3 key lessons we learnt in 2019 (Part 1: Mindset)

It’s now been officially just over 1 year switching from a traditional corporate bank like UBS to a robo-advisory fintech startup like AQUMON. On the last day of 2019 it’s given me an opportunity to look back, reflect on my journey so far and share a little on the lessons I have learned so far with the intention to help others. In part 1 of this series I focus on ‘mindset’ which to me is the most important thing to on your journey to ‘success’ both in life and in business.  

Lesson #1: Be driven by learning

We all need a start. The biggest difference working in a startup versus a corporate is where you are constantly working in an environment where you don’t have all the answers. Many of us with corporate backgrounds have transferable skills but unlikely have the actual experience of working in the startup industry. Furthermore many startups may be addressing needs which there are limited solution providers. The experience at times can be like feeling our way around in the dark. So when you run into such difficult questions who do you ask?

Beyond going back to learn from books or youtube (both my goto ‘mentors’) back in July we started an AQUMON ‘Smart Talk’ series whereby we invited startup practitioners to come into our office to share their inspirational stories and give our teammates a chance to directly ask questions on how to solve problems they run into. To me this made a lot of sense.

One of the more memorable sessions we had was with Victor Lang, COO from Gini. Their startup and app aims to help people manage their finances easier. This was a time when AQUMON’s mindset was more Sales/Marketing focused and we were honestly not as a product driven as we should be. What Victor pointed out was the need for your product to be always improving or “always be shipping”. Since then we’ve honestly taken that to heart we’ve had multiple upgrades to our product (even more coming in the pipeline!). What we learned was every time we offered client-driven improvements to our product our business received another shot of adrenaline and we would organically see another larger wave of new clients onboard.

Takeaway: 

If you want to see growth in any area of your life you have to be driven first by learning. This should be in your DNA. Like a scientist, once you have learned something put it into practice and see the results. Learn, test, repeat.

Lesson #2: Be all-in. 

Once you have the catalyst to be driven by learning you need something to help keep the engine going. For most of us we approach our ‘work' exactly like how it sounds…like work. But it can be more than that if we are willing to have an ‘all-in’ attitude. Could you love your career, team and company to a point where it becomes an ‘unhealthy’ obsession 

The first 3-4 months when I joined AQUMON my friends would ask me why I was so down. Besides experiencing growing pains of tackling something completely new the thing that frustrated me most was the fact that we were trying so hard but saw nowhere near the results we wanted. What I didn’t understand at the time was jumping from an established 150 year old brand like UBS to a relatively new brand like AQUMON was we sorely lacked the initial ingredient needed in all successful financial/investment products of ‘trust’. It honestly pained me to experience this but being all-in helped us weather through this period.

Since we didn’t have many weapons in our arsenal we focus on creating deeper connections with people through our offline events and we organized/participated over 70 events in 2019. To continually understand Hong Kong people’s changing investment needs and our market better we held many nights of focus groups at our office. Our focus groups pointed us towards less advertising and more linking ourselves with trustworthy platforms/companies. In the 2nd half of 2019 we focused on creating more PR/media opportunities on reputable media platforms and our exposure opportunities increased by 70% this year.

Fast forward 12 months, we had a fantastic year where our business grew by multiple fold on minimal increase in budget. Although these are happy numbers to be proud of what made me most joyful was seeing our seeds of trust blossom at Hong Kong Fintech Week trade fair. From 1 year ago when we we had a booth at Asian Financial Forum where very few people knew who we were to being surrounded for 9 hours straight at our booth with positive comments on people/their friends using our product, following what we do, liking our branding and more it felt amazing the small magic that having an all-in mentality can create.

Takeaway: 

Results may vary but going all-in into your career is a very freeing feeling whereby you are not just working to work but driven by something much more powerful. I find this is the mentality you need to take yourself to the next level. 

Lesson #3: Stay positive. You’ll need it to stay the course. 

Considering positive results are not guaranteed an important thing that is going to keep yourself and potentially those around you on track is positivity. We all spend half our lives at at our jobs, why not make it an environment that you and your team enjoy in?

This was my first week at AQUMON. We refurbished a vintage Volkswagen van into a coffee van (our branding color was still orange then) to create additional branding awareness near the central business district (CBD) of Hong Kong. The objective besides handing out AQUMON flyers was to ‘invite’ people to the van and create an opportunity to understand their financial needs over a complimentary cup of coffee and introduce them to our robo-advisory brand.

I still remember the first few minutes I was handing out flyers on the street and getting ignored left and right by pedestrians while thinking to myself “A week ago I was working with and respected by wealthy clients and now I am handing out flyers on the street and getting ignored. What am I doing?” A mindset change was needed and I created a challenge for myself to be the best street salesman. This was important not only for me but for my teammates because looking around my teammates weren’t exactly comfortable as well. We started to gamify the situation and target people who we’d thought we would connect better with (for me it was foreigners, overseas born Chinese and ladies) and we surprised ourselves with quite a bit of success. Looking back this branding exercise directly and indirectly created a number of fruitful business partnerships for us in 2019

Takeaway:

In the infinite game that is business I find positivity is often an overlooked but important factor to success. How you approach any situation is all about choice. If you think/act positively and consistently work at it, even if no guarantee in results, at least you and your team will enjoy the journey.

Part 2 & 3

In part 2 & 3 I’ll be addressing about lessons I learned about leadership and business. If you like this article and it helped you in some way let me know! As we wrap up 2019, I wanted to wish everyone a very Happy New Year and looking forward to new adventures in 2020. Happy investing!

Ken