| Nominee: |
Mr Peter Tan |
| Company: |
Pacific Centennial Group |
| Address: |
32 Maxwell Road #03-07 White House |
| Website: |
www.virtualoffice.com.sg |
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| Interview with Mr Peter Tan |
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| 1. What is the nature of your business? (Business Profile) |
| I help emerging entrepreneurs and established companies, around the world to have a virtual office in Singapore. Having a virtual office is like having your own office, but without costly rental or expensive manpower. Virtual office gives you a prestigious central business district address, mails and courier alerting and forwarding, phone and fax services and the access of meeting facilities. Do take a look at our website, http://www.virtualoffice.com.sg, to get a better idea. |
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| 2. What made you embark on this venture choice? |
| I was doing a project for SPH and required a business address. It was how I came to know about business address providers. This gave me an idea and I decided to set up a virtual office company since I am also very interested in IT related areas. |
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| 3. How does your business work? |
| Yes, I do have the money to start the business. |
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| 4. Did you have the capital to start the business or did you have to borrow from someone to get started? |
| My parents do not have their own businesses. However, my parents were a source of inspiration. Like any great dad, mine was someone whom I didn’t fancy to talk to. I thought that he was strict, cold and unbelievably stingy. Whenever I met with failures, he was probably the first to give me a good scolding and I was quite afraid of him. At first, I started the business because I want to prove to him that I am able to manage my own life. Gradually, I learn that my dad was cold because he doesn’t know how to communicate with his kids. He wanted the best for us by being practical and realistic. He is a man of integrity who believes in hard-work. Now, I’m a father of a kid and have accepted my dad’s value as mine whenever I make any business decisions. |
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| 5. Do your parents have their own businesses too? Have they inspired you in one way or another? |
| My childhood dream was to be an engineer. However, I realised that I am not good in Mathematics and engineer is very numbers intensive. I decided to strike out on my own when I knew that most business address providers are traditional in the way that they does business and realised that I could do add value by allowing business address to be bought online, just like how web-hosting companies do. |
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| 6. What was your childhood dream? When did you decide that you would strike out on your own instead of working for someone else? |
| It is to prove your ability and also have full control of your own destiny. If you have never tried setting up your own business, you will probably never know whether you will succeed in it. |
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| 7. Why does someone decide to be on their own rather than join an existing company? |
| It is to keep track of the monthly cash flow. Initially, I had a lot of creative ideas. While being creative is good, creative ideas may not be practical and it may not work sometimes. Hence, it is important to have a good balance between creative and practical thoughts. Also, I have around 200 direct and indirect competitors in Singapore. In any healthy competition, we had to keep our prices competitive while improving on our solutions offering and quality of our customer services. |
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| 8. Are there at any point in your life that you experienced a significant event (WW2, racial riots of the 1960s, the Economic Crisis of the 80s or 90s, SARS, new competition or shifts in market behaviour and trends) which affected or influenced you and your business that made you change the way you think and do your business? |
| My family and my employees are my source of motivation. Knowing that I have to take care of them, I need to make sure that this business is doing well. Also, seeing the daily growth of this whole business idea spurs me on to do an even better job. |
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| 9. What are some of the challenges in starting a business from scratch? (Modify question to what are some of the challenges in maintaining a family business if applicable.) |
| I introduced this package deal and customers just have to pay a lump sum to use the office facilities anytime during office hours. There was this lady who took up the package and planted herself in our office everyday. Basically, she claimed her own private space and even brought in a printer. I realised that this idea is not going to work for me. What if more people like her do the same thing? Hence, I wrote her a letter and refunded her the money. |
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| 10. Who/What motivates you? |
| Our proudest achievement was our ability to attract several Fortune 500 companies, major financial institutions and venture capital firms to use our services. At that time, we were still in our old office that was quite small. In fact, a typical pantry of a Fortune 500 company is probably bigger than that of our old office and we have only no more than 2 staff. |
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| 11. Tell me about the first few customers and the first few years of business. |
| My competitors took my own online articles to publish as their own. I’ve tried to take some legal actions towards them, but I failed because the cost in doing so will not be beneficial to me. For days, these issues troubled me. However, I’ve never felt like giving up because I’ve come to realise that I should not focus on tackling this issue. I should concentrate all my time and resources on my customers instead. They are the ones who make me successful, not my competitors. |
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| 12. Please tell me some stories of your best day in business or your proudest achievement to date. |
| I guess it is pretty much when our monthly revenue has breakeven with our expenditures and is generating a reasonable return as capital for expansion. |
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| 13. Do you recall your worst day in business? Have you ever felt like giving up? |
| As someone who used to have low self-esteem, I took failure quite personal and never once lead any team, as I was naturally a follower. But to succeed in business, one has to be self-confident for others wanting to follow you. Although I might not have all the answers, I clearly communicate that to my staff that I’m willing to work hard with them and share responsibilities and reward of growing the company. I formed my own basis on how leadership works and learns to inspire others. |
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| 14. When was the moment you realised the business would work and support you? |
| In many ways, an entrepreneur is similar to someone who worked for a salary. However, an entrepreneur like me wants to control his own destiny. We can’t wait for management approval or relying on someone to do so. |
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| 15. What are some of the things you have had to overcome to succeed? |
| Starting a business is the easy part. The hard part is whether if you know how to sell. It’s better to have a second-rated product that you could sell than to have a world-class product that you can’t sell. Look at major companies – their CEO has to know how to sell, whether to its customers, the stock analyst, the staff and the critics. |
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| 16. What are some qualities that you feel you possess which differentiate you from someone who works for others? |
| I’m a person who loves to devour business books. From Howard Schultz to Larry Ellison, I am inspired by their strength in seeing the future and worked towards it. It takes a huge amount of courage to believe in an unknown vision and execute that vision without any history of guidance. |
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| 17. To succeed in business, what qualities are essential? What are some of the secrets in making a successful business? |
| Definitely! I think every businessman or businesswoman will want to expand their business. |
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| 18. Who or what inspires you? |
| I hope to establish an Asia-Pacific network of virtual offices, and help the global market to have their presence felt in this area. But before we could do that, we are currently firming up on our operations while starting to build a good management team. Hence once we are able to acquire mezzanine capital for infrastructure and marketing proceeds, we are able to developing our brand in our intended cities. |
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| 19. Have you ever thought of expanding the business in some way or in multiple locations? How and where? |
| An entrepreneur is someone who never says “die�. Though this may sound contrary, but he could also be someone who is very afraid of failing and this fear spurs him on to do his business better. |
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| 20. What aspects of expansion would you like to see for your enterprise? |
| I feel that it is more of an in-between. Education helps to equip one with the proper skill sets, but I feel that it may cause the person to be less of a risk taker. On the other hand, someone who has received lesser education may feel that he has nothing to lose and is not restricted to certain ideas. |
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| 21. In your opinion, how would you define entrepreneurship? |
| True entrepreneur should have a strong vision in what is going to happen in the next few years and have realistic ways to achieve it. It is not difficult to demand that others to listen and obey you. The hard part would be for others to respect and willing to follow you. For example, I told my staffs that if they can’t afford a Toyota, I would not even buy a Hyundai. When I win, my staff win with me. No one is left behind. |
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| 22. To what extent does one?s educational level help or hinder entrepreneurial-ship? |
| Here is a good saying that was suitable for me – “Rolling stone gather no moss�. Since young, I have been a dreamer and was aimless in my life. My mom kept saying that to me but I was certain that I was right. However, I was not. In business, you need to stay focus. People rely on you to have a clear vision and be able to persevere with passion (but certainly not with blind faith). |
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| 23. As we try to select the final 41 entrepreneurs, what qualities would you think a person should have to inspire others? |
| Go ahead and try it. But remember to always keep a lookout on your cash flow. Always work out a budget and never over spend! |
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| 24. What are some of your own values in doing business and what do you like to pass down to others, particularly the younger generation? |
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| 25. Please help me make a three-line summary of this interview after the basic information: your name, name of your business and kind of business. These three lines will highlight the interview for those who will be reading the summaries prior to reading the entire interview. |
| Peter Tan is the CEO of Pacific Centennial Group, which is the leading virtual office provider in Singapore offering value-for-money business support services such as registered address, mailing services and others. To date, the Group has nearly 1,000 clients world-wide in more than 8 countries. |
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| 26. Student’s Personal Comment |
| A very interesting character. Yes, that was what I felt after a good chat during lunch and a quick coffee break. Take a look at his namecard, you will agree with me too. A man who believes in taking full control of his own destiny, he left his job and ventured out on his own. Armed with a good knowledge of IT and its developments, he felt that this will be a good business idea. Along the way, he had a lot of creative ideas, but those were tarnished because some just weren't exactly very realistic to apply.However, that did not stopped him and I believe that's the main reason why his business is doing so well. Creativity is very important, especially in the IT area, because of its rapid development. He never fails to amaze me with his life stories and his life philosophies. |
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| Interviewed by Wang Jierui Joanne on 2005-03-07. Student can be reached at joanne.wang.2003@business.smu.edu.sg |
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