Episode 2: The early grind as a solopreneur

While most people would remember 2020 as a year of COVID, I remember it as a year where I became serious about the work in AVODAH. Why 2020, in the midst of employment fears and economic woes? 

To me, the reason for AVODAH’s existence was to help people and their careers. COVID did not just disrupt people out of jobs. It also disrupted people’s mindsets towards work. The WFH trend gave people impetus and ideas about how life and work can be better intertwined. The isolation from workplaces made things clearer for some people and also confused some people. Perhaps people started to think about life alot deeper, realising the futility of life. Yes, I think COVID made people think more about their careers. So it was a best time for us to start! Right?

Very early on, I realised that no one knows about AVODAH and earning an income from providing career services was going to be challenging. You see, in Singapore, there is an abundant supply of career services. The government, union, schools, universities all have their own career services. I estimate at least 800 employed career coaches from this segment back in 2020. A few of us also jointly wrote a paper published in the Asia Pacific Career Development Journal back in 2019 about a landscape review of our career development services in Singapore, showing how well covered Singapore is. So how is AVODAH different? Back in 2020, alot of the public and institutional career services aimed at facilitating transitions into work, which was different from what AVODAH is set out to do. We believe in  job placements as one of many (not THE) outcomes, and we emphasise on strengthening the internal psychological processes and mindsets of a person in making good career decisions for themselves and empowering them with the tools to secure job placements or increase job satisfaction. Sounds all good, but where is the money?

So my first grind was to find money. Fast. I took up a provisional private hire driving license and was prepared to drive my life away on the road - as a backup plan. The 1st 6 months of my early grind was spent in ITE West, learning plumbing, electrician, aircon refrigeration maintenance work. This was an area I was keen to know more about and I have come to respect the work of a tradesperson. What they do is hard work, high skill. It also helped that the 6 months of learning came with a generous allowance of $1,200 per month, which was barely enough for my wife and me but we managed through, along with our savings. Every day for 6 months, I would spend half a day in ITE learning and then returning home to design career services, market them, pitch to companies, engage in coaching and counselling work. When the 6 months of allowance ended, I was terrified. I remember thinking “it’s now me facing the big wide world now”. I think the support of people around me helped in us by referring work to us. So we got small gigs that kept us going. One gig was with the Randstad RiseSmart team who engaged me as a freelance coach to support outplacement services. So I used a “survive one month at a time” mindset to keep plugging, diversifying my income, looking high and wide for income. Looking forward beyond one month would scare and discourage me. I rather keep my eyes on here and now and close my eyes in prayer. 

Achievement unlocked! I became a low wage worker. By definition in Singapore, a low wage worker today is one who earns $3,000 or less a month. In 2021, a low wage worker was defined as someone who earns $2,000 or less. After a year in my early grind, I received news that I qualified to be a low wage worker! I was given a Blue Community Health Card (a card for subsidised health and dental care that was given to the households with less than $1,200 per member in the household) and a Workfare Transport card for discounts for taking public transport. I remember being in two minds about being classified as a low wage worker. On one hand, I was glad that I received benefits from the government as a low income worker. On the other hand, I was so discouraged to realise how far I had fallen from my salaried days. Back when I was working in employment policy, we often discussed and debated about the forms of help for low income workers. Never did I realise that I would become one of them. There was a sense of shame that I attached to this status, that I am poorer than the average citizen. It didn’t help whenever I used the cards, the people who verified the cards often took a second look with disbelief to make sure I was the right recipient. I knew that I needed to flip my mind about this status so I chose to look at the positives and used humour to cope with this. I also had greater empathy for the low wage workers in Singapore, knowing that they are just like me, trying to make ends meet. I have since moved out of this status in 2024 so I am very thankful for the support I was given through this classification.

Referrals, referrals, referrals. The projects that got us through were mostly from word of mouth. People knew what we were doing and they spoke about us to people they knew. I will never forget these people - Yvonne Kong-Ho , Andrew Er , Jeremiah Wong 王俊傑 , James Tan , Aries Yeo , Fong Ling Ng , Ng Xiao Hui , Aree Fooyontphanich because your recommendations for me and AVODAH kept me going. I decided early on to not engage in expensive marketing expenditure and instead to go with word of mouth recommendations. It was a tough call to make because in business, we generally need marketing to generate sales and income. There were some companies that offered to sell us leads. These companies do social media marketing for coaching services and they take in online leads and sell them to career coaching companies to follow up. In the world of social media where we are flooded with advertisements and Google listings, so I felt that word of mouth offers a more personalised touch. On hindsight, I realised one more benefit - our early business model was not ready to scale. AVODAH was a 1.5 man show in the early days. If we had gotten more leads, I would have difficulty converting them. 

Burnout. I knew about this word, just never thought it would happen to me. Around mid 2021 at the 1 year mark, I started to feel a sense of dread, demotivation in doing the business. I felt really lousy but still pushed on with my tasks. Slowly I resented my work, I hated the time I was putting in and I went into a shut down mode. It was my wife Clarissa who pointed it out to me and after speaking to a friend, I realised that I was in a burnout mode. Historically, I thrive on fast paced work. I love pushing output quickly. I never had a problem with burnout when I was working for someone. Yet now when I am working for myself, I burnt out. Who was to blame? Where was the problem?

As I reflected, I realised that self employed and entrepreneurs do bad things to themselves. We pack our time like sardines, meetings after meetings. We chase after every lead we get. We commit to projects and we want to give 120% because we want to set a good record. We want to turn up for everything, even if we are half dead. I was glad that my wife was there to pick me up and help me set boundaries around my time. I needed a reality check and she gave it to me. I needed to fall back on a routine of time so that I can organise myself and my day better. This helped me to prioritise my well being and ensure I can give my best to my clients. The Bible also helped me to slow down as I mediated on the truths about the source of my worth and identity.

I also learnt that my time is limited and I need to choose my time wisely to pursue things that are more important or worthy. Do I want to drive private hire for 8 hours and then slog another 6 hours on AVODAH just to make ends meet? I need to learn to say no to certain opportunities or pass them on and be at peace with it.

My solopreneur days lasted up to 2022. During this time, we were building momentum by simply not dying. AVODAH had some success, we created some simple processes to help us organise our work around, tracking our efforts, our leads, our followups. Every month that we survived, we built another step. 

Stay tuned for the next episode article about flying a plane while building it.