Singapore
I landed in Singapore with the reckless confidence of the ill prepared, suitcases in hand and a plan to find my fortune. My plan was simple:- to survive. I am amazed at how I tackled such a task without knowledge of Asia nor of running a company. In truth I didn’t actually know much about Public Relations either. I was armed with the number of Carol Wong, who is the niece of the neighbour of my grandparents when they were living in Sussex. Not exactly a close connection, but Carol kindly let this overstressed stranger stay in her apartment for three months – it was just the time I needed to get myself established.
Nine years later, and EASTWEST PR has become one of the longest established PR firms in Singapore, it hardly seems possible. Somehow the Agency has survived a litany of near death experiences. My initial budget was to have £30,000 turnover in the first year, but I did that in the first two months – and through over trading ended up with GBP35 in the bank and £40,000 of debtors. Lesson #1 – cash is king. With cash in the bank I expanded and while the headcount increased to 14 the turnover remained about the same, and profitability declined. Friends and family came out to visit, and I moved apartments, but I was oblivious to everything, living on coffee, cigarettes and adrenaline. I went to England for Xmas and every photograph has me asleep on the sofa. I was 28, without time for anyone, and making it all up as I went along. I had a reputation as a perfectionist and being “intense.” I don’t remember laughing for three years.
Around the time of my birthday in January 1997 Hanbo Steel, a large Korean chaebol, collapsed under $6bn in debts, and it was the first time I realized that I simply ride the wave of the regions economy, and am not the turning the tide. In Oct. 27 the Dow Jones industrial average posted its single-biggest point loss ever of 7.18 percent to 7,161.15, the Nasdaq plunged to 115.43 points and the S&P 500 index tumbled 64.65 points. The decline is so steep it prompts stock exchange officials to suspend trading. As the saying goes, if America sneezes, Singapore catches a cold. In December, with currencies plunging, and our clients pulling out or going out of business, Alan Greenspan said “While the adjustments may be difficult for a time, these crises will pass.” In March of 1998 things hadn’t got much better, with Kunihiro Hatae, general manager of Tokyo Securities summing it up, “It was like a fierce battle.” Those of us hanging onto our businesses rallied round to shore up one another’s cash flows, would call one another to simply share worries, and pray for respite.
The Internet boom brought salvation at the tail end of 1998 and early 1999, but S.E. Asia continued to be a cauldron of change. May 21st 1998, “I have decided to declare that I have ceased to be the president of the Republic of Indonesia,” said 76 year old President Suharto who had ruled since 1966. Indonesia, a country of 202 million, was a major contributor to the wealth of Singapore, and the ensuing currency collapse and deathly violence started the decline in property prices in Singapore, and friends of mine with business in Indonesia lost money, some it meant packing up and heading home. At this time EASTWEST started to get a trickle of Internet companies calling, and in 1999 this turned into a flood, replacing our broadcast and IT clients as a major source of income.
For a year I became one of the thousands who believed they might be the next Jerry Yang or Larry Ellison, it all seemed possible. I started go-events.com, a search engine for business events, and in December 1999 I rather impossibly raised US$500,000 from a local venture fund on the basis of a power point presentation. On paper I was worth US$5,000,000. After three years of toiling at the face of PR this seemed like manna from heaven. I assembled a technical team and set up offices in Brisbane and Hong Kong, magazines were interviewing me, CNBC filmed a feature, and I gave lectures in Hong Kong, Bombay, Bangkok and Singapore. All of sudden it was celebrity, it was rock and roll and I was part of the trendy young things that were redefining business models. I played a dangerous game of neglect with EASTWEST, finding later about accounting theft and factional fighting.
December 29th, 2000 the Nasdaq Composite Index plunged 39.3% to 2470.52 – it was the end of any funding hopes. At the end of 2000 we were profitable, but only with two of us left, and I had to take the decision to continue or find an exit. I had created the largest site of its kind in Asia, one of three on the planet, and I was a celebrity, but I had a profitable PR agency that was going off the rails that needed my attention. I had to choose, and as I walked across the fields in Selling I took the purple skies at dusk as an omen; I had to let go of the ego, and sell my baby.
I learnt a lot from running the Internet Company, including the fact that I had not built a solid company in EASTWEST, but rather fuelled myself and all that worked with me on of a vicious cocktail of anxiety and ambition. I had used up all the trust and goodwill of the team and clients through my neglect over 2000. When I faced the team at the first strategy session in January 2001 on Sentosa Island, I felt like an adulterous husband returning home still smelling of another woman’s perfume upset at his children’s behaviour but with no moral authority. The accountant had been stealing. One staff member was invoicing clients for meetings that hadn’t taken place, and the Agency was like a vipers nest. With the Internet bubble truly burst our portfolio of tech driven clients were not leaving, but rather evaporating. I was extremely tired from the battle with the investors over selling go-events.com for 10% of the money I extracted from them. I formed a partnership with the largest international technology PR firm, Brodeur Worldwide, and the managing director invited us to move in to their Orchard Road offices a detailed agreement for them to acquire EASTWEST in the autumn of 2001.
On September 11, 2001, four U.S. planes hijacked by terrorists crashed into the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and a field in Pennsylvania killing nearly 3,000 people in a matter of hours, and once again I was to see that Singapore is like the bird that sits on the rump of an elephant. The rhetoric of the War on Terror was quickly adopted by Singapore, an island with 4 million mainly Christians surrounded by Islamic states of Malaysia and Indonesia, and the naval base for the US Pacific Fleet. I flew in from the UK on the 13th September to see sub-machine gun toting soldiers at Changi Airport. John Back, the laconic MD of Brodeur Singapore, told me that the deal was off and that Brodeur would close the office inside a month. On the 14th I sat down in the plush offices with the 8 guys and gave the alternatives: 15% pay cuts or redundancies. It was quite a change from the story in August when the promise was of more money and career opportunities. In a perverse way I enjoyed the adversity, and was heartened that everyone wanted to keep the team together, and we began the first installment of a long term freeze in earning as we watched the Brodeur team be disbanded.
The new team held together for the next two years, managing to establish itself as a competitive force in Singapore. We were ranked the top independent Agency in Singapore by PR Week in 2001, and in 2002 I was immensely proud that we won the British Chamber of Commerce SME of the Year Award. As the Minister for Trade and Industry,, handed me the crystal trophy, I felt that the troubles were behind us. Derrick and his team had brought in the Nortel account, it was the largest win we had won in years, and gave me renewed confidence that here we had a real business. In October 2002 183 people lost their lives in the Bali bombings, which meant that Europeans and American were increasingly wary about coming to SE Asia.
Then in March 2003 SARS struck, and it seemed like we were destined to be struck by famine or flood next. Singapore’s tourist arrivals in May contracted by a stunning 70%, and it was estimated that Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (Sars) crisis cost Asian economies over seven million jobs and slashed at least 30 billion dollars off growth estimates.
