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Lessons from Marc Goh, Design Prodigy

I’ve met several young and bright entrepreneurs in my time, and I know a lot who are really there. As in, their businesses are really chugging along smoothly. One of them is Marc Goh, an NUS graduate who formed a web consultancy business called Design Prodigy. We met in one of those PHP meetups, and he happened to sit beside me.

Marc looks like a simple, humble guy, who speaks like any Chinese Singaporean I know. I didn’t realise he owns a business until I had his namecard.

What impresses me, behind that guarded facade was the kind of business he runs, and the ability for him to survive all this while. He has a proper office at Stanley Road. In fact, I think I pass by that road often when I used to be working in town. A team of a 11 he says he has. Mostly with a team of programmers in China.

I asked him about how he has managed to keep it together for so long. And it’s the same story I’ve heard or rather experienced. Manage your overheads. Don’t live beyond your means.

My dad used to run an engineering company. Before he was a businessman, he was a General Manager (that means boss), at this large Engineering firm in Bugis. He then left the company to start his own firm. The office was sprawling large. It was besar I tell you. But overheads, overheads, overheads killed it. We didn’t need such a big office. If he had cut the overheads in half, he would have continued until this day, he always said. And then… the Asian Financial Crisis.

Dad could never really pick up from where he left off. The business had to go. And in those days, things got so bad, he, a Masters holder, at sub-40 years of age, had to drive a cab to make ends meet.

Marc experienced the same kind of failure in his first year of business. Overheads killed him. But being young, single and unmarried, he has the advantage of trying again. He charges a hefty premium for his services, the smallest of his consultancy plans comes at $3,000, the largest at $8,000. But it’s all about killing the killer. Overheads.

I’ve seen the same thing in the place I’m currently working at. Overheads is always an issue, and it’s really about your pricing and managing those overheads. We’ve got to price our services more than our costs. And our costs, also includes our salary.

I’ve often felt that profits would be my salary. But the secret to Marc’s success I think was that he included salary as his overheads. Which is why his services are a premium. In that way, he gets to live a daily living without worrying when the next pay cheque will come. You’re not digging into your profits that way.

How do you define success? Well, Marc disclosed to me that next year’s NDP website, might go to him. That’s success. You know if the government is going to trust you with something like that, you know you’ve made it.