 public dispute and gaining and losing trust or rebuilding trust I would say let's welcome grace from the change school The change school I would say it's a school for the modern life about happiness and practical Interaction with the world okay. I'll give her the stage. She's a little bit sick. So please Sorry Grace is a little bit sick. So if you can just be very relaxed for her that would be wonderful. I Should be alright Thank you. Yeah, so I guess just a quick thing the change school is a holistic Education provider where we work with individuals who are at a career crossroads or life crossroads And then we work with businesses who are also going through change So today I'm kind of taking you through I guess what I call lessons from a serial fuck-up or because I don't have the word failure in my dictionary So I term it as aka lifelong learning. I think everything happens for a reason and that Thanks, and that you know everything is there there's a life cycle for things So sometimes it's just a matter of fact of us being able to appreciate that So I'm going to try and talk as fast as I can through some of the things So one of the stories and I'm going to take you through some lessons that I've learned but through three main stories And as quickly as I can So the first one was in 2011 when I was running my other business and these VCs Approached us and asked us to do a joint venture to build an online group buying sites I was I think 26 at that time. I'm 33 now Sorry, no. Yeah. Anyways, don't worry. I'm not great at math. Sorry So they approached me and my past business partner and it looked great. Everything was amazing over promise You know everything pretty much, but for us, we were super bright-eyed and we thought great This is going to allow us to have money. They're going to pay us a salary They're going to give us a percentage of the business and it's something that we wanted to do within the fashion industry which was my background we were in negotiations for about a year back and forth and They were introduced to us through a mutual connection. So initially we thought, okay, they're good people We know the person who's connected us to them. So why not go ahead? and you know in the end something we realized was that It wasn't something from the beginning that we wanted to go with we were Instinctually going this is not right. However, based on Social pressures, you know start up world get some VC money get investment build your business this way, etc, etc We sort of got roped into it And I think no matter how who gave us advice. We didn't really listen to our gut instinct So for me what happened was we continued on this journey for a year And then we realized that what they were promising promising us was all fake actually in the end they ended up paying us for three months and They were based here in Singapore. So I'm mindful in case anyone is interconnected somehow They paid us for three months and Nothing ever eventuated. It was just a lot of conversations Again, a lot of meetings a lot of you know, you've got to work hard. You've got to keep doing this You've got to keep growing. We've got to scale. We've got to scale. We've got to scale but we never really saw any results and Eventually they sold eventually we walked out They sold the business to someone else and then that person actually contacted me about a year and a half ago because that the VCs got bankrupt and They had to leave the country So my number one lesson is go with your gut always because it will not lie to you The second story is really about 2009 I set up my own company an agency called agent grace and It was focused on Australian businesses coming into the reason region someone had given me an opportunity They had a fashion agency and I came from the fashion background with marketing You know wholesale brand management, etc. So it was the perfect opportunity And I found a business partner who had gone to school with here in Singapore. We set it up and Everything was going great. We had great clients Good money coming through everything but again something really was inside me not a hundred percent fulfilled And I never started to listen to these things until probably now when I look back and I started running the business and in 2011 my father passed and I realized actually it wasn't what I wanted to do and What that lesson taught me and setting up a business is that it's easy to set up a business in Singapore? Opportunities come all the time, but it doesn't mean you should take it. But most importantly is that? Passion is what gets you started, but purpose is what keeps you going and I wasn't fulfilled in that business No matter how many skills I had in you know marketing or brand management or how? Experienced I wasn't working in the fashion industry. I Still wasn't fulfilled doing what I was doing so I could have a good business make good money But it wasn't going to get me for the rest of my life So the third lesson which is probably the most recent one was With the change school actually so previously it was called change ventures and as a company We are still called change ventures private limited and it Happened in a very close community here in Singapore actually at the hub and at the hub in Somerset and I had just gone through my you know epiphany of the company agent grace isn't what I want to do I took our haters for a month came back and I started connecting with the local community and I met a guy and We got along a lot of great synergies and I Through this idea of actually why don't we do a hybrid of an MBA and a yoga retreat Which is what our signature program is change ventures And that happens in Bali every year so got along three months later we set up a company which is change ventures and We decided to start doing the pilot What I didn't realize however was that our visions were totally not aligned and I jumped into something giving him 60% of the business and I took 40% because I wasn't able at that time to commit all of my time and Quickly I realized that I'd put myself into a situation again too quickly before really thinking about what I wanted who this person was and what the impact of it would be and The five days before our program was supposed to start in Bali He went to the UK and never and actually said I'm going to stay in the UK Can you run this program with 17 other individuals and also can you pay me a certain amount? Which was we were in the negative We had no money and I had put majority of my money into the business So it broke my idea of the vision broke my idea of of you know the person that I thought he was But it also taught me a lesson that vision is not Vision is important, but what we think so what I may think is like flexible or what someone else may think is flexible Is very two different ways of looking at it, right? Or what I may think is like a social cause someone else may not think is a social cause We're totally misaligned in our vision and in the end. I ended up having to deal with some lawyers Luckily it didn't cost me so much Because we didn't have any money However, I was able to save the business which is what is now the change school and I have I have a new business partner And she's awesome And I have no hard feelings to the guy Honestly, I really don't but I think one of the main things that I learned from that is you know When you talk to someone when you're starting to start a business whether it's with a VC whether it's with another business partner Just make sure everything is aligned aligned and just for you to be able to stick with your gut to be able to stand out but more so that your values are more important and What I didn't realize in all of the situations whether it was setting up my own business Was that my values weren't aligned my values weren't aligned with the VCs at the start? my values weren't aligned with the person that I was going to set up this business initially and I ran too quickly and too fast into you know Hey, let's do it. What have I got to lose which is great in some in some circumstances But I think the biggest lesson is you can tell a person by the core of who they are And if you know them well enough, you'll see their true colors come out very quickly and And now what we do at the school is obviously helping individuals align their values with life and work But also ensuring that they know what their values are so for me these last three Key stories have really helped me to look back and understand that this is what it was meant to teach Me this entire time and helped me create the business that I've currently got So yeah, thank you Taking questions Seed some questions Grace is not staying after this Okay, she'll be staying a little bit after the event So if you do need to contact her you can always reach out to her through the change school or to your directly. Thank you very much