Welcome to our Global Expert Interview Series with Simon Alexander Ong, an exceptional personal development entrepreneur, renowned lifecoach, and globally renowned speaker. Simon’s captivating journey has not only garnered acclaim from prestigious stages but also recognition from esteemed media outlets and industry leaders.
Renowned for his compelling talks on purposeful leadership, entrepreneurship, and success, the influential contributions of Simon Ong extends to prestigious events such as The Peter Jones Foundation, The World Business & Executive Coach Summit (WBECS), and the London School of Economics (LSE).
Expertise of Simon Ong is sought by major media outlets, including Sky News, BBC Radio London, and LBC Radio. His insights grace notable publications like HuffPost, Forbes, Virgin, and The Guardian, featured in a nationwide campaign by Barclays UK, underlining his impact on lifestyle habits.
Beyond the spotlight, Simon Ong leaves a lasting imprint on the corporate landscape. Collaborating with major corporations like Unilever, Barclays, Salesforce, Microsoft, and EY, he advocates for improved lifestyle habits and employee well-being, establishing himself as a trusted advisor.
Accolades from Adobe, praising a recent keynote as ‘truly amazing and mind-blowing,’ and Docusign, highlighting ‘ Simon’s ability to deliver wisdom in clear and simple ways as energizing and inspirational,’ testify to his exceptional speaking and coaching prowess.
In his debut book, “Energize: Make the Most of Every Moment,” published by Penguin in April 2022, Simon Ong achieves instant bestseller status, winning Book of the Year in the Wellness and Wellbeing category at The Business Book Awards 2023. Renowned figures like Simon Sinek, Marie Forleo, and Dr. Marshall Goldsmith laud its transformative impact.
In this interview, we will uncover the secrets of purposeful leadership, entrepreneurship, and the transformative power of energy management. Simon Ong will share insights gained from working with global brands, providing a roadmap for adopting mindful and impactful practices in both personal and professional spheres.
Join us as we unravel the extraordinary journey of Simon Alexander Ong, exploring his accolades, associations with industry giants, and the profound principles shaping his remarkable career.
Julia Ager, CEO, Jus Agency
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Q: Can you tell us one of your career highlights and what you are excited to be working on now?
My greatest highlights were the interviews I had on BBC News and Sky News. On these platforms, I shared my work as a coach and spoke with a national audience. My second highlight was getting a book deal with the world’s largest publishing house, Penguin, where I wrote my first book “Energise”. To work with such a big publisher is an experience I cherish so much.
I am excited about the developments in AI and the Metaverse. I am also excited about my speaking and coaching engagements. I’m in the process of creating “Simon AI” for people who cannot afford to be coached by me either in person or virtually can be coached by my AI who speaks over 12 languages. It’s incredible what AI can do in terms of allowing my work to be communicated to people of a different nationality or in the location they reside. On the other hand, the metaverse is designed to create a campus in the virtual world around the work I do such that people who want to go deeper into my work can now access it through their Meta Quest or the Apple Vision Pro.
Q: You’ve delivered keynotes and talks at organisations such as Salesforce, Microsoft, EY, Google Meta and Adobe. How were you able to leverage these Partnerships?
I can share some tips on how businesses can access partnerships and relationships in the same way I have; When I published a book I was able to get authors like Simon Sinek Marshall, Goldsmith Marie, and folio Ali Abdaal to endorse it. I’ve been on stages with the likes of DPAG Chao, Jay Shetty, T Hara and companies such as Salesforce, Google Meta, Adobe and EY.
There’s one habit that every business has to embrace to get access to opportunities that most get access to and that is the ability to build relationships through adding value to every interaction that you have whether online or offline.
The way we add value is not by thinking about the value to add but by listening to the others to find out how we can be of service. Give people the opportunity to share their struggles, pains, challenges, goals and ambitions. When you have access to such information, you have an understanding of how you can be of service and then become useful and valuable. People would want you in their circle and part of their plans for achieving their success.
Q: What are the most common trends, challenges or opportunities for personal development within corporate work and how do you address them in your presentation?
We can address them in three ways;
- Adapting to a changing world; Technology is advancing and the world is changing at a rapid rate. Understanding how organisations can adapt to changing trends and ways of working is essential. During and after the pandemic, a lot of us had to adapt to a new world of work, and also understand how to get the best out of employees. Before now, organisations were about telling people what to do and you rewarded them for what they did. In today’s world, the way we lead is very different. It’s about how we can create a culture that makes people recognize the work they do and look after their well-being. This is because if you are not giving people the platform to succeed, they’re going to burn out or move to a competitor.
- Leadership; Leadership is not about telling people what to do and how to do it, but rather empowering them and coaching them to success. This was evident in a study by Google called Project Oxygen in 2008. In this study, they looked internally as to what made some leaders better than others. They discovered eight factors after this 12-month study. At number eight, it was discovered that a leader had great technical skills and at number one it was that leaders were great coaches; this shows that just because someone is a great salesman or great technician or great engineer, it does not automatically make them a great leader. Leadership is a skill we have to cultivate and understanding how to access it within each of us which will allow a company to thrive.
- Optimising culture to get the best out of the employees and empower them to be leaders themselves; An organisation will become powerful when everyone shows up each day demonstrating leadership qualities. When we look at the growth of a company, we focus on two growth cycles which are scaling revenue and scaling headcount, that is, as we scale revenue, we need the headcount to match our bigger ambitions. When scaling companies, we fail.
Q: What advice would you have for a first-time leader?
- I would recommend that leaders should work on their ability to communicate. Once you step into a position of leadership, a lot of your job is going to be about communication, whether communicating with shareholders, external suppliers, clients or your employees. Communication is going to be a big part of your role. Warren Buffett when asked what is the most important skill in business He responded by saying Communication. He got a certificate from the D con Institute of Public Speaking. This allowed him to communicate with the world to get people to buy into what he was trying to create. As a leader, if you understand how to communicate your vision, mission and objectives to other people in a way that gets people behind your story, people want to follow you towards a future that is compelling for everyone. Hence, communication will be the first skill to develop as an effective leader.
- Ability to listen, be coached and coach others: If you can understand others that gives you the data on how to serve others better, if you can be coached, it shows you have the humility that says I don’t know it all and that there’s always more I can learn which makes you a better leader because you are always a work in progress. Also, when you can coach others you’re able to tap into the talent within every individual that you lead.
- Ability to ask for help and get feedback; when you show that you are comfortable asking for help and that you want to get feedback about your performance, you’re showing your entire company that you want to learn which makes you relatable.
- You can’t lead others unless you are leading yourself first; when you lead yourself first, it inspires others to want to embrace the habits and the changes you’ve made that have transformed your life. It’s the same thing with parenting, when you tell a child to do something often the child doesn’t listen, but the child will always follow in your footsteps. With leadership, leadership is set by example because that’s what people follow, if you set the example by doing certain things well, people follow and it becomes the culture.
Q: What would you recommend for somebody to implement into their lives to get more grounded to do the things that we’re talking about?
For someone to show up in the right way to influence the people that they lead, they have to focus on their energy. In my book, energy is divided into four dimensions: Physical, Mental, Emotional and Spiritual. When you are embracing habits that address those four areas, the energy that you are going to have when you show up at work each day is going to be infectious.
Harvard Business School conducted a study that shows that the greatest relational energy between people in every organisation is between those at the top and the rest of the company. The way your senior manager shows up at work influences how you are during your day. If you resume one morning and you’re there before your manager, when he or she comes into the office you can tell exactly whether they’ve had a great or bad evening the night before even before they spoke. That’s the energy being emitted from their body language and the non-verbal cues.
Physical energy entails working on your sleep, diet and movement. If you are getting sufficient rest and sleep each day, moving your body regularly and eating healthy diets you have a fantastic baseline of physical energy. Mental energy is cultivating a resilient mindset, it’s your ability to focus on what matters and access your creative energy. Emotional energy also known as emotional intelligence is how you relate to yourself and others. Spiritual energy, on the other hand, is believing in the mission and vision of your company and seeing your work being a success.
Q: Are there any other nuggets or transformational advice from your book?
The first piece of advice is the ability to express gratitude and appreciation to people not just within your company but to people who have helped you in your business journey and also people who have referred business to you. It could be something simple like dropping a voice note to a client or a note to an employee, for instance; just saying I just wanted to share my appreciation with you regarding the work that you put in this project in the last two weeks. Your hard work has not gone unnoticed and I just wanted to express my appreciation for your input.
Receiving this kind of note from your superiors would motivate you and it would be a catalyst for you to want to do more. Studies have shown that it has the greatest impact on performance.
Have diverse inputs into your thinking; what you want to do is not to be around the same influences and the same inputs all the time because otherwise your creativity dies and you have no space for Innovation. The more diverse you are, the more creative you get. Exposing yourself to new ideas and perspectives gives birth to originality and things that have never been done before.
Q: Could you share some of the best ideas you’ve received along the way that have shaped your mindset?
Two factors determine how ideas are utilised, the first is diverse inputs; 1. Diverse inputs: spend time with people from different industries to get new perspectives, over time, your mind will start connecting the dots between different industries to create something original.
The other side of the coin is tapping into your curiosity; when you travel to a new place, and make new connections, you’ll be curious about how things work in other countries. If you can write down your questions and then explore them to generate innovative ideas.
Q: What is your secret source to getting things done? Is there anything that we can learn from that?
Don’t be attached to an outcome but be open to everything.’ To achieve this, write down all your objections and address them immediately. If you are worried about the cost of something for example, a better question to ask is ‘How can I do this for minimal cost for free.’ Asking yourself that question can get you thinking about ways that you can offer value that may not always be monetary. Try to address those things as quickly as you can and then think about the smallest bit of action you can do to get started.
Once you take those small steps, you create momentum and when you get that momentum, you want to see the whole project through. Don’t be in your head always and don’t be too attached to the result, enjoy the process.
If you don’t enjoy the process, it may feel like a chore and you’re not going to put in the energy it requires. Your ideas are mere experiments, not all of them are going to work until you put them into action. Some of the experiments will work and it will work beautifully and if some fail, it’s part of the entrepreneurial journey that will teach you lessons you would not have known until you put them into action.
Q: If you had a budget of $2,000, $10,000 and then $150,000 to invest in your business, where would you allocate those funds?
If I’ve $2,000, the first thing I would use that for is marketing. This is because when you are just starting you may have a great product or service but if no one knows about it you’ve got a hobby. Use that budget of 2000 to understand your target demographic, how they spend their time, where they receive their information, where they get their influences to make a purchasing decision and use that budget to allocate resources to share your work with that audience.
With $10,000, I’ll surround myself with people who have got to the next level. Working with people who have been there to coach you and that’s because it saves you so much time so many failed efforts and many failed experiences. One of the fastest ways to make progress in your business journey is to create an environment around you that makes it impossible not to succeed and people you learn from play a vital role in your Journey. I would put some of that $10,000 investing into some advisers or mentors who can help me get to the next level.
$150,000 I would focus on systems and hire a team; having a system in place and a team that can implement the system. You then start outsourcing some of those functions to a team to execute.
Q: Could you leave us with a podcast, book or course recommendation that you think would be very useful for us to check out?
The first book is The Go-Giver by Bob Burg and John David Man. The essence of the book is that the secret to success is giving. The more value you put out to the world the more you get back in return and that value contributes to a meaningful life and a life that has a legacy.
The second book I would recommend is The Infinite Game by Simon Siner. This book highlights how too many businesses are playing the finite game. The finite game is playing to win, playing to be the best. This is what drives their success, but the issue is who determines the window where they decide who’s the best and who’s deciding the best. It’s not very clear and it’s the wrong game to be playing if you want to thrive in the long term as a business. The right game to play is the infinite game because when you’re playing the infinite game it’s never about winning today or tomorrow, it’s about how you can adapt to cater to consumers whose needs are changing to remain relevant so we don’t go out of business.
The world changes, if you look at Apple when it first started you would have categorised it on the stock exchange as a computer company that sells laptops and PCs. Apple has evolved over the years, and that’s because they do phones, watches, televisions and a lot more than just computers. They’ve become a Lifestyle brand. When we think of Apple, we think of the Brand Apple, not its computers. This is the same with the Rock who built a career by being known as a wrestler, but also directs, acts and runs businesses and more. He’s become a brand that transcended a title. When we’re playing the infinite game, we’re always looking at ways that we can adapt and evolve to remain relevant and be of service to the people we do business with.
Thank you Simon Ong!
Find and follow Simon Ong on Instagram and through his website.
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About Jus Agency
Jus Agency is an international marketing agency that helps clients to grow, scale, and launch their businesses through a variety of services, including Fractional CMO services, Strategic Marketing and Expert Team Hires. Our mission is to help our clients achieve their business goals and realize their full potential.
To learn more about all the ways we can help you grow your business, head to www.jusagency.com or get in touch julia@jusagency.com
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