Welcome to Resilient Entrepreneurs where we showcase business owners who know how to bounce back from adversity and thrive. Today we're talking with Tan, who founded a digital agency with a team of other young and passionate digital specialists. His company is Glaxier based in Brisbane, Australia, although he works with clients anywhere in the world. He's also started a dog jewelry business, ooh, interested to talk more about that. We'll ask Tan to look into a crystal ball and share his views on AI which is of course a favorite topic of ours, and we'll dig into social media advertising for some helpful suggestions for those business owners out there. It's a hot topic that can open a wormhole so heads up, we're gonna go there. So Tan first of all, welcome to Resilient Entrepreneurs. In researching you, we came across your personal website where you say, ‘Ask me how to pronounce my last name!’, which I really appreciate because I'm not even going to try, can you please introduce yourself!
Haha yes, thank you. So my name is Tan, my last name is Pongsukwechkul. And it's a Thai name so people always ask how to pronounce it because similar to English, not everything that's written sounds like it shows. So yes, I get this a lot.
I love your approach on your website, how you said, when you meet me, ask me how to pronounce my last name. I mean, that's just embracing the one thing that is probably always in front of you. Right?
Yeah.
So tell us a little bit about your story Tan. We know you live in Australia and work in Australia now but you're originally from Thailand. Can you tell us a little bit about your story on that move from one country all the way to Australia?
So when I was 14 I moved to Australia. I had an opportunity where my auntie was coming here to work, she was sponsored by her company and I had the opportunity to follow her along. She asked me one question- “do you want to come to Australia?” I thought I was probably running around playing and didn't really think about it so I said yes, straightaway and I just had to follow through. So I said, yeah okay, let's do it and I was here and was doing high school and uni and back then, started working here, happily ever after.
And were you speaking English when you landed at 14?
Yes, I was not bad but I wasn’t great either. Got bullied a lot in school about my accent, my English and I had issues with pronouncing some sounds in English as well, so people were mocking me and stuff like that. So I just had to get over that and practice and learn to overcome the problems there.
Yeah, that's a lot to go through at a young age. You breeze over it as if “Oh, yeah, I got bullied and you know, I got through it.” And I really appreciate that attitude and I think that maybe that's why you're resilient and successful in what you do now. Can you talk a little bit more about that experience and just getting through difficult times like that?
I think looking back.. it was a while ago, so looking back, it was probably more annoying than anything..and there are always two sides, there are bullies and there are also good people, good friends that I met. So I think I tend to focus on the positive side of everything so I just went along with life and try to, if there’s anything that's not great, where I don't want to be involved, I just let it go, and the people who will make fun of me I just don’t hang out with them and get over it.
I think that optimism helps so tremendously in life in general, but to be able to make such a brave leap at such a young age and then to have to deal with cultural and language issues and all of that. So then you went on to university, went on to a master's degree, correct? And so tell us the story from there to becoming an entrepreneur.
Yeah, for sure. So, originally I wanted to be a doctor, well I wanted to be a lot of things, including a doctor, a director, a chef, but then I settled at a doctor - Asian parents! You had to be a doctor.
Yes.
So over here in Australia you have to do a bachelor degree before you can go on to do medicine. So I did bio-medicine as an undergrad degree and then I was trying to get into medicine, and promptly failed at that pretty badly. So I tried it for a few years, after I graduated I kept trying for a few years. But it just didn't work out so I said to myself, No, this is the last time that I'm going to do the test and I still failed the last time. So what I mean by failing, I wasn't failing, I still got good marks but it wasn't enough. And yeah, so after the last time I said, ‘It's time to probably do something else’ and the next thing I wanted to do is business - marketing and stuff like that to really put my creativity into use. So the next thing is probably to do something related to business because at that point, I had a degree that's not related to business and probably nothing that I can use from that degree. So at that time I was in Melbourne and I came to Brisbane because my girlfriend at the time got into medicine in Brisbane, so I followed her here and did a business degree in Brisbane.
So were you always a creative person, did you feel that was more your path but you chose to do medicine to chase your parents dream, now it's your opportunity to chase your dream.
I was always creative, probably not in the common sense of what a creative person is, but I like fun, I like to play, I like something new. So I always created games, new ways of doing things and stuff like that ever since I was a kid. When I grew up I didn't have a lot of toys so I just used my imagination and whatever is around me to play, create something to play with my brothers. So in that sense I think I was pretty creative. And the doctor medicine thing, I'm both logical and creative so I think in parts and it ended up being the creative part.
Yeah, it's useful for business, I was just gonna say to be logical and creative because an entrepreneur, if you can have both sides of yourself like that you can build and create new businesses, new things all the time, which is amazing.
Yeah, definitely. The challenging thing is to pick which mindset is needed at the right time.
And now you're running your own business Tan, and it's in a creative space, digital advertising and digital performance. So before we get into that, let's just tap into the dog jewelry business because I am fascinated by it. What prompted you to start that?
It's not jewelry for dogs, it's jewelry for dog lovers. I was looking for a gift for my girlfriend at the time, my wife now, so I was looking for something that's custom made, something that will only be ours. So we had two dogs at that time, a border collie and a rough collie. So I looked up a design, I've got a friend who is a jeweler and designer, so that was handy. So I said I want to make these two dogs into a pendant. If I get her references can you do it? And my friend did it and it was unique, it was something that I thought, yeah, this could be a business. They are probably people like me that are looking for something unique, something that's more personalised because I know how much dogs or cats can mean to pet owners, pet pet lovers. So at that time we said yep, let's do it, let's see where this goes, and give it a good go.
And that was in 2020, so middle pandemic chaos?
Yeah, I didn't think much about it but thinking back, it was the right time for an e-commerce business anyway, so it was pretty good timing.
Yeah, exactly what I was thinking, the timing is perfect for anything online. And so you built a business together and how's that been going?
At the moment we are having issues with suppliers so a lot of the products we have are out of stock, but otherwise the website is functioning and selling so you can check it out. We probably have new designs coming out as well but with the supply issue we’re just putting that on hold at the moment but we'll have a cat collection in the future as well.
Come on now. Us cat owners need stuff too.
Sometimes Sky features in these podcast episodes, Sky the siamese cat.
Very loud, she’s beautiful but very loud, she likes to talk. Yes, it's hilarious.
And so now into the digital business, digital agency business that you've started, you're still quite young, this is your second business and you were working at an agency and then decided to branch out on your own. So you really have that entrepreneurial spirit running strong.
I would say I don't know. I don't know what entrepreneurial spirit is, but I like freedom, so I think that's what it is.
What does freedom mean to you? And is that the best thing about being an entrepreneur?
For me, freedom is the best thing in the world. You could have money but you can’t buy freedom. So for me, the number one priority is freedom. I need to be able to choose the hours I want to work, when I want to work and what I want to do. Being an entrepreneur, being the business owner fits all those boxes but for some people that are not really committed or driven, freedom can be a downfall as well, and that's the same for me sometimes.
Yeah, that's so true. It's so true. Tell us a little bit about what you do at Glaxier, how do you help your clients?
I help businesses get more leads and sales, more customers, more profit into the business by getting the business, getting the client in front of the right prospects. So we do that through Google ads, Facebook ads, Tiktok ads. A lot of businesses that I find, they are still very traditional which is surprising because we are in the digital world. Most people are still relying on referrals and word of mouth but I mean, I think as business owners growth is important, and there's no better way to grow quickly, whether it's organic or paid, so this is how I help my clients, getting their names out there, get in front of the customers, and you can get a lot of customers really quickly.
Yeah. So what are your thoughts on the difference between organic growth and paid growth? Because this is a question we get a lot too is, should I pay for my posts? Should I boost? Should I create ads? Or should I just post frequently? So what's your thoughts on how to grow well on social media?
I'm gonna use a metaphor here. It is a problem of what should you eat? Do you eat protein, or carbohydrates, veggies, you've got to eat them all if you want to be healthy. Same as digital media so you have to be great at organic, you have to be great at paid, because there's an element of reach, there's an element of trust. So organic struggles with reach sometimes, social media platforms have been putting limitations on your profiles, and that. And if you think about Google, you can't rank for everything so to be able to reach more people you'd have to pay. So if you want to reach more people, pay but there are some people that catch on to the paid advertising world. So they think ads, people can just pay to be here. So you're gonna miss out, if you focus on paying, you're going to miss out on these people, and there are a lot of people on Google that it's about 70% of people that are just skipping ads. So if you have to do both to maximise your growth, from my point of view.
Isn’t it the best part of digital is that you can skip ads, right? That's what everybody wants to do. As soon as it says, Skip Ad on YouTube, you press the button to skip the ad. So people, I guess advertisers would be concerned that the money that they're spending on ads will be wasted. So how do you counter that?
Most people skip ads because it's not the right ad for them and because they're not interested.
You can’t really target 100% of people that are going to be the right people, so I think skipping shouldn't be a concern for advertisers, it’s about maximising relevant people. So for example, if on Facebook, if you get what we call in the industry is the Click Through Rate or View Rate. Because I focus on results I tend to look at Click Through Rates and Conversions more but looking at Click Through Rates it's a good indication of whether you're reaching the right people and whether your ads or the content that you create are great quality. Yeah it's about making sure that your ad isn't spamming people and people who aren't interested, that’s all.
Yeah, it's all about that good targeting, good niche marketing, being clear about your targets. Yeah.
Tan, what would you say are the top three mistakes that people make when it comes to digital ads? Social media ads.
Right, I'm going to talk across the digital world, so Search and social media as well. The biggest mistake is probably looking at reach and impressions. Because like I said, it's about targeting the right people. So I get people who say, Oh this company is promising me 10,000 or 100,000 reach, and I say, “I can do that with a minimal budget, I can just spam the ads and you will get that reach and you won't have to pay much at all. But what's more important, is to focus on what really drives the revenue and profitability of your business. What’s the bottom line for your business? Is it leads? Is it the sale? What's the best thing that you can track online because digital marketing is about being able to track what people do with your business. So if you can track sales, track sales, if you can track leads, if that's the best thing you can do, track leads. But yeah, that's the first mistake - not tracking the right thing.
The second thing is probably not the right channel. So if your business for example, if your service is really complicated and you're choosing Google ads, for example, as the main advertising platform, then you'll be missing a lot of opportunity to really explain what you do. Because at the end of the day, Google ads is all about text and you have limited words, 25 characters for a headline, 90 characters for a description. How can you explain a complicated service in that many characters? So in that case I would go to social media, Facebook, and TikTock and really explain it and really put your personality behind the brand and the service to really get the best out of it.
The third one is probably the notion that paid ads are just a waste of money. A lot of leads I talk to say, Okay, I'm doing this, I post daily and I get a few clients coming in, I don’t need to do paid ads, maybe they’re afraid of investments but in business, money makes money, I think everyone knows that. So advertising is putting money to work and if you're doing it the right way, you're gonna get a lot of profit out of it.
Yeah, that's very true. And often in times of financial stress, like a pandemic, or recession, people tend to cut marketing budgets first, right? That's the first thing that everybody, even big businesses, shut down. Because it's easier, right? It's easier to shut down a budget than it is to have to let staff go. And I understand that from a human perspective, but from a business perspective, it can often be quite detrimental to a business. And my opinion is that a lot of businesses, especially older established businesses, haven't yet figured out the social landscape, digital landscape of advertising is no different than the newspaper used to be. You have more people watching digital and spending time on digital than you have reading a newspaper or a magazine or a more traditional marketing source. So that switch, I think, is still a shift in mindset and understanding how you can find your space in the digital world because it seems so huge too. I said this recently in another podcast, Instagram, you used to be able to scroll to the end of your Instagram feed, right? You used to be able to get to the end of it and be, Oh, you've seen all the posts for today. You're like, oh, great, you know, got my Instagram and now you can scroll for days and never get close, right? Like you'll never see everything, it's impossible. So people fear the noise that's out there. So how do you.. with advertising, how do you cut through all that noise? So you feel like your money, your investment is worth it?
I feel like advertising is not about being different. The idea isn't to stand out, to cut through the noise. The idea is to merge into the platform. Say for example Instagram, there's a lot of good photos you know, anything that's a good set up, it's a perfect photo platform, right? So if you put something that's more organic, that are blurry and stuff like that, then you're gonna stand out but not in a good way. The best advertising is when people don't realise it’s advertising, so you have to match the content that's on the platform. For Tiktok, if you advertise on Tiktok and you do a static ad or an image ad on Tiktok, then you're going to stand out in a bad way, because people are just gonna scroll past you. But if it's more about engaging content, you talking to the camera, or someone talking to someone, or there's some sort of music, then you're going to fit into the platform and people will watch you.
How does this all factor in with influencer marketing because a lot of clients, a lot of people who are using social media, small or medium businesses are not interested in putting themselves in front of a camera every day. Or even imagining that they are influencers in their industry, even if they are, they don't want to be in a spotlight. How do you balance that?
In that sense, creating video content, but they don't want to be in front of the cameras, I think there are a lot of ways around it. You can do an explanation video, you can scroll, drag your mouse along the screen and record your screen and explain that to people. It's content, it's still video, and people can hear your voice and not your face and you can get away with that. There are interesting YouTubes where it’s just drawing and sketching, animation, there's a platform that does animation, it makes it look like you're drawing and explaining things. And you can do that.
And yeah, influencer is a good way as well. We would recommend influencer. So you contact an influencer, get them to do content and at the start you ask that you're going to use that content for ads later. You pay a little bit more, but you get video content that you can use for ads for something that you already paid for anyway. I think it's a pretty good investment.
That's some good advice. What's your thoughts on AI? Because nowadays, you can get an avatar to speak for you and you can get ChatGPT to write you a script and everything. So what's your thoughts on there and the future of marketing that's coming through that?
Yeah, AI is a skill and we're moving to a world where you need to know more things to be able to work in a competitive industry. So not only do you have to know the platform that you will be advertising on, or posting organically on, you have to know how the algorithm of each platform works, you now have to know how to work AI because that's a competitive edge, right? If you don't use it you're gonna fall behind. I think the industry is talking about prompt engineers. And I think you have to learn at least the basic of what you need to say, the right things you need to say, the parameters that you have to set for AI for it to produce at least good quality, acceptable quality content that not a five year old can do.
Yeah, because some of it's pretty bad. I mean, we played around, we've tested and it's exactly that. It's about the prompting, right. So give us some tips, do you have any tips on how to write a good prompt? Maybe an example.
Yeah, for sure. AI these days is very smart. So you can, when I use it for content, before I ask it to do anything, I tell it more about my business, my audience and purpose and tell it everything that I would tell my content writer, before I ask it to produce a piece of content on something.
So you're effectively giving it a creative brief, you're treating the AI as an assistant, a human assistant.
Yeah, so you have to treat it as your employee that does a job really fast, because if you don't do that, then you're assuming that AI knows what's in your mind, which it won't.
It's good for now that they don't know what's in our mind. I mean, I think that's the thing.
What's the future of AI? If you were to project into the future, look into the crystal ball, what does it look like in, I don't know, even three years time
Three years time, three years time, I think AI is growing exponentially. Everything nowadays can be solved with AI, there's even a website, I can't remember the website, but it collects all the AI tools and it literally has everything that can be solved by AI. So I think in three years people will catch on and AI will just be another tool, you won't have that hype around it anymore because nowadays, we still say something is written by AI, created by AI, supported by AI kind of like, oh, this is a new product. But in three years, you won't have that buzz, that ring to it anymore.
Yeah, I didn't get on the podcast and say, Tan it's amazing. I found you on this thing called Google and I love it, it's great technology. And I think we probably were talking about Google like that a few years ago.
Yeah. And it's literally considered a verb now, go Google it. That's how technology works and I hope that we do get to a place where it is just integrated seamlessly into so much of what we already do. What about the dark side? Is there a dark side? There's always a cost, what's the cost?
Well the cost, in a business perspective, everything is just gonna be a lot more competitive, because your content, the power of content, organic content, now, everyone can do in five minutes. So what you produce, what you create, what you prompt the AI will have to be that much better than everyone else. Otherwise, you're just another piece of content in the millions of content in this topic. So yeah, I think the competitiveness in business is exponentially increased with AI.
I like to think that it allows us more time and space to be the strategist, the director, to bring our expertise to the table, us in marketing but whatever industry our audience is in, if they have a specialisation in a field, then that allows them more time to shine that and not get caught up in the weeds of production.
And with this explosion of content, which I definitely agree, we're going to see so much more in the next few weeks, months, nevermind years, do you think other platforms are going to pop up, going to grow, to take some of that content, because like I was saying about Instagram being so busy, so full, it seems now that it almost feels inevitable that something new is going to come and not take its place, but become a different sort of maybe a different niche, maybe for a slightly different market. Anything on the horizon that you see potentially coming up soon?
Well, we can already see a change, we can see that now on social media all the short videos are doing really well and you can't do that with AI or at least you can't produce it with AI. So I think the popular themes are going to be the human-to-human interaction, because it’s authentic, it has that personalisation, and people love that connection. I don't think anything that's created by AI is going to be overtaking the world because even if the short videos are going to die down in the future, there'll be something that's personalised, that has a personality to it and that'll be popular still. So I think there'll be a shift but you will have to have these qualities to be successful.
I like to hear that. More human, more authenticity and honestly more quality. The more I watch YouTube these days, I mean, I barely watch cable, sorry, cable company if you're listening, but I barely watch cable anymore. I spend most of my time on my smart TV on YouTube, and my kids do too. And our algorithm is so interesting because it's like football and some weird kids shows and marketing stuff and business and I like travel. And it's such an interesting mix of different things that I'm always coming across but the quality of production is cinemagraphic. It’s just gorgeous, beautifully produced quality, amazing videography. I see a lot more people are gonna go into short video but the quality, it's not just hastily put up videos, it's really well edited, music and everything in it, it's quite amazing how that shift I see, hopefully will just keep growing because I think that is a platform where you can be very authentic where personalities are going to shine, where people can be experts and can grow incredible businesses as a YouTube content producer.
Yeah, it's all about return on investment. If they put their time into the videos and they get the return from it, then why not? And YouTube is a great platform to monetize video content creation. So if YouTube makes it profitable for them, we're going to see a lot more of that. I watch only YouTube as well, I don't really watch cable TV anymore.
Yeah, sorry, for the advertisers too, who are still on there advertising on TV.
And this is why you choose digital media rather than traditional TV and stuff like that. So it really depends on the audience. But if you're reaching us, if you're trying to reach us, digital media it is.
Yeah, I think my kids would never think to put on regular old TV, they're always looking for something online to find that's interesting and they like the format and they like that there's more immediacy to it, they can skip past the ads, they can skip to the next thing if this one's boring or they can go find someone new and go down a different path to find something they're interested in and what they want for that moment. It's quite amazing. The shift, and I'm always interested in what's next, what is coming next.
You get hooked, I get hooked for hours.
Yeah, it's a scary wormhole to go down I know. So let's talk a little bit about business in general and entrepreneurship in general. You talked about freedom being the best part of being an entrepreneur for you. And you talked about failure, which is something we also like to ask, about your mindset around failure. So as a business owner yourself, and one who created businesses during the pandemic, which is a crazy and amazing and roller coaster of a time to create businesses, what's your mindset around failure and success?
I think this is the toughest question. It might be because I play a lot of sports and games and board games and stuff like that so I lose a lot. So failure and losing isn’t the biggest deal, it isn't the end of the world, but I also hate losing so I try to win, I try to succeed or to achieve my goals. But if it doesn't happen then I look at it as how did the winner, or why did I not succeed in this case? But what can I learn from it and just move on and do better next time? I would recommend anyone to play sports as kids!
Yeah, you sure do it's true. So one last question Tan, what is your definition of resilience? What does it mean to you?
Yeah, this is also a hard one. So a dictionary definition is getting back from, to be able to bounce back from the challenges, right? And I think that's essentially what I think it is, and it's just the ability to overlook what you've done wrong, your mistakes, and just focus on the optimistic side of things and being able to see light in the dark and just being able to do better next time, I think that's my definition of resilience.
Yeah, that's a good one. Thank you so much. Really appreciate your time, your energy, your optimism, I think it really shines through everything you've talked about today. And I hope this inspires people out there to get on digital, get on the digital media landscape because that's where it is now, that's where advertising exists and there's a lot to learn for sure, and we really appreciate Tan, you really helping guide us through understanding a lot of it, because there's still questions, there's going to be more. How can people find you if they want to learn a bit more? Or maybe how they can work with you.
Yeah, so my business, my digital agency business is Glaxier.. So you can go to glaxier, G-L-A-X-I-E-R dot.com.au, and find me there. Or you can go to LinkedIn as well and search my name. Just type in my last name, I don’t think there’s anyone else.
Nice, easy to find you and we'll be sure to share it in the show notes so people can search those to be able to find you and link and connect. So thank you very much, we really appreciate your time and hope to see you again.
Thank you.
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Thanks for joining us on Resilient Entrepreneurs, we're Laura and Vicki from Two Four One. We love supporting entrepreneurs, especially with mindset, marketing and motivation which is why we’ve built an incredible community of business founders who meet weekly in the Level-Up League. If you'd like to know more about it, look us up at www.twofouronebranding.com
