In this episode of Before We Get There, your host Nicholas Braman talks with Christel Goh, founder and CEO of Grow Public Relations. Christel shares her inspiring journey from working in PR for big brands to starting her own social enterprise and eventually founding a successful PR firm. The conversation covers how her personal experiences, such as caring for her grandmother which led her to create a game for seniors and eventually take the leap into entrepreneurship. Christel discusses balancing motherhood and growing a business, the importance of origin stories in PR, and how she leverages LinkedIn for personal branding. She also shares how her husband joined her in running the agency and the future goals for her company and personal life. Tune in to hear about Christel’s unique path and the lessons she’s learned along the way.
Guest Links:
Christel’s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/christelgoh/
Grow Public Relations: https://www.linkedin.com/company/grow-public-relations/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/christelyay/
Podcast links:
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/2h9gsrWKH9C1KY1OzR12kr?si=2a4d19970632465f
Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/before-we-get-there/id1775182252
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/beforewegettherepodcast/ Linktree: https://linktr.ee/nicholasbraman
Website: https://nicholasbraman.com/before-we-get-there-podcast/
Nicholas: Welcome to Before We Get There, the podcast where we explore people’s journeys, how they got to where they are, what keeps them pushing forward.
And where they eventually want to get to. I’m your host, Nicholas Breiman. And today, I’m joined by Crystal Goh. Crystal is the founder and CEO of Grow Public Relations, which focuses on supporting PR efforts for startups. And SMEs around Southeast Asia. In this discussion, we talked about how she started her social enterprise and how it’s success led to freelance opportunities while she was still working full time.
How she eventually left her job. And founded a company, what it has been like becoming a mother while growing her business and much more. Enjoy the show. Hi, Crystal. Thanks so much for being with me here today.
Christel Goh: Hi Nicholas. Thank you for having me.
Nicholas: So I wanted to start off. I saw you had a post recently on LinkedIn talking about people’s origin stories and how we should embrace our origin story.
And I know that you have quite an interesting one with how. You got started in PR and became a PR expert. So let’s start with that.
Christel Goh: Okay. So my origin story is that I, my origin story is that I’ve been in PR for the past decade, right? So I’ve been in agency. I’ve been in house doing a lot of PR work for big brands.
And then along the way, I actually started a social enterprise, creating localized games for seniors. The reason I did this is because my grandma has dementia, so I wanted to create localized tools for her and there weren’t many in Singapore to engage her at that point in time, right? Through that journey of getting my social enterprise out there and I used PR because that’s my skill set, right?
And I got a lot of publicity for the project. A lot of business owners started to ask me to do PR for them, for their businesses. Got about freelancing and eventually decided to build a team. So we are grow public relations and we focus a lot on SMEs startups, getting them featured in the media, building up their reputation.
So on. Yeah. So that’s a bit about my origin story. Building on that point, Nicholas, you talked about. Um, I talked about the importance of origin stories, right? And I think because in my line of work, what we do a lot of is to tell the origin stories of people. And it’s, it’s really good because it gets the brand out there.
It gets the founder out there and it tells a story of why people do what they do. That’s always very inspiring. It’s always very relatable and people love that.
Nicholas: So that’s, that, yeah, that’s super interesting. I want to dig into that more because. You know, that’s what we’re doing here on the podcast is talking about people’s stories and their journeys, where they came from, how they got to where they are, and podcast is obviously a long form, but when you’re pitching something like a PR.
Article. It’s very short. So how do you side or even just your own philosophy of where do people’s origin stories start? Is it back when they were in grade school and they were selling candy to their schoolmates? Or is it for like for yourself? You are in PR, but it’s a big jump to go from doing it as your full time job.
Just starting a side project and using your PR skills to build that project. So how do you see that about how far back do people’s origin stories really go? Yeah,
Christel Goh: that’s an interesting question, right? And we usually assess people before we take on the project. We assess whether they have a strong enough origin story.
If you’re going to go by the origin story route, that’s the first thing, right? And the second thing is that sometimes clients or people get scared because they don’t want to go that deep into their childhood and talk about all their childhood traumas. And it may or may not be helpful for the story because we want to see into that narrative of why they would do what they do, right?
And if certain things lead to them getting to where they are, then yes, that’s part of a good story. Uh, but if it goes way back, um, into certain traumas that they had, uh, that may not be very helpful for the narrative of the story, then maybe not. Yeah. But. People like that story of overcoming a strong or a very big challenge to find success somehow.
Um, and if we find this, um, element in a person’s story, we will always try to use it.
Nicholas: That’s a good way to look at it. So digging into your, your personal story, again, you started this card game because of your grandma. What made you decide to take the leap into trying to promote it and get, build awareness and help other people with it?
Christel Goh: I think I’ve always been very interested in the aging space because I lived with my grandma, right? So I saw her age and I saw a lot of gaps in the system. Um, and that made me want to create something. When I created something for my grandma, I had comments from friends saying that I should sell this thing, right?
And that was what led me to putting it up on a crowdfunding platform. And when it’s up on a crowdfunding platform, then you have to naturally market it. Um, and the only way that I knew how to market was to tell a story. So I told that story about how I started this, uh, because of my grandma. Uh, and that’s what kind of, um, got it featured in quite a bit of platforms.
Uh, and got the word out there about the project.
Nicholas: That’s yeah, that’s really cool. Were you, did it feel awkward to be working on this project while you were doing your full time job as far as maybe there were some contacts that were similar or it’s in the same line of work?
Christel Goh: It was in a very different line of work.
Um, I used to work in a university, uh, as my full time job. So that university comes. And this was completely different and the connections that I got it from like a previous place that I was at as well. So it didn’t feel like there was any conflict. Yeah. And at that point, my bosses also seemed okay with it.
I eventually transited to a part time role where I balanced both this, uh, social enterprise freelancing, doing PR projects on a freelance basis, and then also working part time at this university.
Nicholas: Yeah, that’s amazing. A lot of areas to manage. So you started the social enterprise and it became popular and got some press coverage.
And I guess, is that when you realized maybe you should help other people do this or what was the catalyst behind freelancing?
Christel Goh: So I think I was, it was at a point of my career where I was working in house at a university and you know, when it comes to marketing, it’s always about Attributing leads to certain funnels, right?
You have to attribute a cost per lead and stuff like that. And it’s something you can’t do PR, right? So while I was at the university and we were getting, um, coverage for our professors and for our dean and it was on like prominent platforms like CNBC, BBC and stuff like that. There was always this question of how do you attribute that leads?
And then it questioned the value of PR, the value of my work. So it did feel a bit demoralizing at times. Because I didn’t know what was the value, what was the value of PR if my bosses didn’t, weren’t able to answer that question, I didn’t know what it was. I started a social enterprise. And I got publicity for the project.
A lot of hospitals, nursing homes, and senior leaders in the healthcare space started to know about my project. And it was just a few months old. That was really incredible to me. And with each article that went out about the crowdfunding campaign, I could see an immediate spike in sales. So that helped me answer that question about impact, that PR had ability to impact small businesses or SMEs in that sense.
And that was what I wanted to start on, um, and got into it eventually.
Nicholas: Yeah, that’s very interesting because. I being in marketing, I have also, of course, had that thought of discussions with colleagues and peers and my answer coming from a digital background where everything is trackable, ideally, at least theoretically was the opposite of yours.
It was actually to move closer and closer to sales and the revenue generation team. But what you did is basically like you made such a big impact that nobody. Can’t deny it, the facts that you may not be able to track by IP address or by individual sale, but the numbers are spiking so much that it’s coming from PR and from the actions you’re doing.
So that’s really cool. What was it like starting off in freelancing? How did you decide to do it? And then how did you grow your customer base?
Christel Goh: Actually, freelancing happened very naturally for me from the SMEs that approached me to do, to take on PR projects for them. I am not exactly sure how it grew at the very start, but there were friends of friends, right, who contacted me and said, Hey, I heard that you did work for this person.
Can you take on my project? Um, and at a time my fees were relatively a lot more affordable than all the agencies out there. I think naturally it made sense for the business owners to contact me. In my early years, most of the business grew very organically. It grew via referrals, I was part of like various networking groups as well, um, and built connections within the space here and there, and then got business as a result.
I did have a specific page that I focused on. Um, because I felt like it could, PR could really apply for every industry. So I was, uh, taking on projects, uh, of all different industry.
Nicholas: And how did you balance that with your full time job?
Christel Goh: I think it was like going out at lunch to meet potential client. Or maybe after work.
At the time I was, I didn’t have a child yet, so I wasn’t a mother. Probably if I look back, I may not be able to do that now. If I was in that position, but yeah, going out during lunchtime after work, and it helped that I was in a job that wasn’t particularly stressful. I came from an agency environment, so I was very used to things being very fast paced and moving at God speed.
If something is needed to be done, it gets done straight away, but that was very different. When I moved in house, so I think adapting to that pace was something that I struggled with, but then realizing that, Hey, actually I can do lots of other things on this side that gave me that freedom and flexibility.
And the bosses, my bosses then were quite cool with it. So yeah, I just took that on and managed to sell.
Nicholas: Just that hustle is why you’re able to be an entrepreneur.
Christel Goh: Maybe.
Nicholas: That’s really sounds like a lot of words. And. Was the idea from when you said the freelancing kind of just happened naturally, but did you have any inkling in your mind that you wanted to turn it into a full time business or start your own company or was it just going with the flow and seeing what happened?
Christel Goh: Yeah, actually, when I also, when I think back, like even before the social enterprise started, there was a time and I wrote about this on LinkedIn, right? I went through writing on LinkedIn. I remembered this incident. I came across this very cool, interesting dining concept that merged dining and entertainment.
And I really wanted to take it on as a PR project because I felt that there wasn’t much news. There wasn’t much about it online. And I felt that if we blasted everywhere, it would go right. Um, so I wrote into the founder on LinkedIn at a time I was also working full time and I haven’t done any of these things.
And then the founder told me that we don’t have a budget for PR. And at a point I thought to myself, it would be really cool if we had PR that was very affordable for projects like this, like SMEs and they are like doing such exciting, fun work. That if we could be a part of, that would be great. Yeah, so I realized that there was some form of idea germination really early on, but I didn’t act on it until it happened naturally.
And I was very happy being a freelancer for a good number of years. I had no intention of hiring people or starting a business. I just wanted to do work that I was happy with. Um, that made me good enough money and I can pay the bills and just be happy. Until my daughter was born in 2020. But in 2020, that was when I realized that I don’t think I can do everything on my own anymore.
Um, I needed to focus on being a mom. So I wasn’t intending to start a business. I’ll hire anybody until I gave birth in 2020. And that was when I realized I cannot do everything on my own. I had to focus on being a mom as well. So I made my first hire in 2020 and I signed up for a business coaching program because that’s when I decided, okay, let’s maybe take this a bit further.
Yeah. So in 2020, I went for that business coaching program and then started hiring people and it grew from there.
Nicholas: So I think we missed a step. You were freelancing and then eventually it grew to the point where you had enough business and clients where you switched to part time at your corporate. Okay.
And then were you still there when you had your baby?
Christel Goh: Sorry. So what happened was that I was working full time. I transited to part time where I had more time to work on like my freelance PR projects and then all my social enterprise. And then eventually I tended like the part time role. I candid because I felt like I, I felt like there was a big project that came in and I needed to focus on it.
And at the same time, I had a conversation with a friend and this friend said to me, you are swimming in an ocean. So this is an analogy. You’re swimming in an ocean. You are holding on to a lock, right? This lock, which is your part time job has kept you afloat for a long time, right? And you are so close to the shore, but Because of the lock, it’s holding you back and keeping you away from the shore.
So you know you are ready to hit the shore. You should really just let go of the lock and swim towards the shore. Yeah, and you’ll get there faster. I was very hesitant to leave my part time role because it was comfortable. I’ve been, was working for like, close to 10 years, right? It’s a comfortable environment.
I know I get a stable paycheck and stuff like that. But at a point I was already making probably more or equivalent to my full time role on a part time, on a part time freelancing basis.
Nicholas: It sounds like the friend had a lot of confidence and belief in you, maybe even more than you had in yourself. Yeah,
Christel Goh: probably, probably he felt that way.
Yeah, and then that was what led me to tender my resignation. Eventually, I attended in November 2019, yeah, around there. And two weeks later, I found out I was pregnant.
Nicholas: That’s amazing timing. Yeah,
Christel Goh: I know. And I was like, oh my, I should have stayed on for the maternity leave. Yeah, but it all worked out because in 2020, COVID happened.
Um, and I got to be at home quite a bit. Yeah.
Nicholas: So was it just that conversation with your friend that was like, you’re like, okay, the next day I’m going to hand over my resignation or was there still some internal back and forth, some thinking, some discussion with your husband, that sort of thing?
Christel Goh: Um, that was definitely the trigger because if I looked at the income that I was making from my freelance role.
I knew that I would be able to sustain myself and I had been freelancing for a couple of years when I made that decision. So the income was more or less stable to pay myself.
Nicholas: Okay. So then you just decided to focus solely on your own freelancing. You find out you’re pregnant and then soon after COVID comes.
So what was that like? Were there times that you were scared that you made the wrong choice?
Christel Goh: I actually, COVID did not have any impact on the business, but. It’s just that instead of taking more F& B lifestyle related projects, then I had more B2B, more tech projects. So there was no impact to the business at all.
It was growing at that point. So there wasn’t that fear. I think the bigger fear was trying to manage motherhood and business. And especially before my child was born because I didn’t know how it was going to be like. Then also in the initial few months, Making that decision to hire people. Yeah.
Nicholas: Yeah. So I’ve talked to several working moms and entrepreneurial moms on the podcast, but I think all of them have started their business or were quite a long time after they were already a mother.
So you’re the first person I’ve talked to who was at the very beginning of your, not the very beginning, but the net beginning of a stage of your entrepreneurial. Journey, and then became a mother at the same time. So your company and your baby are growing up together. It looks like.
Christel Goh: That is the strangest thing ever.
Yeah.
Nicholas: How about let’s just talk about parenthood and motherhood more. Cause that is a topic that we like to get into here on the podcast. When I had my kid in, or my wife had my kid in September of 2022. I still was not allowed into the delivery room because of the COVID measures. What was that process like in, it sounds like you had your baby in 2020?
Christel Goh: Yeah, my husband was allowed into the delivery room. Also, we had a natural delivery. I think per C section, it might be a bit different, but my husband was allowed in. And we had it limited to two people in the hospital. at one time, two visitors at one time. So definitely we didn’t have that many people when I delivered.
Um, and to be honest, I’m actually very thankful for COVID. Even though everybody says it was a terrible time, but COVID, one, it did not affect the business. And number two, it actually gave me a lot more time at home, right? It made it so possible to do calls and like everything like work wise. I remember expressing milk in a call and stuff.
So that’s always fun. And then I think it, it made it so easy such that you didn’t really need to leave the house. You could do everything from home. So I, I actually felt that it was a very helpful time for me, especially since I was a new mom. I had to adjust so much to that. Yeah.
Nicholas: So if you, if COVID hadn’t, if it had been the old world before COVID, do you think?
And you would have gone and rented an office space or gone to a co working space outside of your home. If COVID hadn’t been around, right. When you were starting your business. I might
Christel Goh: have had to. Yeah. Yeah. I might have had to.
Nicholas: Yeah. It’s definitely a big difference for a lot of people, even for still for a lot of corporate jobs that have more flexibility than they used to.
Christel Goh: Yeah, definitely.
Nicholas: Um, another area I wanted to get into, we’ve had several content creators, creatives on the show. And you’re very active on LinkedIn, of course, as part of your business, but also your personal brand. What is your kind of philosophy on putting yourself out there, being active on LinkedIn, creating content, sharing your ideas and your thoughts?
Christel Goh: I started committing to writing on LinkedIn, I think in February or March this year. Right. And I did because I’ve always advocated for clients to be at this online, right, to share their story and stuff like that. I realized I wasn’t really doing it. So I wanted to be practicing what I preached. So I started in February, March period.
Um, and I committed to writing like at least two times a week. Um, when I started writing initially, I think definitely the engagement wasn’t the best. But as I attended like various LinkedIn bootcamps and I started writing a bit more, then it got better. For me, my perspective on LinkedIn is that definitely helps you to be a bit more like top of mind among your connections, people get to see you a bit more, you might get some business out of LinkedIn or maybe clients that you are talking to or prospects that you are talking to would see your face pop up a bit more and they’d be remember, reminded of you, but.
The biggest lesson for me is more of one in content creation. We do a lot of angling and messaging and story pitching from the PR fund. When it comes to LinkedIn, I get immediate feedback as to whether this piece of content worked or it didn’t. So for me, that is a great lesson in learning what was, what best on this platform, what kind of stories people really, why certain things get more traction, why they don’t.
So I see it as more of a experiment and a game of sorts to learn what works by what doesn’t. And then I do take this, these insights and I share it with my team members. And you also take on like LinkedIn profile or like LinkedIn management for some of our clients as well.
Nicholas: And so how do you tailor either if you, either for just for yourself, or if you want to bring in some of your examples as well, how do you make content unique to you?
Each individual person and not just sound like a cookie cutter, typical LinkedIn post.
Christel Goh: Do you mean like for clients or for myself?
Nicholas: Either one, whichever example you want to share. So
Christel Goh: for my own content, I don’t do things like, I don’t prepare a content calendar beforehand. I don’t have a month’s worth of content.
I just on the fly when I feel like it. So it’s like perspectives that are. Key to what I really think about. And I think the most important thing to me, and I always share this with, um, my team members as well, is that the hook has got to be different. It cannot be like a plain vanilla thing. Like networking is great.
Today I had a post, which is it, the hook is I’m taking a break from networking. Yeah. So I feel like it has to have some conflict in that way. Um, conflict is what makes content interesting to me. It has to have a, a, a differentiation, a differing point of view. You can’t be always talking about the same thing that everybody’s talking about is too politically correct.
And LinkedIn has that, um, negative stigma of being too, Safe, being too polished and being too clean at the end.
Nicholas: How do you, cause that’s something I’ve struggled with personally, as well as some other friends that I’ve talked to where I agree that definitely it’s more interesting when you have posts that are.
You don’t want to just state common sense. Right. But I think that builds up a pressure to be, to say something new or to say something wildly thoughtful and cause people to stop and stare at your post. Cause they’ve never heard this thing before. And that can cause a lot of pressure when you’re trying to think, Oh, is this good enough to post or is it, was it interesting enough?
Is it different enough? New enough? How do you deal with that?
Christel Goh: Yeah. It is asking yourself, but do you have a point of view on that situation? Right. Yeah. Because if you just. churning out content for the sake of churning out content, just like biting any material, then it becomes flat, it falls flat, right? So I think it’s really asking yourself whether you have that point of view.
I was talking to someone the other day, another content creator, and then he said some people just may not have that point of view. And then I was thinking, There are people without point of view on something that, that, that is strange, right? Because for every topic, we probably have a certain perspective and is your perspective doesn’t add value to people or like, it’s not something that’s worth talking about.
Then why should we talk about it? Maybe move on to something else that you care about. I don’t know.
Nicholas: Yeah, that’s a good point. And I think for me, it’s like they say about teaching, right? You don’t. Really know something well until you try to teach it to somebody else. And then you realize you have to break it down step by step, piece by piece.
Whereas a lot of the part, part of the process, you probably, you just do automatically if you’re good at it and you’ve done it a lot of times, or if you’re a natural at it for creating content, especially maybe more B2B focused content, more expertise focused content. It has helped me personally. To really understand my own thinking about a lot of the work I do and the topics, because when you’re just doing it.
You don’t take that extra step to think about every piece of it or to try to, how you would explain it to somebody else. And so actually writing about it or creating a script or video about it is, has been super beneficial just to clarify my own thinking and my own strategy or why I decided to do something when I decided to do
Christel Goh: it.
And the information is quite cheap these days, right? You can get it from ChatGPT. I think we got to find our value as human beings against AI, isn’t that right? Yeah. And I think you mentioned about very technical content, very B2B focused content, and it is also realizing that if we go broad, like in terms of the topics, it’s very general about entrepreneurship, about motherhood, about careers and stuff like that.
Generally you get more engagement, uh, your posts perform better, but then if you go a bit nicher into like B2B marketing. Then, you know, it appeals to like, maybe as much smaller audiences, but then it could be the more qualified audiences that you are wanting to reach out to.
Nicholas: Yeah. So let’s dive into that a little bit because of the industry you’re in.
I think that everybody has been talking about newspapers dying for the last probably two decades, but even more so recently with the rise of LLMs and chat GPT. More people are outsourcing their content writing, editorial staff. I think there’s been some news recently locally about editorial staff being retrenched.
What are your feelings on that and where the media industry is going? I
Christel Goh: mean, to be honest, it’s very scary as a PR person because it does seem like the industry is shrinking a lot more and I, and it’s something that we try to communicate within our team internally, right? That if you want to continue to function and survive as a communications person.
Then you have to be able to perform over multidisciplines. So if you look at like the, uh, corporate communication roles these days, they require you to be well versed in all areas, whether it’s your socials, whether it’s your like print or whatever platforms, right? It’s not about the platforms at the end of the day, but it’s really about being able to implement that strategy across the board, right?
Yeah. And that’s something that I think is important for us to. be ahead of and also why we’ve been going a bit more into the content creation route, whether it’s LinkedIn or we’ve been even doing videos here and there because it’s that, um, it’s recognizing that the marketing funnel is dead in a way, right?
That people, the way that people buy from us or the way that people consume our content comes in all different directions. And at the end of the day, you want them to lead. To be led to you, but for them to be led to you, then you need to be present.
Nicholas: Yeah. Yeah. There’s a lot of, just so many options available out there right now.
It’s, it is difficult sometimes to know what to prioritize, whether that’s for work or, or for personal branding and that sort of thing. Um, so I’d like to go back to, um, 2020 when you hire your first person, what was that like, it was the first time you’d been the, now you’re, can say, I A real business, like you have an employee working for you, you’re responsible for somebody’s salary.
How did that feel?
Christel Goh: I think the first time was like, I really wanted to find somebody that was within our budget, something that we can, we could really afford. So I looked toward like remote talent and it surprised me because you can actually get like remote talent and it’s a lot more manageable for the business operation.
And yet, they could actually do very similar roles to people based in Singapore. Yeah, I actually wrote an entire article about this as well in Today and got a bit of flack for it. But it is what it is. Yeah, so I think the start was definitely a bit more challenging in trying to Understand what works in the employment space.
Um, moving on to now having a much clearer sense of what we need to function, survive and thrive as a company.
Nicholas: And so what was the growth like after that? It’s been four plus years since then. I know you have a bunch of employees sitting around the region. What are some big successes or challenges that you’ve had along the way?
Christel Goh: Yeah, I think successes is managing to stay afloat up till now that we are still surviving. I think for most agencies, they would tell you that the past two years have been really difficult, right? There’s been like so many layers of stuff like that. But yeah, I think success would probably be still functioning, still surviving.
Maybe one good thing is that we haven’t. I haven’t had the need to take any business stone up to this point. Um, challenges would be that as an entrepreneur, learning about managing people, learning about, learning that being empathetic or being kind may not always be the most helpful thing. It may be helpful for that person, but it may be terribly unhelpful for the team.
There’s a one as well and understanding market cycles. I think when you are starting a business and when things go really well in the first few years, like there’s been like the incredible growth and when things slow down, you’re not exactly sure how to deal with that. But that happens with every business.
There’s always market cycles, right? So learning to deal with that, learning to be okay with that and learning to balance, I think, mental health. Right? That the business I run, even though it consumes me so much, it is just a part of me and it’s not my entire identity.
Nicholas: Yeah. So how do you balance work and life when it’s your own business?
Christel Goh: In terms of separating. Work and your personal identity. This is something that I truly struggle with for a very long time. Um, so up to last year, I think my husband was saying something like my husband and me, we run a company together. I run the sales and fulfillment side of things. And he runs a lot of the operations, the HR, the marketing side of things.
He said to me that like your entire life is just work and your daughter. There’s nothing else. Like maybe you should. do something about it. I think definitely having a child helps me to ensure that there, there is a end to it. At 5, 6 p. m. she’s home and I don’t work anymore. Yeah, I just cannot. And my brother did tell me as well that he feels that, Without my daughter, I probably would be a more, a lot more obsessed with work that I currently am.
Yeah, but I think this year has been quite, uh, has been quite a good year for me in terms of trying to disassociate with work a bit more.
Nicholas: Yeah, that’s good to set boundaries. I’m actually fairly good at that, but it’s something I have to encourage my wife to do more and more. And especially like you mentioned, having a hobby.
Or some activity, some, even just group of friends that is outside of former colleagues and business acquaintances is, I think is really important for mental health. But I think you just dropped, uh, some big news that I actually didn’t know. So you and your husband run the business together. That’s pretty unusual.
And it sounds very interesting, but possibly very challenging as well. How did that happen? Yeah, I
Christel Goh: think a lot of people say that, um, they don’t know how we do it, but we just, actually, my husband has been an entrepreneur before me, so he has always been in internet marketing and stuff like that. And then in maybe 2021 or 2022, when the business is growing.
And I felt like I needed greater support. And a business coach told me that you should get like, um, someone into manage like your finances and stuff like that, and maybe this person could be a co founder. Uh, this person should be the opposite of you. Right. Uh, and I realized that’s my husband before I asked him and he was okay with it.
So that’s how it happened.
Nicholas: Wow. That’s so funny for, first of all, that, that opposites attracted and that’s what you needed for your business. That’s amazing. But then for my wife and I, cause we are in similar roles, my wife is in, in marketing as well, and we always talk to each other about how we can never work together, just because our personalities and our working styles are so different.
So have there been any, any challenges or even just spending all the time together and always talking, talking about work or having the same things on the table? Yeah,
Christel Goh: because we are very different people. So naturally our work styles are very different. We also came from very different environments.
Where I do things very quickly, but he’s a lot more meticulous, he’s a lot more careful. Right, naturally there were a lot of clashes when we started working together. But we got a bit more used to each other’s, like, communication styles and way of work, right, over the years. So it got a lot better as we worked together more.
Um, and we did a video recently as well, talking about like how it’s like working together with your spouse. And I think there are a few things that people wouldn’t know unless they’re working with their spouses, right? Is that you will never run out of topics to talk about because you’re always talking about work.
And the second thing is that I think a lot of couples, they might, might reach a point where maybe you don’t have the same goals anymore. But for us, because it’s very clear, we have like certain business goals that we are working towards. So it forces us to have a bit more alignment in the things that we do.
And also that, uh, realization that sometimes I need to be at work a bit more so he can help out the kid. And sometimes he needs to be at work a bit more and then I’ll help out with the kid. Yeah.
Nicholas: Yeah. We’ll have to put a link to the video in the show notes.
Christel Goh: Yeah.
Nicholas: Do you set certain times, like, or is it just, Oh yeah, I finished washing the dishes and by the way, this client wants this from you, are you going to be able to send it tonight?
How do you do these?
Christel Goh: Okay. So when it comes to work conversations, I don’t think there’s like a specific time that we cut off, which may not be the best thing. We find ourselves talking about work a lot, right? Um, but when it comes to, I guess, having certain boundaries, we probably both recognize and learn to recognize that it’s an ongoing journey, right?
That there are times where I do not want to be disturbed, there are times where he doesn’t want to be disturbed. So we need to take a pause sometimes, and then we visit a situation at a time.
Nicholas: One thing I wanted to dive into a bit is I’ve noticed you’ve mentioned several times about taking classes or having coaches for your business, and that’s really interesting that.
I just maybe like to know more about, is that a habit you’ve always had, or is it something that you started once you decided to be a business? What’s that going out and seeking experts in training and coaching that help you be better at what you do?
Christel Goh: Yeah, I think, uh, ever since I started to become an entrepreneur, then somehow I do find these causes, uh, coaches really helpful.
I don’t actively seek them out. They just happened to be my network and I find out about what they’re doing. And I realized that it could be potentially helpful and then it takes off from there. Yeah. I feel that like at different seasons of an entrepreneur’s life, then you probably need different things, different kind of like different advice or different And
Nicholas: that kind of format of having a coach or, or seeking external classes, is that something that you’ve.
Now gone beyond and used in other parts of your life, or is it just for your business and being an entrepreneur?
Christel Goh: Mostly in business earlier this year, I also started on a little bit of like mindfulness, therapy kind of thing, which like I said, was, is, is, has been helpful and I’m trying to get my team to be involved in it.
Somehow in, in terms of trying to disassociate with work, sourdough making class. So I’ve been making like sourdough as well. It has to be fun. Wow. That’s
Nicholas: good. Do you use a Dutch oven or how do you know? I
Christel Goh: just use like a loaf pan. Cause I make sandwich sourdough. Well, you sound like you know this stuff.
Nicholas: I’m, yeah, I’m a big home cook. Yeah. I’m not an expert, but I try to cook a lot. I’m actually really disappointed today. It’s Thanksgiving and you’ve got the listeners. You guys will hear this next week, but we moved to an apartment this year that doesn’t have an oven. So I’m having to. Read, figure out how to do Thanksgiving without an oven, which is not easy.
Yeah,
Christel Goh: it’s not easy. Yes.
Nicholas: Um, so I wanted to just, we don’t have a ton of time left, but I did want to talk about you’re in this space specifically of helping startups and SMEs and I think that’s super interesting ’cause I, I’m sure you meet a lot of really cool and interesting people. What are some of the, the cool stories that you’ve seen or.
Maybe the successes that you’ve had that you’ve seen small business startups get launched after you started helping
Christel Goh: them. I think one of my really first projects was one that was quite impactful to me. Um, I took on this project of cleaning robots. So it was by this cleaning company. They are like a 30 year old company and it is decided to do things differently by disrupting the industry.
They’ve got quite a bit of funding in and then they were developing their own autonomous cleaning robots. Right, they were developing their own autonomous cleaning robots. And then for me, learning about the technology was so cool. This was very early on and these cleaning robots were hardly seen. Now there’s a lot more, right?
Now there’s a lot more. But in the past, really, there weren’t that many of these. So learning about the tech, learning about how they use AI and LiDAR sensors and things like that, things that I thought were really interesting. And then this company actually worked with a PR company before, but didn’t get them that kind of results.
So when I took on a project and I got publicity for them, they literally were featured in a lot of international publications, local publications. They were everywhere at one point of time. And then they started getting like invitations overseas and stuff like that. And the founder did tell me that the work that you do was quite incredible in putting us on the map.
So I think hearing people tell me that is something that, that drives me.
Nicholas: That’s really cool. So looking forward in, in your business and career, you mentioned you guys have contingency plans, but I’m sure you’d like the business to grow. Are there any specific goals that you have for the future?
Christel Goh: Yeah. I think moving forward, we are working towards being more holistic in our offering.
So we’ve started to offer a lot more like content services to clients as well. Whether it comes to like video production, like short form videos or like LinkedIn, for example. Yeah. So content creation is something that we’re trying to go into and offer clients a bit more. Working with partners to execute some of these things.
That’s one. Second thing that we are trying to push forth a lot more is a coaching program. Because, um, we’re trying to introduce that culture of coaching when it comes to PR in Singapore, such that businesses who may not be able to afford a PR agency, right, or maybe they want to build that PR capability within their team.
So that PR can be part of their strategy, something that they take on for the entire year and not just do a couple of projects, get a couple of features and then be done with it, but to really see the benefit of putting their brand out there, we have developed a coaching program that we’re launching in December.
Nicholas: Wow, that’s super exciting. And how about in your personal life, if you look ahead in 10 years, or actually 10 years down the road, you look back. From your personal perspective, what would some elements of your life be that would make you feel satisfied and like you were successful? Yeah, I
Christel Goh: was just thinking about this yesterday.
Uh, I wouldn’t say 10 years, but in two, two to three years time, you see my daughter goes to primary one. So my goal when my daughter goes to primary one is to be able to stop working at 1pm or 2pm and then just be a mom. That’s my goal.
Nicholas: Wow. That’s awesome. That’s a really, really practical and Important.
I’m sure your daughter would be thrilled if you can make that happen or when you can make that happen.
Christel Goh: Yeah. So what can you do with it?
Nicholas: That’s cool. Um, well, thank you so much for being here with me. Where can people find you? Where should people find?
Christel Goh: Uh, they can connect with me on LinkedIn, uh, Crystal Go.
And then also they can go to our website at growpublicrelations. com.
Nicholas: Awesome. Thanks again for joining me and have a good rest of your day.
Christel Goh: Thank you. Thank
Nicholas: you for listening to Before We Get There with your host, Nicholas Brayman. Please like, and subscribe on YouTube and your favorite podcast platforms like Spotify and Apple Podcasts.
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