Oswald Yeo, CEO Of Glints – A DotCom Magazine Exclusive Interview

    Chawisa Teansue
    Chawisa Teansue, CEO Of Glints

    o swald Yeo is the CEO of Glints. Oswald is a thought leader, influencer, visionary, and successful entrepreneur. Oswald Yeo provides the leadership and energy that has inspired the creation of Glints. Oswald Yeo joins other leading CEOs and Founders taking part in our Leader Roundtable Interview Series. The DotCom Magazine editorial team has recently awarded Glints with our Impact Company of 2019 award. We are delighted to have Oswald Yeo join us for our Leader Roundtable Interview and our popular “speed round” as well.

    Education & Employment
    Glints bridges the gap between education and employment

    Oswald Yeo, thank you so much for taking the time out of your busy day for this interview about your company, leadership, and entrepreneurship.

    1. What is the “elevator pitch” for Glints?

    Glints is a career discovery and development platform. Glints bridges the gap between education and employment by being a professional platform for young people focused on career discovery and development. We help young people discover their passions and develop the relevant career skills, while empowering employers to attract the right talent more effectively.

    2. What is the key to your company’s success?

    Self-understanding, consistency and discipline.

    We practise what Jim Collins call the Hedgehog Concept, a niche in the market that we can uniquely and profitably serve. Once we have clarified that Concept for ourselves, it’s a matter of sticking to it in everything we do, day in day out, for years on end. In other words, we achieve success by being boring.

    3. Many of our readers are just starting to build a company. What advice can you give entrepreneurs just starting out with a new venture?

    A great entrepreneur is one who embraces paradoxes. The first extreme to get comfortable with, is to pick an idea knowing that it’ll take you years to realise it in its full glory. Yet, don’t be paralysed by analysis, and seize the momentum as it comes.

    4. For other entrepreneurs seeking to build a business as successful as yours, what advice can you give them when times get a little challenging?

    This is what we signed up for. Suck it up.

    5. How important is the commitment to client satisfaction at Glints, and how do you make sure your customers will become raving fans of your company?

    The importance dawned on us when we realised we were spending way too much effort acquiring new customers. To turn that around, we made someone accountable for customer satisfaction and retention, and tracked those metrics religiously.

    6. In today’s fast changing business environment, how do you stay abreast of things?

    By having a low sensitivity signal detector. To be honest, there are only that many things that will tangibly impact your business, so turn the social media and news off.

    7. What is your “Why”? Why do you get up in the morning, and how do you keep yourself at peak performance to lead Glints?

    To build greatness, and realise it in the team around me. Us humans have an instinctive need for transcendence beyond the mundane and the prosaic – it’s indeed a blessing if we can strive towards that and graze it at the place where we spend the majority of our brief sojourn on this Earth.

    8. Can you recommend a book that has had an influence in your career? How did it influence you?

    Good to Great. It showed me that greatness is as mundane as it is sublime, within everyone’s reach yet unattained by most.

    9. When communicating with your staff, can you tell us the most important thing you do so that they are able to carry out the objectives that you set forth at Glints?

    Instead of motivating them, we unblock them. Our fundamental assumption isn’t that they need motivation, but they already are (otherwise, they won’t be here), and all they need is some support in clearing the path.

    10. Can you explain what leadership means to you?

    Impact maximisation and ego minimisation. Truly impactful changes are mostly achieved in teams, and leadership is simply the lens that focus that team’s brilliance on a single goal, with as little concern for self-interests as possible.

    We help young people discover their passions and develop the relevant career skills
    CTO, Seah Ying Cong,
    CTO, Seah Ying Cong,

    We would like to have some fun and do a “speed round” with you! We will ask you ten more questions that we want you to answer in just one to three words only.

    Here you go!

    1. In three words or less, what makes a successful CEO?
    Decisive, gritty, clear-eyed

    2. Describe your business in one word?
    Augmentation

    3. Describe your customers in one word?
    Exuberant

    4. What one attribute do you look for when hiring an employee?
    Hunger

    5. What is the one word you want your customers to say about your company?
    Bold

    6. In three words or less, describe your passion?
    Reach for greatness.

    7. In three words or less, describe what it takes to be successful?
    Think, act, reflect.

    8. In three words or less, describe your first year in business at Glints?
    Deer in headlights.

    9. In three words or less, describe how running a successful company has changed you?
    Perennial occupational hazard.

    10. What is the one word that you believe has the most power in the English language?
    I.

    oswald Yeo, thank you so much for sitting down with us for our DotCom Magazine Leader Roundtable Interview Series. We very much appreciate the time you spent helping our readers learn more about what it takes to be a leader. We wish you, your family, and of course Glints, nothing but the best.

    Thanks again!

    Oswald Yeo, CEO of Glints, The Leader Roundtable Interview Series