Simon Ong coaches business owners to build purposeful and successful companies

To celebrate the launch of Enterprise Nation's new business support platform, which makes it even easier to connect with experts, we're profiling some of the many advisers that support our community.

Our third profile is Simon Ong, life coach and founder of SAO Learning. Watch the video on scaling up challenges for solo founders, where he talks to Good Koffee founder Chris Crocker. Read our interview to hear more about how Ong helps business owners and the challenges he's faced on his own journey.

Describe your business in one sentence.

Through my work as a life coach, business strategist and speaker I help individuals lead more purposeful and fulfilling lives and businesses.

What services do you offer?

Private coaching, mentoring and consulting, group coaching and workshop delivery. Speaking about leadership, entrepreneurship and the psychology of success at events.

What first attracted you to Enterprise Nation?

The fantastic StartUp events, which are held at the beginning of each year, and the opportunity to help businesses realise their ambitions through understanding the importance of mindset and effective business strategy.

Tell us about Enterprise Nation events you've been involved in and how they've benefited your business?

I've been involved in a number of Enterprise Nation-related events. These have included speaking at StartUp 2018 and 2019, Twickenham Stadium with O2 Business and in a series of events with DocuSign that took place across the UK.

Being involved in these events helped to raise awareness of the services I offer through both my private coaching and the online community I run for aspiring to early-stage entrepreneurs.

What challenges have you faced building your own business and how has seeking advice from other experts helped you?

I have faced many challenges in the journey of building my own business. I think challenges are an essential part of growth. Without them, we wouldn't be able to build our confidence by overcoming them, learn important lessons from things that didn't work and develop our resilience.

At every stage of growth, we will face different challenges. When first starting out, my challenge was all about building a client base and generating a decent revenue stream. That is still the case, but with additional challenges of hiring the right people, learning how to manage my time more efficiently and raising awareness around the work I do internationally.

Seeking advice from other experts has been an integral part of my success. We never get to the top alone and we can never know everything. It's important to remain an eternal student by learning from others and being accountable to those who can help support, encourage and challenge us to be better than who we were yesterday.

What tips do you commonly give to clients you work with?

Three come to mind here. The first is to begin with the end in mind, as Stephen Covey would say! Make sure you understand what success means to you, what fulfilment looks like and what sort of impact you want to have with the business you are building. If you don't have clear answers to these questions you'll quickly fall into the trap of measuring the success of your business by someone else's definition.

The second is to create an environment around you that makes it impossible not to succeed, from who you spend time with and the spaces you work in to what you read and who you follow on social media.

The third is to make sure that you and your business deliver more in value than you take in payment. For money is simply an echo of value as our worth is judged by how much more we have given to the world than we have taken in payment.

What's the best piece of advice you've been given that has benefited your own business?

Make sure to build relationships with not just those in your industry, but those in other industries. This will allow you to develop new perspectives, insight and ideas for your business. Having the opportunity to speak with Michelin-starred chefs, tech entrepreneurs, film producers, social activists and people in the fashion industry, has allowed me to learn things that I wouldn't have otherwise had the opportunity to do.

Become part of the Enterprise Nation community

We're proud to have entrepreneurs like Simon as members in our amazing community of small business owners. Join today for the full range of member benefits!