Entrepreneurship article 2: Lessons From Eric Feng’s Entrepreneurial Journey

As an advocate of social media, globally-renowned speaker, author and entrepreneur Eric Feng has propelled himself into superstardom, and he shares how a strong online presence can protect businesses against unexpected adversity 

As a fresh university graduate, Eric Feng first ventured into entrepreneurship as a corporate trainer, due to his passion for teaching. However, he had difficulty in finding, as well as managing clients, who were often older than him and perceived him to be young and inexperienced. Together with help from his mentor Ron Kaufman, an expert speaker on customer service, Eric discovered that before he could sell his programs, he had to first “sell himself” and position himself as an authority which people would want to listen to, instead of being a commodity and a single corporate trainer out of thousands. Thus, he started to make use of social media — which was in its early stages back then — to establish himself as a “somebody”.

His first breakthrough came when his content was forwarded to the HR director of a pharmaceutical firm who liked Eric’s style, and engaged his services for a year. Ever since then, Eric’s entrepreneurship journey has seen an upward trajectory, gaining more recognition, fans, and satisfied clients who celebrate his principles of creating success through strong personal branding.

Here are valuable lessons and strategies that can be learnt from Eric’s own story.

Before starting your journey to building influence, it is recommended to answer the following questions:

WHO do you want to influence? These are the people which you either have easy access to, and/or understand well. As a start, you can identify 2-3 markets you have a chance to build influence in.

WHERE do they spend time online? This determines the platform on which you should post your content. 

After you have established your target market, the next step is to structure your content, which is the currency of the internet. Content allows you to generate the leads you want, and it needs to be attention-grabbing. Your content should either: 

• be of educational value, 
• Allow others to know you and your values better, and/or
• Be entertaining.

When starting out, your content should document your learning journey, and answer the questions which your target market wants to know. Once you have answered enough of your target market’s questions and provided enough value, you’ll start being perceived as an expert. While nobody loves salespeople, everybody loves teachers.

The key is to spend more time with your followers, either through an email mailing list, telegram/facebook group, or any other platform to nurture your community into becoming your fans.

As long as you are consistently catering to your target markets’ needs and establishing your visibility, credibility and popularity among your target market, you will become a figure of influence that is known, loved and respected.