Meet Michael, a seasoned COO, business strategist, and digital innovator with a strong technical foundation in building intuitive IT systems and platforms designed to maximise profitability. With a keen eye for solving complex business challenges, Michael creates smart, scalable solutions that streamline operations, reduce costs, and boost revenue.
His strategic mindset and hands-on experience have earned him the trust of high-profile clients—including the Ministry of Home Affairs, Singapore Red Cross, Abbott Laboratories, and American Express—where he consistently delivers results that exceed expectations and drive lasting impact.
With your background in both business strategy and IT systems, how do you approach aligning technology with business and profitability?
The first thing about technology usage is that it has to address a real business problem that is either costing them or making them lose their opportunity. With that in mind, we dive deeper into understanding the business at its core.
We understand their operational workload before we even try to. This is for the purpose of crafting out what are exactly the pain points, challenges, and issues that happen that is close to the ground.
And with the implementation of the technology, we can deeply solve it and then generate either cost savings or a new revenue stream for the customer. We don’t just look at the technical aspect, but also the business aspect.
You have worked with high-profile clients like Abbott, American Express, and even the Ministry of Home Affairs. What is your secret to consistently delivering results that exceed your clients’ expectations?
First point is that we take the pain to spend time to really understand the issues that they have. And the second is that we maintain very open and honest communication channels with them about what will work and what will not.
It’s not just for the sake of earning whatever cash on the table, but we give a genuine interest in their business, in helping them solve their problem. Once we have that mindset, it will deliver the optimum result that the partner is pursuing. And that is also why they choose to work with us for a longer term.
If that project has no benefits at the current stage or we find it too early for them to get started, then we will actually advise against them doing it at this point. We advise them to sort things out first.
I can give you leads, but if you’re not going to be able to follow up, then there’s no point. It’s wasted. That is how we approach this.
What are some of the most common pain points businesses face today and how do you help address them through digital solutions?
I think they don’t move fast enough, or they are afraid to move, especially in adoption of digital solutions. But when we pitch them to the client, they are afraid to take them up, or they don’t have the necessary infrastructure to do so. Then that will open up quite a tedious task for them.
They need to start implementing CRM systems, they need to start doing analytics, tracking on their end, etc. We try to make them understand how all these new tech solutions address pain points like, “I don’t generate enough sales.”
You’re not generating enough sales because you’re not selling to your client what they want. And you don’t even know what your clients want because you are not tracking them, right?
You track all the data, but you’re not using them. So we’ve to give them a very detailed understanding of how they can utilise this to ultimately translate into their goal of gaining profitability.
Can you share a specific project where your strategy significantly reduced cost or boosted revenue for a client?
We did run a brand awareness campaign for a Fortune 500 company. They deal with corporate insurance. What we realised is that people didn’t really understand what they provided, what the key benefits were, or why they should work with them.
We created a corporate branding video for them, and using that asset, we implemented a LinkedIn marketing campaign. That campaign actually generated quite a number of leads for them and ultimately they closed several million-dollar projects.
It was so effective that when the campaign was planned for one month, by the second week they told us to stop because their sales team couldn’t handle the enquiries. This is one of the many success stories that we have.
Branding is a long-term thing that covers many facets, without necessarily having ROI in dollars and cents. You cannot measure branding in terms of, “How much revenue can it generate?” Or, “After I do my branding, will my sales revenue double or triple?”
What are some common misconceptions about branding?
Doing a logo is not branding. Branding is about knowing your whole business objectives, goals, and how you reach those goals, so that your brand is established and known to your target audience in a particular way which you envision it to be.
For example, if I have a value shop, branding to a value shop is to make things look cheaper—we are affordable, we don’t want to look atas. So if you’re on a low budget, you come to us. That’s branding.
This is a common misconception we get: “I do my branding and after that, my number will magically fly—two times, three times in terms of my sales volume or in terms of whatever streams that they are looking for.”
Branding is a long-term thing that covers many facets, without necessarily having ROI in dollars and cents. You cannot measure branding in terms of, “How much revenue can it generate?” Or, “After I do my branding, will my sales revenue double or triple?” This is something clients need to understand.
What are your thoughts on the future of digital transformation in business, and where do you see the biggest opportunities for growth?
I have to go with the buzzword: AI, definitely. Internally, we are also using AI a lot now. In terms of copywriting, I’m using it creatively to come up with the first draft, but there’s still a human touch.
In terms of artwork, instead of creating all the concept artwork from scratch, we use AI to speed it up, then get feedback from the client to see whether we are heading in the right direction. We don’t need to waste too much effort.
AI is definitely the way to go for digital transformation. Now, there can be robotics, automation, system processes in place—but these are still slow on the uptake. Only those who are a bit more savvy will go into AI and everything AI.
Start somewhere small. You don’t have to go big and say, “Well, I invest millions into AI or robotics.” Take baby steps. From there, see a 10% ROI before you move further. This is also our step-by-step approach, rather than a one-big-investment that you need to make.
What do you think makes a good entrepreneur?
Resilience is one, for sure. You will get a lot of challenges, so you really have to be tough to fight through all the dust and the bullets.
Action is another. You can spend all the time dreaming, but if you don’t put it into action, it’s no use.
Third, you can never be a solo player. It’s so stressful and you have so much to manage. Always have a good team that can complement your skill set.
And also, don’t be afraid to have a devil’s advocate in your team, because they ask the really hard questions. You need to have this open mindset—be willing to take in the critique—and from there address it objectively.
Everyone thinks that whatever they start is the best thing that can happen. But that’s hardly the case. Whatever you are doing is always a build-upon of some other thing or concept. What you are really doing is innovating—you are not inventing.
What’s your vision for Singapore in the next five years?
Wow, that’s tough. I hope there is less income disparity, and the cost of living becomes more affordable for everyone. On the global stage, for sure, Singapore has all along been on the top list as an education hub. I hope that continues to grow because talent is all we have. We don’t have any natural resources. So that’s definitely the area we have to move into.
But for education, we do see that a lot of the younger generation are starting to become a bit ‘softer.’ Softer in a sense that—I don’t know—maybe they are seeing too many stories on social media, seeing too many articles on mental health and work-life balance. They neglect to consider what stage of life they are in.
So when all this work-life balance and well-being came up, it was initially by a group of people who have been in the industry for a long time. They have been through a lot and maybe they need to slow down the pace and focus on their mental well-being. But it’s getting misinterpreted by the younger generation as, “I want work-life balance now. I want benefits now.”
But they neglect that they are at a stage where they are new in their career. They don’t have the drive and determination to push themselves and when it’s time for promotion, do you think they will get promoted? If they don’t, then they get disheartened and think, “I don’t get promoted. I’ve been doing all this.”
So this has to be resolved, especially for the younger generation. Otherwise, what we are going to get in the next five years is just a bunch of people who easily crumble under pressure, unable to meet the demands of today’s work.
Connect with Michael: FyoozStudio and LinkedIn.
