Patrice Tanaka, Founder & Chief Joy Officer of Joyful Planet LLC, interviews people who are actively living their purpose and contributing to a more joyful planet. This interview spotlights Ai Ching Goh, Co-Founder and CEO of Piktochart based in Penang, Malaysia, which is a web app offering users without intensive graphic design experience a way to easily create professional-grade infographics using themed templates.
Ai Ching Goh
Co-Founder and CEO, Piktochart
PT: Ai Ching, what I love and admire about you from what Deirdre Breakenridgehas told me and also through your media interviews is how you’re pursuing your passion and living your purpose, in part, through Piktochart, a startup you co-founded with your husband. You once gave the following advice when asked about the necessary skill-sets and attitudes needed to succeed in the technology and startup industry, “Find joy in everything you do.” Ai Ching, can you share your life’s purpose, which I define as one that leverages your greatest talents, expertise and passion in service of people and planet.
ACG: Thank you for asking, Patrice! I find the mission of moving towards a joyful planet very inspiring. My life purpose revolves around building businesses with people and culture at their core.
This doesn’t mean that revenues don’t matter when building a business. Rather, I find that the most important aspects of scaling a business center around learning how to best work with everyone – discovering unique strengths and weaknesses and giving employees an environment in which they can grow.
When people are using their amazing talents, they are joyful and free to do what they do best. My life’s purpose is to foster environments that allow as many people as possible to experience this.
PT: When did you discover your life’s purpose? Was there a triggering incident?
ACG: I find that I have many friends who are tired. They are not just physically exhausted, but mentally and emotionally drained. They lack vigor or something to look forward to in their daily lives, apart from the next vacation.
I had a similar story. At the end of 15 months in my first corporate job, I was completely burned out. I decided I would leave the corporate world. As it turns out, I was hospitalized during the last week of work due to the stress.
It was my first tale of driving at 150 miles per hour and crashing.
Once I felt back to myself, I tried to figure out what was wrong in that first job. I was certainly naive and inexperienced and made enough mistakes to drive my employers up the wall! The management was very much top-down, and I was told that I got it wrong without a clear picture of how to improve myself. There were also performance reviews and 1:1s set in place, but they did not help me to understand what I had to achieve, what my gaps were, and or how to bridge those gaps. Thanks to this experience, I found out that I thrive in environments where people are empowered to do their best.
Ai Ching Goh and colleagues.
ACG: From day one, we experimented with assembling the right team and setting ourselves up as an unconventional company that would grow at its own pace.
Our mission was to build a company with a structure that was similar to a family – the whole unit competes with the world, but not with each other. The first thing that we did was to constantly collect data from the team, whether verbally or quantitatively. We now send a weekly survey, gauging team members’ relationships with peers, whether or not they feel aligned with company goals, etc.
As a result, it was not difficult to spot the areas where we were lacking. For example, we have difficulty in opening up to one another in order to give constructive feedback because everyone wants to be nice! We’ve gone to great lengths to find ways of equipping the team leaders to walk the talk; revamping performance reviews; and conducting quarterly, non-anonymous, peer-to-peer reviews. I’m happy to say that things are beginning to change!
We’ve restructured meetings from boring weekly meetings to our Monday Morning Meetings. Now, everyone on the team take turns leading the meeting each week, and we all listen while seated on bean bags. As families are very important to us, we have also included them in our annual retreats in exotic locations all over the world. As a result, there are many strong bonds and relationships within the company.
PT: Did knowing your purpose in life change what you do in your professional life in any way? And, in your personal life?
ACG: Before discovering my life purpose, I focused all of my personal learning on topics like marketing, calculating unit economics, public relations, how to get more sales, etc. I don’t discard the importance of having business acumen as a leader, but it’s as if I discovered a whole new world about managing a business. I became more focused on the study of people development versus managing the marketing and cash flow of the business.
It changed me as a person as well. Before this, I had always taken pride in my ability to multi-task. As soon as I woke up every morning, there would be at least five mental dashboards switched on in my mind, and my brain would get started. Even when I met up with friends, I wasn’t able to be fully present because there was a constant anxiety about work. Now when I go on holidays, I am able to ‘switch off’ because I know that the team I work with is as capable and motivated (if not more so) than I am.
PT: How does it feel to be living your life’s purpose? Specifically, how would you describe it in terms of the success, fulfillment and joy you experience?
For example, I have had the privilege of watching how one developer joined our family as a fresh graduate. He tried multiple hats including management roles, and he’s finally found his fit. He is recently now engaged to be married, and he has also had some successful financial endeavors outside of Piktochart. I watched this amazing person truly blossom before my eyes.
There are some who ask, “Don’t you want to get some cash out and move on to something else?” Piktochart has been successful, and other startup founders might dream of being able to cash out and move on. I don’t feel the rush to move on because we are doing what we want to do right now. To be honest, it feels like there’s still a lot of room for everyone to continue growing, and I’m looking forward to watching it happen!
PT: What is the result of knowing and actively living your life’s purpose? Is there a power that comes from knowing your life’s purpose in being able to actively live it?
ACG: I feel I am still a student when it comes to discovering and empowering people. Because individuals, and our entire company’s culture, are both so malleable, I’m constantly learning how to approach different challenges, but knowing and actively living my life’s purpose guides me on the path.
The greatest strength that I am able to draw from is that I am able to find joy in what I am doing today. I think that it is not easy to rejoice all the time – especially in the more difficult times – but when I am doing what I feel I am meant to do, it makes everything worthwhile.
PT: What are your greatest hopes and dreams for the life purpose you have chosen?
ACG: I hope that more companies will realize that the path to profitability and success has a lot to do with people. I hope leaders strive to empower people to do what they do best and help each one of them reach their fullest potential. My greatest hope is that more leaders truly value each and every team member, and speak up about this shift and what they learned when they placed people first. As Andrew Carnegie said, “Teamwork is the ability to work together toward a common vision. The ability to direct individual accomplishments toward organizational objectives. It is the fuel that allows common people to attain uncommon results.”
PT: What do you think you would be doing now if you hadn’t determined and then actively begun to live your purpose?
ACG: In the past, I was constantly driven by growth and would not stop at anything in order to keep getting to greater heights. So, if I had not actively begun to live my purpose, I would likely try to want to prove myself in every role and workplace. I imagine the same things would carry on from my past life – my relationships with people would suffer, I would be known as a tense person, and it would show physically and emotionally.
PT: How important is it for individuals to discover their life’s purpose? And, do you think that businesses would be wise to help employees discover their purpose?
ACG: I think discovering your life purpose is important because it will likely maximize your potential and what you bring to your career.
As an example, when I was hunting for our first recruiter, I went through the usual channels of looking for people with recruitment experience. After spending some time without a very good fit, I started looking instead for someone who loved working with people but came from a sales background. She understood the art of selling, but it turns out her life purpose was actually nurturing and helping people become their best. We would not have discovered her talent if we looked purely from the perspective of past experience or academic qualifications. Discovering your life purpose helps you to shine and share your passion with the world.
Businesses should also make it a priority to help people discover their purpose. Employees would be happier, more fulfilled, and more engaged, and that definitely results in higher productivity! In Piktochart, we try to spot new talents or skills that people may not have been exposed to in the past. We have always promoted from within, and all of our team leaders and leadership today are not external hires. This was only possible due to all the effort we put into building a business that is primarily centered on people, and has two great by-products from that focus – happiness and profits.
PT: What advice would you give others about discovering their life’s purpose?
ACG: I’d advise others to have patience and persistence. The first step is realizing that you are missing a life purpose, and that you are committed to taking time to find out what it is. For me, searching for my life purpose appeared as a silver lining after some life trials from a miserable job and health issues.