Learning is a forever journey and not something that should be halted or resumed as and when it is seemingly needed. From children requiring tuition in addition to classroom education, or adults in need of self-improvement courses, education has become a necessity.
This situation has been further exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic threatening jobs in almost every industry, leading to the need to re-skill and upskill.
However, courses, whether academic or non-academic, have become more and more expensive over the years. Many of them charge exorbitant fees but do not impart lasting impact, knowledge, or significant skills to their students. In the end, students often walk away from these courses feeling disappointed and harbouring a recurring question: What have I learnt from this?
I noticed this phenomenon among my peers when I was in university. At the same time, I fell in love with training, speaking, and educating — basic skills that I felt everyone should have access to. Because of this, I became very disillusioned with these issues within the education industry and set out to change the norm.
Addressing gaps in the education industry
I have been a serial entrepreneur since graduating from the National University of Singapore (NUS). After learning all I could from my internships, I realised that I could combine my love for public speaking and training with my goal of making education and learning, not only transparent but also accessible and affordable — by having students of my own. I began with teaching the skill I was most familiar with and had mastered by the age of 18: forex trading.
To polish my speaking and training abilities, I decided to join multiple firms and take up a variety of leadership positions which I felt accelerated my training as a public speaker. They included positions like Academy Director of Forex100 Academy, a forex trading school; Head of Blockchain Development at Jigsaw Capital, a consulting firm; and Vice President of InvestPage Holdings, an investment holdings company which provided opportunities to investors while serving as an education hub.
Each of these roles required me to lead others, imparting the lessons and skills that I had learned as I polished my skills over the years. However, the journey towards becoming a professional trainer and speaker was not easy.
One of the challenges which I faced in becoming a professional trainer was my age. As I started with financial coaching, many believed that I was too young to be coaching other people and that age reflected my calibre. Despite giving it my best in terms of teaching, many still found it hard to trust me because of my youth.
Another challenge I faced was my own conscience; while I did not believe in overpriced courses, I was constantly pressured to follow the “market rate” while setting the prices for my courses. It troubled me greatly because in my heart, I knew that education and the price tag attached to it, should be affordable by the masses. These challenges, especially the latter, continue to haunt me as I struggled to find my compass in life.
Soon, I started Reubiks Academy in 2014, which began as a transparent and trusted learning ecosystem for aspiring traders and those looking to boost their financial literacy and wealth management skills.
The road to digitising education and making learning transparent
As I continued to hone my skills as a trainer, the path to success was even rockier. I unexpectedly experienced failure after failure in my pursuit of entrepreneurship. I was even betrayed by ex-business partners resulting in a financial loss of approximately S$200,000 (US$150,000) by the time I was 27 years old.
This betrayal was extremely painful because I had trusted my then-partner so much, leaving him to handle day-to-day operations while I focused on running the sales component of the company. At one point, my losses had become so enormous that I only had S$289.60 (US$217) to survive. However, I learned a valuable lesson; a true blue entrepreneur might not be the best at every component of the business but he or she must be able to, at least oversee and execute it at a basic level.
Despite falling on hard times, I only became even more determined to create viable options and transparent avenues for everyone looking to learn. More than that, I aimed to protect students, young and old, from potentially unscrupulous individuals, who would charge large sums of money in exchange for a curriculum that provided little value.
Also Read: SMU’s Protégé Ventures as a catalyst for entrepreneurial education
To recover my losses, I took on multiple part-time jobs just to get by. I worked part-time as a sales associate in the Merchant Acquisition department at GrabFood, gave tuition to primary school children, taught blockchain technology to adults, and took on website and app development projects.
During this period, I discovered that not only did parents find it difficult to find affordable and reliable tuition for their children, but that people looking to learn a skill were not given sufficient choices like price comparisons of courses, and previews of their selected curriculum, among others.
Most importantly, the entire education industry needed disruption as parents and learners were still making phone calls to arrange tuition for their children with a tutor they have never seen before.
The culmination of my part-time gigs, especially during a time where online marketplaces like Grab were gaining notoriety, led me to create a platform that would allow students to “shop” for tutors and lessons in a marketplace setting. With this, Reubiks Academy evolved into Reubiks mobile app, an education marketplace that gives students access to any educational curriculum imaginable, whether academic or non-academic.
How education marketplace benefits both tutors and students
In line with the goals that initially spurred me on to embark on this journey, an education marketplace like Reubiks mobile app provides students with transparent, accessible, and affordable education that was never available before.
By browsing through a list of tutors, their curriculum, their teaching styles, and their fees, and filtering them via a simple comparison feature, students of all ages can make informed choices in their learning journey with us. Transparency is further guaranteed by the marketplace as students can experience free trials before deciding on their lessons.
Meanwhile, trusted tutors who utilise a platform such as Reubiks mobile app are able to tap into a network of eager students, enabling a more efficient method of teaching while ensuring a healthy transfer of knowledge.
Also Read: How edutech startups can accelerate active learning
With the COVID-19 pandemic resulting in education becoming an increasingly virtual process, tutors must find new ways to reach their students and conduct classes effectively. Therefore, an education platform such as Reubiks mobile app which matches students to prospective tutors and vice versa might just be the answer!
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Image credit: Annie Spratt on Unsplash
This article was first published on December 14, 2020
The post How my entrepreneurial failures led me to rethink learning and upskilling appeared first on e27.