The Amazing PestBusterians

Now, I really have something (actually, a lot of things) to say about the PestBusterians. They are really one amazing group of people. If you have read the book, in Chapter 17: The Importance Of Cultivating Your Biggest Asset, Thomas reveals why he treats his staff as his company’s greatest asset. He also shares secrets to creating a strong team that lives up to the standard of a highly trained professional. One of his secrets, which he talks about in detail in the book, is that he invests about 4% of his revenue on staff training. When you have a chance to meet any of his staff, you can certainly see how this investment has paid off.

Team PestBusters (as I like to call them) was only brought into the planning of the launch party about one week ago. Thomas simply told them that there was going to be a party at Thumper to launch the book and that we needed help to organise and run the party on the day itself. His staff basically just took it from there.

They had a meeting to determine the different roles needed to run a party smoothly i.e. welcome reception staff, hosts, runners to replenish the book stock, sales staff, photographer, videographer, etc. Then came the most amazing part: his staff basically volunteered themselves for the different roles according to their strengths and interest! I was just blown away by this super efficient and self-motivated team. 

One of the most common compliment I heard throughout the whole night was this: “Did you all hire an events company to do this?” When I told them that it was all the work of Thomas’ team, they were really surprised. I mean, it was all so professionally run and everything went so smoothly, they probably thought that it must have been the work of a professional company.

Even though it was a night of madness because we didn’t expect so many people to turn up and to turn up ON TIME at that; the PestBusterians kept it all together and worked like a well-oiled, lean, mean machine. So to all you PestBusterians who were involved with the launch party, we would like to say a BIG “Thank You! You made it all happen.”

P.S. Before I go, I just have one last thing to add: if you look at the photos below, I think you’ll agree that Team PestBusters is also one great looking bunch of people!

Secrets To Dominate Your Niche Launch Party!

The time stated on the invitation card and on our EDM (Email Direct Mailer) was 6p.m. because we expected people to arrive late. After all, this is Singapore and 22 April is a Tuesday night, so who would come on time for a book launch right? Wrong!

We turned up at Thumper, Goodwood Park Hotel, on the Secrets To Dominate Your Niche book launch day at 4:30p.m., expecting to have a good 2 hours of preparation time. As the good staff from PestBusters were busy creating a ‘Niche Domination’ atmosphere, the authors were busy with a short face-to-face interview with one of the local magazines.

We branded the event with dummy books on every table at Thumper, as well as created a video loop that played the book reviews on the LCD screens around the club. Images of the book were everywhere! No one could miss it.

And then, it happened… the endless streaming in of invited guests. The authors had just finished up their interview at 5:45p.m. and were rehearsing their speeches when the first few guests arrived. The authors greeted their guests as they trickled in slowly… at 6p.m. on the dot… and they got stuck at a pillar near the entrance.

The pillar became the “official” author meet-greet-sign station as the guests filled the place and people queued to get their books autographed. Even though we had prepared a nice signing table right in the middle of the room, the authors were kept busy chatting with guests who arrived one after another and signing books.

By 7p.m., the place was packed and there was actually a long queue of guests holding their freshly bought Secrets To Dominate Your Niche book and waiting for the authors’ autographs. The authors were stuck in one tiny corner, with 3 persons sharing a small ledge to write (Angela, Business Development Manager of PestBusters, was appointed official autograph message writer) and sign the books.

Before we knew it, it was time for the authors to give their short thank you speeches and invite Nicklaus D’Cruz, CEO of OAAG and The Flying Club, and Choe Peng Sum, CEO of Frasers Hospitality, to say a few words about the book. They were among the many established movers-and-shakers of Singapore who had given their reviews for the book.  

Then it was back to more book signing. The guests continued to mingle and network. Although this time, the authors managed to make it to their book signing table and the guests were able to take some nice photos with them.

The book launch was a huge success. It was one of the biggest book launches by local authors, with over 300 invited guests showing their support. Throughout the whole night, we kept hearing from the guests that this was a book launch with a difference. They were amazed at the turnout (so were we!!!) and also at the place that we chose to have it in, as well as the buzzing atmosphere.

To those of you who were there at the launch, we want to extend our heartfelt thanks and appreciation for your support. You helped us make the launch a success. It was such an exciting night for everyone involved. Thank you!

We will be putting up more photos of launch party soon. So do keep a lookout for it.

Differentiating By Design: The First Impression Is The Only Impression

The book looked great. The finishing was perfect. Now for the delivery method.

It was time to send out copies of Secrets To Dominate Your Niche to the media and we were thinking of a creative way to package the book so that it made an impression. We had come so far from the very first day we wrote the first word of the book. We couldn’t afford to throw it all away in one lame first impression. After all, in Chapter 9 of the book: Differentiate By Design, the authors shared on the importance of communicating your company’s difference, positioning and corporate values through your brand identity. So of course we had to walk the talk!

We had the idea of stuffing the book inside a rich black velvet bag (similar to those used for high-end, limited edition whisky bottles) and have real money sticking out the top of the bag. There were two problems with this idea though. How do we find the right size and right material for the bag? And would the real money look too gimmicky; or worse, constitute as a bribe!!??

Anyway, we searched high and low for the bag. We explored different options of making the bag. In the end, family members came to the rescue. Sant’s family in Bali helped us source for the materials and created our dream bag based on a sketch we sent to them and some images of whisky bottle bags we found online.

Some of the bag images we sent to Sant’s family

We only gave Sant’s family one week to source, produce and courier the bags over to us. But before they went into full production of the bags, they emailed us a sample of how it looked like so that we could make any changes if necessary.

Sadly though, they informed us that there simply wasn’t enough time to add the dollar sign and the three “catch words” Outwit, Outsell, Outperform, on the bag. We were happy to have gotten everything else that we requested for, including that beautiful golden tassle to secure the bag. Then it was a one week wait for the bags to arrive.

When we got our hands on the bag, it was another ‘love at first sight’ moment. We decided to do up a sample package just to see how it would look with the book inside it and stuffed with bubble wrap.

But when it came time to do up the actual packing for the books in the bag, Thomas’ staff came up with truly wonderful ideas on how to spruce up the design. As the two authors were busy signing the books, one of his staff was fiddling around with the tassle to come up with a nicer knot. Then another one of his staff suggested printing the hand image on the book cover, laminating it and hanging it on the tassle so that it dangled on the front of the bag!

That was one fantastic suggestion because by then, we had thrown out the idea of stuffing the bag with real money. (It would have looked inproportionate because of the size of the bag and we still weren’t sure whether it would be ‘legal’ to have that.) Furthermore, the laminated image created a greater impact and it served a useful purpose as well: it could be used as a book mark and was a physical reminder of the Secrets To Dominate Your Niche cover.

I’m sure you will agree after looking at the photos below:

And so as you can see, just the simple act of packaging the books to be delivered to the media people took a whole lot of thought and effort. But I’m sure if you were one of the recipients of that package, you would have been curious and suitably impressed, woudn’t you? Let us know your thoughts on this.

More importantly, I hope you got an insight into the work that went into the whole branding and marketing of this book, just from this story on packaging. We also did a whole lot of other materials just for the launch that’s happening on 22 April. Take a look at some of them below:

Eugene modelling the STDYN T-shirts

Testing out how the Banners would look on the launch night at Thumper

Letterhead and Invitation card

And a whole lot more! But I’ll leave that for another time, perhaps when I have the time to take more photos.

Hot Off The Press

Finally! April 15 had arrived and we were all standing in Thomas’ office admiring the first few editions of the book, Secrets To Dominate Your Niche. It was one thing to see the book cover design in a pdf file and imagine how the special finishing i.e. bind emboss title, spot UV for the hand image, gold stamping for the word ‘Dominate’, etc, would look. But it was really another thing to see, hold and feel the physical product in your hands!

We loved how the book turned out. That’s why we couldn’t resist taking photos of the book from all the different angles. Check it out for yourself: 

Isn’t it totally different from the book image you see in the Book Synopsis section of this website? We MMS-ed a few photos of the book immediately to our extremely talented designer, Jessie. She had been such a “darling” (according to Thomas) throughout this project. She provided us with a great design to start with and she was willing to work with us when we wanted to make certain changes. But the crunch was when we first received the proofs (print out of all the pages of the book on normal paper) of the book and realised that the spacing wasn’t ideal. The words were too close to the edge of the page.

We shared our concern with Jessie and asked her to shift the alignment of the words and increase the border spacing between the text and the edge of the page. She stayed up till the wee hours of the morning so that the final working file could be handed over to the printers as soon as possible. So Jessie, if you are reading this: we really appreciate everything that you have done for us.

Although we had to push the delivery date of the books back by 5 days, the wait was worth it because everyone commented on how “reader-friendly” and “easy-on-the-eyes” the layout was. The morale of the story: if you know what is right, then you have to stick to your guts and make the change.

The first few copies were sent out to Thomas’ daughters, who are studying overseas and to Sant’s family, based in Bali. Not forgetting some loyal readers of Sant’s blog who had pre-ordered the book even before it hit the stores. If you were one of them, thank you for your support!

Getting the book printed was just one of the many “challenges” that we overcame along the way. We had a great idea on how to deliver the books to the media but had a difficult time finding what we wanted in Singapore. But that is another story in itself and I’ll share it with you later.

Secrets To Dominate Your Niche - The Beginning

Things are getting crazy!

So many things to do and so little time to do them all. The first few editions of Secrets To Dominate Your Niche will be arriving in the next 5 days and the launch will be happening in the next 12 days. And we were still looking for some special packaging to deliver the books to the media, among the many preparation activities for the BIG LAUNCH.

But I digress. Today, I will take to you back to the time when Thomas and Sant first met: at Dr. Dennis Wee’s office on 21 January 2006.

(L-R) Chris Koh, Vice President of DWG, Thomas Fernandez, Dr. Dennis Wee, President of DWG and Sant Qiu.

If you have read the first few pages of Secrets To Dominate Your Niche, you would have known that Thomas and Sant first met when Thomas was a guest speaker at one of Dr. Wee’s training seminars and where Sant was one of the trainers. They met again at Thomas’ office when Sant was doing an interview series with millionaire entrepreneurs and Thomas was one of the featured interviewees.

It was during that interview session that they both found they had a lot in common. They shared similar thoughts on marketing and business strategies and also enjoyed reading the same kind of business books. At the end of the interview, Thomas shared his dream of writing a book to help entrepreneurs in their journey and also to give back to society.

At that time, Thomas had been invited to give a lot of talks on entrepreneurship by many institutions and organisations. He discovered that people were asking him the similar questions. Since he knew Sant had written a book before with Dr. Wee and he enjoyed the banter with Sant during the interview session, he broached the topic of writing a book together.

Sant was interested to work together with Thomas on the book project because he saw the value that Thomas’ experiences and expertise could bring to others. Although he was already halfway through writing his marketing-specific book, he decided to put that on hold and work with Thomas on Secrets To Dominate Your Niche. (During that time, it was just called ‘The Book’ because the content was still in the works.)

That was the birth of the book and the date was 28 September 2006.

However, due to the busy schedules of both authors (Thomas travels A LOT!!), the actual writing of the book didn’t start until early 2007. Even then, it took longer to complete the book than planned because quite a few meetings had to be postponed due to clashed schedules. But it was all worth it because the final manuscript was something that they had poured their heart and soul into and they were extremely humbled and gratified that others (reviewers) recognised the efforts.

Now it’s just the long wait to see the book in print. And in the next post, you will get to see the very first book, hot off the press! Watch out for it.