Richard Tan, founder and CEO of Success Resources, the largest seminar organiser in Asia, has overcome many adversities in life including a failed business, before finding his niche in organising seminars. He shares his success story with Meeting Planner. Call it an accident or call it fate. It was a series of unfortunate events that led Richard Tan to venture into the seminar business 16 years ago. First, he lost his job as an engineer at an oil rig during the oil crisis in the late 80s. Then in 1990, he started a business dealing in a non-slip flooring chemical, which failed miserably and lost lots of money, sending him spiralling into a hefty debt. 
An Accidental Start
Out of a job, heavily laden by debt and with creditors hot on his heels, a good friend “volunteered” him to help out at a non-profit organisation. As Richard had some free time on his hands, he went to offer his assistance. As fate would have it, his task was to help the organisation run a conference cum seminar. At the end of the event, someone went up to him and said: “Richard, you did quite a good job. Why don’t you consider doing it full time?” As he was already in such a big predicament and had nothing left to lose, he thought to himself, “Why not? Maybe I should continue doing this fulltime.” It was during this tumultuous time in 1993 that Richard started Success Resources to organise self-improvement seminars for the public and for a start, he paid himself only a small allowance per month.
Today, Success Resources is the largest seminar organiser in Asia and has successfully promoted seminars for world-renowned gurus such as Anthony Robbins, Robert Kiyosaki and T Harv Eker, all around the world. The company organises about 20 to 25 seminars with more than 1,000 attendees annually and has generated hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue. Richard’s feat of rising from the ashes earned him the Phoenix Award by the Singapore Government in 2003. This prestigious award is bestowed on only one deserving entrepreneur from Singapore each year.
Apart from Success Resources, Richard is also the CEO of SkyQuestCom, which was ranked the 11th fastest growing technology company in the Asia Pacific region by the 2008 Deloitte Technology Fast 500 Asia Pacific programme. The company, which achieved a 3-year revenue growth of an astounding 2,724%, is also the fastest growing technology company in Singapore.
The Organising Process
Organising a seminar is a process that requires planning and step-by-step implementation. “There is a checklist of what to do. The first and most important thing to have is the agreement with the speaker. Once the agreement is done, the next most important things are to fix the venue and to set a date,” says Richard. At Success Resources, the marketing process begins as soon as the first three things above are done. It’s a logical process as you can’t market an event, or even announce it if you don’t have a venue and a fixed date.
Different companies have different ways of marketing. For the company, as soon as the venue and date are set, they will begin to sell the tickets. 90% Selling, 10% Organising Richard has an invaluable tip for those who are interested in running their own seminars, gleaned from his many years of experience. He opines that many people cannot sell their tickets because they spend too much time doing the organising work and they forget to do the marketing. For Richard, the main concern for any seminar he organises is whether he can fill up the entire room. “We only start looking at the finer details such as lighting and sound system, during the last one month to the date of the event. We spend 90% of our time selling and only 10% of our time organising. Organising is very easy. In fact, even a fresh high school leaver or college graduate can organise a seminar for you, but they may not be able to put the people in the room for you. To sell the event, you need a very capable person,” he elaborates.
Hence, sometimes the seminars are not perfect and they improvise along the way, but the important thing is that they manage to fill up the rooms. Richard rationalises that by getting the sales in, he can solve all his other problems by paying people to do the work for him. “But if you have no sales, you can’t afford to hire anyone,” he says.
How to Promote a Seminar Promoting a seminar is an important aspect of the seminar organising process. Only with effective promotions, marketing and advertising can you have a sell-out event. What are the avenues available? Among the most common methods are direct mail, email marketing, fax marketing, radio commercials, banners ads, resellers and TV commercials.
“For a big seminar, each avenue will bring in only a small number of people. For example, if you advertise in the papers, one advertisement will probably bring in about 50 people and the next will bring in, say 20 people. After that, the ad doesn’t work anymore because the people who read that paper and are interested to attend your event would have already signed up,” he observes. “But if you need to get 5,000 people, then your radio, direct mail, resellers, etc, will each being in a few more people. Hence, for a big seminar, you’ll have to explore all avenues of advertising and marketing. Internet marketing helps you save a lot on the cost, and you can reach the customers straightaway but you still have to find the right prospects. There’s no single method that will solve all your problems,” he adds. 
Big Is Not Always Beautiful
To date, the biggest seminar organised by the company, which was held in China, attracted 25,000 people. “Sometimes, the numbers can be very deceiving. We have run big seminars with 8,000 and even 25,000 people, but the big ones may not be profitable, as the tickets are lowpriced,” explains Richard.
According to Richard, the seminars that are most profitable are the ones with high-priced tickets. For Success Resources, the most expensive seminar is the one featuring Jay Abraham, where costs US$25,000 per ticket, and also T Harv Eker’s private circle, where the company charges US$20,000 per ticket.
Greatest Challenges
Commenting on the trials and tribulations in the seminar business, Richard shares, “The biggest
challenge is to find good people. This kind of business involves very long hours and you need to find someone who can sell, can work long hours and who is also meticulous. So, the major challenge is getting good people to run the business.”
Richard offers some solutions, “I think one of the solutions I have is to hire the people who have
attended my seminars before, because they’ll have a better idea what we do, and if they decide
to have a change in career, we can consider them. The other way is to train fresh talents. We are
probably one of the most aggressive companies in the market, and the people we have are already
the best in the industry.”
Risks of the Trade
Running a seminar business comes with its own set of risks. “I remember one year, I organised a
seminar in Sri Lanka, and the Tamil Tiger rebels blew up the airport and our speaker couldn’t go
there. So, we had to cancel the seminar and issue refunds, causing us to lose a lot of money,” recalls
Richard. There’s also the threat of disease outbreaks. For example, during the SARS outbreak, he decided to proceed with the seminars in Malaysia and Singapore but cancelled the one in China, as it was more serious there. A possible solution to this problem is to buy insurance but then, not many insurers will insure against such risks. Richard believes that as a leader, you must be very decisive and make very clear decisions. Therefore, at times of crisis, you decide to either go ahead or not, stick with it and make that your right decision.
Words of Wisdom
In this fast paced world, we are often overwhelmed by the sheer number of things that we need to do. Richard offers a possible solution, “If you have 100 things to do that will make you 100% successful, but you simply don’t have time to do it all, you only need to do the three or four most important things. You’ll find that if you do those few things well, you’ll achieve 80% to 90% success and in the process save yourself a lot of time.”
Case Study: How to Get 5,000 People to Sign Up for Your Seminar in 2 Months
Richard found himself in a huge predicament a few months ago, when an under performing staff only managed to sign up 30 people when they had already booked a venue for 5,000 people in London. And the event was only two months away!
Drastic situations call for drastic measures. Richard knew that to successfully sell to customers, you need to build a relationship with them, which takes time. As he didn’t have much time then, he needed to shorten the process. “So, when I went to London, I tried to figure out who had the customers I want. I ended up with 40 names but finally shortlisted it down to 20. These were the people who have run seminars before and have databases of customers who fit my target market. I spent two weeks visiting these people personally and asking them to help me sell my seminar tickets. As an incentive for helping me, I offered them a commission. The normal rate was 50% but I offered made them an irresistible offer of 100% commission on ticket sales. They were shocked, but that was exactly what I did and they became my motivated resellers,” he shares.
With this single marketing technique, Richard managed to get his resellers to send out emails to their databases comprising 900,000 names. At the end of the day, he managed to get more than 5,000 people to sign up for the seminar and people were still trying to sign up even after registrations were closed. Many people would think the Richard was out of his mind to offer 100% commissions, but it was an intelligent marketing move. Richard had nothing to lose as he knew that he would be making more on the sales of products during the seminar, rather than the ticket sales. The company generated a total revenue of £3.2 million from that seminar alone. Richard attributes this success to his willingness to share, “I succeeded because I made it worthwhile for people to help me.” Perhaps, we can all learn a useful lesson from this and apply it to our lives, not just in organising seminars.
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