Lingostars provides Mandarin and Korean education services to both children (Year 1 to Year 13) and adults. If you want to learn Mandarin and/or Korean, for whatever reason, you can get help from us. Second-generation Korean kids can maintain their ties with their parents’ country by learning more about Korean culture and languages at our centre, too.
My business is a success because it encapsulates my entire career. My experiences as a teacher and as a certified simultaneous/ consecutive interpreter and translator in Mandarin-Korean enable me to help anyone interested in learning Mandarin and Korean.
To succeed in business, you need to be persistent and flexible at the same time. Carrying out tasks single-handedly is important, but listening to other people is even more important as it opens up new perspectives and opportunities.
My advice for someone looking to start up a business is to do it now. Don’t wait for the right moment to come along – there isn’t one. And remember, an idea that seems great now might not be valid later.
To start up my business I spent a lot of time brainstorming with my husband. My teaching experience gave me confidence, and I found I knew what to do every step of the way.
The greatest challenge I’ve faced was when I had to delay the opening of our centre in DB North Plaza due to COVID-19. I spent four months worrying whether to keep the business or not. But I had a long-term goal and I stuck to my original plan.
My plan for the future is to make Lingostars synonymous with Mandarin/ Korean teaching excellence, and I want to entice people from across Hong Kong to our DB centre. In the future, I would like to expand the business first to Hong Kong Island and eventually further afield, ideally to New York and Singapore. While online learning is becoming more popular, I believe people, especially young children, still prefer an interactive learning experience.
When hiring staff, I always ask about their long-term vision and willingness to accept new challenges.
The entrepreneur I most admire is Peter Thiel. His book, Zero to One, awakened my entrepreneurial side and made me venture in a direction that I’d never imagined possible. The chapter “If you build it, will they come?” totally changed my approach to marketing. You need to have the right product, but you also need to know how to launch and promote it in the right way.
My favourite social-media platforms are Instagram and Facebook. While Facebook is more marketing oriented, Instagram gives me a plethora of ideas about how to make my classes fun and interactive.
My personal motto is to stay positive, and keep moving forward.