What do you do?
Everything I do is built to awaken people’s imagination of what is truly possible, so they can live a better story, and I do that through my work as a coach, speaker and author.
What is your favourite thing about what you do?
For me, my favourite thing is witnessing the transformation within people’s lives. To see them begin to realise their full potential, and to focus their energy on the gifts and the talents that they were born with.
What’s your least favourite thing about what you do?
Now that I am a parent of a daughter, I think the least favourite thing is time away from my family. I really enjoy spending quality time with them and often as part of my work I speak to audiences across different cities, and I do miss my family when I am away from home.
The thoughts that I would share if I could give advice to people would be two words – ‘don’t wait’.
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I’m sure there are a lot of people who would love to publish a book, as well as write a book. When writing your book, how did you stay focused on writing and how did you realise that you actually could write a book? I’m sure this is ‘mission impossible’ for a lot of people.
It is. I’m going to be honest, writing the book ‘Energize’ was probably one of the greatest challenges I’ve ever faced for a number of reasons. I got the book deal in April 2020 – this was the same month that the world entered lockdown. It was also the same month that I became a father for the first time. So just imagine for a moment having to write a sixty-five thousand-word book whilst balancing your duties as a parent, with the world going into lockdown and you have to adapt your business, and nobody can come to your home and you cannot go outside because nothing is open, and so to manage all of those things was challenging.
Writing the book was both a challenge and a blessing. The challenge I shared just now, the blessing is that it gave me space to reflect on my own journey, and I think that is a very important activity – to reflect on just how far we have come but to also process it through writing. And part of the journey of writing is being able to see yourself as an author. I think until we can see ourselves as an author we are not really going to write. Because we don’t feel we are ready, we don’t feel we have much value to share. But the moment you see yourself as an author you just put down your thoughts on paper and then you can edit. There’s a great quote and I don’t know who mentioned it, but it says “you cannot edit a blank page.” And so the very first step to writing is simply downloading your thoughts and then sifting through that to create structure and order.
With regards to publishing a book, for someone who may not know where to begin, what would you recommend their first steps be?
I think that with anything, the first step would be to understand how the industry works. So if you were looking to publish a book then the very first step I would take would be to go to some book launch events. Look at how people bring a book to market. Connect with people within the publishing world; editors, marketers, and designers, and begin to understand the process from discussing your idea, all the way through to publication. I think it helps knowing that process when you do get to the point of putting your proposal together. Because writing a good book is only 50 per cent of the game. The other fifty per cent is your strategy, it is your business plan. Your book is a business in itself. The book is the product – how are you going to get it out to market? Every publisher is going to invest in you, and they want to see that they are going to get a good return on their investment.
How much longer will you avoid doing what you are capable of, in order to continue doing what you are comfortable doing?
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If you could pass on one piece of advice, what would it be?
The thoughts that I would share if I could give advice to people would be two words – ‘don’t wait’. The reason I share that is because when I was seventeen, I lost my mum to a tragic accident and there were many life lessons that came from that tragic experience. The two words that came out of that were the words ‘don’t wait’. Don’t wait can be the words that become your greatest antidote to regret. They can be the words that set you on the path towards fulfilment. When you begin to collapse the gap between idea and execution, you will begin realising just how strong and capable you are. You will begin to live a life more true to yourself than a life lived for others. And to inspire you to start taking small steps forward here’s a question I want to leave you with. How much longer will you avoid doing what you are capable of, in order to continue doing what you are comfortable doing?
Simon Alexander Ong was photographed & interviewed at Victoria House in London by Laportra.
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