Accelerating Success: EO Singapore Member Used Entrepreneurship to Escape Childhood Hardships

By Brian Burnsed, EO Global Senior Writer

EO’s Accelerator program, which is designed to help small businesses scale to $1 million in annual revenue, is celebrating its 20^th anniversary this year. Along the way, more than 2,000 participants have graduated to full EO membership. To mark the occasion, we are sharing stories of EO members who have leveraged their time in the program to transform their businesses and accelerate their entrepreneurial journeys.

As an adolescent in Malaysia, Joshua Chin watched his parents fight and eventually fracture. After years of moderate success, his father’s business failed. Bankruptcy ensued. The family lost their home. Joshua’s earliest years were defined not by youthful frivolities but, instead, worries about the next meal: Even a small bump in bread prices meant potentially going to bed hungry.

“Money is not the most important thing in life,” Joshua reflects. “Yeah, that’s easy to say when you don’t have to figure out, ‘How are we going to put food on the table tonight?’”

Joshua’s parents earned GED-equivalent educations, but their son was fortunate enough to garner a government-funded scholarship to study in Singapore when he was 12. Upon arrival, he focused on one goal: build a better future through education and financial independence.

“That was a big part of my psyche,” he says. “If I get enough money, a lot of these pains and problems would go away.”

Today, the 29-year-old founder of the Chronos Agency, a lifestyle marketing firm with a global portfolio of direct-to-consumer clients, is successful enough that he doesn’t fret over bread prices. Along the way, though, thanks to guidance from mentors and peers, including many in the EO community, his ambitions have transcended making ends meet.

Learning the Hard Way: eBay to eCommerce

By the time Joshua enrolled at the National University of Singapore in 2015, motivated by those difficult memories, he was already determined to start building his own business. He devoured popular books like “Rich Dad Poor Dad” and “The 4-Hour Workweek” as he helmed a small eBay store.

Reselling goods online, he earned over $1,000 profit in a few months—a life-changing sum at the time.

“That was the most amount of money I had seen in my life,” he says.  

Still, a few dollars in hand, he remained unfulfilled. The business created no value to consumers, and it did not seem sustainable or scalable. The success felt hollow. Worst of all, he felt isolated: “I did not know how to build a community,” he says.

So, after taking note of Shopify’s success in 2016, Joshua sunk his modest earnings from his eBay business into books and online courses focused on marketing. Sacrificing his social life and waking up daily at 5 a.m., he poured himself into school and his new venture, offering marketing support to help small-to-midsize companies turn traffic into leads.  

In parallel, he worked as a summer intern for a larger firm. There, the company’s CEO and Joshua’s first mentor, an EO member, introduced him to the organization and recommended that he enter the EO Global Student Entrepreneurship Awards (GSEA) to get invaluable input from successful entrepreneurs and measure his burgeoning business’s long-term viability.

After Joshua’s presentation during the competition, the judges critiqued him for not having a clear purpose. He seemed to lack vision, they told him, despite already having amassed several clients and a 30-member marketing team scattered around the Philippines and Malaysia by the time he graduated in 2019. “At the time, as a kid in school, I was just happy to be making a profit and being able to feed myself,” Joshua says. “It showed me that there was a lot more that I didn’t know.”

Accelerating Growth 

His mentors, all EO members, “asked questions that I otherwise would not be asking myself.” Plus, Joshua finally found the community he had long sought among peers in EO Accelerator (EOA) facing similar growth challenges.

The friendly competition and camaraderie were palpable. At long last, Joshua thought to himself, “I am not alone.”

The COVID-19 pandemic catalyzed his company’s ascendance: As global ecommerce surged, so did Chronos. Chronos has grown to nearly 80 employees and its business is split between the United States and the Asia-Pacific region. Via an array of SMS, email, and even direct mail marketing, Chronos helps its clients—mostly mid-market e-commerce firms like TheraIce and Truly Beauty—transform ad traffic into customers.

Joshua continues to lean on the leadership lessons his EO mentors taught him. He remembers, above all else, how they listened and how they asked pointed questions. He does the same when confronting problems with his own staff today.

“My main takeaway I got from EOA, interestingly, was the ability to listen,” he says. “Listen without judgement and coach; I think that carries a lot into my work today.”

Coming Full Circle 

In January 2020, with Chronos having cleared EO’s $1 million annual revenue threshold, Joshua mulled continuing on as a full EO member—but had reservations. In Accelerator, he saw clear benefits of building a group of like-minded peers at the same stage of their entrepreneurial journeys. But, only 24, he wasn’t sure how he’d relate to more seasoned entrepreneurs.

What value could he bring to them? “I did not know if I would fit in,” he says.

Ultimately, he made the leap and says now the decision has helped enrich his life—not just his career. While his time in EO Accelerator was focused on improving his business, his time in EO has been defined by improving himself.

After so many years spent sacrificing for the sake of escaping the difficulties of his childhood, Joshua has begun embracing his life beyond his company. He leans on fellow EO members, absorbing their input and experiences, which has helped him forge his own path.

He got married late last year and, before doing so, consulted an array of fellow entrepreneurs—from those who were newly married, to those celebrating 25-year anniversaries, to those who had endured a divorce.

“I didn’t want to repeat the mistakes and outcomes that my parents had to go through,” he says. “They didn’t have the privilege of knowing about all of the questions I have been able to ask myself.”

Though he escaped difficulties in Malaysia at a young age, he has not forgotten his family. His relationships with his parents and his younger sister, who he helps support, have endured. Some baggage from the past remains, he admits, but his parents are in a much better place than they were when he set off for school in another country nearly two decades ago.

Aside from maintaining a healthy company and building a healthy marriage, Joshua’s next goal? Buy each of his parents a new home—replacing the one lost to bankruptcy during his childhood.

“Being able to have a place to call your own and to have the security of knowing that this is my home and I am safe,” he says, “it is a big deal.”

Interested in participating in EO Accelerator? Learn more here.