Who is Ken Chee?

Ken Chee is the co-founder of 8I Holdings Ltd, a company whose primary business is conducting investing training. The company also manages a fund called Hidden Champions Fund (see this post about the fund). He is currently the chairman and CEO of 8I Holdings.

In his LinkedIn profile, he mentioned that he started a branding and marketing company in 2003. I believe this is the period he mastered his branding and marketing skills to the finest. This is one of the key skill that prospered his next company, 8I Holdings, to a multi-million dollar business. 

I don’t know him personally. But let us analyze who he is from what he has achieved and what he says in public space. 

Love posting on Facebook

Ken loves posting on Facebook. He writes new post almost everyday. Sometimes, he posts multiple times within a day. I don’t know any other public listed company CEO who posts on FB that often. It takes time to write a post, upload the pictures/videos, and comment on the posts. I wonder how much time he spends on Facebook. Just like I wonder how much time Donald Trump spends on Twitter daily.

Share many things on Facebook

Ken shares a lot of things on Facebook, whether it’s personal or business. That’s very normal, like many people out there.

Once, he even shared a screenshot of the email that a banker sent him to prospect him business. He mentioned that he was not a suitable client for this banker. The screenshot included the name of the banker and bank. Nah, that maybe a bit over to share banker’s details on Facebook. I feel like this is mocking the banker. The post was deleted shortly. That’s the right thing to do. I don’t have the screenshot of that to show. I remember it because it’s very odd for people to share such sensitive thing, especially the banker’s name on FB. 

Kind human being

A friend told me Ken is a very kind person. She said Ken’s company raised fund for the needy. When having traffic accident, Ken’s first reaction is to care about the person, not about the car. When someone who has little money ask him whether he should attend 8I’s $4000 investing program, Ken asked him not to attend first and gave him advice for free. 

I looked at my friend, who actually does not know Ken, and asked how she knows all this. She said Ken shares all these good things he did on his Facebook page. Now I also learn that Ken is a very good promoter.

Very confident 

Having been a public speaker and presenter for many years, he is very confident. See this post in which he argues that most of the students of his investing course can attain very good and consistent return. Firstly, the post is about his student who grew the investment from 100k to 600k in less than 10 months while sleeping.

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Next, some other people commented and asked about the underperforming students in the class. But Ken replied that most of the graduates who take action and apply what they learn achieve similar results. The student above was talking about 6x returns in less than 10 months. If most graduates have this results, they can retire in few years. Ken also said one can easily out beat Buffett’s 21.6% return per year. Can you believe this? 

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Unfortunately, the fund that 8I manages, Hidden Champions Fund, is currently at negative return since inception. This clearly contradicts what he says. 

Integrity

In one interview (see this link), the interviewer asked Ken to summarise his whole life in one word. Ken answered Integrity. 

I find that it’s very unusual for a person to describe himself as integrity. I never see an honest person who describes himself as honest. Ken is unique.

Big fan of Digimatic

Ken is (or used to be?) big fan of Digimatic. His company bought Digimatic (formerly CPA Academy) for few million dollars and sold part of it for more than 10 million dollars and even listed Digimatic in Australia Stock Exchange.

After that, whenever Digimatic makes announcement on its Facebook page, Ken will like the page or share it. He also writes several posts praising the business of Digimatic. 

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In this post, he praised the founder of Digimatic, Ivan Ong, and said sorry to the platform companies, such as Facebook, Google, Whatsapp, for not understanding their business and their potential. Ken described Digimatic business as one having great growth potential, generating massive results.

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Digimatic IPO at 23x P/S and Ken still considered cheaper than most SG, MY and Australian listed ad tech related companies back in 2014. Digimatic is a super fast grower. 

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But since late 2017 or early 2018, he has stopped talking about Digimatic. In late December 2018, Digimatic was sold off and no longer part of 8I Holdings. That’s quite a sudden change in view within 1 year. Just in July 2017, he repeatedly praised the Digimatic business growth potential and their founder. Now in 2018, he sold off the company. All the talk about the great potential in 2017 only to sell out the following year.

Note that Digimatic’s share price crashed to a very low price this year. If one believes it has super growth potential, then he should buy more, not sold out at low valuation. This is contradictory.

Also, 8I already sold part of the ownership in Digimatic for more than $10 million within few months of buying it. Why sell when all the praise about great growth potential? One blog talked about this deal but was asked to remove it unfortunately.

Petty

Ken described himself as petty (I didn’t say ah, he himself say one) as seen in this post, in which he claimed that other blogger defamed him. I think the blog he referred to is this, (from investmentmoats.com), but I don’t think the blog defamed him. The blog was just stating the blogger’s opinion. 

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In other posts, Ken also talked about other financial bloggers and claimed that the bloggers defamed him again. It seems that he remembers very well other people who criticised him and keeps driving himself to prove them wrong. This is a good self motivation and one of his strengths. 

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Skillful storyteller

One comment in a blog that talked about value investing summit organized by 8I says this: “… Ken Chee … humours the audience with stories about his life and experiences, and the principles of value investing. He also impresses the audience by saying he turned $16,000 into $100 million in some 15 years … Ken is quite an engaging speaker and skillful storyteller so it was rather entertaining for the most part until he comes to the punchline..”

I agree with this commenter. I attended a workshop run by him before. He is a master in presentation and telling stories. He is very passionate about what he does, has good humours and engages the audience very well. This could be his natural talent, which is further honed during the time he ran his branding and marketing company. 

This is another Facebook post by Ken, saying that someone complimented him. The words “move crowd like a pastor” is very important. Because that’s what we discuss in next point.

Master in selling

Following from above, he is also a master in selling, in my opinion. I copy the quote from the same commenter here because the commenter describes it so well (taken from this blog):

“… At the point he mentions this, he goes into full-on aggressive salesman mode and starts using psychological pressure to goad the audience into signing up. He basically uses all the classic sales techniques like creating a sense of urgency and encouraging a herd mentality by saying things such as “Oh, this is one of the last workshops where I will personally provide training..”,“Special discount for people who sign up today..”, “Our upcoming workshops are almost full already..”, etc. etc. And here’s the most insidious (in my opinion downright unethical) thing he does – he divides the room into those who want to sign up and those who don’t, and then he hounds those who don’t want to sign up by bellowing “Why have you not joined the other group.. can’t you see so many people signing up.” He keeps on doing this until some of the undecided people finally join those who are signing up.”

And another quote:

“At the end of the workshop, Mr Chee then comes back to the stage and rouses up people’s morale and tells us how awesome we are for completing the program and being serious about investing in our future. He then tells us we must practise ‘gratitude’ in order to earn good karma/fruits, and plays a video on why and how to be grateful. Cleverly, right after the video he tells everyone to then put gratitude into practice by writing down how grateful we are for having attended the workshop! Which by now, we have paid almost $5,000 for – plus an additional several thousand if you signed up for the exclusive 8i club as well. These ‘gratitude’ notes are then used as testimonials and I would seriously doubt how authentic these are as they were written after a speech and video designed to get us high and emotional, and plus if we put in negative words, then that’s not practising gratitude then is it? I’d call Mr Chee a master psychologist and manipulator, not a master value investor.”

In my opinion, anyone with this skillset will likely do well in their life, especially when his career is related to selling. It can be insurance, real estate, MLM, or anything. The enthusiasm in speaking, the passion he shows, the sales technique he applies will bring in a lot of sales. Ken applies this skillset to selling investing training program that cost $4000 over 3 days, and it’s perfect for him. If he can sells the program to 50 students per month, that’s $200,000 revenue per month or $2.4 million per year. The fact is he indeed achieves this and even surpasses it. Of course, now he has a team to do it, so he can spend less time for this now. Look how far he has achieved!

In his LinkedIn profile, he mentions that within 18 months, his branding and marketing company achieved $1.4M in revenue despite recession. I believe him. He is a master, an expert in this field. 

The comment above is just a comment from one guy who attended 8I’s program. So, probably we should just ignore what he says. But I personally attended the free workshop before. I experienced the same thing that this commenter said. This is my personal experience. Maybe you have different experience. 

Someone compared Ken to a pastor. If Ken runs a church, I believe he can grow it to have large followers, like City Harvest Church. A charismatic leader like Kong Hee, who has so much confident and passion in his speech can move the crowd and gain their trust. The followers will believe what the leaders say and do what the leaders ask. I believe Ken has similar ability. This is my compliment to him.