Discover the power of positive company culture

A strong company culture can be the bedrock of a thriving business, which is exactly why Foong Ng is focused on revolutionising employee engagement with Matchable, the UK’s leading employee volunteering solution.

It’s not enough to offer your employees a job and a paycheck, they need to feel a sense of purpose, and giving them opportunities to make an impactful difference is a great way to do that.

In this episode, you’ll discover why a positive culture is key to retaining top talent and attracting new hires, and how you can build flexible volunteering into your organisation’s offering.

Foong also shares her journey on how she transitioned from the corporate world into creating a business that allows big companies to give back, with all the actionable advice small business owners need to cultivate a supportive and safe workplace environment.

Here is her unfiltered advice below:

• The moment you realise you’re living someone’s else dream
• How to get into the startup world without having your own business idea
• Key learnings when switching from a B2B to a B2C business model
• Your employees need more than just a paycheck—they need purpose and meaning
• Find your North Star to help measure your growth and success
• Modern volunteering can be made as flexible as you need
• What skills are organisations looking for in volunteers?
• The secret to building a great company culture
• Learning your panic attack triggers
• Bouncing back from a crisis of confidence
• Adjusting to the emotional side of people management
• Having a background in finance can help you to hit the ground running
• Building your own company means you get to choose who you work with
• Mapping out aid routes in the Congo

The moment you realise you’re living someone’s else dream

Bex Burn-Callander:

So tell me a bit about where your journey with volunteering started. When did this start to feel like an avenue you wanted to pursue professionally?

Foong Ng:

Yeah, so I can tell you the origin story.

Bex Burn-Callander:

Yeah, sure. Tell me the origin story.

Foong Ng:

So just a little bit of background, so I’m Asian, as you can probably tell. I was brought up in a very Asian culture. So my parents were always like, “Grow up to be an accountant, a lawyer, a doctor.” And so, I was a good Asian daughter.

So I went to Cambridge university, and I went into law, with French law. And of course, that now no longer exists, sadly. And then, I decided I didn’t want to be a lawyer, so I became an accountant.

And I joined one of The Big Four, and I was there for 13 years living out my parents’ dream. But also, I really enjoyed it, most of the time.

But what happened, after 13 years, was I started realising that what I was doing day to day didn’t align anymore with my personal values.

How to get into the startup world without having your own business idea

Bex Burn-Callander:

So what changed? You were, as you say, living out your parents’ dream. But was that not fulfilling for you?

Foong Ng:

To be honest, for a long time, I really loved what I was doing. A lot of my key values are around feeling challenged and growing constantly.

And I think in that kind of environment, especially in the city, there’s a lot of structure and hierarchies, and you constantly feel like you’re progressing and challenging yourself.

But one thing that happened was I actually started getting panic attacks at work. And I think for a really long time, I worked on the assumption that if I put my mind to something, I could do it.

And I think the fact that my body started telling me that this wasn’t right, or something wasn’t right actually really threw me, and it made me sort of re-evaluate, “Why are these panic attacks happening? Is this really what I want to do?”

And as a result of that, I ended up taking a 3-month sabbatical from work and I realised that what I had been doing day-to-day was just no longer aligning with me.

And I’m what you call an elderly Millennial, so I was very much about finding my purpose in life and I was like, “If that’s not what I want to do with my life, then what is my purpose?”

So I ended up taking 3 months to just explore different things. And that’s when I came across this opportunity at Matchable.

So I had a side hustle, which was called Suits and Startups, and it was all around bringing together people in the city and entrepreneurs who I found so inspiring, so motivating, and who gave up everything to pursue a dream.

And after the fact of that, I realised I wanted to be in startups, but I didn’t actually have my own idea.

So I started looking up founder roles that were coming out of incubators and Founders Factory, Entrepreneur First, etc.

And I ended up finding this role at Matchable, which had come out of an incubator that was created by 8 of the UK’s largest charities.

So that included the British Red Cross, the British Heart Foundation, the RSPCA, etc. And they had actually come together to think up ideas that would solve some of their collective problems as charities.

And one of the things they found was there was a disconnect between what people thought volunteering was, which was painting fences, and planting trees, versus what the charities needed, which was skills-based volunteering.

These people who were coming to do all this stuff were very, very skilled people in business and marketing and tech, etc.

So they wanted to create a skills-based volunteering platform, but they needed a founder to do that. So I applied for the job and I got it. So that was 5 years ago.

Bex Burn-Callander:

That is so amazing. I didn’t know that there was a potential to want to kind of start and build a business from scratch, but be able to apply for that as looking for a role in a more traditional way, like a job-hunting way. That’s really interesting and I’m sure our listeners will find that fascinating.

Key learnings when switching from a B2B to a B2C business model

Bex Burn-Callander:

And obviously, with your background, you must have really stood out because you were working with numbers, in big business. You were really high up as a member of The Big Four, so they must have seen that you had the potential to revolutionise this idea.

But is it right that when you started, the business looked a bit different, and you actually had to hone the model and pivot slightly away from the business that you initially joined? Tell us a bit about that.

Foong Ng:

Yeah, absolutely. So when I started, Matchable was an idea. So they literally said, “Build a skills-based volunteering platform. Here’s some very, very early sort of pre-seed money to get you going.”

They had some advisors around to support with fundraising and creating a business plan, etc. But it was really nice that I could just build what I thought Matchable should look like. So I had a lot of free rein around it.

And I guess Matchable has been through quite a few iterations. And also, so we started, well I started Matchable in 2019, that first year it was just me.

And I did a small round so that I could hire my first half employee Rosie, she’s amazing. And then, subsequent to that, hired 3 more team members.

But that ended up being the beginning of Covid, so sort of March 2020, at which point we were still in the customer development phase.  

We’re trying to figure out, “Actually what do people want out of this platform? What does success look like?”

We started with a B2B model, so we ended up selling to learning and development teams because we would say, “You can upskill your teams through these incredible projects. It’s experiential learning, but also you are doing it with purpose, so it gives it even more meaning.”

And we had started getting these contracts in L&D for training teams like marketing at L’Oreal, Monzo, etc.

But what happened when Covid hit, was that everyone panicked, and all of the companies stopped the budgets that they didn’t feel were essential to running the businesses day to day.

So L&D budgets got cut, benefit budgets got cut, and actually, a lot of the people we had been in discussions with who were L&D managers disappeared from one day to the next.

So we also were like, “Well, maybe this isn’t the route we should go down if there’s no longer demand here.”

At the same time there was this whole wave around the NHS and helping your community and “We are all in this together.”

So for a short time, we ended up pivoting to B2C. So we onboarded individuals who wanted to volunteer.

We had a database of projects that we had collated, and we allowed individual freelancers, people who just wanted to do good, to come onto the platform and pick projects themselves.

And the one thing with that kind of business model with B2C is you need scale and volume to make it viable as a business.

So we tested a subscription model, and we got about maybe a hundred people over a couple of months volunteering through us and paying us to get access to the projects, which was amazing.

But we also got a lot of pushbacks because the general premise is that, “Why should I pay to volunteer? I’m giving my time already. What are you bringing to me that I couldn’t just go and find myself?”

And of course as a business, we had to put in a lot of effort to try and find really innovative impact startups like social enterprises that you wouldn’t find elsewhere, where you can effect change through a 30-minute project on a global scale.

One of my favourite organisations is called Choco4Peace, and they help reskill previously Colombian cocaine growers into cocoa farmers and they use blockchain to make sure that they’re fairly remunerated.

So incredibly innovative, and impactful, that you just from your own desk, would never have the idea that you could do that.

And so, we were finding these organisations, but it’s very difficult to take people on a journey from your traditional volunteering where it’s maybe you’re going to weed a garden to this and what it could look like.

And we realised through that that the market just wasn’t ready for B2C, so we then pivoted back to B2B. But we took a lot of learnings from that actually, and that’s kind of the platform that we now have at Matchable.

Bex Burn-Callander:

So now, do you have organisations coming to you? So it’s always businesses of a certain size, shall we say, where there’s a number of employees who want to get involved with volunteering?

Or do you have a lot of small businesses, kind of little, even one-man band still coming and saying, “Look, I want to get involved”?

Foong Ng:

So our smallest client at Matchable is 2 people. They’re an animation house called Tin Mouse, and they’re so cool. They’re a B Corp, and they just wanted access to projects they could do where they would use their animation skills to support charities. So they’re our smallest.

But then, our 2 largest are 4,000 employees each. And we are across 15 different countries because we can do remote volunteering.

So our 2 largest clients are both the marketing, one’s called Dentsu, one’s called Havas.

As long as the company wants to offer paid volunteering to their staff, whatever size or industry they’re in, we can support them. So it’s quite nice in that way.

Your employees need more than just a paycheck—they need purpose and meaning

Bex Burn-Callander:

And tell me why. Because obviously, from an individual’s perspective, there is this learning and development piece where you’re going into a new environment and you are really testing your skills, but you’re also learning.

But there’s also this connection, isn’t there, between companies wanting to create more of a culture, a really tangible culture, and volunteering can contribute to that.

So tell me why in terms of the business case, why are so many companies keen to say to their employees, “Come on, let’s go do this thing.”

Foong Ng:

So a lot of the drive around Matchable comes from my own experience being in The Big Four. And I think one thing that you can get carried away with when you are in a company that’s day-to-day very busy, you’re trying to deliver on certain targets, and you can feel very much like you’ve lost a sense of purpose.

Especially in The Big Four, you have incredibly large organisations as clients, and it’s all around the millions of pounds or billions of pound deals that you’re doing.

And it just kind of feels very money-driven and can feel quite empty sometimes.

And I think that’s why, especially the Millennial generation, Gen Z, etc, all really value purpose, community, and giving back.

And volunteering and offering volunteering to employees is a tangible way to make them feel like we are offering you more than just a job, a paycheck, etc. “You can come to us.”

Obviously, this is a growing trend where companies need to offer employees everything, not just a paycheck, but purpose in life and something more than that day-to-day.

And volunteering is such a tangible way to do that. I think that’s why it resonates and also can impact culture so quickly.

Bex Burn-Callander:

I know exactly what you mean because I started my career working for a private equity magazine, and I would spend my days writing up these multi-million-pound deals.

And then you’d leave the publishing house and there’d be people, homeless, begging outside the office and it was like, “I’m living in this bubble. I’m talking about these huge numbers and these huge investment houses who are just paying out enormous amounts to their shareholders, which is great, but this is not what the real world looks like.”

And there can be that disconnect, can’t there?

Foong Ng:

A hundred percent.

Find your North Star to help measure your growth and success

Bex Burn-Callander:

And then, tell me about the growth at Matchable. So you said it’s been through a few iterations, but do you feel like now you’ve landed on exactly the right recipe for success?

And what does success look like for you guys? Is it about how many volunteers come through your doors or the impact that you make in terms of what those skills are doing within those organisations? Tell me about that.

Foong Ng:

One thing I’ve learned with the startup life, coming from a very structured corporate life prior to this, is that every time I set a goal it will change inevitably.

Bex Burn-Callander:

Yeah.

Foong Ng:

And so, our North Star just as Matchable, as an organisation, is meaningful matches.

So we want to make sure that people not just match with a project, but also just have that moment where they really feel, “I’ve made a difference.”

You don’t want it to feel just like work. You want it to feel like, “I’ve given back, and I feel good about it as well.”

And obviously, on the other side, a big part of doing this is around the impact you can make globally and locally and for the world across so many different causes.

So we have meaningful matches as a North Star because it kind of brings together both the employee satisfaction, and volunteer satisfaction angle, but also the charitable angle and the number of lives you can impact or the number of CO2 you can reduce and all that kind of stuff as well.

I would say in terms of business metrics, so we’ve done 3 rounds of funding so far, and I think it’s interesting as well to see the startup landscape, and you probably know, but go from success looks like Series A, Series B, and grow as fast as you can.

But you can still be loss-making, but as long as you shoot for the moon.

And we need the biggest team possible to I think now the perception of what success looks like as a business, which is more kind of we should be stable, sustainable, profitable, and not necessarily be spending on huge teams, huge salaries, let’s build the best and most solid business we can as efficiently as possible.

And obviously, with AI as well, you can do so much more with less.

So I think as a business, we’ve been through that journey as well. We broke even this year, and to be honest as a founder, knowing that cash flow isn’t an issue so much now is incredible, it’s a huge weight lifted off your shoulders. So I’m very happy about that.

And then, of course, off the back of this, just looking to keep growing as much as possible.

Bex Burn-Callander:

Because are you guys mainly focused on the UK? Because this obviously is a global market. Is the plan to be sort of across the whole world and offering these opportunities on every continent?

Foong Ng:

I would love that. I think the reality is we are still early stages, early days in the UK. We have quite a good brand and brand reputation in the UK already, and the way we started to do that was by onboarding UK-headquartered companies that have branches across the world.

So we are across 15 different countries as a result of being able to offer remote-based projects that you can do from anywhere.

But every country has its own kind of view of what volunteering looks like, and the priority that it takes in their own culture and business.

And I think there’s a lot of those kinds of subtleties as well that we still need to figure out before we go global. But yeah, that’s the dream.

Modern volunteering can be made as flexible as you need

Bex Burn-Callander:

And just for our small business listeners who, if we’re realistic, in a small business, people wear a lot of hats, don’t they? And it can be incredibly busy.

So sometimes I think the idea of taking time out of a business that’s growing and where people are already sometimes stretched, that might feel like it’s too much.

But do you think that there’s more interest from the small business community in terms of, “Yes, we can do this. We can plan it in to actually let our people have a volunteering experience.”? Is that a kind of direction of travel at the moment?

Foong Ng:

That’s a really good question. I would say, to be honest, that’s a problem that we’ve encountered in both small and large businesses, especially in this environment.

So one of the things we’ve sort of learned through the years is that everyone is always busy. And you know how Netflix say, “Our main competitor is sleep.”

And we are like, actually for us, we do offer volunteering projects that literally last 30 minutes and you can do them at lunchtime.

And our star volunteer at the moment has done 22, 30-minute projects, all with 22 different organisations, over the course of a year in her lunch break, which is incredible.

So it’s definitely possible. But we need to make the volunteering opportunities but also create or convey the message that, “If you have a lunch break, why would you pick this over maybe going for a walk or having a therapy session, having a nap?”

How do we make volunteering as appealing as possible?

And so, we spent a lot of time trying to do that with the kinds of projects and organisations I mentioned, kind of cutting down projects into very bite-sized chunks. So people call it micro-volunteering sometimes. And you can definitely do that.

But I would say it is still difficult sometimes for employees in companies to feel like they have permission to do that.

And so, one trend we are also seeing is a trend towards team, group, everyone together, maybe out at a food bank or taking a full day where it feels more like, “We have permission to do this because the company’s organised it, they’ve put it in our diaries, and everyone is doing it at the same time.”

So it has been interesting and it very much depends on the culture of the organisation, but we are seeing a bit of both at the moment.

What skills are organisations looking for in volunteers?

Bex Burn-Callander:

And what are the skills that you are really looking for? You mentioned that there are some really exciting projects out there, but what are the kinds of people that you’re really excited about coming forward and joining Matchable?

Because there must be a sweet spot where charities are thinking, “Oh, come on. Find me these people.”

Foong Ng:

Definitely. So when you think about it from the charity side, so we call them impact organisations because we cover charities, social enterprises, community interest companies, and impact startups as well, so any organisation like that.

One of the criteria we have, especially for impact startups, is that they wouldn’t be able to afford the skills that the volunteers are offering.

And so, often the skills that are required are the ones that maybe are the next step above just keeping the business going or not nice-to-haves, but they are the thing that you want to be able to afford but you can’t.

So things like marketing and brand building, really valuable actually to get these organisations funding, raise their profile, all that kind of stuff, but often the kind of skill that they can’t pay for. So those skills, definitely.

Tech is a huge, huge one. A lot of our impact startups are building incredible platforms, things like that.

We have one organisation called AfriLearn, and they are creating a platform that makes high quality education affordable to Africans across the continent through tech, which is incredible.

And they’re looking to do more through AI, gamification, all that kind of stuff. And they have such incredible and interesting projects, but you need tech skills to do that and obviously, tech is very expensive.

So I think tech and marketing are probably the ones that the organisations look for most.

Bex Burn-Callander:

Oh, that’s interesting. You heard it here, listeners, if you’re in tech or marketing, this could be one for you.

The secret to building a great company culture

Bex Burn-Callander:

And then, we’ve talked a bit about how volunteering can help companies build a stronger culture. Tell me about the culture at Matchable and how you’ve made it as strong and as vibrant as it possibly can be. What’s been your secret to building a great culture?

Foong Ng:

You probably have to ask my team that. I think one really interesting thing is, coming from The Big Four culture, I learned a lot about what looks good I suppose, and about also what could be improved.

And I think that was so essential for me as a stepping stone to becoming a leader here at Matchable and also creating the culture that really I wanted to see. But I think just taking the best bits from that and building on it.

I think one of the things that I have found essential actually for us, is creating an environment where people feel comfortable to fail and admit that something has gone wrong without feeling like they’re going to be told off, or it’s going to impact their job or the perception of them at work.

Because one thing that did happen to me through the panic attacks at The Big Four, was my perception of myself changed and I lost confidence.

So I think really valuing mental health, but also just creating that environment where everyone can show up however they’re feeling. As long as you do your work, it doesn’t matter where you are, or when you are working.

And also, let’s all support each other.

So if you are going through a tough time, we all want to know about it and we want to support you. Because all of this contributes to you feeling safe, like you can show up as your best self, and also in you doing your best work because you feel you have that support.

So yeah, that’s kind of the premise on which Matchable’s culture is built.

Bex Burn-Callander:

That’s the best way to learn, not just from great managers and great company culture, but also from really bad experiences and times when people get things wrong. That can sometimes be a far more powerful learning experience.

Learning your panic attack triggers

Bex Burn-Callander:

But Foong, do you remember what caused the panic attacks? Was it just a lot of things kind of stacking up over time?

You mentioned that you had a side hustle as well as a high-powered job for example. You must’ve been flat out most of the time. But what was it that was kind of the thing that ended up snapping?

Foong Ng:

Good question. I think a lot of it was there was something around the environment, but also mainly pressure I had put on myself, I think.

So when I left my job in The Big Four, I was a director and it’s the level just below partner. And I was being told by a lot of partners I was working for, “Oh, you can make partner in 2 years,” which is considered very fast obviously.

And I think as a result of that, you have to meet certain criteria obviously to make partner. But a lot of it is around billing a lot and having clients that love you, but mainly around billing, I would say.

And so, as a result of that, I think I felt pressure, maybe self-imposed really, to take on as much as I could.

And so, I ended up picking up so many projects, and what then happened was, I was in it quite a technical role. I was giving tax-structuring advice on deals, M&A deals.

And the thing is with tax, is it’s based on real legislation that if you aren’t up to speed or you don’t know the situation properly, then you can actually end up giving wrong advice.

And I think one of the things with me, what I’ve learned just in terms of my own knowing my strengths and weaknesses, is that I’m quite an anxious person.

But also, it made me very, very anxious when I started getting so many emails because I was on so many projects that I felt I was not up to speed on the deals that I was advising on.

And I would worry a lot that I was giving the wrong advice, and I felt unprepared when I was showing up on calls, which is not a great place to be.

And the thing with the legislation is there is actually only one right answer, so if you don’t give the right answer, then it’s wrong.

And for me, that dynamic, I was not comfortable with that amount of risk just personally.

And obviously, there are great partners out there who are comfortable saying, “Look. Hey, I’m going to take that away and I’m going to think about it,” which is also maybe what I should have done. But it just felt overwhelming.

And alongside the volume and this pressure I put on myself, what started happening as well was that I started feeling quite morbid thoughts.

But when you think about, “Oh, in the future on my deathbed. When I look back at my life, is this what I want to have achieved, hundreds of amazing big money deals?”

And for me personally, it didn’t feel like enough. So there was this dichotomy between working really hard and feeling like I was losing control, and also this underlying sort of feeling that, “Actually, I’m working really hard at a thing that I don’t believe is right for me anymore.”

And I think that’s what actually caused the panic attacks. It was the culmination of those 2 things.

Bouncing back from a crisis of confidence

Bex Burn-Callander:

And how did you come back from it? Because you mentioned seeing yourself differently. Even the fact that you couldn’t rely on your body to behave in the way that you needed it to at that moment. That sounds like that can create a real crisis of confidence.

But then, you’re going into a role where you are building a business from scratch and that takes oodles of confidence. So how did you go from A to B and rebuild yourself?

How did you make that journey so that you could start in this role confident and determined to succeed and knowing that you could do what you put your mind to?

Foong Ng:

It took a long time, to be honest. So when I left The Big Four, I took a sabbatical, and I had my own identity crisis because for a very long time, I had been defined by my job.

And I was very proud to say I was a director there. And when anyone asks you to introduce yourself, you’d immediately say, “Hi, I’m Foong. I’m a Director at one of The Big Four.” And that was who you were.

And so, when I didn’t have that anymore, it made me question a lot of things: what was important to me, what I wanted to do with my life, why am I here?

And it was kind of exacerbated as well because as I mentioned, I’m Asian and I have very Asian parents. So I would go back home and my mum and my stepdad would be like, “Foong, are you lost? What’s going on? Suck it up. Just get on with it.”

I think one thing that helped direct me was the panic attacks, but also the fact that they would say, I mean they’re Gen X, Baby Boomers, and they would say, “Suck it up. Your mental health isn’t that important. Just make partner. Once you make partner, you can do anything.”

And I think hearing that and having such a reaction to it being like, “Actually, I don’t want that.” I realised I don’t want that at all and that’s not okay, I don’t want to live like that, and that really helped me understand what I didn’t want. So that was good.

And then, it was a matter of figuring out, “Who am I and what do I want?”

And so, I remember at the time not putting pressure on myself, but just actually just taking time to go and meet people I found interesting, explore different things, figure out what I really enjoyed, but also what drains my energy and all that kind of stuff, and giving myself that permission to do that.

And then, I think that’s kind of eventually how I realised I really wanted to be in the startup world, and I want to try being a founder.

And the one thing about being a founder, I’ve never had a panic attack as a founder, even though I think the perception is the pressure is a lot higher. There’s a lot more riding on what you do day-to-day.

But the one thing I realised was that fear that I always had to give the right answer, that doesn’t exist at all in the startup world. Literally, every day we are trying and failing to do things, and it’s okay.

And I think for me, that felt so reassuring and so much more in line with me and my character and how I like to work. So I think that was also something that kind of led me there.

Bex Burn-Callander:

Yeah. I was literally going to ask that, whether you ever experienced a panic attack under the pressure of building a business, which as you say is extraordinary, especially when you have investors.

But it’s really interesting that the experience of it is so different because the environment around you is so different.

And obviously, you were talking about creating this culture where people are allowed to fail. And that applies to you as well, which must be incredibly reassuring to be part of a team where you’re all just doing your best and if it goes wrong, you work together to fix it as quickly as possible.

But it’s not the end of the world, you’re not going to lose your position in the organisation. That just sounds like quite a lovely way to live your life and build a career, really.

Foong Ng:

Every day I think it’s such a privilege, to be honest, to be able to do what I do and what my team does. I love it.

I just love building and figuring out how to make the business work, learning new things, and having that environment exactly like you say, where you can experiment, and you can try new things.

And also, the things that you want to try, you could just make them happen straight away. There’s not 10 layers of sign-off and it takes ages to do anything.

But I’m just very grateful for finding this. And even on the hardest days, it’s still more me I think, and that’s why I’ve not had the panic attacks.

Adjusting to the emotional side of people management

Bex Burn-Callander:      

And what has the hardest day been while you’ve been building this business? Because as you mentioned, it’s not all smooth sailing.

But can you tell me about a particularly challenging time, and I guess how you got through it? I would like to know how you got past that challenging time?

Foong Ng:

My God, so many. I think one of the things I found hardest actually running Matchable and my own company has been people management.

When I was in The Big Four, I loved talking about personal development and my career progression and all that stuff.

But actually, now being the person who manages the team, it’s a lot harder just because you are dealing with a lot of emotion and all that kind of stuff.

And the thing is obviously, like a lot of companies out there and startups out there, we’ve made redundancies. We’ve had people come and go ourselves.

And I think one of the probably hardest moments for me so far has been, so last May, we made our whole sales team redundant.

And it’s so hard, because these are people who bought into you and your company and your mission and your dream, and they’ve come on board to help build that with you.

And so, you love them as people, you believe in them and what they can deliver. And sometimes, unfortunately, because of cash flow, economics, and business reasons, you have to let them go.

And the difficult thing is also that obviously in that moment, that moment is about them. It is about them losing stability, it’s about ego, it’s about all of those things that they’re going through.

And you can’t make it about you at all, even though inside your heart is breaking because these are people that you love so much, and you’ve worked together.

And I found that really difficult to try and keep as neutral as I could be when you are delivering that news, when you’re going through that process. And yeah, that was one of the hardest moments for me so far.

Bex Burn-Callander:

I don’t think it’s ever been harder to be a leader, because the things you’re responsible for now compared to 50 years ago, right now, you are not just trying to lead a business to stability, profitability, all those things.

You are also really, I guess responsible for the people that work for you in a way that leaders never were before: their mental health, their physical health. People are supposed to come to work and feel that they are their authentic self. That was never a thing.

 Even when I was starting my career, you left your authentic self at the door, and you came, and you were the automaton that was going to do the job. That’s a huge shift.

And heavy is the head that wears the crown. That’s huge to have to try and balance those two often very opposing pulls in your life, where you want to do what’s best for the business, the business has to survive. That is the overriding aim.

But then, you’re also trying to do that while protecting people and looking after them. That must be really hard sometimes to try and balance that.

Foong Ng:

A hundred percent. I think that’s exactly how it feels sometimes. And I have definitely through the years been guilty of keeping people longer than I should have, just because I want to give them more chances and I want to believe in them and all of those things.

And I think it is a sad lesson to have to learn, that like you say, the business has to come first. Because if there’s no business then there’s no salaries and there’s no team anyway.

And I think especially with things like cash flow and managing that, you have to think about these things more often than you want to.

Having a background in finance can help you to hit the ground running

Bex Burn-Callander:

Do you feel like having your finance background has been a real asset here? Because you’ve been through fundraising.

It must’ve been amazing to be able to read these contracts and think about things like interest rates and loan amounts and all these things and know exactly what everyone’s talking about.

Has that been a real game changer? Because you probably haven’t had to pay for that advice either because you know this stuff.

Foong Ng:

It’s interesting. I guess I would never have said it was a game changer, but I guess if I didn’t have these skills, I would really miss them.

Because I mentioned cash flow. That’s definitely something I learned as an accountant to manage.

And also, because I was doing sort of private equity and real estate deals at the time, knowing how to structure a shareholding or how it’s funded and what all these different terms mean, it did allow me to hit the ground running, especially because the first thing I did was fundraise when I started.

So yeah, I think it does give you a huge advantage. And you’re right, I’ve never had to pay for anyone, apart from sign-off on accounts, which I can no longer do. But yeah, it’s definitely a plus.

Building your own company means you get to choose who you work with

Bex Burn-Callander:

And I’ve asked you for the darkest time while growing Matchable. I want to hear about the highlight. What’s been the absolute highlight, if you can pick one of the journeys so far?

Foong Ng:

Wow. I think the happiest moments I’ve had oddly enough, weren’t so much business related.

You know when sometimes you have a bit of an out-of-body moment, where you are with a team and you think, “Actually, you know what? I created this. It’s amazing.”

And I think there have been a few moments like that. Obviously, the team has kind of grown and shrunk and all that kind of stuff.

But I think the amazing thing about building your own company is you get to pick who you work with, which is so great. And I have loved every single person that we’ve ever hired.

And I think there are these certain moments, like snapshots in time, where we’ll have a team social or team building day or whatever that is, and you have that moment where you look at everyone and you think, “Wow, this is so amazing that these people have bought into this, that we are building this together.”

And it is very special. So there’s a few moments that I can remember like that.

Bex Burn-Callander:

It’s amazing when you talk about the out-of-body experience because it is sometimes the great moments are always around other people and just appreciating all the different elements that make a business, or a project work, and having them all in the same room sometimes and just being able to be like, “Oh wow, look at all this. It’s all just like magic. The magic is happening.”

Mapping out aid routes in the Congo

Bex Burn-Callander:

And then finally, Foong, can you tell me about your most impactful volunteering experience? Because I imagine you’ve had a few over the course of building this business, but I’d love to know which one has really changed you or where you learned the most.

Foong Ng:

Oh, it’s difficult.

Bex Burn-Callander:

Is this picking your favourite child?

Foong Ng:

Every time I go on the platform at the moment, there’s new projects that uploaded. And there’s just organisations that you just can’t even start to imagine what they do. You know what I mean? It’s just incredible. So I get very excited every time I go on.

I think one of the ones that actually is very popular on our platform and has felt like a huge reward in a very short space of time, is a project we have called Missing Maps.

And basically, what you can do is you go on, you log on, you literally can spend 10 minutes, and it will give you different maps of areas that have been affected by hurricanes or floods or whatever.

And it will say, “In the Congo, 10,000 people have been displaced because of this flood.”

And what you do is you map out buildings and roads and things so that aids can actually be delivered in real-time to these places because they now have a map that will get them there.

And the idea that that is possible, I did it in my pyjamas the other day just sat at home. And yet, it’s so impactful and you can see it happening and it’s on the other side of the world.

It is so incredible what tech can do. And I sat there and I did 20 buildings in 20 minutes. And I think the scale and impact of that in such a short amount of time just blows my mind and always makes me just so inspired by what can be done.

Bex Burn-Callander:

I feel like you need to write a book about the cool stuff going on out there. It seems like you’re almost like an encyclopedia of the most interesting not-for-profits and community businesses that are operating, because they are all looking for skills and you are a really great almost hub point for them.

So I hope you do that. I hope you go and create a magazine or something so that we can all find out about these amazing businesses and where all the cool stuff is happening.

Foong Ng:

Next project.

Bex Burn-Callander:

Next project, yeah, add another one to the list.

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Want to know more about Foong and Matchable Volunteering?

You can find out more about Foong on her LinkedIn.

You can find out more about Matchable on their website.