"No mistake or failure is so catastrophic that we cannot move on from it."
Alex Loh is a consultant and coach in the fitness, health, and wellness space, business owner, podcast host, loving husband, and doting father. His compass is guided by the desire to help people. He coaches individuals and business owners to find purpose. Together they unlock fruitful solutions, experience growth, and achieve targeted success. His focus is to help businesses and organizations harness fitness, health, and wellness as the vehicle to build sustainable solutions. These sustainable solutions translate into elevated happiness and fulfillment for the individual and organization.
He spent his last 20 years in a non-linear career path, working in different industries and helming leadership roles. With a keen focus on transferable skill sets and competencies, he has realized that being a generalist as opposed to a specialist, has allowed him to excel in the different industries and roles he has held. He wants to share his experiences and help others achieve similar success as well. Fitness and sports have always been a big part of his life, having represented Singapore in Water Polo at the Asian Games, Commonwealth Games, and SEA Games. The resilience and mental toughness ingrained from years of competitive sports are something that has helped him push through the most trying times in his professional and personal life. As he moves into his forties, he now leads his life more as an everyday athlete active in various sports and fitness activities.
He is a firm believer in wellness being the cornerstone of life. As a recovery advocate, he is constantly exploring how they can manage pain, accelerate healing, boost energy levels and achieve greater general wellbeing. By also engaging in preventive health strategies, we can fulfill our life’s purpose more energetically. We only have one life, so we must live responsibly and be able to enjoy it.
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Table of Contents
Thank you so much for doing this with us! Can you tell us a story about what brought you to this specific career path?
Alex Loh: I pride myself on having walked a very non-linear career path these past 20 years. It is with this also that I have developed frameworks to help others realize and understand that they too can pivot and be adaptable, as long as they understand how to make sense of their experiences and knowledge and how these work in tandem with their soft skills they must already acutely have the self-awareness of.
I started my career as a professional athlete. I represented Singapore in Water Polo at the SEA Games, Asian Games, and Commonwealth Games. With the understanding that I didn’t want a standard office-bound corporate job, I moved on to be trained in sports science and physical education where I landed my first “real” job as a physical education teacher in a government high school. This position saw me there for a good 8 years. When I left education, I was Head of the Department for Student Leadership and I was also the college swimming and water polo team coach. In these 8 years, I also dabbled in multiple hustle business ventures, from F&B to retail to marketing to education, some failed miserably but some were highly successful. My next role brought me to Bangkok as a Project Manager of a real estate company, responsible for launching a 100 unit luxury serviced apartment, right at the “river Thames” of Bangkok City – the lovely Chaopraya River. This project lasted 1.5 years and it was an extremely steep learning curve having to learn about construction, architecture, interior design, procurement, and most importantly – understanding the Thai culture and how to work with the men on the ground and manage multiple vendors to ensure the quick and safe delivery of the project.
When the beautiful units were inspected and ready for launch, a hotel management company was engaged to manage the units. It was at this point that the hotel management company asked if I wanted to interview for the role of General Manager of the property. This led me into the world of hospitality and towards the end of my 2.5-year stint with the company, I was also managing their Singapore hotel and looking for expansion of the brand into another part of Thailand. In the year 2017, we won Best Serviced Apartments Thailand, much to the credit of my team as well. 2017 also saw me leave full-time employment to do my own business. An events company I had invested in over the years was looking to expand regionally and my ex-business partner managed to convince me to take on that expansion role. This saw us taking our event brand from Singapore to Malaysia, Thailand, and Hong Kong, and successfully launching our event with 4,000 signups in each city. The end of 2017 also marked the end of my partnership in the business as there were vision and values alignment issues I faced with my then business partner.
In 2018, I was part of the pre-opening team as General Manager of the world’s first, 20,000sqft fitness and wellness coworking space, in the busy central business district of Singapore. Leading a team of 15 people, we also launched a second property 1.5 years later in another trendy neighborhood on the other side of the city. It was also at this point that my daughter was due and I made the decision to leave, and to join in partnership in a business focused on pain management, recovery, and optimization. This new business, still within the wellness space, was where I spearheaded the rebrand of the business, built the business plan and manual for the franchise, and successfully brought in franchisees from Singapore and Malaysia at the end of 2019. When the pandemic caused borders to close and lock-downs to happen in each country, these franchisees also pulled out and it was at this point that I decided to leave this business as a partner.
June 2020 was when I founded my consultancy Aviary & Co. I wanted to help individuals and businesses in the fitness, health, and wellness space with clarity of direction; experiencing growth; unlocking fruitful solutions; and achieving success. I was doing workshops, training, and delivering keynotes in addition to having several retainer accounts with clients as a consultant. In April 2021, one of my clients propositioned for me to join them full-time because the product/program I had created for them was well-tested and they wanted someone to bring to the market this product/program. I politely declined the offer, and they counter proposed to start a new business unit for me to lead it as CEO and also be an equity partner as Co-founder. This led to the founding of Actxa Wellness in July 2021, where I am now spending most of my time busy with. With Actxa Wellness, I am now able to amplify my purpose to help individuals and businesses!
Is there a particular person who you are grateful towards who helped get you to where you are? Can you share a story?
Alex Loh: Has to be my wife, my pillar of support, and also a champion supporter. Every decision to change jobs in this non-linear career journey was always laden with doubt, sometimes self-doubt, and lots of questions. These difficult transitions would not have been possible without the deep questions my wife asked for me o gain clarity. I know she secretly already knew where and why my heart was inclined towards and heading for, but she always has this knack to be able to tease it out of me. And never once has she not supported my life and career decisions. If I am helping others with clarity of direction as a coach, my wife does the same for me.
Often leaders are asked to share the best advice they received. But let’s reverse the question. What’s the worst advice you received?
Alex Loh: An ex-boss once told me, “As a leader and manager, sometimes to get things done, you need to be an ***hole.” This was amidst some company restructuring and I was tasked to let a few people go after the top management decided to close down a department within the company.
Needless to say, I was very troubled by this advice and also the fact that I needed to tell some in my team that I wouldn’t be needing their service to the company anymore and they would be out of a job. So what did I do? I did it in the best way I knew possible, which was to connect individually with each employee and to also find the best way out for them in the difficult period. I connected with others in the industry who might have a place for them and everyone was well-placed after. I didn’t need to be an ***hole and I kept true to myself and my beliefs and these ex-employees are still within my close network.
Resilience is critical in critical times like the ones we are going through now. How would you define resilience?
Alex Loh: Resilience is the capacity to recover quickly from difficulties. Some call it grit or toughness. But I feel that resilience is not enough to take us past our thresholds into that next stage of growth. I like to take it one step further and talk about Mental Toughness instead. This is achieved through Resilience + Positivity + Confidence.
Positivity is the practice of being or tendency to be optimistic in attitude. Confidence is the feeling and belief in oneself over being able to accomplish something. Mental Toughness is the idea of being able to push past failures by remaining positive and competitive.
In your opinion, what makes your company stand out from the competition?
Alex Loh: Many things make my company stand out from the competition.
- The People. A team of young go-getters who believe in our vision and mission and are living examples of the good work that we do.
- The Leadership. I am confident that my knowledge, expertise, experiences, network, and authentic personality will be able to drive the strategic direction of the company with clarity and coach the team to experience growth, unlock fruitful solutions, and achieve targeted success.
- Our Product. The focus is on building sustainable positive lifestyle habits with credible research and science-backed data, through the incorporation of hardware, software, and a tried and tested curriculum.
You are a successful business leader. Which three character traits do you think were most instrumental to your success?
Alex Loh: Authenticity – I am the same person online and offline. And I am the same person as my family, friends, and colleagues. My actions are driven by my desire to connect and get to know others, and not by self-serving or commercial agendas.
Empathy – I feel for others. And I listen. I want others to be included, and I want to be able to meet their needs and concerns.
Mental Toughness – No mistake or failure is so catastrophic that we cannot move on from it. And with resilience + positivity + confidence, I have been able to carve out my path and also help others do the same.
Being a CEO of the company, do you think that your brand reflects your company’s values?
Alex Loh: Absolutely!
Actxa Wellness was started to amplify my purpose. My purpose is to help individuals and organizations harness fitness, health, and wellness to build sustainable solutions. This could be in clarity of direction, experiencing growth, unlocking fruitful solutions, or achieving targeted success. Whatever the process, the outcome is to build sustainability, Our values of happiness, betterment, sustainability, empowerment, community are a reflection of my own.
How do you monitor if the people in your department are performing at their best?
Alex Loh: There are daily and weekly tasks. And there are also slightly longer-term projects that they have to work on. Having frequent 1-on-1 check-ins on work performance, challenges faced and possible support required is one. The other is monthly 1-on-1 informal lunch sessions where I get to understand someone from my team better on more fronts than just the work front. From personal aspirations to family concerns to the history of experiences and connecting on multiple levels. If I can support on other fronts, I will.
What’s your favorite “life lesson” quote and how has it affected your life?
Alex Loh: Your purpose is a constant. Your purpose is not a destination. This is a quote that was born out of the pandemic when my business failed in March 2020 and I was left job searching unsuccessfully for 3 months before realizing what my purpose was and then suddenly everything was clear to me. Even now, my north star guides my life in that general direction towards fulfilling my purpose and continually adding value to those around me. Having the mindset that all roads lead to Rome and that we each are meant to accomplish different things in the different stages of our life is something that is completely aligned to my purpose, and is my favorite life lesson.
Jed Morley, VIP Contributor to ValiantCEO and the host of this interview would like to thank Alex Loh for taking the time to do this interview and share his knowledge and experience with our readers.
If you would like to get in touch with Alex Loh or his company, you can do it through his – Linkedin Page
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