A Blend of Passion, Mistakes and School - Sharing from Co-founder of The Coffee Roaster

Co-founder of The Coffee Roaster Ang Swee Heng shares various life and business lessons he gained from starting his own business

Recently, 3 groups of secondary school students from Yuhua Secondary School and Hai Sing Catholic School paid a visit to The Coffee Roaster cafe to learn more about the cafe business and our entrepreneurship story.

These students were eager to learn about basic coffee knowledge Swee Heng shared. For many of them, it was only the first few times ever tasting specialty coffee too!

Then came the highlight activity: Demonstration of competition Latte Art designs by our co-founder Swee Heng himself! All the students were in awe as they witnessed the magic of latte art first hand.

Finally, the students were free to voice any questions they had in the free flowing Question and Answer session. Here are some of the insights Swee Heng shared during the session:

Pursuit of Passion

“When we are passionate about something, it is important for us to pursue down this road. Because during this journey, not everyday is going to be a good day. In fact, when you are in your own business, most of the days in the start of the journey are probably going to be bad days.

So why do we need to do something that we are hugely passionate about is because this is actually what keeps us going, this is what sustains us when the days are grey.”

Learning in Today’s World

“Now is actually the best time to learn things on your own accord. You have Youtube, you have Facebook, you have communities online that can help you achieve your goals in terms of learning. So it is all a matter of whether you are motivated enough to chase this learning journey.”

Becoming Good at Coffee

“At the end of the day, improvement is a consistent journey that we go in a day-in, day-out basis. And we always keep questioning ourselves: How do we make it better, even up till today?”

Making Mistakes

“To achieve mastery in any field or skill, making mistakes is part of the process. It is just how you see it: If you see making mistakes as a negative thing, you no longer want to try for a fear of failure, that’s where you stop having these opportunities to grow.

If you embrace failure and think in a positive way, that failure actually helps us to become better, provided you go through your own mistakes and reflect on how to become better, that becomes an opportunity to advance.”

What Students Can Take Away From School

“What you can bring away from school is this perseverance, whether you are creative enough to find a solution, how you engage people around you to find a solution together. Pay attention to all these attributes, because these are the things that you can bring away from school.

At the end of the day school is just a platform in which academics seems to be the focus. But what is really lasting is paying attention to how you deal with issues on a daily basis. You want to do big things? You have to be able to do the small things right first.”

Did you learn something from this sharing session too? Check out the video highlights of this sharing session here!

Find out more about the coffee workshops we conduct here too!