We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Mianya Ong. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Mianya below.

Mianya, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Are you happier as a business owner? Do you sometimes think about what it would be like to just have a regular job?

I joke that operators don’t often go starting businesses–and there are definitely days I question what I’m doing haha. Going into business was a bit of a happy accident and I find my work extremely rewarding. It is more stimulating and fulfilling than a ‘regular’ job.

I love the problem solving aspect of what I do. But there are times when the business requires more of my energy and focus to be on sales, marketing, finance, partnerships, and other administrative items. For me, this looks like going to networking events back to back in order to build relationships. As an introvert, this is very much outside of my comfort zone. And whenever my social battery is low, I struggle to remember why I’m putting myself through it. At the end of the day, it’s all about balance. I believe in the business and I know that it will pay off in the long run. But since we are still in our first year, there are more sacrifices to be made.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

Of course. Having been in the tech and startup world for well over a decade, I’ve held just about every role under the sun including product, technical support, customer success, sales, marketing, implementation, etc. The thread that brings all these experiences together is the operations element.

Over the years, as I took on more operations leadership roles, I noticed that ‘ops’ is a commonly misunderstood department within growing organizations. In the case of most startups, by the time an operations leader is hired, the company often has a large number of challenges and pain points. As an external consultant, I’m able to address these challenges far more efficiently than if I were hired to join the team internally.

At Thinkment, we work with early stage to growth stage organizations to develop an operations foundation that can scale with the company. It’s a proactive approach that is highly strategic. We build an operating roadmap that complements the go-to-market strategy, the product roadmap, and the financial model. It’s the most efficient method to establish a flexible, sustainable business system. In my opinion, also the best value for the price point.

What’s been the best source of new clients for you?

Education and workshops. I realized pretty quickly that ‘operations’ is an abstract concept that is misunderstood by a large number of small business founders. To combat that, I started partnering with accelerators, incubators, venture studios, and investors to bring operations workshops to their companies.

This allows me to introduce the fundamentals and best practices of operations while also establishing my credibility and authority as a subject matter expert.

Can you share a story from your journey that illustrates your resilience?

It’s easy to overlook someone’s full journey when we focus too heavily on objective business details. As someone who has always been ambitious and high-achieving, there were very few times in my life when I did not have a sense of control. But, I was in a severe car accident that made me completely re-evaluate my outlook on life. In the aftermath of being faced with your mortality, the person that comes out the other side is different.

I had a very long recovery journey and am incredibly grateful every day that things did not take a turn for the worst. However, the mental and physical journey was absolutely grueling. I lost motivation completely and had several moments of wanting to give up. It took a while to find my way back to having a purpose. Now that I have my North Star mission, I have more clarity than ever.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.thinkment.com
• Linkedin: linkedin.com/in/mianya