The Rich Robinson Show - Season 1 - At the Speed of China

Peter Winn on Upping the Game in the Education Space in China

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Peter Winn founded and sold Talent Education Group, one of China's fastest-growing education enterprises. He previously founded and headed up EF Professional English (China), a part of EF Education, China's largest English-language teaching organization. 

EF went from a startup to one of China's most recognized consumer brands with over 100,000 students and schools in Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Shenzhen, and hundreds of other locations during his tenure.

In this episode, Peter shares his unique journey of getting entangled with China and how he achieved success in the education space in the country.

Key Takeaways:
•Salt music and songs have an interwoven relationship with knowledge, education, and culture.
•During the 1970s and 1980s in North Miami, Spanish was the other language they used.
•There are 56,000 Chinese characters.
•Wharf Holding built Time Square in Huahai Road and Beijing wherein there strategy made an early wave.
•EF Education China is owned by Phillip Holt.
•EF Education China was a startup in China and became the largest English-language training company in China.
•WorldStrides bought Talent Academy
•The education market in China is incredibly large, fast-moving, and yet treacherous.

Best Moments:
-Peter shares how he got introduced to learning Chinese with music.
o"Well, you can go to a new type of classroom where they play great music and you can get drinks and you can go with friends and have a good time and you can learn Chinese that way." I would say, "Well, the hell with class signed me up." So, KTV became a way to do that. I didn't realize at the beginning. So it was a good opportunity. [00:02:00.2 – 00:25:25.7]

-Peter shares how he got into Chinese language.
oSo, I thought, "Well, why not take, why not look into Chinese?" And I also was looking at the most popular language in terms of what people wanna study, but the most number of people who speak that language. And I thought, "Oh, okay, Chinese." No alphabet. So, check the box there. That's a challenge. I had no idea what I was getting into. It is not like Spanish or French. [00:09:05.7 – 00:09:31.5]

-Peter shared how he asked his wife why there were so many Chinese characters.
oI was thinking about this the other day. In fact, said to my wife, and I said, "How are there so many Chinese characters?" [00:12:25.9  - 00:12:34.6]

-Peter shares how his first interview in Hong Kong went.
oAnd I remember going to interview because I thought, "Well, I'll just talk to the companies that interview at college. I'll just look up their branches here and start interviewing." So, I interviewed at all those companies, which were by nature multinational companies. And it had a lot of people wanted to work there. And so, the first thing they'd say is "Oh, okay Peter, I see  on your resume you say you can speak Chinese. Okay, so we're gonna do this interview in Chinese and we're gonna do some case studies. And what's your feeling about the political situation, the economic trends in China." And I thought, "Well, two years in Chinese, I can tell you how to order some noodles." [00:19:10.7 – 00:19:51.3]


Post-production, transcript, and show notes by XCD Virtual Assistants

Rich Robinson:

Live and action. Showtime. Welcome to the pod, Mr. Peter Winn, ladies and gentlemen.

Peter Win:

Rich, it's great to be here. Thanks for the invitation.

Rich Robinson:

Yeah. You're calling in from the upper sea, I guess, or Shanghai, or however it's literally translated and you've been there for two decades now.

Peter Win:

Pretty close coming up on two decades.

Rich Robinson:

Were reminiscing about how we first met in Honkers in the curiously fragrant harbor that is Hong Kong back in the late '90s. And I clearly remember that you had been doing some, KTV kar-, karaoke in in Cantonese. One of the few people I knew that can, bust out the "gam bu gao tsuan" and look forward to peeling back some of that. But I'd love to dive right deep into how you got bitten by a radioactive KTV spider back in the day and your origin story, and then your path to China.

Peter Win:

Sure, sure. KTV. Well, that brings back memories of a different era all together.

Rich Robinson:

I had a friend that had KTV PhD on his business card.

Peter Win:

And what a transformation we've seen in across the board and everything, right? So you asked about KTV. What's the story behind that? Well, I was a student of Chinese, as a lot of us were coming over. This was starting, I think, there were various waves of foreigner trying to make their way, whether it was directly in China, or through Taiwan, or through Hong Kong, or I said, should say, sorry, mainland China versus through other ways to get into mainland China and there we would try to find every possible way we could to get more exposure to language. And so, what if someone had told me when I was in university sitting there trying to memorize sounds and memorize cards, if someone said,"Well, you can go to a new type of classroom where they play great music and you can get drinks and you can go with friends and have a good time and you can learn Chinese that way." I would say, "Well, the hell with class signed me up." So, KTV became a way to do that. I didn't realize at the beginning. So it was a good opportunity.

Rich Robinson:

That's funny. You say that because I just read a book about Genghis Khan in the New World order, and they talked about how there would be these legions of soldiers on these low riding horses, right? They were just so formidable, right? They could just, that one split second, when they were in the air, they could just release their arrow with such accuracy. But they would be traversing thousands of kilometers and they would have these songs that they would sing. And the songs were all sort of protocols for battle or protocols for how to be a soldier. And I'm like that was their sort of like, a school. One room schoolhouse in a way, right? And like singing is a... I remember a Cheers episode where he was trying to remember all the countries, Cliffy and the postman. And he's like, "Albania, it borders on adriatic". And like, I can't ever unremember that, right? So it's a really good tip. Like, learning songs is a terrific way of doing it. Plus, the extra bonus of like just blowing away your Chinese compatriots when you're able to bust something out, right? And then, the next level, which is like on the romantic level, then it's like, oh my gosh. Right? Then you're like, Elvis and, you know, Justin Bieber all-in-one.

Peter Win:

Sure. Well, it's interesting that you bring up that Genghis Khan reference because salt music and songs in particular have this interwoven relationship with knowledge, with that education, with culture. And you think about it, there are many cultures that through, just like you were describing, the ritual, the songs in set up the framework for the other elements of the culture, whether it's faith, and whether it's battle hands. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. So this sort of falls into that category. But if you think about it, yes, you can sit there with a book and try rote memorization or you can affix, attune to it with video with friends, and the opportunity to do something fun and a party environment. And you can combine that all together and say--

Rich Robinson:

Beer and duck tongue.

Peter Win:

And make the excuse that you're learning something. Well, you actually are. And it's a great way, it's a great way to learn. So yes, I had some time doing the top 40. And then, beyond that, after we met each other in Hong Kong, and then I moved to Shanghai and got involved in business in Shanghai. Today, not as much, obviously, but it had been part of a lot of the culture of business.

Rich Robinson:

You're mojo. Yeah. So, and you've really dug, speaking of the educational aspect of learning through song, like you've really become a true player in the educational space in China, especially as a foreigner, it's like really tough to crack the Middle Kingdom. And right now there's a lot of tumultuous sort of, things happening in that space because of the government regulations. But let's go back a little bit more to your education. Like what, what turned you on to Chinese, because that wasn't really, wasn't so sexy then in the '90s. Like, what was that trigger?

Peter Win:

No, it wasn't. I started studying Chinese, I think in 1987.

Rich Robinson:

Wow. That was Peak Japan. Like, how did you choose that?

Peter Win:

Rich, I know people. I know foreigners who came to China before 1987. And for me, they're really the one who deserve respect. People say to some...

Rich Robinson:

There's always somebody there earlier.

Peter Win:

Yes. Sometimes I meet people. People say, when did you get to China? And I say, "1992. 1991." And they say, "Wow, you're amazing." And I say, "No, I'm a neophyte. The guys who, I talked to came in the early '80." And they really set the groundwork of what became a very vibrant foreign community. Now they're always foreigners, going back years and years, but the modern structure, infrastructure, the modern society, societal elements of the foreign community were really laid during that period. So I respect those guys, but you asked me...

Rich Robinson:

Fascinating. Yeah.

Peter Win:

But what triggered it for me? What started? I grew up in South Florida. I grew up just north of Miami. Where I grew up, you're gonna say, "What's the connection to Chinese?"

Rich Robinson:

Oh, you don't have to say anything else. I get it now. North Miami, China, of course. In the '80s, '70s and '80s.

Peter Win:

But everybody, all the kids, we all were studying Spanish. In Miami, as you probably know, there's almost more Spanish than English. There's certain sections of the city where the stores will put a sign outside that said we speak English, because they're the exception, and they want to indicate that. So we all studied Spanish. I got to university and as many liberal arts universities in the western world required, there was a language requirement.

Rich Robinson:

And what school was that?

Peter Win:

That was Princeton.

Rich Robinson:

I knew that, but I wanted to make you say it. You're being modest, but that's pretty tough. That was your safety school.

Peter Win:

So, I enroll in Princeton freshman year and it was your signing up for classes. They make it clear that there's language requirement and back when I was there, there really wasn't a way to get out of it. Even if you were good at a language, you had to go through the first year, get the credential, get the stamp, and then you could move on. So I thought, "Well, I don't want to take Spanish again." I had done like a semester abroad in Spain and I was just... So I said, "Well, what options are there?" And at university, there were tons of options beyond just the normal high school one, two, or three.

Rich Robinson:

At Princeton. Yeah, very well known for Chinese too.

Peter Win:

Yeah. There was a strong East Asian studies department. So I thought, "Well, okay, I want to try something." In my youth, I was very adventurous, so I said, "I want to try something that's totally different from any experience I've had so far." And I grew up in a fairly insular community. Everybody. It was sort of a usual American upper middle class community, doctors, and lawyers, South Florida, but not much exposure to the international world other than Latin America. And certainly, not exposure to Asia. So I thought, "Alright, well, maybe I'll try..." First, I thought, "Well, maybe I'll try Russian. Maybe I'll try Arabic. Or maybe I'll try Chinese." I thought, "I don't wanna do Japanese." It has an alphabet in some ways. So, too easy.

Rich Robinson:

Wow. Too easy. Whoa.

Peter Win:

And I thought Russian kind of has an alphabetic - Cyrillic. And then, I looked and I thought, "Arabic. Well, it didn't seem as interesting at the time as a culture." So, I thought, "Well, why not take, why not look into Chinese?" And I also was looking at the most popular language in terms of what people wanna study, but the most number of people who speak that language. And I thought, "Oh, okay, Chinese." No alphabet. So, check the box there. That's a challenge. I had no idea what I was getting into. It is not like Spanish or French.

Rich Robinson:

35 years later, you're still working on it. And your Chinese is excellent.

Peter Win:

Working on it, but it's not like Spanish or French 101, where you sort of look at and you say, "Oh I get it. It sounds pretty close to English." Not at all. And so, I was there memorizing the sounds. In Princeton's 101, headed by a guy who's pretty well, who was very well known or is still well known in the language training sector. A guy named "JoJo Ping," is very rigid. He's the guy who set up the Middlebury program originally.

Rich Robinson:

There's a lot of Princetonians in China. And I've heard his name before.

Peter Win:

Yeah. He's all about regimen, and wrote, and really grinding it.

Rich Robinson:

Which is how most Chinese people learn anyway, right? So you're getting the right, yeah.

Peter Win:

So, you don't get into application. It's not like he's breaking out the KTV, which probably was why the pendulum swung all the way to the extreme on the other side. But we can get into that in a few minutes. But it was wrote, you're sitting there memorizing these sounds that have nothing to do with anything you've ever encountered.

Rich Robinson:

Right.

Peter Win:

Oh, also, I will tell you that what the natural reaction is most kids in 101, in any of the language schools say, "Hey," or any of the most liberal arts programs, when they're faced with the requirement of language, the common reaction is say, "Let me study something I'm familiar with to get it over with." So we had tons of watch Hawaii in our class.

Rich Robinson:

And they have a leg up.

Peter Win:

They had a leg up. They had two legs up and two arms up. And were answering every question and propelling the class forward. And it was harder than brutal. So, after two years, my grades were going down each semester and I thought, "You know what? I better try to pass or I'm gonna be kicked out. So, I ran over to Spanish department and I pleaded them to let me...

Rich Robinson:

Open the gates. Open the gates.

Peter Win:

Yeah, as a sophomore becoming a junior to let me into Spanish 101 so I could just get it passed. Did that and then I was able to graduate.

Rich Robinson:

You're the second person on the pod, Justin Mallen, I don't know if you know him over in Hung Joe. Yeah. You must know Justin, right? That also was saying, like, and both of you guys, like, it's objectively true that like of all the foreigners in China, like you two have, you can go head to head against anybody, right? But both of you like, openly admit in the podcast. Like, first two years I sucked. Like, I was just "Not enjoying it so much and struggling and just not really crushing it," right? Which is amazing to me because I mean, I've know hundreds of foreigners, thousands, and you guys are like, top 20 probably, right? In terms of like your Chinese abilities, and it's like, it just shows the goya. How much of a slog it is. It's such a brutal initiation.

Peter Win:

I was thinking about this the other day. In fact, said to my wife, and I said, "How are there so many Chinese characters?"

Rich Robinson:

56,000, right? It's like...

Peter Win:

I've been studying this for 30 years, and I thought you know, at various points you get to this where you think you can see the peak, but yet, it's just a false peak and you get to the plateau and it's not. So studying a language of lifelong endeavor.

Rich Robinson:

Well, but even more though, I see Chinese people who are masters, PhDs, right? And they're talking to each other and they're like, "Oh, did what your boys like so much, yeah." And they're trying to like, draw it on their hand. Because they can't hold it all in their ram, right? They see the character, they're like, "Oh, down on that. Sure. You know, Ray," right? But they're like, "Oh, but that's 13 strokes, and I don't remember how to do that," right? It's just crazy. They're drawing it on their hand and like they're showing each other, and they're like, it's tough. It's tough even for like the super insiders that are like absolute turbocharge under the hood, right? And we're like top students, top universities. Like it's the character thing is a whole 'nother dimension.

Peter Win:

It's challenging. It's definitely challenging. And they're various levels along the journey, but it's a long journey and I don't know that the journey ever end.

Rich Robinson:

It never ends but that's kind of a beautiful...

Peter Win:

You have to enjoy the journey. So let me tell you a little bit more about the journey. So I graduate, I was able to graduate with Spanish, thanks to the Spanish department of Princeton. And then, when I started working, when I first started working, I was in New York City. I was living outside the city. The first job I had was up in Connecticut in a place called Norwalk, Connecticut, which is about an hour and a bit drive north of New York City. But I was really frustrated that I had, in my view, let this challenge defeat me, that I had to with my tail between my legs...

Rich Robinson:

That's the Peter Winn I know.

Peter Win:

Go to the Spanish department and pleaded the gate. And I said, "I can't accept that." I also had an intellectual curiosity. This was at the time that it was still Dao Xiaoping had been making a number of reforms. The SEZs were opening in the south part of China, and so it was a lot of activity going on. Very interesting. And so, I enrolled in classes in NYU. And I used to drive down.

Rich Robinson:

Wow.

Peter Win:

Two or three nights a week to NYU, to the continuing education department at NYU and take Chinese classes. And in those classes, there were no watch out in Hawaii. Nobody takes continuing ed for that. There were secretaries at trading companies and some business people and a few lawyers, but everybody was new. And I found, surprisingly, in that environment, that I was top of the class. That was very motivating. So, I developed a good rapport with the teacher. He was a great guy. He was a cool guy. We got to know each other. I think he was from Nanjing. He said, "If you're really serious about this, you should just go over. There's tons of opportunity." And I started to think about it and I said, "You know something, you're right." So in 1990, it was the end of'91, early '92, I quit my job. I had a used car, sold my car, I broke my lease in my apartment and I got a one way ticket to...

Rich Robinson:

One way.

Peter Win:

One way.

Rich Robinson:

Burn the bridges, burn the boats.

Peter Win:

And, well, I had the intention of buying the other leg.

Rich Robinson:

Of course, but still, yeah. But mentally setting that tone.

Peter Win:

Right. So went out and landed in Hong Kong with the intention of transferring up to mainland China and getting a job.

Rich Robinson:

Wow. So good for you doing that. Like, still so not sexy in '91, '92, right? Matter of fact, Tiananmen hangover. And like, Japan kind of, on the decline then. So, really still not much of an indication that China was going to be that interesting. Like, it was still like Peter Hessler doing like his Peace Corps stuff, right? Like, around that time.

Peter Win:

Peter Hessler and I were on the track team at Princeton. He was few years behind me.

Rich Robinson:

What? Oh, of course. Oh, that's excellent. I gotta get him on here. He's amazing guy. I played basketball with him, with all the journalists. Dandong in Beijing.

Peter Win:

He may have a little more time now that he's back in Colorado.

Rich Robinson:

Indeed. Indeed. Yeah. Wow. Interesting. Yeah. So there you go. There's another Princetonian that really made a mark in the Middle Kingdom. So you land in Honkers. He's a good athlete. Not one of my favorite, I love the mechanism in the book where he talked about his running when he lived out in the west of China, and he would pass this rock that was carved with some Chinese characters. And every time he went by the rock, a few of the characters turned into English so he could comprehend it. Yes. Yeah. And it was just like, it kept revealing itself every time he ran past it, right? I thought that was one of my like favorite sort of, mechanisms for writing and it just was so evocative. And of course, now, he's a world class author for New Yorker and beyond, right? But unsurprisingly. So, it was actually Hong Kong that we first met in the '90s, but where were you during the '90s mainly? Tell us about that.

Peter Win:

Where was I in the '90s? Well, so I went out to Hong Kong, speaking of language, I thought, "Well, hey, I have two years of university language. I have continuing education where I was the star student in the class." Wasn't that oppressive? and I thought, "How hard can it be?" Right? So I first landed, I remember flying into Kai Tak Airport.

Rich Robinson:

Oh.

Peter Win:

Just the buzz and all the different cultures and it was just overwhelming. And looking up at the vertical element of Hong Kong, first going onto Hong Kong Island and seeing that.

Rich Robinson:

That city is stunning.

Peter Win:

It was overwhelming. And I remember the first place where I stayed, it was a youth hostel. And it was so small. You could basically touch three walls of the room. It's how small it was.

Rich Robinson:

You put your key too far in the keyhole. You break the window except there's no window.

Peter Win:

Exactly. So, there wasn't really... I'm trying to think there wasn't much on the internet at that point, of course. No mobile phones. So I took out the phone book and I started to say, "Alright, what companies are here?" And I started to try to figure it out, work through the network meeting people, as many people as I could to try to figure it out. And I remember going to interview because I thought, "Well, I'll just talk to the companies that interview at college. I'll just look up their branches here and start interviewing." So, I interviewed at all those companies, which were by nature multinational companies. And it had a lot of people wanted to work there. And so, the first thing they'd say is "Oh, okay Peter, I see on your resume you say you can speak Chinese. Okay, so we're gonna do this interview in Chinese and we're gonna do some case studies. And what's your feeling about the political situation, the economic trends in China." And I thought, "Well, two years in Chinese, I can tell you how to order some noodles."

Rich Robinson:

That's what I think about the menu situation.

Peter Win:

That was not gonna fly. That was not gonna fly. And several times I remember, being shown very quickly the door and said, "Next time you put Chinese on your resume, you better mean it." And I remember taking the star ferry every... the companies were basically on Hong Kong Island. I was staying in Tsim Sha Tsui, and I remember taking the star ferry across and looking out the skyline every night just after being rejected by three or four companies a row, and just looking out and saying, "You know something, I've gotta find a way. I can't let this city or this situation defeat." And I just kept chipping at it, chipping away, and eventually, through a School Alumni Association, I found some good contacts and I ended up working at one of those companies. And that's how I started in Hong Kong. I was originally planning to try to get a job in mainland China, but at that point there really weren't jobs that foreigners could get in mainland China. Unless, you were a correspondent or unless you wanted to work in... let's say, you worked for Motorola, you could go to the rep office and sit around, but they really weren't doing a lot.

Rich Robinson:

Even in '96, when I moved out after grad school, I wanted to be an internet guy in China, and there were more people online in Hong Kong than there were in the whole of the mainland. So, I ended up spending four years, '96 to 2000 there. So, even most of the nineties, there were pretty limited opportunities I think in the mainland.

Peter Win:

That's right. Not like today with a Starbucks on every corner and business. Boom.

Rich Robinson:

Yeah. It's tough. So the path from there, from the curiously fragrant harbor up into...

Peter Win:

Yeah. So I, very fortunately, I had a girl in my class, in my Chinese 101 class. Whose name is Michelle Sohmen. And she is the daughter of Helmut Sohmen, who was an Edgeco member in Hong Kong. And her grandfather is YK Powell. But we, at Princeton, didn't know anything really about Michelle's background. She was very humble, very down to earth, and just one of the gang of friends and classmates. And she said, "Well, my family has a company. Why don't you..." You know, she gave me a contact of somebody to look up. And very fortunately, that led to an opportunity to work with Wharf Holdings or Wheelock, and ended up working with Wheelock in their retail division. Looking at market expansion opportunities into mainland China.

Rich Robinson:

Amazing. Wow. That's a great connect there. So, I actually have heard of like the YK Powell school, like that name is like well known. So, one of the like, kind of magnates. Wow. That's great. And tell me about some of those early days, bridging as a foreigner into those situations.

Peter Win:

Well, we were trying to figure out the parent company. Wheelock Wharf is one of the largest conglomerates in Hong Kong, right? And today it's run by a guy named Peter Woo, who's one of the large tycoon families in Hong Kong. And they've got operations in a variety of varying construction infrastructure. They own the tunnels, they own the ferries, Times Square. So a very broad, diverse business. And we were looking at ways we could bring their retail division, which was called"Lane Crawford" into China and set up shopping malls in China and department stores in China. So, I did research together with a team to look at what consumer profiles were in Beijing and Shanghai and try to figure out where we were gonna open our first store. I remember we went out to Shanghai, I don't know if you're familiar with it, but the Shuwei area. Shuwei, Shu Ja Wei now is a booming, booming retail area. In some ways it looks a little bit like Shinjuku in Tokyo in terms of how booming and buzzing it is and how much retail there is. So, it's a major intersection, and I remember looking at that together with our team and thinking, "Well, this is way too much out in the boonies." This is before the metro system was set up. Well, before Pudong airport was there, before they elevated the highway system was set up. And at night, a lot of the city was dark. So, we went out to Shujawei and there was still some construction going up, but we thought, "This is way too removed." So we ended up choosing a location on Huahai Lu, Huahai Road. And we opened the first retail store there. It was called Maison Mode. This is back in... it was '90s. Mid-late '90s. There was one other mall, another Hong Kong company called Dickson Concepts that had opened a location, but we were larger. And we used to have people come in from all over the Huadong area, from Jiujang Province, from Jiangsu Province to come see this first department store. The first Western sort of international.

Rich Robinson:

Because there was like department store number one or department store number two, right? Where it was like so old school where you had to give money somewhere, and then they'd give you a receipt and you walk over there and it was like, you might as well been in the fifties, right?

Peter Win:

Well, the common way to do it, Shanghai, number one department store was everything is behind counters. They're staff who are there, who can help you, but who a lot of times are taking their time and, reading the newspaper, doing whatever. There isn't a lot of rapid commerce going on there, usually. But, that was just the way it was done. That was the common way. And so, we thought,"Well, we're gonna take a novel concept and try an international department store." But we didn't realize how challenging that would be.

Rich Robinson:

And what were some of the biggest things to overcome.

Peter Win:

There's a reason that the traditional way was done in the traditional way. Well, we had tons of people coming in from all over the area because we had free air conditioning.

Rich Robinson:

Come on in and cool down.

Peter Win:

Come on in. Sit around, play some cards. Cool down. Bring your relatives. Bring some food. You know what "guads" are?

Rich Robinson:

Yeah.

Peter Win:

And we had a lot of the clothes. We ended up having to put in plastic containers because we didn't get much buying, but we got a lot of touching. So, we ended up... so the whole concept was, it was very tough to make that work. But nonetheless, it was a good exercise. And eventually, by tweaking it, we eventually got it to work. And we opened what today is called Times Square on Huahai Road. We did a Times Square in Beijing, and this was part of Wharf's strategy in China in that early wave.

Rich Robinson:

So, I mean, you can imagine the whole premise of my book "At the Speed of China," is that it's roughly

a 4:

1 ratio, four years in the west, a year in China. A generation in the west, half decade in China. So, that was 25 years ago. So, you can imagine a hundred years ago, say, in New York City or Chicago, there's some big fancy new department store that's opening up and all of these immigrants showing up there, to just kind of marvel at. They don't have to just look at the Sears catalog, right? And a lot of touching and probably not a lot of great hygiene or sort of, etiquette around that. And that's a century ago, right? But that's like 25 years ago. That was 25 years ago, right? That wasn't... I had already been out of grad school by then. And I'm 54, so it's like, it's not that long ago, but it's really a long time ago in China because things have changed so dramatically since then.

Peter Win:

Yeah, from a time perspective, it's not that long. But from a lifestyle perspective, it's like another world. This is at the time that it's not exactly the time, a little bit later, but sort of in that same period that the first KFC opened, the first Starbucks opened in Beijing. And McDonald's...

Rich Robinson:

Pizza Hut was like a fancy place, right?

Peter Win:

Well, people were saying that pizza will never work, that coffee will never work. And people would come to marvel at it because it was just so different. And of course, people would want to touch the items that were out in an open area. And of course.

Rich Robinson:

Yeah, of course.

Peter Win:

People want to try to go to McDonald's and try that one meal because it was so interesting. It was so unlike what had been here before. And now, the pace of change has been absolutely phenomenal. It's mind blowing.

Rich Robinson:

Mind blowing indeed. Yeah.

Peter Win:

The adoption of new models, the ability to move quickly, to transform, to change, to pivot, to modernize. It's just mind blowing.

Rich Robinson:

Yeah, and it was difficult even 25 years ago to really smell that, right? Because there was still, like, in the mid '90s, it was 25 years ago, but 20 years since Mao had died, right? So it was closer to Mao than to now in many ways, right? Still, had that kind of pull of gravity from the Mao era and more mile than now. And that's going to the book somewhere. But yeah, but since then, that has just been like obliterated. Like, of course, there are some Mao era practices that are now being reinstituted in a different way under Xi, but, that's neither here nor there, right? With around like, this specific, commercial discussion other than some of the regulatory changes. But tell us out in podcast land about your hero's journey from setting up the first shopping malls to getting into the you know, EdTech space.

Peter Win:

Sure, yeah. Well, I actually had an hiatus in the middle where I went back to the US, and I went to business school and worked on Wall Street for a couple years and then realized that my heart was really back in China and my interests were back in the far east or what we called then "The Far East." And I wanted to get back as soon as possible and be part of the transformation that the miraculous developments that were going on that led miraculous to where we are today. To be able to witness that kind of change was really a unique opportunity. So again, left a situation in New York. I found myself leaving New York again and flying back.

Rich Robinson:

And what year was that?

Peter Win:

That was ' 99. It was 2000. It was right after"dot-com" bust. This was in the early wave. I remember the early wave of the first speaking of tech. The first tech companies doing their listings overseas; Sohu, Sina, NetEase.

Rich Robinson:

Yes.

Peter Win:

And I was working at one of the banks where we were involved in those listings. And those were really breakthrough changes that were happening. I was sitting there saying, "Well, all this change is taking place. It's so fast, it's so exciting." And I'm sitting here half a world away. And I decided I just wanted to get back.

Rich Robinson:

I wanna be in the arena. Excellent. Yeah. And I think that's when we first met, when you... the late '90s there, and when I

Peter Win:

I was there

Rich Robinson:

in '96, 2000. Yeah.

Peter Win:

Yeah. So I came back to... I again landed in Hong Kong. I met you. We have many mutual friends who we knew, and spent time with during that period. And I joined a startup, a tech startup that was doing payment processing. We operated that for a while. We ended up operating it into the ground.

Rich Robinson:

As one does.

Peter Win:

And then as one does. And then, I've done a variety of different things. I was helping a telecoms company with a sale to an investor. We set up with a couple colleagues. We set up an investment fund that we ran for about two years. And then, along the way, socially, I met somebody who said, "Well, we are trying to get an education business started in mainland China. And we've run into a bit of challenge. Would you know somebody who might be able to help us out?" And this was the family that owns EF Business. English First. Phillip Holt. So, I first tried to introduce him to a couple people; lawyers, consultants, none of them really fit the bill for what they were looking for. And then, we kept talking and he said, "Well, would you like to help us?" And it wasn't really at the time, what I was interested in, but I thought it was a very interesting opportunity. And I thought, "Here's a company that is bringing a product, bringing a service into a very high growth market. It's a consumer oriented, branded type of service. And it would be very interesting to work with them to try to develop that opportunity."

Rich Robinson:

And and super successful family run company in outside of China, right? In other markets and well regarded, very like still nimble, entrepreneurial, right? So, how long had they been in China at that point? And like, where were they in terms of like revenue and size? Do Do you remember?

Peter Win:

Well, what EF did in China was very different from what EF did in the rest of the world. EF is at that point, and to this day, to a large degree is primarily a language travel centered business. The majority of the volume that EF does globally is Europe and the US. Outbound or even domestic tours in the US. So, there's a lot of educational travel, educational tour. That was their main focus. They were not, as people know them in China, an English language training company that was a peripheral business.

Rich Robinson:

Is that right? I never really even knew that. But they had a pretty good English, or maybe they then built up their English training business around the world

Peter Win:

Well,

Rich Robinson:

success in China, or no?

Peter Win:

Yeah, as simultaneous to, and yes, after to some degree. We had an online English business that the company had developed called "English Town" that we were trying to sell. It was very early days for online education, so we were getting some attraction, but not much. We launched that in China through agents and the company ran into some trouble with one of the agents. There was some impropriety, they stole a bunch of money, so at the same time, we were trying to apply for, or they were trying to apply for the license, the education license, which wasn't a good time to have all that happen. So, there were a lot of challenges when we first started, and Philip, and another guy who was there and Bill Fisher were trying to figure it out. And so, I joined the company to work with them, to help them lay the groundwork for what we later opened as EF Professional English, which we launched in 2003.

Rich Robinson:

And that was raging success. Like, what was built there? I think the entire team is like a PayPal mafia, but there's like a EF Mafia that's really gone on to do some amazing stuff in EdTech. Like, the whole sort of like flywheel and engine that was built behind that was extraordinarily well done. And for the most part, like, you're like, yeah, we drove that startup into the ground. Like, most companies that have far more resources and expertise and intention come into China and just crash that spaceship, right? But you guys were able to create something really from the ground up for that market, which is kind of unusual, right? It's like a larger, older company that was able to kind of come in and sniff around and go, "Okay, this is what the market needs, let's build it." And I think it's pretty proud legacy. Can you tell us some like stories about what you built there?

Peter Win:

Sure. Well, thanks for that, first of all. But we did not have that. We had no idea that the evolution was gonna take place the way it was, but the way it did. But we had a couple things I'd say that were pretty unique that influenced that. One is that there was a, the company gave the China team a pretty high degree of autonomy. So, we were able to drive decisions within China. We were able to take the product and adapt it to what the market needed, and we were on the ground to be able to see and sense what that was. We were to some degree, a really pioneer in the model at that time that worked. Now, today, that model doesn't, probably, isn't really as applicable, but the model that we used was to be in retail locations with a hybrid product where part of the learning took place, face-to-face, part of the learning took place online. The bit of the concept of flipped classroom, that then became all the rage and in vogue. But, we used that initially where the face-to-face portion was the social fun element. And then the self-study through videos and through exercises was more what you do as an individual and travel at your own pace through that. So, we launched that, and at the beginning it wasn't glorious days from day one. There were certainly not tons of obstacles, tons of dead ends, roadblocks constantly. But we just kept pushing. And we had the belief and we had the backing from our parent company that we were in it for the long term. And I think that's a core issue or that's a core element of EF success. There are companies that have come into China that have tried for years and just have not been able to get traction. There are other companies that come in, and are able to get their brand, get following to the brand, get traction, and be able to get above a critical mass and become successful. And I think, a lot of it comes down to a few key things, but one theme that you continue to see in the examples, both successful and not successful. And in the successful, it's done well and successful. It's not done well, but it's the same concept. And that is commitment and commitment to the long term. The EF family knew that China was where they wanted to be. They could not be in China. And they also embraced that it wasn't gonna be instant success, that it was gonna be a long road. And if they continued to invest, continued to support the team and kept at it, then eventually ,they'd be able to develop a successful business. And for the first five years, it was not, it wasn't, it was pretty lousy. We were losing money. But we knew, we believed that we had to get above a certain critical mass to, to matter to the market. There was so much change. So the speed of change in China is phenomenal. There's so much change. There's a lot of market distraction. And it's only if you can get to be a certain critical scale. Scale basically trumps everything. If you can get to a certain critical scale, then your chances of success are a lot higher. But to get to that scale, you have to have the commitment.

Rich Robinson:

Thanks for sharing. Yeah, lots of good lessons, lots of dead bodies along the road to success in China, right?

Peter Win:

Rich, the model that seems not to work, and I know you've spoken with hundreds if not thousands of business people who are here looking at it from the outside. But the model that doesn't seem to work for foreign groups trying to come to the market is, well, the approach of basically saying, "Well, let's do this incrementally." Let's build a small base and take it for six months. If six months succeeds, we'll invest a little bit more, will drip feed it. That does not work. The team on the ground cannot do long-term planning. They can't put in place the infrastructure they need. They can't hire the people they need. They can't do the partnerships they need because they don't have the long-term commitment.

Rich Robinson:

Indeed, yeah. So, there's this philosophy of fighter pilots. Like, "You don't have to necessarily have the faster plane, but you need to have the faster pilot and these OODA loops.

O O D A:

observe, orient, decide, act. And then rinse, repeat, rinse, repeat, right? So you can make a lot of different changes instead of just going, being more agile. And one of the things in China is that things do move so quickly that you need to be able to be so nimble and agile and responsive that if you have to dock with the mothership and go back and say, "Hey, can we get your permission to do this?" And the decision cycle there, of course, is much slower than you're just doomed to failure, right? And I think, that's the really, the crux of the book is that there's been this like sweeping, speed in China over the last few decades, but like now it's like really hit a sort of peak. And even if you don't want to be in China, or you don't necessarily even think that you're gonna be competing with Chinese companies, like to be able to learn from the whole ecosystem in China around being able to leverage speed as an advantage. There's so many, it's really multi-variate, all the reasons why things move more quickly. Both good and bad, right? I mean, and that's what I'm gonna lay out in the book. But I think fundamentally, if you don't have that independence to be able to do those OODA loops quickly then you're all... Like, at the beginning of the Matrix where they're like,"Oh, my men are up there." And he's like, "Your men are already dead," right? So it's like, "Yeah, no, I have a team in China." It's like, "Your team's already dead," right? There's just like, they have to do a 2:00 AM conference call from their apartment in their closet, like, with motherships, sort of timeline and, they're like, yeah, let us, let's get back to you. We'll get back to you in a few days. And it's like, "Oh, man." Like, our good friend Jeff Knowles, who introduced us, he was at eBay. And eBay was the number one player in China. They bought the number one player in China. And then they ended up driving that thing under the ground because they just tried to do everything

Peter Win:

on,

Rich Robinson:

you know, the mothership.

Peter Win:

Hard to be competitive. Hard to be competitive without autonomy. So I think I agree with you. Absolutely, speed is important. The market is very fickle. The market reacts fast. Right now, as I know, because it's a core area that you work on. It's KOL driven that leads a lot of popularity of various consumer products and consumer services and brand loyalty sometimes, a lot of times is very low because the fickle nature and the fast moving capricious nature of the consumer market. So, there are a few strategies that you definitely need to keep in mind and speed and nimbleness is absolutely one of them. Capturing market attention, but then retention is another because you can be fast, but you can also die fast, and go down in flames. So, it is really speed of attractiveness and speed to competitiveness, but then, stamina and the ability to scale. If you can combine the nimble elements and speed on the front end with scale, ultimately, then those are truly the brands that have the staying power.

Rich Robinson:

Indeed. That's great. And like, that's roughly like what I'm attempting to tackle over the next decade or so. Number of books is around entrepreneurial agility. And I think speed is one area and nimbleness and mindset, and also if you can be nimble and agile at scale, like, new players in the NFL who before were these lumbering beasts and now they can run the 40 and you know, what a wide receiver used to do, right? I mean, like things that the game is being upped. So talk about upping the game. Tell us about your journey from taking EF to a really good position to then venturing out on your own in the educational space.

Peter Win:

Sure. Well, we left off when EF was just starting, but we were lucky to be able to bring on a great team. We had a great senior management, and across the board they were able to bring on great teams in the regions that we worked in primarily at that point it was Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, and eventually we expanded beyond that. And we became through the process, the number one English language brand, English language training brand in the country. We were an Olympic sponsor in 2008.

Rich Robinson:

Huge.

Peter Win:

That catapulted us into another level of awareness and we just continued to keep trying to optimize the model beyond that. But I remember talking with a number of people, and sometimes it would come up in some interviews and they'd say,"Well, Peter, what's really the secret sauce that had made EF that successful at that point?" And the answer isn't really other than what we talked about just now from a structure perspective, governance is autonomy. But, from an operating perspective, it wasn't any one thing. It wasn't any one particular thing that we did. That, that...

Rich Robinson:

Well, well, but I'm gonna stop you right there though, because I disagree. I think the one thing that that you did, and I'm gonna, you know, you're a modest guy, is that you were able to set, like this was a startup, right? You were the founder of this company, right? And you set the culture and the startup that the incredible reputation of that team was like, it was like standout, like everybody complains."Oh my God. It's so tough to recruit good people and it's so tough to retain good people." But you were able to put together this like, Steve Jobs talks about it. He's like, "You gotta get A people, because then A people will hire other A players, and then they'll bring other A players on. Otherwise, if you hire a B player, then they hire a B minus, they hire a C plus." And then Steve Jobs calls it the "Bozo Explosion." But you were able to get A players and that's, I think, the one thing that you did because you can't do all of those things well, but the team can. So I think, you made an incredible you know, mark. And you set the bar high for all other companies to bring in good people. So there I said it. Accept the compliment. You, modest bastard.

Peter Win:

Thank you. Yeah. We were able to bring on a great team. They inspired others below them. We continued to do, culture was very important to us.

Rich Robinson:

Yeah.

Peter Win:

We spent a lot of time thinking about how can we make people really excited about what they're doing and how can we give them the autonomy within the framework of where we were going on our roadmap of development, but give them the autonomy to feel like they really had buy-in, to feel that they were really part of this success. And they were. Absolutely. But it was the combination of thousands of little steps, little wins. We would just keep pushing on everything and everyone additive would in aggregate lead to the value that we were able to create. We were just relentless. We would live and breathe what our vision of where we wanted to go. And we could not have had that drive and that excitement if we were say, part of another organization, a different kind of organization where we're overly controlled, they're boxed in. This was our vision. This was our team. It was a new product and new business for EF. We were the pioneers.

Rich Robinson:

on a mission

Peter Win:

So, we were on a mission. It was very exciting. I was there for 12 years. We became the number one English language brand. And then, in 2012, I had taken the business to where I thought I could take it within the family business structure. There was one of the sons who was gonna come out to China, and take over the China business. So I thought, "Alright, maybe it's a time to consider some other opportunities." And I set up a company focused on children's education called "Talent Academy." We, at the beginning, we said,"Let's look for an opportunity that is the shape and form of the English language sector." When we first started at EF. What does that mean? That means where there's large and growing demand, but extremely fragmented supply. And so, we said that doesn't exist in English language. English language has become very competitive and the barrier entries become very high, but it does exist in children's education other than English language, which was in the extracurricular area. Extracurricular was dominated by moms and pops, and there was very little structure. It was very unsophisticated, and so we thought, "Let's go in and try to apply sophistication in the models of what we had used in the English language space to this sleepy area that was just starting to grow." So, we got some private equity backers or some VC backing from a fund called "Baird Capital." It was actually funny because Baird had never done a startup. We were originally...

Rich Robinson:

How is that? Really. Wow.

Peter Win:

We were originally looking at doing a buy-out, which didn't work. We went in back to the drawing board and Baird said, "Well, good luck. We don't do startups." But we pitched them again and again, and they liked the concept and they liked the team. They said, "You know what, we're gonna find a way to make an exception." So we were the only startup they had ever done.

Rich Robinson:

Fascinating.

Peter Win:

And we got some angel investment at the same time. We brought in Baird and we did this first round, and that got us started. We launched in 2013. I had a good partner who came also from EF named Zen. We built that business over six years. We actually just sold that business in 2019.

Rich Robinson:

Congrats. Nice. And who is the purchaser of the business?

Peter Win:

The buyer of that business or the majority of that business is a US company called " WorldStrides."

Rich Robinson:

Yeah. Huge. Yeah.

Peter Win:

Which is in a portfolio company of Primavera Capital out of Hong Kong and Eurasia, which is a big buyout fund out of Europe.

Rich Robinson:

Terrific. And, you know, I visited you a few times along the way. I've been to your offices and met some of your terrific team members. Tell us some of the trials, tribulations, and triumphs along the way there, sort of your initial thesis and how that held up to the actual battles.

Peter Win:

Oh, well it's a good question. Actually there are too many tribulations to go into, but it was never straight line growth. There were tons of obstacles, whether it was regulatory obstacles, which interestingly even today actually it's a very timely topic. But operational challenges, sales and marketing challenges, real estate expansion challenges, financing. We raise capital, all in probably six different times with all the different

Rich Robinson:

Wow. That's a lot of reasons.

Peter Win:

Yeah, and every time it does take a huge amount of bandwidth away from focusing on growth of the business. So that was a lot of time spent. We had some... fortunately, we had good backers who stayed with us. Many stayed with us with each round, which was great. It's always tough to find good talent. That was always...

Rich Robinson:

Yeah, I'm sure it became a lot more difficult, right? Because then, the EdTech market, like, you basically, helped to staff that there was so many people from EF that then went out and started their own or took over a lot of leading roles, right? And then it became so well funded in such a feeding frenzy. Yeah. It was probably really tough to find good people.

Peter Win:

Yeah, absolutely. Operationally getting the business model right, we experimented a lot. We tried to change various elements, which eventually we found what worked and we were able to scale and grow the business. We launched an early education business, which was a preschool which worked well and summer programs. So, at the end of that growth period, we were the largest English language summer program operator with summer programs across Shanghai, Huangzhou, Beijing, and Tianzhen. Cooperating...

Rich Robinson:

Not what you originally had set out to do, right? But then that sort of like unfolded in front of you in some

Peter Win:

ways. That's Was not part of the original business plan, but eventually that became a very fast growth area and a great opportunity for us.

Rich Robinson:

Yeah, I like how you used the word"relentless" before with EF. Paul Graham, the guy who started Y Combinator, he made a top 10 list of qualities of successful entrepreneurs. And someone said, "What about, that's like one quality or one quality that sums them all up?" And he's like, "Oh man, it crushed me to just get top 10 qualities." But he's like, "Okay, I'll tell you what, relentlessly resourceful, like, you just have to just jump in and then just every day, "Chīkǔ", eat bitter, just chew through barb wire, and then just be relentlessly resourceful." And then, like, these peaks open up where you're like, "Oh, wait a second." There's, "I thought I was going to that peak, but okay, I'm gonna have to go into this valley, but now I'm gonna go to that peak." But you would've never been able to see that peak had you not already been. Had you already embarked on that journey. So pretty. I was pretty

Peter Win:

happy Hadn't heard that, but that really resonates. I think, in a short timeframe, you can be smart but that's not necessarily gonna get you success. You can be lucky, and that can be short-lived. You can be smart and lucky, and that can work, but you can be resort, you can be relentless. And even if you're not lucky on the first 2, 3, 4 attempts, if you're relentless, the chances of having something work eventually are good, are high. You cannot give up. There are so many doors that get slammed in your face. The most common answer is, "no." The most common result outcome is, " frustration," and you just have to keep plugging away.

Rich Robinson:

Fascinating. Yeah. I love hearing a happy ending at the end of an entrepreneurial journey, since the most likely outcome is failure, right? And then, and even though like you were like entrepreneurial, but you were really an entrepreneur inside EF, right? And like, that's not always a good, then you leave that environment, you don't have any air cover necessarily, right? Like, you're really operating without a net, right? And you have to jump into it really on your own and raising money six different times, right? And it's like every time, even if you're an industry insider, and even if you're have a skills experience network. It's still, it wants to not only just make you fail, but you know, just completely defeat you internally and externally and you are able to

Peter Win:

just

Rich Robinson:

merge victorious.

Peter Win:

Yes. But as you go through the process or as you're contemplating the process, you have to embrace the fact that failure is the default. And so, to overcome that, you have to go in with the attitude and with your eyes open that it's gonna be a pitch battle. And that of itself has to be stimulated. And if you can find a way to make that stimulating, the process of building with all the frustrations, at the same time being passionate about what you're doing as your product or your service, you can combine those and be relentless, then your chances of success are go up significantly.

Rich Robinson:

Indeed.

Peter Win:

Well put, Rich. I agree.

Rich Robinson:

And tell me about what you're working these days.

Peter Win:

These days. Okay. These days, I'm working with a few colleagues in old business contacts. We're looking at a bunch of different things. All of which are interesting, we're still exploring which one is the most interesting and it's gonna have traction. But, we're looking at something in food and beverage. We're looking at something in domestic travel.

Rich Robinson:

Like to invest in? Or to actually like start or take

Peter Win:

and

Rich Robinson:

operate? Like, what's the?

Peter Win:

These are either buyout opportunities or development opportunities or ground up combination. I also occasionally do some advisory work with some funds, particularly funds that have been active in the education investment space in Hmm.

Rich Robinson:

Yeah. Which is a incredibly large and fast moving, but very treacherous area these days, right? With the latest regulations, a lot of market capitalization.

Peter Win:

Right, with the new statutes that have come out really spooked the market. The took a nose dive last week and the education stocks are down quite a bit. Some 80, 90% off their highs from a year ago. I just coordinated a seminar two, three weeks ago with King and Wood Dentons and the head of the education practice for LEK, where we focused on the new statutes, webinar and we're gonna be doing a follow up in a month or so, once more clarity comes out of the Ministry of Education. That's beautiful. And just as a little callback, you talked about how you got to China 30 years ago and you were like, "Ah, I'm already late to the game. People have been here for, since '79 or '80," right? And I once had breakfast with Dashon, Mark Roswell, who is this very well-known, like luminary, like, if you spoke Chinese, even passingly well, people would be like, "Oh wow. Nǐ shàn dāshàn," right? Or like, " Nǐ shàn dāshàn." They'd always say, "Your Chinese is not nearly as good as Dashan."

Rich Robinson:

Yeah, I guess it did. Yeah, it's true. It's true. So he was his Chinese was really amazing already in the late eighties. But I was talking to him about doing some kind of a mobile entertainment deal. This was 2004 or whatever. But he said, "Yeah. When I showed up in '88 to go study in, in Beijing, I was already late." right? And, but the fact is, now you look at him and you're like, of course that guy was a pioneer 30, 33 years ago. And I've just recently gotten involved in blockchain and NFTs and I basically think like on disk to online 10X. And then, online to on chain, another 10X in value. But, I'm kind of reinventing myself and showing up to this game a little bit later. But you're kind of doing the same. You're like, "I'm gonna take my skills experience network, my scabs, callouses, scar tissue, like armor. And I'm gonna go back into battle. And I'm gonna pick a new sector or something really interesting and just get in there and jump in the driver's seat and see what we can do." Right? And like, it's really exhilarating in many ways, right? And you have to be like,"Alright, I'm gonna get back out there. And of course it's gonna suck," right? It's a "túrán chīkǔ," right? But it's okay if that's what I want to do. If I'm not eating bitter, if I'm not actually pushing myself and I'm not getting better, right? And really challenging myself. So I look forward to watching your future adventures, my friend.

Peter Win:

Thank you, Rich. I'm excited about it.

Rich Robinson:

Great. Thanks a lot. And to

Peter Win:

to

Rich Robinson:

be continued.