Business – Greg Fok Advisory

When There’s No Clarity, You Cannot Make good Financial…

April 21, 2025April 21, 2025
by Gregory Fok

A CEO of a large company once shared something with me that I still reflect on today:
“Most people, including myself, don’t actually know what or where they are exactly. It takes time to consolidate all the information.

I know where my company figures stand but not my personal ones.”

That struck a chord.

Over the years in my work as a financial planner, I’ve met countless individuals. Some incredibly successful in their careers, who still feel uncertain when it comes to their finances. And the root cause often boils down to this: a lack of clarity.

They might not be clear on:

How much they’re actually spending or saving

What they truly want to achieve financially

Where they currently stand in relation to their goals

And when there’s no clarity, making good financial decisions becomes incredibly difficult. How do you decide where to invest, how much to insure, or when to retire, when you don’t have a clear picture of your financial landscape?

I’ve seen it firsthand:
People feel overwhelmed not because they lack options, but because they haven’t had the space or guidance to gain clarity.

That’s why the first step in any financial journey isn’t about picking the right product or chasing returns. It’s about understanding.
Where are you now?
Where do you want to go?
What matters most to you?

Once that’s clear, everything else starts falling into place.

Clarity brings confidence. Confidence leads to conviction. And conviction leads to wise decisions.

If you’ve been feeling stuck financially, don’t rush into action. Pause, reflect, and seek clarity first.

It’s the best investment you can make, do you agree?

How do you create more time?

December 5, 2024
by Gregory Fok

Time will just fly past and we will no longer be able to get it back.

At the beginning of 2024, we decided to go for a long trip holiday and my intention was to be able to spend good time and create memories for the family. So with intentionality, we booked the trip way in advance, almost at the beginning of the year.

🎯 As an entrepreneur and high income earner, work time is precious to you and sometimes, it may be hard to take time off and we leave it to the last minute to decide. Even during the trip, it is hard not to open emails and check on work. And when you get back, there are thousands of emails awaiting for you to clear!

🥂 Again, during the trip, I intentionally decided to not check emails and told my staff not to disturb me unless there is a big or urgent issue on hand. Having learnt from Dan Sullivan, time to break and enjoy is designed to focus on that with 100%! When I am back to Singapore to work, I do that with 100% focus too! So I did that and my wife said why am I not even posting on LinkedIn.

I said I wanted to soak in the holiday environment and be present for my family. (I am only doing this in the early morning before the family is awake, as I just feel inspired!) What have you done intentionally to create more time for yourself and your loved ones?

🎯 I have been “financial coaching” for the past 19yrs and those who have set their dream goals, stuck to their plan, remained disciplined, despite the market volatility, and had me as the one journeying with them, have a much higher chance of success in the best and worst case scenarios of their lives If you like to find out more how we do it to help families and businesses get to financial freedom, follow my posts and reach out and we can have an initial meeting at our cost, with no obligations.

Do you wish you could Rest x 2…!

July 20, 2024
by Gregory Fok

We work in a hectic lifestyle in Singapore. I used to work non stop 24/7 when I first started out 19yrs ago. I remembered vividly going for multiple meetings in a day, sometimes packing 2-3 in one evening!

⛈️ One night, when I was taking the LAST train ride back, I asked myself, how long am I going to last at this pace? If I continue like this, there might be a burnout. I could even feel my heart pounding with all the adrenalin, just thinking about it.

My mentor was sharing with me, you need to take a different strategy if you want to be able to sustain long in this business. You need rest and you need to be selective in who is going to be your client.

💯 “Come to me, all you who are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.”

Today’s gospel passage reminds me of this.. REST. Within this short message, it reminds us to REST TWICE and leave our burdens to God in prayer. When I leave my problems at the foot of the cross and my concerns, I always have this feeling of assurance that God will provide and he has provided for the last 19yrs and counting, in HIS time. I do the right work, with the right people and with the right attitude of value adding and effective hard work, and I just trust the process.

🙏 Ever since then, I had repositioned my practice. We always have a “Pre-screening” meeting before prospects engage us. It was about us getting to listen to them, to understand their pain points and if they and we would be able to see ourselves on a long term partnership together. If for whatever reason there is no fit, we part ways respectfully. And if there is a good conversation with trust, then, we will be in for the long haul.

So today, we are not looking for quantity but quality and that will result in wonderful relationships we have with our clients, their partners and families, and we build a better and happier practice.

♥️This take a PROCESS to plan, to TRANSFORM with a rewirement programme. And I can tell you it takes time. It takes effort to Unlearn to Relearn.

Pic : I got this as a gift which is so apt for me!

Wouldn’t you like to simplify your financial life?

May 22, 2024May 22, 2024
by Gregory Fok

Which would you prefer? The journey on top or below?

You are getting one year closer to retirement than you think. You realize that as you grow older, you have more assets.

When you get more senior and wiser, the following happens…

🧨 You want to reduce your risks.
So one of your ways of diversifying is to split your investments into various stocks, funds, pools of types of assets. Maybe you even start to invest overseas.

🧨 Managing larger amounts of wealth.
The skill-set of investing small amounts of wealth vs the skill-set of managing larger amounts is very different.

🧨 Your life becomes more complex
Because of the above 2 reasons, your life becomes more complex due to the need to spread your investments around. There are some people we work with who have even lost track of what they have with age and time.

💡You will come to a stage when you want to SIMPLIFY your life. Especially if suddenly, health changes or if someone else is going to take over what you have. The likelihood of them being able to appreciate all your efforts and work of your lifetime is going to go down the drain.

We help you to consolidate and have a clearer picture of what you have. So that your family can have a clear picture of where you stand and know the strategies to execute in a SIMPLE way, but yet still reduce your risks and increase your expected returns, while giving you and your family peace of mind, with less anxiety.

Which would you prefer? The journey on top or below? The choice is yours.

If you like to find out more how we do it to help families and businesses get to financial freedom, follow my posts and reach out for a copy of our PROCESS or we can have an initial meeting at our cost, with no obligations.

♥️This take a PROCESS to plan, to TRANSFORM with a rewirement programme. And I can tell you it takes time. It takes effort to Unlearn to Relearn.

My name is Greg and if there is someone who would like to transform, multiply their life, their business, their wealth, with PURPOSE, and have time for themselves, with less anxiety, pls feel free to share or reach out to me and repost too! I would sincerely appreciate it!

The unspoken considerations for wealth transfer

March 21, 2024
by Gregory Fok

When it comes to wealth transfer, all parents plan with the best of intentions. However, when we hear it from the beneficiaries, it may not be viewed in that manner.

💣 There was a couple who had 2 properties. One is a HDB and the other is a private property. And they have a business and some other parts in investments and cash. They still have outstanding loans for the property and have taken a loan for the business, with a personal guarantee. They have 3 children and 1 of them is in the family business.

🔥 The above scenario is quite typical for an affluent family. However, you can just imagine the time bomb that they are sitting on, waiting to be passed on to the children.

When I speak to the child, he says it just seems like a recipe waiting for disaster to blow up. Who will take over the HDB? Who will take over the private property? What is the implication to them to take over the property? Is it going to be split 3 ways? How about the business? What is going to happen to the value of the business? And who will be the specific beneficiary to be settling the outstanding loans?

☀️You have taken a whole life of a few decades to build your wealth. Wouldn’t it make sense to spend just half an hour to understand what the implications are and how you can potentially prevent problems down the road? Most people have no solutions but we can bring in our 19yrs of experience to help.

We walk through a process of ABCD to plan for them. ♥️ Be wise and plan ahead.

We all want to transfer wealth with minimum costs, minimum conflicts and confusion, wouldn’t you?

A painful lesson of my life.

November 29, 2023November 29, 2023
by Gregory Fok

March 2009…

I was away for a holiday in March 2009, at the depth of the financial crisis. I had sat through one of the biggest downturns of the markets and my emotions and mood was swinging up and down with the market conditions.

I told myself that there seems to be enough blood with the red in investments in the streets. I will want to avoid the emotions so I will wait till I get back from my holidays before I decide to buy more stocks again.

When I got back a few weeks later, the stocks I had wanted to buy had gone up by at least 15%!

So I thought to wait for it to come down before I decide to buy again. The prices soared and never came back down to those previous levels. I had missed the boat. In the recent years, some of these same stocks have actually been delisted!

💥 Lesson learnt : It is so hard to time the markets or pick stocks, especially over a prolonged period of time.

🤓What is the solution?
And so now, I use a systematic process that helps me and my clients have more purposeful living, increased peace of mind, better relationships, reduced risks, have more time for yourself, simplify your life and still get higher returns!

When you have a solid process for decision making made at the beginning, you get to your goals more easily.

Do you agree?

My name is Greg and if there is someone who would appreciate and read my posts and insights, pls feel free to share with them and me and help to repost too!

hashtag#invest

hashtag#mindset

hashtag#BusinessGrowth

Can you imagine crossing this bridge without the railings?

September 28, 2023September 28, 2023
by Gregory Fok

It has been some time since I crossed an overhead bridge..

😅So as I was crossing over and was imagining walking over without the green guardrails. What would the feeling be like? It would seem quite scary. Although I would still walk in the middle and not move to the sides nor go anywhere near the guardrails, I would never have imagined myself crossing the bridge!

💡Well, getting ourselves protected and having risk management in place is a bit like putting the green guardrails in place. We probably will not touch the guardrails and we probably will not use the insurance policies nor do we need to have a diversified portfolio, but we know that in case we tripped and fell over, we will not fall over the bridge!

And the same applies to our finances as well. When we have our “guard rails” for our finances in place, we can walk across the bridge with confidence, with peace of mind and we can even speed up our walk because we know that our risks are managed well.

🦉So the next time you cross the over head bridge, think of me helping you ensure that your safety measures are put in place and you can sprint across the bridge with no fear, which means you can even get to retirement earlier than you expected.

Would you like to put your financial guardrails in place? And how are you reframing the way to build large wealth?

Do you know someone who has a joint loan…

April 7, 2023April 7, 2023
by Gregory Fok

If you do, are you aware that your business partner’s liability now or future, may accidentally become yours?

It is quite common for business partners or doctors, dentists to come together either purchase a clinic, property or start a business or buy medical equipment together. That usually might be the case because on an individual basis, you might not be able to afford buying the clinic, the shophouse, property or come up with capital to run the business. or you basically thought to share the risks with someone else.

So when you do that, you sign the loan off on 2 accounts, once on behalf of the company and the other as a personal guarantor. It might not seem like a big issue at first, but did you know that your partner’s liability can suddenly become yours?

I feel sorry for the innocent parties, however, this case study listed below will have given us a glimpse into understanding that unexpected liabilities that might come about.

A wife bought a landed property together with the husband with a mortgage loan of USD$1.94mil at the beginning. Her husband subsequently, on his own (without the spouse), went on to take on business loans of USD$131mil.

So most people would assume that is the husband’s liability on his own. It is not.

Suddenly, when the husband was unable to pay off the debt, that USD$131mil debt now falls to the spouse as well, on top of the USD$1.94mil loan. (Manifold Times | Wife of Coastal Oil’s Tan Sing Hwa saddled with debt to the tune of USD 131 million)

We help businesses exit smart at the highest multiples, so that you can manage your wealth well.

If you know someone who has taken a joint loan with a partner, it might be time to reassess the financial implications and obligations it might have on you or your family. These scenarios can be planned in advance to be prevented so that the risks does not fall on your friend’s lap.

Why should some doctors and business owners, wealthy families…

February 16, 2023May 17, 2023
by Gregory Fok

For families who are wealthy, their biggest fear is usually loss of assets taken away from them or their family unjustly, especially if there was a way to have mitigated that risk at the beginning.

Some of these risks include…

🔮1) In laws and potential ones

They will provide for their children, their grandchildren and descendants but they will be concerned if the money falls into the hands of the in-laws and future spouses of these in laws who may remarry as well. This is unfortunately true given the state of marriages today.

🔮2) Unwise taxes that can be mitigated.

If a person did not distribute his assets out appropriately, the children and grandchildren might be burdened with the need to pay buyer stamp duties, additional buyer stamp duties for properties in Singapore and estate duties for US shares and other jurisdiction which can be as high as 25-40% of the value of the assets.

We have seen many cases where these taxes could easily have been minimized or eliminated through proper planning. Every case is different.

🔮3) Business owners liability

Most wealthy families run businesses. If you run a business, you never know when and how you might be hit. And most of the time, it is not even your mistake or fault. But you bear significant risks the moment you set up a business on your own. Let us help you to identify the risks and mitigate them so that you can sleep well.

🔮4) Partnerships with others

If you have gone into business or joint ventures with others, their risks can easily become part of your risks. For example, when 2 persons are running a business, when one party is accidentally made bankrupt, the partner could be potentially implicated, even though the cause of the bankruptcy did not arise from your business.

🔮5) Personal guarantees

Pls avoid signing personal guarantees at all costs, if you can help it. If you really cannot do so, protect your family members from unnecessary risks because personal guarantees can sue all the way to the person’s entire assets, even those in their personal name.

🔮6) All assets and loans being under the same bank!

This is the worst allocation of assets because the bank can very quickly take control of ALL assets and freeze it immediately when circumstances change. We had a case where a doctor received payment from a patient (who unknowingly received from an alternative source) and his bank accounts were frozen in the midst of investigation by the police.

We always try to understand your concerns, situation and explore solutions that best fit. Together, we plan ahead to re-allocate your assets and structure to avoid any unforeseen circumstances, which can be varied dependent from person to person, business to business.

If you want to be able to protect your assets, ask us a question so that you can enjoy your life and view.

Business owners consideration for transfer of assets

June 24, 2022June 24, 2022
by Gregory Fok

When a business owner is young, he uses his blood and sweat in exchange for an income he works hard for.

Once he has built it to a reasonable size, he needs to have the following considerations.

1. Who is going to take over the business and the liabilities when the key person is taken out?

A friend of mine had a strong business and successful one for many years and were thriving. One day, during dinner, the partner choked and died suddenly on the spot. Since the partner was the one with all the connections and loans, when the partner passed, the liabilities were called on by the banks almost immediately. Customers trusted that particular partner but when my friend tried to salvage the business, the customers changed suppliers. Cashflow was very tight and eventually the funds dried up promptly. The business had to be closed and there were even outstanding payments that needs to be settled.

2. Who is going to take care of the family expenses?

As a business owner, your purpose of the business is really to take care of your family. However, when there are outstanding payments to be settled and frozen liquidity, the business dries up all the funds and usually the family might not be left with much.

For example, if your family needs $10,000 a month for expenses and you would like to provide them for a period of 20years, the total provision for the family will work out to be about $2.4mil.

3. Funding

Funding of the above scenarios can come from a variety of ways.

a) One is to keep and hold cash and wait for the sudden need to use the fund. However, it is the most ineffective use of funds.

b) The second is to use discounted dollars from your revenue of the business (This is exactly what Walt Disney did to access funds when no banker was willing to lend).

For example, if your revenue drops by 2-3%, will your business by badly affected? If your revenue grows by 2-3% more, will you call for a big celebration?

But what if we reposition that 2-3% wisely, that can protect the 100% of your revenue. Wouldn’t that make sense? And on top of that, after many years of funding, there can be another mountain of asset that you have created for yourself that is totally available for use for the future. Wouldn’t you like to be smart, just like Walt Disney did?

4. Legal aspect

Now that you have settled the above financial portion of your life, have you written your will and trust to solidify the decision of who will be the next person to take over which asset from you? Every asset class has pros and cons in distributing.

For example, illiquid assets like property and businesses should try to give to more than one party to avoid confusion and conflict.

What we can do for you is to combine the power of the finances and the legal aspects of planning your business so that it can continue to thrive for a very long time!