KBC Relay Interview with Carl Kwan (January 27, 2011) - "From Hong Kong to Canada to Korea... With a TV Smile!"

View Carl Kwan's profile on KBC
January 27, 2011 - KBC Relay Interview"From Hong Kong to Canada to Korea... with a TV Smile!” Carl Kwan TV Personality on EBS
Carl Kwan was interviewed by Eun-Shil Boots (Park). (Click here for Eun-Shil's relay interview.)

 

Eun-Shil (은실):  Carl thank you for joining us on KBC. I am happy that you can join us for today. Can you first introduce yourself to our audience?

 

Carl Kwan: First of all, I'm happy to be here and happy to do this. As for an introduction...I was born in HK and emigrated to Canada with my family when I was about 2 1/2 yrs old; actually, the same age that my son is now. I grew up in Vancouver and have been in Korea since 2004. I have a few different areas of work that I specialize in. I've been able to somehow leverage English teaching credentials and an MBA into: English teacher and consultant to Korean executives, presentation design and training both offline and online, social media marketing, voice acting, and TV work.

 

Eun-Shil (은실): Thank you Carl for your extended answer. I have also seen on your personal website that you are doing a lot of different things. Is there one thing which is your favourite thing you like to do the most?

 

Carl Kwan: That's a really good question. I'm going to answer that by saying that everything starts and ends with whether or not I'm passionate about the type of work I'm doing and whether or not I can help people. But if I had to choose only one thing, I'd say that right now I love the TV work.

 

Eun-Shil (은실): Aha, I actually have friends working for TV channels here in Europe, the competition is hard....how did you get your place in Korea for these type of work?....Especially you are more or less a sort of "kyopo" or foreigner?

 

Carl Kwan: I know that it's usually very difficult to get involved with TV almost anywhere in the world, so I think I was just in the right place at the right time. I started off by auditioning for a TV hosting job with EBS, but was only offered voiceover work. Then last year, EBS approached me and said something like, "Nobody else wants to do these teacher training videos, so do you want to do it?" And things kind of went from there. And I was never too concerned about looking like a “kyopo” because I look different without the hair, but mainly because I never believed it would be a problem.

 

Eun-Shil (은실): Good answer, I also read on your website that before you went to Korea you were a restaurateur, please tell us more about your "switch' and the decision to come over to Korea straight away from Canada?

 

Carl Kwan: Yes, that's right. My family had a pizza place for about 7 years that we sold the year that I moved to Korea. As for my "switch"...That's an interesting question because If I hadn't met my wife, I might never have had any connection to Korea at all. I had originally planned to move to Taiwan to become an English teacher, but fate had other plans for me. In 2002, a few months before I was planning to leave Vancouver, I met my wife and, as they say, the rest is history. So, that's my connection with Korea.

 

Eun-Shil (은실): Aha, actually I wanted to start to talk about your choice for Korea instead of those other places in the world you  have been travelling to in the past. Can you share with us what is the major difference to live in Korea and lets say the other places/countries you have visited in the past?

 

Carl Kwan: Since I'm from Vancouver, I get asked a lot why I don't live there because it seems that EVERYBODY wants to live there and because it's always ranked #1 or #2 as one of the best places in the world to live.  Well, when I first arrived in Korea it was December and really cold. We were to only stay for 4 days before going to India for the next 4 months. But there was something weird about being in Korea. It was sunny! In Vancouver, it's predominantly cloudy and rainy in the winter. So, that's one thing I liked immediately.

 

Carl Kwan: The second thing is that Vancouver's small and Seoul's huge! It's just so much more exciting to be here. On top of that, you can have and do practically everything without feeling homesick, in my opinion. But even better is how you can order everything online and get it in like 2 days. That sold me right away.

 

Eun-Shil (은실): Yes indeed the korean internet shopping malls are famous and well known over the whole world I assume.

 

Eun-Shil (은실): Which brings me to my next burning question to you. Carl you are living for quite a while in Korea and started your own business. What is your most important advice you would like to give to people who wants to come over to Korea and wants to start a business over there?

 

Carl Kwan: I would say that there are several important things to keep in mind, but they can all be grouped under one category... Be open-minded and flexible, be prepared for anything, be well-versed in Korean culture, including language, and get ready to meet some amazing people that will inspire you with their hard work and determination. Overall, I'd say this comes down to keeping your eyes, ears, and heart open.

 

Eun-Shil (은실): So you are telling us the audience to be very open minded and flexible. That’s funny that you bring up these points. I have seen over here in Europe many companies making these mistakes you are telling about. They thought they were flexible and open minded but they were actually NOT. Maybe culture difference…..

 

Eun-Shil (은실): To change the subject a little bit; how about your future plans in Korea? What can we expect from “mister Kwan” in the nearby future?

 

Carl Kwan: That's something my wife would like an answer to, as well, so perhaps we can kill two birds with one stone here. I'll have to answer for each of the things I do...

 

Carl Kwan: As for teaching, I'd like to move more into presentation workshops and personal development. We have a book that's about ready and a website that gets about 5000 visitors/month, plus a steadily growing number of people around the world that have taken my online presentations course.

 

Carl Kwan: I'm also keen on showing off what I can do in terms of social media marketing, so my business partner Liam Lusk (also a KBC member) and I will be looking to do more in that area. We've been able to get onto the first page of Google for search terms related to certain industries here in Korea, so we have a pretty good handle on how to help businesses there.

 

Carl Kwan: And I'd really love to get more TV work because I think I just like the attention, to be honest. But the main reason I'm doing all this is to keep helping people achieve their goals and to create opportunities for myself anywhere in the world. The world is full of opportunities for anyone who really wants to find them.

  

Eun-Shil (은실): That’s great Carl, it seems to be that you’re quite a busy man. I personally think that the topics you mentioned as above will be more and more important in the nearby future of doing business in general.

 

Eun-Shil (은실): For instance about your online presentations, what kind of advice would you like to give to our KBC members, in fact what can we learn from you about lets say the common mistake a lot people do make when they have to do a presentation?

 

Carl Kwan: They don't prepare enough and don't know what their audience wants to hear the most. The thing you want to do in a presentation is to tell a compelling story, whatever your overall purpose may be. That takes knowledge of your audience, preparation, and the ability to draw the audience in to hear your message and be somehow moved by it.

 

Carl Kwan: And the other thing is the over-reliance on slides with loads of text and boring charts while the presenter reads from the slides. Complete disengagement with the audience and a lack of consideration for their time and energy.

 

Eun-Shil (은실): Absolutely true!

 

Eun-Shil (은실): Before we are gonna finish our conversation I like to say to you that I am very impressed about all your work so far. You are doing a lot of different things at the same time. I would almost say you act and live like a "real" korean ;)

 

Carl Kwan: Thank you. I like it when people think I'm Korean, which might sound weird.

I'm actually a big family guy, so I spend the majority of my day at home with my wife and son. In that respect, I'm much less like a "real" Korean, but I know they would love to have the same time that I do. I read that something like over 95% of the people who are on their deathbed never mention that they wished they spent more time at work. It was always family, friends, connections, and contributions that they wish they'd have spent more time on.

 

Eun-Shil (은실): You are so right.

 

Eun-Shil (은실): Thank you for your insight you have given us as well as a private person and your business so far.

 

Eun-Shil (은실): I’m wishing for you a happy and prosperous year 2011 and may this year for you to be a year of good earnings as well ;)

 

Carl Kwan: Thank you for asking to do the interview. It's been a lot of fun and I hope you also have a prosperous, as well as healthy year. All the best for 2011.

 

NB: Anyone who is interested in Carls work, please take a look on his online projects:

http://presentationexpressions.com or http://thepresentationboss.com

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Permalink Reply by Lara Tosh on January 28, 2011 at 1:57pm

Great interview Carl ...it helped me put a few things into perspective within my own life^.^  Thanks so very much for sharing a brief chunk of your story!

Permalink Reply by Carl Kwan on January 30, 2011 at 10:42pm
Thanks Lara!
Permalink Reply by Steven S. Bammel on January 29, 2011 at 8:36am

Carl,

 

Thanks for doing the interview. It's very interesting that you've settled in Korea even though your roots would have more naturally taken you to China or Taiwan.

 

Regarding presentations, I'm curious if you're familiar with the Beyond Bullet Points approach. I've had some mixed results with it in Korea and I'm curious if you might think that's a cultural thing or something else.

Permalink Reply by Carl Kwan on January 30, 2011 at 11:11pm

Actually, Hong Kong would have been my next choice since I already speak Cantonese, but hey, no regrets because it's all a matter of what you make of the circumstances.

 

Yes, I know the Beyond Bullet Points approach and it's something I completely advocate. Can you describe who you were working with and what type of presentations they were trying to give? The short answer is that culture plays a part in it because the more that's on the slide, the more "work" was put into the preparation is what I think the assumption is.

 

However, the other reason is the lack of proper training to show what to do if you do need to provide all that data or "information" and how to craft a story for your particular audience. If you ask someone to drop a habit you'll need a compelling alternative and proof that what you're asking the person to change is worthwhile.

 

But the biggest reason of all may be that people are, by and large, terrified of giving presentations and I think this may be the main reason why just using bullet points and putting everything onto the slides is so common. This is not only happening here, of course.

 

If I'm scared out of my wits of presenting or of screwing up then having everything up on the screen is my safety net. At least I won't forget anything so my boss doesn't blame me for anything and I can get through the presentation as quickly as possible, right? :)

 

Then imagine if you're a non-Native English speaker asked to give an English presentation. Not high on most people's bucket list, I imagine.

 

The best way to overcome the fear is practice and preparation combined with knowledge of how a non-bullet approach actually works in the presenter's and, ultimately, the organization's favour and you're on your way to a bullet-free presentation world :)

 

 

Permalink Reply by Steven S. Bammel on February 3, 2011 at 10:50am

I learned and started applying the Beyond Bullet Points (BBP - http://beyondbulletpoints.com/) approach in my second semester in grad school at Hanyang University. It worked nicely for me because it meant less to write in Korean on each slide and by focusing on a core storyline, even if I butchered the Korean in my speaking, at least people wouldn't completely lose the main idea.

 

But I sensed that my Korean listeners thought that my presentations took a step back when I started doing this. Perhaps they interpreted the photos and lack of verbiage as being a short-cut to a properly prepared presentation. It was only later when I started putting more words back into the slides of my presentations (while still following the overall BBP logic flow) that I got comments saying that I'd really improved. 

 

I'm not ready to say it's a cultural thing; I did wonder though. It's possible that weaknesses in my Korean ability made it harder to fill adequately in with oral commentary and for that reason, listeners figured my overall presentation approach was lacking.

Permalink Reply by Carl Kwan on February 4, 2011 at 1:51am

Yes, it's definitely possible that your language abilities at the time caused the perceived problem more than your slides. The slides are only meant to support what you're saying and aren't supposed to stand on their own without you. That type of presentation is possible, but with help from some text. One of the best examples of this is from a great presentations designer I know named Scott Schwertly. I've included a presentation of his at the bottom of my reply.

 

I don't know everything about your presentation, but from what you've said I'm going to infer that you tried to keep things super-simple in terms of design. Supporting the images with a small amount of text, like just a keyword or something like that, gives a context for the image so the audience can more rapidly identify with what I'm trying to say.

 

I did this for many of the videos we made for our presentations site because the audience is mainly non-Native English speakers and because I wasn't including notes or the script. Plus, people couldn't just stop me to ask questions if they didn't get something.

 

One other thing is that many people fear, or are very uneasy with, adding more slides. I'll make one slide for every keyword or point I'm trying to make. In fact, I just made a video that demonstrates this. There are no images at all, only text. In total I used 45 slides for it. You can check it out below, too.

 

My video:

How to start a presentation & use humour

 

 

Scott's video:
Meet Henry
View more presentations from chereemoore.
Permalink Reply by Steven S. Bammel on February 13, 2011 at 5:23pm

Thanks, Carl. Scott's presentation is nice and I'd say it is the model on which Liam build his social medial presentation last month (view it here). It's considerably different than the BBP approach though, which has a set frame structure.

 

I'm going to upload a couple presentations shortly to show the contrast between my before BBP and after BBP-modified.

Permalink Reply by Steven S. Bammel on February 13, 2011 at 5:41pm

The Honda presentation is the first one I did with the BBP approach. 

 

Does honda's hybrid approach work, v2 (ko)

The Technology Management one shows my modified approach later, for which I got a lot of praise. This could have been for many reasons; I'm not saying it's because of a problem with BBP. 

 

Technology management 09 10-10, presentation v2k
Permalink Reply by Carl Kwan on February 13, 2011 at 10:06pm

Thanks for sharing both presentations. I see what you were trying to do with the first one compared to the second. 

 

You're right, so many factors can determine how the audience responds. It may have been their level of knowledge, the time of day, the shock of seeing something so different than they were used to, etc...

 

One probably significant difference was the extra Korean text. That most likely helped because they had some clue as to what you would be talking about. The first presentation needed some support from text, in some cases, to make it more clear what the slide was about, perhaps.

 

And the second has a more Korean look to it, so I think visually the audience might have felt more comfortable with it.

 

Personally, I like the first one better.

 

Permalink Reply by Steven S. Bammel on January 29, 2011 at 8:37am
Oh, I was also going to ask if you could post links here to a TV show or two that you've done...
Permalink Reply by Eun-Shil Park on January 29, 2011 at 9:03pm
Yes that would be nice. Its so incredible how many different types of careers are being shown on the KBC site. I do think that we all can learn so much about eachother......never think that you know everything already....
Permalink Reply by Carl Kwan on January 30, 2011 at 11:24pm

Seriously? :)

 

Okay, thanks! The show you can actually see me on is "박윤주의 Classroom English" and you can see it online via VOD (video on demand) at www.ebse.co.kr. Under 방송프로그램, click on 교사 and on the page that opens up it's the show on the far right. No, that's not me in the picture, but the host, Professor Park Yoon Ju^^

 

I joined the show around episode 20, I think. You have to register with the site in order to see the videos, though.

 

The other EBS shows I'm on are voiceover only, but I'm on Drama English, English Conversation, TOEIC Speaking, some famous speech show (I was recently Gandhi and I've been Martin Luther King, Jr, Obama, and Abraham Lincoln!), and some others that I don't even remember.

 

Oh, and I'm in the orientation videos for all new EPIK/GEPIK (Government program for public schools) teachers. I developed and taught the whole thing all by myself, but you can only see those if you're in the EPIK/GEPIK program.

 

Thanks again!

 

 

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