Mike Cheong: Who, What, Why and How To Work With Him Today
We Believe That Learning Should Be Engaging and Powerful
Michael Cheong (or also known as Coach Mike Cheong) is a marketing communication and digital marketing trainer. He is also an NLP coach and professionally involved in media-based ventures (copywriting, SEO, YouTube, and social media branding).
He also provides marketing communications skill training and coaching to seniors, business owners (small and medium enterprises ‑ SMEs), corporate companies, and community training.
Also selected under “Successful People in Malaysia by British Publishing House Ltd” (4th edition 2022), and lead trainer for Facebook, Michael is a certified trainer under HRDC and MDeC.
Mike Cheong: Qualifications & Credentials
What People on Google Say About Mike Cheong
A little bit more about Mike Cheong
Mike Cheong is a digital marketing trainer in Penang. He specializes in marketing communications training that is highly engaging and interactive.
He is actively involved in personal branding and social media platforms like Instagram, Facebook, and TikTok, an advocate for zero-cost marketing techniques and strategies. You can follow him here if you haven’t yet.
When he’s not training, Mike helps others to rank on Google by providing SEO content writing services to selected clients.
He is also an advocate of community empowerment with the Young Men’s Christian Association (YMCA), a community-based service serving communities around the world.
In addition to Good Ventures, Mike Cheong is also involved in YouTube production with his buddy (check out buddy-buddy on YouTube) and collaborates with other like-minded professionals in the training industry in the training niche and development of people too.
Mike Cheong is a highly sought-after zero-cost digital marketing trainer, which would benefit beginner startups, small business owners, upcoming entrepreneurs, engaged intrapreneurs, and those who seek to upgrade themselves in the area of digital marketing.
Moreover, Michael is also an avid community trainer under the eUsahawan Program that is focused on helping Malaysian entrepreneurs.
“A person that loves to help others. That’s #MIKECHEONG“
Current Undertaken Efforts by Mike Cheong
Mike Cheong has and currently is a board member of several organizations and clubs, including the Entrepreneurs Trainers & Coaches Network of Malaysia (Persatuan Jaringan Pelatih dan Pembimbing Usahawan Malaysia). He is presently the chair for the Technology, Research & Innovation (TRI) subcommittee, aka “Team of Geeks.”
The TRI subcommittee focuses on Malaysian government grants, innovation, technology, and other technical stuff that geeks like and do best. Michael is proud to work alongside “Grantologies” with brilliant ideas that will play a significant role in pathing the way for Malaysia and potentially impacting the global market and trends.
This organization is also known as TNC. Network, an NGO that focuses on training and developing skilled trainers and coaches in Malaysia.
Will TNC Network have plans to expand further?
Yes, there seems to be, as Michael is also involved in an international program under the Digital Serantau banner.
Digital Serantau focuses on training sessions and upskilling entrepreneurs within the Southeast Asian region, which is neighbouring Malaysia like Brunei, Singapore, Thailand, Australia, Philippines, Vietnam, India, Mongolia, Macau, and Hong Kong.
Some of the notable projects are intensive framework digital marketing training with the YMCA of India and entrepreneurs and startups in Brunei.
Being a nation builder at heart, Mike Cheong is also pursuing SF career coaching under the #HRDFCareerCoaching initiative. To help more people and to understand them better, Michael Cheong is also taking up NLP as an enthusiastic practitioner to help others on a deeper level to gain breakthroughs in their professional and personal lives.
Michael Cheong also works and teams up with like-minded trainers with individual strengths areas and dynamically teams up with them on training projects. Some of the projects that he has embarked on are Penjana HRDF training, which aims to help Malaysians upskill themselves so that they would be able to have better opportunities for jobs during the challenging COVID19 pandemic situation.
A person that loves to help others. That’s #MIKECHEONG
Mission, Vision and Core Values
Facebook Reviews
Mike Cheong Does Not Like Selling
It’s true, I dont like selling or sales
Michael Cheong was born and raised on the island of Penang. It is a small island shaped like a turtle on the top left side of the map (just below the beautiful island of Langkawi) of Malaysia.
Since young, he was always keen on computers and IT matters, bugging his late father to teach him more about working with documentation with the classic Windows 95 personal computer.
Does anyone remember those times?
If you cannot, I am sure the sweet-sharp sounds of a 56k dial-up modem will jog some memories.
Being a person who does not like to “sell,” Mike later then discovered the wonders of marketing by accident.
Yes, you heard that right; Mike Cheong does not like to sell. In fact, up to today, he still dislikes selling.
During this time, he also does not know much about marketing – all he cared about was computer games, books, and sometimes, hanging out with friends. (not a very sociable person, isn’t he?)
However, with time, he soon learned the importance of marketing.
Later, he has also joined several MLMs, including Omega Trend, where he has met some of his mentors. They were terrific at growing their network through network marketing techniques and taught the world of them because to him – what they did was extraordinary.
At one point in time, money was hard because there were no sales, and that drove him to take all marketing lessons learned and implement them – hard.
Times was hard, and so he had to be too.
The lesson paid off! In due time, Mike Cheong started to draw in his own network and learned the art of negotiation, honesty, integrity, and the tiring but rewarding “follow up” sessions.
However, instead of going on stage and earning big bucks, he was more fascinated with the marketing techniques and skills that were imparted to him.
Welcome to The World of Mass Communication and Marketing
With these lessons embedded in him, Mike continued his studies in Mass Communication at KDU. College, Penang.
Normally, the saying is that if you are a Mass Comm student, you will be destined to be a newspaper or magazine reporter, newscaster, radio DJ, movie producer, PR, etc.
Marketing communications: You will be ready for anything with the spotlight because you were built for attention, and you will be paid to get and, more importantly, hold the audience’s attention.
Amongst all the subjects that were taught to him by his esteemed professional lecturers (who are all very experienced and subject matter experts of the media industry) he loved productions, copywriting, and anything that needs to be presented in a form of marketing involving his beloved teammates because whatever it was – the end results would be magical.
Together with his buddy Asher Leo and Daniel Zadkiel, Mike Cheong is now also involved with a YouTube channel project called Buddy-Buddy. (If you have not followed them on YouTube yet, please do like and subscribe to their channel for fantastic and fun stuff).
Benefits of Digital Marketing for Work
Michael’s entrepreneurship journey began when he started selling real estate projects of new development from prominent developers.
Some of the projects are namely Casa Perdana and Pavilion Resort.
Together with a dynamic team, they self-learned about fusing traditional marketing with digital marketing to ease work.
Surprisingly, digital marketing was able to help them reach further through the Propertizer blog.
It was no walk in the park as a lot of work had to be done. Content marketing fundamentals are hard to learn, but once mastered, you are able to get the attention of your potential audience.
There were lots of people to meet and greet to sell properties that are luxurious and plush, totally worthy of its pricing.
Michael then learned about Social Media’s wonders when this so-called magical Facebook was able to not connect him with friends but even reach new customers and grow his customer base.
This was all done organically without paid marketing like Facebook ads, which was not very easy to do for him back then.
Digital Marketing for NGO: Marketing Empowers Communities
In his next phase, Mike Cheong took these learnings and took a break from the ever-busy and growing world of real estate into a totally different path – serving in an NGO.
While Michael used to be part of committees to organize big rave parties in Penang, it was now time to put these marketing skills and lessons to serve his community.
Mike Cheong then joined the Young Men’s Christian Association of Penang (YMCA Penang). It was a totally different scene for him yet an encouraging one.
In the beginning, Mike was really lost. New skillsets must be acquired in a new world – and that will take time.
With countless hours at the office and overtime, working past midnight and going back home in the wee hours of the morning became a regular routine.
Serving the community is not a bed of roses as he had taught earlier on.
Though not everyone he helped was thankful (at first), what he did was clearly making an impact and he soon began to see the fruits of his labour.
While serving youths and seniors in various charitable and social services, Mike Cheong learned new lessons about serving and humility.
Some of the notable communities that Michael has served are the YMCA Youth and Sports committee, the Pusat Maju Diri YMCA (PMY) that develops and support the Penang deaf community, and of course to empower the underprivileged youths in Penang.
YMCA and The World: A Voice for the People and Marketing It to The World
He has also had the opportunity to connect with the Asia Pacific Alliance of YMCAs (APAY).
Mike Cheong took the opportunity to travel to various parts of the world, including Hong Kong, Thailand, Japan, Korea, Macau, Singapore, and India, to connect with the YMCA Asian network and the community they serve there.
Because of this, he has met amazing and wonderful people from all over the world that is genuine in their calling to community service.
The learnings were useful and humbling, as he learned to serve and interact with various levels of communities and people.
He was also part of the Youth Participation and Development Committee (YPLD), where he represented YMCA Malaysia and served alongside like-minded leaders from other international YMCAs.
Michael was tasked to use his marketing skills to handle the social media marketing platform for the YPLD, YMCA Penang too.
He has also had the opportunity to connect with Hard Rock Heals, the internationally famous Hard Rock brand’s charitable arm. He loved their motto, which advocates “Love All-Serve All.”
The project is a music school (The Music School of Hard Rock – MSoHR) that aims to empower underprivileged youths and transform their lives through the power of music.
Back home, Mike Cheong used and sharpened his social media marketing skills to create more exposure to community works and needs so that more people might be aware of such initiatives.
Why so?
For more people to join in helping to empower our community, and it was working well.
Using digital marketing strategies like Facebook and Instagram, strangers became followers and then volunteers to donors for our meaningful programs.
This is the marketing engine of the new era and the breakthrough in the marketing industry.
This was the power realized from content marketing fundamentals to generate useful, relevant and helpful marketing content from social media to reach others.
Mike Cheong also sharpened his digital marketing efforts by working on copywriting projects and undertaking more projects to widen his knowledge of art and science to write copies that sell and SEO copywriting that ranks on Google.
Was that all?
eUsahawan: A Gift from Malaysia For Malaysians
Before COVID19, Michael’s Digital Marketing journey seemed to have opened again when he was selected amongst thousands of applications to attend the eUsahawan Program.
Due to globalization’s rapidity driven by the growing use of new technologies, the Digital Economic role as a driver of national development is more critical than ever before.
To help Malaysians gain a better foothold in the digital world, Malaysia Digital Economy Corporation (MDEC) affiliated with the Ministry of Communications and Multimedia has developed this program.
The eUsahawan Program seeks to utilize digital entrepreneurship values, digital marketing concepts and knowledge to micro, youth, and rural entrepreneurs for income generation, increasing sales, and marketing online their products and services.
The initiative was implemented by including and fusing digital entrepreneurship syllabus into the education and training at Higher Education Institutes (HEIs), Technical Vocational Education Training (TVET), and short courses organized nationally.
The e-Usahawan Program is a practical hands-on course using the syllabus developed by MDEC and digital marketing professional industry players.
These syllabuses are recognized by the accreditation body, Ofqual United Kingdom. The Office of Qualifications and Examinations Regulation (Ofqual) regulates qualifications, assessments, and examinations in England.
Being a community trainer under the eUsahawan Program, Michael has been more exposed to serving communities and now helping entrepreneurs, intrapreneurs, and startups to get their businesses online through popular and hot digital marketing techniques.
From small businesses like Nasi Lemak and kerapek stalls to SME industries, digital marketing benefits are so helpful for them to improve their online marketing.
Some of the digital marketing training topics that are covered include:
Facebook marketing, Instagram marketing, marketing from SEO, using marketing budget, outbound and inbound marketing, crafting the right marketing message through copywriting, digital marketing analytics, hybrid marketing of products through offline and online marketing strategies, utilizing various popular online marketing channels, marketing mix, and hot marketing tips that are used by largest clients that are effective and relevant to the industry.
TNC Malaysia: Joining the Entrepreneurs Trainers & Coaches Network of Malaysia
Michael is also blessed to have come across mentors and professionals that he can call friends and partners now – which later formed the TNC network.
Here is more information about the Entrepreneurs Trainers & Coaches Network of Malaysia (Persatuan Jaringan Pelatih Dan Pembimbing Usahawan Malaysia).
As mentioned earlier, the Entrepreneurs Trainers & Coaches Network of Malaysia (TNC Malaysia) is an NGO formed by like-minded trainers and coaches in Malaysia.
They have the vision to help and empower coaches and trainers in Malaysia in terms of upskilling, helping them apply for grants for potential innovative ideas and mentorship opportunities.
Being a member has many more benefits, but these are the most notable ones at the moment.
He currently chairs the Technology, Research, and Innovation (TRI) subcommittee of the Malaysian government, known as the “Team of Geeks.”. The TRI subcommittee focuses on government grants for individuals, startups, and non-profits.
Aside from that, this committee also focuses on technology, innovation, and other technical matters that geeks do best.
Does Mike Cheong Consider Himself A Tech Geek?
Well, that’s for sure. Ok, well, at the moment – that’s for sure.
Michael is honoured to work alongside “Grantologies” from the team. They are experienced professionals who hold brilliant ideas that work towards bettering our society that would make the nation proud.
Regardless of how large or small, we can play a role in setting Malaysia on the path to a digital future and influencing global trends and markets.
This organization is also known as TNC Network, an NGO that focuses on training and developing skilled trainers and coaches in Malaysia.
Will TNC Network have plans to expand further?
Yes, there seems to be, as Mike Cheong is also involved in an international program under the Digital Serantau banner.
Digital Serantau focuses on training and upskilling entrepreneurs within the South East Asian region, which are neighbouring Malaysia like Brunei, Singapore, Thailand, Australia, Philippines, Vietnam, India, Mongolia, Macau, and Hong Kong.
Some of the notable projects are intensive framework digital marketing training with the YMCA of India and entrepreneurs and startups in Brunei.
Continuing on, Mike Cheong, who is working and teaming up with like-minded trainers, especially in Digital Marketing, works with other professional individuals with individual strengths areas and teams to conduct training projects.
As mentioned, some of the projects that Mike Cheong has embarked on are Penjana HRDF training.
The COVID19 situation has hit the world hard, and Malaysia is undoubtedly no exception. The Program is initiated by the Malaysian Government under Prime Minister Yang Amat Berhormat Muhyiddin bin Haji Muhammad Yassin.
The programs aim to help Malaysians of all ages upskill through these skills marketing classes so that they would be able to have better opportunities for jobs during the challenging COVID19 pandemic situation.
As taken from the Penjana plan (a plan to revitalize and revive the economy of Malaysia), the Training Program Under Hiring Incentive states as:
The IPK Training Programme is an incentive given by the government through Pertubuhan Keselamatan Sosial (PERKESO) under the Kementerian Sumber Manusia to employers to train employees who have been employed to work under the Insentive Penjana Kerjaya (IPK) and unemployed citizens too.
The IPK Training Program aims for workers taken by employers the opportunity to improve their skills in line with the needs of the employer’s work and company and digital marketing courses is one of them.
It is a very effective way for them to attend impactful digital marketing courses through both physical and internet video conferencing sessions (as long as they have stable internet access) so that they can learn the current marketing mix.
Career Coach: Nation Building Through Coaching
During the course of developing himself in digital marketing training, Mike Cheong also trained on solution-focused training on career coaching.
It empowered him, but with the skills and techniques learned – he is now able to help serve Malaysia better by helping fresh graduates, retrenched workers, and workforce staff who want to upskill themselves gain better career clarity through career coaching.
Attendees are given 1-to-1 coaching classes/sessions so that they can share their thoughts, dreams, hopes and aspirations. Through some hours of coaching session, they are able to dream and see themselves as who they can potentially be.
Career Coaching helps others because it brightens the lamp of hope for them to reach their dream jobs through coaching and guidance.
With the rewed mindsets and clarity, participants would take actionable and realistic steps towards a hopeful foreseeable future.
It is also a pleasure for Mike Cheong to help others achieve their dreams.
Mike Cheong now works with HRDF Placement Centre under the #HRDFCareerCoaching initiative.
NLP and Marketing: A Combo To be Reckoned With
In the pursuit of learning and serving people better, Mike Cheong also took up Neuro-linguistic programming (NLP) to better understand himself and others’ needs.
NLP is a pseudoscientific approach to communication, psychotherapy, and personal development that could help Mike develop skills for better training his participants.
Since there are many other digital marketing trainers out there, Michael realized that to market and brand a product or service, one needs to have a deeper understanding of their audience.
However, for that to happen, one must understand themselves first. NLP is a psychological approach that includes analyzing practitioners’ approaches, which applies them to achieve personal goals. It relates languages, thoughts, and patterns of experiential learned behaviour to specific effects.
Besides digital marketing topics, NLP techniques would be fantastic to apply as a form of marketing through copywriting, content writing, and SEO writing techniques.
It makes marketing content and the marketing of products very relatable, natural and non-intrusive.
This excited Mike Cheong because it would be helpful to brands or persons as a whole. They can gain clarity and direction to reach measurable and marketing goals.
They can better market their products and services because they understand their customers’ needs and wants on deeper levels.
They would be able to upgrade their marketing game – no matter digital or not.
Work with Mike Cheong – DIGITAL MARKETING TRAINER
Presently, Mike Cheong is working freelance and is available for hire. He specializes in marketing communications on various digital marketing topics especially on marketing online.
Mike works well with Digital Marketing Training Providers (TP), Government Agencies, Training Agencies, Non-Profit Organizations (NGO), Digital Marketing Agency, Corporate Companies and Various Organizations. He is experienced in both online (especially online) and offline (physical) content deliveries.
He simplifies complex marketing terms into byte-sized concepts and outlines strategies that attendees can implement with tangible results to further their business reach, self-branding, and revenue growth.
Michael’s life ambition is to help others to be better.
When other people win, Michael Cheong wins too.
