The Creative Who Learned to Sell

Property sales was never the plan. My plan was to make films.

At university, while most advertising students were learning to write copy, my focus was on making microfilms. In 2014, halfway through my second year, a short film won an award and an invitation to premiere at the Clermont-Ferrand International Short Film Festival in France. That moment felt like a signal. EDGE, a production company, was born before graduation.

That decision changed everything, though not in the way I expected.

The Phone Call That Redirected My Career

In 2016, a newspaper ran a short piece about a student who had started a production company while still in school. The chairman of Star Properties read it. He called.

What started as a conversation about filming two microfilms became an acquisition. EDGE became part of the Star Group ecosystem and renamed as Metropolitan Production. We kept making films, property campaigns, TV programmes for TV Station, concert productions from Starhall to the Hong Kong Coliseum. I was doing what I loved, at a scale I had never imagined.

Then came 2022, and a different kind of ask.

From Making Campaigns to Running Them

In 2022, Star Properties was preparing to launch its first major residential development, After The Rain. I had been doing the pre-marketing work. Just before launch, the chairman invited me to join as Marketing Director.

A year later, the market had turned. Interest rates were rising. Sentiment was deteriorating. Price indicators were pointing in one direction. The chairman promoted me to Managing Director and handed me the whole project, pricing, marketing, sales strategy, everything.

I was now responsible for clearing over 150 units in one of the most difficult market environments Hong Kong had seen in years.

What I Did Not Know

Numbers were the first challenge. A decade spent thinking in narratives and images had not prepared anyone for yield curves, cash flow forecasts, and monthly liquidity presentations to the chairman.

The learning curve was steep. The First-hand Residential Properties Sales Ordinance required mastering clause by clause. Managing agent expectations, buyer psychology, and pricing strategy simultaneously was a different kind of creative problem, one with real financial consequences. There were moments of pressure unlike anything in production. Everything landed on one desk. There was no one else to pass it to.

By end of 2024, the entire inventory had been cleared.

What People Got Wrong About Me

There were colleagues who said I had no business being a Managing Director. A creative person, they implied, was not qualified to run a sales operation.

I understood the concern. My CV did not follow the conventional path. I had not come up through agency, banking, or traditional property sales.

But a conventional path does not always produce the ability to read a market, tell a story that moves people, and execute under pressure without a template. The sales numbers answered the sceptics better than any argument could.

The One Thing That Made the Difference

If I had to distil everything I learned from this transition into a single idea, it would be this: Market vision is everything.

A creative director asks what story to tell. A managing director asks why the market needs to hear it right now. The best version of both is someone who can do both at the same time.

I did not plan to become a Managing Director. But I think everything I did before it was preparation.