“They make fruit jam out of discarded banana peels.” Justin Chan, founder of creative agency Designed For Good (DEFG), was telling me about his upcoming collaborator, a climate conscious food design unit looking to run a programme with a food rescue ground-up initiative. Originally, the ground-up wanted a standard setup, serving rescued produce over a meal. Justin is thinking of something far bigger with them. He helped them curate an intimate fine-dining evening for survivors of domestic abuse. I stared at him, completely lost. Trash to survivors? He caught my expression and laughed: “I connected food rescue with women’s rescue.”
That ability is his superpower, which he terms “Collaboration-as-a-Service”, taking two completely disparate ideas or organizations and finding a way to make them click. Like how second-hand fashion initiative Cloop now collaborates with Daughters of Tomorrow, enabling low-income women heading out for job interviews to be fitted with high-quality professional attire.
Justin speaks with the confidence of a seasoned entrepreneur, but just two years ago he was earning a regular salary lecturing at Temasek Polytechnic.
Today, DEFG is a 30-person powerhouse powered almost entirely by volunteers. Not random volunteers, either. We’re talking elite creatives who have worked at Lego, Google, and Apple. “My team come from all over the world,” he told me, leaning in. “Including one who worked with Netflix in the US who is joining us next year.”
Naturally, I had to ask the question every founder thinks is impossible: How on earth do you convince top-tier talent in the US to stay up late, work Singapore hours, and do it all for free?
He smiled. “I built it in stealth mode. If I told people my methods beforehand, they would have told me I was out of my mind.”
Here is the unconventional playbook behind how he did it.
1. How to manage multiple projects at once without burning out?
Master the arm of extreme task-switching. By forcing your brain to jump between complex creative directions in tight intervals, you train yourself to context-switch across dozens of projects simultaneously without losing momentum.
“You know how lecturers are always asking, ‘Can you remind me what your thesis is about?’ That’s because lecturers are truly overwhelmed”. Justin explains that back at Temasek Poly, he was managing 80 individual student projects across three different cohorts at any given time. That skill became the bedrock for how he manages a fast-growing, 30-person agency today.
He developed this intense task-switching discipline directly in the classroom. Standard consultations involved spending 10 straight minutes per student, a system that left everyone else idling around waiting for their turn. Justin overhauled the format by splitting consultations into two tight 5-minute sprints per student. In the first sprint, he reviewed their work and set clear, immediate task for them to complete by the end of the class. In the second sprint, he checked their progress, evaluated what they completed, and set homework for the next session. Students were amazed by how much they could accomplish in one lesson, while Justin trained himself to context-switch across dozens of creative directions without losing momentum.
“So now, when my team runs 40 client projects, it feels like light work.” He smiles.
2. How to train your teams faster and at scale?
Instead of relying on repetitive trial-and-error, you can accelerate their learning by explaining the institutional rules rather than make them learn by brute force doing.
“’Draw 200 logos and you’ll eventually figure out what a good logo is’, that was the old-school way I was taught,” Justin lamented. He rejects teaching through brute force. Instead, he has reached a level of mastery where he can break down artistic intuition with engineering precision.
“Do you know why fashion logos are almost always black and white?” he asked. “That’s because they must sit cleanly on varied print materials, physical tags, and textured fabrics without clashing. In contrast, technology brands operate primarily on digital screens, allowing them to leverage vibrant full-color palettes. And do you know why a festival logo needs bold typography instead of just abstract icons? Because the name of the event is the brand people search for and share.”
He also teaches his students and team strategic business frameworks like Blue Ocean Strategy. The idea is simple: stop fighting competitors in a crowded market, a “Red Ocean,” so named because it’s bloody from everyone fighting over the same customers, and build an uncontested market where no one else is competing (a “Blue Ocean”).
Take Cirque du Soleil. Instead of competing in the traditional circus Red Ocean alongside giants like Ringling Bros., they eliminated expensive star performers, animal acts, and slapstick humor. Instead, they borrowed from live theatre, dramatic storylines, operatic lighting, live music, and professional choreography. They transformed the circus into an intellectual, artistic experience, unlocking an entirely new target market of adult theatergoers and corporate clients willing to pay premium prices.
This is his secret! It’s not that he pays better. It’s that he offers world-class, structured mentorship they can’t get anywhere else.
3. How to motivate and retain high-performing talent without money?
When team members are given complete ownership over causes they care about, their engagement stems from intrinsic purpose rather than financial compliance.
“How do you get 30 creative people to adopt your exact design style?” I asked. “Oh, I don’t,” Justin replied. “My goal is to build you to your fullest potential so you feel fulfilled.” If a volunteer designer is passionate about animal welfare, he will actively source a client project in that domain for them, while his core staff handles the foundational agency work.
That philosophy stands in stark contrast to old-school creative giants. David Ogilvy famously designed his agency to operate as “the teaching hospital of advertising.” To achieve a single editorial voice, Ogilvy wrote extensive internal memos, guides, and books (such as Confessions of an Advertising Man and Ogilvy on Advertising) that detailed precise rules, down to how headlines should be structured. Junior’s work would be rigorously critiqued by senior leaders and peers until it conforms to that voice.
At this point, I understood Justin’s secret. People flock to him because he develops talent and creates a great place to work. He doesn’t have to pay them with money, because he is already paying them with autonomy and fulfillment.
Want a front-row seat to interesting people like Justin? Join Block 173.
Just like Justin built a 30-person movement powered by real purpose and mentorship, we are building Block 173. This is a movement that is best described as the“Miss Tam Chiak” of career advice, run with the spirit of “Lunch with the FT.” The goal is to give curious minds a backstage pass to interview people in the world’s most intriguing trades, and giving back to the community by writing up the gems of knowledge they have learnt into LinkedIn and blog posts.
As a founding Fellow of Block 173, you get rare insider access to these interesting people. You will also get to bond with a tight-knit community of ambitious peers who open doors for each other, and apprentice under me.
Interested? Drop me a message with your CV, a 1000 word writing sample of an interview you’ve done, at eileensoh@better.sg. Only shortlisted candidates will be contacted.
About Justin Chan
Justin Chan is the founder of Designed For Good (DEFG), is a thriving social enterprise that does branding, service, web design and event planning that drives awareness and productivity for businesses in the sustainability and social space. Reach out to him if you have a cause or project worth championing.
Outside of his professional pursuits, he is a dedicated father to a special needs child. He has been featured across mainstream media platforms, including Channel NewsAsia (CNA) features, prominent leadership podcasts, and high-profile public engagements (including with PM Lawrence Wong) discussing social entrepreneurship, design education, and workforce evolution.
About Eileen Soh
Eileen Soh is a Southeast Asia geopolitical and cybersecurity intelligence analyst at a Fortune 500 company, with 13 years of experience in Singapore national security.
Before writing publicly, Eileen spent more than a decade writing for senior decision-makers in government. Working for readers with little time taught her to get to the point quickly and catch the attention of busy people in 90 seconds.
Today, she teaches the same discipline on LinkedIn, helping readers learn how to catch attention in 90 seconds. She writes about personal and company branding. She also leads Block173.com, which interviews successful people in Singapore to find out “how they did it” and share career advice.
She has spoken at Women in Tech and the Singapore University of Social Sciences, been featured in The Straits Times and on The Flying Dutchman’s Morning Drive radio show, and is ranked #4 on Favicon in her subdomain.
Want to bring your brand story to her 10,000 followers? Drop her a message here.
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