Arthur Wong

Arthur Wong has a wealth of experience and exposure in many diverse business environments. He has spent more than 25 years working with and for businesses that have spanned the globe. He’s worked in over 60 countries.

After graduating from the University of Pittsburgh in Chemical Engineering, he donned a hard hat and steel toed boots and progressed through a number of technical engineering positions in industrial chemical manufacturing facilities. While there he found that the biggest challenges were not solving complex chemical process problems, but always centered around people issues. In all the years of formal education, he was ill prepared to work alongside co-workers who had many ingrained opinions, much less, manage and motivate operations, maintenance, and engineering groups effectively. Forging friendships and relationships with other managers, outside vendors, and fellow workers was as important as solving the next process bottleneck. After a protracted union strike which lasted 90 days through Thanksgiving and Christmas, requiring him to be locked inside the plant, working 12 hour shifts, he re-evaluated his career.

One question that he asked at the time was “Who are the people in this company that have the most impact?”. The answer was the salespeople. After all, they brought in the orders. They had the most independence. They were able to be captains of their own fate, making more money, and having more influence than anyone else. From that point on, Arthur was determined to become a salesperson. The transformation didn’t happen overnight. In fact, it was rare that engineers ever made it into sales.

Taking a new position as a technical service manager with a $100 million a year environmental biotechnology firm was the springboard to a career in sales and marketing. Arthur traveled from coast to coast and abroad visiting customers and prospective customers providing consultation, training and sales support. He discovered that he was making more sales than the salespeople. Shortly thereafter, Arthur became a product manager for the worldwide industrial division with responsibilities for sales, technical support, and marketing. That was the first time he made a commission, in fact, it was a lucrative override on all world-wide business in the industrial division. The company became a market leader by innovative advances in technology as well as adopting consultative selling strategies.

Five years later, a vice president of a $10 billion energy company approached Arthur with an offer to start a new division focused on cleaning up their environmental legacies. At the time, they owned seven oil refineries, 1300 gas stations, one of the largest natural gas pipelines in the country, holdings in eastern and western coal. They were one of the largest crude oil traders in the world. Arthur became part of the management team that built a network of nine regional sales and service offices as well as becoming Chief Technology Officer responsible for due diligence and procurement of innovative new technologies. Later he managed a six state territory selling environmental consulting and remediation services.

A few years later, an opportunity to return to his hometown of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania was an offer that Arthur could not refuse. He accepted a position as Vice President of International Sales for a large engineering firm. Arthur sold large design/build projects to industrial customers in the steel, automotive, pharmaceutical, food processing, utilities, petroleum, chemical, aluminum, mining, aerospace, and transportation industries. In addition, he built a network of distributors and representative agencies in Latin America, Asia Pacific, and Europe. Within a year, the company was sold and consolidated into the largest environmental abatement company in the country. As Vice President – International, Arthur took a position as an Asia Pacific Marketing Manager in Singapore while continuing to team sell 20-year contracts for large industrial and municipal facilities. As an executive and manager, his knowledge of negotiation and bidding processes has been directly responsible for sales growth and winning more than $100 million worth of business.

After the company was purchased for $8 billion in cash, Arthur left the corporate world to focus on his own businesses. He has started up and operated a marketing consulting practice focused on small to medium sized businesses. He also continues a private engineering consulting practice to the refining and energy industry. Back in 2003, Arthur was burned out after spending many years climbing the corporate ladder in engineering, sales, marketing and executive roles in a number of Fortune 500 companies. Arthur has traveled to more places in the world than he can remember, working across dozens of time zones, chasing after the next big project and the next big market. The work was lucrative, but the toll on his personal life was devastating.

While consulting for Sam Lucci in one of his companies, they became friends. Sam shared his ideas for creating something that would have a worldwide impact. He wanted to take his lifelong quest for understanding “why people do what they do” and teach others, “how to help them change for the better, which in turn would change our society for the better”. The secret is, of course, “Think More – React Less™”. Seems so obvious, but knowing what that means and how to do it is the real secret. Sam’s passion for Think More – React Less™ was and is intoxicating and his ideas are electrifying. Arthur put his own business pursuits on hold and joined with Sam and has been with him ever since.

Arthur has worked for the last twenty years with Sam Lucci, building a sales training, employee development and personal development practice dedicated to teaching people to “Think More – React Less™”. He has been active in many roles including: sales, marketing, management, coaching and training.