Adam Khoo

Khoo is the director of seven other private companies. He was also a director of the Singapore Health Promotion Board (HPB) from 2009 to 2010. He is a member of the Singapore Chapter of the Young Presidents' Organization, whose membership is available only to business owners below age 50, who run businesses with a minimum annual turnover of US$9 million.

In 2008, Khoo was ranked among the top 25 richest Singaporeans under age 40 by The Executive magazine. In the same year, he was conferred the NUS Business School Eminent Business Alumni Award.

At 23, Khoo obtained his licence in NLP in Seattle, Washington. At 24, he became a trainer at SuperTeen, conducting courses for organisations like the Chinese Development Assistance Council (CDAC), Association of Muslim Professionals (AMP), Nanyang Girls' High School and the Universitas Pelita Harapan (UPH) in Jakarta. At 25, Khoo was coaching top insurance agents and marketing managers twice his age on how to boost sales. At this time, his father, Vince Khoo, who owned the advertising agency Adcom, bought out all partners and offered the younger Khoo the opportunity to run it. Within three months, he turned it around from making losses in 1998–1999 to clinching a pitching rate of 80 percent with the first monthly profit, and went on to increase margins by 30%. Their clients have included AIA, Dumex, Mobil (lost during the Exxon merger), Phillip Wain slimming centres, Sobe Fresh Soya Milk, Tabasco, Heinz, Sinsin, Night Safari, Singapore and MobileOne (M1).

Khoo's portfolio consists of property that he rents out. In 1998, he bought a condominium in East Coast for S$480,000 and rented it out for about S$3,000. He sold it for S$650,000 in 2004. Other properties he owns include a house in East Coast and a condominium at Robertson Quay.

In 1987, when Khoo was 13, his parents enrolled their "under-achiever" son for a five-day residential program at Ladyhill Hotel called Super-Teen Camp. The man responsible for spotting Khoo's "gifted talent" in Super-Teen was Dr. Ernest Wong, founder, principal consultant and master teacher of Ernesco, the Centre for Motivational Language Learning based in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia (the Super-Teen Camp is now under Learning Mastery Pte. Ltd.) Dr. Wong's teaching tools incorporated and adapted an American-developed learning technology called neuro-linguistic programming (NLP), as well as whole-brain learning. This was the beginning of Khoo's interest and journey in mastering motivational techniques, which formed the foundation of many of his books and seminars.

Adam Khoo Yean Ann was born on 8 April 1974, to Vince Khoo and Betty L. Khoo-Kingsley. At age eight, Khoo was expelled from St Stephen's Primary School for misbehavior, partly due to poor academic results. His parents hunted for a primary school willing to accept him and finally found Ngee Ann Primary School. Due to his poor results at the Primary School Leaving Examination (PSLE), he did not qualify to enter any of the six secondary schools his parents had chosen. He eventually enrolled in a government school, Ping Yi Secondary School, where he passed only five out of eight academic subjects and finished 156th out of 160 Secondary 1 Express Stream students.