About
About Jonathan Seet
I spent a year unable to find anyone left to sell to. What fixed it was not a better pitch. It was being told I had the whole thing backwards.
About · Jonathan Seet
Jonathan Seet is a Singapore-based direct response and SEO copywriter, corporate trainer, and adjunct lecturer at Singapore Polytechnic, where he teaches Life Skills and Communications. He is the founder of Manuscript LLP and an ACLP-certified trainer, certified by the Institute for Adult Learning in 2023. He has written and trained across ten industries over fourteen years, has trained more than 500 working adults since 2015, and has taught more than 300 polytechnic students since 2024.
The year I ran out of people to call
Between late 2010 and early 2012 I was a financial planner in Singapore. I had the product knowledge and I had the enthusiasm. What I did not have was anyone left to talk to.
The playbook was warm network first, then cold calling, then street canvassing. I worked through my warm network in months. The cold approaches converted at a rate that made the arithmetic impossible. When I asked my managers what to do, the answer was to do more of the same, harder.
Digital marketing was only starting to become visible in Singapore then. Nobody in my office was using it, and the advice I was given was to leave it alone and stick to what worked. I went and learned it anyway.
I was selling the wrong thing
Two people changed how I work, and neither of them started with tactics.
Stuart Tan, a psychologist and trainer, ran the programme I joined first. What he fixed was not my technique. It was the assumption underneath it, that I was not the kind of person who could stand in front of a room and be believed. Eloquence, presentation and memory are trainable skills. So is the nerve to use them.
Sant Qiu, a sales copywriter, I went to work for. He gave me the correction the rest of my career is built on.
I had been leading with the product. Its features, its returns, how it compared. He showed me that the product is the last thing an audience cares about. The work starts with who they are, what they already believe, and how the brand is positioned in front of them. Everything else follows from that, and nothing works without it.
Where it got tested
By mid-2015 I was one of the senior copywriters at Maneuver Marketing. We were launching a new brand to widen the company’s reach, and the hardest part was the name. We settled on Growth Tribe: help aspiring freelancers and business owners grow, by belonging to a tribe of people willing to put in the work.
It became one of Singapore’s leading Facebook groups for entrepreneurs, and it led to Customers on Demand, a Facebook marketing workshop that filled rooms.
Client work ran alongside it. A sales page from those years that took a client past six figures in its first month. An apparel printing company taken to page one of Google, with organic traffic up more than 300%. I keep client names off this site. What both had in common was the thing Sant had drilled into me: start with the audience, not the offer.
That is still the copywriting work I take on today, and there is more of it in the portfolio.
The first room I could not control
Fabian Lim taught me SEO. He also put me in front of my first live training room.
Forty-plus adult learners. A full day. Building WordPress sites from scratch. I knew the material cold. What I did not know was how to run a clock. I overran, and the overrun pushed the hands-on setup back for everybody in the room.
Nobody walked out. But I have never forgotten it, and it is the reason time is now the first thing I design into a session rather than the last. Cover the core objectives, cover them properly, and finish when you said you would. A trainer who runs long is not being generous with their material. They are spending someone else’s day.
That is a one-off I only needed once. It is also why how I run corporate workshops now starts with the clock.
Why I kept teaching
What kept me in front of rooms was never the fee. It was watching people do things they had already decided they could not do. Build the site. Write the page. Send the email. Ask for the sale.
The most recent cohort thanked me and told me they would keep what they had been taught. Some of them wrote it down by hand.
I am scanning those letters now, and they are getting a page of their own on this site, because they are better evidence than anything I could write about myself. Until then, the credentials page is the short version.
What I do now
Adjunct lecturer at Singapore Polytechnic, teaching Life Skills and Communications across six interdisciplinary Common Core modules. Lecturer and trainer at the Singapore Institute of Retail Studies from 2022 to 2025, and formerly a digital marketing lecturer at CCAMT. ACLP-certified trainer, Institute for Adult Learning, 2023. Founder of Manuscript LLP.
I still write copy for clients, and that is deliberate. A trainer who stops doing the work starts teaching last year’s answer, and in this field last year’s answer expires quickly.
Since 2025 I have also helped run overseas learning expeditions with partner institutions abroad, taking students out of the classroom to apply design thinking to a live community brief.
The framework underneath all three roles is the CULTIVATE method, if you want the mechanics. There are also credentials in full and a page on speaking.
The year this site was not here
For about a year, jonathanseet.net did not exist. The domain expired, the hosting company holding it had become unreachable, and by the time I got to it the site was gone. There is no dramatic story. I lost most of the photographs from the early years along with it, which is why a few of the images on this page are the ones that happened to survive on other people’s phones.
I mention it because it is the honest answer to why older profiles of me still surface in search, describing a company I no longer run. This is the current one.
Beyond the desk
I cycle Singapore’s park connectors with friends, usually early and usually further than planned. I have a weakness for Italian food and for anything with chilli and sambal. I am a practising Roman Catholic, not perfect, but trying.
What I actually believe about this work
For a year, nobody showed me. Then three people did, and the change was not gradual.
That is the reason I teach as well as write. Most people are not short of effort. They are short of one correction, delivered by somebody who has actually done the thing. I had to go looking for mine, and it took three years. If I can be that for a room of people inside a day, that is a better use of a day than nearly anything else I could do with it.
Where to go next
- Corporate workshops and training for teams that need to be able to do the work themselves.
- Copywriting services for businesses that need the words written.
- Free classroom tools and resources for students and fellow educators.
Tell me what your team needs to be able to do
Corporate workshops, coaching and speaking, or done-for-you copywriting. Tell me what you are working on and I will tell you what I would change first.
Common questions about Jonathan Seet
What is Jonathan Seet known for?
Direct response and SEO copywriting in Singapore, and corporate training in marketing communication. He is also an adjunct lecturer at Singapore Polytechnic.
Where does Jonathan Seet teach?
He is an adjunct lecturer at Singapore Polytechnic, teaching Life Skills and Communications. He taught at the Singapore Institute of Retail Studies from 2022 to 2025 and previously taught digital marketing at CCAMT.
Is Jonathan a certified trainer?
Yes. He is an ACLP-certified trainer, certified by the Institute for Adult Learning in 2023. The credentials page has the full list.
Does Jonathan still take copywriting clients?
Yes. He writes for clients alongside the training and lecturing, which is deliberate: it is what keeps the material current.
Does he run training outside Singapore?
Yes. Since 2025 he has helped run overseas learning expeditions with partner institutions abroad, taking students out of the classroom to apply design thinking to a live community brief.