JAMAICAN entrepreneur Duane Lue-Fung wants to fill a void in what he believes is an under-served market for professional training and coaching across the Caribbean.

The Kingston businessman has launched a new company, Duane Lue-Fung Marketing, that will offer services aimed at developing professionals through sales training, success coaching, personal development, and public speaking sessions. Against this background, the company promises to strengthen human resource at organisations through enhancing employee morale, increasing productivity and boosting sales.

Lue-Fung, who is principal of Lutec, a distributor of copiers and multifunctional printers in Jamaica, suggested that many working individuals across the region are experiencing a “quiet depression” in today’s harsh economic climate, which has prevented them from maximising on their talents.

“Professionals genuinely need help, and it has opened up a personal development market where you do a lot of business and success coaching,” he said.

The market for professional development is worth hundreds of millions of dollars worldwide. But Lue-Fung said a passion to help people, not money, motivated him to start the new venture.

“I have a passion because there are so many people out there who have been knocked down; they need someone to pull them up,” said Lue-Fung, one of the founding members of the Young Entrepreneur Association of Jamaica.

Lue Fung said a lot of his company’s teachings will be based off personal experiences.

“I’m using my personal experience to develop and get into an industry where entrepreneurs are no longer afraid to talk about their successes and failures,” said Lue-Fung.

“I went through a period in business where I became stuck like everybody else,” he said, noting that “the key to personal speaking and why the industry is getting so big now is that people want to hear real stories.”

Indeed, Lue-Fung’s experiences have made him into a sought-after sales trainer, success coach and personal development expert.

His acumen for marketing and sales has been critical to him building Lutec (formerly known as Copier Concepts) from start-up into a leading distributor of copiers and multifunctional printers in Jamaica, with very little financing.

More recently, Lue-Fung’s success in network marketing, through which he has achieved emerald status as an independent distributor of gourmet coffee product Organo Gold, has earned him high ratings as a young public speaker.

“In doing network marketing, one of the things that I have realised, after speaking to so many people, is that people want to excel but the major factors are fear, low self-esteem and lack of vision. Most people never expand their vision themselves,” he noted.

Having done speaking engagements in Jamaica, Suriname, Barbados and Trinidad & Tobago, the businessman said demand for personal development coaching is strong across the Caribbean. In fact, it has influenced him to set up a bureau with professionals across the region who have made themselves available for speaking engagements and coaching.

“The bureau we are putting together is a Caribbean bureau, not a Jamaican bureau,” said Lue Fung. “We are tapping into resources. I might find a CEO from Trinidad who is doing speaking as well and doesn’t mind coming here to talk about a particular issue.”