Happy International Women’s Day from us to you!🌷

This week’s episode is an Actsplore This Podcast Favourite - a re-release in conjunction with International Women's Day on 'Owning Your Story & Billion Dollar Goals’.

If there's one person who embodies dreaming big, wild, and audacious, it's none other than Malaysian born and bred, Washington based Sarah Chen-Spellings!

In this wide-ranging and unfiltered conversation, Sarah shares the formative experiences that drove her to start Lean In Malaysia and Beyond the Billion, the highs and lows of her career trajectory smashing the glass ceilings, how she redefines failure, the value of authentic leadership, and much more.

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This week’s episode is a re-release of one of our favorite conversations on Career Prototyping with the incredible Bill Burnett. This conversation feels especially timely as we reflect on fresh starts and set intentions for the year ahead.

We speak to Bill Burnett, the co-author of the #1 New York Times bestseller Designing Your Life and Executive Director of the Design Program at Stanford University, to understand how design thinking can help us create a life and career that is both meaningful and fulfilling!

In this actionable and insight-filled episode, Bill unpacks how we can apply the concept of prototyping in our own lives to test out ideas and how we can reframe the dysfunctional beliefs that hold us back. (Spoiler alert: stay tuned to hear how you can better manage your energy as Bill walks us through his Energy Engagement map at the end!)

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NGL - 2024 has been a year of HUGE change for us 🙈😌

From changing jobs to moving countries on totally opposite sides of the world to each other, we’re learning to ride this rollercoaster 🎢 of change with our arms lifted high and as open as possible!🙌🏻

While change is never easy, it’s always an opportunity to grow 🌱.

In this episode, we dive into the twists and turns of navigating these life transitions as well as explore what it takes to embrace change while staying grounded.

Join us as we share our experiences and tips to help you navigate your own transitions (big or small!) with ease ✨

Featuring our beloved friend and pod guest extraordinaire, Crystal Cha, we explore how life changes, global events, and personal growth shape our narratives.

Let’s be real, sharing the personal stuff can feel daunting, but we wanted to bring our #ActsploreThis fam along as we dive into the highs, lows and in betweens of life in our 30s!

In this episode, we reflect on this new chapter: shifts in our career, evolving family & friendship dynamics, and how our relationships have evolved since our 20s.

It’s raw, real and relatable as we unpack themes of grief, growth and the messy yet meaningful journey of figuring it all out.

HIGHLIGHTS:

00:37 Reflecting on our 30's era

03:46 Career pivots and lessons learnt

10:05 Evolving family dynamics

18:40 Navigating friendships in our 30s

25:02 Relationship insights and personal growth

32:20 Advice to Our Younger Selves

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It's been a hot min, fam and we're back with a belated episode: Ask Us Anything & Life Updates with Sarah-Ann and Janice.

Huge thanks to our listeners for submitting a range of deep & thought-provoking questions to us, from the best and most underrated piece of career advice we've received, to our audacious goals, how we nurture our inner selves and the 'What Ifs' if life hasn't brought us to where we are today...

Spoiler alert: stick around for some major life updates! It's been a long time coming and we're grateful that you're sticking around!💖

Thank you for all the support we've received so far - #staytuned for our next episode on 'Life in our 30s'!

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Freda Liu is one of the most recognisable voices in Malaysia. She has lived and breathed business in the past decade with Malaysia’s only business radio station BFM 89.9, and  is currently the producer and presenter of The Shift Asia, a podcast platform that focuses on ESG, SDG, sustainability, and embracing fresh & innovative strategies in business practices

Besides being the author to 7 books, she is a powerhouse communicator and has been skillfully merging her experience as a journalist, broadcaster, emcee, moderator over the years. 

In this episode, Freda shares her journey from early storytelling competitions to a surprising career in broadcasting, and the pivotal moments that shaped her trajectory in media. We delve into her bold career moves, including joining BFM 89.9, and the lessons she learned from conducting thousands of interviews.

Freda opens up about how she navigated personal challenges, including her divorce, and how she transformed adversity into strength. Freda also shares some tips on how you can use the Wheel of Life exercise to find  fulfillment beyond work. 

HIGHLIGHTS:

3:30 Freda’s divine pivot into the world of broadcasting 

6:40 Why it’s crucial to try different things 

9:42 Freda’s annual practice for intentional growth 

13:07 What being ‘Better and not Bitter’ looked like & what her divorce taught her

18:28 Her daily monologue whilst navigating grief 

20:46 Saying YES to joining BFM 89.9

26:38 Freda’s very first BFM interview 

30:40 The Wheel of Life and how this practice changed her life 

33:41 Freda’s self care mechanism 

38:59 How Freda is ‘Elevating’ herself this year  

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Peter Yong (aka Mr Money TV) grew up believing that money was the root of all evil. 

So how did Peter eventually go on to become a wildly successful personal finance YouTuber with a 7-figure media empire?!

In this unfiltered conversation, we dive into the twists & turns in Peter’s journey (spoiler alert: he had multiple pivots in his career before building Mr Money TV..one of which involved a lucrative stint selling insurance!) 

Peter shares about the challenging beginnings of building Mr Money TV, balancing multiple odd jobs to keep the venture alive, the brutal lessons he learnt as he scaled the business and how he plans to advance his mission of demystifying the complex world of finance for the average Malaysian through accessible and engaging content.

Episode Highlights: 

2:00 Growing up with very little money 

4:04 Mr Money was a bad boy?!

5:42 What his dad’s bankruptcy taught him 

6:55 Peter’s first job…in HR? 

8:00 Peter grew up thinking that money is the root of all evil 

10:41 The life lesson that his first job taught him

13:23 Brutal realities of being an insurance agent 

15:10 The secret to getting good at something 

18:00 Uploading his first YouTube video 

20:00 Working multiple odd jobs to sustain Mr Money TV 

21:35 The moment he decided to go all in 

24:42 How Peter found his co-founders 

29:35 Navigating difficult conversations  

32:28 The most brutal lesson he learnt building Mr Money TV

36:50 Peter’s ‘Ikigai’

40:11 Unpacking the content creation strategy of Mr Money TV 

42:13 How Peter successfully monetised his podcast 

44:14 Taking advice from the people around him..and an MIT professor!

46:46 What’s next for Mr Money TV?

Watch it on YouTube: https://youtu.be/B1iVwpIFMFs

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It’s hard to believe we’re almost halfway through 2024! When time flies by so quickly, we want to take a moment to hit the pause button and reflect on the whirlwind that was the first half of the year. 

Tune in as we share our reflections on a recent Actsplore This milestone! We also share personal experiences with caregiving, struggling with ambiguity, the new habits that have made a difference in our daily lives ..and more! 

We hope that this conversation will prompt you to pause and reflect on the first half of 2024. As always, connect with us on socials and share with us a practice/habit you’ve implemented that has made a difference for you. 

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Dr Ong Kian Ming (better known as OK Man) is the former Deputy Minister of MITI and two term Member of Parliament in Malaysia from 2013 to 2022, representing the Democratic Action Party (DAP) and serving the largest parliamentary constituency in the country. He currently serves as the Program Director of Malaysia’s very first Philosophy Politics & Economics (PPE) program at Taylor’s University. 

In this wide-ranging discussion, we uncover the life & leadership lessons that Dr Ong learnt the hard way - so you don’t have to! (Spoiler alert: we get some insights on Value-Added Networking, Value-Added Transparency and Value-Added Mentoring) 

Tune in as Dr Ong shares about his lesser-known childhood stories, lessons from his yester-years of management consulting, roadblocks that he faced as a policymaker, how Sheraton Move took a toll on his mental health, what a ‘return to politics’ could look like - and more!

Episode Highlights:

1:35 OKM’s lesser known childhood fun fact

7:40 His proudest policy achivements 

11:22 Not taking credit as a politician 

12:26 Main roadblocks bringing a policy from strategy to ideation 

15:11 First Difficult Lesson (Value added networking) 

20:17 Second Difficult Lesson (Value added transparency) 

22:27 His involvement with the vaccination exercise during the COVID Pandemic 

25:56 Balancing conviction and ROI as a politician 

26:54 Third Difficult Lesson (Value added mentoring) 

29:39 Who is his mentor in the political landscape?

32:26 Sheraton Move and how it affected his mental health 

40:31 His aspirations with his podcast venture, Are We Ok? 

42:40 What he would do differently if he rejoined politics

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