Foolish Careers

On this podcast, we've always interviewed creators in Asia. 

I made an exception for this episode because I wanted to speak to Chris Jones. Chris is a journalist and screenwriter who is best known for his work at Esquire Magazine, where two of his stories won the National Magazine Award, the highest accolade for magazine writing in the US.

I'm a long-time reader of Chris's work and also enjoy his hilarious Twitter feed @enswelljones. So when his book publicist reached out -- out of the blue, which is a first for Foolish Careers -- and asked if I wanted to check out the book and interview Chris, I wasn't going to say no. 

The book is called The Eye Test, where Chris makes the case for the value of human creativity in an age of algorithms: https://www.twelvebooks.com/titles/chris-jones/the-eye-test/9781538730683/

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Temujin is a limited-series audio drama about the life of Genghis Khan. It has a fan base in the audio drama world and was a finalist at this year's Webby Awards in the Podcasts - Scripted Fiction category, where it competed against The Daily Show with Trevor Noah and entries from HBO, the BBC, and Wondery.

Spoiler alert: Temujin lost to Trevor Noah. But it was comfortably in second place with 34% of the 2 million votes cast. (The Daily Show with Trevor Noah got 40% of the votes. Third place got 10%.)

It has opened doors for the show’s producers. Writer and director Roshan Singh was brought on as a writer on the animated adaptation of the beloved graphic novel The Art of Charlie Chan. He and fellow Temujin producer Isabel Perucho have set up Andas Productions to create narrative stories for audio and video games. 

But back in university (they graduated from Yale-NUS three years ago, although it feels like a lifetime in the past), Temujin was a capstone project Roshan worked on with his classmates.

Most thesis projects simply get printed and sent to the archives. He wanted to put it out into the world, despite little encouragement from mentors. 

“One thing a mentor of mine said was that Temujin was just a silly little side project I was doing with my friends and that I would have to grow up soon and figure out what my actual career is going to look like.”

He first pursued it as a play, but there was no interest. So Roshan considered audio. “The beauty of audio is if you have the resources, nobody can tell you not to do it.” With Isabel running marketing, they raised $10,000 on Kickstarter to fund the production. “We decided to push ahead because we had this faith that if it meant something to us, then it'll mean something to someone else.”

In this interview, Roshan and Isabel reflect on the experience of finding a listener base for Temujin and how they're navigating the industry as young producers. 

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Paniti and Nuttaya Junhasavasdikul had stars in their eyes. They had just spent two weeks in Hawaii with Nat Bletter, a pioneer in the bean-to-bar chocolate movement, and at the Fine Cacao and Chocolate Institute in San Francisco with chocolate scholar Dr Carla Martin. From Dr Bletter they learned how to produce and package bean-to-bar chocolate, and from Dr Martin how to grade cacao, the better to evaluate the beans they were buying directly from farmers. 

Their idea of having one’s own brand of chocolate…seemed…possible. 

They had already planted 400 cacao seedlings on a plot of land in Mae Tang, in Chiang Mai province. Which they found while on a motorbike trip around Thailand. Which they had done to slow their lives down after two decades working as lawyers clocking billable hours. 

“Those hours, we only spend them and we don't get anything back,” Paniti says. “Lawyers have a good life. We get paid well, we reward ourselves with cars and watches. But finally, we felt that this wasn’t for us. So we tried to enrich ourselves with more experiences than objects.” 

The plan was to build a retirement farmhouse, eventually. But in Thailand, unused land is taxed heavily, so a farmer suggested they plant cacao. “We can grow cacao in Thailand!” Nuttaya thought. “This is interesting.”

Following their curiosity, they crisscrossed the country on their own cacao learning tour, then Nuttaya taught herself how to make chocolate using YouTube. The texture of these early batches wasn’t great, but they discovered that cacao from different provinces presented unique flavor profiles. 

Cacao from Chumphon, on the Gulf of Thailand’s western coast, has “notes of ripe grapes and red berries.” Just 200 kilometers north, Prachuap Khiri Khan, which grows pineapples and coconuts, is “bright and citrusy, with a smooth floral aftertaste.” Beans from Chantaburi, in the east, hint of “passion fruit, mango, and a honey-lemon creamy body.” 

“And that was it, the idea ran wild,” Paniti laughs. 

Kad Kokoa, their brand, celebrates Thai culture through chocolate. Now three years old, Nuttaya and Paniti have self-funded it to where it is today: a retail space, a cafe, a lab, a talented team, relationships with farmers, awards, the support of top chefs, an outpost in Tokyo, and a growing base of regular customers. 

Paniti used to think this was the time to scale. They met with many investors and almost closed some deals. The typical response was: “We like your brand very much, but you need to move a needle. If one day you make half a billion [baht], talk to us then.” On reflection, this type of investment was not for them. “We cannot take money then suddenly we are running like a rat trying to deliver investor returns from chocolate.” 

So until they find their “investor soulmate,” as Nuttaya describes it, someone who has patient capital and is investing for impact, they’ll continue to bootstrap. 

In this interview, Nuttaya and Paniti share what they’ve learned about patiently building a product, brand, and creative life from scratch.

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As fledgling graphic designers, Felix and his co-founder Germaine were held at arm's length by clients. While developing a brand identity for a restaurant, they never had a chance to taste the food. Another client claimed to do guerilla marketing but actually did above-the-line advertising, and when Felix pointed this out, he was told to stick to designing the logo.

“I felt like we were just designing the candy wrapper for this thing. I didn't really know what we were selling, whether it was good, whether it lived up to its promise.”

The situation amplified the value (or lack thereof) businesses saw in design. Design Film Festival — the studio’s first, most visible, and longest-running venture — was their response to the need to educate non-designers about the value of design. 

“The design conversation had to move beyond its professional ghetto,” Felix says. A conference or book wasn’t the solution. “It's difficult to convince a banker or a housewife to go out and buy a huge design book, but if you ask them to spend 70 minutes watching a film on Dior, that’s quite simple.”

They convinced movie distributors in the US and Europe they were legit film festival producers and assembled a lineup of 8 films screened over 10 days in a 100-seat theatre.

On the first day, only 30 people showed up. 

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Through self-inquiry, Keith has embraced vulnerability and emotional honesty for a more meaningful career and life. “I'm 50 years old, I should know better, but I don't think the learning journey ever ends.” 

He incorporates these ideas into the robust innovation workshops he designs for clients seeking to imagine meaningful customer experiences in a world of accelerating change. While the work requires academic rigor and practical experience working with organizations and ecosystems, Keith says “quite often, the soft skills are actually the difference between success and failure.”

And if you enjoyed this episode, there's more where that came from. Sign up for the free Foolish Careers newsletter. You'll get fresh stories and actionable takeaways from a creator who's ignored the advice to get a sensible career. Go to foolishcareers.asia. We look forward to hearing from you!

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Sunisa Manning was born and raised in Bangkok to a Thai mom and American dad. She studied journalism at Brown University then came back home to work in the non-profit sector, which led to working in rural Thailand with farmers, school teachers, and descendants of royalty alike. 

The experience opened her eyes to the wealth disparity in the kingdom and was part of Sunisa’s political awakening. (“I was one of those people who probably couldn't have told you it was rice growing in the field for a long time.”) 

It planted the earliest seeds for her debut novel, A Good True Thai, a coming-of-age story about three young Thais from different classes and ethnic backgrounds who join Thailand’s 1970’s violent democracy movement.  

The characters are compelling; the story has the sweep of historical fiction. Jonathan Head, the BBC’s long-time Thailand correspondent who hosted Sunisa’s launch, says it has an incredible sense of place. It is deeply researched and took six years to write.

Between the writing and the topic, there was potential for getting published in the US. “We tried to sell it in March 2017. Donald Trump took office in January 2017. I talked to my agent about it: ‘You think Americans are going to want to buy anything to do with the rest of the world?’ She was like, ‘I think it's so topical.’ And that's really not what anyone else thought.”

After trying to sell it to a US publisher for three years, Sunisa submitted her manuscript to the Epigram Books Fiction Prize, a Singapore competition that opened up to Southeast Asian writers in 2020. A Good True Thai was a finalist and sold out in four months, which hasn’t happened since the Prize’s first year.

In this interview, Sunisa tells us how she advocated for her own work and promoted the book during the pandemic. 

We're also joined by Epigram's Fiction Editor, Jason Erik Lundberg. He edited the book and provides insight into the writer-editor relationship today.

If you have a novel in your drawer, or in your head, this is the podcast episode to listen to

And if you enjoyed this episode, there's more where that came from. Sign up for the free Foolish Careers newsletter. You'll get fresh stories and actionable takeaways from a creator who's ignored the advice to get a sensible career. Go to foolishcareers.asia. We look forward to hearing from you!

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How does a kid just out of National Service learn about wine when there are no teachers in Singapore? Wine for Dummies, of course. 

Gerald Lu, one of Singapore’s leading sommeliers and current chair of the Sommelier Association of Singapore, had no choice. “The industry wasn't very helpful then. There wasn't a sommelier association. All the best wine guys are at The Raffles Hotel or maybe Les Amis, and these guys are very busy so you email them and nobody replies.”

Choosing to become a sommelier is unconventional in Asia, and hard graft in a place like Singapore where alcohol is expensive and wine isn’t baked into the culture. The Ministry of Manpower created a category for the job only in 2015.

Gerald is an example of how one can pursue the work you love despite being misunderstood or dismissed. In this interview we talk about how he found a path through an under-developed industry and the role of a sommelier as storyteller.

For a summary of actionable takeaways from this interview, go to www.foolishcareers.asia and subscribe to the newsletter.

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By age 30, Shaz Hassan had several significant projects under his belt. His London-based production firm Studio Rarekind, cofounded with Ryo Sanada, had produced and sold three independent films, “Scratching The Surface” about Japanese hip hop culture, "Rackgaki" about Japanese graffiti art, and “Soka Afrika” documenting human trafficking in football.

They had authored two books on graffiti art in Asia which led to a new project, Stickerbomb, a series of sticker books curating street art from around the world. 

These projects established Studio Rarekind’s reputation as a creative studio plugged into contemporary culture and attracted projects in sports, music and art. 

Not bad for someone who started out as video paparazzi doorstepping Justin Timberlake as he came out of a club.

The day after he submitted the hard drive containing Soka Africa, Shaz got on a plane to Southeast Asia “and basically never left.” He lived and worked in Siem Reap, Jakarta, Bangkok and Singapore for the next decade. 

Shaz had come up as part of the street art and DJ scenes in Brighton and then London’s East End, which nourished Studio Rarekind creatively. Coming to Southeast Asia, he sought new creative scenes and found pockets of it in Jakarta, Bangkok and around the region. 

Moving to Singapore to “get serious,” Shaz struggled to find a scene that synced with Studio Rarekind’s edgy vibe. While they won great projects with advertising clients like Nike and Netflix, it pulled them away from making the films they loved. (It maps to the 5-year gap in Shaz’s IMDB page.)

“I was out drinking one evening with another agency and I realized that what we were creating was essentially what they have. It set off a trigger in my head: Wow, I don't want what they have. I never wanted that in my life. What am I doing?” 

In this interview, Shaz talks about how Studio Rarekind built a culturally-relevant body of work, the decision to close down the studio in Singapore, and why every creator has a “therapy piece.” 

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What if you had to explain the concept of a gallery, then build one, before you could present your art? What if a creator had to build YouTube or TikTok before they could produce their first video? 99.999999% of us would never get started. 

And what if you craved cheese while living in the poorest country in Southeast Asia, where milk isn’t part of the diet and farmers didn’t know they could milk their buffalo? 

If you’re the founders of Laos Buffalo Dairy, you do it all from scratch: build the dairy, convince farmers to rent you their buffalo, grow the grass the buffalo was going to eat, set up the breeding program to improve genetics, import the equipment. And of course, make the cheese -- and yogurt and ice cream and cheesecake.

“We wanted a midlife crisis with a purpose, not a Porsche,” says cofounder Rachel Elman O’Shea. “The Porsche would’ve been cheaper.”  

Rachel is a trained chef. With her co-founder Susie Martin, a seasoned corporate executive, they decided to deal with their midlife crises by moving from Singapore to Luang Prabang, the Lao city known for its monks and languid life along the Mekong. The plan was to build a hotel, sell it, then figure out “the cheese thing” afterward. 

But a farmer was willing to lend them his buffalo for the cheese experiment. Before they knew it, they were learning to milk buffalo and trying (and failing) to make buffalo mozzarella.  

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Journalist and editor Kristine Fonacier launched her writing career in the golden age of magazines, and her freelance work as a music journalist quickly took off. Ten years in, she found herself questioning its relevance.

“I was doing rock-and-roll journalism. After your hundredth party, you begin to wonder if you’re really contributing anything to society.”

This triggered a career recalibration that included 18 months of volunteer work in Guyana, an experience that informed her editorial decisions when she came back to the publishing world and built a broad body of work that spanned business, politics, culture and travel. 

As editor-in-chief of Esquire Philippines (she’s the first female editor in the title’s 80-year history), Kristine led an editorial shift that featured fully-clothed middle-aged women on the cover and called out misogyny in its pages. She helped the country’s youngest billionaire write his first book. Then out of a desire to read and tell travel stories about the Philippines that were not stereotypical listicles about white-sand beaches, she co-founded Grid Magazine, an independent title still running today that has found a new revenue stream during the pandemic. She is currently editor-in-chief of travel title Smile Magazine.

In this interview, Kristine spells out the traits that helped her build a versatile writing career, how to turn a passion project into a sustainable business, and why she looks for attitude over talent when hiring writers.

If you enjoyed this interview, there's more where that came from. Join us at Foolish Careers, www.foolishcareers.asia, where you can sign up for the weekly newsletter and connect with the Foolish community. We look forward to meeting you!

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