Ramen To Riches

Ramen To Riches

By Chris ChongBusinessEntrepreneurshipTechnologySelf-ImprovementManagement
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Ramen To Riches episodes

  • Making A TV Show Part 2

    Due To A Surge In Traffic, For An Easier Experience, Listen On Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Stitcher or Podbean.

    Thanks for joining me for Season 1, this is our Season 1 finale episode. Join us in the coming months for the start of Season 2 (to be announced). We hit 34 episodes!

    Hey, I need to be real to your right now. I’m so scared. I’m so scared about whether I’ll be able to make this Tv show. Why did I make the stakes so high? Why didn’t I walk away from it like I could have last year? I could be sipping on fresh coconuts in a hammock somewhere in Southeast Asia worrying about when my hair is going to turn grey. Instead, I’m freaking out about something that is still very much an idea. It hasn’t even grown into a business, no one has said anything, it’s all just a bunch of words on a piece of paper.

    I stopped dreaming recently, I mean, I still had dreams while I slept, I stopped having dreams about my life. About who I wanted to be, about where I wanted to end up. I guess it’s just the reality of life, that eventually, maybe in your 20s, or maybe in your 30s, you get hit hard in the face by a good dose of reality. How does it feel? It stings. It feels like that time when you woke up from being asleep and miss being back asleep.

    What are the stakes? Well, failure for one thing. Not being able to hit the bullseye. Our life is short so we’re told we have little room for error. But isn’t that the beauty of life, you should see the light side of it, otherwise, we’re all doomed to setting unrealistic expectations. You should embrace the idea that you can fail because it means you’re really living, you’re really taking risks worth taking.

    What’s my dream right now? Well, like you, it’s probably to make something worthwhile out of this life. What does that mean? Well, I’m still trying to figure out the answer, but I think it involves giving back to society. If you’ve already got a dim view of people then you’re a goner. You’ve got to see the best in humanity.

    I also need to stop dating. It takes up a lot of social energy- firstly, you want to create a good impression, so you spend a lot of time preparing for a date. You think about the kind of experience the other person wants to have, would you rather be exciting and surprise her or play it safe? I’ve always played it safe,  but I know I used to be far more exciting when I was younger. Dating and travelling. Two privileged things that go beyond the expectations I ever had for my life, but two things that are taking me away from my career goals. I want to be successful in my podcast, but I can’t be if I’m delaying writing a podcast because I had the most amazing date and I’m not at home to record it.

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    14 min
  • Making A TV Show Part 1

    Due To A Surge In Traffic, For An Easier Experience, Listen On Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Stitcher or Podbean.

    Hey, we’re making a TV show about entrepreneurs in Singapore! Or at least we’re trying our best. I’ve partnered up with a Singaporean producer, Ser En Low, to make a TV show detailing the experiences of two entrepreneurs, from humble beginnings to business success and prosperity – including all the gritty details you usually don’t see in “overnight success stories” that you see in mainstream media.

    Hear our experiences here as we begin this long and arduous journey.

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    1
    11 min
  • Making Millions From Memes: Karl Mak, Co-Founder of SGAG, MGAG and PGAG. Part 2/2
    Welcome back to part 2 of this 2 part series, if you haven’t checked out the first part, then I recommend listening to it first, where we explore the early days of Karl Mak’s journey building SGAG with his co-founder, Adrian. In this part, we discuss building relationships with clients, his future plans for SGAG and the Hepmil Group, and his experience raising SGD$1.3 million in pre-series A funding through angel investors.
    Introducing Karl Mak, the very intelligent, measured, co-founder of Hepmil Group, best known as the holding company in Singapore of SGAG and other entities, whose content is now seen by over 10 million millennials across the region weekly.
    27 min
  • Making Millions From Memes: Karl Mak, Co-Founder of SGAG, MGAG and PGAG. Part 1/2
    Introducing Karl Mak, the very intelligent and well-spoken co-founder of Hepmil Group, best known as the holding company in Singapore of SGAG and other entities, whose content is now seen by over 10 million millennials across the region weekly.He talks about how important data and metrics are in order to discover strategies to create viral content, creating a proper content strategy for something as eclectic as comedy, and working with conservative clients to create buzz around issues that Singaporeans can relate to, even convincing their clients- big household brands- to make fun of themselves along the way in a pursuit to connect with millennials.He starts off by telling us about his startup, that essentially started off as a joke between two friends.After raising SGD$1.3 million in pre-series A funding through angel investors, I ask him whether he was literally scrolling through his phone to show investors his most popular recent memes.
    35 min
  • Hey, Change The World You Live In
    At the end of the day, that’s the point about life. It’s whatever you want it to be. It’s whatever lens you choose to see it through. Being average is so contagious it should be labelled by the medical industry as a communicable disease. That means it’s as easy as catching a cold. When you see someone else frown, those muscles around your mouth, they just start to naturally drop into a frown.
    13 min
  • How To Build A Top Digital Media Company: TheSmartLocal Founder Bryan Choo
    Imagine you’re 18 years old, and in your spare time, you hang out with your friends at an internet cafe to play computer games religiously. That’s the childhood that most of the kids from my generation grew up in. We’d spend hours in an internet cafe. But I was never the best at computer games. In fact, I was crushed in nearly every game, even my favourite game, Starcraft. But imagine being the kid who was so good he’d go on to represent your country in computer games. That was Bryan Choo, the founder of TheSmartLocal, one of the biggest local digital media companies in Singapore.Listen to how a computer game geek used his skills and strategy as a national champion to then build a culture and lifestyle website that now gets 3-4 m page views per month, a Facebook page with 360k followers, and a Youtube page with 230k subscribers. It took him 7 years, but Bryan now develops viral content for millennials on a daily basis, and if you’re under 35 or Youtube is the first page you go to on the internet, it’s likely you’ve seen a video that one of his over a hundred staff have created. He also talks about taking on traditional media giants SPH and Mediacorp, and how he got his first big break.
    32 min
  • Groupon to Hard Times: The Darkness Of Early Success. Part 2
    My brother and I had a startup that had just been bought out by Groupon, the world’s biggest daily deal website, for an estimated $24 million according to the Straits Times. We made it on the front page of the national newspaper, I was busy representing Groupon on breakfast TV shows and on Channel NewsAsia, while my brother was busy moving our new offices to Harbourfront Centre. Enjoy part 2 of a 2 part series, don't forget to listen to part 1 first.
    26 min
  • How We Built A $24M Startup: Beeconomic To Groupon. Part 1
    At 20, I took a break from my law degree to co-found my first startup, Beeconomic, which was fully acquired after 6 months by Groupon.
    As Groupon Singapore co-founder, we created over 200 jobs and made history by helping Groupon become "the fastest growing company ever" (-Forbes and CNBC). After Groupon, I worked on a startup that failed, which taught me important lessons along the way.
    After finishing my law degree, I joined a "Top 5" law firm in Australia as a legal intern that led to an offer in their M&A advisory practice.
    I then joined Hong Kong's oldest English newspaper, the South China Morning Post, as social media editor focusing on content and marketing. After achieving strong digital growth, Jack Ma's Alibaba acquired the newspaper. After the paper was successfully sold, I left to pursue my passion for cooking.
    After culinary school, I moved to Singapore to advise a $100M Japanese VC as a full-time advisor. A highlight is our $1M investment into a fast-growing, millennial-focused news platform.
    I have served as a consultant to 60+ startups and I also volunteer as a mentor at an incubator. My goal now is to pay-it-forward by sharing knowledge through my semi-autobiographical podcast.
    28 min
  • The F Word: Failure, Can We Talk About It? Part 1 Feat. Elisha Tan from TechLadies and Facebook

    Due To A Surge In Traffic, For An Easier Experience, Listen On Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Stitcher or Podbean.

    Let’s both be real for a second, let’s talk about failure, small failure, big failure, surprising failure, embarrassing failure. It’s scary, just the sound of the word failure gives me goosebumps, I’ve been through it.

    Whether you’re scared about the word itself, or you relish in talking about it as much as you can at parties and networking events until your friends say “enough, we get it, you failed”, then you’ll love today’s episode. Elisha Tan is like us, two people, a success and a failure. One Elisha is the founder of TechLadies, a volunteer platform that teaches ladies how to code, and Developer Programs Manager for Facebook APAC, the other is someone who spent four years on a startup before closing it down, repairing herself only to get fired from her new job for not being a culture fit after just 6 months.

    She’s inspirational, in the way she describes her feelings of pain, sorrow and the realisation that it was going to be a bumpy road if she wanted to reach her lofty aspirations. It’s a feeling we all have when we know that our precious goals might be trampled by reality. I’ve failed and I ain’t afraid to say it, uhhuhh.

    But you have to keep in mind, while you listen to this story, that it was her resilient mentality that has now landed her dream job at Facebook, where she essentially got to turn her side-hustle, into a full-time job at one of the best employers in the world. She took a break from her free catered meals at Facebook to chat with me about how she crawled out of the failure hole, and the character she gained from being lost in the wilderness for 5 years, which she lends to now landing her at her dream job. Take a listen as she first opens up about the challenges of being a founder with no technical experience.

    Now, she’s a Developer Programs Manager for Facebook APAC – developer communities across Asia to reach 40,000 developers in the region, upskilling and helping developers with employment and startup opportunities.

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    1
    31 min

About Ramen To Riches

From the publisher's feed

Hear real-life advice from entrepreneurs and leaders who’ve reached high, done it, and had egg on their face to prove it. “Ramen To Riches” presents a new podcast episode each week with lessons that will edge you closer to your success.