Many of us would have felt stuck with what we do at some point in life. We’ve studied and trained in a particular field, or worked in a sector which likely defined our career trajectories. 

Not Jeevi Pillai. 

To call her a dance maestro (dancing since the age of four!), successful business entrepreneur and professional national sports psychologist would be more than fitting. 

As a career, she has worked with national athletes in Singapore to help them achieve high performance. As a passion, she learnt Chinese dance to Ballet, Bharatanatyam, modern Indian dance, Reggaeton, and Hip Hop. And her most recent love, African dance. Her interest and curiosity in exploring different experiences had led her to travel to the many countries in Africa learning AfroDance - a dance form which she eventually fell deeply for and brought to Singapore. Yet, listening to her speak of her journey and goals suggest that she’s not done yet. 

She’s a pure explorer and adventurer. And that’s exactly the spirit one need to not be constrained by the definitions of what you do. Jeevi shares on her journey of learning, being in unfamiliar spaces, and how her foundation in sports psychology helped frame her own mindset towards her business. We talk about making mistakes, letting go of perfection, or merely chasing goals or breaking boundaries - but rather, “it’s about allowing yourself to be you.”

Key moments:

• How growing up in Singapore shaped her curiosities towards the many dance forms
• Why African dance is so different and “speaks to her soul”
• The secret to enjoying dance is also a life philosophy (which is also the hardest thing to do!)
• Her journey struggling with perfectionism - and how Africa uncovered a whole new perspective
• Combining her passion in sports psychology to dance and entrepreneurship 
• How she learnt how to embrace her curiosity, trusting the process and letting things happen 
• Why she doesn’t believe in the phrase “being the best version of yourself”
• Follow your passion - is that good or bad advice?
• Her new venture in DARE platform, which combines the high performance mindset with mental well-being for everyone 

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeevi-pillai-248089bb/

Website: https://www.afrowithjeevi.com/

Afrowithjeevi Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/afrowithjeevi/

AWJ Retreat Instragram: https://www.instagram.com/awjretreat/

The DARE Platform: https://www.instagram.com/thedareplatform/

The DARE Platform Freebie - 7 ways to optimise your performance through Mental Rest

Email: [email protected] / [email protected]

Connect with Pearl Lim:
linkedin.com/in/pearl-lim-curiousleaderscircle/

To say that "change is a constant" will be an understatement these days. 

Yet, why does it seem that reacting to changes or driving change is so difficult to do? Why do we suck at it so much? 

Well, to break this down, we’ll have to look the intricacies of human behaviours. And I speak with Oliver Foo, who’s not only a veteran in corporate leadership, but had also recently published a book called Head to Heart to Habit on driving behavioural change. 

Oliver has spent 30 years in the tech and telecommunications industry, leading people and businesses across markets, with him living in countries such as Singapore, UK, Germany, Canada and Finland - and has since made the transition to help fellow executives in complex leadership roles. I met Oliver at a coaching workshop and I find him to be a deeply reflective person with a sense of humour and wit. Now, what does it take to do adapt to changes well? Let’s find out….

Key moments:

• How his childhood formed his curiosity around human behaviours
• Switching from being a software engineer to a two-decades long career in sales and marketing
• Finding out what the opposite of curiosity looks like - and why that is BAD for you
• Why having “experience" can actually sabotage us 
• The single key question that we need to ask ourselves when making decisions 
• His personal reason for writing the book, Head to Heart to Habit
• Addressing the myths of making behavioural changes (or… why is it so darn hard for us to change!) 
• The secret model behind understanding why people behave the way they do (or why you may not be happy at your job)
• What you must do if working with someone of opposing values to you
• His advice for addressing our fears of failure in driving change

Connect with Oliver Foo: https://www.linkedin.com/in/olifoo/

To learn more about his bestselling book: https://www.headtohearttohabit.com/

Connect with Pearl Lim:
linkedin.com/in/pearl-lim-curiousleaderscircle/

“We are told that fitting in is the way to be accepted in this world... so the outlier mind is about how do we give people the permission to feel, love and embrace the outlier that’s in them." 

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In this episode, I sit with Judy Liu, who is a true rebel in every sense of that word in the corporate world. 

Her joie de vivre, her energy and way of seeing the world and the people around her, runs with the refusal to adhere to societal expectations of what should be. 

She’s navigated multiple career pivots, defying conventional paths to carve out a niche that defies most people’s expectations of what a career should look like. From learning structural drawings as an aspiring architect, to drafting legal strategies as a student of law degree, to studying psychology as the Head of Learning and Development at Hays. 

She also candidly shares about how her diverse background has shaped her own views on leadership behaviours and expectations. 

She is a Third Culture Kid, as someone who spent her childhood across seven different schools by the age of 12, and has lived in Australia, Taiwan and now Singapore. It’s perhaps that upbringing and experience during her formative years that has given her such a unique perspective on things, preferring to see things with lightness, humour and cheekiness - rather than giving in to the drudgery of work. 

These days, Judy is the founder who runs a new company called The Outlier Mind, which is dedicated to helping leaders uncover their own uniqueness, weirdness even, and building resilience and optimism by thinking differently. 

We discuss the power of challenging assumptions, why she leans into difficult moments of conflicts and tension rather than shy away, and why she thinks holding lightness and humour can be the most rebellious thing an outlier can do to be thriving at work. 


Key moments:

• What does an “outlier” in corporate look like?
• How she purposely seeks out tension and discomfort, rather than avoiding them
• What is the first thing to do when having difficult conversations
• Why the implicit leadership theory creates more challenges for leaders looking to bring their true selves to work
• The moment her boss called her “shameless”... and how she reacted to that comment
• Being the third culture kid - it can either be really distressing... or really liberating
• Why she believes in keeping a sense of humour and lightness 
• Her “fan-girl” moment talking about Derren Brown (with a special shoutout to this English mentalist, illusionist, and writer!)
• .... and the cheekiest thing she ever did!

Connect with Judy:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/judyliucoaching/

Her website:
https://www.judyliucoaching.com/

Connect with Pearl Lim:
linkedin.com/in/pearl-lim-curiousleaderscircle/

There’s a famous quote by Albert Einstein that goes, "it’s a miracle that curiosity survives the formal education.”

Yet when we think about education, there’s a sense that we focus a lot more on the teaching, the academic curriculum, the results... rather than the experiences of  learning from the child’s perspective. Where it seems to be all about getting the right answers, rather than asking the right questions. 

In this episode, Eileen Tan shares from her years of experience working with children on her views of how we can get better at building the education for our young, how we can nurture (not diminish) their innate curiosity… and how we can set them up better for life’s hard knocks and challenges.  

Key moments:

• Rethinking our education system 
• When role modelling is more crucial than focusing on academic curriculum
• How do we ignite a child’s curiosity?
• You don’t have to answer to all the “whys” (and becoming exhausted!)
• How learning together with your children allows them to learn empowerment… and compassion
• How working with children lessened her “perfectionism” tendencies
• Is AI a good or bad tool?
• How failure and making mistakes isa way of building resilience 
• Her own journey of from being an educator to a business owner 
• Childhood education was not her first choice of study - What changed her mind?
• Why she believes that compassion is the driving force for the future

Connect with Eileen Tan: linkedin.com/in/illusorydoll

Connect with Pearl Lim:
linkedin.com/in/pearl-lim-curiousleaderscircle/

“There shouldn’t be a concept of retirement actually... whenever people want to stop working, they can; when they want to start, they can. And they shouldn’t be questioned about it. We want to facilitate the fluidity of work.”


******


We often think about our career journey from our mid-20s to 50s, and it’s commonly one that is linear from university to corporate, then retirement. And we know that there are a lot of agencies in this space to help people progress in their careers. But what happens to the age groups that fall outside of this range?

I speak with Kai Ning, Lim - a HR business partner at Unilever - who has embarked on a mission outside her corporate role, to not only support these groups of talents in their second chapter, but to also help us rethink the way we hire for our organisations.  

She is the Co-Founder of The Courage Chapter, an enterprise founded with a mission to change the narrative around ageing in the workplace. She and her team seeks to redefine “retirement” and promote new practices to ensure that meaningful work is viable throughout people's lifetimes.

It is a conversation on work and retirement. 

But Kai Ning’s authentic sharing on her own entrepreneurial path gave a lot more insights into what it means to embark on something new, to go against the “narratives” that society has built, and her learnings on the two main fears that we will face in journeys like these... and that the numerous challenges may not be all that bad.



Key moments:

• How her first internship job showed the inequalities of society
• Started her first project in Career Socius while still in school to help disadvantaged youths with their personal branding
• How coaching helped her get clarity in finding her core purpose
• What was her secret to success, balancing a full-time job with a social enterprise on the side
• Fear is really a narrative drilled into you - “You are not running the race against anyone else.”
• Her time in Korea shifted her Singaporean perspective/narrative
• Balancing the practicality of life vs. the idealism to bring into the world
• How becoming an entrepreneur makes her “smarter”, having to constantly think of ways to better the organization and her life. 
• Understanding the 2 types of fear (Pachad and Yirah) in embarking on new journeys
• Why she looks forward to the day when her services are no longer needed. 

Connect with Kai Ning: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kaininglim/

Website: https://www.thecouragechapter.com/

Connect with Pearl Lim:
linkedin.com/in/pearl-lim-curiousleaderscircle/

“Learning and figuring things out has always been a fundamental part of who I am... to think about things in a different way and explore the world with a curious lens.”

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AI has gotten quite the reputation of being inauthentic, fake and being the ultimate risk in replacing our jobs, since the launch of ChatGPT.

So I wanted to speak with Ashvin Praveen, who is the co-founder and CEO of an AI startup called Cleve, on his views about building a tool in this space. Now, what you’ll want to know about Ashvin is that he is a graduate from mechanical engineering with first class honours degree turned social media marketer. 

Not quite the usual path. 

He worked for companies to develop their marketing strategies before starting his own agency and running it for over 3 years. Then he joined the startup world and is now creating his own AI tool that will change the way we tell our stories, sharing his business journey on Linkedin. 

He is thoughtful, insightful and extremely curious - about the way we behave and how we should rethink the way we work with AI. 

And he is 25 years old. 

Here’s our conversation on his journey and how doing things differently has served him. 

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Key moments:

• How his entrepreneurial journey started
• Going against the conventional wisdom that you need decades of experience to start a business
• Business is all about solving problems, not just selling
• Marketing is the “engine" of building successful companies (debunking the myth that it is all about designing ads on canva!)
• Entrepreneurship is all about learning than controlling outcomes
• Differences between Gen Z entrepreneurial mindset vs other gens - is there less fear of failure?
• What Gen Z needs to learn from the older generations
• The two camps of thought behind AI - is it a blessing or a curse?
• Why Cleve.ai is about amplifying personal stories, rather than generating inauthentic content
• AI actually will force us to better our thinking and decision making
• Advice to aspiring entrepreneurs - the journey is going to be HARD
• Being confident in your curiosities to pursue the “what-ifs” in solving problems

Connect with Pearl Lim:
linkedin.com/in/pearl-lim-curiousleaderscircle/

What would you do differently, knowing that you probably have 1,000 weeks left in this world?

Neeraj Narayan has spent 14 years with Nike as a top global director, working his way through roles and ranks across different countries.  These days, he is an entrepreneur, investor, mentor, and CEO of Synergy India Ventures, which is dedicated to social impact.

He is also embracing his creativity through writing, painting and photography - all captured with his unique lens of deep introspection. Neeraj shares what it is like to be "a rebel in the family”, to constantly pursue something meaningful to him outside of the scripted path, which his father would have much preferred for him. We share thoughts on how important curiosity is in leadership, yet how challenging some managers find it. 
 
The conversation also goes deeper into his journey, from burnout to entrepreneurship, managing the highs and lows of running your own business, and how setting boundaries may actually just set you free.

**********

Key chapters:

• How he got a job offer from Nike on LinkedIn, 14 years ago
• The most common mistakes people make while working in Nike
• “What if I fail” mentality is a barrier - it doesn’t matter if you don’t have all the right experience 
• Being the “rebel” in the family opened up new unexpected paths
• How to be curious - yet not defiantly challenging to your boss
• Leadership lessons from Metallica band
• What burnout really feels like
• The "1,000 weeks" philosophy 
• The cycle of ups and downs as an entrepreneur 
• Fighting climate change starts with not accepting the default
• Problem-solving requires curiosity and courage

Connect with Neeraj Narayan: https://www.linkedin.com/in/neerajnarayan/

His art and photography: https://www.instagram.com/neerajnarayan/

His writing: https://medium.com/@neeraj.narayan

His art studio: https://neerajnarayan.art/

His organisation: https://www.synergyindia.ventures/

Connect with Pearl Lim:
linkedin.com/in/pearl-lim-curiousleaderscircle/

Who is Pearl and why did she start Rebel Curiosities?

In this final episode of season 2, the tables have been turned - I get interviewed as a guest instead by the wonderfully insightful Dalglish Chew, professional coach and partner at Avalanche VC, who was my very first  guest on the podcast!


Dalglish takes to his role as interviewer and coach effortlessly, digging deep into my psyche for the motivations behind the podcast. 

I knew I started this podcast as a learning journey, into the trait of curiosity as a way of thinking differently, as a “rebellious” way of looking at the world we live in - and largely, be inspired by the awesome guests I had on the show. 

But what the conversation uncovered was the deeper meaning of what I felt deeply about and care for. It’s not always an accessible space for me, and Dalglish expertly steered the discovery process like an expert tailor,  stitching in place the perfect articulated piece of my “why”. 


And for all of you who have been listening, thank you so much for being part of this journey. You are a huge part of my “why” in these conversations - I look forward to the next season with you!


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Key moments:

• Why I started a podcast… and why this title
• Curiosity vs. passion as an enabler
• Connection is about being able to see different perspectives 
• Am I truly an unconventional rebel?
• How restlessness became a force to ask the question “what’s the worst that can happen?”
• How to let curiosity be a permission to wanting more in life

Find out more about Dalglish here:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/dalglishchew/
https://dalglish.coach/

Connect with Pearl Lim:
linkedin.com/in/pearl-lim-curiousleaderscircle/

Petr Ludwig is the best-selling author of the book, The end of Procrastination, and the founder and CEO of his company, procrastination.com. 

His book has been translated in over 20 languages and sold 400,000 copies across 28 countries since it was published in 2013. He is a successful entrepreneur and keynote speaker. 

But that’s not what we will be talking about today.

In this episode, my conversation with Petr starts with him sharing what it means to be a rebel or “punk” soul - and how that led into interviews with the famous Stanford prison experiment scientist, Philip Zimbardo, who started to look at rebels as people who want to do things differently. 

He shares his philosophy on leadership, what it means to run a family-like business, and how his near death experiences caused him to take a very different perspective on life. 

This episode with Petr feels more like a conversation that had to be continued, rather than an interview session. 

Listen till the end as he also coached me on my own procrastination habits (!) and shares how to mindfully create small steps for a more meaningful life.

————

Key moments:

• How his rebel philosophy is linked to his “punk” band in younger days

• His meeting with Stanford prison head scientist, Philip Zimbardo, on the 40 years of research of being evil vs. heroic.

• A rebel mindset is also about doing something, when everyone else is silent 

• How he started a “face mask” movement when he moved back from New York to Prague #masksforall

• Why the best kind of leaders embrace humility and admit mistakes

• How his study of complex systems help him embrace the fact of never knowing everything

• Why AI won’t take jobs, but will take jobs from people who won’t use AI

• How his near death experiences changed him to live his life to the fullest, without procrastination 

• How to overcome procrastination i.e. the emotions of putting off things

• Why negative dopamine hits like social media actually make it worse 

• Why the rebel spirit is all about trying and uncovering new ideas - and being unafraid to fail 

Learn more about Petr Ludwig:

LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/petrludwig/
Book - https://procrastination.com/book
Website - https://www.petrludwig.com/

Connect with Pearl Lim:
linkedin.com/in/pearl-lim-curiousleaderscircle/

In the world of business and marketing, product commonly trumps customer. 

And by that, I mean we usually focus too much on product promotion, than thinking on focusing on the customers and their experience. I wanted to find out more about how we can do things differently.   

So I reached out to our guest for this episode, Ilenia Vidili, who is the speaker and author of the book - Journey to Centricity - to find out more about her views on doing marketing differently. 

But. 

What I came to find out in our conversation was a strong and determined spirit who insists on breaking the conventional norms and expectations. 

Not only did she turn down the opportunities in her career to take a step back from the rat race, but sold everything she had and moved across continents, to do a soul-searching journey - one that left her questioning and ultimately finding her purpose in life. 

Customer-centricity came out of that, but more than being just one of a strategic business perspective, it became her mission to make an impact with what she believes truly matters. 

And that’s the rebel spirit. 

She has been awarded the LinkedIn Top Customer Experience voic, and shares with us her journey of writing, how constantly battling against your own resistance might be the biggest obstacle you have to overcome. 

Key moments:

• Why she sold everything she had and packed everything else into a single suitcase to move to Thailand
• How that became a mission to make a real difference in the world of business
• Why AI can get in the way of your ideal customer experience
• Why being product-centric can kill off curiosity 
• How she earned her Top Voice award in LInkedin
• The secret to getting good at what you do

Find out more about Ilenia Vidili here:

• Website: https://www.ileniavidili.com/
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ileniavidili/
• Book "Journey To Centricity": https://www.amazon.com/dp/8894663868?ref_=cm_sw_r_cp_ud_dp_H3AJ0NHKGDGVRCQYRWEY

Connect with Pearl Lim:
linkedin.com/in/pearl-lim-curiousleaderscircle/