The Creative Odyssey Podcast

He spent two decades in banking and oil and gas before walking away at 47 to figure out what he actually wanted.

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Farhaz Farouk grew up between Saudi Arabia, Sri Lanka, and Bahrain before spending 15 years in banking and later becoming CFO of an oil and gas holding company. At 47, he quit to finish an MBA — and never went back to corporate life. He returned to Sri Lanka at 48 and rebuilt himself as a coach, trainer, and consultant, now serving as Country Director of Morphosis Coaching.

This conversation covers:
- Why "one-size-fits-all" coaching and training fails clients
- The difference between managing and leading, and the ego mistake behind most bad leadership
- How business cards without job titles changed the way Farhaz saw hierarchy
- Why he intentionally keeps his coaching fees flexible to make the profession more accessible
- The Ikigai framework, and how to apply it to your own life

Farhaz's story isn't about a dramatic reinvention — it's about slowly giving himself permission to build a life around what he's actually good at and drawn to, instead of what looked responsible on paper.

CREDITS:
Hosted by Sheran Ranasinghe
Produced by Odyssey House Media
Guest: Farhaz Farouk, Morphosis Coaching

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Two failed startups. A biscuit pudding business that lasted until the second COVID wave. A viral hotel video shot on an iPhone 6S with a GoPro. A $15 Fiverr order that became film school. This is how Hashan Hettiarachchi built Three Circles — a creative production and events company now operating across Sri Lanka and the Maldives.

📥 Get the Sri Lanka Podcast Tour Magazine — free download:
https://stan.store/TheCreativeOdysseyPodcast/p/get-inside-the-creative-odyssey-magazine?utm_source=ig&utm_medium=social&utm_content=link_in_bio

In this episode, Hashan breaks down the whole arc — losing his hospitality job during COVID, the relationship that suppressed his creative ambitions, the moment he sold every collectible he owned to stay financially alive, and the inner child he says is still running the whole operation at 35.

Topics covered:
- Why two failed startups were the education no course could give him
- Walking shop to shop with 25 cups of biscuit pudding and getting rejected everywhere
- The viral hotel video that proved equipment doesn't determine outcome
- Learning Premiere Pro, DaVinci Resolve, and camera settings from YouTube and Fiverr
- How a $15 editing order became the foundation of a media company
- The partner who held him back and the wife who didn't
- Selling his entire collectibles collection during the hardest stretch
- Why he still calls Three Circles a prototype at 35
- His honest take on AI in the creative industry
- Why motivation is old-fashioned and discipline is the only thing that works

Hashan Hettiarachchi is a Sri Lanka-based entrepreneur, filmmaker, concept developer, and event planner. He is co-founder of Three Circles, a creative production and events company handling prestige events across Sri Lanka and the Maldives.

Connect with Hashan:
Instagram: instagram.com/hashan__hettiarachchi
YouTube: youtube.com/c/HashanVlogs

Connect with the show:
Instagram: instagram.com/thecreativeodysseypodcast
Sheran: instagram.com/sheranstories
Email: [email protected]

Listen everywhere:
Spotify: open.spotify.com/show/12SGsSsLz4DqlLFwxigjXX
Apple Podcasts: podcasts.apple.com/pl/podcast/the-creative-odyssey-podcast/id1750306317
Buzzsprout: thecreativeodysseypodcast.buzzsprout.com

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For 25 years, Lizzie Ranasinghe insisted she wasn't creative. She drew constantly. She did calligraphy. She built her own greeting card business on the side. And she still believed the myth that creativity belongs to a certain kind of person.

This is the first episode of Producer Talks — a new series where Sheran sits down with his producer (and wife) Lizzie to take apart eight myths about creativity that quietly convince capable people they don't qualify.

They get into why creativity isn't innate talent but a rewireable skill, why the "creative and organized" dichotomy is false, why waiting for inspiration is backwards, why originality is mostly myth, and why perfectionism might actually be proof you're doing the work right, not evidence you're doing it wrong.

Topics covered:
Creativity as a trainable skill, not a fixed trait
Why creative people need systems and habits, not chaos
The role of action in creating inspiration, not the other way around
Creative versus logical thinking as a false choice
When to follow the rules of your craft and when to break them
Why nothing is fully original, and why that's fine
Consistency versus perfectionism in creative work

If you've ever doubted whether you count as a creative person, this conversation is for you.

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Feeling like you're losing a race no one told you about is one of the loneliest experiences a creative person can have — and Grace Abigail Devaprasath spent years running it.

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Grace is 23, based in Colombo, Sri Lanka, and she will tell you straight — she never called herself creative. Bad O Level results. Bad A Level results. Always behind, always doing more just to escape the thought of not doing enough. Then she walked into a classroom of special needs children and everything she believed about creativity fell apart. Today she is head of projects at an NGO, co-founder of a sustainable clothing brand built for bodies the fashion industry ignores, and a collaborator to multiple creative businesses in Colombo — none of it from a degree, all of it from curiosity and a willingness to fail in public.

This episode is about what happens when you stop waiting for permission to call yourself creative.

In this conversation you will learn:

• Why spending years feeling creatively behind is not a sign you missed your window — it is the window
• How teaching special needs children rewired Grace's entire understanding of what creativity actually means
• Why she built a sustainable clothing brand specifically for mothers whose bodies the fashion market had forgotten
• How she manages multiple creative ventures simultaneously while keeping her Sri Lankan parents' peace of mind
• Why she would rather fail at something than spend her life wondering if she could have done it
• What she did the exact month she got fired from the job that was her heart and soul
• How to use curiosity as a daily practice even when you don't see yourself as a creative person

Host: Sheran Ranasinghe Guest: Grace Abigail Devaprasath — head of projects, NGO sector; co-founder, sustainable clothing brand; Colombo, Sri Lanka Recorded at: Hatch.lk Startup Hub, Sri Lanka Produced by: Odyssey House Media Episode theme: A 23-year-old who never called herself creative builds three ventures from curiosity and a refusal to play it safe.

🎧 Spotify: open.spotify.com/show/12SGsSsLz4DqlLFwxigjXX 🎧 Apple Podcasts: podcasts.apple.com/pl/podcast/the-creative-odyssey-podcast/id1750306317 📧 [email protected]

🎙️ The Creative Odyssey Podcast explores the inner lives of creative people — why they create, what it costs, and why creativity might be the most important thing any of us can do. Hosted by Sheran Ranasinghe. Produced by Odyssey House Media. Recorded at Hatch.lk Startup Hub, Sri Lanka.

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At the peak of an award-winning acting career — theatre in Sydney, agents in London and Australia — Biman Wimalaratne made a decision most people never do. He walked away. Not because he failed. Because he wanted to stop narrating other people's stories and start living his own.

Now he's Chief Growth Officer at Kainovation Technologies, an InsureTech startup building AI-powered insurance intelligence tools and recognised as a Top 7 Startup in Sri Lanka. He also helps run N Chandraratne Decorators, a 45-year-old family construction business that took a serious hit during the Sri Lankan economic crisis — and came back.

In this conversation, Sheran and Biman go deep on what it actually looks like to follow your curiosity across multiple careers, industries, and versions of yourself.

WHAT YOU'LL HEAR:

- Walking away from an acting peak — and why it was the right call
- Why creative people need both analytical and creative modes to function at their best
- Career cycles: how Biman learned to read industries the way a musician reads time signatures
- The "jack of all trades" argument — and the part of that quote most people have never heard
- What the Sri Lankan economic crisis did to a family business built over 45 years
- Door-to-door sales in Sydney, drama school, and proving something to yourself
- Facing racism as a brown guy navigating Australia and London
- The moment he said "forget what everyone thinks" — and what happened next
- Why versions of you have to die for new ones to emerge
- The inner child underneath all the ambition — and why no one else can do that work for you

Recorded at Hatch Sri Lanka — a startup hub where creativity and technology meet to solve real problems.

CONNECT WITH BIMAN:
Instagram: @bimankw
LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/biman-wimalaratne-bb3804b7

LISTEN & SUBSCRIBE:
🎙️ Spotify: open.spotify.com/show/12SGsSsLz4DqlLFwxigjXX
🍎 Apple Podcasts: podcasts.apple.com/pl/podcast/the-creative-odyssey-podcast/id1750306317

📖 Get the Sri Lanka Podcast Tour Magazine: https://stan.store/TheCreativeOdysseyPodcast/p/get-inside-the-creative-odyssey-magazine

📩 Contact: [email protected]

creative entrepreneur, Sri Lanka podcast, actor turned entrepreneur, career pivot, following your curiosity, InsureTech Sri Lanka, Hatch Sri Lanka, Kainovation Technologies, creative entrepreneurship, entrepreneur motivation, self love, inner child, career advice, Sri Lankan startup, multi-passionate entrepreneur

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Sachith Perera is an IT project manager who built a photography and video studio in his parents' backyard during COVID — not because he was a creative, but because he was curious.

In this episode, Sachith breaks down how he applied the IT concept of minimal viable product to launching Creator Space Studios, survived Sri Lanka's economic crisis, and grew a 15x15 foot backyard space into a fully booked commercial studio working with some of Sri Lanka's biggest brands.

But the deeper story is about what made risk-taking possible — losing his father at 15, a mother who held everything together, and the support systems that taught him the worst thing that can happen is rarely as bad as the fear of it.

He also mentors young professionals, offers free studio time to emerging creators, and believes you should want the people you help to become better than you.

This is what creativity looks like when it lives inside a curious mind — not a paintbrush.

——

📍 Recorded at Hatch.lk | Sri Lanka Series

💌 Get inside the Sri Lanka Podcast Tour Magazine:
https://stan.store/TheCreativeOdysseyPodcast/p/get-inside-the-creative-odyssey-magazine

📲 Follow Sachith: @sachithperera | linkedin.com/in/sachithap/

📩 [email protected]

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Engineering without creativity shows up in the product. Every time. Himashi Naurunna has been inside enough products to know — and in this episode she explains exactly what that means.

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Himashi Naurunna is an Associate Tech Lead in AI/ML at Gapstars, a former game developer at Rivertune Games, and a First Class Honours graduate in Computer Software Engineering. She's based in Nugegoda, Sri Lanka, and she has one of the clearest creative philosophies of any guest this show has had — she just doesn't frame it that way, because she doesn't need to.

In this episode, recorded at Hatch.lk startup hub in Sri Lanka, Himashi and Sheran cover:

- The game that sparked everything — Ori and the Blind Forest — and the moment she thought "if they can do it, I can do it too"
- How gaming became the gateway from finger painting into coding and eventually into machine learning
- What creativity actually means inside a world of logic, code, and algorithms
- Why AI is built from human creativity — and why that makes it a creative tool rather than a threat
- Building Yokai L — the mobile game where every micro-decision from jump height to damage buffers was a creative act
- The line that landed hardest: when you engineer without creativity you can see it in the product
- Engineers and burnout — why they're married to each other, and what gets you through the 3AM bug spiral
- The blob tracking algorithm she posted on Instagram that inspired people she never expected
- AGI — what it is, what it isn't, and why the dream isn't just intelligence but creative intelligence
- Why humans are, structurally, already a form of AI — and what that reframe does to how you think about what we're building
- How Sri Lankans respond to AI engineers — and what Himashi says back
- Why Hatch.lk is the Silicon Valley of Sri Lanka and why building around builders is the only proper way to do it

This episode is part of The Creative Odyssey Podcast Sri Lanka Series, recorded live at Hatch.lk startup hub, Colombo, Sri Lanka.

─────────────────────────────
GUEST
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Himashi Naurunna
Associate Tech Lead, AI/ML — Gapstars
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/hansa-naurunna-013324197
Instagram: @lia.likescookies

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FIND THE SHOW
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📩 Email: [email protected]
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─────────────────────────────
PRODUCED BY
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Odyssey House Media
Recorded at Hatch.lk startup hub, Sri Lanka

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He didn't walk away from aircraft engineering because something better came along. He walked away because nothing he built ever reached anyone — and that was the only thing that mattered to him.

Tharaka Hettihamu is a product manager and builder working at the intersection of agritech, AI, and startup product development in Sri Lanka. In this conversation, he breaks down what product management actually demands, why he pivoted from aircraft engineering into tech, and how his team at Spectrify AI is digitising data across Sri Lanka's tea industry to turn a supply chain into a value chain.

📥 Download the Sri Lanka Podcast Tour Magazine — free: https://stan.store/TheCreativeOdysseyPodcast/p/get-inside-the-creative-odyssey-magazine?utm_source=ig&utm_medium=social&utm_content=link_in_bio

What we get into:

• Why Tharaka left aircraft engineering and what he found on the other side
• What product management actually is — and why emotional intelligence is the core skill
• How Spectrify AI is using infrared spectroscopy to digitise agricultural data in Sri Lanka's tea industry
• What it means to convert a supply chain into a value chain
• The Govi Lab program — one of 10 startups selected, backed by the Bill Gates Foundation
• AI agents, digital workers, and the Vector project
• Why creativity in tech has nothing to do with artistic talent
• How AI access in rural Sri Lanka is an infrastructure problem, not a readiness problem
• How to get into product management from any background — including the free resources Tharaka used

CONNECT WITH THARAKA Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/hetti.tech/ Website: https://hetti.tech

🎙️ The Creative Odyssey Podcast Hosted by Sheran Ranasinghe | Produced by Odyssey House Media Recorded at Hatch.lk, Sri Lanka

🎧 Listen and subscribe: Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/12SGsSsLz4DqlLFwxigjXX Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/pl/podcast/the-creative-odyssey-podcast/id1750306317 Buzzsprout: https://thecreativeodysseypodcast.buzzsprout.com 📩 [email protected]

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What if every job you've ever had was building toward something you can't see yet?

Ammar Ahamed didn't plan to become a growth marketer, a startup founder, or a skill development entrepreneur. He planned to be a journalist. Then HR felt safer. Then PR felt right. Then employer branding took him across Sri Lanka, Indonesia, and Jordan. Then growth marketing found him. Now he's running two companies while heading growth at an AI firm in Singapore — and he commutes three hours a day by public transport from Mawenella to Colombo.

None of it was a detour. All of it was the portfolio.

In this conversation recorded at Hatch.lk in Colombo as part of the Sri Lanka Series, Ammar makes the case that your job title is a corporate categorization tool — not your identity. Your skills compound across every role you take. And the skills you most need might be ones you don't even know you have yet.

What we get into:
- Why Ammar calls his career a portfolio instead of a path
- How he went from newspaper clippings to key account manager in 3 months
- The hidden skills you carry that experimentation unlocks
- The fake podcast that revealed his real ability
- What the Hatch startup community taught him about creative courage
- Why coding, farming, and engineering are all forms of creativity
- The 60/40 rule: why soft skills matter more than technical ones
- How to upskill, reskill, and reinvent yourself — starting now

Download the free Sri Lanka Podcast Tour Magazine:
https://stan.store/TheCreativeOdysseyPodcast/p/get-inside-the-creative-odyssey-magazine

🎙️ Hosted by Sheran Ranasinghe
🎬 Produced by Odyssey House Media
📍 Recorded at Hatch.lk, Colombo, Sri Lanka
🌐 thecreativeodysseypodcast.com
📧 [email protected]
🎵 Spotify: open.spotify.com/show/12SGsSsLz4DqlLFwxigjXX
🍎 Apple Podcasts: podcasts.apple.com/pl/podcast/the-creative-odyssey-podcast/id1750306317

Find Ammar: ammarahamed.life | @ammar.ahd

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He wanted to make music. The instruments he needed didn't exist in Sri Lanka — too expensive to import, taxed at 50% on every component, impossible to hear or touch before buying. So Arunoda Susiripala built one from scratch. No electronics engineering background. Just the internet, AI, and a decision to stop waiting.

📥 Get the Sri Lanka Podcast Tour Magazine — inside stories from every guest on the tour:
https://stan.store/TheCreativeOdysseyPodcast/p/get-inside-the-creative-odyssey-magazine?utm_source=ig&utm_medium=social&utm_content=link_in_bio

In this episode:

- Why Arunoda got into modular synthesizers and what made existing tools feel wrong to him
- How he taught himself electronics with no formal engineering background
- What it actually takes to build and ship a hardware product from Sri Lanka — the logistics, the import tax, the manufacturing realities
- Why he open sources everything: designs, components, manuals — all of it
- The "fail fast" system he uses to move quickly and know when to stop
- His take on the "no opportunity in Sri Lanka" conversation — and why he thinks it's the wrong frame entirely
- How community finds you when you build something worth finding
- His advice for anyone who keeps waiting for the right time to start

Arunoda Susiripala is a game developer, researcher, and founder of Bread Modular — an open source modular synthesizer built for affordability and accessibility. He's based in Sri Lanka and currently builds tools for 3D artists and game developers through his company GDi4K.

Find Arunoda:
Instagram: instagram.com/arunoda
LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/arunoda
Substack: storiesfromsrilanka.substack.com

Bread Modular:
Instagram: instagram.com/breadmodular
Website: breadmodular.com

📻 Listen & Subscribe:
Spotify: open.spotify.com/show/12SGsSsLz4DqlLFwxigjXX
Apple Podcasts: podcasts.apple.com/pl/podcast/the-creative-odyssey-podcast/id1750306317
Buzzsprout: thecreativeodysseypodcast.buzzsprout.com
✉️ Email: [email protected]

Hosted by Sheran Ranasinghe. Produced by Odyssey House Media. Recorded at Hatch.lk, Colombo, Sri Lanka.

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