The Woke Salaryman Podcast

*THIS PODCAST EPISODE IS SPONSORED BY UOB*

We've been away for a while travelling Southeast Asia promoting our books.

We talk about the trade-offs for the creative soul who wants to run a creative business.

Juliana Chan is a scientist and scholar turned business owner. Today, she runs Wildtype Media Group, managing a 20-member team — based in Singapore, Malaysia, the Philippines and India — with 30 to 40 regular freelancers around the world.

Is overtime ever justified? Why do good employees leave? Do you have to worry about your own job being irrelevant? 

This episode, we get the whole TWS team to have an open conversation on these hard topics. We hope you enjoy it. 

Also, this is our first sponsored podcast - a shoutout to Workforce Singapore for sponsoring this conversation. To find out more about what grants and tools are available to kickstart your company’s job redesign initiatives, visit https://go.gov.sg/tws-jobredesign 

Featuring (from left to right):

Wei Choon (Co-founder)

Ruiming (Co-founder)

Vivienne (Account Manager)

Wen Xin (Artist)

0:00 Intro

1:16 Why are they called The Black Hole Group

10:05 Starting a hostel in their 20s

15:17 The margins of running a hostel

21:08 Scaling the business

24:02 Do you hang out as friends now?

28:58 Working together as friends/cofounders

37:15 Growing a business = compounding learning

41:00 COVID as a wake-up call

48:20 Co-founders with different lifestyles

54:21 Would you recommend starting a business with a close friend

Jeremy Tan is a professional magician who does a lot of work on cruise ships!

We talk to him about the pros and cons of working in such a unique job, what it takes to succeed as a magician, balancing artistry and corporate crowd pleaser, adapting to COVID, and more.

We respond to some spicy comments on Reddit about the fact that we have sponsors, and talk about how we approach sponsored content, what we say no to, and whether we think we've sold out, and whether we can sleep at night.

Watch this to understand how your financial agent is actually being paid, and what your options are.
We also talk about parenthood and why Asian parents find it so hard to be emotionally vulnerable with their kids.
⁠0:00⁠ Intro
⁠1:24⁠ Convo starts
⁠12:06⁠ Flashy agents and flashy wealth
⁠20:56⁠ Chris' childhood
⁠25:39⁠ Being caught in the wealth trap
⁠30:14⁠ Working hard VS Time with family
⁠38:00⁠ Asian parents and affection
⁠43:22⁠ Fresh grads, do this now
⁠46:50⁠ What are rich people like?
⁠50:27⁠ Financial freedom as a MINDSET

Providend's Podcast: https://open.spotify.com/show/5Z3FcQx5rHHFx8Fd2gLhOl?si=98960dbb5db54a2c

Meet Vivienne, she's the first person we hired since we went full-time with The Woke Salaryman.

2.5 years ago, Viv left an amazing job at a very esteemed bank to join our humble little rickety company.

2.5 years on, our company is still rickety; but she has become indispensable.

We interview Viv in this podcast about what it's like to go from a huge, highly regarded MNC to a tiny SME, whether she has any regrets, and what we do well and not so well.