Womenpreneur Asia

Today’s episode is with Jocelyn Pantastico who is the Co-founder & CEO of Olivia Technology Group based in The Phillippines.

Jocs as she is more fondly known has spent most of her life in the corporate world, with many of those years as an expat in Indonesia.

In 2018, she returned to The Philippines to start her tech startup, Olivia, a milestone she is most proud of. 

Her software frees companies from tedious manual data capture so that they can focus on real work. Olivia processes receipts and invoices, translating them into reports and digital assets in seconds. 

But it really isn’t about the receipts as we get deeper into this interview. While today's episode is about software that keeps your money in check, it is also about the bigger concept of wealth, money management and investing. 

We spoke about how her world now is distinctly different from her corporate days. She talks about the startup lessons she learned as she built her startup and how she had to change the ways she thought about putting products out into the market. 

She also talks about how her software is creating more value for accountants rather than taking away their jobs. And in that process, she uncovered the reason people were leaving accountancy firms. 

We also discussed why women don’t talk about money as openly as men going back into her own past and her realization that she needed to be open about money with her daughter. She revealed some really smart strategies for teaching her daughter how to invest, ultimately giving her a headstart with money and how that has transformed her own daughter’s relationship with money and wealth. 

This episode is brought to you by Redbox Studio.

For more information about Jocelyn, visit: https://womenpreneurasia.com/podcast-season-04/

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Today’s episode is with Evi Mariani, ​​Co-Founder and Executive Director of Project Multatuli based in Indonesia.

Evi was the former managing editor at The Jakarta Post. Her collaborative projects won the 2020 Public Service Journalism Award from the Society of Publishers in Asia and the 2020 Tasrif Award from the AJI. 

Evi and 3 other fellow journalists started Project Multatuli, a media organisation dedicated to carrying out the ideals of public journalism by giving a voice to the voiceless, spotlighting the marginalized, and reporting on the underreported. Multatuli comes from Latin meaning “I have suffered much.”

In this episode, we talk about how a crisis led Evi to start something that truly spoke to her heart - social justice. She said she was never raised to be political - all she wanted was to travel and see the world as a journalist.

As an Indonesian Chinese with a Catholic upbringing, social journalism wasn’t the path she was supposed to take. However, her first taste of political activism began in earnest when she entered Gajah Mada University which opened her eyes to diversity, pluralism, gender equality and so much more. 

Evi started her media organization during the pandemic which also pushed her to return to her Chinese business roots so to speak. She had to figure out the best model for her media business because she didn’t care much for the advertising model that most media defaulted to. 

As the only woman among the 4 founders of Project Multatuli, she is known as Ibu Dir. Evi is a woman who called herself an underachiever but today, she is the one who is pushing for greater change through the medium she knows best. 

Today’s conversation is a little deeper and more thoughtful but I know that Evi and Project Multatuli are exactly what we need to change the game. 

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Today’s episode is with Michelle Hon who is the founder of MomBoss Academy based in Singapore.

Most of my podcast guests are fun but Michelle is another level of fun. 

We talked about the concept of false beliefs about working hard and how income is tied to effort or is it? We spoke about being paid for results, not the 100 things that we do. It’s about the 80 20 principle. 

Michelle learnt this when she had to recover from dengue. At the same time, she was also pregnant. She worked fewer hours than before and yet, her revenue grew bigger than the years before. It flipped all the beliefs about working and hustling hard. 

For Michelle, it’s about the effort that gets people to results and that is not always tied to how hard you work. Beliefs impact actions. And when you change your actions, you change your outcomes. 

We also went back into Michelle’s past as a child when she was given a book called Mind Over Matter for a birthday party that didn’t happen. You have to listen to that part of the story that involved a difficult childhood and growing up having very little money. 

We talked about how Michelle’s tough childhood actually helped her get to who she is today. I love her strength when she said "If I start something new and it doesn’t work out what do I have to lose? I just go back to square one and that’s not too bad." 

You’ll love today’s episode. Let’s get into it! 

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Today’s episode is with May Sresthaporn who is the founder of MSHAPPYDIET and PLANTOGENIC in Thailand.

One is about the community while the other is about products but both are about health, wellness and balanced living.

She said she enjoyed the food a bit too much when she studied in the US but realized that the sugary foods and carbs took a terrible toll on her health! 

When she came home to Thailand, May started blogging about herself and her own stories of regaining good health through healthier eating and lifestyle. Some 10 years later, this passion bloomed into two health-based businesses.

We talked about the dilemmas of entrepreneurship, what success means and how do work and life fit into everything that we want to do as entrepreneurs.

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In today’s episode, I am speaking to Evon Heng who is the Principal & Chief Operating Officer of PropNex Malaysia, a real estate agency with 1,000 negotiators.

It wasn’t always this way and in the early days when she started the business, she found it a struggle to grow after a certain point. 

Evon grew up in Klang, Selangor and she had always wanted to become a businesswoman because of her parents. 

After getting her real estate negotiator licence, she began her career in selling real estate.

In 2018, Evon and her partner became the master licensor of PropNex Malaysia, enabling Malaysian real estate negotiators to become even more successful based on the systems of its mother company - Propnex Singapore.

For more information about Evon, check out womenpreneurasia.com

Her father, who was a property negotiator, was her main inspiration to join the real estate industry. While working at her first job, she enrolled on a part-time diploma course in estate agency.

This week I speak with Lalita Raman who is the CEO and founder of Transitions Intl Ltd based out of Hong Kong where she facilitates and coaches in the areas of leadership and communications. 

This Mumbai native started her business in 2012 after spending 20+ years working in various investment banking organisations in Hong Kong. 

She talks about how she had to adapt to different roles and build new skills as she made that shift from employment to entrepreneurship.

In her coaching work, she helps executives do the same - finding in themselves the clarity and confidence to manage the change that comes with career shifts. 

For show notes and more, visit womenpreneurasia.com

Today’s episode is with Dr Wendy Liew who is the founder of The Image Creator, a corporate training business based in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

She was a delight to interview - we had so much fun and laughter and even tears - as she was open enough to talk about her shortcomings, the fear of losing face and being a failure.

Success means a lot to her because she grew up in a small town and in an era and an environment where boys were favoured over girls. Her mother was her biggest supporter even borrowing money to put her through university and often had to deal with Wendy’s impulsive career changes. 

She learnt many hard lessons and struggled with her own pride and perfectionism and wished she had been less of a lone ranger and more of a leader when she first founded her business. 

When she was chasing after what she wanted, she couldn’t reach her goals but when she let go and learned to take helpful advice and opened up, her business began to change and soar.

Then the pandemic hit and again her business earnings hit the ground and now she is transforming her business for the next phase.

For other information and show notes, visit womenpreneurasia.com

Linda Lo is this week's guest and she is the founder and director of Ambon Boenda, a food business involved in baking and retailing Indonesian layer cakes in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Linda was born in Indonesia and currently lives in Malaysia.

Known as spekkeok or kue lapis in Indonesian, the layer cake originally was a Dutch cake. Spekkoek was made by the wives of Dutch administrators in Batavia during the colonial period and later, the Indonesians put their own unique twist to the cake by adding spices such as cardamom, cinnamon, clove, mace, and anise. It has a unique taste and flavour and Linda lets you in on what makes a great layer cake and what you should look for if you're buying one!

Linda started baking from home in 2015 - in the back lane behind her home - and not long after decided to take a leap of faith to start her own retail store.

This is her story of how her intense love for the cake of her homeland made her learn under five bakers so that she could share her Indonesian cakes with discerning customers in Kuala Lumpur and beyond!

For show notes and more, check out womenpreneurasia.com

From disaster risk management to closet consultant and now founder of a fashion tech startup, Eri Kobayashi wants us to rethink how we wear our clothes and at the same time, wants to give women convenient access to other image and styling consultants.

Eri’s story starts in the most unlikely of places - Singapore. That’s where she was living for 10 years before she returned to Japan to start her fashion app business.

She was already a stylist and closet consultant but she wanted to build a platform that connects women to their stylists and continue to create confidence for women who didn't know how to put together lookbooks of their own.

For more show notes, visit womenpreneurasia.com

Episode 1 of Season 4 is about Jomie Casas from The Philippines who helps other entrepreneurs manage their companies remotely. 

As the founder of Just Rent a COO, Jomie and her team help clients run their businesses on autopilot so that they can fall in love with their life (and business!) again.

Jomie decided to live the life that she wanted because she started questioning assumptions about life, family, travel and more.

She didn’t start out running a remote business - in fact, she ran an e-commerce business in The Philippines before selling the entire business and jumping on a plane headed to Singapore! 

For more information about Jomie, check out WomenpreneurAsia.com