So This Is My Why Ling Yah
-
- Business
-
A podcast featuring inspiring people about their journey to discovering and living their "WHY" or purpose in life. With your host & producer, Ling Yah, we deep dive into everything from finances to dealing with doubts and setbacks, and how to forge an unconventional career from ground zero! Expect to hear from entrepreneurs, artists, journalists, musicians, Hollywood actresses, VC founders and more. Visit www.sothisismywhy.com for more details!
-
Ep 142: I've Done Something Many Haven't Had the Opportunity to Do | Lucas Lu (Head of Zoom Asia)
Meet Lucas Lu - Head of Zoom Asia.
And also a fellow Sarawakian!
Lucas has had an illustrious career going from GM of Systems Technology Group at IBM Malaysia where they closed large deals within the first 6 months, leading to Lucas winning ASEAN Rookie of the Year - his first big recognition.
He ended up staying at IBM for 10 years and won 2 Global Golden Circle Awards before moving on to become:
- General Manager, Astro
- GM (Tech Sales Malaysia), Oracle
- Senior Director (APAC Enterprise Commercial Sales & Industry), Microsoft,
Prior to his current role heading the Asian arm of Zoom, covering ASEAN, South Korea, Hong Kong SAR & Taiwan).
While at first glance, Lucas appears to have had a very varied career, he has also been very intentional about every career move he’s made.
And has had no zero regrets with how it has turned out.
So we dive deep into this episode into all things career development:
❓ How has Lucas chosen the roles that he has?
❓ What is his secret sauce to climbing the corporate ladder?
❓ How should one find mentors/career sponsors?
❓ How does he plan his career & life (he has a plan for everything, including for his family members!!)?
Please do listen & leave a rating & review!
Highlights:
1:50 My first 15 years
2:27 Shell City
4:22 No one leaves Shell, but I did…
5:26 Getting the call from IBM
6:05 Switching to tech
6:59 Lucas’ unfair advantage over other people
7:50 Lots of planning & reflections
11:55 What should you do when you first take on a regional role?
14:06 Career sponsors
14:41 Secret to landing career sponsors
15:22 The first time doors opened for Lucas?
16:15 Moving on after 10 years
17:14 Bringing a corporate mindset to the startup world?
19:09 Measuring returns for media projects
19:41 Moving to Oracle
21:01 Kilimanjaro
22:55 Element of luck
24:16 Dealing with failure
25:55 No regrets?
27:37 Moving to Microsoft
29:14 Takeaways from being fully immersed in a country
32:00 Did hiking change how he approaches sales and work?
32:25 Why Zoom?
33:43 Checklist for Lucas’ next career move (no compromise)
34:24 How to determine if someone is the right person to work for?
35:33 Most influential person in Lucas’ career
37:28 Managing the strawberry generation
39:15 What Lucas hopes to achieve at Zoom
43:58 The second act in Lucas’ career
46:45 What STIMY listeners can help Lucas with
🙊 Like STIMY? Buy us a ☕️?: https://beacons.ai/sothisismywhy
📍Show notes: https://www.sothisismywhy.com/142
💌 STIMY Newsletter on the art of storytelling + building your personal brand (+snippets of STIMY behind-the-scenes): https://sothisismywhy.ck.page/acd5bd1062
✍🏻 Leave a review on STIMY: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/so-this-is-my-why/id1521191442 -
ICYMI: The 6 Powerful Women in the Room - Jacqueline Novogratz, Lydia Fenet, Nicole Quinn, Pink Pencil Math etc
This episode is a compilation of 6 of the most powerful women featured on the So This Is My Why podcast, discussing the milestones that led them on their journey to success
Ep 124: Jacqueline Novogratz
Jacqueline is the founder & CEO of Acumen - a non-profit global venture capital fund that aims to use entrepreneurial approaches to address global poverty. As the OG of impact investing, she shares her experience in Rwanda and learning that the most important thing is to build something where you leave no footprint behind.
And how there is no such thing as black & white. Everyone has an angel and demon within them that comes out at different times.
📍 Listen to Jacqueline's full episode: https://www.sothisismywhy.com/124
Ep 115: Lydia Fenet
Lydia is the former Executive Director of Christie's New York and for 10 years, she thought it was a privilege to be working at Christie's. She never asked for more.
Until she realised that you are just a number in the P&L, and you have to fight for what your worth. In one conversation, she managed to x3 her salary, obtain an international director designation and start a new department on strategic partnerships.
📍 Listen to Lydia's full episode: https://www.sothisismywhy.com/115
Ep 125: Tanya Zakowich
Tanya has worked at NASA, Boeing and Hyperloop and shares her journey in making big career pivots which led to the creation of Pink Pencil Math with 2 million TikTok followers, 507k Instagram Followers & 99k YouTube followers.
📍 Listen to Tanya's full episode: https://www.sothisismywhy.com/125
Ep 79: Nicole Quinn
Nicole is a General Partner at Lightspeed Venture Partners. She's known as the celebrity whisperer who's worked with the likes of Lady Gaga, Tom Brady, Gwyneth Paltrow and Jessica Alba.
📍 Listen to Nicole's full episode: https://www.sothisismywhy.com/79
Ep 77: Lily Wu
Lily is a two-time 7 figure business founder who shares how she got started on her entrepreneurial journey in Australia as a teenager
📍 Listen to Lily's full episode: https://www.sothisismywhy.com/77
Ep 56: Lauren Hom
Lauren is a California-born designer, illustrator & hand lettering artist with a 250k strong following on Instagram. She is known for her use of bright colour palettes & playful letterings and has worked for clients such as Starbucks, YouTube, TIME Magazine, Google and AT&T. She has also been recognised by Communications Arts, the Art Directors Club, the One Club, the Type Directors Club and the Webby Awards
She shares how she's built her enviable artistic career including with Daily Dishonesty.
📍 Listen to Lauren's full episode: https://www.sothisismywhy.com/56
*
🙊 Like STIMY? Buy me a ☕️?: https://beacons.ai/sothisismywhy
🍿 YouTube: https://youtu.be/ncLfbdQ7XQA
🌍 Website: https://www.sothisismywhy.com
💌 Sign up for the weekly STIMY newsletter: https://sothisismywhy.ck.page/ebf231f605
✍🏻 Leave a review on STIMY: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/so-this-is-my-why/id1521191442 -
Ep 141: Inheriting a 100-year-old family business | Fong (Co-Owner, Tong Heng)
Sponsor: Descript - an AI-enabled software that makes it possible to edit weekly videos efficiently because it transcribes a 1.5 hour interview in 1 minute - and allows all editing to be done via the transcript! To find out more: https://www.descript.com/?lmref=sjT9JA
*
It’s not every day that you get to inherit a 100-year-old family business, but that’s exactly what Fong Wai Kheng has done.
Fong is the fourth generation of his family to run Tong Heng - Singapore’s top confectionary shop most known for its trademark 💎 diamond-shaped egg tarts.
Ask pretty much any Singaporean (I did), and it feels like 99% of them will have heard, eaten and love those egg tarts!
So of course, I got curious.
And asked Fong if he’d be up for a STIMY interview!
After all, family businesses are tricky.
There is:
🍿 The legacy you’ve inherited & must now maintain
🍿 The relationships you need to navigate (you can’t split family/work)
🍿 The challenge of keeping your brand relevant (a huge issue for Tong Heng at one point until they went through a massive rebranding exercise)
🍿 All the ups and downs of keeping a business alive.
A business that first came about because of Fong’s great-grandfather who fled China in 1901 (end of Qing Dynasty) to work as a c****e in Singapore.
His great-grandfather eventually earned enough to start his own pushcart coffee business but… the local “gangs” came around for protection money.
The great-grandfather had none, but promised to have the money ready next time.
Unfortunately, the gangsters won’t hear of it.
And proceeded to beat him up.
Or at least, they tried too.
Because what they didn’t know was that Fong’s great-grandfather had been trained in martial arts by the soldiers in the Qing Court (+ he was also 1.87m tall!).
So Fong’s great-grandfather beat up those gangsters instead. 🤣
News spread.
The community gathered and gifted him with a pistol before appointing him as its protector!!
Want to know what happened thereafter? 😏
You’ll just have to listen to this STIMY episode with Fong to find out.
Highlights:
2:54 Childhood
5:00 Expectations in joining the family business?
6:32 Have you had enough fun?
10:26 100-year-old confectionary shop - the origins of Tong Heng
12:22 Tong Heng’s trademark egg tarts
14:22 Gangs & protection money
14:44 Martial arts
16:50 After the war
17:55 His two aunts
20:24 Pulling a surprise
25:06 A new shop
27:38 Cracking thousands of eggs?!
29:40 Massive rebranding exercise to appeal to the Gen Zs & Gen Alphas
33:23 Tension in the family?
34:41 Going viral
35:00 Branding decisions behind Tong Heng’s trademark yellow packaging
36:15 Tong Heng’s faithful customers - the grandmother & her grandson
37:30 The future & staying in their own lane
39:35 Advice for other family business owners?
🌟 Special thanks to Limpeh Studios for making this recording possible! If you want to do any studio recordings while in Singapore, be sure to check out: https://www.hepmil.com/limpehstudios
🍿 YouTube: https://youtu.be/kSXxRHrWWas
📍Show notes: https://www.sothisismywhy.com/141
💌 Weekly STIMY Newsletter on the art of storytelling + building your personal brand (+snippets of STIMY behind-the-scenes): https://sothisismywhy.ck.page/acd5bd1062
✍🏻 Leave a review on STIMY: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/so-this-is-my-why/id1521191442 -
Ep 140.2: The Secret to Picking F&B Winners & Winning Michelin Stars | Loh Lik Peng (Founder & CEO, Unlisted Collection)
Hey STIMIES!
Welcome back to Part 2 of the So This Is My Why Podcast with Loh Lik Peng - CEO & Founder of Unlisted Collection.
In Part 1, we covered Lik Peng’s journey from wanting to become a doctor (just like his parents) to becoming a commercial litigator and purchasing his first hotel property: Hotel 1929.
The property that kickstarted his crazy career pivot.
But the F&B industry is a tough place to be. You need a good dose of hard work, luck and… a talent for spotting F&B talent (which Lik Peng has!).
In this episode, we dive into the intricacies of his international hospitality business, tackling questions like:
Why does he give equity to his chefs?
How does he identify and convince culinary talents like Rishi Naleendra to come on board?
How does he work together with the chefs to ensure that they have everything they need to build a thriving business?
How attaining a Michelin star flipped a switch within the chefs he works with
What are his thoughts on brand building?
When is it time to pull the plug? (His most painful failure was with One Leicester Square in London)
His big passion with museums; and
So much more
If you haven’t heard Lik Peng’s origin story, listen to the previous STIMY Ep 140 Part 1 episode first.
And if you have, then stick around for Part 2!
Are you ready?
Let’s go.
Highlights:
2:52 Lik Peng’s hands off approach
4:20 Discovering Rishi Naleendra & being a good spotter of F&B talent
5:51 Did Lik Peng conduct any due diligence on his potential talents?
6:56 Building the infrastructure for an F&B business
8:20 “I didn’t understand what P&L was before. If I knew, I would’ve never said yes.”
9:06 Keep an eye on the numbers!
10:12 Winning a Michelin star flipped a star switch…
11:18 When are chefs ready to strike out on their own?
12:05 Brand building
13:30 Overcoming moments of blind panic
14:46 When do you let go?
15:33 Biggest failure
17:57 Passion for museums
21:30 Do you still identify as a lawyer?
21:43 Which pivot was the easiest and why?
24:01 Finding your second & third act in your career
25:14 What book are you reading now?
25:14 Art of finding the right talent
27:00 Any non-compete clause?
27:38 Three key things that you’d attribute your success to
30:14 One COVID casualty
31:23 Luck
📍Show notes: https://www.sothisismywhy.com/140
🍿 YouTube: https://youtu.be/w22CAJupO48
💌 Weekly STIMY Newsletter on the art of storytelling + building your personal brand (+snippets of STIMY behind-the-scenes): https://sothisismywhy.ck.page/acd5bd1062
✍🏻 Leave a review on STIMY: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/so-this-is-my-why/id1521191442 -
Ep 140.1: The No-Nonsense 'Lucky' Hotelier?! | Loh Lik Peng (Founder, Unlisted Collection)
Want to know how a lawyer became a successful hotelier with 40 hotels & 9 Michelin-starred restaurants in Singapore, London, Ireland, Shanghai & Sydney?!
Look no further than today’s STIMY guest: Loh Lik Peng, the founder of Unlisted Collection.
Lik Peng grew up expecting to be a doctor, like his parents.
But ended up practising as a commercial litigator for 3 years.
During that time, the world was hit with the Asian Financial Crisis and a rundown property called Hotel 1929 came onto the Singapore property market.
Hotel 1929 was located in Singapore’s red light district and Lik Peng saw potential in it, so he took a year off from law to develop the hotel with the full intention of going back to being a lawyer thereafter.
But life didn’t turn out that way.
He ended up opening his first restaurant at Hotel 1929, then another hotel and restaurant, and another and…
In fact, he bought so many properties in the area that his friend once remarked that the street should be renamed “Peng Road”! 🤣
Lik Peng has now become one of Singapore’s most established hoteliers (he struggled with imposter syndrome for a long time when people called him a hotelier!) despite starting out by taking projects “by the seat of his pants”.
And his Michelin-starred restaurants include:
⭐️: Burnt Ends, Marguerite, Nouri
⭐️⭐️: Cloudstreet, Da Terre
⭐️⭐️⭐️: Zen
So do you want to know how he did it?
Let’s go!
P/S: This is Part 1 out of 2 of Lik Peng’s episode (Part 2 is coming out this Weds).
Highlights:
2:32 Dad as the Chief Glutton
3:24 Boarding school were the best years of the life
4:42 Being a lousy doctor
5:32 Learning important lessons from the Asian Financial Crisis
7:14 Hotel 1929
8:24 The “Peng” Road?!
9:15 Worried about being in the red light district?
10:41 Family thought he was insane?!
11:30 Turning the corner
12:43 Being hit with SARS
13:55 What crisis management looks like in a hotel
14:52 Expanding to London
17:54 Romanticism overruled my logic…
20:57 The secret to getting things done
22:35 Managing risks
24:11 When Lik Peng thought he could call himself a “hotelier”
25:43 The magic behind what he does (while being pragmatic?!)
26:48 What properties interest him now
30:24 Any regrets investing in Old Clare, Sydney?
34:41 Navigating unsexy regulations & red tape
35:46 Surprising things about the Australian hospitality market?
36:45 Dr Stanley Quek
40:37 Family friend to business partner?
Special thanks to Limpeh Studios (Hepmil Media) for the studio!
📍Show notes: https://www.sothisismywhy.com/140
🍿 YouTube: https://youtu.be/w22CAJupO48
💌 Weekly STIMY Newsletter on the art of storytelling + building your personal brand (+snippets of STIMY behind-the-scenes): https://sothisismywhy.ck.page/acd5bd1062
✍🏻 Leave a review on STIMY: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/so-this-is-my-why/id1521191442 -
Ep 139: Sneak Peek - Singapore Subseries!
It’s finally happening!
The launch of STIMY’s special Singapore subseries.
Where you’ll be hearing from a range of fascinating Singaporeans/Singapore-based tech leaders, entrepreneurs, and daredevil adventurers on how they’ve built their careers, their journey in finding their why and the legacy that they want to leave behind (if any!).
We ran the whole gamut: the media broadcasting space, F&B (what it takes to build an empire of nine 1 - 3 Michelin Starred restaurants + inheriting a 100+ year confectionary brand), hospitality, tech and so much more.
To whet your appetite, you’re getting snippets from some of the guests that you’ll be meeting over the next few weeks.
Are you excited?
I know I am! 😉
*
Also a special shoutout to Karl Mak (STIMY Ep 55) & his team at Hepmil.
They’re the ones who made this subseries possible and generously allowed me to record all my interviews over a span of 4 days while in Singapore.
I definitely couldn’t do it without them - thank you Hepmil!
P/S: Let me know if you’re interested in doing a studio recording in Singapore! There’s plenty of space to do so at Hepmil’s Limpeh studios. 😉
📍Show notes: https://www.sothisismywhy.com/139
💌 Weekly STIMY Newsletter on the art of storytelling + building your personal brand (+snippets of STIMY behind-the-scenes): https://sothisismywhy.ck.page/acd5bd1062
✍🏻 Leave a review on STIMY: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/so-this-is-my-why/id1521191442
Customer Reviews
Very inspiring
Great podcast. Obviously a passion project for Ling.
Very varied guest spots — from musicians, to artists, to the occasional stunt woman — means it’s always fresh and always surprising.
Highly recommended!
Very interesting!
Such an interesting podcast.
About real people doing stuff. Thank you.