The Woke Salaryman Podcast

The Woke Salaryman

Hi, we’re Ruiming and Wei Choon, the co-founders of The Woke Salaryman. We’re a web-comic with over 400k followers across our Instagram & Facebook platforms where we talk about personal finance, investments, career things and more. Follow us on Instagram (@thewokesalaryman) or check out our articles at www.thewokesalaryman.com

  • 38 minutes 12 seconds
    Surviving and thriving past COVID for SMEs and FnB businesses

    *THIS PODCAST EPISODE IS SPONSORED BY UOB* We sit down with Bernard Tay from Jinjja Chicken and Paul Kan from UOB to talk about the challenges facing SMEs and FnBs post-COVID. Specifically, about inflation, digitalization, and overseas expansion! The insights discussed in this video can be found in greatest detail in the UOB Business Outlook Study 2024, which you can check out here: https://go.uob.com/3TT7si8 0:00 Intro 2:48 Life after COVID, not all smooth sailing 4:21 Inflation! 7:03 Hiring Singaporeans for F&B 11:07 Digitalisation for SMEs! 18:52 Difficulties in digitalisation 22:25 Costs of NOT digitalising 26:44 Overseas expansion! 28:54 Unique challenges of Southeast Asia 35:00 Advice for SME operators

    8 October 2024, 3:00 am
  • 38 minutes 10 seconds
    Our new book and our thoughts from travelling Southeast Asia recently

    We've been away for a while travelling Southeast Asia promoting our books. 0:00 Intro 3:36 Traffic in Jakarta, KL VS Singapore 8:45 City planning is tough 15:13 Vietnam's growth since the 80s 17:43 Would we migrate somewhere else in SEA? 20:14 Retirement village business overseas? 26:05 Book recommendation: Public subsidy, private accumulation 29:33 Book recommendation: Blue Period 31:55 OUR BOOK More on our book and where to get it: https://readtws.com/book

    3 August 2024, 2:59 am
  • 19 minutes 7 seconds
    What you stand to lose when you start a creative business

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

    0:00 Intro 0:50 More about our business and me 1:36 Creative VS Business owner 4:15 Delegate to people who like it more, or are better than you 6:42 Consider input, not just output 10:10 Being creative is good for business 11:36 Take creative risks as a part of business 13:21 Unproductivity is part of productivity 16:25 Mistakes are part of the plan 17:47 Give yourself due credit

    22 March 2024, 3:08 am
  • 53 minutes 5 seconds
    She runs a 100% remote company

    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. In this episode, we talk to her about how she took her company remote, and the impact it has had on morale and productivity. 0:00 Intro: The road to 100% remote 5:00 Productivity will suffer 14:14 The types of employees that are suitable for remote work 18:58 How do you know everyone is working? 27:26 What about hiring locals and protecting local jobs? 31:36 Where in the world are her colleagues working from? 35:55 What's the competitive advantage of someone from Singapore? 41:37 Singapore's a great place to start a business 46:00 How you can keep Gen Zs 51:14 Concluding plugs

    28 February 2024, 3:00 am
  • 1 hour 9 minutes
    Employee VS employer: Is it okay to leave after training? (and more)

    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 2:08 Why do good employees leave? 3:51 What is a good employee? 7:45 What is job redesign? 14:18 Have you had a job redesign? 20:58 Do all jobs need to be redesigned for relevance? 29:35 Should all employers job redesign? 38:15 Approaching job redesign with limited resources? 47:41 Who should initiate job redesign? 52:27 Is it fair to have employees OT for job redesign? 59:10 Job redesign VS find new job

    12 January 2024, 3:00 am
  • 1 hour 1 minute
    Should you start a business with a close friend?

    This episode, we talk to the founders of The Black Hole Group; a collective of lifestyle and F&B concepts. They started out in 2012 with a backpacker's hostel, and now they own about 13 F&B and lifestyle concepts and are still going strong. More importantly, they are friends who started a business together, and we are super excited to talk to them because The Woke Salaryman was also started by two friends who met in school. They met in JC; while we met in Poly, so we have so many things to ask. We will ask them about what it's like starting a business with a close friend, how to maintain or balance being friends and business partners, and their journey from plucky 26-year-olds running around putting our fires in a backpackers hostel to essentially, F & B moguls.


    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

    14 November 2023, 9:15 am
  • 38 minutes 35 seconds
    We talk to a professional cruise magician

    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.

    0:00 Intro 1:23 How he started magicking 7:19 Becoming a cruise ship magician 15:31 Adapting to COVID 22:17 Revealing magic tricks to the public 33:50 Crowd pleasers OR artistry

    24 October 2023, 3:11 am
  • 38 minutes 31 seconds
    Our approach to sponsored content

    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. The Reddit thread: https://www.reddit.com/r/askSingapore/comments/15c2suy/is_the_wokesalaryman_just_sponsored_nonsense/ READ OUR COMICS: Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thewokesalaryman/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/thewokesalaryman LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/thewokesalaryman/posts/ Our website: https://thewokesalaryman.com/ Timestamps: 0:48 Is TWS sponsored nonsense? 4:38 When we reject clients 9:52 Do sponsors make content bad? 13:06 Fluffy centrist content VS taking a stand 15:18 Have we run out of topics? 18:14 Choosing tone, raw vs empathic 23:02 We make readers feel unambitious :( 24:17 Limitations of content formats 27:26 TWS is self-righteous 32:00 OP elaborated more 35:03 Bye bye :(

    19 August 2023, 4:17 am
  • 56 minutes 9 seconds
    Why this financial agent doesn't take commissions and why Asian fathers struggle to be vulnerable

    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

    27 July 2023, 7:05 am
  • 1 hour 39 seconds
    We interview our first hire

    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.

    17 June 2023, 3:00 am
  • 48 minutes 45 seconds
    AI IS COMING.

    At The Woke Salaryman, we create content by writing and drawing. A.I. solutions for these 2 functions are getting really really good.

    Are we at risk?

    In this podcast, we discuss specific short and long-term worries we have about A.I.

    We also talk about what we'll do if we are fresh grads entering the market now.

    10 June 2023, 1:00 am
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