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

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

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

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

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

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 :(

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.

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.

Hawker culture is very important to Singapore culture.

Central to the definition of HAWKER is the idea that hawker food should be CHEAP and GOOD; but are hawkers still financially sustainable in a world with aggressive inflation? Can hawker prices keep up with inflation and still satisfy customer expectations of low prices?

We talk about this and more with Faye Sai, one of the three siblings that run Coffee Break: a third-generation hawker store at Amoy Street Food Center.

They took over the stall from their father, and they serve traditional-style coffee in a hawker setting.

We talk about this infographic that compares the cost of retiring around the world.
Singapore is the most expensive country apparently. We discuss why this is so and what Singaporeans can do.

Source: https://theindependent.sg/singapore-allegedly-the-most-expensive-country-for-americans-to-comfortably-retire-in/

Original source: https://www.netcredit.com/blog/cost-of-retirement/
(The link to the original source article doesn't seem to be working anymore but you can still find the infographic if you google 'Netcredit cost of retiring around the world'.)

Timestamps:

0:00 Intro
2:18 Reasons why Singapore is the most expensive country to retire in
2:24 Singapore's unique position as a city-state
3:22 Retiring in Malaysia?
6:16 Retiring in Australia?
9:09 Retiring in Japan?
11:14 Prices of retiring at different countries
11:49 Pros and cons of retiring overseas
11:56 The value of the Singapore dollar
13:24 Size of the country where you retire
14:36 Pace of life
17:10 Leaving your relationships
18:42 Giving up local identity
20:01 Learning new language nd culture
20:43 Raising kids
24:14 Giving up safety
24:50 Economic mobility
28:00 is it wrong to leave your country of birth to retire?
32:00 Looking at Southeast Asia as a whole
34:34 Does the productivity of residents matter to governments?
36:52 Attestupa
39:17 Elderly people retiring
42:13 Should Singaporeans consider retiring overseas?