Xavier Desmet is the Head of Digital Natives, Startups and Unicorns for Asia at Zoom. And in this episode, we talk about all: Tiger Mums (or for the French, “Jewish Mums”); Xav’s “WTF” moment when he realised that management consultancy wasn’t what he wanted to do with his life; His journey in the startup world and why he decided to leave Paris; Whether your life ends when you have kids; How words can change your brain; How Xav’s initial months at Microsoft were “absolute hell” and how that chan...
Jan 08, 2023•1 hr 6 min•Ep. 106
Welcome to the first STIMY episode of 2023! For the 105th episode, we're doing a little sneak peek into some of the upcoming episodes and as always, they're varied, but interesting. With tons of insights to apply into our own lives. We've got: Xav Desmet: Head of Digital Natives, Startups & Unicorn for Asia at Zoom Fabien Riggall: Founder & Chief Creative Officer of Secret Cinema (he took movies like Star Wars & Moulin Rouge, brought them to live & allowed the public to experienc...
Jan 01, 2023•18 min•Ep. 105
Welcome to Ep 104 of the So This Is My Why Podcast and this is... Goodbye! 😱 At least to 2022. This will be the last episode of 2022 because it's time for a break :) That said, I didn't want to sign off without sharing a little something about what STIMY has achieved, and also highlight some special moments from STIMY episodes this year. Featured STIMY guests include: Ep 103: Nicole Levinson - Former VP of Marketing North America, LVMH Ep 102: Notle - the ex-convict who once ran Singapore's fir...
Dec 19, 2022•28 min•Ep. 104
Nicole Levinson is the House of Yes. And unafraid of forging her own path, which includes being: 🔥 Chief Marketing Officer, audo 🔥 Senior Vice President of Brand Marketing and Partnerships for Playboy Club, New York 🔥 Vice President of Marketing, North America for LVMH But who is Nicole Levinson? Nicole is the child of Holocaust grandparent survivors. She began her career in Christie's, then Sotheby's, before pivoting into the world of PR with Elizabeth Harrison of H&S, who told her, “Tak...
Dec 11, 2022•1 hr 10 min•Ep. 103
Notle Chew grew up a Crazy Rich Asian. Who later ended up joining the Secret Society & running one of Singapore’s first social escort businesses (and a successful one at that!) for almost 7 years before he ended up in prison. Which, as you can tell, is not a story you’d normally find on STIMY. But also a story I’ve really wanted to have told. Because I believe that we can learn so much from people from all different parts of society. And Notle’s life story is a cautionary tale, while also gi...
Dec 04, 2022•1 hr 19 min•Ep. 102
Welcome to a special Questions from the Audience episode with Adrian Tan! Adrian Tan is STIMY's latest Ep 101 guest, i.e. the King of Singapore President of Singapore's Law Society Partner at TSMP Law Corporation Prolific LinkedIn writer And several weeks ago, I asked on LinkedIn & Instagram whether any of you had questions for Adrian. Turns out, 5 of you did! And here, Adrian answers them all. Highlights: 1:01 Aaron Lim - Cancer treatment & mortality 2:04 Jeff Ong - How cancer affected ...
Nov 30, 2022•15 min•Ep. 101
Adrian Tan, the King of Singapore & ultimate Linkedin Influencer, is back with Part 2 (check out Part 1 in the previous episode)! Here, Adrian shares how his career developed as a lawyer, why he hated his time as a General Counsel, thinks that lawyers should be legal influencers, how his LinkedIn posts go so viral and more. Highlights: 1:58 Embarrassed by his bestselling books 5:59 The non-confrontational litigator? 10:01 Working with Davinder Singh, one of Singapore’s top litigators 12:50 H...
Nov 27, 2022•42 min•Ep. 101
The King of Singapore has spoken… to me! 😮 His accolades are every Asian parent’s wet dream: 👉🏻 President of Singapore’s Law Society; 👉🏻 Partner at TSMP; 👉🏻 Bestselling author of The Teenage Textbook & The Teenage Workbook, which were turned into a play, movie and TV series etc.; and 👉🏻 LinkedIn writing extraordinaire (all his posts go viral & even hit the mainstream media headlines!) But who is Adrian Tan, really? How did Adrian Tan end up where he is? What was it like growing ...
Nov 22, 2022•44 min•Ep. 101
Welcome to STIMY’s 100th episode! In this landmark episode, Red Hong Yi (former STIMY Ep 2 guest) is back as the guest HOST! She brings the 🔥 & asks about my entire journey because since June 2020, STIMY has grown to: 12k+ followers 31k+ downloads 35+ countries; A book offer; and 1 STIMY physical hangout. All in the span of 2+ years!! WOW. If you’ve ever been curious as to who I am, why I started STIMY, lessons learned, my 200k word novel and what’ll happen moving forward… then this is the ...
Nov 13, 2022•1 hr 27 min•Ep. 100
Welcome to STIMY's special Questions from the Audience episode! Remember Davy Liu, the former Disney animator from STIMY Ep 99? We collected some questions from you, dear listeners of STIMY, and had Davy answer them! To Nathan, Wei Choon & Josh Wong - thank you for being part of STIMY. :) 0:24 At what point did Davy's parents change their mind about his profession as an artist? 4:02 Thoughts on merging or converting Asian stories in a Western or global audience 9:39 Challenges in creating wh...
Nov 10, 2022•14 min
Davy Liu is a Chinese Forrest Gump. He’s also a former Disney animator who’s worked on Beauty and the Beast, The Lion King, Aladdin, Mulan, Atlantis and Star Wars, and is the founder of Kendu Films. Fun Fact: General Shang in Mulan was drawn based off Davy! There's an uncanny likeness between both fo them. Now. Given Davy’s illustrious career, you would’ve thought that he’s had a smooth career trajectory but that’s hardly the case. He struggled while growing up in Taiwan, where everyone was expe...
Nov 07, 2022•1 hr 1 min•Ep. 99
Devil Wears Prada is the closest thing I have to the world of high fashion. When I asked Francine Ballard how closely it mimicked reality, she said, “There is some truth to that.” And she should know. Francine Ballard has worked in the fashion industry for a while. She was the American Fashion Director at Time Inc (InStyle), Conde Nast (Lucky magazine), and PaperCity Magazine as Style Editor at Large, working with fashion and jewelry brands Hermès, Gucci, Fendi, Dolce & Gabbana, Cartier amon...
Oct 30, 2022•52 min•Ep. 98
Jeremy Au is the Chief of Staff and Head of Strategic Projects at Monk’s Hill Ventures, a venture capital firm investing in early-stage tech companies, primarily Series A, in Southeast Asia. And is also the host of the BRAVE Southeast Asia Tech Podcast! Prior to Monk’s Hill Ventures, Jeremy was CEO & Co-Founder of CozyKin, a VC-backed edtech startup, which was acquired by Higher Ground Education and scaled across multiple cities in North America. He was a Bain & Company consultant and ha...
Oct 24, 2022•55 min•Ep. 97
ICYMI: Zeneca 33, prolific NFT investor & thought leader (he has 300k Twitter followers!) was on STIMY. If you've ever seen some of Zeneca 33's works/writings, you'll know that he's very bullish about generative art : a type of NFT where the art is generated entirely from code. A particular generative art project that he loves? Art Blocks. We unpacked all that in Zeneca 33's Part 1 STIMY interview & this ICYMI provides a glimpse of that conversation. If you want to listen to the full Par...
Oct 19, 2022•6 min
Aaron Tang is a popular Malaysian blogger known as Mr Stingy (on personal finance & career), and the Country Manager of Luno - Malaysia’s first regulated cryptocurrency exchange. In many ways, Aaron’s career has been dictated by his “maximizer personality” & desire to make the greatest use of the resources he had. This has resulted in some pretty ingenious moves, including a use of multiple credit card schemes to pay off his RM58k student debt at the start of his career! In this episode,...
Oct 16, 2022•1 hr 11 min•Ep. 96
It’s not normal to make yourself redundant, right? 😳 It’s hard enough applying for a job 😩, going through 5-8 rounds of interview 🤢before settling into your new role & figuring out how everything works. And what it takes to reach the top. 🧐 It’s also not normal to work with NASA to launch a new product (Angry Birds Space🐦 !!) & have an astronaut 👨🚀 talk about it live from the International Space Station 🌚. 🎉And yet, that’s exactly what Marja Konttinen has been up to. Marja Kont...
Oct 09, 2022•49 min•Ep. 95
This is an interview where Freda Liu (former STIMY Ep 27 guest!), BFM 89.9 radio TV host turned the tables and interviewed.. me! About my personal journey, particularly with starting this So This Is My Why Podcast. It's still strange to hear myself speak even after publishing 94 episodes, but I do hope you find something interesting out of this interview! E.g. how I went from discovering what a podcast was to deciding to launch one, some of the highlights including interviewing James Corden's Bi...
Oct 02, 2022•33 min•Ep. 94
ICYMI (in case you missed it) features some of my favourite moments from earlier STIMY episodes. Back in Episode 85, Dr Robin Dunbar (Emeritus Professor of Evolutionary Psychology at the University of Oxford) is most known for formulating Dunbar's Number = the cognitive limit of a person in terms of the number of relationships they can handle at any one time. That number if 150. Lots of people disagree, particularly that one person can only have around 150. So what does Dr Robin Dunbar think? 🤔...
Sep 27, 2022•2 min•Ep. 85
What does it mean to be the underdogs? One of the economically marginalised? Unable to open a bank account, cash a cheque… all the things that most of us would take for granted? Geoffrey See - World Economic Forum Young Global Leader & serial entrepreneur - knows this well, because of his extensive work as a social entrepreneur in North Korea via Choson Exchange. But after 11 years, Geoffrey knew that it was time to move on. And in this episode (Part 2), we cover Geoffrey’s journey into the ...
Sep 25, 2022•33 min•Ep. 93
North Korean women are entrepreneurs. Not the first thing you might think of, but a reality that STIMY’s latest guest - Geoffrey See - knows very well. So who is Geoffrey See? Here’s a quick run down 👇🏻 Graduated from Yale University & the Wharton Business School; Worked as a Bain consultant; Co-founded Choson Exchange : a social enterprise that created the largest training program for female entrepreneurs in North Korea - which ended up being profiled in a Harvard Business School case stu...
Sep 25, 2022•41 min•Ep. 93
How do you get a Deputy Prime Minister* to give you RM 500 million (USD 105M)? By having the guts & conviction of a Tiger General. 👇🏻 Several months ago, I interviewed General Tan Sri (Dr)’ Borhan bin Ahmad (Retired): a retired 4 star General & former Chief of Defence Forces in Malaysia - the highest military rank that one can attain. ⚔️ This was the 82-year-old man who had: Established Malaysia’s special forces in the mid-1960s; Fought in the Congos, the Vietnam War (escaping days bef...
Sep 19, 2022•59 min•Ep. 92
Welcome to a very special STIMY Episode 91 & I'm delighted to see all the new STIMY followers this week! Instead of the normal guest format, this episode will highlight: The reasons behind why I started So This Is My Why; The kind of guests you’ll find featured; A very shocking incident last summer involving the Late Late Show with James Corden; and 4 lessons learned from past STIMY guests. The short clips from 10 of STIMY’s past 90 guests will hopefully give you a feel for their episode, an...
Sep 11, 2022•42 min•Ep. 91
TM Lee is the co-founder & CEO at Coingecko - one of the world’s largest crypto data aggregators with over 150 million users in 2021 alone! But before becoming a founder, TM was first influenced by his brother to become a coder. He learned about Reddit and Digg, and even ended up studying computer science at Purdue University, where he was exposed to the likes of Jason Fried (Basecamp) - a huge proponent of the bootstrap mentality. TM tried many things. He wrote an aggregator in college unti...
Aug 29, 2022•1 hr 10 min•Ep. 90
Tibor Mérey is a Managing Director and Partner at Boston Consulting Group (BCG), global co-lead on the metaverse, and a core member of Boston Consulting Group's Technology, Media & Telecommunications (TMT); and Marketing, Sales & Pricing (MSP) practices. He leads the TMT practice in Austria, where he focuses on digital transformation and technology-enabled growth strategies. Prior to joining BCG, Tibor co-founded a freestyle fashion startup in Switzerland. In this STIMY episode, we dive ...
Aug 21, 2022•47 min•Ep. 89
ICYMI: Zeneca 33, prolific NFT investor & thought leader (he has 300k Twitter followers!) was on STIMY. He's a part of some of the most influential NFT projects around, including Bored Apes Yacht Club (BAYC), Cryptopunks, Goblintown, Art Blocks and more. We've all heard of BAYC/Jimmy Fallon. We hear (seemingly) everyone talk about being part of the Bored Apes community. But... what is it really like? What true value does it give Bored Apes holders? Are BAYC overvalued? Could BAYC's valuation...
Aug 10, 2022•10 min
Diego Borgo is a metaverse & Web3 strategic advisor to Fortune 500 brands like Adidas, Salesforce, Unilever, Boson Protocol and more. Having featured a number of NFT founders & artists, this STIMY episode showcases how brands have and can enter the metaverse with Diego, who’s been in many Fortune 500 boardrooms & has his finger on the latest alpha: who’s done well, who hasn’t, how important “sustainability” is and ways to ensure that both employees and existing customers are onboard ...
Aug 07, 2022•1 hr 18 min•Ep. 88
ICYMI (in case you missed it) features some of my favourite moments from earlier STIMY episodes. Back in Episode 85, Dr Robin Dunbar (Emeritus Professor of Evolutionary Psychology at the University of Oxford) shares why he thinks that the only way we can make REAL friends is through physical IRL interactions. Virtual friends? Meh, they're fake. But do you agree? 🤔 Listen to the full episode here: 🎙️Apple Podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/so-this-is-my-why/id1521191442?i=1000566279...
Jul 26, 2022•6 min•Ep. 85
STIMY 87 features Phil Libin. Some things he’s most known for: Co-founder and CEO of Evernote, which he grew to become a beloved product for hundreds of millions of users Managing Director at General Catalyst Co-founder and CEO of All Turtles, a globally distributed product studio Co-founder of mmhmm, an all-in-one platform for making, watching, and talking on videos This is an episode that’s all about startups, growth, regret and why Phil hates the metaverse & thinks blockchain is bullshit ...
Jul 24, 2022•44 min•Ep. 87
We’re back with Part 2 of STIMY’s interview with Zeneca 33! ICYMI: Zeneca is a former professional poker player (15 years!) turned NFT founder, investor and educator. He has nearly 300k followers on Twitter, founder of ZenAcademy, an NFT community that aims to create a safe learning environment for people discovering their place in web3, has a newsletter, YouTube channel and 2 podcasts! If you want to listen to Part 1, head over to https://www.sothisismywhy.com/86-1 Things get juicy in this epis...
Jul 17, 2022•55 min•Ep. 86
ICYMI (in case you missed it) features some of our favourite moments from earlier STIMY episodes. Back in Episode 79, we met Nicole Quinn : General Partner at Lightspeed Venture Partners aka the "Celebrity Whisperer". Nicole led the Series A in Cameo and Lady Gaga's Haus Labs and seed rounds in Girlboss, Illumix and Sagely. She also invested in the Series B in Calm and Series C in Goop and sourced Rothy's and Zola. Here, Nicole Quinn shares how she did her due diligence on Lady Gaga as a potenti...
Jul 09, 2022•4 min
