Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Foreign.
[00:00:10] Speaker B: Welcome to Hacking Kaizen. I'm Graham Newman. This week we're talking to Paul Myers, head coach at Asia Founding Coaching. Paul is a serial entrepreneur and Asian digital pioneer with nearly 30 years of experience building innovative products and companies across Asia. He's founded six companies, achieving three successful exits including a NASDAQ listing. Paul is passionate about impact, equality, mental health and founder well being. We'll discuss these issues and explore how coaching methodologies help founders manage uncertainty not just in strategy, but in dealing with the emotional toll of self doubt, fear of failure and staying grounded through chaos. We'll also delve into mentorship and its critical role in developing emotional resilience during high stress periods or moments of failure. So how do mentors help founders reframe setbacks, develop emot emotional intelligence and find opportunities for growth? We'll also unpack how coaching helps founders sustain a long term vision from recruiting key hires aligned with their values to building resilient teams and nurturing open communication. So whether you're a founder, an aspiring entrepreneur, or simply curious about the intersection of business strategy and mentorship, stay tuned. This conversation promises insights and inspiration.
[00:01:34] Speaker A: The most important thing for me about, about founder coaching is that I probably don't have another startup in me. I don't have the seven to 10 years or the patience for it at this point, right? So I may not be changing the world, but I can help you change the world. I can help other founders change the world. And that's really part of the reason I do it, is because I can contribute. You don't have to make all the mistakes, right? You don't have to take 15 years to learn everything. Let, let me help and let me answer those questions and kind of education, but kind of support as well. And so for me that's actually quite a bit of this because I feel like I can help move the needle in a positive way. And I see that in my clients. Going back to making documentaries versus where I first started, the great thing about making documentaries was it gave you the license to learn and to make right. It's a really nice combo. And that's what I'd like to keep doing for as long as I can keep doing it. You know, doing new things, going to new places, talking to new people, asking new questions and making things out of it, making it into a book or making into a podcast or making into a course, being able to do both of those things that I think that'll keep me ticking along for quite a while.
[00:02:33] Speaker C: I'd like to start looking at coaching strategies for founders and how we help them navigate uncertainty. So what specific coaching methodologies have proven effective in helping founders manage the uncertainties inherent in startup environments?
[00:02:51] Speaker A: So I don't use any formal kinds of frameworks. I'm much more of the Socratic school of let's ask some questions and poke around and see what's going on. Right. In general, founder coaching is different from life coaching or other executive coaching in that it goes if you think of it as a spectrum. On one side of the spectrum you have the operational kinds of issues. I need to raise money, I need to hire a cfo, I want to expand into Indonesia, those kinds of things. On the other end of the spectrum is I hate my co founder, my partner wants to throw me out the window, I'm scared talking in front of people. And most founders are on multiple points simultaneously on that continuum. So I look for the pain points there. On a time when we, when we have a session, often people will bring that up. What's the pressing issue of the time? I try to set it up with a deep dive hour and a half, two hour intro session to kind of poke around and find out what are the three things we want to talk about over the next three months. My standard package is kind of a three month package, right. To start with, and we identify three things. Most people don't stay with those three things, but it gets us to the point that I understand the more a two hour deep conversation. I know a lot more about you now and I feel a lot more comfortable where those buttons might be.
[00:04:01] Speaker C: And how often do the issues of emotional toll of uncertainty such as self doubt or fear of failure empower founders to stay grounded and resilient?
[00:04:11] Speaker A: In Southeast Asia, the bulk of my clients are in Southeast Asia, although there are some in North Asia and South Asia as well. Right now the bulk of the of founders are males. And often for first time founders you see coming from Singapore or here or Jakarta, often third generation wealth, they come from money, maybe schooled abroad, great. But asking for help, saying I don't know how to do this, I'm scared is not in the profile.
[00:04:35] Speaker D: Right.
[00:04:36] Speaker A: And it's very hard for males to do that as I found so interestingly, 70% or so of my clients are female founders, which is given that only 2 or 3% of all venture money goes to female founders and female founder companies, you know, I can't do that math, but it's a real difference there. Fear of failure is probably a good driver, but it's probably also an inhibitor as in People don't ask for help when they could be or might be helpful for them to be asking for help rather than getting stuck with your experience.
[00:05:07] Speaker C: Do you see the look and the feel of the founder, broadly speaking, is similar. Same education, same schools. And perhaps what could we do to make that ecosystem a little bit more inclusive, a little bit more accessible, a little bit broader?
[00:05:23] Speaker A: The history of the entrepreneur ecosystem is really 15 years old, 20 years old, maybe. But now we know how that works, right? We know, here are the things you need to learn, here are the tools available, the map, here's the process, right? So that is democratized in some ways, right? We have programs, and I've worked in accelerators in Myanmar and I've worked at accelerators in Samoa where more and more people are able to learn the process and learn the tools so you don't have to be coming from wealth to do it. And we learn new things as it becomes democratized. Right. There's a different flavor comes out of it and a different motivations and different problems to solve come from it.
[00:06:00] Speaker D: Right.
[00:06:01] Speaker A: I mean, I find that the best founders are the ones who have a problem they want to solve, and it may be a local village problem. It may not be. I want to be the grab of potatoes or something like that. It doesn't have to be giant, but it's a problem that they know and they want to solve intimately and personally.
[00:06:17] Speaker C: Bangkok is actually very, very entrepreneurial. But if we kind of scale that up on a national level, do you think founders can really make change supported by coaching?
[00:06:26] Speaker A: I think that's two questions. I think, yes, founders can make change, and yes, I think coaching can help them be better at doing it.
[00:06:33] Speaker D: Right.
[00:06:33] Speaker A: You don't have to make all the mistakes. You don't have to live in pain or suffer. Right. You don' have to have your wife want to throw you out the window. We know what the tools are and we know how to deploy them. And it's more, do founders ask for help? And I have found that younger founders do now more. It's easier for them to do it than folks in their mid-30s who are starting companies who are a little more set in their ways. I think 21, 22, 23. Asking questions and asking for help is very easy, which is great. And they might not be the best founders, or it may be. They may not be successful at that one, but they do one and learn and do the second one and learn and the third one, fourth one. That's when they start to really scale and fly. And so if and when they ask for help at that age, I think it's really positive.
[00:07:16] Speaker C: You mentioned at the start of the interview, it's usually a kind of 90 day or three month process. You start off by probing and digging. But what's the actual kind of curriculum, if that's the right word, Is it bespoke? Based on the founder's needs or with your experience?
Is there a kind of general process that you can help nurture and hold their hand through that period?
[00:07:37] Speaker A: It's driven by the, by the client, the founder. That said, it tends to be five or six similar things. So I kind of have answers and materials ready for these issues, right? Whether it's co founder issues or home issues, or raising money issues or expansion issues, those kinds of things, and leadership issues. But I also do courses and classes where I think I address those in a more straight line, formal fashion.
[00:08:03] Speaker D: Right.
[00:08:03] Speaker A: And I do that with different universities and different accelerator programs as well.
[00:08:07] Speaker C: And have you seen any common themes emerging post Covid or broadly speaking, have they changed in the last 10 years? Or broadly speaking, are they the same? Is it about burn rate? Is it about mismanagement of cash flow? Is it about key hires? What are the kind of the main drivers?
[00:08:24] Speaker A: I think now in the past couple of years as venture funding has dried up, essentially the glory days of easy money, business plan pitch, get 500,000amillion dollars easily. Those days are gone. A and B, getting that follow on round is much, much harder. Founders now have to be a lot more attuned to the actual business of their business. Are you making money? Are you getting clients in the door? Are the customers happy? How are you measuring? What are the metrics? Most VCs that I know and most investors that I know are very, very attuned now to metrics. Even if you're not making money, is your customer growth going in the right direction? Are your marketing ratios correct? Are those those kinds of measurements going in the right direction? Where before it was less of that and now we see more of part of that is many founders aren't business people. And it was the same for me. I mean when I started my first company, I was three, four years into it, till I even heard the term cash flow right, I had no idea what cash flow was and I learned really quickly. But similarly, many founders, they may be great software engineers or biologists or marketers or whatever, really stars in their field, great idea. But that's different than running a business. So being a founder, either you need to learn that stuff really quickly or get Someone on your team who knows that. But I think that's where a lot of struggle happens for founders and that's only exacerbated in the past couple of years as funding has tapered off.
[00:09:44] Speaker C: That's very interesting, looking at the kind of DNA of founders and I guess there's kind of two buckets. There's, there's why people and how people. I'm not a why person. I don't have the long term vision. I kind of sit behind the arrow point and I'm more of a how person, how to implement things. Do you find most founders here have that vision and that leadership and that drive and that kind of, you know, look and feel of what we would see in terms of well known case studies like Uber and Airbnb or our founders here, that they genuinely believe in what they do and they just need a little bit of hand holding from you.
[00:10:21] Speaker A: Successful founders have a passion to solve a problem, I think. Right. And early on I realized and running the accelerator program and investing and working with VCs, people invest in the people less. So the idea, the idea could be good, but you know, you're going to learn new stuff and you're going to pivot or you're going to change. Right? But if I know and I see that in your, your eyes, that you're committed to this project or this idea or your heart is beating faster, that it's real, those are the people who get backed, those are the people who get funded. So the why is really important. Essentially anybody can become a founder now. Okay, we all know what that there are many books about how to do it. It's not about getting rich quick. It's not about becoming the next Zuckerberg or, you know, whatever. Although some people think that that's what it is or it's glorious or sexy to be a founder. Being a founder is cool, but the ones who get funded, the ones who are successful in general are the ones who like, are ser problem that they want to solve.
[00:11:14] Speaker C: And what about the ethics side of it from you, Paul? It's safe to say that the consulting world is, to a point, full of snake oil salesmen. You have a very strong ethical compass. Has there ever been in a situation where you've walked away from a project, you just thought, this doesn't smell like right, it doesn't look right. And to be fair to the founder, I feel in my professional experience it's best to kind of part ways or have you stuck it out, you got your hooks in and you've Done your best to really, really help them.
[00:11:44] Speaker A: I think by the time I'm working with people, that's been sorted already, either by me or by other people. You know, there's that kind of attrition that, that process, that funnel. So the snake oil and, and the BS is kind of like funneled out. I've heard those stories. I, I guess I've been fortunate enough not that not to be involved in any of that. It does happen. I just haven't, haven't seen it myself.
[00:12:05] Speaker C: I want to move on and talk about sustaining the long term vision for founder endurance. So how do founders identify and recruit key hires who align with their startup long term vision and values? And how do you support that decision making?
[00:12:20] Speaker A: It's really difficult. As a founder, you have this passion and this drive and you're willing to work those 18 hour days and do that for six or seven or ten years or whatever. Really hard to get other people to buy into that to the same degree that you're bought into it.
[00:12:33] Speaker D: Right.
[00:12:34] Speaker A: And a lot of founders have problems as the company becomes successful and they raise some money and they need to expand. They want to hire six of them and there is no six of them. Right. That doesn't exist. So it's important to be able to communicate the vision and the expectations as well as you know, there are potential upsides for working in a startup. You're not getting rich in working in a startup, at least in the early days. There might be a potential down the road, but you're there to grow and to learn and to contribute to a project if you're not the founder or co founder. Right. So being able to communicate that and that enthusiasm and to keep it going even when you may be lagging yourself as the founder is really tricky. Good ones know how to do it. Part of my coaching is to help them communicate that as well so that they can continue to attract and retain good team members. Right.
[00:13:21] Speaker C: And what role does a founder self awareness and empathy play in assessing a potential candidate's fit to contribute to the company's enduring success? You mentioned you don't necessarily need a me too somebody else if you're looking at a key hire. So what would be the competencies you could perhaps advise founders on? Or does it not matter?
[00:13:42] Speaker A: Founders need to have empathy that goes beyond their strong vision.
[00:13:47] Speaker D: Right?
[00:13:48] Speaker A: So strong vision is like job one, job two or three or eight or whatever that job is is having empathy to understand that not everyone's going to be like you and how to be a good manager.
[00:13:57] Speaker D: Right.
[00:13:57] Speaker A: How to be a good leader. Lately, the number one question that I get and the reason why founders want coaching from me is because they want to learn how to be a. Because they don't have that skill set. And so what does being a leader mean?
[00:14:11] Speaker C: Can we unpack that a little bit more and talk about that space?
[00:14:14] Speaker A: So I thought a lot about it. So job one is understanding who you are.
[00:14:17] Speaker D: Right.
[00:14:18] Speaker A: And so I have courses and I work with my founders on what are your values. Right. When we all have values and we all operate by our values, but we very rarely examine closely what our values are or question them.
[00:14:29] Speaker D: Right.
[00:14:30] Speaker A: So that's one of the first things I do and I work with, and I have a entire kind of curriculum around that too. So knowing who you are, I believe, helps, one, you to make better decisions because you understand why you're making the decisions. And two, for your team, their BS antenna are not tweaking. Because if I know you really believe in what you're telling me, it's easier for me to follow along. Right. And to buy in rather than, this is such crap. I don't believe that. You know, you have to believe if you're on a team like this and working this hard in what you're doing.
[00:15:00] Speaker D: Right.
[00:15:00] Speaker A: And in the leadership. So having that, I think that values base is really important. And then comes the empathy, because you now know that maybe not everybody shares those kinds of feelings, but you can be you, I can be me, but we can still be on the same team.
[00:15:13] Speaker C: I wonder, looking ahead to the next five years or so, Gen Z are going to be moving into leadership roles. And their EQ and IQ touch points are potentially very different from Millennials and Gen Xs. Us. And will we have to shift in terms of how we teach and how we nurture leadership for Gen Zs, or do you think fundamentally people are people people? Yeah.
[00:15:39] Speaker A: Good question. I don't know the answer to that. I do think about it. I work with some. Well, I work with people younger than myself, significantly younger than myself, who have a different OS than I do. But by listening and talking and asking questions, I think I can find out what the drivers are for them.
[00:15:54] Speaker D: Right?
[00:15:55] Speaker A: And yes, they're going to be different. But for us older folks here, who may be their bosses or their leaders or whatever, asking questions rather than giving directives is really essential. And understanding what that OS is and how it works and how it's different, I think there's fun, fundamental things like solving a problem, being passionate about solving a problem is still going to Be key, how they communicate, how they operate may be different than how you or I would. But incumbent upon us to ask those questions to figure that stuff out.
[00:16:21] Speaker C: I want to touch a little bit on the digital coaching side of things. We've seen an explosion of platforms that influence accessibility and effectiveness for coaching founders who face unpredictable market conditions, particularly post Covid. And I think this is a good thing because it expands the opportunity. Not all founders are based in metropolitan Bangkok. We have incredible talent in Phuket, Chiang Mai and Isan. Is this something you're looking at in terms of a digital presence and offering more of a kind of blended learning experience and expanding your network for people who might not necessarily have the opportunity to meet you face to face on a regular timeframe?
[00:17:00] Speaker A: Good question. When I was learning to be a coach, we were strongly dissuaded from doing anything remotely. Zoom, Skype, don't do that.
[00:17:09] Speaker D: Right.
[00:17:09] Speaker A: That body language is important and it is. And you know, being up close and personal, that's really important as well. But then Covid came and that all changed. So I say that far and away, the bulk of my sessions are remote. And in fact, I have clients, you know, ranging from Scotland to Samoa to Nepal, which is great. I love that, you know, I love that I'm able to help people there. And I also learn a lot that way. But using the old model, that would not have been possible. Moving into the kind of, is AI going to disrupt this or do I incorporate a bot or have some canned answers that come out and, you know, you pay me a certain amount of money, you have access to that knowledge. I'm not there yet. I'm not there yet. Personally, I'm working on courses that I can then deliver remotely via video distributed in lots of different ways that we can do now. And then there's a personal part. I think that there's always going to be a need for the personal coaching at least. No, I still firmly believe that there is a need for the personal aspect of the coaching because that's. There's some things that at least now, as we talk, I'm going to pick up on things. How you speak, the tone of your voice, if you're tapping your foot, if you get a tear in your eye, those kinds of things that are going to be very hard to pick up at least now with AI models and totally online models.
[00:18:23] Speaker C: So what does it take to be a coach? What is the pipeline to enter the industry, Paul, successfully, or what do you think are the competencies that make a great founder coach?
[00:18:34] Speaker A: So I think in my view to be a founder coach, one must have been a founder and gone through that experience because it's so, so extreme. The highs and the lows and the commitment and the pain and you know, you bump your head a lot and it's humbling and it's hard. It's extremely difficult to be a founder and to be a successful founder you have to work very hard and there's a certain amount of luck and there's a certain amount of serendipity that goes into it. To be a founder you need to be committed to that long path and gone through it. So while I think for some coaching branches of coaching, non founder branches of coaching, one can learn how to be a life coach, one can learn how to be a executive coach coach, I like to believe, and maybe it's self serving, that you have to be a founder, you have to have done it because otherwise you're not going to understand all that pain and all that crucible.
[00:19:22] Speaker C: I agree. My analogy is a professional kitchen. You start off at the bottom making the soups and stocks, then you move on to the grill and the desserts and you then become head chef. It's a rite of passage over 20 years. And the reason you get to the top is that you put the hours in and you've had the successes and fail failures and it's not. You just don't parachute in as an executive chef. Right. You have to have experienced that before and it's very visceral. It's a very, very visceral experience.
[00:19:50] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:19:51] Speaker C: But is there any formal accreditation or in, in terms of qualifications or kind of topping up how you deliver this learning and this expertise? What would you recommend in terms of founder coaches topping up their knowledge with other references?
[00:20:09] Speaker A: So there are a number of programs and certifications for becoming a coach. I have looked at them and I have chosen not to go that path for better or worse. I think there's probably a number of jobs that I did not get because I don't have that accreditation. But for me I trained as a documentary filmmaker and I learned to ask questions early on and I think that's a real skill. Learning to ask good questions is a really good skill and then learning to listen is a really good skill. And I don't think everybody has that. So to be, I think to be a successful coach coach you need to learn how to shut up and just listen and let things sink in, but also ask good questions and not be thinking of all the questions three in advance. As the other person's talking.
[00:20:48] Speaker D: Right.
[00:20:48] Speaker A: But actually ask the questions that get in there and root around. So if there was a skill set or skill sets that I'd recommend, it would be really those. Being a founder doesn't necessarily make you a good listener. So developing that additional listening skill is really important. Just to let it go and sink in, hear what's going on.
[00:21:07] Speaker C: I think it kind of comes under the umbrella of critical thinking. On the qualitative side, it's looking at body language. It's asking the right questions at the right time, knowing when to put the ego aside. And the war stories of, oh, yeah, somebody else did it like that. But also on the quantitative side, you need to obviously, you know, have the ability to probe and investigate the balance sheet, the statement of income, and actually track that as well. So it's a real blend, isn't it, of the qualitative and quantitative that brings out an exceptional founding coach like yourself?
[00:21:40] Speaker A: I'd like to think so, yeah. But I think it is those combination of those things, the experience and the. The softer skills.
[00:21:47] Speaker D: Right.
[00:21:47] Speaker A: Being able to be empathetic, being able to listen, being able to ask the right questions, knowing when to shut up, knowing when to probe, knowing when to push.
[00:21:54] Speaker D: Right.
[00:21:55] Speaker A: If I can sense that you're skirting the issue, I'm gonna, I'm gonna push you. And I've. I've had some. I have a client now who's like, I need you to kick my butt sometimes. And I'm like, okay, good, I will. And knowing when to do that, rather than just to be Simon Cowell all the time.
[00:22:07] Speaker D: Right.
[00:22:08] Speaker A: That doesn't necessarily make you a good coach. So, yeah, those. That two sets of skills, I think you summed it up really well that way.
[00:22:13] Speaker C: What do you think the future of founder coaching is going to be, Paul, In Southeast Asia, if we project ahead three to five years, what would you like to see? Would you like to see an expansion of the industry? Would you like to see more migration over to a kind of blended experience, leveraging technology? How do you see the industry playing.
[00:22:32] Speaker A: Out so selfishly, I'd love to see it expand. If you go to the Valley, Silicon Valley, most founders have coaches. It's. It's more the. The rule than the exception here. It's the other way around. So from a completely selfish point of view, I'd love to see the business demand expand, because that would be better for me, of course, but I think it would be better for founders as well. You know, we're in this, this technology shift right now. You Know, every interview I give, we, you know, we see how long we can go without mentioning AI, but this is the AI moment. How is AI going to change all of this? I have no idea. We, none of us do. Will we, as an industry of founder coaches, rely increasingly on technology? I'm sure.
[00:23:10] Speaker D: How?
[00:23:10] Speaker A: I have no idea. Will I do it?
[00:23:12] Speaker D: Yeah.
[00:23:12] Speaker A: If there's something that can help me be more effective. Yeah, let's. It's another tool. It's another arrow in my quiver.
[00:23:18] Speaker D: Right.
[00:23:18] Speaker A: Will I rely entirely on that? No. No. Nor do I want to see that happen. Maybe again, selfishly, I think that having that personal connection is really important to being and having a good coach.
[00:23:29] Speaker C: I just want to backtrack a little bit. Paul, you spent 30 years in Singapore. You've had a number of very successful companies, some less so. And you've got the war wounds and the scars of very, very exciting time for Singapore. If you look back on your career, could you give us some insights into what experiences really kind of shape how you deliver founding coaching now? Perhaps give us some highlights and some annexation anecdotes about your own journey.
[00:23:57] Speaker D: Mm.
[00:23:58] Speaker A: So I look at two things in particular, not in chronological order. I had a mobile content company and we were raising money and I'd been running it and building it for seven years. And we were the largest distributor of mobile games in Southeast Asia. This is pre App Store, pre Google Play. All of that's pre. Pre smartphone. Even the name is Acme Mobile. I always wanted to have a company called Acme. So that was it for Acme Mobile.
[00:24:20] Speaker C: We.
[00:24:21] Speaker A: We grew very big and we distributed pretty much everybody, all the mobile game developers in the world. We distributed distributed to Southeast Asia and I had all these deals with carriers around and distributed in what, 14 countries. And it was, you know, it was booming. And okay, it was the old model and I, okay, we've built it now. Let's raise a bunch of money and step on the gas. So did so and found a buyer. Somebody offered to buy us for a fairly significant amount of money in cash. And since I was the majority shareholder, I thought, you know what? I've done this seven years, I can be bought. So. Yeah, exactly. So signed a term sheet, doing into due diligence. Financial crisis came. Their funders backed out. My buyer back backed out. We were left high and dry. You know, I had two months of operating capital left and I had 45 employees around the region. And my marriage was not in great shape and I had three young children. And it was, I like to say, half Jokingly, it should have killed me. You know, it was. But it was hard. It was really, really hard. And eventually I did find a buyer. And while it wasn't the amount of money that was on the table initially, everybody got paid out and, you know, we exited happily and moved forwards. But I think that experience has really made me very, very sensitive to the extremity of what you can go through as a founder. And that's made me a lot more empathetic to it.
[00:25:33] Speaker D: Right?
[00:25:33] Speaker A: Because it was hard. It was hard. You know, I. That whole. Andreessen Horowitz has the famous quote that when I was a founder, I slept like a baby. I woke up every two hours crying. Right? That. It was exactly that. It was exactly that, right? For like a year. And it was hard. It was terrible. And, you know, so I learned a lot from that. And I have a lot more empathy as a result of that. The flip side of that, though, is I was hired in the mid-90s to start an anim company in Vietnam.
[00:25:58] Speaker D: Okay?
[00:25:59] Speaker A: And in the mid-90s, Vietnam is just starting to open up again. And we were doing artwork for educational CD ROMs. You remember educational CD ROMs like the Magic School Bus and stuff like that. So we were doing, you know, the artwork for that. And a lot of people don't know, and I certainly didn't know it until I got the job, that Vietnam had a very strong animation industry that was started, you know, basically by the French in the colonial days. And they. A lot of people were taught really well to be great artists and animators at all. So post War of Independence in Vietnam, or post American involvement in Vietnam, a lot of these animators just left and did whatever they could to survive, as did most people at that point. And so part of what my job was was to find these animators, go out and find them wherever they were in the countryside or. Some were jewelers, some were selling fruit, some were farmers, some were just, you know, not doing anything and convince them to come back to be artists again. And so managing art artists, it's very different than managing engineers, right? And so you. You lead with the heart. And it was great for me to, A, learn that and B, help people come back to the job that they really love. You know, artists are committed to their art, right? And if you give an artist an opportunity to be creative and get paid for it and support their family after 25 years of hardship, which is what it was for most of them, that was great. That was great. And it may be my favorite job on the Heart side. So I learned, I learned that as well. Different kind of lesson but it made me a lot more sensitive to the people of the enterprise.
[00:27:23] Speaker C: Yes, yes. The creative industries is very, very strong in this part of the world I think. And you know, in terms of the creative industries hub, it's certainly Bangkok and Vietnam. I think Philippines as well has a very, very strong animation history. So what's the future of Paul? We're recording this in the middle of December. What's the future next year for you Paul? What do you want to see the future of Paul?
[00:27:45] Speaker A: Great question. I'd like to see more clients, you know, I'd like to see founder coaching become more acceptable and some of that is industry wide and some of that may be me pitch message more clearly so that it lands more importantly and people say yeah, I want something like that, I need something like that. I'd like to see more of that. I have a couple of courses in development that I want to be selling independent to the coaching. One is on values based decision making. I have a two part series coming out on communication, on communicating one to one and then communicating to crowds because most founders are bad at both and will raise their hand and say I hate going to networking events and I hate speaking in crowds. So if you're a founder you gotta do both man, you gotta do that thing. So how do you, how do you do that? So that those are the upcoming courses for me and see how I, how does that distribution work? I don't really know yet. Some people do it very well, some people have great courses that never see the light of day. So I'm learning that this continuous learning for me I, we haven't spoken about this but I have a mastermind group called Founder Circle that I do now both in Singapore and Bangkok in alternating months where founders get together in a closed door session and talk about what's going on with them in a group of founders in a quiet, safe, secure place. And I want to do more of that. I'm looking for a way to maybe make that available to corporates to do it remotely. It doesn't really work remotely yet on Zoom or I have not figured out how to do it but I'd like to see to be able to do more of that because I know that's really effective. I've done it now for three plus years in Singapore, just had my first year anniversary here. So a couple hundred founders across a variety of verticals have participated and continue to participate and I'd like to be able to leverage that more. Because if nothing else, I could see that it helps. And it makes me feel good too, doing it.
[00:29:28] Speaker B: My thanks to our guest, Paul Myers.
[00:29:30] Speaker C: There.
[00:29:31] Speaker B: Hacking Kaizen is produced by dsa. Nikki edited the program. We'll be back at the same time next week. But until then, from me, Graham Newman. Many thanks for listening.
