October 15, 2025 • 37 mins
Fresh out of the studio, Yuying Deng, Co-founder and CEO of Esevel, shares her transformative journey from corporate lawyer to healthcare operator to tech entrepreneur with our guest host Yana Fry from Yana TV. Yuying discusses how the pandemic's sudden shift to remote work in April 2020 revealed critical gaps in IT infrastructure for distributed teams, inspiring her to launch Esevel—a platform now serving companies across 88 countries. Yuying challenges the traditional HQ-centric worldview, advocating that "HQ should be a mindset, not a location," and shares how Esevel deliberately builds leadership opportunities for talented professionals regardless of whether they're based in Manila, Singapore, or São Paulo. Last but not least, Yuying shares what great would look like for Esevel's future: becoming the indispensable tool companies think of first when scaling global teams, while proving that talent and performance matter more than location.
"Many companies that say they do distributed and remote work actually still have a very HQ-centric worldview. That means leadership is in HQ, strategy is formed in HQ, and high-impact jobs are in the HQ as well. So when they hire remote and distributed teams. For example, in the Philippines, Brazil, and India they use these more as back-office functions. So you have very talented people who join them there, thinking that they could rise in a global company. But very soon they find that they hit a glass ceiling and are no longer able to advance, and so they move on to another firm. I think that’s a massive waste of talent, especially if you’re talking about here in Asia. This is the world’s fastest-growing region. People are ambitious, people are bright, and they are able to take on leadership positions if they’re given the opportunity to. This is one thing that we have really tried to reverse at Esevel. You do not have to be at HQ in order to rise into a leadership position. As long as you perform your job and perform it well, we look at performance more than location. So I think that is one thing that has to shift: HQ shouldn’t be a location. HQ should actually be a mindset. And I think that’s something that a lot of remote companies or distributed work companies have correct when it comes to that." - Deng Yuying
Episode Highlights:
[00:00] Quote of the Day by Deng Yuying
[02:00] Introducing Yuying Deng, CEO of Esevel
[02:25] From lawyer to operator to founder
[03:32] MBA at INSEAD shaped entrepreneurial journey
[03:53] Built community care division for Orange Valley
[04:24] Family business dynamics and PE exit lessons
[05:44] Esevel: IT operations platform for distributed teams
[07:56] Company DNA shaped by pandemic remote work
[08:38] Importance of staying close to customer problems
[10:16] Managing operations across 88 countries globally
[12:39] Failure is a feature, not a bug
[14:33] Operational complexity and doing boring work well
[16:35] Future of hybrid and remote work
[19:48] HQ should be a mindset not location
[21:25] Characteristics needed for remote work success
[22:40] Growth opportunities regardless of employee location
[24:58] Founding a company is like raising child
[26:52] No perfect time for major life decisions
[29:31] Ethical principles learned from parents
[30:33] Vision for Esevel and family independence
[32:28] Partnership requires mutual support for success
[35:48] Rising through adversity with determination
[36:34] Legacy focused on happy, independent children
Profile: Yuying Deng, CEO of Esevel: https://esevel.com
LinkedIn Profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/yuyingdeng/
Guest Host: Yana Fry from Yana TV: https://www.youtube.com/@yanatvsg
LinkedIn Profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/yanafry/
Podcast Information: Bernard Leong hosts and produces the show. The proper credits for the intro and end music are "Energetic Sports Drive." G. Thomas Craig mixed and edited the episode in both video and audio format.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Many companies that say that they do distributed and remote
work, they actually still have avery HQ centric worldview.
So that means that leadership isin HQ, strategy is formed in HQ,
high impact jobs are in the HQ as well.
So when they hire remote and distributed teams, say for
example, in the Philippines, in Brazil and India, they use this
(00:20):
more as back office functions. So you have very talented people
who join them there, right, thinking that they could rise in
a global company. But very soon they find that
they hit a glass ceiling and they're no longer able to
advance. And so they move on to another
firm. I think that that's a massive
waste of talent, especially if you're talking about here in
Asia. This is the world's fastest
growing region. People are ambitious, people are
(00:43):
bright, they are able to take ona leadership position if they're
given the opportunity to. So this is one thing that we've
really tried to reverse at SFL. You do not have to be at HQ in
order to rise into a leadership position, as long as you perform
your job and you perform it well.
We look at performance more thanlocation.
So I think that that is one thing that has to shift.
HQ shouldn't be a location. HQ should actually be a mindset.
(01:07):
And I think that's something that a lot of remote companies
or distributed work companies have it correct when it comes to
that. Welcome to Analyse Asia, the
premier podcast dedicating to dissecting the pulse of
business, technology and media in this region.
I'm gonna Fry the founder of Yana TV.
(01:28):
And today I'm guest hosting for Bernard Leong.
And our topic for today, remote workplace management in Asia
Pacific, a very challenging topic that became mission
critical as companies embrace hybrid and distributed team.
And my guest today is Yu Ying Deng, who is the Co founder and
(01:48):
CEO of SFL, a fast raising SAS startup, helping company scale
their remote operations across the region.
And yes, she also happens to be Bernard's spouse.
That's why I'm interviewing heretoday.
Yu Ying, welcome to the show. Thank you so much.
Yeah. You have had such a fascinating
journey from law to healthcare, to giving birth to three
(02:11):
children, to starting and now moving overhead with two
startups. Yes, I've been busy.
Very busy, clearly. What were the key turning points
that you feel shaped you as the founder you're today?
Let's just go straight to it. All right.
So I think that, you know, I've had a very circuitous kind of
path, as you mentioned, like going from a lawyer to an
(02:33):
operator to being now a founder.I think the key turning points
for me was when I was in law, I actually felt a disconnect
between what I was doing, even though I was learning a lot, and
the actual impact of my work. So.
Why is that I? Felt that, you know, I was doing
a lot of IPOSA, lot of MN as throughout different countries.
So I was based in Hong Kong, I was a registered lawyer there
(02:55):
and then China and London. But I felt that there was a
disconnect because I will felt like I was watching from the
sidelines when I actually wantedto be in the field itself
playing right. I was advising businesses, but I
was always constantly thinking what would it be like if I were
to do things the other way around and build a business from
the ground up. So I think that was one of the
(03:16):
key turning points during the financial crisis that happened.
And, you know, seeing how the law firms reacted to it and made
me wonder, like, what would it be like to actually build a
business from the ground up withthis kind of realities happening
around me? And that's why you started your
two businesses. Yeah.
So it actually took a longer path than that.
That was when I decided to do myMBA at INSEAD and that really
(03:38):
gave me a very good grounding inentrepreneurship and also in
operations as well. Post MBA, I then joined my
family's business, so we were running the largest chain of
private nursing homes here in Singapore.
I helped them to build up a community care, community care
division and then get it sold toa private equity firm and then I
founded my first start up. So that was how it happened.
(04:00):
So we're talking about the Orange Valley nursing homes,
your family business, and I knowthat you played the pivotal role
when you actually helped it to exit into the private equity,
yes. So what were your biggest
experiences and learning about strategy, negotiation and just
managing stakeholder expectations and also just
working in a family office? Oh yes, I mean, like working in
(04:23):
a family business, I think it's any second Gen. kind of
entrepreneur would tell you it's, it's difficult, right?
You have to manage family dynamics and you know, that can
spill over from work into familylife after dinner as well.
I think we managed that quite well.
And like in terms of what I actually learnt from the exit
into PE, I think it was really alot of negotiations, a lot of
(04:44):
attention to detail, and also a lot of things about strategy as
well, because it wasn't an easy or straightforward kind of exit.
There was some complexities behind it like.
They always there are. Yes.
So it was a process that actually took us 1 1/2 years to
complete. And that also taught me a lot
about managing expectations frompeople, whether these are other
(05:04):
shareholders, minority shareholders, majority
shareholders and so on. And also learning about the
interests that different people have as well.
Some of which may be explicitly stated, but a lot of which you
have to understand from like thedynamics that's happening.
So very useful lesson and kind of mini MBA if you would.
In real life. In real life.
(05:26):
Which brings us to SL. And for those who are unfamiliar
with the company, can you just tell us that?
What SL? What are the hidden pains and
problems you are solving for companies across Asia?
Sure. So SFLI would describe it as a
scalable IT operations platform.So you can think of us as IT
(05:47):
services for distributed teams. So what we have done is that
actually we have built up an infrastructure on which
companies can tap on to manage IT for their distributed teams
throughout 88 countries in the world.
So our services you know is put into a platform and it comprises
of a few parts, includes things like IT, asset management
throughout all these countries, procurement, provisioning,
(06:10):
deprovisioning, security, SLA guarantee kind of help desk as
well. And we have basically invested
heavily in building an infrastructure that spans things
like partners, local sourcing and repair facilitation,
anything that you can think of, right?
SLA security for IT that companies can tap into.
(06:30):
So it is IT as a service, but you could tap into it as a start
up and basically almost have like a global might of like a
Fortune 500 global IT support behind you but without the
overheads of paying for one. An interesting fact about SL
that people might not know that the company was founded in 2020
(06:51):
in the midst of the pandemic in Singapore, where many companies
were actually shutting down. Yes.
Tell me why, April. Itself, yes.
So tell me why? So I think SFL is like, really
one of those things that came about, like when we became aware
of the problems that were happening, I'm sure as you know
as well. Yeah.
Because you also lived through the pandemic, right?
And you've seen what things werelike.
(07:11):
Officers were shutting down, people required to work from
home. And immediately, IT departments
worldwide, they were panicking, like, how do I get laptops to my
people, like when they have to work from home?
Like, everything's on the desktop.
It's tethered to the office desk.
How do I make sure my people areproductive?
So that was when we first becameaware of the problems that would
originate with distributed teamsand remote teams.
(07:34):
So when we saw that, we saw the opportunities that that was
there to solve the problem that was happening, we decided to
incorporate the company straightaway.
And how do you feel that the fact that it was incorporated
during the time in the pandemic actually shaped the company DNA?
I think that had a lot of impacton the company.
I mean, one of the impact is more internal.
(07:55):
So we are fully remote company ourself, right?
And we employ people throughout 8 different countries here in
the Asia Pacific. And very soon, we'll be hiring
people in other regions in the world.
So it shaped us internally, madeus realize that there were
actually a very large global talent pool worldwide as we
hired these people and we saw how capable all of them were.
(08:16):
And we also understood that thenthe culture of a company, like a
remote company has to be built very deliberately and
intentionally from the ground up.
But I think the other thing thatit taught us as well coming from
the pandemic was that how important it was to be close to
the problem, right? Because we were talking to IT
people everyday, we were understanding their pain points.
(08:36):
And so that is one of the thingsthat has really different from
how I built SFLS compared to my previous start up.
We always want to be very close to the problem so that we
understand exactly what it is that, you know, our clients
need. What is the next step up that
they want? Like what are the pinpoints that
they actually want us to fulfil?You see, it's very important to
build the culture of the company.
(08:56):
So how do you do that? It is not easy.
Especially given that your company is so diverse, Yes.
It is. I mean, we have people from I
would say 6 different countries,right?
But you're. Operating in 88 countries, would
it be correct? We are operating so you.
Employed from about 6 countries,but you're operating in 88
countries. Yes, it means you are dealing
(09:16):
with customers in 88 countries. Yes, we are dealing with end
users in 88 different countries,but our customers thankfully are
from countries usually like the USUK, Europe, Australia,
Singapore. So they tend to be more, more
commonalities between them than differences.
Our end users are in 88 different countries, but then
(09:37):
again they're usually English speaking professionals in those
countries. So again, like a lot of
commonalities, but where the cultural differences really
comes in is in terms of like thepartnerships that we form and
the infrastructure that we're building up to enable us to
service all these countries worldwide.
So it is there that we have to learn, you know, the language
(09:57):
differences, the operational nuances, like the different
speed at which people move, likein different countries.
I I would say, you know, it's definitely very different in
Europe, right, as compared to like somewhere in China, as
compared to someone in Brazil. So people move at very different
speeds and they have different expectations and understandings,
(10:20):
but it's fascinating. Clearly, clearly it looks like
you are doing a great, great jobwith this.
I hope so. I.
Know that SL supports companies like Zenjit and Getco.
Could you share a story that illustrates to us how your
platform helps these company distribute the work that truly
(10:42):
matters? So I mean those are not the only
companies that we have we. Can mention on air by the way.
Yes, yes. We do have a lot of companies
that we're not able to mention by name due to Ndas.
So how we usually help them is twofold. 1 is basically to
enable device life cycle management for their team
members who are overseas. So you can imagine Yana one day
(11:04):
if you were to set up a company that has like about 2000
different employees, you have AHQ in one place, but
distributed teams, back office support in maybe five to six
other countries worldwide, Very,very common kind of structure
nowadays. You would struggle, your IT team
would be struggling to get them devices to make sure that you
know they can properly on board and off board people in an
(11:25):
expedient kind of manner. According to what HR says,
right? If you're someone on boarding on
Monday, that person needs to receive a laptop on Monday.
Otherwise they would be not productive.
Absolutely. Yeah, so.
Those are the things that we help to ensure, and we also help
to ensure the security of like data while the laptop is being
there, used by a person in a different country as well.
So that's one aspect of what we do.
(11:46):
The other spec of what we do is that we enable them to also
then, you know, not just do device life cycle management,
but the security management of those devices while they're
overseas. So to make sure that the laptops
are properly updated with the latest OS, the patches that you
can remote lock and wipe if you have a bad lever or if someone
loses the laptops, right? So all these are important
(12:06):
things for compliance, for ISO standards and so on.
Looking at your years of entrepreneurship and all the ups
and downs, highs and lows, what do you feel are the hardest
earned lessons that you wish youknew before you started?
It's one of those tough questions, yes.
(12:27):
I know, I know I'm thinking hardwhen you say that.
I think I used to be very affected by failure, right?
And I think like after having gone through one failure with my
first startup and now having more success with the second
one, what I've come to realise is that in entrepreneurship,
failure is not a bug, it's actually a feature of the
(12:49):
process, right? So, you know, that was one of
the hard earned lessons that I had that not to be so affected
by something going wrong in the earlier stages, right?
But to know that this kind of like obstacle, this kind of
challenge actually gives you resilience and clarity that
helps you improve on like any second iteration of what you're
doing. We we were mentioning that you
(13:12):
were working with your family business, right, They are Orange
Valley nursing. So how do you feel that you
experience working in the healthcare and elderly care
shaped your resilience and just your values as an entrepreneur
and as a founder? What is important to you?
I mean, there's one thing I respect a lot about my parents
when they start up the company and that is that they always had
(13:34):
the customer at the forefront, right?
So everything that they did in terms of like the buildings that
they design, right, the operations that they set up, the
people that they hired in, everything was done from the
viewpoint of the customer. Is this the best for the
customer? Is this what is going to give
the customer the best results interms of in terms of healthcare?
And I think that's something that I really took away from
(13:56):
that. And so like having a client
first, customer first attitude is always something that we've
had in at SFL. The second thing is just about
operational complexity. I think as you can imagine, like
running a nursing home with like1000 beds, few thousand kind of
a healthcare workers and like all the different kind of
medication, the procedures, the dressings that you have to do
(14:19):
for different people, dealing with like client feedback and
all that. Very operationally complex and
very high stakes. So although what we're doing at
SFL is not high stakes in the way of healthcare, but it's high
stakes in the way of, you know, if you have an employee on
boarding, that person needs to get a device by Monday, right?
So I've learnt that not to be afraid of operational
(14:39):
complexity, not to be afraid of doing boring work, right?
But I think really the best workcomes is when you're willing to
do boring like invisible work day in day out and producing a
result for your customer at the end of the day that is seamless.
What is the biggest mistake you have made in business as a
(15:00):
businesswoman and what have you learnt from that?
I would say that that would harkback to my first start up where
we were building an idea that that we had in our minds that we
thought would be fantastic. And when we went out to talk to
people about it, they gave us feedback.
For example, price point is too high.
This thing is over engineered. I need something simpler.
(15:21):
We didn't take that feedback toohard, right.
So I think it was like a lot of resistance and a lot of
defensiveness. And, you know, I've learnt not
to repeat that with my second company.
We go where clients want us to go.
We go where the market indicatesthat we should go.
Yeah. So that was one of the hardest
last week. Which I actually find requires a
lot of humbleness in leadership because sometimes or very often
(15:43):
when leaders go out entrepreneurs, they have a
brilliant idea and they're like,I'm going to change the world.
It's what I want to do. But then to receive feedback and
say it's not what we want, actually you need to be very
humble and accepted. So this to you for being able to
do that because. It becomes very personal exactly
because. It's not they just it's not.
They just reject me into my company.
They reject also my values on myideas.
(16:05):
Exactly right, exactly. Wow, wow.
Took me. Years to learn that I.
Think I'm still learning. I'm still learning as.
Well, don't get me wrong. So looking ahead three to five
years, what is the biggest shiftyou expect and how Asian
companies approach hybrid and remote work?
So I think that hybrid and remote work is here to stay,
(16:27):
right? So when we when companies were
doing it post pandemic or duringthe pandemic itself, it was more
like how do we get this done? Like how do we get this done
quickly, right? So a lot of things was like done
in patch works. But then what has happened is
that I've seen a lot more of a deliberate shift towards
companies actually thinking about it.
OK, I'm getting a lot of benefits from remote work,
(16:48):
right? Say, for example, if I'm hiring
the Philippines and Indonesia, I'm getting employees who are a
lot more willing to work for me and to stay because I'm saving
them three hours a day in terms of transport cost.
So it's become a hiring and retention tool.
The second thing that we've seenis companies from developed
countries. So the US, you know, the UK,
Singapore hiring into developingcountries because it's a lot
(17:11):
more of an efficient cost base and they get talents over there
that would otherwise be very hard for them to hire within
their own countries. So that's also that as well.
So I think it's definitely here to stay and I think companies
are becoming a lot more intentional about how they are
structuring like their own internal operations and their
company culture for for remote and hybrid work.
(17:32):
So part of it is also the infrastructure that has come up.
So employer of record companies,which enables you to hire
worldwide IT infrastructure companies like ours that enables
you to, you know, support and equip your people worldwide as
well. So that also has a part to play
in it. So definitely, I think here in
Asia, remote hybrid work is hereto stay, but also for the rest
of the world. From your experience, but even
(17:55):
just look at the industry, do you feel that organization is
doubling down on remote models or they're swinging back to
what's the office like? What's actually really happening
on the ground right now? So that I, I feel that there are
two aspects of it. 1 is that some of the companies, I would
say the more traditional ones, so the ones like banks, some of
the larger tech companies and soon, they still find it because
(18:17):
of structures that have already been built up over time.
They find it more expedient to call everyone back into the
office and not reform, you know,any of the structures that
they've had in terms of management incentives and so on.
Right? And of course there's a short
term gain to that, but I would say the Googles of tomorrow, the
Netflix's of tomorrow, the Amazons of tomorrow.
A lot Now we want to know the names if you know, tell us
(18:39):
you're going to invest in the stocks they.
May not even be listed yet, right?
So all these companies, they have already come up with like
infrastructures, cultural norms that allows them to recruit and
to motivate and to promote people with global talents.
So I think that that is the way that most companies are going to
go in the future. And if you think about it
(19:00):
economic wise, right, these companies are going to have
access to much more global diverse talent pools, a lot more
cost efficiencies than, you know, the older players of the
past. So I do think that the world is
moving towards this direction. What's one thing you know about
managing distributed workplaces and workforces in Asia that few
(19:24):
people do but they should know about it?
Tell us the secret. I do think I've observed one
thing and that is many companiesthat you know say that they do
distributed and remote work, they actually still have a very
HQ centric world view. So that means that leadership is
(19:45):
in HQ, strategy is forming HQ, high impact jobs are in the HQ
as well. So when they hire remote and
distributed teams, say for example, in the Philippines, in
Brazil and India, they use this more as back office functions.
So you have very talented peoplewho join them there, right,
thinking that they could rise ina global company.
But very soon they find that they hit a glass ceiling and
(20:07):
they're no longer able to advance.
And so they move on to another firm.
I think that that's a massive waste of talent, especially if
you're talking about here in Asia.
This is the world's fastest growing region.
People are ambitious, people arebright, they are able to take on
a leadership position if they'regiven the opportunity to.
So this is one thing that we've really tried to reverse at SFL.
(20:28):
You do not have to be at HQ in order to rise into a leadership
position, as long as you performyour job and you perform it
well. We look at performance more than
location. So I think that that is one
thing that has to shift. HQ shouldn't be a location.
HQ should actually be a mindset,right?
And I think that's something that a lot of remote companies
or distributable companies have it correct when it comes to
(20:49):
that. When you look at those talents
that are living across all of those countries around the
world, how do you actually realise who is the one that
needs to be promoted and put in a leadership position?
How do you choose those people? What are their qualities?
So I think for someone to thrivein a kind of remote and
distributed environment, it is it is a different set of
(21:11):
characteristics from someone whowould thrive in an in office
kind of environment. And I think that is also
something that many companies donot realise until they have had
some experiences in hiring as well.
So someone who would do well in a remote work environment tends
to be an independent thinker, a good communicator, right?
And they tend to, you know, wantto express themselves rather
(21:32):
than withhold their own opinions.
So whenever we identify people like that, people who meet those
characteristics and at the same time are hungry for more, eager
to learn, these are the people that we want to promote.
So to me that sounds like entrepreneurial mindset.
So how do you actually working within the company then?
If they have actually entrepreneurial mindset?
(21:54):
So what motivates them to stay at SFL?
So I think it's the opportunity like in a company that's growing
fast, right, for them to be doing something very differently
in one or two years time as compared to what they were doing
from before. So there is that whole growth
that's happening within the company that motivates them.
But I think the second thing is also like the expectations that
we set that, hey, it doesn't matter if you're based in Manila
(22:17):
or you're in Singapore or you'rein San Francisco or you're in
like Sao Paulo and Brazil, doesn't really matter.
As long as you're performing, you're hitting your OK Rs,
you're meeting your KPIs, right and you're communicating well
with your team members. You are someone that we want to
promote into a leadership position so.
Speaking about team members and managing teams, people you
describe sounds very much like avery high end single
(22:40):
performance. The type A personalities
probably, who would, you know, go there, communicate, make it
happen. So how do you make sure they
work harmoniously in teams with each other when they're all
superstars? So I would say that you know, as
a start, we don't we don't hire lone wolves.
So we do not hire like individual performance.
So one of the things that we do very rigorous, very rigorously
(23:02):
at SFL is the whole hiring process, the kind of questions
that we ask, the reference callsthat we do and the kind of focus
questions that we ask them as well.
So we look for people who can communicate well because they
need to work well within a team.And also one of the things is
that we look for people who are part of a team and they should
have overlapping time zones, right?
So I think that's one of the things that's very often
(23:23):
overlooked because if you're someone working in a completely
different time zone from you, very difficult to get any work
done even. If you're a great communicator,
I just have to ask right now. So what is your secret question
or strategic hiring since you'reso good at it?
So now tell us. We're open and all.
I, I, I wouldn't say I'm a fantastic hire.
I mean like you're a really. Good one, definitely.
(23:44):
We've had people, you know, who didn't quite fit and work out as
well. But I think that it is really
important to follow a set of structure like in terms of your
interview questions, in terms ofwhat you're looking for in the
people and in terms of like, youknow, the reference calls that
you do. So I do have a book that I
(24:05):
follow quite religiously. It's called Who and you know,
it's, I can't remember the author's name, we can drop it
into the footnotes later. But I find it has basically
helped me to find good people even though I was not able to
meet those people to interview them face to face.
Very powerful little bit. Just shifting the gears here and
(24:25):
focusing on the family. OK, So I know that you have been
often saying that founding a company is like raising a child
and you have three of those to celebrate a little bit.
What do you mean by that? I think, you know, in a couple
of ways, like first, it does take a village to raise a child.
When raising my kids, I'm very fortunate that, you know, my
(24:46):
husband helps out a lot and my help, I, we have a helper,
fortunately here in Singapore and also my mother helps out a
lot as well. So I think it's the same thing
with founding a company and you must also you need.
A mother, a husband as a helper.I got it.
This is the secret. Well, I, I was going to say
like, you need people beside youto really help you through it.
(25:06):
So whether this is like fellow founder friends who can guide
you through like experiences that they've been through
before, whether it is like friends who are, you know,
financiers, right? Or lawyers, people that you can
call when you're in a fix and, you know, ask them how would you
sort out something like that? Even I was part of the iterative
accelerator and that was also something that helped me a lot.
(25:29):
Just the fact of knowing that there's this community of people
that you can go to with questions at any time of the
night and there'll always be someone there to reply.
Because being a founder is a very lonely kind of journey,
right? And you need the support network
beside you to make it work. For all other women out there
who are just trying to balance family, career, children perhaps
(25:53):
if they want to have them. So what is your advice?
How do you feel the best way to do that?
Well, I, I have actually received like many questions
from, you know, fellow female founders before, like who, who
have always been concerned right, Like when is it the best
time to get married? When do I have kids?
Would having kids interfere withraising money?
(26:17):
You know, what would V CS stink,right?
Would it interfere with like me getting business, business and,
and travelling for business and so on?
And I think for me at least personally, like it has always
just been just do it because there is especially for having
children, right? Like there is no perfect time to
get things done, to get these kind of things done.
(26:38):
So if you just do it, you would eventually find a way around it.
It is about what is important toyou, right?
And if this is an important milestone that you want to hit
in life, then just go ahead and do it now, or at least take a
step towards getting it done. Can I ask a personal question?
Yes, please. Have you ever dealt with
mother's guilt and if yes, how did you deal with that?
(27:01):
All right, Yeah, Mother's guilt,plenty of it.
So I think we. All have it, yes.
I I do work from home. So you know, I've had my
daughter tell me one day, she said this was when she was 8
years old. She said, mommy, do you know
what, I want to be 1 when I growup?
I said, no, She said, I want to be a housewife.
And I was like, why? I was a bit surprised because I
(27:21):
was, you know, I was working. I thought I was showing my kids
like, this is an example of likea mother who's working.
And she said, I want to be a housewife.
And I said, why? Right.
And she said, well, so that, youknow, when I have a kid and when
my kid comes home from school, Icould actually pay attention to
my kid. She was like a big Ouch kind of
(27:42):
moment because I I do lock my door right?
Like you. Have to focus I device.
How do you focus on work? Yeah, so there we go.
Yeah, like a mother's guilt. But how?
I comfort myself. Yes.
I'm more interested in that. Modern, snarky teenagers.
Yeah. So how I comfort myself with it
is that I do believe that, you know, teaching kids to be
(28:05):
independent and to have an independent mindset is a very
important part of bringing children up.
So whenever my children are there like squabbling amongst
themselves or, you know, being unhappy that I can't pay
attention to them or saying I'm bored, like can you do something
with me? I comfort by myself by saying
that, well, this is all part of growing up.
They have to learn how to deal with it, right?
(28:27):
And so that is also part of being a parent as well, teaching
them all these life lessons. Absolutely.
Since we're on the topic of children and parents, I'm just
curious what is the biggest lesson that you learn from your
mom and from your dad? They.
Want to make sure they listen tothe podcast and if you had this
(28:48):
moment when you reach out when you were saying something like
that, now they're like, OK, she got it when she grow up.
I would say like looking at the kind of people that they are and
like looking at how they build up their lives and their and
their businesses. I would say the biggest lesson
or the biggest take away from them is always to do things that
(29:09):
you can sleep with at night, right?
So what that means is, you know,you have to do things in a way
that's ethical, in a way that you feel is right and it does
right by the people that you're dealing with.
So I think that that is what they have always done.
Like I've never seen them do something that's inappropriate
or said something that was inappropriate about other people
even behind their backs. So that is something that I've
(29:30):
taken away and it's a principle that I hold with me when I build
my business as well. When you think about the next
few years, what does grade look like for yourself personally,
for SFL and just, you know, you as a founder and as a mother
take us on this journey all. Right.
(29:52):
So let's deal with the easier part of the company first.
So I would say grade for SFL would be where we become a very
indispensable tool for companiesthat are growing globally.
So whenever a company is thinking of hiring someone in
the UAE or they're thinking of like offboarding someone in
Mexico or onboarding someone in China, immediately who they
(30:13):
think of is us. So that's who we want to be,
right? In terms of family, what I would
say is independence for my children.
I think especially in this age of AI, right, where I know that
a lot of parents are concerned about how is AI going to affect
like jobs for my kids, you know,how is it going to affect like
how my kids do their school workand so on.
(30:35):
I think for my kids, what success would look like for me
as a mother is independent thinking, right?
And not just blindly accepting like what society tells you
things should be independence and independent thinking for
them. For me as a founder, I think it
would be making SFL into the reality of what we want the
world to be, which is basically if you are talented person who
(30:57):
joins SFL from any part of the world, you have a chance to rise
up to a leadership position in afast growing company.
It doesn't matter if you're based in Manila, in Shanghai,
in, like, you know, Sao Paulo, right, You have a chance of
being a leader in a company thatappreciates you for who you are
and not where you're based. I have to ask about your
husband. Maye please there is this.
(31:19):
I hope this is a. Question I can answer well, it's
an. Appropriate 1.
Not an inappropriate. You know, they say traditionally
they used to say that behind every great man there is a woman
that has been supporting him. I find it now with where the
world is going, we can reverse this sentence, reverse engineer
that as you say, that next to each great woman there is a man
(31:41):
who is supporting him. So what do you feel then the
role your husband has been playing and in general your kind
of reflections towards other women?
What, what? What do we want from our man?
Help us to succeed. So I think the most important
thing that my husband has brought to me is that I know
(32:02):
that he also wants me to succeedas well.
And I think that's very important for, like, any sort of
partnership, right? I've seen, you know, some
relationships where one party may not want the other one to
succeed so much because of insecurities that they may have.
But it's very different for me and Bernard.
Like, we both want each other tosucceed.
And that may mean like sacrifices, right, that we have
(32:22):
to make in the short term, like,oh, I have to go out for this
business, this meeting. Will you do the kids expelling
with him kind of thing? And he's always willing to do
those kind of things. And I'm also willing to do it
for him as well. So it is not something that's
easy. And I would say that we have had
to really get to this understanding after the first
few years of the relationship. But I think we're at this place
(32:44):
now where you know, we, we know that we're trying to do right by
each other. Beautiful.
Thank you for sharing that. Before we wrap up, is there a
book, a podcast, or a tool that has been recently inspiring you
and really helping you to go to the next level IT in business
life? All right, so I have actually
(33:07):
been listening to a podcast called Empire.
It's by two historians, and it has been fascinating for me.
I mean, first of all, I'm a history buff.
I used to do history in high school, but more than that as
well, it has shown me about how the world is different and yet
always the same, right? It is always about like human
nature and how human nature keeps repeating itself, whether
(33:31):
this is the Byzantine Empire or whether it's the Mughal Empire
or whether it's the Chinese Empire.
So when you look at all these different personalities, the
mistakes and the successes that keeps repeating itself, it shows
you that at the end of the day, like everything revolves around
human nature. So that is something that I
really, you know, enjoy listening to, would encourage
anyone who even has a bit of interest in history to listen to
(33:54):
it as well. Well, thanks.
You like history so much. I just have to ask, So what is
your favorite event from the history point of view in in
terms of what we can learn from that and how do you feel it can
actually help us to build a society we truly want to have?
So I, I, you know, when, when I look at history, I think I look
(34:16):
at it more from personalities like rather than events, because
like that, that is just a lot more of a captivating subject.
So I think one of the things that I've been listening to
recently is the founding fathersof the US, right?
And you know how a lot of them actually had to rise to
adversities. Like, you know, I think everyone
is familiar with the story now with Hamilton, right?
(34:37):
Because of like the music we've.Watched the musical exactly we
all. Watched the musical now that we
read the book, but it wasn't just Hamilton, it was also
George Washington, Thomas Jefferson that actually rose
from very adverse kind of situations and brought
themselves up to a higher level.So I would say that you know the
lesson I learnt from that is that things are not irreversible
even though you may be may have been born or like subjected to
(34:59):
very bad circumstances in life, but to sheer will, you should
actually be able to rise up to ahigh level right with sufficient
amount of luck and sufficient amount of determination.
And the final question before wewrap up for today, please let's
go all the way forward up to youbeing 300 years old and you're
300 years old, yes, and you're looking you.
(35:22):
Must know about some technology that I haven't heard.
Oh. I am sure we will get it in our
lifetime. OK.
And so you're, you're looking atyour life and what would you
like to be most proud of and most happy about at the end of
your life? I think that that is something
that that we ask ourselves, you know, a lot about right from
(35:43):
time to time. And I think for me, a lot of
that, like honestly would be my kids, right?
And how they have turned out. Because a lot of things you do,
it's always asking about like, why is this thing important to
you? Why is this thing important to
you, right? So for me like fundamentally be
my kids and you know, just by knowing that they have turned
(36:04):
out to be independent, happy kind of people like would be
sufficient for me. They do not have to achieve like
a certain level of success or you're not.
Being Asian now come on. I think even for Asian parents,
that is what they want. It's just that they express it
in a different form. I, I, I do know, I think for my
parents at least that that is what they are happy with that
(36:27):
OK, on my deathbed, like I can go knowing that my kids, my
descendants are well and they'retaken care of and they're happy.
Like that's it. Well, with that, I have nothing
else to ask. I mean, this is like really
it's, it's, it's the final dot. So my only question left when
the audience who wants to connect with you and learn more
about SRL, how they can do that?So if they want to learn more
(36:50):
about SFL, they can come onto our website.
It's really easy. So it's SFL, ESEV, el.com.
And if they want to connect withme, really easy as well.
My e-mail address, yuyingyuying@sfl.com.
Thank. You so much Yuyen and it was
such a powerful conversation on leadership, resilience, AI,
(37:11):
motherhood and dealing with diversity and remote workplaces
and really, really amazing and still our listen.
I thank you so much for tuning in today.
That was Yana Fry from Yana TV and next week you're going to
see Bernard again in this chair on the show.
So make sure you tune in to analyze Asia.
(37:31):
Thanks, Yana.
Many companies that say that they do distributed and remote
work, they actually still have avery HQ centric worldview.
So that means that leadership isin HQ, strategy is formed in HQ,
high impact jobs are in the HQ as well.
So when they hire remote and distributed teams, say for
example, in the Philippines, in Brazil and India, they use this
(00:20):
more as back office functions. So you have very talented people
who join them there, right, thinking that they could rise in
a global company. But very soon they find that
they hit a glass ceiling and they're no longer able to
advance. And so they move on to another
firm. I think that that's a massive
waste of talent, especially if you're talking about here in
Asia. This is the world's fastest
growing region. People are ambitious, people are
(00:43):
bright, they are able to take ona leadership position if they're
given the opportunity to. So this is one thing that we've
really tried to reverse at SFL. You do not have to be at HQ in
order to rise into a leadership position, as long as you perform
your job and you perform it well.
We look at performance more thanlocation.
So I think that that is one thing that has to shift.
HQ shouldn't be a location. HQ should actually be a mindset.
(01:07):
And I think that's something that a lot of remote companies
or distributed work companies have it correct when it comes to
that. Welcome to Analyse Asia, the
premier podcast dedicating to dissecting the pulse of
business, technology and media in this region.
I'm gonna Fry the founder of Yana TV.
(01:28):
And today I'm guest hosting for Bernard Leong.
And our topic for today, remote workplace management in Asia
Pacific, a very challenging topic that became mission
critical as companies embrace hybrid and distributed team.
And my guest today is Yu Ying Deng, who is the Co founder and
(01:48):
CEO of SFL, a fast raising SAS startup, helping company scale
their remote operations across the region.
And yes, she also happens to be Bernard's spouse.
That's why I'm interviewing heretoday.
Yu Ying, welcome to the show. Thank you so much.
Yeah. You have had such a fascinating
journey from law to healthcare, to giving birth to three
(02:11):
children, to starting and now moving overhead with two
startups. Yes, I've been busy.
Very busy, clearly. What were the key turning points
that you feel shaped you as the founder you're today?
Let's just go straight to it. All right.
So I think that, you know, I've had a very circuitous kind of
path, as you mentioned, like going from a lawyer to an
(02:33):
operator to being now a founder.I think the key turning points
for me was when I was in law, I actually felt a disconnect
between what I was doing, even though I was learning a lot, and
the actual impact of my work. So.
Why is that I? Felt that, you know, I was doing
a lot of IPOSA, lot of MN as throughout different countries.
So I was based in Hong Kong, I was a registered lawyer there
(02:55):
and then China and London. But I felt that there was a
disconnect because I will felt like I was watching from the
sidelines when I actually wantedto be in the field itself
playing right. I was advising businesses, but I
was always constantly thinking what would it be like if I were
to do things the other way around and build a business from
the ground up. So I think that was one of the
(03:16):
key turning points during the financial crisis that happened.
And, you know, seeing how the law firms reacted to it and made
me wonder, like, what would it be like to actually build a
business from the ground up withthis kind of realities happening
around me? And that's why you started your
two businesses. Yeah.
So it actually took a longer path than that.
That was when I decided to do myMBA at INSEAD and that really
(03:38):
gave me a very good grounding inentrepreneurship and also in
operations as well. Post MBA, I then joined my
family's business, so we were running the largest chain of
private nursing homes here in Singapore.
I helped them to build up a community care, community care
division and then get it sold toa private equity firm and then I
founded my first start up. So that was how it happened.
(04:00):
So we're talking about the Orange Valley nursing homes,
your family business, and I knowthat you played the pivotal role
when you actually helped it to exit into the private equity,
yes. So what were your biggest
experiences and learning about strategy, negotiation and just
managing stakeholder expectations and also just
working in a family office? Oh yes, I mean, like working in
(04:23):
a family business, I think it's any second Gen. kind of
entrepreneur would tell you it's, it's difficult, right?
You have to manage family dynamics and you know, that can
spill over from work into familylife after dinner as well.
I think we managed that quite well.
And like in terms of what I actually learnt from the exit
into PE, I think it was really alot of negotiations, a lot of
(04:44):
attention to detail, and also a lot of things about strategy as
well, because it wasn't an easy or straightforward kind of exit.
There was some complexities behind it like.
They always there are. Yes.
So it was a process that actually took us 1 1/2 years to
complete. And that also taught me a lot
about managing expectations frompeople, whether these are other
(05:04):
shareholders, minority shareholders, majority
shareholders and so on. And also learning about the
interests that different people have as well.
Some of which may be explicitly stated, but a lot of which you
have to understand from like thedynamics that's happening.
So very useful lesson and kind of mini MBA if you would.
In real life. In real life.
(05:26):
Which brings us to SL. And for those who are unfamiliar
with the company, can you just tell us that?
What SL? What are the hidden pains and
problems you are solving for companies across Asia?
Sure. So SFLI would describe it as a
scalable IT operations platform.So you can think of us as IT
(05:47):
services for distributed teams. So what we have done is that
actually we have built up an infrastructure on which
companies can tap on to manage IT for their distributed teams
throughout 88 countries in the world.
So our services you know is put into a platform and it comprises
of a few parts, includes things like IT, asset management
throughout all these countries, procurement, provisioning,
(06:10):
deprovisioning, security, SLA guarantee kind of help desk as
well. And we have basically invested
heavily in building an infrastructure that spans things
like partners, local sourcing and repair facilitation,
anything that you can think of, right?
SLA security for IT that companies can tap into.
(06:30):
So it is IT as a service, but you could tap into it as a start
up and basically almost have like a global might of like a
Fortune 500 global IT support behind you but without the
overheads of paying for one. An interesting fact about SL
that people might not know that the company was founded in 2020
(06:51):
in the midst of the pandemic in Singapore, where many companies
were actually shutting down. Yes.
Tell me why, April. Itself, yes.
So tell me why? So I think SFL is like, really
one of those things that came about, like when we became aware
of the problems that were happening, I'm sure as you know
as well. Yeah.
Because you also lived through the pandemic, right?
And you've seen what things werelike.
(07:11):
Officers were shutting down, people required to work from
home. And immediately, IT departments
worldwide, they were panicking, like, how do I get laptops to my
people, like when they have to work from home?
Like, everything's on the desktop.
It's tethered to the office desk.
How do I make sure my people areproductive?
So that was when we first becameaware of the problems that would
originate with distributed teamsand remote teams.
(07:34):
So when we saw that, we saw the opportunities that that was
there to solve the problem that was happening, we decided to
incorporate the company straightaway.
And how do you feel that the fact that it was incorporated
during the time in the pandemic actually shaped the company DNA?
I think that had a lot of impacton the company.
I mean, one of the impact is more internal.
(07:55):
So we are fully remote company ourself, right?
And we employ people throughout 8 different countries here in
the Asia Pacific. And very soon, we'll be hiring
people in other regions in the world.
So it shaped us internally, madeus realize that there were
actually a very large global talent pool worldwide as we
hired these people and we saw how capable all of them were.
(08:16):
And we also understood that thenthe culture of a company, like a
remote company has to be built very deliberately and
intentionally from the ground up.
But I think the other thing thatit taught us as well coming from
the pandemic was that how important it was to be close to
the problem, right? Because we were talking to IT
people everyday, we were understanding their pain points.
(08:36):
And so that is one of the thingsthat has really different from
how I built SFLS compared to my previous start up.
We always want to be very close to the problem so that we
understand exactly what it is that, you know, our clients
need. What is the next step up that
they want? Like what are the pinpoints that
they actually want us to fulfil?You see, it's very important to
build the culture of the company.
(08:56):
So how do you do that? It is not easy.
Especially given that your company is so diverse, Yes.
It is. I mean, we have people from I
would say 6 different countries,right?
But you're. Operating in 88 countries, would
it be correct? We are operating so you.
Employed from about 6 countries,but you're operating in 88
countries. Yes, it means you are dealing
(09:16):
with customers in 88 countries. Yes, we are dealing with end
users in 88 different countries,but our customers thankfully are
from countries usually like the USUK, Europe, Australia,
Singapore. So they tend to be more, more
commonalities between them than differences.
Our end users are in 88 different countries, but then
(09:37):
again they're usually English speaking professionals in those
countries. So again, like a lot of
commonalities, but where the cultural differences really
comes in is in terms of like thepartnerships that we form and
the infrastructure that we're building up to enable us to
service all these countries worldwide.
So it is there that we have to learn, you know, the language
(09:57):
differences, the operational nuances, like the different
speed at which people move, likein different countries.
I I would say, you know, it's definitely very different in
Europe, right, as compared to like somewhere in China, as
compared to someone in Brazil. So people move at very different
speeds and they have different expectations and understandings,
(10:20):
but it's fascinating. Clearly, clearly it looks like
you are doing a great, great jobwith this.
I hope so. I.
Know that SL supports companies like Zenjit and Getco.
Could you share a story that illustrates to us how your
platform helps these company distribute the work that truly
(10:42):
matters? So I mean those are not the only
companies that we have we. Can mention on air by the way.
Yes, yes. We do have a lot of companies
that we're not able to mention by name due to Ndas.
So how we usually help them is twofold. 1 is basically to
enable device life cycle management for their team
members who are overseas. So you can imagine Yana one day
(11:04):
if you were to set up a company that has like about 2000
different employees, you have AHQ in one place, but
distributed teams, back office support in maybe five to six
other countries worldwide, Very,very common kind of structure
nowadays. You would struggle, your IT team
would be struggling to get them devices to make sure that you
know they can properly on board and off board people in an
(11:25):
expedient kind of manner. According to what HR says,
right? If you're someone on boarding on
Monday, that person needs to receive a laptop on Monday.
Otherwise they would be not productive.
Absolutely. Yeah, so.
Those are the things that we help to ensure, and we also help
to ensure the security of like data while the laptop is being
there, used by a person in a different country as well.
So that's one aspect of what we do.
(11:46):
The other spec of what we do is that we enable them to also
then, you know, not just do device life cycle management,
but the security management of those devices while they're
overseas. So to make sure that the laptops
are properly updated with the latest OS, the patches that you
can remote lock and wipe if you have a bad lever or if someone
loses the laptops, right? So all these are important
(12:06):
things for compliance, for ISO standards and so on.
Looking at your years of entrepreneurship and all the ups
and downs, highs and lows, what do you feel are the hardest
earned lessons that you wish youknew before you started?
It's one of those tough questions, yes.
(12:27):
I know, I know I'm thinking hardwhen you say that.
I think I used to be very affected by failure, right?
And I think like after having gone through one failure with my
first startup and now having more success with the second
one, what I've come to realise is that in entrepreneurship,
failure is not a bug, it's actually a feature of the
(12:49):
process, right? So, you know, that was one of
the hard earned lessons that I had that not to be so affected
by something going wrong in the earlier stages, right?
But to know that this kind of like obstacle, this kind of
challenge actually gives you resilience and clarity that
helps you improve on like any second iteration of what you're
doing. We we were mentioning that you
(13:12):
were working with your family business, right, They are Orange
Valley nursing. So how do you feel that you
experience working in the healthcare and elderly care
shaped your resilience and just your values as an entrepreneur
and as a founder? What is important to you?
I mean, there's one thing I respect a lot about my parents
when they start up the company and that is that they always had
(13:34):
the customer at the forefront, right?
So everything that they did in terms of like the buildings that
they design, right, the operations that they set up, the
people that they hired in, everything was done from the
viewpoint of the customer. Is this the best for the
customer? Is this what is going to give
the customer the best results interms of in terms of healthcare?
And I think that's something that I really took away from
(13:56):
that. And so like having a client
first, customer first attitude is always something that we've
had in at SFL. The second thing is just about
operational complexity. I think as you can imagine, like
running a nursing home with like1000 beds, few thousand kind of
a healthcare workers and like all the different kind of
medication, the procedures, the dressings that you have to do
(14:19):
for different people, dealing with like client feedback and
all that. Very operationally complex and
very high stakes. So although what we're doing at
SFL is not high stakes in the way of healthcare, but it's high
stakes in the way of, you know, if you have an employee on
boarding, that person needs to get a device by Monday, right?
So I've learnt that not to be afraid of operational
(14:39):
complexity, not to be afraid of doing boring work, right?
But I think really the best workcomes is when you're willing to
do boring like invisible work day in day out and producing a
result for your customer at the end of the day that is seamless.
What is the biggest mistake you have made in business as a
(15:00):
businesswoman and what have you learnt from that?
I would say that that would harkback to my first start up where
we were building an idea that that we had in our minds that we
thought would be fantastic. And when we went out to talk to
people about it, they gave us feedback.
For example, price point is too high.
This thing is over engineered. I need something simpler.
(15:21):
We didn't take that feedback toohard, right.
So I think it was like a lot of resistance and a lot of
defensiveness. And, you know, I've learnt not
to repeat that with my second company.
We go where clients want us to go.
We go where the market indicatesthat we should go.
Yeah. So that was one of the hardest
last week. Which I actually find requires a
lot of humbleness in leadership because sometimes or very often
(15:43):
when leaders go out entrepreneurs, they have a
brilliant idea and they're like,I'm going to change the world.
It's what I want to do. But then to receive feedback and
say it's not what we want, actually you need to be very
humble and accepted. So this to you for being able to
do that because. It becomes very personal exactly
because. It's not they just it's not.
They just reject me into my company.
They reject also my values on myideas.
(16:05):
Exactly right, exactly. Wow, wow.
Took me. Years to learn that I.
Think I'm still learning. I'm still learning as.
Well, don't get me wrong. So looking ahead three to five
years, what is the biggest shiftyou expect and how Asian
companies approach hybrid and remote work?
So I think that hybrid and remote work is here to stay,
(16:27):
right? So when we when companies were
doing it post pandemic or duringthe pandemic itself, it was more
like how do we get this done? Like how do we get this done
quickly, right? So a lot of things was like done
in patch works. But then what has happened is
that I've seen a lot more of a deliberate shift towards
companies actually thinking about it.
OK, I'm getting a lot of benefits from remote work,
(16:48):
right? Say, for example, if I'm hiring
the Philippines and Indonesia, I'm getting employees who are a
lot more willing to work for me and to stay because I'm saving
them three hours a day in terms of transport cost.
So it's become a hiring and retention tool.
The second thing that we've seenis companies from developed
countries. So the US, you know, the UK,
Singapore hiring into developingcountries because it's a lot
(17:11):
more of an efficient cost base and they get talents over there
that would otherwise be very hard for them to hire within
their own countries. So that's also that as well.
So I think it's definitely here to stay and I think companies
are becoming a lot more intentional about how they are
structuring like their own internal operations and their
company culture for for remote and hybrid work.
(17:32):
So part of it is also the infrastructure that has come up.
So employer of record companies,which enables you to hire
worldwide IT infrastructure companies like ours that enables
you to, you know, support and equip your people worldwide as
well. So that also has a part to play
in it. So definitely, I think here in
Asia, remote hybrid work is hereto stay, but also for the rest
of the world. From your experience, but even
(17:55):
just look at the industry, do you feel that organization is
doubling down on remote models or they're swinging back to
what's the office like? What's actually really happening
on the ground right now? So that I, I feel that there are
two aspects of it. 1 is that some of the companies, I would
say the more traditional ones, so the ones like banks, some of
the larger tech companies and soon, they still find it because
(18:17):
of structures that have already been built up over time.
They find it more expedient to call everyone back into the
office and not reform, you know,any of the structures that
they've had in terms of management incentives and so on.
Right? And of course there's a short
term gain to that, but I would say the Googles of tomorrow, the
Netflix's of tomorrow, the Amazons of tomorrow.
A lot Now we want to know the names if you know, tell us
(18:39):
you're going to invest in the stocks they.
May not even be listed yet, right?
So all these companies, they have already come up with like
infrastructures, cultural norms that allows them to recruit and
to motivate and to promote people with global talents.
So I think that that is the way that most companies are going to
go in the future. And if you think about it
(19:00):
economic wise, right, these companies are going to have
access to much more global diverse talent pools, a lot more
cost efficiencies than, you know, the older players of the
past. So I do think that the world is
moving towards this direction. What's one thing you know about
managing distributed workplaces and workforces in Asia that few
(19:24):
people do but they should know about it?
Tell us the secret. I do think I've observed one
thing and that is many companiesthat you know say that they do
distributed and remote work, they actually still have a very
HQ centric world view. So that means that leadership is
(19:45):
in HQ, strategy is forming HQ, high impact jobs are in the HQ
as well. So when they hire remote and
distributed teams, say for example, in the Philippines, in
Brazil and India, they use this more as back office functions.
So you have very talented peoplewho join them there, right,
thinking that they could rise ina global company.
But very soon they find that they hit a glass ceiling and
(20:07):
they're no longer able to advance.
And so they move on to another firm.
I think that that's a massive waste of talent, especially if
you're talking about here in Asia.
This is the world's fastest growing region.
People are ambitious, people arebright, they are able to take on
a leadership position if they'regiven the opportunity to.
So this is one thing that we've really tried to reverse at SFL.
(20:28):
You do not have to be at HQ in order to rise into a leadership
position, as long as you performyour job and you perform it
well. We look at performance more than
location. So I think that that is one
thing that has to shift. HQ shouldn't be a location.
HQ should actually be a mindset,right?
And I think that's something that a lot of remote companies
or distributable companies have it correct when it comes to
(20:49):
that. When you look at those talents
that are living across all of those countries around the
world, how do you actually realise who is the one that
needs to be promoted and put in a leadership position?
How do you choose those people? What are their qualities?
So I think for someone to thrivein a kind of remote and
distributed environment, it is it is a different set of
(21:11):
characteristics from someone whowould thrive in an in office
kind of environment. And I think that is also
something that many companies donot realise until they have had
some experiences in hiring as well.
So someone who would do well in a remote work environment tends
to be an independent thinker, a good communicator, right?
And they tend to, you know, wantto express themselves rather
(21:32):
than withhold their own opinions.
So whenever we identify people like that, people who meet those
characteristics and at the same time are hungry for more, eager
to learn, these are the people that we want to promote.
So to me that sounds like entrepreneurial mindset.
So how do you actually working within the company then?
If they have actually entrepreneurial mindset?
(21:54):
So what motivates them to stay at SFL?
So I think it's the opportunity like in a company that's growing
fast, right, for them to be doing something very differently
in one or two years time as compared to what they were doing
from before. So there is that whole growth
that's happening within the company that motivates them.
But I think the second thing is also like the expectations that
we set that, hey, it doesn't matter if you're based in Manila
(22:17):
or you're in Singapore or you'rein San Francisco or you're in
like Sao Paulo and Brazil, doesn't really matter.
As long as you're performing, you're hitting your OK Rs,
you're meeting your KPIs, right and you're communicating well
with your team members. You are someone that we want to
promote into a leadership position so.
Speaking about team members and managing teams, people you
describe sounds very much like avery high end single
(22:40):
performance. The type A personalities
probably, who would, you know, go there, communicate, make it
happen. So how do you make sure they
work harmoniously in teams with each other when they're all
superstars? So I would say that you know, as
a start, we don't we don't hire lone wolves.
So we do not hire like individual performance.
So one of the things that we do very rigorous, very rigorously
(23:02):
at SFL is the whole hiring process, the kind of questions
that we ask, the reference callsthat we do and the kind of focus
questions that we ask them as well.
So we look for people who can communicate well because they
need to work well within a team.And also one of the things is
that we look for people who are part of a team and they should
have overlapping time zones, right?
So I think that's one of the things that's very often
(23:23):
overlooked because if you're someone working in a completely
different time zone from you, very difficult to get any work
done even. If you're a great communicator,
I just have to ask right now. So what is your secret question
or strategic hiring since you'reso good at it?
So now tell us. We're open and all.
I, I, I wouldn't say I'm a fantastic hire.
I mean like you're a really. Good one, definitely.
(23:44):
We've had people, you know, who didn't quite fit and work out as
well. But I think that it is really
important to follow a set of structure like in terms of your
interview questions, in terms ofwhat you're looking for in the
people and in terms of like, youknow, the reference calls that
you do. So I do have a book that I
(24:05):
follow quite religiously. It's called Who and you know,
it's, I can't remember the author's name, we can drop it
into the footnotes later. But I find it has basically
helped me to find good people even though I was not able to
meet those people to interview them face to face.
Very powerful little bit. Just shifting the gears here and
(24:25):
focusing on the family. OK, So I know that you have been
often saying that founding a company is like raising a child
and you have three of those to celebrate a little bit.
What do you mean by that? I think, you know, in a couple
of ways, like first, it does take a village to raise a child.
When raising my kids, I'm very fortunate that, you know, my
(24:46):
husband helps out a lot and my help, I, we have a helper,
fortunately here in Singapore and also my mother helps out a
lot as well. So I think it's the same thing
with founding a company and you must also you need.
A mother, a husband as a helper.I got it.
This is the secret. Well, I, I was going to say
like, you need people beside youto really help you through it.
(25:06):
So whether this is like fellow founder friends who can guide
you through like experiences that they've been through
before, whether it is like friends who are, you know,
financiers, right? Or lawyers, people that you can
call when you're in a fix and, you know, ask them how would you
sort out something like that? Even I was part of the iterative
accelerator and that was also something that helped me a lot.
(25:29):
Just the fact of knowing that there's this community of people
that you can go to with questions at any time of the
night and there'll always be someone there to reply.
Because being a founder is a very lonely kind of journey,
right? And you need the support network
beside you to make it work. For all other women out there
who are just trying to balance family, career, children perhaps
(25:53):
if they want to have them. So what is your advice?
How do you feel the best way to do that?
Well, I, I have actually received like many questions
from, you know, fellow female founders before, like who, who
have always been concerned right, Like when is it the best
time to get married? When do I have kids?
Would having kids interfere withraising money?
(26:17):
You know, what would V CS stink,right?
Would it interfere with like me getting business, business and,
and travelling for business and so on?
And I think for me at least personally, like it has always
just been just do it because there is especially for having
children, right? Like there is no perfect time to
get things done, to get these kind of things done.
(26:38):
So if you just do it, you would eventually find a way around it.
It is about what is important toyou, right?
And if this is an important milestone that you want to hit
in life, then just go ahead and do it now, or at least take a
step towards getting it done. Can I ask a personal question?
Yes, please. Have you ever dealt with
mother's guilt and if yes, how did you deal with that?
(27:01):
All right, Yeah, Mother's guilt,plenty of it.
So I think we. All have it, yes.
I I do work from home. So you know, I've had my
daughter tell me one day, she said this was when she was 8
years old. She said, mommy, do you know
what, I want to be 1 when I growup?
I said, no, She said, I want to be a housewife.
And I was like, why? I was a bit surprised because I
(27:21):
was, you know, I was working. I thought I was showing my kids
like, this is an example of likea mother who's working.
And she said, I want to be a housewife.
And I said, why? Right.
And she said, well, so that, youknow, when I have a kid and when
my kid comes home from school, Icould actually pay attention to
my kid. She was like a big Ouch kind of
(27:42):
moment because I I do lock my door right?
Like you. Have to focus I device.
How do you focus on work? Yeah, so there we go.
Yeah, like a mother's guilt. But how?
I comfort myself. Yes.
I'm more interested in that. Modern, snarky teenagers.
Yeah. So how I comfort myself with it
is that I do believe that, you know, teaching kids to be
(28:05):
independent and to have an independent mindset is a very
important part of bringing children up.
So whenever my children are there like squabbling amongst
themselves or, you know, being unhappy that I can't pay
attention to them or saying I'm bored, like can you do something
with me? I comfort by myself by saying
that, well, this is all part of growing up.
They have to learn how to deal with it, right?
(28:27):
And so that is also part of being a parent as well, teaching
them all these life lessons. Absolutely.
Since we're on the topic of children and parents, I'm just
curious what is the biggest lesson that you learn from your
mom and from your dad? They.
Want to make sure they listen tothe podcast and if you had this
(28:48):
moment when you reach out when you were saying something like
that, now they're like, OK, she got it when she grow up.
I would say like looking at the kind of people that they are and
like looking at how they build up their lives and their and
their businesses. I would say the biggest lesson
or the biggest take away from them is always to do things that
(29:09):
you can sleep with at night, right?
So what that means is, you know,you have to do things in a way
that's ethical, in a way that you feel is right and it does
right by the people that you're dealing with.
So I think that that is what they have always done.
Like I've never seen them do something that's inappropriate
or said something that was inappropriate about other people
even behind their backs. So that is something that I've
(29:30):
taken away and it's a principle that I hold with me when I build
my business as well. When you think about the next
few years, what does grade look like for yourself personally,
for SFL and just, you know, you as a founder and as a mother
take us on this journey all. Right.
(29:52):
So let's deal with the easier part of the company first.
So I would say grade for SFL would be where we become a very
indispensable tool for companiesthat are growing globally.
So whenever a company is thinking of hiring someone in
the UAE or they're thinking of like offboarding someone in
Mexico or onboarding someone in China, immediately who they
(30:13):
think of is us. So that's who we want to be,
right? In terms of family, what I would
say is independence for my children.
I think especially in this age of AI, right, where I know that
a lot of parents are concerned about how is AI going to affect
like jobs for my kids, you know,how is it going to affect like
how my kids do their school workand so on.
(30:35):
I think for my kids, what success would look like for me
as a mother is independent thinking, right?
And not just blindly accepting like what society tells you
things should be independence and independent thinking for
them. For me as a founder, I think it
would be making SFL into the reality of what we want the
world to be, which is basically if you are talented person who
(30:57):
joins SFL from any part of the world, you have a chance to rise
up to a leadership position in afast growing company.
It doesn't matter if you're based in Manila, in Shanghai,
in, like, you know, Sao Paulo, right, You have a chance of
being a leader in a company thatappreciates you for who you are
and not where you're based. I have to ask about your
husband. Maye please there is this.
(31:19):
I hope this is a. Question I can answer well, it's
an. Appropriate 1.
Not an inappropriate. You know, they say traditionally
they used to say that behind every great man there is a woman
that has been supporting him. I find it now with where the
world is going, we can reverse this sentence, reverse engineer
that as you say, that next to each great woman there is a man
(31:41):
who is supporting him. So what do you feel then the
role your husband has been playing and in general your kind
of reflections towards other women?
What, what? What do we want from our man?
Help us to succeed. So I think the most important
thing that my husband has brought to me is that I know
(32:02):
that he also wants me to succeedas well.
And I think that's very important for, like, any sort of
partnership, right? I've seen, you know, some
relationships where one party may not want the other one to
succeed so much because of insecurities that they may have.
But it's very different for me and Bernard.
Like, we both want each other tosucceed.
And that may mean like sacrifices, right, that we have
(32:22):
to make in the short term, like,oh, I have to go out for this
business, this meeting. Will you do the kids expelling
with him kind of thing? And he's always willing to do
those kind of things. And I'm also willing to do it
for him as well. So it is not something that's
easy. And I would say that we have had
to really get to this understanding after the first
few years of the relationship. But I think we're at this place
(32:44):
now where you know, we, we know that we're trying to do right by
each other. Beautiful.
Thank you for sharing that. Before we wrap up, is there a
book, a podcast, or a tool that has been recently inspiring you
and really helping you to go to the next level IT in business
life? All right, so I have actually
(33:07):
been listening to a podcast called Empire.
It's by two historians, and it has been fascinating for me.
I mean, first of all, I'm a history buff.
I used to do history in high school, but more than that as
well, it has shown me about how the world is different and yet
always the same, right? It is always about like human
nature and how human nature keeps repeating itself, whether
(33:31):
this is the Byzantine Empire or whether it's the Mughal Empire
or whether it's the Chinese Empire.
So when you look at all these different personalities, the
mistakes and the successes that keeps repeating itself, it shows
you that at the end of the day, like everything revolves around
human nature. So that is something that I
really, you know, enjoy listening to, would encourage
anyone who even has a bit of interest in history to listen to
(33:54):
it as well. Well, thanks.
You like history so much. I just have to ask, So what is
your favorite event from the history point of view in in
terms of what we can learn from that and how do you feel it can
actually help us to build a society we truly want to have?
So I, I, you know, when, when I look at history, I think I look
(34:16):
at it more from personalities like rather than events, because
like that, that is just a lot more of a captivating subject.
So I think one of the things that I've been listening to
recently is the founding fathersof the US, right?
And you know how a lot of them actually had to rise to
adversities. Like, you know, I think everyone
is familiar with the story now with Hamilton, right?
(34:37):
Because of like the music we've.Watched the musical exactly we
all. Watched the musical now that we
read the book, but it wasn't just Hamilton, it was also
George Washington, Thomas Jefferson that actually rose
from very adverse kind of situations and brought
themselves up to a higher level.So I would say that you know the
lesson I learnt from that is that things are not irreversible
even though you may be may have been born or like subjected to
(34:59):
very bad circumstances in life, but to sheer will, you should
actually be able to rise up to ahigh level right with sufficient
amount of luck and sufficient amount of determination.
And the final question before wewrap up for today, please let's
go all the way forward up to youbeing 300 years old and you're
300 years old, yes, and you're looking you.
(35:22):
Must know about some technology that I haven't heard.
Oh. I am sure we will get it in our
lifetime. OK.
And so you're, you're looking atyour life and what would you
like to be most proud of and most happy about at the end of
your life? I think that that is something
that that we ask ourselves, you know, a lot about right from
(35:43):
time to time. And I think for me, a lot of
that, like honestly would be my kids, right?
And how they have turned out. Because a lot of things you do,
it's always asking about like, why is this thing important to
you? Why is this thing important to
you, right? So for me like fundamentally be
my kids and you know, just by knowing that they have turned
(36:04):
out to be independent, happy kind of people like would be
sufficient for me. They do not have to achieve like
a certain level of success or you're not.
Being Asian now come on. I think even for Asian parents,
that is what they want. It's just that they express it
in a different form. I, I, I do know, I think for my
parents at least that that is what they are happy with that
(36:27):
OK, on my deathbed, like I can go knowing that my kids, my
descendants are well and they'retaken care of and they're happy.
Like that's it. Well, with that, I have nothing
else to ask. I mean, this is like really
it's, it's, it's the final dot. So my only question left when
the audience who wants to connect with you and learn more
about SRL, how they can do that?So if they want to learn more
(36:50):
about SFL, they can come onto our website.
It's really easy. So it's SFL, ESEV, el.com.
And if they want to connect withme, really easy as well.
My e-mail address, yuyingyuying@sfl.com.
Thank. You so much Yuyen and it was
such a powerful conversation on leadership, resilience, AI,
(37:11):
motherhood and dealing with diversity and remote workplaces
and really, really amazing and still our listen.
I thank you so much for tuning in today.
That was Yana Fry from Yana TV and next week you're going to
see Bernard again in this chair on the show.
So make sure you tune in to analyze Asia.
(37:31):
Thanks, Yana.
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