Misfits: Wisdom from Unconventional Individuals

Seth Godin (@thisissethsblog) is the author of 21 bestsellers book. That includes Tribes, Purple Cow, Linchpin, The Dip, and This Is Marketing.

His blog (which you can find by typing “Seth” into Google) is one of the most popular in the world. In 2013, Godin was inducted into the Direct Marketing Hall of Fame.

Two of his TED talks are among the most popular of all time. He is also the founder of...

Chris Lee (@chrisasylum) is the founder of Asylum Creative, since 1999. His client list includes Aesop, Johnie Walker, Sony, Hublot, Harley-Davidson and more. The cross-disciplinary studio design logo, website to entire hotel and cafe interior. Most notably, The Warehouse Hotel, 4fingers and Tangs.

His works can be found around Singapore, Shanghai, Chengdu, Beijing, Paris, Bali, Los Angeles, New York, Abu Dhabi, Tokyo, Venice, K...

Lin Tan, MCC is an executive and mentor coach and also a founder of Collective Change Institute (CCI). She is the youngest Master Certified Coach (ICF) in Singapore, making her 1 of 6 Master Coaches in Singapore. Lin also served as the president of ICF Singapore in 2020.

Her clients include DHL, Royal Bank of Scotland, Burberry, Discovery Channel, and diverse agencies of the Singapore government.

She has a Bachelor’s degree i...

“You don’t want to do what they do, you want to see how they see”.

– Nate Green

Nate Green, is an author of multiple books, marketing strategist at Precision Nutrition and a recovering fitness junkie.

Nate barely graduated high school with 1.7 GPA. Despite all odds, he became one of the most sought after writers and strategists in the fitness industry. 

He wrote one of the most popular blog post on Tim Ferriss' blog, T...

Tynan, is an entrepreneur, personal coach and minimalist nomad. He is the author of best-selling books, Superhuman by Habit and Forever Nomad. 

Tynan also pioneered the idea of Empire housing, to share homeownership with friends. With this, he brought an island in Canada and homes in Hawaii, Budapest, Tokyo and Vegas.

In his former life, he is a pickup artist and instructor, best known as Herbal in The Game by Neil Strauss.

In...

Nina Barber, is an executive and CEO coach & matchmaker. In 2 years, she is billing $2,500 - $10,000/month per client for her coaching services. 

She is also the founder of Prismaticco, a matchmaking service for startup executives to find coaches.

Nina has also co-founded a social enterprise, Nika that brings clean water to more than 40,000 people every day.

In this conversation, we spoke about:

• Why Nina spends $50,000 a ye...

Dr Stephen Snyder is a sex and couple therapist for over 30 years. His goal, to help you have great sex. 

He is also the author of Love Worth Making: How to Have Ridiculously Great Sex in a Long-Lasting Relationship.

Stephen is an associate clinical professor of psychiatry at the Icahn School of Medicine.

In this conversation, we spoke about:

• Why you should be sexually selfish
• How the idea of “desire” can mess up your sex lif...

Derek Sivers, is a kind of a reluctant entrepreneur, circus-clown musician turned author.

In 1998, Derek created CD Baby by helping his friends sell their CDs. It became the largest seller of independent music online, with $100 million in sales for 150,000 musicians.

In 2008, Derek sold CD Baby for $22 million, giving the proceeds to a charitable trust for music education. He went to speak at the TED Conference, for 3 times in 2010...

Ali Abdaal, is a YouTuber and junior doctor in the UK. His YouTube channel has more than 30 millions view and 500K subscribers. 

He is also the founder of 6med, the largest medical exam preparation crash course in the world. 

Ali holds a doctorate from Cambridge University.

In this conversation, we spoke about:

• Ali's battle-tested learning techniques
• How to choose your doctors 
• How to grow a YouTube while having a 50 hours/...

Michelle Florendo, is a coach for Type-A professionals and executives. She has served on the inaugural coaching team for Seth Godin’s altMBA, guest-taught on Stanford’s famous Design Your Life course, and is a founding member of the Forbes Coaches Council. Michelle is also a mother of 2, admits these achievements.

Her coaching philosophy is a blend of decision engineering, design thinking, and lean startup principles.

Michelle hold...

Steph Smith (@stephsmithio), 25 is a senior analyst working on Trends, tracking up-and-coming trends. 

After less than a year of learning to code (while having a full-time job), she has won the Golden Kitty award for inclusion, on Product Hunt. 

Steph writes a blog about remote work, women in tech and learning to code. 

These days when she is not at work, she is building Upread, a tool connecting indie publishers with their readers...

Khailee Ng is a managing partner of 500 Startups, a venture capital firm. He has led more than 180 startup investments, with a few “unicorn” successes such as Grab and Bukalapa.

Khailee has previously founded Groupsmore which got acquired by Groupon and Says.com, which got subsequently acquired by Media Prima, Malaysia’s largest online media company.

BUT, even if you have zero interest in startups, this episode is well worth the ti...

Alvin Poh is an entrepreneur and co-founder of Vodien, a cloud hosting company.

Vodien was founded in 2002. It was later acquired by Dreamscape in 2017, and was valued for S$ 30million. Shortly after being a millionaire at 33 years old, he sold most of his belongings (including his Lamborghini) and embraced minimalism.

Alvin holds a masters in Information Systems from Carnegie Mellon.

He is now travelling and snowboarding around th...

JR Hinds is the owner of Hinds and Associates, specialising in employer-sponsored health insurance plans. Today, over 90% of his business is developed through referrals.

He has a private pilot’s license and flies a Cessna 172. He also jumped out of an airplane twice (but never one that he was flying).

JR rappelled down the building the day before his wedding day and threw a surprise wedding for his 50 guests.

One of his favourite t...

“I don't think we ask deep enough questions and give young people enough credit for being able to have those answer within themselves.”– Michelle Jones

Michelle Jones is the founder of a higher education institution, Wayfinding Academy. It is a new 2-year college aiming to revolutionize higher education. They have been approved to offer Associate’s degrees by Oregon’s Higher Education Coordinating Commission.

She has taught in trad...

“It is not a failure if there are lessons to be learnt from it.” – Daniel Lim

Daniel Lim is an entrepreneur and business coach.

His coaching and training practice aims to help people to redefine success, build businesses and do work which is aligned with their values and purpose.

Daniel's former design studio, Studio MDS work with clients such as Capella Hotels, Singapore Flyer and National Heritage Board.

In 2017, he designed and ...

Annabelle Kwok, 25 is the founder of NeuralBay, an Artificial Intelligence company that specialises in vision analytics.

She consults with companies on A.I. driven solutions and was previously the founding CEO of SmartCow.

At 20, she travelled alone for 6 weeks to Togo, West Africa. She has witness people fainting from malaria, getting robbed at knife-point, and balanced buckets of water on her head.

At 22, she met U.S. President B...

"No one says that decided to start drinking because my ambition in life is to be an alcoholic. It’s rubbish.” – Dr Munidasa Winslow

Munidasa Winslow is a psychiatrist and the executive director of Promises Healthcare. He has been practising psychiatry since 1988 and is known for his work in addiction medicine and impulse control disorders.

He was also responsible for the setting up the Addiction Management Department at the Institu...

Lim Der Shing is currently a private investor, Venture Advisor with Jungle Seedplus and board member with several organizations. Huang Shao-Ning is the Managing Partner of Hub Ventures Fund and a Partner at Entrepreneur First, the world’s leading company builder.

Together, they are the co-founders of JobsCentral Group and manage a regional portfolio of over 17 angel investments in startups.

JobCentral grew from a 2-man startup into...