I hope you’re having a great weekend. I’m flying off to our company’s sales kickoff in Spain in a few hours, and looking forward to an energizing and fun week. Here’s this week’s list!
Next guest on Before We Get There podcast
This Thursday I’m excited to be joined by Cheryl Lau. Cheryl is an entrepreneur, content creator, and podcaster for her just rebranded show, ‘Edit History’. She was always an academic high achiever until while she was in law school she started to feel her trajectory wasn’t the right fit for her, she ended up quitting school, not only once, but twice; also leaving a PhD program a few years later. This tough decision changed Cheryl’s life as she broke out of the mold and ended up starting her successful coaching business. We discussed all of this, as well as overcoming imposter syndrome, balancing family traditions across cultures, and the importance of creating meaningful work. Cheryl’s story is one of resilience, self-discovery, and continuous growth. You won’t want to miss this episode!
What I read this weekend
I missed the hype for Crazy Rich Asians until I watched it on an airplane a couple of years after it came out. But I ended up liking it more than I thought I would as it is a cute romcom but brings a lot of elements of Asian values and pressures into the story. This week I decided to read the book that it was adapted from. I think this is another rare case in which the movie surpasses the original work. The story has slight changes, but the book drags on with flowery descriptions of clothes, jewelry, and interior design, to emphasize how crazy rich the people really are. I think the movie was able to keep the story a lot tighter, and had the benefit of being able to show instead of tell us about the lavish lifestyles the characters lead. It’s always fun reading descriptions or seeing places on screen you are familiar with, especially somewhere like Singapore that it doesn’t often happen with.
What I’m thinking about LA this weekend
The very sad and ongoing fires this week in LA are heartbreaking to hear about. In 2018 I visited LA for the first time and in addition to visiting Santa Monica, The Comedy Store, Art of Jiujitsu, and a bunch of other attractions, I also took a hike in Topanga State Park starting at Los Leones Canyon. This area is in the heart of the Palisades fire, and the areas I walked through and homes I saw are almost certainly all destroyed. It was a really beautiful area with views out across the whole city, you could even see the Santa Monica Pier and Ferriss Wheel below. Seeing places you’ve personally experienced reduced to headlines about destruction changes the way you process these events. It’s made me think about the stories we attach to places and how those memories shape us, even as the places themselves are forever changed.
What I listened to this weekend
Joe Rogan had Mark Zuckerberg back on this podcast this week for episode #2255. First of all, it’s amazing to think that’s the number of shows he’s recorded over the last 15 years, an average of one episode every two-plus days. Second of all, no matter what your opinion of Rogan or Zuck is, it’s awesome to be in an age where we can listen to the CEO of one of the biggest companies on the planet sit there and talk for 3 hours, for free. That is what made me like podcasts so much, free-flow conversation, there’s no segments, bits, silly games, or anything but people sitting down and having a conversation. One thing that stuck out to me in the episode, other than the talk talk about BJJ, MMA, and bow hunting, was how Zuckerberg talked about his competitors. First of all, JRE is on Spotify, I was watching on YouTube, which is wild that the CEO of a rival company is on the platform at all. But during the discussion, Mark was very gracious when he talked about the industry, mentioning several times that it isn’t only Meta making advancements in certain areas, and that some other social media platforms are doing a better job of content moderation.
That’s all for this week, have a great week ahead!