In this special holiday episode, Nicholas reflects on an amazing 2024 filled with personal growth, travel, and podcasting milestones. From watching his daughter grow into a bubbly toddler to launching “Before We Get There” and connecting with incredible guests, Nicholas shares his favorite moments and lessons from the year.
You’ll also get to hear clips from two guest appearances Nicholas made this year:
- The Thought Leader Club Podcast with Cheryl Lau: A candid discussion about personal branding, thought leadership, and why authenticity matters.
- Dad Dialogue with Lawrence Chinery: Insights into fatherhood, cultural nuances, and balancing parenting with a career in Singapore.
Join us as we celebrate the journey so far, highlight key moments, and look forward to an exciting 2025 with more diverse guests and stories.
Guest Links:
My episode on The Thought Leader Club Podcast
My episode on Dad Dialogue
Podcast links:
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/2h9gsrWKH9C1KY1OzR12kr?si=2a4d19970632465f
Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/before-we-get-there/id1775182252
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/beforewegettherepodcast/
Linktree: https://linktr.ee/nicholasbraman
Website: https://nicholasbraman.com/before-we-get-there-podcast
Nicholas Braman: Welcome to Before We Get There, the podcast where we explore people’s journeys. How they got to where they are, what keeps them pushing forward, and where they eventually want to get to. I’m your host, Nicholas Braman, and this episode is going to be a bit different than our usual ones. Today, I’m going to share some reflections on this year, 2024, and As well as the first nine episodes of the podcast, this podcast, then you’ll get to hear selections of two podcasts that I guessed it on recently.
The first is the Thought Leader Club podcast with Cheryl Lau. Cheryl is a veteran podcaster who shares her knowledge on content creation and thought leadership. This was a super fun episode and actually it was one of the catalysts for me to start this podcast. I had never really considered starting a podcast before.
But after being on with Cheryl, I realized that I really enjoyed it. And more importantly, that I would prefer to be the one asking the questions and the one answering the questions. I’ve always been more of a listener than a talker, so it made perfect sense to me. And if you listen closely, it’s pretty funny because near the end of the podcast, she asked me if I have any upcoming projects or plans to do anything new, and I said I didn’t.
And then less than a month later, I actually launched this podcast because of the conversation I had with her. The second selection is from Dad Dialogue with Lawrence Chinery. Lawrence is a father of two boys from the UK. He is currently a stay at home dad in the Netherlands, and he started his podcast to create connections, uh, with other fathers and share stories, successes, challenges, and see how much we have in common with other fathers.
So I really enjoy talking to him and talking about fatherhood. We talked about my journey of being a father for the past two years. Some of the cultural and practical aspects of parenting in Singapore, including the education system, raising a family abroad, which we are both doing, and much more. So I hope that you enjoy the selections from these two episodes, and that it helps you get to know me a bit better, since on this podcast I am The one doing more of the listening than the talking, I think it’ll be nice for you to hear more about my story, at least these two areas of thought leadership and being a dad, so I’m very happy to share those with you, but before we get into that, I’d like to look back a bit on 2024 because I think it’s been an amazing year for me.
It was my first full year at a new company in a new role. And I feel that I was quite successful, and I’m especially happy that I’m getting to work with some of the most amazing colleagues that I’ve ever had the pleasure of working with throughout my whole career. One of the main focuses this year for me, of course, is my daughter.
She went from just starting to walk at the beginning of 2024, and then you look at her today, she’s a bubbly toddler. She doesn’t. Hardly ever stop talking. She loves to swim. She’s starting preschool in a few weeks, or no, in one week, almost exactly one week after the new year. She’s grown a ton this year, and it’s been a lot of fun to see her grow and to be able to experience that with her.
I think it’s really an amazing age, when they grow so fast and change so much all at one time. I also started my weekly newsletter in February, The Weekend Wind Down, if you haven’t heard about it yet, it’s published on LinkedIn, as well as my own website, and I will put the link in the show notes, and in this newsletter, I actually talked about it a bit on Cheryl’s podcast, but it’s just a quick read, where I share a few interesting things each week, this includes things like podcast episodes that I enjoyed, Books that I’m reading, news on marketing, or tech, or AI, gadgets I’m using, and just a lot, a variety of different things, it’s just a way to wind, as the name says, wind your weekend down with some nuggets of things that I have been thinking about, or learned, or read this week, and you know, We are at just over 650 subscribers, so it isn’t huge, but it’s been really rewarding to sit down and write each week, and I’m proud that I’ve been consistent publishing it.
I only missed one week so far, so that’s been a great experience and I plan to continue doing that. It was also a really nice year of travel for me because I got to go to a lot of places that I’ve never been to before. Thank you so Including India, Taiwan, Australia, and Japan. Most of those four work trips I got to explore.
I enjoyed exploring all of those places with, with the time that I had outside of working. And I’ve developed a routine or a set of activities that I like to do in each place that I travel to, I might share more in another episode about that because I think that it really makes traveling more enjoyable for me.
But of course, in those places, the food, hiking, going to local jiu jitsu gyms were all great. Some of the highlights for me were probably in Lonavala. I visited a hill fort that’s outside of Mumbai. And then around Sydney, I hiked around the North Head and went to the quarantine station. My daughter and I got to pet giant tortoises and capybaras at a farm in Yilan in Taiwan.
And in Tokyo, there was one night that I got completely lost in Golden Gai. And ended up at a bar where no one spoke English, and I just sat there and watched them have their interactions for a couple of hours while I enjoyed the drinks and the atmosphere. So that was super fun. And finally, I’d like to thank all of you for listening, uh, to Before We Get There.
I hope you enjoyed our episode so far. This will be the 10th episode. But I am really happy and proud of what we’ve put out all of the guests have been amazing and it has been an honor talking to them and learning more about their stories, which is the goal of the podcast and when I go back and I’m doing clips for social media or rewatching or listening to podcasts, I’m actually very intrigued at the lessons.
Everybody has shared in the different perspectives. I really enjoy that. We’ve had such a variety of guests. I say in the about section or the intro to this podcast, we talked to entrepreneurs, we talked to creatives, athletes, business leaders, and I’m just a variety of people that give different perspectives and have different lessons to share.
And I hope that you are enjoying that as well. I want to keep up this variety and actually have a really cool list of guests lined up for next year that I can’t wait to share with you. So I am very much looking forward to 2025. We’ll have more guests, probably from more places, not only from Singapore, but across Southeast Asia, especially, and likely beyond that as well.
So I hope you have a great rest of your holidays and a wonderful end to your year and enjoy the selection from my two guest episodes.
Cheryl Lau: Hello, everyone, and welcome back to another episode of the Thought Leader Club podcast. Today, we are going to talk to Nicholas Brayman, who is, in my eyes, known for his LinkedIn newsletter, The Weekend Wind Down, among other things as well.
And I’m really looking forward to this conversation because. Although a lot of the conversations on this show has been focused around folks who are using social media and personal branding for their business, I really think that Nicholas is going to bring a different perspective to this show because he’s going to be talking about building a personal brand and online presence through LinkedIn for reasons outside of building a business and specifically for career.
So I think that this is going to be an angle that. It’s relevant to a lot of listeners. I’m super excited to dive into Nicholas’s experiences. Without further ado, to get the conversation going, let’s have Nicholas introduce himself. Nicholas, who are you and what do you do?
Nicholas Braman: Oh, first of all, Cheryl, thank you very much for having me.
I’m excited to be here today. A little bit about myself. I’m originally from Seattle, but I’ve been living and working in Asia for a total of about 15 years. The last 10 here in Singapore. So it’s definitely home now. I’m a marketer by trade. I’ve been focusing on in the B2B tech space for the last eight years or so.
And currently I lead a marketing team that is covering the APAC in Japan regions for my company, Kariba, which is a FinTech solution provider based out of the US. And other than that, I spend a lot of time with my daughter. I have some hobbies, I do jiu jitsu and like everybody else, enjoy traveling and reading and cooking and eating and that kind of stuff.
Yeah.
Cheryl Lau: Fantastic. I think there’s a lot of different things that we’re going to dive into in this conversation because you’re such a multifaceted person and it feels like from the outside looking in you have such a well rounded life. So maybe to get the conversation going, what is this newsletter about and why are you being active on LinkedIn?
Nicholas Braman: Sure. So I’ve been On and off active on LinkedIn for probably about eight, eight or so years at some points more active than others. And, but I’ve built a pretty, I would say, strong network. I have a lot of connections, both virtually that people that I haven’t met in person, but a lot of. Now, at this point in my career, ex colleagues, business partners, and that sort of thing, and I’ve, I’ve had my own website for a few years.
I do some blog posts and that sort of thing, but the newsletter really came about because I wanted to find a way to keep myself active on LinkedIn. But I didn’t want to commit to having to write blog posts every week or even every month. I wanted some way that was a little bit lighter, more flexible, gave me the ability to focus on different topics and I was going to experiment
Cheryl Lau: to start.
Hey, wonderful. So I think the natural question that’s coming up for, I’m sure listeners as well, but me in particular is, okay, so Nicholas, you have a full time job. You have. A young child, you have family. I’m sure there’s other you have many hobbies. There’s a lot of things going on in your life. How do you even make time to write this newsletter?
Nicholas Braman: Yeah, that actually comes into partly the schedule. So I set it on I publish on Sunday evenings. So I did that for a couple of reasons. First of all, timing wise, it’s it is a convenient time for me to have all weekend to do whatever I want to usually ends up happening on. I started on Sunday morning and finished in the afternoon, but I’m able to I don’t have work commitments that I need to do at that time.
And the second reason, which you may find interesting, is that I actually, because a lot of my connections on LinkedIn are my boss and my boss’s bosses and people from my company, I actually didn’t want to publish it during business hours and have people question if I’m spending my working time doing this side I Side gig, side project kind of thing, so I put it on Sunday.
Okay, there’s no conflict of interest. There’s nothing that was one small thought in my mind when I set the schedule.
Cheryl Lau: Why specifically did you choose LinkedIn? Why a newsletter? Why are you building? Because essentially the way I see it is that your newsletter really is encapsulating, to a certain extent, it is encapsulating your thought leadership, your ideas, your viewpoints.
On certain subject matters, not just one subject matter, but a few of them or, or more
Nicholas Braman: as a full-time employee, a corporate employee, and with no plans in the immediate future to be an entrepreneur or a solopreneur or do my own thing. So first of all, I wanna keep my professional and personal life somewhat separate.
So Instagram is definitely, I, I have a, my kid, my private. Profile private, I, I really only add people that I know in real life. A lot of it is friends back home that I don’t see very often. And that’s the only way we talk or people that have moved to other places. But also for future proofing is the closest phrase I can think of, like specifically publishing on LinkedIn, even posting stuff beyond just reposting my company’s updates, which a lot of people is what they use LinkedIn for.
It’s like building out a very long and consistent resume. That lives online and I can’t ever say for sure, or no one’s told me specifically that, oh, I checked your LinkedIn and that’s why I want to do business with you or why I thought let’s hire this person or anything, but I think in this day and age, it definitely happens, uh, for almost everybody.
If you have a modern, uh, forward thinking and looking, uh, type of company and team, of course, they’re going to check your LinkedIn when, when you talk to them and. Again, not only for the external visibility, but also for my own as a marketer, we often find that people are not marketers are not very good at marketing themselves.
They’re gonna get a marketing for their job and for their company, but marketing for yourself still seems like a, maybe a little bit too cheesy or a little bit too full of yourself kind of thing makes people uncomfortable. Or even writing resumes, talking about your achievements and accomplishment could be uncomfortable for some people.
And so again, I’m not trying to position myself as the expert. Marketer out there, right? There’s tons of people, millions of people who have more experience than me, who my people on my own team, much, much less everywhere else in the world. Right? So I, it’s more about expressing myself and sharing who I am.
And I think that can come through as authentic. And if people know who I am, they feel closer to me. And again, I think if people Yeah, if people happen across my profile and they do the beginning and redo issue or two of the newsletter or read some of my blog posts, they get a much better picture of who I am rather than just the list of job titles and where I went to school.
Cheryl Lau: I think what you shared is likely going to be very reassuring to those who are listening to this specific podcast, because from my conversations with the listeners who are not entrepreneurs, are not starting businesses, they’re in a job, but they want to build something online, whether it’s a newsletter or a podcast or a blog, what I want to segue into next, is to have.
Is the idea of thought leadership? Nicholas, what is your definition of thought leadership?
Nicholas Braman: Again, going back to what we were just saying about I am not and wouldn’t want to and couldn’t position myself as one of the top doesn’t Marketing or PDB marketing or tech marketing people in the world. But it really relates back to, I told you, one of my hobbies is jiu jitsu.
And so I do relate a lot of things in life back to jiu jitsu. I’ve been doing it for about five years now, four or five days a week. And there’s always people that are worse than you, but the reality is can learn. Maybe a better way to put it is there’s always people that you can learn from. And there’s always people that can learn from even if it’s your second day of training.
And so. I think that I’ve taken that mindset into thought leadership, where what I have to share, there will be millions of people who already know it, who are more experienced, maybe have deeper thoughts about it and longer experience with it than I do, but there’s also layers of people who know less about it than I do.
So I am not a top expert, but I do have things worth sharing And other that other people will find valuable. So I guess to put it simply, thought leadership is when you’re able to share something that provides value to others. Take an armbar, for example, a jiu jitsu move, I have had classes that have taught the armbar several hundred times at this point.
It’s a very common move. But even at this point, sometimes there’s just something in the way that the coach phrases something. Or maybe I’m just paying attention at the right moment. Something clicks with you quite often. And even black belts who’ve been training for 10 or 20 years, we’ll tell you that this happens.
It’s just sometimes there’s something that clicks and you go, Oh, I never thought about it that way before, or, Oh, that really helps me. And it just fits. So even if it’s not groundbreaking, something cutting edge that nobody’s ever heard before, there’s still value in sharing your thoughts and your opinions, and especially again, When you do it in an authentic way, like, I would never write a blog post and say, this is the best B2B LinkedIn strategy, so you should read this article.
First of all, I’m going to run out of content really quickly, and then second of all, it’s not authentic, it’s not true, but if I can share insights I’ve had, or lessons that I’ve learned, Again, other many other people probably have learned those lessons before, but it’s me sharing how I learned it and what the result was and what it means to me that is is unique.
And that’s not nobody’s going to replicate that. If you stay true to yourself and you give your authentic voice. And that comes to the article again, it doesn’t sound like catchy PT. It’s not generic. If you try to. In marketing, it’s a principle, right? If you’re trying to talk to everybody, you end up with fluff that doesn’t resonate with anybody.
And I think it’s the same thing when you’re doing things for your thought leadership from personal level, um, you shouldn’t try to sound like you’re the smartest. You shouldn’t be talking about things that are not, you should be talking about things that in a way that are personal to you and authentic to you.
And. When you do that, even if you’re talking about something that people have heard before, it’s going to come to you in a genuine way, and it might click with some people.
Cheryl Lau: And I think what you said earlier about Jiu Jitsu, when I asked you, what is your definition of thought leadership, and you explained your viewpoints through the lens of Jiu Jitsu, I think was exactly exemplifying what you just said about Jiu Jitsu.
Being authentic and sharing it from your point of view and how, even if it’s not groundbreaking, can you share it through your lens? Because when you share that example or your interpretation or definition of thought leadership through the lens of Jujutsu, I was like, I have never heard anyone say it like that, so I’m genuinely curious to know, with so many different things in your life, like, what is your stress level on a weekly basis?
Let’s start there. What is Nicholas’s stress levels on a weekly or daily basis? It’s,
Nicholas Braman: it’s, but
it’s also, it also is having that balance already. It’s like a self fulfilling prophecy. If you are able to have balance, you have family time, you have hobbies, you have activities, you have work, you, first of all, the, the things outside of work, I try not to, in a certain cases where it doesn’t work. Where we have challenges that we have to go through that are stressful, but like in a good week or a good day when things are flowing smoothly, whether I’m going to the gym, whether I’m taking my daughter out for a walk to the playground or taking her to the pool.
Whether running errands, doing all that sort of thing, when the balance is already there in the first place, it makes, it doesn’t, none of those things are work or job adding to the stress. They’re taking away the stress. I think it’s hard to get there if you’re not, the challenging part is to get to that point where you do have that balance.
But once it’s there, um, again, one of the things I wrote about in my newsletter, I think it was this week, was that I, I’ve actually been out Um, from the gym for almost a month, I was traveling and then I got injured on my first day back and in the past that used to stress me out a lot because I’m missing out on training time, I’m becoming unfit, I’m so frustrated that I don’t have, I’m not able to go to the gym that I’m injured or sick or what have you and this time it was really noticeable for myself that I didn’t feel that stress at all.
Um, I was not happy that I was injured and didn’t feel good, but it wasn’t. It’s okay, this happened, and now there’s going to be a few weeks of downtime while I let it heal up, and there were so many other things going on in my life and work life and personal life that, and as I mentioned in that newsletter, I, it’s been long enough, and this probably can relate back to creating content and being consistent, it’s been long enough that I’ve been training jujitsu and going to the gym and doing weightlifting and combat sports that I am very, I know that I’m going to go back.
It’s not going to go missing as a part of my life, so I don’t have that I’m able to say if I have to take a month off, I have to take a month off, but it’s always going to be there. It’s a part of my life. It’s part of who I am. And so the stress or the worry, the unhappiness about missing out or not being able to do that part of my life for a period of time wasn’t there.
Cheryl Lau: So interesting because I know a lot of people. Who I’ve spoken to, they’ve shared with me how when there is something that they have been working on building consistency for, whether it’s posting weekly on LinkedIn or going exercising or something, whatever it is, right? They’ve been working on being consistent, but then life happens.
And they break their streak for whatever reason, but for some people, it really weighs heavily on them. They feel very discouraged, but it sounds like for you, you have a lightness, like a very light. Sure, like you might be annoyed, you might be disappointed, but like overall, it feels quite light, like you’re not like letting it really weigh you down.
So, One thing I would love to know is, how are you so chill? Thanks. Do you have certain, uh, routines or practices that you do? Or is it more like just your natural temperament? Like, how are you so chill?
Nicholas Braman: My wife, first of all, would probably not say that. I mean, I’m hoping this woman’s as chill as you think I am.
But no, I am, I’m definitely very chill. I think part of it is definitely temperament and personality. But again, going back to what you just mentioned about people feeling if they break their streak, they’re messed up, or they have lost out on opportunity or something like that. Again, I think that’s just time and experience.
Like I said, I’ve been doing jujitsu for 5 years. That’s 5 days a week, thousands and thousands of times I’ve trained jujitsu. And so when it gets to that level, Probably like yourself for podcasting or for posting on social media, if you miss out on something doesn’t go exactly the way you hoped it would, or maybe you post at the wrong time, ideally you should post between 9 and 11am, but you forgot about it and it goes out at 12, it probably rolls off your back quite easily compared to somebody who’s late.
On their 1st or 2nd episode of a, of a podcast, right? Because you have all that experience and you know that it’s not going to affect things in the long run because you are already going to be consistent. And even if, you know, there was 1 episode that gets less views than a lot of other episodes, it’s not the end of the world.
Cheryl Lau: I really love the point about how. If you have been committed to practicing consistency and practicing certain skill sets and putting in the reps, eventually, yes, life will happen, but you have that skill set, that consistent muscle in you, and it’s not a big deal if You have to take a break for whatever reason, and that’s also why it’s important to start now, like start practicing those reps, like now.
So, if anything happens, you’re good. You’re gonna be chill about it. So Nicholas, as we start to land a plane for today, I would love to know, what are you working on moving forward? I know there’s a lot of things going on in your life, but what are you working on? What’s going on these days for you?
Nicholas Braman: Yeah, nothing too new on the horizon being consistent, again, with what I am doing and continue to be doing everything I’m doing better.
My daughter spent more time with my daughter as much time as I care with my daughter. I’m still fairly new on my job, so I’m building my team up and we have nearing the end of the year, so there’s always a lot of work to do. And then. Just again, there’s always plenty of things to get better and do better at, but no, no big projects or anything like that.
I do enjoy this format of podcasts and public speaking is something that I’ve been doing a bit more of and probably would like to continue that. But again, no formal plan or pressure or anything. It’s just something that I myself would like to continue doing.
Cheryl Lau: You know what? I’m going to put you on a spot here.
If you could speak into existence, let’s just say. Okay. A speaking opportunity or podcast interview opportunity that you would love to make happen. What would you like? What are you looking for? If listeners happen to know connections, what would be a great fit? What would you love to make happen? Let’s speak it into existence right now.
Nicholas Braman: Just because I think it’s the most fun one. I would love to sit down Ferriss. Henny, you’re back.
He’s, he always has such interesting, intelligent people on his podcast, and he’s such a good interviewer, the way he asks questions that, yeah, I think it’d be fascinating. I’d probably rather be the one interviewing him than him interviewing me, but that would definitely be something on the bucket list.
Cheryl Lau: Okay, we have this in recording, it will be out in the public at some point soon. So who knows if this clip will reach him. Okay, Nicholas, any final thoughts or takeaways you want to share for the audience? Just any last words.
Nicholas Braman: Yeah, I think just one point going back to the jujitsu metaphor and what you took away from it.
I think one of, one of the keys is not only To not pretend to be something that you’re not, or to be better than you actually are, but also that in you do have something to offer no matter your experience level, no matter how capable you feel, because that’s the other part about jujitsu is you feel like trash every day.
It’s literally a fight. You’re literally getting in a fight with people every day, right? So people are lying on top of you, twisting your body into positions that they’re not supposed to be, and you’re getting beat up. So it’s, you don’t, most people, you don’t feel that you’re, there’s never a training session from, um, 95 98 percent of the practitioners where you quote unquote win, like we don’t talk about winning and losing in the training and gym context, but you don’t win.
Actually, you will improve if you win every time, right? Because you need that pressure. You need to be the one who’s worse to actually learn and make progress again. Even if you feel like you are not doing well, or you’re not the best one in your gym, or not the best of your group of friends, or whoever, you still have lessons and value to offer to other people who have been doing it even less time than you, or maybe even again, if somebody was doing it as long or longer than you, but there’s something about your perspective, and Or just maybe you focused on one area of one technique that you can offer insights at that person who maybe overall is more experienced and better than you, but they haven’t come across that before.
And you can still offer that to them. So, um, I would say, yeah, definitely be humble and don’t try to puff yourself up, but also realize that everybody with their own experience and perspective has value and can teach other people things that even if they feel they might not be able to.
Cheryl Lau: Fabulous nuggets to end off this conversation.
This is part of the growth if you feel trash Yeah, that is part of the growth expect it You’re gonna feel trash many times and whatever you’re working on. It’s normal. Keep moving forward fabulous All right, nicholas. Thank you so much for being on this episode and to everyone else Thank you as usual for tuning into the podcast.
I’ll see you all in the next one. Bye everyone
Laurence Chinery: Thanks for having me hello and welcome to the podcast the show where we talk about the successes and stresses of becoming a dad and being a dad my name is lawrence thank you for taking the time to join us today today’s guest is nicholas nicholas is based in singapore.
He actually grew up in America, but it’s actually adopted out of Korea. So Nicholas, thank you so much for joining us, the dad dialogue podcast today. Thanks for taking the time for coming on. Can you just start off by telling the listeners just a little bit about yourself and your family?
Nicholas Braman: Yeah, sure. So thanks for having me on.
Yeah. My name is Nicholas Bremen. I grew up in the U S in Seattle, but I’ve lived off and on in Asia for total 12 plus years and have been in Singapore for the past 10. Uh, I have a two year old daughter with my wife. My wife is, is Chinese. I’m actually ethnically Korean, uh, long story, but I was adopted. So that’s something I, I think we can probably get into later, but yeah, settled here.
I work in, in marketing in the tech industry and, um, just loving being a parent and a father.
Laurence Chinery: That’s awesome. 10 years there is that’s quite a long time. So you’re feeling settled there.
Nicholas Braman: Yeah, definitely. We, you know, it’s a great country. It’s a great mix of East and West. It’s not quite as it’s very connected.
It’s very international. There’s lots of expats here, lots of foreign workers and but it still has that traditional. The main ethnicities here are Chinese, Indian and Malay. Uh, people. And so it’s, it’s got a really interesting mix and people are still connected to their heritage, but it’s super convenient, clean, known for being clean, safe, amazing food, all that sort of good stuff.
Laurence Chinery: Yeah, the list goes on. I think for for things Singapore is known for travel, education, it’s a it’s up there. I know for a lot of lists. So how have you found? Navigating the world of having a child with your family abroad because you’ll see your parents or the grandparents of your daughter would be in America.
How have you found that balance?
Nicholas Braman: So my mother in law has actually been living with us since my daughter was born. So that’s been helpful in a lot of ways. But of course, it It presents its own challenges, and I haven’t actually taken my my daughter back to the U. S. Yet. I’m hoping to bring my dad for a visit to Singapore in the next year or so so they can meet.
But I actually don’t feel a very strong need at this age to bring her back. And we’ve taken her traveling other places. She’s been to China, Bali. We just went to Taiwan, but at this stage, taking her back and saying, Hey, this is where I grew up, or this is where I went to school, or I used to love this restaurant.
It’s not gonna, it’s not gonna remember it. So for her, it’s just another place to run around and play. Eventually, I will definitely visit and love to show her the yeah. The U. S. She’s an American citizen. So the administrative side of things was, it was interesting being, being born overseas with an American parent and a Chinese American father and a Chinese mother.
Their only choice was actually American because it’s Singapore is not like the U. S. where if you’re born there, you’re automatically given citizenship. And then China has. Has their rule is if you are born outside of China, and only one parent is Chinese, you’re also not automatically given Chinese citizenship.
So we’re very happy with her being an American. It’s fine. And we’re lucky. We got to be permanent residents here in Singapore a few years ago. So that makes things like schooling a lot easier if you’re not A permanent resident or a citizen, then you have to go to an international school, which, of course, is a lot more expensive than the local schools.
Laurence Chinery: I’m glad you mentioned schools. Can you talk a little bit about schools in Singapore? I’m not fully aware. I had a few with my background having lived in Hong Kong. I knew a few people that had either taught in Singapore. I had a few kids in my class when I was a teacher who had been in Singapore and left to go or left to go to Singapore.
So there was quite a lot of exchange. Can you just talk a little bit about the education system? Like, when would they start? Like a preschool and school and the general view of schooling there,
Nicholas Braman: it’s been a huge learning curve for us. We’re also in the process of buying our first house in Singapore. We’ve been renting since we’ve been here and the proximity to the school.
Which school makes a big difference in is a huge factor. Singaporeans take their education very seriously. I think they again, like China and Korea and some of these other countries that education system was known for being very rigorous and The so people really consider what school they’re going to try to get their kid into, and we’re talking about primary school.
It’s not even like middle school or high school. It’s from the time. They’re five years old, which school they’re going to go into has a chain reaction down through the rest of their education. So we’re lucky in Singapore that there’s domestic helpers usually from Philippines, Indonesia, Myanmar, and yeah.
That allowed us to keep our daughter at home until now for the first two years with with also the help of the mother in law and the ability to work from home and that sort of thing as well. So I’m very grateful for that. I did not want to put her into daycare. I know some people that don’t have a choice.
They both worked outside in laws and they’ve been in daycare since they’re six months old or a year old and she’s going to have my feeling is that she’s going to have enough. School for for the rest of her life. I don’t want to push her into it too fast. And so she’s going to start what’s called nursery one at the beginning of January 2025, which I still feel is quite early.
Laurence Chinery: Yeah, I can connect and relate to that. It was similar to Hong Kong in that it’s very early and I worked in a local school my first year there and. In the local school, once they’re in primary school, like after preschool, once they’re in primary school and secondary school, they also go to school on Saturdays.
I’m sure people that have sent their kids to daycare for a long time. They know the process of we have to learn to say goodbye, but that doesn’t stop. I think the parent having those some of those feelings. Is there anything that you’re preparing for that process? Because she’s still very young, How are you approach?
Nicholas Braman: Yeah, super young. And I feel it even with just how much time I spend with her on a day to day basis, the guilt comes in where, you know, did I, you know, she’s asking to play with me, but I have a work call or a meeting or what? And so I think it’s definitely gonna be worse. But I think as As a parent, you have to think about what’s in their best interest for the long term, and certainly, like you said, no judgment on people who decide to send their kids to school even earlier.
People need to work and provide for their families, and that’s an important aspect of it as well, even if the kid is too young to understand. She’s the good thing is everybody thinks that kid is smart, but she’s super smart, and I think she’s getting a little bit bored at home, so I’m hoping that having the stimulation and we actually, she just had an assessment yesterday, she was actually, it’s the first time she’s, she’s been through this type of thing, like testing her of, Oh, put, how do you want to stack these blocks up or push this little thing over here?
And it was the first time she’s bonded or responded to and, and, Adult that she hasn’t met before, and she like sat in the person’s obviously it’s a professional who is very good with the kids and all that. But that was I was glad to see that it’s made me think that, okay, maybe this preschool thing won’t be so bad after all.
Laurence Chinery: Yeah, you definitely have those moments, and I’m glad that you can have that feeling of a little bit of release before it happens, because it is, excuse me, it’s pretty nerve wracking. I also just want to really quickly touch on, you had the mother in law live with you, and I know that’s quite a common, like, Chinese thing.
Can you, did you guys do the Chinese confinement, like when your baby was first born? Can you tell us a little bit about that? I find it really interesting.
Nicholas Braman: Yeah, so that’s another aspect of Chinese culture, and I don’t think In China, it’s a huge industry. It’s a little bit different in mainland China than it is in Singapore.
So in China, from what I understand, they have confinement centers, which is basically like a resort that most mothers go to for around four weeks after the child is born. So the culture part of it is there are specific foods that new mothers are supposed to eat that in Chinese traditional medicine are good for their recovery and getting their body back to being healthy and recovering more quickly.
And So that’s the traditional part. And now, of course, it’s evolved with the way things are in China. Five star, they come with massage, belly massages and all these treatments and everything for the new mothers. And part of that is care for the baby. It’s also the baby and the mom stay in this place together, sometimes with the father, sometimes the father comes and goes.
And so you have these yeah. Again, extra hands to help because you know how it is a newborn mother. They need to every three hours. They need to sleep every three hours and it’s We had a, so in Singapore, that’s what it’s like in Mainland China. In Singapore, it’s a little bit different because usually the confinement nanny comes to your house.
And so they stay at your house for two weeks or four weeks, however long, and they only have certain duties, which includes taking care of the newborn, however much you choose to do that, and then cooking these foods for the mother. And in a lot of ways, again, having been through it, We had a little bit different of an experience.
My daughter was, actually had some complications when she was first born. So she was in the hospital for longer than usual. And I was going and visiting every day. And then when we got out of the hospital finally, we came back and we Actually, for the first two weeks, we didn’t have a confinement nanny or a helper or anybody.
And at that point, my daughter was used to me. And so she was only taking bottles from me. So I was doing all of the feeding. My wife was expressing milk. And so I wanted to take that off of her hands because it’s hard enough for her. She has to keep up the schedule, right, to regulate the milk supply and all this sort of thing.
And it just worked out well that. My daughter felt comfortable with me. She slept. I was the one who a lot of the most of the time was putting her to sleep as well as feeding her. And so that first two weeks, I think, were as tough two weeks as anybody has. She was a great baby. Didn’t cry a lot. It was pretty easy to go to sleep.
But we did a lot of things like the skin on skin care. And that sort of thing. So my schedule was the same as my wife’s getting up to do the feedings and putting her back to sleep. And then after those first two weeks is when we had a confinement nanny come in because I had to go back to work eventually.
My, I’m a new parent. Is this bad? Like you get at least for myself, I used to get scared as a new parent, right? Is this normal? Is this just what babies do? Or is there something wrong? Do we need to take her to see the doctor? And so it was also helpful to have. This person who’s been with so many newborns over the years and has the experience to be able to pass on some of that knowledge to us.
Laurence Chinery: Yeah, I think that’s a really important thing. And I think a lot of parents go through that mental gymnastics of I’m the parent of this child. I’m the one that knows best. I’m the one that should be doing everything. But then submitting to yourself and sacrificing yourself was like, hang on, there are people in the world that are doing this as their profession, and they’ve literally done it.
Helped hundreds of thousands of babies go from a baby to a toddler or a toddler to whatever. And it’s got a sacrifice of, yeah, you’re the parent and you’re going to love him or love her or love him more than anyone. At different stages, there are different people that are more qualified to look after them than you.
Nicholas Braman: One of the more interesting aspects of being a father that I realized is that it’s so much easier to have small talk with people. And like, when you have kids, there’s always something to talk about as a fellow parent. You know, you go through some of the same struggles and challenges and triumphs and feelings, feelings for your kid.
And, you know, even at work, like my boss, my boss’s boss are a lot of our team probably because the age we all are, we all have young kids. And so it’s always something. It’s nice to be able to connect with other parents on. I never just never crossed my mind before I became a parent myself that that would Make you feel so much more connected to other people than don’t have that experience experience
Laurence Chinery: history.
And the reason why I started this podcast was because I saw the value in that, but also at the same time, small talk is okay. Like you obviously will talk about. Oh, bloody blood. Like my son did this or he did that. And this is good. And we’re applying to this preschool and that’s the easy stuff to talk about.
And I found out after becoming a stay at home dad, I was, we were trying to find relationships where we could have those conversations and it was fine. But I just sometimes found a new parent in my life don’t know you that well, like you’re a stay at home mom and like our kids get on and it’s great and it can sometimes feel a bit isolating.
And I know I, the reason I started this podcast, I really don’t want any dad out there to feel isolated. Because we’ve got to do this together and we’re going to help build each other up. How have you balanced work and being a parent? Is the culture within your company quite driven or are you able to like balance your time nicely?
Nicholas Braman: So I’ve worked for two. Companies during the time that after my daughter was born, and so, like, I think I mentioned when I first introduced myself, I’m a B2B marketer in tech. I was looking after the Asian region at my previous company. Now I’m working after the whole APGA region. So he’s a Asia Pacific in Japan, which is basically everything in Asia.
So, like I mentioned, my, my current team, there’s a lot of young parents would understand, like, even if, you know, You need to work late at night, but you can’t work during just after school hours around dinner time. You know, everybody is understanding and flexible about that, which is great. I think it, it more goes again back to like my personal feelings of how much time I want to spend with my daughter.
I tried it. My daughter loves swimming. I’ve started taking her to the pools and she was super young. So we try to, I try to either go on a walk. Or go swimming with her basically every day that I’m not traveling or out in an event to have that time together specifically and then. Like I mentioned, that’s one of the great things about working from home is that in between meetings, if I’m going out to the fridge to get a snack or make a coffee, you’re able to interact with her for a few minutes and it’s just, you’re not gone from the house for eight minutes.
10 hours a day and see when they only have the time with you in the mornings and the evenings. Yeah, my personally right now, my, my company culture is great, but I think also that if I had to be in the office five days a week, or if maybe I had a different boss who was not as understanding, it’s also how you manage yourself and manage your time and expectations.
Even before I had kids at previous roles, I’ve always been a proponent of this term called You know, job crafting where I think in most people’s roles, you have some flexibility about what you prioritize, how you manage your workload, what you focus on, and I try to do that in a way that allows me to, for example, from a career perspective to work on improving or getting better at the skills I think are going to help my career, and I think the same thing can be said about time management and how you prioritize.
People talk a lot of the mental health advice and this sort of thing. If it helps for you to go on a walk for 15 minutes in the morning and get out and clear your head, you’re going to be more productive going through your day. And so that’s all intertwined. And certainly as of so far in the last two years, being able to have those few minutes with my daughter, being able to stop work and eat lunch with her and that sort of thing is, you know, I’m grateful for it because I know obviously a lot of people are not able to, to do that, but it’s been a great, made me certainly more mentally healthy and happier and everything else.
Laurence Chinery: Yeah, that’s awesome. That’s awesome to hear you’re able to take that ownership of it and structure it around what you fit and making sure that your priorities are there and that you still care about your work. It’s important. You’re still going to Have it fit around your life and your family. I think there’s a lot of, I think that’s like a generation of dads now is trying to take that ownership and working harder, like not longer and really prioritizing discipline within a work setting and getting stuff done and shutting off rather than, like you said, that 10, 12 hours a day away.
As we come to the end of our time, the question I tend to ask all our guests towards the end is. If you think back to maybe a couple of weeks before your daughter was born a few weeks before becoming a father, what do you think Nicholas back then needed to hear? What right? One piece of advice might you give to yourself before becoming a father for the first time?
Nicholas Braman: I think for me personally, it would be to appreciate Every moment. I think I’m quite lucky. So I would never, I wasn’t the kind of person who I’ve always gotten along with kids and my nieces and nephews and whoever always enjoyed being around kids and used to be the uncle that would run around outside in the yard with them.
But I wasn’t the kind of person from a young age was like, I can’t wait until I have kids. I want a big family or I really want to. Um, make that, uh, my priority and my relationships and my marriage and that sort of thing. So it was actually a process with us because I’m, I think I became a father at a fairly old age.
I was 37 when my daughter was born and now we’re going through the process of deciding whether or not we want to have a, try for a second kid. So it wasn’t something that like, as soon as we got married, we went ahead and tried to have kids. And I. What’s been the most unexpected and the best part of becoming a father for me is that I love it more than I ever could have imagined that I would.
I really enjoy being a father. I really love having, you know, my daughter and I think it’s made me a more, I think, a better person and more responsible person. And it’s helped. I think it’s helped our relationship in a lot of ways as well, because I am able to be a good father. And that’s It actually comes more naturally to me to be a good father than to be a good husband, I think.
And so that’s, that’s something that I, I, yeah, I’m loving almost every minute of it so far.
Laurence Chinery: Awesome. So Nicholas, I really appreciate your time. It was awesome getting to chat to you. Thanks so much for joining us for the dialogue podcast.
Nicholas Braman: Great. Thank you very much. I had a great time talking to you. Thanks for having me on the show.
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