Ep. 10: (Mandarin) Entrepreneur Wei Luo quit coding to build vertically-integrated home renovation business

Olivia Xing is an actress, standup comedian, artist and student based in LA, and she recently did a one-hour comedy special called Party School where she told jokes about China, the US, politics in both countries, and the immigrant experience.

00:00 Teaser
00:44 Intro
02:48 How Olivia got started with her Party School comedy special
08:19 Chinese debate show 奇葩说
12:12 How Chinese comics and rappers deal with censorship
16:26 Olivia's biggest takeaways from her comedy special
18:38 Richard's favorite jokes from Olivia's comedy special
23:29 ESL comics: English-as-a-Second-Language comics
25:13 Minority comics shouldn't pander to stereotypes just to get laughs
30:02 Fellow professional comics she admires
32:36 Cultural outlets for the Chinese diaspora
35:25 Why there are so few male ESL comics
37:33 Recommendations of ESL comics to follow
42:45 How Olivia deals with bombing on stage

Indigo was co-founder of Sina Weibo, or China’s Twitter. After Weibo, he started doing angel investments and incubating new projects. One of his main investments included the largest off-line art selling platform in China. Recently he got into the world of web3 and NFT. He writes a blog about frontier tech, and teaches online courses on stock investments in these areas. He is based in Vancouver.

I spoke to him about China’s startup environment since 2009, his takeaways from doing angel investments, his views on web3 especially NFTs, and his observations of target countries of Chinese immigration.

02:24 Indigo's work at Weibo, post-Weibo investments, and classes on Web3 & investing

08:35 Phases of development of China's internet sector

11:08 Streaming commerce

17:14 Exit of venture capital from China

19:06 How young people in China today are evaluating a career in entrepreneurship

22:12 Out-migration from China: Evaluating Singapore, Japan, Vancouver

29:28 Indigo’s advice for making angel investments: sourcing via personal connections, working on a platform full of entrepreneurs

32:23 Why streaming commerce is popular in China and not in the US

35:39 Three uses for NFTs: digital collectibles, creator royalty, soulbound tokens

46:08 Indigo’s life vision includes continually getting involved in businesses with young people

Peng Dang is a standup comedian based in Texas. Peng moved to the US from China in his twenties, speaks absolutely impeccable English, and more importantly, tells jokes like a local pro. I find his sets funny, educational, and wholesome. I’m not sure if a comedian wants to hear their jokes described as “wholesome,” but I mean that as a compliment.

We talked about how his English got to be so good, what life was like for him in Alabama, Atlanta and Dallas, how he honed his comedic skills, his views on "freedom of safety" on China's streets, the infamous Tony Hinchcliffe incident, and more.

I hope you enjoy listening to this episode. Feel free to like, share and subscribe!

0:00 Peng’s standup about Chinese builders

1:52 Blue material

5:54 How Peng got started in standups

6:39 Standup about Chinese railroad builders in the US

8:15 Peng learned to speak English by listening to punk rock while in China

14:37 Standup about kung-fu

15:23 Spending time in Alabama and Atlanta

21:37 Standup about the Chinese language

23:39 Gun safety and crimes in America

27:30 Standup comedy TV shows in China

29:30 Overrated comedians

Amy Yu is a bilingual standup comedian based in Canada.

We talked about how standup comedy changed her life, how she thinks about telling jokes in Chinese vs telling in English, and how to properly tell a dirty joke.

I also had a pretty serious debate with her about the role of artificial intelligence in comedy.

0:00 Amy’s standup set

01:04 Debating the role of AI in art creation

22:31 How comedy helped Amy with mental health

28:17 How to deal with bombing on stage

31:48 Amy’s (and Richard’s) comedic influences

37:02 Telling jokes in Chinese vs English

38:32 Jokes about going on a date with a Chinese American

39:40 Blue material

Dan Chan is a magician that has performed at corporate events at fortune 100 companies and lavish parties hosted by celebrities. He recently got to perform for Elon Musk at the PayPal 20-year reunion party, hosted by Peter Thiel.

Prior to his illusionist career, he was an employee at PayPal, where he met Thiel.

Dan has also been grooming his 14-year old son to become a magician, who has been doing his own $1000 shows in the San Francisco Bay Area.

We talked about how Dan decided to become a magician, how he received his training, his experience of tiger-parenting his son to learn magic tricks, how he found success in Zoom-based magic shows after Covid dropped all his bookings, his plans to build a private VIP magic mansion in the bay area, and his plans beyond magic.

0:00 Dan's magic

2:24 Dan at Paypal

05:13 Starting out performing magic at local libraries

08:47 Dan studied at a clown conservatory

09:24 Dan disliked studying but enjoyed magic

11:58 Teaching his son to reverse-engineer his success

13:49 Dealing with flops

14:42 How Covid made him pivot into Zoom magic

16:28 Plans to make a private magic club in the Bay Area

20:42 Tiger-parenting his son for the career of a magician

23:15 Plans to become a better speaker, do a TED talk and write a book

Alec Sorensen is a career coach who helps people take action on life-changing business ideas they've been putting off.

Alec is also a follower of the Mormon church, a Japan-living American at one point, a California-to-Texas transplant, among other things.

We discussed how he got into career coaching, his faith, cultural shocks in Japan, why he moved to Austin from the Bay Area, and more.

0:00 Intro

1:20 Alec as a Coach: His thoughts about the coaching industry, and how he uses habit building techniques to help people achieve their goals

12:18 Growing up as a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints and thoughts on the Broadway show The Book of Mormon

20:26 Joseph Smith's controversy: His spiritual experience and his motives of starting the Mormon church

27:21 The question of polygamy: Does the current church endorse it, and the logic behind the practice

31:59 The Mormon church hierarchical order and how apostles are selected

35:39 Religion vs Crypto: They are both a commitment to fulfilling an unrealized vision

40:48 Alec's experience as a missionary in Romania

45:53 Missionary KPIs and follow-up of new converts

49:44 Alec's experience in Japan: Learning a new language, and living in a remote village

53:35 Chinese vs American parenting: Expectations of parents of their children, and why economic factors allow for more flexibility

58:44 Replaceability of the working class, China vs US

1:03:34 Japanese stereotypes that proved true during Alec's stay in Japan

1:11:38 Alec's experience as a crisis counselor for male rape survivors

1:18:46 Alec's opinion on microdosing and other mushrooming techniques used in counseling

1:19:28 Illegal drugs, coffee, tea and sodas: Why the church frowns on their use

1:21:57 Coaching: Why coaching, Insecurities, Working with clients to get them results

1:31:47 Decision to move to Austin: All the pros

1:38:08 How he gets clients from conducting pilots

1:48:30 Conversations in Austin vs conversations in the Bay Area

1:51:37 Cognitive dissonance: How some champions for change in the Bay Area are somehow ill-prepared to pivot when confronted by people of different opinions

1:54:43 Argument for the legitimacy of Russia's invasion

1:58:54 Outro

(Episode in Mandarin)

Karol Guan is an entrepreneur. This interview was recorded in Nov 2020. At the time she was co-founder of HelloAva.co, a startup that recommends skin care products based on a combination of AI and doctors. Karol studied Fashion/Apparel design at Parsons School of Design in New York City.

We discussed how the 2020 Covid both helped her startup grow and presented challenges to the way she worked, how she felt about being a woman in the male-dominated startup space, how her training as an artist and creator at Parsons prepared her for entrepreneurship, how she felt about sexual harassment in the venture space and beyond, the career paths of her friends that have returned to China, and more!

0:00 Intro

02:34 HelloAva is the StitchFix for cosmetics

11:41 Rewards and challenges for being a startup founder

16:01 Dealing with messy logistics at her startup during Covid

25:52 Women in startups 36:53 Sexual harassment in venture

45:54 Finding one's calling in life

1:09:45 Reflecting on career paths of friends returning to China

1:14:56 Being Cantonese

1:22:05 Karol asks Richard about his takeaways from hosting Chinatown 2.0

Erin Cuellar is Director of Operations at STERIS, a manufacturer of medical devices. At the time of the interview, she was senior operations manager at the same company, and her role was essentially that of a plant manager.

Her responsibilities included supervising teams, managing KPIs, and maintaining quality controls.

Erin comes from a very different world than I do. She dropped out of college, worked at a local manufacturing site, joined an apprenticeship program, got her journeyman’s card which is sort of like a full license to practice in the trades, and moved from state to state for employment in manufacturing.

In the course of 13 years, she moved between five different states. At least one of the moves was the result of a plant shutdown thanks to outsourcing.

But Erin and her family, which includes a husband and three children were fully resilient in transitioning to new homes, new jobs, and new schools.

In fact, about a year after our interview, Erin moved to Pennsylvania to become Director of Operations at her company. I became interested in the trades in recent years after noticing and following the works of Mike Rowe and Andrew Yang, who both highlight a change in the mix of American jobs available as well as people willing to undertake those jobs.

In the US, there just seem to be fewer opportunities in the trades sector, and even fewer young people looking to enter those fields.

Mike Rowe looks to encourage the youths to get into these areas, whereas Andrew Yang sees the loss of these opportunities as the force that hollowed out middle America, which disenfranchised large swaths of the population, leading to rising support for the wings of the political spectrum.

In today’s conversation, Erin and I talked about what it's like to work in a manufacturing plant, her experience of working in the trades as a rare species of a woman, her moves around the country in pursuit of various manufacturing jobs, how does she think about raising her kids, and why she thinks it's a good idea for young people to consider a career in the trades.

Bruce Wang is a Chinese cowboy. Not an ethnically Chinese person that was born in Texas, but someone born and bred in Yunnan, China.

He came to the US as a college student. He adopted a Southern accent, started dressing like a cowboy, and started making videos about how cowboys spend their time.

We talked about why he decided to become a cowboy, why he felt the cowboy culture reminded him of his hometown of Kunming, how he felt different when speaking a different language, and how he dealt with an identity crisis.

We also talked about whether he has encountered acts of racism and racial ignorance, his plans to dedicate his Ph.D. to the intersection of languages and cross-cultural understanding, and more.