EPISODE 81: STORYTELLING THROUGH A DIFFERENT LENS WITH SNIGDHA SUR (Copy)
Photo credit: Mat Fretschelel
MEET: SNIGHDA SUR
Snigdha has worked at McKinsey and advised BuzzFeed, Quartz, Amazon Studios, Scroll.in, and Reese Witherspoon’s Hello Sunshine. She got her MBA at Harvard, studied Economics & South Asian Studies at Yale, and spent five months coding at Flatiron School. She was born in Chhattisgarh, India; grew up in the Bronx and Queens, New York; and has worked and lived in Mumbai, India. She can speak Hindi, Bengali, and Mandarin. She loves Bollywood and reading novels.
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Podcast
SHOW NOTES
We have a very special guest on the show today: Snigdha Sur, founder of the world-renowned smart journalism platform of the South Asian diaspora, The Juggernaut!
This season, I’ve focused on broadening the types of guests on the show to bring various cultural backgrounds, so we can dive deeper into identity and voice as multi-faceted, often multi-cultural individuals. In this episode, Snigdha and I converse about South Asian history, the importance of BIPOC storytelling, what failure really means, her inspiring journey that led her to create this empire she’s built — and so much more.
As a storyteller, I love that Snigdha touches on many great ideas about how we can build a future through honoring our cultures by sharing our narratives.
We also explore:
FULL TRANSCRIPT
Judy Tsuei 0:07
Welcome to the fuck saving face podcast where we're empowering mental and emotional health for Asian Americans and beyond by breaking through taboo topics. Life may not always be pretty, but it is indeed beautiful. Let's make your story beautiful today
hello, hello. So a lots been happening recently one of which is that I lost my voice, I picked up whatever cold was going around my daughter's school and develop laryngitis. And I actually gave a talk recently in LA like this. So compassion in sGv. That's the San Gabriel Valley hosted an event and invited me to attend. And I was so honored to be one of the speakers, where I spoke about the power of storytelling and how useful and vital essential it is, when it comes to bridging our cultural divides. When you hear someone's story, you understand them better. Our minds are actually wired to step in someone else's shoes to cultivate more empathy and compassion, and to really relate to someone else. So it takes a lot of bravery and courage to show up authentically as yourself. And for a lot of us in this season, you'll hear an interview with a book marketing expert, where she talks about self promotion and how for a lot of us who grew up in collectivist cultures, that's the antithesis of what we grew up with understanding, we grew up as you know, falling in line, at least I did. And so being in this world of self promotion can feel very uncomfortable. And sometimes it can seem like storytelling is something along those lines of You imparting your unique opinion, your take your wisdom. And I always like to remind people that you are this unique expression of universal life force energy, that it's coming through you in the way that you were uniquely built to bring it forward. So the world needs to hear from you. Because storytelling is so powerful in forming connections. It also helps us wire our brains to have deeper compassion and empathy than when we tell these stories, you know, as openly and honestly and authentically as we can we help others understand where we're coming from. And hopefully, we can also be active listeners, we can hear what someone else is going through when their experiences may be different from ours. And I always try to encourage a lot of just kind of forgiveness and compassion when it comes to conversing and articulating. In earlier seasons of the show. We had therapists come on one of whom specializes in relationships. And for a lot of us, for me, I watched my parents have a very contentious marriage, where it would felt like for me growing up, it was like World War Three there was yelling and shouting and never any sense of forgiveness or apologizing or taking responsibility, I have actively worked to cultivate a different type of relationship in my relationships. And yet, I still fell prey to that. Because that was normalized in my mind growing up. That's what I learned to expect. And so that's what happened in my marriage where there wasn't a lot of space to hold someone else to be able to see them as a full person, but with their own wounds and life stories, and there wasn't a lot of coming back together. And that's something that I've really tried to underscore, underscore and articulate in my own personal relationship now, and even my relationship with my daughter, you're not going to get it right in the moment, every time our brains go into that fight or flight. If you're a parent, then you know, sometimes you're just maxed out. So you might not get it right in the moment. But the coming back together is where the reparations are made, when you know the analogy can be that when you're exercising, you're creating these micro tears in your muscle, and then it comes together and then becomes stronger. So I like to view that as how we are in relationships as long as there is healthy respect and a knowingness that we are human and we're fallible, but that there's also love and honor, and a willingness to hear and see the other person. All the stories that you've heard on the podcast, though so far, or one slice of someone's experience. It's not representative of the whole unnecessarily, but hopefully, you'll find elements that you resonate with, so that we don't feel so alone so we can create this virtual community. And it's understanding that we are all on this heroines or hero's journey, aiming to figure ourselves out. So can we figure this out with as much grace as possible. I've also been really lucky that the universe has brought so many opportunities for me to speak up and speak out recently. So at the diabetes company that I work with, I was invited to be part of the amplify series and I was on a panel where I was sharing my experience, having to deal with a model minority myth, having to bring my daughter and raise my biracial Daughter, what it's like to be living in a third culture raising her as a third culture kid when we're alone. being abroad in Taiwan. And all of it was such a wonderful opportunity for me to realize that there was an audience willing to hear that not everybody who participated in the listening or attending this virtual event was Asian American, and that there were other South Asians on the panel. And even they were saying, Well, you know, the hate crimes that had happened, weren't targeted towards people like me. So I also want to be an ally, I also want to listen, and I loved being able to share my personal experience, and then be asked questions about it. So I think that if you are nervous about sharing, knowing that you are valuable, you are worthy, and that you in your life lessons may be able to help someone else who was a little bit behind you in the journey, or that maybe in your sharing something that lights up something within you or was within someone else. And then both of you, or the community that you're a part of builds upon that. And I think that that's such a wonderful magic. Because of that event, I was asked to potentially participate in another one for sharp, which is a huge medical, you know, establishment here in California, and then another one potentially with a large legal firm. And it's just been so fun to be able to do this thing that I love to do. So when I was a yoga teacher, I love teaching. And now I feel like speaking is an opportunity to take that love and just shift it a little bit. Maybe we won't be moving on the mat. But hopefully we'll be moving some hearts moving some minds. That's what I hope that you will get out of today's interview sneakiness or is the founder of the Juggernaut, where she interviews South Asian entrepreneurs, about the startups they've created and the cultural legacies they're building along the way. She's a founder herself, so she understands the ups and downs of life, behind the glossy cover stories, the podcasts that she has the Juggernaut interviews, moves past the fluff. She is really all about asking the tough questions about what founders really do to grow big ideas, build capital and redefine success. The podcast is built upon her company the Juggernaut, which is a premium publication and community that publishes smart takes and well reported stories about South Asia and South Asians. What was really fun about this is that when I did the interview with Jaya Malik, who launched our season talking about diversity, equity and inclusion, I mentioned that I interviewed Snigdha and she was so excited because Jaya is South Asian and she definitely know knows what the Juggernaut is and knew about Snigdha. And so she told me that she was fangirling, which was extremely endearing and such an honor for me. So the Juggernaut calls it small, smart journalism for the South Asian diaspora. And they welcome all readers who are curious about South Asian stories.
The Juggernaut covers everything from politics to culture to tech, and their goal is to celebrate South Asian heritage but also to challenge and unlearn what their history books and community have gotten wrong. They're thoughtful and everything that they do from choosing the fonts created by South Asians to paying Writers and Illustrators responsibly, and they've been featured in TechCrunch, Forbes, CNBC, Harvard Business, School blog, and Yale. A little bit more about Snigdha. Before we dive into the interview, she worked at McKinsey, and advised BuzzFeed Cortes Amazon Studios, and Reese Witherspoon's Hello, sunshine. She got her MBA at Harvard, studied economics and South Asian Studies at Yale and spent five months coding at Flatiron School. She was born in India, grew up in the Bronx and Queens, New York, and has worked and lived in Mumbai, India, she can speak Hindi, Bengali and Mandarin, which she and I connected over during this interview. She loves Bollywood and reading novels. So without further ado, I'm gonna turn it over to this week's interview. So I'm so excited for this week. I say that every week, I'm so excited because all the guests that I bring on are so fascinating. But I have a negative sort of founder of the juggernaut. And so your team actually reached out to me because they were sharing about the new podcasts that you have. And so then I started diving into your podcasts and just really loving the people that you were bringing on and hearing their stories. So similar to what we've done here in this podcast. And because we've been working in season three to broaden the scope and the types of guests and the cultural backgrounds. I'm really excited to have you here, because so much of the work that you've been doing is in the South Asian space. And so I'm going to just turn it over to you to use in your own words and share your story of who you are, what the Juggernaut is and how you identify.
Unknown Speaker 9:45
Thanks so much, Judy, for having me. My name is Sega. I identify as so many things. We talked about this a little bit but I identify as South Asian identify as Indian identify as American identify as Bengali ancestrally we've had Holmes in what is present a bungled lesion present day Burma. So I've really, really related to that entire sub continental region. In terms of what we do at the juggernaut. We're on a mission to diversify storytelling, because we think that so much of mainstream media has been dominated by Western narratives. And we see this dissonance growing up in the US, right? Like we read these history textbooks in elementary school and middle school in high school. And then we go home and ask our parents, their histories, and it's just so starkly different and sometimes completely absent from our history books. And so using that we think, Well, if you know, so much of our history is not told how much of our present day is also not told. And so the Juggernaut is basically a new media company and community telling South Asian stories, we focus on South Asians around the world, with a primary focus on first targeting the diaspora in the US, we made that decision, because honestly, you know, you always want to make something that people want, as Y Combinator says, so I am that person. So I knew how to build for myself. So we started with the US, but 15% of our subscribers, and a lot of our audiences are not from the US at all. And so we're just trying to tell stories of people around the world and make that happen. So I'm happy to you know, go forth from there. Yeah.
Judy Tsuei 11:15
And you know, I love Well, first of all, the fact that you took a newsletter and created a subscription model around it, and then, you know, have built this basis. And I was reading in like a TechCrunch article about your open rates and how they far surpass, you know, the traditional subscription, open rates. Just, I have always loved having a newsletter and sending out these, like, personalized stories. So just to hear, you've been able to build like a whole business around it is really exciting. And I wanted to ask you about, you know, just how you came about doing that. And storytelling, for me is such like a heart driven, kind of idea. So did you take what you learned? And also, just to backtrack? Can you explain what Y Combinator is? Because you dove into that really quickly, but just yeah, like, you know, now you're VC backed, and, you know, got funding for it. And so I just want to hear more about that, like how you built it into a business, the storytelling?
Unknown Speaker 12:10
That's a great question. So I did start as a free weekly newsletter, in fact, I was sending it. So sporadically. I was doing it on the weekends and just sending it to my friends. And the reason I decided to make it more into a business is because I felt that what I was initially doing, you always want to create, like a minimal viable product, right? What's the least you can get away with and the cheapest thing you can do? So I had like a free MailChimp account. This was pre substack. And I was just sending and writing my analyses and what other people other people's stories on South Asia that week, said, here's what you missed this week. Here's what I'm thinking, here's what I'm thinking. And I soon realized that, you know, no matter how much I was scouring the interwebs to find articles and stories, I was never really satisfied. And I felt that other people might be feeling that same way. And so I started talking to journalists, I was like, Hey, do you ever pitches that you pitch and they don't get greenlit like? And I was like, what are the stories you would tell if you had a you know, magic wand? I love that magic, one question because you can kind of see what's possible. And so many people I was talking to I, you know, we're like, hey, actually, I would love it if there were more South Asian stories, and this is what I would need to succeed. And I thought, Well, I wasn't, I come from a very humble family. So it's like, well, I don't have the funding to take a chance on this and to scale it and to actually pay people what they need. Because it's also important to remember that on the flip side, the reason we charge for subscription is because over subscription revenue is going to these writers, so 94% of our writers and illustrators and photographers are people of color. And we never have had the resources of the New York Times. But those numbers are stark opposite of us newsrooms, right. Which means that we try to give them as much as we possibly can, even when we're at subscale because and that's why we tell our community members, if you want to see your own community thrive, and he wants to actually preserve your stories of today in the past, it's so important to invest in these journalists, because I think sometimes people think that storytelling is really easy. Storytelling is easy, in some ways, but it's other ways. It's really, really difficult. And so it's really, really important to to do that. So So in terms of like, wrapping that up a little bit more quickly, I can talk forever is I ended up giving myself five months, I quit my job. And I said, Well, can I get this funded? Can I get this idea funded? And so many people on the East Coast said that no, you're you're this is a crazy idea. Like we have backed the likes of BuzzFeed advice. And you know what those stories are like, this is not going to work. And I kept on telling them we are not BuzzFeed, we are not vice. We are not these companies that are trying to be everything to everyone. We know exactly who our target audiences. And we ended up going to the West Coast pitch to Y Combinator which is this big accelerator program in Silicon Valley, one of the first and I think one of the most renowned to this day, and they saw our numbers they saw our MailChimp open rates. They saw how much our audience loved us and they said, Well, you're clearly building something people want we don't know where it's Gotta go. But here's your first check. And so the rest is kind of history after that in terms of how it became a business and why I wanted to scale it, because I felt that otherwise, I could keep going at a certain pace. But I felt that the moment was ripe for more change that was
Judy Tsuei 15:17
faster. That's amazing. And I love that you're supporting writers of color. And then also, as a writer, and I say this all the time. It's just like, it's such a disheartening journey sometimes because like, content is everywhere. And nobody could function without content. And yet you're undervalued when it when it comes to producing the content. And so you're like, Okay, well, all these businesses from a marketing branding, you know, editorial standpoint, need content, and you're not going to support the content, like writers who are creating it for you. And yet, you're also making so much money from, you know, all of the efforts put forward. So that's always been such a struggle and frustration, and I love that you're supporting, like, in my own team, with the team of writers who I have, I always tell them, like, I want to make sure that you're making a competitive wage, I want to elevate all of us into establishing like, hey, we provide really good work. And, you know, yes, it's not perhaps the same as like a doctor in surgery, like, that's fine. But it's still so important in so many ways. And our whole entire civilizations have been based on storytelling. And so if we're not honoring that, like, yeah, how are we going to know the past and the present and build into the future? So thank you so much for what you're doing there. Can you share about how you moved from the subscription, and all the things that you built where it is, now, you know, how big your readership is? And all of that, and then how you transitioned it into evolving into a podcast?
Unknown Speaker 16:44
Yeah, that's a great question. So we don't reveal all our pink subscriber numbers, because we don't want to be on this crazy treadmill where people keep on asking us like, I kind of want to shelter our team as they grow and figure things out and make mistakes. And so I would say that in terms of how we think about our audience, I always view it as like a concentric circles. So on the very outside of the world, we have like hundreds of 1000s of monthly unique visitors, we have 100,000 Instagram followers, and then you know, it goes from there. I think our newsletter readership right now, that's public is like 40,000. And so in terms of how we think about going into podcasts, basically, I call 2022, a year of experimentation, it's, you know, we've proved out that we have pretty good writing, in written form, we prove that we have a pretty good free newsletter based on our open rates. But I kind of wanted to meet people where they were, and some people don't love reading the written word. Some people want to listen to a podcast on their morning walk, or they're afternoon run or something like that. And some people want to watch video instead of reading a written version of it. So we also expand into video, more video stories, November. And so I would say that this is our journey to kind of meet people where they are, and try to make people more aware of us, especially if they're not readers in the traditional sense. So our podcast is really fun. Because one of the things I think about a lot is strengths based storytelling, right? What are we really, really good at saying telling our stories up? And I thought that and what's missing in the world? I think those are two questions that are really helpful in making things people want, right? You want to do that intersection of things people want, things that are missing and things that are you're really good at right, that intersection is where you want to play. And I know that I had this amazing network of founders. And I was always so impressed by the stories they told me and the lessons they had learned. But when you looked at mainstream media, going back to the mainstream media, mainstream media loves covering people after they're successful. They rarely talk to people as they're building. And that entire journey is erased and like sanitized, because he wasn't just shows like how I built this, by the way, I love how I built this, when you listen to those shows. It's like they've already built it. It's done. It's done. So when you look backwards, it's easy to see what's happened. I think it's far harder to catch somebody when they're not famous yet, and when they haven't figured it out. And you get to like, ask them all those probing questions. And so that's what the Juggernaut interviews founders are first series is about where we interview founders of South Asian descent, ask them some typical, we really hard questions that other people don't ask. And I think the reason we are able to get away with that is because I'm the founder myself, and so I can catch them a little bit. They know that they know they're, they're getting ready for a little bit of a difficult interview. But hopefully, we're also teasing out a lot of insights that other founders or other investors can glean, and get inspired. That's amazing. So can
Judy Tsuei 19:35
you tell me about the Juggernaut as a name? How did you come up with the name?
Unknown Speaker 19:40
Yeah, so I'm a former Spelling Bee kid with embarrassing but really fun. So I, I had a list of words, English words that had South Asian roots. And then I was like militantly going on, like needing cheap to see what domains were available and then Which trademarks were available in my class, and that I'm that of a crazy person, I guess when it comes to being a founder. So I found out that the Juggernaut had a domain available. So we bought the domain and had similar Instagram handles available, which I was a little bit worse on the handles, but it was available in our class as a news news and information for trademark as well. And so that's why we went for it. So that's why and then it's the South Asian route. It's juggernaut in Sanskrit, which means the word of the world. And in the 1800s, the British saw this big procession in Orissa, presently Orissa. And it was the Juggernaut procession, and they called it a juggernaut. And that's why it's unstoppable force. It's a large kind of phenomenon. And so I kind of wanted to reclaim it because the British mess up our spelling.
Judy Tsuei 20:50
I love that so much. I love that idea of reclamation. I think I saw in another article, you know that you were just talking about how big this population in this audience is. And so it's so resonant I love when naming works across the board to have like, you know, depth to it. And everything I've actually told my partner before, like, there are certain stores that I won't go into, because the marketing and the way that they named, it is so terrible that it just makes me angry as a writer. And I'm like, No, I refuse That's not funny or funny or anything. Like, okay, chill.
Unknown Speaker 21:22
I also think a wonderful side effect is that, you know, we're really proudly women owned women, like our executive team is like, basically all women. And I think I also want to reclaim that feminine energy in the sense that I think people view the Juggernaut as like masculine, like Marvel hero, and they always associate with, like, dudes. And I thought, well, actually, no, like, I think it could be, I think, also, feminine energy can be really powerful, too. So I was like, No, we're gonna, we're gonna also reclaim it on that side as well.
Judy Tsuei 21:51
Totally. That's amazing. You know, cuz this is a great segue into the question that I asked you before we got on, because in the beginning, first season was all about Asian Americans, like the core, you know, identifying Chinese, Japanese, Korean, like that kind of, quote, unquote, Asian. And then the second season, we started branching out, we brought in Latino voice, we started bringing in other voices. And this third season, I'm aiming to continue to expand that to really highlight, you know, more groups who just are doing incredible work. And as you said, the mainstream media doesn't really highlight or just, I think it was really interesting over the last kind of year, just seeing and reevaluating how much we take as normal when we're, we're just not challenging it. So I mentioned this in another episode before but how someone had shared an image of a black fetus inside like a black mother's body, and that that's not an image you ever see. Like you never in anything, ever see that? And so even just to the granular little bits like that, how is it that we've not tried to come up with a better way? It's kind of like how, you know, a friend of mine is very interested in getting into the tampon making or feminine product making business. And like, why after all this time, have we not created a better way to do this, you know, and just all these oppressive things that we just subscribe to, because we just take it as normal. And that's just normal. So I love that. In the beginning, when you said, you went around to all these journalists and ask, like, which pitches didn't, were not taken, that you wanted to write, I think that that's such an amazing angle and perspective to take to really draw for the things that need to be said. So, you know, bringing you on and in the audience that you're working with, and all the stories that you're highlighting when growing up, when people would say like, what are you? I'd be like, a person. I mean, like, I'm Asian American, I'm, you know, Chinese. I guess that's what you're asking. So when it comes to that, and then, you know, people lumping Asian Americans all together, what is as a South Asian person, how does that feel? And like, what, you know, what conversations are happening there that you would like to underscore highlight?
Unknown Speaker 23:56
That's such a great question. I think, my understanding of this, and I know there's some such amazing literature written about this, across the spectrum of, you know, identification, my outsider in understanding is that I think growing up for the longest time, I do think that I think the coalition I think somebody I think Cathy Park, Hong called it a coalition, the Coalition of Asian Americans for the longest time we've let other people even define us. Yeah, in a way. And I think growing up, I grew up in New York City, and it's so diverse. It's so fun. I always grew up with, honestly, not even questioning diversity in the sense that I always had friends who are not who didn't look like me. And that was never a question. When I think growing up in New York City, whenever you did hear Asian American, you automatically thought East Asian American, and I don't know why. And we were always called like Indian or something like I'm Indian, but we were called Indian. And what's really interesting is that if you're a South Asian let's say you were Pakistani American or Bangladeshi American or Sri Lankan American people would still call you for some reason Indian when we were growing up because they just they just didn't know better. They were like, Oh, you're south. You look South Asian but betta You know that word South Asian also is a very modern word. Yeah. And even India is part of a group that's called like Sark, which is South Asian something regional Corporation. And it's very modern word because a lot I always go back to like it was the British who created these lions, like, you know, before we were all these like individual princely kingdoms who happen to be in the same region. And it was all these creations. And so the way I identify is, as a kid, I would first identify as a nerd, but then and then then after that, I would say I identify as like in the American, South Asian, American Bengali. You know, I also speak Hindi. And we also talked about this a little bit like I also speak Mandarin. And you know, growing up, like, I went to Stuyvesant High School, which is 65%, which I when I went Asian American. And that meant that I had a lot of East Asian American friends. And they taught me everything from how to eat with chopsticks to learning to love boba tea, and like sushi and like dumplings, because we were like, 10 minutes from Chinatown. And I would never give away that education like that education was like, worth so much to me. And so today, I say, I do take, I noticed that subconsciousness, or I read an article recently in New York Times about, I don't know, if you read this, the San Francisco situation of the Department of Education, and outstaying and I read Asian American parents that I immediately thought East Asian, because it's been like so ingrained in me that you know, you don't belong there because of what's happened in the past and how people have to find this in the past. And I think that at the end of the day, what I'm noticing is that what's lovely to see is that more and more people of our generation and younger, just embrace it. So like they identify as multiple things. And that's wonderful to see. And it's never, I hope, one day in a weird way that we even outgrow the coalition because we're each so strong, that we don't like the reason Asian American was invented at the end of the day, the 1960s was because we were small group, and people weren't paying attention. And now people chose to interpret Asian American to mean what they wanted it to mean. And I think hopefully, we're coming to this era where we're going to outgrow that coalition, quote, unquote, not in the sense that we won't be allies, but in the sense that I want people to know the differences between what it means to be Korean American versus Japanese American like, yeah, there are some interesting differences there. Like I think it'd be fun to for people to know that I think people are slowly now learning some of that stuff, which, you know, has taken a lot of
Judy Tsuei 27:23
time. Yeah. And I think that's so fascinating, because my daughter is half, you know, me and half her dad, so she's half Asian, half Caucasian. And so she'll have a whole other experience of identifying with who she is, and like, you know, what she's going to resonate with? And yeah, I think that the younger generations now are finding their own way and their own. She stands up for herself way more than I did her age, she's much more clear about like, what is right, and what is wrong for herself. And I think that those are wonderful attributes. It's funny, because it's caught, it's leading me to the next question that I wanted to ask you, when I read your bio, I see a lot of ivy league schools and like, you know, all of the kind of accomplishments, and I wanted to ask, like, you know, as a nerd, well, and I'm also a nerd, I'm like, so I just am such a nerd. But like, from, you know, I imagined that it felt well, from a personal accomplishment, it feels really good to know that, like, you're among the best of the best, you know, how did it feel for you going to the schools, Were there certain pressures from your parents to want to achieve? Or do you feel like, yeah, like, I just kind of want to know, the influence externally. And then the intrinsic motivation that you had?
Unknown Speaker 28:35
Yeah, you know, one of the so it's so funny, because, you know, my partner and I joke about this all the time, we got so lucky with our parents in the sense that my parents and his parents are so lost a fair, like growing up, my mom would rarely ever look at my report card or demand to seen a report card. I remember, like when I went to die, which is like very intense, where I was living like two and a half hours away by public transport, so I never sleeping. And my mom would be like, can you just go to bed already? Like, what are you going to achieve by like, not sleeping, like she was concerned for me? And I think that, like, I think that to your point, like, where did the motivation come from? I think probably a lot of the motivation came from inside which because partly, I am an immigrant. I'm not even the child of immigrants. I was born in Nigeria and moved to the US. And when I was newly immigrated to the US, I was hazed a ton, like, I had an accent, like people said, I was bad at English, like, I probably smelled or something. I don't know what they, like, you know what I mean? Like, it was one of those things where I was just like, on and on and on and I was like, Well, you know, I probably that little kid Amin was like, I want to prove them all wrong, right. And I and I, you know, I'm gonna be better at English than them like, you know, watch me right. And I think so much of that was probably a little bit extrinsic intent in terms of like, you know, this goes back to the whole model minority myth, right. feeling like you have to be perfect because, you know, Pete People don't view you as somebody who belongs. And I think that was probably part of it. But it never came from my parents and things. The second thing was, this is my lovely insight into myself, which is, I had a lot of early failure. And that allowed me to succeed later. So, you know, this is my thesis where my first week or two at psi, I got straight up 60s and 70s, on my tests, like, to the point where that my teacher, one of my teachers, I remember took me aside and was like, Hey, are you doing okay? Like, you seem to know the answers when you raise your hand in class, but you're really bad at taking tests. And it was like, I was like, Oh, I didn't even know there was a way to learn to take tests, because I've never had to be good at taking tests. And so, you know, she, like, I did not have the highest like Sky test for when I got into STEM. And so she literally took me inside and taught me how to take a test. And I think that having those champions early on, where whether it's failure, because you're three years old, and nobody likes you, or whether it's failure, because you're in high school, and you're getting 60s on tests, I think all of those, like, moments are just learning though. It's because without those failures, you're not going to, like really try because I was like, Okay, now I know that there's like an alternative possibility. And I'm very thankful that my parents were very quite chill about it. They were just very confused. I mean, when I went to grad school, they're like, how much more grad? Like, how much more schooling do you want, I was like, what, like, they're very, they made me pay for my own grad school, which I thought was hilarious, because they're like, we're done. We've cut you off after undergrad, because I think they knew that if they left me to my, to my devices, I'd like go for like multiple grad schools or something, because I just like loved learning. So they cut me off after undergrad.
Judy Tsuei 31:37
That's amazing. I love that you had that experience. And I think that it's so hard to fail from an early age, if you weren't taught that it was okay. So I'm, it's wonderful to hear that that was a learning opportunity for you. And it's actually funny, because, you know, as a personal aside, recently, I was talking to my partner, and he has a very different lived experience from me, you know, he's a white man grew up on the East Coast, like, we're now in California, but he's very direct, in forthcoming with his opinion, and his thoughts with strangers, you know, like, so if we're not getting, you know, the best service like he's not afraid to like speak up about it. And like, meanwhile, me I'm just trying to create, like harmony and balance every which way, it doesn't matter if like, I'm going to yield my needs. And there was a person who I interviewed who said, there's a lot of cultures that are high context, and then American culture is very low context. So Asian cultures are usually Alright, what's happening for everybody? How can we make sure everybody in this space is going to feel comfortable and respected or like, you know, however, it's gonna look. And so that's high context. low context is like, you know, Americans, like, I want this, I want you to serve me, this is like my right or whatnot. And that's not across the board. There's obviously nuances. But I I hadn't ever thought about that before. Just like, Oh, I see. So it was very much ingrained in me from a very early age. And so I recently talked about how, like, we were joking about it, I said, you know, there's a part of me that very much respects that and like, I'm like, How do you do that? And then the other part of me, so I'm straddling this line, where I'm like, Please don't make any like, please don't say anything, I, everything's fine, everything's fine. And it's not like he's aggressive. It's not even like any of that. It's just different from what I know. And so I said this recently to this consciousness, spirit, science, executive leader, and she was saying, well, actually, what I think is interesting is he's also aiming to create harmony, he's just doing it in a much more direct fashion, where like, you are trying to do it, as you're like shoving things under the rug, we're not going to look at that, that's fine to worry about it. And he's like, No, let's just look at it. And let's just go through it. And then we'll just move forward with it. And so that was such a wonderful way to kind of reframe either conflict or standing up for yourself. And so as I was saying, Oh, well, there's this circumstance in my life right now, where like, I will just as a general theme, I think I'm supposed to have healthier boundaries all around just learning how to like stand up for myself and say things that might make someone else slightly uncomfortable. And so he was trying to help me, like, I'm like, I literally don't know what to say, like, can you help me figure out what to how to approach it? And he's like, there's plenty of ways you could do it, you could do it in a jokey kind of way, like, oh, it's making me kind of nervous to say this, but or you can do it in a very direct way. Like, hey, you know, my, my daughter needs this and I really want to respect her and like, you know, whatever, or however, it's gonna look and it was truly so helpful just to have someone play out different scenarios with me and to give me the words to actually say, and so a lot of your, you know, story about that was like, oh, there's someone outside of you who can show you. You're not a failure at this. You're not like, bad at this necessarily. You just haven't learned yet that there's a different way to take a test. There's a different way, you know, to have a conversation. I'm like, Oh, I see. So I love that idea of like, failing early or having all of these skills Let's play into something great earlier on. I could talk to you for hours. I really love that. But um, I wanted to ask you as we come to a close along this idea of like saving face and removing taboo shame or stigma around anything, what would you say? And encourage people to affect saving face about?
Unknown Speaker 35:18
Yeah, I think that's such a wonderful segue to I think what I just said, I would say, succeeding Facebook failure, I think first and also, I would also say succeeding faced about I, I would say, like promoting, I'd say the myth of oh, man, I hope this doesn't come out wrong. Let me a little bit. Yeah. Which is like, here's the thing. I also say fucks thing face about feeling like every single story has to be the same. How about that? As like a diverse storyteller? I think the first part is, I think our community in general, as Asian Americans, or even as South Asian Americans, or you can even be specific as immigrants, like whatever you identify, as, I think we often have this idea that we cannot fail. And I've always been the one to be like, no, like, I actually think the folks who feel more and more often are the ones who end up becoming more successful however way you define success, because and however way you define failure, because they've gone through the reps, like I really, I think I'm very Taoist in that sense. Like you can't have success without having failure. So I think like, you know, succeeding face about failure, I've noticed that like, you know so much about, and when people are feeling or when people don't feel like they're at their best, however you want to define it. I think those are the loneliest moments. Whereas sometimes when you think like, why do people perceive that, like, sometimes they do something, and you're like, wow, you're crushing it, I'm like, why didn't they perceive it that way? You know, I'm like, What are you talking about in my head, because I'm like, I'm like, this wasn't exactly how I wanted it to be. And so I think that, you know, I always say, make sure you define failure and success to your own norms, and no one else's. And even if someone thinks you're crushing it are some of the things you're feeling from the outside, know what that means to you. And I always ask myself, Am I still learning, and if I'm still learning, I'm doing just great. And it doesn't matter what other people say. And then the second piece I'll say is, you know, fuck saving face about having only one story, which is, I often think that sometimes there was like, I think my three Rama Krishna would never have ever actually said this kind of well, which is, whenever you have any form of representation anymore, people just get angry. This happened with just like that, and the sorry, Episode, this happened, we would never have ever, never have I ever in certain episodes, and I think she said something like, Hey, we're only telling one story here. We're not trying to represent all South Asian Americans. We're not trying to represent all Indian Americans. We're not trying to even represent like, all like diasporic kids, we're just telling one story. So I really think this idea that we keep holding this crazy high bar for our own community, when we're telling stories. It's kind of messed up, like, let us just tell that one story, and maybe it's not supposed to be representative of everything. It's just there. And hopefully, it'll be even more stories so then we'll be part of one of many, so I would say fuck saving face about that a little bit. I don't know if I answered it directly. Yeah, no,
Judy Tsuei 38:03
I love that. No, I
Unknown Speaker 38:04
think about it. I love those
Judy Tsuei 38:06
answers. So people want to follow up with you and they want to sign up for the Juggernaut or listen to the podcast, where can they find you?
Unknown Speaker 38:13
So our Instagram is at underscore the Juggernaut so th e ju GG er NAU at our Twitter is be the Juggernaut and then I'm personally on my entire name at all the handles because I always joke that my parents gave me an SEO optimized statements thank us for as an IG, da che ser on Instagram, Twitter, wherever you can find me. But and then follow our podcasts. It's on anywhere you listen to podcasts. It's called the Juggernaut interviews, Cohen founders, I hope you'll enjoy it. It's always a fun conversation to talk to people and tell me stories.
Judy Tsuei 38:47
That's amazing. Thank you so much. Oh, one other question. As you're looking forward into the future. What are you looking forward to creating more of?
Unknown Speaker 38:57
What a great question. Oh, well, one of the things I'm thinking a lot of during these crazy times you're living in when people are experiencing so much burnout and so much drainage of energy is I'm really looking forward to coming up with a sustainable process for you know, energy on for me and my team. And I think that that's something that's been really top of mind for me, which is 2022 is all about experiments, but it's all about how do I like catch the burnout? How do I pause the burnout? How do I stop it? How do I make sure that people on the team are feeling energized because when you lose that energy, it's just really hard. So I want to create more energy this year and make sure it's sustained.
Judy Tsuei 39:35
That's wonderful. Yeah, I love I used to be a Reiki practitioner and all of that. So like energy, and helping people better understand energy and being able to perceive energy is incredible. And yeah, the burnout there's a an episode with the Nagasaki sisters all about how to avoid burnout. It was on Brene Brown's podcast, but you know that I think the other interesting thing is like listening to all in neuroscience from like Huberman labs and all that. It's like, you're going to experience stress in life, that's fine. That's a natural thing that occurs. But it's just how do you move in and out of it more seamlessly, that that can be an opportunity to help yourself be healthy all the while, and really, you know, sustain yourself. So thank you so much for sharing. I've had a wonderful time.
Unknown Speaker 40:22
Thanks so much, Judy, for having me. This was such a fun conversation.
Judy Tsuei 40:27
I've loved that. In season three, we've been moving beyond the AAPI community to embrace more voices, across all voices of color. And I hope that you're also enjoying these interviews, I would love to hear from you, please email me at hello at Fox saving face.com. Share your thoughts, let me know what you want to see more of what you potentially want to see less of I'm open to the feedback as long as it's cushioned by kindness, let's say. But as we continue to move forward, I'm excited to share this journey with you. I'm heading to V con, by the time that you listen to this, I will either be in Minneapolis or headed there. And V con is Gary Vaynerchuk event where he calls it kind of Coachella meets crypto. For those of you who have been following this season, you know that I've been diving deep into web three, into all of the things where we take branding and marketing and evolve it into from web two into web three. And just about how to create more of the idea of decentralization, which I think is at the root of a lot of what I'm doing is to create access for all for mental and health, mental and emotional health support. And to create more access so that women feel empowered, and have a sense of financial independence, I believe. And I've experienced that when you don't feel like you have the resources you find you might find yourself stuck in situations that are unhealthy. But as long as you can feel empowered to earn to save, to invest, to take care of yourself now and in the future, to take care of those that you love, especially if you have small children, it really creates more of that sense of freedom. And I think that that's so important. And everything that we're doing, I think all of us want to feel free, we all want to feel free to be who we are, to not have to continually fall in line with expectations, or paradigms that don't fit us. And so I hope that in these interviews, you get to see different people living in ways where we're all trying to figure out our truth. We're all trying to find what works for us, what works for us now may not have worked for us back then. In the future, it may not work for us then either. So we're just in the moment figuring it out as best as we can. No matter how many people you see who you think look like they have it all together. Every time I've met someone and actually dropped into a deep conversation, I can tell you that we're all human, that even the people who seem like the most successful or they have whatever materialistic things, or even career successes, or whatever it is, whatever accolades and things where we look up to, or wish we also had that, at the core, we are all human dealing with human feelings and experiences in life. So I just encourage you to know that you are, where you're meant to be. If you feel like you're not where you're meant to be giving yourself the breathing room to figure it out, making the pivots that are needed to potentially leave unhealthy situations, to take care of your own health from a mind body spirit level, to get the support that you need, and not be afraid to ask for it. Because even if there are people who have hurt you, and maybe there were people that you thought you could rely upon who you can't, there are people who care, and there are resources available. And asking the questions, speaking up, using your voice is such a wonderful way to just get a bit closer to where you want to be a bit closer. And you know that in season one, I talked a bit about Abraham Hicks and how I remember, you know, when I was kind of diving deep into all the abraham hicks stuff, that we all believe that we will feel better in the having of the thing that seems outside of us. So we believe that we will feel better when our bank accounts have a certain number. When we publish that book, when we've gotten that promotion, when we've met the person when we have the family, all the things if we can start to figure out how to feel the way that we want to feel then now we not only help shortcut, the path to get there, but we've kind of circumvented it too because we believe that we will feel better better in the having of that thing over there. And so it's been a practice of mine to learn about contentment in this moment here and now knowing that I am one of those people who continually moves the goalpost. And one of the things that my friend Deb said to me is, you know, she's very deeply rooted in her religious faith. And she said, if this is all that God gives me now, am I going to be okay with it? Can I be grateful can I be thankful. And recently, my friend Marge was using my phone to work this American Airlines reservation, we're going to be taking the kids to Mexico for a surf trip, later this year, and she had been on hold, and I was trying to help her out by calling on my phone as well. So we were on the phone. And as she was using my phone, she's looking at it and an affirmation that I put up every night comes up, it was like nine o'clock at night. And she's like, What is this thing that says all as well with my soul? And I was like, Oh, my friend, Deb, actually told me that every night before she goes to bed, she checks in with herself. And she says, Do I feel like all as well with my soul? Do I truly believe that? And do I know that that my soul is well and good. And I really liked that understanding, because I found that in my yoga training and my spiritual practices, that the soul is always good, always, okay, our human experiences may be something different, but our soul, our core of who we are, is always good. And so being able to be able to say that and come to that point of contentment was really important for me. So I hope that if that resonated with you, you could take it, if it didn't resonate with you, you can let it on go. The next episode we will have is a mindfulness practice. So I look forward to getting your feedback. Email me again. Hello, folks. I mean, they support the show if you can, and you can also support it by spreading the word if you like, what you hear. Thank you and see you soon.
Want to support this podcast? You can do so in crypto. If you'd like to send your dollars aka fiat currency to me via the Cash App, which uses a super fast Lightning Network. I can convert it into Bitcoin. You can find me on the Cash App by typing in dollar sign Judy its way that's T S. UEI. But if you'd actually like to send me direct cryptocurrencies, email me at hello at Fox saving face.com And we can exchange crypto wallet addresses more ways you can support the podcast or by sharing this with your friends, family, anybody you think might enjoy this? And remember to go get your copy of a little book of Tibetan rites and rituals at Barnes and Noble, Amazon, audible or wherever you'd like to get your books. Make your story beautiful today.
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