Happy Lunar New Year! (yes it still counts)

Hi, welcome to another issue of On My Own Terms newsletter. Happy 2025 - and happy lunar new year. I have been procrastinating on this issue - and sharing my 2024 reflections.

Big hello to our new subscribers benedict, shuyi and john lee coco!

Best,

John Lim

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My 2024 Reflections - What doesn’t kill me makes me stronger

Instead of setting new year resolutions, I embrace reflecting upon the past year. On the very last day of 2024, I ‘forced’ myself to pen down some thoughts:

I can’t wait for 2024 to be over. Just when I thought things can’t get worse than 2023, 2024 proved to be a worse, if not one of the worst years for me. Long story short: the AI startup I joined at start of 2024 didn’t work out, I was without a pay check for 5 months - and it was my third time hunting for a full-time role in 12 months. 2024 is also the year I think I came closest to anxiety / depression.

On this very last day of the year, I’m penning down some of the best and worst memories. As a reflection - and down the road - a reminder to myself the things I have experienced and overcome.

(Some of the) Worst memories:

Job hunting and interviews: the job market in 2024 has not been the best, especially for tech sector. Two incidences stood out:

• Changi Airport Group (CAG):

  • Interviewer (hiring manager) was late for > 1 hour for the scheduled online interview. Someone in her HR team had to whatsapp me to push back the timing twice cos her current interview/call over ran.

  • In the interview, hiring manager made a comment about candidates from marketplaces (i.e. Lazada) “usually don’t do well at CAG - cos we don’t burn money here”.

👉👉👉 I have a favour to ask - if you have enjoyed this, would you kindly forward this to three of your friends/family/colleagues please? This helps me know which of the newsletter content works so that I can better serve you. Simply click “forward” on your email browser / app - it would mean a great deal to me 🙏

One Recent Video I Enjoyed

If you grew up in Singapore and you’re a film buff like I am, I hope you like this video as much as I did:

About John Lim:

John has had an unconventional career by Singapore / Asian standards - with several career switches. He started his career in banking before co-founding a laser tag events company. After building the business from ground-up, growing the team to 20+ and running Singapore's largest indoor laser tag center, he joined an early-stage tech startup to lead business development across Southeast Asia. In 2019, he took a leap of faith to join the e-commerce industry, seemingly unknown sector, until a few months later when Covid-19 pandemic brought the world to its knees.

While John finds himself lucky to have 'survived' the career switches relatively unscathed, he has never forgotten how it feels like to be at the crossroads of your career and life. Now, he has started On My Own Terms Podcast - to provide the resources and perspectives he wished he had - and to help you make the most of your career to live your best life. Join him as he speaks with unconventional career changers and risk-takers, taps into their experiences and perspectives and discusses all things career. Together, they will provide you nuggets of wisdom, inspiration and actionable insights to start living life on your own terms.

Top Episodes on On My Own Terms Podcast:

1. Leaving $500K High Life Career and Co-founding CRM Platform Advocado with Joval Gan 

2. Moving From Finance to Fashion, Test Driving Your Next Dream Job and Investing in Yourself with Career Change Coach Jennifer Ong

3. Finding The Right Business Partner, Co-founding Tech Startup with No Technical Background and Advice on Joining Startups with Matthew Low

DISCLAIMER: Opinions expressed in newsletter and podcast are solely my own and do not represent the opinions of past, current or future organizations that I was, am and will be part of.