Welcome to On My Own Terms Newsletter

Welcome to On My Own Terms Newsletter

Thank you for making history together with me - for this is the first ever edition of On My Own Terms Newsletter. The mission of this newsletter, alongside On My Own Terms Podcast, is to help you make the most of your career to live your best life. Via this newsletter, we share with you bonus content from the podcast episodes and resources on career switch and growth.

A Little About Me: I'm a husband, father and a curious business and tech enthusiast. I have had an unconventional career by Singapore / Asian standards - with several career switches. I started my 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, I joined an early-stage tech startup to lead business development across Southeast Asia. In 2019, I 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 I consider myself lucky to have 'survived' the career switches relatively unscathed, I have never forgotten how it feels like to be at the crossroads of one's career and life. In 2021, I started On My Own Terms Podcast - to provide the resources and perspectives I wished I had - to help you make the most of your career to live your best life.

This newsletter is an extension of that mission.

I sincerely hope you'd find the newsletter useful, inspiring and maybe entertaining 😛. As always, I'd love to hear from you - feedback, suggestions or simply just say hi. Simply click reply ✍️ - and I'll read and reply to each of your emails. Till then!

Best,John Lim(More of me here)

Latest from Podcast - Ep 12: My Career Journey So Far - 3 Transition Chapters (the last one was painful 😔 )

In this solo episode, I shared the behind-the-scenes of my career journey thus far - with the focus on the 3 career transition chapters:

1. From banking 🏦 to laser tag 🔫

2. From employer to startup employee

3. From untimely departure to ecommerce industry in Covid19

Besides letting you better understand my motivations starting this podcast & newsletter, I also wanted to provide more background and context to some of the questions and topics I discuss with the podcast guests.

Listen👂on Spotify, Apple Podcasts or Google PodcastsRead 📖 more here👀 Watch on YouTube (episode to be published soon)

If you're new to the podcast, here are the top 3 most popular episodes:- Ep 5: [Full Conversation] Joval Gan on why he left his $500K high life career - Ep 2: Matthew Low on stumbling into entrepreneurship - Ep 3: Best Jittida Haputpong on why you should not rush to find a job straight out of university

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Are You Learning or Earning In Your Career? If Not......Time to Consider Quitting

I receive numerous versions of this question all the time - "Shall I stay at my current job or look elsewhere?". And I have come across many answers addressing this topic. I particularly like this one: Learn, Earn or Quit by Garry Tan, as explained by him in the video below. I personally find it simple to understand and easy to quantify.

A lot of other answers to "Do I stay or quit my current job?" out there mention the need for passion, which I find, can mean different things to different people. I also find Passion and Career do not necessarily have a straight forward relationship. I will explore this more in future editions of the newsletter / podcast.

💰💰💰 Are You Earning Enough?

So, maybe you are not learning at your current job, or not learning as much as you'd like to. Are you earning? How are you earning relative to your peers with same amount of work experience, job title and within and across industries? Welcome to the salary guides: 1. The Straits Times Salary Guide 2022:

2. Seedly Salary Guide Singapore Across Industries (2022):

TL;DR (Too Long; Didn't Read): I found the Straits Times Salary guide a little more comprehensive - it seems like there are more jobs data available in the database - so you're more likely to find your role and industry. That's at least from my experience. Let me know your thoughts!These salary guides are also helpful reference points when you are looking to negotiate for more pay during appraisal or performance review with your current employer - with your potential future one 😉

Random (Cool) Things

Did you know modern boys and men are struggling? In the video below, Richard Reeves, author of Of Boys and Men, reveals that in recent decades, American men have been faring increasingly worse in many areas of life, including education, workforce participation, skill acquisition, wages and fatherhood. As father of a 3-year-old boy, the video definitely made me sit up and wonder what it means to raise a boy 👦 in modern times.

Ok ending the newsletter on a more chirpy note going into the work week....Heard of MrBeast, the famous YouTuber who has 128M subscribers (at time of writing this)? He has reportedly $100M net worth and is only 24 years old. I hear of him all the time, but I'm a little embarrassed to admit that I've only watched a first of his videos - just this week. The video is below - and if you watch this one - I bet you'll watch another of his. Go ahead, hit reply and tell me i'm wrong.

Thanks for reading! If you enjoyed this, feel free to subscribe and get my next letter in your inbox.

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.