Welcome to Foolish Careers

For those of us who ignored the advice to get a sensible career

Have you ever been told to get a more sensible career?

If so, Foolish Careers is for you. It’s an interview series featuring writers, artists, and creative entrepreneurs who ignored this advice to pursue a creative career instead.

You might be thinking…

Oh no, yet more generic career advice to “follow my bliss” 🙄

I’m tired of those tepid listicles too. Those fluff pieces that tell us to “follow our heart” and “find our passion” but don’t explain how to start, how to build, how to make money or pay the bills.

Foolish Careers is a response to all that. We unearth specific, actionable tactics from creative professionals who are figuring out how to build successful careers in Asia, so the rest of us can apply them to our own endeavors.

If we call ourselves a creator, maker, or artist, we are also entrepreneurs. We need to be as creative in how we run our career and business, as we are with developing our craft.

What you can expect

Every week, we publish one article with actionable takeaways alongside an audio interview where our trusty creator tells their story in their own words.

Here are some of the stories:

Budjette Tan, co-creator of the graphic novel Trese and advertising executive: Collaboration, selling to Netflix, and tactics for finding creative pockets of time

Kristine Fonacier, Esquire’s first female editor-in-chief: How swapping rock-and-roll journalism for volunteer work led to a more substantive writing career

Rachel Elman O’Shea, chef and co-founder of Laos Buffalo Dairy: What building from scratch really looks like, and what it will take to keep going post-COVID

Shaz Hassan, independent filmmaker and book author: The importance of being part of a scene

Simply subscribe to the newsletter to get the latest interview, free. As a subscriber, you also get to meet other “fools” on the same road of building a unique, singular, and fulfilling foolish career.