On this podcast, we've always interviewed creators in Asia. 

I made an exception for this episode because I wanted to speak to Chris Jones. Chris is a journalist and screenwriter who is best known for his work at Esquire Magazine, where two of his stories won the National Magazine Award, the highest accolade for magazine writing in the US.

I'm a long-time reader of Chris's work and also enjoy his hilarious Twitter feed @enswelljones. So when his book publicist reached out -- out of the blue, which is a first for Foolish Careers -- and asked if I wanted to check out the book and interview Chris, I wasn't going to say no. 

The book is called The Eye Test, where Chris makes the case for the value of human creativity in an age of algorithms: https://www.twelvebooks.com/titles/chris-jones/the-eye-test/9781538730683/

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Temujin is a limited-series audio drama about the life of Genghis Khan. It has a fan base in the audio drama world and was a finalist at this year's Webby Awards in the Podcasts - Scripted Fiction category, where it competed against The Daily Show with Trevor Noah and entries from HBO, the BBC, and Wondery.

Spoiler alert: Temujin lost to Trevor Noah. But it was comfortably in second place with 34% of the 2 million votes cast. (The Daily Show with Trevor Noah got 40% of the votes. Third place got 10%.)

It has opened doors for the show’s producers. Writer and director Roshan Singh was brought on as a writer on the animated adaptation of the beloved graphic novel The Art of Charlie Chan. He and fellow Temujin producer Isabel Perucho have set up Andas Productions to create narrative stories for audio and video games. 

But back in university (they graduated from Yale-NUS three years ago, although it feels like a lifetime in the past), Temujin was a capstone project Roshan worked on with his classmates.

Most thesis projects simply get printed and sent to the archives. He wanted to put it out into the world, despite little encouragement from mentors. 

“One thing a mentor of mine said was that Temujin was just a silly little side project I was doing with my friends and that I would have to grow up soon and figure out what my actual career is going to look like.”

He first pursued it as a play, but there was no interest. So Roshan considered audio. “The beauty of audio is if you have the resources, nobody can tell you not to do it.” With Isabel running marketing, they raised $10,000 on Kickstarter to fund the production. “We decided to push ahead because we had this faith that if it meant something to us, then it'll mean something to someone else.”

In this interview, Roshan and Isabel reflect on the experience of finding a listener base for Temujin and how they're navigating the industry as young producers. 

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Paniti and Nuttaya Junhasavasdikul had stars in their eyes. They had just spent two weeks in Hawaii with Nat Bletter, a pioneer in the bean-to-bar chocolate movement, and at the Fine Cacao and Chocolate Institute in San Francisco with chocolate scholar Dr Carla Martin. From Dr Bletter they learned how to produce and package bean-to-bar chocolate, and from Dr Martin how to grade cacao, the better to evaluate the beans they were buying directly from farmers. 

Their idea of having one’s own brand of chocolate…seemed…possible. 

They had already planted 400 cacao seedlings on a plot of land in Mae Tang, in Chiang Mai province. Which they found while on a motorbike trip around Thailand. Which they had done to slow their lives down after two decades working as lawyers clocking billable hours. 

“Those hours, we only spend them and we don't get anything back,” Paniti says. “Lawyers have a good life. We get paid well, we reward ourselves with cars and watches. But finally, we felt that this wasn’t for us. So we tried to enrich ourselves with more experiences than objects.” 

The plan was to build a retirement farmhouse, eventually. But in Thailand, unused land is taxed heavily, so a farmer suggested they plant cacao. “We can grow cacao in Thailand!” Nuttaya thought. “This is interesting.”

Following their curiosity, they crisscrossed the country on their own cacao learning tour, then Nuttaya taught herself how to make chocolate using YouTube. The texture of these early batches wasn’t great, but they discovered that cacao from different provinces presented unique flavor profiles. 

Cacao from Chumphon, on the Gulf of Thailand’s western coast, has “notes of ripe grapes and red berries.” Just 200 kilometers north, Prachuap Khiri Khan, which grows pineapples and coconuts, is “bright and citrusy, with a smooth floral aftertaste.” Beans from Chantaburi, in the east, hint of “passion fruit, mango, and a honey-lemon creamy body.” 

“And that was it, the idea ran wild,” Paniti laughs. 

Kad Kokoa, their brand, celebrates Thai culture through chocolate. Now three years old, Nuttaya and Paniti have self-funded it to where it is today: a retail space, a cafe, a lab, a talented team, relationships with farmers, awards, the support of top chefs, an outpost in Tokyo, and a growing base of regular customers. 

Paniti used to think this was the time to scale. They met with many investors and almost closed some deals. The typical response was: “We like your brand very much, but you need to move a needle. If one day you make half a billion [baht], talk to us then.” On reflection, this type of investment was not for them. “We cannot take money then suddenly we are running like a rat trying to deliver investor returns from chocolate.” 

So until they find their “investor soulmate,” as Nuttaya describes it, someone who has patient capital and is investing for impact, they’ll continue to bootstrap. 

In this interview, Nuttaya and Paniti share what they’ve learned about patiently building a product, brand, and creative life from scratch.

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