Welcome to invest in yourself, the digital entrepreneur podcast. Join the podcast mogul Phil Better as he interviews successful entrepreneurs that make their living in the digital world. Now let's join your host, Phil Better, as your special guest today on invest in yourself, the digital entrepreneur podcast.

Welcome back to another riveting episode of Invest in Yourself, the digital entrepreneur podcast. I am, of course, your host with the most feel better. And today, I am very, very, very excited about our guests because they are transforming the landscape of management and leadership in this digital age. They are not only the visionary cofounder and CEO of Onloop. Since 2021, he has been at the helm of Onloop, a gen generated AI company with a mission to convert every manager in the world into a great manager. Through their innovative collaborative team development, CTD, approach and platform, Enlope is revolutionizing how the world's top creative agencies and technology companies approach management and leadership, which we all know is very important. He's on a journey to organizational effectiveness beginning with the significant roles at Uber. And throughout his MBA at Stanford.

His passion for driving business outcomes through effective management is evident in the success and impact of On Loop. A proud naturalized Singaporean and an MSMAU scholar, Our guest has has been recognized as the World Economic Forum Technology Pioneer in 2022. So that's huge. So let's get ready to learn about the change that he's bringing into the management and leadership world. Please welcome our guest, JJ. JJ, thank you so much

for being here. Thank you, Phil. Thank you for having me here.

Okay. I'm gonna just jump right into it. What made you decide to become an entrepreneur? What what made you just decide, hey. I'm gonna go into the crazy world and the ever stable world of entrepreneurship?

Well, you know, I I I call myself an accidental entrepreneur. Mhmm. I I don't think growing up, anything in my childhood sort of suggests entrepreneurship. And I grew up in a salaried household, and as I was I was taught that going getting a job and and being a salaried professional is the way you build a career. I I think the wheels first started turning when I decided to leave management consulting at Accenture and go to Stanford Business School. And the Stanford MBA program is a little bit unique, whereby the focus is a lot on you as a person, and why people should follow you, which becomes obviously very important in in in any sort of entrepreneurial venture because you typically have to hire a team. You probably have to inspire customers to buy a product. You have to sort of inspire people to invest in you.

And so so you end up building a movement in some shape or form. And and when you think about digital entrepreneurship today, it is largely a movement. Right? So so, obviously, the clear economy and and sort of people getting followership, becomes becomes a big part of it. But I didn't actually feel financially comfortable to do it, until I left my job at Uber, after we IPO'd. And, you know, my my net worth was in the 6 digits, which led me sort of say, okay. I give a fork to not have a job, for a year, a year and a half, and sort of give this a shot. And so, what sort of eventually led me taking the plunge is is really believing in what we do, and and really believing that sort of helping knowledge workers achieve their full potential at work, is is probably one of the most meaningful things that people can do given that so much of our awake time is spent at work. And and I'd felt throughout my career that the approaches that I witnessed in how teams were managed, the cloud teams were assessed in double up, were just frankly subpar.

And and I felt that we couldn't do it better, and sort of rethink how organizations, are managed, which is what we focus on, at Onloop.

So was was Onloop did did the the the idea for Onloop, did that come from having bad managers in your career as a salaried employee and you're like, I have to change this? After, obviously, after you went to Stanford Business School, you probably have said, oh, this is how managers have to be, you know, like, this they're supposed to inspire, not, you know, create fear. Was that was Onloop, the idea or the the the the Yeah. So so so not