The Coffee Chat (#53)
My conversation with Kevon Cheung - Founder @ Public Labs, Podcast host, published author and dad to 2 girls!
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Hi there 👋🏽
I am back from a longish vacation, the last 3 days of which was spent pretty much in an airplane! (mostly due to flight cancellations and delays, some of it due to very ambitious bookings on our part). Nothing forces one to be introspective and reflective like being stuck inside of a metal tube!
Last time around this happened I did something fun, this time around I used the time to do some reflection on how over the course of the last 6 months, I have been consciously working on reframing my definition of success.
Essentially I am coaching myself to move away from the external, tangible, outward facing definition of success to something which is more personal, inward and broader. I still do somewhat care about the outward markers but I have stopped judging myself or others on how many of these markers they have or when they hit them.
Life is all about trade offs and ultimately being at peace with yourself. A narrow external definition of success makes us forget that someone can be successful in one narrow dimension of their life but an utter failure in everything else.
In an achievement driven culture too often we are made to value people on the basis of a very myopic definition of success - I would encourage you to also expand on this. Success is not a title, a car, a house or a bank balance. It is a little bit of that but a lot more of being at peace with yourself and your choices.
☕ Now, on to today’s coffee chat…
Meet Kevon Cheung
Kevon is the creator behind Public Lab - a business he started in his quest to rethink how work and family fit into life. He considers his life to be an open book and thrives while building in public. For Kevon transparency is one of his core values.
And you will see a lot of that in our conversation below! Kevon was raw, candid and honest. I am also grateful that Kevon made the time to chat with me even though he is half way across the world in Hong Kong!
Below is my conversation with Kevon…
Please tell us a little bit about yourself and your family
To understand more about who I am we need to go back to my childhood. I am a very quiet person and ever since I was young I have been trying to find a place where I can create in the world. When I was a teenager, I would be super quiet in gathering and would never speak up and do most of the listening. So I think that was the reason why I was attracted to the internet in the first place.
I started building website when I was 12 and was also running forums on the internet. That was my escape - the internet gave me sandbox where I could play with things.
People around would play sports after school while I would go home, get on the internet, and meet people while staying in my safe space. I was having so much fun with it and once I discovered this world I knew this is what I wanted to do.
The other thing when someone asks who is Kevon I like telling them about my values - transparency, honesty, integrity. That is why this whole idea of build in public appeals to me even though I am a naturally shy and quiet person.
In terms of family, I have been with my wife since 2016 and we have two daughters - a 3 year old and an almost 1 year old. Things happen really fast when you meet the right person. We are very similar - like we did the MBTI tests and our types were exactly the same. And I know people say it can get boring if two individuals are exactly the same, but for us, it's actually good because our values in terms of all aspects of life - money, relationships, what gives us energy, how we operate are exactly the same and it keeps us in sync all the time.
Our values our aligned - we prioritize happiness, we don't like to be too competitive, we don’t need to send our kids to the best schools and we also prioritize doing things and being involved in the day to day. So in Hong Kong a lot of people will delegate raising a child to what we call helpers - there is this culture here that you need someone who works for the family because the parents need to work all the time. As a couple we have rejected that and we have created a life where we get to parent our own kids and dial back being in this 24*7 hustle culture.
Interesting and I am glad you found so much value from the MBTI. The MBTI is always fun to do. I always say it's like corporate horoscope because I know over the last few years there has been enough and more conversation to debunk it. But I still think it gives a language for people to be able to communicate with each other like I am an E, so this is just so energizing for me to be able to meet new people and have these conversations. It is so important to know what gives you energy and what doesn't because especially when you're a parent I think that more than time management what actually helps you succeed is to be able to manage your energy better.
That is so true and the way to manage your energy is to do things that give you joy..
But is that hard though? I grew up in Asia, I spent my early years in India and so I know that in Asia we are a very status prestige driven society where people are working really hard and long to the point that it is unhealthy but they view it as a certain badge of honor that I work X number of hours or my kid goes the best school in the city. While it is great that you and your wife have made a choice to step away the rat race, has that been harder to do when you are surrounded by people operating in a very different manner?
We definitely feel like an outlier, but I don't think it's hard to do - you basically do not need to care about what people see or say. For example recently we were walking down a very busy district and I was carrying the baby and here in Hong Kong it is very rare see a dad carrying a baby. In some circles it is also very rare to see a mom carrying a baby because they always have like a helper following them carrying the baby. But we don’t care and it does not bother us. This is who we are.
It can get hard if you are someone who always compares themselves to others. Just be yourself. If it works, it works and if it doesn't, it doesn't.
How did you adopt this mindset? I know you studied in North America, did that influence you or was it something else? How did you and your wife develop this perspective that this is how we want to raise our daughters?
Interesting question. It's very different between me and my wife. If I have to put bluntly and honestly I didn't actually get a lot of parenting, because my dad was working all the time and he passed away really early, probably because of overworking. My mom was not very educated and she became a widow and had to figure how to care for me and my two elder sister. Before my dad died she was a homemaker but soon she found herself in this difficult spot where she had to start making money to sustain this family. Given that, her attention was focused on helping us survive and less on parenting. So maybe in a way I wanted to do the opposite because I didn't get a lot of time from my parents when I was young. I want to give my girls a lot of time.
My wife’s childhood was the exact opposite. She was given a lot of time and attention as a child and she is very close to her mom now. My sense is she is doing this so that she and the girls also have a close relationship as that is important and valuable for her.
To be a more present parent you wanted flexibility, is that what pushed you towards entrepreneurship? Entrepreneurship can also be hard and demanding - how do you manage your business, your side projects and and family responsibilities effectively? All the things that you are doing demand both time and energy
So I have always had an entrepreneurial role, although I haven't always been the sole proprietor. For instance, with the kids coding school, I initially joined as a partner and eventually transitioned into the CEO role, essentially serving as the right-hand person to the founder. This experience enlightened me to the possibilities of running businesses. However, it wasn't until recent years, around 2019, that I took on the leadership mantle entirely.
There are definite advantages and drawbacks to this path. On the positive side, flexible hours allow me to spend ample time with my children. I can drop them off at school, pick them up, and even volunteer for events like their Christmas party. Yet, running a business, particularly in the knowledge sector, presents challenges. Consistent income can be elusive, requiring continual effort to create content, maintain relationships, develop new products, and manage existing ones. The financial aspect can be unpredictable, with revenue fluctuations tied to marketing efforts.
Navigating these complexities remains an ongoing process. Nevertheless, I appreciate the ability to work without interruptions, like I'm doing now in my quiet office. I have the flexibility to integrate work into my life and not the other way around, it is a privilege.
Sometimes it's not the hours of work, but it's what you're working on that if you are not enjoying what you're doing, then it's so much harder. It becomes so much harder to push yourself on a Monday to get up and go and put in those hours. In your case, I suspect that even though it's a lot of hard work, and there's a lot of stress atleast you enjoy what you do and are having fun doing it
Oh so much fun that if you give me $100 million, I would still be doing this. I just enjoy it very much. I think I'm a person who kind just knows myself really well and I have done a good job of sticking to my own defined path really well!
What a great thing to teach your children - how to be your own person, how to listen to yourself and not get influenced by what society expects us to always do…
Yeah, takes years to learn that exactly. Hopefully they see us live this life and pick this up on the way
So you are the build in public guy and I was thinking about it that one of the ultimate building in public actually is raising children?
I get where you are going but I will push back and say that it should not always be building in public because if you are constantly sharing how they are doing and what they are doing then I think you do them some disservice. So my first attempt to create content was in 2018 when I wasn't married, but I was dating my wife, and my first YouTube channel was about parenting, raising kids. We didn't have kids but to make a video, I had to borrow kids. So after six videos I gave up - it was too hard. It took me 40 hours to make one videos. I thought about putting the family life in public, but then I decided against it. I don't want that to be in the way of how we live our live as a family. To be a family of influencers change a lot of dynamics. So yeah, you will see me posting on Instagram photos, but yeah, I wouldn't be filming them all the time
Oh 100% I try my best not to judge but I find it odd when people turn their kids into these public influencers and broadcast their family life all the time. But wait you wanted to make content around parenting before being a parent? What made you want to do that?
I didn't approach it strategically. My primary motivation was to encourage greater involvement of men in family matters. In our culture, men often take a passive role, merely observing from the sidelines. We've heard stories from friends where a father's attempts to help are met with criticism from the mother, leading to discouragement and disengagement. This perpetuates the stereotype of men as solely breadwinners or playmates for the kids, rather than active participants in household responsibilities. Coming from an education background in the US, where family roles are more balanced, I felt compelled to challenge this mindset. However, I lacked a clear strategy and struggled to reach my target audience beyond sharing videos with friends and family, which proved ineffective. So I just stopped doing it.
So now that you have been a dad for over 3 years, did you learn anything about yourself and how you operate? Looks like compared to the men around you, you are more involved
As the youngest in my family with two elder sisters, I grew up feeling like the favored one, often receiving the best treatment. This might have fostered some selfish tendencies in me. However, becoming a father has completely shifted my perspective. Now, everything revolves around my daughters; their needs come first, and my own desires take a back seat. Even before our first child was born, I recognized my shortcomings, particularly my fear of water. I worried that this fear would limit our family's activities involving water. So, before we even started our family, I sought swimming lessons to overcome this fear. Everything I do now, whether it's learning new skills or pursuing hobbies, is with my daughters in mind. They are the center of my world.
I love this notion of shrinking of the self as well as your approach to actively addressing your weaknesses to ensure they don't impact your children is truly commendable. It's inspiring to see how intentional you've been in acquiring new skills to become a better adult and parent. Instead of fearing parenthood as the end of personal growth, you've embraced it as an opportunity to continually improve yourself. I love that.
I have this parenting notebook. Basically the thinking behind creating it was that while running start ups teams I always had culture and values written out and defined. That got me thinking, why don't we have one for our family! This is a living document because you cannot cannot just sit down one night and write it down. I have been refining it for 3 years and it is helping us define what this family is about. I would encourage you and all your readers to also start this for their respective families!
🤓 Open tabs…
(I have modeled this section after those “open tabs” that we all have with a few (okay 30-40) interesting links that we promise we will eventually get to one day. These are the links that I had open for sometime that I finally got to …)
⭐The nuclear family was a mistake
We’ve made life freer for individuals and more unstable for families. We’ve made life better for adults but worse for children. We’ve moved from big, interconnected, and extended families, which helped protect the most vulnerable people in society from the shocks of life, to smaller, detached nuclear families (a married couple and their children), which give the most privileged people in society room to maximize their talents and expand their options.
⭐Toys will be toys
It’s become fashionable to reject colourful plastic playthings and embrace minimalism, but there are joys to welcoming a little brightness into our homes
⭐China wants more babies. Many women are saying no (🎧)
The Chinese government is concerned about the country's birth rate. The population in China is now approximately 1.4 billion and could drop to roughly half a billion by 2100. Beijing is demanding that women have more children, but many Chinese women are saying no.
📖 My private thoughts from my very public diary…
(Sometimes on X (Twitter), sometimes on Threads)
I would love to hear from you, feedback is always welcome!
And if you happen to know an inspiring working parent who should be featured in a future edition (or if you yourself are one) - please do get in touch
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Disclaimer: All views expressed are my own and do not necessarily reflect the views of my employer