Serena Lam: Vietnam Refugee Inspiration, IBM to SaaS Founder & Sales Automation Consequences - E471

Serena Lam, CEO & Cofounder of Fuzzy Sequence, and Jeremy Au discussed:

1. IBM to SaaS Founder: Serena described her seven-year tenure at IBM, where she tackled diverse strategic roles across the U.S., China, and India. This experience provided her with a robust foundation in technology and business strategy, crucial for her later ventures. She emphasized the comfort and security of a well-structured corporate environment, noting how it fostered her ability to save and enjoy a reliable income, which contrasted with the uncertainties of startup life.

2. Sales Automation Consequences: She elaborated on the creation of Fuzzy Sequence, a sales AI platform that integrates multiple tools to optimize sales processes. She highlighted how her own frustrations with booking meetings and enhancing sales productivity led her to develop a solution that now facilitates these tasks for other sales professionals. The platform automates and personalizes client interactions, which optimizes sales strategies and enhances meeting bookings. She discussed the complexities of scaling startups from small teams to larger operations and elaborated on the need for adaptive leadership as startups grow

3. Vietnam Refugee Inspiration: Reflecting on her family's history, Serena recounted her grandparents' and parents' escapes from China and Vietnam. These experiences of survival and new beginnings in the face of adversity instilled in her the values of courage and resilience. These personal stories are also a continuous source of inspiration, driving her perseverance in the face of business challenges.

Jeremy and Serena also explored the implications of AI in sales, the necessity of authenticity in customer relations, and the integration of technology in traditional business environments.

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(01:39) Jeremy Au:

Hello.

(01:40) Serena Lam:

Hello. How are you?

(01:42) Jeremy Au:

Good, it's good to see you again. And I'm excited to have you share a little bit about yourself. Serena, could you tell us about yourself?

(01:48) Serena Lam:

Yeah. Hi, I'm Serena, founder of Fuzzy Sequence. I'm building a sales AI platform that helps 10X your sales growth. A bit about me, I started off my career at IBM when I was 19 years old, did an internship and actually spent about seven years there. It was very lucky, was able to travel and work on all these different types of projects. The good thing about IBM is that it's such a large business. So I was able to go to the U S., China, India and probably had about 10 different roles. And then after that, it was very lucky. One of my clients offered me a role and moved to help lead their strategy and transformation team.

And then, itch took a gap and my bosses encouraged me to start my own business. Tried to start my own business, didn't do so well and realized that I was good at the one to a hundred. So I'm very good at scaling, but I'm very bad at the zero to one. So I spent the last three years at zero to one businesses.

(02:40) Serena Lam:

I was at a 10-person startup, a 50 person startup, and most recently a 200-person startup. And then, last year, I felt, you know, what, I feel like I can do it now. And last year, I quit that and now, I'm building Fuzzy Sequence.

(02:52) Jeremy Au:

So Serena, could you share about what you were like as a

(02:56) Serena Lam:

Ooh, what I was like as a student, I think I was actually pretty hard working. But actually no, I'll take the two extremes. I know that I can learn things quickly, so I'd leave these to the last minute, but I can learn things really quickly. So then I'll get high results. So I think I'm the two extremes where if I really like something, I'd put a lot of effort in and I'd work really hard and I'd do really well, but then things that I really don't like, I wouldn't spend time on it. As a student in Australia, my parents were tiger parents, so I had tuition every day. I did sports every day. I also did musical instruments. Did tennis, did swimming, my parents made me wake up in the morning to do squad and then played netball, did dance. Actually, round of fact, I was also, I used to, was part of the National Cheerleading Association as well. In high school, I also loved co curricular so, was vice captain of the school back in high school as well yeah. I did a bit of everything. I've always like really liked doing things and making the most of every opportunity and just dabbling into a lot of things. And I think that's part of actually why I like being a founder because you have the opportunity to do everything.

In uni, similar was a lot of, did a lot of co curricular, loved meeting a lot of people. And in uni, I did Commerce and I did Business Information Systems. So, IT and Commerce, majoring in finance. It's so funny. When I was, I was in a school that was quite academic. My friends did med. They did legal. They did all the true traditional Asian. subjects that you had to do. And I remember I wanted to do that as well. So all my friends went to Melbourne uni and I wanted to go to Melbourne uni. My mom actually made me do IT. And I didn't want to do IT. I remember that night I got my grades and I'm like, I don't want to do IT. It's for nerds. And mom was like, IT is the future. Trust me. And this was, yeah, 12, 13 years ago. And you know what? It's the, it's been the best thing I've ever done actually. So grateful to my mom who made me do IT, who made me learn Chinese. And now it's like opened a bunch of doors for me.

(04:36) Jeremy Au:

Incredible. And, there you were, and then, you started out for your first jobs. Could you share a little bit about that early career history?

(04:44) Serena Lam:

Yeah. So I started, I probably had my first job when I was 19. I was an intern at IBM and I was doing SQL databases. So pretty much dealing with large data and being able, and in the procurement department, I was working on one of Australia's largest telecoms provider, where we're essentially helping them save costs and automate all of the processes. It was a pretty cool job because I also met a lot of friends and weirdly enough, a lot of my friends that were interns are now like senior leaders at all these other tech companies. I remember it was that job that made me realise I wanted to do something more. I knew I wanted to do something big and I initially it was CEO, but I realized I had to listen to this person and this person, I always felt like I could do something better and always felt like I had a better idea. I might not have, by the way, it could have been just ignorance, but at the time I felt like I could do something better. And I watched this movie when I was 19. And I get asked like, what made you want to be a founder? And this is probably going to be really silly, but I watched Social Network, and there was a scene. Was that the, was that, does that made you like want to be a founder?

(05:38) Jeremy Au:

One of those. We keep going. Good story.

(05:41) Serena Lam:

It was the scene where Dustin and Mark got in trouble. So I don't actually remember the whole movie, but I remember there was a scene where they were in the Dean's office and they got in trouble. And I remember that I might be paraphrasing this, but this has stuck in my head for the last few years, 10, 15 years. The Dean said, look at every other company and every other university, they produce great CEOs. At Harvard, we produce great people who build companies to hire CEOs. And I was like, like that phrase. I was like, Oh my God, I'm doing all these things where I can just hire a CEO. And I think it was literally that phrase that made me want to be a founder.

So 12 years ago was like my first founder experience while I was working at IBM, I actually built my own business as well. Didn't do very well, but got my first funding. It was like 20,000 for a university to fund the first experience. But it was that moment that made me want to be a founder. And I crafted my career off the back of that. Like every time I felt like I didn't have skills, I would look for a job that would get me that experience to learn that particular skill. And I used my career to sort of build those experiences along the way. Cause there was so much that I just did not know reflecting back and that was like a good springboard. But yes, it was The Social Network that made me like really change how I wanted to build my career. And I'm so lucky I watched it at 19 because I think if I watched it a lot later, I'd be on this journey a lot later as well.

(06:55) Jeremy Au:

Oh, wow. What a story. There you are building, you're at IBM. So what was your mind state at that point in time because eventually moved into technology?

(07:03) Serena Lam:

Yeah. So I think I always knew I wanted to be a founder. So I think everyone who knew me, even at IBM always had, I think one of my bosses, my old bosses, he brought me over because he knew I was in the startup space. Nine to five, you'd have your normal job. And then from five to 10, I would always like build something on the side. They say that a good founder has had 10 fails, I probably had something like that before. 10 projects that didn't work to get you to the thing that works now. And it was always off the side of my desk. The mindset for me during IBM was what can I learn for me being an entrepreneur in the future better. So whether it be coding, whether it be learning analytics, whether it be learning how to understand numbers, learning strategy. It was that, but then also when you're younger, it's also what experiences can I get? Where can I travel to? Where can I meet really cool people? And so it was like with that in mind, I approached my career.

How can I get on client side? How can I, understand all the different problems there and I was chasing way to find an idea, which is actually quite hard and probably the wrong approach. My first startup was a dating startup. So at the time there was, there was those Tinder or there was Match.Com. And it's funny now, cause now I've met thing in real life at some of the events in Singapore. But at the time you would either have Tinder, which is a swiping motion, or you'd have match. com, which you'd have to fill out this huge form to even meet one person. And there was nothing in between. So what we tried to do was optimize the experience to meet people. There's a lot of variation in the place where for example, if you're successful, it actually means you lose a customer. So LTV is actually quite low.

If you optimize on certain things, you actually lose out on the experience. So one of the other things is I'm also not a very romantic person, so probably wasn't the best space for me as well. So it made me really dig deep into, okay, if I were to build something, I should do something that I'm relatively good at and what I love. And it's been, I think I've been on quite a journey to figure out what I like and not like more, which is part of why I'm doing Fuzzy Sequence at the moment. But yeah that's a different conversation that we can get into.

(08:50) Jeremy Au:

Well, that definitely is very similar to Social Network then because you literally made another dating site. Mark Zuckerberg.

(08:58) Serena Lam:

Pretty much.

(08:58) Jeremy Au:

And so, there you are, and then you've joined a few startups. So how did make the decision to work at those e those startups?

(09:03) Serena Lam:

Yeah, I think I looked at what I wasn't good at and what I needed to learn to be honest. It was very introspective in that sense. I knew that I wanted to lead some product teams. I knew that I also wasn't very good at marketing. I'm a tech person by trade. I'm a strategy person by trade. And the startups that I joined all were incredible at getting their name out there, branding, marketing. The last startup I was part of, they raised 89 million for their Series A so absolutely incredible. And seeing the team and how they even do the brand voice, how they get in front of customers. And so, with those, even the three companies, like I was very intentional with how you do marketing and how you learn about marketing. And one of the things that I learned from one of the founders of the first startups is, and I think the perception of marketing is always, you have to be creative. You have to do something bold and something new. And I always thought that, and I always thought, Oh, I'm just not very good at that, but actually that was the wrong mindset. One of the founders she actually mentioned, she was like, Oh what can you say that's trending and how can you make it 10 times better? And actually a lot of it is it's it saves jobs, quote, where good artists copy and great artists steal, and what can you steal, but make it even better than the actual thing is. And so I've just taken that, like, I've looked at, what people I like and respect do, and I just think of how I can make it better and replicate it.

And I've really thought about it. The last six months, especially, I mean, we're still in beta mode. Our product's still out there, but it seems like when I go to events, people will know who I am. They know our brand, which is actually quite heartwarming. And I think that was a big lesson learned like doing marketing really well is something that I've actually thought about a lot. And then the other side is doing product really well. How do you scale from a 10 person to 50 person to a hundred person? And each time, the skill sets required a different, even to the point that engineers are different. I've realized you can't hire people who've been at large corporates at small startups and the small startups, you need the engineers who are good for smaller startups. There's a particular skillset for scaling as well. And you actually need different types of people at every different stage or get them to grow at every single stage because otherwise it's actually quite tricky to scale with the business as well. So that was a very interesting insight for me.

So zero to one, zero to 10 is all about how do you build things quickly? If a customer complains in the middle of the night or the customer wants something, how do you build it within the next week to keep the customer happy? And you have to have really quick iteration cycles. One of the things that I did realize was if you don't have the right coordination, incidents happen, things occur, and there's a long flow and integration that needs to happen between each of the teams to make this thing happen. And so, the mindset and the culture and even the workflows for a 10 person, 50 person, and there's a hundred person and 200 is actually very different along the way. You need to reinvent the processes and the workflows from a 10 person to a 50 person to a hundred person.

And then on the contrary, if you're at a 10 person startup and you're trying to implement 200 person processes, you're over planning overdoing it. Like you don't need everyone to know you need to get the thing done and you need to get to your customer quickly. And so the mindset and how you're growing the team and how they think about communication and change management is so important throughout the process.

(11:51) Serena Lam:

Otherwise. What happens is when you're at the 200 person startup with lack of communication is either one, you get duplication of work where people are working on the same thing. And I've seen it happen so many times and they don't even talk to each other about it. And then you push it and you have like these two same features on two different product teams. So the processes and workflows are actually so different along each step and being able to build each time and reinvent each time is so important as well.

(12:12) Jeremy Au:

You know, you said that you enjoyed corporate in the past. Could you share more about why you had enjoyed corporate as well?

(12:17) Serena Lam:

Yeah, I think with corporate, I really liked it because you have so much opportunity. And I think a lot of people like corporate because, to some extent, budget's unlimited. You have such a large team. Why I loved IBM and ANZ is you can tap on anyone you want on the day. As a startup, if you don't know something, you have to build a relationship, find mentors, bring people together. When you're at a large company, there's always an SME that knows something that you don't know. And, even with IBM, there's like 20, 000 people that you can ping in from America or US or wherever. And so you want to learn about topic A, you talk to your boss and your boss will introduce you to someone or, reach out to their network to to introduce you to someone.

And so I think the learning and being able to tap into networks happens a lot more quickly. It's not saying that you can't do it within startups, but it's a lot harder, especially when you're resource constrained as well. But how I've replicated in startup was being able to make the right friends to teach me the right things. But in a corporate, it's like part of your job to give back to the community. I think that's part one. So, learning.

The second part is, at ANZ, I was very cushy, right? You have a 200 plus K job, you get paid well, everyone around is actually super lovely as well, and everyone wants to help. I loved corporate as well because there was a lot of structure. You know what you're going to do you know what the roadmap looks like, but also everyone's very cohesive and I also had the best team. So I think contrary to why people want to start a lot of startups, generally, people hate corporates. I on the opposite end, love corporates. And I think that's one of the reasons why I'm with Fuzzy, like I've decided to target corporates cause I really liked that space and I really liked the people there. So yeah, a bit different for me actually.

(13:44) Jeremy Au:

Yeah. Could you share about what you're building with Fuzzy Sequence and how it works with corporates?

(13:48) Serena Lam:

Yeah, definitely. How I started Fuzzy Sequence was I was actually building a different software at the time. I'm building a completely different startup. And one of the things that we were asked, like, so with our investors there's two metrics. One is obviously MRR. The second metric in lieu of MRR is how many meetings can you get booked? And so MRR is very dependent on. How forms your product, how many, how far you can get the product to be to sell the product. But the second one with meetings, I had control over that. And I remember talking to one of the managing partners and he's like, okay, guys, you need to get as many meetings booked per week. And you need to increase the meetings booked per week.. And so I thought about, okay, how do I do this? And I looked online, looked at all the different softwares, but they're all point solutions. And they're all doing slightly different things, but the outcome that I wanted was meetings generated.

And when I looked at all these different tools, I was thinking, there's a lot of redundancies of different points of products that you don't need, but there's little bits here and there that really optimize the process. And so, week after week, I started getting more meetings booked than anyone else. And it's because I use these seven different tools and I remember like, one of our partners said to me, Serena, like, how are you getting all these meetings booked? And I'm like, I don't know. And then a lot of my batch mates are like asking me, how do you, how do I get done? I started teaching a lot of people. And then one day I was like, What if I just make, because as a founder, you don't make a lot of money. I thought, what if I just want to do this as a service on the side? And one of my mentors like said, Oh, this could be a good way for you to make money. And I'm like, is this why I did this? Like, am I trying to build a services business or am I trying to build a product business. And, my dream is, the lofty dream of audience, a hundred million revenue. And I'm like, I'm not going to be able to do that with the services business. What if I would have built a product? And that day I took what I thought would be a good product and put it into a Figma design.

I showed a few people and literally that day, I had some stranger say to me, Oh, cool. How much is it? And I had never in my life have someone asked me how much one of my products had been at that stage. And I just made up a number. I was like, Oh, $99 per month. And that day, I don't even know if this customer knows this, but they're like, Oh, sure, let's go for it. And my heart like, I remember this anxiety, but like excitement. I'm like, Oh my God, I stumbled across something. And then literally the next minute, like the next hour later, cause my whole calendar was full of meeting advice. I did the same thing. I showed them the Figma as if it worked and like, cool, yep, sign me up. And then I did it again. And because of how easy the sales were, and I did not have a product at the time. I thought, Oh my God, I must be on to something special. And so that day onwards, I was like, okay, I need to stop taking customers. I did the Wizard of Oz approach. I did everything manually for them in the background. And then sold the product. And ever since then I've moved all my resources building this product. And yeah, it's been awesome ever since. And what's been really interesting is, I really found a problem that one I relate with because I had the problem myself and I feel like everything has taken me to this point for this product.

(16:25) Serena Lam:

A few things is like one, I've always been fascinated with people and I've loved people. And I think with sales, it's a lot about how do you write really good sales copy, or how do you understand people in a way that resonates with people? So that you can actually meet people in a genuine way. And you're using your tone of voice, what you care about to pretty much get a meeting with someone. And the second part is technology. I've had my whole career in tech and so I've always loved tech. And so I feel like it's my personality of loving people. And then plus the tech that's helped me get to where I am today. So it doesn't matter about all the fact that the different journeys I've had, I feel like everything's led me to Fuzzy Sequence and what I'm building right now. And then the last seven months being doing this full time and I'm in Like really nice space where I love my customers. I love the people that I'm working with and everyone's been really great for that.

There was a week where we struggled. There was one week where, we're still in beta mode and we're building the product and, our customers are paying right? And there was one week where our product was down and I was really stressing out. And I messaged all my customers. I got them a box of chocolates and I'm like, Hey, it's really sorry. Crazily enough, my customers are super understanding. They're like, Oh, don't worry. We understand you're a startup. We're supporting you. We've loved everything you've done. And it's just, it's made the world of difference for me, having just really supportive, really great customers. Yeah. And it was, I feel like this is, everything's led to like what I'm doing right now, which has been really fun.

(17:40) Jeremy Au:

What's a miss or misconceptions about sales, from your perspective?

(17:43) Serena Lam:

Maybe I'll phrase a phrase that differently. I think a lot of people hate sales, actually. And a lot of people come to me, especially most people build a startup because they love building a technical product and they love trying to make a difference. And the misconception actually is you build a product and customers will come. And that barely rarely it happens unless, people know about you, you've got a huge network. And so a lot of the time you actually need to do sales led growth first and show people the product and get people excited about it. I actually think that if you approach it as sale, which is it's talking through the features, talking through the benefits. People actually don't want to buy your product. Instead, if you're actually trying to solve a problem and you're trying to help them, people actually want to buy it instead. And so even when I talk about sales, I always focus on what's the relationship you're building. How do you get to know a person and like, don't sell things that actually won't be useful.

Last night, I had a conversation with one of the founders of a restaurant tech company, and he's actually built one of the really impressive, biggest ones in Singapore and Southeast Asia. And he's like, Oh can I use your software? And I just said straight up, like, I, I don't think it works. My software works really well for people who are digitally present online and restaurants generally aren't, unless you're dealing with restaurant corporates. Otherwise it's probably not the right software for you. And I think being able to solve a problem that really fits people's needs is really important.

I think one of the things that sales reps do sometimes is actually sell something that doesn't work. It actually leads to a bad customer experience and they end up churning anyway. And so I really believe with any sale is like, you should be solving a problem and you should be actually providing a value where you're selling something that actually helps the customer. And if it's not like upfront, be like, you know what? I don't think this is the right solution for you, but you should try X, Y, Z instead. So I think it's cliche. It is like being able to actually provide value on and selling something that's actually helpful for them as opposed to what's not. And like first time founders, I've always said to everyone was like, take it as an opportunity to make a friend. And, if you're helping a friend, it's you see a good deal at, fair price, or you see a good deal at Kohl's and you're like, Hey, this is a really good deal. You should buy it. You should do the exact same with when you're selling a product. Are you actually helping them? And if you're not, then like, you shouldn't be selling the product anyway, cause you're not really helping that person. And that's how I've approached it is how do I help someone as opposed to how am I like trying to get money out of this person? And I think the conversation shifts a lot as well.

(19:50) Jeremy Au:

I think one of the interesting parts that's there is about sales and the context of AI, right? So for myself, I already noticed that I'm getting a lot more inbound from sales folks. And they're like very personal written, and I'm pretty sure it's not written by them because they're like, I reference your I mean, references, clear giveaway, but it's like, I thought your LinkedIn posts on this was very interesting, I was looking at the sales rep and I was like, there's no way you wrote this. So someone using something like a secret software. So what's that new age, maybe say what's sales in the age of AI, maybe from the sales person's perspective, and then later on, we'll talk about it for sales from the customer's perspective?

(20:27) Serena Lam:

I think you raise a really good point. I think with the personalization. The goal of Fuzzy and what we're trying to do is get people to the meeting more quickly, but in a real way. And I think what you've said just then is it doesn't feel real. And so how do you build something that replicates you as a person as a salesperson? One of the things that we do is we try to train a brand voice. We try to learn exactly like you, even to the point where we build lists. We try to work with the customer to understand what are the pain points and you're actually helping them. To your point, I completely agree when you're spamming people and it's not personalized, that's not representative of the sales person themselves.

And I think people know, like people say it and they're like, they delete it, they ignore it and everything. And so I think what will end up happening in the future is how do you be more you at scale and how do you replicate that scale so that you are using software that is like you as opposed to doing something that isn't genuine. And I think that's what will actually make the difference in five, 10 years, is how do you be you and people get to meet you as a person as opposed to like what you said, like this generic doesn't sound real software. And you look at that person that you know that they didn't write it. And I think that's the difference between the two.

(21:29) Jeremy Au:

And how do you think about it from the perspective of the customers, right? If every sales rep is writing and being you at scale, then obviously you're going to get a lot of messages and emails that are very personalized. How do you think customers are going to react or think through this process. I mean, obviously it was going to take some time to process as well.

(21:45) Serena Lam:

Yeah, no, good question. I actually asked customers on this as well. I'm like, Hey, how do you feel about this message? And how would you react to it? And I, most customers said, if it's relevant, I'm okay to have the conversation. If it's was not relevant, it pisses me off. So there's two extremes, right? One, sometimes they're actually looking for that software and they've posted it in their network and if someone's taking the time to actually look through what they need and then come with a tailored solution, that's awesome. It's actually saved them like months of work. And so, they really appreciate that. On the other side, and this happens to my partner. My partner posted about a Web3 blockchain event he went to five years ago. So it's not even the last three years, it's five years ago. And it was a hackathon because he wanted to learn about this space. And it was a one of it. And he's only posted about it once. He still gets Web3 connection requests and development requests till this day and think that's what pisses people off.

And he's like, people are asking me about Web3 needs and I, there's nothing, there's no skill profile, there's nothing in my job history, there's nothing there except for that one post that I did five years ago and that pisses people off. So I think it comes back to what you said. One, authenticity. Are you actually approaching the right people in the right way and you're talking to people in the right way that actually resonates with them? Two, are you solving a problem that actually they have? If you're solving a problem that they don't have Web3 versus a solution that looks for people are going to get pissed off. And I think the third one is being able to not spam. And I think building personalized experiences off the back of that's really important.

So at the moment, where I see it being is how do you learn more about the customer so it's authentic to them? How do you learn more about the salesperson and the company? So it's authentic. So you're building the relationships together as opposed to things that don't hit the mark. And I think if you're solving a real need, whether it be from a salesperson perspective or someone needing a product perspective, then it's okay. But then if you miss the mark, then. Then yeah, I think people get really annoyed and I would get annoyed as well, especially like, someone's messaging me and it's like, like one of the best examples is people like to me, Hey, we do B2B lead generation, or we do sales generation, or we help you get more leads.

And, straight away, they haven't even bothered to look at my company's profile. They haven't even filtered the list that they've made because that's what my company does. And it just really shows that people haven't taken the extra care. We always recommend our customers like you should know your list. Don't, the moment someone builds a list over 100, I'm like, that's wrong. You should have be really targeted in your persona. Who are you trying to solve? What keeps them up at night? Are you actually helping them? What's the value proposition? Are you actually making a difference? If you're not making a difference, then you shouldn't be targeting them. Like if you're spamming people, everyone's going to be really annoyed at that. But if you can really add, if you're actually helping someone and adding value to their life, then that makes a world of difference.

(24:06) Jeremy Au:

And on that note, could you share about a time that you have been

(24:09) Serena Lam:

Time that I've been brave. The time that I've been brave, I think was definitely when I quit my corporate job. I really enjoyed the people that I worked with. I love my boss. I love my team members. I love my boss's boss. And I made a pretty good salary as well and everything was comfortable. I got a steady paycheck and the corporate job was very comfortable and I loved everything around me. Every few months I could go on holidays, no problem, spend whatever I want. I could go fine dining whenever I want. But leaving corporate to do a startup was quite hard, I'll admit. Building my own thing where you're pretty much paid nothing and you want to reinvest everything to the business. And it was the first time in my life where, because I'm a saver, I would save money across, every month I'd see my bank balance increase. It was the first time in my life where I started seeing my bank balance decrease because I was pulling from my savings.

I think that was very scary for me and something that was quite hard for me. And I think moving into startup where you're moving from a 200K job to like pretty much nothing is very scary, especially with what you can spend, what you can, I just bought a house as well. The mortgage I have to pay for. It's quite scary, but I think on the contrary, if you know that you're doing something, that's your life's work it makes it all the more rewarding. So I think, yeah, that, that was probably the most bravest thing for me. One of these concepts that I got taught was because my career moved so quickly, I've always told my colleagues I wanted to start a business. And the thing that they said to me was, you're strung by the golden handcuffs. So the golden handcuffs is, you get paid so much that you're strong to the business. And so you get pulled to these higher salary jobs, these higher position jobs, and you keep wanting to go, got going.

But then when you quit and when you break loose, and when do you actually focus on your passion and your dream? And leaving ANZ was that like, I had to break through from these golden handcuffs. And that was probably one of the scariest moments of my life. And then seeing my bank balance for the, for a few months, actually go down and everything. And like, that was really scary. Cause you know, I had no funding. I was doing this by myself. But now, seeing the business go and everything has made a huge difference, but that was probably one of the scariest things I've had to do.

On the contrary though. I think not as brave as my family and all that, like, my great grandparents left China to like escape to Vietnam. My parents escaped Vietnam to get us to Australia as refugees. I think that's probably way more brave than I had to. And I, I use my family as inspiration as probably everything that I've done probably wasn't as brave as what they've had to do. And I think I draw a lot of my courage from that.

(26:19) Jeremy Au:

How has your family been an inspiration to you?

(26:22) Serena Lam:

Ah, that's a good question. My mom always says and this is when we used to play big tours, kids. My mom always said, it's not the cards you're given. It's how you play it. And it's always made me think about the resources that I have and what can I do to get to the next step? So a bit of context. So I'm born in Australia. My ancestry is actually from China, but we've actually had nothing quite a few times from like, both sides of my family, from mum and dad. My ancestors left China because, communism and a lot of the, back then it was quite hard for business people. And so they left and went to Vietnam with absolutely nothing. Grandma's side had nothing, grandpa's side had nothing, and they had to start afresh. They didn't know Vietnamese. They didn't know anyone there. And my grandpa, from nothing built one of the most successful, so for motorcycles, there's a lot of spare parts. And so he made friends with the guys at Honda, Yamaha, and they built one of the biggest motorcycle spare parts providers in Saigon, but communism struck and pretty much you couldn't be rich in Vietnam. And it was terrifying. Like they'd have the Viet Cong come in every day. And my grandma tells me about the stories where they'd come in and try to look through your house and see like, any finances.

And my grandma, I remember a Chinese movie we were watching when we were kids and grandma's like, Oh, I've met her before, but I had to burn all the photos because back in the day, if you had any photo photos with anyone outside of Vietnam that was risky. And My grandma, my grandpa was super brave. Like even to the point where they had five children, they were all under 10 years old and they brought my mom, my aunties and uncles and they just left, they didn't know where they were going and they escaped. And the first time, they weren't successful. And like my mom at my mom and my uncles and stuff, they were in primary school, they were like under 10 years old and they actually went to jail which is scary.

(27:57) Serena Lam:

First time. My grandma's like, we have to escape. We have to leave Vietnam. And at the time, my Uncle Eric he loved Bruce Lee and, we call him now the lucky child, but he was, practicing and copying Bruce Lee and he broke his leg. And so that day, the morning that they had to escape Vietnam, they couldn't. And so my grandma, my uncle Eric had left behind. And that morning, my grandpa was like, doesn't matter where we're going to, we have to go with the four children. You can come first. So my grandpa took the four children, my mom included to, to escape. And they had a friend that was writing a letter to them at the time and says, you should come. We're having the best life overseas. Come and get us. And that was my grandpa's friend. And he took the four children and it actually turned out to be a trap. And so let's take my grandpa, all the children were actually taken by the Viet Cong and they were put in jail and all the kids were actually quite young.

Luckily, apparently my grandma was telling me that there was this, I think there was a drunk guy that went past the jail one night and my grandpa said, go to my wife, go to this address and tell her that we're here and she will give you money. And luckily my grandma knew. And so my grandma. She was super brave. She went to the jail and actually like essentially had to bribe them to, to bring the family out. And so while that happened, my grandma. She had to save money, get all the money, try to figure out from family and friends what I could borrow to save for the next time to be successful. But in the meanwhile, when everyone was in jail she kept getting letters from her husband, my grandpa, saying we're safe, come over now.

And luckily, they had a secret code to each other. And my grandpa never wrote the secret code, and my grandma knew, because that secret code wasn't written, that they weren't safe. So she kept getting these letters and her friend, her neighbor kept saying, Oh, you should go now. They're all over saved. They're having the best time. You should go. And my grandma stood her ground and said, no. I'm gonna think about it, but secretly she knew that her family wasn't safe because the secret code never appeared. Which was very smart of her which I would have totally fallen for and so a month later luckily that guy came to my grandma's house asked for money. My grandma gave them money and she knew where her children and her husband was and so they you know Was she was able to get them come back home and they decide again save a bunch of money before they could escape the second time. And that's why uncle Eric, we say is the lucky uncle. And yeah they escaped. And the second time around, they didn't know where they were going. They're on a boat and luckily the boat landed in Malaysia and they were lucky that they could come to Australia and Australia welcomed them with warm moms to come to the refugee camp.

And, my family started fresh. My grandpa and grandma started a Chinese restaurant business, which was really good. And all my and uncles in their own right are super successful. Like, they came to Australia, not knowing in English, they were like less than 10 at the time. And now like my mom leads tech teams. My auntie is an executive at Citibank uncle has his own business. And I think there was a lot of trauma and grit involved, but you know, they came to Australia with basically nothing. They were the only Asians in school that to learn English from scratch and they've worked so hard. And I think a lot of it has to do with like my grandpa's grit, my grandma's grit to like push through when you absolutely have nothing and start from scratch and, they had nothing in Vietnam, then nothing in Australia. And now, all of them are successful in their own rights. And same with my dad, actually, like my dad, when their family escaped he was with his grandparents and his parents and his sisters were in a different boat and they, my dad actually escaped and he actually went to Germany because you're, you can't choose where the boat goes.

And then his parents went to Adelaide and he didn't see them seven years because they couldn't afford to bring him and the grandparents over. So he did high school in Germany. And then when they could finally afford for my dad and the grandparents to come over when he was about 16 years old, then he finally went to Australia. And again, he did really well. Like he, end up doing a degree in biomed. Actually, he's in sales now, but he did the sciences around. I was very good at that. And so I think both my parents inspire me a lot on what you can do with absolutely nothing. And so it's made me a lot more resilient and it's made me think about my work ethic and being able to be creative with what I don't have. And, there've been times with my family, it's been quite hard where we have nothing and we bounce back. And I think through my grandparents, my parents, even my childhood, like we've had periods of nothing and we bounce back.

Yeah, I think that's really formed how I approached life and how I approach tough situations. And, even now like raising money, everyone says it's a downturn and it's a hard market. And, my, my whole thinking is it's fine. It's only what's happening right now, but I know we'll be successful in the future. We just need to put the steps in place. And when the steps are ready to go, we'll just flip a switch and we'll make, we'll be growing really quickly. So I think it's being the really taught me and especially my grandpa, like one working hard and true being creative with what you don't have. I think that's been really crucial for how I've thought about life.

(32:11) Jeremy Au:

Wow. What a story. Thank you so much for sharing about that. On that note, I'd love to wrap things up. So these are three takeaways I got from the conversation. First of all, thank you so much for sharing about your early career and how much you enjoy corporate life. We have a cushy job know, kind of a steady paycheck and we're able to save money. So fantastic. And I really empathize with that as well.

Secondly, thanks so much for sharing about Fuzzy Sequence, sales and sales automation. How, from your own experience as a sales representative that was trying to book meetings, Hohowou really improve the productivity of getting that done.

And lastly, thanks so much for sharing about your own family experience about how your grandparents inspire you in terms of the flight from Vietnam in order to have a better life and I thought it was such a harrowing tale about all that luck, bad luck, good luck, secret codes. They definitely are inspirational role models. So thank you so much for sharing, Serena.

(33:01) Serena Lam:

Thanks for having me, Jeremy.