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I found this interview banter in an old email from 13 years ago with Nicole Foo. Throwbacks are great, but the key messages from the past keep you moving forward.
STYLE Malaysia January 2012 Issue
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Nicole Foo: You wear so many hats! How do you juggle the many thousand things on your plate?
Jasmine Low: One person is never a hero. So, I work with many partners and share my workload by outsourcing the work to experts in their own fields. I recently had the privilege to meet Mitchell Baker – the founder of Mozilla Firefox and we shared the same philosophy – that the world is a platform for us all. I joked that while she is the champion of open-source technologies, I champion open mic platforms in Malaysia.
The reality of juggling many things at once is many long hours of discussions and delegation of tasks to the right persons. It is only possible to do many things when you’re surrounded by a talented team and the support of a great business partner.
There are no short cuts and there is a lot of hard work. For 10 years during the building blocks of my career, I was getting an average of only 4-5 hours sleep a night, which is why my weekends are sacred. The irony is I love to sleep! I could sleep for 16 hours in a day!
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Nicole Foo: Do you ever feel like you’re a jack of all trades, master of none, or truly master of all?
Jasmine Low: I’m not a master of one, neither am I a master of all. I am a generalist – a specialist in being general. My ‘kiasoo’ attitude makes me reach out to learn and understand a little more than just beneath the surface. I’ve spent many self-taught hours on viral marketing, web development, online PR and e-commerce.
By delegating tasks to experts in their fields, I learn from the experts and increase my knowledge by sharing ideas and process flows from them. As a team, projects can move quickly along. It’s really really hard to do things solo. It just doesn’t work.
In short, I am a master of being an overall project manager and am constantly looking for great people to team up with, to achieve the task at hand.
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Nicole Foo: 2011 has been a busy year for you, what have been the highlights in terms of your work, and why?
Jasmine Low: Indeed, 2011 has been an incredible year! It seemed as though we finally received the recognition we so rightly deserved 🙂
There are three main projects we’re very proud of; FEYST – Independent Youth Festival organised in conjunction with the Sweden Malaysia Innovation Days forum and exhibition and also the first conference for Mozilla Firefox in Asia.
I must applaud the Embassy of Sweden for their belief in our drive to promote Malaysian indie music. We worked with various Swedish partners to put together the 4th FEYST Independent Youth Festival in collaboration with Sweden Malaysia Innovation Days. As a part of the project, we also brought a group of Malaysian journalists to tour Sweden – the land of the Nobel Prize Award and explore how the innovation process takes place.
It was a truly rewarding experience for me personally, as it took us a long time in building the relationship with the Swedes. As a result, the youth festival welcomed international partners like IKEA, Ericsson, Volvo and ran outside Pavilion KL for a week. I’m happy to say we managed to connect the commercial advantage for the brands directly to the youth community of musicians and gamers.
The Mozilla Firefox conference was significant for us as it is taking our business international – and that, is where we want to go and grow.
Relationships are very important and running a business sometimes can be frustrating as it takes a long time to build fruitful relationships. I find sometimes that when you keep going and persevere, the rewards naturally flow. It’s just like writing a song.
If the tune is right, but the lyrics not, it doesn’t jive. But when you persevere, it will eventually come to you. And that, is when you ‘hit the perfect note’. hehe.
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Nicole Foo: You are a great supporter of the indie music scene; how do you think things have grown? Has the quality of acts improved? Have the audiences matured? Have sponsors been more forthcoming? What more do you think can be done?
Jasmine Low: The scene has matured to the level where many of the acts that appeared about a decade ago as upcoming musicians have not made it big mainstream. Awareness of the independent scene is definitely one of the most positive encouragements for new acts. And it’s the awareness that spurs further improvement by the artists themselves. It’s imperative for acts to now go overseas and tour, rather than sit on their laurels back home lamenting their music is not played on the radio stations. Go! That’s what we try to encourage all musicians to do. Go and get your music heard! If you’re an English language singer songwriter, go to where your market is. Not expect the market to drop by your doorstep.
As audiences mature, they would also expect more quality. So gigs alone are good, but no longer good enough. I personally feel we need to move towards better and more fantastic productions! I congratulate the recent production companies like Enfiniti Productions who strive to increase standards in Malaysia.
Sponsors are focused on their own brands. Yes, while some are more forthcoming, others are demanding for more returns of investment – which, we often cannot give. Therefore, we are moving away from the
sponsorship model and are working on new ways to fund concerts and festivals.
Nicole Foo: You just opened the Doppel Kafe, tell us more about that.
Jasmine Low: Doppelganger Open Mic is the community project supported by Go International Group since 2005. We first introduced our pop-cafe concept in 2005 in Bukit Bintang and held weekly music gigs, film screenings and album launches there for 2 months. After that, we brought Doppelganger Open Mic on tour to a few very supportive venues around Selangor and KL. We opened Doppel Kafe at Mezzanine Floor in Central Market Annexe in November 2011 as an extension to our event management business – offering the arts and music community a space to be themselves, a place to produce, perform and connect. We are also supportive of NGO groups, and work closely with them to utilise the space as an avenue to raise funds for their work. So come by every Saturday for weekly arts & music bazaar, Doppel swap meet and also open mic gigs featuring upcoming acts. We open Monday-Saturdays from 11am-11pm (Thurs-Sat) and close Sundays.
Nicole Foo: What can we expect from you in 2012?
Jasmine Low: Quality. Our challenge is to increase production quality of our concerts and events. To do that, we need to source for more budget from sponsors and thinking of ways to creatively raise more funds to get our projects off the ground. Without funding, nothing can be achieved. It IS all about money. But first, before the money, you need good content. We are ready to take Malaysian music international by organising the next world tour.
Nicole Foo: Would you say you live and breathe social entrepreneurship? Why?
Jasmine Low: Our company values – Sharing of Insights, Integrity, Valour, Love are just windows to the values we wish to impart in our daily work. We are not unique in wanting a better society, a better environment for ourselves. So yes, I live and breathe social entrepreneurship because we spent so many hours in a day working. It’s important that our work reflects our values. I am constantly learning, and constantly improving. While we know we cannot make great changes, we know that our contribution helps.
Organising gigs and events for the independent scene are not always profitable. That’s why our commercial side of the business is important as it has often supplemented and funded our ‘fun’ projects. However, we are working towards making our ‘fun’ projects self-sufficient and profitable.
I think that’s why in all that we do, our commercial projects for example, are infused with a little ‘indie’ spirit. In fact, we are pleased to have been able to be one of the pioneers in connecting Malaysia’s wonderful talents to corporate Malaysia. And will continue to do so because we believe Malaysian music is good enough to eat! And Malaysians love eating, don’t we?
Read more about Malaysian music: Music – JASMINE LOW