Today we’re interviewing Daniel Teoh, a serial entrepreneur in Malaysia and founder of Native Discovery, a social enterprise that co-creates community-based ventures with indigenous communities to boost livelihoods and grow their cultural confidence.
They specialize in sustainable tourism and work closely with our community partners in hosting unique experiences that are meaningful, challenging, and fun for both international and domestic travelers. Thank you Lee Swelin for this awesome introduction.
This was a super fun interview! Daniel guides us through audibly about how a tour through these indigenous populations works and I was salivating by the time it was done.
Like all creatives, Daniel’s path wasn’t set in stone. Daniel has a degree in Civil Engineering and split off as an entrepreneur as opportunities came. What was his guiding light, was his passion to share the indigenous culture of Malaysia.
Daniel is also a super cool entrepreneur who does things scrappily and hustles his butt off and you’ll hear a ton of examples of how he tested and validated his ideas into viable businesses.
This is also a great interview about indigenous people. Actually, all over the world, I’ve learned about indigenous people. America has its own issues, but surprisingly, in Australia, indigenous people were a huge part of the museums. I even went to a live event about some artists in Melbourne in
In another part of this interview, you’ll learn a lot about Durian! Have you heard of durian? It’s a really smelly fruit that is very polarizing. In my opinion, it smells like rotten, overripe fruit. I can eat it, but not a lot. I find the texture super good.
Anyways, you’ll learn not only the magic of durian, but how they grow, how it’s harvested, and what might actually eat durian. You’re also going to learn some cooking tips with Durian! You’re going to learn so many things about Durian, you might actually want to buy it at an Asian grocery market.
Daniel’s story is an inspiring journey of following what you care about and seizing every opportunity to build something amazing
What’s Up With Adam
I’ll keep this short. I’m a huge fan of being obsessed with a problem. Basically, we got feedback on a product I was working with and there were some clear improvements I spent all week trying to fix it with good success. I felt super proactive and I’m trying to distill it.
I think first of all, people liked the product and gave candid feedback on what was missing. Candid feedback is hard to give, and it takes the right environment, mood, and people to do so. I don’t know if you’ve gotten feedback that made you feel like garbage, but generally, that type of feedback makes you super unproductive and unresponsive. You start to spite people rather than try and improve it.
This is a two-way street and literally, a dance of emotions between one who gives feedback and the one who gets feedback and even I have a hard time mastering it.
Anyways, just something on my mind. I was pretty productive and creative this week. Go me.
Ok so Daniel’s interview was super interesting as it was a story of something I had no idea about: indigenous food. In America, we believe that native Americans eat like, berries and nuts. Funny enough, the most popular Native American cuisine is Fry bread which is dough fried in oil. Was really popular in Arizona. However, there are some dark roots as it was made due to the fact that Americans gave flour to the Natives while relocating them.
Anyways, native indigenous cuisine is a rarely preserved part of society and is generally spread word of mouth and dies by industrialization. Daniel talks about these amazing recipes that seem to be lost in time and this is just a small group in Malaysia. I haven’t thought much about this side of food, but it gave me a lot of perspective about how we eat today, where now we have access to everything BUT the indigenous people’s foods.
Links
Borneo
Malaysia Peninsula
Primary Rainforest – Pristine and preserved
Secondary Rainforest
Hari Berry – Malaysia Blueberry
Pitaya
Mangos
Durians
Cassava
Edible Rubber Tree Leaves
Sambals
Airbnb Experiences
Orang Asli tribe
Penang Island
DiscoverNative.org
End of Show
Climate Change doesn’t just affect us
One of Daniel’s resonating topics was that Mayalsia’s jungle missed its fruiting season.
If you’re currently listening to this podcast, with your phone, or in your car, you are blessed to live in a place with food, water, shelter, and the industries that have made it easier to live.
One of the biggest topics taken from the World Economic Forum and Davos was that climate change is already taken into effect and is ravaging countries we don’t really notice, Malaysia is one of them. The beauty of the Malaysian rainforest might overflood. When I was in Cambodia, a tour guide told me that the ancient city of Angkor Wat might be destroyed because of soil erosion. We don’t notice these issues, but we spend time arguing over the internet on stupid stuff like how proud we are to eat steak because it gives protein in our diet.
Not only that, but the countless arguments on LinkedIn saying a whole category is dead. I have a bias, of course, but I think it’s frustrating a bunch of upper-class elites are arguing on a virtual message board about killing off a potential climate-friendly solution appalling.
In my opinion, we’re too late. The planet is screwed, and human selfishness will be it’s downfall and we won’t even know it. I think it’s sad that we all live blindly and do these dumb arguments online. I am ashamed of both sides who do this never-ending war on convincing an inconvincible side that their solution is right.
But that doesn’t mean I personally won’t do my best to help this planet live as long as possible.
A lot of people my age and younger talk a lot about a lack of purpose. I think COVID and globalization really took a number on the reason that we exist on this planet. I think it causes nihilism and complacency. There’s some truth in it, but is that a life worth living? In ancient times, a man would die by their sword for a cause that probably only benefitted the emperor.
So now we have actual problems that are actually happening and people just want to sit there and rot.
I’m not saying that’s not a viable option in life but the world seems so much brighter when you fight for something.
This is our last Malaysia interview and what a ride! Looking back, 4 days, 5 interviews. Not bad Adam! We’ll be continuing our trip around the world but first, I was fortunate to do two United States Interviews recently that I really want to share.