From Clinician to Changemaker Empowering Communities and Redefining Impact – with Weh Yeoh

Adopting an entrepreneurial mindset can help health professionals identify needs and fill gaps in a way that serves the community, creates a successful and sustainable practice and, on a personal level, thrive in their career. 

One person who has done this in a very powerful and impactful way is Weh Yoeh. Weh is a professionally trained physiotherapist who has completed a MA in Development Studies. He has lived, volunteered and worked in Asia for 8 years. He is the founder of OIC Cambodia, an initiative that aims to establish speech therapy as a profession in Cambodia and co-founder of Umbo, a social enterprise bridging the gap for rural children to access allied health services.

In this episode, Jo and Weh discuss the power of entrepreneurial thinking, how to create sustainable growth and how to challenge the status quo.

You can connect with Weh via his website at www.wehyeoh.com or via LinkedIn. You can watch Weh’s TedTalk on Why International Charities Need To Make Themselves Redundant here.

Resources mentioned in this episode:

• Future-Proofing Health Professionals Symposium 2023
• The Entrepreneurial Clinician book

If you know you need more support, please visit my website at https://jomuirhead.com

Transcript

Jo:

So welcome to another episode of the Entrepreneurial Clinician. I am your host, Jo Muirhead. And today we are taking the word entrepreneurial for us spin because we have learned that entrepreneurial means money, it means lifestyle engagement. It means I can work from anywhere in the world. It means I don’t have to do anything I don’t wanna do. But the reality is entrepreneurial thinking allows us to do good in this world and create so many new opportunities for people who may not have had them. And that’s why Weh is with us today. So Weh, introduce yourself. Tell us who you are, where you are in the world, what made you say yes when I said can you come on this podcast?

Weh:

Well, what made me say yes is the easy part because Jo has been a wonderful supporter of both myself and the charity work that we’ve been doing in Cambodia for the last 10 years. Jo, 10 year anniversary in July this year. That’s and that’s how we met. So Jo and I met when I was looking to do some fundraising and Jo has been really supportive ever since then. My background is a physio. I do consider myself a failed physio and a recovering physio. So definitely can identify with allied health professionals who feel a little bit burnt out, maybe a little bit tired of the day-to-day. However, I haven’t done physio for about two decades, and so most of my work has been working in the nonprofit and in the social enterprise space. And I worked in Cambodia for five years. I lived there and started a charity called OIC Cambodia. And what that’s doing is setting up the profession of speech therapy because there are none in the whole country. And then since I’ve been back now on the five and a half year anniversary of working on Umbo. Umbo is a social enterprise. We’re for-profit for purpose. And what we do is we do online speech and occupational therapy predominantly for rural Australia.

Jo:

Yeah. So to hear that what he calls a recovering physiotherapist. But he has taken the discipline of speech therapy or speech pathology to an entire country that didn’t even know it existed because he saw the need there. Then he comes back to Australia and goes, why are our people in rural and remote Australia still struggling to receive assistance? So he goes, oh, let me go create something to fill that app. Yeah. So this is gonna be a great conversation. So Weh, what made you decide that you needed to be a recovering or non-practicing physio?

Weh:

I mean, I think it’s really interesting that we largely choose professions when we are not yet fully formed humans. And I still don’t consider myself fully formed <laugh>, but certainly at the age of 17, really with no idea about what I wanted to do. And I knew that I wanted to do something health related, but I knew it wasn’t medicine because I’d seen my older brother go through that whole process and was very turned off by that. And then I thought, oh, well, like sport and physiotherapy is involved in sport. And then of course I ended up working in aged care for most of my career of two years with geriatrics and people recovering from stroke and so on as well, and people with dementia and all sorts of interesting conditions, but not exactly the glamour that I thought I was gonna experience in my physio career.

One of the things I struggled with in physio is just the impact that I could have. I really wanted to see if I could do something to impact many people. And that’s not to underplay or to criticise the impact that a physio can have. I still think that allied health professionals have enormous impact in terms of depth. But I’m the kind of person who’s more interested in the systems and the bigger picture stuff. And that’s why looking at how charities and how social enterprises can provide impact and why there are huge gaps in certain areas like Cambodia, like rural Australia, that’s been more interesting to me.

Jo:

Ah, fantastic. I love it. And now you have the opportunity to talk to people about what it was that took you from this clinician practising physio with this big dream and asking these uncomfortable questions like, why is no speech therapy in Cambodia? Or why people in rural and remote Australia are still unable to access occupational therapy? And then you’ve been able to engage your entrepreneurial thinking around, well, how do we fill these gaps? Because it’s very easy for somebody to come from a charity background and just stick their hand out all the time. Like I think at one stage you and I called it glorified begging, you just stick your hand out all the time, <laugh>. But you came up with some pretty innovative ways to raise funds. Can we just talk about that for OIC in a moment? Because I just wanna help people understand the impact that you can have in the creativity you can have. So what are some of the interesting ways you did fundraising for Cambodia?

Weh:

Well, yeah, it’s sort of born out of necessity really, if you think about it on the scheme of things that people are willing to give money to and to donate to in Australia, speech therapy for kids with disabilities in Cambodia is not exactly number one. So we sort of know where the typical areas people are interested in are, and certainly that wasn’t one of themSo one of the best ideas we came up with was day without speech, which we’ve still been running now for I think about eight years. And what we do is we get kids mostly in school to give up talking for a big part of the day. They’re younger kids that are, let’s say four years old. I believe some have done 45 minutes without talking, which is impressive. And some of the older kids that are, let’s say in year five or year six, they’re doing the whole day and then they experience what it’s like to not be able to communicate the way they used to.

They raise money for Cambodia and we come in and do a bit of a debrief to help them process what they’ve experienced and why they’re so lucky. And one of the most interesting things about this has been learning that the teachers, well firstly, don’t mind if the kids aren’t talking for a day, which is not surprising. But secondly, they like the fact that the kids have to empathise with other children who are not connected. So much fundraising in schools, for better or worse, is about fundraising for yourself, for your own facilities, but to do it for someone who’s not even remotely connected to you, I think it’s quite special.

Jo:

Yeah. That’s really powerful. I love the day without speech. I’ve done my own day without speech. It was great to be involved in something bigger than myself but it was horrible <laugh> being left without that method of communication. And I know you had challenged me to even give up my ability to type and I’m like, oh, I’m just not doing that. But that brings us to the question, how did you find out that speech therapy was needed in Cambodia? Like, how did you even see the need?

Weh:

So that’s the interesting part of the story for me because it was so obvious it wasn’t. And I certainly can’t claim to be the first person to notice it. In fact, when I got there in 2012, it was something I just heard over and over and over again. And Cambodia historically, I’m not sure about the current statistics cause we are talking 11 years on, was one of the most charity dense, I was gonna say charity infested, that’s probably not the right word. <Laugh> charity dense.

Jo:

That’s a nicer word. We can create a picture with that.

Weh:

Yep. Charity dense countries in the world. I think it had the second highest number of NGOs at one point and it also had the second highest number of UN agencies behind Rwanda, I believe. And so there’s all of this money and all this activity and the country certainly needs a lot of help, but it struck me as really surprising, I guess, that there was something that affected over half a million people, but no one was doing anything about it. And so, like you said, it, I guess it took someone young and stupid enough to wanna take it on, but it wasn’t that the need was hard to find. It was really, really obvious.

Jo:

Yeah. The hard bit though is going, I wanna do something meaningful about this. So we’ve all heard of ‘fly in, fly out’ or FIFO as we Australians like to shorten everything. And we know that FIFO goes in and out of some of these countries like Cambodia quite a lot. What, what was different about OIC and in terms of your leadership of this project, what made you go, we wanna be more than a FIFO operation?

Weh:

Yeah. Well I guess I’d seen so much in the charity sector about this cycle of dependency. And I call it the hamster wheel of charity work. So it’s basically this idea that we get funding, we do the work, and then we request more. We justify why we should have more funding. And we keep that cycle going. And with charities, the fact that they are focused on growth that’s in and of itself tells you that there is a whole system to maintain. But one of the things actually learned from physio, and believe it or not, there are some things I did actually learn. And one of them was about ethics and it was really about this idea that ethical physiotherapists break the business model. That’s the gist of it. So there is a difference between addressing someone’s symptoms, let’s say if they come in with back pain and I take that pain away as compared to solving the underlying problem. And that is potentially through exercise and advice and more long-term solutions. Which means that that patient or client doesn’t come back eventually. And it struck me as interesting that charities didn’t have that mindset because it’s the same kind of idea that yes, it is potentially bad for business if charities are gonna stop at some point in the future, but it’s obviously the right thing to do in terms of empowering countries like Cambodia. And so with this issue in Cambodia, I was very keen on setting up what I call now a redundant charity. A redundant charity is the idea that a charity in advance will say, I’m gonna finish our work here in Cambodia by this date, and our date for Cambodia is 2030.

Jo:

So you actually went into this creation of this enterprise, which paid you some monies to support yourself, with the goal of becoming redundant?

Weh:

Yes.

Jo:

That’s right. And so what will that mean for the nation of Cambodia? So when you go redundant doesn’t just mean OIC is pulling out and the service no longer exists.

Weh:

It means they take it on for themselves. I think that’s the most important thing. It means that they’re the ones who are in charge. And it means that when we leave, because it’s not a question when charities at some point do have to stop, there’s no such thing as a charity that’s gonna keep on going for all eternity. Everyone knows that. And the research shows that the key reasons why they leave countries like Cambodia either because of a breakdown in relationship between the host government and the donor government or because money runs out Now, neither of these reasons are intentional reasons where this initiative has said, you know what, we’re gonna exit when we feel like you’re empowered. These are just accidental reasons. So my whole thinking is then, well, why don’t we set it up so that it’s intentional so that we are the ones who are in charge of when that time is. And that means that you as in Cambodia, in this example, are empowered to do it for yourself. And you’re not relying on me and you’re not relying on Western donors. And you are the ones in charge.

Jo:

And was the part of OIC and your project and us getting to know each other was, I was fascinated by this and loved this sense of empowerment, being able to help a nation understand that your, in this case, young children don’t have a way of being able to communicate, I love you to mum, or I love you to dad. That brought me to tears. It was like I, if my son hadn’t been able to verbally express to me that he loved me, that would’ve been so difficult. But, we’ve got this whole nation that didn’t even know that there was a solution.

Weh:

Yeah, that’s right.

Jo:

And so you go there and you go, we’ve got all these kids and older children because they can’t speak, they can’t get educated. When they can’t get educated, we know they’re not gonna be able to work. And the cycle of poverty just continues as after generation, after generation after generation. So no wonder we have the NGO capital of the world turning up in Cambodia. you were committed to breaking that cycle by becoming redundant.

Weh:

It’s not new, it’s not an original idea. It’s not an original idea in any sense in the charity world or even outside of it. And there are charities all over who do say, oh, we’re working ourselves out of a job. And then you ask them the question, okay, tell me how, what’s the plan and when it’s gonna happen? And then there’ll be some vague response of some kind. But we all know that in life, one of the most important things to do is to start with the end in mind. You don’t just buy a gym membership and off you go. You go, okay, my goal is to lose X amount of kilos or to run a half marathon or whatever. And that’s what success looks like. But for some reason, I think in the charity world, and I believe it’s because it’s a wholly emotional experience helping people that sometimes we lose sight of the fact that there needs to be calculated and potentially cold and rational decisions about how we actually do this helping. And we need to activate thatSpaSt of Sur brains too. And then that’s when we come up with something that’s really meaningful.

Jo:                                         

Powerful. So it’s not unlike health professionals in private practice because if we don’t have clients or patients to treat, we don’t earn an income. And I know that this conversation comes up a lot when I’m working with health professionals and they go, I feel so awful asking to be paid because I’m making money off people’s pain. Like emotional pain, physical pain, mobility, pain. So to me it’s such an interesting parallel. It’s like, are we secure enough as health professionals to go, there will be a day when you don’t need me. And I am working towards that day knowing full well that we’ve got other work to do to replace that income. So it’s a very similar process, isn’t it? The hamster wheel.

Weh:

<Laugh> It is the hamster wheel. And it was interesting, I think with your book, The Entrepreneurial Clinician, one of the things that I learned was that isn’t the mindset of the typical allied health professional in the way that we’re taught to ask these questions and to think about things in this way. But it doesn’t do us any service. I think that’s probably the gist of itAnd taking this idea of redundant charities and taking it into private practice thinking about the end in mind, if that’s all it really is, you know, when what’s gonna happen after a certain time and, and how are we gonna get to that point? And then how are we gonna ensure continuity? I think that’s already a big part of the journey.

One of the things I hear quite a lot in private practice, I guess In allied health, is this idea of growth. And in startups as well. You know, this idea of growth and with charities there’s also this idea of growth. Charities talk about the fact that, oh, we raised a hundred million this year compared to 80 million last year. To me, this isn’t necessarily a sign of success. To me a charity should be saying, we actually don’t need to raise more and we don’t want your money because we’re getting closer to our goal of achieving whatever it is we’re trying to achieve. And the parallel, I guess with the private practice is that I feel like a lot of people want growth, but they don’t really know why they do. And they don’t really know what the trade-offs are.

So to bring them into what I’ve been working on for the last five years with Umbo, we have grown and some might say rapidly, I would say sustainably. And we haven’t had exponential growth, which I’m very glad of the fact that we haven’t. And one of the key benefits of not doing that is we can sleep at night. Our stress levels are a lot lower than they would be if we’d taken on huge amounts of investment and more risk, I guess. So in that journey of growth, I think it’s really important to ask yourself, why am I doing it?

Jo:

Yeah. Why am I growing? And you’re right, there are trade-offs. There are a lot of trade-offs for growth and, and sometimes growth. We have so much KPI mentality around the dollar value, whereas that’s really just a tool. It’s not really indicative of the outcomes that we’re achieving at all.

Weh:

And it’s only one measure, right? So for me, when the questions asked, are we growing at the right pace? So yes, the financials are a big part of it. This is now talking about Umbo, which is a for-profit by the way, not a charity. Are we growing at the right pace? Are the financials indicating that the clinical measures and impact are successful still? Are the social impact measures successful still? Are we getting good feedback still? And the last one is really important, is our internal engagement in terms of culture going up or maintaining the same? Because of course, if people grow too fast, culture tends to drop off. So that’s the thing is that when you’re talking about growth on a financial scale there are many other things that you have to sacrifice to achieve that. But if you can maintain in these examples five domains all moving in the right direction, then I believe you’re growing at the right speed.

Jo:

If anybody is looking at how to grow ethically, probably morally, I don’t wanna be the moral police here today, but, you know, in a way that allows us as health professionals to maintain our integrity, you need to go back and get the show notes for what way has just said, because they are going to be the five pillars of your business. And if you haven’t got those things all growing at the same time, you are gonna struggle. And I know that because I coach a lot of you, and these are one of the things that we’re always working on. The culture piece is so important, but coming into Australia, so you came back home and you discovered this need. What was it like managing that transition back to Australia from Cambodia? Because that’s just fascinating to me. <Laugh>.

Weh:

Yeah, it was very hard. It was, you know, putting my heart and soul into this work in Cambodia, and I guess not knowing how to manage my own relationship with my work, which is another theme I’m sure for your clients and people listening to the podcast, we all struggle with this at some point in our lives. That was very difficult. I think coming back and having a sense of loss around all the things that I’d really been working on and having to give it off, which was the right thing to do. So making sure that there were local Cambodian leaders that are running the charity, which is still running in Cambodia but then not really not knowing what to do. And I guess part of the solution to that, for me personally, was discovering another need which Umbo is filling. And that’s the huge wait times that people are experiencing mostly in rural Australia in terms of speech and occupational therapy.

Jo:

Yeah. And they’re extraordinarily huge. And, and again, we had the same almost the same charity welfare like mentality where we had all of these occupational therapists and speech pathologists flying in and out of rural communities. It’s almost like they go in, they dump their goodness and then they leave. And those, like you and I, we go out there and we go,  people can’t generalise. They’ve got no support system set up. They’re completely dependent on you coming back again in two weeks time. And that’s something I know you are fighting to remove those barriers.

Weh:

Yeah. There are very good examples of big institutions that shall not be named, who go into rural communities and do screening for paediatric speech and OT, provide a report and then disappear back to the city. And then the families are like, well, what do we do now? Okay. So now we’ve got a way to describe the issues that we already knew about for our child. But we don’t actually have any want to do the therapy. And I think this is not only meaningless, but it’s also borderline unethical to set people up with a certain expectation and then just take off. So I think what we do at Umbo is really important because we work with local communities to make sure we have some context for those people. And our therapists are not just all around Australia, but overseas. About 20% of our therapists are Australian trained, but based in different parts of the world. Meaning that after hours, before hours all very, very possible. And it’s a beautiful way, I think, to provide services to rural Australia.

Jo:

Okay. So this is really good. So now we have this social enterprise, which is a for-profit. Okay. So if people are asking what does that mean? Is that an Australian term? It’s a private practice, but its impact is social change, right?. So not only have you found a problem that needs a fix, cause we just can’t keep saying to our people who live in rural and regional Australia in two years time, yeah. When your child is eight, you might be able to start services. Or, oh, we didn’t find out about this learning difficulty and your child’s already in high school by the time you get services, let’s calculate that out. Oh, they’ll be ready to take on an apprenticeship, which they have no hope of being able to fulfil. Right? So then we’re adding to a cycle of poverty here in Australia, because kids in this case can’t participate in education. So a way of helping us as a nation meet this need. You’ve gone overseas and you’ve gone, where are my Australian registered, skilled capable OTs and speech pathologists who can work in Australia using telehealth?

Weh:

That’s the gist of it.

Jo:

How cool is that?

Weh:

Yeah. That’s the gist of it. And it’s also thinking about, everyone says, oh, there’s a shortage of speech and occupational therapists. So then the question for us is, well maybe there are some, maybe there’s latent supply, maybe that they’re just undiscovered. And what we found is that yes, this batch of people who are living overseas is one example. And then of course the other one, which is very common is mums of young children who want to do 10 to 15 hours working at home. But certainly can’t be able to get into a clinic to do a full-time role. Along those lines with Umbo, the other thing I’ll just mention is that it’s not just the fact that most of our clients are rural, which are 60% of our clients. And you know I think it’s 11% of our clients are First Nations clients and all sorts of other beautiful metrics about the types of people that we are providing services to. But also we have 50% of our profit goes into a social impact bank account. And then that money is used purely to subsidise services. So people who can’t afford, maybe they’re about to or trying to get onto NDIS, but have to pay privately for an assessment, we can subsidise those costs up to a hundred percent for them.

Jo:

Up to a hundred percent?

Weh:

Yeah. exactly. So people who otherwise would’ve missed out and fallen through the gaps. And it’s a beautiful full circle way to impact people’s lives because this is quite a significant number of people. And of course, as the company grows, and so now we’re talking about growth, but as I said, like in a meaningful way, I think as we grow that 50% profit gets bigger. Yes, at the moment we’re giving away about $3,000 a month in free services. And that’s because we’re still quite young, but that figure could easily be much, much greater than that in the future.

Jo:

Wow. So my next question for you Weh is that you’ve talked about redundancy and you’ve talked about your leadership becoming redundant. Like your goal was to hand the leadership of OIC over to a Cambodian based team. Where are your redundancies for you personally in Umbo? Whatcha aiming for <laugh>?

Weh:

Yes. So talking about leadership, and I’ve come from leading a very small charity in Cambodia where it was sort of around five to 10 people sort of level. And then with Umbo, you know, back when it was one and three and then five and then 10, and now we’re at 65. So as I’ve seen that full journey of course, which some people are very fortunate to see. Now, what’s been most interesting to me has been that I’ve had to adapt to Umbo. And if I could think of one leadership lesson of leading a startup, that’s probably, it is that your startup won’t adapt to you. You better do the adapting yourself. And the people that are able to do that quicker and with less you know, throwing the hands up in the air and less fuss and just get on with it. They’re probably the ones who are gonna succeed the most. But we’re certainly at a stage now where I’m the relevant person in the role at the moment. And there might come a time in the future where Umbo potentially it’s too big or maybe isn’t changing enough to suit my skill set because I’m all about change and growth and I’m thinking about how to solve problems as they progress. And maybe Umbo will become so stable that I’ll get bored too. That’s very possible as well. So I think being open-minded about that is really important. And I’ve openly said to our board as well, if there’s a better person to do it, I’m more than happy to step aside.

Jo:

It takes an incredible amount of security in yourself. An incredible amount for anybody who can stand up and say, if you can find somebody better and not in a passive aggressive way. Cause I know you well enough to know you haven’t weaponised that you’ve kind of gone, if Umbo needs somebody else in this position right now, it’s more important for Umbo to have the right skillset than it is for me to be in this chair.

Weh:

Definitely. Right.

Jo:

That’s a hard thing for us to say. When, I mean, you birthed this thing, you grew this thing. How have you, I’m trying not to blow smoke here. What mindset do you have that enables you to go, if I’m not the right person for the job, help me step aside. What’s that mindset?

Weh:

Yeah, I think it’s just thinking about things beyond yourself. It’s really taking your ego out of it. And yeah, in my upcoming book, Jo ‘Redundant Charities’, which I’m sure we’ll talk about soon that’s a big part of it. So going back to the charity idea and social impact, which of course has been my whole area for the last 15 years, it is very hard to take your ego out of it because when you’re a founder and then you’re involved in helping and you’re not exactly getting paid a lot, you’re not exactly glamorised. You have to take something out of it. So having your ego stroke is actually a nice way of being paid <laugh>, funnily enough for the work that you do. But it is counterintuitive to making yourself redundant for sure.

Jo:

Yeah. So you’ve already brought up the book, which is great. I’m just gonna jump down to that point on my page here.

Weh:

Sorry for jumping ahead!

Jo:

<laugh>. No, I don’t mind at all. How do you want this book to make an impact? What is it about this book that we need to read?

Weh:

I think that the way in which we view helping has to change. I think that there has to be alternative views. And I will say this is only one viewpoint and the way that we scrutinise what is a good cause has to change as well. And it’s gotta go beyond just feeling good about it. And we have to, as I said before, engage rational thinking. And so with redundant charities, it’s really firstly highlighting why things are the way they are. What are the reasons why the structure of charities encourages dependency and encourages this hamster will. That’s the first half of the book. And the second half is highlighting all those charities that have broken that model, including the one in Cambodia that I started, of course. But those that are setting themselves up to be redundant and really bucking the system and doing it in a way, which I think shows a lot of integrity because it’s not what they’re incentivized to do.

Jo:

No. So what are the lessons that health professionals in private practice can expect to learn from reading a book about redundant charity?

Weh:

So I think when people read the book, they’ll hopefully see the argument about why charities are the way they are, and then they might get to the end of that section to feel a little bit depressed. But that’s why I’ve structured it the way I have because the second half is like, you can do something about it. So I guess that’s probably the message for people that are in a system like private practice and so on and maybe NDIS where it feels that it’s immovable and they feel like they’re just a little cog in the machinery and there’s not much they can really do about it. There is always something you can do. There is an alternative. And so within the nonprofit sector and within aid and development, there is so much whinging about everything is terrible and…

Jo:

Oh, have you been in health? That’s true. That’s so good. <Laugh>. Yeah, we eat our young, we’re like, you sucks. That sucks. The system sucks. Everything sucks. Right? I’m gonna go and learn how become a yoga teacher instead or something.

Weh:

Yeah, that’s right. And I probably exclude myself a little bit. You are much more involved in the sector, but I try to exclude myself a bit from my own mental health, probably <laugh>, but you know, complaining is valuable to us to an extent, but I guess the point is that there’s always something you can do. And so I found it really bizarre that in aid and development everyone complained about donors and the time that it took to do reporting and the time you know, asking for money and this cycle of dependency. And then with these redundant charities, they’ve taken that and they’ve said, okay, enough complaining, let’s think about a different model. And then they’ve created something really amazing.

Jo:

Yeah, that’s really powerful. So you’ve been working on this book for a while now. Wait, am I allowed to ask a very uncomfortable question? When can I get a copy?

Weh:

You can ask. You can get a copy by September. So it’s all happening at the moment. So yes and thanks to your advice as well, Jo, for getting it up and running. But yes, it’s been going for two and a half years. Which actually now I’m understanding is not that long. But I’m interested to see what people think about it. If it is of interest to people, that’s great. If it’s not, that’s also fine because for me personally, learning about these charities and writing this book and going through the process and me feeling inspired by their journey, that’s been enough already.

Jo:

Wow. Oh, now I wanna read the book just for that <laugh>. Fantastic. So Weh, you said yes to being a part of the 2023 Future Proofing Health Professional Symposium. Thank you. What can we expect to learn from you during your symposium presentation or interview? I think I’m interviewing you, aren’t I?

Weh:

I think so. Yes.

Jo:

Yes, I am.

Weh:

I think if people would get to know me and what I’m about, one of the things they would say is I’m not run of the mill <laugh>. So I’m not a standard physio. I’m not a standard you know, CEO or a charity founder. And I think that’s something that I have to really thank my parents for. They really encouraged us to challenge the status quo, which I will say is culturally actually quite unusual in some senses.

Jo:

I didn’t wanna bring that up, but because you know, this face, middle aged. My socioeconomic status, I kind of went, Ooh, I don’t think I can say that.

Weh:

I can say thank you for saying it. It’s cool. Yeah, I mean in eastern culture obviously it’s a lot about conforming and a lot about collectivism and fitting in with the group. So my parents, for whatever reason, were not like that and are not like that. So they always challenged us to think differently. And I think looking at problems that exist within the healthcare sector, there are ways in which professionals are able to think differently. But hopefully they’ll get a little bit of encouragement that despite the difficulties in choosing that path, there is always an outcome that’s worth it. And swimming against a stream, like, it’s never fun. It’s never enjoyable when you are in it, but sometimes when you just take a step back and look at what you’ve able been able to achieve and the lessons that you’ve learned and the people that you’ve become friends with along the way who are similar minded, then you start to realise it’s worth it. So I hope that people feel encouraged by that journey and want to apply it to their own areas of work.

Jo:

Yeah. I know that people who come to your session will be inspired and there is this incredible gift you have Weh to help normalise those of us who aren’t typical, you do that graciously and you do it without even trying to. So well I know there are many a times when I’ve spent time with you and I’ve gone ‘that’s an excellent way Wehism’ <laugh>

Weh:

<Laugh> Should start charging for them. Get some royalties. <Laugh>

Jo:

<Laugh> Possibly. There we go. Nicely done there by the way. We can have so much fun playing it. If you have not seen way’s Instagram handle, you need to go find that. We’ll put it in the show notes. That is hilarious. Which is great because it’s all about comedy. Alright. How can people find you apart from Instagram, <laugh>? How else can people find you?

Weh:

Pretty much every platform, Jo, unfortunately. I might not be that active these days cause I’m trying not to, but even on Threads, I’m not sure. Are you onT? I’m not sure. Cause it’s been like literally a week.

Jo:

I’m on Threads, but I’m kind of watching what’s happening. I’m actually enjoying it to be honest cause it’s all about conversation. But I can spend a lot of time there. I have to be careful.

Weh:

Definitely. So, okay, so the first one is my website. So it’s my name Wehyeoh.com. And then also redundantcharities.com will be live for the time the podcast is up. Umbo.com au. I’ll just keep on listing URLs. OIC Australia is at oiccambodia.org. They’re both charities that I’ve been involved with starting. And then all the usual social media platforms except TikTok. Too old for that.

Jo:

Yeah, I’m way too old for TikTok. I’m too judgy mc judgy. Weh also has a fantastic TEDx talk that he did a couple of years ago now. That is very, very, very good. So we’re gonna find it and we’ll put that in the show notes as well. Awesome. So it’s been ages since you and I caught up for our actual real life coffee. Yes. I can’t remember if we were going to a cafe and I was gonna get you a coffee. What would you be ordering?

Weh:

Ooh I’m oat milk at the moment. It’s tasty, but it’s also the most sustainable one I think in terms of resources. But you’d be very proud of me Jo,  because I recently grew up and got my own coffee machine at home after using aero presses and french presses and just kind of like delaying and delaying and delaying. So I feel like I’m a grown up human being now that I’m like tamping my coffee and you know, doing all that kind of stuff. So Yeah. But it’ll be an oat based something.

Jo:

Oat based something. So I might an oat based piccolo cause I haven’t had anyone on the podcast yet. Excellent. Weh, thank you so much for your time, your energy, your thoughtfulness with this podcast today. And for helping us to become more informed about how we could actually challenge the status quo. There’s always a way to do something different and that every single one of us have a role to play in making change. So thank you so much for that and I look forward to interviewing you again for the symposium