Tribeless’s Gwen Yi shares her experience
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As a board game enthusiast, one of my favorites has to be “We Are Not Real Strangers” (WRNS). It’s a card game that debuted in 2017 and allows for honest connections with the group you’re playing with.
Most card games these days are just for fun, while WRNS gives you the option of being as raw as possible with the “strangers” around you.
By the end of the game it seemed like we had all memorized each other, and it was a very meaningful experience.
I recently discovered a card game like WRNS from Malaysia called The Empathy Box.
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Made by Tribeless, a training and consulting company founded by Gwen Yi, it teaches empathy.
The cards in this box are a tool to help create a safe space for empathetic group conversations and were a personal help to Gwen when she resigned as CEO of Tribeless.
It started with the dinners
Tribeless and The Empathy Box were never what Gwen intended to do, although she always knew she wanted to be an entrepreneur.
4 years ago, his mental health took a leap forward, leading him to drop out of his university studies abroad and return to Malaysia.
“In this room of pain and loneliness, I was trying to figure out what to do with life. And then I started to organize dinners, ”he told the Vulcan Post.
“It was a fun thing I did and never made a profit. But when he did, there was a rule: don’t talk about trivial things. “
Gwen wanted to break the standard of conversation. How are you, how are you working, is your business good or not?.
These dinners became a part of Gwen’s life, and she also found that during these sessions, people opened up more and formed deeper connections.
It inspired her to turn those meaningful experiences into The Empathy Box, even though she personally isn’t a natural loveseat.
“You can’t tell, but I really have a lot of social anxiety. If you take me to a room full of strangers, I’ll be the one to stick around and talk to my friends, ”he confessed.
However, you always wanted to tell others about things beyond the surface, so these cards were your safe place to share your stories with others and vice versa.
Accept a harsh truth
Although the concept was there 4 years ago, Tribeless was not registered as a company until February 2018.
Gwen had also taken on the role of CEO of the company, but she was very new to the startup world. Titles like Founder and CEO didn’t mean much to her at first.
When they released the first version of The Empathy Box, they received orders from 22 countries which she personally remembers as a very stressful time.
“I didn’t know how to do compliance, sales, manufacturing, sales, human resources and everything. But my co-founder and friend Shawn knew exactly what to do at the time, ”he recalls.
The more she worked with him, the more she realized that he was much better than her as a CEO. But it wasn’t the reality that Gwen found easy to accept at first.
It took him 2 months to fully agree to cede his CEO role to Shawn, during which time their relationship was at odds.
He described an almost existential crisis when he discovered his identity was closely tied to the business until his sanity worsened.
So she must have asked herself a lot of honest questions to understand why she held the title of CEO so much when she was not fit to do so.
Founder = / = managing director
Growing up, Gwen Yi had always admired her parents, who were entrepreneurs with their own businesses, which made her believe she was destined for the same leadership path.
“I kept thinking, all the time, I thought I was a CEO of a fashion entrepreneur. How is it that not only is this not true, but I am the one causing the business to fail? “
“Part of me died, but another part died so this society could survive,” he realized.
After a year of power struggles between her and Shawn, they reached a sweet spot when Gwen finally let go of her ego and admitted that she needed help.
“My ego was huge, you can’t say anything bad to my face. But as I learned this ability to take criticism and have difficult conversations, our relationship between power struggles and what it is today has changed. “
Today Shawn does the internal work for Tribeless, such as administration, technology, legal and accounting, while Gwen takes care of the outside work, such as partnerships, clients, and chief training.
Since Shawn took over the business in November 2018, Tribeless has doubled its revenue and Gwen now has full confidence in her leadership.
They also reached out to businesses, international nonprofits and a national friendship campaign that reached 750 schools.
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This interview was conducted as part of our new Vulcan Post Open Book video series.
Gwen’s Story is the second chapter of our new company, and you can watch the video interview here:
- You can find more information about Tribeless and The Empathy Box here.
- Here you can find more information about other Malaysian startups we wrote about.
Featured Image Source: Gwen Yi, Founder of Tribeless