“My great-grandparents started a horticultural business over a century ago. I’m the fourth generation. This is what that taught me.”

I didn’t set out to write a book about farming. For most of my life, I thought I was as far from the fields as my family’s sacrifices could take me. But sometimes the lessons we need most are the ones we’ve been standing on all along.

My family’s story began in 1911, when my great-grandparents founded Nyee Phoe — a small nursery in Singapore that would span four generations. They grew plants, shaped landscapes, and built a business on soil and sweat. Each generation adapted to their time: my great-grandparents farmed the land, my grandparents weathered hardships, my parents and uncle scaled the company, and I… I searched for the why behind it all.

Growing up, I carried the expectations of every generation before me: study hard, get a degree, work in a multinational company. That was the dream — the wish of every farmer parent who worked so their children could escape the fields. And I did. I studied. I explored. I had the privilege to choose a different path.

But privilege brings its own questions: What am I building? Why does it matter? What will endure beyond my lifetime?

The Search for Purpose

For years, I chased growth the way many leaders do — sales targets, new projects, the next opportunity. I said yes to everything. My calendar was full, my inbox overflowing, my days stretched thin. It looked like progress, but it wasn’t. Deep down, I was just keeping myself busy to feel like I was moving forward.

The harder I pushed, the less grounded I felt.

Then came my work with the Kranji Countryside Association (KCA), where I met farmers across Singapore who shared the same challenges: adapting to uncertainty, working with limited resources, sustaining communities through their craft. Together, we learned that resilience grows stronger when it’s shared.

From 2014 to 2016, I served as Vice President of the Royal Agricultural Society of the Commonwealth (RASC) when Singapore hosted the 27th Commonwealth Agriculture Conference. That experience widened my perspective. I saw how farmers from vastly different climates and contexts shared one thing: a grounded awareness of purpose. Their patience, adaptability, and courage reminded me that leadership — like farming — begins in the soil of values.

The Local Farm: Growing Farmers, Growing Food

In 2019, just before the world changed, we launched The Local Farm (TLF). As we searched deeper into our purpose, our mantra emerged: Grow Farmers, Grow Food. It came from a simple truth — no farmers, no food.

That realisation simplified everything. Our purpose wasn’t just about selling produce; it was about nurturing the entire ecosystem — supporting farmers fairly so communities could be nourished.

When the pandemic hit, everything slowed. For the first time, I had space to reflect — not just on what I was doing, but why. In that stillness, I realised my work was never only about food or business. It was about tending to people, values, and possibilities.

In that moment, I understood: I am a farmer after all.

Not in the way my great-grandparents were — working the soil with their hands — but in the way that matters most: nurturing systems designed to endure. Building trust slowly. Tending to roots, even when storms come. Creating conditions where growth can happen.

The Farmer’s Mindset

Farming taught me what business school couldn’t: that real leadership isn’t about speed or scale. It’s about depth. Knowing when to plant and when to pause. When to add and when to clear. When to hold firm and when to bend.

These lessons became the foundation for this book — three qualities I call The Farmer’s Mindset: Simplicity (clearing what’s in the way), Resilience (bending without breaking), and Adaptability (preparing for weather you can’t predict).

Together they form the GA Tree Framework — roots for purpose, trunk for resilience, leaves for collaboration. Not a formula, but a rhythm. A way of tending what matters.

A book born from encouragement

In 2023, during a workshop by Winnie Hart at the Entrepreneurs’ Organization Global Learning Conference in Cape Town, I was reminded that what I had been living and learning was worth sharing — not as a manual or checklist, but as a mindset. A way of seeing. A way of being.

Her encouragement inspired me to write GROUNDED — not as a typical business book, but as an invitation. An invitation to slow down, to reconnect with what matters, and to lead in a way that truly sustains people and progress.

Why This Matters

We live in a time when leadership is often measured by speed and scale. But the farmers I’ve worked alongside taught me a different measure: Are the roots deep enough? Is the soil better than when we found it? Will what we’re building feed people after we’re gone?

This book is for anyone who feels that tension — between moving fast and staying grounded, between growth and purpose, between what the world asks and what actually matters.

Four generations taught me that you can’t rush what’s worth growing. But you can tend it faithfully, season after season, until it becomes something that outlasts you.

That’s what GROUNDED offers—not formulas or quick fixes, but a different way of seeing. A different way of leading. A different way of building something that matters.

Because in the end, it’s not about how fast we grow. It’s about how deep our roots go, and what we leave behind that continues to nourish others long after we’re gone.