The Standard Setter

Before the Door Opened

I was not waiting for someone to believe in me.

By the time I walked into Above Advisory in Sydney, I had already built something from nothing. A small interview page I started myself during university, not because anyone told me to, but because the market had made itself clear: no portfolio, no experience, no job. So I made my own portfolio. I found my own clients. A cafe. A quantity surveyor firm. I learned content, video editing, copywriting, client management, all of it, by doing it for real people with real expectations.

WAQ Production. The interview page I built at UNSW. 96 posts, 1,000 followers, the receipt I walked into Above Advisory with.

I was not the kind of person who waited for permission.

But there was something I did not have yet. I knew how to work hard. I did not yet know what hard work looked like at its best.

The Last One Out

Molly Lim was the founder of Above Advisory. I joined as a social media manager, blending the marketing background I had built myself with the accounting and finance I studied. On paper, it was a good fit. But what I actually learned there had nothing to do with any of that.

What I learned came from watching.

Molly at her desk. The image I carry without realising I'm carrying it.

Molly was the last one to leave the office. Every time the sky outside went dark, she was still there, screen lit, working through something for a client. She replied to every client concern with care and patience. She invested in software she believed in. She checked in on her team, not to monitor, but to genuinely ask how they were doing, whether they were aligned, whether they had what they needed.

She never sat me down and told me any of this. There was no mentor session, no lecture on professionalism. I just watched. And in watching, I started to understand what the word "standard" actually meant. Not as a concept, but as something you could see with your own eyes, in the small daily choices of a person who had decided what she stood for.

The most powerful lessons do not come from what people tell you. They come from what you see people do when no one is asking them to do it.

That image, the office at night, Molly still at her desk, became a reference point I have carried without realising it. A quiet calibration of what it means to take your work seriously.

What a Platform Actually Is

There is something else Molly gave me that I did not fully appreciate until much later.

She knew I was interested in investing, in property. So when a buyer's agency approached her as a potential client, she offered to bring me along. Not because it was part of my job. Because she remembered what I cared about, and she saw an opening.

That is what a platform is. Not a title or a salary or a desk. It is someone who pays enough attention to know where your interests live, and then finds small ways to let those interests grow inside a real context.

She gave me her trust. She gave me resources. She gave me proximity to things I was curious about. And in return, I gave the work everything I had, because when someone treats you like you are worth investing in, you do not want to prove them wrong.

The Difference Between Molly's Bet and Mine

I carry all of this now into how I lead my own team.

I have a team member, HuiXian, fresh out of university. She wants to build a career in marketing but does not quite know where to start. I bring her into real projects. I explain the thinking behind the work, not just the task. When this is done, she will leave with a portfolio, not just completed assignments.

But I have been honest with myself about something.

Molly's bet on me was different from my bet on HuiXian. Molly invested in someone who had already proven he would not wait around. I had the page, the clients, the track record, small as it was. She was placing a bet on a horse already running.

My bet on HuiXian is different. I am investing in someone I hope will start running. That is not wrong. But it is a different kind of faith, and it carries a different kind of risk. I am not sure yet whether she is ready. Part of why I am investing is because I want her to be.

I think Molly knew the difference too. I think good leaders always do.

What Stays

I used to think the lesson from my time at Above Advisory was about finding a good mentor. But that is not quite right.

The real lesson is about what happens when you put a person who is already hungry into a room with someone who has already decided what excellence looks like. The hunger meets the standard. And the standard, once you have truly seen it, does not leave you.

You carry it into the way you reply to a client at 10pm. Into the way you check in on your team, not to monitor, but to actually ask. Into the way you look at a fresh graduate and think: what do they care about, and how do I make space for that inside the work we are doing together?

You choose who you work with. That choice sets the ceiling you aim for. And if you are lucky, and if you have already done enough to deserve the luck, the ceiling is higher than anything you could have set for yourself.

Who you work beside shapes what you believe is possible. Choose that person carefully.

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Related: No One Cares More Than You and The Work Nobody Saw — two posts about HuiXian, the bet I made, and what it actually looks like to back someone in real time.