Sara Jane Ho
speaker
196 appearances
1 recordings
1 series
first heard Dec 2024
last heard Dec 2024
Sara Jane Ho’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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Appearances
Hi guys, it's Tony Robbins. You're listening to Habits & Hustle. Crush it.
There's only been season one.
Yeah.
Yeah, that's a great question. So by the age of 14 years old, I'd grown up in Papua New Guinea, the UK, Hong Kong, and Exeter, New Hampshire, because I went to boarding school at Phillips Exeter. And so I was very much a third culture kid.
You know, I was always like between really different cultures and trying to figure out how to fit in, right, which is kind of the one thing about like being human, right, human connection and belonging. And so it was very much a survival tool for me to be in different microcultures and figure out, OK, how do I how do I fit in? What are the codes of conduct here? What is the how are people dressed?
What is the slang used? And later on, when I graduated from Harvard Business School in 2012, I well, first I went to a Swiss finishing school, which is it was where women used to go back in the day because we didn't have the opportunity to go to college. And so women would finish the education at these finishing schools. It's mostly in Europe, but in America, you have CHOM school.
You have etiquette schools very much in America too back in the day. And now, you know, women are emancipated. Women can vote. Women go to university. So we no longer go to these finishing schools. But for me, going to finishing school and starting a finishing school in China for women, because we don't do kids, we do adult women.
It was an opportunity I wanted to combine what I was passionate about with what I felt was a market need because no other country has been like China where they've gone through so much change in such a short amount of time. Like when you think about the Industrial Revolution, right, that alone took 150 years to play out in Europe.
And then you have like the services revolution, the technological revolution. In China, you've had industrial services technological in 30 years. So that's a huge amount of change in a really short amount of time because China only opened up with economic reforms in 1978. So you have all these people with newfound riches. Right.
And then but then trying to figure out how to navigate the world with confidence. And for me, when I was growing up, my mother was very much a she was a role model and she was always hosting in the house, creating magical moments between friends. Christmas would be dozens of people at our house. And then I lost it to cancer when I was 21 years old. And my life really changed. I'm an only child.
My dad didn't entertain in the same way on his own. And my home went from being really warm and loving and busy to very cold and lonely and empty until I realized, because I'm a Sagittarius and I love being with friends and organizing social events, I realized I could continue her legacy in something that I also enjoyed doing with etiquette.
And so that's why in 2012, I moved to Beijing and I founded my etiquette school.
Yeah. So California is very casual. It's convenient. It's casual. It doesn't have the same sort of depth of history as the North as New England. Right. Yeah. Whereas like New England and then the South.
So the South is a lot of focus on charm school. That was a big thing. Debutantes coming out, their debut into society. So America is so big that you're right. It is very culturally different.
But back in the day, it would be. So for example, in Europe, if you're from a good family, then you'd be sent to, actually, if you're a man, you'd be sent on a grand tour of Europe to go study the arts, to go see, let's say like, you know, to go to Italy, to go to Greece, to go here and there, to finish your education, right?
Women would be sent to finishing schools to prepare them for life as a hostess. Princess Diana, for example, went to finishing school in Switzerland.
Yeah. So I was there for two, two and a little bit, two months, a little over two months. And it's a very intensive course schedule. you know, from morning till late afternoon. The course itself is called a hostess course.
And there were a lot of modules and everything from dining to dressing to table conversation, greetings and introductions, a lot of country learnings because etiquette is contextual. So there's no right or wrong in etiquette. It really, it's contextual. It depends on where you are, who you're with. For example, let's say if I give a gift to you and we're in the West, right?
You would open the gift in front of me to show importance to the gift. You would read the note in front of me. You'd make a big fuss of it and show gratitude. Now, in Asia, if I gave you a gift and if you opened it up straight away, it would show greediness and that you have no self-control. So in Asia, if I receive a gift, I put it aside. I don't make a fuss of it. Just put it aside.
And then maybe on my own is when I'll open it up. And then later on, then I'll thank the person who gave it to me.
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