#79. Quinntessential Questions With Alia Ballout |
Building Singapore’s First Olive Oil Brand
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In this episode of The Quinntessential Questions Podcast, Paul Quinn sits down with Alia Ballout, Founder of Beît Ballout, Singapore's first olive oil brand and processing facility. From quitting a career in law to filling olive oil into badly packaged bottles at market fairs, Alia shares her transformation journey and the moment a video call from her mother picking olives in Lebanon changed everything.
She discusses entrepreneurial resilience, the fear of being seen, authentic brand building, and why she believes the only protection you have in this world is economic. Alia also opens up about why her mother became the face of the brand, and the delusional mindset that turned a product nobody wanted to look at into a million dollar vision. Whether you're building a brand from scratch, navigating corporate environments that try to dim your light, or searching for the courage to be seen, this conversation offers hard-won wisdom on entrepreneurship, identity, and turning fear into fuel.
Guest Bio
Alia Ballout is the Founder of Beît Ballout, Singapore's first olive oil brand and processing facility, born in Singapore, raised in Oman, and shaped by a Lebanese heritage that includes a grand-aunt who was the first female feminist in the Middle East, a grandfather who served as political advisor to Saddam Hussein, and an uncle who was a founding member of Al Jazeera, bringing that same fearlessness to a journey that took her from a Juris Doctor at SMU to the opening team of the Mondrian Hotel, through law firms that told her to stop shining and a recruitment career that taught her she was built to sell, before registering a company in a corporate law class without knowing what she would do, filling olive oil into badly packaged bottles bought from Scoop, selling solo at market fairs for nine to ten hours and pushing a trolley home because the taxi was forty dollars, landing Tatler Dining and Straits Times coverage off a single viral reel she never planned to post, building The Shared Table into an intimate curated dining experience bringing together chefs from Palestine, Lebanon, and Italy, and now co-oping olive farms across South Lebanon, Palestine, and Spain with a conviction that branding is so much more than sitting on a shelf, that the only protection you have in this world is economic, and that nothing worth building has ever been done by someone who was afraid to be seen.
Minutes
(00:00) Introduction
(00:56) Who is Alia Ballout?
(04:42) A Family of Main Characters
(07:30) Growing Up in Oman
(25:51) The Fear of Being Seen
(26:57) Imposter Syndrome Isn't Real
(28:43) Law School at SMU
(38:15) Lebanese Resilience and Fearlessness
(41:36) The Olive Oil Origin Story
(49:16) Selling Alone at Fairs
(49:44) The $1 Million Product Mindset
(53:12) Tatler, Straits Times, and Going Viral
(1:04:36) Building Singapore's First Olive Oil Brand
(1:09:08) At a Certain Level Everything is Spiritual
(1:19:52) Supermarkets Take 50% of Your Profit
(1:21:10) If Temasek Invested in South Lebanon