Kelly Wong, 28, Founder of Wong Kee Wanton Noodles
“For me, the 20s is a good time to take risk. It’s a good time to try new things because you probably don’t have a lot of liabilities.
Before striking out on my own, I was in banking. I was really tired of working in an office and wanted to achieve more. It also hit me that my dad was getting older, and it’d be a waste if nobody picked up his great cooking skills as a hawker. I decided to get him to teach me, it helped that I inherited a passion of cooking from him as well.
Before I made the switch, I had to mentally list the pros and cons and ask myself if I could handle what’s to come. Being my own boss means relying on my own discipline and diligence to get work done. It also requires a lot more time than an office job, but I was still committed to doing it, despite knowing this.
There were a lot of things that happened after I made the switch that I didn’t expect, or were worse than I’d imagined. Manpower was way harder to deal with than I thought, and business can be unpredictable. Factors such as location, parking, weather and school holidays all play a part in whether or not a business does well. It’s been more stressful than I thought it’d be.
When there was a change in infrastructure in my previous location, my business was affected and I had to close shop because we stopped making money.
But you know, you don’t just fall and never get up, and I shifted to Timbre+ to keep going. My mom always tells me to never take failure as failure–its just a learning path. I believe that as long as I continue on working towards my goal of running a successful business, I’ll achieve it. I’ve now been doing it for about five years.
The hawker industry is pretty male-dominate, and that can be tough. But it also just makes me want to prove myself. Sometimes, my team will tell me that I’m like a man. I act and speak like one, and my working style is also quite masculine. I suppose I got these traits from my dad. However, to me, if the guys can do it, I don’t see why women cannot. In this trade, if we don’t carry the heavy goods and don’t do the dirty work, no one else will do it for us.
I never thought that people would ask me to share my story, but people have also told me that I inspire them and that really makes a difference to me. When I first entered the industry, my dad told me that it’ll just all be uncles and aunties and I’ll have no friends. I said ‘It’s OK, it doesn’t matter,’ because I already have enough friends and I don’t think you need a lot to get through life. But I actually met a lot more people than I could have imagined, whether from the media or food industry, and got to enjoy a lot more experiences.”
See the full list of Change Makers here.
Looking for some seriously good life inspirations? Click here to meet the CLEO Change Makers!
The CLEO Change Makers 2017 is presented by SK-II.
