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.”
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The CLEO Change Makers 2017 is presented by SK-II.