One Sneak Peek Into Experimentation and Authenticity

I was inspired to start VENKA Media, the first iteration of Ripple SG, by a few news media outlets.

Some local, some foreign.

And one of them happened to be Rice Media, a Singaporean digital publication committed to delivering clarity and sensibility about life in Southeast Asia through investigative reporting, cultural commentary, and critical analysis.

That’s why I was so honoured when I was introduced to Julian Wong, the talented co-founder of Rice Media.

Julian has worn many hats throughout his career.

From becoming a barista, doing freelance writing and giving tuition during college to co-founding Rice Media and doing leadership development and organisation design work at Open Government Products (GovTech), Julian has extensive experience leading both others and himself.

As an executive coach, and having recently returned to Rice Media to lead new partnerships projects, we at One Sneak Peek Into thought he would be able to share valuable tips for youths who are struggling to figure out their path or professionals contemplating a career switch.

Here’s what we talked about:

1. Follow your curiosity

“How I would describe my career is that I have always just followed my curiosity and see where it leads me to.

Back in school, I wasn’t always the best student. I was always more interested in asking questions than following instructions.

I was very curious about things both inside of school and outside of school.

When I finished JC, I found myself starting to wonder what life is really about. Is it just about studying or is it about other things as well?

So that was when I started doing part time work. And by the time I got into university, I was already working as a barista, a freelance writer, and a tuition teacher.

And after university, because of all these different things that I was doing, I somehow found myself with the opportunity to create a media company that became Rice Media. That soon became what I’m now most well-known for.  Rice Media was interesting for me because in my role I managed both our content and also our people, and oversaw internal operations. And that's where I learnt how to scale people and organizations and figure out how to bring out the best the people I work with.

After around five and a half years at Rice, I found myself at a crossroads. In my personal life, I had just lost a very close family member. This then made me think about what I wanted to do next, whether I wanted to keep staying at Rice or if I wanted to transition to something new. That was where I transitioned into working at Open Government Products, in GovTech, where we grew the team from 59 to 180, started training middle managers and managing organisational performance. I basically did that for two years and it was a lot of fun.

But I soon realised that fundamentally, I'm not great at being an employee. I don't like people telling me what to do.

So I decided to take a year off to really figure out what I wanted and what I was uniquely good at. Currently, I work as a coach. I also do consulting work, and I've transitioned back into Rice Media to figure out how to deepen our cultural impact through partnerships and non-media projects.”

2. Finding passion through experimentation

“I have been very lucky to have had the last one year to really stop and reflect.

I’m in this new phase of my career, where I'm now exploring a lot of new projects, new non-media related projects with Rice. I'm seeing how all these different experiences are actually showing up and connecting. There's like coaching work that I'm doing, there's organization related work, there are other kinds of things as well. But all of this happened because, I experimented a lot. And because I think I was always curious and at no point in time sort of thought that, you know, I already figured it outand this is what it's gonna be for the rest of my life.

I think for a lot of people like me, we're always in a rush. We have a very clear idea of where we want to go. And then we're like, How can I get there as fast as possible? Which I think is not always a bad question to ask. But now what I'm learning to think about is, is this the right opportunity for me?

Part of figuring out your purpose, is also about knowing what you don't want to do. So, for instance, I know that I don't want to work in certain kinds of roles. I know that I don't want to do certain kinds of things. I know that there are certain kinds of partners or people whose values will differ from mine and therefore may not make sense for me to work with.”

3. Be authentic as a leader

“As I was reflecting on the last 12 or 13 years of work, one thing that seemed to come up a lot for me was that I realized I just really am very curious about people. And I enjoy seeing the people that I hire grow to become the kind of writers and people that they have the potential to be.

So as I thought about these things and I started asking myself, ‘what can I do in this space that makes money’?

And then coaching came up.

In a similar way, I think that leadership is really about adding value to the organization and to the team, and doing it for the right reasons. Because what I've noticed across my career is that a lot of people will do things just because they want to be promoted.

That lands you in a very weird place because then it becomes very outcome driven and inauthentic. People can achieve a lot, but still feel like they are in the wrong place, this is not who they are, or that they are still deeply unhappy.

And this is what I think we all need to figure out across the course of our lives – how do I become the best version of the person or leader that I am uniquely qualified to be, where I am not simply performing what others think I should be?”

Connect with Julian : https://www.linkedin.com/in/wjwjulian/

Join our telegram channel: https://t.me/onesneakpeekinto

And that’s all for today’s One Sneak Peek Into

Stay tuned for more insights from our interview series as we continue to explore the stories of trailblazers breaking barriers and redefining success.