What Are Rebecca Lim And 7 Other Girlbosses Doing That You Aren't?

Tjin Lee, 43, PR maven and entrepreneur

Who’s the girlboss: The next time someone declares that work-life balance is an urban legend, point them to Tjin Lee. The mother-of-two juggles #momlyfe with, not one, not two, but nine businesses under her tres chic belt — including PR and events firm Mercury Marketing & Communications, music school Wolfgang Violin Studio and online boutique Curated Editions — all while putting Singapore on the fashion world map as chairman of Singapore Fashion Week.

In between all this, the poster #girlboss of work-life balance still manages to find time to traipse around the world with her procurement officer husband John Lim and their adorbs tykes, Tyler and Jake. And some of us find it a chore to go grocery shopping after work.

But Tjin isn’t just content with juggling family and career. While she’s previously attributed her flexible schedule as an entrepreneur to being able to juggle both children and career, this working mum takes it a step further: setting up businesses inspired by motherhood, whether it’s hawking cute onesies on online baby clothing store Baby Style Icon, or setting up co-working space Trehaus which is decked out with childcare facilities. Yup, she aims to make that seemingly-elusive work-life balance a little easier to attain.

Can’t go a day without…. “Social media. Staying on top of the game means being on top of everything around you, and there’s no quicker and more targeted source of news and information in this digital age.”

A mantra she lives by: “Sometimes you win, sometimes you learn.”

Andrea Chong, 25, blogger/influencer

Who’s the girlboss: With an Instagram following of 292k, @dreachong has more followers than Felicia Chin and Zoe Tay. Combined. Like any girlboss will tell you, success doesn’t happen overnight. Her client portfolio has progressed from humble blogshops, back when she first dipped her toes in the industry in 2012 as a blogshop model who only started her own blog as fodder for a clicknetwork show. Today, the personable girl-next-door (albeit one with really nice clothes) is hawking products for global brands such as Pandora, SK-II and Microsoft, and is often living the Insta-high life, whether it’s hot air ballooning in sunny Cappadocia or selfie-ing with Kylie and Kendall in LA.

While just about every millennial and their mother is hankering for an Insta-perfect life like hers, this social media force knows that it’s not just about posting pretty pics. “You can’t just e-mail [a brand] and say, ‘Hey I’m a blogger with X number of followers, so sponsor me!’ You gotta tell them why you deserve to be sponsored,” she’s previously said.

In fact, Drea functions almost like a one-woman agency. Behind each perfect IG square is a photographer, stylist, location scout, photo retoucher — and her name is Andrea Chong. Oh, and did we mention that she’s the model too? Sure, she’s got a small team that consists of an assistant, videographer, and a manager from an influencer agency who helps with some of her campaigns.

But in her home office, she’s towkay, business manager, sales person, and admin lady, all rolled into one. And even though her assistant and manager have access to her calendar, she still works out her own schedules (she has a penchant for categorising her work days into Admin Day, Shoot Day or Meetings Day). Now that’s what we call multi-tasking.

Girlboss material: This millennial boss lady is so flexible, her team is on a “modern day [work] schedule”. “I have a home office where everybody meets when we’re not shooting. But if they need to edit videos or reply e-mails and prefer to do it from home, then do it from home. There’s no point for them to travel to my place just to reply e-mails in front of my face. Don’t need to come to the office at 9am. We keep communication open and there’s no point in playing politics or being a mean boss.”

A mantra she lives by: Cluttered space, cluttered mind. “I have to have everything organised — my to-do list, calendar, my space. If the space or my [home] office is messy, I can’t work. If I notice that the floor is very dusty while I’m in the middle of replying to e-mails, and I’ll vacuum the floor before I go back to my e-mails.”

Sonia Chew, 25, radio deejay

Who’s the girlboss: If you think 987FM radio jock Sonia’s job is just sitting behind a console and talking, well, this girl has taken on much more in the name of work than most folks. For her Toggle travel web series TravelSSBD (Same Same But Different, which clinched a Gold award at last year’s New York Festivals TV and Film Awards in Las Vegas), she has parasailed off a cliff despite a fear of heights, eaten snakes, and explored a deep, dark cave on a floating buoy all while rocking #onfleek eyebrows. Who says millennials are spoilt and lazy?

So serious is Sonia about her personal brand, she engages her own photographer to take photos for Instagram. “These days, your Instagram is like your résumé, so I wanted my feed to look cohesive and professional. I just do some minor photo editing on my own, like putting a VSCO filter on the photos,” she says.

It is one up for someone who has already bust the concept of deejays having faces for radio, and successfully crossed over to TV (Sonia also hosted Ch 5’s food series You Think You Know: Food in Singapore).

Girlboss must-do: “I make sure I have some time for my morning face mask, and I never leave the house without lipstick and perfume. I strongly believe that if you look fresh and feel confident, your day will rock.”

A mantra she lives by: “Never ever get complacent. Be professional and deliver 100 per cent at every single gig, big or small. Honestly, I have always found it hard to deal with failure. But over the years, I have told myself that everything happens for a reason, and I should be happy for others instead of feeling salty!”

Jenny Tay, 31, undertaker

Who’s the Girlboss: For some, their career is a matter of life and death. For Jenny Tay, it’s about death and, well, death. And you wouldn’t even be able to tell. Standing at 1.75m, the svelte funeral director could easily be mistaken for a model. Instead, comforting bereaved families, handling coffins and overseeing the embalming of corpses is all in a day’s work for Singapore’s top femme fatale (quite literally). She also happens to be the daughter of arguably Singapore’s most famous undertaker Roland Tay, who’s made headlines for his pro bono work for high-profile murder victims like Huang Na.

The next time you’re afraid to take the plunge and go for a career switch, consider this: this fearless #girlboss didn’t only leave a marketing job to help with the family biz after her then 65-year-old dad’s heart attack, she hardly flinched the first time she came face to face with a corpse. “I see myself as a caretaker for the dead. There’s no need to be scared because all of us will also pass on one day,” she opines.

Being a woman in a rough trade typically run by older men hasn’t daunted Jenny one bit. “When I first joined, it was hard for business vendors and even my staff to take me seriously as they thought that I was too young and demure, and they didn’t think that I would last even three months. I had to work doubly hard on the ground to earn their trust.”

While Roland still acts as a consultant for the biz, Jenny has since, among other things, established a proper workflow system and charted out career progression paths for their staff; and together with her husband, has increased the company’s revenue from $2mil to a whopping $11mil in just four years. Now that’s to die for.

Girlboss must-do: “I spend five minutes each day going through my to-do list so that I have a clear view of how to plan my day. It’s also important to count my blessings and be grateful every day. There are so many things to juggle in our daily lives and it’s important to keep track of what I have to do so that I’m on top of things.”

A mantra she lives by: “I live by my favourite quote from Henry Ford: ‘Whether you think you can, or whether you think you can’t, you are right!’

Kirsten Tan, 36, filmmaker

Who’s the Girlboss: There’s an age-old showbiz adage that goes, “Never work with children or animals”. And then there’s this garang Singaporean filmmaker who goes and does the complete opposite. Kirsten took on a giant elephant in Thailand for Pop Aye, her heartwarming debut flick about a Thai man’s attempt to bring his childhood pet elephant back to his hometown village. The movie became the first Singaporean feature film to win a Special Jury Prize for screenwriting at the Sundance Film Festival.

It is all thanks to this #girlboss’ penchant for playing the game of life in Hard mode — the National University of Singapore Literature graduate would’ve eschewed the typical Singaporean path if she could, but got a degree at her “business folks” parents’ insistence. After getting to know some Thai artists during a one-year film residency in Korea, Kirsten decided to visit her newfound friends in Thailand, where she ended up spending two years backpacking through the country and co-running a T-shirt stall at Bangkok’s Chatuchak market to make extra dough.

Following that, she continued to pursue filmmaking till her efforts paid off, despite feeling like a “misfit”. She muses, “Pop Aye was an incredibly difficult film to make, but I realised success isn’t about glory; it’s about staying on long enough to the end. I don’t think I’m particularly achievement-oriented, but I’m obsessed with what I do. Film has become so much a part of my life’s purpose that I almost subconsciously include most of my life experiences in the films I make.” And that is working like a true bawse.

Can’t go by a day without… “Simply putting one foot ahead of another, step by step, to make it out intact when I’m thrown into the deep end of challenging situations. On set, I worry more about moment-to-moment situations. I barely have time to think in a macro way, like if my films do well or not. I believe that a large endeavour is created with a thousand tiny decisions and as long as I feel that I have made each decision to the best of my ability, I can live with no regrets.”

A mantra she lives by: “‘There isn’t anyone you couldn’t have loved once you hear their story.’ When I try to empathise with people and see where they are coming from, I begin to understand why they behave in a certain way sometimes. It helps me [get into] the characters I’m writing.”

Cynthia Chua, 45, CEO/founder of Spa Esprit Group

Who’s the girlboss: She introduced Brazilian waxing to a generation of clueless Singaporeans. Today, her risqué-taking endeavours includes coochie perfume — yes, eau de toilette for your privates. You may think it’s ludicrous, but naysayers did too, once upon a time, well, 21 years ago when the Spa Esprit Group began as a humble day spa in Holland Village. And 21 years, 17 Spa Esprit brands, 30 Browhaus outlets and 14 F&B outlets later, these critics are probably eating their words somewhere (probably at a Tiong Bahru Bakery outlet or Forty Hands cafe) or drowning their sorrows at Tippling Club.

The jewel of her endeavors, Strip, alone has 48 outlets across 11 cities. It’s single-handedly, in Forbes’ words, “put Singapore on the map — one Brazilian wax at a time.” No beating around the bush: world groom-ination is definitely on this #girlboss’ agenda.

Last year, Cynthia expanded her biz into London and will soon be making inroads into China and America. Speaking of bushes, this gungho girlboss is also big on urban farming, as one of the pioneers of urban farms here, with a farm-to-table concept at the lush Open Farm Community, and has introduced an urban rooftop farm perched atop Raffles City which provide the main ingredients to some of Spa Esprit’s farm-to-beauty range. What next?

One thing she has to do every day… “Think out of the box, and wondering what’s the discovery for today and what my a-ha moment would be. Every day’s got to be exciting!”

A mantra she lives by: “I did it my way!”

Janice Wong, 34, pastry chef and entrepreneur

Who’s the girlboss: At 24, the pastry prodigy ventured into unchartered territory — luxe dessert joints were practically unheard of here then — and started 2am: dessertbar in Holland Village. In the past decade, she’s gone on to snag the title of Asia's best pastry chef, awarded by the prestigious San Pellegrino Asia's 50 Best, for two consecutive years. Besides expanding her dessert empire islandwide, the pastry prodigy ventured into savouries last year with an eponymous flagship restaurant at the National Museum of Singapore, and restaurants in Hongkong and Japan.

“Being a girlboss is definitely inspiring as there aren’t many female head chefs around so you really are in a position to inspire females to pursue their dream in this line,” says Janice.

But this is a girlboss who thinks outside the...plate. Not content with just serving delightful desserts on dinnerware, Janice began experimenting with larger-than-life edible art installations that are artistic feasts for the eyes and tastebuds, if you will. Think plucking sweets and treats from ceilings and walls. Paintings created with kaleidoscopic chocolate paint? Check. They’ve inked her status as the go-to artist-cum-chef for events and shows, both on our shores and overseas, including the Miami Art Basel. And if the size of her creations corresponds to her plans for domination in the culinary world, we’ll be keeping our eyes peeled, and our bellies ready for more.

Girlboss material: Janice doesn’t believe in beating around the bush. “I’m very direct. It’s always been in me. When you are direct, you are efficient.”

A mantra she lives by: “Treat everyone with respect and be happy always. As the boss, if you don’t do that, it creates a ripple effect of bad energy which affects others.”