New Generation Freelancers! with Kyle Ong and Loh Yen-Lyng
“We must paint a realistic picture of what freelancing is. I think freelancing is tougher than as a full-time employee.” More millennials want freelance careers instead of working full-time. CreativesAtWork Loh Yen-Lyng and Kyle Ong talk about what it is like to be the next generation of freelancers.
Jayce: I’m Jayce, I’m one of the co-founders of CreativesAtWork.
Fanny: Yeah, I'm Fanny. We are from CreativesAtWork and we're just trying to see if we can reach out to more people who are interested in freelancing, hence, we started this podcast and every week we will invite freelancers or our partners, who can tell us more about the gig economy, which is booming in Asia.
Today, who do we have?
Jayce: Do we have Kyle and Yen Lyng.
Fanny: They are freelancers in the media industry who have turned into partners with CreativesAtWork. So, right now, they help us to work on projects, and to see how we can bring more freelancers to work on more jobs for our clients.
Jayce: Okay, shall we get Yen Lyng and Kyle to introduce themselves?
Fanny: Yeah.
Jayce: A bit about yourself and what you do?
Yen Lyng: Well, when I freelance I describe myself as a business developer and marketing consultant. They’re terms that work for it. Basically, the next question from people would then be, “So, what do you actually do?” It's basically, everything, because it's such a wide scope. There's actually no scope, it's mostly for small businesses who might not necessarily need such a big team or a full-time person to come in, or if they cannot pay a full-time pay but they still need help, in terms of maybe meeting clients, maybe in developing more proposals, coming up with a marketing strategy. So, they need someone to fill a gap, but they don’t have a very big gap to fill.
Jayce: So, Yen Lyng, you were working full-time before you turned to freelancing?
Yen Lyng: Yes.
Jayce: So, what made you decide to go into freelancing?
Yen Lyng: The company didn't need me anymore. I think it's precisely that, that a small company does not have such a huge hold of you, and there was no point in them retaining me as a full-time staff. And of course, they relocated after that, so that was an additional prompt, I think, for them, and at that time it was either for me to go and look for a full-time job or for me to explore freelancing, and I was very lucky to be offered a freelance gig that could allow me to, I won’t say entirely turned me into freelancing, but I thought that I could maybe explore this for a bit. And two or three years down, I'm still here and I think if you asked me to turn back now, I wouldn't.
Jayce: Okay, Kyle, how about you?
Kyle: I'm a Millennial. So, I'm young. I'm a film maker and I've been freelancing for a bit, since my high school days, so yeah, that's it.
Jayce: How long have you been freelancing?
Yen Lyng: And what do you freelance as?
Kyle: Okay, I've been freelancing for five to six years, but if you're saying seriously, like super serious about it, I would say after school, two years. I freelance as… there’s no actual term for it. So, the reason I call myself a film maker instead of like a director, producer, a DP, is because I think that I can do, I’d not say all of them, I can do some of them, and I can do them okay. So, I can direct, I can produce, I can edit, I can shoot. But if you were to ask me, “Are you a post-production producer?” I'm not that, but I can edit, so probably an editor.
So, I like to call myself a “Creative Swiss knife”, so I can do things that are creative, but not necessarily to the best, and I'm currently trying to find it right now.
Fanny: But you are young, so you still have time.
Jayce: So, you have not worked for anybody before, since you've graduated?
Kyle: I have, but not full time.
Jayce: Okay, so you have always been freelancing? So how do you know freelancing is the right path for you?
Kyle: I guess I started out when I was younger, I went through the route that my parents wanted me to have. I knew that I wanted to do films, but typical Singaporean parents might say, “Oh you want to do creative, you don’t want to be an artist. It's not going to work.” So, I followed their advice, I went to do accounting. I did okay at it.
I know right? Me accounting. I did okay at it, but I could not imagine that one day, one day I cannot imagine myself, after one year passed of doing it, I started thinking, “If I'm going to do this for the rest of my life, no matter how much I earn, it's not worth it. It's just boring.”
So, I found myself in class doing more and more film making stuff than doing the actual accounting work. That's when I knew I had to drop out, but don't drop out, guys don’t drop out. We are not Bill Gates, or we are not Steve Jobs, you shouldn't drop out, it's a dumb decision.
Yen Lyng: So, do you regret dropping out?
Kyle: No. Yeah but like, there's a difference between dropping out from normal school over Harvard, that's the difference.
Fanny: So how do you guys choose a project now that you're freelancers?
Yen Lyng: Now, because it’s quite full right, the plate, I don’t have a lot of chance…
Fanny: But when you are not full, as a project comes along, what kind of criteria do you place on the projects that you accept? Is it like first come first serve until your plate is full?
Yen Lyng: It used to be, when I first started out it was like that. And so actually I still have a client who I undercharge, because he was like my first or second client or something like that, but I just feel bad dropping him, but it's really not worth my time. But because he's my first client I can't drop him, until I can find a better alternative for him.
But right now, I think I'm lucky to know people and work with people who work on things I like anyway, because they're friends but a lot of it is true, still through word of mouth and people know what I do. It's more like we will be talking about, “What do you want to do?” You know? “Hey, how about this idea?” Then, “Okay, let's do this together, yes.” Yeah, I guess it's hen-picking that way, but it's not like they come to us, there's not a huge plate in front of me to choose from, but when I see an opportunity I'll go for it.
How about you?
Kyle: I think I have at least also one client that I also undercharge, simply because I enjoy working with that client and I want to maintain that relationship. But not to sound like a show-off but as you grow as a freelancer, your rates grow as well and then you know that certain clients can't afford you anymore, but I don't want to drop that client because I like working with that client and I want to maintain that relationship. Like in fact, that client is no longer a client, it's like a friend. So yeah, I do have that client. I do not have the luxury to be super overbooked, but enough to be [Unclear 00:08:50].
Choosing clients-wise, I think I'm okay. I think right now as I mentioned, I'm quite a generalist, so if the project is interesting and it pays, I think I will take it.
Yen Lyng: Have you ever thought of expanding your team?
Kyle: Okay, here's the thing about me. I know that a lot of film makers, especially directors, after a few years, they will build a production team and stuff. I guess I never felt that I needed a production house thing, I guess I could, but I feel that I prefer to work as a freelancer, as an individual, and then I will get help from my freelancer friends if I need. So, for example; if I'm directing a project and I need a camera guy, I will just find a camera guy.
Jayce: How is the working relationship with CreativesAtWork? That is the first question, second question is, has it actually helped you to progress in your freelance career after working with us?
Kyle: You first.
Jayce: Ladies first, for you it’s always ladies first.
Yen Lyng: I'm biased because the first job that I talked about when I came, that was from you guys. So, for me it was like opening doors for me, because actually, I always wanted to be a freelancer, I think, ever since I was very, very young. I want to be my own boss, I cannot listen to people, I have my own ideas. But I went to film school and I realised I'm not that creative, I'm enough for me to fit into film school but not enough to say…
Jayce: Be an award-winning director.
Yen Lyng: Yeah, you know, I wasn't technically strong. If they asked me to operate cameras, I had to think very long, I can't even remember certain things on how to operate it right now. So, I thought, “I should leave that to people who can do it better.” But actually, when I was in school I thought that of all the, I would say the credit roller that you want to see yourself in, I want to be the executive producer.
Kyle: The one that's making the money, right?
Fanny: Or losing the money.
Yen Lyng: That’s right. But at the same time, there's the pinnacle of where you can go in film making, but because I felt that I couldn't go into film making because I didn't have the talent, I stepped out, and that's when I went to business development and marketing. Because they're sort of straddling between the two if you really think about it, and CreativesAtWork, those first few projects, sort of brought me back into it a little bit. So, it is there where I sort of carved out the little niche that I have for myself. I'm still sort of carving out and trying to streamline that niche a lot more, but does that answer your question, because I forgot what the question was? How does working…?
Yeah, so basically that’s the whole journey, the whole freelancing journey.
Kyle: There's two questions.
Jayce: Yeah, there's two parts to it, that is part A.
Yen Lyng: Oh, the part B?
Jayce: The B part, how has it…
Kyle: How has it helped your career?
Jayce: Yeah, how has it helped your career? But I guess you also answered it, because as you said…
Yen Lyng: Yeah, that's right, it's about streamlining. Because I think a lot of people who I talk to, why I advocate freelancing so much right now, is because when I said I want to be a freelancer, but I didn't think I had the skills for it. I went for a lot of motivational talks last time, one of them said, “It's not that you don't have the talent, it's just that you have to 'brain' yourself, you have to tell your story. You just have to find that talent.” He knew of one kid who could speak 12 languages fluently, he's a natural linguist, but he felt that he had no talent, because he didn't know how –
Fanny: To use it.
Yen Lyng: Yeah, how having 12 languages could help him. So, it's just knowing your strengths and then just doing what you love, finding someone to pay you to do what you love basically.
Fanny: Yeah that's the thing.
Yen Lyng: Ikigai.
Fanny: Ikigai.
Yen Lyng: Yeah, and so that's why if, like I say, if you ask me to go back to doing a full-time job right now, I wouldn't. Because yeah, there are business development jobs, yeah there are marketing jobs, but they do not give you the same kind of freedom, they do not give you the same type of control that you want over the career that you have.
Jayce: Kyle how about you?
Kyle: Now, you mentioned the full-time thing, right? Actually, I was thinking back, I was having flashbacks, actually I did have a full-time job, because it was so short I forgot about it.
Yen Lyng: Is it internship, does it count?
Kyle: No, no, no, it was a full-time job, I was very lucky. I thought, at least… Okay, let me set the context, at least I thought I was lucky. Fresh out of film school, you know, and then I applied for a few jobs because I wanted a stable life, so I applied as a director for an agency, and I got it.
Yen Lyng: Oh yeah, you should mention this.
Kyle: But after working for like a few months, and it was a job that required me to fly for oversea shoots, I realised that I was receiving the short end of the stick, basically. I'm glad I realised it so soon, and I'm glad that I left that company so soon, because of my experience as a freelancer, I knew that those are not reflective of the rates that the company was earning.
So essentially, the business strategy was very smart, a very lean team, but they were earning a lot of money with that lean team. So, I left, it didn't reflect, and I left.
Jayce: Okay, and that's where you decided to go into freelancing to keep all the money to yourself.
Kyle: Go back to freelancing. Yes, okay not really, and the ability to choose and the ability to do my creative work. I guess that is what freelancing is about for me.
Jayce: But I'm sure as a freelancer, you faced a lot of challenges as well?
Kyle: Oh man.
Jayce: So especially in Singapore, because I think freelancing is still in a very nascent stage in Singapore, compared to places like for example, US and all of these. So, what are some of the challenges that you faced when you first started out as a freelancer?
Kyle: I guess the first step, in a Singaporean context, so for the overseas friends that are watching, it may not apply to you; but the Singaporean parent, oh my God, like every Chinese New Year dinner, they'd be like, “So what exactly do you do? What is a freelancer?” You know? Like, “So are you your own boss? Do you have CPM, do you have medical benefits?” And I guess I went through, the first step was my father, my father was very against the idea, he was like, “You're not going to feed yourself. It's a terrible job, so why don't you just be a normal person and then just go?” –
Yen Lyng: A normal person!
Jayce: Be an accountant.
Kyle: Be an accountant, yeah. So, I think that is one of the hardest challenges, to get approval of your family. Even after joining art school, my dad was still like, “I don't think you should do this, you should really be thinking of a career and stuff.” But I guess time proves.
Jayce: So now is your father more acceptive or does he understand?
Kyle: No no, my father is happy with my progress right now –
Yen Lyng: Tolerates.
Kyle: Is the right word. He's happy with my progress, but now he's complaining about other things, like, “Why aren't you getting married? Why do you work so much?”
Yen Lyng: But you are.
Kyle: Not really, it’s too far.
Yen Lyng: You can tell him time proves.
Kyle: Exactly yes, so you?
Yen Lyng: The more practical sense is like having to deal with finances. CPF was something that I never quite liked anyway. So, you know me, that CPF I'm like, they are not deducting 14% of my pay, it's fine.” But I've always been good at saving, so that's good for me as well, it doesn't really make a dent in my plans.
But I think it's learning how to run your own business, even though I say that I like to run my own business, there’s a lot of practical problems that you have to think about, like again, finances.
Right now, the headache for me is sorting out invoices and if I register myself as a sole proprietor, and the IRP and the banking problem, I had to set up another corporate account. All these are the very minor headaches that put a real chink in your plan, you know [unclear 00:18:37].
Actually, all of this, my parents, they were worried, but I've always been sort of a rebel in my family. So, my family would nag, but they expect it and I expect it, so that is negligible, but my dad still asks me, he will still ask me, if I stay at home and work there for a couple of days in a row, a couple of days in a week, the question is like, “You have no more projects?” He's retired, he doesn't work anymore, but he still asks me, “You need money or not? I can give you money.” I was like, “You have no money, you’re already complaining.” But, I'm still okay, I just prefer to work at home some days, so I don't know why he doesn't get the concept that I can work anywhere I want.
Fanny: I think parents are still okay, the worst are the, I'm sorry, the taxi drivers. Like every time if I get into a cab, because we are in this industry, so we dress readily, every time they would ask me, “What do you work as?” Sometimes I would say, “Yeah, off, taking it off.” Or I say like, “I’m sick.” The other day I told them, admin, because if you tell a freelancer, they would understand.
Yen Lyng: If I’m doing it for me, it still sort of works there.
Fanny: And then there was one time where me and my husband we were doing some applications, so we had to fill into the property agent, but at that time I was a freelancer, I was really just freelancing so there was no occupation to tick as a freelancer. So, he said, “May I tick this box off?” “It’s odd job labourer.” After I met MDA, the Media Developer Association, I told them this. And I'm so happy that five years, five or six years now, it's better, people are starting to recognise freelancers in Singapore.
Yen Lyng: Do you feel there's a difference from you being a freelancer and you being a business women right now?
Fanny: Yeah, actually
Jayce: I've always been employed but just in a different capacity.
Fanny: There's a difference, I think when you're a freelancer you have more freedom, but I mean right now we are running CreativesAtWork. I really look at CreativesAtWork as an entity, I work for CreativesAtWork. Because CreativesAtWork ultimately, is not… I mean, of course it's founded by Jayce and me, but never before, ever by us, it is an entity and it will have to be passed to somebody besides us who is more capable to run it, if such an opportunity arises.
So, I really treat it as a baby now, you know? I'm just holding it for the moment and helping it build up to its fullest potential. So, it's a difference, but when I'm working for myself as a freelancer, there are pros and cons.
Jayce: I think the accountability is different and how you actually manage it would be very different; if you are managing your personal capacity versus if you are managing it from entity perspective.
So, I mean personally for me, I have always been employed, it's just that now it's under CreativesAtWork, but previously it's under other organisations. The greatest things that I’ve seen in the last five years since the founding of CreativesAtWork, is really the acknowledgement of freelancers. Back when we first started, everybody… I have clients when we go to clients and say, “You know, I run a network of freelancers called CreativesAtWork.” Then people are like, “What are freelancers?” “You mean your company doesn't employ anybody, just you?” So, questions like these, “How do you run a company without anybody inside the company, just you?” So, a lot of question marks, and they’re quite always, “You mean, there are freelancers, graphic designers at Freelancers?”
Then we have a lot of explaining to do, where we show our client, to say no, these are companies, those are creative professionals, and anyway, if you work with an agency, the chances are they are also working through…
Fanny: You may, true.
Jayce: Yeah, you may be working with the same group of people as well. But until today, there's really a vast improvement. I think right now, most of the time, our clients already knows what a freelancer is, without us having to say it, and in fact, some of them actually appreciate it, that the very fact that we have been reaching out to this group, and the whole concept of using freelancers to work on their project is no longer a novelty. They kind of acknowledge that there is this need of this group of people that they can actually leverage on, in terms of helping to skill up their creative business part. There's really a huge improvement. And then back then, it wasn't something talked about by the government, but now if you look at it; NTUC, RMDA, MOM.
Yen Lyng: They're all trying to push it.
Jayce: Yeah, people are trying to, not to push, but push is one, second is really to actually see how we can actually improve on the current situations and make it a viable career. So, from a protection perspective, from a sourcing perspective, from even a pure acknowledgement perspective, I think that kind of helps to make this freelance career a much more enjoyable one.
So, having been through it, now that you yourselves are into it, what is the future that you see for this whole freelance, or rather the gig economy?
Yen Lyng: In general?
Jayce: In general, for Singapore.
Fanny: Maybe an easier question to answer is, I mean we are in touch with a lot of schools because of graduates and things like that, whenever we talk to the graduating students, they fall into two camps. One camp is, they want to… Let's talk about polytechnics. Polytechnics are after the high school. One chemist wanted to finish their studies to get a degree in university, another chemist they want to be freelancers. There's literally 50%-50% so it seems like the fresh grads now, they don't want to look for a full-time job, so do you think this is reflective of what's coming, especially in the media sector in Singapore, are we expecting a lot more freelancers?
Yen Lyng: I think it's a long time coming. I think all creatives who go into art school or media school want to be a freelancer. It's just that maybe in the past, the general industries, they didn't know that was a viable option. In our minds, freelancers were always the ones who couldn't make it, there were a lot of misconceptions about it, you don't have a steady job, you don't have a steady income, you're going to earn peanuts and everything. But now that it's been more proven and there's more support out there, both from tangible support from the government to just people, society acknowledging it more, it's become okay to say that, “I want to be a freelancer.” In the past it was, “Which company do you want to join?” But now that you know that you can be your own boss, I mean who doesn't want that, especially younger ones? But at the same time, having come from an employee status, I think it is a good experience for young people to go through, being employed. Being told what to do and to do it.
Kyle: Yes, I totally agree.
Yen Lyng: Yes, because I think a lot of us do want to become freelancers because we don't like being told what to do. I mean I can relate, right? But at the same time, it's the respect of elders, it's the respect of people who have been through things that you haven't been through before and knowing that there's wisdom over there and learning from that. I think a lot can them come up.
Of course, we see in the news, in the media, a lot of success stories of young people who never went through that process but still became really successful. I think that's a lie. I mean it's not a lie, people have done it, but it's literally one out of a billion.
Kyle: We have no idea, they probably went through hardship, but they shouldn't call it that.
Yen Lyng: Yeah, and we just like to see the cartoon version of it, the caricature of it, so it's not true of life.
Jayce: Yeah, I also feel that for younger freelancers, it's always good for them to actually experience corporate life. I mean, especially for Singapore, because the truth is in Singapore, most likely you're working at corporate jobs versus…
Yen Lyng: You own film.
Jayce: TV, you know. So, the bread and butter of the industry is really corporate work. So, if you want to work on corporate work but yet you don't know how a corporate in Singapore functions, I think that is going to be very difficult.
That's one, and second, it's always good when you're younger to actually start building up connections, contacts, because that's how you actually start your business. If you have no contacts, no connections, it's very tough, unless you have a very rich daddy, or you come from a rich family where the connections, the relationships are already there, you just need to kind of pull some strings and then you get what you want.
Yen Lyng: I think it's not only the connections, but it's how to communicate.
Fanny: Present.
Yen Lyng: Yeah, that's right.
Fanny: What do you think Kyle?
Kyle: Of what?
Fanny: About the future.
Kyle: I think the future is very bright as long as we keep moving in this direction with companies like CreativesAtWork, it gives us hope that there's someone fighting for a rise, like even for NTUC, so fighting for a rise. I think it's good, but we must paint… I’m trying to think what she said, we must pain a realistic picture of what freelancing is. I think freelancing is tougher than as a full-time employee, and I only worked for three months and I'm a millennial, I cannot take achievement.
With that said, freelancing is harder, because you need to manage your client, you need to manage your invoices, you need to manage your texts, you need to manage your own CPF, everything. And on top of that, if you're not getting representation in the union, you're not getting representation anywhere, it makes it harder. Like what you said for the employment thing, the thing that you ticked for the form, it makes it harder, so I cannot imagine what people endured 10 years ago.
Jayce: I wonder if the box is still there?
Fanny: No, you can change. I think it's self –
Kyle: No, I can assure you, it's not there, it's self-employed now, they changed it, because I fill that form out.
Fanny: That was really, utterly.
Jayce: But there is ‘other’ or so, right?
Fanny: I didn't see ‘others’.
Jayce: No, there's no others?
Kyle: There's no others.
Yen Lyng: I remember some government forms are like that, they didn't have anything, if not you just thought out of the...
Fanny: So, one last question. If there's one value, just only pick one value that you think all freelancers should cultivate, what is it?
Kyle: Value? Oh, it's a very tough question, can I have two?
Fanny: One, one, one.
Kyle: Only one?
Yen Lyng: I have one, just let me try to find the right word for it.
Fanny: We should also answer that question, maybe answer first. Okay, for me I think it's being reliable.
Jayce: Yeah, I knew you were going to say that.
Fanny: Because we're coming from the perspective of CreativesAtWork, so we work with them and you have to be reliable, you work, if it's not on par, we can still explain, we can still work together, but if you're not reliable, you disappear, you miss the deadline constantly, it's very hard.
Jayce: For me, yeah, because I knew she was going to say that, so I can't choose that, so I'm choosing trust. I think to me, not only as a freelancer, I think from the clients’ side as well, people who are using the service or people that are providing the service, or in any business, I think trust is the most important thing, and it's the most difficult, it's the most easy thing to break, but it's the most difficult thing to build up.
Yen Lyng: Yeah, value. I would say those two are very important, but as a personal point of view I think; willingness to learn, because it requires you to be humble. It requires you to always be improving. You fall down, it doesn't matter, you stand up again. I think a lot of people nowadays, I mean, the next generation, even though it's not that far away from me, they're always very self-righteous, I think that leads to a lot of issues. Like, “If something goes wrong, it's not my problem, it's the problem of society.” You know? “It's not me, I can't help it.” Then it will affect everything you do, you just won't try your best, because you keep thinking, “I can't help this, that's my limit.” You never grow as a freelancer or as a person just in general.
Jayce: Okay, Kyle?
Kyle: Hard work. I learned it the very, very hard way. I thought that just because you go through film school, just because you know a little bit about film, you can be a director immediately, you can just jump straight in, like disrespect the generations before you. That's not how it works out. How it works is, 10 years, 20 years, then you will reach where you want to be, but in between it's all hard work and sweat. So, the picture that you want to paint to the rest of the up and coming freelancers, is that no matter what you do, hard work pays off.
Fanny: Yeah, agreed.
Jayce: Yeah.
Yen Lyng: I don't know whether you guys ever faced this, but last time… Sorry, just one last point. Last time when I was in my graduation show, I remember clearly one guy, I remember the company’s name also, he came up to me and then we started talking about what you do and what you are looking for, so I very honestly said, “You are just in there to learn.” Actually, I can't quite remember my answer, but it's basically, “I don't expect to jump up into some great position, I go inside there to learn. It's an internship? Fine. Any position will do, because I don't know about what you do, I don't know your company, and having just graduated of course, I don't think I have all the skill sets.” And then he was very surprised, he was like, “You're the first one I met who says that.”
But I thought having just graduated that was the case. But I don't know whether you go to graduation shows nowadays and you see that kind of, the one where people come on and they expect to be –
Fanny: Yeah, actually they run great shows, like small businesses now. Each of the booths are small businesses.
I think young people nowadays are more savvy, but back when I was with my production houses, I mean every year we had tons and tons of interns, we had like buckets of 10s and 20s of interns coming through our production house for three to six months.
There is the difference. Those that are in university, the majority of them, 90% of them, want to be directors. “When I'm going to graduate I want to be a director. I want to be a director.” Yeah but those from polytechnics, because they are more hands-on, they are like, “I want to become an assistant.” You know? A bit more self-checked. I'm not sure why, but those that are aiming for graduate with degrees, they all want to be directors, but you're not going to be a director when you first come out. Life is not like that, you have to start from the bottom.
Jayce: And it has to do with the of the schools. I think the schools themselves right now all schools want to show that they have the best students, so they want to put out the best students. So, from day one, they could have already been saying, “You come to this course, you are so good.” And then therefore you are “A something-something.” So hence, I think the students also have these expectations.
But I do agree there is a need for graduates who want to go into media industries to understand the industry first.
Personally, for myself, I come from the finance industry, which is totally different right? So, the finance industry, I would say, is fairly established in Singapore, so hence I think the reality, I think what you learn in school is not so different outside. So, debit and credit still works, so the changes that you expect to your curriculum is not huge, so most of the time, the things that you learn from school is applicable and is enough for you to bring into your working career.
But I must say, when I came into the media industry, this is very different for the media industries, because it is craft-based, because it is creative-based and technology changes so fast.
So, a lot of things, the trend is very different, so maybe what you learn in school may not be applicable by the time that you are ready to graduate. And on top of that, guys have to go through NS, so there is again, this gap already.
From that perspective I think you have to have an open mind, that you have to relearn all your skill sets again when you are out in the real world in that sense.
Fanny: Yeah.
Jayce: Okay, so as a summary, in my perspective, what I'm hearing is, freelancing is definitely a growing industry in Singapore. More and more people are going to choose this as their career and it is possible for it to be a viable career provided that you work hard, provided…
Fanny: That you are reliable.
Jayce: That you are reliable.
Fanny: Open minded and trustworthy.
Yen Lyng: I think we all encourage people to go freelancing, it's just that we are so, we're practically, because we are freelancers, or we work with freelancers very closely, fellow freelancers as well, and you guys work with them on a daily basis, it's not all roses.
Jayce: So, I think there is a similarity between freelancers as well as entrepreneurs, this is almost the same. As an entrepreneur you run your own company but as a freelancer you also run your own company. So, in fact, actually, freelancers are entrepreneurs themselves as well. So, the challenges are almost quite similar in that sense.
Alright, okay, let's have a toast. Thank you so much for coming. Thanks everybody.
Yen Lyng: It’s not alcoholic by the way.
Kyle: Perhaps we could add just one more question I was thinking, which is quite interesting. But if you could ask us, how is it working as a freelancer but at the same time working with CreativesAtWork?
Yen Lyng: Isn't that what they asked?
Kyle: No.
Yen Lyng: Oh no, it was not the same.
Fanny: Okay.
Jayce: Okay.
Kyle: That means we play two roles at the same time, because we are being freelancers and helping freelancers.
Fanny: Okay, so you guys are freelancers, but you guys are also freelancers working for CreativesAtWork, helping us to manage other freelancers, so how has it been?
Kyle: I think as a positive, it gives us empathy towards the freelancers, but we must keep it in check, as much as we feel for the freelancers you must also think for the company. So, there's always two sides of a coin. With that said, the experiences gained from managing the freelancers, helped us in our freelance career, at least for me, yeah.
Yen Lyng: I would say it does help in empathy, but because of the role that I play, or the niche that I have, which is business development, a lot of companies that I go to, this is the role that I play already. I'm basically a part of the company, and sometimes I have to play the role of the stand-in boss to make decisions.
Jayce: She’s telling us
Yen Lyng: Oh yeah, yeah. So, for me that is not the issue, but sometimes it's just different jobs might require different levels of commitment, simply because the boss maybe, does not want you to take that level of responsibility. So, I'm fine with that as well. If you don't need me to make hard decisions, that's great.
For me it lends to my job of communicating with both sides easier, it makes it easier to communicate, to both the company, in this case CreativesAtWork, and the freelancer. Because I myself as a freelancer, I hire freelancers to help me as well, so it's playing multiple roles but it's something I'm used to at least.
Jayce: If you like what you have been hearing, subscribe to our YouTube page and leave a comment.
Fanny: You can also look for us on iTunes and also look out for our Facebook page and Instagram to follow us. So, see you next week for another episode. Bye.
Jayce: So, just one last question before we go, what would you tell your younger self?
Yen Lyng: I didn't think about it, let me think about this one. What would I tell my younger self?
Kyle: Be patient, be humble and things will come.
Jayce: Can I just ask, your younger self, how young do you think that younger self is?
Kyle: I'd probably roll back to around five to eight years ago.
Jayce: Because he's a very young man. So, 12 years old, you’re about 16 years old, 16 or 17 years old?
Kyle: Yeah, roughly.
Yen Lyng: But I think, be patient is a very important thing that I think I would like to tell myself if I had the chance, it was always the race to go to the next level. A race to grow up, a race to start doing something, “How come other people are doing it already, and I'm not?”
As I said, there's a lot of stories out there of the young people who achieved. I have to say I love Mark Zuckerberg, no matter the things that's going on about Facebook and him right now, he's somebody who I really look up to, but he also puts in a lot of disillusions into a young mind.
So, I think yes, you have to be patient. Things don't have to come over night. You are not a failure if you don't achieve certain things by the time you're 21 years old.
Kyle: Yeah, I think, from my perspective, one's career should be based on one’s failure. The lessons you learn from the failure, it shouldn't be based on your success, because the moment you start thinking about much success you have, you become drunk on it and then you stop learning, you stop listening, because the ego gets in the way.
I think, not only that, my generation, we grew up with digital, so there's this sense of instant gratification and there's this sense of, “Everything is so easy, social media, everything's perfect.” But you must see the imperfections in order to really learn.
Jayce: Actually, for me, now that I look back, what I want to tell my younger self, which is not too long ago was, I wish I had actually studied less. I think I studied too much, trying to get that perfect score, that I actually missed out quite a fair bit in terms of travelling, in terms of just having fun. I think I was caught into that whole Singapore society, or education system that you…
Okay, I think for me, I think it's like that because I do a lot of [drilling 00:48:04], which looking back, this is not the 21st century skill sets that you need to have, but during my time, that worked perfectly well. You just need to ace that exam but most of the time, you know that whatever you aced during that exam is probably not applicable.
So, the application part was actually kind of missing during my education time. If I could probably go back, I would probably enjoy my life more because I spent a lot of time studying. Although I enjoyed it as well.
Fanny: For me it's, do more of what makes you happy. Yeah, I was unhappy for quite some time when I was stuck in jobs I didn't really like or doing things that were pleasing other people but not me, but I would go back and tell my younger self, “You have to do more things that you really like.”
Jayce: Okay, great.
Yen Lyng: I think we are inventing in life. Because if you guys gave that same advice to my younger self, I would've been like a hobo and not do anything else.
Kyle: Yeah, no actually, it's a reverse refraction of what we are, plus I have a lot of friends that are still stuck in jobs that they hate, but they are also all about, “I'm young, I should live my life.” Then they start buying stuff that they cannot afford, so they become impatient, so they start travelling when they can't afford it, so they go into debt.
Yen Lyng: Do they?
Kyle: Yeah, millennials do that. Studies show that millennials are the poorest bunch.
Fanny: I can see how like, avocado sandwich.
Kyle: It’s not that nice though.
Yen Lyng: But actually nowadays, they have no sense of saving money or anything. I see them like, you know when they go to a restaurant nowadays, everyone’s on their own, I'm not saying with their parents or anything, but they can go out by themselves after school, go to some nice restaurant.
Jayce: But that could be a –
Fanny: A sign of their parents being from an affluent generation as well.
Jayce: Yeah, exactly, I think it's a sign of the society moving, becoming richer, moving on, so the parents can afford it, so the second generation don't really need to work hard for it. Because they know their parents have worked, they know their parents will save for them, so they don't need to save.
Yen Lyng: My parents didn't save for me.
Kyle: Nope.
Yen Lyng: Maybe they did.
Jayce: That's not the right question to ask, the more important question is, “Do you save for yourself?”
Yen Lyng: Yeah, but because I've always had the idea that I've had to save for myself, but I didn't have the concept of whether someone else will save for me or not, it's just that I know I need to save for myself.
Kyle: Maybe only for me, that concept is foreign then.
Yen Lyng: Saving for yourself?
Kyle: No, no, no, like parents saving for me.
Yen Lyng: Okay, well.
Fanny: Thank you.
Jayce: Okay, thank you.
Yen Lyng: Something for everyone to think about. Thank you.