Starting out poor and being dumped by a girl because she saw no better life with a cleaner is truly a successful and inspirational story for a man who now makes fortune.

Instead of getting frustrated, Vernon Kwek used his heartbreak and the discrimination he went through from his girlfriend who chose a university guy over him as a motivation of working hard and striving further in life.

The 48-year-old is now Singapore’s Primech Services & Engineering CEO who owns a 10% share in the company.

Simultaneously, Vernon also runs A&P Maintenance Services and Maint-Kleen, two other cleaning companies handling some of the biggest companies in Singapore, including Changi Airport Group, with over 3,000 employees under his power.

Vernon was born to a humble family. When he was barely 13 years old, he helped his father find a new job after losing the latter’s job as a salesman.

After his father was accepted as a cleaning supervisor, Vernon manifested his hard work and family-orientedness by helping his father in cleaning toilets and offices during the weekends.

A year after, he gave up school just to work as a full-time cleaner to help his family. Being a responsible teenager, he was shortly promoted to cleaning supervisor at the age of 14.

“I asked the manager if he was sure. My dad became a supervisor only when he was 40. I was only 14. But he said: ‘Don’t worry. You have your dad’s genes. He has leadership qualities, you should have the same too,’” Vernon shared in Strait Times

Later on, he was again promoted to a higher position as a senior supervisor until he finally became the company’s CEO.

Nevertheless, Vernon experienced many downfalls in his journey but never lost hope as he was determined to have a better life. Now, he is a successful family man with four kids.

When Weilyn Chong’s name and photo appeared on a Times Square billboard from the Nasdaq Tower, it instantly went viral, inspiring many young Singaporeans to pursue entrepreneurial endeavors.

Weilyn acknowledges the value of entrepreneurship in Southeast Asia despite the fact that the majority of her work with founders is focused in the US.

Growing up, 20-year-old Weilyn Chong has lived from one place to another between Singapore, Hong Kong, and the Netherlands which made her immersed in varied cultures.

Weilyn’s global exposure enabled her to be more flexible in dealing with many kinds of people especially since their family annually joins in Singapore Global Network events.

Despite their frequent moves, Weilyn’s mother made sure to give them a strong sense of connection to their roots by taking them to see their grandparents, spending time with family, and eating Singaporean food. 

The Singaporean third-year economics student at Princeton University expressed how being among passionate individuals inspires her.

Weilyn started a podcast about women entrepreneurs with her failure project for “The Other ‘F’ Word” class when she was still a freshman, and she has since enjoyed it.

Together with her high school friend Ali Debow, she even converted it into a regular extracurricular activity by co-founding The Entrepre女ers Network, a podcasting startup that connects and promotes female entrepreneurs with topics including design, young changemakers, and Gen Z female founders.

Weilyn wants to increase the visibility of female business owners and give them connections opportunities. Her team has spoken with over 130 creators in a year and increased their listenership and social media reach to 30,000.

She said that they hope to get young females to dream of being an entrepreneur and understand that entrepreneurship doesn’t have to look a specific way.

Learning that bias happens between genders in the global arena as only 2% of total venture capital funding goes to women because they are women, she attended a conference put on by the Nasdaq Entrepreneurial Center (NEC) to address the complex issue of inequity in venture for entrepreneurs of color and women entrepreneurs.

There, she met people from the Center and expressed her interest to get involved in the work they do in any capacity. 

She was asked to join the NEC board in order to represent Generation Z and put a spotlight on young entrepreneurship.

“I grew up thinking those two things are mutually exclusive – either you do charity work or you make money. But what we’re seeing is that you can raise a lot of money and make a positive impact on the world,” she said on CNBC.

Both Filipino educators, Camille Ona and Marvin Paclibare found a different world and passion out of their classrooms during the pandemic as teachers-turned-entrepreneurs and founders of Taho Klasiko, a special milk tea-inspired taho shop.

Breaking free from their first-loved profession, the two sculpt their name as entrepreneurs who choose to walk into another path.

Marvin said that if not for the pandemic, he might still be teaching now just as he thought that he would forever be a teacher. He also added how he realized that there is a bigger world waiting outside teaching.

With people becoming more mindful of their health, especially during the onslaught of the pandemic, Marvin said that they eyed tendering a healthier version of milk tea.

The shop attained a grand slam as the two now earn 6-digit figures per month, an amount far way better than their incomes as teachers in the Philippines.

Camille mentioned in an interview that although they are still passionate about teaching, they just chose to be practical.

Despite entering the world of business, the owners are still having the vibe of teaching as entrepreneurs who are open to learning and improving their craft just like when they were still teaching.

They also shared that they hired working students to extend help to them. 

As a piece of advice, the former teachers said that would-be entrepreneurs should go outside of their comfort zones and open their ways to many opportunities.

“It’s not enough that you have a dream; you need to work hard to make it a reality,” Camille added.