As boss, I’ll play the bad guy

Her brassy, Singlish-spouting comedic persona is familiar to just about every Singapore household. However, fewer know Ms Irene Ang for the tough business woman that she is.

As founder and Chief Executive of FLY Entertainment, the 46-year-old does not only run a successful artiste management company, but a host of subsidiary businesses as well, including in food and beverage and organising K-pop concerts.

She is also a rare woman at the helm — and proud of that fact — in an industry where “a lot of the top guys are men”.

PLAYING ‘HERO’

When Ms Ang set up FLY in 1999, it had only two employees and a fax machine in a small space at the back of a factory. She herself was new to the industry and a year into her role as Phua Chu Kang’s screen wife, Rosie.

“I was only two years into the business so it was very hard to say, ‘Come, let me manage you’ to the experienced artistes. The laojiao (veterans) will say: You siao ah!” So, I’d work double jobs — manage the business and groom myself as an artiste, so I could raise my profile and help FLY in return,” she recalls over a glass of Malbec at The St Regis Singapore’s Astor Bar.

FLY was started to right the wrongs Ms Ang perceived in the industry. The economic crisis in the 1990s saw production companies closing down, with actors stranded without pay. So, the insurance agent-turned-actress wanted to “be a hero” — “the only way that actors could be protected is if they band together (under an agency)”.

FLY’s first talents were younger names such as actress Beatrice Chia-Richmond, who incidentally now heads its concert arm. The firm’s first major breakthroughs included the discovery of artistes such as Chua Enlai, who was then in the army, and Allan Wu, a model who was groomed to act and host.

On her own dime, she flew to the United States to meet casting directors and management companies and went door-to-door with videotapes of her artistes. “It’s about 10 years later that we see people now coming back to us and asking for Asian actors,” she says.

“That is what I started FLY — to see more Asian actors get a fair chance to show the world that Asia has so much talent, not just kungfu stars.”

15 YEARS OF EXPANSION

Today, FLY is a powerhouse in the local entertainment industry with 45 employees and 52 artistes in its stable. Ms Ang says it took about a decade for FLY to establish its name to attract veterans such as actor Adrian Pang.

What’s more, the company has branched off into different interests — funnily enough, not the result of some grand strategic scheme, but in each case to address a specific problem that Ms Ang ran into.

A year after setting up FLY, she went into events management because acting alone did not pay enough and her artistes needed to secure gigs such as hosting. FLY Academy was then started because “some of the artistes come to us, damn gorgeous but cannot host, cannot act”.

“Then we realised that we were spending money on (hiring) all these venues and we don’t have our own space — hence, HQ Karaoke & Bar and FRY Bistro.”

Running Into The Sun, the concert arm behind Korean band Super Junior’s performance in Singapore, was born out of a talk with Ms Chia-Richmond who wanted to give the concert business a shot.

Having a laugh at her own cluelessness about the scene, Ms Ang recounts that when she received the email from her staff detailing the costs of bringing Super Junior to Singapore, she wondered what this “thing” was.

“I said, ‘Is it a new burger we’re launching?’ ‘Cause I was thinking of Carl’s Junior!”

Now celebrating its 15th year, the company has lined up enough work to keep busy for most of 2014. FLY has taken on a musical, giving Jack Neo’s Ah Boys To Men a new story and script that will be staged in April.

In addition, Ms Ang will play mentor to up-and-coming director Tan Ai Leng who is working on a period film, Sinema Paradiso.

“I’m mentoring her because the movie industry is filled with great men, but there are no women to help women. I’m not a director, but I’m a businesswoman — making a movie needs business sense as well,” says the entrepreneur who will help in getting investors and sponsors.

RIDING OUT THE CRISIS

Even as her baby marks a major milestone, Ms Ang looks back on what was one of the toughest years for the company.

In early 2009, she returned from shooting Phua Chu Kang in Malaysia to find the company S$300,000 in the red.

She had to decide between letting go of two employees or having the entire company take a 50 per cent pay-cut — “and I’m very proud of my team because every one of them said they’d rather take a pay cut”.

When the full effects of the global economic crisis hit Singapore soon after, companies’ first cuts were to their entertainment and marketing budgets. Ms Ang’s business savvy was put to the test.

“It was very hard to get sponsors. So we went to St James Powerhouse and Zouk and asked them to partner us. We put up a week-long show for them, they gave us the venue for free, then they got a cut when people come.” Getting companies to part with S$100,000 might be nigh impossible in that climate, but getting people to spend S$28 on “two drinks and some laughs” was easier.

Celebrating its 10th anniversary that year, FLY spent three months putting together an interactive dinner theatre project, Devil Eats Prata, and raised S$75,000 for the Yellow Ribbon Project — a project close to her heart in a very personal way.

BE IN A POSITION TO GIVE

In interviews with the media, Ms Ang has not baulked at speaking of her family’s difficult background. Her mother went to prison multiple times for drug abuse and her father, a policeman, was an absent figure. Ms Ang was brought up largely by her paternal grandmother.

One of the things her grandmother taught her, she says, was “relentless forgiveness” for her parents.

Another of grandma’s lessons that has been imprinted in her life, is that one should always be thankful for being in a position to give. Ms Ang remembers how her grandmother, who worked at a coffee shop stall, gave a bun to an old man who could not afford to pay.

“Since then I’ve positioned myself to give and not ask for bao,” she says, in a rare moment of solemnity.

One further episode cemented her commitment. In her 20s, Ms Ang found herself saddled with a credit card debt of S$26,000 after a slew of hard partying. “I would go to Zouk three, four times a week and I’ve vomited in every corner”. She was unable to make payment on her car instalments, and her grandmother had to lend her S$500.

Over time, it slipped Ms Ang’s mind to return the money, until one day, it was too late. At her grandmother’s wake, angry at herself, she vowed: “Ah Ma, I can never return you the S$500. So I will return it manyfolds back to the world. I’m going to make you so proud of me.”

Ms Ang pauses and says: “Now that I look back, I think even in her parting she taught me a lesson.”

The mantra of giving back is now firmly entrenched in FLY’s DNA. “Every month we’re helping something or somebody. I don’t think we have ever turned down any charity, whether it’s a hospice or the Cat Welfare Society.”

HAPPY TO WIELD WHIP

As a manager and boss, Ms Ang may strike you as tough to work for. She has high expectations of her staff and is not afraid to push for more.

“I tell everybody the same thing: Yes, you’re not good enough because I think you can do so much better,” she says.

It is essential that her staff take away something from their time in the company. In her opinion, it is the management’s job to think about profits and the staff’s job to “learn to be a better manager, a better publicist, a better assistant or a better event manager”.

“So I play the bad guy. I’m happy to be the one to whip the people,” she says.

Yet in the early days, it was not easy to be the bad guy. “In the beginning, when the first artiste left us to do his own thing, you tend to think it’s you or what did you do wrong. Or the first staff that leaves, you think: I’m a bad boss. It’s only through time I learnt that sometimes, people just come and go,” she says.

This prompted her to implement an exit interview for staff who resign, where they are encouraged to be honest about how FLY can improve.

However, a tough taskmaster is not all she is. Mentorship is “very important” to Ms Ang, and at any point in time, FLY has six interns put into specific roles and groomed to become full-time staff. “Of our five heads of department, this is the first real job for three of them,” she says.

This year, the CEO is also happy to take a backseat in the company and let her heads of department run the show. “They are responsible for their own performance and their people. I only come in as advisor.”

Her first ten years running FLY left her without time for herself, but Ms Ang feels that now, “some of the older departments are auto-piloting so it’s very fun. I let the older staff run things and I focus on the new projects. I’m at a stage where I’m very, very blissful and I also have a bit more time for myself!”

ME TIME

What will she do with this time? For one, she has set a goal to sleep more and do at least 100 minutes of exercise each week.

She also plans to take short breaks in between projects — if not for an overseas getaway then at least to Sentosa, where she likes to take a book to Tanjong Beach Club or Coastes.

Her other goal for the year is to “be present” in the situation. She calls this the power of being there, not just in the physical sense, but meaning she will put her phone aside and make an effort to not check her messages in front of colleagues, friends or reporters.

“And I think it’s basic courtesy. Because with social media these days, kids are on their phone all the time, and I myself am the biggest culprit,” she says with a sheepish grin. However, she is true to her word and Ms Ang’s two hours with me are WhatsApp-free.