At 282m above ground, this is the tallest point in Singapore and the view is spectacular. We’re at the viewing gallery of 1-Altitude, the world’s highest alfresco bar on level 63 of One Raffles Place. It’s 10am and somewhat misty, but Joseph Ong, helmsman of One Rochester Group (ORG), which carries the award-winning bar and other lifestyle F&B concepts, reminds us: “It’s the clouds.” 

He may literally have his head in the clouds, but the 43-year-old founder-managing director of the $25m empire hasn’t always been in a high place. There was a time when he was mired in poverty, living in a one-room flat. “Growing up during the 1970s, I played in the streets and never had toys. In those days, if your family wasn’t rich, you worked part-time, and even if it paid $1 an hour, you were happy. Studies then got neglected and the poverty cycle kicked in. There were no dreams or aspirations. If you asked about my ambitions back then, I might have said I’d work in a coffee shop,” he says.

He narrowly missed repeating Primary 6, landing in a secondary school where fights were common. That strengthened his resolve to turn his life around. From the Normal stream, he became a top student. After university, he held key positions with Ernst & Young, KPMG and Symantec, where he was its youngest vice-president (Asia-Pacific and Japan) in 2013. 

ORG began 10 years ago as an MBA project he embarked on with his wife Wendy. He wanted to prove that the right strategy could lead to a thriving business even without a competitive edge or forgoing a stable corporate job. The effects of that 10-year experiment went far. From One Rochester, a restaurant and bar opened in 2006, ORG now encompasses a string of popular F&B outlets and clubs, and an events arm that organises 300 weddings a year. 

He continued to run the business on the side while holding down a full-time job, but finally left Symantec last year—and a million-dollar annual compensation plan—to write a book about his unorthodox approach to entrepreneurship. He felt the time was right as Symantec was undergoing restructuring and it was ORG’s 10th anniversary year.

Remote-Entrepreneurship was released in July. Joseph’s initial idea 10 years ago was to pen a book about micro-strategies, but four years into the experiment, he realised it wasn’t just strategy that was driving ORG. “The business was organised in a unique way with a remote owner, myself, and empowered managers who behaved like business owners. It was a product of collective leadership. The team helped me to create the remote management system that I used effectively for years. 

“The book’s message is that you can start a business, be great at it yet keep your corporate job. It’s an approach to entrepreneurship with less risk and higher chance of success.” 

With the book completed, Joseph is training his focus on growing the business—after all a remote entrepreneurial company by his definition is all about expansion. “Apart from growing existing businesses, we’re converting more places into event venues. We’re also in talks to take ORG’s holistic concept of dining, bar, weddings and events to cities in Malaysia, Indonesia and China. We’re targeting revenues of $40m to $50m a year in two to three years, if people believe in our entrepreneurial strategy and collective leadership model.”

While he has taken an unconventional approach to entrepreneurship, he’s otherwise a typical guy who likes phones and gadgets, travelling and Asian food. For 15 years, he drove a Mercedes-Benz until he switched to a Porsche last year. “That’s probably my only luxury item,” he offers.

Weekends are precious for this father of a seven-year-old who is up checking e-mails by 6am and squeezes meetings in between family outings. Young Jerome has already learnt that “the crucial thing about running a business is to keep improving it over and over and over again”. Will he follow in Dad’s entrepreneurial footsteps? “Considering that I’ve to pay him if I want something from him, there’s a chance!”