By Zhang Huixin (23J17)
RVHS is home to many unique, distinguished students, and there are always those few people in your cohort who are well-known across the entire level, be it due to their many achievements or just general notoriety.
However, some rare ones are known throughout the school, even across cohorts, making waves among students even after the person themselves has graduated. We got a special chance to interview one such student, now an alumnus, on how and why he does what he does. He is none other than Ryan Koh.
Background
Unless you only joined RVHS this year or have lived under a rock this whole time, he would need no introduction. Ryan first became known widely across the student population in RVHS when he uploaded the music video for his rap song, “明月” or “Brightmoon” in September 2022. The initial reception was far from ideal. While he had garnered many views and comments, many of those comments were sarcastic and mocking.
Ryan’s first released song and music video. Video: https://youtu.be/ZN8x3CglecE?si=BJIWUoN-i7jRPsPy
However, as the age-old adage goes: There is no such thing as bad publicity. Perhaps it was for the meme, or perhaps it was out of curiosity or pity, but the video’s viewership only climbed and so did his popularity.
Within just six days of the song’s release on YouTube, he had garnered a following and had perhaps what was the loudest crowd when he performed “Brightmoon” at RV’s annual Mid-autumn festival. People were making online boards to send him words of encouragement, asking him to sign their shirts and shoes!
Following that, he released more songs such as “RED” for Chinese New Year in 2023 and “Best Friend” for Valentine’s Day in 2023. As of the date of this article’s writing, “Brightmoon” has 16k views.
If this was not enough, music was not the only thing he did. He founded his own sizable e-commerce growth agency, RKoh Media, when he was 12. At the age when most of us were on holiday after PSLE or worrying about our future secondary school, he was focused on making business ventures. Today, he pulls a five-figure monthly salary.
Business
As I connected and settled down to interview him over a Zoom call, I noticed that he was looking cheerful. Tired, partly due to our meeting being at night on a weekday, but cheerful. He had finished his A-Levels last year, and so, eager to finish my own this year, I asked him what he had been doing since the end of his A-Levels.
“It’s been a good time,” he smiled. He explained how before the intense mugging period, he had to juggle his business and academics, and that during the A-Level preparation period, he was solely focused on and stressed about academics, having to put his business aside.
Now, he can fully devote himself to his business so he has more time to sleep and recharge.
Jumping off his mention of his business, I asked him why he had decided to embark on something so ambitious from such a young age. Most people I know who run a business usually run a small local one selling their handmade products. Ryan explained that after his PSLEs, he started googling for ways to make money. Dropshipping soon stuck out as interesting and lucrative to him.
For those unfamiliar with the term, dropshipping is when the business owner acts as a middleman, connecting customers with producers, while not needing any inventory of his own. Dropshipping is less risky, nullifying the potential issue of losing money on lost inventory, and also allows for the global expansion of business operations.
Dropshipping explained. Image credit: https://dropshipping.com/article/dropship-from-china-to-usa/
Of course, starting a global dropshipping business at the age of 12 is a massively ambitious project, and his parents were justifiably cautious about his ventures, even after his business took off. His parents worried about his health, particularly his chaotic sleeping schedule and deteriorating academic performance.
While they supported him in doing something he enjoys, his mother, especially, still wanted him to maintain some academic standards as a safety net, in case anything ever happens to the business.
Eventually, he had to step back slightly in JC to focus more on his studies.
Throughout this entrepreneurship journey, he had to face down challenging clients. In one memorable case, he had to publicise a client who had lied about their details, making it much harder for them to succeed.
While they did get a result, the client was unsatisfied and demanded a refund, which Ryan had to acquiesce to because of their guarantee of refunds if they failed to achieve desired results.
This case led Ryan to reconsider whether such a guarantee was beneficial for his operations. “It attracts the people that are not exactly the clients who you want to work with,” Ryan lamented.
“Some people are not very transparent and you just can't know from the start.”
Of course, difficult clients are not the only challenges that he faced running his own business while in school. With his many school commitments, such as being part of the HSSLA executive committee, Student Council and Bicultural Leaders Academy, I had to ask him to share tips on how he balanced them all.
“I enjoy working,” he shared, “so my leisure time is my work time.” He also emphasised the creation of a priority list of tasks which helped him better schedule his time, and the importance of pacing oneself to avoid burnout.
Guess what hobby helps him unwind? As I’m sure you’ve figured out: music.
Music
Of course, I had to ask him more about his music! One thing I was most curious about was why he started producing music. Surprisingly, it started off as a joke! “I was just having dinner with my teacher and two of my friends after CCA,” he explained.
They were discussing how, during the Mid-Autumn Festival (MAF), the staple songs tend to be very traditional. Being an innovative person, he proposed that he do a hip-hop-style performance instead.
Surprisingly, his teacher and the teacher-in-charge of MAF 2022 were both willing to give him a shot! He then began creating “Brightmoon”, a song where old meets new, east meets west, through modern hip-hop, yet conveying traditional themes of familial love still.
“My strengths are in my lyrics,” he admited, focusing mostly on the lyric writing while leaving most of the sound direction to his producer.
He draws inspiration from his daily life for his songwriting. His song “RED” was inspired by eating Mala with his friends!
“The sweat on your head represents the amount of work and effort that you put into something, into something very tough,” he explained, drawing metaphors from how one sweats due to tasting the spiciness of Mala.
He believes that the best songwriting originates from real-life experiences and perspectives, not from simply sitting down and forcing himself to compose lyrical prose. He also shared the numerous tough challenges he and his team faced when filming the MV of “Brightmoon”, such as how they had to stay up till 2 a.m. just to film.
Behind the scenes of the music video of ‘RED’. Photo credit: Ryan Koh
As we all know, the initial reception to the song and MV was less than encouraging, with sarcasm and many hate comments dominating the comment section. While the tide mostly turned by the time of the MAF performance, it was still a hard time for him to overcome.
I asked him how he dealt with it, and he credited his supporters, saying, “I think that's the number one reason why I make music as well. It's really for the people that supported me back then.”
Memorably, a student on crutches gifted him a card before his performance on MAF, encouraging him to continue pursuing his musical career.
Other than that, there was also a K-pop-style photocard of himself that he received from another fan. These acts of encouragement from family and friends helped him get through the worst of it, and he believed that working hard on his future projects was the best way to respond to haters.
Tokens of encouragement Ryan received from his fans. Photo Credit: Ryan Koh
Future
It was getting late, and hence I asked him what were his plans for the future. Business-wise, he is looking forward to expanding it into many domains, including music, investment, and even education for aspiring entrepreneurs. He shared ambitious goals of expanding more within the Asian market, having already had prior experience with the US’.
Music-wise, he plans to release a full hip-hop album titled Prophet this year. Through his music, he hopes to raise the standards for local music video quality by hopefully involving more CGI in his upcoming MVs.
Listening to his future plans, I could not help but be awed and inspired by his ambition. Goals that might have cowed even adults, let alone a fellow adolescent, do not deter him; instead, they are things he is striving for.
To anyone interested in pursuing entrepreneurship, he shared from experience, “Age is just a number. I think that be it you are Secondary 1, Secondary 4 or even JC1, it doesn’t matter.” He emphasised that it is truly the drive that matters. If you wish to do something, take action — only then do you actually have a shot at succeeding.
“You have to become an action-taker. You can't stop at just wanting to become someone, but not wanting to put in effort for it.”
Ryan in Spain after his A-levels. Photo credit: Ryan Koh
Once again, I was reminded of another saying: “You never know unless you try.” Truly, many of us have highly ambitious dreams, be it becoming a celebrity or a CEO, but how many of us truly work towards that goal? How many of us abandon them and opt for safer goals instead? While not all of us strive to become entrepreneurs like Ryan, we should all aim to be more audacious and take action to realise those seemingly impossible and faraway dreams.
With the June holidays coming up, let us all take this downtime to reflect and take steps towards realising our dreams!
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