Courage: JuE Wong, CEO of Olaplex

Life is full of decisions, and we see ourselves making crucial life choices at every corner, especially in our adolescent years. Many people tend to follow the less risky route, but JuE [joo-ee] Wong - the CEO of Olaplex - chooses otherwise.

Olaplex is a well-known hair care brand that develops a customized regimen to strengthen and sustain healthy hair. With the increase in internet fame over the past few years, the brand has soared to new heights.

I had the incredible opportunity to have a conversation with Wong about how her entrepreneurial habits turned her into the successful woman she is today. The main trait she really possessed was courage.

After being born and raised in Singapore, Wong attended university in Australia, while simultaneously being an exchange scholar at UCLA. She has lived in 7 different countries, and she never hesitates to switch up her lifestyle at any given moment.

For the first 12 years of her corporate career, she was a commodity trader (one that invests in physical products, such as crude oil). This allowed her to truly understand that taking risks is a part of life and a valuable learning experience. Additionally, she realized that you don’t always have to follow market trends to make money.

Although investing in crude oil may seem completely different from managing a leading hair care brand, you would be surprised to find out how the two experiences coincide with each other.

“So because the first 12 years of [her] career was in something other than beauty… [she] really wanted to ‘leap frog’ what [she has] missed because there was just no way [she] could start where everyone else was 10 years ago”. As a result, Wong made the decision to work for what she referred to as "emerging" companies, which are enterprises that are experiencing rapid development. This allowed her to get firsthand insight into how data leads to decision-making, and she applied this expertise to her work at Olaplex.

Wong migrated from one beauty brand to another, which provided her with a really diverse career path. She particularly enjoyed working with small, up-and-coming brands that were either in need of private equity investors (investors that help change the structure of a company in order to facilitate growth) or were in the midst of a brand turnaround.

Usually, brands are halfway through their seven years of private equity when they are in a "turnaround" situation. As a result, when a new CEO is appointed during this period, significant changes are made quickly. This situation can be extremely stressful, but only someone as courageous as JuE Wong can handle that challenge.

Wong joined Olaplex in January of 2020, which conveniently happened to be right before the COVID-19 pandemic. Prior to the pandemic, many hair care companies - including Olaplex - had a primarily retail business model as opposed to a direct-to-consumer one. With that being said, 50% of Olaplex’s revenue was essentially shut down, since it was difficult for customers to shop in person during the pandemic. As a result, Wong and her team had to be both creative and level-headed.

Wong made many decisions on the fly of the moment, but she remained completely grounded. Similarly, she never expected to join the role that she is in today. “So if you ask me if I ever aspired to be a CEO, I would tell you very frankly: not in a way that you think. I didn’t start out one morning, you know, in school and say ‘I want to be a CEO’. But what I did know - and what I do know - is that everything that I did or do, I apply myself and did it the best that I can”.

As both a woman and a POC, Wong continues to break barriers for the future businesswomen of our world. Although it may seem like she may face racism, she told me, “as an Asian, where Asia is really the dragon rising, why see yourself [as] anything less?” If anything, being a woman or a POC allows us to bring more to the table. “There’s a lot to see and a lot to learn from each other. I think the younger generation - like yourself -, I do believe you see less color and more about the commonality amongst yourself in terms of attitude”.

The most important aspect of analyzing successful people in our world is taking away the traits that have brought them to where they are today. When JuE Wong makes a decision, she never looks back. It’s important to always keep your head high and take risks while you’re young because you never know what they might entail.

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A huge thanks to JuE Wong for such an enlightening discussion, and for being an amazing role model for the future entrepreneurs of generations to come!