No pay for 2 years, then just $300 a month: Why Books Beyond Borders founder says this is unsustainable
For the first two years of running Books Beyond Borders, founder Randall Chong did not draw a salary at all.
When he finally did, it was $300 a month, an amount he now readily admits was "so bad".
"It was $300 for six months when I first paid myself," he recalled.
Books Beyond Borders has come a long way since Randall founded it in 2019, growing from an operation run out of his grandfather's spare room to one that now includes a warehouse and office in Jalan Pemimpin, along with The Bookstore at Maxwell.
Surely, he must be making a living wage now? When Stomp asked this question, Randall chuckled.
"Honestly, I'm still way below the market rate. It's embarrassingly low," the 33-year-old said.
The founder is clear-eyed about a reality that still makes many uncomfortable when it comes to social enterprises: profit is not taboo. In fact, he unabashedly believes that profit is essential. Not just for survival, but also for impact.
"You cannot give from an empty cup," he said. "If your cup is empty, you will burn out."
The social enterprise model differs from a charity. While it has a social objective, social enterprises are still businesses.
The sector has been growing steadily in recent years, according to Raise Singapore, a cross-sector effort founded in 2015 to support social enterprises. The number of Raise members nearly doubled between 2023 and 2024, from 357 to 693 members.
Some other notable social enterprises include The Green Collective SG, a retail store which curates sustainable brands, and Foreword Coffee, a coffee company that champions inclusive employment.
The accidental social entrepreneur
Before Books Beyond Borders, running a social enterprise was never a thought Randall considered.
"Before, I've never actually volunteered in my life before. I've never given any sort of donation," he confessed.
Prior to 2019, this writer would have described Randall as your typical 'tech bro'. Randall had been working in a tech start-up based in Bangkok, travelling frequently between Singapore and the Thai capital.
He assumed he would always stay in the tech space. That is, until the emptiness set in.
"There wasn't really much meaning," he said. "It felt like every day when I was going to work, the goal was to just make the investor happy, you know?"
As the start-up expanded, his anxieties grew. He had not taken a proper break in two years and found himself constantly thinking about how to escape work. Burnout eventually pushed him to take a six-month sabbatical, during which he challenged himself to do one thing that scared him.
That challenge was hiking to Everest Base Camp in late 2018. He had neither a guide nor a porter, and would not consider himself to be in peak physical condition, but he accomplished what he set out to do anyway — and more.
Along the way, Randall noticed something that unsettled him.
"I started to notice a lot of young boys and girls were out of school, working as porters with little to no pay," he said. "Some of them were carrying really heavy loads for less than a dollar a day."
One encounter with a 15-year-old boy named Madan stuck with him. When Randall asked if he was tired, the boy laughed.
"He said he used to walk three to four hours just to get to school, but now he'd rather work."
Subsequent visits to remote schools in Nepal revealed bare classrooms, unmotivated teachers and, in some cases, no books at all.
"If I were in their shoes, I would also rather work," Randall told Stomp bluntly.
That was the turning point. He returned to Singapore, quit his job and began what would become Books Beyond Borders.
Not a thrift store, and definitely not a charity
In its early days, Books Beyond Borders functioned much like a typical charity thrift shop: it collected donated books, sold them cheaply, and channelled proceeds into education initiatives in Nepal.
This writer recalls donating books to its original Jalan Pemimpin outlet in 2022, sifting through many yellowed paperbacks in the dollar pile. Then, the bookstore was a six to seven minute walk away from the nearest MRT station, almost entirely unsheltered.
Now, located in Maxwell, the operation looks very different. Things are more "sustainable", Randall said.
This writer has visited the Maxwell outlet on multiple occasions and observed that the bookstore has expanded its offerings to include handcrafted goods made by Nepalese artisans. The books are also in better, more marketable condition, allowing them to be priced higher.
Notably, the Maxwell outlet features a more 'upmarket' interior design, seemingly tailored to the more affluent tourist crowd that frequents the Chinatown area.
"When we moved to our main Maxwell bookstore, we decided we didn't want to be known as a thrift store," he told Stomp. "We didn't want people to just think, 'Oh, cheap books, one dollar.'"
That perception, he explained, would make it hard to pay the bills. While business tends to be strong during the Christmas season, there have been months when Randall had to dip into his personal savings to fund scholarships for students in Nepal.
With a prime location also comes higher rent, and Randall expects costs to rise further.
It might seem contradictory, then, that Books Beyond Borders does not accept monetary donations. After all, cash flow is clearly vital in helping to keep the lights on.
When you take people's money, they want to decide how it's spent, he explained. If someone donated $100 to the bookstore, they want to see it go directly to the beneficiaries in Nepal and not towards anything they don't think is "useful".
But Randall argued that the same $100 could also go towards building a website or store improvements, which help build brand awareness needed for long-term impact.
As a social enterprise, Books Beyond Borders pays taxes, receives no grants and operates with Randall as its only full-time staff member.
He handles almost everything from finance and product design to TikTok livestreams and packing orders. He only hires part time staff to help run retail operations, which offers him some small reprieve.
According to its website, Books Beyond Borders has contributed over $40,000 to girls' education in Nepal since its founding in 2019.
Helping hand for other small businesses
In August, Randall shifted his attention to other founder-led businesses in Singapore.
Through a side project called Two Storytellers, he approaches these small business owners spontaneously, phone in hand, filming unscripted interviews.
It was an initiative that was sparked, much like Books Beyond Borders, rather randomly.
Randall had noticed a man selling coffee in the carpark of his office building with only a piece of tarp to shade him from the sun. Curious, Randall asked him some questions, and the rest was history.
"A lot of these businesses have great products and great stories, but they don't know how to use social media," he said. "Without social media, we would have shuttered a long time ago."
Now, he's paying it forward with these interviews, which are unpaid and unscripted.
One of his most popular interviews was with the elderly owner of a Peranakan clog business in Chinatown Complex, who has been in business for 18 years. The interview has garnered at least 147,200 views on TikTok.
In the video, the owner spoke candidly about the possibility of closing his business down due to old age. He shared that the complex felt "haunted" after the Covid-19 pandemic and that covering rent had become a challenge.
Randall sees them as a natural extension of Books Beyond Borders' mission.
"I don't want us to be known just as a bookstore," he said. "I want us to be known for telling great stories."
For now, he has no plans to work with large brands commercially, choosing instead to keep the project authentic.
Social enterprise founders must pay themselves to be sustainable
Looking back, Randall said his biggest misconception was believing Books Beyond Borders could only ever be a secondhand bookstore and nothing more.
His epiphany? That there's no rulebook to what the bookstore can be. That realisation now shapes the advice he gives others hoping to start purpose-driven ventures.
"Focus on how you can make it sustainable," he said. "Pay yourself. If you can't, it won't last."
For Randall, the lesson was simple but hard-earned: Purpose, without any profit, rarely survives.
The writer assisted with ad-hoc copywriting for Books Beyond Borders in 2022.
