"It's the complete opposite of Mad Men! Everything, from the way you dress to the work itself. My first year in advertising was the hardest time of my life–ever," he laments. "I came from a background of playing football almost professionally my whole life. That was hard work and a lot of training but advertising is a whole different level of stress.

"In my first year, everyone thought I was an intern because I was 19. The interns who were 22 and 23 knew a lot more about advertising than I did because they went to school for it. I was so behind. I didn't know anything. I didn't come from a creative background and I've done zero creative work in my life. So people looked down on me and they obviously believed that I didn't deserve to be there. That was a struggle, trying to compete and at the same time, studying as much advertising as I could," Lee shares.

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Lee recalls being put on the Petronas account, one of Leo Burnett Malaysia's biggest.

As he settled in and picked up his pace, and spent many a late night in the office, so did the recognitions. Year in, year out, Lee would bag awards, from the local Kancil Awards to the regional AdFest, to even the prestigious Cannes Lions and The One Show. He became one to watch. But in a country where workplaces are still very hierarchical, based on age and position, and with 80 per cent of employees preferring to work with an older manager, he has his work cut out for him.

When it comes to getting people to take him seriously, he says: "I became a creative group head when I was 22 with two or three years of experience in advertising. Suddenly I had to lead a team and they're not young people. They are 35 or 45, people who have done advertising for a decade or more. So, of course, everyone is going to look down on the younger, less experienced person."

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Still, he soldiered on. "The easiest thing you can do is throw your title at them and just boss people around but I think the best way to convince someone is through the work. As long as you're there for them and you show them what you can do, at some point you'll earn their respect. You can’t demand respect, you have to earn it. That’s what I did for about a year or two.

"As creative director, I review work and ideas that people have spent a lot of late nights thinking about. That’s their idea and they nurture that idea. If you kill an idea (and my job is to kill ideas until we get the best) of a person who already doesn’t respect you, you better have a damn good reason or an alternative that's much better. Over time, sticking with them through the late nights and when clients rejected the work, that’s when respect was built," he reminisces. "I'm still really good friends with the first batch of teams that I led so it all worked out in the end."

With such sheer determination, unwavering perseverance, and zest for the advertising industry, truly, the sky's the limit for Lee. To date, he has spearheaded some of Malaysia's most notable campaigns including Petronas' Rubber Boy and Monochrome, Coca-Cola's The Galactic Bottles, Voice of the Children's The Anti-Bullying Bullying Videos, and Samsung Galaxy’s S10: Space Launch, Malaysia's first launch of a phone to space.

Then, at only 23 years old, he was made creative director at Ogilvy Malaysia–the youngest ever to helm the role. That said, having accomplished most of what people would have taken a decade or more to achieve, it begs the question: "What's next?"

"I do want to leave advertising eventually. I want to transcend from advertising to do other forms of creativity and just experiment. If I stop experimenting, I think I'll plateau in my career and life. Fashion design—that's the next thing I want to do. When I realised that I was a creative and I could be creative, while advertising is a medium that I want to do, the itch is really to just create. I want to create products and I want to create change. I just want to keep creating for the rest of my life. Hopefully, one day, also create some social change."

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Given the opportunity, would he have changed how his life panned out? Lee says no.

"Not a single thing in both my career and life. Going broke was the best thing to ever happen to me and it taught me the value of hard work. It gave me a whole new perspective on life. When you don’t know when your next meal is or how to afford it, that’s when you're driven to succeed," he says.

Tatler Asia's Asia’s Most Influential is the definitive list of people shaping Asia. Asia’s Most Influential brings together the region’s most innovative changemakers, industry titans and powerful individuals who are shaping the region through positive impact. View the full list here.

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