“Academics is not the only way forward. Experience is key.” – Elim Chew

This is the first advice Elim Chew gave a keen audience during the Connected Women “Entrepreneur Mindset: Risk and Reinvention” event in Singapore.

Chew is one of Singapore’s prominent entrepreneurs but her journey to success wasn’t a straight line. In fact, it took a lot of risks and reinventions for Chew to become the influential figure she is today.

From fashion to food

Chew started her foray into entrepreneurship with the retail chain 77th Street. Chew, who studied in the United Kingdom, was in her early twenties when she got the idea for the business.

“I saw all these funky weird stuff from London but I saw all these fashion things that were not available in Singapore so I started importing them in Singapore,” she said.

Chew said that she was also working as a hairstylist that time and she was wearing the bracelets and jackets she got from the UK while cutting the hair of her customers. Many of them would ask her about her stylish accessories and clothes and she recognized that there is a potential market for these items in Singapore.

She immediately faxed her sister to send more of these fashionable items. Together, they started selling them for a profit.

Chew and her team was able to grow 77th Street. At its peak, they had 16 stores in and they even had a 77th Street Plaza in a shopping mall in Beijing.

The road to success wasn’t smooth, however. This time, they were disrupted by the rising price of rental, the lack of manpower, and e-commerce.

This did not stop the enterprising Chew to start another venture.

“As we were retiring [from 77th Street] we decided, okay we move from fashion to food! That’s when we wanted to invest in businesses,” she said.

It was then that they were introduced to a Korean chef who taught them the business of running a Korean barbecue restaurant.

“It’s quite scary because we knew nothing about food,” Chew confessed

Their consultants that time discouraged them due to their lack of experience and an undesirable location. Chew said that they still did their best and even prayed before they opened for the first day.

Come opening day and I’m Kim Korean BBQ had surprisingly long lines. The success of the first store gave birth to I’m Kim Junior, Goro Goro Steamboat and Korean Buffet, and Captain Kim Korean BBQ and Hotpot, which is halal-certified.

The key to the success of these chains is to listen to your customers, Chew shared. Since a lot of people were asking for halal food, they made sure to get a certification even if it took six months to process it.

Another technique is to make yourself different from the competitors, which was their strategy with the Goro Goro Steamboat. With these, their food chains continue to grow.

“The best part is my team of 77th Street the fashion business, the management team, is actually running the food business so we run the business how we run the fashion business,” she happily shared.

From food to FastFast

As an entrepreneur, Chew realized that she had to run a lot of errands and had no time at all to accomplish them. This was when she met several enterprising young people who offered to run her errands for her. This idea eventually became Fast Fast Delivery, her next business venture.

“You can go to website and it run errands for you. So you’re sitting here now you forgot your headphones somewhere, you can go to the website and get someone to bring it here for you and you pay in cash,” she explained.

“I usually try to get students single moms, single dads, people strapped for cash and need daily income,” Chew added.

She explained that 90% of the money is given to the driver and the remaining 10% goes into training the drivers or errand runners on how to use the platform.

“Crowdsourcing I think is the only way forward,” she remarked about this platform.

This idea also worked out for a group of young people she met, who was crowdsourcing for an advertising business. This particular group of young people raised a million dollars for their business, Carblicity, a crowdsourcing platform that connects advertisers with private car owners for the purpose of Outdoor Advertising using stickers on cars.

This in turn allows advertisers to tap on the resources of the any person in Singapore with a car for their advertising purposes, while drivers can now enjoy the rewards once reserved for public transport vehicles.

“With Carblicity, you can have one car a month just doing your advertising,” she said.

From FastFast to fish and filming

Despite her busy schedule, Chew still finds the time to do her hobbies. One of these is fishing with 16 of her friends.

Every three months, they would get together and fish. Their biggest catch, she said, was 645 fish in just a few hours.

Chew and her friends would then donate their catch and other meat products to a soup kitchen that cooks 6,000 meals a day for low-income people in Singapore. Chew shared that the usual donations are vegetables and tofu but she noticed that the soup kitchen did not have any meat.

“So every 3 months, my friends and I get together to donate chicken, fish, and all that but the most important thing is we love fishing right? But there’s this group that cleans the fish and cooks the fish,” she shared, explaining that this activity creates another stream of revenue for this group of people.

“So for people who want to do something, you can start anything, right?” she said.

After many years of taking the lead in starting businesses, Chew also said that it’s about time that she pave the way for a new generation of serial entrepreneurs.

This is why she has ventured into digital filmmaking and created her own YouTube channel, ElimChewTV, where she features young changemakers. An example is a Vietnamese who started a music school because he believed that every child has the right to music.

Chew said that she dedicated the first 50 years of her life to serial entrepreneurship, which is chronicled in her book, The Elim Chew Story: Driven by Purpose, Destined for Change. And her story doesn’t stop there.

“For the next 30 years of my life, I’m hoping to give to 1 million changemakers and impact 1 billion lives.”

If you think you’re a changemaker and a serial entrepreneur like Elim Chew, the first step is to find the courage and dedication to commit to your dreams. Once you have it, why not join a community like Connected Women who will support you in different aspects such as finding a remote team? Find inspiration and build your network today.

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