Hi! I’m Warren Chew, founder of Enayble Academy.

In 2007, I founded Falcon Mobility, one of Singapore’s leading distributors of electric wheelchairs and mobility scooters. Like many new entrepreneurs, I was full of optimism and invested my life savings to start the business.

But I got burnt. Badly.

I didn't test the market demand and ended up stocking too many products that didn't sell well, and too few of those that did. I took on fixed costs like rental and salaries before the business even became profitable. To make things worse, six months after starting operations, Lehman Brothers collapsed, triggering the Great Recession of 2008.

Within a year, I had lost most of my S$100,000 startup capital.

I had to go back to shareholders for more funds and also took on a few bank loans. Even though the business survived, I struggled immensely, and it was losing a lot of money. It was one of the most painful and difficult periods of my life. I was dead broke, but I still needed a way to survive.

While searching for answers, I came across a free entrepreneurship seminar. The coach asked this question:

"If you can't make money with no money, what makes you think you can make money with money?"

That question hit me like a sledgehammer. This was exactly what I had been doing wrong!

I started my business with a "big bang" approach, blindly trusting my own judgment without validating decisions with data. In hindsight, I should have gathered more user feedback regarding the product mix and been more frugal with my expenses.

This was an AHA moment for me. It created a paradigm shift in how I approached business. Since that day, I have always validated demand for a product before investing in more inventory—sometimes with just one sample unit and no stock.

I became very good at being broke—not at becoming broke, but at surviving with little or no money. I was forced to master bootstrapping, using highly creative strategies to overcome cashflow challenges without relying on loans or investors.

Over time, I developed a framework that I call the Start Small, Scale Fast (SSSF) strategy. It’s a method for people to start a business with little or no money while minimising risk and maximising the chances of success.

With the SSSF strategy, I turned Falcon Mobility around, growing it into the 7-figure company that it is today, and it is on track to become an 8-figure company within the next few years. I also co-founded two other 7-figure companies, including a highly profitable one started with just S$1,000 capital.

Looking back on my life, I’ve often wished I could travel back in time and mentor my younger self. If I had known then what I know now, I wouldn’t have had to endure so much hardship and pain.

But maybe I was meant to walk this journey. Maybe all that struggle happened for a reason. Perhaps I was meant to teach the lessons I learned the hard way, so that others may be spared the pain and suffering I had to go through.

This is why I founded Enayble Academy—to help other BrokePreneurs build and scale their businesses from zero to seven figures without taking excessive risks.