His PSLE score was only 150, leading to taunts that he was stupid. The people who made fun of him perhaps wouldn’t have expected him to be a successful entrepreneur at a young age of 26.
Lawrence Kim’s second identity is a student. He is currently studying business, in his 3rd year in SMU. In fact, he started off his career at a tender age of 17, manning his business while studying. From printing business cards, he slowly took his business right up to being a sea inspection company’s directing manager, with a mean 5 figure monthly salary.
Last year, he was recruited by the National Youth Council to become the youngest “Young Business Leader” member. This non official organization’s main motive is to gather all the young entrepreneurs, and organize activities to encourage young adults to carve out their own careers.
Lawrence made up his mind to work hard after his poor results in primary school.
He told reporters, except for mathematics, he was no good in every other subject, and even obtained a low mark of 150 during his PSLE. His parents were infuriated, and he was teased by neighbors that he was stupid.
After he enrolled into secondary school, in order not to let people look down on him, he worked very hard at his studies, the result being he topped his school during his N levels, and was even the top 3 in Singapore.
Speaking of business ventures, he started saving up in secondary 2 by working as a waiter in a community club’s restaurant. He could earn 8 dollars per hour during weekends, and on festivals and occasions, for a good 14 hours, he could earn over 400 dollars.
After his O levels, he enrolled into Singapore Polytechnic’s business finance course. He also used his savings of 5000 dollars over the 4 years of part time work to start up his printing business.
“I rented a shop in the neighborhood to attract business, helping them to print their name cards, and even gave out flyers myself,” Lawrence stated.
For the first few months, his profits did not even exceed what he used to earn from his waiter job. Business, however, became brisk after a few months, and one year later he spent 3000 dollars to buy a second hand printer, rented a small factory in Geylang Lorong 2, hired 3 workers and expanded his business.
Despite the economic crisis and SARS, Lawrence’s business gradually built up. In 2007, he even sold off the company at a handsome price of over 500 thousand dollars. He invested the money in his dad’s sea inspection business, and became the managing director to 30 workers.
The managing director was an intern in the company for a year.
Lawrence majors in business; someone asked why he ventured into engineering. His response was that everything could be learnt from scratch, so his first year in the company was spent learning the basics e.g. x ray and thickness of the material. If he was not at school, he was at the shipyard.
“In 2007 and 2008, I hardly got any pay. The company was expanding rapidly. If we made money, we put them into hiring, buying of equipment. The projects that we’ve completed not only renew regular customers’ trust in us, but also attract new customers.
Lawrence likens doing business to being in love, in that one must put in effort to love the workers and the work, and must be willing to sacrifice for the job.
“You don’t have to be wealthy to be an entrepreneur, but it doesn’t mean that you’ll see fast results.”
He confesses that he is a perfectionist, depending on 4 cups of coffee a day for energy to do the day’s work. Even if he only has 4 hours to sleep a day, he still insists on reading the reports himself. He could have graduated this year from SMU, but because of a business trip to the USA, he asked for a deferment in semester and went overseas for over 3 months for sea inspection.
“I think some workers will think that working under me will be very tiring, but once we hit it off, everyone can walk a different kind of path from before.
He said, after entering the company, he asked of his workers to fully address all problems from the company’s customers and to provide better service, and even has a goal of entering Singapore’s top 3 after a span of 3 years.
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