The Ten X Group were officially registered as 10 X Enterprise on September of 2019 when 3 friends discussed the lack of opportunities for working people out there to improve themselves, upgrade their skills, enjoy their work and most importantly feel gratified about their jobs. Yeah, it was a loosely conceived problem statement with not many facts and figures to support it. A lot of it was intangible but we didn’t really care, all we wanted to do was to drive change, somehow! Quickly realizing that we were all part of the same roost, where we felt that our current employers (at that time) would- by the nature the of things, focus on the cost side of opportunities = cost cost cost cost…”let’s reduce that”, let’s “manage that tighter”…let’s go “under the baseline this year”! To simply put it, we were frustrated employees ourselves having worked on both sides of the coin – both in management and as a regular salaried employee. Either way we felt that employee gratification was a failing cause. Employers didn’t really see why it was important or rather it’s significance. Jobs were merely about completing the tasks at hand at any cost without really thinking about the cause and effect. One would wonder; who cares about the introduction of robots when we were all essentially turning into robots ourselves?
Frustration….
Instead of allowing the frustration to consume us – Team Ten X as we decided to call ourselves (inspired by Grant Cardone’s amazing book) took the problem statement by the horns to see if we could tackle this issue – somehow! We really didn’t have an idea of how, but we wanted to do something! Everything sounds pretty ambiguous now, right? I guess that ambiguity made us think outside of the box. However, we soon learned that any amount of innovation that we could conjure up would still bind us down to the regular detractors – cost, technological efficiencies and also people. We had our day jobs to focus on and lived by our regular salaried incomes limiting our opportunity to venture this idea out with our life’s savings! We were destined for failure! FACT: 8 out of 10 startups fail within their 1st year of operations – we knew we were definitely going to fall within that 20% of failures at the rate things were going. How did we turn things around? Starting with the end in mind- the fear of failure and embracing the willingness to fail fast helped us along, a lot!
Stroke of Genius…
As much as we would like to claim that The Ten X Group as we are now known – is an absolute result of pure intelligence, hard work, and diligence from the 3 of us – it really isn’t all that. We had a stroke of luck, a tiny little break, a eureka moment thanks to the wonderful people around us. Yes, we got a break and we capitalized on that little opportunity that lay in front of us to be where we are today. Thereafter came the hard work, intelligence, genius, diligence, chocolates, candy and all those wonderful words you could use to describe our journey as The Ten X Group. The key here is to maximize your opportunities by capitalizing on it through proper planning, discussions, the willingness to fail fast and most importantly the ability to learn from past mistakes (study other business models). If you would like to learn more about our journey, drop us an email on our “Contact us” page and we will definitely hit you back with an appointment at our favorite coffee joint – on us of course!
Now the eXperience….
As consumers and organizations alike become more and more fixated with the term “Customer Experience” – we also saw that there was a growing need to improve the “Employee Experience”. I mean look at it this way – you could use the highest-grade bread, chicken slice, salad and mayonnaise to make the Ultimate Sandwich but if it wasn’t prepared in the best conditions and by a person who genuinely wanted to put the exact amount of measured ingredients – you could never really guarantee the “ultimate sandwich”. A sandwich is a sandwich unless you spend some time enhancing the esthetics of it and yeah maybe put a special touch to it or make it a little different. It’s really about the sandwich maker here, right? We wanted to tackle that sandwich maker instead of the sandwich itself. Are we making sense now? We chose to focus on the employee versus the customer, but why?
EX = CX (Employee Experience = Customer Experience)
Employee Experience is now slowly taking the forefront over the commonly utilized KPI’s of the past, if a customer liked a certain service rendered, they would simply buy more and repeat their loyalty to that specific consumer opportunity. We as Team Ten X wanted to impact that change, we wanted to help employers to gratify their employees with the simple formula: “A Happy Employee essentially means you will have A Happy Customer”. The challenge was finding an equilibrium where employers could see the benefit of such a program for their employees without paying much attention to the cost but rather looking at the potential change it could bring. Enhanced employee experiences guarantee a better customer experience – a happy employee would go the extra mile to assist a customer in need – at least in theory.
Leap of Faith….
As we spoke to more and more people about our ideas, we started thinking that we could possibly become a job placement agency? Maybe change the face of job-hunting? A company to help people nail interviews? We were spoilt for choice… but that would defeat the purpose that we initially had started out on. We wanted to stick to our Vision, Mission and Values – it was honestly tough especially since we did not see any cash flow and the business was running on almost a zero-capital investment startup model. That’s when we took another leap of faith – one of the founding partners decided to quit his fulltime job to focus 100% on our venture. It was an absolute gamble but we knew that this would be absolutely worth the while. We knew that having a person 100% of the time thinking TEN X – would lead to better planning, implementation, and quality! Thank you Nisshan for taking this leap for Team Ten X – it really made a difference!
Careful Decisions…
Through the course of our journey, we pitched our ideas and methods on many platforms and even attended interviews with potential venture capitalists. In the end, we had a total of 3 serious potential Venture Capitalists who were absolutely sure that they saw a “gem” in us. We weighed out our options, we sought out expert advice and most importantly we compared our Vision, Mission, and Values with that of the potential VC’s, to see if we were in-line to co-exist. Ten X never wanted to lose our identities in the name of growth/profit/revenue. Guess what? We turned them all down and instead went with a smaller investor who shared the same notion to help people grow in their personal/work capabilities. Upon agreeing on our terms and signing off on our VMV’s – we had now received the investment that we so badly needed to kick-start our Ten X journey with just a little more “meat on the bones”. Decide wisely, don’t be blinded by the need for an injection of funds to catapult your business performance. It’s important to stick to your values – make it and design it the way it suits you the best, don’t deviate as you will only lose your value and cause which leads to a short-lived passion for your business. Longevity is a product Passion!
Certification Program + Fitness regime + Self-improvement?
Instead of coming up with a job-seeking portal where people are evidently spoilt for choice in Malaysia, we wanted to create an initiative where people would be able to garner a more value-added experience or as we call it, Holistic Learning. This is when the “Enhancing the Employee Experience” project was born. Team Ten X wanted to exemplify the various means of increasing the employee’s performance through gratifying programs such as professional certifications, self-improvement, fitness programs and also programs for the corporate world further guaranteeing an increase in the employee experience. It was a tough market to crack but we had an idea that at that point would almost work! I mean, how many of you have ever heard of a plan where the employees are put through a certification program + fitness regime + self-improvement which leads to them becoming “happy”; which then in turn increases their loyalty to the organization, improves productivity, maintains a high output quality and most importantly catapults the increase of the customer experience! Try saying the last line in one breath! Sounds confusing, right? Trust us, we have spent hours on R&D to ensure that this concept is a workable one! Now to simplify it and make it more marketable!
We Prepped…
As a run up to becoming business owners (noting we only registered with SSM in September of 2019 albeit talking about this ideology since 2018) the 3 of us were heavily involved in a lot of self-improvement programs. We wanted to better equip ourselves for the business world whilst managing our day-jobs. Adam Abdullah comes with senior management experience within the operations circle – overseeing multiple multi-national companies through his 15-year working experience (Adam is a graduate in Psychology and also currently pursuing his MBA). Naviin on the other hand has seen 6 years’ experience within the customer experience circles coupled with a strong knowledge of finances and mathematics as a whole (Naviin is currently pursuing his Bachelor’s Degree in Actuarial Science). Lastly but definitely not least, Nisshan who is currently pursuing his Bachelors in Business Management has immense knowledge in project management through his working experience with FinTech companies coupled with awesome know-hows in cost saving methodologies.
Formula…
Our team combination and synergy on paper seemed to be amazing – I mean who wouldn’t buy an idea from 3 “experienced” and we like to think smart young men? Well, it wasn’t that easy! Between the 3 of us, the idea was GENIUS AF. As a concept many organizations and people alike recognized our genius – but they were unwilling to invest in our programs! Why? It didn’t quite make sense right? They loved it but they somehow didn’t need it?
We further incinerated ourselves by setting demanding goals to ensure our programs were absolutely affordable, high quality with a guaranteed top-notch user experience. In Malaysia, as a whole – personal certifications come at a premium price – change was on its way through us and we had the formula but something was lacking. We had the ideas but lacked the expertise!
Partnership…
Recognizing the need to have a partnership with an internationally recognized service provider – we were in search for an organization who could guarantee us great and affordable content coupled with the usage of the latest available technology. After rounds and rounds of discussions, we finally made the awesome decision to partner with – The RPM Academy. As a professional certification provider with years of experience, RPM Academy agreed to be a part of the program that we wanted to roll out for the Malaysian public. This would guarantee great output + minimal financial investment from us. We were on the road to make this a reality! Explaining our idea to organizations was not going to be so difficult after all with the usage of technology, applications and of course amazing course content thanks to our partnership with the RPM Academy. This was probably the biggest break we got on our business venture thus far, we understood the bigger picture and instead of trying to do everything ourselves, we knew looking out for help would only make us more efficient and productive. It’s not always about you creating or innovating on your ideas – sometimes great and well thought of partnerships can provide you that gel that you ever so need to increase your omni-business needs.
Services….
With the launch of our official Ten X website (www.thetenxgroup.com) on March 5th 2020, we now offer you the Malaysian public the following programs either for individuals or corporate organizations:
Enhancing the Employee Experience
Professional Certification Programs
Travel X (Coming Soon)
Each and every program that we deliver are a result of our global partnership programs and lots of help from our friends and family. We explored as much as we could before we decided on investing – a simple formula of weighing out at least 3 options before deciding on the best, cost effective and high quality (& returns)– simple process of elimination.
Youth =?
Albeit being an extremely “young” company, The Ten X Group was created with the sole reason of helping the growth of the lovely people in Malaysia – YES, we love our country but we definitely love humanity even more 😊.Our companies’ youth should not discount the experience that we carry in Project Management, Management, Operations and also Financial Analysis as mentioned somewhere in the jungle of a paragraphs above this. Our relatively youthful outlook (ignore Adam’s silver beard) – has actually helped us a lot where lots of organization or people alike absolutely love our take at things. Employee Experience? Wow! Those were some of the reactions from our clients. The goal here is to create a niche for your business – be brave, be different and most importantly stick to your niche. You can and probably should modify your goals as you go along, but just don’t deviate too much – keep it real and raw.
Modest Results…
Through the course of creating our custom-made programs, heavy time allocation was made towards research and development (R&D) – we conducted various market surveys, interviews and also sought-out expert consultation to ensure we were in-fact setting up the right business model for success. With our results in hand from the numerous rounds of R&D – we utilized our vast experience to grow the company to where it is right now with over RM30,000 in sales over the period of just 5 months. Just by utilizing our own financial savings and some investment from a Venture Capitalist, The Ten X Team was able to easily differentiate ourselves within the market of training and development – exponentially. We set-out to change the face of human capital training and development. Even though we have successfully done that in theory, we are also fast to admit that we have an even more windy road ahead of us – don’t worry, we will get there, with YOU in mind.
Teamwork, Discipline and Love
The Ten Group consists of 3 individuals of considerably late bloomers – our average age stands at 32 – only 1 out of 3 of us has a University Degree, 1 out of 3 currently owns a car and 1 out of 3 of us owns our own home. Failing to flatter on life’s apparent “needs” – we knew in our hearts that those things didn’t matter. We had embarked on this journey to improve the quality of the lives around us, personally and obviously for our friends and family. Our key success components have always been Teamwork, Discipline, and Love. Staying disciplined to meet almost every other day to discuss our business needs, keeping the Love to pursue our dreams has also been pivotal in our so far modest success rate. Don’t be afraid to call up your partner early in the morning to say things are not going to plan and that he/she needs to get-up early to get things done. Criticize each other but always maintain a level of teamwork, don’t throw words instead throw suggestions when you criticize/debate – stick together through the times and success is yours to lose.
Epilogue…
As we continue on our journey towards helping lives by providing affordable self-improvement opportunities – we promise to champion the human touch at every corner that we take. Yes, this is a business but who says you can’t be nice and still make a buck?
Contact us at ask@thetenxgroup.com if you have an idea or even if you would like to just chat about our journey (constructive criticism accepted!). It hasn’t been easy; we would be the first to admit that. The Ten X Group are still not a success but we have definitely achieved something here and we are absolutely super proud of ourselves for what we have become now– we believed in ourselves and we took a leap of faith. YOU should too, remember to always Define -> Measure -> Analyze -> Improve -> Control.
“Capital is not so important. Experience is not so important either. You can get through both of these things. What matters are your ideas! – Harvey Firestone (Founder, Firestone Tyres)
We wish you all the best in your future endeavors! Remember whenever you think of enhancing your Employee Experience, think about Ten X! “Think EX, Think Ten X”
Thank you.
Sincerely,
Team Ten X
Adam, Naviin & Nisshan