How Alvin Poh Sold His Business for $30 Million and Became a Digital Nomad

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This is the digital nomad quest podcast with Sharon Tseung. teaching people how to build passive income, become financially free and design the best lives.

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Hey guys, so today we’re speaking with Alvin Poh, who co founded voting and sold his company, and now is a digital nomad. Hey, how’s it going? Good. Good. Go ahead and tell us about yourself. Yeah, so voiceprints hosting company. We founded it together, me and my co founder. And we were 17 when we did that. So we were still students in school. And I remember the first iteration of the business. It was a web web design for and we did web design projects. After after a while we realized that it wasn’t very sustainable. It. It turned out to be a lot harder than we taught to manage clients and projects.

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As students, so then we started looking at, you know what we could do next. And we realized that all our clients need a web hosting. And we pivoted from like a web design company to a web hosting company. And that’s how the company got started. Interesting. So are you passionate about that subject? Or are you more passionate about design or you are very interested in design, because we could like, almost immediately apply what we’re learning in school into a science project. You face problems with web design and web development. And sometimes we could even go to school and as our lectures about how to solve a particular problem, which was, which was nice. It felt like we had a lot of help and support. So that was definitely something that I was very interested in.

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Hosting was just a natural progression.

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How did you start the company how

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You’re 17 like they were still too young to like really start a company. Yeah. So we opened it under my dad’s name. Well, you’re from Singapore, is it different back then I think the legal age was 21. Like you had to be 21 before you could open a company and before you open and bang the phone, like what motivated you to want to start the company? Or you guys entrepreneurship like why that intrigued you as well as the company you ended up starting? I guess it isn’t as glamorous as as entrepreneurship makes it all to be we actually just a couple of broke

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students and we just needed money. It was either work at a part time job that pays you probably about $5 an hour at a time. Or you could like do business run a business on the side. And for me, I was really doing freelance web design projects. So those were getting me about a few hundred dollars a month.

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Which I thought was was great because, you know, you get your time freedom you you obviously get to manage your time yourself and

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you get paid more than what you expect from like a part time job. I mean, at that age, that’s really good and what were some of the challenges you face like when you started I’m sure like just starting on companies.

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I think my whole journey was filled with challenges. Redis thought though, I think the biggest challenge was to find clients. We do need to have a budget to do that. So I remember doing like all kinds of stuff just to get clients. We will go to the library for example, and we will find books about business and we will put up flyers so our business flyers and we just like created it all and I’m just like stuff looks for the head off flyers as well. We’ll we’ll create online classified ads about business and back then people

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was still responded to those ads. Yeah. So that’s how we, that’s how we started. I guess it was a it was a challenge to find clients but slowly managed to find a few and then do happy enough that they refer their friends to us and sort of grew from there. I mean, you do that. Okay, so you do the hosting for these clients. Okay, so it’s not like Host Gator or something like that. We actually like Host Gator except we are based in Singapore. Oh, cool. When did it kind of hit that point where it became like a huge company started getting employees, things like that. Our first employee was 320 10.

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So between my co founder and I, we just handled everything when the revenue got to a size where we could afford somebody salary decided to like, hire someone. And the first role that you hired for was for sales for sales, okay? You hire that person because like

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Not focus that much on sales anymore. and concentrate on like the other areas and aspects of the business and make sense. And how long did it take to like get both of us at school, we went to college. The business was closer our main focus back then school, but after my co founder graduated he, he graduated earlier than I did. And so he focused on the business started growing it. And I think it took us about a year or two before we could have the revenue that we needed to hire.

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The finance lady helped us with accounting, bookkeeping and building bills that you didn’t send to customers and payments that he sent back to us or handled by her. So that was how hiring looked like. And we just we just made sure that you know, whoever we hired for we had the revenue to cover the salaries so that we don’t have to work on that anymore and co founder I could focus on other

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aspects. Yeah. So business. So yeah, what are those other aspects of everything like, like, if you look at the organization chart of the business, I guess that’s where everything was handled by us at a start until we grew to a size where it was the higher end for those people and those departments. Okay. So this involves everything from marketing to sales to finance to building infrastructure systems. Yeah, you have to do any coding. Yeah. Both both my co founder and I were coders by training. Okay. We did a lot of projects on our own internally for the company. Yeah, they wouldn’t like products that we sell. But they’ll be systems that we needed internally, like, maybe you’ll be a simple system that helped us keep track of who paid and who didn’t, could be something that helped automate certain tasks. And I guess those were the things that we could do because we had that kind of progress.

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mean bad girl? And

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is that how you guys man? Oh, yeah, it’s cool. Well, he was the guy that set right beside me when we had all orientation.

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Because I feel like sometimes when I partner with people on stuff, it can turn out badly. How did you know? He was like the right? I didn’t I guess the good thing was that we had a kind of like a working relationship as students first. So we, because we got to know each other at orientation. Yeah, we started hanging out and we started doing group projects together. We started working on assignments together. And I guess that meant a really good relationship between us. Yeah, so when it was time for our school holidays, and we had time to look for part time work, we naturally just did that together. And then one thing led to another and we started like exploring the idea of starting a business.

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This interesting yeah. So I guess that’s, that’s important because we didn’t start a business because we were friends. But rather, we knew that we could work well together. What would you say? Are the top factors of choosing a partner? Like what are the best traits? Well done. trust and respect, like, the top two. Okay, you got to find someone that actually complements you skills wise. And personality wise, you feel like he had stuff that you didn’t have that like, Oh, yeah, for sure. Okay. So in the company, I was the CEO and he was a CEO and that misty means that, you know, he’s, he’s a lot more risk averse than I am. Yeah, I like trying new things. I like doing stuff I like, you know, exploring stuff. It was humble. We needed to expand our customer service team. And we need to look for more people for that to happen. Yeah. And we’re facing

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A problem in Singapore because we just couldn’t find a manpower. And, and so I was in charge of that I was like supposed to look for ways we could grow our team and we looked at, you know, bringing people in from another country into Singapore, we look at outsourcing. We looked at going somewhere else, and opening up an office there.

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And I guess that’s the kind of stuff that I will do. Yeah, and it’s a long process. But eventually, we managed to find something that worked for us. And when that happens, my partner will be the one that handles things like, you know, how do we get the departments? How would the departments look like how would salary structure like how incentives work for our team? How would we have disciplinary actions for you know, for team as well, and you handle all that? So as he’s a very process driven

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A very detail oriented person. Yeah, you guys were like early 20s when you manage this team

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30s because Did you have any mentors or like anyone to teach you how to do?

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We do we have a formal mentor, but we had a lot of people that we got advice from, like, you know, friends, family, or like, especially people who are in business also. Okay, so that advice they had

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that experience that you could share? I think that really helped. Did you have to do a lot of networking to get those connects? And like, did you have to get funding? Oh, we will 100% bootstrapped. So we had no external funding at all. Yeah. We didn’t really go for networking events to find people were always just asking around to see if people had an idea of people had a friend that you know, who they think could help.

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us in whatever problem that we face. Yeah, the way we expanded into the Philippines was because one of my very good business friends had a friend who was also in business and head office in the Philippines.

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And she was super helpful to us. He said, you know, just try hiring. We could, we could use his company, which was already set up his office, which was already there, hire someone, put it under his payroll, have them work from his office, and he was just like, charge us cost the cost. So for us, there was a very, very low cost way of trying out the method. And thankfully it worked. We, we found something that worked out for us. We started great from there and eventually got a team called our own office got our own company set up in the Philippines. So without him I don’t think we would have been able to

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set things up in the Philippines that is, so you guys have to

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you have we’ve we’ve tried expanding image because manpower is something that’s super important for our business. So we’ve been constantly trying different offices, different locations.

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The Philippines is our main customer service

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area, but please try Malaysia

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Indonesia

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India. Okay, so yeah, it’s quite a few places

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and offices you first started. How many hours a day did you work? Well, that’s like crazy. Yeah, I was I think the business was our whole life and pretty much and was there to balance like life or did you know those new bells all work

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But I mean, for us, we loved it because we enjoy what we were doing. I guess. So there was, there was what kept us going. Yeah. But yeah, there’s a there’s a whole ton of sacrifice involved. So we definitely didn’t have much of a social life, or family life also got impacted.

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To really hang out very much with our family. We don’t have time to do all that. Yeah.

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So that’s the same thing with Francis well, wasn’t like that the whole time he saw

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me.

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Up until now, it was always like, no, it got better once we started, even when we hired people at the start, it wasn’t that easy. There was only after we started having a middle management here that, you know, we started empowering people and, you know, trusting them a lot more that we could ease ourselves away from the day to day

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aspects of the business.

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How old are you? I really like?

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Um,

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that was probably in

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2015, maybe 20 minutes?

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No, it wasn’t, it wasn’t that far off. Yeah, what made you start the company? As a whole lot of reasons. We’ve really spent close to 17 years running a business 17 and it was like, maybe time to look at what else we wanted to do. Yeah. So we want to know as a as part of business, for the business we want to expand and the company that acquired us, they had all these dreams of expansion as well. And I guess they were just in a better place to bring it further and reader. So it just made sense for us. Okay, so they’re still going on then you guys, both of you guys.

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And then you sold it for him.

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$30 million. Okay, that’s awesome. After that you decided to, you know, matter like was that was that? Well, after I sold the company I stayed on for a year. Okay. And after the year, I was questioning my life and what I wanted to do, and I realized I didn’t have a clue. So this one I decided to sell everything that I hadn’t seen before my house, my car,

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most of my possessions. And now like everything that I have probably fits into two suitcases. Yeah. And that’s Yeah, so I then decided to travel meet up with friends that I haven’t met for the longest time. You know, see what else is out there in the world?

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Yeah, because it’s not now then when? Yeah, do you feel happier now than before? I think freedom really drives me like I enjoy freedom. So having that is always

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Something that makes me happy ND will do this right? Oh, yeah. Yeah, definitely happy. What? I guess what are the challenges of being nomadic

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routine? I think it’s really hard to, to work on certain things that you take for granted when you’re at a certain living at a certain place. Yeah. So even like maybe a fitness routine or like media with friends or even the food they eat. Well, to me health and nutrition,

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health and fitness actually

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pretty important to me. Yeah, for sure. But I finally had it on the roof. That’s true. I guess it was kind of like the same for me. Like finding a schedule was kind of hard. But I feel like it was very necessary, right for, I don’t know if you like to be more spontaneous or structured. I like beans. I like having a bit of spontaneity sometimes. But, like, I want to make sure that is for every day. I get to do some things. I get to

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You know, put in a workout or I get to spend some time, you know, checking off tasks or errands before I go do whatever it is that I want to do. Because it’s very easy to get lost in there and spend like days just like traveling and having fun. Yeah. So I guess that’s the thing that you watch out for. Are you going to work on some new project? Oh, no, I was just exploring. I think I’ve not had this for a really long time. So I just want to like travel. I want to take people on, hang out with people and see what else is out there before I started project.

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I mean, do you find I guess when I was nomadic, I started feeling like, I just kept thinking about my purpose and stuff like that. Yeah. Did you ever Yeah, same thing, I guess for me is like, okay, should I work on some project or something? Because I was thinking about that for so long. So I wonder like, if you’re just traveling for a while, Are you anxious to work on something or know something’s coming going

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lot now, so I try to like write on my blog. And I want to write a book as well. Okay. So, I mean like project. Yeah, growing my Instagram as well. So

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all those things I mean dizzy, I guess. Focus. Okay. In the meantime at least did you think about your purpose Did you find a conclusion? Not yet so easy to find purpose in like our work and like this this was such a huge part of my life. It was my purpose. Yeah, now there is no longer part of me. I feel like I need to rediscover that again.

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Sometime so it doesn’t really have to be something I do right now. I just have to keep myself busy. Work on some projects here and there, I guess but no, no real business that I’m studying right now. So for the moment. Yeah. Alright, so someone wanted to do what you did, like, create a business, sell it and then become nomadic.

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With some of your best advice, I like first step.

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But I don’t know, that’s the best way to do that. You could approach it in several ways if you want to be nomadic, but I guess if you want to start a business, yeah, the best way I recommend is to start by offering a service. A lot of times people

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actually find it harder to just start. So as long as you can start a service, it’s, it’s a lot lower risk, it means that, you know, you can start experiencing entrepreneurship, we can start learning about how to run a business, things like accounting, marketing, branding, all that. Things that you can explore when you do a service based business. And I think that’s, that’s pretty much the best way to begin, cuz he didn’t freelancing for sure. I know. What did you do for clients? Again, web design, okay. Yeah. can be anything it could be like, you know, moving along, for example, it’s really easy to say maybe just go down your entire neighborhood and knock on doors.

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offering to mow lawns for example and appreciation for a project or to that way, it could be anything. It could be washing cars, it could be moving lawns, it could be doing any form or service

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that you like to see yourself doing and then slowly trying to steal things from the kidnappers

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expanded I guess now that kind of

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when you started it, what were some of the first steps to like scaling it up or like not even scaling it up just like getting it?

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Ready?

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Well, I guess you’re always reading for clients.

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Like there was no real process we just

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yeah, just just try to find clients who needed a web site. And you know, we, we, in a very logical we thought about how best to approach it like there was no one template. That’s it. Oh, first of all, you know,

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Content client and and and after that he will propose something to the man. And then, you know, the proposal is to have like five versions and from there, you know, there wasn’t a set template we just did whatever seemed like it made sense for us. And thankfully enough, that worked. I guess as long as you have a very logical view of things and you put yourself in like your clients, yes, you can you can come up with like, a process that you know, they appreciate. I guess that’s how you fall in office, you clients and got office few projects. And what was your biggest learning? I guess from all the way

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to persevere? I think we faced so many failures that it wasn’t funny like most of the time.

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When I look back, I think the whole journey was filled with

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time where you like almost gave up or no, I think we always felt like the business was our baby. Yeah, not just a baby but like our lifeline.

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We couldn’t like just give up on that.

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But like it changed our view of failure. Failure now means to us a way of, of learning how not to do it. Yeah. And you just have to try something else. Because each time you fail, you find all, you know, ways that you shouldn’t do things or ways that you could do things better. And keep doing that. It will slowly you need you to like a way that actually works. Yeah, yeah. So that’s what we learned.

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Here, India have any last words? I think it’s very important to know what you’re doing, why you’re doing things. That’s kind of your purpose and your vision. Yeah, once you have that, just doing it, committing to executing on it, and you’re not giving up whenever you

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come across obstacles because you’re bound to come across obstacles and problems.

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Awesome. That’s all the questions. I have.

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Thanks, Alvin for coming on to the show. Thanks for having me. Hey, bye

Transcribed by https://otter.ai