DL Resources was established by Daniel Teo and Loreen Teo. DL Resources started work from home when they first set up their company in 1996.

Company: DL RESOURCES PTE LTD Address: #21-01, International Plaza, 10 Anson Road S079903 Website: N/A Interview with Mr Daniel Teo by Tan Sheng Rong Kevin on 14-May-2011. Student can be reached at swat_bear@hotmail.com   Business Profile: DL Resources Pte Ltd is an established Information Technology Service Company. The company is focused on providing Contractual IT Professionals to our clients in Singapore, consisting of financial institutions, banks and Multi-National Companies.   Interviewer's Comments: It had been an enriching experience having the opportunity to interview an established company in the field of IT manpower services. I am sure this experience will assist me in the near future.   1. What is the nature of your business? It is in IT manpower services.   2. When and why did you decide to become an entrepreneur / take over your family business? NOTE: If it is not a family business, ask: Do your parents have their own businesses too? Have they inspired you in one way or another? (Select appropriate question according to the entrepreneur being interviewed.) This company started in 1996. After working for companies for a while, we decided that we want to have a more free style of doing things. So this is to try out. Starting our own business gives us the freedom to do things that we do not have a chance to do for example implementing certain policies when we were working for a company.   3. What are your reasons for choosing to do business in this particular industry? Because we were already in IT, so this is a natural progression, ie we both had worked for computer companies, hardware companies, software companies before. So when you look for an industry to start off our own business, it will be much easier if you look for something which you are familiar with.   4. How did you put together all the resources needed to start your business? For example: getting the start-up capital, hiring staff, doing sales and marketing, advertising, etc. Savings. We actually started very small. DL started from home and there was no one doing things except me and my husband. So we actual created our own invoice, our own internal systems & procedures. Everything was done by both of us. Of course like some of the requirements like accounting and financial reporting, we outsource them to professional. We were the sales/admin/including being the office auntie to do office cleanup.   5. So you do not have any help from your family at all? No.   6. What are some interesting stories you have about your first few customers/first few years in business? I would not call it interesting, but i guess some of the first few customers are more memorable. I remembered the first customer we had was a multinational bank. The guy was a very nice guy, a Chinese but American Chinese. I think what struck me was, he knew we were very small, a very small IT manpower company. However, he gave us that trust, so I would not call it an interesting story. But it would be something that we appreciated him for being one of our first customers. So it actually gives us some confidence. If we do not have customers, then it becomes very scary. But for a multinational bank to choose our company to provide the service, it gives us a bit more confident to move forward.   7. What are some of the challenges you faced when you first went into business? At IT manpower, means we employ programmers or analysts under our company and assigned them to the companies to do the work. The main challenge in the beginning was to ensure that our staff get paid on time. So of course, we ourselves went without salary. We did not have to pay rental initially because we operate from home. However, the people that work have to get their salary on time. So money was the main challenge, the operating capital.   8. How did you overcome these challenges? Please share some specific examples. We do not draw salary; we were living on our own savings. We also have to make sure that we do not spend unnecessarily. We watch our expenses very closely. Tighten expense, we only spend when necessary.   9. So are there times when you were not able to pay your employees on time? No. I think as a startup, if that happens then it would be very hard to recover. Your reputation in the industry will be ruined. People will spread that this company cannot pay wages. If we had to beg borrow at times we would have done so, but thank goodness we did not have to.   10. Can you remember your worst day in business or a time when you felt like giving up? What happened that made you feel that way and how did you triumph over it? Sometimes you do feel that it is very tough because we are new, there are a lot of bigger companies doing something like this. The prospective customers ask you questions like what is your track record/experiences. At times, these make you feel very small and very depressed, but at the end of the day, you just tell yourself that you just have to pursue and try and do not give up. Of course sometimes there are thoughts like if it does not end up well, what should we do? At that time our children are quite young and we have to support the family. The other thought is that worse off we give ourselves another 2 to 3 years and if it does not work out and we run out of savings then we go back and to work for others. However, it is not really giving up but the thoughts behind is that it is ok. We are still not so old; we can try and if we do not make it, we go back to work for other companies.   11. Can you share some of the lessons you learnt from overcoming your own business challenges? One of the lessons we learnt is never give up, be very sincere, and be honest. If people ask you about your experience if you do not have it you tell them you do not have it but you tell them that you work harder and you assure them that if anything goes wrong, you will always be there to help them. Actually we learnt that not necessarily customers only look for big companies and also of course you have to watch your spending. Some companies just because they got an order they start celebrating. For us we make sure that every dollar goes back to the company that even until today the cash that we have from the company, goes into the company. We do not draw it out and spend. It goes within the company, so actually a lot of our cash is with the company. I think some of the lessons would be to watch what you spend, be perseverant, be sincere and be humble.   12. When was the moment you realised the business would work out? Actually I told you earlier. We gave ourselves 2 to 3 years, i think that was about that time. First few months were very tough. But after the 1st year, we had some contracts coming in then these contracts were renewed. So I think probably by year 2, we think that this business should be able to sustain us. Of course there was the financial crisis that came along. There were years that things were very bad but again because we have started from nothing so when we have grown and when business go down we just tighten our belts again. We told ourselves we cannot be as bad as day 1 as before. I think it was ok after year 2.   13. What are some of your proudest business achievements to date? Our proudest achievement is from nothing we actually grow DL into a company, our revenue is only about Sing $ 10 to 11 million. So this I would think it is an achievement that we single handled did it. I think it is meaningful because this tells you that we are also not wonderful people, we do not have very strong family connections. So any ordinary people would be able to do it. So I think that is another meaning to us and other people. There is nothing impossible in life if you try and if you do not try you would not know whether you can do it or not.   14. How do you differentiate your business from your competitors? Please provide specific examples. Actually in this business, there are a lot of competitors and a lot of them charge much lower than us but and yet we are still being able to maintain the business because I think what we differentiate ourselves is that we are truly being sincere to the customer and being honest. In manpower, there are different skill set, sometimes a customer ask you for a certain skill set, you cannot lie about it because this is like selling a product. If your product cannot do the things, you cannot tell them it can. It is because it only takes them 2 to 3 months to find out. And if it happens once, you can say oh this person did not tell me the truth so i do not know. But if it happens over and over again, eventually you will lose the trust of the customer. So I think that is where we are different from the competitors. It is because we also put in a lot of our effort to source for our own manpower. And when we source for our own manpower, we also do not take in everybody. Our selection criteria are very high. We rather have a smaller pool and then we tell the customer sorry we do not what you want rather than ok, because for money, we just take them and then assign them to the customers. So that is where i think you have to be very sincere, you have to very strict with yourself.   15. What are some business ideas you have implemented that created great results in your business? Right now I cannot think of any. I would not even call it ourselves great business idea or great results. Have not reach great results but I think we still keep to the very simple way of doing business. We try not to make things very complicated for ourselves or the customers. But right now I cannot say we have created great business ideas. Simplicity to me, maybe an idea we have, is always keep things simple. Do not make it so complicated for the customers and maybe in other areas I should add is that we actually practise a lot of flexibility. Some of the clients we deal with are corporate, you know there have a lot of bureaucracy be it their own process. Sometimes they may not be able to issue us even a Purchase Order (PO) first and yet they need us to start the service. So sometimes we have to help them. Bases on trust. I think some of these helps. If you are too rigid, if you demand payment on time, then it makes their life difficult. We take risk as a small company but we think it is a calculated risk.   16. Are there any entrepreneurs out there that inspire you? I think the 1st person that I admire is the creative technology founder, Sim Wong Hoo. We are not comparing ourselves with him but at least we look up to him. He is a simple guy who is able to come out with such a great product. The other one is the founder of the thumbdrive, Singapore Trek Technology. These are the people that tell you that they also managed to do something very big out of nothing. It is only through their own hard work and I am sure these people also failed a lot of time and tried a lot of times. So I think these are 2 companies and persons that really impressed me.   17. What do you see for your business in the next 5 years, and does it include any plans for expansion? Growth is there. We do baby step growth, because we also find that in this type of business, quality is very important and it is very hard to ensure your quality is there if you grow too big. We are not looking at expansion as in setting up offices all over but over the years our revenue has been growing. We think this is a good way to do it. Step by step, probably hopefully in the next 5 years we can double our revenue.   18. What does entrepreneurship mean to you? Entrepreneurship means the ability to do the right things and adhere to your principles in your own environment. Also, to be able to create a working environment that is within your control. So to me that is one form of entrepreneurship so you can implement and see your ideas through fruition. Versus working for somebody, sometimes you may think you have a great idea, but if your bosses or your manager does not agree then that idea disappears. Whereas in an entrepreneurship, when you run your own things, you got nobody else to blame but yourself. So to me that is the beauty, I am not saying the meaning of but rather the beauty of entrepreneurship.   19. What are some entrepreneurship qualities that you have which has helped you come this far? Perseverant, do not give up, positive thinking helps, positive attitude. If you know the glass is half full or the glass is half empty concept. I always look at things as half full and see the good things in other people. Trust people before you judge them. Because some people look at things and say oh can I trust this person? But one of the things that I feel that we implement is give people the benefit of the doubt until it is been taken away. So it is along the line of positive attitude and do not give up so easily and of course always watch the money in the bank.   20. So what about risk taking as a quality? Yes. That i think earlier I have covered it that sometimes the customers do not even give us an official purchase order and we are prepared to take on the job for them and supply them the manpower and yet when the staff starts work you still have to pay them salary, so that is a risk. But again you have to weigh the risk. I would not call that risk, maybe it is more of managing risk versus flexibility. You cannot say because of risk I become inflexible. So there is an element of risk, but you must be able to balance it with how flexible you are in doing business with another party. And I think that is why you want to be an entrepreneur. Because as a company you always have a structured process and you are one of so many other staff, could be into the thousands, so the company would not allow you to do things your own way. But if you are an entrepreneur and you still do things so rigidly then you are no different from a company structure.   21. In your opinion, what other qualities does a person need in order to be successful in business? And why? (e.g. Educational qualification, work experience) I think experience helps. We may have educational degrees but nobody asks us whether we have a degree to do business with you. But experience is not so much of people ask you what is your work experience. They will ask you what your company experience is. But I think I would say if I am just fresh out of school, I probably would not jump straight into entrepreneurship because my thinking might not be opened up yet. It is better to work for someone for a couple of years to experience the different work culture, the different work structure and processes so that when you take the leap to start something, you would know what is the thing you want. You have to define something. They say people are born entrepreneur. But you must have a set of guidelines and these type of guidelines only comes when you have worked for somebody. You cannot sit at home and think about them. If you have an idea but your idea has to be supported by processes of your own company. Even though you are an entrepreneur you must know how to do things. Example Step 1 to Step 3. You must define what are the values/goals/targets that your company are going for. I think all these will only come about only when you have worked for awhile rather than if you are a boss from day 1. That is why I think work experience would help. Another thing is to have a positive attitude. If you are one that gives up easily and say that I do not make a sales in 2 month 3 months time than I want to give up, then you will not last very long because starting a business is aactually very tough.   22. Who or what motivates and inspires you when you are facing difficulties in business? I think no one can motivate you other than yourself. To me, do not blame others for what is happening to you. It is just like there are sunny days and there are rainy days. Always remember that at the end of a bad rainy season, the sun always come out. So I think the motivation needs to come from within. If you depend on somebody, then you are always looking out for a helping hand and I think that is not what we practiced. We always have to count on ourselves first before we look for support. So I think the motivation is really within us.   23. What are some of your business values and what would you like to pass down to others, particularly the younger generation? The values would be being honest, and in honesty the word though maybe simple but it covers a lot of things. Being honest to yourself, to your customers and to your staffs. Fair treatment, Christians has this saying, do not do onto what you would not do to yourself. It is the same thing. If you expect people to work hard then you have to set by example. You cannot say because I am the boss, I can switch off and i expect you to work like a slave. It does not work this way because you have to put yourselves in their shoes. So in terms of values I think there are a lot. I think what eventually i would like to do is to help youngsters maybe not like fresh from school. When we first started this business, we were in our thirties. DL Resources is about 12 nearly 13 years old. So maybe we would like to help mentor and guide people along if they encounter problems how to solve it. But again youngsters today are quite internet savvy. They are smarter than us, so maybe they do not need our help. But if there is a possibility, that is to become their mentor.   24. Can you share some of the more significant events / incidents that affected or shaped your business philosophy and the way you conduct your business? I.e. Financial Crisis in 2008 to 2009. During that time, the financial crisis affects everybody, it affects our customers when our customers get affected of course they would not have requirement for manpower services. actually the other one that affected us a lot was the cost of doing business in Singapore. We find that a lot of companies start shifting their IT developments out of Singapore and they shift to China/Philippines/India. Because we are not from there, we are not like the other companies whereby they have their headquarters elsewhere and a branch in Singapore. We did not have that. Crisis affects everybody. Another wakeup call was, sometimes we have to change our way of doing business. Say like one customer decided to move some of the operations to Malaysia. For them to go into a new country they also need to understand the market, then they need to start to hire people and they also have a need for manpower services, so if they go over then they have to look for a equivalent company like us to do the business. Then we offer them why do not we also source for you and then they work with you in Malaysia for example. We did not open a company there; we follow our customer in Singapore. But when our customer branch out there, then in our contract we branch out with them together, thus our staff also work off shore, going along with our customers. That was something we did to tide ourselves over because we know that some of our customers are moving off their operations from Singapore. They will still have a base here but they are moving off. When we do that, then they feel assure then they are here and we are here. If anything happens, and if anything happen to the staff in their offshore location, they do not have to talk to some offshore people, they can still talk to us, we are here, much nearer to them. So to me that is a change we implemented. We open up ourselves to do business and of course when you do that, then you have to learn new things. For example, in Malaysia how do you handle payment/tax/withholding tax/service tax etc. So this is another new area for us.   25. With the changes in the market today, do you think it has become harder or easier to succeed in business? Why do you say so? I would just make a very general statement. I think that it is easier to succeed in business not because of changes in the market but I think as time goes by, companies are more prepared to do business with new start ups and younger companies. So they are prepared to give entrepreneur a chance, they do not have to have big brand names, multinational or 50 years experience. So from that angle I think it is easier to succeed. Whether it is because of a changing market I am not so sure but the acceptance level of companies taking on suppliers/vendors who are younger and newer are at a much higher level.   26. How do you compete with other companies that are larger than your own business? Quality is what we emphasis. Next is relationship. Many of the customers have been with us, some for as long as we started the business. You will find that if you deal with people in a very sincere and open manner, they stick with you. We do not say ok because I know what you want and I know you can pay, we will push the product to you. If I think that this person is or this quality is not good, then I would not push it to you. Because I rather lose this deal but look at the 10 years of deal that I am going to have with you. So I think that is how we compete with other businesses.   27. Can you share with us some ways in which have you have successfully used to manage in between work and family? We do work from home. So for example if we have to watch my children (my sons) over their exam, so at times I work from home . Technlogy allows us to do a lot of stuff electronically and offsite now. You do not really need to have a lot of these meetings face to face. You can use video/phone call and Skype. We can even talk to overseas customers with video and voice. Many years ago, you have to fly over for a face to face meeting. So now you do not have to. So I think all these help one to balance work and family.   28. Is there a time whereby you have to sacrifice either work or family for the other? We try not to, there may be some sacrifices. In terms of sometimes, late in the night you get phone calls. But I would not call it sacrificing. Same as when you have to do something for your family you just have to do it. But I do not think there is a big sacrifice, you just have to manage it. Whichever is urgent you attend to it first, regardless of whether it is family or business matters. If family has an urgent thing that crops up you attend to it, if business has an urgent thing that crops up you attend to it. I think so far, there is no conflict.   29. Is there one person in your life that you think if without him/her, you would definitely have not made it this far in business. DL is owned by Daniel and me, so I guess both of us are important. We are the only 2 person that started this company. He does the interfacing of the customers and the people. He does a lot of operational things. Whereas I do a lot of the infrastructural setup and supporting processes. So I guess both plays a role, albeit in different areas.   30. How much have your company grown since it started, in terms of customers? If you look at day 1, we have zero revenue and today we have reached 10 million. Because it is not like we took over from somebody when it was 5 million then now its grown to 10million then you can compare as 2 fold. But we started from nothing to something, so I cannot give you a growth % but in terms of growth we have been growing steadily each year. Although I mentioned there was this multinational bank that trusted us but now we have many more bigger customers and a lot of the customers are giving us a lot more contracts so it is not only the customers that has gone big. The big customers have placed a lot more trust in us. So that is a growth in itself.   31. What advice would you give young people who want to start their own business? As I mentioned earlier, do not rush, and make sure you have some funding. That is why I say young people unless their family are rich; or perhaps they already have some money. If not you got to make sure that you can last if you want to start out on your own. You must have a business plan, a business plan in terms of your overheads, costs, expected revenue streams etc. At least you should plan that if for the next 6 months, there is no revenue, what would be my cost, do I have to pay rental/utilities/phone line and internet expense ect. There are some expenses you do not see and do not think of it. And of course if you are to hire staff, what is the cost. I think you need to really need to have a costing of at least 3 months to 6 months or even 1 year, assuming no business. You must be able to tell yourself, ok I am prepared that if no money comes in from this period, I am still ok. But if you never plan and you expect to start a business and hoping business to come in next month, and if there is no business, do you close down? That would be the advice I give; Yes, you must work out a business plan. The financial part is very important to me because you do not want to worry about that on a daily basis when you start your business. So the financial component is very important. And secondly, it will be better if you already have some targets (goals/objectives) in mind when you start your business and always start small and simple. Costing is everything. Spending is everything. Do not go and rent a posh office somewhere in an expensive area just to impress people. To me that was what I think we sacrifice, we did not have a posh office, we were working from home office. When customer asks us about it, we say we were starting out. In 3 months we actually managed to get deals and we felt comfortable enough that we would be able to have some revenue coming in to rent an office. So our first office was at International Plaza, we have moved units over time but today, we still remain at International Plaza.   32. How do you keep your best employees, do you have other companies poaching your employees? You cannot keep people forever, but I think if you are fair to them and if you reward them equitably, I think they will stay with you. I think one of our employees, who does our accounting for us, he is been with us for at least 8 or 9 years. He is one of the oldest. Another staff has also worked for us for a long time. I think if you are fair to them, they appreciate and they know that. You just have to be transparent about it.   33. What does your business do in general? We provide manpower services. For example, if a customer has a project (IT project). They need people to do certain programs in certain skill set then they will come to us and say I got this application that I need to develop, I need people in this area then we will look for them. So we are like their HR department, we are responsible for the staff, we interview the staff for them but they will still go through a final round of interview but we are like their HR manager. Although they have their own HR department, they have so many projects going on, so instead of they doing themselves. So in a way they outsource this role to us. So we are like HR department to many of our customers.