YT15 | This university dropout built a $25 million business in less than four years

Can a university dropout build a multi million-dollar business? This is Melvin. He has spent the last 16 years travelling the world and changing the lives of countless people – from kids to teens to adults to top entrepreneurs. Along the way, Melvin built a 25 million dollar coaching business from scratch in just 4.5 years, coached the majority of Asia’s top speakers, coaches and sales leaders and is the co-founder of the renowned X-Factor Method which is the behind-the-scenes mastermind behind many 8-figure brands around Asia.

In this episode Melvin shares with me his unconventional entrepreneurial journey, how his rebel spirit and self-awareness led to his successful business, transcending cultural differences and education systems, and why entrepreneurial journey is not for everyone. Born and raised in Singapore, Melvin defied norms by dropping out of university, questioning the status quo and crafting his own path in life.

Discussion Topics: This university dropout built a $25 million business in less than four years

• Melvin’s journey into the entrepreneurial world
• The turning point in Melvin’s life
• How to find your niche?
• Can a business partner compensate for your weaknesses?
• Are there any differences between Asian and Western businesses
• How can Asians level themselves up?
• The difference in coaching Asians and Westerners
• An anecdote to self

Transcript: This university dropout built a $25 million business in less than four years

Yana: Welcome to another episode of YanaTV. Today our guest is Melvin Soh and he is the founder of X Factor Method. Melvin also built a 25 million business in less than four and a half years, and coached all the leading speakers, coaches, and sales representatives in Asia. I’m very curious about the story. You’re a Singaporean, you were born here, you grew up here, you went to the Singapore educational system. And then what happened?

Melvin’s journey into the entrepreneurial world

Melvin Soh: I think it’s really interesting first and foremost because my parents are not entrepreneurs. There are some kids who come from an entrepreneurial background and basically they learn from their dads.

If your dad is Robert Kiyosaki or your dad is like Warren Buffett, then it’s very easy to have the entrepreneurial dream. My mom is a housewife. My dad works for the train station, SMRT. And they always told me that as I was growing up, Study hard, get good grades, find a job, and that’s it. And that was what I was preached to in my family, I was preached to in school, I was preached to in society, that’s what you’re supposed to do.

But I think I have a very interesting spirit. I have a spirit that cannot be confirmed. So when someone tells me to do something, I love to ask the question. Why do we do this? And you realise that, something started programming when adults and you do something they can’t expect. They just say, just do it. Because this is the way it is. This is the way life is. 

Yana: This is a really bad answer for kids.

Melvin Soh: I was like, hey man, that’s not really an answer, right? So you’re just telling me to follow the rule because it’s what it is. But, of course, we’re at 0 to 18. I just live with my parents. I can’t just say no so I just follow. But at 18 to 20, I started to really reflect upon what I wanted to do with my life. Now, I didn’t know. So being a rebel, I didn’t know what I wanted to do. I just know what I didn’t want to do.

I say, I just didn’t want to follow this system. I didn’t want to go to university, go and get a job, and slowly climb the ladder. I was an excellent student. It was a very confusing period for the school because I was both one of the best students, but also one of the least conformist to the discipline culture.

I’m a troublemaker because I just don’t want to follow rules. So at 20, I decided to go. I wanted to drop out and start a business and from school, I was supposed to go to university after two years of military service in Singapore.

So I just want to drop out. So then my mom gave me a very interesting proposition. She asked me a question. She said, How do you know you don’t like university if you haven’t gone?

So I said, Okay, cool. Let’s give it six months. Let’s give it a year. It was exactly like I thought, I just didn’t like it at all. So I have an issue with the university and here’s the thing, I’m not going against the system. I’m just telling you, here are my thoughts. If you are a doctor, I think you should get training. We don’t want a doctor without it.

Yana: Clearly not. No YouTube doctors, please. That would be really bad.

Melvin Soh: We don’t want engineers who are building structures for people to live in who learned it off like trial and error. From AI. But there are some areas. So my biggest issue was I went to a business school and the business school lecturer didn’t have a business.

Yana: Yeah, so it’s theoretical.

Melvin Soh: So I kept thinking to myself, there were like 300 people there, I kept thinking to myself, in what world would this be acceptable? Let’s say I teach you driving, but I cannot drive. Never driven a car. Would you learn from me? You wouldn’t, right? I kept thinking to myself Okay, so why is everyone listening to this guy?

Because he has a lot of interesting theories, but none of which he has done before in real life. So I was like, am I the only one who thinks that this is insane? I realised people go to business school to a large degree to find a job, not to start a business.

I was like, I don’t think I want to do this. So I quit. Now I quit, and what proceeded on? It was about six or seven years of, if I can use the word, poverty. Because the thing is, when you quit, you live in two ways. You either live by design and your own definition, define, or you live by default.

And every time you choose not to follow the system. You automatically go from default to automatic to manual. Now, a manual means you need to design everything. You need to define everything. There is no guarantee. So I just thought, hey, I want to be a rebel. I don’t want to follow the system. Cool. Then go and build it on your own now.

And I was like, oh, so I need skills. I need money. I need people. I don’t know what the hell I’m doing. I just came from the school system. I didn’t have contacts. I didn’t know how to build a business. I didn’t have skills that people would monetize and would pay me for. And I just didn’t even know which business to do because business is in many areas.

So business actually comes from first, not market awareness, but self-awareness. What are your skills? Where do you want to have interest in? Where are your talents? And I had no idea, but I just came from the school system where they asked me to memorise a bunch of information and so it was about 800 bucks a month. For six or seven years. One meal a day, and the other times when I’m hungry.

I had a funny conversation once with a Muslim taxi driver during Ramadan. He said, hey man, I’m fasting. I said, oh no, I’m starving. It seems like we’re both the same. I said, what’s the difference between starving and fasting? Fasting is when you choose to. Starving is when you want to eat but you’ve got no money. I was starving, and I didn’t know what industry to go to. I’d chosen to come out on my own. I couldn’t go back to school now.

Yana:  You’re also very young.

Melvin Soh: And there weren’t a lot of examples around where I could learn from and it was just literally, this is what I would compare it to. Imagine right now this entire place is all dark and I’m just grasping in the dark and I don’t know what the heck I’m finding.

I don’t know where the switch is. I don’t know if I’ll ever find the switch. I don’t know how big this room is and it’s just one day turned into a week, turn into a month, turn into a year. It just compounds and it’s a very lost feeling and it’s like you’re stuck at sea. There’s no ship left and you’re like, how long would this be? Lord knows.

Yana: So what was the turning point when either you or someone else actually turned on the light in your room and you saw light?

The turning point in Melvin’s life

Melvin Soh: Sometimes if in a completely dark room, you only need one light ’cause the moment you have one light, you can see. So what was your light? Yes, so my light, and this is why I share my story, it’s interesting these days.

There are a lot of young people that look up to me and somehow I tell them how difficult it is to quit school. And why they should like, really think before they, but somehow they missed this part and they quit school and let me know. I was like, do you hear the story?

It’s hard. I found a mentor and I think it’s really critical therefore when I coach young people today I always say if you ask me right if you want to quit school that’s cool But only do it right if you have a mentor or you’re willing to be an apprentice Which means you’re gonna work under someone who’s really talented.

So you don’t want a business school professor who has no business. That’s fine. Go and find somebody you look up to and respect and say can I work for you either for free or can I work for you? I’ll just do anything and learn and absorb. So I found a mentor. So doing so as an apprentice because the moment I found a person who had done it before. The person cleared up a lot of cobwebs for me. Limiting beliefs showed me the light and all of a sudden I’m intelligent enough to figure out the pieces.

I’m like, oh, this is the way it’s done. So one thing leads to another is like a domino effect. Then, when you figure one thing out, you figure out the second, the third, the fourth, the fifth, then it gets a lot easier. I made more money in the two years after I found a mentor than I made in the first seven years.

Yana: That’s a lot about the Benton Mentorship in general. I’m a big supporter of learning from the best. I think it just shortens your learning curve. It’s exactly what you said. How did you find the niche? Like specifically with you, because what you said you had no clue. We’re not sure about your talents and your skills and what is it you want to do? Like, how do you specialise specifically in what you are doing?

How to find your niche?

Melvin Soh: I think the most important thing is people are always obsessed with finding business success. But business success is a connection to self-understanding. So the one thing my mentor helped me understand was not chasing different areas of business.

But you can make money doing everything. You can make money selling chicken rice. But the key is are you supposed to be that person to do that particular thing? And sometimes we don’t understand. So how do we know? So you gotta look within and I started to look within and ask.

And ask myself where are my skills? Where are my passions? What have I always been interested in? What are my weaknesses also? So for example, I’m not very good with logistics. I should probably not do it. I’m not good with logistics, so I probably should not start a logistics company, but I’m really good at selling, really good at sharing and educating. So I started and realised this is the path that I’m talented in.

In the same amount of time I’m gonna be really impactful in this area and really lousy in this area. And more and more, as I started to grow in self-awareness, I started to move towards the areas of my strength. If I go in the areas of my skills, I now have a lot of value because I have intelligence, I’m passionate, I have talents, et cetera. I have a lot of value to give. And when people have a lot of value, they me giving, they say, Hey, you know what? That’s worth a lot of money.

They gave me that. But if I go in the area where I’m weak, I just have no value to give and people are like, no, you suck. You should get out. So I think that is where it begins. Where is your greatest value? Where are your greatest talents, your strengths, your passions, and self-awareness is really critical. I so wished I spent the first six or seven years discovering that. But I didn’t. So at least this guy helped me.

Yana: And I also know that I heard that you have a business partner, right? So then you employ someone who compensates your weaknesses and you decide to go with the business partnership. So you have a partner who is probably more logistically strong so that you do all the other things and it’s also an interesting choice to have or not to have a business partner and all the pros and cons around it. So what is your experience working with someone else?

Can a business partner compensate for your weaknesses?

Melvin Soh: I, in my experience, I would find that if a person is a solopreneur, their success is going to be limited. They’re going to be stressed out. And it’s just really challenging. The reason is because every person has strengths and weaknesses. And if you are a solopreneur, you have less time to amplify your strengths and you spend all your time working on your weaknesses.

And so a solopreneur is a person who, in my opinion, spends very little time amplifying strength, all the time making up for the weakness, and still suck at it. And so when you find a team member, and you find a partner, you want to find someone that believes in the same thing as you, but is complementary.

So it’s similar, yet different. So it’s not entirely different. But if you find a person that’s entirely different, you want to go east, they want to go, the other person wants to go west. Then you’re just going to have conflict. But some people find their best friend to be a business partner. Now, both of you want to go east.

Both of you like the same thing. But both of you do the same thing as well. So one of you is irrelevant. So what you want to do is very interesting. You’re going to find someone who is similar, yet complementarity different.

We all want to win a trophy, but you play attack, I play defence. And we have that understanding and chemistry. If you find that, oh that’s brilliant. So that’s a partner. But a partner is not a team either. You also want to have a team. A team exists to complement your weaknesses and allow you to take care of everything else. So all you need to do is do what you’re amazing at.

And that should be the way to think about team members. You don’t want people who are yes men. You don’t want people who are political. You don’t want people who are all of these things. You want people to be independently okay to take care of every single thing to the best of their ability so that all that remains for you to do It’s only and precisely and solely what you’re good at.

And that happens you’re just like, Oh my God, so every day I just wake up and do my strength. I don’t have to take care of everything else. Yes! Oh my God, this company will fly.

Yana: Yes. I love that. This year’s travelling around Asia, right? I think it was most of the countries in Asia, and you taught and worked in many countries. So can we just name a few?

Melvin Soh: A few parts of Europe, not that much, but virtually every part of Asia. I’ve just done events in every single part of Asia. And also Australia and New Zealand, which I’m travelling to next month.

Yana: If I may ask, as a person of Asian origins, who has been going and working in the West and at the same time working, are there any differences?

Are there any differences between Asian and Western businesses

Melvin Soh: This is my favourite topic. So I travel to the west, so it’s very interesting. So there are two kinds of Asian people. There’s Asian American, and there’s Asian. Asian people very rarely think of spreading their business over to the West. I put it down, I call it reverse discrimination. It’s not when people discriminate against you, it’s when you discriminate against yourself. You automatically think, no, they won’t like me, I cannot go there, there are more talented people there, etc. So you don’t even try. It’s interesting. 

Yana: Which is really not good. So please try at least.

Melvin Soh: It comes from a very interesting low self esteem place, which could be an overconsumption of Western culture, et cetera, but what I realised is that it is influenced by culture. 

So you automatically feel that the people there are better than you and you have no value, which is interesting because if some of these people were to actually go over there, they would realise that actually, there are a lot of people in America not overgeneralizing, but many people in America who have never left the country before.

Every country has people with value But they might not know some of the things that you know from an Asian, Asia perspective. And when you go over there and you spread it, they realise that you have value and that realisation is priceless because When that happens you suddenly realise, hey, you know what?

I have something that I can contribute. So why have I never ever thought of spreading my wings further beyond the small limits of Singapore, Malaysia, or Southeast Asia? It’s interesting.

Yana: Asian. Asian, yeah. And Asian American.

Melvin Soh: Asian American, I think it’s a separate topic by itself because Asian Americans, like to talk about discrimination, etc. I’m quite sure times for them over there are really challenging or so, but I want to talk about what I noticed as a difference. I noticed that Asian people have a lot of value, but very rarely advertise it. American people, some have value, some, maybe not as much, but they do one thing for sure. Fantastic at advertising.

Fantastic at amplifying. We get what we believe we have. I might say, this American fella might not have as much value as this Asian fella, but he for sure knows how to advertise it, ask for it, communicate it, and so he’s gonna get a lot more opportunities than the Asian fella, who might have more value, but doesn’t share and speak about it.

So at the end of the day, I think it needs to be a com, a combination of intrinsic value, which means you have something within yourself, substance and the ability to have extrinsic value. The ability to know how to communicate, express, and negotiate and ask for it. If you have both, then it’s fantastic. If you have one or the other, let’s you have very good talking, but you have no substance, then you’ll be found

There’s a problem. But if you have a lot of substance, but you don’t talk about it, then you’ll never get any clients and everyone just ignores you because you choose to ignore yourself. So I find it really interesting in both parts of the world. I put it down to the fact that in America Individuality is their core value.

You got to showcase yourself in Asia Which has plus and minus. Which has plus and minus points: everyone’s always wanting to be special and unique and talk louder. Yes, but here we have humility And just fitting in is the core value. So nobody wants to come out there and say, you know how great I am. I think there’s things to learn from both sides. You gotta learn how to have extrinsic value, advertise. You gotta learn how to have intrinsic value also, substance. You can combine both, then that’s exactly what they teach in X Factor, you’re going to be very successful.

Yana: I love that. At YanaTV, we focus, on Asia, right? Deeper in this particular subject, for, and since you said it, maybe for Asian people, and you’re an Asian person, so you tell me that. Yeah. I think it’s also cultural. It’s cultural, it’s about all kinds of things. You know what you said. Values, cultural values, things you say, things you don’t say, how you’re perceived, what you can express, what not. So what do you think could be done about it? So how do we level up that?

How can Asians level themselves up?

Melvin Soh: I think the most important thing that Asian people need to do is to travel. To travel, okay. Because if you watch too much Western culture, or European culture, or whatever. If your understanding of the world is through the lens of social media, or through the lens of Netflix, you’re never really gonna understand. You’re always gonna think Oh my god, they are so much better, they are so much better. When you travel and you actually go there, and you’re like, Oh, wow, this is it?

Yana: Maybe not.

Melvin Soh: Yeah, then you talk to a

Yana: few people. It looks much better in the movie.

Melvin Soh: Yes, that’s why it’s called show business. It’s a show! It ain’t real!

Yana: Sorry, Hollywood, It

Melvin Soh: is fake. Okay, let’s just call it that. It’s fake, okay. It’s all made up. And I consider myself not just a great marketer and a coach, but I myself an industry insider and I’m a behind-the-scenes strategist for a lot of these eight-figure companies. And so I know what happens behind the scenes. What happens behind the scenes is all the things that are advertised on social media, all the good parts and all the parts that are real, you don’t see unless you’re an insider.

So I go in there and I’m like, guys, don’t understand. It’s all a bunch of bullshit. Okay, it’s, this is fake. It’s fake. You have value. You have real value. But yet you’re discriminating against yourself based on some fake social media that some person engineered to make you feel like you don’t have value. So when you actually travel and you go there you see it, you’re like, hey man, actually I got substance.

Yana: Exactly. Okay, travelling is one of the solutions.

I love that. You also work, again, with different types of people, right? As we said, you coached and you mentored a variety of people. And the same, some of them would be Asian, some of them non-Asian, like what we call Caucasians or white. And I’m just curious. What is your experience?

The difference in coaching Asians and Westerners

Melvin Soh: My experience with working with all these people, I find it interesting as well because it’s not so much about the race, I think, or the gender even, or even the country.

I find that fundamentally, when you start working with clients, it’s always the vibe you put out. And whatever you get back. In those, it’s like energy, so there’s this law of attraction. Energy matches energy. At the end of the day, I find that even white people black people, men, women just whatever red, yellow, rainbow, Yes. Once they come, Always match my level of energy or so, because they consume my content. We live in a world of social media and content. So the content has energy and frequency. And so a lot of people that jive jive or vibe with your energy and frequency, are drawn to you.

So the ones that I come to, I find are really awesome. They all have an inner rebel within them. Okay. They all, so that’s correct. So I have actually had a fantastic time working with all of these different folks that I feel that at the end of the day yeah, just, but I feel naturally the folks from the West are just a bit more confident when it comes to being able to spread their message. I think a lot of times for people in Asia, one of the things is to support them to raise their level of self-esteem and self-worth and self-value to be able to recognize that, hey, why?

Will my message be received? Will people think I’m stupid? Will people think I’m smart? Etc. And I think that comes from the education system. Because very frequently in the parenting system. Because we have a very interesting way of parenting and educating people in Asia.

There are two kinds of parenting styles. One kind of parenting style is when I raise your self esteem and help you believe that you can do something. Another kind of parenting style is when I put you down and I keep telling you how silly you are in the hope that you will feel inferior and therefore work harder. You have seen coaches do the two things.

One coach builds a person up and says, Yana, you can do it. Come on, man. I expect more from you. You’re better than this. So that’s one way I challenge you too high. Another one is, Yana, you are trash today. You are rubbish today. Come on, man. If you don’t do this, you’re going to be dropped. That’s called threatening and the Asian parenting system is probably number two Because, and here’s the thing, even if the child is smart. Because the parent feels that if I compliment the child, it’s very typical. In Asian society, I feel that if I compliment you, you’ll get a big head, you’ll get haughty, you’ll get arrogant, you’ll get egotistical.

And so my job is to constantly remind you, Put you down, man! You got 100 marks this time, you might fail the next time. Hey, man, hey, no compliment? No. It’s just so you Work harder. What happens if you are exposed to this for 10 plus years? Then your self-worth takes a beating.

So it’s not people discriminating against them. It’s the discriminating said, the self discrimination. The parenting style is different. It’s raising my self esteem. You can do it, whatever you believe, go for your dreams. And therefore, these people have higher belief in themselves.

Yana: And life is a lot about self. And the Parenting and education system, you said? I find it interesting, you mean the local education system?

Melvin Soh: Local education, the Singapore education system. It is designed in such a way to be competitive and so to have people determine their self worth based on the ability to take root memorization exams. I call it root memorization exams because learning is a huge passion of mine. What is the definition of learning? A lot of people don’t understand.

Learning fundamentally is a change in behaviour. Which means when I learn driving, I can drive. When I learn cooking, I can cook. But the education system confuses people in the area of learning. And so learning now becomes the ability to take good notes, memorise information, and pass exams.

That is very different from being able to do it. And the real learning, if I learn photography, I should be able to take photos. That’s the only benchmark. Not be able to code photograph theory, memorise photograph theory, take a photo exam. No, the only benchmark is the ability to do it. But however, to be a good student, your goal is to memorise a lot of information, pass a test, then simultaneously forget all the information, and throw your textbook away. Because you have to clear.

Yana: the mind, right?

Melvin Soh: And so you see tons of kids in Singapore and around Asia who are cramming information in their brain for a particular date in November and December where they take the exam and right after, they celebrate by burning their books and going, I never have to read this shit ever again. And they forget everything.

And more importantly, it kills the passion for learning. And that’s why many of these people, after they finish university, get their degree. Papa and Mama are finally happy, they never want to learn ever again. Because why? Their desire for learning is killed.

But then we live in a world that is constantly disruptive. My greatest challenge is I constantly love to learn Because, at least I drop out, so I don’t care about degree learning. I care about constantly learning from life.

Yana: Yeah, like real real life learning.

Melvin Soh: And so I think the world is going to be populated by people who love and understand what learning is and continually learning into their 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s, until the day they die.

And the people that stop learning after 24 or 26 when they get the degree, and I’m done with learning, they’ll be eliminated.

Yana: The final question for today.

Let’s say if you are 300 years old and you’re very wise and you’re very wealthy and you’re very healthy and you fulfilled all your dreams and you’re looking at Melvin who is sitting here today, what would you like to say to him?

An anecdote to self

Melvin Soh: I would say there’s a lot more to learn. And that, learning is a process of unlearning, learning. Re-learning, Yes. And that, for as long as we can do that process, for as long as we have goals, we have dreams to look forward to, for as long as we’ve let go of all the things that were so that we can embrace what could be, then we’ll always be young. And I hope I continue doing that process all the way to my final days.

Yana: And that was Melvin Soh on YanaTV today. And Melvin, I would love to hear from you guys. Let us know in the comments if you run your own business, or maybe you drop out, or rebel, or would like to unite with other rebels. We would love to hear those stories. And, of course, remember to subscribe to the YouTube channel, share this episode with friends.

We always talk when we share conversations with people we really like. Conversations go deeper and I would like to thank MUSE studio for hosting YanaTV. We love being here Thank you guys, and I see you next time