“We went for dinner, myself and Jan at O’Galito’s in Centurion Mall, and that’s where it all started…
I had worked for OUTsurance for 11 years as a Head of different departments, but I have always had a vision to start my own business and do my own thing, we read a lot in the media about unemployment in the country and the only way in my opinion we can solve that problem is if we use the ability we were blessed with in creating jobs for people. Then I instigated it and started putting some “nonsense” into Jan’s head asking him “what about if we left OUTsurance?”
These are the words of Peter Khan (Managing Director and co-founder of Multiplier). I had the privilege of meeting withhim at his beautiful double storey house in Centurion together with his co-founder and Director Jan Thema. As we had a long dialogue about the reasons for him leaving a lucrative package of about + - R3 million per annum (salary, bonuses and shares) with the largest short term insurer in South Africa to pursue a project that could potentially have ended their careers.
“It wasn’t even a difficult decision.” Jan describes about the bold step he took to just ship and become the sailor of his own boat with Peter.
“When you are in an organisation and you can see that the people I work with particularly Pete who I had worked so closely with over the years at OUTsurance where I was the General Manager and he was my Head; we had worked well together and we excelled in all the departments that we ran. The reason I say it was an easy decision is that: when you can run key departments within an organisation like we did with minimal involvement from other parties, then you know you are on to something. We were almost running our own business within a business, it’s just that we never owned it. That gave light to the fact that we are capable of doing it. Pete has always been an innovative thinker and the key to any business success is innovation and I think we also gelled very well in making a success of everything we did together, so it didn’t take a lot of convincing for us to “Multiply” the minimal capital we had.
It was something that was bound to happen, it was a case of when, it was a case of how, it was also a case of facing what every aspiring entrepreneur faces which is to say, “Am I ready to leave the comfort zone because we were getting paid good money”. It was a matter of measuring your dreams against the comfort zone and saying, “can you leave your comfort zone and move on.”
Peter and Jan started Multiplier on their own with very little capital, in fact the only capital that they had was their last salary, pension and shares that they had accumulated from their previous employment which they had to sell to gain capital. Shares were not the only thing they sold, Peter had to sell his BMW 335 and settle for a much smaller and cheaper vehicle. They had to change their lifestyle, where they shopped, where they ate, what they ate and at times they struggled to provide for their families the way they did. They had an idea and major sacrifices had to be made to reach the levels of success that they were destined for, but they didn’t realise that in reality it was extremely hard. Determined as they were Peter and Jan had made a pact that they will never work for someone ever again, they will never be employees again and that’s what kept them going.
They started Multiplier with the vision that they are going to build something out of nothing, everything they’ve done around Multiplier has been from scratch. The company itself is 100% equally owned by just the two of them, with no help from the government or any external investor.
“When we started we had no office.” Peter recalls of the early stages of Multiplier. “ We decided to meet up at Parrots in Centurion Mall with our laptops and that became our office where we would spend over 8 hours a day thinking about what we were going to do and how we were going to do it. At that stage we had absolutely no clue what we were going to do but we knew we wanted to be in the financial sector and play the call centre game. Then we decided to just give it a shot, we sent out proposals to ten different companies and nine of them came back and said they were willing to do business with us. This was in a space of three days and we didn’t even have an office nor did we have employees. So now we have people wanting to work with us but we don’t have space to actually run the business, so we drove around Centurion and found a little “warehouse”. We took this little warehouse which had sand and mud and we cleaned it up, Jan and I together with others actually went in and got down and dirty with spades, brooms, mops and hose pipes to turn this warehouse into an office.”
Multiplier is only two years old but employs just over 60 people working in a call centre doing all kinds of different jobs. The company does work for some of the leaders in the financial industry. It operates as a call centre brokerage and also offers call centre support for many other organisations. At the moment they do short-term and life insurance and they have just recently got their commercial license approved with the FSB. They specialise in generating excellent quality leads/marketing for business, effective and quality telesales and handling and support of overflow calls in peak periods. Multiplier pride themselves on innovation, they choose to do everything in a unique and inventive way, they were the first call centre based brokerage company and are looking at breaking more boundaries within the financial industry.
Mutliplier are a client centric company that is obsessed with offering fabulous service, if you are insured with them, then you are guaranteed a courtesy call at least once a month,where they ensure that your profile is in order and they will always renegotiate your insurance deal. Gone are the days where you need to call an insurance company to cancel and your premium suddenly gets miraculously dropped. They are the first and only company that does this in their industry.
They have a strong passion for their employees, (he shared and explained that a “deal”
was offered by his previous employer, he would have been given a cash incentive worth millions after 12 months, if Peter did not “take” OUTsurance staff, he turned the deal down without hesitation and with a smile). They treat staff like gold and make them feel and believe that they are all in it together. The employees themselves have a great sense of belonging and entitlement towards the company. “We have a rule in our company where we say, we will pay you R5000 .00 to resign, this is over and above your salary, so basically we will compensate you for leaving.” Peter explains this fresh concept with a proud smile.
“What makes Multiplier different from any other organisation is the approach we have with our people, there are no rules within our company. The guys have free access to internet, they take lunch freely and we don’t request sick notes when you take a day off to go to the doctor, we have no drinking rules or drug tests. What we are trying to create is a culture of accountability within our staff. Every Friday we close the office at three o’clock and we go and relax with the employees and get to them know each one of them better, enjoying some lovely cold beers.”
Peter and Jan started Multiplier from scratch but they insist that if it wasn’t for the support that they received from some of the extraordinary employees at OUTsurance they wouldn’t have gained the expertise they have to run the company. Their story is one of taking the initiative and being bold, they could’ve just stayed in the organisation and continue to climb the corporate ladder, but they had a burning desire to create their own ladder and be a master of their own destiny. “The timing was perfect” they both insist “had we started anytime sooner or later it probably wouldn’t have worked out.”
It is true that fortune does favour the brave, with no real motivation to leave high paying jobs, no financial backing or cushion to fall back on these two young entrepreneurs took a bold step and relied only on a vision that was so deeply embedded in them to run their own business and started what will possibly be the future of insurance as we know it. This is the start of a success story of how Peter and Jan invested a mere R3.6 million 18 months ago and have turned this into a business valued at over R20 million currently.
Bold mean make the world go round .....
ReplyDeleteI would also like to know are they only based in Pta? If I wana apply for a job who or how do I contact ?
Their head office is in Pta but they work within numerous cities. Go to their website www.multiplier.co.za and get in touch with them
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