What It Means To Be A Leader

When I was still hosting a business show in one of the largest cable TV channels, I always ended my episode by showing an inspiring video of the week. I usually get the video from YouTube.

As the year comes to a close, I am again reminded of this video I shared with my viewers.

The video talks about leadership.

We all want to become leaders. We want others to follow our lead. But what does it mean to become a leader? Who gives legitimacy to leader?

When we are thrust in a position of power, leading a group or an organization, we tend to forget where power comes from. The power we have is vested on the people we lead. If they choose not to follow our lead, then we don't have any power.

A humbling reminder for all of us who are looking forward to the New Year.

Happy Holidays and enjoy the video.

Make Your Business Accessible

When choosing a location for your business, accessibility should be the first thing you should consider. Your customers should be able to go to your shop quite easily.

There is no use in putting up a business in a cheap location with a parking lot if your customers need to drive an hour to get to your shop. There is also little value in putting your shop in a high-traffic location if you are selling to a small niche - the rent will just eat up whatever you will earn.

image from http://brokensidewalk.com

Getting the ideal location for your business is a delicate balance between making your shop accessible to your clients and making sure that rental payments will not eat into your profits. The most ideal and best locations for businesses are also the ones that have the highest rents. So be very careful in evaluating where you put your business.

Most business people like putting their shops in malls. Understandably, malls offer high volume of traffic for those who want to rent a space. Malls also provide parking spaces. They are also accessible via public transport. If you are a business-owner, setting a shop inside a mall would make good business sense, except for the rent. The rents inside malls are quite astronomical and sometimes even forces some of the businesses to close shop.

If you have a very high profit margin, say for example you are selling jewelry; or you are attracting lots of customers, think of McDonald's, then renting in a mall won't be a problem. You can easily cover the rent with your profit margins or the number of customers that buy your products.

However, if your profit margin is not that high or don't get that many customer, it is best that you avoid setting-up shop inside malls until you are certain you can pay the rent.

Choosing the right location for your business means you have to understand where your customers are mainly coming from and how they will visit your store.

Different kinds of products or services need different kinds of locations. You cannot evaluate a site based how a fast food company evaluates a given location if you are a furniture company. Those who are buying from McDonald's might not be the same people who are buying Ikea products.

When you choose how accessible you want your store to be ask yourself these questions; are you customers traveling by car? Will they be using public transport? Can they walk to your store?

Customers who are using cars need parking spaces. If you are a stand-alone shop, you should be able to provide your customers a parking space they can park their cars on. If you are a jewelry store, it would make no sense to let your customers park one block away from your store. You will just provide opportunities for thieves to rob your clients.

If your customers are using public transport, then make sure that they can easily go to their next destination when they leave your store. This just means, your store should be near bus stops or terminals. It would be no use to rent a place with a very large parking space. You will just be wasting your money.


Getting to know your customer is the key to finding the ideal location for your store. Find out how they will be going to store. Talk to them if possible. Get into their mind.

In the end, you want your shop to be easily accessible to your customers. You want them to get into your shop and buy your products. Make it convenient to visit your place and they will keep coming back.

Getting The Right People

This is follow-up to my previous blog.

One of the biggest issues an employer has is finding the right people with the right attitude for the job. It is not only important to find the people with the technical qualifications to do the job, but also the behavioral requirements needed by the job.

Finding the right person is a hit or miss affair. It might even be disastrous for small businesses.

Systems have been developed, such as a serious of interviews and tests, to get the person most suited to the job the job. Yet, this is no guarantee that person hired will perform well on the job.


Here are a couple of things I have learned from my experiences so far.


1. Money does not always motivate people. You need to get to provide them or show them a higher purpose on why they should be doing the job you asked them to do. Money can only get you so far. You might also consider Maslow's hierarchy of needs.


2. Leadership is an inverted pyramid. As a leader, you support and provide, as much as possible, for the needs of your employees. They are looking at you for direction and guidance. You must provide those things for them. Some times your employees are not only treating you as a boss. They see you as an older or wiser family-member. Take time to listen and relate with them.


3. Establish clear lines of communication. This may sound strange given my second advice. What I want to point out here is that even if you get to know them and relate with them, certain barrier must be maintained. They should respect your position. If the respect is eroded, you will have a hard time deciding on difficult decisions.


4. Lastly, work doesn't define the person. If you see that the person is not performing well on a certain task, don't immediately judge him and think that he is a failure. Take time to find out if what he is doing is really fit for his personality. Remember the phrase, 'fitting a square peg on a round hole?' There might be a mismatch somewhere.

My Path To Entrepreneurship

I was born in a family which believed that if you studied hard and get good grades you will be gainfully employed and will never have to go hungry again. In fact, if you worked-hard enough and become loyal enough to the company you work with, that company will provide every thing you need. I believed in those words for quite some time.

Because of idealism and the expectation that I will be monetarily rewarded handsomely when the 'time' came, I joined young companies and start-ups. When the call center industry was just beginning to take a foot-hold on our shores, I was the first ones to grab the opportunity. But then I got bored. The job was very repetitive and I wanted something with some more challenge. The work in call centers was what others were looking for, but not me. I wanted to go out. I wanted to be on the field.

When the opportunity came for me to work outside of the office and meet a lot of people, that was when my view about employment change. I was working with a company that a operations nationwide. Although it was a national company, I had a chance to develop my own area. I met people a lot of people who wanted to earn extra money because they need it. I met people who wanted to be their own boss because they grew tired of working for someone else. I was talking to them, helping them make money while I was receiving a fixed income.

I opened a shop which became the number 1 shop in the Philippines. It bested even the company-owned shops. A couple of others were in the top 10. I saw people who made a lot of money because of my efforts.

After I left the company, I went in to sales and handled a number of sales people. I would go out with my salesmen and talk to the clients they were serving. Some of these clients have their own catering business, others have their own stalls in wet markets, others own big restaurant chains. Their backgrounds were diverse but they all own businesses - and they were earning more than I did. Yes, I had a car. Yes, there was gasoline allowance. But my income was a pittance compared to what they were earning monthly. A business-owner who sells nothing but coffee in a wet market in one of the cities in Metro Manila was even able to send all of her kids to reputable schools! And she has savings more than she could ever imagined!

That event became the turning-point. I wanted to be an entrepreneur and own a business. I knew I had skills to make a business successful. I went to work for a start-up and was mentored by a businessman. It was a very mutually beneficial relationship at first. I helped in setting-up the system and managed the company as whole. I developed new programs and businesses for the company. But things started to change when I realized that the owner was rushing decisions and then changing them like changing hats.

GreenRides chosen as the official car cleaning service provider of Toyota.

The whole experience burnt me out... It was then I finally decided to go into business and work for myself.

I didn't get my business flying immediately. There were more misses than hits. I found the hard way that venturing into business is not a walk in the park. It was work - pure hard work...

Why become an entrepreneur? Why be a business-owner?

According to the Department of Trade and Industry, 99.6% of businesses in the Philippines are in the Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises segment. And they contribute to about 63.2% of employment or about 3.6Million jobs nationwide. MSME's are the biggest contributors to economic growth and employment.

Aside from the monetary consideration, entrepreneurs or business-owners earn more in the long-run that employees, I also find it as a Filipino that it is my duty to contribute to the national development of the Philippines. President JFK said it best, "Ask not what your country can do for you, rather what can you do for your country."

Don't take me wrong, there are other ways to show one's love for country. But this entrepreneurship is the path I choose. This path is not for everyone.

The car clean technicians during Toyota's Caravan.

This will be the overall theme for my blog. The lesson will revolve around entrepreneurship; the lessons I have learned and the essential things needed by entrepreneurs.

Finally, I don't consider myself as an authority in the subject. Rather, I am more of a practitioner. I just teach and share things that I experienced myself. I hope, through this blog, I will be able to touch more lives and convince more Filipinos to become entrepreneurs and help improve the economic situation of our country.

Say What?!

Communication is one of the key elements of any successful relationship; it doesn't matter whether it be a professional or personal relationship. However, the art of properly communicating is often taken for granted. Disagreements and arguments often come about because of the failure to understand the other party.

But what is communication? And how can we impart or share our thoughts and ideas to another person or party and ensure that it will be taken in its proper context.

Thanks to www.kristaabott.com

Entrepreneurs need to communicate properly their vision for the companies to their employees. Managers need to talk with their staff to ensure that every one works harmoniously in a team.  Furthermore, good communication also makes sure that the customer is able to really understand and know the benefits they will get when they acquire your product or service.

Whenever I give talks, I usually define terms so that every one will be on the same page. Making sure that every one is on the same page is usually the best way to start things since this facilitates in understanding the things which will be said or shared.

For starters, let us define what communication is. Communication is the process or an act of imparting or sharing a thought, idea or opinion through the use of speech, writing or sign-language. In other words, communication may be done verbally or non-verbally.

From this definition alone, we can see and understand that we are communicating all the time. Whenever we share our opinion, our ideas or the benefits of our services we are essentially communicating.

We can also see that communication is also a process. Several key components are essential to make sure that what we want to impart or say are properly understood and received by the other party. The diagram below shows the different components of communication.

Thanks to http://www.latex-glove.biz/

The sender imparts the message. She encodes the message to a medium that will be both understood by the her and the receiver of the message.

The medium is how you impart a message. It can be a face to face communication, through email, phone or twitter.

Then the receiver gets the message from the sender through the medium chosen by the latter. Once the message is received it is then decoded by the receiver. Decoding the message will be done according to the context that makes most sense to the receiver.

Once the receiver decodes the message, he will then give feedback to the sender.

If the sender and the receiver are encoding and decoding the message in the same context, there will be immediate understanding of the message and it will result in immediate feedback. However, if the sender and receiver are using different contexts to encode and decode the message, confusion or misunderstandings may crop up.

Noise also contributes to misunderstandings and confusion.

From the image above, it can be deduced that good communication must come from properly defining the terms and creating a simple and understandable message that can be understood by the receiver. It is also important that noise should be lessened.

I spent so much time talking about communication in this blog for several reasons.

1. Communication is essential for business-owners and entrepreneurs. You have to constantly talk with lots of different people at any given day. You will also be wearing different hats or persona. You can be a supplier to person A then be a customer to person B.

Effectively communicating with different people will give you an added advantage. You can easily adjust and adapt your words according to the situation and the context to whom you are speaking with.

2. Communication creates and provides a harmonious relationship within the work place. You can rally your staff and employees around your vision. You can sell them the future you are envisioning without sounding like a dictator who will ask his employees to do anything anytime.

3. Effective communication can get you places and let you meet people you haven't dreamed of meeting. Effective communicators can become speakers and are able to sell their own brand. People make a living out of their speeches. So if you think you are a good speaker or communicator and have something to tell others, this can be your path to fortune and fame.

Importance of Developing Contacts

I used to have a weekly business show in a cable channel. The show was called View From The Top. I got to talk to a lot of amazing and wonderful people who are already considered as industry leaders and innovators.

One of the people that I've interviewed is Ms. Jayjay Viray, the Country Manager of JobsDB Philippines. I used to work with in EdsaMail and met a her a couple of times when she was already with JobsDB and I was connected with another job portal company. Ms. Viray never ceases to amaze me. She is full of wit, intelligence and charm.

In this first part of the interview, she talks about the importance of developing contacts, maintaining relationships and developing friendship. In one of the quotable quotes during this interview, she mentioned that a person told her "there are two things that will make you successful in the Philippines, cash or contacts. But if you don't have cash, yet you have contacts you will make it."

That was why she started developing relationships and decided that she will meet someone new each day.

You can watch the interview below.

Why Stand-Out?

In almost every street corner one will see stalls selling pork and shrimp dumplings. These are selling at Php25.00.

I have often wondered why the store owners have not tried to differentiate themselves from the other stalls. What would happen if a new kid on the block comes along and is able to sell the same kind of dumpling a lot cheaper and still earn a profit?

Am sure these stall owners will cry foul and make the life of the new kid miserable. However, give a few months and the new kid will be the only one who will be selling the dumplings.

The reason why am advocating small and medium scale businesses to develop their brand and differentiate themselves from their competitors is that it helps them to be first on their customers’ mind.

For guys, remember the time when you started liking a girl? What did you do to get the girls attention? You tried to be different and stand-out from the other guys! You wanted to prove to the girl that you’re the better (or in some cases, the best choice) among the guys courting her.

Some tend to be known as the Joker, the Hopeless Romantic, the Thoughtful One. These are the brands that they want to be known.

You paid more attention on what you wearing, saying and even how you acted; you tried to be more romantic and chivalrous. You simply had to put your best foot forward.

The same is true for the girls. They focused more on highlighting their assets. They dressed more elegantly and learned to acquire class.

If this is the case in courtship, why would it be any different in business? Business owners must realize that they are still competing with other suitors for the customer’s heart. To get the customer’s approval, the business owner must learn to differentiate himself from the pack. He must constantly prove that he is the best alternative.

By constantly striving be better, he would have placed himself at a very good position. And whenever a customer thinks about his company, he will think about the good qualities that the company has over others. Companies will be able to develop good will and loyalty.

Marshmallows and Motivation

Image from www.lucassdocblog.blogspot.com

I had a talk in Dela Salle University in Manila with a group of graduate students taking up Industrial Organization. The topic focused on motivation, either employee motivation or employer motivation (if you are a business owner).

The question I tried to answer is; what motivates you?

I began my talk with a study conducted by Mr. Walter Mischel’s 1960 experiment, known as the Marshmallow study. In his experiment, he gave hungry 4 year-olds a marshmallow, but he told them that if they were able to wait for him to come back without eating the marshmallow he would give them another one.

I know most of you will say that this is a study of patience and self-control. You are right and I won’t argue otherwise. But I also saw how one can be motivated to wait just to have two sumptuous and juicy marshmallows.

For these 4 year old kids, having two marshmallows was enough motivation to wait for Mr. Mischel. They can see, smell and experience the taste of how having two marshmallows is better than one marshmallow.

What motivates you? What is your marshmallow?

Consider this, you are working hard to achieve what end? To realize what dream? For you to be motivated, you must have a goal – make it a crystal clear goal. Then make steps to ensure that you will be able to get what you want on a given period of time.

I advised these graduate students that if you want to achieve your goal and realize your dreams, you must make a constant decision to work towards it. If you are not sold on your dreams, any obstacle that comes your way will be a reason for you to give up.

What motivates you?

Begin with the end in mind… And work backwards. Make and create steps to achieve it. Then continually decide that you will achieve your goals no matter what…