Why Be an EntrePinoy - 2

Do you like corned beef? O may sakit lang ba ang tinatanong?

Thirty or so years ago, all the karne norte we ate came from the United States, Brazil, or Argentina. Remember how we badgered our “stateside relatives” to bring us Libby’s, Hormels, and Hereford, seeing how it used to cost an arm or a leg to buy it here

Not anymore.

Today, there are Honey, Campo Carne, Purefoods, Argentina, Swifts, and CDO corned beef – all made in the Philippines and many of them better-tasting than the imported brands.

We also used to import all of our food processing equipment, but today, Benjamin Almeda and his sons’ factory in Gagalangin, Tondo, Manila, are fabricating some of these machines at half the price of the German makes. As we import less, we save more. Our dollars stay inside the country rather than paid to foreign businessman. Ang resulta – a better balance of payments. Mas konting utang sa World Bank.

This is another reason why entrepreneurs are dubbed the engine of the economy. Would you want to count yourself among the select people who will push the Philippines on its way to being a proud and self-reliant country, sa wakas. At long last.

I think by now you understand why our beloved Pinas needs many people who will set up their own businesses. But there is one more important reason.

Entrepreneurs who set up businesses in small towns and cities help develop these areas and thus stop the rural people from leaving their homes to migrate to the big cities.

If you come from the provinces, can you count how many of your kababayan and kababaryo migrated to Metro Manila, Metro Cebu or Metro Davao? And while you’re counting, can you also include those who left Pinas for contract employment in Hong Kong, Singapore, Saudi Arabia, Italy, etc?

Why did they leave? If there were enough entrepreneurs who were able to set up enough factories and other business establishments in your town and employed many of your kababayan, don’t you think some of the migrants could have stayed instead of left?

Do you know what else I am trying to suggest by asking you these kulit questions? I am trying to tell you not to look too far away from home when looking for a site for your future business, if you have a mind on one. Set up your store or your factory right where you live or were born. Wouldn’t it be exciting to help build up a new growth area or “boom” town? Your very own bayan!

Why Be an EntrePinoy - 1

Rare is the Filipino mother who tells her young son or daughter: Child, when you grow up, you be an entrepreneur, ha?

A teacher, yes — the so-called noblest profession. Or a doctor – naku, every family needs one. Or a lawyer – aba, galing-galing, so dignified. What about an engineer or a nurse or therapist with outstanding prospects to work abroad – aba siempre! And a salaried corporate manager in a multinational ? – yes na yes din.

Indeed, why should a self-respecting person go into business – a trade associated with exploitative, profit-taking capitalism. Or ruthlessness na mala-Shylock. Dyahi. For shame!

But have you thought of it this way?

The everyday reality is most people need or demand goods and services – these are the consumers or the general public. Other people supply these goods and services and these of course are the entrepreneurs. Together, they make up what is known as the economy. Demand and supply are the forces that make the economy work and vibrate.

When there is demand for goods and someone supplies it, money changes hands and profits are made. The more goods are demanded and supplied, the bigger the profits and the more the money that goes around the economy. This is how an economy prospers and grows. The main person who makes this activities happen is, sino pa – si entrePinoy.

EntrePinoy helps a country prosper not only by producing and supplying goods and services that are in demand and therefore makes profit but also because in the process of producing goods and services, he employs other people. Needless to say, when he employs workers, he pays them salaries. This gives workers buying power and enables them to become more active participants in the economy. As more and more people buy, the more profits entrepreneurs will earn. The more the entrepreneurs profit, the more they are able to hire people and to pay them well. And so the benefits go round and round in a circle in a spiral in an ever-growing prosperous, generous wheel.

Further, entrepreneurs who succeed and grow help other entrepreneurs succeed and grow too. How does this happen? Well, few entrepreneurs are self sufficient. No entrepreneur is an island, wika nga. Most depend on other entrepreneurs for their raw materials, parts, and supplies. Aling Lilia, a ready-to-wear garment manufacturer buys tela from Divisoria Maramingtela, a wholesaler; buttons, zippers and accessories from a suki in Tutuban mall; sewing machines and small sewing tools from a Singer dealer. A few months before Christmas, when Aling Lilia is hard pressed to serve peak orders for RTW, she sub-contracts some of the sewing to her kapitbahay and kumare, Aling Cora who is a fine costurera. As Aling Lilia prospers so do Divisoria Maramingtela and her other suppliers as well Aling Cora, her sub-contractor.

Do you see how the success of one business benefits other businesses with whom it is linked with? Do you see why it is true that “growth begets more growth?” And do you see the entrepreneur at the center of it all, making it happen?

O di ba, yes na yes din dapat sa pagiging entrePinoy. It is every bit as dignified and rewarding as any other profession – if not more.

The Innovative EntrePinoy (Part 2): Innovations That Changed Lives

It is the innovative drive of the entrepreneur that continuously improves daily living. If we compare the way we live with the way that our grandparents and great grandparents did, wouldn’t we say we’re better off in the sense that we enjoy more and better products and product choices, equipment, appliances and gadgets that make us feel more comfortable and let us perform our work better, faster, and with less mistakes?

Here are examples of innovations which have changed our lives:

From the traditional clay stoves using wood fuel, we now have:

· Kerosene stoves

· Gas stoves

· Electric stoves

· Stoves that can alternately use gas and electric power

· Multi-purpose cooking ranges that can roast, grill, and bake

· Turbo broilers

· Convection ovens

· Microwave ovens

· Specialty cooking devices like shabu-shabu cookers with side grillers

· LPG-fueled grills

· Crock pots or slow-cookers

· Rice cookers

From mats, wooden beds or papag, we now have:

· Mattress beds

· Brass beds

· Canopied beds

· Double-deck beds

· Pull-out beds

· Sofa beds

· Folding beds

· Water beds

· Hospital beds (that can be cranked up and down)

· Beds equipped with air compressors guaranteed to prevent bed sores (for bed ridden persons)

· Orthopedic beds

From the industrial revolution to what is now known as the IT age, entrepreneurial innovation have been making profound changes in the quality of lives and life styles.

Innovations in Information and computer technology or ICT has wrought the most recent and most pervasive changes not only in industry, commerce, and the management of the workplace but every conceivable dimension of human life such as education, communication, recreation, music and the arts. Paperless offices, strictly no cash transactions, robotronics, voice recognition in computing – these may still be in the experimental stage but loom large in the foreseeable future.

If Steve Jobs and his partner didn’t put together the first Apple personal computer in his garage and if Bill Gates didn’t spearhead development of computer application software and other tools, can you imagine how differently we would have been leading our everyday life? You couldn’t have been reading this blog piece on entrepreneurial innovation, in the first place, could you?

Next: Filipino entrepreneurs who cashed in on their innovative drive.

Wanted: More Pinoy Entrepreneurs

Thirty years ago – maybe more – we have been said to be on the verge of some industrial take off or other. We were up there in the Asian economic totem pole third only to Japan and Singapore.

The take off never happened. Did we run out of gas, suffered a flat tire, got derailed by infighting?

The signposts are alarming. Many of our women still dream of going abroad to be mail-order brides, to be singers and entertainers, or to take domestic and “care-giving” jobs most of the locals — Americans, Europeans, etc. — wouldn’t touch with a ten-foot pole.

Our men possibly fare better, but not too much better. Many train to become engineers, technicians and skilled artisans; but once they get some minimum experience locally, they take off for some job abroad, draining our country of the skilled human resources it needs so badly for its own oft-postponed “take-off.”

The social costs of Pinoys leaving home in pursuit of the American dollar are unquantifiable. We see them all around us — broken homes, split marriages, unsupervised children dropping out of school and turning to drugs and other vices or entering into relationships for which they are not ready.

Many concerned Filipinos have wearied of trying to study what’s wrong with the country or the national psyche.

They just want action — an action plan that is doable or, to use the technocrat’s term, SMART (specific, measurable, attainable, realistic and timebound).

There may be very few action plans smarter than a national entrepreneurship campaign – a campaign for independent, job-creating, income-producing entrepreneurship — where all sectors can close rank for.

In communities where entrepreneurs abound, the population stay rather than migrate, roads and infrastructures are built, social and educational services are improved, commerce booms, and the quality of life rises. Enterprise begets more enterprise, progress begets more progress.

This is why President Arroyo is trying to implement the “A Million New Entrepreneurs Program” as the centerpiece of her economic agenda. Taking the cue, local governments have set up their own local enterprise promotion programs.

This is also why entrepreneurship subjects have been infused into the curriculum at both high school and collegiate levels.

… and why industry associations, civic clubs, and even religious groups have joined the “small business” bandwagon.

… and why this little corner makes a pitch for entrepreneurship.

And the pitch is addressed to you, kababayan/katoto/kapwa-Pilipino — whether you are a salaried employee, a housewife bored or hardpressed making ends meet, a graduate who can’t find a good job, a retiree, an OFW, or an expatriate Filipino.

The next pieces in this corner will discuss more about the advocacy for entrepreneurship, the entrepreneurial personality, starting a business, improving a business, and entrepreneurial role models.