I recently attended the whole-day seminar on personal finance, “Steps to Financial Peace,” by none other than Randell Tiongson, a Registered Financial Planner (RFP) in the Philippines and a strong advocate of personal finance management, with guest speakers Francis Kong, Paulo Tibig, Jayson Lo and Ador Abrogena.

Francis Kong

I always remember listening to Francis Kong on the radio when I was stuck in the car with my late dad and he would love to listen to DZFE-FM where Francis had his daily inspirational talk on business and faith. Today, he is a sought-out motivational speaker to far-flung regions of the migrant and overseas Filipino community, giving 360 talks in 365 days of each year, as he says.

I personally met Paulo Tibig at the “Wealth Summit” and saw him again during the launch party of a company I used to work for in a short amount of time. Paulo has built his logistics company from ground-up and has also gone through the trials of being an entrepreneur. Today, he is an active officer with the Philippine Franchising Association, enthusiastically advocating franchising and entrepreneurship in the country.

Jayson Lo is a new guy to me, with a brief introduction by Randell before he went up on stage to give his talk on his successes, failures and trials in business, losing millions and gaining it back all over again. His story breathes optimism and faith, that despite being down in the rut there should be no direction but up.

Paulo Tibig

Ador Abrogena heads the Trust and Investment Group of Banco De Oro (BDO). They were the major sponsor of the event and this allowed them to present their product as a means to invest money into different financial instruments, i.e. equities, that yields far more returns than nominal savings accounts or worse the piggy bank.

But this was Randell’s show, with each speaker helping hone the messages that Randell spoke of. Like I mentioned, he started off his whole-day talk with education, and the lack of it, in a subject of personal finance that strikes hard into each one of us, from the time we start earning an income to the time most of the video displays of our entire life pass us by in a short span of time. Why is that? Why is our academic institutions not teaching us the rudiments of personal finance? Why didn’t they tell us what a life insurance is for, accident protection, educational and pension plans, stocks, futures, bonds and so many other ways we can make our money earn more rather than the piggy bank mentality of savings?

Jayson Lo

Randell showed his attendees a video on economic freedom, commenting that the more open and free the economy of a nation is, the more the residents benefit from it financially. The Philippines has a pseudo way of doing it, like opening corporate ownership to foreign entities at 100% for a selected list of industries; I observe that until the industry proves itself first, the Philippine government will not budge at lowering the barriers. Is money remittance the only means to sustaining the wealth of a country? In fact, will it sustain itself or falter once a new nation becomes the new source of skilled, quality workers? Do you think we need more foreign direct investments (FDI)?

I wish I was in high school again, and I was given the chance to attend a public seminar akin to Randell’s where I am awakened by the reality – at an early age – that I need to start planning my life; because today I realize that in order to bring up the stakes of succeeding regardless if an event creates it or not, “life events planning” is the keystone to securing financial success. From school to graduation, from my first job to my second and third one, my first entrepreneurial endeavor and the failures that befall each of them, to my marriage, kids, house, car, tuition fees, health care for everyone, insuring my family’s financial continuity should I die, retirement and the longevity of our lives while we cannot work anymore, and everything that affects my loved ones during and after my death. You think a high school kid will get encouraged to respond positively should he or she attend courses like this? You’ll never know until it happens.

As Randell mentions, there are three ways a person can acquired wealth:

• Inherit it
• Marry it
• Spend less and invest

Of course, the chances of waiting for the first two events to happen is like playing the Lotto – one in a gazillion chance. The best, most rational path to financial peace is the third means; and the age to which you start doing so is so often directly proportional to the odds of succeeding. It’s not just investing cash in financial instruments – the word also describes doing so for yourself. Acquiring new skills, experience, tools to assist you – there are a host of other means to which investing is also related to.

During the break, I was talking to Jenny Magalong, head honcho of Whiteboard, the company responsible for arranging Randell’s seminar, and was telling her how my dad never really prepared for his life events that affected our small-unit family. He only bought one life insurance, and that was out of respect to his brother-in-law, worth a whooping $680 in today’s measurement. He bought no education fund nor anything that prepared him for his retirement. At 54 years of age, he had a stroke which incapacitated him and abruptly ended his professional career and a continued income. By the time he died, all he had left my mom and I was the house. It was good enough I was the only child and supporting such as small family unit wasn’t a huge burden for my dad. I love my dad and my mom, and for everything good that I saw them do during my life; but preparing for the inevitable possibilities of life wasn’t a priority. Typical of the culture to which the average Filipino was brought up, everyone just kept spending but not investing.

The biggest topic which Randell and his guest speakers kept reiterating was all about debt. One story was about a 15,000 Peso per month employee amassing a staggering 1 million Peso debt, done in the course of a few years through friends, relatives and cash advances. It was like a pyramid scheme, loans made to pay off other loans, until the principal and interest payments ballooned to more than 6,000 percent. Another dealt with one who amassed a little less than 10 credit cards and just kept buying beyond her ability to pay until everything exploded in her face and she had maxed-out all her cards.

Obvious to everyone is the simple mathematical equation to financial peace, to wit:

Income – Expenses = Savings

Obviously, income should always be higher than expenses.
Obviously, if income is disturbed, expenses can be controlled down.
Obviously, you should not deduct savings and add it to expenses.
Obviously, savings means extra money stashed away somewhere.

That’s where the falacy of savings exist in our minds: it equates to a savings account in a bank. What many do not know, or attempt to try to know, is that savings also involves investment. Randell tells us the tried and tested rule of getting 30 percent of your total savings and investing this, or making your money grow more money. You leave the 70 percent intact for emergencies and the additional things you want to buy to motivate you to continue doing a good job. (New shoes, anyone?) But as time goes by, you keep iterating the method of investing 30 percent as your income goes up. I will assume that for everyone, 30 percent isn’t much to ask.

Randell Tiongson and me

Personal finance is as common as common sense tells you – save, invest, lessen cost, find more means to increase income. If you are reading this, it means you have access to the internet. Spend an hour a day sifting through the many ways of saving, of investing, of lessening your cost, of finding additional means to more income. You can also force yourself to start using some tools like a daily expense tally, or go more complex like using QuickBooks and the like. The faster means is hire a retained accountant to do your personal finance books, and a personal finance consultant to help you find the better and comfortable means to managing your finance, no matter how small it is. I remember Randell telling me it only costs about 18,000 Pesos or so to hire a good personal finance consultant which accounts for a series of one-on-one sessions, not just one.

You have to educate yourself to learning more about personal finance management. The likes of Randell’s whole day seminar is a small drop in a bucket of learning how to manage your money and how to plan for your future. Today may be great for you but man’s history is generally sought with many ups and downs. When you are in a period where there is no income coming in, are you prepared? Start today; it’s never too late even if you’re 50 or 60 years old. Better if you are 20 or 30 years of age and you begin planning and managing your present and future finances.

Personal finance – something old but still something new. Sounds like getting married? It is. It’s a lifelong commitment.

Title photo by Ken Teegardin at SeniorLiving.org

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Photo above is a studio shot of the (funny?) sales and operations managers of Group C of Avon in the Philippines, headed then by Connie Arboleda (holding the teddy bear).

My former colleague, mentor and past country manager of Avon in the Philippines, Malu Dy Buncio, now Chief Business Development Strategist at Mansmith and Fielders, Inc., recently popped an image-poster announcing her two-day pubic seminar on the dynamics of direct selling. For those who are thinking of entering the wonderful world of direct selling, I urge you to spend a little cash and time for this two-day seminar. Malu will not only thrill you and drive you nuts about direct selling (oh, how I miss listening to her); she’ll make sure you walk your way out of the seminar with a real, no nonsense plan. For more information, please go to the Mansmith web page of “The Dynamics of Direct Selling” or click on the poster below.

Anyway, this announcement from Malu got me thinking of my glory days working for the number one direct selling company in the Philippines (do you have to guess?) where I discovered the finer lines of managing thousands of independent dealers, not to mention learning to remove pride and ego by singing and dancing in front of everyone during sales rallies and assemblies. I mean, when do you get the chance to sing “Rapper’s Delight” in front of 800 people at The Music Museum? LOL! Those days have gone and passed but Avon was the pinnacle of my experience in the art of managing a direct selling organization and I owe many subsequent successes I’ve had to the people I worked with in direct selling. The fact is many of the things I will mention in my story came from pronouncements of Malu during her long tenure in Avon, not to mention also being the precursor to Avon in the Philippines – Beautifont.

In the interest of my love for the small business, I’d like to put this story in the same perspective that any new direct selling endeavor often starts as a small business and ends being a huge success, sometimes beyond your wildest dreams. All you need to do is “begin.”

Why I made my way into Direct Selling

I was first and foremost an I.T. geek or nerd long before anyone even heard the phrase “information technology.” It used to be called EDP (electronic data processing) and then transitioned itself to a more sexy term, MIS (management information systems). I spent seven years holed up in an office facing humongous CRT screens of “green fonts over black background” and programming my time away using Cobol, Basic, Pascal, C and xBase. Then, a blinding glimpse of the obvious struck me: I have never heard of an EDP or MIS guy become general manager of a company – any kind of company. This was the era long before the internet crept into the common household and Tim Berners-Lee invented the World Wide Web. Come to think of it, we were already excited just using Bulletin Board Systems (or BBS).

I pondered the thought some more and saw general managers coming from three usual places in corporate Philippines: finance, marketing or sales. Geez! Me do finance? I’d have to go back to school to do that plus pass the CPA exams and have a decade or so of grudging experience. I also quipped, “What the heck is marketing?” And so, the inevitable was obvious – find a job in sales.

I was the head of MIS in the Philippine licensee company of Jockey International which created other business units inside the company. During this time, Jockey Philippines recruited and convened a small team of experienced managers to plan, set up and operate a direct selling division. Being the top IT guy of the company, I became part of the planning team which included Millicent “Joy” Isaac and Naomi “Omi” Diaz. We eventually launched the direct selling unit and set up the first branch with myself handling automation and operations management. In a year or so, Omi left and the Operations Manager position in the direct selling unit became vacant, and I was asked to fill it in on a temporary basis while the owners looked for a replacement. After a week of its daily grind, I asked that I stay on a permanent basis. That started my direct selling career.

Two years in Jockey Philippines’ direct selling unit was great but my quest for learning more, especially on the sales side of the business, grew beyond what the company could provide me. So, I sought the help of two headhunters to find me a job inside the country’s number one direct selling company, Avon Cosmetics Inc. I moved into Avon in a lower rank, from National Operations Manager in Jockey to the Branch Manager of Avon’s Shaw (boulevard) Branch, with almost the same salary. That’s okay – the point is I’m in the best corporate university to get me a degree in direct selling, so to speak. I managed the third largest branch of Avon in the Philippines which, in two years, became number two in the country (Avon then had 21 branches nationwide), thanks to my able branch teammates in the likes of Arlene Nolasco, Tente Alday (now Country Manager of Mary Kay Philippines), Ria dela Vina and, of course, the original Big Brother when the TV show didn’t even exist, Jimmy Gatdula. We also had our mentor and the best group manager, Connie Arboleda, always patiently supporting our needs and our very diverse branch management team. After two years of grassroots experience dealing directly with the independent dealers and franchise managers of Avon, I moved to its head office to set up and manage the newly formed Customer Service Department, headed by another great mentor Tonet Rivera, now the Global-Regional top guy for Bristol-Myers Squibb and a budding pilot who writes about flying, together with his son, in their blog, Flying in Crosswinds.

But during my next two years as head of a new department in Avon, politics crept in, a good way in hindsight but not something I wanted for my career path. There was a new computer system being developed and implemented, and I was asked from the highest management realms to be part of the users group, the team that brought the practical ways of managing and operating direct selling branches. The history of automation in Avon always pulled good, experienced people from branch and support-unit levels, and involved them in the IT project. However, such projects usually lasted for a year or two, and by the time it ended, those branch sales and operations people already lost the original job they once had, not to mention a career path they started out with. Avon is a very good employer and in that respect, it usually created new positions to adopt these jobless champions of automation. Having that perspective in mind, I thought my carefully planned career path in Avon was gone. Then, a good friend recommended me to Personal Collection a.k.a. LTS Philippines, a competitor of Avon in the direct selling field, to head national operations. I took no longer than a week to decide, resigned my post in the IT project and immediately jumped into my new job. It only lasted a year to which the reason would need more paragraphs to relate; so, I won’t. After a total of seven years in direct selling, I spent two jobless months contemplating what to do before I eventually joined Mega Magazine as its General Manager. The rest is history.

The Beauty of Direct Selling

Mind you, I’ve never had the opportunity to be the moniker of the “Electrolux Man” gloriously singing, “I’m gonna knock on your door, ring on your bell, tap on your window, too…” But I invited myself to join two area saturation activities conducted by my Avon franchise managers to actually conduct the literal “knocking on the doors” activity: introducing myself as a representative of Avon (I couldn’t imagine calling myself an “Avon Lady”) and selling make-up and brassieres. On occasion, I would tag along in other area saturation drives but just observe than conduct the face-to-face cold-calling process.

After seven years inside the wonderful world of direct selling, I came to realize good things (and some not-so-good) about it. The most basic description and analogy to direct selling was that it was about personal selling: everything was face-to-face; 80 percent of the entire selling conversation was banter; relationships and camaraderie mattered more than today’s “business as usual” consumerism principles; it was a 9-to-9 job, especially on weekends; there was always an inviting commotion happening in our world almost every day – if not, our dealers would have left us; you learn the real “art of the sale” in direct selling and not from Donald Trump’s books; it was always “fun” almost every day; and it was also exhausting at times.

Despite all these things about direct selling, and running and managing a small or large organization of sales and operations people, one thing was very glaring – it was all about money. If money is not you cup of tea for a lifelong career, then direct selling isn’t for you. I remember my former IT boss telling me: “There are only three loves in the world which correspond to who you eventually become. For love of country, you become a teacher; for love of pride, you become a computer programmer or scientist; for love of money, you go into sales.” That’s what direct selling is all about for the millions of people who join the many companies in the industry – it’s all about money. It may be called “income opportunity” or any highfalutin description the creative marketer can coin, but the simplest, one-word term for it is still “money.”

“RITA” will help you succeed

To earn money in direct selling, you don’t pin yourself to area saturation drives and knocking on doors for the rest of your life. You must recruit people, commonly termed as your “down line.” In time, your down lines also mimic your success by recruiting their own network of people; and so the cycle continues. The larger your network of down lines, the better your income if the direct selling company you belong to acknowledges your down lines’ success to you. But things change and life for some down lines take a 180-degree turn, and so you lose some of these people along the way. To replace those who have left your network, you keep recruiting more people into your network. The famous moniker in direct selling happens to be the name of a woman – R.I.T.A. Simply put, it means “Recruitment Is The Answer.”

It’s like the job of the recruitment officer in a company, and you’ll never know when your best employee will decide to leave you. The recruitment officer continues to cull the labor pool for people with the right skills and competence, and puts them in an active file. For direct selling, RITA must not be in an active file – these new recruits must immediately join your network and you start teaching them how to sell great. RITA is a daily job, not a seasonal one. You don’t stop recruiting until you stop direct selling. It’s just part your job.

One of the most important acronyms I learned – R.T.D.M.S.

Okay, here come the acronyms again; but this is important. This time, it describes you entire role with your network and your direct selling business. In sequence, RTDMS simply means “Recruit, Train, Develop, Motivate and Sell.” These are the pinnacles of your work in your direct selling job. It is a cycle that you do every day. It is the process by which you become successful in your direct selling career. It is inevitable that you do all these, not just one.

We’ve touched on RITA as a means to continue growing your network while others inside it may falter and leave. “Training” your network, new recruits or otherwise, is an ongoing function. Many of your down lines cannot afford formal study about sales and many of them may not have gotten a college degree; and so you must fill-in that hole in order to better themselves. Training can be one-on-one coaching or group sessions. It can be short, one-hour bursts or whole-day, out-of-town sessions. However it is done, your content has got to be meaningful to them. From selling tips to effective on-time collections to recruitment blitzes and developing a growing network, it’s your job to teach them all these. The best method is obviously based on your experience of becoming a successful direct seller. Ask the help of someone who can assist in creating simple Powerpoint presentations or just talking points. Don’t create a written speech of the entire session – speak from your heart and experience, and with gusto! Sometimes, you need to attend good public or private training sessions – do so at your expense. What you pay for at these public training courses will return back to you in multiple folds if you apply it and teach it.

Photo by ericoebanda at Flickr-com

Developing your network means finding those rare down lines who can one day become great leaders like you. You have to be observant in finding these future leaders and give them more of your time than usual. You have to pull and convince them of your intention to groom them as a future leader of their network (under your network). Like a teacher, you have to create a simple syllabus of their development so there is a guide for both of you to follow. Some of your future leaders cannot be groomed – that’s okay. This means don’t just choose one – choose a few good ones. Besides money and pride of success, the basic thing we usually leave our children, network of friends, and work colleagues is education. The additional gratification for developing future leaders is their admission that you were responsible for their success, even if the direct selling company you work with does not financially recognize the leaders elevated from your network.

Motivation and inspiration may be intertwined but the point is to make the heart as energized as the mind. The psychology of successful people is always bred inside the heart and soul – the unconscious part of a being – that propels him or her to do great using his conscious mind. It is a daily role you play while you crisscross the many people in your network. Be it done on stage or a small group session, motivational speeches are usually impromptu. I used to buy those corny “Chicken Soup” books and other similar titles, and would index-card them according to title or theme. I made sure I wrote down the group to which I told my motivational story in each index card so that I don’t repeat myself the next time I’m called to talk. However you do things, you have to carry many stories with you and be careful not to repeat them else you start hearing snickering and pun smiles from your audience.

Selling does not stop because you have a network doing that for you. There are always people who will demand to buy only from you, especially your personal customers to which you have been selling to when you started your direct selling career. They may even recommend you, not your down line, to sell to their friends. Whatever the reason may be, your selling job is never over. Even while sitting in a restaurant you open your Avon catalog and glance at the neighboring table looking at you and your catalog, heck! Offer to show them the catalog and sell them. You’ll never know – they may become your top seller in the future. Like any good teacher training your down lines, keep your selling skills intact by practicing what you preach all the time. These instances are also good stories to tell your down lines during your motivational speeches.

Alone is not the answer to Direct Selling success

If you browse publications that show the successes of people in the direct selling field, you’ll notice that most of them are always married couples. Why is that? Simple: you can’t do all things successful, alone. “No man is an island” is alive and well in direct selling. You have to have a partner to help you achieve your success.

A partner doesn’t really have to be your husband or wife; it can be your cousin, brother, sister, parents or even your friend. At most, it’s always been a relative in the Philippines. But a spouse is usually best. The way it works is that both of you divide the many things involved in your direct selling business. For one, face-to-face activities such as recruitment, training and motivation are primarily in your alley. Back-office work like inventory management, credit and collection, computerization or automation, and a host of others belong to your partner who is usually not the type who can talk in front of hundreds of people, if not just a dozen, and can sell themselves about your direct selling business. Sometimes, these partners are also your drivers, collectors, distributors, coordinators, personal assistant, etc. Don’t put them down because of the type of job they do for you – they are as every bit important as what you do. Together, you bring totality in your direct selling business and make it even more successful because of your diversity in character and the division of labor you’ve both agreed to undertake. In the end, always reward your partner, whether with your time or money, because without them, you will greatly lose out and fail.

There are many upcoming direct selling businesspeople who think doing it alone is better than having to manage a husband or wife to help them with their business. History has been repeating itself that couples are the best type of business partners that make an endeavor succeed faster than you would think. If you are focused on your job, knowing the other always has your back, the chance of success becomes limitless.

Will your children willingly inherit your Direct Selling business?

Here’s one glaring thing that I have noticed in the great direct selling businesses in the Philippines – no matter how hard the parents try, the children are always never interested in inheriting and pursuing their parents’ direct selling business. For most, the children’s interest lies elsewhere. Why is that?

Think about it – when parents are financially good, their natural tendency is to educate their children in the best schools money can buy. These children grow up hob-knobbing with the children of other successful parents who live in posh residences and mingle only with the upper echelons of society. Well, generally speaking. If that or anything similar is the scenario with the kids, they will eventually develop interests that’s probably contrary to your direct selling business like a professional career in the medical or legal fields, hi-technology work involving computers and the internet, or other career paths.

Photo by rochell at Flickr-com

Direct selling in the Philippines caters to the middle-to-lower strata of social classes. This is where the ambition of wealth is more desirable in direct selling than asking the successful ones to abandon what they’re doing and join in. Children who have been bred and educated in expensive private schools tend to shun away from dealing with the masses of direct selling. The mere idea of speaking in the jargon that the masses can understand is already a feared activity, not to mention having to do everything that mom and dad have been doing during their growing-up years. There is a disconnect in terms of social breeding, education and ambition to be someone; if it were a life of corporate boardrooms where titans meet other titans of industry, that would be most appealing to the children. But a direct selling business isn’t anywhere in that spectrum. Though even more successful than many struggling corporate giants, the allure of neckties and chic corporate suits just doesn’t match the loose, very informal setting of direct selling. In the end, the parents end up giving their successful network to someone who has no blood relations to them – anyone they trust the most in their down lines.

This is a challenge to many direct selling companies managing successful and thriving networks – there is no succession plan within one network. The inevitable is that when the successful couple retires or is too old to work, the network is in chaos and immediately divides itself into many smaller pockets, and the former glory of the parent network withers away. I once attempted to convince Avon that employing automation as an incentive to lure the Yuppie kids of successful direct selling moms and dads is a gateway, not the only solution, for the kids to enter the direct selling domain. Once inside the business, it becomes easier for mom and dad to story-tell what they’re doing and slowly introduce the children to their day-to-day activities. They may set up a small office for the children where they can dress up in suits and chic corporate attires, but they eventually become personally involved in the business. In time, they realize the income potential, imbibe the work styles, assimilate the character of mom or dad, and continue the business when the parents retire. Unfortunately, somewhere along the way, my proposals fell through the cracks of the mighty direct selling giant. “That’s how the cookie crumbles?”

In summary

Hey! For every story or article, there’s got to be a summary, right? So, let me jump right into it and rewrite everything in outline form:

• Much like any kind of job you do, you do it because you love it. Period. The moment you fall out of love, forget it. No matter how hard you try, you’re just dragging yourself into something you think is worth it but in hindsight you don’t give a crap about it. In the end, you’re bound to fail.
• Direct selling is personal selling as opposed to today’s mix of online and offline selling in the corporate sense. Think of it as social media selling – it’s always more a social encounter than business as usual. If you can’t socialize, you’re a dead duck in Direct Selling.
• Direct Selling, like any kind of sales job, is primarily about money before anything else. “Ewww! Money? Not for me.” Then don’t.
• “Recruitment Is The Answer” (or RITA) is only one answer to make it big. There are lots more I didn’t discuss.
• RTDMS is another “answer” of making it big in Direct Selling.
• “No man is an island” in Direct Selling success means you have to have your partner doing full-time work, too. Doing it alone is just too hard, creates too much anxiety and not worth the cake. Find the right partner, synergize and do it together, forever!
• Provide the best education for your children that your Direct Selling money can buy. But if you want them to inherit your Direct Selling business, you’ve got to start planning a way to entice them to join you. Forcing them to do so at a more adult age won’t make the grade. Create a succession plan – ask help from others if you need to – but make a plan, any workable plan.

My Mom and I in Miami

Today, I am what I am thanks to my seven years of in-depth and hands-on experience in the three direct selling companies I worked for, the longest and best of which belongs to Avon. From a geek who often replied in single words, I can now express and describe a single word in multiple paragraphs and have no qualms speaking to large groups of people; besides the awesome “people and sales management” skills I learned. If you intend to be general manager one day, you’ve got to make “sales” part of your career itinerary because it simply goes a long way in molding you to the right future head of a company, large or otherwise. Direct selling is here to stay; you can’t discount the fact that it offers the lowly poor an invitation to succeed if he or she puts their heart and mind into it. It’s the fastest way to make money – for everyone!

If there’s a book entitled “Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff,” someone ought to write “Don’t Sweat the Direct Selling Stuff.” Direct selling may be part of your destiny – today! So, find out if it so.

Ending this, I leave you with my favorite ten, two-letter words that make up a great, inspirational sentence. “If it is to be, it is up to me.” Awesome indeed!

Referenced websites:

Dynamics of Direct Selling
http://www.mansmith.net/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=177&catid=27&Itemid=17

Mansmith and Fielders, Inc.
http://www.mansmith.net/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=1&Itemid=35

Tim Berners-Lee
http://www.w3.org/People/Berners-Lee/

World Wide Web
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Wide_Web

Jockey International
http://www.jockey.com/

Jockey Philippines
http://gtvl.com/

Avon Cosmetics, Inc.
http://www.avon.com.ph/PRSuite/home_page.page

Flying in Crosswinds
http://tonetcarlo.wordpress.com/

Bristol-Myers Squibb
www.bms.com/

Personal Collection a.k.a. LTS Philippines
http://www.philippinecompanies.com/companyprofile/36840/lts-phils-corp-personal-collection-

The Electrolux Man and Other Stories
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Electrolux-Man-Other-Stories/dp/0947062149

Donald Trump’s The Art of the Deal
http://www.amazon.com/Trump-Art-Deal-Donald-J/dp/0446353256

Mary Kay Philippines
http://www.marykay.com.ph/mkpweb08/home.asp

Mega Magazine
http://www.mega-magazine.com/

Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff
http://www.amazon.com/Sweat-Small-Stuff-small-stuff/dp/0786881852

Photo by fbouly at Flickr.com

Everybody’s gotten into the social media bug. Even grandparents have asked help to be taught and grandchildren painstakingly trying their best. Moms and Dads have gone awry on the social media bug. What was once the private realm of teens and yuppies has now been invaded by their parents, Uncles and Aunts. If e-mails and websites successfully made the world a smaller place a decade ago, social media networking sites have compounded it o a two-block radius.

I asked the once-dominant Friendster people, a lot of who I talked to belong to the call center industry, if they had a Facebook account. “Of course, I have” was the common answer, succeeded by “Who doesn’t?” But the answer to my next question surprised me. When I asked which social media website were they spending more time interacting, and not playing games, they blushingly quipped “Friendster.” Why is that, I asked. “Because Mom and Dad are in Facebook!” came their funny reply. However, others also mentioned that they already created a great network in Friendster and it would just take too much time building the same network in Facebook. Yet, a resounding reason were the pictures – tons of it uploaded through the years that many have no idea how to move or copy it to Facebook that doesn’t require too much time and effort; not to mention the testimonials. Kids! Haha!

Of course, I only talked to a few who represents a few hundred thousand or so people working in the industry (versus 92 million population figure) whose “investment” of time and effort in perfecting their profile pages, posting their hundreds of pictures and keeping intact their (inbox) messages with Friendster is tantamount to building and maintaining a three story house through the years – you can’t easily sell and transfer all your treasured belongings to a new abode overnight. I looked at Merriam-Webster for the synonyms of investment and I found beleaguerment, leaguer, siege, baptism, inaugural, inauguration, induction, initiation, installment (also instalment) and investiture. I also found related words such as containment, confinement, segregation, enlistment and enrollment. So much for the dictionary.

As we invest money in our home and family, transportation, career, probably our own business, education of the kids and more, so have we also started to invest time and effort in our preferred social media websites. I’m talking about our personal knowledgebase of interests, notes, shared items like links and pictures, likes, messages and comments, social groups and many more in Facebook. If you began building your Facebook social profile in 2006 like I did, you must have accumulated close to 5 years of so much “stuff” (and I can’t find any better word to describe it) inside that now-popular online community. You dread moving out of it and into a different one because it will take so much of your time or the next big thing in social media networking is something so enticing you can’t resist just moving into it and just leaving everything in Facebook.

Here’s my million Dollar yet generally-speaking observation to social media investment of my friends, family and acquaintances: the way they invest their time and effort into Facebook is almost the same way they value money and how they invest it. Think about it – If you’re a miser, you probably don’t have that much friends in your online social network and are cautious posting and sharing stuff. If you’re a spendthrift or worse, a squanderer, chances are you have tons of friends in Facebook and post, play games so much and share stuff without thinking about future repercussions. Though “character” also flows naturally in the way you use Facebook – who you are in real life or imagine yourself to be in real life is who you personify in Facebook – but that’s another story. (In fact, character is the main reason why some of you are not even using Facebook – LOL!.) What I’m expressing is putting financial investment and social media investment in a similar or equal reaction to how you conduct yourself with one and the other.

Photo by dborman2 at Flickr.com

Now, I wrote “generally speaking.” The paragraph above is not an absolute statement. There are exceptions to my generalization like celebrities, politicians, and every person who is widely known to a mid-sized or large community or the general public, and are always much talked about. There are always exceptions to many rules in life and this is one of them in my topic.

But it’s funny to note the parallelism of investing your money and investing your stuff in Facebook; and notice I only touched on the extremes: the miser and the spendthrift. I know many of us consider ourselves in the middle – not a cheapskate or extravagant. Just about right. If that’s the case, then good for you! You may be doing a good job in both your personal finance and your investment in Facebook without going to the extreme of things. And if your character is about as good as the good cop on television goes, then that added factor makes you use Facebook more wisely than many others. Lucky you!

“What’s the point in all these?” Simply, realize it; then, adjust and change the way you do things to your liking. Plan how you’re going to use Facebook the way you plan (or want to plan) to use your money. If impulse buying is a hard habit to break, then impulse posting, impulse sharing, impulse uploading of photos and everything else you do in Facebook follows your style when you go shopping. If you spend too much money on big ticket items that you can’t even afford, chances are you’re spending too much time on Facebook, too; time that has been allotted and should be devoted to your profession and your family. It’s “sky’s the limit” on many other parallelisms to how you invest your money and the same way you use Facebook.

The good changes you do in the way you invest and use your money will most definitely trickle down to the way you invest and use your time – and stuff – in your online social networking. If you need to schedule your expenses, then so must you schedule using and the way you use Facebook. Real life and virtual life do mix a lot today, and they’re one and the same – like it or not. It’s your life; and with your God-given “free will” and your faith in Him and your family’s support, you can “realize it and change it.”

Money and Facebook – how we (generally) use one is (usually) the same for the other.

Whoda thunk it?

It’s been a roller coaster ride from childishness to maturity and fatherhood. I’ve had good successes and disappointing failures. Many of these have affected acquaintances, friends and family. Life is such that you fall down, get up and continue where you left off. Regardless of the gains and pitfalls, life is still good – and I am luckier than many in the world who have a lot less and suffer more.

I love technology, having started my work interests in the field of computers when display monitors was a roll of paper, the keyboard looked and felt like a typewriter, and saving your files meant punching holes on a long roll of paper. Today, we have the means to telecommute and sit in coffee shops while we surf the world wide web. That’s the span of my experience and love of technology.

I enjoyed the challenges and education of the workplace, and the constant movements between organizational people who muster strategies and instructions on what best to do to achieve the ideal profit. I love collaboration and coordination, managing projects, creating new and better ways to do things, daydreaming of ambitious programs that will better a small part of the business or the larger picture. From staff to supervision, management to directing. At one point, I was a one-man department where I prided myself to be able to gain access and support from people belonging to other teams and departments, and succeed in delivering my expected results. Recently, I ventured into entrepreneurship and learned many lessons on how “not” to do things.

I envision a good lifestyle, from fashion to good living standards and the eccentricities of the upper social network that I can share erstwhile to my wife and children. Of course, it’s still a vision that needs to be fulfilled. Though money is not something you bring to your grave or after-life, it is a means to provide others a better life than what you had.

I love having idols in life and business machinations. The movers and the shakers who takes your breath away when their experiences are shared and their knowledge exchanged with you. I continue to add more idols in my life as I continue meeting, experiencing and adapting the best traits I learn from these idols. It’s even much better if your idol is your personal friend or acquaintance – the experience is more livid.

But, life goes on and life is good. God still continues to be part of my being and the way I deliver myself to others. I have been a devout Catholic since childbirth and even if I opened up to be introduced to other types of faiths, I still came back to my Catholic upbringing; and I am very proud of that. I love God as I love people around me, even if others do not understand and misunderstand my love. As humans, it is very important to continue loving others so that we can say, “life is good!”

Now, it’s time to share. Inspired freedom to share my experiences, my ideals, my thoughts, my ideas and my hopes. I once read a book whose title was “Hope Is Not A Method.” True. Don’t make it a method but continue to hope for the best and plot the method to which you could achieve your aspirations in life. And I “hope” I will succeed in my words that it may be able to help you in you path in life, where “life is good!”

There are, of course, those that think otherwise. For some reason, I may have hurt them or became the reason why they failed a business opportunity or the like. If in my good conscience I know I have done nothing wrong but gave everything my honest and sincere best, then I can sleep soundly and now worry about those who may think “otherwise.” Life is too short to keep hurt feelings or, worse, become vengeful with spite. I grew up with parents who were not perfect but were consistently nice and accommodating to everyone. That character rubbed in on me and made me live life according to those ideals. Despite the ordeals and hurtful encounters, never ever change the goodness in you – ever!

I haven’t written at all only because of the rut I went through. But, like any wounded prey, you lick your wounds, heal yourself, get up and start walking back to the path you came from. That path is still my intention of providing for my wife and children and being able to go back and live with them – near them. A short version of a long story is that I live thousands of miles away from my family but I never relinquished the aspiration to be back with them, forever.

My rut was the result of a few failed projects involving call centers, web development, content development and internet marketing. My realization to all these is that at the end of the day you are still who you want to be, and if those failures make you succumb to brooding and procrastination, you will have failed not only yourself but everyone around you. To be able to get back up on your feet and go back to your chosen path in life is difficult but not impossible. God and faith are very important – don’t be part the 5% population in the world that do not believe in God at all. God moves wonders in you to make a dash back to reality and life, and continue conveying compassion, love and understanding to everyone around.

Notice that many of the world’s richest people are, well, to put in direct perspective, “assholes.” Therefore, nice people don’t necessarily beget wealth – not that much, anyway. I don’t mind that at all. I’ve learned that our aspiration in life must not be about money but peace of mind. Regardless of how people think of you, if you think you have done no one wrong, or if you have sincerely apologized for the wrong that you have done, then there’s nothing from stopping you to live life according to your good principles in life.

Be a good person, no matter what the odds are. Money does grow on trees but it blossoms way above an oak tree – yeah, that tall. You need effort, determination, focus and ambition to have your picking. That’s how wealth is achieved. However, there are other people also trying to do just the same as you are, together in the same tree. If you think kicking them out of the tree to fall and hurt themselves, or trampling on them to speed up your ascent, will make it easier and faster for you to get your wealth, well, think a milion times before doing just that. Because, man, I’ll tell you – it isn’t worth it.

Today, two nice persons by the name of Fred C. and Chris P. have given me renewed life to a new business opportunity that I thought was lost. We recently met, rejuvinated the past intention to market and sell their service in the country, rekindled our professional relationship to a new par, and has now inspired me to rise up from the rut and go back to the path I was once at. Yes, you need people like Fred and Chris who are willing to help you, even if it’s just a nudge. You need people who are willing to support you in what you’re trying to do, people like my newfound friend, Gale P. You need to continue doing the “meet and greet” friendly, unobtrusive networking even if the likelihood of a sale isn’t there – there are always indirect means through your new professional acquaintances that isn’t apparent but will eventually result in closing a sale. Don’t do it out of self-interest because that kind of negative vibe will become obvious later on. Do your networking out of sincere interest to meet, greet and get to know the person well, especially friends and acquaintances you haven’t seen for a long time.

One thing you must always do is “be honest.” Never lie, cheat or steal. You don’t have to be great friends or BFFs but honesty is a quality that draws honest people closer to you than, say, your gift of gab. In the 80-20 rule of life, 20 percent of people may just want to use you. Be careful but be honest. If you can’t help the person who’s asking for money or your valuable time, tell them so. I was once in that situation where I asked people for money (I panicked) and half of them responded back. A big portion of that half said they couldn’t help me because of varied reasons. With sincere gratitude, I admonished appreciation for even just responding back to me. Many of them today are closer to me as friends or business acquaintance than before. The other half stayed silent and I’ll never know why; but that’s okay. They have their own reasons why and I for one cannot even think of judging people. My faith has taught me well that only God can judge us.

I have lived alone since, oh, for almost two years. Prior to that, I lived with my in-laws for about a half a year. I am an only child so maybe that’s the reason why I can survive without have anyone in my humble abode when I come home. After separating from my family, I pursued the course of entrepreneurship and have had my share of successes and failure, more of the latter. Good friends who became my business partners are now gone and, like always, I do not force myself to want someone to like me. Again, they have their reasons. Many other people I know, friends and acquaintances, continue to appreciate me as who I am; and I am thankful for them all the time. If I feel the angst to be around people, I just go to a coffee shop with my notebook computer and get into my creative self of looking for solutions to my issues and my problems. My notebook is my best tool of soltitude, tapping away on the keyboard, verbatim to my thoughts and without the need to edit what I first write. Regardless of my situation, I try to visit my in-laws every weekend and mingle with them on everyday banter of family life or things that have happened.

Recently, my father-in-law got sick and had to go through an Angioplasty surgery. I didn’t have to tell anyone that I felt so much compassion for him and what he was going through. I felt his pain. He is growing old yet continue to work for wealth because, somehow, I understand his need to fulfill many of his childhood aspirations. He is a kind and decent man. Just like me, he is an only child, too. I even asked my Facebook friends for their prayers, and many obliged openly or did it in their own non-public ways. My real father, Antonio Lumanlan Pekson, died 16 years ago and even if my father-in-law isn’t my blood relative, he is the only Dad I have today. (My Mom also lives far away from me.) My Catholic and Filipino traits rub on me to respect my parents and elders, be kind and honest to people, and never cheat, lie or steal – and of course, never kill. With that, I will always love my in-laws in my own humble way.

I’m now trying to get back on the road to recovery. I have been very busy tyring to come up with sales and marketing plans for the service I am trying to sell. KUNNECT is a hosted call center solution that allows any business center or call center, small or large, to perform its customer-centric services without the need for large capital investments, no need for a long set up duration and no expensive upfront fees. I love the product and the service, and I love the people behind it – Fred, Chris and everyone in KUNNECT. It has, as I mentioned, given me a renewed inspiration to fulfill my dreams once again but with the honest feeling that I’m doing the business market some good, too, in providing a cheaper but productive way to do business. And I’m doing it “on my own.” No more business partners. No more suckering myself into believing that good friends are the best kinds of business partners. They will always be my friends but I’ve learned late in life that it’s not always the best combination. Give them something to do on their own is better than working together but feeling you can’t argue about his personal self in the workplace. That’s a fine tightrope to walk.

Love God. Love your family. Love everyone around you even if they do the wrong things. Love your work, something which you spend a third of your life doing – sometimes even more. But most importantly, love yourself, too. To love yourself means you profess a positive aura that becomes very transparent to the people around you – and, like a virus, they get hooked on your positiveness and optimism, and project the same sentiments to others. All told, life is short but life is good, no matter what the odds are. Life is God’s gift to you – so, treasure it to its fullest potential.

Happy halloween!

And so, I woke up after just two hours of sleep as I kept tossing and turning on bed trying to get through the day with sunshine and smiles regardless of the problems. After the last discussion about the previous day’s stark mishap, I trekked to Greenhills from Makati City. As a person raised in (Metro) Manila, I’ve always been a “South Boy” and would hardly travel North unless it was at Ortigas Center where the second business district of the metropolitan area is located. At a place where I rarely go, I always keep it in mind to get into the first available parking space and walk to look for the place I intend to go than drive myself insane going in circles trying to find the “best” parking slot.

Who is Randell Tiongson?

I saw Randell’s e-mails months ago by way of a school Yahoo Groups–either LSGH Manos or One La Salle. From there, I e-mailed him about a travel portal project and agreed to met at the Bonifacio High Street in The Fort. I explained my new project and invited him to participate. Randell was informal, quirky, extroverted, extemporaneous, smiling, happy and full of life. From then on, he became part of my Facebook network while keeping tabs on his www.income-tacts.com website which he manages together with other “Registered Financial Planners” in the Philippines. Randell is a public speaker and loves to conduct training sessions, and also writes for a few publications, including the Business Mirror newspaper and Money Sense magazine. Recently, he personally began blogging through www.randelltiongson.com with the help of Carlo Ople, an internet marketing guru who manages www.newmedia.com.ph and consults with corporations wanting to traverse the web but don’t really know how to.

Financial Planning Basics

Randell’s talk on financial planning was geared towards the individual and the family. When he began his presentation, I thought of many friends who should have been at the event to listen to Randell talk, people who were just starting their careers and new mothers and fathers. He repeated the phrase “financial freedom,” reiterating the Filipinos’ need to start getting out of the cultural rut that we’ve been taught, e.g. “When I retire, I expect my children to take care of me,” and become independently secure when retirement does happen. His talk on “credit cards” (the evils of…?) touched on my history as having always depended (and looked for more) credit so that I could buy more stuff I really didn’t need. Randell’s worst-case experience of helping a couple was to find out that the wife had accumulated 13 credit cards and, to Randell’s quip to himself: “I didn’t know there were that many credit card companies in the Philippines!”

Randell Tiongson in his Financial Planning Seminar (1)

Randell touched on many fine points of personal financial planning, including why spouses and families don’t discuss and plan the household’s finance and accounting. I know one family that does that every year but nothing really is implemented as most of the time, it’s the patriarch that dictates what’s going to be done, leaving the other spouse and siblings with nothing but to nod and agree–with eyes rolling up and noses neighing like horses.

Topics about risks, acumen of financial planning and retirement lent an interesting insight, agreeing that many Filipinos tend not to weigh risks and probable earning opportunities. A good formula that Randell shared about retirement is his 20/20 rule: if you are going retire in 20 years from now, you should have started planning for 20 years ago–wow!

The talk ended with a short Q&A session and a raffle of a gift certificate. Randell also gave away copies of back issues of the Money Sense magazine while GBX (the hip shoe brand) gave away T-shirts to everyone who attended. Food was catered by Quick Plate of Randell’s wife, Mia. I networked a bit while eating a hearty plate of sausages and pasta (yummy!), and was introduced to Edwin Ngo, President of 128 Dream Fountain Corporation that carries the GBX brand. I was happy to get inquisitive support from Edwin, Randell and Carlo on my still-in-the-beta-phase travel portal project called “Just Go Philippines.”

Randell Tiongson in his Financial Planning Seminar (2)

In Summary

Many of the things Randell touched on has one way or another crossed my life in theory or practice. However, our cultural weakness is that the typical Filipino is a poor planner and implementer. We plan extravagantly (impossible dream?), spend like the King of Saudi Arabia and die poor or in debt. “Consumer debt,” as Randell also mentioned, is more prevalent than “business debt,” the latter being that we borrow money to create more money.

The North American Filipino Community

I’ve dealt with the Filipino-American and Filipino-Canadian markets through many telemarketing and online projects, besides having lived a few years in Canada and traveling repeatedly in the few U.S. states where the Filipino population is large. I have only met a handful of Filipinos who run their own business; most continue to strive and look for one employment after another. Hardly anyone goes after entrepreneurship. But we love selling bits and pieces and earning, well, bits and pieces, too. I think we call that “paglalako,” similar to our liking for direct selling. Even some Filipino-Chinese have fallen into the “entitlement” trap of our past cultures, that if you study hard, you’ll get a good job, stick to that company forever and retire handsomely. Yeah, right. You think at these trying times the word “handsomely” is still aptly viable?

Ask Randell for Professional Counsel…

…and not just your drinking buddy or your Dad. For those who can afford to cough up a few thousands of Pesos for multiple sessions with Randell so he can help you properly and correctly plan your household or personal finance, especially for the young professionals and new families, I suggest you take the initiative to seek the counsel of someone like Randell so that life in your future and that of your family becomes less painful, more rewarding and simply enjoyable. As my moniker with my company, Workspresso, says: “Work the Way you Want.” That’s how I’ve been aiming to life the remaining decade of my business life–the way I want–of course, with more wealth and more blessings to share.

Kudos, Randell. I do hope there’s a repeat of your free talk so that I will make sure to pull those friends of mine to attend the next time around.

Like what the subtitle of Howard Schultz’s book says, “One cup at a time,” I strongly recommend going to Starbucks for the start of something great in your career, business and the things you do great!

Why on earth would I say that Starbucks is a great place to do your work? Let me sum it up in one long and bold sentence:

“It offers one of the best coffee in the world plus I just love the ambiance of the hissing of its large coffee maker, the resonance of its blenders that creates their famous Frappuccino drink, the jingle of the scoops of ice that make their iced lattes and mocha drinks, the holler of its baristas to whose drink is currently being served at the bar, the chatter of banter and sweet conversations, the slight turning of the page by solitary readers of books, magazines and newspapers, and the keyboard clicks of nonchalant writers and workaholics (like myself) at the surrounding tables.”

Obviously, it’s not just the coffee; the sensation of being in its café adds value to working in a Starbucks coffee shop.

Starbucks is probably the best place to set up your first business meeting that will never hurt your cash pockets. I mean, why spend a ridiculously high sum of money over lunch or dinner for a deal that you have no idea where it’s headed? At the end of the day, it’s all about matching what you offer and what your counterpart is looking for. No matter how expensive, extravagant and image-building the meal is, if your business endeavors do not complement each other, it will never work out. “The meal doesn’t make the deal.” So, the best place to cold-call and start the business relationship in an appeasing atmosphere that allows both you and your new acquaintance to relax while shop-talking is still a Starbucks coffee shop.

Recently, I had the chance to call on bloggers to invite them to write for an upcoming travel portal to the Philippines that I’m involved with. Though the site is (frustratingly) not yet online, I’ve managed to get quite a number of good bloggers on the fold while getting introduced to a new, growing segment of the publishing industry that I never cared to bother myself to know more about. I met most of my prospective writers and photo-journalists in a Starbucks coffee shop, a lot of these done at café along Legaspi corner Rufino streets in Legaspi Village, Makati City. My intent for meeting each one of these budding writers and photographers is to describe the travel portal project in detail, something that my literary abilities cannot correctly express. The relaxed aura of meeting at Starbucks proved to be successful, and many signed up to be part of the project.

So, one might ask where this excessive penchant for Starbucks began. As my agile mind can recall, it started in November of 1994 when I had my first taste of a cup of brewed “to go” Starbucks coffee in Sydney, Australia, right before boarding a boat that would take us to the famous Opera House. The trip to Australia was one of my marital travel adventures – my wife, Carina, and I had a penchant for traveling as much as we can before we decided to have kids – six vacation trips in a span of just a year which brought agitated responses from my then Avon boss, Connie Arboleda (who also became my firstborn’s godmother). I heard of Starbucks only from books and magazines. “Hmm. Not bad” was my smiling response. But that was it. It took a year before I had a chance to go to Vancouver, British Columbia in Canada for the first time when my wife gave birth to our first born, Cara Isabelle. In my three weeks there, I probably drank 3 cups per week, usually the brewed kind, and without my wife knowing that I was slipping in and out of her aunt’s house where we lived. The nearest Starbucks café was a five minute walk along Granville Avenue in the Marpole district of Vancouver, BC, which was also right in front of a Safeway store. It was actually the latter which I used as my alibi to buy nonessential things just to skip out of the house and buy my cup of Starbucks coffee.

When I came back to the Philippines, I actually mailed a proposal letter to Starbucks in Seattle, Washington where I offered to get a franchise for a Philippine store. In those days, e-mail was nonexistent and “Voice over IP” was unknown. I never got a response from them.

In 1997, Starbucks opened its first Philippine store at the 6750 Building along Ayala Avenue in Makati City. It was a partnership with Rustan’s Corporation, a well-known family who has been a business mainstay of department stores, supermarkets and restaurants in the country. I thought they got a franchise from Starbucks Coffee Company, something I attempted to do. A few years later, I read the very first published book by CEO Howard Schultz of his wonderful story of Starbucks and learned that the coffee company does not franchise – it partners with experienced restaurant companies on the basis of its standard partnership demand to create hundreds of branches on an annual basis.

The years went on in my corporate life and I sipped the famous coffee mainly for pleasure. Then, it became an evening ritual and for good reason. At the end of a tiring day in the office, my wife and kids would always demand quality time from me until they all zonked out on bed. Having all these corporate issues and debacles in my head while being with my family was a tough thing to handle. Don’t get me wrong. I love my wife and kids very much but the transition wrought my mind with distraught. I started straying to Starbucks for a moment’s time of peace while trying to readjust before driving back home and welcoming my family with high energy and smiles. I would spend half-an-hour or so sipping my hot, grande, non-fat, one equal latte while simmering the humid air outside (I smoked a lot before) and observing the people around me. Sometimes, I would read a magazine or today’s newspaper that was always available inside the café. I realized that the entire routine was the best relaxing way to downplay my corporate role, adjust and move into my fatherly and spouse role. This went on forever.

I would also use Starbucks as my venue to meet friends, acquaintances, old schoolmates and former office colleagues. The ambiance gave a better venue for entertaining ourselves over our hot or cold drinks and the not-too-heavy offering of meals and pastries. My corporate meetings would also be set on its hallowed grounds and I would guess 50% of the time, something successful came out of my many meetings in a Starbucks café.

When I got a chance to work at an American call center in Guyana (South America), my trip would take me from Manila to a two hour stopover at Narita airport in Japan where I would savor a cup before a longer flight. I would arrive at LAX airport in Los Angeles, California, grab another cup of Starbucks coffee before hailing a Supershuttle van for my one hour trip to Fontana, CA, where my Mom lived. I would stay for 2 or 3 nights before going back to LAX to catch an afternoon flight to Guyana. The plane would take us to Northwest Airlines’ Detroit or Minneapolis St. Paul hub, usually for another two hour layover before going en route to Miami, Florida. The latter was the last leg of my domestic U.S. flights. My next ride was a British West Indies Airways plane (they commonly called it “Beewee”) which had a one hour stopover at Barbados before proceeding to Guyana. Okay, let me count the number of times I would buy a Starbucks cup – five cups in a grueling 36-hour flight from Manila to Guyana, not to mention the fact that I always brought at least 5 big bags of ground coffee because three months without Starbucks would be suicide. That’s why I always have my 2 nights in California. The round trip back to Manila would be the same and the number of cups of Starbucks coffee I sipped would still be the same. This went on for two years with a quarterly home leave for 2 weeks.

One Christmas season, I gave away those “Manila” labeled wide-bottom mugs to my CEO and the people who reported directly to me at the Guyana call center. I wondered why Sean Krivatch, my CEO boss, enthusiastically thanked me days later. I later learned that he and his wife loved the mug because it wouldn’t rock unbalanced on the bed mattress, and their “breakfast in bed” routine quickly added my mugs into their customary habit. “I never thought of it that way but, hey! You’re very much welcome for the mugs.”

After two years, I hastily left my work in Guyana to fly back to Manila because of family problems. Being away regardless of my quarterly visits was a strain on my relationship with my family despite the financial gains. I could call them once every other day and would use the online text messaging system chikka.com to send short messages to my wife’s mobile phone. My computer at our condominium unit along Roxas boulevard only used a dial-up internet connection and my wife was never interested in learning anything that had to do with computers. She was a dentist by profession and that was the extent of her technical knowledge in life.

Back in Manila, I roamed the city streets networking with people who would be interested in my North and South American call center connections while my I fixed my issues with my family. Again, the best place to set up a meeting was Starbucks. By this time, there were so many branches between the cities of Pasig, Makati, Manila and Muntinlupa, places where I had easy access to go to. There would be new encounters with entrepreneurs and corporate managers that may be interested in me or what I had to offer. Friends would drop by to offer their help in referrals. It was actually the best place to meet during this time of my life because it was always a “dutch treat” encounter between me and those I was meeting. If I had to pony-up the treat, it was just a cup of hot or cold coffee, not a big strain on my dwindling savings.

There had been many good and bad encounters for me while sipping my coffee in a Starbucks café. It was the place where my wife and I had a big argument (good thing we were outside). I had my only one-on-one talk with father-in-law out at the Alabang branch before my family and I went to Canada. Starbucks Greenbelt 3 was where I got Frank Lai of Montreal-based GoldTech Systems, Inc. to sign a joint venture partnership deal with Hans Dee of Mannasoft Technology Corporation with the intent to set up GoldTech in the Philippines. Though I was a 10% shareholder of the new company in paper, I reassigned my shares to Frank so he and Hans could equally own the company, fifty-fifty. It was also the place where I first met the heads of another Montreal-based company, Fred Cote and Shawn Privatsky. A year later, I got the contract to represent them in the Philippines. Their company is Proximo Systems, Inc. and the hosted call center solution I was to market and sell in the Philippines was called Kunnect. Though I met Kyujin Hwang, then a Vice-President of U.S. based telecommunications company Airnex Communications, Inc., in another place, I had good (business) relationship-building sessions with Kyu in many Starbucks branches. A most recent meeting in Starbucks was with the CEO of The Travel Outlet of Virginia, Inc., Roy Estaris. The Travel Outlet is a twenty-two year old travel agency company in the U.S. and, after I sent my 17-page business plan cum proposal, I got the contract to develop and manage the content of their upcoming travel portal business, Just Go Philippines (or aptly branded as “JustGo Philippines!”). When on his next trip to the Philippines he brought along his COO Naomi Fitzwilliams, whose birthday happened to be on the night they landed in Manila, my business partner Richard Sia and I bought her a Starbucks item as a birthday gift, a set of six espresso-sized cups each labeled with the different city names Starbucks had a branch in the Philippines.

Back while I was in Canada fixing my family problems, my wife and I joined the choir of the Canadian Martyrs Catholic Church. This was where I met Lennie Cristobal, the choir’s musical director and pianist, and we spent many evenings talking about the choir, musical pieces and life in general in a few of the Starbucks branches in Richmond, BC. During one evening coffee session, he got me to agree to start playing bass guitar pieces since two acoustic guitars playing with no consistency in strumming or plucking sounded awful. I could read musical notes so he gave me simple pieces at the start. I eventually translated his pieces into guitar tabs since I could read tabs faster than standard piano pieces.

On an over-the-border trip from Richmond, BC to Seattle, WA, Carina knew that one of my lifelong dreams was to visit the very first Starbucks coffee shop at Pikes Place and we did. When we were there, my kids, Cara and Aaron, looked at me with confused faces why I looked so happy being inside that small place with hardly any chair to sit. I also bought one of their prepaid cash cards that featured the picture of the Pikes Place branch.

Starbucks will always be part of my routine in life – for work and pleasure. I started this literary piece while sipping a grande, one Splenda Americano in Starbucks-Greenbelt One after a nice meal of Hummus and a Gyro (or Shawarma) at The Mediterranean restaurant inside the same mall. Starbucks always has electrical outlets in its store and is friendly to laptop (or notebook) users like myself. It will always be my personal place to think clearly, organize my thoughts, read a good book or magazine and make it the only place to meet people for business or leisure. Even if I had the financial means to set up my own coffee shop, I wouldn’t do it. I’d rather put up something else and continue to savor what every Starbucks café all over the world consistently offers me – a very good cup of coffee and the best ambience for being your self. Like what the subtitle of Howard Schultz’s book says, “One cup at a time,” I strongly recommend Starbucks for the start of something great in your career, business and thing you do great!