the real thing

it's only the 3rd quarter of the year and i feel like it's already crunch time. after 2 months of construction we were finally able to operate wellaks, our salon and spa the first business we can call all "orignally" ours. we did the design, we manage the construction, we polish the facade, we shower the room with perfume and tried our best to follow feng shui by having the dry run last october 28. the night before we were still working polishing the shop around 11pm, i rest and let it go and release all worries. "be still my heart" as the song goes, that's the only thing left to do after investing some of the savings and lot's of our personal time in construction and finding the right people. all i can say is that i was not disappointed and i was more surprise of the outcome of the first day dry run. faith really remove limitations.

i was not able to blog much about the adventure in construction which i will do later on up coming post but one thing i learned is that you should never leave anything to chance and that you should be able to find trusted and experience people. the "construction adventure" was worth every peny, i did not only learned so much how things goes during construction but the mistakes and setbacks we experience along the way are valueble lessons which i will cherish and make sure not to happen again on future endeavors or projects.

along with the learnings are surprises, i guess it is really true that realiable people shines during crunch time. we were suppose to have a certified therapist that will lead the team, but she did not report on the first day, second day and third day, we were left to trust the main operation to a petite but reliable lady which i will give my hats off. she saved not only our first day but if i may say our shop which until now she does not fail to do so. she was really one of the surprise, then again the cabinet maker also saved the facad and manage to put life and art on what was to become a very dull barbers area, thanks to his genius we were able to bring life to the barbers area and the counter i am forever gratefull and i will make sure that he will handle future construction for us which i hope is in the near future. not all surprises created positive output some wre mediocre but what does a startup can offer especially for someone like us who went to a business that we dont know much about, we only have the courage and drive to pursue a dream. i wont write much about the not so great surprises but for a startup make sure choose the right people, and this early we already have our competitor.

in a few days we will be reaching our first month of operation and we can say that we are very satisfied with the output, the sales is more than what we expected for the first month but what's important is the "great potential" of the business to grow. we are currently busy now setting up the process or the sop, a must for the operation we are managing the operation on a day to day basis, surprises to come along the way but i believe we are beginning to stabilize.

still there are lot's of work to do and lot's of things to learn but the adventure is worth it. can blog much write now as i am still busy with other tasks and projects.

daze but not confuse

hoo waaa!!! it's an al pacino trademark lines in so many of his movies, it's something that describe my schedule and my tasks this past several weeks. it's the 'ber months and as they say "when it rains it pours", as i write this blog "perma" a supertyphoon just passed by the philippines a week after "katyana" which leaves manila flooded and something that i will not talked about in this entry since everybody knows that. "when it rains it pours" is a very appropriate description for my entrepreneure journey. in my past entries i've mentioned that i am currently working on 3 business opportunities, one of them is a small retail store which after a month is doing pretty well, my mom and aunt were able to grow the store quite modestly what i know is that the sales does not go down 900 a day. something i am really happy but still not contended. ever since the retail store started other ideas and opportunities came up to take advantage of the market that the store brings within it's sorrounding, another aunt started selling viands which is also doing good, so my mom and i decided to let go of the fried chicken business and started a congee business beside the retail store, it's doing good and what's important is that we don't pay any rent and mom need not travel far to sell chicken, she earn's while at home.

retail was the first, whole month of september i was very busy processing the food cart busines, registration and coordination with the franchise and the lessor was taxing but a very good learning experience for me. i never thought that 15centimeters will make or break an enterprising idea. well, we were hoping to coincide our opening with the lessors retaurant, however in the foodcart business measurement is important. cart's have standard size usually 6feet or 1.85 meters, unfortunately the lessor is trying to maximize the front space to cater to 4 tenant at 1.7meters front space each. we were very lucky that we were able to establish good relationship with the lessor and got feedbacks from them that the other tenants are not willing to let go of the 15centimeters which means we had to have our cart customize to 1.7meters which will delay the release of the cart. for me this is better than arguing perpetually with other tenants. i learned a lot of lessons just starting the foodcart, 1st you have to be vigilant and as much as possible create a good rapport with the lessor. i was able to convinced the owner to give the us the space that is beside the entrance, something which is an advantage, this means more space for direct contact with customers, at first the lessor plan was to raffle the location but because i made it a point to directly coordinate with the lessor and visit the site as often as i can they awarded to me the prime location. when you really want something to work, one should be observant and inquisitive we were the first tenant to know the exact location of the entrance cause i took the time to ask detailed questions and did not just focus on getting a space. yes i did made mistake, i assumed that the 15centimeters will not make a difference because of this the customized cart will not make it on our target opening and it might cost us extra.


third, the salon project is really taking so much of my time since i am the financer which is really easy since it only involves sourcing and releasing funds, this is easier if you have the money. the difficult part is the design, especially the interior, it took me the whole day today just figuring out the right color actually not figuring its more of choosing. i have a lot of ideas in mind that i am having trouble deciding the best color for both massage area and the barbers area. designing the furniture is a challenging task every furniture in the salon is customize, though not all are original ideas but everything is personal since i choose the size, the lenght, the color, the hinge, the lock, the handle and even the location where each piece will be positioned. this what makes the salon project more personal for me, aside from designing, i also act as the errand boy, imagine the owner buying supplies on his own. well i did love it, it takes me away from the routine, i really enjoyed roaming in sta.cruz and binondo. i learned so many lessons in starting the salon business which i will be discussing in future blogs, i guess right now i have written so much and if i will not curve my excitement i might finish a novel.

that's how busy i am for the month of september, primary reason why i was not able to create an entry for september. i am only hoping that business will be busier than me, once they all started.

"success usually comes to those who are too busy looking for it." ~ henry david

Passion

i just watched for the nth time "serendipity", God knows how i love this movie but not as much as "pretty womam". and i think it is just appropriate to use one of the tagline from that movie for my blog this month which i am lucky enough to have created one. dean said "you know greeks didn't write obituaries. they only ask one question after a man died. did he have passion?" well i don't want to sound morbid but setting up a business do requires lot's of passion.

if i will chronicle in detail my adventure it it will take two days to write everything so i wil cut it short and focus on the lessons i've learned. did i have passion? i already got sick but i made sure that i will be reporting everyday just to make sure all documents will be processed. i've already release so much cash just for registering the business and we are still on the process of getting accredited by SSS, i've already spent so many hours on the process of designing, registering and coordinating with the possible site owner and had to work extra days in the office just to make sure i don't missed anything on my regular work. i was not able to sleep well, since coordinating with the supplier and site owners requires some timing, several times i had to wait for hours for an audience with the owner, dust and heat made me terribly sick. i also had to be patience for the ever changing requirements and rules of the site owner. how is that for having a passion.

i never thought setting up a business will be this difficult but i am loving every step of the way. i have never been so excited in my life (except for several occassions like my wedding day and birth of my two boys), this adventure unlike the hike in pinatubo, the arayat climb, the palawan hopping is not physically taxing but more of mind exhausting experience. you really have to time everything, preparing the documents even the moods of the site owner. i am learning so many things along the way. just this early whatever happens to this adventure everything is worth going through.

lessons, make sure you have everything prepared before registering anything or you will end up going back and forth. DTI was the easiest one to do, just make sure you have prepared a list of names and take advantages of the online registration offered by DTI. SSS is the hardest one they will require you to submit the SSS details and payment information of your soon to be employee even if you have not started yet, this is our bottleneck right now. next is the mayor's permit then on to BIR and barangay clearance. we have been working on this for about 2 weeks now, it is really time consuming.

Everything you don’t know yet is difficult simply because you don’t know it, but when you take steps towards knowing, it becomes less difficult and therefore easier

time management

there are no priorities just priority!!!

it's been more than a month since i post a blog, time really flies fast. it was really a busy month for both work and entrepreneurship however prioritizing was really difficult, one will suffer in the end. this month a big portion of my time was alloted to TSG due to the recent network problem we encountered, it was a total of two weeks of pure headache, i felt that i have shortchaged SDG for several months now. i think i need to make major changes on how i manage my time in the office, i have started planning and even recommending changes in the position of the team members. i am hopeful that i get positive feedback but it's been two weeks and i have not gotten any reply. promoting the team members will give them more authority and i hope they will embrace the responsibility.

what happen to the other two weeks, it was all entrepreneurship. i was able to finalize a deal with the lax project for a maintenance/development fee, it is not the much considering that it involves development but it will give a stable stream of funds for three years equal to one third of the total monthly funds that i am receiving right now from the five it projects i am currently handling. i have wrote about this before in my previous blog and now it's final. the only thing for me to do is identify which one is the priority for each week, when i only have four weeks.

it is now my goal to just work on each project once a week each month, this way i can give my full attention and deliver what is fair to the client. i will defer from working on two projects each week except for emergency purposes. however i still have to make some adjustment this early to provide permanent fix for two or three of the clients before i can set a once a week schedule. everything will start in the hardware, securing the network to minimize visit due to hardware problems and viruses. clients that involves software modification or alteration are done off-site, i just have to work extra overnight for these one. but if i will be able to stabilize the software and meet the requirements of the clients by december this year than next year will just be maintenance activities and less work.

to sum it up, first priority will be the organizing of the manpower in the office, next is finalizing the business plans and establishing the first business then the schedule for the extra-it-projects.

hope everything works well for me, an i will surely need help in accomplishin everything. with all the busy schedule i try my best to appreciate the beauty....

when it rains it pours

faith springs eternal.....

what's with the title? it's just raining really really hard for several days now in manila...no, it's not the reason. well, this is related to the opportunities that has been coming my way since the birthday month started. i was able to close the a project, start of may that now covers around 30% to 40% of my extra income. it was a good deal or it was a good strategy for me, when i started handling consultation for it related work with some good old corporate friends, i just did it to maintain a good relationship and knowing that they trust me that i understand what i do. it was never really about the money from the start, i just love what i do and i am happy that people trust me. however, along the way requirements become to time consuming. sometimes i had to spend weekend working on networks and softwares away from my family and sometimes i will report to work dead tired from a consulting work the other night, but i never complain i am just too happy delivering systems and assisting users. from this i've learned that i am a people person (however quiet i am) and that i have some marketing and sales skills that i can developed further.

well where am i going with this explanation of how i love my job? it seems that with this love, i was able to establish a network of not only good friends but good customers as well. without knowing it i was able to build a good foundation for what i can call a future business opportunity for me right now. why future, this extra business as of the moment gives me around 25% of what i earn a month as an employee. that 25% is actually is more than the salary of a newly hired team member and i am planning to grow that 25% to 50% next year. that extra earning will be invested on assets like stocks and a business, take note i did not say "small business" but business i will try to refrain from using the word "small" when i talked about business.

ok, going back, this love for my job not only created those opportunities i was also able to help others financially and professionally. moonlighting is not a bad thing i now have this concept that compares moonligthing to being an entrepreneure and if you are an entrepreneure you are more aware that you need to maximize your time and work efficiently during office hours cause you need to leave early to work on an extra project. this means you do your job right as an employee and probably better than others since you tend to deliver ahead of time and in IT try to learn more new ideas that you can both apply to your regular work and also to your extra project. it actually build character, makes a person more of an achiever.

on the first pharagraph i mentioned those things that i learned about myself since i started consulting work, i also discussed how it took sometime away for my family. since, i have started enriching my financial knowledge by reading books which an article states that only 10% of what you read is retained after two weeks. i also realized that if it will take away some precious time from my family it might as well pay good. and since i have attended some seminars which again study says 30% of what you learned from seminars are retained after two weeks, i also learned that you need to be paid right, appropriately of what you think you are worth otherwise you might not perform well on that job. so when those opportunity came i was firm in asking for the right price, the amount that i will be happy to perform my tasks and the amount the customer is also confortable paying especially this trying times. and you know what i got it as planned and without any hitch, before it was really hard for me to ask the "happy amount" i was too shy that i was asking for too much it is only now that i realize that i should have done that in the past. anyway i was really surprised that everything went well, there was not even a bargaining. so what i did with this latest deal was again to ask for the "happy amount", of course i did research and made some documentations to justify the cost. i am now currently practicing what i have read from the book and learned from the seminar, and according to the study 90% of what you learned in your practice you retained.

i certainly hope that i dont annoyed anybody who read my post for lack of layout or pattern on how my story goes. i have been creating post almost instantenously or impromptu. what comes out in my mind i write. so my apology

entrepreneurship challenges

it's not that easy, this should be the title of this post. the path to financial freedom is not that easy, lucky are those as barry would say "made it through the rain" i guess for me rain has not started yet. well i guess the challenges is in the start, it could be bad or good but whats good is that you started. when my wife and i started discussing going into business, there were allot of questions and mostly ends on a negative note, but in the end the a question answered all those questions "if not now, then when" when do we get our feet wet into entrepreneurship.

not that we are complaining life life has been very good to us, we are not well-off but we managed to enjoy what we have and give the kids what they need and more. however life is so good that it somehow made us complacent and forget to challenges our selves to do better and achieved our potential someone said "in a day, when you don't come across any problems - you can be sure that you are travelling in a wrong path". i feel that we never had a major problem financially cause we really never pressure ourself to do more not better in terms of financial matters. it is good cause we are not pressured to compare our family with others, it is bad cause we will never know what might have been. so that answered those questions, and that started the planning and conceptualization.

i started by learning more related to finance, where to put the extra cash, join seminar, invite speakers, read blogs and articles until we came up with some ideas taxi, restaurant, poultry, and buy and sell. it was really an advantage having so many ideas to choose from, however it was really not easy especially when you experience each of those ideas goes poof one by one. it could be disheartening for some people, it did for me for awhile but now it's more of happy experience since through this process i met lots of interesting people, learn new concepts, generated new ideas.

what went wrong, first the taxi business is really not profitable if you will be running only one unit, i was very optimistic in the start since a good friend will be able to help get a franchise but things did not go in our favor since the line i want is no longer available so we had to defer this for a while, but i learned the process and increase my patience.

the poultry business requires a huge investment, i visited this one acre land which is suitable for a pigery and poultry unfortunately the price is too steep for me and based on my review i had to come up with 500K just to setup the place. again i had to defer this idea but i had fun looking at the place i actually visualize how i will setup the poultry and the small hut, the place is so nice it's on top of a small hill and around it is a river. it allowed me to dream.

and now the restaurant, i thought i did everything during the holyweek. preparing the materials and costing, i already met with the suppliers and ready to buy the materials to repair the place. but i hit a wall when i met the owner which now i consider a my first mentor into business, let's call him pwc a man in his 50's but very accomplish with several good business. somebody that can teach me lot of things related to business, i could be hard headed and very bullish with my plans but i was no match with this old man's wisdom in running a business. during the first meeting he throwed me so many questions that i went deaf, ala hatton hit by pacquiao. it was only then that i realized that i have a lot to learn in going into business thanks to this old man who gave me lot's of insight and made me think again if i really look into all the details of running or even starting a restaurant.

all three ideas are on hold, until i can come up with a better plans. but what is exciting is that i was able to get my feet wet on entrepreneurship. the challenge is staying on path.

i am not to schedule to post on my blog today, im not sure what happen. so if your reading this, my apology for the incoherent thoughts.

likuan u - u turn

well, how do you start your day when it's your birthday? first break all the rules you've learned regarding finance. pamper your self with a good vanilla latte and a slice of muffins. Hmmm.. seriously a quite time with your self with some nice music to think about what happened the past years and plan for another year.

did i say break all the rules regarding finance? yes but i did not say forget them, just break them all for this day. well we were supposed to spend some huge amount of money this weekend since it's my wife's birthday is two days ahead of mine but some miracles came up and aborted half of our plans to splurged.

first expensive thing i bought this month and for a long time now is a pair of earring and a very, very beautiful white gold ring with a precious stone on it. why did i spend on this? it was a good deal for the same price i got the seller to give me a good terms, it is actually twice the number of payment terms she gives to her regular client. it was really funny how i was able to convince her, we were discussing the price using her calculator to avoid the other clients knowing the terms heheheh, that's the wise financial person in me...thanks to all those readings i made. the family had an outing together with the in-laws, cousins, pamangkins and some friends in a new resort, according to ghie we only spent PhP2K for the whole event considering our number. my mother in-law took care most of the expenses as her way of returning the favor for all those years that we have been handling the expenses for the family outing. well that's the most expenses we had for this weekend aside from treating the yaya of rylev to a good lunch in contis this mother's day which coincides with her leaving us for good to study.

what were suppose to be the other expenses, first we were suppose to go to a resort just ghie and the kids, i guess that's another PhP10k damage. and since ghie still has no gift for me, she was considering on purchasing nikon d60 which based on our survey this mother's day, the lowest is around PhP34K. if we did push through with the gift and the trip we could have easily spend around PhP80K in one month, good enough to fund our first carinderia. ghie and i were very surprise that we can afford such things considering that we don’t yet have a passive income. well thanks to not giving to pressure and i will not be buying the camera anytime soon until we have a passive income "delayed gratification", thanks to rylev and shaun for making me so tired last sunday playing in timezone and buying their school needs that i was no longer able to take the long drive to batangas for our family outing. this is a good PhP40K saving.

well you might ask what made me think twice that allowed us to saved that PhP40K? the books and my new mindset with regards to creating passive income which i will talk about on my coming post next week since a lot of good things will happen on my birthday week. and i guess the good lord gave me a sign, i was on my way back to my old habit of compulsive buying until i saw this sign in edsa on our way to trinoma "LIKUAN U", it was really funny but it made sense for me during that day. sometime’s we get lost on our track whether spiritually, professionally or on our adventure to financial freedom but sometimes it only takes a sign to get back in line just by a "U TURN".

happy birthday to me, thanks to all those who greeted me. thanks to joyful office-friends that keeps the stress low and allow us to tour philippines and who also makes my work meaningful, thanks to high-school long-time friends who don’t don’t forget special occasions and find time to have fun from time-to-time, thanks to old officemate who still remember my birthday. thanks to my family for supporting me and most specially thanks to ghie, shuan and rylev for making life so meaningful….love you all.

by the way i'm blogging in the mall, i hope i don't see the d60 heheheheh