I don’t normally post gadget reviews, but this one is something I think is cool.  For the last 2 weeks,  I have been carrying around a thumbdrive that fits into my wallet. It was given to me by our principals in IBM as a new form factor for thumbdrives.  Thumbdrives are getting smaller, but it is not really great to put around your neck, and it creates a bulge in the pocket.  This thumb drive packs 512 megabytes into a card slightly thicker than your VisaCard, and you can put into your wallet. 

It is a great product, and I hope it can be introduced to the market soon.

The last two weeks, we have been hopping around city to city ( Los Angeles, San Francisco, Washington DC,  New York, and last stop is Vancouver) on a business mission trying to sell our city to prospective investors.   I am doing this as a consultant to our city investment promotions office for which I am paid 1 peso a year ( an equivalent of 2 US cents in salary per year).  I also have to spend for my own travel expenses so it really is not a very well paying  job.  The actual payout is the experience, the satisfaction of doing something for your city, plus of course, I also have an opportunity to meet  lots of businessmen to pitch our company and its services as well.

It is always good business to participate in community projects. The goodwill and the experience are things that you cannot get elsewhere.

One of the things I have gained considerably the last two years is being comfortable with our business.  We have passed the days when we used to grow triple digits and high double digits, and more or less have become more stable.   There is not much high growth, but that is OK.  The perk is that once you accept that,  you also get more to accept yourself.

One of the things ( after talking to over a hundred business people) is that many of them express appreciation that our mission ( including my companions) are all straight talkers.  We promote, but we answer the questions in a straightforward, no nonsense manner.  If there are problems, we say so.  And that is I believe one of the greatest perks of success - that you don’t have to BS to get projects or customers, and you are not under heavy pressure to accept business ventures that intuitively you feel is not the right partnership.  You have a good track record to show, and you let it do the talking.

On introspection, I found out that many of the problems we have had as a business the last few years was trying to force yourself to accept projects that you feel starts off with the wrong expectations of the customers or is not really the prime focus of your business. However, because at that time, you were under pressure to generate business, so even if your gut feel does not feel right, you plunge into it anyway, and make promises that you may be unlikely to keep or fulfill. 

Many times, that really boomerangs, and end up causing more damage than benefit.  I think the best way for business to grow on the long term is to be healthy - as they say, don’t marry for the sake of marrying. It pays to take time first to nurture, and make sure first because both sides can be hurt if both plunge into it with rose colored eyes or false pretenses and expectations.

One of the turning points of my life was two years ago when I received the Entrepreneur of the Year award from the Cebu Chamber of commerce for ICT.  The award was given by the President of the Philippines and during that same night, the chamber of commerce also honored three of the top businessmen of the country.

These people, Andrew Gotianun, John Gokongwei, and Lucio Tan had three things in common - they were Taipans , they were billionaires, and they were all in their seventies. Each of them have probably a dozen or so companies on average, each probably larger than mine.

I was seated just a few feet from them, and it was always great to take in who they are and what they represent.  They were successful, but they were getting old, and had trouble even walking.  One thought occured in my mind - when they looked at me - maybe thirty five years younger and a hundred times poorer, would they willingly switch places with me?

The answer, I reckon, is yes. Who wouldn’t give all his wealth to be 35 years younger?  And , if they were willing to be me - then why was I working so hard to be like them?  Wasn’t the path I taking leading me to where they are now — that is working so hard so that thirty five years from now, I would be like them - rich and reverred but old, and maybe too frail to enjoy the wealth and life itself?

Is that a worthwhile goal, - miss enjoying life and family so that you could accumulate wealth, and finding it too late that your health does not allow you to enjoy even a fraction of it anymore?

My friend took us to the Pier 39  in San Francisco over the weekend.  One of the attractions there were over a hundred seals in the wharf.  Most of them were lying around basking in the sun, but my attention was drawn to two seals who had the plank all by themselves, and they were fighting over it.  One of the seals persistently pushed the other into the water as if saying — this plank is all mine.  He had to make a huge fight over it many times as the other seal keep coming back for that single plank as well?

As I was looking at it, I thought -  It was ok to share, and everybody was sharing.  What’s the big deal of putting yourself into persistent danger fighting over such? It wouldn’t be yours for a long time anyway.  There just was too many seals over a dozen planks that you had to share eventually unless you wanted to get killed.  Why make yourself an a***ole by trying to get one all by yourself.

Then I thought that well, all of us look at  how stupid he was, but he may not know it.  But maybe we are all that — we are blind to our own faults and prejudices.  How many of us spend our energies fighting over something that in the whole scheme of things were really not sustainable or unimportant?  We work hard and plan hard, and invest our feelings, but beyond your emotional hurts, how important is it that you are trying to do?

Seth Godin has an uncanny way of observing things and stating something that everybody sees but never take note. Here are more of his statement of notes from his latest blog post.

1.) Real Security Comes from Growth.
2.) When your goal is to fit in, you won’t stand out later.
3.) Become wary of creating standards. when you do, people follow you, and if they can do it better or cheaper, then you’re out. Well, in short, really, whether you create a standard or not, you have to be ahead and stay ahead.
4.) its better to bet on change than in not changing.
5.) I agree wholeheartedly on this — doing something half good is sometimes more disastrous than doing nothing at all. As i said in previous post, if you don’t do it well,you create distrust. People who can’t do proper tech support for instance, or deliver a bad presentation creates a more disastrous effect than ifthey don’t do it at all.
6.) its all about execution, not the idea.

And an apt ending - don’t let the watermelon seeds prevent you from enjoying the watermelon!

Yesterday I attended a session on how to be successful. The speaker was the country managing director of IBM Philippines, Mr. Joaquin Quintos.

The important thing to realize, according to him, is that it is hard to monopolize the resources essential to success anymore.  There was a time when people could be successful because they have the advantage of location, of connections, of knowledge, of land etc.

Read the rest of this entry »

It seems like you have to be careful what you post.  A 22 year old woman was arrested after she tried to hire someone to kill another woman whose photo her boyfriend posted in his MySpace.com web page.  It wasn’t even clear if the boyfriend and the woman was romantically involved, but the woman obviously tried to do her boyfriend in. More ….

Last weekend,  I had a great time with my kids teaching the younger one ride a bike.  As I recall the many great time I had as kids, it pays to enjoy your kids and the memories will see you through a lot of challenging times.

 There are some simple skills that are memorable, as I am sure many of you will remember the first time — you ride a skate, ride a bike, learn swimming, fly a kite, learn to type.  These simple skills are go with you when you grow old, the memories of the first time always there, and knowing how to do these things increases also confidence.  Won’t you wish that when your kids reminisce that — you as a parent was there trying to teach them?

We want to be successful, and on the course of experience, we formulate some ‘theories’ on how to do it.

For instance, almost all of my business friends automatically wants to increase their sales.  The hidden assumption is that if you increase your sales, you increase your profits which I presume would be the ultimate goal.

However, let us assume that you are selling an item that you have a 20% margin on.  So you want to increase your sales, and you cut your price by 10%.  Cutting your price by 10% means your margin is now down to 11%.

So you can only make the same amount of margin Read the rest of this entry »

For the last 2 years, i have not only blogged, but also experimented with various ways to collaborate and communicate.

So I have also made experiments in launching wikis (  The CebuWiki is a wiki we did to promote our city),  galleries ( Cebu Pictures Gallery hosts pictures about Cebu , and the Premium Concepts - my wife’s lifestyle store chain).

I also blog in our company’s computer blog, and also we blog about how great our city is, and monitor the various tech support forums.

Many responded that they are having a hard time keeping up with many sites, and the last few days, we have put in a portal which automatically summarizes what is happening in all these sites. I have also put in many of the summaries ( RSS summary feeds) of some of the great management and technical blogs that I constantly read.

You can access it all here.