When I heard about the government’s plan on creating millions of jobs through entrepreneurship, I came out a little bit unconvinced.  Going into your own business is not a walk in the park, and pushing people into something that they are not trained or prepared for can be damaging – failure in business will not only impact your self confidence, but can hit your life savings as well as your marriage as well.  But I do agree that as a nation, we could benefit from cultivating a culture of entrepreneurship.

We think our national culture, which basically encourages citizens to go to school, graduate and then get a job is too ‘constricting’.  In many families I met, being entrepreneurial is still not being encouraged or frowned upon.  For sure, many parents see their obligation as getting the children through college, and then helping them find a job.  I  remember then the  looks of my teachers who look at disdain at some of our classmates attempting to sell candies or other wares while I was still in high school.

Maybe indeed for many a developing country or actually everywhere in the world now, where take home pay will constantly be wanting and not enough, creating a merchant class who is resourceful and business savvy and enabling them to earn on the side, as well as providing micro finance capital might be a good way to grow the per capita income of an economy.

The best way to enable that is to encourage schoolchildren to set up small buy and sells, if only as part of the training, and allow that in the halls outside of classroom hours. If you think how Michael Dell was able to start his PC business in his dormitory, and how many of Silicon Valleys entrepreneurs started off their businesses in Stanford with the active participation and assistance from the school, we may be teaching our young well by encouraging and getting their feet wet in business early — in school.  

Of course, we don’t encourage peddling by teachers and pushing that to the students, but it might be good to start them young, and put in to the minds of our schoolchildren that peddling wares is not difficult, or shameful, and in fact is a good way to learn the ropes of business. 

Will it distract their schooling?  Maybe.  Will it hamper their learning?  Most likely not. 

As Mark Twain says, " I want to make sure my schooling does not interfere with my education."   Making our people business savvy is certainly teaching them a skill they will use their whole life. 

But beyond the encouragement of entrepreneurship is also mentoring new entrepreneurs how to grow and scale the business.  I believe that because of economic necessity, many people do have a side business or small entrepreneurial endeavor already, it is just that they don’t have the knowledge and means to grow.  Many businesses or sari-sari stores are still the same size and scale as when they were started 10 or 20 years ago.

One way to grow a business is the learning of proper management and financial skills. The other is knowing how to partner.  I remember too vividly my father’s anecdote that most Filipinos don’t know how to work together.  IN fact, he says that one Filipino businessman is as good as one Japanese businessman, but ten Filipino businessmen working together in an ecosystem will lose out big time to ten Japanese businessmen working together because the Japanese know how to partner and team.

If you look at the way many partnerships end in the Philippines, this may be something to look at.  I know many businesses whose partners quarrel when they make money, and they quarrel when they lose money.  The business eventually suffer whether it was doing good or not.

Indeed, in an era where competition is tough, it is important to recognize that we have a better chance of making it if we are able to put the right skills together than doing it alone.   For instance, in most cases, the entrepreneur who founded the company is most likely the one managing them, but there is a choice – you can get professional managers to come in.

Creating companies is like creating cars. The joy and rewards may be in creating the best cars, but also with the knowledge that other professional car drivers may race the cars better. Of course, you can be the mechanic and the car driver at the same time, but that does not necessarily have to be always the case.

I started to write for SME Insights,  a national bi-monthly Small and Medium enterprise magazine last July 2006.  These are the series of articles I wrote for them which I am putting on here.