One of the young lions of Philippine business, who was recently named presidential consultant for entrepreneurship, is spearheading efforts to provide Filipinos, especially the youth, with a new breed of role models: successful entrepreneurs who, despite the present challenges, continue to believe in the country and its future. His objective? To create a culture of enterprise where the Pinoy entrepreneurial spirit is given free rein and allowed to soar to new heights.
HOW DO YOU get some of the country’s most recognized entrepreneurs to work together for a common cause?
RFM Corporation CEO Jose “Joey” A. Concepcion III has done just that. These past months, he has lugged around a Powerbook and pitched his thoughts patiently to one entrepreneur at a time. It’s a very unfamiliar role for him. This time, he wasn’t selling beverages, hotdogs or ice cream but promoting an advocacy, part of his emergence as a high-profile booster for the government’s drive to create more entrepreneurs.
Concepcion only got his Malacañang assignment as presidential consultant for entrepreneurship early this year, but he is already lending his pro-bono government job with the same passion and gusto he has for building RFM’s food and beverage brands.
It really helps that entrepreneurship development strikes a loud chord among a wide swath of Filipinos. Though Concepcion initiates a lot of consultations with entrepreneurs, government agencies and “enabler organizations,” he’s surprised that so many others are seeking him out—especially in the academe and among business organizations. As a result, he’s now doing eight to 10 speaking engagements a month.
His major milestone to date is the non-profit Philippine Center for Entrepreneurship (PCE). Out to prove that it’s a serious effort coming from the private sector, he wooed several outstanding individual entrepreneurs as incorporators—familiar names all in the Philippine business landscape, some of whom he didn’t even know personally before.
It’s no small feat but PCE now has a board of trustees composed of Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year winners Tony Tan Caktiong and Socorro Ramos, Splash Corp. founder Rolando Hortaleza, GMA Network CEO Felipe Gozon, SM’s Harley Sy, Vivienne Tan of Thames College, and Joselito Campos of the Unilab-UFC empire.
Besides seeding the Center’s initial operations, these trustees, more importantly, have bought into Concepcion’s vision to promote entrepreneurship by enhancing education (formal and non-formal), developing the entrepreneurial mindset, and unifying key stakeholders to create an environment conducive for business startups.
Wherever his current job brings him, Concepcion asks other entrepreneurs who have been successful to pay back—first of all, by encouraging Filipinos to believe in their country. “Entrepreneurs who have succeeded have to remind other Filipinos that there is hope,” he says. “Next, they should come out of their shell and inspire others.”
Taking a leaf from his marketing battle plans, Concepcion wants to grow new Philippine superstars: the entrepreneurs who started small, with a single—often, simple—idea which they, through imagination, daring and hard work, have successfully grown into thriving, growing businesses.
His wish is that more Filipinos would view these “superstars” as better role models than what pop culture is offering today. “We need the right reality show: the telenovela of the successful entrepreneur,” he declares.
In an exclusive interview with Enterprise, Concepcion details how he intends to do this.
ENTERPRISE: Why do we need a national advocacy to push entrepreneurship? Aren’t Filipinos into their many little businesses already?
CONCEPCION: First of all, we want our countrymen to take their entrepreneurial drive to the next level. Nothing’s wrong with being a micro-entrepreneur or a survival entrepreneur. These comprise about 92% of all entrepreneurs and they also help move our economy along. But we can’t really go forward as a nation if we’re a nation of mostly micro-entrepreneurs. We want them to progress into small and medium enterprise (SME) owners. In banking language, SMEs are the businesses with P15 million or higher capitalization.
Furthermore, we must advocate relentlessly so that we can change social attitudes and put into place a stronger culture of enterprise. We’re battling deep mindsets that hamper the entrepreneurial spirit—such as fear of failure, fear of taking risks, and misconceptions about business ownership and self-employment.
Sometimes, those who choose the entrepreneurial career path are even stigmatized. In very traditional Pinoy families, the parents and grandparents want their children to take up professions, pass the board exams and become doctors, engineers, lawyers, CPAs—if not, maybe get employed with one of the big companies. To them, being an entrepreneur was always the distant choice—they’d say that if you can’t find a job, mag-negosyo ka na lang (just go into business).
To promote entrepreneurship as a career option, we’ve convinced many known, successful entrepreneurs to become our spokespersons. Their role is to inspire others by relating their success stories and sharing their success secrets. They can help fight the stigma.
My role as consultant cannot go far unless I encourage fellow entrepreneurs to become advocates too. I’m happy, therefore, that so many entrepreneurs have offered themselves to inspire and serve as mentors.
ENTERPRISE: What’s the role of the Philippine Center for Entrepreneurship?
CONCEPCION: I co-founded the non-profit PCE recently together with well-known entrepreneurs such as Socorro Ramos of National Bookstore, Tony Tan Caktiong of Jollibee, and Rolando Hortaleza of Splash Corporation. A major part of the Center’s mission is to promote entrepreneurship education in all levels through curriculum and materials development, teacher training, and research.
We held successful consultations to discuss how entrepreneurship could be taught better in schools. We then formed a technical working group of school deans and business leaders to explore ways for the business community to help students in building their first startups.
The PCE’s programs will not stop at education but will also intervene in key stages of the entrepreneur’s “life cycle”—from the time he learns business basics, starts to generate ideas, and sharpens a business plan, all the way through setting up the business, raising capital, expanding, divesting, and going on to another startup.
We will strengthen PCE as the central institution that would bring all stakeholders and enablers of entrepreneurship programs together.
ENTERPRISE: Since you’re looking beyond micro-entrepreneurship, how can Filipinos take their business enterprises to the next level?
CONCEPCION: We must also harness the field of “technopreneurship.” This is, simply, by teaching a sense of entrepreneurship to our intelligent and technically capable engineers and scientists. We want for them to understand markets better and to be able to commercialize their ideas. There is a difference between knowing your math well and understanding why math models are important to business.
The Filipino entrepreneur has become empowered and self-sufficient because of technology. He can work with lower overhead because of technology. Today, if you have a Blackberry or a Wi-Fi enabled laptop, that’s already your office. Technopreneurship will move us up the value chain, so to speak: from being call centers, we can turn into centers of innovation.
Together with many groups that include your Enterprisemagazine, our advocacy supports the technology innovation competition called PESO or the Philippine Emerging Startups Open (“In Search of Excellence,” EnterpriseOctober 2004). It has attracted close to a hundred innovative entries nationwide. The projects have impressed judges from the world-famous Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
I draw inspiration from a Filipino technopreneur whom I met only last summer. Dado Banatao rose from very humble beginnings in Cagayan Valley to become one of the most revered engineers and inventors in another valley, Silicon Valley. He’s a dollar multimillionaire and runs a $300-million venture capital fund. Dado has said time and again that the Philippines must have a culture change that rewards those with a deep knowledge in science, technology and engineering—not just the managers.
ENTERPRISE: What is the ultimate goal of your advocacy?
CONCEPCION: Our concrete goal is to spawn the creation of what we call “Go Negosyo Communities” everywhere. These are communities where the academic, business and government people are drawn into a triangle of almost seamless collaboration. And we want this to become the norm and way of life.
In such an ecosystem, there will be constant networking, mentoring and cooperation among academics, entrepreneurs, industry experts and venture capitalists, with the government providing support through a viable policy infrastructure. Campuses will, thus, be transformed into genuine business incubators. They will thrive on the same collaborative spirit that gave rise to Silicon Valley in California, Route 128 in Boston, and Bangalore in India.
These vibrant Go Negosyo communities are likely to emerge earliest in our university towns like Iloilo, Los Baños, Baguio, and Dumaguete. Every Go Negosyo community will be distinguished by its ability to produce a continuous stream of startup ventures.
Another concrete measure of success for our advocacy is when we’re finally able to embed strong entrepreneurship lessons into the national curriculum, even as early as the elementary grades. At the college level, we’re looking at how we can assist in the area of curriculum enhancement, providing manuals, training the teachers, and involving real entrepreneurs in the learning process. As important as the diploma is, I believe that those majoring in entrepreneurship must have real working businesses by the time they graduate.
ENTERPRISE: How soon should one get into business anyway?
CONCEPCION: You’re never too young! It’s never too early, even for children in grade school, to learn the basics and be exposed to a real enterprise.In fact, if the goal is todevelop a culture of enterprise and cultivate tomorrow’s competitive entrepreneurs, we must start them young. Our primary and secondary schools can already start to teach the values and develop the mindsets of an entrepreneur.
When I visit schools, I often persuade students to put up their own small ventures as early as possible. Maybe it’s because I took the same route as a teenager. But I do believe that getting our young exposed to entrepreneurship will unlock their creativity, enhance their life skills, and help them build a better vision for the future. Right now, a handful of elementary and secondary schools are into this—getting the kids thinking about business models and doing business plans. We want to significantly expand that, which is why we’re working closely with educators and the DepEd (Department of Education) to embed it in the curriculum.
ENTERPRISE: What inspired your belief in young entrepreneurs?
CONCEPCION: Don’t you often wonder like me why most Filipino-Chinese have been successful? I deeply admire the young, aggressive Filipino-Chinese entrepreneurs—they’re my toughest competitors in business! A lot of credit must go to their exposure to the family business at a young age. The environment is already there even as early as grade school.
But most of all, I believe that many young Filipinos do have the gift for running a successful enterprise. A lot of twentysomethings out there would even forego their corporate job, steady paycheck and guaranteed benefits for a shot at business ownership. Another thing about young people: they can still afford to take big risks and possibly fail without giving up their entire future or their family’s welfare. So, I thought, why not encourage them? After all, if they start creating their wealth today, they will become tomorrow’s big companies. For an economy to thrive, we must give rise to many of them.
ENTERPRISE: How else can you get young people thinking about business?
CONCEPCION: We want to boost the popularity of business plan competitions and make them a “hip” activity. Right now it tends to be the same nine or 10 schools who join these contests. Furthermore, they shouldn’t limit it to college and post-graduate participants. If high schools have science fairs, why can’t they host business or entrepreneurship fairs as well?
On the surface, business plan contests look like mere academic exercises, or a contest of who can make the best presentation. But they’re really more than that.
First of all, they make student-participants more aware that, in the real world, real money flows only to the best-documented, best thought-out and well-presented plans. Contestants bring their presentation standards up, knowing that real entrepreneurs and real investors will participate as judges and mentors. Business plan competitions are ultimately a venue where good ideas and prospective entrepreneurs are brought to light and to the attention of potential investors. They don’t only hone technical skills but also spark creativity, a trait common to most of the world’s successful entrepreneurs.
Aside from helping students develop a solid business plan, these competitions also provide the contestants with a businessman-mentor, someone who can show them the ropes.
I hope that when business plan competitions become highly popular among students and faculty, the school owners and officials would take notice. Then hopefully, they will redesign their academic offerings to convince students to try entrepreneurship as an alternative to being employed.
We don’t really lack capital as much as we lack would-be entrepreneurs who can communicate their ideas very well to funders. And that’s what business plans are all about: networking and matching ideas with sources of capital.
ENTERPRISE: What’s your advice for the aspiring entrepreneur?
CONCEPCION: I could probably say a mouthful, but let me focus them towards the basics:
First of all, put it on paper. When you’re just starting, it can be hard to get people to take you seriously. Inexperience, combined with lack of collateral, often means that your loan application will be denied. So how do you try to convince the lender—and yourself—that your business can do well? My advice is for you to develop a rock-solid business plan. It’s really a roadmap that will tell the lender how you will be able to make enough money to repay the loan. Your business plan should outline the company's finances, management and marketing. Writing it down also takes out the guesswork. It’s challenging and will teach you a lot about the business along the way.
Second, where do you get the money? I agree that financing remains the primary issue for Philippine startups today.But there are actually several sources you could consider. Nowadays, microfinancing is accessible through government and private agencies and NGOs with a mission to help young businesses get a start. Microlenders are more inclined to take a chance on a new business than conventional banks, whose primary concern is to manage their bottom lines. Relatives—like your rich or dollar-earning aunt or uncle abroad—may also be willing to lend you. You might even get it from them interest-free or at a low interest rate. The most common source of funding, banks and credit cooperatives, will provide a loan if you can show that your business proposal is sound. Venture capital firms, on the other hand, can help companies financially and professionally in exchange for equity or partial ownership.
If you don’t wish to spend your life working for someone else and would rather strike it on your own, remember that entrepreneurship has its own rewards as well as risks. As my parting advice, get yourself a mentor who will help you navigate those risks and dangers, someone who’ll share tips based on his or her own experience. They don’t necessarily have to be in the same business field as yours.
Just don’t forget that successful business owners are those who did their homework (a business plan), love what they do, and are not afraid to fail!
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