Get rich, put up a business

Get rich, put up a business

How does one parlay P10 million into a P300-million enterprise after five years?
Ask Bryan Tiu, founder of the Teriyaki Boy chain of ten restaurants in Metro Manila 70% of which was acquired for P230 million by the growing Pancake House conglomerate of the Lorenzo family. And to think that Bryan is only 30. He was barely 25 and fresh with a business management degree when he put up the first Teriyaki outlet in Greenhills in 2001, for just P10 million.
Bryan’s Teriyaki Boy was valued by Pancake House at P328 million of which a whopping P274.5 million was brand goodwill, meaning his brand value was growing by an average of P55 million per year.
How does one organize an airline and make it to the big league accumulate 14 million passengers and chalk up P8 billion in annual revenues in less than ten years?
Ask Lance Gokongwei, the genius (he has a double summa from UPenn) son of legendary entrepreneur John Gokongwei Jr.
His Cebu Pacific is today the second largest airline in the Philippines with a third of the market and with the best pricing structure and on-time reliability record among the half a dozen local airlines. This year, Cebu Pacific is expected to ring up profits of P300 million.
Lance offers three reasons for Cebu Pacific’s success story. “We were very focused on customers, we were able to deliver quality service to them. And I am surrounded by very talented managers, very passionate people who work with me.”
So there, the rules of business success: focus on the customer, render quality service, get the right people, and have passion.
And can a college dropout build a business worth P2 billion with just a single product?
Ask Alfredo Yao. He dropped out of Mapua because he needed to work right away and support his family. He first put up a printing press printing packaging materials. Then one day while visiting Europe in 1979, he chanced upon a packaging technology called “doy packs” -- a way to package ready to drink juices by keeping them fresh but easy to drink by the customer.
And to think nobody paid him attention when he was proferring doypacks to local food manufacturers. Undaunted, he decided to produce the juices himself. The rest as they say is history. Today, Yao’s Zest-O drinks generate P2 billion in annual sales.
Those are among the success stories celebrated in this year’s crop of Entrepreneur of the Year awardees handed out by SGV and Co. of the Ernst & Young accounting giant chain, on March 8.
The EOY awards is the most eagerly awaited business recognition program of its kind. It aims to identify, acknowledge, and encourage entrepreneurial people, who through their energy and passion, help bolster the economy, underpin the country’s future and create wealth and employment.
Says SGV Foundation Chairman and President of this year’s 20 finalists: “They play a significant role in their communities. they have helped produce new jobs, and new opportunities that have greatly influenced the way we live. They are the visionaries, leaders and winners in business.”
Capping the evening’s glittering awards rite, Senator Manuel Villar, the first Filipino brown billionaire, delivered an inspirational speech. Villar in the late 1990s had a housing construction business with a market value of $1 billion. Not bad for one who began as a fish vendor in Divisoria.
The senator wondered why the Philippines haven’t progressed all these years. And he has this theory:
“It is because there is bias against entrepreneurship in the Philippines, and that is why, to me, we have not moved forward.”
He elaborates:
“ We were told by our parents to study very hard so that one day we can get a job. And we tell our children to study very hard so that they can have a job, the children of our children.”
“We tell the children that they should study to have a job. And this is passed on from generation to generation to generation, and that is why we have become a nation of employees. We like to serve. We like to be employed.”
“If we cannot find employment in the Philippines, then we go out of the country. And there, in the other countries, we try to find employment.”
In Divisoria, he recalls, “I saw the difference between a Chinese and a Filipino vendor.”
“The Chinese -Filipino, and he would tell me, one day I want to become the biggest this, the biggest that. But when you talk to a Filipino vendor, he would tell you, as soon as my children graduate, I can retire, I will retire.”
“Among us Filipinos, at the age of 30, we are asked, why haven’t you got a job? But among the Chinese, they are asked, why haven’t you got a business, yet?”
“To me, unless you are able to change this, my dear friends, we cannot move this country forward.”
Finally, Villar suggested: “We entrepreneurs should share our thoughts. , it is nice to be on your own. You get the satisfaction of being the master of your fate, the captain of your destiny. Having no boss. That is the kind of feeling that you cannot have if you are employed.”