Why be an entrepreneur?

(This post marks the first entry of Karen Galarpe, the new blogger for Open For Business. Karen is the editor of SME Insight, the Inquirer group’s magazine for entrepreneurs, and has been a journalist for almost two decades now. She has written extensively on entrepreneurship in many different magazines and books like The Ultimate Guide To Starting Your Own Business and has been a consulting editor of Entrepreneur. Karen is bringing in her extensive experience on writing about entrepreneurship and is a great addition to the INQUIRER.net team. Welcome, Karen! — Ma. Salve Duplito)

SOME years ago, in an interview with Good Housekeeping magazine, Sharon Cuneta advised the GH reader what to do if she had P50,000: Put half of it in a high-yielding account in the bank, place about 10 to 15 percent in a savings or checking account for emergency, then start a small-scale business selling cakes (if the reader loves to bake) with a startup capital of P5,000.

Many entrepreneurs started out this way, putting up a business they love with a small capital. And they have found out that the rewards are good — money will flow in most cases, and they’ll get to do what they love to do.

Take my high school batchmate Analyn, for instance. She’s good at cooking and so she started selling chicken pastel and baked macaroni from her home on a small capital. Soon she got a small space in Greenhills Theater Mall and the Peach Box business was born. Analyn tells me that among her regular customers are showbiz people, with whom she’s now on first name basis. Her business, which she runs with her sister-in-law, Joan, is growing, and now she has other products as well, like kesong puti made from pure carabao milk from the family business, Arce Dairy.

My other friend Jun is so high-tech (and I’m so low-tech) that I had to ask him more than once to explain to me what business he got into with his friends. It turns out that they do IT stuff such as making billing software, among other business solutions they provide through their company, Seer Technologies Inc. And time and again he has told me how happy he is to be doing what he loves and doing it for himself — no more employment in other companies for this fellow.

So why be an entrepreneur? It’s to do what you love to do. And I found out, through years of covering interesting people in my work as a journalist, that such passion is the one that will spell success in business. Indeed, when you do what you love to do, you excel in it, and in the process, you help enrich other people’s lives. The money will just follow.

In this blog, Open for Business, we’ll be featuring passionate business people and find out how they run their businesses. We’ll follow the travails of the winners in our mentoring contest and see what will happen when they implement mentor Willy Arcilla’s tips. We’ll talk about entrepreneurs’ concerns and what must be done to address them. We’ll talk business — plain and simple.

Thanks to Salve for giving me the opportunity to blog here. She has done a wonderful job — I’m sure you’ll agree. Now let’s take Open for Business to the next level. Jump in on the discussions!

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