(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.
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I stumbled on this short film by Nic for www.monday9am.tv that shows an interview with one of my favorite authors Seth Godin. There’s a lot of talk in the video about curiosity, faith, getting stuck and why one of the smartest things done by the smartest people in the world was turn off their television. But what I really want to share is how he talked about attitudes towards risk. He says:

Curious is the key word… It has to do with a desire to understand, a desire to try, a desire to push whatever envelope you are interested in… [Curious people matter because they] are the ones who talk to the people who are in a stupor. They are the ones who talk to the masses in the middle who are stuck. The masses in the middle have brainwashed themselves to think that it’s safe to do nothing.

Seth Godin is a genius at creating strategies to market stuff. He wrote bestselling books such as Meatball Sundae, The Dip and All Marketers Are Liars. Imagine what would have happened if he was not curious enough to try out his ideas. But it wasn’t easy for him, too. He further explains:

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(Photo from Agence-France Presse)

By J. Randell Tiongson, RFP®
Personal Finance Educator

I was thinking of a New Year’s Resolution for 2008, something I can choose… then not follow, haha! In my hobby forum (www.reefphilippines.com), someone asked us about our New Year’s Resolution and one wittingly answered that he will only make one, that is not to make any resolutions — funny guy. Seriously though, this is a great time to reflect on what I want to do for 2008.

I want to pursue my entrepreneurial endeavors for 2008. I have been happy with my career these past few years. I have a job I really love and I work with a lot of people I really like. I am thankful for what I have now… how many people can really say they like being an employee? I actually sincerely do. If only I get that promotion, then everything will be perfect (I really hope my boss reads this, haha!).

Now if this is the case, then what seems to be the problem? Well, there’s a tiny voice in my head that keeps on telling me that I can also be a successful entrepreneur. I grew up in an family of entrepreneurs. I am the lone employee in my family. In a brood of about 45 cousins in my mother’s side, there are only about 10 employees, maybe even less. My siblings can’t comprehend the concept of vacation leaves! That voice that keeps telling me to set up my own business is somehow rooted in my subconscious. There are times that I am happy that I am employed when I see my siblings go through some business reversals but I still feel that I also have the smarts to be an entrepreneur too.

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The Philippine Daily Inquirer’s Ronnel Domingo has an article today about eight cities that made it to the Institute for Solidarity in Asia’s list of business-friendly cities.

ISA is headed by Jess Estanislao, one of the few persons in this country most qualified to make this list. Estanislao is known by most as the chief economic manager of the Aquino administration, first as socioeconomic planning secretary and later as finance secretary. What few people know is that he has a PhD from Harvard University, where he was also a teaching fellow and a research fellow.

I included this little snippet because ISA’s public governance system and scorecard is patterned after Harvard’s scorecard for LGUs. Any ranking of the country’s cities will fall down like a pack of cards if there is even a tiny hint that the judging process is arbitrary. Who else but Jess can ensure that the list is bullet-proof?

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As Francis Kong climbed up the second floor of Dôme in Podium, I knew immediately I was face to face with a dyed-in-the-wool entrepreneur. First, he was comfortable in jeans on a weekday at three o’clock in the afternoon. Second, he spoke no jargon. These two things, and his Chinese surname immediately gave me a sense of what I was going to hear for the next hour or so. Or so I thought.

The first revelation was that he was not born a wealthy Chinese. “I started from scratch,” Francis says. But he tells of how his father drilled into his mind not to become an employee, even as a kid.

“Kahit manager ka diyan, di ka yayaman. Kahit konti kita mo, basta sariling negosyo okay,” he recalls his father telling him.

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