An entrepreneur, a businessman, who wandered into teaching after finishing his MBA. Now a full time entrepreneur and businessman, discovering what works and what does not work. Surrendering idealism for Pragmatism In entrepreneurship, you do not really know until you find out...
I am a businessman and entrepreneur and an educator on entrepreneurship by accident/or on the side. I am first and foremost a businessman and entrepreneur. I made this blog to gather my thoughts on the subject, make this as a legacy for future entrepreneurs.
Many individuals and organization are making plenty of revenue from courses that instruct individuals how to be better marketing, finance or administrative persons. Or masteral degrees.
But in my experience, that isnt the strategic issue or the problem in organization, They are in Peter Senges term: personal mastery and mindset. Unchanging mindset and personal mastery result in:
1. No change; -in sales and revenues. Flat and going south performance
2. Delays
3. Defective products
4. Non conformance to standards;
5. Waste and losses
6. Problems and more problems
7. Angry customers and exodus to competitors
8. Failing and losing organization
Talk about grand strategy and cute campaigns. Unless we get people on the line and as one, nothing happens. Senge was right that the correct strategy is to get people get in line for one vision through shared learning
Managers must talk less on process and technique but work more on team building and getting the people work as one.
This post is thankful that there more hospitals thanks largely for the efforts of doctors to put up their hospitals and there are various aggressive groups like the ACE group. This is heartening and a welcome development. Part of this growth is generous financing from govt banks like Landbank and DBP. And this is fueled by support from UHC and Philhealth. We can see huge reimbursements from Philhealth (and horrors large arrears too due to red tape. This was not solved by resignation of former President of Philhealth)
At the Macro level, the biggest source of funds for health care are still the Household, followed by Local Govt and then govt agencies like SSS. At the Micro market level, the growth of revenues of many hospitals are from insurance and Philhealth. In strategies of hospital we evaluated, we recommended that the Philhealth dept of hospitals be beefed up and representation with Philhealth be increased.
We will not know the outcome of the PHAPI holiday with Philhealth:
1. Do not fight City Hall;
2. The external analysis always mentions PESTEL (Political and Legal)
3. It it is a Doctors Hospital, many patients will not look kindly on the doctors who swear by the Hippocrates oath
We learned though that the Hospitals did not push through with this plan to boycott Philhealth
This post is overwhelmed by the growing passion in taking sides in the current political campaign: both national and local elections. All ready there is a frenzy for campaigning for the elective positions. Onc can guess that this is so: 1. To the victor belongs the spoils, or as claimed 2. Many are being paid.
But there are also real fanatics who wish to hitch their wagon to their political candidates. I know of one FM loyalists who cried when FM was deposed. And even blamed Cory Aquino for his misfortunes (he was not looking for a job)
Change can not come from the political leaders without the support of the followers. Change can not come from the top - it can only come from our own personal changes. How far are the political candidates from the populace. And the truth is when the politician gets elected. I found this out after helping a former mayor become a governor. We helped him by: 1. campaigning for him among the subdivision buyers of the subdivision we built. 2. We claimed that the road built by us (there was a promise that we will be reimbursed) was done by the good mayor (We were never reimbursed) Well the good mayor got elected. But his post never got past his fat secretary (she has died)
Did the good governor help me as a person or as a businessman.? No. He let me struggle with his successor who objected to his previous approval.
What about you as person? Can he get you a job.\? May be if our are related to his leaders. But for only for three months. If you are at the lgu level, then maybe you can get occasional ayuda from the Barangay Chairman or the Town Mayor. But dole outs and alms can not make you successful.
You alone can make a success of yourself. Never believe the false siren song of politicians. Change the govt and change your life. FM changed the govt to parliamentary. Did we change the course of the nation.
We amended the constitution of 1935 to that of 1987. Did the destiny of the nation change? We never will know. But if we were to listen to the critics, it never improved.
But mind you our economy did improve not because of the govt but because there are many hard working Filipinos: 1. who became OFW and remitted billions of dollars, almost 1/3 of the Phil GDP
2. who joined with foreigners for the BPO 3. who became entrepreneurs and investors.
We can succeed irrespective of the President, and policies
Countries succeed inspite of corruption as in Italy (one of most corrupt) Indonesia and Japan. This post condemns corruption, but to make it as an excuse not to move forward in unacceptable.
Rather it is us to us to change our mindset of fiefdom or feudal relationship with politicians. We campaign but we expect the politician to pay sometimes with their own lives. We extract every bit of ayuda an PHP from the elected politicians furthering the graft that happnes in the govt. He has to extract and skim from all contracts so that he can feed the masses milling to his house to get all sorts of ayuda. The masses, themasses force the uppen echelon to steal to feed the hungry millions - to continue committing graft. We abhor graft, but we like the ayuda. We do not relect people who are stingy with ayuda.
Many cling to BBM because of promise of great wealth to the supporters : the FM gold bars and the Tallano wealth (not true?)
We have always thought of our companies as in the lower tier below such giants as Manila Memorial Park ark,,(5 locations; Forest Lake (23 but only 17 active) and Golden Haven (35 locations they say)
But we have only 7. We are awaiting deal. to make it 8.
But we are multi product memorial company offering various modes of interment: plots and ash vaults;
and various services: interment, funeral, and cremation.
We have 2 cremation facilities now, we have at the drawing board +3, we can have 3 more by next years. That can make our crematorium number even with the number of parks. 3 of the parks can have 10 digits inventory. We can have an average of 10,000 ash crypts in the 6 locations. We can be propelled into upper echelons of the industry when we complete this.
We also found out that the memorial park owned by the richest citizen of the Philippines does not make that much lacking perhaps critical skill and expertise in the business. The company which has incuded Bria in their company name makes more in housing and land development
In due time we can reach the level of their liquid assets, and total assetts (are they under declared
The recent pandemic has wrecked havoc on the memorial business. The traditional giants in memorial are probably hurting like the giant memorial plan company. Their sales probably shrunk, no one is using their plan, ,because people now turn to memorial plots, actual cremation and interment service. No use having the funeral service since the attendance is limited if not prohibited.
As the big company do not have cremation infrastructures, , they turn to local funeral homes who in turn turn to crematorium And as usual engage in layering of cost and squeezing the owners of the facilties. That would be unsustainable because customers will soon find out that there is over pricing. Direct cremation can be had for 1/3 the cost of the plans
We also realized that they may be holding billions of pesos in trust funds. It is not actually theirs but a liability to plan holders. We may be having more margins than them and resources owned.
Truly small holes sink a ship. Holes that you do not see but are plenty, sink a ship. Not the big ones. Because the big ones are visible, surely many will see them
and thus prevent the ship from leaving port, or is given top priority among the work. But the small ones are neglected:
Related thoughts:
1. God is in the details;
2. Those who can not be trusted in small things can not be trusted in big things;
3. PDCA - Check check check
4. Gemba kaizen - the actual battle field in business is the sales office or the manufacturing plant. This should be visited by the boss
and observed carefully. It is not enough to depend on written reports
5. Small losses add up, ,small cost reduction add up over the years and in the entire enterprise. Nothing is ever to small not to deserve your attention:
6. Be careful of your thoughts, they become your words, your words become your action
7. "For want of a nail, (horse)shoe was lost, for want of a shoe, a horse was lost, for want of a horse the soldier was lost, for want of a soldier an army
was lost, for want of an army a kingdom was lost
8. In writing the presence or absence of a comma can change the thought of a sentence
9. Some children are born defective or have serious congenital diseases because of defective gnome sequencing of a chromoome
Anecdotes
1. The Fukushima reactor had a meltdown, because a cooling pump failed to function because the battery wras grounded by the flooding; the same thing happened
in nuclear accident in Chernobyl Russia. A worker failed to turn on the valve for cooling after a test was conducted. Imagine a high tech equipment failing because
of a negligent worker, and a valve that was left open
2. The roro that sank of Batangas bay and somewhere in Belgium, sank because the ramp was not closed;
3. The JAL plane which cost Boeing nearly half a billion was caused by worker failing to install 7 rivets, just 7 rivets. He forgot about this because he had
lunch
4. In my experience, there was a formwork failure and an entire batch of concrete needed to pour on a slab was wasted; it was good nobody was hurt
because of same negligence - the formworks carpenter failed to secure the formwork by pounding a coupe of 5 inches nail.
5. In the movie Crimson Tide, a nuclear world war could have started had the order to torpedo a Russian sub was carried out, despite an incomplete communication
Denzel Washington averted this, because he had the sense to disobey Gene Hackman the captain, unless the complete message was received
ACTION POTENTIAL:
1. Employ the 5H and 1W in your repertoire when making a plan of action;
2. Ask the question why five times;
3. Read the literature on the subject before proceeding;
4. Be meticulous before any action; avoid shooting from the hips
Our concept of wealth has been radically changed by the Pandemic. We think of wealth and its ranking on a more or less stable manner. But that has been changed lately
1 In the cryptocurrency industry, lately billions in wealth (value at stockmarket) were wiped out because of Tweets by Elon Musk, crackdown by China on cryptocurrency. What is billions being wiped out? A lot. We could hardly make our ends meet;
2. Ellon Musk could be the wealthiest man yesterday, but today it may be Jeff Besos or Arnault or VMH. Because the wealth is defined by the prices of the stocks at stock market. Hence your wealth can go up or down on a day to day basis.
3. A Chinese mogul whose wealth was based on virtual education is now nearly wiped out as the pandemic wrought havoc on his business model. So with many face to face schools
Nothing is ever secure and permanent due to the pandemic.
A sister and in law passed away leaving 3 parcels of land to her 3 children. It also brought out the fact that an ancestral home was left intestate and needs an adjudication.
The document for adjudication was shown to me for comments and rejected this. Because it 1. allowed an spa to sign in the adjudication document. And also the phrase for adjudication.
The adjudication for the ancestral home was more complex because the family tree involved tree generations, and two of the scions are dead and hence the property needs to be adjudicated to the grandchildren
I was able to do this in less than half day. The lawyers would have charged an arm and leg for this work.
In the discussion for a marketing plan in 2021. debate raged between : cash only but with huge discount, or extended payment no dp, o interest. This post gave in to later. In the midst of unemployment or failed business, we can not pretend that the market is normal, we expect lower revenues due to lower affordability of unemployed masses.
Hence this post is amazed of continuing efforts to sell high ticket items like cars and real estate. Surprisingly, home sales in US is booming, car sales in 1st qtr of 2021 went up. The rest of the world exhibited negative growth.
This post is bearish on new investments and more careful. Yes we can under a JV arrangement where cash outlay is minimized.
It depends on how much you can bear risk of low or zero cash flow
This post taught for 13 years in a country renowned Professional School, all over the country NCR, Cebu, Clark, Subic and Laguna. And almost all levels in management: standard, MDs, middle management (mixed with senior company officials)
This post too had over 40 years of experience in various levels: banks, finance, real estate, retail, medical pharma.
And yet since we are part time educators being in Professional School (we work and teach at the same time,) under the University rules, we are only called lecturers. In our town, only a National Artist who taught music is the only one recognized as a professor.
Really, have we contributed to nation building and teaching future generation of business leaders?
In a recent Bilyonaryo post, MVP was reported to be steering towards businesses that are less regulated. They are into energy, (Meralco) tollways (NLEX) and telco (PLDT). They are bountiful businesses and hence heavily regulated because they involve the masses.
SMC in its expressway inter connect project is having a spat with a regulatory body
We too would like to think in the same manner but the arms of govt is everywhere; they own 42% of other busineses (the VAT and Income Tax)
It is our experience that the LGU will squeeze you dry before giving you a permit (CIA)
In our recent experience:
1. A councilman intimated he must get 7 numbers if our proposed joint venture with the LGU pushes through. The local execs will get no less;
2. In another LGU we were tricked into having a proposal to be a bidder to a proposal of a relative.
The reason why there is the NPA problem is that corruption has not been solved; due to theory of thesis anti thesis means that NPA exist because of corrupt officials that are still there. The current administration
A relative, a cousin has enlisted my help to advise her on the proposed sale of their 38 year old school to group engaged in real estate development. She has the appraisal of the land and building and ready with the financial statement.
The appraisal says P200 million, but her balance sheet says P100 million. She wants to sell because she is behind her loan amortization for 6 months, and finds difficulty in raising enough cash for salaries of teachers.
Some questions were raised:
1. Is it true that this group is buying school, when they are closed and no revenues, that the time of reopening is unclear
2. If the news was true then most probably the group is on a vulture bargain hunting mode and most probably if they notice that they are desperate. They would probably bid P40 - 50 million.
This post proposed a two pronged action plan
1 Prepare a presentation video or power point to emphasize the strong points of the school
2. Ad hoc measures to raise cash for the school: discounts on advanced payment, collection drive, (and even incentivize payment)
We need to raise funds to restructure the loan, and to pay the salaries.
An oil magnate from the south, after selling his courier business to another group is reported to be selling assets in his oil retailing business. His group is now the third in the industry having come from nowhere and over took a multinational. His petroleum group has has reported a net loss of P95 billion.
Wow thats a lot!
The pandemic has put many businesses to a test and their management prowess is being evaluated. This is real case analyses and many may not make this. Only their courage and determination will separate the losers and winners.
