Is there such a thing as entrepreneurial genes? Can business skills be learned in school? Can entrepreneurship be sustained by passion? If the answer to these questions is “Yes,” then there is no way Mona Liza Lee-Serrano could have missed the entrepreneurial calling.
At the Serdef’s online small business clinic, someone who signed himself “Alan R from Taguig” asked for advice on whether he should pay himself a salary in the small signage business he owns.
“Give not a cup (of milk) but a cow” is Heifer International’s version of “Teach a man how to fish to feed him for life.”
Henry Sy. Lucio Tan. John Gokongwei. Just a few of the so-called taipans in the Philippines. Migrants or sons of migrants who started small but grew phenomenally to own global business empires. There are many more of them, less recognizable names, smaller-scale and less prosperous perhaps, but still with thriving businesses in their own right.
Uncollected payments from customers and clients can be a big headache for small businessmen who typically have limited capital resources.
In 1976, The New Rural Bank of Lianga in Surigao was put up by a native son, Ignacito “Chito” Alvizo, who had a vision to “be an instrument in alleviating poverty in Mindanao” where six of the bottom ten provinces in the country can be found.
Myrna Castro Bituin and Cynthia Aguilar Villar. Successful women entrepreneurs both, but poles apart in motivation when they were beginning their respective ventures.
“We have grown. We are no longer the same company,” Loreta Rafisura, president of Salay Handmade Paper Products, Inc. (SHAPII), declares.
At the peak of her career, Vivian Bandiola Libao, quit her high-paying job at Petron Corp. when her husband, Francis, joined the STEAG State Power Corp. in Misamis Oriental.
In the perception war that is Philippine politics, President Noynoy Aquino has been looked at by critics as lackadaisical, laid back, do nothing.
Esmerna “Esmer” Gabutina owns Tinabuan Arts and Crafts, a sinamay-making enterprise under the DTI One-Town-One Product (OTOP) program in this municipality.
In 1998, in the wake of the flood that devastated parts of Lanao del Norte, a 30-year-old entrepreneur with a sense of mission provided free funeral service to 38 dead, including those whose bodies were unclaimed.
