Letting go of fear–both in business and in art

IN HIS printing shop

For everything there is a season and a time for every purpose under the sun …

Maldwyn de Pano spent 30 years establishing and growing his business before he could pursue his other passion:  Painting.

Not that he totally forsook fine arts after he graduated from UP College of Fine Arts in 1980.  He would set up an easel and take out his paint brushes now and then—usually during weekends—even when he was struggling to build a clientele for his printing shop.

But painting was then more of a hobby— a therapy for calming the nerves of an entrepreneur engaged in what may be one of the most stressful businesses one can think of.  “Printing is chasing one deadline after another; you barely have time to breathe.  The client wants his book or brochure out not next week, not today, but always yesterday.”

Being an artist helped Maldwyn make Design Plus a reputable name in the printing industry.  In his own words, “I did not leave the arts.  I just concentrated on commercial art.”

The name “Design Plus” is spot on for a company that offers design plus printing, photography, digital publishing—the works.  “Plus” can also stand for the premium Maldwyn adds into every job he accepts:  His commitment to perfection.   He would design covers and do hands-on lay-outing himself to satisfy a client.  He would go to the field to take pictures for a cover that has to be “composed just right.”

Indeed, for the first 20 years, he was all things to his business.  He made client calls, prepared quotations, designed and laid out covers and inside pages, delivered proofs, handled photography, approved a piece of work page by page, supervised actual printing.

“Before, Design Plus was 80 percent me; 20 percent was my staff.”  Today the ratio has reversed.

His people used to be scared to take initiatives. “One wrong move or decision— they’d get hell from me.  No one dared decide for himself because that was how I wanted it to be.  I used to tell a worker to his face:  ‘Just use your hands; let me do the thinking.’”

Maldwyn can’t exactly remember when he began trusting and empowering his people.

MALDWYN de Pano with daughter Dennise Avila and wife Ruth at the opening of his one-man show at The Arthologist Gallery.

It dawned on him gradually he was doing something wrong.  “If I micro-managed and a mistake resulted, I couldn’t correct it by doing the same thing again.  I had to do it differently next time.”

Nowadays, before a major project begins, he calls in his staff—the account executives, artists, production managers.  “We sit together, set goals together, anticipate problems together.”

He has set up autonomous units, each authorized to make decisions.

“Dati ako ang bida.  Ngayon sila na.”  He now believes even those at the base of the organizational pyramid has something important to contribute. “Bawat isa, may alam na hindi ko alam gawin.”

He has learned to let go, to let his people make their own mistakes. “I can now rationalize that if a mistake happens there’s a reason for it.” Even if he loses a client or project, he thinks there is something better in the works.

Lately, too, Maldwyn has discovered the benefits of outsourcing.   Where he used to employ seven artists/designers, he now has three or four in-house.  He jobs out 50 percent of his design requirements to freelance artists and small designing outfits.  He also sources out binding and some machine operation.

With Design Plus running more on “people power” and less on his own labors, Maldwyn has lately taken up painting more seriously.  He has in fact put up his private atelier at the penthouse of the Design Plus building on Narig Street, Project 7, Quezon City.

He took stock of what he has done during his weekend trysts with the Muse and found mostly half-finished canvases.

Why?  “Because there was always something wrong with a painting.  I’d go back to it again and again, hoping to correct the mistake.”

In painting as in business, Maldwyn learned to let go his fears.

He applies his first brush stroke on an empty canvas without a preconceived idea how the painting will look like.  “The more I planned, the more it turned out badly.  So, I just let go and enjoy.”

His metaphor for painting is dreaming.  “Dreams take place without rhyme or reason.  The dreamer drifts with the dream without knowing where it will take him.”

AT HIS atelier

In this sense, art differs from entrepreneurship.  You cannot do business without planning, calculated risk-taking, SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats) analysis.  You have to begin with an end in mind.  “Art, on the other hand, is telling me not to think of results, to completely trust that a stroke cannot be wrong, that what is regarded as a mistake can even be the highlight of the work.”

He calls his works “lyrical abstractions.”  Every canvas tells a story, he says.  “But my story will be different from yours and those of others who look at it.”

(Maldwyn de Pano may be contacted through Tel. 3744183 / 09228576380 and [email protected]. For more entrepreneurial stories, visit the Small Enterprises Research and Development Foundation website at www.serdef.org)