#businesschronicles

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Take me back to the start(up)

Startup is the sexiest word of our generation. When I hear that word, I think about 20-somethings in a posh office and typing on their MACs. Or jet setters looking for designs for their brick and mortar stores. How they are bought by an internet company (Hi Tumblr) or private equity firm (Hi Rue21), become millions richer and move to larger offices or build more stores.

There is nothing sexy with what we have been doing these past months. While driving for several hours in the Manila traffic (though questionably Dan Brown’s inferno), numbing my fingers silly cutting and embossing pieces of hard paper for hours, and dealing with difficult suppliers, it was ingrained into me how difficult it was to make money. Nobody said it was easy.

It is overwhelming thinking about this daunting task ahead of us. I don’t feel equipped for it. How do we become the Berkshire Hathaway of design? Or, how do we become Berkshire Hathaway?? Dream on.

Dreams take work. We’ve started. I realized that the real work is how to make it better. //FR

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The mind is like a parachute

My mom tells me during our arguments: The mind is like a parachute. It works best when it is open. I keep this in mind when I wear the entrepreneur hat. I can't seem to fully dispel notions of proven business successes (I'm looking at you, Peter Drucker) and wholeheartedly jump into the possibilities of 2013. My experiences in Singapore and China, however, introduced me to creative structures and operations, so it is not a culture shock to see diverse practices. Still, I tread carefully when applying it to my own, keeping in mind that the things we decide now may form the main pillars of our business. 

I've found that it's best to find a compromise on ideas. On times I am proven wrong, I look forward to how it can make our company better, and think of it as conditioning for bigger challenges and larger decisions.

Hoping we’ll land safely. //FR

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Learning is my first love

New knowledge drives me. I joined the debate team to push me to learn more about how government and societies worked. My first job involved speaking with CEOs on how they ran their organizations. The happiest days of my life was spent in Beijing learning Mandarin and the Chinese culture. The most magical date I had was with a Uighur boy who took me around the tombs of Kashgar’s famous Chinese Muslims. It felt fresh, new, and exciting.

On my end, I have had to relearn marketing strategies and organizational development, mostly from my readings in the past out of interest, but now have real-life application. I’ve become keener on examining cost and operation structures to see what works best for us. Now that I’m managing my own, I have a better understanding why companies are the way they are, and guard myself when I navigating gray areas. I’ve set on stone that we will not go through a Muddy Waters (!) accounting scandal. The more we learn, the more we move forward. 

Keep learning, keep growing. //FR