I Pity

"Sige! Ubusin mo yan or you will not go home with us!" 

The mother in the other table was very mad at his young son.

We were having our Sunday brunch at our favorite Chinese restaurant in Greenhills this morning. The tables were so close to each other that I couldn't help overhearing the loud conversation in the table in front of us.

Earlier, the son insisted that he wanted to eat jumbo siopao.  He did not see what it looked like. He only overheard my son Ico order it.  I think he liked the sound of "jumbo" attached to the word "siopao" and he was intrigued.  So, he insisted that his Mom order it for him. 

"Hindi mo kayang ubusin ang jumbo!  Regular siopao na lang!" The Mom suggested, but he insisted.

So, the Mom dutifully ordered the jumbo siopao.

When he saw my husband pour hot sauce all over his siopao, he also got some hot sauce and poured it over his, despite his Mom’s protestations.

"Arrrggghhhhh!" he went when he bit his siopao. He immediately grabbed a glass of water and gulped it all down.

This was when the Mom went: "Sige! Ubusin mo yan or you will not go home with us!" 

He was almost in tears as he tried to peel off parts of the siopao that were drenched with hot sauce and ate it piece by piece.

I pitied the boy.  And as I watched him through the corner of my eyes, I remembered a suggestion from an OFW friend not so long ago.

"Why don’t you give us a list of businesses we can go into when we go home and how much it would cost us to put it up? This will make it easier for us to start a business."

Sadly, this is the mentality of most OFW’s as well as employees who want to go into business.  They think that they should have a menu, and if they don’t know which to choose, all they need to do is to look at what they can afford and choose that.  Or, just like in restaurants, copy what the other table is having and the food will be good, they would copy other people’s business and expect to also succeed.

I had to explain to my friend that businesses do not work that way.

It must start with you, the person who wants to go into business.

He must ask himself these questions:
1.    What are my skills? 
2.    What topics am I knowledgeable in?
3.    What can I do better than most people?
4.    What do I enjoy doing? What am interested in?
5.    What am I experienced in? (previous work, job, project, childhood experiences, etc.)

Here is how I chose some of the businesses that worked:

I have always dreamt of being a teacher.  I prepared educationally to be a teacher. I taught for 8 long years.  I am passionate about seeing my students learn, in seeing their lives transform.  

So, it is natural for me to have a school as one of my businesses.  

When it came to helping students learn, I can work hard for very long hours.  Even when the school was incurring losses for four years, I persisted until it turned around.  My boundless energy came from my love for work and knowing what I was doing.

My grandfather was a gold jewelry maker.  My grandmother and my mother sold jewelry. I grew up watching my uncle make jewelry and helping my mother display jewelry every morning before going to school. 

I knew jewelry and could talk to people about gold and gold jewelry easily.

So, even if I did not enjoy wearing jewelry, it was natural for me to go into the jewelry business.

Did you learn from my examples?

Did you discover something about you by answering those 5 questions above?

What is natural for you?

Are you in a business that you enjoy?

Do share with us your discoveries in the Movement Group and let us help each other find the "right" business that we will enjoy starting and growing.

Talk again soon!