proverbs 15:22

i was touched by this passage: “plans fail for lack of counsel, but with many advisers they succeed”the “consultative council” thing that i have been practicing for years was amazing to see in a bible’s passage. its included in bro. pio español’s talk on the kerygma feast last feb 7. the talk was about “the key to winning every race”. perhaps it is true. this has been my secret for not loosing a dime in business. i talk to a lot of people on critical decisions without hesistancy. most of them thinks that i’m better to decide on my own and that their opinion is of less value (since most are not entrepreneurs). if only they knew, that i really draw ideas from them and mix it.  even if i don’t follow all of their ideas perfectly, its helpful..hehehe

i talk to people coming from the streets, from people where i strucked a 2 hour conversation out of nowhere (most of the times not remebering their names), to people from the academe, to corporate folks, to government people, to inventors, to artists, to pedicab drivers, to experienced entrepreneurs, to old people (which i like talking because of timely wisdom), to kidnappers even, to our parish priest, to some crushes here and there and to my key people. this process offers a diverse view of things on differents social, political and just plain life setting! this diverse view of things taken piece-wise will be anything but utterly useless. but if mixed together with an open mind you would consider things that were not done before.

something quite magical. something excitingly genius. some idea that’s as pure and complicated as love..hehehe perhaps when people ask, where did you get all these new business concepts? im answering “we developed it”. ofcourse its the only thing we did, build on and develop to what would have been useless singular ideas. i guess most of the heralded genius concepts are found on the streets and the bible. its not mostly from white-collar corporate desks..hehehe and i guess even my most wildly-creative marketing concepts are influenced by the bible..its seeing outside the box of normalism!whahahaha what a word..

let me give an example, a pedicab driver whom i talked wants water to be priced low for him to afford it for his family (market demand), an entrepreneur friend says that its impossible for a lot of costs are involved (cost acctg), an electronics enthusiast was excited about automating magnetic valves but is blank on how to use it (the cost controller), an established eccentric inventor friend can draw up the plan for the challenge’s sake but do not know how to sell (technical design), an automation engineer friend who don’t have a break to be popular wants to use a PLC-SMS controller (R&D), another one has capital but only knows typical busnesses bound to lose (financial)..hehehe what i did is just add a little of improvements in the engineering design, management of product development and aesthetics and drawing up a marketing plan and voila! its something..waaaaaaaaaaah!hehehe

ok. so enough for that..where is the moral of the story? in our present day society which pushes us to specialize with higher education it kind of veers away from “knowledge enlargement” needed in business and life in general. we are made to be good “technicians”, specialist in a sense (even on office work) for us not to own our time to develop a compendium of ideas..or simply not to have the time to have coffee and pasta with these diverse friends at our time..hehehe because of the above paragraph, we tend to be proud and not even consider talking to a lowly takatak boy. because “what would we get from them?” our specialist mind thinks..hehe “im more intelligent than a takatak boy so as for him to not deserve even a minute of my time”.

to cut the story short, to have success in life is to humbly ask for advices from a mix of people contrary to what our white-collar success pushes us not to believe. its to listen and ask. plain and simple.hehehe and not complain and wish for something in the sky!

lessons in life i learned from chess

i guess i should never regret living my early teenage life the “chess life” way.  i have chosen this instead of focusing on secondary education.  it made me loose a lot of things in school based awards (but not on one time acad comp like abs-cbn toys and rotary regionals) because of simply being not in the classroom.  things i previously regreted because i was entering UP with no background of supposed to be learned things from highschool (kasi we simply get the 2nd highest grade as a rule if ever we win in compet1t1ons and we always do.  specially in speed chess).

it was a very exciting experience for me.  controlling people’s emotions and playing with their minds instead of the board.  just a quick snap..snap..snap.. with a 3 move faster than my eye hand movement and then wasting my time analyzing other boards while the opponent analyzes ours with my time ticking off, quickly rushes blood to opponents nerves.hehehe

but i guess that explains a lot of questions posted to me by one person i had coffee with last week.  he was amazed with my posts at www.entrepreneur.com.ph/board and quickly asked if i was the monicker “accukix”.

he was asking about my childhood and my young life trying to analyze why i think this certain way, which to him is kinda opposite to most people.  i guess he was referring mostly to my business dealings and influences.  so this is chapter 1 of my future biography..whahahaha

lessons in business i learned from chess:

1.  “alekhine’s defense” this defensive move is generally considered as a counter attacking stance.  it let’s opponent try to “overextend” by thinking that they have control and killing off the base for the tempted overextension. tjis is transformed as a weak point for attack.  in business and in life, it is very useful.  people will tend to occupy a lot morethan they could handle especially if they don’t know the opponent.  it’s letting people feed in their need for dominance and pride and then excitingly counterattacking them to demise!  people controlling the center will bring in “pride” and false feeling of control to a lesser compet1t1on and then hitting them boom..boom..boom.. will make them fall harder with pride.  a trap of weakness in layman’s term.

2.  “accepting king’s gambit”. kings gambit is on the attacking stance with quick silver-like moves.  it kind of shocks opponents with complications and uneasiness for fast developments.  i usually do these when people know less of it and know little of my developments.  that’s why i always develop things in business to use these technique more with ease and quickness.  it also explains why i “block” my own shots..hehehe contrary to how a usual business person does business.  i create the demise of my own businesses to bring in a new and better project.  people who fear battling fire with fire will bring this technique to a better success ratio..hehehe

3.  ruy lopez opening..hehe i use this when i don’t need to risk.  i don’t risk when i only need a draw to win the tournament.  so in business, i try to dance in the tune if compet1t1on is of lesser quality because i know that they will “fabricate” their own failure.  and i just need to wait with patience.  “patience” is a thing not used by most entrepreneurs.  they don’t have patience to prefer ideas morethan money.  kaya they self-destruct with the “emotionality of money” and that’s why 9/10 cease to exist in business startups after 5 years.  so no need to risk with “attack” or “counterattack” because they will just self destruct..hehehe

as i look back, this person asking me is quite a respectable fella and have been employed for morethan 20 years just to notice that this is not what is needed by his family and listening quite intently to my young thought.  i guess i may have lost out not getting good grades on the 1st few semesters in UP but i learned life lessons that may sound older than my age.  and in this case.  its equivalent to 20 years of his life.  he was amazed that i was helping 50 families 20-25 as FTEs and 25 or so others as independent distributors in different business fields at my young age of 25.  i’m happy that our lord help me sail this blessing-in-disguise-way..thank you lord.

tax avoidance street smarts graduation

i guess i came to a point where the small advantages of a street smart tax avoidance technique is well and over my present capacity.  it could still provide me the same tax savings but the personal time needed to explain such to a lot of people will surely eat my personal time.  so in short money saved is not equivalent to specific time spent.

lets define tax avoidance first as compared to tax evasion.  tax evasion is purposely manipulating taxable items to have a lower tax amount.  may it be in manufacturing a support document for a legal dependent, lessening of actual sales declared, hiking up of costs and expenses that has a clear definition in the laws of the land.  tax avoidance however plays on the unclarity of undefined concepts,  vagueness in the generalities placed in the law and the vast possibilities of interpreting vagueness in an acceptable conceptual function.  in short, tax avoidance measures is simply intelligently legal.

i have been acustomed to so much of this thru my observation and virtually full centralization of decision making  in the first 2 months of my new businesses.  i always think if saan yung vague, mali, mali na technically legal and tama and such stuff.  in my accumosaic business, i observed na generally wala naman kaming for sale na item sa kiosk sa sm city iloilo (ofcourse meron din pero it can be easily scrapped out).  So i thought can it be treated like a “billboard”?hehehe  ofcourse kung nakakita tayo nang billboard nang jollibee tapos kumain tayo sa malapit na store, di ba yung sales is considered sa store not sa billboard?hehehe

so yun, my concept is to make folks from the revenue district treat it as a billboard in the hallway of a mall with a personnel just giving out calling cards and entertaining in the process for sales to be treated in consolidation in my small town biz.  (technically parang ganoon pa rin.  nagkaiba lang yung jurisdiction from rdo 74 to rdo 75).  so why?  because sales expectations from the city is different from sales expectations from the towns.  i hope gets nyo na yung point.

pero on 2nd thought, i am now valuing my time to be morethan the 2-3 days in a quarter needed to explain such an occurence to BIR people in the ground tax mapping the business even if big bosses signed an acceptance letter.  The hassle and the 2-3 days time requirement would most likely only be equal to my tax savings if not more.  if iisa lang yung biz ko, ok sana.  in today’s case, parang hassle na kung magstreet smart strategy ako even if it will conceptually work (i guess..hehehe)

billboard sa loob nang mall.hehehe parang kalokohan pero natatawa din ako..hehehe