A Doyen’s Strategical Remark

By: Salvador Silva Jr. III

FedEx founder, Fred Smith, who has a $5.3 billion net worth, revealed that his college professor labeled his concept for Federal Express “interesting, but not feasible.”  Walt Disney once got fired from his role as a cartoonist at a newspaper because, according to his editor, he “lacked imagination and had no good ideas”. Steve Jobs was ousted from Apple Computer in 1985. These are just a few untold stories of how entrepreneurs encounter challenges but were never discouraged in achieving the success of their business.

As an entrepreneur with years of experience in managing several companies, I also faced challenges when I was starting up. Building our brand with limited resources, no experience, no significant result to back it up, securing the finances in selling the services and products, and hiring the right people were just a few of it but our main challenge back then was an external factor. When we entered the market, just like everybody else, our first barrier was our competition. We made sure our clients can differentiate our brand and ensure that they are satisfied, because knowing that they are  happy with our products and services, we thrive. Even at the beginning of  the company’s growth, we were already barbed with new challenges and so we keep adding more professionals into our team and continually grow our companies.

Experiencing a lot of difficulties along the way was never a hindrance for me to settle for less, and I always remind myself that this business has a purpose to which I must work hard for. One of them is to see your people’s lives improving and their careers growing continuously, opening to bigger possibilities. It is a rewarding feeling that you are making something out from your effort that changes other lives so that they can become better individuals. You instill principles of values to them, and seeing those values in their families is worth all the risk and hardships. If you can influence one employee, it can mean you are influencing one family. Ultimately, you change more people’s lives along the way.

Unlike in the past, starting a business now is almost very easy. Even the government has the ease of doing business protocols already. What is important here is that, before you start your business, you should know your deep reasons and purpose other than just to make money. Know what are you trying to solve or provide with your business and what principles and values you want to build within that business. Just making money and creating a business are no longer relevant as the new working-class generation aka the millennials, now wants a strong sense of reason towards their job. I see businesses that only keep on making money but are too hard when it comes to reinvesting in their business. Right now, those businesses are slowly being eaten by their more relevant counterparts.

To those who are expanding, make sure that technology and innovation should be part of your business’ strategic expansion, because it’s just a matter of time that the new landscape of business in the Philippines will be adopted. Some notable significant possibility of the root causes are traffic, parking space, and unstable oil prices. These are all major issues we are facing nowadays. We all know that the Philippines will soon be working on connectivity — this will allow the internet of things. Better be ready because almost all major consumer habits will change and we are not talking of slow conversion to a new habit as it can even happen immediately once this opportunity opens.

 

Mr. Salvador B. Silva Jr. III is an experienced Chief Executive Officer with demonstrated performance excellence in the fields of logistics, supply chain, and information technology-powerediness solutions. An innovative entrepreneurial leader whose enterprises have created nearly 300 jobs and have helped fuel the engines of local economic development in Western Visayas and beyond. A visionary entrepreneur, Mr. Silva is the Group CEO of the Invictus Group of Companies.