The Filipino Entrepreneur

Planning to start a business by selling rice? You too can start a rice dealership by registering with the Department of Trade and Industry(DTI) for a single proprietorship, the Securities and Exchange Commissions(SEC) for a partnership or a corporation, or to the Cooperative Union of the Philippines if you are a member of a cooperative. You must also secure a license from the National Food Authority(NFA), the government agency that makes sure you have calibrated weighing scales, a storage area, rice boxes, and price tags indicating the variety of rice you’re selling. You also have to produce a green signboard bearing the name of your business and the NFA control number that’s at least 450 mm in width, 750 mm in length, and containing the NFA seal and your license is renewed annually.

You need a minimum investment of php30,000 to start retailing or wholesaling rice. And since this is a staple diet of us Filipinos, buyers are already there. If you are eager to start then here are some rice dealership business tips:

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Last Sunday, Kabuhayang Swak na Swak featured the process of making herbal candy and it was demonstrated by Mr. Ronald Barangan. The candies were made from natural ingredients like coconut sap, coconut sugar, palm syrup and your choice of tropical fruits. You can use many varieties of tropical fruits like bignay berries, guava, pineapple, papaya or bananas. This is a good home based business making healthy candies. Healthy because many fruits aids in preventing or recovering from illnesses . So without much ado here are the things needed and procedure to make the candies. In the sample below, they use bignay berries to make the candy. Here it goes:

Bignay Herbal Candies

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I guess this topic is not new and you have heard some articles about how an entrepreneur should think to run his business. It is a common thought that when you already chose the world of entrepreneurship, and choose not to be employed, then that is the start of of being an entrepreneur. But old habits are not easily forgotten specially if you have been an employee for a long time. So changing your mindset is one of the most important prerequisite in running a business. There are many differences between an entrepreneur and employee and I have read many articles that compare their thinking. But the recent article I read have the best, in my opinion, of what they really differ.

Entrepreneurs focus on opportunity, while employees focus on resources such as money, people and time. For example, a person who thinks like an employee will say “I can’t do it, because I don’t have the money.” On the contrary, a person who thinks like an entrepreneur will say “Let’s tie up the deal and find the money later.”. A way of thinking that separates them worlds apart.

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Customer satisfaction is what a business is all about. Obviously if there are no customers, there is no business. This is why it is very important that we know what our customer’s wants or needs for them to be returning customers and build loyalty. Some companies ask feedback from their customers stated on their catalogs, brochures or websites in order to serve them better. Without this it’s hard to please them, but if you can read their minds through mental telepathy there is no need to ask feedbacks. I don’t know if I have to mention the company I worked with some time ago. Imagine, they don’t have any procedures on how to get customer feedback. They have this “I-Have-The-Best-Product-Mentality”. So the result, they are being beaten by competitors and there is no stopping on their downsizing.

To define it with simplicity, “Customer convenience means doing business the way customers want to do business with you.” Makes sense doesn’t it? customers don’t care even if your product is made from a space age material from the center of the earth, was manufactured in Jupiter, made it’s quality inspection in Mars, packaged in Pluto and then delivered via space shuttle, if they don’t want your product. Simple.

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News all over the world have included the new acquisition of Google, the company called POSTINI. Many, I think including me don’t know about this company until the news exploded about this. I’ve read the news in the Webmaster’s World forum. Many have posted this news on their blogs that announces this and I also wanted to jump in the bandwagon but not just to announce it but to say something about their success story. Visiting the Postini forum, there was a letter from the founder Mr. Scot Petry regarding this great news titled Google to Acquire Postini

They started the company in 1999 which is during the dot com bubble and said that during that time the kind of service they were offering was not really promising. But despite of that they pursue their vision and wanted to become known as SaaS (Software as a Service). And with this long term view they are now reaping the fruits of success. There are some points that made them fortunate because they have this in their organization: (quoting from the letter)

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