The Filipino Entrepreneur

Talk about dirty business idea, but this is not a dirty as siphoning waste from a ‘poso negro’ where a truck siphons human waste and dispose it. As I’m browsing the internet I found a business idea that scoops dog waste and made it into a business. I’m not sure if this business will work in a third world country like us but I think there are places in this country that have a high standard of living like in some exclusive subdivisions.

As I was reading the article, I can’t help myself laugh on this kind of business but as long as it’s not illegal, why will I make fun of it? right? One reason I think why this is a good business idea is the answer on number 9 on the frequently asked question:

9) “Why would anyone pay you to clean up after dogs?” Busy dog-owners are delighted to pay someone to have this done! Many dog owners need a way to dispose pet waste that is both legal and practical. Some cities’ refuse departments prohibit the placement of animal waste in with residential refuse. Uncollected dog feces is a significant contributor to ground water pollution. Uncleaned back yards stink, they annoy the neighbors and attract flies that lay their eggs on the feces and then move on. Pets and people using dirty yards track poop into the house. You can provide simple, neat, and cost-effective solutions to all these problems and more. Lack of time; physical difficulty; and the “Repugnance Factor” mean many people are more than happy to pay someone to do this necessary chore. Some clients even tell us we are a “godsend” and credit us with stopping family quarrels!

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I’ve seen the topic in about.com regarding the 6 ways to make money this summer ( I only chose 5) . I’m not sure if all of them are applicable in this country but at least you will have some idea how to be your own boss this summer. The ideas are enumerated below and I made some changes to make it more confusing ( No, it’s only a joke) .

Go to public places where it is hot and help them to keep cool

There are many public places where there aren’t enough convenience store like beaches, resorts or other popular summer destination. You can try to sell cold bottled water, cold juice drink, sports drinks, cheap sunglasses, sun visors, fan or battery powered electric fan. Be imaginative and think of other things that people might need going to summer destination spots.

Lawn and Yard Care

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Sundried fish and fruits in the Philippines are common nowadays that is why Cebu has been famous for sundried delicacies like danggit and dried mangoes. But dried vegetables are not popular here maybe because we have an abundant supply of fresh vegetables. I’m not sure if it will be profitable selling dried vegetables because the time and materials spent on processing might not be feasible. But maybe with a little creativity by adding value to the product, you might sell it with a higher price than selling only fresh vegetables. For example, the food fish tilapia can be sold with a higher market value by converting it to marinated fish fillet, sausages or hamburger patties. Likewise you can also convert an ordinary vegetable like ampalaya or bitter melon into ampalaya chips by adding flavor like cheese or barbecue. Branding it as a healthy diet for diabetics, it might be a hit!

Sun drying of foods have been practiced by people since ancient times to preserve food in leaner times. There are many ways of food preservation like canning and pickling but solar drying is one of the cheapest way because you only need sunlight to petrify the food stuffs and a small investment in making the solar dryer. This summer is great for starting a sundried food business if you are thinking of having one.

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There are many kinds of insurance policy and the two most common are: life insurance and car insurance. I heard and read about the two kinds but never heard of the home warranty insurance. Maybe it’s already available here in the Philippines but maybe there was no Filipino corporation who have that kind of insurance company. So what is Home Warranty Insurance? it’s an insurance policy for home owners to protect them from unforeseen breakdown of their major appliances due to wear and tear provided that it is working in normal condition. For example, you and your family went on a vacation and left your refrigerator running. We don’t normally shut down our refrigerator when we leave our house but sometimes we do if we are going out on a long vacation. But a refrigerator works 24/7 because it was designed to do so unlike an air conditioner which you have to turn off once in a while.

Then in your journey suddenly your refrigerator malfunctions and the compressor motor is burning out. All the stuffs in there melted. Your ice cream cake is melting along with the thawing frozen beef and fish dripping all over your stuffs in the freezer. After a few days everything in the fridge is rotting and you went home after your trip and opened the fridge. Then you smell the horrible stench. What will you do then? I hope you won’t get a sledge hammer to fix your fridge (Just kidding). Now you know that somehow a Home Warranty insurance is a necessity specially if you have plenty of appliances at home not to mention top brand appliances to protect your investments. Upon searching the internet I can’t find a local provider of home warranty insurance , I just came across American Home Shield that provide that kind of service in the U.S. Maybe someday local insurance companies will integrate that service or maybe some multinational insurance company will provide that service here.

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I guess in this kind of business, many will be disgusted because you are actually dealing with pests like rodents, termites, cockroaches, and other insects that annoy us, it can also be a health risk and sometimes destroy our property. Like for example, a termite. Although termites are very small, they are destructive to our homes if not properly eliminated. A whole house can be torn apart by those tiny insects not because of their size, but because of their enormous numbers that eat the structures of our house. Most houses are built with wooden structures and even modern housing today use wooden structures on the roof and ceiling even though the walls are made of concrete. There is a time while I was working in an office building with all of the structures made of concrete, I saw traces of termites on the floor near the wall. My workstation and our department’s cubicle was parallel to the wall. That time I was having an allergic rhinitis often and sometimes there are patches on my skin due to allergy. I notice there was a wooden molding for the electrical wire on the wall which is near my work place. One day the technician removed that molding and there I saw were lots of termites and the wooden molding has already been devoured by those little pests. Now I know why I always sneeze inside an air conditioned office.
Even if your house is termite proof (I mean everything is made from steel and concrete), having termites around can also be a health risk. Normally in our dwelling, most of the things are made of wood like furnitures and also there are things made from paper like books and boxes, which termites loves. So starting a pest control business can be a lucrative one. There are many types of pest control business: for example Terminix, which only deal with insects. Other pest control services deals only with rodents, and others specializes on both insects and rodents. These are all home pest control but there are other categories like garden pest control or lawn pest control. There are also various ways of controlling pest like chemical-based sprays and organic-based sprays (organic pest control) so its up to you which type you will consider on your planned pest control business.

There are some DIY (Do-It-Yourself) methods on eliminating termites but that is mostly termite prevention. For example, avoiding moisture accumulation from the foundation which the termites need survive. Diverting all the possible water source away from foundations which is the best way to prevent soaking the wooden parts of your house specially the foundations. Avoiding contact of soil to wooden parts of the house is another preventive method. But most of the time people won’t think or bother on how to prevent termites until it’s too late so the best option for them is to call a professional. Even if they did so, there are methods that will not work on the kind of treatment they did. Some treatment will not work on the kind of termite they are dealing with so then this business opportunity comes in, which is in the form of pest control services.

Are you Web-Savvy? then I think there is a business opportunity waiting for you as an internet trainer. Being web savvy is not just the average internet surfer who uses the internet. Its a kind of skill and knowledge of various web technologies. Today there are lots of young people who have an above average skill when it comes to the realm of the internet. That is why many have made their fortunes doing things online and their creativity is their vehicle to reach that status. But not every one will become a super millionaire and not everybody is lucky enough to follow their foot steps. But still, being web-savvy will give you extra income helping those who are not very familiar in the world wide web technologies. People like in retirement homes or those who are scared with technology who wish to learn some basic things like making a free blog or a free website. Some may wish to learn more than just pointing a mouse and clicking. You can guide them with regards to SEO (Search Engine Optimization), blog publishing software, HTML/CSS, RSS/syndication, feed aggregators, pings, trackbacks, full vs. partial feeds,blog carnivals (for kick-starting your blog’s traffic), search engines, page rank, social bookmarking, tagging, contextual advertising, affiliate programs, traffic statistics, email

How about having a Computer Cleaning Service business? sounds not a very promising since not everyone is aware that a dusty internal computer parts contributes to wear and tear of a computer. I have an incident once where my old computers’ power supply just blew up because all those dust particles inside the power supply have accumulated with moisture so the internal components were short circuited. Besides, the dusty CPU heat sink, in my observation slows PC performance too because the airflow inside cannot circulate due to dusts sticking on the heat sink that acts as an insulating blanket. The cooling fan also accumulates dusts which in turn makes it ineffective to circulate the air, blowing cool air inside your system and expelling heated air outside (for the power supply). It’s not easy to promote it but you just need a little creativity to convince your prospect on the importance of cleaning your computer just like the one I mentioned (the reasons why cleaning is needed). Regarding the tools needed, just a set of screw drivers to open the casing and a compressor to blow off the dust. In my experience with my previous employment, when I have a task cleaning the computers, I used compressed air which is more effective compared to a vacuum cleaner. Wearing a filter mask is a must whenever you dust a computer with compresses air.

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When you think of aerial photography, you would think that you have to ride on an airplane or a helicopter to shoot pictures from the sky looking at a bird’s eye view. Since you need airplanes to take photographs, you need an aircraft to fly you to the air and thinking of such a business, you will be discouraged enough to know how much an airplane would cost or just to rent one, you might have second thoughts if that would be profitable. It’s because just renting an airplane, even an two seater Cessna airplane would cost more or less 8,000 pesos an hour. I’m not sure if the amount I mentioned is accurate. But back then in 1987 when I was still taking up flying school it already cost 2,500 pesos an hour with a Cessna 152 airplane. It’s the cheapest and oldest trainer airplane around. It would cost you much more if you buy one and the maintenance cost would be a headache unless you have lots of money to burn.

So how would you think of having an aerial photography business if that is one of your dream? that is where AeroEye Asia, an aerial photography service provider can be your inspiration. They use radio controlled helium balloons, radio controlled airplanes and helicopters, and ultralight and full size general aviation fixed wing and rotary wing aircraft (helicopters). Maybe they have a large capital so they have real airplanes and helicopters but those model aircrafts they are using although not cheap, can still be affordable. As a RC aircraft hobbyist myself in the past, I have read in magazines about radio controlled airplanes with a camera inside where you can shoot photographs remotely using your radio controlled transmitter ( the box where you control your aircraft with an antennae). Back then is was not easy to install a camera because there were no digital cameras then and most of them are heavy and bulky.

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I think the Pinoy Delikasi is not new to us because as far as I remember it was already featured by Korina Sanchez in her program. Maybe I’m mistaken, maybe it was featured in another program. But last night it was featured again in Mel&Joey and the name of the owner is Jovelito M. Cipriano. Jovelito not only built a successful business, but also created a multi-award winning e-commerce model. I really admired that guy and envy a little bit because that was the kind of business I wanted to start. An online business selling Philippine native delicacies. In fact, before I discovered his website I’ve been making sites that sells pili nuts, dried fish like danggit, dried fruit preserves but it didn’t work out because I was really newbie in website making and it requires a big capital to start that online business to successfully run it. You have to have a merchant account so that customers can purchase online. Payment by credit card will make the transaction faster because customers have what we call “impulse buying” which will help to prevent that second thoughts. And during that time there were no local merchant account in the Philippines for online business. So the only solution then is thru western union, direct deposit to your bank account or some other means to pay you. Paypal was not useful that time and it’s only last year that Paypal announced that you can transfer your funds thru your credit card.

Another thing is you need to have at least an inventory to sell online so again it requires a capital. Maybe contacting manufacturers of those products and offer consignments will work but I think at least you must have a capital to pay them when it is already due. And since the payment is by credit card, the mechant account provider will transfer the money paid by your customers to you after a month via check. I was employed that time so I really can’t handle that. It’s easier to just make a website and have affiliate programs to earn which requires very little investment.

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Whether you plan to start a business or already have one, it is important to have an uncanny talent for spotting new ideas. Creative thinking and brilliant idea generation are two ways to continue differentiating your business vis-a-vis your competitors and raising your business to a higher level.

HOW DO YOU GENERATE NEW IDEAS?

Spotting opportunities are all about the right mindset. You need to be in the ”idea-spotting mode” everyday so you can turn simple everyday experiences into opportunities. A starting point for this would be finding a solution to problems shared by a number of your friends and family that a current product/service cannot fully satisfy.

Observe your surroundings and listen to people. When you’re in the idea-hunting mindset, you’d be surprised how many ideas will go your way. Start reading books, magazines like Entrepreneur, websites, newspapers and the like. Read between the lines; some ideas come about from current events or even advertisements.

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We have so many good products but does not sell very well because the packaging is not right. Like for example the simple yema or the piaya. If your packaging is well presented and attractive, your product will stand from the rest. If you have purchased the Bong bong’s piyaya, you will see that the packaging is very well presented and attractive. Besides, it’s not only attractive but taste’s better from ordinary piaya. It’s imperative that you should blend the delicious piaya of yema in your packaging and should also look good to eat.

So how will you improve your packaging specially to a small scale businesses?

You can visit the Department of Trade and Industry (www.dti.gov.ph), Bureau of Food and Drugs (www.bfad.gov.ph) or Packaging Research and Development Center (www.mis.dost.gov.ph/prdcp/index.php) for the guidelines in packaging. For samples of label attractive label designs, you can visit here: http://www.mis.dost.gov.ph/prdcp/label_design.html You can also hire an artist that does not charge too much to help you in your packaging design. So don’t fear on the cost because in the long run it will benefit you and your product.

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