Kung Hei Fat Choi! Since today is the celebration of the Annual Chinese New Year we will tackle some of the questions why Chinese are so good in business. In the Philippines almost 50% of all successful businesses are owned by the Tsinoys (Chinese Pinoys), in fact currently about 7 or 8 of the top richest man in the Philippines has Chinese blood, among them ranked number 1 is Henry Sy a former shoemaker turned billionaire and owns one of the biggest mall in Asia, SM.I want to share some of the work ethics by the Chinese because I notice that a lot of Filipinos are not really good with entrepreneurship. I hope with this article I can inspire more Filipinos to be an entrepreneur and be successful in business.
Why are a lot of Chinese Business men from China, Taiwan, Macau and Hongkong, and all over the world are mostly successful?
I think the traditional Confucian values of self-discipline, hard work, frugality delayed self-gratification for the sake of long-term benefits are important factors in entrepreneurial success. Chinese are taught by parents to be independent and be persistent. At an early age, Chinese parents teaches its young siblings the importance of entrepreneurship over employment. They believe that having your own business is the key to a successful life, unlike Filipinos we are taught by our parents to have a good job not to have a business.
Can the Filipinos be a successful entrepreneur like the Chinese?
Of course, whatever race or color can be a successful entrepreneur. But I just want to end some of the negative traditional Filipino cultural habits influenced by the Spanish during the colonization period. These doesn't apply to all Filipino's but to some, this habits still exists and If you want to an entrepreneur, you should learn to end this bad cultural habit.
Here are some of them
- Mañana Habit (mamaya na habit or do it tomorrow). This is one of the notorious habits we should eliminate. If you can do your work today, why do it tomorrow.
- Filipino Time. Referred to as "always late". You can observe this when someone is planning a meeting or an activity, if they agreed on the time of the gathering expect someone is 30 min to 1 hour late. We have this mentality that whoever arrives first are too excited and sometimes get teased at, and you don't want to get noticed early, so everyone will be arriving late.
- Fiesta Habit. In the Philippines we have a lot of celebrations and fiestas. And when a there is fiesta, expect a lot of foods, drinks, Lechon, and "bring home". Its not bad to celebrate a local fiesta, but the problem is, mostly who celebrates these occasions often borrows money just to celebrate, sometimes a whole week of nonstop fun. A catering service ranges from P10k - P30k. Based on statistics an average Filipino earns less than P10K a month, so spending almost 30k a day is not practical and bad for entrepreneurship.
- One day millionaire. Not all, but I notice this on call center agents. They spend a lot on parties, bar hoping and just about anything that they desire. They spend like they have the highest paying job in the country. After all those one day millionaire spending, most agents are on survival mode for the next couple of weeks. Less money, no savings. So we should be careful on how we spend our earnings.
What are some of the practices of Chinese entrepreneurs?
One of the best Chinese business principle is the strategy of being content with low profit margins and aims for high sales volumes. This is not easy and requires tons of patience, perseverance and commitment. If you look down the history of big time companies like SM, Mang Inasal, Bench, most of these companies starts with low profits and instead they aim for high sales volumes.
What can we learn from Chinese entrepreneurs?
We should encourage frugality in the Philippines and promote a higher savings rate all through out the country. Americans and Spanish has influenced us with their free-spending "fiesta" and credit-card mentality, unlike traditional Chinese that value thrift and saving money. If we can save money, there is financial security in the future. Also too much debt, if you can't pay your debt don't do it. Remember do not spend more than you earn, this is a mentality that we should always keep in mind.
Did I miss something? lets discuss the topic
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