BizTekPinoy

By JAIME GARCHITORENA

In my mind I feel that if I make my success public I end up cornering myself and putting myself in a situation where future failure is not an option.

A success story is always a good way to get people interested in your company and if you believe that word of mouth is an entrepreneur’s way of promoting his business then stories of your successes shouldn’t be kept too close to the chest.

More so in the context of high value, mission critical, or high priced projects or items, nothing sells better than stories of success.

Now there is a dark side to the high value placed on promotion and self promotion.

This can be seen in the existence of dubious awards groups that come out of the woodwork and into you fax machines every year. For the price of thirty thousand pesos (Php30,000.00) or so, a desperate entrepreneur (wink wink!) can get his company the title "best in anything under the sun". For the money he gets a plaque, an advert in the paper, and an awards night where you and your award-paying peers get to slap backs and toast to a reputation well bought.

Sound bogus? You bet it is! But you won’t believe how many suckers…I mean, legitimate entrepreneurs (wink wink!), buy into it.

On the other side, as much as hundreds of entrepreneurs love these "wink wink" awards, a whole bunch of other entrepreneurs seem to hate talking about their own legitimate, business successes. In my experience, when I ask these businessman how their business is doing, the answer almost always involves a lot of hemming and hawing, invisible pebble kicking, and head scratching. And whether business is bad or good, the answer always ends up with a non committal "ok lang".

When I ask them why they’re so reluctant to talk about their current state of business, the mumbled answers are consistent; If business is bad then they don’t want anyone to know and when business is good the words, "ayokong masabihan na mayabang ako", " ayokong mausog" and BIR inevitably comes forward.

I find this secrecy thing a bit odd because, for various reasons, I like letting people know how my company is doing.

One reason for this is because making my success public is a very important personal driver.

In my mind I feel that if I make my success public I end up cornering myself and putting myself in a situation where future failure is not an option. That place is a great place for me to live. I like having no plan B. Failure is not an option.

It also boosts my ego (and damned if I won’t feed my ego). This is my psychic reward to myself. As a manager of a recovering company it’s nice to pat myself on the back sometimes. Nothing more. Nothing less.

Now, there’s no secret to why a I might personally enjoy tooting my own horn but believe it or not, it’s not just about me as the business owner.

Another important reason I have for being open about our small successes is my staff.

Being a small IT company means that the small moves by the big players in our business environment sometimes translates into huge waves of change that we had found difficult to adjust to.

Now the IT industry is a small community and so no matter how hard we tried to keep your difficult times quiet (as Jurassic Park made perfectly clear) nature always finds a way and sure enough, the rumors of my companies eventual demise was the buzz word of the biz.

In the process of our rehabilitation, my staff worked really hard to reinvent the company image. So as a tribute to all this hard work, I decided to be the official spokesperson for our company’s victories with hopes that the same grapevine that carried the news of our failures would also carry news of our achievements. True enough, as difficult as it was to keep our problems secret, my staff started to hear good things about our own company which made their success even sweeter.

But on the lighter side, I like talking about my small victories when I’m in a group of entrepreneurs, because I’d like to be able to share a good story or two.

I mean really, no one wants to take advice or hear the mediocre exploits of a company that’s doing "ok lang" no matter how new your car or big your watch ( because then the underlying assumption is that its daddy’s car and watch or your doing something illegal, immoral, or both…in which case I want in on it) .

And I’d rather do without the theoretical. Heck, in theory I can be Bill Gates 10 years from now.

I like talking about my business so that I give and get some tips and tricks on how to do better business. Now we’re not talking state secrets here. Just "plain ole success stories" which can end with a "man we made a killing" or a "that’s where my new BMW came from".

Its just more fun that way. At least it is to me.

Of course it can be argued that there is virtue in the low-profile entrepreneur that has that quiet, shy, I drive a 1994 Honda Civic aura about him that masks the millions he has gained from his commercial exploits. Especially if you’re the kidnappable kind.

But as I’m hardly kidnappable (my condo is still in hock), I like the Tom Cruise-Porsche there is no substitute-Risky Business rule that says if you can’t say it you can’t do it.

Different strokes. Different strokes.