how to become a successful entrepreneur.. top 5 successful entrepreneur in the philippines

1. How should an
entrepreneur
define success?
Here's the top -10 list,
in descending order, for
success:

2. You must be passionate about
what you're trying to achieve.
This means you’re willing to
sacrifice a large part of your waking
hours to the idea you’ve come up
with. Passion will ignite the same
intensity in the others who join you
as you build a team to succeed in this
endeavor. And with passion, both
your team and your customers are
more likely to truly believe in what
you are trying to do.

3. Focus intensely on your
opportunity.
This focus and intensity helps
to eliminate wasted effort and
distractions.
Most companies die from
indigestion rather than starvation—in
other words, companies suffer from
doing too many things at the same
time rather than doing too few things
very well. Stay focused on the
mission.

4. Success only comes from hard work.
We all know that there is no such
thing as overnight success. Behind every
overnight success lies years of hard work
and sweat. People with luck will tell you
there’s no easy way to achieve success—
and that luck comes to those who work
hard. Successful entrepreneurs always
give 100 percent of their efforts to
everything they do. If you know you are
giving your best effort, you’ll never have
any reason for regrets. Keep your focus on
things you can control.

5. The road to success is going to
be long, so remember to enjoy
the journey.
Everyone will teach you to focus on
goals, but successful people focus on the
journey and celebrate the milestones along
the way. Is it worth spending a large part of
your life trying to reach the destination if
you didn’t enjoy the journey along the way?
Won’t the team you attract to join your
mission also enjoy the journey more as well?
Wouldn’t it be better for all of you to have
the time of your life during the journey, even
if the destination is never reached?

6. Trust your gut instinct more than any
spreadsheet.
There are too many variables in the
real world that you simply can’t put into a
spreadsheet. Spreadsheets spit out results
from your inexact assumptions and give you
a false sense of security. In most cases, your
heart and gut are still your best guide.
We’ve all had experiences in business where
our heart told us something was wrong
while our brain was still trying to use logic
to figure it all out. Sometimes a faint voice
based on instinct resonates far more strongly
than overpowering logic.

7. Be flexible but persistent.
Every entrepreneur has to be agile in
order to perform. You have to continually
learn and adapt as new information becomes
available. At the same time you have to
remain persistent to the cause and mission of
your enterprise. That’s where that faint voice
becomes so important, especially when it is
giving you early warning signals that things
are going off-track. Successful entrepreneurs
find the balance between listening to that
voice and staying persistent in driving for
success—because sometimes success is
waiting right across from the transitional
bump that’s disguised as failure.

8. Rely on your team.
It’s a simple fact: No individual can be
good at everything. Everyone needs people
around them who have complementary skill
sets. Entrepreneurs are an optimistic bunch
of people and it’s very hard for them to
believe that they are not good at certain
things. It takes a lot of soul searching to find
your own core skills and strengths. After
that, find the smartest people you can who
complement your strengths. It’s easy to get
attracted to people who are like you; the trick
is to find people who are not like you but
who are good at what they do—and what
you can’t do.

9. Execution, execution, execution.
Unless you are the smartest person on
earth, it’s likely that many others have thought
about doing the same thing you’re trying to
do. Success doesn’t necessarily come from
breakthrough innovation but from flawless
execution. A great strategy alone won’t win a
game or a battle; the win comes from basic
blocking and tackling. All of us have seen
entrepreneurs who waste too much time
writing business plans and preparing
PowerPoints. I believe that a business plan is
too long if it’s more than one page.

10. Be honest and show integrity.
These two qualities need to be at
the core of everything we do.
Everybody has a conscience—but too
many people stop listening to it. There
is always that faint voice that warns
you when you are not being completely
honest or even slightly off track from
the path of integrity. Be sure to listen to
that voice.

11. Appreciate your success by
giving back.
By the time you achieve your success,
lots of people will have helped you along the
way. You’ll learn, as I have, that you rarely get a
chance to help the people who helped you
because in most cases, you don’t even know
who they were. The only way to pay back the
debts we owe is to help people we can help—
and hope they will go on to help more people.
When we are successful, we draw so much from
the community and society that we live in, we
should think in terms of how we can help
others in return. It’s our responsibility to do
“good” with the resources we have available.

13. Manuel or “Manny” Pangilinan is the
top honcho of the Philippine Long Distance
Telephone Company (PLDT). Under Manuel
Pangilinan’s watch, PLDT slowly amassed
full or majority ownership on a number of
key
Internet,
communications
and
broadcasting related corporations. This has
made the Wharton-educated Pangilinan one
of the Philippines’ top telecommunications
magnates. Pangilinan is also engrossed in
propelling Philippine basketball back to its
old glory days. This successful entrepreneur
currently owns a professional basketball
team bearing the name of a mobile phone
company he also owns, which competes in a
Philippine based league. He has also almost
exclusively bankrolled the entire Philippine
national basketball team which represents the
country
in
international
basketball
competitions.

14. Recognized by Forbes as the
richest man in the Philippines, Sy’s
name is synonymous with the
Philippine
retail
industry.
The
company he founded and owns is the
largest retail and shopping mall
operator in the country. His company
built and operates three of the ten
largest shopping malls in the world.
Henry Sy’s business acumen is so
sound that professors in college and
graduate programs in the Philippines
frequently use his business model to
teach
students
and
budding
entrepreneur the fundamentals of
business.

15. The self-made Lucio Tan is
another Filipino of Chinese descent
who is one of the most successful
entrepreneurs in the Philippines. He
amassed his wealth (he is currently
valued by Forbes at over $1.7 billion)
from a variety of sources including
tobacco, beer and alcohol, air travel
and banking. Although still takes a
hands-on approach when dealing with
his companies, many close to Tan say
that he is no longer concerned with
material wealth. Tan, they say, is more
excited about bigger challenges and the
pursuit of intellectual endeavors.

16. Jaime Zobel de Ayala is the CEO
of
the
well-established
Ayala
Corporation. The Ayala Corporation is a
holding company for the Ayala Group of
Companies which owns a diverse group
of
companies
that
range
from
telecommunications and real estate to
automotive and financial service.
This Harvard alumni is also
involved in a number of charities as well
as being a patron of the arts. This
successful entrepreneur is also an avid
sportsman who regularly enters local
marathons.

17. The recipient of the Ernst and
Young Entrepreneur of the Year Award in
2004, is firmly established as the leader in
the Philippine fast food industry. He
founded the hamburger fast food chain
Jolibee in 1978 and turned it into one of the
largest fast food chains in the world. His
company has purchased a number of
locally prominent fast food restaurants
and has even ventured into opening
outlets outside the Philippines. Areas with
a strong Filipino community such as
Hong Kong, Saudi Arabia, Taiwan and the
United States were some of its first
international outlets. Not only is Caktiong
recognized as on one of the most
successful
entrepreneurs
in
the
Philippines, his Jollibee foundation has
been very active in helping out the less
fortunate.

18. Successful entrepreneurs in the Philippines
are a dime a dozen. The truly exceptional are
those able to become more than executives. The
successful entrepreneurs on this list were able to
use their achievements in the business world as
a springboard for bigger and better things. A
truly successful entrepreneur is not just fixated
with the bottom line. Instead, they find
equilibrium in ensuring a steady growth for
their respective companies as well as being
socially aware of the needs of the people around
them.