Why Philippines’ Richest Man Not a Filipino?

 

Have you ever ask that question? How did it happened that the richest person in our country is not a Filipino?

At the age of 90, Henry Sy is still the number #1 in the richest list according to (http://www.forbes.com/philippines-billionaires/list/#tab:overall) with the total  net worth of $ 14.4 B. Have you ever imagine yourself as rich as that? Come on! Why not?

Let us have a  brief background check of who he is and  get some life and business tips how to become one of the richest persons in the country.

Being the richest man requires a lot of determination, discipline, patience, perseverance and a positive perspective about life.  If you have all this, we can say that you are almost qualified to be the next Billionaire of the Philippines if you put it  into action or application.

In Henry Sy’s experience, he started at the bottom where he experience  a lot of external and internal hardships,  the good thing we can see about him is that he never gives up  as he pursue his business goal.  Now,  the owner of 33 established SM Malls and Banco De Oro-EPCI Bank.

It is a sad reality that in our own country, the richest man is not our own countrymen. Most business establishments here in the Philippines are owned by Chinese. Is this really our destiny or is there some factors that hinder  our success?

Filipino Culture – a  pro poor mindset

Have you ever heard these lines from your parents:

“hayaan mo anak, bibili tayo nyan pag nagkapera tayo(don’t worry my child, we will buy that when we have money)”

“Anak, mag-aral ka mabuti para magkaroon ka ng magandang TRABAHO(My child, study hard so you can have good job)”

Our culture always tells us to be a worker and not to be the boss which limits our  capacity and skills.  The mindset that our parents give us is to study hard and get a job rather than have a business.

Our parents also taught us to buy the things we want when we have the money rather than investing it. We always see our parents how they spend all their money without any savings.

Filipino Media – pro poor mindset

Can you think of any Filipino movie or Teleserye that has a rich man as a main character and the poor guy are the villain or what you call “kontrabida”? There is no such thing, or maybe there is but not a popular movie. In every Filipino movies, the role of the rich man is always the villain. They are the greedy, evil and bad guys on almost all Filipino movies. And as always, the poor guys are the hero and good men. Our media always gives us a mindset that being poor is good, happy and full of love while rich men are always the bad guys.

I remember a picture shared on Facebook, it shows the expectation vs. reality of success. It is not a straight line ahead to the top but rather a straight line going up and has ups and downs. We have to learn  how it feels at the bottom first and know how to get up from it. Honestly, as I read the story of Mr. Henry,  it was not an easy experience and not an over night success.

Successful people do a lot of work, even extra and another extra effort to meet what they have now.

We can  learn on the simple example the essence of  determination  which is one of the values of Mr. Henry.  If you started your dream pursue it and go for it even it is hard. Life without hardship is not challenging anymore and if there’s no challenges, there’s no reason to become better  nor to strive harder.

Image Credit: http://cointelegraph.com