“In this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes.”

And with this I have to agree with Benjamin Franklin.

It appears the Philippines has regulations on taxes that’s different from what I learned during the course of my MBA. Businesses have three basic types of taxes here:

1. Value Added Tax – is a business tax imposed on and collected from the seller in the course of trade or business on the sale of properties, lease of goods or properties, or rendering of services. The business is charged the difference between the percentage tax on the gross sales amount and the percentage tax on Cost of Goods Sold/Costs incurred to deliver the service. Thus, this tax is directly proportional to the margin a business sets to make profit and is also an indirect form of tax that can be transferred to the buyer.
2. Percentage Tax – is a business tax imposed on persons or entities whose gross annual sales or receipts do not exceed Php 1,500,000 and are not VAT-registered. You can look at this as the barrier to entry for small entrants, as they get taxed on the gross sales amount of their receipts (not their Net Income) and simply says they get taxed regardless of whether the business is earning or losing money.
3. Excise Tax – apply to goods manufactured or produced in the Philippines for domestic sales or consumption, and is imposed in addition to the Value Added Tax.

Bottom-line: Tax rules are different for every location.

“Don’t be a turkey, try some free jerky.”

Interesting tidbit I got from the TV show ‘Crowd Control’ when it comes to persuasive selling.

They highlighted three different tactics:

1. Reciprocity – doing something for others imply they need to do something in return. Highlight the word ‘FREE’ when giving out samples.
2. Making the first move – there’s a higher likelihood of closing the sale when the salesperson does the first move.
3. Fun with rhymes – people are more likely to process the message when it’s been broken down, and rhymes are a fun way to tap into that recognition process.

Fourth Industrial Revolution

We are privileged to live in age where we get to be at the forefront of all these advancements. While as an entrepreneur I see infinite possibilities, the bigger question is–how can we position ourselves to ride the wave of these developments?

And more so, are there other things we have yet to uncover?

Deep-dive: A (better) way to size a market

Prior to the Entrepreneurship class with Professor Newman, I found myself guilty (among with many others I’ve met) of taking shortcuts when it comes to Market Sizing. What I used to do is pull up a resource (like IBISWorld), or Google for an infographic that looks like the one above, and once I get the number on the revenue of the industry then I found my market size. Plain and simple.

If you don’t have anything else, having this means you’re already ahead of the pack. But why then would we need a better way?  Here are three reasons why:

1. The number in the infographic represents what has historically been made, not the potential of what can be earned in the future.
2. More often we also find projected growth rates, but still this information does not give us insights on whether the market is over or under-served.
3. The revenue of the existing players does not necessarily imply there’s room for new entrants to take a piece of that pie.

So if this information doesn’t cut it, what else should we do?

One step at a time

I’ve started reading a book that was given to us as a gift by Professor Newman–the professor that I consider to be the best one I had at the program. The book is entitled Just Start – Take Action, Embrace Uncertainty, Create the Future (image links to Harvard Business Review Press):

Three essential partners in a founding team

A few weeks before my graduation from the MBA, I set up the opportunity to have a quick lunch with my Negotiations professor, another nerd I dearly admired. While we spent most of the time navigating his career choices so that I can be guided with mine, we were also able to stir the discussion to a topic of our mutual interest–Entrepreneurship.

“When it comes to setting up your own company, the right time is when you’ve met these three essential partners for your founding team: a passionate products guy, a persuasive sales person, and a stingy numbers kid.”

Hitchhiker’s guide to the Future of Work

I found this useful video from Stanford Graduate School of Business’s Career Services on strategies for surviving a career pivot. I believe this is timely considering it fits my context–being a generalist who has been hopping from one career to another. It also highlights valuable insights on how to transition, and the value of pro-bono consulting/project work in making ourselves attractive to prospective employers.

On Lakes and Swans

So what is Swan Lake, what’s a black swan, and why am I a diviner?

Hello World

This is my very first post and I’m new to WordPress.

I created this blog to capture my thoughts around three particular domains of knowledge that I’m particularly passionate about. Hopefully this blog can act as a channel to pass on the learning I achieve everyday and serve as an archive of the knowledge base that I will be building.