Turning Obstacles into opportunities

"Sir, talagang di na kayo ma-reach!" A student hollers at the professor, who reluctantly poses for yet another snapshot inside the Asian Institute of Management (aim) building in Makati City. "Saan po lalabas yang mga pictures nyo?"

"Ah, wala, wala..." the professor smiles politely. He seems very uncomfortable being a model. A small crowd gathers around the shoot. "Sheesh! Nakakahiya naman ito," the professor mutters under his breath, regretting the fuss this feature is creating. No doubt about it: Francisco Jay Bernardo III is big.

And that’s not to describe him physically (although he does appear imposing). Jay Bernardo is big in the sense that he has been named one of the Ten Outstanding Young Persons of the World (toyp) for 2004 in the field of entrepreneurship, the first Filipino ever to be honored in that category and only the 12th Filipino in the award’s 14-year history. Later this month, Jay, now 40, will receive the award in Fukoka, Japan.

The toyp is a program of the Junior Chamber International or Jaycees, a federation of some 200,000 young leaders and businessmen all over the world. It anually recognizes "individuals between the ages of 18 and 40 who exemplify the best attributes of the world’s young people". The nominations are selected in various categories such as politics, science, culture, academics, and of course, business. And without question, the man they call the "rainmaker" has earned his spot there.

Best known for his ability to turn everyday nuisances into business opportunities, Jay continues to inspire and impress the world of commerce. His money-making ideas come from the most sensible and the most trivial–from uncollected trash to inefficient parking lots to dirty public toilets (his current crusade).

His JAD Group of Companies, which started out as a manufacturer of plastic sticks for cotton buds, is now a billion-peso conglomerate of outsourcing establishments–a mere ten years after it was founded. It is currently (and profitably) involved in logistics, distribution, research and development, technology, and human resources.

Quite naturally, these triumphs have generated not just money, but recognition as well. One might therefore expect Jay to be kind of smug, aloof, and even a tad arrogant–the usual characteristics of a young hotshot.

"I’m not, though," he insists, sighing after the photographer finally decides he has enough shots. "Far from it, actually."

An idealist at heart, Jay is as passionate as anybody in trying to uplift the country through local entrepreneurship. He has pioneered the educational TV program EntrePinoy, and founded LET’S GO (Leading Entrepreneurs Towards Sensing Global Opportunities), a non-profit, non-stock organization which aims to support small-scale businesses.

In 2002, he decided to leave JAD to become a full-time teacher at the Graduate School of Business and the Asian Center for Entrepreneurship at aim. He joins his father there, who was a former dean of the school.

"This is my calling," Jay says. "Even when I was still with my company, I already wanted to help the economy. But I didn’t want a simple company program; I wanted it to be more than that. And that’s what convinced me to enter teaching."

Creative Ways

For Jay, urban madness is a reality that doesn’t easily go away. Because it’s there, he says it is better to turn it into an inspiration for profitable ventures rather than just sulk and complain.

"If you look at problems as opportunities, you can embrace each one," he says inside his small, tidy office at aim. "When people ask me what business they should go into, I often tell them to look inside themselves and know what it is they really want. And this works most of the time. If it doesn’t, my advice is to look for something irritating. You might be surprised just how many opportunities a single thing can offer."

Not many people, for instance, regard toilets as a significant contributor in boosting a country’s tourism, but in fact, the first impressions of a country by foreign travelers are made in the restrooms in the airport and then continue to the facilities in the different tourist spots.

Jay explains: "Many of us find these places, especially the poorly maintained ones, disgusting. But if we convert them into cleaner, sweet-smelling lounges, complete with good-grooming amenities, then we can charge a fee. And right now, a lot of people are gladly paying to use these lounges simply because they prefer cleanliness to filth."

He adds: "Another example can be the parking lots. Kung sa mga sinehan, merong mga reserved seats, then why not reserved parking spaces? And that’s just one point. I’m sure other people have other ideas for it."

Different alternatives for capital sources–that’s the rule Jay always follows. It is often the primary concern of new entrepreneurs, and naturally, this is what he tries to impart to his students.

As an educator, he is more of a practical, out-of-the-box kind of teacher; he never shouts, but rather maintains his strong personality through a deep, clear voice, where he "does things which are not at all traditional". Whenever he gets the chance, Jay brings his students out of the classroom, out of the school even, "so that they could experience real life and not just read about it in some book." Through this, he encourages his students in a way that lets them think more creatively and widely, which he says makes the atmosphere inside the classroom more relaxed. Basically, his knowledge is what he offers to people–nothing more, nothing less.

"I always tell my students, ‘look at your irritant’, and if there are many who share your view, then more likely there’s a business opportunity around it," he says. "And maybe, you can create something that serves a good purpose, too."

It’s true that his knack for creativity in business is a combination of many factors, but according to Jay, "I got much of it from the way I was brought up."

Starting Early

Even as a child, Jay was already inclined to business. In second grade, he sold sipa (shuttlecock) to make extra cash for toys that his allowance couldn’t afford. In order to finance his first business, he relied on strategy and a little help from his mother.

"My mom was the one buying the sipa that I was selling in school," Jay recalls. "And I had to be good at the game so I can make all the sipa go to the roof so that my classmates would buy again from me."

He stresses that he never borrowed money from his father, who, by then, was already teaching him basic accounting and business math.

"My dad, being the academician, taught me discipline. If I borrowed P1,000 from him, I had to pay him back with interest," he relates. "But I couldn’t understand him back then so I never borrowed from him. It was better that way."

Jay believes, however, that his father’s efforts to teach him advanced math at such an early age helped a lot because "he was also teaching me the value of money at the same time".

The eldest of three, Jay was also able to at-tend good schools. His father, a teacher, was entitled to having his eldest son study for free in whatever school he worked for (including, of course, aim).

"I got into better schools because of my dad," he smiles. "I was lucky, I was blessed."

After finishing his Industrial Management Engineering at De La Salle University and his mba at aim, Jay, with longtime friend Allan Reyes and lifetime partner Dina Go, put up a small business that initially catered to the needs of Johnson&Johnson, making the sticks for J&J’s cotton buds. But in no time, they were making the whole cotton bud.

According to Jay, their capital of P100,000 was quite low for a manufacturing business. But since they purchased old equipment from the company for a lower price or bought them on a "pay-when-able" basis, their seed-money proved to be enough.

"We were always looking for win-win scenarios. If I bought new materials, it would’ve cost J&J a heck of a lot more," he explains. "The product wouldn’t be as competitive and they would’ve ended up on the short end of the stick. You see, if I have a low cost of start-up, then I could give you a product that’s low cost."

The company became, in principle, an outsourced manufacturing group through which Jay was later able to put up several more companies for warehousing and distribution. The JAD Group of Companies was born.

"We broke down a whole company," he says, "and all of the companies are now on their own."

Developing their business not only resulted in good steady production and sales but healthy employee relations as well, something which he never forgot. In 2001, JAD was awarded the Employer of the Year by the Personnel Manager Association of the Philippines, beating out several multinationals. For the next two years, Jay and JAD would receive at least eight more national awards in business.

Interestingly, most of these were credited to the efforts of the JAD management to educate its employees on how to become entrepreneurs themselves. Human resource people were aghast, but Jay believes that by doing this, he’s not only helping the business grow, he’s also honing the employees’ skills and possibly making them future partners of the company.

"If they (the employees) leave us in good faith, more likely they’d still do business with us, right?" Jay says. "You don’t have to be selfish about it. We encourage entrepreneurship because this is what made us go up in life."

And life certainly does keep going up for Jay Bernardo III. Not just professionally, but personally as well. Happily married, he’s now more than ready to start a family, comfortably. His fortunes have assured him of that.

And yet for all his success, he remains the anti-thesis of a business mogul. "In my spare time, I like watching movies or going to places which have not been discovered before. I’m a bit of an adventurer, see? I’m not the type who would eat at the same restaurant over and over. I always like to see the alternative sides of everything," Jay explains. "Including, of course, the business scene."

But right now, his advocacy remains top priority. He has, after all, already conquered the financial world. Jay says he’s working on modules for high school students and grade school pupils to teach them early on what entrepre-neurship is all about and how they can benefit from it. He is also currently in talks with the Department of Education about having entrepreneurship as part of the curriculum in high school ("Hopefully, it will be implemented next year," he reveals). This would surely benefit everybody, particularly the youth, as they’d be able to see business in a positive light.

"Ngayon kasi, when kids hear about Bill Gates or other foreign giants in the trade market, they feel that duplicating their feats are impossible," he stresses. "They view them as an enigma, and hindi naman dapat ganoon. I mean, it’s not bad to model yourself after those guys. Pero sana, yung mga examples na makukuha natin sa kanila ay i-localize natin dito."

"Entrepreneurship is about being self-reliant. It is something worth pursuing, and it is something where you would really try to see how good you are."