Sharing Mary Anne, my wife’s article first published in HerWord.com last September 30, 2010
Dear Mrs. Colayco,
Where can I go to learn about the stock market? I hear about ordinary employees like me playing the stock market on the Internet and they say they make a lot of money from it.
—Aggie
I received a question some time back on a matter that applies even today.
Would it be wise to borrow to grow our catering business?
Ten years ago, my husband and I took over his mother’s catering business. Although the business has been around for 50 years and has built a solid reputation for quality food and exceptional service, we soon realized it needed a lot of improvement. We had to spend most of our savings to build a new kitchen, get a new service vehicle, buy new equipment and utensils, design a new logo, etc. We also had to re-introduce the business to the market because most of its old customers were gone. In this kind of business, we always have to change outdated equipment and design to keep up with the changing trends and keep the competition at bay.
Continue reading Loan to grow a business
Almost all entrepreneurial books talk about three “must haves” in establishing and sustaining a profitable enterprise. Business history has shown that the personal passion and vision of the entrepreneur-founder generally leads to create the business (company) that produces (technology) services and/or products that fill a continuing need of a sufficiently large consuming public (market). Yes, it seems to be incontrovertible that passion, technology and market must go together if a business is to succeed. The more interesting question though, is, which among the three must your starting point be? Or, could any one of these three “must haves” in fact, be a starting point in establishing a business?
Continue reading Getting into business