The return of the family business

My birth-day week kicked off last Saturday. I had dinner with my son, Gino, his wife Faye, their daughter Maxine, and her friend Joseph. When we entered the elevator we ran into Dante Silverio and as we were leaving the hotel restaurant we ran into Alex Castillo, a former client of McCann-Erickson. Of course, I said hello and that impressed the children. Nannie knows the whole world, they giggled.

On Sunday, Tina hosted lunch for me and I invited my old friends from Avellana. Erik arrived promptly at 9:30 a.m. We picked up Inday and Rey from SM Bicutan. Then we proceeded to Starbucks where we were supposed to meet whoever else showed up and predictably nobody did. We went on to Lily Pad. Marl texted for directions. She showed up with my godson BJ. Then predictably late Chito and Leps showed up.

It was a wonderful lunch, lots of fun and laughter, lots of wine and kare-kare, which I absolutely love but cannot for the life of me cook. I brought two bottles of Pinot Grigio, my newly discovered favorite wine, so light, refreshing, delicious and so, as I later e-mailed a dear friend, I overate, overdrank, overjoyed, and on Monday morning, I was overhung. But never mind, life went on.

On my birthday I like to think about changes. There are many. One is the rise of entrepreneurship. In 2001 I got my masters in entrepreneurship at the Asian Institute of Management. That was a triumph for me because I had never been to college. And now I had a master’s degree. I am not certain that I learned very much but it set me up to teach my Joy of Writing classes and saw me through my unlucky years.

I even taught entrepreneurship. My class did well at the school’s Entrep week, one of the groups grossing more than a hundred thousand in that period so from the results, I might have taught it well not because I learned it in school but also because I had done it. Doing it is the best teacher though one must be prepared.

Why is entrepreneurship back? It was always there. That’s the way the business world began, getting more and more elaborate, moving into the building of railroads, mass transit, airlines, food manufacturing, large manufacturing concerns, into investment banking until everything started to fall apart. Now, in the USA and Europe, all that has fallen apart and I, a visionary, see that we will return to simple entrepreneurship to survive then to succeed once again. I think you will forgive me for calling myself a visionary. My life has taught me that. When I say something will happen, it doesn’t immediately but it does in five years. That’s why I allow me to call myself a visionary.

Nevertheless I can see it happening. There is the strengthening of family businesses, one of the outstanding models of successful entrepreneurship. I now work for my first cousin who, little by little, is setting up a tribal business composed of many interrelated families. It is clever and it is bound to work well because it actually is the trend. The trend is to go back to what it was once but with improvements learned from the intervening periods so the family business is not exactly the same.

Maybe this is also why the Carl Jung Circle Center has decided to offer a seminar called Personal Power in the Family Business. It is designed for owners and their children in the family business and designed to help them define themselves within the family business. This is very important. Does s/he have a real say or is s/he merely a puppet? It will show them very creatively — meaning in a fun and cheerful way — how to establish their personal domain in the business.

This will be conducted by the three stars in the local Jung firmament — Dr. Dido Gustilo-Villasor, an outstanding therapist at the Makati Medical Center; Rose Yenko, a psychologist who does marvelous consulting work for large business corporations; and Sophie Sim-Bate, an outstanding child therapist. They all have outstanding skills. I met them when sometime in the ’90s I was thoroughly exhausted and stressed, saw a Jung Festival at the Ateneo, and decided to join. That introduced me to Carl Jung’s philosophies, which are not esoteric at all. I find him practical, spiritual, and highly creative, a lot of fun.

I have taken — and written about — all the Jung seminars this group gives because they are really good. I enjoy them and they help me find myself. They help me know people better. Through the changes in my life — and there have been many — Jung and my Jungian friends have helped me.

If you have a family business, if you feel your children need to discover themselves in it to take it forward after you and to continue to make it grow, send them to this seminar.   It will be on Aug. 26 and 27, from 9:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. at the Ateneo Rockwell in Makati. Tuition is P8,000 only. It will be good for your children.

To make reservations, call Tin at 0917-6172550 or e-mail jungphilippines@yahoo.com or call Rose at 0917-5123763.

I promise you, the young ones will have fun. That will make you happy, right?

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