Dr. Armand Cacacho, FICD
Fellow
Institute of Corporate Directors
This article is based on my own entrepreneurial journey in the USA and is intended to provide some insights that could help the many micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs) in the Philippines. It is based on my decades of experience as an entrepreneur in the San Francisco Bay Area, California starting a company from zero and scaling it into a multi-million dollar revenue company.
My interest in entrepreneurship began after I took a course in entrepreneurial management as part of my Master of Business Administration (MBA) program in Chicago in the early 1980s. Following graduation, I toyed with several ideas to start as a business but none of the initial ideas became a reality.
I moved to the San Francisco Bay Area, California in 1984 after I was recruited to work at a construction management company here. It was the golden age of the technology industry in the San Francisco Bay Area/Silicon Valley with many technology companies starting and building their corporate headquarters and manufacturing facilities here.
As a Civil Engineer with an MBA, I worked on many of these projects as part of the consulting team working for real estate developers and some of the biggest banks in the USA that financed these projects. After several years of working for the company, my entrepreneurial interest got me again into thinking of starting my own construction management company. To supplement my knowledge base gained from my MBA program and work experience, I read two books from two successful American entrepreneurs titled “What They Don’t Teach You at Harvard Business School” and “The Art of the Deal”. These two books provided me with additional knowledge on building “soft skills”, negotiations, and strategies.
Feeling confident but no outside funding, I embarked on my first business, a construction management company, and bootstrapped it. At first, my fee was a few thousand dollars per contract. Then I started winning larger contracts with several hundred thousand dollars per contract and total annual revenue reaching a million dollars. Banks started calling me offering financing to grow even larger. With bank financing, my company started winning in the millions of dollars range per contract.
I also started buying and selling real estate and co-founded a mortgage finance company in addition to founding or co-founding other businesses in the technology and healthcare space. While the other businesses had mediocre financial results, the others flourished. My successes led to me to being recruited to become an executive of a Fortune 200 multinational company in California.
Lessons for MSMEs
Prepare
Get the necessary education, training and skills in your field of interest. You do not
need to get a full MBA to obtain these core skills. Get educational training in accounting and finance, marketing, entrepreneurship, operations management, and information technology.
Think Big
Find ways and don’t be afraid to meet with executives and powerful people from big
corporations. Otherwise, you will always be a small business. In my case, I took on
leadership and chairmanship positions in business associations in California. I did a
lot of public speaking in conferences and made presentations with executives from
many large businesses including Fortune 500 corporations. Project power and
knowledge of your own market area.
This is how I became known in the construction industry in California and was
eventually recruited as a joint venture partner of several Fortune 500 corporations in
the engineering and construction industry. These large multinational corporations
became repeat clients/partners of my construction management business for many
years and lead to winning several awards in California for my business including a
permanent bronze plaque on the wall of San Francisco International Airport for my
role in helping build the airport to what it is today.
Don’t Be Afraid to Tell Your Story
In most Asian cultures, it is not often that business people tell the world of their
successes. They are often apologetic if they sound like bragging about their
achievements (in Tagalog: nagbubuhat nang sariling bangko). If you, the
entrepreneur/business person, do not tell the world of your successes, other people
will not know what you do and are good at. Most customers and other business
people will likely deal with successful entrepreneurs/business persons who have
good products or services.
Be Nice and Grateful to Other People
In business, it pays to be always nice and grateful to other people. This has always been one of my greatest assets (my soft skills). It is not enough to have a great product or service. The entrepreneur/business person has to have a great personality. This can come handy when dealing with customers, employees, and other stakeholders.
Some Final Thoughts
Success for an entrepreneur is not guaranteed. You have to do several experimentation and iteration until you find the right product-market mix. Once you find the strategy that is repeatable, you’ll then face the challenge of scaling your business into a large enterprise. Successful entrepreneurs do fail at one point or another in their journey. Even large and established companies sometimes fail when they launch a new business or product. You should be able to take those lessons learned and use them in your next venture.
About the Author
Dr. Armand Cacacho, FICD is a Certified Board Director (NACD.DC) by the National Association of Corporate Directors USA and a Senior Accredited Board Director (SID-SrAD) by the Singapore Institute of Directors. In addition to his MBA, his postgraduate education includes Strategy and Innovation Specialty (Stanford Graduate School of Business), Global Management and Business (Stanford University), Renewable Energy Specialty Professional Certificate Program (Stanford School of Engineering), Certificates in Disruptive Innovation Strategy and Entrepreneurship (Harvard Business School), Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence (DeepLearning.AI and John Hopkins University), and Exponential Technologies (Singularity University). He is a licensed Professional Engineer (PE) in the USA. Armand was recognized by the late President George H. W. Bush, Sr. for his leadership in the Asian American Pacific Islander (AAPI) community in the USA in 1992 and won awards from various industry and professional organizations in the USA. Armand is an Adjunct Professor at Asian Institute of Management and faculty member of the Institute of Corporate Directors Philippines. He has been serving as Mentor to Stanford graduate students since 2015 (on and off).
He can be reached at armandcacacho@gmail.com or his LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/armand-cacacho-nacd-dc-a128a515/
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