Compassion = motivation

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Compassion = motivation

“If you want others to be happy,

Practice compassion. If you

Want to be happy practice compassion.”

-Dalai Lama-

I strongly feel that while the entrepreneurial mind enables a person to start and grow a business venture, it is compassion that will sustain it. If the primary motivation for setting up a business enterprise is profit, then an entrepreneur can lose his motivation once this is met. The business no longer becomes meaningful. The search for meaning in what we do is what often sustain us.

            Meeting the bottom line is important because it will allow me to pay my teacher and improve our facilities, but it is not the motivation that sustains me and keeps me fully invested in the vision of our school.

            I know of people who have set up schools, then just as quickly closed  them down, simply because they were no longer profitable. I have also met many venture capitalists who have offered to grow my school, but at a cost.

            I feel that in the end, a true entrepreneur will find more reward in the good that his business id doing for others whether it is through a service, a  product or job generation than the profits it brings.

            Compassion is an equally important component of the entrepreneurial mind. It determines the kind of decisions an entrepreneur will make, the type of culture a company will have and how customers and employees will be treated. Compassion is the heart of the business.

            The challenge for parents and teachers who want to teach compassion is to get children to care about people outside their families. Filipinos value close family ties, but we are not raised to share the same care and compassion for people in the community and the country.

            It will take a deliberate effort among parents and teachers to give children the opportunity to actively show compassion toward others.

Grace Glory Go (Philippine Star)

“We believe that every employee is an integral part of the business. We truly treat each person in the company like family. It’s faith in the fact that whatever we build will benefit not just ourselves but everybody around us. We have faith that whatever efforts we put in will bring good results.”

ABC’s of developing compassion

Always think of how you can improve people’s lives. Empathy towards other encourages compassion, which children can put into action by thinking of business ventures that can solve social ills or make a difference in other people’s lives. One of the key advocacies of the Multiple Intelligences School is to encourage children to use their intelligences to make a difference. In line with this, our children run a yearly MI Kids Can. For Kidss, by Kids Bazzar to teach children to be entrepreneurs with hearts. They create products and sell them for the benefit of underprivileged children.

            It is never too early to teach children that they can already think of ways to improve people’s lives. You can even start by asking your child to sort all his old toys and old clothes, sell these through a rummage sale and donate the earnings to support a feeding program that your child can be part of.

Believe that Filipino can. Love for country and caring for the Filipino should be in the heart of any future entrepreneur. We should model for our children pride in our heritage and our products. Buy Filipino and let your child know why. Explain how buying Filipino products will help generate businesses and jobs for our countrymen. My rule for is that we can only buy abroad what we cannot buy here. It has become second nature for my children to say, Mom, we have that in the Philippines, let’s not buy it here. By doing this, we come home with lighter luggage all the time.

            Remember that taking pride in the Filipino worker and our products will motivate the future entrepreneur to invest in our country.

Care about others. Successful entrepreneurs recognize that people contribute greatly to their company’s success. Teach your child to care more about others than the profit they can generate. Happy employees will be more productive employees. Joselito Campos learned from his father that Loyalty is a two way street. You have to take care of the employees and they will work (long and hard) for you. We treat our employees more as a family. When the entrepreneurial mind is wired to care about others, the motivation for product development and human resource development will always be meaningful and for the service of others.

“With ordinary talent and

Extraordinary perseverance

All thins are attainable.”

-Thomas Foxwell Buxton-