10/11/2019
RIP Mr. John Gokongwei Jr.
To honor one of the greatest business leaders who ever lived, here are 10 things we can learn from Mr. Gokongwei:
1. Significance Over Success
Mr. Gokongwei is the third richest man in our country yet his focus turned to philanthropy when he passed the reins of his business.
In 2006, at 80 years old, he gave away P20 billion or half of his shares in the JG Summit Holdings to the family foundation. He understands the Winston Churchill quote, “You make a living by what you get, you make a life by what you give.”
2. Frugality
Mr. Gokongwei takes pride in his frugality. He rides economy in his own airline before he got old and needed to ride business class. In the book, Lessons I Learned From My Dad, his son Lance spoke about his dad’s frugality in detail.
In my personal experience, I spoke in URC’s event for their top level management in 2014 at their GBF (Gokongwei Brothers Foundation) facility. I used a karaoke to deliver my speech. URC makes billions, yet I used a karaoke. I don’t find this funny but amusing, and I am amazed by their frugality. We moved to another venue for my trainings with them and just returned to the same venue in 2018. Guess what, the Karaoke is still there.
3. Avoid Bad Practices
He said, “Success is not necessarily connections, or cutting corners, or chamba—the three Cs of bad business. Call it trite, but believe me: Success can be achieved through hard work, frugality, integrity, responsiveness to change, and most of all, boldness of dream. These have never been easy slogans for me. I have lived by them.”
4. Be Fearless
“Life is full of challenges and so it’s full of opportunities and choices. You can either choose to be afraid or be brave. I chose to love my life even during times when I was afraid” he said.
5. Innovate
Mr. Gokongwei ventured into uncharted territory, from cornstarch to shopping malls, to jumbo jets, he innovated and changed entire industries. One in particular is in telecoms. He built Sun Cellular and offered unlimited text or call. People said it was crazy and there was no way it was going to last. When Sun was acquired in 2011, it was valued at a whopping 74 billion pesos.
6. Never Retire In Life
He never retired, he just changed his career. From a businessman to a philanthropist, he continued to abide by his calling in life to be an entrepreneur. He said, “Entrepreneurship for me is a path to a Happy Life.”
7. Never Stop Learning
He has a never stop learning approach to everything he does. When his kids are young, he wouldn’t give them much allowance, but he would spend money on books. According to his son Lance, their dad lets them buy as many books as they wanted but was very frugal on other things.
Mr. Gokongwei’s wife also teases him by calling his stacks of books and magazines the Great Wall of China.
8. Look back where you came from
9. Do Your Homework
In an ABS CBN article, Mr. Gokongwei does extensive study before venturing to another business. It may seem he's doing things on the fly but there's a careful study before it's done. He said, “You have to do four things. First, you have to assess the market. Second, is it large enough? Is there growth in the market? Third, do we have the capital to compete and fourth, do we have management and technical expertise to compete?”
10. There is no success without succession.
Long before his demise, he had passed on the reigns of JG Summit Holdings to his son Lance and family. He trained his children to work from the bottom of the company before they can be at the top. The title COO (Child Of Owner) didn’t exist for him. His children had to work harder than everyone else. As we can all see, he trained them well.
He said, “The business is not there to serve the family. The family is there to serve the business. I serve the people the business serves - our clients. I serve the people who work in the business - our employees.” What a perspective. Many businesses would greatly benefit from this wisdom.
We will surely miss one of the greats who taught us to start small but dream big.
