“No one became rich by working 9 to 5.” “Why slave yourself by working a regular job? Be an entrepreneur and take back control of your life!”
Such are the talking points of some “financial advisors” and “experts” that have sprouted all over social media in the Philippines.
The talking points can vary, but the message is clear: working a day-to-day job will never get you rich, so quit that job and take that risk by starting your own business!
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In his 2016 Last Week Tonight episode about multi-level marketing (MLM) firms and their negative effects to their “recruits,” satirist John Oliver showed the absurdity of this mindset that everybody can be an “entrepreneur.”
Drawing on the talking points of most MLM companies – the so-called “pyramid scheme,” where new recruits will then be encouraged to recruit more people to join their company – Oliver showed a video clip of one former MLM company explaining how, after around 13 or so cycles of recruitment (based on the assumption that you’ll have to recruit five more people, then those five new joinders will recruit five more of their own), you’ll “exceed the population of the Earth.”
“Within 13 cycles you run out of people – and that is, assuming that everyone on Earth wants to become a protein-shake distributor,” Oliver himself quipped.
Exactly! Hindi lahat ng tao, pwedeng maging negosyante. Hindi lahat pwedeng magbenta ng kung anu-ano.
Kung tutuusin nga, pati mga MSMEs, kailangan ring mag-hire ng mga tauhan para maayos na mapalakad ang kanilang mga establisyimento.
Kaya naiiling na lang ako sa ilang mga “financial guru” kuno na pilit nang pilit sa mga tao na huwag nang maghanap ng trabaho at sa halip ay maging entrepreneur na lang sila.
Kung tutuusin nga naman kasi, hindi ba nila nare-realize na yung 50.3 milyong mga Pilipino na may trabaho (batay sa ulat ng Philippine Statistics Authority noong 2023) ang siya ring bumubuhay sa mga maliliit na negosyo gaya ng mga sari-sari store?
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I believe no one said it better than national hero Dr. Jose Rizal who, in one of his letters to his sisters, declared: “Not all of us can be doctors; some of us have to till the soil.”
Hindi naman sa sinasabi nating masama per se ang magtayo ka ng sariling negosyo, o sumabak ka sa sideline para may dagdag-kita ka, lalo na sa hirap ng buhay ngayon.
Pero ang masama ay yung ibinababa mo ang mga taong nagpapagod bilang mga ordinaryong empleyado upang itaguyod ang kanilang pamilya – tapos sasabihan mo pa sila na parang inaalipin nila ang sarili nila!
#WeTakeAStand #OpinYon #ColumnbyJamesVeloso #UnCommonSense #ToxicEntrepreneurMindset