An excerpt:
John Gokongwei , Jr.
Ad Congress Speech
Nov 21, 2007
Before I begin, I want to say please bear with me, an
81-year-old man who just flew in from San Francisco 36 hours ago and is
still suffering from jet lag. However, I hope I will be able to say what
you want to hear.
Ladies and gentlemen, good evening. Thank you very much for
having me here tonight to open the Ad Congress. I know how important
this event is for our marketing and advertising colleagues. My people
get very excited and go into a panic, every other year, at this time.
I would like to talk about my life, entrepreneurship, and
globalization. I would like to talk about how we can become a great
nation.
You may wonder how one is connected to the other, but I promise
that, as there is truth in advertising, the connection will come.
Let me begin with a story I have told many times. My own.
I was born to a rich Chinese-Filipino family. I spent my
childhood in Cebu where my father owned a chain of movie houses,
including the first air-conditioned one outside Manila . I was the
eldest of six children and lived in a big house in Cebu 's Forbes Park .
A chauffeur drove me to school everyday as I went to San Carlos
University , then and still one of the country's top schools. I topped
my classes and had many friends. I would bring them to watch movies for
free at my father's movie houses.
When I was 13, my father died suddenly of complications due to
typhoid. Everything I enjoyed vanished instantly. My father's empire was
built on credit. When he died, we lost everything-our big house, our
cars, our business-to the banks.
I felt angry at the world for taking away my father, and for
taking away all that I enjoyed before. When the free movies disappeared,
I also lost half my friends. On the day I had to walk two miles to
school for the very first time, I cried to my mother, a widow at 32. But
she said: "You should feel lucky. Some people have no shoes to walk to
school. What can you do? Your father died with 10 centavos in his
pocket."
So, what can I do? I worked.
My mother sent my siblings to China where living standards were
lower. She and I stayed in Cebu to work, and we sent them money
regularly. My mother sold her jewelry. When that ran out, we sold
roasted peanuts in the backyard of our much-smaller home. When that
wasn't enough, I opened a small stall in a palengke. I chose one among
several palengkes a few miles outside the city because there were fewer
goods available for the people there. I woke up at five o'clock every
morning for the long bicycle ride to the palengke with my basket of
goods.
There, I set up a table about three feet by two feet in size. I
laid out my goods-soap, candles, and thread-and kept selling until
everything was bought. Why these goods? Because these were hard times
and this was a poor village, so people wanted and needed the basics-soap
to keep them clean, candles to light the night, and thread to sew their
clothes.
I was surrounded by other vendors, all of them much older. Many
of them could be my grandparents. And they knew the ways of the palengke
far more than a boy of 15, especially one who had never worked before.
But being young had its advantages. I did not tire as easily,
and I moved more quickly. I was also more aggressive. After each day, I
would make about 20 pesos in profit! There was enough to feed my
siblings and still enough to pour back into the business. The pesos I
made in the palengke were the pesos that went into building the business
I have today.
After this experience, I told myself, "If I can compete with
people so much older than me, if I can support my whole family at 15, I
can do anything!"
Looking back, I wonder, what would have happened if my father
had not left my family with nothing? Would I have become the man I am?
Who knows?
The important thing to know is that life will always deal us a
few bad cards. But we have to play those cards the best we can. And WE
can play to win!
This was one lesson I picked up when I was a teenager. It has
been my guiding principle ever since. And I have had 66 years to
practice self-determination. When I wanted something, the best person to
depend on was myself.
