Anointed CEO

What type of automobile does Fernando Poe Jr. (FPJ) usually owned in his movies?
What does Dolphy usually wear in his movies?

I am a great believer of what psychology refers to as conscious mind and subconscious mind. Conscious mind is basically defined as the awareness of our thinking, feeling, and doing. While subconscious mind is considered as the deepest level of consciousness, that individuals are not directly aware of, but still affects conscious behavior.

You may google it for deeper meaning, as I do not intend to discuss the details of it, but I believe you got the definition and difference between the two.

Now, going back to my intro questions, the answers are: Owner Type Jeep. The cheapest automobile available in the Philippines. And Sando, a sleeveless shirt and probably the cheapest shirt you can buy in the market today.

So what am I driving here?

I refer to FPJ (Da King) and Dolphy (King of Comedy) as they are the most “masa” actors in Philippine movies for more than 4 decades. Majority, if not all of their movies, they played as a poor and almost helpless man where they will triumph at the end. This is also the story line in most movies and telenovelas by actresses Sharon Cuneta and Judy Ann Santos.

And who are the heartless kontrabidas? The rich and successful.

Regularly watching and reading the same kind of material is like enforcing your mind to feed it with that substance. The more Filipinos watch this type of movies, the more they are programming their subconscious mind that being rich is evil. Or simply, being poor is good and being rich is bad. So they stop dreaming of becoming rich. They even teach their kids not to be rich indirectly.

When I was young, I remember a relative giving me unsolicited advice saying, “Wag masyadong mataas ang pangarap, mataas din ang babagsakan mo.”

Is the entertainment industry and moviegoers are not aware of this? I don’t know. But I want to leave a question for you to ask yourself. What do you feed into your conscious and subconscious mind?

In the past, this donut store was successful in creating a marketing buzz in U.S. and knows how to exploit buzz opportunities. How successful are they in US?

There were stories that people are camping outside the store the night before grand opening just to be the first to get the taste of their melt-in-your mouth donuts.

Here is another article back in 2001 on how people cant wait for Krispy Kreme to open up in their city.

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/business/33430_krispy01.shtml

So after I heard that they’re sending dozends of donuts to top bloggers in the Philippines, I wonder what the result of their efforts is, considering pinoys are not really donuts lover.

Very few bricks-and-mortar businesses are convinced of the effectiveness of advertising online (yet?) in country’s local sites. They still prefer traditional media (e.g. newspapers, billboards, radio, etc.), and they have valid reasons whether we like it or not. There are a lot of variables but the core reasons are the following:

Ads limited room for creativity. With limited pixels in a webpage, web designers are almost helpless to create a banner ad that will get readers attention without annoying them. In desperations, some put their ads in the middle of the article to get attention, not really a great user experience.

Readers are too broad to target. Top sites like, inquirer.net, mb.com.ph, pinoyexchange.com, and yehey.com, big slice of their users are Filipinos outside the Philippines. So you will notice the ads in inquirer are more of on real estate, remittances, and online businesses advertisers. According to their site, only 33.13% are coming from the Philippines. Check their stats here. Advertising to them may be good for international branding though.

So far, local city guide clickthecity.com and other niche sites like weddingsatwork.com can deliver eyeballs more effectively than bigger players. Advertising in adwords is still too technical for local business owners.

Ads blindness. This is a fact, the more a person exposed to banner ads or text based ads (e.g. adsense, ypn), it increases its ad blindness. That’s why savvy users will not click these. This is a serious case for the forum sites like, pinoyexchange.

Small number of Filipino Internet users. Users from our country is relatively small compare to progressive asian neighbors, like Singapore. In 2005, Singapore has 66.3% of its population using the Internet while we got 9.0% (source: Internet World Stats). In addition, there is no reliable source to get more accurate guesstimate figure of active Internet users in the Philippines.

There are other reasons that may not be listed and I guess it’s a long way to go before my favorite lugawan sa kanto will advertise online.

Initially, I thought this guy was on crack offering a “FREE Hugs” to everyone. Silly eh? Watch the video as the result is astonishing and made me realize how people today are craving for a sincere, warm, and simple hug.

The message they want to convey is simple, “To let every single person know that they matter“.

Visit their site at www.free-hugs.com.

Since this is my first post under “Movie Dietary” category, allow me to explain what topics should be in here. These are blogs that lists some “food for the thought” that I picked up in a movie and I would like share it with you. This is NOT a movie critique article of some sort.

Let’s get started.

Movie Title: Invincible
Actor: Mark Wahlberg as “Vince Papale”
Synopsis: A story of a 30-year-old bartender that made it to the NFL Team. Read more at yahoo movies.

Some food for the thought from the movie:

Take out anything that will slows you down
In a scene where Mark was in a camp for try-out, he can’t seem to beat two other hopefuls in a sprint. What he did is, he replaced his regular football gear with a quarterback gear, which is lighter. With less weight, he then beat other players in a run.

In life, anything that is slowing us down to achieve our goals should be taken out. It could be a hobby, bad attitude, or relationship with wrong group of people.

Go out there and work harder
I did not say work hard, I say HARDER. In another scene, Mark ran around the neighborhood to prepare himself for the upcoming try-out. Then he went home, realizing that to qualify for the NFL team, he has to sacrifice more and so he went out again and ran more until evening.

To succeed, working harder is a key ingredient. We’ve heard this many times.

Learn the tricks
Mark Wahlberg was schooled by a veteran player on how to read the play of the opponent by simply checking the hand position during set-up.

In running a business or working as an employee, learning the tricks or trade in your field will help you a better person. If your job requires some typing, then be a better typist by teaching yourself to use home keys. This little effort may significantly increase your productivity.

Have fun
After Mark failed in his televised NFL debut game, he went back to his old buddies and played football with them in the mud. He had fun. He then redeems himself in the following NFL game.

Sometimes, we tend to forget to have fun in our work or in running our business. Constantly remind ourselves that work is effortless if we are having fun doing it.

Prove them wrong
In the movie, Mark’s wife separated with him and left him a very discouraging note saying, “You’ll never go anywhere. You’ll never make any money and you’ll never make a name for youself“. Will there be more discouraging words other than that? Sometimes, the person most dear to us is our very own critique. The least person we expect.

It is up to you to take the challenge and prove them wrong and show to them what are you capable of.

Are you tired of working with an egoistic boss?

Working as a consultant in several companies gave me a chance to work with different people with various positions. With countless meeting I’ve been into, I saw more than enough of “Battle of Egos”. Where two or more individual unconsciously played virtual tag of war and exhibits how big their egos are.

Egos are not necessary evil and everyone of us has an ego. It provide us drive and energy, if they are use appropriately.

Unfortunately, most of time the bad side of ego dominates and resulted in low productivity, culture of dishonesty, loss of good people, and intimidation. In Filipino, we call it “Pataasan ng Ihi”. Have you seen how our lawmakers debates on national television? You’ve seen a classic egos at war. You will rarely see sincerely acknowledge his mistakes. These are Ego-driven individual. Ego-free is the counterpart of Ego-driven.

In corporate world, executives pride themselves with their title, (e.g. “Executive Director”, “IT Manager”), salary, big offices, and more. They may not aware of this, but their mismanage ego comes with an expensive price tag.

I will post a series on managing our own ego and other people’s egos. Stay tuned.

When i bump into blogging few years back, i did not see the sense of writing a personal diary where people will read. I even asked myself “Why will they care about my thoughts and life“.

Until recently, when i was jobless and browse the entire day, I appreciate the benefit and potential of blogs.

Primarily, I am impressed with the information and thoughts from blogger whom i visited the most. I love reading interviews in newspapers to see the thoughts of people. I have this genuine interest in people inside me since i learned reading a broadsheet. I’ve read interviews and biographies of politicians, celebrities, businessmen, and leaders.

It is awesome learning experience where network of people share what they have learned from their mistakes and what made them successful. Blogging made it possible and have it available to everyone for free.

So, why did i start blogging? To payback.

I would like to share my experiences in life and hopefully (fingers crossed), people will find this blog as useful, informative, and entertaining. If not, shoot me an email.

Lastly, blogging and reading my own blog is like feeding my mind with nutrition  and to keep me motivated.