We got hired to run a planning seminar for a hotel in Subic. As I listen to my colleague conduct a program on customer service, I got the inspiration to write this blog. You see, not too long ago, my colleague was my assistant — now we are co-equals. Here’s more, the owner of the hotel who hired us once belong to a team I used to manage.

For 2010, here’s a great suggestion for a goal to have – A MENTOR.

Having a mentor or mentors (better) will really change your life for the better. Life is too short for you to learn by personal experience and at many times , it may be perilous. While personal experience is  a good teacher, there’s an alternative to that — experience of other people.  Having a mentor allows you to learn from his/her experience.

Be selective of your choices — not everyone is qualified to be a mentor. In my view, there are 3 things that you need to consider in getting a mentor:

1) Competence – he/she needs to be very good at the thing you need to learn. You can’t learn about cooking from someone who burns every dish he touches or someone who is single does not make a good mentor on marriage.

2) Integrity – there are two ways to accomplish goals, the right and the wrong way. Make sure your mentor will help you chose the right path.

3) Willingness – your mentor must be willing to mentor you right? Good people will only be to happy to mentor you. Francis Kong once told me, “when the student is ready, the teacher appears”.

Much as I mentored many, I too was mentored by a lot of people —  and I continue to have mentors. I am blessed that I have very good mentors all throughout my life. Today, I still search for mentors and learn from their wisdom – not just professionally but also personally. I got mentors in my profession; mentors in the faith; mentors in relationships; etc.

I am going to blog about my mentors soon… but let me recommend the best mentor (and Lord) you can ever have: Jesus Christ.

Dedicate 2010 to the Lord and it will be a great year.

Happy New Year to all!

Randell, Mia and Kids

“It’s important to know how our prepaid customers think. If you’re a telco, how do you convince a farmer to spend his money on prepaid load over food?” – Ernest Cu, President and CEO of Globe Telecoms

From http://www.abs-cbnnews.com/business/12/19/09/getting-know-sophisticated-prepaid-user

What was that? Globe wants to convince farmers to spend their money on prepaid load over food? Did I read that correctly? Whatever happened to business ethics, corporate social responsibility or just plain decency? I know that profit is the main reason for business, but this is another issue and it’s absolutely, well… wrong!

Poverty is the country’s biggest problem; lack of financial literacy is a leading reason why poverty is very difficult to battle —  then we have corporate giants who even brag about how they want to milk us Pinoys the limited money we have.

This makes me even more passionate about the advocacy to bring financial literacy to Pinoys! Hmmm, maybe I should also change my telecom provider.