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Excerpt

What Was The Thinking Process Behind This Entrepreneur’s Latest Business?

Thinking of a business is no different than studying for an exam, Check out Charles Sy’s own process of building up a business in this podcast!

How tight is the competition for talent?

In the Philippines, fresh graduates would almost always seem very angelic, and because of that, it feels like they have huge potential. However, if you put them out there, the potential you found during the hiring process suddenly disappears.

To be honest, it’s hard to find real talent. There are many good-hearted people out there. But you need to develop the many factors that are important for you.    

The hard part for those who hire fresh talents like Charles is that they’re first movers. They’re the pioneers in the Philippines, and because there’s no real basis for what they’re doing, there will be some who will drop out. 

In the end, it falls on the leader. Charles believed that they could achieve his goals. What’s important is how he and his team execute it—that includes hiring the right people and being patient with them. 

How do you keep the right people in your team?

You have to take care of them. Employees can understand this by looking at their CEO. Rarely will there be a CEO who believes that all of his achievements were because of him alone. A person who will say that it’s “All Me” is nothing more than a narcissist. 

Charles values people a lot. He has a few people that he treats as the cornerstones of his business. He keeps them no matter what.

Do you have any employees from Cotton Depot that are still with you after you sold the business?

There were some people that handled the back-end operations of Cotton Depot that went with Charles. One of his employees started out at 19 years old. Five years later, she’s now the oldest of his team at 24. She is now one of the cornerstones of Charles and she handles the company treasury. 

How many people do you have in your team?

Charles has around 40 people on his team. During peak seasons, he usually hires around 30 to 50 people contractually. In order to keep things on a personal level, he keeps most of his relations between his core employees.

How do you generate ideas?

Charles finds his ideas through a lot of things. Most of the time it’s from wanting to solve a problem. 

A good example would be how Dropify was founded. Charles called someone and talked about e-commerce. They got to converse about how Filipinos are very talented. They only needed money to allow them to take advantage of it.

Charles said to himself: “If he could only find a way so that online businesses no longer need capital, that would be great”.

How did you come upon these things? Is it about your experience?

Dropify was based a lot on Charles’ own experience. But the process of coming up with it was long for Charles. He had to think and research about things along the way. The whole process is also a learning experience for Charles because he makes sure to study and understand every piece of information that is needed to start up that business.  

This time of brainstorming, building up a business from scratch is incredibly enjoyable for Charles. 

This is because he knows that it’s a mixture of luck, God’s grace, and his own efforts that resulted in Dropify.

Do you have an online community for your people?

Charles started a group a few weeks ago that now has over 1,500 members. The boom in the number of members is the result of Charles solving a problem within the community. The group is named: “Pinoy drop-shipping via Lazada, Shoppee, and Shopify”.

The community serves as one big testimonial where drop shippers would share their stories of good profit and great service.