Building a circle of success

GO NEGOSYO PILIPINAS

- ANGAT LAHAT! JOEY CONCEPCION

There is a special place in my heart for successful entrepreneurs who mentor other entrepreneurs. It takes a generous soul to share their hard-earned knowledge so that others might also have a chance to succeed. Last week, I had a chance to pay tribute to one such man at the 50th anniversary of the company he founded, R. Lapid's Chicharon & Barbecue.

Rey C. Lapid was one of our most active mentors at Go Negosyo. He volunteered to mentor at even our specialized programs like Kapatid Mentor ME (the "MBA for MSMEs"), the Kapatid Agri Mentor ME (for agripreneurs), and even took the time to mentor online when his schedule was too tight. He joined us at our entrepreneurship tours for 3M on Wheels (then called Mentor ME on Wheels) to the provinces around the Philippines. He was a man of few words, but when he did speak, he was brimming with ideas.

He was already a successful businessman when he joined our roster of Go Negosyo mentors. The growth of his company is an example of a micro-enterprise becoming a small company, then growing to a medium enterprise, and now a large, multi-franchise operation. Along with that success came a treasure trove of lessons that he generously shared whenever he mentored small entrepreneurs.

He started his pork crackling business using what he learned as a young man who gathered trimmed-off pork skin from his father's meat stall in the Quiapo public market. From those discarded pork skins from market stalls came a business now synonymous with that beloved Filipino snack, chicharon.