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Nora Soriño .

ILIGAN City–Every business venture is a gamble. Take this newspaper with its founder, Ernesto “Toto” Chu who had to struggle with the odds, a few decades ago.

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We will never really be able to fathom how he had succeeded in this business in this part of the world where others failed.

Envious of his success, others try to copy him or his strategies. Or identify themselves to be connected with this paper. But copying, or identifying with a successful one, or go into some demolishing mode if only to elevate oneself in the same business can only do so much.

Someday, somehow, something’s got to give.

Maybe, Toto has some trade secrets. So let’s not prod him on that But his other strategies are not secrets at all. Like, “the proper solution to a particular problem will lead to success.” Or seeing to it that the goods, that is, the newspapers, are delivered on time, and “daily.” As in “daily,” and pronto. Now, the paper is a going concern and has been such for quite some time already. Throughout Mindanao.

But as a going concern, one can’t just rest on the laurels especially in this internet age.

So, it’s time to tell this story of one Chief Executive Officer of some business that’s as successful as this daily.

Bammy, the CEO of the A Company was retiring. He was told by Management to scout for one.

He did not have a hard time looking for one. He had Harold, his son in mind. (“Way pabor-pabor”?)

When he told Harold about it, the latter almost could not believe his ears. In school up to college, he was just an ordinary student, even struggled with his grades. But he could say in the eyes of his father Bammy that he was earnest. It was a gut-feel of his father, he could see. Which became a riddle for him. What did his father see in him?

One day, his father told him that he had to now begin his work as his understudy. Because, Bammy explained, one of the middle managers came down with a serious case of apendicitis and had to be taken to the ICU.

He had no choice. And anyway, the idea of becoming a CEO somewhat appealed to him even if he did not really know what it was all about, but no matter. He’ll know it in due time, he tried to think positively.

As he was made to sit on the desk of the manager who was sick, Harold felt like a fool especially that no one briefed him about the company or about his job.

So he just tried to act as if there was nothing the matter and tried to absorb as much as he could what the product and services the company was offering. Little by little too, Harold knew something about the company and could talk something about the company when some visitor came around.

He was able too to observe Bammy, his father as the latter went about his job, and sometimes the serious face in his father breaking into a smile at him whenever they came across each other in the company area.

And then Harold observed about his father as the latter went about his job as CEO of A Company.

He was always talking with sales agents of the company. And even with prospective sales agents.

And one thing more, it became a habit with his CEO father Bammy. He then decided that if other men had this well, fun nights  of “going out with the boys,” his father had this habit of doing his  night out with persons in sales.

So, this was among his father’s formula for success as CEO of a big company? And he saw his father winking knowingly at him whenever they ran across each other within the company. Meaning, his father knew that he, Harold had made some major analysis about his father’s career in the company.

In that connection, I remember boss Toto Chu say that first we train reporters. By “them” meant those connected with this company, the Mindanao Gold Star Daily.

The logic, I could see was that being “reporters” were far more attractive for any person to be with the company in the beginning.

And then, boss Toto says, later, we train others to do the selling.

That, in a nutshell is “genius” in business. No further comment, Your Honor.

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