Weblinked 7.0

There's seven of us. We met each other through the internet. We all joined a group about three years ago exclusively for Filipino mommies. We visit each others' blogs and from there we were able to develop some camaraderie. What made us closer is the fact that six of us live in the same city, in areas near each other. One is from a different city but it doesn't matter. She joins us whenever she can.

Three years ago, one of us suggested we meet up and have dinner. And so we did. We met in a mall and had our first dinner at Five Cows. Only four of us were able to come but in most succeeding meet-ups, we are complete. We had our picnic, we had our Xmas party, we had our malling and eat-outs, we attended events a few times.

We created our own site catered to mommies all over the world, Filipino Mom Blog. True, we were not able to give this much attention as all of us have our own preoccupations in our daily lives. But we are still maintaining it and will relaunch as soon as we can. I hope we can relaunch this year.

What we are busy with right now as a group is our newly formed small company, Weblinked 7.0. It was borne out of Wenchie's entrepreneurial spirit. There is a big market for a lot of professionals, and people with businesses, which are very interested in creating and maintaining their own websites. This triggered her to tap potential clients and for us to start a web development group.

I will not go into details but this small group will evolve into media consultancy and events organizing later on. For now we are focused on website development and maintenance, which includes web content management depending on the needs of the clients.

Finally, I was able to join the group yesterday as it was a holiday. We missed Chats because of her migraine. Talk about wrong timing. We had our meeting at Figaro, UP-Ayala Technohub. It was very productive as we were able to finalize the first leg of our activities complete with target dates of completion.


Julie, Feng, Wenchie, Me, Cookie
We have different personalities but we have the same drive to make things happen. We have proven this in our individual lives, professionally and personally. I guess these differences in personalities are complementing as we have been together for about three years now.

Wenchie is the entrepreneur. Chats is the marketing person. Cookie can take care of legalities as she is very well versed in big businesses and her husband is a lawyer. Cess is a good writer. Julie has technical knowledge and has a resource person, her husband who is an IT consultant. Feng takes care of government dealings as she is very familiar of the procedures. I can do business development and financial and investment management - managing costs, expenses and how to make the business more profitable.


Julie, Wenchie, Me, Feng, Cess, Cookie
This project of ours excite us because this is something we are passionate about. We love the internet, its benefits and its power to send messages across millions of people in just one click.

We have to manage our busy schedules for this great project of ours. Admittedly, we have our own preoccupations. We are all mothers for one. I am in the corporate. Julie is a teacher. Wenchie is an entrepreneur and works part time in a government agency. Feng works too. Cookie presides their business. Chats does a lot of freelance writing as well as Cess and she's also into sales.


Cookie, Me, Miss Liza Maza, Wenchie, Julie
We chanced upon former congresswoman Liza Maza at Figaro. Wenchie introduced herself since she and Miss Liza have a common ground. We took the opportunity to have our photo with her.

She said it perfectly as a reply to what Cookie said that we have our "own things". Miss Liza said, "women, they always have their own thing". Haha. True.

Trust us, women, to make things happen. :)

On a More Optimistic Note.....

A link from Time's Tweeter caught my attention, Overrated Optimism: The Perils of Positive Thinking. Intrigued, I clicked on the link and read on. On my mind was what can be the perils?

I know that positivity resulting to complacency is one. It can be detrimental if all one does is sit all day, do nothing but just give oneself sweet talk that good fortune will come like magic. That will cause agitation at least for me.

The article as I understand it commented on certain groups of people and even organizations whose reading of positivism became more of wishful thinking to the point of sugar coating words thinking of this as motivation and optimism.

What comes to mind are the two leaders I encountered in my corporate life.

Mr. Action Man simply inspires the organization, from the lowest level up to the top management. He kept the flame, which was already quickly fading, so alive for the people once again.

We can attribute his charisma to sheer sincerity of his intentions. He is a man for others and truly an action man. He was very sensible and charismatic without being big on words. His words are not rehearsed but always with so much wisdom. His very presence vibrate positivity.

The work environment suddenly turned from tired and worried to one that is dynamic, positive and harmonious. True enough, our organization turned around barely six months after he assumed CEO position. The company made its profit after years of being in the red.

Then the torched was passed on to another leader. I commend her attitude for trying to reach out to everyone in the organization. I just don't know why her sincerity cannot be felt. She is good in delivering speeches, in making presentations but none of these were able to ignite the passion the organization once had. Even the middle managers do not feel any vibrancy on her leadership.

A leader cannot just be full of positivism and words to live by but lacking concrete and effective directions. The people will readily perceive false optimism.

Mr. Action Man managed to put actions into his words. He gets things done without much ado. He is very positive that the action plans will work and he, together with the whole organization, worked hard to make them real.

I can see where the article is coming from.

True, there were a lot of factors why the organization went back to being in the red. This is not to say it was just about the change in leadership. For one, the employees across all ranks and departments have their roles to play. The economy, the competition were the biggest hurdles (but that's why there are CEOs and executive committee).

But regardless of all these, an honest to goodness positive attitude and management are still possible as we have already proven.

"Stuff happens" as mentioned in the Time article but positivity cannot be discounted. Sobriety, when called for, should not harm our passion. Keep faith and optimism alive. Stuff happens and you start to be negative about everything, you're doomed. I still choose positivity. What else is there in the first place?

That's the point I want to deliver when it comes to creating and implementing positivity in our lives, professionally and personally. Positivity is bringing out the best in a situation, implementing actions with conviction with an unwavering faith and belief to what God can do in helping us achieve our goals.

One thing that did not sit well with me in this Time article was the way life coaches like Joel Osteen and Tony Robbins were regarded. These people live what they preach and they are not out there just to sweet talk the people. I did not mean to say the article implied something like that. But it felt like it downgraded how powerful and real life coaches like them are able to share to the people who listen and reflect.

"Optimism was not only patriotic, it was a Christian virtue, or so we learned from the proliferating preachers of the "prosperity gospel," whose God wants to "prosper" you. In 2006, the runaway bestseller The Secret promised that you could have anything you wanted, anything at all, simply by using your mental powers to "attract" it. The poor listened to upbeat preachers like Joel Osteen and took out subprime mortgages. The rich paid for seminars led by motivational speakers like Tony Robbins and repackaged those mortgages into securities sold around the world." *Overrated Optimism

I do believe that God wants to prosper us. God is good all the time. I will let this post end with this question again, tell me, what better else is there to believe? I will always choose positivity and being optimistic the way I stated it two paragraphs above. They are still more practical choices if I may say that.

Balancing the Scale

I just needed to change my template. This looks like a table cloth. It's green, it's dainty and it has flowers. This is not me and I don't know why I like it. Edited, 8.17.09, 10:08AM. Obviously I was not able to stand the green, flowery, table-cloth like template. Too dainty for me. I opted to go back to my old template. End of edit.

In an unrelated matter, I finally used TweetDeck for my Twitter updates. I love it! It's more organized than Twitter and I can easily read updates. I use Twitter for two things - number one would be for my microblogging and number two would be updates from different news tweets and what's the latest on Hollywood. I am informed right away what is happening around the globe which is also vital with my kind of work.

This tweet update got me interested, from CNNMoney.com's Ask the Expert, "Retired at 38, Reality vs. Fantasy". The email sender has $900,000 and tired of the highly pressuring corporate life.

In a nutshell, the expert advised not to retire at the drop of the thought but take on simpler jobs, reduced hours and see how he will find living a simpler, slower paced life. It could be the younger one retires, the more money one needs.

Take that in Philippine setting. How much is $900,000? At the current conversion rate, that would be P43M. Yes, he can very well retire, build a ten-door townhouse or apartment for rent and invest some in stocks. But this comes to mind, if I have that money, will I retire this early?

Definitely I will invest my money on more real estate properties and stocks (with extra caution on this one). Financially, I will ensure the future of my daughter and my family. I will indulge on my interests like traveling with my family and pamper myself and my family on a number of occasions. I will set aside bigger amounts for my church and other charitable institutions for senior citizens and street children.

Being an entrepreneur as what I have been trying to master now is a totally different discussion so let me leave that part. So back to the question, can I really leave my work? Work for me is a source of good income and benefits. But additionally, it is one of the ways I enrich my social life and a great venue for continuous learning. I love interacting with the different people I meet in and out of my job. Sure I can also do that even without a job but it could be more limited.

Sometimes too, it's not all about money. A change in lifestyle when one retires has a big emotional impact one might not be prepared to take on. I want to slow down once in a while but my body system looks for a fast-paced life. Multi-tasking is my brand of heroin if I may borrow a line from Edward Cullen.

I always tell this to myself, I should be enjoying what I am doing so that I will not drag myself to work everyday. It's a personal decision of wanting to hold a career and continue balancing the scale. Taking a sabbatical is a good thing if work pressure is taking its toll. We all need to breathe some fresh air after all.

Restaurant City and Your Management Style

I have been playing Restaurant City for maybe four nights now. My sales is doing good. I have already reached the 10K bracket (but I bought a lot of fixtures so now, it's down to 8k). What I like about this game in Facebook is it's not time consuming. You open your restaurant, ensure that it is well-manned - you have your business running while you do other productive things.

Restaurant City can be a gauge of how good a leader and a manager one is in terms of the following aspects:

Customer Service
1. Do you provide your customers the basic needs like a clean wash room?
2. Are you able to divide the layout properly? How many square meters do you provide for the dining area and the wash room? How many tables and chairs do you provide to accommodate your customers without sacrificing their comfort?
3. Do you have the proper size of manpower versus the needs of your restaurant - its size and customer base.
4. Are you able to position your people properly such that they are able to attend to your customers promptly?
5. Do you excite your customers with the different menus that you offer?

People Management
1. Are you a hands-on manager? Do you give your people a free hand to manage their tasks once you have oriented them?
2. Are you well-manned? Do you encourage multi-tasking or each person has a specific role during their shift?
3. Do you schedule breaks or do you let your people reach their breaking point before you let them rest?
4. Do you let them eat properly or do you ration food?
5. Do you sack an employee on first offense? What policies have you laid about employee infractions?

Sales Building
1. Satisfaction rating translate to sales generally. Do you monitor the satisfaction rating and implement measures to arrest the decline? Do you implement strategies to continuously make it higher?
2. Again, do you have the right number of people to serve the number of customers that go into your store? Are they in the right position? Do you take note the number of walk-outs because of inefficient service (slow attending time, no available seats)?
3. Do you go around your neighboring restaurants to check what they are offering in their menu? Do you try to trade ingredients you need so you can offer something new to your customers?

Profit
1. How much of your sales go to manpower expense or renovation/face-lift expense?
2. Is your layout efficient to maximize your seating capacity versus your manpower? Does it complement the size of your restaurant?
2. How do you see renovation and buying additional fixtures and equipment, an expense or an investment?

I base my decisions in running my restaurant with the above questions. That is the reason why I get so excited with this game. I implemented the following as soon as I reached level 11, 10x10 floor area.

1. 1:4, 1 cook for every 4 tables.
2. 3 cooks all the time and 2 waiters.
3. An assigned cleaner if it's peak time.
4. Provided a waiting area with 2 seats. The customers actually wait for vacant seats.


EQ is very much needed too as there are times you have to work with your neighboring restaurants for ingredients you want to trade. If you're nice and you have what they need also, you just might get what you need.

A well-managed store (or department) makes the owner more productive as he or she can focus on other business opportunities that can make the company grow.

Remember though, for every computer game, there is a cheat sheet. Let's make it sound better, there are hints and guides you can find. But for all it's worth, challenge yourself first and make strategies on your own.

Restaurant City is like running your own business. See how it will grow. It will give you a sense of satisfaction knowing that this is also what you are doing managing your department or your unit in your line of work or even in your household.

Yes, the name of my restaurant is Serendipity. Obviously it was inspired by one of the most romantic movies I like, Serendipity, with John Cusack and Kate Beckinsale.


It's fun!