Can you really find success by following your heart? Ask these entrepreneurs who built their businesses upon their passions.
Passion is the creative energy that fuels us. It is a driving need, a compulsion, and we cannot help but seek its fulfillment. It is also propulsion, a force leading to action or movement, which has enabled leaders to change the world. In 2013, an Ernst & Young survey on global job creation showed 43 percent of “the world’s most dynamic entrepreneurs” admitting that “a passion for their product or service was the driving force behind their market entry.” Included among the passion-driven are manufacturers, at 35 percent, and healthcare professionals, at 30 percent. The most passionate, at 47 percent, were in IT and technology, where the pursuit of “the next big thing” is practically habitual.
Wasn’t it Steve Jobs who said, in his much-quoted 2005 commencement speech at Stanford, that you should “have the courage to follow your heart and intuition?” In the same speech, he reasoned, “Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do.”
Of course, the pursuit of passion is not without risk: It can be all-consuming, which makes it potentially destructive, as well as constructive. In other words, passion could be the death of you, but it could also very well be the making of you. For the following entrepreneurs who embraced their passions, the struggle is well worth the prize.
FAST MOVER
Inheriting his dad’s passion for cars, a son rebuilds the family fortune
A couple of weeks before Jean Pierre “JP” Tuason graduated from De La Salle University, his dad, racing champion and automobile refinishing mogul Arthur Tuason, died of acute leukemia. Creditors converged, legal battles ensued, and JP’s family moved from their Forbes Park home to a rental. “Within six months I was poor,” recalls Tuason.
The new industrial engineering graduate, still a bit shell-shocked, got a job as national sales manager at a multinational. He had a monthly salary of P80,000 and was driving a BMW as his company car. But what he really wanted was to go back to the world of motorsport.
Not surprising for the son of a race car driver, Tuason’s love for motorsport can be traced back to when he started karting at age 13. In 1999, Tuason, together with his then-girlfriend (now his wife), Jeanette Ipapo, and his brother Mike, also set up a karting clinic, which 150 students joined. The three enjoyed the experience so much that they set up the Tuason Racing School (TRS).
"I grew up around cars. I grew up racing cars. To be honest with you, I couldn't imagine myself doing something else... I'm really happy doing what I do." - JP Tuason, President, Tuason Racing School
In 2003, he would break through at the Asian Formula 3 series at age 27. He left his high-paying but low-excitement job in 2001, gathered his savings, plus the insurance money his dad had left, and high-tailed to the U.S. with Jeanette for a whirlwind tour of racing schools. Inspired by what he saw, Tuason wanted his own racing school here that offered premium service—clients show up, pay the fee, get kitted, and later compete in an organized race.
But the Tuasons lacked capital to make this happen. Jeanette’s solution: Get sponsors. They started with Ford—a relationship that would last a decade and tally up 45 race cars. “We charge P5,000 per person. For most people, that’s expensive. But for us, our break-even point is P25,000 per person. Who covers the P20,000? Sponsors,” says Tuason.
While their primary goal was to make motorsport mainstream, they soon realized the market would not be able to sustain the business, leading to their move to take on road safety and defensive-driving programs. Of the 5,000 students TRS now trains annually, only 2,000 are involved in motorsport. “The road safety stuff takes a lot less money. Hence, the profitability is much higher, double what we make in the racing school,” explains a pragmatic Tuason.
When Ford bowed out as exclusive sponsor in 2010, TRS took the opportunity to diversify: they retained the road safety program with Ford, but started racecar driver training for Toyota (hence the Toyota Vios Cup), and sports car driving for BMW (Tuason is the only certified BMW M trainor in the country, after having undergone rigorous training in Germany).
Most recently, the Tuason Racing School has also organized biker classes with trainors from the California Superbike School; their inaugural event this year sold out. Tuason points out, “People are buying motorcycles that cost P4 million each. That’s why people pay P75,000 to do the course, walang problema. At the end of the course, they’re safer riders.”
But in homage to his roots, Tuason also started the TRS Raceday three years ago. The school rents the race track for P300,000 and organizes a freebie motorsports festival for P400,000 for the day. Around 300 to 400 cars show up for various track activities that motor clubs participate in. “It’s targeted toward the guys who just don’t have the money to go racing, but they want to experience being at the race track,” he says.
Now a family man with five kids—two newborn twins at that—the erstwhile daredevil gave up competitive racing years ago, no longer willing to spend $20,000 a weekend for a Formula 3 race. “If I got into an accident, it cost half a million to repair the car. I love it, I really enjoy doing what I do, but I can’t afford to be racing cars anymore. So I made a conscious decision to say, enough of that, I’ll stay on the other side and I will support the people that are trying to go up,” he says.
MR. AND MRS. FEELGOOD
How a couple introduced healthy eating into the mainstream
Who knew that being “dragged kicking and screaming” into alternative health practices would one day help Katharina Rempe Azanza and her husband David Azanza in business? Their complementary brands—detoxification juice delivery Juju Cleanse and dedicated salad joint Juju Eats—would not have been possible otherwise.
The couple has practiced juice cleansing for years, particularly Kat, whose parents, Eckard and Perla Rempe, had founded holistic retreat The Farm at San Benito in Lipa, Batangas in 2002. “When my parents were conceptualizing The Farm, we were very much involved in the process. We were the original guinea pigs,” says Kat.
In fact, Kat had turned vegetarian early, but had felt slightly rebellious against the veganism and detoxification that her dad (“the original Juice Nazi,” she jokes) insisted upon. “Having that experience, it makes you understand what it’s like to be pushed into something that you’re not ready for,” says Kat.
"Be creative: find your passion and find an angle to it. Make it lucrative." - Katharina Rempe-Azanza, Vice President, Feelgood Inc.
Kat’s dream was to create a gentler introduction to healthy life choices. David, meanwhile, practiced balance and moderation. Both believed in empowering the individual to be responsible for their own health.
When the Azanzas came home from China in 2010, it seemed an opportune time to try out novel business ideas. “Frankly, we were coming back to nothing… I figured, just go for it,” recalls David, who says he immediately started testing several business concepts, including Juju Cleanse, under the banner of Feelgood Inc. “We had a deep awareness and understanding [of the practice], and habitual juicing [was] happening in the family already,” he adds.
When the juicing business exhibited more growth than the other business concepts, David decided to concentrate their efforts there. “The Farm is far away, it’s expensive, it takes a long time to really do the program [there] properly, and we wanted to do something that was more convenient, more accessible, [and] more cosmopolitan,” he says.
The Juju Cleanse program—which allows customers to choose their cleanse level and duration—was formulated by Kat, with help from David, and consultations with an in-house nutritionist as well as the doctors at The Farm. “We developed the three levels for people to choose from, when they felt that they were ready,” explains Kat.
The first two years were rough: working from the Rempes’ small kitchen (and later extending to the laundry area), delivering to the client’s door as late as 10 p.m., and at peak, during Lenten season, entertaining calls from clients as early as 4 a.m. But they’d sunk P250,000 on equipment, and so they doggedly persisted.
Despite skepticism from some quarters, orders steadily poured in. They started expanding operations to encompass most of Metro Manila, even going so far as to tie up with City Delivery to reach clients beyond the drop-off zones.
Juju’s popularity spread so much that the Azanzas were able to stretch the concept to include another brand, Juju Eats, in 2013. From five juice cleanses for Juju Cleanse, Feelgood Inc. now offers 15 unique beverages, 10 à la carte salads, and extensive fixings for DIY salads, at Juju Eats. Those who have tried the cleanses can continue to feel good about themselves by eating healthier food—“at the same price point as an extra value meal at a fast food,” David points out. Those who eat at any of the restaurants can try the juices as refreshments, or perhaps sign on for the cleansing program.
A salad joint seemed so far-fetched that few realtors were willing to bet on it—outright saying “Pinoys don’t eat salad,” or incredulously asking, “Walang kanin?” But the Azanzas found a spot along Pasong Tamo. Once it clicked, they used that as “proof of concept” to build another branch at Eastwood City Cyberpark in Libis, Quezon City, and just recently, at Rockwell Business Center in Ortigas, Pasig. By November, they’ll launch at The Podium in Mandaluyong City.
“We were lucky. It was below the radar of most Pinoys [because] it’s so weird,” says David, noting that The Farm had already been cold-pressing juices, and that there were salad-focused establishments abroad. “So it’s not like we created it, we just helped to popularize and bring it into the consciousness [of the general public].”
RENEGADE ARTIST
An artist finds success—and family support—as a furniture-maker
Niccolo Jose is not your typical 27-year-old. A graduate of environmental studies and studio art sculpture at Lewis and Clark College in Portland, Oregon, he weaves twig sculptures, and when given leave to stay in his family’s warehouse and make his own furniture, created a giant chair, dubbed “Think Big,” for his birthday.
“It was an accident, getting into the furniture [business]. I was tasked to make furniture for myself, I might as well do it my way... So, actually, my earlier stuff did not look like furniture or did not even have the right measurements,” says Jose.
He devoured interior and industrial design textbooks and DIY manuals. He studied the properties of wood, going as far as the University of the Philippines in Los Baños, Laguna, which has a wood library. He studied the available technology for shaping wood at the Department of Science and Technology (DOST). And he would have kept it at that—he wasn’t ready for exhibition—if not for two things: his family was building Green Canyon Resort in Clark, Pampanga, and a friend of his mom noticed his early experimental pieces and suggested Jose fill up the space with his wood art.
Thus, the retail furniture business Studio 10.10 was built. Jose uses reclaimed wood, occasionally compromising with newer wood only if the client is unable to meet the price (300-year-old wood doesn’t come cheap). His pieces go for P5,000 to more than P200,000, depending on the amount of labor and varieties of wood utilized. He processes the wood himself, in a kiln designed by the DOST—this saves 70 percent on the expense of buying kiln-dried wood, and gives him more creative freedom with the material.
His family rallied to support him. Not that he gave them much of a choice, as he proposed knocking on doors to sell his art. His mom’s response: “Be an artist, but do it as professionally as you can.” Thus far, Jose swears he hasn’t succumbed to his mom’s nightmare vision of an artist—bearded, tattooed, and drug-addled.
However, he does tend to be a bit eccentric. He got rid of everything in his bedroom, save for a night lamp, yoga mat, and his books. “You stimulate your creativity by creating an environment wherein you’re like a homeless man… because I don’t have a bed, every day I think about the best bed,” explains Jose.
He lives simply, getting a monthly salary of P25,000, and plows back the rest of the earnings into the business to pay for an astronomical power bill, and to reward his crew, and his family. “We work as a family to actually make it work. I cannot take full credit… any business needs a support system,” says Jose.
Buyers of his furniture get a free hotel stay, and Green Canyon guests have the option of having furniture custom-made. As the resort develops further, Jose intends to keep producing—anything from tree houses in the mountains to a sculpture park on the grounds.
He still exhibits; this month you’ll see his work at the ManilART Fair and Manila FAME. He also has a solo exhibit scheduled next February.
"Because the business works, I can still continue making art... I want to change that idea, that 'I'm not going to support my kid because he's an artist'." - Niccolo Jose, Craftsman-artist at Studio 10.10 and Green Canyon Resort
The difference now, for Jose, is that he takes inspiration from his clients, taking measure of the “personal culture” of their private spaces. “I am designing for the person whom the piece belongs to,” he says. He treats his studio furniture as a luxury good. “You can bring it back, and I can make it brand new again, or I can change it for you. That idea makes clients come back and refer me to other people.” The art of doing business, he points out, is being able to adjust to people and surrendering your ego.
Whatever happens to the business, Jose is confident he can start over. “[Successful artists] allow themselves to grow,” says Jose. “You still need to make something in order to make the next thing. You need to sell that piece, in order to actually make something that’s your own later on.”
COMICS CRUSADER
Taking over new worlds
Paolo Chikiamco, lawyer and Palanca Award-winning writer, thinks there isn’t enough Filipino representation in genre fiction and comic books to date. So he’s made it his personal mission to write as many as he can—and as many as he can convince his friends to collaborate on.
“The lack of Filipino characters and Philippine culture in genre stories does a disservice both to us [Filipinos] and to the genres where we are all but strangers,” he says, adding, “I want someone who enjoys Godzilla to be thrilled when a monster destroys Makati, for example.”
Chikiamco, whose efforts started in 2009 with Eight Ray Publishing Inc. and its imprint Rocket Kapre, has been at pains to put the Philippines on the digital publishing map. In his quest, Chikiamco has been a prolific writer of speculative fiction—you’ll find his stories included in several anthologies. Most notably, he published the anthology inspired by Philippine myth, Alternative Alamat, which was recognized for its category in the 2012 Filipino Readers’ Choice Awards.
Of late, Chikiamco has shifted focus to comics. He came out with High Society, which became the featured giveaway at the Geek Dad section of Wired.com—a deal he credits to the machinations of the comic’s publisher, Flipside Publishing.
Still ongoing is his Mythspace series, a space opera where creatures of indigenous folklore are re-imagined as aliens. “One of the reasons that we set out to make a universe with this set of stories, instead of an anthology of standalone tales, was that we believe there are creative and commercial benefits to being able to revisit a setting repeatedly, accumulating detail and history that makes it more real for readers,” he explains.
Chikiamco’s next salvo gathers the writers and illustrators he’s worked with in the past five years in a collective called Studio Salimbal. The logic is to pool the efforts of the members to create a single brand that readers and publishers can trust would consistently come out with quality work.
“There are doors that wouldn’t open to us individually, that will accommodate us as a studio: it’s one thing if a creator wants to put his or her one book up in your digital storefront, and quite another if a studio offers you its backlist of 10 graphic novels—you come in with more leverage as the latter, and with more respectability too,” says Chikiamco.
Among Studio Salimbal’s more notable members are Budjette Tan (writer of horror/crime series Trese), Mervin Malonzo (behind the aswang comic “Tabi Po”), and Noel Pascual (best known for the series, Crime Fighting Call Center Agents).
Chikiamco has faced his share of setbacks, and he readily admits that most of his posse have “day jobs” that allow them to continue doing what they love. That in itself is a sign of their commitment. “We’re doing comics now, even when the monetary rewards pale in comparison to the time and effort we put in... The dream is to reach the point where we can make comics—comics that we own, comics that we can be proud of—for a living, instead of in the sliver of time between our day jobs and personal lives,” he concludes
"I'm not always sure that I'm good at what I do. I'm not always sure it will ever make me good money. But I never doubt that this is something worth doing. - Paolo Chikiamco, Managing Editor, Studio Salimbal
TURNING PASSION INTO PROFIT
The emotional impact of a passion project is much tougher on the entrepreneur. Yet, ironically, the same principles of good business apply. Here are a few tips:
1. BE HONEST—BUT DON’T LIMIT YOURSELF.
Niccolo Jose of Studio 10.10 started with custom furniture, and later he was designing not just items but entire houses. “Say yes, and then you figure it out later on, or you learn. Or you tell them the truth that ‘I don’t do this, but for you, I will’... When people know that you’re very honest about your work, that’s when they know that they can trust you,” he says.
2. IGNORE COPYCATS.
When detox juicing companies started coming out of the woodwork, Juju Cleanse co-founder David Azanza took it in stride. “We keep an eye on what is happening in the market, but our strategy and our business plan are not dependent on what other people are doing. We have our own vision of where we want to go and what we want to do,” says David.
3. YOU’RE IN THIS TOGETHER WITH OTHER PEOPLE.
JP Tuason of TRS sits down with his employees and brainstorms on the company’s “wish list.” It’s an immediate gauge of what the employees aspire for, and whether TRS is meeting its goals. “We’ve now checked off everything on that list... So yeah, we’ve come a long way,” he says.
4. YOU WILL PROBABLY GET REJECTED—IT’S OKAY, LEARN FROM IT.
Paolo Chikiamco of Studio Salimbal says rejection toughens you up so you can attempt something bigger and more rewarding. “It taught me not to be afraid to ask for much, if you have an idea that you believe has legs.”
Originally published as the cover story of the October 2014 issue of Entrepreneur Philippines.
Photos by Hedi Aquende. Styling by Belle Camarsi. Grooming by Tricia Miranda and Jen Balbuena-Cosare.