“ALL IN!”

So I finally did it. I finally resigned.

I’m about to leave the safe confines of the corporate world and venture into the great unknown. Let go of my stable paycheck and turn my back on a career that’s as tempting as tempting can be.

There’s been a lot of talk and speculation about my resigning, so I guess I owe it to everyone to set the record straight. What really happened, what’s going on, what I’m really up to.

In Hold ‘em Poker, if you want to win big, at some point you’ll have to bet big. If you have absolute certainty in your hand, and your gut just tells you that this pot is yours to take, you go all in – bet the farm, plunk in all your chips, no regrets - win or lose. I’m there. I’m at that point where I can finally say “All In!”

You see, I’m part of this community called Life’s Directions. And, as the name implies, it’s all about people finding out what they to do with their lives, and then hopefully going ahead and doing it. If I truly wanted to “eat our own dog food”, i.e. walk the talk --- then I have no choice but to follow what I’ve discerned as my own Life’s Direction.

And when you come to the realization that what you’re doing now isn’t going to take you where you want to go, then it’s time to change the course as soon as possible. Which in my case, means resigning from the corporate life.

When I turned 27 last September 2004 I remember writing “What to do with this gift called life? It’s a question 1. Few ever ask, 2. Fewer can honestly answer, and 3. Even fewer still who can truthfully say that they actually got up and did something about it. I’d like to believe I belong to the second group. But I’m trying as damn hard as I can to fall into the third.”

Fast-forward one-and-a-half years later, I’m finally jumping onto the third category. All in.

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If you believe in something so strongly it practically resonates with your gut, you owe it to yourself to go for it. Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon.com, calls this his “regret-minimization framework”. Armed with nothing less than an idea and the colossal opportunity which was the Internet, he left his job and went for it. He founded Amazon.

Now, I’m not out to start a multi-billion-dollar company; But like him, I’m just out to pursue my dreams.

“All men dream, but not equally. Those who dream by night in the dust recesses of their minds wake in the day to find that it was vanity; But the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act their dream with open eyes, to make it possible.”
- T.E. Lawrence

I’ve realized that my long-term vision is to help in my own small way to serve our country. This is something that I have been actually doing self-study into these past few months. What became a topic of interest has become a passion. It has crystallized in me that the best way for me to contribute to the country is by directly creating jobs, as an entrepreneur.

As such, I’ve decided that for the decades of my life to come, I will be focusing on three areas that I feel will have whatever small ripple I wish to make :

1. Export services / outsourcing – in my simple understanding, if we just rely on businesses that make money circulate within the country, then our country will not develop as fast as it needs to. Thus, I dream of serving foreign markets.

2. Education – there is really a strong need to build skills of Filipino people in order to prepare them more and more for a globalized world. But there should also be more and more a movement to higher-value skills. If one looks at the spectrum of skills now, we’re providing the brunt, low-value work. We can definitely be more world-class. In the future, I dream of having my own school.

3. Empowerment of the poor – our country still has one of the highest incidences of poverty. From a business point-of-view, they’re a huge market, the so-called “bottom-of-the-pyramid”. From a human being’s point-of-view, we just have to help. Areas in the future I want to enter here are related to microfinancing and skills-building.

In a line, I just want to build skills for Filipinos in order for them to compete in a globalized world. Put simply, my burning platform is to create jobs.

Now, this is something I’m not going to achieve overnight, maybe not even in the next several years, if ever at all. The more I know, the more I realize how much I don’t know. But the good thing is that this cause will probably keep me preoccupied for years and years to come. It’s a whole life’s work.

Now, I believe in thinking big, but starting small. Baby steps towards a grand vision. So in the next few months, I’ll just be focusing on three things : 1. Setting up a small business aligned to #1/2, 2. Volunteer Work, and 3. Self-education/self-training.

On # 3, you see, part of being in Life’s Directions is also a sense of self-awareness through discernment. Strengths and weaknesses, the whole shebang. I’ve looked at stuff I’m not good at, stuff I still need to learn, and these are the things I’ve put on my tasklist.

Some stuff that’s there :

- Discover and get guidance from mentors
- Learn to sell, as in the Electrolux knock-on-your door variety. Be a part-time sales agent.
- Teach an elective part-time
- Travel to other countries
- Network like crazy

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But lest you think that passion is all it takes to go for it, I caution thee my friend. This is something I’ve studied and prepared for with absolute detail. Passion gets you to leap, but it’s careful and dutiful planning which will give you the confidence to enter into execution phase.

I definitely don’t have a romanticized notion of what I’m about to embark on. No dreams that it will be an easy life, nor safe from any failures of any sort. In fact, years down the line this could very well be the stupidest decision I ever made. But I believe in it strongly enough that maybe looking stupid will be well worth it. As I said in my resignation letter, it’s a cause worth going hungry for.

Let’s revisit the practicalities. I’ve analyzed my financial position and computed my budget for the next two years. With a much recalibrated lifestyle, I’ll probably make do assuming I don’t make any money (talk about worst-case scenario). I’m working with people who I believe are very good partners and essentially want the same thing. I’ve psychologically prepared myself to fail and learn, fail and learn, until I get it right. I’m still relatively young and I’m not feeding anyone. I can still afford to make mistakes.

This hand feels good, and if I lose, I can still play a few more rounds.

All in! Why not?

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If there are people out there who believe in this as well, I’d love to hear from you. The more I talk about this to people, the more I discover like-minded individuals. I’d love to meet you and learn from you as well. Alone I’m useless, but together we can probably make a difference in all the years to come.

Please email me ruizmark@gmail.com.