Capping Off The Week

That guy is a great basketball player.
Although I’ve heard the one on the right isn’t that bad either. :)

Yup, that’s me interviewing [tag]T-Mac[/tag], last week at Shang. I just realized I have to get that pic printed and put somewhere nice as it shows two things I love – Writing and Basketball. It’s an honor to have been chosen to interview the guy, and not just any guy, but a Scoring Champ, 5 time All Star and one of those rare stories of a young phenom successfully transitioning into the NBA from High School. I was on a high for days after believe me.

Funny how, at one point, I was asking him a bunch of questions he had to answer with the first word that pops into his head. I asked “[tag]Jay-Z[/tag] or [tag]Snoop[/tag]”, and he said “Jay. All day.”. I realized that, not only does he like him, they probably hang out. I also elicited an unexpected reaction when I asked him about a coach he used to have that dissed him. He took a few seconds to answer and was quite candid about what he felt after that.

Anyway, the article is gonna come out on Sunday, and I’m transcribing stuff at this very moment (well, to resume after this post of course), so make sure to grab a copy ok? Yep, that’s me sounding like a commercial.

And that’s not the half of it. I’m starting to enjoy writing for Hingemedia’s new SME mag. I interviewed [tag]PlanetSport[/tag]’s [tag]Anton Gonzalez[/tag] just yesterday at their office at Rockwell.

Anton, like my previous interview of the husband and wife team of [tag]moondishfoods[/tag], is very inspiring. I said this before and I’ll say so again a hundred times. People like them are no different from you and me, but they achieve success because they take the logical, common sense path in making decisions, which then pay dividends in the end. Coupled with hard work, risk taking and resilience, they persevere not because they were born with silver spoons in their mouths, or they’re necessarily smarter than everyone, or they have special powers or mystical gifts or anything. They achieve because each step they take had been well thought out, and they made the best of the opportunities that came their way.

In Anton’s case, he had resources from his parents, but in the mid 90s he took risks on personal(!) loans that would have overwhelmed anyone. But he found a risk worth taking and so he took it, in full knowledge of the fact that he might fail. However risky it may had seemed, he impressed on me how he felt it to be the most natural decision in the world, almost as if he would have been foolish not to have taken it. True enough, he now has retail giants Planet Sports, The Athletes Foot, Nike Stadium, Kidz Station, The Sports Warehouse, New Balance Shop, Nautica and Timberland, numbering 60 in total, and investments in several other businesses.

Inasmuch as he succeeded, there are just as many, if not more reasons why he could have failed. He could have decided to do something else. He could have been gypped by his investors, or another coup could have erupted at one point (even now), and everything could have gone slurping down the drain in a clockwise motion. But the important thing was that he, like most entrepreneurs, still went out there and did it, and the spoils to the victor, as they say.

I wish I met dudes like him when I was younger. You can learn more in an hour with him than reading ten business books. Nevertheless, I’m learning.

Oh, and finally, some Kikay Exchange news. I’ve interviewed my first Featured Product of the Month, and I’ll publish it next week. The interview was fun and the Kikay girls are soon to be recipients of some nice stuff :). They don’t read this, so I’m not worried about pre-empting. So shhh okay? Can’t wait.