A critic somewhat.

JORGE MICHAEL MANIBO PEREZ·SUNDAY, 4 OCTOBER 2015

This topic has been long overdue. So today, I will tell you the story of how I came about joining this type of business and what it has done for me and my family. It all started back in 2009, I was struggling through the hardship of working for a corporation, or rather a privately held business that focused on recruitment. Some will say that we should all work because we find a sense of fulfillment, or a sense of purpose in working. This has to be true, because you can only find yourself in the face of the other. However, it doesn’t really follow. The problem with recruitment agencies is they only make money because someone else loses something, in this case, the employees who are deployed, are often subject to overtime, and are generally underpaid, it is the healthy way of circumventing the labor code, namely where companies cannot hire contractual employees when these employees serve a purpose that is deemed necessary to the nature of the company or business. For example, a warehouse logistics company should not be allowed to hire contractual warehouse workers. This is my interpretation at least. Now moving forward, so I was tired of these long 12 hour days, that often escalated to 15-18 hours depending on the demand of the need, while being paid poorly. Time for change was coming. So I submitted my resignation, in good faith, and was only allowed to leave, nine months later. But nonetheless thanks to people who shaped me and helped me deal with the tenacity needed to survive everyday life, this was my reality at the time. In tagalog, isang kahig isang tuka, the only difference was, it wasn’t really the case, I was actually spending more than I was earning, despite my already frugal lifestyle, imagine a life where buying your food outside, would make or break your budget in the month. I remember taking home around 12k monthly. and having a mere 300 pesos in my pocket daily. 300 x 30 is 9000 already. :D So I was technically paying the company back just to get to the office and survive day to day. But nonetheless I am but thankful because of the many crazy experiences that I learned on the way. I learned that title and positions were meaningless really, unless you’re in a MNC, or unless you’re in a huge organization. But most of all I learned the value of helping others, but if you look at it critically, was I really helping others, helping by helping them subject themselves to poor work conditions, and poor pay, because it was better than being unemployed, but was it really? To this day I ask this question, while being bombarded by money isn’t everything lectures, and stuff like that. You see, I grew up around people who out caste me, in the Indian Sense. What increased my reason for leaving was the fact that I felt overworked and under compensated, all I got from my good friend was, “there isn’t much money to expect from Human Resources”, and so dang, I was fed up. And so I left, 6 months later, I found myself taking calls for a bank based in britain, for american accounts, although taxing on my voice and my schedule, as I was in the graveyard shift, It did pay better overall, and I felt much less overworked, however, I felt so small in such a huge system. It was fun nonetheless because even though I was asleep in the afternoons, I found it fun to have time in the morning to run errands etc. But due to the strange schedule, I always found myself running after time. You run after time because your sleep schedule is not the same with everyone else. So after another taxing year and so, I decided to throw in towel. Around the same time, my spouse was invited to a company, in tomas morato called frontrow. She came home one night, and told me all about it and asked me to review some notes that had come from her sponsor. Being arrogant as I was, I mulled through these documents and only saw fault around every corner, I was like, is this the kind of document that a company allows its employees to distribute, I could not understand a thing really. So I stopped my spouse from joining, rejecting the idea that it may actually be a good idea to join the company. I told her that we barely had money and she would be throwing even more money away. But following her instinct my spouse joined anyway. So when I found out I was infuriated. Because the time requirements on her end was stupendous, she would leave in the afternoon and return in the early hours of the following morning. I was dumbfounded, because I was told that I should invite someone, to join, in order for the system to work. I was furious. I was very angry with myself and with everyone around me because I did not see the value of this. But my spouse did not give up. She took me over to the office one night, and one of the mentors after a grueling 4 hour discussion, explained to me the differences between how the chinese spent money. He said that when the chinese get a hold of money, instead of buying it with goods, or services or cellphones, they would first, save a certain amount in order to invest. This must be a fundamental truth in any investment. The irony was I was asked a question, and asked to share with everyone in the room what I had learned during these grueling 4 hours, and I was shocked at my own answer, I said that frontrow helps people because they help change the fundamental view of how money works. Often we are trained in the prussian system of education, where you get a specialization and work for someone else , or work for the government, frontrow on the other hand presented a different view, that you should fight against that system. That you should believe in the power of dreams, and consider increasing the size of your pan in order to earn more, instead of the traditional, ‘pag maigse ang kumot, matuto mamaluktot.’ And so I was a changed man then, and realized that I should grab this opportunity because it presented itself very well. So I signed up, and the following day, I had two sponsored guests. both of them joined, as my explanation of hte business and how it helps people actually works. In one week I was able to bring in more money, than I had currently brought in answering calls from my current company, I was astounded, I was made a believer of these large checks, because it would be simple logic. These persons who had large checks to the amount of 6 figures, were true because they were working so hard for their money, not many people understand this, but when you are responsible for conducting 9 -12 seminars a day, and work 10-16 hours a day, if you are being paid 6 figures, you would be happy. The only difference is this type of income is residual income, because they have become too big to fail. Everyday, rain or shine, storm or shine, someone will sign up a subdistributor, and their checks will continue coming in, as long as the business keeps running. And so I became addicted to this idea of bringing in sponsors everyday, however, rupture was comign my way. After a few weeks, I had run out of leads, friends, family, co workers, turned away because they knew for a fact they would be invited. I would often get this hard no for an answer, :D a bloody hard no at times. And the worst of all was the definately not. And so time passed by, training after training, we were taught not to give up, to continue running, running and running, keep those leads coming. Of course this is how the training would go because the checks of those on top, depends on the checks of those on the bottom, or to better put it, they want as many people on the bottom to keep referring people so that their checks wont stop rolling in. This is what I would call the pat of least resistance. Afterall who in their right mind wouldn’t want to receive a pay check week after week. This is when the rupture comes in, because after some time, running out of leads, and those who joined under me quit on me, I was outnumbered outgunned and it was impossible financially to sustain the business. The rupture came soon enough when I knew that I was in the red. This default came in the form of there was just not enough money to keep operations going. So we had to do something different. I listened to my father who said we should try to sell the products instead of trying to sign up distributors. And so we built a system behind this new idea of selling the product instead of the dream. But during hte transition, I had read almost all these books about money by kiyosaki and trump, my words were changing and so was my reality. I had stopped thinking of life in terms of rich and poor, and only thought about rich and broke, I was broke at some point. Then it all fell into place, the system began working, the products began moving and I had access to money that I had never had before, I had access to freedom that I had not before. I went on to continue building this system and still it is in play up to today. Distributors come and go, but we continue selling our goods. while having the time of our lives. We were able to visit malaysia, on a tour grant by the company. We had reversed the rejection in such a way that when the product worked, people would begin asking us how to become distributors. And the rest is history. It all occurred on one night when I attended a final training, and the trainer, the same person who was my reason to join, explained that there was a man, who had a serious sleeping disorder, he felt that in his dream, the doors would not open, he would push so hard to open this door, but a simple change of perspective, from push to pull is what it took, and the man was cured of all ailments. The same rupture happened to me. I guess that is life, it is expressed in circles of experience. Sometimes you are up and sometimes you’re down, however, what matters is that you keep an open eye on perspective. Three solid years of not working, being fully retired, enjoying and biding my time, has made me complacent, and as a result I lost all that I had built up. But in hegelian terms, the dialectical spirit is in play. Now I know better than to breed complacency, and so I continue to this day, reading books, studying, learning. I realized that I had come to the point that I no longer used my head. And that was all that it took for me to fall apart, it would be me not using my head. So I face tomorrow ready, understanding where everything fell apart, it is that strange moment that we move from being creators of vitality, to complacency and decadence in Nietzsche’s terms. Much thanks still though because I was able to live, 36 months of my life, truly free. Back in the day, when jolibee was a luxury, now vikings doesn’t even hurt. I may be down now, but I have learned a plentiful of lessons to help me get back to where I was, now more much much more fiscally responsible, I guess that is what happens when you’re unable to accept your own being, or your own caste, or your own surroundings, you grow complacent and arrogant and begin to see wrong, now we charge it all to experience. But we continue to move forward, as should. Hopefully, next time around, I do not ignore the numbers.

These recent revlations, in fact this last month, has been one hell of a rollercoaster ride. But I realize that the most successful of all entrepreneurs, are not decadent. In fact they read a lot. Take zuckerberg for example, he has a year of books, he is even reading the nature of scientific inquiry, and other books. Somewhere along the path of enjoyment I fell off the wagon, but now I’m back. And I have found much much more than money, I found love, I found friendship, and i found family.

But I will continue to hold everything I consider true in high suspicion, because we never really know, do we?