Ep277: Rhonadale Florentino – To Succeed in Startups, Don’t Just Do it

Andrew Stotz 00:03
Hello fellow risk takers and welcome to my worst investment ever stories of loss to keep you winning. In our community. We know that to win investing, you must take risk. But to win big, you've got to reduce it. This episode is sponsored by a Stotz Academy which offers online courses that help investors, aspiring professionals, business leaders, and even beginners to improve the finances of their lives and their businesses. Go to my worst investment ever.com right now and to claim your discount on the course that excites you the most in there. Fellow risk takers. This is your worst podcast host Andrew Stotz and I'm here with featured guests. Rona Dale Florentino, run Adele, are you ready to rock? Oh yes, I'm very much ready to rock very excited for today's episode. I am super excited to have you on and just talking before the episode really makes me think that the audience listening out there is going to gain a lot from this discussion. So let me introduce you to the audience. Ronan Dale has been a human resource practitioner for around 19 years, two decades. And she is the CEO and president of up Russia social geekery is an HR solutions and services provider located in the Philippines not too far away from where I am here in beautiful Bangkok, Thailand. She has held various director level positions and has worked on the gamification framework to gamify aspects of human resources. And the digital 2001 project which helped her company digitize the Human Resources operations which to me, both of those sound pretty cool, particularly that gamification. Now, she graduated with a bachelor's degree in psychology and has been quite active in improving the standards of human resources in the Philippines through programs like Rush's HR boot camp, which provides the necessary competencies for up and coming HR practitioners who would like to become leading professionals some day, Rona Dell, please take a moment and fill in for their tidbits about your lovely life.

Rhonadale Florentino 02:18
Thanks, thanks for that, that was actually a very good introduction. But I'd like our audience to know that I'm just not about HR. So in my off time, I also do a lot of other things. I'm surprisingly, I like playing games. So um, I think it's also one of the reasons why I am into this gamification very much because I like to play PC games. I spent hours sometimes playing ps4. So those are the things that keep me VC. And aside from being an HR, I also like to dabble in some web development. I do love creating websites. And I do have some background in SEO, which later on will play a big role in the story that I'm about to tell you. I'm really curious about the gamification thing I know we all talk about that, but very few companies organizations really incorporate that may be you could just share some of your experience or your opinion about gamification and the future of gamification. Well, I'm, the primary reason why I got into gamification is that I used to work for a mobile gaming company. And because I worked there, I got to understand the different gaming principles and how you can have it applied in different aspects of your work, not just in, in operations, but also in sales in HR, and things like that. Um, with gamification, the aim is to tap on the competitive spirit of your members to get them to compete with each other and to compete as a team as a team also each other and you come up with just like in a game, you have leaderboards, you have badges, you have trophies that they can get if every day you reach a certain number of points, or if ever, they're able to do a certain project a certain task. And if they get a certain number of points, they can have this convert that do merchandises to like, in our case, we have, we get they can have it converted leave credits, extra time off, they can have it converted to mugs, jackets, things like that, and it was very, um, it's a fun way of looking at things especially because most of the members that we have back then were millennials. So they are very into this, getting the things that they like as soon as possible, having specific goals that they have to meet, being able to see how they fare compared to their other co workers or their colleagues. It is a very fun way of doing HR. Instead of us worrying about how to get them to join trainings. They are the ones interested in joining this trainees because they know that they would get points for that they would get extra points. If they cascade those trainees and they get more points if they get certified, or they create their own modules for training. It was very fun.

Andrew Stotz 05:13
It's kind of amazing, because, you know, let's just take some gamification aspects that don't even provide like big prizes, but just putting up a competition amongst people, and then it just massively increases engagement. And it's just, it's humans are pretty predictable in that way. I guess I would say,

Rhonadale Florentino 05:34
Yeah, I agree. I agree.

Andrew Stotz 05:36
I use it a lot in my online courses where I try to help people see, Alright, here's where you are, here's the leaderboard. Come on, let's get up there. And that type of stuff, you know, it helps it helps me to when I get behind, and someone's given me a little nudge. So, yeah. All right, well, now it's time to share your worst investment ever. And since no one ever goes into their worst investment thinking will be, tell us a bit about the circumstances leading up to it, and then tell us your story.

Rhonadale Florentino 06:05
Um, so I've been an HR like what you've mentioned, I've been an HR practitioner for almost two decades now. But in this story, I was I think, about 10 years into my HR profession. And I was, I was very happy with what I was doing. But one of the things that I I discovered during my work is that a lot of HR solutions and services providers here in the Philippines have very huge price tags. They, they, they tend to sell their services. But if you're a small company, you definitely won't have the budget for these kinds of services. So most likely you would be left on your own. Or you would have to really do massive research in order for you to get your HR programs, policies and procedures in place. So I thought at that time that it was not a fair were fair way of doing things. So I said, Hmm, I am an HR professional with 10 years of experience at this point, I think I can do a better job and provide better service at minimal cost for them. So I, when I had that idea, I did not instantly get into the business. I started with thinking of what if I try to become a consultant. So I tapped into my network, I checked if anyone wants to have a consultant, but I had some challenges along the way. But that's not yet the story. That's just the initial part of the story. And then unfortunately, something happened along the way, I got into an accident, I was bedridden for I think about a month or two. And I'm not the type of person who can just sit down and not do anything. So during that two months, I was thinking of how am I going to earn something, while not a while being bedridden and not doing anything. So I had a laptop in front of me, I tried to look for online platforms where I can get a job, things like that. And then I came across oDesk at the time it was oDesk right now, I think it's upward. I tried applying to jobs and they got hired. But this is not for an HR work. This is for a writing job, I had to do articles, I had to write blogs, I got to understand what SEO is about at least the basics of it, at least a part of content marketing. Like I got all of those experience. By the time that I was able to go to work. Um, I was still toying with the idea of doing a consultancy, but this time, I was thinking of doing a consultancy, and doing internet marketing, two different lines of business. Which at that point, I thought, this is something that I can manage. I'm good at it. I know that I'm good at it. I have 10 years of experience in HR, and with online marketing or internet marketing. My clients are very happy with the kind of work that I'm doing for them. So with that, I said, if I go into analyzing everything, I would lose time. So the best thing to do is to go to the government agencies here in the Philippines, have the business registered, come up with a catchy business name. And then let's start doing this business.

Andrew Stotz 09:32
like Nike Just do it.

Rhonadale Florentino 09:34
Yes, like Nike, I think that was my model that I'm just doing. Instead of I'm analyzing things. Let's just do this. Let's get done with all of this. So I got the business registered the name of the businesses that time was talent shout business consultancy. And I was very proud of that because I was in my late 20s at that time, and I and it was I thought that, that age is very young to have your own job to be a managing director or president or CEO. So this is a very big deal for me. And I was very particular with the title that I have at the time. presidency, oh, wow, this is big for me, registered a business. Um, I have all of these things ready, I started tapping my previous clients for internet marketing, and getting them to do subscribe to my business, instead of going through oDesk. I tried looking at my previous bosses and asking them if they know of anyone who might need an HR console that in the first few months was really the best for me. Money was coming in, I was getting a lot of clients, I was getting a lot of requests. And then it hit me that I cannot do all of this on my own. So being the HR professional that I am, I started looking for people who can help me. But young as I was, I started looking at the wrong direction, I started looking at people that I have an emotional connection with. So this, this goes against all of the things that I've learned as an HR professional, instead of me, looking into the competencies, the skills, I was looking at the emotional connection. So I got people that I have I that were part of my life in the past that I had relationships with, and hire them to do the job. But because this people do not share the same vision as I have, nor the same skills that I have, I had to take time to really train them. And this took a while. So I noticed that we're getting a lot of complaints, because the quality of the services that we are putting out are not the same as before. So I was doing two jobs at the time, I was training my staff. And at the same time, I was also trying to do some of the things that they should be doing. And it was putting so much strain on me. So it said I had to dial it down a bit and lessen the number of clients that we are taking in. So we had, we had to say no to some of our clients. And then because I hired people for operations and not for finance, I do not have anyone helping me monitor my finances. My idea of finances at the time was that money coming in, as long as what I am is, I am spending is not more than what's coming in, I'm safe. But I forgot to take into consideration that there are some expenses that may not be payable at this point. But it will accrue at some point and you have to pay for that. And if you're not looking at it carefully, you might not notice that you're spending more than what's coming in. And that's what happened. I was spending so much on meals on Saturday, on things that are not really important to the business. that at some point, I realized that Wait, I was no longer making money. I was already spending so much that my personal finances are now getting mixed with the company's finances. And at that time when I registered my business, I registered it as a sole proprietor business because I thought I would not be spending more if it's a sole proprietor business. So there was a I was when I started looking at the finances when I got someone to help me with all of the things that's when I figured out that I was losing so much. So much money that I have to cut down on costs and I have to let go of some people. And because I was still nice to these people and trying to support them, even if there wasn't much return on investment, they were not really familiar with the processes they don't know what to do. Because I was nice to them. When I had to let them go there was a lot of conflict. I had these are friends These are people who are who are part of my fasten I have relationships with I had to let them go. And they had to even up to now some of them I haven't spoken with for a long time. They do not want to talk to me They do not want anything to do with me. Because I had set the wrong expectations with them. I had to let them go and I had to rebuild the business. But I was so in the lead, that rebuilding the business was no longer an option. And everyone that I got to talk to, they were telling me that, you know, it's not a good idea to rebuild the business, just declare bankruptcy, just close the business. And even I had a lot of that's with government agencies here, the Philippines, you have to pay for ssms philhealth. But even if you're a sole proprietor, we had a lot of misses and those and incurred a lot of penalties, a lot of fines, I had to pay all of those out of my own pocket. And I was so in the negative that I had to close the business and I had to go back to the corporate world. And when I went back to corporate world and started working for a few years, that's when I realized that how I handled that how I started that business was wrong, right from step one. So Wrong, wrong from the start. Wrong from the start. And I am not afraid to say that because when I realized I had to have that realization, in order for me to really understand the best way to start a business, and the best way to go about it, and the kind of business that I should be involved with. I had to go through that in order for me to grow as a business person.

Andrew Stotz 16:44
Got it? So tell us, how would you summarize the lessons that you learn?

Rhonadale Florentino 16:50
Number one, and this is for anyone who was looking at and start would like to start a business? No, it's not correct, don't just do it. First thing that you have to do is you have to do your due diligence, you have to research First, you need to have an understanding, not just of how to start the business, but an understanding of your own strengths and weaknesses of the kind of service that you're really familiar with. And not the kind of service that you want to have just because everyone's doing it. I think that's one of the mistakes that I've had, because everyone is into internet marketing, everyone was into SEO, I started doing that even if I do not have the right background.

Andrew Stotz 17:37
Got it. So don't just do it,

17:40
don't just do it.

Rhonadale Florentino 17:42
Next is always of papers, particular attention to your finances. That's very important. Um, regardless, if you're an HR or regardless of the background, you need to have an understanding of basic accounting principles, basic financing principles, for you to understand what's happening in your business. Because if you do not understand your numbers, most likely, you would be quite surprised at the end of the day, and you would not realize that you're losing too much up to the last minute. So you have to make sure that you you pay particular attention to your finances, you have to understand what's credit, debit assets, liabilities, things like that, you have to have an understanding of

18:32
Well,

Andrew Stotz 18:34
well, let me let me summarize what I took away. I've been writing down a lot of things as I went through this. The first thing I think about is I often say that small businesses a trap. You know, people get into it, and they don't realize they're gonna get trapped in it. It, you can't walk away from it, or else you're going to lose everything. But sometimes it's hard to even bring it forward. And so sometimes you just stuck and I'm sure before you eventually decided to close. It's like, you know, yeah, okay, I want more sales, but I can't hire, I don't have the budget to hire the salespeople or whatever. The other thing is, I always tell people that startup business is actually business and most of the people who startup companies, they focus on the one area that they're good at, but running a business means you got to be good at human resource. You got to be good at finance, you got to be good at bookkeeping, you got to be good at marketing. You got to be good at administration. You got to be good at management. I mean, you got to be good at everything. And agree, most people, I would say most people fail in start a business because they don't realize it. It's not about taking one technical skill that you have and say I'm going to build a business around the fact that I'm a good plumber, as an example. And I know in the case of my own startup that I did many years ago with my best friend Dale And that was 25 years ago, and it is a factory in Thailand. Now, we survived till 25 years later, we are alive and thriving right now. But the point is, is that there was many times that we felt trapped, we didn't have the answers, we didn't have the resources. And when you have a crisis comments even worse, because unlike a big company, you can't go to the bank and get money and you can't, you know, it's very hard. And so there are times also where you just have to stand still, and just not fall down, not get knocked down. Yeah, but you don't, you don't have the resources, I remember the time, we didn't have the resources to hire the salespeople to go forward. And we did, there was no buyers of all of our assets that we had in our factory. So you couldn't really go back and say, let's just finish this thing, because there was nothing to recover, if we decided to do it at that point. Now, the other thing that you reminded me of is the idea that business is an emotional journey. And I think that people get all excited about it. But in the end, it's about, it's about a tremendous amount of emotions that are going to shake you to the core. And most people go into it, and they don't really think about it. But the truth is, once you're in it, it is an emotional roller coaster. And the last thing I recently wrote, I took, I've been teaching finance now for almost 30 years. And I decided to write a class, I decided to write a course, in finance, for human resource professionals.

Rhonadale Florentino 21:29
Well, I'd like to enroll in that course.

Andrew Stotz 21:32
And, and the this course, kind of came from my challenge of my own business where I could see that on the management team, there were people such as human resource, such as marketing, such as sales, that really didn't understand the finances of the business. And in some cases, they didn't want to other cases they just didn't have time to. So I designed a course called finance made ridiculously simple. And I tried to make finance as simple as possible, because I want to help people who are non financial people to start to build the competency that will allow them to survive. But I mentioned that because I say one thing in that course, and I've always said it to my students is that finance adds no value. Now that sounds a little bit strange. But the point is, is that value comes from your products and services, your interactions with your customers. Finance is a support function, just like other support functions, that gives you the tools gives the management team the tools to assess the outcomes of their decisions, in that sense, finances a mirror. And that's really you just remind me and I have been working with a group of interns and who have taken the course and we're working on how do we market this? And how do we make sure that we hit the mark and the mark is human resource professionals, finance, marketing sales, the people who are non financial, and how do we help them to do that, so that they can survive, you know, and they can actually become better managers. Because if your human resource manager or a marketing manager and you sit down on the management team, and there's the CFO, right across from you, and if you're feeling like you're lacking confidence, you don't really understand what he's talking about, or she's talking about, then, you know, it just, it holds you back in your career. So it's critical. And you, you really highlight that to this story. Anything you'd add to that.

Rhonadale Florentino 23:27
I actually agree with what you mentioned, I'm here in the Philippines, I don't know if it's if it's a cultural thing, but here in the Philippines, um, people are afraid of math. And accounting and finance is considered as a math, math area. So that I think that's one of the reasons why most of the HR here don't have an understanding of the basic finance principle or accounting principles, because they are afraid that it will highlight their lack of knowledge, perceived lack of knowledge when it comes to numbers. But in reality, it's I agree that it's really one of the things that they need to have in if they want to have the confidence to talk to their CEOs, and to really get their CEOs to understand for example, the return on investment on a project, the costs involved benefit analysis of that particular project, they need to have an understanding of those things, if they would really want to speak to their CEOs and manage their see. I agree with that. 100%. And I think that

Andrew Stotz 24:26
one of the lessons obviously, for the listeners out there who are starting their business starting, you know, thinking of starting their business or have already started it. I think there's a lot of lessons from what you've, you know, taught us today and shared with us. And then I think the other lesson is to when you come back I remember I was a head of a department and then I lost my job during the Asian crisis. And then there was no jobs. This is 1997 and somebody called me back somebody called me. He was in a similar position as I was and he called me to be a little bit Junior of a position to work under him. And when he interviewed me, he said to me, you know, you probably don't want to work with me because you know, I'm doing your job. And three years ago, you used to do this or, you know, two years ago, and, and I said to him, you know, the fact is, I'll be your best employee. And he's like, What do you mean, I said, I understand everything about what you face in your job. And as a result, and I don't want it right now in my life. And as a result, I'm going to be a much better employee to understand the pressures that you're under and deliver my work, so that it satisfies what you need to, you know, do your job well. And of course, I was hired immediately. In that case, I think I made a good point. But the idea is that when you struggle, and you go out on your own, or you go somewhere, and you work somewhere else, if you go back to the industry where you were, or maybe even in some cases, we always encourage people to come back, we're going to go out and start your own business, you want to go work somewhere else go. But if you left on good terms with the company, consider coming back. And when those employees return, they in return with a whole different level of respect for what it takes to run a business. Yeah,

Rhonadale Florentino 26:10
yeah, I agree. Because when I got back to the corporate world, I had a different understanding of what my boss the CEO is going through, because I've already gone through it. And I was able to provide them a better support as an HR professional when I came back to the corporate,

Andrew Stotz 26:26
and it's so nice to have money automatically come into your mind. Yes,

Rhonadale Florentino 26:32
yes, I missed that part. When I was, um, what I was doing my own business, money doesn't come automatically, every 15 or 30 years, you're in the Philippines, um, you really have to literally work your ass off in order for you to get paid. But if you are an employee, you can just do whatever's on your job description and just wait on the 15th 15th and 30th. And you'll have your money there. It doesn't work that way when you're in the business. So that's one of the things that you have to keep in mind if you're going to start your business.

Andrew Stotz 27:03
So let's think about a man or woman listening to this show who is just about to start the business? Or maybe they just have started their business. And I'm going to ask you this question, which is based on what you learn from this story, and what you continue to learn what one action would you recommend our listeners take to avoid suffering the same fate?

Rhonadale Florentino 27:24
Hmm, just one, let me see if there's one thing Yeah, if there's just one thing that you have to make sure that you do, in order for you not to go through this, it would be do your due diligence. That's it. When we say due diligence, that would already encompass everything, researching what the business is all about. Understanding the finance part of it, understanding the different types of setup that you should have in place, whether you should go Corporation, or you should go sole proprietor that would encompass it. Just do your due diligence before you do it. Before you do your business. Yeah,

Andrew Stotz 28:08
beautiful advice. And I would add on one part of my businesses is what I call outsourced CFO, where I basically help companies, usually they end up in trouble, because they've messed up their finances so much. And in the end, you know, we come in and help them clean that up. And one of the lessons that I learned from seeing so many different cases is one simple thing. Close the books every month and produce a balance sheet, and an income statement and a statement of cash flows. Get an accountant, an accountant who can help you to do that. You don't have to be an expert in it, but just make sure that tell that account, I want the button months, the books closed on a monthly basis. That's it all most people, they just do it once a year for small business owner, do it once a month, it's gonna cost you a little bit more, but the reality is, is going to help you bring those finances you know, in perspective, from month number one.

29:05
Agree agree,

Rhonadale Florentino 29:06
I think, I don't think I was able to mention that earlier. But when I had my previous business talent shot, I did not hire an accountant. I was doing accounting myself and I don't know accounting. So when I when I when I had the second business, which is approach. Um, that's one of the things that's one of the first things that I had in place, an accountant who can help me work through all of these books, understand what's happening, and like what you've mentioned, have the books closed every month so that I have a better understanding of what's happening.

Andrew Stotz 29:39
Exactly. And the great thing is that there's a lot of accountants out there that love doing that. Yeah, your strength, you know, let's use them. Alright, last question. What's your number one goal for the next 12 months?

Rhonadale Florentino 29:52
Right now with our approach, my primary goal is to grow the services we have. So right now we're full Focusing on training, providing training services, webinars, things like that. But we would like to add one more service, which is the managed payroll service, outsourcing. So that those are the two things that we are planning to have. Our target date to have all of this in place will be around quarter of next year. So hopefully by quarter two of next year, both these services would already be both income generating and then after that, that's when we add more services and look into further expanding the company.

Andrew Stotz 30:31
That's exciting. All right, listen, there you have it. Another story of loss to keep you winning. Remember to go to my worst investment ever.com to claim your discount on the course that excites you the most now, as we conclude, Rona Dale, I want to thank you again for coming on the show. And on behalf of a Stotz Academy, I hereby award you alumni status for turning your worst investment ever into your best teaching moment. Do you have any parting words for the audience?

Rhonadale Florentino 31:04
He is so much for that. I'm already worse for our audience. I think I've already mentioned it earlier but do not be afraid of the numbers. The numbers will help you realize where you are where you're at at your business and it will also guide you on what should be the next step. Know your numbers is very, very important.

Andrew Stotz 31:25
Know your numbers ladies and gentlemen. Well that's a wrap on another great story to help us create, grow and most importantly protect our well fellow risk takers. This is your worst podcast host Andrew Stotz saying. I'll see you on the upside.