Every entrepreneur has heard the advice: “Talk to your customers.” But what happens when the answers they give lead you straight into a dead end? A growing body of business research suggests that direct questions about what customers want often produce polite false positives — people say yes to avoid disappointing you, or they describe a future they can’t really
When a Philippine business grows from a core team of five to thirty people, the informal ways of working that used to get things done start breaking down. The founder who once knew every task and approved every decision becomes a bottleneck. Communication that used to flow naturally across a small group turns into misaligned priorities, delayed execution, and growing
The Philippine retail market is projected to reach around PHP 2.65 trillion by 2026, and physical stores still account for the bulk of that spending. But when the number of people walking through your door starts falling — and you notice it before your competitors do — the difference between recovering that traffic and watching it slide further often comes
In 2022, 70.71 percent of Filipino workers reported high burnout—the highest rate in Southeast Asia. That same year, roughly 9 out of 10 startups in the Philippines were failing, with 70 percent of registered ones shutting down before ever launching a product. These two numbers aren’t just coincidental. For many business owners, overwork becomes a way to avoid the harder,
Consumer complaints in the Philippines have been climbing steadily, and the numbers tell a clear story. The Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) received 27,947 complaints in 2022, more than double the volume from 2019. By 2023, that figure inched up further to 28,824. Online transactions alone accounted for 44 percent of the 2022 total, with over 2,500 cases involving
Nine out of every ten startups in the Philippines eventually fail. Seven in ten registered startups shut down before they ever launch a single product. These aren’t just statistics — they’re the backdrop against which every Filipino entrepreneur operates. When the odds are that steep, pausing to celebrate a win can feel like taking your eye off the ball. The
More than four in ten chief executives of the country’s largest companies say they plan to raise prices in the next 12 months, and nearly a third are already in the process. That’s according to a joint survey by PricewaterhouseCoopers and the Management Association of the Philippines conducted in July and August 2023, covering 157 CEOs. The finding reflects a
Most business owners don’t start their companies planning to keep rules vague. Yet in practice, many never put clear policies in writing from day one. The result is a workplace where employees operate on assumptions, guesswork, and unwritten rules that nobody officially approved — but everyone follows anyway. These “made-up rules,” as described in a piece by Entrepreneur Leadership Network
Most entrepreneurs who fail don’t fail because the idea was wrong. They fail because they quit too soon — abandoning a business at the first real resistance, then starting over with something new. This restart loop is so common that it has a name: the doom loop. The pattern is straightforward enough — hit a wall, close shop, launch something
A single defective product batch can undo years of brand-building in a matter of days. The 1982 Chicago Tylenol poisonings remain the most studied example in crisis management: seven people died after consuming cyanide-laced capsules, Johnson & Johnson’s market share plunged from 35 percent to 8 percent, and the company spent over $100 million ($318 million in 2024) on a
