Filthy rich

There is not a single business gene in my body.

This I realized while writing a business plan for the Ayala Technoboot Camp tomorrow. My team (Kino Aquino, Isabel Nabor, Zi Laqui, Ate Xy-Za Oro, and my thesis adviser) is pitching to a bunch of successful businessmen, and we're here trying to sound business-like.

Don't ask me how to market my product because my answer would be: "Oh, I'll hire someone to do it for me." But here I am, doing just that--thinking what my "competitive advantage" is, who my "target market" is, whatever that means.

I realize some people like doing these things. Hands up to them. To be in business, one must have the intestinal fortitude to overcome failure, to rise above one's self.

I'm even surprised because the speakers we've had so far do business not because they have to but because they want to. They derive a kind of satisfaction, probably of the same kind as, say, getting good experimental results.

This whole exercise of thinking like a businessman taught me to look at things differently. But it made me realize something as well: that I'm never going to get filthy rich in the future. No, sorry, I don't have it in me.