It never ceases to amaze us how much time people waste searching endlessly for a shortcut to entrepreneurial success and fulfillment when the only real path is staring them right in the face.
Real entrepreneurs are those people, who start a real business that employs real people, providing real products and services to real customers, and creating a whole cycle.
For Jennylyn De Los Santos-Floresca, an entrepreneurial cycle does not only mean providing the best products she can offer, but it also should inspire others to success and have their own business.
For greener pastures
Floresca, Ray Education Directions Philippines president, said starting off her business was no easy feat.
Before she had her business, she had to work different jobs before getting her pot of gold.
Floresca, who is a nursing graduate worked as a marketing officer at a Taiwanese hospital before she became an assistant of a British teacher in Shanghai.
“And then I said to myself, how can I become like her? I am a professional, and it seems like they don’t give value to my degree,” she said.
With her goal to become successful, she applied for Tesol (Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages) and took it for two weeks.
Tesol is a flexible credit master or arts program the provides the skills to teach English to non-English speakers in the United States and abroad.
“After taking my Tesol, a lot of opportunities opened to me and (I) became a Director of HR Marketing in Shanghai Jao Tong University in China,” she said.
Despite her growing success in China, she needed to go back home in the Philippines because she had been away from her family for quite a while.
But her boss instead of stopping her instead gave her an opportunity to handle a business in the country.
“You are not going home. You go home and open a branch in the Philippines,” her boss told her.
“This is how Ray Education was born,” she said.
Challenges
Ray Education Directions is an educational consultant training center that provides a career path for students who want to be internationally competent.
Now on its 7th year in the business, Floresca described her journey as fruitful and fulfilling.
Ray Education, who has its main base in China, now has centers throughout Asia, Europe, North America and Australia with direct student admission partnership with over 4500 universities and colleges.
However, like any successful entrepreneur, Floresca also shares a few challenges in her business.
One of those challenges is being called a fraud by some students, whom she lent money to help them in their international careers.
Another challenge is having students, whom she had helped in their interntional careers but who chose to go TNT (tago ng tago) abroad.
Despite these bumps on her journey to success, she continues to persevere and hopes to expand her business.
Goals
Like all businesses, Floresca shares that there is no secret formula towards becoming successful.
“However, you just have to be true, consistent with your service and maintain a good relationship with your client, then you can always be successful,” said Floresca.
With the success of Ray Education Directions, the company now has 40 employees, and have helped about 40 people become internationally competent with their curated programs.
Ray Education’s goal also is to help 100 people become internationally competent with the standards abroad.
Floresca also plans to build a school in Cebu where she can tap more people locally.
“Cebu is such a rich culture and we can do a lot here,” she said.
With her growing success in her business, ultimately Floresca wants all her students to be like her — become internationally competent, work abroad, come back home in the Philippines, and be able to build one’s own business.
“My goal here is to make creative people with the same passion as I have,” said Floresca.
A goal that she believes she can achieve because she sees the world as one full of infinite possibilities with countless opportunities.
She plans to let people realize that their lives and career are finite and that they should start grabbing the opportunities in front of them.
She says that having finite lives and careers means that we have limited time to find what we all are searching for and make a mark on the world.
“This is our time,” said Floresca.
“Ignorance has a very expensive outcome, find something you like to do and just do it,” she said.
That’s how real entrepreneurs with a heart always start.
