By Vernon Velasco
TALK about future plans, KC and I love to moon about forever. It doesn’t have to be so big as to canoodle in a lovely penthouse or shell out obscenely for a ’54 convertible through a joint bank account.
We start out small, like she lets me use her spoon and share her cup of water. I tell her that, to make-believe we’re a starting couple, all it takes is to acknowledge that a relationship is about sharing. And so we have agreed to call her things “conjugal property”, which means (and we have to be very clear on this) what is mine is mine and what is hers is mine, too.
So when KC brought up that one of her life plans is that she wants to share a business with me, I gladly obliged, except that, for the time being, I don’t have the money. So, instead, I volunteered to be in charge of the marketing in the business plan, which she took to mean I’m going to be her marketer-slash-operations manager-slash-kargador. That’s fair share, if you ask her. “But, by the way, what are we into?”
“Kawaii costumery,” she said. Novel-sounding, to say the least. But what does she mean by that? “You’re hawking our products by being my model and wearing really cute KC Niña Pusing cosplay headdresses and stockings.”
I have seen hardcore fan boys going kawaii and an average office girl obliviously going to work in Little Twin Stars leggings. So I explained that someone else is better-qualified than I am and can “be paid to do that”. I said it the way I might when we leave, say, a coffee shop and I let my trash right there on the coffee table. My girlfriend would reprimand me on bad manners, but, then again, “someone is paid to do that.”
“Someone is paid to do that” is always our point of difference. So I expected KC would strike it as an unwelcome business suggestion when I told her tall tales about my friend Rafa, who runs a coffee business and monitors the trade without having to frequently visit the coffee shop.
“She can monitor business transactions, she knows whether the coffee delivery boy doesn’t make it on time and she knows whether the barista is just doing Facebook at the shop. She does it all from a far-away place. Is she God?” I said. “Hush. No, sweetie. But she has eyes wherever her business operates.”
“How does she do it?” now baffled, she cocked her head.
“Someone is paid to do that. And I don’t mean an insider.”
“Cree-pyy! She employed an apparition?”
“Globe, silly.”
Rafa is subscribed to Globe myBusiness (https://mybusiness.globe.com.ph), a host of solutions that digitize business and make every scintilla of operation accessible on your smartphone. Specifically she is subscribed to Globe Charge and myBusiness CCTV, the monitoring aspects of the plan, since she, every so often, has to do business remotely.
Mobile point-of-sales solution Globe Charge comes with a cute sensor device you plug into your smartphone as a credit-card terminal, which enables customers to do mobile payment and tap-pay cashless transactions through Visa or MasterCard (not to mention sparing the entrepreneur from having to go through the arduous process of applying for a credit-card terminal in a bank). The virtual cash register also allows Rafa to remotely check her shop’s daily transactions and inventory even from half a world away.
MyBusiness CCTV, on the other hand, allows Rafa to remotely video-monitor every nook and cranny of the business, from security to customer service to how the coffee is prepared, and “[over the phone] Oh, Marco [the barista], cheer manong up over there with free love Americano. Looks like he has just broken up with her girlfriend.”
Other Globe myBusiness solutions include large-format advertisement displays, host Web sites and Wi-Fi hub, since Wi-Fi is attractive to customers and it can be a source of additional income. Globe Telecom recognizes that young entrepreneurs and small-and-medium enterprises are the order of the day. And so the telecom, which is ever at the forefront wherever it matters, digitizes business and assists by making sense of the technology millennials have always leveraged on.
I egged my girlfriend on that it’s a must-have, then she can employ me as a full-time boyfriend and dump me as a part-time business partner since, anyway, Globe myBusiness can be paid to do that. Because, really, how else can would-be entrepreneurs get all the ease of doing trade by having something in full charge of control and monitoring of business operations, all while we enjoy our time together? ■
Image credits: Jimbo Albano
