On August 27, 2026, I will celebrate 12 years of blogging. When I started JosiahGo.com in 2014, my objective was simple: to share what I was learning and make practical business knowledge more accessible to students, entrepreneurs, managers and business owners in the Philippines. I did not realize then that blogging would also become a record of my own reinvention. […]
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Many corporate executives talk about culture, but very few can seamlessly connect deep organizational values with hard, marketing strategy. Unilab President and CEO Sebastian “Backy” Baquiran belongs to that rare breed. In fact, Backy achieved a historic milestone in the Philippine business community by becoming a rare two-time Mansmith awardee. What makes his trajectory fascinating is the order of his […]
While visiting Bangkok with some old friends, we stopped by a popular shopping mall where one of them decided to get a suit made. The proposition stopped me in my tracks: One coat. One shirt. One pant. One tie. Custom-fitted. Ready in 24 hours for roughly US$137 (Baht 4,500, or Php 8,300). My friend ended up upgrading his raw material […]
When news broke that the United States government moved to close the $800 de minimisthreshold, the tariff-free customs exemption long leveraged by Chinese cross-border platforms Shein and Temu to ship direct-to-consumer parcels via air freight, industry observers treated it as a sudden geopolitical shock. But from a strategic auditing perspective, this outcome was not a surprise. It was a structural load […]
We all know King Solomon for his wisdom. He is history’s ultimate poster child for deep strategic insight. If he were a modern CEO, he would be the visionary founder featured on every business magazine cover, the legendary entrepreneur who inherited a stable organization from his father, David, and rapidly scaled it into a golden conglomerate of unprecedented wealth, complete […]
Every year, I meet business owners who ask essentially the same question. “Our products are good. Our people work hard. So why aren’t we growing?” It is a fair question. What’s interesting is that another company, in the same industry, serving the same customers, often grows much faster. Same economy. Same regulations. Sometimes even the same suppliers. Yet the results […]
(Adapted from the book “Entrepreneurship: The Four-Gate Model”) Imagine a business poised to disrupt an entire market, one where a simple product is turned into a game-changer through innovation and strategic foresight. This is exactly what Orocan, a trusted plastic manufacturer, did with their insulated coolers. It all started with a single observation by their president, Ramon Go. Ramon Go […]
In strategy, activity is often mistaken for progress. Organizations move quickly to solutions because “doing something” feels productive. However, in the PILA (Problem, Insight, Logic, Assumptions) reasoning stack, the Problem is your structural foundation. If the “P” is weak, the entire stack—the forced insights, the fragile logic, and the risky assumptions—becomes an organizational liability. Solving the wrong problem well is […]
For decades, Tang has dominated the powdered beverage category in the Philippines. Leadership, however, does not guarantee immunity from change. Markets evolve. Consumers evolve. Categories fragment. I sat down with Mondelēz International in the Philippines’ Managing Director Aleli Arcilla, recently conferred an honorary Mansmith Sales Masters Award, to discuss Tang’s strategic reset for 2026. Q1: Let me begin with an […]
Early in my career, I had a routine that I valued deeply. Whenever our schedules allowed, I would ask Dr. Ned Roberto—the legendary marketing research guru who at one time served as our Vice Chair at Mansmith and Fielders—to sit in the back of my seminar. My request was simple: Audit my logic, find the cracks, and give me a […]