For several years, Capisnons have invested their money in several companies promising a hefty return for a short period.
Some are lucky enough to be at the top of the food chain leaving thousands of downlines in the agonizing pain of waiting as they brace the reality that they have been recruited into a Ponzi scheme sanitized as an investment company.
Not even our Capisnon self-made billionaire Edgar “Injap” Sia II can turn your money double in that instant.
The man behind the success of Mang Inasal and Double Dragon Properties was declared by Forbes Magazine in 2016 as the Youngest Billionaires (US dollars) in the Philippines with an estimated net worth of $1.2 billion.
Injap’s meteoric rise to success in the food, retail, and real estate industries is something we and especially our young Capisnon entrepreneurs must emulate.
Injap who called himself a Capilonggo, short for Capisnon and Ilonggo was born on January 9, 1977, the year of the Dragon, in Iloilo City to a Chinese-Filipino father and a Japanese-Filipino mother that gave rise to his famous nickname “Injap,” Intsik-Japanese.
Like most Filipino-Chinese families, Injap grew up in a simple and frugal lifestyle, he mentioned that their family vehicle for years was only a motorcycle that fitting their whole family into it, is a daily struggle.
During his free time, he would work as a cashier in their small but flourishing grocery store.
Even at a young age, he would already exhibit his potential as a visionary and innovative businessman. In one instance, when Injap was left to manage their store after his family went on vacation, he ingeniously sold cement after seeing a building construction in front of their store and to his family’s surprise, their business layout was completely different in a positive way.
Injap like other self-made billionaires such as Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg dropped out of college at the University of San Agustin in his senior year.
Nevertheless, he believes that education is life-changing particularly to those people who came from poor families.
Behind the success of Mang Inasal is the story of hard work and tenacity.
He and his wife personally marinaded the chicken inasal and slept in the wee hours of the morning but still managed to wake up early for the opening of their store.
At 34, Injap became a billionaire after selling his 70 percent stake in Mang Inasal to Jollibee Food Corporation and made many headlines all across the business world.
But with all the success, Injap believed that an entrepreneur must think outside the box and be prepared to be called crazy.
With the investment craze in Capiz, Capisnons must learn to follow the footsteps of Injap, that there is no shortcut to success. You have to work hard to gain financial independence without sacrificing the principles of fair play and your principles in life.
As Injap said in his book, “There is a thin line between being aggressive and being purely reckless.”
Let us all be aggressive but not reckless especially with our investments.*
