In my conversations with entrepreneurs, CEOs and Filipino businesspeople over the years, we often talk about their “secret sauce.” What is that one ingredient or special mix of ingredients that made their enterprise succeed where many others failed? Or what makes a startup special? Oftentimes, interviewees will respond with their business strategy or their family values. Other times, they will talk about how their hard-nosed grit propelled them towards entrepreneurial success. But one answer that always comes up — and too often we don’t talk about it enough — is how passion drives entrepreneurship.
Yes, not capital, not a master’s degree, not being raised with entrepreneurial values. But passion. Heart. In Filipino, we call it puso. And somehow that word communicates so much more. It is the beating heart of business. With its heartbeat, it enables and informs everything we do as entrepreneurs. And at the same time, it puts the entire money-dominated narrative of business on its head by focusing instead on passion, service, relationship-building, and, yes, even love — all of which may serve entrepreneurs better than the relentless pursuit of profit.
Recently, I had the good fortune of interviewing Charisse Tinio, an extraordinary entrepreneur who has truly embraced puso as a way of doing business. In fact, she credits it as her competitive edge and her reason for doing what she does with excellence. And fittingly so. As the founder of Nice Print, a photography and videography services company that dominates the booming wedding services industry, she has built an empire within the industry, expanding to grow other businesses in related services. Most famously, Nice Print has become known as the wedding photographer of the stars, ever since the wedding of Ogie Alcasid and Regine Velasquez in 2010.
What can we learn from Charisse Tinio’s dedication to puso? I’ve listed three key points from our fascinating conversation.
1. Build Your Company on Relationships
The wedding services industry is an immense, rapidly growing, and competitive industry. I can attest to this as a wedding host myself. There are countless hosts, planners, photographers, and videographers in the biz. How does a business set itself apart in such an industry?
Charisse believes it’s about puso, saying, “What really sets you apart is the heart that you put into it, the passion that you put into it.”
It is this passion that has been at the very center of what Nice Print has been doing since 2006. “I’ve always built my company based on relationships,” Charisse continues. “I value that a lot. And people feel that if you’re very sincere, that you’re not just here for the money, you’re not just here for the day of the wedding. We go the extra mile all the time.”
For Charisse, going the extra mile isn’t just lip service, and neither is building relationships. She recounts how she maintains links with her clients, even sending gifts when they give birth or go through other life milestones.
After 19 years in the business, the relationships she has fostered in her business continue to bear fruit.
“We’ve come full circle with them,” Charisse says, “I’ve had debutantes who are now my brides. And then I have one-year-old celebrants who are now my debutantes.” These strong relationships extend even to her celebrity clients, with Nice Print now doing the wedding of Leila Alcacid, the daughter of Ogie and Regine.
2. Your Team Is Your Capital
Building relationships isn’t limited to just your clients or your customers. It also extends to your partners, the people who you work with, your team.
For Charisse, this bond with her team has led to something that is almost unheard of in today’s modern startups: loyalty. Charisse shares that after 19 years, hardly anyone has left her team.
She explains, “If you treat them well and if they see that you’re genuinely caring for them, they will stay… And we’ll take care of them till the end. So, it’s really building relationships not just with the clients, but more importantly with the team, with the talented individuals. Because they are your capital.”
Now managing not just Nice Print but a group of companies, Charisse has learned to trust her team, delegate responsibility to them, and, most importantly, give them avenues for growth, with some of her managers becoming part owners of their businesses.
“I’ve learned to delegate, and just really trust the process,” she says, “and para bang i-mentor sila, para gumaling din sila [and mentor them so they can become better], and they can think like me somehow, and work like me, and decide like me.”
3. Service at Its Heart
Another hallmark of Charisse Tinio’s management is service. Among Charisse’s early ventures before Nice Print was Konica Express, a film developing center in the retail space. But as digital photography began to take over, she had to pivot her business away from film. Her answer? Service.
“Nung nagkakaroon na ng struggle, kasi nga mamamatay na ’yung film industry [When there was already a struggle because the film industry was dying], I told Jim [Charisse’s husband], I think the best thing to do is service. And Jim was challenging me and said, ‘Why?’ Sabi ko, ‘Eh kasi, no matter the technology [Because, I said, no matter the technology], people would still need people to shoot for them.”
From there, the service-oriented, relationship-centered Nice Print was born. Charisse admits that she has never been into the technical side of the business, such as the videography or the editing. For her it’s all about relationships.
“Hindi pwede ’yung galing lang. [It’s not all about excellence.] You have to build relationships. Build relationships,” she emphasizes.
To entrepreneurs who want to emulate Charisse’s success by creating a business centered around puso, she advises just starting, no matter how small the venture, but always with passion.
“Everything starts from something so small,” she says. “And you’ll really never know unless you try. So you have to keep trying. If you don’t succeed at first, do it again, and do it again, until you hit it.”
RJ Ledesma (www.rjledesma.com) is a Hall of Fame Awardee for Best Male Host at the Aliw Awards, a multi-awarded serial entrepreneur, motivational speaker, and business mentor, podcaster, an Honorary Consul, and editor-in-chief of The Business Manual. Mr. Ledesma can be found on LinkedIn, Facebook and Instagram. The RJ Ledesma Podcast is available on Facebook, Spotify, Google and Apple Podcasts. Let Mr. Ledesma know if there are other entrepreneurs you’d want him to interview by sending an e-mail to ledesma.rj@gmail.com.
