WBW 41: The Secret in Making Your Customers Happy is to Make Yourself Happy First part 1 of 2

Isn't it irritating to go to a shop that ignores you, frowns whenever you ask a question, treat you like you're nothing. Chances are you'll immediately leave, never to come back ever again. Now take a step back and reflect - maybe you're just like another ass attendant whenever you talked with your clients, partners or colleagues. It could be that you have a real personality problem, or that innately, you don't believe in your work. In this part one of two, Jun Miranda shows how in his mid-40s, he made a decision to pursue his long restrained passion, motivating him to treat his customers the best he can, creating PCCI - one of the most successful digital imaging training centers in the Philippines.

Who is Jun Miranda?

Jun is the first Adobe Certified Expert (ACE) and Adobe Certified Instructor (ACI) in Photoshop (2000) and Lightroom (2008) in Asia. He is the president, creative director and resident photographer of PixelMagic, a digital imaging studio and service bureau since 1996. He is a CompTIA Certified Technical Trainer (CTT+ Certified Professional) and is also the president and program director of PCCI.

Jun is past president of the Camera Club of the Philippines, and was founding president of both the IdN Club Philippines (the country's first association of digital artists) and Club de Camera Digital (the country's first association of digital photographers). He is also a member of the National Association of Photoshop Professionals. He is a product of the Maine Photographic Workshops (Rockport, Maine), Dynamic Graphics Educational Foundation (Peoria, Illinois) and United Digital Artists (New York). He also took Creative Training Techniques under Robert Pike and a class on Corel Painter under Jeremy Sutton, instructor, lecturer and author of several books on Painter.

Jun writes a regular column for Manila Bulletin called Digital Focus, is a regular contributor to i-mag photography magazine, and lectures at different trade shows here and abroad. Lastly, he is a proud Filipino, becoming an activist leader during the Marcos regime.

Show notes:

What do you consider your greatest failure / challenge?

• From early on, even back in high school, he wanted to pursue the world of art – painting and stuff like that. When he was in college, he chickened out and thought that he wasn’t good enough. He went into a business course in La Salle.
• Looking back right now, he felt he should have pursued that career. It’s a lost opportunity, but now he finds himself in that world as well. But he should have built that career at that time.
• Looking back is always 20 / 20.

What’s the feeling of having put on hold what you really wanted to do?

• When he was 45 years old, he had a mid life crisis. He had to leave this place. It wasn’t really his cup of tea but he was there for the money. But it was really paying well and the good thing is that is where he got his seed money. Without it, he could not have probably pursued what he is pursuing right now.
• In a way, sometimes you are forced to prostitute yourself for the money. Also because he was forced to work.
• Typical example would be you want to get married and you have to work immediately after college. Banking was the only possible venue at the time. Through family connection you got employed, etc.
• He was very flexible academically because he was taking up business courses so he could very well go there. It was like hell for him because he didn’t really like it. He was good enough to pursue a career in banking but he was never happy in it. And later on, when worked for a foreign bank, the pressure was building up because you have open position, can’t sleep at night, you can really lose millions of dollars. So eventually he thought that he had to quit. He was in a position where he could quit because he only had 1 kid and his son was already graduating college. He also isn’t the kind of person or has the kind of family that spends a lot.
• It’s not like making money to pursue luxury. He wants to travel, yeah, but never luxury to lets say buy Mercedes Benz or having good houses. It was never like that.
• He kept telling his friends that he was going to quit. He was more brainwashing himself than anybody else. Until he pinned himself in a corner that he really had to quit. He talked himself into it. Its not an easy decision on his part. He has a well paying job. He is at the height of his career, then he decided to quit. Everybody was saying he was stupid. But to him, its either do it now (in his mid 40s) because 10 years from now, it won’t happen anymore.
• Finally he said he was going to quit. But the first month after quitting, he kept asking himself if he did the right thing, for the first time in his life, he was nobody. When you enter a local bank, you’re recognized and you don’t queue anymore. When you call up, you say so and so and your company.
• One time when he called up somebody, the person on the other line asked who it was and from company he was from. He had no company. He was nobody. He was just a friend. That’s when he realized all of a sudden that his whole status changed.
• But then when he quit, he really wanted to pursue something. At the time, he wanted to go into law. While he was waiting for law school to open, he went to the US to study photography. Then an American friend of his mentioned that a nearby town was offering photoshops in around 1996.
• When he came back to manila, forget law! At 45 years old, to take up law, he’s gonna start from the bottom and build up a career. Its going to be too late.
• When he came back, he put up one of the first imaging studios in 1996. There were only two of them. He had a partner who is a photographer and that’s how he started.
• But teaching has always been in his blood.  Before he went into serious work, he was an activist. Activism is teaching. You go there and teach the students your ideology. He’s very used to teaching, public speaking and everything.
• The nice thing about is that when he put up the imaging studio, he got known in the industry and then sooner or later, he was invited to speak in one of the first graphic expos. The organizer later on invited this publisher of IdN magazine, a graphic magazine based in Hong Kong. He wanted to put up an IdN readers club, which is a Macintosh based graphics magazine. At the time, he was one of the first Macintosh users. He started using them way back in 1986.
• Among the same minded friends, they put up the organization called IdN Club Philippines. So they were all photographers, graphic artists, etc. And to make money and raise funds, they would do quarterly seminars. And we’d talk among themselves as public speakers. He would teach on photoshop. Someone else would talk about pagemaker.
• The feedback that they were getting from participants was that they wanted hands on. Not just seminars. So the board thought they might as well put up a school, training center. Then he did the project study. And he said, that they weren’t going to make money. Its going to be difficult. Its easier said than done, but it was at the back of his mind.

For part 2 of 2, click here.