WBW 43: Being Yourself is Not Just a Cliche, It can make You Rich Too! with Anton Diaz

In this day and age, there is no reason for a person to pursue his passion and not find a way for it to be financially rewarding. It's easy to get trapped in the notion that following one’s passion and becoming rich is like having to choose at crossroads where both can’t be achieved at the same time. We, at EntrepBuff.com, strongly believe this is not the case, wishing to break this mental barrier by publishing this talk by Anton Diaz as he shares his experiences in transitioning from corporate executive into an internet maven, sharing the insights that led him to this journey, and how he built Our Awesome Planet, which not only he is passionate about, but certainly earning from as well.

Who is Anton Diaz?

Anton Diaz, graduated as Valedictorian in Don Bosco Technical Institute Makati in 1991, then went on to take up Electronics and Communications Engineering in De La Salle University in 1995. He then joined Procter & Gamble and stayed there for 12-13 years, and during his last few months there, was handling IT and was the CIO of P&G.

In 2006, he then began his journey of becoming one of the top professional bloggers and internet marketers in the Philippines. He started his professional blog “Our Awesome Planet” back in 2006, starting simply from documenting his family’s journeys – their travels and discoveries of different restaurants and sites to see throughout the Philippines to now having a large following of up to 5,500 readers or 12,000 hits per day and sharing with people a slice of Manila's hidden places – both food and travel secrets.

Among his other interests are exploring beaches, playing badminton, internetmarketing, photo-blogging and traveling around the Philippines.

Show notes:

Attended the First Asia Blog Awards

• There were 400 bloggers who attended from Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, Philippines and Australia
• The best bloggers is Shashou. She was just a waitress before, but now she is the region’s best blogger
• And this is a look on what the world of internet entrepreneurs. They are less than 25 years old. Some of their bosses are just a year older than their entire team.

The Story of Our Awesome Planet

• In 2005, he created Our Awesome Planet. He started that when he had his first son named Aidan, and then they had another son Joshua who came 2 – 3 years after.
• The passion behind is that they wanted to capture the childhood of his kids.
• Most people don’t really know what happened during their childhood, and what they wanted to do was to document it day by day while they are growing up, with the hope that after, they understand what happened to them in their childhood
• They love to eat out and travel, so they wanted to share the experience with them when they are older.
• Also in 2006, he realized that the Philippines, he realized that the Philippines is super beautiful. He worked in Procter & Gamble for 12-13 years. His last boss just spoke earlier that morning – Johnip Cua. And he was handling the IT, the CIO of Procter & Gamble when he quit his day job.
• In 2006, in P&G, he went to Singapore, Japan, London, US. And you start to realize, all the wonders out there are really manmade. When you go to the Philippines, all the wonders here are natural . And its super mind blowing that he wanted to share this with all the people, specifically Filipinos. He wants to inspire the mind, touch the heart, one Filipino at a time, that our country is super beautiful.
• There is a picture of when Gloria Diaz when she won Miss Universe and when the first man landed on the moon. In the past, newspaper documents history. But today, bloggers are the modern historians, because we record the history of Manila.
• During his time, the hottest places to go to were Faces and Mars, but you won’t see any recorded history or photos of what really happened there. But now, 10 to 20 years from now, people will go back at this day, and really laugh on what people are doing in Manila in circa 2000.
• In 2007, there was this blog, called Julia and the Philippines. And it really inspired him because her last post was in Jan 13, 2007 entitled “Buhay Pa Tayo” or “We are still Alive”.
• At the age of 38, she decided to step out of the rat race of New York, and join Peace Corps.  And she was in Bicol. And 2-3 months after, she was the first casualty in Batag. But he is sharing the story not because of the tragic incident, but when you go to this blog, “Julia and the Philippines”, you can understand her story. You can read her story. And she lives forever in a blog.
• You can go back to the blog of Francis Magalona. You realize that you learn a lot of lessons and you get inspired.
• In one of Bo Sanchez’s talks during Nov 2007, he really found that his calling is to share the food and travel secrets of the Philippines.
• By Feb 2008, he decided to leave Procter & Gamble after 12-13 years of working there. He decided to take Our Awesome Planet to the next level.
• It is still doing 5500 readers, 12000 hits per day and still growing
• In 2008, he launched the Ultimate Culinary Tours, one of the best Culinary Tours in the country. They have culinary tours in Pampanga, Tagaytay. One of the bestsellers is the Ultimate Culinary Tour in Batanes.
• This year, as his way of giving back to the community, he launched Maven Secrets. This is to share what he learned over the 4-5 years from P&G, doing Our Awesome Planet and learning from the top internetmavensin the Philippines.
• He launched a 90 day program in Asian Institute of Management this year. He’s also helping AIM take their internet marketing to the next level.

If you were to attribute your success to one quality, what would it be?

• The number one quality of all entrepreneurs is speed of implementation.
• For Our Awesome Planet, if you look at most of the successful blogs, they were started in 2005. In the same way, all of the other business models. Like the course in Internet Marketing in 2009 in AIM.
• Paunahan lang talaga. It really is speed of implementation.
• You get the idea, how do you implement it and execution.

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