Innovation is a word most attributed to big-time companies. One can imagine tailored suits, cold meeting rooms, and dark-roasted coffee clinging to snow-white papers with vaguely important technical words. It is a grown-up word, one most associated with experienced CEOs. To burst your bubble, this is not a journey of traditional proportions. If anything, it is quite the antithesis of what the Philippine business scene is accustomed to. An entrepreneurial mindset is best exemplified in its ability to bring a strong business model and vision to life, so what better way to shake things up than a team of fresh-eyed Gen Z entrepreneurs?
I know, right? Reel in shock for a second.
Done? Good, because Porsha Mangilit shares how she pushed the boundaries between our preconceived notions of entrepreneurship and modern business strategies in the digital age.
No, this was not written by a traditional suit.
Porsha Mangilit is a visionary and one of the core members behind Terra, a sustainable eco-fashion brand made for the modern Filipina. She is a recipient of the prestigious international Junior Achievement Asia Pacific Company of the Year and FedEx Access Award in 2019. That celebrated win, which took Philippine news outlets by storm, serves as a testament to the idea that innovation knows no age.
Any business student or aspiring self-employed young person who comes across this honest, no-frills advice will find it direct, candid, and brutally raw. She explores the process, experience, and challenges behind Terra as someone who dared to take the leap alongside her team. It is a true testament to defying the expectations prematurely placed upon them by manufacturers, partners, and even themselves: youth, vision, and execution.
Fall Seven Times, Stand Eight Times
The popular Japanese proverb perfectly captures the spirit embedded in each chapter of The Gen Z Hustle by Porsha Mangilit. It answers the questions you may have been sitting with about a possible business model with a candid and inviting voice that coaches rather than instructs. One of the main lessons from her experience is to have the courage to create. Often, we find ourselves discouraged before the grind even starts, whether from the daunting statistics of failure in entrepreneurship or simply the weight of the unknown. Like Ms. Mangilit and her team in those early stages, many of us get stuck in decision paralysis.
What if I fail? To that, I ask: what if you succeed?
The Gen Z Hustle is more than a blueprint. It is a reframing of innovation on our own terms. For too long, the capabilities of young people have gone unacknowledged, with progressive ideas, visions, and inventions pushed aside simply because of the one thing Ms. Mangilit and I believe is both our greatest strength and our greatest challenge: youth.
What to Expect from This Read
Say a business student, young entrepreneur, or aspiring self-starter stumbles upon this book. What should they expect?
Not your cookie-cutter, ordinary cheat sheet.
If you are looking for something comprehensive yet flexible, basically anything but the standard business plan guide, you will find it in the second part of this read. Do not be fooled by its neatly chronological order and systematic format. Look closer, and what lies within is pragmatic advice that accounts for inexperience without penalizing it. It is inviting and forgiving, yet grounded firmly in reality.
There is no age restriction on innovation. What separates the dreamer from the mountaintop is treating entrepreneurship as a mindset rather than a destination. Rome was not built in a day, and the same goes for any business model. What this book offers is a blueprint built for its target audience: the Gen Z dreamers, hustlers, and aspirants.
Written by Eowyn Leila Punzalan