Name: Adriel Thomas P.
Zialcita
Section: 4BLM
From Shoes to Supermalls: The SM Story
After watching the video, how did you feel?
What inspiration did you grasp as soon as you finished the video?
Henry Sy encountered many problems and hardships on his road to success. How can you relate
to his experiences? Provide your experiences and how you make a comeback or surpass these
trials.
How do you use this as a motivational tool to create your business plan?
Connect your answers to the article.
A hero story narrative that is always been popular for much of science-fiction throughout the decade has
been prevalent not because of the cool weapons or gadgets that they show, but because of showing the
arduous task of completing the Hero’s Journey. The Hero’s Journey popularized by Henry Campbell, is a
narrative way of showing the hero’s journey from the moment they left their ordinary world to the
moment they face challenges. The video reminded me of the same thing, it reminded me of the Hero’s
Journey, which in this case is the journey of Henry Sy, much like an ordinary science-fiction hero, Henry
Sy was an outsider and did not casually fit in at first. I felt as if I was watching someone take on the
journey of a lifetime. This journey truly inspired me to not only pursue my dreams through hard work
but also to rely on the wisdom that others can input in us whether that is good or bad. Much like Henry
Sy, the transformation from SM to Supermalls was brought about by the influence of his family, and
without his business partners, he would not have been able to continue. This is a key feature of what
makes Henry Sy a compelling person because he did not just reach their alone, he had some help and
even when such person criticizes his decisions, such as the fact that he wanted to build a Mall on Makati,
its the fact that despite such criticism it made him more emboldened by the way he would approach
certain aspects of his life. I trade stocks through the casual market in the Philippine Stock Exchange Index
all the time, it is often a common saying in the stock market that one cannot predict when the stock
would go down or when would it go up, the best tool that a person has, is risk management. All through
the failures and success, Henry Sy despite failing was able to assess his risk and his gains, not being too
greedy and not being too indecisive, he took opportunities when he can, but also refrain from taking too
much. This really shows that in all aspects of our lives, we could not really know where we are headed
and we could not even know if we are headed somewhere, what matters is what we do today, what we
assess of ourselves is what makes our journey meaningful. That is why I feel like the most important tool
in a business plan, whatever nature it may be, is to always assess risk. There is also a lot of luck and faith
but we should not just rely on such luck and faith to save us all the time, we must be able to prepare
ourselves from the moment we may fail but most importantly when we win, because even when we win
there is still plenty of work to go ahead. I feel like this is actually why SM allows key positions to enter
into the management of SM, because Henry Sy a young boy from China took a risk of going here and
making a name for himself, an outsider with nothing on him but future saw what he could do and never
look back. We could always and should always look back at Henry Sy as an example of what risk
management and business planning can lead a person.
