My Cousin, The Biz Wiz: Profile on Manny Gonzalez

I wrote about my cousin, Man­ny Gon­za­lez, busi­ness­man and CEO of Plan­ta­tion Bay Hotel and Resort in Mac­tan, Philip­pines. This appeared in Pos­i­tive­ly Fil­ipino, Novem­ber 14, 2018 — please click here to vis­it Pos­i­tive­ly Fil­ipino.  The text is past­ed below.

My Cousin, The Biz Wiz

By  Cecil­ia Manguer­ra Brainard

Pos­i­tive­ly Fil­ipino, Nov. 14, 2018 

I ran into my cousin Man­ny Gon­za­lez in Paris sev­er­al years ago. He, his sis­ter, and a mutu­al cousin were on hol­i­day and rent­ed an apart­ment in the Saint-Ger­main-Pres area; I had a lit­er­ary event and stayed in a hotel in near­by Saint-Michel neigh­bor­hood. One Sat­ur­day in Octo­ber, I hur­ried down the Boule­vard Saint Ger­main to meet them at Les Deux Magots for din­ner. I had not seen them for some time. We had all got­ten absorbed in our own lives and lived in dif­fer­ent parts of the world. We only knew the broad sketch­es of our lives.

That first meet­ing at Les Deux Magots was heady. We were excit­ed and bub­bled with old fam­i­ly sto­ries. In Paris, we had more din­ners and a shop­ping expe­di­tion to the flea mar­ket at the Marche Aux Puces Saint-Ouen. The pleas­ant bond­ing in Paris was fol­lowed by more get-togeth­ers in New York and in Mac­tan. Lat­er on, I asked Man­ny if I could write about him. I want to find out how you became a busi­ness­man, I said. He agreed.

To most peo­ple, Man­ny is the suc­cess­ful busi­ness­man who is the CEO and prin­ci­pal share­hold­er of Plan­ta­tion Bay Resort and Spa in Mac­tan, Philip­pines. To me, Man­ny is my first cousin.

I recall, before Plan­ta­tion Bay exist­ed, Manny’s vis­its to my entre­pre­neur­ial moth­er. This was back in the ear­ly 1990s and he would sit and pick her brain about the resort hotel he want­ed to cre­ate. He did build Plan­ta­tion Bay, from the ground, carv­ing 11 hectares of dry Mac­tan land into a kind of fan­ta­sy­land with seafront and a huge man­made pool at the cen­ter, sur­round­ed by clus­ters of colo­nial-style build­ings to house 260 rooms. Plan­ta­tion Bay has a vari­ety of restau­rants, shops, ten­nis courts, pools, meet­ing rooms, spa, and oth­er leisure facil­i­ties, mak­ing the resort feel like a com­plete lit­tle world. Plan­ta­tion Bay claims it’s the Num­ber One choice of trav­el­ers.

Aside from own­ing a home in Barcelona, Man­ny keeps an apart­ment in Plan­ta­tion Bay. His typ­i­cal day at Plan­ta­tion Bay is this: Break­fast with the gen­er­al man­ag­er or oth­er offi­cers. Morn­ing brief­ing. Inspec­tions and quick meet­ing some days. Lunch by him­self. Read­ing and writ­ing in his room, with the TV turned on for back­ground noise (typ­i­cal­ly, DVDs of old TV series). When he is out-of-town — and he is fond of trav­el­ling — Man­ny con­tin­ues man­ag­ing the resort via emails with hotel offi­cers.

His love Plan­ta­tion Bay is appar­ent: one of his hap­pi­est moments was the 20th year cel­e­bra­tion of resort busi­ness in 2016 when they had a fire­works dis­play and which start­ed with a rock ver­sion of “Amaz­ing Grace.” “It was heart-thump­ing,” he declared.

I real­ized that for decades, Man­ny had poured him­self into Plan­ta­tion Bay. Sit­ting in the Kil­i­man­jaro Kafe for break­fast and study­ing the Kore­an tourists, I men­tioned that Plan­ta­tion Bay was his cre­ation and it was a good one because he made vaca­tion­ers hap­py; he gift­ed them with mem­o­ries that will last their life­times.

I asked if he con­sid­ers him­self a suc­cess­ful busi­ness­man. “Yes,” he said. I asked if mon­ey is his sole mea­sure of his suc­cess. He said mon­ey is just part of the notion of suc­cess. He talked of oth­er fac­tors such as the chance to exer­cise both cre­ativ­i­ty and man­age­r­i­al com­pe­tence in a vari­ety of dis­ci­plines such as food, archi­tec­ture, inte­ri­or design, recre­ation activ­i­ty design, mar­ket­ing, prop­er­ty devel­op­ment.

Indeed Man­ny scru­ti­nizes restau­rant menus and food prepa­ra­tion; he goes through great lengths to find the right brand of but­ter, cof­fee, wine or beer; he exper­i­ments with recipes until they find the right one for crois­sant or faba­da, for exam­ple. He is involved with room designs, choic­es of fur­ni­ture and fix­tures, hir­ing and fir­ing, and just about every per­snick­ety detail in that resort.

He also start­ed health care pro­grams that extend to the sur­round­ing com­mu­ni­ties of Plan­ta­tion Bay. Manny’s brain­child includes the Las Vegas-style per­for­mances by work­ers who have to audi­tion and get paid extra for their per­for­mances.

I won­dered who had taught Man­ny to be inno­v­a­tive, to step out of the “box.” “Who men­tored you?” I asked.

“Var­i­ous peo­ple have helped me through­out my life, some with­out even real­iz­ing the extent to which I ben­e­fit­ed from their ran­dom acts of kind­ness. This makes me all the more aware that the most impor­tant ingre­di­ent in suc­cess is good luck, and a knack for seiz­ing on unde­served lucky breaks,” he replied.

I had not expect­ed to hear Man­ny talk of “luck” and had assumed he would cred­it hard work and his abil­i­ties for his suc­cess. He had gone to the Ate­neo and Colum­bia Uni­ver­si­ties, and he had worked for years in inter­na­tion­al bank­ing and finance.

I also assumed his life had been chore­o­graphed toward suc­cess but his state­ment about this was, “My life was nev­er care­ful­ly planned. I just wan­dered from one sit­u­a­tion to anoth­er. I took a Human­i­ties major (at the Ate­neo) because it would allow me to fin­ish col­lege ear­ly, not because of any deep con­vic­tion except a gen­er­al belief that broad knowl­edge would be good for me.”

I did not – do not — believe his life has been that ran­dom because I knew of his busi­ness ven­tures when he was just a child. In Wash­ing­ton D.C. where his father had worked, Man­ny and anoth­er neigh­bor child had a news­pa­per busi­ness (they sold one copy). He and anoth­er child also ran a prover­bial lemon­ade stand. Lat­er, in Cebu, we cousins used to play Monop­oly and Man­ny always end­ed up with the most num­ber of hous­es and hotels. In grade school, he rent­ed out his comics to his class­mates, “to sup­port my com­ic-book addic­tion … and for some­thing to do dur­ing sum­mer.” At school, he dis­cov­ered that many chil­dren did not both­er return­ing their soft drink bot­tles for their 5-cen­ta­vo deposit, so he col­lect­ed the emp­ty bot­tles to “earn mon­ey to buy treats for myself.”

One sum­mer in Cebu, he and anoth­er boy cousin, con­coct­ed a busi­ness of sell­ing scrap met­al. They had seen men pick­ing up met­al from the side streets and the two boys real­ized there was mon­ey in that “garbage.” They used the fam­i­ly car to hunt for dis­card­ed met­al. It was the earn­ings from the scrap met­al busi­ness that he invest­ed in the pawn shop owned by our two old maid aunts. As luck (or bad luck) would have it, the shop was bur­glar­ized, and Man­ny had his first les­son about the uncer­tain­ty of invest­ments when he lost every­thing.

Plan­ta­tion Bay Resort and Spa in Mac­tan, Philip­pines (Source plantationbay.com)

Despite the pub­lic per­sona of being a suc­cess­ful busi­ness­man, and unknown to many, he is inter­est­ed in what I call “New Age stuff.” He has hired Feng Shui mas­ters for Plan­ta­tion Bay. He col­lects crys­tals and talks about their “ener­gies.” He is inter­est­ed in the heal­ing qual­i­ties of herbs. He seems to believe in kar­ma and is gen­er­ous to his employ­ees. “I have had a chance to help peo­ple improve their lives and broad­en their hori­zons, not just by pro­vid­ing employ­ment and a nur­tur­ing envi­ron­ment, but by shar­ing busi­ness skills and per­son­al val­ues,” he says.

At times, he has felt the sting of betray­als by those close to him, but he shrugs this off: “I have a short mem­o­ry for things like that. It takes a lot for me to sour com­plete­ly on a par­tic­u­lar per­son, and my unre­ward­ing expe­ri­ences don’t trans­fer to oth­ers.”

When asked what qual­i­ties have helped him become suc­cess­ful he says, “Deter­mi­na­tion and an appro­pri­ate­ly opti­mistic out­look in life. Choos­ing work that I enjoy. Will­ing­ness to be dif­fer­ent. Sweat­ing the details.”

I had one more ques­tion for Man­ny. Through­out the years, I’ve vis­it­ed him in his dif­fer­ent homes and almost always he occu­pied the room that had no win­dows or had black­out cur­tains — the “cave” I called it. “Why do you like win­dow­less rooms?” I asked.

His reply was: “I actu­al­ly like two kinds of room — those with spec­tac­u­lar views, and those which allow me full con­trol of my space. Open rooms can be a win­dow on a beau­ti­ful world. Dark, enclosed spaces are com­fort­ing, womb-like.”

His sug­ges­tion to young entre­pre­neurs is this: Rec­og­nize when oppor­tu­ni­ty knocks. Sweat the details. Action and exper­i­men­ta­tion are bet­ter than end­less analy­sis and dis­cus­sion.

He end­ed the inter­view with this mis­sive: Be grate­ful for all your bless­ings.

~

Bio: Cecil­ia Manguer­ra Brainard is the author and edi­tor of 21 books. Her recent books are Please, San Anto­nio! & Melisande in Paris, and The News­pa­per Wid­ow. Her offi­cial web­site is ceciliabrainard.com.

Tags: #plan­ta­tion­bay #Philip­pines #resort #busi­ness #busi­ness­man #Fil­ipino #pro­file #essay #trav­el #mac­tan #cebu