A colleague told me last week he was pulling out of a Manila deal. Too slow. Too complicated. Too many moving parts with no clear timeline.
He’d been in market four months. Araw ng Kagitingan – Day of Valor – was the same week. The irony wasn’t lost on me.
The Philippines marked Bataan last week – 1942, the fall, the march, the men who held a line with nothing coming to help them. They held anyway.
I’ve watched Western businesses enter this market with confidence, capital, and a 90-day plan. When the approvals take longer than expected, when the partner dynamic shifts, when the room stops making sense – they leave. Reallocation of resources. Strategic pivot. Changing priorities.
That’s not strategy. That’s tourism!
Valor isn’t the dramatic entry. It’s what happens when the timeline slips and the path forward isn’t obvious. When you stay in the room. When you keep the relationship alive through the slow periods. When you don’t mistake difficulty for failure.
Markets like this one don’t reward the loudest arrival. They remember who stayed. No fanfare. No relief column coming. Just the decision, made quietly, to hold the line.
PS. If you’re thinking about what staying actually looks like in Southeast Asia, my updated LinkedIn has more on what I’ve been working on: linkedin.com/in/davidthomas-asia
