MANILA, Philippines — In celebration of its 160th year, a milestone in the banking industry, Bank of the Philippine Islands treated its clients, today’s young achievers, to a special evening at the Peninsula Manila to learn from two business leaders who blazed trails in their respective areas.

One was Joseph Sigelman, who at age 39 has leaped from one career to another, covering four entirely different industries, and triumphed through the boldness of decision-making and struck a new market by seizing opportunities that came his way.

Welcome the Unexpected

Business success comes in many forms, and not always the way it is expected. Armed with degrees from Princeton University’s Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs and Harvard Business School, one would assume a career in finance or businesses for Joseph Sigelman.

That was the direction he was taking at the start, as banker at Goldman Sachs, preparing for another presentation the next day, until a light bulb moment happened.

“I was trying to get a PowerPoint presentation one day—I think bankers spend lots of time doing PowerPoint presentations—and my friend happened to be doing the same exact thing in New York, where he was working. (Both of us) were going back and forth until 3 a.m., and we realized there’s got to be a better way to make things work internally,” Sigelman begins.

“There were times a couple times before when I was in India on vacation and was very impressed by the depth of the talent that exists in the country. And then I came up with the idea that if I can link the pool of services from a country like India to the United States and the UK, maybe that’ll be a compelling business.

“I left Goldman on September 1, 1999, and flew to India. That time, I didn’t know where to stay so I checked into a hotel and asked if they could give me a long-stay rate because I didn’t know for how long I would be there. I checked in September 1, 1999 and I checked out of the hotel March 1, 2007,” recounts Sigelman.

With his friend, Randolph “Randy” Altschuler, he co-founded OfficeTiger, one of the first Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) companies in the world, which eventually grew to a company of 7,000 people. “OfficeTiger focused on the provision of professional service outsourcing,” explains Sigelman.

Initially, the company focused objectiveson doing PowerPoint presentations, and then eventually migrated to research, analytics, legal outsourcing, accounting, and so on, “basically, services that require judgment,” he explains, “so we were not a call center. We didn’t do a lot of the mechanized road works, but work that requires people to interact directly with bankers, consultants, lawyers.”

Constant Reinvention

Looking back, Sigelman recounts how astounded his mother was the first time he decided to switch careers—how he could just pack up and fly to a destination so far away to start a business that seemed so distant from his training. To her it seemed such a foolish decision; she had even supposedly asked, “Now you wanna be unemployed?”

But that’s how it has been for Sigelman, then and today. “I’m like Madonna, I guess, I re-invent myself,” he explains, not so much in self-deprecation. But this ability to find something that’s not so new and commonly overlooked and give it a fresh twist and make it flourish, has taken him from the safety net in New York and London to India, Colombia, and to the Philippines, making a name for himself globally, in three different industries.

The experience of embarking on something new definitely required risk, then hard work from the bottom up, but was exciting nonetheless, and in the end, the rewards have been immeasurable. “You go from just flying around, and then suddenly you’re on your own,” shares Sigelman.

“Your business card doesn’t mean anything. Back then, no one knew OfficeTiger. (Working for a big institution), there will always be a famous brand right behind you. It doesn’t matter who you are, but the brand stands for something.

And now you have to become whatever brand you’re trying to promote and support its character. I never look back, but you have to have exceptional optimism, because no matter what happens, you (somehow) know you will succeed.”

In 2007, he and his partner got an offer to sell OfficeTiger, and they opted to remain co-presidents. “I was talking to a friend of mine and he was spending time in Colombia. It turns out, one of the prime drivers of Columbia’s economy were oil and gas, and it turned out in that time, in 2007, a lot of money was coming into the country in order to fund the creation of oil and gas companies,” he recounts. “There was a gap, though—a lot of these companies couldn’t get their services done well, and so to produce the oil fields, they required a lot of other companies to do the setup. So I inquired, why can’t local companies fill the gap?”

The answer was that local companies didn’t have access to capital because Colombia, while safer, held a perception of risk that was still high—it didn’t match the reality. “Banks were charging 20 percent interest rates to local businesses; private equities did not exist,” recounts Sigelman, “and so we said , ‘let’s start a business.’ And so we went from OfficeTiger to PetroTiger. My partner and I learned a lot, and we also made a lot of mistakes, and eventually PetroTiger grew to a company of 2,500 people.” Now, based in Bôgota, the company also has offices in Argentina, Panama, Mexico and Spain.

“I still have an ownership stake at PetroTiger but I’m not an officer of the company because I couldn’t do both,“ he clarifies, before introducing how he ended up calling the Philippines home—for now.

“I came for a visit here in Manila, and someone told me there was a very interesting company here called Atlantic Gulf and Pacific, and I immediately fell in love with what I thought was a tremendous business,” he shares, adding that “it fabricates what I would describe as ‘Lego-like’ modules that eventually become refineries and power plants and LNG facilities, and offshore platforms that can go around the world.

And these ‘Lego pieces’ can be thousands of tons, it can be six-stories tall.

It’s an example of a company that’s proudly Filipino, a 110-year-old that has the capacity to be a strong global player in what it does.

“And so I got really excited about it. I’ve always tried to figure out a way to live here in the Philippines and do something that I wanted to do. And I thought that was my opportunity to do that,” he shares.

‘Making himself useless’

Throughout these changes in his work, it was never about leaving a legacy in any industry nor about finding something new, getting tired, and beginning a new search. In each successful venture, what he perceives as his key contribution was making himself useless. “Seriously,” he assures.

“When you go into a business, the last thing you want is for an organization to be anchored on the personality of one person—that’s not an institution; that’s not going to be a business that will last through the years.

“Sure you need to inspire, (but) the first thing that you want to do is create a team below you that’s smarter than you are. You want to make sure that you have the right institution, the sovereign structures, the checks and balances.

But you also want to make sure that these don’t get so big that they stifle creativity. It’s that balance that’s so difficult to achieve. And you make mistakes, you learn and avoid making the same mistake again,” says Sigelman.

He adds that when you start a business and think for a second that you’re only there for a short or limited period, you’ll fail. “Because you won’t be able to make decisions about what’s good for your company in, say, 10 or 20 years, and so on,” he explains.

No Genius Required

Young entrepreneurs sensing something that might become the next big thing can learn from what has worked for Sigelman three times. No genius required, he stresses. “There is a moment when an entrepreneur just knows when to make that leap. It is when the passion in his or her gut comes into full alignment with his or her hardest rational thought. It’s not dissimilar from falling in love.

I had always thought of many reasons why I would not pursue an opportunity prior to starting OfficeTiger or PetroTiger or joining my Filipino partners in AG&P. Indeed, these may have or may not have been great or even better ideas, but if you do not have full confidence—inexorable optimism—that a particular idea is something you want to work on 24/7 perhaps for years, then let it go,” he shares.

“Think of ideas that have an impact on changing something we take for granted—ideas that are iconoclastic. Those are the most fun and give you and your investors and your employees that sense of mission to take you through the inevitably tough patches that every business confronts, often regularly in its beginning.

“The moment I took my first leap from an established and rewarding position—defying common sense, my parents’ original entreaties and all manner of financial planning—I did so because I found an idea in each business that I knew, if done right, could have an impact on changing the way that specific industry would function,” shares Sigelman.

He concludes: “I knew, as well, that each of these businesses had elements of their roles that I personally enjoyed—new adventures, travel, new industries that I found fascinating and wanted to understand, and the challenge of managing, sales and human resources with which I was not necessarily comfortable with, but wanted to learn how to do better.”