movement changed just this past decade since college i have joined the mayan parties where you only eat with your hands supported filipino food pop of events at the hole in the wall venue's tested mouth watering recipes from film cookbooks and ate during new york city's filipino restaurant week but what is it about this movement that brings the community together and how do these fill and leaders help ignite the fire to start other small and international businesses irah shell account but i'm joined with my co host christina pastore unfortunately jen is not able to make it at this episode on mock a lot of t v and we welcome our guest speakers who are those fire starters and foodies who help promote companies and brands that lipped the community even higher as a self identified fire starter our st guest speaker is mike and he is an entrepreneur with over twenty years of international business experience he has a civil engineering degree and a masters in business administration he has worked in the fields of mass transit rolling papers media and entertainment and his agency planet x is currently representing time to iraq in the usa tundra why is currently the largest selling rum in the world and is poised for even more success here in the u s our next guest speaker is joanne canossa who is a texan born cali new jersey raised to ny who has resided in new york city and london for over a decade by day she manages a market street department at barclays investment bank where she is also the c e o of barclays reach an employee affinity group that provides employees support for disability and mental health and wellness needs of their employees and the c e o lead for the barclays embrace asian professional into it what does it actually mean to be a fire starter well to me what that really means is to be somebody that's a catalyst for the creation of things that are much bigger than the sum of its parts and you know going busy out there and having some good ideas that are meaningful impactful that can really help benefit society and going after that and then just to do all you can to make a fire start the ladybird i feel like that we have so many great ideas in the filipino community like i hear so many great initiatives and things that are going on but how do you actually gets to the point of actually doing action from all those things that you started i mean really what it started out with is really just kind of having an idea and thinking about the best way to kind of put networks together people that i know of organizations that i know to really kind of make those things actually happen and it sounds simpler than it really is but but it it took a pretty long time like i saying probably you know in the intro you said i've been in international business for like twenty five years yeah it pretty much takes twenty years to build some of these networks that are powerful enough to actually make something a reality because you can never really make an impact unless you actually have power and i mean that in a selfish way i mean that in a way that is very practical you know you can't be imp unless you actually are in a position that you can actually provide influence yeah and it's taken me a while to build those but in my in my very diverse career i've been able to build a lot of networks and a lot of really interesting relationships that have really helped you know move all these different things that i'm working on at this point in my career what's interesting is everything sort of ties into each other and so it's just a matter of plugging these things together and finding ways to make them work so speaking of networks you actually know the other guest speaker joanne how did you guys get connected in this whole world of filipino community yeah we're actually coming up to our one year friends  restaurant week and we and our energies match the rom is a official sponsor of barclay center which my bank cones also consider yourself  community so with the fire starters in new york in the bag in london in the philippines we're all trying to get together to make an impact and worse you know trying to start with the younger generation so i know mike has this big idea planned in the fall for a creative economy conference where we're inviting filipino fire starters to come and speak and really be mentors to the younger generation i'm curious mike about why because i  something that's very i think important for for for our culture which is mainstreaming our culture in a way where we can really start bringing that mainstream power back to our own country to actually affect socio economic change that's kind of how i view ted why role within that ecosystem of filipino empowerment and this new come up that's happening right now with filipino food movement and everything it's all part of the same piece of the puzzle right it's all about trying to say ok what can we do to showcase what is very filipino yet very international and something that is surprisingly high quality surprisingly you know a lot of the things busy people don't associate with the philippines i think that we get involved with w brought it here as a partner of the brooklyn nets and barclays center and then later on as a part of the golden state warriors these were big moves but these are calculated in the sense that partnering with the n b a gives us the world's biggest stage i think basketball  is definitely an international sport and it's something that i think as far as most of the major sports i feel like this is probably the the sport that's most in tune with pop culture can i have a pop culture kind of that cool culture that's driving the trends with music with fashion the same way that's what the philippines has been doing for a long time here in the united states for a very i find that a very masculine imagery are you shirt so to speak to that the real power of ten why is being the number one selling rum in the world gives us a very broad platform it's a very broad platform but it's also a very elevated platform so what we can do with that and the strength in that is bringing to that platform other causes other people that don't really have the ability or have that voice to come out there and make a splash so we can we can take you know like like women empowerment groups and different people on to our platform and support what they do through bringing you know liquor for their events sponsoring different things that they're doing and that's something we've already done you've done events with google for for girls leadership we've done you know a lot of things we've supported women's charities we've supported recently  stem science charity so we do a lot of things that sort of run counter i think to what most people would expect of of electric company for dads because this is what's going to be needed in this day and age to be an authentic brand in a space where that to city i think is missing multiculturalism and heritage those messages are kind of diluted so when you when you have the ability to really bring those two to a bigger stage then i think it's your socio economic responsibility and moral responsibility when you have something this big to do something good with it and so speaking on that i know joanne you're working on a number of projects is there one that you wanted to share that that speaks upon that like leveraging the community yeah sure and on the back of mike's talking about making the filipino culture mainstream i mean the lee anthony had mentioned that filipino food is becoming mainstream and i think that's why our partnership works and a lot of off the st wellness festival where we're giving back to the indigenous community and the women in the philippines as well as the other generation and found why use a sponsor yes exactly and it's under with the communities it actually is we use that as one of our biggest selling points but you know at the same time that we can say that i think what what's more important to people when they hear that is ok well  why is the largest selling rembrandt and why isn't the larger why and why have i never heard of it why not whatever and it's really been isolated to our to our region for such a long period of time so coming here united states is kind of like think by but by doing that and showing why we deserved to be the number one in the world people are really going to say well yeah we'd love to be on your platform as well because you guys are doing such amazing things the people you're hanging out with are the people that we want to hang out with things that you're doing the things we want to do so we want to give power to not just you know being number one selling rembrandt abroad but actually doing something about actually my curious question is why aren't the filipino celebrities promoting we have a few things that are kind of kind of are going we've had a lot of interaction here with the filipino community a lot with the consulate with the department of tourism we sponsor the filipino restaurant week a lot of the filipino chefs celebrity chefs do represent our product and they definitely bring it to their event that they have it's represented in their restaurants so we are starting this is kind of a grassroots movement kind of it's so funny world's biggest but the same time to build the authentic platform that we what i think we really have to engage people at a level where you can really build that true authentic organic following and i feel like that when you're like the perfect example of how one hundred why has been able to to support and leverage community support basically with with my gun and your other project i mean i really appreciate the friendship and the partnership and not only my pop form being raised by the brand but we're also helping other filipino fire starters locally like our friend charles m wasn't really ready to open up and are going to order a tiny it's so hard especially now that the city has raised a minimum wage to fifteen dollars a lot of restaurants are shattering i said on the national restaurant association so how is the filipino food movement working with my buddy omar shaw here and five filipino restaurants in london and working with the consul over there to kick off restaurant week so i think in new york where we're really amazing fire starters you know we're not  don't want to just build up the pop from here we're really reaching out to our friends and family network how continue to fire you know but here in new york what's fascinating is so last year we were sponsors of the filipino restaurants here this year we 're also going to be a major sponsor of the restaurant we you know my agency planet x we ran the social media and the content creation for last year i mean we were the ones analyzing the metrics of the actual restaurant week what was really interesting to what you find out running with what it was actually the most interesting thing for last year is that majority of the people that went to visit the filipino restaurant last last restaurant week last year our interviews with the guys who were at the stores and then also when you looked at our instagram followers you could see the shift of people who were who were like really you know not filipinos that were all of a sudden you know it just gets so saturated you can't just be expecting all the filipinos in the community to just eat there you need other people and you're part of the most beautiful part is really we're able to share our culture which is an amazing thing yes because because our culture is one of the most but what's great about even walking into a g p m harl car that's owned by a friend of call her a lot of the patrons are non filipino to see that we're we're pretty proud that's we're also partnering with our friend jell o who just opened up a speakeasy in korea town and launching a few filipino pop ups there are a lot of non filipino patrons goes well so it's really exciting to see that our fear in our drinks in our culture is becoming more mainstream what i know i was when i was f what people don't know about ted why because they never most people have never even heard of it when they've seen it is that it's actually aged in kentucky bourbon barrels so we buy our expected bourbon barrels from the united states and we ship them to the philippines where they're aged in the philippines and there's if you go to the actual facility in the philippines in laguna you'll see it's just full of these barrels of rum it's just crazy just so so many of them and  you know filipinos are known for many things something a lot of things that we are proud of but i feel like that there's there's there needs to be more of a push for other things that we should also look up to like do you feel that same way and like yeah you know i always said this to people that i know that you know in the philippines culture is so diverse and so multitalented that to say that we are known worldwide for overseas filipino workers are nurses and you know or call centers of the philippines is is to is to really only touch the surface of what it is that we our as a culture you know because we we are actual drivers of culture and a lot of these things in the fashion industry music industry in the lifestyle industry you know cooking and and all these amazing things all of these things a lot of people don't realize the things that we really love about pop culture and a lot of these things have been heavily heavily influenced by the filipinos who that generation of filipinos that that kind of were born here or moved here like a couple decades ago and then became part busy of you know the m t v and the viacom's and all these different fashion brands and tech brands venture capital all these things these there are powerful filipinos that are driving a lot of that and no one really realizes that but that's the power that we have now too unite as filipinos as a philip a filipino community and say how can we all your show but it will be what it is exactly that how can you be learning how can we partner with each other and use the powers that we have to help each other because that's the only way we're really going to effect the change we want so i want to also touch base with ups and festivals that are happening in new york and i'm also going to be a vendor at world's fair again which is owned by the same company that runs l a seafood and  pick one or two vendors per country trepan zen and it's right outside citi field which is weird for me because i'm a yankee fan but charles is going to be there said selling his muncie also working with cello as mentioned saturday but yes we will we definitely want to check out all of your partners all the people that that you've been able to work with and also collaborate with i feel like it's incredible that we're able to all support each other and not have that crab mentality of like yeah he's doing too well so yes i love to collaborate with you both and get your projects but we do have to be in closing the episode so i'd like to st ask you mike you shared with me earlier your life moto motto strength does not come from winning can you quickly let me know like what do you mean by that sure you know for me that that's something that i i really hold very dear to my heart just because you know to build my career to word that right now i've had to let go of the idea of perfection let yourself be flawed don't be don't apologize for being broken can you let me know quickly about what you think so don't not judge others is actually a sign that up my friend what i do but really just to appreciate yourself more and and just let yourself be flawed because you're perfect and your worst and best version of yourself love it so thank you again c and at heart of pleading i wanted to also take this time to thank our founder our co producer and lead co host christina pest or oh my god this is going to be continued support thank you