MEET Michael Goho, age 28, and executive vice-president of the family-owned Gateway Group, an automotive company dealing mostly in cars—BMW, Nissan, Kia, Peugeot, Mahindra, Foton and in Palawan, Suzuki—with showrooms not only in Cebu but also in Davao, Manila, Bohol and Palawan.
Of the business, he says the brands selling well are BMW and Nissan.
Michael is a product of Sacred Heart School with a management degree from the University of Asia and the Pacific. Looking back, he muses, “I should have taken something like Philosophy, though I did learn a lot about business.” This is because he has started to look into himself, at this stage in his life.
Growing up, he relates he was the class clown. He would join school plays as he found it interesting how people would approach a certain scenario in order to make the play come alive. He loves to sing and would sometimes go for karaoke at night, singing old songs—hits from the likes of Frank Sinatra, Elvis Presley, Paul Anka, the Everly Brothers. He loves to travel and finds Iceland as the most fascinating place he has recently traveled to for its friendly, relaxed people and fresh food. To keep trim, he is into boxing with his older brother Markane under a personal trainer at the back of their Minglanilla Nissan showroom.
Michael considers himself an introvert and he gets along well with only a few people, “I value the few friends I have,” he says. He is really choosy about his close associates as he looks for “authenticity, real people who think deep, not superficial and self- absorbed. People who are honest and real,” like his girlfriend.
Of his parents and other persons of authority, Michael says: “I listen to what they have to say but in the end, the choice of what to do is my own. If you live your life to please someone else, you lose yourself. I can say I am still being lost and am now looking for a higher purpose. You can possess wealth but you are not happy. Sometimes you are merely a product of your own environment. That’s why I am now seeking for a higher purpose, seeking meaning and purpose of this life, for a sense of God.”
He says he was raised a Catholic but that confession, communion, Sunday Mass eventually seemed mere routine, and did not give him a personal relationship with God. These days, he reads the Bible, reads other stuff in relation to his search for a new meaning, for a new purpose, books like C.S. Lewis’ “Mere Christianity.”
At this stage in his life, Michael says: “I am 28 years old. The business is doing well and good. I am seeking a higher purpose of this world, a sense of God, a personal relationship with God.” For sure, he will find that relationship he is actively seeking and if he doesn’t, surely God will find him.