Tạ Minh Tuấn, author of Trước bình minh luôn là đêm tối, was selected by Forbes as one of Asia's most successful young people, creating groundbreaking change in society. His question, “What is your reason for starting a business?” has given many young people pause for thought.
“When is a favorable time to start a business?” There are two favorable times. One is while you are still a student, when you have nothing to lose; the other is at age 35, when you are mature enough. But to me, the best time to start a business is when you feel: “I must do this. If I do not, I cannot bear it—I cannot even go on living.”
Starting his business as a student, by age 23 Tạ Minh Tuấn was recognized by CSIP, the World Bank and the British Council as one of the country's 15 outstanding social entrepreneurs.
My father's cancer was a “pain” for our entire family, and I started a business to solve that “pain.” It was a tremendous motivation for my success! I had two choices: let the pain gradually eat away at my will, or act to overcome it, because doing nothing was unbearable. My father chose action, and so did I. “Starting a business from pain” was my reason.
And you? What is your reason for starting a business?
1. Because “I can no longer bear poverty and humiliation.” Becoming wealthy, as long as it is legitimate, is always a good enough reason to rise!
2. Or because you feel life is so short that you want to spread your wings fully at least once, with no regrets regardless of the outcome. Because “Only after exhausting human effort can one know Heaven's will.” Without doing your utmost, you cannot understand your own “heavenly destiny”.
In old age, you will keep circling the question, ‘What would have happened if I had done it back then?’ You will never know if you never act. But if you act, whether you succeed or fail, you will have an answer about your own fate. That is why being lazy when young means being… silent when old.
3. You start a business because you cannot accept the boredom of everyday life or keep living so emptily, so you want to pursue something greater, though it remains very vague.
But as Steve Jobs said, if you wake up each day and realize that your current work is not what you want to do, and this continues for many months, find a way to change. Because this life is so finite!
4. Speaking of Steve Jobs means speaking of passion. Sometimes, you have an intense love for something or a field — perhaps a bowl of phở, fashion, or robotics… So you start a business to live your passion.
As Warren Buffett often says, ‘I tap-dance to work.’ And as a familiar saying goes, ‘When you work out of passion, you do not feel as though you are working.’ It feels more like enjoying a game.
5. You want to create greater challenges for yourself to overcome old limits. You perform your technical work well, then after many setbacks become able to manage, and next you want to run your own business and build an “empire” of your own.
6. Sometimes, the reason for starting a business is quite “megalomaniacal.” You are not particularly concerned with making ends meet. You are truly serious about “changing the world.” You understand very clearly that to change the world, you must change yourself. You also understand very clearly how important money is. To you, money matters, but it is not the most important thing.
Money does not make people happy; it only makes them happier. That means you must know how to be happy even before having much money, or everything will be a tragedy! You seem more interested in “changing the world.”
You seem more interested in “changing the world.”
For you, a great goal can be easier to achieve than one that is too small. A tiny goal offers only one route, and you must do everything yourself. A great goal offers many ways forward, and you can inspire other talented people to help make it real!
7. Many people have started businesses because they discovered a “problem” in their everyday lives or in their own communities. After giving birth, a young woman wanted to go to a spa, but no one could look after her baby, and the spa could not accept newborns as clients. She needed to “relax.” She could see her problem clearly. No one was helping to solve it, so she decided to solve it herself. And so she opened a spa service for both mothers and babies, making its first appearance on the “scene.”
Pay once for the full package, and a lovely specialist who understands children will massage the baby and soothe them to sleep. The woman can simply undress comfortably, lie on the bed, close her eyes to peaceful meditation music, and smile as she drifts to sleep, while every millimeter of her body is attentively cared for and her energy restored. At the end, she is full of vitality again to be a kind mother, good wife, and diligent employee. Happiness—that is what entrepreneurs bring their customers.
What a business sells is happiness. Customers pay to find happiness when their problems are solved effectively. Entrepreneurs seek profit by solving problems for others. The more successfully they solve those problems, and the more people they solve them for, the wealthier they become!
What a business sells is happiness.
8. Some people also start businesses because they want to “right a wrong.” A young man sees that there is so much wrong with education, so very much wrong. He wants to build an education company with a more effective training method to “right the wrongs” in a field he deeply cares about.
In Bangladesh, poor people sometimes need only a small loan, perhaps just a few dozen dollars, to create a livelihood and escape poverty—for example, to buy a sewing machine. But no one lends money to the poor, while banks lend only to the rich. The result is many tragic outcomes for poor people. Something seems wrong here!
A man saw this “wrong” in society. He built the world's first bank specializing in lending to the poor and founded the concept of microfinance. The bank's name is Grameen. The man's name is Muhammad Yunus, a social entrepreneur who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2006 for this very initiative.
The results were impressive: the poor's subsequent loan repayment rate was… higher than the wealthy's. This shows that when people are trusted through the right approach, they will not disappoint. Poor people are no less capable than rich people; they may even be… more trustworthy, as their better repayment rate shows. Yunus “corrected” society through his social enterprise.
Sometimes you start a business not only to “correct” society's wrongs, but partly to “correct” your own imperfect past self, as in the later ventures of this book's author (“Darkness Always Precedes Dawn”—reporter's note).
That is what many people call the Reason to Start, or the Motivator. As for me, I prefer to call it the Trigger Factor. What is your Trigger Factor?
What is your Trigger Factor?
At that time, I had a very powerful Trigger Factor. My father's cancer made me want to work in healthcare, caring for and helping patients like him. That was my motivation, my reason, my answer to “Why must I do what I am doing? Why must I start a business?” I had a “Big Why” to succeed. What is your Big Why?
“Bigger Why,” “Smaller How.” When your “Why” is big enough, your motivation strong enough and your understanding of what you must fight for clear enough, how to do it becomes simpler. With enough motivation to act despite every difficulty, obstacle and challenge, you have a very high chance of finding a solution. With this “Big Why,” you can ignite your own fire. You no longer need a speaker to inspire you; you can self-motivate.
The strongest Trigger Factors and Big Whys do not come from the brain; they begin in the heart. The heart has energy 5.000 times stronger than the brain. It holds the true secret of all the greatest successes. If you start a business solely for reasons arising from the brain, calculating your profits and losses and what you personally gain, your motivation is very weak. A slight nudge will knock you down. A little difficulty will make you quit immediately. Because the brain cries out, ‘This is exhausting, it is no longer beneficial, let’s stop!’
Entrepreneurs must make money, but if money is all you make, do not call yourself an entrepreneur. Starting a business must provide a livelihood, but if earning a livelihood is all it is, it is not entrepreneurship. Your reason need not be grand, but it must reach beyond yourself. You are great because you choose to live a great life. It does not matter whether your dream is big or small; what matters is whether you can grow by living it. But I have noticed that no country in the world taxes dreams, so if you dream, make it meaningful.
Entrepreneurs must make money, but if money is all you make, do not call yourself an entrepreneur.
Connect yourself with something greater than yourself. Let it motivate you, guide you, and become your life's “rudder.” At least once in life, feel the simple greatness and meaningful happiness of being part of something greater than yourself. That could be your Big Why!
*This article is excerpted from Before Dawn There Is Always Darkness by Tạ Minh Tuấn. Starting his entrepreneurial journey as a student, by age 23 he was recognized by CSIP, the World Bank, and the British Council as one of 15 outstanding social entrepreneurs nationwide. Dubbed the award-winning young entrepreneur, he was named twice by Forbes in 2 consecutive years, 2015 and 2016, among the 30 most successful and influential people under 30 in Vietnam and Asia. In 2017, Minh Tuấn made the Businessman Of The Year list.
Original article on CafeF: http://cafef.vn/khoi-nghiep-tu-noi-dau-cua-ca-gia-dinh-khi-cha-mac-ung-thu-8x-viet-tro-thanh-nguoi-tre-thanh-cong-nhat-chau-a-va-day-la-cau-hoi-anh-khien-nhieu-start-up-phai-suy-ngam-2018022715341179.chn
