Smart Startup – Smart Up
Chapter 1: Reasons to Avoid When Starting a Business
Knowing what to avoid
before starting a business will help you not follow in the footsteps
of those who have gone before,
or can help you define your startup goals,
what you are starting your business for.
Knowing what to avoid
before starting a business also helps your newly established business survive
and develop sustainably.
Here are the startup reasons you need to avoid:
1. Start a business because you don’t know what to do.
Because of not knowing what to do,
starting a business model is not wise at all.
Why is that?
Are you willing to commit even if you know for sure that you will fail?
Are you ready to take all the risks on the way to start a business?
Do you continue to work hard even when no one hires you?
Are you willing to do more without a job?
Those are the questions you need to answer
before starting a business,
because the simplest thing here is:
When you start a business,
you will have to do more work than all the people
who are employed combined.
That’s why it’s so hard for someone
who doesn’t know what to do to get on the path to entrepreneurship
– that is,
having to do more work even when hired.
Are you ready to set foot on that path?
If you fall into a situation where you don’t know what to do
and want to move forward,
start reshaping your life:
What are your core values?
What needs to be done right now?
What is the job that requires the most time investment?
What is the really important direction to start a new better life?
That’s what you should do,
not keep diving into a startup.
You also need to understand that starting a business is a journey
of a thousand miles starting with the first step.
And when you take the first step on that road,
you will have to do more work than all the people
with the most stable jobs.
Are you willing to put in that much time,
effort and work when you don’t know what to do
and need a sense of progress?
The answer to this question is usually no.
However, if you start with that reason,
you need to do the next thing and vice versa:
Start from zero to 10 times more jobs
(that you’ve never even touched),
even 100 times more.
The future will open up
before you and you will start a better trajectory on the path
to conquering new goals.
There will be hope,
there will be a next step,
there will be a future if you do the opposite of what you started:
Instead of not knowing what to do,
now, you will have to do many times more.
If you’re ready,
go ahead.
If you’re not ready,
you should stop.
Starting a business isn’t for you yet,
start another time.
Entrepreneurship is not for people
who don’t like doing what they don’t love.
Entrepreneurship is for those who can do all it takes
to serve others in a spirit of mutual benefit.
2. Dissatisfied with the current working environment.
Successful people are motivated by love rather than mutual hatred.
Hate, envy… often bring negative emotions
and hardly bring good results
even though you have tried very hard.
Perhaps you have been told
by someone that “one person can succeed
by trying to surpass others”,
but you will not find a successful person
who comes out of jealousy.
Do you think:
Starting a business with a discontented mindset will bring success later?
The answer to this question seems to be no,
and if so,
it won’t last long.
Because later your employees will also leave you for that reason.
If you build your company on a foundation of dissatisfaction,
your employees
– if they’re good
– will do the same.
What do you see yourself getting in this spirit?
No one can succeed on the basis of discontent,
hate,
envy.
Taking love as the root is the root of all paths to success.
Entrepreneurship should be a sign of wisdom rather than a sign of enmity.
Because there will never be someone willing to help you
with a spirit of friendship
when deep in your heart has not yet shown the shadow of love for others.
So if you start a business
because you feel dissatisfied with the current working environment,
then do the opposite.
Start a business with love for your customers,
start a business
because you love others
and are ready to create solutions to help customers…
Start a business because you love your employees
and want to help them get jobs on the basis of creating value
for both sides.
Let’s start a business out of love
and want to contribute something to the community.
Start a business because you know:
Serving on the basis of love will bring better things to the world
and that goal is greater than your career.
So, instead of starting a business with discontent,
start a business with love.
3. Everything is subject to your decision,
you want to be in charge.
How can you make something go smoothly without anyone’s support?
There is a very good saying about working
and starting a business
– owning it,
it is:
“If you are an employee,
you only have one boss.
But when you step out to start a business
– own,
you will have countless bosses,
which are your customers.”
And that’s 100% true.
Starting a business is choosing a job “becoming a bride and groom”,
so that you can start a journey of thousands of miles
where you will meet your “boss” wherever you go.
Think about it:
If you want everyone to follow your decisions
because you’re the boss,
how can you best serve your customers?
Because customers are the real “boss”,
capable of saving or killing your business.
If you want to be the boss,
want to decide everything for yourself
and start a business from there,
then the road ahead will be an abyss.
Getting a salary is a universal solution,
but most of us don’t feel that the pay is commensurate
with our efforts.
The reason is that most salaried people serve only one boss.
Although it is often the “big boss”,
there is only one in number,
so the recognition is not commensurate with the effort,
leading to dissatisfaction.
Basically, it is for this reason that people start their own businesses.
However, something strange happens:
When you start a business,
you will have to serve “more bosses”.
If you’re not willing to do it,
you’ll fail.
To be successful,
you have to almost do the opposite.
Let’s start with serving more bosses!
Begin to adapt to the right guidance of others,
be ready to speak up if they are going the wrong way
and need your correction.
Let’s start with the simplest things:
Serve more, be more reciprocal,
adapt more,
act more devoted…
and especially “forget yourself when serving others”.
Instead of wanting to decide everything,
now do the opposite
and you will be the next winner among the smart startup “superstars”.
Mahatma Gandhi,
one of the people who is venerated as a living saint,
once said:
“The best way to know who you are is to forget yourself
when serving others”.
Are you willing to selflessly serve others?
4. Have more time for family and yourself.
This is a legitimate wish, not a mistake.
If the first three reasons often lead to failure
and leaning towards negative emotions,
the fourth reason is basically a positive one.
However,
it still cannot lead you to the destination on the chosen path.
Why is that?
After starting a business,
the reality is often the opposite of the imagination,
that is,
you have less time,
now you will have less time.
I have had the good fortune to meet many young entrepreneurs.
Before starting a business,
they had a rather rich personal life.
They have time to play sports,
meet friends to exchange information,
go out on weekends with their lover
and moreover have time to spend with family.
However, when starting a business,
most of us have to work 16 to 20 hours a day,
so the time spent on the above becomes a luxury.
Once we don’t spend enough time
with the people around us,
our friends,
lovers and family will grow further apart
and the relationship will not be as good as it used to be.
This is the harsh reality that
when starting a business you have to accept.
Many of you have to break up with your lover right in the start
-up stage.
Many of you become obese
because of lack of exercise time and prolonged stress.
Starting a business has never been a rose-lined road.
Dale Carnegie
– author of Winning the Heart,
one of the most famous,
bestselling and most influential books of all time
– said:
“If life throws you a lemon,
turn it into a lemon glass of delicious lemonade.”
And that is also the spirit of a true entrepreneur.
When you start a business,
you are someone who has never stepped up a ladder at all,
in fact you are on the ground
and waiting for the day to come to the surface,
then walk like a normal person with full of wounds.
That’s also why you have to get past the first six months
of the startup phase and get off the ground,
or your project will be forever in the past.
The dream of starting a business to spend more time with family
and personal life is forever just a dream,
because it will never come true
until you successfully complete your startup.
At least for the first six months,
you will have to work continuously
and have almost no time off.
So, instead of dreaming of spending more time
with your family
and yourself,
you should do the opposite when starting a business:
Prepare a warrior spirit to win everything,
despite all the ups
and downs that come your way start-up path.
5. Freedom in the use of time.
You can start a business with this mindset,
but it doesn’t last long,
because in reality,
once you start a business,
you hardly have a day off.
Nor will there be freedom
until your business has been shaped
and its mission established.
If you are a business owner,
you will have to do almost everything.
Being free to choose your working hours
and days off happens only if you have a complete business
that goes into stable operation
and you own the money printing machine.
However, in the early stages of operating the machine,
things are not so simple.
If you can’t get past the “underground” phase to go up and then land,
you’ll be forever below ground.
And so there will never be the concept of freedom in the “dictionary”.
That will never happen.
Do you dream of freedom?
Would you be willing to trade six months to four years of hard work
without a day off for the freedom you desire?
Do you dream of choice?
Would you be willing to trade six months to four years
for not having any choice
but to serve your customers continuously
with the most legitimate claims possible?
Do you dream of working and resting in a balanced way?
Are you willing to trade from six months to four years working like crazy,
without anything “energizing” and still “excited” as usual?
It will be great if you are willing to make a trade-off,
but if not,
starting a business is not for you.
There is another way to go,
up to you and up to your strength.
Be wise!
So you’ve come to the fifth reason to avoid on the road
to start a business.
Obviously, this is not always pleasant.
Because the reasons given are the reasons most people dream
of achieving and starting with it.
In general,
however,
these are still the wrong reasons to avoid,
to overcome,
and most need to think in reverse
before you go any further.
A great businessman once said,
“When everyone is going in a certain direction,
I almost certainly won’t.
Because that direction will lead to mistakes,
or will never make me different.”
That’s also why most people start businesses unsuccessfully,
because they simply start businesses for the “wrong” reasons,
and failure is predictable.
Failure to prepare is to prepare to fail.
6. Get rich.
Do you see where this reasoning goes wrong?
This simply happens when the business is complete.
There is never a new start-up where the amount of money you earn
is more than the amount of money you work
(if any, because you are too good).
Since you are on the ground,
how can you compare with a person walking normally on the ground?
Do you know why a complete business makes more money as an employee?
That’s because you serve “more bosses” than “one boss”
when you’re employed.
From there:
The amount you earn is proportional to the value you create.
But in the early stages of a startup,
you even need to buy the value of someone else
or a group of other people to create your value,
so basically you lose more money than you gain.
And that’s also why you can hardly make more money than work,
although there are some entrepreneurs who do.
Do you want to know the truth?
The truth is that 90-95% of businesses fail
within the first five years.
That is a reliable statistic about the number of businesses established
and bankrupt in Vietnam as well as in the world.
Do you think this is alarming?
No.
That’s the most normal number for hundreds of years
and it will stay that way until later,
unchanged.
So the question here is:
How can they go bankrupt
if the business owner earns more than the salary?
Indeed, employees cannot go bankrupt,
but setting up a bankrupt business,
of course, the balance of financial income
and expenditure of the business will not exceed revenue
and expenditure when working
– this is easy to understand.
Simply put,
if a business fails,
most of the time it’s more debt than it makes money.
Be more alert to this:
there has never been a greater number of businesses going bust than now,
despite the sheer number of startups.
The dream of starting a business is really burning
in the hearts of young people,
but only when that dream does not come from money
but from more noble motivations can it succeed.
Otherwise,
the dream of starting a successful business forever is just a dream…
To succeed in starting a business with the goal
of “earning more money than working”,
you must again do the opposite:
Work more before you can make more money.
As you know,
starting a business is the arduous process of finding many bosses,
as many bosses as possible,
which means you will have to serve more
before you even think about getting more money.
Behind the success of an entrepreneur is the attitude
of serving the community through solving social problems,
not working hard to make money and make money.
As time goes on,
the reason becomes more compelling
and seems closer to the right reason,
but in reality it is still reasons to avoid.
Because there is a bigger truth:
Get rich and make money fast often do not exist at the same time.
Because the road to riches is often not the way to make money fast;
on the contrary,
the road to quick money is often not the path to wealth.
Do you know the fastest way to make money?
That is buying lottery tickets today,
winning tomorrow.
However, the sad thing is that in reality,
the number of people who lose money
is many times more than the number of people who gain money.
Do you know the way to make money even faster?
That is going to the casino,
gambling
and winning instantly with a lot less capital than profit.
However, the sad thing is that not only do not become rich,
but many people also have to pay a heavy price for their actions.
Did you know that the road to making money fast is often full of dangers?
Obviously there are no shortcuts to glory.
Now, you can go down the road of making quick money,
but that is not the way to riches.
Assuming you can make money really fast,
that path is an exponential money-making graph
– it’s a steadily increasing path,
there’s never a financial spike
– and you’ll never be able to make money now.
In contrast,
the income graph of people following the rich path
is not an additive but an exponential.
In fact,
in the beginning,
the multiplier loses to the adder,
but later on,
the multiplier will surpass the adder many times over.
That’s the difference between getting rich
and making money fast.
And often there can’t be an arithmetic progression
that is both an additive and an exponential,
so it’s hard to find a way to make money fast
and get rich at the same time.
Starting a business is a matter of starting to build a business,
often this path does not bring quick wealth
and even less can make money fast.
What reason do you take to dream of getting rich
and making quick money in the early stages of starting a business?
With a complete business, though,
you can be completely financially free
and make money faster than ever.
If not then why 90% of the rich people in the world have businesses
and come up from the business path?
Starting a business is a hard road in the early stages
and then there are sweet flowers and fruits.
Like the King of Inventors,
the brilliant businessman Edison said:
“Genius is 1% intelligence plus 99% sweat and tears”.
That saying can be applied to start-up entrepreneurs: ”
A successful entrepreneur is due to 1% of intelligence
– talent and 99% of sweat and tears”.
7. Lost a certain amount so now want to earn money to make up for it.
There is a funny saying related to people who start a business
with the aim of making money to make up for something lost:
“If your reason for starting a business is
to try to get back what you have lost,
you will probably lose money always what is.”
This is understandable,
because starting a business is starting a career
and you cannot start a career with a feeling of lack and jealousy,
that will surely lead you to failure.
If getting your lost assets back is your reason to start a business,
then I advise you not to start a business.
If you start a business with this reason,
you will definitely lose.
8. Entrepreneurship is the process of going from serving to serving,
going from heart to heart
and helping others get what they want,
from there,
you will get what you want.
As for the reason to pay off debt,
which is a short-term goal
where you have to start a career
with a job that usually takes up 24/7 of your time,
you will not be able to succeed.
The great value of a startup is
that you have a better product
and bring a better solution to the community.
The rest of the reasons won’t get you anywhere.
So remember that:
“If your reason for starting a business is to try to get back what you lost,
you will probably lose what you have.”
In fact,
not only with a startup but in any job,
if you do it with the mindset to prove,
you will not be able to succeed.
And if there is success,
it is still a temporary success.
You work for success simply
because it’s your passion,
not to prove to others that you’re a successful person
through your work.
This makes no sense at all.
Not to mention,
the psychology of proving success often comes from their own incompetence,
because those who know themselves well do not need to prove themselves.
Trying to prove something true is a mistake
that comes from not accepting yourself;
if a person cannot accept himself
then he will not be satisfied and success forever is a dream.
The startup story has a similar meaning:
If you start a business with the mindset
and reason to prove yourself,
this startup will surely fail miserably.
Because starting a business is such an arduous process,
while you’re “busy” proving it,
there may be no one left for you to prove after a successful startup,
or you may never reach the top
to success until you understand that: success
in entrepreneurship is either truth or failure.
If it’s true,
you don’t need to prove it;
If it doesn’t work,
no matter how you prove it,
it’s still a failed business.
There is a famous person who said:
“There are two types of people in the world:
Those who claim to have made it
and those who make it happen.
The second group is less.”
What do you see in this statement?
Those who are great are often far less than those who claim to be.
This saying is also advice for startups
with the purpose of proving themselves.
The fact is:
Entrepreneurs who work hard at work will be more successful
than entrepreneurs who talk too much.
So, instead of starting a business
with the desire to prove ourselves,
we should instead serve others
by solving their problems through our core competencies,
strengths and expertise,
or a group of people in an operating organization.
Are you willing to help others with your abilities?
Are you willing to help others with your forte?
Are you willing to help others with your core expertise?
If you can do that,
you don’t need to prove it,
people will automatically recognize you.
To be successful in starting a business:
Have a “master mind but serve as a servant”.
9. Do what you love.
Dedicating yourself to what you love is a good reason,
because every person’s life needs passion in order to do well.
Of course,
if you don’t like what you do,
you won’t be able to start a successful business.
That really is a good reason to start a business.
Only reality is not as expected.
When starting a business,
you will have to do a lot of things that you may not like,
even a little.
And that is the training period to serve customers better.
If you only do the things you love,
your career path will soon be closed,
because there will be a lot of things customers like that you don’t like,
but you have to complete them.
There are many people who think
that if they do not start a business,
they will not be able to devote themselves to the things they love.
This is true,
but it is not enough to build a successful business.
You will have to struggle
with a lot of things that make you struggle.
All that is related to entrepreneurship is not limited
to the things you love to do but often all the business
related things that you probably never knew about, like:
finance – accounting, marketing, etc.
Marketing, sales, distribution,
relationship with partners,
research – product development…
In the early stages,
you even have to concurrently act
as a security guard or a janitor.
If you limit yourself to the things you enjoy,
sooner or later your business will have to close.
You will end the game without knowing why.
Remember:
When you start a business,
you will have to do what your customers like,
not what you like,
and because of that, there is no such thing
as “devoting yourself to what you like”
before your business grow strong.
By now, you must have seen
that if the above reasons are not a reason to start a business,
then what is the sure way to build a successful business?
There are only two reasons to start a business
and create true brand and value:
The first reason for starting a business:
your product/service has a better solution
than the current product/service.
And:
The second reason:
your product/service is better priced than the current product/service.
If your product/service has a better solution,
your price is fine.
But if vice versa, your price will have to be better
to compete with competitors in the market.
Do better in the most different way,
you will win.
Smart Startup – Smart Up
Jack Ma’s Career Planning Advice for Young People
In 2014, Jack Ma’s income was 18.5 billion USD,
equal to nearly half of the total budget revenue of Vietnam in 2014
(about 919 trillion VND).
How can an individual earn half the budget
of a country of 94 million people?
Surely there will be many doubts in the process
of finding the answer
to this question.
Just know that,
for young people,
they definitely need to try their best.
And Jack Ma’s advice is not superfluous.
Here is Jack Ma’s share in a talk show with young people:
“Don’t worry too much!
Every mistake is an asset,
a valuable income for each person.
So I often tell myself
and tell my young people that:
– Before the age of 20,
study well.
To become an entrepreneur,
you need to gain some experience.
– Before the age of 30,
follow someone,
go to a small company and work.
Usually a big company is a great place
to learn how to work
and you are just one part of a big machine.
But when working for a small company,
we learn how to be passionate, how to aspire.
We learn to do many things at once.
So before the age of 30,
the important thing is not which company you follow,
but which boss you follow.
Very important, good bosses teach us differently.
– And from 30 to 40 years old,
you must clearly define self-employment
if you really want to become an entrepreneur.
– From the age of 40 to 50,
try to focus on doing everything you do best.
Don’t try to jump into another field,
it’s too late.
Maybe you will succeed,
but the failure rate is too high
(except in some special cases
and you believe you have the ability to start over).
From 40 to 50 years old,
think carefully,
how to focus on what you are best at.
However, from 50 to 60 years old,
invest in the young generation.
Because then they work much better than you.
Please trust and invest in the young generation
so that they become talented people.
– From the age of 60 onwards,
take time for yourself.
Sunbathing on the beach,
for example,
because it’s usually difficult to find opportunities at that time.”
These are tips for me and for you,
passionate young people 25 years old,
feel free to make mistakes
to gain many valuable lessons for yourself.
“Starting a business is an exciting but difficult path.
Smart start-up will help you reduce difficulties,
increase fun so that you always have a clear fighting spirit
and reach for success.”