Chairman of John&Partners: Leaving a management position in a large corporation to switch to "teaching the CEO" and advice "Don't start a business because you want to get rich!"

Talking to the young intellectual reporter, Dr. Ngo Cong Truong shared the reasons for starting a business that young people need to avoid, which are: starting a business because you don't know what to do, starting a business because you are dissatisfied with the current environment, because you want everything to go your way, want more Time and freedom to use time, want to get rich, want to prove myself and do the things I like.
It sounds absurd when a lot of it is the purpose of starting a business of young people. However, Dr. Truong analyzed: "If young people start a business for one of these 10 reasons, it is easy to fail, because in reality it is far from what you imagine. Entrepreneurship is just starting a It's only a career. It's important that your business be able to scale up and accelerate."
Mr. Truong said that there are only two right reasons for starting a business. The first reason: your product or service has a better solution than the current product or service. And the second reason: your product or service has a better price than the current product or service. Because, if your product has a better solution, your price will be okay. But if vice versa, your price will have to be better to compete with competitors in the market.

Why did you choose to start a business in education?
Educational counseling is a very difficult field, it can be said that it is the most difficult of all kinds of difficulties, because I consult others.
When I set up a business, I thought that I must build a business that solves problems for many people and brings value to the community. There are many things that are easier, but I can only help a small group of customers. But through the way of counseling, training and education, it will help a lot of people.
The first is to help the employees, then to help the business owner himself, and even to help that business. That is why I chose the path of counseling and education. At first, I also hesitated, choosing the path of counseling and training, or counseling and education, in the end I chose education because it solves more fundamental problems. Through education we can influence many different behaviors.
Developed countries like Japan or the US, they all change the country through education.

He once said, young people only like to read success stories, not failure stories. What difficulties did you face when starting your own business?
Very difficult. When I first started a business, sometimes I didn't want to think about it because it was so terrible. No capital, no relationships, no employees, generally a lot of nothing. But I have to pass each of those problems in turn.
In the process of doing, I also tried and failed many things, some things were wrong, I got up, and there were mistakes, I lost everything. But that is the material for me to build corporate culture, I have to face many trade-offs.
Success stories you can read, Google search is right out. But if the story fails, you won't be able to Google it. What successful people say is not true! Failure, they rarely tell you. In my opinion "learn from failure" is more important than "learn from success".

Currently, every year in Vietnam, there are many new businesses established, but there are also corresponding businesses that go bankrupt or temporarily stop operating. What do you think causes them to fail so much?
I think there are two main reasons, the first is still the business owner. Not only do they need to avoid the above wrong reasons for starting a business, even if they have a real desire to start a business, during the process, increasing the thickness of knowledge and skills is very weak. The second is because they have too little experience, the failure is still largely due to the owner. As for the external environment, it is always fluctuating, so the impact from the outside in does not affect the internal business much, they can completely choose to face the fluctuations, with pressure and overcome.
I see people are cheering for entrepreneurship too much these days. The spirit of entrepreneurship is high, but the founders themselves are not fully equipped with knowledge, the risk is great. I started my business nearly a decade ago, and encouraging entrepreneurship is timeless. Cheering is right, but it's not right for people to make it a trend.
Many young people today, sometimes just because they are dissatisfied with their current job, just because they don't want to go to work but start a business to be able to own, this is an extremely dangerous idea. It is certain that the state needs more enterprises. Currently, Vietnam only has about 500,000 enterprises, but in the US, it has already reached millions of units.
When you are mature enough, mature and thoughtful enough, you should start a business. Many new graduates want to start a business right away, which is good, but the success rate in this group is very low, because they don't have enough experience.

Nhiều startup chia sẻ họ gặp khó khăn trong việc huy động vốn vì khởi nghiệp thì đôi khi 5 năm hay 10 năm mới có thành quả nên khó thuyết phục nhà đầu tư, đặc biệt là nhà đầu tư Việt Nam, ông đánh giá thế nào về vấn đề này?
Tôi không cho là như vậy. Việc đầu tư ngắn hay dài phụ thuộc vào khẩu vị của nhà đầu tư. Nhà đầu tư cũng có nhiều loại, có người thích đầu tư dài hạn, có ông lại chỉ thích ngắn hạn. Tôi có kêu gọi các nhà đầu tư Nhật Bản vào Việt Nam, họ đầu tư dài hơi lắm, chứ ít khi nào họ đầu tư vào các dự án ngắn và trung hạn, 5 năm hay 10 năm là chuyện bình thường.
Quan trọng là các bạn phải chọn đúng nhà đầu tư có khẩu vị phù hợp với mình, và nếu thực sự muốn kêu gọi được nhà đầu tư chất lượng thì nên tập trung vào hoạt động của mình.

More specifically about starting a business in the technology field, as an information technology engineer, how do you evaluate today's information technology human resources?
Vietnamese IT engineers are creative, they are capable of outsourcing and solving problems for many other foreign companies. Intellectually, the Vietnamese are not inferior to anyone, even India, they also work for them. What they lack is lack of implementation and lack of maintenance. From an idea, to the product is a very long way, once the product is available, maintaining its operation is another story.

How do you evaluate the startup environment in Vietnam at this time?
Currently, the conditions for starting a business are extremely favorable, much more favorable than 5 years, 10 years ago. The first is about logistics, the second is the business environment supported by the government and startup ecosystems. It's just a matter of whether the founder has the ability to succeed or not.
The government is doing a great job in promoting startups, but from encouraging and facilitating the government to startups implementing it is still far away. Everything needs to be more realistic. It is necessary to learn from countries like Israel and China, they call and act very realistically.
Thank you, sir!

Dr. Ngo Cong Truong was born and raised in Quang Nam, from a poor family in the Central region.
He studied in high school at the high school specializing in Mathematics, Hue University of Science, then studied mechatronics - Ho Chi Minh City University of Technology. Right from the first year, he went through a lot of work to find his passion and try to see which field is his strong point.
He chose to do things unrelated to the engineering he was studying, from organizing a Play Station game competition for students in Ho Chi Minh City, to keeping cars, keeping helmets, selling flowers, etc. then worked as a tutor, 2D-3D mechanical design, marketing international English center... to explore business possibilities for myself.
After graduating from university, he decided to stay in Saigon to work, then experienced many positions at multinational companies from interns, trainee administrators, employees, senior managers. middle to senior management.
In 2010, when he was in the management position of a multinational company, considered the dream and goal of many people, he gave up and chose the path of starting a business because he thought that when he decided to Whatever you do, do it quickly. Moreover, his tendency is to act, for if there is a dream without a plan of action, it will only be a daydream and become an illusion or fantasy.
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