Through the days of gain and loss

I used to think starting a business was all about numbers.

How much revenue.

How much profit.

How many employees.

How many branches we could open.

How many people knew our brand.

That was what I used to think.

Only after enough days when the money in my account fell short of all I had to worry about, enough nights when my mind refused to sleep over a wrong decision, enough mornings when I woke not knowing where to begin, did I understand: starting a business is not just about building a company. Sometimes, it is how a person rebuilds themselves.

I have lived through years like that.

Years when I worked so much I forgot what day it was. Years when twenty-four hours never seemed enough. I chased work, chased the things I believed mattered, chased dreams I thought would vanish if I did not catch hold of them.

I used to be so afraid of failure.

And then I failed.

Failure did not knock. It walked right in, sat down beside me, looked at me for a long time, and asked one simple question:

“What now?”

There were no words of encouragement.

No music playing in the background.

No lights.

No one beside me to pat my shoulder and say, “Stay strong.”

Just me.

And a whole mess I had to clear up myself.

I think that was when starting a business truly began.

Because when everything is going well, it is easy to talk about vision, mission, ambition, core values. Those words are beautiful. Very beautiful. But on some nights, sitting alone, I realized that life does not run on beautiful words.

Life runs on bills that have to be paid.

On people waiting for their wages.

On a phone call from a customer.

On a decision that, if I get it wrong, takes so many others down the wrong path with me.

And on mornings when I do not want to get out of bed but have to anyway.

I have nothing against inspiring words.

I just feel sorry for words used so often that they lose their soul.

“Never give up.”

“Failure is the mother of success.”

“Follow your passion.”

“Success takes hard work.”

I have heard them so often.

And I have said them so often myself.

But the farther I go, the more I find that, on their own, those words are hollow.

Because what does never giving up mean when you have run out of money?

What does hard work mean when someone has given everything they have and still nothing works out?

What does following a dream mean when behind you are a family, employees, and responsibilities you cannot set aside?

Perhaps starting a business is not about never falling.

It is about knowing what to pick up first after you fall.

I used to run a café.

Ngồi Cafe was a chapter of my life that was both beautiful and painful. I poured so much time into it, so much effort, so much faith, and brought so many people into that dream.

Then one day, it came to an end.

November 12, 2024.

Bánh Mì was born.

And around that same time, Ngồi Cafe closed, and the team went its separate ways.

One door closed.

Another opened.

The strange thing is, I do not remember how sad I was.

I only remember how it felt to see Bánh Mì, a tiny, rosy newborn, resting peacefully against my wife's chest.

In that moment, I suddenly understood that some things I had thought were losses were really just life quietly giving a gift another name.

Ngồi Cafe had been a dream.

Bánh Mì was a dream too.

A dream I did not need to build with plans dozens of pages long.

It only needed me to be a father.

That was all.

From then on, I began to look back on my years of building a business with different eyes.

I was no longer so proud of what I had built.

Nor was I so ashamed of what I had not done well.

I was grateful for both.

Grateful for the days of success, because they gave me faith.

Grateful for the days of failure, because they gave me depth.

Grateful for those who stayed.

And grateful for those who left.

Because without the people who came into my life, I would not have known what it meant to walk alongside someone.

Without those who walked out, I would not have known what it meant to grow.

And without the times I lost something deeply important, perhaps I would still be confusing having more with living more deeply.

These days, I still work.

I still build businesses.

I still write.

I still want to do things that help others.

But I no longer want to run as fast as I once did.

I want to slow down a little.

So I can sit with a cup of coffee in the morning.

So I can watch my child grow day by day.

So I can know whether my wife is tired today.

So I can listen to an employee talk about some small thing I once might not have had time to hear.

So I can understand that, in the end, a life is not measured by how many tasks we have completed.

Some things cannot be put into a report.

A hug from my child.

A family meal.

Someone who had lost all hope finding a little more courage after a conversation with me.

A person with a disability daring to leave home on their own.

A child coming home from school and calling out, “Dad.”

These things bring in no revenue.

But they bring meaning.

And perhaps that is what I have been searching for after all these years of building businesses.

Not a way to make others see me as successful.

But to be able, after making my way through this life, to sit down and say:

“My life was not perfect, but it did some good.”

There are still things I have not managed to do.

Still dreams unfinished.

Still times when I doubt myself.

But I am no longer afraid of that.

Because I have come to understand that life was never a straight line.

It is a road that sometimes widens, sometimes narrows.

Sometimes it is full of flowers.

Sometimes full of stones.

Sometimes we move very quickly.

Sometimes we only want to stand still.

And sometimes we think we are moving backward, when life is really teaching us to look in another direction.

My years of building businesses have given me many things.

But the most precious was not a brand, a company, or any particular achievement.

They gave me another version of myself.

Someone who knows how to fail.

Someone who knows how to begin again.

Someone who knows how to love.

Someone who knows how to slow down.

And most importantly, someone who has finally understood this:

Starting a business is not a journey in search of a grand life.

Sometimes, it is simply a journey of learning to live with kindness in the life we already have.

And if I had to start all over again?

I would still begin.

But this time, I would not hurry.

I would go more slowly.

Look more closely.

Love more.

And live more honestly.

Because after all those years, I have come to understand one very simple thing:

The greatest success in a person's life is not how far they have traveled.

It is who they have become along the way.