Hey you - yeah YOU - you can be an entrepreneur
In my opinion, one of the worst and most destructive trends in Western society is that entrepreneurship has become a lionized mysterious pursuit.
There's nothing magical about it. You get some inputs (your time, knowledge, resources, goods, whatever), you add some value to it by improving or rearranging the inputs, and you sell them for more than it cost you to get them. Profit.
"Oh, but it's so hard! And I have no money! What will I do?"
Okay. Here's a can of Club Soda (actually, two cans of club soda, to be precise):
The price of a can of Club Soda is 4500 VND, which is about 25 cents USD.
No matter how poor you are, you can find 25 cents if you live in Vietnam, or $1 if you live in the USA. Then you buy a can or two of club soda. You go somewhere where it's hot and people are thirsty - a tourist area, the beach, the park, whatever. You sell the can of Club Soda for 10,000 VND for a 100% profit. You go back to the store. Buy two cans. Sell those.
Maybe you mix in other kinds of soda, juice, snacks, whatever. Maybe you try to buy the stuff in bulk to get it at a lower cost. Maybe you go to a business that's already selling successfully and offer to buy cases of soda and deliver to them, still cold, for a small markup and they sell it. Maybe you find some space that's open and offer the owner a percent of the profits to let you set up a table there and sell.
You can do this. It ain't so hard.
I have no idea why this isn't taught in schools. Anyone can sell. You get some inputs, you do something to make it more valuable (transporting the good somewhere where it's more desirable, in this case), and you sell for a profit. BAM, value created. The person is happy they get a cold drink, you doubled your money. There's many times I'd been on a beach or at a park that I would have been very happy to buy a drink that had been marked up in price a little bit.
I plan on doing this with my future kids. We'll go to the discount store, buy some sodas and snacks, go to the beach and sell. They can learn how to pitch to people, build their confidence and defeat insecurity, how to handle rejection, how to give good service, and they learn how to make a profit by helping people have what they want. You can do this. Anyone can do this. Find some inputs, make them more valuable somehow, sell them at a profit. BAM, you're an entrepreneur. Feels good, huh?
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