ONLY USE A BAMBOO STRAW TO MAKE YOU BECOME MIGHTY

 

1. Money does not buy everything, but money buys almost everything

I was born into a working family and have a tradition of business for nearly a century.

Therefore, I hate empty philosophy.

If you want to say, choose a simple word.

If you do, then start doing the actual thing.From childhood hardship helps me understand the saying:

“Money doesn’t buy everything, but money buys almost everything.”

For thirty years of existence, I always try to make money by all means.

Life taught me that money is not hard to earn.

With a little intelligence, honesty, agility and effort, I can live well.

I solved the question that made 95% of the crowd stress:

“How to make money?”

But, one late afternoon in 2017, when I was drinking coffee, watching the construction worker build the first house made by my own hands, I found something too strange:

“Before, I thought happiness was home. Why is this time, had home, I’m still unhappy? ”

2. Almost everything, except … happiness

Without one billion, I crave one billion.

There are more than a billion, I was startled:

“Oh my God! Does my life have nothing but the words “make money”? “

Money is a necessary condition. But not enough conditions for me to be happy.

Even if I earn another 5 billion, another 10 billion. that will not make me more excited. If I cannot answer the two questions:

“Who am I really?”

“What is the true meaning of my life?”

I really don’t know the answer.

It depressed me for months.

4. Who am I and a billion … straws

One day, while I was waiting for my partner in the cafe, looking at a peach cup of tea and a black plastic straw, I suddenly calculated it.

If a person drank a cup of coffee daily, using a plastic straw, then 7 days would be 7 straws.

Vietnam has 90 million people, at least 3 million people have to drink coffee every morning; that’s 21 million straws discharged every week, 84 million straws a month, and … 1,008 million straws are discharged each year?

I have to read again, I afraid read wrong. Not 18 million. Is 1,008 million. Ie … A BILLION.

Not a few dozen, a few thousand, but ONE BILL plastic straws discharged a year.

I am contributing to THAT ONE. With this peach tea cup.

But a straw takes ONE THOUSAND YEARS to decompose.

I know the law of cause and effect. A billion plastic straws, which exist for a thousand years sooner or later, will  return to the consequences for my children and grandchildren.

I don’t want to put my future to death.

But, if you want a better future, don’t say it, do it. I have to be a pioneer to change a comfortable lifestyle to become familiar, to return to nature.

But how?

I know myself a lazy one. Without a very formidable motivation, I would never do, not even a finger, to correct myself.

5. Please knock, the door will open

As a follower of God, as a child I listened to the Bible , humming every single word like singing in the middle of cathedral:

“Because anyone please is allowed;who find is meet; who knocking on the door will be able to open.”

Who among you, when his son asks for bread, will give him a stone? ”

It seems that God has listened to my wish this time.

At the end of 2017, in an accidental comment on Facebook, I met Nghia again.

Nghia and I have been CEO class of SG05 for a long time.

But it was not until the end of 2017 that the two sisters discovered we were in the same direction: We wanted to do business in the direction of being friendly with nature.

Say to do , in early 2018, we set up Hoi An Development Co., Ltd.

We start from the things smallest, most commonly used, and hardest to decompose: plastic straws.

If  want to get rid of the habit of having a plastic straw every day, I have to be a pioneer.

There is no better way than selling your own products that remind you to live more naturally every day: bamboo straws.

6. Hardship two word “nature”

We spend months searching for the source of the material.

Finally, the two sisters stopped in Thanh Hoa – the place where the first bamboo ecological park was established in Vietnam.

Nourished by the Ma River, this bamboo grows lush, thin bamboo; enough to produce a wide-area bamboo straw, from 6mm to 8mm, easy to hold, easy to use, especially to drink pearl milk tea.

Did the natural product is choose difficult way

Currently the market is still new, the purchasing power is low.

But I do not go looking for customers, I go to connect with companions.

Because I understand that only people who are really serious about nature use bamboo straws.

They are more than customers. They are like-minded to me, with La Xanh.

Sometimes, customers come to the place to import large quantities of bamboo straws, they just ask the straws to be colored, square, beautiful; to put into their restaurant system; We also have to refuse.

Because it was a natural bamboo straw, have nothing the same color and square?

Each bamboo tube has a different color, size also a few mm difference.

In particular, natural bamboo straws often have a small brown spot on the body of the pipe, the cleaning is not clean, the brush does not lose, we call it “naturally bestowed on it”.

It is this brown spot that makes bamboo straws unequal, always brown, yellow, gray, pale mixed.

But, customers have their own reasons, their expectations are right.

Can’t agree, then break up, know what to do?

7. The road to happiness

Also from that failure deal, I myself understand, La Xanh is an extremely small business.

Because there are so many natural things we have to do every day, little by little; but the results came very slowly, such as using packaging to be recycled paper, paper from cajuput; buying bamboo from farmers does not force prices.

All are difficult, require effort, and the results are almost never perfect.

But, whatever difficulties I can accept.

Not because of whom I want to evangelize, or whom to inspire.

But because I’m happy when I’m made La Xanh.

La Xanh though small, but anyway in my eyes it is the meaning of life

8. Just using a bamboo straw makes you mighty

Many of us want to do great things. Want to change the world.

They are on TV, on stage, wearing microphones, pressing powerpoint slides, saying great words.

They said more than enough, I now shouted any sentence was redundant. I just want to take action.

I think that changing the world does not necessarily come from big things.

Using just one bamboo straw, that’s enough.

Because Vietnam is litter more than A BILLION straws a year, and ONE THOUSAND years they decompose.

Should reduce a plastic straw, light burden for Mother Nature for a millennium, it was silent greatness already.

But I did not try to convince anyone.

I just tried to live well, and find companions, and everyone around me thought how that was their right.

Just let it be, somewhere Heaven will be arrange.

I believe that great desires will always find their way into reality.

Elon Musk will bring people to Mars, Pham Nhat Vuong will bring  Vietnamese cars become famous.

And me and my companions, continuing to follow the simple belief, are:

We don’t need to say big words, just using a bamboo straw is enough to make us great.