The business mistake that taught me everything

Added: 2026-05-18

[00:00:00]You need what is called the failure stack. And my failure stack is so, so bad. Honestly, if you looked at me when I was creating businesses early on, you would have been like, "This kid is going nowhere." But, that is the prerequisite to success. [music] I failed more times than anyone has even tried like in these early stages. The very first failure that I had taught me so much. I loved eating Vietnamese rolls, and I was like, "I am going to launch a Vietnamese roll cafe." And they were trending on Facebook. I kind of understood a little bit of Facebook. So, I went and there was one [music] next to my gym, and I used to train a lot back then. I was like, "This is easy. I'll go to the gym, I'll come make some rolls, I'll make some money." So, I rented my first ever lease for a bunch of random equipment from a cafe around the street, which by the way, I needed none of it. I needed a bain-marie to warm up all of the meat, and I had bought none of those important equipment. So, I basically just lost all of my initial investment on day one.

[00:00:55]But, I finally just kind of pushed through, pushed through, pushed through until I could finally open the store. I remember day one, someone came in and gave me a $5 note. And it was the best feeling, just like feeling physical money. And the smile on my face when there was actually a lineup that first day was just incredible. But, the writing was actually on the wall the whole time. After that day, I didn't even know how to do accounting. I was like, "Wow, I've got this big stack of cash." But, I spent way more than I was actually making. Every single week, I was like, "I'm going to make money."

[00:01:26]But, it never came.