Student. Pham Vo Thanh Diep Teacher.

Nguyen Phuong Chi

DIFFICULTIES OF SELF-EMPLOYMENT

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Many people think that establishing a business for yourself is more comfortable

because nobody controls you, and you can do anything you like. I totally used to agree with

this statement. However, since I started my business as a ticket airline agency, I must face

with more obstacles than the time that I worked for previous companies. I realized that setting

up a business is hard and even harder to make it survives. Therefore, I would like to share my

difficulties for Vietnamese youth to help them think and prepare more carefully before setting

up business. Obviously, there are many difficulties, but mainly three of them are finance,

balance between business and life, and market.

The first problem that we cope with is finance on capital and income. For capital,

although Vietnamese Business Law 2007 allows to establish company without the required

initial capital for most of business fields (Department of Planning and Investment of Ho Chi

Minh City), we have to make fundamental investment for labor salaries, taxes and facilities.

Even if we have estimated the cost for such basics, over-budget is often an avoidable

problem. Just take a part of business for an example, the expenditure for marketing promotion

force and gifts can not be planned exactly. Besides marketing, we also can not tell the cost of

monthly bills for telephone, electricity, internet… Worse than that, we never know how many

customers and how much revenue we can earn. These random factors make the finance

unpredictable and risky.

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Student. Pham Vo Thanh Diep Teacher. Nguyen Phuong Chi

For income, while employees are easy to find an alternative job in difficult period, the

self-employers will bear all of the damage if we do business ineffective. In this case, we are

suffered from not only loss, but also debt of staff salary and obligatory tax. Moreover, most

of business will be unprofitable at early stage. Mr. Pham Thanh Hung,an entrepreneur, said

the first 2-3 years, enterprises overcome storming period, the fourth and fifth year is called

stable period, and the following years are the time for company to grow. According to him,

about 70% of businesses go bankrupt after two years of its establishment (Huyen Trang).

The second is concerned with balance between business and life. Employees are just

only in charge of their duties; on the contrary, self-employed people deal with many

responsibilities for the whole company on various field such as management, accounting,

taxes, payroll, legal issues, insurance, marketing… To oversee or fulfill so many tasks like

that, the self-employers has to learn and perform lots of things. Abundant load of work would

make us feel lack of time for everything and cause work incomplete. We certainly can hire

employees, but we still have to attain all these knowledge to manage business. These tasks

lead us straight to overwork and stress. Actually from my own experiences, I felt stressful

when managing many things at the same time. I have to pay attention to design logo, then

choose suitable color for it, recruit staffs and deal with taxes and legal issues…

While you are trying to tackle these problem, you may not notice that you are missing

lots of things used to be precious to you. Before business, lots of other things are more

important such as family, friends, love… When we are too absorbed in business, we neglect

our life. We will not pay enough attention and care to family, friends, or even for yourself.

Instead of that, you have to spend time, mind and money for your business matter,

employees, customers and partners… That is when you understand “What have you”, not

“What you have” as you have dreamed. You can live without the surroundings, whereas you

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Student. Pham Vo Thanh Diep Teacher. Nguyen Phuong Chi

can not get out of the business circle. In the worst case, you have to choose between your

company or your own life?

Last but not least, I would like to mention about market problem including labor,

competitor and customer market. Human resource is one important factor determining the

survival of business. For capital shortage, we can be borrowed from different sources;

however, for the lack of human resources, it is hard for to settle. To select competive

candidates for right job, it takes much time and expense from the tight budget to interview,

review and select them. However, to keep employees stick with the company is more

difficult. After training and developing their skills, staffs might leave company, bring

experiences and methods, and even use them for our competitive companies.

Besides, as a newcomer participates in new market, we are still small and weak in

compared with the earlier enterprises that has survived for a long time. It would be tough for

us to obtain a position in the market and find loyal customers because those enterprises have

already achieved a specific market share and a number of customers before our

establishment.

In addition, the other trouble we face is customer matter. Unlike many beliefs that we

can treat customers by the way we want when we are the boss. On the other side, we have to

treat them nicer and better because now the customers are yours, not someone else’s

customers. To lose one customer is not only to let go an opportunity but also to provide your

competitor a chance. You are working for your own sake. While understanding how

important they are, it is a great challenge to reach them and make them become our loyal

customers. Even when they are our loyal customers, we still can lose them. Sometimes, it is

the customers themselves a problem. They are easy to refuse all our products or services, just

because we don’t serve well in the first time. The recent report stated that 96% of dissatisfied
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Student. Pham Vo Thanh Diep Teacher. Nguyen Phuong Chi

customers do not complain directly, 90% will not return, one unhappy customer will tell nine

others and 13% will tell at least 20 other people (Thanh Tuan)

In a word, self-employment is not as wonderful choice as we used to dream of. In fact,

it means we are ready for higher challenges. Self-employment will have coped with

difficulties such as deal with unsymmetrical financial matters, keep the balance between

business and life, struggle for a standing in the market. In spite of those hardships, self-

employment is a powerful means for personal growth and carreer, and worth our attempts.

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Student. Pham Vo Thanh Diep Teacher. Nguyen Phuong Chi

References:

Department of Planning and Investment of Ho Chi Minh City. (n.d). List of business

field must have prior legal capital business registration. Retrieved on November 22, 2010

from http://www.dpi.hochiminhcity.gov.vn

Huyen Trang. (n.d). Thinking is necessary, but action is more important. Retrieved on

November 22, 2010 from http://khoisudoanhnghiep.thanhgiong.vn

Thanh Tuan. April 26, 2008. Customer service culture - a cornerstone of success.

Retrieved on November 22, 2010 from http://vietnammarcom.edu.vn

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