Myat Nyein - If you have a good idea, you will not run out of money.

How to start a business that doesn't require capital

I still vividly remember the first business I ever did for money . I was seven years old at the time, in 1946. My mother suggested that I write a letter to my grandparents (the first letter I ever wrote). She also gave me a five-cent coin to buy a postcard and a stamp. I excitedly entered the post office, where people were bustling around. I was still secretly worried that I would get a postcard and a stamp for the five cents I paid.

When the post office clerk gives you a postcard, a stamp, and four cents in return...

"Is that all?"

I asked. The clerk kindly explained. The postcard was called a penny postcard because it cost one penny.

“ If you want anything in this world that costs a penny, you can buy a postcard. This postcard will always cost a penny. It will always cost a penny.”

She said boldly.

Today, a postcard costs 25 times more than it did back then. And the postal service complains that the price doesn't cover its costs.

Nothing in the business world is permanent.

The lesson I learned from my first business venture was that nothing in business is permanent. When it first came out, it seemed like it would never change. But it didn't.

But what about the lessons?

Do lessons change as consistently as everything else? Or do lessons never change? Do they remain the same forever?

I think that the constant learning experiences are what make life interesting. We have an experience. We learn a lesson from that experience. Then we move on. We do something else. We learn a lesson. And that lesson may be the exact opposite of the lesson we learned the first time. That's life.

Rent a flashlight and start a business

When I was nine years old, there was a summer camp that every kid wanted to go to. It was built on Lake Champlain. My dad was a player and coach on a Northern League minor league baseball team.

I am very proud of my father. How many young people have seen their father running around the field and being cheered on by the home team fans?

When I was nine years old, a very important matter came up for my father. He was very good at catching worms. No one could catch as many as he did. In the middle of the night, when it was raining heavily, he showed his skill. He was very fast at catching worms. He could catch two worms in one go.

When I was in the tenth grade and had to do a science project, I wondered why my father could catch two worms together. In fact, my father caught two worms at once, while they were mating and fertilizing each other.

Find business opportunities in the cracks.

The real trick to catching nocturnal reptiles is knowing where to shine your flashlight. Worms never fully emerge from their burrows. They usually keep their lower bodies safely tucked away in their burrows. If you shine your flashlight on them, they will quickly retreat back into their burrows. It is important to avoid shining the flashlight directly on the worms to achieve your goal. You can shine the flashlight elsewhere and see if there are any worms by looking at the shadow.

Catching worms gives me three kinds of satisfaction. The first is that I can satisfy my father's passion. The second is that I get to catch more fish for our frequent fishing trips. The third is that it gives me the opportunity to sell the worms we catch. This saves my parents money.

I became fascinated with the business of selling worms. I put up signs everywhere I could. I sold worms as bait to anyone who came with a fishing rod. One fisherman who only wanted to catch catfish said he only wanted boiled frogs as bait. So I just caught baby frogs. I listed the names of the baits available on the signs. Then I spent hours chasing the fast-running frogs in the mud.

Increase the selling price and make more profit

I still remember wondering how much I could sell the animals I caught. I never understood how prices were set.

Look. The post office buys a little card. They print a stamp on it. And they let you send it anywhere in the country. It costs just a penny to send a postcard. How do they set the price? A penny is the price I get for selling a worm I catch at night. That worm is the one that disappears when a lucky (or unlucky) fish bites it.

There is one more thing I don't understand. Catching a frog is ten times harder than catching a worm. Ten times more tiring. Yet the selling price is only five cents per frog. Why? I sell worms by the piece. Because other guys sell them by the piece. As for the frogs, there is no one else to sell them to. I don't know how much a frog should be sold for. The first customer I bought from said that selling a frog for five cents was a fair price. So the selling price for a frog became five cents.

Prices continue to baffle me. Forty years ago, I sold a frog for five cents a piece. I was nine years old then. Later, I worked as a collector of information and printed it for sale. I sold it for thirty cents a piece. Then I sold my company. The new owners continued to sell it. But they sold it for $1.20 a piece. Four times more than I paid. But customers kept buying it at that exorbitant price. I was amazed. If I had, I could have sold it for ten cents a piece.

Halfway through the summer break, I've already made a whopping $12 from my sales. I 've sold 40 frogs and 1,000 t-shirts. That's a lot of work for a nine-year-old.

Beware of partnerships.

At that time, two people came to me and said they wanted to join my business. They were two teenage girls. They had bicycles. They promised to take the fish I caught to the lake. Then they would take them wherever they went and sell them. I could imagine that the market would expand. If the market expanded and more people sold, they would make a lot of money (even if they had to split it into three parts). So I agreed to join. We formally announced our agreement in front of our parents.

Within a week or two, our partnership was thriving. I had caught all the worms I could, and I couldn't catch enough frogs to sell.

Then nature took its course. My two female partners met the boys while they were running their business. (They were really cool guys, they said.) And suddenly the whole business came to a standstill. I wondered if the business of selling worms on bicycles wasn't what they had envisioned.

Every Sunday night, when our family drinks milk together, our host, Kaw Kwok, opens a big money box and divides the money into three parts. I feel so sad that I have to donate two-thirds of my hard-earned money to two girls who are “just having fun” without working hard.

Partnerships often fail on the last day.

Forty years later, I looked back on my business experiences. I realized that I had never encountered a business where all the shareholders were working in the same way. What usually happens is that over time, the needs of the shareholders change. At that time, one shareholder was sticking to the original goal. That shareholder had invested a lot of effort. He had spent a lot of time. Eventually, the shareholders, who were being careless, became angry. This is where the stories of discord begin.

Some businesses should never be started.

Aspiring Entrepreneur Ever since I was a child in the countryside, I have always wondered what kind of business I should start. One summer school holiday, I saw people coming and going and were thirsty, so I set up a stand selling ice cubes. That business only lasted as long as the ice cubes melted. As quickly as the ice cubes melted, my business failed.

Every Sunday morning, as I watched people pass by our house on their way to church, an idea came to me, a young entrepreneur. I found a tin can in the middle of nowhere. I peeled off the wrapping paper on the outside. I drew a plus sign on the metal can with red paint. And in the morning,