9X CEO 'sleeps and eats sour meat' since age 18, starts business with 4 million VND

(Dan Tri) - When she first started her business, Thu Hoa described herself as "the most immature person in the sour meat village" in Thanh Son district, Phu Tho . She had nothing but perseverance and determination to spread local specialties to everyone.

9X CEO tells story of starting a business with sour meat, some weeks only sleeping 2-3 hours/day ( Video : PV Group)

Nguyen Thi Thu Hoa (born 1992) is a Muong ethnic girl, from Thanh Son, Phu Tho.

After finishing high school, Hoa did not continue her studies like her peers but soon dabbled in business. Up to now, after 15 years of starting a business, she is the owner of a company producing sour meat - a specialty dish of the Muong ethnic group in Thanh Son district - with a revenue of 83 billion VND in 2022. Recently, Thu Hoa was nominated for Outstanding Young Vietnamese Faces in 2023 thanks to her outstanding achievements in the field of business - startups. This is the second consecutive year she has had this honor. The 9X businesswoman shared with Dan Tri reporters about her journey of devoting her youth to spreading her hometown's specialties with countless failures, crying, pouring sour meat into the river, and some days only napping for 2-3 hours, "eating and sleeping with sour meat". In 2010, Thu Hoa got married when she was just 18 years old. When she first became a daughter-in-law, she saw that 5-7 houses around her were making sour meat, so she also tried to learn how to make this dish to earn some money to make a living. With 4 million VND in hand, Hoa started making the first batches of sour meat, selling them to the villagers. The simple recipe was just a pot of meat, adding a handful of seasoning powder, a handful of MSG... without any standard measurements. Therefore, her customers said that this batch of meat was bland, the next batch complained that it was too salty. This made Hoa struggle to find her own recipe. "Back then, I was the most "inexperienced" person in the sour meat village. Every day, I could only make 5-10kg of meat, while the girls next door had already made 200kg. I looked at it and wished that I could make it to that level," she recalled. During the first year, Hoa managed to do everything herself, from going to the market to buy meat, processing, canning, receiving orders from customers to even delivering the goods. When her belly grew too big, she had to use a very high table to slice the meat, so she hired someone to help her. Selling dozens of boxes of sour meat a day only earned 150,000-200,000 VND, but had to pay 50,000 VND to the workers. Hoa felt sorry for her but had to accept it. Now, sometimes, the person who helped her that day still sits and reminds her: "Do you remember, Hoa, when I was working until the day I gave birth, I was still sitting there slicing meat, trying to finish cutting a pot before going to the hospital?" Having said that, Hoa looked down at her hands, remembering the time she gave birth, her blood was bad, the stitches broke, and it took nearly 20 days to heal. Even though she had her mother and family to help, she was only partially relieved, and customers still had to answer the phone continuously. Turning to look at her newborn baby, Hoa burst into tears. But she had no money after taking a long break, so before the end of her confinement month, she had to make sour meat again, and she didn't pay attention to any abstinence, causing her arms and legs to become full of veins. At that time, Hoa only had one thought in her mind, which was how to quickly find the right formula for mass production. On her journey to find the answer, Thu Hoa couldn't count how many times she failed. "But thanks to that day, I had no knowledge, no experience, so I wasn't afraid of anything. I just rushed forward, just did it, and corrected my mistakes. That's the advantage of someone who knows nothing," she said with a smile.

With a small capital, Hoa only dared to buy a few kilos of meat for each batch to experiment. Every step of making sour meat was very meticulous, every 3 hours she had to check it once. But one day, she was impatient and took it out too early, the meat had not yet had time to sour, and when she incubated it again, the temperature was not right. So she had to throw away the whole batch and start over. Then, one time when she had almost mastered the recipe, Hoa boldly bought 10 kilos of meat to experiment. After a night of staying up, she was so tired that she fell asleep. When she woke up, the meat had overheated and spoiled. At 4am, Hoa sat hugging the box of meat and cried, blaming herself for being so careless. At first, every time the experiment failed, Hoa felt sorry for the waste so she just put it in the refrigerator, stir-fried it gradually to eat. But later, the amount of waste was so much that she gave it to the neighbors to feed their chickens and pigs, but they were so bored that they didn't even bother to take it. With no other choice, she had to sadly take the whole box of meat and dump it into the river to feed the fish. At that time, she was only in her twenties, while many of her friends were studying, eating, and going out, Thu Hoa spent all day "eating and sleeping with sour meat". Every holiday, when friends came to her house to invite her out, she sadly refused because she had to stay home and work. "After so many times like that, I felt very sorry for myself. Meanwhile, I didn't know anything, almost everything I did was wrong, everything I touched was broken, and I was criticized all day long. I also wanted to go out and have someone take care of me", the 9X businesswoman recalled. Many times when she was discouraged, Hoa just wanted to stop and go to work for hire to ease her mind. Her mother felt sorry for her daughter so she advised her: "What's the point of dreaming of great things, just sell enough to eat, don't try anything anymore". Trying to hold on until the slow season, not making any money, Hoa switched to insurance consulting and selling functional foods. However, while doing other jobs, she always thought about sour meat, saying that this insurance consulting "trick" was great, could be applied to selling sour meat, and that functional foods had eye-catching packaging, she should also change the appearance... Realizing that no matter what she did, what she wanted to do most was sour meat, Hoa decided to put everything aside and focus on this specialty dish. After nearly two years of sleepless nights, some days only napping for 2-3 hours, working 24/7, Thu Hoa successfully found her own recipe for making sour meat. At this time, the number of customers was stable, many people came back to buy and praised the deliciousness, saying that they liked it as gifts for their partners. Hearing such feedback, Hoa felt both proud and suddenly had an idea: "Sour meat has been around for a long time, even hundreds of years, but no one has developed it to let many people know that this is a specialty of Phu Tho province". From then on, she aspired to bring the four words "sour meat specialty" to all parts of the country. However, the desire is one thing, starting to make it is not simple because at that time, sour meat was only known to people in Thanh Son district and a few neighboring localities. Even in Viet Tri city, also located in Phu Tho province, many people did not know about it. In addition, sour meat is a dish that needs to be eaten immediately and cannot be preserved for more than 7 days, making it very inconvenient to transport over long distances. That prompted Hoa to delve deeper into the research and spend another year learning how to preserve sour meat for two months without using preservatives.

On her journey to start a business with sour meat, Thu Hoa can't count how many times she failed (Photo: NVCC).

By the time the formula was available and the preservation method was successful, Thu Hoa turned back to improve the production process to increase productivity. She confidently was the first person to explore and create some specialized machines to make sour meat, instead of having to do it 100% manually. Looking at Hoa's fragile body, few people would dare to believe that when the machine broke down, she was ready to roll up her sleeves to fix, weld, and solder everything, but she was helpless when it came to circuits. Therefore, people often teased Hoa as "the girl with a small body but doing all the work of men". In 2015, Hoa's Truong Foods brand was officially born, with the company headquarters in Thanh Son town, Thanh Son district, Phu Tho province. A year later, the businesswoman built a spacious production workshop - something that 6 years ago, when she was just sitting and slicing and mixing meat in a small corner of her home kitchen for retail, she could not have imagined. This place has also been renovated 4 times, every year when sales increased, Hoa expanded a little to make room for production. In the following years, Hoa successfully brought the specialty of sour meat to many regions in the S-shaped strip of land. To do that, in addition to perseverance and determination, she always focused on innovation and creativity in formulas, products, packaging, designs, and even sales and marketing methods. Until now, at the company, Hoa still hangs the slogan: "Take action, if you are wrong, you will learn a lesson, if you are right, you will get results" to always remind herself not to falter or give up when facing difficulties. In 2022, Thu Hoa suddenly became famous on social media after participating in Shark Tank season 5. She impressed with her intelligent and decisive image, attracted the attention of all 4 "sharks" and successfully raised 15 billion VND in capital. After just one night of sleep, Hoa was startled to see employees texting her in droves, and the number of followers on her personal page increased rapidly. As a normal businesswoman, when she suddenly became the center of attention, she was both happy to have the opportunity to spread her products, and worried, not knowing what to do. After this "billion-dollar deal", Hoa's sour meat brand became known to many consumers. Thanks to that, the scale and output of the business increased impressively, reaching 52 billion VND in 2022. In the same year, Hoa won first prize in the National Youth Startup Ideas Competition in 2022 ; entered the top 20 nominations for Outstanding Young Vietnamese Faces in the field of Business - Startups. After spreading sour meat to many regions of the country, Thu Hoa returned to her hometown and realized that her hometown still had many delicious and unique specialties that were not known to many people. Therefore, in two months of 2023, Hoa decided to carry out a campaign to spread the culture and cuisine of her hometown Phu Tho to everyone. She traveled to local specialty businesses and little-known tourist areas to film videos and post them on her existing platform, attracting many viewers. After the campaign ended, Hoa built a space to introduce the culture of the Muong ethnic group with stilt houses, farming tools, and typical products on a campus of nearly 1,000m2... to continue spreading the culture and cuisine of the ethnic group to the masses. In addition, Hoa also had another milestone last year when she completed the factory, creating jobs for 140 employees, 85-90% of whom are female and 30% are ethnic minorities. She also collaborated with the Thanh Son District Red Cross to build 3 houses for people in difficulty.

In particular, over the years, Thu Hoa has always used a portion of her business profits to do charity work, to repay the land that raised her. "My point of view is that if you want to do good, you must first be good. You yourself must have value to be able to give value to your loved ones and create value in your homeland," the businesswoman expressed.

Thu Thao - Dantri.com.vn

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