Why Build a Build New Business

2026-05-15 · Ho Chanh Nghia

Originally published on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/why-build-new-business-khanh-pham-hbrwc/

Why Build a Build New Business

More like biographic, than a how to manual. But many of us moved away from guru, and just want to read about a normal life. Here is the early years of someone the USAF tried to hang and lost. The combined 3 billion annual budget of USAF/AFTAC waged a war on a little Chinaman with zero budget, and still lost. If Genghis Khan had written a biography, it may be something boring like this. So this is sort of the prelude to the story of the Chinaman who defeated the US Air Force in a war that was impossible to win. Not the same as Ho Chi Minh in Vietnam War, but not that much different. A guy trying to live fighting the white man who wants to prevent him from living. A story about where monsters like Adolf Hitler come from.

It was 1993. I was in 11th grade, I saw 5 computers at a garage sale, asking for $50. I said that’s cheap, it should be 100 usd. I asked my sister for money, and she supported me. I sold all 5 computers, but I cannot recall how I spent all those money back then. I wanted more of it, this idea of taking 1, and turn it into 2, is too easy. Any salesman can tell you this. Sales is a great profession. Where you do nothing, and make more money than the people who spent decades training, and years laboring to produce the computer.

I like easy money as much as the next man. To include selling sexy photos like Hustler and Playboys. Back then really liked the idea of producing sex objects and selling it and be a millionaire. My worker called me pimping out my country. I have always thought about it, and it is not completely false. Back then I had not read Pimp: The Story of Iceberg Slim, so I didn’t really have a manual for pimping. So I stuck to selling PC until my father recall me to run his auto repair business.

Getting tired of dealing with my father who lacks much imagination, and is not capable of learning to do a better job at his job, I wanted out. Well, I did what most employees do today. I tried to not think about it. Show up to work, find ways to numb my brain so I don’t feel bored and dissatisfied. One thing my parents did right was, I always showed up, even when mentally not there. I open the shop at 7am as any days before. I close up at 5pm and sometimes 7pm. I take my Taiwanese girlfriend to where she wants to go, and take her home at 9pm. Then I meet up with a friend at 10pm to go to a new nightclub. I wanted to experience something and clubs sort of provided a sense of life. Except I really hate walking around without elbow space, and getting cigarette burns from inconsiderate people at the clubs. One of the guys works for the hotel across the club, and got us in to hang out. Watching the police legally steal 50 or so expensive cars from the house below was a sight to remember forever. In California, the police made laws that allow them to take your assets if you are involved with drugs. God forbid you were snorting cocaine to kill the stress of running a rat race, you cannot win.

My father does not place great value on attending school. I mean, he does not believe in going to school for the purpose of learning more. He wants me to go to school, so that I may obtain a certificate that indicates I am an engineer or doctor. His view of school was more about status. He would say otherwise, though. Through 30 years of life and work, I have met only a very small percentage of the people who actually believed in going to school, to learn, to learn, and simply to learn. To learn in order to do better. My father did not have a large budget, so I helped the business in any way that did not add more cost to his operation. I redesigned his AC systems to provide higher quality for his customers. I signed up at a local college to learn the trade—AC systems, collision estimating, and so on. I was the assistant manager, son of the owner, but I only received half the minimum wage. My father said that since I lived at home, it was fair to deduct half my wage for lodging. It seems logical to me, but I am not certain this is what I would do with my own son who stayed home to help build my business. I would likely split 50/50 with my own son who serves as my right-hand man. But hey, we all live by different principles.

One day, legs on the table, sipping coffee, trying to think about a life that seemed to lack meaning. (Not that life really has meaning.) The army found me. Uncle Sam wants you.

I was not really interested. The army recruiter was not really interested in accepting no. He was an infantryman, back from real military service, and trying not to return. He did what his training taught him, and stuck to me like leeches on a fresh leg. I was, and still am, generally a caring person for those who are respectable. The black man was a respectable man. I wanted to visit and talk. He came by for an oil change, back then it was 14.99 at my shop to get an oil change, and that came with an oil filter and oil. I took him to an internet café and let him play my version of infantry. Counter Strike was big back then, and it is still among the top 1-3 currently in 2026. Counter terrorists vs. terrorists. The nice part is if you die, you start over. I wanted to get his insight on real combat, to get him to experience the imitation of his life. He was bad at it. An expert soldier would do well against a gamer, inside a game. There was a vast difference between reality and the fake.

So to return appreciation for a friendly relationship, I went with him to the Military Enlistment Processing center to take the test. They want to see where I rack and stack against the recruits, and where to put me into. The practice exam they gave me in the office usually takes an hour, I walk out in 15 minutes. The real exam was two hours, I walk out in 45 minutes. Not that I don’t care about scoring well, it was a competition after all. It is just how I have always dealt with tests from school, to SAT, to military. Get it done, and go home. I can tell the questions were difficult because I had to struggle. Many questions I could not answer. In the end my score was well over the 90-99% of the population. You have to understand, by 20s, I only had 10 years of education vs the competition’s 20-25 years of education. Not mentioning the fact that there is a large gap in quality of education as well. To have soldier in flipflop defeats the modern army of the US in Vietnam War is not just a simple dissertation for generals Petreaus’s Lessons of History and Lessons of Vietnam. https://press.armywarcollege.edu/parameters/vol16/iss1/27/

So the score was amazing. They were hoping for 25% but got 99%. He said I should join the infantry like he did. 40,000 usd is waiting for me to sign. I had less than 1,000. 40,000 is a lot of green backs for the year 2000. The bait was set, I can smell it, I can taste it, I am ready to bite.

I spoke to Kevin about it. Kevin ran an internet cafe in San Gabriel for many years. I was camp out at his business from 8am to 10pm for nearly a year. When he opened a new center in North Ridge, I drove more than an hour to play at his center. He stopped taking money from me at that point. I shared with him about my considerations to join the Army. He told me he did, and he did not like it. You have to live to enjoy that 40,000. What about the college education they promised, can we use it. He said yes, you can use it, but you are always in the field so it is unlikely that you will use it.

I told my mother about my considerations, and she handed me a card from a Lt Colonel of the USAF. “We are a kindler, gentler Air Force.” That was her motto and calling card. My parents came from the Vietnam War, the real war, as real participants, with real losses, and a lifetime of trauma. So, they never wanted me to join the military. My father did shut me down in 1998, when the Army recruited me from high school. Becoming an engineer or doctor was not as appealing as joining a “military” was the mindset of that boy. My father flatly said no. I told the Army that we do not have to listen to my parents. He told me the Army does not want to entangle with parents, so they do not want to sign me when my parents were objecting. I doubt they sing the same tune today, but they had more principles back then.

So I searched for the Air Force guy. Sign up to go die for my country. 30 days later, I still could not find a job I wanted to sign up for. Military police, weapons depot, fueler, etc. I said no, no, no. I walked out of the MEPS without a job signed. Many days and many weeks, it would be like this. One day, they called me and said they found a job I could be interested in.

9S100. Scientific Application Specialist. Probably the worst description for any job in the world. My recruiter does not know what it is. The entire military enlistment center does not know what it is. Apparently a top secret unit that no one knows exists. Not the military (not even the military attaché in Thailand), not the senators, not the president. Just one of those invisible guys like that fat dude in “Office Space” that sits in the back and no one knows he exists. I had no idea what it is. No one knows what it is. All I can see was they will train me on electronics and science, and so I signed. 9 months of training, and a lifetime of enslavement. Not sure how to explain it, even after all these years, and my hair are 99% gray at this point. Some men sold their soul for dollars, some sold their country for a beauty, I sold my soul for a bunch of electronic classes. Since life does not really hold meaning, does human decisions have to hold any more meanings than this.

Basic training made me cry. I wanted to go home. I cannot. I cried. I cried. and I cried.

I almost died when I received 10 to 20 vaccines from the US Air Force. They lined us up in a line and walked us down two nurses who would administer vaccines to us. We had to be in compliance, of course. I nearly died, because my body shut down. It was cold. It could not generate heat. No amount of blanket could warm my body. I thought I was a goner. Then I was not, I came back. After a lot of scientific classes, and managing every imaginable program for the military, I am fairly confident I can kill any man with vaccines. You just need enough of it to kill an elephant. You can kill a man or an elephant with water, as a matter of fact. You just need enough of it.

The military created a different side of me. From trying to skirt the laws and survive in Los Angeles, to trying to ensure no one skirts the laws. We should not see it as a 360. I still recall my father made a few Vietnamese dong, smuggling shrimps. You read that correctly. In the 1970s and 1980s, Vietnamese were not allowed to survive and breed. The US wanted us all dead. They wanted us to die without gassing us, as that looks bad on the news. They wanted us to just vanish. The Vietnamese communist party was fearful of an uprising from the old order, so they wanted my father to just die. They wanted him to die, but not make the party look bad in the news. Even back in 1970, the opponents of the US were aware of the hybrid war we fight today. In 2026, we’re thinking we invented hybrid war in 2010, but it had existed already in 1970. We’re just 40 years late to the reality. So the Vietnamese people who had no rights to exist, wanted to remove my father’s right to exist, and it just made for a very bad existence. I am not getting it as bad as my father did, but I am getting a similar sort of persecution. They want me to die, but they do not want to be known as the hands that killed me. This USA. This US government. This US military. This US Air Force. These Americans!

So for 11 years, I defended the security of the nation at the special level. I was sort of a CEO for a small business, working as the lowest ranking members at AFTAC. I understand a lot of what goes on in the minds of workers. Pecking order, sabotage, complaints about management, …. I got both sides of the views. For the most part I tried to help management where I could. I helped my coworker where I could. My favorite bad worker was this Yankee from Texas. I think he is from Texas, he has that twang. He usually sleeps at work. I don’t know what he does during the day, but he shows up to work for night shift, and would end up sleeping without fail. His office is horrible, as it is a middle cubicle at the center of the office. Anyone can see he’s sleeping. He even created a signature for his job with ASCII art of a man sleeping at the keyboard. He goes to my area to sleep most of the time. And I would make sure to visit his area to check on his mission after I check my area. I understand his job must be done, and it is boring. I know it is boring to him and meaningless to him. Looking for nukes to fly, since 1930, when was the last time a nuke flew? So for a job where your one and only mission is to wait for nukes to fly, it is understandably horrible. To make his existence more bearable, while also not failing the nation. I just do both jobs. And this is also why I am always on the volunteer list to work during holidays and emergency. Work tries to share the burden so we rotated who will go on emergency operations when we have to evacuate. Every hurricane that came, I was on the volunteer list. My boss said I don’t have to, but I said I have no family. The other people can spend time with their family. Some could posit that I was not very smart. I could have used those times to visit California and take care of my parents or my love life.

There are things I cannot do for people though. One lt colonel needed a passing grade on his physical test, in order to be promoted. He made it clear. A friend of mine asked me to give him the test, thinking I am always nice about helping everyone. As the official usaf physical training leader, I volunteered to proctor his physical test. He was not too fat, but fatter than the standard allowed. He could not run very fast. Overall he deserved to fail. So I failed him. He complained to my friend, to make sure I understand he has to pass the test. I said, I can run with him and help him get into standard, but I am not passing him just because he has a big rank. In the end, the lt colonel gave up on convincing me to pencil whip his test, and he just tried to pass the test the way it was meant to be passed. His belly was not going anywhere, but I can deal with kinder measurement on the belly, and his running endurance really improved enough to pass the air force test. The test is fairly basic. I sat at the computer 24/7 for 12 months and get up and run the miles and a half without training each year. When I started playing soccer daily, I ran faster. But many of us young people usually can pass the test without training. Only very unfit people were failing. Perhaps the air force was strict in its effort, but there were many military people that needed to be removed. Unfit by all standards, but because their friends could not see them out, we end up with an entire military of unfits. (The actual truth was, the usaf wanted to downsize. They wanted to fire people without the consequences of firing people).

After 11 years of petty office politics, and being accused of selling secrets to China 3 or 4 times. I was ready to go to war. I was ready to go to trial and settle this in trial. However, I was forced into signing a waiver for trial, sign a waiver for legal representation, sign a waiver for the US constitution. « this is really the primary evidence I hold against the DoD and USAF AFTAC. If you void the US constitution, you also void any existing social or legal contracts. You also have committed treason.

The first thing I wanted to do was to have my own army. If we’re going to have a war, I want to at least have a fighting chance. This area, 99.99% of the living do not understand. Why would anyone need their own army in 2013. even now in 2026, people still think this is a world where they can talk their way out of a murder. Like Iranian leader who got decapitated, in a decapitation operation. No kidding, they call it a decapitation operation. I have dealt with gangsters, car insurance companies, used car salesmen, and the US military. I am pretty sure talking to them without a gun pointed at their head is fruitless. Any MOU or MOA would be worth less than the paper it is written on.

….

So in the most general of phrase. You need a new business, because the old one is not working. not working for you.

While the East Indies may work for Rothschild and Epstein. it never worked for me. If there is to be a sex trafficking business, It should at least be working for me. As it is, all these are working against me.

A nation needs to protect its people, and a large component of that is the military. Since the military and the nation harms its people, there is a need for a new business. Someone will fill the gap – eventually. how business has worked for 3,000 years.

When I first started applying for jobs, I listened to all the gurus. A nice retired colonel even help me pen a cv for management role. It was completely different from a worker role. I didnt even have the concept differentiated until I asked gemini to review my CV and it tells me how I mixed the style for management and workers. Anyway, I took a nice CV and got in line at the job fair. 2,000 people like me with 20-30 years of experiences were in line to ask for a job at Lockheed Martin. I walked to the back of the line and waited for my turn. Hand in my cv and shared some meaningless chatter with the recruiter. I decided this situation is not good.

2013-2026: Americans are still standing in line. but instead of 2,000 people, we are looking at 2 million people standing in line.

If you super impose the realities of 1200 imperial China to modern employment situation. How many years would it take for Genghis Khan to find employment inside the wall? Even if he managed to score an employment, how many years would it take for him to climb the corporate ladder?

Genghis Khan did not start a new business because there was not enough of it already. It is simply not serving him. There were many nations and many governments, but none of it serve him. He could try to work for the Chinese imperial forces for 100 life time and still would not be a “Han”. So when I look at the story of the Zionists, I do feel for what they are trying to do. I am too interested in finding my own nation, a nation where it respects my existence and shares in the duty to protect that existence. What respectable man would put up with a nation that spits on him and wants him to die because he has a darker skin or his eyes are not round enough.

When I look at the startup world, where money is funding 100 businesses, and hopes that 2 will provide a payout. This is like a friend of mine who plays poker this way. He will just bet on everything, and hope that he will score the next hand. “Fishing” is the name of the game. Professional call this the donkey at the table. So in essence, the VC of today are the richest money bags in the world. Like most donkeys at a poker table, they are armed with the biggest cash bags, and ready to go fishing. As long as donkeys go to the poker table, sharks will not retire from winning too much. It only attracts more sharks, and thus the VC and startups culture.

A new business is not a new invention, or new idea, or impossible idea. A new business can simply be washing dishes or laundry, for people who need the service. Invention is when you’re washing too many dishes, and needed to make it faster, cheaper, and better. You would find ways. In the old days, you just do it and teach the next guy. In modernity, you would build a shadow startup, and rake in millions in seed money, and launch a moonshot promising to pay back 500x. Then you use millions of dollars, and the business producing 500k a year is not enough to pay the 500x returns. So you fold and go bankrupt.

New business does not have to be this way.

A new business can be just a group of people honestly serving another group of people. Sometimes the money flow is small. Sometimes the money flow is large. The important thing is that the buyer and seller are both in agreement on the nature of the transactions, and are happy to maintain the arrangement far into tomorrow.

This sort of trust does not exist.

That is why you need a new business.

But for this new business to exist.

First, you need a new government.