5 Years

It’s been exactly 5 years since I met Phong, since we started this whole journey together.

5 years. Sounds like an awful long time. Really, the concept of five-years has almost never existed in my mind.

When I was a kid, a school year seemed like for-e-ver. I still distinctly remember entering the 10th grade, looking at the upcoming 3 years of high school with a sense of dread, and wondering to myself, “man, when will I become an adult?”

And now, just like that, it’s been 5 years. Everything feels like a dream. I can still remember each and every single week of the past 5 years as if it was yesterday (having a diary helps a lot hehe). And yet, added up together, they represent one-fifth of my life.

There’s a saying “Isn’t it funny how day by day nothing changes, but when you look back everything is different?”. So much truth here.

I’m just rambling on about the concept of time. Let’s conclude this part with perhaps the most apt song for this moment — Time by Hans Zimmer.

Such a poignant and beautiful melody isn’t it? Every time I listen to this song, it never fails to evoke a deeply melancholic, out-of-this-world, existential sense of wonder in my mind.

The 5-year Journey

Five years ago, I met Phong and suggested that we start something together. That was the 13th of June, 2014. (okay I should have written this post on 13/6/2019, but the past week we’ve been so busy that I can only find time to sit down and write today).

That day, we met up next to Hoan Kiem lake, parked our bikes, and walked 2 laps around the lake. During the walk we caught up, chit chatted a bit, and I told him that we should definitely build a start-up project on the concept of home fitness.

The idea came from my previous experience working at several start-ups, which had greatly inspired me and shown me what was possible. I had also been lifting weights at home for close to a year at that point, and so naturally I just saw fitness, and specifically home workout, as the first step in my own entrepreneurial journey.

By that point, I had already met Phong several times before. We both had a passion for fitness. We had taken part in a fitness competition together, so Phong was naturally the first person I thought of.

That’s us in a Running / Bodyweight Fitness challenge in 2013.

At that time, we were two guys young, dumb, and full of cum. That’s what my American boss used to call me, which perfectly describes us back then ? Really, we were two 21-year-olds eager to create something of impact, eager to change the world with nothing but our muscles and determination. We were enthused, naive, relentless, fearless, and stupid.

Fast forward 5 years: I won’t go into details here, because it’s close to midnight now and I can’t write down everything that has ever happened. That deserves its own memoir. This is just a quick self-reflection post.

But to be brief, we’ve been through a lot. Through thick and thin, innumerable failure and embarrassments, through the ups and the downs, we’re still here. Still just the two of us. Still kind of young, still kind of muscled, still very much clueless. Still got the fire. A lot more humbled and down to earth now.

What do you do when you have too much muscles? Answer: you carry heavy-ass tables up and down stairs. Moving tables out of our Lê Trọng Tấn classroom in October 2017.

Can’t say that we’ve achieved success or anything. Our business is kind of doing well now, but I wouldn’t call it a success. Still too many things to be done. And furthermore, I always have a dream-like feeling that everything we’ve built is nothing more than a house of cards ready to fall apart any moment.

One thing I’m definitely proud of though, is that through all we’ve been through together, we’ve developed between us a sense of camaraderie that is hard to describe, that I could never have anticipated. A mix of being brothers, comrades, friends, colleagues, schoolmates, and business partners I guess.

(On an unrelated note, “camaraderie” is my favourite English word ever. It describes a bond, a sense of solidarity between people that can only be achieved by having been through some really tough shit together).

The Anniversary

So for the 5-year anniversary, I made plans to go to Tam Đảo for a day. The plan is to go for a run and enjoy some exotic scenery.

On the way to Tam Đảo, we hit an unpaved stretch of road filled with gigantic potholes. Fell off the bike, got some minor scratches. The left rear view mirror and left footrest of my Wave were trashed. The footrest was pressing on the shifting lever, so I couldn’t down-shift to climb up the slopes to Tam Đảo. We were dead worried we’d be stuck there, but luckily a local guy came out with a special lever tool and helped us fix the footrest. Good people still exist aye?

The drive up the hills to Tam Đảo was very nice. Some breathtaking scenery. The roads were freshly paved and very easy to drive on.

Once we got to Tam Đảo it was just a lot of running around. Climbed up the TV tower, visited the waterfall, visited the church. Not a lot of landmarks. The town was actually slightly messier and uglier than we thought. Lots of tacky and gaudy buildings that kind of ruin the historic beauty of the town. The weather wasn’t even good — we were expecting cool, “Đà Lạt-like” weather, but it was just as hot as in Hanoi.

At the TV tower on top of a mountain peak. Very scenic climb up.

Final Thoughts

Five years sounds like a long time, but I feel like it’s just the beginning. I’m incredibly glad to have found a co-founder, a friend and partner like Phong. The past 5 years have been wonderful; the lessons and memories I’ll forever treasure.

Will there be a “10 Years” post? Why not! I think if things continue the way they are now, there’s no reason why we can’t make it.

Let’s hope that 5 years from now, we will still be two 30-something guys who can look back at the decade-long journey and appreciate all the glory and all the shit that we’ve muddled through together.

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