Someone once asked Khanh: “Does success mean having a lot of money? And if you don’t have much money, should you feel inferior and like a failure?”
So is having a lot of money the same as success?
There is endless talk about MONEY and SUCCESS on social media. A successful person has the backbone to earn money, but a rich person with a lot of money is not necessarily successful. If you had 1,000 billion dong but no health, would you call that success? If you had 1,000 billion dong but lived under extreme stress, with no one you could trust beside you, a broken family and a lost spirit, all inside a magnificent castle — would that be success?
Everything starts with how we define it. To earn money, you have to know what money is. To succeed, you have to know what success means to you. For Khanh, success is being able to do what you set out to do. If you say you will retire in 5 years and build a charity house, and you do it, you have succeeded. Or if you say you will retire before 45, move back to the countryside to grow vegetables and raise chickens, live a simple life — and you do it — you have succeeded. So everyone has their own definition of success. Khanh’s success is not your success.
Money is only a tool of success. When TikTok’s CEO decided to retire at 40 with an estimated net worth of 44 billion dollars, many people asked why he would retire so young, why he didn’t do this or that with all that money… We cannot impose our own definition of success on anyone else. Be bold, be successful, and do whatever you want.
— Khanh Ngo
