Businessman shares his story

THANH Dang received an early lesson in entrepreneurship from his mother, a woman who only a few years earlier had risked her family's life escaping Vietnam.

KEEN TO HELP: Thanh Dang from SSS Strawberries is starting a new career as a business coach. Picture: Jack Tran

THANH Dang received an early lesson in entrepreneurship from his mother, a woman who only a few years earlier had risked her family's life escaping Vietnam.

Working on a West Australian strawberry farm, Thanh's mother would every day collect the low-grade fruit that the farmer could not sell, load it into a van and take it home where her seven children were waiting.

"My mother would get all seven of us in a production line, cutting up the fruit, putting it in punnets and wrapping cling wrap around it," Thanh said.

"She would then sell the strawberries to service stations, roadside stalls and corner stores."

Only a few years earlier, the Dangs had escaped Vietnam as refugees, spending four years in an Indonesian camp before arriving in Perth in the early 1990s.

"I was three when we left Vietnam," Thanh says of his family, which now runs one of Australia's largest strawberry farms, SSS Strawberries, in Bundaberg.

"My parents had tried to escape before and my father was put in jail several times.

"The night we left I was woken up in the middle of the night and put on a boat. We were then put on another boat which sailed to Indonesia. There were lots of dangers because we were sailing through areas where there were pirates and lots of (bad) weather.

"People asked me why my parents did not leave one of us behind, the youngest was two months old and the oldest 11, so at least one would survive, but my mum said we either all lived or all perished together."

The entrepreneurial skill of refugees arriving in this country from war-torn or repressed countries has long been recognised. According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics, humanitarian migrants report higher median incomes from their businesses than skilled or family reunion migrants, a consistent finding in multiple studies.

In 2009/10, almost 5000 humanitarian migrants reported $83 million in income from their own unincorporated businesses.

But, similar to many refugees, it was a struggle for the Dangs at first. Arriving in Perth as a seven-year-old, Thanh did not easily adjust to life in a new country.

"I could not speak English and I was an easy target for bullying," he said. "I had a pretty good mind but I lacked direction. I also learnt that I could generate a lot of attention by acting up and trying to impress the cool kids."

Thanh concedes he could have easily slipped into the role of juvenile delinquent if he had not discovered his passion for breakdancing. He formed a group, Breaking Barriers, which performed in pubs and clubs and later went on to compete in national championships.

"For the first time, I was looked up to and teachers were nice to me," Thanh, now 31, said. "That achievement was implanted inside me and I realised that I was able to achieve anything if I put my mind to it."

About a decade ago the Dangs, who had run a fairly successful farm in WA, decided to move to Queensland, where the strawberry growing season is better and there is more access to backpacker labour. Thanh says the family wanted to buy a large farm where they could harvest fruit from millions of plants.

But the family, who settled on a farm on the outskirts of Bundaberg, initially struggled to make ends meet and hit some of the hardest times they had experienced.

"My aunt sold her house and put all the money into the business," he said. "As well as strawberries we had to plant a lot of other crops. The whole family had to go back into the field. It was hard to watch my 55-year-old mum go picking fruit in the sun and to watch my sisters, who are not big people, have to carry watermelons that weighed up to 20kg. I remember having to go out into the scrub and my mother using a chainsaw to cut stakes for the tomatoes because we could not afford to buy them."

It looked like the end of the road for the hardworking Dang family. "The local farmers would come around to ask if they could buy our equipment because they were hoping we would fail and laugh at us," he said. Thankfully things slowly turned around for the family.

Thanh says he had a personal epiphany when he started reading self-help books written by business trainers such as Tony Robbins and Blair Singer.

Robbins, dubbed "the CEO whisperer" by Fortune magazine, has worked with US presidents, including Bill Clinton, sports stars, such as 18-time tennis grand slam winner Serena Williams and media mogul Oprah Winfrey. Singer is a business coach in the same vein and the author of motivational books.

"Those books taught me how to implement systems," Thanh said. "Farmers do not tend to implement systems. We used to work in the fields but now we are working for the business. I am in charge of training, my sister is responsible for the shed and my brother the chemicals and irrigation."

The farm now has an annual turnover of more than $10 million and the family has invested in property and other businesses. The family has more than 40ha under cultivation, growing just over two million strawberry plants and making it one of the largest strawberry growers in Australia. Thanh has moved to Brisbane where he is launching a career as a business trainer using some of the techniques taught to him by Robbins and Singer. The farm is now so successful that his parents have retired and the family can have six months of the year off to do other things. Helping their financial success has been a $6 million portfolio based on residential properties and rental income.

Staying true to their grassroots, the Dang family donates 10 per cent of profits to charities around the world.

Thanh says he still remembers the early lesson taught by his mother as she got the family to cut up and package the low-class fruit. He has not seen anyone emulate his mother's idea. "We now own a farm but no has come up to us and asked for the leftover fruit like my mum did," he said.

As he embarks on his new career his mother's business nous will no doubt come in handy.