I write this column on the flight out of Hanoi en route to London via Moscow.    I am on the Board of Vestergaard Frandsen, a for-profit, privately held humanitarian development firm, which has factories in Vietnam which we visited.

As an American, it’s slightly odd going to Vietnam – perhaps a bit like going to Cuba.    A bit of history, but life has moved on.   Still you can’t help but be aware of the past as you go there.

And yet, the country surprised me on many levels.    I was aware that the 90 million Vietnamese are experiencing a high-growth rate, and growing a middle class.     In cities like London and San Francisco, you can see their expats as industrious manicurists, restaurant owners, and dry cleaners in particular.    But in Hanoi this past week, I just was swept away by their niceness.   Yes, niceness.    Their attitude to life is fantastic.

I found at every counter and restaurant a very friendly, gracious Vietnamese person.    They were quick to be helpful, got me out of the Hanoi airport at 2 am when a flight cancelled, and I thought I would never get my bags out from the plane hold until morning (but they did).    The folks at the factory were professional, articulate, passionate, and just plain lovely.

Outside of the Intercontinental (where the Sunset Bar is a must go to place), the city is well – not clean and looks poor.     It would have been easy to say – “they’ve got a long way to go”.    You might find yourself even thinking a thought of, “poor Vietnamese”.    I even remarked at one point how friendly everyone was only to get the response back from one of my Board colleagues, “well, why wouldn’t they be?   They’ve won.     They routed everyone that’s tried to take over their country – the French, the Japanese, the Americans and the Chinese.     People who win feel great.  They have nothing to feel bad about”. 

Touche!

I thought about that the rest of the trip.     Here is a country where it seems the average person is  about 5’3’’; they are not physically imposing.      They’re growing rapidly.    The friendliness is not one of subservience at all, but one of magnanimous graciousness.    Love it.

Vietnam, as a country, is like an entrepreneur.     Playing a game of asymmetrical warfare.    You can underestimate them if you want; feel sorry for them if it makes you feel good.    But like with every entrepreneur, the fact of underestimating them gives them good road to accomplish what they seek to achieve. 

I’ll never forget sitting across from the then CEO of an incumbent telco in early 2005 as he was being condescending to Skype, one of Ariadne Capital’s clients at that time on a Radio 4 show.    I remember saying something along the lines of – “fascinating really ... your industry is in a trillion dollar freefall, and you have yet to explain how you are going to recover, and yet you scoff at Skype’s ability to change the rules of the game.     Let’s watch this play out”.

Entrepreneurs  must think big, start small, and move fast.    If you ever stop thinking big, it’s game over.   That’s what entrepreneurs do as a habit.   They redefine industries – first in their mind, then in the market.     They identify the way the market should work, and feel compelled to bring that vision to life.   

But you have to start small.    You have – typically – a grubby little office at the beginning if you’re lucky enough to have an office at all.     You convince yourself that the simplicity of the early days brings you closer together, and it probably does.    Your advantage is the mental game that you are playing.    You know that you can make a decision and implement it.    You don’t have to have it approved by 5 layers of management.

And you win – when you do -  by playing a better mental game than the incumbent or your competitor.   For life, really ultimately is all a mind game.    I play a number of games with myself every week from deciding that things I don’t want to do hold a total fascination for myself, to focusing on what my business will be like in 5 years time, and using that vision to keep me going in the rough times.

I ruthlessly eliminate negative people from my life, and I do mean ruthlessly.    I pretend that insults are really compliments, and I try to always be gracious to people who are not so to me.   Why?   It freaks people out.     They can’t figure out where your positive energy comes from.

When you are friendly and gracious – even when you don’t feel like being so, you realise that it helps you achieve what you want to.    It flips your mind into a field of – “I’m the one who has the capacity to rise above the pettiness, simple game-playing, mere childishness of what’s going on, and be the adult”.

Most of the world operates along pretty prescriptive patterns of  - master/slave, supplicant/provider, senior/junior, you versus me, incumbent/challener.    The really subversive stance to take is to be independent.    Defy the definitions.    Don’t react to the other side.    Imply a different standard of behaviour. 

This is what I came to love about Vietnam in the past week.    They seem to be saying, “it’s not perfect, but we’re working towards that.   We’re happy with who we are, and we’ve demonstrated a great amount of houtzpah.    We know what we’re doing, and feel how you want to feel about us, but we know who we are, and we are in the ascendancy.”

If we could bottle that, and sell it to anyone considering setting up a new business, I would.     While there are lots of theories about why some people are successful, and others not, why some get funded, and others don’t, why some change industries, and others are merely profitable enterprises, the older I get, and the more I see entrepreneurs in different parts of the world, I have reduced my recipe to success to an exceedingly simple – “Play the right mental game”. 

1. Be positive at all times – not a cheerleader, not a fantastist, not an airhead, but positive about the options for building from wherever you are.    Think of negativity as a killer virus that you must immunise yourself against.
2. Act like a winner.    Exhude warmth, graciousness, time for others.   This is what people do who feel great.   Even if you don’t, flip the switch, and fake it.... you’ll find that you’ll get there faster by faking this than working to genuinely feel it.
3. Underestimate no one.     And I do mean – no one.   The guy who smells.    The woman who speaks English poorly.     The older man who doesn’t seem like he is au fait with technology.   The older woman who seems well, old.    Everyone can have a card up there sleeve.    Everyone can be a natural ally.    Alliances can be built out of simple raw materials.  
4. Forgive and forget mistakes.   They happen, but make them history fast.    The more you try to assess and apply blame, the worse it gets.
5. Be a fighter.    It’s not over until it is.    Keep the faith that you can pull it through.     Focus on what you are achieving, not what you haven’t been able to do yet.    Eighty percent of the significant deals that I’ve gotten done in my career were No’s I had to change to Yes’s.   In some cases, I had to neutralise what was a negative first before even beginning to get to Yes.
6. Be thankful.    We can all focus on what we don’t have, and didn’t get, or what remarkable things we have to be thankful for.    The latter is a much better place to be.

Life is all about where you are going; not where you came from.     Build a position for 2012 in your mind of “abundance” and “ascendancy”, and watch through the year as that mental position becomes reality.