TIPS - AMBITION THAT LEADS TO SUCCESS

Luck can open the door for you. But you still have to walk through it. Luck is more about being prepared for those opportunities that come knocking your door. You have to have an open mind, the right skill and all your senses working to see what opportunities presents themselves.

That’s what happened to Taryn Rose, a Vietnamese refugee who moved to United States when she was eight. She hopes that she would follow in footsteps of her father … becoming a physician. However, different things happen. After working 36 hours shifts as a resident in orthopedic surgery, she experiences a lot of sore feet. But unlike most of her colleagues, she turned her pain into profit. Today she is CEO of TARYN ROSE INTERNATIONAL a $28 million company that makes comfortable shoes.

She got her medical degree from University of Southern California, but she found her heart was no longer in medicine. She always loves shoes and wanted to learn new things about it. To fulfill her ambition she had become friends with a sales clerk who knew people in shoe industry in Italy. She made the introduction and headed off to Milan to learn how to make shoes. She did some research on her potential customers and with the data she manage to get a $200,000 loan in 1998. She wore out a lot of her own shoe leather showing samples to independent shoe stores and buyers at upscale department stores.

At the beginning, she did everything by herself, from designing, marketing and accounts. There are moments when she felt so frustrated and even crying. But with great patient and ambition, she never gave up. Finally, her effort rewarded. After 8 years after she started her business, now her shoes can be found in more than 220 stores worldwide.

Rose has no regrets about leaving medicine. What she did is not all that different from what she did as a physician. The goal is the same … to relieve pain. As a surgeon, she might helped only a few people but with her shoes, she is helping hundred of thousands of people.