Overcoming Obstacles An Inspirational Thai Immigrant Story
hello everyone
i’m glad to be here today and share my
life and lesson
experience my name is marisa viruhayan
i originally came from thailand i
married
and came to the united states in the
late 1983
with a very minimal language and no
working experience
today i am an accountant and a small
local business owner
despite any successes people may have
it is very important to remember your
roots
i would never have dreamed to be where i
am today
it took a village to set me to the right
path
i know i working hard but it was my
willingness
to lead me to the right people to propel
me
forward let me take you back
35 years ago it was
in the lane in the middle the night in
the late october 1986
i woke up to the knock in the front door
i rushed over to open the door
and there were two police officers
waiting for me
they told me my husband was deceit
i didn’t understand when i came to this
country
i speak very minimal language
i was afraid to look stupid i didn’t
even try to practice
i got by because my husband did
everything
for me but it didn’t help in this
situation
i knew one thing was wrong with him and
he was at the hospital
and i thought maybe he was sleeping or
passing out
i didn’t know what the word disease
meant
and i kept asking the police officer
when will he wake up
at the meantime i tried to get my
children
ready to go to the hospital with me the
police officer kept
trying to stop me from giving the
children a bath
and tried to stop me and didn’t
understand
what i was doing they just told me my
husband was dead
i felt so helpless they asked me
questions
but i didn’t know how to answer they
understand that i didn’t know in
english finally they called my
mother-in-law
and that’s when i learned the shocking
news
suddenly life was different
i have two young children to rest and my
life
to rebuild my father-in-law
asked me what do i want to do next
one thing i knew for sure was that
working at the minimum wage at 4.50 per
hour
would not be enough for us
i told him i have no working skill
no education only thing i can do
is scrubbing the floor or cleaning the
dishes
or sacking the food i have 35 years to
work before i retire
i need to do something better than that
so i decide that i want to go back to
school and get more education
he said okay marisa you can do it i step
back a little bit and say well wait a
minute
granddad i call him granddad because my
children call him that
i said wait a minute if i was lucky
enough
to go back to school just like everybody
else
normally and take four years to get
college degree
i would be 31 years old it was so old
when i think about it i said who’s going
to hire 31
years old lady to work he said
um you’re going to be 31 anyway
do you want to be 31 with the degree or
without a degree
of course i want to be 31 with a degree
so he took me to don bosco commodity
center to learn
english which is free since i have no
money
don bosco teaching english for refugee
and new arrival to basic living in this
country
but my goal was to get a college degree
so i expressed that to the teacher
and one of the teachers introduced me
to the basic adult education that offer
close to my house at pacquiao high
school
so i ended up taking the class english
class in the morning at don bosco
and evening class to prepare myself for
ged exam
i kept doing that until the fall 1987.
i took the ged exam and i passed it
so i went on to take community college
after two years i decided to go to an
accounting degree
because nursing and accounting pretty
good choice but
nursing i’m afraid of the blood and i
don’t like needle
until today i cannot look at when i give
blood
so i decide for the sake of myself
and somebody else i won’t hurt i go with
the accounting degree
i like the number i feel like i can talk
to the number
and i graduate from rockhurst in 1991
which is four years like my plan
it’s a lot of hard work every semester
time too
what i have learned through the college
i learned that the education extends
beyond the classroom
getting college degree it doesn’t mean
just to get the job and paycheck
i also learn along the way that
i learned the people skill analyzing
skill
and a little critical criticis
critical thinking that i learned and
everything else beyond which
that is my bonus no shortcut to college
one thing i learned
and if i put myself through that’s the
bonus skill everybody can learn along
the way
getting through the classroom
before i graduate i married my husband
he from thailand also i land my first
job in kansas city downtown
i felt different i feel like someone
news in me
i feel like i want to create things and
take control of my own life
i don’t want to be helpless anymore
my husband and i had a dream we want to
own our own business
and what we know best are food we want
to own taste
if we want to own thai food restaurant
we put proposal together
we went to the bank the bank turned us
down in no time
because we have no experience we don’t
have
enough money to back up for the question
and we also learned that restaurant
business is high fatality business
90 percent of the time never make it the
first year
but because the bank turned us down
disappointed yes but never give up
i believe in that if i have the will i
will find a way
with my paycheck is a good calculated
risk that my husband can give up the job
i still keep working full-time
for the back-up plan so we decide to
take out our credit card
and max it out buy purchase the
equipment
and set up the kitchens
don’t have money left so i have to take
all my hobbies
handcraft with cross stitches from the
house
rip everything from the wall and come
and decorate our restaurant
which turned out to be good because the
theme on those
cross stitch work is about thai culture
which is perfectly fine
so we work very hard because credit card
credit credit card interest is not
joking
they’re high so we work seven days a
week
he works seven days in the kitchen i
hold up day job
evening time i come to restaurant
serving table
and on the weekend we pay everyone first
before we pay ourselves in about four
years
when we pay off our debt
so we keep continue working and
ten years later we have opportunity to
open tessitai’s second location in
liberty
and in 2014 we opened another one
noodle shop big buffer with all this
restaurant i should be happy and relax
and kick back
but i never feel enough and i thought i
being silly
or regressed never never happy with what
i have
but no it’s not what it is
i am entrepreneur i like to keep
thinking creating what next
so the new challenge came
at the same time i lost my day job so i
have eight to five
what do i want to do remember
i am observant when i was
working in downtown i watched people
lighting up to um to buying lunch
and i start to calculate what the
revenue and expense to find break-even
points
so when i have my own restaurant i also
watch my customer
i talk to my customer i get the feedback
and they knew they liked my hot sauce
so i think about okay something new i
want to learn i want to try to bottle my
hot sauce
and that’s another whole learning
experience
i never know how difficult to come up
with the label
all kind of information on that little
paper
take a lot of work and research but i
like it because it’s fun i always want
to learn and try the new
things we put the bottle together
i make it i label it
packaging i put in front of my stove for
the testing
to start moving start moving so i took
the bottle to the first case to the
grocery store
locally and luckily they took it so i
start demoing
do the demo and sample and
expanding to the point that
is too much for one person to do so
then i start to have distributor and
co-packaging
in 2015 i add sweet peanut sauce on it
and then the new challenge with the thai
testy thai beef jerky
thai candy version
life is good and still learning
and i want to tell you kansas city
commodity has given me so much from the
beginning
i am paying forward and hope that this
message
will motivate you and help you move
forward
to overcome any challenges
this community we are lucky to be in
this community
that has a visionary and entrepreneur
to support the entrepreneur
there are so many resources that
we can reach out if you’re willing to
learn and try new things
it can be very exhausted
very hard work but
this community is very friendly and
people around here
always there to help you with encourage
and advice if it’s nothing else
and willingness are essential to
entrepreneurship
and in life in general
if you willing to work hard set up your
goals
i believe that you will overcome any
obstacle
and realize your vision for yourself
your family
and your community thank you
you