🇻🇳 Emerging Markets Trailblazer Rich Pham: Always say yes.

Joel Kaczmarek: Hi Five Guys, this is Joel and today I have a really, really international version of Five Things 20 because Rich Pham, my guest today, is pretty international himself. Rich is originally from Vietnam. His parents and he used to live there. He then emigrated to the US and he worked in so many countries. I even need my cheat sheet to get them all. USA, Japan, Singapore, Thailand, Vietnam, Cambodia, Malaysia, Korea, China. He actually worked all around the globe, you could say. And he worked for pretty interesting companies such as Procter & Gamble, Johnson & Johnson, the Nona. And he's also entrepreneurial because he sold a drink, which is called Pocari Sweat, for $200 million. So he's quite successful in what he did. And he's also a sportsman. He's into racing. He owns the Formula 3 racing team. races himself. I learned that he even managed to get the third place in the 24 hours of spa, which is quite dangerous, I can tell you guys. And he's also won the C-class in China in 2015. So a really versatile guy I'm talking today. And we met in Vietnam and I was totally curious to learn about the five things he wished he knew when he was 20. So dear Rich, hi, nice to see you.

Rich Pham: Hi, thanks for having me on the podcast. I'm really happy to be here.

Joel Kaczmarek: Maybe we could start with a short introduction about you, just taking five minutes to get to know you better. I mean, your CV is so dense, so full of things. What would you say, what is the red line that goes through your life?

Rich Pham: constant change. So first of all, thank you everyone for spending your time to listen to this podcast. I just want to say that your introduction was really terrific and it made me sound like a multimillionaire, which I'm not. I did sell my company and evaluation was over 200 million. And because I race cars doesn't mean that, you know, I'm not the polo country club type. I was born in Vietnam. My parents and I lived here until the end of the Vietnam War, which was in 1975. We left at the time because my father was in the government in Vietnam, so we had to leave. We went to the U.S., and it was really a tough struggle. For both my parents and myself, my mom didn't speak English. I certainly didn't speak English when I was 10 years old, and we all had to start over. From there, I managed to go to school, got a job, and got promoted and eventually ended up as an expat at the age of 27, running a joint venture for Johnson & Johnson. I mean, who knew what they saw in me, but I did and I went and it just springboarded me to Thailand, to Singapore, to Vietnam and all the other countries. So I've been very fortunate and blessed.

Joel Kaczmarek: And I mean, I didn't manage the company so far you're working for right now, which is called NFQ. And my friend Lars Jankowski, who, you know, made me come to Vietnam as well. He used to introduce you as Rich is a great guy. You need to know him. He's loved in the team. And more interesting, his father was really, really high in the government and he had to escape the CIA to the US and then came back. He has great stories. And he even brought Coca-Cola to Vietnam. So as you said, your life is really about change. And I guess also about adapting. So I would expect you to be really adaptable to things because the many countries you've worked in and the different companies you work for, shows me a person that's quite adaptable or can adapt to change. Is that right?

Rich Pham: Reflecting back on my life, I've had a lot of change. So I think instability and uncertainty is really two things that run through the core. And I've gotten so used to it now that I think I can't live a normal life like back in the US where everything is relatively calm and stable. I crave the grittiness, I think is the right word, the grittiness of Vietnam and Southeast Asia, not knowing what's going to happen when I go to work the next day. Having a stable environment is just too boring for me. And I guess that's why I race cars as well, because it just creates excitement. I found golf. I played golf for 15 years. I went to golf school. I really was really into it, doing it four or five times a month.

Joel Kaczmarek: But it just got boring. I can imagine the 1970s, a 10-year-old that doesn't speak English. You must have felt pretty alienated in the US. Was it like that?

Rich Pham: Oh, absolutely. You know, America, even though it's considered the melting pot of all cultures, in the 70s, there wasn't really a program for immigrants. In school, there wasn't English as a second language, ESL as they call it now. I basically went to class not understanding anything except for the math section. where that's the only section I could participate in. And I literally brought a coloring book with me, and I would sit there and color while history, English, all the other subjects were being taught. And only when the math section came in was I able to participate. And even that was just too simple because in Asia, math is pretty advanced, much more advanced than a comparable 10-year-old would have to do in America. Yeah, America was pretty unfriendly, both in terms of school as well in terms of welcoming immigrants.

Joel Kaczmarek: What was your strategy to get integrated? Like, how did you make friends? What did you help to get grip of the situation?

Rich Pham: In America, when you go to high school, sports is everything. The popular kids at school are the athletes. So I learned to be an athlete. In Asia, soccer or football, as you guys call it in Europe, is very advanced. And in America in the 70s, football was just at its infancy. So naturally, I was a football star or a soccer star. And then I learned then to play American football. And I was the quarterback because that was the centerpiece of the hero of everything. I learned to play baseball and I was the pitcher. I was a horrible pitcher, but I was still a pitcher. My defensive skills to learn to integrate into the American culture was sports.

Joel Kaczmarek: then you were confronted with the situation of coming back to your home country, to Vietnam. Was the situation there as it was in the US, that you were the alienated kid in a way that doesn't fit in? or was it different?

Rich Pham: For those, let me just give a background of what happened in Vietnam. So in 1975, the Vietnam War ended, which means the South Vietnam where I live lost, the country folded, and it was integrated into one country. And for 1975 until 1994, Vietnam was pretty much closed, only open to the Soviet Union. And when the embargo, and there are no foreign companies, no Western companies operating in Vietnam because of the embargo. When the embargo lifted, I came back and I was the first person for Coca-Cola. I launched it in Vietnam. Now, most people didn't really welcome me back. I wouldn't say it was unfriendly, but People, because under a socialist culture, everyone's supposed to be equal, they didn't really think it was fair that I managed to go to the US, get an education, come back. The whole feeling was, it could have been me. You just got lucky and left, and it could have been me, and I'm better. They would rather work for a Caucasian manager than they would for me. It was very difficult. But like we talked about 10 minutes ago, change was part of my life and learning to adapt was part of that. I didn't really expect to be unwelcome in my own country, however, but things are much better now.

Joel Kaczmarek: Let's get started with your five things. Maybe if I may ask you, what's your age today?

Rich Pham: I'm 58.

Joel Kaczmarek: What's the first thing you would have loved to know when you were 20?

Rich Pham: So the first thing I would tell my younger self is always say yes. And always say yes means a lot of things to me. It means don't be afraid of failure. Don't worry about getting your hands dirty. Don't worry about the unknown. Now, I'm not saying, you know, go jump out of a plane or do something stupid. I'm talking more about opportunities in life. Everything that I have done, you know, saying yes to at the age of 27, going to Japan and not speaking Japanese, knowing nothing about the culture, returning back to Vietnam where my father was potentially, well, where my family was high in the government and I didn't know what was waiting for me. It was really the unknown and scary for my parents. I was too young and naive to understand what it meant. saying yes to getting into a racing car where we know it's hazardous, right? So it brings a lot of opportunities. It brings a lot of rewards as well. And I guess I'm speaking mostly in a professional sense, right? Saying yes, it means that you, when a door opens, you should try to step through it because somebody believed in you to give you the opportunity to ask you the question. So say yes. Companies don't hire me because they have a lot of money and they can't find anyone internal to fill these roles. Companies, you know, all the big companies that work for Coca-Cola, like you said, Johnson & Johnson, Danone, companies have a lot of bench strength and they only go outside when they need something done. And it's usually because something has gone off the rails and they need someone to come in and take a fresh look at the situation. And that's how I've made my career. Every company I've gone into has required me to do some type of restructuring, to change the strategy. And of course, it's you enter a company and there are many people thinking either I could have done it, why didn't they pick me? Or this guy know nothing about our industry, our product, our culture, and there's a lot of resistance. If I sat down and really thought hard about it, I probably would have said no. But, you know, I think by saying yes has opened up a lot of rewards and opportunity. And of course, I've gotten a lot of great experience because of it. Saying yes also means, like you said, I've jumped from traditional companies into tech. I've never been in tech before. I worked for at NFQ for Lars, as you mentioned, and I grew from. I started as a CEO. I became CEO of Asia.

Joel Kaczmarek: So your first aspect even contains some kind of being healthy naive, as far as I can tell. So you didn't think about it too much. You just said yes and then found a way of how to do it.

Rich Pham: Yes. Find a way to do it. Don't put yourself in danger, but don't be hesitant about the unknown.

Joel Kaczmarek: When we're talking about business, there is no real danger. usually, right? You know, it's not like race driving that there's a danger for your life. But often it's a danger for your career that sticks to a certain decision-making process. So when a boss comes to you and says, hey, Rich, we fucked up social media. Can you fix it? And you say, yes, then you're in charge of doing it. So the biggest danger you have, the biggest risk is actually not managing to do anything. And the interesting part about this is usually when I meet corporate guys, they are really, you know, focusing on their fears. They are, you know They're not that risk-affine as you just mentioned. Comfortable with the uncomfortable. Usually it's the other way around. How did you manage to?

Rich Pham: Well, first of all, I want to say that there is danger in business. You could be asked to go and run a rack. So there is danger. There are dangerous countries. But let's get back to your question. I don't know why I don't focus on the safe aspect. I think it's because what I've learned, one point in my life, in the corporate world, I got derailed. I didn't play the political game correct, and I was sidelined. But I said yes. I said yes to the job. I went and I did it. And more importantly, I had a boss who I knew didn't like to do certain things. So I went and did it. And I said, yes, I did all the things that he didn't like doing and he appreciated me for it. And I got promoted because I did all the things that he didn't like doing and I did it well. And I said, yes, there's no danger.

Joel Kaczmarek: When you were a boss, was it also the employees you loved the most, the ones who said yes and who are willing to try out things?

Rich Pham: That's actually one of my points that I would tell my younger self. And one of the points I would tell my younger self is be dependable. If you are swinging for the fences, you're only as good as your last home run because you will also strike out a lot. But if you are someone that everyone can depend on, he'll get the job done. They will do it correctly. on budget, maybe even before the deadline, that's what gets you promoted because people want dependable employees. I also want dependable employees. I don't want people who are magicians, as we say. I don't want someone to come and say, look, I just did this great thing because sometimes it's not so great. And sometimes the rabbit doesn't come out. As a manager, as a boss, yeah, I like dependable employees. And what I found is that I was dependable. I hope I'm still dependable. And that's what is valued in an organization. I think entrepreneurship types of company are different. Yeah, because you're trying to break through a barrier. You're trying to break into some industry. But in companies, being dependable is highly valued. In a mid-sized company and bigger, your boss wants his or her team to deliver. And if you have members of your team that sometimes hit home runs and sometimes strike out, then as a boss, you don't deliver. He or she wants, obviously, to get promoted, to get rewarded. So they need dependable people on their team.

Joel Kaczmarek: How do you manage to be dependable? What would you say are the most important structures or aspects in your life that you should focus on to be dependable?

Rich Pham: I had a lesson learned early on as well. I had one of my bosses come to me one day and he said, Rich, where is that report? And I looked at him and my response was, we agreed it was due Friday. I forget what day, let's say it was Wednesday. And I looked at him and I said, I thought we didn't need it till Friday. And he looked at me and he said, you know, it's due when I asked you about it because it's top of mind for me. And I thought about it for a minute and I go, yeah. He's right. It was important for him. That's why he asked me for it. So I should have known and understood what was important for him and do it and do it early. And that's dependability. Doing things on time, on budget, that says you're just doing your job. You're not really excelling. But doing things under budget before the deadline and understanding what your boss wants and needs, that's really dependable. They can depend on you.

Joel Kaczmarek: but isn't the boss someone that should structure a team so that the team works and not the boss does? Because what you just mentioned sounds like a situation where you also had to swallow quite a bit of pride, to be honest, because you were actually right from what you agreed on and he was actually not accountable to what he said in the past. So there's two sides. There's the one part of being forward-looking. What does my boss need? What does the team need? What does the situation need? And then there's the other one, the agreement you had.

Rich Pham: I mean, you're right, but we don't live in the perfect world. The boss controls your salary, your promotion, how you are perceived to other departments. So I don't consider it swarming my pride. I consider it working smart. So let's say in a team environment, your boss manages four people and there's an opportunity that comes up. How is he going to choose among the four people? He also wants to look good by recommending somebody that can do the job well. And if the four people are just on time, on budget, what's he going to do? Draw a name out of a hat. No, you don't. You never as an employee, you never want to be in that position where you're just good enough or, you know, they draw a name out of a hat. You want them to instantly say, yeah, that guy, Rich, is the perfect guy for that job. So I don't consider it solving my pride. I consider it working smart.

Joel Kaczmarek: But what was the price of working smart?

Rich Pham: Calling your own shots. When I was at Danone, I was a country manager for Danone. And I was a country manager in Vietnam for six years, which is highly, highly unusual. Usually Danone likes to move people three to four years. But I was consistently one of the highest growth countries in the world. Yes, Vietnam was small, so doubling was easy. But doubling every year for five or six years means that I was able to call my shots. I was able at the end of the year to sit down and say, you know, I don't want to go to China. I want to be here. And they would have to say, yeah, you can be here. You know, being dependable and being good allows you to also have some leverage against management. Looking back on my 58 years of life, I have no regrets. Of course, I've made a lot of mistakes. I made a lot of stupid mistakes. I've done a lot of stupid things. But they all have added up and have rewarded me through experience, through knowledge. And I'm still alive. I still am kicking and happy. So I think my biggest accomplishment, I look forward to the next day, every day. I welcome the challenges that life throws on me. Don't think that every day I wake up and go to sleep happy. For sure, there are some days where, you know, I want to go home and kick the dog. I don't have a dog for all those people out there. But, you know, you do get frustrated. But a week later, a month later, you look back and you're like, well, that wasn't so bad. Now, the next time this thing comes up, I know how to deal with it.

Joel Kaczmarek: Number one was always say yes. Number two was be dependable. What's your third thing?

Rich Pham: Implementation is everything. I'm not the smartest guy in the world. There are plenty of people smarter than me. When I worked in companies, sure, there are many managers within my company and at the competition that are smarter, but I'm still successful. And why am I successful? Is that I learned early on that the strategy on a PowerPoint in a boardroom is 30% of your success. Because all the people that you're trying to talk to, whether you're in a service business, which means all your clients or all your customers, they don't see your PowerPoint slide. The only thing they see is how you implement it. So implementation is key. I believe you can have a relatively good strategy, but if you implement it well That's what people see. And that's what people understand about your brand, your company, your service. Whereas you can have a company with a much better strategy that implements it poorly. And then they fail.

Joel Kaczmarek: Yeah, I like that idea because in the startup space, it's quite the same. I always tend, you know, sometimes founders approach you and ask you, hey, I have this and that idea. Would you sign an NDA so that I can talk about it and you won't steal it? And I always tend to say to these guys, hey, listen, ideas are worth nothing. Execution is everything. I didn't expect this to be the same in the corporate world, to be honest, because, you know, from the outside, I sometimes get the idea of people doing great talks and that's the one guy that managed to look good. But I'm really, really happy that you're telling me that it's also about implementation there, because in the end, the numbers count and the numbers come from. how do I execute this stuff.

Rich Pham: Yeah, a person who does a great presentation doesn't mean that they can be successful actually running a company.

Joel Kaczmarek: And how did you manage to implement things in a way that other people didn't? So what's your secret sauce here?

Rich Pham: So the short answer is do more than your job and really have understanding how your target audience, whether it's a client or customer, step into their shoes and try to see what they see. So this is a story that was told to me when I was at Coca-Cola. Because at Coca-Cola, you spend millions, hundreds of millions in marketing. And the story goes as follows. You wake up in the morning, you get in your car, go get coffee. On the way to the coffee shop, a dirty Coca-Cola truck cuts you off. You get to work, you decide to call and complain about this truck that almost ran you off the road. You call the company and someone answers, hello, you know, really rudely, really roughly. So the millions of dollars that you have spent in marketing has just gone all up in the air. because now you don't say that driver of that truck or you don't say, you know, that operator at the Coca-Cola company who picked up the phone was rude. You say the company. That coke truck, you say that company is rude. I learned early on that no matter what you do, you really need to be passionate and understand how others see you. So whether your job is in marketing and operations, whatever, you need to really take ownership of everything that you do and implementation is key.

Joel Kaczmarek: I guess this is also about culture. Like how did you manage to manage culture in your companies? What's the secret trick behind that? Because everyone out there needs to know what's Rich's ideas of a great experience here right now. What would Rich do? That would be actually the, or what would Coca-Cola do? would be the level about it, right? How did you manage to film that?

Rich Pham: I was really into making sure that all the details and everyone understand what they're doing and how it impacts the company. So it doesn't mean I'm micromanaging, not by any means, but having to explain to people the importance of their function and how together, it fits into the big picture is really, really crucial. So let me give you an example. In one of my companies, we had a telephone hotline where consumers can call and 99% of consumers call to complain. Nobody ever calls and say, I had a great experience today. This department had really high turnover because if you can imagine, your workday consists of going to work and listening to people bitch at you. Every time the phone rings, you pick it up. Someone's bitching at you. And there was really high turnover. I went to this department and I said, look, people call and give you comments because they care. They love the brand. They love the company. And they're calling to say, hey, my favorite brand, my favorite company that I like, you did this wrong and I just want you to know. And it's really comments. And it's really true. So if you think about it in your own life, you go to a restaurant, it sucks. The manager comes by and say, how was your meal, Joel? And you're like, yeah, I'm never coming back. So yeah, it's good. Thank you. That's what you say. And you walk away, right? But if it's your regular restaurant, You would say, hey, you know, the coffee wasn't. Did you did you change the beans? Did you do something different? Right. It's a little salty today because you care, because you want to come back. You come here every day. I explained this to this department that their whole job is to pick up the phone and listening to people. And they and it got better. The turnover reduced because they understood, even though people were yelling at them, it's because they care. Otherwise, people have a freedom to walk away and go to another store, go to another product.

Joel Kaczmarek: What's your fourth point?

Rich Pham: It's really important to be rememberable at work. And to remember at work means that people will remember you for how you make them feel. You can be a star. You can be a superstar. People will always remember Rich Pham for how he made them feel special. That, I think, is not only at work, but also in life. You make your friends feel special. Your friends make you feel special. And that's what keeps your bond together year after year. Even if you move away to a totally different country, in my case, making someone remember how you made them feel is really an integral part of success in life. And this is more personal than professional. In a professional environment, it's Greeting people each day. How are you? Understanding their hobbies. Understanding what their wife or husband's name is. How many kids they have. What did you do this weekend? That's what makes people feel special. And that's what makes people feel like they're not a cog in the machine. Understanding that the person who's doing this job actually is a person. They have interests. They have families. They have hobbies. And don't treat them just like a machine.

Joel Kaczmarek: What's your view on business and being friends? Because I was once talking to a manager and he says, you know, I'm always kind to people. I always help them whenever they ask me for something. I always try to help as much as I can, but we're not friends because friends is totally different. You know, it brings problems, this and that, this and that, this and that. What's your view on friendship and business?

Rich Pham: I think where I've seen friends come apart in business is through lack of communication because you're friends. You need to understand, or what I believe is you need to understand that you're here and you're getting paid to do a job. You need to have open communication with each other. If we are both in business together and we're both giving each other feedback, you're going to know when it's time for me to go, or I will know when it's time for me to go. It won't be a surprise. Nobody's going to get hurt because through the past 365 days, you know, we have started to have different views on the business. I think friends have different expectations or maybe you know so much about them, you're afraid to give them honest feedback.

Joel Kaczmarek: Your fourth point, coming back to it, it's really important to be rememberable at work. Do you also become rememberable by sharing successes? Because in the business world, it's quite often about who's the one that managed to do this and that, to achieve this and that success, to create this and that opportunity, et cetera, et cetera. And it's always quite easy to give the props to someone else. So this might be a helpful thing. Is it about this or isn't this not necessary to be rememberable?

Rich Pham: Of course, sharing success is important. But what I'm talking about is the day-to-day interaction. Because successes and failures hopefully don't happen every day and don't happen that often. But every day we go to work, we see each other, we talk to each other. And it's important that I feel good being at work next to you and you feel good at work next to me. I do want to know what's going on. I am interested in understanding you because at the end of the day, I want you to be productive and I want you to help me be successful or I want to help you be successful. And I want to make the relationship not just about money, not just about work, but a deeper connection. And I think that's what I mean when I say be remembered, be memorable.

Joel Kaczmarek: I like that. Come on, let's stick to your last point.

Rich Pham: Last point, learn to pivot. You know, life throws you curves. You could be driving to work, getting in an accident. You know, let's talk about my life, right? My parents, our family lost our country. We left with virtually two suitcases. I had my life planned out. Then I got divorced. I thought I was doing well in the company and then I made a mistake politically. You just have to learn to roll with the punches.

Joel Kaczmarek: What do you need to be able to pivot?

Rich Pham: optimism, believing that there is going to be something better. And it's not just doom and gloom. I think because, you know, early in my life, we, our family lost everything, that we had to be optimistic. You can't but not be optimistic. Looking back on my life, I don't regret any decision, mistakes, missteps, because I'm still here. I'm still happy. I'm still okay. I'm talking to you. At 58 years old, I have a wealth of experience that I can draw on. that will help me help others, help me overcome what may happen tomorrow.

Joel Kaczmarek: As far as I can tell, quite a few people out there are afraid of failure. So they think if I'm stepping into unknown terrain, if I do not know what's happening here, everything might go wrong. From your perspective, as you said, 58 years old, change as your red line through your life. How often does it really happen that something went awfully wrong? Or is there always a way out? What's your experience on this? What would you answer these people?

Rich Pham: Success has a lot of luck involved. It's not just all skill. It's not just all timing. There's luck. Sometimes when you're successful, you don't give enough credit to being lucky. You just think that you're great. But failure Now you really have to analyze everything. You have to see maybe timing was bad, but maybe what you did was also not perfectly timed with the environmental factors. And you learn a lot from failures. Look, nobody likes to fail. I don't like to fail. But failure just adds to your knowledge base.

Joel Kaczmarek: I mean, we could compare this to racing. Racing is actually a sport. that's pretty clear, right? You're racing against the clock. There's no room for any kind of interpretation. It's really, really clear. Either you're the fastest on this lap or you're the slowest or something in between. How did you manage to deal with failure, to deal with losing, to deal with not being first or a winner?

Rich Pham: No, it's not just, I wouldn't even say that. I've had accidents. I've been on fire three times. In my last incident, just about four months ago, I was on an F1 track in Malaysia down one of the longest straights and I lost my brakes. Did I enjoy any of those experiences? No. But now I know that if I lose my brakes again, I know what to do. I know that all the protective equipment that we wear, you know, from the Nomex underwear to the suit to the balaclava, they're all fireproof. And yeah, they really work. Technology really works. So yes, so now I am less fearful. I'm still cautious, but I'm less fearful now. Because I survived all those really disastrous failures.

Joel Kaczmarek: It's not only about gaining experience, but also about gaining trust, as far as I can tell.

Rich Pham: Mostly experience, but yes, trust. And the next time it's trust that I know what to do.

Joel Kaczmarek: All right, Rich Pham. Number one, always say yes. Number two, be dependable. Number three, implementation is everything. Number four, it's really important to be rememberable at work. And number five, learn how to pivot. Yeah, I really enjoyed this. What a big vita, what a big life you lived so far. And I'm curious what is still coming.

Rich Pham: I hope to see you soon. And thank you very much for allowing me to be on your podcast.