The Transcript

Karthika: Welcome to the show. I’m so glad you’re here and I cannot wait to chat with you. Thank you so much.

Minh: Thanks so much for having me.

Karthika: Oh, absolutely. You have such a fascinating story and I know that our readers are really going to enjoy this. Let’s jump right in. So you are originally from Vietnam. Can you tell us a little bit about your home, where you grew up, and your family, what that was like?

Minh: Absolutely. I grew up in a multigenerational household. My Dad is his parents oldest son, so traditionally we lived with my grandparents, and we lived in the center of town opposite from an French Opera House and the complex that we lived in was also built in French architecture. So there’s a lot of French influence in Vietnam. And I of course didn’t realize this at the time, but it was a beautiful place to live in., I didn’t really come to appreciate it until we’ve moved farther out of the downtown area when I was in elementary school and I was the only child until I was 13. So when I was little, like three or four, I spent a lot of my time by myself. One of the activities that I remember most was looking out to the street and just watch life go on. We lived on the second floor. So I remember having a friend who was a street barber and I would watch him cut people’s hair from above and my favorite was when he would look up and see my see me and start making faces at me and it was a silly sort of hide and seek game, but I loved it and it’s probably why I still remember until this day, we definitely lived in a community.

Minh: I remember hanging out with the kids and the teenagers living in the building. We knew the neighbors next door directly below us and even the ones next to them and one time the girls in one of the condos were experimenting with hair perms and they decided for me to be the model and I came in and normal Vietnamese kid but came out looking like I’m a four year old Zimbabwe and they had given me this huge afro that made my hair look twice as big as the rest of my body. And my mom still has pictures of this and it’s always a fun memory for the time that we lived in that building.

Karthika: Oh my God, that’s hilarious. And I love what you said, a couple of things that you said like multigenerational, a lot like India to maybe not now as much, but when I was growing up in India, a lot of it was to multigenerational as well. I mean it was very common for, you know, grandparents and aunts and uncles and all of them to live together in like one big house. And it sounds like it was very similar for you as well, right?

Minh: Yeah. It’s very normal for Vietnamese to, for different generations to live in one house in Vietnam. And the tradition is that the oldest son would always live with his parents to sort of take care of them and you know to be there when they, when they need him.

Karthika: Right. That’s, a lot. I mean, again, very similar to Indian culture and it’s sometimes it’s not just like the oldest. Sometimes if it’s the only son then you know, that’s, that’s kind of where, who will kind of take over. But like I said, things are changing definitely. But, it’s like almost like I had a flashback of going to my grandparents’ house and hanging out with my cousins and my aunts and uncles and everybody lived together. It was just such a beautiful experience.

Minh: Yes definitely. It was very collective.

Karthika: You sounds like you’ve had a fascinating childhood. I did not know that Vietnam had such a strong French influence.

Minh: Yeah. We live in Hanoi and there’s a lot of French influence and so much that I didn’t even realize. I mean, I grew up in it, so I didn’t realize how much of it was from the French culture until later on I went to France for a year to live there and to study there and I realized that a lot of the Vietnamese words were sort of formulated based on the French pronunciation. So that was an interesting thing to learn. I’m a polite culture when I was in another culture.

Karthika: Yeah. Oh, that’s interesting. So what made you kinda decide to move away from home?

Minh: So I didn’t really decide to move away from own per se. It was a decision for better education. So going abroad for education was and still is pretty normal and popular choice for Vietnamese students. So it was just a something that everyone else around me was doing, so I was just part of the trend.

Karthika: That’s sort of what is fascinating to me as I talked to everybody on the show. I always find similarities no matter where we are. I mean, so much of what you’ve said already is so similar to India and Indian culture. Some of the more obvious ones and some of the more subtle ones too. I mean, I, I know for me as I was kind of getting out of school and in college and kind of undergraduate, it was, again, it was something that most people did. They, I mean if you could afford it, most people would send their kids abroad for higher education. Education is a big deal in India where the country of 1 billion people, I think education is one of the ways you sort of stand out, so it’s a high priority. So it’s very interesting that a lot of similarities between Vietnamese kind of culture and community and, and India. So where did you, where did you end up coming and how was that like?

Minh: So I went to Villanova University and it’s in a small town called Villa Nova. It’s about 30 minutes outside of Philadelphia and it was an interesting time. I um, when I was in Vietnam, like back when I was 17, I thought I was very ready to go abroad because I had gone abroad a few times before then and I didn’t think that I would have any problem. I’m adjusting to the new culture. Well, I was, I was very wrong. I would be lying if I said I didn’t have any, a culture shock at all. Uh, it was actually pretty hard, at least for like a month or two. It was very challenging, and one of the reasons was that the English that was taught in school in Vietnam was very different from the English that is spoken here and the breath of slangs and colloquial English is just very impressive.

Minh: In Vietnam we are taught British English, so I learned things like Zebra crossing, queuing up and then here people were like what’s zebra crossing? It’s crosswalk and I’m like costs what now, you know, it’s like simple stupid things. But it made me feel like what I thought I knew didn’t really apply anymore. And so that was, that was a little shocking. And then growing up in a different culture, I didn’t really have knowledge of popular things with people my age year. And so when my peers would talk about what they watched growing up or like a new season of some show coming out, I wouldn’t have any clue. And so it was challenging to sort of establish things in common with my peers then.

Karthika: Oh, I can totally relate. I mean, of course, you know, I came in when I was a little older, but it’s the same thing. We had British English and you know, we didn’t say zee, we said ‘zed’ and that’s just, that’s, that’s exactly what we did. Right. So you come here and I came from Bombay, which is as cosmopolitan as it can get to a very small college town in the middle of Illinois where, you know, that was only thing around was corn fields and people were really nice and I didn’t know how to deal with that. I was like, why are you saying hello to me when I’m walking down the street? Why are you asking me how my day is going? I have no idea who you are. For all I know you’re going to mug me, right? In Bombay, the hustle and bustle and you know, people just kind of going about their day that it was incomprehensible that somebody would actually want to be nice to me, a complete stranger. So for me it was a lot. And I still sometimes, it’s funny, it’s like now I have kids and you know, when my kids talk about, shows and things like that, I’m like, I have no idea what you’re talking about because I never grew thinking like that

Minh: Yes. I have different shows and different sort of pop culture. It was definitely is an adjustment for sure. That’s so interesting. I don’t have kids so I don’t have that experience yet. But that’s fascinating. Yeah, it’s just life is, is very different and you know, when you just going to look at it from an outside perspective sometimes it’s very amusing to. I was just gonna say I was very lucky to have met a friend in college. Her name is Sarah and Sarah was someone very curious and it was sort of a hippie and always interested in trying new things and meeting new people and she would always ask me about Vietnam and what life was like there and asked me to even teach her Vietnamese. And so our friendship really allowed me to share my background and reciprocally I got to learn about her and American culture as well.

Minh: She actually invited me to her parents house in upstate New York for Thanksgiving the second day we knew each other, so we became really fast friends and it was really wonderful experience for me to see how Americans celebrate one of the major holidays in the US. And it was also nice because it was where I saw my first ever snow as. So that was really cool.

Karthika: That’s amazing. And I know, thank you so much for sharing the story because, you know, a lot of times we don’t realize the importance of trying to make somebody else feel welcome. What a profound effect that can have. Something as simple as, you know, tell me what Christmas is like for where you grew up or tell me how, how your childhood was just simple questions that make the person to not feel as awkward and kind of out of place because you know, we all feel that at some point or the other.

Karthika: But when somebody else makes even the slightest bit of effort, especially like, you know, being so many thousands of miles away from home at a young age kind of moving away from everything that you’d know and love and gotten, gotten sort of used to, it can be challenging. And to have these people in your life that want to make the effort, you know, it’s, it’s just, it’s incredible. And I think having, having those sorts of people makes the journey less difficult. Well, absolutely. I could not agree more. I think it’s a, you know, it’s true that we don’t, we don’t typically think about, you know, asking about other people’s experience, but you’re right, it’s so important and I’m just a little bit of effort of trying to get to know them can make such a difference. Absolutely. So what happens next? Kind of walk us through what happens.

Minh: So after Undergrad I actually went back to Vietnam who were for a little bit before coming back here to the US for Grad school. And just to give you a little bit of a background in Undergrad, I majored in global interdisciplinary studies and in all see the reason why I majored in it was because it allowed me to study in France for a whole year. And so that was, it was like a lot of the reason for why I decided to do it, but it was such a generic major that I didn’t feel like I had a solid knowledge of anything. So I decided to, when it came to Grad school, then I decided to focus on one single discipline instead. But back then the trouble was I still had no idea what I wanted to do after Undergrad. So what I did was I applied for three different things for Grad school, so business, economics and communication and my thought was whatever I got in for, that’s what I do. And so I left it to fate.

Minh: And as it turned out, I got accepted back into Villanova University actually for communication. And while I was working on my master’s degree, I got an internship at QVC and sort of ironically at the global business development department because of my background. So it turned out that my undergrad was more useful than I thought.

Karthika: Excellent. Yeah. Now you said something that I want to probably go back to a little bit. You said you went back to Vietnam and you spend some time working there. It’s almost like, you know, did you have any sort of reverse culture shock? I mean, how was the work environment, how is the working environment in Vietnam and is a very different from here?

Minh: That’s a good question. So I think I did have a bit of a reversed culture shock because I had gotten, gotten used to the way of life in the way of the style of working in America. And so when I went back to Vietnam and was in Vietnamese working environment, then things didn’t really make sense for me then. And I sort of had to learn it from scratch. You know, how to interact with my colleagues, how to interact with my superior and just in general, got to use to, to a completely new sort of culture, which is funny because you think that, that it would come naturally, but it was, it was a process.

Karthika: How so? Can you like elaborate? What is sort of the key differentiator that you found going from here to there?

Minh: I think the main thing was that it was really hard for some reason to know how everything worked there. So it’s not very clearly stated anywhere.It’s not like you have a manual that you can go to and refer back to, or read about how things are supposed to work. Whereas here, when I was at QVC  there is a system, I have a superior who oversee, oversaw my work and who would act as I’m sort of my mentor to guide me. I never had anyone like that when I was in Vietnam working for a bank, actually a private bank,  and so that was probably the biggest thing that was different in Vietnam that, you know, I had a bit of a hard time getting used to things.

Karthika: That so interesting. And, again I draw similarities. A lot of, you know, a lot of work in India too is kind of like what you described. There is, there probably are not set processes and manuals and things like that. Now of course it’s different in, you know, a multinational corporations, but I’m talking about general working environment. Everything sort of just don’t worry, it’ll get done. That’s the attitude. Oh, absolutely. So what’s the status, you know, can you tell me how long it’ll take? Oh, don’t worry, it’ll get done. Come back and for days and you’ll have your stuff ready. I’m like, what? So yeah. And it’s not like, it’s not like here we have a manual, like a physical manual either, but I think the point is that you would always have someone who’s a resource for you here so you can go to and ask about things that you don’t know or you know have to learn.

Minh: So yeah, I think that’s, that’s the key difference. No, I can totally relate and I just have this mental picture of all the stuff that I’ve gone through and I go back and I needed to get stuff done. It’s like I kind of give myself a day, I have to give myself a whole week because that’s just, that’s just the way it is.

Karthika: So back from Vietnam and then you get into QVC and how was QVC? What did you do at QVC?

Minh: So QVC was great. I learned a lot from the three years that I was there. I was in the, like I said, a global business development. Later on it turned into corporate development. And what that meant was basically business expansion. So we worked on mergers and acquisitions, we worked on opening new markets for QVC and I was in the program management part of the team, and so it was, it was very serious work and it was a lot of challenging experience because I worked a lot. I had to work a lot with executives directly. And so that was always very intimidating because I always felt like I was the most junior person in the room and, um, I never felt like I was entitled to having a voice. And to be fair, I, I didn’t feel like I had that much to say anyway. and so for awhile it was very, it was a very humbling experience. You know I really had to learn to gain more confidence in a meeting room with all people around me being CEO and CFO and all those big titles that were at the time, very scary to me.

Karthika: So what happened after QVC? So a year and a half into QVC.

Minh: Then I started my photography business on the side and then since 2016 I’ve been running my business full time.

Karthika: Wow. So how did photography come into the picture?

Minh: It was always a hobby. So I started taking pictures in college. I picked up my first camera, I think my sophomore year in college before I went to France because I thought, you know, I better know how to take decent pictures before I went to Europe. And so in year of I just took a lot, a lot of pictures. We got to see a lot of things and um, I got to travel a lot. So that was, um, that was a year full of photography for me. And then I actually just didn’t really think about photography for awhile, not until maybe halfway through Grad school. And then it’s just sort of revived, got revived for some reason, and then I got more interested in learning about film photography. That was probably what it was actually. So film photography got me really interested in. I’m learning more about the art because I just thought it was so interesting that a film photography even exist and it was getting so popular, so I started to look into that and started learning how to take pictures on film. And I never thought, you know, it sounds like now that I intentionally open a business, but it really didn’t happen that way. It just I just needed a name and then I needed to register it and then I needed to find a way to take more pictures so I, you know, took free pictures for people and then, you know, those turn into referrals and you know, that it just one job after another. Then it led into more of a business, but I never had the intention of starting my own business.

Karthika: That is amazing. I mean, hats off to you, you know, running a business and kind of doing all that is not easy. It’s a lot of work. So how do you have any, like is there anybody in your family that perhaps owns a business or are you kind of the only one?

Minh: I’m pretty much the only one, my parents have been government workers all their lives, so when I was younger they would always tell me that as a family we don’t, we just don’t have the business genes so we would never get into anything like that is too adventurous, is too risky and we just don’t have the ability to do something like that. So I really had come to believe that and you know, never thought of owning anything on my own and, you know, I didn’t go to business school or anything like that. So, uh, I didn’t think that I would have the skills or the guts to do it.

Karthika: Fascinating. I mean, it’s the same way. I am the only one in my family. I think a extended family too that has had a business for as long as I have and it’s always challenging to kind of go back and answer that. So what do you do again? Yeah, I’m working, but I’m working for myself. No, the question mark on their face. What does that even mean? Working for yourself? But I totally get it again, for me, it’s just not something that my parents ever wanted to do. They wanted to do the same, you know, the, the risk averse, you know, do something that you know, you’re going to get a steady income because you have family to support and all of that stuff. Now you still have family back home, right?

Minh: Yup. My whole family is back home in Vietnam.

Karthika: So how is it now when you go back? Has, has Vietnam changed a lot?

Minh: Yeah. I’ve been in the US for 10 years, so over the past 10 years, Vietnam has become a lot more developed and commercialized compared to when I left for college. My parents live in Hanoi, which is the capital, so it’s always hectic there. Whereas here in the US, I live in the suburbs and it’s pretty quiet most of the time. And so it’s a completely different experience whenever I go back. And food is such a big part of the Vietnamese culture, so, you can find open restaurants, uh, at any time during the day, anytime of the day. Food places can be as crowded as they are for breakfast or dinner. Yeah. And street food is very popular. When I used to work there in Vietnam, we would sometimes order mid morning or mid afternoon snacks are delivered to the office. Ao whenever I go back I would try to eat my way through as many things as possible to savor them for the rest of the year when I’m back here in the US. And the greatest thing is even if I eat a different thing every day for a whole month, I would still be so far away from exhausting all of the food options that are available. If you can’t tell yet, I’m a big food enthusiastic.

Karthika: No, I think again, I think from like a city and a country, right? I mean that is, that’s very normal. It’s very normal to have street food, right. It’s very normal to have something to eat anytime of the day. It’s not a, it’s not like set, you know, breakfast from like seven to 10 and then the shops closed. It’s just, there’s always some activity, something happening no matter what time of day. Right?

Minh: Yeah, for sure. I mean if you go down the street, if you look to your left, you right, two minutes down the road or two minutes back. It’s, it’s restaurants and cafes everywhere. So, it’s a great thing. And I think, you know, living in Vietnam and growing up there was, it was a big part of the reason why I’m such a foodie now. Experience food.

Karthika: So talking about food, do you have any sort of go to comfort food or something that really kind of, you find yourself gravitating towards when perhaps you feel a little homesick and you’re missing home?

Minh: So I always go to for which you call ‘pho’ here, it’s a pretty comforting food for me. It’s such a great combo of everything. So some meat, some herbs and carbs. Soup all in one. Yeah. So it’s always a good choice for me. Excellent.

Karthika: And do you cook a lot of Vietnamese at home or do you find yourself sort of integrating a lot of Vietnamese as well as American foods? I mean, how does, how does the typical meal play out at home?

Minh: So I guess I make both. I do make a lot of Vietnamese food but more, I guess I do food and Vietnamese ways so I would, in Vietnam, people eat food in smaller pieces because we use chopsticks to eat. Whereas here you would find more big pieces like a steak or like a half chicken and you because you can use a fork and a knife to sort of cut it and um, you know, prepare it on your plate. But when you eat with chopsticks then everything is, has to be in small pieces. So in order for you to pick up. So I’m at home, then I would, uh, I find myself cutting a lot of things into pieces subconsciously. Like I don’t really think about it, but that’s just the way that I was taught how to cook. And my mom would cook that way, so it’s just sort of something that I naturally do that is so interesting. I mean, I would, I would have never sort of Kinda come up with that concept of, you know, you, you eat with chopsticks so everything is finely diced so that that’s, you know, it’s easier to eat versus you know, a fork and knife.

Karthika: Yes Just like in India, a lot of what we eat we eat by hand.

Minh: Yes. it’s completely different. But you don’t think about that typically when you say, oh, what do you like about Vietnamese food? You like, you know, a particular dish or something to drink. But the whole process of preparing the food is different. Yeah. And it’s just so much part of me that I don’t think about it. I just do it.

Karthika: Very interesting. So let me ask you this, now that you are here, you are living here in the states. Do you find yourself kind of integrating both cultures, like making a conscious effort to integrate both cultures into your life? Or is it sort of, you know, you’re kind of well blended in and it’s not even sort of second nature. I mean, it is second nature.

Minh: Yes I find that I don’t deliberately distinguished between the two cultures, its just part of my life or the way of life for me, I guess there are definitely things that I do because I did them when I was growing up. Like I always think it’s mind boggling that people eat yogurt here.I would eat yogurt after dinner because it helps you with your digestion and that just makes so much more sense to me and eating yogurt on an empty stomach, you know? And so I eat yogurt at the end of the day versus the beginning here. And so that’s, I guess that’s from my Vietnamese culture.  I also eat a lot more for lunch than I do for dinner because lunch gives me energy to do things for the rest of the day. Whereas, so you don’t do much after dinner. So it just doesn’t make sense to eat a lot for dinner and then go to sleep.

Karthika: Isn’t it amazing how some of these ways, subtle like it, like, you know, the earlier example with the small pieces of food, I mean, there are some subtle things, but they are so obviously different from, you know, here, it’s just, it’s just a totally different takes on the same thing and I’m right there with you with yoga piece because that’s how it is in India too. It’s like typically you have yogurt after the meal because it helps with digestion. And the first couple of times I had, I saw someone putting yogurt and the Granola and berries and full of honey and I was like, oh my God, that looks so gross.

Minh: Yes. Why do you eat? Why do you ruin your yogurt?

Karthika: That it’s so fascinating. So what lies ahead for you men? Are you fully living your dream?

Minh: That’s a good question. I feel like I always have a project that’s next in line. So for now I’m trying to expand my photography business into commercial photography in addition to wedding photography, which has been my main focus. And we’ll see where that goes. But my dream is to have my own startup that makes some kind of innovative products that solve some kind of problems. I always have idea. So, you know, like every two days I’d have an idea for something we shall see if any of them come to life.

Karthika: You have such a great attitude and you’re so open to doing different things. I mean, you’ve, you know, you’ve moved around, you’ve, you’ve moved here, then you move back and then you did a year in Paris and you know, you had a steady job, then you decided to do your own thing. You’re so open to whatever life throws at you. Um, so I have no doubts that you will be highly successful in whatever you do. Thank you so much. This has been such an interesting and I wish you the very best for whatever the future has in store for you.

Minh: Thank you so much. That’s so kind of you. It’s been such a pleasure speaking with you. Bye now.