This week we have the opportunity to speak with Ricky Nguyen, who is the Co-founder of Spot Trender. As Co-founder at Spot Trender, Rick creates and refines enterprise solutions for professional advertisers to win hearts and minds. He built Spot Trender from scratch to profitability. In his spare time, Rick enjoys various projects to promote STEM education and advanced science in the United States.
Background
Rick appreciates his situation as an immigrant from Vietnam. For him, he believes that because he immigrated, he had the perspective of Vietnamese as well as incorporating the perspective of Americans. Also, Rick attributes much of his success as being able to combine the two different aspects and happy to have immigrated here. Because of the upbringing within America, Rick had a paradigm shift. He was told he was stupid in Vietnam but was told he was gifted in America. The paradigm shift played a part in his acceptance into a top university at UC Berkeley. Additionally, it helped in immediately starting his career as an entrepreneur shortly after graduation.
He also mentioned his stupidity is what caused his path to entrepreneurship. He did not believe he can fail with the founding of Spot Trender (then called QR Pitch). Rick attributed it stupid exuberance. It wasn’t until he met his CMO at a random event where he was told that his initial concepts do not work. The concept does not work because the customers he is going after do not have money. He had to go after people who have the money instead of looking after those customers. Rick then pivoted, and the rest is history and changed the company to profitability.
Mindset
Rick also mentioned how mental mindset helps him to get to where he is now. He also said that over time the mindset changes slowly. It did not come overnight. Instead, it was a bunch of little things over a while that helped him transition to starting a company. That brought the company to profitability, as well as continuously continue to be part of the company. He also mentioned that hatred helped me start the company because he used to hate as a creative resource…almost like using all the angry energy toward sex..:)
Navigating the Rise on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, or on your favorite podcast platform.
