Conversation with Vinh Giang

Anwyn It’s amazing to have you here, I have so much respect for you and what you’ve achieved. It’s a great honour. 

Vinh Thanks, Anwyn. I’m really excited to connect with you. I really enjoyed our time together at the workshop and in our community as well. It’s so wonderful to have your presence and be here with you.

Anwyn When I came to the Melbourne show that you did, and you talked about meeting Adam Cheyer, the guy from Siri and you approached him to have a chat and that changed your life. 

And this reminded me of a course I once did, “Money and you” and they talked about Buckminster Fuller, and he basically said, if you don’t ask, you don’t get and I’ve always remembered that, and asked for these opportunities, and I think that amazing things can happen.

Vinh It’s so true. I think one of my favourite quotes, I can’t remember who said this, but if you don’t ask, the answer is always no, right? 

Anwyn Well yes, It’s true.

Vinh And I also ask for a lot of things too. And I’m so proud of you for doing this, right? We do to some extent, create our own realities,  and this is us doing so.

Anwyn Yes, maybe let’s go back to when we’re children, we have this idea of fitting in and being accepted and being liked. I love that you are still friends with Lenny, that you talk about your mate at school, and he was like somebody that you looked up to because he had charisma or that he got the girls?

Vinh He was good at sports, really good at sports.

Anwyn Well most people might be just envious, and then not want to be their friend, but you were curious. So what gave you that curiosity?

Vinh Well, I think what made me really curious about Lenny when we first became friends was how good he was at handball, how good he was at football, how good he also was a game we played called Pitball. I just couldn’t understand how someone was so talented and so good at what they were doing. And I think I’ve always been drawn to mastery. And when I was young, I was really chubby, I wasn’t very athletic, and I never let my own shortcomings stop me from being curious. And the same thing with us being on this call together right now. Lenny’s like, Oh, I’ll teach you at recess. And because of someone’s compassion, and being so loving and so kind. 

He taught me how to play handball, and I got really good at handball. I think I just had a really positive experience early in my life. When I was curious, I was lucky enough to meet people who were willing to teach me and that curiosity was always met with kindness. It was always met with a bit of compassion and that love and and it’s what inspires me today to to continue to try to do as much as I can. I think kids are naturally curious. It’s like my daughter right now, she’s 15 months old. My son is eight now and still curious, but babies have this beautiful, curious mind where she’s opening every cupboard, It pisses my wife off to the max! But I love it, because I just see curiosity. I see this mind that’s like, well, what is this like?  

We tend to lose that because of rejection, because as you get older, you start to be curious, and say, Oh hey, how does that work? You get, stop asking questions, right? And that rejection stops us from being curious, which is a shame.

Anwyn Yes. And to extend on that, when you’re a child you want to fit in and then as an adult, when you go into the business world, it’s about standing out and being different. So then you have to embrace those unique qualities. Which is really interesting, that it’s totally flipped.

Vinh It is especially during those teenage years, the pressure to fit in is crazy right? And some of us don’t find our individuality again after that. I think it’s very scary.

Anwyn I am curious about your entrepreneurial skills, like, very early on you were selling things and you were buying them. You even went overseas and got electrical goods.. So where did that entrepreneurial skill come from?

Vinh It came from mum and dad, from my uncles. So my dad’s got many brothers. He’s got six brothers, and seventh one passed away. Dad’s always just been so entrepreneurial with his brothers. So growing up, my parents, uncles, aunties, all worked on the farm. We grew up understanding how farming works. You nourish the ground, you fertilise  and then you can grow things, and then you can take them and sell them to agents and to grocery stores. 

As children, we were in these farming sheds, every weekend, every day after school, folding boxes. We watched them build a business. And then after that, they realised that they were selling to middlemen. Selling to agents – our vegetables, who then sell them onto grocery stores. Why don’t we just cancel out the middlemen and start our own grocery store? We can be the whole thing. And then I watched them start their own grocery store. Then instead of being on the farms, we started to spend time in the grocery stores. So I literally watched them go through the entrepreneurial process again and again and again, till they did it with grocery stores, with restaurants, with pharmacies. And I watched them do this in so many different lines of business. So by the time I was in my mid teens, I’d watch them start and become successful, three, four different types of businesses. And that was my world. I went from stacking noodles in a grocery store to stacking gifts in a pharmacy, in the pharmacy section. And so I already understood that language of entrepreneurship. And I think kids can understand a lot more than we give them credit for. Sometimes we go, oh, I don’t want to overwhelm you with too much. And it wasn’t overwhelming at all. We soaked it in like a sponge. And I look at all my cousins now, we’re all very entrepreneurial. Okay, not because we’re gifted, but I think because we were exposed to it and we understood the language. 

So when we failed at something, we didn’t overvalue that failure, because we watched mum and dad fail so much to the point where when they failed, they didn’t react towards the end. They would say, Oh, well, that doesn’t work. Let’s try something else. So we grew up in an environment that failure was very normalised.

Anwyn I think, speaking many languages, you know…..

Vinh I felt like I knew where you were going there. In that I can speak Chinese, I can speak Vietnamese, I speak English. I can also speak entrepreneur, right? I think it’s interesting, because I never thought of it, until you brought it up there. I never thought of entrepreneurship as a language. And I know you cook, I know you’re a part chef as well. And cooking is also a language, right? These are all languages.  And some people think to themselves, Oh, why am I so bad at cooking? Why am I so bad at entrepreneurship? It’s well, how often do you speak that language? I speak for 30 minutes a week. Well, that’s why you suck at it,

Anwyn Yeah, you have to practice it. 

Vinh if you cooked for four hours a week, 10 hours a week, it’s inevitable you’re going to get good. And I think often we judge ourselves so quickly with the cooking language or with the entrepreneurial language, whereas in reality, we haven’t spoken it for long enough

Anwyn Yeah. And I love that story about how, when your father came out and they saw the oil rig, there was a New Zealander, and he was putting up the signs of love and and peace. And it really astounds me that people can communicate. They learnt how to converse in different languages. And I absolutely admire people that you are able to speak many languages like that, because, to me, that represents a lot of hard work when you’re able to do that. How do you think that’s helped your communication skills?

Vinh Yes, definitely with that story in particular that you shared, it was when Mum and Dad were Vietnamese refugees, they were just floating around the ocean, nowhere to go, and they were basically going to die. And they were lucky to encounter the oil rig and the New Zealand captain came down and saved my parents. They couldn’t speak each other’s language, but he was able to speak the language of love. I think it’s a reoccurring theme in our chat right now, is it was love, compassion and kindness. He came down and drew the peace sign. And my parents understood the peace sign. They understood the love heart. They couldn’t understand anything else he was saying. So based off a drawing of a peace sign and a love heart, my parents gave him permission to sink the boat, because that was the only way he could save them. It’s ocean law that I can’t save you unless you’re dying. Based off two pictures, there was enough trust there. Otherwise, my parents thought, oh, are these people trying to kill us too? They didn’t know. 

I reflect on that a lot, it was not just the pictures, it was through his body language, it was through the kindness and love in his voice, yes, through the melody, it was all of it. That every single sound that Captain made was one of love, right? And that’s what my parents trusted. And to answer your question and giving context there, do I think that speaking many languages has helped me? I think definitely being able to speak Vietnamese, Chinese, English, and also learning the language of love, learning the language of entrepreneurship, learning the language of cooking. I think the more languages you learn, the more understanding you have, and the more ways you have to be able to connect with other people. Because you know as a chef that you can connect with people without saying a word. You can connect with people through taste, right and again, it just opens your mind to a whole new way of thinking. Whereas, if the only way you’re able to connect with others is through words, then then you’re missing out. 

Anwyn Yes, I really like also what your father said when you wanted to change careers,

In life, you have to jump as high as you can, and that he would be there. He’d be your net. That’s really beautiful, because, he valued security and safety and so it was really out of his comfort zone in a way, wasn’t it to to support you, but that’s the faith or the belief in you. Do you think it was about faith?

Vinh I think it was my dad coming to the realisation that he didn’t risk his life to find freedom, to then force his son to do something he doesn’t want to do. My dad escaped communism, right?  So my dad leaving the country, risking his life to leave, a lot of Vietnamese families died on that journey, and it was very real. Our family dying and passing away, and me never existing was very high. So I think when my dad reflected upon his life and thought, did I do all of that to then push my son into something that he doesn’t want to do? Did I chase freedom to only trap my son, to dictate how he lives his life? My dad is a very wise and philosophical man, so I think when he went on that journey as a father, he quickly realised, that he’d been blinded by love. He’d been blinded by fear. Sometimes we’re so afraid of setting the people we love free, out of the fear that they might get hurt. 

And now that I’m a father too, I know exactly how my dad feels. We are so afraid to put our kids into situations that are difficult, and yet when we reflect upon our own lives, it is only through those most difficult and challenging moments that we grew and have become the people that we are. 

Yet sometimes we starve our children of those very moments that they need to become the people they’re going to be. So I’m coming to that same realisation I’m having to learn the exact same lesson my dad learnt, and it’s, 

give them freedom, let them fly, let them jump, let them fall, let them scuff their knees and bruise their elbows, you know? Let them do those things.

Anwyn Yes, I think I had very lenient parents, and they let us do a lot of things, and make a lot of mistakes. And so that’s kind of how we brought up our children too. 

Vinh That’s beautiful. And and I think my dad could have very easily clipped my wing. And he chose not to, and I’m very grateful for that, because if he didn’t let me jump, if he didn’t encourage me to jump, I probably wouldn’t have, because I would have also clung to security. I would have probably also clung to the safe route and not walk the path less traveled. 

These are  wonderful questions. Thank you for being so thoughtful in them. It’s a beautiful conversation.

Anwyn Thank you. And I particularly love the story how you met your now wife, and was she in a friendship group of somebody you knew?

Vinh I didn’t really know them. There were just a group of pharmacists and us guys were single. I fancied her. I was looking for love, and knew that a party was going on. The word around town was, this is graduation party. I was like, Oh, let’s go. And me and my friends kind of crashed that party.

Anwyn  So maybe you could tell that story just briefly, you know, that line ?

Vinh Oh, it’s so cheesy, but I love it. So I crashed a graduation party, and the girl who I fancied, and who’s now my wife was there and and at the time, I was very heavily into magic. So I told my guy friends there. I said, watch as I go woo her with my magic skills. And I walked up to her at the bar, and I said, Would you be impressed if I transformed this king of hearts into the Queen of Hearts like yourself? And at the time, I thought this was such a good line. Now, in hindsight, I know how nauseating it is. And she said, no. I was so shocked, because I expected her to say yes, to see a magic trick. So I walked away with my tail between my legs. I kept going back to the same bar, I went there four times in a row just to try to see her again, and she was there the fourth time to which I walked up to her again. Took all the confidence in my body to do that, and I said, Hey, would you be impressed, if I took you out for a coffee instead? And we just got on like a house on fire. We really connected. And the chemistry was amazing. And again, it goes back to such a common theme that we’re having through this conversation, that sometimes you have to be courageous enough to ask again. When life gives you a no, sometimes it might not be a no forever, it might just be a no for now.

Anwyn And she said, come back and when you’ve turned into a real man. I love that. It’s kind of really sassy and saucy, isn’t it? It’s like she’s saying it because she believed in you, that you were worth it. It’s like you just had to raise the bar.

Vinh Yeah, Because just to clarify, her response after I said the cheesy pickup line was, I’d be more impressed if you transformed to a real man. And she didn’t say it in a mean way or anything, I think what she was saying was, like you said, you’re capable of more than this. You don’t need the cards, converse with me, right? Talk to me like a real person, right? Whereas I was still being a little boy,

Anwyn And you said, that she’s like the boss before?

Vinh  look, my wife is a very strong woman and I love that. I said to her, since the beginning of our relationship, I’m not going to treat you like a princess. In all of the previous relationships I’ve had, I treat my partners like a princess. You’re different because you’re not a princess, you’re a queen, you’re very different, you’re powerful, you are mighty, and you are little bit scary. Which I love? Because it takes that to tame me.

Anwyn Would you say she’s a bit similar to your mother?

Vinh Yeah, in many ways. Mum controlled the money growing up, My dad would have to ask my mum for pocket money. It was crazy, right? And it was unreal. And thank goodness, because Dad at times, wasn’t good with money. Whereas mum was amazing with money with one income. Dad worked, and yet mum controlled the money. Mum was so smart and clever in the way she saved and invested that she was able to put two kids through school and support their kids in starting their businesses. Mum’s super smart and bossy too, which is great. We needed that.

Anwyn And so what’s important in a relationship for you?

Vinh What’s important for me, Anwyn is, allow me to still be an individual. Don’t forget that before we came together, we were individuals, and we’ll come together and become one. But also remember that separately, we are still one. So there’s the combined version of us, and then there’s the individual versions of us. Don’t forget about those individual versions of us too. 

I thought, after getting married, we become this one unit, and that’s it. There’s no individual, no individualism anymore. Whereas we’ve been married, my wife and I now for more than 10 years, and I think what we’ve started to learn the importance of is nourishing ourselves individually too. 

So when we come together, we come together more inspired, more happy, more wholesome, and to not forget that’s really important to me.

Anwyn So Individualisation?

Vinh Yeah, not becoming too codependent, you know, I think early in my relationships, I was so codependent, whereas what’s beautiful about my marriage that I love, is we are still very much individuals. We still find each other really, really interesting and engaging, because we have our individual lives still. And we come together and we’re really good there too. But it took us a while to work that out. 

Anwyn So I know people, mothers that don’t speak to their children, and then there’s children that don’t speak to their mothers, what would you say would be a good starting point for their communication when that’s broken down for such a long time? Because I feel like your mother is a very important part of your life, and it really breaks my heart to see this.

Vinh It reminds me of a time when my relationship with my parents wasn’t that great, and there was a time in my life where that was the case, and that was during my late teens, early 20s, when when I didn’t want to become the accountant, when I didn’t want to follow that traditional path where I quit University, and that soured our relationship quite a lot. So I’m just reflecting upon it. And I think the first step, someone has to take the first step, whether it’s mum or whether it’s you as the the child. And I took the first step, not saying that, Oh, look at me. I’m a great person. But when I took the first step that was one of compassion and realising that, mum’s a human being too. And I had this idea in my head that my parents had to be perfect. Growing up I thought that, Oh, mum and dad know all the answers. They know everything in life, whereas in reality, no, they’re just human. And they have their flaws, they will make their mistakes, as I have my flaws and I’ll make mistakes. So that first step was just extending some compassion and giving them a break. They put me through school, they had to work multiple jobs and learn a language that they didn’t even understand and start from scratch. So it was extending a lot of compassion first, and that compassion is what then led to the desire of wanting to connect with this person more.   I first had to be empathetic and compassionate.

Anwyn And would part of that be forgiveness, maybe? 

Vinh 100%  the words they said to me when I quit university, they didn’t mean. They were scared. And I know it sounds really trite, but it’s when I really started to think about what must it have been like for them, right? Because mum and dad really valued education, because they never had education, and then to watch someone they love throw that away. I started to gain understanding through compassion, becoming more empathetic, and only then did my heart start to open and forgiveness like you said. And instead of saying, Oh, I hate this person to now, I feel so much love for this person. You did all of this because you were scared. You said all of those words because you were scared and you loved me. And when you mix fear with love, it creates a lot of confusion. And then I started to speak to my mum more lovingly and my tone changed. And my tone changing, hers changed. It wasn’t even in what I said, it was how I started to greet her. Instead of not saying good morning, it was saying good morning with with love. 

I reflect back now. Was more in how I spoke to her, Oh, Mum, have you eaten yet? 

There’s a softness in my voice, I’m going out to get some lunch. Can I get you some too?

It wasn’t even us having deep conversations. It was just through extending love in the way I talked to her, and that opened her up slowly. And she’d say, Oh, you know what, I haven’t had yet. Maybe we can go together. And then that was the beginning steps. It was just in having more love in my voice, and more love in my heart, in my mind.

Anwyn Yes, it’s interesting. That exercise that we did in the community was about that, 

“Is that how it is?” and then you put a different emotion onto it and changes it completely!

Vinh It does, because like you said, to give people context, It’s not the words, “Is that how it is?” You can say it in a mean way. Or you could say it in a curious way. And just the emotion can change the delivery. And to make it really pragmatic for people. If you’re wanting to connect with mum, dad or someone you love and you’ve had a tough relationship or there’s a little bit of conflict there, the best thing you can do is to start speaking with more love in your voice, more kindness, more of more compassion. Watch – that alone will start to soften the other person, but you have to be consistent with it, right? You can’t try it once and be like, Oh, well stuff you then! You can’t do that. 

Anwyn And so is there any words of advice that you could give to people. I’m thinking about long term relationships. So quite often I’ve heard you talk about, if you want to attract somebody in a dating situation, which is when you’re just meeting them. Rather when like say, bad habits have set in, maybe resentment or something like that. Is there any tips that you could give on communicating in a relationship?

Vinh I think in a relationship, one of the most important things we can do, especially in today’s world, is “presence”. I think the willingness to truly be present, it’s like us both on this call right now, I can feel your presence, and I hope you can feel mine, in that we’re locked into this conversation. We’re not doing anything else, whereas a lot of the times, we are half watching Netflix, we are half checking social media, we’re half watching videos on YouTube, and I think that is damaging more relationships than anything in the world right now, it’s our addiction to our devices. There’s something so beautiful about being with someone who is present and giving you their full attention watching your facial expressions, watching your body language, for more information and context behind what you’re saying. So that when you do ask someone, Hey, how’s your day? And and they say, yeah, it’s been okay. When they say that, you can hear the emotion in their voice, you can see the expression in their face, which then causes you to follow up and say, Hey, doesn’t really sound like it’s okay. You want to talk about the day? Sometimes, because you’re present, and you picked up those visual cues and those auditory cues, because you picked it up and asked that extra sentence, that person now opens up to you more. 

You deepen that relationship. You strengthen that connection. Because if you weren’t present, you missed an opportunity for connecting with your kids, connecting with your mum and your dad, connecting with your friends, connecting with your colleagues. And to me, that presence is what allows us to get what I believe is, we are starving for connection more than ever. Yet we are not learning the very skill that is required to get what we want more of.

Anwyn I think that point you’ve made there about connection is important. I feel connection is before communicating. And so the way we connect is through many ways, it can be a physical touch or something like that, that develops the start of the conversation.

Vinh To round it out as well. Anwyn, I think you can connect through, like you said, touch. You can connect through giving someone a gift. You can connect through words of affirmation. You can connect through doing something for someone, acts of service. It’s The Five Love Languages, right? There are so many different ways to connect with someone.

I think the most important thing you can do, if you listen to this and you feel inspired, is go spend time with someone you love and commit to being present for that 30 to 45 minutes. 

Just to being present and being curious, right? 

So, just in summation, with all the things we spoke about, if you go into that connection with someone you love as a call to action with being

-Present

-Curious and  

-Compassionate. 

Watch just what those three things do. Yes, you will be shocked. Ask more questions than you say, Be curious.  Be compassionate. Be loving in your response and just be present. Watch what that does.

Anwyn Yeah, beautiful.

Vinh Thank you so much for this conversation.

Anwyn Yes, it’s been brilliant. Thank you for taking time out of your day. You’re very generous. It’s interesting, you do the friend archetype so well. I feel like I know you well, like you are a friend. It’s a beautiful thing.

Vinh It’s something I’ve had to learn, I’ve gone through my life not learning this, and struggled in relationships and not knowing why, thinking I wasn’t capable, so I made a lot of incorrect assumptions along the way, whereas now that I’ve learned all of this is a skill, and we all can learn this.

Anwyn Well, you’ve done it exceptionally well.

Vinh Thank you, and you’re on your journey too, my pleasure. Hey, it was so nice to spend time with you, and so beautiful to see you in the community as well. And and great to talk to you now as well. You have such a kind heart, and I can feel it.

Anwyn Oh, thank you. So do you? And so where can people reach you? 

They can find me on Instagram at Askvinh

and if you just search my name, Vinh, you’ll find me.

Anwyn Thank you so much. It’s been wonderful

Vinh  pleasure. Thank you so much for this podcast and for the opportunity and it’s always nice to be able to connect with luminaries and have a bit of a chinwag.