IAM1493 – Founder Helps Individuals Begin a Career in Management Consulting

Coming from a low-income, first-generation background family, Davis graduated from Yale in 2015 as a QuestBridge Scholar and was the first in his family to go to college. After graduating from Yale, Davis worked at Bain & Company as a management consultant and at Jumpcut, a Y-Combinator education company, where he was the Vice President of Operations.

Today, he is the CEO of MyConsultingOffer.org, a company he founded to help students and professionals begin a career in management consulting. When Davis isn’t helping aspiring management consultants, he volunteers at and donates to various educational non-profits; competes in the World Championship of Public Speaking where he was placed in the Top 200; and spends time with his family.

• CEO Story: Davis’ family immigrated from Vietnam shortly after the Vietnam War. He was lucky to be born in the US. His grandma wanted a better life for her grandchildren and worked so hard to get any job she could get and finally got to start her own business with no knowledge nor experience yet she pulled it off as it went along the way, which is why she is the source of inspiration for Davis to be an entrepreneur and help others succeed. Started management consulting part-time, now doing full-time with a team.
• Business Service: Help individuals get the interviews and pass the interviews to get an offer
• Secret Sauce: Help people get the consulting offer successfully, even with a small amount. Donating portions of the income.
• CEO Hack: Don’t do all the business to yourself, but instead, find others who are experts in their field.
• CEO Nugget: Where you are is ultimately a gift, you may have struggle moments, but somebody elsewhere wishes to take your place.
• CEO Defined: Leading your organization and creating amazing results for your team or clients.

Website: www.myconsultingoffer.org

LinkedIn: davis2

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00:21 – Intro

Do you want to learn effective ways to build relationships, generate sales, and grow your business from successful entrepreneurs, startups, and CEOs without listening to a long, long, long interview? If so, you've come to the right place. Gresham Harkness values your time and is ready to share with you precisely the information you're in search of. This is the I AM CEO podcast.

00:48 – Gresham Harkless

Hello. Hello. Hello. This is Gresh from the I AM CEO podcast. I have a very special guest on the show today. I have Davis Nguyen of my consulting offer.org. Davis, super excited to have you on the show.

00:59 – Davis Nguyen:

Thanks for being here. I'm excited.

01:01 – Gresham Harkless

Yes, super excited to have you on. And before we jump into the interview, I want to read a little bit more about Davis so you can hear about some of the awesome things that he's been working on. Coming from a low-income, first-generation background family, Davis graduated from Yale in 2015 as a Quest Bridge scholar and was the first in his family to go to college. After graduating from Yale, Davis worked at Bain & Company as a management consultant and jump-cut a Y Combinator education company where he was the vice president of operations. Today he is the CEO of myconsultingoffer.org, a company he founded to help students and professionals begin a career in management consulting.

When Davis isn't helping inspiring management consultants, he volunteers at and donates to various educational nonprofits, competes in the world championship of public Speaking, where he was placed in the top 200, and spends time with his family. Davis, again, excited to have you on the show, my friend. Are you ready to speak to the I AM CEO community?

[restrict paid=”true”]

01:54 – Davis Nguyen

Happy to add value where I can.

01:56 – Gresham Harkless

Yeah, absolutely. You're adding value in many different ways. So glad we get to pull you away for a little bit to hear more from you and to kind of kick everything off. I wanted to rewind the clock. I know I touched on a little bit, but hear a little bit more about what I call your CEO story. We'll let you get started with all the awesome work you do.

02:10 – Davis Nguyen

Awesome. So I'm a very unlikely entrepreneur. It wasn't like I was born one day. I was a being entrepreneur. So I'll share a little bit of background. So, my family immigrated from Vietnam shortly after the Vietnam War. So I was born, I was lucky enough to be born in the United States, but my family were farmers back in Vietnam. And so during that time, anything that they could do, they wanted to be able to create a new life. So my grandma was the first person in our family to come to the U.S. And she wanted a better life for me, my siblings, and my cousins. And for her, my grandma didn't finish high school. She didn't have a proper education. She's literally working on farmlands. So when she came to the U.S., She would take any job that she could get.

For example, she was a baggage handler, like imagine a tiny little 5-foot-one woman handling baggage for Delta. She would clean houses. She would cook. She would do anything she could to save up money. But eventually, my grandma would save up enough money to open up a nail salon. So she had never done manicures before. Didn't pedicure. I can't even be sure if she got a manicure or pedicure before she started. But she was like, you know, I always had a dream about owning my own business. And, she started this business with no experience. She didn't go to physical, didn't have an MBA, and didn't even file for the right paperwork. In fact, I remember growing up, and a lot of times the IRS, the government would come and say, you're missing this license and so forth.

But my grandma would always put everything in and pursue this dream and realize that, Hey, I'll figure everything else as I go. And that became my first inspiration for entrepreneurship. And then my grandma, literally the shop, was in a community where they've never had people who were Asian going in, opening stores. And I remember a couple of things that happened during my grandma's first couple of years before the Nailsop took off and was able to provide was, I remember for example, there was an arson who set up the shop on fire. And instead of giving up, my grandma would just come in the next day, brew everything off and just pick it back up. I remember one day when the business started taking off and my grandma was basically robbed because she kept the money in the store.

And this is way before like touchless pay, Venmo, and everything else. And so it was like then things were done in credit cards and cash. And so she was robbed at gunpoint. And then a couple of times when, even when they couldn't rob her and she put in like a safe and she put in metal bars in the shop to prevent arts and things like that. They still found other ways people, for example, one night just broke in and stole everything. And my grandma every time would just come in and that was the story of the entrepreneurial journey in a lot of Asian parents, they'll say, oh, be a doctor, be an engineer. But my grandma never really pushed us to do anything. And I was just certainly inspired by my grandma. I was like, wow, she's creating jobs for people.

She gets to do something and she gets to learn. And I thought, wow, that would be a really cool job. I didn't have a name for entrepreneurship, being a business owner or anything, but I was like, I want to do what my grandma's doing. And so that was the inspiration for starting my journey as an entrepreneur.

04:50 – Gresham Harkless

Nice. Well, I appreciate you so much and sharing that. And I think so many times when we're doing all the things that we're doing on a daily basis, sometimes we can kind of lose focus and not realize that a lot of times our story ends up being, the people that love and care for us, may sacrifices and the words that were coming to my mind, hard work, resilience, just an incredible work ethic and just a never die attitude. It sounds like your grandma has it. I think that's something that you can obviously hear inspires you, but I think it's definitely inspirational to me as well.

05:23 – Davis Nguyen

Hi, every now credit to my grandma there. I didn't know any of that. ,

05:30 – Gresham Harkless

I beg to differ with that. So I wanted to drill down a little bit more and hear a little bit more about what you're working on, how that transition, your grandmother, and her dream, have inspired you to do all the awesome things you're doing.

05:41 – Davis Nguyen

Thank you, my grandma inspired me to be an entrepreneur. So I always had some sort of entrepreneurial business or venture coming out. For example, it was elementary school, selling candy bars and selling Coca-Cola bottles. My family would, for example, go to a discount outlet and I would just buy a bunch of them. I'm like, all right, I can probably just sell these, make a little bit of money. Middle school did the same thing with trading cards and then high school did the same as well. I always had these ventures going back and forth even in college. They weren't all successful. And a lot of the people who ended up being my mentors, my bosses, my managers at these various internships just basically said, hey, Davis, look for something called management consulting. It'll brush up on your skills.

And so that's where I ended up starting my career working in management consulting. And for anyone who's not familiar with it, it's similar to being a business doctor. They hire you, you come in, and you solve a sticky problem. So it could be like, for example, working with a hotel chain, thinking about expanding to a new country or working with a luxury brand that is thinking about launching a new product. So like the problems and I was like, wow, I get to work in different industries with smart people. It sounds fantastic. But eventually, I would end up getting multiple offers. I loved my time in consulting. And I would have stayed actually, I thought about, wow, I can see myself staying here because I really enjoyed the people, really enjoyed the work.

And at the time there was an education company going through Y Combinator called Jumpcut, which you mentioned in the intro and they had an opening. I was like, wow, well, I want to work in education because education is what enabled me to be where I am. And so I took the plunge. I was like, well, I can come back to Bain, but this jump-cut opportunity going to Y Combinator, that's like a unique opportunity. So you know, I'm just, well, let's take a risk on myself. And of course, when you're a startup, going to Y Combinator and you're in the education space, you're still figuring out how to find a market product fit. You're trying to figure out how to be profitable.

And so I took a 40% salary cut, not including bonuses or anything else, to join this company. It was still in California, so I was still only paying the cost of living and things like that. And I've been supporting my mom since I was 13. And so I still needed to figure out a way to make all this happen during this time when my family members ended up needing emergency surgery and cost about $20, 000, which I didn't have at the time. And so I needed to figure out a way to, well, support my family. This is where the idea of my consulting offer came, which is that when I was at Bain, I was involved in the recruiting of new talent to Bain as well as going through the resumes, making sure to write for interviews, and so forth. I just really enjoyed it.

And so I said, well, what if I do this on the weekends? Monday to Friday, I'll work on Jumpcut. Then Saturday, and Sunday, I'll just work on this business. And it just took off as in I started with just a few handful of students who wanted to work in consulting and as soon as just word of mouth blew up. And eventually, I decided to go full-time. And today we have a full team that helps way more people than I could have in my living room on a Saturday or Sunday when this business started a few years ago.

08:19 – Gresham Harkless

Nice, I appreciate you so much and sharing that journey. And so you touched a little bit upon what you're doing at myconsultingoffer.org. Could you draw down a little bit more and Let us know what we can find there and how you're making that impact with you and your team?

08:33 – Davis Nguyen

Yeah, absolutely. So very simple. When someone wants to work in management consulting, could be either a student or they're currently in the workforce and they want a 6 figure salary. They want to work with the CEO. They want to build the skillset. They want to have this on their resume, a company like McKinsey, Deloitte, Bain, and Boston Consulting Group. Basically what we do is very simple. We do 2 things. We help you get interviews and we help you pass the interview so you get the offer. And that's pretty much what we do. And part of the business too, the .org part, is that we donate a lot of our profits to many of the education companies that we partner with.

And so it's kind of like a pay it forward model, which is like, you got a consulting offer, but there are people all around the world who want to have an opportunity at just being able to provide for their family, to be able to do better in a previous generation. So that's what we basically do we make the money, obviously help people get through the consulting offer and success based. So it's kind of like one of our most popular business models is that, hey, if you can't afford everything up front, you pay a little bit to make sure that you have some skin in the game, but we take the majority of the risk.

And of course, as a result, we want to make sure that we're invested, we have skin in the game, and you get the offer. And then afterward you'll pay the CSP and we donate a portion of that to stars scholarships, funding research, fighting cancer. There are so many causes over the years that we built up and a lot of it is team generated. They'll come back to, hey, Davis, there's a cause I really care about. So when the Ukrainian process worked and one of our team members was Ukrainian I was like, well, David, can we, I was like, absolutely, we can add these funds.

09:55 – Gresham Harkless

I appreciate that. So this might be for yourself, the business, or a combination of both, But I wanted to ask you for what I call your secret sauce. And this is something that you feel kind of either sets you or the business apart, but what do you feel kind of is that secret sauce for you or the business?

10:10 – Davis Nguyen

We literally have skin in the game with the people who work with us. As in it's not like, Imagine that you could hire a team of lawyers and you had 2 options. You had a lawyer who charged you an X amount upfront and a lawyer says, Hey, you don't pay until we win. We wanted to be the latter. We wanted to have skin in the game with our clients. And that's, obviously, we deliver great results in the first word of mouth kicks in. But that's one of the secret sauces is that we were invested.

10:35 – Gresham Harkless

Yeah, absolutely. I love that. And I think it again creates that great environment and that cycle of benefits that happens in so many different ways. So I wanted to switch gears a little bit. And I want to ask you for what I call a CEO hack. So this could be like an Apple book or a habit that you have, but what's something that makes you more effective and efficient?

10:55 – Davis Nguyen

I find that this is something I've learned actually more after becoming an entrepreneur you don't have to do everything yourself. As in we think of as like the solo founder or the person who has to do it. But a lot of times when I'm about to start something, I think about, well, who's doing it really well, and what can I learn? My path won't be the exact same as theirs, but maybe like, for example, when I first started working out when I was overweight, I was like, well, I'm not going to try to create a workout routine by myself and figure this out. I was like, well, there are probably forums online that I can learn from.

There are probably friends of mine who eat healthily. There are probably people who have been lifting weights. They can probably give me the run around on this one. And the same thing to business, for example, if we're about to start a new marketing campaign, Let's say we want to build our YouTube channel. And I would say, well, who's doing it really well versus us starting from scratch every single time?

11:38 – Gresham Harkless

Awesome. Awesome, Awesome. So I want to ask you now for what I call a CEO nugget. So this is a little bit more word of wisdom or a piece of advice. I like to say it might be something if you were to hop into a time machine, you might tell your business.

11:50 – Davis Nguyen

I always remind myself of this. And I also give new entrepreneurs. This is that doesn't mind. It's like being a founder, being an entrepreneur, being a CEO, there are going to be ups and downs. Just remember though that somewhere someone in the world wishes they were you and they would trade all their problems to have the problems that you're solving. And, this helps me keep stay grounded for when there are tough decisions that need to be made, there are problems that are going on, or tough emails, and so forth. I just don't remember myself. There's at least one person in the world who was like, I trade everything I have to have what you have.

12:24 – Gresham Harkless

I love that just on obviously a business level is, like you kind of touched on, and we've been talking about the ups and downs of the journey of entrepreneurship. And sometimes things don't always go the way you want them to go. But I think even on a human level, so many times we can get in this, I guess, the spirit of, I want this or I want that, or I wish I was here, I wish I was there. And it's so kind of sometimes forward-facing. It kind of robs us as we kind of talked about it. You said that the present, you know, and how that is ultimately a gift because where you are is something that, you know, you might've been even dreaming for years and years ago. And definitely somebody else might be doing, you know, as we're talking now.

13:02 – Davis Nguyen

Exactly.

13:04 – Gresham Harkless

Awesome. Awesome. Awesome. So I wanted to ask you now my absolute favorite question, which is the definition of what it means to be a CEO. We're hoping that different quote-unquote CEOs on the show. So Davis, what does being a CEO mean to you?

13:15 – Davis Nguyen

To me, being a CEO means leading your organization and creating amazing results for the people who choose to work with you. Either it's your team, or it's your customer, your client. It's being that person who's responsible for the results that you create in people's lives.

13:30 – Gresham Harkless

I love that. And I think that as you talked about your team, you talked about clients and customers, imagine your partners as well. When you think about that amazing result, that phrase that you use, it can kind of manifest itself in so many different ways for different people. As you mentioned, somebody on the team wanted to be able to kind of donate for everything that was going on in their life, to be able to do that. Of course, somebody wants to get a job, or there are just so many different ways that you can create those amazing results. So it sounds like you've been able to kind of tune into that and be able to kind of execute on that for the team as a whole.

14:01 – Davis Nguyen

It's a work in progress. I wouldn't say that I was born a perfect CEO, and I'm far from it. It's just learning. It's getting feedback. It's learning from your mistakes. It's learning from your successes. It's learning from others. And it's like a gradual process. For me, it's really fun to be able to take it. Obviously even during the tough problems, it's just for me, it's like learning is part of the process, but we said, I know lucky tone, right? It turns out again, someone somewhere wishes they were you and they would trade all their problems, all their struggles for yours.

14:32 – Gresham Harkless

Yeah, absolutely. I love that. And do you feel like that, that educational background that you, you kind of talked about, do you feel like that has really helped out with, I guess, that mentality of learning and, and first of all, being able to appreciate this a day, but also be able to kind of continue, you know, get better and grow in so many different ways?

14:49 – Davis Nguyen

I was always that curious type of person. So people always joke, oh did Yale bake you a curious learner? I was like, oh probably the other way around, which is I was curious and then Yale is like, oh let me then begin. And from when I was little, my high school system was called the worst school system in the U S for a number of years when I was in school. It's better now. And at the time I was just so curious. I was like that kid who is like, or like Davis just shut up. We want to get out of school. We want to get a period. We want to get lunch, but I'm over here just asking questions about anything that was just so fascinating. I was just so curious and even today my friends are like, all right, all right, if we take Davis on this tour, he's just gonna, we're not gonna make it past the first leg of this tour. We're just not.

15:31 – Gresham Harkless

Well, David truly appreciate your time, appreciate your curiosity as well too. So what I want us to do now is pass you the mic, so to speak, just to see if there's anything additional that you can let our readers and listeners know. And of course, how best people can get a hold of you, and find out about all the awesome things you and your team are working on.

15:46 – Davis Nguyen

Awesome. Feel free to check us out at microsoftingoffer.org or just send me an email, Davis at microsoftingoffer.org. I'm very easy to use LinkedIn, whatever channel. I am, I'm pre-plugged in for better or worse.

15:58 – Gresham Harkless

Yes, absolutely. And to make it even easier to be plugged in and be connected. We'll have the links and information in the show notes too, so that everybody can follow up with you. But Davis, truly appreciate all the awesome things you're doing. Of course, appreciate your time again today. And I hope you have a phenomenal day.

16:12 – 1Davis Nguyen

All right, to you in the audience as well.

16:13 –  Outro

Thank you for listening to the I AM CEO Podcast powered by Blue 16 Media. Tune in next time and visit us at iamceo.co I AM CEO is not just a phrase, it's a community. Be sure to follow us on social media and subscribe to our podcast on iTunes Google Play and everywhere you listen to podcasts, SUBSCRIBE, and leave us a five-star rating grab CEO gear at www.ceogear.co. This has been the I AM CEO Podcast with Gresham Harkless. Thank you for listening.