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Excellent Executive Coaching: Growing Your Business and Enhancing Your Craft.
EEC 399: From Escaping Saigon to Leading a Biotech Company, with Quang Pham
00:22:57
Quang X. Pham is a biotech executive, war veteran, author, speaker, and community leader with a remarkable journey shaped by resilience, service, and entrepreneurship. He made history as the first Vietnamese American to earn naval aviator’s wings in...
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- [00:05]
A
Is the American dream true or false? So let's ask Quam Palm, who was came here as a refugee at 10 years old and ended up as the very successful CEO of a pharmaceutical. He spent also time being a veteran. What was his journey like from coming with nothing and overcoming all those obstacles to be a very successful person today? So let's ask Kwam Phong. Welcome to the excellent executive coaching podcast. I'm your host, Dr. Katrina Burius. And today we have Khong Phang. Did I pronounce that okay?
- [00:54]
B
That is fine.
- [00:56]
A
Okay. So you've had quite a journey. You came from Vietnam at the age of 10 and to this country, so you had to start from scratch. So tell us a little bit about this journey of yours.
- [01:12]
B
Well, first of all, thank you for having me share the story today with your audience. You know, it's been 50 years, you know, 50 years since the Vietnam War ended. And I feel privileged to be never all alive and, you know, be able to pursue most of my dreams in America. I've traveled extensively to Europe, Asia, Mexico and Canada. But I'm very happy and fortunate that we landed here. And it was from a decision my mother made when we were evacuated from the war. We could have gone to France because we had. I spoke the language as a second language, and half of our family had gone to Paris to flee the war early. But at the last minute, she said, America is better for us. I don't know why I think like that. I just feel like it's a better place for us than France. And that decision changed our life. It would have been easier in the early years to go to France because of family connections and the language. And it was challenging for us because we didn't speak English. We didn't have any money. We lost our father. He stayed until the end of the war and was captured. And, you know, basically, we had no contact in America. And so the early years were challenging, but I think in the long run was definitely the better decision. I love France. I love my family there in Paris. But it was the first decision that, you know, that changed our lives forever. So first, the end of the war. We had no control over the decisions that she made. She had control over.
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A
Right. But what were some of the challenges you had to go through coming to a new country and starting from scratch?
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B
Yeah, I think America is the land of opportunity and welcoming to immigrants. Over the years, the early settlers were immigrants, and there are millions of immigrants, but we came as refugees, refugees from a very controversial and lengthy war that America didn't win. America didn't lose the war in Vietnam. It just stopped participating and withdrew. The South Vietnamese lost the war. So, number one, coming as refugee from a controversial war led to a lot of confusion. In the early days, for example, we settle and we were sponsored by an American family in Southern California in about 50 miles north of Los Angeles on the coast called Oxnard. It was a very diverse town with Mexican immigrants, African Americans, Japanese Americans, have been here for a couple of generations. So all of a sudden we were there, and a lot of people didn't know why we were there. They thought we were the enemy.
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A
Oh, really?
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B
So, yes, and they didn't really understand that there was a war between north and South Vietnam and America was backing people in the south like us. So that was the initial confusion. A lot of people thought we were Chinese. They didn't even know who the Vietnamese were. And so I think the cultural confusion, and I think amid a difficult decade for America, right, the Vietnam War, the oil crisis, the Iran hostage rescue, it was just a confusing time. So I think we got through that by focusing on our education and helping our mom get off the public assistant.
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A
You know, so.
- [04:09]
B
So the kids, you know, we paid a lot of attention to school, we went to work at a very early age, and we were able to move off public assistance. I think part of that was the pride that the program from the government was to help us resettle, not to sustain us for the rest of our lives. So we took a lot of pride in getting off the public assistance as fast as we could.
- [04:27]
A
Right. And Oxnard is a farming. Is known for its farming. So it's not as if they've been traveling around the world like every person. So I can understand, you know, it is.
- [04:37]
B
I used to joke. We grew up in Oxnard, just a little north of Malibu, between Los Angeles and Santa Barbara. I mean, you were correct. So there were a lot. Tons of Mexican families there, illegal and legal. A lot of Japanese American farmers and generations have been there. But it was a town that I think I wouldn't have traded anything just to be thrown into the melting pot. In a way, it was already difficult, but to be in a melting pot, you see the challenges of other groups as well that have been there longer than you.
- [05:05]
A
I see. So what do you think helped you.
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B
Succeed in the early years? Definitely the focus on learning English and not just studying and passing the school test, but the actual use of the English language. And I was able to practice it by involving myself in the youth sport, Little League baseball, the high school Basketball team. And I made a lot of friends through sports because in youth sports in America, which is widespread, I saw early on that you were selected to play or to be on a team because of your results, your ability. And so you got picked to be played or you got chosen to play or to start or to be a captain of a team because of what you could do, not because of favoritism, not because of your race or anything. So for me, right out of the bat, I put in the effort to do well by practicing extra hours. So just that small part of my life allowed me to, I think, integrate faster. And that helped me not only go to college at ucla, but eventually into the Marines and to be able to relate with a lot of people from different backgrounds. So, you know, playing sports and being involved early really helped me with the English language, which then helped me with the education and to of command a presence as a young officer in the Marines and become a pilot as well.
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A
So what made you decide to go to the Marines?
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B
Yeah. The Marines is the smallest of the four military in the United States. It's also known as the toughest, the one that sees the action, the, the quickest. I chose the Marines and the military in general was number one that I wanted to pay back on my citizenship. I wanted to serve my new country, my adopted country, the United States. Because this was 11 years after I had come a dairy. I was well on my way to getting a degree from ucla. I had earned my citizenship, which didn't take much. I mean to become a city United States, you basically have to be a law abiding citizen, pay taxes if you work, and pass a 100 question test about the country, you know, how many senators, who's the president and so forth. It was pretty easy. I just felt like, you know, it was just so much given to me that I wanted to serve my country and I was able to do that through my service. What I, I didn't know that was the connection to the war in my family, which I didn't learn for years later that my father had served alongside with the US Marines early part of the Vietnam War. So I write in my book. Are these coincidences or were they destiny? The thing that happened in my life, and that was the first, which I don't think it was coincident, I was kind of destined to do what I did as to become a U.S. marine pilot. It was seven years of my life. You know, that didn't start out very well because of the cultural and the emotional challenges, but I had a Very. A very rewarding tour, met a lot of good people, gained a lot of confidence, and I think what the outsider would say, a lot of street credibility. It was almost like the stamp of approval that you are an American and for the rest of your life, nobody will ever question your patriotism to this country. And it turned out to be true.
- [08:10]
A
Really, huh?
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B
Yes.
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A
Did you ever meet your father again?
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B
Yes. So my father had come to the United States twice before the end of the war to train with the US Military, and he was fluent in English, so it would have been natural for him to come with us, but he chose to stay with his men. And at the end, when Saigon collapsed a week after we left early, he was not able to leave. And the. The North Vietnamese Communists put him in various labor re. Education camps for 12 years. And so he was captured. And we didn't hear really from him for the first five years. Then we learned that he was alive five years later. Then he was released in 1987, 12 years after we left. He waited five more years for the bureaucracy and the paperwork to clear, and he rejoined us 17 years later in 1992. And so in the United States, there are big efforts underway to help the Iraqi and Afghanistan translators and allies of the United States to get them here. I empathize and I feel for them because some families were able to come out to Vietnam together. Some families saw their family, you know, reunited sooner. Just. It took us 17 years. But I think when you look at the big picture, over 60,000American families never saw their loved ones. And those are the names on the Vietnam wall in Washington, D.C. right.
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A
And there's a lot of names.
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B
Yes. So we at least got our father back. It took 17 years, but we're fortunate. And he lived another eight years before he passed away due to cancer.
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A
So what was his experience coming back? He probably came back the changed man. But.
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B
Well, you know, the story was my mom was to change woman. Here she was raising four kids, married to a fighter pilot, turned a career officer. And she was educated, she was a school teacher, but she came here, learned a new language, became a bookkeeper and an accountant. And now here's the 17 year, 17 year separation that came to an end. Now, my father was coming over after being isolated and in captivity in his late 50s. And now here's a woman who's an independent American woman who has raised four kids that had gone to college, and now they were living together in Los Angeles, that the kids were gone. It was very challenging for them. And that happened in their late 50s. And so they tried it for a year and it didn't work out. They ended up divorcing but remained friends. And we did all the family things together. But it was definitely more challenging, I think, for her in those first six months. Yes, yes.
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A
Because he probably expected her to be the same she was 17 years ago.
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B
Exactly.
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A
Yeah.
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B
Yeah.
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A
Well, so you've come overcome a lot of the business and personal obstacles in your life. How did that impact your business life?
- [10:49]
B
Yeah, I think the Marines and the military taught me many things. I think one of the most important things I learned early on was to make decisions. They taught us, as young officers do, when you're in harm's way and you have young Marines underneath you who are in your platoon or your squadron or you're in your helicopter, you can't call your board of directors, you can't call your, your coach. Right. There are decisions that need to make, but they're life and death. They're extreme scenarios. So I learned very much learning on this to, you know, pick on the information at hand and make a decision and make adjustment, keep moving forward. Don't be locked into, you know, they call it analysis by paralysis and have all these experts make decisions. So that really helped me when I became an entrepreneur. What the military didn't teach me was we didn't really have a good background in finance or budgeting or cash flow and that you can go out and fly and burn aviation fuels in 100,000 of dollars or shoot munition. Right. And it's taxpayers money. So when I became an entrepreneur, I was very cognizant of the fact that. And today, as a public company CEO, that investor money is very sacred. You have to account for it, you have to use it wisely. And it's not infinite. You know, money just doesn't keep coming to you like you are in the military or the government.
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A
Yeah, right. Yeah. So that's another steep learning. On the, on the journey, you also.
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B
On the job.
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A
On the job, you became an entrepreneur and also an author. What instigated you to become an author?
- [12:21]
B
You know, I. In Underdog Nation, I talk about certain things that hold people back and is usually not financial, is usually not circumstantial. Everybody has some kind of hang up in their life. You know, I hope, I hope they all have perfect life, but we have relationships or things that we leave unanswered, you know, and for me, the unanswered was, why did my father leave after the Vietnam War? How could the United States not win a War, with all the resources and all the sacrifices, why didn't the Vietnamese sustain itself like South Korea? So I set out to write a book to answer those questions. Not so much for other people, but for myself. And that was my hang up. I had, you know, become a citizen. I had served my country. I already worked in pharmaceutical sales and started a company. But I didn't have those answers. So when I turned 40, at my father's age, when he made the decision to send us out of Vietnam before the end of the war, I had a young family, and I just couldn't imagine what it was going through his mind, and he was already gone. So I set out to interview people that served with them. And upon the completion of the book, it was published, I felt a huge weight off my shoulders. It's all in my new book, Underdog Nation. I encourage people to close those loops, you know, so they can advance personally and professionally, whether, you know, they don't have relationship with their parents or a sibling or an old friend or an issue or something they're. They were always dying to do but couldn't go. Somebody just, there's something on your list to do or some person you need to reconcile with, do it sooner than later. And I think that would relieve a lot of the emotional obstacle for them to go on to do what they want to do and define a success, whether he's a starting company or advancing, you know, in the corporate ladder.
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A
So those are the questions. The first book is the questions you wanted answered. Like you said, why. Why couldn't America win the war with all the resources? It's also linked to your father in some ways. Right? It seems, yes.
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B
And I hold the South Vietnamese responsible too. With all. It was 21 years of war and hundreds of millions, 60,000American lives. Right. I think. And they always did. The motto was, you know, Korea's had a war in the 1950s. It was a stalemate. But look at South Korea today. It is a thriving, productive nation with a huge American president, a demilitarized zone that's been there since 1954. Now, why couldn't South Vietnam existed like that? So those were, you know, questions that lingered in my mind as an adult, you know, oh, it's over 20 years ago. And, you know, those are the questions that I became comfortable with the answer, you know, as I learned through my father's journey and writing the book, I don't wake up with those questions in my mind anymore. Ever since that book came out.
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A
Oh, that's great.
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B
It was a cathartis very much so. And I guess you don't have to write a book, you don't have to do, but there are things in people's life that could really help them and unleash the energy that kind of wasted in having those kind of questions or hang ups.
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A
So what, this next book that you're writing, what is it unleashing?
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B
Well, it's an unleashing for people who were like me. Okay. After the military, I felt I accomplished a lot. So I landed in a big pharmaceutical company where I was a nobody. I started at the bottom again at the age of 29. It was not to go fly for American Airlines. So all of my flight experience meant nothing. And so I think when that happens, people have the tendency to cling onto their past, their glory. A lot of veterans do that. When we first leave the military, right, we talk about the places we went to, the things we flew, our experience, but to our new corporate peers, unless they serve too, it really doesn't mean a lot to them. And so, you know, in my early years, I was very proud of who I was, but not who I became and where I was going. So the old life journey saying is the journey is not where you came from, but where you're willing to go. And for me, at that point, I had made a decision to become a business person, a salesperson in the far industry. So I had to let go some of that in the past. And it took a couple years for the transition mentally, where, you know, I was not going back to what I did before, but more of what am I doing now to contribute to my employer and my business. And so the book lays out steps where you can overcome that mentality and recognize where you should be talking about now in the future and less about your past. First of all, you have to reconcile that past by overcoming that whatever hang up you had before. And I think the second is if you are somebody like me, who didn't have an Ivy League degree, who had never been a CEO, who had never raised money before, what can you do to make yourself a better candidate to get venture capital? Know, these events for me happened 25 years ago, but the things I did was I always worked on my public speaking skills, I always worked on my presentation skills, not so much PowerPoint skills, but to be able to read the room better, to see if there's interest. Well, I always had a script, I always had a story I could tell instinctively through reading the room, that if the investors are interested in or not, or they are interested in certain Questions that I would go there right away and not follow the script. And, and it turned out it worked really well for us because we secure financing. And so I think, you know, the presentation skills come with. Are you there to educate somebody? Are you there to entertain them? Or are you there to persuade them to invest in your company or do something that you want to do? So you have to have that in mind. You're not teaching college kids or high school kids, you're not there to educate them. It's their job to get educated. You're there because they have an interest. And I think if you get to a meeting with investors, make it happen, make it, you know, give it your best shot. So as an underdog or somebody who's not favored that, who didn't have the credentials, that's what I did. I wanted to be the best presenter, persuader. If I got into a room, I knew I had a good chance of advancing our company to the next stage for review, for funding. Because it's a long process. You know, each day these investors get hundred, dozens. Okay. So you have to be able to catch their attention and even now, 25 years later, their attention spans even less. And there's just so many interesting ideas, AI backed businesses and services that, that want investor money. I think in many ways it was easier to raise money 25 years ago. Today it is extremely hard to raise money from institutional investors. So if you advance in the conversation, you have to be convincing, you have to be persuasive and you have to be able to read the room. And so I did extra things to get me those intangible skills that does not show up on my resume.
- [18:57]
A
Well, good for you. Because reading the room and understanding what strategy you're going to have if it's to inform, entertain or persuade.
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B
Persuade, yeah. Yes.
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A
Because those three strategies.
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B
Yes.
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A
Good for you. Now you're in the pharmaceutical industry and you mentioned that it's hard for Americans to understand or accept the high cost of prescription drugs. We'll finish on that question, which is a bit out of the box for. From what we've talked.
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B
No, I think some of that out there. I think when you look at, you know, people go out and buy a house, that's three times their annual salary. Right? That's the question. The American dream is to own a home. If you put 20% down and the home is, you know, X, okay, that's about three times what you make. So that's the assumption you may go out and buy a car and finance it over five years and pay 5 to 8% of interest or, or go out and take a vacation or buy a boat. But God forbid, if you have to pay $500 out of pocket for a chronic medication, okay, that can lower your blood pressure, that keep you away from the risk of having a stroke or heart attack. So it doesn't really match up with in terms of other things. And so drug pricing is always a high target. And the drug industry is usually right at the bottom of industries least trusted by Americans. According to various polls, the cost of drug development is extremely high because the FDA and other agencies around the world requires companies like ours to make sure the drug, number one, is safe and human and number two works. So there's a series of steps that the FDA makes us go through, which I think is the right thing. But when you have an FDA or the government that is not fully staffed to serve an industry that is very big and very diverse, sometimes things take time. So time is money. You just don't have infinite time to get things through. So I think part of that is the regulatory requirements and the cost, but part of that is the industry. So it's a two way street. The industry has to be better. Use tools like AI to recruit the right patients, use AI to develop the right protocol, use AI to identify the molecule faster. Instead of testing thousands of drugs every year, AI should be able to reduce that to perhaps a few hundreds in another five or ten years. So I think we are going to make progress with technology.
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A
Oh great. Yes.
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B
That's reducing the cost overall of producing the drug. And last comment on that is that the majority of the novel drugs in the world come from the United States, but they're not charged the same price when they go outside the United States. So we do provide a huge benefit our industry does for the world.
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A
Yes, indeed. There's a lot of pharmaceuticals in Switzerland as well.
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B
Very much so. Novartis is one of them. About it. Yep.
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A
Ro. No.
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B
Yes. Roche Novartis. Yes.
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A
I couldn't help it. Coming from Switzerland, I work for a.
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B
Roche company called Genentech.
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A
Yeah, right. That's a good company. Well, it's been wonderful. Thank you very much for sharing your knowledge and your experience and your journey, which is really very, very interesting.
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B
Thank you. Dr. Katrina.
- [22:02]
A
Yes. And where can people get a hold of you?
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B
Well, I'm available on LinkedIn but I also have a website for about my books and the speeches in my career. It's under my name. Quangxfam Q U-A N G X P-H-A-M.com Great.
- [22:18]
A
So I encourage the listeners to go and buy the book. Very interesting. Okay. Thank you again.
- [22:24]
B
Thank you.
- [22:25]
A
Bye.
- [22:27]
B
Thank you for listening to the Excellent Executive Coach Coaching Podcast. You can subscribe to all Future podcasts@excellentexecutivecoaching.com join us each Wednesday to learn more about the latest trends in leadership techniques and bring your coaching to the next level. To learn more about Dr. Burris CEO mastermind, use the contact form@excellentexecutivecoaching.com.