Season 3 - Episode 10 | A Post-War Spirit of Independently Finding Solutions in Life: Nguyen Thi Nam Phuong (Vietnam)

Dr. Ramesh delves into the remarkable journey of Ms. Nguyen Thi Nam Phuong, a dynamic entrepreneur from Vietnam. A 'can-do' spirit forged from her post-war childhood helped her navigate education in Russia and later, to co-found one of Vietnam's earliest companies in organisational development, charting its path of innovation and success.

Join us as Nam Phuong shares her crisis-resilient mindset in dealing with setbacks and how these experiences gave her grit and driving force for her far-sighted business expansion into an online management training company using the learning management system her team developed.

3 Key Insights from this Podcast:

1. Strength Forged from Hardship: Post-war hardship forged a generation of people like Nam Phuong, who developed a crisis-resilient mindset of independently finding solutions with risk forecasting and a fun, creative attitude.   
2. Purpose-driven Entrepreneurship: More than doing business profitably, entrepreneurship is also about creating value, building effective teams and contributing back to society.
3. Playing the Long Entrepreneurial Game: Nam Phuong calls out the necessity of generating short-term income in order to survive and build a viable business over long-term.

Host: Dr. Ramesh Ramachandra, Author, Podcast Host, Founder of Talent Leadership Crucible & Founder of Impact Velocity

Guest Speaker: Ms. Nguyen Thi Nam Phuong, Co-Founder and Lead Consultant of OCD Management Consulting, Co-founder of OMT & OOC Technology Solutions JSC.

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Transcript

Dr. Ramesh Ramachandra 

Welcome to the Thriving in the Age of Disruption podcast series.

We're so excited to have you here today to get your thoughts on entrepreneurship, crisis resilience, spirituality, and a couple of other topics. 

Nguyen Thi Nam Phuong

Thank you for inviting me. My name's Nam Phuong, coming from the warm memory of my father. I'm now 57, in the Vietnam labor market, I am the senior citizen who is retiring.

Yeah. I actually got two years’ retirement salary already, but I just started my third organization. I'm the lead consultant of OCD management consulting company, uh, OCD means organizational capacity development. I'm co-founder of OCD and then the other two, three organizations, the online management training company called OMT is now still alive and yeah, and efficient.

OOC means OCD online consulting. Because seven years ago, we thought about transforming digital transformation of our internal consulting process to make it more efficient to the customers. We want to cut costs for the customers by introducing the technology. But then later we shifted into producing the HR,  Because I'm the person of two majors, human resource management and information management system.

I have a team to develop MES, manufacturing execution system and ERP for manufacturing businesses. 

Dr. Ramesh Ramachandra 

We met about almost three years ago and you've impressed me with your knowledge and your confidence. And more importantly, with your own background of having gone to Russia to study and starting in a field which is really new in Vietnam and creating leadership around that.

So perhaps we can go back a little bit and have you share how you got named by your father just before he left for the war, when you were still eight months in your mother's womb. 

Nguyen Thi Nam Phuong

Nam Phuong originally, in Chinese, Nan Fang. It's a very beautiful name, Nan Fang. That was the last queen of Vietnam's name.

Yeah, Nam Phuong. She died in, in France. She left when the new government came. And Nam Phuong was the symbol. A very beautiful, but very smart lady in Vietnam. She was the idol for all the Vietnamese ladies. She introduced a new thinking for the Vietnamese. In the past, Vietnamese family can have so many wives in one family.

And Nam Phuong was against that law. She wanted to introduce the new law with one wife.  So she was the idol for Vietnamese who think of being beautiful, smart, and very innovative, and dare to fight for the right of women. She was the feminist, okay? So my father went to the Southern Front of War against America.

When my mother was pregnant for eight months, and he just left for her the last words, and he said, okay, if that was the boy, this should be Phuong Nam, and it's the girl, then Nam Phuong, just because I want you to memorize The southern eastern southern front like her father was there for the better life of the South and of Vietnam.

So after three years, I met my father for the first time and my mother took a long time to explain that was my father. We were very lucky because we got father back. That's why I always think that I need to give back to the life because I got a lot. Yes. Yeah. It's the internal motivation for me to do something.

I even don't realize that until my mother and father received the recognition for their participation in the French. And American war, yeah, for their contributions for the Vietnamese independence. So I thought, “Okay, they have the recognitions and this is also for me because, yeah, I'm so lucky and I have them alive and healthy and smart.”

Dr. Ramesh Ramachandra 

They have obviously passed on their great DNA and courage to you to take on what you need to do in life. 

Nguyen Thi Nam Phuong

I think so. My father influenced me a lot. He left for the Vietnamese army when he was 10 and he could not write and read, but he started to learn how to write and read at the age of 10 when he was serving in the army.

He was not an official soldier. But he was like the assistant, and he could learn Vietnamese, Chinese, and then he was sent to Pyongyang, Korean University of Arts, and he became choreography. He learned everything. In Korean through Chinese with a starting point that he could not read and write at the age of 10.

So I think Vietnamese army was amazing. They could give him such a quick education, but he was an amazing person. He became the leader of the performance art ensemble in army. Later on, he started with the performance organizer, and it was in  1980. This very early for Vietnam, because at that time, we had also the embargo.

We could not do the free market economy. So for him to become entrepreneur with the performance art, he was signing contract for which is a very famous Vietnamese pianist.  He won the Troupin Prize. My father signed the first contract to make the performance around Europe. And that was very difficult because we were under embargo.

But anyway, he could sign several contracts for the Vietnamese to make performance in Europe. For example, the soldiers, even the normal people with the traditional performance art in villages. So he sent the villagers to Europe to make performance, and he could sign good contracts and earns a lot of money for the Vietnamese government at the time. 

Dr. Ramesh Ramachandra 

That's really interesting because in my podcast, I talk about two kinds of mindset that we need to have to thrive in the age of disruption. The first is an entrepreneurial mindset. And what I can hear from this story is that your father and mother at some level were very patriotic and they contributed to society and to Vietnam, but they were also entrepreneurial.

And how I define an entrepreneurial mindset is number one, you're someone who's resourceful. That means you look at a problem, you're A, able to define it and look for a solution. Number two, you're someone who knows. How to deal with uncertainty and manage risk. And the last thing is you're creating value, not just financial, it can be non financial value and you're creating value for yourself and for other people.

So when you look at the entrepreneurial mindset, you had such great examples of people around you, right? Demonstrating that whether it was working for the government. or contributing to society. You yourself have started three businesses. So can you share a little bit more about how you saw your own entrepreneurial mindset being developed and what you think is its relevance today?

Nguyen Thi Nam Phuong

I think I'm myself, not a very much money thirsty person. Usually when you are entrepreneur, you all the time need to think about money, right? How to earn money, how to make it bigger? Otherwise, if you are not money thirsty, you cannot do anything about the entrepreneurship. Okay. Yeah. So if we say that we are immune to money, it's just a lie.

I think entrepreneurship is about creating value and get money. This is the money just to show your success. When you earn a lot, your success is bigger. In the past when I saw how my father was thinking of earning money. All the time he was saying  this, such kind of performance people, the singers, the dancers, and any others, they can get a lot of money by making their performance.

We are asking whether they are just thinking of getting money when they're performing or they really love their job and they want to show this job to other people and advertising for the value and at the result, they can have their money. So entrepreneurship. In me, not because I'm money thirsty. I am working with my president.

We were longtime friends during the student time. At first, for me talking about money, it's a shame. I cannot, like, negotiate with any person. About money. This is very difficult to overcome my mind of saying about this because for me, thinking about money is shame. If you value it, you pay. If you don't pay means you don't value it.

So usually I don't put the negotiation aspect into my work. Later on when I was working with her, I think this is just the marketing ideas. You need to show value and communicate your values until people pay. Appreciate this and pay it. So entrepreneurship is about getting enough money. For you to show the value and invest back to improve the value that you are delivering.

Yeah. So for me, for the first time, I just love the work. I love the job. I want people to get it, but then I have my team, Ha and Khanh, who is talking about money, who is money thirsty. That's a good combination. Well, yeah, that's why we have more than 20 years together. Yeah. Yeah. I don't recognize this until we had a big problem in a crisis in COVID.

When we need to keep our company, we have to sell a lot of properties to keep the fund, to keep our people. At that time, we just talk to each other whether we keep the company, we keep the value we already put into the name OCD, OMT, and OOC. And we are keeping what? All three? Or just the mother company?

And then we come back with the daughter companies later, depreciating our efforts and money. But of course, I think the stress on each of us, sometimes we need the money resilience first. With the money, you cannot do the important things, right? Yes. Although money is not important. That's right. It's a paradox, but it is true.

We have to think of sacrificing some personal interest, some personal needs to keep the company. Entrepreneurship is not about doing the business alone. It's about teaming up with people who can be like puzzle with you so that. In the crisis, we can make the decision together and put our effort.  On the priority, and then rearrange the resources, the money first, and then the people.

How you keep people stay with you? Because money only. Because a lot of people don't like other work than the thing they do in OCD. A lot of our consultants come to the company for their career development. We all the time need to manage their expectation about sacrificing money. For the career, I think for the job of consulting, sometimes people in Vietnam, some don't pay much for your knowledge. They don't pay for what you invest in the past. 

Dr. Ramesh Ramachandra 

But you've actually touched on a couple of key components here in discussing entrepreneurship. And so firstly, yeah, you're right. You can have an entrepreneurial mindset. And not go and start a business or run it. But if you get the opportunity to start and run a business, that's also great.

Being clear for yourself, what is the value that you are bringing to your customers and how that value is just not financially critical when you had that big crisis as a group. The fact that the three partners could come together and decide what to cut and how to reorganize your resources and prioritize.

The work that you wanted to do, because at some level you had the same value system, so you could give and take. Each one was able to look at the big picture, even though in your case, the focus was not about making money, but you could see the importance of having money to be able to pivot or to transform the business at that point, because the old way of doing business could not apply during the Covid period.

This is an important lesson about entrepreneurship, and thank you for calling out that sometimes ourselves as individuals, we may have a difficulty about marketing ourselves and yeah, this is where we can partner other people to support us because if we can't be sustainable. Yeah. In making the money every day, every month. Then our business is not going to be around because we can't pay rent, we can't pay salaries, and no matter how good we are, we can't contribute that. Yeah. 

The second point, which is what you brought up here, and that's about crisis resilience. I define crisis as a setback or a failure that we experience. And some people can give up, some people can fight, and some people can just freeze. And I think you're someone who's willing to, in a moment of a crisis, get into action, to look for the solution, to see how you can actually move forward.

Nguyen Thi Nam Phuong

I believe there's two points of being resilient in the crisis. The first one is how you trained in the past, how you were developed as a child. So I was born in the war time. And I grew up in hardship until I was sent to the Soviet Union, to Ukraine, to study. During the time I was the student in the Odessa University, I was learning linguistics.

We got the scholarship, but that scholarship is very tiny. It's enough for us. To live very modest life of a student, you cannot travel, you cannot do other extra work than every day just learn and eat three times a day. You need to keep the money and never touch a single penny for a long time until you can go to see the performance, for example, in the theater.

And at that time, when we were small, We all the time were put into the hard situation to have the solutions, the skills and mindset of independently finding a solutions was in the education of the time, not only me, but my generation, when we identify the need. Crisis, the opportunity for crisis, the symptom of the crisis, then we are thinking of solutions.

Maybe because we are very much alert of those risks. So risk forecasting is very important for entrepreneurs. No high risk, high gain. People usually say that. But anyway, in a team, you have somebody to drive and somebody to press the brake. So we are balancing our team for risk, taking. So when we are doing the forecasting, we see that technology is the tendency and we love technology.

I came from HP, I came from Clicknet, the contractor for the industrial projects. And this is very much the technology oriented company and Khang is also a person who has a very personal interest in technology. That's why in 2010,  we started with online management training. So online management training, the LMS,  the learning management system using the online technology was so new to Vietnam, it was not so new to America. We went to America and  personally said which provider we could get. And we decided to take Illinois University. The one who had two thirds of their revenue came from online training. And they had a very interesting platform for that and courseware and the way they are teaching.

So platform you can buy everywhere or develop, ‘cause why you can do by yourself, but the teaching technology using the online tool. And how to motivate, encourage your learners is a very big know how. So we sent 10 people to learn this. I think in Vietnam, only OCD has 10 MOT, Master Online Teacher Certificate,  developed in Vietnam.

The online course, and we sold it and we make the new OMT company to embrace that product. 2012 was still early for Vietnamese to make the online management training. And although we found the Moodle, a platform for a lot of training, communicating, and this is a very good tool, platform for the trainers.

And we have achieved technology person who found Moodle open software to develop fully for OCD, the platform and we sell it to the companies and the first deal was with America Military Bank, MB. They recruit. More than 200 people in 60 branches all over the Vietnam, and they need to train them, test them, and then certify them after two months of internships so that they can make the decision on recruitment.

Everything was online, and it was successful. Yeah, they right away build such a system into their system. So they bought the whole system and the cost rate to transform into the internal system. With that experience, we believe that we would not sidetrack with the market. Just the market is too early to pay.

They don't see the value yet. Until 2020, when everyone say, “You need to remotely work.” And then everyone just accept it as a normal life and people start to ask, give me a technology. So they just could use the Zoom. That's all. They don't have LMS. They don't have the learning management system. So I introduce again Moodle 4.0 to those who are making the training and they are so happy. 

I'm talking about the resilience coming from forecasting, but also about the strong decision at the moment. So, for example, you are buying something from Illinois, right? Sending a lot of people to learn this. Just everything is so new, Dr. Ramesh.

Sometimes we think we are abnormal when we are very much motivated about something. Finding the value of this.  It's only us saying about this, not so many people talking about this. Many people were thinking we are so crazy. 

Sometimes we feel we are crazy. So I think you really touched on a great example here in discussing crisis resilience.

Dr. Ramesh Ramachandra 

Number one is you pointed to your generation of people who grew up in hardship because it was forced war. It's like you are trained to independently look for solutions. And you were able to take that way of thinking through all areas of your life, whether it was later on being on scholarship in Ukraine, studying with the limited funds to make how you lived and save a fun and creative way of enjoying even that hardship of having to save money.

The second piece that you talked about, which is actually very critical for entrepreneurs as well, is the ability to do. Proper risk forecasting, because risk forecasting requires you to be here about what are the mega trends that are happening in the world. And it's not about just simply looking at what I have done and extrapolated.

What's really going to come. So when in 2010, your company decided to go into LMS, which was very new. And there was even no market demand and people are saying like, you're crazy to spend so much of money to do this. And it may have been true for the first few years because you didn't have the customer demand.

But then when COVID happened and everyone had to go online, you could see that decision you took then was actually the correct thing. So then the question is, As an entrepreneur who has made that early move, but the demand is not a match. How do you keep sustaining your belief in what you think is going to happen in the future?

Nguyen Thi Nam Phuong

Yeah, we in Vietnamese usually say you have to get the short money to nurture your long dream. Means that you need to survive first before talking about your future. So usually when we are developing a new product and service. And so we don't have the money yet. Then we are focusing another team on getting the money that we need to survive sometime with the fresh money on what we are not loving to do it.

For example, currently training. I don't love to do long training because sometimes I feel I'm so distracted. But anyway, we need to sign the training contracts to get quick money so that we can make long dream. So that's 

a very valuable advice as well, because there's a time in entrepreneurship with a lot of venture funding being available, that many people thought that they don't need to focus on providing a service which can give them revenue or income and to just wait to raise fund from angel investors or VCs. And then that created a dependency for raising funds. And so many businesses, which may have had great ideas, never saw the light of the day because they never got to raise the funds. And in especially today's market, it's near impossible to raise funds.

So then how do you actually make sure you survive for yourself? And what you've actually shared is as an entrepreneur who starts a business, you want to keep looking at how you can generate the income with activities that you can provide to your customers with value. Even though It may not be what you personally may want to do, and you may be looking at something in the future, but you know that the demand is not there yet.

So you're toggling the short term and the long term. 

Yeah. Actually, we are overloaded with financial problems and professional problems all the time when we are meeting the crisis. So, 2010, and then 2018, yeah, 2012, 18, and then currently. We are meeting the three difficult moments in our company, how we depreciate our efforts and money before  2015.

We had a very good network with the governmental aides, Swiss aides or German aides. They usually have their support for developing something. And of course, when you are getting such money, You need pitching the project and showing how you meet their objective. For example, we bought something from Illinois because the Swiss government supporting entrepreneurs applying new technology.

All right. So we need to very carefully scan their objective, their requirements and everything. So that. We can build a project that meet all the requirements and present to them. This is not easy for all the companies, but because all the governmental aides are very difficult to get, and they are under very strict conditions.

But I think Ha was excellent person in making this happen. We want the fund for 4  million US dollars. Wow. Yeah. To manage a big project. In Vietnam, we hired about 20 international consultants to come to Vietnam to change the Decree 17. So people know in Vietnamese, Decree 17 is about the land law. So because of the land law, you cannot make a clearance for the sites for the constructions.

So we don't have roads, we don't have the big construction site because of the law, but also because of the governmental project management. So we build up the capacity for that and change the law by hiring the consultants to Vietnam and to manage the whole project for millions US dollars. On the first day of OCD, uh, 2004, so I myself interviewed and recruited people online like that in 2003.

We just have Skype to interview people. Yeah. And I got eight excellent consultants from Australia, from New Zealand, from many Europe countries to Vietnam and manage them very nicely to work together. So I'm so happy because I was. 36 when I managed the project and the consultant, all are 40, 40 something, 50, even in Vietnam, someone is 60.

So we finished the project. We got the money and the country has all these highways and the big construction site in Hanoi around Hanoi. That was our success at the first time, but I was talking about how we get the grants, the money. From different organizations. You need to meet the criteria, and you really meet it by doing it, not just cheat them.

Yes. A lot of people just make it appear to meet, but we meet it really. Correct, yeah.

Dr. Ramesh Ramachandra 

So what you're saying is that you can actually find different sources of income. And in this particular case, you looked at the aid agency as a source of business, but to be able to work successfully with these international organizations, you have to bring your professionalism and you have to create value because if you don't, then you can get the money now and the next time you're not going to get the chance, right?

So you have to have that commitment to delivering value and exceeding on that. And then of course it was a meaningful project because it actually made a big difference to Vietnam and its society. That's really great because as an entrepreneur, we have to be looking at different opportunities. It may not show up in the way we imagined.

But if we are committed that we want to build a company which is sustainable, we're going to take all these parallel paths. You need to deliver in a professional way what you promised. Then you can work with one sponsor, then you can have the next sponsor because of what you have done in the past. Correct. So that's the word of mouth that continues. 

If you had to give advice to someone who is young and wanting to become an entrepreneur, what is your advice? 

Dr. Ramesh Ramachandra 

Some entrepreneurs don't have the internal resources. If you are delivering some products and service, you need to be very proficient in your work, the product and service.

You love it. You make it valuable. You make it with your confidence so that You can be very proud of what you are doing. Then you are selling. Sometimes you have ideas and you team up with somebody who are very proficient in their work. So entrepreneurs is about money thirsty. You need to have the inside resources, the values of your product.

Money comes to you because you have the value, not because you get the money. And you think of doing some value on the base of that money, right? 

Dr. Ramesh Ramachandra 

Correct. Now I want to move to the next topic and it's about spirituality. What is spirituality for you and where are you in that journey? 

Nguyen Thi Nam Phuong

Actually, my life is very complicated and I'm very unique case of not following any principle of life that people usually love. For example, when you have a big problem, you seek somebody to help you.

Or when you are sick, you just sit down, take uh, pills and cure yourself, right? When you are tired, you just lie down and sleep to recover. I'm not doing the same thing. I'm crazy person. Maybe I'm following my father's example. When I'm feeling tired, I'm seeking something to do to get over the body. I always need something active.

For example, when I cannot sleep, then I switch on music. Listen to it so that I can sleep. Usually I listen to it half an hour before I can come in to sleep. And my husband says, “Oh, why you switch on everything around you?” I love dancing. I was learning ballet for nine years. And until now, I love doing ballets and watching ballet.

So for me, when I'm very tired, I will do such a thing. I love sports. I can play very well tennis, ping pong, and swim. Then when I find that, oh, so tired, so stressed, I'm in a very bad condition. Okay, I go to swim. I go to play tennis and ping pong and the thing. just to occupy my head. I need to free my head from the bad thinking.

Even when I'm sleeping, I can dream of being swimming, being dancing. I love music. I love dancing. And that is the freedom for me during the time of stress. And people ask, Nam Phuong, why you have so much energy? I say maybe because I am always getting energy from those I'm talking to. I'm talking to Dr. Ramesh, and I have energy for the next meeting. Always, I feel some taking in. When I meet somebody, look at their eyes. Even when I'm talking to somebody, but I'm talking to myself. We have arguing something, very negative thing. I have another motivation for doing better after the arguing. For me, nothing is the end of the world.

The best thing is the learning points for me to start a new thing. 

Dr. Ramesh Ramachandra 

So for you, spirituality is really about being consistent in your day to day actions with your heart and your head, the alignment, right? And it is really being in action physically and mentally. When you're doing that, you are here in the present with people connected to yourself.

So that's really beautifully said, thank you. And do you think it is possible for us to live a simple life today? And what's a simple life for you? 

Nguyen Thi Nam Phuong

For me, I'm living the simple life, easy, understood person because everything I just speak out. So I think I'm a simple person because people can look at my eyes, look at my reaction to understand me.

Dr. Ramesh Ramachandra 

Yes. That's a simple life. Very good. Nothing hidden. Everything is there. And it's consistent with who you are, what you say, how you think. Wonderful. So you make it simple for others too, to be with you.  Okay, so if you had to describe thriving, what three words would you use to describe thriving? 

Nguyen Thi Nam Phuong

Thriving is just the motivation to do something better and better, and you really take action for that.

To me, thriving is in your action. Not only say, “Oh, I like to do it”, but I will find time to do it. Not yet, because I'm a person of action. So usually, I love it, then I do it. If I'm not doing it, It means that I love to do other things at that time. 

That's right. 

Yeah. And telling the truth to ourselves about that.

For my life, I see that I am loving to do a lot of things, trying a lot,  not yet there for my destination that I want. 

Dr. Ramesh Ramachandra 

Do you have a picture in your mind about that destination? 

Nguyen Thi Nam Phuong

I think one day I will have a big book of the journey our team have gone through the 30 years, we are the combination of four generation from ‘60s to 2000, although we are so different from age and backgrounds, we have the same thing of doing everything with heart and head of trying to do it with the real motivation.

We love the work. We love each other. We admire somebody in our team so that we can support and work with them together. We are the real role model is the top people, Khanh Ha and me, and we are kind to our employees. We take care of them. We're communicating during the work, just the work. But if they have the personal problems, We are communicating personally, yeah, and we are helping personally, and we are devoting our efforts to help them.

So that's why they feel that they have the colleagues, they have everything, and they have siblings in the company. So we have a lot of resilience. We are resilient enough to overcome the three crises, and I hope that We might become better than five years ago after 2024, I love dancing and I play pianos and guitar, but nowadays I don't play very well.

So maybe when I fully retired, I come back and learn to play it very well and sing every day and dance every day for my family.  

Dr. Ramesh Ramachandra

Wow. I got that. 

Nguyen Thi Nam Phuong

I have a lot of students. A lot of people call me the teacher and they require probably a lot in the human resource associations. They also ordered me a lot. So maybe I don't have enough time to play pianos and guitars, but also come to the discussions and transfer my knowledge and skills to them until the last day of my life. 

Dr. Ramesh Ramachandra 

So write a book, go back and reconnect to your passion, dancing, piano, guitar, and keep mentoring the next generation of people in the HR association and community so that you can transfer your skills to stay connected with the community, to empower them.

Yeah. Yes. 

Thank you for sharing that. I've got three more small questions to ask you. What's your favorite book? 

Nguyen Thi Nam Phuong

I love the Seven Habits. Nowadays, I love my father's book. He writes a lot about the wartime of, and I learn a lot. I think not only Seven Habits. There are a lot of habits.  Surviving people from the work and from the economic hard time. Yeah. Very interesting. 

Dr. Ramesh Ramachandra 

Wow. Is it in English? 

Nguyen Thi Nam Phuong

No, in Vietnamese. He's writing a lot and because he's old, he's 90 already. So he just thinking of something that he write down like facts and figures, bullet points. 

Dr. Ramesh Ramachandra 

Okay. Good. And if you can have dinner with anyone, who will it be? 

Nguyen Thi Nam Phuong

It should be one of the two person that I always talk to when I'm feeling stressed, my friends, they're not the mentors or any other person who helped me in leading the company.

They just the person who is listening to me and don't judge me.  And that's a gift to have that. I'm happy that I have those people with me. 

Dr. Ramesh Ramachandra

Yeah. Yeah. The two best friends. Yeah, I got it. If you could have any superpower, what would it be? 

Nguyen Thi Nam Phuong

For me, you can influence somebody with your heart and head. So superpower comes from that.

Give a solution, you give an advice. And, uh, it's really either from your knowledge or from your heart. Right.  

Dr. Ramesh Ramachandra

That's right, that's right. And lastly, what's the best advice you have ever received? 

Nguyen Thi Nam Phuong

Best advice I think was from my friends and also my colleagues. Yeah, they say that I'm the best person of doing consulting work, but I'm very bad at it.

Counting numbers, so I'd better avoid doing this to give the image of lead consultant. 

Dr. Ramesh Ramachandra

That's not true. I've seen you go through complex numbers and you made it really simple and easy for me to understand. Well, Ms. Nam Fung, we've come to the end of our very interesting, lively conversation. I've enjoyed it.

I've learned so much about you and I really get a sense of why you are the way you are and who you are. I'm privileged to have met you and thank you for being in this podcast.  

Nguyen Thi Nam Phuong

Thank you very much, Dr. Ramesh, for inviting me to such an interesting conversation.