Week 4 – Binh An Nguyen

Introducing Binh An Nguyen

A note from Kerrie Phipps – I actually met Binh in Adelaide in 2012 at my Conversations With Entrepreneurs event. He inspired those around him and I was delighted to meet him. Imagine my delight when Dallas from Sydney recently nominated Binh and shared his skill in creating systems and building inspiring teams. Enjoy, and take notes! And share with others the valuable insights below!

Dallas says, “I have been privileged to know Binh Nguyen for a few years now. I got to know Binh due to sharing some common interests with online marketing. Binh takes his interest a step further with running a highly successful business that offers these services.

The more I have got to know Binh over this period of time, I have found him to have an extremely good insight about business and more specifically, the importance of systems in every aspect of the business.

On one particular occasion, Binh spent 1/2 a day with me discussing all thing important things that he has applied to his business to make it what it is today. It is rare that you hear small business owners talking things like company values, vision, integrity, community service and being a good corporate citizen.

Binh really gets what goes into running successful businesses and building successful teams… learning from him is always a wonderful experience.” – Dallas Kelso

In the last 5+ years, Binh An Nguyen has helped several multi-million dollar companies around the world sell millions of dollars worth of products online. His clients come from around the world, including 6 of the 7 states in Australia, the US, UK, New Zealand and Canada.

Binh is regularly invited to share his knowledge on stage at several business events around Australia, including the CEO institute, CPA Australia, and the Marketing and Communications Executives International.

Binh also has students from around the world who pay him a lumpy 4 figure sum to learn internet marketing from him. His students come from all over Australia and he also has students from the UK, USA, and Japan.

During his free time, Binh likes to play a friendly game of basketball with his friends, and take his partner to the beach for a stroll or coffee.

1. Describe a significant business challenge have you faced. How did you approach it? What did you learn?

My biggest challenge in business occurred before I even started the business…
When I decided to start my business, I was still studying Bachelor of Engineering at Adelaide University. My parents were the typical traditional Asian parents who believed that getting a good degree and a good job was the only way to move forward in life. I had to twice quit university to chase my dreams.
The first time I tried, my parents gave me a real big guilt trip, and my dad’s health at the time wasn’t too good either. This caused me to return to university just to make them feel happy and proud of me. Once my dad’s health recovered, I quit again, as I knew that university was not something I wanted to do. I was the sort of person who wanted to get out there and make a difference. Needless to say, my parents didn’t take it very well. My dad screamed at me, and I remember for that whole month, we barely spoke or looked at each other in the eye.
This also gave me the motivation to succeed in business. I wanted to prove to my parents that you don’t need a piece of paper that people label as a “degree” to succeed in life. I was determined to get my parents to see what I saw.
Funnily enough, my parents are now my biggest supporters. When they saw that I was winning the ANZ small business award, and that my picture was displayed on large bill boards and flags in the middle of the busy Port Road to promote the success of businesses in the local area, they realised that there was some substance in what I believed in.
What I learnt from this experience is to always pursue your passion. If others don’t believe in you, or try to drag you down to their comfort zone, just ignore these people and do it quietly and keep it to yourself. If you truly believe in something and are passionate about it, no one can stop you.
My parents had all the best intentions, but they fell victim to the poor traditional mindset of believing only in what they can see is feasible, based on what they and those around them have achieved. This is not their fault, and they meant all the best for me, but in the end, it would have been harmful had I given in and let them convince me to “play it safe”.

2. What are the most important things you’ve done to grow your business?

My business only really exploded once I decided to hire a team instead of trying to do everything myself. Sir Richard Branson says that if you want to build a successful company, hire people smarter than you, and then get out of their way. I agree with this, and really recommend those who have their own business to start thinking about how they can develop their own team to take off the work load off their shoulders. Even if it’s just delegating 1-2 hours a day, the habit of delegating tasks that you shouldn’t be doing will allow you to really focus on what you do best, and on the activities that yield the highest returns. There is an opportunity cost in trying to do everything yourself.

At a dinner event hosted by the Marketing and Communications Executives International.

I actually owe this lesson to a friend and mentor of mine, James Schramko. I was lucky enough to be able to spend a day with him one on one at his house in Sydney many years ago, and saw how he ran his business. It was from that trip that the true importance of people and systems in business really sunk into my head. As soon as I returned from that trip, I spent many months creating the right systems in my business and recruiting the right people. From then on, as they say, “the rest is history”…

3. What does success mean to you personally?

Success has a lot of different meanings to a different people. To me, success has nothing to do with the balance on my bank account or the material things I own (although both of those are pretty good and are by-products of being successful).
The real meaning of success, to me, is to be truly happy. It is being able to do what you enjoy and being proud of yourself and your achievements. When one achieves those things, I believe that person is truly successful.

4. What do you believe are the essential qualities or attributes of a successful person?

To be successful, I think you need to have a mission and a dream that you are truly passionate about and believe in; passionate enough that it will drive you into massive action. You need to devise a plan to reach your goals, and to follow that passion tirelessly; never giving up or letting any hurdles along the way stop you. Michael Jordan said “I’ve failed over and over and over again in life, and that is why I succeed.” I am also someone who failed my way to success.
Many people look at a successful person and only see them once they are already successful. What they don’t realise (or don’t get to see), is that that person usually has to go through a lot of sweat, tears and failures to get to where they are at now. My childhood hero, Michael Jordan missed more than 9000 shots in his career, lost almost 300 games, and was trusted to take the game-winning shot 26 times, and missed, yet he is considered as one of the greatest basketball legends that ever lived.
The other thing that I feel is very essential to success is to be able to understand that we live in a world of value. If you can focus on delivering as much value to as many people as possible, success will come. Money and wealth is just a by-product of great value exchange.
Once you’ve got those attributes and understanding, the way to fast track your success is to get mentors who have already been where you want to be. Also form a network of smart people around you as your mastermind group. This, I believe, is how to really speed up your journey to success. Always be learning and investing in yourself.

5. What is your approach to marketing and how did you (or are you) becoming known?

We are an online digital marketing agency specialising in SEO. Unlike many other companies in our space, who focus a lot on sales (you can often tell this because of their aggressive sales approach and because their sales team matches or exceeds their operations team), we have a different approach to marketing.
Like I mentioned above, I believe that wealth is a by-product of being able to add lots of value to another person’s life. This is why we focus on two things:

1. getting the best possible results for our clients and
2. exceeding customer service expectations.

Even though I work with many companies around the world developing different marketing channels for them daily, I still believe that the best form of advertising is word of mouth. We still run campaigns such as seo, ppc, and offline campaigns, but the majority of our resources is allocated to delivering the best possible results for our clients as their excitement in working with us forms the foundation of our marketing.
Similar to McDonald’s not being in the “fast food business”, but instead, they are in the real estate business, we also understand that we are not in really in the “digital marketing business”; we are actually in the people business. With that in mind, our marketing approach is to focus is on our 3 main groups of people: our clients, our team and our partners.

6. How does your business contribute to your community?

Many years ago, before Market Ease became as big as we are now, I decided that no matter what, I will be contributing back to the community. There was a time when business did not go so well, and I was struggling to pay the bills, but despite that, I still decided to continue sponsoring and supporting a dozen children with WorldVision. At the time, I chose to struggle financially than to cancel my sponsorships. I believe that when you give without taking, the world will, directly or indirectly, give back to you 10 folds.
Over time, I learnt that with charity organizations, a lot of your money doesn’t actually go to the children and their communities. This is because a lot of the money is used on staff wages, and other costs. Since then, I have flown to the Philippines on several occasions, and have decided to build a back office there. While on my trips, I learnt that the Philippines had a lot of wealthy people, but at the same time, there were also a lot of extremely financially disadvantaged people as well. It was then that I decided I would contribute to the communities in the Philippines and have 100% of my money go directly to the people in need.
Since then, my team of 30+ people and I have generously donated one day of our time every month to different charities in the Philippines. We do this on a monthly basis without fail, and this has been running for a couple of years now. We have spent time and donated food to homeless people living on the streets, the elderly who have no homes to live in, disadvantaged children and many others. The most memorable one of all is when I got my team over there to spend a day with the kids with cancer and gave them gifts and food and drinks. There was a photo of one beautiful little girl who was smiling and seemed very happy playing and dancing around with our team. I found out that she passed away the following month. It was a really good feeling to know that we have put a smile on this little girl’s face and made some of her last days an enjoyable one.

Name: Binh An Nguyen
Role: CEO
Business Name: Market Ease Business Promotions
Address: Suite 1402, 147 Pirie Street, Adelaide, SA, 5000
Phone: 1300 662990
Website: http://www.marketease.com.au
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/binhdownunder
Twitter: https://twitter.com/binhdownunder