070: Create Memorable Experiences that Reel in Your Audience with Kenny Nguyen CEO and Founder of Big Fish Presentations & Three Sixty Eight

Our core standards are purpose, process, focus and measure. We do every project with those four different standards, and its so important that you identify your customer standards when you deliver projects or when you build a company.

#00:00:45-6# Neil : Hello its Neil Ball here, thank you so much for joining me today on the entrepreneur way. The entrepreneur way is about the entrepreneur’s journey, the vision, the mind-set, the commitment, the sacrifice, failures and successes. I am so excited to bring you our special guest today, Kenny Nguyen. But before I introduce you to him, I have a quote for you, Courtney Cox said, ‘the questions I am asking myself are what makes me happy? Where do I want to be? What will make me happy at 50? 60? and 70?’ The entrepreneur way asks the questions, so we all get the insight, inspiration and ideas to apply in our businesses. Kenny welcome to the show, are you ready to share your version of the entrepreneur way with us?

#00:01:35-7# Kenny Nguyen CEO and Founder of Big Fish Presentations & Three Sixty Eight : Yes sure.

#00:01:37-6# Neil : Thank you Kenny. Kenny Nguyen is the CEO and founder of Big Fish Presentations. A company whose mantra is turning presentations in to experiences. He and his team have helped Fortune 100 companies to start-ups better present. He is a co-author of the book The Big Fish Experience, create memorable presentations that reel in your audience. Kenny, can you provide us with some more insight in to your business and personal life, to allow us to get to know more about what you do, and who you are?

#00:02:13-5# Kenny Nguyen CEO and Founder of Big Fish Presentations & Three Sixty Eight : Yes sure, so what I do is on paper, we do presentations .. we train presenters, with video production we also help .. conferences, but really what we do at Big Fish Presentations is we turn presentations in to experiences. And what that really means is that content, design, delivery, everything’s in sync, we find that central message and we can help people really hone it down, I mean Neil, you and I talked earlier before the interview that we see so many different things, so many different presenters out there, that its hard to see what’s the good ones, but when you do see the good ones, you are just completely shocked. Its like ‘wow, that’s an amazing presentation.’ And the challenges, why can’t they all be great? And that is what we try to combat is that how do we rid the world of boring presentations? That’s what our company lives for and our mission is we want to rid the world of boring presentations, and I am so glad to be here, because hopefully after this interview man, some people would be inspired by that mission help us out.

#00:03:11-6# Neil : Mmm hmm, Kenny can you tell us the story of how you actually got in to your business because I have read it in your book and it is quite an interesting tale isn’t it I think?

#00:03:20-5# Kenny Nguyen CEO and Founder of Big Fish Presentations & Three Sixty Eight : Its a sad tale because no one should ever go through those kind of brutal experiences with presentations, but five years ago I was sat there at a really boring presentation while a student actually at Louisiana State University, and a Fortune 500 executive came up and gave a speech, I will never forget it Neil, the guy came up and gave a speech and his PowerPoint had 200 slides, with nothing but texts and the guy ran off every single slide, and you might think I am exaggerating, I kid you not, it might have actually been more than 200. I remember that it was stated for an hour, it ended up being three hours of just getting brutalised. And I felt like as I sat through that, just mental agony, I just thought you know what if there was a company that could really help guys like this out, not only become like a great presenter but also help this on their presentations. Right after we launched, we got a company called raising canes, one of the fast growing chicken finger restaurants in the United States right now, and the second client became the largest privately owned company in Louisiana. Blue Cross Blue Shield, Louisiana, and it just showed me that ‘oh wow, people actually of all sizes need help with their presentations’ there’s a market for this.

#00:04:32-4# Neil : Mmm hmm yeh I mean yeh you talked about that presentation where you had 200 slides and somebody reading the slides and then obviously at the other end of the scale you have got someone like Steve Jobs who used to be very good at doing presentations. What’s the thing that makes the difference? Obviously the lack of 200 slides and not reading them is obvious but why was Steve Jobs so good at doing presentations?

#00:04:57-5# Kenny Nguyen CEO and Founder of Big Fish Presentations & Three Sixty Eight : So I think he was good at doing three things. One. He was a phenomenal story teller. Two. He is very good at making complex things simple and easy to understand. While his products are like great advances to technology, he makes even the common marketer understand it. Or even the common consumer understand it, why does it make his life so good? When I think of Steve Jobs, I think of someone that does not show like not only the steak but also the sizzle. He gives them both. And that’s really really, really rare, like I love that and finally, three. what I think that he was also so great at, delivery, I mean he knows when to pause, when to up his tone, lower his tone, his body language is very powerful, he just is excellent at delivering simplicity, stories through his body language, his tone and his content.

#00:05:49-1# Neil : Mmm so your book, I am looking at your book now, and in your book you have got quite sort of clear structure in there of how to create a presentation, which is obviously more than just creating a slide show and standing there and reading the slides out, can you just talk us through the basics of what you are actually, what the frame of your book is about?

#00:06:10-3# Kenny Nguyen CEO and Founder of Big Fish Presentations & Three Sixty Eight : Yeh so the framework of the book about is actually our presentation process at Big Fish, we take every client through this process and its a three-step process, its simplistic or engaging contents, simplistic design and engaging delivery or powerful delivery I like to say. Because while everything is engaging, you can’t have content that’s not engaging, you have to get the audience to understand it. You can’t have design that’s complicated, make it simple, I like to say the KISS principle, Keep It Simple Stupid. And when it comes to delivery, of course its engaging but powerful. Powerful is when you think of tone, body language and content together or what you say. But that’s the three ways the book is segmented out, and it all combines so its constant design and delivery = experience.

#00:06:55-4# Neil : And the book is born out of your real world experience of doing this for other people, which is obviously a good thing because experiential writing is much better than having something where someone is theorising about how to do it, so I think that’s a great thing so it looks like you have got a great book here, Kenny, so can you just tell us what you enjoy most about what you do?

#00:07:20-3# Kenny Nguyen CEO and Founder of Big Fish Presentations & Three Sixty Eight : The one thing I enjoy the most of what I do is I want to get to work with start-ups, I love working with start-ups and helping them honestly just come up with a message and get their investment money, I like things that have high stakes in them, I am not a gambler or, I am more a risk taker but I do like people when I come in and say ‘let me help you get this investment or let me kind of make this presentation kind of a big difference in your company’ because its one thing to say ‘let me just re-create this marketing day.’ There is something like a presentation, we work with Ted for example, they have a great message and they want us to help like nail it down. I love doing that because those kind of platforms, I really think we can make a difference on.

#00:07:58-3# Neil : Mmm I think if you can deliver a good quality presentation, it can obviously be the difference between getting persuading somebody or getting somebody to actually see what you are saying and want to buy in to it and not, so its a very powerful thing isn’t it?

#00:08:15-9# Kenny Nguyen CEO and Founder of Big Fish Presentations & Three Sixty Eight : Yes it is, its a very powerful thing, because the thing is with presentations, like any presenter, they really hold a great key to persuade an audience, that’s like that’s what it is, its an argument. Its like, at the end of the day, you are trying to argue for your point or for the .. give you money, or your cause like its your moment, and I think everyone should be able to own that moment.

#00:08:38-1# Neil : Yeh one of the things that you talked about earlier is about using stories and things that I think we talked about that before. Having stories in a presentation is quite a good idea as well isn’t it?

#00:08:45-9# Kenny Nguyen CEO and Founder of Big Fish Presentations & Three Sixty Eight : Yeh very good, in fact I think stories is one of the most powerful ways to open a presentation.

#00:08:54-7# Neil : Mmm yeh because it makes it memorable. So what is it that drives you Kenny?

#00:08:58-5# Kenny Nguyen CEO and Founder of Big Fish Presentations & Three Sixty Eight : What drives me the most, and my personal why is that I love helping people that don’t have a voice create that voice. Whether its visually or vocally, or just through online digital campaigns like I love, love, love Neil helping people find that voice or brands.

#00:09:19-0# Neil : Yeh and have you got any sort of examples of how you have done that?

#00:09:26-2# Kenny Nguyen CEO and Founder of Big Fish Presentations & Three Sixty Eight : Yes man, I am a lot like for example with Ted, we work here I will give you a better example, raising canes. Raising canes is our first client, and it is actually one of our favourite clients because they let us be creative and they help us simplify the complex. What I mean by that is they recently had a huge conference to celebrate their 20th anniversary. And at this they were going to reveal a huge plan where they were planning to go, this is a huge deal, they were planning to go 1.5 billion dollars within the next five years. Now the crazy part about that, it took them 20 years, to this year to even get to half a billion dollars. They are going to triple what they did in 20 years in five years, and they were going to tell their employees that and their managers and their leadership that. Now that’s a really tall order, how do you deliver that at an event? And make it seem like very realistic? And so we actually worked with the executives on the content, I had to deliver it in a very emotional way, but also in a very logical way to actually make it sound like you know this is something that is going to be very exciting for the company. We are not going to like burn you out, this is something that’s going to be enriching for everybody. We created like the whole entire like scene from the stage to the actual messaging to coaching the presenters in the videos; we crafted the whole entire show. And that is one thing I loved doing, that drives me is when I can create a show experience like that, I think like the Disney aspect, Disney makes you feel like so many emotions when you go in Disney world. And I think that when we do these presentation shows, is that we want to kind of craft that kind of show as well. So we want to take you on this emotional experience, that’s what really drives me is taking something that is taking something that is really like complex, and to something that is very emotional, happy, scary and making the audience feel because that’s what I feel like the best pictures are, they make you feel.

#00:11:13-3# Neil : One word you keep saying there is experience, I think that is really interesting because I think that a lot of people that do presentations see it as a presentation, and you have really taken this to a next level and talked about an experience, so often when people do those presentations, they become a by-product, a bad experience, and with the right planning, you can create a presentation that becomes a good experience and something that people becomes memorable to people, so that’s really what the essence of what this books about, isn’t it? I think its creating experience.

#00:11:44-3# Kenny Nguyen CEO and Founder of Big Fish Presentations & Three Sixty Eight : It really is, and I am glad you noticed that because my guys actually joke about it around the office, how many times I say the word experience, I say it a lot Neil. But that’s really what we do man, we sell experiences.

#00:11:59-6# Neil : Yeh and how do you relax when you are not working in your business?

#00:12:03-3# Kenny Nguyen CEO and Founder of Big Fish Presentations & Three Sixty Eight : I cook a lot Neil, I trained four years to be a cook, and I still love doing it, actually you go to YouTube right now, and go to YouTube.com/you’vegotmeal. You can actually check out some of the dishes I have been cooking, besides from that I love travelling man, its good to explore the world and learn, I learned so much, do different cultures, I feel like its made me a better person, a business person as well.

#00:12:27-8# Neil : So I hope your cooking is well-presented and becomes a great experience then when people eat it, is that the case? #00:1

#00:12:32-1# Kenny Nguyen CEO and Founder of Big Fish Presentations & Three Sixty Eight : Yeh when I see cooking man, like actually, believe it or not Neil, you can actually see some themes throughout the book, actually mentioned in the book that I actually trained in culinary arts. Its like content and its like great ingredients, you have to have great content, design, its like the great presentation, delivery is all about the execution of the dish, any experience is going to come to the presentation experiences, its all about all those things coming together. So great meals man are very much like great presentations.

#00:13:03-0# Neil : And do you have any entrepreneurial role models?

#00:13:06-3# Kenny Nguyen CEO and Founder of Big Fish Presentations & Three Sixty Eight : Besides the obvious Steve Jobs I really really admire, in fact one of the people I admire you just had on your show, Philip from Nebia, I love that, I love what he is doing. I think that hes doing an incredible thing that how he is taking on a challenge and has gotton so many people behind him, to change the way how people see a simple thing like showering man, how it can save money. And not only that, how it can make a bigger difference and save water for people man. I mean like you cannot get a bigger social mission than that and feel good at it at the same time. Like those are the types of entrepreneurs that I really admire, are the ones that build social missions in to their businesses. My father is one too.

#00:13:46-2# Neil : I think what Phil is doing is absolutely awesome actually because he has taken something that is so fundamental and something that has not really changed an awful lot for so long and sort of come up with a new way of creating a shower experience. So its amazing I think, so you mention your dad there, what were you going to say there?

#00:14:06-9# Kenny Nguyen CEO and Founder of Big Fish Presentations & Three Sixty Eight : Oh so my dad is definitely my biggest entrepreneur hero, he is has been there from the get go, since I was a young child. Like pushing me to be an entrepreneur and own my own business, control my destiny, and I can’t tell you enough how much that made an impact on me is that you know he is the one that told me to drop out of college, even though he is the guy that told me to go to college in the first place, but when he saw like how I was doing, because I ran this company while I was in college, and I dropped out and he was the one that said, ‘son you should really drop out because you are going to do this anyway when you grow older. Like why not just do it now?’ and absolutely right.

#00:14:40-4# Neil : Kenny can we just talk about the time before you were an entrepreneur, I mean you have just talked about it a little bit there, so you have sort of given us a nice segue in to that. What difficulties did you have to overcome when you started your business?

#00:14:53-4# Kenny Nguyen CEO and Founder of Big Fish Presentations & Three Sixty Eight : Oh man Neil, one of the things we had to start was not having any money. Because we was bootstrapped and we had to recruit the right talent. Like we had to make sure like the thing is like a lot of entrepreneurs, you don’t have money, and you need to recruit talent and you don’t have any funding. Not only money like investment, funding but also like you do not have another job. You have got to really sell the mission man and find the right people and the right place, whether you get equity. My first couple of hires did not get equity, which is the like my business partner today, Gus, me and him both share equal duties of the company. Share equal equity and its great, but that’s definitely challenges that we had in the beginning was hiring. Like finding the right people to make sure this company gets the right foot forward, can’t do it by yourself. The next thing is focus, as an entrepreneur in the beginning, you have so many different opportunities, I get more opportunities today than I did back then, and its just about saying no and sticking your nose in to the right ones. But also, the thing is, I view it this way Neil, every year I get about 20 good opportunities to take the future in the business. Out of those, my job is to figure out the five. And from those five, I have to figure out which three to focus on, and usually out of the three, one of them is the right one. And the other two are duds and I move on, and its like a quarterback and then a fell. You have to have a short term memory when it comes to bad decisions, you move on, but you learn. And that’s the way I have learned it, is that you have just got to wade through that mess.

#00:16:19-4# Neil : Yeh

#00:16:19-4# Kenny Nguyen CEO and Founder of Big Fish Presentations & Three Sixty Eight : And once you go through that mess, you find the right decisions. You just keep on moving; just never lose your focus.

#00:16:29-1# Neil : And you talked about hiring there and the difficulties of hiring. This has come up before, I had somebody on recently who was setting up a business, and he would not tell anybody that he hired what the business was about. And he had to sell the vision somehow and it was a guy called Jonathan Pirelli, who has got this nutrition bottle and so how did you sell the vision to people? when you had difficulties paying them presumably at the beginning? so what was it that made them get on board with you?

#00:17:04-3# Kenny Nguyen CEO and Founder of Big Fish Presentations & Three Sixty Eight : So really what made them get on board with me is it was a unique mission like I pushed them, you know think about this, you see boring presentations every day, but how would you actually like to make a dent? And actually like I just quote Steve Jobs, how do you make a dent in the universe? And a way where we can actually make a dent and .. the .. boring presentations. And usually the biggest selling point was ‘holy crap that’s a huge problem, boring presentations’ like, if someone is really boring in a presentation, and does not adequately sell the value proposition, can you imagine how many deals that could have been made with good products and the people that present it, or just great presenters. Like it can be a very different world, and for good or bad, but at the same time there is potential here, and so people that came on board and began saw that potential, and thought wow this is something that can actually make a calling for, it is not just some designing, I am helping people actually present something and putting it all online. And that’s a very big calling card, even today.

#00:17:59-9# Neil : Yeh so really take the zooming out even further on this, this is really about communication skills isn’t it? With your book, because obviously the things that are in your book you can apply, apply to even recruiting people, ultimately because you are selling the vision to those people. So its not just about standing in front, in an auditorium full of people, it can be a presentation in front of a small number of people or one person and selling the dream.

#00:18:30-2# Kenny Nguyen CEO and Founder of Big Fish Presentations & Three Sixty Eight : Yeh agreed.

#00:18:30-2# Neil : Did you have any doubts that delayed you starting your business?

#00:18:36-4# Kenny Nguyen CEO and Founder of Big Fish Presentations & Three Sixty Eight : Honestly no, I did not have any doubts, the thing is I just jumped in to it and thought ‘you know what let’s do this, and if I fail I fail, but I will never be out.’ If you lose, don’t lose the lessons, one of my favourite quotes. Next to be so good they can’t ignore you and I never ever doubted that this was going to fail and the thing is that this scared me. But I just knew, as long as I kept my focus something was going to happen.

#00:19:05-0# Neil : What mistakes did you make that slowed your journey?

#00:19:09-6# Kenny Nguyen CEO and Founder of Big Fish Presentations & Three Sixty Eight : I actually made a bad hire in the beginning that slowed it down, I thought like hire your friends was a good idea, it was not, that did not turn out well. I also made the mistake of hiring a bunch of college students, in the beginning who are still here today, they are great. But the thing is they have actually slowed down the company because we could not take as much work on. But the thing is those guys are like you know it was the best thing I ever made because in the beginning while I was slow, today we are killing it together. That’s the thing is you know, you give or take when you don’t have enough money, you hire college students, you invest a lot of time in college students, hopefully they stay, if they don’t so be it. You know, you are still good friends with them, but a lot of the ones did stay and I am so thankful they did because I will ride or die with those guys. You know Phil Corey, those guys in the office right now, Rob like, the guys that had been there for many, many years, you know I can’t thank them enough and Gus my business partner, so those are some of the mistakes I made in the beginning. But those mistakes turn out to be victories in the long run, looking back at it though Neil, if I were to change things, you know I don’t know if I would hire out of college, or I do not know if I would honestly just try to focus on one thing, just what the presentation is on. I would look at the bigger picture, and say while we are fixing just presentations, how do we teach these people how to fish?

#00:20:20-4# Kenny Nguyen CEO and Founder of Big Fish Presentations & Three Sixty Eight : Like you actually train to be better presenters, we did not do that until about year two, and we missed a huge revenue stream for that.

#00:20:30-5# Neil : Yeh, you talked about hiring friends there, would you not do that again then?

#00:20:37-4# Kenny Nguyen CEO and Founder of Big Fish Presentations & Three Sixty Eight : You know that’s an iffy question, of course I want to trust people I have, but you know the right friends I do hire, the thing that I will say is this, is that I want to make sure that friend, completes me in what I do not have in the business sense. Like I am not the world’s best manager, but I am a better visionary and strategist, and so I can find something that compliments me as a manager like a CFO role, and there are my personal weaknesses, like that is something that I really like, and that is what my business partner Gus likes, like we have been best friends for more than ten years and the thing is that is really great for me because I know I can trust them, and it really comes down to trust and faith, that they can do things that you cannot.

#00:21:13-2# Neil : And what are some of the things that you did before you started your business that would be helpful tips to some of the listeners who have not yet taken the first step on the entrepreneur’s way?

#00:21:22-7# Kenny Nguyen CEO and Founder of Big Fish Presentations & Three Sixty Eight : You know honestly, I would you hear like a lot of people say just create a business plan, and just get going, to me it is like the first step is just getting that down in your mind, and just going with it, like everyone will have doubts, its just jumping, like with me, I guess you could say like I don’t know whether to doubt or was it a scare but I did say, what if this could fail? But I thought at the end of the day like, am I going to be kicking myself 40 years from now and saying ‘I did not do this?’ I would never want to have that feeling, so its all about assessing your doubts and just jumping. Like, I cannot tell you enough Neil, if you do not jump, you will never find out if you are going to fall or not.

#00:22:04-1# Neil : Yeh I totally agree with you, there is nothing worse than sitting there thinking ‘what if?’

#00:22:08-7# Kenny Nguyen CEO and Founder of Big Fish Presentations & Three Sixty Eight : Yeh its a horrible feeling man.

#00:22:10-5# Neil : Yeh absolutely, Kenny can we just talk about the entrepreneurial journey a little bit here now? Do you think culture is important from the beginning in a business?

#00:22:23-4# Kenny Nguyen CEO and Founder of Big Fish Presentations & Three Sixty Eight : Like one thing of culture, I think culture might be the most important thing, honestly Neil because culture is what defines your personality, your call your company like the thing is you can have a great business, but you do not have a great culture, how are you going to recruit talent? One of the most important functions of your business, like culture is one of the most underrated but also, one of the most important things at a company so I am not building a great business, its about building a great business and culture. They come hand in hand.

#00:22:52-0# Neil : So do you think that is something that you should think about from the beginning then, because some people will let it evolve organically and then other people have the view that you should sort of sit there and engineer it to some extent. I just wondered where you think where you should go with that?

#00:23:08-9# Kenny Nguyen CEO and Founder of Big Fish Presentations & Three Sixty Eight : Yeh to me that like I think when it always comes to culture you got to get there from the beginning like, for the first three highest we will define your culture like make sure like do not hire people that are just like you. Hire people with different personalities, obviously same cultural values but at the same time different personalities, different interests, you can make yourself have a very different diverse cool culture, but so important to understanding that culture is really what makes you want to stay at the company. It really is like money is one thing but if you love what you do, and when the going gets tough, man like you want to stick around.

#00:23:48-4# Neil : Knowing what you know now, is there anything that if you had known it when you started out, would have helped you to short cut the learning curve?

#00:23:59-5# Kenny Nguyen CEO and Founder of Big Fish Presentations & Three Sixty Eight : One thing I would shorten my learning curve is to read more books. Yeh I did not read a lot when I first started the business, it was not until later parts at the last three years that I started reading more. I felt like I would have read more, made that time to read more, and that would also help me out. I wish I also would have hit the gym a little bit more in the beginning, because that would have helped me keep a clean fresh mind. Because the thing is, its like its so important to carry yourself because at the end of the day, you are the one that is producing your business, if you cannot take care of yourself man, like I do not know how you can take care of your business.

#00:24:31-6# Neil : How much does gut feeling influence your decisions in your business?

#00:24:35-6# Kenny Nguyen CEO and Founder of Big Fish Presentations & Three Sixty Eight : Everything man, like a lot of gut feeling stuff man. In fact, like for my Tedx talk, we were talking beforehand how he turned down Shark Tank. You know the reason why he turned them down, to even be on the show was my gut feeling just said no, and from there like I learned if you follow your gut feeling, there are a lot of chances there are no what ifs. So that’s why I say like you know, follow that gut, learn to develop that gut, look for the long term versus the short term. That’s how you can see a clear focus.

#00:25:05-6# Neil : What advice would you give to other business owners who may be struggling in business at this moment?

#00:25:16-5# Kenny Nguyen CEO and Founder of Big Fish Presentations & Three Sixty Eight : Honestly, its just trusting your people, like ask questions, don’t be a micro manager. I find the best way that we can grow a business, is to listen to the pains of our people that we pay too high to get their ideas. Why should we just make them do the work? Pay them and make them earn their ideas and let them contribute their ideas. I think that is like a common thing, is that we start with as an entrepreneur, you have this vision, but you are not always sometimes in the frontline, it is important to listen to your people, and that can really make a big difference to your company. Because our processes, our creative processes have been tweaked so much by our creative team, people that came on board to the company that had spoke up. I cannot thank them enough for what I do.

#00:25:58-2# Neil : Life is made of constant change, whether we like it or not, and many say the only constant in life is change. Kenny, how do you try to keep up with change?

#00:26:06-3# Kenny Nguyen CEO and Founder of Big Fish Presentations & Three Sixty Eight : When it comes to dealing with change, change is happening all the time, it is identifying the change as something that you want to jump on or off. Or at least monitor, and I say that, its a moral blanket statement but the way I see it is change happens all the time in our industry, people are always trying to like have new presentation tools, they are trying to create new ways to get good content, its identifying which one is the focus. Which one is the focus to your business model? And the thing is, I don’t want to change all the time, I like change, whether I am constantly changing, how will I keep up with the foundation? So the best way I keep up with change, is I say, ‘does this tune in with my focus?’ if it does not I move on. And there are so many things like change can do to our company, like for example, if we want to create a model where we do everything customise design, If we are creating a model where we are just shipping out templates, or we are using programmes such as Hykudec which is a great programme for presenters on the fly, but it might be tougher for the customised design. You know that is not a change that would be great for our business, it might be great for some companies but the companies we want to work with, that’s not the change that they need. You know, and so that’s how I identify changes, you know stick in focus.

#00:27:18-8# Neil : And what is your favourite book on entrepreneurialism, business, personal development, leadership or motivation? and can you tell us why you have chosen it?

#00:27:29-5# Kenny Nguyen CEO and Founder of Big Fish Presentations & Three Sixty Eight : I love, love, love the new book by, actually its not really new,you ever heard of ‘be our guest’ by Ted Kenny?

#00:27:36-5# Neil : No.

#00:27:36-5# Kenny Nguyen CEO and Founder of Big Fish Presentations & Three Sixty Eight : Its a really good book, its actually written by one of the he used to a big higher up at Disney, and what’s so cool about it, is what I learned throughout that book, he interviewed the Disney institute that’s what he did, and we learned a lot about customer service, and how do you create happiness in a company not only culturally wise, but also just overall when it comes to vast cultures and what I mean by that is this, is that this is a huge company, how do you create a culture that is applicable to all the different parts. To all the different departments, its simply very tough because you have so many different employees in different walks of life, and so what he identified to be our guest, was how do you create a great customer service experience that ties back to your culture? I recommend any entrepreneur read that because its helped us really identify what’s our core standards. Its amazing, our core standards are purpose, process, focus and measure. We do every project with those four different standards, and its so important that you identify your customer standards when you deliver projects or when you build a company, so be our guest by Ted Kenny is one I definitely recommend.

#00:28:46-2# Neil : Yeh, you talked about core standards there and that’s its interesting you mention that because I have come across that with other people, I have talked to and I have read about it as well. So the core standards, they are presumably something that everybody that works in your company knows about, would it be right in understanding that?

#00:29:00-6# Kenny Nguyen CEO and Founder of Big Fish Presentations & Three Sixty Eight : Yes.

#00:29:00-6# Neil : And what’s the benefit of them knowing what they are?

#00:29:09-7# Kenny Nguyen CEO and Founder of Big Fish Presentations & Three Sixty Eight : It starts with the first one actually, I said how it .. but focuses the first one, is that if they know exactly the core standards are, it never loses their focus. The don’t make decisions that don’t align with these cores here so focus, is that we operate in a team way, where there are different teams in the company, that take on certain projects. So small teams can take on big problems, purpose is that we never forget the why. We like to work backwards is that we always want to think of the end result first, before even starting to put something down to a page or to a line of code, we always think of the final end result, and that is so important is that we never lose the focus so it stems from that. Process is that the process allows us to be focused but following a process allows us to keep things consistent, but also very great for our client, we want a great consistent experience, and finally measure. We don’t make decisions or we don’t recommend things for our client, that we can’t measure, and the thing is we don’t just paint pretty pictures at our shop, we want to be able to find a way, where our clients can say ‘wow they did a great job, and this is how they did it and this is how they measured they do it. And so its very important to have those things, but it all ties back to focus.

#00:30:22-8# Neil : Everyone, when you have a busy life, listening to audio books is a great way to expand your knowledge in the time when you may be doing other things, such as driving or when you are at the gym. We have a special offer for you of a free audio book of your choosing, to choose your free audio book, go to www.freeaudiobookoffer.com. As long as you have not already signed up then you will qualify, Kenny what I would like to do now with you is speculate a little bit about the future and things, so what one thing would you do with your business if you knew that you could not fail?

#00:30:58-3# Kenny Nguyen CEO and Founder of Big Fish Presentations & Three Sixty Eight : You know if I could do one thing with my business, I would like to be the premier conference company in the world, where we can help produce conferences, and be a consultation company and just help people just develop their experiences, to .. its very tough because when you work a lot of presenters with different time lines, different time schedules, its simply not the easiest scale or business model, and so if I could not fail, I would love to be in that business where you know time is infinite and there are no repercussions if every presenter was great, when they go up there, but I know that is not a perfect world, but that is what I would love to be at a conference, production company, I just has great, great conferences and shows.

#00:31:41-9# Neil : Yeh you are the first person who has asked for infinite time but I will second you on that, I would like that. What skill if you were excellent at it, would help you the most to double your business?

#00:31:53-9# Kenny Nguyen CEO and Founder of Big Fish Presentations & Three Sixty Eight : Time management. I mean I think I am a pretty good time manager, but I feel like I can always be better, if I may manage my time most efficiently, and say focused and not be distracted. I feel like I will be a lot better of a business person. I am still working on it today, I say no a lot to different things come my way but you know I still can get distracted sometimes, its just learning how to better manage my time.

#00:32:18-1# Neil : In five years from now, if a well-known business publication was publishing an article on your business after talking to your customers and suppliers, what would you like it to say?

#00:32:29-5# Kenny Nguyen CEO and Founder of Big Fish Presentations & Three Sixty Eight : That we figured out how to become that production company that I talked about earlier, you see like, if I could not fail Neil, I still want to do it. Like that scares me right there, I have doubts about that but I still want to do it in five years so they can write and say ‘we did a great job at it.’ And I will be very proud of what we have become.

#00:32:50-1# Neil : We are now at the part of the show where you share three golden nuggets with us, so Kenny, what is your favourite quote, and how have you applied it?

#00:32:59-0# Kenny Nguyen CEO and Founder of Big Fish Presentations & Three Sixty Eight : One of my favourite quotes is actually a quote by Steve Martin, and I love that because its just basically Go out in the world and just do your best. Really just do your best, and if you are the best, people will notice you, and you will make a difference. The next one is, Don’t count the days, make the days count. Its basically don’t waste your day, make sure every day you have a purpose and you enjoy that purpose. I don’t like living in a world where, if I hated what I do, that’s why I am very blessed to do what I do. So you know don’t count the days, make the days count is one of my favourite ones. And finally, one of my all-time favourite quotes as well, is if you lose, don’t lose the lesson. I think failure is totally ok, and if you fall down, its perfectly ok to say what I take away from this and move on, because in two years, maybe that failure won’t define you anymore you will forget it. It won’t be something so big, see I just looked in the future, so those are the three ones I really, really love and I hope any business person can take that to heart.

#00:33:58-6# Neil : Yeh you have got some great quotes there. Do you have any favourite online resources that you can share with us?

#00:34:05-8# Kenny Nguyen CEO and Founder of Big Fish Presentations & Three Sixty Eight : I love productcon.com that actually helps keep me up with the what the latest tech trends are, that’s how I sold Nebia, actually for the first time, Stilbs company. Productcon.com read it, its like the online, how I get my news sometimes, and as weird as it sounds man, I love the Slack count as online resources I think its kind of an online programme, but it helps me keep up to date with my team, that’s an online tool that we use, like all the time.

#00:34:35-6# Neil : And that’s called what? The Slack?

#00:34:38-2# Kenny Nguyen CEO and Founder of Big Fish Presentations & Three Sixty Eight : Slack yeh, its by Stuart Butterfield, yep.

#00:34:39-7# Neil : And what is your best advice to other entrepreneurs?

#00:34:46-4# Kenny Nguyen CEO and Founder of Big Fish Presentations & Three Sixty Eight : Best advice, that’s a good one. Stay focused. That’s the best thing I can say is like if you have a mission, go after it. At the same time, be a capitalist too, you know help the world. Like make sure the idea that you have, can actually sustain you. Like really like, you need the money to make sure the company can be sustained and make a difference. And so I guess you can say, like Stay Focused, but be a capitalist. Ha be adaptable and change.

#00:35:14-6# Neil : Everyone if you did not manage to get a note of Kenny’s favourite resource, or his favourite books, then you can find the links on Kenny’s show notes page, just go to theentrepreneurway.com and search for Kenny or Kenny Nguyen in the search box. Kenny, is there anything else you would like to add about your business?

#00:35:35-8# Kenny Nguyen CEO and Founder of Big Fish Presentations & Three Sixty Eight : One thing that I would love to add is that we have, if you can identify your mission, in any company, just like we did in our .. boring presentations, I think that really helped rally the troops so if there is anything there, not only does it rally the troops, it rallies others to believe in us, and believe in our mission. I think any business person should find that, like what is your mission to the world? and how do you have the community, not only internally but externally support that? so thank you all for listening to what I had to say, I hope you all believe the same way I do, is that we can really really make a dent in the world when it comes to boring presentations. We all work together.

#00:36:11-4# Neil : Yeh I think you are totally right, I think that it is something that is sadly missing in the corporate world and it is something that they need to get a lot better in fact not just corporate world, businesses in general, I think everybody just needs to get better at presentation skills. So its really great that you have written a book that actually helps people, shows people how to do that. Yeh and I love it, Kenny, thank you for coming on the show, it really has been an honour having you on here, I being able to actually read your book and talk to you about what the concepts and your thinking behind your book and also sort of zooming out a little bit and finding out a little bit more about how you relate that in business, and how you think as an entrepreneur, its really been a great thing, so thank you very much.

#00:36:55-2# Kenny Nguyen CEO and Founder of Big Fish Presentations & Three Sixty Eight : Yeh no problem Neil, I love and enjoyed it man, you are very inspiring yourself, and I think great things come to those people who listen to this interview, I am very blessed to be in it.

#00:37:06-3# Neil : Thank you, you are welcome.