How Two Rice Bowls and
Four Chopsticks Turned Into a
Billion-Dollar Business
When the United States left Vietnam in 1975, it left behind a nation wracked with inflation, corruption and an identity crisis. The country staggered through the 1980s as a socialist-capitalist country – it tried socialism first, then modified it with capitalism.
For the families that lived through the early post-American years in Vietnam, it was one crisis after another. Yet one family not only survived and thrived, it built one of the largest businesses in Southeast Asia from scratch.
“My father started out with nothing more than two rice bowls and four chopsticks,” says Phuong Uyen Tran in her new book Competing with Giants, published by Forbes.
The company grew so large that Coca Cola wanted to buy it for more than $2 billion.
“He persevered because he had tenacity and placed his trust in his core values and people - his business associates, employees and customers.”
Her father, Tran Qui Thanh, is chairman and CEO of the beverage company Tan Hiep Phat (THP). He turned down the offer from Coca Cola. Thanh’s company now supplies beverages, including herbal and green teas, sports and energy drinks, soya milk and purified water across Vietnam plus 16 other countries, including China and Australia. It is Vietnam’s largest family-owned manufacturer in the “Fast Moving Consumer Goods” category, employing more than 5,000 staff members nationwide.
“It is never easy to compete with giants,” says Phuong, “let alone face them down.” But her family legacy is a story that proves David can indeed compete with (and even outperform) Goliath. Watching her father turn down a sum of money most could never dream to see was an event that shaped Tran’s entire philosophy from that day forward.
What has Phuong learned from the family values her father always applies in business?
5 Family Values to Business Success:
Whether you start with rice bowls or owning the entire rice factory, scaling a business requires strategy, discipline and good old fashion family values.
About Phuong Uyen Tran
Phuong Uyen Tran, author of Competing with Giants (https://www.thp.com.vn/en/), is deputy CEO of the THP Beverage Group, a leading beverage company in Vietnam that was founded by her father. She is responsible for the company’s marketing, public relations, and CSR programs nationally and across Vietnam’s 63 provinces. She also leads THP’s international marketing programs across 16 countries where THP’s products are distributed including Canada and China.
====================
SelectHealth and Associated Food Stores Bring Minions to Murray to Fight Food Insecurity
Companies donate more than $3,500 in food to benefit KidsEat! and Utah Food Bank
Salt Lake City, UT (August 20, 2018) Minions made out of nearly 4,000 lbs. of food recently took residence at the Murray library thanks to SelectHealth and Associated Food Stores. The companies participated in Salt Lake County Health Department’s 3rd annual Foodstruction program, which encourages companies to build creative displays out of healthy food items as a way to raise awareness of food insecurity. Following the event, SelectHealth and Associated Food Stores donated the used items, totally more than $3,500 worth of food, to KidsEat! and Utah Food Bank, making it the largest donation of the event.
“SelectHealth is proud to have won the prize for donating the most amount of food to help our community. The staff that participates in this event have a lot of fun designing the project, and seeing it come to light. The fact that it does such great for the community, is a bonus, said Amber Greene, Community Relations representative for SelectHealth.
SelectHealth organized a 12-person team to participate in the event and coordinated with Associated Food Stores to get the 4,908 cans needed to complete the design. The project required two different builds—a test run and the final product. The food used in the test run build was donated to KidsEat!, an organization that provides weekend meal packs to at-risk kids to ensure they don’t go hungry while not at school. SelectHealth was able to pick which organization to donate the food to. The items used in the display built at Murray library were donated to Utah Food Bank.
“This is our 3rd year participating in this wonderful event. SelectHealth loves that this event really shines light on the food insecurities members of our communities face. We decided to build minions this year because we wanted something that was popular and would appeal to kids, said Greene.
Foodstruction is part of Salt Lake County Health Department’s mission to fight food insecurity with Utah Food Bank. Each year several companies visit libraries across the county to build creative displays meant to educate the community about food insecurity. Community members are then invited to vote for their favorites. SelectHealth and Associated Food Stores took third place.
###
About Associated Food Stores
Associated Food Stores is an independent retailer-owned warehouse based in Salt Lake City, Utah, which provides complete warehouse facilities and services to over 400 grocers throughout the Intermountain West. To learn more about Associated Food Stores or to find a retailer near you, visit www.afstores.com.
Media Contact for Associated Food Stores
Rachael Wabel
801-978-8913
About SelectHealth
SelectHealth is a not-for-profit health plan that serves more than 850,000 members in Utah and Idaho. Through a shared mission with Intermountain Healthcare of Helping People Live the Healthiest Lives Possible®, we are committed to assuring access to high-value care, providing superior service, and supporting the health of our members and the communities we serve.
In addition to medical plans, SelectHealth offers dental, vision, pharmacy benefit management, and life and disability coverage to its members. SelectHealth plans are available for Medicare Advantage and Medicaid enrollees, and we’re also a carrier for the Children’s Health Insurance Plan (CHIP) and the Federal Employee Health Benefits (FEHB) Plan.
Year-after-year, SelectHealth is rated as Utah’s top HMO plan by state and national organizations, receiving top scores in both member satisfaction and clinical performance. For details, visit selecthealth.org.
=====================
If you haven’t tried this yet, you’re going to want to add this to your morning routine right away...
Drinking 1 cup of this delicious hot beverage in the morning sets you up to burn more fat than 45 exhausting minutes on the treadmill...
In fact, some folks are losing up to 23lbs of fat in just 21 days by drinking it every morning.
>> 1 Cup of this tomorrow morning will burn 3 lbs of belly fat fast
Plus, it’s super easy to make right in your own kitchen.
------------------
Fear, Greed And The Financial Hazards
Of Emotional Investing
He was a successful dentist who managed his own money his entire life and prided himself on his financial acumen.
When he retired, he saw no reason to change. Instead of kicking back and enjoying a well-earned life of leisure, he became not only financially invested in the markets, but emotionally invested as well, much to the detriment of his personal life – and his money.
“He would wake up early and seclude himself downstairs with three screens,” says Brian Decker, a financial planner and founder of Decker Retirement Planning Inc. (www.Deckerretirementplanning.com).
“He would look at research before the market opened. He would be grouchy when the market closed if he hadn’t done well that day. Even if he went on vacation, he was tethered to Wall Street.”
That’s no way to invest – and it’s certainly no way to retire, Decker says.
Yet plenty of retirees and pre-retirees let emotions – particularly fear and greed – dominate their financial decisions.
“Fear will keep you out of the market when you should be in,” Decker says. “Greed will put you in the market when you should be out. It’s hard to buy low and sell high when you’re operating strictly on instinct with no strategy.”
Emotional investing is especially problematic in retirement.
“Market crashes aren’t such a big deal when you’re younger and working because you have time to ride the wave,” Decker says. “In retirement, time is not on your side. You need that money to live on now.”
Instead of letting emotion rule, retirees and those approaching retirement need to rely on math and logic, Decker says. As a fiduciary – a financial professional required to put a client’s best interests first – Decker has seen a number of cases where investors come to him and they don’t really understand what they are invested in, what their actual returns are or what kind of fees they are paying.
“The blame for that often rests on the shoulders of the financial professional who was giving them advice,” Decker says. “They need to be more thorough in explaining investment products and be more forthcoming about how they work. But investors also need to make sure they understand the investments before they jump in and get excited by hype.
“If you’re invested emotionally, it’s more difficult to see things objectively. It’s easier for you to justify staying with an investment because you feel it’s a great product. You become certain that there’s no way you’re going to lose long-term. That there’s no way it’s a bad investment decision for you.”
It was that kind of emotional-investing situation that Decker faced with the dentist who resisted the idea of turning his finances over to someone else to manage. But in discussions with Decker he began to realize that he couldn’t keep doing what he was doing. His constant monitoring of market ups and downs, his non-stop worries about his finances were bad for him both personally and financially.
“We said to him, you can keep managing your own money, but you aren’t going to know how to protect yourself from the market’s downside,” Decker says.
It took a year of working with Decker’s firm for this particular client to let go completely of his fixation on the markets and allow someone else to help with those decisions. In that moment, his grateful wife teared up. “Now I have my husband back,” she said.
About Brian Decker
Brian Decker, a financial planner and founder of Decker Retirement Planning Inc. (www.Deckerretirementplanning.com), has more than 30 years of experience in asset management and has worked for several brokerage firms. He became a fiduciary in 1995 and since then has created several investment models and honed his risk-management skills with a focus on investment models designed to make money in up or down markets. He has a degree in finance and marketing from the University of Washington.
