Entrepreneurship 101, with Shark Tank-winner & restauranteur Tony Lam
Is starting a business something you are interested in? What’s it take to commit to entrepreneurship?
Tony earned his chops in the food and beverage space through sweat, long hours, and a visceral desire to succeed. He owns and operates five Wingstop restaurants with a staff of more than 100. Through his success, he discovered another rising gem in the industry: Mavens Creamery, a disruptor in the frozen desserts that has doubled sales year over year for the past 3 years. They’ve gone from a humble in-home enterprise to now working with more than 300 retail grocery chains and food services. And, recently, they were featured on Shark Tank.
Find out more about Tony Lam:
Below is our edited transcript of Tony Lam’s interview, “Entrepreneurship 101,” at the Imagine Talks Annual Symposium.
Fireside chat with Tony Lam
Francis Kong: Again, we are with Tony Lam. Tony, you’ve been an amazing business and entrepreneur leader, especially during this time of COVID, as we experienced this crazy shift of economy. But before we jump into the questions I have for you: can you tell us a bit about yourself? I want to hear — I want to hear again, I know but I want people to learn about your story. You have this amazing story of how you’ve come overseas and because of the help and generosity of others. Were you be able to get that chance of self-promoting growth? I would love to hear that story, I think you could share them to the audience.
Tony Lam: Absolutely. Thank you, Francis, for having me here, by the way. I was born in 1975, you could do the math. Yes, I’m about 45 years old. I was only three months old when the fall of Saigon happened. And my father, who’s actually a naval captain in the South Vietnamese government, he was able to just basically tell all the family members, “Let’s go and let’s get on the boat guys and flee the country.”
And I was only three months old. I traveled to the Philippines and we stayed with the refugee camps over there. And then eventually we were sponsored by a Catholic family, through Catholic Charities, in California. During this time, the church organizations were looking for families that wanted to sponsor. And a complete stranger — family basically brought us in, gave us clothing, and gave us a roof over our head, provided food. From that moment on, when my parents tell me about the story, I’m forever grateful. And they’re no longer here, but their kids are still here and I still communicate with them.
Entrepreneurship offers the privilege of being your own boss
Tony Lam: At least we’re on Facebook and we communicate that way. And so I’m very fortunate that I came over to the US when I was very young. I went through the whole educational system, went to college at Cal Poly and I got a business degree. I got an opportunity to work in a high-tech company, Cisco Systems. And now I’ve gone into the entrepreneurship world. It’s been so exciting in the last 15 years, working for myself, being my own boss. I want to be able to inspire as well as mentor the younger generations and pay it forward, Francis.
Francis Kong: I love that, it is a beautiful message. Now, we’ve heard from many other speakers in the past that — and it’s the one thing that we supported in Imagine Talks, all this entrepreneurship really is the only key — potential to actually find real, true personal wealth. But as a successful entrepreneur yourself, do you believe entrepreneurship is for everyone?
Tony Lam: I get this question quite a bit, honestly, it’s not — it’s not for everyone, okay. There’s a specific type of — how do I say — individual, right? Entrepreneurship — if you’re willing to, willing to take the risk of having highs and lows through this journey. And that’s what I see when you open a business, it’s a journey and you’re going to have your highs and lows.
And if you are the type of person that would rather not deal with the stress, have a steady paycheck? Absolutely, a lot of people do fit in that category and they can also make investments into other businesses, right?
Venture out and try entrepreneurship
Photo licensed from DepositPhotos
Tony Lam: But I think that in life you should, I think, take a risk or two and try a business, try to open a business and learn from that. What I’ve done throughout my life is not all my businesses have been successful, the ones that have failed. I look at it and I try to figure out what did I do wrong to make sure that I don’t repeat that same mistake.
Tony Lam: So think of it as a paid tuition, money that you had invested and you lost, but you learn from that. Just like when you go to school, you’re learning through taking courses, right? So that’s how I see running a business and entrepreneurship more in that sense.
Francis Kong: So for people who want to see whether not they account for it and how much they can afford the “tuition”, what are some really smart ways — safe ways? Obviously coming into entrepreneurship is a risk.
Tony Lam: Yes.
Francis Kong: That is, by definition, the nature of the beast.
Tony Lam: Yes.
Francis Kong: And what are some ways that people who are just starting out can try to minimize that, so it doesn’t wipe out your savings and make really bad choices that devastate them?
Tony Lam: Yeah, absolutely. I think when you go into opening a business, you need to do your homework. You need to have a business plan.
When opening a business, a business plan is crucial
At the end of the day, the reason why you do this business plan is so that it makes you think about did you go and test this product? Did you get feedback on it? Who are your competitors? How big is the — what we call “TAM” — Total Addressable Market, right? We’ve got to make sure that there’s a market fit for your product. And so … Putting a business plan, I really see it, on the average for us to do one, at least a month or even six weeks to put one together so that after we analyze it, we can determine whether or not we want to move forward.
The other thing I tell people is that before you jump into something, if you have a family, obviously, you want to have enough savings and ask yourself, “If I don’t have any revenue for the next 18 to 24 months, do I have enough savings to be able to pay for my expenses?”
Francis Kong; 2 years?
Tony Lam: Yeah. So and that’s why I tell people like otherwise, you have to raise money, it’s one or the other: either you use your savings, or you find other investors that will put money into to get you to that two-year mark.
Entrepreneurship requires a passion
Tony Lam: But I tell people that going into business, you’ve got to have that passion, and that passion can’t be a one month or three months or a one-year thing. It has to be at least five years or longer, because why do I tell people that? It’s because you’re going to have many bumps in the road, and you’re going to be discouraged because you’re going to hear the noise out there. Like they’ll discourage you sometimes like, “See, I told you this wasn’t meant for you. You know, I told you that this product was there’s no fit for it.”
And so you just got to ignore: ignore the noise and tell yourself, and really be able to overcome these obstacles.
But if you work hard at it, the other recommendation I do tell them is: surround yourself with positive people, positive people, and find the people who have succeeded in the space and ask them to be your mentor.
Not every single person you’re going to ask is going to say, “Yes, I’ll be your mentor.” But, you want to find individuals who have successful track records and be able to get some advice from them. And a lot of people, I think, in life are more than willing to do that. I mean, I am one of those people.
Francis Kong: Thank you for that.
Entrepreneurship requires due diligence
Tony Lam: Yeah. I’m one of those people who want to pay it forward and I’ll give you an example, Francis. I had one of my friends, she saw my Wingstop and she was like,
“Hey, Tony, I want to open a restaurant, too — a Wingstop.”
You know, I said, “Have you ever worked in the food space before?”
And she said, “No.”
And I said, “OK, before you even go into the food space, come work at my Wingstop for two weeks.”
Now, I didn’t ask her to go and come work at my Wingstop for free labor. (Well, yeah, I did.) But, so she went [and] she worked there. She worked there for two weeks, right?
And if she came back and she said, “Tony, wow, I worked there for two weeks, it was a lot of hard work and you know, but I can handle it.” More power to you, please move forward. Go and open a restaurant. You’re doing your due diligence. You got to do this.
Now, she actually came back and said, “Tony, that was a lot of hard work, and I’m so happy that you gave me this opportunity.” Well, she didn’t invest, she wouldn’t have lost 4 or 500 — has she gone in? Right? Without having done her due diligence or having someone be as open as me, allowing her to go into business.
Francis Kong: Go behind the scenes?
A step-by-step checklist for entrepreneurship
Tony Lam: Yeah, she — I saved her 3 [or] $400,000 in investment money right there. So again, it’s about finding a mentor, like, I said someone that’s willing to give you a chance or give you some opportunity or guide you in the right way so that you don’t have to make these unnecessary mistakes, so to speak. Save yourself a couple of years from doing that.
Francis Kong: I love that. And so my next question for you then is: do you have a simple — to show the audience here — a simple must-have checklist that must be in place before you even begin? Like Mentor, check. Like this is the idea, check. 15 to 24 months of savings.
Do you have a simple, like, must-have — before you even go out and do anything — you must have this?
Tony Lam: Yeah. I mean, you pretty much nailed the top three. Right there is what I would tell people. Now, that’s if you decide to go on your own, now, if you decide to have partners in the group, my thing is I’m in ten different businesses. I have ten different partners, sets of people and it’s very important that you get to know your partner at the very beginning.
Sometimes people will tell you, “Don’t do business with your friends and family,” To a certain extent that is true. But you really have to be able to sit down with them, get to know them. You know, there might be complete strangers that you’re trying to partner up with, but you really need to go out to the movies, have dinner, you know, before you spend the next potentially three to five years — maybe even your lifetime — with them.
Entrepreneurship & the total addressable market
Francis Kong: Yeah.
Tony Lam: You want to get to know them, right? And I think that I’ve been successful. I mean, I — my Wingstop business, I’ve had the same partners now for 16 years. A couple of other businesses, all of them 5 to 6 years going strong.
Francis Kong: Fantastic! And then let’s talk about some of the other businesses aside from Wingstop. Tell us about this beautiful product we have right here in front of us. What is this? How it get started and what was the inspiration behind it?
Tony Lam: Yeah, so my partner, Tammy, she came up with the Vietnamese Coffee Cold Brew. So what happened [was] — long story short, her uncle back in Vietnam owns one of the largest coffee plantation in Da Lat. And he’s more famous — or I should say, most of his business is in the European market — but not so much in the US market. Well, my partner, she’s very talented. She’s a formulator. He basically asked her,
“Can you come up with a product and take this to the US market?”
Her background is in beauty, and how we got connected was: I’m in the food space. She needed someone in the food space to help her out. Now, when she met with me, it was very interesting because she made me think. she said,
“Tony, you know the average coffee drinker drinks coffee twice a day.”
And just imagine, it’s a — it’s a legal drug, right? Caffeine is a legal drug. Now, imagine if they drink one bottle a day for us, that’s $4 that we’re selling as retail. That’s over $1200 [a year]. This is where I talk to you about TAM — total addressable market.
Francis Kong: Right.
Entrepreneurship: the product-market fit
Tony Lam: Right? The market is really big for this product, right? I said, “OK, that’s really interesting.” So you could see the opportunity here. I said — I’m running the numbers in my head, I said, “Well, you know what? This is a huge opportunity in a coffee space.” So the next thing that we have to do is we have to go find market fit, right? What do people think about the coffee?
So we’ve done so many samples. I mean, I can’t tell you how to be at least close to one hundred different events, just passing out samples. And the beautiful thing about her is she takes in that feedback and she’s an artist, but she takes in feedback of what people have to say and she will tweak the formulation if necessary.
Right. And so this has been going on since for the last three years, we finally came up with the final formulation back in July. And this is what everybody is happy with and so now in the last —
Francis Kong: How long did that take?
Tony Lam: That took — I’ve been with the company for a year and a half now, plus a year and a half right now. So for a year, it was just a lot of testing.
Francis Kong: Wow.
Tony Lam: But we released this back in July. Now, the opportunity that’s put in front of us is we’re going to be — we have access to 45,000 convenience stores.
Francis Kong: My gosh.
Tony Lam: We’re talking to Costco, we’re talking to Whole Foods, and we’re also talking to Walmart right now. And so back to my — I’m using my formula, you want to have the mentor.
The importance of educating consumers about your product
So one of the board members on our company, her name is Vanessa Dew, she happens to be the co-founder of Health-Ade Kombucha. So we have a veteran — CPG in the bev space — in our company. She currently has — her product is in 30,000 locations today. So because of the learnings that I have done in the past, I’m able to fast forward and speed this process, right? So we’ve made a lot of progress in the last — honestly, the last half-year — and this year I think that we’re going to really — we want to educate people about Vietnamese coffee.
A lot of people out there, they don’t know that Vietnam is the second-largest producer and exporter of coffee beans. But it takes an army of people to educate the consumer. But I have to say that the feedback that people have been giving us is they love the coffee. And so it’s just a matter of raising money and spending it on marketing because you’ve got to build that brand awareness at the end of the day. I can be in 45,000 convenience stores, but if people don’t know how to find me, the convenience stores can say, “You know what, Tony, this is not moving.” They’ll remove it from the shelf.
You see, and so very important: even though you have a great product, you’ve got to make sure you have a marketing budget to go with that. Because, like I said, you’re going to have to be giving out [or] handing out a lot of samples. Because I know — just like my Wingstop — if you eat the lemon pepper wings, I know I will convert any new customer to be a lifelong fan of Wingstop.
Tony Lam’s future in entrepreneurship
I know that if I can get the person to taste this product, there will be an Omni Bev fan. That’s how confident I am. And anybody that goes into entrepreneurship and has either a service or product has to have that mentality: that if I can get that person to try it out, I will make them a lifetime fan of my product.
Francis Kong: I love that. What — we have few minutes left here — what is the — you’re already been involved in 10 different businesses. What is the future of Tony Lam look like in, say, the next three to five years? Obviously, definitely an upswing, what about — What do you want to do professionally, personally, community-wise?
Tony Lam: Yeah. You know, Francis, I’m getting to a point where I get more excited watching people open businesses. And I do want to do a lot more mentoring as well as philanthropy. That’s something that is on my bucket list, that I’ve always want to do is give back to the community. One of the things that we want to do is give back to the Vietnam farmers, for example: they’re growing the beans for us — come back to the community, come back to my roots and be able to give back and pay it forward.
Paying it forward & giving back
Francis Kong: Why is giving back so important?
Tony Lam: I wouldn’t be here today if it wasn’t for a complete stranger, you know: a family in the US who sponsored my family. And so, just out of kindness from that — that’s in my DNA. So I want to do the same thing.
Francis Kong: You want to make a full circle.
Tony Lam: Yes.
Francis Kong: Tony, thank you so much. I think that’s the only time we have right now, but it has been so inspiring, so enlightening and so inspirational to listen to your story, to see how you’ve grown, your insightful entrepreneurship, a product that you are launching, and the excitement that we can get access to it. And, of course, what you want to leave behind is your legacy. Thank you, thank you for joining us and I hope to see you in a more public and open venue in 2022. For now, thank you so much for joining us for Imagine Talks 2021.
Tony Lam: Thank you. Thank you, Francis, for having me here.
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