Lee & Chieu discuss: 

• An early understanding of being self-sufficient

• Learning about specialism from his time at Amazon, Microsoft & Yahoo

• Creating a message that customers share for you

• Surrounding yourself with great people

• Chieu’s desire to help people’s financial education

• Finding success in having a real, positive societal impact

Links & references:

Lee Cooper: https://www.linkedin.com/in/leecooperrecruiter/

Chieu Cao: https://www.linkedin.com/in/chieucao/

Mintago: https://www.linkedin.com/company/mintago/

Get in touch: lee@extrology.com

Episode highlights:

“I arrived in America when I was two, so quite young, early on. My parents were so busy, doing various jobs and starting their own businesses. But what I did really well and early on is I learned how to be self-sufficient.” - 2:10 - Chieu Cao

“Great marketers are great storytellers. They communicate and they connect with people, and that was a natural bridge from my linguistic desires.” - 6:28 - Chieu Cao

“Even managers are specialists in the sense that they’re great managers, right? They're looking across your whole organization, but what they're really good at is specialising in great management. So even on the surface it may seem general, but it's not.” - 12:40 - Chieu Cao

“We're not selling discounts. We're actually selling happiness, we’re selling engagement, we're selling a better culture. So what I did was remove all references to discounts and savings, and just had really nice pictures of ice creams, lollies and things that make you smile.” - 21:00 - Chieu Cao

“As a brand, you want to make sure that what you say is clean and clear enough that the end users can repeat your message without any kind of clutter or confusion, and that's how a brand gets very viral and grows.” - 27:05 - Chieu Cao

“Find ways to surround yourself with great people, because if your business is purely reliant on your abilities, you don't know how good it can be.” - 31:35 - Chieu Cao

“There's so much money floating around. It's about £20bn worth of lost pensions. Yet people just don't find them, know how to manage them or deal with them, and for me this is wrong.” - 39:55 - Chieu Cao

“Success means having real social impact, looking back on what we've done and building something that is meaningful for people, and what I believe is meaningful is having a better life. ” - 49:15 - Chieu Cao

“I don't really idolize the likes of Bezos, or Elon Musk. I like smaller business owners, like my parents. They’re starting from zero and going to something - it’s so hard.” - 51:05 - Chieu Cao

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