Category: Garrett

I can’t believe my time in Ho Chi Minh is coming to an end. It has been an amazing summer filled with beautiful sights, amazing food, and new experiences. At Spiced, I learned a lot about the coworking industry and the day-to-day operations of a start-up company. I feel as if I did well throughout my internship and was able to help Spiced get started on the right foot. One area that I did very well in was financial budgeting and tracking. Some of the projects I worked on that had a direct impact on the company include: revenue and pricing models, pitch decks, and income and expense reports. These documents allowed Spiced to price their items competitively in the marketplace while also maximizing profit, as well as keep accurate and up to date records of their revenues and expenses to ensure they are meeting their targets and staying in budget. An area where I have room for growth is my knowledge of google sheets. While I learned a lot by doing various assignments, I was inefficient and spent more time than I could have taken because I had to learn different formulas and tools that google sheets provides.

The experience of getting to live and work in HCMC for 2 months, as well as travel throughout southeast Asia on the weekends, has been an experience I will never forget. Stepping out of my comfort zone while getting to experience new cultures has helped me grow in numerous ways. One such way is that I improved my interpersonal skills by overcoming language barriers and interacting with people from all walks of life, from street vendors in Malaysia to bus drivers in the Philippines to business professionals in HCMC. I gained professional experience through my internship at Spiced, as well as improved my professionalism by better understanding Vietnamese business culture. This experience will help me in my future career because it illustrated an area I need to improve upon, and it helped me develop my interpersonal communication skills, which are important in the Private Wealth Management industry.

One key takeaway that I had from this experience is that the United States often confuses overworking for efficiency. In the United States, from the moment people wake up in the morning until the time they get home at night they are working hard trying to get as much done each day as possible. While things obviously need to get done, there is no reason we try to cram so much into such a short period of time without giving ourselves a break. In HCMC, people can often be seen sitting and talking on the street no matter the time of day. People here know that they have work they need to do, but they also understand there is no reason to work yourself crazy in the process. For example, while Spiced was under construction, the workers would often sit around and talk and take breaks throughout the day, but they still finished their job on time. In the United States, we view people as lazy if they take breaks. We need to change the notion that if you take sporadic breaks you can’t also be productive and meet deadlines.

The time that I felt most proud during my internship was when I saw that the prices I determined for our different products and offerings were the ones being advertised on our website. It felt amazing getting to see the work that I have done be able to shape the company and help it grow. I was very happy that my work was being utilized and taken seriously, and it further motivated me to continue to work hard and do whatever I could to help the company continue to expand. 

My biggest professional accomplishment during the internship was teaching a course on the basics of investing to both our members and HCMC residents. I am a big advocate that everybody should invest long-term as a good source of supplemental income, so I enjoy teaching how to begin investing and building a portfolio while managing risk. This class was especially important to me because it was my first time covering a stock market outside of the United States (both the Ho Chi Minh and Hanoi exchanges) as well as speaking to non-native English speakers. This was something I had to adapt to, as I had to control my speaking rate and pronunciation while making sure I didn’t oversimplify any topic. However, after the class concluded I was able to answer questions from the audience, and the questions they were asking made it appear that I succeeded in being able to accurately convey the information I wanted to. In addition, we had a networking session and I received lots of positive feedback from the audience, making the class feel like a success for both the audience and for me.

One way that living in HCMC has changed is the way I view the hustle and bustle of the United States. Here in HCMC, you can find people sitting along the street talking, eating, or playing games no matter the time of day. While these people undoubtedly have things to do, they don’t forget about taking time to relax and enjoy themselves as well. As a result, even though there is a lot going on in HCMC, you can feel a certain calmness to the city. In the United States however, people are frantically going from one task to another as if they were racing, trying to be as “efficient” as possible. This leads to a feeling of chaos and frenzy, and lots of additional stress. I believe that it if U.S. citizens took time out of their day to just relax and take a break, even if it was only for 5 minutes here and there, they would be more productive throughout the day and feel less stress.

From this internship, I have learned a lot about the coworking industry, specifically the coworking industry in Vietnam. The industry is very young, with the first coworking space globally opening around 2005, and the first coworking space in Vietnam opening in 2012. I also learned more about the targeted customers of a coworking space. There are two main types of coworking spaces: ones that target startups and small businesses, and ones that target individual entrepreneurs and digital nomads. Spiced, where I am interning, targets the latter. Prior to this internship, I had thought that all coworking spaces targeted startups and businesses, not individual nomads. One other thing I learned about the industry is the way that they make money. The actual coworking segment of the business is high-volume and low-margin, so these businesses need to make their money in higher-margin segments. Predominantly, this comes in the form of private office space, educational courses, or, in the case of Spiced, a bistro.

Spiced has many strengths in the industry, such as its incredibly loyal customer base (many customers that were members at our previous location are still members today), the fact that we separate ourselves from competitors by focusing more on community instead of working, the fact that we have a pool and garden on-site, and the fact that we serve community lunch produced in-house to help build friendships among members. Some of the weaknesses that Spiced must overcome include its lack of available desk space for coworking, as we are unable to fit as many hotdesks as some of our competitors. Opportunities we face include expanding to be able to serve food from the bistro to locals and other non-members, as well as starting consulting sessions where we are able to provide advice and support for startups. Threats we face include the low barriers to entry of the industry, price cuts by competitors that we can’t match, and not having enough members to adequately build a sense of community.

An amazing moment in my HCMC life was when I was flying back to HCMC from Kuala Lampur. On my flight, I became friends with the man sitting next to me, and we talked about our lives and why we were in Kuala Lampur, among other things. Once we landed, he invited me and my friends I travelled with to go and get drinks with him nearby, so we met him and his son and all got to hangout and become friends. It was a really fun experience getting to go see a part of town I would have never been to, as well as getting to befriend locals and learn more about what life in HCMC is like. 

The most challenging aspect of my internship has been adapting to my bosses’ style of communication. He is an external thinker, which means that he brainstorms and works through his progression of ideas out loud. As an internal thinker (meaning that I work through an issue or idea in my head), it took some adapting to be able to understand what exactly my boss was trying to tell me. As a result, at the beginning of my internship I was having trouble understanding the assignments that my boss was giving me, since he would say things out loud that contradicted itself and would confuse me, but it was simply him thinking out loud. I learned to combat this by writing down all the different instructions that he gave, and then piecing them all together like a jigsaw puzzle. This challenge provided me the opportunity to enhance my interpretation skills.

My favorite feature of my internship is that I get to talk to all of our different members and learn about their varying businesses and backgrounds. Since we are a coworking startup targeting expats and digital nomads, our members come from all over the world doing various things. In the past week I have had the opportunity to meet people from Singapore, Thailand, Switzerland, Italy, and France, just to name a few. I’ve gotten to talk to them and learn more about their culture and what their life as a nomad and/or expat is like. I’ve also gotten to meet people across various industries, ranging from cybersecurity to graphic design to writing, getting to learn a little bit about what each industry entails. Prior to the start of my internship, I thought we would only get members from southeast Asia at Spiced, so it has been amazing having the chance to meet and speak with people from other parts of the world as well.

HCMC has amazing food. As a self-proclaimed foodie, I’ve loved having the opportunity to indulge in food unique to HCMC. My favorite food that I have had has been bun cha. Bun cha is grilled pork and noodles. You are given 4 bowls: one of pork with sauce, one of noodles, one of lettuce, and an empty bowl to mix it all together. First, you put the lettuce in the bowl, then you add noodles. Next, you add some sauce from the pork to make the noodles less sticky and then mix the three together. Then, you add the pork and more sauce, and mix again. Now you are ready to eat! The pork was full of flavor from the sauce, and the noodles and lettuce add texture and even more flavor. While bun cha is my favorite, I highly recommend eating as much food as you can while in Vietnam.

During my internship so far, I have produced revenue models for each of our different revenue streams, with the exception of the bistro: the coworking space, the courses we offer, the coliving space, and private office space. Since tomorrow (May 24) is our grand opening, all of the revenue models helped us modify the PnL statement that we used to budget our first 3 months of operations. While it is a little hard to predict what I will be doing over the last 4 weeks of the internship due to the fact that we are about to have our grand opening and are moving from planning to execution, I hope to find new ways to ensure that Spiced is maximizing revenue while minimizing costs. I also hope to develop new initiatives to attract new customers and further enhance the community that we are trying to develop for our members.

I compliment my supervisor well. He is more marketing focused and is skilled at designing the visual layout and presentation of our marketing material, while sometimes struggling with numbers and budgets. I, on the other hand, am more skilled financially compared to my marketing skills. I know how to find break-even points and determine pricing, and I am more capable of keeping track of our revenues and costs than he is. As a result, I can convey the financial information to him, allowing him to maximize his time working on marketing and advertising in order to grow our customer base.

One thing I have learned from living in HCMC is the practicality of chopsticks. Back in the United States, I only used chopsticks at sushi restaurants, so I never completely understood the appeal of them. However, now that I have been living here for a month and use chopsticks for every meal, I have a much greater appreciation for them (and I’m starting to prefer them over forks in general). For example, at hotpot restaurants, which are very common in HCMC, using chopsticks makes turning over the meat that you are cooking a lot easier than using a fork would have been. It also makes beef or chicken taste better, because then you don’t get the taste of metal in your mouth, instead you only get the taste of the food. It also makes sharing easier, because now instead of having to use two hands to scoop something out of a bowl, you now only need one. These are just a few of the reasons that my appreciation for chopsticks has grown from living in HCMC.

My supervisor is Martial Ganiere, the CEO and owner of Spiced. He oversees everything the company is working on, from the ordering of inventory for the bistro, to the layout and design of each room of the complex, to the pricing and advertising of our services, and everything in between. Although he has a lot to do each day and expects the work that is assigned to get finished, he is a very laid back individual, making jokes and giving us breaks to go and grab coffee as needed. His day-to-day schedule is usually relatively similar each day in terms of structure, although he will usually be working on a different aspect of the business each day. Although our day starts at 9, he will usually show up before that to oversee the construction crew that is preparing the complex for our opening in 10 days. Once we arrive at 9, we will have a team meeting for about half an hour on the day’s objectives as well as any developments that occurred after we had left work the previous day. After the meeting he will either be making phone calls to clients and investors, designing the website, or working on the layout of the complex until lunch time. After lunch, he will work with Tri, the head of the bistro, about any work that needs to be done or appliances that need to be ordered for the bistro. He will then continue doing the various tasks he was doing that morning. Before everyone leaves around 5:30, we will have another meeting to go over how the days work went and what was accomplished.

My role at Spiced is to oversee all financial aspects of the business, including pricing and the construction of revenue models. My daily life at work begins with the morning meeting, in which I am assigned my tasks for the day. After that, I am free to structure my time as I please, choosing which tasks I want to prioritize first and how much time I should spend on each assignment. The main projects I have done during my internship so far include market research, a pitch deck for investors, and a revenue model for the courses we offer.

One of the most interesting experiences I have had in HCMC so far was when Jake and I got lunch last week. We went to a restaurant down the street from where we work, where everything was on the menu was in Vietnamese without translations or pictures. We decided to be adventurous and blindly order something off the menu. Jake ordered chicken with rice, and I wound up ordering pork with rice. It was the best pork I have had since I arrived in Vietnam, and it was cheaper than any other restaurant I had seen offer the same dish for. It was a really good meal and a lunch experience I’ll never forget.

While in Vietnam, I will be interning at Spiced, which was the first coworking company in Vietnam when it opened in 2012. Spiced provides office space to digital nomads and expats who don’t need permanent office space, just reliable connection to Wi-Fi. However, in order to separate themselves from their competitors, they emphasize building a community around the office space. In order to accomplish this, they have an in-house bistro that serves a community lunch to all members, and they have a pool and garden for members to network and hangout in when they aren’t working. They recently relocated from D1 to a bigger 3 story complex located in D2 of Ho Chi Minh. The first level is the bistro and the pool and garden, and its main use is to build the community and allow members to interact and network with one another. The second level is community space, where we have bedrooms available for rent for people interested in coliving, as well as a living room for members to work or talk in indoors. The third level is the office space that is available for rent. This layout gives members that want space to relax and network many locations to do that without interrupting the work being done on the third level.

Spiced has a very laid-back culture and environment, as they prioritize getting the job done well over getting the job done fast. The team is composed of 5 people: Martial, the CEO; Trí, the bistro operator and chef; Luka, a tourism intern from France; and Jake and I, finance interns participating in the UF in Vietnam program. It is a very small start-up where all 5 of us sit together in a room on the third floor of the complex. In fact, they don’t have their grand opening of their new D2 location until June 24.

My experience during the first week of my internship was an overall very positive one. During the first day, I was given a tour of the unfinished location, and the CEO explained to me his vision of what he saw each room becoming and what its purpose was in the grand scheme of the company. However, during this tour we had some communication issues, as I interpreted his explanations as meaning Spiced was more focused on the bistro than the coworking space. This confused and worried me, since we had focused on only the coworking space during my interview, and I suddenly felt out of place and unqualified due to my very limited knowledge about the restaurant industry. This prompted me to seek a conversation with him into what Spiced’s business model was and how I could be utilized best, which helped alleviate my concerns about the work that I would be doing and the impact that I would be able to have on the company as a result. It was also very beneficial because for the rest of the week I was assigned to work on a pitch book for investors, which allowed me to learn a lot more about both my company specifically and the coworking industry. Although it was challenging at times since I was new to the company and had never made a pitch book before, it was a very beneficial experience and I learned a lot about how to sell a company. I really appreciated how I was given the opportunity to do meaningful work right from the beginning, allowing me to learn hands-on and have the opportunity to help shape the future of the company.

The picture below is of a normal desk setup on the third floor co-working space.

I still can’t completely believe that I am here in Vietnam. The cultural week was incredible, I got to see and experience so many things that I never thought I would get to. I learned how to bargain in the market, hiked farther up a mountain than I ever imagined myself possible, and even got to play soccer with some locals!

Prior to the week-long cultural class in Gainesville, I had known nothing about Vietnam, so all my expectations were based off of that course. I expected to come to a city with no streetlights, scooters everywhere, with people lining the streets either sitting and drinking beer or eating street food. While the streets are filled predominantly with scooters, there are far more cars and streetlights than I originally imagined, and while there are many food vendors (which are even better than advertised) and people on the streets, they aren’t over-crowding the sidewalk. Another expectation that I found to be true was the kind nature of the locals. Everyone I have met in Vietnam, whether at a restaurant or at one of the places we visited during the culture week, was very friendly and would either wave or say hello, and they didn’t treat or look at me differently because I am an American.

One expectation that I had that wasn’t the same was the way waiters and other restaurant employees interact with customers. While I knew coming in that they were more distant than waiters in America, I thought that just meant they wouldn’t come ask you how the food was as you ate. Instead, wait-staff here won’t even acknowledge you unless you explicitly call them, regardless of if it’s to order food or to pay your bill. Wait-staff will just stand around doing nothing, completely ignoring you and your attempts to get their attention, which is unacceptable in America. All in all, it has been so much fun getting to experience Vietnamese culture and I can’t wait to continue to learn more about it.

One activity that was culturally informative was the trip we took to the floating market. It was fascinating getting to see how the farmers would drive their boat right up to ours and connect them with a rope, and then show and sell us the items they had available. Often times there would even be one boat on each side! This gave us insight into the life of a Vietnamese farmer, and how early and how hard they had to work to make a sale. All of the fruit was fresh, as if it had been picked that morning. Since the market opened at 4 am, farmers must have worked all throughout the night preparing just for that days market. Even though they had to work so hard, they all had smiles on their faces and were clearly loving getting to interact with us and share the joy of fresh fruit with us. This illustrated how even though the people here work very hard and don’t get to enjoy all of the luxuries we do, they still go through each day with a smile and love what they to do.

Some questions that I want to address during my time in Vietnam are: How come restaurants don’t offer napkins? Why isn’t tipping as common here as it is in America? Why are lane dividers drawn on the streets if cars and scooters blatantly ignore them?

Prior to last weeks class, I knew almost nothing about Vietnam and its culture. After learning a lot about the country and its culture during class, one thing that stuck out to me is the significance of age in the country. Age plays a role in many day-to-day activities, and it is among the first questions that you will be asked when you meet someone. In Vietnam, older people are viewed as more intelligent due to their wisdom and experience, and they are generally regarded as always knowing the best way to do things, even if they are wrong and someone younger is correct. In addition, the eldest individual is always the person that you greet first when you enter a room, and they will be the first one to sit down and eat during a meal.

Although on the other side of the world, we share many cultural similarities with Vietnam. One such similarity is our love for coffee. Although not a big coffee drinker myself, there’s no denying that Americans drink coffee all the time, as evidenced by the Starbucks on every other corner. Vietnam is the same way, as it is common to start your day with a cup of coffee, and then to have a cup throughout the day if you need that extra push. Coffee drinking is also utilized for many of the same things, whether it’s a much-needed caffeine boost, to socialize with family and friends, or just to enjoy the rich flavor.

However, there are also many differences between our two cultures. One such difference is the fact that in America, people will tell you outright if you are doing something or saying something wrong. In Vietnam however, they won’t directly tell you, instead phrasing it in a less direct way in order to save “face.” For example, if your boss in America doesn’t like the work you’re doing, he will tell you something along the lines of, “you need to improve the quality of your work.” In Vietnam, if you ask your boss if they like your work, even if they don’t like it they might say something such as, “Yes, but maybe we need another perspective.” This difference will impact my professional experience in Vietnam because it will make it harder to judge the quality of my work, especially in the beginning of my internship. It could reasonably be inferred from that statement that my work wasn’t liked by my boss, but it also could be assumed that my boss really does like my work and wants another opinion on how to proceed. Due to the United States being a low context culture, I am accustomed to always taking what people say as truthful and not placing much emphasis on body language or other non-verbal cues, so it will take time to get accommodated to understanding the non-verbal cues my boss and other citizens are giving me. Although this will be difficult at first, I’m very excited to further develop my understanding of non-verbal cues both inside and outside of work.