Tacos, Llamas and Tips

Photo Credit: Andrew Kung

I recently went one on one with Maggie Hsu. Maggie is a Principal Co-Founder of Gold House, a nonprofit collective of pioneering Asian leaders dedicated to systematically accelerating the Asian diaspora’s societal impact while enhancing the community’s cultural legacy. Maggie is also the former Chief of Staff to Tony Hsieh, CEO of Zappos. Maggie previously led business development for Fluidity, a platform for tokenizing securities based on the Ethereum blockchain. Prior to that, was Director of Strategy at Hilton Worldwide and was a consultant at McKinsey & Company. Maggie is also a co-founder of Mochi Magazine, an online magazine for Asian Americans.

Adam: Thanks again for taking the time to share your advice. First things first, though, I am sure readers would love to learn more about you. How did you get here? What experiences, failures, setbacks or challenges have been most instrumental to your growth?

Maggie: I grew up on the East Coast as the daughter of Taiwanese immigrants. I always wanted to go into business but intentionally studied something different in college – biology. This way, I would learn the scientific method, a way of approaching and solving problems. After college, I became a management consultant, again learning problem solving frameworks that could be applied more broadly to both business and life. More so than memorizing any specific facts or formulas, learning how to problem solve has been an incredibly useful skill.

After being a consultant for a few years, I realized that for my whole life I had a very clear path laid out, as determined by my parents (and not questioned by me): go to a top-rated college, get a prestigious job, then go to a top-rated business school, and get another prestigious job. But what came after that? Suddenly the prescribed path ended.

I have always enjoyed bringing people together, whether that is hosting celebratory parties, connecting two friends who have common interests, introducing two friends who might have a romantic connection, or helping someone get a job. I feel deeply rewarded when I facilitate a connection that grows into something beneficial for both people. How could I reconcile my career path with this passion?

I took what many considered to be an odd detour and went out to Las Vegas to work for Tony Hsieh, the CEO of Zappos. Tony had been on a nationwide speaking tour for his book, Delivering Happiness, and had been speaking about “engineered serendipity”; the idea of curating environments and situations that help people connect with each other in unexpected ways. Here was someone who was extremely successful in the business world, also passionate about bringing people together, and an incredible non-linear problem solver. I cold e-mailed Tony and showed up to Vegas with a small suitcase, expecting to be there for two months. Three years later, I left Vegas with a completely changed perspective and direction.

While I was in Vegas I met many people including Bing Chen (Chairman of Gold House), Kevin Lin (Principal Co-Founder of Gold House and Co-Founder of Twitch), and Tim Chang (Principal Co-Founder of Gold House and Partner at Mayfield). It was then did I realize that I could chart my own path; and, that my career and identity didn’t have to fit into a neatly definable box.

Adam: How did you come up with your business idea? What advice do you have for others on how to come up with great ideas?

Maggie: Gold House began with a question: “Why are Asians so behind?” In Silicon Valley, Asians are nearly 30% of workforce but less than half of executive ranks; we’re the least likely to get promoted; we experience the widest margins of economic disparity of any domestic demographic; have the highest rates of poverty in certain regions; and certain conditions like clinical depression, suicide, and diabetes befall our people more than any other group per capita. Why? Like good Asians, we decided it was our fault. But instead of waiting for someone else, a group of us decided 2 years ago to do something about it. We created Gold House Collective, whose mission is to build systems that enable our community to live more authentic, more successful, and longer lives.

Our seminal program is our Gold House Salons, which bring together small groups of Gold House members over an unforgettable dining experience to solve a specific challenge. At each dinner salon, we take this 30-person group and put them to work solving a problem (we make them work for their dinner!). One of our earliest salons was hosted by Crazy Rich Asians director Jon M. Chu in advance of his film’s opening. His challenge for the group was how to make the film a box office success, and that salon launched the #GoldOpen movement which has successfully supported nearly a dozen Asian-led films—several to #1 opening weekend box office success. More recently, we hosted a series of salons for The Farewell, starring Golden Globe winner Awkwafina and directed by Lulu Wang. Those salons explored the idea of how to better build intergenerational relationships —critical, given 1/3 of the population is Baby Boomers (including most of our parents). We’ve also partnered with Summit on a series of salons: one around “building tribes and communities” and another around “following non-traditional paths”.

When we launched Gold House, people told us that hundreds of Asian groups existed already, across ethnicities and industries, and that our concept had been tried - and failed, many times over. They were skeptical that our idea was different. Yes, it was true that the concept had been tested before, but there are many good ideas out there, and often your idea has already been explored by someone else. Don’t be discouraged by that. What brought Gold House from “good” to “great” was, in my opinion, the combination of having a clear purpose and a simultaneous eagerness to adapt if something wasn’t working.

Adam: How did you know your business idea was worth pursuing? What advice do you have on how to best test a business idea?

Maggie: We spent our first year convening hundreds of top Asian creatives, entrepreneurs, and executives to determine how we could enable more authentic lives through media. As we know, what you see is what others say and therefore, what you believe about yourself. We hosted informal focus groups, always bringing together these minds over a delicious meal, since food is such a central part of our culture. We also researched aspirational and analogous collectives from the Free Masons, to the Young Professionals Organization, to the Executive Leadership Council, to the African and Jewish diasporas, to the Church in order to understand how they smartly (and across generations) fortified mutually-supportive bases.

Often people are secretive about their ideas because they are afraid others will steal them; we prefer to be open and collaborative, since you never know what another perspective or insight can bring to the idea.

Adam: What are the key steps you have taken to grow your business? What advice do you have for others on how to take their businesses to the next level?

Maggie: We think in much shorter planning cycles that aren’t dictated by something as arbitrary as years or quarters but rather based on the speed in which we need to move against a particular initiative. I have rarely seen such tight cycles of iteration and execution in nonprofits – it’s bringing a bit of the Lean Startup Methodology to the nonprofit world.

Every initiative we put out, such as #GoldOpen and #GoldRush, is launched with the highest level quality, but we are brutally honest about changing elements that don’t work. Our team doesn’t take it personally if we have to change something – at the end of the day, the “customer” determines our success, and if something needs to be changed, we change it. This relentless customer focus is a core principle at Amazon and something that I’ve brought over to Gold House.

Adam: What are your best sales and marketing tips?

Maggie: Focus on authentic memorability. When I worked for Tony, we were asked one year to host a CES party in Downtown Vegas, where Tony has invested over $350M into helping revitalize the area. At any given moment during CES there are hundreds of events going on simultaneously, and it’s hard to attract people’s attention to an event, let alone one that is not held on the strip. Tony didn’t want to just host another bland cocktail party. He had recently moved into an airstream and tiny home community and thought it would be fun to host the event there. A friend of his, Javier Anaya from Pinches Tacos, offered to cater the event. So now we knew there would be tacos at the event; and Marley (an alpaca who also lived in the community), would be roaming around. As we thought of how to best brand the invitations, Tony asked, “Why don’t we just call it what it is?” Tacos and Alpacas didn’t quite have the same ring as Tacos and Llamas, so we branded the event “Tacos and Llamas”. A surge of RSVPs immediately came in, with people loving the uniqueness of the concept. One person even asked if we were serving llama tacos. The event was a huge success because it highlighted the quirky nature of Downtown Vegas in a way that led to many stories. It has turned into its own underground viral brand and we have hosted many more taco and llama parties since then.

Adam: In your experience, what are the defining qualities of an effective leader? How can leaders and aspiring leaders take their leadership skills to the next level?

Maggie: Be vulnerable and authentic. If you are authentic, the right people will find you. People can sense when there is a dissonance between what you say and what you do; or, if your stated company values are not actually practiced. We have seen this recently with a few prominent tech leaders. 

Adam: What are your three best tips applicable to entrepreneurs, executives and civic leaders?

Maggie: First: The power of weak ties. This concept was originally coined in the seventies by sociologist Mark Granovetter and later articulated in the book Linked by Albert-Laszlo Barabasi, where I first learned about it. When you are in a close-knit group, you are well supported; but the group is limited by having access to similar information and thought patterns. However, when you reach out to other groups via weak ties, you gain access to different ways of thinking and new opportunities. Although Gold House is focused on the Asian community, we have also connected with other communities such as the African American and LatinX communities through our #GoldOpen program. We’ve collaborated with them on buyouts and promotion for films such as The Sun is Also a Star, Just Mercy, and the forthcoming In the Heights.

Second: Hire for and support a value-driven culture rather than one that is prescriptive about decisions. We’ve all been in a situation with a customer service rep that clearly has a set script to follow and won’t listen to your concerns, or who does understand your concerns but isn’t empowered to fix them. At Zappos, all the customer service reps were empowered to do what they needed to do in order to fix the situation. There were no scripts, because the company trusted them to do the right thing.

Third: You can’t be everything to everyone. For every initiative we prioritize at Gold House, there is one we don’t, and that’s okay.

Adam: What is the single best piece of advice you have ever received?

Maggie: You never know where your next idea will come from – so always keep an open mind and open eye, and treat everyone and their ideas with respect.