Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Alex Nguyen. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.
Hi Alex, thanks for joining us today. Being a business owner can be really hard sometimes. It’s rewarding, but most business owners we’ve spoken sometimes think about what it would have been like to have had a regular job instead. Have you ever wondered that yourself? Maybe you can talk to us about a time when you felt this way?
I think starting this year, I was beginning to find happiness as a business owner. At first, there’s this initial honeymoon phase of being able to start a business, but as I went along, it got tougher and tougher. What I mean by tougher is that I felt I wasn’t making a lot of progress in the direction we were going. At the same time, I realized that I needed to build my network more and I did not have the right resources and connections to go to the next stage. After I finished graduate school in business, it seemed like we kept doing the same thing over and over – production, popups, online sales, rinse and repeat. We didn’t enter into new stores, or pushed forward with grocery stores. It felt very stagnant even though we did increase our revenue. At that point, I kept thinking about whether I should start applying for jobs so the business can have some cash flow and I could continue living. But the idea of working for corporate bothered me so much. I know for a fact that if I ended up in corporate, they would have me working even after hours and I wouldn’t have time to reinvest into Hot Boi Chili Oil. Do I work corporate to continue my current lifestyle or do I push hard to find more opportunities to benefit the company? So when an opportunity came to us to attend a trade show in Vegas for a low cost, we had to jump on it asap. Even then, it came with issues that we couldn’t foresee and we almost did not attend the trade show due to it.
Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.
My name is Alex Nguyen, I’m 30 years old and my journey into consumer packaged goods – specifically, chili crunch has been somewhat unorthodox. However, I can assure you that my story became full circle after starting my business. A little background about myself: I graduated from San Francisco State University with a BA in economics in 2018. Around that time, I founded a Facebook group called Subtle Asian Mental Health. It was meant to help dispel and destigmatize Asian mental health and provide support and services all over the world since the group was accessible throughout the globe. Eventually, the goal of the group was to create a non-profit to continue the mission in creating access for Asians in need of mental health resources. Not long after in our planning, a coup was staged to kick me off the team. Part of it was my leadership, which, I can take ownership of. But the other part, was people that I brought on board were folks who could not be trusted.
Why I mention this story is because first and foremost, having a strong foundation for leadership is important when you own a business and there are people on your team who depend on you. Secondly, a team that trusts you to make the decisions and to lead everyone on the right path. Lastly, having humility as a leader to observe, notice, listen, and understand our team when we are forced to look within ourselves.
That said, I don’t regret any of these experiences. I’ve taken what I’ve learned and cultivated an experience that I hope my team can take away and bring it to their next endeavor.
So fast forward to the inception of Hot Boi Chili Oil. I’ve always been a fan of chili oil ever since going to a local Chinese-Vietnamese restaurant during my childhood. It was something I ate with my dad frequently afterschools. During peak quarantine, I honestly had nothing to do – just like everyone else in the world. One day, I decided to make chili oil just for the hell of it. It’s hard to go to a grocery store, why not make it myself? Cooking is one of my passions, so making hot sauce shouldn’t be a hard thing, right? Wrong. I followed a recipe online and tried making it… If you can guess, it tasted like a*s. Where’s all the crunch? The brand that comes to mind for me is S&B’s chili crunch. Slivers of almonds and garlic. Super tasty. Anyway, I disappointingly decided to take a nap and maybe I could return to it or throw it in the trash.
Within the first 20 minutes, I saw blue skies and clouds with – guess what, fried garlic and shallots. Cut exactly the way you see the garlic nuggets in our jars today. I immediately woke up, ran straight to the kitchen, chopped and diced everything, and threw it into hot oil… Lo and behold, another mid chili oil with some crunch. BUT! We were getting somewhere! The flavor was amazing! It gave the chili oil something that I had been looking for.
I gave it to my life partner and she exclaimed that we should try to sell it. That night, I took a bunch of pictures, made it look nice, and then it was uploaded to my personal Instagram to see if there were any takers. I think we got about 10-15 orders. Not bad. After the friends and family got to try it, they also had the same sentiment about starting a business. But when we started to get orders from random people through word of mouth… That’s why I started to feel that it’s probably time to start one.
The brand name, “Hot Boi Chili Oil” started off as a joke. I threw it out to my friends, asking what we should call our brand and first thing my friend says, “Hot Boi Chili Oil” Boom. That’s all I needed to hear. He responded, “Lol, that was a joke, but ok!”
My dad, a successful first generation entrepreneur in CPG, mentioned to me in passing, “Why not use Nau as the mascot? Wouldn’t that be cool?” Honestly, these two initial ideas are probably the best ideas I’ve gotten from people. I didn’t shy away from their suggestions. It just worked, so let’s run with it.
Hot Boi Chili Oil is an artisanal chili crunch that has a crunch that takes your tastebuds to the next level and our secret is in the golden garlic nuggets.
One experience that I will never forget to this day: a friend of mine was coming to pick up an order from my house and when I handed him the chili oil, he looks into my eyes and says, “You’re onto something. You’re onto something.” Every single customer has always come up to us, expressing how much they appreciate the crunch of our chili oil.
From then on, it was off to the races. We outfitted my garage to handle our production, learned on the job, eyes and nose shot from all the spices and smells. Eventually we moved out of the garage and found a small kitchen to work out of and we’ve been slanging this ever since.
Hot Boi Chili Oil has opened so many doors for me. It has given me the opportunity to go back to school and earn a Masters degree in business, concentrating in food entrepreneurship and marketing. I’m extremely fortunate to have been able to go to school and work for my passion.
Any advice for growing your clientele? What’s been most effective for you?
The most effective strategy for growing my clientele has been three things. Having a great product, customer service, and understanding of who our customers are. When you have a product that can speak to your customer, word of mouth becomes a powerful tool to push your product out there. Customers are generally more willing trust their friends that vouch for a product that they’ve been using. At the same time, the early days of our business, we struggled with batches – some batches were completely unusable and some processes in the production were decimated. Being transparent and honest with our customers really helped build the brand loyalty. Even to this day, we’ll sometimes have hiccups, unable to fulfill our deadlines, but our customers have been so understanding that they’re willing to compromise with us.
Are there any books, videos, essays or other resources that have significantly impacted your management and entrepreneurial thinking and philosophy?
There is this one instance when I had an opportunity to visit Warner Brothers, Nordic Division in Copenhagen, Denmark for a study abroad program during the MBA program. The director of advertising mentioned story about leadership and managing people on his team. He mentioned that while he may be the director of advertising and he’s the boss or leader of many people on the team, there are just some things that he’s not good or even great at. For example, running models to determine which advertising strategy they should dive into – he’s terrible at math! But the key thing is mentions next: “If I don’t like working with numbers, I’m going to work with someone on the team who scares the living hell out of me. Why do they scare me? They’re so good at numbers and making models that it just scares me. They live and breathe numbers. As a leader, you need to be honest with yourself and entrust people who are good at what they do to help you reach your goals. Because at the end of the day, it’s you that is successful, it’s the team that helps you reach that success.”
Contact Info:
- Website: https://hotboi.co
- Instagram: https://instagram.com/hotboichilioil
- Facebook: https://facebook.com/hotboichilioil
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexnguyen309/
