We recently connected with Mai Le and have shared our conversation below.

Mai, appreciate you joining us today. Often the greatest growth and the biggest wins come right after a defeat. Other times the failure serves as a lesson that’s helpful later in your journey. We’d appreciate if you could open up about a time you’ve failed.

Failing and succeeding are the yin and yang of my life. My many personal and professional failures, as hard as they were in those moments, have spurred my successes when I have recognized and accepted them. Three areas of failure that I would like to share are related to school, parenting, and startups.

School
When I entered college, I struggled with writing so much that I tried my hardest to avoid courses that required writing assignments. Unfortunately at that time, my college requirements included writing courses, which to my perceived detriment lowered my GPA. In my first year of college, I spent hours and hours, possibly an entire weekend, writing as little as one paragraph and garnering grades no higher than a B, most of which were C+ or B-. I realized that writing and communication of any kind were my weaknesses that I had to overcome. I decided to abandon my strengths in math and science to pursue two majors that required pure writing. This has allowed me pursue new passions in areas where oral and written communication is key as an entrepreneur and author.

Parenting
Parenting is hard and failing is normal. I will be the first to admit that I failed over and over again, affecting my children in ways that will have lasting negative impact. They are and will continue to address their internal struggles due to my parenting style. As a Vietnamese refugee, I was brought up differently than my American peers. For example, the three words “I love you” are not spoken or articulated. Love is shown through action and food, for example. I continued my own upbringing of showing love in the same ways that my parents did. That wasn’t enough for my children. My inability to say those three words to my children created a huge gap in our relationships. It took me nearly 15 years to finally realize that I have to try to communicate in their love language as hard as it may be for me. While I’m not there yet, I will continue to try and rectify my failure as a parent.

Startups
As a CEO and co-founder of a few startups now, I have to fundraise. I absolutely hate fundraising. How fun is it to really go to an investor as a minority woman asking for money and proving 10x return on their money? It’s not so easy, especially for me where culturally it’s not in my DNA and personally I’ve been too afraid. I avoided it whenever and wherever possible. However, building a medical device company, you really need cash to build the technology and the quality management system around it, go through FDA approval process, and more. Getting out there and getting used to the many “NOs” from investors was the only way to succeed. I needed to go out pitching over and over again until each bee sting of a “NO” numbed me to the point where it becomes second nature. I was finally able to raise the seed money needed to take my company to the next phase, and I will now have to do it again this year.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

I’m a serial entrepreneur, published author, and burgeoning screenwriter. I never planned for any of the aforementioned titles. My career path has zigzagged, allowing me to stumble into new and unimaginable passions. Nothing I’ve done connects linearly on a resume or LinkedIn. However, looking back, as Steve Jobs had aptly put it, everything connects perfectly and makes total sense in retrospect. I spent most of my 20’s saving the world in Africa, Asia, and the Middle East. I thought that was my passion until I had to give up my career for family. I’ve been a serial entrepreneur since my 30s, and I’m currently the CEO and co-founder of Haystack Dx, a medical device start-up, whose mission is to improve the lives of those suffering from nerve and muscle disorders through better and early detection and monitoring of diseases.

I stumbled into entrepreneurship when I left my supposedly forever career saving the world traveling to developing countries on assignments. I founded and co-founded technology startups where I have been the visionary, business developer, product evangelist, and sales/marketer in leading them from ideas to the market. I led engineering teams advancing new technologies such as optical character recognition and artificial intelligence (AI) in the mid-2000’s when these ideas were just in their infancy. Unfortunately, many of the technologies I developed were too early for adoption and/or I failed to market them successfully to convince people to adopt. Regardless of my successes and failures building technologies, my passion has been to create solutions that would positively impact people, while bootstrapping those companies with little funding.

I’m most proud of my flexibility to take risks and try out new things, allowing me to work in numerous fields and build a variety of products. Whether or not I’m an entrepreneur, activist, writer, or some other title, I want my fans, followers, and clients to know that I pursue each and every one of them with my heart.

Any advice for managing a team?

The hardest part of my job as the CEO and co-founder is neither technology nor business challenges, but rather managing and working with a team of diverse personalities, skills, egos, passions, and goals. The one advice I have for those in my position working with a diverse team and trying to keep morals high is to make decisions or statements only when you are in a wise mindset that allows you to be reasonable with moderate emotions in order to see all perspectives.

Learning and unlearning are both critical parts of growth – can you share a story of a time when you had to unlearn a lesson?

I was taught to work hard in order to succeed. I have worked 150 to 200% harder, losing sleep and to the detriment of my health, in order to succeed, and this includes working on vacations and every waking minute. I am starting to unlearn that working hard doesn’t mean sacrificing life, family, and friends. At the end of the day, the work is always there, not the precious time you have with others and yourself. Up until this year, I missed out on many holidays and ended up in hospitals because I overworked without sleep. I also lost moments with my three children and husband. I’m trying to unlearn that mentality that I grew up with in order to make it in America as a refugee woman of color, but it will take some time before I get there.    

Contact Info:

• Website: maikimle.com
• Instagram: mai_unplugged
• Twitter: mai_unplugged

Image Credits
Photographer: Joe Lee