He Left TikTok to Find Presence: How Living Abroad Changed Everything

[00:00:00] Nick Tran: It was probably one of the most rewarding chapters, not only in our family’s life, but in my life personally. A mid career sabbatical and you get to prioritize your family was, you know, beyond remarkable. Kids can adapt. It’s also what helps them grow and strive and persevere. I don’t remember seeing my kids during that time that I was at TikTok. Part of the rationale for leaving was to literally take it up a little bit and get me out of that mode. You can get a lot done when you’re very intentional with that time. There’s no social media for them. It’s they’re seven and nine. They’re not of the age where it’s appropriate. You realize how fast the world moves. That’s why I’m really more focused on building the values and the different philosophy of things for my kids because those won’t change. Life is a team sport, but it’s a lot harder to win when you’re playing by yourself. I wasn’t learning or having fun. I would leave and find something else. I only care about the stat of how many people that have worked on my teams that have become CMOs or C level executives in their own right. Right Now I’m at seven.

[00:00:59] Kevin Rice: Welcome to CEOs and ABCs. Real stories from execs who lead at work and show up at home. Career moves, Parenting wins and fails and everything in between. I’m your host, Kevin Rice. Here’s today’s episode. My guest today has built some of the most culturally relevant brands of the last two decades. He led marketing at Taco Bell, Samsung. He brought Hulu into cultural conversations with bold, unexpected campaigns. At TikTok, he guided global marketing through one of the most explosive periods of growth in social media history.

He currently serves as President and CMO of a joint venture between Diageo and Main Street Advisors where He oversees Lobos, 1707 and Ciroc vodka. But beyond the resume, Nick is a really intentional father who pressed pause and moved his young family to London for three years, visited over 20 countries and gave him a reset on presence. In this episode we talk about what that season taught him about designing a life, not just a career.

Setting real boundaries and high pressure roles, turning weekends into intentional adventures and bringing his kids into the work he’s truly proud of. Like letting them have a peek behind the scenes at a pickleball brand activation.

We get into the practical side of parenting today. Guardrails on screens and social media, teaching generosity and kindness and why he’s Investing in languages and music over short termed muscle and skills. And how he’s coaching his teams and his kids to be curious, resilient leaders in a world that changes daily.

If you’re trying to build an ambitious career at work without losing yourself at home, this conversation’s for you. My guest today is Nick Tran. Nick, thank you so much for being here.

[00:02:37] Nick Tran: Thank you for having me. This is going to be fun.

[00:02:39] Kevin Rice: Yeah, I appreciate it. You recently just returned from a stint living overseas. Tell us about it. What was that like with your family living overseas for a while?

[00:02:48] Nick Tran: It was probably one of the most rewarding chapters, not only in our family’s life, but in my life personally.

So to not be focused on work and have a moment in your, you know, time where you have like a mid career sabbatic and you get to prioritize your family and travel and making breakfast and going on walks and exploring the city around you, especially one that you’ve never been to before, was, you know, beyond remarkable. It was without a doubt one of the best gifts I could have given to myself and to my family. So I would highly recommend anyone that has the opportunity to just do like a few months here, or in my case, three years, where you can just take some time and enjoy that with your family. I think it’s a critical part of life.

[00:03:30] Kevin Rice: That’s amazing. So was this a career move or was this purely about giving your family kind of like a more worldly view?

[00:03:37] Nick Tran: It was definitely the latter. So there was nothing out there from a career perspective. We had lived my entire life in Southern California. My wife is from Arizona. But when we had our kids, we were pretty much rooted in Southern California and by family and by friends and all that stuff. But then it kind of struck us that if we didn’t move while the kids were young, we’d probably get to a point where they’re in school, they have friends, they have a community around them, and you don’t want to pull them out of that in the midst of like junior high or high school. I feel like that’s just traumatic for kids. So we, we recognize that when they were three and five, if we were to do something bold and get out of our comfort zone, that would probably be the best time.

And we just literally made the decision and pulled the trigger and then ended up going to London. And I’d actually never visited London before in my life.

So it was a completely new adventure. We were discovering the entire city and country as a family for the first time. And it really opened up my Eyes to what people are capable of doing even though it’s uncomfortable and at the same time how adaptable kids, especially at that age are. We put them in a British school system and for the ages that they were there, feel like they’re from the uk even though they’re blatantly American.

[00:04:57] Kevin Rice: What do you hope your kids take away from that experience?

[00:05:01] Nick Tran: The takeaway for them I hope is that there was a chapter in their childhood that they remember me being completely present. When I was younger, both my parents were working full time and I didn’t get a chance to see them as often as I probably would have wanted to, let alone be able to travel and have them involved in all the day to day stuff.

I think we ended up going to like 23 different countries in the three years. So I hope they remember some of the places that we visited, some of the friends that we made, the communities that we were a part of. And then, you know, there’s so many lessons that you can learn from being abroad and having a little bit more of like a global view of what’s happening in the world. For myself, growing up in the US everything was a very like us first US centric approach. Seeing the world through the lens of someone that’s spent, you know, half of their lives at this stage abroad is just something that I hope that they, they keep with them forever.

[00:05:55] Kevin Rice: Yeah, that’s amazing. I have always dreamed of having my kids and taking them and moving and living overseas for the reasons you described earlier. I feel like I just kind of missed the opportunity where they’re kind of rooted now. They’ve got friends, we’ve got support system here and it’s just so hard to make that move.

So I really applaud you for doing it. It sounds amazing.

[00:06:17] Nick Tran: Yeah. And we didn’t want to get to a point where we felt like regret about not doing it. And my wife and I have, we’ve always said like we would love to do that. And because I was in a position where I wasn’t working and my wife was open to not working as well, it really just kind of became the catalyst for us to say, okay, well there’s no better time than now.

So let’s literally open up a map and decide what would be best for a fun experience for the kids. So we, we looked for a place that was English speaking and a place that they could easily get to know people and build friendships. So it was down to Canada, UK and Australia. Australia is just so far from everything else. So if you want to also Travel, it’s difficult. Canada just felt like similar to the us Too close to home.

So we settled on London again, never having visited. And there was a little bit of anxiousness when we first landed, like, what did we do? What do we get ourselves into?

But then you realize one, people around the world in a lot of places are just so nice and welcoming. And you get to a place like London, you realize this isn’t like we’re popping our kids into a place that’s a very difficult environment to live. So once you got rid of the unfamiliarity, which is a fair feeling, and then you no longer feel unsafe, then you sort of hit this moment where you’re like, this is an amazing time to explore.

Let the kids be kids and allow them to go to the playgrounds. Which, by the way, the first lesson I learned when I got to London was how different playgrounds are in other parts of the world versus the US Because I think in the US there’s an immediate concern of liability and is this unsafe for the fear of getting sued. Whereas like in parts of Europe and in London in particular, playgrounds are insane.

My initial reaction was, is this safe for our kids? But like, kids play there all the time, nobody gets hurt, everyone has fun and you have everything from crazy zip lines that are pretty tall to wood structures that have no safety nets beneath them. And again, my first instinct was, is this safe? Only to realize kids can adapt and work their way up to doing these fun things for them. And it’s challenging, but it’s also what helps them grow and helps them strive and persevere and take risks and do things that are in a safe environment. So I really enjoyed some of the early lessons I learned and just being abroad and seeing how other people raise children versus how, how we tend to do that in the U.S. yeah.

[00:08:47] Kevin Rice: Speaking of lessons, so I, I was fortunate. I got, I took a couple years off, kind of a mid career sabbatical after I sold my company as well. And I used that time really intentionally to reconnect with my kids because when I was working, it was long hours, I was traveling a lot, I was missing time with them. And I just started to feel a great distance between me and my children and taking time off, I really focused in on our connection and starting to think about applying the same intentionality that I did with my career to my personal life. And so I took a lot of lessons from reflecting on the way I was working my career into that break and then applied them to now that I’ve like started working Again, I’m curious, what lessons did you learn about how you were working in your career and what are you bringing forward now that you are back in a role as president of this joint venture between mainstream advisors and diageo?

[00:09:40] Nick Tran: Yeah. So I feel that most people plan out their work life and they have certain milestones that they want to accomplish, and they take their personal life as their moment to relax and be unburdened by those checklists, let’s call it. And where I wanted to prioritize my life was in doing things with my family and my kids. And I. I put little milestones together that would help us feel like we were moving forward in the relationship with, like, our family more so than anything. So one of the things I quickly learned is that, you know, pancakes aren’t the same in London as they are in the US and my kids loved pancakes. So I made it a point to try to quickly learn how to make pancakes from scratch as quickly as I could so that I could make that for them and make sure that they had a piece of that with them when they were abroad.

So having those little things that I tried to accomplish to build that relationship and be closer with the family was one of the first things I did when I, when I took that time off. And then recognizing that the times during the week that they were in school was sort of my time to do what I needed to do for myself, but that the times when they came back home and when we had weekends, that’s when, like, my actual quote unquote, work started when I was abroad. So it was just sort of like flipping the schedule and then taking advantage of every weekend that we had and trying to do as many things that we knew would be fulfilling to them and exciting for them again, whether it was traveling to Paris for the weekend or going to another country for an extended weekend, or meeting up with their friends in their native countries, because a lot of the kids from London aren’t actually from London, they’re from other parts of Europe. And then just recognizing that even within the UK there’s just so much to explore, it really gave us this mindset of, okay, the weekdays I’m resting, and then the weekends were full on. We’re taking, you know, charge of our time and maximizing it to the full, fullest that we can make so that when we left, we leave knowing that we put it all out on, on the table and we didn’t, you know, waste any of the time that we were there just thinking that we were in a comfortable environment. And then miss out on all the opportunities that you have by being abroad.

[00:11:54] Kevin Rice: I love that it really resonates when I’m not intentional about my time with my children, Especially when I’m working and especially when I was in a high stress position.

I would just go into default and we would go through the motions and I would look back and I feel like I kind of wasted that weekend or I wasted that evening when I was more intentional and I thought about, okay, here’s an activity we can do to talk about resilience or talk about teamwork. Like, I’ll give you one example. I came up with a little LEGO project where my kids had to each build a piece of a LEGO project and then figure out how to put it together as a single unit. And then I use that as kind of a way to talk about teamwork. I look back and I felt like that was such a more, like, meaningful use of time than just, like, going through the motions and being distracted and thinking about work.

[00:12:44] Nick Tran: Sure.

[00:12:45] Kevin Rice: I’d love to hear some more of the milestones that you thought about for your family and how you’ve worked towards putting those in place.

[00:12:52] Nick Tran: Travel was an easy one because we all knew we wanted to travel. So it was really about how we immerse ourselves in different cultures and pick up some of the local nuances. So in addition to the major cities, we would try to add to our list of places to visit these secondary cities that might be overlooked by a lot of folks that have to travel far distances to get to Europe.

So we were able to discover cities like Falsterbo, which is on the southern, western tip of Sweden, that most people would never have heard about. We were able to go to the city in Finland where we were able to watch the northern lights and have this crazy experience where there was a sauna in our room and we would throw the kids and, like, family into the sauna, get super, super, super hot to the point where we were, like, sweating, and then immediately bundle up in our winter gear, run outside when the alert told us that the northern lights were now appearing over us. And then we would just lay down in the snow watching the northern lights do this magical display above us. And then when we were too cold to lay outside, we’d run back in and then sit in the sauna for a half hour to basically defrost. So those milestones with where we visited and what we did were all engineered by my wife and I to try to take advantage of the things that most people don’t get to do when they’re so far away. So you get this ability to explore culture in the way that a local would be explored. So that was one milestone. The other thing that we really enjoy as a family is just food.

So there’s this rule that we always try new things. And we were trying to expose our kids to as many different cuisines as possible.

So some restaurants they went to, they’d have these little passports, which I thought were really fun ideas, so you could have a little food passport, where when you go to different countries, you’re not just trying the expected cuisines, but you’re trying things that most tourists might not be trying. And then they can have little stamps and then stamp that they try these various dishes. So food was another milestone that we did.

And then I took a lot of time personally and tried to start doing things that challenge me and that I hadn’t done before during the time that my kids were in school. So I got back into writing posts on LinkedIn, which I was only doing previously in moments where I was looking for a new role or working.

And I realized that that’s something that I wanted to not only do, but maintain and be consistent about, which is why I still do it to this day. And I also wanted to say yes to things like podcasts, because previously I would always say no.

I think it was because of the environments that I was in from a corporate perspective.

I was very concerned about saying something that wouldn’t be reflected of me or the company that I was at. And always with these constraints, that some of the companies would say, we don’t want you to speak on your personal stuff, but you can certainly speak on just the company thing. So you become more of a company spokesperson. So for a while, I was avoiding the opportunity to speak about myself and my experience and what I’ve been through. So I also started to, you know, say yes to a lot of these opportunities, more and more, be more vocal about what I’ve learned. So those are, like, a handful of the milestones that we were. We were trying to accomplish while we were abroad.

[00:16:09] Kevin Rice: Yeah. That’s amazing. I think there’s a lot of, like, lessons and values that you’re able to instill in your kids in a deeper way. Right. It’s not just like a conversation about, hey, we should try new things. You have real experiences to anchor those lessons for. For life. Which makes me think about, like, some other inflection points that maybe you went through, like, the first time you became a parent. What was that experience like for? Like, how did your perspective on work and career change as you. You became a father.

[00:16:39] Nick Tran: I think it was a little bit different from my first child versus my second child because when we had our firstborn, it was important for me to feel that I could provide for the family. And if, you know, my wife wanted to take time off, it was something that I wanted to make sure that I could. I could do in support. I almost took the moment that we had kids like a fire under me to try to do as much as I could to earn whatever I could and ensure that we were stable. So I think that was the initial motivation. By the time we had our second kid, I think we were in a little bit more of a comfortable environment.

And I started to focus my attention, knowing likely that that would be our last kid, that we would, you know, be intentional about what the time we spent. And I was more present and I was traveling less. And I was trying to make sure that I was there when she was young. Because the parts that I missed for my son were the early stages, like moving from 0 to 3 months, 3 to 6, 6 to 12, 12 to 2, like, you know, 12 months to 2 years old.

Those leaps are so significant that if you don’t really immerse yourself in those stages, the blink of an eye, they’re a toddler, and you would have missed out on all those, like, little nuances they had when they were babies. So I think those elements that I missed for our first, because I was just so focused on working, I tried to be more mindful of when we had our second.

And then, I will say, the moment that I got to TikTok, it became very difficult to balance, mainly because the pace of work at TikTok was unlike any place I’d ever seen before. I was heading up marketing globally, and it was the most fun and exhilarating role that I had, you know, up until the the end. And I realized I was getting to the point where I was, like, pretty much addicted and obsessed with work.

And it was almost unhealthy, the relationship that I had with work at that point, because we would start at 6am in the U.S. because that’s the only time that the global team could meet. I’d start with Europe, then I’d go to the us Then I’d work with Asia at night. So it was this, like, steady stream of, like, meetings that I just was obligated to have. And then the pace that we were working was also, like, incredibly fast because we were trying to literally market at the speed of culture, which was Getting to the point where it was innovative, fun, exciting, but then also feeding this obsession because the more stuff you make and the more stuff you see in the market, the better you feel and the more excited you are at the next thing. So we were essentially just grinding things out to the point where I don’t remember seeing my kids during that time that I was at TikTok.

So it was really helpful for me personally leaving TikTok to be able to move abroad and away from the environments where I was set off by certain triggers in the same house. I would immediately think that I have to work or do things or be non stop around the clock. So part of the rationale for leaving our comfortable state was to literally like take it up a little bit and get me out of that mode. And it was really a blessing to be able to go abroad and spend that time and reset.

[00:19:56] Kevin Rice: I appreciate you sharing all that. I have similar but different story where in my career I was building my company in the last couple years before we sold it.

I was working incredibly long hours. But more importantly, the hours I was with my kids, I wasn’t really present for them. I was thinking about the next meeting, I was thinking about the next client presentation. And so I was physically there, but I wasn’t mentally or emotionally or even energetically present for them.

And I’m curious, is that just the way that it is for people like us who have high ambition? Is there anything you would have done differently if you know what you know now?

[00:20:36] Nick Tran: Back then, TikTok was hard because the expectations for us were to be in that mode.

So if I take TikTok aside, I will say there were plenty of meetings that in hindsight were nowhere near as important as some of those moments that I could have had. Obviously outside of normal working hours with the kids. I think we sometimes have this belief, especially as you get more senior, that in the positions you’re in, these meetings are mandatory and necessary to succeed. And I’ve realized now that majority of the meetings don’t drive much impact. So I’ve been a lot more intentional. One of the things that I did when I was abroad actually was I started helping out and consulting different brands. And my approach, which is gonna sound maybe a little bit un, like unconventional, was doing one hour a week of consulting for each client. And it’d be 30 minutes on a Monday, 15 minutes on a Wednesday, and 15 minutes on a Friday.

And it actually ended up working is because you can get a lot done when you’re very intentional with that time and people are a lot more efficient when they see your time as being very scarce.

And their approach to you when you have 15 minutes versus when you have an hour, is to cut all the elements that are not critical and just hone in on the things that really matter. And I realized that that’s where I could make the most impact.

It gave me a great opportunity to keep my mind sharp and think about problems that people were facing in the business world. But it also left most of my time open for me to take that time with the family.

So I’m taking that same approach back to what I’m doing now, where it’s not about how much time we’re working, it’s really about what we’re setting out to do and how we can accomplish those, you know, as efficiently as possible.

And ensuring that not only myself, but the team has that breathing room around the workday to just be parents, be present for their kids, be present for their families. And if they don’t have kids, they could be present for their dogs or for their friends, it doesn’t matter who. But I think we all need to have a little bit of that moment of either rest or leisure to really bring our best game to the field.

[00:22:58] Kevin Rice: Yeah, meetings are kind of like gas, right? Like they fill up the space that you give them. So being more intentional with the time kind of it’s a forcing function to get them done more efficiently. And what I’m hearing from you is really around boundaries and intention. And that was kind of the same lesson I took away. I look back at my career and I don’t know if I would have been able to accomplish the things I accomplished without pushing really hard. But what I could have done differently was been more intentional about the time I did have with my kids, be more present, plan that time so that it’s more meaningful.

[00:23:31] Nick Tran: And I think that’s a big motivation for me now as I get back into, you know, know, a full time role that takes a lot of my attention is just to carve out those moments that I’m with the kids and not worry about the, the work element, but then know that as soon as it’s time, I’m, I’m back in it. And luckily now they’re at an age where they’re in school most of the day, so it’s very easy to, to balance out. But at the same time they also respect the fact that like I’m now back to working. And there’s moments, especially during the week, for specific events or dinners or activities, activations that we have that. I. I just have to be part of that. But at the same time, I try to include them whenever I can, just so they can get a glimpse of what I’m doing. So we. We hosted our first pickleball tournament for Ciroc last month, and I, you know, was able to bring them out and they were able to see what we were working on and the activation, and they even were able. They. They were playing pickleball with Matt Manasse, who’s that pickleball coach to the stars, and they enjoyed it, and they also got a glimpse of what I was working on as a, you know, in my new role. So it’s definitely fun when they’re at an age where you can show them some of the things. Obviously they weren’t partaking in any of the. Of the beverages, but they were able to, like, see what it was that we were building and how we were bringing this new world to life.

[00:24:47] Kevin Rice: Yeah, we talked a little bit about boundaries, and one of the things I’m starting to think a lot about, and you’re the perfect person to talk to about this, is boundaries in social media. And how are you thinking about introducing your children to social media if you haven’t already? And what guardrails are you thinking about putting in place?

[00:25:07] Nick Tran: Yeah, I mean, I have a pretty hard stance on this. There’s no social media for them. They’re seven and nine. They’re not of the age where it’s even remotely appropriate or a thing that I feel is a discussion topic. You know, for us, they have very limited access to the Internet. They have minimal screen time, but that’s something that we’ve been doing since they were kids. So when they were younger, they would be able to do three episodes of Bluey a week. So it’s basically 24 minutes. That was pretty much the extent of their screen time. Now that they’re a little bit older and they have friends that are still in London, we give them about five minutes roughly a night to message their friends, but that’s supervised, and it’s in a closed environment where they’re only able to message their friends and no one else can message them, and they can’t message anyone else. They have unrestricted access to message their grandparents and FaceTime their grandparents, but outside of that, there’s literally no screen time, let alone social media. I don’t find social media to be generally helpful for kids that are under 13.

I don’t think it helps promote any positivity or any traits that are beneficial for them. Definitely does not develop any habits that you want to maintain.

So we’ve been pretty intentional about not exposing them to anything in that world until they’re much older. I also encourage friends and family members with young kids to not let them be on social media, especially short form. And it’s just because that’s not really the best place for a developing brain to spend their time. So I definitely avoid that in totality.

As far as screen time on things that we’re okay with in New York, at the school that they’re at, they actually have a lot of homework that’s done on iPads. So the homework that they do, obviously screen time, fine, no problem. There’s some specific games that are educational in nature that I’m open to and then when they travel for long periods of time. So my son might be playing chess on his, you know, iPad and my daughter might be watching Bluey or things like that. So that’s pretty much where we allow them to, to participate when it comes to social.

I don’t mind showing them a video that I find interesting once in a while or if there’s something that they’re curious about, but it’s not something that they have access to. It’s literally me showing them specifically something that I think is cute or funny on my phone and then doing it in a one burst moment where they’re not scrolling and sifting through. It’s me showing them that one thing and then taking it away.

[00:27:31] Kevin Rice: Yeah, I appreciate that. Cause it helps like strengthen my own resolve. My, my son, he’s asked me dozens of times if he can create his own YouTube channel because where he gets exposure to it is not at my house, but when he goes and like does play dates with friends, they’re watching YouTubers play video games, which is hard for me to understand, but it’s what they want to do. And I only have so much control when he is at a friend’s house because there’s this kind of weird conflict of I don’t want to tell other parents how to put guardrails around what the kids do when they’re at their house. But at the same time that’s kind of where you get. Gets exposure to things that I’m not super comfortable with. And so I’m constantly telling him, no, you can’t create a YouTube channel. And he’s like, why not? Like, well, it’s just not appropriate for your age.

So I’ve got three boys, my oldest is nine, my middle son is six. And then I have a 18 month old. And so I’m, you know, running the gambit with three boys with a lot of energy.

[00:28:33] Nick Tran: Yeah. I mean, what I would do if I were in your shoes is if, if my nine year old. So I have a nine year old. If he said, I want to start a YouTube channel, I’d first ask him, what do you want to share on your YouTube channel? And dig into the things that are exciting to them about it. Because if you dig in and it’s just the idea of being a YouTuber or creator that has some level of fame that’s like, not really helpful. But if, if he was like, oh, I really love science and I’d love to create a channel where I can share my love for science with folks. And I want to show experiments that I’m working on and doing all these different things. There’s a way to channel that to something really positive and fun. And then if the idea is like, yeah, if you want, we can record some of these and, you know, we can put it on YouTube as a private link to your grandparents so they can see the experiments you’re doing. Or you can teach your cousins this thing down the road. Like, those are all outlets that I think are actually acceptable. I just don’t want to expose them to the elements of social, which are predominantly short form that, like, I would think are more harmful at this age than helpful.

[00:29:40] Kevin Rice: Yeah, I appreciate that. I appreciate the guidance because I get so much value out of these podcast interviews. I actually, I saw you recently on a podcast where you talked about wanting to be a teacher at some point in your career.

[00:29:54] Nick Tran: Yeah.

[00:29:55] Kevin Rice: Being a parent is essentially largely, you know, loving and teaching and helping your kids, like, grow into adulthood. So what are some of the things you’re teaching your kids today?

[00:30:06] Nick Tran: Ooh, I feel like they’re taught quite a bit. The main things that stand out.

I have a big emphasis on my older child, more so because of him being the firstborn and probably those nuances. But make sure that he can learn how to be generous. I don’t want him to ever feel like we’re in a world where if I get something that means you don’t, and if you get something that means I don’t. I think there’s definitely this mindset of abundance which a lot of people have talked about before, that I’m trying to instill on him so that he feels that a lot of people can win. And the more that you give, the more that you receive. My daughter, who’s the younger one, with her, it’s just really about kindness. I don’t know if it’s, like, a boy girl thing, but there’s definitely this, like, nuance where the girls are a little bit more, like, advanced and a little bit more mature.

And sometimes, even though she’s younger, some things happen in the classroom, and she’ll point out that, like, that wasn’t very nice from that other person. And then before she even gets to the here’s how I’m gonna retaliate. I try to, like, intervene and let her know that, like, well, it didn’t make you feel very good. We don’t want anyone else to feel that way because it’s just like, a perpetual cycle. And I really just want to instill kindness in her because she’s actually fairly generous kid. I also try to make sure that they know that life isn’t necessarily easy.

But we acknowledge the fact that there’s things that we’ve been able to do and that my parents and my wife’s parents have been able to do that provided us a very comfortable lifestyle, which is almost a responsibility on our part to ensure that they’re instilled with the right values, to not take that for granted and then to be generous with others around them. So that’s a big one that I’m always pushing as far as, like, traditional elements.

They really like music.

[00:31:59] Kevin Rice: Yeah.

[00:32:00] Nick Tran: So both my kids are doing piano and violin and in choir. And it’s not something that I’m necessarily very musically inclined, but they just seemed passionate about it. So we just wanted to feel that passion and give them more support around it. And my son, for the first time, his class is doing the John Lennon song Imagine from End of School Situation. And he asked the teacher, he said, I mean, I could sing with the rest of the class, or if you want, I would love to play the violin to the music. And this was something that caught me off guard. And so the teacher sent us a note saying, hey, your son asked if he could do the violin accompaniment. Accompaniment to Imagine. And I immediately just felt this, like, you know, burst of joy, like, inside that just pride. Pride to a degree, but, like, more joy. Just that, like, he was accomplishing and working on something that he wanted to share with his classmates. He was now knowing that he had to work harder because it’s harder to do the violin than just to sing it. And he was willing to put in that effort to then showcase that with his class. So for me, I was just so overjoyed that he wanted to do that for himself. And it was nothing that we were Pushing. So those lessons I find to be most critical as long as they’re curious. And we put them in situations where the answers aren’t just given to them, but we talk things through. My favorite thing is my son will randomly ask questions right before bed or when we’re on walks. And it’s in those moments of silence when they’re bored to a degree that they start to think about things that they otherwise wouldn’t have thought about.

So my son asked me, do more planes fly into JFK than leave? Or do more planes leave than come in? And it was one of those things where instinctively I was like, I don’t actually know.

Feels like it would be kind of the same, but what do you think? And then he was breaking it down like, well, there’s a lot of people in New York, more people than I’ve seen in any other place. But it’s a place that a lot of people seem to want to visit.

I don’t know. So he was, like, kind of breaking down the logic of his thought. And then after five minutes of him going through his thought process, I was like, well, why don’t you just ask your mom? And his mom is just very practical. So as soon as he asked her, she’s like, it’s the same, because when a plane flies in, it has to leave. I was just like, okay. I mean, that’s very simple. But, like, I just love seeing them go through the thought process and breaking things down and uncovering what the world is showing them and what they observe and how they, you know, distill that into, like, actual knowledge. So, yeah, those are all the things that we really try to teach the kids.

[00:34:36] Kevin Rice: Yeah. And keeping space for that. Right.

Boredom is actually a great thing for kids.

[00:34:41] Nick Tran: Absolutely.

[00:34:41] Kevin Rice: It forces them to get creative.

[00:34:43] Nick Tran: Great for adults. Yeah.

[00:34:44] Kevin Rice: I wanted to talk to you a little bit about. The world is changing dramatically. Right. What the corporate world looked like a few years ago looks completely different today, and it’s going to be completely different in the future. So along these lines of, like, what you’re working with your kids on, how are you preparing your kids with the skills or values, because you mentioned some of your values to thrive in the future, that’s really hard to comprehend in the next 10 years or by the time they enter the workforce.

[00:35:11] Nick Tran: Yeah, that’s honestly really tough. I don’t know if I have a good answer, because if you’d have asked any parent three years ago, what is the one skill that their kid needs to learn, they would have said coding or, like, Software development. And would they have been wrong at the time?

No. But immediately, overnight, it becomes practically irrelevant. Right? Like, you can literally put text in and then have various programs spit out the exact coding of what you want to have. You just realize. Realize how fast the world moves, how quickly technology evolves, and the things that you thought were absolutely essential and critical a few years ago, how they become replaced so quickly. So that’s why I’m really more focused on building the values and the different philosophy of things for my kids, because those won’t change regardless, and they can adapt with all those other elements and the pace of technology. But if they’re grounded in terms of, like, the values they have and the philosophy that we’re, like, teaching them and the general areas that we want them to explore, that’s kind of where I’m really leaning them to be. So languages could be irrelevant because you could just put in, you know, your AirPod 3, you can, like, immediately hear someone translating. But I do think there’s skills in learning a different language and wiring of your brain that allows you to maybe think a little bit differently and unlock parts of your. Your brain or your thinking that, you know, you might not if you didn’t have that. That capability. And then similarly, music, there’s things that, that might do, like, yes, maybe AI one day you can push a button and it’ll just show you how to play a violin or a piano. But the work that it takes to be able to master those skills and the process and the journey, I think is a better learning than the actual outcome. So when it comes to things where I find, take work, take a little bit of resilience, take a little bit of determination and perseverance, I’d rather teach it, instill those attributes than worry about things that ChatGPT can tell us tomorrow. So that’s kind of where my head’s at. But here’s another fun example that I did with my kids. When they’re younger, until now, I would play a game with them where if we were standing outside and there was like, let’s say, a painting on the wall, they would have to try to prompt the AI to match what they saw as closely as they could, just based on feeding it the prompt. And then we would all, including my wife and I, do our own versions, we would save them, and then we would all vote to see which version was the closest to the actual thing that we were trying to create. And it was fun because it taught them at a very young age how to input prompts and how various words created a completely exaggerated view of what they were trying to develop. And it gave them a little bit of insight into, like, how those tools could help them do things more efficiently in the future. And it was just a simple, fun game that we would do while we were, like, sitting at a restaurant or waiting at a bus station or whatever it might be.

So those are, like, fun things that we would try to teach them versus, like, a more traditional path of teaching.

[00:38:22] Kevin Rice: That’s great. Like, the skill is learning how to learn. It’s not necessarily learning the, like, hard skill set. It’s just learning how to be a continual learner.

Prompting is a great example of that. My oldest son and I, we sat down and we were playing around with Mid Journey and we were creating some, like, images of our middle son riding on an alligator. Cause he loves alligators.

Then we took it into VO3 and we made a little clip out of it. And then this process turned into a discussion about what’s real and not real. And when you are older and you’re looking online, what percentage of what you see is actually going to be real content. Because it’s changing so quickly, overnight. But I think what you really hit on was just values and character traits. That’s what’s going to prepare a future generation for a world that we really can’t comprehend. Actually, some of the values you mentioned, I literally have on our. You know, we have a poster that has our family values on it. And one of them is compassion, which is kind of close to kindness. One of them is contribution, which you mentioned, generosity.

So when I plan my time intentionally with my kids, usually there’s some underlying value or character trait that I’m trying to support in teaching them as they grow up.

Because like I said, yeah, that’s what’s going to prepare people for the future.

[00:39:41] Nick Tran: Yeah, I. I agree. And that’s definitely how we’re doing. And also I recognize that we’re privileged enough to be focusing on those things. And there’s other things that other parents have to, like, struggle with. But at the end of the day, I. I do want to set them up for success in the. In the realm that I think we’re going towards. And I definitely feel that that’s the more important factor at this age.

[00:40:04] Kevin Rice: Yeah, I wanted to kind of tie back to our listeners. Many of them are earlier in their career. Senior managers, directors, vice presidents, aspiring to the kind of career that you’ve had. And I’m wondering if you have any advice, if you look back on your career, what Were the things that you did that allowed you to move up? Was it results? Was it the relationships you built? Was it how you crafted your reputation? What are some of the lessons that you can look back on your career that you can share with the audience as they aspire to have a similar trajectory?

[00:40:38] Nick Tran: I honestly think it’s a lot of what you just mentioned, and it’s not just one of those dimensions. I think they all feed into the, like, success that an individual has. I tend to use this, you know, idea often, and it’s something that I share with everyone that asks. I find, you know, that life is a team sport, and if you play individually, even if you win, it’s nowhere near as fun. But it’s a lot harder to win when you’re playing by yourself.

So it’s important to find your cohort and have this group that grows with you in your career who are doing things and experiencing their own elements that allow the group to basically feed off of each other and know how to learn a lot more at a rapid pace. So I have the cohort that I grew up with that not only Taco Bell, but which, by the way, was an incredible group of individuals we juggling caught, like the Taco Bell mafia, where the folks that came from there ended up becoming CEOs and CMOs and founders of a bunch of amazing companies. And then this group that I was working as peers, where I was, you know, Taco Bell doing social media, and there’s people that were running social media, other brands. We also developed this cohort and we’ve stayed close since the beginning of our careers. And as we’ve all risen, we’ve been able to share that experience with our close cohort, and then they’ve been able to take those learnings and then run with it, and then they share learnings with you and then you run with it, and so on and so forth. So one thing is that network that you have to not only just have mentors, but actually people that you’re growing in your career with. I think that’s been a critical part of my success. The other element is that the more that you focus in on the results, the. The less I think you actually win and succeed because you’re. You’re already setting up yourself to avoid anything that’s truly groundbreaking or innovative, because in order to win, in most cases, you just have to be a little bit better than everyone else, and it’s safer to play within those parameters and in that framework.

So what I found is that if you’re Chasing title or money or promotion, you will likely be able to do fairly well early in your career, but then you’ll plateau a lot earlier than people who have a longer view of their. Of their career. And they don’t think of each step as like a rung in the ladder, but they have a North Star that guides them. So you mentioned earlier, like, my North Star is that I wanted to go back to teach.

So what fueled me was this idea of, you know, the more I learn and the better I am at marketing, the better I will be as being a teacher. And if I could get to the point where I’m one of the best marketers in the world, then that means I would be one of the best teachers of marketing in the world, which is really what my. My goal was.

So while other people were com, you know, competing for different jobs or titles or compensation packages or whatever it might be, I just focused on learning as much as I could and leaving the outcome to be dictated by, you know, other people. So then I was almost able to navigate through this, like, you know, career trajectory at a much faster pace because I wasn’t bogged down by the politics or by the, you know, allure of titles and just basically made it clear that if I wasn’t learning or having fun, I would leave and find something else. And as long as I was learning and having fun, and I can use that as a case study in the future to be a better teacher, I’ll keep at it. And that opened up more opportunities than you can imagine, because people saw that there was a motivation behind just climbing the corporate ladder. And that also helped fuel a few people around me to recognize that my intentions were, you know, a bit more interesting than what most people are asking for. And they literally helped carve and craft my career, starting with things like Patao, which is, you know, where we met, and other member invite only things. Because I entered that world at such an early age, because people saw that I wasn’t there for the title or for the comp. I was there just to learn and grow. And so they plugged me into these networks at a much earlier age than I ever should have been part of it, which also helped propel my career at a very fast pace.

[00:44:46] Kevin Rice: How are you taking some of these lessons and helping to offer them to your teams today as a. As a leader? A big part of your job is how you elevate people beneath you into leadership roles themselves. So what are some of the things that you’re coaching or teaching your own teams on? How to grow in their career.

[00:45:05] Nick Tran: My number one stat for me is aside from, you know, or in spite of any of the awards that I’ve won, I only care about the stat of how many people that have worked on my teams that have become CMOs or sea level executives in their own right. And right now I’m at seven.

So my, my goal is to try to increase that as much as I can before I end up hanging it up and ensuring that more people that have worked with me are given the ability to learn and then grow and then take on challenges for themselves that push them up in that C level role.

One of the things that I’ve enabled my team to do, which again might seem counterintuitive, but I find it important. I have pushed all of my direct reports, which is chunk of the company right now, to focus on developing their personal brand and highlighting their thought leadership on LinkedIn. And it’s because I don’t think LinkedIn is just a tool for people to go and find jobs. I think it’s a great platform to highlight the work and create meaningful relationships with people across different brands and companies. And if they see that you’re doing something fun and interesting, they’re more likely to reach out to you with an idea to enhance the brand that you’re currently working on.

So I am a huge proponent to the point where I hired someone to basically give them consulting advice on how to improve their presence on LinkedIn, show them, like, how to craft that personal brand narrative and, and ensure that they become thought leaders who can be on podcasts and speak at conferences and do these engagements. Because if I’m doing it, it’s fine, but if 12 of us are doing it, that’s a lot of amplification for a brand that, you know, is now trying to come back into culture, be relevant and drive a new narrative. And I’d rather have 12 people working on that than just one. So I’m definitely pushing a lot of that through my teams and through my network.

[00:46:58] Kevin Rice: That’s great. I totally agree. I think building a personal, professional brand is probably one of the most important things you can be doing to grow in your career right now. Whether it’s, you know, being able to get a promotion in your current company or get noticed for new opportunities with other employers. Most of the, like, the best jobs are not posted on jobs boards these days. Like, you know, we have it on our Patao WhatsApp group. There’s tons of awesome jobs that get passed behind the scenes and get filled through referrals and, and those referrals are based on, like, who you know. And a big part of that is how you present yourself online and the brand you’re building.

[00:47:33] Nick Tran: Yep. And I think that’s all why I, I find that to be such a, an area of passion that I, I, I don’t want the team to neglect, even though I know they’re working really hard. It doesn’t take that much time. Spend five minutes every other day, think of something that you saw that was exciting to you or interesting, and then just like discuss it quickly and then put it out there. I think, I think that’s a, a very easy thing that everyone can do.

[00:47:57] Kevin Rice: Nick, thanks so much for taking the time today.

I think what really sticks with me is the way you’ve intentionally designed your life, not just your career, the way you foster values of generosity and kindness. You’re a really inspirational parent and a world class brand leader. Like that combination is pretty rare, so I’m really grateful you shared it with us today. If you’re enjoying this conversation, make sure to hit subscribe so you don’t miss future episodes. CEOs and avoid is all about helping you grow in your career and show up at home. We’ve got many more amazing guests coming up, so tap, follow, and stay tuned.