- My name is Alex Guevara
and this is Originals.
We talk to innovative, creative,
and rule breaking people
from all walks of life.
In this episode, we talked to Jenny Poon,
the founder and owner of CO+HOOTS,
an innovative co-working
space in Phoenix, Arizona.
We talk about her background
and the opportunities
Jenny is trying to create
for entrepreneurs from
under-represented communities.
You were born in Minneapolis, right?
So you and I are both Mid-Western people.
Your parents came here from Vietnam,
is that correct?
Was that during the Vietnam War or after?
- Yeah, my parents are born
in Vietnam but were Chinese ethnically,
so my grandparents are
both sides from China.
They escaped China during the
Japanese, China-Japanese Wars.
So they went to Vietnam
and then my parents
escaped Vietnam during the Vietnam War.
- Wow, that's intense.
Right?
- Yeah.
- Do your parents talk about that?
Like about, like leaving.
- I think its a common
thing of any immigrant.
Like the immigrant and probably
specifically Asian guilt
that you get from--
- Yup, yup.
- From all of their,
and it was hard, right?
- Sure.
- So I do know their story really well.
I know, you know, they
came at separate times,
all of the challenges they went through.
Like, even, you can't deny that.
It's incredibly scary for you to
pick up one day at the drop of the hat
and be like, "I may not
ever see my family again."
- Yeah.
- And I don't even know where I'm going.
I'm just, for at least Vietnamese people,
I'm just going into the
middle of the ocean and--
- Hoping where you land--
- My life somewhere.
- Yeah, my parents were similar.
I mean, they came from the Philippines.
My dad left during the kind of like
government upheaval and I
remember him telling me,
you know, Missouri, he landed
in Missouri in January.
So like, Philippines,
Vietnam, very tropical,
like warm places and
dropping them into this
like really cold climate,
so, like, that's crazy.
So, am I correct that I
think I read or saw somewhere
that your parents owned a
restaurant in Minneapolis.
So okay, so here is a funny story.
Back in Missouri in college,
there weren't really any Vietnam
restaurants at that time.
There were Chinese restaurants
owned by Vietnamese families.
So, you had the Chinese menu on the front
and then you had the secret
Vietnamese menu on the back.
And, so, if you really
wanted Vietnamese food
you had to ask for that
menu and then they would,
they would serve it.
Was it Vietnamese food your
parents served or Chinese?
- My parents they served like,
it's a combination, it's a hybrid
of Vietnamese-Chinese food.
So some authentic Chinese stuff,
some authentic Vietnamese stuff.
The typical stuff that people order is
like your typical Chinese stuff,
like your sesame chicken and stuff,
but they do have their secret menu
and their off menu things--
- Yeah.
- Where, like, hey, you could order,
well now they have a bowl of Pho
that they didn't have that before.
- Yeah.
- Um, you can order their,
every once in a while
she makes like this catfish dish
or she makes, um, like--
I can't remember what it's
called, but its not even,
I think its more Chinese.
It's the Hainanese Chicken.
- Oh, okay.
- So she makes little
things from different areas.
A lot of those are off
menu, but the normal things
that you would get from
a Chinese restaurant.
- That's really cool.
And you worked in the restaurant
as a kid growing up, kind of.
- I grew up in the restaurant.
- Like doing homework
in the booth, that was--
- Yeah, homework in the booth.
We had a little, I remember,
we had a little rice room where,
it was just filled with bags of rice
because they own a Chinese restaurant.
- Yeah.
- And you cook an endless amount of rice
and I remember being in that rice room
and playing around these huge bags of rice
and jumping from rice bag to rice bag,
thinking there was lava on the floor.
You know like, I think the kid experience
is the same for all kids.
It's just that there are
different flavors of it.
- Yeah.
- Like, little kids will
jump around on couches.
- Exactly.
- I was jumping around on rice bags.
- The settings just
different, you know it's--
- And I was that way throughout
all of high school and into college.
So, I went to the University of Minnesota
where my parent's restaurant was.
- Gotcha.
- And so, after high school, we would go
to the restaurant and
work the evening shift
and then throughout
college, I'd take my classes
in the morning, 8:00 a.m.
'til I think 10:00 a.m.?
Or 8:00 a.m. 'til 11:30 a.m.?
And then I would do the lunch shift
and then 2:00 p.m. to 6:00
p.m., I would be in class
and then 6:00 p.m. until 9:00 p.m.,
I would work the restaurant
and then I would study after that.
Some days I would just
sleep at the restaurant
because it was so close to campus.
- Wow.
- So I didn't have to commute back.
- It's like a really structured day.
You've had for your, like,
your whole life, right?
- Yeah.
- It's interesting, right?
I think our generation of parents,
they came to America and
for many Asian immigrants,
they were denied like the
kind of common opportunities
that other people could have
in terms of typical jobs
and so many Asian immigrants had to
start their own businesses, restaurants,
grocery stores, stuff like that.
So, your parents are like, the
first entrepreneurs you knew.
- Absolutely.
- Even though you, I don't
know if you knew that
when you learned that term
when you were younger--
- I don't think we called
them entrepreneurs,
I think we called them business owners.
- Yeah.
- And even then it wasn't
a really positive term
because we saw what that took, right?
It took so much energy,
they never took a day off.
It was seven days a week.
It was 9:00 p.m. 'til 10:00
p.m. every single day.
Like, who wants to work like that,
especially when you have friends
whose parents pick them
up and drop them off
at school and they get
to go to gymnastics,
and I was in some of those,
like my parents were great,
they put us in some of those things,
but they could never drive us there
so I would always have
to carpool with everyone.
Or anytime there was any, I remember
I was able to participate
in one tennis camp, once.
It was really expensive, but they said
the only way I can go to
that is if I find a ride
to get there because it was in a city
three hours away or something like that.
- My gosh.
- And so I would have to,
I would have to figure some
of these things out myself,
but the fact that they worked really hard
to let me have those opportunities.
- Yeah.
- We got to kind of play
this little balancing act
of being very Asian
from an immigrant family
and then, we grew up in the Mid-West,
so most schools were full of white people.
I think I saw my first
Asian friend in high school.
And so there wasn't,
it's not like when you go to California
and everyone around you looks the same.
So it was a very, very
interesting experience
and I think it did very much shape
what I know about being a business owner,
being an entrepreneur, and
also how you lead communities
and how you lead your employees.
- Sure, so I guess my next question
about that would be then,
and there's probably
many things you've
learned that impacted you,
seeing your parents run this restaurant.
You personally working
there, sleeping there,
playing there, but what's,
what were like some
of the biggest things you've learned
or what you apply today in terms of like
what you saw from your parents.
- Uh, I think my mom says a lot
well, yeah, a thing she says a lot is,
"I'm never gonna force you to do anything
you're gonna do anything that,
you're gonna accomplish anything you want
if you put the time and energy into it."
There's a beautiful, like,
Chinese poetry saying
about it that sounds amazing in Chinese
and when you translate
it, it's like awful.
But its something along that and it was,
I think really seen when
there was a period where
we were all going off to college.
My mom still, even to this
day works at the restaurant.
She's the cook there,
my dad runs the front
and its just them two kind
of running the show there.
They're getting close to 70,
so I think its about time they retire.
- Sure.
- But there was a time
there where my sister
had the opportunity
and she was interested,
she said she was interested
in taking over the restaurant.
And my mom said, "Great,
come here every single day
and I'll teach you how to cook."
And my sister never showed up, right?
I asked my mom, I was
like, "Why didn't you teach
my sister to do this because
she can take this over,
she has the skills to do so."
She said, "She never showed up,
she never showed up for work
which shows me that she's
not passionate about it.
I'm not gonna force anyone to do anything
they're not passionate about because
it's not gonna be successful."
And so in that way, I've
kind of realized like
ya, this is a great, the
restaurant's a great business.
It's successful, it's sustainable,
it's got good revenue.
It's got, has made a name for itself,
but like that's not my passion
so I'll never be successful in that role
as much as you set it
up for success for me.
And, so like, when I
created this business,
co-working really wasn't a thing
it was just something
I was passionate about.
I wanted to be around other people.
I wanted to learn from other people.
I saw myself succeed when I was around
really brilliant people and I wanted
to surround myself with that.
- Yeah.
- And so, CO-HOOTS was
built off of those things
that drove me to want to
keep doing this, right?
To build communities--
- Sure.
- To connect with people.
And then also, so that like ability
to constantly focus on what
you're passionate about,
which sounds really funny
coming from an Asian parent,
right, like, I don't
think she ever would say
go build a business or
go be an entrepreneur.
It's always be a doctor, an
attorney, or a lawyer, right?
- Practical.
- Yeah, she would tell me those things,
but again I'm not passionate
about those things
so I'm not going into those areas.
Her actions showed me
that you can be successful
in anything that you are
really passionate about.
Because when you are
passionate about those things
you never stop, right?
- Sure.
- And that's what my day looks like,
when I wake up in the morning.
I wake up at probably around
5:00 a.m. or 6:00 a.m.
and I sit in bed for
probably a good three hours
and I'm just like reading
and looking up information.
It probably sounds like hell to a lot
of other people, like why would you want
to start your day with reading and like
and like catching up on things?
But, that's my favorite time
where, like my favorite place
is just laying in bed and if I can do that
and be like learning things,
I absolutely love that.
So, like those are
things that I think about
when I think about just
the life that I live.
I wanna be happy and the
things that make me happy
need to be ingrained in a daily basis.
And those are the things that
like my mom teaches me, right?
And if you're able to like
continue to feed that passion
throughout your day, and throughout weeks,
and throughout months, then
like, one this isn't a job,
which was one thing that I
always questioned about her.
Like, how can you do this on a daily basis
seven days a week and
not take a break, right?
Like how can, why would
you want that for yourself?
- Right.
- And like not until recently do I realize
that she's actually really
passionate about that.
Like she sees creating food and
like being in the restaurant
as a challenge that like
constantly feeds her.
It's not like, it's the most sexiest thing
you can ever do, right?
We're not changing the world necessarily,
but it feeds her, she gets excited,
she sees a challenge in
creating food every single day.
And coming up with new things
that people are excited to try.
- Yeah, and she's feeding people who
are hopefully making an impact as well.
- Yeah.
- At which, she's providing fuel--
