36: Huy Nguyen - Yes, and

Tech Sales is for Hustlers

Huy Nguyen moved to the U.S. from Vietnam when he was seven years old. He had never been on an airplane, didn’t speak English and had never lived in a house (or anything other than a hut made of leaves).

His path to tech sales was atypical. When he graduated with a marketing degree from the University of South Florida in 2018, he took a job as a graphic designer at a financial firm. He wasn’t a fan of the work, however, so he bought a one-way ticket to London to perform improv and make websites on the side.

Unsurprisingly, his couch-surfing lifestyle wasn’t sustainable, so he moved back to the U.S. where he discovered high-tech sales and memoryBlue in Austin, Texas.

But Huy’s early days as a Business Development Representative were just as rocky.

“I didn’t have any money back then,” Huy says. “I had maybe $200 or something in my name. I had probably $3,000 in debt. And I ended up living at different Airbnbs for like $30 a night. My girlfriend came to visit me at the time, as well, and we were just sleeping in my car.”

On this episode of Tech Sales is for Hustlers, Huy, now a successful Enterprise Business Development Professional at Couchbase and a Finalist for the 2020 memoryBlue Phenom Award, discusses how he improved at selling despite nearly quitting several times. He found success by asking his coworkers for advice, taking the time to get to know the people he was calling and finding a routine that worked for him.