Underdog Nation

Pham discusses the benefits of setbacks and being underestimated in this business/motivation guide.

The author, a U.S. Marine Corps veteran and pharmaceutical CEO, observes that “being an underdog means people don’t expect much from you—certainly not a success story.” To be an underdog is to be counted out and to be equated with failure; drawing on his own history as a refugee from war-torn Vietnam, a trailblazing Vietnamese-heritage U.S. military figure, and a successful entrepreneur, Pham makes a convincing argument for the familiar business-literature notion of failure as a blessing in disguise. “If failure makes you more resilient, then it becomes a source of gratitude,” he writes. “If failure teaches you the greatest lesson of your career, then it becomes a source of gratitude.” In the author’s view, underdogs enjoy an unexpected creative latitude because they free themselves from the ways other people define success—they’re free to chart their own courses, using the tools that failure has sharpened. “None of your own experiences are wasted if you see them as resources for confidence and credibility,” Pham asserts, referencing, among many other personal memories, the traumatic loss of his father to cancer. “For him to fight and survive the prison camps for so long only to succumb to the world’s top killer—without an alternative treatment,” he writes, “felt like an immense injustice”; this experience fostered a sense of mission that helped to push the author into achieving pharmaceutical breakthroughs. The moving personal stories intertwine very effectively with the more generalized insights Pham draws from them; he’s got the on-page charisma of a born storyteller, and his example will doubtlessly encourage other underdogs. “If I could fly into an active combat zone,” he writes, “I could certainly walk into a doctor’s office and handle a difficult receptionist.” Readers will feel they can do likewise.

A winningly personal and uplifting call to believing in your own inner underdog.