S3 Ep 4 | Eric Chan, CFO @ LA Clippers, on Developing Trust By Sharing Weaknesses

One of the things that my parents taught me also was this notion of like never show others your weakness. And so the biggest thing for me has been really to be much more open with others about things that are kind of in my mind or things that are going on in my life and ultimately becoming more vulnerable. (upbeat music) - Hey everyone, this is Jay. - And this is Angie. - And welcome to another episode of Across the Lines, a place where we have candid and vulnerable conversations with Pan-Asian American leaders about identity, work, and the confluence of the two. - Join us on a journey to amplify their voices, humanize their achievements, and share their wisdom. Whether you're looking for advice or just want to hear leaders who've been there and done that, share their personal and professional stories, you've come to the right place. - Today we're excited to speak with Eric Chatt. Eric currently serves as a CFO for the LA Clippers where he leads the organization's financial operations, including establishing and implementing a long range, financial strategy, policies and goals and leading financial projection for all Clippers operations. - In this episode, we spoke with Eric about why the notion of never showing others your weakness was one of the biggest things he had to unlearn. How a reference check from someone who'd previously let go helped him land a job as a CFO for the Clippers and why he transitioned from diminishing his Asian identity to embracing and leaning into it in his professional life. - Eric, thank you so much for coming on to the Cross Alliance podcast. Eric, one way that we like to start our podcast is by asking our guests what their favorite dish was growing up, what was that for you? - So growing up, I, and actually frankly, kind of carries over today. I love chicken and I love noodles. Growing up, my family was not particularly wealthy by any means and it felt like pretty much every single meal was chicken and noodles and I just kind of grew up with that and ever since then, you throw me into any sort of situation where there's noodles involved. I'll tend to basically eat it by it, whatever, starches are just kind of my love. But in terms of actual kind of a specific dish growing up, it was probably kind of a one ton noodle soup where again, just really simple, really basic, really hardy kind of, you know, warms the soul. - I love that. It's that home cook meal that home vibe that you can feel while you're eating this. Even if you may not be like with your parents or with your family, I feel like food for many cultures, including a lot of Asian American cultures, it hits that tone a lot. Eric, you mentioned, you mentioned a little bit about your upbringing and kind of how your parents grew up maybe not with the most amount of money and they were making dishes that were relatively affordable. Like tell us more about your upbringing and your childhood where did you grow up? What was that like for you? - Yeah, so I grew up in a few different places around Northern California, but you know, spent some time up in that San Rafael area for a few years, but eventually migrated my way down to the South Bay where I was in Sunnyvale, San Jose, but eventually kind of centered around Cupertino, which is where I was born and raised for the most part. But you know, and kind of as mentioned, wasn't born to any sort of significant wealth. My parents were both immigrants. My mom was a homemaker. My dad was in the county. I think one of the things that, you know, called a blessing or occurs and was that somehow I was able to test well early on in my life. And so I actually skipped a grade early in my life. So I skipped first grade. You know, for those that have kids today, you know, jumping from kindergarten to second grade, doesn't seem like a big thing on paper, but for a kid, especially, you know, that was my size. I'm not that big today, but even back then, I was really, really small. Like it was interesting, daunting, but early on in my life, it was literally just about, how do I continue to kind of make it through my schoolwork, get things done, especially when I'm dealing with older kids. And so that was certainly kind of a one big piece of my upbringing that I kind of strongly remember today was just kind of always being around older people in general. The second thing that was obviously, you know, very keen to me is that, you know, at that time, my parents did not speak English, particularly well. I remember my dad and I can get stories for days on this, but, you know, one of the things my dad really instilled in me was this notion of learning how to communicate well as a kind of a key success metric later on life. And so he insisted quite early to really, really be strong in English language for me to be able to survive in flourish here in the States. As a consequence, my Chinese is probably pretty piss poor, but in terms of English, I think, you know, certainly been able to kind of, you know, work my way through that. But in the early days, I remember, I didn't speak English particularly well. I was with older kids. I was bullied a little bit as well. And, you know, childhood was certainly interesting as a result. I mean, that sounds like quite a crucible of an experience, right? In your early days, just having skipped a grade, being very different than your peers in so many dimensions. Based on some of those learnings from your upbringing and some of these values that are instilled upon you by some of these experiences as well as your family, how would you say those if perhaps carried over into your life now? And throughout that journey and process, how would you say some of those values and learnings have perhaps accelerated your growth both personally and professionally? And if there's any that you kind of had to unlearn as well to get to where you are now. - I would kind of maybe, let me kind of give you two values of things that I kind of was supposed to instill in to me early that I think I kind of kept with me. And then two, then I think I've changed my perspective on over time. So the kind of traditional Asian mantra is always to be hardworking, right? Because there's just no substitute for, you know, perseverance. And that even if you're less talented, you're less strong. As long as you work harder than anybody else, you're gonna at least have a better chance of succeeding. And I think this notion of hard work certainly has kind of stayed with me kind of to this day. And part of it is, you know, watching my parents survive and spending a lot of long hours working themselves. There's still different shortcuts to kind of get stuff done and people have found those shortcuts. There's still something about kind of installing the right work if they're not even for yourself, but for your team, for your peers that I think still transcend a lot of kind of time and so forth. The other value that I would say that my dad taught me early on was to be very aware of my situation in circumstances. And again, this is both physically as well as called mentally. As I mentioned earlier, you know, I was really small when I was younger, at times bullied by other kids. And so my parents quickly put me into a karate class really in my life just so that I could start to figure out how to defend myself. But one of the things that was around that whole principle was just that my dad just said, "Hey, look, there'll be days and times where you will not have people around you that are gonna be supporting you." And you just need to make sure you use to know where you are at all times and make sure you understand what the situation is and how to protect yourself. And that also applies to other things beyond just the physical side, but even like kind of on the business side or mental side, kind of knowing what the situation is, how to potentially succeed or extract yourself out of difficult situations has always been kind of one of those things I've always kind of kept in mind. In terms of something that I would say that I have accelerated, you know, I mentioned earlier about, you know, my father's desire to have me speak and write well. And again, I think a lot of it was just self-survival. Like, look, if you can't speak the English language, people are gonna make fun of you. And they make fun of you and they don't respect you and you're not gonna be as successful as you possibly can be. It was kind of the mantra early on in my life. And I took that, you know, to heart. And I spent a lot of time working on my written and oral skills. And again, you may notice it sometimes, you know, I had points today, but growing up I had a major stuttering problem amongst everything else I had problems with. And so besides not speaking English well, like people would make fun of the stutter. And I told myself early on in life that I wanted to be able to speak like, people that I've seen speak well before on TV or whatever, whether that be, you know, Martin Luther King or John F. Kennedy or other people that I just randomly saw on TV. I said, I wanna be able to speak like them in that kind of way. And so I spent, and I could probably, such as some extent, still spend hours talking to myself just to kind of hear my voice and hear how I articulate certain things. 'Cause it's so important that, you know, especially in a world where human connection is so vital that if you can't communicate your thoughts in a way that can draw on sympathy or empathy or some level of connection, you're not gonna be effective in doing anything in life. You asked a question on kind of things that I've had to unlearn. One of the things that my parents taught me also was this notion of like never show others your weakness, show that you're strong, show that you're not gonna get pushed around or get emotionally swayed or keep that poker face at all times. And it works great when I'm playing poker in life and in kind of on a personal side. I've definitely had to take a lot of time to try to unwrap some of that stuff. One of my mentors, you know, later on in life, told me that the best way to connect with others is to be as transparent and as authentic as you possibly can be. sharing kind of things that I've failed in and things that haven't worked well. Because I think, you know, those are the moments that people understand that you are a human, right? And I think that side certainly has been a process over decades, frankly, to unlearn this notion of like try to, you know, always look like, you know, you know, well put together and then you have no issues. I think that's just far from the truth of kind of how normal human life is. And certainly that's something major that I've kind of had to unlearn over time. Eric, thank you for sharing that. You've done a really great job being able to balance the really like hard like driven like work ethic side of you with the softer communicative vulnerable transparent side of you. I kind of want you to just like touch on that nuance and that balance because a lot of the time you don't find a lot of leaders that have that balance kind of done so correctly. Because on the one hand, you feel like I'm hardworking, like, you know, I may be stoic and you get my shit done, that might limit you from being more open, more vulnerable, more transparent. If you're being more open and more vulnerable and transparent, that might, I don't know, people in my question and be like, hey, like is it working hard? Like, how did you how did you manage that balance? How did you how did you lean into that? And if you have any like specific advice on like what to do, like maybe maybe it's maybe it's talking yourself in the shower, like any any other advice, like what are really cool to hear. Yeah. I think somewhere, you know, between my 20s into my 30s, I had a change of mentality on kind of what I thought was important to drive success in my own personal life, whatever that may mean. And I think early in my life, I always thought about this notion of I, I can do this, I can achieve this. And I think that's kind of a lot of the more traditional Asian mindset that, you know, you strip everything aside, you have to rely on yourself to achieve the goals that you want to achieve. And I think somewhere along the way, I actually somehow got to the conclusion that I can only get you so far. And it kind of goes upstream and downstream. Like I cannot succeed without having a good team underneath me today. The reality is that you can't do every single thing yourself. And so I think, you know, a lot of it was just recognizing that the people underneath you are frankly more important to your success than you yourself. And so that's that's kind of number one. And so with that, you know, I've probably spent more time in the last decade mentoring, coaching, advising, being a shoulder to cry on, being a shoulder to lean on on a lot of topics with people that are junior to me. And I've somehow gotten into the space where people feel like they can tell me their life issues and conflicts and problems and so forth. Simultaneously, you don't succeed if you can't get buy-in from your peers and your superior, right? Like you can be the smartest person in the room. And I learned this early on too, where I sat in rooms where people were brilliantly smart, but they were arrogant, they were antagonistic. And people didn't buy into their ideas, partly because of just who they were. And I think, you know, in watching some of these things play out, you realize that you need to win those around you and those above you as well. And so with all that, the notion of hard work has changed into one where it is always still going to be about the work. But it's also now taking that work and, you know, changing it slightly. A lot of the through lines, I'm hearing from you here around playing as a championship team and being able to see the whole court before you shoot, excuse my puns here, but you know, see a lot of tie-ins here to your professional journey as well. We'd be remiss if we didn't cover your incredible journey so far. And right now, you're the CFO of the Clippers, but you've had a real incredible journey before that as well. So maybe I'll start with the journey itself and then in there, I'll kind of sprinkle in some stories. You know, today I'm the CFO of the LA Clippers. I get asked often, well, how did you get here? And like, what model can I follow to get to your job? Because that's who I want to be someday in the future. You know, what I generally tell most people is that if I were in your shoes, I would not necessarily recommend doing my journey at all. Because my journey is one where I made a lot of calls, and decisions that could have completely gone sideways. But the one principle that I had all along was that I wanted to do stuff that I wanted to do. And that's the one thing that I'm probably is one of my greatest vices, it's that I'm probably a little bit selfish in terms of my personal desires, even from a career perspective. And so I've, you know, I've done banking, I've done consulting, I've done business development, I've done operations, I've done product development, I've done finance, I've done marketing. And so I've done a lot of things within, you know, you know, my 20 plus years of kind of career that has been frankly a little bit secluded, right? I went from banking into a startup, and then a startup into a large company, a large company, to another large company. And across that each time it was, I recognized when I thought that I wasn't going to add more value to the company, or I didn't think that I had much more to learn. And that's usually kind of when I left. So I've jumped around and in any of those journeys, I could have gone and completely lost. But let me kind of kind of talk through kind of career, basically through undergrad to grad school and then kind of even after grad school, I had a bunch of these different jobs. And then finally years later, I landed at Mattel. And while I was Mattel, I was doing corporate strategy and, and partnership stuff and so forth. And then I got asked one day to say, Hey, you seem like a really smart guy. I bet you could do some finance. And I said, I don't know if I really want to be a finance guy in terms of like corporate finance. And they said, no, no, no, you know, you get to work with business units. You get to look at, you know, PNLs and it's going to be, you know, really fun and exciting. And so I kind of just literally got into that career. And then, you know, of course, many years later, I've kind of parlaided into kind of a CFO path. But that wasn't really my intention early on in my life. In terms of the clippers, there's a story that, you know, happened a few years back where I was working at a prior company. And I saw a linked in posting by the LA clippers and they were looking for a CFO. And I remember it was like a January of that year. And I looked at them and like, wow, like why is a company like the LA clippers posting something on LinkedIn for a job posting like this, like when they go through a headhunter or whatever. And later on, I found out that, you know, our president had had his idea that a role like this, you would get so many great applicants that would apply. Well, I did not apply. I said, you know what, there's no way I'm going to get this job. I'm not going to apply, but just kind of focus and move on. Then in April, a friend of mine, I said me a link said, hey, the clippers still have this posting out. I know you mentioned that you saw it. Like you should post for it. Like if they're still open, like who knows? And so I said, you know, I was really, really remembering this. I was, it was one night I was working on a spreadsheet for my company. And I, I came across that posting. I said, you know, all I'd ask for is just to submit your resume. It's not even a cover letter. Like this camp, you know what? I'll throw it out there. I'll feel better by myself. And then I'll move on. So I submitted my resume and then just kind of, you know, let it be. And then a week later, they called and they said, hey, we'd like to have a conversation with you. And I was like, well, that's interesting. Like why, why would you pick me out of any sort of single candidate? And they said, well, it's funny, but you know, about a week ago, we changed the job spec on what we were looking for. And previously we were looking for someone with traditional sports and entertainment experience. And we went through a whole bunch of those candidates between January through April. And we didn't find the candidate we liked. And so we talked to our owner and he said, you know, given his experiences at Microsoft and so forth, he wanted somebody that had a big company experience. So it could could understand the formality and process of how to run something that was at scale, but it had also worked as something entrepreneurial. So that because, you know, the clippers to some extent are run a little bit like a family office and it could be nimble and so forth and kind of could marry those two pieces together, happen to be in LA and happen to be a sports fan. And so we came across your resume and said, maybe. And so that literally was the first conversation. And if I had maybe applied three weeks prior, maybe they would look my resume and said, no way. And if I applied maybe two months later, maybe they would have found 10 other candidates that fit exactly that same profile. So timing and circumstance and luck, obviously play a huge role there. Along the way, you know, as I was kind of moving through the rounds, I was always curious as to when they were going to give me that call to say, hey, we had some great chats, but I think we're going to go a different direction, right? Because again, I never thought that I would be the right person for this specific job. But the recruiter one day told me this story later on, months later, and said, you know, why you actually kind of got through some of these rounds and especially in the early phase was obviously, you know, you presented well, you know, you communicated well, all this and that kind of stuff. But we did some background thinking on you. I said, oh boy, that's not a good sign. And they said, you know, we talked to a CMO for one of the companies that you work for on their experience with you. And this CMO happened to be somebody that I had fired and did not have an necessarily a positive feeling about the company that they work for previously. And so what they said, what the recruiter told me was that despite all those things, what that person said about you spoke volumes and they said that number one, nobody likes to get fired, right? And that's a horrible experience and so forth. But Eric handle that like a professional handed that with class, handle that with dignity, but more importantly, how that like with a sense of humanity that I will always always remember, that's kind of number one. Number two, out of anybody in the organization, I would recommend none of them for any jobs in any time of my life, right? But Eric's the one guy that I would, you know, pick in a heartbeat because of XYZ, you know, reasons. And I did not know that he was going to give this recommendation. I did not know, frankly, I didn't kept in touch with him very much, you know, after I had, after he had left. But you know, the recruiter said that for somebody to say that despite kind of what had happened to them about you specifically told me that you had a good character, that you had good smarts and that you could, you know, understand kind of how to run an organization smartly. And so I guess one of the big, big lessons there that I kind of took away, you never know kind of when anybody could be impactful to your life or your career, whether that be people that are junior to you, whether that the people that are senior to you, whether the people that you've had adverse relationships with. And it's not necessarily about, you know, kissing somebody's ass or, you know, bending over to kind of like, you know, help somebody out or whatever. It really is like how many authentic relationships can you form, whether they're deep or even on the surface level, that potentially you just want to treat people like you want to get treated. And I think that oftentimes I see a lot of people take it for granted, especially is they get higher up in their careers where you see more senior people treat those that are junior worse and worse. You know, I think it's a shame, number one, but number two, I think it's top of the fact that I honestly do believe that there's a lot of karma in this world and that, you know, the way that, you know, in this notion of pay it for or good things happen to, you know, good people, I'd like to believe, hold some sort of water in this universe. Eric, that's a beautiful story. And it combines like what we were saying earlier about matching up that hard work ethic with the humane and compassionate responses. Like, a lot of hard work to be able to fire someone who is at an executive level, arguably like one of your own peers. As we kind of, and you're the end of this podcast, Eric, I'm curious, like specifically, what has your experience been being arguably one of the few Asian Americans in some sport in such a high leadership position? I would love for you to kind of share your experiences there and what you've been able to kind of take away and then learn over the past three years or so at the Clippers. So, you know, I'll draw on a few kind of principles that, you know, we've been spoken about today. Early in my life, I don't know if this is a thing that's with all Asian groups, but certainly was with my specific family where to some extent, they kind of de-agent me a little bit. Don't think of yourself necessarily as Asian Asian. I think of yourself just as, you know, a human being and kind of operate from there. To be fair, like, it was widely aware of me that I was Asian and different, but I kind of kept on blind. I was like, look, I'm just going to push forward. I'm going to like pretend that, you know, some snider comments, some bad jokes, whatever are not relating to me. I'm just going to just keep myself focused on kind of doing the right things and so forth. And so, for many years in my life, I didn't necessarily think about my ethnicity in a strong way that I probably did later on kind of in my life, right? Then as I became more successful in my own career, and I had junior people, younger people come up and wanted to hear about my life story, which I'd buy by the way I felt like was a story that nobody wanted to hear or should you know, was not important. When they started asking me about, you know, more of those, and I started speaking to them and they seemingly, you know, got some value out of it, I kind of said, my voice actually matters here and my ethnicity matters in the sense that I have a weird ability to potentially influence future leaders to do bigger and better things than I have before, where I might have been constrained by extra-wide reasons. If I can help people, you know, avoid some of those same pitfalls that I maybe had, you know, had come across, they might be able to do really, really great things in their life and career. So, as it relates to the Clippers, again, to some degree, when I interviewed, I didn't think of me interviewing as an Asian executive, right? But now being in this spot, I recognize how few Asians there actually are and I recognize how important it is for Asians to kind of have a voice, even just to kind of serve as a another beacon or inspiration point for those that might want a similar career in the future. And so, number one, I will just say this, the NBA Brawley speaking has been really, really good in terms of kind of being on the forefront of kind of race relations and trying to be very conscious about kind of the social landscape and so forth. And that's why you see a lot of players being so active in social media and elsewhere about racial politics and social justice and so forth. And I think, you know, the Clippers themselves very, very similar in nature kind of on the forefront of really trying to do the right things. But for myself, I think what I've really tried to do is spend time with Asians within my own organization, Asians outside of my organization and other sports teams and Asians in general about kind of walking through a journey, just very similar to kind of what we would kind of walk through today as a microcosm just to see if I think I can be helpful to them in any part of their careers. Right? And I think a lot of that stuff is important that you're accessible to, right? I see as a lot of, again, I hate to say this, but I see a lot of Asians at times become a little bit more micro focused as they kind of grow up in the career where they've now finally hit their pinnacle and now they're like, all right, now it's about me maximizing my time and career and wealth and it may not kind of giving back as much as they could be, right? And becoming a little more instiller in nature. And so I think for myself, I just thought about the platform that I have making the most use out of it to help as many people as possible because I think to some degree, you know, you kind of get to different stages of your life where it's about wealth or about job advancement or about career or fame or whatever else. And I think there is a point where at some point you get to a place where all those things still matter to some degree. I don't want to pretend they don't exist, but it also becomes down to legacy. What kind of legacy you want to leave for those are coming up ahead? And I think there's still a shortage of vocal, loud, prominent Asian voices in America today that I think that I hope that, you know, over the next decade plus we continue to find those voices within the broader community, whether they've been in sports or entertainment or in finance or in technology that are truly going to be names that stand out in our part of the national discourse on anything. It's so important ultimately to companies, enterprises, communities that the Asian voice is heard as a piece of the kind of American fabric. And Eric, we're incredibly grateful to be adding your voice as well. I hope we're amplifying it in this small but growing course of proud Asian voices that aren't afraid to be authentic and vulnerable. So thank you so much. As we come up to the end of our time here, Eric, we wanted to get your perspective on a piece of contrarian advice that you give your audience anything that stands out to you as something that has worked for you that goes against the grain. So I think in terms of contrarian advice, you know, one of the things that I've tried to focus people on is there's something about kind of work life balance, spending time with friends and family and so forth and it's being time at work. And one of the things that I will say that I think people don't do as much of that I think is valuable but sacrifices a lot of personal time and commitment is networking in general. Everyone will say I network but when you really think about it, when did they network? Well, they might network here or there but you know, those that are really, really good at networking potentially are out every single night during the work week. Outside of work hours, meeting up with somebody to get advice can counsel to talk about business, to talk about life. And you know, I find that as time has gone on long, I've become less focused on necessarily spending time kind of just solely within the traditional framework of kind of how people should live in terms of like family life and you know, everyone should be having dinner with a family at 5 p.m. and going to sleep at 10 p.m. or whatever else. And spending more time trying to actually network and meet new people and talk about different things kind of later on in kind of in my career. And so I wouldn't know if it's contrarian advice as much but I think that the effort to truly be able to leave a legacy requires a lot more effort and time on the social and networking front than people kind of give a credit for and to be really really good at it is just a sacrifice that some people need to think through in terms of whether or not they willing to kind of go to those links to become ultimately what they you know, maybe aspire or dream to be. Thanks so much for sharing your insight there and as we come up to the end of our time here, thank you so much again for coming on to the show today. So many incredible pieces of learning, so many stories, so many insights that we're really excited to go back and share their audience and also listen back on. It's been a pleasure. Pleasure to all mine. Congratulations to both of you for doing this podcast in the first place again, really inspirational work and uh continue success in the future. Thanks so much for tuning into Cross the lines with your hosts Angie and Jay. If you enjoyed today's conversation about the intersection of work and Asian American identity, please subscribe to the show wherever you get your podcasts and leave us a review to spread the word. We'd really appreciate it. And as always you can head over to across the lines podcast.com to learn more about the show as well as check out all the links and resources in the show notes. That's all for this episode folks. See you next time.