Two years after opening the studio, I had to close it because we were barely getting by. Actually I told everybody the reason for closing was that I wanted location freedom which was true but it wasn’t the full truth. The other reason for closing was that we were struggling so much financially and that it wasn’t sustainable and at the end,
Milena Nguyen
we were just burned out.
Today’s episode is with a Vietnamese entrepreneur, Milena Nguyen who is a Conscious Business Coach at Soulforest Education. Milena Nguyen is also a published author and 3-time TEDx speaker.
Her story began with a successful stint in Europe, working for AIESEC, the world’s largest organization for youth leadership development, overseeing 127 countries.
After leaving AIESEC and returning to her home city of Hanoi, Milena was buoyed by a desire to live her passion.
She remembered that in her periods of loneliness and despair, she was helped by yoga, spirituality and mindfulness. Much to her parent’s surprise, she didn’t want a job; she believed she could inspire women with yoga. At 24, Milena opened her yoga studio in Hanoi with a business partner.
There is a saying that, if you do what you love the money will follow. And I think that is a very dangerous half truth, I did what I love and I was so passionate. Where was the money? It didn’t follow me.
She believed she was a great yoga teacher, passionate about her craft and in many ways she was but she wasn’t running a great yoga business. Burnout was real as she was teaching 20 classes a week!
After two years of struggling with the business, Milena finally made the painfully obvious decision to shut down her studio for good because “we were barely getting by. I told everybody the reason for closing was that I wanted location freedom, which was true, but it wasn’t the full truth. The other reason for closing was that we were struggling so much financially.”
She wasn’t about to give up on entrepreneurship though. Milena decided to bet on herself a second time in a smarter way. She decided to learn how to become an entrepreneur by investing in herself and getting a coach.
Her bet paid off and today she is in a very different place and a far more successful entrepreneur because she has finally has created a business that serves her best.
As a coach herself, Milena works with women and men from more than 15 countries. With more than 5000 students enrolling for her online courses and a following of 40K readers for her book, blog and social media channels, she certainly has re-invented herself with this business.
Listen to the episode for the story of how she pulled herself together and the mindset reset that she had to undergo with the help of her coach.
This self-declared introvert says that entrepreneurship is learned and she learned how to run her coaching the heart-centred way.
We have our outer journey and inner journey with entrepreneurship. The outer journey is all the marketing, strategies and sales and the things that you do with your business – which is important. But there’s an inner journey too, like insecurity would come up, imposter syndrome would come up, especially limiting beliefs about money would come up.
Her favourite books include The Gifts of Imperfection: Let Go of Who You Think You’re Supposed to Be and Embrace Who You Are by Brene Brown and Radical Acceptance: Embracing Your Life with the Heart of the Buddha by Tara Brach.
Milena has given keynote speeches in 11 countries, including events with audiences of 5,000 people. She has delivered workshops for the audience of organizations like the United Nations, Salesforce, Citi, IFC, Lean In, Startup Grind, Horkest, and more.
Milena’s work has been featured on HuffPost, e27, Timeout, VTV (Vietnam), BFM The Business Station (Malaysia), and more.
She was most proud that she was the first Vietnamese who worked on the global leader board of AIESEC, the world’s largest organization for youth leadership development, overseeing 127 countries.