We recently connected with Vicky Nguyen and have shared our conversation below.
Hi Vicky, appreciate you sitting with us today to share your wisdom with our readers. So, let’s start with resilience – where do you get your resilience from?
I get my resilience from both my grandmas.
My grandma was left with 7 kids when her husband passed away at a young age and my grandma had to find a way to support her family. She asked her dad if she could borrow money to start a business, but in those times, it was frown upon for a woman to start a business, not alone a widow woman. He finally gave in and gave her money to invest in her business.
My other grandma left her small village and family at a young age to go with her aunt to learn how to sell jewelry. She started her business making jewelry all while raising 15 daughters.
Both grandmas became pretty successful business owners in their communities, until the Vietnam War.
During the Vietnam War, they had to leave everything behind and escape to the US. Because they had so many kids, it was difficult to bring all their kids at once, but because of their resilience, all their kids eventually made it out of Vietnam.
From there, my grandmas and her family rebuild their lives. One of my grandmas did anything she could to support her family. One of her random jobs was picking strawberries on the fields.
Let’s take a small detour – maybe you can share a bit about yourself before we dive back into some of the other questions we had for you?
Yummmm!Bar started because I used to eat a lot of store-bought bars that I thought were healthy…
…but when I actually checked the label, they were not healthy.
I had never read ingredients before, only the front of the “pretty” packaging.
And it turns out that the packaging is trying to sell me, not give me the full truth.
I worked and traveled a lot and I ate store-bought bars all the time:
💫 On the go
💫 Between meetings
💫 At the airport
💫 On the way to the gym
Then I craved more sugar or more salt, and they never kept me full or satisfied.
So I tried buying healthier bars…but I couldn’t pretend that they tasted any good.
That’s when I decided to make my own bars, researching ingredients that actually tasted good AND were good for me.
I needed bars that didn’t compromise in any of these categories:
💫 Tasty
💫 Functional
💫 Healthy
When I made my first bar, I let my sister try it. She never liked many things I made, so it gave me a boost of confidence that she was genuinely impressed!
Then I started giving it out to coworkers, and one suggested that I start a business or a side hustle.
I started selling it to my co-workers at the time, but there was always something that held me back from going all in. I could say it was because I…
💫 Had a full time job.
💫 Started teaching yoga.
💫 Traveled a lot for work.
But it was mainly because of FEAR.
Eventually I got into selling at farmers markets. I thought I’d be able to serve more people like me…but it ended up being so much more!
Kids really enjoyed the bars and grew up eating them, and parents felt good about their kids eating it, too.
I even had a teacher come to the farmers market because she saw her kids at the playground eating Yummmm!Bars. She was so curious that she came to the farmers market and bought some!
💫Yummmm!Bar is for community.
💫Yummmm!Bar is for teaching younger generations the importance of eating healthy
💫Yummmm!Bar is for reading ingredients and labels and know what is (or isn’t) nourishing your body.
That’s one of the reasons why it felt like such a big loss when the business Instagram account got hacked two months ago. It was more than a social media account; it held our memories and milestones and behind-the-scenes of our first 5 years in business.
Because of both my grandmas and their resilience to a much challenging hardship, this gave me the strength to persevere.
There is so much advice out there about all the different skills and qualities folks need to develop in order to succeed in today’s highly competitive environment and often it can feel overwhelming. So, if we had to break it down to just the three that matter most, which three skills or qualities would you focus on?
When I first started, I wanted to go with the flow and have fun, but I soon learn the importance of getting organized and creating structure and systems in place.
Tapping into my intuition is super impactful too. When I have a strong guy feeling to go for something, I go for it.
You can get so much in life just by listening, observing, learning from others. I love listening to people’s stories and the difficulties they faced not only in their career, but also their personal life and how resilience played a role in their lives
As we end our chat, is there a book you can leave people with that’s been meaningful to you and your development?
“The four agreements” by Don Miguel. Every time I read this book, I get different perspectives based on the current space in my life.
“Be impeccable with your word”,
“Do not take anything personally”
“Do not make assumptions”
“Always do your best”
Contact Info:
- Website: Yummmmbar.com
- Instagram: Yummmmbar
- Facebook: Yummmmbar
- Linkedin: Yummmmbar
Image Credits
Madison Tristan – photographer Zo’e Cole – photographer
