Queen Energy Activated | Mai Phương | Sean’s Learning Adventures

In this episode of the Growing Money with Sean Trace podcast, I sit down with Vietnamese artist and Miss World Vietnam finalist Mai Phuong to talk about confidence, creativity, and the courage it takes to reinvent yourself. We dive into her transition from beauty pageants into music, the inspiration behind her song Queenergy, and how she discovered her authentic voice as an artist.

Mai Phuong shares how self-confidence, boldness, and authenticity became the foundation of her music and personal growth. We talk about the importance of mentors, learning from the right people, and how great teachers can completely change the trajectory of your life. She also opens up about the pressure of maintaining a public image while still trying to express herself creatively, and how embracing imperfection has helped her connect more deeply with her audience.

Along the way, we explore the power of music to shape our energy, how posture and mindset affect confidence, and why believing in yourself is often the first step toward success. Mai Phuong also talks about writing music in English, performing internationally, and how language can open doors to new collaborations, ideas, and opportunities around the world.

This conversation is about more than music. It is about identity, resilience, and the bold decision to step into your own story, even when the path ahead is uncertain.

If confidence really is a form of energy, what would change in your life if you chose to show up every day with a little more of it?

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

You know, my background is a mid-world Vietnam. So I took that as my inspiration to work on this song. Because when I uh changed my career path into singing, I kind of like trying to find a way to tell to introduce myself to the audience. You know? And I as I was trying to find a story, I think, well, let's just bring the fact that I'm a beauty queen. And to change into music, it means connecting to new frequencies and new energy. So let's just put that together and call it queenergy. And it's like it's an anthem for um self-confidence and knowing that you are beautiful, and it's literally the most powerful formula to get where you to get where you want and what you want. So that's why we have queenergy.

SPEAKER_00 0:57

So uh what music are you listening to right now?

SPEAKER_01 1:00

I'm on some Justin Bieber songs and Madison Beer. Well, I listen to those artists on and on again and again because I like I generally like pop and RB. So yeah, I'm having Yukon on my playlist right now on replay.

SPEAKER_00 1:18

That's awesome. So good, some good music. Now, you just mentioned your album right now, and I want to ask you about your music. Uh, your song Queen Energy with DTAP has been getting so much buzz. Can you walk us through the inspiration behind that track and what it means to you personally?

SPEAKER_01 1:35

Yes. Well, you know, my background is a mid-world Vietnam. So I took that as my inspiration to work on this song because when I uh changed my career path into singing, I kind of like trying to find a way to tell to introduce myself to the audience, you know? And I, as I was trying to find a story, I think, well, let's just bring the fact that um I'm a beauty queen, and to change into music, it means connecting to new frequencies and new energy. So let's just put that together and call it queenergy. And it's like it's an anthem for um self-confidence and knowing that you are beautiful, and it's literally the most powerful formula to get where you to get where you want and what you want. So that's why we have queenergy.

SPEAKER_00 2:29

I remember um listening to this one song recently and having it listening by two different singers singing the same song. Yeah. And one person, they both sang it beautifully, like no, no judgment. It was unique and special in both ways. But the one person sang it from a way that was very performative. It felt like they were up and they were trying to perform, and the other person sang it from their soul, and you could feel the soul coming through that. And I think that's such a powerful thing, is to be able to be in a place that you can share that. And it leads to my next question: that the energy in Queenergy feels both uplifting and bold. How does this reflect who you are as an artist today?

SPEAKER_01 3:17

I think bold is the word because everything that I have up until this moment, and I and I think it is true to everyone, too, you're just one step away from success by being less or more bold than you can be.

SPEAKER_02 3:33

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 3:34

Because when we have boldness, we can literally have the confidence to strive for whatever we want. And in Quinergy, by saying those affirmations to myself when I sing the song, I get more confidence each and every day when I stand in front of the mirror, seeing myself, and then just channel it out. Que energy, queergy. And that's also one of the reasons why I wrote the song. I want it to be a mantra of good affirmations so other people can feel more confident about themselves when they listen to the song. So, yes, boldness. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 4:14

Well, but one of the powerful things too that people don't realize is that you can tap into great vibrations. And like, think about that. Like, I was listening to a song at work today, and I was listening to Beyonce's Cowboy Carter. I love that album. I love Beyonce and Cowboy Carter, because I grew up in the South, man. I some of that country vibes mixed with Beyonce. Like, dude, I powered through my work today. My team, we did like, geez, we exported about a hundred videos and we were just crushing it today, doing a bunch of videos for our clients back in the U.S. It was it was a lot of work. But we did it and I felt great afterwards. I felt like energized, I felt uplifted because the music has that energy that you can kind of pull from it. But it's so cool because I I wanted to ask you, like, I know what some of the songs that I listen to. I I love that, like, oh, was it that song You Raise Me Up? That song always lifts me up, you know. But like, I want to ask you this, because I know the message from that song. What message are you hoping listeners take away from Queenergy, especially fans in Vietnam and internationally?

SPEAKER_01 5:20

Well, I put it all in the chorus part where I say, watch me when I walk is Queener G. Because ever since I was little, I really struggle with my self-identity and how I present myself to others. And I feel like everyone would go through that phase of not really believing what you have and the potential you can reach if you just believe in how amazing you look, how amazing you can feel. So I want people to just feel those things from normal activities like how we talk, how we walk, just fix your posture and put on an outfit that you like and just tell yourself that you're a beauty queen, you're a queener G. Being able to tell yourself that you're a king, you're a queen, I think is the highest form of confidence because if you're not confident in yourself, you cannot make other people believe in you. Yeah, and it's very hard. You don't have enough self-trust in yourself. How can other people trust in you? So being confident and believing yourself from those small things can add a lot of changes in your life. And it brought me to where I am today. So everything was built on true story of myself.

SPEAKER_00 6:42

I love that. One of the one of the things too, if people don't realize the the posture, that the importance of posture and presenting yourself. And like I worked with that with my daughter, Eilani. And I noticed this. When I say something to Eilani, I'll be like, Ilani, you did that wrong. You know what happens? Immediately the posture goes like this. And I'm like, hey, no, no, no, no. Just because I said something, just because I corrected you, I want you to stand tall. I want you to be confident, I want you to look me in the eye and have that because there's power in that. But we, you know what? I'll tell you a secret. I I might seem big and strong and stubborn now, but when I was a kid, I got bullied and beat up so bad. I got bullied. I got like at my school, it was really rough, and the older kids used to beat me up all the time. But I, when I got older, I joined martial arts. I started training in judo and jujitsu. You better believe it. And then, like, I got yeah, all right, and I got my black belt in judo, and then after that, I started training Muay Thai, and then I started training uh karate and other martial arts, and I've been doing martial arts for 25, some odd years. And now I'm confident because I learned to be confident. But it was some teachers that when I was having a tough day and I was like laying on the ground, one of the things my judo teacher taught me is like even when I had a hard throw and I fell down really hard, he told me, he's like, Can you stand up? And I said, Yes. He said, then stand up. Don't stay on the ground. If you have the ability to stand up, stand up. And I stand up and I was rounding, and he's like, No, no, no, no, stand tall, stand tall. And I I've carried that with me. So when I hear about you talking about that, it makes me think about that because a lot of us are not born with that confidence. But you know, I want to ask you this because you went through some pretty big transitions. You transitioned from pageantry into music. How would you describe your evolution as a performer and artist in that?

SPEAKER_01 8:43

I feel like it's still me appearing on stages, but it's different now that I have more freedom to move around and to express my creativity with many others. Um when I was a beauty queen, it was more about like dazzling gowns and speeches and ambassadors and stuff. But when I changed into singers and performer uh performers, I feel like every time I show up, I try to connect to the audience as much as possible. It could be through my performance by preparing it at its best, or just have a good time with them, just talking and get to know the crowd. Because um for me, I try to live like every day is the last day that I live. So every performance that I carry out, I want it to be the best. And even if I'm a beauty uh a beauty queen or a performer, I always want to make sure that every time I show up, there is a good message that I leave for the people and they can feel some sort of inspiration from the story I tell. And yes, I feel like I also struggled with how to tell my story in the way a way that they can easily connect because I used to be the one who was trying to like give like a good perform and be performative. But like as I went on, I feel like it's it drained me a lot. I lost a lot of energy by doing that. So I worked on myself, I did shadow work, I sat with my own emotions, and I just I asked myself questions like do you want your your little children, your baby sisters, to listen all of those messages that you were sending them to them like that? Or you would channel it in a way that people can see themselves through the situation that you were in, and they are able to draw, draw some sort of solution to themselves rather than just seeing like a dazzling performance, and then they just go home looking for another artist to watch and saying cliche things like, Oh, you can do this and that, and I used to be like this and that. I also learned to present myself in a not perfect way. Yeah, it's and it's different than Beauty Queen. When I changed into performing, I presented myself as a very imperfect wholeness because I am still whole myself and I'm still learning to make myself whole each and every day. But I know that I have to be okay with being imperfect because we are human. And and I'm I'm not proudly saying that oh, I'm not perfect, and I won't try to be perfect, but it's just I want people to understand that acknowledging your own imperfection is a good way for you to go through hard days and not blaming yourself for not doing good enough.

SPEAKER_00 12:00

I love that. First of all, there's a couple things there that I love. I want to talk about the idea of memento mori. I don't know if you know that, but it's called that. Memento mori is the practice of recognizing life is finite, that eventually we all die. I love to live by that. A couple years ago, I don't talk about this all the time. I talk about this with my family, but I got really sick. I had a heart infection, and I was really sick. It was really a tough time. And in that time, I couldn't hardly walk more than a couple steps. And then I was back in bed. Doctors couldn't figure out why I wasn't getting better, but I was in bad shape. And there were a couple nights that I just didn't know if I was gonna make it. But that gave me the awareness that every day after that was a gift, and that every day I feel like I have a responsibility to try to make this world a little bit brighter of a place, to make it a little bit better. Because um I'm a huge Lord of the Rings fan, and I don't it's way before your time, but Gandalf and the Lord of the Rings, and and Gandalf gets this mission and he gets sent back to Earth because it's not his time. And I felt like that was the what I was being told. It's not your time. Your time is to be down here, and you've got a mission left to do. And I think that if you can figure out your why, what is your why? And you were talking about talking to the younger sisters and such. Today, Ilani was being a little bit of an a-hole to her piano teacher. And I called her out on it. I said, Ilani, you're not being so cool right now. And she's like, Well, I don't feel good. I'm just this. And I was like, but you're being kind of a jerk. And she sat down and she was like, she looked at me and she's like, I'm sorry. And I looked at her and I said, This. I said, You know what, Ilani? Today I'm having a horrible day. Horrible day. I had some bad news yesterday, and I just I don't want to smile. I don't want to be bright and happy. But I said, you know what? Your mom, she's looking at me to be strong. You, you're looking at me to be strong. All of my workers are looking at me to be strong. And everyone on my podcast, like the people that I'm trying to impress and try to inspire, they need me to be strong. And I said, you know, and at the end of the day, I can be a jerk, I can be grumpy, or I can have a good attitude and smile and say, you know what? I've been through worse. This is not gonna beat me. And that positive attitude, that positive expression can make all the difference in the world. And it leads me to ask you this because in your musical performances, how do you balance your personal style with appealing to a wide audience? Because you've told me your why, but does your why always is that what the audience wants? I know for many singers, especially my wife, what the audience wants and what she wants is not always the same thing.

SPEAKER_01 15:04

Well, it is team effort. I can't do all of this without my team, without my people, without professional music team and beauty team, and the management team, you know, because like every performance that I carry out cost a lot. And to be able to like present myself to the audience, and like we just have to have like the whole backstage crew to work with, and then we have to settle for a plan where we all have to agree on us. For us, took meetings, a lot of long meeting sessions, to be able to like agree on something and bring it out to to the audiences, and it's not an easy work at all. And like that's why I even though I like a lot of things and I tend to be too how can I say too high with my creativity, I that's why I need like a music director which is DTAP to work tightly with me and to explain what is um suitable that I should bring out for the audience uh during each period of time and also with the visual taint, because if I just give you the things that I like, it's like I'm forcing you to eat ramen, for example. I really like ramen, I'm forcing you to eat ramen while you like sushi, you like spaghetti. So I think like working in music, it's like you're providing something, you're providing your product to the listeners. They are like the music consumers of yours. So to learn about the listeners and like understand what would suit them to like utilize your music product is a must. And I'm I'm still I still have to learn each and every day. Uh but for DTAP, I really respect them because even though they um they wanted my products to be commercial as much as they want it to be commercial and mainstream, they still create rooms for me to put my phone in it. Yeah, because some element I brings is kind of like niche to the listeners in Vietnam. And they they did not see it that as drawbacks, they just see it as my my own color. So that's why I feel like I don't have such a hard time to uh create something that the audience would want because we work as a team.

SPEAKER_00 17:42

I love that. I love that. One of the things too that I wanted to ask about that was um, you know, you've spoken about your English language studies, but and I wanted to ask how, because you talked about them, not just niche and Vietnam, but also, you know, international. Like how has English opened doors for you, especially in international platforms like Miss World and in music collaborations?

SPEAKER_01 18:05

It helps me a lot in networking with other people. It is the universal language, of course. And um when I use English, I also feel like it's easier for me to convey my thoughts into the thoughts, into the things that I wrote. Even when I journaled, I also journal in English. I don't know why, but as much as I love my mother tongue, um when I do creative work, I feel like English is a very good um uh means to help me release all of my thoughts without being shy. Because in my mother tongue, sometimes it is I call it too vulnerable for me to use my mother tongue. But I would use it on special songs or special occasions, and mostly English um helps me a lot in like expressing myself and by connecting to many other people and being more active when I use the language, it helps me to like uh like it strengthens my relationships with other people a lot. When I worked on collab uh on collaborating with artists, I talk to them myself with DTAP as well, so they would understand what I want more because I get to directly talk to them. So it's easier to to have English as a language that I can use like pretty fluently.

SPEAKER_00 19:41

That's awesome. And it does, you're right. It is a I was on a flight recently from flying, I was in the US, then I flew to Qatar, and then I flew from Qatar back to Vietnam. And was when I was getting on the flight from Qatar to Vietnam, there was a German couple sitting next to me who didn't speak English. And it was interesting because the lady sat down and she was trying to speak to me, and I'm like, I'm so sorry, I don't speak German. But she got really upset. She got really upset, and I was just like, What did I do? And then finally I sat down, I pulled out luckily there's Wi-Fi on the plane, and I turned, I turned on ChatGPT. I'm like, hey, uh, what's going on? I she's like, Oh, I wanted your seat. I wanted to change seats with you. And I was like, Oh, so it's just so much easier. Like, we there was something to be communicated, you know, and the power of being able to like bridge and connect with something so simple, it's really beautiful because we might have needs, we might have wants, but until we can communicate that to each other, it's really hard. And like right now, at this point in time, English is the world language, it is the global language, and it's so powerful to be able to command that. And can you share a moment where your English fluency helped you in a way you didn't expect, either on stage or behind the scenes?

SPEAKER_01 20:59

Well, mostly it would be working with other people uh like internationally. And I feel like English has always been there as a tool for me to communicate daily. So it helps me a lot in every way possible. Uh like when I search for Google results, there are more results when I use English, obviously. And um, there are plenty of sources of information where I can really tap into the knowledge by searching it in English. And I also feel like, okay, there's there was one time when I traveled to Japan. In Japan, they did not really speak a lot of English, but English was the only language I knew back then. So by having English, I I can ask a couple of um Korean, uh, a Korean couple. To help me find a way to Sinjuku Station, I remember. And yeah, I don't know Korean. I don't know much of Japanese. So English was the only way. And they helped me. And I we use only little English together. But yes, it did save me that day. Because I only traveled for for five days. So I took that whole day. I I traveled by the subways, and it's really hard to use. I don't know how to navigate the ways.

SPEAKER_00 22:32

So thank God I have in the Tokyo subway systems are really complicated. I was like trying to figure that out. That is probably one of the most difficult things to navigate. So yeah, definitely having people who can help you is really good. I I think that I got so lost the last time I was there. But I want to ask you this one. Coming from pageants into music and social content, what has been the biggest challenge you've faced creatively and how did you overcome it?

SPEAKER_01 23:00

I think it's mostly deals with um maintaining the perfect image in the eye of the public. Because when I worked in the Beauty Queen industry, we always have to keep the image very perfect. And I really really appreciate that because it is the special feature of that sort of field to work in. But when I turn onto music, uh as much as I want to be creative and express myself more, I'm I'm still a Miss World Vietnam. So there are certain things that I will be more restricted when doing in the art field, for example. Um there was one time when I when I asked for um I cannot I cannot see it here, but it's about like a bit exposing when we yeah, a bit exposing in doing your visuals. And um Anfangan said that no, you cannot do that. Uh in your case, you can't, but with others, they can't because I have like um my Ms. World title. And so everything has to be more carefully planned. And my audience, I have to respect them and just just bring out positive images so they can see because I have kids and adults, people from all ages, they see my fan page and everything that I post. Even sometimes I want to express my thoughts in like a more free, like free way. But I have to think that will this affect any of my audiences? Will this affect any of the brand deals that we're having? So it is much more, it took much more consideration for my case.

SPEAKER_00 24:52

It's complicated, right? It is, it's really complicated, but you have the skills to navigate it and you have the team behind you that can help you handle that as well. But looking forward, how do you envision uh your career evolving over the next few years? And what are you most excited to explore?

SPEAKER_01 25:12

For the time being, I'm still new to this the whole um music thing. So I will still have to get more trainings on perfecting my performances. And I'm also thinking about acting. Uh I I I also like uh to be on screens, and there is also a new project of mine, which is going to be released within April, really like relating to movies as well. So make sure to check it out. And um, I I I feel like I still want to be a versatile um artist in the industry because um there is so much more that I want to see and learn and express myself. But yeah, first of all, I have to like keep elevating myself with more classes, more tutorings, and more trials to see what I can do.

SPEAKER_00 26:08

That's awesome. Well, where can people find out more about your album and what you're doing next?

SPEAKER_01 26:14

Um, you guys can follow my fan page. I will send uh Anshan the link if possible. It's Hunming My Fung, or you can search on YouTube. It's MyFung. And on Spotify, also MyFoo. Wait, I can I show the screen to please do. Yes, uh okay. Please go and check out my Spotify. I have 11 songs here, yeah, and on Instagram as well, so just come and check it out. There's I'm gonna be updating you guys with a lot of information. Here is also my Instagram. There will be a lot more, I promise. Yeah.