Career Coaching Secrets

The Dichotomy of the Entrepreneur: Balancing Business and Spirituality - Yoana Nin

• Davis Nguyen

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In this episode of Career Coaching Secrets, host Rexhen interviews Yoana Nin, a real estate broker and life coach. Yoana shares that her inspiration to become a coach came from seeing high-earning professionals who were miserable. She realized her calling was to help them overcome mindset barriers and find fulfillment beyond just making money. A certified life coach through the Jay Shetty program, she now works with entrepreneurs and professionals.

Yoana uses her established organic audience on Facebook for marketing, building on the trust she's earned over 12 years in real estate. Her biggest challenge is balancing her two careers without confusing her audience. She advises other coaches to focus on their "why" and not just on revenue, as scaling can lead to burnout if you're not prepared for it.

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Yoana Nin:

being a very strict person with myself. I'm not kidding around. I'm not lying to myself saying things are different than they are, what they are. I noticed that my interests and my passions were really focusing on that spiritual part of us. And because of the dichotomy in me being an entrepreneur and a businesswoman and a spiritual person and having this gift of helping others find their true purpose,

Davis Nguyen:

Welcome to Career Coaching Secrets, the podcast where we talk with successful career coaches on how they built their success and the hard lessons they learned along the way. My name is Davis Nguyen, and I'm the founder of Purple Circle, where we help career coaches scale their business to $100,000 years, $100,000 months, and even $100,000 weeks. Before Purple Circle, I've grown several seven and eight figure career coaching business myself, and I've been a consultant at two career coaching businesses that are doing over a hundred million dollars each. Whether you're an established coach or building your practice for the first time, you'll discover the secrets to elevating your coaching business. Hey

Rexhen Doda:

everyone, welcome to another episode of Career Coaching Secrets Podcast. I'm your host, Rejan, and today's guest is Ioana Nin, a vibrant entrepreneur, acclaimed real estate broker, and transformative life coach who infuses passion, effort, and healing into all her endeavors. As the founder of the Prosperous Agency and Ioana in coaching, she supports professionals, business owners, especially entrepreneurs in overcoming fear, visibility issues, and mindset barriers to create the life and businesses they envision. Her journey began as a Romanian actress leading to a successful life in North Carolina. Ioana's story is one of daring reinvention, intuitive guidance, and empowering others without apology. Today, she aims to inspire and assist others in achieving similar transformation. And it's a pleasure for me to have her on the podcast today. Welcome to the show, Joanna.

Yoana Nin:

Oh, wow. Sounds really good.

Rexhen Doda:

Thank you for coming, Joanna. It's a pleasure to have you on. So, Joanna, I want to know how this all got started. What inspired you to become a coach? We were talking earlier that this is right now you in your beginning stages. But what inspired you to make this transition or like go towards the coaching industry? That's a very interesting approach from real estate to coaching. coaches in the podcast that have done the opposite from coaching to real estate. So I want to know your story as well.

Yoana Nin:

Probably they weren't making enough money in coaching and they decided to transition. First of all, thank you so much for having me here. It's a real pleasure to speak with you. You seem like a very cool guy. I'd love to probably meet you in Albania or Romania at some point and talk some more. What inspired me actually came from a lot of years of working as an entrepreneur in as an immigrant in the United States and seeing how the grind mentality is extremely trendy here in the United States and everybody's grinding, grinding, grinding to a point where they don't even know sometimes why they are doing what they're doing. There's a lot of people, especially after COVID in the real estate industry that came out and said, listen, we really have to admit the fact that we're just doing this for the money and we don't really wake up happy. We don't really go to bed happy. And through my conversations with a lot of agents, with a lot of entrepreneurs, you know, people that make, you know, I don't know, 10 million, 20, 30 million plus per year. I've sat through some really, really strange, vulnerable conversations where you saw that their lives were just like, sometimes even more depressing, probably a harsh word, than someone's life that lives a very simple life from a financial perspective, right? They live a simple life, but a life where there's more peace of mind, where there's more joy in the family, when there's more quality time with your loved ones, where there's more travel, where there's more engagement in their inner selves. So throughout these conversations, What I was told, and I've been told it since I was a child, is I don't know what it is about you, but you channel, you bring out the best of us and you always make us feel better about ourselves. You always give us hope or you give us a vision or a mission for the future, right? So that prompted me to saying, I really, and I've been feeling this for a long time, but I myself was in that situation. you know, bubble of, okay, well, I have two kids. I have this life. I'm running this company. I got to go, go, go, go, go. Till one day when I said, listen, I think this is not my calling. I really don't think this is my calling. I think my calling is way deeper than just real estate, which I still love, but it's not what I want to do till I'm 70, 80, 90. So when I did all of the reading and exercising, right from Tony Robbins to going to all these workshops, to all these books that I read, I really constantly came back to listening to podcasts that had to do with spirituality with energy healing, right? From Julie Ryan to Esther Hicks, The Teachings of Abraham, to the Next Level Soul podcast, to channelers, to psychics, to tarot card readers, to all these things. So I noticed, and I was working on myself, and I noticed that Being a very strict person with myself, I'm not kidding around, I'm not lying to myself saying things are different than they are. I noticed that my interests and my passions were really focusing on that spiritual part of us. And because of the dichotomy in me, being an entrepreneur and a businesswoman and a spiritual person and having this gift of helping others find their true purpose, I shifted and I started building the coaching. I got certified through Jay Shetty. After I got certified through Jay Shetty, I got certified as an intuitive energetic healer. So then, you know, the few years have passed and I've been building and building and sharpening my skill sets. as a life coach and working with entrepreneurs, working with people, working with career-oriented people who feel stuck and feel like life is definitely worth more than just the financial part of it.

Rexhen Doda:

That is such an interesting story. And when it comes to Jay Shetty, Is it? I didn't know there was a certification he does. This is kind of new I learned. So is it life coaching certification?

Yoana Nin:

Yes. Yes. It's a very intense school, actually. It was mind blowing. The amount of work that he does and all his coaches and the preparation and the amount of hours that you have to do unsupervised, supervised coaching. The whole team is excellent. So I've been following him for a very long time. I love him. I love his wife just as human beings. Again, some couple of years ago, I decided to take the leap and I got certified. And I'm very happy, I think, because the amount of work that I had to do for myself and to become certified was significant. And so, yeah, here I am. I'm

Rexhen Doda:

also a fan of Jay Shetty. I like the book, Think Like a Monk, which was pretty nice. And I wanted to ask you right now, when it comes to, and I mentioned this on the intro as well, when it comes to the people that you work with, we talked about business owner, entrepreneur. We talked about professionals as well. And it goes into the transformation. It goes into life coaching, essentially. So how does the program exactly work? Is it a certain length? that they go through working with you? How have you packaged this?

Yoana Nin:

So initially, just for your information, I guess, to give to other coaches. So initially, I was struggling with this because I have a program that is a three-month intense program, which is a one-day per week, one-on-one with me, one hour. So it's a one-on-one, three-month, where they go through the videos, they go through the course, they go through the homework. And so We go from A to Z in three months together. So initially, I did all this work, created all this amazing curriculum, which took about six months to build from all of the knowledge, all of the resources. And then the biggest struggle for me was... I actually was amazing. The moment I created it, my first client signed up. It was crazy. I was like, oh my God, I just launched this. And so my first entrepreneur client who owns a building, she's in the building industry, she signed up. But what I noticed while I was working with her is that the program is long and it's very intensive. So my ultimate decision is to make the whole process more digestible. And so what I've decided recently is that I'm going to offer maybe Maybe here's a six-week program. Maybe we can do a power coaching where you only really connect with me when you feel like you need some guidance and then we can go through some exercises together. So I think I really want to restructure to where I give people a lot more options because it's very tough, but the really real transformation does not happen quick. So really take this seriously. And if you really want to work with someone one. I'm not going to go to the gym and tell my coach, please. I'll just come when I feel like it, okay? I'll just do my ab work when I feel like it. I'm going to expect this to work. If you're aware of what you have and the amount of fat and whatever, you're going to know it's not going to happen. So the reality is that like in everything, it does take at least three months to change, to rewire, to shift your brain, right? To make the new connections, to instill those new habits, to instill a new routine. I'm not drinking my coffee every morning the same way. I'm not eating the same stuff and expecting the results. So having that coaching process to me was like, it's a no brainer. You have to do this. Now, also the amount of money was significantly higher. So I think for a new coach like me, it's kind of hard to say, Hey, you know, pay me 5,000 bucks. And it's, it's, it's nothing right to change your life. If you really are in that moment where you're ready to change your life. But for a lot of people, that's a lot of money. And especially since I'm not well known yet, it's difficult. So they would prefer to go slowly, slowly, slowly, smaller amounts to see how they feel with that personal coach or like with me. And so long story short, I'm working on offering different and more diverse options for everyone out there.

Rexhen Doda:

So you're kind of like working on your offers and improving your offers constantly. I

Yoana Nin:

think it's going to be a lifelong improvement, right? Just like what you guys do. There's never a setting. I mean, you can do repetitive stuff that works, but ultimately you adjust based on the people that you work with and their busy lives. And America is well known, again. Grind, grind, grind. And I'm studying also the people that I work with and a lot of CEOs and CFOs, like when they hear mindset and manifestation and awareness and all that, they're like, what is this BS? Like, we don't have time for that. Can we just get to our schedule and work within the company with what? So it's very interesting to study their approach. And so if they get to where they need a coach and the company doesn't offer them a coach, they are probably in a situation where they're really unhappy. And they've been unhappy for quite a while. And they don't want to go to a therapist. They don't want to go to a counselor. They don't want medication. They don't want alcohol, drugs, any of that. But they realize that the only thing that you can do in this life is to work on yourself. If you're really serious about changing your destiny to the better.

Rexhen Doda:

Absolutely. Right now, how are you going about find younger clients or what marketing channel would you say is working best for you?

Yoana Nin:

So Facebook. Facebook is really strong for me. And because of my real estate business, I've been running this company for 12 years. I've started slowly, slowly posting some tidbits here and there. And everyone that has connected with me so far has been either in real estate or in the construction or something related to that stress of real estate and dealing with so many clients on a daily basis. And that's what's working for me because that's the one thing that I'm kind of... Now, I do have... TikTok, which I started and I've been posting on and off, but you know, this is not revenue creating or anything like that. And I enjoy it. I feel like I'm giving, I'm serving by posting 60 seconds, maybe every day or every other day of inspiration. rather than monetization. But yes, Facebook. And I'm planning on, when I started, if you go on YouTube and you go Ioana Nin Coach, you can see my real estate platform, but then you can also see that I initially started working with a lot of women and then interviewing women and interviewing them on struggles and resilience and people that have Again, great businesses and what they did to get to that point. But very fast, I was getting a lot of calls from men, agents, builders, people that are like, why are you only helping women? We feel like we would like to talk to you. We feel like your energy is really inspiring us. And we don't want to necessarily speak with our wives or our aunts or whatever, right? So then I shifted. And that's, again, for your purpose, for your research. I shifted to like, why can't I just? Help. Everybody, pretty much, women and men, or whatever gender you are, date them into their alignment. But Facebook so far is the best.

Rexhen Doda:

And Facebook is mostly utilizing your audience that you had created before. It's not Facebook ads. It's all organic right now.

Yoana Nin:

All organic. All organic. Yes. Even for my Real Estate channel, everything's always been organic. And I feel like once you build a following that really loves and trusts and sees you for a while They are, of course, more open to welcoming other sides of you, right? Rather than going blank into the big picture. craziness and like, okay, you know, you can definitely run ads, but I think that it depends again on how strong the offer is and what you have to offer and how people see you because they don't even sign with Tony Robbins or with other people. It's, it's, it's a, it's, I feel like people are getting more and more, um, pessimistic when it comes to paying or getting in programs because there's so much stuff out there. That's just a lot of promises and promises and promises and no actual results. or promises for people that there's a discrepancy on, well, you can achieve this, but then, Nobody actually takes the time to saying, hey, how much time do you actually have at hand? And how much money do you actually have? And how much bandwidth, emotional bandwidth, do you actually have to do this, right? They're just selling, selling, selling, and not actually looking at the person on the back saying, dude, this person is really not, like, actually today was the best, best, best. I got the best email. And you wouldn't think it's the best email. If you looked at it, you would like, why are you happy about this? We were thinking about hiring a company for our SEO team. And we asked them so many questions because we were so burned out. you know, for real estate. And so after so many questions, the guys were like, listen, I don't think we're a good match. You know, I don't think we are a good match. I think that we're good with where we are. We don't necessarily need your business at this point. It was so refreshing to me to see how someone looked at me and said, this person is not ready to work with me right now. Right. I'm not going to offer something just to sell them on thousands of dollars a month. I understand that they're not in the mental state where they require our, or they could handle what we do and And maybe, maybe to some extent, they felt that they could not be where we are right now. And at the level of knowledge that we have, because we're not just real estate brokers, right? We know our stuff when it comes to SEO and more like we have, my husband is a marketing genius. So- He's knowledgeable, right? It's not just, you know, okay, build a website. So yeah, to your point, I know I talk much, so just cut me. Say cut, cut,

Rexhen Doda:

cut. No, no, I actually like what you're saying. It makes sense that you're utilizing your organic skills traffic or your organic audience that you had built primarily from your real estate business now for your coaching business as well. So that makes a lot of sense. What is a goal that you're working on for the next one to three years? And what is a challenge? So it's a two-parter question. What is a challenge that is blocking you from getting to that?

Yoana Nin:

That same thing that's a blessing, it's also a curse. Because being in the industry, It's almost like you, Regine, would say, hey, I do this, I do this. But then I would look online and I'd be like, oh, wait, he's a car dealer as well. Because that's his passion. Like, is he working in this? Is he working? So people were asking me at some point, are you still doing restate? So I think the biggest challenge is how do I maintain it? Right. Being a broker in charge and owner of a real estate company while also working on my coaching. And so people understand that, yes, I am also a coach. And I also they're not then saying, oh, we're not going to connect with their company anymore because it seems like she's doing something else. Right. Because they're not on my Facebook all the time to notice all of my posts about they're just like, yeah, just coaching. So that's the biggest struggle for me. And there's a lot of people who are, I feel, struggling with that, right? They're doing something or there's a lot of you know, people that work in a certain job and which is exactly what my client's struggle is. They're doing something, but then they really want to do something else as well. So then they have to maintain the balance, the harmony between I'm making money here and I'm good. I'm feeling good in my company, but then my vocation or my dream is to do something else. How do I pair them if they don't have a lot in common, right? Or they have a little in common, but how do I go out there to the world and say, hey, I'm doing this as well. So that is the challenge. What I want to build ultimately is I want to build this coaching to where I can help as many people as possible with getting unstuck. And by that, it's really going to being interviewed by Oprah, going on the stage with Tony Robbins, going on a stage with Jay, really going into the authenticity of the people that struggle with that. You know, millions and millions of people is my goal. And of course, I will have to go public and viral for doing that. And as many souls touched as possible in a very positive way.

Rexhen Doda:

Thank you. Thank you so much for sharing that. And Right now, it's actually looking at your coaching business. You mentioned that you also have made some investments in it. Like one of them was Jay Shetty for the life coaching. What would you say have been some good investments that you've made on your coaching business so far and maybe what have been some not so good or bad investments. So I'm looking for both in my research.

Yoana Nin:

So coming from a spiritual person like me, you might not like this answer because I don't look at any investment as a bad investment. right? So I, like I said, this guy said, I don't want to work with you. I thought that was extremely refreshing because it's a lesson, right? So there's really like financially looking at the finances. I mean, I paid for Jay Shetty, right? Then I went and I became an intuitive energetic healer that also costs as well. I think the only bad you know whatever was initially when i wasn't really really really clear on who i really want to work with or who i can attract and i was letting myself be influenced by well you should only work with real estate agents right because that's your strength and because that's what you have experience in you should work with people in real estate and you know you don't have any other experience and so you know just stay with your line so in that beginning I was so confused as to do I only work with real estate agents? Do I work with everybody? And so I started working on all of my courses and all of that in high level, right? And this guy, this coach that I hired at that time to work on my funnel and create the content and create ads and stuff like that was actually extremely, extremely pessimistic in a way saying you know I mean you're an immigrant and you know you have to understand you're in America you have an accent people are not gonna so I there were so many voices right when you start something new that are you have to be very very careful just like in life who you actually listen to not trusting your gut will lead to some bad investments but I look at it as, hey, I learned my lesson. You know, I've paid $20,000 for that. This wasn't like $1,000 or $100. It was $20,000. What did I get? I built all of my work. He pushed me to do that. And then I still have it. I have the platforms. I have everything. But I lost a lot of time. process, right? I didn't get the real person that looked at me to really understand, even though I was speaking my soul out to this person. I said, I cannot be more vulnerable than this. You could be my husband at this point. Like, you know, so much about me. And I was having these high hopes of this person is going to listen and this person is going to understand what I really want to do and maybe change my mind in a, in a, um, in a discussion that is building on my questions, in a positive way, not in a skeptical, it's not going to work, blah, blah, blah, because you never know. People have an energy. People have a destiny. They have a vocation. You cannot stop them just by saying, oh, you know, this is not going to work from a, like, whatever marketing perspective or, you know, whatever the SEO keywords, blah, blah, blah. The market is saturated. So there's so much noise out there that it can be or it can lead to a lot of waste of time and depriving one from like still believing in their own resources, in their own gut and in their own destiny. So that's the biggest challenge, but you know, I'm here and I'm going to move on.

Rexhen Doda:

Well, I'm glad that the energy is right. So the final question for the podcast is, What advice would you give to other coaches, just like yourself, that are trying to scale their coaching business, scale their impact specifically? So touch more lives, make more change in a more human life.

Yoana Nin:

I guess the biggest advice would be don't look at it from a money perspective. Like you want to scale and understand, but can you handle the scale? Can you handle that? All of the people that are involved in scaling and the issues that can come with that and making sure that you are loving on your team, you're loving on those people and you pour into them. Or are you just doing this to create more revenue? Which by the way, I noticed with a lot of coaches, they create more revenue, but then again, the stress and it's so, so high. And the money after a point, you know, after you make, you know, 500,000, a million or whatever, it doesn't really make so much difference in your life. You know, it can get to where you get depressed. You don't have time to breathe. You don't have, you get sick, you know? So when you handle that, are you aware of all the things that you're going to have to do? All of the how many people will you have to have, how much help, especially if you have a family and so on. So that's my advice. Look really closely at what you can handle and how much money do you actually need to be where you want to be or to plan for your retirement. Because that's a very different level for everyone, right? I'm okay maybe with a million. You might be okay in Albania with 10,000, 20,000. And you might be living a beautiful life. And here I am stressed out, looking great online. And it's all, you know, sparkles and money and career and fame. And then the reality is, freak, I'm just exhausted. And I don't want this anymore. But then I'm doing it to prove something to someone. That is the biggest mistake. Who are you trying to prove something to? Someone that actually doesn't really care as much about you. So once you have this clear and you know why, and you go seven level deep on your why, and you answer, why do I want to make money from a physical perspective, motivational perspective, inspirational perspective, you know? emotional perspective, mind perspective, whatever, all of what we are as human beings. And if you are seeing that there's a linear answer that matches, then go for it. If not, then you might want to go back and make sure

Rexhen Doda:

you're- Absolutely. I like that you have this reminder of like, what are you actually chasing and why are you doing this?

Yoana Nin:

I mean, nobody lives forever, right? We only live maybe till tomorrow. So everybody leaves their day thinking they're going to live much longer, but we don't know that.

Rexhen Doda:

Thank you. Thank you so much, Joana. And thank you for taking the time to come into our podcast. For anyone who wants to find you or connect with you, They can go into LinkedIn, search Ioana Nin. They'll be able to find you and they will be able to connect with you from there. And there's also a website, I believe. I'm going to let you confirm on that one. What are some of the other ways that people can connect with you or reach out?

Yoana Nin:

So the main coaching website at the moment is IoanaNin.com. You can reach me at Ioana at IoanaNin.com as an email, 9193 I just got my new coaching number. So yeah, I can send that to you and you can add that in editing if you don't mind so that they can easy access to me, other coaches or potential clients. That would be lovely.

Rexhen Doda:

Thank you. Thank

Yoana Nin:

you so much. So

Rexhen Doda:

yeah, also Facebook and YouTube. Search Ioana in coaching. You'll be able to find her there as well. So thank you so much, Ioana. And thank you for taking the time to come into our podcast again. It was lovely having you on the show.

Yoana Nin:

Thanks, Regine. Have a beautiful day. Night.

Davis Nguyen:

That's it for this episode of Career Coaching Secrets. If you enjoyed this conversation, you can subscribe on YouTube, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you're listening to this episode to catch future episodes. This podcast was brought to you by Purple Circle, where we help career coaches scale their business to $100,000 years, $100,000 months, or even $100,000 weeks, all without burning out and making sure that you're making the impact and having the life that you want. To learn more about our community and how we can help you, visit joinpurplecircle.com.