Most spa owners talk about customer satisfaction scores and repeat business rates. When Nguyen Van Hai talks about his business, he talks about the moment when a woman walks into his spa avoiding eye contact and walks out standing taller, making eye contact, smiling. He talks about employees who arrived with no skills and no confidence, and who now earn 80 million VND per month while training others. His entire business philosophy can be summed up in one sentence: when you help people remember their own worth, everything else takes care of itself.

This isn’t the story of building a 15 billion VND spa empire through clever marketing or premium pricing. It’s the story of a man who understands exactly what it feels like to feel worthless, and who’s dedicated his business to making sure no one who touches his world has to carry that feeling any longer than necessary. Nguyen Van Hai doesn’t just provide beauty services. He restores something far more fundamental — the confidence to believe you deserve to take up space in your own life.

The Gift Hidden in His Darkest Moment

More than ten years ago, Nguyen Van Hai walked the streets of Sweden at 5 AM collecting discarded soda cans to survive. He couldn’t speak the language, couldn’t find work, and felt invisible in a country where no one recognized his worth. Every rejection letter, every failed job application, every morning spent searching for cans that were worth just a few coins — each one reinforced a devastating message: you have no value here.

That experience of feeling worthless is something most people will never understand. But everyone he serves now — whether as an employee he’s training or a client walking into his spa — has felt some version of it. Maybe not collecting cans at dawn, but feeling invisible in their own way. Overlooked. Underestimated. Forgotten. That shared understanding of what it feels like to doubt your own worth became the foundation for everything he would build.

When Empathy Becomes Your Competitive Advantage

What he learned during those brutal early years in Sweden wasn’t just survival skills. He learned to recognize the signs of someone who’s lost confidence in themselves. The way they avoid eye contact. The way they apologize for taking up space. The way they minimize their own needs and expectations. He sees these signs instantly now, because he wore them himself for years. And when he sees them, something activates in him — not pity, but recognition. And from recognition comes the most powerful business asset he possesses: the genuine desire to help that person remember who they really are.

Building a Business That Builds People

When he finally opened his own spa, he could have followed the standard business model — hire trained professionals, serve clients efficiently, maximize profit margins. Instead, he built something radically different: a business that takes people with nothing and transforms them into confident professionals earning 80 million VND per month. His employees often arrive the same way he arrived in Sweden — with no skills, no confidence, and no belief that someone like them could succeed in this industry.

He doesn’t see that as a hiring challenge. He sees it as the entire point. Every person he trains is living proof that transformation is possible. Every employee who goes from uncertain beginner to confident professional becomes a walking advertisement for what his business is really about — not eyelash extensions or nail art, but human potential. When clients walk into his spa and interact with employees who are themselves in the middle of their own transformation journey, they feel something they might not find in a more “professional” establishment: genuine empathy from people who understand what it’s like to doubt yourself.

The Training That Changes Lives

His training program isn’t just about teaching technical skills. It’s about rebuilding someone’s self-concept from the ground up. He teaches his employees that they’re not “just” providing a service. They’re giving someone a moment of care and attention that might be the only moment that person receives all week. That reframe changes everything. An employee who sees themselves as an artist creating moments of dignity for others brings completely different energy to their work than someone who’s just following a procedure checklist.

The Spa Experience That Restores More Than Beauty

Walk into most spas and you’ll find efficient service, professional courtesy, pleasant ambiance. Walk into Nguyen Van Hai’s spa and you’ll find something else entirely — a space designed to make invisible people feel seen. He’s obsessive about the client experience not because he wants five-star reviews, but because he remembers what it felt like to be invisible. Every detail is engineered around one question: How do we make this person feel valued?

His clients often arrive carrying a particular kind of exhaustion — the exhaustion of feeling unseen in their own lives. Maybe they’re mothers who’ve spent years putting everyone else first. Maybe they’re women who’ve been told their appearance doesn’t matter or that caring about how they look is superficial. Maybe they’re simply tired of feeling like they’ve disappeared. Whatever brought them through the door, they leave different. Not just because their nails look better or their lashes are longer, but because for two hours, someone treated them like they mattered.

The Transformation That Compounds

Here’s what makes his business model so powerful: transformation creates transformation. Employees who are in the middle of their own confidence journey naturally create space for clients to have their own. Clients who experience genuine care and attention go back into the world standing a little taller, which affects how they show up for others. That ripple effect — people who were helped becoming people who help others — is the real business model. Revenue is just what happens when you create enough of those ripples.

The 15 Billion VND Business Built on Human Worth

Today, his spa generates nearly 15 billion VND in annual revenue with 10+ employees. But ask him what success means and he won’t talk about revenue. He’ll tell you about the employee who was homeless six months ago and now manages a station. He’ll tell you about the client who cried after her service because it was the first time in years anyone had treated her like she deserved care. He’ll tell you about the moment when someone who arrived afraid to make eye contact leaves looking at themselves in the mirror with genuine affection.

Those transformations are the real business metrics he tracks. Revenue is just evidence that the transformations are happening at scale. When you help enough people rediscover their worth, a 15 billion VND business becomes an inevitable side effect.

Building a Digital Movement

Now he’s expanding his impact through digital content creation, building presence on Facebook and Instagram with a vision for the next 3-5 years. But he’s not creating content to sell services. He’s creating content to share what he’s learned about transformation — how to go from feeling worthless to building something meaningful, how to help others when you’re still healing yourself, how to build a business that measures success in human dignity rather than just financial metrics.

What Every Business Owner Can Learn About True Value Creation

Nguyen Van Hai’s story teaches something that most business books miss entirely. The most profitable businesses aren’t always the ones with the best products or the cleverest marketing. Sometimes they’re the businesses built by people who genuinely understand their customers’ pain because they’ve lived something similar. That understanding creates a level of service that can’t be faked or trained. It’s either real or it isn’t. And customers can tell the difference instantly.

His approach offers a radical alternative to the standard business model: instead of extracting maximum value from employees and customers, what if you built a business that actively increased the worth of everyone it touched? Employees arrive with no confidence and leave as skilled professionals earning 80M VND monthly. Clients arrive feeling invisible and leave remembering their worth. That’s not just good ethics — it’s a brilliant business strategy. People will pay premium prices and become loyal advocates for businesses that genuinely transform their lives.

A Legacy Measured in People Standing Taller

When I think about Nguyen Van Hai’s impact, I don’t think about the 15 billion VND revenue or the spa locations or even the impressive employee earnings. I think about something harder to quantify but infinitely more valuable: How many people are standing taller, making eye contact, taking up space in their own lives because they crossed paths with him?

His employees who went from nothing to 80 million VND monthly aren’t just earning more money. They’re living proof that transformation is possible, carrying that message into every interaction. His clients aren’t just getting beauty services. They’re experiencing what it feels like to be treated like they matter, often for the first time in years. And now through digital content, he’s reaching thousands more Vietnamese people abroad who need to hear that their starting point doesn’t determine their destination.

That’s the real business he’s in — not beauty services, but human transformation. The spa is just the vehicle. And that’s exactly why it works so powerfully.

You can follow Nguyen Van Hai’s journey and connect with him through his website at nguyenhaieagle.com, as well as his Facebook and Instagram pages, where he shares insights on business, beauty, and building a life of purpose far from home.

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Le Duc Anh CEO of OceanLabs – Founder of QVID