We were lucky to catch up with Minh-thu Lam recently and have shared our conversation below.

Minh-Thu, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Can you open up about a risk you’ve taken – what it was like taking that risk, why you took the risk and how it turned out?

At my last career, I had almost a fairy tale story in an industry that is pretty cut throat and grimy. I spent 9 years in the auto industry and started and finished my career at the same place. I was working for the #1 luxury auto dealer in the world and working in 1 place over the course of my career, especially as a female was extremely rare.

I got hired on with no experience and it took 3 months to sell my first car (grounds for firing). However within 2 years I got promoted to a finance management position and spent the final 7 years being 1 of 2 females in an 8 person management team, making multiple 6 figures by the time I was 31.

From the outside looking in, I had it all, however the money and accolades didn’t make up for the guilt, dread and anxiety I felt inside. While my career was damn near perfect, I was never truly fulfilled or in alignment with the work, so at the end of 8.5 years, I gave my notice with no plan, and left my cushy job to travel the world and live off my savings. I took 9 months to heal, recalibrate and find a new purpose and at the end of that 9 months I came back to Edmonton and started my company, Higher Alignment Consulting. Everyone thought I was crazy and no one understood how I could make such a jump with no plan however the birth of my company showed what happens when you trust your intuition. Now I coach executives who are struggling just like me how to reconnect to their purpose and productivity by rewiring their relationship with stress.

Taking that leap of faith was the biggest risk I’ve ever taken. None of my family or friends understood it but because I jumped, the universe rewarded me with the most fulfilling and freeing work I could have ever dreamed of.

Minh-Thu, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

The last question will answer a bit about my back story. However what I specialize in is working with executives and high performers who are stuck on the hamster wheel of burnout and struggling to get off.

In my last career I was addicted to the results…money, accolades, all the shiny things. However I barely slept through the night, my digestion was terrible and I woke up every day with anxiety. I eventually got to a point where I was so out of balance that when I got home from work all I could do was order food and lay on the couch. I had become a shell of a person. A person who was once ambitious and driven to now a person who just wanted to feel some inner peace. So I went on a soul searching journey of figuring out how to heal my burnout and feel more at peace internally and through years and years of studying and practicing different modalities, I was able to finally pull myself out of that dark hole. Once I came up for air, I could see more clearly and this is when my vision for what I wanted my life to look and feel like shifted.

Yes I wanted to continue achieving at a high level and living a comfortable life, but I realized that all those things without inner peace and freedom meant nothing.

So I went on a mission to create this life for myself… and I did!

This is now what I teach people to do in my Higher Alignment Program. I show my clients how they can continue performing at high level but in a way where they can feel more peaceful and be present with the things that mean the most to them.

I have worked with some incredible people all the way from the marketing agency CEO’s to tech executive’s. Anyone who knows what it’s like to eat, breath and live high performance is my kind of client.

I teach people how to feel less guilty, feel more free and also find more time and energy in their schedule without sacrificing their performance. In fact most people’s productivity goes up by the time they’re done my 90 day program. This is something none of them expect when we start.

The most fulfilling thing about this process is witnessing people finally release all the pent up tension they’ve been holding on to for so long and every time this happens, they create space for fresh energy to come in!

I’ve had clients who already make multiple 6 figures attract new job opportunities, dream homes and massive pay offs all because they followed my blue print of healing their burnout and reconnecting with themselves.

There is no limit to how your life can change once you do this work and I see it every time I bring on a new client.

Do you have any insights you can share related to maintaining high team morale?

My advice for managing a team and maintaining high morale is to empower your staff with understanding their nervous system and how to use it to their advantage so they can maximize their output in a sustainable way.

The reality is the role of a leader comes with a lot of responsibility. Not just from a performance aspect but also from the aspect of how much you affect a person’s mental and emotional health.

Forbes released an article in Sept 2024 and quoted Workforce Institute saying “managers have a greater impact on someone’s mental health than a doctor or therapist..”

This statement alone is not meant to add more pressure to the leader but rather to show how important it is for manager’s and executives to take care of themselves so that they can transfer this down to their team.

So the best way to manage/lead a team to sustainable long term success is to make sure you’re taking care of your mental, emotional and physical health in a way that your team can follow your lead.

Understanding how to get your nervous system to work for you vs against you is vital to a sustainable and high performing career and all members of the team can learn this skill set.

This will directly affect your morale, client retention, closing ratios and ability to work as a team.

What’s a lesson you had to unlearn and what’s the backstory?

A major lesson I had to unlearn was the idea that ‘guilt’ meant I was a good person.

I used to feel guilt for a lot of things… taking breaks, going on vacation, saying no to projects. I thought that because I felt guilty, it meant I was really empathetic and caring and so I would ignore my needs and let the guilt hold me back.

However what this led to was me feeling resentful, more burnt out and so out of touch with what I needed to feel balanced and peaceful. I realized that a lot of the time my guilt would turn into shame and the shame became a really unhealthy cycle for me to live in. It lead to a lot of negative internal self talk and always judging myself.

When I realized how unproductive the guilt was for my life, I took a step back to reflect on my relationship with guilt. I realized that I had grown up feeling guilty about a lot of things and to me, feeling guilt was a bit of a safety blanket.

Through self reflection and a lot of journaling, I was able to break down the stories in my head around guilt and taking care of myself and see how self destructive this pattern was. I then started to reframe the narrative and eventually got to a point where guilt no longer dictated my behaviour.

Contact Info:

• Website: http://higheralignmentconsulting.com/program/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/minhthu_lam/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/minh-thulam
• Other: Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/5U35pd1JcoyOqrriuqixZZ?si=7cd1e1acb7044a5c
  Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/the-higher-alignment-podcast/id1771504768

Image Credits

@glareannphotography