Last year in Saigon, I spent an hour trying to find a coffee shop.
It turned out to be one of the best real-life examples of the tiny business model I’d ever stumbled into.
I had the address. I had directions from a new local friend who knew her. I even had Hang’s WhatsApp number (which, I’d learn, was the only way anyone finds this place).
When I finally reached the building, I messaged her: “I’m here.”
She came down to meet me at the street level and walked me through what felt like a maze. We climbed hidden staircases, passed through what looked like someone’s living room, turned down narrow hallways I’d have never found on my own.
The building itself has quite a history. It’s a French colonial structure that once housed rubber plantation offices, then the US Consulate, and later became CIA headquarters. The rooftop was used for evacuating South Vietnamese refugees during the Fall of Saigon in 1975.
Now, tucked into this historic building, Hang runs her tiny tea and coffee shop.
What Makes Her Business So Memorable
Her menu is pretty much one signature drink. Vietnamese salt coffee with a twist.
She sources her own ingredients. When I asked about tea, she disappeared into her small kitchen and came back with a traditional Chinese medicine blend she’d prepared specifically for the season. While I sipped it, neighbourhood puppies wandered in and curled up next to customers.
On her website, Hang writes: “In order to maintain our privacy as well as show consideration for our neighbours, we do not disclose our precise location to the public, and advanced booking is a must.”
She’s not hidden because she’s new or struggling to get noticed. She’s hidden on purpose. By design.
Hang could easily scale this. She could open multiple locations, franchise the concept, hire staff, make the place easier to find, put a more accurate description on Google Maps and watch the tourist crowds roll in.
But she hasn’t. And I don’t think she will.
Because once you do that, you lose the thing that makes it special. The personalized TCM tea. The neighbourhood puppies. The intimate conversations. The careful curation of who gets to experience this space.
You can’t do that for 100 people a day. You can only do it for the few people who make the journey.
Why I Made the Same Choice for My Business
I’ve been thinking about Hang’s approach a lot since I got back, because it mirrors something I chose for my own business years ago and something I’m seeing more clearly now.
After my 2015 burnout, when I rebuilt everything from scratch, I made a decision that felt counterintuitive: instead of trying to serve more people, I’d serve fewer people better.
I don’t have a team. I don’t have multiple programs running at once. I don’t want to try to fill an arena.
My tiny business model looks like a cozy living room. Small. Intentional. Designed for depth, not breadth.
This means I can text my clients between sessions when I notice they’re talking themselves out of something important. I can send voice memos back and forth when they need to take an imperfect action but feel scared. I learn about their families, their dreams, the personal stuff that doesn’t fit neatly into a business strategy session.
I have time to build custom Notion dashboards for each client. To create personalized mind maps when we’re brainstorming. To track the patterns in how they make decisions, what scares them, what energizes them.
Most importantly, I can have conversations that go beyond tactics. The kind where we’re not just solving a business problem, but understanding why something feels hard, or why they keep avoiding a particular action.
You can’t do that with 50 clients. Or in a one-to-many program. Or when you’re trying to scale.
You can only do it when you’re intentionally small.
Why This Matters More Than Ever
This is exactly why the tiny business model is becoming more relevant, not less.
Everything is getting automated. AI can write your emails, create your content, analyze your data. Mass production of services is everywhere.
Which means the thing that will actually stand out is how people are treated. Not as a number in a funnel, but as a real human with a specific situation that deserves attention.
The experience of being truly taken care of. Not just served, but seen.
That requires intimacy. And intimacy doesn’t scale.
Hang understands this. She could make her coffee shop easier to access, but then it wouldn’t be the same experience. The journey to find her is part of what makes it memorable.
What Would You Actually Lose?
I’m not saying everyone needs to build a business that requires a guide to find it (though I love that Hang does). But maybe we’ve been asking ourselves the wrong question.
Instead of “how do I scale this?” maybe the better question is “what do I lose if I scale this?”
For Hang, scaling would mean losing the neighbourhood puppies (they don’t do well with crowds, actually they tend to piss everywhere and people get irritated, lol), the personalized tea blends, the intimate conversations. The very things that make it worth visiting.
For me, scaling would mean losing the weekly voice memos, the custom dashboards I have time to meticulously create, the ability to notice when a client is stuck and reach out before they even ask. The relationships that span years instead of months.
Those are the parts I’m not willing to trade.
If you stripped away everything you think you’re supposed to build and just kept the parts you actually love doing, what would be left?
That’s the question I ask every client I work with. It’s the foundation of building a tiny business model that doesn’t burn you out.
Not “how do you grow this?” but “what does your version of enough actually look like?”
Because for a lot of established solopreneurs, the answer to feeling scattered and overwhelmed isn’t doing more. It’s getting really honest about what they’d lose if they kept growing the way they have been.
And if you’re sitting with this question and realizing your business has drifted further from what you actually want than you’d like to admit, that’s exactly the kind of conversation I have with clients in the Tiny Business Method. We build a tiny business model that fits your life, not the other way around.
Grab a free Strategy Session here if you want to explore what that could look like for you.
