Our June 2019 Event. Nathalie Danon: From a rather lost young French expat to a modern foreign language entrepreneur!

On the evening of 20th June 2019, we gathered again in Central London to listen to Nathalie Danon’s talk entitled ‘From a rather lost young French expat to a modern foreign language entrepreneur!’

After Gabriella Ferenczi welcomed the attendees, Nathalie shared with us how she accidentally became a language tutor, found her true core passion and turned this into a successful and profitable enterprise. 

Nathalie explained how she started out in the UK as a ‘rebellious’ and highly ambitious yet not particularly confident French expat. She studied law and international trade in France and tried to go down the traditional route of finding a ‘safe and secure job’.

After trying her hands at different jobs, she told us her moment of epiphany that prompted her to start teaching French to children, which led to her establishing her language academy in Berkshire, back in 2008.

Nathalie shared candidly and very openly what challenges she’s faced and lessons she’s learnt along the way. Boy, there were many!

To list a few:

• When it comes to business, don’t listen to your family. (They only do what they do and say what they say out of love.)
• Go with what excites you. If you’re not excited about it, when things get hard, it will get just way too difficult and you’ll feel it’s not worth it.
• Be resilient and mentally strong.
• Know a little about many things in business but focus on doing what you’re good at. Learn to delegate by surrounding yourself with professionals who are better at certain areas of business eg. marketing, finance.
• Network a lot. Networking takes a long time to work, but once you master it, it will pay dividends for years to come.
• Appreciate what you have. Savour the moments and appreciate the journey.

Nathalie realised that in order to grow and tackle some challenges, she needed to invest in her personal and business development. She borrowed money to get the help of a great business coach to support her on the way. She feels she’s still very much on the journey and continues to work hard to reach her short- and long-term business goals.

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After Nathalie’s talk, we continued with a lively Q&A, and Nathalie shared some more rather interesting stories of her ups and downs in business. These served as important points to consider for those of us who have entrepreneurial ambitions.

Thank you to everyone who joined us, see you next month!

#wearelanguageprofessionals

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About the speaker:

Nathalie Danon is an award-winning entrepreneur and a language and business coach based in the UK and France.

As a language coach, her mission is to deliver a lifelong love of languages to everyone; child, or adult in both personal and professional worlds.

As a business coach, she works hard to make sure life is fun and hopes that her continuous approach to learning and development inspire others.

She started her language business journey in 2002. 11 years ago, she founded the VICI Language Academy, delivering linguistic coaching in 11 languages to clients between the ages of 2 and 92.  

And for the last 7 years, she has also been running VICI Language Dynamics, a corporate offering designed to ensure that business organisations flourish with the right language training services.

VICI has grown exponentially and is now an international business with offices in the UK and France.  

Nathalie is here to help other language progressional turn their love of languages into profit by learning the skills they need to make a sustainable business using her experience, lessons learnt and highs and lows of being a modern language entrepreneur!

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On Saturday, 20th June 2019, Nathalie delivered a unique Business Growth Workshop designed specifically for language professionals in business. The next workshop’s date is now set for Saturday, 2nd November 2019. Have a look at the programme details and do register while it’s early bird if you’d like to join us.

To learn more about Nathalie and her work, check out her personal website, follow her on her Facebook page and Instagram, connect with her via LinkedIn, and feel free to reach out to her via hello@nathaliedanon.co.uk.