As a mother of three with a career as a physician’s assistant in cardiac surgery in New Jersey, Middletown resident Lynn Luu has still found time in her busy life to give back to other women entrepreneurs like her. Recently, Middletown Life met with Lynn to talk about The Ambitious Rebel, a company she founded in 2020 that provides strategic and personal coaching.

Middletown Life: You call your company The Ambitious Rebel. I imagine that the name is inspired by the company’s founder and the life she has led, yes?

Lynn:  I have always been a rebel all of my life, and I don’t always conform to what everybody wants me to do all of the time. When I was a youngster, I did what I wanted to do, and there was a familiar chorus around me that said that whenever something went wrong, it was always Lynn’s fault. As a teenager, I could hear the same chatter, that “Lynn isn’t doing this, she’s not doing that.” I wasn’t the perfect child, but I did what I wanted to do, and I did what I thought was aligned to who I was, and I didn’t care what others thought. That is the foundation of what eventually became The Ambitious Rebel.

For anyone who grows up with an independent spirit, there is a freedom and strength and a certain recklessness to it, but I think for those who grow up according to that compass, they are driven to succeed in spite of what people perceive them to be. How did you imagine you would leverage that independence, in terms of a future career?

When I was younger and growing up in Middletown, I was just living my life. My parents came to America from Vietnam; my mom was a chef in Wilmington and worked seven days a week and my father worked many shifts at oil refineries in Delaware City. They didn’t know how to guide me in terms of what my dreams were and how I could possibly achieve them. My friends told me that I should become a fashion designer, so I signed up for fashion design school but never went to it. At one point, I thought I wanted to try architecture, but nothing ever materialized. Then, I realized that I liked to help people, so I entered the medical field and eventually, I thought about becoming a physician’s assistant. I entered that path on my own. I applied to and entered Drexel University, and I moved in that energy of direction of knowing what I wanted to do. 

You have been a physician’s assistant in cardiac surgery since 2008. When did you begin The Ambitious Rebel, and what was the need you saw that inspired the start of the company?

As I continued to work in cardiac surgery and saw the hierarchy of the surgeons I worked with, I saw that I was misaligned with them. I really wanted to do my own thing. I don’t like having a boss. I don’t like to listen to others but do things on my own terms, in terms of advocating for others on my own terms. 

Sensing the difficulty I was having in communicating with the surgeons, I left one hospital and joined another, and I began to experience a lot of anxiety – and that’s when I realized even though I had a great title as a physician’s assistant, that I had a beautiful family and a supportive husband and a lovely home here in Middletown, I was not feeling fulfilled. I began to look into getting a life coach, and once I started to work with her, that is when everything began to shift for me.

I saw endless possibilities. I saw myself expanding my identity and realized that I am not just a cardiac surgery physician’s assistant and the mother of three children. I always saw myself as something more than that – as an entrepreneur – but I self-sabotaged myself out of manifesting it  because I was stuck in my current identity.  When the pandemic arrived in 2020, I was also in the process of transforming myself on a journey of spiritualism and at the same time, I received my certification in life coaching and began The Ambitious Rebel that same year.

The audience for The Ambitious Rebel is women, specifically those who have an entrepreneurial spirit like you. In serving as their business and wealth manifestation coach, you see their aspirations and goals, but you also see their hesitancy, their trepidation. 

There are the masculine and the feminine energies. Masculine energy is about doing, accomplishing and taking action. Feminine energy is led through intuition and trusting one’s self, and when a woman is comfortable enough to learn from that lens, it leads to a kind of clarity. The problem is that most women are accomplishing in a hustle-and-grind way. We are led by the decisions we make in the moment, but when we try to expand ourselves in ways that are out of our comfort zone, our subconscious mind and our body are both geared toward protecting us from any harm. 

When you’re trying to do something new, that’s when your lack of self-worth and your doubts and your fears arise. You can learn about how to eat better or go to the gym or how to start a business, but you’re not going to be able to accomplish it if your subconscious rewiring is still stuck at, “I am not good enough. I am not worthy of this growth. The last time I tried this, I failed.”

This is where my work in energetic and subconscious rewiring with my clients comes in. I encourage them to recalibrate on an energetic level, a nervous system level and on a subconscious level in order to align them energetically and get to a place where they can accomplish their personal growth and goals. 

There is not an entrepreneur alive who has not experienced some degree of failure – an idea that did not have financial backing for instance, or a partnership that did not imagine the same goals. I am assuming that some of your clients arrive at your door with great aspirations and a few war stories, as well. How do you guide your clients through the process of redefinition and reinvention?

It's about powerful listening – to be able to hear what they are saying and being able to connect the dots that connect back to the root cause of what they believe is blocking them. As an example, one of my clients has all of these beautiful ideas and is very independent, but she would try something and it wouldn’t work out. She would try something again and it wouldn’t work out. It became a start-and-stop motion. She told me, “My life is hard. I have to take care of my mother. My sister had cancer and I have to take care of her kids. My brother is going through a divorce, and I have to spend time listening to his relationship problems.”

I told her, “When you think about putting time into your business, you’d rather sit and watch Netflix. This is a form of being a rebel against herself and your aspirations.” For five years, she never understood why she could not work toward her vision. I told her that it’s not about being overwhelmed. It’s about self-sabotage because she was resenting having to be the person to take care of everyone else in her life, but not herself. Hearing that was a huge breakthrough for her. 

This work is crucial to identifying the root cause of that which holds one back, then bringing awareness to your conscious mind, and once you reach that, you are able to make changes in your life. 

As the founder of The Ambitious Rebel, if you could choose only one gift to give each of your clients, what is that gift?

It goes back to opening my clients up to the gift of awareness. Unless you have that awareness about your true self, you don’t have alignment, or self-trust, or clarity, or intention, or boundaries, and you are not able to embody to be who you ultimately want to be. 

What is your favorite place to visit in Middletown?

I am really enjoying Mango Mango. They have incredible Asian desserts there, and my kids and I love to visit.

You host a dinner party and can invite anyone – living or not, famous or not. Who would you like to see around that table?

I would definitely invite my best friends and my family, because they are my village and they support me. The truth is that I get to have this dinner party all the time, which I am so grateful for.

What item can always be found in your refrigerator?

Pistachio ice cream. 

To learn more about Lynn Luu and The Ambitious Rebel, visit 

https://msha.ke/theambitious rebel.com.