About me


Hi, I'm Diego Milan.
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Here's my genuine attempt at telling my story—doing my best to walk the tightrope of avoiding the pretentiousness that tends to sneak into bios while being genuine about my accomplishments.

Throughout my career, I've consulted over 300 businesses. From small founder-led startups to big Fortune 500 companies, I've worked with clients of all sizes to help them improve their processes and scale their businesses. I've worked as a sales trainer, a marketing strategist, and in DevOps, helping optimize and secure release pipelines. Each new industry I've explored has been an intentional effort to learn something new, to scratch a personal itch.

I'm a curious person, consider myself an "early adopter" of technologies, and am constantly tinkering with projects as a form of praxis—turning theories into practice. I enjoy combining ideas from what I think, what I've experienced, what I read, and what I listen to, and turning that combination into something new. I usually do this through writing (though I give myself full liberty to experiment with other mediums).

When I’m not jumping down internet rabbit holes, I’m either on a client call or on an airplane. I firmly believe that travel is essential to understanding the world. Reading and studying can only get you so far. With every trip, the way you see the world shifts, things make a bit more sense, your ego lowers, and you change, even if it’s just a tiny bit.

Despite all the expertise I’ve gained from my career, it all goes out the window in moments like the first time I had to figure out the train system in Japan, trying my best to communicate with a worker about how to get from Tokyo to Kyoto, or when I tried to decipher a French menu at some bougie restaurant in southern France, the annoyed waiter telling me that menu was all they had and eyeing me like I had just thrown up on the floor.

Both experiences made me feel awkward. I think regular exposure to that is good for the soul (and it's a good way to make sure your head doesn't get too big).

When it comes to my life philosophy, I try to learn from everywhere and everyone. Some wisdom from this person, some from that book, some from this religion or that business theory—everything a potential teacher; everything a potential lesson. It all eventually gets mixed and turned into personal reminders for how I want to approach my life.

If I were to surface 7 of my favorites (or at least those that come to mind while writing this bio), they'd be:

1. You can always change and improve. And you should.

2. Simplicity > Complexity

3. There are many paths to the mountaintop. Most of life is figuring out which mountain you want to climb and how you want to do the trek. There's no single right way. But advice helps.

4. You learn more by doing than by theory. But reading helps.

5. Your attitude and mindset determine your reality. You control both.

6. Everyone has a perspective worth understanding.

7. The world is bigger than the four corners of your office. It's worth exploring.

Kyoto, Japan

My favorite . . .

Skills

Writing and marketing will always be my favorite skills. There's nothing that brings me more joy than a perfectly written sentence or a well-executed marketing strategy. I also enjoy tinkering with productivity software and enjoy project management (leading me to obtain my PMP certification back in 2023).

Thinkers

I'm currently a big fan of Ryan Holiday, Shaan Puri, Tim Ferriss, Craig Mod, Naval Ravikant, Derek Sivers, Andrew Wilkinson, and Steven Pressfield. I'm eternally grateful to Viktor Frankl and M. Scott Peck for introducing me to this path I'm on.

Podcasts

I'm always discovering new, interesting podcasts, but a few I return to often are The Tim Ferriss Show, My First Million, Founders Podcast, Modern Wisdom, and Never Enough.

Books

My favorite fiction books of all time are Musashi by Eiji Yoshikawa, The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho, Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse, and The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald. My favorite non-fiction books are Mindset by Dr. Carol S. Dweck and The Talent Code by Daniel Coyle.

Cities

Tokyo and Taipei. Tokyo, because in all my travels, I've never been able to recreate the feeling I had while walking from my hotel in Marunouchi to get ramen in Ginza, freshly landed and full of excitement. What a rush. And why Taipei? The night markets, the greenery, the temples, the people, the culture—it's perfect.

Quote

It may seem difficult at first, but everything is difficult at first.

– Miyamoto Musashi