My Journey

My Word of the Year for 2020

December 31, 2019 By Kat

Every year, I pick a word that I will focus on for the year. It’ll be my mantra for the year, if you will.

How did I do for 2019?

Last year, my word of the year was COURAGE.

I would have to give myself a B for that. I could’ve done better. I could’ve been more courageous and showed up more. I’ll admit that there were times where my fears got the best of me and I hid.

New Word for a New Year

So my word of the year for 2020 is CERTAINTY.

If I had regrets for 2019 and past years, it’s that I waffled too much with uncertainty. I wanted to do things but then rationalized myself out of not doing them. Or I got busy with other things, and put them on the wayside.

I really like the word CERTAINTY for this upcoming year because it means that whatever I want, I need to be certain and move ahead with it. It’s almost worst to want something 50%. I either need to decide I don’t want it (0%) and forget about it, or decide that I want it (100%) and do everything in my power to go for it.

Going for things full force with my finite amount of energy means committing myself to less things. I won’t be able to spread myself as thin.

Confidence

Another reason I picked this word is because certainty reminds me of the word confidence. For the most part, we all could use more confidence in life – to carry ourselves with pride and know what we’re worth.

But confidence is such an overused word now, it almost doesn’t mean anything. I hear the word confidence so much that it doesn’t inspire / empower me as much (on a visceral level) compared to the word certainty.

Certainty is knowing what you want and knowing that the actions you take are aligned correspondingly.

So wherever you are in your life, whatever decisions you make, make them with certainty. Even if they lead you down a less-than-ideal path, at least you explored something new and learned from it.

If you’re going to be wrong, be bold about it! You’ll likely make more progress by failing forward than by continually stepping forwards and backwards with trepidation and indecision.

In a few hours, we’ll enter a new decade. I welcome 2020 with open arms!!! I will be wrong about certain things, but at least I’ll be certain that I wanted them.

What a Toddler Taught Me About Business

July 26, 2019 By Kat

Owning my own business has taught me so many life lessons, and there can be a teachable moment within every encounter – a new client, collaborator, friend, family member, etc… Even when you least expect it.

This story happened a long time ago actually, last December. I was giving a Christmas gift to my nephew, who is a toddler. It was a dinosaur themed lego set – the Duplo ones with really big pieces for young kids.

Anyhow, he unwrapped the gift, and then opened the box to play with the legos. The lego pieces came in these sealed little plastic baggies. And he outstretched his little arm, held out the bag to me, said “Help pleez!”

At the time, he didn’t have a big vocabulary, but he knew how to ask for help. And that was the lesson I needed to learn.

Up until that point, I was trying to do everything in my business on my own. My own marketing – videos, social media, blog. Finding speaking opportunities and personal styling clients, doing sales calls, managing the administrative stuff and finances, while trying to juggle promotion for my book as well. There was just so much going on.

After that moment my nephew asked for help, his words kept ringing in my head. The words are so simple. Yet as adults, it is so hard for us to ask for help.

It wasn’t an overnight thing, but I started to ask more people for help. I started collaborating more. I was open to accepting help instead of being stubborn and trying to do it all on my own.

And probably the biggest step was to ask for support, in those tough times of my business, to say that I needed help.

Somehow, we’re conditioned to think we need to figure it all out on our own. But we don’t. We don’t even have to hold it together all the time. It’s a humbling realization, and it requires putting our egos aside. It’s okay that we need each other. And it’s okay to ask for help.

To my dear nephew, thank you for reminding me of this important lesson. And yes, I’d be happy to open that bag of legos for you.

If you enjoyed this post, you can check out other articles of my business journey here.

Photo by Caleb Woods on Unsplash

Transformed by Kat: Alice Shares Her Story

April 24, 2019 By Kat

Excited to share the latest client before & after photo!! This is Alice and she shares her styling journey below.

“For the last quarter century of me dressing myself, I’ve stayed with the tried and true (and boring) uniform of a (probably black) shirt and jeans. Once a year I’d force myself to go to the store and if the item somewhat fit, I’d buy it. Being overweight didn’t help this relationship I had with “fashion”.

I didn’t want to wear clothes that drew attention to me until Kat showed me the possibilities. She completely changed the game for me by helping me realize that beautiful, well made clothes didn’t have to be super expensive and that dressing well didn’t have to be uncomfortable.

In fact, the new work pants she helped me find are more comfortable than yoga pants! I honestly haven’t felt so comfortable, beautiful, and most importantly, confident, in my own skin since I was a kid. Not to be dramatic but a whole new world has been introduced to me and I can’t wait to explore it.”

Thank you so much for sharing, Alice!! You are glowing and I couldn’t be happier to see your confidence shining through.

#styledbykatkuan #transformedbykat

Pros and Cons of Doing My Own Business Taxes

March 21, 2019 By Kat

Hallelujah! I’ve finished my 2018 taxes. It was no easy task. This year, my second year in business, I decided to do my own taxes with TurboTax. (Last year I had a CPA do them for me because I had zero clue about what was involved.) Since doing my own taxes this year was quite the harrowing experience, I wanted to summarize the pros and cons.

Pros

Save money instead of paying a CPA to do it for you
Understand the finances of your business better
Get more organized with documentation
More in control of when it goes done instead of relying on someone else’s schedule

Cons

You could be doing it wrong lol
Takes a lot of time and research
Can get stuck on questions that you don’t know how to answer
Could be missing out on some deductions

It is quite a tricky balance. Doing my own taxes was a huge time commitment. When it comes down to it, the hours that I spent on it probably could have been spent on my business earning enough to cover the cost of a CPA. However, despite all those cons, I feel like the educational value I got from the experience far outweighed everything else. And the long-term effects of this newfound knowledge will serve me well beyond the tax season.

Yes, taxes are a necessary evil to keep your business running. But at the same time, the process is so detailed that you must pour over the details of every dollar that went in and out of your business. I was in Google spreadsheets forever filtering, categorizing, sorting, and summing up all sorts of columns and things. I had to login to all my accounts and figure out when things happened and make sure I didn’t miss anything.

In a way, it was re-living my entire past year and all the financial decisions I made and results I received. It made me extremely reflective on what were some not-so-great choices about how I spent my money and what activities were very effective in getting an ROI.

It made me very aware that even though a new business owner gets BOMBARDED with ads for classes, tools, events, resources, etc.., in the early days, you really don’t need all of those things. You need to get your way to a good business model and try to operate as leanly as possible.

I know that going into this coming year, I’m going to try to keep impeccable records and do proper bookkeeping as I go. Because I don’t want to deal with the frustration of going through a whole year of records at the end of this year, like I had to do for last year. Once you know the documentation and format of numbers you’ll need for tax time, it makes it easier to know what to keep and to use some sort of organizational system. Mine is still a bit ad-hoc at the moment. 🙂

Highlights on What I Learned

Track every source of business income
Count inventory at the end of each year (books in my case)
Download all business bank account and credit card statements for record keeping
Track car mileage for business purposes
Track all home expenses, figure out size of home office, and you can get a deduction as a % of your home expenses
Some expenses like phones or internet bills can also be deducted at a percentage based on how much you use them for work vs. personal use
Track business expenses. Here are some examples for me last year: advertising/promotional costs (like online ads, book launch party, business cards, supplies for events), business travel (went on a trip to NY for a workshop with my business coach), legal and professional fees (coach, lawyer, professional association membership dues), meals with clients or when traveling, educational expenses (classes, magazine subscriptions, events), shipping supplies (for my book), software subscriptions, license and fees (city business license fee), equipment (vlogging camera and payment reader), and other miscellaneous expenses.

It’s pretty great how many deductions you can get as a business owner! It’s just that you need to keep good records to back up everything you want to deduct, in case you get audited (hopefully not!).

Screenshot from TurboTax Home & Business edition
Part of the business deductions list

I also must include that I could not have finished my taxes without the amazing help of my CPA friend Wendy (@thetaxmuse). She specializes in working with creatives and small business owners and has free tax tips + resources on her Instagram page (go follow her!).

Wendy and I (inadvertently twinning at the chamber expo event!)

I attended 3 of her group tax workshops, where she thoroughly answered so many of my newbie tax questions. Her first workshop was actually last year back in October, when she first advised us entrepreneurs to start getting our papers in order and reviewing the year’s numbers. (Even though I started back in last Fall, it still took me a long time! I wasn’t very organized…) Anyhow, without her help, I can’t imagine being able to do it on my own otherwise.

Hence, if you decide to do your own taxes in a future year (it’s probably too late to do that this year), try to find someone you can ask for help. Turbo Tax is great, but sometimes it’s hard to figure out where to put numbers or how to answer their multiple choice questions.

Okay best of luck! Hope you can get lots of tax savings $$! And more importantly, I hope you can become more empowered with tracking the numbers in your business!

If you enjoyed this article, you can check out more business articles on my blog or sign up for my mailing list here.

Photo by 3Lopez

How to Create a Booth Display for Your Business

March 15, 2019 By Kat

Last month, I had the opportunity to showcase my personal styling business at the Four Chamber Business Expo in Palo Alto! The event was hosted by the Mountain View, Sunnyvale, Los Altos, and Palo Alto Chamber of Commerce organizations. As a business owner, you can purchase an exhibitor table / booth at the expo, which is held during one evening.

I wanted to write this tutorial for those of you who may be wondering about this method of advertising and promotion. Sponsoring an event or purchasing an exhibitor table at a event can be a great way to spread awareness about your business and meet potential clients or collaborators in the community.

In this current age of digital advertising, I think there is still a lot of value in meeting people face-to-face and building a relationship on that foundation. It doesn’t necessarily scale as fast, but if you have the time and financial resources, it can be a marketing option to explore.

Last year, as my first year in my business, I had setup a booth at this event as a children’s book author to promote my first book.

Last year’s booth at the Four Chamber Expo

This year, I came back with a different career, haha! My booth was for my business as a personal stylist. I offer styling packages for helping clients upgrade their wardrobe with closet consultations and shopping trips.

This year’s booth at the Four Chamber Expo

Honestly, when you’re figuring out whether to invest in having a business booth, you first need to figure out whether the cost makes sense to you. Depending on the event, it can cost several hundred dollars and beyond (even thousands of dollars) to have a table at an event. For this event, it cost $200 for a 6′ table. You should weigh the cost of how many products / services you must sell in order for the cost of the booth to be worth it. It’s easier when you have higher-priced services like coaching or styling, as opposed to lower priced items like books. You’ll just have to sell a lot more books to be equivalent to the cost of selling a couple of the bigger service packages.

But of course, marketing can’t just be measured in short-term returns on your investment. There’s also the benefits of increased awareness and exposure, so people even begin to realize that you and your business exist. This is harder to measure and takes a lot of persistence and consistency – to keep showing up, so people can start to associate your business with solving a certain problem they may have in their life.

Part of maintaining that consistency is to collect business cards (brought a jar for that) and email addresses to build up your mailing list. Then you can continue to send out useful information to interested people.

Mailing List

To increase the incentive for people to sign up for my mailing list, I decided to do a giveaway. Chocolates and cookies are a popular giveaway, but may not help them remember the specifics of your business. On the other hand, schwag like pens or water bottles personalized with your business logo is useful, but can be pricey. At this point in my business, I’m not ready to buy branded schwag yet. I don’t even have a formal logo yet!

I wanted to go with something fashion-related, so I decided on lint rollers! They’re fairly inexpensive and I had seen them on sale at IKEA, so I went and picked up a huge pile of them! So if someone signed up for my mailing list, I’d give them a handy dandy lint roller. These were pretty popular, so in the future, if I had budget, I may get them personalized with my name as schwag.

Business Info Materials

The next thing I had to prepare was the actual handouts / materials with my business information and services. That included business cards. I used a template and same-day printed them with Office Depot.

I wanted to prepare a whole bunch of pretty materials and pamphlets on my process and services, but alas, I ran out of time. So at the minimum, have some handout about your services that people can take with them. I created a one-pager that listed the 3 different tiers of styling packages that I have, with pricing information and a special event discount for anyone who signed up that day.

If you want something a little fancier, you could use the free tool Canva to design brochures and flyers. They have great template designs. (I wrote a Canva tutorial for social media graphics earlier on my blog.)

Anyways, I came up with that handout, then rushed to Office Depot to get a stack of copies printed. Speaking of printing, if you’re going to do marketing for your small business, you’re probably going to have to print frequently. Luckily, the Mountain View Chamber of Commerce has a great partnership with Office Depot so members can get discounted pricing on printing. It saves a bunch of money!! Printing costs can add up!

Client Testimonials

Another thing that new customers love to see is your work in action, a.k.a. your portfolio. Since my work is very visual, and people would be passing by the booth fairly quickly, I decided to print out before/after photos of 3 of my clients.

Speaking of printing, in my experience, Office Depot does a great job with black & white copies (and they’re very fast with turnaround time). But their color copies don’t turn out as great. The color looks weird – too yellow or something. Hence I opt to go to FedEx for my color printing jobs, which is a little pricier, so I use it more sparingly.

By the way, it’s easier if you have the email addresses of Office Depot and FedEx on hand, so you can email them the files instead of bringing a USB there directly.

I sent them the copies and printed them. I trimmed them to fit my clear frames, which I had bought earlier at Michaels.

Before & after photos of my clients Ines, Paula, and Michael

I also included before/after photos of my own style transformation!

The photos were quite a hit, people liked seeing the transformations.

Payment Methods

Another thing I prepped for is to accept payments in-person. I use a Square payment reader with my phone. I setup the Square app with the items that are available for sale. Last year, it was the book (and I had to make sure the sales tax percentage was correct for the city I was doing the sale in). This year it was the styling packages with the discounts applied. I also tested out the reader with my own credit card to make sure the whole process would go smoothly and that the receipt looked the way I wanted.

This should be setup as early as possible. Last year, I panicked because I was going to use a PayPal reader but then my account wouldn’t activate, so I rushed to get a Square reader on the day of the event. Avoid those last-minute scares!

Decor of the Booth

The last part is the fun part of adding the decorative finishing touches onto the booth.

I had actually envisioned what the whole booth would look like as step 1 of this whole process. I sketched out what I wanted the booth to look like (see below). I thought about what props I already had from last time or around my home that I could reuse. It helped me to also think about what I needed to purchase/create.

A later, more refined sketch of my booth

Some decorative items I used were: some faux flowers in a vase, some twinkling lights, basket for the lint rollers, a vase for the business cards, a trinket tray for my business cards, Vogue magazines, velvet clothing hangers, candles, jewelry box holder, heels, fashion tape, and fashion books.

I also got a letter board from HomeGoods (where I got a lot of decor items for last year’s booth), where I could display my name and title. Otherwise I didn’t have a big sign with my business or name on it.

Get Yourself Ready

After all the work of running around and getting your booth ready, don’t forget to get yourself ready! I planned out my outfit ahead of time, did proper self-care and grooming, and allowed enough time to do my hair and makeup before the event. Since you’re representing your brand and your business, you want to look polished and professional – even if it’s been a frantic day, ha!

Extra Hands

If you’re a one-person business owner, try to find a friend or family member who can help you out at your booth. I asked Vince, my fiance, who I am grateful for. He helped me move and setup everything, as well as talk to people at the booth with me. It’s hard to handle all of that as one person! Let alone, sometimes you need to go to the bathroom and don’t want to leave everything unattended! Thanks babe!

Conclusion

To summarize, this is the process of how I designed and prepared my booth to promote my business at a local business expo. Overall, I thought it was great exposure for my business. I met many new contacts in the community, and have leads that I’m following up on now. It is a lot of work, so it’s not something I would do on a frequent basis, but it’s a good marketing tool to use every now and then. And once the primary legwork is done for setting up a booth, it’ll be easier for me to do the same setup for a booth at a different event.

I hope the article helped you understand what the experience is like and helps you decide whether you would want to do it in the future for your business! Again, in early stage businesses, it’s important to pay attention to costs (me learning from my mistakes) so be cognizant of how much you invest in the price of the booth and the materials so that you can get the most value from the experience!

Celebrate

After the event, we were exhausted and starving, so we went out for a little impromptu dinner date. Sushi, yum! Cheers to a successful event!

Thanks for reading! If you enjoyed this article, you can check out more tutorials on business topics on my blog.

Or you can sign up for my mailing list, where I share more behind-the-scenes of my life as an entrepreneur.

The Joy of Work

February 26, 2019 By Kat

Last week was a really hectic, but fun and fulfilling week of work for me. I wanted to write this post because my work now has a different feeling to it, compared to when I had internships / jobs at corporate places. In the past, I’ve been lucky to have some very rewarding experiences on projects had a lot of purpose and meaning. But somehow it feels different now.

The word that probably best captures my sentiment about work now is: joy. A close second is probably the word stress, haha! 😉 But the joy outweighs the stress and keeps me going!

As I drive to meet my clients at the mall or at their homes, I have a lot of excitement about what’s coming up. I have excitement to talk to them, spend time getting to know them, and being able to figure out what knowledge or resources I can share with them to help them with their challenges. It’s very mentally stimulating because it involves deep listening and empathy and drawing on the best of my communication skills to articulate my thoughts as clearly and compassionately as possible.

With each work experience, I learn and grow and gain more confidence in my chosen career path. And of course, what follows joy is gratitude for this joy – gratitude for the people, places, and events that led me to my personal styling business. And gratitude to myself for making the leap of faith that this seedling of an idea (that fashion would be something I’d really enjoy doing) actually did come true!

Who knows what’s to come, but right now, these days, I feel so happy.

Happy doesn’t mean everything is easy and working 100% in my favor. But I feel happy as in fulfilled and feeling useful to the world.

A long time ago, my church gave out this card that says “God Use Me” to whoever attended service that day. We were supposed to take it home and pray about it, ask God how we could be of use to Him. I decided to frame it and leave it on the mantle. I prayed about it but not much happened. I still felt lost as what I was to do next.

As glamorous as it may sound to not have work and to just sit around with no obligations, it is quite stressful actually because I was always wondering, should I be doing something productive? Or I wish I had something to do. Or I wish I could make progress towards my next step in life. Anyways, that whole period of time in my life deserves its own detailed explanation, which will have to be saved for another time.

However, my point here is that when you’ve experienced having “no work” to do, you really do cherish when you have meaningful work to do. The other title I was considering for this blogpost was: “The Gift of Work.” Because now I do see that having work is a gift, to do something meaningful and contribute to someone’s life in a positive way – however big or tiny. It’s a gift for ourselves, really.

If your current work doesn’t feel that way to you, then maybe you’re doing the wrong type of work. If it’s draining or you loathe doing it, perhaps it’s time to consider if something else would make better use of your talents and skills.

Try to listen to what pulls you or attracts you. That may be a sign for the next big change in your life.

For more behind-the-scenes insight on what Kat Kuan’s life as an entrepreneur and personal stylist is like, subscribe to her mailing list here.

Photo by @lailaniafrica of @chicreativeagency

My Word of the Year for 2019

January 27, 2019 By Kat

I wanted to pick out a word-of-the-year. One thing to focus on for the year. But I couldn’t decide which word to pick!

Top contenders:

Massive action – phrase borrowed from Tony Robbins on how to take charge of your life and achieve your goals.
Focus – self-explanatory, we could all use more focus and less distractions.

However, I realized that “massive action” was not working for me because I kept trying to pile more things onto my plate and keep moving in many directions, making little progress on any one thing.

I also realized that “focus” was too narrow of a word for me. It didn’t excite or motivate me that much. The word made me think of limited options and a smaller focus area. It wasn’t very invigorating to wake up and feel like you must focus for the day. Felt more obligatory for me personally.

But then I was listening to this amazing motivational YouTube video Live Your Dreams over and over again. Then I decided on my word for 2019.

Courage

I believe that the word “courage” will steer me in the right direction at each step of the way during this year. Courage means doing the hard thing. Doing a single hard thing can give you more progress than doing 100 easy things in the wrong directions.

Oftentimes the “hard thing” is the right thing to do, and probably the thing that we fear and dread the most. But that’s when we stand to have the biggest gain both in potential external results but also in who we become as a person.

If I have to measure each day, then I’ll need to ask myself, if I did things that required courage each day. It freaks me out thinking that I’ll need to face a fear each day, but if I don’t, what is at stake? If I don’t face a fear today, if I just stay in my comfort zone, then I’ll likely stay the same. I won’t have grown that day.

Sure, one day without growth is no big deal. But if you multiple that by 7 days in a week, spent hiding and procrastinating from your fears, that’s one week of your life gone by that you didn’t grow. And then a month passes by, and you didn’t grow. You make more excuses about why it’s “safe” to stay where it’s comfortable. And then years pass by, and you’ve settled for even more things and you’ve come up with a laundry list of why it’s too hard to change now. And then life send you a wake-up call that you are ill prepared for because this whole time, you didn’t grow into a stronger, better person. You’re essentially the same person as you were 5 years ago.

The Movie: Revolutionary Road

Another way to think about this sobering thought is illustrated in the movie: Revolutionary Road. (This movie reunited Kate Winslet and Leonardo DioCaprio on the big screen since Titanic. Omg I just had to watch it! It’s available on Amazon Prime if you’re interested.)

It’s about April and Frank Wheeler (played by Kate and Leo respectively), who are a married couple in the 1950s living with 2 young kids in Connecticut. They live in a picture-perfect neighborhood in a picture-perfect house. He goes to an office job, while she stays at home to take care of the house and kids. The problem is that their life is on autopilot. They had ambitions when they were younger (her to be an actress, him to go back to Paris – a city he loved) but then they settled into married suburban life and those dreams got put on the backburner. They get so numb with their life and by staying static, and as the movie unfolds, they actually find that there are consequences. I won’t go into details in case you want to go watch it.

Honestly, it was a depressing movie, but I can’t help but find how truthful it is. Staying still in life is so tempting because it seems safe (it’s what you already know and are familiar with), but it is actually the riskiest option. But we can’t see the consequences until the long term, and by then, it may be too late to change our choices.

Many people are dead now. Many people are allowing their dreams to die. Many people have allowed their ideas to lie dormant and collect dust. Many people have all this talent and ability that they allow to be buried inside of them, that they will take to their graves. Because they didn’t have the courage to be who they are.”
Les Brown

Thoughts on Courage

Courage is hard. There’s so many uncertainties and things to fear and worry about in the world.

Does it mean that valiant people are not afraid? No, it means they experience that fear and they move forward.”
Les Brown

What I’ve been trying to do is feel the fear. To feel the trembling fear when I’m about to do something I’m scared to do. And then to acknowledge it and DECIDE that I will do it anyways. And the quicker I do it, the less painful it will be because I won’t have to agonize over all the worst case scenarios.

Cowards die many times before their deaths, The valiant never taste of death but once.”
Shakespeare (Julius Caesar)

I’m far from perfect, and still very much working on being brave. It’s daunting because just as every day is a new day, every day you’re faced with a choice of whether you will be brave or not. And I hope that for me and you, we both decide to be brave.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mNgIvxZ4m8U

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Where I Developed My Sense of Imagination

December 18, 2018 By Kat

I have the most fond memories of going to my grandma’s place – well it was my grandparents’ home, but she was the woman who ran the household, made sure all the kids were fed, and was the glue of the family.

She lived down the street from us, and my parents would drop me and my sister off at their place so they could go off to work. My grandma would bring us to school, picks us up from school, feed us a tasty afternoon snack, and then let us play until our parents picked us up. My two cousins were around the same age as me too, so it was the 4 of us hanging out and growing up together.

It was so much fun. It was a humble home, didn’t really have many toys, but we always found something to occupy our time. We loved to make up games and use the furniture to setup obstacle courses. We’d crawl under the dining table. We would turn the folding tables on their sides and pretend they were cars. We would make ample use of the sofa pillows and blankets and create forts. Or we’d use pens/paper to entertain ourselves for hours. We would draw or make things out of paper and scissors, and use up all her tape!

We didn’t have much technology – there was a TV in the living room that we’d watch cartoons on – Animaniacs, Sailor Moon, Power Rangers, or whatever was on. They had the best shows back then! The TV would overheat and she’d tell us to turn it off and go do something else instead.

There was a small backyard with fruit trees and a grass area for running around in. We’d make up games, play on our little bicycles, play water games in the summer, or kick the ball around.

I smile as I look back on all these memories – playing and using our imagination. Anything was possible with those pillows and people to play along with.

A couple distinct things stand out:

We loved our grandma’s spaghetti. It was always exciting when that was the afternoon snack.

We enjoyed watching the Teletubbies and even created our own Teletubby club, where each of us were a Teletubby. I was LaLa, the yellow happy go-lucky one! We also had our own Teletubby newsletter complete with “news” and puzzles and other cute clipart images – whatever was available on the Create-a-card software we used.

We dedicated two blank notebooks to each of our grandparents and would each add a page to the notebook. For example, we’d add a drawing or glue in something. Then when the pages would all get filled, we wanted to gift it to them. We never finished it, so we never gave it to them, but we’re pretty sure they already saw it when they would clean up each day lol.

On occasion, she’d take us to McDonald’s, which we loved because of the food and the ball pit.

We would also play “school” to mimic our teachers and teach my little cousin. Looking back, maybe that’s when I started to like teaching! It’s so funny to find early traces of our current selves in our childhood.

All in all, I am so grateful for this time in my life when I had time to play. Life got much busier as I got older. I started doing more activities and running from extracurricular to extracurricular. Unfortunately, there seems to be less time to play for adults, but I’m realizing how much fun it is and how necessary it is for my soul. So I’m trying to make more blank spaces in my life to imagine and create things! Who knows what can come from it? Perhaps the best part is to have no expectation at all about any result, and just let things unfold.

Was there a specific place you remember your imagination developing?

Two Types of Discipline

December 7, 2018 By Kat

As an entrepreneur, it’s so hard to be the boss of yourself. You work on something for a goal or deadline, but you’re also the one setting the deadline on yourself, so you can just as easily change it. With better tools, I’m learning to manage myself better, and I came to realize that there’s 2 types of discipline in this world.

Discipline Out of Fear

This is the type of discipline I grew up with. Being in an Asian household, there are strict expectations to study hard and do well in school. In school, there is pressure to do well on homework and exams, otherwise you could *gasp* get a bad grade. School turns into the myriad of college entrance exams and college applications where the constant driver is to do well otherwise *gasp* you may not get into a “good college.” The pressure doesn’t let up in college either. You vie for good grades otherwise you may not get a “good job.” And once you land in a good job, there’s the fear of getting a bad performance review or disappointing someone who’s a higher-up, so you work and work. It’s really a culture of fear that we’re brought up in. And it’s quite toxic because we do things because we’re afraid of disappointing others or bringing shame onto ourselves. We fall prey into thinking that if we can’t do something, it may reveal that we’re incompetent or not good enough.

All this to say, I got very good at being disciplined out of fear. I could crank through lots of work and memorize my way through a class to remember the content long enough to pass a test and then forget it afterwards. I was able to pull through on an extremely challenging deadline by sacrificing my own health and well-being, but it was for a good pat on the back or a good grade / performance review.

But when I left the normal world of formal education / corporate America, I found it very hard to get things done because I had operated so long on discipline out of fear. Sure, I was afraid of failing at my business or being embarrassed that I couldn’t meet a goal that I had announced publicly on social media. But that fear wasn’t enough to get me out of bed and to the gym, and taking care of myself, and doing the hard work of building a business every day.

I learned that I needed a different type of discipline.

Discipline Out of Love

I’m starting to learn that there’s a new source of energy, a new source of motivation which is much more boundless than fear. It is doing things out of love. You can be disciplined in your work and show up raring to go every day because you love it so much. You’re so pumped to make progress towards a dream that puts you on Cloud 9 just thinking about it. You can be disciplined in how you take care of yourself – exercise and eating healthy because nourishing your body feels good to you.

Here’s another way to put it. You can eat healthy because you fear dying early or getting some incurable disease. Or you can eat healthy because it feels good in your body and gives you energy.

For a long time, it felt weird to do things out of love, especially out of love for myself. But when you do things that make you feel good, or find a way to make something feel good (finding a form of exercise you really like), then you are much more willing to stick with the consistency of discipline because it feels great each time.

I also had a mental block on this because sometimes “feeling good” in our society is labeled as indulgent or short-sighted or irresponsible. We’re conditioned to expect that we need to suffer in the short-term for a happy future. But actually self-inflicted suffering just cripples our energy and enthusiasm for life. So I call BS on that. I think “feeling good” is a good thing, and we should pursue more of it, in a healthy way of course.

Instead of doing things out of obligation, I continually challenge myself to do things out of love for myself, love for others, or love for my work. It’s definitely a mind shift, but I think one that will ultimately change the course of my life.

What mode are you operating in these days?

Feeling Guilty for Having the Opportunity to Chase My Dreams

October 5, 2018 By Kat

This is a hard post for me to write. But a part of me likes being challenged to be honest with myself and to the world, so here’s my best attempt at finding words to express myself.

If you’re new to my blog, I left my job to start a business (see Reflection on Leaving Google).

One of the hardest things is to figure out who I am and what I want in life. And for me, that can also trigger feelings of guilt.

If a friend told me they were feeling guilty for having the chance to leave their job and have time to figure out what they want in life, I would encourage them not to feel guilty. So on the obvious level, I shouldn’t feel guilty. But my subconscious mind can still hold onto those feelings.

I wanted to write this article because I don’t think this topic of guilt is acknowledged much in the media / literature on entrepreneurship.

SEEING EVERYONE ELSE OVERWORKED AND STRESSED

Being around other people in Silicon Valley and witnessing their overbooked, overstressed, and overworked lives – trapped in demanding jobs because of all their bills / debt, made me feel guilty that I was free from that (at least temporarily). I mean, I have my own stresses and problems, but I would say our struggles are different.

Anyways, it made me feel like I wasn’t doing enough and wasting time “enjoying” life, when others were working their a$$es off. It made me scared that I’d have later regrets for enjoying my life in this moment, and wishing I had worked harder and self-sacrificed now. For some reason, I also felt like I must partake in their suffering, otherwise I would be falling behind in life. Weird, I know.

I knew that comparing myself to other people’s lives wasn’t a good idea. I knew that enjoying life in the present is all we can do. But the guilt still lingered.

GUILTY THOUGHTS

A lot of my guilt was around the thought, “Why do I get this opportunity (and this time in my life) to chase my dreams? And why do others not?” It would make me shrink back because I couldn’t fully accept this opportunity or think I deserved this chance.

The best way I was able to overcome this thought is through this poem by Marianne Williamson called “Our Deepest Fear.” This is my favorite poem, so I highly recommend that you read it. I printed it out on paper (archaic, I know) and put it by my bedside so I could read it and absorb the words.

In the poem, she actually says “Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous?” Which is very similar to the questions that were circling in my head.

Her response in the poem is, “Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God.”

Well damn. I guess that’s the answer.

The journey in dealing with this guilt was a long process and more complex than just reading a single poem, but this poem helped me reach a turning point.

NEW THOUGHTS

I try to see this time in my life as a gift from God – an opportunity to break the bad habits of my old life and create a life on my own terms. I try to see it as I got this opportunity and I’ve got to take a hold of it and run for as long as I have this opportunity.

Here’s another thought that helped me.

It’s this mental image of a big globe. And all these people on the earth, who are standing on different parts of the globe. (I should really sketch this out at some point.) And they’re each given a different path for their life that extends outwards from the globe in different directions. Yet these people don’t realize that everyone’s path is different and going in their own direction – the beautiful uniqueness of each person. Instead, they try to look at each other, they get competitive, and try to travel someone else’s path and follow that person’s steps – neglecting their own path that God had laid out especially for them. So I think the lesson is to follow our own path, and not get distracted by the paths other people are on. We all encounter pain and suffering along the way, but in different ways. And it’s not productive to take on someone else’s pain that was meant for them to learn from.

The guilt has waned over time as I’ve read more, talked to more people, and reflected more. It doesn’t bother me as much, but that was a mental mountain to climb. Just like I’ve been trying to declutter to get rid of things that don’t serve me in my life, I’m trying to let go of the thoughts that don’t serve me. And guilt for sure does not help me at all.

Guilt holds us back from embracing all that we can be. Guilt can clip our wings and ground us, when all our soul really wants to do is spread its wings and fly in all its beautiful glory.