You Are More than Your Job

Somewhere along the way, we lost ourselves and our identities in our jobs. Just remember that you are more than your title.

“Learn to work harder on yourself than you do on your job. If you work hard on your job you can make a living, but if you work hard on yourself you'll make a fortune.”

- Jim Rohn

When I quit my job to start my first company, I felt completely naked. I had always felt confident introducing myself to people covered in an armor of my resume. All my life I had added brand name after brand name to make myself feel secure. UPenn. Stanford Business School. Deloitte. Yahoo. Apple. eBay. Sony. Now I suddenly felt anxiety walking into a cocktail party where I knew I would be asked the dreaded question, “So what do you do?” Prior to quitting, I could smugly rattle off my title or employer and feel accepted. Now I was afraid of being judged as someone who “couldn’t get a real job.” Living in Silicon Valley, some people reacted positively and supportively of founders pursuing their dreams. But other times, I could sense the dismissiveness of a person I just met who thought I wasn’t worthy of talking to and it stung.

I realized that the reason it hurt when someone blew me off because I didn’t work at some big name firm or company, was not on them, it was on me. It was my ego and pride that was overly concerned with how others perceived me. I cared too much about what some stranger thought of me. A person I would likely never see again. The opinion of someone who didn’t matter to me and had no impact on my life. It was likely someone who worked at a big company in a role that I could have gotten myself if I wanted to. Worse yet, I was probably projecting my insecurity on this random person who wasn’t thinking any negative thoughts about me in the first place! Only when you realize that you worry too much about what others think of you, when they have too many of their own problems and insecurities to think about us at all, do you become free.

This insecurity I felt was ingrained at an early age by my mother. When you are raised to believe that your self-worth is driven by your achievements and titles, you believe that not having them somehow makes you worth “less”. My mom wasn’t even that much of a tiger mom compared to others. I just remember getting into a fender bender early the morning after senior prom, arguing with my mom, when she said that I played too much, which is probably why I didn’t get into Harvard or Stanford. I felt like I was a trophy for my mom to brag to her friends about and she could only brag if there were brand names associated. Once I started my own company, she had nothing to brag about, because no one had ever heard of my company before. Even when we reached over 30 million users, she still asked when I would get a job at Google. I know that she only wanted the best for me, and that meant job security. To that generation (consumed with the immigrant scarcity mindset), big names meant stability, so it wasn’t entirely her fault.

After a few years of building my startup, I realized that I didn’t care about what other people thought of me. It’s amazing how liberating it is when you don’t live for the approval of others. I was happy being my own boss and being free. I had felt trapped in the corporate rat race and now had the power of agency and autonomy. I was making just as much money if not more than my peers, even if most people over the age of 25 had never heard of my company. I was interviewing celebrities and traveling around the world. Graduating from business school, I would have never imagined myself interviewing Seth Rogen, Craig Robinson and Evan Goldberg in a million years, but here I am:

I went on to start another company in the restaurant industry which I personally loved. We had Thomas Keller as an advisor and I was working with other world-famous chefs I admired like Dominique Crenn and Jean-Georges Vongerichten. After that, I raised a venture capital fund to invest in Asian American founders. What I realized along the way is that I didn’t let my job define me, I defined my job instead. I started companies in areas I was passionate about: entertainment and restaurants. And I started a venture fund to support a community I care deeply about: fellow Asian American founders. But I never limited myself to job. My job was always my main source of income, but it wasn’t my only source of fulfillment.

Don’t Let Titles Constrain You

When many of us were younger, we participated in many activities in high school in college. I played tennis and basketball, I competed in Model U.N. and the school paper and yearbook among other activities. We could pursue multiple interests because we had the luxury of freedom and time. Once we graduated college, our identity suddenly became focused into one thing. We became a doctor, a lawyer, an engineer, an investment banker, a consultant, a product manager, a designer and the list goes on and on. One label described our entire persona, even though we likely still had a myriad of passions and talents. Just because you became a doctor, doesn’t mean that you aren’t still artistic or good at building things. Even though you became an engineer, doesn’t mean you stopped enjoy writing poetry or cooking.

As I got older, I realized that the world makes you feel like you have to choose between your interests based on your career choice, but it doesn’t have to be that way. There is no rule that you can’t still pursue other careers or interests. You never have to feel trapped in one role for the rest of your life. Just as you can simultaneously be a brother, son and father or sister, daughter and mother, you can be more than one thing at any given time. You can also choose to be different things. I went from product manager to founder and CEO to investor, while also becoming a producer, activist and creator.

I find that many people I speak to are unhappy or unfulfilled in their current roles or careers. I know a number of physicians that feel bored of the monotony, but feel trapped because medicine was their chosen career and main source of income. I know many lawyers that hate their work, but are uncertain what else they can do. When you have to choose your future as a twenty-one year old junior in college taking the LSAT or MCAT, you have no idea what you’re getting yourself into. And for many Asian Americans, the pressure from your parents to find a stable career with a secure income is intense. The guilt of choosing a career to repay them for their sacrifice weighs heavily on you. Only ten to twenty years later, do you start to feel tinges of regret that you wish you could have pursued something else that you were actually passionate about, not just a job that paid the bills.

“The way to get started is to quit talking and begin doing. ”

- Walt Disney

Stop Making Excuses

I don’t have enough time. I don’t know how to code or build an app. I don’t feel inspired. There are countless reasons you can give yourself not to get started. But for every excuse, there is a solution. Never before has there been so few plausible excuses for not trying something new or starting a new endeavor. AI has expanded the possibilities of what we are capable of. It allows us to be much more efficient and productive while making up for skills that we lack.

• Have an idea for a product or app but don’t know how to code? Use “vibe coding” solutions like Lovable, Replit, Base44 or Bolt to build your website or app.

• Want to write your first book, but not sure how to get started? Use Sudowrite to give you some inspiration and guidance.

• Would you like to start a podcast? Set up an account on Riverside and invite your first guest.

• Want to learn a new skill, sport or hobby? Take a course on Maven or find a coach on Skillest

The time you spend doomscrolling on Twitter or Threads or mindlessly watching videos on TikTok or Instagram, you could choose to use productively by creating something out of nothing instead. It’s a matter of finding the discipline and willpower to fight the inertia and start building momentum towards a goal you can care about.

It’s never to late to switch careers, no matter what others tell you or what you tell yourself. My friend Abigail Hing Wen was a corporate lawyer for decades and ended up writing best-selling young adult novels like Loveboat, Taipei which she turned into a movie Love In Taipei from Paramount and Lionsgate. She recently directed her first short film starring Broadway legend, Lea Salonga. My friend Eric Lu was at Harvard Medical School when he went to become a writer for Wong Fu Productions (a YouTube content creator). His parents forced him to complete his medical degree, before he returned to Hollywood to become a full-time writer on The Resident on FOX for four seasons. He is currently writing for the ABC series High Potential as well as working on producing other projects. Both Abigail and Eric graduated from Harvard. Abigail got her law degree from Columbia and Eric got his medical degree from Harvard. They both could have gone down a very defined career path that was clearly laid out for them. But they made their own path and are extremely glad they did.

You scroll TikTok and Instagram every day watching people just like you who have pivoted their lives to become content creators and influencers. Chloe Shih went from being a product manager who was laid off from Discord and shared her personal stories only to become a life coach with over 1M followers. Daniel Chung was a banker who bought a few restaurants that failed and started cooking for his wife, and now has 3M followers making cooking videos. You read articles in Inc and Fortune about people who quit their office jobs to start a business. Justine Tiu was a UX Designer and her husband Adrian Zhang worked on Wall Street, when they quit their jobs to pursue entrepreneurial endeavors. Crocheting was just a hobby for Justine, but they turned it into a $7M crochet-kit business called the Woobles. These people are just like you, but they made the decision to hit record or quit their jobs and start something. You are the author of your own life, stop letting others write your story for you.

While I have been a serial startup founder, and now a venture capitalist, I am so much more. I co-founded a non-profit to support the Asian American community during rising anti-Asian hate. I co-founded a coaching center to support Asian American executives shatter the bamboo ceiling. I produce films like 38 at the Garden and am currently working on a documentary about Martin Yan and another about how Asian American creators were the pioneers of YouTube. I launched a podcast interviewing Asian American executives and founders. I am also writing a children’s book about building confidence and knowing your self-worth isn’t tied to your achievements. I hope to one day publish a book about this very topic about separating your identity from job.

Why are you still living in a box someone else built? Every minute you spend letting labels or limits define you is a minute wasted. You invent stories about failure, fear, or “not being ready.” You imagine bogeymen that don’t exist—just to justify staying safe. But here’s the truth: You can follow the linear path like it’s Super Mario… or you can open up your world and play your life like Grand Theft Auto. You don’t need permission to start. You don’t need to quit your job to explore new things. You just need to stop waiting.

Break the box. Bet on yourself. You will not regret it.