Kat Kuan

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What a Toddler Taught Me About Business

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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

The Joy of Work

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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

Two Types of Discipline

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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

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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.

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Disney’s Coco: Choosing Between Your Family or Your Passion

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Coco is about the story of a boy named Miguel who loves music and idolizes a music legend Ernesto de la Cruz. Because of past family drama, the family banned all forms of music. Hence, Miguel has to sneak away to learn how to play guitar. He gets caught and his guitar is destroyed. He runs away and embarks on an adventure where he must choose between following what his family wants or following his passion for music.

If you’ve ever tried to chase your passion / your dream, it likely has made a loved one in your life a bit concerned. They may say certain things because they are scared about the uncertainty of your future. They don’t want you to suffer the pain of rejection or failure. But living life in a safe way can mean missing out on discovering your biggest strength or your greatest sense of fulfillment. Therein lies some major tension.

We do a lot of self-sabotaging on our own, but I wonder if potential entrepreneurs get scared to go for what they want because there are people in their life who prefer different life choices and can be very vocal about it. When these people are close to you, and supposedly know you pretty well, it grows the seed of self-doubt inside yourself and that can cause you to turn around and give up. That is quite sad actually. It’s also hard because anything worth creating / developing takes years and years of dedication and focus, without any visible results. It is a very hard internal battle to fight to keep going.

If you choose to keep striving, here are some inspiring quotes I found on never giving up. My favorite is from Confucius who says, “It does not matter how slowly you go as long as you do not stop.”

I certainly don’t have all the answers, and each person will have to find a balance for themselves. If you watch the movie, you can see how Miguel navigates his tricky situation.

I enjoyed this movie very much because the storyline was so touching. The visuals were spectacular, and the music was amazing too. If you haven’t seen it, I highly recommend it. Queue it up in your Netflix watch list! Of you can also rent Coco on Amazon.

If you can relate to any part of this struggle, I’d be honored to hear your experience in the comments below.

Disclaimer: This post contains affiliate links. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. And of course, I would recommend this movie regardless.