ARTS - Asians Redefining Their Success: Recent Episodes
Yunzhe Zhou
A podcast for Asian career changers who want to pursue a creative field and redefine what success means to them. If you are a dreamer and doer who wants to stop settling at work, take ownership of your career, and live your fullest life, then this is for you.
Hosted by Yunzhe Zhou, an artist, coach and entrepreneur, this podcast shares raw advice from successful career changers to empower you in yours.
Get more daily tips here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/yunzhezhou
Welcome back to the ARTS podcast! In this episode, Kimberly Han and I talk about her journey of moving to LA to pursue directing seven years ago, and the realization of one of her biggest dreams this year - the creation of her film Champion. Champion, a story inspired by her own personal experiences as a daughter of immigrants, is about how 9-year-old Korean girl seeks to rebuild a sense of community and mend her broken heart, after moving to California without her "goose father" who stayed behind to make money for his family.
In our conversation, we also explore how the creative journey is like for Asian immigrants, as well as the themes behind Champion - and our own personal coming-of-age stories of anguish AND self-reliance while growing up.
Prepare for your heart to be seen and touched <3
About Kimberly: Kimberly is a Korean American writer-director with a passion for socially conscious stories that push boundaries in genre or form. She also likes elevated genres where she can build worlds that span from sci-fi to horror to magical realism. For her day job, Kimberly is a Manager of Scripted TV at NBCUniversal, and she previously worked at Leverage Management and Anonymous Content. She was a Creative Executive fellow with Film Independent Project Involve, where she produced several short films that premiered and won awards at major festivals, including Berlinale and SXSW. Kimberly graduated from the University of Chicago with an Honors BA in International Studies & Cinema Studies. Her hobby is baking cakes for her friends. Her specialty is a fluffy Korean strawberry shortcake, which comes out right 75% of the time.
Donation Link: https://www.filmindependent.org/programs/fiscal-sponsorship/champion/
Website: https://kimberly-han.com/
IG: @championtheshortfilm
Happy AAPI Heritage Month! Today, we have Marty Noel Chenyao with us. Marty is a troll who lives under a bridge made of Coca-Cola bottles, wide-ruled journals, and pink organza dresses ;).
In this episode, we talk about the pressure Marty felt to go after ‘status’ careers (aka software engineering) to prove his worth, the post-undergrad existential crisis that made him realize that he had to do his own thing and how he balances having a main job with making art every day.
We also dive deep into how realizing that he was an artist and deciding to pursue art led him to come out as a transgender man, as well as what the gender transition was like. Marty also shares golden nuggets on how to be honest with yourself and truly BE your most authentic self, so if you’re looking for an episode to live an aligned life, this is it.
Reach out to Marty:
- IG: @the.antisocialite
- Website
Resources:
- Big Magic by Elizabeth Gilbert
- Art inspiration
- Trans issues
- Trans art
- Subreddit for trans people in denial
- Subreddit for transmasculine people who still enjoy feminine aesthetics
- Social justice & self expression
In honor of Women’s History Month, I’ve invited a couple of my clients who just started their businesses, and made their first 1K and beyond within 3 months, to share their insights, mindset shifts and behind the scenes stories with you. Each of them is breaking barriers and making history right now - not just for themselves, but also for the whole entrepreneurship field as what’s possible as an Asian and woman of color.
This week, I have the AMAZING Michelle Carrizosa with us. Michelle is a Career Coach for women of color who want to break into tech. She was a Program Manager for AWS in Seattle before founding The Tech Career Lab in 2019 to help women navigate their career transition. Side note: she’s also now living in Paris and running her business from there, which is super fun.
So in this episode, you’ll hear about how Michelle went from daydreaming about having a biz while being in tech to actually making it happen while facing her fears around having an accent & imposter syndrome, how to grow a business when you have a very dramatic critical brain, and how she was able to make 1.5K just an hour after our first coaching call.
The theme of this episode is to really explore what getting comfortable with the uncomfortable looks like, even a year in. It’s something that will ALWAYS happen in business, especially because discomfort often equals growth. So if you’re having trouble putting yourself out there, having money conversations for your services or being vulnerable with your content, this episode is for you.
Reach out to Michelle:
Recommended Resources:
- Life Coach School podcast
- Make Money as a Life Coach podcast
- Reading fiction!
- Yunzhe’s LinkedIn
In honor of Women’s History Month, I’ve invited a couple of my clients who just started their businesses, and made their first 1K and beyond within 3 months, to share their insights, mindset shifts and behind the scenes stories with you. Each of them is breaking barriers and making history right now - not just for themselves, but also for the whole entrepreneurship field as what’s possible as an Asian and woman of color.
This week, I have the AMAZING Arianna Laila Dela Rosa with us. Arianna (she/her) is a holistic career coach who empowers first-generation professionals to navigate the job search and thrive confidently in their careers. Being a first-gen professional and woman of color, Arianna tailors her coaching to overcome barriers many of us face, such as self-limiting beliefs, imposter syndrome, and lack of career confidence and clarity. When she's not coaching, she's studying for her M.Ed in Learning Design and building diversity, equity, and inclusion programs for students at her university. Overall, she's committed to serving her community from a place of empowerment, learning, and joy.
In this episode you’ll hear about what inspired Arianna to go into coaching full-time vs. finishing the final round of a 9-5 job interview, the money mindset shifts that were essential for her to make 5K+ in 3 months (i.e. changing the beliefs that “money is bad” and “charging would make me a sell out”), and how she was able to become fully booked while building a business based on her own terms.
The theme for this episode is around authenticity, which is also the most valuable thing that Arianna got out of coaching. We often think that we need to be like all the other coaches with thousands of likes to make money, when really, honing in on who you really are and how you can deeply serve your dream clients, and just focusing on that versus comparison and shoulds, is the highest value generating activity you can do for your business.
Resources
- Yunzhe Zhou for business coaching
- Nicole Cruz for life coaching
- Aisha Joseph for DEI work
Reach out to Arianna:
In honor of Women’s History Month, I’ve invited a couple of my clients who just started their businesses, and made their first 1K and beyond within 3 months, to share their insights, mindset shifts and behind the scenes stories with you. Each of them is breaking barriers and making history right now - not just for themselves, but also for the whole entrepreneurship field as what’s possible as an Asian and woman of color.
This week, I have the INCREDIBLE Kristy Ishii with us.Kristy is a life transitions coach & career consultant for both the US market and Japan. She’s a trauma-informed coach training at the Institute of Coaching Mastery and works with people who want to transform their lives both through inner work and outer work. She serves clients on mindset block awareness, forgiveness & acceptance, and supports clients in calling forward how to achieve aligned action through career and lifestyle transitions.
In this episode you’ll hear about how Kristy was able to overcome all self doubt she had, to fully believe that she could do coaching full-time, what happened for her when she tested out all her limiting assumptions versus holding on to them (hint creating 1K+ client), and the biggest shifts that she got from coaching around making paid offers.
The theme for this episode is around what Kristy and I coached on the most - which is making offers. Most people don’t make offers because they’re afraid their services isn’t valuable, they won’t help their clients get results and fear of rejection. Kristy and I talk about how to separate your self worth from your product worth, and how you can feel confident in charging for your services.
Resources:
- Brave & Bold Mastermind
- Headspace
- Notion
- Calendly
Reach out to Kristy:
- IG: @kristymariko
- Linktree
In honor of Women’s History Month, I’ve invited a couple of my clients who just started their businesses, and made their first 1K and beyond within 3 months, to share their insights, mindset shifts and behind the scenes stories with you. Each of them is breaking barriers and making history right now - not just for themselves, but also for the whole entrepreneurship field as what’s possible as an Asian and woman of color.
This week, I have the AMAZING Kim DeGracia with us. Kim is a PhD scientist turned copywriter and launch strategist who helps medical professionals launch their online courses with confidence and ease. Thanks to coaching and her personal development journey, she went from a fearful people pleaser to saying "yes" to herself. Today she's living her dream of having a passionate career while giving back to holistic health providers that helped her on her health journey.
In this episode, you’ll hear about how Kim overcame her fears to start a copywriting business using her existing gifts vs. starting over from scratch, the most valuable takeaways & results she got out of coaching, and how she was able to create her first 1K client as an introvert.
The theme for this episode is that your past experiences aren’t a waste, you don’t have to throw all that away or shove it under a rug in entrepreneurship. You can make the most use out of your old identity - your profession, your college education, the gifts you already have, to start a business. There’s a lot of gems here. You can be just as you are currently, to make money.
Resources:
- Workview Medium article
- Design Your Life
- Start Today Journal
- The One Thing book
Reach out to Kim:
- IG: @copywithkim
- Website
Happy Women's History Month! I'm also celebrating a new milestone in my creative business - where I just created 10K IN A WEEK! This wasn't even in my realm of possibility a year ago, or frankly even 3 years ago when I made about 1K (with rounding up) in my first year of entrepreneurship. This is why I love creating from the future, instead of letting the past define us. And because this podcast is all about breaking barriers, I wanted to share with you what I found the most helpful on the journey to here - at the 5K month, 10K month and 10K week level, that I've experienced in the span of just the last 6-7 months.
I hope my insights will inspire you to go after your own creative dreams & build that purposeful AND wildly profitable business on your own terms :)
Get more business resources and tips here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/yunzhezhou/
Our relationship with our parents is one of the most important ones of our lives - not only did our parents shape our childhood where many of our values and beliefs were formed and influence us to this day, but it also determines the way we nurture our next generation.
Iris Chen is an author, unschooling mom, deconstructing tiger parent, and founder of the Untigering movement. As an advocate for peaceful parenting and educational freedom for children, her mission is to inspire generational and cultural transformation, especially among Asian communities.
In this bonus episode of Asians Redefining Their Success, Iris and I dive into her new book:"Untigering: Peaceful Parenting for the Deconstructing Tiger Parent", specifically the Redefining Success chapter. We talk about how she went from a homemaker to a self-published author, what’s it like to untiger aka leaving behind coercive parenting to one that’s more gentle and peaceful, and how we can best mend our relationships with our parents by healing our relationships with ourselves first with radical self-love.
Resources:
- Untigering book
- Reparenting: act of giving yourself what you didn’t receive as a child
- Other parenting instagrams from womxn of color: @asiansformentalhealth, @deconolizedparenting, @latinxparenting
Reach out to Iris Chen: Website | Facebook | Instagram
Jenna Pascual shares her story of how she left the tech world to become an entrepreneur and laughter yoga teacher.
In this bonus episode, I coach Clover, founder of Unconventional Asians, how to set boundaries. This is a recorded coaching session, so if you were ever curious about how coaching works or how coaching with me is like, you can experience that in this episode!
Denise Wang shares her journey of becoming a VP at BlackRock after graduating from Yale, to quitting her job and starting a career development platform called UniCareer.
Melissa Ess shares her journey of going from nightlife and tech to channeling her experiences and trauma into poignant art pieces as a founder of Ikigaijin.Studio
Susie Yi shares her story of switching careers from tech (and almost going to dental school after Harvard) to pursuing the arts full-time and becoming a freelance illustrator.
In this episode, I share the 3 major lessons I learned from taking a creative break and what helped nourish my passion for this craft.
This personal interview is all about exploring the unwritten rules that we have set for ourselves as creators. And how to let go of expectations from society and those rules from yourself.
Tanya Zhang shares her journey of switching careers from consulting to building her own fashion startup that makes actually slim fit men’s shirts called Nimble Made.
Adam Kim shares how he switched from a biology major to a full-time music producer, and hitting 1 million streams in one of his songs!
Carolyn Brunson shares her journey of overcoming a sudden rare illness and how she was able to bounce back through meditation, exercise, and a faith over fear mindset.
Yang You shares her story of how she was able to switch from a background in data analytics and civil engineering into product design at a SF startup.
Marcus Chan shares his story of quitting his corporate job and the behind the scenes tips on how he was able to set his new business up for success.
I’m a firm believer that reflection doesn’t have to be hard so for anyone who wants to do a year in review that feels easeful, this is for you! In this episode of Asians Redefining Their Success, I guide you through the 5 core questions to ask yourself to reflect upon 2019 and plan for the new year. It’s also short and sweet - the whole exercise only takes 20 minutes :)
Islin Munisteri shares her story of how she quit her job in engineering because of the stress on her mental health and how she started her own business as a way to have flexibility to see doctors, and empower herself to get better.
David Tian shares his story of leaving the prestigious academic route and pursuing what fulfills him - teaching students in Korea.
Nelson Toriano shares his story on how he was able to quit his job in tech and become a highly successful personal trainer, as well as finance coach for new personal trainers.
Kristie Moy shares her story on how she changed careers from Customer Success to Recruiting and all the steps in between that helped her find a career she loves.
Lily Hii shares her story of how she changed careers from being in accounting for years, to finally starting her business and becoming a money mindset coach.
Ruika Lin shares her story and advice on how she followed her creative interests, and changed careers in completely different industries, from consulting to tech.
Adam Yee shares his story on how he turned his side project in podcasting into a full-time career.
Toni Liu shares her story on how she quit her medical career to pursue drawing and writing.
David Hu shares his story of how he was able to change careers from software engineering to career coaching.
An introduction to the ARTS podcast as well as the how the host, Yunzhe Zhou successfully switched careers from marketing to business owner + coach.