Welcome to another episode of Live Your Dream podcast!
Before I start the show today, I want to let you know that I’m having my first Clubhouse room this Saturday February, 27th at 9pm Eastern Time.
Clubhouse is a new audio app and I’ve recently joined and would love to talk to you there. My ID is @celinalee, that is @celinalee and if you follow me, you will be the first to know when I host rooms.
This Saturday I’ll be talking to Hooni Kim, the chef and owner of the restaurant, Danji and Hanjan in NYC. Hooni was actually the first person I interviewed back in 2018 when I started my podcast, and also the first person I interviewed for my book.
During our interview, I talked to Hooni about how once an aspiring doctor became a chef, and why he still pursued his dream even when so many people around him said he was crazy, and told him not to do it.
Hooni’s first restaurant, Danji actually became the first Korean restaurant in the US to receive a Michelin star, and Hooni became a trailblazer and inspired many other Korean-American chefs to follow his footsteps.
This Saturday I’ll be talking to Hooni about how he has navigated the challenges of running two restaurants in NYC during Covid. So if you are in the Clubhouse, I hope you will join me this Saturday February, 27th at 9pm Eastern Time. I think it will be a very interesting conversation.
This is my first Clubhouse room that I’m hosting so I’m super excited because normally when I have conversations with guests on podcast, I can’t engage with my listeners and can’t answer questions live, but now I can!
I think we are going to make this very interactive so bring your questions, and I look forward to talking to you this Saturday.
And If you want an invitation to the Clubhouse, I have a few invites and would be happy to invite you. Just message me on my website, celinalee.co/contact that is celinalee.co/contact.
I’ll also include all the details about the Clubhouse room in the show notes for today’s episode as well as the link to my interview with Hooni Kim if you want to check it out.
You can see the show notes for today’s episode by opening up your podcast app and clicking on today’s show notes. Or you can go to celinalee.co/episode47 that is celinalee.co/episode47.
If you enjoy listening to my podcast, or if it helped you in anyway, I’d be so grateful if you can please tell your friends about it and also share on social media.
Another way you can help me is by writing me a review. I love reading your reviews and it means so much to me. And it totally makes my day. And it keeps me motivated to keep creating new episodes even on days when it’s really hard to do so.
So I’d be really grateful if you can please write me a review on Apple Podcast or on Podchaser if you listen from an Android phone. I’ll include both links on the show notes for today’s episode.
If you have been listening to my show for awhile, you know there’s a question I ask all the people I interview and that is “who helped you to achieve your dream?”
I ask this question because we all know no one can succeed alone and achieve dreams alone.
Everybody, including all the incredibly successful people I’ve met, all had people who helped them to get to where they are now.
They were sometimes family members, like grandmother or mother. Or sometimes a friend, a teacher, or may be even a stranger.
Today I want to share with you the answers to this question, “Who helped you to achieve your dream?” from some of the guests I’ve had on my show, Michael Kim, Dennis Hong, and Kara Goldin.
They each talk about different people and the roles they played in helping them to achieve their dreams.
As you listen to these stories, I hope you will think about the people who have helped you, and also remember that no one does it alone. Even the people who have achieved incredible success all had someone who helped them along the way.
You probably have listened to my conversations with Michael Kim, who I’ve had on my show several times, because so many of my listeners demanded that I bring him back for every season of my podcast.
Michael is the co-founder of the law firm, Kobre & Kim and if you haven’t yet listened to his episodes before, please listen and trust me, it will be worth your time. A lot of my listeners have shared with me that they have re-listned to his episodes many times like reading a good book over and over again.
I’ll link his interviews in the shownotes for today’s episode as well as the interviews of all the guests I’ll be talking about today.
Here is what Michael said when I asked him, “Who helped you to achieve your dream?”
Michael Kim
So I think a lot of different people along the way. But probably, if I had to choose the three random people, I won’t say the top three people because then whoever’s not included, will feel unhappy. So top three, three random people that come to the top of my mind. But not in order of significance. And not even the most significant people.
I’d say, the first was my grandmother, but not for the reasons you would expect. Everyone says, oh, my grandmother gave me all these values whenever. She was a very unusual person. She, I think, even though she grew up in rural Korea, she, I think, from an early age was quite rebellious. And, for example, when she was like, 75, or 80 even she watched Michael Jackson videos and learned how to breakdance and stuff like that. Yes, she’s a very unusual person.
So when I was a kid, as most Korean kids, I was raised by my grandma. And I spent a lot of time with her. I think she kind of gave me a worldview that where she really didn’t respect any traditions and always thought about new things, even though she was, you know, from, she was born like in 1910, or something crazy, like 1919. Some really long time ago. At a time when the Korean society really, if you’re a woman, especially in a traditional household, they would really just kind of put you in a little box and tell you you can do this and not that. You’re almost like a little play thing for other people. But yeah, she really just really had her own mind and her own way of behaving and acting. So that really probably gave me unbeknownst to myself a real subconscious comfort with not following other people’s instructions necessarily. So I think that was really very helpful.
And then I’d say another person would be a good friend I had in the army who actually ended up dying in Iraq in a truck bomb attack. And I think the reason that he ended up being significant is that until he died, I actually, the only people I cared about who had died were old people. So, you know, my grandmother died. And then like, my uncle died, and I loved them, and it affects you a lot. And it causes you to, like I said, realize what I told you earlier, which is, a certain type of regrets you can never fix.
But when someone old dies, kind of like deep down, you think like, okay, it’s supposed to happen at some point. Old people are supposed to eventually pass away. But when somebody who’s your age or younger dies, especially suddenly like that, it really ends up affecting your worldview, in the sense that you kind of see life more for what it is. Which is, there’s really nothing at the end that kind of summarizes the whole thing and makes sense. It’s really just an accumulation of all these moments that you have. And for that person, that was just, that was the end. And, and then just seeing how the world just moves on. Obviously his loved ones never forget them and so forth. But the world just moves on. Right? So I think that really ended up kind of allowing me to see more clearly how important it is to have the goal of making yourself happy, and so forth.
And then I’d say probably, in terms of people who helped me I’m always grateful to the first person that taught me English, Mrs. Brown, who was a tutor.
Celina Lee
When you moved to Miami?
Michael Kim
She actually taught me a little bit in Costa Rica. I couldn’t speak it fluently back then.
Celina Lee
So when you were like six or seven?
Michael Kim
Yeah, yeah, that’s right. I think if I had only spoken Spanish at that point, I would have never really become fluent in English. And that would have really limited my ability to do all kinds of things internationally. Because I think, fundamentally, I mean, one of my great loves is international travel and international work. And unless you’re fluent in English it is very hard to achieve. Not impossible, very hard. And it’s one of these things where, as I mentioned earlier, like when you have a certain goal, you have to understand like what it takes to actually achieve that goal. And fluency in English would have been an integral part of almost everything that I have now. And If I, if I hadn’t learned it at that early age, it would have been really hard later in life.
Celina Lee
So did you get a chance to say thank you?
Michael Kim
No, because I never really found her again. With a name like Mrs. Brown, I’m definitely never going to find her again. It’s like going to Korea and looking for Mr. Kim.
Celina Lee
Hope she knows.
Next I want to share with you, Dennis Hong’s answer to the question, “Who helped you to achieve your dream?”
Dennis is the Professor and the Founding Director of RoMeLa, Robotics & Mechanisms Laboratory, at UCLA.
When Dennis was six-years-old, he saw Star Wars for the first time and he was absolutely mesmerized by the robots he saw in the movie. And he knew that one day, he will grow up to become the person who makes these robots. And now as he is living his dream! He has invented many amazing robots and the world’s first car that can be driven by the blind, which he talked about in my conversation with him on my podcast.
I’ll share Dennis’ episode in the show notes for today’s episode in case you haven’t yet listened, it was a really fun conversation and I think you will really enjoy it.
This is what Dennis said about the person who helped him to achieve his dream.
Dennis Hong
When I first became a professor, this was at Virginia Tech, fresh out of grad school, fresh, you know, getting my PhD, I became a professor at Virginia Tech. And of course, the first thing as a professor you need to do is to start writing research grants to get research funding to start your research.
So I mean, I was pretty good at everything. But I’ve never had formal training for writing proposals. So every time I write a research proposal, I got rejected. I write another one, got rejected, it happened over and over again. And the first two, three years when I first became a professor, you know, my failure rate was almost 100%. And I was so disappointed and discouraged. And, you know, up to a point that I started to worry that you know, is this my real right path, and I actually cried in my office at nighttime when nobody was there.
But there was one instance. So I went to one of the International robotics conference, it was held in Las Vegas at the time. So after the conference, coming back to the airport, I took the airport bus shuttle. And it was a full bus. And there was just one empty seat. So I sat in there. And right next to me, there was an older gentleman, it was an Asian older gentleman. And as I always do, I’m really always kind and nice to people. I like to talk about, you know, things.
So I said, hi, my name is Dennis and he said, oh, hi, my name is such and such. And I started talking to him about oh, yeah, I became just became a new professor at Virginia Tech. I do robotics, I’m starting to get excited and start talking to him about all these ideas. I have this cool idea about a three legged robot that flips itself. Amoeba robot that, you know, turns into… So I started getting really excited and, you know, started talking to him. And normally if you’re just a regular person, you know, I talked about a lot of technical stuff. But this person was actually listening to what I had to say and he seemed like he was really interested in what I had to say.
And then when the bus arrived at the airport, he introduced himself to me officially and he said that he’s the program director of robotics division at National Science Foundation. And that’s exactly where I was supposed to submit my research proposal. It was a coincidence, right? So after that, he gave me his business card. And he told me to give him a call when you go back. So I actually gave him a call. I visited his office in Washington, DC. And he gave me a lot of good advice and insight. He became my mentor. So every time I ever researched a proposal idea, he gave me feedback and ideas and who to collaborate with. And that really helped me and after that, every time I submit a research proposal, it got all accepted. So he’s one of my heroes. He’s a, he’s my Savior, I should say.
So the lesson is be kind to others everywhere all the time, because you never know. Who will be your Savior or who you will be helping. So be kind to others always.
Next I want to share with you Kara Goldin’s story about the person who helped her to achieve her dream.
Kara is the founder and CEO of Hint, well known for its flagship product, Hint Water. Kara started the company with a simple idea, to make water that tastes great.
She was addicted to drinking diet soda, and wanted to drink water instead, but hated how bland it tasted.
So she began cutting up fruit and throwing it in pitchers of water. And this little experiment not only helped her to continue drinking water but led to her starting her business,
14 years later, Kara grew her business into a $100 million company, and what’s remarkable is she also raised 4 children during this time.
I was curious how she had the courage to start a business in an industry she had no previous experiences in and I found out the answer when she talked about who helped her to achieve her dream.
Kara Goldin
My mom, like when I was in kindergarten, my mom was an art history major, always knew a lot about art. She taught our class and in school for many, many years, and then finally decided what she wanted to do with her life when I was like, in kindergarten and spending more time in school was go and be in fashion. And we were like, oh, wow, and she was like, yeah, I’ve always wanted to do so she didn’t have this fear. That that was like something that she couldn’t do.
And so we were like, well, how are you going to do it? And she was like, oh, I think it’d be so great if I could, like, be a buyer at a store. And so, she started at the bottom, and she went into management training. And then she almost became like, she worked actually, until she was 80, in a department store in Scottsdale, and she became a lady like, you know, she was always so nicely dressed and always like, into, never went out the door without makeup on or hair done and stuff. And she was like, always, just really into fashion.
She ended up being in the last probably 10 years in the children’s department. And she just knew. She had four kids or five kids. And so she knew so much about fashion like about children and stuff. And so she knew all the designers and so she almost became the original personal shopper before personal shopping even became like an actual job. Like my mom would call people, a lot of them like my friends or like friends that she knew from us kids like their parents and stuff. And she’s like, I know you really like Ralph Lauren. There’s this collection that came in and we only got a couple of pieces, and it’s going to sell out. And so they’d be like, oh, gosh, set it to the side for me. And she’s like, okay, don’t worry, I will. I will Don’t worry. And I don’t know. It’s like she loved what she did. And so I saw that passion, too. And I also saw this, I mean, she had no, I don’t know, maybe she feared it a little bit. But you never saw it in her that changing from an art history to fashion at age 45 was strange. She just went and did it.
I think there is no better role model for children than seeing their mother or father pursue their own dreams.
So if you have children who you want to encourage to achieve their dreams, I believe the best way to do that is by showing them how you pursue your own dreams.
I remember having a conversation with someone who was famous because all six of her children became incredibly successful in different industries and I asked her what was so special about her parenting.
And she told me that you have to model the life you want your children to live. She got two PhDs even while raising her six children, so her kids grew up seeing their mom studying, and working hard towards her own goals and dreams.
In a similar way, I think Kara must have been influenced by seeing how her mom changed her career into fashion when her mom was 45-years-old, and how she worked in the fashion industry until she was 80-years-old.
I think it normalized taking a risk, and switching career later in life.
And I believe seeing her mom having the courage to pursue her own dreams, most likely had a huge impact on Kara becoming a successful entrepreneur.
I hope you enjoyed the stories I’ve shared with you today, and I hope you will remember to do three things after you finish listening to this episode.
- Give yourself the permission to ask for help.
As you just heard in the stories I’ve shared, no one can succeed alone and can achieve dreams alone. It is not only okay but absolutely necessary that you ask for your help. So think about the goals and dreams you have, and think about who may be able to help you. And reach out to that person and ask for help. You may be surprised to find out how much people actually want to help you if you just ask them.
- Reach out to the people who have helped you and say thank you.
Studies have shown that expressing gratitude has many health benefits. Writing and delivering a letter of gratitude has shown to significantly increase the happiness score of the people who wrote the letter, and had lasting effects on the brain months after the letter was written.
So yes, reach out to those people who have helped you in the past and say thank you before it is too late, and not only will you make their day, you will also be very happy for a long time.
- Help someone in need.
Think of someone in your life that you could help.
It doesn’t have to be financial help, but you could just spend some time sharing your experiences or giving encouragement to someone. Or maybe make an introduction to someone that would be good for them to know.
Whatever it may be, help someone and pay forward the kindness other people have shown you. And I guarantee, you will also feel great when you help them.
Ok, I hope what I’ve shared with you today is helpful and I’d love to hear from you about the people who have helped you, and who you have helped.
And as I’ve shared with you, I hope you will join me in my first clubhouse room this Saturday February, 27th at 9pm Eastern Time. I’ll be talking to Chef Hooni Kim and I think it will be a really fun conversation.
I’ll share the details and all the links I talked about in the show notes for today’s episode.
Just open up your podcast app and click on today’s show notes. Or you can go to celinalee.co/episode47 that is celinalee.co/episode47.
If you’re looking for guidance on how to find happiness and fulfillment in your career, I put together a guide to the three steps to finding true career fulfillment.
In this guide, I share the three common themes of the people who have achieved incredible amount of success and if you find what those three things are for you, I can guarantee you that you’ll not only have a successful career, but also a very fulfilling life. So if you want to check it out, you can download it by clicking on today’s show notes on your podcast app or on my website, celinalee.co that is is celinalee.co
And if you enjoy listening my podcast or it helped you in any way, I would be so grateful if you can please tell your friends about it and also write me a review on Apple Podcast or Podchaser where you can write a review even from Android phone. This is the best way you can help me to grow my podcast so more people can find out about it.
I actually check several times a day to see if there’s a new review, I know it’s kind of funny and silly, but this is how I know you are listening and what I’m creating is actually helpful for you. So if you want to make my day, please write me a review on Apple Podcast or Podchaser, and I’d be so grateful.
If you have questions about my one-on-one coaching, or have any thoughts or questions about my podcast, you can reach out to me on my website celinalee.co/contact,, that is celinalee.co/contact, or click on today’s show notes on your podcast app and that will take you to my website.
And please subscribe on iTunes, Google podcast, Spotify, or wherever you listen to your favorite podcast, and I’ll be back next week with another episode. Thank you so much for listening and I hope you have a great week!
Wondering how my coaching can help you? Here is what my clients have said about their experiences of working with me.
Download the 3 Steps to True Career Fulfillment Here
There comes a time in your career when you question your professional happiness and fulfillment. This can be a defining moment if you take the time to ask yourself important questions and take action towards career that brings you joy.
If you are feeling stuck and don’t know what to do next, you are not alone. With the right guidance and a little momentum, you can be happy and fulfilled personally and professionally. If you’re looking for clarity and next steps, check out this guide, the 3 Steps to Finding True Career Fulfillment.
I use a 3-part framework to help you take the next step towards doing work you love and believe in. Get your copy here.
Did You Enjoy This Episode? Click Below To Subscribe:
“How did you find what you wanted to do with your life? How did you have the courage to pursue your dream?” These are questions I explore with people from all different walks of life. Their journeys reveal stories about dreams, courage, inspiration, and creativity. Subscribe below!
