Feb 14, 2025 |
If you’re here with me, you gotta be a lover of paradoxes.
Because we’re gonna talk about how to make it raaaaain because you deserve the soft life AND also how the money-based capitalist system is toxic and must be dismantled and frankly we all can, and should learn to live on less.
Both are true. This is a paradox, not a contradiction.
A contradiction must be resolved.
A paradox must be lived into.
We live in a maddeningly complex, fucked up world. Therefore, so is everything we do. We soar, AND get dirty. We sing, AND we grieve.
Not either or. Both AND.
Feb 14, 2025 |
So, a little story first.
I started taking piano lessons around the time I embarked on my sabbatical. I stopped studying piano at 13 years of age and going back to it as an adult is something I always wanted to do, and now that I had all this time, I figured it was the perfect time.
And piano lessons taught me something fascinating.
I’m a hard worker. When the teacher tells me to work on a new technique or changing a bad habit, I take that seriously and practice with focus and dedication. (Something I never did as a kid, much to my mom’s chagrin.)
But here’s the thing… practicing hard was not enough.
And super annoyingly, practicing too hard had the opposite effect that I wanted.
It seemed like, past a certain point, practicing with all my might made me sound WORSE.
Why did more effort not yield better results? I’d sometimes cry after lessons. Not because my teacher made me feel bad but because I was so frustrated to not be able to break through.
And here’s the really weird thing.
Sometimes, I’d get so frustrated that I’d throw up my hands and abandon practice for a while, right? I’d say “fuck piano!” and just skip practice.
Then lesson time would roll around again, and I’d feel nervous that my teacher would admonish me. (Although she’s really nice and would never be mean to me… good asian child “get an A from teacher” syndrome never goes away!)
And you know what would happen?
After days of zero practice, I’d suddenly, mysteriously sound soooo much better than I did at my hardest working moments. And the techniques that I was tearing my hair out over would… roll off my fingers effortlessly.
What the actual fuck? This happened again and again.
And finally my teacher explained it to me:
When we’re too obsessed with getting something right, all the tension and effortfulness actually twists up our brains, and therefore muscles. And we end up sounding even worse than our baseline.
Giving our brains and muscles time to rest, and “forgetting about it” for a little while… allows our unconscious mind to actually integrate what we are learning.
And here’s an even crazier thing. I’d often tense up in front of my teacher when playing a difficult part because I wanted to “get it right”, and I’d sound terrible. I needed to relax to sound better, but no matter how many times she told me to relax, I couldn’t get myself to.
And we’d discover together that the only way I could get myself to relax enough… was to pretend that I’m drunk. (Yes, this is a real piano strategy I’d cultivated for myself.)
If I pretended I was drunk and sloppy and I’m just playing like whateverrrrr wheeeee… somehow, magically — or infuriatingly — I’d suddenly sound 100 times better. What the hell?
This taught me a crucial lesson.
Getting far, far away from the zone of “i’m putting in my 100% because I really this”…
… and saying instead “fuck it” and “i don’t care if it all goes to hell” and literally just abandoning it all for a while…
… made all these unconscious connections happen automatically that massively sped up my learning and added so much beauty and depth to my performance.
And this is exactly what I’ve done with my work for the past half year.
It’s not just that I am more relaxed and refreshed now. It’s like…. It feels like my mind got a whole OPERATING SYSTEM UPGRADE.
Like going from iOS 2 to iOS 20.
After 6-7 months of NOT even thinking about work, so many thorny creative + business problems that I’d been trying to solve for years… magically solved.
Brilliant next-level ideas… downloaded.
My ability to SEE things… massively upgraded. it’s like I moved up from the top of my neighborhood hill to the peak of Mt. Everest.
This is the power of unconscious processing that happens when you give yourself some “fuck it” space.
To be sure, I don’t have a full picture of how this is true yet.
Because I’m not fully out of my sabbatical period.
But I feel it.
I am already starting to feel glimpses and trickles of it.
The trick is, when the time comes to “abandon practice,” that you have to FULLY let go.
When I say “fuck it,” I mean “FUCK IT.”
And this is not to be confused with being generally indifferent, or avoiding challenges.
The two ends of the paradox are: give it your all, and then let go just as completely
Do your drills, and then forget about it and go take a long nap.
I want to be clear: being able to take months off from work is a great luxury and privilege. I feel enormously lucky and grateful to have had it, and am well aware that not every deserving person gets it.
But I share this because I see so many people not even allowing themselves small amounts of rest and unplugging.
Or feeling terrified that, once they let go of the tight grip on their work, it’s all gonna come tumbling down. Or, even if they do take a break, feeling paranoid about “losing momentum” the entire time and not fully being able to let their minds rest.
I get it. it took ME time and practice to TRUST the rest, too.
I’m still working on it, actually. (It’s hard to 100% decondition a mind that’s been programmed by capitalism for decades!)
But hopefully this message serves as an extra reminder that — if you are resonating with this — it is safe for you to soften into your next operating system upgrade.
And know that you can trust the infinite wisdom and massive operating power of your unconscious mind.
Whether it’s 6 months of 6 weeks or even just 6 minutes…
… you deserve to say “fuck it” and rest.
Feb 12, 2025 |
It’s been offered to me a thousand times.
Including from people whose work I respect and love so much, I promote them voluntarily.
“You talk so much about our thing anyway. Why not make some money from it?”
I could. With almost no effort on my part.
And yet, it’s always been a clear “no,” and the reason has always been so simple to me.
When I say something, my people trust 100% that that’s what I mean.
They don’t have to ever suspect that I have ulterior motivations.
My word is worth more than anything in the world.
Especially in business.
If I lack money, I can go to work to make some more.
Once the 100% trust that people have in my word is broken, I have nothing, and that trust is almost impossible to win back.
Feb 12, 2025 |
No one taught me how important my Asian ancestral heritage was in helping me be good at business.
I had to figure it out on my own. And here’s what I figured out.
I am thankful for my Confucian heritage.
It instilled in me one of the most defining values I hold, which has been passed down in my family: education is the most valuable asset in the world. More than any material possession. Without it having to lead to any capitalism-friendly “outcome.” Enriching one’s mind is its own reward, and the most valuable one.
This kept me focused on learning business for the way it sharpened my mind, without being anxious for material “returns”. This non-transactional relationship I had with business is exactly what kept me in it long enough for me to get really good at it.
I am thankful for my Taoist heritage.
It taught me that no one thing is separate from the ecology surrounding it. That you are not separate from me. That there is only Oneness.
That cultural knowing is exactly what planted the firm attitude in me that my thriving is vitally interlinked with yours, that I cannot use, manipulate, and extract from you to get ahead. When I cheat you to get what I want, I only end up cheating myself.
The Taoism baked into my culture also taught me this. When there is an up, there is a down, and when there is expansion, there is contraction.
Don’t get too excited on a good day, and don’t be too depressed on a bad day. Proverbs of this nature are passed down and repeated in my family.
This is exactly what gave me the steadfastness to keep going long enough to see my efforts bear full fruition in the long term.
I’m thankful for my animinist/shamanic heritage.
One of the teachings I’m known for is the idea of “the spirit of your business.” I believe your business literally has its own spirit. So does your social media account. So does your phone. So does your email.
I’m often asked where I got this idea from. And while certain sources gave me inspiration for articulating it out loud, it was always obvious to me because of the animism that is part of our traditional culture.
Western culture sees certain things as living (birds, trees, humans), and other things as inert (mountains, seas, the soil).
Animism recognizes everything as alive and conscious — each different thing in its own way.
This way of seeing everything in my business ecosystem — even things that are dead or inert according to Western culture — as ALIVE, CONSCIOUS, and being in a LIVING RELATIONSHIP — has been key to my creativity and genius-level intuition about making strategic moves for my business.
The ideology around ancestral veneration that is central to my culture (which is half-Confucian and half-animist/shamanic, I think)… also turned out to be critical for my business success.
Koreans believe that our lives are closely interlinked to our ancestors.’ We are also taught that everything good that happens to us is NOT only due to our own merit, but due to our ancestors’ benevolent deeds.
Almost like I’m receiving delayed good karma for what my ancestors did.
For example, my mom tells me the story of her grandmother, who would always welcome into her home travelers who needed a place to rest.
She would feed them the best food, give them a warm place to sleep, and send them on their way with more provisions.
And she would tell my mom: “I do this for you. All the good I do will come back to you. So, when you grow up, you must remember to be kind to everyone, and help as many people as you can.”
The recognition of interrelationship across time and space is baked into our worldview.
Do you know what this means?
It means that, from day 1, I knew that my business would fail if it didn’t benefit others before it benefited me.
Generosity and benevolence had to be the primary values through which I filtered all of my business decisions.
This was not only the way I created success for myself (it all flows back to me, always), but the way I create good fortune for my descendants.
Actually, I’ve oriented my business to community care in much more radical ways since I became a mother.
Because now I think acutely about my son’s well being, and I want him to have a good future.
The best way for me to invest in his future well-being is taking care of the community around me now.
Yes, we were a colonized and impoverished and war-torn people, living to this day with a legacy of trauma.
But.
I’m not prosperous in spite of being Korean.
I’m prosperous because I am Korean.
(Please, substitute “Korean” with whatever you are.)
What about you?
If you’re from a non-dominant culture, in what ways has your heritage made you stronger, better, more prosperous?
Feb 11, 2025 |
I promised my clients I would post this publicly.
I would 100% be living with my parents if I weren’t married.
Whole-ass adults living with their parents is still the default in cultures outside of pathologically individualism-obsessed America.
Living alone is also just not financially feasible in many parts of the world where living spaces are much more cramped and expensive.
Fuck anyone who shames you about it. Literally tell them “why yes, I live with my parents. I’ve been lucky enough to escape dystopian individualism.”
If given a choice again between living alone (ew, I hate being lonely), living with roommates (ugh), and living with people who gave birth to me and love me (and getting to save on rent!), it’s a no-brainer choice.
Warm bodies of family members nearby is a good thing for humans and that doesn’t change because you’re a grown-up.
Big big caveat: I’m not talking about if you actually enjoy living alone, or don’t have a good relationship with your parents.
Like if you have crappy parents and want to be away from them, or you are truly living your best life on your own — Woohoo! I celebrate you and your badass independence!
Through this post, I am only attempting to explicitly address all the shaming around people who choose to live with parents for different reasons, especially when it really helps them to reduce their financial burden as an entrepreneur.
I also recognize that having parents you have a good relationship with, and having the choice of being able to live with them and have it be a positive experience and save on rent is a huge privilege. This is not true of everyone who has parents.
I recognize that some have the privilege due to sheer good luck, and others don’t due to no fault of their own. I’m saying: if you do have this unearned advantage, the least you could do is to not feel shame about it.
Generally, life is hard, and life is expensive — it seems like — pretty much everywhere nowadays. Everyone who is figuring out how to make life work for themselves in these crazy times is deserving of our respect and admiration.
Feb 4, 2025 |
I built a business that earned a cumulative revenue of nearly $15 million.
Here’s what I would do if I were starting over from scratch today, knowing everything I know now.
A lot of things on the Internet have changed since the days when I was “coming up.”
In those days, there was no TikTok. (not that I’ve ever been on TikTok anyway)
Instagram and Facebook hasn’t devoured by monetization monsters and ads yet. They were actually places where people just showed up to chill, where you could make friends and find community with relative ease.
But, actually, social media isn’t where I found my people originally.
I found it via blogging.
Yup, blogging. I started a little blog 15-ish years ago. It slowly amassed a small group of people who loved to read my writing and interact with my ideas. (Emphasis on small.)
These people became my Facebook friends. And many became my real life friends. They were many of my earliest supporters and paying clients. (For a tiny tiny business that barely earned a part time income, but was fun and meaningful nonetheless.)
Then it took about a decade after that for me to figure myself out. Gaining in self awareness. Learning how to like myself and believe in my own work enough to show up for my passions in a bigger way without needing external approval every step of the way.
Yes, I said one whole decade.
That’s not slow.
That the time it takes for sustainable internal shifts to happen.
Remember the very small group of original blog followers?
Let’s say there were 20.
Once I started showing up on social media like I mean it — that is, without self-censoring, without requiring for your approval — the 20 people who loved my brain turned into 30.
Then 30 turned into 50. Then 50 into 100. And so on.
This, too. Slowly.
At the same time, I was honing my business skills, little bit by a little bit. The basics of copy. Humane marketing. I checked out a million “experts” and learned from many of them, but the only person who taught me anything worth a damn, which has since become the soul and bones of my business, came from my teacher Fabeku Fatunmise, an ordained priest of the Yoruba tradition. (@ownerofcoralandbrass on IG, though he isn’t here much. He no longer teaches business, and hasn’t for a long time.) He is not just a business teacher for me. He is a soul teacher. And that’s the only kind of business teacher you should have. Don’t settle for anything less; so many of us have gotten used to such low standards nowadays.
So then the 100 of people who love my brain turned into 200 and 200 turned into a thousand and on and on. This coincided with my personal growth and taking bigger and bigger risks with my creativity.
The throughline of my business growth — and integrity — has been my writing. Still is. Always will be, most likely.
I am a writer. I write.
I am a multupassionate ADHD person.
My business has, correspondingly, morphed into new forms multuple times. Things I’ve done for money: coaching, hypnosis, art, classes… on becoming more of who you are, marketing, spirituality, creativity. I can’t stick with one thing, and never will, and that is part of my genius.
You can look forward to me continuing to evolve.
The only consistency in my work is my spirit and my indefatigable curiosity.
I never set out to be a big star, or to get rich.
I am endlessly grateful that I get to support my family with my creativity.
This is a tremendous blessing and privilege that no one is entitled to. There are countless millions of people in this world who are far more talented and hard-working than me who will never get to enjoy the same because they are facing too many systemic or cultural barriers.
So I practice gratitude instead of entitlement, and orient myself to the humility of knowing that the gift of “making a living with my passion” can be taken away from me anytime, and that’s okay.
So, let me come back to answering the actual question of, what I would do if I were starting my business from scratch today.
I would do what I have always done.
I would tend to my own spiritual wholeness first and foremost. I would doggedly follow the breadcrumbs of my curiosity. I would be in a passionate relationship with life and learning.
And I would write about it. Again and again. Because I am a writer and I write. Without the expectation that the world needs to validate me with others’ approval or reward me with “success.”
Incidentally, this is exactly what I am doing.
And if you’ve been a student of mine, you also know that this is what I have been teaching YOU the entire time.
Feb 3, 2025 |
Most of what you’re taught in business is how to drive “top line” growth.
How to make more sales. How to create more revenue.
Less talked about, but probably more important, is your take-home pay.
How much is left in your pocket after your expenses are paid? That is your “bottom line”, as most of us know.
(Who cares if you made a million dollars if you had to pay out $999,999 in expenses, right?)
And you know what matters — in my opinion — even more than the bottom line?
It’s what I’m calling the bottom-bottom line. (Sorry, I couldn’t think of anything more elegant to call it, but it just came out of me in conversation with friends.)
That’s what’s left with you when it’s ALL said and done. What you get to “take home” at the end of the day — but this time, we’re talking about your spiritual home.
(Because none of us is making it out of this world alive. None of us is going to be able to take a single penny with us.)
Your bottom-bottom line is the state of your wellness/intactness as a soul.
Why do we all want more money? So that we can live better, have more freedom, options and safety, be able to enjoy ourselves more, and help others, right?
And the reason we want those things in the first place is because we believing those things will make us well.
Focusing singularly on making more money, and determining whether your business is a success or failure based on “top line” — or even “bottom line” —
… is like pouring all our energy into the middle man instead of the goal. The tool, rather than the project.
Human wellness existed long before the system of money was invented.
And it still exists in spades in parts of the world that are severely monetarily deprived. I would argue, it exists more in many of those places because people there have been less corrupted by individualistic capitalism.
They still maintain a connection to their ancestral spirituality, a coherent sense of their orientation and belonging in the visible-invisible material-spiritual web of life.
(To be sure, I don’t mean to romanticize or gloss over the real struggles faced by impoverished people across the world. There is nothing noble or romantic about poverty in itself; but I do observe with immense humility and admiration how so many of these people manage to lead lives that are way richer in joy, connection and spiritual wholeness than most rich Westerners can even imagine — in spite of it all.)
Let me be very clear. I’m not saying that money doesn’t matter. I’m not naive or delusional.
Money is a vital tool in the “consensus reality” world (of 2025, anyway) with which lives can be saved and human potential expressed.
The simple fact is that money can stitch wounds, feed children and provide paper and paintbrushes for the artist. All these things matter.
But in order for us to create a new, better world that serves the deep health of all living beings (as opposed to more wealth in the hands of the top 0.1%), we have articulate and anchor to a different paradigm than the one we’ve been handed by default.
And we have to do it on purpose, again and again and again.
And that paradigm is one that prioritizes the bottom-bottom line.
Determining business success NOT by how much money you’re bringing in, but by what the journey is doing to/for our souls, our sense of connectedness to each other and all that is alive and true in this Universe.
I have some questions for you.
What is it like when you are well?
How do you know when you feel that sense of deep wholeness and connectedness, regardless of what’s going on in life?
(I have had the experience of being on the floor sobbing, devastated from a personal loss, unsure of myself and grieving — and still feeling more WHOLE and INTACT than ever before. Have you ever had a similar experience?)
How do you recognize those moments of deep wholeness/wellness/connectedness? What do they feel like?
Jan 21, 2025 |
Something that is super simple to do and underrated is gaslighting yourself into thinking you’re really hot.
If you haven’t done this, I highly recommend it.
I say to myself “you’re so cute” every time I pass by a mirror and always hype myself up about how good-looking I am.
The key here is to NOT connect it to specific features (“i have good legs”) or states (“i look good when …”) it’s an all-encompassing, unconditional, generalized “I’M SO CUTE IT’S NOT FAIR”.
Whenever anyone makes a less than flattering remark about my looks, I am literally confused because do you have eyes?
Literally (1) no one is stopping you from doing this, (2) it costs ZERO dollars to do this, and (3) the ROI is incredible.
Jan 16, 2025 |
Some people, when I talk about attuning to “enoughness”, misunderstand me as saying, you should be content with the minimum that allows them to get by without dying of hunger.
Nope, nope, nope.
Have you taken a vow of poverty? Have you renounced the world to devote yourself to an ascetic spiritual life?
If not, “enough” means so much more than “the bare minimum you need to not DIE.”
Human beings need food, shelter, clean water, and some clothes that protect us from the elements.
These are the bare minimum that we need to survive.
Let’s say all of humanity — all 8 billion of us — achieved this. Woohoo! That’s an accomplishment, right? Everyone having enough to be materially safe.
But imagine that that’s where it ended. Let’s say no one had the tiniest extra thing more.
You want to paint? Sorry, no paintbrushes for you. You’re not gonna die without it.
You want to form a band with your friends? Sorry, no musical instruments for you. You’re not gonna die without it.
You want to read books of poetry, make sculptures, build a playground for children? You want a hammock for naps, and extra coconut butter to soften your skin and hair? An altar and offerings for your gods? Nope. You’re not gonna die without any of that.
You have enough to survive. Be happy with that.
Would you want to live in that world?
I’m guessing not.
There’s surviving by meeting biological needs.
And then there’s flourishing, by meeting emotional, psychological, aesthetic, relational, and spiritual needs.
I want you to be able to flourish.
When I talk about knowing what is ‘enough’ for you, it’s actually useful to know both numbers.
What is an “enough for sheer survival” number? (That matters.)
And what is an “enough for me to flourish as my fully expressed, most joyful self” number?
Do you need paintbrushes, rose-scented perfumes, weighted blankets, regular trips to the beach, money to help out your friends and family from time to time? Then you gotta factor that into your “enough for flourishing” number.
To be sure, the number is not an easy thing to arrive at.
For about a year now, I’ve been studying myself, me and my family’s basic survival needs, as well as what our needs are for our maximum flourishing.
What exactly does that include? What do those things cost? What if our needs and priorities change? What if this happens? What if that happens?
When you’re trying to plan for future contingencies in an ever-complicated world and/or have dependents, this gets even more hairy.
I still don’t have an exact figure yet.
But, through a whole year of thinking about it and talking to my friends and advisors about it, I have a much clearer sense of what my values are, how to express them through money, and a a better sense of the range of numbers I need to be thinking about.
All of that has directly shaped how I make plans for my business.
And awareness is power.
So I don’t expect you to be able to arrive at a clear-cut number right away.
You will, most likely, have to do some investigation into yourself, your world, and the future you want first.
And it will most likely be a dynamic process, and an ongoing journey of learning and iterating, rather than deciding that a number must be written in stone.
But engaging in that process left me feeling so much more purposeful and empowered about what I’m doing with my money and life.
So, if you resonate, I recommend that for you.
I wish for your survival and safety.
But even more than that, I wish for your flourishing.
Because you get to.
Because you’re worthy of it.
Jan 15, 2025 |
Find a Black woman, or Black queer person talking about it, and listen to them.
If you have a problem worth spending money on, hire them.
If you’re skeptical about that, and doubtful that the color of one’s skin makes someone automatically more qualified (and I really agree with that), allow me to explain why.
I guess not all, but an overwhelming majority of man-made problems plaguing our world today are a result of colonization and white supremacy. Everything from housing insecurity to your personal insecurities.
And here’s the thing.
Non-Black people of color (like myself) have a different relationship to white supremacy than Black people.
Non-Black people of color (like myself) were extended a promise — which has always been an illusion and a lie, but white folks perpetuated it hard and for a long time — that we have a chance of sitting with white people and benefiting from their privilege as long as we did the right things.
As long as we spoke English. With the right accent. As long as we worked hard. As long as we renounced and shamed our own traditions and people. As long as we were willing to forget historical harm perpetuated to us. As long as we ate the right food, mimicked white habits, and glorified white ideals and norms.
let me be clear, this was always an illusion and a lie. We were never, ever going to sit at their table and fully share their privileges. They wouldn’t have it.
But we were offered the scraps, and told — if you get in line, you’ll get more. And one day, you’ll be able to have ALL of it.
Just keep being/doing more of what we told you.
Many of us — often out of wanting to just survive, and sometimes out of ambition — swallowed that lie hard and deep.
And fell in line with what white supremacy told us.
And here’s the thing: that same lie was never sold to Black people, and particularly Black women.
The message, for so long, continuing into today, was crystal clear.
“No matter how hard you try, you’ll never be one of us, you’ll never sit at our table. And in fact, the harder you try, the more we’ll deride and punish you.”
This is the reason why Black folks in general, and Black women (and queer folks!) in particular, have the clearest view of reality, and the best access to wisdom about what’s really fucked up about the world and how to fix it.
They didn’t have a choice as to whether to buy into the lies of white supremacy. Because they were systematically excluded from even being offered crumbs that came with “willing” subjugation and compliance.
From the beginning, Black folks (and particularly women and queer people) had no choice to see reality for exactly what it is.
They didn’t have the choice of buying into their own oppression the way non-Black people of color did. So, in a way, they were “forced” into clarity about the entire death cult that is white supremacy.
White supremacy doesn’t benefit white people either. In fact, white people are poisoned by it. Any system that is premised on anti-human principles, poisons those who buy into it.
The same way the patriarchy poisons men.
If you’re white, you both participate in, and are harmed by, white supremacy.
That’s why I say — regardless of whether you’re white or yellow or brown, if you want the answer, go to Black people.
Go to Black women and queer people.
They are the greatest experts and pioneers on whatever problem that you’re trying to solve — whether it’s business growth or relationship issues or nutrition — which has been inevitably created by, and/or perpetuated by white supremacy. Because white supremacy has extended its poisonous tentacles to every area of life.
Sometimes it’s a struggle to find Black teachers. Not because there aren’t a lot of them (there’s TONS AND TONS of them who are way, way more qualified and experienced than the average white counterpart), but because white supremacy has intentionally undermined and silenced them and punished them for doing the same things that white people are rewarded for.
But that’s even more of a reason you should seek them out. Don’t give up on the first day of your search. Tell everyone what you need help with, and tell them that you’re specifically looking for Black teachers, consultants, speakers, and coaches. Keep searching. Follow the breadcrumbs of information.
I’m not primarily following Black creators/teachers for some kind of social justice reason.
I’m following them because they have the best information about how to get from where I am and where I want to go.
History has forced them to be 10x more qualified and 100x more insightful than everyone else.
I feel a little nervous posting this, only because talking pointedly about a group of people I don’t belong to feels… a little risky.
But I have to say it out loud because I wish someone had told ME this long ago. It would have saved me soooo much time and wasted effort.
