Sun Yong: From Orphanage To Success Story, This 6-Figure Entrepreneur Changed Her Perspective And Embraced An Attitude Of Gratitude To Do The Thing

I do really believe 100% from every part of me that everyone has the capacity to be able to do the things that they want and not to be held back by the mental baggage that's in our head that we want to push through.

Welcome to the do the Thing podcast. In each episode, we get down and personal with people who go after the things they want to make all their wildest dreams come true. Join us as we unveil and dissect a formula for what it takes to do the thing. Here is your host, Stacy Lauren.

Hey, everyone. Welcome to the do the Thing podcast. I'm your host, Stacy Lauren. I met my next guest through a mutual friend. Her story is truly inspiring. Sometimes it's easy for us to take the things we have for granted. We can even feel pity for ourselves when something small doesn't go our way. But this guest grew up with nothing. Literally nothing. She spent most of her childhood in an orphanage. The conditions weren't great, but it was all she knew. Although her traumatic upbringing could have molded her into an angry and resentful human, she looked on the bright side and changed her mindset to one full of gratitude. She's thankful and blessed for every experience. This guest has a real rags to riches story. But through it all, she never lost her sense of humbleness and gratefulness. Even as she transformed into a successful entrepreneur and author, she always found a way to pay it forward. Whether by helping her orphaned friends get adopted or inspiring others to go out and invest in themselves, she's the epitome of doing the thing. Please welcome Sunyoung to the show. Hi, Sunyoung. How are you?

Fine. How are you, Stacey?

I am doing great. I'm so excited to have you. To have you come on.

Me too. I'm really excited as well.

Yeah, I've been really liking it because this podcast is relatively new. It's only. I've only been doing it a few months, and so the majority of the people I've been interviewing have been people that I either know personally or like, kind of like from 1:1 level to the left in terms of someone else knows them. And I know my friend Sandy had met you recently, and she was like, you have got to have sunyoung on your podcast. So it's. I'm so excited to get a chance to talk to you and get to know your story.

Great, Great. Yeah, she told me, she's like, when I was telling her that I do a podcast too, and she's like, you got to meet this girl that you know, Stacy she has her own shows. And I was like, okay, I'm on, I'm on.

So I love it. Yeah, here we are. Well, why don't you start off and just tell everyone about you and your background.

Okay. My name is Sunyoung and I'm a six figure entrepreneur. And I basically grew up as an orphan for first 14 years of my life and always had this problem wondering why is not my mom and dad is not with me or what kind of money or what kind of job that people have to have to, you know, take care of their kids or, you know, take care of the family. So I was kind of wondering back my mind ever since I was about, you know, 3, 2, 34 years old, ever since I can remember, you know, what happened basically is like my mother passed away and my dad decided to no longer take care of all of us. And so my sister and I just kind of became an instant orphan. And we lived in one orphanage. My sister worked there as a staff, kind of paying her way of us staying there. And she was probably about 10 to 12 years older than I was. And I was about 2 or 3 years old at the time. I remember there's been like every morning, at least once or twice a week I would hear staff members would open the front door of the orphanage and say, oh, we got another baby today. You know, of course, you know, when they open the door, babies would be crying. They'll be wrapped in a very thin layers of blanket and just crying. And so I remember listening to babies crying. And the orphanage people work there saying, oh, there's another baby got dropped off. So right away, and I thought, oh, well, my family must be normal, you know, maybe every family does that. Then I realized, you know, later on my sister said, you know what, let's go to another orphanage. And I said, why? We're doing fine here. And she says, well, you know, I have to take you another orphanage because that's where they're gonna teach you how to walk. And I said, I don't want to walk. I just want to live with you. And she says, you don't understand. Like, you know, I promised dad that I would take care of you until, you know, one of something happens to one of us. But I can't really take care of you like normal people could take care of you. I don't have any money, I have no resources. Basically she says, I just have to take you to this orphanage so they could teach her how to walk. But as a little girl, I didn't care about anything Else because I just lost my mother. She went into a room to deliver a baby, never came out. And I just lost my dad. I don't even know my mom and dad's name. Only person, the name that I knew was my sister's name. And that's all I knew. And I just didn't want to separate from her at all, no matter what the cost of it. But she just knew that she couldn't take care of me. So she took me to a second orphanage. It was horrible separations where she had to lie to me saying that she had to go to the bathroom because she knew that I would not let her go, let go of her hand and I told her that I would want to go to the bathroom with her and if she was really going to come back for me, why would she not let me go with her? So I just hung onto her hand and it was just the longest, very sad part of my life.

Yeah, I could imagine. Did. So did she. So when you went to the second orphanage then did she just. She dropped you off there and then did she. Did she come back?

Never came back. She never came back for me. So I had all these problems growing up, you know, as abandoned child and, you know, not trusting people. And I had a few opportunities to be adopted by accordion family. Couple of families came wanting to look me over, wanted to stop again, you know, I was rejected. When they're looking over at me, I told myself, I said, please take me home, please. I just want to belong to a family. I want to be able to taste good foods, I want to be able to wear nice looking clothes. And I didn't get picked. They didn't take me home again. So many times in my life I've been rejected and nobody wanted me. I lived there. As I came to america at age 14, I just had to learn so much. But throughout my journey by going through counseling, trying to understand why I belong, why I was abandoned. It was my fault, all those issues. I found out. One of my counselors told me that I lived in a life in Orphanage like POWs do, I guess. And I didn't realize how bad. I knew that it was bad, but I didn't know it was that bad.

How did you end up in America at 14?

So there was a family. Well, we had a. American lady that came to volunteer in an orphanage one year, I guess you would call her. What? Anyway, she came and volunteered and kind of did her internship, I guess to find out how the orphans were in Okoria and see anything that she could do to help us out. And in that sense. And we did get some few gifts because she was there. And some of the army people would send us some gift like life in orphanage. Like I only got maybe that once, once a year, not once a month, once a year, twice a year. And anyway, when she went back to America, she says, I promise you guys that I'll find a home. I'll find a way for you guys to come to America. Oh wow. That was my hope. There was a lot of us hope and we hung onto that hope. And two, three years went by, four or five years went by, just never happened. But it was nice that to go to America and have a freedom. Then one day I received a letter saying that there was a couple from America that is looking for a child that are older. Usually a lot of people adopt babies, but they were looking for special needs child and it has to be. They have to be handicapped and they have to be older, you know, like a teenager. Well, I belong to that category. Just perfect. Because the second orphanage where my sister dropped me off was like a rehab center. So 100% of the kids were all handicapped. 80% of the kids had a family and 20% of the kids did not have a family. Again, all of us were handicapped. They all got around with wheelchairs, with crutches, with a limp. A lot of those kids had polio. There was me, didn't know how to walk. So it took me about 2, 3, 4, 5 years to learn to walk. I would say so I think I was there about 4 years old. I lived there for about what, 10 years. And I finally learned to walk when I was about six or seven years old. We didn't have any physical therapists or anything like that. Just old fashioned way, just get up, holding onto the rail and standing up and down, up and down. And then once I managed that, then I took a step and that's how I learned to walk. That's why it took me so long, but because I was malnutrition and nobody really helped me to. Nobody ever helped me. I didn't know how to crawl. I was a huge mess. So when I fit under the special needs of child, that's how I got adopted by American family. Once I came over, of course, going to a brand new country, not knowing any language at all. On top of that I had to learn to trust people. Someone wants to love me the way I am, just the way I am. I was born with a little minor hair lip. I couldn't walk. But of course by the time they adopted me, I did walk. But when I came to America, they fixed me up. They did all kinds of surgeries. I mean, they did a surgery on my lip to fix it up. They did surgeries on both my legs, cut my growth plate so that they could straighten my legs. I was in a cast for a whole year, six months each leg. And when I was growing up in orphanage for first those 14 years of my life, I never ever looked in the mirror. Didn't even have a mirror to look at. I didn't think I was worth looking at. I remember one time when I was an orphanage, my friend and I, we were. This was after I learned to walk. So it was about, you know, I would say about 10 or so. I went outside and I looked at the part of the building that had a medal. I looked inside, I looked at that metal. I realized how bad my lip was because kids in the orphanage was making a fat of me. They were calling me names. So I didn't even bother to ever to look at myself or did we even have a mirror to look at. So when I found this metal part of the building outside of the orphanage, when I saw my lip, I knew why I was made fun of. I was called names.

Yeah, that had to be so incredibly hard. And then to not, you know, to then just kind of feel it.

Yes, it was.

And so what did you do next.

After came to America, I was so happy because I had a freedom. Some dream that somebody promised, but it did come true. I took that opportunity and I studied. I was determined that I was going to make sure that my adoptive parents would be proud of me. But then something that really bothered me, so I was communicating with my adoptive mother, opening up my dictionaries and trying to give her a message saying that there were some other kids that my friends left behind. There are so many kids that wanted to come to America. Like that Peace Corp worker. That's it. The American lady, she was a Peace Corp worker that she promised that she would find a family for us. But it didn't happen. I was communicating with my adoptive family, my adoptive mother, using dictionaries and saying, look, I have some friends that they would love to come to America to. They're my friends, they're my family. How can you help? Well, at the time, my parents were president of the adoption agency in Utah. So they announced that in the newspaper, monthly newspaper, and I'm proud to say with their big help, people from within about 15 to 30 miles of where I was living, other families have adopted Most of my friends that we. That I hung around with, there was about seven kids were adopted by the other American families that was involved in that adoption agency group. So I was just so happy because to me, at any time when I get an opportunity for a better life, I don't just end there. I want to share that there's somebody else that needs a desperate help, that desperate need. And all of them had polios where they can walk just normal. They all were handicapped kids. That was part of my dream that I didn't think that I could even conquer. But just by sharing and letting my mom know, using a dictionary, because I can speak the language, to share that there are some friends in the orphanage that they long to come to America or they long to belong to a family.

Yeah, it had to be amazing at such a young age and without really knowing, you know, much in terms of even what you had gone through at the orphanage. And once you got out, you got to see things a little bit more clearly. And then knowing that you were able to make an impact on the other kids there, I mean, that had to be. Gosh, I'm imagining that had to be so amazing.

Yes. We were so happy. And, you know, while we're living in America, we got together, you know, every so often and we just talk about. I mean, it was just great. And don't get me wrong, the life was rough because having to learn the language and we looked very different. The food that we had to learn to eat, the foods that we have never seen before, they didn't look like as long as they're not a rice to us, it's like it wasn't a food because we have never seen it before. So there's a lot of difficulties and challenges and obstacles that we have to overcome. But you know, looking back and for longest time that I hated my sister for the thing that she did for me to drop at the second orphanage and never coming back. For me, I just hated her for longest time. Now that I'm a mother, even a grandmother, looking back how hard that would have been for her, and that was the only thing that she knew how to give me a chance is for me to learn to walk. And way back in 2018, I went back to try to find her with my husband and we were there for a month and I couldn't find her because I didn't know her birthday. So I didn't have too much luck. But now I understand the things that she had to do, what she did, why? And clearly, because I'm A mother now and knowing that some of the things that I have to do for my kids, it's sometimes difficult, but we have to do it. Yeah.

Where she was putting you first over anything else. And you realize that now after doing that with your own kids and grandkids.

Yes. Instead of hating her for what she's done.

Yeah.

Yeah. So it was amazing.

That's unbelievable. And it's great to have come to that place where you're able to, like, forgive her in that way and then not only forgive, but understand her lens at the time.

Yes.

Yeah. So what's it like for you now? What's. What are you. What are you up to now?

Well, so I have gone through all that after, you know, I did go to, you know, junior high and high school and college and I became a certified medical assistant. I always wanted to be a nurse because soon as when I learned to walk in orphanage, when I was like, you know, six or seven years old, they gave me this white dress. They used to call me little nurse because I would do all kinds of errands for everybody else because I walked normal without crutches and things like that. I was just so happy to do all these errands for everybody else and who can walk? And I used to carry kids behind my back and taking them to place from point A to point B. When I came to America, studied really hard and gone through college, and I became a certified medical assistant. I did that for 33 years. Oh, wow. During that time, every single day, I was so grateful to be waking up to go to a job that I was loving it. It was like my dream job. What is a dream job looks like enjoying what you're doing. So I would, like, love, like, I was so excited to, like, go to bed at night, just to wake up to go to work. I'm one of those five, like 5 to 10% in the world that loves what they do. One of the reasons I was feeling that way is just because I was comparing my life to where I was as an orphan, as to why I took the opportunity and got studied really hard to became certified medical assistant. But then also I was making my own money, and by doing so, I could buy my own car. So, see, by going through all those process, starting getting an education and getting a job, and I was living in my dream life, doing that for 33 years. And I thought, you know what? As much as I love this job, I may be doing my dream job. I may be living in my dream life in certain parts of my life. That but financially I wasn't living my dream life at all. I was struggling to pay bills. I was living paycheck to paycheck after going through a divorce. I was married for 14 years, survivor of the domestic and physical abuse, mental abuse, to file for divorce, raising three girls as a single mother. And I thought to myself, wow, as much as I love this job, but why am I struggling financially? Why am I not able to pay my bills? It's not like I'm living in a mansion. I was just living a normal two three bedroom house with three girls and just had a. I was driving a car that was broken down, I was break down on the freeways with the kids and I didn't have a cell phone at the time. I was just like that. This is not the dream life financially. So I thought to myself, why not? I could create myself a dream life that will meet all my needs. In other words, I could still enjoy what I am doing and I can make enough money to live my true dream life, being able to go on vacations and things like this. And so I decided way back in 2014, I told my doctor that I was working for and said, you know, I'm going to retire early. And he says, what do you mean? Like when I go within a year? And he says, do you have any money? And I said no. He says, well, I'm going to retire when I have a million dollars. And so, you know, and I thought to myself, million dollars? Like I don't even think of that much. Like I don't even have any money. Like I said, I was living paycheck to paycheck. I didn't even have any emergency money. So right there during that conversation I felt fear of, oh no, I don't even have any money. How am I going to retire? My doctor asked me, do you have a million dollars? And I said, well, no, obviously not because I didn't have any money. But in his mindset, he had to least save million dollars or more for him to retire me. If I was thinking about if I wait to have a million dollars to retire, I would never be able to retire. Remember, doctors make a lot more money than I did as a certified medical assistant. In fact, when I retired, I was only making $16 an hour. But during that conversation with my doctor, I felt that fear for about 30 seconds to a minute. And then I thought to myself, I go, you know what, why not, why not me that I could make a million dollars. There's a people out there that is making million billions of dollars. Why not me? That was my switching gear of my mindset basically saying, I didn't come up with, oh, I can't do that. I don't have any money, I can't retire. You're right, I should stay and I should work till, you know, I'm so old that they have to let me go. I wasn't thinking any of those negative thoughts at all. All I thought about it was like, you're right, I don't have any money. But then I said to myself right away, why not me? Why not me? That's all I took. And I retired exactly year from 2014, at 2015 in December. And actually, like, I wanted to retire like May of the following year, but my kids were visiting me from Italy with grandkids and I didn't have any money. But I thought, you know what, why not retire six months earlier than I planned that. So I just retired like December 2015 and I became an entrepreneur. Since I have retired and let me tell you, the life changer, just because I thought about this small positive thought to myself instead of dwelling on negative thoughts how I don't have, how I couldn't, how I can afford, where who's gonna take me if I was to apply for new, you know, job or anything like that, I didn't even think any of that other than saying, why not me? Just go for it. Why not me? So when I retired and I became an entrepreneur and it was a life changer. Now the reason I love being an entrepreneur more so than as a certified medical assistant, is this. When I was working for my doctor, when patients would come in to see their doctor who I happen to work for, they come in to see the doctor for their physical illnesses, like they have problems with their stomachache or migraines or headaches or, you know, you name it in all kinds of different physical illnesses. Sometimes it's just, you know, depression, anxiety, you name it all. And I wasn't able to share all the traumas and things that I went through. I was so grateful that I had a job. So I was smiling, I was happy because like I said, that was my dream job. Because I was very satisfied and it was a very rewarding for me to work with the patients. But when they come in to see me, I can say, oh, I understand your problem. Thanks for sharing. Now here's my problem. I could share who I really am. All they knew me as a happy nurse, happy nurse for so and so. Dr. Happy Sonyong. That's all they knew me. But they didn't know my story. I was abandoned. I was an orphan. They knew none of that. But to be an entrepreneur, as much as I didn't want to talk about all my bad experience that I have gone through, the things that I have to face, I get to share those with the people. Spaces like this, Right?

Yeah. And I'm just thinking, like, what an amazing analogy your life is in terms of the. The part of how you struggled so much to learn to walk and how many years it took you to do that. Because it's like you're not. Or you might be afraid, but you're. You're realizing that the first time you do something, it's almost like you're walking again. Right. Where you're not. You're. You're able to stumble or whatever. Like you're. You're patient with yourself to take the time. Well, to learn things. And I just. I think that because when some people say, like, oh, I can't do this, I don't know how. Like, you didn't say that when you were learning to walk. You know, you learned to walk. You, like, took the time. So anyway, that analogy is really. It's really sticking out to me with your life.

Yeah. When I saw my friends walking by when I was practicing, just hanging onto the rail, for example, and every time I look at them and I say, you know what? I'm going to learn to walk so that I could help them. I'm going to learn to walk to help them. I didn't tell them, but that's what I was telling myself, because I thought, here I was given an opportunity, even though I didn't want it, but I had no choice. But I was given an opportunity to learn to walk. And I thought, if I learned to walk, I'm going to do so many things with my friends. I'm going to do things for them. That just was in my mind. I'll tell you what, that was like, the best thing. And that's why they called me Little Nurse and I had a little white dress. And I guess my dream kind of began. You know, I didn't even think about all that when my sister dropped me out. In fact, I said, I don't want to be here. I just want to live with you. I don't want to learn to walk. Right. Yeah. But when you're given an opportunity, you do what you could do, and then you can't think about you. You have to think about how can you as a human being pay forward for the gratitude that I felt those People that worked with me in an orphanage, they didn't have to help me to learn to walk, but they did. They were not a doctor. They could have said, no, I'm not a doctor, I'm not a physical therapist, I can't help you. All they did is took me to the rail, long rail, throughout the orphanage and says, you hang on to the rail and learn to stand up. I just took a step by step. That's all I did. I hung onto the rail, I stood up and then I sat down. Day in, day out, hour after hour, I stood up, I sat down, I stood up, I sat down once, I conquered that step. Then I next time when I held that rail and I took a one step and then I would just stand there and then I would sit down, hang on to the rail again and getting up and then take another step. I did that numerous times. And then next thing I took another step and I went walking across the long rails from one point to the next point. And then finally when they says, okay, now you gotta stand up, you can't hang on to anything. I was so afraid. I was just so afraid. And I said, I can't wait to hang on to you or anything else. No, because you know how you just need to stand up on your own. You could just, you know, there's a rail for you to hang on to, but you can't use it. That's only if it's an emergency. If you think you're going to fall but don't hang on to it, just stand up. Not holding on to anything. And I remember that moment, it was scary. And the next thing they told me is like, okay, get away from the rail and take a step without hanging on to anything. And I'm like, no way. I was just petrified. I thought the floor was going to move. That's how scary. I was so scared. At ages 6 or 7, taking a first step, not hanging on to any hands or objects or rails or anything. So scary. I remember that. I thought, I thought as soon as I took a step, I thought the floor was going to move. Crazy, right? Yeah.

And it's always just so amazing to me, like, because now hearing you talk about how you're doing the thing and how you started your entrepreneurial journey and how you had that goal of retiring at a young age, even though you weren't, you had no money at the time, you know, and it's like that step by step philosophy in addition to your risk assessment of why not me? Like, you just, it literally like is so ingrained in you to just take one step and not to focus on all the hows and the where's and the, you know, like, all the things that people can tend to focus on. And I love that concept of just like what's right in front of me. And it sounds like that's kind of how your brain's programmed from that experience, you know, for you to be able to really get out there and do the thing.

Yeah, exactly. You just have to do it. You can't just wait, you know, you cannot just listen to all these noises. No. Like backgrounds, you know, people that, you know, your friends and they grew up with, you know, they'll say, you can't do that. There's no way. Oh, you know, what do you have to like, how can you start, you know, and they doubt, they give you doubts. And so we start to believe that, right? When someone says, oh, you can't do that, like, how could orphan girl to be successful entrepreneur? Like, you know, there's just no way. There's no way. But I didn't think about. There's times where it's like, yeah, you're right, there's no way. How so let me tell you something. I. When I came to America, I was determined. And I remember I would get up 4 o' clock every morning, every single day. During the summer, during the school years, I would just study, study, study. It took me like an hour to do solve one problem, looking up the dictionary because I didn't know what the question was. If I was to solve a math problem, for example, or English homework that I have to answer. I didn't know, like if you said multiplication, you know, answer these questions like questions as, you know, how did Susie got this much buying how much? Whatever. You know, it could be a math problem or English problem. The questions that they were asking I couldn't understand. So I had to look up every single word. It took me a long time, but again, I was 14 and I have to say that my mother has invested in me. She gave up her summer teach me English. So when fall came, least I knew how to say hi to everybody. And when they say hi to me, that I would understand that they're saying hi because I used to think, because when they would say hi to me and they were smiling at me, I thought they were making fun of me because again, I have a minor hair lip. This was, you know, before I had a surgery, right? Because they couldn't do a surgery right away as soon as I got there. Wait till I Settled down a little bit. But so every time I. When I first came to America, when people were smiling and I thought, oh, no, they're making fun of me again because I look different. Especially in America, everybody had a blonde hair, different color hair, and I was also jet black. I was a little Asian girl and very shy. I would always cover up my mouth because I didn't want anybody to see my lip. And just never. And so when she taught me, you know, hi, how are you? And just, you know, I'm hungry, all those just basic necessity for us to communicate. So she invested in me to teach me. And I thought, wow, someone would do that for me and love me the way I am, the way I look. I was so grateful. I was just so, so grateful. So I live my life with a lot of gratitude, right? A lot of gratitude. And as I got older and I think about all the things that it makes sense to me. It was like connecting dot to dot, right? Never even thought about it. I used to think about, man, why is my dad. Why did my mom have to die? Like, I don't even know. She never helped me. Why did she have to die? Why did my dad just, like, not want to take care of me? Why, why, why? You know, why am I left here alone and being made fun of for somebody to make fun of me? Why did my sister did this? She promised me that she would take care of me. Why? That's how I grew up not knowing. But now when I realized, and I thought, I am so grateful for every little thing that I get that I get to do. So when you have the attitude of the gratitude, how grateful you are, literally everything that you do on daily basis is not a chore, it's not a work, it's an opportunity. It's like, I can't explain it. I just cannot explain. Like, for example, like, you know, whenever I have my kids over and my oldest is mom, that's a lot of questions. No, it's not. It's not work at all. It's like, I enjoy this. They don't understand because they have not lived through what I've been through, right? So I was explaining this to somebody other day. And the reason I think that I really enjoy every moment, that whenever I cook, everything that I do is when I was in an orphanage, I never had a toy to play with. None of us had toys to play with. Never received any toy, never got a toy. And I didn't even know that there was any toy. For Christmas, every year for Christmas, you know, there Would be a church service and things like that every Sunday. But then Christmas, they make a little bit special when it comes to church services. But we never received anything. We never was recognized for our birthdays or Christmas or anything like that. I remember one year for Christmas, we got an apple by our head. And the apple that I received for Christmas present, I was just so grateful. Taking that bite from that apple, every single bite. It was just like, obviously it was the last bite in orphanage life I was so, so grateful for. So when I came to America and just even working, struggling to pay bills as a single mother, worked all kinds of jobs. I worked on my day off, I did a catering business, I did a detail house cleaning. I sold vacuums at night, trying to make the ends meet. But all those opportunities, I was so grateful. Opportunities, working, making my own money. That's what makes me feel like I'm a millionaire compared to life that I had as an orphan girl. Yeah.

And I love that you are really expressing the gratitude and that, gosh, the story of the apple, I mean, it's the ultimate. You know, I actually had heard a story. Gosh, it was last year, and it was someone that was just in terms of gratitude, but she was literally like on her last days from cancer. And what she said was, um, on. I wasn't friends with her, but it was through a friend she told me. What she said was, I woke up today. So that's her gratitude in the morning. Right. So I'm literally, as you're talking about gratitude, I'm sitting here because I ended up doing a mug for myself because I loved it so much. So I'm sitting here with my coffee cup and it says, I woke up today. And yeah, it just makes me think of just how, you know, how magnificent you having this sense of gratitude, you know, throughout your life really is.

Yeah. It's a change of perspective, you know, so it is hard for someone to just think of gratitude right away because, you know, maybe they have never lived through what I've been through. But, you know, I'm telling you, the more I meet people as an entrepreneur, every single one of us have gone through our own journey that we didn't want to go through, that we refused to or don't even want to even talk about it. Right. But it is all our personal journeys that we have to share, because I didn't become a successful entrepreneur just overnight, and nor did I prepare or ready to be an entrepreneur when I was working as a certified medical system for 33 years.

Yeah. Yeah. And I Love that. I love the why not me, too. I. I just. I really like that frame. So what would you say if you had only one piece of advice for people on how to do the thing? What would you say would be your piece of advice?

I would say, don't use any of the excuses that you have used and just say, why not me? Because nobody will tell you why not you. Sanyoung, you could do this. You have to believe in yourself, say, why not me? I could do it. And you have to tell yourself, because if you wait for someone else to tell you that, that you could do it, then you'll never happen. If you wait for someone's approval, or if you wait till you're good enough, or you wait till you have enough money, or you wait till, you know perfect timing, or you wait till, you know my kids are grown, or you wait till I get a degree. All these excuses. No more. Get rid of it. Don't listen to all these negative noises from the people that you love that you care about. It's in your circle. No, just tell yourself, why not me? You have to believe that you could do it. You could become anything, anyone, if you want to. You have to change your mindset and taking actions, because you may have a mindset, but if you don't take actions, nothing will happen again. You may take actions without the right mindset that you. That you believe in yourself, then it's not going to be the true who you could become. So that's the advice that I would give.

That's. I just love that advice. It's so good. Thank you so much. This has been really amazing getting to hear your story, and it's so inspirational. And honestly, I'm just sitting here as you're talking, I'm like, just thinking of all these times I've played this victim role, you know, And I just. I just am so inspired by you. And I'm like, sitting here just like, okay, if I'm ever in that victim role, I'm going to think about Son Young, because, you know, you really. You really show how you became the victor, you know, throughout your life and your story.

Yes. Thank you, Stacy. You know, all of us are in the same boat. You know, my problem isn't any better than yours or, you know, nothing like that. Everybody's journey is their own struggles, and I could only struggle with mine. If I was to give in a, like, a struggle, stuff you've had, I don't think I could handle that. Right. And as you're listening to my stories, or for your audience. You know, some of you guys may say, you know what, I don't think I could go through what she's gone through. But then I could say to myself, I don't think I could go through what you guys going through. Right? What you guys been through. So there's a purpose, the things that we go through, but what we do with it, what's the results, what's the outcome? And we're not going to wait till 10 years from now or 20 years from now. If you want to go for something, you have to do it now, now. No excuses. So that's the bottom line. I have a couple of books that I published. It's called Invest in yourself, Throw away all your excuses to turn your life around. And that was just like my journey. It was just perfect for me because I have used all kinds of excuses myself too. That's probably why I was a medical assistant for 33 years because I have used all that excuses in my life. So it's been my pleasure to be in your podcast show. You have an awesome podcast show. I listen to your episodes and it's just great. But yeah, just do the thing to say, why not me? Just do the thing.

Yeah. And I love the name of your book. What a great. What a great name. Because that's literally what I'm sitting here thinking is like, okay, I have no excuses for anything.

Yes, exactly, exactly. That's what we have to think.

So where do people. So if they want to get the book or if they want to learn more about you, where can they find out about you?

So yes, you could go to my social media. I'm on Instagram, LinkedIn, Facebook. Under the Facebook, I have a unique medical system. That's the strategy system that I teach people how to make money and learn to invest and diversify. That's how I became a self made millionaire. That I didn't really get to talk about that in this show. Maybe we could do another show segments on that.

Yeah.

But yeah, you could go to my Instagram as well. There's a calendar link and then you could just go to www.invest in yourself that book, you could order our books and that we will sign it and send it to you. There's another book that my husband and we both wrote. It's called Relationship. It's called Opposite. Opposite. I found out that once I thought my husband, when I met him, I thought he was my jackpot. The miracle, the demand that it could just love me and everything. And then I, when we got Married. I found that he was so opposite of me, which he said to write a humorous book about relationship. How we were so different but we learned to, you know, handle daily frustrations. And that's kind of fun book because he writes a book about it says M stands for Mike. It was my, you know, my husband's name. He complains about the things that I do that bugs him, that irritates him. And there's in a part it says throughout the chapters and you'll say as for sunyoung. And I write about the circumstances, situations, the things that he does that bugs me and that it really irritates me. It's kind of funny book. It's a great relationship book. So both my books are like a self help tool book. It's only 10 chapters each book and it's something that you want to read and then have it by your bed or your, you know, a kitchen table or something. So if you ever have any problems like how do I invest money or I'm having a problem with my relationship with my spouse or my partners or you know, whatever with your kids, whatever, you could read that. And there's some helpful tips that we wrote throughout the book chapter. So it's great.

Is it opposite, opposites, how to stay together when you're so different? It's that one, I'm looking it up right now is that I like. I'm so excited. I want to get. I can't wait to get that.

That sounds.

And I'm actually starting. I'm starting a dating challenge soon and for doing, doing the thing on dating and I'm. I'm actually gonna have a book recommendation list for people because there's a lot of books I think that, that are so have been transformational like for me, you know, and so I'll definitely read it and then I'd love to recommend it.

Yeah, that'd be great. And again, a lot of times, you know, throughout our journey, like we get motivated listening to people, you know, like Stacy or me or a lot of some of your entrepreneurs or you know, you could be your CEO and some of you guys may have been motivated by others or you motivated with other people by others. Right? You motivate other people, you're motivated by others. But being motivations. Let's say I went, I attended this motivational thing and then I come home and what do we do? We face same old things, same old routines, same house, same old routines, same people. So how are you going to motivate yourself to hang on to the motivation that you just received or if you're a motivator, how is your life? Do you just talk about it or do you motivate yourself to live your life like that daily basis?

Yeah, I'm ready to go, man. This is like. I'm like, let's do this thing. I'm just like all motivated.

So. So, yeah.

Thank you so much, sunyoung. It's been wonderful getting to know you and I appreciate you being so open about your story. And it is funny that we didn't get into the business side, but I think it was so important that we got into where it started because that's really how you were able to do the thing right now. And I think you gave such a great way of explaining how you do it. And then I think people can apply it to anything that they do. So I really appreciate you coming on and talking to me today.

Today. Thank you so much. I appreciate the opportunity.

Thanks for listening to the do the Thing podcast. We hope you enjoyed the show. But even more, we hope you'll be inspired to do the Thing. Do you have a burning question on Doing the Thing that you'd like answered? How about an inspiring do the Thing story of your own that you'd like to share? We'd love to hear all about it. Just leave us a voice message at do the Thing callcast co or email us@helloothingpodcast.com.