Madame Speaker Says

Facing Bankruptcy, Finding True Currency with Art Chang

• Magogodi • Season 2 • Episode 121

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Why 98% of Immigrant Businesses Fail (And What One Bankruptcy Survivor Learned) | Art Chang on Leadership, Small Business, and the Currency Beyond Money

What happens when your business dies at 27 and still, your employees don't leave you? Art Chang—NYC mayoral candidate, women's studies major, and bankruptcy survivor who went on to build dozens of wildly successful companies—reveals the hidden currency that saved him, why immigrant entrepreneurship myths are dangerous and the systemic failures killing small businesses in America.

IN THIS EPISODE:

  • Why a man majored in women's studies—and how it became his framework for understanding power
  • Growing up amid racism and trauma: How immigrant childhood shapes resilient leadership
  • Running for NYC mayor: Ranked choice voting, coalition building, and sharing the mic
  • COVID exposed the tech gap: Why 98% of Chinatown businesses lost revenue
  • Storytelling as survival: The hidden advantage separating thriving founders from struggling ones
  • Bankruptcy at 27: What the system rewards (hint: not community value)
  • Trust as currency: Why his employees stayed when he couldn't pay them
  • Beyond networking: Give before you get and build relationships that matter
  • Tender-hearted masculinity: Redefining leadership for a new era

SHOCKING STATS:

  • 61% of small business owners struggle with cash flow (QuickBooks, 2021)
  • Immigrant business owners face 2-3% higher interest rates (Harvard Business School)
  • Small business owners often one week of revenue away from collapse

ABOUT ART CHANG: 

NYC Mayoral Candidate 2020 | Bankruptcy Survivor | Small Business Advocate | Women's Studies Major | Champion for Immigrant-Owned Businesses

Art learned the most important business lesson through bankruptcy: real currency isn't money—it's faith in people, confidence you instill in them, and genuine investment in their growth.

đź”— CONNECT with Art:
LinkedIn - http://linkedin.com/in/artchang
Medium - http://medium.com/@achangnyc
Instagram - http://instagram.com/achangnyc
The Tech Mayor Project - https://techmayor.nyc/
CACF: Coalition for Asian American Children and Families - http://cacf.org/

CHAPTERS: 1:00 Show Open And Guest Introduction 3:15 Why A Man Majored In Women's Studies 6:08 Growing Up Amid Racism And Trauma 10:22 Women's Studies As A Framework For Power 14:50 Running For Mayor And The Mic 16:22 Ranked Choice Voting And Power Sharing 20:30 Small Businesses As A Lifeline 24:40 COVID Exposed The Tech Gap 28:10 Storytelling As Survival For Founders 31:00 Privilege, Access, And Who Gets To Start 34:40 Self-Education And Business Basics 38:10 The First Company's Rise And Fall 42:20 Bankruptcy, Balance Sheets, And Capitalism 46:05 Community Value Capital Doesn't Count 49:20 Paying People Back And Earning Trust 52:05 Beyond Networking: Give Before

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SPEAKER_00:

When I knew I was going bankrupt, I told my employees, and I said, you should all find new jobs. You know, we don't have we don't have enough ability to pay you. Some of them stayed until the lights went out.

SPEAKER_03:

Wow. Why?

SPEAKER_00:

To support me. And you know, when you do that and you realize that the currency in business is not just money. It's your faith in people, the confidence you instill in them, the gifts that you give them by helping them grow and keeping them safe and looking out for them that really come back and pay dividends for the rest of your life.

SPEAKER_04:

That art leads so beautifully to one of the things I actually admire the most about you. You're listening to Madam Speaker Says. Your no-fluffed cheat code to becoming the voice everyone listens to. I'm your host, Marcel Hodi. If you've been waiting for permission slip to straighten your crown and take up space, like you invented the blueprint, Madam Speaker Says got you covered. No whispers, no apologies. You, me, and some bold ass moves. Let's get into it. Welcome everybody. You are listening to Madam Speaker Says. I'm your host, I am Marco Khodi, and I'm so thrilled to have you join us here today. We are speaking to the human being whose opinion matters so much when I am making a big decision, right? And when I'm making a decision that feels like, oh my god, what happens next? And how do I think about so many different pieces of information and think about them strategically? This is the human being I want to get on the phone. And this is also a human being who I have experienced as the mayor of New York. He actually ran for the mayor of New York, and we're gonna get into that in just a hot second. But the thing that I want you to know the most about Art Chang is this is the kind of human being who invites you into their home, right? I've been to Art's home in Brooklyn, and art makes you not only feel super welcome, but then he's also like, hey, why don't you just come over? Like always. And you know, you can just you this is your home, literally. This is somebody who takes that so deeply to heart. This is somebody who I thought one of the most interesting things, Art, about your campaign was how you centered the small businesses, right? Like really going on a listening campaign and really bothering about folks who are not necessarily the headlines of the New York Times. You really got intimate with those people's stories. And I'm so thrilled to have you here today for this particular conversation. This human being is here to talk about all the yummy things, and we are about to get into it. So grab your notebook, listen really closely because we have art here, and this is gonna be good, including how to run one of the most interesting and dynamic campaigns for the mayor of New York City, and also how to live through your city and lead in a time when it feels like your city is under siege. So, art, welcome, first of all. It's so lovely to see you.

SPEAKER_00:

So lovely to see you. I can't I can't see you enough.

SPEAKER_04:

Well, you're gonna have to come to Oaxaca. We'll have to do something about that. Well, that's a deal. My very first question, I am going to take you back some decades, some years, and we are on the campus of Yale University, where you graduated. I'm bringing this up. Yes, it's a fancy degree and all of that, but the thing that actually fascinates me the most is here you are, you're probably like what, 19, 20, and you decide of all the things you could decide on Yale's campus, that I'm going to be a woman's studies major, right? You're only the second person in the entire history. Folks, anybody listening, this is hundreds of years of history, okay, that Yale has behind it. Here comes Art Chang, this adorable young Korean-American young man strapping, and he's like, hi, hi, hi, raises his hand. I want to be a woman studies major. So for me, number one, that tells me a lot about who you are. You're only the second person in the entire history of the institution as a man to choose this particular route for yourself. But then it makes me wonder for somebody like that, when you think about thought leadership in the context of our times, why is that an important pursuit, especially for people who are coming at it from the margins, who came to a place like Yale University and they didn't see 500 others who looked just like them, spoke just like them, or thought apparently there was only one other before you who thought just like you.

SPEAKER_00:

Well, it's funny, you know. Um, I say that I'm the second because I don't know for sure that I was the first. But when I asked the program director who I'm still in touch with, Helene Wenzel, she can't remember another one.

SPEAKER_03:

Wow.

SPEAKER_00:

So um uh whatever it was, it was it was very pioneering and um a little bit insane. Um, but uh but I think it's I think the story of how I got there is actually very instructive and interesting. Um so I grew up in Ohio in an all-white town in Akron, Ohio, in an all-white school district, where we were the only family of color. And um uh when I would leave the house, I was subject to the taunts and racism of my community. And then when I come home, um I would wonder if my mother was going to be alive because of the domestic violence at home. What I'd like to say is that my parents came from Korea and they came after the Korean War. Um, they escaped from the war, but they brought the war home with them. So it's we're all kind of part of this intergenerational trauma. And for Korea in particular, that trauma began centuries ago. But in the most recent memory, it began with the Japanese occupation of Korea in the early 1920s and um then continued until the end of the World War II, and then shortly afterwards the Korean War broke out. So um here I am, you know, the the child of people who fled the war, and living in this all-white community and going, What am I doing here? What am I doing here? How did I get here? Why is my community so broken? Why is my family so broken? And realizing even as a little boy, that I could do nothing to fix those things. But what I could do is remember how to think about a better world that I could have when I grew up, which is really the first key to resilience. Now, my mom was a very determined person. She was herself in the second class of women to graduate from medical school in Korea.

SPEAKER_03:

Wow.

SPEAKER_00:

Um, her father was unique in that he believed that in order for there to be an equal and prosperous Korea, women had to be educated just like men. But even more importantly, he instilled in my mom and her sisters the fact that women had to work twice as hard to get half the credit. So she had this work ethic instilled in her. And so for her, um, who you know, her her, she lost everything after the Korean War. Her family fortune was gone. And um she her father was assassinated when she was when she was 16 because of his views. And um I was left with this sense that I was supposed to reclaim the lost family reputation, fame, and fortune, and ultimately go back to Korea and become president.

SPEAKER_04:

No small feat.

SPEAKER_00:

No, it was a very specific path.

SPEAKER_04:

Very light expectations, very light expectations.

SPEAKER_00:

So I got when I got to Yale, um, you know, I would my expectation for myself, which I got from my mom, was that I was going to become a pre-med. And then I was going to go to Harvard Medical School, and then I was going to uh you know have an illustrious career that would bring me bring me back to Korea. And just also as a note, I don't speak Korean. And I also, you know, was as separated from Korean culture as any white American.

SPEAKER_04:

But you'd be a great president of Korea.

SPEAKER_00:

I'd be great. That's because I look like everybody else. So but in in so in in at Yale, you know, I got there full of trauma. The trauma of my childhood, the trauma of the pressure, the trauma of my community, my family. And I got to Yale and um I started taking pre-med courses, and I just couldn't figure out who I was. And so I saw this course in the catalog, Introduction to Women's Studies, and I walk in, and the first thing one of the students says, turns to the turns to the professor, and she says, What is that man doing in my class? And I am very used to being rejected, and so I thought, I'm gonna sit here, sit here and see what happens. And uh it was an absolutely amazing program. It was an amazing time to do it, amazing insights that have really um continued to build through the rest of my career. And now at 62, I look at that and I go, well, that was really one of the best decisions I ever made. There are a couple things there um that are very kind of fitting with my personality. Um, number one, the program was only a couple years old. So this was like the beginning of women's studies as a pedagogy.

SPEAKER_04:

What year was this? I'm not sure.

SPEAKER_00:

Um I was born. Yes.

SPEAKER_04:

There you go.

SPEAKER_00:

Um yeah, so 1982. Um, the professors who were there were writing some of the foundational books and doing some of the foundational thinking in women's and gender studies. Um, it was really a super exciting time. People were, you know, the you know, the entire women's liberation movement was in full swing. Um, there's a lot of discussion about the recognition of the women's movement and how it had also brought with it racism, implicit racism, implicit bias. Um, and um needed had a lot of work to do. So this is like very interesting from all kinds of different angles. And kind of like my my grandfather with his daughters, the professors in the women's studies program also had a bit of a chip on their shoulder. And so they felt like they had to be twice as good as the other professors to get half the credit. And so the courses were unbelievably demanding. Um, the volume of work, the expectations were um, in some cases pretty excruciating, but so exciting because it was all very new, and you felt like there was a social cause behind it. So understanding myself and kind of like where I came from this whole novelty, you know, the newness of this um was certainly important. But you know, it really helped me understand myself. And you can imagine here I am, this um Korean American man. Yale at the time had less than 2% Asians in the student body. You know, my my Ohio had a 0.02% 0.00 Archang. Yes. And um, when I was born in Jim Crow, Atlanta, Georgia had a 0.001% Asian population. So we're talking about a time when there were also not very many Asians, and so really I didn't fit in anywhere. So, you know, what women's studies did for me, which I think was a little bit unintentional, was it gave me a way to have an architectural view of the entire world. You had men, you had women, you had straight, you had gay, and you had everything in between. Um, you had people, you had race, economic class, religion, national origin, culture, all these things that actually separate people from each other.

SPEAKER_02:

Yes.

SPEAKER_00:

And so nobody actually fits neatly into any box because everybody occupies a number of different boxes. And so you get this view of this world, which is very, very dynamic because everybody is different. And so it gives you a way, a very disciplined way to understand people, to understand communities, to understand how they function, and to understand the differences between them and why conflicts might arise. So that that that was just foundational. I think you know, of anything that I've studied, that was the most important thing that I've learned.

SPEAKER_04:

How did it inform? Let's fast forward a minute, right? And by a minute I mean a few decades. Here you are, you're running for mayor in New York City. How did it inform the importance of understanding who gets to dominate the mic, right? I mean, I think one of the things that I think is fascinating about the male race in New York City is it intersects all of those different kinds of humanity that you just talked about, right? I mean, New York City has every class, every ethnicity, every, every, every, every different combination of humanity, right? Every intersection, if we borrow from Kimberly Crenshaw. What I want to understand is when you're running for that seat and you have that type of training behind you, how did it inform for you? Okay, here's here's the here's how it's rigged or here's how it's stacked. Some people are much more powerfully heard at the mic and others are not. How do we discern that? How do we shift that? And how do we make room in seats of power for more people who haven't been heard to be the ones who get to be the loudest at the mic?

SPEAKER_00:

It's such a good question. You know, when I ran four years ago, it was the first time that a type of voting called ranked choice voting went into place. And in ranked choice voting, every voter had a choice of up to five candidates. And you put them in your order of preference. And the way it worked is that that all every every first position would be counted, and then somebody would be declared the winner of that first slot, the bottom person would be ejected, and so on and so forth until there are winners. So there were 13 of us who were on the ballot. Um, and there were five women on the ballot, and they represented a cross-section of New York City. Black, brown, white, um, professional government experience, nonprofit experience. Um, and it was really a privilege to be in a race with with you know the the the other other the other the other um candidates. Um, but a lot of the things actually still a lot of the traits and a lot of the commonalities, I think, of pre prior elections um were really clear. So for example, you know, in ranked choice voting, like we saw with Zoran Mamdani and Brad Lander, that that forming a slate is very powerful because it can get voters to gravitate around two candidates and rank the two candidates next to each other. In my election, there was no cross endorsement except for me. I endorsed another candidate who was a black woman. Um, we were some of the lesser candidates. Um and I tried to get other candidates who shared my political views and policy proposals to cross-endorse with me. But nobody would do that. Nobody would even have a conversation about that because they were so determined to win the old school way.

SPEAKER_04:

And for folks who are listening, this is a very different voting system because it's thinking about the votes and thinking about the voter as somebody who is interested in values as opposed to a winner takes all, right? So the folks who kind of collaborate together, if you if you and I collaborate together, I'm using that in air quotations for anyone who's just listening. If you and I are on the ballot and we're collaborating together, that means if I lose, all of my votes go to you, art. So it eliminates this thing of winner takes all, but the winner won by like basically nobody would vote for any, you know what I mean? Like they got the least votes of everybody, but they win anyways, which is the national election.

SPEAKER_00:

Yes, yes. So we'll be in the past, you know, the the mayoral candidate would win with 25% of the vote, for example.

SPEAKER_04:

Exactly.

SPEAKER_00:

And um is that democratic? You know, I would argue that it's not. Um, we have uh we have some debate around this ranked choice voting system uh going forward, but I think it's here to stay because it it people once your people are used to it, they like it. Because you know, you don't necessarily really know who your favorite favorite is. And so it gives you an opportunity to support multiple candidates.

SPEAKER_04:

And it also eliminates this very strange thing that the loudest people who are the most controversial, who say things often hateful, become the ones who, again, they dominate the microphone. And, you know, the candidates who are value-driven don't necessarily always know how to dominate the microphone the same way, and the votes go the other way. Okay, let's switch gears because this is not a political podcast at all. But I am interested in your time running, and one of the things that I'm really interested in is the businesses that you spoke to, right? The many small businesses that you're an advocate of. And also you're somebody who ran with a really diverse experience. You have worked in the private sector, you've worked in the public sector. Right now, you are heading up a program at Columbia. And what I was so fascinated by is you've founded and led 12 companies yourself, small companies, right? Small businesses. What I want to understand, Art, is when small business leaders, especially or founders, the folks that you're working with at Columbia, they're not necessarily all founders, but they are definitely people who are leaders. What's at stake? How do you help them understand what's at stake when they're open their mouths to speak? And how do you train them for the kind of public speaking that is just it's common parlance? If you're going to lead, you're going to speak, right? Not necessarily everybody is going to be doing it on the platform of I'm running for mayor, but everybody does it. And you certainly know this, having run 12 companies. How do you prepare for that? What's important to know? And how how did you see that playing with all the many different companies you were working with?

SPEAKER_00:

Companies are as different as people are. And when you take people and their desire to start a company, they start for any number of different reasons. Um I would yeah, I would venture to guess that the majority of people who start companies have no intention of becoming wealthy. They're doing it to support their family and themselves and provide value to their community, whatever it is. And they think about um delivering a service that enables them to make a living and have dignity um and uh you know be able to be independent. You know, when you look at New York, for example, um over 70% of um businesses are these tiny, what we call micro businesses, a single owner, single proprietor, they're making less than you know, a million dollars a year. Um, it's it's uh it's a it's a huge amount of effort for not a lot in return. And so you think about who actually does this, right? People do this generally not because it's their first choice, they do it because it is their only choice. Immigrants who come from another country, who don't have the language, or don't have educational requirements that satisfy large corporations or government, um, who may be undocumented, um, are not going to go and go work for a large company and have a salary and all the benefits. They're going to do the thing that actually is within their reach, whether it's a food cart, um, whether it's a rentals, um, you know, shop inside of a mall, whether it's something a storefront on a street, a tiny restaurant. Um, these are the people who are trying to get something, get some hold on the American dream. And this is something that I feel so intrinsically because of where I come from. You know, I'm I am, you know, I people look at me and they go, oh, here, you know, you're like this model minority guy. You you went to these fancy schools, you you know, had these fancy jobs, you made money, you're obviously had born with a silver spoon in your mouth. But what people don't understand is that I'm actually like the people who are the immigrants. I have gone bankrupt, I've lost everything, I have had housing insecurity, I have experienced not being able to buy food or pay the rent, and actually not even having a subway token to go on the subway. And when you experience this level of poverty, you understand the challenges that people are are dealing with and how they're grasping at these straws, you know, to build themselves up through these small businesses. It is a lifeline, it's a way of actually trying to make a difference for themselves and more importantly for the next generation to come. So I see that. Um, I also see people who are, you know, you know, you work do backbreaking work. You know, a typical immigrant, you know, restaurant owner comes to work at five or six in the morning and then they go home at 10 or 11 or midnight, seven days a week, sometimes all cash businesses. And you saw really the impact of this during COVID when areas like Chinatown in Manhattan lost 98% of their revenue. 98% of their revenue. And what you discovered is that, contrary to people's perception of Asians, that actually most of those small restaurant owners or store owners in in Chinatown didn't know technology. They didn't even have internet, they couldn't accept credit cards, they weren't set up properly, so they couldn't get government relief, they didn't have people on payroll, so there was no way to document the relief for their workers or for themselves. So we have this thing that called small businesses that people think of in this very romantic ideal. But we are talking about people who are barely, you know, a week's worth of revenue away from being unhoused or unfed, and they are desperate to keep their heads above water so they can feed their families.

SPEAKER_04:

And that picture is so detailed, it's so pregnant. Like we can see what you're talking about, right? It's very far from the romantic that you're describing, or rather, that we have in our imagination of, oh, I'm gonna start a small business, great, ring bells, Instagram, blah, blah, blah. What I want to understand too is the bridge between that level of eking out a living, not just for yourself, but usually there's an entire community that depends on this, right? And the storytelling that is necessary to keeping the lights on, the storytelling that is necessary to convincing the government or whoever else that, yo, we actually, we, yeah, we're we're minorities, but not in the model minority way that you think of, in this particular way of I'm owning the small business, but I'm struggling, right? And it's not only communicating the struggle, but it's how do you communicate the fullness of what it means to own a business, especially when you're in front of clients. Not everybody who's listening to this podcast is necessarily that type of entrepreneur. Some of them are really sophisticated entrepreneurs. And what I'm asking is in your experience, what have you learned that's the bridge between, yes, the nuts and bolts matter so much, and this better be a way towards creating revenue because that's what our business is to support our family. But how do I get these skills that are about the storytelling, which gets the traffic in the door?

SPEAKER_00:

That is such a you're hit, you're you're hitting the nail head the nail on the head for one of the major issues that affect um micro businesses and their opportunities to grow. Um, most people aren't really trained in storytelling. Some people are natural storytellers. That gives them that's a gift, it gives them an advantage. But most people are not. And when you're separated by language and culture, it's extraordinarily difficult. And you see this even with within immigrant communities. You know, the the entrepreneur who got a college degree in their home country and they come here and they open up a greengrocer or they open up a gas station, well, they have already a leg up. They may look like every other immigrant entrepreneur, but because of the added entitlements that they had from where they come from, they are already much further along in the game. And you see this a lot. Like you, you know, back when I first moved to New York in the 80s, you saw Korean green groceries, you go talk to them. Well, they were former accountants and doctors. They weren't people who came from who were peasants in Korea and came to this country and had the capital to start a grocery. Grocery store. They were so we have this again, this myth of people coming here and pulling themselves up by the bootstraps. It's not equal for everybody. And you bring the social constructs of where you come from to this country, and they give you the same relative benefits or disadvantages that you had in your home country. So, you know, when I look at people, for example, and we started off with you asked a question about my program at Colombia. So my program at Columbia cost$70,000 a year.$70,000 a year.

SPEAKER_04:

In 1982.

SPEAKER_00:

This is now. This is now.

SPEAKER_04:

In Colombia, got it.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, but Colombia. So um, and there are almost no scholarships. So who can afford this? Right? Mid-career people who, you know, will take can take out take out a loan and think about the benefit for their careers, people whose parents are wealthy, who send them here for education to get a Columbia degree. Um, they're already coming from privilege. And so what I think about, and you look at the startup entrepreneurs, you know, why are they mostly white? Why are they mostly men? Why are they mostly coming from some of the more elite schools? It's because they already have advantages. They're not afraid to start because they don't have anything to lose because they will be backstopped. So um there's this candidate for um Senate in uh in uh Texas, James Tallerico, and he is he has this famous quote. He says, The difference between right and left is not as big as a gap between billionaires and everybody else. This privilege, this intrinsic privilege that you have from how where you're born gives you such an advantage. So I told a story about being hungry and broke and all those things. But the fact that my mom went to college, yes, my dad had a PhD, yes, my dad had a PhD, right? You know, and so I struggled, but I felt like I had it, I had the American dream in my reach. So even though I failed and it cost me personally, it was something that I had an easier time to recover from. I always had the Yale degree. You know, when somebody who has nothing fails, they don't have that asset to fall back on. So we we again we love everybody in the same, same, same, same, same set of circumstances, and it's just not true. It's just not equal. The level of education that it takes to bring somebody who is running a food cart to somebody who can build a multi-million dollar franchise business is so vast that it's almost unimaginable.

SPEAKER_04:

This is true, Art. And you know, it's it's you having a lot of self-awareness about where you are now versus where you are when you failed, as those are the words that you're using. And in a heartbeat, I want I do want to talk about that because I think there's a lot of rich lessons for people there. But what I want to ask you is for the person who's listening and did not get the elite education, does not have parents who are plugged in, does not even have parents who are immigrants to the United States, who back in the old country, wherever they came from, were accountants and lawyers. I mean, there's so many people who are listening who don't have the kinds of privileges that make it make failing and coming back a little bit easier. What I want to understand is number one, I'm not even gonna ask you as a question because I know that this is true, that that person still has a chance, right, to be the thought leader, to be the advocate to start the business that actually outcompetes all of the tech bros that we're talking about. Um, what I want to understand is, but what does that take, right? If you don't have all of the things that we're talking about that are like, okay, here's some of the shortcuts, which are not even something that you do anything about. I mean, that's privilege that's handed to you. What have you seen in your many decades in different industries that are like, but the things that anybody can have access to, here's what they look like.

SPEAKER_00:

Right. It's important to note that I never studied business.

SPEAKER_04:

Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_00:

I never studied business.

SPEAKER_04:

Um, you studied women's studies.

SPEAKER_00:

I studied women's studies. Um, so I I studied people.

SPEAKER_04:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

And um, I went to college full-time at Yale, and and the other thing is people see Yale and they don't realize that I worked two full-time jobs when I was in college. I worked 40 to 60 hours a week, sometimes 80 hours a week, so I could pay my part of the tuition and pay for my living expenses. So um it was an excruciatingly painful time. Um, you know, four years of getting four hours of sleep a night on average. Um, and I'd say that um even that I graduated with really no understanding of business um from a nuts and bolts perspective. I understood it as a person who worked my way up from washing dishes at a restaurant to waiting tables and bartending. I understand it from the person who cleaned offices at an architecture firm, and then worked my way up to being a designer. Um, but I don't know it from you know the kind of formal training that people might get who go to business school. But because you don't go to business school doesn't mean that you can't give yourself business knowledge. And today it is more easier than it ever was. When I started off and thought about my first business, I subscribed to the Wall Street Journal in paper, and I read it. I took a marker, I would circle terms I didn't know. Then I had a financial dictionary in paper, and I'd look up the terms I didn't know. And then I'd had another book about how you like how you know what business things mean, and I would study that. And so every day I would study these things to try to figure out how to how how the world worked. And I'd ask myself these questions: what is revenue? What are expenses? What is a company? What's a corporation, right, versus a sole proprietorship? Why are they different? Why do you have to choose? You know, these are things like if you go to school, you learn these things because they're spoon-fed to you. But when you are a person who is trying to do something, and you ask yourself these questions, right? What's in it for me? What do I actually own? If I have partners, what happens if we don't get along? What happens if partners don't fail to do their part of the work? What happens if I fail to do my part of the work? What happens if I want to leave the business? There are all these common sense questions that once you think about, they actually have practical answers in what happens based upon different ways that businesses are set up. So any human being can do this. And now, thanks to the internet, and um, I will actually put a plug-in for AI that with AI, it is easier than ever before to understand how to do things and put them together. The platforms, the tools, setting up an accounting system, uh a digital bank account, a payment platform, a CRM, these are now available in very small sizes, easy to use and available to almost anybody. You don't need a college degree to get those things or to understand them. But you have to put in the work. You cannot just say, I'm gonna set up a business and then just throw all these things together without really understanding what you're doing, because then you're putting yourself in the same place that I was when I said I started the business that went bankrupt.

SPEAKER_04:

So, what I'm hearing you say for the person who's listening is it is very different today. Yes, privilege gets you a lot further than should be the case, right? Not everybody has the same starting point. But because of what we have available at our fingertips through these little nifty gifts here, these little phones, even though we all know these phones come with a lot of caveats, footnotes, don't do this, don't do that. The access that we have available to us is enormous. And it it's enough to not stop anybody, regardless of what kind of circumstance they come from. I want to talk about this moment we keep alluding to. You're 27 years old. You've just started your company. It's your very first company, am I right?

SPEAKER_00:

That's right.

SPEAKER_04:

And you experience a huge F. Like walk us through that. What happened? And most importantly, what did you learn? What did you learn from failing and failing that hard and that young? In a lot of ways, I think it's a gift to fail really hard when you're young. What did you learn for yourself and especially things that feel applicable to other folks who are leaders, who are leading things that they've never seen done before necessarily? That's one of the things that you spoke about. I hadn't seen the inner mechanics of what a business actually is, apart from working as a dishwasher and then working my way up to being the front of the house. There are a lot of people who are listening who have similar experiences. They're doing like they're literally building the ship as it sails. And they're like, holy mother of all the things, this thing better hold up. And we don't want those people to file for bankruptcy. So tell us what you learned and what that experience was for you. While he is grabbing his water, let me tell you about a beautiful, okay? And when I say beautiful, I mean like this is the T. There is a quiz that walks you through the type of leadership architect that you have as a thought leader, and it also tells you how to maximize your strength and the moments and the places where you might actually need a little bit of support as a thought leader. It is a really fun, intriguing, it's a game-driven quiz. I highly recommend you check it out. The notes are in the show notes. If you're curious about that, check it out. Take the quiz, learn what kind of thought leader you are, and definitely learn the weaknesses that might prevent you from, you know, walking into your very first big fail as the leader. And the weaknesses are also the strengths, right? So let's be clear about that. We're going to hear in just a second from Art what his learnings were, but I wanna be, I wanna be so clear about this because I found in my own life art, the moments where I failed were so fucking painful at the time. And some of them were in business, but those are the moments that have actually prepared me the best for life. So I don't even know that I can count them as weaknesses or as failures. Now, I mean, sometimes on a bad day, don't ask me. But now when I think about them, I'm like, I'm actually, I actually, and I mean this, I have so much gratitude for the things that I went through that felt like this this is pretty hard.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah. You know, resilience. People say resilience comes from experiencing hard things. You don't get resilience from doing easy things. I guess it's from having pain and suffering and knowing that you can come back from that. So um so the business, oh my god, there's so many things I could talk about. Um I'll just kind of just start from the very beginning. So the I worked by that point, by 24, I had already worked for six years in architecture. Um, I had worked for a manufactured housing company. I built houses. Um I've I had built houses with my own hands. Um by that point I built 12 houses. Um I knew how to sell. I could convince people to buy things, I could convince workers to do things, to collaborate and produce something that was meaningful to somebody else. And so I looked at the world and I said, well, you know, there's this big problem. There's this gap between owners, contractors, and architects, where they don't speak each the same language, they don't coordinate, they don't collaborate. And so okay. When I started this business, I already had a number of years of experience um dealing with this very complicated intersection between three different customer types: the owner of a real estate project, the designer of the real estate project, and the builder of the real estate project. And it felt very familiar to me. And I believed that I could solve the problem by getting everybody to collaborate, by being able to see things before they were being built, and to take this more iterative approach toward construction. Um, I was very successful in selling that concept and that dream. Um, too successful. And uh in my second year in business, um, I had gross to over a million dollars in revenue. Um, I was getting new clients left and right. Um, my biggest client was Bill Cosby's business manager, and through her, I picked up a lot of their work in the tri-state area. Um, I at one point I had a hundred um contractors working on different job sites. So I felt like the king of the mountain. And for myself, I felt like I was on my way to achieving my mom's dream of restoring the family fame and fortune, doing it in my own way, and becoming the president of Korea. Exactly, exactly. Maybe not through medicine, but through but through through through through construction and design. Um and uh because I was being so successful, um I um had the hubris and the overconfidence of youth. And I said, I don't need advice from anybody.

SPEAKER_04:

Who does?

SPEAKER_00:

I know everything, everything is is possible, and um so I just grew and grew and grew and grew and didn't mind the business fundamentals. And then one day um one of my clients went bankrupt and didn't pay me over$500,000 worth of invoices, which I also had to turn around and pay other people. And um, I couldn't pay my employees, I couldn't play pay anybody. And um uh very quickly, I mean it became clear within days that I had to declare bankruptcy or um uh in order to protect myself um from the liabilities. Um and it was so painful and so interesting at the same time. When you're when you're when you're when you're a child of trauma, one of the things, um, and you may relate to this, when you see terrible things happening in front of your eyes, you become very adept at actually putting yourself in a different space, getting your mind in a different space, dissociation.

SPEAKER_04:

Hello, my friend.

SPEAKER_00:

So you become expert in looking down at the world with yourself in the in the scene, yes, but you're disembodied from what's going on, yes, which protects yourself emotionally, and so in this moment, I was able to leverage that as a skill and look down on the situation of this bankruptcy and realize that this was an amazing experience, amazing, and I was able to look at myself from the distance and say, Whoa, dude, you're really fucked up with compassion, pardon, with compassion at the time, um yeah. I mean, I kind of laugh. I mean, I still still do to this day. Like I make mistakes and I kind of laugh at myself at the same time. I'm super embarrassed.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

Um, and you I realize how many of these mistakes actually come from um the childhood trauma, you know, that um, you know, um I was punished for asking questions when I was a kid. Um, I was always trying to solve the relationships between people. I knew I couldn't then, so I tried to do it as an adult. Um, I um was really good at convincing people because that was also a tool for survival. And I knew how to, you know, build a team and a community because that was also another survival trait. Um, so I was able to look at this and go, well, wow, there are some things that you did that were terrible, and but I can understand why. And there are things that you did that were amazing and why you were so successful. And you can continue to build on that. Um, and you know, there's and this is going to be a very obscure reference that most people probably won't understand, but there is no better way to understand capitalism than to go bankrupt.

SPEAKER_04:

Hmm, say more.

SPEAKER_00:

Because in capitalism is actually not based upon the revenue. Capitalism is actually based upon something called the balance sheet. And in the balance sheet, it's all about your assets, which are the things that you own, right? They're they could be tangible, like buildings and cars and land, it could be intangible, things like intellectual property, patents, trademarks, but the assets are the things that you own. And then your liabilities are the things that you owe. Things that you owe. And so when you have a healthy balance sheet, your assets are greater than your liabilities, and that results in shareholder value. So capitalists are not actually as focused on profits, they're focused on building assets. So when you look at the world, and the world tells you that, oh, look, Asian people are making more money. Or black people, look at the income of black people. It's rate, it's it's it's it's we're we're we're it's growing. Well, then look at their asset value. We are not building asset value the same way that white people have built asset value.

SPEAKER_04:

But at the same time, I mean that's a really, really interesting point, right? And I want to get back to the bankruptcy and what it taught you because I think there's some real nuggets there. But one of the things that I think is also very telling about what you just said is capitalism is not so invested in creating value, right? The thing that is very different from the kinds of businesses that you described at the very beginning that are about we're here to feed our families, we're here to take care of this community, we're here to make sure that the 50 people who lean on me in my village back home, those kids need to go to school. Okay. So this business, it has to be profitable. And this business has to create value where the customers, when they're coming in, they're super happy and like their grins are through their faces every single time they leave. It's a very, very different premise and understanding of why I'm in business versus this other thing that's like, let me just hold as much as I can. Very different. But I do respect what you're saying for our communities, for the kind of wealth that matters for our communities, we do need to think about assets. We do need to think about our wealth in a way that's very different from, okay, I now have more income than I did last year. Yay for me. That's not necessarily going to create the kind of abundance for our communities that to me is actually going to free us from capitalism in the first place.

SPEAKER_00:

Yes. I'm anti-extractive capitalism the way it is today, where so much of it is about taking money away from people, uh, taking assets away from people, taking value away from people. You know, go back to the initial example of this small store owner. Your corner bodega or coffee shop, the place you go nearly every day, and they know your name and they know what you want. And so they always make sure that they have what you what you need. They're they're amazing businesses, absolutely amazing businesses. We don't have a way in capitalism of valuing the asset that is that business, because community value has no asset value. It doesn't have a financial term to it. Yes. And in many countries in Western, in Western Europe in particular, there are protections for comp for businesses, small businesses that have been there for generations who are part of the community fabric. In Japan, if you're an artisan of a certain type, you are protected because that is essential to the community fabric of the country.

SPEAKER_04:

Yes.

SPEAKER_00:

So you know, we don't have that in our system of accounting. And so it's a missing piece.

SPEAKER_04:

And it's broken for that. The system is broken for that.

SPEAKER_00:

Yes, 100%.

SPEAKER_04:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

So, you know, back to the things I've learned. I mean, I I learned um um uh some really hard lessons um that uh have stayed with me to this day. Um I learned um um, you know, I owed my own my employees um back wages when I went bankrupt. Four years after I went bankrupt, I finally got a payout from the bankruptcy court from my client. I was able to pay back the back wages for all my employees. They never thought they'd see the money. Um when I knew I was going bankrupt, I told my employees and I said, You should all find new jobs. You know, we don't we don't have enough ability to pay you. Some of them stayed until the lights went out.

SPEAKER_03:

Wow. Why?

SPEAKER_00:

To support me. And you know, when you do that and you realize that the currency in business is not just money, it's your faith in people, the confidence you instill in them, the gifts that you give them by helping them grow and keeping them safe and looking out for them, that really come back and pay dividends, you know, for the rest of your life.

SPEAKER_04:

That art leads so beautifully to one of the things I actually admire the most about you. I have seen you, you know, I've known you now for over a decade, and I've seen you in professional settings, I've also seen you in social settings where you literally are the mayor of whatever space you're in. It's so interesting to learn about the family story where your mother expected you to become the president of Korea, because the way that I've experienced this really seismic thing that you're saying, right? How people, how you put faith in other human beings, how you make other human beings see and believe in you. That's something that I've experienced in you. And the the word that we often use to describe it is, oh my God, he's a master networker. I think that's a really cheap way of describing the kind of community thing that I see at play. And I'm joking when I say, oh my god, he's the mayor of every space I walk into, but I'm not joking because you are masterful at that. And to me, that's one of the most important things that you need to learn to cultivate if you're really serious about becoming a thought leader of any kind or a leader full stop of any kind. What is the masterclass in three minutes? On how do you, and I mean, I think just through this conversation we've learned, right? You are a studier of people, you're somebody who one of the things I wanted to call out, which I thought was so important for people to really take in, how do you take your trauma and turn that into something that is a tool, something that's actually an asset, which is what you did through the bankruptcy. But if you describe for yourself this mega thing that you're brilliant at, at bringing people together and connecting with many different kinds of people, how do you how would you teach that to somebody else at Colombia?

SPEAKER_00:

I I did I did teach it to people at Columbia, but it's not by making it explicit, it's by making it implicit. So um I have this exercise at the beginning of every cohort where you know um we do some fun things together, we get to know each other. But one of the most moving experiences is I ask everybody to tell their origin story. Where did you grow up? Your parents, what were you like when you were a child? What did you dream about? What were your hopes and your fears? And everybody would have five or ten minutes to talk, and people would go around. And I would always always kick it off because I'm very transparent about my own past and struggles. Um people, so that set a tone for the cohort, and people would tell things to the group that they wouldn't had never never told anybody, and so with that comes immediate trust because you are risking opening your vulnerabilities up and and hoping that other people would treat that with care and respect and um and give it what it was give it, give it the value that it had. And you find that almost everybody does. Almost everybody does. And the beautiful thing about this is that you know, this kind of deep relationship that you have with people is something that um can build upon in ways that are really Incredible. Um, I met you in a c in a program at NYU. Um, I got to know you. I think we probably had one very, very um deep conversation at the very beginning that allowed us to really get to know each other. Um I have those conversations with people. You know, I'm really interested. You know, I learned that if you want to be interesting, you have to be interested. And if you're not interested, you will never be interesting. Yes, and so it's not about you, it's about them. And so the gift that everybody can give to the other person is to have a genuine interest in where they come from, how they got to where they are today, where do they want to go? What's holding them back, and how can I help? I love that. You can't get until you give.

SPEAKER_04:

Yes.

SPEAKER_00:

Networking is transactional because there it implies an equality in the get versus give. You get I give. You get, I give, I give, you get. It's it's it's this kind of exchange of value that reduces human relationships down to accounting. When you just give and give and give and give, and then you might get something back that is unbelievable because you will never have expected it. And people are not necessarily in a position to give, right? But they will remember. It's really the key to life, it's the key to friendships, it's a key to relationships. So, like Magahori, I will never forget you, I will always help you. You can always count on me, you can always have a place to sleep, things, food to eat, close to where folks. So you are my friend.

SPEAKER_04:

Thanks. I I appreciate that, and I know it, I know it to be true, not just a platitude, which is a very big difference.

SPEAKER_00:

And this will be true for as long as I live. And that's something people feel intrinsically. So I there are people like you, and I may not see you at there. I don't you know, I have seen you for a decade, and then all of a sudden it's as if we were never separated. Yes, yeah, right, yeah, because I know who you are and I know where you come from. I know you intrinsically, so it's just a storyline that has a pause in it.

SPEAKER_04:

Right, right, right. And you know, I I want to encourage people to really lean in and tap into that wisdom, the part that is about being more interested than being interesting in yourself, you know, like how do you approach the world with this kind of curiosity that art I've definitely seen you embody? And like I said, I admire it because I see how people are magnetized towards you because it's a genuine thing, it's not something that you're putting on because you're running for this office or you're doing this at Columbia. This is a way of life, and this is a way of life that manifests into so much beauty far beyond any one particular thing that you could have imagined. I want to close. And in closing, not only are we going to do a rapid fire to close, but I want to ground us in something so moving that you shared publicly. It's on LinkedIn. Follow our chang on LinkedIn and go to this post where this man talks about the moment you learned that your heart is tender, right? You went to the doctor, and the doctor told you you have a heart of an 86-year-old, and here you are, you're fifth, you're 62. You're 62. And I was so moved by that post, both by the transparency, but then also the courage of what it takes. And this goes back all the way back to when you were at Yale and you were the first or the second man ever to do their women's studies program. It goes to this thing of reimagining what masculinity can be, right? That actually we kind of need to be different. We need to show a radically different idea of who gets to lead and how, right? That you could put that information first of all out there and then have the audacity to say, no, it's our job to check in on one another, right? I mean, I was so moved by that. I want to acknowledge that post. I highly recommend people go out and read it and especially share it, share this particular conversation and art modeling of a different kind of masculinity with the men in your life who need to see a different kind of male leadership and thought leadership that looks completely different from anything that we've seen before. And like I said, I'm grounding these particular questions from that heart space, that open space and that really brave space. I am also flipping it because these questions are exactly the questions that you put to your students. So you have a word or three words at most to answer each of these questions. Today I am interested in keeping New York safe. What's holding you back right now? And what are you dreaming about?

SPEAKER_01:

Love.

SPEAKER_04:

Oh, that is the literally the most perfect answer. All right, Chang, this conversation has been so rich and so much of a blessing, and it feels like love. Thank you for being here.

SPEAKER_00:

Thank you so much for having me.

SPEAKER_04:

And thank you.

SPEAKER_00:

Always a pleasure.

SPEAKER_04:

Always, always a pleasure. And I will see you in New York. I'm coming to stay at your place. Thank you, everybody, for listening today. Hey, pull up, pull up, pull up. Just you and me for a second. Are you an exec, a founder, or an entrepreneur who's sick of shrinking in rooms you're overqualified to lead? It's time to stop playing small and start owning your expertise. But how, machodi? Girl, I got you. I offer coaching that helps women of color just like you to claim your place as a folk leader. Whether you want to command a room, craft and share your signature story, or finally get the book out of your head and on to book jobs. I've got the strategy and spicy accountability that you need. If you're tired of seeing less qualified folks chime while you stay behind the scenes, girl, the wait list is open. Follow the link in show notes to stop waiting for permission and claim your VIP spot now. My mission? Helping women just like you to snatch the spotlight, shake the table, and take your damn seat at the top already. No begging, no detours, and no, no apologies. Just bold as boost.

Head Shot

Magogodi

Host
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Art Chang

Guest