Embracing the Uncomfortable

Your background is really interesting and unique. You were born in Kuala Lumpur, then raised and educated in New York. How has your background influenced what you do at Poshmark?

That’s such a good question. My background contributes quite a bit. I would sum it up by saying that being born in Malaysia, I’m ethnically Chinese. Moving to America when I was very young and raised to be American, but I don’t look like a lot of the Americans that I grew up with. I’ve always felt that I was different from others. There are the mainstream folks that I saw on TV that I saw around me and then there was me. And I wanted to be mainstream but I didn’t look the part and play the part.
So, that was a lot of my background and how I saw the world as a child was really trying to understand, why are they eating what they’re eating? What is that? And what does it mean to go to a friend’s house and have an American dinner, when at home, we were using chopsticks and eating rice and they were eating pasta? So, I had to just always learn.
And I would say that that set me up very much to do what I do today. Which is, being able to not only hear the words that people are saying, but also being able to read very quickly how are they feeling when they’re saying that? What’s their body language? What are they saying that they’re not saying in words? I have developed all these antennas for that. So, I think I have to as a kid and I didn’t understand the language as well as my peers. So, I had to learn to understand.
So, that has helped me form this really deep empathy for the customer. And once you have that empathy for the customer, then you start to innovate and develop things as you think the customer wants them rather than the way they always have been.
And I would say the second thing that really helped me is because I got used to being a bit uncomfortable all the time. That really set me up for entrepreneurship where you just get comfortable with the discomfort. It buzzes a bit and then after some time it just quiets down and just becomes your normal every day.