Building an Empowered Brand Through Storytelling with Jerry Won
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Description
In a world where personal branding can shape our careers and amplify our voices, storytelling becomes a powerful tool for self-expression and impact. As a professional and advocate, I believe it's more important than ever to own and share our unique stories to connect, inspire, and lead with purpose.
In this episode of Branding Room Only, I’m joined by Jerry Won, an inspiring storyteller, keynote speaker, and founder of World Class Speakers, the Asian Creator Awards, and the Dear Asian Americans podcast. Jerry’s work resonates with me as he focuses on making everyone feel seen and heard through storytelling, empowering others to take their place on the stage with confidence and authenticity.
We discuss Jerry’s journey—from immigrating to the United States and navigating cultural expectations to breaking free from traditional paths and building platforms that amplify underrepresented voices. Join us as we explore the duty to “get loud” with our stories, the importance of embracing identity, and practical strategies for building a brand that’s both powerful and authentically you.
Chapters
1:12 - How Jerry defines personal branding
5:33 - The moment Jerry bet on himself and decided to anchor his career in his own story
7:36 - Why context in advice matters, especially for marginalized communities who are often misled by one-size-fits-all success stories
13:52 - Jerry's "duty to get loud"—why sharing your experiences helps others avoid struggling alone
22:03 - Jerry’s experience emigrating from Korea to California at 8 years old and the impact it had on his choices as a parent
35:23 - Building a business during the pandemic, the challenges Jerry faced, and how storytelling played a key role in his success
47:27 - How the next generation is breaking racial barriers, and why supporting them is more important than ever
52:47 - The one thing Jerry will never compromise on: staying true to himself, honoring his ancestors, and setting an example for future generations
Connect With Jerry Won
Jerry Won is a renowned keynote speaker and creative entrepreneur who speaks on
Storytelling, Personal Branding, and the Asian American Experience in the Workplace. He is the Founder & CEO of Just Like Media, an innovative storytelling company home to the award winning Dear Asian Americans Podcast, whose guests include Vice President Kamala Harris.
He is also Founder of World Class Speakers, a speaking coaching and events platform to lift up marginalized voices on stages all over the world.
His speaking clients include JPMorgan, Harvard Business School, Dartmouth Tuck, Google,
Pepsi, Meta, and more. In May of 2023, he was invited by The White House to host a
conversation with Vice President Harris at The White House Forum for Asian Americans, Native Hawaiians, and Pacific Islanders. He has been featured for his expertise in Forbes, Business Insider, LinkedIn, and more.
Jerry earned his B.S. from USC Marshall and MBA from Michigan Ross, where he served as
President of the Student Government Association. He lives in Southern California with his wife Kyunghwa and children.
Jerry Won | World Class Speakers | LinkedIn
Mentioned In Building an Empowered Brand Through Storytelling with Jerry Won
Minda Harts on The Branding Room Only
The Anti-Ableist Manifesto by Tiffany Yu
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Sponsor for this episode
This episode is brought to you by PGE Consulting Group LLC.
PGE Consulting Group LLC is dedicated to providing a practical hybrid of professional development training and diversity solutions. From speaking to consulting to programming and more, all services and resources are carefully tailored for each partner. Paula Edgar’s distinct expertise helps engage attendees and create lasting change for her clients.
To learn more about Paula and her services, go to www.paulaedgar.com or contact her at info@paulaedgar.com, and follow Paula Edgar and the PGE Consulting Group LLC on LinkedIn.
Transcript
Paula Edgar: Welcome to The Branding Room Only Podcast where we share career stories, strategies, and lessons learned on how industry leaders and influencers have built their personal brands. Now, let's get started with the show.
Hi everyone, it's Paula, your host of Branding Room Only. So excited for my conversation today with Jerry Won. Jerry is the founder of World Class Speakers, Asian Creator Awards, and the creator of Dear Asian American Podcast. He is a keynote speaker and coach who's worked with some of the world's leading brands like Google, JP Morgan, Harvard Business School, and The White House.
His mission is to make everyone feel seen and heard through stories told on stages, and to inspire them to take their own stages. So you know I'm ready to have this conversation. Jerry, welcome to The Branding Room.
Jerry Won: Thank you, Paula. I'm really glad to be here and thank you for creating a platform for all of us to share our stories and to build not only powerful but profitable brands centered on our own stories.
Paula Edgar: Oh, yes, I love that. Let's jump right in. This podcast is about personal branding. What does personal branding mean to you? How would you define it?
Jerry Won: Yeah, it's what people say about you. I think if we think about as children or as through life, starting with when we're children, other people tell our stories. Of course, it's our parents and our family who tell us how we behave and even so, we're so young, we don't even have our own memory. That then translates to our teachers and our caretakers, our coaches that say, “Oh, Paula's a great swimmer and Jerry's a great gymnast,” or whatever it is.
Then we get stories told about us and then the reputation builds. So at some point, I think people realize, “Hey, when do I get to have people think about me in the ways that I want?” If you think about that, we go through schooling, we go through counselors, we go through admissions people, and we get to college and beyond, and we get to recruiters and managers and promotion committees.
Many of us, too many of us, unfortunately, go through lives, our entire lives, having other people dictate only not we are known for, but the value that's attached to what we are known for. I think pre-internet, let's just call the internet one giant bubble, pre-internet that was more acceptable because there was really no pathway.
But with the advent of the internet and platforms that we know and use like LinkedIn, email, podcasts, we can really shape how people think about us, what we are known for, then ultimately, in the sense of building a business or even advancing in your own traditional career, how we get rewarded for those things.
Personal branding, I know it's a fancy buzzword and people describe it in different ways. But for me, it's what do people know you for and what are people willing to give you money for? Then you own that narrative.
Paula Edgar: I love that, I love that. Everybody listening right now, make sure that's a clip. That being said, in three words or phrases, how would you describe yourself and essentially what your brand is, what are you known for?
Jerry Won: Yeah it's been a long journey. So I am a storyteller. I am an empowerer and I am a builder. Again, I think I follow a lot of the scripts that were told to me. So I was born in Korea, came to the States when I was eight and shout out to all of our parents who did what they did and who did what they had to with limited information and in the best of their ability to craft a better life for us, and what parent doesn't?
But I think with the acceleration of technology and with the changes that immigrating to a new country does without the understanding of how things work, we were told a very specific version of success, which is study hard, focus on academics. We did clubs and sports only so that it would look good on a college app, but not to really exceed at it. It was just sort of, how do we get to the next level?
In many cultures and particularly in Korea, it was very sequential. You do this, you get to the next one. After you do that, you get to the next one. I don't think that my parents and many immigrant parents or many parents from marginalized backgrounds understand that that's not how America and particularly corporate America rewards its people.
So what we value, things like collectivism, being humble, and putting the team before me are things that are not necessarily rewarded. Again, I'm generalizing here. You might say, “Well, I have this story,” that's fine, I'm talking about how it is for most people. The data backs this up.
Why I share all this is that I don't think that many of us went through our lives understanding that our stories and our experiences and our perspectives had material value. We were told to suppress it. We were told to be a different person from nine to five, and then you can be yourself on the weekend.
But when you go to work, you be somebody else. You be the person that they want you to be, that they expect you to be. That was also, in my opinion, reinforced because that's what was rewarded. So words like assimilation or acceptance or belonging, all these things come into play.
It took me a long time. It took me about 20 years of navigating through different parts of corporate America, went to graduate school, did all the things that you're "supposed to do." Five years ago, I realized, "Hey, what's the one thing that I haven't tried?" Which was to bet on myself and to center and anchor my story and the stories of other people who look like me into both building something that was meaningful, but also marketable.
I grew up a lot thinking that leadership looked a certain way. I grew up a lot thinking that leadership was an objective definition because that's what we were taught. Then one day you realize that, "Hey, all the things that you were taught about leadership were both devised and taught and reinforced by people who have no idea what my life is like as an immigrant kid."
Paula Edgar: But look like you who have not--
Jerry Won: No, that don't look like me." Then look, I accept my privilege. I am an educated East Asian straight-born man. I am one thing away from the most privileged in this country. It's a big thing, but it's one identity piece. Then we look at you or we look at my wife, we look at other friends, if you, at the intersectionality and an intersection of all the different marginalized entities, you fall farther and further down the privilege scale that America brings to you.
To me, it's about understanding that and then understanding that while we can mope about that, which is you can mope for a little bit and get sad, but you also have to, on the same side of the coin, understand that that is so much empowerment in that because there are thousands, hundreds of thousands, millions of people that look like you, that look like me, that need to hear the story from you, that have to hear the story from me, because just like the advice that I was taking for myself in determining what corporate success looked like, what entrepreneurial success looked like, what life success looked like, the advice was tone deaf.
Because while the content might have been good, Paula, I think what it totally missed was context. Here's a phrase a lot of authors and speakers, they say, and they say, “If I can do it, you can do it.”
Paula Edgar: So can you.
Jerry Won. I say, “Okay, but I'm not a 6'5 tall, white guy.” That matters in this country. So again, this is not an attack against other people, but it is to understand that the source of the information has to be considered when you take the information to heart. I can say the same thing to Black women and they'll say, “What do you know, dude? You don't know my life,” which is fine and I don't know your life.
Therefore, I go to rooms and I know that I resonate in rooms with people that understand my background and you resonate with people with your background. There's this wonderful, wonderful clip. It's an interview with Denzel Washington. I think many people have seen this. It's made its way around the internet. He talks about this need for specific people from specific backgrounds to direct specific films.
The question was asked: did it have to be that a Black director like you made this movie? He goes, “It's not about color, but it's about culture.” He brought up parallel examples of how it had to be Steven Spielberg that made Schindler's List, and it had to be Martin Scorsese that made Goodfellas. Because it's not about who you are, it's about how you understand the perspective.
So the empowerment piece for me comes from then letting other people know it's not even a secret, but it's just there's this moment that I had where it's like, “Okay, I am not going to seek the biggest audience because the biggest audience, at least in this country, does not look like me. I'm going to seek audiences that come to me and that resonate with me, that light me up too, because I'm bringing them a different, contextually resonant version of the same story that other people have tried to tell.”
Paula Edgar: We jumped all the way forward and it's fine, but it sounds like you give people agency.
Jerry Won: That's the whole thing.
Paula Edgar: Right, to be able to say, “It's okay for my story to be at the forefront and to take center stage,” which I think, I'm also a child of immigrants, that having a stage and being told that there is value in your story, even if it's not what has been the American story is a wild thing. I find it so interesting, especially now, because obviously, we're in a state that's now where we're hearing about stories that we hadn't heard before in the political context.
Folks are taking center stage, which we'd never, I imagine, my family is from Jamaica as well, and I also have Asian folks in my family from Jamaica, it would never have been able to think, “Oh, my gosh, the potential president,” and hopefully [inaudible] the actual president will have had this background because our stories have not been at the forefront.
Jerry Won: Sure. I'll even take it a step further because you said it's okay. It's not only okay, it's necessary. I'm going to go deep, or you decide if I can go in deeper or not. But listen, here's the deal because we're all called minorities in this country as if that's an identity. That's a noun. I like the word minoritized because then it's an action that was levied against us. So we've been made to feel like a minority.
In the context of Asian folks on this planet, we're like 60%, and again, this is not to say, “Oh, we're not the majority,” that's not the point. But listen, we don't have to go very far back, maybe two generations. Our grandparents collectively, no matter where you came from, went through some stuff. A lot of stuff.
Whether you immigrated here, whether you're refugees, whether your ancestors beyond that were slaves in this country, we went through a lot of stuff for us to be here today. You gotta honor that. How are you going to honor that? Are you going to honor that by being scared of what your manager's going to tell you? Are you going to honor that by, and again, I'm not minimizing security, I'm not minimizing financial security, importantly, and physical safety, but a lot of too many people who have that checked off still play small and refuse to own their own story because of so many different reasons.
Paula Edgar: Playing small. Yeah, I remember when I was growing up, my parents would be like, "Chill out."
Jerry Won: Yeah, don't be extra.
Paula Edgar: No, like, “Chill out.” I know that that came from a place of fear.
Jerry Won: Oh, but also love, like don't stand out.
Paula Edgar: Right, right.
Jerry Won: Because in your culture in mind, if you stood out, you got whacked.
Paula Edgar: That was not invited. Sorry, y'all, but I’m not.
Jerry Won: It's not because, and again, not everybody listening is an entrepreneur, I get that. But you can take a little bit more ownership of your own career. You can take a little bit more ownership of your own families in your own communities and in whatever that you belong to, because it's not for you and it's not for your ancestors even, but it's for the people that are coming after you.
So all this clicked for me and I'm grateful that it clicked while I still had enough life to do this work. I'll pose a question to the audience and if you're listening, you can nod along. Have you—because I have and I'm sure Paula has—have you figured out some stuff in this life by yourself? There was no rule book, there was no playbook. Nobody pulled you aside and been like, "Hey, this is how this world works."
We had to go through some stuff. We have. It sucked. It's painful. It's emotionally and physically and just mentally painful. So why would you want that? Why would you want somebody else to go through that? Especially people you care about. Your kids, your nephews, your nieces, your cousins, your descendants. To me, if we put that all together, you actually have a duty to get as loud as you can about all the stuff that you figured out and you don't have any excuse anymore because we have this thing called the internet.
Paula Edgar: I've heard of it.
Jerry Won: Yeah, we have cell phones, we have stuff, we got AI now to assist with whatever mental blocks you got, to shout it from the rooftops, because they say you can't take money to the grave, you can't take your ideas to the grave either.
Paula Edgar: I love what you just said, a duty to get loud because all of us have a platform, whether we think of it as a big one, we all have a platform and we're all influencers to someone, to somebody’s somebody's. We influence what they know, what they care about based on who we are and how we have interacted with them, so I love that. We jumped all the way in, and I have to ask you questions that I ask everybody.
Jerry Won: Yeah, sure.
Paula Edgar: I have to run backwards. So, do you have a favorite quote or mantra?
Jerry Won: It's “Get loud.”
Paula Edgar: Oh, okay.
Jerry Won: When I was younger, it used to be “Hakuna matata.”
Paula Edgar: I love it.
Jerry Won: Then I realized that positive vibes only didn't really help. I think it's understanding that you almost have to. I don't know the full stories of my grandparents, particularly in our culture, you don't talk about stuff. Out of my four grandparents, only one is alive and two on my mom's side, we never really talked because of the age gap and cultural gap and all that stuff.
But what I do know, is that they risked their lives, literally, to save their country, they were all born into an occupied Korea by colonizers, so they fought for their country back, and then we were involved in a civil war, and they played critical roles, all of them, in helping build the Korea that we know today.
The things that I'm going through are nothing. I'm scared of some person's opinion, throw anything at any of the things that we-- I'm not trying to minimize people, so I get it, but listen, in the grand scheme of things.
Paula Edgar: Right, their heart is not our heart.
Jerry Won: When I was growing up and in the Korean culture, elders would tell you to eat a lot. You never leave food behind, always eat a lot, finish your meal, and let me feed you more. It's because they love you, it's because they also grew up with no food. When you had food, you ate it. They weren't allowed to have Korean names, they weren't allowed to speak the Korean language.
But in an effort to “shield” us from stuff, they did not tell us everything. Now we have this unique opportunity where we have the ability to tell. Nobody can tell us no. We have this podcast, we have email, we have LinkedIn, we have anywhere. We've seen some stupid people create some stupid content so we know that there's no barrier to creating content.
Like you said, everybody influences, everybody has a platform. Therefore, everybody has, again, not a right, but a duty, in my opinion, to move your own family, your own community, even humanity forward by sharing stuff, sharing all the lessons that you've learned. Again, if you were taught or if you were raised with a scarcity mindset, this is going to be a challenge because it was a challenge for me to get through this stuff too, but sharing stuff doesn't mean that you lose.
This notion of you got to hold everything close to your heart and not let anybody know anything and everything's a secret, give it away. I think sometimes people look at successful people who are generous and they miss a sign or misattribute the causation, which is, “Oh, they can be generous because they're successful now.” If you ask every single one of them, they're like, “No, I am successful because I've been generous. I've been giving away my secrets. I've been sharing.”
But how does this type of personal brand give it away? Be a helpful person, be the person that people come to or help be the person that people want to hang out with. Sure, I think sometimes also we think of personal brand and we overcomplicate it where it's this pristine manicured presence on the internet. Look, it's your reputation. It's as simple as that.
When people hear Paula, what do they think about? When people hear Jerry, what do they think about? What are they telling other people when you're not in the room? That's your personal brand. If you can tie a business to it, great. But if not, it's just what your reputation is.
Paula Edgar: What you were just saying helped me think about people talk a lot about authenticity when it comes to your brand. I remember somebody telling me you have to be very careful about pushing forward the fact that you're Black. I was like, “I don't think I can hide it.” Moreover, I don't want to, and being authentic and to your point, telling those stories.
When you were talking just now about being a helper and giving, I also thought to myself, and being the person that you needed that wasn't there for you, to get away from the potholes that you had to go through, when I think about this, I’m like, “I wish I knew these things.” So I want to tell people those things because I don't want folks to have to figure this out again.
A lot of that is around branding, but it's just about in general, I do think that when you have a giving spirit, it resonates more. If that's who you are, it's even better. I think it just should be who we are anyway.
Jerry Won: Yeah, of course.
Paula Edgar: I'm going to come back to one other question to ask you. We jump back in because this one I want to delve deeper into. Do you have a hype song? When they're going to get full Jerry, come up on the stage, what's playing in your head? Or you're having a bad day, what are you using to kick it up? It could be two songs or the same song.
Jerry Won: Listen, this is when the book cover doesn't match the content. I have an extremely wide array of music. I grew up listening because my dad listened to a lot of oldies music so I love Motown. I love oldies music.
Paula Edgar: Okay.
Jerry Won: My wife is surprised every time I get in the car, she’s like, “How the hell do you know all the lyrics to every song?” There's that. I also love 90s and early 2000s hip hop because I'm 41. I grew up with that. Now we can't listen to any of that music. We're two more people being canceled away from not listening to anything from that decade.
Paula Edgar: The mix tape is totally messed up.
Jerry Won: Yeah, we're losing everybody. We're all going down together.
Paula Edgar: We're going to listen to jazz. Look, I'll bet you anyway.
Jerry Won: The song that I would listen to, in the car, going to a job interview, or whatever is I Feel Good by James Brown. It's loud. There's some K-pop music from, again, I might get canceled, but when K-pop was good, again, from the same genre of the millennial era, it's good, and then music does have a way of again, it's a personal brand, it's how you personify.
I think in this era, music has become obviously a little too, not only commercialized, but too scripted to fit a trend or to make it sellable. I understand that the business needs for that. But yeah, any song that has to do with empowerment, and then just self-loving and all the wonderful things. But yeah, I'm a fan of all different types of music. Now I got kids and so I got a whole new world of kids songs and all that stuff that lives in my brain.
Paula Edgar: My listeners know that I am a Prince fan through and through and that I love asking this question because I think it does give me an insight into folks. But for me, it's always before I speak on a stage, before I do something, it's always Prince’s Baby, I'm A Star. Always, always. Yes, but also, speaking of hip-hop, I love I'm A Hustla with little Jay in there, so I have a bunch of different things but Prince is my baseline.
So you started talking about growing up in Korea, and want to talk about how you grew up, where you grew up, and then how that shaped you, you think. You started getting into it but tell me more.
Jerry Won: I was born in Korea in 1983, younger of two sons and grew up privileged. My father's a physician and we grew up, PSY made it famous, but I was raised in Gangnam, which is a nicer part of Seoul. Then for reasons still families don't really talk about some of these things, but we decided for one reason or another to leave that behind and move to America when I was eight.
My American immigration experience was also really interesting because we followed my mom's brother, my second uncle. We moved to a city in Southern California called Fullerton.
Paula Edgar: I went to Cal State Fullerton.
Jerry Won: Oh, no way, cool. So Fullerton is the most Korean place outside of Korea.
Paula Edgar: Yes.
Jerry Won: When you immigrate to Fullerton, you're not really immigrating to America in the traditional sense. Because even back in 1992, they sent letters home from the school district, English in the front, Korean in the back. Then I had no sort of acclimating challenges because of my cousin in my class and there were enough kids in my class that spoke Korean. It was just this really interesting melting pot of culture.
I grew up in a very safe sort of immigrant neighborhood, although some of the things that I still vividly remember is that because we were present from a population perspective, but our community was not present in the community. So we did Boy Scouts, and I don't remember having troop leaders that looked like me. I did basketball, swimming, and baseball as a kid.
I don't remember seeing very many Korean coaches or Korean dads, and look, I don't blame them. They were trying to survive. They were trying to figure this out. Those were seminal things and I look at teachers. I remember everybody in the school district, the only Korean teachers we have are really the ESL teachers, the language teachers, or the one guidance counselor that they desperately hired to try to communicate with other Korean-speaking parents. It's really, really interesting.
Then we moved to New York City for my father's job. I went to high school in New York City, which was One of the best things that ever happened to me because when you're a teenager in New York City, you learn to grow up. I am so grateful that I got to experience that because Fullerton is one of these places that on paper is diverse, but you hang out in your own circles.
But in New York City, when you take the bus, when you take the subway, when you live life, you see and interact with everybody. It humbles you, it teaches you things. I went to high school there, we came back to LA, I went to USC for undergrads. My family all moved back to LA right around that time. I've been mostly an LA person ever since, absent a few stints for grad school and stuff. LA is home for me.
Now we live, not where we grew up, but in an area that's a little bit more diverse. I coach my kids with sports things, not only because I want to, it's fun, not only because it's meaningful for my kid, but I do it for two additional reasons. I want the other kids to look like my kids, to look up and see a coach that looks like them, which I think is where most people stop, but I gotta take it a little further.
I need other non-Asian kids to see me as a mentor, a coach, a community leader, I need their parents to see me and people who look like me, not in the stereotyped way that their parents saw my parents. For parents who coach, it's so much time. It's a lot. But for me, it's my way of activism, too. It's my way of showing up so that we're building relationships. I don't know, like I said, Fullerton is one of the most Korean places in America. I did not have a single Korean sports coach growing up and I want to change that.
Paula Edgar: Yeah. I love that. I love that you're being thoughtful about the experience that you give your kids and everyone who is surrounding them and also thinking about the experience that you didn't have. The direct contrast that you didn't have the folks in leadership that looked like you. I always say shout out to parents who want to do extra stuff as a parent who does not.
Jerry Won: It's a lot. I'm tired. I'm tired all the time.
Paula Edgar: But I also again, thinking about Orange County, I moved there, I'm a New Yorker, went to Massachusetts, met a guy, moved to California, we were probably the only two Black people there. I would say we looked in the mirror and were like, "There's another one." We're like, "Oh wait, there's just us again," then coming back to New York City, which is where I live again now, it is so true that what I loved about the experience is that I got to meet people who are not like me because, to your point about getting on the subways and things, I didn't really have to do that.
I could stay and be amongst people from the Caribbean and be fine and then you get out and you realize and that's why I love about the opportunity having lived in California, even though it was not the most diverse situation in terms of connectivity, but shout out to Cal State Fullerton because that's where I got my degree. We know a little bit about how you were raised and how that shaped you, but tell me about your career. What was your career?
Jerry Won: My career, like I said, my father was a physician, so when you grew up in a Korean household, that's not just the expectation, but I made it known pretty early, to the dismay of my parents, that I did not want to do anything related to that. In undergrad, I pursued a business degree at a time when most of my peers, and again, because in general, the narrative was like, “Pick something stable, pick something dependable, and pick something where if you do act, you get why and it's repeatable.” So a lot of my peers went into more safe things like accounting and the sciences.
Maybe I was built different, I don't know, looking back, everything makes sense. But I met a professor who said, “Do sales, do marketing.” Sales is one of those interesting things that a whole lot of people have opinions on, whether you need to go to school, whether it's an honorable position, or things like that. But I enjoyed it because it clicked for me early that it wasn't getting somebody to do something, but you were there to help somebody.
Sales to me is you have a problem and I might have your solution and if it is my solution that I think I can help you best with, I want you to work together with me on it. It also means that if I am not your right solution, then I'm going to let you walk and I'm actually going to help you find whatever it is or whoever it is that can help you.
So for the first 10 years of my adult life, I sold, I sold really, really various things from, my first job was working for a big national home builder, so I sold homes to active adults, we called them, but it was at 55 and older demographic in a place called Bakersfield, California, which is not the most diverse place in California, let's call it.
I sold condos in downtown LA. I did a whole bunch of stuff, sold mortgages, stayed in the B2C services world for 10 years. The last thing I did in that chapter of my life was I sold insurance, auto and home insurance, which I'm really super grateful that I did because that's where I met my wife. It’s just a whole different story, but then I went to graduate school.
Through that point, I think it was just the chase of things where I wanted to feel like I can fit into a system or fit into an organization where I could find success. Whatever that meant. Most of the jobs that I had up until that point were commission only or some reward-driven system.
I had no idea what PTO was. You don't work, you don't sell, you don't earn. I worked a lot of weekends. Real estate weekends, all these different things. In my 20s, I think I pursued this validation that my career path was right. But what I also realized in hindsight was that even though I had jobs that didn't have a salary or a floor, I was also choosing to do things in an area where I had a ceiling.
So again, looking to what I do now and what you do now, which is there is no ceiling because we work for ourselves, hell, there's also no bottom, we have some terrible months, but I was neither nor, either or. I wasn't doing something that would build a trajectory-driven salary path, nor was I doing something where I could make a million bucks that year because the comp plan sort of caps what you could make.
It was good, but it wasn't great. I had never had a traditional salary position at the time. Between that and, again, having met my wife, who is much smarter than I am, had already gone to graduate school, the bug was planted that I too should pursue higher education.
We went to Michigan to get my MBA, came out as a strategy consultant, did the travel bit for a couple of years, did a few extra things, and then five years ago in the shadows of me being fired, then finally realizing, “Hey, maybe I am not meant to thrive in this system,” or “Hey, maybe I am not even meant to survive in this system, why don't I do the scariest thing that I've done?”
But the thing that makes me the most at ease, which is to anchor my story and to see if we can make something of me was, my wife will tell you it was the dumbest thing that I could have done, because we had two kids at the time and one was six months old, we live in California, we borrowed money to go to grad school so I was like, "What the hell are you doing?" Looking back, did it work? I think so, I'm not sure yet. We still got a long way to go.
But I started this journey, Paula, six months before the pandemic hit. The other side of the story is that of course, I wasn't irresponsible. I was still trying to get a job and then try to provide for my family. But everything stopped right in March and April of 2020. People stopped calling back. There were no jobs to be had. People were trying to figure stuff out and while companies were trying to figure stuff out, they just said, “Don't let anybody else in.”
There was that but it was tough. The thing that I was stubborn about was that I could make a business out of sharing Asian-American stories, my mind included. How? I wasn't sure. I think the Black community had similar parallels in the summer of 2020, especially, but we were busy taking care of each other.
It was sort of faux pas to be not even loud, but vocal about building a business. I'll say it now because it's been long enough, there was this assumption of shame if you talked about money. It was a lot of gaslighting of, “How dare you talk about money, we're trying to keep people alive.”
I get that because so many of our communities were being wrongfully targeted, murdered, and attacked and it was a sort of, “Hey, all hands on deck, we need everybody,” which I get. But I built my business and podcast anchored in Asian-American storytelling at a time when I didn't talk about money. I was like, “We got stuff we need to pay for.”
It wasn't until the following year in 2021, again, it's in the shadows of some really ugliness, that the pivotal point in our community, especially for the Koreans, was the Atlanta murders. It was March 16th, and seemingly overnight, all of corporate America wanted an Asian speaker to talk about what we were going through.
Paula Edgar: Yeah. I think that's when we reconnected.
Jerry Won: Yeah. This is sad, but I was one of a very few Asian-Americans who were loud on LinkedIn four years ago. There are a few of us more now, but certainly not a sufficient number. If you're out there, please stay loud. I got out of inbound. I got companies and schools saying, “Hey, can you come help us with this?”
I got very busy seemingly overnight. I did almost 40 gigs in a month, all virtual. This was 2021. I clocked in revenue just north of $100,000 that month. I said, “Holy shit, it worked,” which in hindsight, it's like, “Oh, it worked,” but going into it I was like, “I have no idea if this is going to work or not.”
It validated. It felt icky. I was conflicted because bad things led to this opportunity. But I was very committed to making sure that we would use this moment to have companies and schools stay dedicated and to normalize, talking about our experiences and anchoring our stories, not just because something bad happened, but because it's something that we experience every day then we have been experiencing this for a long time.
I sold stuff for 10 years. In college, I was a tour guide. I did orientation. Words, communication were always a part of who I was. It took me a really long time to unlearn a lot of the things that I was taught and conditioned to believe that my words were not worth material market value.
Still, I struggle with it. I know a lot of speakers of color, a lot of entrepreneurs of color, but we still struggle with value, of saying the number, pressing send, and negotiating against ourselves. It's hard, but in that moment in 2021, I said, “Holy shit, it worked.” The game was, “How do we sustain?” Because let me tell you that the revenue was good in May, which is Asian-American Heritage Month. Then for the rest of the year, it was kind of flat. I'm not spirit Halloween. I'm not a costume. I'm not a seasonal business, but it certainly felt like a Christmas tree lot.
You're having your spikes in one month and then you go home for the rest of the year. But I know that that's not something that only I have experienced. Black speakers are busy in February. That's terrible.
Paula Edgar: Oh, 100%. Yes.
Jerry Won: Then how do we normalize all of us encouraging each other and bringing each other along so that we can stay loud consistently? Because look, I need somebody to do that, I need to stop saying I need other people. I want there to be research and I'm happy to participate in it. But I think our communities face less discrimination, racism, and all the things during our months because of the heightened awareness.
So it's ironic that we talk about all these things given our months because corporate America needs to check a box. But it is the time when we needed the least. I think people are more aware of like, “Maybe I shouldn't say that in the meeting.” Or, “Maybe I shouldn't ask Jared to fix the projector because you got to be nice to the Asians this month.” But in September or October, as we said here, we go through stuff every day.
Paula Edgar: Maybe that's the lead-up. Leading up to it, if you really truly want to be engaged and protective and supportive of and knowledgeable about it, it can't just be in the [inaudible].
Jerry Won: Exactly, do you do November, Black History Month for no reason? You do something for the LGBTQ community in January. I have so many thoughts on this. As much as I appreciate these heritage months and these history months, it cements the narrative that we are not the mainstream, that we need an “us” month.
If you're a corporate DEI leader, the whole point of this is to normalize everything throughout the year. So I enjoy being busy in May. It helps me take care of my family. It is a topic that I believe I am uniquely positioned to handle with care and then to help move organizations and people forward.
But we need to talk about this stuff all year and that's sort of the personal brand. Where I am conflicted, and I'm sure other people are too, as a speaker who speaks on other topics too, is that when they see me, they go, “That's booking for May” on the Asian American topic. I say, “Listen, I can do a whole lot about this.” No, no, no, no, that's fine. We'll see you in May for the thing that we think you fit the description for.
Paula Edgar: The irony of stereotyping for someone who doesn't want you to break stereotypes, hopefully.
Jerry Won: I know. But when it comes to personal brand, the reason why this has been something that's been top of mind for me for a long time is how do you break through that? It's not binary. I can't not be Asian. Also, I'm never going to not talk about that, nor can I talk about anything in life, meaningful without my identity, my experiences, and my perspectives infusing my narrative.
But again, this is a challenge that many people have: how do I become known as somebody who's great at something in addition to, at the same time, at the intersection of who I am? It's something that I've been—I don't say struggling with—it has been an ongoing and active dialogue in my own head and people on, I can't abandon everything that I truly care for, but I'm really good at storytelling, I'm really good at personal branding, I'm really good at like coaching other speakers to do what I do, but it's also through the lens of me being me.
Paula Edgar: Yeah. My business tagline is professional development through the lens of DEI. I'm always going to have that lens, but truthfully, when folks are like, “Oh, there's Paula. She's a DEI speaker,” I'm like, “Actually not.” Actually, the primary topic that I speak about is personal branding. Hence, my podcast. Hence, the things that I do, talk about personal brand. Because I come at this intersection and in this color, folks are like, “Well, it has to be a personal brand for the diversity retreat.”
Jerry Won: I know.
Paula Edgar: No, it could be a personal brand for everyone. It was interesting that you brought this up because I talk about it in smaller groups, but I never really talk about it-- But to your point about us getting loud, I think this is a good reason and way for us to be able to have people think differently about that expertise comes in all colors and in all experiences.
It's not just expertise based on those colors or their ethnicities or their identities. It is expertise. If nothing else comes with it—but again, I think that a lot of things have come from this conversation—this is a takeaway that folks should really be thinking about, because it's just true, we have to be more thoughtful about how we search for, engage, and connect with people because I think that's how we move things forward, even more than the identity months.
It is being like, “Hey, this speaker can talk about X thing at any point. Guess what? They don't look like the speakers we brought in all out because expertise comes in different shades.”
Jerry Won:. Again, I want to scream into the dark void sometimes, but if you hire Paula for personal branding, you get the tactical personal branding, and then you get the context for free. You get the additional perspective for free.
Yet, it's frustrating sometimes to not have organizations see that as an additional value. They see it as a detriment because—people might be shocked for me to say this—if you think that given the opportunity in a diverse room, that I am going to go out of my way to only help people that look like me, that tells me how you would do that in that situation. It's not about me.
Think about it, if you're a person of color in corporate America and you're in charge of promoting somebody, holy crap, you overthink this. If I promote the Black person, they're going to think I did it because he was Black, but he's really good. Other people don't think that way, but this is another silent burden. If you verbalize that, “Oh, you're going to play favorites or play nepotism,” that means you're going to.
Paula Edgar: Right. Or that if we resonate, or we only resonate, which is just not true.
Jerry Won: Right. We don't build the businesses that we've had if we don't. Again, even if that wasn't true, isn't it great that we can learn how other people experience life to build a little empathy?
Paula Edgar: Yes. Cultural fluency.
Jerry Won: Again, this is my Little League example. I don't do it for my people. I do it for other people so that when they grow up, they're like, "Oh, I did have a Korean Little League coach and he was dope. He taught me baseball, but he taught me some other stuff too."
That's what we need to be doing. One of my favorite, I call her friend and a colleague and then the business of speaking and all these things is Minda. Minda wrote a book called The Memo, which is a specific book for a Black woman in corporate America. Listen, I am not a Black woman in corporate America. However, I read her book and I was like, “You know, there's so much I can resonate with.”
Paula Edgar: It's turning into a movie too. I'm so excited.
Jerry Won: Yeah. Then the thing is also people don't expect you and me to show up on a stage together. They get confused. They're like, “I thought [inaudible] supposed to like each other.” But it makes me smarter. It makes me more empathetic. It helps me understand that one, we're not alone and that we're not here to fight against any other group for supremacy, and two, it just humbles you. Holy, I had no idea.
Again, I am one thing away from being the most privileged in this country. I don't know what it means to be disabled in this country. I don't know what it means to be a gay man in this country. I don’t. So I have to learn that through the lens of other people and then learn through their words.
When you write a book for LGBTQ leaders, non-LGBTQ people should read it. Today—I don't know when this is going to air—but today my friend Tiffany Yu wrote a book called The Anti-Ableist Manifesto. She is a disability advocate, but the book is not written for her community. It's written for us. It's how we can show what is better for her community. Now, if people just pigeonhole that book as “Oh, that's for disabled people.” Then it doesn't get its job done.
Paula Edgar: Right, they already know.
Jerry Won: They experience it.
Paula Edgar: We're trying to expand.
Jerry Won: Right. This whole notion of just us showing off for each other and being humble, and I think it's necessary, and we touched upon it a little bit. The leading presidential candidate is both Asian and Black. Not either or, and the sum of her two parts doesn't equal 100, but she is both at the same time and because she is both, she is now a new third person, which is she is her own new Black-Indian-American person.
Look at who your friends are marrying. Look at who you're marrying. Look at what your kids look like. How are you going to fight race wars when everybody is family with everybody?
Paula Edgar: Right. [inaudible]
Jerry Won: That's gone. Think about how we're going to teach Black history going forward. Think about how we're going to talk about the Asian-American experience going forward. It is blended and it isn't us versus them.
For all the smart people out there who want to get ahead of trends or whatever, don't assume that the demographics are going to change because the demographics are already here. All you need to do is to ask your kids or your nephew or your nieces or your grandchildren, “Hey, tell me about your friends in class.”
Paula Edgar: Oh yeah, they will teach you.
Jerry Won: They were already there and they don’t know.
Paula Edgar: They will teach you whether you want to know or not. My kids are my best DEI teacher ever. They’re like, “We don't say that. You've learned so much.”
Jerry Won: You know what's scary too, Paula? My son is seven, and he learned about Jackie Robinson and he's learned about a lot of the things that are difficult topics. My wife and I have many conversations on how we want to respond to some of his questions so that we handle it together.
Then we also have this sad realization that there are so many families in this country that will respond to the same question from their kids with so much hate. That is taught because the kids are coming to you with curiosity and you're responding with hate, and you're conditioning that because what does a kid want? A kid wants their parents' acceptance.
Again, it's very, very challenging. All the things that I do and want to continue to do, which is to empower other people to own their own stories, are all intertwined for me because I need everybody, not just the Asians, anybody to understand that their stories matter and that their stories not only matter, but they're valuable.
I also realized that because we live in a little system of government called capitalism, I need to be a success story from an objective financial lens for people to trust me when I say, “You should do this too.” I get it. What authority do I have to tell somebody else to do what I did if--
Paula Edgar: If it didn’t work.
Jerry Won: Yeah. You're still struggling. It's really interesting. But I grew up not seeing names that looked like mine when I went to the bookstore. Certainly not in the leadership section, certainly not in the business section. Those things are changing. So how do we accelerate that change to make sure that everybody feels heard and seen?
What I'm advocating for isn't the minimization of anybody else's voice, but it is the addition of other people's voices so that there's context in our advice. This notion that one singular advice or framework or thought process can solve everybody's problems is quite lazy.
Paula Edgar: It's wrong.
Jerry Won: And it's offensive.
Paula Edgar: Right, right. Especially because of all the stories that we live with and the sort of texture and context and all the things that are living there that can be valuable in our work and play and home spaces. I feel like if we're not asking for and tapping into these stories, we're losing out.
Those people who are teaching hate and are teaching their kids to separate are basically making it so that they're not able to navigate in the world that is going to come at them, whether they want to or not. If you want to actually have your kids and you and your descendants be able to be in the space, you have to teach that the world is not just the single story that you have. All of us for the most part even when we have what looks like a single story, we don't have one. We have multiple things that are going on.
Jerry Won: We’re complex.
Paula Edgar: Very, very complex. I tell people all the time as soon as I stepped foot in the boarding school, everything about the Black girl story that you knew changed because I went to [inaudible] school. There are privileges that happen with lots of different stages and experiences we have.
I, of course, knew this conversation was going to go quickly. I just didn't realize how quickly it was going to go. I want to ask you a couple of questions before jumping off. One, just because I'm [inaudible] and I want to know, is this, what do you do for fun?
Jerry Won: I’m a huge sports fan. Unfortunately, I watch more than I participate. We're big Dodger fans here. We're Clipper fans. I don't care what other people say, we're Clipper fans. I happened to go to USC in Michigan, who are both big sports schools. In fact, USC played at Michigan two weeks ago, so we did a family trip out to Ann Arbor, which was a lot of fun.
Paula Edgar: Nice.
Jerry Won: If I had more time, I would say reading. I love to read. I love to listen to books. Just being curious, I think is a fun sport. The realities of being a solopreneur who travels often with kids, and who has a lot of activities, I don't get a lot of that me time per se.
Paula Edgar: Yeah. I hear you.
Jerry Won: I think hobbies change a little bit as we grow a little older with the different life stages. We're prime baseball playoff season. Basketball's about to start in the thick of football season. That's how we have some fun here.
Paula Edgar: Okay, love that. I ask everybody who comes to my podcast two questions. One is this. What is one aspect of your personal brand that you will never compromise on?
Jerry Won: Me being me. I say that with an asterisk. Authenticity is a really interesting word that I think has been overused at times and has been disingenuous in some regard. Look, if we were truly authentic, many of us would get canceled. There are rules. There are boundaries.
My personal brand is therefore I try to live by three related principles that I do right by my ancestors who gave me the opportunity to do what I do. Did I maximize the opportunity that I had? Am I doing the most with the opportunity that I have today? When my grandkids thought I was cool.
We obsessed so much, Paula, on being good descendants. We always talk about how our ancestors paved the way and what are we doing with it. Part of it, let's stop living in the past a little bit, and then let's focus on what you want your grandkids to say about you. How did you have stuff up?
Or you're going to say, “Oh, I got to middle management and I had a lot of PTO.” Again, those are things that are in the survival mode. But if you're listening to this podcast on the internet, we're okay. We're all doing a lot better than we give ourselves credit for. So go have some stuff up.
Paula Edgar: I love that.
Jerry Won: What are they going to say? “Yo, my grandmother, she built some stuff.” We have to think about it in that context. I was listening to something yesterday. Robin Sharma is one of my favorite authors. If you haven't read Robin Sharma's book, you should. Super easy to listen to. But it's just reality as a reminder that a few weeks, a few months after any of us dies, outside of your immediate circle of family, people forget you.
Then what the hell are you worried about? The opinions of who? The people that talk shit today aren't going to show up to your funeral. They're certainly not going to pay your kids' bills.
Paula Edgar: That part and also [inaudible] they can’t come in.
Jerry Won: Then why are you worried? Why are we all worried about the judgment of other people? Again, we have DNA inside of us that is meant to do great things. We have done great things with the DNA. We survived. We built countries, we built stuff, and we survived people who tried to overthrow us. Again, I understand times are tough. We're living in a divided world with a lot of stuff going on not just around the world, but climate change and elections. It's heavy.
Paula Edgar: Yes, it is.
Jerry Won: But you still have agency to make it better not just for yourself. I think we all have complicated relationships with money and I have come to this point where money buys you access to do the things that you really want to do. Don't be ashamed of making money. Money used for good is better than no money at all.
Who said we can't have nice stuff? Because we should enjoy that too. I try to live at the intersection of all of that. I don't get it right most of the time. Oftentimes I'll get it right, or sometimes I'll get it right and feel really good. Hopefully, my legacy is that I can help other people find their confidence and their empowerment to get loud. This doesn't make any sense if it stops with me. It's about growing the tent and bringing other people along and making sure that everybody can just get a piece of the pie.
Paula Edgar: I think that's a perfect lead into my final question, which is my Branding Room Only is a play on the term standing room only that I thought I was clever and I am, and that's why the podcast is named that.
What is something that people would be standing room only to experience about having to do with you? What's that special magic about you that people would be standing room only in the room for?
Jerry Won: Look, I think that I exist and it's a weird thing, but I have been fortunate to have spoken in front of audiences at organizations whose names some of you might be impressed by. But what really moves me to tears and keeps me going is when somebody sends me an email or somebody pulls me aside and says, "Hey, this is the first time I saw somebody that looks like me on a stage like this. This is the first time we talked about being us in this organization. This was the first time that I saw myself at a conference.”
While we can celebrate those things, it's all the emotions, it's humbling, it's sad, it's angering, but then it's also very empowering because there's no way in hell this is going to be the last one. What's that door to opened down? Vice President Harris said in an interview in May at the APAICS event, “You kick that mofo down. You let everybody else in.” Because that's the only way this works. Representation only matters if it's the right representation. We say that so much as if one of us solves all problems. It doesn't. Standing room only, and then in a sort of a weird way, then why don't you give me a bigger room, man? If you give me a bigger room, we won't be standing room only.
Paula Edgar: Oh, yes. I love that.
Jerry Won: Why did you limit my potential?
Paula Edgar: I love that.
Jerry Won: Guess what, people, we live on the internet, and you're listening to this on some of the internet. Ain't no capacity for a room on the internet. We have limitless potential to speak volumes. We've all cried reading a book. We've all cried listening to a podcast by ourselves in our homes.
That person—this is sad, but stick with me—the person who wrote that book that you cried through has no idea who you are. It's kind of sad. They don't know who you are, but they change your life. Flip it and think about the work that you can put into the universe, your words, your impact, your children, all the things that you put into the universe, that will help somebody cry one day thinking about the impact that you brought to their lives and you don't know who that person is today. Massive volume is the only antidote. You get loud, you don't know who's listening.
I’ll leave people with this. There's that phrase, “Dance like nobody is watching.” I think it's wonderful. It's empowering to say, "Hey, be free of judgment and be yourself.” But what if you dance as if everybody was watching? What if you danced as if the right person was watching? What if you were dancing as if you were the only person who could inspire somebody because they look like you, they lived your life, and you're mixing in things that only you can based on your experiences?
While dancing like nobody is watching is empowering, but you have to assume that your stuff is good and that you have to understand and have the confidence to know that your stuff and your words and your impact not only can but will change the world and step into whatever it is that you're doing with the confidence to fully change somebody's world.
If you do everything you do knowing that you're going to change somebody's life, why wouldn't you get up out of bed every day? Why wouldn't you do more of what you're doing? It's hard. I suffer through it all the time. Self-doubt, minimization, and posture syndrome. I get it. But I have enough receipts. I have enough emails in my inbox. I know how people objectively feel and it's not boasting if it's happened.
Paula Edgar: I love that.
Jerry Won: It's true. I interviewed the vice president of the United States of America. It’s something that happened. I felt very unsure about it because it was like, “Oh, am I bragging?” My friends are always telling me, “You did it. How many other people did it?” I was like, “I don't know.”
Just say it. It's this thing. Your story is important. You need to say it, not that you should. You have to say it. You owe it to yourself and to your ancestors and God damn it, you owe it to your descendants to share it because you need them to remember you for something.
Get loud. I love the platform that you've built. I love you sharing all these things. This platform is powerful not because it's the biggest podcast in the world yet, but because it speaks to people that I can't communicate with. It speaks to people that Adam Grant can't reach. Because they look to you and they see themselves in you. We all need to create these things that are not only great at content but specifically at context. So, Paula, thank you. Thank you.
Paula Edgar: Thank you for being on the podcast. This is fantastic.
Jerry Won: This is so fun.
Paula Edgar: Awesome conversation. You have an open invitation to come back whenever you want to talk about whatever you want to talk about. Everybody, go and tell somebody who needs to hear this because I feel inspired. I'm going to get louder and that's going to be real loud. Everybody see you soon. Make sure you download, share, and tell a friend because we are out here winning with Jerry Won. Bye, y'all.
