Why Purpose Without Self-Compassion Leads to Burnout with Jane Chen

0:00Hello, everyone. It's Guy Kawasaki. I believe we are in troubling and dangerous times. One of the things that's happening is that privacy is eroding. And when privacy erodes, so does democracy. So Madison, Nisberg and I, we just finished a book. It's called Everybody Has Something to Hide. This is a jargon-free book. It is for everybody to learn why and how they should use Signal. They should use Signal to ensure their privacy, safety, and well-being. It comes out on January 28th for five days. It'll be free, and then it'll go to$4.04. I hope you see what we did there. The forward is from Congressman Ro Khanna because he believes, like we do, that democracy is extremely important.

0:56And Signal is one of the tools that can help us preserve democracy. So remember the name. Everybody has something to hide. It's by Guy Kawasaki and Madison Nismore. You have to take care of yourself because that is what is critical for sustainable leadership. Sure, you can burn bright for one or two years and burn out, or you can actually take care of yourself and make impact in the long run. That is what I really care about. And here's the other thing. The way that we treat ourselves extends out to everyone around us. What is the number one most important determinant of the highest functioning, most innovative teams?

1:38It's psychological safety and it's the ability for someone to come to work and bring their whole selves and take risks without fear of failure. And my question for leaders now is how do you create that as a leader for your team if you don't have that within yourself? And this is the importance of the inner work of leadership.

1:59Good morning. This is Guy Kawasaki. This is the Remarkable People podcast. and you're starting with this introduction, but we're going to quickly devolve into a recording of the banter that we started this episode with, which I must say we started off the rails and we were able to pull ourselves back into the rails. But you shouldn't miss the introduction now. Some people believe that a podcast should get off to a fast start and cut all the bullshit at the front, but we don't believe that. We believe that our podcast is like you're sitting in on a conversation between two longtime friends in Kaimuki at the Rise coffee shop.

2:39And you're going to just be privy to a little bit of a crazy conversation. But this is Remarkable People podcast. And now we want to thank you for what you're about to endure. Where do you live in Oahu? I live in Kaka 'ako. In Kakaako in one of those 30-story buildings. Yeah. It's great. And which side of Ward Avenue are you, Eva or Diamond Head? I, Eva. Eva of Ward Avenue. Yeah, so I can see Kewalo's from my apartment. Are you close to Whole Foods? Yeah, I'm across from Whole Foods. Yeah, you know that area. I love it so much. And surfing there is a totally different thing than surfing in Santa Cruz.

3:29Just like the people, the culture. Yeah. I love Santa Cruz, but Hawaii is like, it's heaven. But so what's your favorite break over there? So I mostly surf concessions. Do you know where that is? It's a beach park. It's next to like big rights. What's on the other side? First hole, second holes, concessions, big rights, shallows. So far I've heard of none of them. Oh, okay. Well, then Kewalos is the furthest on the right of that. So you've heard of Kewalos. Yeah. I'm a longboarder, so I don't go to that. You're a longboarder. Yeah. You must love like Diamond Head and Queens. My shortest board is 910.

4:10Nice. Nice. Nice. Nice. Oh, I love it. Oh, my gosh. Okay. Well, we'll have to surf together sometime in Hawaii or Santa Cruz. I love the lao lao at Highway Inn. I go to Highway Inn all the time. It's so good. There is a coffee shop around the corner from Highway Inn that I've spent many an hour riding in. Which one? I gotta go. It's the one that has upstairs and downstairs. It's the Diamond Head Malka corner of that building there. Okay. I'm looking for a good coffee shop to write from, so I'm going to go check that out. Oh, okay. I'm not, I am telling you, Jane, I found two of the world's greatest coffee shops to write.

5:02Oh my God. Okay. Tell me, please. I'm going to let you in on this secret. All right. Now, ironically, they are both named RISE, R-I-S-E. So one is RISE, the dorm. This used to be the Atherton YMCA. It is on University Avenue. Okay. And it is across the street from the University of Hawaii. They have a coffee shop that is open from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. It's all UA students, but it is a great coffee shop. They have very good coffee, very good food. If you're really nice to me, I'll give you my username and password so you can get on their Wi-Fi really easy. I am on the UH Foundation Board of Trustees, so I made them give me a password.

5:53And I also got the world's greatest email address. It's kawasaki at uh. Yeah. So that's number one. That's number one. Okay. Number two is in Kaimuki. Okay. Now in Kaimuki, there's about five coffee shops, but every coffee shop in Kaimuki, there are people on top of each other it's just packed yeah and let's just say the wi-fi sucks in most of those coffee shops okay but you're gonna thank me you're gonna say this is the best podcast i've ever been on because i found out something useful so there is another coffee shop on 11th avenue called rise again r-i-s-c it has one megabit internet access it is adjacent to a humongous parking lot you know the parking lot that is the other side of coco head diner yeah okay yes it's on the other side of that parking lot okay okay i know what you're talking about it is air conditioned there is a downstairs and an upstairs in the upstairs there is an electric outlet every three feet i have never been there when it's crowded i do not understand why more people don't use it because i've never heard of it yeah it is the fastest internet i have ever seen in a coffee shop close to parking good food the people are really friendly and that's the place okay thank you for these little tips oh my god i'm gonna go check it out thank you i've been looking for a good coffee shop there's none in kakaaka so it's like i'm but i used to hang out mostly in kai mu ki so i'm gonna check that out well this is totally off the rails episode already and all of this is being recorded we're probably gonna use it so yeah i have been searching and searching and finally i found these two and they're both named rise and yeah i have been in coffee shops all over the world i'm telling you these two rock yeah amazing and they're both in hawaii thank you guy this is already a great podcast maybe we should just end the podcast now.

8:15I see you in Hawaii. See you at Rise. All right. So now I'm going to really do an introduction. Sorry, everybody listening. But now everybody listening knows the best two coffee shops in Honolulu for working. I got to tell you one more funny story. So I posted this message about the second coffee shop in Kaimuki saying fast internet, good parking, good food, air conditioning, lots of electric plugs and i posted this on threads and somebody says to me from hawaii somebody says to me you're trying too hard people care about other things in coffee shops so he told me i'm trying too hard so that i look up his bio and what this guy does is he takes old ancient hawaiian black black and white photographs and he colorizes it okay so i thought here's some irony he's telling me i'm trying too hard and he's taking classic photos and putting color on them who is trying too hard oh my god i love you guy i love how you took the time to look him up

9:29jane one agent to another you understand that's just how i get it i know i'm cracking up Okay. So I am going to read you what I think is your introduction. All right. So obviously this is a guy Kawasaki, you've been listening to some banter and somebody's going to say, okay, why do you waste our time with 10 minutes of banter? We just wanted to listen to Jane. But anyway, so Jane is the co-founder of something called embrace and I'll let you describe, she has a very, or had a very unique, well, we're going to get into that. I don't know the exact status right now of a very, very interesting product.

10:10She developed at Stanford in India. I would say that this book that she wrote, which is called like a wave we break. I don't know of another book that is so open and raw about what happened to her and all the trials and tribulations that she has gone through. So she has, it's a little bit of entrepreneurship, a little bit of mindfulness a little bit of self-discovery a little whoo whoosh i don't know anybody who has gone through more treatment in more different ways from bali to san francisco it's the most fascinating and she loves surfing which right there that's all you have to do to be remarkable to me she loves surfing although jane i gotta say that you tell the story of the first time you went surfing and your massage therapist took you to diamond head and i would not have said that diamond head is the place to start learning how to surf on a tiny day in the winter it is yeah but as you mentioned in your book you gotta schlep all the way down that oh yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah that's true that's true it's a workout just getting down there so your book contains what I consider maybe the best one liner of the people we've interviewed in 2025.

11:31And that one liner is prayer. Didn't work for shit. When I read that, I said, oh my God, that is so fricking funny. Prayer didn't work for shit. Wow.

11:46So, so anyway, I mean, you know, we're smiling and laughing and all these kind of things but i really feel awkward about this but you're gonna have to tell us the story of your upbringing as a taiwanese immigrant and like some of the stories of your father and mother are deeply deeply disturbing to me and one of the things that i learned from your book more than anything is i really hit the freaking lottery because i was not born in a family like that and I'm Asian American too, but my father never did those kind of things to me. So I hate to drag this up, but for people to understand the context of this episode, we're going to have to do it.

12:30So please explain this. Yeah. So I'm a first generation Taiwanese American immigrant. I was born in Taiwan, moved to the U.S. when I was four years old. And actually, guys, I wrote this book. I really learned a lot about the history of Taiwan. I'm also part Japanese. So at that time that we moved, Taiwan was under martial law. And Taiwan was one of the countries under martial law for the longest period of time, so 38 years in total. And during that time, there was a great deal of violence and oppression. So hundreds of thousands of people were killed, disappeared, raped, etc. And my parents were trying to get us out of that environment.

13:09And it wasn't until the 90s that Taiwan actually held its first open presidential election. So that's just to kind of frame what was happening in the backdrop there. Now, my parents grew up with corporal punishment, and that's how they raised us, their three daughters. And it's something that is more common in Asian culture, I would say, but also something that's not spoken about. And so it was something that became very normalized in my home. And for us as first-generation immigrants, my parents really wanted us to excel in school and excel academically. So there was a lot of pressure for that to happen, right?

13:45And that's how my father showed his love, was by pushing me to excel. But when I didn't meet his expectations, I was punished violently. And I think a defining moment for me in my childhood was when I was 12 years old. I came home from school one day, and I decided to read my history book on the front lawn. It was beautiful and sunny outside. And when my father came home and saw this, he flew into a rage. He was really angry because he decided homework shouldn't be done on a lawn. It should be done at a desk. And so he beat me up and he demanded that I apologize. And do you think that your mother and father were raised by parents who did the same thing?

14:28Yes, I think it is such a ingrained part of the culture that there isn't an awareness as to the impact on children. And I see this in a lot of first generation immigrants. And again, for me, it was so normalized that I didn't ever stop to think twice about it until much, much later on in my life. But wouldn't you think that if you were violently punished like this as a child, you would be the last person in the world to do it to your children? And yet the cycle continues. What am I missing here? Yeah, the cycle continues. Again, I think when something becomes so normalized in the culture, and I even talk about a phrase in Chinese in the book, that's about, that's a way of parents show their love is by punishing their children and demanding that kind of excellence.

15:21But I think if that's all you know, you either go two routes, right? You either realize that that's not something that you would do and you raise your children very differently, or you do the same thing. You repeat the pattern because that's what you know. So what is your relationship with your mother and father now? I still have a relationship with him. It took me a lot to process all of that. And coming back to this story that I told, I think that moment at 12 years old, I felt so powerless in that moment. Right. And what I didn't understand was that would fuel my drive later. That feeling of powerless would lead me to help the most powerless people in the world.

16:03But it would take me decades to connect the dots as to how that all fits together. And I do have a relationship with my parents now, you know, and I'm sure we'll go into this more, but through this healing process, came to really have compassion for their stories as well. And I've learned what my boundaries are for myself. And so it's like this combination of being both open hearted and having my boundaries. But I understand my family history and context a lot better through the writing of this story. I'm almost afraid to ask you this question, but a few years ago, there was this big fad because of this professor from Yale about being a tiger mom.

16:43So when you read that, like, what was your reaction to the tiger mom theory? Yeah, that's a good question. Here's what I feel about this. I think that I'm not one to judge how someone parents, but it's about the intentionality behind that, that you make an intentional decision as to how you want to raise your kids. And I think what happened in my household that ended up being damaging for me was there was a lot of reactivity. It wasn't about just intentionality, but things would happen or I get punished because my father got angry at something and got reactive. And so I think for a child, it's that kind of inconsistency and unpredictability that gets really confusing, right?

17:28And what ends up happening, and of course, I didn't know how to articulate this in that moment, was me feeling like, oh, there's something wrong with me, right? I'm bad, or there's something wrong with me, because I didn't know how to make sense of what was happening in my environment as I grew up, right? But I now believe the best gift you can give to your child is love and compassion and confidence that they can do anything. And that was something I had to learn to give to myself over time. How long did it take? I mean, you read the journey. Well, you could dive into my company later, but it took really hitting rock bottom in my journey as an entrepreneur to then go on a deep healing journey in which I began to confront these things because I really, this was not in my consciousness that any of this affected me.

18:16And now it's so obvious, But I literally did not connect the dots until 10 years into creating Embrace and the company failing in that moment and then going on a healing journey that, oh, that was my motivation. That that feeling of powerlessness had given me that purpose, but it also drove me to extreme burnout.

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19:17Today, Raz's success is proof that with passion and the right support, it's possible to make your dreams a reality. Learn more at CapitalOne.com slash business cards. You're listening to Remarkable People with Guy Kawasaki. I think it's time that you give us the gist of the story of Embrace because it is quite a story. Yeah. Yeah, so Embrace started. I was a graduate school student at Stanford, as you said, doing my MBA. And I took a course the first year called Design for Extreme Affordability at the D School, which is all about creating low cost technologies for people living on less than a dollar a day.

19:58The challenge posed to my team at that time was to build a baby incubator that costs 1 % of a traditional incubator. And so I teamed up with some incredible students in all the different graduate programs, mostly the engineering schools. and we developed this concept. Let me back up for a second. What we discovered was that 15 million preterm and underweight babies are born every year. One of the biggest challenges they face is just staying warm and that is the primary function of an incubator. But incubators are not only expensive, what we saw as we went around and did research was that they require constant electricity which is a huge challenge in developing countries.

20:35So based on this insight we came up with a concept that looks nothing like an incubator. It looks like a little sleeping bag for a baby. And the core technology is a wax-like substance called a phase change material, which when melted maintains the exact same temperature, 98 degrees, for six hours at a stretch. And you can simply reheat this every six hours, and that's enough to regulate the temperature of these vulnerable babies. So we had this concept, and we graduated Stanford, and we thought, if we don't take this forward, no one else is going to. So let's just give this a go. And we packed up our bags and we moved to India.

21:15India was home at that time to 40 % of all the world's premature and underweight babies. And I spent four years of living in India. And so we did everything there, product development, manufacturing, distribution. And this is not like a Silicon Valley tech company. This is like a medical device that we're doing, trying to serve the poorest markets in the world. And we were so naive, which I think you have to be to do this kind of thing. And along the way, we did save a lot of babies along the way. And that was the most rewarding part of this. And I remember the, one of the most touching moments was we donated incubators to an orphanage in Beijing.

21:52And they found a two and a half pound baby that had been abandoned on a street. So they kept him in our incubator for weeks and he survived. This is Nathan. Yes. And I got to visit the orphanage seven months later and hold him in my arms. And then he was adopted a few months after that. And so this was just one of many stories. Nathan is very special to me because I've kept in touch with his family over the years. They visited me in Hawaii last year and he came surfing with me. Wow. I know. So that story is very, very special to me. But there were many stories like that. And that's what kept me going and going and going.

22:30But at the same time, we face so many challenges, like manufacturing challenges, funding challenges, distribution challenges. We're working primarily with the Indian government. That in itself is like such a difficult undertaking. And so it was just one thing after the next, after the next, constantly running out of money. And you know how startup world is. And it's like you take like a traditional startup, you put it in India. And then you, again, you're serving these certain markets. And I was just getting so exhausted. By four years in, I was burned out, but I kept pushing myself. And then 10 years in, we just faced one too many setbacks and we had to shut down the company.

23:11But before you shut down the company, you got investments. You converted to a for-profit model. Yes, yes, yes, yes. We started as a nonprofit. And then a few years into that, we've spun out a for-profit arm. And at that time, this was the beginning of the impact investors coming on scene. And so we were hearing from investors, if you guys had a for-profit arm, we could invest in that. And so we decided to spin out a for-profit arm. And we really did that to diversify our sources of capital, right? So we could attract both philanthropic funding and private funding to scale in the way that we hoped.

23:48And what is the status of Embrace today? It's a miracle. We had shut down the company at that 10-year point. And then I could talk about the prayer and what happened as a result of that. But at the end of the day, there was another investor that came in and saved the day. And actually, there's a whole story about Tony Robbins coming into the scene. But there was a group that just really believed in our mission and did not want it to fail. And so they saved the company. So wait, is this Mark Benioff or is this after? No, this is after Benioff. Mark Benioff was also one of the people who saved us in a low moment.

24:27There are many, many angels along the way that gave us lifelines. But Mark came in. We were at that time talking to a company about doing a global distribution deal. And they were supposed to come in and take our next round of financing. And then that deal fell through because the CEO stepped down. And we had really put all of our bets on that partnership. and that was one of the first times we ran out of money and luckily I had met Mark Benioff in Davos at a meditation session and I know it's just such a serendipitous story and Mark and I happen to sit next to each other there may be like a handful of people there out of the thousands of attendants and afterwards we just chatted and I told him about Embrace he told me he had a personal experience with a premature baby.

25:17And when this all happened, months later, I sent him an SOS telling him what happened. And he immediately responded, maybe 24 hours later. I'll never forget what he wrote. He wrote, Dear Jane, I will fund your company. Aloha. You gave it a 10-year run, right? That's about eight years longer than most of us. So today, can people still buy the... Yes, Embrace. We turned it back into a nonprofit in 2021. And so that is what operates today. I've stepped down. So we have a new CEO in place. And it's now donating incubators to primarily humanitarian crisis zones. So over the last couple of years, we've gotten incubators to places like Ukraine, Syria, Turkey, anywhere there's been a war or natural disaster, we've sent incubators.

26:07And so that's been super exciting. And in fact, the organization, when we were students back at Stanford, our goal was to save a million babies. And just this year, 18 years later, the organization has reached a million babies. Wow. Wow. And do you have any role in the current Embrace? I stepped down in May and I stepped down to focus on this next chapter of my life. So I'm an advisor and a well-wisher and I have a call with the CEO tomorrow. So I continue to get updates and spend so much of my life and my heart and soul in this organization. So I feel really excited that it's in good hands and I feel happy about the legacy I've left.

26:48I have to tell you that as I was reading your book, there are so many sort of coincidences, right? So you went to Stanford, I went to Stanford, you got a Stanford MBA. I got rejected by the Stanford MBA program. So I never donate money to Stanford. I still haven't gotten over that. And then I have friends at D school and you mentioned one line or about the company that was making the light. And I think it's called D light, right? Yeah. Yeah. And when I started a company called garage.com and we actually funded D light. So there's that overlap. And then you go on this whole thing about how you take beta blockers to make speeches.

27:31And this is time for guys, true confessions. I have something called Meniere's and Meniere's is tinnitus and hearing loss and vertigo. And one of the theories of Meniere's is that it's caused by anxiety. So years ago, my doctor prescribed lorazepram and I took lorazepram as an anti-anxiety, which is not a beta blocker. But, you know, same theory, right? And you talk about beta blockers and how you take it to help you make speeches. And so I was taking lorazepram and he said, take lorazepram whenever you're in a high anxiety situation, which is making a speech, as you mentioned. So I took it like the first three times.

28:12And the three times I took lorazepram before a speech, I got standing ovations. So I said, man, lorazepram really helps me get standing ovations. But then I thought, oh, what if I'm going to be psychologically dependent on lorazepram to get standing ovations? So I quit cold turkey. But anyways, and then your co-founder Rahul, Rahul, I hope I pronounced that name right. He introduced you to Carol Dweck, who has also been on this podcast, who is like a friend of mine. And then the last thing that I loved is that your first car was a Toyota Corolla and my first car was a Toyota Corolla. I wish I could have that car back.

28:50I know it's a great car. Great car. It was a stick shift and it was so much fun to drive. Yeah. So now back to this is the most disjointed episode of remarkable people ever done. So, you know, sometimes people say that the way to find inner peace and happiness is to help people less fortunate than you. Right. So now I'm reading your book. I'm thinking, man, she certainly is helping people less fortunate than her. But it sure as hell doesn't seem to be bringing her inner peace. Do you buy that theory or is it bullshit? I think there is an aspect of that and it is wonderful to give to other people.

29:36That was the fulfilling part of my job. But I think what was also mixed up with that was my identity was completely wrapped up about my work. Right. So I was so entwined. And that's many of us overachievers. We define ourselves by our jobs, our titles, the companies we found, our accomplishments. so what happens when all of that goes away and so I think for me there was also like this feeling that I was never enough and the need to prove myself and so that was also mixed in there as well it was very nuanced and that was the part that I think was keeping me unhappy that no matter how much I did no matter how much recognition we received it still never felt like it was enough And I think what happened was, you know, because I believed in what we were doing so much as well, I just kept pushing and not listening to the signs that I was burned out and exhausted.