Who says people can’t multi-task?! For the founder of the Niko Car Seat Cover and part-time NBC News Correspondent, it’s pretty much another day at the office!
Reischea Canidate-Kapasouris:
Who says people can’t multitask? For the founder of the NIKO car seat cover and part time NBC News correspondent, it’s pretty much another day at the office.
Julie Holton:
The climb to the top feels so good when you get there.
Audrea Fink:
Is it just us, or can it feel lonely sometimes, even when you’re successful?
Reischea Canidate-Kapasouris:
And who defines success anyway? What about life’s twists and turns?
Julie Holton:
We’ve learned a few things along the way, and we’re ditching the culture of competitiveness.
Audrea Fink:
Bringing together women from different backgrounds to share their stories.
Reischea Canidate-Kapasouris:
Let’s do this together. Welcome to Think Tank of Three Podcast. Hi this is Reischea Canidate-Kapasouris, here with Audrea Fink and Julie Holton. We are your Think Tank of Three.
Audrea Fink:
In this episode, we are talking to a real superwoman, Jinah Kim. Mom, entrepreneur, and reporter who came, saw, and conquered pretty much everything she put her mind to.
Julie Holton:
Women, we all want to know what has driven Jinah and kept her constantly looking to that next great idea.
Reischea Canidate-Kapasouris:
Jinah, thank you so much for taking the time to join us today.
Jinah Kim:
Thank you. And, whenever I hear an intro like that I always think to myself, I am just like everyone else, I put my pants on one leg at a time and I look like a 13 year old boy when I wake up. I can’t ever figure out what 15% is on a meal receipt tab.
Audrea Fink:
Right? It’s hard!
Jinah Kim:
I know. I’m with you all, I’m not superwoman. Trust me, everybody in my family would be like, “Superwoman who?” But, thank you. Thank you, it’s lovely being here.
Reischea Canidate-Kapasouris:
Hey, we speak truth, we speak truth. Let’s face it, you do not know how to sit still, you never have, I’ve known you for many years. Founder of WorldWise Productions, love the name, creator of the Niko Car Seat Cover that you can find on Amazon, by the way, NBC News Channel and MSNBC West Coast part time correspondent. And just for giggles, she speaks four languages. Pretty much awesome, wrapped in. Whatever you just heard her say about, “I can’t figure out 15%,” whatever. Let’s start however, with WorldWise Productions. Let’s share with everyone of how that came into being.
Jinah Kim:
So I was full time with NBC being a journalist. That was pretty much the path that I thought I was going to be on for the rest of my life. And it started pretty early, it started in high school. I was copy editor of my school newspaper, and then I was at The Daily Bruin when I was at UCLA. So I was like, “Yeah, this is the path for me. I’m going into journalism, and I’m staying there.” Well 2006, the recession was starting to show its ugly head and I swear to you, every day I’d come into the NBC News West Coast Bureau and somebody would say, “Oh, did you hear? John just got laid off. Oh, did you hear? Robert is now gone.” And I was getting so scared. I don’t know if anybody else in the audience remembers those days but 2006, 2007, the signs were already there. Of course, 2008 was just like…
Jinah Kim:
So my brother, who Reischea’s also good friends with and I are both in the news business. He shoots and edits and does anything technical, and I’m a writer and reporter, I felt like I had that side squared away. So we’re like, “Hey, all of our friends are getting laid off. We want to have a plan B, plan C, plan D. So, let’s just go ahead and start a video production company. I mean, come on. We know how to do videos, right? I mean, it airs nationally, it airs locally, what could possibly go wrong?” So we just decided to start a video production company, not knowing who our audience was, not knowing who we were going to sell our product to, or anything like that, how to even start a business.
Jinah Kim:
But we just got a website together, printed a bunch of brochures, printed a bunch of letterheads, most of which is now still sitting in my garage because you know, nobody uses letterheads anymore. And then we told everybody. We blitzed out to anybody and everybody that we knew that we started a production company. “Hey, do you need a video? Just let us know.” Lo and behold, two weeks later a friend of mine who happens to be a media relations person at UCLA Health, she used to pitch me on the all the research that came out of UCLA and ask me to do stories on those at NBC News. She picked up my email and said, “Oh, somebody here at UCLA’s trying to make training videos. Do you do training videos?” My answer of course was, “Of course we do training videos. I mean, come on.” You know? Never done a training video in my life but I was like, “Well yeah.” So I got on the phone with this woman, and she’s just like, “Yeah, we’re doing blah, blah, blah. I need 10 videos.” So we’re like, “Got it.”
Reischea Canidate-Kapasouris:
With no knowledge.
Jinah Kim:
Yep.
Reischea Canidate-Kapasouris:
Ready for you.
Jinah Kim:
Yep. Been there, done that. So a little bit of gumption, little bit of lying. Anyway… maybe fudging is the better word.
Reischea Canidate-Kapasouris:
Confidence.
Audrea Fink:
Yeah. I did… confidence.
Reischea Canidate-Kapasouris:
Confidence.
Audrea Fink:
Gumption. You knew you could do it, that’s almost as good as having done it.
Jinah Kim:
Yes, that is how I approach my life a little bit, as you’ll find out through this interview is I tend to just do it and just ask for permission and forgiveness later.
Audrea Fink:
I love it.
Jinah Kim:
My brother and I started the company. Two weeks into starting the company, got some orders, made about $48,000 that first year, and that was 2008. And then 2009, we made a $100,000 and we both still had our full time jobs. And then 2010 we made $200,000. So we were like, “Okay. I think we’re on to something.” And that’s when I really tapered off from NBC news and decided really to just do breaking news, and entertainment news, and stuff that’s very West Coast. Earthquakes and fires and the likes and decided to devote most of my time to the production company. And in 2011, my brother who was just like, “I’m ready to give up KABC yet,” decided to just stick with KABC full time and that forced me to hire a director of photography, because I don’t know anything about shooting, editing, any of that.
Jinah Kim:
And that was one of the best things I did, you know? It felt like a little bit of divorce from my brother when he stepped away, because we have no filters, we have no barriers, we don’t really have to formal with each other. I just go, “Hey, this came up. Let’s just do it.” And now, I had my first full time employee and that scared me to death. I was like, “How am I going to pay payroll? What laws do I have to know about hiring somebody other than a family member?” But I bit the bullet knowing that we were doubling our revenue, and I was just like, “It’s just going to work.” And I just lost a lot of hair, lot of worrying later. He, not only brought in his salary, but almost doubled his salary and he is still with me today. He ended up being one of the best things I ever did; hiring a full time employee. So, one of the takeaways that I still treasure to this day about that experience is I am not afraid to hire employees. I have known now, that every employee… we’re now five of us full time.
Jinah Kim:
Every employee that I’ve ever brought on, has brought on their salaries worth of revenue and then some. So now, we are kicking butt and doing better than ever. COVID did hit us a little bit hard, but believe it or not, just this summer alone, we have made up for the lost revenue that we had during COVID. So I feel like we’re on the right track. People like what we do and it’s kind of worked for us. So it’s now year 12 that we’ve had WorldWise Productions.
Audrea Fink:
That’s awesome. Congratulations.
Jinah Kim:
Thank you.
Audrea Fink:
Quite the success story. So what is the focus of your production company? When you started you were just like, “Yeah, I can do that.” Have you grown and shifted in focus? Or are you still like, “Whatever comes through the door.”
Jinah Kim:
Yes, that would be true. All of the above. So pretty soon people were like, “Oh, do you do this?” And of course I was like, “Yes.” And then, “Do you do that?” “Yes.” So in the beginning, you just say, “Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes.” And you learn as you go and the good thing about starting a business during a recession is you almost couldn’t go wrong, right? Even if you had zero money, it’s like everybody’s in the same boat. So we felt very little pressure in the recession to perform.
Jinah Kim:
So that really helped us kind of throw anything at the wall and see what stuck, but we primarily just through UCLA being our first client, and then ordering tons and tons of videos from that point on, ended up being a very health care focused video production company that now does videos for a huge number of health care companies, as well as academic medical centers like UCSF, UCI, University of Chicago Medicine, Stanford Health and we do training videos, promotional videos, program debut videos, patient education videos. But honestly, we have a good number of also just commercial clients where we debut their latest product, or we do a Kickstarter video for their latest invention.
Jinah Kim:
We also have a lot of nonprofit clients that ask us to do very emotional, invested, engaging content that really brings the fundraising dollars. So I’d say we literally do everything and anything, but we’re not that company that does Coke commercials or Samsung or Nissan, driving next to a car with a helicopter, we’re not quite at that level yet. We don’t do features, we don’t do music videos, we’re squarely in the corporate and commercial space.
Audrea Fink:
One of the things I love about the story you just told was how balls to the wall you kind of just went. You were like, “Yes, I’m going to do it. We can do it. We can do it.” So regularly, it’s so common to hear women say, “Oh well, I just… I wasn’t qualified enough,” or “I didn’t make all of the qualifications,” or “I didn’t have my plan laid out, so I didn’t do anything.” In fact, they wait for it to be perfect and for the situation to be safe before jumping in, and what I love hearing is you were like, “We’ll figure it out. We’ll figure it out along the way.” I think that that ability to be comfortable, if you will, with the unknown is amazing and I think you see really great things come from people who are willing to be like, “Let’s try it, see what happens.”
Jinah Kim:
Well and if I could just say one thing about that, I have a friend whose been trying to start a business and she has a business, but she’s that type of person that is like, “Dip your toe in the water. Is it the right temperature? Wait, is it the right acidity? Is there any murkiness below?” You know? She’s constantly dipping her toe, then dipping her foot, then dipping her ankle and then 10 years goes by, you know? And nothing’s really happened. I do… just like what you were saying, I do find a lot of people, especially women because we’re over thinkers just kind of by nature-
Reischea Canidate-Kapasouris:
Right.
Jinah Kim:
And very organized and everything has to be in a box. We tend to overthink starting something that we’ve never done before and I understand that is completely just fear inducing, and I did have very much an identity crisis when I decided to go from journalist, which I’ve ever been my entire life to business woman, you know? I’ve never been one, so it was… I remember being a little bit depressed and questioning who I was and everything, but what I do that I do think serves me well is I do dip my toe in that water, and then I jump in, because I know I can swim. Do a little bit more of that. As long as you know you can swim. If you can swim a little bit, don’t drown the first time out.
Audrea Fink:
Right, right.
Jinah Kim:
If you kind of know how to swim already, don’t spend 10 years dipping your toes and going, “My business plan isn’t done yet. Well what about my marketing plan? What about the research into the industry?” Just jump in.
Reischea Canidate-Kapasouris:
I feel like that’s directed at me.
Jinah Kim:
No. No, you got two babies girl, that’s a whole nother thing.
Reischea Canidate-Kapasouris:
No, but I fight that myself. I do. I fight that whole having the right timing for everything and then yes, when you throw in the other aspects of stuff, but it’s real. It’s a real battle. You have to step out of that comfort zone, and that’s, I think, one of the amazing things about you Jinah is you put that fear in a box, you set it off to the side and you say, “I don’t have time for you right now.”
Jinah Kim:
I do think we have to do a little bit of that, because otherwise, fear does paralyze us.
Julie Holton:
Jinah, I also wonder how much… I mean, you report for NBC News, I wonder though Jinah, how much of your time in news helped you to become this business woman as well, because you learned how quickly things can change. I mean, look at what we’re all going through now and how quickly we’ve had to transition and how quickly we’ve had to change our business models and change our how plans for 2020, whether you’re a business person or not, folks were listening. We’ve all had to throw out our plans for 2020, but I wonder Jinah how much your experience as a reporter helped you prepare for becoming a business woman.
Jinah Kim:
I do agree with that. Very few people are TV reporters or reporters in general and so I don’t want anybody listening to this to say, “Well I mean, of course she could do it because she… had to report on a school shooting on a dime.” I mean, I was one of the first reporters… I was the first reporter on the scene when John Denver died up in Salinas, Monterey. I was the first reporter on the scene when the Santana High School shooting happened, and then the first reporter on the scene when that guy, Aaron Ralston, remember had cut off his own arm because a boulder trapped it in Moab? When you have five minutes after you get out of the truck to go live, you do learn to think on your feet. You do have to be comfortable with things changing every two minutes. You’re constantly improvising as a reporter, you tend to get good at communication, right? Which is a key element to starting a business, unless you’re able to really hone in on what it is that you do and perfect a bit of an elevator speech for whoever you might meet to pitch your business to, it’s difficult if you have that apprehension.
Jinah Kim:
So I do think that combination of characteristics that made me become reporter and that I refined and intensified during my reporting career definitely helped me be a business person. But I would say that all of us have that. We just haven’t been encouraged to shout it out to the world like I have in my career. But almost nothing you do can be catastrophically wrong, but if you don’t do it, it might hold you back to where you’re stymied for the rest of your life. So I would err on the side of being bold and loud and just doing it.
Julie Holton:
I love that so much and I’m going to repeat back what you were just saying Jinah, so that our women who are listening can connect the dots here because you’re right. You don’t have to be a journalist to be able to become a business woman, but you’re talking about being able to adapt quickly. How many moms do we know are the fastest at adapting quickly on the fly? And whether you’re a mom or not, we’re talking about being able to see a situation for what it is and make split second decision. Being able to communicate with people around you, and you also… the third thing you mentioned Jinah is being fearless. I, as the executive producer who is often on the other side of the camera communicating with someone like you out in the field, I know that it’s not fearlessness. It looks fearless on camera. So when you’re watching TV, it looks like reporters are fearless, right ladies?
Julie Holton:
But there’s still adrenaline, there’s still nerves, there’s still the what ifs. So it’s being able to be that… Reischea, like you said, put it in a box, kind of fake it till you make it, have that confidence, even if you’re building yourselves up before you dive in.
Reischea Canidate-Kapasouris:
Yep.
Julie Holton:
Absolutely Jinah, that was beautiful. I also have to ask you, how is being a national correspondent not your main gig? Because we’ve talked about this, but that is like, “I do that part time.”
Audrea Fink:
Right?
Jinah Kim:
I think when you have personality like mine where… I do things and then I ask questions later, it does tend to make you butt heads in a news room. A news room is, as Reischea can tell you and apparently as you can testify to, is a very politically charged place. And one thing that you say or do to somebody, or didn’t do, can get you in a place where now you’re the unfavored reporter or something. I was just tired of that. I was told one time… and I will name her because even if she’s still at NBC News, I don’t care. Elena Nachmanoff was the primary, and I don’t know if she still is, the primary talent recruiter for NBC News. Back when I was just like, “I’m good enough for Nightly News. I’m good enough for The Today Show. Why am I… at MSNBC and news channel only?”
Jinah Kim:
I go up to her at the Asian American Journalist Association Conventions and say, “Elena, why am I not being promoted to the top shows?” And she pulled me aside and I remember this conversation distinctly and had the balls to say to me, “Jinah, you’re just not my type. You don’t look like what I look for. You don’t sound like what I look for. Look on NBC Nightly News, look on The Today Show, you’ll see what I look for.”
Audrea Fink:
That’s like [crosstalk 00:18:53]
Reischea Canidate-Kapasouris:
Yep. Hello.
Jinah Kim:
Best thing she could have said to me because I was just like, “F this.” Somebody telling me what I’m worth, whether I look like what I’m supposed to look like, whether I’m talk like I’m supposed to talk like, when I could get vacations, when I wake up, all that stuff, somebody else telling me all of this. What I’m worth, what my title is, I was over it and that is truly when my heart kind of left the industry and I said, “I’m better off forging ahead on my own.” So when the production company took off, I was really like, “I think this is a sign that I need to embrace this and I am so glad I did.” I know being a reporter sounds like a dream job, but no matter what your job is, it can turn sour after a while. And you just get-
Reischea Canidate-Kapasouris:
It can wear on you. It can absolutely-
Jinah Kim:
[crosstalk 00:19:47] on you.
Reischea Canidate-Kapasouris:
Wear on you.
Jinah Kim:
So I would say if you can start your own gig, wow, that’s the best thing I’ve ever done. And fortunately, NBC News is still willing to let me be part time and do breaking news as they happen, entertainment news as they happen, west coast news as they happen. So I’ll take that couple days a month, just so I can keep my name on that, but the peacock on my business card, which does get me far, right? Being part time NBC News correspondent carries a lot more weight than being principal of WorldWise Productions.
Reischea Canidate-Kapasouris:
When Jinah told me that story way back when, I was floored and I’m like, “Well I’m sorry. What is she looking for? Is she not looking for talent? Is she not looking for a phenomenal reporter? Is she not looking for someone who speaks clearly? Because I’m really not sure what that means, even though we all knew what that meant.
Jinah Kim:
What that means.
Reischea Canidate-Kapasouris:
It’s utterly frustrating, but I find it interesting and I was going to ask you then, why do you continue with this reporting side of the gig, and I think you found a way to make it perfection. In that you’ve got this full robust company in WorldWise Productions and yet, you still have this full robust foot within reporting and it’s reporting real stuff. It’s reporting the fires that are going on. It’s reporting the drama in the world right now, in the country… you went to the Olympics. Part time and she’s covering the Olympics part time. I mean that’s… how are you able to avoid that pull?
Jinah Kim:
Because I feel like I don’t presume to think I contribute much to the news room, but there are very few Asian Americans on camera at the network level. And I feel like if I can represent just a little bit of that once in a while where they see a Jinah Kim appearing on TV, and then every once in a while, I can bring the perspective of what I am, as the daughter of Korean immigrants, as a business woman into the story that I’m covering, I feel like that’s something that other reporters cannot do. So as long as they’ll have me, I feel like I have something to contribute and I would like to do that. Also it keeps me sharp. It keeps my reporting and communication skills sharp.
Reischea Canidate-Kapasouris:
And you do contribute quite a bit. You contribute quite a bit to that news room in that short amount of time that you are in there because you’re a professional, and you’re a damn good reporter.
Audrea Fink:
And representation matters. It matters. It’s so important for us to be showing that there is something other than-
Jinah Kim:
What Elena Nachmanoff thinks is- Correct.
Audrea Fink:
Whatever’s she looking for, yeah.
Audrea Fink:
I want to touch base real quick on something, as you were talking about this balance between running a company and being in this industry that is not necessarily trying to be for you and you are making it. How does your mental health interact with this? Do you feel like you’re able to put those things in a box and process it? So thinking you’re the first to a school shooting, that’s a lot, right? There’s a lot of emotional stuff that happens in the news and you’re seeing a lot of that. Then you’re switching to running a company and you also, I’m sure, have some weight from being a Korean American in the US, which has not always been… well it’s still not always… we’re pretty racist in this country, so sure. We’ll just not try to sugar coat it. So how does your mental health play into that? How do you manage?
Jinah Kim:
And I have a six year old.
Audrea Fink:
Of course.
Jinah Kim:
I would say that he takes up the biggest part of my bubble, right? It is a lot. I am, I think good at pulling myself above it all. When I find myself like… because I feel like the hamster in a ball that’s this big. I try to go, “All right, just chill the F out Jinah.” And I step back and I think about where things are. And when you go above, you realize that that neighborhood that seems so crowded is actually pretty small. So I try to go above… and I think about woman who are handling a heck of a lot more than I am. So lately, believe it or not, I think about Ruth Bader Ginsburg. If you guys watched her documentary and the movie about her life, that freaking woman stayed up until 2:00 AM every day, woke up at 6:00 AM, did her husband’s papers for Harvard Law School because he had cancer, and then fed and got her children off to school, and then worked at a law firm three times as hard as the men there because she was a woman and she had to prove something.
Jinah Kim:
When I think of women like her, I think “Okay, I can get a grip on this.” I also have a friend, Kelly Lim. She had horrible meningitis when she was eight years old. She has only one left arm and two fingers. She has no legs. She’s missing her right arm, at the elbow. She not only got a degree in medicine, she became a pediatrician, so had to finish that fellowship and residency. Then she’s like, “Pediatrics, not so much for me.” She then went on to complete a residency and fellowship in allergy medicine. And now she’s an allergist specialist at UCLA Health and she has twins, and she has a husband who’s like a rocket scientist.
Audrea Fink:
A literal rocket scientist.
Jinah Kim:
Is a literal rocket scientist. He worked at SpaceX. So I look at her, where she… she told me one time, she can’t even put her hair in a ponytail. So she was trying to figure out a way to put her hair in a ponytail by herself and I said to myself, “Jinah, shut the F up.”
Audrea Fink:
Yeah.
Jinah Kim:
You look at women like her and you can’t do your own stuff? I don’t… I try not to make excuses for myself, because that is an endless proposition. I can make excuses for myself all day long, but I look at women like her at RDG and I go, “Not going there. Not playing the violin today.”
Reischea Canidate-Kapasouris:
I’m just-
Audrea Fink:
I know, right? I’m like-
Reischea Canidate-Kapasouris:
I stay there. I stay in awe.
Audrea Fink:
Let’s just sit here and bask in the glow of Jinah.
Reischea Canidate-Kapasouris:
Bask in the greatness of Jinah Kim.
Audrea Fink:
I love it. I love it.
Jinah Kim:
Reischea loves me. She’s a little biased.
Reischea Canidate-Kapasouris:
I have a reason to be. I have good taste in friends.
Jinah Kim:
I do too.
Audrea Fink:
Okay so reporter, principal of your own production company, where do these NIKO Car Seat Covers come into play?
Jinah Kim:
When Niko was two, my son, he was starting to eat in the car and he was always doing this thing where he’s like, “I’m done with the yogurt, take it.” And I’m driving 70 miles an hour down the freeway and I’m like… trying not to crash. And then he was dropping Goldfish like there was no tomorrow in all the crevices and cup holders, and if he was done with his ice cream or chocolate, he would just smear it on the seat. I was just like… I just had enough and I looked for a solution on Amazon and ordered whatever it was that I could find and found that they all popped off the seat, or covered over the cup holders, didn’t have any pockets. They were not elegant solutions to what I was looking for. Plus, a day at the beach and him not being able to hold his potty when he was potty training just sealed the deal. I was like, “All right, I got to figure this out.”
Jinah Kim:
I just randomly called the sewing company, the sewing repair company in my town and said, “You must know seamstresses. Do you know a seamstress?” And they were like, “Okay yeah, just call Barbara.” So I called Barbara at her home and I was like, “I know you’re head of the Quilting Association of [inaudible 00:28:17] Valley and I know you’re busy, but can you make something for me.” And she was like, “Sure, go right ahead.” She charged me $50, as long as I brought three towels that I bought at whatever. Took them over to her, took my car seat to her and she stitched the three towels together in a pattern that would fit the car seat.
Jinah Kim:
And I was like, “This looks good.” Then I thought to myself, “I can’t sell this. I want to sell this.” Because there’s other moms out there that need this. So being Korean, there’s a lot of Koreans in the garment industry here in LA. One of them happened to be the person that makes everything for Kirkland, Abercrombie Fitch and Nordstrom. He owns a huge company in Long Beach. So I got referred to him through my Korean connections and he was like, “Are you kidding me? I have four kids. This is great. Why doesn’t this already exist?” So he kind of took me under my wing… his wing and I got super lucky because he didn’t charge me anything to create the prototypes that were good enough to put on store shelves.
Jinah Kim:
So once I had the prototype, his company helped me make the first 2,000 and then I started a Kickstarter campaign. Then we transitioned to Amazon and oh my god, I thought I was about to die. I thought Amazon would kill me. I really did. I didn’t know what I was doing. I’ve never been in retail in my life. Amazon is like the Titanic and they were asking me to operate the ship and I had never sailed before. So many, many gray hairs later, we got on Amazon and now I’m happy to say two year later, we’re at about 400 sales a month.
Jinah Kim:
So it’s not anywhere near where a lot of Amazon products are selling, but 400 items a month at $39.99 each, to me, two years out with just me and one little gal helping me out, I consider that a victory. And I just want to build on that and go from there, and still to this day, if you Google children’s car seat covers, you will see that there is nothing out there except the NIKO and it has the cup holder openings. It has a water proof bottom. It has two pockets on each side for that banana they’re always trying to hand you on the freeway, they can just stick it in there.
Reischea Canidate-Kapasouris:
Yeah.
Jinah Kim:
You take it off, wash it, put it right back on.
Audrea Fink:
I’m so excited. We have so many moms who listen and I know so many moms and I never know what to get people who have kids, because I don’t have kids. So I’m always like, “Here’s a gift card.” Now I have a new thing. Now I have a new thing. I’m so stocked.
Reischea Canidate-Kapasouris:
And it’s a great thing. I got one. I mean, I don’t need them anymore because… thank gosh, we have gotten through that potty training stage and everything and I reached a point where I was like, “You’re not allowed to eat in here anymore, forget it.”
Jinah Kim:
You can do that.
Reischea Canidate-Kapasouris:
You know? It’s awesome. Once again, Jinah just… she thinks it, she does it.
Julie Holton:
And this incredible think it, do it attitude, I really would love to know, you said you have a six year old son. What are you… and I know we have so many parents who listen, so many moms, and we’re constantly… and I’m not a mom either, but I’m an aunt. And so I’m constantly trying to think in terms of what am I teaching the little kids. So what… I think this is just so incredible that your son is growing up in this world where he sees his mom has an idea and she makes it happen. I just… I absolutely love that. How are you… how are some of these lessons translating for him right now at his age?
Jinah Kim:
You know, truth be told, he would probably prefer a mommy who doesn’t do these things, right? Because he wants more mommy time.
Audrea Fink:
Yeah.
Jinah Kim:
That is something that does prick at my heart when I think about all the things that I’m juggling and how really 24/7 he probably would like me to be that mom that doesn’t do those things. But I can say that later on when he’s older and understands what it is that his mom did, and named a company after him, and was able to translate ideas into products or services or businesses, I think he will appreciate that that this is something he also has innately in him. Just like I was able to do it at a time when… who knows what the internet, or cell phones, or devices, or technologies going to be when he’s my age trying to do these things, he’ll be like, “I can’t believe my mom did that when we only had 5G.” You know? “We were only at iPad 4, how did she do that?” You know?
Jinah Kim:
I feel like these are lessons that’ll pop when he’s older, but what I do want to say about moms is that because we’re able to juggle so much as it is being a mom, and Reischea can tell you all about this. I can literally stir the scrambled eggs while I am cleaning the counter with my other hand. You just learn how to multitask in a crazy way, and we, as moms figure out that something’s not efficient. This isn’t happening fast enough for me to be able to feed my child or do this with my child. And we just go “Wouldn’t it be great if blankity-blank?” And then because we have kids and lives, we can’t take action on those ideas. But if you did, I guarantee you it would pay off. So that is the thing I can say about being a mom and juggling and what my son thinks.
Reischea Canidate-Kapasouris:
And listen, even if you were able to spend all of your time with little Niko, little Niko would still feel that it’s not enough time.
Jinah Kim:
That’s true.
Reischea Canidate-Kapasouris:
There’s no such thing as… Chrisonia and I will sit and play… which means I’m giving up a bunch of other things that need to get done to say, “Okay, I’m going to dedicate this time to you.” Let’s say an hour has gone by and I’m like, “Okay, mommy needs to go work on X,Y and Z.” And literally 20 seconds have gone by, she’s in my… “Mommy, you have to play with me.” It’s like, “Listen, I can’t dedicate the entire day just to you. At some point, you’re going to want to eat. At some point, you’re going to need some clean underwear. At some point, mommy’s got to get her other work done that’s not necessarily attached to you, your dad, your brother, this house.” So you’re never going to win that argument. You’re never going to win that argument.
Audrea Fink:
Because there’s an article that talked about the working mom and how if the parents who are working devoted specific quality time to their children, the children fared no differently than parents who had stay at home time. It is less about the quantity of time you spend with your kids and more about the quality of time. So he might not love that you’re not around all the time because he loves his mom, but he will benefit from having had a mom who was so invested in making a life for him and also spending quality time, right? Spending that one hour of undivided attention versus 15 hours of constantly divided attention.
Jinah Kim:
Yes, I do try to put my device away when I with him and I’m fully present to him. That is something that I can give him and I do.
Reischea Canidate-Kapasouris:
You know, in all of this that you’ve done and all of these adventures, these work models, the news, the NIKO Car Seat, WorldWise Productions, let’s face it, you have met so many people in doing all of this. Talk about the relationships that you have been able to develop because of everything that you just are doing that just puts you in the face. Listen to what you just said with regards to getting the car seat prototype underway from yet another connection.
Jinah Kim:
Yes, and relationships, many people will tell you is the key to everything. If you have people who think you’re a complete schmuck, and you’ve never done anything for them because it was all about you, you will not get the help you need to be able to do what you need to do. If you think you can do everything by yourself, maybe. But it’s so much easier when you have help along the way. When I started WorldWise, I had a great relationship with that media relations officer at UCLA Health. She launched me with the NIKO, just like Reischea was saying. It was that Korean connection that I had, but that person was willing to refer me to his friend Dan Kang, because he liked me. If you don’t have that relationship building skill, I’m not sure that you’ll have the help you’ll need to get you to mile 23, you know what I mean? Maybe you can make it to mile 20 on your own. How many miles is a marathon? 23 miles, right?
Audrea Fink:
I don’t know, I’ve never attempted it.
Reischea Canidate-Kapasouris:
26.2.
Jinah Kim:
- Yeah. The last six miles I heard are killer, right? You are just dying. When you get to that point, you need somebody to hand you that water and cheer you on, and that’s what relationships will do for you.
Audrea Fink:
I can just imagine a bunch of women out there freaking out being like, “Well I’m not likable, or I don’t know how to be likable, or maybe I’m an introvert.” I don’t think likability is specifically about being everybody’s cup of tea. I can guarantee you the four women on this podcast right now are not everybody’s cup of tea. But likability comes from being able to build that relationship. It comes from asking questions, from being interested in them. People love talking about themselves, so if you can ask questions and people can tell you the answer, they’re going to remember you as someone who made them feel good. Building relationships and being likable to the people who are your people, that’s what’s going to build that network that is going to be so valuable, because network is so important. But you don’t have to… don’t stress about not being everybody’s favorite or the popular kid, that is not what makes likability.
Jinah Kim:
Absolutely. But someone can see right through you when you’re not interested in them.
Audrea Fink:
Yes.
Jinah Kim:
So exactly like what you were saying. If you find yourself regularly coming away from a conversation and somebody else did all the asking, and you didn’t bother to even ask that person a question about themselves-
Audrea Fink:
Right.
Jinah Kim:
Check in with yourself once in a while and go “Huh, I just told them my whole life story and I didn’t find out anything about them. I don’t even remember their name. I don’t remember their name.” Right? You didn’t do the job there.
Reischea Canidate-Kapasouris:
A previous guest on this show that these wonderful ladies interviewed who happens to be the big sister I never had, Seannon Owens Jones actually just sent me a book recently about marketing relationships specifically and she, like you, is phenomenal about developing those relationships. As a matter of fact, she’s the direct link to how I’m with this podcast now, because of developing relationships and keeping in touch with individuals, even if it’s just one or two people because let’s face it, we run into… we meet people all the time and you can’t hold on to every single person that you meet. But you try to invest the time into the individuals as regularly as you possibly can. So a person like Jinah Kim and I, who knew each other all of two years, came into a station together, but that’s my heart. I’m not letting that go.
Jinah Kim:
Me neither.
Julie Holton:
And ladies, you know what the other factor is? I think when we’re talking about likability, before we can move on, I just have to say this. I think so often as women, we are our own worst critics.
Audrea Fink:
Yes.
Julie Holton:
So we tend to think about all of the negative qualities that we don’t like about ourselves, or things that we perceive about ourselves that we don’t like. So we tend to then think that other people are saying these things or other people don’t like us for who we are. And really, a lot of that work starts with ourselves, and I know we talk about this on a lot of our podcasts, but that work starts within. So of course, we need to be building these relationships outside of ourselves, but that work starts within us.
Audrea Fink:
This has been so insightful. Thank you so much for joining us today and sharing your thoughts and your wisdom and your advice. Before we go, we are collecting advise from successful women in our communities and sharing it out with our think tank forum. So we have three rapid fire questions for you. Number one, is there a lesson that you’ve recently learned that you wish you had learned earlier in your career?
Jinah Kim:
Chill the heck out. That’s what I would say. I get so over thinking about mistakes that I’ve made, or things that I’ve said, or things that I could have done differently. Sometimes when I go above those trees again, and I take the bird’s eye view, I realize it wasn’t a big deal.
Julie Holton:
What is the biggest piece of advice that you would offer to a woman in any career?
Jinah Kim:
Dive in. Don’t spend so much time taking the temperature of the water. If you feel like you know how to swim that water, just try it. Worse thing that’ll happen, you’ll just get back out, but you’ve tried.
Reischea Canidate-Kapasouris:
I know that you’ve already touched on it, so I think this will be more of a reemphasis with regards to today’s professional setting, what do you feel the most important skill for a woman is?
Jinah Kim:
I do feel it’s likability and relatability and relationship building. I know that’s a three part answer, but they all kind of are in the same-
Reischea Canidate-Kapasouris:
They all work together.
Jinah Kim:
They’re all in the same bucket, right? You can do something exceptionally well, and you can be extremely talented at what you do, but that likability will carry you that extra last lap.
Audrea Fink:
Well thank you Jinah for sharing with us. Can you share the best way for our audience to connect with you if they have additional questions or maybe business interests?
Jinah Kim:
Yes, just email me. Jinah@wwpvideo.com and I’m happy to answer their emails. Give me a little bit of time because six year old Niko, NBC, but I’ll respond for sure.
Reischea Canidate-Kapasouris:
And remember, that’s Jinah J-I-N-A-H.
Julie Holton:
Jinah, thank you so much for joining us today, that’s all for this episode of Think Tank of Three.
Audrea Fink:
If you have topics you’d like us to cover or guests you’d like to hear from, send us a message at thinktankofthree@gmail.com. Subscribe to the Think Tank of Three wherever you listen to podcasts and connect with us online. We blog weekly at thinktankofthree.com.
Julie Holton:
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Reischea Canidate-Kapasouris:
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