From Nordstrom to TikTok Live to digital media, this episode shares how balancing multiple income streams helped me discover what I truly loved doing.

Kelli (00:00)
Hi everyone, welcome to the Goldsea Podcast. My name is Kelli and if you had asked me when I graduated high school what I thought I would be doing in my twenties, I probably would have told you something completely different from what I’m doing today.

I definitely don’t think I would have told you that I would be working in media, producing podcasts, styling people for Nordstrom, creating social campaigns, marketing a sports bar. But somehow I’ve been able to find a way to make all of those things fit right into my schedule within the last couple of years.

My career has been anything but a straight line. I’m twenty-four now, and I think that one of the biggest things that I’ve learned so far being in my twenties is that you don’t necessarily need to know exactly what you want to do when you’re 18, 19, or even 22. Sometimes you just figure it out by doing things, going through experiences and realizing what you like and what you hate.

That’s pretty much what happened to me.

So today I wanna talk about how I went from having absolutely no idea what I wanted to do with my life to balancing multiple streams of income while also building a career in social media, marketing and content creation.

Going all the way back to when I first graduated high school, I attended community college, and my first major was actually business real estate. Throughout high school, I thought I wanted to become a real estate agent. As a child, my dream job was to become a fashion designer. But as I grew up and I got to high school,

I decided to go towards a more traditional path and when I was younger I would always love going house hunting with my mom. She was always on the hunt for her dream house. So we would look at houses online together and then go and visit them as well.

I really loved seeing the different homes, seeing interiors, and really just imagining what you could do with different spaces like that.

So naturally at that age I was like, okay, I like houses. Maybe I should just go into real estate. But then I actually started taking the classes and I was like, okay, maybe not. There were a lot of numbers, a lot of math problems, technical concepts, and things that just really weren’t exciting to me.

I started realizing that liking houses and actually liking the business of real estate were two completely different things. And that was my very first lesson because sometimes you may like the idea of a career more than you like the actual work.

So I switched my major multiple times. I considered criminal justice, sociology, and psychology,

and I was just trying to figure out where I fit in and what I really liked.

In my second year at community college, I landed on communication and media studies. And choosing that major ended up being one of the best decisions that I could have ever made in my life.

Taking these classes felt like I was learning about things that aligned with how my brain worked. Growing up, I always had a creative side. I loved talking to people. I was always a social person. I loved understanding why people think the way that they do,

and communication gave me the room to explore all of that. But more importantly, it didn’t lock me into just one career.

After doing my research about the major, I realized that I can work in marketing, I can work in media, public relations, social media, entertainment, sports. At the time I didn’t know what I was going to do, but I finally felt like I was going in the right direction.

Something that shaped my career was definitely timing. I was a part of the high school class of 2020, so the timing wasn’t that great with the pandemic and all. I graduated into a world where nobody knew what was going to happen.

School shut down, so we didn’t have people that we could talk to and guide us into the next steps of our life. Businesses were closing, people weren’t working, college was virtual at first. Entire industries were changing and I was here, freshly graduated, thinking to myself, okay, I’m supposed to figure out what I’m gonna do for the rest of my life now.”

And so aside from school, I would fill up the rest of my time with work.

My very first job was at Kids Foot Locker and I also worked multiple serving jobs throughout college. One of my first major jobs was Nordstrom.

I started off as a sales associate working in the women’s department. I worked in lingerie, I worked in the activewear department. And this was really exciting for me because, like I said before, I always wanted to be a fashion designer, but this kind of sufficed because I was around fashion, I was around clothes, and I was around something that I was interested in since I was a little girl.

This was the very first time I was working in an environment that felt creative because I was putting outfits together for customers, I was learning about different fashion brands, and I was learning about how clothes fit different people.

Throughout all the years that I’ve worked in retail, I didn’t really realize in the moment how incredibly important learning how to sell would become. Retail totally teaches you how to read people.

Some customers do not want you to talk to them at all and they just want you to ring them up after they’re done shopping. Other people want you to greet them when they step into the store. You learn how to ask questions about people and you really learn how to listen as well.

So as I was working at Nordstrom, on top of that, I was also working my serving job. So throughout college, I had school, Nordstrom, and restaurant work, and that definitely helped me with the mindset that I have today.

I strongly believe that working these jobs has helped me with my people skills. It

has helped me become the person that I am today.

And so during this time I really enjoyed being busy. I liked knowing that I had different ways to earn money. And without realizing it, I was also learning how to manage my time extremely early on.

Throughout the first two or three years being in college, I was working three different jobs, Nordstrom and I had two restaurant jobs all at once.

I got very burnt out and I eventually quit both of the restaurant jobs and I was only working at Nordstrom. So I started to ask myself, what else can I do here?

After working at Nordstrom for over three years, I was offered the opportunity to become a Nordstrom personal stylist. So now customers could actually book appointments with me online. I could build my own clientele, I could create online styling boards, and then that’s when another opportunity also opened up, and it was with content creation.

I was able to become a part of Nordstrom’s digital styling and influencer ecosystem and I started to film videos for Nordstrom.com. If you go on the website and you look up a product, there’s always a video that goes along with it that shows you an up-close look at the product and tells you a little bit more details.

When I was doing this, that was really my introduction to being on camera professionally. I would talk about products, I would demonstrate outfits, explain how pieces would go with one another, and just really create shoppable content.

Here I would also get gifting opportunities. I would collaborate with other stylists all across the country working on digital campaigns for brands at Nordstrom.

So I kind of personally taught myself how to create this kind of fashion content. And then I realized while doing it that I really like this. And I really liked being on camera. I really liked creating something and seeing people respond to it. And I loved seeing that people wanted to buy something because I was showing it to them.

I realized that I really liked this. I liked figuring out how to make someone interested in a product. I just didn’t know that I could really build a career around this retail position that I was in.

Aside from Nordstrom, I was going to school, but I also kind of had a lot more time because I wasn’t serving anymore. And so I started to kind of look at what else I could do besides that. I was sending out emails, looking at random opportunities, and one of those opportunities eventually landed me on the whatever podcast.

For anyone who’s unfamiliar with it, it’s a pretty raunchy podcast that became known for these big panel discussions and debates, especially the ones around modern dating and relationships. At first I went on as a guest. I had no idea what was about to happen. I just thought, okay, I like being on camera. Let me try and see what this opportunity is all about.

After the show, clips of my appearance began to circulate There were clips of me debating the other girls on the panel, debating with the host, and just sharing my opinions. And those videos were getting millions of views across TikTok and Instagram. And I remember watching it happen and thinking, “Wow people actually think that the stuff I have to say is interesting.”

And after that, I was invited back multiple times to be a guest on the podcast again. Eventually, I was able to develop a relationship with the show’s producer, and he really liked the way that I thought. He liked how I communicated with guests and how I understood different people and personalities. And he offered me a position working behind the scenes rather than just being on camera in influencer relations.

This was fascinating to me because this gave me the opportunity to really grow my network. Now I wasn’t just talent sitting in front of a camera.

I was helping build the panel, I was negotiating rates, I was doing influencer out I was doing influencer outreach, casting guests, and helping determine which personalities would work well with one another. And because this entire position was remote and it was contract based, I did all my work from my phone, just a couple hours each day and

fit it around everything else that I was doing. So now I had another stream of income that replaced my serving income. And also I got more experience and another skill.

So now at this point I’m working at Nordstrom three days a week, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, and going to school on Tuesday and Thursday.

Like I said, I would fit in the influencer relation stuff throughout my schedule whenever I had time. But then during my junior year of college came one of the most random and probably one of the most important opportunities

I found a position for a hosting job at a TikTok livestream company.

When they called me in for an interview, I really didn’t know what I was walking into. I kind of showed up and they handed me a product. It was some kind of 14-day gut cleanse product. And they said, Here’s the product, here’s some notes, sell it to us for five minutes. And I was like, Five minutes of talking? That’s it? I can yap for 25 minutes. I can totally do this. I had already spent my years working in retail and restaurants and without realizing it,

I was training for this exact situation. Retail taught me sales. Serving taught me how to talk to strangers. Making content for Nordstrom taught me how to talk on camera. And working for the podcast taught me how to think quickly. Now all of a sudden all of my unrelated jobs were coming together and I did this interview and I got the job on the spot.

Once I started to go in more, I was live streaming and I realized that I was really good at this. In the first month that I started, in the first month that I started selling this gut pill, I generated around $100,000 in sales. And that completely blew my mind. I was talking for six hours straight, which was way more than what the other hosts were doing. They would have three different hosts a day working two-hour shifts.

And I would come and I would work a full six hours shift talking from hour one to hour six.

Now, if you’ve never live streamed for six hours, it is a lot of talking. You’re repeating information, you’re answering the questions that people are asking in the in the comment section. You’re creating urgency, you’re keeping these people entertained, you’re watching the sales numbers all at once. This is no editing. This is all in live time. So you don’t have an opportunity to do another take. You just really have to keep going.

When I would tell people what I was doing for work, they would be completely mind blown because they didn’t understand how I was able to do it. But I loved it.

As I was live streaming more, I realized that

I kind of liked this a little bit more than working at Nordstrom. So I switched up my schedule. Now I was going to school on Tuesday and Thursday. I was going in live streaming on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. And then on Saturday and Sunday, I would work at Nordstrom.

Then throughout my schedule, again, like I said, I would spend time on my phone doing influencer outreach and casting for the podcast. Looking back at it now and saying it all out loud, I don’t know how I did it. At the time, it felt normal, but I was basically working every single day and I didn’t have no off day. But

I was making money from multiple places

But other than making money, more importantly, I was learning completely different skills from each one of the different jobs that I had.

Each one was teaching me something new. Nordstrom was teaching me about fashion, sales, and client relationships. The podcast was teaching me about the entertainment industry, casting people, and talent relations. Live streaming was teaching me social commerce, content strategy, and performing,

and then in school I was learning about communication theory and media. Suddenly I started to see a career building from this.

I took the live streaming position very seriously because of how much I enjoyed it. Eventually it became more than just me sitting in front of the camera and doing these live streams. We started to plan mega live streams, some of them which lasted 12 hours long. And I became completely involved with the moderators and other team members to figure out what kinds of products are we pushing,

Which hosts are gonna come on and do the live stream? How do we keep viewers entertained? Which deal should we do? What language is converting? There was an entire strategy behind these mega lives. And at that point, that’s when I started to understand that social media wasn’t just about making something look good and posting a pretty picture. There was an entire strategy behind everything. There’s psychology, there’s data, sales, storytelling,

community management.

And the more that I was executing the strategy behind these live streams, I thought that this is exactly what I love doing. I love working in this kind of environment. And by my senior year, I had some kind of direction. I knew I liked social media, I knew I liked content creation, I liked being on camera, I liked marketing, I liked storytelling.

And so from there I started to just prepare myself for my life after graduation.

I started to completely rework my resume. I built my portfolio and all of my random jobs did not look random anymore. I had so many videos that I had created over the years. I had campaigns that I worked on. I had real number results. I had social media experience, on-camera experience, styling experience, live commerce experience, and actual numbers behind my work. So by my final semester, I was applying for full-time positions, and that’s how I ended up here at

Asia Media Group. I joined Asia Media Group as an associate editor, and this role brought together so many of the things that I discovered that I loved. Here I write articles, produce podcasts like this right here. I create Instagram and TikTok content. I research Asian American culture, business, entertainment, and sports,

and I also help keep Goldsea.com updated with stories that matter to the Asian American community.

When I was initially hired, I was still in college, so I worked part-time, which meant my schedule changed yet again. So now Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, I’m working at Asian Media Group. Tuesday and Thursday, I’m going to school, and then Saturday and Sunday, I would be at Nordstrom.

Saturday and Sunday, I would still be at Nordstrom, and in between all of that, I would do the influencer relations still for the whatever podcast.

Now at this point I had to dramatically cut down on live streaming because the commute to the office was about an hour each way. And I really would only so I started to only come back for major live stream events.

So, even though I still had multiple streams of income, I did start becoming more selective, and that’s another lesson that I learned along the way: having multiple streams of income doesn’t mean you have to say yes to everything forever. Sometimes some things are only there for a little bit. Sometimes you will only have a gig for like four months, and that’s okay. But I think the most important thing is just to say yes to the experience,

But you don’t have to keep saying yes to that if there are more opportunities that you want to go and explore. Something just serves its purpose for the time being. You learn from it and then you make room for the next opportunity.

Once I finally graduated from college in 2025, Asian Media became my full-time position. So I had another decision to make. What am I gonna do with Nordstrom? I didn’t necessarily want to leave because I had spent years, because I had spent about six years now building my clientele. I built so many relationships with customers, and I’ve already established myself as a stylist for the brand.

But at the same time, I did not want to spend every Saturday and Sunday working an eight hour retail shift anymore.

So I decided to take action and change the way that I was working for Nordstrom. I moved most of my styling online and I would create style boards for my phone and send products to different customers so that they I so that I could continue managing my relationships with them. And then I would physically go into the store once a week or once every other week. And now I finally had my weekends back.

For just a little bit because apparently for some reason I do not know how to leave empty space in my schedule or time for me to take a break. So now

it’s been almost a year since I graduated from college and I’ve been working full-time. And with the flexibility that I had on the weekend now, I took on a contract marketing position with Game Changer Brewhouse, which is a sports bar in Sherman Oaks.

This was exciting for me because I was going to be able to do something I haven’t done before. I was going to be completely leading a restaurant’s marketing strategy.

So rather than just creating content and posting it, I started to have to think about the bigger picture. So I have to think about what’s happening this weekend. What sporting event are we marketing? What are we posting? What flyer will get attention? How are we going to how are we going to get people through the door?

And because this was a contract position, I didn’t have to be on site all the time. So working on the weekends there fit right into my schedule. We just recently hosted the FIFA World Cup, which was absolutely crazy.

And there was so much planning behind those events with soccer games every single day. Sometimes there was five or six games every single day. Sometimes there was back-to-back turnovers where there’s fully sold-out reservations all day long.

Gaining the experience that I got from that campaign taught me a completely different side of marketing.

You need those views to become reservations, customers, sales, revenue.

And knowing that made me a much stronger marketer today.

So I would definitely say my career now looks completely different from what eighteen year old me would have imagined. My primary career is in media.

I’m an associate editor creating editorial content and social content centered around Asian American stories. And at the same time, I’m leading digital marketing at Game Changer Brewhouse.

Because of the industry that I decided to step into,

I was able to find positions where I can create my own schedule and do things from home and do things right off of my phone. Over the years, I’ve been maintaining the pieces of my network and skills that I’ve built throughout fashion, content creation, and social media. And when I look back at everything that I’ve done, there are so many lines that just connect all of it. Back then, I just couldn’t see the line when I was living it.

I think people online always talk about having multiple streams of income and they talk about it like it’s the glamorous life hack. Yes earning money from different places can be great, but I think the overall biggest benefit of it was the career leverage. Each job gave me something that I could bring to the next one.

And that’s the part that I wish more young people understood. Your first job is not going to be your dream job. Your second job isn’t going to be either. But working so many different jobs

has definitely helped me get me to where I am today.

I don’t want this to sound like I’m telling everyone in their twenties that they need five different jobs because you definitely don’t. There were so many times where I felt absolutely exhausted, times where my schedule was ridiculous, where I wasn’t even getting a break.

And eventually I did learn that being busy and being productive are not the same thing. In the beginning, I wanted every opportunity, but now I’m much more selective. I stop and ask myself if it helps my career. I ask, does this teach me something? I ask if it pays enough to justify my time, and if I actually am going to enjoy what it is that I have to do.

I think at twenty I was just trying to still figure out what I liked and kind of collect experiences. But now I want to build more depth. And I think that is a really important transition throughout anybody’s career. I think if you are eighteen, nineteen, twenty, twenty one, twenty two, any age really, and you have no idea what you’re doing with your career, you should not

panic yet. I think experimenting was one of the best things that I could do. Take those internships, send those emails. Don’t be afraid to message people. Apply for stuff that you’re not even sure if you’re qualified for.

I did not wake up one morning and decide that I’m gonna build my career around marketing and digital media.

I took the opportunities that came along the way and I discovered what I truly like.

And from there one thing just kept leading to another.

So even though I changed my major multiple times and worked multiple different jobs in between hospitality, entertainment, and fashion, I can now look back and see how each of my experiences was giving me another piece of the career that I have today.

I’m still figuring stuff out. I’m only 24, but I do know what I’m good at and what I love doing. I love turning ideas into something that people respond to. I love being creative. I love working with people.

So really at the end of the day, I do not think your twenties are supposed to be about finding that perfect career immediately.

It’s really more about collecting enough experience to realize who you are in your line of work. Thank you guys so much for listening in, and we’ll see you in the next podcast.