"The feeling was akin to climbing a mountain for ten years, and when you get to the summit, you realize you climbed the wrong mountain the whole time. The pursuit of prestige, money, title, and stability wasn't my dream; it was my parents' dream for me. When I checked that box, I realized I felt so hollow and empty." - Daniel Suh
"The biggest misconception about burnout is that it comes from the number of hours you are working, how demanding the work is, or how high-pressure it is. Burnout can be correlated with the number of hours you work, but the causal factor to burnout is what you are thinking and feeling during those hours." - Pooja Venkatraman
"It is not really about happiness; it is really about the pursuit of happiness, and our willingness to go through difficulty, challenge, and sacrifice. Instead of thinking about happiness and unhappiness as a temperature, what I find more interesting is the thermostat, which asks, 'Does this bring purpose to me?'" - Jeremy Au
In this compilation episode hosted by Edric Poon, Daniel Suh, general partner at Gold House Ventures and a former corporate lawyer, describes the guilt second-generation Asian Americans feel toward immigrant parents, and why that pushes many toward prestige careers. He recounts five years in consulting with senior military and government clients, a Northwestern JD/MBA, and summers at a big law firm and a private equity firm. A verbal private equity offer left him feeling he had climbed the wrong mountain. Executive coach Pooja Venkatraman argues burnout comes from the mental soundtrack running during work, not the hours worked. Jeremy Au says purpose, not happiness, sustains effort, citing his army service.
E713 Daniel Suh, General Partner at Gold House Ventures
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3BayAbDaMGM
E712 Pooja Venkatraman, Executive Coach
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eG25OpGZ66c
E720 Jeremy Au on Life Self Mastery with Rohit Malhotra
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3GVydLTmN8c
00:00 Intro
00:36 Daniel Suh: second-generation guilt
03:03 Consulting and learning to speak up
05:04 The JD-MBA, Big Law and the rat race
09:14 The private equity offer and the wrong mountain
10:27 Pooja Venkatraman: burnout isn't about the hours
12:16 Imposter syndrome and the wrong path
14:16 Why not just quit?
16:15 When emotion is high, intelligence is low
17:38 The romanticization trap
18:13 Jeremy Au: the thermostat, not the temperature
19:44 Outro
#CareerPivot #ImposterSyndrome #GoldenHandcuffs #ExecutiveCoaching #VentureCapital #PrivateEquity #BigLaw #Purpose #TechPodcast
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Introduction
Edric Poon: Welcome back to BRAVE. High achievers across Asia are systematically trained to optimize for external prestige signals: Big Law equity, private equity deal tables and corporate titles. Yet reaching the summit of someone else's mountain often triggers a quiet identity crisis.
In this video compilation, we examine what it actually takes to unlearn institutional prestige, unlock the golden handcuffs, if you will, of corporate security, and reconstruct an authentic identity beyond external validation.
We start with Daniel Suh, General Partner at Gold House Ventures and former corporate lawyer. Daniel reflects on the psychological friction of second-generation immigrant guilt, stepping away from high-status institutions, and why a private equity offer could no longer cover up a fundamental misalignment with his values.
Second-Generation Guilt
Daniel Suh: I think our generation, as the second gen in the US, we struggle in the sense that we are split between identities, and we feel almost a sense of guilt or debt towards the previous generation. And we feel that going down this prescribed route of being a white-collar professional, being a doctor or an engineer, is the best way to honor their sacrifice.
And because of that, you tend to diminish your own dreams, your own passions. You'll never hear Asian immigrant parents tell you, "Hey, go pursue your dreams. Go be happy." Maybe eventually. But I think that first instinct is to say, "Hey, we want you to be secure, to be financially stable." And basically the implication there is, "We don't want you to struggle like we did. We want you to be stable and financially secure first, and then you can be happy," right?
And so I think a lot of my generation now, we are entering a phase where, hey, we did everything right, quote unquote. We went to grad school, we worked at the best companies. But we feel this sense of hollowness, that maybe this is not the life that we wanted for ourselves. Now we're here, but maybe our real passions and real dreams are unfulfilled.
Side note, I actually think that's why the Asian founders we back are so exceptional. They all have the most amazing pedigrees. They come from Berkeley, Stanford, Harvard. They worked at the best tech companies, law firms, consulting companies. But now they're in their mid-20s, early 30s, and they're like, "Hey, I've already done that. Checked all the boxes. Now I'm going to go pursue my dream."
Jeremy Au: Amazing. And one thing that comes up for me is that in America, there's such a huge focus on academics, because it feels like academics is the only fair system, at least from a parent's perspective. It's an equalizer, right? Because it's not a social network. It's not who you know. It's very much like, okay, you got 99 out of 100, you get into the UC system, and then college will, you know.
Consulting and Learning to Speak Up
Jeremy Au: And I'm just kind of curious, because there you are, and you went through the experience where you went into consulting and you did five years there to support your family. What did you learn from that consulting stint?
Daniel Suh: I think consulting was one of the most formative experiences I've had professionally. Being in a big company really taught me how to speak the language of the corporate world. It almost felt like training. You go to college and learn, and it sets a baseline. I felt consulting was very similar: how to think in a structured manner, how to be analytical.
My clients were very senior military and government officials. So I'm in my early 20s, and Asians, we look so young too. So being in a room with a two-star general, or working with someone from the Pentagon, it's intimidating, right? And I'm also an introvert, so I think it really forced me to ask, "Hey, do you belong in this room?" It made me confront that question.
And my upbringing as an Asian son, an Asian immigrant, where we're told, "Hey, just blend in, just conform, don't stand out, don't cause any friction," kind of worked against me. But being in the consulting world, where you're client-facing and you have to present in a certain way, have a certain demeanor and engage, was super intimidating, but it really taught me the value of speaking up and being present. In retrospect, it's really the soft things that mattered.
Jeremy Au: And I resonated with that. I was also a consultant in my formative years after undergrad. I bought glasses so I'd look older.
Daniel Suh: The moment I started my consulting job, I got LASIK. I wore glasses to look smarter.
Jeremy Au: And older.
Daniel Suh: And older.
Jeremy Au: Seriously, it's a real problem for us.
Daniel Suh: Shout-out to Warby Parker.
"I Have to Be a Lawyer Now"
Jeremy Au: And so there you are, and you went back to grad school, looking at the joint JD and MBA. I think that makes a lot of sense for your career. I'm just kind of curious: there you are studying, and you made the decision to say not law, but to go into business. How did you come to that realization?
Daniel Suh: That in itself was a journey. I applied to the JD-MBA program because when I was applying, I was in my late 20s. Rather than go back to school twice, I'd just do it in one shot. Northwestern has an accelerated JD-MBA program, so that's what I applied to, and it was my dream program.
It was so funny, because I was also applying to regular MBA programs as well, and I got into a couple. But when I told my mom, she was just kind of lukewarm about it: "Oh, cool, that's a good school." But the moment I told her, "Oh, I got into law school," she just screamed, right? She's like, "Oh, you're going to be a lawyer!" And I remember thinking, "Dang, I have to be a lawyer now. I don't want to disappoint my parents."
Big Law and the Rat Race
Daniel Suh: So I went to Northwestern, I went to law school. And what I learned in law school was, one, I could do law school, which is pure grinding. I was in the library for 12, 14 hours a day, just really locked in.
But just because you're good at something doesn't necessarily mean you derive joy from it. And I never had this emotional invocation of, "Oh, this is what I'm meant to do," right? I think a lot of pressure came from seeing what everyone else wanted to do and comparing yourself: "Oh, they're going to work at this law firm," or "They got this clerkship." It almost became the ultimate rat race. You're doing something, you want to excel, not for yourself, but to keep up or just to race ahead.
And I caught myself just really sad and depressed about it, too. But, you know what? I'm here. I've got a ton of student debt. I've got to make it worth it.
So over the summer, I worked at a law firm known for being a place where you just really grind. And I saw the associates. They're so miserable. I think one reason is just the nature of the job, if you're working insane hours, billable hours. And I also saw the partners, and these are just amazing, incredible people. But what really stood out to me was that the partners who were crushing it loved what they do, right? They had a passion for law. Law was the entire thing. Whereas a lot of the early associates I met were just doing it to get on the partner track, or because they didn't know what else to do.
They're all brilliant people. But I just saw the difference, the gap between doing something you love versus something you feel like you have to do. And the questions of my purpose really started cascading in my head. What's something I'm passionate about? What makes me feel alive? At the end of the day, I thought, law is something I could do, but I don't think I could do it for the next ten years. I don't think I would really be the best at it.
The Startup That Felt Like Fun
Daniel Suh: And so I came back to school, and that's when my MBA classes started, and that was just so much more fun. I would wake up, go to school, go to classes, sit in the front, raise my hand to participate, just completely insufferable.
At Northwestern, there's a student entrepreneurship program. They choose ten of the top student entrepreneurs, and I was lucky enough to get in. Me and a couple of MBA friends decided to do a business together. We got funding from that, and in my year and a half at the MBA, all we did was work on that company. And I remember this came from the deepest parts of my heart: "Oh, this is so fun."
I lived in the apartment building known for having all the MBA folks, and Northwestern MBA students are known for being party animals. I remember on Friday nights, the unit next to me would have all these ragers, and I'm like, "Oh my gosh, they're so annoying," because I'm just working on my company at 2 a.m. on a Friday night. But to me, that was the most fun.
And then I think that made me think again: is this what I like? What do I really want to do?
The Wrong Mountain
Daniel Suh: That summer, I was lucky enough to also intern at a private equity firm. And in my mind, I was like, "This is so insane. I've reached the American Dream." Because, coming from poverty, a family of immigrants, I'm working at two of my dream firms, in Big Law and private equity, with these amazing people at these big-name firms.
So yeah, I was there, I got a verbal offer, and I was happy. I was elated for, like, ten minutes. I got back to my hotel room, and I was like, "Wow. It's gone, you know?"
And I came back to school, and I just got this deep, deep depression. I was like, "Why am I so sad?" And I think the feeling was akin to climbing a mountain for ten years. You get to the summit, and then you realize you climbed the wrong mountain the whole time.
And I was like, wow. I just grinded my entire 20s because I thought I wanted to be here. And the pursuit of prestige, money, title, stability, that wasn't my dream. That was my parents' dream for me. And when I checked that box, I realized I feel so hollow and so empty.
Burnout Isn't About the Hours
Edric Poon: Stepping off the track requires overcoming the internal machinery that got you there in the first place: fear, status anxiety and chronic imposter syndrome. Here's executive coach Pooja Venkatraman on why burnout has almost nothing to do with the hours on your calendar, and everything to do with the mental soundtrack running underneath your work.
Pooja Venkatraman: The biggest misconception about burnout is that it comes from the number of hours you're working, or how hard you're working, how demanding the work is, how high-pressure it is, right? People think, "Well, if you're working 24/7, you're up until two in the morning, my gosh, you must be burning out." And if you have two hours of work a day and you're barely doing anything, "Oh my gosh, what a luxurious life," right?
And what I find is that burnout can be correlated with the number of hours you're working, certainly. But the causal factor of burnout is: what are you thinking and feeling during those hours?
Because my project at BCG where I worked the absolute most, we literally worked till 2 or 3 in the morning, Monday to Thursday. My slides would be done, and I would regularly stay late to help make other people's slides, right? It was just such a team effort. Crazy hours on that project. Most fun time in my life. I genuinely still look back fondly. At that time I was like, "Oh, what a dream. That was so much fun," right?
Jeremy Au: It's like, wait, can we bring it back?
Pooja Venkatraman: Exactly, right? And I can also think of times in my career where I've had very little to do, not that much work on. And I have felt tremendously burnt out, because what I was thinking and feeling while I was sitting there was, "What am I doing? Why am I here? What should I be doing? Should I do this?" I don't know if that makes any sense.
And so I always bring people back to this: the cause of your burnout is going to be the mental and emotional soundtrack that's running inside you all day long.
Two Flavors of Burnout
Pooja Venkatraman: And I think there are a couple of flavors of it that tend to cause burnout. Because if that soundtrack runs for an hour or two, and it's very stressful, but then you're fine the rest of the time, it's not going to be a big deal. It's when it runs 24/7 for months and years at a time, right? That's when it really causes burnout.
So I'd say one flavor of that soundtrack is essentially, "I'm not doing a good job," right? You can call that imposter syndrome. You could call that just being in a stretch zone, being promoted and truly doing things you haven't done before. But any time people are feeling, "I'm doing a bad job. People are judging me. I'm going to get found out, that I actually don't really know what I'm doing. Every meeting feels so high-stakes. I always feel behind on my to-do list," right?
Any of those things, which essentially sum up to "I feel like I'm not doing a good job," for high achievers, that is an existential threat, right? To feel like, "Oh, I'm bad at this." The feelings associated with that are so fearful and so intense that feeling that way for a long period of time will absolutely cause burnout. And that's kind of the high-intensity one, right? Burnout with a high-intensity emotion.
The other one, which can be a little more subtle and doesn't come with that high-intensity emotion, is a sense of, "I'm not on the path I want to be on." I'm not doing a bad job. No one's yelling at me. Often, there are a lot of things about the job where, on paper, it looks great. People would think I was crazy if I stopped doing this. But there's just a voice inside that's like, "This is not it. This is not what I want to be doing," for whatever reason, right? Maybe it's because there's something else you want to do, maybe it's something you're not interested in, whatever it is.
And it's surprising, because that's not what people picture when they imagine burnout. They picture that high-intensity, "I'm working all the time," high-pressure thing. I have seen the second one create the same kind of burnout, right? Every day you feel that friction. You're like, "Okay, I have to respond to emails and go to the meetings and do this." But all the time there's this unanswered question of, "I don't want to be here. I want to do this. What are we doing? Why?" And you don't have a satisfactory answer to it. And that is the second flavor that I see also leads to burnout for people.
Why Not Just Quit?
Jeremy Au: So why not just quit? I mean, when people tell me they're burned out, I'm not an executive coach. I'm not trained to be an executive coach. I'm more of an operator, and I like investing. So I always caveat, and I always tell people, "Hey, why not just quit," right? Because that's what I did. I was at jobs I didn't like. I burned out and I quit. Five-minute call, I didn't try to do anything. It's like, bam. Okay, so what's the difference? Why not just quit?
Pooja Venkatraman: Totally. And it's funny, I will ask people similar questions. Not because I'm trying to tell them they should actually quit, but because it can actually be helpful to give someone an answer for the purpose of seeing how they react to that answer, right?
Because the reason people need coaching is that if 100% of them were convinced the right answer was to quit, they'd just quit. There's nothing to be worked through. They're just like, "Okay, well, I quit. I knew that there was no part of me that was against that decision," right?
Where people end up needing coaching, or just a thought partner to think things through, is when there's a tug of war internally, right? When one part of you is saying, "F*** this, I want to quit," but then another part of you is saying, "But all my friends would think I was stupid," or "My parents would be really mad at me," or "I don't know what else I want to do."
And often with burnout, it's, "I don't know what else I want to do. I'm afraid my ambition has just permanently gone offline. When I ask myself what I want, the answer is to lie on a beach for three months. But that's not a career plan, right? And I need to make money," all of those things.
And so that's really where I think coaching can come in. People feel this conflict between two sides, or even multiple sides, of themselves, and that's what stops people, right? Because if there's no conflict, my clients are extremely high-achieving and proactive and action-oriented. They're gone, right? They've already moved on to the next thing. They don't need me whatsoever.
When Emotion Is High, Intelligence Is Low
Pooja Venkatraman: But it's that conflict that I think people just struggle with, especially because our careers are so important to us, right? Achievement, status, success, ambition, all of those things are so important to us. And when the stakes are so high, one of my favorite coaches has this great quote: "When emotion is high, intelligence is low."
When the stakes are really high, when it's your baby, your career, your life, your LinkedIn page, your little announcement to everyone at the ten-year reunion, "This is what I'm up to, guys," right? Your emotions are going to be high. It's inevitable, right? Unless you're literally a stone-cold serial killer, you're going to have a higher level of attachment and emotional engagement when it's your own career.
And then inevitably, because your emotions are high, your intelligence is going to be lower, right? Your best thinking faculties are going to be offline. That's why it's so easy to give advice to other people. And then you come back to your own life and you're like, "Damn, I should take my own advice," right? Why is it so easy to solve that person's problem? Because you're not attached to it.
And so that's where I think coaching can really come in, to help people in two ways. One, my brain is not emotionally engaged, right? So my intelligence is online, and I can offer my perspective. But also, helping people learn: how do I calm my brain down in the moments when it's really high-stakes and my brain wants to be in a lot of fear, or just feels the pressure of the situation? How do I calm myself back down? How do I access my higher-level thinking?
And then once people can do that, they just have some space, right? To say, "Okay, one side of the argument, second side of the argument, third side of the argument. How do we solve the puzzle of all these pieces?" That's where it gets much easier for people to feel clear about what to do, and go confidently.
The Romanticization Trap
Edric Poon: Here's a blind spot many high achievers miss: the romanticization trap. Leaving corporate security is not a silver bullet. If you jump off the track without building internal discipline, freedom quickly turns into aimlessness.
In this final segment, originally featured on Rohit Malhotra's Life Self Mastery podcast, and of course reposted on BRAVE as well, Jeremy Au speaks more on why purpose, not ambient happiness, is the true thermostat for endurance, and how real agency means learning to hold your own leash. Here's Jeremy Au.
The Thermostat, Not the Temperature
Jeremy Au: In fact, it's not really about happiness, right? It's really about the pursuit of happiness: our willingness to go through difficulty and challenge and sacrifice.
And it always makes me thoughtful to say, "Yeah, I'm happy right now," or "I'm unhappy right now," which I just take as the temperature, right? The temperature is 18°C, the temperature is 25°C. Is the temperature right? What I find more interesting is the thermostat, right? Which is: is this something that gives me purpose?
Because when I was in the army, there were so many times I was very, very unhappy. I can tell you that the army is full of moments that make you very unhappy. Living through the monsoon in a jungle, having the water go right through you, trying to sleep while water is flowing all around you, right? You're very unhappy at that point in time. But when you have a sense of purpose and camaraderie and brotherhood, and your mission to go from point A to point B, then it's doable, right? It's survivable.
And 20 years down the road, it's a fun story that you talk about on a podcast, right? And you say, "Hey, that was a good time," even though at the time, I can tell you, I was very unhappy.
And so for me, it's being very thoughtful about the thermostat rather than the temperature. Instead of thinking about happiness and unhappiness, asking, "Does this bring purpose to me?" Right?
Outro
Edric Poon: Dismantling status anxiety, unlearning fear-driven achievement, and avoiding the trap of romanticized career pivots. True agency isn't found by changing your business card. It's built by changing the internal metric of who you're working for.
Thank you so much for watching this compilation feature. Check out the description below for full links to all three conversations. And once again, this has been another episode of BRAVE. We'll see you next time.
