Read: Driving for Uber when you can’t afford a car

Growing up, I worked here in the summertime. I was mostly filing. That was the heyday, so I was really, really busy here. Once I graduated from high school, I worked a lot of other jobs. I worked at McDonald’s on Chambers Street, behind the counter and in the kitchen. That was my first real job outside the family business. I did sales at Abercrombie & Fitch, different campus jobs. But I really started to become interested in finance and banking.

My third summer in college, I got a sales-operations internship on Wall Street, and that world definitely started to have a draw for me; I wanted to go into consulting or investment banking. I think that they create structure and discipline. Also, you know, it’s kind of fancy. You work at Goldman Sachs or McKinsey, and you get to travel around different towns and countries. The next summer I went up to an internship at a private-equity firm specializing in family and closely held businesses in Greenwich. After that, I wanted to use that leverage to jump to the Citibanks and Merrill Lynches of the world. But that was during the recession of ’07 and ’08, and every time I called people, trying to network, there were hiring freezes. So I kind of saw the writing on the wall.

Rather than going back to the family business, I decided to go as far away from it as possible. I thought, I need to experience something more than I know. I was reading The Economist, and every other article is about how China is growing, China’s the next dynamic market. And I just wanted to experience it. So I traveled to China through a Christian organization. I taught English in a small town called Zhenjiang (although a small town in China is, like, 2 million people). Zhenjiang is famous for this special vinegar they make—that dark stuff that’s fantastic with dumplings—and the whole city just smells like vinegar.

I tried to start my own business in augmented reality, using webcam technology to try on glasses. I tried to copy what Ray-Ban did, but couldn’t find a trustworthy tech partner, so it didn’t go through. So I kept teaching English and then got a real job at an HR consulting firm in Shanghai. I was doing recruitment consulting, basically headhunting for the Fortune 500 companies that were coming into China, to try to find them local talent.

At this point, I knew I wanted to come back and work at the family business, but my mom was like, “You can’t come back to us without proving yourself.” Like, getting a promotion or a raise. I got my promotion from associate to senior associate that April, in 2012, and I came back six months later to start at my family’s shop.

I moved in with my uncle in Manhattan, and I started studying for the GMAT. I went to NYU’s business school in 2014 and finished last May. During that whole time, I was working at the family business.