At 24, Jane Lu felt as if she had hit rock bottom. She had quit her corporate job as an analyst at Ernst & Young to start a business that ultimately failed. Except she had never actually told her parents this and still lived at home, so she continued to put on a suit, take the bus into the city with her mom, and pretend to go to work every day. Now, however, she's running a multimillion-dollar business, and she shared her "immigrant success story" on TikTok, where it has gone viral.
"This is your sign to start your dream job/business!" her video begins, the text laid over a photo of Jane, as a young child, with her parents. As many children of immigrant parents can relate to, the video then reads, "My parents told me to be a doctor, lawyer or accountant."
The video continues, "I got a job at one of the Big Four accounting firms, but I hated my job and didn’t want to do it for the rest of my life. I secretly quit my job to start a business (I opened two pop-up stores). That business failed."
She adds, "I had to keep pretending to my parents that I was still working as an accountant. I lived at home, so [I] had to put on a suit every morning and go into the city and pretend to go to work. I started another business, and the business took off. I started to make more in one day in sales than my old yearly salary."
Then she says, "I finally told my parents. They were shocked. I bought them their first new car and paid off their mortgage. After decades of hard work, they were able to retire early. My business now sells to millions of customers around the world and is now one of the largest online fashion retailers globally."
Jane's video concludes, "Twenty-eight years ago, we immigrated from China to Australia. I had never expected that we would actually live the immigrant dream."
Since she posted it to TikTok, Jane's video has been viewed 2.8 million times, been liked more than 396,600 times, and received 1,329 comments. Viewers' reactions range from feeling awed and inspired to loving her company, Showpo, even more after learning about its origin.
BuzzFeed spoke with Jane to learn more about her story (and, of course, exactly how she pulled it off). "It really was so nice," Jane, now 36, said of the reception to her video. "You don't often go viral on TikTok with no negativity because there are all these trolls."
As a child, Jane thought she wanted to be an accountant, as her parents encouraged her. "You think being creative is only for the visual arts, drama, and music," she reflected. "It seemed like working for a big multinational was the most exciting thing I could possibly do."
Right after graduating from high school, Jane began working at KPMG, a Big Four accounting firm, through a cadetship. "I didn't even know what accounting was until I got the job," she admitted. "I started doing accounting at university as part of [the cadetship], and I just wanted this big corporate job more than anything."
It wasn't until she later became an analyst at Ernst & Young that she realized she didn't like her job, let alone her field of work. "Probably for the first two years — because you're such a junior burger — you don't realize," Jane explained. "It's quite fun. You dress up in a suit. You have this full-time, recurring income. It was all just really exciting." But by the time she began at EY, she was finding it hard to even stay awake.
"For a while, I was like, I think this is it. You're just not meant to enjoy work that much anyway," Jane said. Then a woman she knew approached her about starting a business together running pop-up stores. And though she had no experience in retail, Jane was already eager and desperate to do anything else. "I just didn't even care what the business was," she explained.
Between feeling as if she was walking on eggshells and pivoting from accounting at KPMG to analysis at EY, Jane found that her performance at work suffered.
"I was winging it for so long that I’d gotten to a point where I felt like it was too late to ask more questions about this job," she said. "I just thought, I need to move on before they fire me."
So Jane quit her job to begin her first business. "I was 24, but I felt older at the time. I started working in corporate at 18, so it felt like I'd built a lot up to just throw it away. But I was living at home and couldn't tell my parents I'd quit my job, so I pretended to go to work every day. I put on a suit. I took the bus into the city with my mom because she also worked in the city and I'd been doing that with her up until then. I had to keep up the facade," Jane said, revealing that she kept it up for six months.
Three days a week, Jane and her business partner would set up pop-up stores in different areas — like a bar, for example — for about 14 merchants. They'd set up tables and products before loading everything back into a van and storing it all in Jane's parents' garage. At the time, they believed the business was only a side hustle. "It was just a ridiculous business concept," she remarked.
While her business partner wanted to set up a permanent store eventually, Jane believed their long-term plan should be to create an online store.
So when her business partner left on a monthlong vacation — ironically, at the same time Jane had finally quit her job — Jane began taking photos of their products and uploading them online. "I had felt like that was the only way to scale," she explained.
However, when her business partner returned from her trip, she told Jane that she no longer wanted to pursue their business. "I was like, 'Oh my god. Why didn't you think this through before I quit my job?'" Jane recalled.
And while Jane recognizes that she made the final decision to quit, she was further frustrated that her business partner had actively been encouraging her to quit her job at Ernst & Young.
"So then I was like, 'Can you please just look at the online store? I really think we should give this a go. Let's just give it a crack for a few more months,'" Jane said, but her business partner was ultimately done.
Jane shared, "That was when I just felt like I had hit rock bottom." Not only did she lose the money she had invested in the business, but to make matters worse, it was also the middle of the global financial crisis. "No one was hiring. I couldn't just get another job."
Once the business failed, Jane struggled to figure out what to do: "At the time, I was very regretful. Even along the way, I was too. I think that's partly why I didn't tell my parents. It's one of the hardest things: to constantly have to back yourself and tell yourself to keep going. You have to convince yourself to keep going every day."
She added, "You already have so many doubts in your head, and you have some friends around you who might be doubting you. Having to justify that to my parents, whom I lived with, would have been really difficult, so I just didn't tell them."
After a month, she ended up getting a job as a receptionist at a hair-removal clinic. "It was not where I thought I would be at that age with my degree and work experience," she admitted. "So by default, the only other option was to start another online business."
It was then, in 2010, that Jane founded Showpo (then called Show Pony), an online retailer. But with her parents still in the dark and no shortage of doubters, she struggled to find support. "It was really tough back then because no one had a business," Jane said. "In this day and age, there are a lot more success stories to validate what you're doing."
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That's in part why Jane decided to share her story on TikTok. "I've frequently had people tell me they really resonate with my story and how it helps them get through the same thing," she said. "I think it's great because when I was going through what I was going through, it would have helped motivate me. So I want to be able to do that for others as well."
In retrospect, Jane says she wouldn't have done anything differently. "When it comes to making mistakes, I think that you are ultimately the person you are," she explained. "You think the way that you do, and so, if you don't make these mistakes now, you’ll make them eventually. Even from a business perspective, I think about the things I've learned. If I didn't learn them then, I’d be learning them now with a much bigger investment and much more to lose."
Today, Showpo has 3 million followers on social media (1.8 million on Instagram alone) and ships to more than 120 countries worldwide. In 2019, the company made $85 million in revenue. And by the time Jane finally told her parents the truth, she was also able to tell them she was paying off their mortgage and buying them a new car.
As for what Jane would tell her younger self (or others in similar situations), she encouraged thinking about your career as a long-term thing. "How do you get yourself closer to where you want to go? You can reestablish yourself early," she elaborated. "No one is doing what they were doing at 18 when they retire. It's a journey. Start doing what you think you'll be good at and what you want to do. For me, there's no point to being mediocre at something you're not good at. The world is big enough for you to try and find what you can excel at, and then just go for it."
