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Shadowing practice: I Quit My $250K Tech Job — Now I Make $33K Selling Matcha

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Line 1

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  1. I went from making $250 ,000 a year to now expecting around $33 ,000 this year and I'm so much happier now than I was before.0:00
  2. Damn this shit is good!0:10
  3. How you take of the matcha matters, the ratios of the matcha powder to water matters, how you whisk the matcha matters.0:13
  4. I knew that every little thing would matter for the success of Wanchahouse.0:21
  5. There was like very little room for error.0:26
  6. So the first two months I only trusted myself to whisk every drink.0:28
  7. My entire life is work now and I don't regret it.0:34
  8. My name is Michelle Young.0:38
  9. I'm 29 years old and I earn about $33 ,000 a year living in New York City.0:39
  10. I grew up in San Francisco.0:50
  11. It was my single mom raising the rest of us in a neighborhood right next to Chinatown.0:53
  12. She's an immigrant and she had to figure out how to make ends meet.1:00
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  1. My family did a really good job in not making me feel like we were poor even though I was fully aware we were.1:07
  2. For example, I slept in the same bed as my mom throughout my teenage years.1:14
  3. For as long as I could remember, financial stability was the ultimate goal.1:20
  4. My older brothers and I, our main goal was always like, we got to get rich.1:25
  5. Like we got to get to a point where we don't have to worry about money again.1:30
  6. My oldest brother who is my idol, he told me that software engineering is the next big thing.1:35
  7. So I decided to pursue it because I was good enough at it and I ended up going to college for applied math and ended up a software engineer.1:42
  8. Going into my college dorm, it was the first time I had my own space and thinking back is the first time I had my own closet actually.1:50
  9. So it was very life -changing.1:59
  10. When I got my first offer as a software engineer, I was actually sitting on the toilet.2:02
  11. I got the phone call and it was $160 ,000 and that was actually in shock.2:06
  12. I started to realize the freedom I had with that amount of money.2:15
  13. I could travel anywhere anytime I wanted.2:19
  14. I could buy almost anything I wanted.2:22
  15. If I enjoy something and I feel passionate about it, I'll go all in and if I start to lose sight of the purpose of it, I'll just dial back2:28
  16. and I just will be very demotivated and that's kind of what started to happen towards the last few years of my career as a software engineer.2:41
  17. I realized pretty soon that I was doing it because of the amount of money that was providing me and the work itself just felt like it wasn't really doing2:49
  18. anything.2:59
  19. It feels like safe work.2:59
  20. And I realized the problem wasn't really the workplace itself because my teams were pretty decent, the culture, the company I worked at was pretty good too.3:01
  21. But by then I had already come up with this idea to start something of my own and doing something more physical.3:12
  22. Around 2022 -2003, I started to realize I needed to switch careers completely and I wasn't really sure what I was going into but I was pretty sure that the3:22
  23. money part was not always important to me anymore.3:35
  24. I was saving but I wasn't completely sure what I was going to do next.3:38
  25. Around 2024, my friends and I go out to get tea and we try different matcha spots and we just kind of realize that there wasn't any good matcha places3:43
  26. in New York and I was making matcha at home for years at that point already so I was like why is my own matcha better than the store -bought3:54
  27. ones?4:03
  28. I decided I really wanted to open a store in New York.4:04
  29. I felt like New York really needed it and so I started to do some calculations on my own just to think about if it's feasible for me.4:09
  30. I saved up $200 ,000 cash savings to open up the cafe and that's what I felt like I needed and it's actually a small amount for New York.4:16
  31. A lot of places cost a lot more to open but I thought I could work with that.4:28
  32. While I was still at my software engineering job, I worked from around 4 .30am to 10am until my first meeting at my software engineering job.4:33
  33. It was horrible, it was very exciting.4:44
  34. It was really fun for me.4:46
  35. I loved working at Starbucks.4:48
  36. It was so fun to do something physical and just learn this completely new skill when I've been sitting behind a computer for the last five years.4:49
  37. I think I was on my own little mission and I had these own little tasks I needed to complete before I'm able to open and it's just this little4:58
  38. training that I set up for myself at Starbucks.5:08
  39. We actually struggled to sign a lease on the first three places I liked because landlords didn't want to trust a new business owner and also a small business and5:12
  40. then we had issues with our contractors.5:22
  41. Some of our counters are still unfinished but they refused to take accountability and we still ended up having to pay them because I was just on a time crunch5:25
  42. to open.5:34
  43. The night before we were supposed to stop open, our basement and our upstairs flooded.5:36
  44. We were having a friends and family appreciation night and behind the curtains there's just like flooding going on and we just had a mop over it.5:41
  45. I was too busy for anything except just doing the next thing that had to be done.5:51
  46. Nowadays my expenses are just what's necessary so I spend most of my time here anyway so I was really just eating and a place to go home to sleep.5:59
  47. I spend $1 ,750 on rent, $258 on food, $112 on transportation, $38 on utilities, $25 on subscriptions and memberships, $15 on my phone bill, $94 on other things.6:13
  48. I had my own place and it was a decent sized studio in a very convenient location in the hand but I knew I needed to give that kind of6:33
  49. luxury up so I took on a roommate and now I live in a two bedroom with a roommate in a location that's a little bit further off.6:42
  50. I miss that studio a lot.6:52
  51. I loved living alone but it's just like one of the sacrifices I knew I needed to make.6:55
  52. My friends, I would not have been able to do any of it without my friends.7:03
  53. I started it alone.7:08
  54. I didn't tell anyone about the idea for the first four or five months and by the time I started getting these issues I was like, I need to actually7:10
  55. ask for help and my friends just came through and then once it opened all my friends and friends of friends came through to support and lined up down the7:19
  56. block.7:29
  57. I think some of my friends waited two hours.7:30
  58. It was like the heat of the summer.7:32
  59. I was just in awe, so speechless by the support of my community I would be working on bar from like 7 a .m.7:33
  60. until like 6 p .m.7:42
  61. or whatever like just standing all day and I didn't take any breaks either because I had to whisk every drink and my friends would come and bring me food.7:44
  62. Now we've gone to the point where most of my employees can run the shop without me and my typical day is mostly admin work.8:00
  63. I schedule my staff to be able to manage the store most days of the week and then I'll work on bar on a Saturday usually and then maybe one8:08
  64. to three other days of the week.8:16
  65. I work like just all hours I'm awake I guess.8:18
  66. I'm just always working as long as I can except Sundays I try to take one day of like complete rest.8:22
  67. Software engineering, I worked probably less than 40 hours a week.8:28
  68. At the end of the day I just feel happy about what I've done in the day.8:33
  69. I feel happy about the customers I've gotten to interact with and make their days a little bit better.8:38
  70. My life is less about like how much money I'm making right now and more about like what I'm doing every day.8:44
  71. When my life was about having a work -life balance and being able to do things outside of work I didn't feel like I was producing anything to the world8:50
  72. or making an impact in the world even though I was making money out of it.9:00
  73. I think now it's less about how much money I make from my work but what I'm actually doing from the day to day with my work so seeing the9:05
  74. people that I'm impacting seeing the space I've created for people to build community here that gives me so much more meaning and purpose at the end of each day.9:13
  75. Thank you.9:34

English Speaking Practice for a B1 American Career Story

This clip gives you english speaking practice built on an actual career story, not a written script. Michelle Young narrates in a clear American accent at 179 words per minute, and the recording sits at B1, so the sentences are direct enough to follow while you shadow them.

What is happening in the recording is concrete. A software engineer who was earning a six figure salary describes walking away from it to run a matcha shop, then works back through her childhood, her mother, and her brothers to explain why money mattered so much to her family in the first place. Across the 87 lines the register barely shifts, it stays personal and spoken, which is exactly the kind of everyday english worth training your mouth on.

The Language in Michelle Young's Story

Three lines are worth stopping on before you play the whole clip.

  • Line 1, "I went from making $250 ,000 a year to now expecting around $33 ,000 this year and I'm so much happier now than I was before." is the whole video in one breath: two contrasting numbers plus a comparative, and then "I'm so much happier now than I was before." Shadow it slowly first, then bring it back to full speed to feel where the stress lands on the numbers.
  • Line 3, "How you take of the matcha matters, the ratios of the matcha powder to water matters, how you whisk the matcha matters." repeats "matters" three times as a spoken list. That kind of repetition is useful for pronunciation practice: say the same word three times in one sentence and you hear whether your own stress stays consistent.
  • Line 22, "When I got my first offer as a software engineer, I was actually sitting on the toilet." is plain conversational storytelling, the kind of aside a person adds while talking rather than writing. "actually" carries the emphasis, practise landing it there instead of on "toilet."

How to Work Through Michelle Young's 87 Lines

This recording is solid material for shadowing english speaking practice b1, and for american accent training, since Michelle Young speaks in clear, unhurried American English throughout. Work it in this order rather than jumping straight to the middle.

  • Start at line 1 and shadow this line on its own five times before moving on, it sets both numbers and the pace you will hear for the rest of the clip.
  • Skip ahead to line 3 and repeat "matters" three times exactly as Michelle says it, matching the stress each time instead of flattening the repetition.
  • Play lines 8 to 17 together, this is the family background stretch, and read it as one continuous story rather than isolated sentences, since that is closer to how it improves english speaking under real conditions.
  • Slow down at line 19, "So I decided to pursue it because I was good enough at it and I ended up going to college for applied math and ended up a software engineer." It strings several clauses together, good practice for hearing where a speaker breathes.
  • Finish on line 22, "When I got my first offer as a software engineer, I was actually sitting on the toilet." Get the comic timing of "actually" before you move on to the rest of the video.
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