We had the good fortune of connecting with Donnie Chen and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Donnie, how do you think about risk?
Risk tolerance is different for everyone, and every action or decision has some degree of risk attached to it. From my experience, the only thing that truly matters is, to fully commit to the decision to take that risk. If you sway or quit before the job is done, all of the efforts and sacrifices will be for nothing.

I’m a first-generation immigrant, my family left Taiwan when I was nine years old. Twenty years later, I took a risk and moved back. This is a story we hear often, an expat moving to a new country to explore, then a few years later, they’d return home. My plan was different, I didn’t plan to explore, my entrepreneurial drive gave me one condition, I can’t come home until I’ve built a business. I committed fully to this decision. I didn’t know anyone in Taiwan, and I wasn’t close to the family that I had there, so I started networking a few months before even hopping on the plane. Once landed, I spent the first year building connections. Instead of going to events and meeting people, I created an entrepreneur-focused group. Within a year, we accumulated over 1500 members. Then I got into the restaurant and foodservice industry. Approximately five years later, I had four restaurants, major foodservice clients, and a CPG product line from my restaurants. By the sixth year, I sold my restaurants to a national hotel group. All of this didn’t come easy. There were trials and tribulations along the way. I needed to drop every expectation and get out of my self-imposed comfort zone. I fully committed to my decision to take the risk of leaving a well-paid job, selling my home and possessions to move to Taiwan.

Whenever you make a decision to take a risk, your resolve will undoubtedly be tested. This is where you need to hold firm and stand strong. When I started the first restaurant. I poured all of our savings into it. My wife and I had to live in a small 100 square feet office at the back of the restaurant. We didn’t even have a restroom in the office, so we had to use the restroom that the guests used when we closed up shop. My employees also didn’t know, no one knew. We would close the restaurant, say bye to the employees, go for a walk, then circle back. During the five years, I would also provide consulting services to bring in extra income. I worked over 14 hour days, seven days a week.

Risk tolerance is different for everyone, not everyone wants to do what I did, and many people can easily do it. But, by fully committing to my decision to take the risk, I moved faster, and with conviction.

Alright, so for those in our community who might not be familiar with your business, can you tell us more?
Pallette Market is a marketplace that makes it easy to discover and support products and brands from diverse cultures and backgrounds. It’s the online version of cultural neighborhoods such as Chinatown, Little Mexico, Black-owned businesses, Little India, etc.

When a person is often exposed to something, it’s more likely they will understand, appreciate, and support it. It’s when something is foreign that they may become fearful of it. For example, If you live in the city and products from other cultures are available, but there’s no one to show you how to appreciate them, you wouldn’t know where to start. This problem is even more pronounced if you live in the suburbs, where culturally diverse products are not easily accessible!

We want to make sharing knowledge and discovering new products easy. If there isn’t a middle ground to spark that connection, it will be much harder to bring people together. We want Pallette to be that middle ground.

Let’s say your best friend was visiting the area and you wanted to show them the best time ever. Where would you take them? Give us a little itinerary – say it was a week long trip, where would you eat, drink, visit, hang out, etc.
Nearly everyone I know who is visiting would expect to visit all of the spots that LA is known for. Other than In-N-Out Burger, I would take them to Smorgasburg to experience awesome food from food trucks. I’ll take them to experience Hollywood, maybe catch Jimmy Kimmel Live while we’re there. Shopping tour at Rodeo, and maybe bus tours. Then I’ll take them to all of the cultural neighborhoods, Filipinotown, Chinatown, Koreatown, Little Armenia, Little Tokyo, etc. The next day, we’ll head to the piers and beaches. Sorry if this was a touristy answer, but anyone visiting me would force me to be their tour guide!

Shoutout is all about shouting out others who you feel deserve additional recognition and exposure. Who would you like to shoutout?
I want to give shoutouts to all of Pallette Market’s early supporters, especially the sellers. They believed in us and supported our mission before we even launched the platform.

We know that it’s hard to believe in something new, it’s even harder to participate in it. In any movement, the first few people who join the movement are extremely important. They are the real leaders because they are the ones that legitimized the movement as a “movement”. So we really want to thank them for giving us the confidence and motivation to build Pallette Market!

Website: https://www.pallettemarket.com

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/pallettemarket/

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/pallettemarket/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/pallettemarket

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/pallettemarket

Image Credits
Photographer: Naomi August

Nominate Someone: ShoutoutLA is built on recommendations and shoutouts from the community; it’s how we uncover hidden gems, so if you or someone you know deserves recognition please let us know here.