The Discipline of Showing Up

What a dinner with Martin Yan reminded me about persistence, service, and impact.

I recently met Martin Yan, the man behind the long-running, pioneering show Yan Can Cook.

We were at a dinner hosted by Hyphen Capital, brought together by Dave Lu, who has a gift for convening Asian American leaders. It was one of those rare gatherings where every seat held someone with an interesting story, and yet somehow the room still felt intimate, almost like a table full of friends.

I was seated across from Jean, a partner at Cooley who had flown in from New York for the event. Beside her sat Martin Yan. As the dishes from the Chinese banquet began to arrive, I noticed something that caught me off guard. Martin was quietly serving Jean, and then the others at the table, moving from person to person without drawing any attention to himself. There was no announcement, no sense of performance, just a simple act of care from the most recognizable person in the room, surrounded by C-suite executives, artists, and community leaders.

I leaned over to Jean and joked, “This might be the only time you’ll ever be served Chinese food by Martin Yan himself.” I asked if I could take a photo, and he laughed, playing along, holding a dish mid-air as he posed. He was warm and gracious, completely present in a way that made the moment feel both light and memorable.

3,500 Episodes of Showing Up

As the meal went on, he began sharing stories about his life. He talked about his show, his cookbooks, and his love of travel. At one point, he turned to the table and asked us to guess how many episodes of Yan Can Cook he had filmed.

I thought back to being a kid, standing in our kitchen, watching him on a small television while my mom cooked dinner. She loved watching him because he showcased the dishes she grew up with, even as we lived in a small town in South Carolina where few people looked like us. His show felt like a bridge between worlds, something familiar in a place that often felt foreign.

I knew he had been around for decades, so I guessed maybe a few hundred episodes. Others at the table offered their guesses. He smiled and then said, almost casually, “Over 3,500.”

Three thousand five hundred.

The number was hard to process. If he had filmed every day, that would have been nearly ten straight years of shows. He talked about the pace, filming back to back, traveling for weeks at a time, making it all work in conditions that were far from perfect. When someone asked him how he managed it, he didn’t offer a grand answer or a carefully crafted philosophy. He simply said, “You just have to show up and do it.”

That line stayed with me.

Most People Stop Before They Start

Because not long before that dinner, I had come across a statistic that surprised me. Only 8% of podcasts make it past ten episodes. People start with excitement. They plan, script, record, and launch. They share it with friends, celebrate the beginning, and then, somewhere along the way, they stop.

Not because they failed, but because they stopped showing up.

Persistence sounds simple when you say it out loud, but it is much harder to live. Showing up, day after day, especially when the work feels repetitive or the results are uncertain, requires a kind of discipline that most people underestimate. It is easy to start something. It is much harder to continue when no one is watching, when the payoff is unclear, when the work becomes routine.

And yet that is exactly what Martin Yan did, 3,500 times over.

At a time when Asian Americans were barely visible in mainstream media, he brought Chinese cuisine into homes across the country. For many people, his show was their first and only exposure to a culture they did not grow up with. He made it accessible, joyful, and human, not something distant or exotic, but something that could be understood and appreciated.

The Woman Who Never Stopped Either

That idea of showing up stayed with me as I thought about another experience I had recently.

I visited Cameron House in Chinatown, a place with a long and powerful history. The building is named after Donaldina Cameron, a woman who, in the late 1800s, dedicated her life to rescuing young girls from trafficking and forced labor. She showed up every day to do work that was difficult, dangerous, and often unseen. When the 1906 earthquake destroyed the building, the work did not stop. It moved and continued, carried forward by those who believed in the mission she had started.

Over 150 years later, that work still continues.

Donaldina Cameron did not know what her legacy would become. She was not building toward recognition or historical significance. She simply did the work in front of her, one day at a time, saving over a thousand girls, hiding them when danger came, and helping them find safety and a new life.

The scale of what she accomplished is extraordinary, but what stands out even more is the consistency behind it.

The same kind of consistency that Martin Yan described so simply at dinner.

You show up. You do the work.

The Phone Call I Never Forgot

I think about this often in my own life. I have done over a thousand coaching calls, including two just last week. People reach out during moments of uncertainty, when they are trying to make a decision or navigate something difficult, and I try to be there for them. There are times when I wonder if those conversations matter in any lasting way.

Then I remember being on the other side of one of those moments.

When I was a freshman at Duke, I once called a law professor, intending to leave a message. Instead, Amy Chua picked up the phone. She didn’t know me, and she had no reason to stay on the line, but she did. She asked questions, listened, and gave her time to someone who was, in every sense, a stranger.

That conversation stayed with me.

Years later, I saw her at a party and almost didn’t go up to her. It felt awkward to remind her of something she likely wouldn’t remember. But I did it anyway, and I thanked her. She didn’t recall the conversation, but she was kind and gracious in that moment too.

It made me realize something simple but important.

You never really know which moments will matter.

Presence Is the Point

Most conversations fade. Most interactions pass without leaving much of a trace. But every once in a while, something sticks, and it shapes how someone sees themselves or what they believe is possible.

Those moments are rarely planned. They happen because someone chose to show up.

That is what stayed with me most about Martin Yan that evening. It wasn’t just the number of episodes or the longevity of his career. It was the way he carried himself at the table, serving others without hesitation, as if that was the most natural thing in the world.

He showed up for his audience for decades. He showed up for the culture he represented. And in that moment, he showed up for the people sitting around him, one plate at a time.

What Lasts

We often think impact comes from big, visible moments, but more often it is built quietly, through consistency, through presence, through the willingness to keep going when it would be easier to stop.

So much of life comes down to that simple idea.

Showing up, again and again, even when it feels small, even when it feels unnoticed, even when it feels like it might not matter.

Because over time, that is what creates something meaningful.

And that is what lasts.