If Jinsoo can do it, you can do it too

“If Jinsoo can do it, you can do it too." That's the motto — and mantra — of quite possibly the most motivated 50-year-old Korean entrepreneur you'll ever meet.

In fact, so motivated is Jinsoo Terry that she's spreading her message to other immigrants, business leaders and, if she has her way, the entire world. "I'm all about overcoming weakness and setbacks, and helping people unlock their potential," she says.

Terry founded her company, Advanced Global Connections (AGC), in 2004, with the aim of training immigrants in communication skills and leadership. She runs two-week training seminars for Asian-born executives working for foreign Fortune 500 companies to help them get the hang of American business etiquette, and, she says, "to remove their fear and exploit their strengths." She employs the same techniques to help American companies motivate — that word again — their foreign-born workforce's often untapped leadership and communication skills. She's a hot ticket on the motivational-speaker circuit, and is a regular columnist in the Korea Times, the largest English-language Korean newspaper, in which she elaborates on her philosophy that business should be "F.U.N." — the acronym she coined for "Funny, Unconventional and Nurturing."

Executives who take her courses have to be prepared to wear socks on their heads or attend meetings on cable cars in her native San Francisco, while AGC board meetings are routinely accessorized with plastic-bird-pensand party hats. "Humor is incredibly important in removing mental blocks," she says. "You shouldn't be afraid to look ridiculous." Such daring initiatives in breaking down management/workforce barriers have already won Terry the U.S. Chamber of Commerce's Minority Business Advocate of the Year award.

Terry's path to success was fittingly unconventional. She blazed a trail in Korea by pursuing a career in engineering — still a male preserve — and, at 30, came to the U.S. with her husband, very little English and even less money: $100. She worked hard in such various industries as textiles and medical-equipment manufacturing, but failed to make headway thanks to her poor communication skills. "It was the classic immigrant story," she says. "I thought success would come very easily, but people couldn't understand me and I couldn't make any connections." After 10 years, she was fired — and resolved to reinvent herself.

She founded her own public speaking forum, the Rhinoceros Business Club, taking inspiration from that animal's thick skin and relentless onward charge. "I started to exchange ideas with business leaders and to mentor young people who felt trapped in the same way that I did," she says. "I started to realize that communication was the key thing if you weren't going to be left behind in a multicultural business world. They heard about my activities in Korea, and asked me to submit ideas on how I would train their executives. That's how AGC was born; it all kind of happened by accident."

It seems to be a winning formula — she now employs nearly 30 people and is expecting revenues close to $2 million this year, she says — and she's founded a new company, Jinsoo Terry Enterprises, to launch what she calls "the Jinsoo brand" beyond the business community.

There's talk of a line of self-help comics featuring a character called Palbot (a friendly robot who teaches you the mores of your adopted country) and an autobiography called Why Not Melt? A CD, The Jinsoo Revolution, is in the works (on which she reaches out to youth, via some exuberant rapping), and she says that her ultimate ambition would be to host a TV business talk show. "I used to say I was a cultural counselor," she says with her ever-present grin. "Now I see myself as more of an entertainer. I love owning my own business because I can constantly challenge myself. I want to use my position to help people understand other cultures and become leaders, whatever their field."