Stories

July 28, 2023

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Dr. Lanna Cheuck, an Ivy-League Trained, Board Certified Urologic Surgeon turned entrepreneur has made a significant impact in the field of aesthetic medicine.

Today, she is the proud owner of LC Medical, a medical spa in Manhattan, and also leads FACE Med-Spa Training, where she shares her expertise with fellow medical professionals.

She has been featured in esteemed publications like Forbes and has been recognized as a Key Opinion Leader in the industry. Nevertheless, she remains grounded and motivated by the positive transformations she brings to her patients and the opportunity to guide others on their own professional journeys.

Beyond her entrepreneurial endeavors, Dr. Cheuck continues to excel as a Board Certified Urologic surgeon, practicing at Jacobi Hospital. She is a respected educator, sharing her knowledge on topics such as penile rehabilitation and making significant contributions to the ISSM.

In an interview with Asian Hustle Network, Dr. Lanna Cheuck shares her remarkable journey and insights into the world of aesthetic medicine. Join us as we delve into her experiences, challenges, and triumphs, discovering how she defied conventions and built a thriving career that empowers both herself and others.

HUMBLE BEGINNINGS OF DR. LANNA CHEUCK

I was born in Chinatown in the Smith Housing Projects and was later moved out to live with my grandparents on Long Island in the middle of second grade as the crime was increasing in our building and my parents had been mugged and beaten up multiple times.

My parents immigrated from China during the Cultural Revolution. They built a raft to escape to Macau, then paid to be smuggled through a vegetation boat before coming to Hong Kong. I grew up very poor and was one of five Asians living in a predominantly white neighborhood on Long Island.

For as long as I remember I wanted to become a Urologic Surgeon, but I didn’t realize the sacrifices I would make to get there. While it is a male-dominated field, I remember at the time I was one of 8% of women in urology.

I had my first child born prematurely with special needs and blindness and took off six months to be with her in the ICU. It was at this time that I realized if I wanted to provide for my family, especially my daughter who will be dependent on me and my husband for a very long time, then I would need to find a new trajectory to help me become more financially independent.

DR. LANNA CHEUCK’S RESILIENCE IN THE FACE OF INEQUALITY AS A UROLOGIC SURGEON

I asked the administrator at the hospital for a salary increase and he told me that I needed to prove why I needed to make more. So, I went and got a different job offer to become a program director of a New York City Academic Institution as their residency director with a 40% pay increase. 

When I presented my job offer to the hospital administrator, he took one look and told me that I should leave and he could not match my salary. It was also at this time that my male counterparts were making six figures more than me while I was working with the toughest patients and doing the toughest work.

CHALLENGES AND OBSTACLES SHE OVERCAME

My father started as a busboy in a restaurant, then became a taxi cab driver, worked at a sweatshop, and then got into the spa business. He opened up a Spa called Eden Day Spa on Broadway. He asked me to help and that’s when I figured I can help my family business and go into aesthetics as a physician.

My biggest obstacle was being under the radar and so I couldn’t really grow. I asked the hospital administrator at the hospital for permission to pursue my second job and he gave me permission.

I was working full-time as a urologic surgeon doing the most difficult surgeries and on nights and weekends, I was taking care of my child and working at my father’s spa trying to grow the aesthetics part of the business.

I remember waiting for one patient to come at 9:00 pm because that was the only time I had available. I was missing my newborn and questioning whether this was worth it. In the beginning, it was very tough to garner any patients, I usually had one patient a week and most of the time they were a no-show. I would wait for hours and drive an hour from Harlem in hopes of seeing even one patient. The obstacles were juggling time, family, wondering if I was making the right decision, and whether or not it was worth being away from my child who was also breastfeeding. 

DR. LANNA CHEUCK EMPOWERING THE AESTHETIC MEDICINE COMMUNITY

I realized that if nobody put me on their platform then I would make my own, therefore, I opened my own aesthetic training business.

When I was first starting, I took two training courses and realized that these courses do not prepare you for the field of aesthetic medicine neither clinically nor from a business standpoint.

As a surgeon, I’ve always been the type to see one; do one; teach one, and that’s exactly what I did. I started an online community for physicians to pivot into aesthetic medicine because one of the things we were never taught in school was business. Since then, I’ve trained hundreds–if not thousands–of physicians and nurses. Some other huge and field-relevant accomplishments include being featured in Forbes and named a Key Opinion Leader for InMode and Galderma as well as a GAIN Trainer. 

HER ADVICE TO ASPIRING ENTREPRENEURS

Network with as many people as you know, be a connector.

Help other people and let everyone else know what you need, if you don’t ask you’ll never know how they could’ve helped you. Additionally, since I’m a visionary, I realized that I need processes and systems in place and strong integrators who help me to fulfill my visions.

This means hiring people who have strengths in other areas that I would consider my weaknesses thus allowing me to build a team that is good at operations.

We were never taught business in medical school which means everything from there on out is learning, absorbing, networking, connecting, and making opportunities out of meeting new people and helping others.

MOST REWARDING ASPECT OF HER CAREER TRANSITION

The most rewarding aspects of my career transition include feeling more valued by my work, patients, and staff and being compensated for something I’m good at, my techniques, and making people feel more confident.

I’m lucky to have patients from all walks of life; from the nurse’s aide who puts away money under her mattress to see me, to the successful CEOs, celebrities, models, actors, dancers, teachers, healthcare professionals, etc. What keeps me pushing forward is that I’m able to help other people pivot and transition.

CONNECT WITH DR. LANNA

Instagram: @doctorlanna

Website: doctorlanna.com

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Stories

Steve Liu Knows How to Draw a Crowd. With TRI3E, He Wants to Help Communities Grow.

From producing shows with major artists to leading product design at Amazon and Palo Alto Networks, Steve Liu knows a thing or two about bringing people together.

With TRI3E, he’s using what he’s learned to help people, creators, businesses, and organizations build stronger communities.

Understanding What Brings People Together

Filling a venue is one thing. Getting people excited enough to bring their friends is another. Steve Liu learned that firsthand in San Francisco’s nightlife scene.

As a nightclub promoter and event producer, he helped organize shows featuring The Chainsmokers, Far East Movement, MC Jin, and comedian Ali Wong.

What stood out to Steve wasn’t just how people discovered events, but what happened when they came together. Friends brought friends, new connections formed, and people found a sense of belonging through shared experiences.

He realized that the most meaningful part of bringing people together wasn’t filling a room. It was creating experiences people genuinely enjoyed, felt part of, and wanted to share with others.

A Different Way of Looking at Problems

Outside entertainment, Steve was building a career in technology. He eventually led product design teams at Amazon and Palo Alto Networks, working on products involving cloud computing, global supply chains, and cybersecurity.

The work was different from organizing events, but it taught Steve how to approach complex, multidimensional problems. Working across technology, business, and human needs, he learned to connect different perspectives, navigate competing priorities, and turn complicated challenges into practical solutions.

His experience as an entrepreneur also gave him a firsthand understanding of how difficult it can be to grow a business, reach the right people, and keep them engaged.

Over time, those experiences started to come together. He had seen how people brought others into events and communities, and he understood how technology could help make those connections easier.

That got him thinking about what better community-building tools could look like.

Helping Communities Do More Together

Think about a restaurant planning an event, a creator looking to bring supporters together, or a community organizer trying to reach more people.

They already have people interested in what they do. The challenge is finding ways to get those people involved, keep them connected, and encourage them to bring others along.

That’s the thinking behind TRI3E (Tribe), the platform Steve is building.

TRI3E aims to help individuals, creators, businesses, and organizations build and grow their communities. Through the platform, they can share events and opportunities, invite others to participate, and give members more ways to stay involved.

For a restaurant, that could mean inviting regular customers to an event and encouraging them to bring friends. For a creator, it could mean sharing a new project with supporters. For an organization, it could mean helping members discover opportunities and meet others with similar interests.

The goal is to make it easier for people to stay involved, bring others along, and create more opportunities within their communities.

Building What’s Next

For Steve, TRI3E is an opportunity to bring together years of experience in technology, entrepreneurship, and entertainment around an idea with much broader potential.

Whether it’s a neighborhood restaurant, an independent creator, or a network like Asian Hustle Network, communities already have people who want to see them succeed.

What if those people had better ways to make that happen?

That’s the vision behind TRI3E: helping people turn their existing connections into more opportunities for their communities.

Join TRI3E

Build your community. Activate your network. Grow together.

Explore TRI3E | Connect with Steve

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Stories

ChargerGoGo’s Next Chapter: GoGoSpark Brings AI-Powered Entrepreneurship to the Future of Work

ChargerGoGo built its nationwide phone charging network by betting on everyday entrepreneurs.

That bet is paying off. In 2026, ChargerGoGo landed at No. 744 on the Inc. 5000 (top 15%), No.5 in Las Vegas, and No.41 in AI and Data industry, the annual ranking of the fastest-growing private companies in America, after reporting 467% revenue growth over three years.

Led by founder and CEO June Zhu, the company has spent years helping local operators build businesses through its charging network. With GoGoSpark, it’s bringing AI into the picture.

Launched at CES 2026, GoGoSpark is ChargerGoGo’s AI-powered business copilot and operations assistant, built to help operators handle the day-to-day work of running and growing their businesses.

What Does GoGoSpark Actually Do?

As AI reshapes the workforce, the next economic opportunity is not only about making employees more productive, it is about giving more people the tools to become business owners.

GoGoSpark was built around that mission.

ChargerGoGo believes the future of work will include a growing number of people, across both white-collar and blue-collar professions, who want to build independent income, own productive assets, and operate businesses of their own. But becoming an entrepreneur requires far more than capital or a good idea. New business owners need help with sales, operations, financial decisions, technology, strategy, and the hundreds of decisions that come with running a company.

GoGoSpark is designed to put that capability in their pocket.

Serving as an AI-powered COO and business mentor available 24/7, GoGoSpark can help entrepreneurs analyze performance, identify opportunities, improve sales, troubleshoot operational issues, understand financial decisions, and determine what actions to take next.

The vision extends beyond operating ChargerGoGo stations. ChargerGoGo is building GoGoSpark as an intelligent business platform that can lower the barriers to entrepreneurship and help everyday people transition from employees into capable, technology-enabled business owners.

In an economy increasingly shaped by AI and automation, ChargerGoGo believes AI should not simply replace work. It should help more people create, own, and participate in the businesses of the future.

GoGoSpark does not replace the entrepreneur. It gives the entrepreneur a COO, an advisor, and a mentor in their pocket—so they can make better decisions and build with greater confidence.

Five Years in the Making

GoGoSpark came out of five years of working directly with thousands of operators, partners, and small business owners.

Over that time, ChargerGoGo saw the same kinds of questions come up again and again: How do I sell this better? Why is one location outperforming another? What should I focus on next? How can I run this more efficiently?

Those real-world questions helped shape what GoGoSpark became.

Rather than building AI for the sake of having AI, ChargerGoGo built a tool around the work its operators were already doing.

As Zhu said when the platform launched, “GoGoSpark is built to be a business co-pilot, helping operators learn faster, operate smarter, and participate in the post-work economy.”

The Bigger Goal Behind GoGoSpark

The Inc. 5000 ranking is a milestone for ChargerGoGo, but Zhu has been clear that she wants the company’s growth to reach beyond ChargerGoGo itself.

When the ranking was announced, she pointed to a bigger goal: giving ChargerGoGo’s Distribution Partners the technology, infrastructure, business model, and support to grow companies of their own.

She even said she hopes to one day see those entrepreneurs make the Inc. 5000 themselves.

GoGoSpark is one way ChargerGoGo is trying to make that happen.

As AI becomes part of how companies sell, analyze data, plan, and operate, smaller business owners risk being left with fewer resources to compete. GoGoSpark brings some of those capabilities directly to the people running businesses on the ground.

ChargerGoGo’s acceptance into the NVIDIA Inception Program also marks another step in that direction as the company continues developing its AI technology.

“The future belongs to those who engage with their AI,” Zhu said at CES 2026. “Our mission is to make sure everyone has that chance.”

ChargerGoGo made the Inc. 5000 this year. If its operators eventually start appearing on that list too, GoGoSpark may have played a part in getting them there.

Discover how GoGoSpark is helping entrepreneurs grow smarter.

📍Website

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Stories

The Day a Las Vegas Slot Machine Changed June Zhu’s Vision for Entrepreneurship

When June Zhu immigrated to the United States, she wasn’t chasing certainty.

She was chasing the possibility.

Like millions of immigrants before her, she believed in something uniquely American: that regardless of where someone came from, if they worked hard, solved real problems, and created value for others, they could build a better future.

That belief led her to found ChargerGoGo.

At first glance, ChargerGoGo looks like a portable phone charging company. Today, its network spans more than 6,000 locations across all 50 states, serving more than one million users.

But ask June what business she’s really building, and her answer is unexpected.

“I’m not trying to just build the biggest charging network,” she says. “I’m trying to build one of the largest entrepreneurship platforms.”

The Question Every Founder Faces

That vision wasn’t obvious in the beginning.

Like countless founders, June spent years trying to answer the same question that keeps entrepreneurs awake at night:

How do you build something nationally without billions of dollars from venture capital?

Every new market required more equipment.

Every new customer required more investment.

Growth always seemed tied to raising more capital.

The Las Vegas Moment

Then one ordinary afternoon in Las Vegas, while talking with her team, she witnessed something that unexpectedly gave her a new perspective.

A few teammates each pulled a small amount of cash from their wallets and decided to play a slot machine together.

Nobody risked very much.

If they lost, the downside was limited to a few hundred dollars each. But if they won, everyone shared in a prize far greater than they could have won individually.

“It wasn’t about the slot machine,” June recalls with a smile. “It was about the ownership.”

She watched people willingly contribute because everyone had a stake in the outcome.

At that moment, the question in her mind changed.

Instead of asking, “How can I raise enough money to own every charging station?”

She started asking, “Why should I own them all?”

What if every charging station could become an income-producing asset for a local entrepreneur?

That idea transformed ChargerGoGo.

Rather than building a company that owned every charging station, June built a platform where local entrepreneurs could own, operate, and grow businesses under a shared brand.

Every charging station became more than hardware. It became an opportunity for someone to build recurring income and grow a business within their own community.

Building an Entrepreneurship Platform

For June, that model reflects something she has admired since arriving in America.

“The greatest strength of this country isn’t just innovation,” she says. “It’s that ordinary people have the opportunity to become builders.”

Instead of measuring success solely by the size of the network, she measures it by how many entrepreneurs it helps create.

Through ChargerGoGo’s distribution partner model, local business owners can build recurring income while expanding the company’s nationwide footprint. As the platform grows, so does the number of entrepreneurs building businesses of their own.

Why Ownership Matters More Than Ever

That belief feels even more relevant as artificial intelligence reshapes the global workforce.

While much of the conversation focuses on jobs disappearing, June believes the more important conversation is about creating more owners.

“The future shouldn’t belong only to companies with the most capital or the most powerful AI,” she says. “Technology should lower the barriers for everyday people to own businesses, generate wealth, and create opportunities for their families.”

That’s why she believes entrepreneurship is becoming more important, not less.

Her vision extends far beyond portable charging.

She imagines a future where platforms, AI, and connected infrastructure allow millions of people to own income-producing businesses that once required millions of dollars to build.

Redefining the American Dream

For June, that’s what the American Dream has always meant.

Not that success is guaranteed.

But that ownership is possible.

Today, when people ask what ChargerGoGo does, she could talk about charging stations, technology, or nationwide expansion.

Instead, she prefers a simpler answer.

“We’re building a platform that helps more people become entrepreneurs.”

Because in the end, June Zhu isn’t trying to build a billion-dollar company.

She’s trying to help build thousands of million-dollar entrepreneurs.

Perhaps that’s the most powerful way to measure success: not by how much one person owns, but by how many owners they help create.

Learn more about ChargerGoGo here:

📍Website

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Stories

How Stephanie Lau Jensen Turned a Personal Identity Journey Into CULTR, a Marketplace for Cultural Brands

Stephanie Lau Jensen grew up between Hawaii and California. Like many Asian American kids raised in predominantly non-Asian communities, she learned early how to move between worlds. Parts of her culture stayed in the background, not because she pushed them away, but because the environment made it easier to leave them there.

She later returned to Hawaii for college, where her father is originally from. Being there placed her in a community where Asian culture was woven into daily life through food, language, and family traditions. It was not a rediscovery, it was a reminder of what had always been hers.

Years later, as a mother of three and a founder with a background in commercial real estate investing, she built CULTR, short for Created for Culture. A curated marketplace for AAPI  and third-culture families raising kids between cultures, one that makes cultural products easy to find and part of everyday life, not just special occasions.

A Birthday Conversation That Changed Everything

The idea for CULTR took shape at one of Stephanie’s birthday gatherings. She was talking with a close friend about identity and culture when a childhood friend overheard the conversation and joked that Stephanie used to be one of them before she moved to Hawaii and really leaned into her Asian side.

Everyone laughed. Stephanie included. But the comment stayed. It put words to something she had been sitting with for years. Culture is not something that automatically transfers to the next generation. It has to be lived daily. If it is not in the house on a regular Tuesday, it probably is not there at all.

When she became a mother and started looking for books, clothing, and toys that reflected her culture, she saw the problem clearly. The products existed. The founders were there, but their work was scattered across small websites and Instagram pages, invisible to most families who needed them.

The Platform She Wished Had Existed

Stephanie’s background in real estate investing trained her to look closely at markets and recognize opportunity gaps. As she continued discovering founder-led cultural brands online, she saw a clear problem: families who wanted these products had no easy way to find them.

That realization led her to build CULTR, a curated marketplace that brings modern cultural brands from around the world into one central destination. The platform highlights independent founders, many from Asian and immigrant communities, whose products carry culture through everyday objects, from children’s books to home goods, apparel, even everyday products you would have never known were made by AAPI makers. With a refined, modern aesthetic, CULTR presents these brands in a way that feels contemporary, approachable, and deeply connected to heritage.

Building CULTR came with its own challenges because the platform did not fit neatly into an existing category. It sits somewhere between a retail marketplace and a cultural storytelling platform, which meant Stephanie had to develop the platform while also helping people understand the vision behind it.

Bringing Culture Into Everyday Family Life

For Stephanie, culture often lives in the smallest everyday objects. A children’s book written in the language your grandparents spoke, a toy tied to tradition, or a piece of clothing that carries a story can shape how the next generation understands identity and belonging.

Alongside CULTR, she is also building PenPals Collective, a project designed to spark global curiosity and connection for children, and launching a podcast called Series M that explores career, motherhood, and identity. Each project reflects her interest in connecting people across culture, family, and generation.

Through each project, and while raising three young children, Stephanie continues working toward the same goal: creating spaces where culture is not something people rediscover later in life, but something families live with every day.

Learn more about CULTR here:

📍Website