Breaking bread with strangers

In 2018, Kaley Chu made a new year’s resolution to have lunch with 100 strangers. Behind that simple yet bold idea was a desperate attempt to salvage lost confidence.

By Danny Chan

She cut a cool and relaxed figure, wearing a disarming smile that put me at ease within seconds of our Zoom meeting.

It’s hard to imagine her being a stuttering mess, but that’s how Kaley would describe herself at a client meeting just a few short years ago. So crushing was that experience to her self-confidence, it led to a make-or-break decision that turned her life around. 

Kaley Chu is today an author, TEDx Speaker and founder of 100 Lunches. As part of a publicity campaign for her new book, ‘100 Lunches with Strangers’, Kaley has been featured in major Australian TV and media platforms including Sydney Morning Herald, The Age, Herald Sun, ABC News and been interviewed by radio stations across the country.

If you had met her in 2017, you would marvel at her transformation, not just in terms of the newfound media exposure, but also the ease with which she handles it.

Read our Q&A with Kaley Chu: Eat, Drink, Woman, Stranger.

In the zone

Moving to Australia from Hong Kong at the age of 17, Kaley quickly experienced the migration blues. Separated from her friends and family, she found her new environment cold and distant.

Complicating the estrangement issues, she found it challenging making friends with the locals – who spoke English differently to what she was familiar with. This made her painfully shy and timid around strangers.   

“As a girl born in Hong Kong, where English was not my first language, I lacked confidence and never dared to step out of my comfort zone,” she wrote in her book.

Kaley went on to do well in school, found a good job, got married and raised a family in Melbourne. Yet the University of Melbourne alumnus felt aimless and socially inhibited – most of her friends at this point were either from Hong Kong or shared similar cultural backgrounds. 

“I had a good job that paid reasonably well, and life was fine on the surface,” she added.

“However, if you looked deeper into my life I didn’t have a goal for where I wanted to go, and I wasn’t sure about what I wanted. Life was like a cycle of work, home, Facebook, dinner, sleep, repeat.”

10 seconds felt like an hour

In 2017, when her son turned one, Kaley returned to the workforce taking on a new role as Business Development Manager for a financial planning company. The position called for her to meet and speak to local clients, which remained an intimidating prospect.

On one occasion where Kaley was supposed to explain the company process to a client, she totally clammed up, until her then boss had to intervene in the embarrassing situation.

“Those 10 seconds of silence felt like an hour”, she recalls in her book.

She did not utter a single word in that two-hour long meeting.

Not so crazy after all

Her confidence in tatters, Kaley knew she needed to do something drastic – thus the idea of doing ‘lunch with 100 strangers’ was born.

What had sounded like a crazy idea slowly became doable and before long, a full-blown obsession.

To date, Kaley Chu has lunched with over 350 strangers, and going strong. At one point, the COVID-19 restrictions threatened to derail her goal, but she converted them to Zoom lunches – with photos to prove every single meeting took place!

These days, Kaley is often described as a ‘social butterfly’ or ‘the girl who can’t stop talking’.

“My whole life has changed – including my mindset, confidence, social network, goals, and plans,” she wrote. “I feel like a brand new, more vibrant version of myself.”

30 minutes with Kaley

I’m sure a Zoom meeting without any grub doesn’t count. Otherwise, I might have joined that growing list as ‘Stranger 396’ or something.

After spending half an hour with this inspiring lady, I was bowled over by her earnest and down-to-earth qualities.

Given my 9:30pm slot probably followed a string of ‘strangers’ eager to engage this fresh new personality on the speaking block, I was half-expecting a jaded interviewee. Instead, I was greeted by a warm and confident person, with a hint of rasp in her voice, no doubt from all that talking.

Distilling lessons from those 350 lunches with people from all walks of life – among them celebrity Shane Jacobson, a cancer patient and a billionaire – Kaley shared openly and thoughtfully (read our Q&A with Kaley Chu).

Forget the hype, this is actually relevant

I believe Kaley’s story is worth retelling simply because so many of us can relate – even within the dental orbit. 

By the time someone becomes a full-fledged dentist that would indicate the fulfilment of several years of clinical and hands-on procedural training. Yet how many dentists have been taught how to act and behave around strangers? Every patient you’ve ever met was a stranger at one point in time.

As a dentist, no one has ever shown you how to overcome your own anxieties when engaging and interacting with patients whom you find intimidating for whatever reason. Just as important are the perspectives of a shy or timid patient but no, that wasn’t part of your BDS curriculum either.

Kaley doesn’t just have a cool story to tell. She is a thought leader who by turning bold ideas into action, has motivated scores of people – including entrepreneurs, franchisees and seasoned sales professionals – to re-examine their business ideals and networking methodology.

The TEDx speaker believes ‘One connection can change your life’. Perhaps she would be that elusive connection that would change yours.

Read our Q&A with Kaley Chu: Eat, Drink, Woman, Stranger.