I took a nearly $90,000 pay cut to work in food—now my restaurant brings in more than $1.8 million per year

This is a special Gen X installment of CNBC Make It's  Millennial Money  series, which profiles people across the globe and details how they earn, spend and save their money.

Ji Hye Kim never considered a career in food. The 46-year-old's family immigrated from South Korea to New Jersey when she was 13, and she spent her early adulthood looking for ways to stay in the U.S.

Every decision she made revolved around one question: "What is it that I have to do to keep the legal status?" she says. Getting into college meant getting to extend her student visa, for example. And any job she got after would need to sponsor a green card.

Kim attended the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor and got a job in hospital administration in New Jersey after graduating in 2002. Though the job sponsored her green card, she ultimately got her citizenship through marriage. Her husband was working at her alma mater, which brought Kim back to Ann Arbor in 2007.

"This was the first time in my life that I was able to ask myself, 'What is it that I want to do with my life?'" she says.

While considering her next move, she saw a job posting for a cheesemonger at Zingerman's Delicatessen. The job would mean taking a significant pay cut, from her previous salary of about $105,000 per year to one that paid about $16,800 per year. Still, she had a good feeling about it.

Indeed, at Zingerman's she found a passion for the business of food, and in 2016, she partnered with the deli to open her Korean restaurant, Miss Kim, in Ann Arbor.

It took a few years for the restaurant to find its footing, including figuring out how to pivot its indoor dining activities during the height of the Covid-19 pandemic, but Kim stayed persistent. Miss Kim brought in $1.89 million