lizeng

[lizeng]

Building a personal brand through writing

I am a big believer that writing has the power to change your life.

I have been journaling since middle school, and since that time I have documented every key decision in my life, remembered vivid emotions from important events, and shaped a clearer mind from all the reflections.

Now writing on social media also helped me find my community of people, make new friends, and grow my business in ways I otherwise never would have. 

I recommend everyone start writing or journaling, and here is why:

Reason #1: Our brain is limited.

Do you remember 3 important things/events that happened last month? It’s hard to trace back in time as our brain cannot remember it all. Writing that down can help.

Reason #2: It helps straighten our emotions and thoughts.

I sit down to write whenever I feel confused, frustrated, excited, or happy. When I finish writing, I have a better understanding of what’s going through my mind and how to handle my situation next.

Reason #3: It brings back memories.

For example, my husband barely remembered the details of our first date, so I pulled out my journal and told him exactly what happened that day. I share vivid stories about close friends too, it creates bonds with people. 

Reason #4: It’s the base form of any content.

Whether you want to create podcasts, videos or online courses, you start in text. In this Ai world, you write your prompt to generate what you want. Having a library of your own stories and lessons gives you a lot to work from.

Reason #5: It helps you build an online presence.

People know you through your content. If you express yourself well, you can build a strong personal brand online. Everything good starts from here. 

If you start writing, even if it’s not online, let me know—I'd love to connect with you (and answer any questions you have getting started!).

[lizeng]

Tips for mom on newborn schedule

My second boy is now over a month old. Having experience taking care of our first child, adapting to the second one doesn't feel as difficult. For around 15 days, he only wakes up once during the night. Around 25 days, he drinks more than 6 oz at night and sleeps through from 11 pm to 5:30 am, giving my husband and me enough rest to stay energized during the day. However, there are some tips I want to note down if other moms ask how I managed it.

The most helpful book I read about newborn schedules is "Doctor Denmark Said it." It's an old book, and some practices may not be well accepted by modern parents. Nonetheless, I believe in its value not only because Doctor Denmark had decades of experience as a pediatrician but also because being a parent has been the oldest role since humans existed. I'm sure parents in the older days or in cultures where moms don't get maternity leave had to raise their baby in a way that didn't sacrifice their own sleep or health.

The most helpful advice I got from the book is the four-hour feeding schedule and keeping the baby awake at night (7-10 PM) before they go to sleep around 10 or 11 pm. However, practicing the above isn't as easy as you might think.

4-Hour Feeding Schedule

Hearing a baby cry so desperately often compels moms to feed their babies right away. Additionally, babies tend to fall asleep during feeding, resulting in inadequate milk intake that cannot sustain them for four hours. In such cases, babies end up snacking and waking up within 1-2 hours because they still feel hungry. Here are my tips for moms to establish a 4-hour feeding schedule:

Don't strictly adhere to the specific times mentioned in the book, such as 6 am, 10 am, 2 pm, 6 pm, and 10 pm. As long as there is a 3.5-4 hour gap between meals, it works perfectly fine to feed the baby at 8:00 am and again around 12:00 noon. For instance, my baby won't sleep until 11:00-11:30 pm, and I'm okay with that.

When the baby cries out of hunger, try to wait for a little while. I usually aim for the next round hour, which helps stretch the time gap between meals gradually. For example, if my baby wakes up at 3:17 pm and cries for feeding, I would comfort him and delay feeding until 3:30 pm. Particularly at night, if he cries for milk around 10:37 pm, I make him wait until 11:00 pm, ensuring he is hungry enough to drink more.

When the baby falls asleep while eating, consider changing the diaper during the feeding session. My baby tends to fall asleep after I feed him one side of my breast. Instead of changing the diaper when he wakes up crying, I usually change it after he falls asleep during feeding. The sudden movement and exposure to the cold air wake him up, making him realize he is still hungry. When he is awake and ready for more milk, I feed him from the other side of my breast. This usually satisfies him afterward.

By following these strategies, moms can establish a 4-hour feeding schedule for their babies, promoting a more regular routine and ensuring their nutritional needs are met.

Keeping Baby Awake after Dinner

This tip plays a significant role in helping babies sleep through the night. However, it can be challenging to keep them awake between 6-10 pm if they are genuinely sleepy. Here's what I usually do:

Allow them to sleep as much as they need before dinner so that their waking hours align with the nighttime.

Give the baby a shower before the last feeding. Regardless of whether they are full or hungry, the shower will awaken them. Extend the shower time to more than 30 minutes.

Engage in skin-to-skin time or tummy time with the baby. These activities can be done right after their shower while they are still awake. Both exercises require the baby to exert effort to lift their head, making them uncomfortable and preventing them from falling asleep.

My baby tends to eat a lot at night, sometimes continuously for 3 hours or consuming 6-9 oz all at once. After feeding him the last meal of the day, he is ready to sleep and won't wake up until 5-6 hours later.

With our first baby, we were extra cautious, and he slept in the same room until he was around 6 months old. Each time the baby made a noise, it would wake me up, and I never had enough rest. For our second baby, here are the things that helped improve our sleep: always allowing the baby to fall asleep on his own without relying on being held, and placing the baby in a separate room at night.

Overall, these tips have been discovered and learned along the way. As time passes, it's easy to forget them. That's why I'm writing them down to benefit more moms who may seek help in the future.

[lizeng]

Mistakes I made and lessons I learned as a founder

Recently, I've been reading a lot on Startup School from Y Combinator and realized that the biggest mistake I made in building something was starting with an idea (a solution), rather than a problem.

Since 2016, I've undertaken three major projects with the goal of turning them into full-time companies, but none of them succeeded. Despite sticking with each project for at least a year and learning a great deal in the process, I made the most common mistake that many creatives make when starting something: beginning with an idea instead of identifying a problem that people face. Even with more experience in building scalable digital products, I still tend to start with an idea in my most recent project at FunKudo.

FunKudo

When my engineer friend asked me to build something, we started brainstorming to come up with startup ideas. I was inspired by a product I saw on Indie Hackers, as well as my past experience creating visual cards for co-workers. Almost immediately, I decided to work on this idea and mocked up the interaction flow for FunKudo. One friend commented on how impressive it was that I landed on this idea so quickly, but also found it somewhat alarming.

However, the biggest struggle I faced later was that I didn't know what exact problem I was solving or what audience I was targeting. Even when I joined an accelerator program, my elevator pitch didn't start with a problem I was solving, but with a vision/opportunity I saw. This is a mistake and I should have focused on falling in love with a problem instead. These problems can naturally arise from past experiences or from a space where co-founders are already familiar.

Another lesson I learned is the importance of finding co-founders to bounce ideas off of, especially those with different backgrounds and skill sets. From FunKudo, I realized that I have limited knowledge of GTM, sales, and growth. While I'm comfortable building and testing the product, I need someone in sales and marketing to take care of the selling side of the business. Of course, I hope to learn new skills along the way, but it will be more efficient to allow co-founders who are experts in their field to do their magic. I also need to conduct research by talking to founders in this space, as well as potential users who may be interested in the product.

Peach Plum Lab

I founded Peach Plum Lab in January 2019, which continued until almost August 2020. During that time, I was also working at another company, a community building platform for creators and entrepreneurs. I was inspired by the work of marketers and solo entrepreneurs such as Amy Porterfield's Online Marketing Made Easy, Steve Chou's My Wife Quit Her Job, and Daniel Leslie's Course from Scratch. I learned how these individuals started their journeys and built successful businesses from the ground up. I thought that building an audience through a podcast would allow me to promote any courses, products, and future ventures to that group.

At the time, I was extremely passionate about the educational space and, combining that with my work at Little Launchers, I believed that kid entrepreneurship was the way to go. So, while still working full-time, I started a weekly podcast and interviewed parents, educators, and kid creators. I also connected with several founders who were dedicated to the kid entrepreneur space. It required a lot of persistence and hard work to produce a weekly podcast, but I learned a lot. However, even after more than 50 episodes, when I was ready to launch a live course with Ashly So, a young fashion designer, my podcast had no impact on course sales. The only three students I had were friends' kids and their friends. I was discouraged and realized how difficult it is to build a business that's not scalable and relies on content creation.

The biggest lesson I learned from this experience is that creating a routine of posting on social media or publishing a podcast/video doesn't guarantee an audience or conversion to customers. If there's no customer base or traction to the channel, it can also be a waste of effort.

Little Launchers

In 2016, my friend Erica and I started a project to develop a series of books. We spent more than 6 months interviewing entrepreneur kids and running a Kickstarter campaign to raise $20K. The campaign was successful, as we reached our fundraising goal.

Working with Erica, who is an amazing marketer, writer, and business person, was a great learning experience. We complemented each other's skill sets well. However, I also learned that a niche market can limit the growth of a product or service. Entrepreneurship education is not mainstream for today's kids, and it was more of a passion project for Erica and me. Many parents were not aware of this space, and it was not a real problem they or their kids faced. Although kid entrepreneurs and authors value this type of content, parents would not typically search for entrepreneurship solutions for their children. Despite this, we saw an interesting opportunity and pursued it.

Overall, my biggest mistake throughout all my projects was starting with an idea instead of identifying a problem that people face. Additionally, finding co-founders with diverse backgrounds and skill sets is crucial. If I were to start a new venture, I would first focus on finding the right co-founder and then identify a real problem that I am passionate about solving. The rest will follow, and I know there are many paths to success. Through trial and error, the way forward will eventually become clear.

[lizeng]

At the ETHDenver Conference, I collected dozens, if not over a hundred, stickers. As a designer, I particularly appreciated stickers that had the following attributes:

Visually interesting yet simple: While many companies simply use their logo as the sticker, the best designs incorporated unique graphics while still including the company logo/name in some way.

Reasonable size: The stickers that caught my attention were not too big (more than half the size of a notebook) or too small, but just the right size to grab my attention.

Shiny and reflective materials: Since stickers are a printed form of swag, their look and feel are important. I loved stickers that used colorful reflective materials, which made them stand out in a crowd.

Include company URL: Since these companies are trying to build their brand awareness in the Web 3 space, adding their URL to their sticker is the least they can do. This gives recipients a way to check out their website later and learn more about the company.

By incorporating these attributes into their sticker designs, companies can create swag that not only looks great but also helps promote their brand and build awareness.

[lizeng]

7 Tips for Figma Hygiene

Photo by Shubham Dhage on Unsplash  

Designing in Figma can be a fun and rewarding experience for designers, but it can quickly become disorganized and difficult to manage if you don't keep your files tidy. By following some simple tips for Figma hygiene, you can ensure that your design files are clean, well-organized, and easy to navigate. Here are 7 tips for maintaining good Figma hygiene that will help you work more efficiently and effectively.

Not every element needs a group layer, frame layer, or auto-layout layer. Try to minimize the number of layers, groups, and frames you use.

A group can be resized, but a frame cannot. A frame can act as a background or a mask layer. Always consider using a frame before anything else.

Try to use whole numbers and avoid decimals in X, Y, W, H values. This makes it easier to align objects and add defined gaps between them.

Regardless of how complete an image looks, always add a frame with clear set sizes like 120x120px. This helps with graphic exports, especially when exporting multiple images. Ensuring the size is the same is essential.

When naming exporting layers, use different names for those you think developers will need.

Auto-height text layers act as an auto-layout layer, so don't complicate things.

Always use colors, gradients, and fonts from the design library when available.

By following these tips, you can maintain a clean and organized Figma project that is easy to navigate and use.

Also, it's important to keep a few things in mind to ensure that your Figma presentation is clear and effective. 

Always start with a title slide, which can include a subtitle with your name and the date. 

The headline on each subsequent slide should convey the most important information you want to share.

Include section slides to help guide your audience through the different topics and thoughts you want to cover. 

Summarize the key points on each slide to make it easier for people to understand the topic.

By following these tips, you can create engaging and informative slides that effectively convey your message.

[lizeng]

How I proposed to start a design blog and got buy in

When I joined Carta, there were about 40 some designers. One day, during a 1:1, a designer showed one article she wrote reflecting what she had designed recently. I simply thought, we should have a blog as a design team, and we can publish writing like this from every designer. Though it’s not new, the idea of a “design blog” was born.

Anyone can think about an idea, but how to convince others to work on it and also be able to gather support from leadership? Here are some of my takeaways.

Share the idea often

It was just an idea, the first thing I did is to share this idea within a design review group. Then I shared it to my small product group and gage interests. Some designers told me previously there were efforts during Hackathon trying to build a design team’s website. I asked for a connection, then we are in a group slack to chat further.

Gather information

The next step after sharing the idea is to gather extra information to shape insight. One of the design lead had connection with company editorial team and chatted with them. I also found out who were managing the engineering blog and asked a lot of questions. I learned that there are many challenges pushing the design blog idea:

Designers don’t have time, or it’s hard to convince people to commit

Leadership or our company may not have the resources to support since every article we publish externally requires a lengthy review process

Nobody took the responsibility to lead this effort so it’s never official

Schedule group chat

With those info at hand, I asked designers who are interested in contributing and scheduled group chat to come up with solutions. In fact, I had many ideas and I also know how to start the project. But having such meeting is key to get support and find blind spot I may have missed. In the process, I wrote a document to track the ideas, meeting notes, and even quotes from people who find a design blog valuable. I scheduled maybe 3-4 chat with the same group, trying to figure out a plan. When we found that there’s no support/approval from editorial team, I proposed alternative ideas to get the project going. All of the thoughts were documented and shared with my manager during our 1:1.

Finalize the proposal

Overall, my manager were supportive of this initiative. He promised to schedule me a meeting with other designer leaders when I have my proposal together. Since I explored so much before putting the proposal deck together, I can provide different perspective and solutions regarding to the challenges too. Before I bring the deck to the design leadership group, I shared with key members from the blog planning group, and with design leaders who know this initiative earlier on. All the comments they gave before the meeting was super helpful to solidify the concept and provide a wider perspective.

The proposal presentation went well, and we got a “Yes” across the board. One tip is to remember what to ask during such meeting. In the end, I re-engaged on the purpose and the follow ups: Let’s define the action from this meeting, can we form an official team to start working on this? The result is everyone said “Yes, you are official, now go with it!” Later once our VP design was hired, she approved our proposal and got a “Yes” from the editorial team to start a design team specific medium blog.

With an official team, everything get easier. Simply work with the team to divide up tasks and stick to a meeting schedule. Results will show as time goes by. Finally, here is the Carta Design Team Blog we just launched end of 2022.

[lizeng]

Embrace now, the present time

I have always been a goal chaser, the good is that I never lose the drive to work toward something, the bad is that I can easily ignore the presence.

A conversation with a mentor inspired me to write on this topic. I was consulting with him about topics I can learn aside from work: financial accounting, organizational behavior and operational excellence etc. He suggests that going along with the experience I gain from work and strengthen the type of knowledge I can practice is more powerful than learning something I may never use for a long time. Mastering something takes 10,000 hours, a lot of the skills will diminish if we don’t use it. That’s a good call on the appreciation of present experience.

Another conversation with Tarun Gulati, founder of Adios World talking about vision also reminded me the power of now. He suggests to look inward not outward for solutions, to bring my unique energy and presence to the problem, and to connect with a mission that won’t change for me for decades to come. We took the time to reflect my past and identified several important values to myself, the group I want to impact and visions I can see in years. Looking back, I have a lot to share growing up in a Chinese educational system and going through all the challenges as an international student and immigrant. I have always aspire to impact young children because my past educational experiences. The path that I am going to create for myself is unique to my own, a combination of my past and presence experience. Working in Silicon Valley as a product designer taught me how to look at problems and solutions in a scaleable way. I believe all these will go into something I build in the future. As Steve Jobs suggests that all dots will connect, no single experience will go to waste. This is a good reminder that our present time build all past experiences.

What I realize by contemplating my past and present is that I need to embrace my current moment as much as I can. Life can change, someday I may go back to China or even go to Africa to make a difference in teenagers’ life. But as for now, I live in Silicon Valley, the world’s center of technology, breathing in and out new ideas and ways to change the world with technology. Many people complain about how competitive, expensive or unfriendly the Bay Area is, I still find it the best place to live. Day by day, as I get busy and may ignore my surroundings, I have to keep reminding myself how much I appreciate:

Every ray of sunshine penetrating through my window blinds

Perfect temperature and weather throughout the year

Every bird chirp, every inch of green grass and every hill surrounded with trees

Beautiful ocean or mountains hours away

A comfortable place I call home

A family and a circle of friends/sisters/brothers

Accessible Asian groceries and restaurant

Career opportunities and how much design is valued

Talented and smart people I can look up to and hangout with

Ideas, ambition and potential that can actually come to life

All the resources etc

Presence makes up our past and future. The place we live, people we meet, things we do, how we spend our time are all personal choices we make. If we go with the flow, we build our dreams upon it. If we go against the flow, every present moment is hell.

This morning, I just read a story of a teenager who decided to gave up his national examination opportunity to revolt the Chinese educational system and failed miserably. He came from a poor family, his parents poured everything into his education and it seems the national exam was his only chance to a successful life. But by reading a novel (Tonggao 2003) from Hanhan who rebelled against Chinese educational system, the teenager decided that is his mission too. He was trying to get the attention from news and social media by doing outrageous things. He was totally looking outward, complaining about the system, the society and never about himself. Unfortunately, he didn’t get the right guidance from his parents or teachers at the right time.

One thing I learned, from my mom since very young, is that there will always be unfair systems, unbeatable challenges, and difficult people in this world. The only thing we can change is ourselves. Switching the control to our own hands, think positively, act graciously and enjoy every up & down along the journey, embrace the current moment - that’s about what we call life.

[lizeng]

How to disagree gracefully

In my career, I have been in difficult conversations. My instinct was to “fight or fly”, either state my position strongly to show assertiveness, or simply ignore that person or their opinions because I don’t agree and I don’t want to care.

I may say things like: “I don’t know about you, but personally I think...” hoping to convince others while knowing they have different views. I have also seen others warmly accept any feedbacks but dare to challenge. Neither were good strategies to communicate gracefully in high stake situations.

I reflected a lot after learning some negotiation tactics from Chris Voss, former FBI hostage negotiator, teacher of the art of negotiating master class, author of Never Split the Difference: Negotiating As If Your Life Depended On It. The most common and useful techniques mentioned by Chris are mirror and label.

Mirror

It is as simple as repeating the last 1-3 words the person just said. It opens up a door for the person to elaborate more and makes them feel they are heard. Being heard is such an important concept despite we are agreeing or not. Everyone wants to be treated fairly.

If the last blog post was about what to think if we want to hear the other’s advices, mirroring is a practical tactic when we want to show that we are curious, we empathize, and we are here to listen.

Similarly, I unconsciously say “really?” a lot when disagreeing with others.That gets the person elaborate, but also gives myself time to think about how to communicate my disagreement gracefully. But this doesn’t apply in every conversation.

Tips: whenever we disagree, dislikes what others are saying, want to make others’ feel heard, or don’t understand what they are talking about — repeating the last 1-3 words as a question. See the magic happen.

The goal is not just to repeat what they say, it’s about understanding their perspective. Making them feel we understood and trying to bridge the gap and find a common ground.

Label

Another concept is label. Either label the person’s negative or positive emotion can help. Labeling has similar affect to get the person talk more. Label makes people think, if they don’t think it’s accurate, they will correct it by explaining more. Labeling requires active listening and consistent thinking to summarize the deeper meaning/ connection/ emotion the person didn’t state. It is important the tone is neutral and calm so not coming  across as sarcastic or doubtful. 

Combine mirror and label can be powerful. Even when we forgot using mirror, label can help calm down the situation.

Interestingly enough, when it comes to negotiation or disagreement, the important part is still listening. Making others feel heard and understood is key before stating our position. Before even express our perspective, Chris also suggest to use a negative label called “accusation audit”.

Accusation audit is to boldly speak up every terrible thing our counterpart could say about us. By doing this, we took away the real accusation and soften the counterpart’s negativity.

You’re going to think that I’m ignorance since I just joined the team. You may think I am a person who is stubborn and only make things work my way. You probably also think that I have no idea how busy you are and joining meetings like this is a waste of your time.

From there, build a plan that’s meeting our goal at the same time is considering the counterpart’s point of view.

Two simple concepts, if used well, can change our life and work communication dramatically. I almost look forward to high stake conversations now so I can practice my mirror and labeling skills. Handling difficult conversation is a needed skill - not everything will go our way. That being said, when we know what to say and how to say disagreement gracefully, we are on our way to be more effective as a communicator in life and career.

[lizeng]

The gap between visual and product design

What is the gap to close if switching from visual to product design? This is a familiar question from graphic designers who intend to transit.

I taught visual design for 5 years before I switch to the industry. Initially I was doing web and UI design as well. Little did I know UI is far different from UX design. Working as the solo designer at a startup helped me to be well rounded, but the best way to learn product design is to join a company with a group of designers who have built great design systems or elegant products.

I worked for 3 startups from different stages and I learned many different things from each company. If I have to summarize the gap that I have to close, it’s interaction design and product thinking.

Interaction design

Interaction design doesn’t come natural to designers with a graphic background. It is beyond just hover and click state. It’s not just about one user’s interaction, it’s also about many users interaction if the product allows. Interactive variation spread across time, users and device, meaning each element can affect the way how people interact with the product differently.

For those who may find the above explanation vague, here’s one example (on Facebook like bar) as to how to dive deep into the interaction design.

Visual designers may be able to come up with the above design, but there are a lot more things to consider from the interaction perspective:

What does it look like when there’s no likes? Do we hide the bar?

What about 1 like? Do we highlight the person’s name?

What about 2, 3, 4, 5 and 25 likes? What’s the maximum number of emojis we want to show?

What if the like emojis are the same? What if they are all different?

Whose name were to appear on the line of text? How many people’s name can show up on the line of text? Full name or just first name?

Do we count the number by including everybody or exclude the name listed?

Should we show everyone’s name in a hover or click state?

Is there a max number we show (like 2k+, instead of 2341) if reaching certain threshold ?

Is each element clickable? If yes, what happens when hovering over and clicking?

I am sure there were more to consider. As a product designer, my head is spinning the whole time, resulting a complete spec sheet answering all the questions I just wrote. Engineers will rely on the spec to understand the logic and details. Now, if you are interested in learning about the like bar interactions, go to Facebook, click and scroll around.

Product Thinking

A company can have great product people and designers, but they may not know how to think lean or strategically when launching product or features. The consequence is months of efforts building something that’s not as desirable.

Why do we need product thinking when launching product or features? Because there’s always limited time, efforts or resources. How to get most impact with a MVP (minimal viable product) as early as possible? That’s the question product managers and good designers think about all the time.

Using the same Facebook like bar feature as an example. That is a bar featuring liked emojis and number count after people interacted with the 7 emojis. What to consider when displaying it?

Do we need this at all? If we can get the same impact without building this bar, that’s the most efficient way. In this case, we need a place to capture the selection, otherwise no social proof or impact will come out from the previous interaction.

What’s the minimum to build? Initially, maybe just capture the first 3 emoji and the total number of people who reacted to the like bar (see image below). Move all of the following to next phase:

Dynamically featuring the top 3 clicked emojis Display names of people who clicked different emojis Display full name along with the line

How to test the effectiveness of the feature before launching, during and after launching? What are the metrics we are using to measure the success?

That being said, data is one of the most powerful assistance product designer can get when it comes to making good design decisions. Leverage existing data when improving a feature, or research market data when designing a new product. Many product ideas from designers can be very powerful if backed with meaningful data.

This is just a small part when it comes to launch a product. There are a lot more research and development work that goes into launching. Great product designers should be aware of the lean development process to be most effective and helpful. If visual designers were able to grasp the above two with project/work experience, they are not far from becoming a good product designer.

[lizeng]

The art of giving and receiving feedbacks

Image from unsplash by Volodymyr Hryshchenko

I invited 3 students to have dinner together one time when I was a design professor. These students were my teaching assistants and helped with either my office work or projects. It is my way of showing appreciation to them at the end of the semester. There is one student, let’s say her name is Emily, loved talking, especially about herself and her stories. The other two were relatively quiet. The whole night, Emily was talking about herself, her family and her experience without realizing if others were annoyed, felt unheard or not involved at all. I had an urge to say something the whole night, but I didn’t. I thought Emily will have a tough lesson eventually she will learn to listen and give others the chance to speak. I regret that I didn’t give her the feedback at the time.

Not long ago, my husband was washing dishes after dinner, he started to tell me how I shouldn’t put dirty dishes over a pan he was soaking overnight. I just showered and put our son to sleep and got a chance to relax. In my mind, I always complete my duties without complaining, and he should do the same. Washing dishes was his duty that night, all he needs to do is to get it done. Because I feel he was correcting me or evaluating what I did wrong though it’s his job to clean that night, I wasn’t ready to hear any feedbacks. All I did is to tell him to stop, stop complaining, stop telling me what I did wrong (as I don’t think it’s even wrong to put dirty dishes over dishes in the sink). We had a fight due to the our communication style. I wish I had listened better and reacted less on his feedbacks.

Giving and receiving feedbacks is hard. It’s particularly challenging for people pleaser types like myself because I don’t want to hurt others feelings, and I dislike hearing others giving me bad comments. But there are better ways to do it, and it takes time to practice. Through several readings ( book listed below)on similar concepts like how to communicate and how to give and receive feedbacks, I have learned several critical tactics as to how to give and receive feedbacks.

Books about feedbacks and better communication:

Thanks for the feedback: the science and art of receiving feedbacks well.

Radical candor: how to get what you want by saying what you mean

No rule rules: Netflix and the culture reinvention

Crucial conversation: tools for talking when stakes are high

Giving Feedbacks

Be assertive and show care

When someone said things that made us feel hurt or uncomfortable, we need to speak up. That’s being assertive and standing up for ourselves. Feedbacks can be part of the conversation. We can clearly state that “when you said... I felt..., I understand that might not be your intention, but can you stop... in the future?” I find these types of feedbacks easier since I am a feeling type of person, and it’s easy to clarify how I feel and what the other person do would make me feel better.

However, when it comes to something I notice on others, but it’s not affecting me directly, I find it hard to express my opinions and share my feedbacks at the right time. For most random acquaintances, we don’t need to care since we may not see them anymore. But in a work place or at home, it’s always better to share the feedbacks than not. People can realize what they lack, and we care enough to give feedbacks for further improvement.

Going back to the example of Emily, if I had the chance again, I may say the following to her in a private setting:

Emily, remember the night I invited 3 of you to dinner? I notice that you had been the one talking the whole night, the other 2 barely said anything. Did you notice that? (Maybe after she acknowledges or disagrees, I would continue ) Does expressing yourself excites you? Do you think there are ways you can better include others in those conversations? (I would hear more about her thoughts and try to understand where she is coming from). I know you are extraverted and you have many interesting stories to share. I also think they way how you express engage others well. But it is an art as to when to listen and when to say things, the difficult part is to listen well and allow others to speak. When you are the only one who talks, others may think you are selfish and didn’t care to know anyone else. Even if they are quiet, you can ask more questions to get them talking. I am sure you get my point. Do you think you can try and practice that next time with me or a group of friends?

State the fact, learn both sides of the story and don’t judge

Notice the above feedbacks begin with the observation not a conclusion like “Emily, I think you are too talkative and doesn’t listen well”. Because those types of feedbacks get rejected right away. Not matter what we say later to make it up, the listener already feel the judgement is made. The best way is always to state what happened, no opinion, no judgement or conclusion. We human are naturally good at making conclusion to save time and effort. Despite how much we dislike the things people did or said, it’s important to hear their side of the story. This is easily said than done. There are so many times when I was in argument with my husband, barely did I realize that I was yelling and only attempting to get my point across, I wasn’t interested in learning his side of the story at all. It’s always an after thought that I should have listened, I should have learn his thoughts before I deliver my opinions.

Keep the ultimate goal in mind

The ultimate goal of feedbacks is for the receiver to feel assisted, motivated to take action and change for the better. It’s not to make them feel bad and look down upon themselves. A case I remembered clearly from No rule rules is that an engineer feeling demotivated after a conversation with Justin Becker, an engineering manager at Netflix. Justin didn’t enjoy giving bad feedbacks to that engineer but he thought he is doing the right thing for the company by pointing out mistakes the engineer made. The engineers’ actual manager however came to Justin and offered feedbacks. This manager first told Justin that he was aware of their conversations, and acknowledged that Justin didn’t do anything wrong by calling out the mistakes. But the manager asked two things to Justin:

Are you aware that my engineer is demotivated and unproductive since the talk, and is it your intention to make him unproductive?

(After Justin said No, he asked again) Do you think you cold have told my engineer what you needed to, in a way that left him feeling positive and motivated to fix the issue?

This example was one of the most vivid case in the book about giving feedbacks. The manager made a perfect example, delivered candid, affective and actionable feedbacks in less than 2 minutes. Notice he only asked questions. Questions make the receiver think, rather than being defensive. It’s the perfect way to engage the receiver. As the book Crucial conversation said, always ask ourselves, what do I really want from those conversations? Make sure you keep the end goal in mind throughout the feedback session.

Receiving Feedbacks

Have a growth mindset

I consider myself a growth minded person, but I am not good at receiving feedbacks. I may take negative feedbacks too personally and have emotional impacts to my day. When I was teaching, I didn’t enjoy checking out students evaluation at the end of every semester. There are good and appreciative feedbacks, but there are many complaints as well. My chair, Jeff would sit down with me to see which complaints were constructive and which were just useless complaints. I find it helpful to filter feedbacks like that. Jerry, CTO of Carta put it really well: growth minded means you detach your future self with your past self. The second you receive the feedbacks, you are a different person from what had happened. You don’t need to feel too attached to those feedbacks because it’s talking about your old self, not the new you.

Listen, listen, and listen

When we disagree, it’s hard to listen. The giver need to listen, more so does the receiver. Thanks for the feedback consider receiver the key side as to how effective the feedback is. It takes about three types of feedback: appreciation, coaching and evaluation. If the giver isn’t giving the types of feedbacks the receiver wants, not matter how good the feedback, it won’t be received well. Sometimes the misunderstanding of the types of feedbacks can cause unpleasant conversations. The example above, about my husband giving me feedbacks about putting dirty dishes on top of a pan is a good illustration of how I interpreted his coaching feedback into evaluation. Despite of the feedback, his intention was to make home cleaning more aligned between us. I felt he was evaluating a task that’s not even my responsibility at the time. The book “thanks to the feedback” also suggest to first understand the givers’ perspective: tell me more, and let’s figure out why we see this differently. The tip is to repeat what the giver had said in a way that’s even better than they said it, and then have a conversation to learn each other’s perspectives. Just to know that our goal is not to agree with all feedbacks, only pick the ones we think it’s constructive and can actually help us grow.

Ask better questions

The fight or flight types of response to disagreement never solves the real problem. Having a growth mindset also means digging for feedbacks when we don’t hear enough. As receiver, we have expectations when it comes to feedbacks. When the recruiter told us we didn’t get the promotion, or the doctor told us about an unfortunate illness , instead of feeling down, what questions can we get by asking more questions?

Can you tell me more?

What am I missing from the qualification?

What are the committee looking for?

What’s your suggestions for improvement?

Can you suggest someone who can help?

I am not in a position to give anyone suggestions as to give and receive feedbacks. I, myself have a long way to go when it comes to feedbacks. Knowing these tips can help me think when the time comes. The hard part about having feedback session is being too emotionally attached. Either good or bad feedbacks, it’s all others’ opinions and it varies from person to person. The truth underlies inside ourselves and it’s up to us to take or leave the feedbacks. However, the more open we are to feedbacks, the faster we can see our flaws and keep growing.

[lizeng]

How to evaluate a startup before joining?

Imagine Vivian works at a large corporation for 5 years now. She is considering a career move to a startup. It is scary since 90% startups fails. She wants to find ways to de-risk the choice of joining a startup before her career move. Let’s discuss what Vivian has to consider before joining a startup.

What’s the definition of a startup?

When discussed within our small mentorship group, everyone came up with their understanding of a startup:

Seed stage before series A

Company that hasn’t found product market fit yet

Company just found product market fit (Series A-B)

Any company before IPO or exit

Not surprisingly, the definition of a startup is often discussed on many websites by different tech founders too. Here are several ways tech founders tend to define a startup according to startups.com:

Company Size

A startup is a company with under 100 employees that is not yet publicly traded” Stacy Caprio, Founder of Accelerated Growth Marketing

“It’s also less than two years old, has a turnover of under $250,000/year and less than 10 employees. Anything bigger than that and you’re starting to enter the small business / SBE arena.” — Alex Winston, Founder and Managing Director of PPC Protect

The “New & Early” nature

“A startup is a human institution designed to create a new product or service under conditions of extreme uncertainty” — Eric Ries, Lean Startup

A startup is a newish company that is the early stages of branding, sales, and hiring” — Scott W. Johnson, the owner of WholeVsTermLifeInsurance.com

The “Growth & Scaling” nature

A startup is “a temporary organization designed to look for a business model that is repeatable and scalable. — Steve Blank, entrepreneur and business school professor at Stanford & Berkeley.

“To me a startup is any company that has a goal to grow and scale, usually quickly and usually using technology to do so” — Ian Wrights, founder of Merchant Machine

“Frankly, a startup is any business that hasn’t reached critical mass yet run by one or more individuals whose primary work-related goal is the growth of that company,” Dary Merckens, CTO of Gunner Technology

Uncertainty and ambiguity

“A startup is a company that’s searching for product/market fit: trying to identify its ideal customers, which products and services those ideal customers purchase, at what price points, and how frequently they make those purchases,” — Joshua Feinberg Co-Founder of SP Home Run Inc.

“A startup is a company that has more questions about its business model and sustainability than answer”. Xiao Wang, CEO of Boundless

“Startup implies a phase of the company where success is not yet determined” Sarnen Steinbarth, Founder and CEO TurboTenant

All in all, a startup is a small group of people seeking for new and innovative ways to fill a market gap, building scalable product to serve its ideal customers, to grow quickly and to succeed. Now knowing what will be involved in a startup - uncertainty, errors & trials, starting from scratch, what should Vivian consider when comparing startups to join?

What to consider when joining a startup?

Before evaluating the ins and out of a startup, Vivian should know what she values most. Richard Liu, previous engineer executive at Google,  Leap.ai founder & CEO in his “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to Your Next Company” breaks it down to top 7 values everyone should consider for their next company: learning, career growth, compensation & benefits, stability, company prestige, impact and work life balance. In the 4 types of company, Richard clearly stated the difference and value among early stage startups, fast growing companies, continued growth companies and mature companies. This is a more comprehensive way to consider all types of company instead of just startups. Vivian totally should read Richard’s article if she is considering all stages of company. Today, we are only going to talk about how to choose a startup.

Connection & Enjoyment

Working for a startup is different from investing in a startup. You have to consider your day to day experience and whether you will enjoy the people, problems and environment. So thinking through the following before you join.

Founders & Team

What founders quality matters to the success of a startup? According to data collected by Crunchbase, the more experience a founder has, the higher chance the startup will succeed. If you know the founder, by all means join a team you enjoy working with. Even if the startup fails, you build a deeper connection with a founder you trust and admire.

Some other aspects to evaluate the funding team are: talent/skill diversity, passion/commitment, personality/adaptability.

Domain

What is an industry or domain you feel excited about? Do you prefer to work for 2C or 2B product? Because many product or tech people deal with the product everyday, finding meaning in building it and connecting to its mission matter. Want to find a field that has a lot of potentials? Here is a list of industries trends experts from Forbes predicts of 2022 that may also help you decide a domain to focus on.

Types of work

When you join an early stage startup you have the opportunities to wear multiple hats. Do you want to work on new and ambiguous problems or do you prefer working on scaling strategy to grow and improve an existing product? Depending on the product vertical, you can get very different types of experience when you know the types of work you want to take.

Growth Opportunity

Business Model

Because startups are uncertain and ambiguous, they might not have the business model figured out yet. How do you evaluate business potential through their business model? Here we are only talking about business models for software. Altexsoft gavstics to business model: distribution, code licensing, revenue stream, interaction and target audiences. Roughly we can divide the target audiences into B2B and B2C, distribution includes on-premises, cloud or hybrid. The most worth noting one is software revenue stream, understanding the following types will help you connect to known examples and evaluate the effectiveness of the business model:

License

Advertising

In-app purchases

Subscription

Freemium

Transaction fee/Usage based fees

Support/Service Fee/Consulting

Momentum + Market size

Similar like how investors evaluate a startup, understand the market size will help you see the potential revenue of the business and opportunities for growth in the company. An early stage startup might not have positive revenues just yet. These pre-revenue startups are burning money to build product and acquiring users. How do you evaluate the potential of the business by looking at the customer growth rate and the market need?

Forbes suggest looking at “market size, market value and addressable market” to determine the market size. Market size is determined by “# of potential customer”, or “# of transactions each year”, and how much those customers or transaction worth is market value. There are other players on the market already, so how much is left for the startup to penetrate is the addressable market. To calculate market size and value, Hubspot suggest the following equation:

Market size = Target market X Penetration rate

Market value = Market size X Avg value

On the user growth momentum side, user adoption rates reveals the potential of the business. According to an article on Forbes, on their first year of the business, user growth rate for the following companies are:

Netflix: 88%

Facebook: 450%

Slack: 534%

You can tell why these companies becomes so successful to start with. But what’s a healthy user growth rate? Paul Graham claim that for Y combinator companies, a good growth rate is 5%-7% per week, while an exceptional growth rate is 10% per week. But it’s not realistic because that kind of growth cannot last forever. So looking at user growth year over year can help. One of my trusted mentor suggested that any top tier company after series D should growth 100% year over year and have a good retention rate.

Financial Metrics

If a company already generates revenue, looking at their net new ARR growth and see if there’s a trajectory might be the best way to evaluate its potential.

According to Storm Ventures, prior to 2012, reaching to $1M ARR is considered a top indicator if a company has figured out how to get customers and retain them. It usually takes the company 2-4 years to attain the $1M ARR. But as SaaS customers feel more comfortable buying solutions that cost above the thousand price per month, it takes less than 100 customers to get to $1M ARR. Thus, some companies can make it to $1M ARR within its first year. Once reaching $1M ARR, the company can use previous experience and scale much faster.

Also, how good is the startups’ sales efficiency? By spending $1, how much can the company generate? For example if I spend $85 and generated $100 in revenue, my sales efficiency is $100/$85, which is above 1. These data may not be available for Vivian to see, but when chatting with executives or founders from the Startup, Vivian can always gain more insight about the companies overall performance.

Sales efficiency a metric that allows managers to understand the direct revenue impact of each dollar spent on expenses or investment. To calculate sales efficiency, simply add together your sales and marketing costs for a given time period.

Lastly, how’s the startup’s gross margin? Investopedia has an article on gross profit and gross margin, read on it to know how to calculate and view it as indications for the companies growth on profit.

Risk/Stress tolerance

Funding size: This data can be easily found on Crunchbase. Ask founders for their burn rate and how long their cash will last without raising fund. Funding size can be a good indicator of how much investors believes in the startup success. The larger the funding, the more generous a startup can be. Catch

Company Stage/Size: Company stage is a good tracker for product market fit but it’s not universally the same for every company. The later the stage, the less risky the startup is. Some companies won’t go public even till stage G, it really depends on the company. If you want more work life balance, a later stage is a better fit.

Company value: If the company you plan to join is pre-revenue startups, Angel investor Dave Berkus suggested to envision the company breaking $20M within 5 years and a assess the following 5 aspects:

Sound Idea (basic value): $1/2 million

Prototype (reducing technology risk): $1/2 million

Quality Management Team (reducing execution risk): $1/2 million

Strategic relationships (reducing market risk): $1/2 million

Product Rollout or Sales (reducing production risk): $1/2 million

However, company valuation alone can be a big topic, learning how to value the company may not be necessary in this context. Just knowing that startups usually do annual valuation and re-evaluate once new fundings come in, checking their recent valuation can help.

Why joining a startup?

At the end of the day, whether or not to join, and what startup to join is a personal decision. People are motivated by different things, one’s experience won’t apply to another. Though startup is risky and can be stressful, the following are the pros working at startups:

Learning/Growth opportunity: wearing multiple hats in a startup can make you a more well rounded person. If you are used to climb small or big hills, when facing a rocky challenge in future jobs, you won’t be scared any longer. The flat road can be comfortable, but it can also be a handcuff if you intend to be a creator and entrepreneur yourself.

0-1 experience: not every job can provide 0-1 type of experience. Building something from nothing and finding product market fit can be the most difficult thing in a startup. You will never get this type of experience working for large companies, even with new teams within Google or Facebook.

Friendships and connections: Especially in early stage startups, people work closer together, go through challenges together and feel more bonding when growing with the company together. You can build friendships anywhere, but in startups you can build stronger and longer lasting connections especially when you know a lot more about the person, what they do and how they impact the company daily.

[lizeng]

When I met my husband back in 2016, I made this digital birthday card for him highlighting all the fun facts I learned about him. One problem I find all the greeting cards on the market is that it is universal and focuses only on the occasion rather than the person. Over the years, I doodled many cards for friends and co-workers centering their image and fun impressions I had about them. I am thinking about building an online tool to allow people to create personalized cards (focus on the receiver) for their friends and loved ones. Maybe a group can make a card like this together online for the receiver. Anyone is interested if I build it? Let me know!!!😆 https://www.instagram.com/p/Cbi4YcAPpiK/?utm_medium=tumblr

[lizeng]

Job Seeking Tips for Product Professionals

Photo by Van Tay Media on Unsplash  

Before looking for a job, think though the following and see if you are able to achieve similar career goal with your current role. Grass isn’t always greener on the other side. Switching jobs can be stressful and challenging, new jobs too.

Requesting a promotion

Evolving or expanding current role

Transferring internally within company

Taking on side projects to develop experience

Developing skills with extracurricular education

If you are sure about changing jobs, get in the “job seeking” mode and start to prepare. In this past round of job seeking, I did many things that I didn’t in my past experience. I wish someone taught me how to evaluate opportunities like this early in my career. That’s why I had to write this article to share my experience.

First, know what you want

Many people leave their career to random “opportunities”: when a recruiter reaches out, they would consider the new job. Few people dive into Crunchbase, do their research and figure out a list of companies they want to join. Maybe because many of you do not know exactly what you want yet. But to start the process and to consider a list of tech companies to apply, you need to know your interest, skills or passion from the following area (Srouce: Reforge):

1. Type of Work

Before finding the company, evaluate what type of product work excites you most. Different team can offer experience that cater to the following focus, talk to the recruiter or hiring manager about it.

Initial Product Market Fit

Feature Strategy

Growth Strategy

PMF Expansion Strategy

Scaling

2. Company Stage

Different stages of companies offers drastic experiences. Where are we on our level of handling ambiguity and risk? How much do we value on career growth, stability, company prestige and work life balance? My former boss and mentor Richard Liu analyzed this very well in his “The Hitchhier’s Guide to Your Next Company”. It’s never a right or wrong choice, you need to find something that fit you.

Early stage startups ←→ Large Company

More ambiguity ←→ More Structured

More general   ←→ More specialize

More Risk  ←→ Less Risk

3. Domain

Many people work in product value the domain or mission of the company. It’s an important factor since we work on the product daily. If you are passionate about a field or industry, working toward a higher mission becomes a pleasure rather than just a day job. Consider what connect with you.

Business Model: B2C, B2B

Industry Vertical: Fintech, Healthcare, etc

Product Categories: VR, Wearable etc

Then, ask around and get help

Now knowing what you want, let’s dive into the process of seeking. In this process, I totally trust referral system in the tech industry. Especially for experienced professionals, letting people know that you are looking for new opportunities is a better path to finding a perfect role.

About submitting resumes

I used to believe that job postings are everywhere and all I need to do is to apply and submit a resume. Guess what? 75% of resumes never get read by a human! I have heard stories over and over again (including my own) how people are applying online but never hear back from the company. In fact, when I was on the hiring team at my previous job, I witnessed how recruiters never get to the online applications but always prioritize candidates from an internal referral system. Unless you tried all the options below, don’t go just submit a resume just yet.

Reach to a human first

If you have friends or Linkedin connections work at the company you want to apply, great, reach out. Even if you don’t know anyone from a company you really want to go, reach to a real human on Linkedin. The difference is dramatic when you start a conversation with real people. Bill and Dave in their “Designing Your Life”book shared the exact same philosophy. Knowing how effective referral works with real experience, I would never go back to seek jobs the way I did before.

Get people around you to help

Tell people that you are looking, they will share opportunities with you when they see anything that fit. You never know if your previous co-workers or friends’ company have an opening that fit exactly what you are looking for. Also, for the type of jobs like product designer, you should ask friends around to help review your portfolio. Early reviews help you see gaps and areas to improve. Iterate several versions before you interview as it will really help refine every detail of your slides and storytelling.

Last, evaluate your new opportunity

Just remember, every time you are looking for a new opportunity, it’s not just the companies are interviewing you — you are also interviewing the company. After you past their interviews, don’t feel a decision has to be made soon. There are so many more questions you can ask and people to connect before you make a decision. I totally took my time and spent almost a whole month evaluate the company after the offer. What did I do?

A. Schedule deeper conversations

During the interview, the company asked as many questions they want to evaluate you qualifications. In my case, I prepared many questions and didn’t get enough time to ask all during the last 5-10min. I requested the recruiters to schedule further conversations with hiring managers and key stakeholders. But, what do you want to get out of those deeper conversations?

Know your team and manager

Ask the recruiter to recommend someone who has been on the team for a long time, doing well and still feels happy. You can get a sense about the team’s culture and how to advance your career like the veteran employee.

Also, know your manager. A good manager can create tailwind for your career by sharing business context, removing roadblocks, offering feedbacks, partnering with you etc. Good manager has self awareness and count their own reasons. Ask questions like “tell me about last time you had to let someone go” (bad manager let others take all the blame)

Learn about Resources

Ask questions around team ratio, team gaps, next hire, and growth recourses and opportunities. One thing that excited me about my new role was the growth opportunity to lead a team and move from a senior IC to a manager. My company also highly value self growth and they reimburse all books cost and provide free access to Udemy. That helps me validate the value I seek in a new opportunity.

Scope: half contributing + half learnings

I value team mobility and career change when it’s needed. The ideal scope of a new opportunity is: a little bigger than the previous roles. Bring half of the experience from past, and learn the rest half through experience. If you want to change to a new role, ask the recruiter about the company’s flexibility on that. During my evaluation process, I even asked the recruiter to chat with someone who switched from finance to product internally.

B. Talk to previous employees

I have never done this in any previous interviews but I did in the recent job change. When I told other friends, everyone thought it’s a great idea to hear real thoughts about the company.

How to connect with previous employees?

On Linkedin, there’s a search feature called “previously worked on {search name} company”. You only need to send 3-4 messages and see who will respond. As long as one person agrees to chat with you, you can ask them to recommend another former or current employee to chat. You will end up with a list of names to talk to after one simple conversation.

What can you get from those conversations?

Current managers or employees would never tell you the whole story, especially the bad side about the company or team. Their focus is get you hired and sign the offer letter. Only previous employees who left the company knows enough about the team and company culture and are willing to share things they would never tell during their time at the company. Ask questions like “why do you leave the company?”, “What made you unhappy or unsatisfied?” You will get a ton of insight you wouldn’t otherwise.

Overall, job changing is important to anyone’s career, so never rush the process nor trying to make a quick decision. Take your time to research, connect with people and ask questions. I am sure in the end, you will find the process totally worth it after landing your dream job! Good luck.

[lizeng]

Things to consider in public speaking

In July, I took a public speaking class from Stanford by Danielle Barnes. Public speaking is a great skill to inspire, teach and get buy in. The framework we learned Danielle's class is called CAMP. It is breaken down as:

C = Context: What do we need to know before starting?

A= Architecture: How will we structure our presentation?

M= Mechanic: What techniques will we use to achieve our end goal?

P= Poetics: What experience do we want our audience to have?

This is almost like a checklist before we start the talk. Here I am just highlighting a few points I thought were really useful to me.

Context: Things to know before preparing the talk

Context is about learning the audience, topic to share, time to share and in what format. As speakers, the better we know our audience, the better the connection.

What are my audiences' background?

What experience level/topic would they be interested in?

What are their values, what's important to them?

What else do I need to know about them?

Also, topics and content may change depending on the audience. So the next thing to think about is what to talk about. For new speakers, it's important to remember: anyone can bring value on something they know. As Sara Wachter said in her talk "Don't feel like an expert? Share anyway". It's so important to recognize that:

Experience is not required for speakers

Imagine the talk as if we are doing it to our past self

The content is new for someone in the audience

We have a special perspective

Architecture: Use storytelling to convey our message

"We are hardwired to make sense of the world in story terms" — Kendall Haven

If there were one thing I can take away from this class, that is storytelling. We started telling stories thousand years ago before any digital device, books or text existed. It's a universal language that we understood as human being. Story doesn't have to be real, or it doesn't always come from ourselves. As long as we include the key elements of a good story, we can craft an impactful story. The 3 key elements of a story are:

The situation

The struggle

The solution

Besides a good story, other contents that can enrich a presentation are: facts, activities and insights. This reminds me of some memorable TED talks that started with a question, gave statics, and provided ways to engage audience in the middle of the talk. These are great things to consider when we prepare the content and structure of the talk.

Mechanics: Use tools to help audience feel engaged and connected

The opening and ending of a talk is critical since it's the first and final impression from our audiences. We need to start strong and close with take aways too.

One of the key thing to help engage listeners in the beginning is igniting curiosity, or define commonly understood pain points. Also, giving relevant context in the introduction is important. Any story we tell in the beginning, the audience needs to know if it is now, past or in the future.

"Most people stopped paying attention to a speaker only 30s into the speech" — Nicole Lowenbraun, Duarte

Throughout the talk, we can also try the following three methods to engage the audience. Many speakers, myself included like to add umm, aww in between sentences to help us think. But pause can be more powerful than any filler words.

"We can enhance the very content — the relevancy and the meaning - if we just take a pause when we're talking." — Liz Danzico in The Power of the Pause.

Narrative: Create tension, have good pacing (repetition, pause, and details etc), or use humor.

Visuals: Use slides, prop and anything that grabs attention

Physical: Any body language, or physical item we can use to help demo our thoughts

To close strong, Chris Anderson, author of "TED talks" gave the following lists to help speakers think:

CTA

Summary

Personal Commitment

Inspiration

Value & Vision

Poetics: Confidently deliver a presentation our audience wants

Be present and talk in a way that's most authentic to ourselves. Thus, we have to know ourselves, and prepare accordingly.

"Everybody's body reacts to anxiety differently. Your warm up is personal"

Some tips I got from this section:

Consider scripting opening and closing

Consider every little detail during virtual presentation (background, lighting, sound, distraction etc)

Turn off notifications so there's no distraction

Test before presenting

Have a backup plan (e.g. slack channel, support person etc)

Also, deliver content in an authoritative way is important to be a leader. Here are some ways to convey authority:

Make eye contact

Keep body language open

Speak slowly

Pause often

A particular portion Danielle shared is why there are fewer women speakers. There are many reasons:

Self-doubt and fear

Lack of experience and worry about being the token

Desire to give others the opportunities

Not being asked to be a speaker

Another take away from this course: treat every experience to speak as a learning opportunity and grow from it. Overall, this has been a great course. Knowing these frameworks helps me gain confidence on how to prepare a talk.

[lizeng]

Mother Teresa's Anyway Poem

People are often unreasonable, illogical and self centered; Forgive them anyway.

If you are kind, people may accuse you of selfish, ulterior motives; Be kind anyway.

If you are successful, you will win some false friends and some true enemies; Succeed anyway.

If you are honest and frank, people may cheat you; Be honest and frank anyway.

What you spend years building, someone could destroy overnight; Build anyway.

If you find serenity and happiness, they may be jealous; Be happy anyway.

The good you do today, people will often forget tomorrow; Do good anyway.

Give the world the best you have, and it may never be enough; Give the world the best you've got anyway.

You see, in the final analysis, it is between you and your God; It was never between you and them anyway.

[lizeng]

A whole Year: How we manage to work full time at home while taking care of a newborn

My son just turned 1! It is a milestone for him and also a huge win for us. For the past year, my husband and I were working from home while taking care of our little one. It requires tremendous patience and time management. What a journey! The beginning was easier, it becomes harder as he grow. Here are some effective tips from past year:

Create a schedule

Schedule is important for newborns. Wether it's eating, napping or going out for a walk, schedule makes it easy for baby and parents to follow. Parents who don't have a schedule usually drives themselves crazy because nothing is predictable. I set an eating, napping and sleeping schedule for my baby, and my husband knows it very well too. We know exactly what to expect at what hour so we can plan our meetings and focus time around that schedule as well.

Communicate and communicate

As a mom, I know women take a lot more responsibilities on child care. Those effort usually are invisible to dad. At some point, I was very frustrated and overwhelmed by how early I wake up to take care of my baby hours before my husband. By the time my husband can split childcare hours with me, I was already exhausted. Communication is key to help understand each other's perspective and feeling. I re-thought about the whole day and listed out every detail of what it takes to care for our baby. Then we talked as a couple, dividing our tasks day by day, hour by hour and we created a plan that worked for us.

Split tasks and make shift

Initially, since my husband wakes up later, he couldn't seen anything I did in the morning. He didn't treat showering our baby and put him to bed as work either. When I leave the dinner table to put our baby to sleep, he thought I was getting away from washing dishes. After we talked and went through all the tasks, he realizes the amount of work I do is equal if not more than his. We then decided to do shifts and split tasks. For instance, after dinner, we will choose to either put baby to sleep, or wash dishes. Also, if I wake up early on Wednesday morning to take care of our baby's breakfast need, my husband does on Thursday. With such agreement, we appreciate and help each other out because we know how hard it is to do everything by oneself.

Multi-task as needed

I take my baby out for a walk in the morning when I have standup meeting. I know what to expect and I use the time wisely. My husband sometimes hold our baby on his lap while he is typing. When there are important meetings, my husband and I tell each other the night before so we are prepared. It is not ideal, but here are many times our baby has to appear on our meetings. Being parents, multi-task is a unavoidable skill.

Ask help as needed

My parents are in China and they haven't even seen their grandson. My parents in law are 30min away from us. We sometimes ask for help in the afternoons when both of us have heavy work loads or meetings. I cannot imagine how to handle 3 day straight back to back user interviews if I hadn't gotten help from my father in law. In fact, we have also tried to find nannies reaching the end of 12 month. It is indeed s challenge everyday, I can only praise the lord "it's another day" at the end of each day. Day after day it's 365 day!

[lizeng]

Grow in Every Way Possible

I often come across great people who are excellent in their own way, or admirable leaders who are experts in their specific field. Never had I known Erbil Karaman did I realize personal growth can be pushed to such an incredible level. From Erbil, I have learned that great leaders don't just tell, they walk the talk themselves. Here are 10 great take aways from knowing a humble, passionate and driven product leader.

Know yourself and what you want

"Any goals can be achieved, if you want to get there, you will". This was the first thing I heard during my career conversation with Erbil. It's a reminder for myself that growing from a designer to an entrepreneur is possible and there are many ways to get there. People who are great at what they do know the options, and the reasons why they chose a certain path. In the product world, there are 2B and 2C, plus so many verticals one can choose. Erbil chose 2C product because he thinks human psychology is very interesting. He also chose mission based product because he find a sense of purpose in serving others. I couldn't agree more on finding purpose in the work we do.

Hardworking is a talent and a discipline

I often feel inspired by people's story of waking up early at 5:00am and start their day. Erbil works everyday from 7:00am till 1:00am including weekends. He has high energy and also know how to reserve energy for high capacity work. Everyone around him is amazed by how long he works and still be present and display the best self through all meetings. He said taking small breaks and eat snacks are good ways to keep his energy high. People like Erbil have God given high energy, and they also practice extreme discipline to utilize their energy well. To work hard, we have to know our physical conditions and learn how to maximize our energy. Erbil showed me that it is possible to work for long hours and still keep energy high, especially if we are doing what we love.

One can be busy and responsive

Doesn't everyone forget something when we get busy? I don't think that is the case for Erbil. I had never find Erbil missing a Slack message or email I sent during the time we worked together. He has a system to prioritize before he does other things like messages. I cannot believe how responsive Erbil is to anyone despite being a CPO who oversees many teams and task forces. Knowing Erbil, "being busy" cannot simply be an excuse for none-responsive behavior anymore. He definitely inspires me to be more responsive and caring to others in workplace and in life.

Take every opportunity to learn

Another thing Erbil inspires me is that he always prioritizes learning. We can learn different things in many ways. Erbil taught me his way of learning through work, people, monthly topics and other resources. People like Erbil who value growth are extremely resourceful. Erbil has gone miles beyond when it comes to resources and creative ways to learn. He often talks about exchanging knowledge with people from different expertise. He absorb from everyone he works closely in the company. It shifted the way how I view coworkers and friends around me. Everyone can be an inspiration for us if see what we can learn from them.

It's now, not the past or future

I usually breakdown my goals into timelines as I consider it a progressive strategy. However, if I want to get to a place in 10 years, why not to learn what's needed now instead of 8-10 years later? Erbil's experience and story showed me taking advantage of the present time and resources is the key to fast personal growth. Living in this information age, anyone can become a master they spend enough time researching about it. But why wouldn't us? Like many people, I blocked myself mentally through a plan and a timeline, thus missing the opportunities to leverage now. Remember, future is shaped by "now". If we can jump to our future learning now, we can be at the future faster than we expected.

See the essence, everything else is secondary

In professional life, many people value certificates, degree, titles and how they look to the public. Erbil graduated from one college in Turkey, and he had no other credentials or certificates in the U.S. He worked at Facebook and Lyft. Though he had the chance to take very high positions at these big companies, he chose to work as a PM lead in different projects and maximize his learning opportunities. As a result, his experience and knowledge is beyond his peers who spend the same amount of time in the same company. Everyone owns 24 hours a day, what we do and how we use it matters a lot. When I see through the lens of my career, I know it is the experience, growth and knowledge in my head that matters most, not anything else. 

Face our weakness is a path to excellence

No one is perfect. Thus, everyone has room to grow and improve personally or professionally.  Even during the time I was teaching, despite the great comments, it was tuff to hear students' feedbacks at the end of every semester. When some people get to a high level, they hear only great things and they feel great. That was not the case for Erbil. During the time I worked with Erbil, I have done 360 evaluation anonymously for him.  He may have realized how hard it was to receive constructive feedbacks from people he manage, he collect survey results anonymously. He faces his flaws and is willing to make change to it quickly. One of the reason I thought why Erbil is so approachable and easy to communicate as a leader - may be because he had improved overtime through feedbacks he collected. This is another evidence, why growth is Erbil's priority in life.

Embrace change and expand the range

One big take away after consulting with Erbil is to embrace knowledge and experience from each vertical. I used to think focusing on a specific field can provide in-depth expertise to our career, but that might not be the case for tech industry. The book “Range” by David Epstein explains it very well. A lot of innovation and creativity came from people who have cross discipline knowledge. A wide range of experience can spark interesting thinking in product design and approaches. That is also the reason I decided to work in Fin-tech with Erbil.

Respect our personality and style

Lastly, I think Erbil knows himself very well. During the time we worked together, I saw him reading the enneagram books with leadership to figure out different ways of working. Though in the end he didn’t stay at our company, I know he respected his own personality and knows his style of working. Even through his departure, I have also learned to respect my inner feelings and true personality. If something isn’t working out for us, endurance can only make it more painful.