 Does this happen to you that you talk to your boss about your promotion? You think you're ready to become the director of VP or Chief Product Officer? Your boss said, You did very well, but you're just not good enough to become a director. This is quite confusing because there's no blueprint for you to continue to get into a leadership position. You don't know what you need to work on. I got lucky. I became a director of product within four years, and I was also one of the youngest director among my peers. In this video, I'd like to summarize the most important learnings I gained so that you're able to use the same strategies to make it happen for you as well to get into the leadership position in the product management space. Hey guys, this is Dr. Nancy Lee. I help hundreds of people lending their dream PM job offer in fan companies and also unicorn startup and also continue helping to get promoted as a product leader. If you want to achieve the same kind of success, please go to PMExcelerator.io to learn more. Please also make sure to subscribe to the channel and turn on the bell button so you'll be notified every time I turn on new videos every Wednesday. Make sure to check out more inspiring stories on our Instagram feed and you can see so many people with very similar background like you to get inspiration to achieve your definition of career success. I transitioned from an individual contributor as a product manager into a director product within four years and I also discovered that I was the only female manager of a 100 people product management organization that belongs to a fortune financial company. And then when I look around and actually this happened to multiple fortune financial companies I've worked for, I was frequently the only woman in the leadership position and I realized that something was wrong. The secret of how to get into the leadership position are frequently not told and especially if you are minority women, the opportunity is only available to certain people. You don't have the right network and right group of people to sponsor you continue to get into the next level. So earlier in my career, I felt very frustrated and felt lost but I'm lucky I figured it out. So that's why I share all the secrets with all of you guys because I want to see all of you guys become the director and VP and chief part of officer in the future so that you're able to help people like you. First of all, when I start on my career, I was working for Verizon. My focus was to build an outstanding product and fall in love with my customers. I talked about the importance of falling in love with customers multiple times in other of my videos you can check out more right here. At the beginning of my first job, I seriously didn't know the path to become a director. All I know is that I want to serve my customer and I'm building a product that's to achieve the important mission which is help cities to reduce car crashes. I feel so excited that I get to go to City Hall every single week interview my customers and understand the pain point. And gradually when we launched our MVP and eventually take it to the market and my product received the Mayor's Best Practice Award in 2017. I was literally so thrilled because to be frank, I deeply, deeply love my customers and love to see the impact was able to make and after our customers applying the strategies and also new product and our customer was able to see the improvement of the street and how they redesigned the street to make the city much more safer for everybody. And as a new mom, I understand the importance of making things safer because every single day we have seen a case biking on the street and also normal people who commute to work and safety is quite important because the success of the product and people start to get to know who I am. And guess what? I had two directors fighting with each other and try to ask me to join their team. And that was so unpredictable. But I really love that people are able to see the impact I brought into the company. So I make a separate video teaching you how to become an outstanding product manager versus a bad product manager. So make sure you watch this video and learn the differences and apply all the strategies to launch an outstanding and amazing product. I'm also going to link the video in the description of this video. After I launched a successful product, I started to build my personal brand, leveraging the success of the product. And the most important thing I did is to help other peers, other team members to be even more successful. I frequently help the sales teams close customers during the sales call and I frequently go into the city hall to interview customers and communicate with customers and be the advocate of our product. And the sales team really followed up with me because the more I talked to customers, the more customers trust our product and the more sales our sales teams was able to bring in. And guess what? We're able to close a 200 million private partnership model with the city of Sacramento. My product is part of the entire portfolio we are able to sell or partner with the city. I'm very excited to see that we're creating win-win situation for all the department that involved together. And also because I'm the owner of my product and frequently I was asked to give presentation about my product inside the company and also outside the company. And I started to leverage my strengths, which is probably speaking to let people know about my leadership skills and the impact I was able to bring to the company and also to the customers. And later on I was able to see the snowball effect. I have more and more customers actually emailing my boss about the impact I was able to make for our customers and I also have lots of sales teams proactively reach out to me asking me to give presentations at the Executive Briefing Center. So Executive Briefing Center is a special department within Verizon. They bring in the C-level executives from the partnership company. They all come in to listen to advanced technology, advanced product because I already build a strong personal brand using a successful product. Lots of sales team just heard about my name. I don't even know them. They proactively reach out to me saying that hey Nancy, you need to speak at this exactly presentation and let them know about the cutting edge product you have launched. And this just become faster and faster and faster for people get to know me within the company. And of course, I also did a very good job during the executive presentation. And gradually my product and also my reputation start to grow outside of Verizon as a time. And I have PR companies or conferences. They reach out to me and actually reach out to my boss boss and saying that hey, we like to invite Dr. Nancy Lee from your company to speak at this conference. And specifically, they call on my name and my boss and boss and also our PR team was like, oh my goodness. We need to pull her speak in different places. She's really good and people outside the company has been calling and asking for Dr. Nancy Lee. So through the entire viral effect, I start to build very strong personal brand. And the third most important thing I did was that I continue to invest in myself especially in the public speaking skills. In the past, I took all possible classes about public speaking skills. I believe I spent over $8,000 or $10,000 in learning public speaking skills. And that actually pay back significantly. And I made videos specifically teaching guys how to improve your business English and public speaking skills in this video. Please make sure you watch it and apply the same strategies and also take similar classes that I recommend for you guys. And actually my favorite public speaking classes is from Dell Carnegie. I want you guys all check it out. It's best investment ever. Besides the public speaking skills, I also invest $60,000 in learning all possible different kinds of skills such as leadership skills, management skills, negotiation skills, how to influence with authorities, communication skills, all possible skills. And I believe that all power skills for us to master to advance ourselves. I made a very strategic decision earlier in my career that I need to learn how to lead and how to manage people before I even become a manager. Because if you don't know how to lead, why, once they give you a title, you're able to lead. So therefore I always prepare myself ahead of time. So comment in the chat what kind of important skills you need to work on today. Okay, so I want to hold you accountable. So comment below. I'd love to learn from you guys. And because all the product and public speaking skills compounded, I was quickly getting promoted to become a group partner manager and actually took me two and a half years to get promoted into a position that was able to manage other people. And at the time the group partner manager was like manager of our managers. I start to manage in terms also start to manage full-time employees and to be frank, like my full-time employees are much older than me and some of them are even 20 years older than me and all of them are men. So I find it really challenging and also just don't know how to deal with this situation in terms of your boss is a young Asian girl and you are much senior under me and some of the people I managed he was a director like 15 years ago. So I feel very like stressed out at the moment and how I conquered this challenge was that first of all, I learned how to lead how to manage people which I mentioned earlier so you really need to invest in yourself and all the investment I made I always 10 times the value I got so encourage all of you guys to invest in yourself today. And then I also use the knowledge I learned and walk into the meeting and call out the elephant in the room such as you know that you had way more years experience at me you were director before I'm here to learn from you as well. So sometimes calling out the elephant in the room will ease out the tension as well and I'm glad I was able to help my employees and team members to grow by start listening to their needs and desire and what they want to get out of their work and after I start to manage people I also intentionally grow the scope of work and I believe this is the number one most important thing people need to understand that in order to get promoted to become a director or VP or chief program officer you need to start to increase the scope of work even if you did very well in your current job as an individual contributor but your scope was so small and you cannot be qualified for the next level of leadership and I asked to be on the most important product within my company at the time which is the 5G Edge so actually I launched the 5G Edge computing product which is the very first 5G Edge computing product in the entire world and when I launched a product I also collaborated with Amazon Web Services so the impact that I brought into the company is huge not only launching a product but also establishing the relationship between Verizon and big tech companies and this also helped myself and my coaching business significantly because my relationship learning from those fan companies is helping me to bring down all the important knowledge to my students who is currently in the PM accelerator that I run Oh, there's another insider table I'll share with you guys that's very funny that originally you saw like fan companies so significantly different from other companies and actually it's not once I start to have a formal working relationship with other fan companies I learned that they still have lots of like internal politics and they still have the same kind of hierarchy within fan companies but a huge difference is that the way they run their product is very agile and fell fast and then also their go-to-market strategy is also very nimble and being able to reach more people out there so I'm going to make more video regarding how fan company grows their product and impact millions of people's life moving forward so make sure you subscribe to channel and learn more and the next thing I did within the company is that I continue to find more sponsors and mentors and eventually I got six VP's and directors as my mentor and sponsors was in Verizon and those helped me to open so many doors and also helped me to understand what the leaders are thinking and I was like five layers under those VP but I was able to get access to brilliant minds regarding how they make decisions and another secret I want to share with you is that even if some people their title was C-level I even had the opportunity to talk to the CEO of my company as well and actually the more high level they are the more humble they are and the more high level they are the more longer vision they have within the entire company for example CEO always thinking about the at least 10 years long term roadmap so I want you guys to start to think as if your CEO to build your vision as well so the biggest difference between sponsors and mentors is that mentors someone who give you advice sponsors are the one who stand behind you saying that Nancy deserves a promotion they put your name behind you saying that they are your sponsors and they can open more doors for you so this is critical ever need sponsors and mentors in your career lots of people ask me the differences between sponsor and mentors I'm gonna make a new video talk about the differences and also help you guys to find out how to maximize the relationship between you and sponsors and mentors make sure to hit the like button and turn on the subscribe button so you'll be notified when this new video is out you'll be thinking hey Nancy you have like six VP to become your sponsors and mentors now your career should just shoot up like a rocket but in reality it's not because I hit Covid that was two years ago my career was rising up very quickly but all of a sudden Covid hit and my company went into hiring freeze and majority of the director positions was taken down with very limited opportunities and out there and some people also are afraid of getting fired or laid off and because the beginning of the pandemic that was in April 2020 everybody was so scared and nobody was out growing their department anymore so all of a sudden my career started to freeze and stagnant so this is crazy so I need to figure out a new plan and so I had a conversation with my mentors and sponsors within the company and I discovered that for sure there's no direct opening potentially I can reach in the coming year so just because the pandemic just hit us really hard in 2020 and then I asked myself a very important question am I happy if I continue to stay in Verizon for another two years and waiting for the director position to show up the answer is no so I made decision instead of waiting so why don't I just go out look for director positions because at the time I feel like I was ready and to be frank I also feel like I was like early in my career I'm also doing my family planning and I really want to become a director before I had a baby so that's some internal reason behind it as well so I made a bold decision instead of waiting to get promoted inside my current company why don't I go look outside and see as any director positions out there but guess what? I found four offers and three of those offers are director product offers and all those offers came within 60 days and I started looking at the beginning of the pandemic which is April 2020 within 60 days I got three director offers this just blew my mind and guess what? all the director offers the job description says the candidate need to have at least five years management experience at the time I was only able to manage people for about year and a half so definitely I was disqualified but I was very good at showing off myself in the interview and highlight my achievement and let them understand the value I can bring to the company and the strategy works out and help myself to level up into the director position much faster and also the strategies I invented can be used by other people as well so that's why I turned the job hunting strategy I used in the beginning of the pandemic into the courses I teach inside a PM accelerator and that has been used by hundreds of people planning their dream job offer in fan companies and unicorn startup as well so ask yourself this question as well do you feel comfortable waiting for another two to five years because a recession may come and you get stuck for another two to five years or you want to make a bold decision try to challenge yourself and interview to find out if you're able to become a director or not outside your company so comment below I'd love to learn from you guys as well see where your mind's at if you're interested in the job hunting strategy I used to land four offers within 60 days you should go to this free masterclass where I teach you how you're able to land your dream PM job offer during hiring freeze and I'm also going to link the masterclass in the description of this video so if I can summarize the top three things actually accelerate my growth into a director and those are three things I want you guys to do as well first of all is create high impact product you need a foundation because as a product manager we really need to fall in love with our customers and continue to grow our product impact millions people's life so this is the basic for you to get promoted into the director level so that you can be a role model for your team and the second thing is probably speaking skills I'm a big believer that if you are doing very well in your job you need to let people know about your impact so I had invested in public speaking even eight years ago so I want you guys to start learning public speaking skills immediately maybe you can check out Toastmaster and take some Delcarie courses you got to do this immediately today the third most important decisions I made is continue to invest myself and invest early and as I said I have invested over $60,000 in learning different kind of power skills and those skills always pay back bring me more than 10 times so you need to master those skills and prepare when the opportunities are presented in front of you you're able to grab it with 100% success rate so I know lots of you guys saying that I'm very busy busy working but I encourage you guys to dedicate 6% of the income every year in learning any kind of new skills so that you're not just doing as a worker be you are advancing yourself into a product leader and a lots of companies have lots of free learning budget for you to continue to invest in yourself as well you should tap into those budget if you're interested in advancing your career to become a product leader you should subscribe to this newsletter where I teach you the advice how to get promoted and continue to learn the insider secret of how to become the next product leader and director, VP and chief firm officer you can go to this website and subscribe to this newsletter and I'm also going to put the link in the description as well if you like any content I share with you today please make sure hit the like button and share this video with anybody who is ambitious product manager who wants to advance their career as well and please also make sure to comment in the video and let me know what kind of new topics you want to hear about because I don't want to live in my vacuum and guessing what you guys want me to talk about so please comment below so I'm going to make more videos that cater to your interests and your needs This is Dr. Nancy Lee I'm going to see you next time Bye