 Okay, awesome. Let's get it started then. I'm so excited to be here. This is actually very much a full circle event for me. I used to be the one who was really just curious about what it takes to get into product, pivot into product, and we're going to explain what I wish I knew when I was pivoting. So we're going to get into just a little bit of background by myself. And then I have all these tips and tricks, very honest lessons that I've learned when I was going through my product pivot that I just want others to be aware of, you know, when they're going through that similar, that similar pivot. So for me specifically, I studied chemical engineering. I studied something that I actually didn't do very much research into when I chose my major. And I actually didn't really understand when I was studying what were the career opportunities that my major was. And so for those who may not have been able to see, I'm Ashima. And I'm now the CEO and co-founder of Dreamy, which is all about making mentorship accessible. But my past life was in, it was in oil and gas. I was working at the refinery. I was working at the oil fields. If anyone is familiar with Bakersfield, California, shout out to Bakersfield because that's where I spent three years of my career in when I first graduated from college. And it was a very eye-opening experience, right? At that time, I wasn't very clear on what my goals were in my career. I really chose what was kind of suggested to me or recommended to me or what everybody else really did when they graduated from school. And that was a field that, you know, a lot of people tended to go into after graduation. Now, what I want to walk through is almost breaking down career journeys, almost like how you would look at product development life cycles. And bear with me here as I walk through kind of that analogy, right? And for anyone who's familiar with the product development life cycle, you have a few stages that you go through when you're shipping out either a new feature or a completely new product, right? Generally, you're going to go through a discovery phase and then you're going to, you know, do some further research. You're going to do some prioritization. You're going to test it and then if everything is going well, maybe you launch it, you get an MVP out the door or maybe a beta. You know, these are just very general steps, right, in product development life cycles. But the most important part is that what a lot of people don't realize is all those steps can actually be applied to your career. And what I mean by that is let's take, you know, the discovery phase, right? And I want you all to be thinking about that as I'm walking through mine. But the discovery phase is all about feeling what's out there for you. You may not have much data or much information to be working off of, but you have a hypothesis that you're, you know, trying to prove or disprove and you're doing whatever research you can to figure out, you know, is this career the right one for me? And, you know, as you all are going through your discovery phase, I think it's important to write down what were some of the lessons learned as you were discovering, you know, what you were looking for in your career. We'll take back, we'll take my example of starting off in chemical engineering and oil and gas. I realized I wanted a challenge. I realized I wanted to have some sort of technical capability to the work that I did. And I realized that, you know, I really enjoy working on strategic high level initiatives. But when I got that first job, this is now when I start to collect some data, right? I started to get some information about what, you know, actually worked for me and what didn't work for me. So what I realized after I went through my first job, after three years, I realized that okay, I really still do enjoy a lot of the high level strategic impact work. I really enjoy being in an R&D position. That was super exciting for me. But I also started to realize what also didn't work for me. And it's very, very, very important for you to be thinking about that anytime you're going through a career pivot. Because it can be very easy when you're trying to pivot your career to go into a field or position without doing much of that self-reflection of what you're actually looking for. And that's one of the biggest mistakes I made. So I didn't do too much self-reflection when I was, you know, at the end of the first three years of my job. I just realized that okay, I think I'm looking for, you know, better lifestyle and I'm looking for something that maybe is a little bit more faster pace. I didn't really spend a lot of time on what wasn't working for me. And here's where one of my mistakes happened when I pivoted my career. And I was realizing that I needed to make a change. I basically applied to anything and everything under the sun that had a high impact element to the work that I was doing and had a strategic element. Well, that doesn't really help me out very much because that could be a lot of different types of jobs and a lot of different types of industries and a lot of different types of products that I could be working on. And that's a big mistake on my end of being a little bit too broad on what I was trying to pivot to. I walk, I realize now and as I was documenting some of, you know, some thoughts for this conversation, what happens when you have a broad idea of where you want to go is that it can actually lead to more confusion. I do want to hear from anyone who's in the chat, you know, do you feel like you may have like a very overarching sense of where you want to go but you're not sure about what the specifics look like? For example, you may not know the specific sub-industry you want to go into saying you want to go into tech and do product management is still actually pretty broad just given how ubiquitous that role is in the tech industry. And so when I was figuring out and applying to jobs, yes, interested in too many things, I totally can relate to that. And that was actually probably one of my biggest struggles too. What ended up happening because I didn't have much of an idea of the more specific focused area I wanted to get into was that I was spending a lot of effort, a lot of time and a lot of energy in everything. And what we need to realize when we're applying to jobs or pivoting your career or developing your career is that your time is very precious and very limited. And there's a lot of energy that's being expended into the job search or job development process, a lot of energy. It's not just about applying to jobs as you all may know, it's about the interviewing, the research, the follow-ups, right? There's a lot of energy that's being expended and the one thing that you really need to preserve for those times when you're on that call, on that interview, is your energy. And that's what really needs to come out. And so that's something that I didn't really value much of was my time and energy when I was going through the career pivot process. And I believe firmly that a little bit of more narrow focus on what exactly and where exactly I wanted to go would have conserved a significant amount of energy and resources from my end to put that into the actual interviews that I was preparing for. So here's what I did. Here's what I did to actually understand where I could have gone better in my career pivot. I did something called a career retrospective. And you can see I'm applying a lot of product development frameworks and processes to how I'm approaching my career and it's actually been helping me big time, even as an entrepreneur and founder. In product development, after you ship out a feature, or let's say you even go through a big product launch, what's very typical, especially if it was a high impact product, is that you'll go through a retro, right? You'll have all these different people from different teams come in and talk about lessons learned, what went well, what could have gone better. And I actually implore you all to be developing a retro as you're going through your career pivot, because it really does help to single out what are some focus items that you can be doing better as you keep going through it. So for me, we'll talk about what I went well as I was pivoting my career. I knew I needed to make a pivot, so I'm going to give myself credit that I identified that feeling soon and I didn't wait too long. And I tried to take action towards that change, which was applying to every single job under the sun. So I'll give myself credit that I identified the inner problem that I was going through and I took some action. Now let's get into some room for improvement. What I could have done better. One was getting clear on what my goals were, right? I knew I wanted to make a change in my career, but I actually wasn't very prescriptive about the actual goals I was working towards and how my career pivot was going to help bridge me towards those longer term goals. You really need to, at least if that works for how you think about your career, it works for me about really thinking out what my long term, longer term goal is, even if it doesn't feel very clear right now, and how the different steps and decisions that you're going to make are going to help you bridge yourself towards that longer term goal. So we'll walk through goal clarity and how to how to get more clear on your goals. The other thing that could have gone better was asking for help more directly and identifying what I needed help for, which is actually now what I spend all my time thinking about. But I'm curious, are there questions or areas that you wish you could have asked someone about your career pivot but maybe felt too embarrassed or didn't know who to ask? Because that's what happened for me. I felt actually a little bit embarrassed that I was pivoting my career because I felt like I was the only one who was coming back to square one and trying to figure it all out by myself and everyone else had their careers really well planned out and they had this amazing trajectory that they were going through. For me it could have gone definitely better on asking for that help. So we get into what will I try next, which was writing down my goals, right, literally putting pen to paper and writing down my long-term and short-term goals and clearly determining the gaps that I needed to fill. You need to think about your career journey as gaps that you're just trying to fill as you get to the next stage and to the next milestone. And if I had kind of shifted my thinking towards, you know, what are the gaps I need to fill, that would have helped me be more tactical and more narrow in my focus. The other thing that I will try next is leaving behind the notion that I need to accomplish everything on my own. This is coming back to me wishing that I had asked for help and seek out mentors, sponsors, advisors, whatever it may be, but leaving behind the notion that I had to go through this entire career pivot by myself without any external help. That's something that is probably one of my biggest mistakes that I really, really implore you all to leave behind if you feel this inner pressure to do everything on your own and to prove to everyone that you have to do everything on your own. Actually you're doing your career and yourself a disservice if you don't ask for that help, if you don't ask for that guidance, and if you try and do it by yourself. And we can talk about how to overcome that pressure. And then what still felt like a mystery for me when I was going through my career pivot was finding those people, whether they were mentors, or finding that career support that could help me in achieving a successful career pivot into product. I want to talk about what were the blind spots of me feeling like I had to achieve everything on my own, and what were actually some real consequences of me not seeking out help. So let's rewind a few years. I'm in my third year at Chevron. I'm about to make a whole career switch into the tech industry. Again, I'm applying to every single job under the sun, whether it's strategy, product, bizops, analytics, I mean literally everything, right? Here were the real blind spots that I had when I was going through my interviewing process, and specifically when I was interviewing for product goals. And these can have financial implications. One was I didn't know what level I should be applying in at, and that can be pretty difficult to understand, right? I had three years of work experience. I was getting promoted in my engineering job, but what does that equate to when I'm pivoting my career and what level I should be applying in at for a product role at a tech company, right? I had no idea how to calibrate that understanding and that leveling. And what I wish I had done back in that time was one, doing a little bit more research on career levels and career architecture so that I would be applying at the right level, but two, just literally reaching out to people who maybe worked in the companies that I was applying to and just understanding what does the team structure look like and the career leveling look like. And again, you know, underselling yourself and applying at a lower level than what you may come in at, again, has potential financial implications. So that was a big, big blind spot for me. The second blind spot for me was what skills I needed to develop in order to really showcase that I can be excellent in a product role. I did not know, you know, I assume that since I had some, you know, analytical background from engineering, I did a lot of process work. I have worked on actually long-term product development, but in a very different front that, you know, I would have the necessary skills to come in without any upskilling. And boy was I wrong, right? There was still a lot of, you know, learning and upskilling and self-education that I should have done if I had known better, but I didn't. And really being able to tackle what are those skill gaps that you can, you know, that you can develop while you're going through your career pivot to really show on your resume that you are really doing the hard work to come in and hit the ground running when you're hired into that role goes very far. For me, the very specific skill gaps that I had was I didn't know how software product development worked. It's very different from, you know, managing asset development 10 years to 20 years down the line, right? A lot of, there's a lot of differences in what even the budgets, the timeline, the risks were associated. I just did not know any better at that time that those were things I should have probably tried to educate myself on when I was going through my pivot. The other thing that I had some blind spots on were actually it's not specific to pivoting to a product role, but it's it does help even if you're pivoting to a different field down the line, is how to assess managers. When you're applying to a role and it's a completely new field, it's a completely new industry, assessing your managers during that interview process is absolutely necessary. There can be a lot of pressure on those of us who have pivoted our careers to get a job, ASAP, and really pivot our career as fast as we can, right? There's a lot of pressure on the time and that, you know, the amount of time that we're taking in the interview process, but it is very important when you're going into a new field that you are assessing your manager as well as you're going through the process. A lot of us tend to assess the overall company, see, you know, what the benefits look like and the work culture. What a lot of people forget to assess is that manager and that team and really getting a sense for is this a right fit for what has worked for me in the past or what it hasn't worked for me in the past. What do you ask to assess these managers? Very, very good question. So it comes down to kind of what I was talking on in that discovery phase of really understanding yourself a little bit better, your work ethic better, your work style better. So I can give a very specific example. For me, I work the best when I do have a manager who maybe gives a little bit more trust in my work, a little bit more hands-off. I have some freedom to be a little bit more creative versus someone who's very, very hands-on and maybe in the weeds with me. I just know that that's how I work better. And that's something that I would just straight up ask to the team and to the managers just in general. What is your relationship, the working relationship with your manager? How involved are you in certain projects? You know, how do you assess what is the general assessment process you take during a project? That's just, I would just ask that because you all are generally given five to ten minutes at the end of each interview that you have to ask these questions. And it is important to just make sure that whatever is on your checklist of things that really matter to you, it may not even be the manager. It could be what are the benefits at the company, but just make sure that you have those checklists of items that you really do want to make sure you feel very comfortable about asking about on these interviews. And so what people will not see, actually, this is where I get a little bit more honest. What people will not see on my LinkedIn, if you find me and you look at, you know, the different companies that I've worked at, was that I pivoted my career after three years of oil and gas. You'll see that I went into Cisco, Meraki, but there was actually a work experience in between where I realized a lot of the mistakes I made when I was pivoting my career. I worked at a startup for three months. I did not properly assess the team. I did not properly assess the role. I had no focus when I was doing that application. You know, I really just was in the mode to pivot and take it from there. And it was very short-term thinking and short-term decision making. At the end of three months, I started feeling kind of the same dread that I would feel when I was in my previous role, just that I know that this, I just knew in my gut and my heart that this position and even the company was just not right for me. And it's a hard, it's a hard realization to come to, right? Because you spent all this time, all these hours, all these spreadsheets, probably, right, that you've developed to get to this point and change your career. And I felt like I was back at square one and I had to figure it out all over again. So this is why I really walked through all these mistakes I made because I wouldn't want someone to go through that, you know, go through that process again because it was just completely, you know, one step forward, two steps back, and I had to go back to the drawing board and really figure it out. And what I did the next time when I was looking for the new opportunity after those first three months was be very, very intentional with my time. That is when I went through my career retro. That is when I went through really writing down my goals and getting very clear on it. And that's when I went through asking for help and really doing my due diligence at the companies and teams that I was assessing. So there's a reason to why I'm very passionate about sharing the mistakes behind a career pivot because I've gone through that and I just know what it feels like, especially if you're trying to do it on your own. So I want to make sure that I'm also paying attention to some questions here. Would you recommend getting a simpler job to pay the bill while figuring out? So Audrey, you're touching upon what I basically went through. Look, if you're in that financial position where you want some extra time and you need a little bit of cushion to feel comfortable as you're doing your assessment, then please do what is right for you. I will never be able to advise based off of those situations. For me, the position I was in was that I was just feeling deeply unhappy and at that time I was in a position where I could take a few months off and I would be okay. But depending on your financial situation, if it makes the most sense to take some path in to maybe a certain industry or company and then take it from there, then please do what's best for you. I would just ask you to think about again how even that simpler job perhaps in any way could still lead you to your ultimate goal. Just think about that because you do want to make sure that you're taking some steps forward even if it's not the direct step to your end goal. So any other questions that I'm missing here? Okay, so I want to cover just a few more templates. I have very limited time. Normally I do this in one hour but I want to talk about two more things. Building your personal board of directors, this will help you out when you're pivoting your career and when you're in the job. Don't forget that when you're in the product job, you still need to develop yourself and you want to do well and you want to grow. So don't forget about that. It's not just about getting the job, it's also doing well when you're in the position itself. So what I spend now all my time working on and passing on to others is start networking ASAP. You have people in this session right now who all pretty much have a similar goal. You should be networking with them. Building up your network even when you feel like you don't need to will take you very far. Maybe it won't help you right now but it could help you when you're looking for that next product role, when you want to start a company, down the line when you want to become a manager. So build your network ASAP right now as you're pivoting your career. This will come in handy big time. Number two, start building your personal board of directors. Companies, public companies, private companies have something called a board of directors right to help shape the vision and the path and the direction a company is taking. You should have one too. You have goals, you have a trajectory you want to hit right. You have a path you want to go on. You need your personal board of directors to help advise you along that right. Someone who may be a few steps ahead of you, someone who's made the mistakes that you don't want to make whatever it may be but they can be in the form of coaches, mentors and sponsors. Sponsors are pretty rare and generally developed within a company that you work at or organization that you work at and they have influence but coaches and mentors absolutely you should be trying to build that up right now and I would actually add a fourth one which is a peer mentor. Someone who is at the same stage as you trying to achieve a similar goal that you are they may not be able to give you all the advice as you as you would like but they could be a very excellent accountability partner as you're going through your steps in achieving your goals. So I'll go into more detail about how you can reach out to all these different types of roles in your life. We don't have enough time unfortunately but please think about building that personal board of directors and it will really go very far throughout your career and your life. Lastly is getting clear on your goals. So if anyone you know has their notion out or their Asana out or if they're old school like me where I literally have a physical journal where I write down all my goals and actual dreams let's like go through an exercise pretty quickly. I want to make sure that you have a framework for a very specific goal that you want to achieve and we're not going off of the smart goals template that a lot of people talk about this is just something that works for me and hopefully works for you. So I want you all to think about let's say one month from now. What do you want to achieve? Be very specific. Maybe it can be I want to work in a health care startup that's a series B of financing working on making mental health care more accessible to teens. Just something very specific right and it can feel scary to write out down a very specific goal because you may feel like it may not come true and it's intimidating but the more specific you can get and when you put pen to paper or fingertips to keyboard whatever it may be things start to get a little bit more concrete and you can now start to use that as a way to walk backwards right on how you're going to get there. So write down that very specific maybe scary goal then you get into the why. Why do you want to achieve this goal? I would be on so many interviews with people who want to pivot into product a lot of people want to get into the product space and understandably it's very exciting but I would then ask why do you want to get into product and that's where I wouldn't get very concrete answers. It's very important to know your why. That's why I walk through the discovery and the reflection and the retro this all then starts to boil down to a why. The reason why I focus on a why is one it really does help to be the root of what is driving you at the end of the day. You're going to have really hard days throughout your career and throughout your pivot and you need that why to really make it very clear in your mind of why you are even spending the time effort and energy and even money to go after this goal. Third one is how will you even start? It's really important to get very clear on the hows right. We walk through the big goal. We walk through the why. Let's get now into the how. What are the different steps that you're going to take and what will actually help to formulate your how is what gaps do you need to fill to achieve this goal. Let's go back to the example of working at a healthcare startup right that's focused on mental health routines. Let's take me for example I know that one of my biggest gaps is that I don't have a very good handle of what does product development look like in the mental health care space. So I need to do research ASAP. I need to build a network in the mental health care space. I need to brush up on even the legality of that and the complexity of that. Just these would be my skill gaps that I know that I need to be filling in order to come to interviews and applications more confidently. So that was a lot. Again normally I do this in one hour and you know I don't rush through it but hopefully I was able to pass along some very tactical steps some very granular mistakes that I made and if there's anyone who has questions in the chat you know please put it in here because I want to make sure that I also give a little bit of that time. I do have a few minutes left to do so. Thank you all. Oh what do I love about product management? Yeah really great question just turning it back on me now. So honestly I just a little bit about my relation with product management. I was most recently before taking the leap to build my own company and build a startup and focus all my time and energy on making mentorship accessible. I was working and leading actually a product strategy team at Zendesk and at that time I'll be honest I didn't know what really drove me to product in the beginning. Again that's why I try and in part get Klee on your why. I just knew that it would be a very good combination of a lot of my skills and backgrounds but now I can really look back and understand what has made me very passionate product. For me I think what excites me so much about product is that you're taking big picture visions and direction that a company wants to go and pass along to their users for them to interact with to improve their life in some small incremental way and you're that person that's able to actually make that happen. This is not it's not a very concrete answer but I think to be that catalyst from vision to execution is very powerful and it's not easy to do and I think what I I fell in love with it even more now that I'm a startup founder and all I'm doing now is shipping out product that can actually have an impact on someone's trajectory in their career and that's a privilege to have. So that's what has really made me very excited about product. I was trying to encourage a lot of people to get into product because actually down the line those who go into product actually make very good startup founders because you know how to be scrappy, be resourceful, be creative, find the short-term path to a long-term end point. I can just keep rattling off the reasons but I really am trying to convince as many people to get in product and even if you don't get into a formal product role there's other ways to bridge that gap. I think my strategy experiences in at Cisco Meraki was excellent for helping me to bridge the gap to product even to some degree interestingly enough Corp Dev because I got to learn about how other startups and companies were building their product and the processes that they would take so there's ways to bridge that gap. The other one which I also am trying to convince more people to do is launch their own company, launch their own product and really get to experience that first hand and that rush first hand of someone using what you've worked so hard on and taking wireframes into reality right but yeah long long long-winded answer but you can tell I'm very passionate about this. Okay two important questions that I hope I can get into. Meika you have asked people skills are important for a product manager how can I improve that any advice would be helpful. I used to be very shy, I'm an introvert so I just struggled a lot with reaching out to people and having conversations and then dealing with conflict oh my gosh like that sounded like my worst nightmare and you always deal with negotiation and conflict and product. My number one advice to you is make yourself a mini goal a bite-sized goal every week you're going to reach out to let's say five new people and you're going to have an informational conversation with them which should start to be pretty easy right you kind of get your toes in the water and then what you can do is start making your goal a little bit more and more complex I think I would want to understand if you and I were talking face-to-face I would understand what people skills you're trying to develop right because that can be pretty broad is it just networking is it just is it conflict resolution is it negotiation so I'd still want to hear some specifics about that but whatever it is set yourself that bite-sized goal that doesn't feel too intimidating get an accountability buddy that you're messaging that I did this every week or log it in and you'll start to see that improvement those habits really start to multiply over time I think I have time for one more question do you think it would be worth to take full time off to learn new skills take time to level up in between jobs before pivoting if financially allowed yeah I think that's a hard one because I think I'm a little bit risk averse I think it does come down to your willingness to take risk and if you do financially can't do that as well for me I was a little bit more risk averse when I was pivoting my career where you know I just felt uncomfortable with kind of going in deep and quitting my job at that time to pivot my career I think I would have had a lot of anxiety specifically and a lot of pressure to again move very quickly and find something very quickly because time is ticking so I think it comes down to your personal appetite for risk and what you plan to be like be very intentional with what you plan to do in that time I know a lot of people do quit their jobs and let's say they go through a product accelerator a product bootcamp they go full in on it and if that's right for you that's great for me at that time when I was pivoting my career I was feeling a little bit more risk averse now that I've quit my job and started a company I can I feel like I can take and you know I feel very comfortable now with taking more risk in my life so if you asked me now and if I was trying to pivot my career then yeah I would say absolutely and I'll give myself six months to do so I think time boxing it really does help and having a very good plan of what you plan to do with that time okay I think I'm a little bit over my time slot um I would love if anyone you know just wants to reach out to me I'll put my direct email in the chat I hope some of my mistakes help you all out because I think one of the biggest lessons anyone can gather is from someone else's mistakes or missed opportunities so you can email me you can add me on LinkedIn I'll try my best to get back to everybody sometimes I you know if you'd like I'm happy to meet one-on-one but yeah I hope that helped and congrats to you all good luck to everybody and looking forward to keeping in touch