 Imagine what this looks like if you only had $1,000 when you moved to the US, but everybody told you that you're on H1B, you don't have product management experience, you feel like it's actually impossible. But what if you're able to double your salary, actually smoothly transition into product management, how is this going to change your future career trajectory and your future income? Hey guys, this is DoctrineNCB, a direct product and featured in Forbes. I've helped 100 people lend their dream PM job offer in fan companies and unicorn startup and continue to get promoted as a product leader. If you're interested in product management course, you should go to PMExcelsure.io and learn more. And make sure to check out our Instagram stories, we're able to find so many people just a very similar background like you and how did they make the transformation have those breakthroughs. I believe one of the days we're going to see your successful stories as well. If you like any of the free tips we provide you today, please make sure you hit the like button and subscribe to the channel so that you'll be notified every time published in your video every Tuesday. Today, I had a pleasure to invite our guest speaker on our product leader podcast series, that's Sherry. Welcome Sherry. I'm very, very excited to hear about how you conquer the struggle and actually double your salary. And thank you very much for joining us today. Thank you, Dr. Nancy Lee. I'm really very excited to be in your channel today. Welcome, welcome. So Sherry, why not do a quick introduction, all the audience has been waiting to hear your stories. Sure. So my name is Shelly and I have like four years of experience building B2C products. I currently work as a product specialist at Deloitte and I love building great products which delight customers. So this particular journey of like getting into product management was exciting, challenging and honestly it was something like a dream come true. How exciting. Sherry, why don't you do this? You mentioned that dream come true. Why don't you tell us your top challenges when you get started, especially you mentioned you're lacking lots of resources when you try to transition into product management. Sure. The most primary challenge that I was facing is my confidence because you know that time like I did, I was not confident at all. I didn't have that confidence to go and conquer things but now I have it for sure. That time I just kept thinking about what I had. So I was like I didn't have much resources. I shifted from India to United States with just thousand dollars and then you know there were so many things happening. The COVID just came in and you know like for H1Bs like for F1 students it was so hard to get a job during COVID because they would not accept people with H1B. So I was between going for a dream job and also like looking into my immigration problems. So that was very challenging at that time and I literally didn't know many things about how the US market works. I used to work in a consulting firm and then I did not have enough resources and time to manage everything. To overcome this, what I did is I joined the PM Accelerator course. When I first talked to Dr. Nancy Lee I had a thinking that this is my last shot and I'm gonna like give my 100%. I'm gonna give my time even after so many things that was happening in my life. Then I decided to join Dr. Nancy's class so that I will have a class to attend and I will give that time. Then made a roadmap of my week that how I'm gonna like give my time to the class, do my homework and other stuff. Actually your story is so touching regarding building confidence and a lot of the audience are thinking about the same thing, saying oh I'm not good enough, I don't have this, I don't have time, actually yourself was a consultant like working 60-80 hours per week and you didn't have money either. We get started with your career in the US but you made it happen. This is amazing stories that everyone loved to learn from you. Thank you so much for sharing with us. Can you tell us more regarding your challenges transitioning into product management with a consulting background? Sure, so being a consultant every time I really had time crunch. I used to work like 80 hours a week. It was like my calendar was always filled with meetings scheduled. I didn't even get time to like have lunch in a proper time. I was always here and there. But then I changed my mindset over there. Like I have to do this, it doesn't matter. The first thing I can't leave my job because I need to look after many things so I can't leave my job. I am on visa, I have to do it together anyhow. So that's how what I did is I learned actually. So one week I was into this thought that how I'm gonna manage my time and what all I need to collect it for. So I made a roadmap. So every Sunday I would like do my class in the PM accelerator course and I would make a roadmap of my week. How does my week look like? I have a plan. It's in front of me. My cell phone or my iPad is giving me a reminder. It reminds me and that helps me manage my tasks, right? So I learned that I did that. So the very important thing in transitioning to PM was my time management. My time was really hectic. I was also going through some weight loss because I really gained a lot of weight with stress and bad eating habits. So I had to go for exercise also at least five times a week. But I made a plan. So my takeaway over here is if you plan for anything if you just make a roadmap as a PM skill for each and everything you'll be able to do it. Because you know you'll have notification. You'll have alarms and you'll have so many things. So you have to do it. You have to get it from your bed actually. So Ibrahim, thank you for being vulnerable with us. Not only like stress from work and also gaining weight, you have to work out. It's like no time working 80 hours per week and doing planning. And actually I'm a big proponent like for planning and this is my plan. This is my plan and it's like crazy. This is my like scheduling as well. That works. That works and actually we should teach this inside of PMXR. Like for people to better organize. Yeah, exactly. This is amazing. This is very important. It's just a simple word like time management but this is very important. My second challenge was storytelling. I was not aware of like what storytelling is actually. I didn't know if you ask me a question. I would straight away tell you. I would not like follow any framework or think about it. Storytelling means I was not able like sometimes I think I'm not like I'm not able to craft things very clearly or you know I'm not able to tell my things very clearly or you know my tone changes. So I started working on those. So what I used to do. I purposely used to go to mock interview session which we had in the PM accelerator course and I used to speak my thoughts. I used to speak what I prepared then I used to get feedback there and that was very embarrassing all the time but still I did not stop doing that. Like you know like in front of so many people people are telling you know this is wrong you need to work on this. So this is really embarrassing and it's okay but it's okay. You should keep in mind you don't have to think other people like about other people. You have to think about yourself. I knew I'm gonna improve by this. So I did this. Then one day I really went to the, you must have remembered Dr. Nancy like I came up with such a good answer about. Yeah and you praised me out there right? Like oh that's such a beautiful answer. So you know just give it some time. Don't be shy. Practice. Let other people give you feedback and I'm sure like one day you can crack Google as well. So it's like it's nothing like it's there's nothing impossible. That's for sure I can assure and if you feel if anything is impossible for you like you can talk to me you can call me actually. Thank you so much Jerry. And thank you for empowering everybody and and you're right. It's like I saw your improvement. It was like if you had beginning and then it was like it was so good. Yes and I bet lots of people just felt like I'm not good enough trying to improve but the marginal improvement are very important for people to continue the progress and also seeing how other people oh this is possible. She improved see how she came in through like that now saying I can do this as well. So that's a power having a community. This is amazing. So now tell us your third challenge and how did you conquer those. One of the major issue there was networking. I really didn't want it to network. You know on LinkedIn it's very vague. You send 500 requests 300 people accept your request. Nobody like reply on your messages or in mails or whatever you do. It is so difficult but if you craft a message especially for a person that person will definitely reply. That's what I learned in PM accelerator class like craft a message individually for a person. Suppose you see an ex job so you want to email a person from that ex organization so you really need to craft that message for him that resonates with the other person that resonates with you and that's how you connect. So connecting and networking is very, I know it will take time but this like trust me this time is worthy. After I started doing that I got more than 60 interviews. I never failed a recruiter round and you know like out of 50 interviews I got like five offers in which one of I had is like doubling my salary and like so many other good things. So start connecting. So start connecting means show your interest. Like if you start showing your interest if a person knows because there's a lot of opportunity in this tech world. It's 2022 and we know how tech is growing. I got a lot of leverage of time. I never used to have time so scheduling interview was like a challenge for me. I really used to tell them to wait for a week but they waited and I interviewed there. So that was ready. So I understood that okay I need to connect. If I connect things work. This is amazing. I love your gut that is okay because you connect with a hiring manager and recruiters is like I'm very busy I'm freaking concerned. I'm working 80 hours per week. Can you wait for a week? They actually waited for you. This is amazing. Actually it happened. Awesome and actually the same strategies apply applicable to our students. Sonia and she did the same thing. She was like six months pregnant. She was like I can't just say I'm busy and she had a full-time job. It's very uncomfortable. She said your efficiency drop significantly when become a student. That's why I like this. Five times less efficient once you're pregnant. And then she said the same thing. She said they should start like I'm the center of the interview. Hey you guys slow down or she reject people for interview. She was the one managing her own time learning time management telling others they do not do things or she need to make them wait. It's so powerful. So powerful once you know how to connect with others. Sherry, so let me answer this very most important interesting question. You had double your salary and given you only had $1,000 when you moved to the U.S. or like as a student on HMB. So what is the most important shift that pushed you to the next level? I had to change my mindset and my attitude towards learning. I used to think that okay this is not possible that is not possible but no. If you want something everything is possible for you. Nothing is impossible in front of you. So always before going to school or before like graduating I had a vision that I have to be a leader in this industry. I have to own my career and you know like act as a leader. Do some things that really affects or impact the community. So I totally changed my mindset. Thinking that okay this is my goal. I'll be working towards it. If I reach here to some point it's fine but one day I know working like this one day I'll reach to my goal. So that was the you know the most important shift that believing in yourself. So I started believing in myself. If I used to see someone speaking very well I used to like learn. Like I used to imitate them like speaking that way so that I learn. If I want to speak that way I have to learn right. I have the full planning. Okay planning changes but there's no harm in planning. You can also like work on that planning. So I believe and I work like that honestly. This is amazing. That's why you're contributing back to the communities. Can you tell us more regarding how you leverage communities how you help others and how other people help you as well? Yes. So one very beautiful story about this. My husband was a software engineer and I helped him transition to PM. Now he's with work day working. So he was interviewing for product manager role. But he was offered senior product manager role. So that is one way I'm giving back to society. Okay next was resources. So I would get a lot of resources on YouTube, YouTube, Googling but you know there was no validation. But when I went to PM accelerator classes I used to go to class. I used to have my question ask question discussed with the community and honestly guys community is a blessing. Like you will never regret getting into it because you learn from different people and you learn from different minds like different perspective of people like what they are saying about and what they are talking about product. So that way joining that community gave me confidence. Like okay I get to read so many answers. I get to read so many things. That gives me a quite good knowledge. This is amazing. Thank you so much. That's why we invite you back to be our guest speaker on influential product theater podcast series because you actually the definition of strong leader is helping others to grow together. This is amazing. Awesome. So can you tell us what the day to day look like as a panel manager right now in your current company? So right now I am working on okay so there is some gap analysis that I need to do in at Deloitte which is a consulting company but it has a lot many of its own product. So there is a gap analysis happening between industry like tech products and the consulting product. So I'm working on that. I'm also working on a pricing analytic website where you know where you can shop for consultant. When you come on the website you can shop for consultants. Like if you want to build something you need support or you need to change your legacy system into cloud. So basically I'm working in cloud and it's like my day starts with daily stand-up meeting then a little bit of market research then I go into customer research what other companies are doing and then I have like a lot many stakeholders meetings. So mostly my days are filled with meetings and rest of my day I give it into research to know like why we are building this what people want how we can analyze data to make this better. So mostly goes into me stakeholders feedback and then you know reprioritizing it. So a little complicated that side but I enjoy doing it. This is amazing. Thank you for sharing with us for lots of people who want to learn more about what the data will look like as a plan manager and what's the skill set. Feel free to check out more videos on top of the screen right now and you can start learning for free starting from today. Awesome. So Shirley let me ask you the last question. What specific advice you have for others who want to jump-start your plan management career? I would say follow your instinct like understand at the very early in your career don't wait for too long and understand like what you want to do. You want to be a coder you want to be a product person you want to build products do business strategy like think about it what you want to do and see where you're interested. I would say in early career just try to toggle between things and see if you're interested where does your interest goes and then choose it like it's never too late you can always switch into different professions like that's completely fine but you know I would like what I did is I thought I understood I made an effort to understand what I like to do so I did this so because I believe like if you're interested in something you're more likely to be successful. Yes and I love what you do this is amazing and that's combining your hobby your passion with work as in the best thing ever that happened to everybody we spend so much time working every day it's better to work something you really love now specifically if people already decide they want to become a product manager so what advice do you have for them if they decide we want to become PM what should I do next? So if you have no idea and you want to start on your PM journey I would say enroll in Dr. Nancy's BM Accelerator Program and also do your own research own study set up a intro call to understand more about the program see a few videos on YouTube there are many free videos on YouTube and then you decide that how you want to go about it. Awesome thank you very much Sherry and for sharing with all of us and for people who is interested in PM Accelerator and feel free to go to this webinar with the step number one you to attend this webinar learn more about our program and also schedule an interview with our head of mission to see the qualifier for the program we're going to link the webinar in the description of this video and feel free to check out all the free training on YouTube as well thank you very much Sherry and thank you for joining us I'm gonna see you next time and really have you to join us today thank you alright see you guys if you like the free tips we provide today please make sure to like the video and subscribe so that we notify every time we post a new video every Tuesday and this is Dr. Nancy Lee from PM Accelerator I'm gonna see you next time please comment in the description let me know what kind of new videos you want me to film and we're looking forward to hear from all of you guys subscribe and like and see you soon bye