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OhHello - Amy Chou "Challenges are opportunities to grow"
34 Plays10 months ago
OhHello!
It's episode 88, and we're back from a lil break! Our next "Hello" (aka an OhHello mentor) has 20+ years of amazing tech experience leading teams, product, and marketing org at TikTok Google Cisco and Intel Corporation -- talk about Silicon Valley experience!
In this episode, I had the pleasure of chatting with Amy Chou- who is absolutely stoked to be a mentor on the OhHello.io platform! Amy shared her journey and insights into #careerdevelopment, #mentorship, and the importance of a supportive #network.
We discussed the significance of having a supportive community, particularly for women and immigrants in the tech industry. Amy highlighted her personal mantra, “Dream, Plan, Do, Live,” which guides her approach to career and personal growth along w/ thanking the mentors that helped her along the way: JeanAnn Nichols + Shawn Mielke
Watch to see how we talk about how "Challenges Are Opportunities for Growth"
and "The Importance of a Supportive Community...a la the OhHello.io 🌞☕️ tribe!
Go book time w/ Amy Chou on OhHello.io!
Recommended
Transcript
Energetic Opening and Initial Small Talk
00:00:04
ohhello
There we go, Amy. There we go. Nice. Nice.
00:00:07
Amy
This music is great.
00:00:09
ohhello
It's amazing. It gets you pumped up. It gets you so pumped up right before we jump straight into it.
00:00:15
Amy
Such great music for Monday morning.
00:00:16
ohhello
Oh, we're recording Monday morning. It's 9 a.m. Pacific time. It's 11 a.m. here in the central time zone. Amy. Oh, hello.
00:00:27
Amy
Oh, hello.
00:00:28
ohhello
Hello.
Amy's Network and Mentorship Beginnings
00:00:29
ohhello
Amy, we met through our mutual friend, Sora.
00:00:32
Amy
Yes.
00:00:32
ohhello
I know that you are, happen to be one of her mentors and she, when Sora and I recorded, and we're going to be releasing it actually very, very soon. She was saying the greatest and most wonderful things about you, but why don't we kick it off in kind of like an old school chain letter. Who are some of your mentors? Tell us a little bit about the people that have made an impact on your career, and then we'll get into the meat of who you are.
00:00:59
Amy
Oh, that's such a great question. I was just thinking about it the other day that I've had several mentors along the way. Looking back, they were my mentors at the time, I'm just like, I didn't even know is that a mentor? Do we have a formal relationship that I call you a mentor?
00:01:18
Amy
And that's something that people don't think about. We always try to put a formal name to that. My very first mentor, she didn't even know she was my mentor, but she was a senior VP at Intel when I first started my career.
00:01:23
ohhello
Whoa.
00:01:31
Amy
And I genuinely just went to her to say, hey, I don't see a lot of female in tech who made the transition from technology tech into sales and marketing. And my undergrad was computer science, and I hated it. And I wanted to get out of coding for the rest of my life. So I went to her and said, hey, how did you become the VP of sales? And I'm interested in that as well. Can you help me? And based on that conversation, she actually opened a couple of doors for me by telling me, hey, there are a couple of open rules on my sales team. Why don't you go interview and see if you're interested and see if there's a fit.
00:02:10
Amy
And that's actually one of the pivotal moments where I was able to move into the cell space. So that's an example of a fantastic mentor who turned into Jean Ann, Jean Ann Nichols.
00:02:24
Amy
Hi, Jean Ann. I will tag her in the video.
Role of Mentors and Sponsors
00:02:29
Amy
Yeah, so she's one of the examples.
00:02:32
Amy
And I think there were so many others along the way. There's a mix of mentor slash sponsor as well. A lot of times we hear people talk about you need a sponsor, you need a mentor, you need a coach, you need this and that.
00:02:43
ohhello
And who is that?
00:02:47
Amy
Sometimes we'll realize one person can play multiple hats as well.
00:02:48
ohhello
What's her name? Awesome.
00:02:52
Amy
For example, one of the senior leaders I worked for Sean Milkey. He was someone who saw capabilities in me and pushed me into a role that I rejected multiple times. I'm like, I'm not ready. I don't think I'm ready. My imposter syndrome was super high.
00:03:12
ohhello
Yep.
00:03:12
Amy
A brand new role I've never been into. He's like, you've got it. I'm gonna push you and you're gonna go try it. And that was yet another really great pivotal moment in my career where I started to become a manager of managers and eventually the senior leader that I became.
00:03:29
ohhello
That's amazing. And you've worked at some great companies because obviously after that role, you'd gone to Google, you've been at TikTok, and you decided to go on and build your own practice.
Joining the Ojillo Tribe: Community & Support
00:03:43
ohhello
What excites you about being part of the Ojillo tribe, being part of what we're building? What excites you about Ojillo?
00:03:50
Amy
I think I love, first of all, the mission of what it's trying to do, right? Like I said, we need your point. We need a tribe to help us to be successful. Growing up with my background, immigrant, Chinese immigrant, being a female, a lot of what I was taught is work hard and try to figure things out on your own. It's almost like a badge of pride to say, I did it myself, right? It's not necessary. There's so many people who've been there, done that, who can make the process so much smoother, or share so much wealth of their information to help you accelerate your growth and to help you navigate your career.
00:04:31
Amy
I have quite a few clients who came to me recently who are like, I want to play this corporate game, but I don't even know what game I'm playing or what the rules of engagements are. I don't want to figure everything out on my own. Isn't it great to have somebody who's been there to share that with me? So I think that's why the Oh Hello Tribe is fantastic because you have a wide range of people you can reach out to based on your specific needs, based on your specific stage of your career. So that's why I love it.
00:05:01
ohhello
That's amazing.
Identity and Balancing Life Roles
00:05:02
ohhello
That's amazing. And, uh, you, you had mentioned your, your engineer engineering and computer science background. So ILL, there we go.
00:05:10
Amy
I and I.
00:05:12
ohhello
There we go. Uh, it's not too often we have fellow line. I, so I had to do that.
00:05:16
Amy
Yes.
00:05:16
ohhello
Uh, what defines you, tell us a little bit more about just who you are as a professional and just personally.
00:05:23
Amy
Ooh, that's such a loaded question when people ask me, tell me who you are, because I think about I know
00:05:31
Amy
I think a lot about I'm a mom, I'm a wife, I am a woman, I am an immigrant. I am somebody who worked in the tech industry for 20 plus years. I was a senior leader. Now I'm a solo preneur with my own business.
00:05:50
ohhello
Love it.
00:05:51
Amy
There are so many different identities that make up who I am. I just know that based on the last few years, especially me following my own company's name, Dream Plan Do framework to figure out what do I want to get out of my life, I feel like I've always been chasing the dream.
00:06:03
ohhello
Yeah,
00:06:10
Amy
I just didn't know whose dream I was chasing until recently. Does that make sense?
00:06:16
ohhello
I love
Following Your Own Dreams
00:06:17
ohhello
that. I think that resonates and will resonate with so many people because we're all chasing a dream, but we're chasing other people's dreams.
00:06:22
Amy
Yes.
00:06:24
ohhello
We're not necessarily focused on our own path and not, and also understanding that most of our paths are not going to be as linear as we are taught or told.
00:06:33
Amy
Yes.
00:06:34
ohhello
So keep on going on that.
00:06:35
Amy
Yeah, I recently actually just had a conversation with someone about how I understand the midlife crisis a lot better now, especially me in that mid-40s age range.
00:06:45
ohhello
Yeah.
00:06:48
Amy
I think especially for someone like me, chasing the dream just meant what it seems like to be success to most people out there, right? Good schools, good grades, good jobs, good promotions, good money, good house, whatever. It's nice to have all those things. But at the end of the day, I just felt like something is really missing. Am I truly doing what I love to do?
00:07:11
ohhello
Yeah.
00:07:14
Amy
For some people, it's great that they're, you know, they're like, I want to climb the corporate ladder, I want to get to a certain level, make certain amount of money. There's no judgment. For me personally, I know the part I love the most about my job was really working with people and help people realize their own potential. That's the part about management that I really loved, right? And I wanted to spend more of my time every day focusing on that versus in the corporate space, I realized I became more and more focused on only driving business results and people are completely secondary. And that's not the space I wanted to be in long term. So that's where I made the switch into, you know, starting my own coaching practice.
00:07:58
ohhello
That's
Tech Career and Coaching
00:07:59
ohhello
amazing. It also basically hits on just how you'd be able to, to the skillset that you offer and just because of your, your background. Why don't you just for, for a moment or so, just talk through your, your background about where you've been and how you're going to be able to help people through Oh, hello.io.
00:08:16
Amy
Yeah, definitely. So like I said, started with a technical background, worked for the first company was Intel. And then I moved to Cisco, Google, TikTok, all big names in tech. And Google is when I moved from an individual contributor to a first line manager to a manager of managers. And then at TikTok, I was their global SMB, small medium business areas. product marketing lead. So all of the global and regional product marketers reported to me.
00:08:48
Amy
I've gone through this path of how do you navigate the entire corporate space? How do you think about getting promos and getting opportunities?
00:08:57
ohhello
Mm hmm.
00:08:59
Amy
How do you reach out to people to become your mentors to become your sponsors? How do you work with your managers? If your manager is good or not good, what do you do? And it's interesting that something I was reflecting on, I've definitely made some career changes because I've had not so great managers. I won't name names, but there was one person when I was pregnant with my first kid, he literally first things that to me was, Oh, that's inconvenient. Let's figure out who your coverage is going to be.
00:09:30
Amy
And so that made me look for my next role, right?
00:09:33
ohhello
Yep.
00:09:34
Amy
But on the flip side, a lot of people say, Oh, I stay because of the people I work with and my manager. And sometimes that actually also may not be the right thing because you realize three years in four years in five years in you're like, I stay because I'm happy or comfortable with my manager. However, I also felt like I could have done more and I didn't get there. So these are the types of things I can now bring into my coaching and talk to people where I play a mix of mentor slash coaching slash advisor role sometimes. And I clearly define that with each of my clients to say, what are you looking for? Because I can provide different types of aspects.
00:10:15
Amy
to whatever your goal is. And these are the types of conversations we talk about. How do we navigate this where you have a clear vision and we build a clear plan and then I hold you accountable to take steps to achieve your goal.
00:10:30
ohhello
Dream plan do.
Encouragement for Seeking Mentorship
00:10:32
Amy
Exactly, exactly.
00:10:32
ohhello
That makes sense.
00:10:32
ohhello
Yeah.
00:10:34
Amy
And live.
00:10:34
ohhello
I love that. Amy, any parting words of wisdom before we both jump to our next one?
00:10:42
Amy
Um, I just think whomever that's listening to this from the Oh, hello network, take this step to reach out to whomever you need to be, to be reaching out to whether or not it's a mentor, a coach, a sponsor, just it's okay to reach out to people to get help to figure out what do you want to do? And how can you get there faster, better? Um, that's it. Good luck with everybody's dream plan. Do live.
00:11:09
ohhello
Amazing. Amy, thank you very much. Thank you everybody for watching, for listening.
00:11:12
Amy
Thank you.
00:11:14
ohhello
Go book time with Amy.
00:11:15
Amy
Bye.
00:11:16
ohhello
Thanks, Amy.
00:11:17
Amy
Thank you.