She Didn't Know Who to Pitch Her Idea To, So She Pitched Everyone. How an AWS Leader Built Alliances and Attracted a Sponsor by Talking to Anyone Who Would Listen

Speaker A: Have you ever wondered how some people

Speaker B: seem to be able to go from

Speaker A: shy and intimidated and soft spoken to being outspoken and being able to build all these strategic alliances with people and attract sponsors for their ideas and for their career while at the same time creating a lot of value for everyone around them?

Speaker B: Um, welcome to another episode of the

Speaker A: Speak youk Mind Unapologetically podcast. And in this episode we are joined by by Helen Hongyi, who is an immigrant and struggled to find her voice, but then she eventually did and she's currently super effective at using her voice. She's so effective, in fact, that she is now in sales, which is incredible. And in this episode she's going to talk about how having really senior leaders give her feedback on her communication skills early on made such a big difference for her. But she's also going to tell uh, her story of how she was able to secure a sponsor career sponsor for her that made the biggest difference and helped her pivot from more technical roles to sales role and taught her everything that she needed to know to be successful.

Speaker B: But she's going to talk about what

Speaker A: she did as well, how she has been driven to add value, she's been driven to support people. And using that and talking about her ideas and communicating in an uh, in an effective, clear way got her exposure. And that exposure led to a sponsor for her idea, which then led to a sponsor for her career. This is a very empowering story that shows that with the right mindset and attitude, you can achieve great things using your voice.

Speaker B: Let's get to it.

Speaker C: And understanding the people is really half of the game. You want to get your allies, you want to build, uh, your internal strategic alliances. No matter how great of idea, you do need the sponsor of that idea. They may not be the sponsor for you, for your own getting more opportunities or promotion, all that, but you do need to really be a good salesperson to sell that idea to not one group, probably multiple groups and show the value.

Speaker D: So I thought it was a, uh, fascinating learning experience for me because I had a lot of no's. Oh, that's not going to work. Oh, uh, I don't think so. And so would approve. And this is really more generic, right. On many things. And for the matter, my whole career I've had a lot of people telling me what I couldn't do. Guess what, I just went and did it anyways. And I think that if I can do it, everybody can do it. It's just that how clear are you on um, what you're asking for? How articulate you are about the benefits, and does that benefit the customer? Does that benefit the company? If you have that really clearly thought through, I don't see any reason why

Speaker C: people don't want to give you an

Speaker D: opportunity to take initiative and see what comes out.

Speaker B: Welcome to this podcast where you're going to learn the strategies, the tactics, and also gain the confidence to speak your mind unapologetically at work and in your career so that you can get ahead faster, you can have more impact, be a better leader and be respected as yourself authentically. And I'll be your host.

Speaker E: Eva Curry.

Speaker B: I'm the CEO and founder of Assertive Way.com INSEAD MBA and a Forbes contributor. Now let's get started. Welcome, Ellen. Ellen Hongyi. So nice to have you here in the podcast today.

Speaker D: Thank you so much for inviting me. I'm super, super excited to be here.

Speaker B: And so am I. Helen or Hongyi is the head of data analytics partner for GTM for Amazon Web Services. And today we're going to talk about how to develop your communication. And she has a very interesting story. Coming to America from China, when you first came to America, how was your communication and what happened there? How was it for you in terms of your communication?

Speaker D: It was a great question. And as you would imagine, I studied a lot. I, uh, read a lot. But it's something totally different when if you have to really communicate verbally with people. I was terrified when I went to grad school. That's really how I started. My probably the first journey is to really get into grad school school. You really didn't have to speak much. But when you really go to the workforce, you really have to communicate. And it was, uh, a long journey, apparently, that I've gone through a lot of challenges, but I'm on the other side.

Speaker B: And you mentioned previously that you were also very shy back then, that you barely spoke English. How was that for you as well? On top of coming to a new culture and having to communicate a lot in a company, you're shy, which is interesting because now you're in sales, which is the opposite of shyness. And you barely spoke English, which is also interesting because now you live off of your English.

Speaker D: Being shy is mostly because lack of confidence. And you talk about my name. So my legal name is Hongyi. That means the water is deep and wide. And I have another angle to, to explain my name because when I was born, my father gave me a boy's name. I didn't even change into this name until I was six years Old. I was going to go to elementary school and I, uh, had to have a girl's name when he thought that I was going to be a boy and moving to the US Changing to another name, Helen, is one of the things that wanted to do to make it more comfortable that people can pronounce my name and for me to feel that I will fit in the barrier of language. It's beyond just the language itself. It's also the meaning behind a lot of things, the culture aspect of it. So absolutely it's, I would say the shy. It's probably not that I'm really shy. I wish that I were more. I would say, I wish I had a better word to describe the shyness, but probably more so is knowing that I was thinking in my native language and I didn't really know what to do to say. A lot of times constantly translating things that I meant to talk about from my mother tongue to English. It was definitely a journey.

Speaker B: Yeah, I can see how that can really make things difficult when you enter the workforce, when you're dealing with problems on top of relationships that you have to build, on top of communication needs to happen and being, translating and thinking about all of these things at the same time. Now, once you did join a team and started working out of grad school, what kind of feedback did you get initially given you were still learning and adjusting your communication. What kind of feedback did you get from your leaders to set a context?

Speaker D: The first check in points like the feedback was you got to improve your communication. That was the way how to start. And I would say to be fair, I reported to a very senior level person. And um, looking back, I was very fortunate, probably blessing in disguise. And he was very senior level person reported to very senior level leadership at Merck. And the person before me was a very senior guy. And it's really multifaceted of the challenges. On one side I'm probably speaking, I was speaking spoken in like a, uh, broken English. And uh, the other side is I was probably talking about a lot of the details. That's not really what he's looking for. And when I got the feedback, I really took that to heart and I thought to myself, I gotta figure out a way. And every morning I was driving at the time from New Jersey to uh, Pennsylvania.

Speaker C: It was a long drive.

Speaker D: I was listening to radio. I repeated every single word that I heard. I didn't even know sometimes what the meaning was because I was told that's the way to improve your English. And after months of efforts, it really Helped, but I didn't really stop there

Speaker C: because I realized my communication style coming from being a chemist to an engineer, the moment that I was being asked a question, I immediately got into all these weeds. The details my leader was personally think that he was totally lost.

Speaker D: Now looking back, I figured he never

Speaker C: really understood what Helen's talking about.

Speaker D: What is she talking about?

Speaker C: I changed my communication style to be a lot more concise because that's really important especially to communicate with senior leadership. Start with a statement and give details only if being asked to provide more details because there's so much attention span they can give you. But yes, I did get very harsh feedback and it was actually a driver for me at the time to want to do better. And I'm very grateful for that opportunity.

Speaker B: I think that's a wonderful opportunity to have a very senior leader early on because like you said, senior leaders will think differently. They're going to look for a different type of communication and you have that. You got that feedback early on which allowed you then to adjust early on and not have to wait until you were in mid level management to have a senior leader to tell you those things. So I think that was very special. Even though it probably hurt in the moment when he said you had to improve your communication. Did he tell you what he meant by that?

Speaker D: That's a great question. I learned to ask good questions, high yield questions only in the later years and I was so afraid at the time and I felt like I couldn't ask and I couldn't really believe that I didn't ask. Now looking back and I made assumptions at that time my assumption was because I had a very strong accent and it's very intimidating to really be able to speak and communicate on every which scene. When you just got out of the school and again at a grad school, you don't really have to talk that much. My classmates used to laugh and say, hey, we didn't really have um, I have a friend who's from another country and her first foreign language was French. And um, people used to laugh at both she and I and said, you seem to be talking but I don't

Speaker C: really understand what you're talking about.

Speaker D: But she, she's from a different country, I'm from different country. Her first foreign language is French. We were still able to communicate but when you're at a workspace it's very particular. There are specific business objectives. And I felt that it was a really interesting experience. I made assumption that one, I have an accent and two, I was not answering his question. I'm still working on the second because it's so easy to get excited and feel that personally a lot of the times it's ongoing journey. Right. Communication is really a journey. No matter how well you think you communicate, there's still room to improve. But great call out now that if I hear anything, the first thing is to ask more questions. What do you mean? Can you share with me more? So I think that being very curious actually help us even more because we make assumption it may not be what he really meant. Thank you for the question.

Speaker B: Yeah, no, that, that's a great learning and reflection as well and I think it's a, it's a very useful one for our listeners to, to hear because often we, and I see this, a lot of people, myself included don't uh, ask the follow up questions to fully understand feedback so that we can actually improve out of that fear that feeling intimidated. I should know better, but I don't. What do I do? And in that case you did something and you improved your communication anyways. You put in the effort to repeat in those videos or whatever you were studying but also change your communication so that you were more concise and that you made the main statements up front. Which is something that took me a very long time to learn as well. I only learned it when I joined a uh, management consulting firm and I also got feedback that I was just getting doing too much randomness in my slides and presentations and that it all had to start from top down the top statement and then we'd end up with a presentation that had 20 slides and a backup presentation that had 500 slides. So it's interesting that you said something that I experienced. I learned as well but in a uh, in a slightly different context in later than I wish I had.

Speaker D: It's interesting to uh, hear your perspective because I used to work with a very senior level executive at Oracle. From him I learned everything can be simplified into three bullet points. I used to produce this big PowerPoint deck and everyone was lost because there's so much information that I got excited with all the stuff and cramming stuff in get more data points. And later on I learned he's right, everything can be simplified into three bullet points. The more that we want to share, the less meaning it is to other people because we can't really just think about what we want to dump information. We gotta think about the receiving side. And I think that's really one of the key thing that no matter where I am, even after I might have overcome some language barrier. This is really ongoing learning and progressing on the communication style so that it's effective. Whatever that we say we do, it's not that we just want to say it for the sake of saying it, is that how does the other side receive? Are we going to do something about? So thank you for sharing that story because I too had similar experience.

Speaker B: And effectiveness is such a key word and we often only think about our own side. But like you said, we don't think about how is it going to be received and is it doing and communicating what we intend to communicate, which is such a different way of thinking about it. And even people who were born and are native English speakers often struggle with that because it's not just about saying whatever or listing a bunch of things. But I like the rule of three. I think that's very powerful as well. And I'd love to know a little bit about sponsorship because you had a fast growth career and I'm sure part of that was learning how to communicate and part of it usually involves a sponsor. And it's really hard to get sponsors as a woman, and I think a lot of people struggle with that. So I'd love to know if you had a sponsor and if you did, how did you get your sponsor and how did the sponsor show up in your life?

Speaker D: That's a great question. A lot of people ask me and I'm mentoring a few people right now myself these days as I was mentored. We all have coaches, we have mentors, and we seek sponsors. Sponsor is the hardest because in my experience, they select us and I had an opportunity to have worked with a gentleman. And it's just so incredible when I look back, he took me under his wing and he believed in what I could be doing without me having that experience. And he taught me to get into the sales field and he also educated me how to navigate, especially with the government partner ecosystem. Every one of those things that I was doing at that time for the specific area I was in, it was

Speaker C: very new to me.

Speaker D: And looking back, I know that he

Speaker C: saw something in me.

Speaker D: A lot of my friends will laugh and say, I'm a bulldog. I never stop. I know that I'm not really. I know that I don't know.

Speaker C: Right.

Speaker D: That's the bigger thing. I know that I don't know.

Speaker C: I'm diligent. But it also takes a lot of, I would say, trust and hard, uh, work and also exposure for the right people to really be willing to be your sponsor. Because you can find Mentors you can find, coaches who can share you the rope you can find.

Speaker D: Mentors you will find. Have multiple mentors along your journey of career and personal life. Sponsors are really hard to come by. I would say there are three things I look back that has helped. Number one is that I did have that exposure. I had a great platform that whatever that I was doing, it was visible. I had that, uh, visibility for people to really see how I behave under stress, how hard I worked. So I think having that platform is really critical. The second piece is that you gotta

Speaker C: add value to the sponsor. Sponsors usually, I wouldn't say always not,

Speaker D: but many times, are not your direct management.

Speaker C: They're the people who's at, uh, very high up, who's able to promote you. They're gonna be the people who can speak up for us when we're not in that room, when everybody is talking about something. And that person will speak up for you, right?

Speaker D: So you gotta build that trust. You gotta add, uh, value to the person. And the third thing is be consistent. A lot of times we do a lot of things. It's like a big bang. I'm not really big fan of big band theory. I'm a believer of doing simple things. But be there, be reliable, right? Be consistent and be diligent. You mentioned that I got into sales, I stumbled into sales. It's another conversation. But I'll tell you, it's almost like when you're in sales every quarter, no matter how well you did, it was the past. You're back to square zero. It's the daily grinding that matters. And I think having a sponsor is a privilege. And for all of us, we need to really seek sponsors, but we need

Speaker C: to do our part.

Speaker B: That's very powerful. Having a sponsor is a privilege and we need to do our part. And then comes the exposure, the adding value to build trust and the consistency, which is key. Now, how did you gain exposure early on? How did you make yourself so visible? Because usually that's not an opportunity that people get early on in their careers.

Speaker D: That's a great question. And you, uh, mentioned earlier that I have a fast growing career. It didn't really feel that way. I felt that it was so hard. Everything was never easy, but I didn't really think much about it to the extent that I would say I did the hard work because I love the work that I do. And having exposure is not necessarily, I want exposure. It's because I love to help people. I got myself into probably, uh, more projects than other people would feel it's okay. And everybody has a different capacity and they have different levels of tolerance of ambiguity and I guess comes to me. I love new things. I love to engage with people. I love people. And I got into some special initiative and that's really how I had a lot of exposure. For example, back in the day when I was at Oracle, I was working with a very big account. Next thing is that they're using my account as the simple account to really train. How do you do account management? So I have my day job and I have my night job on sales enablement. I just absolutely loved it. And little did I know that as I was really passionate about helping people, getting in front of the customer, helping the team to be more effective to drive that sales efficiency effectiveness. I gained a lot of exposure because it's extra work but, but it's much needed work that it's not really that hard. It's just that do you really want to roll up the sleeve and do very simple things starting from taking a very challenging, very large global challenging account, document all this like a case study and communicate with people? It's not really hard, it's just that you have to roll up sweet and do it right. It's passionate. It's a passion project for me. I'm passionate about helping people. It's all connected the dots but in a way from outside in, from looking outside in, a lot of people may look at other people's career as wow, there's so much goodness. But behind all that it's a lot of hard work. There are a lot of 15 hour days, a lot of uh, sleepless nights. I've developed a PowerPoint until 4am Because I didn't follow the three bullet point rule. I was told not good enough. You may have to redo that, finish that the next morning at 1am still not good enough. But it's through the grinding, right? You learn and you grow. Especially when I guess uh, we're progressing

Speaker C: careers, especially uh, your career especially you're changing your career, it's probably even more of people already think that you're behind.

Speaker D: And I changed my career a few times.

Speaker C: I was a chemist by training by the way before I got into computer engineering and then I got into customer management.

Speaker D: Then I got into partner and got into partner sales. It's every time having those transition. It's interesting that how hungry that I'm looking back I was very hungry apparently that I want to learn but how much I felt that I was so far behind and know that I didn't know, even later to my career on, when I was at Tableau at the time I was running the government education,

Speaker C: regulated industry basically and the partner alliances

Speaker D: bd, everybody on my team was so smarter and more experienced because I knew that I need to hire the best people. So it's, it's definitely an, um, interesting journey. It's an interesting journey to have those exposures starting by do extra work, take initiatives and ask for help. Know that we don't know. Find the best people who can work with you and really work together. We say you work fast. If you walk alone. You will walk very far when you work together. So that's really. There's no secret sauce. I'm sure that a lot of people have done similar things, but, uh, for me in particular, as I walked through the journey, it didn't really feel that it's that rapid growth. It's the daily grinding. I am. I had been enjoying the ride along the way because it's something that I. I'm passionate about. I love people. I love working with people.

Speaker C: And that actually helps.

Speaker D: It doesn't feel it's hard work. I feel it's fun, especially when you're surrounding yourself with the right people.

Speaker B: Oh, uh, there's a lot to unpack there. So you definitely mentioned a few things. You did a lot of the grinding. That's the bulldog in you. Here's the hunger. When opportunities come forward, you take them on you. Like you said, it is the night shift and you seeked out help where you felt like you needed help. And in that situation, in that specific initiative that you got around these big accounts and breaking it down and systematizing it, how did that specific opportunity show up for you? Was there a leader who said, okay, we're looking for someone to help us with this, who would volunteer or how did it actually come about?

Speaker D: It's a great question in terms of having those initiatives. There will be times you're being asked, but I've seen more times. We're the one who come up with idea because at the end of the day, the leaders are looking at people to come up with idea. I have read a book called Outside Innovation Even to create new products these days, LEGO actually hired a bunch of kids to help them, to inspire them to create products. And the leaders are seeking people who's constantly thinking about new things.

Speaker C: We should be doing.

Speaker D: We should be thinking, but not yet doing. Very fortunate. That's why I said a good platform. I have been very fortunate to have worked with some really most innovative company that are Born with that mindshare on um, creating new things, bringing about new ideas. And Oracle is like that, Amazon is like that, tableau is like that. And I've had great learning from the leaders and now I'm leading a team. I'm anticipating the same thing. Nothing less from the people because the

Speaker C: idea, the best idea come from the people. So if all of us want to

Speaker D: grow our career and as a female

Speaker C: professional we probably have our unique challenges but we also have our advantage. And one thing I would say I would encourage everyone to think hard is that what are the ideas you can help your leaders solve? You don't need other people to come to you, bring about that ideas they have, what can you bring to them and initiate something that you want to own. I'm m going to say that it's probably one of the homework to think about it because we all have areas where we can add value to leaders and leaders need help.

Speaker B: So you did come up with the idea.

Speaker D: I come up with the idea for using this uh, very large, we call it global bank in that material and then we roll out that whatever the training globally because at that time I was facing a ah, very complex accounts enterprise solution selling and who is the customer? It's not one person, it's a whole organization. You can have everyone appear to be a buyer but then if one person says no, it's a no. So in that complex environment I also had done a few things even till this day just to protect innocent. My friend will tell me that how courageous I was telling the customer not to do certain things because from customer relationship, customer success perspective it was not the right thing to do. But in terms of preserving resources at the customer during the last financial crisis it was the way for the leader at the customer, uh, the only way to keep her 120 people resources. Yet it could create much bigger challenges without careful planning. And I was probably the only person who knew that it's going to potentially rock the boat. But I was so glad that I shared the head to here and make

Speaker C: decision based upon additional data points.

Speaker D: And that's the time that I said

Speaker C: to myself complex account engagement is important to have a methodology. And I could use this very complex account probably not going to be any more complex than what I was dealing with to really help the sales team and the field organizations appreciate some of the nuances and use that as a case study on um, how do we do a better job. And I think that if we do the right things, profit will follow. And I learned that since my first real job at Merck. I learned that in our intention, it was, um, something really profound. So that's really what triggered me to offer that, hey, we really need a good methodology that can be shared globally to leverage that best practice based on the complexity and keep our customer success at the forefront. What do we do? And we have so many people on that account team, 30 plus people on that account team, and there are many other people who's actually servicing in that account, doing some other supporting functions. It was something that I'm sure that everyone would have opportunity to identify. In your respective line of business, what are the things that are keeping your leader up, um, at night? How can you, no matter how senior or how, even if you're a new graduate, what are the things you can do to add value? That's the way to get the mind share as you're helping. You're, uh, part of the process to solve the problem that matters to the business and uh, matters to your leader.

Speaker B: All right, so this is fascinating. Thank you for sharing that story. So there was a situation where during the COVID with this client that you wanted to make a difference. It was somewhat risky. Like your friend said, you were courageous. You did it anyways. You learned from it. You saw it as a business case. You developed your own theory around what needed to happen that would support your business leader. And then you shared that idea and said, we need a, uh, process for this, for the account management. And you articulated. I can't repeat exactly what you said, but it sounded very convincing the way you said keeping the customer success at the forefront and doing this and doing that. Who did you actually pitch to?

Speaker D: A lot of people. A lot of people. And first of uh, all, this is during the last financial crisis in 2008. It was a long time ago and I was much younger and uh, probably a more bold. And I'm still very bold. That's a given. But I didn't know where to go. I talked to a lot of people and I got a lot of people from cross lines of business all think that is a great idea. And apparently that I had a great support from sales enablement. We have a great, amazing sales enablement team that I have at that time, my mentor who's working side by side with me. That was before I got into sales. And not only I spent a lot of time working with my colleagues and cross lines of business, I also went to the customer and asked for some additional insights on what might be the way that you see us do differently as an external facing Person. I'll tell you, I'm a big fan of Amazon's leadership principle and everybody has to go through all that crazy and rigid but also very effective hiring process. Our number one leadership principle is about customer obsession. No matter what, when, how you always put customer at the forefront. I sometimes looking back at my career and if anything that I would say that has worked, it is that always put your customer at the center and

Speaker C: front of whatever you do, no matter what time, what situation, always do the right things. And it was the founding principle of all this. Regardless of that, I look back, I was young, I didn't know who to go to.

Speaker D: I went to a lot of people

Speaker C: and it was really in a way also helped me to understand how any big company organize. So I've worked the big gigantic companies. I've also worked the startups, pre IPO startups. It's fascinating and understanding the people is really half of the game. You want to get your allies, you want to build, uh, your internal strategic alliances. No matter how great of idea, you do need the sponsor of that idea. They may not be the sponsor for you for your own getting more opportunities or promotion, all that, but you do need to really be a good salesperson to sell that idea to.

Speaker D: Not one group, probably multiple groups and show the value. So I thought it was a fascinating learning experience for me because I had a lot of no's. Oh, that's not gonna work. Oh, uh, I don't think so. And so would approve. And this is really more generic, right. On many, um, things and for the matter my whole career, I've had a lot of people telling me what I couldn't do. Guess what, I just went and did it anyways. And I think that if I can do it, everybody can do it. It's just that how clear are you on um, what you're asking for, how articulate you are about the benefits and does that benefit the customer? Does that benefit the company? If you have that really clearly thought through, I don't see any reason why

Speaker C: people don't want to give you an

Speaker D: opportunity to, to take initiative and see what comes out. But again, I was fortunate that I said that earlier, that I have a great platform, right? That's the company that I happen to happen to really have experience with. I would imagine that no matter where

Speaker C: you are, there's always opportunity to innovate, there's always opportunity to find something new. And it may be a new product, it may be a new idea and maybe new way of doing things. Think about Uber right Uber invented this new way of taxi.

Speaker D: They, it's the same concept, they just

Speaker C: change the way how you do it. It's the same thing.

Speaker D: You need a ride.

Speaker C: They changed thinking.

Speaker D: So I'm just going to say that

Speaker C: think outside the box. There's always something to do.

Speaker E: Yeah.

Speaker B: You know, I don't think you had a great platform. I think you created a great platform based on what I'm hearing because you did have a customer who had a problem and you applied the Amazon principle, which at the time you didn't know it was an Amazon principle, but it's

Speaker D: a lot of companies principle.

Speaker B: Yeah, you did focus on the customer. You realized an opportunity, you had an idea, you went back to the customer to ask questions to refine your idea. You didn't know who to whom to talk to, so you talked to anybody and everybody.

Speaker D: I did was pretty effective in a way, but it was pretty good because by the talking I actually get to know new people, how important that is to have internal strategic alliances. More exposure is not just exposure to the leadership, it's also exposure to the people. Think about it. People carry anything. Tipo is like water. The boat floats on water.

Speaker B: Yes, the boat floats on water. I love that analogy. So you got more exposure to more people. Eventually these people led you to who was the big sponsor in your life. He wasn't your sponsor then, but like you said, he liked your idea because you pitched your idea very well and then he became a sponsor for your idea which then increased your platform to apply your idea. Yeah, because you had a passion for people and for execution and you grind and you were bulldog and you were hungry. You made it happen. And like you said then your sponsor saw all of those qualities in you as he was sponsoring this idea that you pitched to him. And then he said, this is my girl, I'm sponsoring her.

Speaker D: I definitely think there's a lot of the hard work behind all this. And again, going back to my comment about I only had people telling me what I couldn't do. It's not untrue either because keep in mind I've changed roles at Oracle before. I went on to the more entrepreneurial venture at the smaller startups and uh, pre IPO companies and so on. I've changed different roles every couple years and I'm extremely grateful. But I've done a lot of the hands on work. I know how this company operates. I started by working at consulting, I worked at uh, customer management, I worked at co customer strategy. I worked partner sales and partner programs and all this Other different areas. Every area I was expact and was parachuting back in to China where I came from. I, uh, had a. I would laugh, had some level of reverse culture shock.

Speaker C: And, uh, it's a long story, but I look back, I've done a lot of the ground level work. And yes, I had a lot of

Speaker D: learning, I had a lot of growth,

Speaker C: but I had done a lot of the ground level work that I felt that even if I was working at a very large company, even today we're so entrepreneurial, I felt at some point I had to tell you.

Speaker D: I felt that I had to still

Speaker C: borrow and beg for resources and make things happen. It's so much fun. But a lot of that is also tying back to have you built a good foundation. Right. I'm not building a castle on the sand. We can't really do that. You have to build a strong foundation. And, um, there is time. When I was younger and I was years before, I was anxious to go do big things. Now I'm looking back, I'm grateful. I didn't really go do big things at the time. I didn't get. I didn't feel that I had the chance. But I did a lot of smaller things, but tangible things, um, and meaningful things. I learned a whole lot by doing those groundwork. And I just want to say that I'm not going to trivialize any of that. It was painful during that process, it's extremely painful. But I feel that my foundation is solid.

Speaker D: I have earned trust along the way. And you have that support, right? Not just from other people, but your knowledge, your experience, your internal, external, strategic alliances. As much as we're walking the journey again, walking the journey together is more meaningful to me because one, it make it more fun, two, you can learn from each other and three, it's solid foundation that we can work much further together. So I just get excited when I'm talking about this. Probably totally off track.

Speaker B: I do love that. Uh, I think it's an African proverb. I think it's a great because it's true. And like you said, it's more effective and it's a lot more fun and it definitely helps. And what I find in you is the example of bringing together that strong foundation with a lot of grind, a lot of hard work in a way that you actually didn't feel like you were progressing that quickly because you were doing so much. But together with the ability to. Through that hunger and a desire to help and a desire to contribute and that desire to innovate and that desire to add value to your, the leaders in the organization and your customers, that not only did you go above and beyond by grinding and doing all the work, but you also use that to leverage that hunger and go talk to people because you knew that by yourself you wouldn't be able to realize these things and add the value that you wanted to. So you spoke your mind unapologetically to make sure that you were able to contribute and get uh, enough support and build those alliances that you wanted to achieve, the value that you wanted to create and to go far together. That's my interpretation of your story.

Speaker D: Thank you. I really appreciate that. And I would say that partially part of me also learned in the hard way. I would say the early days, I didn't really think too much about everything else. I'm just keep doing what I'm doing. And as I progress my career, one of the things I would call out is give other people credit, let other people shine. And I actually find that a lot of times we are so focused on

Speaker C: what we do, we forget about the surrounding.

Speaker D: But we're probably one piece of the entire ecosystem and that nobody, no one can get everything done by ourselves. And it's really important for us to recognize our friends, colleagues, people who contributed in our career, or people who showed kindness and make sure that you thank them and help them and let them shine.

Speaker C: It's really important.

Speaker D: I didn't really think much as I walked through the journey and become natural of me.

Speaker C: But later on people told me that how much that have made an impact for me, it's a small thing because it comes natural. I'm just very grateful for a lot of things. Listen, I'm an immigrant. I moved to this country with $800.

Speaker D: Everything is up. Uh, I have nothing to lose.

Speaker C: A lot again, I'm grateful. And small things that we do, small gesture of kindness make a huge difference. And I would say sometimes we feel singled out, we all have those moments, we feel not included and all that. My question to myself sometimes is that one, that's how I feel. It may not be what other people intentionally do. And two, is that no matter how I feel, what I do about it to change that, what do I do to really not really do the same thing I felt that other, others are doing to me and the others, what do you do differently to really make the environment, the community a better place? It's important because keep doing right things, good things will happen. That's what I believe in. No matter what, just keep doing the Right. Things.

Speaker D: That simple.

Speaker B: That simple. And I see in you from our very first interaction, you're always thinking about the people and how to add value and how to support and how to be grateful and recognize others. So I think that's very special. That together with your drive creates wonders and is, and I'm sure is going to allow you to do, contribute so much because you're welcoming people and you're working together with people and you appreciate people. So I appreciate you for appreciating people but also driving forward everything that you believe in and in your ideas. And what are some of your last thoughts for our, uh, listeners today?

Speaker D: Yeah, it's a great question. And I look back and I look forward. I would like to say three things to the audience. Number one is really understand your superpower. Understand what you're really good at. I really want us all to do more of what we're good at. Right. Understand yourself is the first step. The second thing I was going to say is find your passion. If you're passionate about the things you do, if you're passionate about your company, even if the journey could be really hard. And some of us like to choose the last traveled road. I know a lot of us do because we want to innovate, we want to do new things. It's not easy, right? As long as you're practicing your passion and also staying close to people that are like minded and the journey will

Speaker C: all of a sudden become more enjoyable.

Speaker D: And the last piece is really to say never stop learning and pay it forward whenever you get a chance.

Speaker C: Help others because we all get help

Speaker D: and we can all do more to help others. And that would be what? That's what's coming to my mind.

Speaker E: Beautiful.

Speaker B: Those are really important tips. Understand yourself, superpower. Find your passion, enjoying like minded people and never stop learning and pay it forward. Brilliant way to end this conversation. Thank you so much for sharing your stories and your views and your philosophies. Hongy, thank you so much.

Speaker D: Thank you.

Speaker E: To learn more about our offerings, visit assertive way.com you can also reach out directly to me by emailing even a curry@assertiveway.com or finding me on LinkedIn. I'll provide the information in the description box below.

Speaker B: Don't let the lack of assertive communication

Speaker E: skills fuel more fear and self doubt in your team and hold them back from expressing their ideas, their concerns and pursuing feedback with confidence and clarity. Take the first step towards a more assertive, empowered team by contacting us today. Thank you for listening to Speak youk mind?

Speaker B: Unapologetically.

Speaker E: And I look forward to hearing from you soon.