Kelly Huang

  • 34/35

    On 34


    34 was a year of liberation. Millie turned 4 and now enjoys art and craft, I have more time on my own. I changed job after almost 7 year stay, it brought the opportunity to live in the US for 30 days. That was an unimaginable and incredible experience.

    Milestones

    • Exercise time more than doubled last year
    • Changed job after 6.8 years
    • Lived in US for a month
    • Stopped smoking and started running
    5,838 minutes of exercise vs 2,337 last year

    Lessons from 34

    1). 60% confidence is actionable

    This was the third or fourth offer in the 6 months search. I had enough sample size to know 60% this could work.

    It was still scary about leaving the people and place I worked for 6 plus year. It was comfortable, even with much frustrations. The doubt never went away: what if this doesn’t work out? What if I’m not qualified enough? How can I come back?

    I carried it with me to the new job, and the lack of thereof gave me a good push to perform.

    It’s what’s unknown that scares me, once I’m in it, I figured how to navigate. And this decision gave me the opportunity to experience different culture, project, skill, and lifestyle.

    2). I deeply enjoy feeling good physically

    I ran my first 10K in April. I had my last cigarette on my last day of work, June 20th. As of the time of writing, I run twice a week, weight lift twice a week, and swim once a week. I feel strong, that gives me confidence and feeds mental strength, it cycled back to my exercise and work performance. This feels deeply satisfying.

    3). Spending is a source of my anxiety

    I tracked my income and expense since second grade, it’s a thing I’ve been doing for 2+ decades. In the past year or two, this has brought me fatigue and tension in the household. I knew how to save and I would try to squeeze the last % if I need to sacrifice. But I don’t know how to spend, and I found this wouldn’t last long. One can only stress for enough time before giving up.

    4). Work is necessary

    We took a 9 day family trip to Malaysia during the break between two jobs. Day 7, midway at Penang, it felt either bored and anxious not to work at all.

    To 35

    35 will focus on learn to be happy. Not to degrade the performance, but learn to reward myself properly.

    1). Learn to spend

    “Spend extravagantly on the things you love, and cut costs mercilessly on the things you don’t.” ― Ramit Sethi

    Linda and I setup another individual envelop for fun money, approximately 5% of our monthly income, split in half. We will try the approach to “save for ___”, to save for a goal, a bigger reward.

    2). Publish more

    This terrifies me. It’s the reason I started the blog; it’s the reason I procrastinate endlessly.

    “The degree of fear equates to the strength of Resistance” ― Steven Pressfield

  • Communicate visual with Nano Banana

    Thinking this would be a good idea to paint a concept of VSaaS, I snapped this photo on the way off HSRT ride. With Google’s Nano Banana and couple of product photos, I could turn this into what I have imaged!

    Whether this is a good visual is subjective, but it saved me a least one mail and 10 minutes of explanation. Unbelievable.

    Next questions is, how can I get more of these “references”?

    Randomly done prompt:

  • Keep a swipe file folder

    Creativity is hard to come by and the market pace nowadays is incredible fast with AI. How can we shorten the time of content creation? Austin Kleon’s book Steal Like An Artist introduced me the idea of a swipe folder.

    After 3 years of collection, here’s what my Google Drive looks like. Since I use Windows at work and Mac at home, Google’s browser based approach made it flexible for me to switch between device and platform.

    My swipe file folder on Google Drive
    Example of what’s in a folder

  • Divisional organization in solution selling

    This part of the interview between Acquired Podcast and TSMC founder, Morris Chang, about the correlation between organization structure and customer gave me an explanation to my current role in product marketing facing a divisional structure.

    Today’s surveillance is about solution selling as network camera and NVRs becoming a commodity. The increasing number of smaller retail stores adopting consumer security products, such as Xiaomi and Tapo, explains the fact that basic surveillance is no longer a technical barrier. Enterprise customers, on the other side, look for more curate business solution and services. Respectively, solution is a combination of overlapping mix of products.

    Who should cover the ground of offering the solution if product development is in an divisional organization? The role often falls into the next role in line, be product marketing, regional product manager, sales engineer, pre-sales, and sales. This requires the next-in-line function team to be well versed in the product and customer pain point in order to build the solution stacks.

    Product marketing, in this situation, is faced to be product first, marketing second to filter the influx products. Tactical implementations that gave me room to survive:

    1. Hire those with experience in sales or customer service.
    2. New member training program to build the fundamental understanding of all products.
    3. Framework of value proposition to streamline the specification into customer benefits.

  • Design presentation from the what-could-be

    Nancy Duarte’s book, Resonate, maps out the rhythm for an effective presentation with the idea of sparkline. It diverges from the conventional understanding of rising action, climax, and falling action. It’s more true in most business presentation as the products or solutions are not that different and audience lacks patience to build up the climax.

    Some tactics to build the what could be and the what is.

    WHAT-ISWHAT-COULD-BE
    – Pain point
    – Background information
    – Introduction to sections    		– Product demo
    – Videos
    – Key feature
    – Advantage over competition

    In most situation, the what-could-be are known facts, the so start with that. Begin with arranging the sequence of what-could-be appearances, then figure out making the what-is later. It’s often easier to create the relative low point than the highlight.