Corporate Survivor with Mei Phing : Career Growth In The Corporate World - Ep118: Family vs Money: Which would you choose?

Episode Date: May 3, 2022

✅ Get My FREE '5-Day Career Growth' Guide + Training 👉 http://www.meiphing.com ✅ Grow your career in the 9-5 corporate world with clarity, confidence and opportunities! ⚡ 👋 Welcome to the Corporate Survivor with Mei Phing — corporate career coach, ex-corporate leader who has led multimillion-dollar projects across 43 countries and creator of the ultimate career course for 9-5 professionals, The Corporate Survivor™. On this podcast, you'll learn how to grow your career in the corporate world without getting stuck with Mei Phing's 3-step framework to gain career clarity, improve work confidence and attract new job opportunities. ✅ WEBSITE ⮕ https://www.meiphing.com ✅ FREE GUIDE ⮕ https://www.thecorporatesurvivor.co/5days ✅ COURSE & COACHING ⮕ https://www.thecorporatesurvivor.co ⚡ 📌 ABOUT MEI PHING: Mei Phing Lim is a Professional Career Coach and former Corporate Leader in the financial services and consulting industries. Mei Phing went from a shy quiet introvert to leading multimillion-dollar projects with teams from over 43 countries as the Senior Director and Head of Governance at Standard Chartered, and now teaching 9-5 professionals how to navigate the corporate world and grow their careers with her career coaching course, The Corporate Survivor™. Mei Phing has been featured as a LinkedIn Top Voice 2023, sharing expert career advice in guiding young professionals to plan, navigate and grow their careers. Mei Phing is a keynote speaker on corporate culture, work performance and career growth, and sharing perspectives on what truly takes to build a strategic and successful career without getting stuck. ✅ LEARN MORE: https://www.meiphing.com

Welcome to the Corporate Survivor Podcast, where we talk about how to grow your career confidence, build your skills and value, increase your salary, and the many lessons we learn in the corporate world. For more career support, click on over to www.mayping.com. This is Mayping, your corporate leader turned career coach. I hope you enjoy, like and subscribe. Hello, hello, hello, everyone. Welcome back to day two of our 30-day live stream challenge. So if you are new to this live stream challenge series,

this is basically a 30-day live stream that I will be talking about multiple career topics of interest, things that I come across on different social medias, not just on LinkedIn, YouTube, TikTok, Instagram, some career advice that I think may not exactly be correct. I want to discuss it in this 30-day livestream challenge. In this livestream also, I may also be answering some of the very commonly asked questions that I receive in my DMs or across my social media platforms as well. So thank you everybody for joining today. So if you

are watching live right now, you're watching live right now, hi, drop a comment and say hi. And I also want to take this opportunity to wish all my Muslim friends friends connections followers on linkedin youtube instagram all my social media platforms and hopefully you guys are spending lots of lots of quality time with your friends and family so say hi do drop a very quick comment if you are watching live right now to those of you who joined the live stream yesterday, thank you so much for rejoining. I do see some familiar names in the comment section, which is really, really great. So thanks so much for joining today's session. And just a very, very quick announcement in case you missed yesterday's live stream or you want to catch up on any of the previous live

streams in this 30-day challenge, you can go to my YouTube or Spotify where I will be uploading all the final live streams. So just search Mei Ping. I'm pretty sure my name will pop up, but if you can't find it, you know, drop me a message, then I'll send the links over to you. So welcome to today's day two of the live stream. And today I actually want to talk about family versus money, which is more important. And when should you choose which one? Now, this topic is definitely inspired by the Hari Raya in Mubarak season, which is officially today in Malaysia, where I'm currently

based. So it prompted the question around, to what extent do you need to give up your career if you want to choose your family? Is any decision a right decision? Or, you know, one decision is better than the other. And what I actually think of you know between the two when should you make a certain decision and how would it impact your career tons and tons and tons of questions that you may have thought of as well so probably I can share a bit of a personal story so I think the main point right is at the end of the day like only only you can decide what is important and there may be certain junctures in your life and career that you may need to prioritize one over the other but it doesn't necessarily mean that if you pick your career you can't also focus on your family

or you can't do your part to care for your family or to love your family but it also doesn't mean that you know if you choose your family you completely ignore or de-prioritize your career or you know completely take a career break so what i want to actually discuss today is more of a how do you find a middle ground between the two should you need to should you maybe not be in a position to pick one or the other so i'll share a personal story um in today's live stream which um it's a question that i get asked a lot ever since i transitioned into career coaching and that is the question of oh me being so like what happened why did you how did you end up as a career coach so as much as i want to tell you that you know i'm

100 passionate about career coaching um a lot of the history i guess inspired me to get into career coaching was actually not so simple so there are actually many junctures within my career journey ever since i graduated in 2008 yeah 2008 long time ago where i chose money for some but I also chose family for the other part. So back to the earlier part of my career, when I first graduated, a lot of people expected me to work in a different city, maybe work in a bigger company or work in a different city or a different country, given that I did receive pretty good results. But what fueled my decision at that time was, and I don't remember telling you many people this,

and very few people know this, was in 2009. So that was the initial time where my mom actually got a diagnosis that she was very sick. So actually i made the decision to stay in penang so i chose family and stayed in penang for one year a little bit over one year which obviously it was something very personal to me and my family i didn't go around telling people why i decided to stay in penang even though there were a lot of talk around me saying that maybe that was a really dumb decision like you should have like gone to a company, you should have gone to work in the city, you should have like blah, blah, blah. Everybody has an opinion, right?

Everybody has an opinion, but only you truly understand what is needed from you at that point. What is your role in the family and obviously the people that you really care about, that maybe other people don't understand or maybe you may not be comfortable to share with other people and that's okay.

So that was most of my 2009. So in 2010, when things got a little bit better, I decided that, okay, I also think that I need to, I need to plan a little bit for my own career, right? Otherwise, I was also in a point where I was a little bit stuck in my career and it wasn't really what I wanted to do in terms of like staying in the company and i also wanted career growth i wanted to have different exposure i wanted to gain different skills i wanted a lot

more things in my career so in 2010 i decided okay i think right now i need to think about my career i need to think about my career so that was the time that i actively started applying for multiple companies multiple job positions both in malaysia as well as overseas and eventually i took up a role in singapore which required me to move overseas so i would say that at that point um someone chose career uh career slash money and you know slash building wealth as well because at that time it was my first full year after graduation and you know for those of you who just graduated I'm sure you can understand how I felt at that time it's you know pretty broke fresh graduate for lack of better word so at that time I decided that okay family situation seems to have stabilized right it was pretty okay so i decided to choose

my career choose my career um go for the money and obviously you know the with the money comes a lot of hard work so i'm not trying to discount that so that's that part and but i also made sure that like for that 10 years that i was working in singapore i flew back to Malaysia every month, every month, at least a weekend, every month. Now, that was something that also a lot of people told me, maybe why are you wasting your money flying back to Malaysia every single month? Like you should be saving your money and like not go home so often because like what's the point? You're going to do nothing at home anyway. I didn't really agree with that so maybe and i don't want to comment on you know different people's

relationship with their family but i think that for me if i can't be physically there then i try my best to be physically there even if it's once a month even if it's logistically extremely troublesome, like leaving the office on time on Friday, rushing to the airport, waiting around, immigration, blah, blah, blah, blah, and then to return on Sunday, which is like after lunch, going to the airport and everything, and to repeat that every single month, and sometimes even more often as well. But that was a decision that I chose.

So as I was saying earlier, you know, it doesn't necessarily have to choose one or the other. Obviously, one can be slightly a bit of priority, but also doesn't mean that you need to completely ignore the other one. Now, I'll give you another example. So during my 10 plus year career in the corporate world, I took one career break about seven months. And that was, you know, before I became a career coach. That was probably around 2016 to 2017. So I did take a career break at that time.

So at that time, clearly I chose family because there was a bigger reason of why I should return home and be a caregiver. But again, as I said, it doesn't really mean that you need to ignore your career you need to just like abandon what you have built along your career journey not necessarily so so what i did at that time was specifically what i teach my clients now which is make sure that you have a very strong linkedin profile that will continue to share that 24-7 online resume of yours, even if you are not actively looking. Because that was exactly how I continued to get headhunted for opportunities, even though I wasn't even looking. Clearly, I had quit my job at that time, and I went home to Malaysia to be a caregiver. So it was never my intention to get any job.

But interestingly, actually during that seven months, I managed to get interviews and invited to interviews with Google, PayPal, and some really huge companies as well. So the question is, how did they find me? LinkedIn. And obviously some very strong LinkedIn networking strategies that I nowadays also teach to my clients in my program, The Corporate Survivor. But the point I'm trying to make here is that, you know, just because you have chosen your family doesn't necessarily mean that your career

or the money part, right, takes an absolute backseat. It's not necessarily true, but you should think about it and kind of like plan ahead and be a bit more strategic about it so that when you want to make that flip, right? So meaning like for family, now you're going to say that, okay, now is the time for me to focus on money

and I want to be able to do that, then you are not starting from scratch because you had already laid down the foundation to make sure that, you know, it can happen for you. So that was kind of how i got headhunted and i got invited to interviews at huge companies google paypal even central banks and so forth and eventually that was how i landed a role and i could return to my corporate job with a much

more senior title more pay doing the job that i really wanted to do which was a lot more interesting in terms of like exposure and so forth so planning strategy continuing to believe in your value to evaluate your own value making sure that like you are visible online so that you are discoverable and you can continue to attract opportunities was something that I did for myself during the career break and managed to see really amazing results. So my career in that sense didn't actually take a, you know, didn't have a negative impact per se because the foundation was really in place for me to easily move back. So that's why nowadays, right, even people when, you know, nine to five professionals come to me asking me

if I think a career break is a good idea and so forth, I don't necessarily say it's a yes or no, but I think it's really important to discuss what do you actually want to achieve and maybe what's the most important thing for you right now. Like what are your family priorities versus what are your money and career priorities? So I can help you, walk you through that process to explore your options and maybe some of the things that you can do for the next phase of your career, your life slash career. But at the end of the day, I think it's important to also recognize that you don't necessarily need to choose one or the other,

but it's equally important to lay down the foundation so that if you want to focus on the money and really level up in your career, you can. And you have to put on the foundational steps to be able to do that, right? Which is nowadays what I teach in my course, right? Making sure that you're clear on the corporate world, corporate mindset.

You know how to work with people. You always know your skills gap and you're working seriously to upskill. So what are you upskilling? Communication, relationship building, critical thinking, right? Managing expectations, stakeholder management, productivity, prioritization, time management,

project management, adaptability, all these things, right, guess what, you can still upgrade those, even if you're choosing your family, even if you're taking a slower pace, you can still upgrade those skills. In fact, if you upgrade those skills correctly, it will actually give you a little bit more time for family because you are way more efficient and effective. And you're not going to take that much time to do something that you know you have pretty much optimized and able to work a lot faster so by doing these you know getting clear on the culture the mindset the people and then continuously upskilling will give you that real solid foundation to then set yourself up to develop a positive professional reputation

that can get you more opportunities whether it's through networking internally externally or building your brand on linkedin making sure that you are discovered and you can continue to attract career opportunities that is the foundation that is the foundation that i have done for myself that allowed me to easily move between choosing family and then the next thing I could choose money, then family again, then money, vice versa. But kind of like maintaining both at the same level, finding that good balance to be able to achieve both goals. Because obviously, like both are important, right? I say that if you're in the process of building your career, maybe if you're listening or watching this as an 18-year-old, 20-year-old, 25-year-old, 35-year-old, depending on where you are along your career journey, especially I would say that probably if you're a little bit younger than 45, there may be some career telling me you want to be entrepreneur then like okay different story but generally speaking like you are still along your corporate career journey right whether it's a fresh graduate all the way to c-suite there is something that you want to focus on that there's still there's always a lot of things that you can improve but idea of today is kind of

like up to you to find that balance but prioritizing one over the other but also not forgetting that you don't not forgetting that you don't have to completely abandon the second option. So family and money, or rather family and career can kind of exist together, but one may be prioritized and the other one, maybe you can take some steps to still do something. So I'm not sure if I'm making sense here. So let me know if you think that I'm making sense. But based on my personal experience is I have managed to balance both from probably in the last probably like more than 10 years of my career, being able to take multiple career breaks and eventually able to return to the corporate world in a with a much better position title job description you know different functions and

so forth like it did not significantly affect that but i think that sometimes finding that balance balance is the real challenge and that's something to to think about something to think about. So, what would you wish would you choose? So if you could only choose one or rather, where are you in your career right now? Are you in a position to want to choose your family because that's important to you? Or you are in a position to want to choose money because you are building your wealth and you want to make more money in your career. You're looking for a promotion. You want more job opportunities. Now, which one is you?

Let me know and also let me know what is actually stopping you from maybe making the next career move. Is family a big consideration for you when you're thinking about the next career move? Maybe you need to move to a different country, move to a different company or maybe you need to work longer hours that you think is going to affect your family life um let me know i'll be really interested to find out and really hear a little bit from you um in terms of like how much your family affects your your career decisions or maybe your money making abilities um so to speak so if there's something that you want to share your personal experience or you feel that you resonated with the story that i shared with you yeah feel free to let me know in the comments i would really love to love to hear from you

okay so thank you everybody for joining lives i'm seeing um some comments so for those of you who maybe want to share some reflections from today's live stream topic which is between family and money which one will you choose feel free to drop it in the comment box i really love to hear what you think um because i think it's one of those topics that we don't really talk about a lot but i think it's a really really important part because we spend so many hours at work that we we can't really differentiate right between work slash family slash money like sometimes a lot of it is actually integrated together if if you get what i'm saying okay all right so just want to say hi to a couple of people hi marco today is my second day seeing you so thanks so much for joining and hopefully you gain some interesting insights from today's sharing

all right hi adriel and hi samsu as well thanks so much for joining live um so in case um you have just dialed in today is day two of my 30 day careers live stream challenge where i will be talking about some interesting topics that are probably on a lot of your mind. These are also inspired from the multiple DMs that I receive on LinkedIn, YouTube, Instagram, across my different social media platforms. It can also be topics inspired by the good slash bad advice that I also see across different social media platforms as well. So if you have a topic or you come across any specific career advice on social media and you're wondering to yourself whether is this good advice? Is this bad advice?

You know, maybe what do you think? So if you want to know what I think and for me to share a little bit more perspective, feel free to drop me a DM with the topic. And if you share the link, that would be great as well so that I can cover it in an upcoming live stream. So this is something I'm going to do every day in May 2022 at 9 o'clock GMT plus 8. And that's Singapore, Malaysia and Hong Kong time. So join me if you are free

and feel free to share some of your perspectives in the comment section as well. So this is really a candid live stream for me to share a lot of my thoughts that, as you guys know, I spend a lot of time on social media because I get a lot of messages from you guys on LinkedIn with multiple questions. And I think one of the best ways that I can give back is by doing these live streams where I can share a lot of my thoughts candidly on interesting topics, topics that you guys care about, and for you all to join live and share perspectives with me. So feel free to do that. And for those of you who may have missed out yesterday's live streams or you want to catch any of the live streams in this next 30 days, I will be

uploading the recording on YouTube and Spotify. So if you want to check out the replays, make sure that you subscribe to my YouTube channel or you can follow me on Spotify as well. So if you have any questions, feel free to share with me, ask me in the comments, reflections from today's sharing, feel free to do that. Any suggestions on upcoming live stream topics, let me know as well. So I will be publishing the topic every day on my LinkedIn and probably around lunchtime, maybe 12 plus to one o'clock.

So that keep a lookout for those topics, those announcements on your feed and set reminder. And yeah, just dial in at 9 o'clock and I will probably see you every day for the next 30 days up till the end of March. So yeah something that I want to be able to be consistent with because my LinkedIn community has definitely grown and I feel like I haven't really had the time to drop every single person a DM so hopefully with these sessions I can really say hi to you guys sound well wishes feel a little bit more connected with my live career advice that hopefully can help you to improve your career hopefully I'll help you to improve your career

now there's one more other thing that since I was talking a lot about career planning right so one of the most common questions I get asked is, okay, so Mipin, how should I plan my career? So if you've been following me for some time, I'm sure that you have heard me talking about this plan your career in six steps or rather the six-step career planning strategy. And that's something that I've been talking about for like long time for a long time so if you want to learn a little bit more on how to plan your career step by step and maybe this can help position you better if you want to take a career break or you want to prioritize your family at some point at least the six-step career strategy can help you set a stronger foundation in terms of um yeah set a stronger foundation in terms of

okay if you're really going to take a break and focus on your family does it mean that you need to your career will be gone no so if you set it up correctly then you know at least you know things are pretty safe because the foundationally is done correctly so if that's something you want to do, you can just go to www.growyourcorporatecareer.com. So it's a video training where I'll actually go through step by step, right, from the starting point of you thinking about your career options and getting clarity around your career interests and direction and it's going to be highly relevant even if you're a job seeker because i actually go through the steps as well as the mistakes that you are making as a job seeker but you don't realize it and the other part is if you're currently struggling in the corporate world and you feel like hey maybe i am working very long hours maybe i'm very inefficient maybe i'm getting things done too slowly and that is also impacting the time that I'm spending with my family because if I can do something faster, if I can be more effective, I can be more efficient or I can be more productive, maybe I can go home earlier.

This could be an indicator that you might want to upskill. So in this training, in the second half of this training, I actually go through the top 12 soft skills that are going to be really, really important if you want to improve your work performance and by improving your efficiency productivity and effectiveness uh basically what it means is that you can go home earlier okay and when you can go home earlier obviously you're going to spend more time your family and do what actually matters to you and i think that's important so um this was a training that i did run live in early april so if you've missed it, don't worry. This is actually the pre-recorded version.

So you can just go to www.growyourcorporatecareer.com and you can actually go through these six steps on career planning. So whether you are in the process of, you know, thinking about your career decision, thinking about whether you need to take a career break or not, I'm very sure this training is going to be super duper helpful for you. So you can just go to the link over here. Then the other thing also is that for those of you guys who have been asking me about my online program, this is actually the online program with a bonus one-on-one coaching call. So in this program, I'll actually go through the three-step framework, as I mentioned

to you, getting clear on the corporate world, understanding about people, upskilling, specifically communication as well as productivity skills so that you can go home a little bit earlier so in this program i actually go through the step by step and once you have laid down the foundation then i will teach you how to do your internal networking as well as your online branding as well so everything is sort of a step by step after you fix the foundation then we are ready to blast out your personal branding and your personal reputation so if there's something that you want to blast out your personal branding and your personal reputation. So if there's something that you want to check out, you can just go to www.thecorporatesurvivor.co.

So anything else, make sure that you drop me a DM. Happy to answer any of your questions. Okay, so if you guys have any quick questions, let me know. Otherwise, thank you so much for joining the live stream. I know it's a bit impromptu at the moment because I didn't exactly announce it. There were some people who joined, some people were like, maybe what's this? So if you find value in listening to me

share some thoughts around very interesting topics and maybe helping you make certain career decisions that is going to be helpful for the future um yeah future of your career maybe your life as well feel free to join we will go in live nine o'clock then for every day this month and yeah feel free to invite a friend if you feel that these sessions are super helpful as well so i don't see any further questions but i hope today's topic whether you know choosing family or money slash career is a good topic for you to ponder on over this festive season because this is the time that we're spending a lot of time with our friends our family catching up on multiple things

so yeah hopefully you have a really really good time to reflect and to really focus on what is important to you not just in your career but in your life as well so with that I will see you tomorrow Cheers