Corporate Survivor with Mei Phing : Career Growth In The Corporate World - Ep168: How I changed my life one year at a time.

Episode Date: March 2, 2023

✅ Get FREE GUIDE, newsletter, join career program 👉 http://www.meiphing.com ✅ Corporate Survivor™ is the ultimate career course for 9-to-5 working professionals, just like *you*, who want to enhance corporate world mindset, skillset and strategy so you can NAVIGATE + GROW your career with clarity, confidence & opportunities... 🚀 ⚡ 📌 ABOUT THIS PODCAST: Welcome to Corporate Survivor with Mei Phing — ex-Corporate Leader turned Career Coach & Founder of The Corporate Survivor™. On this podcast, Mei Phing shares her corporate world insights, experiences and wisdom so you can grow your 9-5 career with clarity, confidence and opportunities. ✅ WEBSITE ⮕ https://www.meiphing.com ✅ FREE GUIDE ⮕ https://www.thecorporatesurvivor.co/freeguide ✅ NEWSLETTER ⮕ https://www.thecorporatesurvivor.co/mondays ✅ CAREER COURSE ⮕ https://www.thecorporatesurvivor.co ⚡

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. Today is my birthday. So let's talk about my life. So you know how people always talk about you learn a lot of lessons in your younger days

as you go along your life journey. And I definitely have as well. But I think in today's particular episode, I just want to share with you, you know, year on year, step by step as I move along my little journey called life, some of the things that have made me who I am today. So let's begin. At age one, I'm the first child and the first granddaughter of my family. So a bundle of joy if you want to say. At age two, honestly, I don't remember but there are a lot of baby photos of me running around doing I don't know what and same with age three. At age four, honestly, I don't remember much as well but my parents used to tell me that at kindergarten,

I had this friend called Maggie and eventually, long story, she actually ended up in the same secondary school as I did later on in life. At age five, I remember I attended a kindergarten where there was this homework where we had to write Chinese characters, which I was really, really bad at. And I really remember crying and telling my mom that I don't want to ever learn the Chinese language because that was the point in time of my young life, I realized that I'm not talented in the Chinese language at all and more that story later. At age 6, I guess graduated kindergarten and really looking forward to growing up and entering school year in the next year.

At age 7, I started my primary school education in Malaysia, very quiet kid and that really continued on at age 8, 9, 10. And I remember that at age 11 and even the years before, we've always been asked by our school and our teachers to complete this little card that asks you, what is your ambition when you want to grow up? And I remember from the age of 7, 8, 9, 10 and 11, I've always put in the word architect. And honestly, I don't remember why. And I don't think at that time, I truly understood what an architect actually does. I mean, obviously I know now, but at that time, maybe it was just a word that appealed to me. I don't know why, but this will actually come to play later on in life where I ended up building

a lot of things, even though I did not end up as an architect. I was 12 years old and I remember specifically even though I was in my primary school I was a prefect at that time and one of those little tasks that they give very young kids during that time as a prefect is that you need to officiate the assembly like the school assembly and I remember standing up on stage and having a mic in front of like the entire school and that was the first time I realized that oh you know public speaking is not for me it was so scary you know looking at everybody at you know looking up at me and that was the really the first time I felt stage fright and the worst thing was was that the other thing I learned also is I sound very funny over the microphone and it's a very scary thing as a 12 year old and then

I remember coming down from stage after that and everyone's saying that hey maybe you sound very funny how come maybe you sound like a baby I know it's very ironic now that you know you're listening to me on podcast but I remember at that time was really scary and it actually stopped me many many many years later on from doing anything related to public speaking or doing anything related to the fact that I have to speak into a microphone because I always had that phobia of people saying that I sound very funny, I sound very young, I sound like a baby. I know it doesn't make a lot of sense now but childhood phobias really do stay. So moving on to age 13 when I officially started my secondary school education, Still very awkward, very nerdy,

take glasses. I look really, really, really, really awkward and made some new friends because it was a new school for me. At age 14, I kind of became a prefect again and I was studying during the afternoon school at that time and I remember that my mom would always prepare food for me in the morning before I take the school bus at 12 o'clock. And moving on to age 15, I moved from afternoon session school to morning session school and really got to know more people, I guess, you know, mid-teens, as we would say. And then at the age of 16, I realized that, you know what, science subjects is really not for me. And I actually took a bit of an unconventional path to not spend a lot of time with the other, I guess, top performance in school

and really charting my own path and like kind of going to a different class. So, you know, long story there. And at age 17, I did the SPM exams in Malaysia, which is kind of equivalent to the O-levels in Singapore. And I got straight A's. How? Long story. But that was kind of a bit of a surprise. And I think my parents were actually really happy about that. At the age of 18, I completed high school and started my college education. So I decided to pursue the ACCA qualification, which is an accountancy qualification. Now, how I decided eventually to choose my education, not really because I was like super passionate about something.

It didn't really work like that. But I really thought about my school life. And I looked into a lot of these subjects that I took in school and I realized that I wasn't really particularly interested in any of them but accountancy was one of those subjects that I didn't feel like I put in a lot of effort but I always used to score really really high marks so I thought okay well maybe this is something a bit more natural to me. So I decided to pursue ACCA as a qualification. Then next, at the age of 19, I was in the national newspaper for having been the ACCA world prize winner for one of the subjects. So the first time I was in a newspaper. Then at the age of 20, I moved from Penang to KL to continue my final year of ACCA in a college. And one of the reasons why I went to KL was because I really wanted to practice independent

living, meaning living away from my family. And I remember that my mom, one of the trips that my mom visited me in a student accommodation in KL, and then she mentioned to me, oh, you know, seeing how useless you are at home, I'm actually really surprised that you could survive alone and it's been many months. So yeah, so something to be really proud of actually. Then at the age of 21, I graduated from ECCA and you know, hooray, right? As enthusiastic, I thought, okay, you know,

I can find a good job and yeah, you know, have success in 905. However, that didn't really turn out well because it was during the financial crisis and there were no jobs available so this is something that if you've followed me for a while I talk about it a lot where I ended up having to join a very small company being underpaid because there were no jobs available but there were a lot of good things that came out from that as well then at the age of 22 when the economy recovered I decided that I would

apply for a role overseas and I moved from Malaysia to Singapore and joining Earns & Young Singapore in an audit and compliance position. Then at the age of 23, I was the top performer at Earns & Young and even the year before as well and sometime in the middle of the year, I was hanging around LinkedIn in 2013 and I realized that hey you know there are some new opportunities available and I decided to apply and that's how I ended up a role in Visa covering Asia Pacific, Middle East, Central Europe and Africa. At 24, that was the year that I spent a lot of my time traveling all around the world because the role in Visa required a lot of travel. So that year alone, both for business travel and solo travel, I have been to so many countries in Southeast Asia, in Oceania, the US and so forth and I

remember that on the 1st of January in 2014 I was in Bagan, Myanmar which is really one of the most beautiful places in the world and that was that I think would wrap up the beginning and an ending of a really really beautiful 2014 for me. At 25 I made a career change from Visa back to the financial services industry and I landed a role with Standard Chartered. So if you've been following me, I also shared the story around how I was headhunted by Standard Chartered's global HR team via LinkedIn. I ended up joining a pioneer team, you know, re-looking and re-designing the financial crime compliance framework. So also during that year, I was promoted from senior executive to manager within three months of joining the bank

and also got a pretty good salary increment from that. And from there on, another three months, I was given a much bigger portfolio to manage. And from talking to just senior executive and manager level, I ended up dealing with director level and even up to managing director level. So 2015 was a really, really intense year for me. And during that time, I think, you know, I was still really young, but it was just a lot, a lot, a lot going on for me. So it was a very steep learning curve, very intense experience, but something that to me is really, really valuable

up to today. Okay, I think at this point, I might have jumbled up the years a little bit, but the main point was that when I was 27, it was the year that I moved to Standard Chartered. And from senior executive, I was promoted to manager in three months. And the next three months, I was given a much bigger portfolio. And I ended up the year working,

I think five times harder than I've ever worked in my life and really jumping from one new experience to the other. Then next, at the age of 28, I step out from my own comfort zones being a public speaker where I learned how to become a public speaker in 90 days and I remember that in the first quarter of 2016 was when my compliance team together with a business partner, we had to run expert training all over the world meaning for Q1 I was in I had to deliver training in New York London then we went to Dubai and then went to Hong Kong then we did it twice in Singapore then in India and then back to London so that was

the 90-day crazy experience for me and I remember that when I was in New York it was so scary having to stand up and speak to 40 people not just in the New York office but many of them have actually flew in from the South America's team to listen to the strategy and the direction and the execution for my team I remember that time I only spoke for 10 minutes but it was just so so so scary but I knew that if I didn't do it then who would do it right because it was an expert training meaning that it's not like a general training but it's really something to deliver strategy to everyone else working in that particular portfolio so 2016 again was a very intense year for me and towards the later half of 2016 I actually decided to resign from my job because that was the first time my mom's cancer actually relapsed. So in August 2016, I decided to quit my job

with not exactly knowing when I would come back but that was the first time I actually quit and went back to being a caregiver. Next, in 2017 and I think I was about 29 at that time, I decided to return to Standard Chartered in a new portfolio, actually transitioning from compliance to the business. And how I managed to land the role was when I was taking a career break, I was still active on LinkedIn. I still remain networked to a lot of my colleagues at Standard Chartered. And I was actually requested and rather given the opportunity to return to the bank in a different role, different portfolio and with a promotion as well.

And of course, salary increment. So that was how I moved from the second line to the first line, which is the business side. And at the end of the year, I was top performer and then I was promoted to director. Then next in 2018, that was a very crazy intense year as well. So aside from taking on new responsibilities, the team expanded. So I started from just working with, guess a slightly smaller team it gradually expanded to

over 40 countries and I was managing that and not only that I was actually the person who started the fintech governance committee it's then a charter and I worked with a lot of people actually from not just executives but manager director and during time, I actually spent a lot of time on regulatory projects as well as at the managing director level. So very close to the C-suite level at that time. At the age of 31, I decided that, you know, time, the final years or final time to spend with my mom is something really important to me. And I decided to forego my career and return home to become a caregiver.

2020 was actually the year that my mom passed away. So I kind of took a bit of a break, you know, from career coaching, from career training and everything else. In 2021, when I was 33, I decided to say, hey, you know, let's maybe run some workshops on career skills, you know, workplace skills, LinkedIn strategies and so forth. So I started running two-hour workshops online, sharing with clients and students,

basically anybody working in the nine to five, on how they can become better in their career, which is really some of the questions that I get asked very often. And these are the things that I work on with my private clients. So 2021, when I was 33, was really spent all on that.

Then the next year, and when I was 34, really spent all on that then the next year and when I was 34 and now we are in 2022 that was when I realized that hey everybody's asking me the same question and obviously my community has also grown a lot not just on LinkedIn initially but on Instagram, Spotify, YouTube and everywhere else and 2022 when I was 34 was the year that I launched the Corporate Survivor which is my career training and mentoring course. And if you've been following me, you would have heard me talking about this a lot because it actually came about a lot of thought and also came about from the entire career journey of being mostly a corporate junkie, someone who has actually worked in corporate 9 to 5 for most of my career and gradually transitioning. So I think, you know, my career across the corporate sphere is something that is really important to me because I feel like how I came about developing the program

also came about a lot of unconventional decisions that I've made in my career. And I hope to also help other 9-5 professionals to not suffer so much, even though I went through a lot in my career, but I don't think that, you know, there's a need for you to do that because nowadays there are so many resources and support available. And that brings us to 2023 and I am 35 today, so I'm definitely looking forward to more exciting things in the future. You know, personally for me, there are a couple of goals that I want to, to you know achieve this year and maybe as time goes on as well i think the first one is that i like to

continue working with more nine to five professionals clients in my career course corporate survivor particularly during the group mentoring sessions as well so group mentor is actually something i introduced last year and i think is a great opportunity for me to follow you on your career journey and help you with any obstacles or problems along the way so the group matter is definitely something that I want to continue the second one is I want to build a stronger community online as well so I have a big community on LinkedIn Instagram you know YouTube Spotify and so forth but I think there is an opportunity for us to connect a lot deeper as well.

So if you've been following my content, don't just be a silent reader. Drop me a message, communicate, drop a comment. I always love to hear from you. So I do want to focus on building a stronger community and a stronger connection between me and you this year and hopefully beyond as well. And the third goal that I have for this year and beyond is definitely to spend time with family and spend time with loved ones because that's really the real reason why I quit my job against everybody's advice I quit my job and eventually

became a career coach today and I'm still enjoying what I'm doing right now you know I think the messages from my clients, my community always encourage me to go on and I hope that I can still go on many, many more years down the road. So there's been some reflections on my overall, I guess, life journey, if you want to call it. But I think the biggest, you know, lesson that I've learned and I also hope that you can learn as well

is that sometimes there are things that happen along our life journey or career journey that we don't think are important things we don't think are significant things but they can become important things in the future in the future so i'll give some examples you know before we wrap it up so remember at the earlier part of the episode i talked about how i find it very very difficult to learn the chinese language. Interestingly, when I was in university and later on when I started EY, I actually met some colleagues who were actually very kind

and they taught me and allowed me to practice my very lousy Chinese language with them. And that has really helped me improve a lot. And right now I can definitely hold a conversation. I also have some clients speaking with me in different languages as well. So that's one part. And the other

thing remember I told you about how I have always indicated architect as one of my childhood ambitions obviously you know I'm not an architect right now but if I were to reflect on my career journey I do think that there were a lot of roles that I took that allowed me to build things right so I've always built frameworks build guidelines guidelines. I've always joined new teams, pioneer teams, building things. And even nowadays as a career coach, I've been building workshops, building training materials, building career courses, right? Basically helping you to build your career. So I do think that sometimes, you know, as you look backwards, a lot of the passions and interests and decisions that you have made in your earlier years may eventually turn into something. But I think a lot of times like we don't spend enough time to reflect on our own journey

so I hope that this episode is something that also encourages you to think about your own career journey and some of the lessons that you can learn from them and empower you as you go along so thank you so much for being part of my community, whether you're a client or your core student or just simply, you know, someone in my community. I really appreciate you. Thanks for being here.

If you have just found me yesterday, last week, last month, last year or many, many, many years ago, I appreciate you and thank you so much for being part of my life. So till then,

I'll see you in the next episode. Bye.