Corporate Survivor with Mei Phing : Career Growth In The Corporate World - Ep49: 10 big wins as a career coach in 2020.

Episode Date: December 23, 2020

✅ 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. Hi everyone, this is Mei Ping and I'm a career coach. Welcome back to my Got a Ping podcast. So it is a career podcast that you should listen to if you want to grow your career

online and offline. So welcome back if this is, you've been following me for some time, if it's your first time listening to my podcast, I really, really want to welcome to you. So this is actually the last episode for this year, episode 49, where I will be talking about my top 10 wins as a first year career coach. So for those of you guys who have been following my journey for some time, you would know that I pretty much started as a career coach out of necessity, really, rather than, you know, interest or whatever, because I pretty much quit my full time banking job in Singapore, I returned to Malaysia to care for my mom. She was ill during that time. And in the

meantime, I thought, you know what, since a lot of people have been asking me, what did I do in my careers, you know, to move up the corporate ladder and how did I become top performer every year? Why not start career coaching? Why not start sharing more tips? Why not start helping more people who actually have the same desires and the same ambitions for themselves? So that's pretty much a little bit about me. If you are new to my content, new to my podcast, or even new to my channel. So the other quick update here is that you would have noticed that this is pretty much a video that I'm doing right now. This is something really new that I'm starting for my podcast. For those of you who prefer some more visual element to my podcast, you can always check the videos out on my YouTube channel. So anyway, let's get back to today's

episode, which is pretty much the last episode to wrap up my first crazy year as a coach. So the first, first, first big win, I think, to be honest, is the fact that I actually started as a coach. Even, yeah, the fact that I actually did something about it and actually started this career coaching journey. So, so yeah, so if you've been following me for some time, you'll know that the brand that I've been using is Gotapeng. It's the brand for my podcast, my YouTube, and all the other trainings that I've done. So the fact that I have started Gotaping, which is my coaching and training brand, I think

that is to me the biggest achievement of 2020. So instead of feeling depressed about my family situation, I actually channeled my energy to do something i believe is more productive and more impactful to to help other people improve in their career and you know improve their linkedin presence right so yeah i mean that's something that i think i'm extremely proud of this year and i hope that if you have connected with me if you have come across any of my content, you find that it has been helpful to you as well. So I think that's like a really, really big kudos that I give to myself. So, you know, you should always give yourself a pat on the back if you feel like you have done well. So that's a big kudos that I'm giving myself this year. Yeah, so the second

win, I think for me, is the fact that I have been really consistent in churning out content. So for those of you who know, also know my story a little bit better, I've actually been on LinkedIn since 2012. So that's pretty much eight to nine years ago, but I've never ever once created content. It's because I was in a really, really busy corporate job. I was really, really focused on my job. And the fact, you know, as a corporate professional, I didn't really need to create content for me to get job opportunities. So my focus really wasn't so much about sharing knowledge, but it was more towards, you know, my own career at that point. So on 1st January 2020, I decided that, hey, you know what, if I want to share insights, I want to share knowledge, I want to share tips, then it's a really, really good way that I start sharing it on online platforms. So the first platform I actually thought of getting started definitely on LinkedIn. It was the platform that I have used for a really long time, since 2012.

It was also the platform that got me a lot of job opportunities over the years. So I decided to start pretty much at a place that I was so familiar with already. So 1st of January 2020 was the first day I ever recorded a video, really, really scary. Then since then, I have been creating content on LinkedIn about, I don't know, I think about three to five posts every single

week. So if you guys are really interested in like my insights on career, job search, personal branding, personal growth in general, right, feel free, definitely, definitely connect with me. So I think that's something that I am definitely proud of because creating content is not really that difficult for me because I share a lot of my personal experience and professional experiences. But I think the challenge really is to create consistent content because sometimes, you know, you just, yeah, you just don't feel like doing it. But I do think that the fact is that if you have something to share, then it is not too difficult to kind of come up with ideas so yeah just like making sure

that I'm consistent with it I think it's a big win for me this year okay so the next big win I think as a first year career coach is the fact that I got to I got invited as a speaker for a lot of very big organization education organizations organizations, universities, and so forth, which I think is something that I didn't exactly expect as a first year coach. But having said that, I am really, really thankful for the trust and for all the experts and the education associations for really recognizing the value that i can bring to their students to their professionals um you know to yeah to basically working professionals see how i can actually really use my experiences and sharing with them

so so this year alone i did so many talks that i um i should really keep track of them. So some of the major ones that I definitely remember are the ones with ACCA. So ACCA is a global accountancy body for accountants. So if you're an accountant, hi, I'm also an ACCA member. So I did talks for ACCA Singapore and ACCA Europe, which covers basically between the two of them, covered about a total of like 20 plus countries. So really sharing my insights on how accountants can become future ready,

some of the skills that are required. I've also done many talks for students at universities in Singapore, in Malaysia, in the US, in Canada, in Hong Kong, and so forth. So also sharing on how they can actually look to plan their career, how they can grow in their career, how they can develop a personal brand on LinkedIn. So some of the topics that I'm really, really familiar with, but I think, you know,

definitely thankful that that is something that's also recognized by the younger generation. It is also recognized by universities that that's something that they want to equip their students with. So really, really thankful for all those invitationsitations so if any of your organizers are listening thank you so much okay so moving on to the next one uh so one of like i think the one of the really really big wins this year is the fact that i got to collaborate with some of the top universities

in the world as a career coach so notably the the University of Hong Kong HKU master's program student. So I've been working with the Hong Kong university team since October. And since then, I've worked with so many students who are pretty much master's students across different, different areas of studies. So I think it's really exciting for me to work with Gen Z, work with the younger generation, understanding where they are coming from in their career

in terms of their passions. But more importantly, being able to give them that kind of guidance that they need in terms of like career clarity, resume, CV review, how they can position themselves better during the interviews, even personal branding as well. A lot of them are actually really interested to build an online personal brand,

build a LinkedIn presence, which I think is really, really a positive thing because you know what we're all living in a digital world so if you don't have an online presence pretty much you don't exist so the fact that you know students recognize it recognizes this um universities recognize this i think this is really a really important step forward so some other top university collaborations as well with NTU Singapore where I ran cross-cultural communication workshop this year. So this is one of the ones I remember the most because communication is something that is so critical but most people think that they don't have a problem. So the fact is that like if somebody cannot understand you

then you have a communication problem whether you want to recognize it or not and some of the experiences I did share with the students was the fact that in my previous corporate role when I was leading teams at Standard Chartered I used to work with people from 43 countries and personally for me I enjoy traveling so I've been to 37 countries and counting probably hundreds of cities over the years. So really, you know, meeting different kind of people, talking to them and understanding where they're coming from culturally and so forth. So that was really a big piece that I felt that I could share. And personally, it does help me a lot in my work with my coaching clients as well. So I work with clients from over 30 countries. And I think the fact that I have traveled to most of the countries where my clients are from and also being able to kind of understand their lingo,

understanding, you know, at a baseline level, how they communicate, what are their preferences has really helped me a lot in my coaching business. And I think it allows me to be a more effective career coach. So that's something that I'm really, really thankful that my personal and professional experience, actually, I was able to translate into, yeah, into being a better career coach, right? A better career coach for my clients, for my students,

and more working professionals down the road. Okay, so some of the other wins that I think, I'm only, if you guys are watching our video, you'll see that I'm turning to the left because I have a list. Yeah, so some of the other wins definitely include. So in November, I was actually invited to be one of the panel speakers for a virtual career expo. So this was actually organized by one of the state governments in Malaysia. So to me, it was an absolute honor to be invited as one of the key speakers because they had like up to the chief ministers and, you know, all these people from government agencies. So I'm really proud to

be considered and to be part of that really important event to help job seekers from affected industries because of the COVID and pandemic and so forth, to helping them transition and positioning themselves well to be able to move to other areas that they can then continue to pursue their career. So I was really, really thankful to be invited and to have the opportunity to be part of that expo. So thank you so much to the organizer, Pink Label. Thank you.

Okay, so some other wins number six is the fact that i finally launched my workshop and master classes so this year alone i think i i ran about like 20 plus master classes and workshops already just under the god of ping brand so some of the topics that i ran were workplace soft skills, how to improve your LinkedIn. I also ran interview skills workshop. I ran speaking up at work, right? So communication skills. I also ran some other personality workshops as well.

So that was pretty much, yeah, a big chunk of workshops that I ran this year. Or rather, if you have followed me earlier in the year I used to call this master classes so really really glad to have worked with so many people and also you know when I when I ran this master classes earlier in the year when the pandemic pretty much just happened I heard a lot of concerns from a lot of my students and clients and I think that you know the fact that I was able to connect with them gave me a lot of concerns from a lot of my students and clients. And I think that, you know, the fact that I was able to connect with them gave me a lot more perspective on the challenges that they were facing. So I was really appreciative of that. Yeah, but I think, you know, it's about consistency,

again, in running the workshops. And I think the fact is that there is a lot of trust and belief in the fact that I could help my students and my clients. So definitely next year, I want to run more resume writing workshops. I want to run more effective interview skill workshops and also how to leverage your, how to improve your LinkedIn profile and how to really use LinkedIn for job search, which I think that a lot of people talk about LinkedIn, but they have actually never found a job on LinkedIn. Like all these gurus, I don't think they know what they're talking about. But that's definitely something that I intend to do a lot more next year, because I get a lot of comments from people saying that, okay, we attended so many LinkedIn workshops, but none of this are actually practical to get a job. And what

I normally tell such students and such clients who have experienced it with some other coach but didn't get the result is that I told I used to tell them that that's because the coach that you reach out to has never himself or herself got a job on LinkedIn before so how can they teach you to do something that they have not actually done it themselves so yeah so if that's something that you want to do remember to check out my workshops next year there will be a promo code if you subscribe to my newsletter so remember to do that or you can reach out to me on dm i'll give you more details all right some other wins for this year win number seven is one-on-one clients you know when i first started as a career coach i thought like who in the world is going to be my client.

So the big lesson that I learned here is to always believe in your own skills and expertise that you need to really trust in that. And nowadays, to be honest, like a lot of my clients reach out to me. I don't really reach out to my clients. So I just continue to demonstrate what I know. I do a lot of sharing on YouTube, on Spotify, on LinkedIn and across all the social media platforms. And a lot of times that the working professionals Spotify, on LinkedIn, across all the social media platforms. And a lot of times, like the working professionals

and even students and fresh graders, they will reach out to me and just say, what you said makes a lot of sense. Like, can you help me? And I need more specific help in a one-on-one session and how we can work together. So that's something I'm really, really appreciative of. Of course, for one-on-one clients,

normally it's private and confidential. so I will not be quoting names. However, I will be sharing a list of the testimonials that I've gotten over this past year, which is more than 100 actually from students at my workshops, students at my events, one-on-one coaching clients who have been kind enough to drop me a testimonial. So that's something that I would definitely publish very, very, very soon. But I was really happy to see that a lot of my clients when we initially started, they were really shy. They had a lot of problems nailing a job. They couldn't really express themselves during interviews. They had really lousy resumes. But after working with me, be it one session, three sessions, and for some of them were working with me

for over six to 12 months, I think that inner confidence that they have is something that nobody will ever ever take away from them. So even if one day they decide that, hey you know Mei Ping, I can fly now and you know I'm ready to do my own thing and yeah and that's something that they will always always take away with them which is the confidence, the skill, the competence, and the expertise that I've managed to impart to them. So that's something that I will always, always be proud of. Okay, so the next win, I think this year, definitely is the fact that I even started this podcast at all. So if you've been following me for some time, this was a podcast that I randomly started in February this year. I thought, you know what,

I have a lot of conversations with people during the day. And I see a lot of, I see a lot of, I guess, insights and tips and whatever not. So it kind of came to me and say, okay, you know, why not just actually record it and publish it so that more people can actually gain from it. And I very intentionally set the episodes between, you know, 10 to 20 minutes. Most of my actually record it and publish it so that more people can actually gain from it and i very intentionally set the episodes between you know 10 to 20 minutes most of my podcast episodes if if they've been following me for some time you know that is to be honest it's only between like 10 to 12 minutes because we have very very short attention span so i want to make sure that you guys actually get the key message rather than listening to me ramble on for like 30 minutes, but you don't get anything from it.

So check out my 10-minute podcast episodes. These are really short. You can just listen to it like on the way to work, on the way from work, plug it in your car, whatever that you want. also definitely did this year after I started my podcast which is more of an audio experience was to republish all the episodes on YouTube because I got quite a number of requests from some of my students who says that to tell me that they don't really like Spotify but they spend a lot more time on YouTube so hence hey I'm here on YouTube and a little bit of a level up for me the fact that I am on video right now so that shows that I also want to level up my, I guess, YouTube skills or whatever you want to call it. So for those of you listening on Spotify, continue to enjoy my episodes on Spotify. They will continue to be published as Spotify podcast episodes.

But if you want a bit more of a visual experience, yeah, subscribe to my YouTube channel. It will be published. The video version will be published on YouTube going forward. Okay, so win number nine. My win number nine, to be honest, is a lot more personal. So this year is the full year that I have spent my time in Malaysia, partially because of the border closure due to coronavirus, but more importantly, because I really chose to spend time with my family. This is not something that I talk about a lot, but as I said earlier, my mom was actually quite ill and she passed away this year in July.

So something that will never, I believe, will never ever be taken away from me was the fact that I was with her this whole year you know from the time that she was a little bit better in the beginning of the year all the way to the fact that she deteriorated and eventually passed away in July I was there with her every single day and every step of the way so to me it's a personal win for me it has got nothing to do with my professional achievements as a coach or whatever but I think it's a really really important part of my story it was a really important part on why I decided to become a coach as I said a little bit earlier so so to me it's a big win that I was there and I continue to be here um yeah until you know I think all my personal stuff settles so um yeah so i really really appreciate my community and i appreciate every single person who has been really understanding

of my situation um and i really appreciate the empathy the kindness um the kind words and everything else so thank you so much i received so many kind um messages and encouragement and condolences messages uh over a period in but to say that in between july and october so i really really thank my community and if you are this if you are one of um one of the person in my god of pain community and network i sincerely thank you and nothing none of this would have happened without you guys so really really appreciate it okay so moving on to the last last last win this year um again you know it's really related to something personal as well um i won't go into detail on this but um i i think every person that who has lost somebody important to them understands that it is not an immediate bounce back. So no matter how much you smile to the public, there's still a lot of grief that I think each and every individual needs to go through. And I am not an exception to

the rule. So I think, you know, just gradually being able to see more of a sunshine and being just generally more hopeful you know the next day like um you know being more hopeful today compared to the day before i think it's a big win for me in life in my personal life um being able to always remember and cherish the memories you know my mom and spend time with my you know my family right now and the fact that i'm back in my hometown i think these are some things that continue to remind me where i came from and where i will continue to go in the future so um like i said you know this this win you know um it's not a professional win but i think it's a again a really important part of who i am as a person and who i want to be in the future.

And how this kind of experiences and my personal life actually shapes me to be a better person and to be whoever that I want to be. Maybe 10 years down the road, if you see me and hopefully I have not changed so much that I'm completely not recognizable. So I hope that I can still bring on the qualities that I think are important in life and the things that I really value.

So hopefully this will continue to stay. Okay, so I didn't mean to end this video on a more negative note. So that's definitely not my intention. But I just really wanted to really do a video today because when I started this podcast never had I expected that I would record 49 episodes in season one so season one as in 2020 right so this is the 49th episode that you're listening to right now so something something really proud of. I hope that every single one of you have enjoyed my content this year, have enjoyed my insights, my experiences,

my sharings, and I hope that we will continue to be connected next year. So there are a couple of exciting things that are going on right now. I am in the process of revamping my website. I am in the process of relaunching newsletters. I have scheduled two major workshops for next year. One of it is effective resume and interview skills. The other one is how to build LinkedIn, how to improve your LinkedIn profile and job search. So these are some of pretty much the upcoming stuff. So in 2021, my main goal is to be more engaged with my community, to be more engaged with you guys, to see how I can help you in your career, in growing your career online and offline. So if you have not yet connected yet, please do connect with me. I am most active on LinkedIn and would

really encourage you to connect with me. You will find the links in the description box below. But yeah, but other than that, I wish everybody a really, really happy new year. I hope that, you know, year 2021 is a time of light, is a time of hope and everything really goes well. And I look forward to seeing you guys next year. So if you enjoy the video version of this, give me a comment below so that I know that this is something that I'm going to do in the future.

Till then, till 2021. See you guys bye