Tiger Sisters - The 3 Stanford Tools That Rewired How We Think In 19 Minutes

Episode Date: August 25, 2025

Most of us were never taught how to make life’s biggest decisions — not in school, not in our first jobs. At Stanford GSB, we learned frameworks that rewired how we think about careers, relationships, and life itself.This episode is Part 2 of our most downloaded series (“Everything We Learned at Harvard & Stanford”), where we break down three powerful tools from Stanford Business School and show you how to apply them — with real company case studies and mini exercises you can try right now.We share:✅ Jobs to Be Done — why people really “hire” products (LinkedIn, Netflix, Sisters Matcha)✅ Mini exercise: uncover what people are hiring you for at work✅ Decision Trees & Expected Value — how billion-dollar companies (and you) make better choices without spiraling✅ “I may be wrong, but I’m not confused” — a decision-making mindset shift✅ A 4-step method to evaluate job offers, entrepreneurship, or any life pivot✅ Life as a Product Roadmap — how to use OKRs (Objectives & Key Results) to prioritize what matters✅ Real examples of health, fitness, and creativity OKRs — and how accountability helps you follow through🐯👯‍♀️ We’re the Tiger Sisters — Your Wall Street & Silicon Valley big sistersDecoding Money • Power • Love✨ New episodes every Monday | Shorts all week ✨🎯 Sponsored by mbaMission, the #1 MBA admissions consulting firm (Poets&Quants). Their expert team has helped 15,000+ applicants get into top schools. Start with a free 30-minute consultation at www.mbamission.com/consult and select “Tiger Sisters.” Use code “TIGERSISTERS30” for 30% off onTrack, their guided MBA application platform.💌 Partnerships: [e-mail]⏰ Timestamps00:00 Why no one teaches you decision-making00:15 The 6-part Harvard & Stanford series01:56 Framework 1: Jobs to Be Done02:52 LinkedIn + Sisters Matcha case study04:10 Mini exercise: What are you “hired” for?05:37 Framework 2: Decision Trees & Expected Value06:31 Real example: job offer vs. entrepreneurship07:49 Case studies: Netflix, Amazon, VC firms09:23 “I may be wrong, but I’m not confused” mindset09:45 Mini exercise: Map your pending decision11:04 Framework 3: Life as a Product Roadmap (OKRs)12:04 LinkedIn + personal OKRs13:18 Examples: health & hobby OKRs14:34 How OKRs give focus + guardrails18:45 Mini exercise: Set your personal OKR19:24 Wrap-up & takeaways👀 Newsletter: https://cherieluo.substack.com/🎁 Survey: https://forms.gle/rXpQtbpwU3qShHW26Why trust us?▫️ Cherie Brooke Luo – 100M+ views demystifying big tech, finance & MBAs▫️ Jean Luo – ex-Goldman, ex-Snapchat exec, 50+ AI patents, startup investor▫️ Together: 4 Ivy degrees • built billion-dollar products • two startups — decoded for youWhat you’ll get (and keep):▫️ 🚀 Ivy League cheat sheets – no $250K tuition required▫️ Personal finance playbooks – salary jumps, investing, money psychology▫️ Networking scripts – behind $100M+ deals, job offers & VC intros▫️ Real talk with unicorn founders, VCs, and billionaires▫️ Mindset resets – clarity minus the pricey life coach▫️ Fashion, wellness, and productivity hacks that actually work💛 LET'S CONNECT:~ CHERIE ~🤳🏻 Instagram – / cherie.brooke📱 TikTok – / cherie.brooke✍🏻 Substack – cherieluo.substack.com👩🏻‍💻 LinkedIn – / cherie-luo~ JEAN ~🤳🏻 Instagram – / jeanluo_👩🏻‍💻 LinkedIn – / jeanluo👉 Hit Subscribe & tap the 🔔, then WRITE A REVIEW and rate us ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ on Spotify & Apple Podcasts!Share this with someone figuring out their next big decision.🎵 Music: Sammy Signal – https://open.spotify.com/artist/2HsyknHuxhT8RoZfn5rqMS🛍️ Items: 🍵 Sisters Matcha – www.sistersmatcha.com | 🌀 Everything else – https://amzn.to/3z0dx5b

Let's be real. Most of us were never actually taught in life how to make big decisions, not in high school, not in college, and definitely not in your first job. At Stanford, we learned the tools on how to rewire our own personal operating system. How do you make better decisions for your career and your personal life? This is the next part of our most downloaded series, which is basically everything we learned at Harvard Business School and the most important tools we learned at Stanford's Graduate School of Business. I'm Cherie. I'm Gene. And we're the Tiger Sisters. We are the internet's Wall Street and Silicon Valley Big Sisters.

We're a top 10 business podcast on Spotify where we talk about money, power, and love. If you miss the first episode of the six most important tools that we learned at Stanford Business School, then definitely go back and binge it later. And so for each of these tools, once again, we're going to do two things. One, we're going to approach it like a real HBS Harvard Business School or Stanford GSB case study. which means we're going to bring examples from real companies and brands and from our own work experience. And the second thing we're going to do is that for each of these tools, we'll actually have a mini exercise that we can work through right here on the spot so that you actually experience the learnings as we're going through the podcast. And as you're going through the mini exercises live with us, we would love to hear from you guys. Please drop in the comments,

share some of the things you're thinking through. And we read through every single comment and we'll try to reply to all of them. And while you're at it, please like, comment, and subscribe, rate us five stars on Apple Podcasts and Spotify because it really helps other people find us and it helps keep Tiger Sisters alive. Great. Let's dive right in. The first framework is called jobs to be done. And honestly, this is one of the most misunderstood ideas or frameworks in product or marketing. This framework was first created by Clay Christensen during his time at HBS, but we learned this at Stanford as well and obviously took it to the next level. Hmm.

Okay, so here's the core idea in a nutshell. People don't actually buy products. They actually hire them to do a job in their life. And most of the time, that job is actually emotional, not just purely functional. And at LinkedIn, we use this framework all the time. If you take LinkedIn profile, for example, why do people update their profile. Is it for visibility? Is it for validation or is it to get hired? Knowing which job you are using the product for or your customers are using the product for really helps you understand

what to build. I thought of another example, which is our own product, Sisters Macha. You might think that people are buying Sisters Macha just because it's an ultra premium, super high quality, like amazing tasting matcha. But I think having talked to some of our customers, a big part of why they're buying it is because they love the narrative and the story behind it. And like, we've spent a lot of time sharing that narrative, how it comes from a small family-owned farm in Wazuka, Japan that you and I both worked on. And like, we've shown that whole journey of how it's made. So I feel like part of the reason why people are hiring Sisters Macha, our product, is that they are also kind of getting that sort of experience of being

a part of that whole sort of like community. Mm-hmm. Okay, so now let's do the mini exercise, which is think about your product, your service, or even your role at work, and be super, super honest with yourself. What are people hiring you for? Is it for your competence? Is it for your confidence? Is it because you are calm in the eye of the storm?

Is it because you are entertainment? Personality hire. Personality hire. Think about it and then put your answers in the comments so that we can see what you guys are doing. And next, we'll dive into Framework 2 right after this break. Applying to business schools, it's a lot. We know. Every decision feels high stakes.

Where to apply, when to apply, how do you stand out? You're Googling everything alone, hoping you're not making a huge mistake. Those months applying to business school, they were some of the most stressful of my life. Having an expert to guide you through the complicated application process, that's a game changer. And that's why we've partnered with MBA mission. They're offering Tiger Sisters listeners free, personalized one-on-one MBA consultations. You can ask their experts anything and get advice you can use right away. The essays, the interviews, sharpening your own personal narrative, think of them as your own

personal counselors to help you with the entire process. They are the leaders in MBA admissions consulting, and I wish I knew about them when I was applying. So go to MBAMission.com slash consult and pick Tiger Sisters in the drop-down menu to claim your free consultation today. Book now before the calendar fills up. Check out the episode description. We have a special discount for Tiger Sisters listeners for MBA Missions Special On Demand platform. They have over 25 hours of videos that take you step by step in the application process. All right. Now back to our show. And we're back. Okay, Framework 2 is about decision trees and expected values.

This second framework can really save you from decision-making paralysis, also known as how to make the big important decisions in your life without losing your mind. Think of it as a way to force clarity when the stakes are high so that you have both qualitative and quantitative methods. So the next time you have a really big decision to make, use the same. this process. There are four steps. One, list out all of your options. Two, sketch out the possible outcomes for each. Three, assign a probability and a payoff. And four, determine the expected value by multiplying the probability with that value. Okay, that sounds a little bit complicated, but I'll give a solid example. So for me, one time when I use this is when I was going through job offers. And I was looking at this job offer that basically looked amazing on paper. And there

were all these different components to it. So what I did was I mapped out three different outcomes for this job, right? One was best case scenario. One was worst case scenario. And then one was the most likely scenario. And then I kind of put a number to each of those outcomes, a value, basically. And then I multiplied each of those by the likelihood of each of those happening. So the most likely, one was the middle case. And then when I mapped that all out and I compared all the different outcomes, at the end of the day, it was kind of a meh offer despite the fact that it looked so amazing on paper. Meanwhile, you can compare that to another option, which is entrepreneurship, which actually looks really risky on paper. And most of the time, you can assign a very low value to it because

you're not making that much money at the beginning. But the option value and, you know, And the upside is actually huge when you map it out using this process. And the biggest companies out there don't just use their gut. They actually use frameworks to map out what are the potential options and which ones are most likely to happen. For example, Netflix uses this framework to greenlight their TV shows and movies. VC firms use this framework to better understand what companies to invest in. And like Amazon uses this framework to better understand their pricing models.

Yeah, I mean, gut instinct is cute, but billion-dollar companies, they use math and they use expected value. And I think it's really cool that you can take this framework that companies use in day-to-day business and honestly apply it to the smart decisions in your life. I think even worse than making a bad or a wrong decision is staying stuck. People often delay decision-making because they're afraid or scared of being wrong or looking wrong. But this framework actually shows you how to be wrong safely. And at that point, you have the most informed decision that you could possibly make. So then you get to choose. Something that's really ingrained in my head is that the LinkedIn product officer has a saying.

He says, I may be wrong, but I'm not confused. And that's something that people like quote back to him all the time. I like that. Who says that? His name is Tomer Cohen and he's head of product of LinkedIn. and he says that all the time when it comes to decision making because he's not afraid of being wrong. I like that.

But he's not confused. He knows the decision that he's made and, you know, he rolls with it. Yeah. Maybe I'll borrow that. Maybe I'll say instead, like, I may be wrong, but I have clarity. Exactly. Do you like that? Yeah.

Yeah. Okay, time for the mini exercise. I love this part. So the mini exercise for this framework is to pick some sort of decision that you've been putting off. and is living rent-free in your brain, and then actually do this. Map out two to three potential outcomes for this decision, assign some sort of value to each of those outcomes, and then also assign a probability to each of those outcomes, multiply those out, and then you get the expected value for each of them.

And once you model it out, the whole point is that it doesn't have to be perfect. It just has to be putting something down on paper so that you have more clarity than the swirl that's going on in your head today. And if you're open to sharing, we'd love to hear some of the decisions that you're thinking through in the comments below. And the expected values. And when you end up picking because I am nosy and I want to know everything that's going on in your lives. Cool. And the last framework combines Stanford design thinking with our product management background.

We'll get right to it after this break. Quick pause, Tiger fam. This is Sheree and we just dropped a brand new listener survey. It's different from the audience survey that you hopefully already filled out. It's 10 quick questions and 2 minutes max. Your support keeps the episodes free and publishing weekly. Why? Because your answers tell future sponsors that Tiger Sisters is a show worth investing in.

That means better partners, stronger episodes, and no random ads you don't care about. Tap the listener's survey link in the description right after this episode. Knock it out and help us keep building a podcast that feels made for you. Thank you from the bottom of our hearts for being the best part of Tiger Sisters. Now back to the show. And we're back. Okay, so the last framework, framework three, is life as a product roadmap, or also known as using OKRs, which are objectives and key results. So, Sheree, what can you tell us about this?

I first learned about the OKR objective key results framework in the professional setting at work. But I think it's really cool because you can actually use OKR. to plan out your own personal life, which is something that I do. Yeah, and so OKRs were actually invented by Andy Grove at Intel first, but it was also popularized by Google and also very much through Stanford's design program. And now it's pretty much used in, I would say, every tech company and lots of non-tech companies have also adopted OKRs. So at LinkedIn, of course, we have the professional OKRs, and these are like the larger goals

that our organization shares. so we know what goal everyone is working towards for the quarter. But we also did personal OKRs and we actually shared this on my larger team too. So basically you would have your larger goal and see how you would measure that goal in your personal life. And we would share this with our team. So everyone else would know kind of what we were doing in our personal lives as much as you wanted to share. But some funny things are like if people, their objective was to get into better shape, they would be like that's their goal.

Their key result is, oh, I need to go. gym for days a week. Some of the people on my team shared, they wanted to get better at dancing or they wanted to learn piano, but then we could kind of know more about their personal lives. So it was a fun activity in that way. Yeah, we actually did this on my team too. And it was also helpful because when you share your okay ours, then everyone else on your immediate team knows something that is very important to you personally. And they can actually support you through it. So I remember someone did have the goal of like, oh, I want to go to the gym three times a week. So like knowing that if this person was sort of like running late for their gym class,

we'd be like, no, no, no, don't worry about it. Just tackle this later. Go make your gym class. I know what's your personal OKR. Oh, that's so nice. Yeah. And supportive. Yeah.

At a supportive team. Yeah. I think it's fun also to share because in that way you have social accountability too. So that like by the end of the quarter, when we also did our review session of our personal OKRs, because like you can put a good. goal out there and put it out to the world, I have this objective, but you might not accomplish it. Then everyone at the end of the quarter was like trying to rush to make their OKRs if they could get something, you know, in by the fin, when the finish line was approaching. Yeah, but let's like continue

to roll with this example of explaining how to use OKR. So like if your objective is I want to get into better shape by the end of this quarter, you know, within three months, what are two of your KRs or key results that you would go along with it? And also explain what a key result is. A key result is how you measure your goal or measure that you achieved your objective. Okay. For example, it could be something like if your objective is to get into better shape, a key result could mean something like very numbers driven. Like I want to go to the gym three days a week for five weeks in a row, for example.

Or by the end of this quarter, I want to be, I don't know, I'm not like a gym bro, but I don't know, like 20% BMI or something like that. Yeah, yeah. Like you have like a number. 20% body fat or something like that. Exactly. So like you have a number that you can track week over week to see also how you're making progress towards your goal. Yeah. So like in the business world, most of the time OKRs are related to, you know, like major strategic goals or like growing the business. So it might be your objective is to hit this level of growth in the company. And then the key results are like achieve this sort of revenue in, you know, the sector of the business and then sign on like 25% new customers in this part of the business.

But you can see how it actually can be, it's very extensible and you can apply it to your everyday life in a way that's really helpful. And it makes the objective or the goal less scary because you get to break it down into very actionable milestones that you hope to see to show you that if you accomplish these key results, then you will have reached your stated objective. Yeah. And then one last thing I'll say about it is that actually a very powerful part of going through the OKR process is even just figuring out what sort of key results would ladder up to the objective and like going through that exercise because then it makes you like think about it. Like if I actually want to achieve this, what are the things that I have to do to like ladder up to that outcome? Why laughing? Because I just had a core memory activated. What?

In 2020, I was trying to make like a fashion styleware brand because I was really bored during COVID and I actually considered calling it OKR, which now upon reflection five years later, I understand how lame that is. But that's how much I like love OKRs. That's funny. Well, you would have had to like go back and like come up with another thing that it stood for. Yeah. Like it could stand for objective key result.

And like something else that's like trendy, fun, and cute. But like the idea came to me because I love OKRs. Yeah. That's like there's this one of the main company, one of the main car manufacturers in the world that is Chinese. It's called BYD. And originally BYD stood for something that's like Chinese. But when they opened up to the Western market, they renamed it. And they said BYD stands for Build Your Dreams, which is allegedly, allegedly.

Which is a pretty cool name for a company. Yeah. Yeah. I love it. I have to think of something for OKR that's less lame. I think the other good thing about OKRs is it makes you shine a light on what is actually most important to you and write it down because without OKRs, a lot of times everything can feel urgent and you're just like, I have to do this, I have to do this, I have to do this.

And then you're kind of just like tackling things as they come and you're not really being as effective as you could be. True. And like if you're in the corporate world and like people are asking you to do ABCD and like asking for your time to do stuff, if it doesn't ladder up to your personal OKRs, you can like choose whether or not you want to do it. You're a professional OKRs. Yes. You can choose whether or not to do it because it honestly might not serve you. So it like kind of serves also as a guardrail of like what success could look like for you in the professional world but also the personal world too.

Yeah. That's a great point. That's a I feel like that's kind of like another. episode, but just a little teaser is that a lot of times people, if they ask you do something, you'd be like, oh, well, I would love to do that, but I actually have to focus on XYZ first because that's my stated OKR. Yeah. Like, not that it's an excuse because it's a very valid excuse, but like you can very much point to a goal that you are setting out to achieve that everyone else has visibility into. On the other hand, it's kind of disastrous when your OKR

don't necessarily ladder up to the OKRs of the org that are like the org that encompasses you. That's a whole other story. Yeah. Dun, done done. To be continued. Let us know if you want to know more about that. Yeah, we have thoughts.

That goes into our power and influence episode. Go check it out in season four where we talk about influencing in the workplace. Hmm. Hmm. And the mini exercise for this framework is to set a personal okay. are for you. What are your goals? And how will you measure success if you achieve that goal? And it could be a totally personal goal. So for example, the goal could be, I want to improve my mental health. So that could be the objective. And then the KR's could be KR one, do three sessions of therapy

this quarter, KR2, journal twice a week for this quarter. And then KR3 take one full rest day. So that's, yeah, I love it. I'm going to borrow that OKR. Okay, now we're going into the takeaways, the last part of the episode. And these are the three frameworks that helped change how we think. The first is the jobs to be done framework, which helps us decide if we're solving the right problem. The second is the decision tree framework.

It helps you stop spiraling and make the right decision. And the third is the OKR framework, where you're going to be the right problem. you can prioritize what matters. So if something landed today in this episode, don't just nod along, do these many exercises and actually commit to posting your answers in the comments so that we can see them and then we can actually respond. And you guys know we love to respond to the comments. And also make sure you like, follow and subscribe. If you're listening on Apple Podcasts or Spotify, make sure you rate us five stars. And all of this helps other people, just like you, discover our podcast. And it also keeps us alive.

Thanks and we'll see you next time. Bye.