After pivoting my career from business to product manager, several random people from the office have approached me to ask how I made the jump. In order to help more, I decided to give a talk about this topic at our annual company conference.

My lightning talk at ZG18

Surprisingly, many more people reached out to me after the event about their careers! I was shocked by how much my experience could impact and help people. So as a result, I decided to share this story with a broader audience —the internet. There are tons of blogs and articles online that talk about how to own your career, but I hope that sharing my story will help some of you to own your careers.

Let’s start with two photos:

This photo on the left was taken three years ago in 2015, when I was at a business conference in Beijing. I was a Business Development Coordinator and directly responsible for connecting Chinese buyers with U.S real estate agents who speak Chinese. The photo on the right was taken three months ago when we shipped 3D capture app V2. And I am now a Product Manager, Tech for the Zillow Rich Media Experience.

In order to make the pivot, I focused on three things:

1. Find Mentors

When you don’t know what you truly want (especially for new grads or juniors), it’s a good time to find some mentors.

The was the email I sent to Nate Moch, VP of Product at Zillow Group, 3 years ago. You can see that I introduced myself and mentioned that I found his name on a list of Seattle tech mentors. I asked him politely whether he still took new mentees. It was 2:42 pm on a normal Tuesday afternoon, and I didn’t expect him to reply.

In less than one hour, Nate got back to me and said: “Yes, I would be more than happy to meet with you and discuss being your mentor.” That was fantastic!

Some mentorship tips:

1. Don’t be afraid to reach out. The mentoring and sponsoring relationships often form between individuals who have common interests or when the junior members remind the more senior members about themselves. The worst scenario is that you got a “No.” So what? Even then, you can still build some connections with this person.
2. Always come prepared for your meet ups. Do not expect your mentor to come prepared for your meeting. Remember that, most mentors are dealing with their own high-stress jobs. Using mentors’ time to validate feelings may help psychologically, but it is better to focus on specific problems with real solutions.

2. Discover Opportunities

When you find out what do you want to do, (mine was to focus on product management), you need to find or even create opportunities for yourself. My opportunity has been Zillow Hack Week. Hackathons are quite common in tech. Normally within a week or a couple of days, employees are free to hack anything with whomever they want.

In my first job, I didn’t have many opportunities to work with engineers, but I always had this idea of building a Chinese iOS app. I went to the iOS team and said “Hi, I have an idea of building an iOS app. Anyone interested?” Again, what is the worst scenario? You got a “No.” So what?

Pandas are a national treasure in China, so I found Panda hats as inspiration for my teammates.

But I was lucky! We were able to recruit a team of 15 engineers, built a Chinese iOS app in five days, we won the first people’s Choice at the 10th Zillow Hack Week.

3. Have Passion!

When I was 16, I decided to come to the U.S. for education. I happened to watch this (highly recommend) commencement speech delivered to Stanford’s 2005 graduating class by Steve Jobs. He said,

“The only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking. Don’t settle.”

This quote helps me with my entire life. Working at Zillow, I feel the strongest sense of ownership ever and I am the CEO of my projects. Also, passion is contagious. Your teammates will become passionate about your project because of your passion. Don’t underestimate its power.

In the end, if you forget everything above, I encourage you to remember this diagram:

Talk to great people, find or create your own opportunities, and combine them together with passion. This is my magic formula for owning my career. I hope you can find yours.