212. How to do your Mid Year Review

00:01:20 - The Paths to Wealth for Employees and Entrepreneurs: Steve Balmer just surpassed Bill Gates in wealth.

00:03:28 - Applying Startup Lessons to Your Career

00:04:20 - Actions for Career Transitioning

00:05:10 - Real Action vs. Busy Work

00:06:00 - Prototyping and Market Testing 

00:07:43 - Avoiding Analysis Paralysis

00:08:41 - Planning for the Next Six Months

00:09:31 - Analysing Personal Skill Sets

00:11:15 - Improving Market Position and Visibility

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Episode Transcript

Sophia Matveeva (00:00.11)
The success strategies for individuals and companies are remarkably similar," said Reid Hoffman. In this episode, we are going to use innovation principles to help you make 2024 your most successful year yet.

Sophia Matveeva (00:18.626)
Welcome to the Tech for Now Techies podcast. I'm your host, tech entrepreneur, executive coach at Chicago Booth MBA, Safiya Matheer. My aim here is to help you have a great career in the digital age. In a time when even your coffee shop has an app, you simply have to speak tech. On this podcast, I share core technology concepts, help you relate them to business outcomes, and most importantly, share practical advice

on what you can do to become a digital leader today. If you want to a great career in the digital age, this podcast is for you. Hello smart people. How are you today? In today's lesson, we're going to help you get on or stay on track to have a very successful year. And this is relevant whether you are an entrepreneur or an employee. Did you see the news that Steve Ballmer, the employee CEO of Microsoft,

has just surpassed Bill Gates in wealth? Seriously. Balmer, who began his career at Microsoft as Gates' assistant, surpassed the Microsoft co -founder on the Bloomberg Billionaires Index on Monday. According to this index, Balmer is now the sixth richest person in the world, with a net worth of $157 .2 billion, topping Gates' measly $156 .7

Anyway, my point is, whichever path you choose, being an entrepreneur or an employee, it can be absolutely glorious. So back to you, yeah. First in this episode, I'll show you how to evaluate where you are, and then we're going to go through a method for how to take the right next step. And if you're not yet a subscriber, then let's change that. Definitely subscribe to Tech For Non -Techies to get more free lessons.

on how to succeed in the digital age. My aim is for you to do interesting work, get paid exceptionally well, and to never be intimidated by a tech bro. So subscribe to this show and that's what will happen. In today's episode, you'll see lessons from startups and product management applied to careers because actually I think it really works. And Reid Hoffman, the co -founder of LinkedIn, said that the success strategies for individuals

Sophia Matveeva (02:44.47)
and companies are remarkably similar. And of course he would know because literally he founded LinkedIn so he's seen both, right? So let's get going. First, look at the goals you set at the beginning of this year in January and be honest with yourself. Are you on track? And this isn't about beating yourself up. This is just about taking an honest look so then we can decide what actions to take. So whether the answer is yes or no, ask yourself, what actions

did you take towards your goal? And this is where you're going to get some real answers. And in general, the way you can measure your real productivity is by the amount of results you get from contact with the market. And this will show whether you are taking real action or you're kind of just doing busy work and thinking that it's action. And it's really easy to assume that you're productive because you spent lots of time doing something.

But time spent is not a result. So think about this. When CEOs announce their corporate earnings and then Wall Street analysts make buy or sell a whole recommendations, nobody is reporting how many hours the company or the executive team worked on something. They report revenue or they talk about the potential revenue that they could get from their R &D efforts. So this is how I want you to think about your work too. And I'm going to show you how to do this with some real examples.

So let's say that this year you want to make a career change and go from a traditional business to working in a forward facing digital one. Well, my question is, what did you do to achieve this? And yes, updating your LinkedIn profile is really useful. You should absolutely start there. And actually I have an episode called How to Get Headhunted, which will help you with that. But then what? Did you tell people in your network that you were open to new opportunities?

Did you try to join an advisory board of a startup? Because that's a really smart move if you want to change your career. Did you post any content on LinkedIn that would help you get found by headhunters? And by the way, these same questions apply to you if your aim is to work with tech clients. So if the answers there are no, then you haven't been taking the right actions. Or let's say your aim was to start a business this year. My question is, how much rejection did you face?

Sophia Matveeva (05:10.52)
For example, if you spent your time making a website and hiring a designer to make a logo, that does not count as getting results. And you know who's telling you this? I literally just this week paid for a new logo design for the Tech for No Techies podcast. And yes, I do think it's a useful thing to do. I mean, I paid money for it. And the font is now more clear and that's going to help more people to discover this show. And eventually some of them will become customers. But this is

very, very long game. And to achieve your goals, especially in the next six months, you need to play the long game and the short game. You need to come into direct contact with the market and then see what happens. So for the entrepreneurs and the innovators here, this could mean making a prototype with no code tools. So if you plan to make an app, did you try to make something with Glide or Bubble? And Glide is easier by the

But if you did, if you made this prototype, I mean, I know it's actually really hard to make something if you've never used any of these tools, so congratulations, but it's not enough because remember you're measuring contact with the market. Did you show your prototype to your target market? Did you maybe even try to sell it? And I've seen really successful founders stop doing this when they get a major client or successfully close a big

because then it kind of feels like, we don't have to push ourselves anymore. And honestly, I do know that it's more psychologically easy to work on the product away from any criticism than to actually go out there and experience rejection for your creation. So I totally feel your pain, but we can't give into that. And if you're a founder or actually any senior professional, I know that you always have so much to

and that you can just legitimately hide in your to -do list. But my dear smart person, that is not what is going to get you big results. If you want big results, beware of drowning in busy work. And if during this investigation, when you've been listening to this podcast and answering these questions, if you've realized that you are not taking action, then please do not hire a coach or a therapist to analyze why you're not taking

Sophia Matveeva (07:31.192)
I mean, I'm an executive coach and I would not take your money for this because whenever a client wants to analyze why they are not doing something, I literally don't let them. If you could take action, so you have a laptop, you have an internet connection, you have a brain and hands to type with and a mouth to speak with, you could take action. So if you're not doing it because you don't want to, and you don't want to because it's hard.

And that's normal. You don't need a highly paid professional to work this out with you. I've given it to you for free. You're welcome. So just instead, for free, decide for yourself right now, what is more painful? Learning to do something you've never done before or staying where you are in life? Both options are hard in different ways. So choose your hard. And this requires discipline.

And I got a request from one of the lovely listeners here. So hello, thank you. I got a request to do an episode on discipline via Spotify. And discipline is what I'm talking about here. Choosing to do hard things requires discipline because nobody wants to do them. I don't want to do them either. We all just want the results without the action. I also want to eat the ice cream and look absolutely fantastic in a bikini. Okay. Now that we've done your analysis.

Let's make a plan for how you're going to spend the next six months to achieve your goal. And this is not the time to shrink your goal because if you had a really big ambitious goal and frankly, you're nowhere nearer than you were in January, this is not the time to think, okay, I'm not going to do it in December. This is the time to think about how to make big leaps towards it because it is possible. So now let's think of you as a business.

And let's think about how we could grow this business in the next six months. So any business contains two vital pillars, product and marketing. And if you ever raise money from a venture capitalist, this is how you will talk about what you're going to do with their money. So how are you going to spend their money as in resources on product and on marketing. And now let's apply this to you. So your product, that's your

Sophia Matveeva (09:54.764)
And this includes your actual professional background. So maybe you're a lawyer or a management consultant by profession, but also the product side of you includes other skills that you have on top of that or that you need to add on top of that. And be honest about the product side of you. Where do you need to add some more features? Have you ever taken a course on tech for business leaders? If not, then that's an area to work on and we have great options at TechFun and Techies.

Or would learning a foreign language help you in your work? Do you want to transfer to a different country? Then language learning is clearly going to be helpful. Or do you need to get another professional certification? Look at the product side of you and see what needs to be added between now and December 2024. And now let's look at the marketing side of the equation. You could be the best product in the world, but my dear smart person, if you are, the world's best kept secret

You're not going to achieve your goals and I don't want that for you. Whether you want to build a business or be a brilliant investor or lead at a corporate, you have to be known for your expertise. You have to know how to make opportunities come to you. So let's look at the venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz and they're now known as A16Z. And they are the VC firm in Silicon Valley that funded Facebook, Airbnb, Stripe and many

And one of the reasons why they keep being successful is that the most promising startup founders come to them. They're literally clamoring to get introductions to them. So imagine that you are A16Z. You have the best opportunities coming to you. And so because you've got the best opportunities coming to you, you're basically more likely to be successful. It's easier to be successful in this case. And the same principle applies with any other profession. So say you're a

And you want the most successful clients to come to you because their success will bolster your reputation because it's much more impressive to say that you represent Nvidia than if you represent a bunch of chip design companies that went out of business. One of the things I do with my executive coaching clients is help them position themselves in the marketplace. So the best opportunities come to them. So my question to you is what is

Sophia Matveeva (12:21.198)
market positioning like now. Whether you created your market position consciously or not, you do actually have one. So do you like where your market positioning is taking you? And maybe you want to go back and listen to this episode again, because I asked you lots and lots of questions. First, analyze where you are and then to take actions to make 2024 your best year yet professionally. So I recommend that you use

product and marketing system of thinking here to make an ambitious and realistic plan for the second half of this year. So first, look at yourself as a product. Do I need to add any features? And then look at your marketing. Does my target market know that I can help them? Are opportunities coming to me? And if you would like some help with this, then I invite you to explore my digital leadership executive coaching program.

Honestly, it is not for the faint -hearted. It is for people who want to achieve really impressive things and are willing to put in the work to do it. My clients have created businesses, raised millions of dollars, created revolutionary products and transformed their careers and become sought after thought leaders in their field. You have heard many of them on this show. And if this kind of success sounds appealing to you, then we could be a great match.

Check out the Digital Leadership Program link in the show notes and then book a consultation call. 2024 can definitely be the year that you achieve something remarkable. We still have time, but we do have to get on with it. And on that note, I wish you a wonderful day and I shall be back in your delightful smarties next week. Ciao.