Olina Qian

I met Warren Tsai in MJAA’s annual conference appreciation dinner this April. That night, the guy seated next to me asked: Have you met Warren Yet? I said No. He told me: If there is one guy you should meet tonight, it should be him. So he introduced Warren to me. From the firm handshake, I had an instinct that Warren is a really dedicated guy with great amount of energy. So we exchanged business card and I invited him for a lunch later.

From our conversation, I knew that Warren started his career as an Hardware Engineer, he took his Executive MBA program in HAAS, Berkeley. Now he is a senior product marketing manager at Cypress. Fasincated by his career progress, I invited him to give us a talk for BayFuBai Business.

Warren asked me what topic he should cover. I told him BayFuBai Business are young professionals who are in their early stage of career development. So why not you talk about some success or failures you’ve been through in your career, how MBA helped boost up your career, maybe some hindsight as well. He agreed.

Today is the day Warren give talk for BayFuBai Business. We planned a 40 minutes presentation, followed by a thirty minutes Q&A. Turned out our members enjoyed his talk so much, they asked lots of questions in between, which made the talk last little above two hours.

I was so impressed by Warren’s open minded. He spoke frankly about everything he had been through in his career, showed us his real thoughts. I learned a lot from this very informational presentation. Here are some of my thoughts:

1. Warren started his presentation by two words: VALUE PROPOSITION. In the field of marketing, a customer value proposition consists of the sum total of benefits which a vendor promises that a customer will receive. He told us, if there are two words you can remember from this talk today, those are the words. I didn’t realized what’s that mean at beginning, then later I realized maybe he means the value each individual can presents to the company. Please correct me if I took it wrong. But it is good to always think about the value proposition in everything you are working on.

2. He mentioned Charlie Rose Show in his talk. He said if you have a good one hour to kill, download Charlie Rose’s interview. Since this guy really knows how to talk, he can carry deep conversation with different kinds of people, no matter how successful they are, Charlie can always get into the point and asked the right questions. I felt that’s the area I like to grow, so I would like to check Charlie out!

3. He mentioned whenever he met someone in the professional event, he will follow up with an email afterwards. The subject will always be: Warren Tsai, Senior Product Marketing Manager, the event they meet. Because people are busy, they might receive hundreds email per day, if you only say Hi in the subject, it will soon buried by tons of other emails. What a brilliant idea, so instead of ‘Nice to meet you’ subject, I am going to change me followup email subject to Olina Qian, what I want you to remember about me, then place we meet now.

4. Word Smith. I actually never heard it before, seems it means speaks perfect English. Since Warren stressed that the ability of using correct words, speak good English is a must in a professional business world. So he suggested us to check out www.bartleby.com/141. I have not check it out yet when I write this blogpost. I will write a followup post if I think it’s useful.

5. When people asked how can Warren started to social with people. Warren said bring out the common interest before you and the other party, find some similar experience is always a good way to start. Or find some trending topics, like two years ago, the book ‘World is flat’ is so popular, so you can ask the other party what is his opinion about it. I strongly agree! In Dale Carnegie, we acutally have a series technique on how to carry conversation with a stranger. Let me know if you like to learn more about it.

6. When talk about Mentor, Warren said in different stages of career, you should have different Mentors. You can learn from your mentor about the set of skills you need to learn and create your own road map. Also, the beauty of Mentor is that you can get candid feedback, for example: What you are not good at. Since people around you are tend to tell you how good you are , but it’s hard to know what’s your weakness, furthermore you know where to improve. It is interesting that many times you think your value is in this area, but your boss might think different about it. So get candid feedback is a good thing for you to grow.

7. I first heard ‘sleep factor’ today, it basically refers to what make your boss can’t sleep at night. So if you know what’s your boss’s sleep factor, you can definitly do a better job. Haha, sleep factor, I like it! Now tell me, what’s your sleep factor?

8. When talk about Resume writing, Warren showed us a good example and a bad example, then he said, always think about ‘RESULT’ and ‘CONTENT’. You should be able to explain to people why the project you work on is so important. Using the formular of TASK, ACTION and RESULT. Always stick to the subject and keep it simple. It is very ture.

9. Regarding the interview, Warren said it’s good to have some good questions ready before you go interview. Practice is definitely the key, also spend some time to know your future employer is important too. Have some question like: What is the most important factor for successful ……(position you are applying)..? Then it is time to learn what they think about it.

10. For his Business school experience, Warren said it is the best decision he ever made in his life. He went to B-school not for a good GPA, but for networking. He got a wide explosure of different people in different industries, everyone has something you can learn from. During the process you work on your project, you will have an wider viewing point about this world. It sounds so amazing. Oh, I want to go B-school again.

11. When talked about what he wish he knew early. Warren said 1, he wish he could interview more. 2, he wish he could speak up more. He said we should interview at least once every two years, not necessary because you want to get a new offer, but because you want yourself to have a better sense of your real ‘Market Value’. Maybe learn more about apportunity area. He also suggested us that don’t be the quiet guy seat next to the corner, you should have your opinion in things and get your message delivered. He speaked up enough in his early years, but he wish he could speak up more when he look back!

12. If someone come over and complaint to you about his job, Warren said, I will listen, with mercy. After listening, I will suggest him to get a new job, or stay with current job but accepting the fact that he can’t learn from it anymore. But if he doesn’t want to change at all, but just like to complaint. Warren said, I won’t listen to it the 2nd time. Haha, so true! You can either live it, or change it, you are the one who is in charge of your own life. Why bother complaint, if you have time to complaint, you might want to invest some time to change it too.

13. It is interesting that before the session, I prepare some questions for Warren. And I surprisingly found out that he acutally covered everything I was going to ask. How smart this guy is! He did use his brain and thought about his audiences when he prepared the presentation. Truely amazing!

14. I found out Warren’s presentation skill is very good. His powerpoint is very clean and well drafted. He asked questions before the presentation to know his audience. He threw out lots of real examples, using numbers to demonstrate his point. When talked about marketing, he first asked us what we will think of when we heard the word: Bleach. We said clean, laundry, germs. Then he showed us a commerical about a bleach in Youtube. All kinds of techiques comes together to build this great presentation. For me, what impressed me most is ‘Heart’! Yes, I can see how many hours he input in this presentation, and think through all of the aspect. I really respect him for it.

What a great session we just had in this two hours. It is even amazing that at last, Warren told us: Be Positive, Be constructive and Be proactive! I really like those three words. (Althouth my slogan now is be cool, be amazing, be everywhere!) Thanks Warren for your valuable presentation, I did learned a lot in this beautiful Sunday afternoon.

Oh, one thing I like to mention that, Warren Tsai is the president of Monte Jade Asia American Association, MJAA is a professional networking association that helps early and mid-career professionals broaden their networks and realize their full personal/career potential. So if you are seeking opportunities to advance your career, do networking, or if you want to become Volunteer for MJAA. Talk to Warren, connect to him in Linkedin, buy him a coffee, I am sure you will be impressed by how amazing this guy is through the conversation.

PS, if you interested in attending BayFuBai business’s future events, you can find us in Google Groups: bayfubai-business@googlegroups.com. We usually holds our events in Google campus in Mountain View on Sunday afternoon. I looking forward to see you all there!