I got laid off 2 years ago...Let's talk MONEY. 💸

how's it being pregnant it sucks i hate it take me out if you ever have a curiosity a what if it would be cool if you must follow that voice from my experience in all my 20s and into my 30s that voice has never gone away do you feel like your content creator income is a lot more unstable compared to a w-2 salary oh yeah it's so unstable it is a fundamental thing that we all agree upon as content creators my old mentor from tiktok i was telling him about like my journey he was like you need to go on your own journey and not go back to corporate because this is your hero's journey do you make more money now than you made in tech spicy depth can help make you money but diversification is what helps you protect it you need to have depth in a certain skill set in a certain superpower once you're able to like have mastery of a certain craft or a skill then you can start making money off of it do you think you could have avoided getting laid off if you kissed my ass you , hi drama llamas welcome back to office drama about once a month i'm gonna do a chloe solo episode where we dive into a particular hot topic it's kind of like my old youtube videos if you remember but just in a podcast format also this does make podcasting a bit more sustainable for me i don't know if you guys know how much work putting together a podcast is it's really hard to do guest interviews and not make this your whole thing but i'm going to do a podcast for you if you look at other podcast creators they're usually podcasting main and i do a lot of other things too so it's kind of a lot to handle but i love this i love this so much so here i am also a lot of people in tech or who i know who are very introspective about their career don't actually live in los angeles and i have learned that it is surprisingly hard to get people from san francisco and new york to fly to la i think san francisco flies to new york a lot and then new york flies like globally a lot but yeah uh so far in my network they don't really come here as much and so that means i have to go to them and with the pregnancy i just don't think it's gonna be that easy for me this year we're gonna have to figure it out and we're gonna have to figure out how we're gonna do remote interviews but i just love the dynamic where you're in person there's like so many things that happen off camera and it feels like you're really building a relationship for example i really want to interview elena verna who is the head of gross at lovable and i think she's in sweden but sometimes she goes to san francisco and so i'd have to coordinate when she's in san francisco or just do remote because i don't think she's ever gonna make it to la you know like i just have people on my dream target list and just it's gonna be really difficult because i'm based here but anyways if you're new to who i am and what this is all about today we are going to go through all of that it is going to be the two year and four month anniversary or milestone of being laid off and to my side i actually have my emotional support husband bok choy boy hello yes kevin's on the side because this is my first time doing a solo podcast episode and i was really terrified because i was like dude i've never done this before i've done like 20 minute youtube videos and they're very different but podcasting i feel like is a conversation so just have him on the side i don't know if i'm gonna get out for like a whole hour i also talk really fast if i'm by myself so i need to like chill out right don't you chill out chill out it's okay it's okay it's gonna be okay yeah woohoo first time i'm gonna be i want to break down the entire timeline of the lore and the life of chloe because i feel like a lot happened and i was infamously laid off two years ago exciting i think i got like over 30 million views when i first announced my layoff so that was a crazy moment anyways let's rewind a little bit i bought a house in 2023 and then i got engaged in november of 2023 and then in january 2024 two years ago i got laid off i shared about it i went omega viral and had a level i decided to do content for a year starting with youtube i joined a talent management company at that time to see if that would help me with my career and then come march april i produced a product management course with an edtech company in taiwan in june i launched jomo joy missing out podcast in december i ended jomo and then launched the famous 30 lessons by 30 series in 2025 february i finally finished the 30 lesson series and went straight into wedding planning i also was shopping around for representation and then joined uta united talent agency in march i had my wedding in china and taiwan and my honeymoon in japan and then in april i went straight to work because i had not made any money up until this point for like half a year very scary in november i burnt out real bad and slowed down read a lot of manhwa watch a lot of anime watch a lot of chinese dramas korean everything had a great time i also started to pivot to building a creative studio and i started to look for new employees for my company i think i mentioned it a couple of times my media company yeah now 2026 this year in january i relaunched jomo season 2 did the whole ces thing that wiped me out that was like a really intense event in february and march i gave out offers for my full-time team and then they started joining onboarding that takes a really long time and then in march i got this wonderful beautiful studio space went to japan came back ended jomo and worked on launching office drama i also announced my pregnancy and then joined a podcast network podcast nation and now we are here recently i've seen far more discourse about layoffs when meta cut like 8 000 employees in may that's when my feed was full of layoff announcements from all kinds of people from like content creators to non-content creators and the type of language i saw felt really different from before because in 2024 when i was going through the mass layoffs everything was so new that i don't think a lot of people actually talked about it which i think was why i went so like viral and it was really unfortunate because i think it was that time when like the girl from cloudflare posted about her layoff and she like recorded i think the entire conversation she had with hr and then i posted mine in that same week and it was just her video and my video back to back and so i think it just got overly blown out but i was someone who just shared about my life a tech life in general anyways i think a lot of people around that time who got laid off with me they just actually went dark online because they were scrambling to find the next job there's a lot of shame everyone wanted to keep it private no one wanted to talk about it and i think i was one of the few people who talked about it publicly and didn't go back to tech but now i think the dialogue is different people are just so fed up with how layoffs are normalized um one of my friends got laid off three times in the last two years and they were at like fang level companies and like a startup and we all get shareholder value it is the brutal reality of the corporate life we live in capitalism but it is so insanely thrashy to the individual my friend had this huge realization that maybe tech isn't for them they're just like gonna leave because they're sick of it they're done i think a part of it is a stage of career though my friends who feel this way are typically in their early 30s they already put in their decade of work without ever taking a gap year or a break and it's not that uncommon to do so in your late 20s early 30s so i think the urge to leave and being sick of it all makes a lot of sense i don't know another friend dme telling me chloe please give me the courage to quit i have survived way too many layoffs and i can't seem to get laid off i think it's time to leave but i'm too scared girl i'm not taking that responsibility i don't even think i would have courage to quit either because i got laid off like it wasn't my choice i get it i get how hard it is i'm very privileged to have that decision made for me and i think the friends that are reaching out to me are not privileged rich nepo baby kids they're children of immigrant families they're usually the first to make six figures in their families or finish college and start building wealth they work their asses off knowing nothing about the world of tech and corporate and even they are sick of it so bottom line the sentiment is really changing in the conversations happening around me so i thought it would be excellent to do this post layoff update with you i put together a poll on ig stories asking you what questions you have for me as someone who didn't go back to corporate in tech and the results are in the biggest and most pressing category was money and finances y'all love money everyone is obsessed with money then it's how did you figure out the next step how did you know to pivot then it's dealing with all the emotional stuff how did you not internalize the layoff as a personal failure how did you build your confidence how did you deal with all the negative feelings and there's a new category that i haven't seen before it's about my personal life on how i planned for my pregnancy especially when i'm on this post layoff journey and it's content creation as a creator mostly how i went about everything was there a strategy to it how stuff like that. And then when I go back to tech, advice for new grads and my thoughts on the industry and job market. As I was figuring out my answers and responses to all these questions, I actually don't think I'm going to address the very last category because I feel like if I do that, this is going to be a three-hour episode because I feel like I have so many thoughts on it. I recently just like researched a ton of stuff and I'm fascinated by the job market, how the job industry works. That'll be for another episode. I won't do these in order. I'm going to start with the emotional resilience and identity piece. And Kevin is going to read out the questions for me. Hello. Here are the questions. The questions. What helped you stop internalizing the layoff as a personal failure? I don't think I ever took it as a personal failure, actually, because the layoff was just so big that it didn't feel personal to me. Like if I were personally fired, then yeah, I would take it really poorly. Like it would suck. But it was a big layoff. It was like 17% of the company, which is really big because at the time, Discord was quite. Small, like 500 people, perhaps? Or was it 1,000? I don't really remember. I don't know. I joined when it was like maybe 200 something. Like we only had, I don't know, 8 p.m.s. or 5 to 8 p.m.s. before me. I joined pretty early. early on i'm not an og of course so a lot of people i knew got laid off even the director of product like my skip the director of product got laid off so i was like okay this is just not personal then it was a thousand people at a time and 170 employees got laid off okay yeah that's a lot of people and then i realized my work enemy didn't get laid off so i was like we all knew he sucked we all freaking knew he sucked so this couldn't have been performance based also i got exceeds expectations so i was like i don't think it's me and the deeper answer is that i was able to detach from work at a very early age in life i wish i learned it much earlier actually when i was at my first startup it was one of those things where i wanted to pour my heart and soul into it i like believed in the mission of making the world a better place like i think when we graduated tech was about making the world a better place right like didn't you remember hearing that phrase over and over again sort of yeah yeah that was like the catchphrase of tech and you just join a startup to make the world a better place so i really believed it i was like i'm making the this is my end-all be-all this is like the club in college that i'm gonna pour everything into and it was a really toxic experience i talk about this in another youtube video but essentially it was so bad that i remember like crying in the ceo's office like glass door office breaking down i remember having so much anxiety that i couldn't didn't speak for a week like i was shaking to going to work i remember my manager yelling at me like just straight up shouting yelling screaming at me and then i'm crying in the bathroom i'm crying on the call and all i can say is yes i remember so many things from that i was mourning the fact that i poured everything into this company because i thought we were a family and that's like one of the biggest lies it doesn't mean you can't work hard and make sure you show up well for work but i remember this is a financial transaction so after that i learned the very important lesson like don't put all your eggs in this basket and then when i moved on to facebook i know people dog on facebook a lot because facebook is like one of the most transactional places in tech you can work at but what i like about working at facebook is that they don't hide what they're doing like i think me and my co-workers we all knew what we signed up for we all knew why we were here and we weren't a family and we had to show impact and we had to work this was the exchange of goods and services money for goods and services and that felt really refreshing to me like no one was lying to my face it was exactly what we signed up for so then i went to tiktok right and then tiktok and then i went to facebook and i went to facebook and i went to tiktok was also like that they did not give a shit about you as a person like you were just one out of the many you're a one small number in the many your opinions don't matter at all it's top down like whatever and i remember talking to a director at that time and i was like that's so horrible like why would they treat me like that and my director was like but you signed up for it and i was like what what do you mean like why don't my opinions matter and he was like but this is what this is you signed up to work here and i was like what do you mean like why don't to do what they needed you to do, not for this, like not for your individuality. And I was like, damn, dude. And I think that he didn't mean it in like a bad way. He meant it as like, that's what corporate is. And in that culture, impact, doing what needs to be done by leadership is the job. And if I wanted to change the culture, I have to start my own thing. So I think that was a rude awakening to adulthood. Things are not as, I don't know, romantic or whatever. I don't know if I explained it right, but freaking Kevin went to Twitch and literally had like the best culture of all time that I've ever seen in all of Silicon Valley. He went through like a golden era of Twitch. Yeah, but I mean, it was really fun culture, but I don't know if I attached my self-worth to my job title either. I feel like I never made real friends at work, except for at the startup, because we were like pretty close, but everyone else was like, we were co-workers. And then Discord was the next place I felt like I had friends. Do you feel like when you stop attaching your self-worth to your job title, that's when you're jaded? Or do you think that's two separate things? I think that you don't necessarily, have to be jaded. You understand what this is, because I feel like jaded, you almost have this contempt, like aura about you. Like, yeah, you have this weird resentment about you that like you freaking hate it here. And that is horrible. Like the system is horrible. But I think the system just is what it is. And you just kind of have to accept that you are being paid for this and that you do bring value. And like, that's all there is to it. Nothing more, nothing less. Accepting that gave me a lot of freedom, like mental freedom, emotional freedom, that my job isn't my everything. So that helped me detach a lot. That said, I still take a lot of pride in my work. And I do feel shame and I feel sad when I don't do well. But I don't think I try to attach my self-worth to my job as much. I feel like it's hard to completely detach your self-worth, though, especially if it's really hard to like not compare when you still have friends who survived the layoffs. Yeah, they're still making money. And you're just kind of at home being like, bumming it out. Yeah, twiddling your thumbs. It didn't impact me right away that comparing with friends or I guess maybe the first comparison was like, how come they didn't get laid off and I was like, damn, did I do something wrong? But then again, I remember it's not that deep. That's not that deep. Don't worry about it. I got other pillars of life to pursue. It's okay. This happens. Life goes on. We'll find another way. But then as time passed and I've got life updates from our friends, like, oh, I got promoted to group product manager. Oh, I got promoted to manager. Oh, I'm now like staff, like principal. And then I didn't get there because I, my last was, I only got as high as like product lead and senior PM and at different companies. So I was like, dang, that could have been me. I could have been up there doing the leadership game. You really wanted to be that. When we first met, you really wanted to be a manager. You're complaining all the time that you weren't a manager. It was the, not the dream, but everyone was gunning for it. You know, it's like the golden badge of you did well in tech in Silicon Valley. If you become a manager and get into director levels, but yeah, comparing with friends and then seeing everyone's TC as time went on was crazy. I was like, wow, people are getting such big offers and people who join AI companies, their offers are crazy. Their offers were crazy. Or people join Netflix and do those like all cash offers. And you're like, wow, you make 700K. Damn, that really sucked. Yeah. How do you deal with that comparison then? I just have to not think about it too much and focus on the life that I chose. Cause I think the worst thing I can do is just waffle. I needed to commit to one path and go all in on it and know that the game I'm playing is not the game they're playing and that's okay. And we're going to have different results and I'm going to have a different life. I also do another check where like, do I want their life? Would I trade my life? Would I swap my life for their life? And every single time the answer is no. Cause you, I mean, you're, you're confident in your own choices. I feel like a lot of people might struggle with that. I'm generally confident in my choices because I did the due diligence of the process to get there. Yeah. You know, your own goals when you choose to do something. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Also like you really wanted to be a manager back then. And now you, you are sort of a manager of a team. It turns out you hate being a manager. You hate the people part. Yeah. Yeah. I changed. I'm a change woman now. You just want to do. Super icy versus manager any day. Well, after you got laid off, right, you pivoted completely from tech into content. Do you have a lot of anxiety dealing with that life pivot? Yes. I am a naturally anxious person. I was very, very anxious at this time, but it wasn't like crippling. I think the type of anxiety that I have is I don't want to do things. I don't stop. I'm not like super stunned. I just have to keep doing things to get over it. I am on anxiety meds. I've been on it for many, many years now for other reasons. And it's been quite helpful. And then I think I started taking magnesium at night for sleep because I have a lot of, I have really bad sleep anxiety. I also did a lot of work to find my North star to figure out like my why and why I'm going to go in this path. So whenever I waffle at night, I'm just going to be like, no, I chose this path for this reason. I got to commit. I got to stay. And lastly, what helps is like, I am finding the thing that is unique to me that other people can't easily replicate or do. I think if I just go all in on that one thing, that one superpower, like becoming a maven versus becoming a jack of all trades and a master of none, I think that really helps my confidence a lot. You can always lean back on that North star when you're like, what am I doing with my life? You have something you can point to. Yeah. I don't know if you guys remember this. I alluded to this a couple of times in my old YouTube videos. I also think I was waffling a lot at the beginning and I was like, dude, I don't know what to do with my life. There's too many options. I'm so scared. And I was like, you know what? What is the one thing I know how to do really well as a product manager? Oh, write a product requirements document. But instead of for a product, it is for my life. So I did that for my life. And that helped me figure out like my through line, my rationale, why I'm here, why I'm making the decisions that I am making. And we'll talk about this in a later section. I mean, when you write a life purity, I feel like you're super type A. Am I type A? Aren't you? I'm not type A. You plan out every decision. I'm disorganized. My brother's on the side and he's like, you have the most judgmental eyes I've ever seen. I've never seen you look at me like that before. He's like. I mean, like type B people are like, okay, going to a new country without an itinerary. Oh, well, I feel like I'm not that type A. Is that crazy? You're pretty type A. I feel like I'm not a good type A. How's that? Yeah. Well, the question from the viewer is how do you handle the lack of routine as a type A person? Like you're not a good type A person. Am I denying my identity? I think you're super type A with parts of your life. Don't laugh at me, Castor. My brother's on the side. Like in career, you're type A, but then in handling your personal life, you're pretty disorganized. I find that a lot of product managers are like that. Like they've got the career down pat, but because they're so organized at work, they don't want to do it everywhere else. They're done. They want to be that person. They don't want to plan the trip. They don't want to, they don't want to plan the bachelorette. They're done. They don't even plan the wedding. So it's fascinating to see the difference between your identities at work and in your personal life, because you're sick of that. You don't want to bring work to your personal, you don't want to work how did I handle a lack of routine I don't think I am a very routine based person right I've never had a good routine I'm just so chaotic this is why I don't think I'm type a you're typing aspects I guess that's it yeah but I think that I'm really good at creating structure for a blank canvas like I'm really good at blank canvas because I think I came from like the startup world and then I had to forge my own career path a lot I don't think I had like a given roadmap to be like here this is what you need to do I did a lot of zero to one products I think that helped me with not being given a routine or a schedule and I was able to craft it on my own and I really really like it I love the freedom to build my own day I think that there are many people in the creator space when I was like starting out people like couldn't handle it because they they like it when someone gives them what to do and when to do and how much to do by the structure yeah that structure but I can just like create that for myself pretty easily hmm I like the independence I got from creating it I don't like when people tell me what to do who likes your own boss I'm confused why people like a routine that someone else gives them sometimes it's about the small do you like it you're a routine guy I'm a routine guy yeah but I think that you would still do well without someone giving it to you I'd make my own routine I would just create my own routine guy yeah now we move on to the next category it is finding your next path and how did you know when to pivot bok choy boy take it away what was the literal first thing you did after getting laid off uh oh off boarding off boarding figuring out health insurance figuring out the severance figuring out papers you gotta read a lot of papers you gotta you gotta go to off boarding yeah we joined like this new discord server that was like for the ex discordians and it was kind of sad it was actually really sad they forced the ex discord people to use discord yes so we were all in this other discord server and then we had to do like hr meetings for what's going to happen next what to expect next what papers to sign it's very logistical were people like ranting or no no everyone's very civil okay everyone's really civil very respectful sad but like we understood yeah how long did off-boarding take you two weeks maybe oh that's quite a while well like there was just a lot of things that you had to wait on and then deciding whether or not you wanted to do cobra which is like the continuation of your current health insurance and then then kevin and I was like is it time for us to get married so you can get on your insurance we looked at riot insurance we did we registered for a couple of years and then we registered for a marriage at the courthouse got on that insurance yeah gotta have insurance gotta have insurance gotta have insurance I mean it was good that we were engaged slightly before you got laid off yeah it wasn't too big of a jump from there yeah so for you I feel like pivoting was a little more obvious in a way because you already had content creation on it wasn't that obvious okay what are you talking about well sure do you want to talk about how you I think it was obvious to other people it was not obvious to me then what were you just what were the other options were we deciding between going back to tech what are you talking about I'm getting another job like everyone else then why'd you decide not to go back to tech because I called Derek my old manager and was like hey what should I do and he was like don't come back I was like what you just trusted his opinion like no I think I did a lot of other things I definitely talked to a lot of people I remember that when I first got laid off that night I went to like this party in LA and then I told them about it because everyone saw from my social media because I posted it and then went to the party and everyone was congratulating me they were like that's so awesome maybe that's an LA thing we love I remember like Eric Way was there and Eric was like congratulations like now you get to do what discord was holding you back from doing I was like damn it's great it's great to have people around you to celebrate what you thought was horrific to like a new chapter of life a new door to open and the fact that the the sentiment around me was so positive and they like believed in me and they believed in my spirit and my creativity when I didn't believe in myself that was awesome I remember I was only barely 100k on Instagram I don't even know how many people I had on Instagram I don't even think I hit 100k on YouTube yeah I was making content but I just didn't think it was anywhere near a career it's so easy to tell someone else oh yeah go start a new thing it's so easy but when you are living in it and you've spent almost a decade on this one career path and there was so much for you to grow into you just don't feel that safe no no no no I didn't know so how did you decide then besides like the people congratulating you my answer was the life PRD is it finally time for me to break it down I gotta pull it up it's been a long time so basically when something traumatic happens or crazy happens like a big plot twist happens your mind just goes everywhere and you don't really know and you're kind of just trying to survive you're in survival mode oh also I remember at the time I was just getting a lot of attention from the virality but a lot of negative attention like I think people were making fun of me people were reposting me there's a lot of hate I was dealing with like legal stuff too it was a very scary back end that I didn't talk about publicly but anyways I don't know I don't know I don't know I don't know after the logistics of that I was like I need to sit my butt down and write out my intentions my dreams like this is the one time I get to really explore all of the things that I'm interested in doing so I wrote a q1 like looking back what are the things that I've learned and then I was like how do I write a product requirement document for my own life and this is essentially what is your why what is your what like how do you write your principles how do you how do you orient yourself on what you're going to do next and why for every step this is the what and why together basically I think I oriented this around content though because at this point I've already had a lot of conversations remember designing your life the book that I always reference in all my content prototype interviews prototype experiences so I just had conversations with all the different life paths that I was considering number one go back to tech call Derek he was like don't do it and number two was do content because a lot of people were like now you can do content and I was like dude I don't even know if I want to do content because at that time my content was like I don't want to do content I don't want to do content I don't want to do content I don't want to do content I don't want to do content I don't want to do content identity was based around my main job so if I don't have my main job anymore what is making my content like look like so I'd have to pivot in content somehow and the third option was to start my own thing to do my own thing whatever that may be it could be a new company new startup whatever and for that third path I just didn't have anything compelling and then for the second path a lot of people were encouraging me to go forth and do it so I was like let's explore what that could look like in my life purity I talk about like what problem I care about the most in life in society in what I think that matters to me personally and I think that the one sentiment that I really really cared about and that resonated with me is that it is a worse feeling for me to have a strong inner desire to want to do something in your life but you just can't reach there for no matter how hard you work maybe there is some sort of ceiling some bamboo glass ceiling or whatever that's holding you back or you don't learn the skill fast enough or there's not enough resources for you because you don't have enough resources for you to be able to do something in your life you don't have access to it and it leaves you feeling like you don't have control that you're stuck you're stuck at level one forever I think that feeling really sucks and sometimes it leads people to really dark places and I feel like I can help with that feeling a lot in the places that I am skilled at one of the things I love seeing in myself and in people and this is why like I love self-improvement oh it's so disgusting to say out loud like I do I do read I read a lot of self-help books back in the day I was like oh how can I be better but you know how can you blame me I'm a daughter like I'm always looking for how do we get to like the better levels like how do we grow how do we get out of our socioeconomic hole that we were in and it requires a lot of looking forward and how can I be the next best version of myself and I think it's a really empowering thing to do when someone can put their mind on something to do something really hard that they think they can't do and they finally do it the sparkles the joy the fulfillment that they get people deserve to feel that type of feeling it's like such a great human experience I want to help people take back control of their lives and that was what my mission kind of like what I cared about the most that was a problem I cared about the most how does that translate to my north star I think I shared this before but if you haven't heard about it yet my north star my mission is to help people build the confidence and conviction they need to take back their lives through achieving their career creative and personal goals and in those three pillars I wanted to create content around how to help people in career in creative and personal goals and I think that I do that pretty yeah I think so that is that is what it's all about those are the pillars of my content that's what like 30 lessons largely was that was personal that was the personal goals the creative part I'm not sure if I do too much on I think for that I'm just leading by example because I'm going on my creative journey it's all very new to me I'm a stem girl I'm not like that artistically inclined and all of this I'm learning for the first time ever and then for career you know I've started on LinkedIn and YouTube and I've made a lot of free content and I've done a lot of free content and I've done a lot of free content career advice videos and now we have office drama yay the next portion is who are we building for I have like all of this in user personas like what is the type of audience I care about what is the type of community I care about the most it's kind of like when you sign up for community service or when you create a non-profit like what segment of the world do you think you are uniquely positioned to help and then do you kind of resonate with and so I really wanted to help the type of person who have this ambition to be a part of the community and to be a part of the action they have these dreams they have these desires they want to get to a better place but they just don't have the resources or the support or the access or the knowledge to get there so those were the types I broke it down into the different personas like the lost youth the young adult the corporate cog the seniors and like why they would be interested in engaging with my content and then I kind of bucketed it all into what I call the underappreciated overachiever and that's usually mostly female I do want to have mostly female audience I'm sorry I'm not sorry dudes but you're you're you're chill you're chill if you're chill you're chill but when I was doing like straight up tech content like um how much money does the product manager week or how do you resume maxing that kind of stuff yo the comments were like kind of gross not gonna lie it was very desperate it was very it's very male i think there are other creators for those you know what i mean so anyways i was looking for a mostly female like feminine aesthetic community of hard-working ambitious workers in tech or corporate or people who want to break in and they don't feel like they're getting rewarded enough for their efforts and then i have a whole section on what do they watch what do they say about their work so you can do like this envisioning exercise on how you want people to explain what you do why are they like excited about your work what will they say about it i think that drafting that story is kind of like pretending that you're writing your own pr article if a news outlet picked up and did like a i don't know a new york times article what would that headline be what is your tech crunch article like headline b and you got to envision that and then you can build your path towards it i have a who is clueless exactly who is she today and then who i want her to be and it's interesting to see me write it out like my own bio i didn't really fulfill everything i wanted to be but i think things change sometimes for the better that's awesome and then some comparables who are people in your space that you would want to emulate it doesn't have to be like fully like there's no person in the world i think that you wouldn't want to copy exactly but what are traits about this famous person or this accomplished person or this mentor or this friend in your life that you would like to be a part of emulate in your own life like you know put a little bit of pixie dust in your in your potion right like for powerpuff girls like right like the father of the powerpuff girls like that guy do that sugar spice and everything nice yes exactly correct then i have my strengths i think in the world of content and perhaps when you're starting a new venture it's gonna feel like you are trying to boil the ocean and you really shouldn't try to boil the ocean it is very draining you're gonna have a lot of anxiety it's terrifying even if you're starting a new startup or a business endeavor or even writing a goal you should start with the place of where you're at and the strengths and the leverage resources that you already have and that's okay everyone's gonna look different there was advice given to me i shouldn't try to like i don't know become a twitch streamer all of a sudden i don't even play that many games so i think i really have to lean into what i already have in my repertoire in my toolkit and lean into that heavily lean into strengths i wrote down a what are we trying to achieve this year they're kind of in my vision board that you can check out i don't think it's like that strict i think that they are directional objectives but i don't think like i was so set on the result i really wanted to build a good process and then i wrote down what i think is really cool my guiding principles and values this really guided me on how i wanted to show up how i wanted to make my content look and feel and what i wouldn't want to compromise on i also have guardrails what i don't want to cross over like i have one of them is don't be a tech bro don't lose your roots don't preach i really hate preaching i just want to share my experience and you guys can pick and choose whatever makes sense for you i don't like one-up one-down relationships so i wanted to make content more positive not fear-based and not like you need a hustle and and sacrifice your life i just think that pursuing a better version of yourself is like a really fun experience it's really joyful and you don't have to make it a grind it doesn't have to be painful so i think all of that thinking about those prompts helped ground myself in a okay yes i'm going to go through content and here is how i want to show up for it and if i just commit to that process i know the results will come that was a really long answer yeah and yeah that's okay i mean it just codifies your like direction your goals in a way that's more concrete right oh man i can talk i guess you're a yapper i'm a yapper do you ever wanted to quit before getting laid off sounds like no from an earlier answer well i mean i fantasized about it remember i think everyone fantasizes everyone fantasizes about quitting i think everyone fantasizes about quitting everyone fantasizes like what could it look like to become a content creator but at that time not a lot of people did it there was um miyuko who did the day in the life of a software engineer the og and she ended up quitting and then i think went back i mean i think the main problem is for these like career content creators is how would you make the content without the career yeah i think that's the main question like the do you i think your your identity gets lost there's a what is it jarvis who went from patreon software engineering to he did some tech content too but now completely youtube skits like it's nothing to do with his previous career so i think the people who made that pivot it's not about their old identities anymore you have to create a completely new one i think that was like that's why i was terrified i was like there's no way but then here i am what about for the non-content creator people then like how are they supposed to figure it all out test things and find their passions if you ever have a curiosity like a what if it would be cool if you must follow that you must follow that voice because from my experience in all my 20s and into my 30s that voice has never gone away i thought that that voice would go and be like haha that's so funny forget about it no i think that itch will never go away and you'll just need to scratch it so whether that's starting a restaurant or writing a book or selling stickers on etsy and doing art or pottery if that is what's calling to you you need to go and figure out how you're going to address it and really take time to learn about it and i don't know if i liked it when i first started out it was actually a really laborious experience like i really hated editing i hated making a video and then over time as i developed mastery in it i realized i really liked it so you have to get to a point of some sort of mastery to decide can you do this on the daily and once you find obsession with it i think like that's a good calling for you but i think on the case of content the reason why i went into it one of the reasons was that i realized i can't focus all my life on work and i've always had this itch of like whether or not i can do content and i didn't know if i had what it took so i just tried it and i spent all of my free time on it i was like i did not have a life like when i started out in 2020 i believe like during the pandemic making content yeah i didn't have friends it was just working on tiktok and then making youtube videos and that was it and i didn't sleep i mean the pandemic didn't help for me yeah it did not it did not at all but it gave you the space yeah give me the space you're such a people pleaser you're always going to events at the time and yeah the pandemic actually kind of helped you i had no time in my 20s to to build my own like what i liked what my own identity was until the pandemic forced you to yes so i think knowing that work was not my end i'll be all investing in other parts of my life so that i can build more progress in it that helped me build the confidence that this was a feasible path to take when did you first feel the itch what did it start how did it sprout pretty early because i grew up in socal in la i'm an i'm an la asian and that's where like wong fu and a lot of asian creators started out it's always been around like i watched jen and when she was getting like 6 000 views on her videos and then i applied for to be a wong fu productions intern in college and got rejected and i was like devastated so i think it was always around me you watched those videos back then and you were like i wonder if i could do that yeah and then i made stupid videos back then too with like little camcorders you did i did i did you have to find the archives it was very cringe it was very cringe i made slideshows for a marching band and for clubs i would always be like the historian so i love documenting i was in journalism so i always like had a knack for wanting to document and write and like i don't know put put a piece together moving on to the next category the most highly requested topic money and finances and here's the most highly requested question which was asked 10 times at least do you make more money now than you made in tech spicy it's a very terrifying question i remember when i had my nine month layoff video was like i'm not ready to talk about this recapping my tech salary i shared that my offer at discord was 215k base but i didn't include a sign-on bonus or the equity package and it's really confusing to compare it is apples to oranges like it's not easy to compare at the time i joined discord before their highest valuation so i got that amount of equity and then we calculated the highest valuation but then i think over time it didn't do so well i joined discord a really great time that was when it was like going through the among us phase and everyone was on discord like discord stonks were high it was pandemic everyone was on this yeah yeah so it was doing really well but it was a private company and when you get equity from a private company doesn't really mean anything funny money unless you get like buybacks or a secondary market or something but i didn't really have that and uh yeah so i have nothing i have a big fat zero from that so if discord ipos i really hope it does super duper well please please discord pms you got to work work you got to work okay but i think that there's a lot of misleading information about creator comp versus a corporate comp in the creator space you have your income which is your revenue which is like how much money you're making at the top right like all the sponsors adsense everything the money coming in and then there is a salary that you pay yourself which should be a reasonable amount for the work that you do if you're an llc s corp llc s corp you pay yourself a salary yeah yes and it does what i do then there are distributions which is like a whole other thing this is the money that you give yourself from the net profits that you make honestly just look at yourself or ask your cpa like i'm a little bit confused there too then you've got company expenses so your company laptop all the work trips all your software subscriptions all the equipment all the conferences that you go to you know your passes are like a thousand two thousand dollars with like a thousand two thousand dollars of hotel and travel and like per diem everything costs money and you don't have to go to cpa and as an employee you get to reimburse those but as your own business owner you have to pay for it yourself and it becomes a business expense yes but you still pay for it from the money that you make there are just a lot of hidden benefits that employees get that you don't as a business owner so like it is not one-to-one just because you make a certain amount like 100k in your business 100k as an employee is not one-to-one no there's also business tax social security and medicare tax totals about 15 yes when your employee you pay half of that out of your paycheck 7.5 and the business pays the other half 7.5 but you in your company you're the business and you're the employee correct so you have to pay both both and you have to figure out insurance 401k your own benefits everything and then an expense that happens a lot for creators is your payroll for your contractors or your employees mostly contractors and creators work with a lot of freelancers so you're gonna have to like be giving out 1099s i have a quickbooks account and a subscription that's expensive i have a cpa you also have representation so yeah you can make all this money but 10 goes to your agency 20 goes to management five percent goes to your lawyer fees and these are just like standardish numbers but everyone has a different dealings and they're all the same so you have to figure out how to make the money and then you have to figure out how to make the money and then you have to figure out how to make the money and then you have to figure out how to make the money and then you have to figure out how to make like it's this is not everyone's numbers you have to pay your business manager if you have one or a publisher for a book deal or an assistant if you need one there's just a lot of other expenses and you're like oh this job kind of expensive but it's not as expensive as other types of endeavors like restaurants so we are kind of lucky in that sense there are also a lot of other caveats you don't really get your own pto when you're your own business owner like the the algorithm doesn't care that you're taking a lead they penalize you for everything the work to money ratio is very different you got to put a lot of work into your time but if you are someone who overworks and you think your salary is not matching the amount of impact and effort you're driving to the company the salary won't really change as much but in the business space to freelance business space your ceiling is like uncapped you can just keep working forever if you can do it yeah because the more you work at a w-2 salary job yeah right the less you're getting promoted correct there's like a quote quote pay bump yeah but when you're you're doing your own business then it kind of scales more linearly yeah so in year one i was like hella sweaty i would wake up work do content edit script film edit script film edit script film don't see people i just need to grind i need to figure this out i'm so sorry i'm busy and also another thing that you have to get used to is doing a lot of free work as a creator you don't really make money for a lot of months and you have to build up your portfolio for the i remember in that first year of q4 i didn't take any money or any sponsors because i was trying to build 30 lessons because i knew that i needed to work on growth versus money there's like it was a lot so back to the discord comp i'll share the target tc of my first year when i joined 215 base 50k sign-on bonus and rsus that were valued at that time if discord was at its peak at the time that was communicated to me through email then i would have had a target tc of 532 000 but yeah obviously a huge chunk of that is zero because we don't have that and then stonks aren't doing super well these days very sad about it yeah it's not real money it's not real money not yet but you know so over time things change my base change over time too like got a couple raises so it got up to 240 something 240 something base how did content compare to that in year one i went back to see my profit and loss my pnl and whatever i paid myself in salary and i paid myself 136 000 so salary to salary did not match but like total to total i think it was comparable but it was still dicey kevin thinks otherwise i think it was close because discord was a lot of funny money you know if you take like the actual liquid cash and compared it it's like very comparable i think you did really well also content was also only like so basically you're saying if you forget equity you're like comparable even if you include some of the equity you're doing pretty well i feel like that's not a good comparison see this is why i can't really answer this question and whenever creators are like oh i make like way more money than my tech job you cannot just say that out the bat like it just bothers me so much we're also paying for like labor for contractors for editors yeah yeah yeah but it's all it's all like a choice emotionally at the end of the year i felt like i made enough money to make me think i have a chance at building a career like i didn't know i can make that much and i also like produced a course so i have digital product i was doing youtube and short form and i was like i'm gonna do this i'm gonna do this i'm gonna do this i'm gonna i joined a talent management company blah blah there were so many things that i was doing and i remember one of your explicit goals for the first year was to match my tech income yeah i was really obsessed with that goal that goal made me very stressed out as well and then kevin was like stop taking sponsors i feel like you overdid it so much work and again you got close so you almost reached that goal but at like what cost i feel like for parts of that year that first year we were a little miserable because you were just so overworked yeah and don't forget you flew to taiwan to produce a course oh yeah like that was a lot of effort and you got sick on that trip i was so sick so that is my long-winded answer of telling you kind of in year one in year two which is last year that's when i hit a million instagram so the economics changed i joined uta i also got we got married we got married that was a lot of time effort like i didn't start making money until after the wedding there was 30 lessons and then into wedding planning yeah exactly so then i it's like half a year almost half a year we just weren't doing sponsors or anything it was just yeah yeah because life you know and then i worked like a dog i just kept working i did everything and then this year i'm pregnant and i still don't know how i'm gonna do mat leave like there's like so many considerations at this stage that i'm not really sure how to handle so we're gonna figure it out one day at a time but i think that my potential in content can be higher than my potential in tech and i think i've built that confidence over time and i enjoy my path a lot right now for sure i mean i think you've hit a lot of the financial goals you set for yourself yes yes yes yeah yeah and then i think that at some point it wasn't about the money but about like the impact the creative energy the flexibility the freedom and i really like not having to tell a manager i want to take today off to do something and we went to japan that's awesome sometimes you wake up and you're like yeah i'm not doing anything today you know how hard it is for me to ask for time off from my manager back then it was like a whole thing i had to recite in my head i was so scared i was scared to take time off to even like go to a hair appointment what i feel like it's just a slack message dude i'm not like you i'm not a man you need a little more man energy in you it was different it was hard i just i worked a lot i'm a people pleaser whatever you know i mean so you gave yourself a year right yeah initially it was like three months you know but that probably wasn't enough to figure it out no i mean what would you recommend for most people then like i think a year is good i think a year in some actually a year and a half for half the year you're just gonna chill you're gonna take a break maybe you're gonna take a break for like three months you want to travel a little bit you want to spend time with family you're gonna catch up on shows you're just gonna like heal from the trauma of whatever was just happening or the big decision that you were gonna make and then you're gonna need time to plan and then you're gonna need time to do so i think you when you have time to do you give yourself a whole ass year which means if it's a year and a half you gotta plan for two years in terms of runway i don't know i'm also really conservative and i also think that progress doesn't come fast i think good things take time and a new skill set is difficult and some people get really distracted i don't know if i'm a distracted type am i a distracted time not really yeah i'm pretty laser focused one week after you got laid off you were just like i locked in the grind i went all in but some people will like take three months six months just to hang out and travel and that's okay if that's what you need that's what you need i hate traveling so i'm okay with that but yeah i would say that's the amount of i feel like besides the pure cash runway a lot of people are also concerned about like the health insurance right like for us we got married but that's not an option for many other people yes okay about that health insurance is a very complicated topic so i'm gonna have disclaimer here i am not a health care professional or a health insurance professional or a financial advisor please do not take any of this as financial advice or whatever advice this is just my understanding of it and my perspective and please double check everything with your own people like your own cpa your own research your own financial advice and i'm not a health insurance professional advisor you know what i mean so this is my limited non-professional non-advice answer it's also a very controversial topic and everyone has their own relationship and journey to health but i am going to generalize here for the sake of answering what i have come to learn is that a lot of people are very fearful of leaving their nine-to-five jobs because they don't want to pay their health insurance because it's some sort of big nebulous crazy expensive thing that is looming over you that keeps you in the corporate handcuffs of work but you have a few options here if you quit do you get cobra if you quit i think you do yeah yes so you can opt in for cobra which means that you can stay on your company's health insurance as long as you pay for the full thing yourself and i think when i was looking into cobra for discord uh if i had to pay for it it'd be like about a thousand dollars a month which i was like that's so expensive that's crazy i mean tech companies usually have really good health insurance plans so when you're paying for all of it that means you're paying for the part that the employer was paying for yeah so i think that gave me a is to be on your spouse's or domestic partner's health insurance which is what kevin and i did i am on riot's health insurance yay but yeah not an option for everyone the third option is for you to look into health insurance yourself and the fourth option is to not get health insurance but you do have to pay a penalty if you're in california so people in other states i think it's a little bit more common to not have health insurance if they don't want to pay for it a lot of young people can choose to not have it yeah yeah but in california you you do get hit with and it is expensive. It's like a minimum of $950 a year. yeah or like 2.5 percent of your gross income whatever is higher yes but anyways you gotta look this up i think the policies will change and i do have friends in california who don't have health insurance and i'm like oh that's crazy to me coming from tech who's someone who's had health insurance all their career i'm just like what but if you compare it to the money that you have to pay to get health insurance like okay the money starts to make a little bit more sense i mean how much do you have to pay so i was looking into this because i have a company now and i have employees and we're looking into like what are some good decent mid-tier plans and um i'm generalizing again but assuming that you are a healthy person you're relatively young in your 20s or maybe really early 30s and you want a mid-tier plan you're looking at around like a four hundred dollars to eight hundred dollars a month and if you want an amazing plan with amazing coverage you're going to go into the eight hundred twelve hundred dollars a month range and so i think that if you're looking at the five hundred dollars a month range you're going to go into the eight hundred twelve hundred dollars a month range and so i think that if you're looking at the five hundred dollars a month range like let's just say on average a mid-tier for a healthy individual who doesn't need to do too much is five hundred dollars a month you're looking at six thousand dollars a year for health insurance that's actually a lot of money for the average american if you're working at an average salary however if assuming that you haven't been in tech for a while you have a multi-six-figure compensation you put your time in and you hate your life to the point that you like cry you lost your identity you're depressed you're burnt out you just want out and you're like everything makes you sad you're working in a toxic environment that six thousand dollar price tag is not as insurmountable as you might think because i know you guys who are working in those freaking jobs i know you've bought some nice things with six thousand dollars i bet you went to japan one too many times i bet you bought a rolex watch i bet you bought a chanel bag and for the price of freedom and mental health and healing and finding the path that you want it is not a horrific price to pay health insurance is not a horrific price to pay health insurance is not a horrific price to pay health insurance isn't the thing stopping you yes i would say this is a very controversial very privileged take i know but this is specifically for the audience in this pay bracket who are complaining to me and being like oh but i don't want to pay for health insurance like that is the sticker price that we are working with and yes it is expensive but not insurmountable at the end of the day health insurance is not holding you back from making that big decision still something to consider and calculate when you calculate your runway and how much time you have left like add that in or you just determine that your risk tolerance allows you to not get it and you'd rather save the money that is crazy but yes i do have some friends who i'm just like what and they're like yeah it's just cheaper for me to pay the california penalty if you're in your 20s if you're in your 20s if you're in your 20s if you're a healthy individual but yeah if that price tag is not something you can take on in your financial situation that is a much harder question to answer and staying in the job market is i would say the more responsible choice like if i were in those shoes i'd stay like i'm your content creator income is a lot more unstable compared to like a w-2 salary oh yeah it's so unstable it's so unstable it's it's like it is a fundamental thing that we all agree upon as content creators and freelancers it is super unstable but i think i trust my ability to adapt to the market demands of the time and to pivot and to create new revenue lines or business models or create value in some way i believe in that ability in me so i'm okay with it so i think that in order for me to address the instability and like swallow it as someone who loves seeing a stable paycheck and knows exactly how much she's gonna make in a single year i really had to rethink what pay looks like in my life remember first of all the money is not one-to-one so we got to figure out like what that number looks like for you and your situation and i had to figure that out for my situation there is like a number that i have in a year based on the expenses that i project that i really want to hit and if i hit that number earlier in the year i tell myself that i have the choice of not working for the rest of the year and that's really cool if we get there earlier you can kind of work on other endeavors or coast or chill but that also means i'm working a lot in the first half of the year and that has happened every year so far yeah you always front load things yeah and the second thing which i already talked to you is like commit to the ability to adapt to market conditions and changes like if things are not ever going to be the same from one year to the next i think people in the content space we have like a six month cycle where we think the algorithm changes every six months like completely and you got to do new things i think if i released 30 lessons again today it would not do as well it's probably so different now yeah it's like the ecosystem changes landscape taste what people are used to is different and you just have to adapt the third concept that i really believe in is that depth can help make you money but diversification is what helps you protect it so what do i mean by depth it is that you need to have depth in a certain skill set in a certain superpower and once you're able to like have mastery of a certain craft or a skill in my case content creation then you can start making money off of it at that point you're really just trading time for money but the root of the question that we're asking here is how do we overcome the instability of a w-2 salary versus a freelance life and i think that in this framing you can think about diversification as a form of stability so when you have a w-2 income you can think of it as stable but in this day and age when everyone's getting laid off like a couple times a year that stability does not exist that does not hold a w-2 income is no longer stable that is one way to make money and that money goes to absolute zero immediately overnight unless you have a great severance package in which case you're scrambling to figure out what's next in content most of my money does come from sponsorships but there are also so many other ways you can make money like adsense products courses podcasting ip ownership you can invest in other things other physical goods and so if one thing fails within this portfolio of revenue driving pillars then you have the other pillars to lean on and that diversification is a and that falls it's over right so that's how i am overcoming the freelance like it's not that stable diversification is stability is protection now on to the next category personal life take it away how's it being pregnant it sucks i hate it take me out don't don't take you out okay fine stay in there uh okay uh yeah i am 15 weeks pregnant right now first trimester was absolutely horrendous i could not do anything everything was disgusting it just feels like day four food poisoning every single day everything wanted to make me puke but i was also hungry and i was like sleeping all the time because i was so exhausted the fatigue was insane and then it was so painful because like you're starting to grow organs you know what i mean and then make your like uterus is going up like it's a lot extra one extra organ and then your other existing organs like get bigger it's crazy pregnancy is crazy let me tell you i was talking to one of my girlfriends who's like a product manager at youtube she's also pregnant at the same time and i was like girl how do you work and be pregnant because i'm just so confused i'm like every day is a freaking battle and she said she said that her first few months was honestly an emotional turmoil because she was like having to come to terms with pregnant her versus non-pregnant her and how much less she can do with pregnant her and she was also trying to come to terms with the fact that the workplace is just not meant for a pregnant woman and men will never have to experience this and even when you go through postpartum after like she talked to a lot of her friends she was like a lot of fathers can't even do much for mothers when they're going through postpartum no matter how much they try so it's a really lonely and difficult challenging experience emotionally and physically yeah seeing how you were doing in the first trimester i like actually don't understand how women yeah do it and i do not understand like both of us zooming out we're very grateful and very happy because we know that pregnancy is a very difficult journey like even to get pregnant is a blessing in life this is kind of why i wanted to get pregnant sooner rather than later even though 32 is not exactly on the early side of pregnancy but it's a very difficult journey it's not early it's not late but it's it's early in our friend groups i would say in the cities in in the big cities where people like are so into career and like making money and like individualism and freedom and they're not as family oriented people are not trying to have babies right now a lot of people are opting for ivfs in fact i talked to a lot of vc guys like older vc men and i was telling them oh yeah i think that i'm like thinking about having kids and it's affecting my career decisions and they're like why don't you just do ivfs and i'm like yeah i'm like yeah and i'm like dude it's not that easy people go through it and it fails you just you have to pay for it you got to go through all the hormones and stabbing yourself and paying yeah it's expensive and you could still fail there's a lot of health complications so i know that a lot of my friends have gone through that journey didn't succeed and it resulted in a huge plot twist in their life so i'm very grateful we're very healthy amazing and we're privileged because like you can have a day where you wake up you're super brain fogged you're super nauseous and you can just choose to not do as much work that day correct it's not an option for a lot of women or i mean they might just take a sick day and stuff but depending on your job maybe those are limited too right and first trimester you don't tell a lot of people and even though that's the one that's worst that's when you feel it's actually it's the worst and then people on their feet all day like i could not walk around so if you work in health care and you're on your feet in the hospital one of my friends is um a nurse and she works in like some one of those emergency departments which is super hectic and i'm just like dude if i had to live that life i'm not really sure some people lock in though some people like are working as teachers in elementary schools or middle schools and because of the environment they're able to log in but i am a physically weak girl i i when it comes to physical stuff i'm not there do you have a lot more empathy for the i have a lot of empathy i'm like y'all are superheroes and i'm out here complaining but um the type of person i am is i complain a lot in the present and then i forget about my pain so i'm okay i think i'll be fine once you birth the baby you'll be like wow that was great yeah i'll be like cool dude i don't know we're all going through at the same time i have my little emotional support group My last point is when people ask me how I feel about motherhood, knowing that I really like doing career things, I tell them, you know, I don't like it because I'd rather be a father instead. Like me? Is that a crazy take? It's me. I am the father. So lucky. So lucky. What'd you solve with me? My life or your life? Yeah. But I like me, you know? I feel like you also enjoy being a woman despite the. All I know is being a woman. Yeah. But I do wonder. What it's like to be a man? Something like that. I don't know. What sort of prep did you do in advance of the pregnancy? You know, did you worry about it financially, emotionally? Yes, that's why I worked so hard. That's why I grinded. Because you were like, I won't be able to do this. Yeah. I knew my body would change and I knew I'm like weak to it. When I'm sick, I'm sick. Like I am out. There's no way I'm working. And I'm just such an energy-based person that I knew it would be difficult for me. So that's why I worked a lot. I front-loaded a lot of it. And that's why I was super ultra stressed out. However, recently I had a conversation with one of my YouTuber friends who was an OG and she gave birth last year. And she was like, don't expect to get anything done or any work done in the last month of your pregnancy and the first month of your birth. In fact, don't even work for three months. I was like, what? What do you mean? Don't work for three. I've never not worked for three months before. That's an insane amount of. Oh my God. You don't do vacations. I don't do vacations. I hate vacations. I just, I enjoy what I do. Does that scare you? I'm terrified. I still don't know what I'm going to do about it. And I'm trying to front-load. We'll see. We'll see how it goes. I trust my future self. Do I? Is the pregnancy causing a lot of stress right now for you? Um, yes and no. I mean, it is stressful, but it's also like, even if I complain about it to mothers, mother's like, you're going to be fine. So I think hearing that over and over again would be like, yeah, I think I'll be fine. I just can't think about it too much. Stress is bad for the baby. I think I am. I'm in my all-time highest peak of peace, inner peace. I have a lot of inner peace. I don't have a lot of drama to talk about, unfortunately. But you have a office drama. Oh, I do. I have this drama. Let's say you're forced to go back to tech. Like what kind of job would you even look at? I would do the same thing. Product management. I do like it. Or some sort of creator, creative role. I think there's like narrative roles or creator roles that you can take, but I'm not sure if I would want to do that, to be honest. It feels a little bit meta. There's parts of it that you miss for sure, right? Yeah. I do like product management a lot. What do you miss the most? About corporate. Yeah. Or tech. I love the people I used to work with. People in tech are really smart, very competent, very introspective. Well, the good ones are. The other ones are crazy and evil, but you know. There's a lot of learning. People love learning in tech. Like you just got a lot of smarty pants who love to grow and learn about new things. I actually really love going to the PM talks where a PM would present their learnings and findings and lessons and insights. User research talks, data science talks, tech talks. I learned a lot about it. So I really miss that people are so committed to excellence and competency. And as I've grown older and experienced some different types of people from different industries, excellence is rare. Yes, I would say so. That is a brutal reality of what I've faced. What do you not miss then? What do I not miss? Oh, the politics. I just could not care. It's really hard for me to lie through my teeth. It's really hard. You're focused on the work part of it. Yeah, I'm very much like a roll up my sleeves, do the work kind of person and to play the I don't know. I don't even know. You're not trying to play those games. I don't kiss ass. I don't do that enough. I can learn to do that more, but I really didn't think that was like worth my time. Do you think you could have avoided getting laid off if you kissed more ass? Probably, probably, but I didn't play the game and it's okay. And I'm happy with my life. Who was the most impactful mentor in your journey? I had two conversations that, really stood out to me in this journey. Number one was with my old mentor from TikTok, Sean Bonowitz, who became a senior director, head of trust and safety at many other companies like Patreon. And I remember going back to the Bay and then we had a coffee chat and then I was telling him about like my journey. I showed him my life purity. And then he was like, you need to go on your own journey and not go back to corporate because this is your hero's journey. Have you ever heard of the hero's journey? And I was like, no, what is that? Like every single, maybe like Disney movie, I've heard of the hero's journey. And he was like, has the hero's journey arc where there's like some sort of crazy event that happens. And there's a call to action. There's a call to action. And you first decline the call to action. You first have to decline it. I got to decline it first. Oftentimes the main character like was like, no, this is the life I know. I don't want to leave. Why would I leave? You're right. Yeah. This is the hero's journey. Yeah. That's also what you did. You're like, oh, I don't know if I should quit. No, I can't do that. It's true. It's true. And then you got to go on and you got to learn the thing. And then after you go on the journey, you bring it back to the village and you start to be like that mentor figure for the next person to go on their hero journey. So I think hearing that from him made me realize, oh, shoot, I got to get out there and do the thing that I'm scared of. That is kind of calling to me that I'm curious about to go on that hero's journey. And it's not that I won't ever come back. I'm going to come back and bring it back to my roots, to the people, to wherever I'm going to be back at. So that was really cool. The second big conversation that was really impactful was after 30 lessons, I think in February, beginning of March, last year, Arden Cho DM'd me on Instagram and was like, hey, I like your work. Do you want to get coffee? And I was like, what? The Arden Cho from Agents of Secret Service. Agents of Secret Stuff. That's OG YouTube. Yeah. OG YouTube. She's the queen. Yeah. I was like, this is unreal. So I went on this coffee chat and she was like, why don't you start a production company like Hello Sunshine, Reese Witherspoon? I think you have what it takes. She's dying and doesn't have original stories anymore. And we need a new wave of original storytellers. And I was like, yo, I'm new. I don't even, what? Like I'm just, I'm just little Chloe here on the internet making stupid videos and everything I'm doing is a first time. So for someone of that caliber and that history in Hollywood to reach out to me and tell me these words and just like put a lot of belief and hope in me, it kind of just changed my brain chemistry. I think I wasn't really understanding what I was doing at the time. Your view was more narrow then? Yeah. My view was very narrow. I didn't know how far I can go. And for her to say that, I was like, dang, I really can do it. Your horizons expanded. My horizons did expand. So lo and behold, I went back to Arden. I remember a few months ago, I was like, Arden, remember when you told me you can start a production company? I did. Here it is. And it might not look like what the final version of it would be with like a big movie or whatever. I'm not even sure if I am interested in making movies, but this is where we're starting and the plan is moving in action. It's so funny that you say that, you know, Arden Cho from Agents of Secrets stuff, because nowadays everyone knows her from K-pop Demon Hunters. I know. I love Arden. She's so, she's so great. Or Teen Wolf before that too. Yeah. Teen Wolf or Partner Track. But if you know her from Agents of Secrets stuff, that's when you know her like OG. That's OG. Yeah. Now the remaining categories are content creation as a career, advice for new grads and the industry outlook. And I don't think I'm going to cover much of this because it was a really small portion of the Q&A. I feel like I covered like the content creation. So if you're interested in content creation as a career, let me know, because I'm not sure if you are. I don't know if my audience is interested in content creation as a career. And I think that maybe more and more people are, but I don't have a good pulse on it. And I feel like that in itself is a whole masterclass. Breaking down this career, brand deals, money, the weird things that people don't talk about. I have to write this out really thoughtfully. Maybe I'll do this in a more, I don't know, private setting. There's a lot of whenever people do, I think it's misleading. Yeah. I'm just going to say that. It's misleading. The advice for students and new grads, a lot of it is like, oh my God, AI is coming. What should I do? Am I cooked? Is tech cooked? That's the industry outlook. For new grads and students, in almost every episode of Office Drama, I ask my guests, what advice do you have for new grads? So hopefully that will be more specific to the role. And they are usually hiring managers. So they will see what is happening in the interview process and see resumes, and they'll give you a more pointed answer. And I do have a lot of takes on this. So if you're a new grad, you're going to have to But again, I think it's more like a career-based episode. And then for the industry outlook, I mentioned at the top of the episode that this is going to be a whole episode as well. There's a lot of juice here. But my general take is don't worry. Every single era and generation of work changes, and everyone is going to have to adapt. You cannot play the career game by the old rules anymore. The modern career is here. A lot of it is based on AI and how you learn to build. A lot of it is the human and learn your fundamentals. Even if it is like giving you the answers right then and there, you must learn the fundamentals because that's when you know how to build good taste. A lot of being a really great person performing at the high end is having fantastic taste, knowing what to build and why, not just like building the thing. I hoped you enjoyed my first solo episode. I'm sorry if it felt a little YouTube-y. I'm not really sure. What is a solo episode? We're new to this. We're new to this. Kevin's, even Kevin, is nervous. The camera's not even on Kevin. I don't know what I'm doing here. Yeah. So hopefully you enjoyed this. I feel like in the Office Drama episodes, it's a lot about the guest and what they're going through. And there's not a lot of time for me to share my perspective and what I'm going through because I also see a lot. I get a lot of questions. I see the comments and DMs, and I want to address that in these types of episodes. Bear with me as I figure out how to be on camera as a solo podcast host person. I appreciate you for even getting to this point of this episode. I hope you enjoyed I covered all the nuances I was able to cover. very complicated topics. And I want to be as honest and transparent as possible without overcomplicating it, but also without oversimplifying it too, because there really are truly that many layers to all of this. There's a lot of topics that you cover in your shorts and then you're always kind of like, ah, but this and that and this and that, and you can't like fully dive into it. I know. I know. Like short form, you have a minute, right? You can't explain these things in a minute. This takes hours to talk through over time, years to understand. So hope you enjoyed this little peek into my two year and four month post layoff update. And I'm excited to see you in the next one. Bye-bye. Yay. Bye, drama llamas. Do we like that? Bye, drama llamas. Bye, drama llamas. Should we have a jingle? Drama llamas, goodbye. Hi, drama llamas. What did you think of our first ever Chloe solo episode? Before you answer that question, let us talk about our Patreon. I think this is our first time really talking about it. We have three tiers. Tier one is drama llama. As a drama llama, you get end screen credits, some behind the scenes posts, and a badge in our Discord. Tier two is when you get promoted to chief drama officer. So this includes all of our bonus segments. A lot of the times we'll pull out the personal shields of our guest shows and we'll put them on the Patreon. Or when we go on huge tangents that don't really fit into our one hour episodes, we'll also put on the Patreon. Then we have tier three, our angels. If you've ever been part of a show, please let us know in the comments. And if you haven't, please let us know in the comments. If you haven't been part of our drama Patreon, it is very, very similar. I also put that together. Our angel tier is truly the flex tier of all time. Check out the descriptions. Thank you to Emily for being the first ever Patreon member of Office Drama. Wow. Check out our Patreon if you want to support Office Drama. We have yet to monetize this podcast. So yeah, it would be amazing, you know, to help keep it going. Thank you so, so much. Okay, now back to the post episode thoughts. Dude, I don't think you understand how nervous both Kevin and I were, or maybe just I was nervous because I don't know if I have what it takes to do a solo pod. You know what I mean? So that's why I've always wanted co-hosts or have guests or just have someone else because I love the dynamic of people having a conversation. It's like funny. You can bounce off to each other. You can laugh and giggle. And when I talk, I don't really laugh at myself. Like it's, I was, I feared so much that it would feel really disorganized or I would sound really monotonous. But then we finished this episode and honestly, after reviewing it, it wasn't as bad as I thought. Just felt like a longer YouTube video. So I hope you enjoyed the details and the breakdowns in this episode. These are very sensitive topics and it does take immense preparation to determine what is the right level of detail and the right level of information to share publicly. One of the really interesting learnings that I have learned in my career is that not everything should be transparent and should be publicly available online. But I've wanted to share insights like any insights to help anyone navigate their own big internal life and career questions. And I find these topics very interesting. And I think it's very fascinating. These were questions that I was pondering a lot and trying to find answers for, but people really don't share that online in a transparent way. Anyways, after doing this episode, I think I like this long solo episode format. I get so much more time to go into the nitty gritty of really hard topics that I don't get to share anywhere else. So that begs the question, what are other topics you want me to demystify or break down for you? I love breaking down information. I love a good framework. I love mantras. I love takeaways. I love understanding where a question is coming from. I love understanding where a question is coming from and formulating a helpful answer. So if you are interested in anything and want to ask questions, let me know. And that way it can inform the next solo episode topics. Yeah, that is all. Thank you so much for listening and I will see you in the next one. Bye. See you next week.