How Did She Become a GenAI Director in 3 Months Without Applying Online

It's already very overwhelming to become a AI product manager. Not to mention become a director product especially competition is very severe. Not only mean manage AI, you also need to have those people leadership skills. And in this episode I had pleasure to invite Judy Shong. She's a director of Genai product and managing a really big team in a billion dollars bank. I'm going to have her to share with you guys how was she able to quickly become a director of Gen AI product by leveraging and launch her own AI product. Hey guys, this is Dr. Nancy CV, a direct product featuring Forbes. I've helped thousands people land a dream PM job offer in fan companies and unicorn startup and continue to get promoted as product leader. If you're interested in landing a dream product management job offer within 90 days, make sure to go to pmxerator.io and learn more. In this channel, we talk about tech trends and free product management training. Like and subscribe and turn your bell button so be notified every time I post a new video every Tuesday and Friday. If you find any of the resource useful, insightful, make sure to smash like button until you turn blue. This is the only way YouTube algorithm will recognize me. Hi Judy, welcome to Product Insider podcast. How are you? >> Yeah. Hi Dr. Nancy Lee. I'm good. How are you? I'm so excited to have you join the podcast because I'm watching you quickly become a product manager then ji product manager become director really fast in less than four years and I always prime myself I become product in four years you actually you you I'll be me you actually did in less than four years uh every single time I see your LinkedIn just say every year there's a new title change no title change and especially you also launch a very successful AI product which help women to prioritize and find out the best outfit as well. So, I can't wait to have you join us. Julie, let's do this. Um, beyond my extreme excitement, I want you to introduce yourself to the audience and what your background and also what's your journey to director of Genai product and AI entrepreneurship. >> Yeah, thank you Dr. Nancy Lee and thank you for having me. Uh, so I'm Judy Sh. I'm a product director in TD Bank, um, the top two bank in Canada. So where I help to re reshape the finance team's AI transformation strategy and road map and also try to help identify where AI can deliver value and can turn those opportunities into practical solutions and besides my time I also AI entrepreneur and the creator of style pilot is a personal AI stylist that can help people to uh get ready for your day like to pick up whatever you may need for your day. Let's say to prepare for a meeting um to go for a date or to go for a vacation. So my journey to uh where I'm right to where I'm right now is not um very smooth. So I have take some like a pivot I've take some steps. So I was a deoy consultant um for seven years and I connected with Dr. uh Nancy Lee um and I told you that I want to become a product manager. So I took the PMA program where I have um like repackaged my resume, my skill sets and then I successfully land a job in TD um like to become a true product manager. So in the three years in TD I successfully launched an enterprise model inventory platform uh for the bank. So I was ranked as the top 1% of the employee in the bank. I was the award-winning product leader in TD Bank. And then the last year I found that with the rising of the AI, I have to pivot my career again from a traditional product manager to an AI product manager. So that's why I took the uh AI boot camp. The last year I was the co-host sixth student where I launched the AI product of style pilot and that experience that truly changed my life uh because I have started sharing my journey uh how I uh developed style pilot from ideiation to development to deployment. So with that exposure to public I got really good uh network experience with um more pe uh people. So it's not I perceive the role of the director of product, it's actually the role find me. So I found very fortunate to become director of finance um to lead this finance AI um strategy transformation in TD Bank. >> Slow down. >> Yeah. >> You got promoted become a director. You didn't apply. Yeah. >> They found you. They say hey we are hiring a director Jai product. Do you want to join us as a director? Is that how it THAT'S HOW IT HAPPEN? >> YEAH. YEAH. YEAH. SO, SO, so that so that's why like I would say the magic behind the scene is not about you have to develop some something and sharing what you are doing is also quite important. So the opportunity will come to find you instead of I do apply for some jobs but actually I didn't do that successful um if I don't share um all the post all the journey about that pilot because the opportunity finds me because of my exposure to linking. >> This is so beautiful. Hey guys, Judy recorded a second podcast with us dive deeper regarding job hunting interview into director position and there as well personal branding especially she's a mom of three she mom of three become a director creating her own like AI startup on the side and getting promoted as a director so quickly sort of a separate uh product insider podcast episode with her dive deeper regarding her job interviews and also leadership development because I believe this special mama of three were very very busy work life balance is very challenging and you're competing against all other men out there and it just it's extremely challen and also company politics and managing bigger team leadership development communication style is extremely challenging especially for women as well so we have a separate episode and Judy going to give us the deep dive regarding how to really rise to the director position was also link in the description show not also going to be available on top of my screen right here to make sure watch that one and Today for this episode I want to spend more time dive deeper regarding her AI product style pilot so that you can create something similar as well and get invited into a director product position as well. This is like mindb blown mind blown. Okay so now Judy so sounds like the style pilot does magic for you. Tell us what is style pilot AI product. So what does it do? What problem does it solve? What benefit gets? And do those kind of recruiters try out and at least I try it out. I they try it out, they reach out to you. So tell us more about this style pilot product. >> Yeah, sure. Um, so style pilot is actually started with a problem that I experience almost every morning. So I have a full of closet, but I still feel I have nothing to wear. So I realized that choosing an outfit isn't simply about by matching a top with a pants or with your shoes. So your outfit is a bridge between your inner world and how you want to present yourself to the outside world. So for example, if you are attending an important client meeting, you may want to feel bold, feel polished, and feel confident. And if you are going on a date, you may want to feel attractive, playful, and adorable. If you are go on a vacation, you may want to feel relaxed, comfortable, but still picture ready. So the challenge is translating how you want to feel into what you should wear by using the clothes that you already own. So the style palette starts by starting understanding your wardrobe, your personal style, your your body profile, the occasion, the weather and your design feeling. So then it can recommends the outfits that fit the moment and also the person that you want to be in that moment. So star pilot isn't help you to just choose the clothes. It can help you to to express yourself to feel confident and to get more value from what you already own. >> This is so beautiful. Uh everybody, we're going to put a demo of style pilot right here so you guys can quickly take a look. I personally try it out. It's really fun. I think this all women so excited. I remember Judy your team is a le biggest team in AIPM boot camp has 16 people, right? >> Yes. Right. AND ALL WOMEN DO YOU >> THEY'RE ALL WOMEN TEAM. I'm leading a but the funny thing is the developers are all women as well. >> I think all women join your team. Our other team took men and all women join your team. We all want to have a fancy outfit. It just is a very very exciting. Um so let's talk more regarding the how you style pilot. Right. So basically sounds like the product you're able to quickly pick different outfit and upload and pick different kind of outfit for you using your existing uh wardrobe without buying new clothes. Right? In this concept actually sounds easy and we actually have lots of people trying to do something similar. However, actually developing it in just two months and launch it successfully. You also have a mobile app actually full suite of product with tons of users. So let's talk about this. What's the secret of developing such comprehensive AI product in just two months? >> Yeah, that's a great question. So, I would say starting from your problem uh first. So, the problem is quite important, right? So you have to identify the problem that you may occur like every day and other people may have the similar problems and then uh secondly within the time constraints you have to decide what not to deliver rather than what to deliver. So it's actually a lesson and learn for me because I lead a the biggest team in coho like six. So I have a very big designing team and a very big developer team right. So my design team like they are all like a female and a male and they are very ambitious. So they created very ambitious like a Figma um like the prototype. So you have a very fancy Barbie wardrobe, you have like a flashlight like at you so you can try on the clothes and you also have like a AI stylist that can chat with you, right? saw all the fancy features in Figma. But the thing is we only have two months like I work with my developer even in the on boarding part we like they spend a month to only like develop the onboarding part because by um provide the the recommendation you have to get all the information from the user right so let's say the images from the wardrobe your style preferences your body profile and your occasion and so on so forth so even for that one feature on boarding It took one month to develop but we have imagine we have five or six like fancy features it's impossible to develop them in two months right so then after that one month of struggling I found that I have to cut the features so what is the core feature that I have to develop within that two months so I think identifying the core uh user journey the workflow is quite important so that's why we decided okay we only have three steps on boarding you can upload right you can input all your information and then recommendation so that's the only two features that we keep even though in Figma we have like five or six but within that two months development we only deliver two and that two feature we can share that uh two feature with the user to get a feedback then we can further iterate rather than we build all five features and the users may not be able to use them. So that's the strategy. >> Exactly. I can imagine because your team is full of women. Everybody's want to do fancy outfit. Everyone do it. I bet all the women just the best scenario. I can have the the Bobby like wardrobe different stuff and then this out of excitement design the best possible experience and I got off. >> Yeah. Yeah. >> Oh no. uh but but you make a great decision which is as a direct product you're making the great cut to really prioritize what needs to get done which also leading to you eventually actually launch on Apple app store with like users and with people like trying out and have great experience I think this is speaking the truth of you being a great AI product leader there's also I think which reference more later on in the next episode we'll talk more regarding how you actually leverage those leadership example to become a AI director product This is so exciting. Hey guys, make sure to watch the next episode regarding how she become a AI direct product is extremely exciting and it was all the women both men especially parents busy parents you got to watch that then you know how to really manage your career and life at the same time and so Judy let's talk about this let's challenges right so you talk about prioritization which is true and I think all the amazing AI leaders as a director we all need to do it so let's talk about other challenges you had when implementing and developing product when you build your style pilot. >> Yeah, that's a great question. So, actually I have two challenges that I faced. Uh number one is actually on boarding. Um because with the rising of AI, uh the users have higher expectations for an AI app, right? So but for style pilot to give to guarantee like uh accurate results you have to get all the images uh from your wardrop. So that means the user have to manually bulk upload let's say 10 images from the wardrop but sometimes depends on the light the pixel the quality is not very good right so you can't guarantee the quality of the uploaded images and also you have to uh get very sensitive um like information such as the body profile right so so we have encountered all the challenges by balancing the technical visibility and the uh user experience. So that's number one. And then number two is um as I mentioned before is the gap between what we want to ship and what we can ship within two months. So it's actually the decision every single lead product manager has to think right. So you can't ship like a Titanic in two months. You can only like ship a canon like that can float on the water. Make sure it's not going to sink. So make sure you have all the like basic features that you want to deliver. So you can validate your product with the market. So I would say that that's the two challenges that I met when I implement um the style pilot product. Yeah, I can actually relate to that and especially when you do very very comprehensive development and actually especially women this everybody try her product okay just like all women need to try it uh and then once you start out as I myself taking pictures and upload to the pictures and actually there's a lots of technical element if everything are perfect everything perfect outfit with on the rack no wrinkles take a picture of course AI can take it how you're like wrinkled different places. You have three kids and all over the place and your dress is like missing things. Some my daughter also cut my dresses sometimes and you're missing a quarter and then and then AI need to like really like do very comprehensive technical filtering images and and integrations actually that's that's a very comprehensive >> and one more thing I want to add is the ROI right so when we try to select the vision model because the core technology of our app is actually the vision detection model so we have juggling between the different models like the small like fashion models in hugging face or the big ones in Gemini but you know like when it has the good quality um like the latency quality and the cost so you can't have all of them at one time right so you have to think through like at the current stage with not too many users so what is the top one indicator that you want to prioritize so it could be you want a better quality without a latency But it means that the cost will be higher. So you have to think about those tradeoffs as a lead product manager as well. >> Exactly. So let us know eventually which one did you pick? >> I picked the Gemini. The Gemini light. Yeah. But it's light. So I don't pick the advanced the Gemini but I picked the light. So that's the one I use. I found I can find a balance between the quality, latency, and cost. Very good, very exciting and which is also I always tell my students people say oh which model is better which model is better depends on your application and also depends on your cost management right so you cannot always go for best quality people say oh clot is better uh ch is better this better that better well for example currently I start to use manas AI manus AI is pretty good in terms of all my >> super expensive >> super expensive it does really good stuff uh and also So my ass was managed by like gem uh the man's AI very expensive is actually really good. Um so therefore it's not about good model bad model it's about what's a model best for you for your audience right because when we always launch AI product inside AIPM boot camp I always tell my student hey see as a real startup and once you see it as a real startup you don't just hey that's a best best technology who doesn't have best technology it's like when you become a real startup you have users user need to pay you a go to market strategy I'm premium model and then you pay your AP API cost payers you have to do margin that you can get. Yeah, >> exactly. Run your margins. All of this inside our own company and it's crazy. So inside AIPM bookam PMA our company we developed two AI product one is AI interviewer AI reserator currently with designing developing AI agent helping our automatically apply for jobs using AI agent right so now sounds good when you start developing that you realize it's very very expensive so therefore treat your product as if it's a real startup and I believe this is also the reason you got invited to interview for those director of jai product >> do you feel the same way Yep. Likewise. >> Cool. So therefore everybody the number one thing for you to get started with AI product management is actually launching real life hands-on AI product and as if you're starting a real startup. I have a free checklist which are 20 top 20 AI product ideas to gain real life AI experience. You can go to this website pmxr.io product ideas to use this ideas to develop your own AI products journey from day one. For anybody who's interested in learning more about AI product management boot camp, you can book call with my team by going to our website pms.ioipm and learn more and join our free AI product management workshop to start learning uh immediately. Um now Judy let me ask you this question right so except those models and you talk about different models you have used did you guys also leverage different kind of AI tools when you develop a style pilot? Yeah. So we don't just relying on one tools right. So as a different teams like the tools can be very different like I personally I use chbt as my body when I do my PM jobs such as how can I manage the team? How can I um do the market research? How can I write better like PRD so the design and the development team can understand. So and also for designer team they may use Figma. So they have very very good Figma uh prototype and then for the developer team I also grant the c the c cursor access to uh to them to make sure that they can like have a speedy uh like the like the delivery of the product. So they use cursor to debug to write the code. So I would say we don't rely on just the one tool. It really depends on your goal and your need right. So you pick the right tool and b and based on your budget as well. >> Yeah, exactly. I bet those kind of conversation were also going to show up in your upcoming interviews. Yes. As well. Yeah, totally. So I believe you really need to get those real life hands-on experience and get ready to help you to become a director Jennai as well. So let's let's do this. I think lots of people heard about this especially my excitement, everyone's excitement. So how can people sign up for your product today? >> Yeah, so we do have a website. Um so it's star pilot.ai. So I can share that link uh with like in the in the video below. So and also the way to follow me is my linking. So as I mentioned earlier like I'm very active in linking. I try to uh po post at least one post every week uh to keep me active and I'm sharing what I'm building, what I have learned. So the lessons that I learned from either my work or uh from my personal life. So um if you want to follow me, please come to my linking as well. >> Awesome. I'm going to link in the description of the show notes and so you guys can actually fill and experience what she has shared so that you can build your personal brand as well. Now Julia, let me also ask you last question. What advice do you have for other AI product managers or a entrepreneur who want to grow their AI product management space? >> Yeah. Yeah, that's for me is a philosophy uh question because um how I grow my career and my personal life is I always ask myself like what kind of the person that I want to become in three and five years. What problems that I want to solve in three to five years and what impact that I want to make in three and five years. Then I work backward. Okay. So to to become the future version of me. So what kind of the skill sets that I have to accumulate? So probably I may need to take some course um to enhance my knowledge and then probably I have to get a better experience uh by turning that knowledge to two to the real world experience. So in three five years you eventually get what you want to become like the future version of yourself. You and me are thinking very similarly actually. I just recorded the other video about can people still land H1B job in the US. >> Okay. Yeah. >> Yeah. Um so everyone you should watch that video. I'm going to link in description show notes. So in that video I talk about the example regarding the scarce and scary part regard all the policy changes and and also the fact that I don't have money. When I moved to US with only $800 in my pocket when I was a PhD student, I was getting paid $1,400 for like three and a half years. Literally have no money. I even still even it today I sent money back to China for my to my parents. Right. And talk about the scary thing in regarding economy changing, you don't have money, everything. But at the time I made the big decision similar to what you did. I actually I went during my PhD really have no money with only $1,400 from the school at the scholarship. And I actually like spent money and took classes and took CPA training, the cheap whatever the certified charter financial analyst and plus public speaking training as well. I spend like $800 on those stuff. And for a PhD student only getting paid $1,400 per month. That's a lot of money. Literally every penny I save all go to my learning. But the reason I decide to invest early is like exactly what you said who I want to be. And I when I was young doing my PhD I thought I want to become the CEO of Fortune 500 company. So I have a goal there and then reverse engineer who I want to be and what I need the skills I need to gain early or I can never hit the goal because the goal is really high way too high. That's why I do it early. Even if the job market is scary I really have no money. I still need money back to China. Everything was scary. But because your goal you work on your goal invest early. I'm glad you and me are very similar. Doesn't know when you become director. >> Okay that's great. No, that's what I think that's the secret behind the scene. Yeah, >> we will dive deeper regarding the mindset in our next episode regarding how busy parents or women want to grow their career and develop the career and the leadership skills way earlier. And lots of time it's not just luck. Lots of time is you actually invest in yourself way earlier and the opportunity was presented in front of you or chasing after you and you catch it right away. This so exciting and cool. All right. So everybody make sure that you need to follow Judy on LinkedIn and also uh check out our product uh AI product management boot camp if you're interested in gaining real life experience by leading a team of software developers, engineers and designers and launch a real life production AI product with real users and so that you can get opportunity to get invited to interview for AIPM positions and also become a director of genai product as well. I'm going to link all the information in the description of show not and you can directly book a call with my team. So Judy, thank you so much for joining us. >> Thank you for having me. >> Dear listener, if you find today's episode insightful and useful and inspiring, make sure to give us a fivestar review on Apple podcast and Spotify podcast. This will be the biggest motivation for me to bring the best guests and give you all the free knowledge and training. I personally re read all the comment and reviews and use it as a motivation continuously to enhance our podcast as well. Make sure to follow us on all our social channel like YouTube, Instagram, LinkedIn, Tik Tok, X and Red by searching Dr. Nancy Lee and Limia DM. This is Dr. Nancy Lee from PMXer.io. Like and comment, subscribe. See our next episode right