I grew up Japanese &
other random facts about me.

Here are 5 random facts about me:

#1 I grew up in Japan and Hong Kong for 13 years.

My atomic family of three (me, my Mom, my Dad) left war-torn Croatia in 1993, determined to make it abroad. After living in the United States (Indiana & Minnesota) for 3 years, we moved to Miyazaki, Japan.

There were no English schools so I got put into local Japanese school where I learned fluent Japanese.

In 2000, my Dad's contract as a Philosophy professor at the university in Japan ran out and we moved to Hong Kong. I basically grew up in Hong Kong until I went to university in Canada in 2009.

#2 I used to think only "special" people gave talks and wrote articles online.

I used to longingly look at people who gave talks on topics related to their industry as if they were "special" people with "special" powers. I never thought I'd ever write articles online that anyone else cared about.

Until I started posting content on LinkedIn in 2019 and realized people did kinda care about my unique point of view.

#3 I started writing on LinkedIn to fight my imposter syndrome.

When I quit my product manager job in February 2020 without a plan, I felt naked — no job title, no reputation and no clue how to describe myself. I couldn't even call myself an entrepreneur because I was in month 1 of my entrepreneurial journey.

I wanted to create a paper trail of what I was doing to make sure I'd get employed again in the future. Sharing my journey transparently ended up building my personal brand and I made a name for myself.

#4 I have LinkedIn Premium because I stalk LinkedIn profiles all day long.

I love checking out different LinkedIn profiles and analyzing them for what's good and what's incriminating. I have a database of good and bad LinkedIn profiles that help me get inspiration for when I help my clients optimize their LinkedIn profiles. (No, I don't use my database to plagiarize.)

#5 I accidentally built my career as a product manager by giving memorable product demos.

During my first job in Tech as a product manager, I learned how to give the best product demos from my boss who was a demo wizard.

I didn't really get how valuable this skill was until I went back to corporate in October 2021 and started giving product demos. Turns out most product demos suck and it was a ridiculously easy way for me to stand out.

Now I coach product teams to use the powerful of awesome product demos to get buy-in for their product vision and make a name for themselves like I did.