S3E1: Getting Into Tech after a Career in Finance with Ventrice Lam

This episode was transcribed with the help of an AI transcription tool. Please forgive any typos.

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Laurence Bradford 0:51
Hey, listeners, welcome to the first episode of season three in the Learn to Code With Me podcast. I'm your host Laurence Bradford. In today's episode, I talk with Ventrice Lam. Ventrice worked at Goldman Sachs for six years before transitioning into tech. Her experience at Goldman allowed her to live and work in Hong Kong, Singapore, and then New York City where she still lives today. But before getting into finance ventures was an English Lit slash Business Administration major in University. Today ventures is the founder of bedelia, a product consulting shop for non technical entrepreneurs, where she helps early stage startup founders translate their product vision into a working prototype. Our conversation spans a range of areas from transitioning careers to overcoming mental health obstacles to knowing what to charge clients. Remember, you can get Show Notes for this episode, plus more information about Ventrice at learntocodewith.me/podcast. Enjoy the interview.

Laurence Bradford 1:57
Hi Ventrice - thank you so much for coming on the show.

Ventrice Lam 2:01
Hello. Glad to be here.

Laurence Bradford 2:03
Awesome. So real quick, could you introduce yourself to the audience?

Ventrice Lam 2:07
Yeah, my name is Ventrice Lam. I'm a Product consultant. And I own Bedelia Labs, which is a product consulting shop that specialises in helping non technical entrepreneurs build up the technical sides of their business.

Laurence Bradford 2:21
Awesome. Yeah. So excited to have you on. I'm going to kind of backtrack though a bit. And I was looking at your LinkedIn profile before we started the interview. And I noticed that you worked at Goldman Sachs for six years. So like, how was that? And to me like six years sounds like an eternity? I'm like, wow, six years like that's so, that's so long, just I mean, I've only had my Learn to Code With Me site it'll be three years in April. So yeah, like what did you like do at Goldman Sachs and what was that experience like?

Ventrice Lam 2:54
So it actually starts even before then, I had no idea what I wanted to do. When I was in school. I studied English literature and that was my first major and somehow decided I wanted to make money in my adult life. So I moved into business Business Administration. And I applied for a job at Goldman. So I was I was in school in Toronto, and I applied to a job at Goldman in Hong Kong, not knowing whatsoever what Goldman Sachs was. That was in 2008, just before the financial crash. So my first few months in that job was a very, very quick learning session of what finance was, what markets were, why the world was crashing and burning. And very quickly. A lot of my team around me was fired and within the first six months, took on a lot of responsibility. So good and bad, right. I learned a lot there. And, you know, I won't go into like, a lot of details, but I was kind of on the operational side of things where it's kind of everything that happens after the fact after you make a trade after you borrow money, what happens after the fact you know, the due diligence making sure that the money, the money hits the right accounts and that sort of thing. So it was the less glamorous side of finance but a really necessary side. And within that role, I got to mature very quickly, I grew very quickly and actually wound up travelling with the company, and working between their Hong Kong, Singapore and New York offices, and finally moved to New York with Goldman in 2010, 2011. And kind of settle down in New York and realise that without the joy of being able to move countries every couple of months, it was, it wasn't a job that I felt very passionate about. And in New York, especially, you know, in Singapore and Hong Kong, those were cities that were very focused in finance, but in New York, in addition to finance there's also tech and fashion and, and marketing and advertising. There's so there was a lot more here to kind of pique my interest. So that's when I started looking at tech as an option and around like 2014. So about two years ago.

Laurence Bradford 5:06
Ah, that's so awesome. And you said so many things I love so first of all my listeners know this or any longer time listeners know this. I actually have been all over Asia I lived in like Thailand, I lived in China. Yeah, I've been to like 13 different countries total. And I've been to both Singapore and Hong Kong and I love them both. So I'm like, so jealous that you got to spend so much time in both places. Like that's so cool. So a start up. So for how many years? Were you travelling? Like, between New York, Singapore and Hong Kong?

Ventrice Lam 5:32
So I moved to Hong Kong in 2008. And that was a big part of my like, you know, Asian kid, Chinese kid growing up in Toronto wanting to like rediscover my Chinese roots. So my grandparents still lived there. My aunts and uncles still live there. So that was why that's why I picked Hong Kong despite it because and that's why I picked Goldman because they had a job posting there, even though I didn't know what Goldman was. So I spent about three years I spent about two years there 2008 2010 the latter half of 2010 I moved to New York for the first time, spent six months here as part of a rotation programme that they have for young for their new analysts that their junior analyst level kind of to give them exposure to different offices around the world. And I moved back to Hong Kong in early 2011. And it just so happened that I had when I was in New York, in New York, I realised that I really preferred being in New York is closer to Toronto is an hour and a half flight and, and frankly, at the end of the day, it was kind of the, the culture fit me a lot better because when I was in Hong Kong, I kind of fell into this weird gap where, you know, on the outside of the Asian but when I hung out with the Chinese people in the locals in Hong Kong, I didn't really get all their local jokes because my Cantonese was was still developing, so I didn't really get a lot of their jokes. At the same time. I look Chinese so the expats kind of just assumed I was another local. So there was kind of a weird gap there. But moving back to New York like I just it just like the culture gap fit again. So while I was in New York, I asked my managers for a move to New York or for New York permanently. And it just so happened that the day after I put in a formal request to be transferred, they announced that my entire team in Hong Kong was moving from Hong Kong to Singapore. So I had to actually negotiate that out so that I would act. So I would help migrate the team from Hong Kong to Singapore. And only then, after a successful migration, would I be moved to New York. So I moved back to now. So long story short, I moved back to Hong Kong back in 2011. And then at the end of 2011, moved to Singapore for six months. And at the end on October 2011. They finally moved me back to boot move move to New York. So that did take a while.

Laurence Bradford 8:00
Oh, wow. So you've been now in New York like living here full time since October 2011.

Ventrice Lam 8:06
Yes, that's right.

Laurence Bradford 8:07
Okay, so that's actually pretty long. Like you've been here what 2017. So like, almost like six years. Five years? Yeah. Five years. Six years. Okay. Yeah, time flies. Yeah. Wow, that's so wild. Cuz I just Well, I just moved to New York in July like it feels like I've been here pretty long. But whenever I tell people that they're like, Oh, you're so new here. Like you're still like, you're still a baby here. Like I haven't been here like a full year yet. But yeah, it was definitely an adjustment for me even though I was coming from a city. I mean, just as you were coming from like Hong Kong or Singapore, it's definitely major cities. I was coming from Boston. But yeah, New York is great.

Ventrice Lam 8:42
Well, so New Yorkers have their own measuring tape for what counts as actually being a New Yorker. So if you haven't been here for at least 15 years.

Laurence Bradford 8:51
Right, right, of course. That's so funny. Yeah, another thing that I thought was really interesting that you brought up and I know I have tonnes of listeners that want to like work and travel or work remotely and get to travel around? And you were saying is interesting how, once you came back to New York permanently, you weren't getting to travel so much, you kind of realised that the job maybe wasn't what you wanted, after all, or it wasn't the best fit.

Ventrice Lam 9:18
Yeah, so there were there were two very specific, you know, retrospectively, there were two specific things that that kept me at Goldman. One was my team in Hong Kong, a very big part. And, you know, well as my team in New York was fantastic. A big part of my experience in Hong Kong from 2008 to 2010, was the fallout from the financial crisis. And you know, all the terrible things aside, when you are in the office every day with your team for 12 1418 hours a day. You kind of really bond with them and they really became like family. And that was one thing that moving from Hong Kong to New York. I just didn't feel anymore for two reasons, one, because we didn't have to go through all that, all that crap together. And then two because, you know, I was older, my teammates are older and when people around you're having kids and family, you're just not, you know, spending hours and hours and hours at work together anymore. And frankly, as a, as a level headed person, you also want an outside life too. So coming out of that was one and then the second was that, you know, as stressed as I was. So Asia has a very different work culture Asia, you know, in in Hong Kong, even secretaries put in 12 hours days from 9am to 9pm. And that's very common. So if you're a white collar professional, you are easily starting at 16 hour days. And while that's stressful, that was very much the case there. And so, while I was stressed what I did enjoy was what got me to enjoy it was the ability to travel a lot. So when I was living in Hong Kong, the rest of Asia is a very, is an you know, is very cheap to travel, you know, you can easily fly to Thailand for $80 for the weekend, you can fly to Taiwan for $100 for a weekend. So I did that a lot. And then also what and then for the latter half of my career, I travelled every six months, which was also which was a great way to keep me on my toes. It was always exploring new, new, a new country, always setting it down new routes. But as soon as that all stopped and you know, there was no more exploration or discovery like in New York City, and that that took a couple of years because New York has so much to offer. And I very quickly realised that the job in and of itself wasn't really that exciting. And the nature of my job, it changed a little bit to where I was less, hands on and I was a little bit more managerial and from a managerial perspective, I I missed getting my hands dirty.

Laurence Bradford 12:07
Ah, got it. That's really interesting. And I think like this is I'm speaking also I kind of came back from vacation somewhat recently. I'm not gone for that long gone for like 10 days, but it was great. And I do think travel has this way where it can kind of like conceal things. So exactly as you said, like with like, the all the exploration, the excitement and gain to go from place to place and like, and whatnot. Like I totally could see myself being in a similar situation or something where I was working a job that maybe wasn't the most fulfilling, but in other ways my life was because I was travelling so much again, you go all these different cities and it almost like, I don't know, like, like, what the heck is the right word? Like it outweighed it or something right. And I really like it. Yeah. Yeah, I really did. Yeah, okay, so when did you leave Goldman Sachs then, like what year?

Ventrice Lam 12:55
I left in 2014.

Laurence Bradford 13:00
Did you get a... because okay, so I think you mentioned in the beginning, but you have your own company now, right? Yes. So did you start your first company right away? Or did you get into another role after Goldman Sachs or another full time role?

Ventrice Lam 13:15
No, so actually, my exit from Goldman Sachs wasn't very graceful. So it took me a while to realise that I was unhappy in my role. I started going to work later and later and I started leaving early and earlier started taking more and more sick days. And then one day when I was forcing myself to go to work, I actually had a nervous breakdown on the chain and I was sobbing and I was like shaking and public. And so I walked into the office and I told my manager, I don't think I'm well I think I need to take medical leave. So I took two months of medical leave and spent those two months really soul searching and trying to figure out what I wanted to do with my life, but as any of your of your listeners who might have struggled with depression might know, it's really hard to figure out what you want to do with your life when all you want to do is cry on the couch naked. Right? So what I actually so I actually had gotten to a point where I was like, Okay, well I like tuck. What I do in my free time at work is read about startup like startup blogs or newsletters and see what's happening in industry because I think there's a lot of innovation and it's really interesting. So I started going to a lot of networking events to see what was happening in that space. I tried applying for jobs both within finance and outside of finance in tech. And what I quickly realised that was that not was that I still had a lot of mental hurdles to get through. I actually, in fact, I had a job interview, I had a couple phone interviews with Bloomberg that went really well. And when we had an in person interview scheduled, I actually wound up completely dressed up in my suit like sitting on my staircase staring at the door as the clock tick by and completely missed interviewed, not because I didn't want to go. But because I couldn't get myself to leave the door. So like I had a lot of mental hurdles to get through, and my exit from Goldman and a lot and that's actually when I started figuring that if I wasn't capable of getting a job, I may as well brush up some of my skill sets, skills and that's when I started taking a programming again, kind of using online courses and so on. And it took a long time of me and kind of offering myself up as a generally competent person to like very early stage startups as like, you know, I, I, I am a smart person. I know some programming and I and I'm not sure how my skill set from financial operations will will transfer over but if you let me shadow you, I can see how I can be helpful to you. And it took me actually almost a year of that, before I started realising that I was actually starting to build real products and and deliver real impact and that I could actually start charging for that. And that was when I first started doing my freelance started, you know, having the gall to build myself out as a freelance consultant. Worked my hourly wage, my hourly billing from $20 an hour to $150 an hour and started getting and figuring out where I fit in the community. And as I've finally figured out my niche, I now I started getting enough projects that I could start outsourcing to other freelancers. And that was kind of how the genesis of the dealio began, just because I needed more people to help me take on the to work on the technical implementation sides of my side of the projects I was working on.

Laurence Bradford 16:57
So that's so fascinating, interesting. And just real quick, before I forgot, can you spell that for me and for the listeners the, what you just said?

Ventrice Lam 17:07
Bedelia, so it's B-E-D-E-L-I-A. And yeah, so it's kind of like, you know, this childhood character Amelia Bedelia?

Laurence Bradford 17:16
Yeah, that's ringing a bell. Yeah.

Ventrice Lam 17:18
Yeah. So. So the idea there is that, you know, she was like a maid who needed very specific language to do her tasks properly. Like, if you told her to dust the curtains, she would actually put dust on the curtains. Okay, it was like her characteristic. And when I was thinking of a name for the company, as thinking that, you know, like, there's a lot of really talented people out there who want to start businesses, but they're just not getting attention from the technical talent that they need, because they don't have the right language. So our goal is to help. People who have like great skill sets are really subject matter experts, but may not have the technical communication skills and help them get that right language to communicate to their future technical hires and CTOs.

Laurence Bradford 18:06
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Laurence Bradford 20:20
God that's, so okay, that's fascinating and then but yeah you said so much before and thank you so much for sharing about like your experience I'm sure so many people, a lot of listeners at least could definitely relate to what you go through I think there's a tonne of people definitely have difficult times at their jobs in days where they don't want to go to work and maybe you know, every so often maybe it's for a prolonged period of time I really well I'm glad that you know you kind of got yourself out you're doing like your own thing now and it seems like things are going quite well for you Even though you and you brush up on your skill sets. Like that's awesome as well. Yeah. So yeah, thanks again for sharing that and Okay, so one thing that you said I know the listeners are going to I want to know more about is how you went from charging $20 an hour to $150 an hour because this is probably like one of the biggest questions I get from people, especially when like freelancing or consulting, one being How do I get clients and another being like, how much do I charge? And how do I start charging more? So if you could kind of, like, get into detail about that, that would be amazing.

Ventrice Lam 21:20
Yeah, so I think the so what you're supposed to do, and what I did, I think are two different things. So what you're supposed to do is see what the market rate is, see where your skill set aligns with, with other professionals in that space and, and market yourself at that rate accordingly, and don't send down because and, frankly, as women, we do have problems do we're less aggressive with with rate negotiation in general. But, you know, I think I did almost the exact opposite, especially given where I was at the stage of my depression and where I was in terms of my security, I basically started and like my personal confidence, And so on, I really started raising my rates as my confidence got higher. So, you know, I mentioned at first I started working for free. So I in order to build up a, and part of it was intentional to build up a portfolio of, of startup experience where I can say I, and also to see where I really fit in in terms of the startup world, which was a question that was the answer that I didn't know. And it became a matter of necessity, as my, as the teams that I was working with would start referring me to other people and so on and so forth. There was kind of a echo effect where, I mean, frankly, if I only have so many hours a day, if you if you want to work with me, then you're going to need to make it more worth my wild and the other than my other potential opportunities. So that's when I start At 20 slowly bumped it up to 25 had the audacity to ask for 50. And then at 50, I started asking for 75. And as one client kept it, you know, and as I realised that these clients were not, not, frankly not flinching at the numbers, I had the number to go, Okay, how about 200? And the Okay, okay, maybe that's a little too much. Let's scale back a little bit. 150 is kind of in the sweet point now for what for what I offer.

Laurence Bradford 23:32
Yeah, that's so thank you for sharing. And I think like, I totally agree with the whole like, as your confidence grows, so to say our hourly re it's like a lot of people could, I will experience that as well. And also, I loved how you said, the more that people want to work with you, you kind of had to, you know, the more we began to charge because it was like getting that time with you and you don't have that many hours in the day. So whoever's, you know, going to kind of pay the most exactly, I get that, but I'm just I'm really interested in knowing the more you start to charge did you find that you got better quality clients?

Ventrice Lam 24:05
So I was kind of lucky. So I never actively went out to seek clients. I did a lot of networking in the beginning when I was just trying to find cool projects to work on. But I've been very lucky to be part of some, some group, some female entrepreneur groups, where it's been a very, where they had very generous cultures, tech ladies where we met is one of them. She works as another one and almost every single person that I've worked with to date for the past year has been a warm referral. So I think as a as a result of that, you know, I have clients who, like prepay me Just in case, I forgot to build them. So I've very fortunately never ran into that problem. But I do want to say, go back to the conversation about like, how do I charge my rates and to build up what I did notice I found it extremely surprising was, as I started hiring other freelancers around me to help me to help me implement the more technical aspects of my business. You know, as I was trying to extract myself from technical implementation and focus more on strategy, I noticed a lot of women and some of them are in the tech ladies group, talk themselves down from a rate. So they will start the conversation with something like $50 an hour, and by the end of the conversation without me initiating anything, they will say, but yeah, you know, I'm willing to do 20 an hour because this sounds like a really cool project. And I will say four out of five female freelancers I spoken to have fallen into that trap. And it's, it's amazing to me, I've never heard it from a man before. And but four out of five women that I speak to all do that.

Laurence Bradford 25:59
Wow, that's really crazy. I've never...

Ventrice Lam 26:00
That's something we need to work on.

Laurence Bradford 26:02
Yeah. Wow. I mean, I get I'm sure you've you've interviewed or spoke to a lot more freelancers and than I have in the past, but that's, um, or I mean in a role where you're like hiring them to do to help you do work. But yeah, that's really that's very interesting to me. And yeah, that's not that's not cool either. I mean, I wish people didn't do that wish women didn't do that talk themselves down.

Ventrice Lam 26:22
I mean, it's purely anecdotal, right? Like, I can't, it's not statistically significant. But like, it's just so happened that like, I interviewed 20 women, and over the course of October to December this year, or last year in 2016, and, and four to five of them talk themselves down without me saying a single word.

Laurence Bradford 26:43
Yeah. Huh. Yeah. That's interesting, huh? I don't know what to do to fix that. Right. I'm like, it's just like having that number and then just stop like...

Ventrice Lam 26:53
Yeah, well, whoever is listening. That's, that's your one takeaway. takeaway homework project is to Pick a number and stick with it. Yeah and don't get definitely don't talk yourself down right?

Laurence Bradford 27:03
I guess well I guess if you were I guess sometimes at the same time people if there's a negotiation right you could maybe start a bit higher and then agree to a bit lower but really you were wanted like the lower I mean, you're willing to settle with the lower knowing that going going in but Yeah, sounds like well, your explains difference, especially if you're not even trying to get the person to lower their...

Ventrice Lam 27:22
Yeah I think negotiation is one thing. But like, back like the, like, negotiation is one thing, right? There's strategies and techniques for that, and that is enough itself and art. Yeah, but like the, what I encountered were women starting the conversation with one number and ending with a significantly lower number with no prompting whatsoever. And that's what I think we kind of need to fix.

Laurence Bradford 27:49
Yeah, yeah, definitely. I did just I think just even just being aware of that, that people do that is like helpful, like, no, like, I mean, for me, that does because now I'm gonna I think if I'm ever in a situation, remember that people will do that and just try not to let myself fall into a pattern like that or something.

Ventrice Lam 28:07
Yeah, I think it's always and also, you know, you, especially what I think what people tend to do is over the course of a conversation as you warm up to a person, and you, you start to get to know them a little better, and you feel like you like them, then you feel like you got to give them something like, Oh, yeah, you know, I can, I can do a little bit less or whatever. But I think there's a middle ground between being friendly and doing business. Yeah.

Ventrice Lam 28:33
And that's actually to give too much of yourself away.

Laurence Bradford 28:35
Yeah, that's something else too. When you mentioned you were working for free and early on and that's something I feel like I used to do like a lot for just not even like actually doing the work for free literally, but giving out a lot of favours with like nothing in return. And it's something that I've been way more cautious about recently, and I feel like I almost completely stop doing just because I don't even have that much time anymore to be giving out paper. I knew it was like that, because I just started this full time job in July. And then I have all this other stuff going on. So it's almost like I don't have the time anymore. But yeah, I used to give way too much away for free, like, whether it's information or advice for something and not get anything like and I don't mean, of course, just Oh, he did pay me for knowledge, but like, you know, they weren't helping me in any way. Right? Yeah, that was giving to much.

Ventrice Lam 29:23
Yeah, it's very much about having a reciprocal relationship in terms of like networking and so on. And I think like giving things away for free has its role, right. Like whether that is, you know, for me, it was in the beginning of my tech career, I didn't know where I fit in. You know, my experience in my prior career was not directly applicable to anything. And or at least it wasn't directly applicable in a way that I had the objectivity to see. So using it as kind of like a way to dip my toe into multiple pools. That's probably a terrible analogy, but to get to be able to see like multiple different industries and multiple different businesses and see what kind of role I could play, like, that was something that I wanted to do. And for me too, it was like, Okay, well, how do I make sure when that I'm leaving the house every day and being productive every day and not just lying on my couch? So for me, that was the benefit I was getting right, like human interaction and responsibilities and other things that I couldn't get that I needed to heal, but would not get if I was not working for free. Yeah, so it has a role, right? Like so as long as you're conscious of it, and not just doing it because you're not you don't think you our valueable. It's, I think that's that's like the really clear line between one between a tactic and like, between like doing it intentionally and doing it because you're undervaluing yourself.

Laurence Bradford 30:48
Yeah, yeah, no, that's, that's, that's great advice. And yeah, there's definitely time and place for that, but I want I want to keep I want to keep moving along. I have a few other questions here. That I definitely want to ask you. Okay, so now that you work for yourself, do you ever want a full time job again?

Ventrice Lam 31:07
Um, so it's funny you asked that because the answer is both yes and no. So from a day to day perspective, I absolutely love running the show. I like being in charge of my schedule. I like being flexible, like, like the ability to say, today I'm not working, I don't feel like it. But definitely, depending on where I am in my confidence cycle, I will you will find me on job boards just looking at what's available, just to see on on a bad day. And I don't think and I think that's a that's the biggest trap for a self employed entrepreneur. And an independent entrepreneur that doesn't have a team around them is that it feels like you can just walk away any day and they'll just all disappear so In order to defend against that, that's why I'm trying to build a team around me. So I have people to be accountable to. So, so yeah, yes and no.

Laurence Bradford 32:09
Yeah, yeah. And I think you know, like, whether you have a full time job or whether you work for yourself, whatever, I don't think looking at job boards just to see what's out there and also to see like, what skills and who's hiring and what job ads are like, Is it bad to me, I do it all the time. I always look at job ads, just to see also just see like, Oh look, so and so's hire, what are they looking for? And especially for me, at least if it's like a senior level position, like, oh, like they're looking for this much experience, okay, they're looking for this this, okay, so I can start maybe putting those foundations in place. So you know, in eight years or in five years, I could be getting that kind of role.

Ventrice Lam 32:45
Yeah, I think that's typically my main takeaway to from like, looking at, like, job postings is like knowing what the market trends are. And like knowing from a self the personal development perspective, like what do I need to start working on if I want to stay relevant?

Laurence Bradford 32:58
Yes, you you phrase that much better than I did. Yes. What do you need to work on? What skills? What responsibilities or extra points of experience? Can you gain to make yourself stay relevant and stay like current with, um, with everything in with technology and whatnot?

Ventrice Lam 33:13
Yeah, yeah. So I was, again, I was peering at your LinkedIn. And I saw you're really active in a bunch of different volunteering stuff. And I think that was what you're mentioning before when you were working for free or for cheap early on. So I see as volunteer experience, so what role did that play and where you are today? Oh, a really big role. I would say that. There. There were two women's networks that I became very active in. The first was women 2.0. So that when that so in 2014, when I first started navigating female entrepreneur networks, they were well into the first that I had encountered and they were really great at hand holding the woman who wanted to move into startups and move into tech, they've since moved from a physical meetup model to an online model to an online digital media platform. But they were a really great start. They introduced me to a lot of great women, one of which was one of my first co founders were when I first you know, so amongst everything else that I tried to do during, during the Dark Ages, my adventures, his depression stage, was also I tried to start a startup and realised that wasn't for me, but one of the women that I met, there was my co founder and today, we're still great friends, and she's actually one of my clients now for her other startup for her new startup and from women 2.0 as they kind of moved off the physical and they stopped doing physical events in person events and moved to an online platform I encountered. Yin and Lisa she works and they were then they do great breakfasts and summits for more mature entrepreneurs, so less people at the beginning of their journey and more like Okay, so how to, like from a very actionable perspective? How do we help you get to your next growth stage. And there when they had realised I had some experience with women 2.0 and they, we had chatted a few times, they asked me to join their steering committee. And as part of their steering committee, I got to meet a great amount of their, of their, of their, of their members. So with women 2.0 when I was meeting members, I was actually trying, I actually, that was when I was doing stuff for free and for cheap. And I tried to spread myself as thinly as possible across as many different early stage female founders startups as possible just to like, get busy and get my feet wet. But when she works, I was meeting women who were already starting to make some money who were already making a name for themselves in the community. And I was able to use them as kind of to build them up as a client base. And, and because of the high quality calibre of women there, they were also able to refer me to their networks. It was a great network effect.

Laurence Bradford 36:15
Yeah, that's so awesome. And I always tell people, I think volunteering and there's so many ways to like put yourself out there and to get experience, especially when you're starting off in tech. And I think volunteering is such a great way because you can well, first of all, you can help other people. Second of all, you can also meet other people that are in the industry or in that space through doing that. And of course, have something to add to like your portfolio or your resume or your LinkedIn. And we have like totally run out of time. This conversation flew by so fast, but I definitely want to ask you this because I feel like you have some really great advice to share. Is there any kind of advice that you can give to the listeners that are trying to break into tech like they maybe are working in an unrelated role right now but they want their first job or they even want to work for themselves, like any kinds of tips you could share?

Ventrice Lam 37:04
Yeah, I think my whole journey these past two years was what I realised the most is at a very basic level level. I'm an introvert. I'm a very classic introvert, where networking makes me exhausted going to networking events makes me want to hold up in my apartment for two days. But hard skills aside, like if you're a competent person and you're interested in the material, the hard skills you will pick up, what's really invaluable is just the people you meet, being useful to the people that you meet and, you know, inspiring them to be useful to you in that way. I absolutely would not be here doing what I am doing today if I hadn't met a group of several groups of extremely inspiring women who, who I saw something in and they saw something in me and we kind of help each other up. Most of all, like I mentioned, most of my clients, all of my clients are warm referrals from friends or previous clients and all my future upcoming future opportunities too tend to be from women that I've met over the past few years and you know, it's it's a it's a muscle that you need to kind of learn to flex but you know, there's no but it's it's a skill like any other if you can learn how to network and like be useful to the people around you that you meet. That's probably the most invaluable thing you can do for yourself.

Laurence Bradford 38:31
I absolutely love that. And I I mean, I'm right there with you. Like if it wasn't for the people in my life, just even like generally I would not be where I am today. So yeah, the people you surround yourself with, whether it's at work, volunteering, you know, friends, whatever, so so key so yeah, so critical and I think one success. Thank you so much Ventrice for coming on the show. I absolutely loved chatting with you and where can people find you online?

Ventrice Lam 38:56
So if you want to follow me on Twitter, my handle is ventersaurus. So Ventrice as a dinosaur, and LinkedIn, you can find me at Ventrice or you can find me at Bedelia.co.

Laurence Bradford 39:17
Great. Yeah, we'll definitely include those links in the show notes for the listeners. Thank you again for coming on.

Ventrice Lam 39:22
Thank you so much for having me.

Laurence Bradford 39:30
I hope you enjoyed our conversation. Again, the show notes for this episode can be found at learntocodewith.me/podcast. If you're listening to this episode in the future, simply click the Search icon in the upper navigation and type in Ventrice. Aside from episode shownotes, you can find even more awesome code related content on learntocodewith.me like my 10 free tips for teaching yourself how to code. Thank you so much for tuning in, and I'll see you next week.