At the age of eight, a young and determined Misa Chien set out on her entrepreneurial quest. A quest that began by selling rocks! A quest that has today propelled her as an empowering entrepreneur.
Misa Chien is the Co-Founder of Autopilot Reviews, a one-of-a-kind software platform built with the intention of showing frontline agents’ positive feedback about themselves.
In this interview, the model and tech leader shares about her journey, her failures, achievements, and the importance of mental health.
What according to you makes one an empowering woman? How do you integrate the same thought into your leadership?
An empowering woman is someone who is open to grow, self-reflect, and continues to put herself out there. I continue to experience fear of failure and imposter syndrome, but despite that, still want to continue to be comfortable with being uncomfortable and pushing the envelope.
Talk to us about your growing up years. What is your earliest memory as an entrepreneur that you remember?
When you want to be an entrepreneur, you need to start somewhere. For my sister and me, it was selling rocks. Yep, that’s right, rocks! It wasn’t a very successful business. If I remember correctly, we didn’t have many customers. In fact, I think it was only our mom and maybe a neighbor who pitied us.
We had no market and no demand, but it did teach us one thing—
How important it is to put yourself out there. If you don’t put yourself out there, you will never take the first step. You’ll never start your own business or launch your own ideas. You’ll always wonder “what if” and dream of what could be. In the end, selling rocks was not the right business for me. It was the first of my many business failure stories. But at only eight years old, it was a great first step.
I got to learn how to sell and be an entrepreneur. Today, I’m co-founding a software business. Luckily that has a much better profit margin than rocks! My sister, on the other hand, has still managed to sell rocks. But now, she’s doing it as a popular jewelry designer. So, I guess it is a happy ending.
What prompted your interest and subsequently your foray into the tech space?
I saw a lot of opportunity to make a large, positive impact on the world, through tech. You can scale very quickly (for example we only have a team of 5 people, but we positively impact millions of employees/customers per year). It’s a very difficult industry to break into, unless you both understand marketing, sales as well as engineering.
However, I was lucky, because my husband is the CTO of the company, and I have a great understanding and forte in sales/marketing, so we’ve found the recipe to be able to scale and grow the company in a difficult market/industry.
What led you to start Autopilot Reviews? What was the pain point that you wanted to address in the market?
As a front-line employee, your life is usually a path of putting out fires, and hearing negative feedback.
In my 20s, I worked as both a front-line employee and manager for my food truck business, Nom Nom Truck, and I was always trying to please the unhappy customers, making sure everyone was happy.
When you’re on the front line, you don’t usually have time to get a pat on the back from customers. You don’t have time to stop and be recognized for your good customer service. You don’t have time but to get to that next customer in line, or fulfil that next order.
So, when Nom Nom Truck failed, and I had the opportunity to build another business, I reflected back on my time at this business and realized I wanted to build something to help others, i.e., frontline employees.
And so I did. Just like all frontline employees, frontline agents at call centers never get to see much positive feedback about themselves. For the software tool we built— Autopilot Reviews, we decided to build a platform to show frontline agents’ positive feedback about themselves.
And what was the result? Increase in customer retention. Increase in employee retention. And a survey tool and customer experience platform that everyone loves with almost 0% client churn.
What is the approach followed by you and your team to ensure optimal client satisfaction?
We’ve built an awesome software product for leaders in the customer service industry because we’ve listened to our customers. It’s extremely important to listen to your customers, without them, you will be out of business. There’s a reason we have almost 0% churn despite there being a recession; it’s because we have built a great product, that customer experience leaders need and want.
What would be your advice for aspiring female entrepreneurs struggling to take that leap of faith?
A lot of people – advisors, the media, society in general—often highlights the negative statistics of being a woman. It’s important to ignore the statistics, and don’t let them scare you. It’s easy to not even try, when you feel that you have a whole mountain to climb. But just remember, if we all never tried, we would never break that ceiling, and there would not even be female entrepreneurs in existence. We all need to start somewhere, and the first step is taking the first leap of faith.
Looking back at your journey, what would you have done different when starting out?
I wish I had addressed my mental health in my 20s sooner. When I was on TV and in the spotlight for my previous business, Nom Nom Truck, I didn’t realize how unhealthy my lifestyle was. I should have found an executive coach as well as a therapist right away to help me through the tough times.
Instead, I did not find a therapist until after I had a falling out with my business partner, and I had hit rock bottom. It’s important to prioritize mental health, even if you don’t feel you have the time.
What does the future look like for Autopilot Reviews? What are you most excited about?
I am most excited about helping others. That could be everywhere from helping frontline employees staying motivated and driven through positive customer feedback on my software, or it could be from being a headlined speaker at a conference and helping others through that talk. It’s drives me to get up every morning, knowing I am making a positive impact on the world, that’s what I feel I’ve been brought on earth to do.
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One Book Entrepreneurs must read: The Charisma Myth by Olivia Cabane
One Productivity Tool that everyone should use: Slack
One Mobile App that you use the most: LinkedIn
One Movie / Show that you would recommend: WeCrash – It shows the dark side of startups, and what you don’t want to do
One Quote that Motivates you the Most: “Just because you failed, does not mean you’re a failure.”
One Investment Advice that you Follow: Traction Trumps Everything.
Read Digital Version of the Magazine.
Visit Autopilot Reviews Website.
