20 | Find the Right Mix: A Woman's Journey from Chemical Engineering to Marketing | Dina Al-Sudani
Tags: career, podcast, news, motivation
Published: 2023-04-19 18:00:00

{% embed https://youtu.be/bmamwM7ZkV4 %}

**About**
After completing her degree in chemical engineering, Dina shifted gears and moved into marketing. Her technical expertise and analytical skills proved to be a great asset in the field. She was able to apply her problem-solving skills to product development and strategy planning, paving the way for a successful career.

Dina Al-Sudani: [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/dina-alsudani/)

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Alternate Titles For The Algorithm:
From Chemicals to Consumers: A Chemical Engineering Major's Journey into Marketing
Mixing Science and Strategy: A Chem Eng Major's Career in Marketing
When Chemistry Meets Creativity: A Woman's Transition from Engineering to Marketing
Catalyst for Success: How a Chemical Engineering Degree Led to a Marketing Career
The Power of Persuasion: A Chem Eng Major's Skills in Marketing
Breaking Boundaries: A Woman's Story of Moving from Engineering to Marketing
Bridging the Gap: A Chemical Engineering Major's Transition to Marketing
Finding the Right Formula: A Woman's Journey from Chemical Engineering to Marketing
Engineering a New Career Path: A Woman's Transition to Marketing
Reinventing Herself: A Chemical Engineering Major's Move to Marketing

**Show Notes**
[00:00:01.370] 
Speaker 2: Hey, you all. This is your host, Elyse Robinson with Nobody Wants to Work No podcast. I hope these stories will inspire you to switch careers. I was an auditor in my past life and now I'm in tech, and let's get to it. We are.

[00:00:20.030] 
Speaker 1: Switching into Tech. Tech resources.

[00:00:22.760] 
Speaker 2: To.

[00:00:23.040] 
Speaker 1: Accelerate your career in information technology.

[00:00:26.610] 
Speaker 1: Monthly classes on.

[00:00:27.640] 
Speaker 2: Tech topics.

[00:00:28.820] 
Speaker 1: We offer free or discounted.

[00:00:30.710] 
Speaker 2: Exam vouches, scholarships, free Udemy courses, free events.

[00:00:35.040] 
Speaker 1: Free boot camps, and more.

[00:00:37.150] 
Speaker 1: You can find us at www.switchanddetect. Org.

[00:00:45.070] 
Speaker 2: Hey, you all. This is Lillise Robinson with Nobody Wants to Work Though podcast. Today, we have Dina. She is in Vancouver, Canada. She is our third international guest, so I'm excited to have her. Go ahead and tell us what your old career was and what you transitioned into, D eana.

[00:01:02.320] 
Speaker 1: Hey, everyone. I'm really excited to be here and talk about my previous experience with you. I studied engineering. I did my four year degree in Malaysia and I was supposed to continue that career moving into Canada and also be a biomedical engineer. But I left that behind, started my marketing career and I'm three years into my marketing career right now doing marketing for real estate project in Vancouver. And yeah, really excited to talk about that.

[00:01:35.350] 
Speaker 2: So do you find that engineering lended well? What type of engineering, first of all? What type of engineering? First of all, what type of engineering?

[00:01:42.330] 
Speaker 1: Biomedical.

[00:01:43.920] 
Speaker 2: Okay, yeah. So that didn't have anything to do with civil? Because I was like, okay, civil feeds into real estate. So maybe they lended to it. But now, let me backtrack on that. Yeah, very different.

[00:01:57.600] 
Speaker 1: I know.

[00:01:59.690] 
Speaker 2: What did you have? Here's a fun one. What did you want to be when you grew up?

[00:02:03.410] 
Speaker 1: That is a really fun one. I was really confused pretty much my whole life. Growing up, I wanted to be an astronaut and work at NASA. I was 10 years old, and that was literally my biggest dream ever. I wanted to be a photographer, I wanted to be a singer, I wanted to be an actress. It was a journey of self discovery, for sure. I was still confused because I wanted to be so many different things, but that wasn't something that my parents or my family would be happy with. We had certain cultural things in our hometown and where we lived that you only have to be a certain type of... You only have to choose a certain type of career. You only have to be an engineer, a doctor, a lawyer, maybe some flexibility on that with a lawyer part, but that's pretty much it. So coming from a family with engineers, I had to follow in their footsteps and just be that as well. That was the expectation. We had chats here and there, but they weren't really happy with me doing anything else. So I did that. I went to university for biomedical engineering, and it was a new type of engineering at the time.

[00:03:18.940] 
Speaker 1: It merged engineering, electronics, and medicine all at once. So it really felt like I was doing more than one degree at once. It was very tiring. I had to study up all night, barely get any sleep. And on top of that, I didn't really like it. So it's very cool. If you're doing that, kudos to you. It's awesome. Good career pays really well. But I just couldn't envision myself doing that for the rest of my life and couldn't see that this was me. I didn't feel like it matched well with my personality or the passions and the hobbies that I had. I would go every day to university and go to labs and do tutorials or do an experiment. I'm like, I.

[00:04:09.250] 
Speaker 2: Don't know what I'm doing.

[00:04:10.800] 
Speaker 1: I don't care to learn how I'm doing it or how I should be doing it. I just want to get this over with. So I did it, whatever. And I moved to Canada two years ago. I wanted that new step in my career, especially that I consider myself a nomad because I was born in Iraq. I lived in... I lived until I was nine and a half years old. I moved to Jordan, stayed there for a couple of years, moved to Malaysia, lived there for 11 years, and now in Canada. So I've lived in different places my whole life, and I was just used to moving to a new country every couple of years. So I moved here. I really like it. And the expectation was, again, to move here and do engineering. And I was willing to do that as well. But to come from a different country and do the same job, it is very difficult. You have to do more studying. You have to do a lot of work, probably volunteer and do free work in the beginning. And you're not really sure how long it's going to take for you to be an engineer here.

[00:05:21.700] 
Speaker 1: So I was like, Okay, I'm just going to move here, do the hard work, and be broke for a little bit. I'll be poor, and then just be an engineer and make my parents happy. That was the thought behind it. So two years into moving into Canada, I found this agency that would just help newcomers to Canada find a job and just train them on how to do your resume, how to learn the Canadian laws, and the text, all of that really important adult stuff. I joined that, and at the time, they didn't have anything to do with engineering or science at all. I wanted something that would help me get my foot in the door a little bit. They're like, We're sorry, we just have business stuff, accounting, and a little bit of marketing. So maybe we can place you into marketing. Because I had a lot of skills that would have something to do with marketing. I did a lot of photography back in the day. I used to just do that on the side while I was doing my degree. I have extensive knowledge and skills and experience in Photoshop and Lightroom and retouching, a lot of volunteering work.

[00:06:26.690] 
Speaker 1: So she was like, You do have that skills and experience. You can just put it into this job temporarily until you can just finish the placement and find something else. You don't have to stay there forever. So I needed the money at the time. I need to find a job to figure out my life after that. So I was like, Okay, I'll just do it. I'm not going to lose anything. And I started it. It was marketing for real estate project. So they're mostly pre sell projects. So what presell is pretty much a building but doesn't exist. You buy a townhome or a condo and then you wait for it to be finished and then you move in. Did not know that thing existed. We don't do that in Malaysia. And I did not know anything about real estate or buying a home at all. I don't have a house. So I tried it and they were willing to hire me without the skills needed for real estate at the time. They just needed someone to assist them with marketing. They're willing with anything. It was a really low paying job, too. So I was like, okay, I'm just going to get in there, get some Canadian experience, learn something and then see what I can do after.

[00:07:35.680] 
Speaker 1: I started it. I really liked it and I felt like I truly went to work every day loving what I do. And it encompassed a lot of things that I like to do in my free time as well. I like creativity, I like retouching, I like photography. I like videography. I like to just brainstorm ideas and come up with something and create a project that never existed and go outside, drive around and see it in real life. It gave me so much satisfaction and I felt good about it and I decided to do it. And I had to have that really difficult talk with my parents. Listen, I don't like what you want me to do. I really found passion in what I'm doing right now. It's really good. I'm already building my experience here in this country and it will in the future pay me well. I am good at it. I am learning, and I can go to school and get a bachelor's degree in it to really strengthen my background. I can be the person that I've always wanted to be. Sorry, it's not the thing that you want me to be, but I will make you proud.

[00:08:46.930] 
Speaker 1: I'm just going to make sure that I will not disappoint you guys in whatever decision I'm going to make. And you're only going to be proud of me. And it was difficult in the beginning to have that chat. They were not really supportive in the in the beginning. Not say not saying I'm supportive, but they weren't really thrilled with it. But as I just continued my work there and I was promoted, I was doing a lot of really important work. We drove around and I showed them the projects that I'm working on. I showed them the billboards, I showed them the buildings that are in construction that I pulled the strategy to launch, and they just accepted it. They were really happy after to see my progress and that I'm happy that I'm working with really amazing, talented people, and then I'm doing a good job. And yeah, they're really supportive. It's funny to say that because if you told me they would be supportive, like two years ago, I would have laughed in your face. But they really are supportive right now. They really am happy that I'm doing the thing that I've always wanted to do.

[00:09:49.440] 
Speaker 1: And I did the thing that I promised them to do, to always make them proud and to not do something that I will regret in the future and say, oh, maybe I should have just stuck to engineering and did that because my current job is not really paying me. So yeah, here's a little background about it all. And yeah, here I am now, almost three years into doing it and I honestly wouldn't have it any other way.

[00:10:16.140] 
Speaker 2: Got you. You touched on a lot of my questions already. My phone is on some passwords coming up. I will say, that's a little side comment, that I hate accounting. I literally do. I will say that I failed my first accounting class. I was like, I'm not going to do this. I hated it. But accounting is the language of business. I was like, Well, first of all, accounting is a skill that I can use as an entrepreneur. I've always wanted to be an entrepreneur. That's number one. And number two, no one can tell me about my money and I can balance my books, et cetera, taxes, all that good stuff. So it wasn't until I got to my audit course where I was like, okay, this is cool. You know what I'm saying? Because I hated financial accounting, I hated managerial accounting. Those are the first two courses that you would ever take in accounting and you have to take them. There's no way around it. And so I was like, okay, as long as I passed it would be I'm good to go. I was like, I will never be an accountant. I hate accounting.

[00:11:37.870] 
Speaker 2: There's all kinds of other careers you can go to if you study accounting, but audit is another big one. It's either you go to audit, accounting, or tax. I was like, Well, tax. I do love tax, too. I'll say I love tax. A dit was so fun. So, so fun. My thing is, did you not find something within your engineering degree that you could have loved, or you were just like, No, I don't care?

[00:12:11.070] 
Speaker 1: I really tried to love it. I tried my best. So I would just go to university every day. I'm like, You could just try to like it, and maybe it will work. Fake it till you make it. But I just couldn't, to be honest, and I didn't care. That's it. I'm done.

[00:12:32.850] 
Speaker 2: Sometimes it's like that. I enjoy chemistry, physics, math, all that good stuff. If you listen to my podcast, Business Brain, which is tech brain, that's about myself. That's the second one. I've always had a scientific mindset, but I didn't want to do the labs. I'm lazy. I am so lazy, I didn't care to do the labs. I feel you on those labs and things like that. I don't know how you did it because I'm like, I don't want to go to school doing all that. You look at the schedule, they're like, Okay, well, the course, I don't know what they call it, the lecture. The lecture is two hours and then lab is three hours. We had school for five.

[00:13:15.540] 
Speaker 1: Hours.

[00:13:15.940] 
Speaker 2: For just for one class and then I still have to take English and math and et cetera. I don't know how people do it. So accounting it was.

[00:13:30.430] 
Speaker 1: For me, we had lectures, tutorials, and labs. So basically I had six courses to take every semester. I was pretty much at university from 8 AM sometimes to 9 or 10 PM just doing all of these things. And then I have to stay there in the library to study because I have exams and quizzes and all that stuff. I pretty much had no life outside university. I barely slept. I used to run on a one hour, half an hour sleep and just chug a lot of Red Bull to keep me awake, which is bad. Don't do that. So yeah, I felt like it was just feeding into the hustle culture. You have to just pretty much kill yourself to be in a specific career and have no life, no friends, don't even experience anything in your 20s. And that maybe potentially made me hate it. If I had a different experience and I actually enjoyed my university experience, maybe it could have been different, but the circumstances that I did my engineering degree in, it was just not the best. And the people and then the culture there, and the students, and it just wasn't that really good community to be around.

[00:14:49.250] 
Speaker 1: So at the end, I felt like I was miserable, tired. I developed migraines. I had dark circles. I was exhausted all the time. Just not something I wanted to do moving forward after taking that.

[00:15:05.070] 
Speaker 2: That's because people need to study those majors. You know what I'm saying? Because they keep saying that the shortage, I don't know how true that is. But I'm calling myself lazy, and I'm going to say that I'm lazy because I didn't want to do all that. But it's crazy that you have to put in all that work to get there. I don't know how people do it because I would have loved being probably a physics or chemistry major, but I was about that life. I wasn't going to do all that work. There's much easier paths to money here in a career and all that other stuff. I don't know. Now I feel bad because you said all that and I don't want to deter people from going into those careers.

[00:16:07.300] 
Speaker 1: Honestly, if you do love what you're doing, you're going to be willing to put in the hard work. My best friend, which I went to school with, she's a chemical engineer now. And that was her passion since she was a little baby. She's always known she wanted to be an engineer and a chemical engineer. So she worked super hard for it and she experienced pretty much exactly what I've gone through, even worse, because chemical engineering is so difficult. But she did it. And now she's doing that in real life and she loves it. So if you have the passion for it, don't be discouraged from what we're saying right now.

[00:16:46.120] 
Speaker 2: That's true. I guess I didn't love it enough, I guess.

[00:16:51.020] 
Speaker 1: I.

[00:16:52.890] 
Speaker 2: Didn't love it enough. Let's see. You talked about the process. You said you moved to Canada and they have these programs that help you find a position. I'm actually shocked. They didn't have any type of engineering type of roles. I'm curious as to why because I've actually looked at the Canadian immigration process for tech and then also being accounting auditor, whatever. They claim they need those roles, but maybe tech is different than engineering, so maybe not necessarily engineering. Maybe there's an overgrowth of those. But did you have to interview for the position or they were just like, here you are. You can work at this real estate company. My thing is, how did you convince them to take a chance on you?

[00:17:52.350] 
Speaker 1: Yeah. So at the time I did have to interview, I did have to touch up my resume because my resume had nothing to do with real estate. So I had to work with that agency to brush it up a little bit and include the skills and the hobbies that I used to have that are more creative and have something to do with photography in it. And I did a few jobs here and there while I was a student that did have something to do with business and sales. So they encouraged me to just include everything and interview. So they had partners at the time where they have people work with. And they introduced a partner to me and they were like, This is a company, they do this, this and this. And you could just try it for a little bit and tell us what you think. The interview process was really easy. They just really needed an assistant at the time. They were willing to take anyone and just train them a little bit. So I had an interview and the manager after, she was like, I really like you. You seem like a good person and I will just train you and we could do it.

[00:18:59.370] 
Speaker 1: I was like, Okay, I'll do it. And I started. Yeah. I think I started a week and a half later. And yeah, I was doing really simple stuff in the beginning. Nothing too crazy, nothing really marketing related. I was just helping out with whatever the manager needed.

[00:19:24.900] 
Speaker 2: Yeah. What are some positives and negatives of your new career? Do you think that marketing, maybe you might get in trouble for sending out the wrong message? What goes on in marketing? I don't know.

[00:19:47.980] 
Speaker 1: Some positives. I'll start with the positives. Marketing is really creative and it's a big umbrella term for so many different things, so you will learn a lot. And if you're a person that likes to learn, this is going to be the best thing that you're going to experience. You get to work with a lot of different departments. You get to meet a lot of decision makers. You get to work with a lot of companies and clients, so you will learn a little bit about sales, a little bit about marketing, a little bit about software development, a little bit about operations. And what I'm doing right now in real estate, I've learned so much about construction, which is bizarre to me to think that I would be a marketer learning about construction, but that's how it goes. And you just really have fun. You meet a lot of people. And if you like meeting a lot of people, you're going to meet a ton if you do marketing. So it could be really fun if you like it and you like making friends and different experiences and traveling. You could travel a lot depending on where you are working.

[00:20:52.870] 
Speaker 1: So it's not really boring. It's not like a routine thing that you have to do every single day. It changes and it forces you to pivot really quickly. So your brain is always working. Some of the negatives, people don't really know what marketers do. So you could get a lot of really weird, questionable questions. A lot of people will ask you, So what do you do? Do you just post on Instagram? And what do you do? Do you just do TikTok? And it's pretty sad because a lot of people have a misconception about what marketers do and how hard you have to work to get into this industry, and they just underestimate your job. So you have to do a lot of explaining, a lot of education. And sometimes even if you do explain what you do to people, they're not going to believe you because they still think you're just going to post on Instagram and do a few TikToks every day. Not really a big deal, but if you get asked this question a lot, it gets really annoying. One other thing, again, this really depends on your industry, but as a marketer working within a company, you probably will be less paid than other departments in the beginning.

[00:22:08.960] 
Speaker 1: Compared to sales or operations or development or even software engineers, you're going to be paid probably less than them. But obviously, if you do work hard and you gain a lot of experience to have a big seat at the table and really have a lot of input in what the company is doing and the projects is launching and probably get a good return investment, you will be paid good in the beginning. So it just needs a little time and effort.

[00:22:36.560] 
Speaker 2: Got you. Here's a good one for you because I'm an introvert. People think that I'm not and I am. I put on my big girl drawers and I put on this persona and I get my money. That's how I see it. I'm going to be bubbly, I'm going to be happy, I'm going to put on a smile. I love to laugh and all that good stuff. That doesn't necessarily carry on to the engineering stereotype of... You know how that is. They want to sit in the corner and they're not people persons. They're not very vocal about certain things. You seem like you're the opposite and you may not have fit into engineering either way. I struggle with that being I have an engineer mind and I also have the business mind and people don't necessarily know what to do with me because I can sit in the corner for eight hours out the day and program if I need to. Then I can also get up in front of 500 people and do a speech just perfectly fine. And that's something that's very rare. And so do you think that you had the personality to necessarily be an engineer?

[00:24:20.660] 
Speaker 1: The answer is going to surprise you, but yeah. It's really interesting that you said I was bubbly and I had the personality for marketing because I've been an introvert my whole life. It's getting better now, but I would still consider myself an introvert. I was never a people person and I would always get social anxiety. I would always get so nervous if I have to give a presentation in front of more than two people. I would shake, I would get palpitation. It wasn't just nerves, it was a whole body attack. I don't know how to even explain it, but it could get really scary where your body just gives up on you. I would hate going into big gatherings. I would hate to be around people. And I would just try. But again, my brain and my body would just give up on me. So telling me that I would be a marketer a few years later, this is insane. And I would say the same thing for engineering. I think there's a misconception that if you are very bubbly and outgoing, you can't be an engineer because engineers are always very closed off people.

[00:25:34.060] 
Speaker 1: I would not agree with that necessarily because I know a lot of engineers that are very bubbly and very outgoing. So it really depends on you as a person and what you can handle and what you like to do. In engineering, you will have to meet a lot of clients, a lot of people work in factories, depending on what engineering you do. Work in big groups, you have to speak at conferences, and you have to brainstorm ideas. You're not going to work alone all the time. So if you're looking to get into the workforce, no matter what industry you are, you have to be accepting of just putting yourself out there and networking and speaking to people because you will never be successful if you just sit by yourself. No work or no clients will just come and knock on your door. You have to really, really work hard and speak to people. So in my case right now, I would say I'm a bit of both. I can be an extrovert when I want to, but I'd also be an introvert when I want to. My friend would call it selective introvert and selective extrovert.

[00:26:46.530] 
Speaker 1: So don't follow stereotypes, don't follow misconceptions about different jobs. Just be yourself. And if you like something, just do it your way. You're going to make it.

[00:26:57.460] 
Speaker 2: I think you say that only because you haven't worked at a large organization where there's pretty much nothing but engineers. Because what you do, you will figure out that you are the freaking oddball. But when I was in big tech or whatever, I would say hello to my coworkers and stuff like that. They're like, What do you want? What do you want? I just like, I'm just being me. But yeah, I will say now. Now, I believe it's changing a little bit to where you may have to do speeches and conferences and consulting and things like that, but there's still a big subset where you don't have to. It's really crazy. And until more people that are, I think the word is ambivalence are in there and extroverts, it's still going to be crazy to an extent. But yeah, I will say being an auditor, it gave me just enough of people as an introvert to where I was like, okay, this is enough. Then I can just go back to my little cubby hole. Even though I did presentations and I did interviews of people and things like that, but it was more so like 70 % I'm researching, writing, and typing up things, and I'm sitting behind the computer sending emails and talking on the phone.

[00:28:39.780] 
Speaker 2: The other 30 % is where I had to go in person and meet these people and do interviews like that. Also, I didn't necessarily work in a team either. I was in charge of my own project. It's like, Okay, this was perfect for me because as an introvert, the stereotype of you don't work well in teams and all that good stuff. You want to be independent. Just to throw that out there for people that may want to be auditors. You can definitely work in a team if you want to. But I was always in charge of my own project to where I directed what I did for my day. The only time I would work in a team, quote, is when I was interviewing people and doing presentations. And sometimes we will work as a team, but it would still be my project. And I'm delegating to my coworker what I need them to do for me because they didn't have a project at the time, so they were helping. But yeah, I find that engineering is still very closed off to an extent. So yeah, just throwing that out there. Last question. Well, actually, I got two more questions for you.

[00:30:03.870] 
Speaker 2: You touched on it a little bit, but do you think that it was a time waster studying engineering? Do you think you should have went straight into marketing, or do you think that it was just too long? You were long for the ride. It was part of your journey, your life, your destiny. Do you have any regrets? Do you think you should have changed anything?

[00:30:30.520] 
Speaker 1: I don't necessarily regret it because it did help me eventually figure out what I want to do and what I like and what I don't like. And at the time, honestly, I just didn't know that I wanted to be a marketer or I wanted a specific career. So I just did it, not really knowing any better. But it did teach me a lot. And I've met really great people. I met great professors that I would probably remember the things that they taught me, the mannerisms, the advice that they gave. And I did meet people from all around the world. I networked a lot. And I don't think I would say I would regret it. For marketing, you honestly don't need a degree. So even if at the time I wanted to be a marketer, it probably would be a waste of money and time to do marketing. You truly can be a marketer by skills and experience, not necessarily a full on degree. Unless you want to, then good for you, but it's not really a necessity. I do regret the money that I did spend, though. For engineering is one of the most expensive degrees you probably will have to do in your life.

[00:31:52.970] 
Speaker 1: And being in Malaysia, I was an international student, so I had to probably pay three times more than locals at the time. So I spent thousands of dollars. And to see now doing something completely different, that money could have been put into better use. But that's such a life. And it's a part of the process.

[00:32:20.260] 
Speaker 2: Yeah, I say that a lot. It's a part of the process. And that's why I asked you in the beginning, what type of engineering degree it was. Was it civil? Let's try to tie it to being in real estate because, yeah, I'll agree that you don't necessarily need a marketing degree because let's say, for example, I studied accounting and I want to get in marketing for an accounting firm or something like that. My background in accounting would help me in that. This is what I tell people all the time when you try to switch careers or something like that, try to play off your old experience because it helps. I get targeted a lot for government contracts because I have that government experience and accounting experience, consulting experience, all that comes into play. Never ever negate your experience in your journey. Like you said, the process. Last question. Last words on telling someone about career switching. What did you wish you knew in the past that you would apply today? Any tips or tricks? For marketers.

[00:33:43.650] 
Speaker 1: Or just generally? Just in.

[00:33:45.790] 
Speaker 2: General advice. And you can make it marketing specific if you want to, too.

[00:33:54.320] 
Speaker 1: That's a really good one. I would say, especially for marketers, if you're planning to switch into marketing or you're doing your degree and you want to be a marketer after you graduate, it's really important to manage your expectations because marketing is not going to be like Emily in Paris. I hear this a lot from people who just think they're going to go into marketing and travel the world and go all over Europe and make amazing money and work with amazing brands. And while this is true to some extent, marketing is one of the jobs that includes a lot of numbers, a lot of analytics, a lot of reports, a lot of work that could be boring to some extent, a lot of client presentations, a lot of approvals, a lot of cash flows and budgets. So it's not always going to be that fun thing that you see on TV. And it's to some extent on TV and online, it's romanticized to a very big extent. And it's really important that you understand it's difficult to get into the industry. It's difficult to stay in it. And it changes so fast, you always have to go in it with a learners and a student mindset to be relevant, to stay there for longer, to get paid well.

[00:35:14.810] 
Speaker 1: So it's not that amazing job where you just work one hour a day and you call it a day and go home and have vacation in Paris. It's not going to be like that. If that's your life, then I envy you. Please teach me your ways. But it's really important to go into it being ready to do the hard work and get your hands a little dirty. And I touched on this earlier, but going into this with a learner's mindset is so important. Oh, can you hear me? Yeah, I.

[00:36:01.540] 
Speaker 2: Can hear you. We're still here. Oh, it showed.

[00:36:04.980] 
Speaker 1: Me that something went wrong with Zoom for some reason.

[00:36:08.380] 
Speaker 2: Oh, okay. No, I'm like, What happened? I'll cut it out. Oh, my gosh.

[00:36:14.160] 
Speaker 1: Where did I leave off? Something you said.

[00:36:16.830] 
Speaker 2: A learner's mindset. Yeah.

[00:36:19.430] 
Speaker 1: So it's really important to go into any industry, but if you do marketing, then same thing applies is that you just have to go there with a learners and a student mindset. You always have to treat this as a learning experience and be able to not only learn from it, but being able to be coached, be open to be coached by other people that have been there in the industry longer than you are. It's easy to go into a job and think that you know everything, you don't need to learn anything, and you can do it. But that's not going to be the case. You're going to work with people that will teach you a lot along the way. And it's important to not have ego, be humble, and learn as much as you can. It's like taking a course, but in real life, hands on. If people are doing a certain job and it's not a part of your job description, it's really, really important to ask them questions and ask why they do it in this company, how they do it, what is it going to mean for you. And learning that will give you so many different skills that you can apply in any job that you take on later.

[00:37:26.610] 
Speaker 1: So it's just to protect yourself in a way that if you go to a job, you're not just doing a few tasks and that's it. They're going to ask you, so what did you learn? Can you do this? Can you do that? And you're like, no, I didn't do that. It's really important to be a well rounded person and learn different things to add to your skill set. I would also say it's really important to understand the hard work that you have to do. So switching from a different career, it's not going to be easy. So even for marketers, you will have to work more than 40 hours a week at times, especially if you're just starting out. It's not going to be fun and games all the time. When I first started in my first two years, I used to work more than 60 hours a week just to catch up and work, do work stuff, and then study. So it's going to be a lot of effort that you have to put in there. But again, if you do put a lot of effort, it's going to be worth it in the beginning.

[00:38:35.060] 
Speaker 1: So that's a really good advice that not only in your career, but in anything in life, you really have to put effort to get things. You won't get something easily. And that's a misconception about a lot of things in life. A lot of people want to get things the easy way. And if it's difficult just a little bit, they do give up and they don't want to do it. So if you want that lifestyle that you see on TV or you want to get into marketing because you like it, you have to put an effort to get there. And one last thing is, anything needs experience, especially in marketing, you do need a lot of experience. And this might sound funny if you're trying to switch or you're trying to get into career in marketing after graduating. Experience can be obtained by so many different sources. So you don't have to have a company type of experience or work in organization or agency to be able to get that experience. I would really, really advise that you look up job descriptions, look up skills and traits needed in marketing, and look up different tools that you can learn or different softwares that you can learn.

[00:39:53.570] 
Speaker 1: Even if you're in school right now, you could use your project, your assignments, and all the work that you're doing in school in your resume to get into a marketing job. It all counts. You just have to put in the work. There's so many sources and courses online that you can take to help you. Like HubSpot and Google, they offer so many courses. They're for free and they give you a great extensive experience knowledge. But what it takes to do certain things in marketing, whether it's social media or SEO or advertising, whatever it is, you can gain it on your own time and then build your own social media platforms, get that experience and show it to potential companies. You will be surprised how well that works. Yeah. If I would go back in time and tell myself this, I would have been way ahead of my I still am a little away, like ahead of people that are in marketing that are just three years into the career, but it would definitely help someone that is starting out to ties into my previous advice, just do the hard work and get as much experience as you can from your school, from your own time, different hobbies that you have.

[00:41:07.270] 
Speaker 1: If you do photography, if you do videography, if you've ever helped someone with a creative idea, it all counts, I promise you.

[00:41:15.700] 
Speaker 2: Surely does count. One thing I can say about audit is it's pretty much been the same since probably the beginning of time. One plus one equals two. You're trying to figure out what the process is and tie that back to what actually is being done, interviews, whatever, presentations. That doesn't really change. One thing about moving over to tech was all of the learning. Yeah, it's putting the time and the work in. I learned AWS. When I moved over to Microsoft, I had to learn Azure. I'm doing the labs and things like that. I probably was working more than 40 hours a week. Then I had exams that I had to pass and things like that. Yeah, nothing necessarily comes easy. Some stuff does. Some stuff does. I won't say that all of it won't, but you definitely have to put the hours in and take your time, pace yourself. Don't burn out, that's for sure. Don't burn out. You money, time waits for no one, whether you do it today, tomorrow, next week, next year. It's going to be there. That's my final word on that. I ll tell them where you can find you, D eana.

[00:42:48.080] 
Speaker 1: You can find me on LinkedIn @dinal sedani. I'm not really on any other social media platforms professionally, so you can just find me mainly on LinkedIn where I can share a little bit of my journey with marketing and self discovery and career.

[00:43:06.100] 
Speaker 2: I'm clicking in it. It's not unclicking. All right, you heard it first from Deana. She went from studying biomedical engineering, biomedical engineering to marketing. And she's moved countries in order to do it and things like that. So definitely reach out to her about all of that. And if you haven't subscribed, you can subscribe on YouTube, Google podcast, Apple podcast, Spotify, and whatever else your favorite podcast app is where we are everywhere. And subscribe and we will see you next time. We got more guests coming because people are excited to talk about their career switching stories. And yeah, nobody wants to work, though.