Engineering grad taught himself digital marketing and landed his first client within 1 month! 

Watch the full interview here :

In this episode of Stories of Hackers, we chatted with Yi Xuan, who is a Engineering grad but after discovering his passion for digital marketing and self-taught himself, he actually landed his first client within 1 month. How did he do it? We hope you guys can learn some new insights from Yi Xuan story, enjoy!

Hey Yi Xuan, can you give us a short introduction of yourself?

Hello guys, I'm Yi Xuan. I came from an engineering background and only graduated last year. I would say the turning point for me is during the internship itself,  i discovered that engineering and the job prospect itself is not something that i want for my future so hence during that time i started to look for something else, and the first thing that really stuck with me was actually copywriting and from copywriting there on i discovered other stuff of digital marketing like SEO, paid ads, search engine and all those kind of stuff. I've been doing a lot of self learning since 2019 until now and i'm still in the process of learning

What got you into engineering in the first place last time?

I believe uh my story is actually similar to a lot of people and i think a lot of people can relate to this. When we were young and if you have no idea what you want to pursue, you go into the science class , you have science and art class right during your high school. A lot of people, parents, friends,  your peers and everyone is like “okay you have no idea what to do why not you just go for science class”  and with science, you have a lot of flexibility you can do in the future. During that time, i'm not a very good critical thinker and without a lot of life experiences, I just followed the path and got myself into Engineering at the University Of Malaya. 

You said your internship got you realizing that engineering is not for you,you want to share a little bit about that as well? 

During university time, there is a lot of fluff and a lot of things that are taking attention away from you about thinking about your future and your career path. I didn't really think about what I wanted until during my third year at my university, and during that time I ventured into my compulsory 10 weeks internship program and it really changed my perspective in terms of my career and my life. I don't want to lead a very boring work life.

Why did you choose digital marketing? 

Even before my internship , I've always liked to do a little bit of writing here and there and share it with my friends. Some of my friends really do like my writing but those are just like the storytelling side of things.

The funny thing is, during my internship, I did a search like what are some of the freelance things that i can do, inside my internship office. I think there's like a list of things people are recommending from the website and one of the things is copywriting so from there I read more about copywriting and then i just went ahead and prepared a very stupid portfolio of my writings of my past writings and then i just went on and find companies or startups or whatever business owners who think this is very important to them and they want people to help them with these areas and from there I get a few gigs. 

Last year back in 2020 during the pandemic, where we're actually being locked at home back in March. It was that time where I decided that I want to do something different so during my free time I started to learn stuff like google analytics, PPC, SEO all those interesting digital marketing things.

Are you completely self-taught in digital marketing? Meaning you didn't go to uni or any crazy bootcamps.

No, i didn't, there are actually a lot of free courses and free online resources online but the downside is actually you might get overwhelmed because once you discover a certain topic, this topic is actually interlinked with another topic and even this topic itself it can be very specialized and you can go very deep dive into it as well. The downside of just doing your own research is actually it's going to be overwhelming and sometimes you just feel lost and you might give up.

What about yourself? Are there any big obstacles or any challenges in your learning journey?

There are certain barriers when it comes to learning digital marketing,  first of all,  you don't have a real business and you don't have anything real for you to test out and to really try the tools. For instance, if you're learning google analytics if you don't have a website, what are you going to do? You can only try with the google's free platform but you don't really have anything to see, you don't have data to really learn.

There’s a lot of the tools out there that are essential for you to be a good digital marketer but if you don't have a business or if you don't have some work for you to work on, you can't really pick those skills up. 

So, for me personally, I prefer to start small I know there are so many things, sometimes I feel really overwhelmed, but I didn't give up but continue to work on my freelance work and from there i continue to slowly see ,discover other stuff and really see how those topics which i'm not familiar with how they comes into play with that business so it's  a slow but continuous learning process for me.

Did you know what is the imposter syndrome? It is a very common thing that self-taught learners go through. They feel like they are less than or nor qualified because they don't have experience. I want to know, what gave you the confidence to suddenly go out as someone with no digital marketing background, a guy with some basic copywriting skills, and talk to business owners for a job opportunity?

I started with no experience when it comes to running ads or managing social media but I know this is the direction I want to go with and it's something that I want to learn and experience itself.

It's also very important for us to join those different facebook groups like Digital Marketing Malaysia, from there you can really understand what are the pain points of business owners out there, pick up some insights and even get a few jobs.

Can you tell us how you juggle between working and self-learning? And how long did it take for you to land your first marketing freelance job? 

After I graduated the jobs that I'm looking primarily for are actually not in digital marketing but instead I'm looking more towards an analytical role and so the first job I've got is actually with an insurance company. At first, I thought to myself that this job is something I want to strive for and I want to continue to improve and climb up in the company but what I really discover it's it's not something for me and it's okay. You can just quit your job and you can continue to do something else, you don't need to be afraid or insecure because you are jobless and all your friends are doing very well.

I believe how I am able to juggle between work and self-learning is my drive. I know I still have something else I want to pursue so I'm willing to spend my time beside my full-time job to really pick up some other skills and learn from other people.

Do you have anything you want to share to our community members before we end this interview?

I just believe that if people want to get involved in digital marketing. It's really a matter of trial and error. Based on my experience, I've actually communicated with some educators out there or even colleges who are actually offering digital marketing courses and trust me those colleges, the thing that they are offering is actually not on par with what the industry really wants. They're actually teaching you basic stuff and nothing practical. I strongly believe paid courses out there from websites can provide you better values from it.

Thanks for the awesome interview !

Hope you enjoyed this series!

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