 I have been in Dubai for more than 20 years, went back after six months of maternity and I was realizing that you know it's not working for me. I think Dubai is the place which is really relationship driven, network driven, who you know, yes they come here and they are earning you know decent salaries compared to what they would back home but they end up spending a lot. Hey guys, welcome to OxyVlogs. In this episode I'm gonna interview a Dubai expert who quit her career at multinational corporation Procter & Gamble to become a millennial career coach. So let's get started. Can you introduce yourself in a couple of words? Hi, I'm Samia, I'm from Pakistan, I have been in Dubai for more than 20 years. I grew up here and then I moved back home and now I've been here since 2009. What did you do before you came to Dubai and why did you decide to come here? So yeah, like I said I grew up here so my family was here and then we moved back home where I studied, I started working so I was working with Procter & Gamble in Pakistan and then they transferred me here to Dubai in 2009 and I jumped on the opportunity and I came. How did you start your career in Dubai and what were some of the challenges you faced? So although I grew up in Dubai, the part of Dubai I grew up in was very different from when I came again in 2009 you know the country, the city transformed and also career wise I felt like the same company back home and here is a bit different obviously in terms of culture, the multi-ethnicities, diversity of people, the way things work so I think I had a lot to learn in terms of you know the way things work and how you work with different people especially. Why did you go back to Pakistan before you came back to Dubai again? So I went back just because my dad didn't have a job and you know so he didn't have a job, he didn't have a visa so we had to go back and then me coming back here was a coincidence, was luck. I was going to go, they were going to transfer me to Geneva last minute it changed and I became Dubai and I was super happy for Dubai because you know I have a lot of friends, family grew up here. It's very close to home, it's like an hour and a half light back home. How was it to work at the multinational corporation? My experience was great, P&G is a great company, it's a great company globally here as well I got the opportunity to work on different assignments. I was working from when I moved in 2009 until I left in 2016 so 8 years, a lot of different brands, products, I was in marketing, brand management, was creating advertising, working on packaging, different campaigns across the region, so Middle East, Africa, Pakistan, Turkey, India. What challenges did you face when you came back to Dubai? I think the first challenge was living on my own because it was the first time I was away from my family and had to do everything on my own. I think the company and my friends circle and network helped a lot there so making the relocation process easier, getting a house, getting a car, the license, this was back in 2009 so it was the good old days and just getting acquainted with how to live on your own and to have a social circle and network and support system of people you can rely on because I think when you're living in your home country or with family you take these things for granted and you already have that network and here when you start from scratch somewhere you have to build it up and grow and have, again, people and friends that you can bank on. Why did you leave your job at PNG? So yeah, after more than 10 years with PNG I think it was about time I moved on to something else so as much as I love my job and I enjoyed my time there I think I was getting gravitating more towards people development than just brand development so even in the last couple of years in PNG I was doing a lot of recruitment, training, mentoring, coaching so I think it really propelled me to start my own business and to really focus on how I can help people accelerate in their careers. Yeah so another reason I left PNG is because of flexibility I wanted more flexibility and freedom in my life especially that I had a daughter. My daughter was year and a half when I left PNG but I went back after six months of maternity and I was realizing that you know it's not working for me like I'm very career-minded, very ambitious, very professional but if I'm gonna leave her somewhere, daycare, nursery, whatever the time that I spend away from her has to make sense. It has to be meaningful, it has to be fulfilling so on one hand there was this struggle of finding meaning and passion in what I do and on the other pure flexibility like eight to four or nine to five being away and just being at one place and not being able to see her, breastfeed her, you know all the things that a new mom has to do was was tough so I think now that I have my own business flexibility is the top of my list in terms of my criteria like I love how diverse my work is. I work with multiple people, companies, I speak, I write, I train, I coach, I facilitate and then as well I manage my day and my time and my week accordingly so there are some days which are full of meetings back to back, some days which is downtime, some days where I have to be with my daughter and spend time with her, some days where I'm recording, shooting so it really you know there's a lot of flexibility around my schedule and agenda. Why did you decide to become a career leadership coach? The more I was working with the team at PNG and the more I worked on myself and realized and figured out my own strengths and values and passions I felt this is something I'm meant to do so I feel it's kind of a calling you know when you know that this is something that comes to you naturally, naturally I feel I'm good with people and also enabling them, helping them see who they are and enabling them to achieve what they're capable of it's something that really drives me so I think that was the starting point of you know figuring out that coaching is one way through which I can do that and then why choosing career coaching versus any other kind of coaching is more because I feel especially for millennials for the younger people or let's say I work with anybody who's 22 to 40 let's say entry level, mid-year, slightly senior professionals there's a big gap between what they are taught or what they learn and when they enter the workforce be it corporate world or startups they are blown away with what they're required to do so there's so many skills that they have to learn along the way which they are not fully equipped with so I think this is where they need the most help so a lot of self-awareness, self-discovery, emotional intelligence, social intelligence, how to be a leader, how to adopt the skills of the future and work with teams, multicultural, diverse, ethnic teams in this part of the world and navigate your way through that and grow your career through that. Tell us more about your project Unwind the Grind, what is your goal? So Unwind the Grind as I said is a millennial career development platform we work with young people with millennials both in terms of one-to-one career coaching, career change, a lot of people come to me more than 80% actually of my clients come to me for changing careers so changing industry job roles, functions or quitting corporate completely to start their own thing. So can we have a huge round of applause for Sarwa and thank them for their support. Are you really in charge of your career or do you think is it managed by your finances? And then I work with organizations as well on how they can engage, retain their millennial employees and build their leadership capabilities. So it started basically again wanting to make a difference to young people's lives, their careers, equipping them with the right skills, with the right helping them see what their strengths are, what they're good at and how they can be better leaders for the future. When you decided to become a coach how were you promoting yourself? So I think what really helped in my case is having a business background and particularly a marketing background so it was just a shift from managing brands and doing brand management and development to managing your personal brand. So I think I relied a lot on first creating a niche that I have a target audience and a niche. So I work with millennials and my niche is career coaching, leadership coaching. And then within that to market my own company as a personal brand. So online presence, online persona, website, social media, writing articles, giving interviews, speaking at a lot of relevant events, industry events. So I think that's the whole cumulative effect of building a personal brand over the last now, almost four years, really pays off. What advice would you give to those who are planning to come to Dubai and start their career here? I know everybody would like to come to Dubai and one of the biggest reasons along with a great lifestyle and everything that this place offers is also the opportunity to make more money. However, what I find working with my clients mostly is that especially young people who want to explore life and travel and have fun, yes, they come here and they are earning decent salaries compared to what they would back home, but they end up spending a lot. So what happens is it limits you from making the career changes or decisions later on that you would have if you had the money. So I can't tell you how many times I have people who want to make a certain career change or take a sabbatical or change industries, change functions, but they're so scared of doing that because they don't have a financial cushion to bank on. They don't have many savings. They don't have any financial sort of security to say that, OK, if I make less money as I change my career from this sector to that sector, I'll be OK with that. Or if I don't have a job, I lose a job, I can still be in Dubai and, you know, ride it out for the next six to nine months. So I would say when you are earning and when you are doing well, focus on saving, investing, making your money grow, making it work for you. So then when the time comes to take those big decisions, you have something to bank on. Many people apply for jobs, but they have no response. What should they do? I think Dubai is the place which is really relationship driven, network driven, who you know, and being on the ground matters most. It's the same across, you know, everywhere globally, but I think here more if you really are serious about moving to Dubai and you want to find a job, be here. Come here. Come on a visit visa. Come for a month, two months, build networks, you know, see who you know, friends, friends of friends. Reach out to people on LinkedIn, have meetings. As long as you're clear on your job search process on where you're starting, what is the industry, what is the company, what is the job role you want. And then you find the relevant people within that industry through your friends, through your networks and connections and meet them. That's how you stay visible, you know, to the right audience. So I would say start from there. Of course, have a solid profile and LinkedIn account and resume and be presentable. But then putting your best foot in the door with the right people to the right people matters a lot. Is it possible to find the balance between work and life and living in Dubai? So look, I think balance is hard to maintain on a day to day basis. That's why I talk more about integration, how you can integrate your work and life and look at it from a longer term perspective. So if you look at two months, three months, four months, how are you integrating the two? I think that works better and integration happens very well when the work that you're doing, which is anywhere apart of your life, is something that you love. Something you love, something you enjoy doing, something you're passionate about. So I think it's more of a mindset. If you're gonna be hating your job and living from weekend to weekend, waiting for the next weekend, so you can just blow off the steam and go party and chill and have fun, then the five days of the week are gonna be very miserable. So the first point of integration is that you integrate work in your life in a way where you spend more than eight, 10 hours of your most productive day working is that you enjoy what you do. And then in terms of how to manage time and balance a lot of things, especially as you're living alone and chores and stuff, I would say that, and this is one of the lessons I've learned as well throughout these years, is you delegate. You plan well, you organize well, and then you try to delegate, automate, and be extremely efficient. So for instance, as an entrepreneur, there are so many things I have to do all by myself with a very small team and then I have family, I have a daughter, so a lot of family related stuff as well. So I would focus on the things which are really value added and where I can add my value in the best possible way. And then I would delegate the other tasks which are, let's say, can be done by someone else and I don't have to spend time doing it. So that way I free up a lot of my time for the more high value added stuff, both for work and for personal life. What if you work for a company only because of money? You work hard, you stay longer hours, how to deal with it and what burnt out at work? So then I would say do the best with what you have. So if you know that you are in a job and you don't like it and you know that, have a plan. So be aware that, okay, I'm in this job for the reason of making money and I'm gonna be okay with that. So that awareness already helps in knowing your reason that okay, it's gonna be for a limited amount of time and I'm in it because of the money, let's say. And in parallel, have a plan of finding a better job. So finding something more in line with what you would like to do, something more interesting, something more you're passionate about and be clear on that plan and work on that plan because that is what's gonna keep you motivated. And then manage your time, I would say. Like, you know, if you are doing a lot of long hours in one week, then take the next week a bit easy. Speak up more because a lot of time what you realize is people aren't saying what they need to say and they're kind of just taking it all in. So when you need to go and tell your manager that, you know, enough is enough, I've worked a lot and all of these things are done and I need to go a bit slow or I need to prioritize my mental health. I need to take a time, you know, a day off or I need to leave early, I have family commitments or whatever, speak up and, you know, make yourself heard. What challenges do you face with running your business? A lot, okay. It's challenging, it's not easy at all. I think also when you are a first time entrepreneur and you're learning and realizing everything the first time, it's not easy. You have to learn on the go. I think the market overall as well in the last couple of years has been quite up and down. The cost of doing business in Dubai is getting better now but four years ago when I started, like, everything, you know, the cost of hiring people, licensing processes, admin work is not easy. So I think at every step of the way you realize how you can drive more efficiencies become more effective. So and you always, it's a trial and error process. I think even for me in the last couple of years I've learned a lot by changing my business model, strategy, looking at my revenue streams, pivoting, improvising and learning as you go. So I think now I'm in a much better place but it's all because of the learning of the previous years. What type of license do you use? So I use a free zone license. So I'm licensed with Pajera Creative City. So it's a free zone license that I can, you know, I can work across the UAE, across all the Emirates and it covers my HR consultancy, coaching and event management. So a lot of different things. How much does it cost? So because I don't have a visa with this license and I don't give my employees visa as well because I don't need that. It's around 14,000 dirhams per year. It would have been higher if I need visa and I'm giving visa for my employees. It would be around 2025. Did you start hiring people from the beginning? No, no, no. So it was again on and off. So, you know, I was, I was always, I've always been working with some interns and freelancers but then there were times where I had an agency for a few months. I tried full-time, I tried part-time, freelancers, contractual, all the different models. So some work, some don't work. What is working for you now? What's working for me right now? I think because also I've changed the business model a bit like in the last year, until last year we were doing a lot of events. Obviously when you put up events of like 1,800 people every month, every other month, you need that manpower of people, videographers, photographers, social media, PR. So now that we've scaled back and the event side of things and I'm working more B2B with organizations, I don't need that kind of support. I think what works for me is people who are committed and you ensure their commitment by being very clear on the priorities, deliverables and their time needed. Because here I feel I've struggled a little bit with freelancers which is, it's open and you don't know how many hours they're working and the commitment is not that high because you're not paying them that much and so that kind of model doesn't always work. So I think you need to be very clear on okay, this is how much you're gonna get, this is what we need and then have clear communication along the way. How can entrepreneurs avoid work doubt? It's tough, it's not easy and again everybody is in different stages of their careers or their entrepreneurial journey. If you're really starting out and figuring things out and you don't know. Of course a lot of your time is gonna be spent on finding how things are done and it will take you longer than it would have taken someone else with like four, five years of experience. So I think at every step of the way it's really important to have a mentor, have a coach and both are different. So a mentor is somebody for instance from within your industry, from within your background and who is really helping you with guidance and advice on how to go about certain things. So those are the people you can bank on with okay I wanna open a bank account, what do I do? Which license works well for my kind of industry or I'm looking to speak to this client but I'm not prepared to lead the meeting, how do I go about it? That's the role of a mentor. A coach on the other hand is somebody who is really gonna hold your hand and facilitate your growth process. So if you want to deliver results that are two X or five X depending on the kind of coach you're getting business coach, career coach, whatever he's gonna really help you achieve that. So looking at the things that you do well, your strengths, leveraging your strengths, the things that you're not doing well, burnout, mental blocks, limiting beliefs and thoughts, fears, all of those things that get in the way of us achieving our results, a coach will be able to help you overcome those and address those. So number one, have a mentor, have a coach who can help you really take your business forward. Two, have a strong network of people you can rely on and bank on for advice, for help, for support, for connecting you to the right network, the right resources. Three, what I mentioned before, make sure that you are delegating the non-value added task so your time as an entrepreneur is spent on the most valuable things where you can personally add a lot of value because your time is money, your time is valuable so you wanna spend that time doing the right things and not like creating invoices all day long. How do you spend your free time and weekends? Well free time is not the luxury that I have, it's like packed back to back. I have a lot of family related stuff obviously to do on weekends and that's one thing, another thing I've done is I initially there was no boundary between weekends and weekdays because I had my own business and I was doing everything, whatever I could. So even on Friday, Saturdays, I would have meetings and clients and work. Now I've stopped doing that unless it's clients who really cannot do any day except Saturday because they're working all week. Unless it's them, maybe one or two meetings, that's it. Weekends are precious, it's time with family because again, my husband has a nine to five kind of job so his only free time is weekends unlike me who I can manage my time differently. So I think I spend a lot of quality family time especially in this weather going out. I'm a big nature freak, so parks and beach and adventure sports, activities, picnics, barbecue, that's kind of my thing. If you had to start over again, what would you do different thing? Okay, so the first thing is I wouldn't mind starting over again and I wouldn't trade off what I'm doing right now for anything else. So what I would do differently is taking again, going back to the same thing I spoke about which is your network is your network. So I think this was a lesson learned for me the hard way because when I was in PNG and getting sucked into the grind and the nine to five and hectic workload schedule, what I didn't prioritize was building networks and really knowing the right people, nurturing those relationships because they always come in handy especially when you're on your own and you don't have that big company name and brand name behind you and you wanna launch your own business. So I think what I would do differently is nurture those relationships and build on them. Be conscious, be proactive and intentional on growing the networks with the right people, the right industry, whatever I could. And yeah, yeah, that's pretty much it. Thank you for watching this video till the end. If you have any questions, leave them in the comments below. We'll get back to you. And if you would like to get in touch with my guests, there are contact details in the description under this video. See you in the next episode.