Law student Cassie Yusofi took a leap of faith and left everything that was safe and familiar in the Netherlands and moved to Asia, where she opened her eyes to a completely different—and more fulfilling—career path in sales. Today, she tells us how she found success in the Philippine startup scene.

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I was about to graduate from a master’s degree that did not interest me in the slightest. I was studying Competition Law Masters at the University of Amsterdam, with the intent of working for a law firm in the Netherlands. My friends were all spreading their wings and I felt quite lost and unhappy. All I knew was that I wanted to spend time in Asia, preferably doing an internship there for a couple of months before returning to the dreadful routine of everyday life in Amsterdam.

Nobody quite understood why I wanted to go there so badly, but everything within me said that I needed to see a different way of living life before I would commit to anything. In 2015, I started applying for internships early on at many embassies of the Netherlands in Southeast Asia. Quickly enough I got myself accepted at the Embassy of the Netherlands in Manila. Within the first three months, I realized how much the Philippines had to offer and started looking for a job.

 

Sealing The Deal In The Philippines
In 2016, I started as a sales intern at BigDish, a yield management platform that offers users discounts of up to 50 percent off at hundreds of restaurants in Metro Manila.

The moment I signed my first contract, I knew this was exactly what I wanted. Studying law was so theoretical—learning articles and law cases by heart without really getting the chance to apply what you know. But being in sales was different. From the moment you’re thrown in the deep and you need to find a way to make it out on top. The level of success you have was easily measurable.

When I met my current boss and I jumped on board, I was excited to be a part of a company that was being built up from the ground completely. I had no skills whatsoever in sales or marketing, but I had ambition and grit. Those things pulled me through when I encountered difficult clients, endless cold calls, and something we call at BigDish “selling the dream”. I’m grateful someone saw what I knew I had: the ability to learn and pick up things fast.

Within nine months, I worked myself up to Head of Business Development, and five months later, I became the Managing Director, at age of 26.

 

Overcoming Roadblocks
The biggest challenge initially was to convince my family and friends that I really wanted to stay in the Philippines. However, I do understand them. They wanted me to be close to them in an environment they knew best.

When I first started my job in the Philippines, the hardest part for me was setting up a client database. You needed make a lot of cold calls a day to get information. I made calls every single day for probably three to four weeks in the beginning. You get so much more admiration for people working in customer service; it’s tough to keep your composure at times! However, I knew this part was temporary and simply needed to get done, so I rolled up my sleeves and got through it, even though it made me want to quit every day.

Achievement(s) Unlocked
By distancing myself from everything that was safe and familiar to me, I unlocked a new level of self-reliance that I didn’t know I had. I wish I had known this much sooner. I might not have chosen the master’s degree when I did, because I would’ve chosen with what my instincts were telling me instead of what others were urging me to do. After the first choice of Asia, which was one of the first decisions I had made completely on my own, I decided to see where this trend would take me. This change in perspective opened my mind to a whole host of new opportunities that I was blind to before, such as start-ups and business development and the slightest chance that I might be good at it.

This career path was far from what I had in mind, and if you would’ve told 18-year-old me what I was doing now and where I was, she wouldn’t have believed you. However, I am quite happy where I did end up, becoming the Managing Director of BigDish made all my sacrifices such as being away from my friends and family worth it.

 

Reaping The Rewards
The best part of this job for me is meeting different people, talking and finding out what other businesses are dealing with and how their management is trying to solve complex questions. It gives you insights into industries that you previously had no idea of.

This job has also provided me with a different mindset towards the world. In this line of work, I am continuously thinking of solutions—the more creative and effective, the better. Especially since when you work for a small bootstrapped start-up, your resources are small. So how do you survive? How do you stand out? With your ideas and with the people you hire. The more you learn to depend on your team and trust them, the better the solutions become.

Being an early-stage start-up, you don’t always have access to funds to do what you want. The lack of funds to carry out the many brilliant marketing ideas of my team was a huge frustration. But this only made us more creative in executing them, and we still manage to do them with success!

Take It From Me—Make That Leap!
How my life would have been if I had never come to Asia? Where would I be? To be honest, I don’t think I would change a thing. Not to sound like a cliché, but if I had to go back in time to change things I didn’t like that happened, then the good that came because of that, wouldn’t happen either. The best way to live is to always look forward; to not listen to what other people say, not allow others to project their own fears and shortcomings on you. At the end of the day, you’re the one that must live your life, not others. Keep the chapters of your life open and make sure you are the one writing them.

 

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