I kind of knew from early on that I wanted to work in marketing. I was always doing creative things and chasing the question of how to get people interested in stuff I made. I did not know what kind of marketing. Branding, advertising, digital, content, growth, performance. They are all very different jobs. The thing that put me in a good position to start a marketing career was that I tried a lot of them, kept what felt right, and dropped what did not. Here is the full path, broken into three phases: high school, college, and my master’s.
High school: failing my way into marketing
I got into music production in high school. I made my own music and tried to figure out how to get people to listen to it. I mostly failed at the marketing part, but the failing is what taught me. At one point I burned CDs of my music and tried to sell them at school. Total flop. When you fail at something visible in school, it gets nasty fast. I bounced back and kept making music.
The music thing pulled me into other things. A friend’s mom was starting a business, noticed I was doing creative stuff, and hired me to design her logo. My first real marketing project, in tenth grade. Making music turned into making videos of me playing music, which became my way into visual media. Then I started promoting those videos on social media. In twelfth grade I started editing videos seriously, inspired by YouTubers at the time. My oldest video from that era is still up on my channel.
The biggest lesson from that phase: if you want to learn marketing, market something. Books and courses are useful, but you only really learn when you are trying to ship. Start a project. See if you actually like marketing or if you just like the idea of it.
College: real clients, a failed club, and finding SEO by accident
In college I started making videos for the student media body, MTTN. One of those caught the attention of a local ad agency in Udupi, and they hired me to make online marketing videos for actual clients. My first taste of professional freelance work. It also taught me the skills of being a freelancer: negotiating rates, setting expectations, managing client back-and-forth.
I started my own YouTube channel around that time. Mostly vlogs and music videos. I kept wondering why some videos got more views than others. Then I noticed the ones about Manipal (where I was studying) consistently did better. That is how I accidentally learned about SEO. I also took advertising electives and a minor in business management. I did the HEC Paris summer school in luxury management, which is where I first saw HEC up close.
I tried to start a marketing and advertising club at college. It failed. We ran one good event and then it fell apart. My first leadership attempt and the failure taught me a lot.
Through all of this I built a small network that landed me a six-month marketing internship at a tech startup for my final semester. That role taught me more practical marketing than any course. If you are considering a similar path, I have a deeper post on building a MiM profile.
Two pieces of advice from this phase: start a project. Anything. Blog, channel, store, side business. When you hit roadblocks, crossing them is where the learning happens. Second, get a marketing internship at a startup with a good team and a good manager. The entrepreneurial mindset you absorb there helps for the rest of your career.
HEC Paris: networking, two contrasting internships, and a YouTube channel
At HEC I leaned into networking. I spoke with alumni and current students doing very different jobs to figure out if I could see myself in their shoes. I reached out on LinkedIn. I went to networking events on campus. The point was not to collect business cards. It was to figure out what work actually looked like inside different roles.
I also read a lot. A mix of textbooks like Kotler and books by marketers like Seth Godin. The textbooks gave me vocabulary. The books from operators gave me intuition.
The biggest decision of my MiM was choosing two very different internships during the HEC Paris gap year. One was at a B2B startup in Los Angeles. I learned an insane amount and came out with way more skill than I went in with. My manager was excellent. That is where I realized: yes, startups and tech are for me. The second internship was a corporate role at MAC Cosmetics in Paris. I learned what structure looks like inside a global brand. I also confirmed that corporates were not for me. Putting those side by side made my direction obvious.
In my final year I did the marketing specialisation at HEC. The technical finishing layer. Around the same time I restarted my YouTube channel with a plan. One video a week. Start with HEC Paris content where there was unmet demand, then expand. It grew steadily and turned into a community. The channel was partly to help people, partly to have a visible project to show employers later. I wanted something I owned that would compound.
The channel gave me freelance opportunities along the way. It also indirectly led to my current job. I cold-emailed the CEO of my current startup, told him what I was about, and it turned out they were hiring someone like me. The two things together (the channel as visible work plus the cold email) are what made that happen. The bigger framework I use for cold-emailing comes from my funnel theory of networking.
What I would tell anyone trying to build a marketing career
The courses and degrees you stack matter less than the work you can show. The only way to get better at marketing is to actually do marketing. Market something. When you start, it leads to other things. The snowball gets bigger and compounds. For deeper career-stage lessons, I unpack the rest in 5 key career learnings and 9 career tips.