How Sacheen Sierro Thrives with Many Careers (Marketeer, Writer, Teacher, Pianist)

Meet Sacheen Sierro. She's a tremendous multi-careerist based in Switzerland. She is an entrepreneur who founded a marketing consultancy. In addition, she's a prolific writer and lecturer. She also has an artistic career as a terrific pianist. As you'll learn from her inspirational story, her many careers are mutually beneficial. I met her via LinkedIn, and it's been a pleasure learning about and from her.

Sacheen's careers:

• Marketeer
• Teacher
• Writer
• Pianist

On her motivations for many careers

"I have so many passions, so many interests, building many careers feels like living many lives in parallel. This is my way to nourish my creativity, my desire to live at 200%. But mostly, each career brings a lot to the other one, and improves my capabilities. 

Over the years, I added more and more layers to what I wanted and could do. And instead of changing areas, I started adding strings to my bow. 

As far as I can remember, I wanted to follow many paths. As I child, I envisioned becoming a chef, a conductor, an architect and a pianist. Then, marketing came to me and I have been practicing it with happiness for the past 20 years. But I kept deep inside me this desire to remain linked to my other dreams. I still cook a lot. I still play the piano, as well."

Advice for aspiring multi-careerists

"Go for it! Don’t even hesitate. It will bring you so much energy, strength and motivation. It might steal a few hours from your night's sleep, but the reward is so tremendously high."  

Overcoming obstacles

"My daily struggle is the lack of time. I would need an 8th day in my weeks. If anyone has a secret or solution, please don’t hesitate to share. Seriously, for me it’s always hard to prioritize and fit everything into one day. 

Also, if you want to keep those many careers in parallel, you need to make sure none is taking too much importance. Because it could slowly swallow another one I split my weeks to make sure that I keep time for them all. The teaching cannot be more than 2 days a week. About the consultancy, I cannot manage more than 5 companies at the same time. My evenings need to be free for the writing. I don’t often go out for that reason. And I need some mornings home to play with no one around."

On how many careers are mutually beneficial

"Each one nourishes the other ones and it helps improving my skills in all areas. For example, my teaching is much richer from my marketing consultant daily experiences.

As a marketeer, the teaching obliges me to always read and keep my methods and tools up to date, especially in all the new areas of my job: digital marketing, automation, SEOo and all the algorithm secrets.

Since content marketing has become a central part of my job, I am happy that I followed several writing and copywriting trainings over the years. Writing novels helped me easily jump in the storytelling train and I am now handling several blogs and managing many newsletters for my clients and myself.

One last example, my focus, concentration and multitasking skills are much stronger from my piano practice.

It's like communicating vessels, where each one improves the quality of the previous and the next one." 

On balancing personal time

"Family time is of course a priority, and I make sure to end my teaching days or my meetings early enough to be at home for the children in the evening. It’s like a pause in my working day, from 5pm to 8pm to help them with their homework, drive them to music lessons or sports practice...Personal time is unfortunately the one that suffers the most. Leisure does not belong to my vocabulary.

 I spend all my time helping my clients, learning new professional skills, being with my children and husband. I don’t do as much sports as I should. Walking my dog is my only physical activity. But what I absolutely keep for myself is my end of the day.

When I close my computer, around 10 or 11 pm, I never go straight to bed. I allow myself a deep dive into a good book. Fiction, no more business reading. It’s my relaxing time. And it often happens in a delicious warm bath."

On what she wished she learned earlier

"When I started, 20 years ago, dual careerism was not such a big trend. Today, the new generations start having multiple careers very early. They don’t lose time, they start being entrepreneurs while they study already. I could maybe have gone faster, if I had known all this was possible earlier. It took me time to wake up."

A Day in the Life

6:30 am - wake up to get ready and prepare a nice breakfast for the children. Pancakes and waffles are their favorites. Then drive to school, nice walk with the dog, and straight to the office. Our dog is still a puppy, so I work hard on her education (should I add dog trainer as a news career ? Hahaha !).

 9 am - Car and driving is always efficient, with scheduled phone calls. One or 2 days a week, I teach in different marketing schools or universities. The other ones, I line up meeting, visit my clients. And Firday is always dedicated to my teams and trainees.

5 pm to 8 pm - Children time. I try to finish early enough to pick them up at school. I love working with them, helping with their homework, prepare funny exercises. I am trying to share with them that discipline and job well done is a key value.

7 pm - We eat. They go to bed at 8.30. After this, my second working day starts.

I love working at night. It’s all quiet around, my concentration and creativity are at their maximum. We are sitting together, next to each other with my husband, each of us with our laptop on the knees. Evenings are moments for writing. I write for my clients. I write for myself. I recently started a blog and a newsletter to share my marketing vision and tools, and many case studies. I am also a hidden secret novel writer. I love diving into imaginary worlds and watch my characters evolve under my pen. I have published 5 novels under a pseudonym.

Where to find Sacheen

•  Website
• LinkedIn

***

Kabir Sehgal is a Multi Grammy & Latin Grammy Award winner, as well as New York Times bestselling author of fifteen books. His debut feature film production Fandango at the Wall is streaming on HBO Max. Follow: LinkedIn, Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, Spotify, YouTube.