Embracing New Experiences - Sail Your Route - Augustin Bourgois : 98

Augustin Bourgois - Augie embarks us on his captivating story of self-discovery and career. Leaving his town in Lille, France, at 15, he bravely ventured to a farming-focused boarding school, opening his eyes to different cultures and ways of life. This bold decision sparked a series of adventures. Augie's path took him to the vibrant city of Bayonne, between France and Spain, where he indulged in delicious food, revelled in a lively social scene, and discovered his passion for the hospitality industry.

Our conversation leads us through Augie's remarkable experiences, from attending culinary school to working in a Michelin-star restaurant. Along the way, he imparts invaluable insights into embracing the unknown, the significance of patience, and the power of forging connections. His story serves as a testament to the fact that regardless of age or background, something new and exhilarating is always waiting for you.

Augustin Bourgois is an MBA grad with a multicultural experience in business management, customer success, and operation development. After working in hospitality management in Europe and Asia, he settled in New York and sterned his career in the tech industry, launching Data Sailing in 2020 as a data analyst. His soft and technical skills solve Data issues and implement new processes.

Please tune in and be inspired by Augie's incredible journey and the lessons he has learned. Whether you're seeking the courage to change your life or simply searching for motivation.

Let's enjoy his story,
To connect with Augie: https://datasailing.com/

Transcript

Daniela: 0:08

Hi, i'm Daniela and welcome to my podcast, because everyone has a story, the place to give ordinary people, stories, the chance to be shared and preserved. Our stories become the language of connections. It's in your connect and relate because everyone has a story. Welcome my guest, augustine Wokh-Yua Ogi. He is an MBAO grad with a multicultural experience in business management. After working in hospitality management in Europe and Asia, he settled in New York and stern his career in the tech industry, launching data sailing in 2020 as a data analyst.

Daniela: 0:52

This is A ugie incredible journey and the lesson he has learned. Talking about his journey in the hotel industry got me very excited, as, like him, i am also an hotelier from Switzerland and the time-spending hotel is always memorable. This story serves as a testament to the fact that, regardless of age or background, something new and exhilarating is always waiting for you. You have to manage your expectations or don't have any, perhaps when and you have no expectations, it takes you to far more wonderful experiences, like it happens to Ogi. So let's enjoy his story. Welcome to the show, Augustine or Augie. I am very happy that you're here. How are you?

Augustin : 1:38

I'm doing great. It's almost spring.

Daniela: 1:40

I'm doing very good. Good, ogi, tell me why you want to share your story.

Augustin : 1:46

I arrived at the time of my life I was just about the 30s and every time you meet new people, you have to tell them what happened the last 10 years and where you are where you are. And every time I tell the story, they're like it's so interesting, we've never met someone like you. I think it's different. I think it's different. I think people need to know that, no matter how old you are or what you want to do, there is always a thing that you don't know is possible. That's my story.

Daniela: 2:09

Great, and so when does this story start?

Augustin : 2:12

This story starts when I'm 15 and I want to leave my parents' house to go to boarding school. And this is where This is in Lille, north of France, at the bedroom border.

Daniela: 2:22

And why do you want to leave?

Augustin : 2:23

I don't know, no, i'm thinking about it. I don't know why I won't leave, but I always thought there was something else than the environment I knew of And Lille is a very nice town, but it's a very still type kind of town where everybody's Catholic uprising and everybody's kind of doing the same thing I was certain there was something else for me that I wanted to do and I wanted to be in a different environment. Just the desire of being different.

Daniela: 2:49

And your classmates were similar to you.

Augustin : 2:52

No, i went to boarding school in a forming school. 80% of that place was daughters and sons of farmers, so they were studying to grow their own farms in the future and raise cattle or whatever they wanted to be.

Daniela: 3:07

Horse riding and everything. You wanted to move away from Lille, but with that you wanted to go to boarding school.

Augustin : 3:13

Yeah, that was the idea, Because I was too young to just leave everything, so I went for the equivalent of my high school. I went to boarding school because my mom didn't want me to go too far. I went to boarding school two hours away, from Monday to Friday, and I would go home every weekend.

Daniela: 3:30

And there's a lot of boarding schools like that in France.

Augustin : 3:33

I don't know. I know that there was that one close to home and not so far from home. It's very rare to find a good forming boarding school for some reason. But I know North of Paris, that that one was the best for forming.

Daniela: 3:45

But this one was boarding school specifically to learn about farming. Kids or farmers will send their kids there so they learn more to come back home and help with their business.

Augustin : 3:55

Correct. The boarding school was mostly for farming people. The people who were going to the school were not in boarding school. They were most likely going into literature or economics, social and North farming. It was a big high school for friends, like maybe 1800 students, and so what happened?

Daniela: 4:11

How was your experience there?

Augustin : 4:13

Well, it was very different from what I was used to, which was my goal. It took me a little adjustment phase. It was my first understanding of there was something else, that everything I knew for the past 15 years and of my I have three sisters and a brother, so I grew up in a very good family and everything was good at home. But now I had the opportunity to meet people that were not raised the same way I was raised, so that was my first understanding of the other culture, even just in your backyard, so two hours away from home.

Augustin : 4:44

Different People are different in the way we're brought. It's cool. or you put everybody that's different in the same environment. there's gonna be to have like a realignment of the planet where everybody's gonna have to behave the way school wants you to behave. So that was very interesting to see that It's not because you come from X or Y or Z place. once you're in the same place, everything you know is not there anymore. so you have to set yourself for success in the same way all together. Does that make sense?

Daniela: 5:14

All right. You spent how many years there?

Augustin : 5:17

I spent three years in high school in France. you go from 15 to 18, then you get your GED at 18, and then you have to choose what you want to do for college And then I decided that I wanted to do pretty much general business studies, but I wanted to be far away from home again, so I moved to Bayonna, which is the Spain border between France and Spain. They call it Basque countries. There's like seven territories. there are three in France and four in Spain. It's very traditional southwest France. Old people speak another language that has no roots in French or Spanish or anything. Basque language is very interesting, but you are two hours from ski stations, 30 minutes from the ocean. the food is amazing and I spent two years there. I didn't go home much. I did a lot of partying, not much studying to every restaurants I could eat. I was living like a 40 years old man, but I was 19 years old.

Daniela: 6:13

Why is that? Do you have money? Was it economical? How?

Augustin : 6:17

I didn't have money much. I was finding good deals and good people to know, so I was not paying for much. It was the first time when I was more than two hours away from my parents on a daily basis. So I lived in what they call the Petit Bayonne, which is basically where all the students would go out every night. I had the best time. I love that place, but I didn't do much studying.

Augustin : 6:39

I had to find a job at the end of the first year and that's how I got into restaurants. I found a job at a Michelin star restaurant to serve some plates and be a waiter, and that's what I did for five months And I realized that it was a pretty good job. I liked that very much. So again, you got to understand everybody in my family as their own company and do things that are pretty high level of education. When I come out I'm like I want to be a waiter. This sounds like a great idea. I can eat for free, i can drink for a month And it's a good life. You don't work much during the morning. You work mostly between 11am and 1am And then everybody go out and have fun. Then you start to get, and my parents were like that's a great idea, but you didn't graduate. So they shipped me back home.

Augustin : 7:23

After a summer of working More than a summer, like it was seven months They shipped me back home and they put me in culinary school between Lille and Paris I won't name the town because it's a nice town, i think, if you like it. I didn't like it And it didn't match with me. I ended up in a professional high school kind of You're not really at a GED level but you want to learn a trade A trade school in the US, i think That's what they call. So I was in there to learn culinary school I don't know why, like eight hours of cooking class, eight hours of old school French rates for a thing, and then I was keeping. So I did that for nine months. I went back to the South to work in a mission star restaurant in the kitchen in Saint-Jean-de-Luz, which is very much this paint border. It's underwater.

Daniela: 8:07

Yeah, but isn't Saint-Jean-de-Luz close to Bayonne?

Augustin : 8:10

Yeah. So I went back home and then I went back to Bayonne. I had some attachment there. My heart was there more than my head.

Daniela: 8:18

So it's interesting that you call the South, because yes, that's the South, but somehow we always think that the South of France is like to lose or knees.

Augustin : 8:26

Yeah, a lot of people would see. I think traditionally a lot of people think of the South like the South is knees can must say. But that's a very different mentality on the French side. Yes, if you're from the Southeast than the Southwest, i always prefer the Southwest. The Southwest is the ocean. You have the waves, more of a surfer vibe than the Southeast. That's very much more chic. It's different vibes. So I really much like the Southwest where I went back to work And then I really got into culinary school and really liked what I was doing with my hands and working with the team Restaurants. It's such a great carrier that's not viewed as a carrier Not I mean the US, but back in Europe. It's a real carrier. It's like you can do 40 years as hotel manager and restaurants and nobody would judge you for that.

Augustin : 9:12

Yes, Out here it's a bit different.

Daniela: 9:14

I wanted to ask you that because, like you, i also went to hotel school in Switzerland, when I was working in hotels there and I loved the whole world. And then we came to Vancouver, canada, and it was a shock. It was not the same, not at all. When you go to Europe and people are waiters, they speak seven languages and you can see that in Europe is completely different than here.

Augustin : 9:38

Yeah, and I don't know why here is not. I mean, here it's because people who work in a restaurant mostly at least when you're younger, as students then it's something that I don't know for everybody. I don't want to talk for everybody, but from what I see is people who don't have the opportunity to do something else, that they need a side job, so they work in a restaurant. In France you have like this real hierarchy of waiters chef de roue, then head waiter And then if you want to be a concierge.

Augustin : 10:06

then you have the goal of to get the gold key on your jacket, which are like le clé-d'or. You have this whole environment that in Europe I would say that you don't have it here in the US. But I didn't know about that. I really wanted that. I wanted to make it a carrier. I was like I want to do this. I know I can see the world walking in restaurants. My parents were like that's cool, But you need to have a degree in that. So they put me back in school. close to Bordeaux, i did an MBA.

Daniela: 10:33

Oh really, yeah, They wanted you to study more. So an MBA on what?

Augustin : 10:37

I did hospitality management, so hotel and restaurants management.

Daniela: 10:41

Oh, wow, okay, Okay. And then you got a job.

Augustin : 10:44

Well, during that MBA. The first year of the MBA was six months in France. Six months you had to go somewhere, not in France, for an internship. I was in China for eight months working for Sofitel. It's a five star hotel brand. There's one in the city here in New York, and I was there in Nanjing, between Beijing and Shanghai 12 years ago. Nanjing was very industrial, only mostly Chinese people. There was not many Europeans. I always remember taking the subway there and I was the only guy above 6 feet And it was very different. That was a shock. You can't say it was a shock. To go from Nile to the south, that was one thing, but going from Nile and France to China in the middle of nowhere, that was different.

Daniela: 11:32

But I loved it. I can imagine Did you pick the city or you were just sent there.

Augustin : 11:37

We had to find our own internship. that was a struggle. I think I sent like 700 resumes in every hotels in South East Asia and China. You find what you can find. Yeah, I had friends who went to Brussels, Amsterdam, Phuket. I had friends everywhere in the world, then Australia, That was good.

Daniela: 11:55

So you wanted to go to China, i wanted to go where most of the people won't go.

Augustin : 12:01

I always have this desire of difference, so most of the people won't go Like I want to know where I don't know anyone. That's usually the goal. I don't want to go and speak French because I find it boring, even though now it will be different, but back then I wanted to be different. I don't want to go to Phuket because everybody wants to go to Thailand. I don't want to go to Mexico because it's spring break and there's going to be way too many Europe. I was like Australia and New Zealand is cool, but everybody speaks English. It's 18 hours flight. I think China is different from everything we know, like the way people are in China and our Chinese people are raised and everything.

Daniela: 12:36

How was the hotel experience there?

Augustin : 12:39

The work was interesting because the brand didn't own the wall, so it was a Chinese company that owned the hotel, but it was managed by the French companies. It was very weird. So you had this double management, but that's for the work itself. It was your house, by an accommodation provided by the hotel. So everybody lived in that towers of apartments where Chinese employees would be eight people per room or Western employees were two people per room Discrimination at the highest level of anything.

Augustin : 13:09

My whole point me going there was to be in a different area, but just arriving was already different, because I was white and I was raised French, so my room was already very different from the rooms my co-workers had. They had two and two in each side of the room, bank beds and one shower for the eight of them. And I had my own apartment, dasha, with another person, but we all had our own bathroom and own bedroom. Wow, and these people were never. they were going home maybe once in the eight months for Chinese New Year, but we would take the bus from our apartment, everybody's apartment, would take the bus to the hotel.

Augustin : 13:49

When your shift is done you could take the bus back to your apartment. You eat there because there is a canteen. Once you sleep and you start over, then you take the bus back to your job. That's all you do. You walk, you walk and you sleep when you have time, and I was pulling like 12, 14 hours a day. That's how I realized how lucky I was, and my first realization of it is like we're not both the same, but I'm already very lucky. I have a lot at home that these people don't have, and even though I came here to find something different, i love it, but I don't know if I could do what they do, like they do have much of a choice. They had to make money, send 80% of the money they were making back to their parents at home and then do that for the next 15 years.

Daniela: 14:29

Wow, you were working 12 hours a day and you had days off.

Augustin : 14:33

I think it was one day off per week. From what I can remember. It's not much, but the job itself was not very complicated. I was supposed to train the Chinese employees. The French art of view for the French hotel And it was pretty In the restaurant In the yeah, there was two restaurants and one bar in the hotel and room service All the food and beverage department.

Daniela: 14:54

When you were off, you had the opportunity to go around and explore.

Augustin : 14:58

Yeah, nanjing is actually a super cool city. It was very green, there was parks, the city itself. In China they call it small. Now I'm in New York. I think it's medium. Back then I thought it was enormous. 12 years ago it was 17 or 18 million inhabitants. It's a big city. Yes, for anyone in the world it's a big city. For Chinese in China it's a medium city. But yeah, i went to see a friend in Beijing. My mom and my other sister came and we went to Shanghai for three days So I saw a little bit of China and not just walk and the bus and the apartment. It was great. I would love to go back to China. I think it's so different from everything we know. The food is delicious, the people are fairly nice and the language is interesting. I think eight months was a good time.

Daniela: 15:43

Do we speak in English at the hotel or French?

Augustin : 15:46

English, mostly No French or barely any French. Everything you don't see as a guest when you go to the hotel is everything that's happening behind the scene. So the basement with the staff locker room where it would change people would shower, it was a disaster. It was rough down there And it's China, so people were smoking in the corridors in the basement, all towers hanging on the walls in front of the shower. That's a pocket-chief size that everybody would shower, dry themselves, put back the towel on the wall And I don't know. But this place it was rough.

Daniela: 16:20

This was for what Was the shower? because you do have a room.

Augustin : 16:24

Well, yeah, but the rooms where we had to take the bus or walk 45 minutes to go back to our apartments. So you know, the cook, the chefs, the people working maintenance, they like to take a shower before they go back to their apartment. Oh, i see, i see.

Daniela: 16:37

Oh, wow, wow, That's rough, oh yeah.

Augustin : 16:40

It was for them, it was rough Me. I was very lucky because I was treated very nicely. I learned mostly about everything. There's both hotels in there. It was amazing.

Daniela: 16:48

Yeah, sounds really interesting. You said that China and everybody smokes, but in France also people smoke.

Augustin : 16:54

I was born in 1992. The law of smoking inside? I don't remember it, but in China I took the train for eight hours. Everybody was smoking inside the train. Oh, i see, you know, it's like Europe in 1950s you smoke everywhere. There's no smoking inside, nobody cares, in the clubs, people who were smoking back in time. But at the same time it's like a parallel planet.

Daniela: 17:17

Yeah, so you were eight months in China and then.

Augustin : 17:20

Then I went back home for the second year of the MBA. We spent one year in class. It's a small village school. It's an amazing school. I think it's one of the top five in France for hospital management. It depends on the program. I think it changed, but it's in a very small village so you live very close. There is maybe 115 habitants, apart from the school. It's in the middle of the countryside, in Dordogne, which is like two hours from Bordeaux. It's in the middle of the Truffaut countryside, nice, so like neighbors who pick up Truffaut and bring them home to the school, i was the president of the student union there, so it was a lot of fun partying. And then we had to do another internship.

Augustin : 18:00

I wanted to go back to Asia, but I didn't want to go back to China. I've done eight months, so we're good. So I wanted to go back to South East Asia and I got Cambodia. Well, i found a job in Cambodia working for Belmond. Belmond is the same brand that does the Orient Express train. You know there's a very luxurious train that goes from depends on the season, but Venice to St Petersburg or Venice to Paris.

Augustin : 18:23

So these same people they own hotels.

Augustin : 18:26

So I work for one of the faster hotels in Sium-Reyap. Sium-reyap is where all the old temples in Cambodia, So on Kaua, that's where I went. So I spent six months there working for them And I thought it was going to be like China, but it's not because a lot of French people are in what they call Indochina, because you know, Cambodia, Thailand, Vietnam all of these were Indochina under the French colonies were a thing. So lots of French people. So I worked there for six months, seven months, Lots of partying, way too much partying.

Augustin : 18:56

Actually, I was sharing my apartment provided by the hotel. I was sharing my apartment with a guy from Switzerland and a woman from Australia, Sarah, And one night Sarah was like oh, you got to come out with my friend And I met this lady going out one night at Deborah I came very much in front of. I mean, now it's going to be seven years and we're married seven years. That's keeping a big part of the story. So we made Cambodia. I was partying a lot, almost lost my job there because I was partying way too much.

Augustin : 19:26

Until I met Deborah, i would kind of calm me down into the partying. Before I left Cambodia to go back to France, i met a French person that was hiring more of a full-time position. So I signed a job agreement with him that after my MBA, in six months I was hired back in Cambodia. So I finished my internship in Cambodia knowing that six months after, with my MBA in the pocket, i would be able to come back in Cambodia and work. And that's what happened.

Augustin : 19:55

Cambodia is an amazing country. Amazing like very nice people, kingdom of wonder. It's a rough country If you're not familiar with it. I'm saying that because the people in Cambodia they're mostly young or very old, so like there's a jump in generation, because the generation from 45 to 70 years old they were mostly killed or there was a civil war in Cambodia, so the people now are very young or reaching that my age, so there was not many. The generation of my parents is not very there in Cambodia. It's older than my parents or me, or young, but amazing people, very nice Kind of old school way of working. The men like to give directions to women.

Augustin : 20:36

A great country, very cheap back then Dirt roads everywhere, had a motorbike. That's all I needed. Beer was like $2. A pack of cigarettes was 50 cents And that was life. That's all I needed to do, and that's all I did for six months, and how old were you? I was 21.

Daniela: 20:54

21 with an MBA.

Augustin : 20:56

Well, no, I was not graduated yet. So that was the second year of my MBA. I graduated at 22,. Got married at 23.

Daniela: 21:03

So you met Deborah.

Augustin : 21:04

I met Deborah in Cambodia. She grew up in New York. She was taking a break from work. She left work when they were giving packages to people to leave. She was teaching English to village kids in the countryside in Cambodia And she was volunteering And she loved it. It was great. We met at a good time where there? was a lot of backpackers. We had a lot of friends doing different stuff And it was a time before Cambodia became too much of a backpacker kind of route style, Very relaxed.

Daniela: 21:32

So how many years ago? Because this is probably have changed now.

Augustin : 21:35

This is almost nine years ago. Yeah, it changed. We don't have. I know. Maybe two people that I knew back then are still there. Everybody left. I think it's very different now. A lot of Chinese people made investments, so the roads are being paved. Everybody has a car. Back when we were there, it was all took, took, all took, took, Or you had your own motorbike or bike, that's it. That was barely any cause, so it was great. Well, i spent six months there. She spent about five months. Then I went back to France to finish my MBA. She came to visit in Bordeaux and I proposed at 22, 20, somewhere around there.

Daniela: 22:13

Wow, pretty young.

Augustin : 22:16

Pretty young. I was, and I'm still, very much like this Don't think too much. Well, no, it's changing, but don't think too much. Just if you think it's a good decision, just do it. So we got on gauge. I went to New York to meet our family after that And then we went back to Cambodia because I had my job offer Come back to Cambodia and live two years in Cambodia And I was working for that French person Oh, it's pretty good. I was responsible of restaurants and bars.

Daniela: 22:38

You said nine years ago that you went the first time, but then you were there for two years, so you saw a development on these changes that you mentioned.

Augustin : 22:47

Yeah, very developed. Lots of changes, lots of like, a lot more foreigners from other countries. Before the first time there was a lot of Australian people in Europe And by the time we left it was a lot of rich Chinese people, rich Thai people, two or three hours flight for them, so it's the backyard. The same way in France, when you go on vacation so much cheap you go to Greece or Italy or Spain. Well, that, or like Mexico for the US, that's what Cambodia and Thailand are for Chinese people with money.

Augustin : 23:17

The difference between 12 years ago in China and nine years ago in Cambodia is like during these three years Chinese people in China as a country got richer and got more inclined to go into other countries. So, and that's why I kind of shifted into what I, what I thought I was good at in the hotel and making people enjoy their stay, to something that become very much like factory wise, where I was not feeling it much anymore. So I was raised and I was educated and hospitated to serve people in a certain way in the I don't want to sound stereotyped, but in the French way of wine and food and coffee after you dinner, and that in Cambodia. In the two and a half years we were there, it really changed into something that was more manufactured and not so much about the experience.

Daniela: 24:03

Is this because the hotel was maybe not a five star? I mean, what's 5 stars?

Augustin : 24:07

It was SLH, small luxury hotels, i mean Cambodia is not very expensive in general. Like a 5 star night in Toronto or a 5 star night in New York City is going to cost you between 800 to 1500 dollars The night, where in Cambodia depends on the room and everything, but within 3 to 500 you can have the best day ever, nice, i have to go there then.

Augustin : 24:28

Yes, so that was that. So we decided to leave Cambodia, my wife from New York. So 2 years in Cambodia for her was a lot Cambodia it's still. It was not the capital, so it was kind of a village way of living. And after 2 years she wanted to go back to the US. I did not. Well, we got married in between. I got married in Thailand. Then, after we got married, i was not ready to move to the US. Never had the wish, you know, i was in my South East Asia kind of brain, so I was not ready to move to the US. But she was ready to move to a city. So we moved to Hong Kong And I did the opening of a French restaurant in front of the race course. Hong Kong is now.

Augustin : 25:09

I live in New York. I know what a crazy city is, but Hong Kong is New York City on steroids. It's non-stop, 24x7, more money, more people, more craziness, more different backgrounds of left and right. If you have enough money, it's amazing. If you dare to walk and make a living, it's very hard, so expensive. And I was walking like crazy hours. I was feeling like the tiredness of starting work at 16, 17 years old To now being tired of walking in hotels and restaurants. So we stayed only 6 months in Hong Kong. Then she wanted to go back home and I was like, okay, we did my suggestion for 6 months.

Augustin : 25:46

Maybe we can go now. So we moved to the US 6 years ago. All of this experience I took it as the best thing that can happen to you is if you don't have any expectations. When I moved to China, i had no expectations whatsoever And I didn't want to set my mind thinking, okay, maybe this is gonna happen or maybe the people are gonna be like this. That's not a good way for me to approach it. It's don't.

Augustin : 26:09

If you don't have any expectation about whatsoever, everything that's gonna happen to you. There is no bad way that it's gonna be turned into. It's just an experience And that's how I took it. I took it China, cambodia, hong Kong and now the US. Anything that happens, don't have the expectation and everything. Then it's not gonna be enjoyable. Nothing is gonna come as a surprise. So if you come in and being like I'm moving to the US but I have no idea what to expect, nor do I want to expect anything, then everything that's gonna come in the weeks, month or anything is gonna be a good surprise And that's how I approach it. And now it's been 6 years. We bought a house in the suburban New York City 2 years ago. I owned and managed my own company for the last 3 years. I left the hotels and restaurants 7 years ago. I still have no expectation whatsoever. I just try to make my own routes in my own terms, with my own background, and that's going well.

Daniela: 27:01

Okay, i agree with you. It's very good about managing your expectations and not having too many expectations, but you really love the hotel industry.

Augustin : 27:09

I loved it and I'm glad I did it, but I think it's good to do different things.

Daniela: 27:13

When you came to New York, you thought that you were not gonna work in hotels anymore.

Augustin : 27:18

Oh well, it was a bit complicated because I did have a visa to start with, but when I first came in, i worked for a catering company that did big events in the city, so I was still kind of in restaurants. I was a staffing manager, so I was trying to find people to work big events. I did that for 2 years And everything I learned in restaurants or in hotels can be applied to everything. Yes, like that's what's amazing. You work in it, so you know, but people would don't know is like when you pick up a phone as a sales agent or customer representative there's nothing that's going to teach you in class how to deal with a customer on the phone, But when people deal with other clients in restaurants or hotels, that's life.

Augustin : 27:57

Listen, When someone is angry at you because they found a rare plate, there's no book that tells you how to react. There's some indication that I'm sorry this happened. Let me send it back to the kitchen and you don't have to pay for your plate. This experience of living through a complicated situation in hotels, restaurants because we're touching to food and where people sleep, That's what you like needs that people like a lot and fairly, because that's needed. So when you touch to this kind of stuff, people are much more intense in their way to go about things. Only jobs where you are confronted to this situation are going to teach you about every other possible situation you can encounter.

Augustin : 28:33

I still love hospitality. I'm not closing the door. There is a restaurant in my village that I'm like if one day that goes for sale, maybe, Maybe I get back into it and I love cooking And that taught me an amazing thing. But I'm not very in a hurry to go back to it. But I'm 30 years old and I did a lot. But I was also like I pushed it. I pushed a luck and I did like six years, seven years in hospitality. I'm not forgetting it because I wouldn't be what I'm at without it, And I always tell to my clients. Now, when I work in technology, I'm like I'm not just a nerd And everything I do apply to my work right now. Everything that's good about me is things that I learned in two others, So I do apply these skills.

Daniela: 29:14

The MBA helped you a lot more. Did you learn way more from that?

Augustin : 29:19

I mean it was a great opportunity for the place I went to. I think in the US they're very focused on the degree you get. I don't think it's the same in France. I think I've got more opportunities when I first arrived in the US because I had an MBA. I didn't learn how to be in life with an MBA. I learned how to be in life with the professional situations I was faced with. Yes, yes, and the place I went to. But the MBA didn't teach me life itself. It taught me how to go about certain things. It didn't revolutionize my whole work.

Daniela: 29:48

Okay. So you came to the US and you couldn't work because you didn't have the papers. but then you started to think okay, maybe I don't want to be doing hotels, what else can I do? So how did you decided to switch?

Augustin : 30:02

Well, after a year and a half working for that person, it was very different from my experience in Asia and I was not a manager And I realized people would not say it as a carrier. That's the professional side of it.

Augustin : 30:14

The personal side of it is I was married for two years and my wife was getting tired of me working nights and weekends. That's the truth. It's a tough life. People who work and still work all of their life, weekends and nights they have my eternal respect. It's a tough life. It's hard, it's a hard job. So I started to go about finding a company that would pair what I learned into hospitality into something that I could do more, into an office environment. So I got into a company that was delivering That's like an application that's delivering meals to offices. I worked for these people for two years. I got promoted after eight months to a GM, so I was overseeing all the customer service for the clients on the East Coast. That was my transition into something that is kind of related to hospitality, because it's related to food and food delivery, but it's not working nights, weekends, 15 hours a day on your feet all the time.

Daniela: 31:11

How do you get to be working in technology?

Augustin : 31:15

Objectively. When you resume a restaurant, hotel, hotel management training, fnb hotels, restaurant, nobody in Chase Bank or Goldman Sachs is going to hire you, right or bad. So I had to make a switch of saying I can be hired but still do something that I learned in hospitality. So when I was first hired by this company, I was hired to oversee coordinators that would go on site And after eight months of doing this I had the opportunity to move within that same company as GM Customer Success Manager.

Daniela: 31:50

So I wouldn't barely go on site anymore.

Augustin : 31:53

But what made me stand out is that I was good on site and good with clients.

Daniela: 31:57

I understand. How do you get to be in the IT job that you're doing at this time?

Augustin : 32:03

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Back then, the startup I was working for was delivering meals to corporate offices And when the pandemic hit, all the corporate offices closed in the city. I was doing a lot of Excel and everything for my job. I decided to get more into that and do a certification for three months with like an online bootcamp, and then I started as a side job. So I started to put myself on the upwork.

Augustin : 32:28

It's a freelancer app, so you put what you can do when people send projects your way And you can apply. It's like Uber, but for freelancing, someone will request something. You say you can do it. You propose and then hire you to do it, and I did that and that took off. So I was making a lot more than my full-time job. So I quit my full-time job and I started doing only freelancing. I started my own company. What do you do? I do data analytics So I help people convert what they do manually on a daily basis to something that's more automatic. So let's say, you use a spreadsheet to track all your expenses as a business And then you have another spreadsheet that says we get this client on this day, this is what this client is bringing me as far as money.

Augustin : 33:19

I put all of this software and spreadsheet that you have into one place, so you just have to look at one place. The data comes in and it tells you directly how much you made yesterday, what's your expenses for that day, what's your revenue per client, what's your number of clients active.

Daniela: 33:39

That's one example.

Augustin : 33:41

But in general, i do automation of collecting your data to making it visible in a way that you're not aware of, because what you do on a daily basis you, for example, let's say, your podcast you have 10,000 people listen to your podcast, but you don't know where they come from. So you want to know where the click coming from. You want to get more of the click from Topify or Apple Music or everything like this, and all of this is collecting. Already You have this information. Whether you know it or not is different. What I'm here is to help you access this information and see it in a way that's understandable.

Daniela: 34:20

Also very different. You have clients, but you're working mostly in the computers.

Augustin : 34:24

No contact with humans, just my two dogs in the office, just a lot of Zoom calls, which I don't mind doing. Soon I'm going to hire people and build the team again and get this kind of team spirit going again.

Daniela: 34:36

Okay, so you see yourself moving from the hotel hospitality to the technology.

Augustin : 34:42

Oh definitely. At least until I get to like a status quo, and if I'm bored again, then maybe I go back to restaurants.

Daniela: 34:49

It is a matter of personality. You will say that you're a person who doesn't have much expectations, but has always a desire to experience more, and that's what moves you to be adventurous, but adventurous with no expectations and no fear that, however, things are going to work out.

Augustin : 35:09

That's a very good description. I like that. I think there's a lot of truth of what you said. There's one thing No expectation doesn't mean no fear. You always are anxious It's a very Western world anxious of what if and what that. but you can have the anxiety coming in.

Augustin : 35:27

You can have it after a certain time, like the stress can lead to anxiety. Being stressed is good. I mean working in restaurants and hotels you're stressed all the time. You've got to go fast and things got to go fast. But the anxiety will come. You just have to make sure that it's handled in a proper way. Another thing I have no fear. I don't. I ended up in some places, sometimes in Hong Kong or Cambodia. I was like I have no idea what's going to happen, if it's good or bad, but I went through it. I'm not sure I would go back to it because I'm maybe afraid of these places, but it's like I had the fear. I just didn't know I would have the fears. It's like this distance. I put myself into something that happens. I just have to concentrate on me and make the best of what I can bring to the table. So things happen in a certain way I may know of, and if they don't, but then it was not my fault I put myself to that purpose of saying okay, i put myself for success.

Daniela: 36:27

If success comes it's great.

Augustin : 36:29

If something else comes, then it's just an experience. Just keep What's in the past is done. We're not getting time back. I wish, but we're not getting time back, so it's just moving on. Time is precious.

Daniela: 36:40

Do. Your personality irritates anybody at all.

Augustin : 36:43

Oh yeah, Some people don't understand why everything has to be always like, and also there are some people dealing with their own challenges. So some people with the love and anxiety, for example, will tell me you can't tell me that this is not working Like. I have anxiety. This is the way I am, And I understand that I'm not saying every second of my life. I'm thinking, oh yes, let's go, Let's do it, It's going to be great. No, no, it's not. It's not always like this. For most of them, I try to approach myself. Whether I succeed or not. It's different, But some people are just like. This is what they like. They don't like the unknown, which is fair. We can all have the same life, But I think sometimes the unknown can be the other side of the fence of your backyard. It doesn't have to be China or Cambodia.

Daniela: 37:30

Anything that you think that now that you have this experience, you will do differently.

Augustin : 37:35

Moving forward patience. Patience is a good thing. I don't want to say age, but it's kind of true. I think, patience, you learn with age Back then I was like I want this, i get it, i do it, i don't. And now I'm more like, okay, I want it, but let's make sure the plan is pretty well done before we go into it. So there's no too bad surprises. But you learn these things like time and things will come. Good things will come.

Daniela: 38:02

Yes, you're right Patience. Wonderful learning lesson, Ogie. Thank you so much for sharing your story. You brought me back to my hotel times. You make me excited because I really missed that world, but it's true that you work really hard.

Augustin : 38:18

It's a good life.

Daniela: 38:19

Definitely. I'm sure that people will learn and relate, which is very important as well.

Augustin : 38:24

Oh yeah, that's the best way they can relate to someone on the podcast or, anyway, can make good links. Yes, thank you, Daniela, appreciate your time. Thank you.

Daniela: 38:32

This was a fun story. I enjoyed very much meeting Augie, his sense of adventure. It was a light story, yet lessons learned. Also, i appreciate that he was able to pronounce my name so beautifully, because I know you may wonder, but Daniela seems to be a very difficult name to pronounce for many cultures. Please take five seconds right now and think of somebody in your life that may enjoy what you just heard, or someone that has a story to be shared and preserved. When you think of that person, shoot them a text with the link of this podcast. This would allow the ordinary magic to go further. Join me next time for another story conversation. Thank you for listening. Hasta pronto.