From Chemical Engineering and Ragging to Kendal’s Head of Operations: Suzana John's Journey!

Suzana John’s journey from chemical engineering to Kendal’s Head of Operations: hands-on pivots, AI-assisted marketing, startup grit, and burnout recovery.

In the latest episode of The Dollar Diaries, Suzana John, Head of Operations at Kendal, shares an honest, unvarnished account of her non-linear career: from studying chemical engineering in India to co-founding startups, leading marketing and operations, building AI-driven products, and confronting burnout. Her story is less about tidy career ladders and more about curiosity, experimentation, resilience, and developing practical skills that matter in today’s creator- and AI-driven economy. This post distills the episode into the core lessons, frameworks, and actionable takeaways for anyone considering a career pivot, building a startup, or scaling their personal brand.

The Power of a Nontraditional Path

Suzana’s background is a reminder that your degree does not determine your destiny. She chose chemical engineering because of family and cultural expectations—and quickly learned that passion and fit matter more than credentials. A few key points from her experience:

• Hands-on experience beat formal coursework: Suzana launched an immersive reading app with co-founders during university and learned marketing by doing—running growth experiments, building communities, and leading a small team of interns. This real-world exposure accelerated her learning far faster than classroom time.

• Startup roles force you to become a “Swiss army knife”: Early-stage companies require wearing many hats—product, marketing, sales, operations, and people management. Suzana emphasises that startup work builds soft skills, adaptability, and the confidence to make decisions with limited information.

• Traditional institutions can both help and hinder: Suzana reflects on how some university environments in India promoted a “slave mentality” and discouraged entrepreneurial thinking. Still, the adversity she faced—ragging, language barriers, and feeling like an outsider—also contributed to resilience.

Lesson: If you’re considering a pivot, prioritize projects and experiments you can start today. You’ll learn more from shipping work and iterating than from waiting for permission or the “perfect” credential.

Practical Skills That Pay Off

A recurring theme in the episode is Suzana’s emphasis on learning tools and systems that deliver impact quickly. She dismisses degrees as a universal necessity and instead highlights practical learning modalities:

• Design and content tools: Learning Photoshop, Illustrator, and eventually embracing Canva gave Suzana the ability to produce creative work without delaying on hiring designers. Her take: Canva is “king” because it gets work done quickly and is increasingly AI-assisted.

• Analytics and performance marketing: Her engineering background gave her analytical instincts that translate directly into performance marketing—understanding CAC (customer acquisition cost), LTV (lifetime value), and optimizing paid channels. Today’s marketing combines creativity with rigorous number-crunching.

• AI as an assistant: Suzana is pragmatic about AI. It’s not replacing marketers yet, but it can dramatically speed tasks—ideation, copy drafts, and even producing LinkedIn posts via a custom-trained GPT. She treats AI as an augmentation tool that reduces a multi-hour task to a fraction of the time.

Lesson: Invest in tools that let you execute—design suites, analytics, and lightweight AI workflows. These produce immediate, measurable returns.

Building and Running Startups: People, Sales, and Co-founders

Suzana’s startup experience—starting a product in college, co-founding Volume, then joining and pivoting Crowdpad into Kendal—offers practical counsel for entrepreneurs:

• Co-founder selection matters more than anything else: When everything is uncertain, the people you build with become your safety net. Suzana calls picking co-founders the most important decision because they share the burden on bad days and complement strengths.

• Sales is the foundational skill for founders: Regardless of your role, being able to sell—your idea, your product, and yourself—is indispensable. Suzana repeatedly emphasises that entrepreneurs must be comfortable talking to people and persuading them.

• Build systems that save time: At Kendal, the team built an AI-powered WhatsApp CRM that qualifies leads, asks appropriate questions, and routes only vetted leads to agents—saving hours each day. Operational leverage through automation is a direct multiplier for scarce startup resources.

Lesson: Prioritize finding co-founders you can trust, learn to sell, and automate repeatable operational tasks early to preserve founder bandwidth.

Personal Branding and the Creator Economy

A large portion of the conversation focuses on content, creator economies, and personal brands. Suzana breaks down how she approaches building an authentic presence:

• Start small and iterate: Instead of trying to pick the perfect niche from day one, post simple story-based content about daily wins, frustrations, and routines. Use engagement as feedback to refine your focus.

• Authenticity beats polished veneers: Suzana found that candid rants, productivity lists, and small daily rituals (like posting a to-do list) resonated. The pattern: useful authenticity often outperforms contrived niched content.

• Tools to scale content: She uses a triad—Canva for visuals, ChatGPT/custom GPTs for voice and drafting, and Instagram as the primary platform for reach. This stack demonstrates how creators can produce consistent, on-brand content faster.

Lesson: To build a personal brand, begin with low-stakes daily posts, measure what resonates, and iterate. Use AI and simple design tools to scale production.

Managing Burnout, Boundaries, and Time

The episode is candid about the emotional costs of startup life. Suzana shares a raw account of burnout—feeling “fogged up,” snapping at loved ones, and needing to step away. Her recovery tactics are practical and replicable:

• Force a real break: Suzana left the country, closed her laptop, and disconnected. That physical and psychological distance helped reset perspective.

• Time is the ultimate currency: Beyond money, Suzana prioritizes freedom over time and health. She frames long-term success as having the agency to decide how to spend your days.

• Habit systems and time-blocking: Daily to-do lists, habit stacking (e.g., incremental gym routines), and calendar-based time blocking helped her regain control and maintain momentum.

Lesson: Build guardrails to prevent burnout—scheduled breaks, time-blocking, and routines that reward completion (crossing items off lists). Protect your mental and physical health as diligently as you grow your business.

The Role of Technical Skills

Suzana candidly states a regret: not learning to code earlier. Her reasoning is pragmatic:

• Technical fluency accelerates product decisions: Knowing how to read and write code makes it easier to scope features, hire developers, and manufacture early prototypes.

• Learn enough to be autonomous: You don’t need to be a full-time engineer, but understanding foundational concepts (Python, basic scripting, and how APIs work) reduces friction when building tech products.

• Start small, be consistent: Suzana recommends one hour a day and points to Python as an accessible first language—concrete advice for busy founders and operators.

Lesson: Even a modest technical literacy gives disproportionate leverage for operators who run tech-enabled businesses.

Practical Advice and Quick Wins

Throughout the episode, Suzana offers small, actionable habits anyone can adopt:

• Don’t over-invest in paid courses; learn by doing. There’s abundant free content on YouTube and practical, on-the-job learning is invaluable.

• Use accountability partners for consistency—friends, followers, or peers who check in and create social pressure to follow through.

• Document small wins publicly to build momentum and a following: posting to-do lists or daily micro-reflections can become the nucleus of a personal brand.

• Test niche assumptions by posting stories and measuring engagement, then double down on formats that work.

• If you’re hiring, prioritize communication and cultural fit over credentials. How someone talks and thinks often predicts their performance in a startup more than where they went to school.

Lesson: Small, repeatable habits and social accountability are low-friction levers with outsized returns.

A Playbook for Modern Career Builders

Suzana John’s episode is a practical playbook for anyone navigating the modern world of careers and startups. Key takeaways:

• Pivot confidently by launching small, real projects instead of waiting for permission.

• Combine creativity with analytics—tools like Canva, ChatGPT, and a strong grasp of performance metrics create a powerful toolkit.

• Prioritize co-founder fit, sales skills, and operational automation for startup success.

• Protect your time and health; build routines and take real breaks when needed.

• Invest in basic technical literacy to reduce dependency and accelerate product work.

If you’re pondering a pivot, building a startup, or trying to scale your personal brand, Suzana’s approach is refreshingly pragmatic: start doing, measure ruthlessly, automate what you can, and keep your time and health non-negotiable. The future she envisions—an intersection of creator economy and AI—feels both inevitable and full of opportunity. Her final counsel is simple: be curious, be persistent, and build systems that let you control your time.

Actionable next steps based on Suzana’s advice:

• Pick one tool to learn this month (Canva, basic Google Analytics, or Python basics).

• Post one authentic story or to-do list daily for two weeks and measure engagement.

• Schedule a three-day offline break in the next 3 months, no email, no work apps.

• If you’re a founder, write down your co-founder selection criteria and evaluate your team against it.

Suzana’s trajectory: from chemical engineering student to Head of Operations at Kendal—shows that unconventional decisions, consistent habits, and a willingness to learn by doing are the most reliable engines for long-term success.