Today on The Procuretech Podcast, we welcome Sarah Scudder, Chief Marketing Officer of SourceDay. They're a Texas-based supply chain software company. Sarah previously appeared on the show way back in Series 1.

SourceDay's mission is to ensure that manufacturing companies always get their parts on time. I can relate to this mission, having been a direct materials buyer in the automotive industry before the 2008-09 recession.

Sarah begins by talking about their career trajectory, which started with a plan to pursue fashion and eventually produce her own fashion shows. She goes on to describe how a volunteer opportunity in her senior year of college led her to procurement and supply chain. Sarah ended up working as an intern for a local company in California that did sourcing and procurement in marketing.

After some soul-searching, Sarah decided that her personality and strengths were better suited for a smaller business. She then took a job working in a sales and marketing, helping to restructure and pivot the business to become a software driven procurement company.

Part of this role included her taking a challenge to post on LinkedIn every day for 90 days, which resulted in people reaching out to her, rather than her reaching out to them. This led her to pivot her career to focus on her newly found passion for demand generation, pipeline creation and marketing.

This ultimately led to Sarah joining Source Day as the Chief Marketing Officer, where she has been for the past year and eight months. Sarah shares how networking has been essential to her career growth and success, both in sales and marketing. She credits her networking skills for undoubtedly helping her land her current job at Source Day. Her introduction to SourceDay's CEO and co-founder came through her network. Without it, she wouldn't have landed the job.

Sarah is also big on community building and hosts a meetup group twice a month, a podcast, and a series of live-streamed show formats. She leverages her network to get advice, feedback, and to secure speakers for these.

Sarah gives some solid gold advice on how leveraging your network, building a personal brand and being a content creator can lead to a wealth of opportunities which otherwise would not present themselves. I can only concur with this. I highly recommend anyone out there to get started, especially if you're a bit stuck about how to pivot into a different career path.

This episode will equip you with the "how" and the "what". All you then need to consider is the "why" and the "where" you want to go with it!

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