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EP 11: John Stech: How he prepared for his first overseas job with Mercedes-Benz and Jeep in Egypt
37 Plays30 days ago
On this week’s Auto Ethnographer episode, host John Stech tells his own story. He had spent his life preparing for a dream of working and living abroad. Suddenly the opportunity sprung up and he had only three months to prepare for a transfer with family to Egypt. Here he would be Managing Director of DaimlerChrysler Egypt (now separated into Mercedes-Benz Egypt and Stellantis Egypt).
John Stech was born Jörn Stech in Germany. His family emigrated to the United States in the 1970s but he spent many summers living with his grandparents in Germany, thereby retaining his connection to his birth country.
Since an early age he perceived the cultural differences between himself and his American friends. This led to a lifelong curiosity about international cultures as well as a deep desire to see the world, both on visits and through an international career.
He had spent thirteen years in his automotive career, most of those working with international markets but from a base in North America. Then, in 2006 his first international assignment would appear on the horizon. He accepted the offer to become the Managing Director of DaimlerChrysler Egypt in Cairo.
This opportunity threw many challenges at John. Although he had some familiarity with the Middle East – his parents had lived in Saudi Arabia – he knew that Egypt was very specific. He felt compelled to understand the market and the culture even before leaving DaimlerChrysler’s US headquarters in Auburn Hills, Michigan outside of Detroit.
The Managing Director role was also a large step in terms of responsibility. John had been leading a 35-person department in charge of volume planning, inventory management, and order intake for Chrysler's 120 non-NAFTA markets. Now he would have nearly 100 Egyptian employees and be responsible for all aspects of the local business for Mercedes-Benz and Jeep, Chrysler, and Dodge brands. This included sales, marketing, dealer networks, customer service and even two CKD assembly plants, one for Mercedes-Benz and one for Jeep respectively.
Now he tells the story how he shaped his life, his education and career in the direction of an international career. He identifies the steps he took to move to a new country and a new job, taking along a family with young children.
For those of you considering moving abroad, this episode shares insights on how to prepare, both before departing the home country and after arrival in the host country.
To learn more about The Auto Ethnographer please visit the homepage at https://www.auto-ethnographer.com
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Transcript
Introduction and Global Experiences
00:00:00
Speaker
I had about three months to prepare before I would depart for Cairo and prepare I did. i think probably it's my my inner German that made me dive into you know planning and making preparations.
00:00:15
Speaker
Hello and welcome to the Auto Ethnographer. John Steck, your host on this journey. We travel the globe to bring you stories about culture and the global automotive industry. Fasten your seatbelt and let's get started.
00:00:28
Speaker
Hello and welcome to this week's episode of The Autoethnographer. We're going to do something a little bit different today. I don't have a guest. I want to talk a little bit about my own experiences because I have lived on five different continents and worked in multiple different countries throughout my career and frankly moved around many, many times, probably too many times.
00:00:51
Speaker
ah The relocation companies certainly prized my business. I want to talk about my preparations, my process on how I took a family abroad the first time.
00:01:04
Speaker
and There's always a first time for everything.
Pursuit of International Career
00:01:06
Speaker
And even though I had spent my life in internationally um growing up between the United States and Germany, I had never worked abroad until 2006.
00:01:17
Speaker
two thousand and six Lots and lots of business trips, lots of traveling abroad, lots of holidays, but I had never actually worked you know embedded into another culture until 2006, which was about 13 years into my career.
00:01:34
Speaker
Well, what I want to do today is talk a little bit about the process of how I prepared myself, how I got a family ready to move internationally together with me.
00:01:45
Speaker
a spouse, as well as two relatively young children at that point in time. I always knew that my destiny was to work internationally. It was a passion ever since I was young.
00:01:56
Speaker
so I was born in Germany, emigrated to the United States, and I knew I knew i was different somehow from my friends. ah We had different relationships. holidays, we had different you know cultural traits, um just just different things, different rules, different behaviors at home versus what I had yeah observed with my American friends and in their homes.
00:02:20
Speaker
So I oriented myself from the very beginning to look at an international career. and And things developed that way.
Automotive Industry Beginnings
00:02:30
Speaker
For over a decade, I worked in the auto industry with international companies from a base in the United States.
00:02:37
Speaker
I'd emigrated to the United States from Germany in the 1970s and then spent pretty much every summer with my grandparents in Germany, in the city of Bremen, up until the 1980s.
00:02:48
Speaker
you know My passion was ignited from the beginning. I really wanted to see the world. Later in my studies, which took place at Bucknell University in the United States, I studied both chemistry and German in the hopes that that you know two subjects could prepare me for a career overseas in the chemical industry.
00:03:11
Speaker
I even applied for several jobs with with chemical companies overseas. ah Later, during my MBA studies, a few years later, after working in the chemical field for a couple of years, I studied at the University of New Hampshire.
00:03:25
Speaker
At that time, they did not have quite the prestigious business school that they have today. It wasn't quite so built out as as they have today. So they didn't have a specific international program, but I made it international by always selecting topics um to write about in my essays or in my assignments that somehow had an international flavor.
00:03:50
Speaker
I really wanted to prepare myself for that, let's call it inevitability, of living abroad. Out of business school, I landed a job with one of the largest automotive suppliers at that time.
00:04:02
Speaker
The company was Textron Automotive. It no longer exists. ah They sold their assets off to a number of different companies, I think such as IAC. They had a focus on interior trim products and they had operations on several continents, um including Europe in in the Netherlands.
Leadership in Global Markets
00:04:19
Speaker
And they served customers from North America, from Asia and from Europe. So this this was very interesting for me. And I sought out assignments within that company that could expose me more to some of their international customers.
00:04:33
Speaker
There was one very interesting project in 1994. I think that was the year that Volkswagen first showed the Concept One.
00:04:44
Speaker
The Concept One, of course, would later become the new Beetle. It had rave reviews. Everybody was excited around the world about seeing a new Beetle coming back you know into production, someplace on the planet. it was It was absolutely, I would say almost a mania about that product.
00:05:02
Speaker
And I was very excited that that the company I was working for was asked to quote on the full interior of of the new Beetle, the Concept One. This was a huge springboard in my career.
00:05:15
Speaker
I was the only German speaker in the company at that time And I received on my desk a huge package with all of the quote requirements and all of the technical requirements for the full interior trim of the new Beetle.
00:05:31
Speaker
All of it, every last word in German. So I had to number one, translate it. And then I had to sit down with the engineering team. with the cost estimating team, and of course with the the overall business management team um at the company to to work through that quotation and to you know ultimately put in a proposal to Volkswagen.
00:05:52
Speaker
I even had the opportunity to travel with one of the senior vice presidents, um and I was quite a junior person at the time, you know to go to Wolfsburg and to present our proposal to Volkswagen at their purchasing headquarters.
00:06:09
Speaker
this This was quite something, especially because, as I said, I was quite junior at the time, and I really leveraged my my language resources and my you know international thinking process to to help me ah moving along.
00:06:23
Speaker
Well, then I also had opportunities to work with Mercedes-Benz. in the United States, um as well in in the factory at Tuscaloosa to launch the M class, but also with Daimler Chrysler on the Chrysler side, where I worked in the area that was responsible for all of the countries outside of the trading block, which was at that time called NAFTA, and which was the North American trade trading block.
00:06:49
Speaker
At that time, you know those two jobs with Mercedes and with Chrysler, Daimler Chrysler, were in the United States, but the focus was almost entirely outside of the country. i had lots of bountiful travel to to many locations in Western Europe, even Eastern Europe, whether I had to go to the corporate headquarters of Stuttgart, to motor shows shows in Frankfurt or Paris or you know other locations on the planet, um or even, which was very fun, to Jeep camps, you know to have
00:07:24
Speaker
managing director meetings with Daimler Chrysler in places like Spain and France and and Austria and Croatia. it was It was an adventure.
00:07:35
Speaker
I loved all of this, yeah sitting in a room with 50 different people from 50 different countries and and talking about their business and how it worked in that country.
00:07:47
Speaker
But I had not yet had the opportunity to work abroad myself. And then suddenly there was the first opportunity to live and to work abroad.
00:07:58
Speaker
I would take the position of the managing director of Daimler Chrysler Egypt. It was interesting because i I had a discussion actually at a camp Jeep in Croatia about the topic. And that's where that idea came up.
00:08:13
Speaker
um and And essentially the offer came up for me to take on that position over in in the Middle East, and or I should say North Africa. This was something new to me on many different
Preparing for Egypt
00:08:24
Speaker
levels.
00:08:24
Speaker
First of all, living in the Middle East. I had grown up between the United States and Germany. So Europe in general, especially Germany was very familiar to me, but the Middle East was a different culture.
00:08:38
Speaker
Also different to me was being in the top leadership position, you know, the position where everybody looks at you for the answers or for the decisions. I was going to have 100 employees across both the Mercedes-Benz as well as the various chryslerbrands Chrysler brands, Chrysler, Jeep, Dodge, and Ram in in Egypt.
00:08:58
Speaker
um I would also have oversight and board seats on two different manufacturing facilities, which were joint ventures. One was for Mercedes and one was for Jeep.
00:09:10
Speaker
And then to make this all very exciting, on top of this, I would be taking along a family, a spouse and two kids, a seven-year-old daughter at the time and a four-year-old son.
00:09:25
Speaker
I had about three months to prepare before I would depart for Cairo and prepare I did. i think probably it's my my inner German that made me dive into you know planning and making preparations.
00:09:40
Speaker
And I had to learn about how to live and how to work in Egypt. My parents had previously lived in Saudi Arabia, and I learned a lot about the Middle East from visiting them there.
00:09:51
Speaker
But there are really vast differences between the Saudis and the Egyptians. and And I had to try to parse those and and understand, you know, what are the differences and how can I work effectively in Egypt?
00:10:06
Speaker
And even though I'd had a 35 person department back in the Daimler Chrysler, ah Chrysler world headquarters, managing the company's inventory production planning, sales planning and sales reporting.
00:10:21
Speaker
across all countries outside of NAFTA. Now, this was a far cry from running a full operation, an operation where I would have sales, marketing, dealer network, customer service, um as as well as government relations.
00:10:37
Speaker
And on top of that, as I mentioned before, I would have two factories where I would be sitting on the board seats and having you know having interaction with the factory and talking with them about production issues and production scheduling and so forth.
Cultural Transition and Community Integration
00:10:51
Speaker
I really needed to dive in and I needed to prepare myself to lead a company that would have nearly 100 employees, which were primarily Egyptians with a couple of German expats.
00:11:04
Speaker
you know My predecessor, the previous managing director before me, was an American who had come from the Chrysler side of the business. And apparently, he focused very heavily on the Chrysler side. So there were some, let's say some frictions between the two sides of the house in the operation at Egypt. And and because of my German background, my having worked for Mercedes-Benz for about seven years beforehand, and then um you know having worked for Chrysler at the world headquarters for four years,
00:11:36
Speaker
it seemed like I was the perfect person to come in there and to try to ah smooth over some of the ruffled feathers that had come into place over the previous couple of years.
00:11:47
Speaker
So how do i prepare for going abroad? I don't like to go anywhere and be unprepared, um but especially for something so big and so important and such a major step in in my life and in my career.
00:12:03
Speaker
I did as as everybody does nowadays, I immediately went online. um But I have to admit the resources in 2006 were pretty vastly different than what you can find online today.
00:12:14
Speaker
There were some articles and and there were blogs, especially expat blogs, which but they covered a lot of the aspects of of living internationally. but With a family, especially as an expat, ah where to shop, schools, preschools, um grocery shopping, touristic activities, information about visas, all sorts of things, things like this, things things that are important.
00:12:41
Speaker
um But also, as as one did back in 2006, I bought books. And of course, those are available now online in ah in a digital format, a little bit less so.
00:12:52
Speaker
at that point in time. But I bought books about the Egyptian culture. I bought books about the Arab culture and on living in in North Africa, living in the Middle East, um hoping hoping that from all of this this this reading that I would do, I could understand how how do people live there? How do people work there? How do they interact with each other?
00:13:12
Speaker
and and And how could I fit in and adapt myself? I also wanted to you know prepare myself to take on the position as a managing director. Like I said, it was the first time that I would be in the top job, the job where I could say the buck stops here.
00:13:29
Speaker
I had to take the the final decisions for for pretty big decisions, in fact. I wanted to be prepared there. So I bought a book on the first 100 days in the top job.
00:13:43
Speaker
The title was something like that. um And I also bought a German book because I would be working in a, of course, in a German company or half German company. It was, I think, called Neum Chefsesse.
00:13:55
Speaker
This was a ah book translated in English to New in the Boss's Seat. It was a recommendation from ah a previous boss that I had personally had in my Tuscaloosa, Alabama days at Mercedes-Benz.
00:14:12
Speaker
i I devoured the books. I took lots of notes. And then i as I do, I created an extensive checklist in Excel that would serve as my roadmap to let me hit the ground running as quickly as possible and and not to leave anything out, not to forget anything, and and to be as thorough as possible in working my way into this new position.
00:14:37
Speaker
In the meantime, my spouse also prepared. She ordered books on raising expat children, how to take children abroad, and also on a spouse following abroad.
00:14:50
Speaker
and this This automatically meant for her having to curtail any kind of professional or career activity that that she had. what What would she be doing when living abroad?
00:15:02
Speaker
In September of 2006, we traveled to Egypt for the first time, one of those look-see type visits. We went and talked to the school. which was the Cairo American College.
00:15:16
Speaker
And we also toured numerous apartments. We we looked at, you know, what are the living conditions like in the city of Cairo, specifically in the district called Mahdi.
00:15:28
Speaker
um That was also where the American school happened to be located. And as as luck would have it, we finally, after touring many apartments, and this was a change as well because we had been living in a house outside of Detroit.
00:15:43
Speaker
Now we were looking at living in an apartment, which was something completely new to us
Navigating Corporate Challenges
00:15:48
Speaker
and something completely new to the to the children. But as luck would have it, the apartment we found ultimately was directly across from the Cairo American College, something that the kids could easily walk every morning to get to school.
00:16:02
Speaker
So in October 2006, I jetted off. My family would be following me about two months later. you know And I landed in Cairo two months before them with the purpose of focusing 100% on the job.
00:16:18
Speaker
on the job Now, I didn't want to be distracted by anything. I lived in a hotel room. um I didn't do anything outside of no being in the office, going to visit the factories, meeting all of my different partners in the business, including the dealers during that time, um and then taking lots and lots of materials home every night and and reading through that so that I could absorb the business you know through and through in a very short period of time.
00:16:49
Speaker
I wanted to be able to then ah have focus on the on my family when they arrived, you know not having to be devoured by the job on their arrival, but but being able to take time, and take weekends, take you know even afternoons to go to the school with with the kids if they had some sort of parent-teacher type of activity.
00:17:12
Speaker
You know I also wanted to have time available to me to look for, you know, everything and get ready um ah get get ready for them. You know, looking for supermarkets, looking for um stores, looking for parks, looking for activities that would be appropriate for the for the kids.
00:17:34
Speaker
And then of course, and the work side, you know, I have to admit, I will never forget the October day in 2006 when I entered the offices of Daimler Chrysler Egypt.
00:17:46
Speaker
I was greeted warmly by the team as I made a round in the office, you shaking hands with with everybody and and and being greeted. it was a really wonderful, warm greeting.
00:17:57
Speaker
And that same day, i would have a town hall, right? Everybody was piled into a large conference room in the yeah the highrise that was high-rise office, which was perched on top of a Sofitel hotel, directly looking down on the Nile River.
00:18:15
Speaker
and And frankly, if you looked off to the west, you could even see the Great Pyramids on the other side of the Nile River. I would be lying if I said that I wasn't a little bit intimidated.
00:18:27
Speaker
I had read about the hierarchy in Egyptian companies. I i read about how they look up at at the boss, at the leader. And I knew here were 100 people, almost 100 people looking at me and and expecting me to say wise things immediately on day one.
00:18:49
Speaker
um and And I think they were as nervous about me, the new boss, as as I was about them. Of course, I could not show that. that That was something that I had to you know had had to put aside. after After this, I dove in.
00:19:07
Speaker
I meticulously, again, my my German heritage, went through my checklist, meeting with every department from both sides of the company, Mercedes-Benz and Chrysler.
00:19:19
Speaker
I learned about the local market. We talked about the sales, about marketing. We talked about customer service. We talked about the dealer network.
00:19:30
Speaker
Some of the interesting laws and characteristics of Egyptian customers and the automotive market in general. you know Even tariffs were a big topic in Egypt at that time.
00:19:43
Speaker
ah For Egypt had a pretty protected market and was charging a very high tariff on vehicle imports. And as a result of that, quite a few of the manufacturers had built CKD or complete knockdown kit factories where they, again, merely reassemble a kit that was shipped from the home factory you know locally.
00:20:08
Speaker
And ah that that was one reason, of course, why Mercedes-Benz and why Jeep had the same type of factory. They were building vehicles from kits locally in Cairo.
00:20:21
Speaker
My checklist wasn't perfect. Of course not. there were There were points that I missed. that were very specific to Egypt. um And there were some things which were superfluous, which i which I had put onto my list, things which weren't really so important.
00:20:37
Speaker
And I had them on there. But the the whole concept of having a roadmap, you know something that kind of that took me through my first 100 days, um that That was important. And I felt really after the first two months, even before my family arrived, I felt like I had a pretty good grasp on the market and and a good feeling for what I had to do and and how I could solve some of the issues that Daimler Chrysler Egypt had to face at that time, whether on the Mercedes-Benz side or on the Chrysler and Jeep side.
00:21:14
Speaker
Of course, on the side, there were also many personal things that had to be done. I already alluded to that. Bank accounts had to be set up, right? I had to make sure that I had a dollar bank account as well as a Egyptian pound bank account so that I could be paid locally and and then exchange my money and and save it in either either currency.
00:21:36
Speaker
The apartment that we had selected was a little bit of a risk. It was still under construction when we selected it across from the American school. And they were really just doing the finishing work. But but still, you you don't know whether they actually finish it or not in in time for us to move in at the very you know very end of December of two thousand six So, you know, it's interesting because it was a new construction.
00:22:06
Speaker
ah Everything could be chosen. you know Even the children were able to choose the color of their rooms. my My daughter chose blue and my son chose green. So they had the light blue and light green rooms painted exactly actually the color that they wanted because they sent me a picture of the color that they liked and and they got exactly what they want. So this was a small touch that made them feel a little bit more at home when they arrived in the country yeah just weeks later.
00:22:39
Speaker
And then the final arrangements with the school had to be made. you know I had to matriculate the kids, um go through the whole process of of filling in ah documents, getting them signed up um and getting them you know oriented into the into the school.
00:22:54
Speaker
And one one challenge was that in the very beginning, they didn't have a preschool class that was oriented you know for my son's age. So he actually had to look at going to a different facility first,
00:23:08
Speaker
and then transferring over into the larger school, which he then did ah for the the kindergarten, where he would then be under the same roof on the same property as my as my daughter.
00:23:20
Speaker
The day-to-day things, you know where where do you buy your groceries? Yes, there was a ah big a big supermarket located on the edge of town. It was a large French um a supermarket brand, and it was not so convenient to get there.
00:23:38
Speaker
you know and And Cairo, if you've never seen it, is not the easiest place to drive. In 2006, there were zero signs in English. And frankly, there wasn't even any good digital mapping.
00:23:52
Speaker
for um you know for GPS. It simply didn't really exist at that point in time. So we had to find something a little bit more local and and local we found. A wonderful little grocery store that local. was 100% Egyptian family.
00:24:09
Speaker
But they oriented themselves a little bit towards towards expats and foreigners. And you know they they made you really feel at home, including, for example, you know taking pictures of of the people who shopped there and then posting the pictures of the families on the wall, the kids especially.
00:24:26
Speaker
and My kids were very platinum blonde at a young age, and they ended up being little rock stars when we walked around in Cairo ah because everybody, every teenager wanted to get their picture taken with with two kids that had such impossibly blonde hair.
00:24:42
Speaker
Overall, I felt ready when they arrived in the middle of December. I had even bought a small potted palm tree, which would serve as a Christmas tree just a week later after their arrival for Christmas.
00:24:56
Speaker
Gifts and decorations were bought locally. i had to make the kids feel as much at home as was possible in a new apartment with furniture that was not our own, because of course our shipping container with our furniture was somewhere on the Atlantic Ocean, possibly on the Mediterranean.
00:25:15
Speaker
um But it was on its way, but they had to be at home. They even went swimming on Christmas day. um They, I can tell you Cairo is not that warm at the end of December, but it's certainly warmer than Detroit. And the kids insisted on taking a quick dip in the pool, the building pool outside of the apartment on Christmas Day.
00:25:41
Speaker
Now came the waiting game. you As I mentioned, we arrived with nothing but suitcases. and our personal belongings, our our household essentially was in a container somewhere on a ship on the Atlantic or on the Mediterranean.
00:25:57
Speaker
And weve we followed the MSC lines, the MSC shipping line um website closely, you know looking every day for a change in in the status of the container, seeing when is it going to be delivered?
00:26:11
Speaker
We didn't wanna live with temporary furniture or air mattresses forever. You hear stories about containers that fall overboard during a ah storm. And, you know, we had these hesitations, these thoughts, these fears that perhaps our, you know, belongings, all of all of our furniture and everything else was sitting somewhere on the bottom of the Atlantic following a storm along the way.
00:26:38
Speaker
but But fortunately, this this wasn't the case. We had the Christmas break and then shortly after the school started, um the kids would join their young classmates. they would They would meet new little friends and they made them very quickly.
00:26:53
Speaker
Little kids adapt very, very quickly. even Even if you're shy, um when you're put into a new place, you know you warm up and and other kids welcome you very rapidly, especially frankly in expat communities.
00:27:08
Speaker
ah Because everybody is in a different place. Very few people are at home in in that community, in in the expat community.
Cultural and Personal Growth
00:27:18
Speaker
And it means that almost everybody becomes that much more open and willing and and capable of of making friendships and being open and being flexible ah to to socialize and and to, you know,
00:27:31
Speaker
um to broaden their horizon with with new friends. This was something I think that made the biggest impression on me over time, which was the school and and my children.
00:27:43
Speaker
They had 60 nationalities, something like this, at the American school in Cairo. And you know my kids, they had friends from all over the planet, from from dozens of different nationalities.
00:27:58
Speaker
The kids were from different cultures, they were different religions, they had different skin colors, you they spoke different languages, they had different accents, and my kids loved it.
00:28:08
Speaker
they they They loved being in this environment with with children from all over the all over the planet. In fact, it It even, i think, makes them mature that much faster in a way um because they have this broad worldview and and they see the world from many different perspectives.
00:28:28
Speaker
And when we returned to the United States back in 2014, the teachers in the United States often told their their mother and and i that, wow, you know your your kids are much more mature than a lot of the other kids here locally.
00:28:45
Speaker
why Why is that? right And we we believe it had everything to do with living this international life and having a bit more you a bit more freedom and a bit more independence when they were living abroad.
00:29:00
Speaker
We used our time abroad as well as we possibly could, as as as efficiently and and as adventurously as we could.
00:29:11
Speaker
you know On the weekends, we would go into the city of Cairo. We went to the famed Egyptian Museum. We visited the pyramids. We climbed up into the the largest of the pyramids to the to the very top on the inside, where you had the king's chamber.
00:29:27
Speaker
We went to the Han-ul-Khalili market, which is very famous for bartering and and buying all sorts of really cool Egyptian trinkets. The kids, of course, were allowed to to choose things that they would take home and and and treasure for years to come.
00:29:43
Speaker
We went to the green and verdant Al-Azhar Park. yeah when you When you live in in Cairo, it it really shocks you um if if you've lived in a place that has forests and trees and grass because it's it's gray and and it's tan and it's brown.
00:30:05
Speaker
because you don't have so much vegetation. And going to this park was just a feast for the eyes ah to just take in the green and the palm trees and and the grass and the plants and the flowers just for a couple of hours, having lunch there and looking out at this and and enjoying it.
00:30:24
Speaker
We even went up to the famed city of Alexandria, which was quite an adventure on the Mediterranean Sea, and explored that city. and we even had We even had lunch with one of the dealer partners from the Chrysler side of the business, who took us to quite a famous restaurant in Alexandria.
00:30:45
Speaker
where one of the dishes on the menu was pigeon. And ah all of us in the family tried it. And and actually, the kids even enjoyed eating the pigeon.
00:30:55
Speaker
yeah Even when we told them what it was, and they still seem to enjoy it. We really cherished those times. um I would say among the most fun was that me, as the head of the Jeep brand in Egypt, I was also an honorary member of the Jeep Club Egypt.
00:31:12
Speaker
And this allowed me a chance and and the entire family a chance to drive out in the desert on these monthly trips with the Jeep Club. We would go out sometimes overnight, sometimes just a long day trip.
00:31:26
Speaker
deep out into the Sahara to the south and the west of Cairo. And we would just drive through the desert. Sometimes it was in soft sand. Sometimes it was rocky. you know It was different every single time.
00:31:39
Speaker
But the one thing that was constant was the adventure that I felt, that my family felt, and that the kids had with the other kids, usually from Egyptian families.
00:31:50
Speaker
They couldn't speak the same language. But somehow children always find a way to play, even even if they don't know exactly how to communicate with each other using words.
00:32:02
Speaker
There were certainly challenges on this journey of living and moving to and ultimately out of egypt But you know preparation was really what helped.
00:32:15
Speaker
we We had really prepared ourselves in terms of what to expect from the local culture and what to expect as an expat living you know also in a big city, which was something we had not done before.
00:32:28
Speaker
All of us were new to living in such a large city. And you know reading about it, preparing ourselves, ah this all helped. And I think it's one of the most important things that you can do as you seek to build your international career is is to know what you're getting into.
00:32:48
Speaker
and to understand you know how to adapt to the culture that is welcoming you and that is know taking you in, adopting you for a number of years before you before you move on.
Unexpected Relocation and Future Plans
00:33:04
Speaker
Unfortunately, all good things always have to come to an end. And you soon we would need our preparation skills again. This time was a little bit different. It wasn't around the world.
00:33:15
Speaker
um But during the... Nine-year marriage at Daimler Chrysler. the The company had a fairly rocky marriage through through part of that time.
00:33:26
Speaker
And even though we had planned to stay in Egypt for three years, the stay was cut short. It was cut short to roughly 15 months, which was frankly a little bit of a disappointment. We liked it and we we had wanted to stay.
00:33:40
Speaker
But I had committed to switching over to the Chrysler side of the family after the divorce between the two companies.
00:33:50
Speaker
I had started in this large business on the Mercedes side, spent four years as ah as a loan to Chrysler, but then ultimately decided to stay on the Chrysler side as the next step for my career.
00:34:03
Speaker
One of the reasons for that was that um Mercedes had you know dozens if not hundreds of people that were capable of working internationally and had a more broad worldview, that was something that was lacking almost completely at Chrysler. There were not nearly as many people who were who had that international worldview.
00:34:24
Speaker
and And because Chrysler in some ways had to start over again, separating itself from all of the different Daimler operations worldwide, they they needed exactly that kind of person. And that it was something that I thought I could offer to them.
00:34:38
Speaker
and And therefore, I stayed on the Chrysler side to help them regain their footing after the after the divorce.
00:34:47
Speaker
But decisions like that get reward rewarded very quickly with unexpected things. um As soon as I made the decision to stay with Chrysler, I was offered the opportunity to move to Moscow, Russia, where I would then spend seven years um for Chrysler, five years. And then I switched to another brand in Russia after that.
00:35:11
Speaker
But I think that is a story for another day. So today's episode was a little different. I wanted to share some of my experiences. And this was the first one, the very first one of actually yeah moving abroad, living in a different country and you know moving a family abroad.
00:35:32
Speaker
you Since that time, I've done it several more times. I went and I lived in Moscow, as I just mentioned. Later, I moved to Vietnam and then I moved to Thailand.
00:35:46
Speaker
So all of these were big changes. Each country is different. Each culture is different. but Even Vietnam and Thailand, though they're very close geographically, um they are quite far apart culturally and from a perspective of traditions.
00:36:01
Speaker
Every one of them took preparation. Every one of them took some homework, getting ready from many different aspects, you know from preparing your your banking, preparing you know your housing, transportation, all of these things.
00:36:17
Speaker
you know It goes to show that it's all in the preparation. You need to have enthusiasm, but you also need to do the homework and prepare yourself for this big adventure.
00:36:29
Speaker
Today's episode was really just the story of how I made this first step, this first step of a journey that I had been dreaming of and wishing for for such a long period of time.
00:36:43
Speaker
And I hope that this story lands well with some of you in the audience who perhaps dream of living and working abroad at some point in the future.
00:36:54
Speaker
I hope that some of what I've talked about ah can be helpful in terms of how to prepare yourselves for and one day you know taking that next career step abroad.
00:37:07
Speaker
I am working on some things that I can share in some later episodes and share on the website. Those are still some weeks away, ah but it's specifically about the the preparation for moving abroad and getting yourself you know oriented, ah set up and and acclimated to a new country and a new culture.
00:37:29
Speaker
With that, I'd like to close the episode and thank the listeners for joining in this week. I hope you join me again next week. And in the meantime, keep on driving.
00:37:42
Speaker
Thank you for joining us on today's journey. Please remember to like and subscribe to The Auto Ethnographer and leave us a rating or comment. For more information, visit our website at auto-ethnographer.com.
00:37:54
Speaker
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