Dee Azlan

Your Brand Alchemist

Believe | Build | Become

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HELLLOOO! ! I’m Dee Azlan

How did I get here? This is my journey,

Throughout my travels, trials, and tribulations, I have exemplified the concept that one can turn their lives around by simply finding their passion and activating it to achieve the heights of their potential.

You must be wondering how I can help you reach your goals. If you can envision it, then I am confident enough to say that I can make that vision become a reality. How do I know? Because I did it for myself and many others. Here is the story of my journey.

At the age eleven, my parents decided to move to Austin, Texas. For a young girl, the social and cultural transition to a whole different culture and country was too much to handle, especially with high school right around the corner. With no help or support from anyone around me, I learned to cope with the change, the challenges, and high school’s chaotic environment to be comfortable in the most uncomfortable situations.

But that is not what kept me going. My love for art, fashion and makeup from a very young age had me hell-bent on becoming a successful makeup artist. For me, makeup wasn’t just a cosmetic product. It was an entire world of textures, colors, smells, and combinations that help women and men feel empowered in their skin. The concept of how makeup can elevate a person’s confidence fascinated me.
I would drop anything to play around with makeup and create looks for myself, my friends, and family members throughout my childhood and teenage years at school. Even though it got me in trouble multiple times, I never stopped because it was my passion!

Like most parents, especially immigrant parents, my folks wanted me to attend college and pursue a degree in something fancy in hopes of getting a job that pays well or with a great title. Contrarily, I followed my intuition and pursued my career in creative arts and business. Through hardwork and dedication, I landed my business management position with MAC and Nordstrom after I consistently proved that I had the keen ability to build teams, drive business, and close deals.

As time went by, my career flourished. But even though I had a knack for implementing effective and sustainable methods for improving systems at work, my inability to synchronize my work vacation days to match my husband’s school vacation calendar disturbed me. I felt powerless when it came to my work schedule. Not having any control of my work-life balance, I wondered, “What am I trying to achieve and at what cost?” My family meant everything to me so I needed to take the steps to change. I needed a whole new environment, a whole new challenge to explore. It was time to go traveling.

When my husband and I got married at the ages of twenty-two and nineteen! We made a promise and set a goal for ourselves, what we would explore and travel together before we decided to have kids. I also made a goal for myself to create a business where I would have the freedom to be with my family and do what I love to do and would get paid for it. That goal seemed far-fetched at that time, but I knew that it was worth the adventure.

One day, on a whim, my husband and I took a risk and resettled halfway around the world to live in the Middle East to start a new chapter in our lives. For the first four months in Abu Dhabi, I couldn’t find a job that gave me the flexibility and the freedom that I was looking for to allow us to travel – same problem as before. That is when I decided to make the entrepreneurial jump to start my very own photography and makeup studio in Abu Dhabi. I mean, I had the talent, the opportunity, and the experience I needed to fulfill my life goal – become my own boss and do what I have always been passionate about. So, I started my own makeup and photography studio!

Within the first few months – it was a hit! As I made connections and lived by the mantras of “Giving it your best in everything that you do” and “Bloom where you are planted”, my concerted efforts landed me with an opportunity to be the Abu Dhabi royal family’s personal makeup artist and photographer. On occasions, I got to work with celebrities, magazines, films and production companies and businesses that need their brand’s contents.

When I got pregnant with my first baby I knew I had to slow down my very fast paced lifestyle which gave me the opportunity to start my next significant accomplishment – my very own makeup line. Sounded huge and intimidating at the time, but deep down, I knew that I could do it, and that is all I needed to make my way forward.

In the retail world, I became very acquainted with client perspectives and experiences of various makeup brands. In doing so, I was able to connect and really get to know what everyday women were looking for in their makeup choices. Additionally, from my experience in media, and working with models, and actors and actresses, I was able to come up with products that satisfied women’s desires of wanting to feel comfortable while wearing makeup and look good at the same time. In today’s digitally-driven world, women feel like they constantly have to look picture perfect all the time for social media – so I catered to these needs with my makeup line. I wanted not only to provide products that didn’t exist at that time but also wanted to give a chance to women of different colors, ages, shapes, and cultures to be represented in beauty campaigns.

My journey of launching my makeup line from scratch led me to a fully sold-out collection within six months, selling close to $800,000. The entire process allowed me to build and develop new entrepreneurial skills like supply chain management, product manufacturing, and branding on top of my previous marketing, product development, and business development experience.

The entire experience led me to explore another chapter of my life – from hosting makeup workshops to empower women by them being confident with their beauty and teaching other makeup artists on how to start their own business. I had invitations to speak at multiple entrepreneur conferences. I had the same questions asked over and over again at different events, in the same lane as “ How did you do it” and “ How do you know what you want to do?”
When my husband and I repatriated to the USA, I already gave birth to my daughter and soon after was pregnant with a baby boy. So once I delved into the similar space of being able to really take time for myself and my family, I was able to really reflect and ask myself, “How did I do it” and “How did I know what I wanted to do at a really young age?”

During that process of self-exploration, I volunteered my time to teach and coach other aspiring entrepreneurs on how to start their business. From there I was able to meet other business coaches and gained opportunities to launch several start-up brands.

After working very closely with a lot of business owners, I realized that there were a couple of main ingredients that were missing in running a business that they skipped when they first launched their businesses. Eureka! The DNA Method was born! All the conversations, case studies and a lot of hours researching inspired me to turn my business knowledge into easy steps that entrepreneurs can follow without feeling overwhelmed. On top of laying out those key steps that all businesses would need, I wanted to make this program different from the millions of other classes and coaching programs that myself and others went through. I noticed that not many other programs really talked about what type of business entrepreneurs should start – this is a huge oversight. Also, since entrepreneurs themselves will most likely run this business, how can they know their internal values to be able to really leverage what they are good at! As most entrepreneurs know, if you ever started a business, you will be wearing multiple hats! But for you to really bring your business to the next level, you really have to know what is your power, so you can make power moves!

Until recently, I’ve been only coaching entrepreneurs through recommendations. However, with the challenges of COVID-19, millions of individuals are struggling or you might be few of the lucky ones who are still able to keep their job. Due to what is happening, I have been really pushing myself to speed up the public launch of The DNA Method! I truly feel blessed to be able to do what I love to do, so I decided to help others experience this blessing through providing them with the guidance they need to brand themselves and their business. My goal is to serve YOU and show you that anything is possible. If you can dream it, we can build it.

Fun Facts

Born in Kuala Lumpur and raised in Austin, US, at the age of 11

A rebel at heart and standing up for myself for what I want and believe it at a young age, got me in a lot of challenges including getting into fist-fights, kicked out of school and even made failing grades which resulted in me being kicked out of my home in my junior year in high school. Just shows how anyone can overcome struggles, turn your pain into power and achieve their wildest dream

I got married at the age of 19, to a friend who was only 22 – right out of college and had an intimate wedding so we can purchase our first home together.

Inspired by the book Alchemist and Carl Jung Studies, we moved to Abu Dhabi and lived there for seven years to pursue our dream of traveling the world to explore different cultures and learn more about psychology and human behavior.

I'm a self-proclaimed introvert who found the idea of public speaking is horrifying. But since i'm talking about what i'm so passionate about, I tend to forget that I am talking in huge crowds on stage. Never would I have thought that I would be traveling and speaking on stages.

I am, for sure, a modern-world-individual with a passion for technology as well. When I'm seeking a thrill, I'm picking up programming and coding which in this journey, I'm discovering more about myself by learning how to communicate to a computer and problem solving.

Presently conquering COVID in Arlington with my husband and our three beautiful children and having the time of my life! We enjoy cooking as a family and exploring new recipes and creating our own family recipes together.

Other than my businesses and family, I am working on building a special project called The Code dedicated for other women entrepreneurs to dive deeper in to discover their core of power.

Let's be friends!

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