Jon Flynn works in AI sales at Google, focusing on media, entertainment, and gaming.Flynn studied journalism and started his career in filmmaking before skilling up in engineering.He followed his passions and said his ability to communicate was the skill that got him the farthest.This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with 49-year-old Jon Flynn, a Google AI sales leader. His identity and employment have been verified by Business Insider. This story has been edited for length and clarity.I've always been a hobbyist in technology, but I'm an accidental technologist.I started my career making music videos and commercials in southern Africa.Now, I help lead AI sales at Google in the telecom, media, entertainment, and gaming sectors within the North American market.That means I'm responsible for a team of sellers and technical and product counterparts that are responsible for bringing the best of Google AI products into the arms of our customers, whether that is an eight-point or multifaceted solution that will be intricate to their business or a film-making process, or to a game customer service engine.If you don't know exactly where you want to end up, don't sweat it. Some of the best journeys start without a map. Here's how I ended up where I am now.I followed my passionsInitially I thought I was going to be a fireman. Then, I wanted to be a doctor. Then, I was planning to be a meteorologist, and eventually I went to school to be a photo journalist. Then, I wanted to get into the movie industry so I went to film school and did a master's degree in cinematography on the back of my journalism degree.The road less traveled, the risky bet, that's where the magic happens."Fortune favors the bold" is a timeless saying for a reason. The people who change the game aren't the ones who wait for certainty. They're the ones who take the leap and figure it out on the way down.The way that I was very fortunate in my career is that I've been able to zigzag to areas of passion.Technology was always a passion of mine, so I always did it in my spare time. I had a computer in the family living room ever since I was single-digits years old. I learned to code and spoke in code poorly, but I can code.I was always the one who would fix the neighbor's computer, I was always the one who would build your friend's computer back in the day when we still built them.That never left me, and when I had downtime after working on a film project, I completed an engineering certification.So I got accredited as an engineer with a Microsoft engineering certification and I got this job opportunity at a financial services company as an engineer.It was really one of those crossroads. I was like, this seems like very much a 9-to-5 corporate kind of offer over here. Sure, it's stable and it's cool, but aren't I supposed to be this cool freewheeling make-music-videos, live-in-your-mom's-basement-until-you're-50 kind of guy?That didn't seem too great either, though. So, I figured I would do both.It opened my eyes to another thing I'm passionate about. From there I went into product and then from product into business and then into leadership. I ended up in an AI leadership role in the sports, media, and entertainmentsector at Microsoft and then in the last year, moved to Google.I never went back holistically into being a content creator. I've created podcasts and I do those kinds of things,I find myself just as fortunate though because I get to work in the industry I'm super passionate about, in terms of getting to influence the way in which content is created and consumed.A technology degree isn't everythingThere's one constant thread between everything that I've done in my entire career from school, to being an engineer, to being a sales leader: conversation.Getting a Microsoft data engineer certification is very functional, but with the advancements in AI, I think that the largest programming language in the world is English, or whatever your native tongue is.The ability to translate technical complex things into conversational subject matters and hold someone's attention when we are surrounded by competing data points is a massively important skill. That has never ever left me on any step of the way that I've gone. Traditionally, technology people speak to technology people, which is such a miss because you become very myopic in your views.When I'm looking for someone who's going to represent the products that we are building and the products that we want to get out into the hands of our customers, I'm not looking for someone who is a PhD.I'm looking for people who are articulate. I'm looking for people who are curious. I'm looking for people who are looking at technology the way our customers are looking at their technology.A lot of people that I hire come from non-technical roles. They come from business-focused roles, project management-focused roles, and, quite frankly, some of them come from marketing and sales roles.If you can articulate what we have in a product and how it's going to help you do your job easier, that's a super valuable skill and none of that has any bearing on a technology-focused degree.