Career Management: Focus on your left foot (podcast episode #80)

How I Made it in Marketing

Let me confess something to you right now — I have my share of weaknesses.

I’m sure you’re not shocked to hear that. We all do, right?

But I don’t go ‘all in’ on improving them. Instead, I focus on my strengths. I learned this lesson from John Maxwell long ago.

He said, “We’re taught to be well-rounded and to improve our weaknesses. However, in many arenas of life, we naturally perform poorly. Even with hard work, we will never become better than average in them. The reality is that people don’t pay for average. No one gets excited to dine out at an average restaurant, to spend two hours watching an average movie, or to hire someone with average abilities.”

I’ve internalized that and live that in my career. So I was excited when I saw the podcast guest application from my latest guest, and wanted to talk to this kindred spirit to learn how he has taken this approach in his – quite successful – career.

But with all due respect to Maxwell, I like how my latest guest worded it even better – “focus on your left foot.” To learn the story behind that lesson, along with many more lesson-filled stories, I spoke with Asim Zaheer, Chief Marketing Officer, Nasuni (https://www.nasuni.com/).

Since its founding, Nasuni has raised $169 million, with the latest funding round a $25 million investment in which all previous investors participated, including Goldman Sachs, Telstra Ventures, and Northbridge Venture Partners.

Nasuni is above $100 million in annual recurring revenue and Zaheer manages a marketing budget of approximately 10% of that revenue.

Stories (with lessons) about what he made in marketing

Some lessons from Zaheer that emerged in our discussion:

• Focus on your left foot
• Be an influencer (and I don’t mean Instagram)
• Be like Randy (research and rehearse your presentations)
• Team above self

Related content discussed in this episode

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This podcast is not about marketing – it is about the marketer. It draws its inspiration from the Flint McGlaughlin quote, “The key to transformative marketing is a transformed marketer” from the Become a Marketer-Philosopher: Create and optimize high-converting webpages (https://meclabs.com/course/) free digital marketing course.

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