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… Born in Goa, India, Shama Hyder and her family migrated to the US at nine years old, enduring the hardships most immigrants experience, sharing a small one bedroom apartment with her parents and sister, adjusting to US culture and paving her way to be one of the leading names in the field of marketing with a long list of accomplishments and accolades. Shama praises her entrepreneurial parents for learning from their ambitious efforts for change. Her father at one point being a taxi driver, saving his income to open his first convenience store, with her mother having her own businesses.
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Her parents’ entrepreneurial drive became a trade Shama started to hate. She recalls memories in which her family would eat out, and she would hear her parents discuss their assumptions of the restaurant’s gross income, its net profit. In her early years, she became entrepreneurial without even knowing it, still resenting the idea of it. At 13, she started selling through [Alumpia 00:00:59], allowing her to keep a commission for her sales, and when she became greater she also started selling candy and other things in schools, and which she got in trouble for, and handmade her own magazines.
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As she grew up, she went to college and graduated with a master’s degree in organizational communication and technology at the University of Texas at Austin. Writing her thesis on Twitter at a time when Twitter only had 2,000 users. Being one of the first Twitter users in the world, Shama still has just her first name as a Twitter handle. At only 22 she offered companies help in the digital marketing space, helping them understand social media and with $1,500 in her bank account and a pure, burning passion, she passed one million dollars in revenue in her first three years. Her rise became something to envy.
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Since then her companies and media has commanded a long and powerful list of clients. She was placed on the Forbes 30 Under 30 list, named the zen master of marketing by Entrepreneur Magazine, the Millennial master of the universe by FastCompany.com. Businessweek and Inc. Magazine all recognized her as the top 30 entrepreneurs in the field of marketing. And she has been LinkedIn’s top 10 voices in marketing for years in a row. She’s also the only woman delegate invited by the US State Department to mentor tech entrepreneurs in the Middle East, and Asia as part of the White House initiative.
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Currently, I have the great pleasure to work with Shama, to pick her brain and study her. And I’ve understood Shama understands the success blueprint or foundation really well. Nearly all successful people know they either have to know the foundations of business, or have other people that understand it well. Shama understands the foundation, and uses this well. Here’s how it works. Shama uses and sees her degree in communication and technology as an aid to her business, and another tool to her weapon list. She has used her communication skills to understand people better, to close better, and lead her team better. She understands the set skills that are important, and how to get better at them and use them effectively.
Shama Hyder:
You want to be an entrepreneur? If you want to be an entrepreneur, it’s very important to understand how business models work, what your market wants. A basic understanding of marketing doesn’t mean that you have to be amazing at all these things, but understanding how entrepreneurship works, customer service works, how you make customers feel special, how you communicate with your team. This is the baseline. And so it’s important, in this general way, to be good at certain things.
Shama Hyder:
For example, in school I always felt like, I’m not a math person, I’m not great with numbers. But running my own business for the past 12 years or so, I’ve had to figure out, I need to get to a baseline where I do feel good with math, I do feel good with numbers. Now I’m not someone you want solving your algebra equation for you, but I have a good enough sense of numbers to be able to run my company, to be able to look at a spreadsheet, to take a look at what my accountant puts in front of me. I don’t think the world belongs to generalists or specialists. I think the world belongs to cross pollinators, people who can take two sometimes very different areas, and combine them to do amazing work. And this is where I think you see some people who exceed and excel.
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This isn’t what the majority of people do, but a key point that all successful people understand. Know all the basics, understand all the basics, and use them to your advantage. On top of this, she is a machine, in every sense of the word. She’s always adapting, always learning, like an ever improving AI. I’ve known her to be a woman of her word, and stick through a decision, focused, self-aware, with high emotional intelligence. The genius of Shama Hyder is her understanding of the blueprint of success, and applying this in teaching multiple industries, which allows her to replicate this for many of her clients, cutting through the noise and marketing this clear method well. Finding the Zen in marketing, creating momentum from a moment, recognizing the potential of a platform, even like Twitter at the time, before it was seen by the majority. This is skill Shama has zoned in on, and a skill I look to improve. If you liked this video, consider giving this video a like and looking at our other videos. You can subscribe to keep updated with new videos we post.
