Know what it looks like to “discover” your career? Jobs and career types evolve over time. Raj Kapur, CEO of &Marketing, discovered his current career as a marketing matchmaker after two decades of testing different paths.
Raj got his BS in Biology and MBA in Marketing from Indiana University. He started his post-MBA career at General Electric. Yet, he found another path outside of Corporate America.
He decided to give consulting a try. This opened his eyes to a whole new world of business problem solving. Plus, it showed him he likes sales.
Now, Raj helps connect companies with fractional CMOs. He didn’t magically manifest this career idea one day out of thin air. He gradually found this path while leading his marketing agency through the Covid-19 pandemic.
Listen to the full episode. You’re sure to pick up a nugget or three for your own career adventures.
Don’t have time on your commute to work? Skim the top themes below. Then listen to the full episode on your commute home.
Core Themes
Here are the core themes you should take note of in your own career adventures.
Discovering Your Interests
We aren’t born with a finite set of never changing interests. Sure, we may be pre-disposed to certain spaces. Our interests are dynamic. They ebb and flow with time. At 25 years of age, our interests tend to become more static. Yet, that doesn’t mean they magically become fixed. They can still evolve as we age.
After leaving Corporate America, Raj discovered that he liked consulting and sales. He liked problem solving. He liked helping people discover solutions for problems they faced.
“That was really key for my development primarily because I'd never been a consultant before. I'd always been interested in it. It turned out I really loved doing it. I really enjoyed the work and I was pretty good on the business development side. In the consulting world, if you're good at business development you do pretty well. I really enjoyed that side of it. I didn't know that I had that skill or interest level.”
Zig When Everyone Zags
Would you follow your friend off the cliff? Remember hearing this lesson, or some variation of it, a quadrillion times when you were a kid? I do. Here it comes again. Don’t just follow the career crowd. Follow your unique interests and opportunities, even if it feels lonely.
This doesn’t mean you have to make up an entirely new job. I’ve met people carving out unique experiences in pretty “standard” careers. For example, I’ve met market researchers who’ve embraced the arts and magic to make them better researchers. I’ve met attorney’s who’ve applied patent knowledge to startups.
Regarding his own career, Raj said,
“When the competition is digging, you should zag. Instead of playing defense, I decided to play offense. The positives of that were we came out of the pandemic, a stronger, much better company. The negatives of that was, man, it was really tough to manage a company while you're going through your own stuff in the pandemic, let alone leading a whole company.”
Measure Income in Years
Managing a career is similar to managing a startup, in some ways. You have a hypothesis on what you might like. You test said hypothesis. You persevere if you like what you are doing. You pivot to something different if you don’t fancy the path.
Raj reflected on leaping from corporate to consulting to entrepreneurship. He shared some of the times he felt like he’d stepped in “the muck” and how he reacted. He mentioned how we should measure our income in years. It’s so easy to place too much importance on your current wage. This can limit exploration. If you shift your wage mindset to a longer time horizon, it will open up a world of possible paths you might like to explore.
“There's been multiple times where I'm like, “Why the heck am I doing this? What are we doing at all?” In many cases, it's not money. That's ridiculous. It took me, I don't know how long, but it was years to go back and make as much money as I made as a consultant, as a founder and entrepreneur. That's not measured in months that's measured in years. Did I have any doubts? I was probably around 40 at the time, father of three with a mortgage to pay saying “What the heck am I doing?” Of course I did all the time.”
Personal Advisory Board
Whether governing or advisory, boards are pretty common in the business and not-for-profit realms. They ideally help advise, connect, and guide companies into better decisions. Why shouldn’t we have our own personal advisory board?
Raj is the second person I’ve met in the past six months that has mentioned the concept of a personal advisory board. He’s right. We should have trusted confidants who get us and help push us into new spaces.
“Every professional, irrespective of if you're an entrepreneur, a solopreneur, or work at a big company should have a formal or an informal board of advisors. It's a group of people who know that they're on the hook to give you advice in specific areas. Bounce ideas off of them. It's incredible to me, the number of people I run into that don't have sounding boards for their professional challenges. It could be a career coach. It could be somebody you compensate to go do that. The people who think they can survive entrepreneurship without a career or an executive coach is shocking to me.”
Be a Go Giver
Remember to be helpful. It’s really easier to get lost in our own career needs. Whether you are networking or seeking a job, being helpful for others is a good reminder for all of us.
Raj recommends The Go-Giver to anyone entering sales for the first time. It can go beyond sales roles. We should all consider reading this book and apply it to our work life, whether we’re in sales or not.
“It basically says if you measure your life and its success by the number of people you can help, all of these things are going to work themselves out. If anybody ever calls me and says, “Hey, I'm thinking about going out on my own and I need to sell,” or, “Hey, I'm taking on a sales job for the first time,” that's the first book I recommend to people. It's not a sales book. It basically teaches you how to be super helpful. That's the mentality I advocate for a lot.”
Connecting Past With Present
Oftentimes, our career past is connected to our future. You don’t magically erase or eliminate the interests and strengths you’ve explored in a prior career. I’ve connected my prior life in horticulture to my current roles in marketing.
Raj studied biology in college. Today, he is CEO of a marketing company. You wouldn’t naturally connect biology to marketing. Yet, they are connected. The scientific method is important in both of them.
“It is untrue to say just because I run a marketing company today and I have a science background that I'd never used a science background, like the scientific method. And experimenting in marketing or an entrepreneurship aren't different, right?
You have a problem, you gather data, you develop a hypothesis, you test the hypothesis and you roll, that's not different than an MVP or the lean startup methodology with life and with marketing. And so coming from a foundation where that's where you start, like academically. It's super helpful.”
Listen to the Full Story
Raj is helping to connect companies with marketing executives. This fits his natural interest in problem solving and his discovered interest in sales. Remember, his path didn’t just magically present itself one day. It has taken Raj years of experimentation and hard work to build HIS path.
Enjoy the episode! Thanks for you support!
Paul G. Fisher
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