written by Palak Patel
Shama Kabani is the award winning CEO of Marketing Zen Group. Her extensive success with Marketing Zen has deemed her to be the face of today’s digital world. She has been crowned as the “master millennial of the universe” by fastcompany.com. She holds her weight under this title as she has also been selected as the most prestigious under 30 for Inc. magazine. As a result to her success as an entrepreneur and educator to others on business and technology, Fuzion Magazine has selected her as one of our most inspirational women in business. Shama reflects on making the top 20, “ It feels very good as well as humbling to have that sort of role on your list.” She laughs as she adds “ I really appreciate it since my dog doesn’t think that I’m a big deal at all, I’m just a treat factory for him!”
Shama is the best selling author of the third edition of “ The Zen of Social Media Marketing” which has been ranked as one of the top 5 social media books and is offered worldwide to numerous universities as a course textbook. “ It definitely feels like you’ve came a long way from not being able to convince the big companies of your vision to now seeing so many universities globally offering this as a textbook.” Her company is set aside from the rest because it is truly “organic.” Marketing Zen is a full service web marketing/PR firm whose goal is to help companies reach their audiences online effectively. “ Everything we do is inbound and by client referral. We promote in saying that we walk the talk, we know what works and I believe in being organic. There is nothing wrong with being aggressive but that is not my business philosophy.” She adds, “ With Marketing Zen, it’s about people who genuinely want to work with us. We only take on projects where we feel we can really help and make a difference.”
Shama believes that a key factor in having a thriving business is understanding your audience and giving them what they want. She also believes in the concept of “ the right time, right place.” “An idea before it’s time in the wrong place can be totally shoved down. Some of the businesses we see today had they not come about when all the factors were rightly poised, they wouldn’t be as successful.” She shares her most important accomplishment; “ My most important accomplishment is being able to have a platform where I’m able to inspire young people. I think when you’re in school you don’t realize how big the world is or what you can accomplish. I like to show young people if I can do it, you can do it.” Shama gives credit to Oprah as one of her role models as well as Ghandi. On her spare time she enjoys spending time with her family, going to the movies with her husband and reading books. She has shared that if she wasn’t a marketing CEO, she would most likely become a history professor. Shama has plans of expanding into the television world, as she has already have her own series, Shama TV and has made appearances on Fox Business. Stay tuned for what she has in store next!
