I Had To Out-Run the Failure Monster with Shanee Ben-Zur (CMO)

Nobody deserves to be yelled at by their boss… ever.

That’s the situation Shanee Ben-Zur found herself in early in her career - and (after regrouping and then giving her notice immediately afterwards) it triggered a new career in tech-marketing. She’s gone to be become CMO at Earnest, with stops at Crunchbase, Dropbox, Salesforce, and NVIDIA.

In addition to the horrible yelling situation, Shanee talked about how her fear of failure caused her to micromanage her team, and shared the feedback that’s helped her grow into her own as a leader.

In this episode, you’ll hear about:

1. The story behind when Shanee was screamed at by her boss in the middle of NYC - and what she did next.

2. Realizing her team was hesitant to provide honest feedback - which led her to seek coaching

3. The team turnover after a successful funding round and the beginning of the pandemic

Things to listen for:

[04:34] Being a child of immigrants influenced her into the wrong field

[09:01] Shanee’s boss screamed at her in the middle of NYC

[12:03] Playstation changed the trajectory of Shanee’s career

[18:31] What caused Shanee’s work tears

[25:31] Creating a culture of fear

[30:57] The goal is to hire people who are smarter than you

[34:44] Therapy changed Shanee’s life

[38:25] Benefit from learning how to communicate wins strategically

Resources:

- Connect with Shanee on LinkedIn

- Connect with Andrew on LinkedIn or Twitter

- Learn more about Navattic

- Learn more about Appcues