Career Advice for Ordinary People

In this interview, Joshua Zerkel, head of global engagement marketing at Asana, traces a career that moved through web design, instructional design, productivity consulting, and TV news before landing in tech marketing and community building. He explains how he scaled Evernote's community to 10,000 ambassadors, why building community for Asana's B2B audience meant mapping distinct buyer personas, and how customer feedback gets routed back into the product process. He closes with practical advice for people earlier in their careers: say yes to opportunities before you're certain, ask people how they got where they are, and focus on doing less of the work that doesn't actually matter.

Hi, I'm Josh. I work here at Asana. Asana provides a tool that helps our customers manage their work and orchestrate it from the biggest projects down to the smallest individual tasks so that teams can work together better and achieve their missions. I lead our community program, our engagement marketing program here. One of the things I'm most proud that Asana has achieved is that we have customers in over 190 countries.

As someone who works on a global team, I really love knowing that we're helping customers achieve their missions all around the world.

So originally, I'm from Detroit, Michigan. I really wanted to be in a bigger city, and that brought me to San Francisco. That's when the Internet as a concept was really starting to become more well known and more exciting. And that's what led me directly into the world of tech. I did not go to an Ivy League school, so I didn't have the pre-set up network. I just needed a job. And so I wasn't very picky in the beginning.

I started my career as a designer. Back in the olden days, we called it just web design. We didn't have a term like UX or UI, but that's what we would call it now. And over time I learned more about what goes into how people use tools and how do we help them learn how to use tools better. So I got my additional degree in instructional design, which is all around helping people use technology to learn better.

And so I did this work for a while, and then in the early 2000s, the market completely tanked and I had to think of something else. And rather than look for work in the same field again, I chose to start something new, try something different, where I started talking to individuals and teams around productivity and did some productivity consulting work and built a really successful business around that.

And at the same time, because I like being really busy, I also talked my way into a producing job at the local news station. Professional organizer Joshua Zerkel says you should consider taking photocopies of important receipts or even scan them into your computer, but you'll still need to keep the originals three years for the taxman in legible condition. If you try to return an item with a faded receipt, the retailer is going to go, well, we don't know this was from here. Sorry, we don't know when you bought it or how much it was.

The TV industry, especially TV news, is awesome and it is crazy. It's awesome because you're reaching tons of people via your work. And that work actually really matters to people. People really care about what's happening. It's insanely challenging because I worked on the 5 o'clock news. Every single day there was a deadline and if I didn't make my deadline, there would be a black screen because my show wouldn't have anything on. In news, you learn teamwork, internal politics, you learn how to work under insanely tight deadlines.

And above all, I think you learn how to tell stories because every news item is a story and it needs to be compelling. It needs to have impact, it needs to have a point, and you need to be really concise. And for me as a marketer, all of those skills are useful to me every single day. A lot of my career has been just based on opportunities that I've seen.

When I saw there was an opportunity to impact people in a different way than news or consulting, I looked for that.

It's very rare at the beginning to know whether an opportunity is good or bad because a lot of bad opportunities can look good but may not actually be good. And ones that look bad may actually have a lot of things that you can learn within them. Generally speaking, I try to be a yes to most opportunities.

Because I was doing TV work and consulting at the same time, the clients that I was consulting with on productivity, all of them needed tools and were asking me what tools should I use, what tech tools are right for me, how do I use them? How do I deploy them? And the only one that I was recommending to every single client that I worked with was Evernote, because it was so flexible. I ended up really getting to know Evernote the product really well, and I ended up writing a couple of books on how to use Evernote. This led to the relationship that I built with them, the company, and eventually they said to me, we like what you're doing out in the world. We need you to do that for us.

I felt like with Evernote there was an amazing opportunity to really help people, help them work better and do it at a really grand scale that I hadn't been able to achieve before. Evernote was an amazing experience for me. It was wild. I joined the company.

It was still on a crazy high growth trajectory and so being part of the marketing team, being part of talking directly with customers, helping them learn how to use Evernote, building community for them, I was open to whatever the business needed me to do within reason. So my role changed, expanded, helped different parts of the business. The advice I'd give people who want to advance in the tech industry is don't be afraid. Ask for opportunities, go on informational interviews, talk to people who are doing the type of work that you might see yourself doing in the future.

Ask them how they got where they were. Ask them to introduce you to other people. This is the most natural way to get into it. I had an amazing mentor at Evernote. She was in a global role. I was very curious. I talked to her about what does it mean to do this kind of work globally? What does it mean when you travel? What do you actually do when you're going to a different place? Like these are things. Unless you ask, you won't magically know.

And so a lot of the conversations were around, what does it actually look like? What is your job and how do you do it? How would you see someone like me fitting into this in some way? Do you see that for me? What would that look like? What are the opportunities? How would I get there? She was incredibly instrumental in helping me develop my career. I think all of us need someone who takes a chance on us and believes in us.

And this person really did that for me. She offered me my first experience doing global work, brought me on the road to meet customers in different countries and really opened my eyes to new possibilities within the world of work and helped guide me. She didn't do the work for me, and I worked with customers all around the world.

I would go host events for them all around the world. By talking to different people in the field that you're interested in or who have roles that you might be interested in, you'll find people that you really resonate with. I wouldn't start a conversation with, I'm looking for a mentor. Will you be that person? I would start out more with, hey, I really like the work that you're doing. I've seen some of your interviews. I really like what you have to say. I'd love to take 20 minutes of your time just to get to know you a little bit and learn more about how you got to where you are.

And as you do that more, you're going to find people that you build a rapport with and build relationships with. And those are people that you could ask not at the first meeting, but maybe down the line if they could be your mentor. At Evernote, I had many different roles over the course of the years and for me, I like not knowing what's coming next.

I was open to whatever the business needed me to do within reason, and so my role changed, expanded, helped different parts of the business. If I can help a business, that's what I'm there for. If I can help the business, help customers, that's even better. And I was always open to that. And I still am. At Evernote, I had many different roles over the course of the years, but all of them were centered around directly helping customers, connecting our teams with customers in different ways. And so for me, even though they're different, they're all pretty closely related.

For me, the biggest achievement was getting our community program up and running and scaling it. To me, that was really, really satisfying, like when we hit 10,000 members actively participating as ambassadors in our program. To me that was really incredible because we started with nothing. If you're lucky in your career, you get to be part of these sorts of adventures. That's what makes it interesting and that's why I had such a good time there.

I was there for quite a while building their community all around the world, and then I came to Asana to build their community program from scratch.

The way that I have survived for so long is I really like what I do. I like working in this industry that's exciting and fast moving. Yeah, it can be tiring at times and there's always something new to keep up with, but it's never boring. And for me, the worst thing possible is to be bored. And I haven't had that experience working in tech yet and I don't think I ever will because things are constantly growing and changing and I like to be part of that.

I'm interested in solving productivity challenges because it's something that none of us ever think about, but all of us have to deal with. What's interesting is none of us are ever taught how to work. We just have to figure it out. And I think there's something really missing in that because how are you supposed to know how to work well or improve how you work if you never are taught how to do it?

And so there's this big gap where there's a lot of opportunity for productivity advice, research, and new strategies for how to work better, that could help people meaningfully, help teams, help lots of different folks all around the world, because until we actually have classes in school on, actually, you're going to get a job at some point and here's how you do it, there's a huge gap in this knowledge. And I like, one, understanding how people work, I think it's really interesting, and two, helping them think of new ways to work better.

When Asana was younger as a company, they were starting to see some of the same things that we saw at Evernote before I started. The CMO at the time asked to meet with me just to talk about ideas. If I were to give advice to Asana, like what would I suggest for building a community? How would I harness this love that people have for Asana and how would I reflect it towards them? He's like, do you know anyone that would want to do this and build this from scratch?

And I thought to myself, maybe me, which was not an interview, and here is an opportunity to start with a blank page again, but do it specifically for B2B, which was a different challenge for me, and I was really excited to take on that new challenge. What I love about running a community program is that we hear from real people what they really think about our product.

A lot of it is great, wonderful, very complimentary, and we hear the rest of it too, which is why doesn't it work like this? Here's a problem I'm trying to solve. Can you help me solve this? When are you going to add this feature? On the community program, we have a very robust way that we collect all of that information and we feed it back in an organized way into our internal feedback process, which goes directly to the product teams.

What I love about this is that the voices of the people who are really using and care about our product are put right in front of the people who actually develop the product, and they're able to take this feedback and use it as part of their development cycle. Then we close the loop with our customers where let's say that you've contributed an idea along with other people for, hey, we'd love to see this feature. Once it's built, we actually have the product manager come onto our private webinar for members and explain we're releasing this feature.

Here's how we took your feedback and here's how it was developed. So it's really saying you have importance to us, customer. We're listening to you and we're developing things around what it is that you want and you need. So all of that goes into this engagement cycle. It's really virtuous because it keeps customers involved and invested in not just what they're using today, but what we're building for them in the future. Yeah, so Asana, it's strictly B2B rather than Evernote, which had B2B and B2C. And so for me, I needed to learn a lot about what is the mindset of the different buyer personas, what's different when you're selling to a company that's ten people versus 50 people versus 500 or 1000, what are the different ways you need to navigate inside of one of those companies?

Who are the people that would actually be using Asana versus people who are the decision makers on whether to buy it?

And so all of these nuances are true in B2B, and it's very different in B2C, where usually it's one person making a decision. In B2B, it's usually a series of people making a series of decisions. And so for me, I needed to understand and my team needed to understand how do we help different personas and which are the personas that we're actually serving the most in the community program? What are the other personas and how are they served by other parts of Asana, like CS or sales or support?

So navigating that and figuring out which program and which part worked best for which person at a company, that was the biggest challenge.

I think for me, the way that I've survived it is by doing things that are really interesting to me, working for companies that are mission driven, that are genuinely helping in the world, creating something that is useful and helpful for people and honestly, looking for work that's interesting. I like to think that I work really hard but really smart. I'm really good at managing my time, and so I make sure that I plan out my day.

Every day I look at my priorities for the day and make sure that my time is set up to help support those priorities. I make sure that I don't work tons and tons of hours because I could, but it actually doesn't help me get more work done just doing more hours. I need to be thoughtful about the time that I spend in and make sure I'm doing the right tasks at the right time, and then I make sure that I take time for breaks.

So I am a hard worker, but I also know when to turn off. Are there any simple tips to increase someone's productivity? There are things that people can try. One, my favorite is stop taking on so many things to do. There's a notion, especially when it comes to productivity, that productivity means doing more. And I actually think productivity means you're doing less, but you're choosing the right things to do. So the biggest piece of advice I would offer anybody is think about what your priorities are.

Make a list and the things that aren't your priorities or aren't the priorities of your team or will help you reach your goal. Just stop doing them and focus on the things that actually really matter. Most of us spend so much time on things that don't really matter. At Asana, we call it work about work. In our recent study, The Anatomy of Work, we found most people spend about 60% of their time on these things that aren't actually important or helping them reach their strategic goals.

So if you can just claim back 10% of that time or 20% of that time, you've just done yourself a big favor. And so I really encourage people, if they're just starting to think about how do I get more productive or my team be more productive, look at your priorities and make sure you're focusing on the things that actually matter.

The advice I'd give to younger people or people who are newer in the workforce, or just developing, about not knowing everything or not having expertise. One, you won't know everything right away. You may think or feel like you know everything, but chances are you still have a lot of learning to do. Be okay with that. Be okay with the discomfort of not knowing everything, but also be equally okay with asking or saying, I don't know that much about this. What are some opportunities for me to learn? I'd like to learn more about this. Is there a project I could work on?

So if there's something that you want to learn that you want to gain expertise in, you don't have to have the expertise right away. It's your job. You own your career path to find the places or the people who can give you opportunities to learn more. When I was young, I really didn't know how to develop my career, and so I wasn't very picky in the beginning. That led me down some frankly challenging paths. But each job gave me something, helped me learn something, or made connections that helped me along the way.

Just don't be afraid to take chances and expect that you won't have the path laid out for you clearly. You will have to make that path, but you can. That's one of the beautiful things about working in tech is there's so many new roles being developed all the time. If you have the motivation and you have some skills and you know how to talk to people, you can find a path for yourself and it can be whatever you want it to be.