Shaqeem Akbar-Downey is a marketing and advertising manager based in Toronto, Ontario. He works with major used car dealerships, building campaigns that focus on reaching the right buyers and converting attention into real results. His career grew out of a competitive athletic background that included playing basketball and football for multiple teams and traveling to compete across cities and states. After attending Sir Wilfred Laurier High School, he studied culinary arts and business management at St. Lawrence College. That combination of disciplines taught him precision, structure, and how to manage systems under pressure. Today, he applies those skills to local automotive marketing, where performance is measured in qualified leads and closed deals. He is also actively involved in youth sports training, volunteering time to coach and mentor young athletes from the Toronto neighborhoods where he grew up.
How do you define success in your work?
Success, for me, comes down to one question: did it work? In marketing, that means did the campaign bring in people who were actually ready to buy? Not clicks. Not views. Real leads that turned into conversations and closed deals. I measure success in outcomes, not effort. Anyone can look busy. The discipline is staying focused on what actually moves the needle.
Was there a turning point that clarified how you think about success?
Early in my career, I ran a campaign that looked strong on the surface. The creative was good. The numbers looked fine at first. But the leads were low quality. People were clicking but not buying. I realized I had optimized for the wrong thing. I had not asked enough questions at the start. I had not understood the customer well enough. That experience changed how I set up every campaign since. Now I do more work upfront so the back end performs.
What role did athletics play in shaping your standards?
Sports gave me a very direct relationship with performance. On the court or the field, you know immediately whether something worked. You can watch the tape. You can see where the breakdown happened. There is no place to hide, and I never wanted one. I carry that same standard into marketing. If a campaign underperforms, I want to know why. I do not wait to be asked. I pull the data and find the answer.
What is the hardest trade-off you have had to make?
The hardest one is patience. Success in marketing, like success in sports, does not happen in a single play. It builds. But clients often want fast results, and sometimes fast results are possible. The challenge is knowing when to push and when to wait. I have had to be honest with partners when a campaign needs more time to find its rhythm. That honesty is uncomfortable sometimes. But it is always the right move.
What habits have been most important to your growth?
Writing things down every morning. Not long lists. Just the three things that need to get done that day. It sounds simple. It works. The other one is following up. Most opportunities disappear because no one circled back. I follow up with leads, with partners, with ideas I want to come back to. It is not complicated. It just requires consistency.
What does failure teach you that success cannot?
Failure teaches you where you were not paying attention. Success can make you feel like your process was right even when it was partly luck. A campaign that underperforms tells you something specific. It points to a gap. I am more interested in that information than I am in the win.
What does long-term success look like to you?
Long-term success is being trusted. By dealership partners who keep working with me because the results are real. By the young athletes I coach who develop confidence and direction. I am not chasing a title or a number. I want a track record of doing what I said I would do. That is hard to build and worth protecting.
What do you wish you had understood sooner about success?
That it does not have a deadline. When I was younger, I had timelines in my head. I thought certain things should have happened by a certain age. Sports actually helped me let go of that. You grow in seasons. You put in the work and the results come when they come. Trying to rush it just creates shortcuts that catch up with you later.