The Power of Authentic Leadership

0:00How many years were you in marketing before you took a break? Roughly about a dozen years. Okay. And then you took how many years off? I round up to seven. Okay. What was it like kind of coming back? Did you feel after the seven years that you stepped back in and you were pulling out the tools and the strategies and the approaches that were working before? Did you feel like all of that stuff is still very relevant to this? Or did you jump back in and say, holy, like this, the whole game has changed. Ultimately, and this is philosophically how I think about marketing. We are that growth lever for business.

0:33So that doesn't change. Yeah, the tech changed. The tactics changed. That's all learnable. There was folks that I worked with that had all of the latest and greatest and were up to speed on the new things because yes, it had changed. We're not mad men. We're not just writing ads anymore as marketers. So I immersed myself in that. And within a couple of quarters, I had our blueprint figured out, had the partnership with the inside sales team going. Some of that stuff never changes.

1:04Hello, world. Welcome to Marketing Trends, your absolute favorite show. This is your host, Jeremy Bergeron. I'm exceptionally excited today. Mandy Daliwal has built a pretty remarkable career in the tech industry. As the chief marketing officer of Nutanix, she's not only shaping the company's global brand, but also influencing how enterprises embrace the multi-cloud era, which I want to get into today. Mandy, welcome to the show. Hi, Jeremy. So great to be here. Thank you. Super excited to have you. Again, you've got a ton of experience and perspective in the space, and I'm learning a little bit about the things that you care about as a marketing leader, which I want to get into right away.

1:52I'm fascinated by how people grow through adversity. Yeah. And so I want you to think about your career and think about things that you've already gone through. And is there a particular challenge either at Nutanix or somewhere else that really pushed you, Mandy, to redefine how you lead or how you market? Wow, that's a great question right off the bat and really a meaty one, Jeremy. I think if I look back kind of in the arc of my life, the biggest adverse moment that I had was a traumatizing health issue that caused me to pause my tech career. And that was me hard-charging A-type personality.

2:36All of a sudden, body said, no more. You've got to focus on yourself. You've burnt yourself out. You owe me. basically was the message my body gave me. I have now the presence of mind to understand that in hindsight. But I still tried to push through. And then eventually I had to take time off. And I took a really significant chunk of time off. And back in those days, it wasn't really appropriate to talk about breaks in your career because that meant you were broken, right? There was something wrong with you. And so I chose me. I chose my family. I got my health back. It took me seven years. I also birthed a baby in that timeframe who's now about to be 17.

3:27But in hindsight, it was the best thing I could have done for Mandy and for the human I am and the leader I am today because it really shaped the next chapter. Wow, that's huge. I mean, I'm reminded of a recent interview I did with Carla Pinheiro Sublette, who is the former CMO of IBM and a beautiful soul and amazing. Do you know Carla, by the way? I don't. Do you have a connection with her? I'd love to meet her. Side note, side note, I definitely want to connect you two specifically. But, you know, she mentioned some of this as well. Like these moments in our careers that, you know, it's almost like there's this unplanned initiation.

4:05It's like this huge challenge that is not just a marketing growth challenge, but like a personal challenge that literally pushes pause on everything and perhaps takes you off of this path into a whole different world. And so that's incredible. I want to hear about, one, how did you recover after that? And look, you're stepping back into a fast-moving industry. You're competing with some major players. I would imagine that you're still responsible for a whole heck of a lot when it comes to the brand and growth and the culture and the teams and everything. How do you balance that now? How did you recover then?

4:48And then how do you ensure that you're taking care of yourself now? Because this is the things that CMOs want to hear about and don't always talk about is like, how do I do this? How do I? I can feel my body redlining. I can feel my relationship suffering. I can see things changing. And all of a sudden, I'm responsible for the board and the stakeholders and my team. And all of a sudden, now I'm out and I can't work, right? So give us a little bit more of that. That's amazing. Yeah. You know, I really frame this and how I think about it as two chapters of my career. One was the really kind of building myself up and, you know, learning and immersing myself in as much as I could.

5:23I came to Silicon Valley from Canada, and I came here to play in the big leagues of tech. So I've always been a very mission-driven, ambitious person. And so when I got here, I just soaked it all in, right? Which ultimately cost me because I spent too much time, too much energy and did not know when to pull back because I was so passionate and excited about it. So that the learning number one is, right, make sure you're measured, do all the good things, throw yourself into it, but also save time for yourself. On top of it, I decided to go back to grad school. So while I'm immersing myself, moved into a whole new country, whole new industry, right?

6:01Just why not? Extremist, right? It's zero or 60 every day. And so, lessons learned. Can't do that all the time. You can do it in your 20s, but you don't do it in your later years, right? So, I think there was a lot of, in hindsight, the reflection is that, yes, go do it, but find ways to growth hack yourself, right? And optimize your own productivity, your own investment into yourself and your personal time and me time, self-care. All these things aren't the woo-woo. I live in California, right? And so there's a lot of that happens, but there's methodology behind it and there's science behind why recovery is critically important.

6:43And I think we're starting to realize that more in life and in career. So I think that was really important. The fact that I didn't do it, I had to pay for it because I depleted the account, right? And so I went in and I took the charge of the health condition and surrounded myself with folks that could teach me, right? I treated it like a project. It became my consulting project and I was the subject. And so I went in, dug deep, dug into all sorts of types of medicine, Eastern, Western, tried all sorts of things, met with great professionals in the healthcare space and was able to really network my way into a recovery, really got the level of attention that I needed and also took control of my own health and made my business to know more, right?

7:30Versus just being a recipient of it. So put myself in the center of the problem, got through it. I was told I'd never have a child. And that to me was a non-starter. Like we're not taking that for an answer, right? So again, right? Mindset, resilience, building that up, grit, tenacity, all those things that we use in business today, using that in arguably the most important role in my life is being a mother, right? So to get to that, did it, did it right, did it in a way that was an A-class project, world-class delivery, right? Candidly. And now all of a sudden coming, stepping back in, and the other piece of this was I was in a big corporation when I went out on medical leave and really had some insight around where I wanted to be.

8:20I came to Silicon Valley to work in Silicon Valley, to work in startups. So I paused the big company track, the enterprise track, and went in. And as my son, Roshan, went back to school, as he got into kindergarten, that was the other thing. We wanted to raise our child ourselves because we knew it was just one. And we wanted to make sure that we had those special moments bonding. I was fortunate enough that we were able to do that as a family. So I I got to be front and center with our child. But at the same time, once he was ready to go off into the world and get into school, I decided it was time for me to go back into next chapter of my career.

8:57And I was very purposeful and deliberate in that, like, I need to be in a startup. I need to go figure out what this is all about and really immerse myself. So in classic Mandy style, did kind of the mid-growth startup, kind of series CD, did the series A zero to one, bring a company out of stealth, did a scale out startup within the behemoth that is Dell Technologies, right? And so started to hit these levels and really expand my knowledge, not only of company size and space, but also in terms of the functional areas within marketing and what the strategies are that are required for each of those stages.

9:33And so I got a ton of clarity and, again, brought discipline and brought self-care, but also brought the ability to just go drive excellence. And the last piece, and I'll stop talking to give you an answer or to give you an opportunity to chime in. The last piece is really the passion was around marketing is not a group of tacticians. We're strategic growth drivers for business. And so that's the energy that I brought to this last chapter of my career. Wow. So much in that. I mean, I want to touch on this one a little bit more and then I want to move to other things. But I know for a fact that in the high stakes world of being a modern day CMO, and not just CMO, but I mean, in high stakes leadership roles, burnout can be a very real challenge and it's a very real thing.

10:27Can you double click on some of the non-negotiable self-care practices that you've built into your routine? Like how is Mandy the mom maintaining energy, creativity, and resilience now? Again, back at an epic brand, growing and not slowing down. What are the things that now are on your self-care tool belt? Great question. I think it really starts with fierce prioritization. Saying no a lot, right? And saying yes to the things that really matter. So top of the list is family, right? Making sure that that is still the number one priority. Yes, I'm an executive. I have responsibility to corporation, but at the same time, I'm a human and I'm a parent.

11:09So how do I balance those two things first? So that to me is number one, family time, carving out time. If you have any tips on how to get rid of mobile devices from in-person time with teenagers, I'm all ears. Gosh, that's a big topic. But in all sincerity, I think, right, just making sure that you're purposeful and also social time. And, you know, having been at Nutanix now for two and a half years, right, that first year on the job, I didn't see my social network as much. Right. You have to you have to make tradeoffs. I needed to put all of my energy that I could, that was available into this new job to make sure that we set the right foundation.

11:55Right. And so I'm not here to preach on, you know, thou shalt, you must do a massage every week. Right. Although that would be amazing. Right. And so there's things like that, but now I've gotten smarter. And so you can build in time, friend time, social time, meal time. Right. And so just re-architecting your life for the situation that you're in and the stage you're in, I think really being mindful of that, you know, and the message to the friends was, I still love you guys. I just don't have as much time right now because I'm in a new job. I'm traveling. I'm trying to get my arms around this thing.

12:24And let's get together for quality versus quantity, right? So people in your life understand they're a huge part of your network, your support system. But at the same time, there's another priority in my life. And it's not a knock against them. It's just, I have to go do this right now. How many years were you in marketing before you took a break? Roughly about a dozen years. Okay. And then you took how many years off? It was a little over six. I round up to seven. Okay. Yeah. Okay. So you took that time off. And this, I just want to speak to the, you know, to the, maybe the fractional marketing executive or the person who, or maybe it's the mom that's home right now that is like, hey, like, okay, this is me.

13:04Like, okay. So what was it like kind of coming back? Did you feel after the seven years that you stepped back in and you were pulling out the tools and the strategies and the approaches that were working before? Did you feel like, hey, wait a second, I still got this. All of that stuff is still very relevant to this. Or did you jump back in and say, holy, the whole game has changed. And now I've got to retool and relearn. And there's so many things that I just am not aware of because you took almost a decade off. What was that like? And then, yeah, I know you worked with lots of various brands and companies, but did you feel confident?

13:41Like, hey, wait a second. Like, actually not much has changed and I got this. Yeah, I love this question. Nobody's ever asked me this before, Jeremy. And at first it's a little unnerving, right? And it's also liberating because you're like, hey, I got something to do, you know, in the outside world with adults. Not that I don't love being a parent, but, you know, the moms groups and the play groups and whatnot after a while. Like, they were awesome. But I wanted to get back into my business career. So I really made a conscious effort. And for me, ultimately, and this is philosophically how I think about marketing, we are that growth lever for business.

14:17So that doesn't change, right? I align with sales. That is a number one mindset for me, top of the list. And so that's not going to change. Sales is servicing a customer, right? So the fundamentals are still there. I have business acumen that I bring to bear. Yeah, the tech changed. The tactics changed. That's all learnable. And so for me, I did not feel like a fish out of water. I loved doing it. I like the pursuit of the deal. The growth side of business is something I'm fiercely passionate about. So for me, it was getting my own product market fit into the right company that I would be able to go make a difference in was the mindset.

15:05And so walking in, I was at a startup, I met with the CEO, we had a really good conversation before my, you know, my final, in my final interview. And it was like, hey, you know how to read a deal. That's your superpower. And I'm like, okay, thank you. I, you know, thank you for helping me learn that. And so I walked in pretty confident knowing what they needed, knowing what I could deliver. And really, it was about turning on a go-to-market in a way that was scalable. And so for me, there was folks that I worked with, right, that had all of the latest and greatest and were up to speed on the new things because, yes, it had changed.

15:44We're not mad men. We're not just writing ads anymore as marketers, right? We're getting very data-driven. We're digital-focused. So I immersed myself in that. And within a couple of quarters, I had our blueprint figured out, had the partnership with the inside sales team going, was able to really go demonstrate that we could start to win in select markets, run a segmentation strategy. Some of that stuff never changes, right? So it's a balance. How do you find yourself collaborating differently with other executives now? How do you ensure that you have this alignment across the aisle now? How important is it?

16:20What's working well for you now in 2024 as we wrap up this year? I love this question too. So collaboration is, again, another fierce kind of non-negotiable principle of mine, right? Business is a team sport. And I come from a family of folks that have been athletes. And I was a tomboy growing up because my brother and my cousins were the only people I hung out with. And so that mindset of being in a large family, in a farming community as well, we all chipped in. We were child labor in many respects, right? But we all chipped in to go make a living for ourselves and grow our family business. So that was a mindset I came with.

17:02And I've always had it within business, whether I was in a functional area or as part of a team or leading a project throughout my career. I think at this level, I realize, and I think everybody in the room realizes this as well, we never really talk about it, but we are business people first, and then we represent our domains. So one of the things I like to say is I'm a business person with a passion for marketing. So I have a seat at the table with the executive team. We're driving a business, but we're unpacking a business challenge and bringing our capabilities to bear in concert with the others.

17:39So whether that's finance to go run a massive compete campaign that we did this year, right? And being able to go get incremental funding and prove out ROI and share results in a continuous way, that's incredibly important. And that's a strong partnership with the finance team. It's also a strong partnership with the sales team because we have to push into the market. They have to pull out of the market the outcomes of that investment. So we take, I, as the leader of the marketing organization, take that responsibility very seriously. And on top of that, the product message has to be aligned with the way the technical teams, the engineering and the product teams are thinking about the journey of the product.

18:18Right. We did our user conference this year in May in Barcelona. And after the pandemic, we're finally back at scale. We had over 4 ,000 people in the room. We launched new products, new capabilities, a bigger vision for ourselves. That was done in concert not only with our CEO, but with every member of that executive team. We had partners in the room, customers and prospects, obviously, industry analysts, press, media. It was incredible, but that shows you the teaming required at the executive level to get all of our functions to work together, to align around the single message that we were trying to deliver, the capabilities of our modernized platform, and come out the other end with resonance in the market.

19:00That requires unification and collaboration. Without it, it's not possible. Is there a particular role in the ELT that you found maybe in the past wasn't as important to collaborate with, but now very much is based on the way the world is? Is there a particular role? Maybe it's just at Nutanix where you're like, no, I actually talked to the CTO quite a bit or something like that. Is there a role where you're spending more time connecting with that person on the ELT versus maybe in past experiences? Yeah, I think for me, that's our strategy team. right? Marketing and strategy go pretty well, you know, in terms of hand in hand, in terms of the investments that we vend out into the market or the name we're trying to build for ourselves.

19:47But the team that we have here really has their finger on the pulse. And so as we become very data driven and very outcome and ROI focused, right, there's a lot of collaboration with that team to ensure A, we're working on the right things, trying to get the highest ROI for, because we can't do everything. So which bets are we placing and how are we measuring the output? So they become a really important business partner to us on the execution side and on the vending of the resources side. I want to understand also kind of a little bit of like how Mandy thinks, and this is just, you know, I'm assuming that there are lots of problems that come across your desk and what are your favorite types of things to solve?

20:35And then maybe give us an example of like something that happened recently where you had to, you know, really put on the hat and actually help to solve a problem, whether it was high level strategic or interpersonal, whatever it was. I want to understand kind of how you think about solving problems. What did you, What was the issue? How did you tackle it? From a problem perspective, we ran into a very real problem earlier this year. We are a challenger brand, right? We don't have deep advertising budgets or dollars to deploy on getting our name out there, right? I'm not running just billboards with our name plastered across them.

21:10It's not been part of our strategy. We're a technology company, right? And we've come across into the market because we invented a certain technology, HCI, and built a name for ourselves. And now we've modernized ourselves into a hybrid multi-cloud player across virtualized and modernized apps. And so how do you go tell the story in a way that's purposeful and not wasteful and yet still hits the bullseye, right? So that's the challenge. Market dynamics, our number one competitor gets bought last fall. the deal closes, it's game on time in the market, right? Because this competitor has raised prices, cut off support, is redefining the business that they've acquired to make it accretive to them, right?

22:00Which is all great stuff. So you understand their business strategy, but at the end of the day, the customer's going to pay one way or another. Either they have to go out and migrate off of it or pay the exorbitant upcharges that they're facing or figure out alternative paths. And so we understand the market problem. We're working with the analysts to really understand customer issues. In the boardroom, in the ELT meetings, our head of sales is like, we're just not known enough. Nobody knows us as the alternative. We need to become the number one alternative to VMware Broadcom. Marketing, what can you do?

22:38I think it's a solvable problem. I think we've got all the levers in place to go do it. We need incremental investment, right? This is the real conversation that happened in ELT. And we have to figure out a good, better, best scenario to start to go build Mindshare. The strategy needs to be leveraged. It's integrated marketing. So we have to work across all the elements within marketing. The product guys got to go put together the appropriate migration strategies, et cetera, et cetera. The digital teams have to figure out where we're going to go run the placements. The comms team have to figure out who the thought leaders and the influences are that have to know about us in order to get air coverage more than just throwing an ad out on a website, right?

23:18So brought the team together within marketing, brought my leaders together, started a weekly standup on here's the challenge. What do we need to do? Here are the roles and responsibilities. Who's on first for each of these aspects of what we need to get done? Brought that together very quickly in a proposal, talked about what we could do, got the incremental funding. Thank you to our CFO and CEO for believing in us and really building a plan that was suitable for us and right-sized for us. We routed it into the market in early March. By May, we were known as the number one alternative. We hit it hard.

23:54The entire team was galvanized across sales and marketing to be able to go push that message into the market. And we're still riding that wave. As a challenger brand, I know that, of course, you're a challenger brand, like you said. That in and of itself says a lot about what's possible, the angle you want to take as the brand challenging the big boys, etc. But in terms of balancing the need to challenge the status quo with the practicalities of running a large, fast-growing company, is there ever tension between taking these bold risks and maintaining stability? How do you balance that? Yeah, we have, I could get into campaign hierarchies and all sorts of things, right?

24:42But we have really good clarity around where we harvest and where we seed. And I think that's really important. So again, going back to the interlock with the strategy team, right? Having the presence of mind to pause for a minute to really understand why you're doing what you're doing. That helps tremendously. And so once you figure that out, you're like, okay, team, I cleared the decks for you now. Here's your mission. Here's the target. Go get it. Okay. I also want to ask a layer of how did you galvanize? How did everyone come together? It also sounds like there was agreement, maybe not a lot of like, we shouldn't, we shouldn't.

25:19There was a quick like, okay, we're accelerating. Now is the time to move. Let's move. What worked well to galvanize everyone? Was it just, hey, we understand we're a challenger brand, so we're all fighters and let's go? Or was there a particular angle or narrative or story that you or others were telling to say, hey, we got to get this right and we got to go now? It started with our CEO. We spend a lot of time in communication with our teams as well in our quarterly company-wide meetings, et cetera, et cetera. But really, it was the sense of our time is now. That became our rally cry. And if you take a step back and look at it from a marketer's lens, it's like, great.

25:56We all have something that we can focus on. We know we have a technology that's modernized. We're investing in it. We're innovating. We know this is, and the other piece of this was this company is very customer focused. Our NPS is 90 plus continually for the last decade. And so what it became is let's do what's right for the customer. But we also know our time is now because there's a better way. And we all believe that. And that's why we're here. That's the culture of the company. And so that became the underpinning of what we were doing. So marketing had the privilege of building out the messaging.

26:31Again, we didn't do this with an ad agency in a vacuum. We had our head of channels, our head of sales, our head of product looking at this stuff. The ELT had their fingerprints on it, had an opportunity to go, no, I don't know if this is right. Tagline was pretty simple, right? The punchline was, we're here to help. that's who we are as a company it wasn't a go download this or pick a white paper etc it was having trouble navigating the storm we're here to help that was the message that went out and so it was bold and it was punchy but at the same time it was human and it connected with that reptilian brain center that we all want as advertisers and marketers right it emoted warm and fuzzy, which is entirely authentic and genuine to who we are as a company.