How a CMO Transforms a SaaS Brand/Mandy Dhaliwal - Nutanix, Team Alignment, Perfect Pairings ~ Spark of Ages Ep 43 - Spark of Ages

Episode Transcript
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Rajiv Parikh (00:05):
Welcome to the Spark of Ages podcast.
Today, we're thrilled to bespeaking with Mandy Dhaliwal,
the Chief Marketing Officer atNutanix.
Mandy is not just a marketingleader.
She's a pedigreed technologyexecutive with over 25 years
experience in cloud and softwaremarkets.
As the Chief Marketing Officerfor Nutanix, the

(00:32):
industry-leading hybridmulti-cloud platform, mandy
leads the global marketingstrategy that accelerates the
adoption of Nutanix's softwaresolutions.
She leverages her expertise inenterprise B2B product marketing
, demand generation, brandstrategy and customer advocacy
to drive growth and innovationfor Nutanix.
She's been a key leader inNutanix's remarkable progress,
contemplating its market valuefrom roughly $5 billion to $20

(00:55):
billion, proving that marketingbranding positioning has a
strong hand in driving valuationand growth.
Before joining Nutanix,dhaliwal held the CMO position
at Boomi and Fugue, and she alsohas been a senior marketing
leader at Blazemeter, soasta,emc and Legato Systems.
Mandy attended Simon FraserUniversity for her undergrad and

(01:17):
holds an MBA in technologymanagement from Pepperdine
University and, notably, a leveltwo certification from the
court of master sommeliers.
Some of the key takeaways youcan expect from this episode
practical strategies for howbusinesses can effectively
democratize AI across theirenterprise.
Mandy's philosophy oncultivating talent from within

(01:39):
the organization.
The importance ofcross-training employees across
all marketing functions.
How Mandy has transformedNutanix's brand to be more
credible, relatable, helpful andcharismatic.
And finally, the incrediblejourney Mandy has been on from
her family's raspberry farm tobecome a professional sommelier
and how that's developed Mandy'simpeccable taste.

(02:00):
Mandy, welcome to the Spark ofAges.

Mandy Dhaliwal (02:03):
Wow, rajiv.
Thank you, Super excited to behere.

Yeah, so glad to have you.
You and I have met at a numberof our go-to-market leadership
summit types of dinners for CMOs, and so we just got along so
well.
I had to have you here, so I'mso glad that you could make the
time.

Yeah, they've been great.
It's a great way to kind ofspread out and share and listen
and learn as well.
So I value the conversationswe've had and really look
forward to growing this into avery kind of long-term, lasting
relationship.

Yeah, great community, so thanks.
So, mandy, you've mentionedthat Nutanix simplifies AI
deployments, and a commonquestion from enterprises is
where do I start?
And, given that many companiesmight feel overwhelmed, how does
Nutanix demystify the AIjourney for businesses?

Yeah, great question.
Thank you, Rajiv.
Really, you know kind of firstpoint, right, we're all learning
as we go, right, and the spaceis evolving more quickly than
anything has ever evolved in ourlifetimes, right, and we are in
technology, we're dynamicpeople, and so what we deliver
is AI-ready infrastructure.
There's a lot of gotchas inthis world of AI, a lot of
unknowns.
As I mentioned, we're alllearning as we go, but there's

(03:12):
the hardware layer and thenthere's a software layer that
needs to sit on top of all ofthat hardware to be able to
deploy your AI, and so we liketo think of ourselves as the
trusted partner for AI-readyinfrastructure, so we actually
activate it and help you getdone what you need to in a
secure and a compliant and adata-friendly way from a
sovereignty perspective as wellas from a manageability across

(03:35):
an organizational blueprint.
You've got silos andorganizations that are running
various AI.
We become that layer thatunifies all of the AI across the
organization when deployedcorrectly.

That's terrific.
I mean, it's one of thosethings as a marketing leader to
come in.
The company is a prettytechnical company it still is
and you came in and you had tomake that message approachable
right as part of them buildingsolutions.
So we're going to get into alot of that.
This is one of the excitingparts.
And so, from your perspectiveas CMO, how do you see agentic

(04:05):
AI directly transformingmarketing productivity and
strategy development withinenterprises, not just IT
operations?
Are there specific agentic usecases that Nutanix is exploring
or advocating for internalmarketing teams or for your
customers' marketing functions?

Yes, all of the above.
I am incredibly bullish, butcautious on the progress that AI
, and especially agentic AI,will have for us, and so you
know, let me start by saying Ifeel like marketing is the
function that is going to bemost affected by this.

It's something you have to approve before you
launch.
So it's more likely to gettransformed.

Yes, Right, there's productivity gains to be
had, but at the same time,there has to be checks and
balances as far as accuracy,consistency.
You know ensuring data, youknow the right levels of data
usage and messaging, and youknow, kind of, all the nuances
that we have with humans.
Right Now, we've got machinesas well, right, and so I look at
this as one more constituencythat we have to manage as

(05:07):
marketers.
Our jobs aren't going away.
They just got even more complex, right.
They're going to change.

Absolutely, absolutely.

It's going to change completely yeah.
And from an agentic standpoint.
We're running a pilot currentlyand so if you go to newtagscom,
we can always share this outlater in the show notes if you'd
like.
We have an agentic technology.
We've got an AI superhuman onour site currently.

I love that.
I went there today.
You and I talked about it atdinner, yes, yes, and the cool
part about you is you'llactually make it happen super
fast.
You didn't go through 10,000layers to make it happen, you
actually put it out.
So I was super excited to see.
I think it was OneMind right?

(05:50):
Is the partner that?

you're working with and you have this agent,
you can ask her any question.

Yes, Nyla is on our website?

Yes, right, and we're running it as a pilot.
We have an existing technologyon our site as well and we're
looking at them side by side.
We're doing a live A-B test,and so we've had about two weeks
worth of data now and we'relooking at.
Someone comes into the site.
Are they looking for an answer?
Do they want to know how todeploy something in a very
specific use case?
Are they looking for a testlicense?
Are they looking for a deskdrive?

(06:14):
Are they wanting to learn alittle bit more about a
capability that we've got?
So we have a first line on our24 by seven storefront,
effectively working all the timeto interact with our customers,
and we're seeing early returns.
We're getting traffic from APJthat we normally weren't able to
interact with because of timezone issues.
So we're on again 24 by 7, thedepth of the conversations, the

(06:38):
ability to pass leads to saleswarmed up, leads to SDRs and AEs
faster.
All of that is alreadyhappening on our site and I
couldn't be more excited, andwe're in deep learning mode.
It's by no mean hardened, but Iam very pleased, but not yet
satisfied in terms of how we'reprogressing on it, and this has
all happened in the last twoweeks.

I think it's amazing and when you put it out,
then you start to realize acouple of things.
We have a similar thing that wejust put up on our website.
My team put something together.
It doesn't have the face, butit's conversational.
I was like, wow, this person'sremarkable.
This agent is remarkablysophisticated in terms of how it
talks about our messaging andour capabilities, but it makes
mistakes.
It's a great time to actuallyhone your messaging and see how

(07:18):
people react to it.
It's a wonderful way you haveyour SDRs who are doing this and
I'm sure you get data from allthat, but this is a great way
for you guys to see it.
In many cases, the first touch.

Well, there's the first touch and then there's
also the listening right.
You know we own the marketmarketers and so I'm getting
real time input on questionsthat are top of mind with my
customers and my prospects.
You know there's no words forthe value and the agility that
gives us to be able to take thatand go develop programs on the
fly effectively, to go addresswhat's happening with voice of

(07:49):
the customer.

Yeah, and I think this gets to one of the things
you've mentioned in previousdiscussions or previous podcasts
, where you made the predictionthat websites may not even be
needed in the next five yearsdue to generative AI.
Given Nutanix's and your focuson leveraging digital tools and
personalization, how would youreimagine this future, where
what we think of as traditionaldigital marketing channels may

(08:11):
diminish and there's newparadigms for customer
engagement and content delivery?
When I go to the Nutanix siteor engage with Nutanix, am I
just going to get this agent infront of me, potentially, and
it's personalized toconversations I had before or
where I'm coming from or who Imight be part of.
Is that part of what you'd see?
Or you have something?
I'm sure you have somethingbigger in mind.

I've got some big visions for this, but I
think, initially right, we haveto show ROI and show value and I
think, from that firstengagement, if we can start to
accelerate value for thecustomer, right and one of the
cornerstones of who we are as acompany, it's all about the
relationship and the trust webuilt with our customers and
prospects.
So for me, all due respect tomarketing and those that have
come before us and everythingthat we've done, but at the end

(08:53):
of the day, right, if I can savethree sales calls and get a
customer an answer, think aboutwhat that does to the buyer
journey, to the adoption of ourtechnology in the market, as
well as the specificity and theauthenticity with which we can
communicate our value prop, theconsistency as well.
I am maniacal, maniacal.

Right, because now , when you are talking about
what your brand should be andthe brand voice you are enabling
, it's far more consistent thanever before.

Absolutely, absolutely, and the real-time
feedback that I can get.

So now, as part of this, are you getting?
Is this something that you'refeeding into a key leader in
your organization?
Are you getting like a summaryupdate of it?
As it goes, how do you look atit?

team and I just shared it with our head of
product Friday right and so anda verbal, not an update yet, but
we will put together amechanism where it goes out to
the go-to-market leadership team, so our head of alliances as
well as channels, as well as ourchief revenue officer and our

(09:56):
head of product and head ofcustomer experience.
So if we're all aligned as faras what's top of mind for the
traffic that's coming into oursite, that is a very important
vector for how we change ournarrative when we're out there
talking to customers, as well assharing in forums like this and
in other forums that we investin.

Real, amazing, rapid form of feedback.
It's just.

Yeah, yeah, real time finger on the pulse,
that's awesome.

So now, one of the things you're passionate about
is customer advocacy, right.
And delivering an exceptionalcustomer experience.
So, beyond your traditionaltestimonial and case study, how
does Nutanix systematicallycapture and infuse authentic,
verbatim voice of its customers,their challenges, their

(10:39):
phrasing, pithy explanations,into your core product marketing
materials?

I love this question.
So we just came off of our userconferencenext.
It happened in May inWashington DC.
We had customers and voices of,real voices of customers
speaking with other customersand prospects throughout that
entire conference.
That's really what it was right.
It was a showcase.
Everything from main stagekeynotes to the demos.
Those were real customer usecases.

(11:04):
Breakout sessions were customerled.
Even in some of our EVCs we hadcustomers explaining how they
were deploying the use cases ormigrating off of one of our
competitors to us and the easeat which that was happening.
So, rather than us tell theworld about how great our
technology is, my preference andbias is to have the users and
the real live case studies andtestaments really be activated

(11:27):
there in those forums.
So that one-to-one orone-to-few conversation is
critically important and again,it just symbolizes who we are as
an organization.

Is this one like.
I think you had what?
5,000 people there and you weredoing this at a time where
people were a little reluctantto come to the US, so you pulled
this huge event together.
This is something that, priorto you coming on, it probably
was nothing like this, and thenyou had it, I think, in multiple
layers.
Right, you had customers,partners, prospects.

(11:57):
I think there was a wholelayering that you had for it to
make it truly meaningful for thewhole company.

Yeah, it's a Rubik's Cube that you have to
line up right.
And it's a Rubik's cube thatyou have to line up right and
it's a master class incross-functional collaboration
is what this thing is now as aproduct, and it's also the
kickoff of our strategy for theyear.
Right, we're in Q4 right now.
Q1 start new fiscal startsAugust 1st, and so we've lined
up the material that we had atnext and the announcements get

(12:23):
enabled to the Salesforce.
My teams are building campaignsand then we add, we layer in
innovation as we go throughoutthe year.
But it's become a tentpolemoment for us from a business
strategy standpoint and, to befair, this conference was
happening way before I got here.
It was just a very differentformat and we as a company have
matured as well.
So there was a lot ofinnovation that was released.
There was customers on stage itwas all the things that you

(12:49):
would expect in a conference butthe knitting together of it and
the alignment and the partnerstories and particularly the
channel.
We had over 1500 folksrepresented from our
distribution networks at thisevent, and so there were
separate summits for them.
So the lift is massive, but theROI is even more
correspondingly massive.

How did you make the case to make it so much
bigger and grander and make itthe company tentpole?

You have to align it to your KPIs right.
It's not magic.
Like it shows, the pipe sourcedpipe progressed.
Q4, the reason it sits in Q4,it's the biggest closing event
of the year.
We run 100 EBCs at this eventconcurrently over three and a
half days.
That's closing gold and eventconcurrently over three and a
half days, that's closing gold.
And then it's pipe building andso it gives us a leg up as we
go into Q1.
We're not starting from zerowhen we get to Q1.

(13:29):
Our pipes are loaded.

That's great.
And so you said 100 EBCs rightExecutive Briefing.
Councils or conferences, and sohow do you get your executives
prepped for that?
How do you make sure they'reready to go?
Because everybody's got amillion things going on at once.
Basically, all the attentionturns to what marketing is
leading.

Yes, yeah, it's a lot of coordination right.
I've got a very strong customermarketing team that works
through that and they're trained.
They do this year round allover the world.
We do onsite, offsite, you nameit.
We go to customers so thatmuscle is honed.
The account executives are verywell-versed in how these things
happen.
And then us as executivesponsors go in and we get

(14:11):
briefings.
So I have a binder that'sprobably two inches thick that I
am immersed in, especially onthat flight over to the
conference.
We're looking at folks that areattending our leadership
exchange.
We have bios on them, topicsthat are of importance to them,
the EBCs that we're attending.
We as exec sponsors understandwhat the issues are.
We spend time with thecustomers, kind of pre and post

(14:32):
as well, in addition to ourspeaking duties on main stage
and all the other things thatwe're doing.
So it's a massive coordinationeffort.
It takes three to four monthsof consistent effort across a
vast group of people in order togo pull it off, but the
alignment and the coordinationthat it gives us, especially
from the CEO all the way throughto the selling organizations,
is tremendous.
And then we take a couple ofweeks off and cool our jets

(14:54):
because it's a lot.

It's a lot going on right.
I mean that's huge.
It's huge.
Someone that's common in ournetworks, udi Ledergore, right,
he's been on this show beforeand he talks about the notion of
courageous marketing.
And in talking about courageousmarketing, it's about enabling
your team to feel some form ofemotional, psychological safety
so they can take real swings.

(15:16):
And you've talked about it interms of real innovation is
about changing the recipe whenthe world needs it most.
So how do you foster thatculture of taking bold swings,
unconventional wisdom, todisrupt how traditional
enterprise B2B marketing is donetoday, rather than just
competing on the existing terms?
So do you have some specificexamples of a marketing

(15:38):
initiative your team took tochange that recipe and surprise
the market?

Yeah, absolutely .
I think from the moment I gothere and got a bit of a you know
, experience in doing that anddriving transformations, I've
become that marketing leader andbusiness executive.
But really for us, right, wewere very much a technology out
to the world, value prop, kindof company, right, quite of
ownership, amazing you know.
And hyper-convergedinfrastructure that was our

(16:03):
thing.
We IPO'd the company on it.
We had massive success.
And I walk in and it's like,okay, we need to be a cloud
company.
I'm like, well, we keep talkingabout data centers and we have
pictures of hardware on all ofour LinkedIn's all over the
world.
Every region again me outsidelooking in every region I look
at there's a different story.
Let's get the narrative right,let's get the positioning of the
company right and then goactivate it.

(16:24):
Let's build the tooling andlet's unleash.

So everybody's thinking data center and you're
saying no, the world wants cloud.
Did you run a study, did youlike?
Why?
I'm assuming Rajiv brought youon another great Rajiv brought
you on, as he's the CEO ofNutanix.
So was that part of thedirection they wanted to move
into and you were part of this,or did you have to help them
think it through and drive themthrough to it, or a combination?

Combination thereof.
There was an aspiration to moveout of HCI and really talk
about us as a hybrid multi-cloudplayer, and that rolls off the
tongue and I said this in myvery first keynote at our sales
kickoff I'm like two and a halfthree months in right and I'm
like I don't know a single CIOthat wakes up and says I need to
buy a hybrid multi-cloud today.

I'm dying to buy a hybrid multi-cloud today, right
.

What is that?
And so we have work to do toturn this into something that's
plain English, that speaks tovalue and also a problem, and so
the work began in earnest tostart to position the company.
Yes, hyperconverge is who weare.
That is the foundation of thetechnology we've built, but now
we've innovated above it.
We have interlocks into cloud.
We can run at the edge, you canrun anywhere right, and that's

(17:35):
something I'll put a footnote inthat.
But really the story on thehybrid multi-cloud was let's put
something in plain English thatpeople understand we're one
platform to run apps and dataanywhere An app, any app, your
apps on-prem, your apps in thecloud, your apps at the edge,
anywhere same thing, all ofthose places.
Let's start there and let'stalk about why this matters,
because in IT, the world isincreasingly complex, simplicity

(17:59):
matters.
You need a platform that canhandle all of this to securely
govern, as well as to be able tomanage and run your most
critical business functions.
We're the underpinning of howmodern businesses run.
Let's go tell that story.
And so, all of a sudden, thenarrative changed and I had
7,000 people in the company thatwe activated.
We enabled everybody to tellthe story because, as a

(18:22):
challenger brand, I can't marketmy way out of this.
I need to influence my way.
And so talk about bold.
You have to sell internally toget people to buy it, and then
they advocate for you.
So we turned on evangelists andwe enabled them with the right
material.
So that happened and we wereknown as a hybrid multi-cloud
leader.
Gartner puts out an MQ.
We show up as a challenger.

(18:43):
Year one, year two we're aleader.
These are long tail things.
It's not magic wand.

So did you go in with that objective?
Absolutely, we're going to goin, and today we're a challenger
.
I'm assuming VMware is theleader?
Yes, and on your side it talksabout a lot of VMware in terms
of VMware switch, or replacement, or working with them, et
cetera, and so you came in withthat notion.

We came in with that.
We've always been a competitorto VMware.
But when we went distributed,when you go hybrid, multi-cloud
there's partnerships with thecloud vendors and all of a
sudden you've got a whole newgroup of companies that you're
partnering with and competingwith.
So now we show up in this MQalongside of Azure, aws, google
right, we're in there with thesebehemoths.

(19:25):
We're the smallest company inthe leader quadrant, but as a
brand, we're a challenger, andthat was the other thing.
Speaking of Bolt, we looked.
Our colors were blue and greenwhen I got here, and you know,
it's a kiss of death for CMOs togo in and start changing color,
because that means you don'thave substance, right.
So it was very cognizant.
Like we all know, this right,it's a cmo, don't every, every
cmo, every ceo or cmo comes in.

Either they change the name or they change the
color.

Yeah, we're not doing that I started with the
narrative but at the same timeI'm like, why are we in a sea of
sameness with everybody else?
If we're a challenger brand,how do we stand out?
And so I got the.
Oh, mandy's favorite color mustbe purple.
I'm like, actually, no, itgreen.
But I'm moving from the greenbecause the business logic for
why we need to is because ourdollars will go further if we

(20:09):
actually can stand out and bebold in the market.
So the X, the rebranding, all ofit that took a year.
Right, that first dot.
Next, that we did in Chicago,coming out of the pandemic.
That's where we unveiled thebrand quietly.
There was no fanfare at all.
By design, let's focus on themessage.
And then, oh, by the way, theswag is really cool.

(20:29):
The swag sold out the first day.
Right, that's right.
And so again, you unleash yourambassadors.
So, very different strategy.
It's not a look at us, it's alook at what we enable, here's
what we do.
Very different strategy.
It's not a look at us, it's alook at what we enable, here's
what we do.
And so that happened this year.
The ante goes up, right,because we now have partnerships
in different realms.
We have external storage.
We were always very locked intoour own storage and we have

(20:51):
interoperability and we offerchoice, but we needed to open up
our storage capabilities to beable to go out there Truly be
hybrid.

Truly be hybrid and truly give and fulfill the
mission of running anywhere.
Running your apps anywhere,yeah.

And competitively, and so we
announced a partnership withDell.
We just announced a partnershipwith Pure right, and so the
journey continues.
So I shared this with my team.
Going back to your questionaround the team, this is the
next turn of the crank.
Guys, let's go.
We have success here.
We can't rest on our laurels.
How do we go now make this abigger story, Given that we
acquired a new technology?
We acquired a company calledD2IQ that has cloud native

(21:26):
capabilities, so we've addedcloud native into our platform.
So we're the platform that canrun virtualized and
containerized workloads all onone platform.
Nobody else does that the waywe do, and we've added all these
external storage options.
So what does that say?
This is now, yeah, it's stillthe one platform, but that's a
very utilitarian message.
That was a crawl walk, runright.

(21:48):
That was the walk, the run, nowliterally the run.
The theme for this year'sconference was run anything
anywhere.

Three words so now you push that message
everywhere and then your proofpoint are all the technology.
Eventually you get to thetechnology of how you get there
right.

Yeah, and so that became the theme and all of
a sudden, right talk aboutmessage pull through and the
press and the analysts and theconference and the partners and
everybody's like, oh we get itnow.
We didn't mention HCI, althoughthat is the core.
It's about speaking thecustomer's language and showing
them very quickly owning realestate in their brain on who we
are and what the capability is.
So that's all the logic.

(22:21):
So the boldness and my team'swalking around with you know
just the most amazing pride ofownership.
It was fantastic to see,because people from all over
were coming up to us and saying,hey, this conference, a, the
energy is fantastic, thematerial has been great, just
everything was well thoughtthrough and that took the entire
organization.
We're the tip of the spear thatmade it happen With us was not

(22:42):
just us, but the team made ithappen.
So that's how you lead teamsinto victory.

And this is great, because when you talk about
go-to-market, a lot of timesmarketing and sales are at odds
with each other.
Marketing sometimes is taskedwith taking care of the lead
generation and sales does thepull through.
But really you're looking atwhat the market looks like and
you're coming up with themessaging for it.
But to make it work, as youtalk about, there's this

(23:08):
integration with marketing,sales, customer success, product
.
It's really all of it workingtogether.
So how do you help structureyour go-to-market team so that
you have seamless alignment,shared revenue goals.
You talked about being achallenger brand, moving from a
challenger brand to the leader.
How do you drive that in everycustomer interaction?

That's a big question.
There's a lot there.
We could probably spend an hourjust talking through that, but
I think big brushstrokes.
I think at the core, theleadership team has to be
aligned.
So us as leaders, within thego-to-market functions, across
sales, customer success, productand alliances big component for

(23:50):
us we all have a meeting of theminds we align with, obviously,
our CEO and CFO as well, and sowe as a leadership team spend a
lot of time together talkingabout where we're taking the
business.
So you won't hear me talkingabout how awesome marketing is.
I talk about how awesome ourbusiness results are, because
that's my first team.
I sit at that business level.
Then I come back to my team andshare with them how we're going
to run in order to fulfill theneeds of the business.
So we all operate like that.

(24:11):
We know that we're harvestingcertain aspects of our portfolio
and we're seeding others.
That's the business strategyand we're seeding others.
That's the business strategy.
So we align there and we havean incredibly strong strategy
team as well, and so the innerworkings of how we operate and
how we structure start there.
Within marketing in particular,I've got a glue team, is what I
call them the go-to-marketstrategy and integrated
marketing team.

(24:32):
They are the glue.
So product marketing obviouslysits closer to sales, and the
technical sales teams right,demand generation fields, et
cetera.
And then you got the corporatemarketing team that's doing kind
of the overlay.
Within our global marketingteam we have a group of people
that are integrated marketingand programs.
So they're building the calendarfor the year.
They're enabling the entirefunction of go-to-market, so

(24:54):
they're sharing with alliances.
We're looking at events thatwe're showing up with.
We're looking at go-to-marketprograms that we're running with
partners.
We're looking at enabling thesales organization for what the
campaigns and programs are thatwe're launching.
Also tying to tentpole momentsright, go play bigger.
Aligning all of that to makesure that everybody understands
what's today, what the messages,what the campaigns are, what's

(25:16):
coming down the pike and whatthe enablement tracks look like.
And so we operate six to 12months in the future.
Sales is operating within the90 day cycle and beyond, but we
start to really wrap kind of thetrain.
Schedule is how I think aboutit.

Are you presenting together?
Are you when you're talkingabout your six to 12 months out?
They're driving the conclusion,but you're still.
Your content, materials,interactions, shows and events
are enabling the sales team todrive those closes.
Are you coming in as one whenyou're presenting to the board
or is it kind of coordinatingthe message before?
How do you do that?

(25:51):
Because I've seen so many timeswhere, because the head of
marketing doesn't own thecustomer relationship or the
prospect relationship, fingersget pointed at them and they
tend to be the first to go right.
And it's tough, because it'sreally an interaction that you
must drive together.

Yeah, it's very interesting that you call that
out and, yes, I've lived andseen that as well, right,
because when sales aren't goingwell, marketers are where the
inspection happens, as well aswith the sales.
But to answer your firstquestion, yes, we present as a
unit, right, and so we just hada, you know, two days of board
strategy and board meetings acouple of weeks ago, and so we

(26:31):
presented, amongst our chiefcommercial officer, me, our
chief revenue officer, our headof customer experience, and we
all chime in, and so thefeedback we get from our board
is the management team and thealignment is getting better and
better, and so I think that'sreally important.
That's again, that's modern daybusiness.
I don't sit on a silo that isan MQL generating machine, right
, we don't do that.
We talk about sourcing andinfluencing and touches to

(26:54):
progress pipe, and so we're init.
To win it together is the mantra, and that's how we like to
operate.
The KPIs show up and we're ableto go in and course correct.
Not everything's perfectobviously never is but you're
able to go in and havemeaningful business
conversations at the regionallevel, at the theater level, in
terms of where we need to turnon, more or less.
I've got leaders within myorganization that map directly

(27:15):
one-to-one with on the alliancesside as well as on the sales
side.
So we have a finger on thepulse of what needs to be done
and we work with the salesorganization to be able to go
drive the revenue that'sfantastic.

Okay, before we go to the game, I have one
question, and that is you've hada definition of an all-star CMO
and it's arming internalthought leaders and the
leadership as channelsthemselves.
So I think it's interesting tosay this, I want to say it again
Arming internal thought leadersand the leadership as channels
themselves.
So how do you at Nutanixoperationalize that process of

(27:49):
identifying, nurturing,empowering your own technical
experts, engineers, productleaders to become go-to-market
evangelists, not just throughtraditional thought leadership,
but by actively integrating themtogether in customer-facing,
go-to-market motions.

All of the above and I love how you've
characterized it Chief AIofficer, who is arguably one of
the biggest brains on AI,especially within our space.
We've got a CTO.
They're regularly on stage atevents, at C-level events that
we sponsor or that we initiate.
They're on stage at our bigshows, at our on tours.

(28:28):
Our head of product, our headof sales engineering All of
these folks are part of theirassets.
For me, as a marketing leader,is how I think about it.
Our CEO he's our mainspokesperson for the company,
not only in financial metrics,but also in vision, thought
leadership, competitive response.
He'll get spicy once in a while, which I love.
All of that Like, let's behuman about it, but let's go.

By the way, I think in today's world, having
an edge does matter.

It does play Right right, it's so important,
and so that is something we'vebecome known for and it's all
the conversation within thethought leadership angle is how
do we go make this happen?
How do we go tell thosecustomer stories?
So within Rajiv's keynote thisyear at NEXT in DC, we had three

(29:08):
customer stories.
We had Tractor Supply, we hadMoody's and we had the US Navy.
They had 10 minutes each.
I'm sorry we had Micron onvideo because Micron wasn't able
to come.
So all of these customers hadprominence in a 90-minute
keynote.
Half of Rajiv's keynote wascustomer and partner voices, and
so what happened in that room?
People loved because thecustomers got to go show their
stories.
So this is Rajiv's story thathe's out in DC after the

(29:30):
conferences ended and he's outhaving a meeting and he has
people that are in the area thathave come for the conference
come up to him and say, hey,next year can I be on stage with
you?
And so talk about activatingthought leadership Like that's
the ultimate goal.
It's a great way to get yourCEO to just get all the feels as
well.

Nothing better to have your customers competing to
be on stage.

Exactly.
And so they're like yeah, yeah,sure, we'd love to, let's talk
Right and let's go cultivate allof that.
So that's a very importantelement of thought leadership.
It's that customer proof that'scritically important.
But again, like all thetechnical folks that we have, to
your point, we're a verytechnical platform and so we
need all of the voices, all theGMs from the pieces of the
portfolio as well.

(30:11):
I encourage them.
I'm like hey, I've got AI, I'vegot writing capabilities.
Give me something.
Let's go figure out how to getyou into Forbes Technology
Council.
Let's figure out how to get youinto Forbes Technology Council.
Let's figure out how to get youout on LinkedIn, out on our own
properties.
How do we get you doing morevideo, et cetera, et cetera.
So you know the answer isalways we'll find a way.
If you've got a story, a pointof view, come with something and

(30:31):
we'll help activate it.
And we'll come to you as well,because we know we've got a
topic that you are the domainexpert on.
We want to hear from you.

I think you nailed it in the way you talked about
the person as the channel.
I've seen this even from mydays back at NCR and Sound or
AT&T.
It's in B2B.
Everyone has to be the topleaders, have to be able to talk
to customers, have to be ableto get in front of get on a
stage, be able to talk toanalysts, be in front of the
market.
You are part of what drivesthat sale.
You're maybe coming from afunction, but you just can't be

(31:00):
the non-communicative leader.

No, not at all.
I think modern day executivesand leaders absolutely that's a
core aspect of their jobdescription.
So it's like start building themuscle man, like we got to do
it.

Better get good at it.
You can't hide in the corner.

Exactly.

All right.
So the great part about this iswe're going to go now to,
hopefully, something you'venever done before on a podcast,
which is play in the Spark Tank.
Okay, so, welcome to the SparkTank, where marketing mastery
meets culinary expertise.
And today we're discoveringwhat happens when you combine

(31:37):
CMO war stories with sommelierlevel taste.
Right behind you you have somewine bottles.
Today we're thrilled to haveMandy Dhaliwal joining us, a
marketing powerhouse who'sturned brand transformations
into an art form and winetasting into a certified passion
.
You've earned your level twocertification from the court of

(31:59):
master sommeliers, so you're notjust building marketing
strategy, you're living proofthat the best marketers
understand that success andfailure both deserve the right
culinary accompaniment.
So we're going to put bothsides of your expertise to the
test with the CMO's culinarytherapy challenge.

I love this, the CMO's.

Culinary Therapy Challenge, we're going to drop
you into the most relatable,ridiculous and occasionally
triumphant moments of CMO life,those situations that make you
either want to celebrate withchampagne or hide in your office
with comfort food, which, in mycase, is mac and cheese.
Your job is to prescribe theperfect dish and wine pairing
that either celebrates thetriumph or helps recover from

(32:42):
the chaos.
Let's see if your palate is asrefined as your marketing
instincts.

Let's go Ready, Maddie.

Ready, you are going to rock this game.
Okay, here's scenario one.
It's called the typo that brokethe internet, so here we go.
Your team just sent apromotional email to 100,000
prospects with a subject linethat reads congratulations with
a G instead of congratulationswith a T.

(33:10):
The replies are already pouringin, ranging from helpful
corrections to brutal roastsabout your company's attention
to detail.
Your CEO just forwarded you onethat says, quote maybe invest
in spellcheck before asking usto invest in your product.
Unquote what comfort food andbeverage combination gets you
through this grammaticalcatastrophe?

Oh boy, in the grand scheme of things, this
one's probably.

I don't know if we had levels it's probably been
worse, exactly Because we've alldone, really as marketers, as
part of taking swigs.
We've done some really dumbthings, so maybe this one's easy
in today's world.
Yeah, but what would happenthat first time?

I think earlier in my career this would be the
end of the world right Now, likeyou've got the experience, but
I've got that behind me.
So I think back then it wouldprobably be a shot of something.
Give me a straight shot of aspirit, right.

Okay, what spirit?
Straight shot of Tequila?
Probably Tequila with Nothing.
What food?
No food.

Just tequila.
It's like whoa.
How do we handle this one?

Tequila reposado, tequila shot wine, any
particular tequila that you like.

There's many.
Don Julio is an easy go-to,yeah Right, and so, depending on
the-.

Maybe in your younger part of the career.
That's probably where you-.

I think that was easy.
And then I think, as I so therewas the tequila time, right.
And then it became gin at theend of the long day, right.
It's like, and so the teamwould be like what are you
drinking tonight?
And I'm like, well, it'sThursday or Friday, cause, you
know, generally don't drinkduring the week.
And I'd be like oh, tonight's agin night and they're like Whoa
.

Amping it up, would you get to a single mall
at the end or something?

Yeah, on occasion, yeah there's been just
a couple of fingers.
I'm not a big like yeah, likejust not a lot, just more to
just kind of contemplate life.

I love it.

That's a good one too.
Yeah, that's a good one.

Okay, let's go to scenario number two.
All right, it's a big challenge.
It's called the budgetpresentation plot twist.
Oh boy, you spent weekspreparing the perfect budget
presentation, complete with.
Roi projections and competitiveanalysis, you confidently
request a 20% increase.
The CFO listens intently, thenannounces they're actually going

(35:31):
to cut your budget by 30%, butstill expect you to hit the same
targets.
The room goes silent aseveryone stares at you waiting
for your response.
What dish and drink pairingmatches this moment of fiscal
reality?

A very chilled martini Belvedere, slightly
dirty, and the food pairing isan olive.
Oh, still going with thestraight up alcohol.
There's things like food willcome later later it's like let's
do the numbing first let's coatit right, and one of those

(36:05):
takes the edge off, and thenit's like, okay, let's figure
out how we're gonna handle thisall right, so olive is your
chaser.

Okay, accompaniment awesome.

I love this extra points oh, yeah, maybe a
little blue cheese, a littleblue cheese with the olives,
yeah.

So slightly dirty.
Belvedere, martini, I love it.
Okay.
Scenario number three theimpossible deadline victory.
The CEO gave you two weeks tocomplete a product launch
campaign that should have takentwo months.
Your team pulled off miracles,survived on coffee and sheer
determination this has neverhappened to you and somehow

(36:41):
delivered a campaign that'sgetting industry press coverage
and inbound partnership requests.
You're exhausted but triumphant, and your team is looking at
you like you're a wizard.
What meal properly celebratesthis previously caffeine-fueled
marketing miracle?

Oh easy, laurent Perrier, rosé champagne and
truffle fries.
I easy, laurent Perrier, roséchampagne and truffle fries.

I love it.

Classic Perrier.
Why that?
Because the truffle offsets thepinot in the rosé right and
it's just, and acid from thechampagne and the fat from the
fries balance each other.
So it is sublime if you've nottried it, Seriously amazing.

All right, we're going to put that in the show
notes as something we need tohave ready for us to celebrate
with.

When you go out, it's really festive, right.
You go someplace.
You're like, bring me a bunchof truffle fries and bring me
some rosé champagne and all of asudden right People are in that
happy mode.

I love it.
I love it, the perfect pairing.
I went to one winery I thinktheir thing was wine and potato
chips, yes, and they haddifferent pairings depending on
what you had.
I thought that was reallyunique.

That was their thing potato chips and caviar
with champagne.
That's another one I love that.

Potato chips, champagne caviar.

A little creme fraiche, right, so your carrier
is the chip.

Oh, okay.
So this is a hot tip, awesome,okay.
So now here's scenario four,the final one, the budget
revenge.
Okay, so remember last quarterwhen the CFO cut your budget by
30%?
Well, you just delivered a 45%increase in qualified leads
using half the resources,through pure scrappy creativity

(38:25):
and automation.
The same CFO sent you a Slackmessage asking you if you'd like
to present your efficiencymethods to the entire executive
team.
So now you're going to put themon the hook.
What dish and drink pairingcelebrates this delicious moment
of vindication?

This is a steak dinner.
This is absolutely a reallypremium cut.
Somewhere you know a Tomahawkand a Bordeaux right.
New world, old world, take yourpick.
This is one of those.
Let's savor this.

All right, what Bordeaux would you recommend?

Margot, I like Left Bank and so you know that's
my personal preference.
I also really like HowellMountain out of Napa because of
the Southwest exposure, soMountain Fruit is kind of my jam
.

I love it.
I love it.
Is there a particular way youwant your tomahawk done?
Medium rare, medium rare, okay,and a restaurant that you love.

Oh my gosh, so many, I think, the steak craving
lately, the Charter Oak in Napa.

All right, when you're celebrating, call Mandy
there.

Exactly exactly.
I'm like, I'm coming.
They can they are?

not I think we're going to have our next
Go-To-Market Leader Societyevent there.

Let's do it.
Let's do it.
They can turn rice into anamazing bite.
I'll leave you there If youhaven't gone.
Highly recommend.

All right, that's in.
Awesome.
Okay, we're going to go fromthe game to more about you.
So did you always know youwanted to work in technology?
Was there a specific moment orproject that sparked you?
How'd you discover that passion?
What got you there?

Yeah, it was during my undergrad, an
internship.
I'm going to totally datemyself here, but I was a product
marketing intern and so I wentto school in British Columbia
and Nortel Networks was inAlberta, so the neighboring
province, and so I went toCalgary to go do an internship
in the fall within the productmarketing team, and so there was
about 20 some odd a number ofus that went.

(40:20):
It was great.

It was good bonding with my fellow
classmates and really beingfirst time I was in a corporate
B2B environment, right HardwareSure, I mean Nortel was like one
of the top phone equipmentswitching true B2B selling firms
.

Yeah.
And so you know multi-milliondollar deals kind of all the
things and highly complex andhighly detailed.
So I get invited I'm the onlyintern that gets this I get
invited to the customer eventthat's happening in Kananaskis
exactly.
Get to go to this thing.
I'm like yep.
And so I meet all these Telcoexecs and I get to be fly on the
wall and also help put on thisevent.
And there's probably 30 or 40execs and 20 or so of us

(41:07):
salespeople, marketing people,kind of Nortel people that are
putting this on.
We spend two and a half, threedays with them, we entertain
them, we strategize with them.
Just for me, that was just thepivotal moment.
I'm like, if this is work, signme up, I'm in right, because of
the way we were able tointeract with them.

It felt so great to be part of driving solutions,
making things happen.
It just was amazing.

Right and socializing with them, being
able to have real conversationswith them, understand what their
business challenges were, beingable to put on nice events and
dinners for them as well.
We did a I think we did like asquare dancing thing, because we
were all dressed up in cowboygear, right, and so it was for a
student, right?
Second year student out of theundergrad who really doesn't
know what she wants to be.
His parents wanted her to be adoctor, hence the MD Of course.

(41:51):
Right, like the Indian thing,and it's kind of like no, no, no
, I'm doing this because thisfuels me and it was just, like
you know, 18, 19 hour days, butit didn't matter.
It felt like it was my callingand so here I am.

It almost didn't feel like work right.

By the way.

I had a similar thing.
I was.
I was going for my electricalengineering degree at my junior
year.
I had my father got me amarketing internship at GTE
Sylvania and I just fell in lovewith that ability to turn
technology into a message andget it to market.
And it was just super fun,super fun.

And so, sidebar on the intern thing, I am so
invested in getting interns andturning them on to marketing, or
not, right, I want them toexperience it To feel it, to
feel it, to get a sense of it,to feel it in a corporate
environment Right and alsounderstand all the elements of
what we do.
No-transcript.

So I think it's really important and for the
intern it's just an incredibleexperience, especially for a
game changer like you, to beclose to your team.
Mandy, you've shared powerfulinsight in the past about the
importance of needing to turnoff that little voice of
imposter syndrome that we have,especially within marketing,
where you notice there's a lotof women there, right, A lot of
women work in marketing and it'sone of the more diverse areas

(43:11):
of various technology companies.
And can you recall a specificchallenging instance in your
career where the inner criticwas particularly loud and how'd
you go past it to solve the hardproblem that you had to face?

Yeah, that's a oh, this is.
You ask tough questions, rajiv.
Wow, I think you know.
If I were to sum up kind of allthe years of being a CMO, I
think two things.
Everybody believes that theyknow marketing, and so it's
really easy for them to have anopinion.
I think the flip side of it ishow do you educate and inform in
a respectful, kind way, butfirm way?

(43:46):
That's kind of the compassthrough which I guide this, and
so I worked at companies of allsizes and shapes and so,
depending on where you are anddepending on the audience that
you're dealing with, we're greatpeople, we live in gray area.
This is the art of marketing,like you know.
As far as figuring out a fit tobe in the leadership role, I
contend that you have to be areally good kind of ambivert

(44:06):
thinker.
There's a lot of functions,especially within tech, that are
black or white, and so what youhave to do and when these
situations arise and I'm gettingbetter at it, I'm not perfect
at it, by any stretch of theimagination Someone will come at
you and go hey, blah, blah,blah, that was great, but here's
what could have been.
But I'm like, from yourperspective, I get that what you

(44:28):
don't understand is all ofthese other things that we had
to navigate.
So, once you have that businessto business, kind of peer to
peer conversation with people,and educate them on things that
they didn't know, because theperception of it is A but the
reality of it is B, plus plushere are all the other things
that you didn't understand, thatmight change your thinking as
to why this turned out the wayit did.
So the imposter syndrome hasnow become empowerment syndrome.
It's been the shift that I'vedone over the years because at

(44:50):
first it'd be like oh yeah,they're right.
Shift that I've done over theyears because at first it'd be
like oh yeah, they're right.
Like you know, if they believeit, it must be true Perception
is reality, right, becauseyou're so used to listening.
But great marketers listen,right, we have ear to the ground
, right, but as you get moreconfidence, as you get more
experience, really it's, hey,you have a point.
I'm not going to refute that.
You're, you know, sure, that'syour perspective.
I appreciate you sharing.

(45:11):
Let's have a conversation.
And yeah, if I'm wrong, I'mwrong.
There's no ego in this stuff.
Right, we learn from ourmistakes, we all move on.
But at the end of the day, theimposter has been quieted
because it's like here's thestrategic reason why we had to
do what we did.
And once you explain that,generally the party on the other
side is like okay, I get it,but lesson learned, we won't do
it this way again.

(45:32):
We'll do it this way for X, y,z reasons, right?
So it's not just a you're notgood conversation, it's a.
Here's the circumstancessurrounding.

You're looking at one trunk of the elephant.
I want to let me help youunderstand the whole elephant
and based on that, let's havethat discussion, and so yeah.

I don't want to be defensive about it, but I do
want to share a little moreinformation if appropriate.
And you know let's go have thatadult conversation.
So I think, that's been reallyhelpful.
And as marketers right, we doeducate a lot, because there is
a black box perception of whatwe do too, and so there's kind
of these two ends of thespectrum that we have to work
through.

Oh, well done.
You mentioned in a previousinterview this is going back a
little bit that your secondgrade teacher shortened your
Punjabi name, mandip Dhaliwal,to Mandy yes, and that your
father also played a role inchoosing your last name.

My first.
Well, my middle name lackthereof of a middle name Lack
middle name.

So okay, thank you for that correction, because I
kept asking how did we come upwith this one?
Okay, there's also a story thatwe found out about you growing
up on a raspberry farm.
Yes, and you're the oldest offour.
I have four, so I love that,and, of course, you probably had
to run the berry harvestbecause you're the oldest of

(46:48):
four.
So can you share a little bitabout your background and some
of the shifts that you saw andhow you got to where you are, or
some of the roots of where yougot to where you are?

Yeah, roots, literally, roots right, physical
.
And yeah, I think you know withmy dad, mandeep Kaur Dhaliwal
would have been my name on mybirth certificate.
Kaur or Sikh right.
Kaur means princess, and ifyou're a boy, sing means lion,
right.
No gender bias there whatsoever, right.

(47:16):
And so my dad deliberately leftcore off my birth certificate
and the logic was we don't wantanyone to discriminate against
you for being a female.
I want you to go out and dowhat you want to and be
empowered to go do so, love it.
So that took a lot of theconstraints off of me and so
that thinking was definitelynurtured in me and that was

(47:38):
pivotal in terms of how I showedup in the world.
Just that little, well, biggesture, but conversation with
me to explain why I didn't havea core, because I thought I was
missing something.
No, no, no, you've gainedsomething, right.
So parenting pro tip, like itworked for me hook, line and
sinker.
So I think that was reallyimportant.
Eldest of four, I was the betatest on everything.

You break ground for every notion your parents
have in their mind of how thingsshould go.
You get to be the first one toexperience it.
Go to a high school dance.

Forget it One a year.
Maybe Get a new dress for it.
Get it one a year, maybe get anew dress for it.
Never, right, yeah.
And so now my younger sistersare like hey, isn't that dance
coming up?
Do you want to go shopping?
And I'm like you're welcome.

They're all free riding off of you yeah, which is
fine.

I joke with them all the time, but it shaped me
into who I am today.
Right, and so it's always thehey, you're the role model,
don't let your siblings down,and especially in indian
families.
You know, you definitely setthe pace for all the other kids
in the family, no pressure.
So there was a lot of that kindof thinking and then leadership
.
It was like you're the oldest,you go figure this out and so

(48:42):
you know you kind of.
You know it's bias fraction,you go do and learn.

It's awesome.
And then you have kids too, andI think you took some time off
to truly take care of them andraise them.

I have one.
He's 17.
And so when he was born, I madea deliberate we made a
deliberate choice.
So I would not work.
I didn't want someone elseraising my child, and so I
stayed home with him for thefirst five years of his
existence.
And that was just fundamentallyimportant to me, because I want
to show up in the best way Ican in all areas of my life.

(49:15):
To this day, being a mother isthe most important job in my
life.
I love the career success.
I love everything.
I don't minimize that at all.
At the end of the day, familyfirst, always.
That's how I lead my teams.
To me, it's what matters most.

Right.
It grounds you.
It grounds all of us, I think,who feel that way, and it helps
you give perspective and helps,at least me, relate to others
when I know.
One of the things about doingthese startups that I've done is
I got to spend time.
I could run off and be a coachfor a little while, yes, and I
could coach soccer.
Actually, I coached all four ofmy kids early in soccer.

(49:52):
I wasn't good enough to do thelater stages, but it was fun
doing the little kid stuff, soit was a blast yeah.

Yeah, yeah, yeah .
It's the most rewarding andjust.
I wouldn't trade it for theworld and I didn't miss a beat
in my career either, right.

So it's just like don't basically say I'm going to
take that much time away fromthe normal track and still
reinsert yourself and basicallyaccelerate.
So kudos to you about thinkingabout it that way.
I think it's a great example.
We asked you a historical eventor person that inspires you and
you answered Jose Andres andIndra Nooyi.

(50:35):
So what about them?
Lights you up?

It's the fact that they had the courage to go
chase what they believed.
Chef Andres is a world-renownedchef, didn't have to go start
World Central Kitchen.
He believed in bringing peopletogether through the power of
food and he did it.
Look what he's accomplished inevery major catastrophe in the
world.
He's got a team of peoplecoming together and just doing
fundamental human basics rightGetting them food, getting them

(51:00):
fed, bringing them together.
It doesn't matter what side ofthe fence you're on, it's just
you know food is the greatunifier.
I think with Indra Noody, Ithink just her transparency and
humility in terms of how she gotto amazing career success.
But you know she's got storiesof yeah, I came home after a 16
hour day and my mom's, like you,forgot the milk, right, so
she'd turn around and go getmilk.
And so the humility to be ableto share that, to come out the

(51:23):
other side and now be just anincredible beacon for women in
business and all of us inbusiness as a matter of fact.

She's a true path breaker when it comes to
becoming CEO of a Fortune 50company and how she ran it with
such great strategic capabilityand humility.

Exactly, and just the humanity.
And she still continues to giveback, which is just someone I
really just am in awe of it'soutstanding.

All right, I have a quick set of questions, so
quick Q&A here, more about whatyou're curious about.
So what's something you thoughtyou'd have to?

you have figured out by now, but you're still
completely confused butsometimes I kind of raise an
eyebrow and go why is this sohard for us to do?
I won't go into too much detail, but you know, if you know, you
know one of those things butthere's so many ways you can

(52:21):
structure it.

I think that's the issue right.
Sometimes you go very local,sometimes you centralize, and
it's very situation and companydependent, so I think, yeah,
there's no right answer.
Do you verticalize, globalize?
How do you do this?
And so it's complex.

Yeah, and obviously not in the day-to-day
with these folks.
So I understand their nuance,but my guiding principle to them
is always let's bestrategically aligned and
tactically divergent.
Go out there and do what makessense for you in that situation,
given that you're aligned tothe strategy.
But even despite that,sometimes we misfire.
So it just kind of raises aneyebrow.

And I'm like why is this so basic thing so hard?
That's great, that's a greatone.
What's a question you wishpeople would ask you more often?
And what's a question?

you wish they'd stop asking.
A question I wish they'd askmore often is how do you think
about the business impact ofwhat marketing does?
Because we still have areputation thing.
Just read a McKinsey articleyesterday that's talking about
oh, it's actually reallybeneficial to be a CMO again,
right?
So the pendulum has come backin how we're strategic growth
drivers, and so more of thatconversation, less of the well,

(53:28):
that was a great trade show thatyou guys put on or a great
event you put on, and it's likeno, no, no, no, no, no.
There's way more to it than theoptic, right?
But again, part of that iseducation and it's on us.
But you know, for the amount oftimes that I answer that
question and then try to explainthe significance of it, it'd be
nice to get a little more kindof understanding of that out
there.

That's awesome.
It is about market right.
We've had these arguments aboutit why?
Is this function marketing asopposed to markets right?
So John Miller's talked aboutthis quite a bit at our events.

Yes, yeah, exactly, we're strategic growth
drivers.
Let's have that conversation.

Right, okay, what's a piece of conventional
wisdom that everyone around youaccepts?

but you secretly think might be wrong.
I hate it till you make it.
I hate it, you hate it, I hateit, I hate it.

I'm like I'm not faking anything.

I'm not faking anything.
If you don't know, you don'tknow.
Learn.

Just say it.

Why do you have to fake it?
Like it just it makes me crazy.
Sorry, you've hit a nerve.

What about it?
Tweaks you.
Just the inauthenticity of it,and so to me it fundamentally
doesn't align with who I am as ahuman.
So you feel like if someoneasks you something you don't
know anything about, do youreact by saying I don't know, or
do you go figure it out?
Or how should people thinkabout?

it.
Yeah, I think it's more of a oh, I'd like to dig into something
I've always wanted to dig intoand I haven't had an update.
If you do right and if it'slike no, I don't know anything
about it, don't really care,like.
I don't want to do a scatterplot on pricing, I just like
great, tell me the results, giveme the analysis of it.
I'm not going to go do thatright, it's not, it doesn't fit
with you.
Know who I am as a human?
No, disrespect.

(55:06):
It doesn't make any sense, right?
So say it straight out thewillingness to really understand
who you are as a human Own.
That versus fake what you'renot.

I like that.
If you could have a 30-minuteconversation with any version of
yourself from the past, whatage would you pick and what
would you want to discuss or say?

It would have to be.
When I first moved, it was July4th weekend, 25 years ago to
the day almost.
It was right around this timetime.
I packed up my car, movingtruck had already come and I
moved to Silicon Valley.
So on that road trip here, mymom and my sister were with me.
I think the conversation wouldbe do you realize what this
holds for you Like?

(55:43):
You took it as an adventure, asyou should have, packing up and
leaving, coming to a whole newworld, coming to Silicon Valley.
This is how you have tostructure this in order to come
out the other side.
I think that was probably oneof the biggest bets that I've
ever made in my life.
And here I am.

That's awesome.
You went to the right place.
Do you have a favorite lifemotto that you come back to and
share with your friends, eitherat work or life?

Great friends.
Great food, great wine I loveit.
You can't go wrong with any ofit.

Wow, I like that one.
That's wonderful and we arelucky to have that small wine
fridge behind you to helpemphasize the point.
What's your personal moonshot?

I think it's more bringing others around me
up to where they want to.
That's really you know I saythis to my team a lot Like I am,
who I wanted to be when I grewup.
You know, I'm still hungry, I'mstill fighting, I still want to
go do more, but for me now, thebest kind of fulfillment is how
can I help others get to wherethey want to.

Oh, I love that.
That's so great Building othersup, helping them get to where
you are.

Or wherever they want to.

yeah, yeah nothing gets me more excited.
Final question If you had toteach a masterclass on something
that's not your job, somethingyou're genuinely passionate
about, what would the course becalled?

It has to have a teaming element to it.
You know kind of a placeholderwould be, how to be in it to win
it together.
That's one of the I have Mandyisms, my team knows many of them
, but I think it's thepsychology of you know, teaming
and partnership to drive biggeroutcomes I think would be some
of the focus on course, materialRight, and how do you go do
that in a very tangible way in ahighly complex world?

All right, let's see if we can simplify it.

How do we turn that into a course Chat GPT.

No, we're not going to use those tools.
We've got two good AI mindsright here, so something that
has to be challenging andprovocative grow, scale, make
together.

Yeah, or win, win, win, like I talk about win
cubed, win cubed.
There it is.

Win cubed, build it together.
Mandy, it was such a thrill tohave you on our show today.
I'm so glad you're here with usand it's so much to share, so I
can't wait till we get this outso that we can all share this
with the rest of the grouptogether.
There's so many folks whoaspire to be like you, and thank
you so much.

Thank you, rajiv .
You're a wonderful host.
Wow, what a journey you got meon so many questions, just
amazing.
For the record, this was notscripted or prepped at all.
This is true authenticconversation.
I did not send the questions toMandy ahead of time just so,
you know, yeah, and I loved thatyou did it and it's just this
wonderful conversation, thankyou.

Well, I just knew you'd be great.
You have it down, you're a pro,so I really appreciate it.
I think there's so many greatlessons that you can get from
this conversation with Mandy.
I had the opportunity to sitnext to her at one of the events
we had put together as part ofthe Go-To-Market Leader Society,
and I was just struck about howapproachable, confident and

(58:45):
passionate she was.
She had this depth of calm andunderstanding that really just
came through her, and she has away, as she saw today, of how
she can just present marketingand branding, positioning, scale
and growth in an executive team.
And what really struck me ishow she comes into a company

(59:07):
that's been primarily successfulby promoting itself as a
technology, a pure technologycompany, and then she goes in
and, in a way, humanizes it,makes it more approachable,
builds a stronger, builds anoverall message that then
resonates throughout theorganization.
The messaging then becomes partof the fabric of the being of

(59:27):
the company, becomes a unifyingforce and then gets implemented
in all different ways.
And so she talked about some ofthe great innovation that she's
brought to the company with AI,but really how she enables her
teams to lead and take chancesand risks while working closely
together with her executive andgo-to-market teams her peers.

(59:49):
So it's really it was a treatand taking time off to be a mom,
it's a really interesting pointof view.
For a super successfulexecutive like Mandy, becoming a
master sommelier is actually areally cool way to understand
how she loves to get into depthabout things.
So when she says she doesn'tlike fake it till you make it,
you understand more about whoshe is as a person, and so I

(01:00:12):
really appreciate sharing allthat with you today, and I hope
you enjoyed it as much as I did.
So thanks for listening.
If you enjoyed this pod, pleasetake a moment to rate it and
comment.
You can find us on Apple,spotify, youtube and everywhere
podcasts can be found.
The show is produced by AdamShah and edited by Sean Marr and
Laura Ballant.
I'm your host, rajiv Parikh,from Position Squared, an

(01:00:35):
AI-driven growth marketingcompany based in Silicon Valley.
Come visit us at position2.com.
This has been an effing funnyproduction and we'll catch you
next time.
Remember, folks, be evercurious.

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How a CMO Transforms a SaaS Brand/Mandy Dhaliwal - Nutanix, Team Alignment, Perfect Pairings ~ Spark of Ages Ep 43

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}How a CMO Transforms a SaaS Brand/Mandy Dhaliwal - Nutanix, Team Alignment, Perfect Pairings ~ Spark of Ages Ep 43