This content was created by GHION.AI . This content was uploaded by GHION.AI . This is a YouTube video titled "Risk a 'No'" featuring Shellye Archambeau discussing her career move to Silicon Valley, where she negotiated for a broader role and the relocation of her assistant. The conversation highlights the importance of asking for what you want, even at the risk of receiving a 'no'.
Chapters
Here I am in Dallas, Texas. I'm at Blockbuster and I'm trying to get to Silicon Valley. So I have an opportunity for the chief marketing officer role at a company called NorthPointe. NorthPointe was back when you did high speed Internet, one of the first DSL lines, et cetera. So they wanted, I'm not. Sorry, they're not chief marketing officer. They wanted EVP of sales, so they wanted EVP of sales. And I was like, okay, right, This I can do. Company's exciting, the whole bit. Benchmark capital, lots of good people in terms of around it. But I asked them, how are you going to measure success? When I'm talking to the CEO, how are you going to measure success of this role? And what she said was, it was a she, she said, I want growth, right? So grow revenue, grow lines, etc. And we need to improve our cost of sale. We need to get more efficient. Said, okay, if that's what you want to do, then I have to have marketing as well. And she goes, well, we already have marketing people. And I said, I understand that, but if you want not just growth, but you also want to optimize the cost of sale, marketing plays a key role in that and I need to have both. Well, they gave me both. So I became the EVP of sales and the chief Marketing officer. But it didn't stop there because then I said, okay. They came back to me and said, great, you now have the roles. Here's the comp, here's this, right? I said, yes. I just need one more thing. You need me to be successful quickly because the market is moving so fast. The best way I can do that is I need to bring my assistant with me because she absolutely enables me to optimize my work, myself and my schedule, et cetera. Right. So bottom line is not only did they move me and my family and give me a job twice as broad as they initially planned, but they moved my assistant and her family from Texas to Silicon Valley.
Fabulous. I think a really interesting lesson in there is a being really clear about what you do want, like actually being thoughtful beforehand and being willing to ask for it.
Right.
I mean, they might have said no and it might have been a not yet situation, but if you didn't ask, you were never going to know whether that was possible.
Exactly right. And that's what I tell people. If you aren't getting no's, you're not asking for enough. So it's okay to get a no. If they have told me no, well, that would have been no different than if I never asked them in the first place.
