Imposter Syndrome Doesn’t Stop at the Top | Connections Ep 1 | Salesforce

So, Sarah, we are here in a bowling alley.

That's right.

Because we know that you are a very good bowler.

True.

Hey, I'm Sarah Franklin and welcome to Connections. 24 years ago I applied to 14 companies and they all told me the same thing.

No.

But I didn't give up. And today I'm the president and Chief Marketing officer at Salesforce. So that's why I want to go on a journey to make the connections with some of the best marketers around. Because just like I didn't give up 24 years ago, I know they've got their own journeys too. My guest today is Sarah Varney, who I've known for over a decade. She's now the CMO of Twilio. We'll talk about what digital acceleration looks like at Twilio and the importance of authentic marketing. As a successful executive who's thrived in a male dominated arenas in tech and on Wall Street, Sarah has some profound and actionable insights on recognizing your self worth.

Out of college, I ended up in a training program to be an equities trader on a NASDAQ trading desk in Jersey City, New Jersey. People would call me Sehuavani. That was my name on the tradehuavani. And I learned how to work in a super stressful environment. I learned how to think on my feet. I learned to work with all different types of personalities. And yeah, it was tough as a female for sure. I was one of the only female traders on the desk. I had to really speak up and learn how to lean in and learn how to, you know, not take a lot of crap because that was just if you, if you did, you were just going to get run over. But you know, it trained me well.

Sarah, we both know that imposter syndrome, it doesn't stop at the top, right? What does that look like for you?

I think at every stage in the game you've got to reassure yourself that you're in the role that you're in for a reason and you know, you've got to push forward. I always tell the story in my career I was appointed to a role and it was a big role. And I don't think that people were expecting me to. I was just kind of not in the candidate pool. I don't think people were thinking that I was gonna get it. Maybe this is my imposter syndrome throwing through right now lives.

I'm hearing imposter here. I'm hearing a little imposter.

Exactly. And I sent an email out to the team and I said, you know, I'm so excited to run this product line. And it was crickets. What? This is going to be awesome. Like, I'm really glad that I've left my comfortable role to take this role. I responded to the group. I said, thanks for the warm welcome. I cannot wait to get started. We're going to do some amazing things. And, you know, over the course of the next, like, six months or so, I just really worked closely with them to make sure that we were putting some wins on the board. And over time, we built an amazing team. We had some great, amazing wins and projects, but we never would have done that if I had not been confident to take that first step forward.

Yeah. Good for you. Well, speaking of imposter syndrome and needing to remind yourself what you're good at, we are here in a bowling alley because, you know, there's this thing called social media, and you may or may not have, like, put some tweets out there, like, I think bragging rights about your, you know, bowling capabilities.

So, yeah, I'm super excited that bowling is one of my guilty pleasures. So I'm very excited to hit the lanes for you today.

That was so fun.

I told you, bowling's always a great time.

It is so fun, and, like, you know, you're way better, but that's okay. My imposter syndrome is channeled. I'm okay. So what themes are really important for you right now at Twilio?

Well, I think through Covid, we've learned a tremendous amount about how people want to engage digitally. The average customer accelerated their digital roadmap by six years, and I think we're seeing a lot of trends when it comes to the move from physical to digital. And now that we're, you know, kind of being let back into stores and physical locations, what does that transition back to look like? When I boil it all down, it's all about building meaningful connections and customer engagement at scale. We hear that from real estate companies, we hear that from retailers. We hear that from healthcare, and, you know, so across the board, we're really trying to determine new ways that we can really empower our customers to do that. So I think, like, if you look at the retail space, you're gonna see a lot more of personal digital shoppers that, you know, you might meet, you might engage with online, and then, you know, you come to the store to actually pick up your stuff, and, you know, then you've got this opportunity to upsell and cross sell that person who actually comes into the store. And so I think a lot of people are thinking through all these dynamics as we're being able to return to a more pre Covid world.

What has that been like at Twilio? Being in a technical world with developers talking about APIs, what's that like? As a woman?

It went from being on a trading floor. I'm like, you know what, I'm going to downshift a little bit. I'm going to go into enterprise software thinking that would be a downturn and I don't think it's even a comparison. I mean that's like even a faster paced environment. I had the good benefit of also working at Salesforce for a number of years and that was a great.

We've had some fun times.

We definitely have. Sarah and I basically like grew up in the mailroom of Salesforce together, so. But learned a ton there. And then, you know, going to Twilio, it was so exciting to be able to do that again. One of my former bosses used to say, you know, the rule number one of marketing to developers is don't market to developers.

That's a tough job when your job is marketing.

Yeah, exactly. I was going to Twilio and he's like, yeah, just my one piece of advice. I'm like, well, great. Now I'm running marketing for this company. This is gonna be hard. But I think there's a lot to be learned from that statement because I just think developers are at the heart of it. They're people too. And that advice is good for whoever you're marketing to. People don't wanna be sold to. People want marketing that connects with them, that is authentic. But in general, I just think that that's good marketing best practice.

How do you think that authenticity goes in with everything you're doing, whether it's connecting with your customers or your developers or with your team From a customer.

Perspective, that's really at the crux of what Twilio wants to do. We want to empower developers across the globe to really build meaningful connections with their customers. At scale, that's a mix of a bunch of different things. It's making sure that you're talking to them on the channel they want to be spoken to. If they're in Europe, you know, WhatsApp is going to be critical. If you're doing something that's time sensitive, you probably are going to want to do it on, you know, SMS versus emails. And then I think it's really about the content. You know, I've talked about this, we've talked about this a lot. Authentic marketing is really earning the right to speak with your customers and delivering content that prioritizes their needs above your company or your products needs. So at Twilio, when we see developers kind of going through a certain process, we want to make sure that we're surfacing the right documentation, that we're servicing the right content and not just trying to move them on to like the next product webinar, to cross sell them some other product. Helping, not selling. That's really a mantra that we try to live day in and day out.

All right, so unpack this for me. It's something you said, which is if you don't build your own roadmap, you're gonna be part of someone else's.

A lot of marketing organizations can act as service organizations and in that mode you're just gonna be reactive to your inbox and you can do a fine job doing that. You can probably get a B at your job just being responsive, but you're not necessarily gonna put up innovation. We don't do B. Yeah, we don't do B.

We're like a bonus point.

Exactly. And to do that I think you've gotta be really deliberate about how you're gonna spend your time or else you're going to be consumed by everyone else's requests. And at the end of the year you're going to look back and say, well, what did I really do that's meaningful in the year I basically served a bunch of other projects and didn't put up innovation for our marketing team and really move the ball forward.

And something I love have always admired about you is that you always come with a smile and a creative idea. Share a little bit about that, like how important it is to have that marketing vision. Especially when you're going through these high growth, high scale moments like you've done at Twilio.

We have a value at Twilio that, that I really try to espouse every day. And it's write it down. And I think when you're in these hyper growth modes, it's so critical to be crystal clear about what your priorities are and why they are the priorities that they are. And then just to be a broken record, you know me, like every quarter I like, you know, people get sick of me, but I.

Who can get sick of you?

Come on, don't say that to me. Have you talked to my husband? But you know, I think it's just super critical because you're moving so fast. Everyone assumes that everyone knows what everyone else is, is doing. So I just Think it's super critical to be crystal clear on what you want to achieve and to be clear about the time frame of that. I have this exercise where I really like people to write quarterly reports or monthly reports on what they're doing. And I think people on my team sometimes think it's about managing up and oh, you know, like, I'm like, sure, there's part of that and I want visibility. And it's harder as we grow quickly to like, know what everyone's doing in every pocket of the team. But at the end of the day, it's really about getting that person to see sweat, having to write up for a large group of people what they've actually done and to be thinking about the metrics and to be accountable. And so I've found, especially in fast growing environments, that that's super key to make sure everyone's growing in the same direction.

You mentioned your husband, Vic. How are you balancing all of that and being a mom of, you know, three children?

There's always like the Instagram story and then there's the behind the scenes story, right?

They're the same, right?

Totally the same. Exactly. His name. You have to pick and choose, I think, in my opinion. And you know, my kids are never going to be the kids that have like the perfect monogrammed outfit and the perfect bow and they, you know, I'm lucky if they have socks on and like. But I think it's just a matter of prioritization and I would much rather my child remember me for being on the side of their, you know, the sideline of their soccer game than like them having like perfectly organized, you know, sock drawers their whole life or whatever it is. Every Sunday I block two hours and I just plan my week and I've gotten into like, meal planning and date. You know, I've never been that person, but I think just doing that up front has really helped me stay organized and just feel like I'm more in control and just more deliberate about how I spend my time.

Apologies if this is too personal, but you've talked about, you know, Parker, your son, and how he's your hero. Can you share a little bit about how he has inspired you?

Yeah, absolutely. So right after I started my job at Twilio, we got a formal diagnosis from my son that he's autistic. You know, I was really hesitant to talk about it for a long time just because I didn't want him to be labeled and I didn't want, you know, kids go through so much as it is. And I also just didn't want to be, like, a poser. I know it sounds weird, but I just didn't, like, want it to be for my own attention. You know, over time, I just started to realize that getting him the really specific help that he needed was better than trying to just, like, push him into some normal environment and hope that, like, he'd pick up on these other things. But it was really hard. You know, at the end of the day, I am so lucky that I am Parker's mom. Every day, he opens my eyes to new ways of thinking. He makes me so much more empathetic to all different approaches to life. And my advice is just to be more open about it. I've been posting on Twitter more about my son's condition, and the outreach that I've gotten back has just been really amazing. And people are just. They're like, I have an autistic son, too. I'd love to talk to you.

Connections are so important. And as a leader, not just being the leader, but being the person that is authentically you and bringing your truth out there, whether it's being on the trading room floor or being a tech CMO or being the mother of an autistic child. And thank you so much for sharing that so authentically with everyone, because a lot of people are scared. Like, do you ever find that? Are you scared?

Absolutely. I mean, I think that that's always, you know, part of being a leader is, you know, you kind of have to take that step forward and you don't know if people are following you or not. You're like, you know, and you just have to, like, stick to your guns and trust your instinct and remember that you're in your position for a reason. And there is the whole story behind how you got to where you are.

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