- So Sara,
we are here in a bowling alley.
- That's right.
- 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 those 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 Sara Varni
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,
Sara 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 Saywa Vani,
that was my name on the trading...
- Saywa Vani?
- Saywa Vani.
And I learned how to,
work in a super stressful environment.
I learned how to think quickly 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,
not take a lot of crap
'cause that was just-
If you did,
you were just gonna get run over.
But you know, it trained me well.
- Sara, 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'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
showing through right now, live.
- I'm hearing imposter here.
I'm hearing a little imposter.
- Yeah, exactly.
And I sent an email out to the team
and I said,
"I'm so excited to run this product line."
And it was crickets.
- What?
- This is gonna 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 can not wait to get started.
We're gonna do some amazing things."
And, 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.
We'd 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-
- That's right.
- 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
and bowling is one of my guilty pleasures.
So very excited to hit the lines with you today.
- [Franklin] Oh look at that straight oh my God.
- Look at that!
- [Sara] Nice.
- That was so fun.
- Yeah, 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 wanna 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,
kind of being let back into stores
and physical locations
what does that transition back 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.
And so I think like
if you look at the retail space
you're gonna see a lot more of
personal digital shoppers that
you might engage with online
and then 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 gonna downshift a little bit.
I'm gonna go to enterprise software."
Thinking that would be a downshift.
And I don't think it's even a comparison.
I mean, that's equally like
even a faster pace environment
I had the good benefit of also working at Salesforce
for a number of years
and that was a great experience.
- We had some fun times.
- We definitely have.
Sarah and I basically like grew up
in the mail room of Salesforce together.
But I 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,
"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, I just said my one piece of advice."
I'm like, well, great
now I'm, you know, I'm running
marketing for this company, this is gonna be hard.
But I think there's a lot of,
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.
And 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,
WhatsApp's 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 have to make sure that we're servicing
the right documentation,
that we're servicing the right content
and not just trying to move them onto 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 plus at your job
just being responsive
but you're not necessarily gonna put up innovation.
- We don't do B plus.
- Yeah, we don't B plus.
- We're like A plus.
- A plus with bonus points.
- Exactly.
And to do that,
I think you've got to be really deliberate
about how you're gonna spend your time
or else, you know,
you're gonna be consumed by
everyone else's requests.
And at the end of the year,
you're gonna look back and say,
"Well, what did I really do
that's meaningful in a 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 it Twilio.
- We have a value at Twilio 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 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 timeframe 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 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
rowing in the same direction.
- You mentioned your husband Vick.
How are you balancing all of that
and being a mom of 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 the same.
You have to pick and choose
I think in my opinion,
and you know,
my kids are never gonna be the kids
that have like the perfect
monogrammed outfit
in the perfect bow on every night.
I'm lucky if they have socks on and like-
but I think it's just a matter of prioritization.
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
sock drawers their whole life or whatever it is.
Every Sunday I block two hours
and I just plan my week.
I've gone into like meal planning and 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.
- [Sara] No.
- You've talked about 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 for my son
that he's autistic.
I was really hesitant to talk about it
for a long time just because
I didn't want him to be
labeled
and kids go through so much as it is.
And I also just didn't want to be like
a poser.
I just didn't like
want it to be for my own attention.
- Yeah.
- 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.
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 about
my son's condition
and the outreach 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.
Do you ever find that?
Are you scared?
- Absolutely.
I mean, I think that that's always
part of being a leader is
you kind of have to take that step forward
and you don't know
if people are following you or not.
- And you're like are you there?
- 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 a whole story behind
how you got to where you are.
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