Rajiv Parikh: 0:05

Welcome to the Spark of Ages podcast. Today, we're thrilled to be speaking with Mandy Dhaliwal, the Chief Marketing Officer at Nutanix. Mandy is not just a marketing leader. She's a pedigreed technology executive with over 25 years experience in cloud and software markets. As the Chief Marketing Officer for Nutanix, the industry-leading hybrid multi-cloud platform, mandy leads the global marketing strategy that accelerates the adoption of Nutanix's software solutions. She leverages her expertise in enterprise B2B product marketing, demand generation, brand strategy and customer advocacy to drive growth and innovation for Nutanix. She's been a key leader in Nutanix's remarkable progress, contemplating its market value from roughly $5 billion to $20 billion, proving that marketing branding positioning has a strong hand in driving valuation and growth. Before joining Nutanix, dhaliwal held the CMO position at Boomi and Fugue, and she also has been a senior marketing leader at Blazemeter, soasta, emc and Legato Systems.

Rajiv Parikh: 1:14

Mandy attended Simon Fraser University for her undergrad and holds an MBA in technology management from Pepperdine University and, notably, a level two certification from the court of master sommeliers. Some of the key takeaways you can expect from this episode practical strategies for how businesses can effectively democratize AI across their enterprise. Mandy's philosophy on cultivating talent from within the organization. The importance of cross-training employees across all marketing functions. How Mandy has transformed Nutanix's brand to be more credible, relatable, helpful and charismatic. And finally, the incredible journey Mandy has been on from her family's raspberry farm to become a professional sommelier and how that's developed Mandy's impeccable taste. Mandy, welcome to the Spark of Ages.

Mandy Dhaliwal: 2:03

Wow, rajiv. Thank you, Super excited to be here.

Rajiv Parikh: 2:06

Yeah, so glad to have you. You and I have met at a number of 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'm so glad that you could make the time.

Mandy Dhaliwal: 2:18

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

Rajiv Parikh: 2:31

Yeah, great community, so thanks. So, mandy, you've mentioned that Nutanix simplifies AI deployments, and a common question from enterprises is where do I start? And, given that many companies might feel overwhelmed, how does Nutanix demystify the AI journey for businesses?

Mandy Dhaliwal: 2:49

Yeah, great question. Thank you, Rajiv. Really, you know kind of first point, right, we're all learning as we go, right, and the space is evolving more quickly than anything has ever evolved in our lifetimes, right, and we are in technology, we're dynamic people, and so what we deliver is AI-ready infrastructure. There's a lot of gotchas in this world of AI, a lot of unknowns. As I mentioned, we're all learning as we go, but there's the hardware layer and then there's a software layer that needs to sit on top of all of that hardware to be able to deploy your AI, and so we like to think of ourselves as the trusted partner for AI-ready infrastructure, so we actually activate it and help you get done what you need to in a secure and a compliant and a data-friendly way from a sovereignty perspective as well as from a manageability across an organizational blueprint. You've got silos and organizations that are running various AI. We become that layer that unifies all of the AI across the organization when deployed correctly.

Rajiv Parikh: 3:45

That's terrific. I mean, it's one of those things as a marketing leader to come in. The company is a pretty technical company it still is and you came in and you had to make that message approachable right as part of them building solutions. So we're going to get into a lot of that. This is one of the exciting parts. And so, from your perspective as CMO, how do you see agentic AI directly transforming marketing productivity and strategy development within enterprises, not just IT operations? Are there specific agentic use cases that Nutanix is exploring or advocating for internal marketing teams or for your customers' marketing functions?

Mandy Dhaliwal: 4:22

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

Rajiv Parikh: 4:39

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

Mandy Dhaliwal: 4:44

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, you know the right levels of data usage and messaging, and you know, kind of, all the nuances that we have with humans. Right Now, we've got machines as well, right, and so I look at this as one more constituency that we have to manage as marketers. Our jobs aren't going away. They just got even more complex, right. They're going to change.

Rajiv Parikh: 5:11

Absolutely, absolutely.

Mandy Dhaliwal: 5:12

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

Rajiv Parikh: 5:29

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

Mandy Dhaliwal: 5:51

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

Rajiv Parikh: 5:53

Yes, Nyla is on our website?

Mandy Dhaliwal: 5:53

Yes, right, and we're running it as a pilot. We have an existing technology on 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're looking at. Someone comes into the site. Are they looking for an answer? Do they want to know how to deploy something in a very specific use case? Are they looking for a test license? Are they looking for a desk drive? Are they wanting to learn a little bit more about a capability that we've got?

Mandy Dhaliwal: 6:18

So we have a first line on our 24 by seven storefront, effectively working all the time to interact with our customers, and we're seeing early returns. We're getting traffic from APJ that we normally weren't able to interact with because of time zone issues. So we're on again 24 by 7, the depth of the conversations, the ability to pass leads to sales warmed up, leads to SDRs and AEs faster. All of that is already happening on our site and I couldn't be more excited, and we're in deep learning mode. It's by no mean hardened, but I am very pleased, but not yet satisfied in terms of how we're progressing on it, and this has all happened in the last two weeks.

Rajiv Parikh: 6:55

I think it's amazing and when you put it out, then you start to realize a couple of things. We have a similar thing that we just put up on our website. My team put something together. It doesn't have the face, but it's conversational. I was like, wow, this person's remarkable. This agent is remarkably sophisticated in terms of how it talks about our messaging and our capabilities, but it makes mistakes. It's a great time to actually hone your messaging and see how people react to it. It's a wonderful way you have your SDRs who are doing this and I'm sure you get data from all that, but this is a great way for you guys to see it. In many cases, the first touch.

Mandy Dhaliwal: 7:27

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

Rajiv Parikh: 7:50

Yeah, and I think this gets to one of the things you've mentioned in previous discussions or previous podcasts, where you made the prediction that websites may not even be needed in the next five years due to generative AI. Given Nutanix's and your focus on leveraging digital tools and personalization, how would you reimagine this future, where what we think of as traditional digital marketing channels may diminish and there's new paradigms for customer engagement and content delivery? When I go to the Nutanix site or engage with Nutanix, am I just going to get this agent in front of me, potentially, and it's personalized to conversations I had before or where I'm coming from or who I might be part of. Is that part of what you'd see? Or you have something? I'm sure you have something bigger in mind.

Mandy Dhaliwal: 8:31

I've got some big visions for this, but I think, initially right, we have to show ROI and show value and I think, from that first engagement, if we can start to accelerate value for the customer, right and one of the cornerstones of who we are as a company, it's all about the relationship and the trust we built with our customers and prospects. So for me, all due respect to marketing and those that have come before us and everything that we've done, but at the end of the day, right, if I can save three sales calls and get a customer an answer, think about what that does to the buyer journey, to the adoption of our technology in the market, as well as the specificity and the authenticity with which we can communicate our value prop, the consistency as well. I am maniacal, maniacal.

Rajiv Parikh: 9:10

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

Mandy Dhaliwal: 9:20

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

Rajiv Parikh: 9:24

So now, as part of this, are you getting? Is this something that you're feeding into a key leader in your organization? Are you getting like a summary update of it? As it goes, how do you look at it?

Mandy Dhaliwal: 9:36

team and I just shared it with our head of product Friday right and so and a verbal, not an update yet, but we will put together a mechanism where it goes out to the go-to-market leadership team, so our head of alliances as well as channels, as well as our chief revenue officer and our head of product and head of customer experience. So if we're all aligned as far as what's top of mind for the traffic that's coming into our site, that is a very important vector for how we change our narrative when we're out there talking to customers, as well as sharing in forums like this and in other forums that we invest in.

Rajiv Parikh: 10:12

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

Mandy Dhaliwal: 10:15

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

Rajiv Parikh: 10:19

So now, one of the things you're passionate about is customer advocacy, right. And delivering an exceptional customer experience. So, beyond your traditional testimonial and case study, how does Nutanix systematically capture and infuse authentic, verbatim voice of its customers, their challenges, their phrasing, pithy explanations, into your core product marketing materials?

Mandy Dhaliwal: 10:43

I love this question. So we just came off of our user conferencenext. It happened in May in Washington DC. We had customers and voices of, real voices of customers speaking with other customers and prospects throughout that entire conference. That's really what it was right. It was a showcase. Everything from main stage keynotes to the demos. Those were real customer use cases. Breakout sessions were customer led. Even in some of our EVCs we had customers explaining how they were deploying the use cases or migrating off of one of our competitors to us and the ease at which that was happening. So, rather than us tell the world about how great our technology is, my preference and bias is to have the users and the real live case studies and testaments really be activated there in those forums. So that one-to-one or one-to-few conversation is critically important and again, it just symbolizes who we are as an organization.

Rajiv Parikh: 11:36

Is this one like. I think you had what? 5,000 people there and you were doing this at a time where people were a little reluctant to come to the US, so you pulled this huge event together. This is something that, prior to you coming on, it probably was nothing like this, and then you had it, I think, in multiple layers. Right, you had customers, partners, prospects. I think there was a whole layering that you had for it to make it truly meaningful for the whole company.

Mandy Dhaliwal: 12:02

Yeah, it's a Rubik's Cube that you have to line up right. And it's a Rubik's cube that you have to line up right and it's a master class in cross-functional collaboration is what this thing is now as a product, and it's also the kickoff of our strategy for the year. Right, we're in Q4 right now. Q1 start new fiscal starts August 1st, and so we've lined up the material that we had at next and the announcements get enabled to the Salesforce. My teams are building campaigns and then we add, we layer in innovation as we go throughout the year.

Mandy Dhaliwal: 12:29

But it's become a tentpole moment for us from a business strategy standpoint and, to be fair, this conference was happening way before I got here. It was just a very different format and we as a company have matured as well. So there was a lot of innovation that was released. There was customers on stage it was all the things that you would expect in a conference but the knitting together of it and the alignment and the partner stories and particularly the channel. We had over 1500 folks represented from our distribution networks at this event, and so there were separate summits for them. So the lift is massive, but the ROI is even more correspondingly massive.

Rajiv Parikh: 13:03

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

Mandy Dhaliwal: 13:08

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

Rajiv Parikh: 13:30

That's great. And so you said 100 EBCs right Executive Briefing. Councils or conferences, and so how do you get your executives prepped for that? How do you make sure they're ready to go? Because everybody's got a million things going on at once. Basically, all the attention turns to what marketing is leading.

Mandy Dhaliwal: 13:50

Yes, yeah, it's a lot of coordination right. I've got a very strong customer marketing team that works through that and they're trained. They do this year round all over the world. We do onsite, offsite, you name it. We go to customers so that muscle is honed. The account executives are very well-versed in how these things happen. And then us as executive sponsors go in and we get briefings. So I have a binder that's probably two inches thick that I am immersed in, especially on that flight over to the conference.

Mandy Dhaliwal: 14:19

We're looking at folks that are attending our leadership exchange. We have bios on them, topics that are of importance to them, the EBCs that we're attending. We as exec sponsors understand what the issues are. We spend time with the customers, kind of pre and post as well, in addition to our speaking duties on main stage and all the other things that we're doing. So it's a massive coordination effort. It takes three to four months of consistent effort across a vast group of people in order to go pull it off, but the alignment and the coordination that it gives us, especially from the CEO all the way through to the selling organizations, is tremendous. And then we take a couple of weeks off and cool our jets because it's a lot.

Rajiv Parikh: 14:56

It's a lot going on right. I mean that's huge. It's huge. Someone that's common in our networks, udi Ledergore, right, he's been on this show before and he talks about the notion of courageous marketing. And in talking about courageous marketing, it's about enabling your team to feel some form of emotional, psychological safety so they can take real swings. And you've talked about it in terms of real innovation is about changing the recipe when the world needs it most. So how do you foster that culture of taking bold swings, unconventional wisdom, to disrupt how traditional enterprise B2B marketing is done today, rather than just competing on the existing terms? So do you have some specific examples of a marketing initiative your team took to change that recipe and surprise the market?

Mandy Dhaliwal: 15:42

Yeah, absolutely. I think from the moment I got here and got a bit of a you know, experience in doing that and driving transformations, I've become that marketing leader and business executive. But really for us, right, we were very much a technology out to the world, value prop, kind of company, right, quite of ownership, amazing you know. And hyper-converged infrastructure that was our 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 talking about data centers and we have pictures of hardware on all of our LinkedIn's all over the world. Every region again me outside looking 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 go activate it. Let's build the tooling and let's unleash.

Rajiv Parikh: 16:26

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

Mandy Dhaliwal: 16:49

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

Rajiv Parikh: 17:09

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

Mandy Dhaliwal: 17:12

What is that? And so we have work to do to turn this into something that's plain English, that speaks to value and also a problem, and so the work began in earnest to start to position the company. Yes, hyperconverge is who we are. That is the foundation of the technology we've built, but now we've innovated above it. We have interlocks into cloud. We can run at the edge, you can run anywhere right, and that's something I'll put a footnote in that.

Mandy Dhaliwal: 17:37

But really the story on the hybrid multi-cloud was let's put something in plain English that people understand we're one platform to run apps and data anywhere An app, any app, your apps on-prem, your apps in the cloud, your apps at the edge, anywhere same thing, all of those places. Let's start there and let's talk about why this matters, because in IT, the world is increasingly complex, simplicity matters. You need a platform that can handle all of this to securely govern, as well as to be able to manage and run your most critical business functions. We're the underpinning of how modern businesses run. Let's go tell that story.

Mandy Dhaliwal: 18:13

And so, all of a sudden, the narrative changed and I had 7,000 people in the company that we activated. We enabled everybody to tell the story because, as a challenger brand, I can't market my way out of this. I need to influence my way. And so talk about bold. You have to sell internally to get people to buy it, and then they advocate for you. So we turned on evangelists and we enabled them with the right material. So that happened and we were known as a hybrid multi-cloud leader. Gartner puts out an MQ. We show up as a challenger. Year one, year two we're a leader. These are long tail things. It's not magic wand.

Rajiv Parikh: 18:47

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

Mandy Dhaliwal: 19:04

We came in with that. We've always been a competitor to VMware. But when we went distributed, when you go hybrid, multi-cloud there's partnerships with the cloud vendors and all of a sudden you've got a whole new group of companies that you're partnering with and competing with. So now we show up in this MQ alongside of Azure, aws, google right, we're in there with these behemoths. We're the smallest company in the leader quadrant, but as a brand, we're a challenger, and that was the other thing. Speaking of Bolt, we looked. Our colors were blue and green when I got here, and you know, it's a kiss of death for CMOs to go in and start changing color, because that means you don't have 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.

Rajiv Parikh: 19:46

Either they change the name or they change the color.

Mandy Dhaliwal: 19:48

Yeah, we're not doing that I started with the narrative but at the same time I'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 must be purple. I'm like, actually, no, it green. But I'm moving from the green because the business logic for why we need to is because our dollars will go further if we actually can stand out and be bold in the market.

Mandy Dhaliwal: 20:12

So the X, the rebranding, all of it that took a year. Right, that first dot. Next, that we did in Chicago, coming out of the pandemic. That's where we unveiled the brand quietly. There was no fanfare at all. By design, let's focus on the message. And then, oh, by the way, the swag is really cool. The swag sold out the first day. Right, that's right. And so again, you unleash your ambassadors. So, very different strategy. It's not a look at us, it's a look at what we enable, here's what we do. Very different strategy. It's not a look at us, it's a look 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 into our own storage and we have interoperability and we offer choice, but we needed to open up our storage capabilities to be able to go out there Truly be hybrid.

Rajiv Parikh: 20:57

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

Mandy Dhaliwal: 21:03

And competitively, and so we announced a partnership with Dell. We just announced a partnership with Pure right, and so the journey continues. So I shared this with my team. Going back to your question around 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 a bigger story, Given that we acquired a new technology? We acquired a company called D2IQ that has cloud native capabilities, so we've added cloud native into our platform. So we're the platform that can run virtualized and containerized workloads all on one platform. Nobody else does that the way we do, and we've added all these external storage options. So what does that say? This is now, yeah, it's still the one platform, but that's a very utilitarian message. That was a crawl walk, run right. That was the walk, the run, now literally the run. The theme for this year's conference was run anything anywhere.

Rajiv Parikh: 21:51

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

Mandy Dhaliwal: 22:00

Yeah, and so that became the theme and all of a sudden, right talk about message pull through and the press and the analysts and the conference and the partners and everybody's like, oh we get it now. We didn't mention HCI, although that is the core. It's about speaking the customer's language and showing them very quickly owning real estate in their brain on who we are and what the capability is. So that's all the logic. So the boldness and my team's walking around with you know just the most amazing pride of ownership. 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, the material has been great, just everything was well thought through and that took the entire organization. We're the tip of the spear that made it happen With us was not just us, but the team made it happen. So that's how you lead teams into victory.

Rajiv Parikh: 22:47

And this is great, because when you talk about go-to-market, a lot of times marketing and sales are at odds with each other. Marketing sometimes is tasked with taking care of the lead generation and sales does the pull through. But really you're looking at what the market looks like and you're coming up with the messaging for it. But to make it work, as you talk about, there's this integration with marketing, sales, customer success, product. It's really all of it working together. So how do you help structure your go-to-market team so that you have seamless alignment, shared revenue goals. You talked about being a challenger brand, moving from a challenger brand to the leader. How do you drive that in every customer interaction?

Mandy Dhaliwal: 23:30

That's a big question. There's a lot there. We could probably spend an hour just talking through that, but I think big brushstrokes. I think at the core, the leadership team has to be aligned. So us as leaders, within the go-to-market functions, across sales, customer success, product and alliances big component for us we all have a meeting of the minds we align with, obviously, our CEO and CFO as well, and so we as a leadership team spend a lot of time together talking about where we're taking the business.

Mandy Dhaliwal: 23:57

So you won't hear me talking about how awesome marketing is. I talk about how awesome our business results are, because that's my first team. I sit at that business level. Then I come back to my team and share with them how we're going to run in order to fulfill the needs of the business. So we all operate like that. We know that we're harvesting certain aspects of our portfolio and we're seeding others. That's the business strategy and we're seeding others. That's the business strategy. So we align there and we have an incredibly strong strategy team as well, and so the inner workings of how we operate and how we structure start there.

Mandy Dhaliwal: 24:25

Within marketing in particular, I've got a glue team, is what I call them the go-to-market strategy and integrated marketing team. They are the glue. So product marketing obviously sits closer to sales, and the technical sales teams right, demand generation fields, et cetera. And then you got the corporate marketing team that's doing kind of the overlay. Within our global marketing team we have a group of people that are integrated marketing and programs.

Mandy Dhaliwal: 24:48

So they're building the calendar for the year. They're enabling the entire function of go-to-market, so they're sharing with alliances. We're looking at events that we're showing up with. We're looking at go-to-market programs that we're running with partners. We're looking at enabling the sales organization for what the campaigns and programs are that we're launching. Also tying to tentpole moments right, go play bigger. Aligning all of that to make sure that everybody understands what's today, what the messages, what the campaigns are, what's coming down the pike and what the enablement tracks look like. And so we operate six to 12 months in the future. Sales is operating within the 90 day cycle and beyond, but we start to really wrap kind of the train. Schedule is how I think about it.

Rajiv Parikh: 25:31

Are you presenting together? Are you when you're talking about 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 to drive those closes. Are you coming in as one when you're presenting to the board or is it kind of coordinating the message before? How do you do that? Because I've seen so many times where, because the head of marketing doesn't own the customer relationship or the prospect relationship, fingers get pointed at them and they tend to be the first to go right.

Rajiv Parikh: 26:05

And it's tough, because it's really an interaction that you must drive together.

Mandy Dhaliwal: 26:11

Yeah, it's very interesting that you call that out and, yes, I've lived and seen that as well, right, because when sales aren't going well, marketers are where the inspection happens, as well as with the sales. But to answer your first question, yes, we present as a unit, right, and so we just had a, you know, two days of board strategy and board meetings a couple of weeks ago, and so we presented, amongst our chief commercial officer, me, our chief revenue officer, our head of customer experience, and we all chime in, and so the feedback we get from our board is the management team and the alignment is getting better and better, and so I think that's really important. That's again, that's modern day business. I don't sit on a silo that is an MQL generating machine, right, we don't do that. We talk about sourcing and influencing and touches to progress pipe, and so we're in it.

Mandy Dhaliwal: 26:55

To win it together is the mantra, and that's how we like to operate. The KPIs show up and we're able to go in and course correct. Not everything's perfect obviously never is but you're able to go in and have meaningful business conversations at the regional level, at the theater level, in terms of where we need to turn on, more or less. I've got leaders within my organization that map directly one-to-one with on the alliances side as well as on the sales side. So we have a finger on the pulse of what needs to be done and we work with the sales organization to be able to go drive the revenue that's fantastic.

Rajiv Parikh: 27:27

Okay, before we go to the game, I have one question, and that is you've had a definition of an all-star CMO and it's arming internal thought leaders and the leadership as channels themselves. So I think it's interesting to say this, I want to say it again Arming internal thought leaders and the leadership as channels themselves. So how do you at Nutanix operationalize that process of identifying, nurturing, empowering your own technical experts, engineers, product leaders to become go-to-market evangelists, not just through traditional thought leadership, but by actively integrating them together in customer-facing, go-to-market motions.

Mandy Dhaliwal: 28:03

All of the above and I love how you've characterized it Chief AI officer, who is arguably one of the biggest brains on AI, especially within our space. We've got a CTO. They're regularly on stage at events, at C-level events that we sponsor or that we initiate. They're on stage at our big shows, at our on tours. Our head of product, our head of sales engineering All of these folks are part of their assets. For me, as a marketing leader, is how I think about it. Our CEO he's our main spokesperson 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 be human about it, but let's go.

Rajiv Parikh: 28:43

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

Mandy Dhaliwal: 28:46

It does play Right right, it's so important, and so that is something we've become known for and it's all the conversation within the thought leadership angle is how do we go make this happen? How do we go tell those customer stories? So within Rajiv's keynote this year at NEXT in DC, we had three customer stories. We had Tractor Supply, we had Moody's and we had the US Navy. They had 10 minutes each. I'm sorry we had Micron on video because Micron wasn't able to come. So all of these customers had prominence in a 90-minute keynote.

Mandy Dhaliwal: 29:16

Half of Rajiv's keynote was customer and partner voices, and so what happened in that room? People loved because the customers got to go show their stories. So this is Rajiv's story that he's out in DC after the conferences ended and he's out having a meeting and he has people that are in the area that have come for the conference come up to him and say, hey, next year can I be on stage with you? And so talk about activating thought leadership Like that's the ultimate goal. It's a great way to get your CEO to just get all the feels as well.

Rajiv Parikh: 29:46

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

Mandy Dhaliwal: 29:50

Exactly. And so they're like yeah, yeah, sure, we'd love to, let's talk Right and let's go cultivate all of that. So that's a very important element of thought leadership. It's that customer proof that's critically important. But again, like all the technical folks that we have, to your point, we're a very technical platform and so we need all of the voices, all the GMs from the pieces of the portfolio as well. I encourage them. I'm like hey, I've got AI, I've got writing capabilities. Give me something. Let's go figure out how to get you into Forbes Technology Council. Let's figure out how to get you into Forbes Technology Council. Let's figure out how to get you out on LinkedIn, out on our own properties. How do we get you doing more video, et cetera, et cetera. So you know the answer is always we'll find a way. If you've got a story, a point of view, come with something and 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 domain expert on. We want to hear from you.

Rajiv Parikh: 30:37

I think you nailed it in the way you talked about the person as the channel. I've seen this even from my days back at NCR and Sound or AT&T. It's in B2B. Everyone has to be the top leaders, have to be able to talk to customers, have to be able to get in front of get on a stage, be able to talk to analysts, be in front of the market. You are part of what drives that sale. You're maybe coming from a function, but you just can't be the non-communicative leader.

Mandy Dhaliwal: 31:02

No, not at all. I think modern day executives and leaders absolutely that's a core aspect of their job description. So it's like start building the muscle man, like we got to do it.

Rajiv Parikh: 31:12

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

Mandy Dhaliwal: 31:15

Exactly.

Rajiv Parikh: 31:16

All right. So the great part about this is we're going to go now to, hopefully, something you've never done before on a podcast, which is play in the Spark Tank. Okay, so, welcome to the Spark Tank, where marketing mastery meets culinary expertise. And today we're discovering what happens when you combine CMO war stories with sommelier level taste. Right behind you you have some wine bottles. Today we're thrilled to have Mandy Dhaliwal joining us, a marketing powerhouse who's turned brand transformations into an art form and wine tasting into a certified passion. You've earned your level two certification from the court of master sommeliers, so you're not just building marketing strategy, you're living proof that the best marketers understand that success and failure both deserve the right culinary accompaniment. So we're going to put both sides of your expertise to the test with the CMO's culinary therapy challenge.

Mandy Dhaliwal: 32:19

I love this, the CMO's.

Rajiv Parikh: 32:20

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 with champagne or hide in your office with comfort food, which, in my case, is mac and cheese. Your job is to prescribe the perfect dish and wine pairing that either celebrates the triumph or helps recover from the chaos. Let's see if your palate is as refined as your marketing instincts.

Mandy Dhaliwal: 32:47

Let's go Ready, Maddie.

Rajiv Parikh: 32:49

Ready, you are going to rock this game. Okay, here's scenario one. It's called the typo that broke the internet, so here we go. Your team just sent a promotional email to 100,000 prospects with a subject line that reads congratulations with a G instead of congratulations with a T. The replies are already pouring in, ranging from helpful corrections to brutal roasts about your company's attention to detail. Your CEO just forwarded you one that says, quote maybe invest in spellcheck before asking us to invest in your product. Unquote what comfort food and beverage combination gets you through this grammatical catastrophe?

Mandy Dhaliwal: 33:32

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

Rajiv Parikh: 33:36

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

Mandy Dhaliwal: 33:52

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

Rajiv Parikh: 34:05

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

Mandy Dhaliwal: 34:14

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

Rajiv Parikh: 34:18

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

Mandy Dhaliwal: 34:23

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

Rajiv Parikh: 34:30

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

Mandy Dhaliwal: 34:34

I think that was easy. And then I think, as I so there was the tequila time, right. And then it became gin at the end of the long day, right. It's like, and so the team would be like what are you drinking tonight? And I'm like, well, it's Thursday or Friday, cause, you know, generally don't drink during the week. And I'd be like oh, tonight's a gin night and they're like Whoa.

Rajiv Parikh: 34:56

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

Mandy Dhaliwal: 34:58

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

Rajiv Parikh: 35:08

I love it.

Mandy Dhaliwal: 35:08

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

Rajiv Parikh: 35:10

Okay, let's go to scenario number two. All right, it's a big challenge. It's called the budget presentation plot twist. Oh boy, you spent weeks preparing the perfect budget presentation, complete with. Roi projections and competitive analysis, you confidently request a 20% increase. The CFO listens intently, then announces they're actually going to cut your budget by 30%, but still expect you to hit the same targets. The room goes silent as everyone stares at you waiting for your response. What dish and drink pairing matches this moment of fiscal reality?

Mandy Dhaliwal: 35:44

A very chilled martini Belvedere, slightly dirty, and the food pairing is an olive. Oh, still going with the straight up alcohol. There's things like food will come later later it's like let's do the numbing first let's coat it right, and one of those takes the edge off, and then it's like, okay, let's figure out how we're gonna handle this all right, so olive is your chaser.

Rajiv Parikh: 36:11

Okay, accompaniment awesome.

Mandy Dhaliwal: 36:14

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

Rajiv Parikh: 36:20

So slightly dirty. Belvedere, martini, I love it. Okay. Scenario number three the impossible deadline victory. The CEO gave you two weeks to complete a product launch campaign that should have taken two months. Your team pulled off miracles, survived on coffee and sheer determination this has never happened to you and somehow delivered a campaign that's getting 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 celebrates this previously caffeine-fueled marketing miracle?

Mandy Dhaliwal: 36:58

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

Rajiv Parikh: 37:03

I love it.

Mandy Dhaliwal: 37:04

Classic Perrier. Why that? Because the truffle offsets the pinot in the rosé right and it's just, and acid from the champagne and the fat from the fries balance each other. So it is sublime if you've not tried it, Seriously amazing.

Rajiv Parikh: 37:21

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

Mandy Dhaliwal: 37:29

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

Rajiv Parikh: 37:38

I love it. I love it, the perfect pairing. I went to one winery I think their thing was wine and potato chips, yes, and they had different pairings depending on what you had. I thought that was really unique.

Mandy Dhaliwal: 37:50

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

Rajiv Parikh: 37:56

Potato chips, champagne caviar.

Mandy Dhaliwal: 38:00

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

Rajiv Parikh: 38:04

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 quarter when 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 and automation. The same CFO sent you a Slack message asking you if you'd like to present your efficiency methods to the entire executive team. So now you're going to put them on the hook. What dish and drink pairing celebrates this delicious moment of vindication?

Mandy Dhaliwal: 38:40

This is a steak dinner. This is absolutely a really premium cut. Somewhere you know a Tomahawk and a Bordeaux right. New world, old world, take your pick. This is one of those. Let's savor this.

Rajiv Parikh: 38:52

All right, what Bordeaux would you recommend?

Mandy Dhaliwal: 38:55

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

Rajiv Parikh: 39:07

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

Mandy Dhaliwal: 39:15

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

Rajiv Parikh: 39:21

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

Mandy Dhaliwal: 39:24

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

Rajiv Parikh: 39:29

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

Mandy Dhaliwal: 39:33

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

Rajiv Parikh: 39:40

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

Mandy Dhaliwal: 39:57

Yeah, it was during my undergrad, an internship. I'm going to totally date myself here, but I was a product marketing intern and so I went to school in British Columbia and Nortel Networks was in Alberta, so the neighboring province, and so I went to Calgary to go do an internship in the fall within the product marketing team, and so there was about 20 some odd a number of us that went. It was great.

Rajiv Parikh: 40:25

It was good bonding with my fellow classmates and really being first time I was in a corporate B2B environment, right Hardware Sure, I mean Nortel was like one of the top phone equipment switching true B2B selling firms.

Mandy Dhaliwal: 40:35

Yeah. And so you know multi-million dollar deals kind of all the things and highly complex and highly detailed. So I get invited I'm the only intern that gets this I get invited to the customer event that's happening in Kananaskis exactly. Get to go to this thing. I'm like yep. And so I meet all these Telco execs and I get to be fly on the wall and also help put on this event. And there's probably 30 or 40 execs and 20 or so of us salespeople, marketing people, kind of Nortel people that are putting this on. We spend two and a half, three days with them, we entertain them, we strategize with them. Just for me, that was just the pivotal moment. I'm like, if this is work, sign me up, I'm in right, because of the way we were able to interact with them.

Rajiv Parikh: 41:24

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

Mandy Dhaliwal: 41:29

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

Mandy Dhaliwal: 41:51

Right, like the Indian thing, and it's kind of like no, no, no, I'm doing this because this fuels me and it was just, like you know, 18, 19 hour days, but it didn't matter. It felt like it was my calling and so here I am.

Rajiv Parikh: 42:03

It almost didn't feel like work right.

Mandy Dhaliwal: 42:05

By the way.

Rajiv Parikh: 42:06

I had a similar thing. I was. I was going for my electrical engineering degree at my junior year. I had my father got me a marketing internship at GTE Sylvania and I just fell in love with that ability to turn technology into a message and get it to market. And it was just super fun, super fun.

Mandy Dhaliwal: 42:24

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

Rajiv Parikh: 42:48

So I think it's really important and for the intern it's just an incredible experience, especially for a game changer like you, to be close to your team. Mandy, you've shared powerful insight in the past about the importance of needing to turn off that little voice of imposter syndrome that we have, especially within marketing, where you notice there's a lot of women there, right, A lot of women work in marketing and it's one of the more diverse areas of various technology companies. And can you recall a specific challenging instance in your career where the inner critic was particularly loud and how'd you go past it to solve the hard problem that you had to face?

Mandy Dhaliwal: 43:23

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 all the years of being a CMO, I think two things. Everybody believes that they know marketing, and so it's really easy for them to have an opinion. I think the flip side of it is how do you educate and inform in a respectful, kind way, but firm way? That's kind of the compass through which I guide this, and so I worked at companies of all sizes and shapes and so, depending on where you are and depending on the audience that you're dealing with, we're great people, we live in gray area. This is the art of marketing, like you know.

Mandy Dhaliwal: 44:04

As far as figuring out a fit to be in the leadership role, I contend that you have to be a really good kind of ambivert thinker.

Mandy Dhaliwal: 44:07

There's a lot of functions, especially within tech, that are black or white, and so what you have to do and when these situations arise and I'm getting better at it, I'm not perfect at it, by any stretch of the imagination Someone will come at you and go hey, blah, blah, blah, that was great, but here's what could have been.

Mandy Dhaliwal: 44:21

But I'm like, from your perspective, I get that what you don't understand is all of these other things that we had to navigate. So, once you have that business to business, kind of peer to peer conversation with people, and educate them on things that they didn't know, because the perception of it is A but the reality of it is B, plus plus here are all the other things that you didn't understand, that might change your thinking as to why this turned out the way it did. So the imposter syndrome has now become empowerment syndrome. It's been the shift that I've done over the years because at first it'd be like oh yeah, they're right. Shift that I've done over the years because at first it'd be like oh yeah, they're right. Like you know, if they believe it, it must be true Perception is reality, right, because you're so used to listening.

Mandy Dhaliwal: 44:57

But great marketers listen, right, we have ear to the ground, right, but as you get more confidence, 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's your perspective. I appreciate you sharing. Let's have a conversation. And yeah, if I'm wrong, I'm wrong. There's no ego in this stuff. Right, we learn from our mistakes, we all move on. But at the end of the day, the imposter has been quieted because it's like here's the strategic 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. We'll do it this way for X, y, z reasons, right? So it's not just a you're not good conversation, it's a. Here's the circumstances surrounding.

Rajiv Parikh: 45:41

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

Mandy Dhaliwal: 45:51

I don't want to be defensive about it, but I do want to share a little more information if appropriate. And you know let's go have that adult conversation. So I think, that's been really helpful. And as marketers right, we do educate a lot, because there is a black box perception of what we do too, and so there's kind of these two ends of the spectrum that we have to work through.

Rajiv Parikh: 46:07

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

Mandy Dhaliwal: 46:24

My first. Well, my middle name lack thereof of a middle name Lack middle name.

Rajiv Parikh: 46:27

So okay, thank you for that correction, because I kept asking how did we come up with this one? Okay, there's also a story that we found out about you growing up on a raspberry farm. Yes, and you're the oldest of four. I have four, so I love that, and, of course, you probably had to run the berry harvest because you're the oldest of four. So can you share a little bit about your background and some of the shifts that you saw and how you got to where you are, or some of the roots of where you got to where you are?

Mandy Dhaliwal: 46:56

Yeah, roots, literally, roots right, physical. And yeah, I think you know with my dad, mandeep Kaur Dhaliwal would have been my name on my birth certificate. Kaur or Sikh right. Kaur means princess, and if you're a boy, sing means lion, right. No gender bias there whatsoever, right. And so my dad deliberately left core off my birth certificate and the logic was we don't want anyone to discriminate against you for being a female. I want you to go out and do what you want to and be empowered to go do so, love it. So that took a lot of the constraints off of me and so that thinking was definitely nurtured in me and that was pivotal in terms of how I showed up in the world. Just that little, well, big gesture, but conversation with me to explain why I didn't have a core, because I thought I was missing something. No, no, no, you've gained something, right. So parenting pro tip, like it worked for me hook, line and sinker. So I think that was really important. Eldest of four, I was the beta test on everything.

Rajiv Parikh: 48:00

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

Mandy Dhaliwal: 48:08

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

Rajiv Parikh: 48:18

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

Mandy Dhaliwal: 48:21

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

Rajiv Parikh: 48:46

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

Mandy Dhaliwal: 48:52

I have one. He's 17. And so when he was born, I made a deliberate we made a deliberate choice. So I would not work. I didn't want someone else raising my child, and so I stayed home with him for the first five years of his existence. And that was just fundamentally important to me, because I want to show up in the best way I can in all areas of my life. To this day, being a mother is the 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, family first, always. That's how I lead my teams. To me, it's what matters most.

Rajiv Parikh: 49:29

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 doing these startups that I've done is I got to spend time. I could run off and be a coach for a little while, yes, and I could coach soccer. Actually, I coached all four of my kids early in soccer. I wasn't good enough to do the later stages, but it was fun doing the little kid stuff, so it was a blast yeah.

Mandy Dhaliwal: 49:58

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

Rajiv Parikh: 50:14

So it's just like don't basically say I'm going to take that much time away from the normal track and still reinsert yourself and basically accelerate. So kudos to you about thinking about it that way. I think it's a great example. We asked you a historical event or person that inspires you and you answered Jose Andres and Indra Nooyi. So what about them? Lights you up?

Mandy Dhaliwal: 50:38

It's the fact that they had the courage to go chase what they believed. Chef Andres is a world-renowned chef, didn't have to go start World Central Kitchen. He believed in bringing people together through the power of food and he did it. Look what he's accomplished in every major catastrophe in the world. He's got a team of people coming together and just doing fundamental human basics right Getting them food, getting them fed, bringing them together. It doesn't matter what side of the fence you're on, it's just you know food is the great unifier. I think with Indra Noody, I think just her transparency and humility in terms of how she got to amazing career success. But you know she's got stories of 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 get milk. And so the humility to be able to share that, to come out the other side and now be just an incredible beacon for women in business and all of us in business as a matter of fact.

Rajiv Parikh: 51:29

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

Mandy Dhaliwal: 51:40

Exactly, and just the humanity. And she still continues to give back, which is just someone I really just am in awe of it's outstanding.

Rajiv Parikh: 51:49

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

Mandy Dhaliwal: 52:00

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

Rajiv Parikh: 52:22

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

Mandy Dhaliwal: 52:35

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 be strategically aligned and tactically divergent. Go out there and do what makes sense for you in that situation, given that you're aligned to the strategy. But even despite that, sometimes we misfire. So it just kind of raises an eyebrow.

Rajiv Parikh: 52:59

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

Mandy Dhaliwal: 53:05

you wish they'd stop asking. A question I wish they'd ask more often is how do you think about the business impact of what marketing does? Because we still have a reputation thing. Just read a McKinsey article yesterday that's talking about oh, it's actually really beneficial to be a CMO again, right? So the pendulum has come back in how we're strategic growth drivers, and so more of that conversation, less of the well, that was a great trade show that you guys put on or a great event you put on, and it's like no, no, no, no, no, no. There's way more to it than the optic, right? But again, part of that is education and it's on us. But you know, for the amount of times that I answer that question and then try to explain the significance of it, it'd be nice to get a little more kind of understanding of that out there.

Rajiv Parikh: 53:47

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

Mandy Dhaliwal: 53:58

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

Rajiv Parikh: 54:03

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

Mandy Dhaliwal: 54:11

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

Rajiv Parikh: 54:15

I'm like I'm not faking anything.

Mandy Dhaliwal: 54:17

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

Rajiv Parikh: 54:20

Just say it.

Mandy Dhaliwal: 54:21

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

Rajiv Parikh: 54:27

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

Mandy Dhaliwal: 54:43

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

Mandy Dhaliwal: 55:06

It doesn't make any sense, right? So say it straight out the willingness to really understand who you are as a human Own. That versus fake what you're not.

Rajiv Parikh: 55:18

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

Mandy Dhaliwal: 55:23

It would have to be. When I first moved, it was July 4th weekend, 25 years ago to the day almost. It was right around this time time. I packed up my car, moving truck had already come and I moved to Silicon Valley. So on that road trip here, my mom and my sister were with me. I think the conversation would be do you realize what this holds for you Like? You took it as an adventure, as you should have, packing up and leaving, coming to a whole new world, coming to Silicon Valley. This is how you have to structure this in order to come out the other side. I think that was probably one of the biggest bets that I've ever made in my life. And here I am.

Rajiv Parikh: 55:58

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

Mandy Dhaliwal: 56:05

Great friends. Great food, great wine I love it. You can't go wrong with any of it.

Rajiv Parikh: 56:12

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

Mandy Dhaliwal: 56:22

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

Rajiv Parikh: 56:39

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

Mandy Dhaliwal: 56:45

Or wherever they want to.

Rajiv Parikh: 56:46

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

Mandy Dhaliwal: 57:01

It has to have a teaming element to it. You know kind of a placeholder would be, how to be in it to win it together. That's one of the I have Mandy isms, my team knows many of them, but I think it's the psychology of you know, teaming and partnership to drive bigger outcomes I think would be some of the focus on course, material Right, and how do you go do that in a very tangible way in a highly complex world?

Rajiv Parikh: 57:17

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

Mandy Dhaliwal: 57:19

How do we turn that into a course Chat GPT.

Rajiv Parikh: 57:22

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

Mandy Dhaliwal: 57:34

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

Rajiv Parikh: 57:38

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

Mandy Dhaliwal: 57:58

Thank you, rajiv. You're a wonderful host. Wow, what a journey you got me on so many questions, just amazing. For the record, this was not scripted or prepped at all. This is true authentic conversation. I did not send the questions to Mandy ahead of time just so, you know, yeah, and I loved that you did it and it's just this wonderful conversation, thank you.

Rajiv Parikh: 58:23

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 great lessons that you can get from this conversation with Mandy. I had the opportunity to sit next to her at one of the events we had put together as part of the Go-To-Market Leader Society, and I was just struck about how approachable, confident and passionate she was.

Rajiv Parikh: 58:47

She had this depth of calm and understanding that really just came through her, and she has a way, as she saw today, of how she can just present marketing and branding, positioning, scale and growth in an executive team. And what really struck me is how she comes into a company that's been primarily successful by promoting itself as a technology, a pure technology company, and then she goes in and, in a way, humanizes it, makes it more approachable, builds a stronger, builds an overall message that then resonates throughout the organization. The messaging then becomes part of the fabric of the being of the company, becomes a unifying force and then gets implemented in all different ways. And so she talked about some of the great innovation that she's brought to the company with AI, but really how she enables her teams to lead and take chances and risks while working closely together with her executive and go-to-market teams her peers. So it's really it was a treat and taking time off to be a mom, it's a really interesting point of view. For a super successful executive like Mandy, becoming a master sommelier is actually a really cool way to understand how she loves to get into depth about things. So when she says she doesn't like fake it till you make it, you understand more about who she is as a person, and so I really appreciate sharing all that with you today, and I hope you enjoyed it as much as I did.

Rajiv Parikh: 1:00:17

So thanks for listening. If you enjoyed this pod, please take 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 Adam Shah and edited by Sean Marr and Laura Ballant. I'm your host, rajiv Parikh, from Position Squared, an AI-driven growth marketing company based in Silicon Valley. Come visit us at position2.com. This has been an effing funny production and we'll catch you next time. Remember, folks, be ever curious.