In the debut episode of Next Gen Builders, join product leader and host Francois Ajenstat in a fun and inspiring conversation with Sarah Franklin, the CEO of people management platform Lattice and former CMO at Salesforce.
In the debut episode of Next Gen Builders, join product leader and host Francois Ajenstat in a fun and inspiring conversation with Sarah Franklin, the CEO of people management platform Lattice and former CMO at Salesforce.
Sarah shares her guiding principles, favorite stories, and oh-sh*t moments from throughout her career shattering the glass ceiling as a female executive in tech.
You’ll hear her colorful stories, like founding the infamous “trailblazer” campaign at Salesforce or the out-of-this-world risk she took in an early job interview. Her conversation offers an entertaining take on career growth that’s invaluable to anyone wanting to elevate their own career.
Throughout the interview, Sarah underscores the significance of fearless pursuit and authenticity. This mindset, she argues, is crucial for breaking through career barriers and propelling oneself from individual contributor roles to executive leadership.
The conversation also delves into overcoming challenges and leveraging one's network for growth and support, highlighting the essence of building a strong community. Sarah reflects on her path to becoming a trailblazer, attributing her success to not only her ability to envision and execute change but also to her relentless pursuit of passion and purpose.
—
Guest Bio
Sarah Franklin is the Chief Executive Officer of Lattice. She brings 25+ years of experience leading and scaling companies in tech and has a unique blend of technical knowledge, business acumen, and marketing expertise. Prior to joining Lattice, She spent over 15 years at Salesforce in a variety of executive leadership roles including President Advisory Board, Chief Marketing Officer, EVP Platform and Trailhead. Before Salesforce, she worked at a variety of companies ranging from scaled businesses to scrappy startups. She holds a dual degree in chemical engineering and biochemistry from Virginia Tech and has been awarded many accolades including Forbes’ Most Influential CMO, “CMO to Watch” by Business Insider, and recipient of the Brand Genius Award from Adweek.
—
Guest Quote
“The lesson is believe in yourself, have passion for your mission, don't accept no for an answer, and have a purpose behind what you do. And when you do that, all of the money, success, everything will follow. But the most important is you'll be happy in your job and that is something that money cannot buy.” – Sarah Franklin
—
Time Stamps
*(05:05) Mapping Sarah's journey and goalsetting
*(08:15) Lean into your conviction
*(12:55) Overcoming the critics
*(15:35) Why relationships should be a CEO's number one priority
*(20:23) What Sarah would tell her younger self
*(22:10) Authenticity, courage, and well-being
*(27:00) Sarah's Oh Sh*t Moment
*(29:24) Being a trailblazer
—
Links
0:00:00.0 Francois Ajenstat: We went from Cooties to Gandhi, Indiana Jones, to the Beastie Boys. Like we had everything in here.
0:00:13.8 Francois Ajenstat: This is Next Gen Builders, the show for the growth and product leaders of tomorrow. Today, we're gonna be talking about career growth, and we have a guest who's worn many hats on her path to CEO from starting her career as a chemical engineer at Lockheed Martin to moving into tech and taking on almost every role in Go-to market, from pre-sales, to sales, to product marketing, to chief marketing officer, and now, to CEO. So please join me in welcoming my friend and colleague, Please welcome Sarah Franklin, the CEO of Lattice. Welcome, Sarah.
0:00:53.4 Sarah Franklin: Thank you. I'm so honored to be here. And wow, Can you introduce me Every day? It just makes me feel good.
0:01:03.0 Francois Ajenstat: Absolutely. I'm gonna be part of your daily motivational speech.
0:01:08.8 Sarah Franklin: Yes.
0:01:09.4 Francois Ajenstat: But, hey, talking about your daily rituals. Aren't you a runner?
0:01:14.4 Sarah Franklin: I am.
0:01:15.2 Francois Ajenstat: And don't you listen to some awesome music every day?
0:01:17.8 Sarah Franklin: I do. I love to run and I love to get energy, and I do love me some Beastie Boys. Just All the Hearts.
0:01:23.3 Francois Ajenstat: And what's your favorite song?
0:01:27.2 Sarah Franklin: Definitely, I love Slow and Low. Like Slow and Low. This is Tempo... I love Running to... I mean, there's so many good songs so many different albums from Paul's boutique to more recent, and I just love them all.
0:01:44.7 Francois Ajenstat: I love them too. I mean, I'm such a big fan since I can't remember when. I think it was Check Your Head was really where I really got hooked, but Sabotage is one of my favorites.
0:01:56.2 Sarah Franklin: Oh, I mean, the Sabotage song in and of itself is Just...
0:02:00.4 Francois Ajenstat: And it's amazing. And the video.
0:02:02.5 Sarah Franklin: It Is also good... I mean, talk about pioneers, innovators, what they did with music, what they did with video, what they did with mixing it up and everything. It just, it's really powerful what they did for music.
0:02:17.2 Francois Ajenstat: Totally. So tell me a little bit about you. So your rituals, you go running every day. Like, why do you do that? How do you stay focused every day?
0:02:23.2 Sarah Franklin: Yeah, so running for me is definitely my time to think, my time to breathe, my time to relieve stress. And it's really my time to get away and just be... I love being in nature. I love... So I run outside. It's also, whether it's cold, whether it's raining, whether it's hot, it's a good forcing function that you have to face the elements of the world. But I definitely love running and thinking, and it's when I feel I'm my most creative.
0:03:00.3 Francois Ajenstat: I love that. And how long have you been doing this for?
0:03:01.8 Sarah Franklin: I've run since I was young and in, I think like middle school, high school, and I played field hockey, soccer. It was just always something I did. And then, it's also something that now as technology has gotten better with your phone, through GPSs, also with music, it's made it something where you can adventure safely, go out into, I love going out into trails and open space and places that would be harder to navigate without your phone these days. But yeah, it's definitely part of my routine and I just love it.
0:03:38.4 Francois Ajenstat: It's great. I mean, it's a great way of like disconnecting from technology, but also reconnecting with yourself and your mind, which is really liberating every day. But how do you keep that ritual going as you moved up in your career and now you're busy executive, how are you able to take the time and keep that a focus?
0:03:58.9 Sarah Franklin: For me, everything, whether it's personal, professional, it's around a goal and what do I wanna achieve. And it's mind over matter. And no matter how you feel, no matter which you might be thinking, no matter what you might be needing to do, if you have a goal, and that goal could be really big, like I had a goal to run a lot one year, but then when you break that down to what it means for a month, what it means for a week, what it means for a day, it's a way to keep yourself incrementally going and achieving something small that adds to something substantive, that adds up to something large. And so for me, it's around goals, and that's how I stay motivated. I'm like, okay, one step forward, I'm a step closer to my goal. And that is just a little bit by little bit by little bit. It makes the big goals not feel so daunting when you have little incremental goals.
0:05:00.0 Francois Ajenstat: So let's talk about that from the perspective of your career. You've gone from being an individual contributor at a large company, and now, you're the CEO of a company. Did you like set out to achieve that goal? Or what was your journey along that path?
0:05:16.6 Sarah Franklin: You sound like my mother, who every day asked me like, what does your degree have to do with your job? Again, I don't understand. Especially when I was a CMO and I was engineer by schooling, it's like, huh, I don't understand that one. And I really, I wanted to be a doctor, new stem cell research, so I'm way off of that pathway. It's something that I do reflect back on my younger self is like, how did I make choices? Like big ones, like I moved from Virginia to California, something that now would feel super daunting to me to move cross country or move to another country. But when you're younger, you just kind of do it, right? And so I definitely, when I was young, didn't say, oh, I wanna be a CEO. But what I did want to do was I set a goal for myself early in my career to be the future.
0:06:17.3 Sarah Franklin: And I wanted to be the person that walked into the room and people felt the future had arrived. And whether it was the latest tech, whether it was the latest fashion, whether it was having a progressive point of view, seeing the world in a way that you could see our future society going into, that was kind of my uber goal. And then pair that with wanting to have a bigger purpose. So you mentioned I was chemical engineer, and when I was in school for that, I was one of very few, if not the only women in most of my classes. And I didn't understand then that that was an endemic problem in society and technology. And it wasn't until I got further into the workforce that I realized, oh, half society's women, but that's not the truth in my career.
0:07:15.3 Sarah Franklin: So short version is, I started to develop the passion for changing the ratios in tech and I subscribe deeply to the beliefs of Gandhi to be the change you wish to see in this world. And so I'd say a mix of passion and purpose. Passion for the future and purpose for being a catalyst of change. And then similarly, later in my career, I saw the same thing in leadership. And so I didn't have the goal of being a CEO early, but as I developed through my career, it was to change the ratios and leadership was when being a CEO became a big career goal of mine.
0:07:55.1 Francois Ajenstat: You've always been a trailblazer and we'll come back to that term real soon, but it is one of the things I've always admired about you is, how you're always trying to think about new ideas and break what is expected and think about problems in any way. And recently, you told me about one of your first interviews. You were interviewing, I think for a pre-sales position?
0:08:15.8 Sarah Franklin: I was.
0:08:16.7 Francois Ajenstat: And You've always Had this mindset. You've always kind of taken things differently to stand out. Like tell us a little bit about that.
0:08:24.9 Sarah Franklin: Oh my gosh. Such an embarrassing story. But I will share just for you, just for you. Yeah, so I... This is one of those things again where you rewind back and you think, oh my God, I did that? But I was interviewing for a job at a company to be a pre-sales engineer. And the company at the time was requiring everybody to have an interview with the CEO. In that process, they gave you a very specific script and a very specific presentation that you were supposed to give. And I flew to Ohio to meet with the gentleman. I waited my turn, I went into the room, I was given 15 minutes to give the presentation, and I showed up. And this was a company that the presentation was around EDI, electronic data integration of backend systems and using the vans and all this stuff.
0:09:17.0 Sarah Franklin: And I showed up and I presented on the colonization of Mars. And they entertained me for the full 15 minutes. At the end, I was like, okay, thank you. Do you have any questions? Like, yes. Did our team give you the assignment that you were supposed to do? I said, yes, yes, they did. Oh, okay, so, you understood what you were supposed to be doing right now? And I said, yes, yes, I understood that's what you wanted me to do. Like, okay, I said, but here's the thing. You have 10 people lined up outside interviewing for this position. They're all supposed to show up and do the same thing in front of you. What you're really wanting to see is one, do I have good presentation skills? Check mark the box. Two, you'd wanna learn something, you're gonna be bored off your rocker hearing the same thing 10 times over.
0:10:11.6 Sarah Franklin: I wanna show up and teach you something. And three, I just want you to remember me and stand out from the crowd and know that every time I show up in front of one of your customers and I talk about your products, they're going to remember me, they're gonna trust me, they're gonna learn from me, and they're gonna wanna buy from me. And he hired me right on the spot. So, I mean, that just goes to show like, you don't be one of the lemmings. You be the person that does what's needed and you have the courage and confidence in yourself to do it.
0:10:39.1 Francois Ajenstat: That's great. And being able to stand out amongst everyone, you call them the lemmings but it's, I think, it's really, really important as you're building, you're building a category, you're trying to create a new product. How do you stand out? Like how do you break through amongst all the noise?
0:11:00.8 Sarah Franklin: Yeah, so it's not about just standing out, it is about having conviction and having passion and belief that there may be a better way, there may be a different way, there may be an easier way. And some of those things may test your things that you really believe as truth in your mind. People ask me often, as I mentioned earlier about my degree in engineering, what did I learn from engineering that I use today? And the single most important thing I learned in my undergraduate degree was when you're faced with a problem, to write down your assumptions, to write down the given facts, to write down the problem that you're trying to solve. Because just in that process alone, you'll really realize, oh, I'm assuming these five things are or are not going to happen. I am believing in certain things to be truth.
0:12:05.4 Sarah Franklin: Like we believe that gravity is a truth, which it is. But sometimes there are things like going to the moon or having rockets that go into space like that defy things that we think are possible. We wouldn't have invented flight, we wouldn't have invented so many things if we could have assumed that we were always meant to be on the ground. And so it's that mindset, that beginner's mind, that where in the expert's mind, there are a few possibilities, but in the beginner's mind, there are many. And when you open your mind to that, that's when you start to dream. And that's when you start to think, and that's when you start to believe that there can be better.
0:12:45.7 Francois Ajenstat: In that situation, How do you think about the naysayers. You're the innovator, you're the trailblazer along the way. You believe, but how do you get others to believe? How do you get others to come along with you in that journey?
0:13:01.3 Sarah Franklin: Well there's two parts to this question. One is, how do you believe when people tell you no? And two is bringing people along. The first point I'll say, I don't know if you knew this about me, we didn't chat about this, but the most dangerous thing that you can ever do to me is tell me no. Like, if you tell me no, I'm like, okay, okay, game on, game on. Like, we're gonna do this. And it's actually something I've put on my social media from early in my career when I did apply for jobs and I got told, Nope, nope, nope, nope. You use that as motivation. When people tell you no, you say like, why not? You start asking questions like, why can't I? What is the reason that this can't be done? What is holding us back?
0:13:49.6 Sarah Franklin: And so you use it as motivation to push to understand what are the real limitations? And then you can make a better informed decision of, is this really a no or is this like a maybe. And then you bring people along. This is what happens when it's the same thing. The, what's that saying? Misery breeds company. The opposite is also true of positivity. And people are drawn to energy. It's magnetic. It is engaging, it is vibrant. And it is something that induces a euphoric feeling of, wow, I wanna be part of that. And when you are so passionate about something, people want to be involved in it too. And then when you put them in the center of that success, you don't make them just something that's around you. You say, come along, come with me, let's do this together. And that's, I mean this better than anyone building community, building that shared success. That's how you bring people along no matter how crazy your ideas are.
0:14:55.8 Francois Ajenstat: Well, I'm glad I never introduced you to my wife, Amy, but she will not take no for anything that is her fuel. But it is...
0:15:05.9 Sarah Franklin: But she and I get along real well.
0:15:07.5 Francois Ajenstat: But it's part of her beliefs, right, it is part of having such strong convictions of what you believe is actually true. So you're now the CEO of a company. How has your perspective of the roles you used to have, how has that changed? You used to be the CMO, the GM and looking up at the CEO in a way, but now you're that person, Has your perspective on the roles changed? The accountabilities? What's different?
0:15:37.9 Sarah Franklin: Yeah, so it is a very different vantage point being the kind of the single point of leadership for the company where it is a little bit lonely in the sense that you're not part of a team. You run a team, you run a company, you report to a board who they're a team, and then you have your leaders who are a team, but you are yourself in the middle, kind of like a shape like this. And my advice to people that are in the leadership team reporting to a CEO would be that don't underestimate how valuable it is to your CEO that you get along with and collaborate well with your peers and that you are directly accountable for your function and that you really show up every day with a focus on your function. If you run revenue, you run revenue, like you, I mean, you just show up every day like running revenue, and you make requests to the product leaders.
0:16:40.0 Sarah Franklin: You ask of the product leaders, you give suggestions, you give feedback, but you work together with them. And I think that's something which when I reflect back on my career, I see it so clearly now, whether it's with Mark or Brett or other leaders that I reported to, how valuable it is to make their lives easier because they're not... I mean, it's just like being a parent. When your two kids are fighting, you're like, oh. You're like, can't do you really need to fight over the stuffy or just is the TV really... Like, and you just take it away for everyone 'cause you don't wanna deal. I mean, it's the same thing. We're human beings. And so that how important it is for you as a company to be getting along. And whether it's the Bezos kind of disagree and commit philosophy or whether it's a various philosophies. But I think that that's very important and valuable to CEOs and something that I see more clearly now in this seat.
0:17:43.7 Francois Ajenstat: And now, how do you build your team? Like is your team, your direct reports, do you have now mentors to help you build and continue to develop?
0:18:04.6 Sarah Franklin: Yeah, so I'm a big fan of just regular communication and regular just honest direct feedback. And I've often, I've had... My teams get, I mean, they're getting to know me, a hundred days in ish for them knowing me. And I would just say like, Hey, go talk to this person that I used to work with, like call her up because I know I sound really crazy right now and you don't fully understand me, but call her up and she'll tell you, she'll interpret and she'll give you some understanding. Or I used to work with this really great revenue person. I used to work with this really great product person. You should talk to them. And connecting, I think that's a big job of the CEO is connecting. And I've done a lot of that, of connecting whether it's our marketing leader or product leader, our people leader to other people that I have in my network so that they can get more access. Because while it's really good to build your network at your job, I think that's another thing I didn't realize. And I see even now more so that, I was at Salesforce for 15 years and people have gone to many other companies. I'm like, oh wow. I have like, I mean like...
0:19:16.2 Sarah Franklin: You and I are great friends and I know we always will be. And I know if I ever needed something, I could call you up and say, Hey could you talk to this person and give them some advice? Or could you take a look at this and give us some feedback that you would? And so I think that going back to beginner's mind, always being willing to listen, to learn, to seek feedback, to seek from others, I think is always important.
0:19:37.9 Francois Ajenstat: I a 100% agree. And the network is strong. And you, you never really realize it until maybe you're, you're out of a company or out of a situation. So when you're in the eye of the storm, it can be hard, but you have actually a lot of support out there. You just have to go and ask for it and be vulnerable on that journey.
0:19:56.4 Sarah Franklin: Yes, a 100%. A 100%.
0:20:00.1 Francois Ajenstat: So if you think about a goal, focus, conviction, passion, and then you think about your career and how do these things play together? If you were to go back to your younger self, 22-year-old, or 21-year-old Sarah what would be some of the advice you would give to help them break through on that journey?
0:20:21.3 Sarah Franklin: Yeah, as you get older, you definitely reflect often. And my oldest daughter's in college now, and I see her about to start her career. And it's moments where you think like God, all of the opportunity that lay in front of you. And what would I tell my younger self aside from wear more sunscreen and things like that I definitely would just tell myself to just believe more, cut out the fat sooner, be more convicted. Don't be afraid. The fear is the number one thing. And especially for women, there's just such a systemic unconscious bias that is put into our society that breeds insecurity, that breeds imposter syndrome, that it makes you feel that you are not meant to achieve. And I see some of this in the younger generation already, which is great, and it's a balance. You don't wanna be some egotistical jerk that shows up in things that you're just perfect. Being humble is important. But I would tell myself to not be afraid. I think that would be the single most thing is just don't be afraid. The worst thing that's gonna happen if somebody tells you no, or you fail or it doesn't happen, all of those are pathways to something else. And that's what I would tell myself for sure, is just don't be afraid.
0:21:53.2 Francois Ajenstat: So, let's talk about fear, especially when you're building something new. There's always fear, right? Fear of failure, fear of embarrassment, fear of the imposter syndrome, whatever that is. How do you overcome fear?
0:22:06.3 Sarah Franklin: So fear is something which is very core to my belief system in the sense that my three core values are one is authenticity two is courage, and three is wellbeing. And my decision making process is always along with the given assumptions. Problem statement is what am I afraid of? And to be very clear with myself, very honest with myself, what am I fearing? You mentioned obvious ones failure things like that which are negative. There's also fears of being successful. There's fears of being wrong. Just as long as there's fears of being right, there's fears of what if this works, what does that mean? And so anytime I write down my fears and then it's very purposeful to say, okay, I am going to face them. We've talked about how I'm in this position now as CEO I would be a liar and inauthentic to myself to say that I was not scared to step into this seat.
0:23:24.3 Sarah Franklin: I would be lying to say that the birdie doesn't sit and say, you're not meant to be here. And I had to say, okay, fear, thank you for being here reminding me that I'm alive. You can now go away and I am going to face you and I'm going to give this my best. And the worst that will happen is, as we already said, it's a loop. Worst that happens is I fail worse that happens is I learn, worse that happens is I try it again. But my mother always told me, if at first you don't succeed, you try, try again. And so that is for me with fear, is identifying it, being honest about it, facing it, confronting it, and then whatever be will be, but you will learn, you'll be better for yourself, you'll be stronger. And I think that's something that we should all do, is be comfortable telling each other what we're afraid of, what we're honestly afraid... We don't have enough honest conversations. I always loved you 'cause you and I could chat honestly. But people are afraid to be honest.
0:24:31.1 Francois Ajenstat: Absolutely.
0:24:35.8 Sarah Franklin: Truth telling, that's a whole nother thing, is truth telling. So important. That's a whole nother podcast.
0:24:38.1 Francois Ajenstat: Well, yeah, that's hours of conversations. But on the topic of fear, what's interesting is that there's that personal fear, but there's also, when you're doing something new that is uncomfortable and you're kinda staring in the abyss and you don't know what's gonna be on the other side, that's also where growth happens too, right? Because you're doing something new, you're doing something that isn't comfortable where there is a risk of failure and there's a lot of growth there.
0:25:08.3 Sarah Franklin: There is... And going back to a topic you mentioned earlier on, bringing people along for leadership and career development and growth, it's an important part to be willing to step out into the abyss. You could be like I saw the visual You're painting of this chasm in front of you, of this abyss and you have to be courageous enough to take a step foot out. And it's like what's that movie? Is it like Indiana Jones or something where this invisible bridge just appears it's like you just have to...
0:25:38.1 Francois Ajenstat: Such a good reference.
0:25:42.2 Sarah Franklin: You just have to believe that you're gonna put your foot out there and it's going to be stable. And then people are gonna watch you like oh God, she did it. She walked out there into the unknown and she's gonna do this for us so that we can follow her. And she'll make it safe. She'll make it steady. That's what you just have to do. You just have to take a breath and go and you do learn and you do grow, and you learn that it's so important as a leader to be the person that does that. You're not a good leader in my opinion. If you just take somebody out and throw them out to the dogs and say, oh, see what happens. So then I can go next. That is cowardly leadership. Courageous leadership is going out there confronting the unknown, taking the hits and learning from it and growing from it. And then your team then feels stronger and they feel confident in your success together.
0:26:39.9 Francois Ajenstat: I've definitely seen that from your leadership and how you're inspiring people to come along. Now sometimes everything goes well and you have what I like to call the oh shit moment. How do you deal with that Oh shit moment? And do you have a good example of one of those?
0:27:02.9 Sarah Franklin: I mean, everything's always perfect I don't know what.
0:27:07.7 Francois Ajenstat: It's roses and rainbows in every company, in every situation.
0:27:11.2 Sarah Franklin: Yeah. No, I've had too many of these to count. And I can tell you stories of whether it's from a marking event. One time we had to do a late minute cancellation because something happened. And you could have seen it when in retrospect, I knew that should have made some decisions earlier, but I felt bad to make the decisions then because people's feelings would be hurt or people would be let down. And then you let it perpetuate until the point of... You come up to the point where you really have to make the call and then people are more hurt and more upset. I've had times when you've launched stuff and it hasn't been a good match or you've had a product service have a disruption. I've had personal failures. I'm myself divorced.
0:28:03.1 Sarah Franklin: I was a single mother. Like I've had you name it in terms of what we call of failures. But what you do in the face of failure is just what you do. The same things face of fear. You be honest with it. You accept it, you're accountable for it. I think accountability is the most important thing ever. You come up and you say, I did this wrong. I will do this differently next time. I apologize. And people then either have a choice to move on or move away, and you have to respect that choice. But I think that that's what people do become to trust you. 'cause they know that no matter whether you do succeed or fail, they know that you'll be accountable. They know you'll be truthful, and they know that you're not gonna throw somebody else under the bus for it. That's the worst. When somebody throws somebody else under the bus, it's like really? Dude, okay, I see how you roll.
0:29:03.1 Francois Ajenstat: Yeah. That's not how you build trust, for sure.
0:29:07.7 Sarah Franklin: No, not at all.
0:29:09.8 Francois Ajenstat: All right. Now Sarah, we've gone through this whole conversation. We've talked about your career and the highs, the lows and everything in between, but we haven't talked about being a Trailblazer.
0:29:21.5 Sarah Franklin: Oh, yes.
0:29:22.7 Francois Ajenstat: Because you are a Trailblazer and you invented the term Trailblazer, if I recall, at Salesforce. You wanna give us a little bit of the story of how that came to be 'cause now it is turned into an iconic theme at Salesforce.
0:29:33.5 Sarah Franklin: Yeah, so this is definitely part of legacy that I'm very proud of, and I'm very proud to have been part of the creation with incredible people at Salesforce along with Trailhead, the learning platform and the characters and all this like stuff. But I'll rewind back a little and I'll maybe put two stories in One, you get a BOGO here. When I first went to Salesforce, 15 or 16 years ago, I was hired on to do like platform product marketing work. And my first campaign ever was admin to hero. And so Salesforce has this platform that enables people that don't necessarily have a lot of technical experience to do really cool things that earn them great career opportunities. Often they don't know that they're doing it and it happens to them. And I was at Salesforce and doing my stuff and my career was a little bit linear and kind of plateaued, and I was very focused on me and my job and my pay and my title and my progression.
0:30:46.9 Sarah Franklin: And I wanted a promotion and I wanted the recognition. And what you hear in this story is me, me, I, I, me, me, I, and I didn't get what I wanted. I was told, no, you're not gonna get it. And I was mad at everybody that was getting it. I was like well, she got it and he got it. Why didn't I get it? And I left, I went took another job. It was a great job. I got the stuff that I wanted, but turns out I took a job that wasn't fulfilling that part that I didn't really understand how important it was, which was loving what I did. I loved shining a spotlight on these admins that were turned heroes. So serendipitously, I a few months later ended up able to come back to the company. I was so happy.
0:31:36.9 Sarah Franklin: And they told me, you're not gonna get any promotion. You're not gonna have any team. You're not gonna have any title. I'm like that's okay. It's good. And I started realizing how much I cared about the purpose and how much I cared about that. And so that was when the moment was, I just, I threw myself into shining the spotlight on admins. I didn't wanna just call them heroes. I called them awesome admins. I wanted to give them a way to learn. We created a platform called Trailhead. We wanted to give them a name that was more than just like admin. We wanted to represent what they did because they were like blazing trails at their work, and we call them Trailblazers. And we started getting moment and it was incredible. And it was amazing. And this is all behind the scenes, like everybody else at Salesforce was like what is she doing?
0:32:23.5 Sarah Franklin: She is crazy town like this girl. She's got like astro characters and she's got some outdoorsy thing. I have no idea what's going on with her, but okay, good luck with that. And then this was the thing was when we had this kind of my inference meeting with Marc Benioff, where he won a developer conference and we were talking about what to do, and he's like well, what do we do this? Because our developers, they're like different, they're not really like Job accorders they configure stuff what do we call them? Like declarative developer people? That's boring. And I was like well, Marc, we call them trailblazers. And I remember this day, oh my God, he looked at me, he was like walked out of the room. And I was like okay, that was a fail.
0:33:14.6 Sarah Franklin: And then that night I had my kind of Jerry McGuire moment where I wrote a little manifesto and I just, I couldn't sleep. And I ended up like at midnight, like sending it to Marc. And I thought okay, yeah, the next morning I'm gonna be totally fired. And it was this whole like thing about Trailblazers and I even, I think part of the lines was like how admins and devs act like each other has the cooties and they don't it's even part of it. But how they embrace equality, they embrace like innovation, they embrace entrepreneurship, all of this stuff. And we set them in a childlike environment of a cartoon-like world where their mind can escape the norms and beliefs of the everyday calcification of thought and escape into a childlike mind of thinking of possibilities. And he wrote back that next morning three words of approved Aloha Marc and Salesforce pivoted that day to become a change company from blue slides and a cloud to an outdoor forest and characters running about and a philosophy around Astro whose gender pronouns are they/them, and they're there to help you.
0:34:28.7 Sarah Franklin: And we created the Trailblazer moment. We put golden hoodies on people, we celebrated them. And that's when my career went from putzing out as a senior director to VP, SVP EVP CMO president, and now a CEO of a company. And I would say the lesson there of the long story is believe in yourself, have passion for your mission. Don't accept no for an answer and have a purpose behind what you do. And when you do that, all of the money, success, everything will follow. But the most important is you'll be happy in your job. And that is something that money cannot buy.
0:35:08.4 Francois Ajenstat: Amen to that. You have to take your shot at times, but you have to have the passion, the conviction, the belief and also you gotta fall in love with your customers. You gotta fall in love with the problem. You gotta fall in love with the opportunity in front of you.
0:35:25.3 Sarah Franklin: I love that.
0:35:27.5 Francois Ajenstat: Sarah. It is always a pleasure to talk to you. It's always fun. I learned something new. We went from cooties to Gandhi, Indiana Jones, to the Beastie Boys. Like we had everything in here, but I learn something new every time we talk, I'm inspired by you, you're motivating me to want to achieve even more. And I'm just lucky to have you in my life as a friend, as a colleague. And I know you're gonna do amazing things. And I am not just on the sidelines. I'm there rooting for you every single day.
0:36:06.2 Sarah Franklin: Well, all the same. Back to you like Chef's Kiss, like you just made me blush. And thank you and I appreciate this and rooting for you and youre whole world that you're creating as well.
0:36:17.4 Francois Ajenstat: Wow. This is fun. This is what we do it. We love it.
0:36:19.5 Sarah Franklin: This is what we do. It's fun. It's why we do what we do. Hashtag.
0:36:22.5 Francois Ajenstat: Exactly. Hashtag.
0:36:25.2 Sarah Franklin: Hashtag Jinx.
0:36:26.5 Francois Ajenstat: Well, Sarah, thank you so much for joining us and thank you for listening to Next Gen Builders. Look out for our next episode wherever you get your podcasts. And don't forget to subscribe. See you soon. Build awesome stuff.