The Value of Fearless Resilience

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- Welcome to Inside the Ohana.

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I'm Dan Darcy, Chief Customer Officer at Qualified.

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And today I'm joined by my great friend,

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Shannon Duffy, Shannon, how are you?

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- I'm doing great.

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Hello.

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- Hello, okay.

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I wanna dive right into our first segment, Ohana Origins.

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So how did you discover Salesforce and start your journey?

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- Yes, I like to say that Salesforce discovered me, Dan.

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And that's because I was acquired by Salesforce in May of 2010.

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And my company, a little tiny company called Jigsaw

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was the first real business or people acquisition

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that Salesforce had done.

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Up into that time, they had done technology or some tuck-ins,

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but we were like a full-fledged business

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and we were one of the first, of course,

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many since, many huge acquisition since then,

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but we were the largest back in the day.

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- Well, I mean, give me some of the details.

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Like, what year was that?

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What was your job, your title?

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Like your initial impression?

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- So, so many things.

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So that was May 10th of 2010,

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that date is sealed in my brain.

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And I was like director of marketing,

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we had like an eight-person marketing team.

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I was the lead, so many impressions.

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I was so like, overwhelmed.

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People were welcoming, but also questioning.

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And I tell people like Salesforce really,

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Salesforce at that time wasn't big.

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I think Salesforce was 3,000 people, maybe 4,000 people.

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But you had like product marketing and PR and demand.

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And I remember people would be like,

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"Well, who does product marketing?"

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I'd be like, "Me."

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They're like, "Who does PR?"

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I'm like, "Also me, who does demand gen?"

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I'm like, "Still me."

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And they were just like, "What?"

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Like, we don't understand.

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So that was kind of my first impression.

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But also just being so impressed about this company

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that had been such a force,

1:44

even back then in the industry, to kind of be inside

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and see how they operated from a marketing perspective

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was just really, really exciting for me back then.

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- Well, you know, for the listeners and the viewers out there,

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Jigsaw obviously was an acquisition company,

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but then rebranded.

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So what was the rebrand name?

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- We rebranded as data.com.

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And that, you know, we bought the URL.

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We did a huge sort of dream force launch around it.

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And yeah, data.com.

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And I hear allegedly that maybe data.com

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will come back for some other products someday.

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So I don't know.

2:15

So stay tuned.

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- I mean, it's always about the URL.

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So glad we got that, you know.

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- It's a great URL actually.

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And Mark was the one that bought it,

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which was very a good marketing move.

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- All right, Shannon, it's time for you to brag a little

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because I know you've had a lot of incredible success

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during your time at Salesforce.

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But what's one of the biggest successes you've had

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while working with Salesforce

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or something that you're really just proud of?

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- I don't want to say that the,

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no one expected me to be successful, right?

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Like I was this Rando from the small company that we bought

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and I'm like trying to figure stuff out.

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And I worked on data and then I worked on part of

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and then I worked on marketing cloud

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and I worked on platform.

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And then by the time I left, you know,

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really their share, I was running all product marketing.

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And so I just feel very proud that the company trusted me enough

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to give me more challenges and helped kind of do my unique

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brand of marketing across all of our products.

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I'm very proud of that.

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- Let's take the opposite side of the spectrum.

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What would you say is one of the biggest lessons you learned?

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- I learned so many lessons.

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I mean, I'm definitely the marketer I am today

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because of Salesforce and because of Mark

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and all the great mentors I had along the way.

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I think my biggest lesson is to be resilient.

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Despite all the successes that, you know,

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no one's journey is linear and I got some feedback

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and some setbacks and there were failures along the way.

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And at any time I let that get into my head and stepped out.

3:37

I wouldn't have continued to have that trajectory.

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- Yeah. I mean, that well said

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because I think it happened, it does happen to all of us.

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It's just something that just continues on.

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I mean, I obviously share in that, you know, in that path.

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- We used to talk about it.

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We had moments together back in the day, right?

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- Yeah, absolutely.

3:55

Now, if you could go back and talk to the Shannon

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that just started out with Salesforce

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as you were coming on as, you know, through Jigsaw,

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what advice would you give to yourself?

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- I would say be fearless.

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I actually thought about this a lot

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and I would say be fearless.

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I think I was so, again, in my own head

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and like, oh, I'm different.

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I came from an acquisition.

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I don't know.

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And what I learned throughout my tenure at Salesforce

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is people wanted different.

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Salesforce supports sort of bold ideas

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and doing things different,

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not always the status quo.

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And I wish I had more confidence in myself

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earlier out of my career to be like that

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from the beginning versus having to evolve in that

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through various different situations.

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- I love it.

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Be fearless because it's like your idea

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is just as great as the idea next to you.

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- And the fearless and the resilience go hand in hand, right?

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'Cause then I'm your fearless and they're like,

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nope, that's wrong.

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I mean, I think honestly the first words

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that Mark ever said to me was,

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I see what you're saying, but you're totally wrong.

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And he said it in a kind way.

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Like it wasn't a bad thing, but again,

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if I had been like, oops, well, I'm done.

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Like where would I be now?

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But I was like, oops,

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I will give you another idea someday that you might not like,

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but I'm gonna keep trying.

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You're less, really, it's.

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- I love it, I love it.

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So I wanna ask you about the meaning of O'Hanna

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because I asked this of all my guests

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and everyone describes it a little bit differently.

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But what does O'Hanna mean to you?

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- I think what's fascinating to me about Salesforce

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is there is this concept of friendly competition

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or co-opertition or whatever that word is.

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Like there is a level of competitiveness,

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which in a lot of ways it's a good thing.

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It pushes us to be better.

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But if you were having a bad day

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or if you need something from someone,

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the organization will rally around you at the same time.

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And so again, like we're all,

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this group of people are working together

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to do something bigger, to change an industry,

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to market and sell in whole new ways.

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And sometimes there's again,

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some competition or some tension that that creates,

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the things that really, really matter,

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the people will step up and they will help

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and they will do more work

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and they will go outside of their way to help you.

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So that's kind of what it means to me.

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- Well, I love it.

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Well, Dreamforce is coming up

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and I know we're gonna get into where you are now,

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which is at Asana and we'll talk a little bit more

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about that in the next kind of segment and piece.

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But Dreamforce, as you know,

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is something that we would live and breathe

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every single year and it was a big event.

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And both you and I are not there

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as part of Dreamforce anymore,

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but I want to like ask you,

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do you have any special Dreamforce moments or stories?

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- There are so many, there are so many

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and some of them probably are not appropriate

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for podcasting right now, but I love Dreamforce.

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Like Dreamforce is that like,

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you're so tired and you're delirious,

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but when you're done, you're like,

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"Oh my God, I did this."

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And everything from like being in the office

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on a Sunday or nine o'clock at night

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and having conversations about like which version of Cody,

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the bear do we put on a slide?

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All the way to like dancing on stage at concerts too.

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My favorite Dreamforce story is one year

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when I was working on "Part Out,"

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we had the cast of Silicon Valley at an event

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and that was when Silicon Valley was like the show, right?

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But I think it was like a show forever,

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but like for like tech people was the show,

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like other people watched it and we had this event

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and we did not realize we were gonna get the amount of interest.

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And so we literally had people lining up

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like the police were called like to see

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the Silicon Valley people and we had the cast,

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these guys that play these, you know, characters

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and they were like, "What's going on?"

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'Cause we needed to get police to escort us

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from one building to the other

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'cause there were so many people.

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They're like, "Are these people here for us?"

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I was like, "You don't realize in our industry

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"how much the show means to us?"

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They're like, "Dude, we live in LA.

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"No one even knows who we are."

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I'm like, "Welcome, welcome to the Bay Area and tech.

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"You are rock stars here."

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They're like, "That's awesome."

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- I love that because, you know, it's funny

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'cause I always used to tell people

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I had a hard time watching it because we lived it every day

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and I know it is something big,

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but and everyone was like, "Is that real?"

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No, it felt like a docu-series.

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It didn't feel like a show.

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(laughs)

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Yeah.

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I mean, and what's funny for people who don't recognize,

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they actually, you know, the writers of Silicon Valley

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would come to the different tech companies

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and find these stories

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and then they would get displayed in this.

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Anyway, I know I digress, but it was,

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that would fit a great draw.

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What a great draw though.

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I mean, of like getting people to come there.

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So, you know, I know SANA is part

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of the Salesforce ecosystem as well,

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but are you looking to attend Dreamforce

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or, you know, is SANA gonna, you know, like, I don't know,

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if you are, like, what are you looking forward to?

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- You know, Dreamforce is a forest and industry.

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It's one of the worlds are just tech conferences.

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It is where you go.

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So we are working on sponsoring, exhibiting,

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because that's where I think the industry goes,

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to see who the vendors are

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and how people who are using Salesforce

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can be more productive, which is right in our sweet spot.

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- Well, let's get into our next segment, What's Cooking?

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So, Shannon, you're now the CMO,

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the Chief Marketing Officer at SANA.

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I want you to talk about how you got to where you are now

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and what your journey has been like

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to get to your current role.

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- Yeah, so I had a great run at Salesforce.

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I was there 12 years.

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I loved it.

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I learned so much and I'm so grateful for Salesforce

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for teaching me so many things

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and making the market, me, the marketer I was.

9:18

It was fascinating being a company like Salesforce

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that literally was changing an industry and cheat.

9:25

Like, it was a revolution in a lot of ways

9:26

and changing the way, you know, software

9:28

and people use software and how they use software

9:30

to connect with customers.

9:32

And I think for me, like, I was very picky

9:35

about where I was gonna go.

9:37

And when I found SANA, it was such a natural next step for me

9:41

because I had been on the forefront of this revolution

9:43

around cloud and CRM and no software.

9:46

And I look at what we're doing as SANA is radically

9:49

transforming the way people work for the better,

9:51

how do you make work more productive,

9:52

how do you work more enjoyable?

9:54

And I was like, this is perfect.

9:56

This is the next step for me.

9:57

I see how this is the next changing force in the industry.

10:01

I see why every company is going to need this

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and I can take all the amazing things

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I learned at Salesforce and put it to, you know,

10:08

a different model, a different type of software

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that is completely complementary to Salesforce

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and not competitive in any way.

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So that's kind of why I joined and why

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I was really excited about SANA.

10:18

- Well, what challenges then are you seeing now

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and like, how are you applying what you've learned

10:22

really at Salesforce to those challenges?

10:24

- So I think we're creating a,

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I don't wanna say we're creating a category

10:29

because the category exists.

10:30

I think so many companies are just doing things the old way

10:33

using spreadsheets and Google Docs and things to,

10:40

that's how we work.

10:41

I mean, that's how we worked at Salesforce

10:43

a lot of the time.

10:44

And SANA is revolutionizing that.

10:46

We're like, how can you look at work differently?

10:48

And how are we facilitating cross-team collaboration

10:52

and how are we making sure that the work

10:53

that people are doing lines up to company goals

10:56

and objectives, right?

10:57

Like that's really meaningful.

10:58

Like, so the challenge is how do I make sure,

11:01

I know everyone knows that they need it.

11:03

How do I make sure every company know that they need it

11:04

that there's a better way.

11:06

It's not just about, you know, spreadsheets.

11:08

It's eliminating work about work

11:09

and it's freeing you up so you could focus on the things

11:12

that are important and having this sort of underlying,

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you know, platform or layer that facilitates

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these connections across an organization.

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- Well, what is next then

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and how are you guys shaping the future?

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- We are doing a lot.

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So we are, AI is huge for us.

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The great thing about SANA is our underlying technology,

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the work graph makes AI sort of seamlessly added

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to our product.

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And if you think about AI, everyone's talking about,

11:39

how do I use AI to make my work better?

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Well, guess what?

11:41

A SANA has that built in, right?

11:43

So you're struggling with like,

11:44

how do I use AI for work by a SANA?

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'Cause we have it for you built in

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and you could use it right away.

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So that's gonna be huge.

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I mean, it's huge for everybody.

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It's particularly huge for us and in this space.

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- Well, let's get into our final segment,

11:56

the future forecast.

11:58

What do you envision as the future

11:59

of the Salesforce ecosystem?

12:01

- The Salesforce ecosystem is going to continue to expand.

12:05

I mean, when I joined Salesforce

12:07

and you were already there,

12:08

it was we had what Sales Cloud Service Cloud platform

12:11

and kind of data.com and look at where it is now

12:14

with marketing and commerce and, you know,

12:17

CBP data cloud technology analytics with Tableau Slack

12:21

for communication, it's just gonna get bigger.

12:24

I think that anything that you kind of need

12:28

to sort of run your business

12:30

or have that 360 degree view of your customer,

12:32

Salesforce will have kind of built into their platform.

12:35

- Well, can you give us a prediction

12:37

of what the future of Asana looks like?

12:39

- It's going to implement AI so fundamentally and so deeply.

12:44

It's going to be a completely seamless experience

12:47

for all our customers.

12:48

It's gonna help them be more productive.

12:49

It's gonna help them get worked on faster

12:51

and it's going to help them foster really deep connections

12:54

and collaborations at their company.

12:56

So they grow faster.

12:58

- I am so excited and our CEO Dustin is just such,

13:03

he is an expert in AI in a way

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that I feel really, really lucky.

13:07

Like, you know, when I joined Asana,

13:09

you know, all of a sudden kind of AI came out of nowhere

13:11

and I feel so lucky that I joined a company that has a CEO

13:14

that is such an expert in this space

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and is so passionate about having it part of our product

13:20

but also done with sort of like principles

13:22

of what it means and how AI plus humans work together

13:25

not sort of one or the other

13:27

or one displacing something else

13:28

to feel really, really lucky about that.

13:30

- What I love about your story is that you started with data

13:34

and now you're back in data, you know?

13:38

- Now we're back.

13:39

- Yeah, we're back, especially, I mean,

13:41

with training, you know, obviously these big learning models

13:44

and especially in the world of like how you think about,

13:47

you know, transforming work with Asana,

13:49

I think that's really awesome.

13:51

What advice do you have for aspiring marketing leaders?

13:54

- Be flexible.

13:57

I think if you're going to excel in marketing today,

14:02

you have to be constantly willing to pivot

14:05

and you have to be looking at what's happening,

14:06

looking at the trends, looking at what people are buying,

14:09

looking at the macro economic conditions

14:11

and you have to be constantly looking at your marketing

14:13

and being like, does this resonate with the buyer?

14:16

Is this relevant now?

14:17

And that can be really hard.

14:19

I think you need to be very data driven

14:23

but also creative.

14:24

And so what I talk to people like marketing leaders,

14:27

I'm like assess yourself on the various different skills

14:31

that you need, creativity, you know, messaging,

14:33

being data driven.

14:34

And if you rank lower than like a three out of five

14:38

in any of those, make sure you're hiring to augment you

14:41

and give those people sort of the autonomy and empowerment

14:44

to build out that aspect of your marketing work.

14:49

- All right, before letting you go,

14:50

let's have fun with a quick lightning round.

14:53

Are you ready?

14:54

- I'm so ready.

14:55

Let's do it.

14:56

- All right, Shannon, secret skill not on the resume.

15:00

I know all the moves to Britney Spears,

15:02

I'm a slave for you dance.

15:04

(laughs)

15:05

- Wow.

15:06

- I know you didn't know that about me.

15:07

- I did.

15:08

I mean, is that on YouTube?

15:09

So where is Britney?

15:10

- I know, it's actually that though.

15:12

- You feel like that's very late at night with those.

15:15

- Yes, exactly.

15:16

- In the keynote room, especially.

15:18

- Yeah, exactly, right before keynote.

15:20

- Yeah.

15:21

All right, best way to spend an evening after work.

15:24

- I honestly, I really love tacos and margaritas

15:27

in Mexican food, and if I could go to a Mexican restaurant

15:31

with friends and just sit and gab and drink margaritas,

15:34

that makes me very happy, very simple lady.

15:37

- Well, I'm a huge fan of Celia's and San Mateo's

15:39

so huge shout out to all of us.

15:40

- I went to Celia's yesterday, I love Celia's, it's so good.

15:44

- Yeah, yeah, I love it, I love it.

15:46

- Yeah, I went to the Menlo Park one, but yeah.

15:48

- Oh, that's nice, nice, nice.

15:49

All right, favorite brand of anything?

15:52

- Sephora.

15:54

I love Sephora, the makeup shop store,

15:57

and I almost like have an addiction there.

15:59

Like I need some sort of like special VIP card.

16:03

I go there so much.

16:04

Happy, happy, happy, happy.

16:05

- I think I have a feeling I know what this answer

16:07

to the next question is.

16:08

You just run front row to get your dream event.

16:11

What is it?

16:12

- Britney Spears and she'll tour again, mark my words.

16:15

- Yeah, I know.

16:17

Oh, free Britney and she's been freed, so.

16:20

Well, Shannon, this has been so much fun,

16:23

but before I let you go, I would love for you

16:25

to let the listeners know where they can find you.

16:27

And if there's anything else you'd like to share or plug,

16:30

like your open role, please.

16:34

- I will say, so many things.

16:36

You can find me on LinkedIn, Shannon Sullivan Duffy

16:39

or Shannon Duffy at asana.com.

16:42

I would encourage you to sign up for an asana org.

16:46

It's free and you will literally transform

16:48

the way you work and connect your goals

16:51

and collaborate across teams.

16:53

And that's it.

16:55

That's all I have to say. - Awesome.

16:57

Well, I loved hanging out with you, Shannon.

16:59

Thank you so much for the call today

17:01

and really appreciate your time.

17:03

- Always a pleasure.

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