Meet Robin Daniels, a leadership expert who has mastered driving action through messaging. With more than two decades of experience spanning companies like Salesforce, Box, WeWork, LinkedIn, and Matterport, Robin has transformed the way people communicate and connect at work. Hear about his insights from launching Chatter and much more in this episode.
Meet Robin Daniels, a leadership expert who has mastered driving action through messaging. With more than two decades of experience spanning companies like Salesforce, Box, WeWork, LinkedIn, and Matterport, Robin has transformed the way people communicate and connect at work. Hear about his insights from launching Chatter and much more in this episode.
Quote
“If storytelling with urgency was easy, everybody would do it, but this is what it takes to become a great company today.”
Episode Timestamps:
*(1:57) - Ohana Origins: Meet Robin
*(10:30) - What Does the Ohana mean to Robin?
*(12:40) - What’s Cooking: Robin’s Current Role
*(21:03) - Future Forecast: What’s in Store for the Salesforce ecosystem?
*(22:19) - Advice for Aspiring Transformational Leaders
*(23:06) - Lightning Round!
Sponsor
Inside the Ohana is brought to you by Qualified.com, the #1 Conversational Marketing platform for companies that use Salesforce and the secret weapon for Demand Gen pros. The world's leading enterprise brands trust Qualified to instantly meet with buyers, right on their website, and maximize sales pipeline. Visit Qualified.com to learn more.
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[00:01:30] Dan: Welcome to Inside the Ohana. I'm Dan Darcy, Chief Customer Officer at Qualified, and today I'm joined by my great friend Robin Daniels. Robin, how are you?
[00:01:38] Robin: I'm great, Dan. It's so good to see you. You know what, you and I have known each other for like 15 years now, and you were always one of my favorite people at Salesforce.I'm so excited to chat with you here, but even my wife always says, Dan Darcy? He’s so great. She remembers meeting you and just cause you treat everybody well and with respect. So I'm excited to be here, man.
[00:01:57] Dan: All right Robin, so I wanna dive right into our first segment, Ohana Origins. Robin, how did you discover Salesforce and start your journey?
[00:02:12] Robin: It's worth taking a step back and just explain how I even got to California and into the tech world to begin with. So I was born and raised in Denmark, but I've always loved technology. I've loved how technology can impact our lives, both the way we work and the way we live. And so I always wanted to be a part of that movement. And I consider myself a super geek, you know, at, at, really at the core of it. And so in when I was 21, in February 1st, 2000, I ended up buying a one-way ticket and going to California. And after two weeks I got two drop offers and I ended up taking a job at a startup company in Los Gatos in Silicon Valley. And a month after I got there in March of 20 of 2000, the whole market crashed. And I was like, what just happened? Yeah. So that company did not end up making it. I went to another company that did not end up making it. Then I up going to a bigger company called Veritas, and with them I moved to England and it was in England that I really started discovering Salesforce.
[00:02:56] Just the leadership from Marc Benioff. And the movement that he was creating around moving everything into the cloud. Back then it was called On Demand. It wasn't even called cloud. Of course that came later, but I was just always fascinated by it. So I actually applied to join Salesforce in 2006, and it was for senior director of product marketing role in the UK. And I went to a lot of interviews with Woodson and Clarence and other people over there, even George Shoe. And I didn't get the. But the feedback I got after awards was like, Oh, you're great. We love your energy. We think you're smart, but you're not quite senior enough for this role, so we're gonna have to pass, but we'll keep you in mind for the future.
[00:03:31] Fast forward a year and a half, I took another job. Suddenly out of the blue, Salesforce reaches out to me and they're like, Hey, we have a. Different role now. We've grown the team. We'd love you to come in, in this product marketing role and lead product marketing for Europe, Middle East, and Africa for, for these kind of products. Are you interested? And I said, Yeah, but you know, I was there a year and a half ago and I spoke to so many of your different people, you know, you probably have a record of it somewhere. And they said, Well, wait, what? I said, Yeah, you know, I, I used to be Robin Gergzen. I've changed my name to Robin Daniels. You know, being a progressive male, I took my wife's last name when we got married, so I've changed my name. And they went back and they talked to everybody who, me, and they came back and said, Yeah, everybody remembers you. They loved you. They thought you were really smart. We'd like you to come in just for kinda the final round. So the second time I came in there, it was super easy because everybody luckily remembered me and they ended up hiring me and that was how I got my start at Salesforce. I, I love it.
[00:04:19] Dan: So gimme the details. What was your initial job? You know, what was your initial impression? Tell me all about that.
[00:04:25] Robin: I ended up working for a guy called Tim Barker in Europe. He's one of the smartest, nicest guys you'll ever meet in, in the world, and he became a really good mentor for me. And based on the success that we had in growing that region, I remember that we were the fastest growing region at the time, faster than America's, faster than APAC and so on. I think it created enough of a momentum around me as a, as a person, a leader, and, and everything. That he got the attention of headquarters and eventually headquarters said, Hey, we're about to launch this new thing called Chatter. Do you wanna come back to the US and work on that? And so when I got that offer to go back to California, I said, This is my chance. And you know, there's always a moment in anybody's career and now that I mentor a lot of other people and I coach people on, on their careers and their growth, there's always at some moment in your career where you're given the shot to do something great.
[00:05:11] You have to decide that as a person, how much you lean into that. When it is you decide how much you work on it, what you're willing to sacrifice, cuz taking your career and having it take off requires a lot of sacrifice. There's no doubt about it. But when I was given the opportunity to really lead product marketing for Chatter, to me, I kind of seized that and it created enough momentum in my life. Cuz I think we, we did well enough in terms of launching that to the world that all other companies afterwards came and found.
[00:05:36] Dan: Well, I'm excited you moved out to California because that's where we got to really know each other and obviously work on building chatter together. So, Robin, you know, building on that, I want you to brag a little because I know you've had just incredible success during your time at Salesforce. What would you say is your biggest success and or something that you are most, you're the most proud of, thus?
[00:05:58] Robin: So, so Chatter was a huge moment, but it was also a great experience because we, we launched Chatter in 2009 at Dreamforce, but the product wasn't ready. It wasn't, there wasn't a real product at that point in time. Then we said, Okay, in order for this to stick, we can't use the same playbook that every other company in Silicon Mall use. Whereas let's launch something once. And then we get some articles and maybe in Tech Crunch. Maybe you feel lucky in Wall Street Journal, New York Times, blah, blah, blah, and then you're good to go. Then everyone is hurt. We said no. If we really want Chatter to stick and be a source to be reckoned with, we have to go into this kind of mode of relaunch. Relaunch, relaunch, Relaunch. Yeah. Launch. Launch Relaunch. We came up with this playbook that set every basically five to six. We're gonna relaunch chatter in a brand new way.
[00:06:40] Of course, the core of the product is the same, but the story around it was just a chatter, mobile chatter app exchange chatter, you know, for, for this industry or chatter success story. But there was always something in the news, and we went on this hyper intense journey. Over about a year and a half of every five or six weeks, we'd have some news. So now it's about chatter and it meant that after, I would say a year and a half chatter was like the most talk about product that Salesforce had ever launched at that point in time. I'm sure it's probably been been, now it's superseded, but it meant suddenly Salesforce was sexy again cuz nobody really wanted to write about a CRM system. CRM system honestly is just not that interesting, but we, we built this social component on top of the CRM system that made it super interesting. But that the story. Of building a CRM system with a social component was something that nobody else in the industry had. It meant that we could suddenly beat all the other CRM vendors cuz we had an interesting component and we could beat all the kind of social vendors that was Jive and Yammer at the time because the combination of those two products was unstoppable.
[00:07:34] And so it created so much momentum. I mean, I remember. Again, it's not like I'm taking credit for this, but because of the execution of everybody who worked on this, including you, the stock price doubled in that time when many other companies saw their stock price not really move because there wasn't that much new and exciting in the market. And if we had just written about crm, I think Salesforce would not have created that momentum if we just talked about CR IDN nauseum, but we create this social atmosphere around it that was really, really interesting.
[00:08:01] Dan: What I really loved hearing was the value-based messaging instead of calling it Facebook or the enterprise. You know, you, you talked about all the different value metrics and the time savings and everything that companies can do. The message around launch, launch and relaunch, kind of repeating those moments over time, you know, and, and perfecting the message. And then of course, storytelling is really about, yes, it’s everything. So that's great. Now, on the opposite side of the spectrum, what would you say was your biggest lesson learned at your time in Salesforce?
[00:08:28] Robin: One thing I've always tried to take with me, you know, in every company since then is this notion of, of really marketing yourself like a consumer company. And I say that I've done this test, honestly thousands of times. Maybe I ask people, tell me three brands, Every single time, a hundred percent. People will mention consumer brands every single time. Oh, I love Tesla, Lulu, Lemon, Apple, Nike, you name it. And so the answer to me is obvious. Market yourself like a consumer brand as much as you can. And the look at what Salesforce does, I think with something that's obviously pretty technical and honestly you could argue is pretty boring. They've done a phenomenal job of the storytelling of marketing themselves, nearly like a consumer fan, even though they're so far from a consumer brand as anything inside. But they do a good job cause they always come back to the human. So it's a huge, huge lesson I've taken with.
[00:09:14] Dan: Love it. And now if you could go back and talk to Robin that's just starting out with Salesforce or the Robin that just got turned down by Salesforce for the first time, what advice would you give yourself?
[00:09:23] Robin: That's a great question. I would say be bolder. I think I was a little too timid in the beginning and it's because I didn't know the level and caliber of people around me and what was expected. So I don't think. It's not like I screwed up, I didn't do well, but I don't think I was bold enough, so I wasn't aggressive enough or assertive enough in, in the things that I wanted to do. Realizing that Salesforce was to kind of play a step of board and boldness. So I think I played it a little bit too safe probably in the, the first six to nine months or so. You know, try to do what was expected versus going beyond what's expected of you and, and really like taking those chances. I mean, I, I have this framework I use.
[00:09:59] And a lot of it comes from Salesforce, even though we didn't use this exact same framework at Salesforce. But I think, you know, individuals and teams, they operate at three different levels. Either do tactical things that brings incremental assaults. You can do strategic things that brings linear results, or you can do epic things that brings exponential assaults. And I think Salesforce is the kind of company that really rewards that level of epic think. That brings exponential assaults. I mean especially cuz you have a, a, a chorus of support around you that's willing to support you in those, those endeavors.
[00:10:30] Dan: I love the reflection there. So, so Robin, I wanna ask you about the meaning of Ohana. And I asked this of all my guests because everyone really describes it just a little bit differently. But I'm curious, how would you describe the Ohana and what does it mean to you?
[00:10:43] Robin: Salesforce was always about, we were like evangelical warriors out there to create a movement that would change the world to change the lives of people. And we were a family in doing it. Family maybe is not the right word, but we were like a movement. And the movement always, I think, starts internally, which is why I think Salesforce did such a good job. And movement to me never starts externally. It starts internally. And Salesforce maybe, I think a lot of it came from Benioff really realized how to harness that kind of passion of the people. I don't think there was anywhere to the, like a lot of people just thought, I'm just selling more crap. It's like, oh, we're trying to create a better future for everybody. I love it.
[00:11:18] Dan: Now, before we get into our next segment, are there any special stories or ohana moments is what I like to call them, that are a little behind the scenes that you wanna share that you normally wouldn't share?
[00:11:26] Robin: I think it was four days for four robots to launch chatters to the. And I'm sitting in this kind of meeting with Craig Wins through and Kendall Collins and lots of other people talking about the launch. And I remember just like after I went to all the things that we're gonna do, like here step by step, but we're gonna do what we're gonna talk about. So on. I, I remember, I think it was Craig, who's like, This is not good us, We need to do better. We need, we need better stories, we need better customers. And I'm like, panic. You know, it's like four days until we're about to launch and it's like, it feels like my biggest moment and, and I feel like I'm, I'm kind of screwing.
[00:11:59] But it was also a reckoning of like this notion that I mentioned earlier of always pushing each other to do better. Yeah. And because of course, whatever I would do, he was my boss at the time would also reflect better on him. So he wanted also, of course be a big moment. But what I took away from that is, you know, it's never too late to actually go and do something better, even though we only had. Like four days to fix this.
[00:12:21] Dan: Yeah, I was just gonna say, four days, that's a whole world of time? Like exactly. If you were saying four hours, like that's, that is obviously also a believable story.
[00:12:27] Robin: But we had to go out and shoot new video, new new customer videos, update the messaging and, and even the launch plans and so on. But it also, again, that pushing for excellence I think is something that I've always taken. Love it.
[00:12:40] Dan: Let's get into our next segment, What’s Cookin’. Robin, now you are an executive advisor at many companies. I, I want you to talk about how you got to where you are and, and what your journey has been like to get to your current role?
[00:13:01] Robin: Sure. So after I left Salesforce, you know, I, I was there, I think it grew from around a thousand people, maybe a little bit more to maybe 8,000, 10,000 people. And I thought to myself, I really want to get in earlier and be part of an earlier journey. So when Box reached out to me in 2000, end of 2011, and basically he was Aaron Levy saying whatever he did at Salesforce, come, come do it for us cuz he wanted to mirror that journey. And there were about 200 people at the time. I thought, well this is my chance, an opportunity to get in a more senior role, pre IPO and help growth into that journey. And then I thought to myself, well now I've kind of taken that hyper growth journey. Let me go even earlier and go to a place where I come in dearly at the ground floor, not maybe as a founder, but kind of I would call it a near founder and help really scale and grow a company from nothing. So I joined a company called Vera that was still in stealth. We just raised our sea ground $4 million, and they hired me to be the chief marketing officer and the chief revenue officer, and we scaled that company just over 10 million in revenue, just over a hundred.
[00:14:01] But I left that company, not because I didn't love the job itself, I loved the art of marketing. I was the, that was my main focus there. But because I, I didn't love the problem that we were solving, which was a cybersecurity company. The world needs it. God bless companies who are solving cybersecurity for all of us, but I'm just not passionate about it. I don't wake up being passionate about that world. What I'm really passionate about, I had this moment of realization, is I love working on technologies that bring people together. So afterwards, I really wanted to go to a. That was all about bringing people together. And I ended up going to LinkedIn again through my Salesforce connection. And LinkedIn of course, is the ultimate platform that brings people together. And if you re round the clock there, I would probably thought I would've been at LinkedIn for quite a while. But then rework came and knocked on my door. And at first I wasn't really sure. I said no. And then they were very persistent.
[00:14:45] And I ended up, of course, becoming the, the chief marketing officer at WeWork and saw them to 20 billion valuation, 47 billion action towards an ipo, and then it all came crashing down. It was pretty, pretty. But it was, it is still a fun experience. So even though I left WeWork, then I ended up going to a company called Matterport, which also about bringing people together around spaces. So I went there, went through hyper growth with them, took 'em public in 2021, which was super fun. But I left cuz during that time I also ended up moving to Denmark, moved back from Silicon Valley to to Denmark. The nine hour time difference honestly is was just too tough. So I left at the end of 2020 21, and since then I've just been working with a bunch of cool companies.
[00:15:23] And what I'm doing now is I call myself an executive advisor, but I'm really trying to work with teams and CEOs and companies who just wanna like. Unlock the potential that they have. Sometimes that's an marketing program, so obviously I have a lot of experience in marketing. Sometimes it's the people themselves that needs to be unlocked and need to think bigger and differently about things. Sometimes it's about the culture itself. For example, I'm here at a company called Beamery in the UK. I love the team here. They're about 400 people, Series C. They're growing fast. They're kind of a talent platform. And I was here two weeks ago and I delivered a four hour course on how do you develop high performance teams and how, how do you create high performance cultures?
[00:16:01] Because it's one thing that growing teams oftentimes struggle with. How do you get everybody to perform at the right level and hold them accountable to it? So these are the kind of things that I'm working on. I still love marketing. It's kind of my passion, of course, branding, storytelling, but it's beyond that. It's much more around the people and the potential at this point. So that's, that's what I'm doing these.
[00:16:18] Dan: Well, I mean, you're the perfect person to ask this because you are going across a lot of companies, but what challenges are you seeing now out there and, and you know, how are you helping apply what you've learned from Salesforce to, you know, the challenges that you're seeing in the market?
[00:16:31] Robin: So a lot of companies are struggling with how do you create not just pipeline, you can create pipeline, but how do you create good pipeline, sustainable pipeline, and predictable pipeline? Those are, those are tough. And how do you create urgency in the buying cycle for people to move? A lot of companies, I feel like are realizing that things keep get punted, and as again, comes back to Salesforce using my lesson Salesforce. The two most important questions you have to answer in marketing is why should people care about your product and why now? Most companies are really good at answering the first question. Oh, they can give you a product pitch all day long. But then you get to the point where, why not? Unless you can answer that, you become one of those products that, ah, it sounds really cool, Dan, but next year, next year when I can find some budget, you know?
[00:17:11] Oh, and then it keeps getting, Unless you can create some urgency, which is really hard to do, you're, you're always gonna not live up to your potential as a business. And so I see a lot of companies struggle. So they, they're trying all these digital channels, they're trying all kinds of marketing tactic. But they haven't answered the fundamental of the story itself. Why this product and why now? So you can try all, you can spend endless lots of money on Google AdWords and LinkedIn advertising, but unless the story is compelling, and I say this, I'll go into bcs or founders and they'll say, Eh, we've tried these channels and it's not working, and my questions back is always, What's the story you're, you're sharing? And then they show it to me and I. That's not good enough. There's no, there's no urgency in this story, and it's hard to do it, don't get me wrong. It's not like if it was easy, everybody would do it, but this is what it takes to become a great company state.
[00:17:55] Dan: I mean, it's, it's hard to create that anxiety in the buyer to get them to know. Of course. And I, I think it's, it's a special talent that you bring. So that's awesome.
[00:18:03] Robin: I've always had the mindset of, I only put out marketing that's aspirational and inspirational. The wor the world has enough fear, so I don't want to add more of fear to the world. Yeah. But that's of course juxtapose with actually, how do you create urgency? So I always think of it this way, right? In my mass marketing that goes out to the world, it should be aspirational and inspirational. Yeah. And even the one, so that's the one to many. Even the ones as few should be that way. When, but when you're with a customer, you have to figure out at some point how do actually get them to engage in a way that's urgent a little bit more. And that can be done to marketing, but it can also be done through sales very well. Yeah. Well, and and
[00:18:37] Dan: If the listeners and the viewers out there aren't following you on LinkedIn, they should follow Robin Daniels because you do drive a lot of aspirational message. That's very inspiring to everyone. So thank you for doing that, Robin. So what's, what's next for you and how are you shaping the future?
[00:18:50] Robin:Well, I think about this question. It's either stay doing what I'm doing, just working across a bunch of companies, which has a, it's a lot of fun, but I also miss being part of something. So my, my inclination is to join something or start something because I think when you're in and out, it's, it's, it's fun for the freedom you have and the connections you create, but you're never as fully engaged as I think I like to be. For some people it suits 'em just fine. You're kind of in and out, but. You know, me from Salesforce when I go into something where, and I give it my all, I, I'm in 200%, a thousand percent. There's no half-assing it with me. And I'm not saying I'm half-assing now, but you're kind of not fully committed in. And I, I like doing that. So I would say stay tuned, but I'm, I'm thinking a lot about what's next in 20 20, 23, I guess is where we're coming up to.
[00:19:37] Dan: Well, I mean, I'll just give you a, a little idea, but I think you're becoming a major LinkedIn influencer and you create that LinkedIn influencer army. That would be
[00:19:46] Robin: That would be kind of pretty awesome. But that's a good idea. I like, I, I don't know if that's enough to satisfy me, but I like that. I like the idea. I do like, I think LinkedIn is just such a spec. I just wanna, I think, talk about it just for a sec cuz it's such a special community and it's a special. It's based on people's real identities and it's very positive and supportive community. I mean, I think people are so supportive of each other when people put out vulnerable, authentic posts about the struggles that they have or the things they need help with. The community really rallies around those people really well, and I've seen it. They've done it from me, and I'm forever grateful, you know?
[00:20:18] And that's one thing. The second. That I realized, and if you're a leader and you're listening to this, I only started realizing this probably about two years ago, is it's the best channel for internal communication. I had no idea, but you know, how often do you have all hands? Probably once a week, maybe once every two weeks, Maybe once a month. That means that most of the people in your company are not hearing from you maybe as much as they need to, but guess what? They're all on LinkedIn every single day. And I started realizing, especially during the pandemic, that I would, I would post every single. I got messages from engineers and from product people and from finance people that I've never met saying, Hey, I saw what you posted. It really kind of made my day or something. And it became kind of a channel for internal morale as well. And if you're a leader or ceo, just think of it for that reason alone. That's why you should use LinkedIn.
[00:21:03] Dan: Let's get into our final segment, The Future Forecast. So Robin, what do you envision as the future of the Salesforce ecoysystem?
[00:21:19] Robin: Yeah, I think it's funny, I'm about to go and speak about this here in just a moment. I think there, there are different levels that you can win as a company. You can either have the best feature, you can have the best product, you can have the best category, you can be a category leader, or you can create a full movement that stands the test of time. And I think when I look at Salesforce's journey, they're on their way to really have created the. That is the cloud for everything. I don't think they're quite there yet. They're certainly the category leaders. So they've gone beyond feature level winning, beyond product level winning. They're definitely the category leader when it comes, I think to like, just like the, the enterprise and business cloud. But I think they're on their way to create movement. And the companies that have created movements like Tesla, Apple, Google, they're, they're not quite there, but I think they're, they're heading that way, meaning they're, they're so woven into the fabric of society, how. Get jobs, how they make their living, how businesses operate, how our personal lives operate. These companies have, that have reached movement level status, have really changed the fabric of society, and I think Salesforce is nearly there.
[00:22:19] Dan: What advice do you have for aspiring leaders out there?
[00:22:21] Robin: In times like this, you have to overcommunicate and you have to be really cleared. What, what people, especially on your team hate more than anything, it's uncertainty. And so you can't be one of those years that hides away. You know, sometimes I, I hear these stories, I'm like, Oh, I haven't heard from my leader in two weeks. I'm like, Honestly, it's just not good enough. If you've been given the privilege opportunity to lead, you have to, especially in uncertain times like this, step into it and lead from the front. Be heard, communicate with clarity, communicate with empathy. I think communication is the key. I, I always say to anybody is communication is why I've succeeded in my life. It's also why I've failed sometimes and I learned a lot of it from Salesforce cuz they, they were so great at communication in all aspects, internal, external, you name it.
[00:23:06] Dan: All right. Well before letting you go, let's have fun with a quick lightning round. Are you ready?
[00:23:10] Robin: I’m ready.
[00:23:19] Dan: Okay. Favorite Salesforce product? Not Chatter.
[00:23:24] Robin: Einstein. Just cuz I love the character so much. That's awesome.
[00:23:24] Dan: Favorite Salesforce Character?
[00:23:36] Robin: I mean, chatty, come on.
[00:23:32] Dan: Of course. Favorite brand of anything?
[00:23:36] Robin: I always say there are three brands I can't live without. If I could choose, it's Apple, it's Whole Foods, and it's Lulu 11. I'm wearing a Lulu 11 shirt right now, so damn comfortable. But those three brands, I think are just brands that constantly over deliver. I. Love it.
[00:23:51] Dan: Secret skill, Not on the resume?
[00:23:52] Robin: Well, I used to be in a boy band, so that was good.
[00:23:58] Dan: I'm so glad you brought that up.
[00:24:01] Robin: I know you've always been looking for that video. I have the video.
[00:24:07] Dan: That's awesome. So you just won front row seat tickets to your dream event. What is it? And it can't be your band.
[00:24:13] Robin: I would say to be at the gala from Year of Black Panther.
[00:24:18] Dan: Oh, that's awesome. Robin, this has been so much fun. I've had such a great time. Before I let you go, let the listeners know where they can find you, and is there anything else you'd like to share or plug today?
[00:24:27] Robin: No, I think it's been a, It's been a huge privilege being here. You can find me on LinkedIn, Robin Daniels pretty easy to find. I post a lot of stuff, but find me there. Connect with me. I'd love to hear from you. But Dan, it's just awesome to see you again and thanks to see me. To see you too. Thanks, Robin. Thank you. I