Building with Purpose

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Robert Chatwani, Chief Marketing Officer at Atlassian, reflects on discovering his personal purpose, building organizations and making career choices with purpose at the center, and his views on the future of Marketing and the CMO role.

 

Episode Notes

Robert shares how his parents and early childhood experiences influenced his entrepreneurial drive and his desire to be a builder. He recounts the influence of mentors early in his career who helped him explore his skills and values, the decision to move to Silicon Valley to start a venture early in his career, a deeply authentic commitment to philanthropic efforts spurred by tragic circumstances, an intensely personal personal decision to leave eBay, and his perspectives on the future of marketing and brand as the CMO of Atlassian.

How can you discover and articulate your purpose? How can you make difficult career decisions? How can you incorporate your values into the professional decisions you make? How can you be a better marketer, mentor, and leader? Robert shares his perspective and insights on finding a sense of purpose and making purpose the driving influence in career decisions.

Guest Bio

Robert is a marketing executive with a passion for building early-stage and large-scale consumer platforms. Deep experience in driving revenue growth through performance marketing and consumer branding.

“I believe that technology serves as a force for positive change in society. My passion is building businesses that foster human connections, create hope, and expand opportunity. I lead with empathy, and focus on attracting, retaining, and growing great talent and world-class teams.”

Building Blocks

Reflect on, and write down, what you love and your “why.” Robert suggested that it’s a worthy exercise to take out a piece of paper and write down your reflections on two things: what you love most, and your reason for being. It won’t be easy, and it might take some time. But, speaking from experience, it’s worth it! It helps provide a ton of clarity on how to think about prioritizing your time, effort, and energy. Plus, it will help simplify your life and will help make you more memorable, distinctive, and compelling to others. Check out the Simon Sinek TED talk on this topic, and Brian Solis’ book Lifescale, to get started.

If you’d like to share, get it out there on social with the Hashtag #BreakthroughBuilders. Or, if you’d prefer to not share it publicly, go ahead and email it to me at jesse@breakthrough-builders.com. I’d love hearing from you and learning from what you built.

Helpful Links

  • The seminal Simon Sinek TED talk on Starting with Why

  • Reflections from Robert on his story at the Atlassian Work Life Blog

  • Robert’s Author Page on the Atlassian Work Life Blog

  • 2-minute interview with Robert speaking about Atlassian at TieCON 2019

  • Robert quoted on marketing’s role in driving brand-led growth at CMO.com

  • Daniel Pink on Autonomy, Mastery, and Purpose here (article) and here (video)

  • Creating a CMO Transformation Agenda: Thought Leadership from Prophet here

  • Four Priorities for CMOs to Reimagine and Rignite Marketing: Thought Leadership from Prophet here

Research Reference

+ Episode Transcript

Jesse Purewal [00:00:00] Hi Friends, it’s Jesse. This past year and a half has been tough. It’s been one of the most harrowing and challenging times of many people’s careers. Yet it’s also been a period that’s taught many of us that we can question the status quo, rethink assumptions we held about work-life balance and work-life blend, and discover new ways to get more out of work. And so, it came as no surprise when the US Dept of Labor announced that more people are leaving their jobs this year than have in the past 20 years. And in a study by my colleagues at Qualtrics that was released last week, we learned that people are looking for new jobs because they feel burnt out, they want more growth opportunities, and they’re looking for better leadership.

An eye-popping half of senior executives say they’ll look for a new job in the next 12 months and nearly 40% of individual contributors say the same. Since this is a time when many people, including many of you who are fans of Breakthrough Builders, might be pausing to consider what’s next, we wanted to do something we’ve never done before on the show: re-release a prior episode.

Today’s episode is actually our first-ever episode of Breakthrough Builders, and it’s my far reaching conversation with Atlassian Chief Marketing Officer, Robert Chatwani. Robert’s story is incredibly inspirational because it’s the story of how he came to discover and then develop the courage to act on and live by his purpose. When he was Chief Marketing Officer at ebay, Robert found himself at that moment, not unlike the moment you may be in right now: you have a sense that things may not be quite right, and that this could be a chance to make a change in work and in life - for the better. Or, maybe you’re just up for an inspiring story and for hearing one of my favorite all-time episodes of Breakthough Builders. Enjoy this conversation with my friend, Robert Chatwani.

Robert Chatwani [00:01:52] Companies and cultures change, but that didn't mean that I had to change, and I think this is a lesson for me that I really remember upon self reflection that any leader, whether you are a CMO or a CEO or a first time manager, you cannot craft a culture or be successful, authentically successful in an environment that has a set of values that's fundamentally different than than his or her values.

Jesse Purewal [00:02:31] From Qualtrics Industries, this is Breakthrough Builders, a series of conversations with people whose passions, perspectives, instincts and ideas fuel some of the world's most amazing products, brands and experiences.

Jesse Purewal [00:02:48] I'm Jesse Purewal. Today on the show, how Robert Chatwani of Atlassian reflected on his past and thought about the future to design his personal purpose and how one key meeting early in his tenure as a chief marketing officer put everything he believed to the test. I'm here with Robert Chatwani. Robert, thanks for coming on the podcast. Yeah, thank you for having me, Jesse. So, Robert, you are an incredibly accomplished leader, you're an even better human being, and I'm so excited for this conversation.

Robert Chatwani [00:03:27] OK, well, thank you. It feels like a rare and privileged opportunity for me to step back and reflect. And it's not often I get a chance to to do that.

Jesse Purewal [00:03:36] Robert, let me start with your origin story. I think your parents were were immigrants and your father came to the US first and from India, right?

Robert Chatwani [00:03:45] He did. My parents are from India specifically. My family's from the state of Gujarat in western India. And my father came in nineteen seventy two, landed in San Francisco State here in San Francisco Bay Area, where I currently am for about two weeks before deciding that he needed to make it to Chicago. He originally came to the US to pursue his master's degree, but needed to work to pay for school and learned and discovered that there were jobs and opportunities in Chicago and actually knew very few people at all in the United States. But he had ventured to leave India against the wishes of his family, by the way, to make a new life in the United States. My dad was the rebel in the family. I had a really conservative grandfather who had a very specific life in mind for each of his kids. And I think my dad at some point decided he didn't want any part of that. I think his story is probably not too dissimilar from a lot of others, which is this desire to build a life and pursue opportunity and, you know, in exchange for hard work and in exchange for leaping into a bit of the unknown and knowing that anything is possible. And he was very adventurous and sort of very comfortable with taking risks, but also knowing and having confidence in his own abilities to to make it happen. And I think I see my story in him. And I think at the core of it was just this fundamental belief that I want to create a different life for myself and I want to work hard in exchange for that, get access to opportunity in. The goal is for him to get his master's degree and to do whatever it took to make sure that he was able to hit those targets and personal goals that he had for himself.

Jesse Purewal [00:05:30] So take me back to those years then in Chicago, land in the northwest suburbs, I think. And if I were to go back in time and meet 10 year old 11 year old Robert Chatwani, who's Robert Chatwani at that time?

Robert Chatwani [00:05:47] Well, Iet's see. 9, 10, 11 years old. First you met a kid who always had a side hustle. You'd catch me on the playground, arbitraging books, selling you, stick on tattoos, basically anything I can get my hands on. The most lucrative with candy, obviously. And I would get caught, sent to the principal's office, know the slap on the wrist. And I sort of figured out that, you know, if you get caught twice in a week, that's bad. But once a week, yeah, you could kind of get by and do OK. But I made a good living as a as a 10 year old on the playground selling, selling anything I get my hands on.

Jesse Purewal [00:06:29] I love it. So you are kind of in those years then giving yourself some of a lesson in supply and demand in market forces and exchange rates at the same time, you're you're developing an interest in something that starts to sound commercial and like a marketplace and you're maybe leaning towards economics. And so talk to me about what it was like when you left the northwest suburbs and started to study this stuff in a more formal way.

Robert Chatwani [00:07:04] Yeah, well, look, you know, I think like a lot of folks in college, I sort of didn't know what I wanted to be when I grew up. I just knew that it it I really enjoyed business. I had sort of an inkling of the field of marketing that my father eventually built a career in finance and accounting. So I tried a little bit of everything. And what I remember most is being inspired by professors who really got me excited about different subjects. And, you know, again, economics in particular was something I was passionate about, but but also marketing. I started my career in management consulting. And one of the great things about that is you could sort of delay or kick down the road this decision of what you want to be when you grow up. It was a great introduction to solving lots of problems in a structured learning environment across many, many different industries. Frankly, a lot of the economic principles I learned in college to real life business problems was really exciting for me in the best. The best part of that was also. Arguably, the most important part of that experience was learning to seek mentors who could really help me shape what it was I wanted to do when I when I really grew up, I suppose.

Jesse Purewal [00:08:19] Say a little bit more about the types of mentors that you found yourself gravitating to, where the people who were just really smart, were they fun, kinetic, entrepreneurial people, the likes of whom you'd been with on the playground? Were they the people that were like your parents? What kinds of people did you find yourself attracted to?

Robert Chatwani [00:08:40] For me at McKinsey, what I saw was a lot of individuals who came from backgrounds just like me, which is a modest family backgrounds, but supersmart. Well, when I say that, what I mean is I felt intimidated by the people that I was meeting. Big sense. Even now it has a name. But at the time I didn't know what it was called. That imposter syndrome. Right. Which is a feeling like, hey, I don't belong here, man. These are some really smart people that I'm I get a privilege of working with day in and day out. But, you know, there are a few folks at the time, a partner who hired me who really bet on me. His name is Glenn Forman, who saw in me, I think, a tremendous amount of potential and said, hey, you know, we're going to bet on Robert and bring him into the team and then over it over time. Other mentors who saw in me, I believe what I didn't necessarily at the time see in myself, which is a focus on not just working hard, but really empathy, empathy for the clients we served, empathy for my teammates, empathy for, frankly, you know, how to build great build a great culture with whatever project that we would work on. And so, you know what, I'll never forget? Her name is Jackie Acho. I don't even think I've shared with her the story, but pulled me aside one day and said, hey, listen, here's kind of what you need to go work on in the next in the next couple of years to really help me understand this idea of caring for everything that you do and thinking about how I spend my time in a few ways. One is what's required of me, like what's my core responsibilities of things that I just I just have to do. And then the second is what actually gives me the greatest return, which is what's best for my career, what allows me to progress. But then the last piece, which is where do I get the most reward? You know, if I if I only do sort of what's required of me and what gives me the greatest return, sort of not complete, but what makes me happy, where am I personally satisfied? And you can't really get to three without one and two.

Jesse Purewal [00:11:01] I understand. I understand. So tell me a little bit about the next step here. I mean, I think a couple of years out of school, you're you're still at McKinsey. There was so much happening not just in Silicon Valley, but in a lot of places as it related to technology, entrepreneurship and the Internet was upending business models. And I think it's hard to believe it tempted you and it attracted you. What happened? Well, here I was.

Robert Chatwani [00:11:29] I was at the time working in Washington, DC. McKinsey had spawned a new practice. I was lucky enough. The partner who I mentioned you bet on me in Chicago also bet on me to join him in Washington, DC, Glenn. And it was amazing. And I was there for about a year, but I decided it was a little bit too predictable. And so a good friend of mine, Samir Samir Batea, who I had met in Chicago, and I decided we wanted to start a venture together. We wanted to start a company. And there's really only one place to do that, which is to move to Silicon Valley. And back then for us, it was and moved to San Francisco.

Jesse Purewal [00:12:10] So wait a minute. If I put myself then in your your parents shoes. Wait a minute. We we crossed an ocean for this. We did all this hard work and now you're going to leave after a few years at a top management consulting firm to to just try something. Where did you get again, maybe question about your dad? Where did you discover your courage and your boldness to make this move at that particular point in time?

Robert Chatwani [00:12:41] You know, post college with a few years of work experience as you start to get to know yourself a little bit. But I mentioned my friend Samir. He was an incredible entrepreneur. And it just had such vision that I think I was inspired by. There was an unprecedented shift towards businesses moving online. The dotcom boom was happening and it was a kind of energy that I had never experienced or seen before. And while I didn't feel like it was just a window of opportunity, like we had to move now or otherwise, this could never happen. It certainly felt like I was missing out on an opportunity to start a new adventure. I just felt like something I had to do. It was a calling.

Jesse Purewal [00:13:23] What gave you the certainty, what gave you the ability to kind of be confident in yourself to to make that move? A lot of people wouldn't necessarily know which direction their compass was pointing.

Robert Chatwani [00:13:36] If I just get to the crux of what it was, it was a really deep seated desire to build something. So this idea of creating something from idea and concept all the way to a company, you know, it's really hard thing to contain. And here I had a remarkable friend who had that same belief and same desire, and we decided we wanted to do it together. And that's a really, really hard thing to kind of contain.

Jesse Purewal [00:14:04] So that was really the spark. So what was the idea?

Robert Chatwani [00:14:07] The idea was to build a marketplace where consumers could trade things with each other. If you bring that online, we really felt like there was a huge opportunity to create a barter community for media, for college students and frankly, anybody who wanted to trade with each other, an online marketplace without cash. Well. So on one hand, our timing was great. We raised within a reasonably short amount of time, a few million dollars in capital. We had about twenty five employees, good early velocity, good traction, but at some point. You realize that customers who like to trade things for free don't like to pay transaction fees, and then we got lucky, we actually had one of our investors who introduced us to someone else who had a commercial B2B barter company. And we actually learned about an entire industry of companies that trade with each other. We didn't even know that that existed. This is where I really fell in love with the idea of technology solving problems related to kind of market inefficiency. And so this idea of technology and people coming together to address a market need, by the way, defined by the supply demand dynamics and these inefficiencies. Going back to what I loved about studying economics here, it was coming to life. I really, really fell in love with this idea of the power of technology to help solve real world problems in particularly through these marketplace business models.

Jesse Purewal [00:15:39] And so, Robert, at some point that. Discovered passion intersects with opportunity, you at some point get introduced in to Ebay, yeah, right.

Robert Chatwani [00:15:53] Yes, that's right. Well, what happened is as we were building this business, you know, it was really a new trading format online. And we got a call. I think it was an email initially from the corporate development team at Ebay. And the conversations went really fantastic. They didn't end up partnering with us or buying our company, but I had kept that relationship intact. And, you know, eventually we ended up selling the assets of our company to one of our customers and it ended up leading to an opportunity to join Ebay.

Jesse Purewal [00:16:26] But there's something else right beyond the premise of the business that really deeply resonates with you and gets you excited. Talk a little bit about about that and what that was.

Robert Chatwani [00:16:38] What drew me to the company was it was a marketplace business powered by community and powered by trust. And like many, you know, fast growing businesses and frankly, environments or organizations that have a strong purpose, you discover more than that. And frankly, I think I got fortunate, which is I really loved this idea that Ebay was this engine that would create opportunity for people, you know, no matter what language you spoke, what country you lived in, what your economic status was, anybody connecting to the marketplace was really bound by this idea of opportunity. And I think that's really something that, you know, seeing my parents story coming from India, my father's story was at the center of why he took that leap to come to the US. And it almost mattered to me less what I did and more that I felt connected to this purpose of the organization that stood for something really inspiring and I think really impactful.

Jesse Purewal [00:17:38] And so you're investing in, in a sense, shifting how the world was typically doing business and getting to to build. Did you find that this was helping you discover something about your core purpose?

Robert Chatwani [00:17:56] I think for me, what I discovered is the energy that gets created when what you believe in, who you are deeply intersects with, the values of the organization that you're a part of. And you know, that's certainly true for me at Ebay, but it's also true for, I think, anyone in any environment that if if that's strong, if the overlap between who you are and what you believe intersects with your team, your organization, your company, whatever it is, then it just unleashes an incredible amount of energy and potential. But here I was sitting in San Jose and, you know, over the years I've taken plenty of trips with my parents back and forth from India. And I came back from one of these trips from India and I just couldn't get over something, which is this disconnect between artisans and entrepreneurs that I saw throughout India. And, you know, this is a trip back to the state of Gujarat and specifically the city of IMed about where my family is from and in why those artisans and entrepreneurs couldn't get access to this global marketplace. Remember, I've seen millions of transactions go by each day, but what was stopping them from being able to tap into the opportunity that would come from actually connecting to this marketplace? And that that really spawned my next idea, which is could we actually make that happen? And so the idea was really simple, which is at its core. Well, why don't we connect millions of people throughout the world who arguably could benefit most from a marketplace where they could sell their goods and rather than let that play out, let that play out over the next decade? What if we were to leapfrog, go all the way to the end and figure out ways to make these connections back? There's a guy at the time at Ebay who I floated this idea, past name Patrick Duvall. And Patrick was sort of listening a bit skeptical. And one of the things he said, OK, like if you're really passionate about this, how do you actually make it happen? And I would throw out some ideas here and there. And it doesn't sound that great. Like who else would you talk to? Who would you connect with eventually as I go throughout an answer as like, well, I don't know. I would call the World Bank. And he goes, Yeah, that sounds right. Turns out there is a phone number for the World Bank. I call the switchboard, introduce myself to whoever the operator was. And she forwards my phone call to a guy named Harold Rosen. And Harold Rosen is the I don't know, like deputy director or director of the International Finance Corporation Grassroots Business Fund at the World Bank. Long story short, we hit it off. Turns out that he's been. Thinking about this, he has access to supply throughout the world, Ebay has demand, those two things had never been brought together and that was the birth of this idea of building a global marketplace on Ebay platform that would connect millions of entrepreneurs from developing countries into a global marketplace. And I encourage anybody who is part of a larger organization, even, frankly, any any company, any organization, if you have an idea and you believe in it. And it intersects with the company's values and mission as well as the company's strategy, then, you know, like act first, then think I don't think too hard about it. Just just do something right. Start to put your ideas down, start to spar with other people around it, and especially when they intersect with purpose and strategy. Do something. Meg Whitman, who is at Ebay. One of the things I learned from her, she was a CEO at the time and a big supporter of this work. She told me, look, the price of inaction is greater than the cost of making a mistake. The price of just sitting on your idea and not doing anything actually is expensive for me. It actually paid off because it's ultimately what led to building that marketplace. I told you about, which is we call it worldofgood.com By Ebay partnered with another prolific entrepreneur. Her name is Priya Hajee. And we did it in a partnership and there's much more. But you can't always predict where you'll end up and what you'll do when you begin a journey like this. And that's been one of my most powerful lessons, is do something and get started, especially if you believe in it. And it aligns with strategy.

Jesse Purewal [00:22:34] And, Robert, your ability to think with agility and to be responsive and as you put it to some extent, act first and think end up paying some dividends in some unexpected and maybe maybe more more sad ways along the journey if I've got my timing right. Your friend Samir, he gets a diagnosis in around two thousand seven. He has leukemia. And there were some very specific, huge hurdles that really hit home for you and Samir personally as you reckoned with how to think about a course of treatment for him. So can you talk a little about what was happening there?

Robert Chatwani [00:23:16] Yeah. So this is this is while I was well, while I was at Ebay, I mentioned Samir, the same Samir who I started my company with. You know, we were co-founders and and moved to California together. He was diagnosed with leukemia, AML, a type of leukemia that can be aggressive. And in his case, it was. Now, you have to understand, it's because of Samir that I moved to California. It's because of him that I started the company. It's because it's through him that I met Sheetal, my wife. And, you know, he was it was it was a brother to me. And when I got this news, I was just devastated. And so, you know, as entrepreneurs, you're like, OK, let's solve the problem. What do we need to do here? And what we learned is that he needed a bone marrow transplant. The problem was that if you're Caucasian, the chances were greater than 80 percent that you'd find a match. If you're South Asian like Samir was, the chances are that it's less than one percent of finding a match. And so here, you know, we're thinking, OK, no problem, let's go to India, population of over a billion people. And of course, we'll find someone who matches there. But no luck because India didn't actually have a national bone marrow registry at the time. So the chances of him actually finding a match were about one in 20 thousand. So your options are, one, do nothing right, let's let you know the medical system take its course. Somebody might pop up as a match. The second thing is we can do something like get all of our friends and family, you know, particularly anybody Semir knew who would be empathetic to the to the cause and and see if we were a match. But then there was another option, which is if there's a one in 20 thousand chance of finding a donor, let's go out and find 20 thousand people to get registered. And we knew that the highest propensity for a match was within the South Asian community. So let's go register twenty thousand people. The challenge was we only had about three or four months to get it done. And so there was zero margin for failure. And that's the journey that we started in to figure out how to solve that problem. And here's what we did. In 12 weeks, we ran 500 bone marrow drives across the country. We organized thirty five hundred volunteers even, you know, Senator Barack Obama, South Asian celebrities all pitched in with their support. And we registered twenty four thousand six hundred sixty two people through that process. And it's through that process in a matter of months, getting over twenty four thousand people registered that Semir found his bone marrow match.

Jesse Purewal [00:26:03] I've heard you in some contexts talk about not asking for help, but requiring help. What what role did that philosophy or ethos play here? And how do you broadly think about that tenet as a leader?

Robert Chatwani [00:26:23] If you ask someone for help, you're giving them an option to say no. So if you believe in your cause, whether you're building a campaign for a friend who needs a bone marrow match or you're building a company or your nonprofit, don't ask for help. Require it. Expect it. The question isn't, what can you do to to help me solve this problem? The question would be, what's the best way in which you can help me? What do you think you could contribute? That would be really impactful and powerful and it's subtle. But if you're authentic and it's for the right reasons and the right cause and you're speaking to the right people, it is incredible what what gets unleashed in terms of support and energy to get behind your mission now across all of this? I think what unifies, whether it is you're building a new venture instead of a company, you're starting your own nonprofit, you're whatever you're doing, it's about building with purpose, having a clear bias for action. Don't overthink it because the plans are going to change here to learn along the way. But you make it happen in some of these lessons, I think are really central to anything that you do, which is define your goal, build and tell your story. Bias for action. Right. Act first, then think engage others in your cause, bring them along on your mission and put in the hard work. You know, all that work ultimately led to thousands and thousands of new donors in the registry and sadly, Semir relapsed. I think there's a final lesson here, which is we think we can control the outcomes in our lives and the outcomes of the hard work that we put in. But the reality is life doesn't doesn't work that way. And it was really devastating for all of us to lose our best friend and for serious family, obviously, to lose a brother, to lose, to lose a son. And we mourned him and we think about him. I still think about him all the time. But we learned that over time we started getting these stories of other patients in need who matched against that twenty four thousand six hundred sixty two people that we added to the registry. And within a few years, we learned that there had been over 300 matches with other patients against those twenty four thousand plus new donors in the registry. And ultimately that that's his legacy. So I think the lesson here is you can never predict what the ultimate outcome will be of all the all the effort that you make. But if it's for the right reasons and if it's purpose driven, it'll only be positive. And so to fast forward and jump ahead of how powerful that purpose can be as a compass, you know, I was at Ebay for 12 years, culminated in running the biggest role that I ever had in my life, which is KMO of the company, everything that I had worked for with great support and mentorship along the way. But it came to a point where I actually had to self reflect. And I had this disconnect in my final years there between the strategy of the company and the gap between the strategy and the company's purpose. And for the first time, I think in my life, I had these deep down feelings of actually being an inauthentic leader, and it led to ultimately one of the hardest career decisions I had to make, but also one of the simplest and most straightforward career decisions, which was to leave the company.

Jesse Purewal [00:30:06] You had proven over time that you had no aversion to making change even when. By all appearances from the outside, things were going great for you and you were in exciting roles and having a ton of impact, but now you're talking about external to the company and potentially doing something that would require you to move on from this this organization whose whose purpose you seem to share for for all those years.

Robert Chatwani [00:30:40] Yeah, and part of this company has grown evolve and, you know, I had a deep seated belief in the power and the intersection really of commerce, community trust, cross-border trade payments, sort of these pillars that had built the company. And, you know, the company really had a strong strategic focus and moving in a very different direction to maybe shed some of the focus on small businesses and individual entrepreneurs and consumer to consumer selling and buying that had really built the marketplace. And, you know, I was very comfortable with that, which is companies and cultures change. But that didn't mean that I had to change. And I think this is a lesson for me that I really remember upon self reflection that any leader, whether you are a CMO or a CEO or a first time manager, you cannot craft a culture or be successful, authentically successful in an environment that is has a set of values that's fundamentally different than than his or her values. And like I said, it became the toughest decision because I love the company. I loved everybody I was working with. But it was the simplest career decision to leave. But, you know, that gap is a very difficult place to operate. That gap between purpose and strategy, when that gap exists, I don't believe anybody can thrive.

Jesse Purewal [00:32:06] Well, and Robert, I think there's a story you shared with me in the past, the story of being on the second floor of the motors building after some people had to be let go and you were with your team and something wasn't right. Can you tell that story and talk about that moment?

Robert Chatwani [00:32:23] Sure. Well, it's certainly not a story I've really told before and a very personal one, but I think an important one. It was, I think, January 2015. And like a lot of companies, Ebay had made a decision that we needed to streamline the workforce. And that was on the front lines of having to communicate that to certainly a lot of the employees in my organization. And so I did that in like often happens in companies when you have a reduction in force soon after you pulled together the team that you need to lean on to help grow the company into the next chapter. And I pulled my team together. And I remember this vividly because I've had a lot of meetings in this building at the time. It was called the Motors Building. And I'm on the second floor, sort of a large conference room in the second floor and all eyes are on me. And I'm in front of the room looking face to face with all of these folks who, you know, some combination of survivor guilt, because we let go a lot of their colleagues and others who were just waiting to hear the vision, like, where are we going? And I had to communicate why I believed so deeply in the company strategy, purpose, vision and the plan that we had going forward. And, you know, let me tell you, I hope no leader has to do this in their career, but the words coming out of my mouth were completely disconnected from my heart.

Jesse Purewal [00:33:58] You know, it's it's interesting to me. I think it's important to point out to people that sometimes there's discomfort with direction and people can disagree and and commit as long as it's inside the radius of their belief system and their fundamental reason for for being. And it sounds like this was just an instance where that rubber band got stretched to the point where you could no longer be comfortable with it. Whether you were right or wrong almost was beside the point that you didn't believe in it any longer and you'd built up these muscles over the course of your life and your career. Around courageousness and audacity and always being able to to look ahead, and I think it's important to to reflect on that, it wasn't just in that moment that you discovered this comfort. You had had earned your way into a clarity of your own purpose that allowed you to then say, yeah, I could move on after a decade of investing in this place.

Robert Chatwani [00:35:08] Yeah, I think that's really you probably articulated it even better than I had defined it for myself, but that's right. And I didn't mention this earlier, but I think this is a worthy exercise for anybody to go through, which is to take out a sheet of paper and a pen or a pencil and start to write down a few things, you know, starting with who are you? Right. And this isn't what you do, but but who are you as a person to define and codify who you are? And as part of that, what do you believe? Right. And there's no right way to do this, but I think it's an exercise worth doing. Once you're comfortable with that, then move on to the why, which is really purpose. Why do you do what you do that? Why for me, you got defined as the following, which is I love creating businesses that create hope and opportunity in the world, in building those businesses with high performance teams. And secondly, to be an inspiring role model for my family. Those are my why. And once you define your purpose, then you can get to the what right. Which is the vision, like what do you do day in and day out? And the reality is that the what will change, right. For me, this change was the what was exercising all of that at Ebay and. I knew that it was time for me to move on because I had defined my purpose, I designed my life around that I had, you know, exercised that by dreaming bigger. Right. I always say dream one size bigger, like come up with your biggest idea for what you want to do and then just dream one size bigger. And I was really proud of everything that I had accomplished. And it was not about changing who I was or why I did what I did. It was about changing the what. And the more clarity and the more honesty you have with yourself around those things and the more comfortable you are with that. I think it can be a really powerful compass to guide you through life.

Jesse Purewal [00:37:19] So you are now the chief marketing officer at Atlassian. So tell me, Robert, how you found your way into Atlassian last year, obviously a highly respected and very successful company in technology and in software, but maybe a little bit orthogonal to some of the things that you had done from a product perspective in the past. So I to know how you organized your thinking around the pursuit of that opportunity and then eventually the decision to come on board.

Robert Chatwani [00:37:57] I think they got to a point of diminishing personal growth in professional growth in terms of building muscle around, you know, something new. Frankly, I love marketing. Right. And they love building. And so where where could I apply that energy through? A close friend and an executive recruiter had the privilege of meeting a guy named Jay Simons. And Jay was the president of Atlassian, helped build this business from its earliest days. And Atlassian is a collaboration and teamwork software company. And so I would say in this instance, what I immediately fell in love with was the company's mission to unleash the potential of every team, its values. Open company, no bullshit is one of the top values of the company, be the change you seek again, this sort of opportunity to build and and change things. And it goes on from there. It was the first time I really thought about joining a culture because of mission and in values first and foremost and people and secondarily about what the company actually does. And the lesson for me there is if you have that intersection, again, similar to Ebay, if you can find that, if you can look for that, then the what will change? And it almost is secondarily to the why. But that was the motivation and inspiration to join was purpose.

Jesse Purewal [00:39:24] Hmm. Robert, what was it like when you first came on board to a company that at that time had been around, you know, 12, 13 years? What were some of the key observations and challenges you had out of the gate?

Robert Chatwani [00:39:41] So I was coming into a business that had momentum, first and foremost. However, like a lot of growth companies, what I knew is that what got us here wouldn't get us to where we needed to go. And Michael Scott, who are our founders, really have this deep seated belief that we need to continuously reinvent what we do and how we do it for a new future. Really, like think about where we want to be, not just next year or two years out, but they talk in terms of decades building the the 50 year company, the 100 year company. And so my first observation at Atlassian was that we would need to make some changes in order to set ourselves up for the next phase of growth. And coming from a consumer marketing background, my observation, just generally a B2B marketing, you know, was that the industry is typically three, four or five years behind consumer brands in terms of how they think about brand building storytelling and driving growth. And so for me, I certainly had a lot to learn about enterprise marketing and the software industry. But my first remit and focus was on incorporating the methodologies and principles that have driven some of the most successful B2C companies in doing that in our environment, really adapting it to Atlassian, this idea of marketing and growth at scale, adopting technology, data science, analytics, all of these principles around building the growth engines. And that's a big part of the journey that we've been on.

Jesse Purewal [00:41:15] If you're giving advice to a marketer who's part of a company where the North Star is product, which I think in technology and you and I are both in marketing, we're both in technology, we see this a lot. If you're giving advice to somebody who has the opportunity but also has to contend with the reality that the product is what the company is leading with, what is the highest and best way to think about the marketing team, the marketing vision and the marketing contribution to growth and success?

Robert Chatwani [00:41:49] Yeah, well, you know, first of all, product led growth is a magical thing. But the role the marketer is is really important in what I would say is the fundamentals don't change, which is first and foremost to invest in building an emotional relationship with your customers, not just a functional relationship, but really forming that bond to to build brand love and product love, because that ultimately is what leads to to customer retention and happiness. You build great products first and foremost, but then make sure that that relationship goes deeper. So that's one. And the second is drive revenue, build the revenue engines that can be measured to drive growth in the business. It starts with empathy for your customer. And I would say in a B2B environment, arguably the emotional relationship with your customer is even greater than in a consumer environment, because in a software business, you have a buyer or somebody who's sticking their neck out to bet on your product. And frankly, oftentimes when that's done at scale. They're betting their career, so there is a big emotional relationship that is inherent in these kinds of decisions. So I think that's really important to remember is building that deeper relationship with your customer. And the second is, I think, community. This is one of the biggest lessons I learned at Ebay is creating a space for your users and customers to come together and really to engage with each other and Atlassian. Now we generate more traffic to the community than we do to Atlassian Dotcom. And that's really remarkable in seeing the correlation in the value that you create in your community to revenue building those analytic bridges to understand that is fantastic. In, you know, an average B2B customers are more likely to be influenced by the emotional relationship and social benefits of your products versus offers or discounting or other tactics that are often used in the community for us is really the heart of our business into a customer's community. And frankly, the last you see for me, if we call this the three C's, is the choreography, which is how do you bring together the whole company and customer experience? So that's the way I think about it, which is really doesn't matter if you're in a consumer business or in a B2B business. But these principles, I think, apply to both.

Jesse Purewal [00:44:11] Robert. How do you see the CMO role evolving over the next couple of years, next five, five to seven years?

Robert Chatwani [00:44:19] I think first and foremost is think about the marketing team, I believe very strongly that in a world of increased specialization in functions and roles and teams, it's tempting for companies to often fragment those teams and create some silos. But the modern marketing organization, you know, frankly today, but certainly in the future should really represent systems thinking. On one hand, you are going to have the heart and soul of everything that you do with the you know, I mentioned emotional connections, but building the brand, driving engagement, building community great content, social engagement, and on the other hand, the brain of marketing the logic. Right. The stuff that you can measure scientifically, the analytics, the data science, those growth engines, thinking about those two things together. And so I take pride in meetings where I have machine learning experts and creatives, you know, brainstorming with each other. It's how we think about it. The lesson in some of our best ideas have come at the intersection of where those types of teams connect. I call it the between the spaces. And in our case, it's in partnership with not just our founders and our leadership team. But heck, you know, I spend a lot of time with our general counsel these days because there's a lot of issues around privacy, a lot of issues around governance. And you talk about the CMO and the CIO or the CMO and the CTO. But I can assure you that going into the future, the CMO and the the head of legal or the general counsel, very important relationship.

Jesse Purewal [00:46:00] For our our builders listening here, if they wanted to know the most important piece of advice they should take from you, given the world as you've seen it and the world as you've experienced it and the world as you've helped build it, what would that advice be?

Robert Chatwani [00:46:19] You know, I think Daniel Pink said it best mastery, autonomy and purpose, you know, these are sort of very unifying as we think about our professional lives. I'll say a few things. One is be honest and true to yourself. Know can you be the same person in every dimension of your life? Really invest in that who and the why the what? And try to show up as the same person in every dimension of your life because one, it's authentic. And secondly, you'll be appreciated by the right people for for showing up as the same person in every every dimension of life. But on the more practical side, what I would say is find a high growth environment to work in, go find growth, because growth, opportunity, growth environments just manufacture more opportunities.

Jesse Purewal [00:45:19] I love that, Robert. It's been great. Thank you so much. I want to I want to give you a special shout out here, not just for talking to me today, but for helping inaugurate this platform and this experience that we're we're putting out into the world where people can hear the incredible and authentic and personal and professional stories of of builders like yourself. So thank you so much for bringing your your deepest and authentic self to the conversation. It's been a treat. I've learned a lot, and I already can't wait till we can do it again.

Robert Chatwani [00:47:05] I look forward to that. Thank you for the opportunity, Jesse, and what a fantastic platform. And it's a privilege to to spend spend the time with you. Thank you.

Jesse Purewal [00:48:00] Hey, everybody, thanks for listening to my conversation with Robert Chatwani. I hope you found it as refreshingly open and entertaining and insightful as I did. You know, it's not often that a sea level leader will really open up like that and be vulnerable and put their full self on display. And I loved it. I think it's a great reminder of how strongly we can still connect with one another, even in these tough times, if we're open, if we're honest, if we're candid, and if we're speaking from the heart. So thousand, thanks to you, Robert, for coming on the show and for you being you.

Jesse Purewal [00:48:33] Thanks for listening to Breakthrough Builders. You can subscribe the show wherever you get your podcasts. If you enjoyed the show, I'd be grateful if you could spread the word by leaving a rating and a review, it really does help other people find us. And please, tell your friends.

Breakthrough Builders is a Qualtrics Studios original, presented and produced collaboration with StudioPod in San Francisco. The show is hosted and executive produced by me, Jesse Purewal. Our writer is Todd Bagnull. From StudioPod Media, Deanna Morency is our show coordinator. Editing and production by Katie Sunku Wood. Additional editing and music is provided by Nodalab. Our designers are Baron Santiago and Vansuka Chindavijak. Website by Gregory Hedon, photography by Christy Hemm Klok. Special thanks to the entire Breakthrough Builders crew at Qualtrics, including Ali Rohani, James Wadsworth, John Johnson, and Kylan Lundeen.

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