Dara Treseder, CMO of Autodesk: Invest in Yourself

Dara Treseder: When I think about my values as a marketer, I really believe in the power of creativity. I'm not just talking about creating wonderful creative, which is really important. But how are you applying creativity to every aspect of your job? I think of creativity as that pixie dust that makes everything fly and gives you exponential return on your investment.

Greg Stuart: Welcome to Building Better CMOs, a podcast about how marketers can get stronger and smarter. I'm Greg Stuart, the CEO of the nonprofit MMA Global. And that voice you heard at the top, that's Dara Treseder. She's the chief marketing officer at Autodesk. And as you're going to hear, she's a veteran CMO with past marketing leadership roles at Peloton, GE, Apple, and more. She's also on the board of the Public Health Institute and Robinhood, and she's on the global board here at the MMA.

Now, today on Building Better CMOs, Dara and I are going to talk about trusting your instincts, the importance of having a coach—the critical importance of having a coach, in fact—applying creativity to every aspect of your job, and so much more. This podcast is all about the challenges that marketers face and unlocking the true power that marketing can have. Dara Treseder from Autodesk is going to tell us how to do that right after this.

Dara, so nice to have you on Building Better CMOs today.

DT: Thank you so much for having me. I'm so excited to be here.

GS: Oh my goodness, you are excited, too. The people here on audio can't see, but you've just got the biggest of smiles and excitement, which is just so typical of what I expect from you. Is that your secret weapon maybe, that's how you win people over with a big giant smile and friendliness? It's got to be it.

DT: I don't know, but I'm certainly an optimistic person. I'm an excited person. It's kind of funny that Pixar movie, Inside Out, and it's like what's your default emotion? Mine is joy, so there you go.

GS: Oh, there you go. I love it. I actually heard the greatest thing today, because of course I get all my information from TikTok nowadays. And it was a guy saying, he goes, "What's more important: positive thinking or reduction in negative thinking?" I thought, "Wow, that's a very interesting question." He says, "Listen, the research is absolutely clear that getting rid of negative—be positive, sure. But getting rid of negative, the most important thing you can do." Isn't that interesting?

DT: No, I believe that, because I really think we are shaped by our thoughts. So the things we allow to sit in our heads, sit in our hearts, they start to shape who we are. So if you have got negative stuff in there, it starts to shape you. So I believe that, and I spend a lot of time really in meditation and positive affirmations to try to reduce those negative thoughts that I have, we all have in our minds.

GS: I love that. In fact, I had a friend of mine... It's funny, we're starting Building Better CMOs we're off on meditation. I had a friend of mine tell me, "You spend 20, 30 more minutes getting ready in the morning on the outside. Why don't you spend a little time getting the inside ready, too?"

DT: I love that.

GS: I've never forgotten that. It's just a great thing. And I think he was totally right, and it's been a practice for me, too. I totally agree. So maybe back to a little business stuff here. We'll come back maybe to some personal stuff later, because I'd love to do that with you. But how long have you been at Autodesk now?

DT: Almost a year. It will be a year in about a few weeks. And what a ride it's been.

GS: Oh my goodness.

DT: I'm absolutely so grateful to be here.

GS: And listen, you had a of heck a ride at Peloton before. That was probably one of the most interesting times in almost any company's history the period you were there, correct? Don't you think?

DT: Oh, yes. It was hitting hills. Hitting hills with a little Tabata, with a little Tabata, so there we go.

GS: Oh my goodness. I don't know. What do you think now? It's fun to be in the center of the action. You have to believe that to be true just knowing you. But also, it can be maybe a rough ride a little bit sometimes with the ups and downs when you're that public. And when a slight event... maybe it wasn't a slight event. Events come around and shift the whole world, or your view of it or the company's view, it's got to be very, I don't know... How did you manage through some of that? Some of the change that was inherent in that company.

DT: I really believe that when we are going through times of uncertainty, the amount of skill sets that we use to navigate that uncertainty, it's not that it was never there. We all have it in us, but it certainly gets honed. And so when I look back on that time, was it challenging? Absolutely. Was it exciting? Yes, in many ways. And I'm really proud of the work that my team and I did while we were there. My belief, I've always said, I believe in a philosophy where there's a time to bloom where you're planted, and there's a time when you need to go to grow.

And I really enjoyed my time there and I bloomed where I was planted, but there came a time where I needed to go to grow. And I think about the role that I'm in now, I absolutely love Autodesk. I'm working across so many different industries as opposed to one industry. And my portfolio of what I oversee is really exciting to me. I have a team almost in 55 countries. I'm also overseeing our digital and e-commerce, which is a very exciting position to be in. So I'm absolutely loving where I am, and I'm grateful for the journey that led me here.

GS: Yeah, no, it's great. And listen, like I said, I think a lot of people probably know you from your Peloton days. But you have a lot of B2B and tech experience under your belt.

DT: Absolutely. It's kind of funny because before I went to my last job, everybody was like, "Oh, you're a B2B marketer. What are you doing going into consumer?" And when I was coming here to Autodesk, everyone was like, "But you're such a great consumer marketer, this is what you do. What are you doing going to a B2B environment?" And my answer was, "I'm both." And really I'm business to human. At the end of the day, whether you are working in a B2B company or a B2C company, the key thing is delivering value for your customer. Putting your customer at the center of it all and being able to really deliver that value. And that's something that I'm obsessed with.

It's something that's a deep philosophy of mine, something I'm so committed to. And it's been exciting to actually apply that in different contexts because you get better at it. And you understand, and you're able to transfer that knowledge that you've gained from different contexts. So it's almost like a skill that you keep building. It's that muscle you keep developing. And so it's been really, I think, a wonderful opportunity that I've had to work as a CMO in different contexts.

GS: Yeah, no, it's amazing. You've got an incredible history there. I think a lot of people don't know. But Dara I think what's something that's very interesting about you is that you actually grew up in Nigeria.

DT: Yes.

GS: And then moved to America at some point, right?

DT: Yes. I came here to go to college, absolutely. I was born and raised in Nigeria.

GS: Wow, until what age?

DT: So I lived in Nigeria until I was about 16, when I went to boarding school in the UK. I think I was 15 and then turned 16. And then I did my A-levels in the UK, and then I went to Harvard for my undergrad.

GS: Incredible. Incredible. Was that always the plan for you to move away from Nigeria? Did the family come with you?

DT: Oh, no. Growing up I never imagined I would ever have those opportunities. It was certainly not something... I lived in a town called Ibadan, which literally means between the forest and the plains. And there was a local university there that my parents had gone to, and I assumed that was where I was going to go, too. So I'll never forget the day my mother called me and she said, "Hey, you've got the opportunity to sit for some of these scholarship exams."

And I was so excited and I sat for the scholarship exam. I got into the school, but I did not get the scholarship. And I was just so grateful for how my parents and my grandparents and really our community came together to help me get into that school. I'll never forget my grandfather literally emptying his bank account for me to be able to go to A-levels and then onto Harvard. It was a real sacrifice. And so I've always thought my success is not my success, it's our success.

How am I driving impact in the communities that I serve? Because I would certainly not be here without the sacrifice, and I was not the only grandchild. There were a lot of grandchildren. So really that sacrifice is something that I think about every day. And I think about how am I using what I have to help others and create that opportunity for other people.

GS: That's so interesting, Dara. Now, listen, I've known you for a number of years. You've been on the MMA board for quite some time. And you've spoken at a couple of our events over the years, so I feel like I've gotten to know you in a bunch of different ways. And you're right, I think your life is completely oriented around a sense of gratitude. Now that I think about what you just said, and when I look back on some of the things you've shared, that really is it isn't it for you? You're just really grateful for where you are, and what's happened in the life that you've been given.

DT: I'm very grateful. In fact, one of the things that I do every day is I keep a journal. And one of the components I write about every day is gratitude. I'm in a position I never thought I would be in. And I think there are a lot of people who maybe they expected to be where they are, but I certainly never expected that. It just wasn't even something that I anticipated, I could have the life that I have now. So I'm so grateful for that. And with that gratitude comes a deep sense of responsibility of how am I lifting others up even as I climb? And how am I leaving this world a better place than where I found it? And creating opportunities for people, especially people who look like me, who maybe never expect to get to the positions that I've had the opportunity to be in.

GS: I love your sense of responsibility to that and an orientation into gratefulness. It's funny you mentioned earlier just it's about training your mind. The number one book I wanted to give my kids, and if they listen to my podcast and god knows if they ever really will, but we'll see. I don't know they've still not read my book, so whatever, who knows, whatever. Although they are grateful.

DT: All kids are like that by the way. All kids are like that.

GS: And they are grateful.

DT: I have my kids read my ads. They're always like, "Do better mom. Do better."

GS: Exactly. "Mom, you can raise the game here a little bit."

DT: Exactly.

GS: No, one of my favorite books is [As] a Man Thinketh. And it's just a little tiny book and it's old, it's a hundreds of years old. But it really just orients it that really you are your thoughts, there is really in essence nothing else, so I love that.

So you end up over at Autodesk, and you come in to do some great ads. And so I think I know where our conversation is going to go. And I know what's going to happen here. So let's remind the listener of the thesis of this podcast, building better CMOs. What do you think marketers don't totally get about marketing or what maybe... You can answer it a couple of ways, what maybe they don't appreciate? What do they think they would be better as a result of a new orientation? What's the thing you'd like to pick on today that you think marketers could have a better appreciation for?

DT: I really think it's creative effectiveness. One of the things when I think about my values as a marketer, I really believe in the power of creativity. I'm not just talking about creating wonderful creative, which is really important. But how are you applying creativity to every aspect of your job? I think of creativity as that pixie dust that makes everything fly and gives you exponential return on your investment. It allows you to get more ROI. It allows you to really exceed expectations and go beyond. And so I value creative effectiveness very much. And I think as marketers, many people who get into marketing, it is because we are drawn. Even if we are data scientists, we are analytical people, we are drawn to storytelling, we are drawn to creativity. We enjoy that. And it is really important that we bring that to every aspect of what we do. And I don't think we focus on that enough. And creative effectiveness is actually one of the keys to success as a marketer.

GS: And so what taught you that? Where'd you pick that lesson up? I don't know that they teach that in B school or wherever. I don't know, where'd you get that?

DT: This is one of those hard-earned things that you learn on the road of life. I've had the fortune of being a CMO a few times now. It was funny, one of my friends said to me, "Well, Dara, you are a veteran CMO." I was like, "Girl, I like that so much. I'm going to include that in my bio. Thank you very much." As a veteran CMO, as my friend called me, I've learned... In fact, that's how she saved me in her phone, it's pretty funny. I've learned a few things. Because I've seen when I've had the opportunity to really tap into creativity in every aspect of my business, and I've been able to inspire and motivate my teammates to do the same, the results have always exceeded our expectations.

And when I look back at moments that I feel like, "Ooh, we could have done better there," it's always because we didn't lean into creativity. It was always because we got into a bit of a rote situation, or we just started trying to please everybody and we didn't trust our instincts. I have learned this, this is what I have lived. And this is what I deeply believe because of the bank of experience that I draw on.

GS: What first taught you that, though? Because listen, you have an MBA from a very well established school in California. So I don't know that they push that within MBA classes so much. So what was the first time you went... was there an aha moment that you suddenly went, "Creative is so critical"?

DT: There was absolutely a moment, this was actually in my time at Apple. When I was at Apple I was working in an amazing department with an amazing leader called Brad Freitag, and we were working on really communicating the power of custom apps. So if you think about it, you go to the App Store and there's almost an app for everything. But believe it or not, there are a lot of folks out there who might not find the exact app to do what they want, so they want to build their own app. And we were selling software that allowed you to do that, whether you were an individual or a small business or a department within a large business. And one of the things that really turbocharged that and enabled us to go beyond was really leaning into creativity. And obviously creativity and design is a core part of the DNA at Apple.

And so being able to see how we were this department, but when we were able to really turn on our creative hats, we were able to go beyond. We were able to plug in to some of the big things that Apple was doing with the iPad across all these stores all around the world. And so it was that moment that I realized this creativity thing isn't just about an ad campaign or creative, but it's really about process. It's about planning. It's about how we think holistically about the marketing demand generation and growth efforts and the full funnel. That was the first moment that I really tapped into that, and I've carried that with me ever since.

GS: Got it. And then have you tried to bring that into GE, and obviously Peloton-

DT: Oh, absolutely.

GS: ... was amazing. That's historical now at this point. But GE same thing?

DT: Absolutely. I pretty much took that to every job I had, whether it was my first CMO job being the CMO of GE Business Innovations and GE Ventures. When I went to become the CMO of Carbon, which is an exciting, 3D printing company based here in Silicon Valley, to Peloton, to now Autodesk. I've been able to take that with me in every job. And that has contributed a lot to my success in every role that I've been. Because no matter whatever job you have there's going to be limitations. There's going to be challenges. And what I found that has helped me really rise above and rise up has been leaning into that creativity and the power of creative effectiveness. And really trying to have that be something I share with my team.

I am always like, "Well, let's think a little differently. Let's get into debate mode. Let's not put ourselves in a box, but let's imagine there is no box, and how would we approach this? How would we think about this?" And just really pushing myself and those around me to think differently.

GS: Okay, so you go into Autodesk, what I would consider to be a very highly technical traditional Silicon Valley—I'll say it again—tech company. So I think that's who they are. Very interesting, cool stuff. They serve a number of really creative industries, so they border on that, but it's always felt very traditional. So did you have a conversation with the CEO and/or the board before you went in there and say, "Listen, this is how I'm going to play the game in creative"? Or did you just come in and say, "Well, this is my job, this is how we're going to do it"? How'd you get the company to adopt that, or did you need to sell it in advance?

DT: Here's the thing: before I got the job, I had written my 100-day plan, and I sent it in before I even got an offer. And that was important to me, yes, because I wanted to make sure what I am about, what my plans were, what my initial thought... Of course, with a lot of caveats, because even as much research as you've done, as much as you've talked to people, there's a lot you don't know. And so it was caveated with, "There's a lot I don't know, but based on what I know, here's my 100-day plan." And sent that in.

And my purpose for doing that was to make sure there was an alignment between what I believed the job to be done is and my approach and what they were looking for. And fortunately, there was that alignment. And I've been privileged to have a lot of great jobs and work for some really phenomenal people. But our leadership team here—our CEO Andrew Anagnost, our COO Steve Blum—these are some of the most incredible human beings.

And so there was an alignment from day one, it wasn't like I came in and it was an uphill battle. Of course there are challenges and there are lots of battles, but that wasn't it. It was like any job, you don't have a job at this level that doesn't have something that you're navigating, whether it's navigating economic uncertainty, whether it's navigating... You're always going to be navigating something at this level, but that alignment is there and has been there from day one. So it's made it a lot easier, because I'm fighting the right battles. I'm fighting the battles of how do we achieve the growth that we're trying to achieve? How do we elevate our brand? How do we deliver on the outcomes for our customers? I'm fighting the right battles, not the battles of how do I get my CEO to understand what the job to be done is?

GS: Not the internal discussion, "Here's the playbook on how we're going to do this." You got that aligned from the very beginning. That's so important, Dara. It's funny, I've often repeated this story. The most interesting meeting I think I've had in running the MMA was a group of CMOs, and I'll even name names, the CMO of GM. It was before Deborah, but CMO of GM was there, Dunkin', T-Mobile, Allstate, Chobani, a bunch of big-time CMOs. And I'll never forget, we had a throwaway question to begin this little private session we were doing. It was what's the role of CMO? What's the role of marketing?

Dara, one hour later, we never got to a second question because we realized nobody in the room agreed what the role of CMO and marketing was. It was all different. And I remember at the time going, "How do we ever expect CEOs, CFOs, or boards to work with us if we've not agreed on what's our go-to-market strategy for marketing?" And so yes, so you took the time to make sure, "Are we aligned?" I'm assuming the 100-day plan said we're going to be creatively driven, I assume.

DT: Yes.

GS: How did you express that in a 100-day plan, do you remember?

DT: I really laid out here's my vision. Here is how I believe the ways and the approach I'm going to accomplish this vision. Here's how I'm going to spend the 100 days to get myself set up for success. And so that was kind of baked into it. So there was that understanding. And that's why within 30 days of being on the job, I was able to launch a first campaign, which was really a test. Because here's the thing, you've got what your instincts are telling you, what your intuition is telling you, but you've got to test it because you're going to validate or invalidate it. And the reality was there's even one year in, and there's still a lot I'm learning. And so it was important to test it early, so that I can know whether or not... because if this isn't the path, then I've got to come up with another plan.

I've got to pivot. Fortunately, the homework and the research I'd done in advance, and my experience was such that the plan has been the right plan. And so we've been able to develop it with my amazing... I have such an amazing team. The people I work with are just some of the most brilliant, intelligent people. And so being able to work to hone it in and make it better, but I came in with a vision and I think that's really important. Of course the vision got fine-tuned, but having a vision is so key because without a vision your team isn't sure what you're doing or where you're going or what to do.

GS: Does marketing have a mission there?

DT: Oh, yes, we've got a mission.

GS: Can you repeat it? I don't know if it's public. Can you say it?

DT: I don't know if I'm allowed to say our mission. I don't know. We have a mission. It's exciting. It's a little too exciting, that's why I'm like...

GS: It's a little too exciting. No, wait, that requires explanation. What do you mean it's a little too exciting?

DT: No, no, no, no, of course, we've got a mission. We've got a bold mission. Everyone in our organization knows it's something I've repeated again and again and again. And repeat every time, because one of the things I realized as a leader just when you get to the point when you get sick of saying something, that's when it starts to really seep in. It's really at the point where you're sick of it is when it starts to really seep in.

GS: I find the most valuable exercise I do sometimes is I ask people some period of time later—24 hours, a week, a month, I don't care what it is—"Tell me what we agreed to before." I want to know either the game of telephone that's gone on in the company or within your own head to make sure that we're still aligned. Because if we don't start from the right basis we're not going to get there.

And so did the company buy in to do a bunch of creative ads? What would push an Autodesk to think that that's what they wanted to do? Can you talk to that?

DT: Absolutely, and I think the key is what are we trying to accomplish as a business? What are we trying to do for our customers, and how does this play into it? So we have been out there and talking about where we are going as a company, and growth is really important to us. And so we want to attract new audiences. Well, you're not going to attract new audiences by doing things the way you've always done them. We are over 41 years old, and we're still an innovative, really smart, wonderful company that's focused on solving our customers' problems. And we have to be able to reach our customers where they are. So everything that we've done has been authentic. For example, the very first ad that we did, which was launched in the finale of The Walking Dead, our software had been used to bring that series to life for all those seasons. So it was authentic to us to participate in the ads, in the finale, because we had been used to create the series. So it wasn't like, "Oh, why are you here? What are you doing?" It was authentic to us.

Or when we had the big takeover at the Oscars, which has been one of our very, very successful campaigns of 2023. And I'm so inspired by our amazing team and partners at Maximum Effort, our creative agency, who helped to bring that to life. Our ability to do that was rooted in the insight and the fact that our software had been used in almost every single Oscar-winning animation movie since 1997, and we hadn't really talked about it. Everything we're doing is rooted in the fact, it's rooted in something that was real and substantial. So it wasn't like we just showed up with a bunch of random ads, and it's like, "What are you doing? Why are you here?" There was real authenticity. We were just celebrating what was already real.

GS: You'd been there on that journey with consumers in the Oscars or Walking Dead for that matter. For years you'd been helping support their experience of that. They just didn't know you were in...

DT: They just didn't know.

GS: ...Autodesk was in the background.

DT: They just didn't know. And when you think about this, this is all tied to a core thing of who we are, which is make anything. We empower everyone everywhere to make anything. And so being able to show how that comes to life has been a powerful part of our strategy.

GS: Hey, Dara, I usually don't ask this. Tell people just for maybe those who don't know, because I've looked at the company, so I know what Autodesk does. What do you do? And there's three or four core industries, as I recall that you guys operate in. Tell people what it is.

DT: Absolutely. So Autodesk is software for people who make things. So we are the design and make platform that really empowers everyone everywhere to design and make anything, whether that is an exciting movie that you watch, maybe the Barbie movie or the Oppenheimer movie. Or it is the building that you're sitting in right now as you're listening to this podcast. Or it's a car that you're using to drive on the road to get you from point A to point B. In architecture, construction, engineering, product design and manufacturing, media and entertainment. From greener buildings to cleaner cars and really critical infrastructure, our software is used to design and make the world that we see around us. And so it's been really exciting to bring that to the forefront. Because many times people actually want to know what is behind the things that they use and love. And so it's been really a joy to be able to tell those stories and bring that to the forefront.

GS: It's almost a variation, and maybe you don't like this example, but the Intel inside example that most consumers can repeat that. I understand this orientation to make sure that everybody understands that Autodesk's behind what you see and experience and feel and touch.

So you come in there to do creative ads, and you said one of the funniest things anybody has ever said on one of our stages at one of the MMA events. It was some variation of, "Because we know everybody else in the C-suite does advertising marketing as a side hustle."

Which it's what we in marketing all know, we live with the fact that we do things that are public and therefore everybody's got an opinion, or many people have an opinion about what we do. So what about getting the rest of the company and engineers to take this creative marketing, creative advertising approach. What's some of the lessons learned you've had around that, and what are some of the challenges that maybe people should watch out if they're going to go down a similar path?

DT: Well, I think the first thing is my job as a global CMO here at Autodesk is expansive. So yes, advertising is a piece of it, but I oversee so much more than that: our digital e-commerce, all of our growth marketing, our industry and portfolio marketing, our communications group, our education business. So it's been really important to me to make sure that I'm clear on my vision for my holistic organization across all of those areas. Because as a CMO, I think it's really important that you're never reduced to the person who just does the creative ads. I think it's really important that you are really clear on your remit, and what you're being asked to do. So having a clear vision, a clear mission, and then being able to actually really communicate that with other folks in leadership. So one of the first things I did was really do a listening tour.

And I say that intentionally, it was a listening tour. To be a sponge and go and hear from all of the leaders what were their thoughts about my organization, what did they think was working well? What did they think was not working well, and what were their kinds of hopes and wishes for the future of the organization? So I really took that very seriously, took very detailed notes, really listened, was a sponge, immersed myself. And that way I was able to adapt and adjust my plan to reflect what I had heard and the findings that I had heard. It helped hone and refine so that the plan that I was running with was not just what Dara had thought but was reflective of what was needed.

GS: Do you have an example of something that somebody said to you that went, "Oh." Was there an aha moment or a couple of aha moments in that you went, "Oh, I don't know if I would've looked at the world like that. That's interesting." Anything you can share around that that'd be helpful to people?

DT: Absolutely. So one of the things that was shared with me, and this was actually in a conversation with our CFO, was help me understand, better understand—and I'm paraphrasing here—the return on investment. Because many times what happens as marketers is we start to report out on our marketing metrics. We don't take the time to translate that to the business metrics. And so it's hard for the finance team to understand, "You're telling me about engagement, but I'm not really sure how that's translating into helping the business." And it's really important that sales and marketing are telling the same story. I remember when I was coming up in my career and a job that I had where the sales leader would get up and you would be thinking it is doomsday. And then the CMO would get up and you would be thinking you were out here having a party with rainbows and unicorns, and it was like, "Which is it? What's happening here?"

And I remember even earlier on in my career, I was like, "Okay, that's never going to be me." It is so important that sales and marketing are aligned and that we're speaking with the same metrics that matter to the business. And so that's an example of—obviously I had this and this was really important to me—but it highlighted how key that modernization effort was going to be for the work to be done. So it made me realize that this is something that... Because this is a complex business across multiple industries, in multiple countries to get that infrastructure right, so we are better able. It's not as easy as, "Okay, we've got one product and a few markets." It was clear to me that I've got to make sure that it's not just the interesting work that everyone sees, but there's that backend work of really having the right infrastructure, the right data, the right tech stack so that we can better report on the ROI of our marketing efforts. That was something that I was like, "Okay, got to figure out how we dial that up."

GS: So I'm not sure if this is right. I want to probe that a couple of times because I think that's so important. And MMA is doing a project, a program, initiative, whatever—the global board told us to do it last year, you were there—around what we now call Project ROMI, which is how does marketing connect to finance? How do the CMO and the CFO get along?

And Rex Briggs, who's been doing that work for us, just shared his year analysis so far, we think we're on a two-year journey. I think it's hard for marketers to sometimes have that conversation with the CFO. Can you get into a little more detail there about either what you promised... And I think one way to maybe go at that is what did you have to maybe bring into the company in terms of capabilities that set you up for success with that conversation or with that readout at some point, that connection to the finance of the business? So I don't know if you had different capabilities, or if you already had that in-house and you just had to reformulate it.

DT: So we have an amazing CFO. Our CFO is Debbie Clifford, and she's really amazing because she's such a great business leader and has a really decent grasp and an understanding of how different parts of the business come together. And so that conversation, it was good because I was speaking to someone who had an open mind and had already been doing some thinking around this. Now with regards to what we had to do together, we had a demand generation group, we had a digital media center, and we had a marketing operations team, and these teams were separate. And I brought them together into a strong, high-performing growth marketing organization. Because think about it, if you're doing demand why is media separate from demand?

And why is marketing operations and the measurement and analytics separate from that, bringing all these together in one powerful growth marketing organization was one of the changes. So there were pieces there, but it was about putting those puzzle pieces together. And really being clear on the charter to be able to be able to accelerate and move us forward. So that was one of the capabilities that we brought in.

GS: So those capabilities had existed in the company, you said, and you brought them together in a new way, or did you have to bring in new talent to do that?

DT: Well, it's been a combination. So some of the capabilities... The individual teams existed, we had to bring them together. And of course there's been some infusion of new talent, and also elevation of some of existing talent, to make sure that we've got the right people in the right seats in the right roles to be able to propel us forward.

GS: There obviously had been a growth mindset within Autodesk previously, but was it an acceleration of that growth mindset, or it was just they were looking for a new orientation to it?

DT: It was definitely an acceleration, and I think an acceleration with clarity on the vision of where we go from there.

GS: Let's take a quick break. We'll be right back after this with Dara Treseder.

This is Building Better CMOs. Let's get back to my conversation with Dara Treseder, the chief marketing officer at Autodesk.

Listen, I want to go back to one thing you said earlier that I kept meaning to touch on. You said earlier that you measured or tested creative. And there's some people, a little old-school I'll admit, who don't think that creative either should be tested or evaluated. I don't know, maybe that's not a debate that really matters to us anymore. But what did you do to assess that you had the right orientation to what you were ultimately going to produce?

DT: Well, when I say I tested creative, maybe just to be clear on what I meant by that is I was testing how creative effectiveness would work for Autodesk in our different industries. Because the company hadn't done TV advertising in a very long time, I don't even know. It was just not something we'd done. And so it was important for me before going out and saying, "Hey, let's go hard here," to test and figure out does this work for us? Does this resonate with our key audiences? And so we did that test, which showed us, "Yes, it does, and here's how you can utilize it." And gave us the confidence that we had to do what we ended up doing with the Oscars and building that muscle.

So that's what I meant. I think it's important when you have a theory, or a hypothesis, to test that hypothesis. Because the test you do will either validate your hypothesis or invalidate it. And either way I think that's success because if it invalidates it, then it prevents you from overinvesting in a tactic or strategy that's not going to work. And if it validates it, then it gives you the gumption and the credibility to be able to move forward.

GS: Have you been in other situations where the creative either didn't play, or because you were doing some analysis you found out it wasn't really working and you had to totally rejigger? Do you have an example of that by chance?

DT: Oh yeah, absolutely.

GS: Oh yeah, let me tell you.

DT: Oh yeah. Oh yeah, I remember that one.

GS: Dara, what I love the most, I love when you meet people outside the business and they think, "Oh, marketing and advertising manipulates consumers." I'm like, "No, you have no idea how much power consumers have." I've been crushed by being wrong from consumers more often than I feel like I've ever manipulated somebody or something silly.

DT: No, no, no...

GS: That's very old-school hucksterism, but it's silly.

DT: ...the power is with the people.

GS: The powers is with the people. No kidding.

DT: I actually think marketing leans in and it gives us the permission to take the step. So I think that's what it does, but it's not so much manipulation as maybe energizing us and giving us that nudge that we need to do what we already wanted to do.

GS: Yeah, exactly. How'd you figure out it wasn't working? Or when were you like, "Oh my god, we just got that wrong." Give an example for people on that, maybe lessons learned.

DT: So I won't say the company. I will just say in a far away land, long, long ago I was in a role overseeing marketing, and we had launched this creative that I had had very high hopes for. It was rooted in deep insight. We had done a lot of work, and in fact, it's actually one of my mentors and friends who gave me the phrase and said, "It was on target, but it was not bullseye." It sort of worked, but it didn't work the way we needed it to. And the reason for that was we were trying to do something we hadn't done before. And I remember when we were first pitched on the idea by the agency, I thought to myself, "This is a lot." Because when you're trying to grab attention, I'm a big believer in simplicity. Because I think when you're trying to do a lot with an ad... You know when you fall in love with your own idea, and you think it's a lot funnier than everybody else thinks it is.

GS: If I like it, I'm suspicious is kind of my...

DT: Exactly. You fall in love with your own idea. You like it a little too much. And I'll never forget when the rough cut came back and I watched it, I cried. I'm not even going to lie.

GS: Oh, really. You knew, "This is not going to work."

DT: I was like, "This is not going to work." I literally cried and I was crying. My husband, whose office was next to mine, he came in and he was like, "Honey, you okay?" And I was like, "Can I show you something? I want you to tell me what you really think." And he was like, "I'm sure it's not that bad. I'm sure it's not that bad." I play for him and he was like, "Oh, it's bad, you got to fix that. You're going to get fired."

He's a marine, so he always calls it like it is. And I was like, "Oh no, oh no." And I was like, "Who else can I show this?" So I take it down, and I show my kids and my goddaughter who lives with us. And they watched it and they were all like, "I don't know what this is. I'm not sure what you're trying to do." And so I realized, I said, "Whoa, this is not good." So I remember calling my head of creative and being like, "This is not it. We got to figure it out." So we're working, trying to get it to a good place. We get it to a good place, but it's good, not great. And we needed great, but we were out of time. And we had to launch with what we had, and we got results that were good, not great, and it was supposed to be great.

It was supposed to be this really big thing. I will tell you what I learned from that. What I learned from that is trust your instincts. As a CMO, as a marketer, you've got these instincts. And I remember when I thought, "This is too much." And that was exactly what it was, it was too much. It was too much to communicate in the 30-second spots we had to communicate it in. It was too complex. And that was a big lesson, it was like, "Trust your instincts." If your instincts are telling you that something is too much, it's not working, don't ignore that voice. It's important. Marketing is art and science. Don't ignore the art side of things because the best marketing unifies the art and science, that's when you get the magic.

GS: Oh, I love that. I know. Listen, I've been in those situations. Another thing I always hated, I hated sitting in a room with everybody else without any other distraction in a conference room and watching the ad. I'm like, "This is not anybody's experience." And then we would play it over and over again, which is no one's experience ever on the consumer side. And so I've always been a big believer, "I want to see it in context. I don't want to see it in isolation, because that's not how anybody's ever going to know it."

DT: And my big thing now is you got to also play it with the sound off and see whether it grabs you or not.

GS: Oh, right, right, right. Listen, there's so many ad formats today, which is both wonderful and horrifying at maybe some level. But what do you think about the movement to shorter ads, lower attention or maybe higher attention, but faster environments like mobile typical? How do you plan and orient around some of those today?

DT: I think you've got to have a mix. So every time you're working to pull something together, you need to look at your full marketing mix. And I think you need to think about all the environments that might make sense for you to show up in to your target audiences. And some of that will be those short, six-second ads. Some of them will be the traditional 30-second, 15-second, 10-second. Some of them will be you want to tell a full story, and you may want a longer time format where you can bring people in and suck them in.

And so I think you've got to think through, "Okay, what am I trying to say? What are the different avenues that I need to say it in?" And what I will say is try to make it custom built. So what I found is when you think, "Oh, I'm just going to make a 60-second and I'm just going to cut it." Without actually saying, "What is the right version of the six second." I'm not saying don't be efficient and shoot it all at the same time, but don't just think, "I'm going to cut it."

Think about what you want each of those to be, because that allows you to actually be a lot more effective. Custom-built, purpose-built ads are so much better than when you try to force something in. You ever seen that six-second ad and you're like, "What the hell was that?" It's because someone just took something and they were like, "Well, let's try to make it six seconds." As opposed to be thinking about, "What can I communicate effectively in six seconds? Okay, let's shoot it all together. So we're saving time, we're saving money," but it's purpose built.

GS: So speaking of formats, have you seen your old employer Apple's climate ad yet?

DT: Yes, of course.

GS: What do you think? Come on. You don't work there anymore. Autodesk doesn't have a relationship with Apple. Do you? I don't know. I don't have any idea. Can you speak freely on this one or...

DT: Here's what I would say, I appreciate the strategy. ESG has been under attack. We are in a season where ESG is under attack, DE&I is under attack. And what I love about what Apple did was it said, "We're not the kind of company that just blows with the wind. We have our values. We have stuff that's important to us, and it's always been important to us, and it's always going to be important to us. And that's sustainability." And I love that Apple leaned into that, at Autodesk sustainability is important to us, too. So it was very heartening to see a company take a stand like that at a time when it's maybe not the trendy thing to do. I also liked that they did that in a creative way, in a different way than what was expected. It wasn't your traditional. And of course, I'm sure there will be... Imitation is the greatest form of flattery. I'm sure you're going to see a lot of companies starting to do this. But before Apple did it, I hadn't really seen anyone else release an ESG report with that type of gusto and creativity.

So it was lovely to see them try something different and do something different. And it was effective. At the end of the day, the amount of times people were pinging me about that ad that day, it was more than 30. More than 30 people, whether it was within my company, outside my company. So imagine that, and I'm just one person. The multiplier effect of that, they got their message across.

GS: I think they did a pretty phenomenal job. And you know what's funny, I felt like they really humanized a company, they humanized Tim Cook a little bit, too. It kind of made Apple seem not the big bad company, because they were accountable to Mother Nature and she was wonderful in that ad. Just her performance was incredible. I thought, "Well played. Well played." Apple always takes the high road.

DT: Yes, I thought the same. At the end of the day, I think the most important thing as a marketer is be memorable. You've got to be memorable. And it was memorable. I can't tell you how many ads I've seen. I don't remember anything about them. It was memorable.

GS: Or that I don't feel a need to see them again. I brought it home and showed it to my wife, I said...

DT: See, there you go.

GS: ... "You got to see this, this is really well done." There we go, extended impression. Well played, Apple. Good job.

So you talked about creativity in all parts of the organization. We focus on the visualization of the ads here a lot, because that's what's always sexy and interesting about our business at some level. But talk about the creativity in other parts of the business here for a little bit. What does that mean? You said that at the very beginning.

DT: I've really tried to make sure that we are applying creativity to our planning process, for example, how we plan. I think it's really important when we're planning that not only are we planning for what I think of as baked, but how are we also planning for the unexpected? The only thing we know after the past five years is there's stuff we don't know that's going to happen, and how are we prepared for that? You have to leave space for the agile and opportunistic. And so when we're planning, we are thoughtful because if you spend a hundred of your resources on the plan and then things happen that you don't know, how do you deal with those things? You're not ready to deal with them. You're not able to deal with them. So we plan 80 percent for what's baked, we leave 20 percent to be agile and opportunistic. That's us...

GS: Oh, you do? Wow.

DT: ... being opportunistic.

GS: Oh wow. You leave that in the budget. You leave that in your time commitments in the programs?

DT: We have a plan for that. Absolutely.

GS: Oh, interesting.

DT: And then within the 80 percent that is planned, 70 percent of that's got to be tried and true. So this we know I put in X, I get Y. Twenty percent, it's going to be an innovation on that 70 percent. Because it's like how are we making that 70 percent better?

GS: Classic Silicon Valley innovation form: 70 percent of what you know works, 20 percent of...

DT: 20 percent innovation...

GS: ... what you think worked or...

DT: And then...

GS: ... could be made better.

DT: ... 10 percent for the...

GS: 10 percent...

DT: ... radical ideas.

GS: ... wild, crazy ass ideas.

DT: Exactly. And so we use that framework for the 80 percent, and then 20 percent we have it for the agile and unexpected.

GS: I think that's a big deal. Listen, I did have an opportunity to write a book a number of years ago on market. It was around the creation of multi-touch attribution, which taught me more about our market than anything. And so we repeated that as a part of it. And one of the other theses we did around that 10 percent, I think this is one of the most interesting things that me and others struck upon—I don't want to be too self-congratulatory on that.

But was to realize that look for things that are impactful, but don't focus on efficiency or cost-effectiveness to begin with. If you focus on efficiency, you'll miss the bigger opportunity. And that's where I think you take those 10 percent crazy ideas, "Go, wow, that really worked. Let's move it over to 20 percent. Now let's see if we can iterate to make it efficient. Because right now it's way too... We couldn't be doing that again, and again, that doesn't make any sense from an economic investment standpoint." That was one of the important lessons that I've used in those kinds of things. Let's make sure that we figure out where to go, and then figure out how to make it really work for us. And then if it doesn't pan out, then eventually get rid of it.

DT: Exactly. I think that's exactly how to think about it, because the reality is when you want different results you can't do things exactly the way you've always done them and expect different results. So how do you build that innovation into the planning process?

GS: So Dara let's shift here a little bit. Let's talk a little bit about what it takes to get to the C-suite. So you've been a CMO three times now?

DT: Four times.

GS: Four times. Crazy. Wow. At your age, too, that's really nuts. When did you start to realize that maybe you had a shot to do something like that?

DT: I'll never forget the moment. I had done some of those kind of classical when you're in a senior leadership position, and you're considered important potential succession. And I'd done one of those assessments. And I was getting the results from the coach that had conducted the assessment. And the person said to me—and this was our big boss—and he said to me, "This CEO really believes in you." I knew he valued my work. I knew he thought well of me. But it hadn't clicked to me that he really believed in me and thought I could have the top job. And the coach was like, "I just want to share some of his comments with you." And started to share those comments with me, and I was in tears. Because at the time I was doing the work, I knew I could get there. I knew I could, but I didn't think I would. And I didn't think I would because I didn't think anyone would give me the shot.

GS: Really?

DT: And to hear that someone saw me in that position, and at the time the top job was not vacant, there was someone else in it and I wasn't in it. But the fact that this man who's still a great mentor of mine saw me in such a positive way was so inspiring to me. And I'll never forget, I kind of left that meeting and I said... Of course, also, there were all the things I needed to work on as well. I put a PowerPoint together that day, I got home late. I put a PowerPoint together, and I went to my husband and I said, "I want us to make an investment in me because I believe I can be a CMO, but I have to work on all these things." And it was a short-term thing. So that coach was only going to be with me for that assessment. He was gone.

And I was like, "I want to actually hire someone to be alongside me as I develop and work on all these other things I need to work on, so that when I do get that top job I am ready to go and I can keep it. I can keep myself at that level." And I remember the pitch to my husband and he was like, "Okay, let's talk about it. What's the time to pay back?" And I had a whole time to pay back. Here's when we're going to get the ROI and the value of our investment. Here's what it's going to look like.

And he was so wonderful because he was like, "Okay, all right, let's make the investment." It was time bound, so it was like, "If it doesn't happen we're going to-" And you know what, I think about that a lot because many times people are waiting for someone else to invest in them. And it's like, "Well, oh, I never got this." You know what, you got to invest in yourself. If you don't believe in yourself, how do you expect anyone else to believe in you. So we made that investment and hired a coach...

GS: You did.

DT: ... to work with me and help me accomplish this. And it was expensive, it wasn't cheap because I wanted to get a really good coach. It was an expensive investment, but we made that investment for me to pay personally to hire someone to help me.

GS: The company didn't do it, you did it yourself.

DT: No, the company didn't do it because at the time, those coaches were really for people in the top job at that place. I wasn't in the top job, so I got a little thing to help me with that assessment, but I was like, "I want to be in the top job." And so I was like, "I need this." And so I paid for that myself.

GS: Dara, I think that's so smart. It's brilliant. In fact, I've never heard anybody else who's ever said that. Listen, Bob Pittman spoke at one of our events, iHeart Media. He opened with, "The only advantage of getting older is pattern recognition." I have pattern recognition now. I'm of the age, I have pattern recognition. And as I look back I think if you're serious, listen, not everybody's serious about business or serious about succeeding, that's okay, whatever. If you are, if you don't have a coach, I think you're a fool. I think you must have somebody alongside to guide you. All great performers, all great athletes have coaches. Of course they do. And so if you're serious, if you really want to play the game you have to have it. And so have I for decades. I totally agree. Single greatest investment you made was a coach?

DT: Absolutely, that was the big investment. I worked with that coach to get into that top job.

GS: Why is a coach important? Why is that getting help, a coach, seeking support, insight outside of yourself, why is that important as you look back on it now? Why did it matter?

DT: Just like you said, every great athlete needs a coach. And I think you're a business athlete. So you might not be running on the track or playing in the US Open or in Wimbledon, but you're an athlete in the corporate sense and you need a coach. And what I found the coach did was help me with three things. My coach really helped me build my confidence as a leader. And as a leader if you're not confident, it's hard for you to lead. Nobody wants to follow a shaky person. The minute you realize... Think about it, if you were on an airplane and the pilot was like, "Hey everyone, I'm not really sure what we're doing."

GS: We'd never fly again.

DT: We'd never fly that airline ever again. No one wants to be on the ship of a captain who does not know where they're going. And so having that confidence I think is really, really, really, really important, that piece is really important. The second thing that a coach really helps you to do is it helps you hone your intuition as a leader. That's one of the things, that instinct that you have. There's a saying, I believe it might be Amazon who has this saying, that leaders are mostly right, and they're in that position because they're mostly right. They're not always right. No one is always right.

GS: No is always right.

DT: But leaders are mostly right. And the reason they're mostly right is that pattern recognition, is their ability to have the right instincts and be able to have the right judgment. And you need to learn how to do that, it's a muscle. The more you use it, the better you get. And having a coach where you can reflect on when I didn't use it, when I didn't lean into it, when I used it too much, that is so important. And so my coach really helped me with honing that intuition and being able to master and trust my instincts. And then the last piece of it is really as a leader you have to be able to take risks. Part of leading is taking risks. But you're not just taking nilly willy risks. You're taking what I like to call clear-eyed risk. What is a clear-eyed risk?

A clear-eyed risk is where you gather as much data as you can, you strip away uncertainty, and then you make a decision with conviction. And that ability to make a clear-eyed risk, you need to have someone you can talk to as you're thinking through those risks. And having a coach, an unbiased, objective person that can talk through that with you is really, really helpful. I have found that to be invaluable.

GS: You know what it is for me, you're never making decisions with perfect information ever, ever. And that is the nature of business because, in fact, the more advanced you have to make further out decisions that have even lower sets of data to make decisions upon, so it's intuition largely. And decision-making is what will help you to succeed or fail. It's just that simple. It's just about making better decisions, a few percentage point better decisions that I would've made on my own. And sometimes they're colossally better decisions, that comes up every once in a while. But it's like many decisions made a little bit better than I would've otherwise made them.

DT: Absolutely.

GS: And that I just think it makes all the difference. I'll tell you something else, Dara, I don't get into this with the board much. I have a PhD in organizational psych on retainer at the MMA, and I have for over 10 years.

DT: Oh, wow.

GS: And he is available to anyone in the company who wants to just seek a perspective around... And there could be a myriad of things, how they make decisions, how they may even make personal decisions for themselves, how they organize their own work, how they align themselves to the company if they feel misaligned. If they're struggling with something personally to find a way out of that or path out of it. Sometimes it's if they feel like they need to have what might be otherwise a challenging or an uncomfortable conversation with me or somebody else, then they have an outlet for doing that because it's all about just improving the corporate, the overall organism decision-making at some level. He's unbelievably invaluable.

DT: That's amazing, what a great resource you have for you.

GS: No, no, no, no and to provide it for the company. And you know what's funny, I tell a lot of candidates we have that. I don't think I've ever heard anybody say, "Yeah, I've heard of that." They've all said, "Really? I've never heard of that." It's very funny to me. It feels like corporate America kind of somehow misses that. I guess do we just expect people to all know what they're doing and figure it out all the time on their own? It feels funny to me.

DT: Yeah. Well, I think one of the wonderful things at Autodesk is we do have those type of resources for our employees as well, so that they can get any help they need. Because I think one of the things that is so important is the mental health and well-being of your employees. And so having that resource that can help you with that is so key and so important.

GS: I agree. Especially, again, in some of these companies who really value human resources, and the role that it can play, that help people just stay... A conversation we'll sometimes have with the staff of the MMA is to say, "Okay, listen, we're here to provide well-being services for you, but we'd like to hear what is your well-being plan? What are you doing to take care of yourself to be most effective? To be tuned up as an athlete here at the company, to try to do the best work you can every day, to feel most challenged by that, and to take on the most challenging work." When people can succeed on that, they feel their own sense of personal benefit, that pays dividends to the company and the individual.

DT: Absolutely. Absolutely. We're all in charge of our own well-being.

GS: Correct.

DT: I love that.

GS: There's a big part of you I've heard you speak in other places around what you do around your well-being. Do you mind sharing with people some of what you do around managing your own life and access to life and so on? I know your meditation and there's other tools that you have.

DT: It's funny to be talking about this on a business podcast, but I believe in the power of gratitude like we talked about. So I make sure that I practice gratitude. I believe that we are what we think and what we consume. And so I'm very intentional about what I consume. And I'm also very intentional about making sure that I'm reducing negative thoughts. And I'm being very thoughtful about what I'm allowing to sit in my mind and in my heart. I know that that impacts how I show up as a leader in my professional life, but even as a wife and a mother in my personal life, so that is really important to me. I do pray and I meditate, and that's important to me. I have my spiritual practice that I do every single day, and I'm a woman of faith, and my spiritual practice really sustains me.

Everyone has got to find their thing. But it's funny because I've been in roles where my life is very public, what is happening to me everyone can read about it. And in those moments I've had friends text me and they're like, "How are you doing it?" My answer is always the same, "I couldn't do it without my faith." Even when things are amazing, it keeps me humble. Because it reminds me that I'm no better than anybody else. I don't deserve it more than anybody else. I'm just filled with gratitude that I have the opportunity to walk in what I'm walking in, but that humility is so key. And so I work constantly to stay humble. And then when things are going bad and things are challenging, it gives me hope. It makes sure that I don't spiral into despair, but I remember that I'm still living and that there's hope. And so those two things, humility and hope, are the anchors of my life, and they're deeply rooted in my faith and in my spiritual practice.

GS: It's funny, I don't think it's my place to say so, and I know HR would never let me say this. But the advice that I'd love to give to people—and I think I can say it here more broadly, because I couldn't say it to the individual—is listen, there's two answers: get God or a therapist. Life is hard. There's struggle. Get help somewhere. You got to have something. It's funny, too, you went to Harvard. So Harvard MBA has a class, it's called Happiness, and it was covered in the Wall Street Journal a little bit. And they had done a study on what determines happiness, and they said there were four elements that are happiness. And their thesis was that they need to teach MBAs to be happy because it's such a requirement in companies today that we make employees happy.

And their thesis was, "If you're not happy, how can you make anybody else happy?" It's great. And they said there were four things. The first two are friends and family. Everybody was going to get that right. I've never had anybody get that one wrong yet. You got to have friends and family, those are the first two elements of it. The third one was challenging work, and they didn't say work with purpose. I agree with Scott Galloway, I think it's stupid we tell people purposeful work. Tax accountants don't feel like they have purposeful work, I suspect. Knock it off. It's just like challenging work is enough. And that's one of the reasons I think I'm happy. I have very challenging work. You have challenging work, you can see you're excited about it. The fourth one's interesting, it's a philosophy of life, which is a variation of what religion can be in some regards or faith can be. But I think we don't emphasize that enough.

You need to have an orientation to how life works to get yourself to the right place sometimes, because life can be hard on times and life can throw tough things at you, really dramatic, tough things. I feel like we don't give people enough orientation to that. I wonder if that isn't one of the coming trends at some point into the future.

DT: Yeah. It's interesting because at Stanford there was a class called Interpersonal Dynamics, which talked about...

GS: That was your favorite class there, too, didn't you say?

DT: That was my favorite class.

GS: I've seen you say that elsewhere. What was the class about?

DT: Look, there's how you see yourself. There's how other people see you. There's how you think other people see you. And often there's a divide between those things. And the more you can harmonize those things and develop skills across the full facet of who you truly are, and become comfortable with yourself and how you show up, the happier you are and the more fulfilled you are. Everyone is going to have their own way they go about achieving that. And for me, I have found my spiritual practice to be how I go about achieving that. And for me, like I said, it's really anchored in those tenets of hope and humility.

GS: I have a special request for you, Dara.

DT: Okay.

GS: I don't know that you've met my daughters at the CEO/CMO Summit. I don't remember if I have actually introduced you to them or not. One thing that I notice about them is that I think it's maybe pervasive. So I'd be curious... you can tell me I'm wrong, by the way that's fine on this. I'm not so sure that young women today have confidence in the way that sometimes young men exhibit themselves around business. And so I've often wondered if we don't need to somehow do more work to give them confidence. You strike me as somebody with an extraordinary amount... a woman with extraordinary amount of confidence today. So I guess the question I'd ask you, or the journey you've been on, is what advice would you have for a young woman today? Both my daughters are entering the workforce for the first time now, and it's going to be interesting to see where they go. What advice do you have for young women today? And you can disagree with my thesis, you can say, "Greg-"

DT: I don't disagree with your thesis because it's always shocking to me... And this happens all the time, where men will show up for a role not really meeting the... and it's not so much qualifications because I'm a big believer in giving people opportunity. But not being willing to do what it takes to have that job. A woman shows up, she's already doing it, she's willing, but she's doubting herself. Whereas the man who's not willing to do the job is like, "Why haven't I got it yet?" That confidence. And I joke sometimes, but I'm like, "Wow, to have that confidence of-"

GS: Maybe it's a gift.

DT: What a gift.

GS: I don't know.

DT: What a gift. What a gift.

GS: We'll see.

DT: And it was funny because the other day I was coaching my daughter, she's doing her homework. She's in 2nd grade, she just turned eight. And she's doing her homework and I was coaching her on it. And I said to her, I said, "Look, when it's a test, I know you're not going to always be perfect, and you're going to make mistakes. When it's homework and you have the time to do it well, I want you to strive for excellence." And as I was saying it, I was thinking about why I was saying it. And the reason why I was saying it has been my journey as a black woman, where it's like I've always had to be prepared. There is not one job I've gone into that I haven't had my a 100-day plan done before I got the job, from when I was in the kind of C-suite level. I have been over-prepared.

I work so hard at everything that I do, I care so much. And the reason is it's how I have to be. To be in the position that I'm in, I have to work harder, I have to apply myself better. There can never be a question. It always has to be like, "Oh, oh, I get it. I see this is the level that Dara delivers at." And the reality is she's a black girl and that's going to be her... I hope that the world is more equitable. I'm not encouraged by some of the changes happening lately. I want her to be prepared for what life is. The reality is it's still hard as a woman. The reality is it's even harder if you are that and other things, there's that intersectionality like being a black woman or a Hispanic woman, that gap does exist.

But here's what I would say: be prepared. When you are prepared, when those opportunities come you're ready for it. And the preparation for me is what has given me confidence. It's funny because people look at me and they think I'm a confident person. I have learned confidence. It's actually one of the things I worked on with my coach. It's funny because when you have kids you see yourself in your kids. I by nature, growing up I was a people pleaser. It was kind of funny. My siblings would always say, "Don't tell Dara she's going to tell mommy and daddy because she wants to please everybody." I was always that kid. It's so funny now because whenever my mom wants to get something, and we siblings have our little group chat, she'll call me. I'm like, "Don't call me. I'm not going to be the weak link. I'm not going to tell you."

GS: I'm not going to tell.

DT: I had to learn as an executive that everyone's going to have an opinion on marketing. If I'm trying to please every single person, I'm not going to please our customers and I'm not going to deliver. I have to be willing to do what is right. And that was something I had to develop. But when you're prepared, it gives you confidence. When I've got my insights, it gives me confidence. So I would say to young women be prepared and know you already have what it takes. There are a lot of half-baked people walking around looking for fully baked people. And the reality is we're all a little half-baked, every single... It's true and if you don't think you're half-baked, well there you go that's the half that's not baked.

We're all a little bit like that. And the reality is that every single one of us, there is a first time someone gives us that opportunity to do something we haven't done before. And one of my greatest joys is giving a lot of people that first time opportunity. And I have been fortunate and blessed that someone has... Now I've been a CMO. It's like, "Okay, Dara is a CMO." But someone took a bet on me and gave me that first CMO job. I think it's so important that we are willing to give other people a chance, and when we're prepared we are able to meet those opportunities, and knowing that we already have what it takes allows us to walk into those opportunities.

GS: So the issue is confidence is critical. Double down on building confidence. Double down on building confidence is what you said. I remind my kids all the time, too, it's like, "Happiness is not a birthright, you have to work for it. Confidence is not-"

DT: You have to strive for it, and when you get it, you got to hold onto it.

GS: Absolutely. And confidence is not a given. There's maybe a few people out there who were maybe born with it. Let's assume most of us weren't. And you're right we had to earn it based on our experiences, so go build confidence. I love that. Good lesson.

Okay, Dara, I think that's all the time we have. I want to be respectful of that. I can't thank you enough for doing this. I can't thank you enough, too, for being really open about who you are and what you're trying to do in the world. I think there's not enough of that that goes around for people today. So I hope that for others out there it's an inspirational lesson for them. And they garner something from this and I sure did, so thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you

DT: Thank you so much. Thank you. I appreciate you.

GS: Thanks again to Dara Treseder from Autodesk for coming on Building Better CMOs. Now check the description of this episode for links to connect with Dara. And if you want to know more about MMA's work to unlock the power of marketing, please visit mmaglobal.com.

Or you can attend any one of our 30-plus conferences in 15 countries where MMA operates. Or really, frankly, write me at greg@mmaglobal.com. Now, thank you so much for listening. Tap the link in the show notes to leave us a review. And if you're new to the show, please follow or subscribe on Apple, Spotify, Amazon Music, iHeart, or wherever you get your podcasts. You can find links to all those places and more at bettercmos.com. Our producer and podcast consultant is Eric Johnson from lightiningpod.fm. Building Better CMOs researcher and program manager is Aneta Palevska. Artwork is by Jason Chase. And a special thanks to Lacera Smith for keeping the trains running. This is Greg Stuart. I'll see you in two weeks.