YouSaid · the spoken record

Shellye Archambeau

lines on the record: 44
first: 2019-03-26
most recent: 2019-03-26
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

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“I try to have the most informed perspective and then take the overall decision. But risks, it's the same that I use personally. I'm like, all right, what's the best that can happen, right? What's the worst that can happen? Can I live with that? What's the worst that can happen now? Are there some mitigating steps that will help me? I do all that. And then try to basically take the bigger bets. Are always safer bets. But the reason I take the bigger bets is I've never believed that the odds are in my favor. And so if I just play the odds and take the safe bets all the time, I'm not going to get what I want out of life. Life may be fine. I'm not saying it's going to be bad life, but I'm not going to get what I want out of life. And that typically means you take the bigger bets and you take the risks.”
2019-03-26 · Masters of Scale · Take bigger risks, w/Shellye Archambeau · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So I passed the baton on my CEO. And I want others to see that it's possible. I believe it's very difficult, especially for minorities, to aspire to something they can't see. So now I have time to do that.”
2019-03-26 · Masters of Scale · Take bigger risks, w/Shellye Archambeau · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah. I'm going to give you a depends and explain. I think it should be rare. It'll happen, but I think it should be rare. It comes back to the premise of the company. Premise of the company was trying to solve a real problem. If that problem is a real problem, then it continues to be a real problem. Now, technology can change or environment can change or something where all of a sudden that problem is no longer a problem. And then you have to rethink everything again. But that doesn't happen as often as you might think.”
2019-03-26 · Masters of Scale · Take bigger risks, w/Shellye Archambeau · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Think of planning as direction. So when I put a plan in place, it's a plan to say, okay, I'm trying to get from point A ultimately to point B. So it's almost like in bowling, it's defining where the gutters. All right. Now between the two gutters, there's a lot that you can do with that ball and trying to get those different pins. So I'm not planning every single step and tactic and things that we're doing. I'm just trying to put the rails on to say, okay, here are the rails. And then within this, make sure, tap, tap, tap, that we're still heading towards that overall direction, but there's plenty of bandwidth and space to be able to deal with what happens.”
2019-03-26 · Masters of Scale · Take bigger risks, w/Shellye Archambeau · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And It absolutely is. And, you know, I think it's true from being leader in general. When I hit the point in my career where I realized. You know what? I can always get another job. It may not be like the perfect job, but I can always get a job to pay my bills. Once I realized that, it was incredibly liberating. To be able to actually follow your own beliefs because they can follow you, we need to take them someplace, or they can decide they're going to fire you. That's really the choice. And back to risk reward. Can I live with it? Can I not? But it gives you so much more freedom when you realize that you can”
2019-03-26 · Masters of Scale · Take bigger risks, w/Shellye Archambeau · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Now, there were plenty more where Vinod was right. The node is amazing. It's so much easier for CEOs, especially when you're newer CEOs, to believe that your investors and your board members know more than you do. They do know more than you do, but they typically don't know more about your company, your market, your customers, your team. And so you've got to have the strength and the resilience to believe in yourself and take that risk. So I consider those big risks that I took. Right thing, big risk.”
2019-03-26 · Masters of Scale · Take bigger risks, w/Shellye Archambeau · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Node wants me to do it one way. And I think we ought to do it a different way. So tell my husband I may not have a job when I come home for this meeting. So I go into the meeting and I say Vinode, I know you want this. We've spent a lot of time. We're going to do this. Here's why. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Got one of those silent steely eyed stairs. He says. Okay, you better be right.”
2019-03-26 · Masters of Scale · Take bigger risks, w/Shellye Archambeau · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Couldn't just go raise money because Zaplet's tainted. We need to do something different. So the node identified a company called Metric Stream, which was smaller than us, and they were really doing operational compliance, but it was close enough. And they were apps people, right? So we put the two companies together, took Metric Stream, much better name than Saplet for the enterprise. And with that configuration and a new business model and plan, we then raised money with Kleiner as our lead and basically redid the company.”
2019-03-26 · Masters of Scale · Take bigger risks, w/Shellye Archambeau · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I did not have a plan going in. West, I did not have a plan. That's not fair. I didn't know what the answer was, I had a plan on how I would planning to figure out the answer.”
2019-03-26 · Masters of Scale · Take bigger risks, w/Shellye Archambeau · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The way I saw it was yes, it was definitely a risk, but I learned throughout my career that people were willing to give me opportunities that were risky, where things were broken. And I could get those opportunities more easily than get something that was working well.”
2019-03-26 · Masters of Scale · Take bigger risks, w/Shellye Archambeau · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“My view is if I had a platform, you can repurpose platforms to almost any area in space. So if I could just figure out a problem that we could solve, then we should be good. So that was my strategy.”
2019-03-26 · Masters of Scale · Take bigger risks, w/Shellye Archambeau · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Said, you have a reputation of being very forceful and of sometimes whip sign companies around. I said, I just need to know, are you hiring me to be the CEO of Zablit to run it the way I feel it should be run? Or are you hiring me to be CEO of Zaplet to implement your strategy and plan for the company? I just need to know which job you're hiring me for. Pretty risky to ask that kind of question. Here I am trying to find a job, right? And so anyways, he looked at me for what seemed like 10 minutes. It wasn't, leaned back, and then he smiled. And he said, I am forceful. And yes, I have strong opinions. He goes, but I hire CEOs to be CEOs. And I said, okay.”
2019-03-26 · Masters of Scale · Take bigger risks, w/Shellye Archambeau · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It was crazy if you think about it. I took a job where I was CEO of a company that was running out of money, that hadn't sold like a new customer in quarters, that most of the investors, you know, had mentally written off. And why do I want to be CEO of a company like that that's completely broken and needs to be fixed and turned around? So high risk.”
2019-03-26 · Masters of Scale · Take bigger risks, w/Shellye Archambeau · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So, the worst risk I could live with. And I thought the opportunity itself was actually super high. So to me, that's the right kind of equation. So that's what I went after. And that's when I came upon Zaplet and Vinod Kosla at Kleiner Perkins.”
2019-03-26 · Masters of Scale · Take bigger risks, w/Shellye Archambeau · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And the reason I picked that strategy is I said, all right, if it doesn't work, nobody thought it was going to work anyway. But at least I've had a top-tier VC behind me. They've had a chance to see what I can do and who I am. And therefore, hopefully get another opportunity. So that was my worst case can you live with it? Best case was if I can take something that's broken and I can fix it at a top tier firm I can then basically decide what I want to go do next because I will have proven myself.”
2019-03-26 · Masters of Scale · Take bigger risks, w/Shellye Archambeau · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So I said, here's what I'm going to do At IBM, a lot of the jobs I took were fix it, turn around, broken things, et cetera. I said, I'm not a fix things. I'm going to go after a C minus to D, God bless. I'm going to go after a problem child, but at a top tier venture firm.”
2019-03-26 · Masters of Scale · Take bigger risks, w/Shellye Archambeau · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Of these dot coms, all these small companies are basically going out of business. And as a result, there are CEOs in the wings looking for jobs that have CEO experience, that have Long Valley tenure, that probably your STEM background, a lot of engineers, well, Shelley is not from the Valley. I've not been a CEO before. So what are the odds that I'm going to go get an A play company? Zero. A plays go to people that the VCs and investors already know that they feel are absolutely going to be successful, right? So fine, I'm not going to get an A play. Could I get a B play? That's probably going to be challenged too, just given the environment.”
2019-03-26 · Masters of Scale · Take bigger risks, w/Shellye Archambeau · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And I'll never forget my boss, the CEO at the time, a blockbuster. He just sat back and said Ah, if that ever becomes anything we'll just buy it. Because Blockbuster was a big business at that time. And I'm sitting there thinking, what? Are you crazy? And that's when I knew that this was just not the place for me to stay. But history is written. Blockbuster is long out of business and Netflix is one of the top brands in the world.”
2019-03-26 · Masters of Scale · Take bigger risks, w/Shellye Archambeau · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Reed came out to Blockbuster and pitched Let's Take Blockbuster.com, the brand, let's take Netflix the technology, put them together, and spin it out and have Blockbuster.com Inc.”
2019-03-26 · Masters of Scale · Take bigger risks, w/Shellye Archambeau · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“When I decided to leave IBM, that was a big risk. I was born and raised in IBM from a career standpoint. If you sliced my wrist, you know, I bled blue. All of my friends and my network were IBMers. My husband had worked for IBM. Leaving IBM, the mothership was definitely a risk. Thinking through that, it really came down to my sitting down with Nashlli. Your objective is to be CEO. And at this point in my career, I didn't see that that was a definite conclusion.”
2019-03-26 · Masters of Scale · Take bigger risks, w/Shellye Archambeau · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“People started hearing about Shelly San, which is what they called me, Shelley San, Mr. Shelley, long before I actually met them because of the flower story. But it was great and it was wonderful that it actually went well. It could have been a bust.”
2019-03-26 · Masters of Scale · Take bigger risks, w/Shellye Archambeau · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And then he broke into this huge smile. I pulled the flowers out of the cupboard and I handed them to him, and it was great. It totally broke the ice. One of the biggest side effects that I had not planned on was he had to carry those flowers all the way through IBM Asia Pacific, all the way up through IBM Japan, up into his office. And of course everybody's wondering why is he carrying all these flowers?”
2019-03-26 · Masters of Scale · Take bigger risks, w/Shellye Archambeau · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I'm walking to the office the next morning and I pass by floor shop and I stop and I think a first date. So I go into the floor shop and I buy the biggest bouquet of flowers and I bring them into my office and I put them in the cupboard. Yamamoto son comes for our meeting and he walks in and we bow and say hello. And I said, so since it's our first date, I bought you flowers. And he froze. And I'm thinking, oh no, this is like going to go so badly.”
2019-03-26 · Masters of Scale · Take bigger risks, w/Shellye Archambeau · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“He said, Now, Shelley, please, this meeting is just a nice meeting. It's a get to know you meeting. It's like, and he's looking for an analogy and he says, it's like a first date.”
2019-03-26 · Masters of Scale · Take bigger risks, w/Shellye Archambeau · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Okay, so here I am. My Japanese team is my biggest team. Yamamota-san, who was running VAT, is indeed the person that is going to be very important to me. So I need to meet with him. Before we meet, I meet with his right-hand person, gosh, two or three times. That's kind of the process. He's the go-between to make sure that the very first meeting goes well.”
2019-03-26 · Masters of Scale · Take bigger risks, w/Shellye Archambeau · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The big thing I learned on that experience was for the first time in my entire career having the experience of being a minority was an asset. I tell people all the time, women minorities go do an international assignment. You will actually have an edge above people who have not been minorities and experienced being minorities in a new culture”
2019-03-26 · Masters of Scale · Take bigger risks, w/Shellye Archambeau · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Men who come from the US and do an international assignment, they assume that everything they've done, their reputation, whatever, all comes with them. Whereas whenever I get a promotion or new job and I walk into it, I know that people are going to assume that I'm probably not quite qualified or not quite ready. So I always have to go in and prove myself, establish myself. Well, because I have that mentality, when I showed up in Japan, I took that same approach. And the approach is I can help my team be successful. That will make me successful.”
2019-03-26 · Masters of Scale · Take bigger risks, w/Shellye Archambeau · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Almost all of them had gone and done an international assignment. But more than that. A good chunk of them, a high percentage, had actually gone to Japan. And I thought that's not obvious. Japan was probably our smallest marketplace.”
2019-03-26 · Masters of Scale · Take bigger risks, w/Shellye Archambeau · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Get far more no's than you get yeses. And learning that that's okay and that you're fine and you can still move forward is important later on because you're going to continue to get a lot of no's in your life.”
2019-03-26 · Masters of Scale · Take bigger risks, w/Shellye Archambeau · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I tell people to this day I think the best first job, I don't care what you want to do in life, is a sales job. Best job because you learn how to ask for what you need. You ask for the order and you learn how to be resilient and that a no is not the end of the world. You learn how to negotiate. You learn how to listen. You learn how to solve problems.”
2019-03-26 · Masters of Scale · Take bigger risks, w/Shellye Archambeau · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I believe that everything has a current. So at IBM, the current was sales. So get in the current. I'm not saying you can't get there a different way, but given that I'm ambitious and I'm trying to move quickly, it's just easier if I'm moving quickly in a current that's already moving versus trying to create my own.”
2019-03-26 · Masters of Scale · Take bigger risks, w/Shellye Archambeau · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So starting IBM and said, okay, the first real big PL job is a branch manager. Great. Looks like the average person gets a branch manager job in their early 30s. Great. I want to be a branch manager when I'm 30. So that's what I just decided. And so it was working hard to achieve the different milestones that you need to do. So I needed to become a team lead, then I need to get a marketing manager's job, then I need to get a second line manager's job. I'm going to use all of these.”
2019-03-26 · Masters of Scale · Take bigger risks, w/Shellye Archambeau · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Set timelines because if you don't have timelines, then it's really easy for things just to linger and take forever. And if you have timelines, then it makes you get things done.”
2019-03-26 · Masters of Scale · Take bigger risks, w/Shellye Archambeau · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Once I set a goal and I put things in place, why make a decision that's not consistent with my plan? So if everything's consistent with the plan, it just increases the odds of one thing's working out. But two, it just reinforces to me the steps, right, that need to happen.”
2019-03-26 · Masters of Scale · Take bigger risks, w/Shellye Archambeau · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Turned out every single CEO of IBM started out in sales. So I needed to start out in sales, which my Wharton friends thought was nuts. What do you mean you come out of Wharton and you're going to go to sales at IBM? That's crazy. You're supposed to go to Wall Street or go be a P&G brand manager, right? I mean, all these other things. But that's what I did.”
2019-03-26 · Masters of Scale · Take bigger risks, w/Shellye Archambeau · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Now, what company? All right, again, you look around, might as well go for the top company. Back then it was IBM. So I'm going to go be CEO of IBM.”
2019-03-26 · Masters of Scale · Take bigger risks, w/Shellye Archambeau · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“What industry to focus on? Doing the research, you know, you learn that people say you want to go into industries that are growing. So I said, great. Back then, technology was a growing industry. Great, I'm going to go be CEO of a tech company.”
2019-03-26 · Masters of Scale · Take bigger risks, w/Shellye Archambeau · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“How do I increase the odds? Where do they come from? Business. So I decided I needed to go to the top business school to get the credibility. So did my research, Wharton was the top business school, and it had an undergraduate degree.”
2019-03-26 · Masters of Scale · Take bigger risks, w/Shellye Archambeau · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“How do you become a CEO? What are the steps? Where are they? So I looked around to see okay where are the CEOs? And you know what? It confirmed my suspicion. I didn't find any that looked like me.”
2019-03-26 · Masters of Scale · Take bigger risks, w/Shellye Archambeau · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So, what do you like to do? And I said, I love my clubs. I love running my clubs. I'm president of this, vice president of that. I went through the whole bit. And she said, Shelly, leading a club is just like running a business. And I don't know that she expected me to actually take that and turn it into great. Then I want to be a CEO, but that's exactly what I did. I'm like, oh, good. That's what I'll do. I love doing this.”
2019-03-26 · Masters of Scale · Take bigger risks, w/Shellye Archambeau · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“In high school, I ran a lot of clubs and organizations. That's how I used my competitive spirit was if I got involved in something that I wanted a leadership position.”
2019-03-26 · Masters of Scale · Take bigger risks, w/Shellye Archambeau · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I believe that a combination of the Bible, the paperwork, and just how my family views the importance of family, it was very clear to me that I was just a continuation. I always had a sense for the ancestors and the depth of where I've come from. So yes, I do believe that has shaped me.”
2019-03-26 · Masters of Scale · Take bigger risks, w/Shellye Archambeau · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I'm very fortunate and that our family has basically our history in a Bible. It reflects generations back so that we know who gave birth to who, gave birth to who. It's just a regular Bible that you can tell. Someone just decided, all right, we use this all the time. This is where we'll take our notes and our documents and just started writing and recording of the Archimbeau side of the family. We came from Jamaica via France. Originally it was a fisherman out of a fishing village in France. It's interesting because the last name changed spellings. So you can see how it's written that my father's father left Jamaica and came to the States with his father. And that's how we got started in the States.”
2019-03-26 · Masters of Scale · Take bigger risks, w/Shellye Archambeau · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I started planning early because I realized through a series of experiences and things growing up that the odds just weren't in my favor to get what I wanted out of life. I decided I wanted to be a CEO when I was in high school, which is super rare, especially for a black female. And therefore, it was always about how do I improve the odds. And the way I improved the odds was to actually make a plan and then figure out how to execute on the plan. a planner my whole life”
2019-03-26 · Masters of Scale · Take bigger risks, w/Shellye Archambeau · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT