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Our guest today is Mailchimp’s Chief Operating Officer, Sheldon Cummings.
Before stepping into his leadership role at Mailchimp, Sheldon had a dual role as a VP Intuit Sales in addition to serving as Intuit’s Chief Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Officer (CDEIO). Since joining Intuit in 2017, Sheldon has led a number of leadership positions across Intuit’s Sales, Marketing, Global Partnerships, and Global Operations teams.
Prior to Intuit Sheldon had a number of roles across industries and countries, including leading a European business for 6 years headquartered in Zurich, Switzerland.
Sheldon, a native of New York City, graduated with a BA from Wesleyan University and received his MBA from Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management with concentrations in Finance, Marketing, and Strategy.
In This Conversation We Discuss:
- What Sheldon got from the private school made him see the value of a network that he carried into his current role
- What Sheldon learned from the CPG experience
- How to stay lean as an organization when there are opportunities to add more features
- How to know which data to look at and which to leave in the background
Resources:
Mailchimp – https://www.mailchimp.com
Connect with Cameron: Website | LinkedIn
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In this episode, our guest is Mailchimp‘s Chief Operating Officer, Sheldon Cummings. Before stepping into his leadership role at Mailchimp, Sheldon had a dual role as VP of Intuit Sales, in addition to serving as Intuit’s Chief Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Officer. Since joining Intuit in 2017, Sheldon has led a number of leadership positions across Intuit’s sales, marketing, global partnerships and global operations teams.
Prior to Intuit, Sheldon had a number of roles across industries and countries, including leading a European business for six years headquartered in Zürich, Switzerland. Sheldon, a native of New York City graduated with a BA from Wesleyan University. He received his MBA from Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management with concentrations in finance, marketing and strategy. Sheldon, welcome to the show.
Thank you so much, Cameron. It’s great to be here.
You are one of the smart guys.
If only.
Kellogg’s not exactly a C-level school. That’s a pretty solid school to get through. I’ve got a lot I want to dive into. I want to find out how you got here. I want to talk to you a little bit about Zürich, Switzerland and what it was like working with Mailchimp inside of a bigger organization. We’ll let the conversation happen organically but why don’t you give us a little bit of your background and what got you into your role?
I’m happy to be here. I’m a native of New York City. I was born and raised in Flatbush, Brooklyn. My family lives in Queens. When I was growing up in New York and I’m running away back because there are no building blocks but there was a program that took kids within the industry public schools and give them opportunity and exposure to prep schools.
I didn’t even know what that was growing up in New York. I had an opportunity to go to a school called George School, which was a Quaker school in Pennsylvania for high school. That was one of those first building blocks for prioritizing opportunity. My mother is an immigrant from Trinidad. My dad’s from New York City. What’s taught in my household is to focus on education and opportunity.
I went to high school in Pennsylvania. I went on to Wesleyan University in Connecticut and there again focused on how I was building that toolkit. I then move on to Chicago. I worked at a company that had a general management track called McMaster-Carr. I like to acquaint that with a Home Depot for businesses or small manufacturing firms. I worked there for a number of years.
I got my MBA when I was in Chicago and then moved on to my CPG career, Consumer Packaged Goods. Why I picked that was it was a path where you had increasing levels of responsibility but very much around that general management lens, that combination between strategy, finance and marketing and how that came together around the consumer and that consumer insight.
I moved to Kimberly-Clark and worked on the Huggies business in Neenah, Wisconsin. For those who might know the Northern Wisconsin area, it was in Neenah. I moved on to Kraft Foods in New York. I’ve had a variety of different roles there through bigger pieces of the portfolio. My last role in the US was managing the Ritz cracker business so Go Big Red.
I wanted an international experience that was from outside of the USA. Many people typically manage global businesses but I wanted to do so in a different context where I can see and run an international business from an international location. That took me over to Zürich, Switzerland where Mondelēz at that time was headquartered.
I had teams on the ground and probably different countries, which were in Germany, Austria and Sweden. I was Head of Portfolio from the general management sector. I was there for six years. Migration is so good. In Germany, it was not very good, even for being there that long. I pivoted at one point and said, “Do I want to become European or do I want my kids to grow up safe in the States with my family and grandparents?” I made the move to tech and moved to Intuit in California back in 2017.
What’s interesting is people might think that consumer tech is good and a large space. Often within consumer tech, you’re engaged with consumers all the time. That’s triple tax if you think about people who are doing their taxes every day. Even many small businesses, often they are consumers with a skill. They have a skillset, a dream and a passion.
That was a relatively smooth transition. I moved over to Intuit. I had a variety of roles at that time. I can talk to you more about the diversity, equity and inclusion lead role before I move over to COO because that was also an interesting building block. I then became the Chief Operating Officer for Mailchimp before the acquisition back in 2021.
It’s funny that you almost answered a bunch of my questions as you were even talking. When you said the leap from these bigger brands into tech, it seemed like oil and water to me. I don’t know where to go here. I got a whole bunch of spots. You said something about prioritizing opportunities at the Quaker School. What did you mean by that?
Often as you’re building a career, you’re potentially going to be geolocated so saying, “I’ll take whatever the opportunities are that might happen within a certain location.” You might be focused on the opportunity wherever the location might be. As I’ve been looking at building my career and my education, it’s been very focused on what’s the opportunity wherever the location might be. That’s what took me from New York to Pennsylvania, Connecticut, Chicago, Switzerland, California and then Georgia. All those things are what I look at and prioritize where that opportunity was and how that could help build that toolkit.
Mailchimp: Often, as you’re building a career, you’re potentially going to be geolocated. Try to focus on the opportunity wherever the location might be.
You mentioned the GM track that you were in. Did you call it Master-Carr?
The company was called McMaster-Carr. Most people say this as Master-Carr. In essence, if you are in the manufacturing space and you look for a solution of a catalog that has anything and everything in it, that’s the company. They had a general management program right out of undergrad where you spent time in marketing, accounting, warehouse and sales. It was a great foundation before I went on to B-School and then went on to packaged goods.
That was what I was curious about. What was that GM track? It was giving you exposure to all these different business areas.
At a very young age, having some level of supervisory experience. That component of how important the people are, whether it’s leading and managing individuals is key. That cross-functional nature is critical. In all years that I spent in Kraft Foods and Mondelēz, I don’t know how to make an Oreo. I can’t make a Ritz cracker to save my life. It’s how you work with the teams with the consumer always at the center building the innovation to bring forward.
Starbucks at their head office level does that with their management as well. They move their management around often. Every 2 or 3 years, they take you out of a role and move you on purpose to give you more exposure to create that real top-line leadership. Do you do that within Mailchimp or Intuit?
Yes. There is this notion of how you are building your box or that experience set. I wouldn’t say that it’s a structured rotational program but it is where we think about mobility more broadly. We don’t think about mobility as someone’s career only being up. It is also a cause. It’s how you’re building those experiences from a variety of different lenses. When you have those different perspectives, you’ll have an outsized impact on the business.
You’ve got the skills from there and cross-training. Did something happen with you at the private school as well that you saw the value of a network? Did you see and learn anything from that that you still carry with you?
The truth I would say is not immediately. Let me break that down. When you first get out of school, whether that’s high school, undergrad and even graduate school, for me, it wasn’t an immediate impact of the network. As you progress through your career, then you find connection points. As you are potentially interviewing with the company, you’re like, “I used to work with it also at that organization.” You’re building that connection where you can learn more about it and what is happening at the organization.
The benefit that is immediate when you’re going through private school and college is this notion of resiliency, putting yourself into environments where you’re not comfortable, relying on yourself and quickly building a network and trust to then navigate and have an impact. I didn’t know what the high school thing was. I never heard of prep school or lived overseas before than in the US. When people hear about my background, they would think about me being more in a military family. The reality is my parents are still in the same home that I was in when I was a kid.
I love the fact that you got to live in Switzerland too. You could have picked a more perfect country. It’s amazing.
One of the things about Switzerland, which is fascinating, is how the society works so smoothly. It’s the stereotype but it’s true.
It’s crazy. They say the trains leave on time. Everything works like a Swiss clock. It functions.
I’ll give you one quick aside. In my time there in Mondelēz, Zürich, there was a little app that you would have on your phone. It’s called the ZVV app. With this app, you can pick any location you want in the city of Zürich and any location that you want to go to. The app would map out the amount of time it would take to walk to the bus, the time the bus would arrive, the time the train would arrive and the time it would take to walk to your final destination. I’ll tell you, it worked. Can you imagine how much, from a clockwork perspective, it needs to be to make that type of system work? It did.
Did you ever try to bring any of that into the business?
What you try to bring into that user experience are those magic moments. As we are digging into consumer insights or customer insights and as we’re thinking about the overall experiences, it’s about how you are one, from a UI perspective, how simple is that? How engaging is that? Two, how do you leverage AI and all the machine learning to make it even easier to bring that magic to the hands of the customer?
We want to support and continue to support that underdog. We want to support that person that has that dream of a small business and is willing to put that into action. When you think about the importance of what small businesses mean, in the US for example, there are 61 million small businesses across. They are truly the ones that are driving and keeping track of the economy. Being a tool that not only helps them with their books and taxes but also how, with Intuit Mailchimp, we’re helping you grow your business. What we do is try to bring the power of the platforms together to make magic for the customers and help them deliver on their dreams.
Mailchimp: There are 61 million small businesses across the US. They are truly the ones driving and keeping track of the economy.
I love that you gave a data point of the 64 million US small companies too. It’s a crazy town. Everybody tells me about their experiences and what they’ve learned out of their MBA program. I’m not going to ask you about that. I’ve always been enamored with the CPG space, the Consumer Packaged Goods. When I was graduating from the university, I wanted to go work for Procter & Gamble. I wasn’t the smart kid so I didn’t get to do that. I was running my business at that time anyway. What do you think you pulled from the CPG experience? For me, it seemed like you were running a business, entrepreneurial in a way. You were running a business unit. What skills did you pull from that that you carry with you?
Yes, I was running a business at that time.
I had 12 employees when I was 20 years old. It was weird.
To answer your question, one thing that you learn is how to decipher and tell a narrative from numbers. Before you ever do a commercial, mess with marketing or any of that, you need to be able to understand the fundamentals of the business. Every week when we started, we had to say, “This is what happened last week from Nielsen. This is what happened across the competitive set, our share and across the overall business.”
In essence, is that on the plan or not on the plan? Be able to tell the narrative off of the numbers. That was a great foundation because you rolled up your sleeves and got into the data. Not only reported the data but you had to pull a story and say, “What do we do next?” The second key foundational component that you bring forward is this notion of that consumer obsession or customer obsession.
When you’re thinking about the brands that have been around for a long time, you say, “How can you innovate anymore? How can you drive any more impact?” This notion of that customer or consumer is at the heart of everything that you do and you’re not able to build more broadly without them. It’s true within CPG and Intuit. We have processes like Design for Delight, in which we look at how we’re getting insights for the customer that we have and how we can bring that through our products.
The third one is the cross-functional nature that I touched on. It’s even more complex when you think about the level of functions that need to be included. That’s both the people that are doing the marketing, manufacturing, supply chain, quality assurance and customer. You’re bringing in another intermediary in the process and how you’re going to sell and give that co-benefit.
That’s another thing that you can bring forward in your career. As you think about partnerships and how you’re leveraging partnerships, it needs to be that win-win-win. A win for the organization you work for, a win for the partner and then a win for the joint customer. That notion of how you bring that through is another critical piece.
Lastly is the vision and setting of the strategies initiatives. How are we setting the vision for this brand and business as we move forward? How does that translate into the strategies and initiatives that we have? How can we have accountability every single week? Those are great foundational skills that you have and can take anywhere.
I had some questions about data that I’m going to get to next but I realized I haven’t asked you to tell us what Mailchimp is. How did that acquisition of Intuit Mailchimp go?
What’s interesting about us and the company is we are an email marketing automation platform. We also focus on how we drive to that underdog and how we’re looking for growing businesses. We’re empowering millions of customers around the world to build and grow their businesses. We are putting data recommendations at the heart of our customers’ marketing.
We talked a little bit about how you can leverage data information to help the end customer and that’s what we’re doing every day, whether it’d be email, social media, landing pages and advertising, and how that can be powered by the AI I talked about. The company is a global organization. From a global organization perspective, half the business is in the US and half is outside. When you think about that mix, it’s amazing how we’re able to engage customers truly around the world.
From an acquisition perspective, Intuit is very strong in those backend components, working on people’s books, their accounting, the taxes, as well as all the other necessary components of how to run payroll into a payment. All of those are core building blocks for running a business. One of the key pieces that customers ask me for is, “Help me grow. How do I grow? How do I engage with my customers that are here? How do I get more revenue?” That’s where Mailchimp came in.
It provides both ends of the need, how we help customers grow every day, as well as how we help them run their businesses more effectively. The acquisition closed back in November 2011. Through that time, what was interesting was if you take a step back, it’s different because many of us have gone back to our daily lives. Back in November 2022, we were still very much in the throes of COVID. Going through that from an engagement perspective and how you’re engaging teams and people that you haven’t met yet but you’ve acquired through Zoom was a huge learning for me.
How do you make sure that they know who Intuit is and understand the organization? How do they make sure that you build those bonds and connections through a screen? We take for granted how to do that and build those relationships. That’s one of the interesting and unique parts about this acquisition versus typically many others.
There were a number of people who started at Intuit Mailchimp who never met their peers much. Much less have gone through meeting other people within Intuit. One of the ways that we worked through that was not only the cons and connection via Zoom. Once things started opening back up, we’re forging ways to build the connected tissue between the two organizations.
My question about MailChimp is was it an acquisition that was strategic? What was the strategic part? It doesn’t necessarily make sense from the outside looking in as to why Intuit would buy it. What were the strategic reasons?
From a strategic reason, it truly is foundational around that growth component. I’ll give you an example. One of the things that Mailchimp towers in are the engagement component for emails, like email in marketing and customer relationship piece. As you think about leveraging that as a platform, we could do and leverage multiple tools within the Intuit family for things like receiving payment through that method.
That’s something that makes it easier for our end customers because they’re used to both sides of the spectrum. They’re used to how they’re leveraging email. They’re also used to how they are creating that email to have more power with things like being enabled and then how that then links back to the overall books. It helps them run their business better and then they can see the effectiveness of the marketing. You can see how it’s this virtual cycle of both growing one’s business, running one’s business and how to work and interact together.
Question on the product side of things. How do you stay lean as an organization when you have the opportunity to continue to add features? It’s when every customer is like, “I would love it even more if it did this. We could use your software if it only did that.”
A lot of that is about the product roadmap. How do you have a product roadmap that is still grounded in the insight and what our consumers and customers are saying? That’s where the discipline comes in. In essence, when you have your product roadmap and how that ties into your strategic plan and the initiatives that you’re trying to bring forth for the customers, you’re doing that ruthless prioritization process as a team and a cross-functional team. You’re understanding what the impact is of the various product launches that we have and we’re aligning with.
Everything from your marketing side, engineers, product managers and customer success component. They all have to be aligned and know what’s happening. That gives you that magnified impact. If you’re constantly running and launching things, you’re never going to break through the noise in terms of communication. It’s not going to be a clear awareness. Your customer’s going to get flooded with a variety of different messaging. It becomes dilutive versus accretive. It’s that rigorous prioritization and that cross-functional connection that is needed to have the desired impact that you want.
Mailchimp: It’s that rigorous prioritization and cross-functional connection that are needed to have the desired impact that you want.
Back to the data for a second, you had to be able to tell the story from the data and look to interpret the data. In any organization, there’s almost an infinite amount of data. As the organization scales, you’ve got every business area and all their data sets as well. How do you know at the COO level what data to look at and what data to hide? If I picture a spreadsheet of a gazillion rows, how do you know which 9,000 rows to hide and which 4 or 10 to look at?
My role as a COO is very much focused on go-to-market so our marketing, sales, customers’ success, care, strategically, where we go as an organization and our operations. We’re working super close functionally with our engineering team and product management team. We’re supported by legal HRs. As we’re looking at that growth component, it’s the end-to-end customer funnel for the key metrics. When I say the end-to-end, the key metrics we’re looking at are, “How are we doing from an acquisition perspective? Are we acquiring the customers at click that we intend based on our media spending?”
The second piece is Mailchimp is very much a product and growth organization. You can start and join Mailchimp for free and then work your way through the various features that we have. Looking at that discovery and active use of our customers, how are they engaging with the products and features that we have? How is that translated to a booking or a paid customer? What is the experience that they’re having from that lens around looking at the active use of features?
Then the retention component. How are we retaining? Is it a leaky bucket or not? Those are some of the main ones that we’re looking at because it gives you a lot of information from the acquisition side to the use. That is a key indicator of what the retention would look like. We have a number of other KPIs that we do look at and measure. The health of the business from a snapshot perspective holds costs relatively equal. That will give you some of the most important critical metrics.
I’m curious. Are you able to see which features or functions of the software customers are using and which ones are laying idle?
That instrumentation is an important point. Not only the instrumentation in terms of what are people using or not but then also, we’re looking at the funnel. When people are landing? Where are they hovering? Who is engaging with the sales team? Those that are going through the rest of the funnel, where are they getting hung up? Where do we have drop-off? That will help you optimize to have the impact that you want so that they have a smooth and easy experience.
I often think about something like Microsoft Excel and how many gazillion features and functions there are within that software and there are probably 50 that we use. There are 5,000 that 7 people use. I always wonder, do companies try to eliminate some of those to try to bring the products back to something simpler? Is it you keep building out something and if people use it, it’s there? How does that work on the product side?
Your point is there’s always going to be a curve in the long tail. That is always true about every product that exists. Going back to an earlier point, the goal of that ruthless prioritization and the testing is to ensure that when you build, it will have that desired impact and use that we’re looking for with our customers so that it’s not just adding to that long tail. Understanding what you sunset is important too. It’s not just what you build but it’s also what you sunset.
The goal will be as you are doing your testing for a launch and iterating because speed is critically important in continuing to learn and test as you go, the goal would be to do as much learning as you can before you do a full roll-up. You’re understanding that level of engagement with the cohorts so that you are knowing which will land the way you intend.
Those are all the things that we put in place. One is the rigorous prioritization and testing. Two is your testing a wall in the way and pivoting through that journey to ensure that you have the optimal experience. You prevent as much as you can that long tail, which could be confusing to customers and the experience but also be willing to sunset things when needed.
I’m curious about when you came in as the COO for Mailchimp. There’s an acquisition. How many employees were at Mailchimp when you joined?
Mailchimp roughly has 1,500-plus employees. What we’ve done throughout that time is it’s in that ballpark. We’re a few hundred more than we were when we started. We started that within the coping context. We are predominantly within the US from an office location perspective. The headquarters that we have is in Atlanta. It’s been in Atlanta for a few decades. It has a unique space and presence in the Atlanta market.
One of the things that have been very welcoming and different is I used to be in San Jose as I talked about Intuit’s headquarters is in Mountain View. There is Silicon Valley. It’s the Bay Area that we know of. You can’t count the number of tech companies. What’s great about it is not only is it a strong and growing tech scene. Mailchimp has had such a presence for so long, both within the tech scene and within the community. The number of people that you connect with might say, “I’m in Mailchimp.” You’ll get a story.
It’s not just a story from a tech lens but also the impact on the community. Throughout time, there’s been a lot of corporate social giving. It’s been not only the tech but also the impact on the community and organizations is something that we are building on from an Intuit perspective. We’re looking to continue that.
That’s one of the questions that I received when I started. “Now that Mailchimp has been acquired by Intuit, does that mean that we’re going to be less invested in the Atlanta area?” It is the contrary. One of the programs that we support is Clayton State, which has its technology program. What we’ve done since the acquisition is taken into that Mailchimp foundation from a funding perspective and then tripled it. That’s one of those types of examples where we’re investing in the community.
A question I’ve got related to that was when you came in as the COO, some 1,500-ish people were already there before you. How did you navigate that whole, “Who is he? Why does he get the job that I didn’t get? Now, I’m reporting to this new guy?” At least you’re likable but it’d be hard for somebody who is a jerk. You seem like a good guy. How do you move into an organization above everybody else and build a relationship? What are the first 90 days like? Can you give us any lessons there?
I appreciate the compliment. I try to be nice. There are a couple of things. One is starting with being human. It sounds cliché but being vulnerable with the teams and the people to say, “There’s a lot that I don’t know. There’s a lot that I’m looking to learn from all of you. There’s an opportunity and excitement to work together.” People know and can tell whether someone’s coming in thinking that they know everything. I try to be more of a learn-it-all than a know-it-all.
Ask questions of the team and the leadership. Do this all through Zoom, not in person where it’s a lot easier to build those connections. By asking those questions and then playing with what we’ve heard, then linking the overall insights that have been presented to strategies and initiatives that they see later. They see their voices in the outcomes that we’re driving in total.
Three is ensuring that they know that the missions of the organization are the same. Intuit is focused on powering prosperity around the world. That is truly what it’s about and how we are championing the underdog. That same language is used in Intuit Mailchimp and it has been in terms of how to champion that underdog. It’s the focus on small businesses and the resiliency that’s required in how we’re going to help.
That’s another tick point where people can say, “I’m being heard. I can see how my voice is included in some of the directions. I understand the why. That why is the same for both organizations. Where I’ve invested my time for the last few years, I know that this new organization is similarly minded and has similar passions, interests and outcomes that they’re striving for the customers.” Those are some of the things that we put together to win the hearts and minds of the employee.
I’m not thinking of your direct reports because I would imagine your direct reports are fairly seasoned solid executives already. I’m thinking of one layer below them. Not to say that this next group is not seasoned or solid but what kind of skills are you trying to impart to that mid-level management group? I launched a course called Invest in Your Leaders. I have these twelve skills. I’m curious about what you’re working with those mid-level managers. What are you trying to skill them up on the leadership side? Less about your product and software and more about skills and leadership. Where do you focus on them? Where are you trying to grow them?
We’re all going through change at rapid paces. It sounds cliché but it’s true, especially when we think about how to navigate and lead through COVID. That’s something that people have not seen before. It’s this notion of leading at a speed and a rate through change because often the middle managers can be frozen. They are critical to the success of how messages and key strategies get implemented across the whole organization.
Mailchimp: The middle managers are critical to the success of how messages and key strategies get implemented across the whole organization.
Their buy-in and leadership are not only about being on the sideline but also about being there in the game with the leaders to help continue to drive and push through change when there’s a lot of uncertainty. There might be concern about, “What about me?” There might be some unknowns about how we navigate this because we haven’t seen it before. That notion of leading through change is one that we are continuing to work with and reinforce.
The second piece is around how the teams are continuing to assess and push talent on their teams because that is a key component as we think about that acceleration component. That team assessment, team development and team leadership are something that’s a skill like every other one. It’s not something that just happens. They have an intention about it. There are a lot of foundational learnings that we have within the infrastructure that we have across Intuit Mailchimp to focus on the development of managers and skills because it’s a critical piece for how we move forward.
It’s leading through change, the development of the team and then how we cascade that information down. We do engagement surveys a few times a year because we want to know where the important base is, how they’re doing and then how we are going to be optional with a lot of insights. It’s not just listening for listening’s sake. It’s truly about, “Here’s what we’re hearing with the various cohorts. How are we going to address it the same way we would address it?”
How about you? Where are you working on your skillsets?
I’m continually working on how I’m being an effective bridge between the Mailchimp organization and the Intuit organization. In essence, I know and I’m near with both but how do we ensure that we are moving with speed through both of those organizations? That’s one thing that I’m working on. It’s not only that connective tissue but then finding ways to leverage the strength of the mothership as well to then accelerate the Intuit Mailchimp division.
The other thing that we’re focused on is how we can ensure that from a technology capability perspective, we’re leveraging the great wealth, everything from engineering skills and capabilities, the marketing skills and capabilities, taking that power and bringing it to life to drive the Intuit Mailchimp business partner faster. We’re looking at ways and those are things that I’m continuing to work on.
To be honest, now that we are open, I’ve been working on how I’m engaging with those next level down. For the first few months, when we were all closed and it was COVID, I didn’t have that similar opportunity. Now that we do have that opportunity to get together at work, we’re creating that community. There is a power that comes from those hallway conversations. Driving that encouragement to have people come in and have that conversation and the workshops together on the whiteboard is a powerful thing to write on together collectively. I’m trying to continue to build that sense of community.
Are you having people come back into the office? Is it a requirement? Is it more optional?
We’re hybrid in the way that we approach it. That’s also with a lot of other companies. We are not mandating that people are in the office by the end of the week or anything like that. Within that hybrid space and opportunity, it’s more about how we’re creating those moments of connection that honestly people value. Once they are in a few times, they’re like, “I missed this. I missed these conversations.” That’s what we’re trying to foster.
That’s what I’m hearing and seeing as well. I want to go back to the 21 to 22-year-old Sheldon. You’re just graduating college. You’re going to go off and start your first career job. What advice would you give the young Sheldon?
Often, I’ve been very driven by the result, whether that result would be a grade within the school. I remember my mom because she was always the one that was on me, whether grades within the school or the impact on the business. One of the things that I would encourage the younger me is to pick my head up from time to time. “What else can you absorb? Are you truly getting as much as possible from the various cities that you’re living in or the various people that you’re bumping up against? Are you maintaining a lot of those connections and relationships over time?” I would push him to do that because there’s a robustness in the collection of experiences that I’ve had over time where I’ve been so focused on the outcomes, whether it’d be career or business. That’s what I would push him on.
Sheldon Cummings, the COO or Chief Operating Officer for Intuit MailChimp. I appreciate your time on the show.
Thanks so much, Cameron.
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