Narrator:

Welcome to Digital First Leadership, the podcast that focuses on helping leaders and teams understand how to master the language of social media in today's digital first world.

 In this first episode of season two, Richard sits down with Tom Mendoza, who is currently a member of the board of directors at UI Path, Varonis and Vast Data. He's also the vice chairman and former president at NetApp. 

Tom and Richard have been working together for years and in this episode, they tell the story of Tom's hesitant transition to Digital First Leadership, as well as the Tom Mendoza goal-setting strategies. In this episode, Tom and Richard share the stories and drive home the ideas that social media has a greater impact on leadership capabilities than ever before.

Richard:

Tom, thank you very much for joining me. I really appreciate it.

Tom Mendoza:

My pleasure, Richard.

Richard:

It has always been fun. As those who don't know, you and I have been working together for many years around this concept of social media. You have been retired now for a while, but you've been extremely active, is a good way of saying it, haven't you? With the whole social media and your voice out there. Tell the audience a little bit about that.

Tom Mendoza:

Well, as you well know, originally I did not want to get into social media. My quote to you was, "Why do I care what Kim Kardashian had for breakfast?" That was my view. And I'll bet a lot of people listening are thinking, "I'm not sure I want to do that either." That's just how it is.

Richard:

Right.

Tom Mendoza:

It was when I went to India and I got to speak in front of many, many people over a two day period. But I got on a plane and I started laughing. I said, "I just missed 1.3 billion people."

Richard:

Right.

Tom Mendoza:

That's when I got back to you. What I was doing speaking all over the world, when I was at NetApp, was about culture, leadership, things that, we were voted the number one company, a place in the United States to work for, but also renowned for a culture that we built.

Tom Mendoza:

And you said to me, all of those messages could be captured in different ways for different platforms. And so that's how it started. And then we had YouTubes that we put out and they became very popular. I walked into many companies that use them for training after that. I remember talking to the largest energy company in Illinois and I walked in and everybody started applauding. And they said, "They've been looking at your videos for two years now." I had an event where the held the Grammys and I walked out, and there were people waiting for me because they had followed me and felt like we knew each other.

Tom Mendoza:

So we extended that to LinkedIn, which I think is a great platform for professional thoughts, but even extended beyond that. As you know, I put one out recently about a golf round with Tiger Woods and Warren Buffet I had.

Richard:

Let's just say so the audience knows, you put out a post as of the recording of this episode, about a week ago, right? Tiger Woods, Warren Buffet. It was about a week ago. It was on the 18th of March and this is the 23rd, so five days ago .

Tom Mendoza:

Yeah.

Richard:

That post generated, how many views did you get on that post? I think in a day?

Tom Mendoza:

It's got 287,000 right now, and it's still going and there's 450 comments. So people are interacting with it.

Richard:

Right.

Tom Mendoza:

Got 4,000, almost 4,000 likes as of today. But people are interacting with it and sharing their thoughts back. So the power of ... At the end of the day. Let's just take a step back. What made me successful, I think, as a sales leader is really personalizing how I sold. When I would travel somewhere, I would meet somebody once, but I'd always have my sales guy. I'd say, "Listen, contact me every quarter and remind me to reach back out to that person," because I can't do it with all the calls I was making. And so many people said, "You're one of the few people who actually follow up." And I just remember the conversation, I built upon it, and I created a relationship. Even if I only met them once, we had multiple interactions.

Tom Mendoza:

Well, with social media that became enormously more expanded, the amount of people. It wasn't just people I had met once. It was people I never met. And I'll get people connect to me, direct connect. And they'll just say, "Look, I've been following you for years, I use these with my kids." And they tell me about the Forbes article, and at the end of the day, we're engaging at a whole different level. But it's people buying from people. People want to know people that they admire or feel good about. And it's allowed me to do that. So, that became extraordinarily valuable.

Tom Mendoza:

And once I retired, it really didn't change anything other than I was retired from NetApp. But I'm still on a board of three dynamic companies. And I get asked to do all kinds of stuff and give advice on this, and in some cases mentor. I've got to be careful with my time, but I really don't find it that invasive because I don't have a problem saying no. And people don't have a problem hearing no, "I'm busy. I can't." Got it. But there's also things that have come my way that probably I would never have known about, simply because people had access to me in an easy format. So it's been very good.

Richard:

What I've really enjoyed is the work that you're doing with Notre Dame at the moment, obviously the College of Business there is the Mendoza College of Business. But what you've been doing with the Dean and the team there has really, I don't want to say a second career, because it's not that at all. But it's the ability for you to take a lot of this knowledge that you have and the relationships you have, and share those with the new generation.

Tom Mendoza:

Yeah. So Dean [Craemer's 00:05:45] is a fantastic Dean. Has been the Dean, I think going on two years now, and very creative. And he asked me to start a speaker series a year ago. I gave a talk, I was the original speaker, his Dean's speaker series. And he said, "Look you just, the way you handle yourself and the way you have conversations, I just think people would learn so much."

Tom Mendoza:

And I love that because I've always felt, and I've done this before in my career where I've had very interesting people that I've had conversations with, and I've exposed the teams at NetApp to them. In the early days I did it on phone calls with some very high profile people. But I've also thought the most interesting thing in the world is a conversation between two people. And now I'm just letting other people listen in.

Richard:

Right.

Tom Mendoza:

Charlie Rose actually said that to me. I had dinner with Charlie Rose. I said to him, "How did you start?" He said, "I've always thought the most interesting thing in the world was a conversation." And I'm like, "Yes, that's how I feel. That's why I love New York City. I go to dinners with people. Why? Because I like to have the conversation." But this is a chance for others to listen.

Tom Mendoza:

So this Dean speaker series, I pick people that have been spectacularly successful in their life. So for three to three came from very, very modest beginnings. None of these people were born on third base and thinking they had a triple type people. They came from modest means, rose up, and over a series of decisions had great things happen to them. And I like to explore, "What decisions were those? What did you do right?" And then I like to talk about what they've done, how they think about the world outside of just their business acumen. All of them are very, very good at giving back and supporting other things.

Tom Mendoza:

I always felt when we started NetApp, we had an offsite. We said, "What are we here to do?" We came away with, "We're going to create a company we're proud of for the rest of our lives." You're not just going to be proud of how much money you've made. I can't imagine that being the number one pride thing. It's just not what you make or take. It's what you give back and the impact you make. And all three of those people are models of that. So the people that I'm thinking about putting on next are right in that vein there. They're humble. They're tremendously successful. They have lessons that I know other people can learn from. And you listened to the three, these people have been phenomenal.

Richard:

Yeah.

Tom Mendoza:

Carl Eschenbach, Jay Sheree [inaudible 00:08:11] CEO of Arista. And then Guy Chiarello last time was spectacular, I thought. But all different, all interesting in different ways, just like all people are.

Richard:

And it makes it interesting. I got to tell you this, you don't know this, and we've known each other a long time. And you know that I have my own company.

Tom Mendoza:

Yeah.

Richard:

You have been instrumental in the encouragement of making that happen for the last couple of years. And my team now is up to 10 people. And when I sit down with my team, and I talked to them this morning, because I knew we were going to have this conversation. And I told them, I said, "Look, we're going to implement a little program. It's the Mendoza 90-day goal program." And I've modified it. I've said, "I'd like each of you to come to the next team meeting with a single goal that you're willing to share with the team. And we all be accountable to each other to help us reach that goal individually." And they asked me, I said, "Does this have to do with the business?" I said, "Actually, no. It has to do with you professionally."

Richard:

And so I thought, "Yeah, there's the Mendoza goal setting." And then that concept of building a culture that you can be proud of. And it's something that permeates because we get to listen to your videos here at Bliss Point. We get to talk about it. And it's a very-

Tom Mendoza:

[crosstalk 00:09:22] Cool. Well, that 90-day goal setting, you and I were, that was something I'd given a lot of talks about, but we put that out on LinkedIn. That got 400,000.

Richard:

Yeah.

Tom Mendoza:

[crosstalk 00:09:33] It had 200,000 in a day.

Richard:

Yeah.

Tom Mendoza:

And to this day I get people sending me notes about they've implemented the system very, very effectively. If anybody listening is interested, you can see it on forbes.com.

Richard:

[crosstalk 00:09:46] Right. It's out there. That brings up another one. And that is, so as you've been doing this work, you've got so many stories that you like to share. I'm going to ask you to indulge, because you and I had talked about how to tell this story and it didn't quite fit on LinkedIn. But it's the-

Tom Mendoza:

The pie story!

Richard:

It's the pie story. I'd love to have you tell our audience because now we're not limited by character count or word count. No. It's a fantastic story. And it goes with your third guest, right, Guy? Doesn't it tie into Guy? Does it tie into Guy?

Tom Mendoza:

No, it doesn't tie into Guy.

Richard:

No. No, no. That's right.

Tom Mendoza:

No. So I was a junior at Notre Dame, and a friend of mine said was there any teachers you ever had in your life that stand out as really affecting your life. And immediately I thought of this teacher named Mr. [Paglisi 00:10:38]. It was my senior year in high school. I had moved to Tampa. My dad changed careers, but your senior year in high school and you leave where you are, and you go to Tampa from New York. It was not a great experience for me in a lot of ways. This was a time of, racial violence in the United States. All white school and all black school across the street. They didn't like people from New York. So it was not friendly. I was angry. The only way I could go to college was a wrestling scholarship. They didn't have a wrestling team. So it was just unbelievably negative from my perspective. So, I was angry.

Tom Mendoza:

And this one teacher, I took it out on him. I just argued with him a lot. He taught basically political science. I don't know what they called it at the time. But we were arguing about the Vietnam War. This was the year 1968, so it was a very hot topic in the United States. And I got so angry with him because he was arguing that we shouldn't be there and blah, blah, blah. And I was mouthing things that my dad said. That's really what, I hadn't really looked into it much. And so I read a ton just to prove him wrong, and then I agreed with him! The more I read over a period of time, I became very much on the same page as him because of facts.

Tom Mendoza:

And what it taught me was to think for myself. It was one of the great lessons of my life. And don't just accept how other people around you think. It's more important than ever right now, that people just only listen to the news that already agrees with them. But I had come to my own decision by reading things from different angles. So I called the school and I said, I want to talk to Mr. Paglisi. They said, "Oh, he left. He left a couple of years ago."

Richard:

You called them, because how many years had gone by?

Tom Mendoza:

Three.

Richard:

Three years. Okay.

Tom Mendoza:

Yeah, so I called. I just wanted to tell him, "You had a big impact on my life," because he said to me, "Did you ever tell him?" I said, "No. That's a great idea." So I called. Couldn't find him. They said, "No. He left, and we don't know where he went. He left almost three years ago." I'm like, "Aw." So I did a couple forays where I tried to find out, but nothing. And then you fast forward to, I think it was 34 years later.

Richard:

Right?

Tom Mendoza:

And I go to Notre Dame. This is four years after the endowment. And I go to Notre Dame to give a talk and it wasn't an expected talk, "Can you be there to speak at a particular function?" I said, "Sure." So I flew in for it by myself. And I'm checking in to a place called Morrison, which is on campus. I had never stayed there before except during the endowment visit. Not a place I'd normally stay, because I have a lot of guys, normally I'm off campus. And a woman goes, "Mr. Mendoza, something was sent to you here. I go, "Are you sure?" I said, "No one's expecting me here." I said, "So what is it?" She said, "It looks like a pie."

Tom Mendoza:

I said, "Whoa, whoa, whoa. No one who knows me would send me a pie. I'm not a pie kind of guy." She's like, "No, it's a pie for you." I said, "Put it in water. Make sure it doesn't blow up." I said, "There's something wrong with it." She goes, "No, no, no. It's a pie. I can tell you this." I said, "Is there a card there?" Yeah. She opens it, it said, "Dear Nana," and it's somebody else. I said, "I told you, I don't know why my name's on it. It's not for me."

Tom Mendoza:

So I go home a couple days later and Monday or Tuesday of the week, I get a call from my guy in Tampa. I had given a talk there. I've given talks everywhere, right? And he says, "Do you know a guy name Mr. Paglisi?" I'm like, "That's the guy." I go. "What about him?" Well, "There's a place here called Dick's Pies in Tampa. And you spoke here and we bought you a pie, this guy bought me a pie. And we sent it to you, and Dick sent one to his mother who's Nana," or his grandma, his grandmother.

Richard:

Right.

Tom Mendoza:

"And somehow the pie that she got has your name in it, and my card."

Richard:

So Mr. Paglisi's grandmother got your pie.

Tom Mendoza:

And I got her pie.

Richard:

And you got her pie. You're at Notre Dame. She's wherever. It's been thirty-

Tom Mendoza:

I started to say, "How did they know about Notre Dame?" Well, this guy called my admin and said, "Is Tom traveling. We'd like to surprise him." That's why it came to Notre Dame. But again, this company did thousands and thousands of pies a day out of Tampa. And two pipes cross, it's me and him. And so Mr. Paglisi called that guy and said, "Tom Mendoza? I taught a Tom Mendoza."

Richard:

In high school.

Tom Mendoza:

He said, "Did he ever live in Tampa?" Well that's what my guy said, "Did you ever live in Tampa?" My guy. "I said, "Yes, I did. I went to senior year of high school there." He said, "Did you have a teacher named Mr. Paglisi?" Because he wasn't sure the guy was right. The guy wasn't sure he's right. "Yes I did. I've been trying to find him for 35 years."

Tom Mendoza:

And we ended up getting on a phone. It was amazing. And he now knows what I did with my life. And he said, "Would you honor me by coming down here and speaking at my business school?" When he left the high school, he went to the University of south Florida, the Gus Stavros Center. And he is now the Dean of it. And it's the Gus Stavros Center of Entrepreneurship. They take people coming into the country, don't have natural entrepreneurial skills from wherever they came, and they teach him. Gus Stavros was an immigrant. He developed those skills, made a lot of money as a car dealer, and he developed it. So I go down there, Mr. Paglisi, I had dinner with him the night before, met his wife and his kids. And then he introduced me with the pie story.

Richard:

Right.

Tom Mendoza:

There are certain things that you just can't explain.

Richard:

No.

Tom Mendoza:

Two pies getting sent arbitrarily to two people who haven't connected in 35 years.

Richard:

Across the country. Right.

Tom Mendoza:

And then I had the honor, they honored him big when he retired. And I had the honor, again, of participating in that. We're still in contact. It's pretty crazy.

Richard:

That is a pretty great story. And as we think about being online and present, you're starting to hear those stories. Now, there's no story that can top that.

Tom Mendoza:

No.

Richard:

But you're starting to hear people are connecting with people. I was just telling you right before we got on the call, I was on the call with a prospective client. He didn't know me. I didn't know him. And your name came up. I brought it up. We have a drinking game here, Tom, every time your name comes up, we drink. Good thing I don't drink alcohol.

Tom Mendoza:

Of course it's water in your case.

Richard:

Yeah, it was water in my case. And he said, "Tom Mendoza?" And he holds up his book. "You mean the same Tom Mendoza that's on the back of my book that I just wrote?" I'm like, "Yeah, the same Tom Mendoza who is doing the foreword in my book?" Suddenly we connected. You made it possible. But again, it's being present now you. So many we see retire and just disappear from the scene. But you have been so present engaging with this new audience, engaging with this new generation of the students at Notre Dame, but also businesses and colleges and universities all around the world.

Tom Mendoza:

I never looked at it as retiring from life. I looked at it as, I never knew, I was not going to sit on a beach or play golf all the time and be in some retirement community. That was never-

Richard:

That was never in your cards.

Tom Mendoza:

I don't like old people who act old. I don't mind people getting old. I just don't like to hang around people who act old.

Richard:

Right.

Tom Mendoza:

And I think part of what living a good life is, is keeping your mind active and in the game, whatever that means to you. And this has really allowed me to do it. The Zoom, I've done Zoom kickoff talks. Funny thing is I signed up with a Washington speakers' bureau last April. They were going to put me out on the road. Apparently that didn't work out too well. I'll tell you, it was a little off.

Richard:

That was in April. Yeah, that didn't work out.

Tom Mendoza:

But, I've done some Zoom things, like for St. Jude's Hospital. They did a fundraiser where they had me as a speaker. I've done quite a few things that just interest me. And this has been very powerful.

Richard:

I was going to ask because the last public speaking event you did, I suspect, is in San Francisco. Right?

Tom Mendoza:

Yeah.

Richard:

That was you and I. I was there sitting in the audience with you as I came up to see you. And that was the last speaking, that was back in February, of in-person public speaking.

Tom Mendoza:

That's right. That's right. That was it.

Richard:

As I recall, you were ill.

Tom Mendoza:

I got ill. And looking back, I think I may have had Covid, just because I'd come off two long trips right in a row.

Richard:

Right.

Tom Mendoza:

Came back to New York, which was hitting New York hard. And I was really sick in New York, and I was isolated in my house just because I was so ill. I never went back to get the test because I wouldn't have changed my behavior.

Richard:

Right.

Tom Mendoza:

I locked myself down just like most smart people did over the last year.

Richard:

Yep.

Tom Mendoza:

Not a fan of those who didn't.

Richard:

No. And you're in Miami Beach at the moment, and as the timing of this recording-

Tom Mendoza:

You know why I came down here? I'm a COVID refugee. We came down here, and it hit New York so hard. So, yeah.

Richard:

Well, I appreciate you taking the time to share stories with us, to talk about it, because it's always fun to spend this time, and very much appreciate it, Tom, thank you. Continue to be an inspiration and an example to so many people.

Tom Mendoza:

Let's do it again, Richard.

Richard:

We will.

Tom Mendoza:

Take care, man.

Narrator:

You've been listening to Digital First Leadership, the podcast where you learn to leverage and build your expertise on digital platforms. For more valuable tips on mastering the language of social media, subscribe to our newsletter at blisspointconsult.com. If you'd like to stay in touch, feel free to add Richard on LinkedIn and join the conversation.