Name: What's the Secret to Intuit CEO's Success?
Uploaded: 2022-06-08
Duration: 9 min 46 s
Description: Sasan Goodarzi says “dream big', “perseverance', and “inclusion matters.”

Sasan Goodarzi says “dream big", “perseverance", and “inclusion matters.”

What's the Secret to Intuit CEO's Success?

Leadership

thank you so much for joining us to talk about into it. Just about everyone is familiar with your famous tax and accounting products, TurboTax and Quickbooks, but during covid you made two significant acquisitions, Tell us about them and how they're going to change and grow your company. We want to play a far more meaningful role in the lives of consumers and small businesses. And so the, the acquisition of both credit karma and male chimps really allows us to shift from being just a platform company where you can do your taxes with us or we do it for you and and manage your accounting as a small business to a platform where you know, you can reach financial freedom, save money, get out of debt and if you're a small business we can help you grow your business and manage your business. And so that's the big shift but it's really all in service of you know those customers that we serve and your key customers, our consumers and small businesses. So they're going to turn to credit karma and mail chimp to be their problem solvers. Is that right? That's right. In fact, just if I could expand on what you just shared, you know, we have well over 100 million customers. It's both consumers and small businesses and you know, small businesses that that we serve, we call them the heartbeat of the globe. These are small businesses that have like 2 to 3 employees, maybe up to 50 employees. They really work hard every day, you know, to be able to put food on the table and those are the small businesses that we serve. They really rely on us to be able to manage their whole business around the globe. Well you know every day we see more headlines about the uh with staff about how the U. S. Economy is weakening, uh rising interest rates, high inflation, high gasoline prices. The list goes on. How are your small business customers coping with all of that? And is there any way that into it with all of its capabilities can help them? Well susie, it's eating into their profits and the way we're helping them is an acceleration to using The digitization capabilities on our platform because the more you use, you know use digitized payments capabilities, payroll capabilities, the more you can get some of your money much faster which helps you feel your success. You've been very optimistic about the outlook for into it for 2022 and um you've been forecasting revenues jumping as much as 28%, which is incredible. But um as small businesses and consumers are struggling as you just explained, what does this mean for into its growth? How is it going to impact your business? Well the things that impact our growth are things like if consumers spend less money with small businesses so our our payments volume, if small businesses hire less employees that impacts our payroll platform, if small businesses don't have the income that that they need to have, it gives them less access to loans, which is another offering that we provide. What has counteracted that is what I was mentioning earlier, which is we have more and more small businesses that are actually using our platform wanting to digitize their payments, wanting to digitize how they pay their employees because it actually helps with their money flow. So that's counterbalancing some of the problems that they're facing and hence the growth projections that we've offered. But that in essence is, you know, how our growth could be impacted in the long term if consumers spend less money, less employees are employed by small businesses. Well, you have a reputation for continuously disrupting into it and reinventing its products. And um it doesn't look like you're doing it because you feel a competitive threat or a crisis is that um you just keep coming up with new innovations to solve whatever problems. How did you get to be so comfortable with and energized by disruption when most people are so afraid of it? Well, first of all, I give a lot of credit to our founder, uh and our founder has helped us think about two things, you know, one is always focus on the largest customer problem that you can solve well and better than anybody else. Don't ever fall in love with your solutions, fall in love with the customer problems. The second is something that, you know, I brought from my past experiences, which is a day, one mindset treat every day like it's your first day on the job. Don't take anything for granted focus on what matters to customers and think about speed as an element to move fast. And I think the combination of focusing on the customer with a day one mindset is really what keeps us fresh every day. Let me circle back to this whole idea of disruption. I guess it's fair to say that you were introduced to disruption at a very young age, you and your family immigrated to the United States when from Iran, when you were nine years old, you didn't speak a word of english. It was a difficult time for you as a child, tell us about your experiences of adjusting to life in America with all of its ups and downs. Well susie, I could not have been more excited when my parents said you know what, you're going to join your brothers in the US uh and we're going to shift you to Orlando florida. It was an incredible dream come through. I remember vividly like it was yesterday I couldn't speak a word of english But within six months at the age of 19, he became fluent and I just loved being in the US within six months a lot of things changed. You know at that time Iran took American hostages. There was a revolution in Iran And really it was a very you know tough time from the time I was 10 all the way, you know. So I was 17, 18 years old where I was bullied in school every day. Told to go back to Iran because I didn't belong here. Just given the relationship between Iran and the US. You know, we we talked a lot, a lot about diversity and inclusion. I learned firsthand what it feels like to be excluded, what it's like to be told to go home, what it's what it's like to be told that you don't belong. And really that is um you know, fueled what I personally try to do and what we're trying to do across the company around diversity and inclusion. Well, you shared this story at several town halls with intuit employees during the pandemic. Why did you decide that was the right time to open up about your personal history? You know, my team really inspired me. And you know, I'll tell you I was reluctant because I don't like to talk about myself. I wanted to focus on what do we need to do for customers. And I'll tell you Suzie, given the inspiration from my team, I told everybody my story and I was shocked the number of people that came up to me after each session that told me about their version of the story and that what I shared with them inspired them to feel comfortable talking about what they have experienced. And uh and I realized then the platform I have and the power that I have to be able to talk about my experiences to create, you know, an inclusive culture. So all the credit goes to my team. Uh and frankly nobody remembered the strategy that I rolled out at the time. What they remembered experience in. What ways do you think that your openness paved the way for um people into it to talk more seriously about diversity inclusion, Which is very much part of the national conversation these days, given the reaction that I got in the realization of how important this is. We actually, a year later changed our values, changed a few of our expectations that we set across the company. And that drives a lot of the conversations that we have. A lot of the training that we do. We talk about our progress against our diversity and inclusion goals where we're good and where we're constructively dissatisfied. So we're working hard to make it part of our D. N. A. There's no destination. It's a lot of hard work. It's not easy. But I think the sort of the instigator of it was just seeing the reaction when, you know, we talked about all the experiences that we've had individually. So how do you feel about the the impact that you had one extremely excited? Uh and just inspired by the platform that we have across the company that not only influence our 15,000 plus employees but also other companies that reach out to us and want to learn what we are doing, I would say the other is uh it's been a big learning curve for me, cuz I never realized how much people keep things inside, how many experiences that that they have that may be very different than my experience. But they were, they have been influenced as a child because of who they are, their color, their ethnicity, their experience and uh and it's just opened my eyes to what a big opportunity this is and what a big problem it is that we need to tackle, you know, as a globe as you look back at the arc of your personal journey. Um how do you think it's shaped you as a leader and how do you think it's influenced the way that you're leading um into it as the ceo of a Fortune 500 Company one is dream big. You know, I believe that your dreams are your own uh and no one can take away your dreams, but it's actually very important to dream big to dream what's possible, whether it's for yourself individually and what you want to get out of life. But also what you want to do as a company. The second is um hard work. It's perseverance. You know, I get asked from a lot of our interns what's the secret to life and I tell them follow your passion by the way, you need to work hard, things don't come easy. Things aren't going to be handed to you. I think the last thing is what we just spent a lot of time talking about, which is inclusion matters. I think diversity is ultimately a fact, and inclusion is a choice and just being very choice fel about using my own story and my own platform to create a culture of inclusion, none of which I would have done if my team hadn't inspired me three years ago to go tell my own story.