This episode features an interview with Mark McLaughlin class of '88, Chairman of the Board at Qualcomm and Vice Chairman of the Board at Palo Alto Networks, a global cybersecurity leader working to shape the cloud-centric future with technology that is aimed at transforming the way people and organizations operate.
This episode features an interview with Mark McLaughlin class of '88, Chairman of the Board at Qualcomm and Vice Chairman of the Board at Palo Alto Networks, a global cybersecurity leader working to shape the cloud-centric future with technology that is aimed at transforming the way people and organizations operate.
Mark also served as President and CEO of Palo Alto Networks from August 2011 to June 2018. Prior, he was President and CEO of Verisign, after holding other numerous positions with the company. Before that, he was the Vice President of Sales and Business Development for Signio, Vice President of Business Development for Gemplus, served as General Counsel of the Caere Corporation, and practiced law as an attorney with Cooley Godward and Kronish LLP.
For nearly a decade, Mark has served as a member of the National Security Telecommunications Advisory Committee (NSTAC), a body that for more than 30 years has brought industry chief executives together to provide counsel on national security policy and technical issues to the U.S. President and national security leadership. He received his J.D. from Seattle University School of Law and his B.S. degree from the United States Military Academy at West Point. He served as an attack helicopter pilot in the U.S. Army and earned his Airborne Wings.
In this episode of On Point, Mark talks about his non-linear career path that started after being medically discharged from the military because of a helicopter accident. He explains his paradigm for assessing work opportunities, advice for military veterans as they transition into civilian business, and how he has balanced his career and family life. Mark emphasizes how veterans can translate their unique skill sets and experiences into jobs and leadership opportunities, the importance of networking with fellow alumni, and how they need to look out for and promote themselves to prosper outside of the army.
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"My big message now to folks who are transitioning out is don't lock yourself into a life plan, something like that where you feel like you're off course, or you're failing if things don't work out exactly like you thought they were gonna work out. Do a ton of networking, super important. That's actually how stuff works in life. That's actually how opportunities present themselves. You have to work really hard to get the opportunities and executing the opportunities, you do a lot of networking that way. And, don't be discouraged if you feel you're on a non linear path to something. Many times in my life most of the best things that happened to me weren't planned; something happened, something presented itself, somebody took a chance on me, and then I went in that direction and it worked out." - Mark McLaughlin
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02:00 AAR - After Action Review Segment
02:15 Decision to Attend West Point
02:55 Experience at West Point
03:55 Starting the Crew Team at West Point
05:50 Difficulties in First Year
07:45 Experience Flying Cobra Attack Helicopters
09:50 Abrupt end to Military Service and Making a Career After the Army
14:30 Career After the Military
26:15 Mentors and Advice from Others
28:00 Time at Palo Alto Networks
35:00 Working with Different Types of Investment Firms and Boards
37:15 SOP - Standard Operating Procedure / Daily Routines and Advice
45:45 Giving Back - Advice for Transitioning Veterans
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West Point Association of Graduates
OP033 - Mark Mclaughlin Final Transcript
[00:00:00] Narrator: Hello and welcome to On Point.
This episode features an interview with Mark Mclaughlin, Chairman of the Board at Qualcomm and Vice Chairman of the Board at Palo Alto Networks, a global cybersecurity leader working to shape the cloud-centric future with technology that is aimed at transforming the way people and organizations operate. Mark also served as President and CEO of Palo Alto Networks from August 2011 to June 2018.
For nearly a decade, Mark has served as a member of the National Security Telecommunications Advisory Committee, which brings chief executives together to provide counsel on national security policy and technical issues to the President and national security leadership. He received his J.D. from Seattle University School of Law and his B.S. degree from the United States Military Academy at West Point. He served as an attack helicopter pilot in the U.S. Army and earned his Airborne Wings.
In this episode of On Point, Mark talks about his non-linear career path that started after being medically discharged from the military because of a helicopter accident. He explains his paradigm for assessing work opportunities, advice for military veterans as they transition into civilian business, and how he has balanced his career and family life. Mark emphasizes how veterans can translate their unique skill sets and experiences into jobs and leadership opportunities, the importance of networking with fellow alumni, and how they need to look out for and promote themselves to prosper outside of the army.
Now, please enjoy this interview between Mark Mclaughlin, and your hosts, Tim Hsia and Lance Dietz.
[00:01:47] Tim Hsia: Welcome to OnPoint. I'm Tim Hsia, class of 2004, and I'm Lance Dietz, class of 2008. And today we're joined by Mark Mclaughlin class of 1988. Mark, how are you?
[00:01:58] Mark Mclaughlin: I'm great. Thanks for having me guys.
[00:02:00] Tim Hsia: Thank you for making the time. Let's get into our first segment AAR or for our non-military listeners after action review.
In this segment, I'd like to touch on specifically what veterans can learn from you, your process, and your journey. Could you please talk about your decision to attend? Yeah.
[00:02:16] Mark Mclaughlin: Uh, I wish I could say it was something that ran in the family or a lot of guys I know are like that or not for me, actually. I'm not really sure why when you go to west point, the only thing I know is that's the only thing I ever wanted to do.
I must have saw a pop-up book or something, and I was six years old, but I was laser focused on that. I applied to one. West point. And fortunately got in my mom was very upset with me for being single-threaded like that, but, but it worked out don't know if I could get in today, but it worked out in 1984.
So I
[00:02:44] Tim Hsia: think the motto back in 84 was be all that you can be. So maybe some army advertising was effective back then could be, it could be. What was your experience like
[00:02:53] Mark Mclaughlin: at when. The old adage that looks better in the rear view mirror. Right? Cause people said when you were asleep, [00:03:00] that's the way my experience overall was great.
I think the first year is for most folks, very, very hard, actually, at the end of my first year, I was very much planning on leaving. And then my mother came to the rescue and boxed my ears and said, get back up there and. Let's do another year and I did. And then that was the best advice I'd gotten. So I turned out to be a great advice.
Did my time, obviously there most importantly met my wife there, which was a life-changing event for me. So it all worked out. So when you know, measured in the things that mattered in life, I met some great people, got a great education that my wife and I got a chance to serve the
[00:03:34] Tim Hsia: country. In one of our previous recordings.
Gentlemen, crystal talked about like his first two years were really rough and it sounded like your first year was rough and, uh, Common takeaways. It's not necessarily how you start, but how you continue and how you finished. What were the other, I guess, the rest of your two years at west point? Like, and what did you study and what activities did you pursue?
Yeah, my
[00:03:56] Mark Mclaughlin: main athletic activity was the crew [00:04:00] team, which just as a maybe interesting historical note army didn't have a routine. There was a guy who was in class enemy, Don libido, class fading seven. We had both road crew in high school or rowing, we got there, there was no crew team at west point. And so we tried to start one and we lobbied and got a prophet to say he would be, he'd be our guy, the coach.
And we actually got the crew team started as a clubs. While we were there. So we did that. Another aside like today, I'm absolutely amazed and it's in a super positive way. You'd go up to west point. Now there's a beautiful boathouse down by the river there's men's teams. Women's teams heavyweight. Really really come a long way, but literally this guy and I conceived of it and started it and talk the coast guard academy out of giving us one of their old wooden shelves.
That was the very first shell that we had. And we used to carry down there on our heads and put it in the Hudson river every morning. And, but it was an [00:05:00] interesting time, I guess, in that the athletic department west point really didn't want to have a crew team. So that was something that Navy does. So it's a powerhouse, so, which is great.
So just kind of like historical footnote, but that got to do anything really interesting. West point probably got started recruiting with Dawn. It was great. So if I could go
back
[00:05:19] Lance Dietz: to one thing you said mark, about your first year being hard, what was it that was most
[00:05:25] Mark Mclaughlin: challenging? Yeah. I'd say nothing that anybody would be surprised.
Right? Nothing unusual. I knew exactly what I was getting into on, like, I was kind of surprised when I got to be sparks that folks that got there had, had not visited beforehand, that came all the way from California or something. I was consult. Really had no idea what they're getting into. I knew exactly I was getting to, so for me it was just tough.
Right, man. A big part of that was the academics was very hard as you guys now, particularly in your first year of trying to get everything done. So, um, there was nothing in [00:06:00] particularly bad other than plebe year. Right. And like I said, fortunately, I got a great advice, stuck it out and you know, didn't never look back right after the first year.
It's a lot of people.
[00:06:10] Lance Dietz: When you were thinking about leaving mark, how much of a plan did you have in place? How detailed was it
[00:06:15] Mark Mclaughlin: and how far along was it? Oh, I was way down the path. It was right. It was Christmas, right for Christmas. I was sure I was leaving and I applied to and applied and got accepted or heard like an early acceptance to two schools, good schools.
And even. My profs even wrote letters of recommendation for me. Cause I said, it's just not for me. Right. And came home for a Christmas break and was sitting in the kitchen. I told my mom, no, you know, I don't think so. Right. I'm going to go to university of Pennsylvania, which is a great school too. And she literally just, I mean, I'm not, I'm not making this up.
And she said, looked at me. He got very solvent, look in her face and said, [00:07:00] you are a horrible. And like really got my attention. Right. And she said, you go to your, do get back up there and you finish your first year. If you want to leave at the end of your first year, call me. Not halfway through, don't be a quitter like that.
And like I said, best advice I ever got as far as west point went back and it was great. It was after actually right after Christmas. Right. Everything started to get better. So words of wisdom
[00:07:27] Tim Hsia: in the army, you flew Cobra attack helicopters.
[00:07:30] Mark Mclaughlin: What went into that decision and what was your experience? Well, let me start in the second end of that question, because the experience was short because I'm unfortunately had an accident.
Then I was medically discharged after just two years. But as far as going into the decision, this might be humorous. I don't know, but, uh, when I got to the academy and after I decided I would stay, and then I was turned into the gray Hawk. Who? Yeah, just wanted to do everything in everything the army had to offer airborne, went to airborne school.
They all had a [00:08:00] sort of in my line of sight ranger, all that kind of stuff. And then we were off, I guess it was the summer of Buckner. And it was unusually rainy. That summer was really bad up there. And so we spent a lot of time, you don't feel exercises and stuff. And I just remember being pretty miserable up, like sleeping in the water and the ditches.
So I started thinking if you want to be in the army, which that's all I ever wanted to do. And do you want to have a great career? You need to be combat arms, right? I, or ideally it'd be combat arms. So it's like. Wonder with combat arms aspect of this, there might be where. I don't have to like sleep in a foxhole every night, like aviation.
So I thought I was going to be an aviator. That was, that was my primary reason for that. And unfortunately was able to branch aviation and that's how I got down to flight school. And that's actually kind of back to what I was saying about, um, Best things and going to west point, one of them was carrying my wife.
We've been married [00:09:00] for 32 years now. She's class of 88. We actually didn't know each other at school, but we met in flight school. So that was another great decision on my part that I wish I could really attribute to anything wise. And my partner worked out for
[00:09:15] Tim Hsia: me. So it seems like you were born and raised in Philly, went to west point fight school and probably.
And then, and then you went to law school in Seattle. Can you talk about your decision to pursue law? Because there are some veterans who I think after their transition, they either go to law school or business school. I mean, those are like, that's broadly saying it, but I'm curious why.
[00:09:37] Mark Mclaughlin: Yeah. So some of these things I've given you already are, or just kind of the way they happen, maybe a little humorous, but that's how they happen.
But this is an important point, really? And I actually do a lot of coaching for vets transitioning and have done a lot of work in. Life in trying to help vets transition. And I still talk a lot of vets today who are transitioning. And I think people tend to, if they see [00:10:00] somebody and they say, Hey, you guys have done well for yourselves.
And you made that transition successfully and it looks like, oh, you must've had some plan. And you executed to your plan because if that was the case, life would be easy, right. To come up and plan your work hard and achieve. But I don't think that's really the way it works out a lot. So for me, The only thing I ever wanted to do.
Like I said, since I was a little kid was go to west point and I wanted to be in the army. That was it. And one night that ended on a night vision mission. And literally that was, it was over right fan. So everything that. Ever wanted to do ended very quickly. And, uh, and then I was out of the army, physically disabled that out in the army.
And I had a really, really hard time finding a job. And at that time today, the idea that people would, I'm going to use the term discriminate against the vet, let alone disabled vet. It's very hard to kind of hard to imagine today. Right. But it wasn't back then. And. Felt like, I just couldn't find anything if any fits for [00:11:00] myself.
And, um, so I, I needed to do something and I decided to go to law school because I thought, you know what? I didn't have really big anchor in to be a lawyer. But I thought I need this to be able to support myself and ideally wanted to get married, have a family. And so I need a profession, right? So I decided to go to law school and was able to go to school up in Seattle.
And Karen at the time was still, she was still flying at Fort Rucker. So we were able to stay together, which was great. And I went to law school, but that put me on to a different path. Like my joke with my older kids today is I was never able to keep a job at my first profession. I was in the. And then I became a lawyer for that simple reason.
I needed to make a living and was able to get into a great law firm in Silicon valley. After I graduated and was on a attracted being told, Hey, you're doing great work, stick to this. You're going to be a partner. It's gonna be. That's sort of the height of the ambition there. If you're going to be a lawyer, did that for a pretty short [00:12:00] period of time, just a few years, and then had another opportunity come up.
So my, my career path, it to bring me to, like this afternoon has been very non-linear and mostly because opportunities presented himself and most importantly, an opportunity presented itself and somebody took a chance on me. And that's really the point I was trying to make. Right. Is somebody took a chance on me.
And in every single case where I, I wasn't the person, when you looked at the resume that you'd say, oh, you're a dead ringer. I'm going to take. But they gave me a shot to do something that, and it worked out for, worked out for them, worked out for me. And so that's my big message now to folks who are transitioning out is don't lock yourself into a life plan.
Something like that, that, you know, you feel like you're off course or you're failing if things don't work out exactly. Like you thought they were going to working out, do a ton of stuff. Super important. That's actually how stuff works in life. That's actually how opportunities present themselves. You have to work really [00:13:00] hard to get the opportunities and executing the opportunities to do a lot of networking.
Now. And don't be discouraged if you feel like you're on a nonlinear path to something many times in my life, for sure. Most of the best things that happened to me weren't planned. They were something happened. Something presented itself. Somebody took a chance on me and then I went in that direction and it worked out,
[00:13:20] Tim Hsia: okay, I've got two notes on this one is very inspirational.
And I mean, I think this is great. And because a lot of transitioning veterans listened to this podcast and they're thinking exactly the same questions, both you and I thought about, which is. I just need to get a job. I need to figure out what I'm going to do. Am I actually
[00:13:37] Mark Mclaughlin: going to be able to support my family?
So that's
[00:13:40] Tim Hsia: amazing. And second is, you mentioned how you talked to a lot of veterans and I mentioned this every now and then when I email you out of the blue, but back in 2011, I emailed you out of the blue. I was at Stanford law school and I was like, okay, wait a second. I'm in law school doing a dual degree, but I'm not really not sure what I want to do.
And asked, [00:14:00] Hey, can I meet you were the CEO of Palo Alto networks and he took the time and can't thank you enough for being on this podcast and helping veterans over to you. Lance mark, could you just
[00:14:08] Lance Dietz: walk us through your career quickly? Post-military and we'll, double-click on a few things
[00:14:14] Mark Mclaughlin: as you do that.
So I went to law school, like I said, and I got out of law school and I was able to talk myself into a job down in Silicon valley with a leading law firm. Yeah. And unfortunately got the job and then practice law in the law firm for literally 365 days. And on the 365th day, I left and not because I was working really, really hard, but being at the right place at the right time is super important in life and a lot of opportunities opening up for people.
So that was 1994. I was in Silicon valley. That was pretty much the beginning of the internet, as we know it. That your Netscape launched its first browser. And it's the beginning of [00:15:00] software as we know it. So there was just an explosion of innovation and business formation going on in the valley. And I happened to be working with this law firm and I did so much work in that first year because we're so much work to be.
That one of our clients asked me if I would join them in-house instead of being at the law firm. And so I over the wall became the general counsel of a small software company, which was kind of nutty for them. I told them like, if you're stupid enough to take your knives one year out of law school, this is a publicly traded company hearing.
If you're stupid enough to be taking a guy one year out of law school, it would be an event general counsel. I'm stupid enough to take the job. And I did, and they did, and it worked out. Okay. So then I ended up practicing for. A couple of years as an in-house attorney, and then realized during that as a lot of corporate lawyers, do they spend time working on deals and working on venture financing and IPOs and mergers and acquisitions.
And I really [00:16:00] enjoyed the substance of all of that stuff. And I found myself more and more being more part of the negotiations and discussions than being the lawyer, or actually doing dual duty and. I thought I want to be conceiving and working the deals as opposed to just the, be in the attorney on that.
So I decided that I was going to recreate myself there and not be a lawyer. And by the way, and Tim will appreciate this with your, your joint degree there. The other group of people that I spend time giving some advice to and coaching to is attorneys who want to become business people. And, uh, cause it's not a exact linear path either.
So anyway, I was able to, uh, I go find a startup. I talk myself into that, startup it, and I told them, Hey, I would like to join you guys, but I want to be the business development person, not the attorney. And they said we don't care what you call your. As long as you do our legal work. I said, okay, so I did the [00:17:00] legal work and it was the business development guy.
And that was really kind of the first time I was doing non-legal work. And a short story on that was that company got bought in the height of the.com boom, by a company called verus. And when that company was purchased, then, um, I was asked to run that company inside of Verisign, which was my first general management job where I owned a P and L I did that lots of details in the aerospace area, but about eight years later, I was the CEO of Verisign mark.
[00:17:31] Lance Dietz: Just a quick question there, having that experience with the transaction, when the company was bought by Verisign, had you thought about, you know, ever going to the investment side of the house at some point.
[00:17:43] Mark Mclaughlin: Yeah. I think a lot of people like operators, I consider myself an operator, right? Not an investor.
And, and I think a lot of operators have a tendency at some point in their career, multiple points in your career where say, Hey, I'm going to go onto the investment side as opposed to be [00:18:00] an operator here. And for some people. That works out, but for a lot, it doesn't most, I'd say it doesn't rate and there's reasons for that.
So I made some money in that deal, which was fine. And then I thought, even, I thought then maybe I'll go do some venture work or something like that, but in like an introspective way and talking with people, I think that being an investor, whether it's private equity or venture or being a wall street guy or being an operator is sort of like a player coach and are both super important for the team.
And operators tend to like to be players, um, or they, they want to be on the court right hand. They want to be calling the plays and making decisions that are in the game every day. So they tend not to do really well when you get into investment side of things, because the work in the investment side is more diverse, right?
So today I'm working on, if you're a venture person privately. Did I work on this company tomorrow in this company. And you can be part of the team sort of, but you're not really in the trenches rate. And [00:19:00] so I think it's super important. This is advice of the people it's like, Hey know what makes you happy?
And if you're good at something and you're happy doing it, you should do that. And don't get sidetracked with things that people tell you, oh, you should go do this now. Or you think you want to jump over the fence to be an investor, or you're an investor you want to jump over. The fence would be an operator.
That works out, but not a lot. And, and I think it's because you're sort of going against your DNA. So anyway, my DNA was more on the operator side and the few times in my life where I thought, Hey, maybe I'll go on the investment side. Fortunately, reign myself back in and just said, that's not really your, I'm not a good investor.
Like one of our, we won't be any good at it. And two, it kind of cuts against the grain about what I like to do. So you joined
[00:19:46] Lance Dietz: Verisign. What was that experience like? And how did that lead to the Palo Alto network
[00:19:52] Mark Mclaughlin: opportunity? Yeah, the Verisign thing was again, kind of non-linear, but it, as far as I did a lot of jobs inside of [00:20:00] Verisign, I actually left the company.
Then I was invited back to run it. So I did that, but I haven't seen. One piece there about less, because I started to take some time off, which is super smart for me, by the way. And another piece of advice I give a lot of people these days, I have this opportunity at that time in my life, I do young children at the time I have three and two to take a little bit of time off and I ended up taking a year off and it was probably the most important thing I did ever in my career, because it was the only way for me to that.
Think about things. So during that year I took off, I was just fortunate to be able to do that Palo Alto networks, the guys from Sequoia and gray lock, who I knew who were the funders of the company, they called me and said, Hey, we've got this great company small, or I'm like crazy. Would you like to look and be being the CEO?
And at the time Karen and I, with our two kids, we lived in Leesburg, Virginia. Well, we had been in Silicon valley. We moved to Virginia [00:21:00] with, as part of the Verisign thing. Uh, lots of details. It doesn't matter, but we lived in Virginia. Right. And I traveled for eight years every week from Virginia to Silicon valley.
Every week. And, and the reason for that was bear sign was half in Virginia and half in California. So I back and forth, back and forth. I did there for a long time anyway, so we were we're in Virginia. My kids were being that's. That was their home. That was where their friends were. So I interviewed for this pallet and network's job in 2008, and I got.
The job and I really wanted to take it because during that year off and I've, I could do a whole podcast on this. And I think Tim, you and I went through this back in 2011, but I came up with a paradigm on how to think about things. Cause cause most people go through their career and most people. Was put more time into the decision about what next car is they're going to buy than, than what the next job is.
And I literally mean that, right? [00:22:00] So I spent that time coming up with a paradigm about if you saw a good thing, how would you know it? Because most of us take good jobs because somebody calls. And says, Hey, I got something you're interested. And then you kind of get into the flow of that. And next thing you know, you get an offer you're working there, but you really don't even really understand whether that was the best thing you could be doing right then, right or not.
So anyway, I came with that. And pallet Palatan networks hit every single bell. And that rang every bell. I knew that it is not guaranteed winner, but it had a lot going for it under my paradigm. I wanted to take the job. I came home, I asked her and I said, and the kids who were at that time, like eight and said, let's move back to California.
Daddy's going to take this job. And they said, yeah, if that's really what you want to do, we'll do that. But we don't want to do that. We like in Virginia. So. And I didn't take the job. And as the world turns, I actually went back and ran Verizon [00:23:00] for the next three years. And I thought that was my one shot.
I had kind of thing. But I had to tell you the whole story to make another point, perhaps for people as are thinking about career transitions and jobs and things like that. I never looked back in that decision at the time because I was pretty sure that when you. If 75 at 80 years old, and you're thinking back on your life, what do you want to be thinking?
Like have read my family, moved them across the country and they're all in counseling now, but I got to do the job I wanted, so I didn't do that. And it was really hard for me to say no, but I do. And it was the right thing for the family as luck would have it. Three years later, I got that phone call again about pallets and networks now is bigger company, not, not huge, 250 people, but on a good solid growth basis could be a public company with a little more growth to it.
And it came around again. And I guess the second. And I went home and said, I know the [00:24:00] answer's probably no, but I got to ask and, uh, you know, the kids were a few years older and at that point they said, yeah, that'd be fun to go back to California. It's like, you never know. So I said, yes. And we packed up when went out to Silicon valley and, and I took the job at running a Palo Alto networks, which was a fantastic opportunity for me.
So that's how I got the palate.
[00:24:22] Lance Dietz: Your comments are mark. Remind me of the episode with Stan McChrystal in which he said something very similar about thinking through and prioritizing the things that are most important to you early in your career, as it relates to work in life,
[00:24:36] Mark Mclaughlin: you know, have had standing come in and talk to a couple of conflict, go out the numbers a couple of times again.
So I would absolutely concur with that. It's it's really important. No, no. Why you're doing what you're doing is really important, everybody. Well, everybody says family first, everybody. Great. I've my observation is very few people do that. And [00:25:00] we have a great ability as humans to rationalize, um, our decisions as to why a decision that may not be the best thing for your family is the best thing for your family, because you're gonna make a lot of money or whatever, whatever the rationalization.
So I completely agree with Stan on come up with whatever your priorities are and in a very thoughtful way. And in stick with them, there's really hard to stick to them that stick with them. You'll, you'll be a much more peace in your life. Mark, as you were thinking
[00:25:28] Lance Dietz: through these decisions, were there any others outside of family that you went to for
[00:25:32] Mark Mclaughlin: the.
I have taken advice from a lot of people in life. And I think that's a really good thing to do. And my 2 cents on this, for folks, as you're thinking about that is you're thinking about choosing a mentor or trying to be mentored. I think it's way more important about I'm going to say the substance of the individual as to what attracts you to them than whatever the surface is.
And what I mean by that is if you said, Hey, Getting mentored by [00:26:00] somebody because they're really successful. That is probably the most shallow level to connect with somebody on. And I've had not a ton, but I've had a few people in my life. Who've been very good mentors, but the, the common thing that thread for all of them was they understood what was important to them and their families.
They were thoughtful about things. He didn't. Wrapped up in the more, bigger, better rat race. I call it like a, I just got, I got, I need more, I need more, they were very successful, but they did it on a terms that, that made sense for them and their families. And as opposed to trying to please other people and trying to.
Be important in the world to other people, as opposed to being important to the people who are going to be with you your whole life. And that was the comment there that that's what attracted me to them. Like, as I got to know them and they became mentors, it was that piece of it lender. I heard them and understood their personal lives, not just their [00:27:00] professional lives, where I said that.
That's wisdom, I'm hearing wisdom, right. And be wise to, to adopt that and to take as much of that as you can get from folks. So I strongly encourage people to connect with, you know, folks in their lives where they say there's a connection on a personal level that I like, no matter what the professional side looks like.
[00:27:20] Lance Dietz: And mark, he joined Palo Alto networks in 2011 and took it from, I think about 200 million. In revenue run rate to 3 billion. When you left in 2018, just incredible growth. What was that experience?
[00:27:37] Mark Mclaughlin: Yeah. So probably the most important part of that is something I alluded to a little earlier, which was, it's really helpful to be kind of right place, right time, you know, in a rising tide.
I, there's a lot of very hard working smart people in the world and that's, that's important to succeed in life. And then it certainly helps if you're in a great team [00:28:00] on something that actually really matters at that time, like cybersecurity and in 2011, cybersecurity. Very early, actually, the way it's only been 10 years right today.
Now it's a really big deal that it was pretty early, but you could tell it was going to be a big deal. And the founder of the company and years Lee Claridge, who runs all the technology still, these guys are still there. Um, they knew exactly what they were doing. And had a lot of conviction that I could sense that and talking with them.
And, um, so there was a lot of, of vision there on, Hey, if we can do the following things, this could be a very, uh, a company that can have a legacy, right? Not an important company, not everybody's getting rich. None of it is we're going to do something good here. Right now, legacy company is going to outlast all of us.
And that was really how we kind of thought about things and design things. So joining companies about 250 people just close the. $50 million run rate quarter, which is great grown very, very, very fast. And then interestingly, the mission was [00:29:00] take it public. I think that's very shortsighted. And so to the investors credit for the company, the teams credit for the company I was brought in because it was a public company CEO to take the company public.
It was ready as far as its growth rate and size EO public, but it wasn't ready to be a legacy. And so I came in nine, did my 90 day tour and came back and told the board, yeah, we're not going public. What are you talking about? That's why we got you. And I said, here's what we need to do. And to their credit, they said, okay.
Yeah, we think this can be a legacy Silicon valley company go do it. And so we took those steps and then we delayed the IPO by a year, got things that, the team, right. That the processes where I got things. Right. But most importantly, The company on a course with a vision and a culture that is very, very strong and still exists today.
And in from that, we were able to grow very quickly at the time when lots of people are doing M and a to try to cobble together [00:30:00] solutions for cybersecurity. We didn't buy anything for seven years. We build everything ourselves completely contrary to what the market was. The ones, every investment banker in the world is telling me.
You don't know what you're doing. You got to go out and use your market cap and that wasn't the right technical answer for the problem. So in 2018, when he decided to step down, like you said, we were doing about the $3 billion in a runway, publicly traded company that was entirely organic, which is very unusual right.
To, to do that. And I, I. At the, an amazing time and amazing opportunity. I, I traveled the world. I worked really, really, really hard. I describe it to people today. When I, when I coach CEOs who are in hyper-growth companies, I said, it's like standing on a marble or trying to write. And, um, you got a lot to do, but those things are once in a lifetime.
And if he can be associated with one, like back to my paradigm, I'm like this has got a shot, right. To be associate [00:31:00] with one, it's an amazing experience. And then just to jump ahead a little bit in 2018, just on a personal side, Karen, I said we've been married 32 years. We have a daughter who's 25 works at zoom, and then.
A son who's 22. And then, um, when we were 45, we had a late in life baby. So Andy and Karen has, uh, homeschooled our kids, all three of them. And that was her career, by the way. She's. Graduated much higher in a class at west point than may. She's way smarter. She was nuclear physicist. She flew, she was a better pilot than me, right.
MBA from Berkeley, super, super, super intelligent driven lady. And, and to her credit, she dedicates. Her professional life to schooling our children. And so I realized, uh, when he, Andy, our youngest was he's just about eight years old, which was in 2018 that, um, you know, I'd really, I was never [00:32:00] home. Like I was having a great time.
It was. It was very successful. I wouldn't trade that professional experience for anything, but I realized with my older kids who were there were born, there were in college and gone. And the difference between a realized between seven years old and 17 years old is in, this is a piece of advice for people who are younger are listening.
The difference between seven and 17 is about 10 minutes in height. And I wouldn't trade a professional experience, but I kind of got, I got a third shot, if you all right with Andy. And so I went to the board, I said, I know you don't want to hear this. Uh, but I need to bet this is kind of back to family first and priorities.
I said, I, I, uh, I can't do this anymore and I can't do it anymore. I choose not to do it anymore. And I want to, I want to homeschool my son as long before. COVID right. I want to be part of that and really be part of his life in a way that I didn't, you know, get the, uh, that I was, I shouldn't say to get the [00:33:00] opportunity I chose not to be right.
So I was working all the time with my older kids. And so that's why I stepped away in 2018. Of from the CEO role and chairman role there, I'm still the vice chairman of the board and still very involved with the company and you're doing great, but that's why at a relatively young age, but 50 52 decided to hang up the operating spurs.
At least, at least for awhile. It's been four years now, right. To, to do what I do today. So when people ask me, what are you doing today? I say I'm a teacher Monday through Friday. That's what I do. And around that, I have some professional activities that I enjoy as chairman of Qualcomm, vice chair of health networks.
I'm going to board a snorkel and still on the national security advisory council at the white house. I've got a number of things that I like doing, but they all get baked around Monday through Friday through certain hours where I teach.
[00:33:52] Lance Dietz: Mark. And before I pass it back to Tim, wanted to ask you about your experience working with the likes of Sequoia [00:34:00] and Greylock, some of the best investors in the world.
What are some of the characteristics that you admired most about investors and
[00:34:06] Mark Mclaughlin: board members? Yeah, there's a lot of venture firms in the world. So I think as with most things in life, it actually comes down to the people. So the two primary investors and pallets and networks were Sequoia and gray lock.
Those friends are outstanding, you know, their track for speech for themselves. So it, it doesn't take me to say that, but my observation of the firms and then the individuals there. It was kind of by I'm going to call it back to this paradigm. They actually studied their own business venture capital. And in every opportunity they saw to help their companies improve.
They took it. There were some of the first ones to bring in people on board to have their own HR advisory staff to say, Hey, let's help you recruit. And they just kept doing better and better and better. And by, by up in their game, each time they distanced themselves from other affirms that the. It all comes down to people as well.
And the giant [00:35:00] blessing for me was to have a sheen, Chad in a gray lock and Jim Goetz from Sequoia be on the board that they're the two guys who hired me along with NIR Zuck, who was the founder of fountain networks. But there's the guys who brought me in, I. And they're just outstanding individuals and outstanding investors in outstanding firms.
So back to kind of, if you want it, if you want to stack the odds in your favor in life, get, get into something that's growing like cybersecurity. That was then, and still is today with outstanding people who know what they're doing. You need to work hard. You need to do a good job. You get a lot of help from these folks.
And those two guys in particular have been the extraordinary as assignment. Almost never happens. Both of them are still on the board of health networks. They've been on the board of pallet networks for, I want to say 16 years. So in Tim, his venture guy will appreciate that. That's super unusual, right?
Super unusual to have venture guys be on a board at all for that long or let alone a public company. But. I think [00:36:00] they realize importance of pallets networks and importance of cybersecurity. And they're, they're enormously impactful on the board. In my, my life. I was super blessed by running across those two individuals and, and having, uh, you know, professional and a personal and real friendship relationship with them for
[00:36:14] Tim Hsia: a very long.
Amazing. Let's get into our next and third segment, the SOP or standard operating procedure in this segment, we're going to talk about the personal routines, habits and words to live by that have been instrumental to marked success. What routines or habits did you have from the military west point law school or as a CEO or as now a coach mentor teacher that you still had here?
[00:36:38] Mark Mclaughlin: You know, I it's interesting to him. I'd say I'm going to throw out there, work hard. And, uh, that's such a trite thing, but I'm not trying to be self-effacing at all. I'm like, I'm not the smartest guy in the room. I'm fine. Like they understand how business works and then how, how to relate to people. But because of that.
And I knew that back at Western, I got my butt kicked at west point on academically, [00:37:00] particularly in the hard sciences side. But I, I knew then, and kind of kept with it that if, if something didn't work out for me, like it was gonna fail at something I never wanted to say it was because I didn't work hard enough.
And so use Lance with your basketball background, like leave it on the court, everything on the court at the end. And, uh, so I definitely put that there in, in west point, as you guys know, really instills that in folks and also forces you to work on time management. If you're a very, very busy business person and certainly the CEO of a high growth public company, it's like being a plebe.
There's not enough time in the day to do everything. So what are you going to do and prioritize. And so I absolutely say that. Critical, which is to be a hard worker. And don't, don't assume that your, your intellectual horsepower is going to be as good as it might be, is going to carry the day. There's a lot of smart people in the world that you're up against.
So hard work for me is one of them. [00:38:00] Um, and then the other thing too, is just this prioritization we keep talking about, or the paradigm or the priorities, wherever you're going to call them. But for me, Figure those out and then recalibrate them at different times. That was very important. And on that some advice I give today, so this is some very tactical, but I think it's really important is it's really hard to think well about something when you are moving a million miles.
And so a habit that I did not have, but I, but I picked up after time that I would encourage people to think about is particularly like in the morning, my habit was to get up or roll out of bed. I would grab a cup of coffee. I'd go out into my gym, hop on the elliptic curve or whatever. Flip on Jim Crow.
Listen to him. And while I was checking my email at the same time email and people in texted him while I'm listening to how the market's going, [00:39:00] whether pallets versus messaging, all that stuff, you know, and, and that's kinda my whole day, right. That was exactly what my day looked like until I checked my phone.
One more time before I hopped in sack at. And that was it. And that's a really tough way to go through your day, particularly if your day it's like seven days a week, which it is a lot of times and leaves very little room for you mentally to, to think about anything, your family, your health, anything.
Right? So it was really, really hard for me, but a habit I picked up from advice from some mentors I got right. Was. Don't do that. Yeah. When you get up in the morning, go get your cup of coffee and, and then do whatever your thing's going to be. Mine is I pray you could meditate, but just be quiet for like the, give yourself 15 minutes in the morning.
Just sit quietly. I don't know whatever's going to work for you before you look at your phone before you turn on bed, mind just 15 minutes and 15 minutes is a huge amount of time [00:40:00] and day before you exercise. Something, right. That you can kind of collect yourself and think about the day. Think about what's important in your life.
Think about all the people you're going to meet today and what a difference you can make in their life they might make in your life. Right. I know that sounds really kind of soft, but for me, it made a dramatic difference about how I went about my day, right after that. And it was just much more peace during the.
And then do that again for me. I do it again before bed as well. So everybody's asleep. I take my 15 minutes writing, just recollect. Think about how the day went and try to come down a little bit, if you will, off the adrenaline, because if you don't, yeah, you're just constantly on. On the treadmill of just this adrenaline high and it's as if nothing else is going to burn you out physically, if not mentally, just give it enough time.
It's definitely,
[00:40:53] Tim Hsia: there's two things that you said that I want to riff on, or maybe reflect on one is this will give please a lot of motivation. [00:41:00] You said public company CEOs are kind of like plebes in the sense that hardworking no time. And so I think I'll give a lot of people, a lot of just inspiration.
And then second thing you said, actually reiterate.
[00:41:12] Mark Mclaughlin: A lot of what our guests have said, which is hard
[00:41:15] Tim Hsia: work. And that's just, I think that's the mantra for every single guest we've had. And then the last note is on the spiritual aspect, Ben fall class of 2007, who I think you also know, you really emphasized that also on the podcast said that you had to get to your spiritual, physical, and mental, right.
And he said, you can get to X out of life. If you do some journaling and reflection, and sounds like that you're also doing.
[00:41:39] Mark Mclaughlin: I would strongly agree with that on that. And yeah, I call it mind, body spirit. Right. And they all matter. And when you're, when you're younger, you were all, you know, we can come out of west point, but we're all 65 and Bulletproof, and that you can, you can power your way through anything.
That's what, that's what it's all about. It's just like, Hey, no mountain high enough. And you can like, [00:42:00] Absolute peak physical, maybe mental, and you can power through a lot of stuff. Yeah. That's not going to last forever. And more importantly than not gonna last forever, whether it's from the physical stamina or the mental stamina is there's all these trite old sayings that we hear.
But as I get older, I'm like, Hey, there's tons of wisdom in these things. Like if you don't know where you're going, It doesn't matter how fast you get there and a Sanders, whole bunch of stuff in the bugle notes. Right. I don't know if they're still studying bugle notes, but whole stuff, a bunch of stuff in there that actually is really, really important as life lessons, but you don't get that right at all when you're in the moment and later on, you'll get them.
And so I would strongly encourage folks to, to manage all three of them and the one. The one that tend to go by the wayside is spear, you know, a lot, and I'm not, I'm not being a commercial for anything. It's like, however you get there. It's absolutely important that you get there because it is the basis by which [00:43:00] you will deal with everybody else in your life.
I tell my older kids, like you can't be good with other people unless you're good with. And you can't be good with yourself unless you're in good with God. Now you can replace God there with it, whatever you want, but we spend all of our time with other people. And unless you have the other two in check, I know who I am.
Right. And I know what I'm trying to get done in my life. And I know which lines I won't cross and all the things they teach you at west point writers. If those are deeply ingrained in you as virtues, okay. Your ability to work with people, manage people, lead people. Goes up dramatically. It's really kind of interesting today when we hear people talk about leadership, leadership, leadership all the time.
And at the end of the day, I think it comes down to authenticity and it's just, you're real. You believe what you believe and that's how you lead. And I think people are. Appreciate that. And [00:44:00] younger people tend to look at older people and say, yeah, that's I think you, I think you got something figured out there, what is it towards that wisdom?
So that, that would be my advice. And so back to Ben, I think that was very wise of him to give that advice to people. And that's what I would tell people as well, is that those three things and balancing and check, like you're going to, you're gonna have a lot of stress in your life and that is unnecessary and that'd be very unlikely to.
Any real peace, real peace. It's gonna, it's going to last long pass your business career. And that you'll be happy with when you're, if you're 85, right, or whatever, when you're fortunate enough to live that long, but a long past your business career
[00:44:41] Lance Dietz: mark, our last segment is what we call giving back. And you shared incredible amount of insight and advice that I think will be super relevant for our listeners.
If you had to summarize this episode into one or two lines, what would those be in terms of advice for someone getting out of the military now?
[00:44:58] Mark Mclaughlin: Yeah, I know it's an easy one [00:45:00] cause I give this whole, the time. Right? I tell them there's a couple of things you need to understand that our reality is right before you move forward.
And these are just the realities. They can piss you off, right? They can frustrate you. They can, it doesn't matter what your emotion is about them. They just are right. And one reality is. That the civilian world and the corporate world has very little idea what to do with, uh, uh, a military resume. And it doesn't matter whether you're a four-star general or a captain, they're just different leadership positions in their mind.
You manage more people as a general right now, but they have very little idea what to do with it. And so you need to understand. And put the time and the effort in to have a translate, what you did in the military, into things that people in the corporate world actually understand. And don't assume that they're going to do it for you.
They won't and nor is it their obligation to do that. So, so understand that importantly and spend the time. [00:46:00] And this is where I help people is to say, Hey, let me try to translate that MOS right into something. The person at Qualcomm or content networks actually needs. They need somebody like you, if they just don't know it yet, because you were a ranger platoon leader and they don't know what to do with that.
It's a software company. It is as good as you are. So that's the first thing realize that's the case. The second thing I tell them is nobody is going to manage your current. Whether in the military or in the civilian world, there's different levels of that. If you're fortunate enough to work with good leaders, work for good managers, they're going to help you in your career.
But the primary responsibility navigation for your career is on you. And, and you need to understand that and work part of it. We talked about her work. Work hard at that and take the onus on yourself to do that, which then leads to the next point, which is the single best way to find something right.
You're going to love to do. [00:47:00] And that's rewarding. And financially rewarding is, is network. You got to get out there and meet a lot of. And through those meetings, one meeting leads to three other meetings and three, the meetings leads to two more meetings and that's how you get to understand what's happening in the world.
You get to understand what different jobs are, what opportunities they are and the chance is that somebody come out of the military and I've given advice to, I mean, I'm, I'm fortunately able to say that I've given advice to four-star generals in three-star generals coming out of the services. Thank you for your service or like, but, so let's talk about what, what does, what does it mean to be on the board of directors as an example, if you're retiring from the military and you want to be on a board of directly, what does that job mean?
What do you do? Right. And here's how you can translate what you did in the survey. Into that kind of role to be a member of a board at a big company like Qualcomm or, or if you want to go and be an operator, how do you, how do you translate that? And just teaching [00:48:00] folks? What, what corporate jobs mean? So when you say I'm the head of operations, I was the chief operating officer, the head of operations or something along those lines and accompany.
Sometimes I'm shocked people come out of the military like, oh, that sounds like me. You know, I say, you don't even know what that means. So there's an education that side too, to say, this is what these job titles mean. And what you want to try to do is find out what your skill sets are. And the skill sets that the job titles define are and find the skillset match.
And don't worry about. And that's how you can get in. And then the last thing would be, um, sometimes you have to make the left turn or something along those lines when you're coming out, where in order to actually move up, you might have to move back a little because as good as a job as you did in the military, and as big as the job you did in the military, you're at a, in a corporate environment.
It's not a one for one, like it's sometimes you have to, you got to step back sometimes, right. To learn. [00:49:00] The corporation, learn the environment, learn the industry so that you can bring immense value to it. But it's not like you're going to walk in the door a lot of times and instantly get it, get a SAS company or a cloud company or something like that.
If you weren't doing anything like that in the service. And then finally the number one thing going for vets coming out, right. That, that the people want, whether they explicitly stated or not, they know it. They look is leadership and team. Right. They assume that, you know, which was not always the case coming out of service.
Right. But it is today. They assume that you are going to be a hard worker, that you're a straight arrow that you're going to be, you're going to be a good team player. And that you're going to be a leader that is an enormous advantage over the other resume. It's not the military background. Right. All of those things have to be.
Once you get the job they're giving [00:50:00] you that everybody that right out of the gate. So your job is to do the skillset match. How do I translate what I, what I skills I developed in the military into skills that you need in the company, but they're going to give you the leg up on all these other things that are so important because, because you demonstrated it and you earned it already and they give you that coming out of the gate, which is a.
Mark.
[00:50:23] Tim Hsia: So very grateful for your time. I'd like to close with three notes that you said, and it's impossible of course, to encapsulate everything in one minute, but I'll try to do so. Um, especially three really important themes. One is the mind body spirit, and it's especially important for post nine 11 veterans.
There's a very prevalent PTSD. It's just so important to get all those, right. It's not just about career outcomes. It's can you look yourself in the mirror and feel good about it? Second of course is networking as you've mentioned. And third is I think Lance and I might be branded. Podcasts, because practically all of our guests who have succeeded wildly have gone through some times of really rough [00:51:00] troughs and managed to get through it like Han Kim.
Who's also a VC and has done extremely well. Can't thank you enough. And thank you,
[00:51:07] Mark Mclaughlin: Lance
[00:51:09] Narrator: OnPoint and character cut is a production of the WPA O G broadcast network. Please take a moment to rate and review the show and join us each week for a new episode. Thank you for this.