Career lessons: making better mistakes, testing waters before working for yourself, and asking for what you want | Pranjalee Lahri (Marketing Consultant)

This transcript has been lightly edited for brevity. 

Mita Mandawker
(00:03):

Hello and welcome back to Ctrl + Alt + Marketing. I'm your host, Mita Mandawker. And if you missed our last episode with SaaS marketing leader Pranjalee Lahri, hit pause and go check it out. It's packed with career gems you don't want to miss. Pranjali opened up about everything from her unexpected journey into marketing to the power of adaptability and staying true to your values. But that's just the tip of the iceberg. Today, she's back to share even more insights to help you make better career decisions as a marketer. So let's dive into the final part of Pranjalee's story. 

Mita Mandawker
(00:55):

I would like to understand next is later on when you moved into like, a leadership role. So when you're working in marketing as a manager, your challenges are very different. Like, you are very heavily involved in tactical stuff, but the lens have to change when you become a leader. You have to become more strategic. You have to manage up, you have to actually advocate for your team, you have to advocate for the campaigns. You have to actually do a lot of back and forth with many stakeholders to prove the ROI and the whole marketing effort that is happening. So what challenges have you faced actually transitioning into that particular role over your career? And just how do you actually go about honing those leadership skills? 

Mita Mandawker
(01:45):

I think that happens eventually, but still, like, what are some efforts that, you know, you have put in very concertedly in that direction? 

Pranjalee Lahri
(01:54):

This is not exactly, doesn't speak into leadership per se, but it does talk about my first promotion where I had my own team. And this is, again, back to the company. The eight years where I spent at this company and my first promotion came about, it was, I believe, two and a half years or three years into that role. And I was so excited. I was like, I was born for this. Like, I couldn't have been more happier. And I soon realized that maybe I had this image and this false impression of what team management and leadership in that form looked like and what the reality really was panning out. 

Pranjalee Lahri
(02:29):

And again, I call this out because in so many companies and in so many roles, when you get promoted, especially when it entails some form of team management and you don't get the proper training, which you really need. What ends up happening is just poor decision making, ill management, and maybe even, you know, spoiling relationships with your peers, spoiling relationship with your peers, because now suddenly you're at one degree higher than them and they are probably not taking this in the right most way possible. So a lot of my leadership actually came from, the baptism by fire. But having put into a role where I thought I was ready for it, and only to realize that maybe this is all going wrong, I went and spoke to my manager. 

Pranjalee Lahri
(03:13):

Then, of course, one of the co-founders of the company. And I said, maybe I'm not ready for this. And I think it was also a self-reflection. I had the degree of self-awareness to feel and know that I wasn't ready for it. And I went and I told him that maybe I'm not ready for it. He was kind enough to give me some leeway. He told me that, maybe take three months. Probably you don't have to be this person at this level and immediately do all the things we expect of you. 

Pranjalee Lahri
(03:38):

You can gradually start kind of, growing into the role and also have the team transition into the newer version of you versus what they were expecting because all of these guys were there at the company before I came in. And imagine I worked with them for three years, and suddenly now I'm their manager. It didn't fit right. Anyway, so that was the start of where the first leadership kind of gave me a slice into what it does look like. 

Pranjalee Lahri
(04:02):

And over the years, I believe it was largely about the team that we were ramping up or with the people that I was working with, whether it was cross-functional or not, it gradually became evident that all of the executional tasks that I was initially tasked with, sorry, we're no longer that important right now, but the expectations from me were changing. 

Pranjalee Lahri
(04:22):

It wasn't just for the OKRs or the KRAs that what I was expected to do that was changing. It was just very evident conversations I was having with my leadership. Then I think the biggest change came. By the way, the first company, after I spent a good amount of time there, I finally reached the level of AVP marketing, had a team of ten, and that is really how I kind of grew the team, almost like as I grew there. But this was still a smaller company. We had about 200 employees in total. And then I moved to this fast-growing startup, which is now a unicorn. And suddenly I'm thrown into this larger kind of, hierarchy and a larger kind of ecosystem of people where leadership is just very different. 

Pranjalee Lahri
(05:03):

And the nature of my role then, because I was overseeing a different region altogether, made it even more interesting. Because one, Southeast Asia is a different geography altogether. Working with local teams there, understanding the cultural nuances, working with leadership, team, etcetera, now became just so much more trickier. And what I realized then is really identifying what is it that each of the stakeholders wanted out of me and wanted of meaning that it was me and my team, but largely, I was the face, the stakeholder, the ownership was largely with me. So everything that I did or my team did was largely what the leadership and the stakeholders that were working with me wanted. So identifying those and then working along with my team to tactically have the to-dos and the exact plans identified became a way of working. 

Pranjalee Lahri
(06:00):

So a lot of the strategic know-how, the hard skills, analytics, for that matter, so much of our analytics and metrics, some portions of them just get washed down. 

Pranjalee Lahri
(06:11):

When you're in the weeds, probably you're just doing it. You're looking at just the leading metrics and you're happy with the numbers that are showing up. You're probably not so much responsible for the downfall, and suddenly now you're responsible for everything from the start to the end. So that was a transition in itself. And I want to say that there was a lot of learning that I want to do, and that is what I continue to do to this day. I listen to podcasts. Like, even today, as a consultant, I'm supposed to be the one person with all the knowledge and the right kind of solution to problems. I know that I need to be learning every single day to represent for that kind of expectation of me. 

Pranjalee Lahri
(06:47):

So I believe that a lot of leadership skills came through how I traversed through my career and what I also saw people alongside me do. 

Pranjalee Lahri
(06:57):

And there's just some people that, you're kind of feed off and you like something in them, so you borrow that from that person. The way the person talks, maybe, or the way the person navigates certain things. I was just trying to absorb all these things, mix and match and make this a part of my own way of working and modus operandi. 

Mita Mandawker
(07:15): 

One thing that I would really like to understand is, say, for instance, a lot of us are solo marketers. A lot of us are working in very lean setups and probably don't have access to marketing leaders. So in those kinds of circumstances, what do you think would be, a good way for a person to actually build those sort of leadership chops because it's not just about doing your work? It's also about a lot of other things, like, you know, stakeholder management. Like you mentioned, you were working with so many different folks across a different region. How does a person who's doing this alone, who doesn't have much access to people, go about doing it? 

Pranjalee Lahri
(08:01):

Well, I don't know if I have the correct answer to it, to be very honest. Because I feel like a lot of your skills actually get better when you put them into practice. If you do not maybe have the full ecosystem to really, you know, kind of work with the team, maybe you will take a longer time, maybe. I don't know. And I'm speaking from my experience that maybe because I had teams where I could try out things and get better at it just made it easier because I could see what things were working and what were not, I believe, and I'm just going to maybe just take a step at answering the question. 

Pranjalee Lahri
(08:33):

If you do not have a team where you could try out your leadership chops, perhaps the best way is really to lean into all of the studies and all of the kinds of podcasts and whatnot out there to understand what it is that you need to do to imbibe in yourself to be a better leader. So as, and when the situation presents itself, you can really kind of work almost like, organically without having to try to figure out what should I do now and how should I really function. I think that's the best I could really suggest at this point in time. 

Mita Mandawker
(09:04):

You mentioned that first instance when you felt that you were not really ready, things were not working out. You had waited long for that promotion. It finally happened. You had a team, and later you had, like, a smooth running, and you went on to become like an AVP over there. So when you were in those very initial days of, becoming a manager, becoming a leader, and your manager was also like, take this easy. Take it slow. Just go about building, things your way. But how did you actually go about it? 

Mita Mandawker (09:41):

You gave a very broad picture, but I think I would be very curious to understand, how did you actually go about easing the team into the new way of things? How did that happen? 

Pranjalee Lahri
(09:56):

What I was trying to do then was continue this relationship that I had with my team, and that was the most important to me then, right, because I knew that if I were supposed to achieve anything, it wasn't going to be without the support of the team. So that my first priority then was forget about what my KRAs for that year are going to look like, because they have now changed. It was about, how do I continue showing my team that I am there with them in the weeds? 

Pranjalee Lahri
(10:26):

So for, I believe, three to four months beyond the period that he had actually given me, I continued doing a large amount of execution still, and we were still a very small team, which meant that I wasn't really just elevated to a strategic level, and I was hands off with everything, but I continued to even work with the team in the daily to-dos, solving the same things that I was doing with them prior to the promotion. Very honestly, I wanted them to feel like I was the same person. Nothing had changed. I had the same intent for their growth as I had for mine and the company’s. And that helped because I believe the team was able to see very quickly that, okay, I hadn't changed so much. I was still being the same person, having the same, similar expectations. 

Pranjalee Lahri
(11:06):

And then slowly, along the way, after I helped them with the execution, I then started moving one step, maybe higher, to say, now that I was in this, we have probably already been bringing a person to help us with this part, and I'll no longer be supporting you here. The entire team ramp-up was built in a fashion that allowed the team to appreciate the growth in a way that wasn't intrusive or that wasn't really, compromising on what they were capable of, but was rather towards a bigger picture of what were able to achieve. 

Pranjalee Lahri
(11:45):

On the backend, though, there were a lot of maybe new things that I was trying to learn for myself, like some of the reports I had to put together. I had to figure out what's going to be the best way to put a report, not just in terms of the format, but what I want the right metrics to show in there, because that is what is going to matter to my management. And probably the rest of the things can stay with my team. 

Pranjalee Lahri
(12:04):

So figuring those things out, I believe where some of these were parallel processes, as I was doing this, I was also starting to do that, but it was really a very slow grind, a very slow brick-by-brick laying activity that I had to do, to finally feel like, I could now reach a point where I could, take one step back and say that nothing changes here, but this is what you can expect from me, and this is what I start expecting from you. And I believe that buy-in kind of had to happen and had started happening more in a frictionless way as we could. 

Mita Mandawker
(12:39):

And I think this worked in your scenario. Every scenario might need a different approach depending on the team, depending on the maturity of the team, experience levels, everything else. But yeah, I think that's a very great approach to take, especially when easing the team and also easing yourself into a new role, because that way it works out for everyone. There are no abrupt and no sudden changes, because sudden changes also tend to manifest very differently sometimes. That's a really great approach of, actually going ahead and bringing in the new order.

Pranjalee Lahri
(13:17):

So this is not just about being an in house person and trying to climb the ranks. Now that I'm a marketing consultant for some of my companies, I am actually brought on board where they have an existing team, believe it or not, it's actually a harder piece to solve because this is a team where they practically get to meet me for a couple of hours in the day. It's largely facetime that I have with them, and they have to trust a stranger, almost a stranger, on the other side of the screen now to tell them what is it that they need to do with their marketing. 

Pranjalee Lahri
(13:50):


So I believe a large amount of what I said, that working with them, supporting them, solving their questions, helping them do their stuff, and enabling, that is still a part of what I do when I work as a fractional CMO for my companies now, and I have to build that trust with their teams, because without that, really everything I'm saying is just talk, right? Nothing is going to translate into the outcomes that we want to achieve together. So, yeah, I think that's the same model that could be applied in different situations. 

Mita Mandawker
(14:22):


That's actually true. I think trust is the biggest binding factor behind everything that we do, especially when we work together. There needs to be a trust involved because otherwise, there's nothing you can build off of it. That's a great. And it's good to know that. I would say it's something that is not going to go out of fashion anytime. 

Pranjalee Lahri
(14:49):

I don't see this really getting old fashioned anytime soon. 

Mita Mandawker
(14:57):

Yeah, totally. I think that brings me to a slightly related question. Because this has been like a very non marketing skill, what do you think are some non marketing skills which have been extremely invaluable in your career? We know that there are some hardcore skills that we need, but what about the non marketing skills? They help you go a long way. As you mentioned, trust building, the whole collaboration part of it, having that empathy for your team. So what are some of those that you believe are absolutely unmissable? 

Pranjalee Lahri
(15:35):

Well, I'm just going to start off with the last one you said: empathy. We throw this word around so much, and I don't know if I'm also 100% empathetic in all cases. I try to be, but I don't know if I am right. 

Pranjalee Lahri
(15:47):

But I feel like just the softer skills are the ones that take you a long way. And again, there is an importance for hard skills and the soft skills equally. But I feel like so much of our work life and so much of our work is actually a determinant of how you work along with your teams, cross, functional leadership, whoever, external, internal, doesn't matter. And I feel like then the skills like collaboration in this day and age are just so critical because maybe we came, at least I came from a time where physical in office work was the only way we knew. And collaboration was easier, not easy. At least you had some kind of in-person time to really understand people. These days, it’s conversing on communication apps and all of these things. 

Pranjalee Lahri
(16:36):

I think collaboration and communication is just so, so critical. And especially when you're talking about hybrid and remote setups. That is what we all have these days, right? You have a part of your team that sits in a different part of a country, or maybe in a different country altogether. It's important to really understand and appreciate and align to their way of working. I'll just quickly, bring up an anecdote. So in the previous example of the Southeast Asia that I was giving you, I had to align to the time zones. And for the good part, Southeast Asia is not so far apart from India. There is a very small time gap. 

Pranjalee Lahri
(17:11):

But even with that, it was important that my evenings were their late evenings, so I couldn't wait for the end of the day to ask someone something or maybe talking to someone where their native language was. Thus, while mine was English, and English wasn't, like, the best way to communicate, just figuring out ways to make this possible became so important. So I believe that communication, collaboration, and of course, empathy is, I believe the broader umbrella for all of this because without that, you wouldn't be able to take the efforts in the direction of trying to get the communication or the collaboration right. I think those are the three ones that I would call out. 

Mita Mandawker
(17:48):

So, before we get into your new innings as a self-employed marketing consultant, fractional CMO, I think one thing that I would really like to understand is when you're in the mid-stage of your career, or when you're mid career professional, one thing that you're always told is you have to be more strategic. Think first principles, think critical thinking. You have to zoom out a bit, look at the big picture, but very rarely you're told that, you know, this is how you go about doing it. That's a skill you have to essentially develop on your own. You have to read, you have to, again, consume a lot of material, you have to speak with folks. But as a leader, it's an invaluable and non negotiable skill to have. 

Mita Mandawker
(18:35):

How have you gone about actually building that particular skill? Any pointers around that? 

Pranjalee Lahri
(18:43):

So a large amount of the skills that I had to build really came from understanding what my stakeholders expected of me. I was very clear on that one thing. If the stakeholder expected me to deliver a revenue or revenue influence, for example, if that is what the expectation was, I knew that I had to be strategic to a particular degree, but also tactically help my team with whatever else. I don't know if I had ever the first principle mindset or one of those much beautifully laid down frameworks that I ever internalized, I don't think I really use that. A large amount of what I did and how I function came from my need at the moment and really understanding that in reality and feasibly, what is it that I could do. 

Pranjalee Lahri
(19:24):

So I think a lot of strategic building and mindset building really comes from one identifying what your stakeholders want from you, how your role now kind of has evolved, and what is expected of you, and then to identify if you have those skills that are needed. Many companies now offer training, learning and development programs made it easier, not the easiest, for you to go and get that particular course or whatever else can at least request for those. But I believe it comes from you identifying it, not so much so waiting for your HR or L&D team to come and identify it as a skill gap on your career path, for you to know that this is what you should do. I'm giving maybe a broad answer. 

Pranjalee Lahri
(20:07):

Not exactly the steps to it, but I believe that is going to be the only way to go. 

Mita Mandawker
(20:12):

I think that's helpful, too. I think just having that awareness about what expectations are and then, just figuring out the gaps wherever you are falling short of, to meet those expectations, that's a good start to have. And continuing on the same note, I think I would like to unpack something else. So you were doing very well in your career. You moved from a very different setup altogether. Like, from fairly established companies to a unicorn later on. And then later on, you came to a place wherein you were like, okay, I need to try and do something different. And you got into the fractional consulting side of things, which is a completely different ballgame altogether. So how did that decision happen? 

Mita Mandawker
(21:03):

From being a properly in-house employed resource to, going ahead and doing your own thing. 

Pranjalee Lahri
(21:12):

I honestly wanted to take a break after my last stint. I thought that I'm going to take a three month break specifically, and I announced this to my friends and family. I was like, for three months I'm going to do nothing. Because throughout my career, I'd not really taken a break other than my maternity leave. And I thought, like, I needed one just to rejuvenate. I'd just kind of get my energies back. Believe it or not, three days in, I started getting impatient and I was like, maybe this is not the right decision of trying to take a break for three months. 

Pranjalee Lahri
(21:43):

And it was around the same time that some people in my network got in touch with me and they got to know that I recently left my previous job, and they offered me a full time position, and I honestly had zero emotional cognitive bandwidth to take it up, and I just respectfully declined that. So moving from in house marketer role and pivoting to a marketing consulting role was really just an organic pull than my push because the same companies then offered me an opportunity to join them as a consultant. I was anxious as hell. So I'm a very structured person who needs visibility and clarity to what's going to happen this month, that month down the line right now, doing that in a consulting route, that's going to be not always true. The visibility may not be there. 

Pranjalee Lahri
(22:34):

The security of this client being with you for these many months may not be there. All of those were really things I had to work upon. But it helped that I have a very supportive family. My initial deterrence to myself, not to anyone, was, will I be able to one, beat my pay package? And second, how do I ensure that I keep this more sustainably running? And it shouldn't just be a short term gap arrangement, that I do it for a couple of months and go back to finding my feet in the corporate world. But my husband has always been very supportive and he encouraged me to continue down this path. And so I think all of those things kind of helped me take the decision. 

Pranjalee Lahri
(23:13):

Yes, there was a lot of groundwork I had to do for myself to understand what it means to be a consultant, build up a lot of those frameworks, and just the ecosystem for myself because I no longer could tap into, an existing in-house pool of marketers for content writers, graphic or whatever. So building all of that was completely on me. I knew I was running my own race, but at the same time, I knew that this is what I wanted to do because I wanted to fly solo. I just didn't know if consulting was going to be the right direction for it or not. But it was, again, I believe the right situations and the right nudge from everyone that told me to get on this path. 

Mita Mandawker
(23:51):

Serendipity at work. 

Pranjalee Lahri
(23:55):

Completely. 

Mita Mandawker
(23:57):

I think one thing that I would like to know is, so for you, the whole process of being your own boss, was serendipity. It was very organic, it was kind of out of your hands. But there are so many folks who want to be self-employed. Whenever I speak to someone, one thing I get to hear from them is, I don't want to be doing this my entire life. I want to be self-employed. I want to be my own boss. But there is never a solid plan in place like I plan to work for five years. I plan to then, you know, save money or raise money. This is the product I'll work on. 

Mita Mandawker
(24:39):

There are no solid concrete steps. I would like to understand what are some considerations you think people need to really consider before starting off with that self-employment kind of a journey? Because, yes, there is a good side to it that you mentioned, and there's also, like, a very hidden side to it, which doesn't often get highlighted, considering you've seen the good, bad, and the ugly so far. Could you also share, a little bit more about the unspoken things? 

Pranjalee Lahri
(25:17):

I believe that everyone should do some kind of self-employment. Because it's just such a great teacher. It teaches you things about yourself, perhaps, that you were blindsided to. So in general, I think it's something we should all go through, no matter what it is. Now, coming to some of the lesser spoken things about self-employment, I think, first and foremost is always the job security or just having that kind of pay that you want. Because at the end of the day, you still need to pay your bills and you need to put food on the table. Again, the dynamics and situations change, and this is not the same for all. If you come from a more supportive family where you maybe have your partner doing a more stable job, maybe it's an easier decision. 

Pranjalee Lahri
(25:57):

Things, even the dynamics of that change. If you have children, if you don't have children if you have dependents, if you don't have dependents or whatever kind, right? So I believe one is to really understand your own kind of security cover. Like how much of run time do you have? Or a runway do you have till you can, probably experiment with something, or how much do you really need to start making, to whatever? To make your bills or whatever. I think our clear clarity from a financial perspective is super critical. Second, of course, is understanding. Do you have it in you to do what it takes to run this sustainably? 

Pranjalee Lahri
(26:32):

And I use the word sustainably in a very mindful fashion, because it's probably okay for us to start something, but you don't want to go back to, probably what you're doing without giving it the right amount of time. You want to see if this is a stint that you can continue running by yourself or whoever you appointed alongside you. If it's a joint venture, can you do this for the long term? This is why the ecosystem and just understanding your own self, the self-awareness comes in. Because speaking from my experience, it's not the first customer that I got, which sealed the deal, and I've been sitting duck on it. It's every month that I have to keep this front and center. What am I doing to continue building visibility for my profile? 

Pranjalee Lahri
(27:18):

What is it that I need to do to keep my customers in the pipeline warm? Who can I talk to now that my agreement with XYZ is coming to an end? You need to understand this of yourself. Do you have it in you, or can you appoint a team? So all of those things, I think, are critical. The last one, and again, there are multiple more, but that's just the top three. The last one, I would say, is just your support system. It's not just about sometimes your financials alone. 

Pranjalee Lahri
(27:42):

If you don't have a partner, or let's say you have an infant that needs child care, and you cannot give your family or your new stint the kind of time and bandwidth it needs, I don't think you'll be doing justice, and you'll be doing service to whatever new that you're starting. I believe these are the three main things. And of course, there are so many nitty-gritties to each of these that we can get into and many more that ensure that you're at least starting out on the right foot. 

Mita Mandawker
(28:10):

I think that's a very good start. It's one thing to actually be self employed. Yes, there's a beautiful dream to be achieved, but it also has to be grounded in the practicality that you actually are setting up yourself for success. Because the three basic things that you mentioned, if you don't have those in place, or if you've not thought about those to some extent, they might actually throw in a spanner when you're actually working on your things. So it definitely helps to have a very solid, grounded perspective on the dream is there. I have this plan to achieve the dream, but yes, these are also the things I need to think about because they will impact it. 

Pranjalee Lahri
(28:55):

Absolutely. And I'm not going to be proposing moonlighting and, double hatting and doing all of these things, but I really feel like self-employment doesn't have to be self-employment from day one. You can continue trying something on the side, see how that works, get just into the rigor of it, see if that's something that even fits well into the way you see yourself operating, and if that sticks, great. I mean, it's something that you could continue down the path on, but at the very onset, if you realize that for whatever reason that's not working out, it's a signal. I believe that it's nicer to test the waters instead of just jumping on the deep end and then figuring out and thinking, oh, my God, what did I get myself into? 

Mita Mandawker
(29:35):

That's actually a solid plan. Rather than putting all your eggs in one basket, you're actually just diversifying your risk, minimizing your risk, and you're also giving yourself the time and the grace to figure out if this is something that you want to do. This is a personal question and I may have touched on this when we spoke earlier. So whenever we are talking about careers, we like to highlight, the success stories. This is what I did, this is what worked well, and this is how I ended up winning. I think one thing that I would really like to understand is, have you had any instances where things have not really gone well. 

Mita Mandawker
(30:15):

That was a very learning or teaching moment for you and that changed your perception of your career or changed your career for the better. 

Pranjalee Lahri
(30:27):

This calls for a different podcast because I just have, like, a bagful of mistakes and failures, which have, of course, converted into learning now. 

Pranjalee Lahri
(30:37):

But I think if you're not failing, you're also not growing. I genuinely believe that, of course, you don't want to repeat the same mistake twice. Otherwise, that's just insanity then. But, yeah, I had so many, I mean, from my leadership transitions to just doing things, I can probably call out a few, and there's one that comes to my mind. So at the previous company, the one before my last stint, were going into PLG. Product-led growth, and it was very new then. This is the year 2015, if I'm not wrong. And PLG was still very new. Like, as a term, it had been freshly coined. We're trying to wrap our heads around it. And I thought, like, how difficult would it be? You set up a trial, you put a form on your website, and ta-da, like, you have it all. 

Pranjalee Lahri
(31:18):

And that was the biggest kind of fiasco we had because we ran campaigns that generated a lot of leads. We had nothing done for the aha moments, for capturing the milestones internally to grow product adoption. And it was just such a big nightmare that we had to actually, hide that entire page, the button from the website until we figured out what is it that we wanted to do in the back end and could really get our act together. So again, I'm just calling here one of the many. 

Pranjalee Lahri
(31:45):

But every time that I have done something like that, of course, there is that misery that you live in, but it's important to get out of the misery to understand and get the learning out of it, which is what I've tried to do much better now, even in my current role, again, as a consultant, when I go in with the first time I started working with my first customer, I was literally learning on the job. How do I even work with this customer in a consultant capacity? And I'm sure there are so many faux pas that I have done with these customers that have only now competed with time. So, one, give yourself the grace when a faux pas like that happens, but at the same time, don't let it repeat. 

Pranjalee Lahri
(32:23):

You might as well make a better mistake next time. 

Mita Mandawker
(32:27):

I love it. Make better mistakes, of course. 

Pranjalee Lahri
(32:31):

I mean, otherwise, I don't know anyone who's not made a mistake and remained unscathed through the entire life. Made it through. I don't know anyone. 

Mita Mandawker
(32:37):

I actually used to have a manager who used to say, make a new mistake every single time. Don't come to me with the old mistakes. And that's kind of stuck with me. And I think, that's a great philosophy to have, make new mistakes, learn, grow, move on. I think growth comes from also failing. A huge, massive growth comes from failing. 

I have a few questions I would really like to ask. I call this section Wisdom Beyond Kotler. I felt so clever when I drafted that segment. I mean, for marketers, Kotler is like the Bible, so it felt like a clever take. 

Mita Mandawker
(33:28):

The first thing that I want to ask is, what are your top hard-learned and hard-earned lessons that you would like to share with your 21-year-old self? 

Pranjalee Lahri
(33:41):

There are so many, but I'm just going to distill them to the three top three. One, I'm going to say emulate the person you desire to become. And emulate is the word I'm going to use very specifically underlined, because it's great to have mentors and advisors, and we all need them. But once you've identified your destination, finding a person who has already arrived, they're just living out their life path can save you so many trials and tribulations and just take you there faster. So I believe one is that second is don't be afraid to ask. And I think I mentioned this earlier too, right? That oftentimes we just get so stuck in our own heads and we just play out the what-if negative scenario that we cannot verbalize what we really desire. 

Pranjalee Lahri
(34:27):

So whether it's a salary increment, you want a promotion, you want to have a change of project, even if you want to go and have a mentor, I think just ask. You'll be surprised at how many people are actually open to giving you that opportunity or whatever else that you want. The third one, I would say, is very specific to marketing. The first two, I believe, are still very agnostic. I think marketing, in my opinion, is on such a cusp of disruption and revolution. If you see the number of just the marketing tech stack, there's an explosion there. The number of new rules in marketing, explosion there. Just everything in marketing I think has just undergone so much change. The number of sub-functions of specialization in marketing, you did not have those for the last, I don't know how many years. 

Pranjalee Lahri
(35:10):

And now suddenly, there are so many that have sprung up. I want all of us to know, and my 21-year-old or 22-year-old to know, that you need to be in sync or one step ahead of this change. Without that, you would always be kind of catching up to something, and you never know. There are other people who are already playing the game better than you. 

Mita Mandawker
(35:31):

Totally loving this advice. I think the part that you mentioned about, just go ahead and ask for it. What's the worst that can happen? People will say no, but what if it's in what? What if it's a yes? Totally agree. This is kind of out of the section, but I still want to know, generalist versus specialist, what's your take? This has always been a question of hot debate. 

Mita Mandawker
(36:17):

I believe you've been a generalist throughout your career. What has your experience been like as a generalist? 

Pranjalee Lahri
(36:33):

I am a product of the generalist era, so to speak because marketing was a singular unit for the longest time. It's only in the recent past that you have specialized functions like product marketing, content marketing, and field marketing. I don't know what all that has come about and I'm sure there is more to this continuum, but here's my evolved take on this. That's definitely a place for a specialist versus a generalist. For example, for a very early-stage startup, you want to have a generalist because one, you have limited resources, you want someone who's able to do everything versus having to worry about who's going to worry about my socials, who's going to worry about my whatever else. 

Pranjalee Lahri
(37:13):

But as you grow and you start scaling, you need to have specialists because you need to have people with specialized skill sets that can really scale each, and every channel to the level that you want and to really extract the juice from it. So again, I believe that there is a place and time for it and every company has their own mix of those. Most startups I see today are going more towards the specialist route again as they scale. And I don't know if there is an inflection point in a startup's journey at a 1 mn mark that really triggers that kind of specialist approach to come in. But I believe that is the way to go forward. 

Mita Mandawker
(37:49):

A follow-up question on this. I mean, yes, companies will do what's best for them in terms of building like a marketing team, but as a marketing leader, do you think being a generalist really helped, rather than, being like a specialist? Because when a person is a specialist, they tend to be like the functional heads. Yes, marketing is also a sort of function, but being a generalist, I believe kind of feeds better into being like a marketing leader because you have so much of a bird’s eye view on everything. So what's your experience?

Pranjalee Lahri
(38:24):

I think that's a good question, and I did not touch upon that earlier. I feel like, yes, a generalist gives you that breadth of experience. You know, we spoke about T-shaped marketers for the longest time. It gives you exactly that because you've been there, and done that, and you pretty much can speak the same language across the board, which is the greatest thing to have. 

Pranjalee Lahri
(38:44):

Even for me, when I pivoted from my in house marketer role to a consultant role, it became very easy to now move into this role because I understood everything there was. If I needed someone, I could easily tap into someone and say, hey, we need someone to specialize here. But I could just, from my experience of being there and done that, could easily spot and say, okay, this is a broken link that needs fixing now. So I feel like, yes, a generalist definitely has better makings of a leader than a specialist who perhaps has come from a narrower lens and a narrower view of a specialized function. 

Mita Mandawker
(39:22):

It's about breadth versus depth. Depends on the requirements of the role, and that's how the person would fit. This conversation has also been a lot about reflection. How the journey has been, how the last 15 years have been, what they have brought, what they have taught, what they've taken to some extent also, how would you reflect on your career, how would you summarize your journey? 

Pranjalee Lahri
(39:55):

I'm trying not to be philosophical, but it might sound like. 

Mita Mandawker
(39:58):

I truly believe philosophy is tied closely with life. I think it's totally. Okay. 

Pranjalee Lahri
(40:04):

Awesome. All right, let's go then. I truly feel like we are all on our own journey. And this is not just for marketing. This is for life in general in my opinion. And what I have striven to do all these years is to bring achievement or to bring fulfillment with the things that I felt are important or I feel are important. It may not be an external validation. It may not be what the world deems as important or, you know, great. It is what I want to do for myself. 

Pranjalee Lahri
(40:34):

So my own self-reflection is that this has been a journey which has been fulfilling, and I've been pursuit of that fulfillment still because, not because I am an unhappy person at heart, because I know there is just so much more to life and I'm just probably scratching the surface of it. 

Mita Mandawker
(40:50):

Great. Thank you so much, Pranjalee, for coming onto this very new podcast and, sharing your story so generously with me. It's been a huge honor and it's been such an eye-opening and a learning experience for me as well, to learn about, so many things from you. So thank you so much for that. 

Pranjalee Lahri
(41:15):

Thank you so much for having me. And this was a great self-reflection. I've been talking so much about self-awareness and self-reflection, but this kind of allowed me to distill everything down into something. Maybe I need to hear out myself because oftentimes we need reminders for how we want to function. So thank you for doing that. 

Mita Mandawker
(41:32):

Great. I'm so happy about this.