Leap Academy with Ilana Golan - Qualcomm CMO Don McGuire: How to Stay Relevant, Resilient, and Ready for Change | E152

Episode Date: March 31, 2026

Don McGuire did not build his career through a straight line. He lost elections as a kid, moved every few years, started over again and again, and had to learn resilience early. After graduating from college, he was still unsure what to do, but a leap into the early cellular industry launched a career that would take him from sales to marketing and ultimately, the CMO seat at Qualcomm. In this episode, Don chats with Ilana about how to stay in control of your career in a world changing at the speed of AI. He shares why resilience matters more than ever, how to spot the right time to leap, and what it takes to stay relevant in a crowded job market. Don McGuire is the Executive Vice President and Chief Marketing Officer of Qualcomm, with over 25 years of experience across service providers, semiconductors, and technology marketing. In 2025, he was named one of Forbes’ World’s Most Influential CMOs. In this episode, Ilana and Don will discuss: (00:00) Introduction (03:14) The Early Experiences That Built Don’s Resilience (10:46) His Love for Marketing and Journey Into Tech (18:00) The Transition From Sales to Marketing (20:18) Why You Must Stay in Control of Your Own Destiny (23:25) Startup Lessons, Consulting, and Selling Yourself (27:43) Knowing When It Was Time to Leap Back Into Corporate (31:45) The Crisis That Forced Qualcomm to Tell Its Story (38:16) The One Trait Gen Z and Gen Alpha Need Most (40:33) How to Stand Out in an AI-Driven Job Market (45:02) Why Portfolio Careers and Side Skills Matter (48:03) What Excites Don Most About Qualcomm’s Future (53:05) Q&A: How to Break the “I Can’t Get a Job” Mindset Don McGuire is the Executive Vice President and Chief Marketing Officer of Qualcomm, where he oversees global marketing as the company expands beyond mobile into automotive, computing, AI, and other growth areas. Before joining Qualcomm, he held senior leadership roles at Intel and other major wireless and technology companies. In 2025, he was named one of Forbes’ World’s Most Influential CMOs. Connect with Don: Don’s LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/donnymac  Resources Mentioned: Qualcomm: https://www.qualcomm.com/ Leap Academy: Ready to make the LEAP in your career? There is a NEW WAY for professionals to fast-track their careers and leap to bigger opportunities.  Check out our free training today at https://bit.ly/leap--free-training

When I decided to get the startup bug, I had three small children and a mortgage and a lot of responsibilities. And it turns out that, you know, like most startups, it didn't work out. And so I found myself one day with that moment of what am I going to do? We all go through this in times in our life. And it's good to take a pause. Don McWire is the chief marketing officer of Qualcomm, one of the world's most influential DMOs by Forbes. I can't wait to dive into how he became the CMO of such an impactful organization. I fell in love with tech.

I fell in love with the fact that this industry is always moving, it's always changing, always innovating, luckily fairly recession-proof. I think it's really easy to kind of fall into an ethos of where you work or who you work for. And then you wake up one day and you're like, oh my gosh, it's been 10 years. How am I still here? For me, I was always like, look ahead. pick your head up every once in a while, see what's going on.

And then when an opportunity opened up, put your fear aside and, you know, go for it. The world is kind of going upside down a little bit. How is the leader, are you able to navigate it? I think as leaders, we go through a lot. Welcome to the Leap Academy with Ilan Show. I'm so glad you're here. In the Leap Academy podcast,

I get to speak to the biggest leaders of our time about their career, how they got where they are today, the challenges, the failures, and countless lessons. So lean in. This episode is going to be amazing. I'm a mission to help millions reinvent their career and leap into their full potential,

land their dream roles, fast-track to leadership, jump to entrepreneurship, or build portfolio careers. This is what we do in our Leap Academy programs for individuals and teams. And with this podcast, we can give this career blueprint

for free to tens of millions. So please help my mission by sharing this with every single person you know because this show has the power to change countess of lives. Deal? Okay, so let's dive in. When you think about the technology that connects our world, the phones in our hands, the cars we drive,

the network powering everything around us, there's a good chance. Qualcomm is somehow behind it. Don McWire is the chief marketing officer of Qualcomm, one of the world's most influential CMOs, by Forbes. That's a big deal. And I can't wait to dive into how he became the CMO of such an impactful organization. And also, what is it like to navigate it at a time of change? And how does he see hiring and jobs evolving and how anyone driven can still be successful at this time

of change? So, Don, super glad that you're here. I'm super glad to be here. Thank you so much for having me. So let's have some fun and take us back in time. And And I remember hearing a little bit of a story, but I wanted to think about some lessons that shaped you to who you are today. Oh, wow. So many things. But I think a couple that sort of stand out is I think when you fail or when you lose or when you don't achieve your goals throughout growing up or early on in your career, your life,

you can either use that as an opportunity to grow or you can let it take you down a different path. So I think that there was like lots of examples of skimming my knees and falling down and not achieving what I thought I wanted to achieve. And, you know, it hurts. Share with me something that comes to mind. I want to hear a story. So I did a speech in college at a speech class and how to do an informational speech. I was trying to figure out, like, what am I going to do this speech on? And so I said, what do I know? Like, what do I really know how to do? And one of the things I said, well, I know how to lose because I had lost up to that point every election I'd ever run for. You know, I ran for senior class president. I ran for ASB. In college, I actually ran for student government as well.

And, you know, I'd not been picked or I'd not won an election. And so I said, well, I'm going to do this speech on how to be a loser. So I got up in front of everybody and I had a big cardboard L that I cut out and I taped it to my forehead like this. And I talked about how to be a loser. And people, of course, laughed and it was funny. And, you know, it was sort of a little bit self-deprecating. But it was all about this idea that losing actually is something that can be used as a launch pad, right? It can actually teach you humility and it can help you reflect. And then it can help you sort of craft yourself for the future.

And I think sales experience also gives you that grit because you have to learn how to handle rejection. And you have to learn how to read people's both verbal and nonverbal cues. and you have to get a certain amount of knows before you get a yes. And so I think those types of struggles or those types of things that you face that are adverse make you stronger and help you become more resilient.

They do, but how do you figure this out when you're a kid? I don't know if I had that perspective as a kid. Like as a kid, it just hurt, period. Is it your parents? Who instilled in you that it's okay to lose and continue? you know a little bit who you're surrounded by whatever sort of parental guidance or figures your siblings your sort of immediate ecosystem of people that influence in your life on a day-to-day basis

i come from an italian irish catholic family and i'm the youngest of four boys so i used to get the crap kicked out of me a daily basis that in itself uh you know teaches your resilience My parents were that nice mix of empathy and nurture and grit and sort of suck it up. And so I had to suck it up from my father, who was super driven and super ambitious and climbing the corporate ladder and didn't have time for the squishy stuff. And then my Italian emotional mother who was nurturing and oftentimes used food too as a way to make up for bad things. but she was very nurturing and very loving unconditionally.

And so I think it was a nice kind of yin'yang to help with things like that. And again, being the youngest, it was so funny, I used to joke with my parents that by the time I got into high school, right? My parents were so exhausted for having raised to three other boys. And for me, it was like, if I woke up in the morning and I was in my room and I came down to breakfast, they were like, good, right? Good. We're success. Yeah, we're success. Because my other three brothers had kind of put them through the ringer.

And so I got the advantage of that. And, you know, you learn from, like, if you're a younger sibling, you kind of watch what goes on with your older siblings, and you learn a lot from that. And even with my children, I have three kids and my youngest, they observe. I think that was sort of helpful as well. It's like, how did my brother handle something that went wrong? Or how did my, whether it's with sports or with school or relationships or whatever that might be. So that was also helpful. So I think, yeah, I think your environment of who you surround yourself with and what you're sort of born into in that environment,

can be helpful or not, depending on the environment. And then, you know, how do you extract from that? And then how do you then apply what you've learned or how you felt in that moment to that next time? And call it naivety, but I'd never thought about giving up. I licked my wounds, right? I felt bad. I sulked. And then I moved on.

And I know that's not everybody, right? I know things deeply affect people and it's not everybody. but it's just sort of this life's not fair. And I grew up in an era, you know, I'm a Gen Xer, and I grew up an era where, you know, not everyone got a trophy just for showing up. So we were taught by my parents, you know, life's not fair. Both my grandparents were immigrants to the U.S.

from Italy and from Ireland. And I grew up in a relatively middle-class situation between the Midwest and California to completely diametrically different places. That also helped me. And we moved around a lot. And so I had to make friends a lot. I had to make new friends a lot.

And I think that's another thing that helped me, like, just put myself out there because I didn't grow up in the same house from birth all the way through high school and then on to college. We moved on average every three years. So, oh, I got to start over. Got to start over. Do you remember resentment? It was hard.

I mean, I don't have any resentment. I did tell myself that I was not going to do that to my children. So my kids have grown up in the same environment, the same sort of place geographically. Because I think that that does offer stability and long-term relationships and all those types of things, a lot of positives there. But I think, you know, having to uproot yourself and start over also build skills. And so not really resentment, but that I wish I didn't have to up, you know, after I was just getting settled and just getting established.

Oh my gosh, I have my peer group. I have my people. Oh, sorry, we're moving, you know, push the reset button. And, you know, again, it was my father is like, you'll get over it. This is an opportunity for me and for the family because he was very like, my role is provider. That was his generation. And my mom, of course, was more empathetic about it. And she understood and was there as a shoulder to cry on, you know, when I went to school

for that first day in a new city and a new place and I hated it and I didn't want to be there and the people were different and I was different and all those types of things. And she was there for all of those ups and downs. So it was a really nice balance of giving. over it, move on, and, hey, I feel for you. I understand an empathy. And I think that defines me a little bit of my leadership style, too. It's like you got to balance that empathy, that understanding, that listening with, we still have to achieve results. We still have to produce outcomes. And so it's probably impacted a little bit that. Oh, for sure. And I want to go there and also

how you got into tech. And it's so funny when I hear you speak. On one hand, I grew up a little bit more like you. And on the other hand, I grew my kids very opposite, like one place basically, you know, and I was like, you know what? It actually taught me a lot to scrape my knees and build myself again. And I'm like taking it away from them. So anyway, so I have my own dilemma with that. Right. Right. But how did you get into tech? Take us on a journey because, again, you have been in like a full stack of, you know, the entire mobile stack, right? You were on the carrier side. And you were on device level. were in Silicon Valley level. I want to take us a little bit on the journey. I think it starts with

when I fell in love with marketing. And that was really in college. I took a consumer behavior class as part of my marketing major. I mean, I decided to declare as a part of my business degree that I was going to go the marketing route, partly because I hated math and I did not want to go with a financial route. I took a consumer behavior class and really, really loved my professor and fell in love with this whole idea of how images and messages and the things that we see in the world influence our behaviors. And specifically in this instance, our purchasing behaviors and our buying behaviors. And so that's when I really said, oh, this is super interesting. I like this. And I'd always had an affinity. You mentioned the grocery store analogy. When I go to a grocery

store, I literally walk up and down the aisles and look at everything. It drives my wife crazy because, you know, she like, get in there, get this stuff, get out. And I actually browse. you know, and I'm looking at, oh, wow, this is interesting merchandising on the floor. Why are they putting these stickers on the floor or why are these end caps things like this? And that's super interesting to me because it's merchandising, it's marketing, it's how they're telling their story and getting someone to sort of look at them or understand their product and then possibly buy it. And so for me, that's interesting.

So I fell in love with marketing first, but then I really didn't know what to do with it coming out of college. And so I went like a lot of college graduates who didn't know where they wanted to end I did a little interviewing, on-campus interviewing, you know, sell me this pencil, do this, do that. But there weren't a lot of entry-level marketing jobs at that time out of college. You pretty much had to go a sales route. And so I was like, I'm not sure about this whole thing. And I was lucky enough where I'd saved a little bit of money.

And when my parents asked me what I went for graduation, I said, I would love a plane ticket to Europe and a backpack. And I would love to just go backpack around Europe for as long as my money would last me. And they granted that wish. And I flew to Europe, like three days after graduation, backpacked around for about seven months, ran out of money, figured out how to get some more money. And my parents actually came through because I was like totally stranded, I think, in Greece with no money.

And I think they wired me some to American Express. But I stayed as long as I could. And then finally they're like, okay, you got to come home and get a job. But it was a great life experience. met some amazing people, traveled around, slept in train stations, on a park benches, and under people's laundry and all sorts of crap. And it was really, really fun. I had the time of my life. I actually wrote about how traveling alone made me a better leader. I truly believe in that. I did my own sense of a few months in South America.

And the fact that I had to make new friends every three years on average made it easy for me to engage with people who I didn't know. Interesting. So you weren't even afraid. of it. That's so cool. I wasn't even afraid of it. So I made some really good friends and traveled with some great people and had a lot of fun. And then I came back and I again, still kind of didn't know what I wanted to do. And it was really my father. And, you know, he was one of those dads. Like I said, he was like the provider when we were growing up. And that was his main role. And he made a lot of mistakes because of that as far as relationships go. I didn't really have a good relationship with him until I was in college. And he could address me more as an adult because that was his wheel.

house. Wasn't so good with the younger years, but when he could have an adult conversation, that he was good with that, because he could talk about what he knew. So when I came back, he was like, what are you thinking? I was like, I don't know. He's like, well, you know, there's this new thing. It's called like cellular technology. And it's going to be big. And he'd been in telecommunications, in aerospace, and networking and all that boring stuff. And I had no desire to go that direction. And I said, do you mean like car phones? He said, yeah, like car phones. I said, dad, I don't want to go to an auto stereo. and sell car phones. I have a college degree, you know. But he said, no, it's go to work for one of the

companies that's building this and making this happen because it's the future. What year is that, roughly? I don't want to age myself. It was like early 90s. And so I actually got this Time magazine that my parents had a subscription to and on the cover. No, it wasn't time. It was like it was fortune or Forbes or something like that. And the guy named Craig McCaw was on the cover. and he had like a snake around his neck. And there was a whole article on this guy who was like a rebel, and he went and took his father's cable money and dropped out of Stanford and bought up all these licenses and was going to launch this cellular telephone company.

And I was like, wow, this guy looks pretty cool. It's like a snake around his neck, you know. And I said, he'd be fun to work for. And I literally interviewed with the local Macaugh Cellular Office in Monterey County. which was closest to my parents lived in Santa Cruz at the time, and I got a sales job, and that's where it all started. We need to pause for a super brief break, and while we do, take a moment and share this episode

with every single person who may be inspired by this because this information can truly change your life and theirs. Now, I want to check in with you. Yes, you. Are you driven, but maybe feeling stuck in your career or a fraction of who you know you could be? Do you secretly feel you should have been further along in your income, influence, or impact.

Do you ever wonder how to create not just a paycheck, but the life you want with a paycheck, the thought leadership, the legacy, the freedom? Because that was me, and that's exactly why I created the Leap Academy program, which already changed thousands of careers in lives. Look, getting intentional and strategic with your career is now more important than ever.

The skills for success have changed. AQ, adaptability, reinventing, and leaping are today the most important skills for the future of work. Building portfolio careers, multiple streams of income and ventures, are no longer a nice to have. It's a must have, but no one is teaching this except for us in Leap Academy. So if you want more from your career in life, go to Leapacademy.com slash training.

Check out this completely free training about ways to fast-track your career and you'll even be able to book a completely free strategy call with my team. That's leapacademy.com slash training. So cool. Amazing. So you didn't have experience. What was it like to find it? Did you need to like hustle, prove yourself? What did you need to do to get the first one?

Oh, yeah. Obviously interviewing was difficult. I was just fresh out of college. I think I was in, you know, a lot of life has just shown up and being the right place at the right time. So I think it was a lot of that, right place, right time. They needed to, they just opened up the market. They needed to hire people.

And I showed up, you know, naive and fresh-faced and ready to go and full of vigor. And the GM just liked that. And he gave me a chance. And it was tough. It was direct sales driving up into farmers' locations in the Salinas Valley, trying to sell them this new technology, fortunately, which they saw value in because of their occupation and what they did. But it was like one hour I'm selling to a farmer who's growing broccoli in the Salinas Valley. and then two hours later, I'm selling to some wealthy person in Pebble Beach.

And it was this really interesting mix of customer base. And so you have to adjust your style, take the tie off when you go out to the valley, because they think you're trying to convert them to some religion, or put your tie back on when you go to Pebble Beach because, you know, they want a little bit more formal interaction. That was the groundwork that started at all. And I fell in love with tech. And I fell in love with the fact that this industry,

and the broader tech industry is always moving, it's always changing, always innovating, luckily fairly recession-proof over the years. So I really fell in love with that dynamic. And so that's sort of led me in and that's why I kind of have stayed in tech. Amazing. And by the way, you said the word luck

and we literally just had Bill McGuire from Benchmark and he's like an investor in Uber and others. Like he's like an incredible investor. But he basically calls it something like preparedness meets proximity to opportunities. So I think you're talking about, and I might be butchering his quote, but I think you're talking about being really prepared

and ready to be there and create your own luck. So I love that. And then, okay, so take me there. You're in sales. How do you then maneuver slowly into some of these other companies? Yeah, fortunately, after spending two years in sales, I really want to get out of sales. It was great.

I think sales has made me a better marketer and having that experience because you understand that dynamic, but I really wanted to get out of sales. And there was a sort of bridge position, which was called product management, product marketing. I can't remember exactly the title, but it was sort of you had a quota, but you also had to build a marketing plan for a product. And so instead of going out there and beating the street and going direct face to face with a customer, you had to build a marketing plan. And then you had to present that to the sales organization so they could go sell your product. It was kind of one step outside of the sales process. I got to put some of my marketing skills to work and understanding the four P's and value proposition and how to convince people through the marketing lens to buy.

And that was my first bridge over into marketing. And then I just kind of went kind of a marketing and general manager at. For those who don't know anything about marketing, what are the four P's? Product, price, place, and promotion. Like those are the three things. And so that's where I got to put that to really to work for the first time in that discipline. And early on in my marketing career, I got to play in the different disciplines of marketing, right?

I was a marketing manager in a small area where I had to do PR, I had to write press releases. I had to buy media locally. I had to understand that and learn that. A lot of great people that helped me and taught me those disciplines. But I got to play across the marketing mix really, really early in my career, which I think also has contributed to me kind of understanding. Because every CMO can't be good at everything or great at everything. Everyone has sort of their secret sauce.

But you need to have a basic understanding of the disciplines of marketing and at least a basic understanding. And so the more time you've spent across the spectrum of disciplines, I think the better overall CMO you can be. And so I really valued that early on experience of rolling at my sleeves and learning how to write a press release, learning how to buy media across different channels, whether it's print or television or radio. those types of things. So that was super helpful to me. And that's helped me sort of grow my career

up through the marketing ranks. And then that coupled with your recipe of being at the right place at the right time and being prepared when you get there helped me a tremendous amount because window of opportunity open, I literally would jump through and ask questions later. That's one of my philosophical, I guess I would say things, is like always stay in control of your own destiny. Tell me more about that. Like I think a lot of people need to listen to that, what you just said. I think it's really easy, A, to kind of fall into an ethos of where you work or who you work for. And it's super easy. And it's not necessarily a bad thing.

It's just corporations or companies or environments, they want you to conform ultimately to what that entity wants you to do. And so it's easy to get into a rut. It's easy to get complacent. And again, if people like kind of like the day-to-day and just want to be where they want to be and they're happy, peace. But it's easy to sort of get lost. And then you wake up one day and you're like, oh my gosh, it's been 10 years.

How am I still here? What did I miss? Because you get into the day to day and you can't see the forest through the trees anymore. And then you hit your job or you don't like yourself anymore. You don't like your career and where it's headed and then you're better or it's maybe too late to start making some decisions. So for me, I was always like, look ahead, pick your head up every once in a while, see what's going on so you don't run into a or jump off a cliff or run into a, you know, a moving car or whatever. And then when an opportunity you opened up, put your fear aside. And if you think that it can help you grow vertically, horizontally, give you new skills,

maybe it's two steps sideways to go one step forward, go for it. And that's what I've did and what I've done. And it's served me well. I have worked for some horrible people. And I've been in some horrible job situations. And I've been in some amazing job situations and worked for some amazing people, including the current company and role that I'm in. But you learn as much from both.

And I made mistakes. I made the wrong decision, which then I had to go self-correct because I just couldn't be in that environment or I couldn't work for this person in their moral code or their values or whatever it was were misaligned with mine. So I had to make those adjustments.

And it was painful and it hurt. And you almost have to press the reset button and then pick yourself up and start over in some ways. A lot of people go through that. And again, it serves you well as you decide where you're heading. Career paths and life paths are not single-laned and linear. No, especially not now, no. Especially not right now. You know, you got to zig to the right. You got to zig to the left. And, you know, sometimes you feel like, oh, I'm really not going anywhere.

But then all of a sudden, boop, you know, you've made advancement. And I do want to talk a little bit about that because I think it's especially important now. Like, I don't know if people can even be complacent anymore. Like, I think the pace of change is so fast that if you're not insanely intentional, strategic was every move you make, like, I think you will find yourself losing relevant at this pace we've never seen before. And I think that's a big passion of mine in Leap Academy and help everybody become their own economy. And even if they want a job, but you can't just be reliant on somebody else. You need to be somehow in control. But you had some interesting also entrepreneurship experiences. I don't know if we want to touch it just a little bit,

But I do think no matter what, like I think it just creates a whole different perspective if you've seen a little bit of that journey as well. So take me a little bit of some of the biggest lessons from those entrepreneurship things. Yeah, the startup bug is a bug that I would say in some ways you should avoid. Or at least do it young. Please don't. When I decided to get the startup bug, I had three small children and a mortgage and a lot of responsibilities. And it turns out that, you know, like most startups, again, great experience, learned a lot,

but it didn't work out. And so I found myself one day with that moment of what am I going to do, right? How am I going to feed my family? How am I going to make my mortgage? And luckily, again, I had built up a reputation and I made so many friends and built such a network within the tech industry that as soon as I made the decision to pull the rip cord on a very bad toxic situation, inbound came my way. Oh, I heard you're leaving.

Where are you going to do? I have this project. Do you want to come work for me? And I literally said, first I need two weeks to just decompress and get my mind right from this experience I just ejected myself from or pulled myself out of. And then I will re-engage. And I think there's people that, you know,

we all go through this in times in our life. And it's good to take a pause before jumping into stuff. So I took a pause, and then I decided, you know what? For now, I have all these offers to come and do Project X, Project Y. There's a lot of people that needed my help. So I said, great, I will help. And I started a consulting business. I figured it out on my own.

I asked some people that I knew had done it before. Hey, how do you set up an LLC and how do you work this out? And I just decided, you know what, for where my family is and I don't want to leave San Diego. And I can go help people and I can make a living. and so I started consulting. And that actually fed my family and sustained my growth for about six, seven years. And then I ended up forming a partnership and then bringing another partner in.

And so we kind of built ourselves a little practice and covering different sectors. And it was a lot of fun. I got to experience a lot of different clients. I got to learn again how to get into sales mode again and sort of thing for your supper and sell the value of me as a product. Which is hard. That's a very big difference. It's a very big difference. But it was good in a lot of ways. And it was wonderful while it lasted. And I love my former partners dearly. But again, there's signs and signals and inflection points that we all go through. And when they pop up, you know, you kind of have to make decisions.

You kind of have to look at where you head it. I want to stop you for a second. First of all, I think it is important to understand that sometimes you come to something. from a passion, whether you're a coach or a marketing person or whatever, and you want to help with people through consulting or coaching or whatever. And I think one of the things that people miss is that if you're an entrepreneur trying to do this, most of the time you're not actually going to do the thing that you love. You're actually going to do more sales and marketing than you even anticipate, right? So the thing that you love is a tiny, tiny, tiny piece and all the rest is like sales and marketing. So first of all, just put it a lot.

a little bit in perspective, but then how do you know when it's time to say, you know what, now there's an opportunity in Intel or whatever, right? I need to move on. When is it time to leap? Great question. So to answer the first part of the question, what you love is what you love, but you spend like 80% of time selling what you love and convincing people to love what you love. And so the what you love part is very small because you now have to go tell people why they should love what you love, right? So I agree 100%. that is the reality of the situation. And then, like we talked about before,

it's like there are signs. We had an amazing client base from, you know, entertainment and tech and even agencies that we were working with and working for and helping through projects and challenges and things like that. I handled the tech sector. One of my partners handled the entertainment sector.

And then we all helped each other out with each of our projects. And so it came to, I was working with Intel as a consultant, and I met some great people there, really smart people there. and they were starting to pull me in. Hey, have you considered, we could really use you full time?

And I was like, yeah, yeah, yeah. And then one of my partners fell ill and had to take himself out of the game for at least a year to address a health issue. And then the other one of my partners decided he was going to go back into the agency world and start an agency with some other people. And he got that opportunity. So kind of at the same time, I had an offer to jump back into the corporate pool one of my partners fell ill, had to pull the rip cord for at least a year,

and my other partner was entertained. All the signs are telling you. The signs are telling me, okay, it's time. And I had an amazing five-and-a-half years at Intel and learned a lot that's really helped me with this current gig because I played the Intel Inside Playbook for five-and-half years. So learning how to sell something intangible and market something intangible was Intel's game.

So it's definitely served me well in my role here at Qualcomm. But that's how I got in a semi. in this part of the tech ecosystem and was taking that leap into Intel, working with some really smart people. I mean, I was there still with Intel's heyday. Intel was still sort of at the top of the world. Then I think some of the signs were there

that may not last forever, but it was definitely a fun time. And like I said, met a lot of amazing people. And then fast forward five and a half years, I was commuting from San Diego to Santa Clara, which kind of gets old. You know, there's an opportunity, a good friend of mine who I'd worked with in the past,

who's now my chief of staff here of Qualcomm, sent me a text or someone saying, hey, there's this job opening down here. I think me might be interested in it. So I looked at it and I'm like, wow, living and working in the same city, hmm, that might be fun. What a change. What a change. What a startup. And so I threw my name in a hat and several interviews later, they hired me to run product

and technology marketing for the company. And then from there, you know, it's been a whirlwind of amazing innovation. and trials and tribulations and people trying to kill us. And we'll go there and we'll definitely go there. That's incredible. So you're in Intel. At that point, Intel, at least to some extent, it's still doing really well. There's the Intel inside.

They marketed this thing really, really well. And then, on the other hand, Qualcomm wasn't like a beloved consumer brand because I was in tech. Qualcomm was the thing that is somewhere, nobody even knew where. Very behind the scenes. And you felt like you can do something bigger there. What made you feel that? What did you latch on to? Again, because Intel had brilliantly made what they do important

all the way to the consumer level, especially in the case of the PC business, I knew that you could build affinity for technology with a consumer, tell your story, have it matter, and influence the whole value chain. And that's what Intel did brilliantly for over 25 years. I knew that was possible. And then the opportunity with Qualcomm was this amazing technology company that no one

never heard of because for years, this company was perfectly fine, not telling its story. The overarching wisdom was, we're happy for our customers to tell their story. And whatever we contribute to that, it's their story. And you could call it selfless in a little bit, but I think it was a bit naive as well. When you're like only producing product for one category, you're the market share leader and no one can touch you and there's no competition and right, you're not diversifying. It kind of works for a while.

But Qualcomm was bulging and bursting at the seams. Our technology was becoming so pervasive and different product categories and different industries were like, oh, I could use that, I could use that, I could use that. So this diversification was happening almost organically, but yet we were still trying to figure it out. Yeah, but we're still kind of okay

with just people just taking our technology and building amazing things and us not getting credit. But then the dark day, came down upon us, as we like to call them. And that was about eight months into my new gig at Qualcomm. And, you know, one by one, all these adverse conditions fell upon us. Tell me a little more. The U.S. government coming after us for the FTC. We had one of the biggest companies in the world trying to kill us.

We had that company planting narratives into regulators all over the world, false narratives about who we are and what we stood for and why we didn't matter for their own agenda. And then we ended up being the, I say the victim, but in a hostile takeover situation. And so all these things sort of happened a little bit sequentially, but kind of they were going on all at once. Most companies don't go through one of these things, let alone three at the same time, altogether. So it was an interesting time period. But it was clear to us at some point, the light bulb went off. and what made it worse for us in all three of the situations is we hadn't told our story.

And the people that were making decisions, whether it's juries or regulators or whoever or shareholders, about what to do in a situation where it's us versus somebody else, didn't know who we were. And so the people who were trying to attack us got to set the narrative, which then put us on the defensive. and then we had to come from behind to tell our story. So the big learning out of that to just shortcut it to the end is we told ourselves never again. Never again will we put ourselves in this position. And I told myself it's going to be my mission to make sure we tell our story.

Because A, it's an amazing story of American innovation, of a company started here in San Diego on a thought and a spirit that we could make communication better, we could give people more access, we could demurricular, we could demolish. We could democratize technology. There was so much goodness in that as a great enabler. And so never again were we going to let someone else strike a narrative and try to tell the world who we were or weren't. And that's what really started the journey. And then from there, it's blossomed into are we just B2B or B2 human or are we going all the way to consumer?

And then the Snapdragon brand was born and nurtured. And all the things that we've done from that point forward, and I became CMO in 2021, which then accelerated our journey because Christiano and I, you know, had a great relationship when he was present in COO and I was running product and technology marketing. So within a week of each other, we ascended. He ascended to CEO. I ascended to CMO. And then we had great conversations about how we saw this world going forward when it comes to brand and products and marketing and telling our story. And we just started executing on it. And then bringing the team together, hiring great people, restructuring for the future.

because we were still diversifying. We were still growing into more things. And so how do we keep up with that and the pace of change and a world that moves at the speed of TikTok? So, you know, all that has been part of this journey. And it's been so fun. It sounds incredible. I mean, you're right in the cast of all the innovation

and all the change. And it's moving at a pace that we've never seen before. I want to ask you two questions. One about the leadership situation, because you fell into this leadership situation. that nobody really teaches you how to go through. And right now you're feeling your entire world is going upside down a little bit.

How is the leader, are you able to navigate it and how are you able to, on one hand, maybe make everybody else feel like things are under control, hopefully, or in some ways, I don't know, or maybe not? And how do you sleep at night? Tell us a little bit, because I think a lot of leaders are right now going into hard situations on their own. So I think they need to hear this a little bit. I think as leaders,

we go through a lot. And some of it's in we have control over some things we don't. I think the pandemic was a big test of leadership for all of us, right? Trying to keep teams motivated as they felt more isolated and how to really bring empathy into the conversation, into your leadership style, because people were facing things that we hadn't seen in the world. work environment ever. And so dealing with that was a huge challenge. But, you know, that's where you have to dig deep and pull out some of your skills from the past and say, okay, this is an adverse situation. How do we handle this? And then creativity and open-mindedness and ideation and all those things have to come together to kind of help you get through it. And marketing, obviously, for our own team

and for our own selves, how to apply that to our team and to ourselves. But we also had to help apply it the company because they were looking to us for those ideas and that creativity to make sure that this employee population did not become so disengaged that it slowed us down or that it took us off our game. And, you know, that was a tough period. It was a tough period. And so that was a big learning lesson, life lesson time. I think fast forward to today, there's challenges every year, every day, every month, whatever. They're just different. Some are greater or some are not. But we all face challenges. And being a CMO is a challenging position in general, especially working for a tech company. So there's going to be challenges, and it's not for the faint of heart. I like to say my

team is a bunch of adrenaline junkies because the pace of innovation, the speed at which we have to operate, the delivery we need to deliver for the business. There's a lot of great strategic thinking and planned sort of initiatives. And there's a lot of dive and catch, a lot of dive and catch. We have a very dynamic environment. We have a very dynamic CEO who's amazing and has lots of thoughts and ideas sometimes that he wants executed in 24 hours. So, you know, you've got to have that agility and that nimbleness. And I've always been a sort of work, hard, play hard kind of person and have fun because you spend 90% of your life at work. You might as well have fun. And so you've got to kind of find that right recipe and that mixture that kind of feels good to you and works for your

environment. And just one step at a time, you have to face everything one step at a time. It's easy to get overwhelmed. And I think it's easy these times. These days especially, it's easy for people to get overwhelmed, especially now, add the environment that we're operating in with the generational shift in either resilience or lack thereof in some of our younger generation. And that could be a recipe for disaster. I went off the podcast for an interview where the host asked me, if you want a gift to Gen Z and Gen Alpha, what would that gift be? And I said, resilience. I'm trying with our kids, right, to make them resilient and have them go through situations that builds resilience, be there for them, be that safety net,

but also kick them out of the nest, let them fly, you know, and crash and burn and get back up and all those types of things. Resilience is a precious commodity, and it's lacking, I think, these days. And again, nobody's fault, not placing blame. It's just... Lacking period. Yeah. Right? Yeah, things happen. And this generation, if you look at it and the aggregate until the pandemic, which was a pretty mentally and emotionally scarring time for a lot of people, generations prior had been through some big world event or life event that triggered the resilience bug or button. And so I think it was taken for granted. And so I think that would be one thing. It's just we need people to be resilient. We need to

help them build resilience so that they're ready to take on the challenges of the future. That's one thing that I would say, again, we need more. of, and if I could gift it to the world, I would gift it to the world. And you're right, because I think I get, you know, I'm lucky enough to speak to some of the biggest leaders of our time about their careers and whatever. And if I need to summarize the podcast in one word, it's probably resilience. You know, like, I'm really like, right? But maybe just tell us, if somebody is right now trying to figure out, I mean, there are lack of jobs in general, like ageism to some extent exists to some extent. You don't want to,

but I mean, it's like, if you didn't tell a good enough story for why I want you 50, then I might hire you when you're 25, right? I mean, let's be real. So ageism is there, losing relevant is there. What do you think people need to do right now? There's a huge people's pile and people with AI. Everybody is an average now. So the question, how do you rise about the noise. How do you get out the people pile? What do you see, Dawn, when you're hiring or when you're looking for people? What do you see in the organization? It's sort of a dichotomy, right? So you've got a generation that's never had more opportunity to explore their passions and pursue their passions with the shared economy. Everyone can be an influencer. There's so many ways to earn a living,

quote unquote. So many ways. And I'm so envious of Gen Z because of their fearlessness with regards to that. We thought, graduate in college, go backpacker around Europe for a few months, and then come back, and then get a job, right? And get a job and stability and a paycheck and a 401k and, you know, all that kind of stuff. And that was just how we were taught and how we were brought up and, you know, go get that job and go get that stability. And that's just not the way they think. They think, you know, multiple jobs, I want to do what I love. I'm not tied to one thing. I'm a multi-dimensional person and I have these talents and I have outlets for these talents. And these talents can make me money. So on the one hand, you've got that environment, which is fantastic, right? And technology

has enabled a lot of that, some of the good parts of technology. But then on the other hand, you have a lot of anxiety and a lot of fear. And you have technology like AI throwing people off a little bit with regards to what is a job anymore? What does that look like? And how do I break in? And how do I start if AI can do a lot of task-oriented things for us? And, you know, when you start in your career, a lot of your entry-level positions are task-oriented, because that's how you learn to then get to sort of a managerial sort of thing and then get to a more strategic thing, get to a leadership thing.

So if that starting point's not there anymore, how do you get to that next phase? So there's a lot of questions for sure. My philosophy has always been, AI is not going to take your job. You might be replaced by somebody who knows how to use that as AI, right? to do their job, but it's not going to fully take your job because you're a human, you can do things, right? And a lot of my younger employees that are coming in, new hires, are coming in AI-Native anyway. And so they're not really fearful of it because a lot of,

I was with the CMO of SNAP a few weeks ago in a meeting. And she was like, you know, this generation is like, they love AI because they're using it for fun. So they're creating videos with Sora, you know, they're getting therapy from chat TVT. It's like they're not afraid of AI. they're using it to fill needs and things in their life, whether it's entertainment or laughing or creativity or therapy. And so they're coming in kind of AI native. They're not afraid of the technology, but then you have to teach them how to apply it to productivity

and to their work environment to help them do their job and achieve their goals. It's really the middle layer that I think most people are worried about, right? Because to the middle layer who've been doing things the same way for years, years in years, change is hard. And it's not just about upskilling. That's kind of a misnomer. It's retraining and really helping these people figure out, can they adapt to this new world? And some of them don't want to. And some of them do want to. And so because the leaders are driving

the change. They're in. They're bought in. We got to do this. Got to do that. Let's drive change. And the younger generations are coming in ready to use the tools, to leverage the tools. They know how to use the tools. And then it's just really this middle layer. So that's what I'm most worry about in my organization is how do we retrain the mindset of these people along with the skill sets of these people to help them be successful for another five, ten years or whatever. And so that's what we're thinking about. We're working on. I've just gone through some restructuring to kind of help with that.

And so that's the thing that I'm most concerned about right now in this environment. Everything else is sort of noise, and you can always kind of get through the noise, but it's the basic fundamental, how do I get my job done? going forward and where's the value created from the work that I do. Those are the questions that people are asking themselves, their managers, their companies. And then, you know, again, on the flip side, people are using these tools to create careers for themselves, right? Or opportunities for themselves. So I'm curious, Don, because I think we're one of the few to actually teach portfolio careers. And again, reinvention and portfolio careers. So I think for some people,

it's only about reinvention. For some of them, it is about portfolio careers. And a lot the executives are like, oh my God, I didn't realize I can do advisory and board seats and speaking and whatever. And like, and suddenly they find this like a whole thing. But then there's like a portfolio, right? So what I'm curious about is as a CMO, how do you also see it in your organization? I do believe eventually everybody will have some kind of a side thing that you do either because it's fun or it's, it's build you, you know, the next thing that you want to learn or it's like it gives you a little bit of. And as long as it doesn't hurt the organization, You still need to be hungry.

We need to be successful. You need to be loyal. Like, I am big on that, right? But how do you see that as an organization? And is that a no-go? Is that cool? And how do you navigate it as a manager? It's not easy.

I think it's super valuable. People need to have time to do different things. We give people a day a quarter to self-improve, whatever they want to do. They can spend that day going to a spa, right? They can spend that day going to a training class, a cooking class, an art class, you know, speaker training, you know, whatever. And by the way, we've made that available and then we said it's up to you, right? No one's going to hold your hand. And one's going to pat you on the back and say, have you done your day of training yet or your day of whatever?

It's up to you. It's there for it to take, but you have to be self-motivated. You have to take advantage of it. So it is up to you to take advantage of it. It's important to make that available for people because you're right. I mean, Gen Z's coming in with like 17. side hustles. My son, it's got like 17 side hustles. And so they're like, no problem, right? And if they took a job where it didn't allow them that freedom, they'd be like, what's going on here?

But giving someone a speakership opportunity or nurturing them as a speaker on behalf of your company and your story and then giving them that path to do something different than just, oh, I work on the product, but now I get to talk about the product. That's a new skill set. That's a new thing for them to do within their career or within their job. And so it expands and it gives them sort of ways to move into other things, you know, give people a chance to publish, right? There's all these platforms, right? LinkedIn, you know, one of the best platforms to give people a voice, become a subject matter expert, not just, which by the way, provides value back to the company, right? But it also provides them an outlet for personal growth. And I think that's really important. And I love when people on my

team are within Qualcomm, and we have some amazing, very smart inventors here at the company that have a gazillion patents and invented some super cool technology that deserve to celebrate that and benefit from that emotionally and personally and even financially. So I think that's the new world and that's the world that we live in. And if companies are afraid of that, then they're not going to be a very desirable place to work. I love that. Thank you, Don. So maybe tell us a little bit about what you're excited about in Qualcomm overall right now and also if there would be like something that you would wish. I know, I know.

So you're going to, I mean, I have all the time in the world, but I'm sure you don't. And then like, and maybe just like a tip for, you know, if you would go back to your younger self, what would you wish, except for resilient, but you had it, right? So what would you wish somebody told you? I'm excited about so much right now. Like I said earlier, we, we are diversifying. Our technology has proven to be so pervasive and be applicable to so many different things. So I'm excited about our robotics business and the growth.

of that. I'm excited about the brand building that we've done and the storytelling we've done at the Qualcomm level, at the Snapdragon level, for Qualcomm to show up on Interbrand's 100 for the first time in 40 years at number 39. That's just a huge pivotal moment for the company and so proud that my team and everyone else here, Qualcomm sort of drove to that place, that inflection point. Snapdragon's showing up on Cantar Brand Z at number 38. So I'm excited about a lot, and there's a lot to be excited about because this is a company that never stops in innovating, never stops growing. And so daily I get excited about stuff. As far as like what would I tell my younger self, I get this question a lot, actually. So I would say if I would have known a little

earlier than one of my mentors kind of brought it to my attention, sometimes you have to be hit over the head with stuff, you know, to realize it. But I think, you know, if someone would have told me earlier than this person told me that the how you do something is almost as important as what you do, that would have served me well. Tell me more. Well, I mean, I'm a very results-oriented person. Always have been. And so there's a propensity to get so focused on the what that you just drive through everything.

And it's the bull in the China Shop syndrome, right? It's that I'm just going to get to the end game, I'm going to get to the finish line. I'm going to get to the end zone no matter who's in my way or what's in my way. I'm just going to do it. And then you end up like, you know, leaving dead bodies in your path. And so you may have got to the end zone. You may have got to the finish line. But the next time you try on your next project or your next initiative,

are you going to have the trust and respect and the collaboration of the people that you just punted to the sidelines, right? Or not, right? And so it's a very isolating. Guiltiest charge too. It's a very isolating sort of way of achieving your goals. And someone finally sat me down and I had a little bit of that problem. And so I was thankful for the feedback. I was pissed off, of course,

I was getting it. But I was thankful for it. And that balance of you got to bring people along with you, right? You've got to be a good communicator. You got to present, you know, reasoning and rationale and give people a chance to absorb and bring them along with you so that it's ultimately going to be more successful. And you are going to be more successful. And having achieved that goal, if you can focus on the how a little bit more.

And that was a nice life lesson for me. And I even apply it outside of work, right? You know, when my kids have tested my last nerve and I want to go straight to the ramifications of what they've done, I often think about the how. And what's going to be the most effective way, right, to have this conversation. So I think that's one thing. I think if someone would have told me it a little bit earlier in my career, probably would have served me well.

None. I love this conversation. I can probably talk to you like many, many, many more hours, but seriously, thank you for sharing and for everything that you guys do. I mean, for me, I mean, Kwokom was like this like thing that when I was in Intel, we kind of knew about it. And it's like, so just seeing how are you morphed. So good.

So good. Well, thanks, Deelana, for having me. It's been a pleasure. Thank you for the conversation. Amazing. Well, I hope you enjoyed this conversation with Dawn as much as I did. as so many nuggets. So basically he says, how do you do something is more important than what you do. What an incredible way to say it. He also reminds you to control your own destiny, which is exactly

what we talk about in Leap Academy of how do you not get complacent? How do you wake up, become more intentional, more strategic, reinvent yourself, figure out what you want to do, always be leap ready, build a brand because that's your currency. That is the only insurance policy you have. And how do you leverage AI because AI won't replace you, but someone else that knows it will? So I am so excited about this conversation. If you loved it, please share it with as many people as you can. We're on a mission to help tens of millions of people reinvent and leap their career because it's going to be really, really hard these days.

There's going to be tens of millions of people losing jobs and losing relevance because of AI. And I believe that any single driven person can find transparency. skills to reinvent themselves and be successful and create portfolio careers for themselves. So I am super passionate about it. So I want you to help me spread the word. So first of all, like, subscribe to the channel, download. And if you can share it, that will be amazing. And if you can give us a quick five-star review, that means the world because that means that more amazing people can come to the show. So that's a big ask for me. And then I want to go into the Q&A section of the show. And remember every week, I go.

to our YouTube channel, Leap Academy, and I look for questions in the comments. So first of all, feel free to add your questions in the comments. I read all of them, and I decide which one we want to kind of shine a light, and I want to answer here. And we already had questions about so many things like your must have, and how do you decide what you want to do next, and how do you experiment with your career, and so many things, and how do you tell a story? So feel free to go back into previous episodes. And today, we are going to talk about a question that Debbie had, a beautiful question. And it's a hard question. What if I don't believe I can land a job in this economy? And first of all, I want to give you a big hug, Debbie. And thank you for being brave.

Thank you for sharing the question. And it is really, really hard these days. And the truth is, I wish I could tell you it's going to get better. I do think it's going to get harder before it gets better. Hands, why I do believe what I say going to say now is super important and why I want to make sure that if you can come to one of our free trainings, so, so, so important. If you can come to LeapCon three days training, super critical. So what I want you to do is think about it as like a little square. Okay. On the side, beliefs. We'll start with experiences. The more things you experience in life, the more you slowly build those beliefs. that you can do something, right? Now, those experiences can also be hard, right? So the beliefs can start

shattering, right? You can start feeling like, oh my God, I got the rejections. Nobody will hire me, age, whatever. Like, all of these things are really, really hard. But the truth is, when you build those beliefs, if you force yourself to believe that it's possible, guess what, will you take more action or less action? You will actually take more action, right? Because if you believe that you're going to hear back, you're going to send more requests. If you're going to believe a hiring manager will get back to you, you're going to reach out to more hiring managers. If you believe people will reach out, right? And now it becomes a numbers game, right? You're going to reach out to a lot of people. Some of them will come back. Some of them are not. But the beautiful thing is when you believe and

you take more action, you see more results. When you see more results, it creates better experiences. It evokes better beliefs. Again, creates more action, create more results. This is how. we create momentum. So clarity comes from action, not just thinking about it, not just dreaming about it, and definitely not letting our drama dictate the action that we take. So again, force yourself to build conviction that there is a chance that it's going to work, right? You don't know, but there is a chance you're going to work. If you're going to tell yourself, I don't believe I can land a job, guess what, you're going to take less action because you don't believe that it's worth it. So why not binge Netflix or whatever, right? The things that we do to cope,

I did all of them to cope with my own fears, right? But guess what? If you don't take action, you're also not going to see results. And now this prophecy that you're actually feeding yourself because you're just like, see, I didn't make it. So now I really don't have the belief. And now I really not going to take action. Now I'm really going to see results. And then we go in a downward spiral. What I want you to do is change their narrative. Like really force yourself to look at the experiences that did work, the experiences that did latch on, the experiences that did create great results.

I want you to look at them all through your life and create this belief of saying, you know what, not only they're going to land this jang, I'm going to land the best job possible because they're going to be so lucky to have me. And with that belief, you're going to create more action and with that action,

you're going to create more results. And I'm just wishing you a ton, a ton of luck and lots of possibilities. If this is helpful to anybody else, write me in the comments on YouTube. Like, I want to know. And again, this means the world. Do share. And I will see you soon.

Remember this episode. It's not just for you and me. You never know whose life you are meant to change by sharing this episode with them. And if you love today's episode, please click the subscribe or download button for the show and give it a five-star review. This really means the world. Join me in helping tens of millions of individuals reinvent the world. career and leap into their full potential.

Look, getting intentional and strategic with your career is now more important than ever. The skills for success have changed. AQ, adaptability, reinventing, and leaping are today the most important skills for the future of work. Building portfolio careers, multiple streams of income and ventures are no longer a nice to have. It's a must have. But no one is teaching this except for us in Leap Academy.

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