#225 CEO Lattice, Sarah Franklin: Trailblazer

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Jan 13, 2025

Sarah Franklin, CEO of Lattice, shares her insights on courageous leadership and the importance of trust within teams. She discusses the challenges of humanizing AI and the need for responsibility in tech development, warning against the pitfalls observed in social media. Franklin emphasizes nurturing resilience in children through independence and essential life skills. Her reflections also touch on learning from experiences and redefining success beyond monetary gains, advocating for impactful leadership and innovation in an evolving workplace.

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ANECDOTE

Early Life and Motivation

Growing up with a single mom, Franklin had to work from a young age, which instilled a strong work ethic.
She pursued engineering for financial security, initially prioritizing money for her future children.

INSIGHT

Money and Happiness

Money doesn't buy happiness; true value lies in love, education, and perspective.
Experiences like loss and social comparison help shift focus from material possessions.

ADVICE

Learnings, Not Regrets

Don't dwell on regrets; focus on learning from experiences to make better future decisions.
Pause and prioritize important things despite ambitions.

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Guest: Sarah Franklin, CEO of Lattice

As the CEO of a growing company, Lattice’s Sarah Franklin has learned that one of her most important contributions is taking a leap of faith. “You have to have the courage to be the first one to do it,” she says,” and to show that it can be done, and to pave the way so that then your team feels trust.”

Sarah cautions, though, that sometimes courage is deciding to stop and go a different direction. As agentic AI becomes more common, the people building companies like Lattice should look to the “cautionary tales” of how social media and mobile phones have changed society, she says.

“We can have the courage to say, what are the outcomes that we want to prevent? Or what are the outcomes that we want to make sure happen? This all takes, courage, because it’s all unknown.”

Chapters:

(01:14) - Schooling in Mexico
(04:09) - Raising brave children
(10:28) - Sarah’s upbringing
(13:29) - The pursuit of money
(16:23) - Measuring success
(19:28) - Learnings, not regrets
(22:55) - Make an impact
(26:44) - Pitching Trailhead
(32:56) - Elevating a B2B company
(35:27) - How to colonize Mars
(38:39) - Marketing, the Salesforce way
(44:21) - Dolphining and truth-tellers
(50:56) - Renewed purpose
(56:30) - The challenges of being CEO
(01:00:18) - Pave the way
(01:03:25) - “Humanizing AI”
(01:06:57) - Handling controversy
(01:11:04) - Who Lattice is hiring and what “grit” means to Sarah

Mentioned in this episode: FaceTime, Salesforce, Marc Benioff, Mahatma Gandhi, Instagram, the Fortune 500, Java, Jerry Maguire, National Parks, Nike, Michael Jordan, Apple and “Think Different,” Sara Varni, Scott Holden, Andy Kofoid, Databricks, Datadog, Behind the Cloud, Oracle, Microsoft, Elon Musk, Amazon AWS, George Hu, Mike Rosenbaum, Cheryl Feldman, Zac Otero, Guidewire Software, AI agents, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, and LinkedIn.

Links:

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This episode was edited by Eric Johnson from LightningPod.fm