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Today’s show featured an interview with Anthony Robbins, the 2025 IES Lifetime Achievement Award recipient, and his daughter Megan Robbins from NVIDIA.
Get your tickets to the 15th Annual Sales Excellence Awards here. They will be on May 1 at the Mclean Hilton in Tysons Corner, VA.
IES Women in Sales Program Director Gina Stracuzzi also co-hosted the interview.
Find Anthony on LinkedIn. Find Megan on LinkedIn.
ANTHONY’S TIP: “Early-in-career people have to get a good coach in their corner, they have to have mentors that they engage with, and they have to be really dialed into building subject matter expertise. The relationships Megan is developing today, she will have these relationships for 10 or 20 and sometimes 30 years. Investing in these relationships is really important.”
MEGAN’S TIP: “Just show up. Get out there in your community as much as you can, whatever profession or industry you choose. Build out your network.”
THE PODCAST BEGINS HERE
Fred Diamond: We have Anthony Robbins and Megan Robbins, Gina. What do you think?
Gina Stracuzzi: I think it’s pretty exciting. I’ve just had the privilege of meeting Anthony right now for the first time, and I’ve known Megan now for a couple of years. She came to our first conference and then went through our Emerging Leaders Program. I’m psyched to be talking to her.
Fred Diamond: Yeah, it’s a lot of fun. Megan was actually at the award event last year when we recognized the great Jim Kelly who was at Dell. Now he’s at Google. Megan, tell all of your father’s friends that they need to register for the event. They need to come.
Megan Robbins: Already have.
Fred Diamond: I know he’s very humble, but we’re definitely excited. It’s going to be a fun show. Anthony, it’s good to see you. You’re retiring. You’ve already announced your retirement, as a matter of fact, in early March. We’re doing the interview today in the middle of March. One of the reasons why we decided to do this show is you did a post about a month ago, I guess, where you took Megan out to California and took her around the hallways of NVIDIA. The LinkedIn post must have gotten thousands, if not tens of thousands, of interactions.
Anthony, for people who don’t know you, give us a little bit of an introduction. Then, Megan, you give us a little bit of an introduction and then we’ll start the formal part of the interview.
Anthony Robbins: Having the chance to work with Megan at the very end of my career and then seeing Megan join a company like NVIDIA, it’s one of my professional highlights. What a thrill. Needless to say, as a dad, I couldn’t be happier to have and share this experience. I’ve been in sales. Fred, you and I met a long time ago. I got in sales in the sporting goods industry after I got out of college. I played sports in college. It was shortly thereafter that I got in the technology business. I spent 39 years in tech serving mostly the federal marketplace, a little bit of the global public sector marketplace and then over time the state and local marketplace.
I was always fascinated with the profession of sales, and especially the way sales has changed from the time that I started. I was always a student of the game, if you will. I worked for 42 years following graduation from college. I’ve been really fortunate. I’ve been really blessed to have worked with some just fantastic companies, and of course, the best one at the end of my career, at NVIDIA. I’ve had a chance to work with folks like yourselves and Rick Simmons and many other leaders on this beltway over time.
As a taxpayer, I serve the largest marketplace in the world. The US federal government is the largest, most complex marketplace in the world, probably the hardest to sell into. It takes a lot of time to develop skills and experience, and I’ve thoroughly enjoyed the challenge of trying to figure out how to do good for those that are stewards of the taxpayer dollars.
Fred Diamond: First of all, you were on episode number nine of the Sales Game Changers Podcast. When we first started, you were with a previous company and you had just moved on to NVIDIA. Yeah, selling to the Federal Marketplace, it’s been referred to on past Sales Game Changers Podcasts as the NFL of tech sales. It’s the biggest market, it’s the most competitive, everybody wants to get there. Megan, it’s great to see you. Why don’t you give us a little bit of an introduction as well?
Megan Robbins: I’m newer in my career. I’ve had a great mentor in my dad in tech sales. I started in college studying sales. I had the chance to work at Dell doing tech sales to the federal government as well. Now, most recently, I started at NVIDIA, which has been really, really exciting to me. I’m new, I’m about five months in, and it’s just been five months of excitement. It’s an incredible company and I feel so fortunate to work here and to have the example of my dad to follow.
Fred Diamond: When all people ask me about starting their careers in sales, I always say it’s great to start with a big brand. Obviously, Dell and NVIDIA are two of the biggest names. Anthony, we alluded to the fact that you just retired as the public sector leader for NVIDIA, and the ride was a remarkable one. Obviously one of the most high-profile companies in the whole tech space. What was it like leading sales for a company that has been so visible and on such an upward trajectory?
Anthony Robbins: It’s a really good question. As I was thinking about that question, you got to rewind the tape a little bit because I was at Silicon Graphics when we sold our crown jewel, we refer to as OpenGL, or Open Graphics Library, to Jensen Huang, the NVIDIA CEO, more than 30 years ago. When NVIDIA was a startup, SGI sold some technology to them more than 30 years ago. At the time we sold the technology, thinking the market had moved downstream, the margins weren’t very good, it was highly competitive. In fact, there were 60 companies in the marketplace of high-end 3D graphics for PCs. SGI was all but exiting that marketplace. That was my first exposure to NVIDIA.
I watched the company, many in the industry that I grew up with worked at NVIDIA and for Jensen. Then when they wanted to expand their federal market, I got a call and when I started with them, we were about an $8 billion company. In this past fiscal year, NVIDIA closed out over $130 billion in revenue. Of course, based on market cap, there have been times over the past year where NVIDIA was the largest company in the world based on market cap. It’s been thrilling needless to say.
Early days marketing what the NVIDIA company had in its technology portfolio, many in government had no idea about NVIDIA. Literally when I started, major government agencies would come visit us and have no concept as to exactly what NVIDIA did. Most would know us either from high-end graphics or gaming. There’s a part in the early days it was about positioning the amazing technology that we even had way back then, seven and a half years ago. Then today, there’s almost nobody in the world that doesn’t know NVIDIA. NVIDIA is in fact behind the world’s progress in artificial intelligence.
Today, representing the NVIDIA brand comes with a lot of responsibility, because in artificial intelligence, it’s the greatest technology transformation in the history of the world. NVIDIA is the most important company in that technology transformation. When customers call us, they expect us to be equal to that task, to be really good at our craft. Whether you’re in sales or marketing or business development, whether you’re in end user sales or the channel, we have to be really good at helping guide the government in the largest technology transformation in history. It comes with a lot of responsibility. In a word, I would say it’s a great challenge to be an NVIDIA employee today.
Gina Stracuzzi: That’s a great lead-in to what I was going to ask you, Megan, which is now you’re following in your father’s footsteps and you’ve got a big set of shoes to fill, so to speak. I’m sure everybody there knows you. Did you intend to follow in your father’s footsteps? What was it like growing up in the house? Do you have siblings? Are they all in sales or is it just you?
Megan Robbins: I’ve got four siblings. One of them is in sales, one’s in a digital creative field, one was more the finance accounting route, and I’ve got a brother that’s still in college playing football. We all went in different directions, and my dad always encouraged us to pursue our passions in whichever direction we went in. I didn’t intend to go into sales. I actually started studying hospitality, and that’s why I chose Florida State. Fortunate for me, they have a sales program in college. When I switched into the College of Business, I started as a sales major, and that’s really when my dad and I started connecting on the profession. Then I had the chance to intern on Dell’s federal sales team, and it pulled all the pieces together for me about the work that he does and this profession. It was a really cool experience for me to have that connection point with him.
Fred Diamond: Anthony, what’s your advice for Megan and for others like her as they start their career journey?
Anthony Robbins: I think there’s a couple things that’s really important, especially for early in career people. Coaches matter. I always think for young, early-in-career people, is to find coaches that are outside of their management chain. Of course, Megan gets coaching here at NVIDIA from her manager, and then Carrie Almeida, who we all know who’s just fantastic. She’ll get coaching there. I also think it’s important to get coaching outside of your chain of command so you can just obtain a different perspective about solving problems, whether it’s managing your career and the like. Coaching and mentoring is a big deal. Gina mentioned it earlier, and Megan’s participated in many programs with you guys. Whether it’s women in sales or women in tech, mentoring is just a huge opportunity I think for early-in-career people.
Then the game today is subject matter expertise. You have to be really good. If your profession is sales, you have to be excellent at that. If your market is the federal marketplace, Megan started her career in the healthcare marketplace, you have to learn that healthcare marketplace or whatever aspect of the federal marketplace they’re in. Subject matter expertise is what people look for in professionals like us, because the business of sales and marketing and business development has changed more in the last 10 years than it did in the last 100 years. I think early-in-career people, they got to get a good coach in their corner, they have to have mentors that they engage with, and they have to be really dialed into building subject matter expertise in the area of their interest and/or responsibility.
Gina Stracuzzi: That’s advice you always give, Fred, to young sales professionals. Be the go-to person for something. Figure out what it is that really turns you on, and then become the subject matter expert at it. It really makes a difference. Megan, Fred and I just went to a collegiate selling competition over the weekend. We were just blown away by the level of professionalism and hunger and excitement in these young people coming into sales. Tell us a little bit about what you took in college relating to sales, and then let’s relate it to what you’ve learned so far in your career working at Dell and now NVIDIA. How did that prepare you?
Megan Robbins: It’s incredible, isn’t it, that collegiate sales network, the industry, it’s something that I learned about once I got to Florida State. I’m fortunate that I had the chance to do it because I was on our sales team for two semesters. I competed at those competitions you’re referencing. I had the chance to coach a team one semester. What they teach us in that program is so valuable. We’re learning how to conduct ourselves in a sales meeting, how to prepare, how to follow up, how to network, interview skills. All of that is just a great foundation of sales that the students are actively seeking. They’re students that want to go and care about the profession of sales. It’s just such a high level. It was a really, really cool program to be a part of.
Every lesson that I learned in my sales program in college, under Pat Pallentino and Chuck Viosca, all of that transferred directly into my sales career post-grad. It’s been a huge advantage to me, because I came into the industry with such a good understanding of the profession of sales and how to be successful in it.
Anthony Robbins: I would just say, Fred and Gina, you remember in our days, what was it, the Xerox sales training or something that we all started with? That was way after college. I never knew that there were sales programs available in college. Then when Megan got into that program, Florida State was flying her to sales competitions, where she was competing both on the sales team and then she coached the team. It was amazing to see the evolution, but not surprising, because it’s a really important profession. I think, Fred and Gina, that’s why I think you guys have done so well, is because every company, world-class or otherwise, requires excellent sellers. Oftentimes, people have had to go get that training outside of their college degree or outside of the early jobs that they had. The programs that you guys offer and others, I think gives us a chance to become excellent at our craft.
Fred Diamond: When I went to college, I was a history major, and I remember my father asking me if I got a job as a historian yet coming out of school. Did you support her choice of major when she said she eventually was going to move into the professional sales degree program?
Anthony Robbins: A hundred percent. Here’s the thing, for me, I used to say to all my kids, I said, “There’s no way when you go to college that you actually know what you want to be when you grow up.” College was an opportunity to learn. I guess maybe there’s 5% of those 18-year-olds that know what they want to be when they’re 30 and 40 and 50 and 60, but a very small percentage. I said, “Just get started and move in some direction.”
Then in Megan’s case, she chose Florida State because it was a top-five school with respect to hospitality program. Then she migrated towards sales. She was just blossoming and she really got into it and she did quite well. Then JK and Surya and John and team over at Dell gave her a great opportunity when she graduated. I was pleased that she went in that direction. I hope she would tell you that I didn’t push her in that direction, but always supported her. I have loved it.
This is an incredible profession, especially with respect to serving the federal marketplace. There’s such great responsibility because the federal government spends our taxpayer dollars. As stewards of our taxpayer dollars, we have to help them do well with how they spend our money. I think this is a wonderful market. It’s an absolutely thrilling profession. I’m pleased to see it. But if she said to me, in a year from now, she’s going in a different direction, I’d be okay with that too, Fred.
Gina Stracuzzi: Megan, you’re a business partner manager now. Talk to us a little bit about what you’ve learned working in the channel.
Megan Robbins: It’s been really interesting for me working in the channel. I really like getting to see the view of the entire federal government and the entire public sector managing our distribution business. When I was at Dell, I was in a direct sales role supporting our federal healthcare business and managing our relationship with health and human services. I was really deep with that customer and I really got to understand what their mission is and the work that they were doing and how to support them. It’s been really exciting for me now to be able to broaden that view and get to see what our channel partners are doing to support all of these government agencies and all of our public sector customers.
Fred Diamond: Anthony, I want to talk about building relationships. You mentioned you’ve been in this market for 40 some odd years. You’ve done a couple of posts about retiring. I know a lot of people who also commented and people from Silicon Graphics and AT&T and NVIDIA, of course, in the earlier places that you might’ve worked. Talk about building relationships, how critical it is for sales success, especially in the public sector markets. A lot of people spend their entire careers in the market, and it’s a great market to serve. Give some advice to Megan specifically, and then also to the junior sales professionals, about the investment in building relationships and how to make them happen and how to get out there.
One of the challenges that a lot of the junior sales professionals have had the last couple years is they’ve been in their apartments or in their homes. Everything’s over Zoom. They don’t know a lot about going to AFCEA, which of course you led for a number of years. Give some advice on that.
Anthony Robbins: It’s such a good question. Oftentimes you still hear people say, people buy from people, even as AI is storming into the sales profession and things are going to change again, just like when social media had a gigantic impact on selling. Relationships matter a lot. There’s two sides of this equation. One is, there’s the partnership side of this. Defense contractors like Lockheed Martin or FFRDCs like MITRE, and distributors like Carahsoft, and resellers like GAI, and OEMs like Dell, what I have found in my career is the employees of all those companies either stay there a long time or go elsewhere, but still serve the same marketplace. It’s very likely that the relationships that Megan is developing today, she will have these relationships for 10 or 20 and sometimes 30 years. Investing in these relationships is really important for the purpose of serving her immense responsibility of being a subject matter expert to the federal marketplace.
Then if I go to the federal marketplace, I think about the value of relationships. We recently had an election and there’s a new administration that comes in. With any change of administration, 6,000 jobs come and go. The senior executives and the department heads of all these agencies come and go with any elected administration. What is constant in the federal government are the middle managers. So many of those middle managers spend their whole career in government. We’ve always said the same thing, middle managers have a memory of elephants. If you do well for them, they remember forever. If you screw up, they remember forever. It’s really important, when we’re building out enterprise solutions for maybe how the Social Security Administration might run, or how the FAA deals with air traffic control, or how the Department of Defense may deploy a mission-critical application in enterprise, those are really important programs and opportunities. We have to be really good at serving them. If we make mistakes, you have to work through those, because everyone’s going to make mistakes, but you have to work through those in demonstrating a capacity to do good by those customers.
I look at it as there’s the middle managers in government that’s really important, and then there’s the ecosystem. Developing relationships in both of those key areas are really important. I wish I had done a better job of building lasting ecosystem relationships early in my career, like where Megan is. Frankly, not just as her dad, but as a sales leader, I think she’s off to a tremendous start of building lasting relationships early in her career. It’s just a joy actually to see her operate.
Gina Stracuzzi: Megan, have you started building these relationships? I can imagine you are, you’re incredibly personable and you ask a lot of questions, and you just strike me as someone who gets that that’s a necessary piece. Talk to us about how you’ve started building these, and have you found it easy or difficult? What advice would you have for younger women especially in this tough industry?
Megan Robbins: First off, thank you for saying that. I’ve tried to raise my hand and volunteer and say yes and show up everywhere I can. I’ll admit, especially when I first started working, walking into a conference or an event, or an awards dinner, or an organization like AFCEA or your Women in Sales group, Gina, any of those groups, it’s a little intimidating at first going into a room where you know not a single person. But I think that has been a huge advantage for me early in my career, just showing up as much as I can. Then you know one more person at the next event. I feel like I’ve built a really great community being a part of so many of these organizations and just showing up as much as I can, because it’s a really, really great community, this industry. I’m glad for the time I’ve spent here so far, and I’m excited for all the relationships to come.
Anthony Robbins: I have to say, I’ve been amazed. At a recent Federal 100 Gala, I get a picture of Suzette Kent and my daughter at the Fed 100 Gala, that I was not at, and I was thinking, “Geez, I had to work for like 35 years before I met the CIO of the US federal government.” Here was Megan, her second year at Dell, meeting those folks. It’s been fun to watch her grow in that regard. I think our networks matter a lot and time invested in them. It’s neat to see Megan do that. For all of us, time invested in those is really important, especially if we want to be great at our craft.
Fred Diamond: Anthony, I guess people want to know, what are you going to do next? You’re still a young man. Are you going to open up a Baskin-Robbins, go back that way, or you’re going to consult, give us some ideas on what you might want to do?
Anthony Robbins: It’s a pretty easy question for me. People say, “What are you going to do with your time?” I spent so much time on airplanes and on crowded highways and hotel rooms, because I’ve always worked for California-based technology companies, so traveling back and forth across the country. I really have found myself very interested in the outdoors. A particular hobby, I love fly fishing. I bought the biggest Airstream they make and an F350 Ford truck to pull it. I plan to drive to Alaska and spend a couple of months in Alaska and try to spend as much time as I can in state national parks, breathing in fresh air and waking up in the morning with a nice cup of coffee.
Fred Diamond: I just want to also acknowledge too, a lot of people here know about Hurricane Helene that went through Western North Carolina, and you’ve worked tirelessly to bring attention to what’s happened there. I went down to Asheville for a week, but you’ve been there really going to all the cities. Do you want to share anything that you’d like people to know about that?
Anthony Robbins: Who would’ve thought that a very powerful hurricane would’ve hit us here in Western North Carolina, in the mountains. When it happened, just the Blue Ridge Parkway alone, they lost tens of thousands of trees. Of course, in all these mountain communities, there were entire towns that got washed away. There were homes that floated down the river. There were towns where all of the bridges that came into these small mountain towns got washed away. When it happened, we were trying to figure out how we could help. We started a GoFundMe program and I think we raised about $87,000, and we started buying generators and chainsaws because people needed power and they needed a chance to clear roads and bridges and the like.
As a result, we got into the public works organizations, the police departments, and the fire departments. In all these small towns, I probably visited more than a dozen small towns up in the mountains in Western North Carolina, it was tragic what we saw. People often say, you can’t unsee what you saw. Sometimes I wish I could. It was tragic what we saw. We tried to make a contribution and we raised a bunch of money also through NVIDIA. In the end, what I realized, as much as I’ve realized at any point in my career, is your sense of community and your ability to contribute to community matters a lot. What I saw in Western North Carolina was a community that cared deeply about each other and gave back generously. It was a beautiful thing to see. We’re not out of the woods yet. There’s still a lot of work here that has to happen. I appreciate you bringing that up and I was glad to try to make a contribution.
Fred Diamond: Thank you for that as well. Gina, is there anything else you want to bring up before we go to the final action steps?
Gina Stracuzzi: I was kidding with Megan and Anthony before you came on that Anthony’s final action step needs to be, “People need to come to the awards event,” and then Megan’s needs to be, “People need to come to the conference.” We’ll have links to that in the show notes too, just in case.
Fred Diamond: Gina is alluding to the Women in Sales Leadership Elevation Conference this year. It’s going to be on October 9th. It’s going to be in Tysons Corner. It’s going to be an amazing day. You’ve pulled together a great committee of leaders and this will be the fourth. Good for you. It’s a great day.
Gina Stracuzzi: Megan’s on the committee.
Fred Diamond: Very good. Anthony, give us one specific action step.
Anthony Robbins: There’s three things I just wanted, in part it summarizes, but I’ll end with the specific action. Commit to your craft. If it’s the sales profession you’re in or marketing, there is so much information that’s available through organizations, Fred, like the one that you and Gina run online and otherwise, that can help make you an expert in the craft that you have chosen as a profession. One is, commit to your craft.
The second is develop subject matter expertise. In the old days in sales, they used to have to come to us for information on our products and services. Today, they actually don’t have to come to you for information on products and services because everything’s online. You have to find a way to add value to the journey that your customer is on. That’s developing subject matter expertise.
Then the final thing and the big action item, and what I’ve seen, in my career, I’ve had thousands of sellers on my teams over time. Over time, my teams, we’ve priced a hundred billion dollars of business to the federal government. What I see sometimes lacking, and when you see it you know it, is personal accountability, that people take personal accountability for their career and the development of their skillset and their own performance. I think that when I see that, I usually see somebody that’s going to do very well in this business.
Fred Diamond: We like to say that you’re the CEO of your career and you may be a partner account manager at NVIDIA right now, but you are the only person who is the CEO of your career. Megan, it is great to have you here. Bring us home. Give us a great action step for the people listening to the podcast today.
Megan Robbins: I would tell everyone, just show up. Get out there in your community as much as you can, whatever profession or industry you choose, just get out there as much as you can and build out your network and come to the Women in Sales Elevation Conference on October 9th.
Transcribed by Mariana Badillo