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Kristi Faltorusso [00:01:07]:

Great. Update AI.

Jon Johnson [00:01:10]:

Is there another bumper? Yeah. Hey, guys, if you didn’t know, this.

Mickey Powell [00:01:16]:

Is presented by Update.

Jon Johnson [00:01:16]:

Yeah, FYI, I think Josh just dipped, so we’re going to get started.

Josh Schachter [00:01:21]:

No, wait, can you hear me now?

Kristi Faltorusso [00:01:23]:

No, not far away. He’s on Mars.

Mickey Powell [00:01:27]:

That’s right. Well, he’s in Argentina, so he’s further away.

Jon Johnson [00:01:31]:

That’s longer for the internet to get.

Mickey Powell [00:01:34]:

Through the hamsters running on the wheel.

Jon Johnson [00:01:35]:

We have a guest here, guys.

Kristi Faltorusso [00:01:37]:

Let’s welcome her.

Jon Johnson [00:01:38]:

Celia hi, how are you? You want to go ahead and introduce yourself? Yeah. Well, Josh has been kind of introducing us to some of the folks that he knows in the industry and we’re so thrilled to have you here. Why don’t you give us just a quick intro on who you are and what the rest of your day looks like? It’s a pretty big day for you.

Celia Gouveia [00:01:55]:

Yeah, absolutely. So I’ve been a leader in the space for about 15 years, typically at startups building and leading teams, companies like Success Factors, which was acquired by SAP, and Glint that was acquired by LinkedIn. And today is actually my first day at a brand new company after a job search the last few months, I just started at Smart Recruiters and excited to wrap up day one here in the next few hours.

Jon Johnson [00:02:19]:

That’s so exciting.

Kristi Faltorusso [00:02:20]:

Wait, the highlight of your day can’t be wrapping it up. Celia yeah, it’s like riding a bike. So they say. So how’s day one been?

Celia Gouveia [00:02:30]:

So day one is great. Onboarding is good. You know what’s funny is once you’ve worked at these startups for a long time, you realize it’s all the same system. So I’m back in slack. I’m back in Gmail. It’s all so familiar. You forget what it’s like. Oh, let me disable those notifications again. I forgot. I get that at this place. So, yeah, I’ve got everything set up in my computer, my phone. I feel like there’s a positive start here.

Jon Johnson [00:02:53]:

What’s the theme that you chose on Slack? Do you have a go to theme?

Celia Gouveia [00:02:58]:

I don’t. I do default. Am I really boring?

Jon Johnson [00:03:01]:

Maybe.

Kristi Faltorusso [00:03:01]:

I don’t know.

Jon Johnson [00:03:02]:

You probably focus on better things.

Celia Gouveia [00:03:03]:

I’m all about facts and let me get in and learn. I don’t even do a background picture on my computer. I probably shouldn’t have.

Jon Johnson [00:03:10]:

Hey, guys.

Josh Schachter [00:03:10]:

Hey, I’m back. You can hear me now, right? Yeah, I’m in. I’m back. I will not say much in this episode.

Kristi Faltorusso [00:03:16]:

Promise.

Josh Schachter [00:03:17]:

So, to all of our listeners yeah, I promise you. But I’ve been listening to the first 2 minutes of this or the first minute of this program, and I just want to say that I am missed from this show because when John was responsible for getting things started which John? There was a valiant effort. But who is Celia? Because we have not even said her full name. So people on the show right now don’t even know this woman Celia, like, who they’re listening to. It was a basic john. I don’t know. You’re just not ready.

Jon Johnson [00:03:49]:

I’m not ready?

Josh Schachter [00:03:50]:

Big time.

Kristi Faltorusso [00:03:51]:

You’re not ready for feedback at work.

Mickey Powell [00:03:53]:

Super aggressive.

Kristi Faltorusso [00:03:54]:

Is this what this feels like? Oh, my God. We should talk about leadership styles because, Josh, this seems like you need some coaching.

Jon Johnson [00:04:01]:

Sorry. I knew this going into this, you’re.

Kristi Faltorusso [00:04:03]:

Supposed to say something nice and then say something instructive and then say something nice again. Yeah, we’re supposed to get like, a little Big Mac.

Jon Johnson [00:04:11]:

Celia, I’m going to probably butcher this, so please correct me. It’s Govia. Correct.

Celia Gouveia [00:04:15]:

You can say gouvet.

Jon Johnson [00:04:16]:

Gouvet. Yeah, not even close.

Kristi Faltorusso [00:04:18]:

That sounds so much fancier. I would buy a bag with gouvet on it.

Celia Gouveia [00:04:21]:

Right?

Kristi Faltorusso [00:04:21]:

I wouldn’t buy Govia. Sounds like Jovia. It’s like a bank.

Jon Johnson [00:04:30]:

Okay, celia, gouvet.

Celia Gouveia [00:04:32]:

That’s a great that’s gorgeous.

Jon Johnson [00:04:34]:

Did I pass? Josh, can we start the podcast now?

Josh Schachter [00:04:37]:

Yeah, now we can start. Hey, Mickey, do you want to mickey because I’m not going to be doing much talking. Like I said, I promise. I promise. But, Mickey, can you tell everybody the story about how we met?

Mickey Powell [00:04:46]:

Yeah, actually, I was going to it’s a great story.

Celia Gouveia [00:04:48]:

This is an okay story.

Mickey Powell [00:04:50]:

No, I think it was great because I feel like I got to know you so fast because you were so authentically yourself, and that’s why you’re here today. So we were at a bar in San Francisco after Pulse one of the Days of Pulse, and Celia was there amongst a bunch of other people, and she started giving another person that was there a ton of shit.

Kristi Faltorusso [00:05:12]:

She was just going to jeff K. Jeff K. Perhaps this story through another channel, but let’s go.

Mickey Powell [00:05:21]:

But it was great, Josh, but they were very, like, East Coast bickering, which, luckily, even though I’m West Coaster, I’ve I’ve chatted with lots of people on the East Coast, and I knew it was like they seemed like friends. They seemed like they knew each other because of how they were bickering and giving each other shit and having a good conversation, and that kind of opened up the conversation. And then Josh realized that Celia knows and worked for who Josh and I were going to go have dinner with in like an hour. So Josh, being the Consummate Relationship networker, was like, you should just come to dinner with us, even though this person wasn’t expecting you to show up. So she came to dinner with us and we had a great time and chatted and we shared an Uber on the way there. And, yeah, we’ve just stayed in touch because we want people that are we like, fiery, feisty, controversial attitudes, and you kind of fit right in, Celia.

Kristi Faltorusso [00:06:16]:

That was a compliment, Celia, in case it didn’t sound or feel like one. I promise you it was.

Celia Gouveia [00:06:21]:

I got it now. No, that’s your side of the story. That’s good to hear. The way from there.

Kristi Faltorusso [00:06:27]:

I want to hear the other side. I’ve heard a different side.

Celia Gouveia [00:06:30]:

There’s been a few different sides, I think, floating around. I will say that I also mentioned I’d been on the job hunt for a few months, and I think they felt bad for me. And we’re like, you know what? We had someone who didn’t show up, so if you’re hungry and starving, you can come to dinner with us and we’ll feed you. And that’s how our relationship started.

Kristi Faltorusso [00:06:48]:

So it was a write off because it was a charitable dinner. Is that how that works?

Celia Gouveia [00:06:51]:

They were donating to the unemployed at the time.

Jon Johnson [00:06:54]:

I love that.

Josh Schachter [00:06:56]:

Can we go into the unemployed? Cecilia, there are lots of people here in the world of CS leaders and ICS that are looking for new work. You’ve landed your dream job that you’re just getting going this week. But can you tell us about just what it was like out there in the wild, in the brush these past few months? Give us the full load out, and we don’t want any of the bullshit, keep your chin up, blah, blah, blah. No, tell us how bad it was out there, but maybe some of the highs, too. Just really the real stuff, because I think that is what people want to hear, because there’s lots of folks listening to this that are in that same position.

Celia Gouveia [00:07:37]:

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I would just say in the wild, is the great first descriptor here. So most of us don’t realize they’ll ever be in this position of looking in this type of economy and market. So I’ve always been lucky to work with a similar network of people. I never had a resume. In the last ten years. I worked for the same CEO at two different companies and then within their network for other companies. So I was fortunate in the past. So when my last startup didn’t work out, I thought, no big deal. I always have these recruiters in my inbox and LinkedIn. I’ll just go and respond to them all and take a week off here and there. Maybe I’ll go wine country and explore, and I’ll be back up and running in a few weeks. It just was not the case. There are so many people, so many qualified candidates in the market, not only that are unemployed, but that are just looking for their next gig. And what I found was, even if I was overqualified for a position, so even if I was applying for something that I knew I could nail, it was the exact same industry. It was the position lower than what I’d done before I knew people there. If you just blindly applied on a website or LinkedIn or name any platform, you were one of hundreds and hundreds of applicants. Just A-C-A pile. If you imagine back in the day of resumes on someone’s desk, and no one even noticed you. So I literally treated this like a full time job. I get a little obsessive in anything I do. So I was not out wine tasting and traveling and enjoying my time off. I was on my computer all day, every day, literally looking for jobs that I wanted to do and then finding a connection of a connection of a connection. I had to have, like, a glimpse of someone within my network that knew of another person in order for me to even be looked at. I mentioned I didn’t have a resume for the last ten years. LinkedIn profiles you’d think would be enough, but everyone says, oh up, just send me your resume. And you think my resume? I didn’t even know people still use those. I thought that was like a business card, right? Isn’t there a QR code somewhere and you can just check out my information? So I actually hired someone to write a cover letter and resume. She did an amazing job, if anyone, anyone’s looking for a really good price. And so I had to start by she’s like, well, what do you want in your resume? I have no idea, whatever’s on my LinkedIn profile that they want a resume. Can we just use that?

Josh Schachter [00:09:55]:

Is he better than Chat GBT?

Celia Gouveia [00:09:57]:

I could have used Chat GBT at the time. This is a good use case right here. It’s pre the cusp of me diving in there. Maybe that would have worked.

Josh Schachter [00:10:05]:

Wait, how many months were you on the bench?

Celia Gouveia [00:10:07]:

I mean, it was three and a half months. It wasn’t that long.

Josh Schachter [00:10:10]:

Okay.

Celia Gouveia [00:10:12]:

I wasn’t fully at that point. I feel like that’s when people were getting I mean, people are excited about GPT and we’re then, but I don’t know if I would have seen about resume writing at that time, but I’m sure it’s even more advanced now. So when I hired someone, she’s like, well, just send me the jobs you want, and I’ll put together a resume that allows it to just directly do that. So I thought, easy enough. So I just put down the top three jobs I want. So she creates a resume for each one. So now every time you apply for a job, you’re editing a cover letter, editing a resume. But I would keep my LinkedIn profile the same because that was me and that’s really what I all I think should be required. I don’t think we should have cover letters on resumes in this 2023, but that’s a whole nother subject for a different day. And then I’d find someone in my network and they’d say, oh, just send me a quick intro blurb about you. So not your LinkedIn description, not what’s on your cover letter, and not what’s on your resume. Quick intro blurb that encompasses it all. That’s one to two sentences, so I can send it to someone I know.

Kristi Faltorusso [00:11:08]:

Great.

Celia Gouveia [00:11:08]:

Okay, let me rewrite this for the fourth time. So now I have an intro blurb for every single job. I want to apply to a cover letter, a resume linking to my LinkedIn, and that might get me to talk to someone, that might get me to the hiring manager, talk to lots and lots of CEOs, all bright people. They would have a great chat and say, yeah, you’d be really experienced. I don’t know if we’re going to hire right now, or maybe in the future maybe you could consult in the meantime. So lots of let me get to know you. Let’s kind of shoot the shit here and we’ll get back to you someday. And there was so much of that until I finally got to a few out of the months. I got a few real, I would say, applications where I was actually talking, going through the process, and then the processes would take a month, a month and a half. We’re talking, meet with every single person, do a presentation, meet again, go in person, even though you’ll be working remote. So it’s been quite interesting.

Mickey Powell [00:12:04]:

It sounds like that industry is broke. AF. Yeah, that sounds awful. And I’ve been there, and I hate it. I think it’s dumb.

Celia Gouveia [00:12:11]:

I’m surprised in the state age it was still this bad. I mean, I thought everyone always talks about that. Systems automatically scan the resumes and find the top applicants and put them to the top of the pile, so to speak. In the old language as long as.

Mickey Powell [00:12:26]:

They’Re not a group that we don’t want to hire.

Celia Gouveia [00:12:29]:

Yeah.

Mickey Powell [00:12:30]:

There is bias built into those systems, people.

Celia Gouveia [00:12:32]:

Right. And then the references and then the presentations, and then every single company had a different prompt for their final presentation round. And so you’d prepare that half the people I didn’t even know who would be on the call for the presentation, so who my audience was. So then I’d be asking questions. Who’s my audience, the length of time I have, what’s the expectations, preparing the prompt, it was more than a full time job.

Josh Schachter [00:12:56]:

Okay, so no more fetching about this. What’s the key takeaways for others going through this? What did you learn through this process that can help others in the same boat?

Celia Gouveia [00:13:06]:

Yeah, absolutely. So one kind of almost like you would say in a CS role, have all your documentation and ducks in a row, right? So have your resume, cover letter. Cover letter updated. Be able to easily know how to personalize them and edit them, know where you’re storing them, make sure they match your LinkedIn profile, and then network, network, network. Take any call. I started to step outside of the box a lot. That’s how I got introduced to many of you. I started to join more conferences out in the wild, was able to moderate some conferences, do more talking. So I just really took the exposure as, let me get to know as many people as possible, because I’m realizing this day and age, it’s all about who you know, and if you don’t know the right person at the right time, you’re not getting to top the pile. So network is the top key here. And that doesn’t just mean on LinkedIn. I’m talking in person as well.

Jon Johnson [00:13:52]:

Yeah, we have a few roles open, and we had one. I have 1300 applications for one role. And when you start saying, hey, let’s let the algorithm work, and it’s like, that’s not like, give me one in this. We’ve gotten through ten interviews out of this whole thing, and it’s like, you can’t even you just start, right? It’s like, how do you know that? You have the needle in the haystack. I’m so glad that you found the role, and I’m so glad that you’re kind of leading into this career, but there’s got to be a way to fix it.

Kristi Faltorusso [00:14:22]:

Yeah.

Celia Gouveia [00:14:23]:

And I’m passionate about this space. So not only am I passionate about CS, I’ve been in HR Tech, so I’ve been in the recruiting space. I’m excited to go back in there, hopefully fix some of this for people going forward. It’s a coincidence that I had to struggle through to get back to a product that hopefully can help with this.

Mickey Powell [00:14:38]:

I’ve been there. So many people listening have been there. So if you’re out in the job networking right now for the average CSM, is it joining Webinars? Because going in person is great, but if you’re in between jobs. Maybe you can’t afford a plane ticket to a conference.

Celia Gouveia [00:14:57]:

Yeah, absolutely. That’s another really good point. Right? Because I always said I was self funded at these conferences. You don’t have a company sponsoring you. Hence, I think why I got the free dinner when we josh, maybe you.

Kristi Faltorusso [00:15:07]:

Should just start hosting events for dinner to attend for free.

Celia Gouveia [00:15:10]:

Feeding us.

Josh Schachter [00:15:13]:

Yeah, it’s a great idea. You could do that, too, Christy.

Kristi Faltorusso [00:15:15]:

I can’t. Nobody wants to come out to Long Island. It’s not safe out here. Actually, that’s a lie. It’s summertime. Everyone wants to come out to the island.

Celia Gouveia [00:15:24]:

That’s true. That’s true. It’s a hot spot, right? Yeah. I mean, for me, just honestly follow the people that you think are the most connected. I mean, follow the influencers on LinkedIn. It sounds cliche, the influencers, right? But follow the people that are the most connected, that are hosting the boot camps and the webinars and the office hours, and join as many of those virtual as you can. Join any slack channels out there. There’s so many free resources in this community and just taking advantage of them all. Not just spraying and praying and applying and hoping that someday someone recognizes you, because that just doesn’t work in this day and age.

Josh Schachter [00:15:58]:

What influencers do you follow the most, Celia?

Celia Gouveia [00:16:01]:

Well, Christie is obviously one of them.

Kristi Faltorusso [00:16:04]:

Don’t take Josh’s bait, Celia.

Celia Gouveia [00:16:06]:

You’re not going to say that?

Kristi Faltorusso [00:16:09]:

I was going to say he’s going to expect you to just rattle off the names of the folks in this podcast.

Celia Gouveia [00:16:12]:

Well, I wasn’t. I purposely was saying Christy and John don’t know if Mickey and Josh are at that level yet, but maybe not yet.

Kristi Faltorusso [00:16:17]:

They aspire to be one day, though.

Celia Gouveia [00:16:19]:

Yeah.

Kristi Faltorusso [00:16:19]:

Just watch. They’re going to make it. See, I got to ask a question. So I want to move off of the doom and gloom of the job search and move to something a bit more positive. I want to hear something because I get a lot of questions about this. Is there an onboarding program for you in your organization? So now that you’ve joined, how are you being onboarded into your company?

Celia Gouveia [00:16:37]:

Yeah. So 4 hours in? Absolutely, yes.

Jon Johnson [00:16:42]:

Checked all those boxes, everything, right?

Celia Gouveia [00:16:44]:

I’m already almost on boarded, pretty much. Here a checklist of everything from I think it’s so important. I’ve built these in the past, too. Regardless of the role, what systems you need, what channels you need to be part of, what emails should you be on, what calendar invites you should be joining, any glossary of terms, product training, regardless of the role. I am huge on onboarding, and I don’t like inefficiencies in anything, whether it be work or personal life. So I have no time to be sitting there figuring out where do I go next, or having someone on my team trying to find some information that’s hidden four layers deep in a Google Doc somewhere. To be one document that has all of the onboarding ready to go.

Kristi Faltorusso [00:17:20]:

And do you feel like it’s comprehensive enough that you’re going to learn everything you need to through what’s been designed? Is it just a checklist? Are you meeting with people? Give me some more details, because I get people ask me all the time, like, Christy, how do I have to design this? How thorough does it need to be? What level of depth? And I feel like for leaders, there’s almost never a leadership onboarding program. And at best, maybe there is a mediocre one for individual contributors. So that’s why I am just interested in hearing what you have available.

Celia Gouveia [00:17:47]:

Yeah, so it’s obviously, I think, a mix of things is what I have and what I’ve typically seen in the past. What I typically see for Leaders is you just take the CSM one to start and you go, okay, this has most of the information on who to meet with, who to get to know where the resources are, what are the key documents, templates, et cetera. And then people just add another section on for leaders. And so then you start to add on, okay, now, as a leader, who should you meet with? So I have a lot of one on ones to get to know different people and meet them, which I actually enjoy. And that goes all the way up throughout the organization, meeting with everyone through the CEO to the different leaders, executives, and then for the team that will be reporting to me, and I’ll be working alongside with I’m going to be joining all the team meetings, shadowing the one on ones. So I’m transitioning into a role that already exists, which I think is a different onboarding plan than when it’s a brand new role, which is what I’m used to coming in and establishing the full function. And so there’s usually nothing to start with. So they are varied, but yeah, combo of meeting with people, doing on your own self, learning, as well as knowing where you should be on day one, week one, week two, et cetera, and having checkpoints and milestones are for me.

Kristi Faltorusso [00:18:54]:

Keys when do you talk to the customers? No, John, it’s my turn. When are you going to talk to your customers?

Celia Gouveia [00:19:00]:

I don’t feel like people should be talking to customers from day one. You have nothing to offer them. They ask you a hard question. You’re just saying, oh, I’m learning. Here I am, here’s my name and that’s it. So I actually think you should wait eight. I’ll probably have in a few weeks, I’ll start talking to customers. I’ll shadow calls that are important, whether it be business reviews or things of that nature with the largest customers. But I have no value to ask in the beginning. I don’t even know the process or the product. So what am I going to do in helping out rather than listening in? I’m just another person here listening. I could be Joe Schmo off the street here.

Jon Johnson [00:19:30]:

Yeah. And I think that goes back to what we’ve talked about before, where it’s like it puts a lot of work on the customer to say, like, now I got to go teach this new person what I do at my company that shouldn’t be part of the onboarding.

Celia Gouveia [00:19:40]:

And that’s the worst. Also, when you do get on the customer call when they say, okay, everyone on the customer side now, please reintroduce yourself and tell us about your business. It’s like, no. If you haven’t looked at these people’s LinkedIn profile and you have not done an internal transition, there’s no reason we should have 25 minutes of each person going around the room and reintroducing themselves because we at our company have a new contact. That’s a pet peeve of mine.

Jon Johnson [00:20:00]:

Quote of the day. That’s the bumper. That’s how you enter this episode. Josh, I know you got a few minutes here before you got to jump to your actual job, so thank you so much for taking the time out of the day. What do you consider success in your first 30 days? What’s the thing that you really want for your own personal benefit and for what? Your boss is looking to check those boxes as well.

Celia Gouveia [00:20:21]:

Yeah, I mean, for me, it’s establishing trust throughout the organization, so creating relationships, understanding who to go to for what, but then really understanding the metrics and how I’m going to drive against them. I mean, I’m a very much measurable person, so first I need to understand what they are, then figure out if I need to tweak them, and then how am I going to measure success against them and make sure my team is set up for them as well.

Jon Johnson [00:20:41]:

That’s awesome. That’s good.

Mickey Powell [00:20:43]:

I don’t need any people to trust me.

Kristi Faltorusso [00:20:45]:

Nobody trusts you, Mickey.

Celia Gouveia [00:20:46]:

Apparently me either, because I go to dinner with strangers on the first day I meet them.

Mickey Powell [00:20:49]:

Right.

Josh Schachter [00:20:50]:

Celia, before you leave, last question. What’s one thing that you want them to know about you that they don’t already know? Give us a fun fact. Give your colleagues here that you haven’t even met yet. Give them a fun fact about you.

Celia Gouveia [00:21:04]:

I’m not prepared for that one. Let’s see. Fun fact about me. So I am very direct in that I’m an East Coaster at heart, but I spent the last 15 years in San Francisco, so I feel like I softened out a bit, and now I’ve moved back to Florida, and I’m embracing my authentic self again. So I really don’t like things that are inefficient or done multiple times or reinventing the wheel. I’m a stickler for process when it’s required, but not for the sake of it, as well as everyone understanding where they stand at all times.

Kristi Faltorusso [00:21:39]:

Celia, give us something fun. Give us something that connects us to you emotionally. Tell us how amazing you are because I know that there’s more fun things about you than process.

Celia Gouveia [00:21:49]:

This is true. So I absolutely love wine tasting. I love my peloton, and if I were to eat one food for the rest of my life, it would be bacon.

Kristi Faltorusso [00:21:58]:

Bacon.

Jon Johnson [00:21:59]:

It’d be a short life, but I’m.

Mickey Powell [00:22:00]:

Here for that.

Celia Gouveia [00:22:03]:

Peloton. I feel like that’s setting me up for life.

Kristi Faltorusso [00:22:05]:

It balances out. How many rides have you done on your peloton?

Celia Gouveia [00:22:09]:

I’ve done hundreds, but it’s been in a box for a while now. I need to get back on there.

Kristi Faltorusso [00:22:15]:

That would be the first thing.

Celia Gouveia [00:22:16]:

I would unbox my room this time for more accountability.

Jon Johnson [00:22:21]:

Well, I suggest that we have you back in, like, 90 days, and we do just no, I mean, I want to hear the cool thing to do. A little health check. What the key? Learnings are. I think that’s something that our listeners would be really interested in, especially on your first day.

Mickey Powell [00:22:36]:

Just get on the calendar.

Jon Johnson [00:22:37]:

I’ll send you my calendar that check in, and we can schedule that check in call. Yeah.

Mickey Powell [00:22:41]:

Can you bring your executive, too?

Jon Johnson [00:22:43]:

Thank you so much, Celia. We appreciate your time so much.

Celia Gouveia [00:22:46]:

Thanks for joining.

Kristi Faltorusso [00:22:47]:

Hopefully we didn’t scare you away and you’ll come back. Good luck.

Jon Johnson [00:22:54]:

Okay. Hey, guys.

Kristi Faltorusso [00:22:57]:

We scared away our first guest.

Jon Johnson [00:22:59]:

I know. That’s amazing success.

Kristi Faltorusso [00:23:02]:

I mean, we’re doing what we do.

Jon Johnson [00:23:04]:

Yeah. All right, so where are we starting today, guys? Or how are we starting?

Mickey Powell [00:23:09]:

Are we breaking down a CS Insider report, or do we not do that anymore?

Jon Johnson [00:23:13]:

We kind of do that. Mickey josh actually posted a comment in here from Chad, who, by the way, I’ve actually been a recent follower of Chad’s, and I’ve really enjoyed some of his content. Chad Horan Felt from Meta, which is formally formerly customer.

Kristi Faltorusso [00:23:29]:

Yeah.

Jon Johnson [00:23:29]:

Oh, wait, formally?

Celia Gouveia [00:23:31]:

Yeah.

Kristi Faltorusso [00:23:31]:

He’s not at Meta any longer.

Jon Johnson [00:23:33]:

Oh, no.

Kristi Faltorusso [00:23:33]:

Yeah, sadly, it was part of the riffs that they did not that long ago.

Jon Johnson [00:23:37]:

Okay, well, that’s a bummer. I’m sorry to hear that, Chad.

Kristi Faltorusso [00:23:41]:

I only say that because anybody who knows Chad, if you know anybody who’s hiring Chad is just awesome, and if I ever had a role, I would absolutely scoop him. So if you’re listening and you’re hiring for a leader, chad is fantastic. Go check him out.

Jon Johnson [00:23:55]:

Yeah, but this post is very focused on what he’s doing with Bard. Mickey, I think you should take the lead on this. Have you read through this? We can talk about something else while you read through it. But.

Mickey Powell [00:24:07]:

I did read through it, but why are you laughing, Josh?

Josh Schachter [00:24:10]:

Because once again, when I go out of, you guys are lost without me. You’re lost at sea here.

Jon Johnson [00:24:16]:

That’s what you think. We’re just having fun.

Mickey Powell [00:24:18]:

Yeah. People love John and Christy.

Kristi Faltorusso [00:24:20]:

Josh we’re barred, though.

Jon Johnson [00:24:24]:

And we’re back, everybody.

Kristi Faltorusso [00:24:28]:

Wait, I didn’t even know that people were using it. This is, like, what. Is that new Instagram Twitter threads.

Mickey Powell [00:24:33]:

Threads.

Jon Johnson [00:24:34]:

I signed up for threads the moment that it came out and I sent a group, chat group text to the group and Christy said, what? What is that? And I explained it to her and she said, what?

Kristi Faltorusso [00:24:46]:

Just no understanding, zero interest whatsoever. More social media. Trying to figure out how to scroll through TikTok effectively and have it learn my algorithm.

Mickey Powell [00:24:59]:

Learn me, please.

Jon Johnson [00:25:00]:

Learn me, please.

Kristi Faltorusso [00:25:01]:

Anyway, my home is bad. Okay, so listen, Josh is so upset with us. I could tell by his sad mad.

Jon Johnson [00:25:05]:

Eye, josh, go ahead and rein us in.

Kristi Faltorusso [00:25:07]:

No, he wants us to go down this path with Bard. And so, Mickey, since you are our chat GBT expert, what are your thoughts on Bard? We’ll start there.

Mickey Powell [00:25:17]:

Yeah, so I think Chad, he makes the argument that because it’s connected to the internet, like, real time information, things like that, and I think that’s a totally valid argument that’s going to get completely innovated away. Like, if you were to use Bing, it’s the same thing. And what I am excited about is Google, there’s rumblings they are working on, like, a big project that there’s rumblings that might be better than GPT four, because, let’s not forget, Google has had some of the best mind for years. So they had kind of, like split off their AlphaGo team, like Deep Mine team, right? But they’ve actually folded them back into the company to work on this. So I’m kind of of the opinion that if they do execute in the way that they might, because they’re so much bigger than OpenAI, that Bard might actually jump GPC Four and kind of continue this arms race. So, right now, being connected to the internet part isn’t that big of a deal, because if you really need that, you can go use being in creative mode, which is just chat GPT under the hood. GPT four under the hood. But I still use chat GPT day in and day out for all sorts of different things and I don’t really need it to be connected to the internet because of the type of work I’m doing.

Kristi Faltorusso [00:26:32]:

Yeah, side by side. And, John, maybe you have, too. I’ve actually gone in and done the same prompts in chat GPT and in Bard. This is when it first came out, just to see. And maybe it’s gotten smarter and better in the couple of weeks since I’ve entertained it. But I didn’t love the results that came back. I didn’t think that they were as thorough. It didn’t read as well. So if you were looking for copy, I didn’t think that it was written well and delivered properly. I didn’t like the engagement in the back and forth on the repeated prompts. So I don’t know. Again, I haven’t used it now in weeks. I was entertaining it while it launched and didn’t go back because of the poor results, in my opinion. Has it gotten better?

Mickey Powell [00:27:10]:

Not significantly from what I’ve heard, but that is more of a limitation of just like where the underlying model is at right now. Right, but again, that might be a totally different story six months from now.

Jon Johnson [00:27:22]:

Yeah. What I do love about this, and I’m going to give Chad a little plus one here, is I really like the framework that he’s using. So company customers and challenges, and I think this is something that’s very intelligent to what just CS in general needs. These are questions that we talked about this kind of on the R chat to BT webinars that we’ve done Mickey, in the past. It’s like, what does this company do and how do they make money? Celia was just saying, if you are a new leader coming in to manage a subset of customers, if you’re waiting for the customer to teach you this, then you’re already behind. Right. So we have these tools now to kind of self educate ourselves. And that’s what I really love about this kind of model, is it really helps you understand the parent company, how they make money, and then what types of customers are buying that product, and then what are the challenges that they’re facing. We used to have to dig through ten different sites, read quarterly reports, and then follow the CEO on LinkedIn and all this kind of stuff. Right. But now we have a single place to educate ourselves and it allows us, as CSMS and leaders, to really educate ourselves in a way. And I think, aside from the tool barred over Chat GBT, I don’t necessarily agree. Like I said, similar to you, we’re measuring things in weeks now instead of years. But a few weeks ago, I wasn’t really that stoked on Bard, but maybe it’s just because my first love was Chat GBT and it’s hard for me to kind of adopt away from that. But I really love the guidance that he’s giving here, aside from the tool that he’s recommending. And I think this is a place that all CSM should start when they’re taking on a new book of business.

Mickey Powell [00:28:52]:

Yeah, I mean, I’ve long since known that the more guidance you give to these tools in terms of a framework, like a way of approaching a task or a project, the better outputs you get. So if you don’t know those yourself, then you have to go find them or you have to rely on these tools to give them to you. So Chad gave us a great framework. Hey, you need to know these three things. Bar chat TPT just happened to be a much better tool at getting to the answer of those three things faster than a human. But you still obviously need to validate the output.

Jon Johnson [00:29:24]:

Yeah, well, this actually kind of gets to, like I’ve been talking about this a lot, is like, I think the measurement is more important than the method. I love this idea of generalized giving ideas on how you kind of come to conclusions. And I think we kind of say the only solution is this tool or X tool or Y’all tool or whatever it is. But in reality, it’s like, here’s the practice. Apply it with whatever tool that you have available to you. Right. You shouldn’t have to buy something in order to be successful. Obviously, that leads to more success, as we know in our industry. But you can implement some of these tools and practices in place I’m sorry, some of these measurements in place prior to you having access to every single tool in the market.

Mickey Powell [00:30:04]:

Yeah, I’d say it’s usually better to do that. Christy, you probably implement processes things like, before you go and find I do.

Kristi Faltorusso [00:30:14]:

All kinds of things, Mickey. I’m so busy just doing the things. What am I implementing, my friend?

Mickey Powell [00:30:19]:

No, I’m saying if you’re like, hey, we need to fix this thing, your gut reaction is probably not like, let’s go buy it.

Kristi Faltorusso [00:30:25]:

My gut reaction is, is it free? If it’s free, it’s for me. I don’t have any money.

Jon Johnson [00:30:30]:

If it’s free, it’s for me.

Kristi Faltorusso [00:30:33]:

So the reality of it is, I don’t think that you need half the tools and technology that we use, to be very honest with you. I have done more with Excel or even half the other things in Google Sheets and have been wildly successful in doing so. Is it manual? Is it taking me more time? Absolutely. Is it as pretty? Is it as fancy? Is it automated? No. Is it effective? Sure. So I’m not bought into that. We need to buy every cool tool out there. And I work for a SaaS company, right. So, yes, we sell a product also, so I’m not discouraging people from purchasing my product or any of our products. But the reality of it is, I don’t think that we need technology all the time to solve everything. I’m more inclined to go test it, figure something out, and if I need the technology to optimize it, fine, I will.

Jon Johnson [00:31:14]:

This podcast brought to you by Update AI.

Josh Schachter [00:31:20]:

Mickey, can you please go remove Christie’s account from Update?

Kristi Faltorusso [00:31:25]:

Okay, so here’s the thing. Here’s the thing. Can I do a soft plug on Update for a second? I don’t like extra tools. I don’t like anything else I have to access. I will say Update AI has literally saved me hours and that I am not being paid to say this. I made everyone on my team download it, and every time I have a customer meeting, I plug it there as well. I not only tell them that is what I’m using to capture my notes, I send them the summary, and because they’re in the meeting invite, they’re getting it automatically. I no longer have to worry about taking notes during my meeting. It automatically happens, and I copy the summary from the link and drop it right into my engagements and client success. Every single thing is there, including the video. So please don’t take it well.

Jon Johnson [00:32:09]:

No, but you actually make a really good point, and I feel like there’s something that we can go deeper into, maybe on another episode, but sometimes we need to do things that are not scalable. To your point. Like, I don’t need a tool to replace my dashboards that I built in Excel. They work because it’s solving a problem.

Kristi Faltorusso [00:32:25]:

Right, I know. And I think if that’s everyone’s first inclination, I’ll tell you, I speak to CS leaders literally every day. It’s part of my job. And I feel like sometimes I’m speaking to folks and it is a cart before the horse situation. Right. And, yes, I’m so happy that they bought our product, and I’m so happy to have them as customers. I don’t always think that they are ready. I think the purchase is sometimes a little premature because they think that buying technology is what they should be doing, when in reality, designing their strategy is what they should be focusing their time on and then figuring out, do I need technology to optimize it, to scale it, to take it to the next level. But oftentimes I feel like I’ve got folks in front of me who are purchasing technology, and I’m glad that they did, but it’s going to take us longer to be successful. And so, obviously, my concern isn’t I don’t want them to be customers, I just want them to be successful. And sometimes without that strategy, I fear that we might not get there quick enough.

Jon Johnson [00:33:12]:

Christy I love that you’re thinking through that. Were you going to make a joke? Josh I was just going to say.

Josh Schachter [00:33:17]:

I hate premature, too.

Kristi Faltorusso [00:33:19]:

Christy yeah, I’m going to go now.

Jon Johnson [00:33:25]:

Thanks, Josh. I appreciate your input.

Mickey Powell [00:33:30]:

Is it easier to just spend money on tooling than stop and thinking about the strategy?

Jon Johnson [00:33:34]:

Yeah, because then you have something to blame. Right. Like, if you implement a tool, my favorite if you implement a tool in six months, you don’t have a success. Like, oh, we need a new tool.

Kristi Faltorusso [00:33:43]:

Can we talk about this? Because it’s my favorite it’s my favorite leadership move of all time. When a leader isn’t successful because they failed to do their job, and then they blame it on the software and they go buy another software, and then that software fails, too, because it didn’t do its job, and they go on to the third one and somehow the leader is still there, but the technology isn’t anymore. And I’m always baffled, so we can talk about that for a minute.

Jon Johnson [00:34:06]:

No, that is why do I always.

Kristi Faltorusso [00:34:08]:

End up hating on leaders?

Mickey Powell [00:34:09]:

Well, but this is like this thing that I do.

Jon Johnson [00:34:14]:

I wish that more people understood that the strategy is more important than the tool that you use. And everything is a sales motion. Every single email that you get, you might as well just start emailing to your newsletter, list your LinkedIn posts. Right. Because it’s like everything is a funnel to get people to buy something from you. And it’s like, that has become this industry that we’re in where everything is a purchasable moment, and it’s completely devalued the need to actually think through what I want to accomplish.

Kristi Faltorusso [00:34:48]:

Yeah, it’s sad.

Jon Johnson [00:34:50]:

Josh is telling us to stop talking in the chat.

Kristi Faltorusso [00:34:53]:

No, he wanted us to stop talking if we didn’t have anything intelligent or witty to say, and then I came in and saved the day. So that’s what happened there. So I just want to make sure that I’m getting the full credit for that or else he would have told us to just wrap it up.

Jon Johnson [00:35:07]:

Yeah. My favorite I really think those are the best way to end our podcast is Josh is like, okay, guys, we’re done. And then he hangs up the call.

Kristi Faltorusso [00:35:14]:

I think it’s sad. Nobody likes that. We get a lot of feedback that no one likes the way that Josh ends our podcast. Yeah, I’m just kidding. Nobody’s ever said that.

Mickey Powell [00:35:24]:

All the users on Threads talking about.

Kristi Faltorusso [00:35:26]:

Yeah, well, actually, there’s a lot of people on Threads. There’s 100 million, literally. Yeah. That’s crazy. Why is everyone doing that? They won’t be there for long.

Jon Johnson [00:35:35]:

No, because Twitter broke fundamental value of what Twitter was, which is like, the free sharing of ideas and information broke. That was the mission of it altogether, and it got completely stripped away. And people said, Well, I haven’t been using this. I’m annoyed by this. And then all of a sudden, there’s a fresh baked Big Mac in front of them, and they’re going to start eating that Big Mac. Right. And it’s going to be something else. It’s not going to be another clubhouse because it’s tied to Instagram.

Kristi Faltorusso [00:35:58]:

Clubhouse was horrible. Like Rip. Does anyone remember that?

Jon Johnson [00:36:02]:

There was, like a 33 month period where that was all I wanted to do.

Kristi Faltorusso [00:36:05]:

See, that’s the thing, is, like, I never got onto that because I knew it wouldn’t be successful. So I’m kind of sitting on here on Threads. So, John, since you’re over on Threads, what’s happening there? Tell us about it.

Jon Johnson [00:36:14]:

Well, there is no hashtags or algorithms at this point. It’s only indexed by what is no Mickey. You say that, but this is my biggest fucking pet peeve with LinkedIn is, like, I want to see who I follow.

Kristi Faltorusso [00:36:27]:

I want to see what people are saying on LinkedIn’s algorithm. Can we make that a whole nother topic? Because I’m sad. I don’t feel good. It makes me nauseous. All right, continue with your threads.

Jon Johnson [00:36:35]:

But that’s the thing, is, like, you get what you’re in real time. What’s the word when it’s in order? Sequential.

Kristi Faltorusso [00:36:46]:

That’s not the right word. I don’t know. Size, order, height, alphabetical. What do you got?

Jon Johnson [00:36:49]:

Yeah, but like, you posted at ten the next person posted at ten one, and you get it in order, and you can actually just scroll through your feed like you normally could when Instagram first came out, when it was like, oh, my gosh, there’s a filter on this, and it wasn’t. Whatever it is today, I just like the freshness of not indexing by hashtag or not indexing by engagement metrics. I’m sure that’s going to change. I’m sure they’re going to introduce some sort of algorithm in it. They’re going to already do ads. Like they’re already talking about that, but today it is this kind of like it reminds me of MySpace top eight. Like, I followed Tom on threads as I follow him on every social media as I can, but it just kind of has that feeling, and I know it’s going to change. It’s going to go away. Like, TikTok was new, and now it just pisses me off because I can’t not scroll. And I have problems with self control, so that’s a me problem. So maybe it was built for me, for the type of person that I am.

Kristi Faltorusso [00:37:43]:

Sorry.

Josh Schachter [00:37:44]:

Talk about people in the CS world sending out mass emails with links to their LinkedIn articles from the past week because the algorithm has suppressed their wait.

Kristi Faltorusso [00:37:56]:

Is that impression count?

Jon Johnson [00:37:58]:

You didn’t get his email? I got his email.

Kristi Faltorusso [00:37:59]:

Wait, maybe I just haven’t checked my email. Okay, I will look after this.

Jon Johnson [00:38:05]:

That’s a bold move. So as somebody who chris, I don’t know for our listeners, but both Christy and I are kind of in the process of building out what we would consider, like, newsletters and some of our own personal content. That just to find if you want to hear what we’re talking about, you have a way to do that. And there are some folks in the industry that are using similar methods to just say, hey, I posted this on LinkedIn, and I’m afraid that you’re not going to see this, so here’s a newsletter of me. And it just feels a little it was shocking when you sent that email, Josh, because that’s not even bringing in secondary value. Right. One of the things that I love about CS Insider is that there is content and there is context and there’s a perspective, and we do these things because we want to kind of add some clarity. But it’s just straight up, here’s my five links. Click on this so that the algorithm kicks me up a notch. It’s not necessarily the model that I would follow if I was anybody who listens to this podcast.

Kristi Faltorusso [00:39:01]:

I didn’t think about doing that. I mean, now that I think about it, I don’t think it’s the worst idea. I mean, I wouldn’t do it because I don’t think it’s a good strategy, because I don’t think people would like it. But I could see why somebody might go that route. But it does suck because LinkedIn controls all of our contacts it does. We’re at their mercy, unfortunately. So we’ve got to figure out a way to take back our content and take back our networks. So I need Mickey to go and figure out how do I export all of my contacts out of LinkedIn and get their email addresses.

Jon Johnson [00:39:28]:

I’m sure there’s a bot for that, but it’ll get you banned.

Kristi Faltorusso [00:39:31]:

I mean, I don’t care. I’m going to leave.

Josh Schachter [00:39:35]:

You know, Christy, a year ago, LinkedIn, when you exported your contacts, it gave you the email addresses.

Kristi Faltorusso [00:39:40]:

A year ago it did.

Jon Johnson [00:39:41]:

Yeah.

Josh Schachter [00:39:41]:

Now it does not.

Jon Johnson [00:39:42]:

Yeah, because they realize that that’s how you own your customers. But again, that’s why we’re making these.

Kristi Faltorusso [00:39:46]:

Decisions to say, like, can I pay for it? I mean, I already pay for premium, and that’s not cheap.

Mickey Powell [00:39:52]:

No, I actually just downloaded my archive of data just to kind of see what’s in there.

Kristi Faltorusso [00:39:57]:

Nothing good.

Mickey Powell [00:39:59]:

There’s some good stuff. Like, you can download all your comments. You can download your good.

Kristi Faltorusso [00:40:03]:

I don’t want to see what I’ve said to other people. That’s boring.

Mickey Powell [00:40:06]:

I was throwing it into Chat GPT to see if I could learn something about myself.

Kristi Faltorusso [00:40:11]:

Oh, you’re interesting. I just want my contacts information. I just want the email addresses. That would be swell. Okay, I can’t have that. No gifts for Christy.

Jon Johnson [00:40:21]:

I think we’re done. Josh. Josh. That’s just at the second. We can wrap up at any moment message.

Kristi Faltorusso [00:40:27]:

This is brutal.

Jon Johnson [00:40:28]:

I love Josh. I love grumpy grandpa in the corner telling us when to spice it up a little bit. During this episode, we don’t know how to introduce guests.

Josh Schachter [00:40:39]:

I just want to say one thing.

Kristi Faltorusso [00:40:40]:

John, that was a you thing. I’m not taking credit for your mishap, okay? Like, listen, we’re not all going down together. That’s not the way this works. I am Rose. I’m going to sleep on the door. You’re going to die like jack. Okay?

Jon Johnson [00:40:51]:

Yeah, absolutely.

Josh Schachter [00:40:52]:

We all have different value that we bring to this podcast, right? My value is not the insight of a customer success leader. We know that my value yes, we know that. My value is being the steward of our listeners. So I want to make sure our listeners know Celia’s last name.

Jon Johnson [00:41:08]:

What? I want to make sure our listeners you’re embarrassing me. I’m so sorry.

Josh Schachter [00:41:14]:

I want to make sure that our listeners don’t have to listen to a 50 minutes podcast because we went on and on too long. They want a 25 minutes podcast.

Kristi Faltorusso [00:41:20]:

Listen, people listen to Joe Rogan for 4 hours, 5 hours. Six, 7 hours. So I think they can listen to us for 40 minutes.

Josh Schachter [00:41:27]:

What you do in your spare time is your own business, Christian.

Kristi Faltorusso [00:41:29]:

Interesting. You know what? I’m going to go. I don’t even need somebody to wrap this up. I’m leaving. I don’t need to leave.

Jon Johnson [00:41:37]:

We need, like, a sound effect of Christie slamming the door.

Kristi Faltorusso [00:41:40]:

Slamming a door? Yeah. Someone go tee that up next week.