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Jon Johnson:

Jazz.

Mickey Powell:

Jazz hands.

Kristi Faltorusso:

I’m not going to participate in all your dances. I’m going to watch all of you dance and judge.

Jon Johnson :

Yeah. You have judgment face on right now.

Kristi Faltorusso:

I do. Because I have a lot of feelings today. It’s a Monday. It’s a Monday, and I’m feeling feisty, feisty, feisty baltimore.

Josh Schachter :

Yeah. Good. Let’s get it going, guys.

Jon Johnson:

Right?

Josh Schachter:

I tilt.

Kristi Faltorusso :

Spicy beltruzo and friends.

Jon Johnson :

Three F’s.

Kristi Faltorusso :

I have a lot more F’s than that.

Josh Schachter :

Well, there we go. You guys got us going. Here the first topic. We need a new name when Brandon speaking of names, how do you pronounce Brandon’s last name? Is it Cestrone or Cestrone?

Jon Johnson :

I would think it’s minestrone Cestrone.

Josh Schachter :

I like it.

Jon Johnson:

Okay.

Josh Schachter :

Cestrone.

Jon Johnson :

This is the problem with knowing people from Slack and LinkedIn. I’ve known Brandon for three years and I’ve never seen his face in person.

Kristi Faltorusso:

Have you seen it on Zoom? You seen virtually, right?

Jon Johnson :

Virtually, yeah, for sure.

Kristi Faltorusso:

I think I’ve only had one virtual meeting with him.

Jon Johnson :

I don’t know how tall he is in person.

Josh Schachter:

It’s actually hard to see his face because he’s got such a big, heavy beard. So even in person, you’re not going to get very far. Good guy. And he exists in person. I’ve actually met the man, the myth of legend.

Mickey Powell:

So brandon of CS insider.

Josh Schachter:

Yes. When Brandon of CS Insider and I decided to do a collab on unchurned plus CS Insider, we really didn’t get to the point of naming the thing. I’ve just been rolling with CS unchurned, which is really lame. So I want to start us off. You guys don’t know this, but I’m creating some branding for us. Who is typing? Is that Christy or Mickey?

Jon Johnson:

I think Mickey.

Josh Schachter:

Mickey.

Jon Johnson:

Mickey is the only one of us with a mechanical keyboard.

Kristi Faltorusso:

You would know, but you would hear mine because my nails are almost worse than a mechanical keyboard. It’s like a little random.

Mickey Powell:

I’m trying to consult my chat GPT.

Jon Johnson:

To come up with names.

Kristi Faltorusso:

I already did that, so just so we’re clear. And I asked for more. So I have 30 chat GPT. We’ll go with names. And guess what, though, guys, they’re all horrible.

Josh Schachter:

Okay, well, what’s the least horrible?

Kristi Faltorusso:

Okay, let’s say I mean, they’re tough. I’d love to hear what Mickey described the podcast as to generate his names, but I’m getting one. Like the Customer Success Chronicles, one woman and three wise guys.

Jon Johnson:

That sounds a little diminutive.

Kristi Faltorusso:

Triumph and tribulations a gender balanced customer success. Podcast.

Jon Johnson:

But it’s like, mathematically not gender balanced.

Josh Schachter:

If you wait it by personality.

Jon Johnson :

That’s what the truist.

Kristi Faltorusso :

Success by Committee. The three plus one podcast.

Jon Johnson :

I actually kind of like Success by Committee.

Josh Schachter :

Yeah, not bad.

Kristi Faltorusso :

Oh, interesting. Okay. Success in stereo conversations with the dash of diversity.

Josh Schachter :

All right, we’re all going to submit one pick. My submission here is Christy with three dudes. Next.

Kristi Faltorusso:

I mean, that sounds like something my husband wouldn’t really love. The podcast to be called? Yeah.

Jon Johnson :

Joshua.

Kristi Faltorusso :

It sounds like something that no one’s allowed to open on their desktop.

Josh Schachter:

Yeah.

Jon Johnson:

Safe search on. I was thinking, what about success and satire? Because we’re all feisty.

Kristi Faltorusso :

Yeah, but I can be the feistiest. Right?

Jon Johnson :

Look, we’ll fight over that success and.

Kristi Faltorusso:

Shenanigans, but I like that you’re doing this alliteration thing.

Jon Johnson :

I like alliteration.

Josh Schachter :

I like that you’re reading your chat. You guys are all reading your chat. GPT screens, humorously helping.

Jon Johnson :

Yeah, of course we’re humorously helping came from chat GPT as well.

Josh Schachter:

I think we just need to name it. The name has to be something about, like, Christie. And this is not me being, like, misogyny. This is me being a pure business. Christie and the Three Dwarves and wanting more views.

Kristi Faltorusso:

Because if we promote Christie’s name, I appreciate that. At least you’re being honest about how you’re using me. I think when I get invited to participate in most things, people aren’t as transparent, so I actually like the direction this is going.

Josh Schachter :

Yeah. Like Christy and more eyeballs.

Mickey Powell:

Yeah.

Kristi Faltorusso:

It’s like when Mickey makes sure that I like his content on LinkedIn post and reshare and comment.

Jon Johnson :

What about faces for Radio CS?

Josh Schachter:

Faces?

Kristi Faltorusso:

I think that we’re adorable.

Mickey Powell :

I think we’re not entirely sure why people care.

Kristi Faltorusso:

I liked the success in satire or shenanigans. I liked those play on words. I do think that we’re a playful bunch, and I do think that there is a lot of humor in our content.

Mickey Powell:

Sarcasm.

Josh Schachter:

And we said that BS and CS.

Kristi Faltorusso:

Was taken already, some version of it, but that’s still my I have a.

Josh Schachter:

Feeling that Tatango you said it was tango. I think Tatango would I think they’re too dry to have done BS in CS. They might have done, like, no BS in CS. But I think the point is, as per the first ten minutes of the show, we are BS and CS.

Kristi Faltorusso:

We are definitely okay, so it’s called CS no BS, right?

Josh Schachter:

We’re the opposite. We’re the opposite.

Kristi Faltorusso:

So I think that we’re like CS and BS.

Jon Johnson :

Yeah.

Kristi Faltorusso ]:

See, Christy?

Mickey Powell :

You already came up with the best name. I don’t know why we’re wasting any more time.

Kristi Faltorusso:

You’re right. I think that we run with that. I think it’s CS and BS.

Josh Schachter :

With Christy Falteruso and three dudes and.

Jon Johnson :

Friends, hosted by Christie Falteruso.

Kristi Faltorusso:

Please. It can’t be three dudes with Christy and friends.

Mickey Powell:

For the reference. Josh is not married, folks and pals.

Kristi Faltorusso:

I mean, clearly only an unmarried person.

Jon Johnson:

Why don’t we just do, like, the Josh Actor dating hour and try to marry this guy off? He’s a successful founder of a startup with AI in the name, which is great on Bumble, I would think.

Josh Schachter:

So we’ve just pivoted the show. This is not going to be a dating show for me to be placed yeah, swipe right?

Mickey Powell:

With Joshua Shack.

Jon Johnson:

Double tap.

Kristi Faltorusso:

Some of them are swipe and some.

Jon Johnson]:

You double tap I don’t know.

Josh Schachter:

I have it depends on how well you get to know them.

Jon Johnson:

It’s actually a mix of both, Josh. It’s a mix of the swiping and the double tap.

Mickey Powell:

Should we actually get to something related to customer?

Kristi Faltorusso:

I think we just named it. I think it’s CS and BS with Christie.

Josh Schachter:

Csnbs.

Kristi Faltorusso :

Yeah. Csnbs.

Jon Johnson:

Okay.

Kristi Faltorusso:

And it can be the and percent, or it can be and. Do we want to write it out like it doesn’t matter? We’ll let the marketing guy yeah, I’ll let Josh run with that.

Jon Johnson:

All right.

Josh Schachter:

Hey, do I need to apologize for my comments about Christy? Am I going to get canceled?

Jon Johnson:

What did you say about canceled?

Kristi Faltorusso:

Because I think I would have to cancel you right. Because would I be the canceller?

Josh Schachter:

No. Any listeners out there?

Mickey Powell:

Anyone can, but the real question is, should Josh be canceled? And that’s an easier question to answer.

Jon Johnson:

Well, there’s many other things off of this podcast that might yeah.

Kristi Faltorusso:

Unrelated, I would say, based on today. No.

Jon Johnson :

Okay.

Kristi Faltorusso :

But again, but the private text message.

Josh Schachter :

Threads that we have.

Kristi Faltorusso [00:07:21]:

This is why.

Josh Schachter :

We just don’t so for all the audience out there so Christy is not advocating for my cancellation.

Kristi Faltorusso :

That’s correct.

Josh Schachter
Thank you.

Kristi Faltorusso:

Please don’t cancel my friend Josh.

Josh Schachter :

With that disclaimer in place, let’s go on to the next topic. So we got CS and BS. Now we’re going to go into a post, and this post was by our friend Erica via Real Talking.

Jon Johnson:

We got to meet her in San Francisco.

Josh Schachter :

Yeah.

Jon Johnson:

First time I got to meet her. I enjoy her interview.

Kristi Faltorusso :

Yeah, she’s great. That was not my first time meeting her. I had a chance to meet her in London, and I met her in Utah, and I feel like all of.

Jon Johnson :

The places london and Utah?

Kristi Faltorusso:

Yeah. I mean, where else is there in California? That’s it. That’s where tech happens, right? California, Utah, and London.

Josh Schachter:

Yes.

Mickey Powell :

What, is she canceling?

Jon Johnson :

New York? Describe your day as a CSM dad with one word.

Josh Schachter:

This is not a good question to do on a Monday, is it?

Mickey Powell :

No, it’s actually really bad. Yeah. You know when you’re, like, you’re in bed?

Kristi Faltorusso:

Friday might be worse, though.

Mickey Powell:

That’s true. But you know when you’re, like, in bed and you need to get up and you’re mentally berating yourself to get out of bed?

Kristi Faltorusso:

I don’t have to have those chats with myself. I just get up.

Josh Schachter:

I mean, let’s let Christy go on this one because her day is kind of well documented at this point, but we know she gets up at, like, 330 in the morning, so christy? Yeah. Go ahead. Describe your typical day.

Kristi Faltorusso:

Okay. Can we all a lot and that there’s no such thing as a typical day in customer success. And I think it’s the beauty and the horror of our job.

Mickey Powell:

Correct.

Kristi Faltorusso:

Right. There’s no consistency, but it’s not mundane. Right. We never get bored because there’s always something going on. And if you are a solution minded person and somebody who likes to navigate rough waters, this could be the role for you.

Jon Johnson:

Is this Josh’s dating again?

Kristi Faltorusso:

Yes. Josh could be the CEO for you. Navigating rough waters. I don’t know, but I think mental package.

Mickey Powell:

Yes.

Kristi Faltorusso :

I do think that there’s a lot to be said about our days. So they’re not the same. Right? So we’re working with customers, we’re in internal meetings, we’re building out all kinds of stuff. And I say stuff like decks for meetings, presentations, projects, success plans. I mean, I don’t know, I can rattle off 100 things that we’re doing all the time, but what do we want to do here? We want to break down like, all of the tasks and activities.

Josh Schachter:

Go ahead. No, you go ahead. No, please.

Jon Johnson:

I’m going to go first. Yeah, she broke it down into kind of some blocks. I do this a lot, so I actually segment out my day on a regular basis. So in the morning, I actually don’t take meetings before 10:00 a.m.. That’s kind of like my dig through email time that’s like kind of get my head around the day, right. Get a cup of coffee, wake up, put on pants, maybe. But I also leave the back end of the day clear too. So anything after 03:00, I don’t take meetings. There’s obviously opportunity for internal stuff if there’s a need, but I like to leave a lot of space for kind of the deep thinking when it comes to this. I think a lot of people think that customer success is like it’s all about customer meetings. You have to do the zoom and you have to do the QBR and you have to do all this kind of stuff. And that’s not customer success. That’s like following a ten step program but never actually going to the gym. Right? So I actually really like to leave a lot of opportunity for, I guess, the natural things to come up, like a random email from a customer saying, I’m trying to figure out this problem. What do you think? And then to go meet with ten or 15 other people within my company and just to kind of workshop strategies and thoughts and how to focus on adoption. And it’s not just I need to get them to use it’s. This is the person, this is the customer, this is who they are. And I do a lot of deep diving into use cases and business problems and how the company makes money in documenting that stuff.

Josh Schachter:

I like it. I like how you block out your day, the morning and the afternoon. And just to be clear, that’s not because you get up at ten.

Jon Johnson:

No, I have children. They don’t allow that. My kids are in California for the next two weeks. So is the wife. So I’m like, this is a weird week. Also, on top of many other reasons, but I just literally rolled out of bed and took my first meeting, and it was pretty stressful. I don’t recommend it, but also pretty great just to, like, you know what, throw some stuff in the hair and then you’re on zoom. It’s great. Life is good. I really need to do the dishes. Done.

Josh Schachter :

I’m looking for that email right now because I wrote myself notes, but I haven’t gotten to them yet. But I attended a work yeah, I know. I attended a workshop a couple of weeks ago from a guy who’s like a work management master guru of how to become more efficient at work. And he talked about every day setting aside 230 minutes slots or three two or 330 minutes slots to read your email. And outside of that, you don’t check your email.

Jon Johnson:

Don’t do it.

Josh Schachter:

And he had buckets within that, and there was like and that’s what I’m trying to figure out, the exact setup he had. But it was like, if it’s less than five minutes that it needs a response response, just do it.

Jon Johnson:

Then.

Josh Schachter:

If it’s greater than, like, 15 minutes, then you book time in your calendar for whenever you have an opening to actually get that thing done. Now, the tricky part is the five to 15 minutes task. It’s like, do you do it then or do you what do you do with that one if it’s going to take you ten minutes? And that I don’t remember the answer, to be quite frank with you, but this idea of like just two or three times a day, you check your email and you either get it all done right then and there, or you book time for yourself in the future.

Jon Johnson:

I don’t know.

Josh Schachter:

I’m going to try it out. I haven’t yet, but I’m looking forward to trying it out as soon as I can find that email with my notes.

Jon Johnson:

Well, I think this also goes on to a topic that we’ve talked about before where it’s like, CSMS are not 24/7 support. Getting in front your customers and communicating with them is like, you may email me on Monday, and I might not get back to you until Tuesday, obviously, if there’s urgency and stuff like that, for sure. But coaching folks to say on every call that I do is like, great, email me. Just so you know, I’m in a lot of these meetings. I don’t schedule them at 10:00 A.m., but there’s got to be this back and forth of my time. I’m managing my time really well, and that’s the way that it should be, right? So I’d love to hear how you guys what do you do when you have to break that cycle, when you have to actually jump on something in the middle of the day or break those rules? What does that look like?

Mickey Powell:

Yeah, I struggle with this all the time because earlier in my career, I think I used constant availability to show that I can help, and I can help fast for internal and external. Right. It’s like the whole, like, oh, they responded to a slack at eight at night. They’re super committed.

Jon Johnson:

That guy a raise. Never nobody ever said, yeah.

Mickey Powell:

And it took me a while to realize that that’s actually not that’s never scalable because, like, obviously, like, you ever been like, with an executive or something, they share their screen, you see their slack, and their slack has like a billion messages.

Jon Johnson :

Unread.

Mickey Powell:

Yeah, unread. Right. Because it’s just like, okay, at some point you have to put in place structure to block out the things and to separate out what and when and why and where. And the book that actually really helped me start to understand this more was getting things done. And it does talk about like, yeah, I would definitely look it up. But to Josh’s point, it actually kind of walks you through. Like, if you can do it in 60 seconds, do it now. If it’s a project that has dependent and things like that and you do want to do it, then you need to put it into some sort of bucket of like, I’ve got to schedule this, and I’ve got to set aside time to do it, but I can’t do it right now. And a part of that is all the context switching. You can’t constantly switch from a little task to a big project back to a little task to another project. Your multitasking is actually just causing you to be less productive. And I struggle with this all the time. I’m constantly fighting that battle.

Kristi Faltorusso:

What I found.

Josh Schachter:

No, please. Christie, go.

Kristi Faltorusso:

Okay, I was going to say so what I’ve done is I actually block two to three hour windows on certain days of the week, which are my days that are focused on deep work. Because those are uninterrupted. I will not schedule anything over them. They are sacred, and I do them a couple of times a week, and sometimes they’re in the afternoon, sometimes they’re in the morning. And the reason why I do that is because I know that I am my best and most alert in early hours. I am less effective in afternoon. Like after 03:00. P.m., that’s just not for me.

Jon Johnson:

You’ve been up for 12 hours.

Kristi Faltorusso:

I’ve been up for a whole day and a half at that point. So for me, I’m less effective. So I know that there’s certain work and certain tasks that I’m best suited to tackle in the morning and some that I can deal with in the afternoons. So on various days, I have these buckets of time. But what I found that is if the window is less than 2 hours, I can’t get anything done. And I know that sounds like, wow, okay, it takes you 2 hours to do anything. Yes. Because to the point of context switching and because, again, distractions and just carving out that time where I actually feel like I have the space to give it the proper thought and clarity that the work that I need to do requires. We’re not talking about checking emails. We’re not talking about, like, the administrative work or the back and forth or scheduling internal, whatever. It’s not that work. It’s not the busy work. It is me working on the business. And so if I don’t build that time in and these are just recurring blocks and everyone knows I will not take a meeting over it unless our largest customer is churning, do not come find me. I shut off slack. I shut off email. I shut off everything during that time because there has to be zero distractions. I cannot be bothered.

Josh Schachter:

Let me just say that everybody wants to be a boss. Everybody wants to be a director.

Jon Johnson:

When I grow, I want to be Christy Baltaruso.

Kristi Faltorusso:

Thanks, guys.

Josh Schachter:

Everybody wants to be a boss or a leader. And this is my point right there. But I find that now it’s just so hard. Like, as a CEO of a startup, you are multitasking so many different things between paying bills, paying your podcast producer, writing your requirements, working on marketing with Mickey. And now I cherish the time where I can just sit down for like an hour or 2 hours and do slides or write requirements or just be in the flow of one. I see activity.

Jon Johnson:

I love that.

Kristi Faltorusso:

It’s my happiest time. I’ll be honest with you. I feel like I’m most productive and I thrive most when I’m left alone to just do the job I think I was hired to do, which, let’s be honest, we are not getting any work done in all the damn meetings that we’re in. I get zero done, right? I’m like, I can either do my job or I can be in all these meetings. I can’t do both.

Josh Schachter:

So this guy that this guru, I found my notes to myself of his takeaways. He also suggests changing your meetings from 30 minutes and 60 minutes to 25 minutes or 50 minutes. I’ve seen people do that.

Kristi Faltorusso:

Google has the default. You can set it. It’s called the speedy meeting setting, and it will automatically change to 25 and 50.

Josh Schachter:

I think that’s smart. And then he also mentions that potentially the most important productivity hack is something that a lot of us don’t do. Most of us do not do, and this is particularly relevant for CS, is that we prioritize based on deadline and urgency rather than by impact. And John, this goes to what you’re saying about, like, CS is not support, but really we should always be prioritizing by impact over urgency.

Jon Johnson:

Yes. I love what you just said. I think that’s a huge it takes a couple of years for CSMS to figure that out. I think they get into the mindset of, I got to get this report by friday. And it’s just because it’s the thing on the list, not because yeah, you may need to get it done by Friday, but it may not be the thing that you want to work on right now. Right. It’s the thing that you work on in your flow state because you need 2 hours to focus on this. Yeah, man, that’s so good. I’m going to steal that.

Mickey Powell:

Yeah. Honestly reminding myself of that.

Jon Johnson:

Yeah, that leads us into your second thing.

Josh Schachter:

Mickey’s actually constantly reminding me of that.

Mickey Powell:

True, but that’s a part of a good working relationship. Is this actually going to move the needle or is it just another thing we can do?

Kristi Faltorusso:

Stop being busy.

Jon Johnson:

Yeah, totally. We’re in the process of this acquisition. We got acquired by a PE firm and there’s a lot the company that I work for user testing just John. Just John. I was personally acquired.

Kristi Faltorusso:

John and his family were acquired by a PE firm.

Jon Johnson :

It’s been an interesting week. No, but there’s a lot of processes and there’s a lot of things when you kind of have things come in and they say, do this, and you’re like, why? And I think that’s like a really good question and I’m asking that a lot right now. It’s like but you just gave words to some of the internal dialogues that I’m having with leadership this week. It’s like, well, because I want to focus on impact, not just urgency. Right? Yeah. This is important revenues, important stability, all that kind of stuff. But if what we’re doing isn’t moving the needle, why are we wasting our time? If we’re trying to do better with what we have, why are we focusing on impact instead of urgency? And then you actually posted this does kind of segue, I feel like, into the second post that you brought the Queen of LinkedIn, small queue. Carly Agar posted top things you need to do to prep for upcoming client meetings. I’m not going to read all ten of them because I feel like they all need to be erased now. And we just need to stay focused on impact. Like, are we focusing on the impact of how our customers are working with our software on our customer meetings? Or is it just bullshit? Like, are we just giving them more work to do on our meetings and taking up time?

Josh Schachter:

Go into that. Explore, like double click into that one more layer.

Jon Johnson:

Quite bright. Yeah. I don’t know if it’s a crisis. I don’t know if it’s an awakening.

Kristi Faltorusso:

Probably a crisis.

Jon Johnson:

Everything is a crisis when you’re 40, which I am, by the way. I think that a lot of what CSMS have been trained to do is to create work for folks that they’re managing outside of the platform in order to validate the purchase of said software. I think there’s a lot of steps that we make our customers do and hoops to jump through to be quote unquote, successful. And I think that how many CSMS do you have? I would ask you, Christy, like, of the software, not maybe that you speak with. Right. But there’s in any given day, like, I’m working with five or six different software companies and I have a CSM for every single one of them. And if I have to spend an hour to give my CSM something so that they can report on my success, that’s taking time away from the job that I’m hired to do. That cuts down a lot of the value of these software companies.

Kristi Faltorusso:

I was going to say it cuts down the time that they are supposed to be giving you back.

Jon Johnson:

Yeah, totally.

Kristi Faltorusso:

Right. So much of the software that we utilize is to help drive efficiency and time savings and all this. But when you then have people who are intervening, who are demanding that time back, can we subtract that then from we don’t. It’s why I also don’t do QBRs EBRs or any kind of BR with any customer success manager of any of my partners or vendors because, quite frankly, it’s a waste of my time.

Jon Johnson :

I know my usage.

Josh Schachter :

You don’t attend, you don’t accept.

Kristi Faltorusso:

I will not attend. I will not attend and do schedule.

Josh Schachter:

Them at client success.

Kristi Faltorusso:

I do not. Have you ever heard me talk favorably about a business review?

Jon Johnson:

No. I have heard you talk unfavorably. And this is the thing, though, correct?

Kristi Faltorusso:

I promise it’s not because I don’t believe that there is value in it. I just think that most organizations don’t orchestrate it. Right. And so it’s a big fat use of waste of everyone’s time. Any CSM of any product that I use, I have not engaged with them before. They do not know what my goals are. We are not measuring towards any objectives. So what do you want to get me on a call for? You’re not giving me an update. I already have my established sentiment if I’m either using your product or I’m not using your product, and I don’t need you to waste an hour of my time, which I don’t have to tell you what my goals are. So that you can fill out some arbitrary system in your tech stack so that your executive feels better about things. No, thank you.

Jon Johnson :

My favorite thing to do when a CSM reaches out to me upon leading up to a renewal or mid year or whatever it is, is like, hey, we’d love to get on an EBR with you just so we can talk through things. Because I know in their mind they need to tell their boss if we’re healthy or if we’re going to renew. I respond and I say, hey, we’re healthy. You can mark us down as renewal. And I give that details like, upfront. It’s like, I’m not going to get on a call with you. I’m not going to fill out your documents. I get what you’re trying to do. I have sympathy and empathy for it. But at the same time, you’re right. You don’t know anything about my business, and I don’t necessarily want to take the next 5 hours of my day to teach you what I do in my company with your software. It sounds funny as a CSM to say that, but I try. This is actually a pretty big kind of like one of those headbutting things within my organization right now where it’s like, I don’t want to get on a QBR with every single customer every single quarter, because that means we’re a very analytic, data analytics heavy operator. We have a lot of numbers and ROI and all this stuff, right? And in order for our customers to come prepared for that, it takes hours of their day and that takes hours of their day away from what they should be doing. It should not be managing vendors. Right?

Kristi Faltorusso:

We should be getting do on to others as we want done to ourselves. If you don’t want to attend one, maybe you shouldn’t be forcing your customers to do one. Just saying.

Jon Johnson:

Well, and that’s, to your point, is, Christy, all those ones that you ignored, I guarantee you at some point they’re like, oh, these guys are at risk, right?

Kristi Faltorusso:

Oh, I’m sure that there’s a lot of conversations happening about how I ignore everybody and I’ve gone dark and I’m a disengaged customer. Like, Leave me alone, we’re fine.

Jon Johnson:

And then they engage their leadership, and they’re like, we got to have an executive. I got to reach out to Christian.

Kristi Faltorusso :

I won’t even tell you that the volume of emails that I get with crazy messages, and I’m like, can you just stop? We’re fine. Move it along.

Jon Johnson:

Anyway.

Josh Schachter:

Well, then what’s the solution? What’s the solution? What would be the ideal utopian QBR?

Kristi Faltorusso:

EBR give options, right? We make an assumption that we’re just going to call it a BR. We’re going to make an assumption that BRS need to be these 60 Minutes meetings or two hour long meetings on site with 30 people in a room. Stop it. I’ve asked every single one of our customers now moving into the partnership because we’ve reframed our framework and said, how would you like us to update you on the progress we’re making towards your goals? Would you prefer asynchronous communication? Would you prefer a one pager? Do you want to have a meeting? What is your preference? And we will meet that. And guess what? I have not yet heard anyone ask me for a 60 Minutes business review meeting.

Jon Johnson:

I have one customer that does it.

Kristi Faltorusso:

Every quarter, not a one. And I manage customer success managers. So going back to like, let’s do on to others, you do on to yourself. Maybe if you don’t want to participate in these things with me, maybe your customers don’t want to participate with them.

Jon Johnson:

Amen.

Josh Schachter:

John, you have a customer, though. That is a very large ACV average contract for you, right.

Jon Johnson :

But they’re broken up into child counts, right. So we manage them as one brand, but individual lines, right? So there’s one customer, and I love this customer so much. They’re so responsive. And every I get an email from the executive assistant saying, hey, it’s Q Two, I got some time. I’m going to schedule our business review. This is the only time that we talk though, and I actually love it because it’s not your typical VR. It’s what you would want. Christy they take an hour out of their quarter to talk through the projects that they’re working on, and I just listen. And we kind of like fill in the gaps when it comes to enablement and support. And it’s like, this is what it needs to be. But what I love is that we’re rolling out Digital QBRs. So we are using a tool called Maddox, and we’re implementing this option idea of saying, like, do you not want.

Kristi Faltorusso:

To get ad for them? It’s like a one pager QBR. Maddox they just like, I got an ad on LinkedIn today. I’ve never heard of them before.

Jon Johnson:

It’s pretty cool. We’re working out all the templates right now. And it’s like for the subset of customers that are like, no, I’m not going to get on an EBR with you.

Kristi Faltorusso:

It’s great.

Jon Johnson:

Here’s your usage, here’s the product updates. Here’s how you schedule resources. Like, if you need me, here’s my link. We’ll talk later because you’re fine unless there’s a risk or unless we know there’s problems. 90% of the time that works. And then you have time for those kind of like custom one on one calls that are really valuable. And I get so much value out of these calls that I have every quarter. There’s probably only two or three of them in all of this large business that we do on a regular basis, like quarterly VRS.

Kristi Faltorusso:

I like it. Well, I’m confident now I’m going to probably going to get a lot of ads now that we’ve actually said the name out loud. So now I’m sure my Instagram and all of my social media will just have Maddox ads surveying.

Jon Johnson:

Hey, Christy, I heard you talking about.

Kristi Faltorusso:

Us on your podcast. Exactly, right?

Jon Johnson:

Don’t do that, Maddox already. We love you.

Kristi Faltorusso:

No, I feel it. I feel like if I open my phone, they’re already there.

Jon Johnson:

They’re just waiting.

Kristi Faltorusso :

They’re waiting for me.

Jon Johnson:

Okay.

Josh Schachter :

Maddox is in our lineup for July 4, by the way, if you want the full founder story on how they started their business.

Kristi Faltorusso :

Oh, really?

Josh Schachter:

My buddy Nick. Yeah.

Kristi Faltorusso :

Look at you. Oh, my buddy Nick Bragging. Humble brag.

Jon Johnson:

Humble, humble brag.

Kristi Faltorusso :

Christie CEO to CEO relationship.

Jon Johnson :

Christy, how do you feel about all these top ten lists? I feel like we’ve been seeing a lot.

Kristi Faltorusso :

Oh, my gosh. Okay, can we go? Are you ready?

Josh Schachter:

Hold on. Can we relate this is because context, we got to keep it in the CS insider collab, right? Mashup otherwise it’s just the BS part.

Jon Johnson:

Okay?

Josh Schachter:

So this is because we go through and Brandon Cestrone sends us a list of all of kind of the articles and links and stuff like that that are going to be in the next episode. And we have tended to see the trend that there’s a ton of listicles out there.

Kristi Faltorusso:

I want to also add that it does go beyond even that, the curated list that’s provided to us, right? So I don’t want to even just like, let’s not target general work very.

Josh Schachter:

Closely, which is representative, which is representative.

Kristi Faltorusso:

LinkedIn more hours than I care to admit out loud. And so what I am seeing is this like flooding of top ten lists. Top ten, top seven, top eight. Okay? And so what I did is I started oh my gosh, right? So I started dropping in these scenarios into Chachi BT to see and not to put anyone on blast, but I see some correlation between what they’re posting and what I’m being fed from this AI bot. Do you want names? Okay, so I know I will not do that. I will not put people on blast that’s broll stuff privately, maybe for our text exchange. But anyway, so here’s what I’m suggesting. I love the use of chat GPT. I think that the stuff that’s coming back here is super relevant, right? If you are pulling your list from there, the lists are good, they’re accurate, right? Like, I’m not going to contest any of this, but would be super helpful to the community is if you picked one to three of those and went deep and contextualized it and layered in your experience, right? And talk about how you navigated something or how you tackled this challenge or how your CSMS do this every day. Otherwise you’re just giving me the same thing. I can go read in Chat GPT and that’s not valuable. So let’s stop littering LinkedIn and other social media platforms with data maybe in context that’s not your own and enhance it. Take that. No, because I’m here for the ideology part of it, right? Like, I love it to give you ideas. I am absent for content ideas. I wake up in the morning, I’m like, I couldn’t post today if I tried. So I like this to help with the ideology. But come on, the real value is what you’ve done, how you do it, right? And giving the community context, give them some direction, give them a story. So if you’re not doing these things, don’t post about it and misrepresent yourself either. And be like, I’m an expert in these ten things. Guess what? No, you’re not. You never even done these things. Stop it. So instead, pick some, dig into it, add some context, tell your story, make it fun, make it sound like you right. Maybe bring a little bit of your personality in there? Because I can tell it sounds like a robot. Anyway, that’s my take. Sorry, I just feel very spicy about.

Josh Schachter:

That Chat TBT hack is that you should always ask Chat if you’re giving Chat GBT content to refine, tell it to keep your same tone. Yes, and it can do that. But I don’t think that was your point, Christy.

Kristi Faltorusso:

That wasn’t my point.

Jon Johnson:

But that’s a good point. But that does get to a point. We live in a world where I think I gave up on posting. I used to post every day and I tried to be all I used.

Kristi Faltorusso :

To post every day, and then I got people yelling at me, thinking that I died. They were like, Where are you? You don’t say anything anymore.

Jon Johnson:

But we live in this world where if you’re not in front of people’s eyeballs every day, you’re kind of irrelevant. And I don’t like, I’m opting out of that world. I would rather have this every day than anything else. Like posting on LinkedIn.

Kristi Faltorusso:

Well, this is my favorite.

Jon Johnson:

That’s just not the world it’s absolutely my favorite. But I do think that there’s a good amount of people that are following these 30 day these things to build your network and your net worth and all that kind of stuff, and they just you have to post every day. And at some point, I found, like, day 18, you’re like, what am I supposed to say? It’s like, oh, top ten list.

Kristi Faltorusso :

Honestly, I blame everyone putting this huge emphasis on, like, you need to build your personal brand. That’s what it’s out there. Everyone’s saying in order to mickey entered.

Jon Johnson:

The chat, mr. Defend himself now.

Kristi Faltorusso:

Well, no, I’ve had people ask me flat out, christy, when did you decide to go build your brand? And that was never a priority for me.

Jon Johnson :

No, but here’s the thing where you.

Kristi Faltorusso:

Knew how to spell customer success.

Jon Johnson:

That’s true.

Kristi Faltorusso:

Just so we’re clear, pre pre pandemic.

Josh Schachter :

That does not mean that it was not in part for your personal brands.

Jon Johnson:

No, but Mickey’s going to jump in.

Kristi Faltorusso:

Trying to learn because nobody was posting at that point. There were so few people talking about customer success. I had nobody. I had no friends. I had no allies. I had no and now I have too much garbage fluttering my LinkedIn feed and I’m mad.

Jon Johnson:

Oh, man.

Mickey Powell :

Blaming the wrong person.

Jon Johnson :

That was guttural. No, we’ll take it.

Kristi Faltorusso :

Should I blame you? Mickey, let’s go.

Jon Johnson:

No, I think, Mickey, there is intelligence to what I’m about to say, okay? Mickey, you are the prime example of somebody who should build out a brand, but not everybody should build out a brand. Do you know what I mean?

Kristi Faltorusso:

Can you talk about that? Can you differentiate? Because not everyone knows, Mickey.

Mickey Powell:

Yeah.

Jon Johnson:

You have something to sell, b, you have and I mean this, like, not just update AI, but your personal side, right? A lot of folks that build out brands aren’t driving people to something. They’re just building out a brand because they want followers or they want something like this. But there isn’t a landing page. There isn’t a product behind it. Christy, we were talking earlier, there’s some folks that maybe want to build out a coursework or something like that. Those are the reasons to drive brands. But I see so many people that just post because they post and they want to build a brand and they’re.

Josh Schachter :

John, I think I would qualify.

Kristi Faltorusso:

Well, have a strong POV, right? They’ve got a point of view and some value to add. Mickey, he’s dominated in Chat GPT, as far as I’m concerned. He is the authority in that as it pertains to customer success. And I will every day go to him if I’ve got questions on how to best utilize this for customer success. My whole thing initially was how to simplify customer success. I think people overcomplicated and we get in our own way. And so I anchored on a storyline that very much drew from conclusions from my experience. So I was able to provide rich content based on anecdotes and stories and experiences. The problem is today is that folks who are lacking those things are just putting content out to be seen. And that’s not building a brand. You’re sharing content.

Jon Johnson:

Yeah.

Josh Schachter:

I genuinely believe that Christie built her brand based on wanting to share content to help others in the industry.

Jon Johnson:

I genuinely believe that.

Kristi Faltorusso:

Of course, I was waiting for but now she continues, I was waiting for.

Josh Schachter:

Something that segue the clock is right twice a day. Every once in a while, I can be kind. So, John, I agree with you. I just want to qualify. I don’t think you need to be selling something. You can just be building your own brand because you want to build you’re building yourself for your next job.

Jon Johnson:

I don’t mean like a physical product. I mean, what is the end goal? Right?

Josh Schachter:

It’s not just because of FOMO, right?

Jon Johnson:

Well, it’s almost like it’s this idea, I don’t know, if you follow this on Twitter, there’s this kind of, like, build in public thing, right, where a lot of folks that are like, entrepreneurs that want to build something are texting out all of the things that they’re learning, right? And I’m not against that. It’s just that there’s some core learnings that everybody has to learn. There’s some things and I don’t mean that in a negative way. And I’m kind of losing the plot here a little bit, so reel me back in when you can. But just this idea that it’s like customer success isn’t support host. We’ve been doing this for 15 years. There’s some things that it’s like but.

Kristi Faltorusso:

We’Ve been doing this for 15 years. So here’s the challenge that I’m faced with, right? We have an entire it’s like the generations, right? Our generation of customer success professionals. It’s like, been there, done that. We don’t want to talk about those things because we feel like we already know those things. But that next generation coming up. I’m telling you, they don’t know what’s going on. They don’t know how to do these things. So I do think that there’s an audience for these first time learners to take some of the stuff that’s less rich in value for us and still find an appropriate audience.

Jon Johnson:

So then I feel like you and I, Christy, maybe there is, like, a maturity thing here when it comes to our age followers.

Kristi Faltorusso:

So should we just build our own LinkedIn?

Jon Johnson:

God, no.

Kristi Faltorusso:

We should build a separate LinkedIn. Right?

Jon Johnson:

No, we all just stop. We just get out of their way. I don’t know.

Kristi Faltorusso :

I know, but I feel like there is stuff that I still want to learn, but I feel like the things I need to or want to learn aren’t the things I’m finding on LinkedIn. And I don’t know if that’s like I’ve hit a certain point in my career and my trajectory where I don’t know. But again, I’m probably just following the wrong people. I’m connected with too many individual contributors, first time customer success professionals. And maybe that’s why it’s because of the network that has organically been built around me.

Jon Johnson:

Yeah.

Josh Schachter:

Mickey, who are you following in the AI world? Because you’ve put a lot of time and effort into this, and I think you follow some people that are really bringing value that others might want to know about.

Mickey Powell:

Yeah. Professor Ethan Molok at Wharton. Ali K. Miller, formerly head of machine learning business development at Amazon.

Jon Johnson:
Stephen Wolfram, who’s the CEO and founder of Wolfram research.

Mickey Powell:

And then there’s a couple of other blogs, the Algorithmic Bridge and Life Architect.

Jon Johnson:

The names of those guys escape me right now.

Mickey Powell:

Those are folks that I’m subscribed to their newsletter, and some of them I pay for specifically. And that’s all in the ebook. I’ve shared all of that. Again.

Kristi Faltorusso:

I was waiting for an opportunity to plug the ebook. Okay, there it is. Guys, I think we’re done.

Mickey Powell:

No, I want to talk because I heard John and Christy go at it for a minute.

Kristi Faltorusso:

Is that what we were doing? That’s what that means.

Mickey Powell:

Whatever you want to call it. Or you weren’t going at it. You were attacking kind of together.

Jon Johnson:

Yes, if you want to know.

Mickey Powell:

Pack of raptors. It was like Jurassic Park. Clever girl.

Kristi Faltorusso:

Interesting. Yeah, actually, the dinosaurs were eating me, so great. Awesome. All right, Mickey, continue.

Josh Schachter:

No, he was saying you were the Dino. Yeah.

Mickey Powell:

You’re the raptor.

Kristi Faltorusso:

Also unflattering. I’m the velocity. No. Okay.

Jon Johnson:

Sorry, Mickey.

Mickey Powell:

Number one, remember, these are all distribution channels.

Jon Johnson:

Here we go.

Mickey Powell:

LinkedIn and like BuzzFeed, they built a business off of like people want to read the top ten list using that? No, I don’t know, but what I’m trying to say is that LinkedIn has built the channel. So through all of the tricks that we know and a lot that we probably don’t know, they have figured out that they can get people there and they can get them to stay there and to stay engaged.

Jon Johnson:

Essentially, Microsoft bought them for, whatever, $26 billion or something.

Mickey Powell:

So, yeah, I am actively participating in putting content out. Some of it’s good, some of it’s not good. But I do have personal and professional goals. But also the process is part of my value of what I get value out of, because I do have to think about what am I posting? What’s my take? And yes, I use Chachi BD to help me. But to your point, Christy, I usually take the extra step of going, do I agree with this, do I not agree with this? Do I have a personal anecdote that can illustrate how I’ve done this before or not done this before? Do I have a contrarian take on this? All of those additional levels. But I think that comes from practice. So I do give a lot of leeway to folks that are trying to post and build the brand. And I’m an advocate of people posting and building their brand to get better at their own writing, which this is something I want to get better at. But also, to Josh’s point, this is the channel, everybody listening that’s ever applied to a job. You apply to 100 jobs, you get no fucking response. Pardon my French.

Jon Johnson :

That wasn’t french.

Mickey Powell:

But you can get a hiring manager to respond to you on LinkedIn. Why would I bother go applying for the job?

Jon Johnson:

I want to say because we’re going to get into it. We can wrap it up here in a second. I completely, 100% agree with you. I do love it. What I think to Christie’s point prior to the pandemic, because that’s when I kind of started getting a little mouthy on LinkedIn, is at some point, we’re going to get to a place where there’s too much noise for it to be a standard newsfeed, as we have right now. So what I am looking for is what the little subset or niche groups and how we consume that data. I follow, like, 5000 people. There’s no way that I’m going to be able to ingest all of that content. I’m still relying on the algorithm. I think we’re getting to the point in these worlds where we don’t want to rely on the algorithm anymore. I want to go to ten people in my community, in my network, that I are trusted and that I can speak to and that can speak to me and that I can learn from, right. That I know I’m going to learn from, and I want to move people in and out of those communities. I want to take what I can and add top eight. Got it. That’s it. Can we please back to Tom yes. That guy’s a genius. So that’s what I’m saying, is, like, I whiteboard back to Christy’s little thing about the top ten. I would just encourage folks that are going through these processes of learning how to post and learning what to post and all this blah, blah, blah stuff, right? That’s fine. If that’s what you want to do, I support you. Find a way to not just make it rote, to not make it this really standard templated thing like these tools, just like in customer success, every tool that we use is only as powerful as how we use it, right? So if you’re not adding your lens or your color or anything to what you’re getting out of these prompt engines, which is what they are, these things aren’t thinking. They’re just guessing what the next likely word is based on what you tell it. That’s all that they’re doing. Add the human element to it.

Josh Schachter:

At the end of the day, it all comes down to just make sure you’re adding value. Use Chat GPT if you want, but just add your own value.

Kristi Faltorusso:

Yeah, and that was my point, right? Instead of feeling compelled to copy, paste all ten things that you’ve just read, pick three that you feel passionate about, right, and go elaborate on it. And if you don’t have experience in there, ask questions, tag experts in it and say, hey, this came back, right? I did this query. This prompt gave me this. I don’t get it. I don’t know how to do this. I don’t know. There’s ways to do this where you can actually be more engaging to the community than just try to be visible, because that’s not value add.

Mickey Powell
You have to think about your audience, too.

Kristi Faltorusso:

But LinkedIn value?

Jon Johnson:

No, you got to think about LinkedIn’s algorithm. That’s the problem. I said that post last week. I wrote a hell of a post. You all last.

Josh Schachter:

Just for the record.

Kristi Faltorusso:

John, let’s go.

Josh Schachter:

John, after this story, it better have a good punchline, because there’s no commentary, no response from us. This story closing out the episode. This is how we end. You have the mic. I’m going to do it. Thanks, everybody, for joining us. Over to you.

Jon Johnson:

I’m not doing it.

Mickey Powell:

No, I have a good ending. It’s a quote from Naval. Ravican is escape competition through authenticity, which.

Jon Johnson:

I did, but I’m so used to people like you. I know.

Mickey Powell:

To our audience.

Jon Johnson:

No, this is therapy. I don’t care.

Josh Schachter:

Tell the story, John.

Kristi Faltorusso:

We’re not leaving until you close it out. This happens to me all the time. And then I went back and I looked at their algorithm cheat sheet or whatever triggers, and yeah, the cheat sheet. And I was like, oh, okay, cool. So if I don’t post every day, if I don’t engage every day, if I’m not doing all the things that they want me to do to gamify the system, then nobody sees my crap anymore. Come on.

Jon Johnson:

No, that’s exactly it. So I spent some time in New York two weeks ago on customer visits. And it was so much fun. Josh and I had some pizza. I walked around and met. I went to some comedy, ate a whole bunch of great food. And I did a lot of listening to customers. And one of our customers spoke at a conference. And I did all the right things. I interacted with all of the speakers on LinkedIn and I followed them and they followed me. And then I tagged them in a post and they responded to the post and I hashtagged it. And I have this really interesting thing that I have been learning about customer success for myself is less about all of these processes and more about what did I wrote. I said a lot of time we forget about the person at the other end of the zoom call and it’s a user, but it’s actually Sam who lives in Atlanta who does these things, right, and walks her dog in the afternoon. And these human elements are so removed from this digital world that so often we forget what customer success is and that a customer is a person. And how do you get back to that? And it is it is going for a walk. It is listening to the same music or listening to a podcast or talking about all of this stuff that connects us as humans. And I thought this was a really interesting post. And I don’t do it for clicks. I don’t do it for likes, but I generally will get a couple of thousand interactions and people respond. It’s like, oh, a couple of shares. Nothing. I mean, 75 impressions, just bullshit. And I’m not Mickey, so I’m not like texting everybody in the group saying, hey, everybody go like this or my.

Kristi Faltorusso:

Friend anymore could be like Mickey and do that.

Mickey Powell:

No, but current leaderboard Christie’s winning.

Josh Schachter:

Just reference.

Jon Johnson :

Yeah, totally. I’m losing at this point. No, but I actually thought about it. I should have them interact with it. I’m going to host it. And instead I was passive aggressive and I took a screenshot and I said, what the hell, guys?

Kristi Faltorusso :

I mean, here’s the thing though. I don’t even see anybody’s content that I want to see anymore. Like all my buddies, all my CS friends, I don’t see their content. That’s not what’s coming up in my feed. And if I took screenshots of what came up in my feed, shame on you, LinkedIn.

Jon Johnson:

Yeah, I’m not a big fan of the Algo right now.

Kristi Faltorusso:

No.

Jon Johnson:

Ladies and gentlemen.

Josh Schachter:

And we’ll leave it at that.

Kristi Faltorusso:

Okay? We.