Back to the startup grind | Jon Johnson

[Jon] (0:00 - 0:44)

There is something to be said about that, but what I want to do is not, I'm going to build out these systems differently, that I want the same systems. I want the people that follow the systems to buy in better, because we get so far removed from the why. We get so far removed from why I have to flag every note with a trait in Vitaly, or Planhat, or Gainsight, because I just have to fill out all of these forms.

And then we go through, it's like, let's automate something. And it's like, our data is garbage. Yeah, it's because you don't know, you don't know why we tag everything with traits.

You don't know why we segment everything like that. And you're just given this handbook that says, okay, get up to speed, go do this.

[JP] (0:53 - 0:54)

It's butter.

[Dillon] (0:55 - 0:55)

Butter.

[Jon] (0:56 - 0:56)

Butter.

Butter.

[Dillon] (0:57 - 1:11)

What's up, lifers, and welcome to The Daily Standup with Lifetime Value, where we're giving you fresh new customer success ideas every single day. I got my man, JP here.

JP, do you want to say hi?

[JP] (1:11 - 1:14)

Hey, I'ma really frost your flakes today, baby.

[Jon] (1:16 - 1:17)

He's got a list.

[JP] (1:17 - 1:18)

Do it. I gotta redo it.

[Jon] (1:18 - 1:19)

Maybe frosted flakes.

[Dillon] (1:19 - 1:25)

He doesn't have a list, and that's the worst part, is this is all off the cuff. Okay.

[Jon] (1:25 - 1:27)

You say worst, I say best.

[Dillon] (1:28 - 1:29)

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, look.

[JP] (1:29 - 1:29)

What's up, y'all?

[Dillon] (1:29 - 1:33)

Same thing. I'm not editing any of this.

[Jon] (1:33 - 1:33)

No.

[Dillon] (1:34 - 1:38)

And we have Jon with us. Jon, can you say hi, please?

[Jon] (1:38 - 1:55)

Hey, guys. Jon Johnson here.

Curly-headed CSM just trying to survive. Curly-headed? Like parsley?

The curly-headed parsley? Curly-headed. Dude, I mean, look at the curls. Look at this.

[Dillon] (1:55 - 2:00)

I know.

They look phenomenal. If you're not on video, you gotta. Oh, my goodness.

It's phenomenal.

[JP] (2:00 - 2:02)

You couldn't find better curls at a gym, baby.

[Dillon] (2:06 - 2:09)

Get ready, Jon.

Jon, if you thought that was good, just wait.

[Jon] (2:09 - 2:10)

No, here's what I expect.

[Dillon] (2:11 - 2:12)

He's cold. He's still warming up the engine.

[Jon] (2:13 - 2:25)

Dylan and I are gonna have a great conversation about CS, and JP is just gonna pepper us with one-liners throughout, and it's gonna be a goal to stay on topic. Oh, that's not my goal.

[Dillon] (2:27 - 2:33)

And I am your host. My name is Dylan Young. Jon, you already said your name.

Can you please introduce yourself?

[Jon] (2:34 - 2:46)

Yeah, my name is Jon Johnson. I work in customer success at a UX research platform called Great Question. I live in Raleigh, North Carolina, and let's see.

How can I go?

[Dillon] (2:46 - 2:47)

Blood typo negative?

[Jon] (2:48 - 3:05)

Well, actually, positive.

No, and you may have seen me in some of the other customer success podcasts, on my podcast with Josh Hector and Christy Faltruzzo called Ed Churns, and then just tearing people apart on LinkedIn for their bad ideas. I don't think that's true.

[Dillon] (3:05 - 3:06)

Do you do that? Is that what you do?

[Jon] (3:07 - 3:15)

I mean, that's an aggressive way of it, but yeah, I think a lot of people say dumb things, and you know, that's an opportunity to enable.

[Dillon] (3:17 - 3:22)

Yeah, don't enable them, but I don't know if you gotta tear them down. I mean, look, everybody's reality is their own. You know that.

[Jon] (3:22 - 3:23)

Yeah, man.

[JP] (3:23 - 3:25)

I like carnitas and pulled pork too, baby.

[Dillon] (3:25 - 3:33)

What? Tear them apart.

Sometimes it doesn't even need an analogy. You see that, Jon?

[Jon] (3:33 - 3:41)

Yeah, I gotta be honest. I didn't follow that one, JP, so. Tear apart.

Yeah, I got there.

[Dillon] (3:41 - 3:43)

It's cool. Yeah, you tear them apart. You know, it's like shredded pork.

[Jon] (3:43 - 3:45)

Pulled pork. It's in the name.

[Dillon] (3:45 - 4:41)

Yeah, yeah. What are we doing here, guys? Well, Jon.

This is different. We're doing something different. So what I would usually say right here is, you know what we do here.

And that's the end. It's usually over by now. It is.

But in fact, nobody knows what we're doing here because this is a brand new format for The Daily Standup. So we have actually published one version of this, but it was between me, JP, and Rob, who is conspicuously. Absconded away.

Absconded away, gallivanting. He is conspicuously absent today. So it's just the three of us.

And we're gonna do a long-form episode with Mr. Jon Johnson. So I think the way we can get this started, I think, is the same way we start every single one, which is, what is on your mind, Jon? And we'll go from there.

[Jon] (4:41 - 5:09)

Yeah, man. That's a great question. So I'm about 45 days into a new role.

And it's a much earlier stage company that I've been in like 10 years. We're under 50 employees, seed funded, good cadre of customers that we're working with. But it's just new, man.

Everything's new. It's like fresh baby diaper skin, man. There's just a lot of stuff to do.

Fresh baby diaper skin. I don't know. I lost the analogy.

[Dillon] (5:09 - 5:16)

Those were just words, I think. I don't know what that was. Fresh baby diaper skin.

That's the name of the episode.

[Jon] (5:16 - 5:37)

Understood. You're learning everything over again. Yeah, there's a lot.

I'm spending a lot of time reminding myself what's important in the long term instead of getting caught up in, honestly, the organized chaos of an early stage startup that just has too much stuff to do and a whole bunch of customers that are finding great value.

[Dillon] (5:38 - 5:41)

So how many times a day do you say, well, that's not really my job?

[Jon] (5:43 - 5:44)

Oh, you're not allowed to say that anymore.

[Dillon] (5:44 - 6:12)

I know. I haven't said that once, which is new. So there's probably a ton of times throughout the day where you're like, oh, well, you wouldn't normally do that.

Right. And that's not a bad thing. It's just you're at a different stage of company.

Right. You said you haven't done this in a decade. There's fires that you want to say, like, oh, I'm not running towards that.

Right. But you kind of have to. Or do you think you come up to it more sophisticatedly?

Like, tell us how that looks.

[Jon] (6:13 - 6:17)

Sophisticatedly? I think it's a word. I think.

We'll look it up later. Google it.

[Dillon] (6:17 - 6:18)

Okay.

[Jon] (6:18 - 6:22)

Yeah, I am thinking about it very differently. And he's like, what's a Google?

[Dillon] (6:24 - 6:29)

Okay. I love that. He was like immediately went into scribe mode.

He's like, I guess I'll do that.

[Jon] (6:29 - 8:55)

Yeah. Are you taking notes? Everybody have your granola turned on?

So no, I actually kind of want to I kind of want to like redirect a little bit because I came into this job knowing that none of it, quote unquote, is my job as as as customer success. However, instead of running towards the fire, I find myself like running towards the system that we have in place to respond to the fire. And I think that's the maturity that I'm finding in my experiences.

Yeah. Like there's a whole bunch of people that have been in the trenches for years. Like my boss has been the head of CS has been at the team for three years.

And there's just a ton of incredible work that she is doing on our for our customers today. Right. But I was hired because there's no time to look at anything else.

Right. So as we scale, you know, you go from 10 customers to 100 customers, like those things, just you have to think about them differently. And it used to terrify me when I started at user testing, like four years ago or whatever, to like, look at it and be like, guys, we're not solving the big problems.

We're solving one offs. We're being reactive. This CS thing is not supposed to be what it is.

So kind of taking some of that and spending a lot of time at what the air support looks like, how our product team is communicating, how our support team is communicating and not just Hey, fix this bug. But what is the entire system around it that supports a bug ticket? How are we communicating?

What is the audit trail? What are we reporting on? How do we have data to say?

Yeah, I think a customer would like this. Right. And that isn't like a today thing.

That's like this stuff is going to implement value a year from now. Today, we're focused on time to value with our customers. And it's really fun because we've got a really cool product.

We were just on stage at config yesterday in San Francisco, like releasing some pretty cool new features that are industry leading. And I get to think about that stuff, not with 10,000 customers in this broad range of historical knowledge. Every customer is a new customer.

So we get to just try a lot of stuff. So there's a lot of energy. And it's been lots of balancing for sure.

But it's been really nice to take the discomfort of coming into organized chaos as kind of the way that I'd say it, like there's a purpose for it. And we know that there's going to be maturity needed. But looking at the signals and actually like working on outcomes and deciding what a success metric is, because we don't have it.

Right. And we think we know what it is. And let's go test it.

So it's been pretty fun. Well, fun. It's been a cool job.

[Dillon] (8:56 - 9:06)

Yeah. JP and I just had this conversation recently about, can we stop talking about our jobs like they're the second coming of whatever?

[Jon] (9:06 - 9:09)

Yeah, it's just a job. I'm so happy for it, but it's just a job.

-: 10:16

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

It's one of many things that are important in your life. JP, why don't you jump in here? Yeah.

Is it a word? Did you Google it? I'm going to do it right now.

Oh, sophisticatedly. Oh my gosh. Yeah.

You know, so talking about, I guess I'm going to focus on the wow. Scrabble. Don't play with this guy.

So, I mean, there's a couple of things that pop up in my head. One of them is the experience of working at a startup with like 50 people. I mean, I'm not going to lie, Jon, in my mind, sheer terror.

Yeah. Sheer terror. I think that's a bit of an exaggeration.

Like I'm exaggerating a bit, but I think that the thing about being, at least in my experience at some of those early stage startups was, I feel like since I was at the earlier stage startups, there's not as much buffer for what's going on, which is a good and a bad thing.

[VO] (: 10:17

Yeah.

[Dillon] (: 10:17

You're able to see both the success and the failure really clearly. At least that's been what I've seen. I'm also thinking uncertainty is just a part of what we do, whether you're working at a startup, whether it's just different flavors of uncertainty.

And usually sort of how long things take to sort of reach you in the chain, right? The chain is longer.

[Jon] (: 10:40

Yeah. And so. It's much shorter in a smaller company.

And let me speak on that just a little bit, because like that is something that is taking some equilibrium for me. It's coming out of a much larger company, User Testing, where we had almost a thousand employees and I don't know what their, I mean, hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue. You want to build out a program and you need to go talk to 20 people.

And it's designed that way, right? Because of the protections. Now, where I'm coming into it from, and I think this is why they always say like, go work for a early stage startup.

It'll be like a cheap MBA, like you'll get a business degree out of it.

[VO] (: 11:12

Right, right.

[Jon] (: 11:13

Because I'm being reminded of all of the protections that we went through. I used to look at it as a burden. I used to look at it as like, God, I wish we could do things faster.

And now that I am doing things faster, it's not being done poorly, but I am looking at it. And the first thing that I'm doing is building out protections. Like I'm building out, I need to get this approval to this person.

I need to get this to that. And then I go into the annals of my brain and it goes, oh, I used to complain about this like all the time. And now I'm the one driving this.

[Dillon] (: 11:42

But do you ever say, no, but I'm different. I'm doing this different. Like my protections are useful.

No, because I'm not. I'm not.

[Jon] (: 11:52

No, you know what I do say? I get the joke and I get like, oh, it's I'm just unique. And I'm no, I'm not.

And I think that's the realization that I'm coming into is that. We've just designed these systems for LinkedIn and podcasts to like elevate ourselves up to these like unique snowflakes of like, I'm doing this incredible. And it's like, no, man, I just want a customer to keep paying us.

I just want a customer to find an outcome like that. Yeah, we're creative. Yeah, we're creative.

I'm not going to let you finish that question. Listen. Oh, I will.

No, but I hear you in the individuality of creativity. Yeah. And I think there is something to be said about that.

But what I want to do is not I'm going to build out these systems differently that I want the same systems. I want the people that follow the systems to buy in better because we get so far removed from the why. We get so far removed from why I have to flag every note with a trait in Vitaly or Plan Hat or Gainsight because I just have to fill out all of these forms.

And then we go through, it's like, let's automate something. And it's like our data is garbage. Yeah, it's because you don't know.

You don't know why we take everything with traits. You don't know why we segment everything like that. And you're just given this handbook that says, OK, get up to speed, go do this.

And I'm not speaking about where I'm at currently. I'm just saying in general, a lot of us have this experience. And you're like, oh, I've got to flag it this way.

I've got to flag it that way. And then it just becomes a game of like 10 different versions of telephone behind value. And we're trying to get our customers to find value, understand the value of the tools that we're using.

So I'm spending a lot of time and probably too much time kind of in the high mind of thinking like, OK, how do I communicate this effectively? And it's change management. It's jobs to be done.

It's frameworks that exist that are not unique, that are not creative, that are actually formulaic, because that allows me to go communicate to 50 people in my company to say, this is why we're doing this. And if we don't do this, it's not going to build out the data management system that we need for a thousand customers.

[Dillon] (: 14:04

So I agree with everything you just said. And the point of my challenge was you said something in there. And this is when I said, well, I want to challenge that.

create a process for the next: 1000

Like they will. Obviously, I've got a little bit of PTSD with some asshole CEOs in the past, but like they will almost like turn it around on you and say like, yeah, that's why you have to answer this ticket, not create tags for issues for the future. Do you understand what I'm saying?

Like, maybe I'm not.

[Jon] (: 14:50

Yeah, there's a push and pull in there. I don't think that you're correct.

[Dillon] (: 14:58

But here's why.

[VO] (: 14:59

It's a matter of being correct.

[Dillon] (: 15:01

It's an anecdote of what has occurred to me.

[Jon] (: 15:04

Yeah, but let me frame it in the way of this asshole CEO, right? Yeah. No problem.

I fixed the ticket. Great. Cool.

That didn't make our customers successful because, again, most of these big companies are defining success for their customers without talking to their customers. They're saying success means logged in and they renewed. Okay, that's success from our standpoint.

That is, as a corporation and as an organization, we are viewing ourselves as successfully retaining customers, but that doesn't mean that a customer is successful on our platform. And that is where this derivation comes from, is, yes, I will always go to my CEO and be like, yeah, I'm going to close that ticket. We're going to meet SLAs.

And you are successful because I met my number. I hit my goal. I achieved whatever it is.

But that doesn't mean that a customer has been successful. And that's the split that I say. And I tell the CSO to get the hell out of my space when he starts talking about that.

Not today. I'm not in that space. But that's what I'm getting at, is that is the job of the CSM, is to say our success criteria are indicative of our board, our revenue, of what we are.

Let's make sure that we're tracking that because we want to be a healthy company. But we cannot say that because they renewed and because they upselled, they're a successful company because if we don't track their outcomes, if we don't track their metrics, if they don't track their metrics, most of the time the job of the CSM is coaching a customer how to identify metrics for success. That's the whole job.

That's it, is those conversations. And the more that you get into those and the more that you productized how you track that, what it means, what the differences are, you can segment your customers accordingly.

[Dillon] (: 16:47

I think, I feel like Dylan agrees with what you're saying. I'm going to go out on a limb and I'm going to sort of phrase it a bit differently, is what you just said was, as a CSM, we should be, you gave an empowering statement. You gave a statement that, let's say, assumes that a CSM's in the same way the doctors have a Hippocratic oath that they try to fulfill.

The Hippocratic oath is not about signing more prescriptions to get more money. They have this sort of ethical thing that they stand by. The CSM, if you're saying, your Hippocratic oath as a CSM is saying, yeah, renewal is great, all this, but that doesn't mean the customer has been successful, then there could be a sort of conflict where, in an ideal world, the company says, wow, yes, that's so great that you said that.

Thank you for reminding us what being a CSM is all about and what customer success is all about. And I think, Dylan, what he's saying is that the company says, well, did they renew, though?

[Jon] (: 18:02

Yeah.

[Dillon] (: 18:02

Did they renew, though?

[Jon] (: 18:04

Yeah, well, but here's what I'm going to tell you. Here's what I'm going to tell you, is it's both and. This is a two-sided kingdom.

And I'm always going to tell Dylan that I think he's wrong because it makes me smile. Whether or not it is... Makes me smile, too.

It makes me smile. And I'm just going to come in with my little fire extinguisher, and I'm going to dose his energy and take it from him.

[Dillon] (: 18:27

Where the hoe's at, man? But...

[Jon] (: 18:33

To douse the fire, you said...

[Dillon] (: 18:34

Yeah, no, I got you, JP.

[Jon] (: 18:36

Let me speak on that, because I do. That was an incredible analogy, and I think we're digging into the truth here, capital T. It's so important to focus on the stage of the company.

In early-stage startups, as a parameter set, we don't want to know what a successful customer looks like, because we will guide our customers into the wrong space if we say, we know better than you. I'm not saying that we don't set metrics for usage and consumption. All those things are so good, but that doesn't mean that they're actually delivering value to their stakeholders.

What I'm describing is starting with revenue. Yeah, renewal. That's a win, of course.

Cool. But in my opinion, the Hippocratic Oath of a CSM, and maybe that's what we need to write out of this, is repeatable revenue and comfortable growth. Repeatable revenue doesn't mean that they're going to renew next year because onboarding took nine months, and they just signed again because they're like, well, we didn't get to use it, so now we're going to use it.

So we'll throw you another bone. That's not repeatable revenue. Repeatable revenue is 20 years of use, of growth, of value.

And I know that we live in a society that cannot sustain that from a SaaS platform. But what I'm trying to get is that we get so locked in on what these definitions are, and we do not allow for the organic nature of what these companies are trying to do. Every single quarter is different.

We look at our marketplace. We look at where growth is coming from. It is always changing.

And when we tie everything down to these core things that don't change, and we don't address them as CSMs, we work against the overall success of finding value in our platform.

[Dillon] (: 20:31

Does your boss agree?

[Jon] (: 20:34

I'll send the podcast to her after this.

[Dillon] (: 20:36

Not necessarily your boss. I'm saying I love what you said. Well, no, but this is what I'm saying.

[Jon] (: 20:43

Most CSMs don't. And that's fine. And I think this is also what I'm saying is that we are, a lot of times, we are coded to find a one-size-fits-all approach.

We scale. I'm going to do this one thing, and then it's going to work for 10,000 people. And there are cases where that's important.

And that's where automation comes in. That's where AI comes in. And that's where all of these things that actually are similar matter.

However, the thing that makes us incredible, not just CSMs, whatever title you want to call it, is that we're able to pattern recognition. We're able to see the things that are happening for our accounts and our industry in a way that an automation won't, right? So what I'm trying to prescribe here is less, this is how I'm fixing problems, and more, today, this is where we're at.

What is the problem tomorrow, right? And kind of shortening that scale of what scale looks like.

[Dillon] (: 21:37

Well, so let me ask you this. You may. Do you think Jon Johnson, 10 years ago, the last time you worked at a company like this, could have commanded this role the way you are right now?

[Jon] (: 21:55

I will. Let me advocate for my leadership in this statement real quick, in the way that I would like to in my current role in the future. Just to be clear, I've only been there for 45 days.

[Dillon] (: 22:08

He just accepted you. Well, I think you are coming at this from a very mature standpoint that I think a... Look, I've worked, I started working at startups when I was 23.

Yeah. And I worked at really small startups from the time I was 23 until I was probably 28. Yeah.

I didn't know what the was going on, nor did I really understand the industry well enough for me to extrapolate out like, okay, well then this feature is going to help you drive up this number, and I know that's actually going to make you successful, and it's going to build on your margin. I was just checking in and running QBRs, and asking them why they weren't logging in enough or doing this or doing that. But now, if I went to a 30-person, 40-person, 50-person company, I could do exactly what you're doing.

So I'm leading the witness now, but I just wonder whether you agree with that, or whether you think it's possible for somebody who's 25 years old, who's working at a great question-esque sort of company, do they even have the capacity to do what you're describing?

[Jon] (: 23:21

Yes. Okay. I think everybody does.

But here's why. Here's what I'm going to say to that. Let me back up just a little bit.

You hit on a few things. I don't necessarily think that it's the experience and knowledge that we carry with us today that would have been valuable back then. I think it is the muscle memory of being in a space of discomfort and harmonizing that through process.

I know that's so nerdy to say, but that is the best way that I can identify it. I think that if a 25-year-old walked into a great question, curious about everything, and truly did not have the mindset of, that's not my job. And we say that in these interviews.

It's like, oh, you were going to start up. It's everybody's job. I am in customer success, a great question.

But I spend so much time with product and marketing and my founders that I'm not just in CS. Nobody in the company is just in their role, because we have, what, like 50 employees? We all sit on Slack together and just chat about this one customer that's having this one problem.

And then we strategize. It's beautiful. I think what happens is we get solution-minded too quickly.

And this is where I'm at. I'm in this push and pull of, I want to come in. And I have an analogy that I've been practicing for this specific topic.

I think if anybody has, let's pretend you're a 43-year-old man who's got a bunch of kids, married for a bunch of years, and makes it back onto the dating market somehow. Oh, boy.

[Dillon] (: 24:56

Oh, Lord.

[Jon] (: 24:56

If that 43-year-old man walked into a bar and met a 23-year-old woman, man, however, whoever you date. Oh, boy. The experience immediately is very different, what those two individuals have.

And the common ground is going to be, it could be great. I mean, I'm not making a broad statement, but age gaps are difficult. Now, for me, if I met that same, or let's say this 43-year-old man met that same 25-year-old or 23-year-old, when they were 23 or 25, there's a shared experience.

There's a shared lexicon. There's a shared catalog of events. They've gone through similar things.

They listened to the same bands. They had the same trends, right? So there's a lot of similarities.

Here's the analogy that I'm trying to paint is when you are an experience, you've had the long haul relationship, you've built these huge systems and you walk into a small startup, I think the 25-year-old is better suited for that. We come in with so much tribal knowledge. We come in with so much expectations.

We come in with so much baggage. Yeah, there's experience, but experience matched with empathy is bull. Because you're going to steamroll, you're going to push, and you're going to fix a problem that you have from whatever history you have without actually like spending the time the first, however long it is, to understand how it's going to fit in the segment that you're in.

And I think that's the experience that is important to know when to shut up and when to do the work. I've been doing this for 15 or 16 years, but today I'm sitting in a role where I'm speaking to customers every day. And I think that's the most important part of this.

And I think regardless of if you're 25 or 43 or whoever you're dating, I know I kind of butchered that analogy, which is fine. I got lost by JP and his beautiful face. I think you're going to be a lot more successful in those spaces.

And that's what I do love about coming back to the startup is if I would have gotten hired as a director at a thousand-person company, I probably wouldn't talk to a customer in a trust-building relationship for a long time. And I think there's problems in that. And I'm trying to spend as much time as I can listening to our customers and not reading the documents that were written a year ago to handle a problem a year ago.

[Dillon] (: 27:21

You know, I just want to say like what I was literally thinking about when you're in a situation. Subscribe. If I'm younger, if I'm 25 and I come in, I am like, I don't know.

I'm curious. Having so much that I don't know gives me more willingness to maybe stay in and see things through. As opposed to if I'm older, I'm going to say I've seen this movie before when I see a preview, but I don't know.

I may not understand that maybe there's a plot twist here. Maybe I have seen this movie before. And so that's what I mean by being older.

And I'm willing to say, you know what? I'm out. Okay.

[Jon] (: 28:03

No, let me synthesize it. Okay. JP, you did that better than I did.

But okay. A lot of people walk in after seeing a preview saying I've seen this movie before. And it's important that we sit through the whole movie because yeah, maybe we get the plot, but we forget the fact that this character did this little thing and that's important.

I think that's what I'm advocating for is regardless of if you're coming in with youth and energy, but no experience versus experience and like not as much energy, make sure you watch to the end of the credits because that's where the value is coming in. And that's what I'm practicing right now is that I'm spending a lot of time going in my head being like, I'm not saying that's not my job. I'm saying I can't solve that problem holistically today.

And I'm really excited to be in a place at this company where I can solve these problems holistically as is everybody in my company that has this mantra of do what you can today and make it better tomorrow. Like that's it. It's that simple.

So yes, fix the ticket. But if I'm not thinking about the fact that I can't track how many times this specific ticket has come in and I can't track the time to close, then I'm not making it easier tomorrow. So as long as we're clearing our path, we need to make sure that we're also laying gravel so the grass doesn't come back up afterwards.

[Dillon] (: 29:18

Where do we want to go next? Let's rewind. We dove in pretty deep there to what you're doing a great question.

But I do want to talk a little bit about this transition out of user testing and integrate question. They play in the same space. You were on the market for a very short amount of time, laid off and sitting back in seats, logging onto your laptop within a month.

It was under 30 days, right? Yeah. Unheard of right now.

Tell us a little bit about that. Yeah.

[Jon] (: 29:55

So I spent a little over three years at user testing and I loved it. I still love it. I have a ton of incredible memories, a ton of incredible friends, and I'm really proud of the work that I did there.

As my career kind of progressed and I was looking for kind of what was next, I started digging into leadership and user testing was so incredibly kind to invest in me and to put me through some programs and certifications. And it just felt like home. And if anybody knows me, you know that last year I also went through like some health concerns that kind of happened right at the same time as I was transitioning into some potential new roles over there.

And it just kind of had to take a back seat. And I was grateful that user testing still saw value in me as an employee and was able to give me space to kind of deal with my cancer treatments and what was going on last year. So that's the preamble that honestly gave me a little bit of time to just think through what I want to do with my career, what I want to do in success and what I want to do at user testing.

Unfortunately, as a new year came around, there was some reorganizations and some changes to the way that the company was run, which is normal in this space. And I was on the market again. Luckily, I had already defined what I wanted to do.

I had spent that time internally talking through where I wanted to go with my career. That's JP's favorite topic. I did.

I have a vision board. I've got a little thing that says, and it's not, oh, would it be a CSM at an X million dollar company? It's like, what are my values?

And I took a lot of the values that I learned from user testing and I built kind of like my criteria for not just next outside of user testing, but like next, right? In my mind, it was in user testing and where we were going. And it was very much aligned with that.

And as the opportunity to look outside of user testing came in, I realized like, wait, this is actually, this is bigger than just this company. This is who I am. This is what I want.

So I do have, I'm very lucky and there's been a lot of work in building my network, not just with the podcast that I do, but the events and onsites and the programs that I run. I like to think I've been a very supportive member of this community. It's very important that people have a job and I try as much as I can to reach out and help people when I can.

And I would expect the same from my community. So I really started there. Like it was not, hey, I'm looking for a job.

Somebody hire me. I started through the application process and I actually had before great question came up. I had three opportunities with offers that were incredible.

And two of them specifically that I turned down specifically for great question. I'll get to the reasons why, but they were both AI forward, both AI voice forward, and they were incredible companies that were growing wonderful programs. And that was the thing for me is that I wanted to be on the bleeding edge of how we're kind of thinking about AI when it comes to a support engine, not just like customer support, but how it supports users, us.

So that was my focus. All of that to say, I was pretty far along with a bunch of opportunities before I was even done working at user testing. Two of those were cold calls.

They were just straight up. I applied. I did what I normally do with multifaceted communications.

I connected with the CEO. I connected with the CSM. I connected with the director.

I provided value to them on every email. And it was like, we got to interview this guy. It's a no brainer.

So I did the things that I normally do as a CSM for myself to get this job. And then as I was going through this process, feeling like I had a lot of really cool opportunities in front of me, I hadn't yet turned on my green banner. And I have opinions about that.

But I was talking with my friend Taylor on LinkedIn about this. And she's an incredible marketer who's absolutely looking for a job. And I'll tag her in my post in this.

But we were going back and forth about like, we turn it on and we turn it off. We turn it on. And I was like, I'm turning it on.

So I flipped it on because I feel like you never know. Maybe there's somebody out there that's dreaming about you. Right?

I mean, sometimes you just got a lady in the bar.

[Dillon] (: 33:59

Yeah.

[Jon] (: 33:59

That's why I go to cop shops.

[Dillon] (: 34:00

Available.

[Jon] (: 34:01

Yeah.

[Dillon] (: 34:02

Shut the front door.

[Jon] (: 34:03

Yeah. Actually open that front door. Thank you.

I let that sink in. No. And so I put my green banner up.

Within like an hour, I had a recruiter reach out to me that I know that was working for great question to find some fills in customer success. Not just like, hey, we need a CSM. It's like, we need somebody that can work with our customers that long tail can help us upskill how we think about these things.

So not just breaking things. That's not healthy. But like using that curiosity and that experience.

And I was like, hey, I just got off the phone this afternoon with the CEO. I would love to call him back and be like, you got to talk to this guy. And he did.

And it was within a couple of days, I was meeting with the senior leadership of the team. And it's not a direct competitor to user testing. It fits in the same space.

We're more on the CRM building out panels versus what they're doing at user testing. But our customer base was the same. So I came in with a ton of tribal knowledge of not just how people use these tools, but the terms that they use, like what value means to them, how to run programs, how to capture success metrics that I'd been doing for the last three and a half years in the same space.

So that came across with a perspective that was really valuable. And that's all of our conversations. I had a bunch of interviews with a bunch of the different leaders.

We have some incredible co-founders. And I had to sit and think instead of worrying about my health insurance, I was kind of thinking like, oh my God, am I going to hurt somebody's feelings? I'm going to turn somebody down.

I don't like turning people down, but I had to be honest about myself. And I went back to my list and I said, what do I want to do? And I said, I want to grow.

Like truly that was the biggest thing on my list was that I want to grow. I need to grow. I know that I have deficiencies in the way that I communicate, in the way that I present, in the way that I assume.

Like all of these things, if I want to build these fully fleshed out functional programs, like I've got a lot of growth to do. And I want to put myself in a place that has leadership and that has opportunity. Not just, hey, we're going to put you in this enablement program and you're going to be awesome.

No, like I want to get in the trenches.

[Dillon] (: 36:11

So you said something that caught my attention. You basically talked about multi-threading when you had sort of cold applied. And I was wondering two things.

One, you mentioned reaching out to the CEO. I wonder why you reach out to the CEO of a company. And two, I wanted to know what is the value that you try to provide in these emails that you send out?

[Jon] (: 36:31

That's my question too. Yeah, great question. Specifically, the company was small scale.

So under a hundred employees, early stage growth. They had been hiring a ton from a company that I worked at in the past called Procore, which is a kind of a competitor, but similar space. And the CEO had made a post.

He just made a post. He's like, hey, we're looking for these people. Let us know if there's anybody.

And I went in saying it was like an engineering role or something like that. I don't really remember the specifics of it, but I was like, I spent some time at Procore. I live in Raleigh now.

And that was kind of the thing. It's like, we're looking for people in Raleigh. And I was like, I'm from Procore.

I'm in Raleigh. I've got a couple of people that I can recommend. I'd love to send this over to you.

And it was just like, great, thanks. You know, no big deal. But he accepted my connection, right?

And we're connected on LinkedIn. And so I started...

[Dillon] (: 37:15

Is this your great question? Sorry.

[Jon] (: 37:16

No, no, no. This is one of the other opportunities. This is what I do for every job, though.

Like, I would say I don't do generic. I don't go, hey, I'm Jon. Will you introduce me to your CSM team?

If I don't have something that is like they haven't asked or there's a comment or there's a podcast or there's content or they're looking for something, I'm not going to email them and ask them for something. I'm just going to be a part of the community. That's what it always starts with.

[Dillon] (: 37:40

Follow what they're saying. Actually, they follow them. And when there's an in, you take...

[Jon] (: 37:46

Well, and you know this too, because if you get a cold DM from somebody that listened to 10 of your podcasts that got a shit ton of value from you, but it's just like, hey, I'm Mario. I need a job. Can you help me?

Your gut... Had to be Mario. No, but like you could absolutely help him find a job, but you don't know about this person.

This person knows everything about you. So in their mind, you are this huge, maybe not huge, but you don't mean this influential person that can get them into a door. And in your mind, there is somebody who's just like knocking, right?

They're the Mormons and you don't want to open that door.

[Dillon] (: 38:20

Mormon Mario.

[Jon] (: 38:21

You have to even that playing field. Like you have to get to the point where... They got to know who you are.

[Dillon] (: 38:27

You know about Mario.

[Jon] (: 38:29

Yeah, yeah. And that's where it comes. It's like, oh, well, I think I sent a couple podcasts of myself talking about some topics to Ned, to our CEO.

It's just like, this is how I think about it, right? You don't need to get on a call with me. You don't even have to have an interview.

Just listen to this 20 minutes and then be like, oh, let's talk about it. And then that's the conversation, right? So, but then once you have that...

Gave him homework? You gave this dude homework? He asked for it.

It's fine. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Dillon] (: 38:55

Um, anyways... Don't stop just to do that, y'all. No.

[Jon] (: 38:59

But it starts on any level. But if you do, hire me. Hire me.

We'll do editing. But that's the thing is that it's, it has to start there. And that's the same thing with a CSM.

That's the same thing for a hiring director. Like whatever it is, you have to find an inflection point in the same way that we do this with customers. And this is why you do it.

And I don't just mean it because it gets you an outcome. It's because it shows the people that you want to hire you, that you know what you're doing when they hire you. Because now that they have hired me, they already know I know how to multi-thread.

They know that I can get in contact with executives and speak to them at their level because that's what I did with them. I wasn't like, yo, Ned, let's chat, dog. Like, no.

I know how CEOs think. Check out these YouTubes. I've got these YouTubes.

[Dillon] (: 39:46

Bing bong. You cool ladies. Yeah, but that's the thing.

You cool ladies. Let him take a sip. Yeah, exactly.

Let him wet his beak. Let him wet his beak a little bit. Jon, I want you to finish this thought.

We're almost out of time. And I also want you to talk about the green banner. All your thoughts.

[Jon] (: 40:05

So I finished my thought. I finished my thought on that. Cool.

My suggestion to people is like, be a CSM for yourself, man. And if you don't know what that means, you got to learn. I don't mean that in a harsh way.

I just mean there's a lot of people that think CSM-ing is just a check-in call. And there's thousands of them out there that do a good job, that are making good salaries. And that's what their expectations are.

I'm not shaming you. But in order to grow, you have to look at it as an expansion CSM. You have to look at it as a farmer, not a hunter.

[Dillon] (: 40:40

Mic drop. JP, you got anything else before we get out of here? No, this is great.

I think we were sort of chatting a bit before the recording, Jon, about that. I think as CSMs, we all naturally do have an urge to want to help people. Yeah.

We also, something you said that was important. And I didn't ask this question. Maybe you want to go out on it.

But it was, you talked about being part of this community. Yeah. And that's an important word, because I think that a community is not necessarily a network.

Of course, they can be the same. But I think in a community, you really think about these ties that you have with people that sustain, job in and job out. They're not so conditional upon things.

And so I just appreciate you highlighting, finding an inflection point with people.

[Jon] (: 41:29

Right. Subscribe. I will speak to that, though, JP, because that's what I'm trying to say is like, if you're reaching out to people in your community, they know you.

If Mario's in your community, what I mean by that is like, that that is, I'm just using Mario, man. Mario Lopez was on an ad on my TikTok. So he's just like in my brain for some reason.

No, but that's what I'm saying is like, don't think that everybody in your network is in your community. Your goal should start with networking and finding your community. And my community is going to be different than your community.

And it should be different. And it's the people that you vibe with. It's the people that help you get better, that you help get better.

And I spent a lot of time trying to build my community in digital spaces. And that was a lot of the last three years. And it's been good.

And there's some great people. But like Dylan and I, we've had lunch a couple of times together. But like, if we lived in the same city, I mean, we'd never see each other.

And not be friends at all. But I was furious. Why?

No, I just mean like. I show up at your coffee shop all the time. I know, I know.

It'd be so much fun. But that's what I want. Those are the people.

I got so disappointed in previous job searches because my network didn't show up to me. And it's like, because I didn't show up to my network. But the people that I care about, the Dylans and the JP and the Christies and the Joshes always showed up no matter what.

So temper your expectations of who you're reaching out to. And make sure that you're speaking to the right people in the right way. Or if you don't know how to build a community, start there.

Like start helping people. Start giving people things. And then ask them for things.

And then you'll have more than most. Well, the best is if you never even have to ask.

[Dillon] (: 43:09

They just show up. I've met people that I actually reached out to because they were just like in, they were a CSM on LinkedIn. And I was in this like super like aggressive, like I just want to meet as many people as possible.

I want to talk. And I would just ask them questions or they would ask me questions. And I've introduced people to mentors in that way.

And like, they've come back to me later and been like, I don't know why you're helping me. You reached out to me on LinkedIn. And I was like, cause I'm just trying to make connections.

I'm just trying to strengthen the fabric of the community. Not to be redundant with that phrase. But, and that person is, the person I'm thinking of very specifically is not likely to ever be able to return the favor cause they're like an entry level CSM.

But to me, that's not really the point. It was also connecting to people that mentor might actually be valuable to me. And there's a lot to be said for it.

There's a lot of value in stroking somebody's ego, so to speak of like, oh, you want me to be a mentor for somebody? And then they create a relationship. And I think giving without expectation is such a big piece of it.

Yep. Jon, that is our time. Dylan.

Thank you so much. I don't agree with you on that, by the way.

[Jon] (: 44:26

That is our time? I'm actually just building out traits in Vitally today. And I like blocked my day off.

This is the only call that I have. Dude, do you want to nerd out about Vitally? I'd love to talk about Vitally.

Oh, we totally should. That'd bore people. Custom formulas?

Ooh, not yet. I've never used it. And I'm like...

Come on, dog. I'm digging into some stuff. So I'll have to like pick your brain.

[Dillon] (: 44:51

That's what my OnlyFans is about. Custom formulas on Vitally.

[Jon] (: 44:59

Send me a link.

[Dillon] (: 45:01

It's ASMR. I have a really good voice. So it's one of those faceless ones. I just do custom formulas in Vitally. Anyway.

[Jon] (: 45:08

No, that's how we know our industry is truly dead. I know that we tried to take over TikTok.

But if like CSM influencers start selling their PDFs on OnlyFans, like we know the market is dead. I see and I think...

[Dillon] (: 45:23

Come get them frameworks. Jon, until next time.

[Jon] (: 45:30

Love you guys.

[Dillon] (: 45:30

Say goodbye.

[Jon] (: 45:31

Yep.

[VO] (: 45:38

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