Taylor: [00:00:00] Welcome to Success/ful, where we break down the essential elements of leading Customer Success strategies. This podcast is all about uncovering blind spots, pushing beyond typical best practices, and tackling those out-of-bounds topics for CS leaders that are key to our success. I'm your host, Taylor Johnston, VP of Customer Success at Vitally. I love connecting with listeners. So find me on LinkedIn and say hello. We'd also love for you to subscribe on your favorite podcast platform. Today's guest is Neil Wu Becker, CEO and co-founder of NextBound. Neil is a marketing legend with an impressive track record of building high growth teams. So his expertise is perfect for giving an outsider's perspective on Customer Success and how to build a bridge with marketing. Let's dive in. 

Well, welcome Neil. First, tell us about [00:01:00] NextBound and your role there as CEO. 

Neil: Yeah, sure. NextBound is a marketing firm that a business partner of mine co founded recently. We provide really quick for services. I'm an ex CMO. I still am actually in some of our client organizations. So we provide proxy CMO, fractional interim CMO services, where we parachute in as needed for heads of marketing roles for companies. We also provide brand and creative services, demand gen, or what we call growth marketing services. And then the fourth one is around PR and corporate communications. In his background, I did three out of four, and I'm not good at one of them, which is the creative services. So that's where my co-founder comes in. She's brilliant at it. 

Taylor: There you go. We all find those people that compliment us. That's what's important. I would love to talk about your background, because you've worked at large companies, but also pre IPO startups. How would you describe your career arc? 

Neil: Yeah, I think from the beginning, first of all, I'm from the San Francisco Bay Area, and I grew up during the dot com boom and at the [00:02:00] time I was a sports writer. I was a daily journalist in New York and the Bay Area in their daily newspapers, San Francisco Chronicle, New York Newsday. The Dot-com boom was happening, so the inertia pulled me in, I was young at the time, pulled me into the tech sector and I never looked back. 

So I was a Silicon Valley denizen from there. Knew nothing about corporate or tech when I did, but now I do. So along the way, to your point, Taylor, I've been in small, medium, large cap public companies, Dow Jones components, Bellwether stock companies, all the way down to SaaS, Unicorns, and pre IPOs that, you Could be less than 10 million of ARR. Primarily been in the IT cyber security space, a little bit of compliance, and a whole lot of enterprise software, including software that touches CS teams like we're going to talk about today. 

Taylor: Amazing. You have seen it all. Um, how has your perspective on Customer Success changed from seeing companies at different stages in their life cycle? 

Neil: It's actually a profound question because there are different evolutionary steps, as you've seen. I've never been [00:03:00] a CSM, never been a CS practitioner, so I've always watched outside in that function and role perform. How I've seen it change, both over time and in different evolutionary steps of companies, is they go from crawl walk, to run and get big is not only the

scope of the installed base and the book of business growing, and therefore the pressure for renewals and the business metrics that go along with it around GR and RR, and revenue in general. Where I've seen the sophistication, at risk of incriminating and maybe in some cases being a little too candid, in the smaller companies that I've been a part of and that I've seen or consulted with in the past, the conversation at the board level, and even in the ELT executive team meetings tends to be, I think, lacking a little bit. 

There should be more substantive conversation between the CS teams, Marketing, for example, and by the way, our groups never talk, and they should, and we'll get into that in a [00:04:00] second, but even the tactical discussions about how CS teams are driving renewals and preventing churn rates from becoming a problem. There's not enough problem-solving before you even get to the CS team, because the CS team just gets handed this bag, and it's either a bag of rocks or it's a bag of goodies, and they have to deal with it. A lot of times it's a bag of rocks, and it's not their fault, and they're getting asked all the questions, and they don't necessarily know how to or are equipped to solve them because it's a QA, a product, a marketing, a sales, an ICP, a persona match type of issue that stuff ran downhill into their hands. 

So the sophistication is what I would say is the answer. The larger companies that I've been in, there is much more collegiality, collaboration, communication, using those words around cross-departmentally, working as one unit, how did we get to this point, good, bad, or ugly with a particular customer or a metric that we're looking at in the CS world, whereas it could be, it could tend to be very [00:05:00] siloed and tactical and say, “Hey, CS team, how are you going to solve this” when you're a company of a hundred million ARR or smaller. So I think it's just a sophistication and the evolutionary path of knowing what you don't know, companies that are smaller could, I think, learn the lesson of pretending you're a bigger one. And you're 13 weeks on the clock in public and your stock is at risk and everything, your ESPP program for your employees, how are you going to help CS? Not incriminate. How are you going to help CS teams actually solve problems that quite frankly, aren't always sourced with them? And I'm not seeing that enough on the smaller companies. And bigger ones get it right, otherwise they would never have grown that big in the first place. 

Taylor: I love that mindset. So, you know, anyone who's listening, get that mindset. That 13 week cadence is a critical one to keep you marching forward. 

Neil: That's right. 

Taylor: So, as a small icebreaker, before we switch to our main topic, what is something that marketing and Customer Success have in common that the other side might not even realize? 

Neil: Ooh, okay. That's a [00:06:00] good, that's a good one. There are several answers, so I'll give you one. It's kind of a yin-yang relationship. Their knowledge of the marketplace and the customer, and even the customer persona at the atomic unit of the customer base, is unparalleled. They being, I'm using the pronoun they, being CS and marketing teams collectively…

They just, from a yin yang standpoint, have two different perspectives on it, and if you bring it together, it could actually enable pre-sales, the sales teams, and also the whole business metric system around growing your company faster versus slower. If I can expound on that for just a quick second, maybe for 10 seconds or 30 seconds on this, Taylor, the marketing team is a poor man or poor woman's version of a chief technology officer. That's why market is in our name, marketing. We get paid to look around corners, look for aha moments before anyone else sees it and says, we need to market and send the company in that direction. 

And then it doesn't always happen that way. The CS teams have [00:07:00] the installed base, they have the big book of business that you wanna manage and upsell and cross-sell and not lose to churn, and they have the successful prospects that cross the line into the customer base. So we must have done something right as a company. Give me the patterns and the information and the persona information on them so that we can go correlate that back into marketing and take what they're looking around the corner on as trends or potential market opportunities and go after those personas within those markets. For the record, that never happens. 

And I'm guilty of that too. In retrospect, when my hair was black, when I was younger, I should have asked those questions in the room. And I didn't think of doing that. And frankly, I'm not the only one. So what we have in common is customer acumen and industry market acumen from two different lenses. Those who have become customers, those who we want to become customers. If you put them together, it becomes so holistic and dangerous. That's a competitive advantage against other competitors. If you can do that at your company, you're going to outclass the companies that don't do it. 

Taylor: Wow. I love that. It actually brings us to our [00:08:00] first point here, which is the importance of sharing with other departments. What are some of the communication challenges you're seeing between Customer Success and marketing? I mean, you've hit on a clear topic that would benefit both parties. What are some of those challenges between the two departments? What else might be falling through the cracks? 

Neil: When I'm in QBRs, certainly regular ELT meetings or C-suite meetings, and even board meetings. There's two conversations that are constantly happening and anyone listening is going to totally agree. It's between sales and marketing usually starts with sales and then backtracks into marketing why the pipeline is good, bad, or ugly. And it's also usually going to be on the QA and the R& D of the solutions or services that the vendor is delivering to the market and why are we late on a roadmap or how is that going to impact revenue? 

And then maybe you get these tertiary discussions around OpEx and things like that, right? EBITDA from the CFO side. The one that never happens that I've realized later in my career is the [00:09:00] conversation that involves CS in a more proactive strategic way, inclusive of marketing by the way, around not just like what I was saying earlier, how come this customer churned?

What are we going to do to prevent that customer? What renewals are coming up so we can prevent churn here? How come our GRR is below 100 percent or NRR is below 100%? Why? How do we get it up? That's like asking a question after the fire has already happened. How do we replant the trees or why don't we get preventative and proactive? 

So, I would say two points on the CS side. Number one, offense, one defense. On the offense side, I think that they need to speak up more. They oftentimes are quiet, quieter in the room, and they're more reactive in terms of the incoming, inbound inquiries they get from whoever's asking questions, and I think they have the opportunity to project and command and be declarative in their tone more than on their back heels sometimes, which I've seen, because they talk less than sales, marketing, and finance, and even engineering in many cases. [00:10:00] On defense though, to their defense, I think everyone not having a CS business card should actually be bringing them in on the front end of conversations on go-to-market discussions around persona identification, the product fit, the market fit, because they're going to get the bag of rocks versus the bag of goodies, if we get that wrong. 

And they have the ability and the right to say, look at our customer base, this worked, this didn't, you guys should go find, or you guys or women should go find these types of, Contacts and turn them into pipeline and eventual revenue. That conversation doesn't happen enough. So the challenge is how do you get CS to reinvent its persona and its brand image within the ELT teams, and then there are organizations that report to them to be more proactive on the broad latitude, lateral view of the business versus just waiting for the inquiries to come in and then transactionally working with customers and not tying it to the business on the front end enough. 

Taylor: I love it. I love [00:11:00] the combination of offense and defense. Because I think, to your point, we play a lot of defense. Yeah. And for those CS leaders listening, we have earned the right. To play some offense here and really drive part of that conversation. So that's fantastic. And you talked about, you know, CS bringing to the table, those insights and really driving that conversation. What could CS leaders be learning and asking their marketing counterparts for? Now you talked about marketing teams are great at seeing around corners. They're great at going out and understanding the market. What could we learn from our peers in marketing? 

Neil: There are a couple things that come to mind. Number one, CS teams are the smartest people in the company with regard to what is making the installed base, the customer base, tick. So, there's a learn question like you asked, Taylor, and there's also a teach dynamic. So they can learn, but also teach. To learn, they could start by teaching the business, sales, and marketing, especially SDR, BDR teams as well. Product [00:12:00] teams, even product management teams about customer acumen they have. And they can even segment. Hey, our F500s, our startups, Strat accounts that we're looking at are like this. 

We go into the SMB world in Europe versus, say, LATAM or the Americas, we see this. So they could be great educators and professorial about it because no one will contest their acumen because they're the ones having 1 to 50 customers per CSM. And in some cases more. So they have a good sense of that acumen where they can learn is from marketing. In this case, I know

it's talking about marketing in some cases on this podcast. Marketing can teach and therefore the CSMs can learn about what we're seeing on a number of fronts. Industry trends due to business trends, and technology trends. And then also in the competitive landscape that we play in. 

And really quick, by business trends, I mean, hey, are we in a macro climate where we're worried about recession and whether or not the Fed's gonna up rates and what that's doing to stall [00:13:00] and freeze hiring and freeze marketing budgets so we can expand versus retreat. You know, is it EBITDA, or is it GROW, because you can't do both 100%. Those types of insights from the marketplace, marketing can do a good job of teaching and therefore CSM's learning on the recipient side, so that they can funnel that into the discussions they have with their own customer QBRs, and not just talk about, hey, did you get your feature request taken care of? 

Or, hey, do we handle that support ticket versus, hey, the macro is turning, what are your exec teams looking at in terms of growth and EBITDA, and how can we help you save money and make money as a CSM? That's a strategic material discussion that can happen versus just, hey, can I fix your support ticket for you? 

Taylor: Absolutely. And it's, you know, There's an element there validating, too. You know, when we, on the Customer Success side, you're looking at churn reasons, and gosh, it's due to external pressures. Okay, well, how deeply do you understand that external pressure? Your marketing partners spend their time understanding that at a deep [00:14:00] level, and so you can really pair those narratives together. So, Neil, what is your guiding principle that you live by that you think CS teams could learn from? 

Neil: Yeah, I tell this all the time, Taylor, to the marketing teams, and I tell myself this as well, um, you know, marketing teams have a tendency to only know so much about the business when they should know much more, so this motto I picked up when I was younger in my career, it stuck with me, I just tell everyone, and it will apply to the CS teams, which is, Business first, practitioner second, always. Business first, practitioner second, always. If you know the business and you have an acumen on the business, then you're going to be a much more strategic, effective practitioner. And if you don't, you're going to be transactional at best and you're going to miss a lot. Um, you're going to live a lie because you're not going to know what you don't know. So business first, practitioner second. If you can apply that approach to any job you have, CS included, you're going to be successful. 

Taylor: I'm going to go back just a little bit. You mentioned the offense-defense [00:15:00] dynamic. What advice would you give a CS leader who is trying to get into that executive conversation? They're trying to lean into that, you know, they're not quite sure where to start. How would you envision a CS leader showing up in a different, more offensive way? 

Neil: So I would say the ability for CS teams to be declarative, I'm using that word again, not inquisitive, but declarative, people who are public speakers will get this, you have to walk on the stage and command the stage, like, this stage is mine, okay, not yours, it's mine, versus, oh, I'm

so timid, I hope they don't throw tomatoes at me, right, it's a mindset you have when you're speaking, I would argue you have to have that same mindset as a CS team because you're constantly taking inbound fire around the negativity that's going on with the customer not being happy or on the inside churn rates and such versus Whatever praise you get for something good is fleeting, and then they go back to the negative. 

So you have to be declarative and set the [00:16:00] agenda and say, Hey, here are two or three things that we're seeing as a priority in the CS organization that we need help from the other organizations to help us with, because we are the predicate, not the subject of that statement. Like, we are the caboose, not the engine of the train, and we want to get ahead of it by influencing you guys to help make your lives easier, but also ours as well, versus, I'm just going to sit back and wait for questions. 

So I'm going back to the same theme, Taylor, but the proactivity, the communication, the collegiality cross departmentally in a declarative tone will assert the authoritative nature of CS teams, which they need to, they're such nice groups, stereotypically, but sometimes they have to show teeth. And say sales, or marketing, I need this, or CFO, I need this, or else, cause and effect, this will happen. I think going out on offense, by having a declarative tone, is the thesis to a long winded answer I just gave you. Because too often I think they soft pedal it. And they could be more [00:17:00] authoritative and declarative if they wanted to. 

Taylor: And now that I think, as well, our industry, we're getting better at just having the data to be able to tell the story of, like, I always tell my team, part of our job is answering the question, what's happening? Can we answer that clearly and effectively is a big part of our job. And then 

taking it one step further to your point, which is, okay, we can say what's happening and we have a point of view. on how to change that status quo, whatever it is. So it's now that we, as leaders, are starting to have some data. We're being able to tell a clear picture of what's happening to your point, walking in with the point of view, and very specific asks, I think, is a huge opportunity for us. 

Neil: Yeah. 

Taylor: So I'll switch gears a bit back to marketing specifically. You've talked about the integrated marketing model that you, that you use that involves a ton of cross departmental collaboration. So I want to hear about that, but first, can you define what [00:18:00] an integrated marketing model is? 

Neil: Yeah, sure. Anecdotally, someone will ask a, a business startup or a CEO, Hey, what's your business model? Or they'll ask a CRO, what's your sales model or your methodology? In marketing, I would argue we don't have one. I invented one as I grew up and saw too many CMOs getting crucified in meetings trying to wing it. Um, integrated marketing is an official proper noun term in our profession, but I've created it as a model, I guess. Integrated marketing as a model is defined as taking the entire vast marketing mix that marketing teams have at their disposal and making sure that you creatively and sequentially Set up campaigns that are longitudinal in nature.

These could be 12 months, 18 months, potentially on the size of the company and every action, asset, event, deliverable, what have you, scratches the back of something that just happened and carries it forward and propagates it, and then sets up something that is about to happen. So it therefore becomes [00:19:00] integrated or synergistic versus. So the integrated marketing model is used by really large F 100s and F 500s that I've seen do it well. IBM, Cisco are two examples. I've been at Cisco. That's where I even learned the term. And then a lot of smaller companies tend to just, they don't have a big team, so they have to just randomly do what they can tactically. 

But you can still have the integrated marketing approach or philosophy applied no matter how big your company is. Team is because every second, every budget dollar and every asset counts, just make them work together as a, as one synergistic organism. Now the integrated marketing model, I think I know where you're going with this, Taylor. Never, oh, most of the times in marketing, it's all geared around how do we drive lead gen and top of funnel and give the sales teams, not CS teams, but the sales team's pipeline to close new logo acquisition. They very rarely, in fact, I have, I don't think I've really seen too many examples in my career. 

I'm three decades into my career now, where marketing [00:20:00] campaigns also definitively have a section built out. How do we drive expansion sales to, and I'm not talking just email campaigns, like actually across the whole mix. PR, Partner Marketing, Product Marketing, Email, Digital, Web, like, Analyst Relations, Investor Relations if you're a public company, like, tell me how all of that works together, rhetorically speaking, to help me on the CS team, not just the pre-sales team. It doesn't exist to, uh, enough, and the CS teams have to go market themselves. So there's no law saying that marketing can't build campaigns that do pre-sales. Implementation in post-sales, up-sale, cross-sale, and expansion sale in the future versus just, I'm only going to do pre-sales. Like we said before, the book of business is bigger for CS teams than it ever will be on the new level acquisition teams. 

So that's where integrated marketing, I know you and I were talking about that offline before, just conceptually. I think needs to apply where we in marketing have to do a better job for you and see us teams to actually support you while we're working for [00:21:00] that company that we're at. 

Taylor: Yeah. I mean, you read my mind. Well, how's it going to be? I mean, I heard two things there. It's, you know, both again. We as CS leaders leaning into and asking for help and, you know, just how can we expand something that's already happening across the entire customer base. I also hear an opportunity for Customer Success to learn from our marketing partners. Sort of the psychology of an integrated marketing model, oftentimes we are, you know, we're trying to figure out how to re-engage customers or, you know, make sure that they're staying activated across the entire customer journey. And there's a lot that we can learn from just the work that the marketing team does to understand customer psychology and how to get them to engage with us. So I see it as a duality, two benefits there for Customer Success.

Neil: Very much so. We owe that to you. It's not just you guys having to pick up the baton or run with it, but I think it's a good mutual opportunity between the two [00:22:00] functions. It doesn't happen enough. Yeah. 

Taylor: Absolutely. Absolutely. And I've heard you, you speak as well about tying your work back to business impact from the marketing perspective. What advice would you have for a CS leader trying to tie their campaign or intervention to business impact? 

Neil: The way CS teams can project and tie to the business more is I use the phrase tops down It's not mine But other people use it too if you think about and marketing teams have to learn this because a lot of them don't know it We get lazy, but if someone asks, okay Taylor or Neil, what is your company's Revenue goal for this year. 

What is its growth rate as a percentage? 15%? 10%? You want rule of 40 at 40%? Um, what is your operating margin and your profitability goal too? Do you want to be at zero, you're going to be in the negative, or you want to be profitable? And why? If you know those types of questions, in fact, even in your revenue goal, what percent is going to come from new logo acquisition and expansion? 

The execs know that because we're talking [00:23:00] about it all the time in the meetings. The non-execs don't. So if you're a CSM, not even this, the SVP of CS, and you know that information, it's amazing information to correlate into your daily regimen because you know, okay, well, we're going after growth, which means expansion's big now that COVID's over, and expansion is X percent, call it, I don't know, 85 percent of our revenue goal this year, or 15%, you choose the number, whatever it could be realistically, and I have 20 percent or 1 5th or 50 of, you know, 2,000 customers, 10 of which are like big strat accounts. I can determine where I focus my time. I can determine the conversations I have that are more strategic, not just tactical with them. Hey, did you get your feature request fulfilled? Right? Something higher level than that. And I would actually say it ushers in the ability for you to have a conversation as a CS practitioner with that customer at that same business level. Hey, [00:24:00] what are your revenue goals? What is your profitability goal this year? How can I help you meet that? Let's work tops down on a customer account plan. Um, so that, uh, we're helping you at the material level. Which can affect stock price, stock rating, earnings, forecast, your ESPP if you're a public company, your equity, whatever. 

Versus just checking boxes like a compliance person does on, yeah, we filled the feature request, sport tickets are good, they're green, not red or yellow, and their health scores, and the customer 360 is done. A mentor once told me, he was a CEO of a startup a long time ago in Texas, he said, Act like an owner, pretend you were the startup person and you put your own money into this. So regardless of what your role is, pretend you're the owner, whether you're CEO or not, that will, if you apply that, you're going to have a different type of conversation with your customers. If that business was yours and you depended on it versus I could just walk away tomorrow.

Taylor: You know, every Customer Success professional out there, we talk a lot about being more strategic and talking at a [00:25:00] higher level. This is the gold here, people. This is how we learn. You don't have to figure that out yourself. There are experts within your own organization who can help you figure out how to have those conversations. And I love what you're talking about as well because, you know, historically in Customer Success, when money was great, When times were booming, it was easier to get time with customers. They had time and the conversations were more operational feature-focused. Time is gone. The schedules are extraordinarily tight. The scrutiny on the budget for any sort of spend is high. So the mandate for us to have conversations at that level and be prescriptive and drive that sort of strategic engagement has never been more intense and more real until we have to get up to that level. So no, I think it's a, I think it's a great call out. 

All right. Well, we've got, I think we have a little bit of time here, so I'm going to do this last question as well, because I think it's a great one. What do you think about ways that the CS team can provide [00:26:00] value to our customers that aren't just one on one experiences the way that marketing diversifies their messaging into multiple channels, how could CS take some learnings from that approach? 

Neil: Yeah, man, that's a great question because I run into this with HR teams as well and sales teams because, and CS teams could qualify here too, where they come to marketing, like we're not perfect in marketing, but we do have some strengths. And one of the strengths is we know how to put campaigns together and we know how to build awareness out of nothing. At least if we do our jobs well. The CS teams have an opportunity to actually take the lead. I've seen sales teams do it, but CS teams, not as much. Even on basic things like field roadshows or industry events that you go to, ‘Why are you letting the marketing team get up there and MC it or determine the agenda for it?’ with very little input from the CS side, other than just say, Hey, show up to this session and you're going to give a presentation on this and we'll have a dinner here, see you there. Right? [00:27:00] So there's a lot of, even at the tactical ground level, the grassroots level, if you will, even with the customer base, to be able to have a one to many opportunity whether they be in events, whether they be in QBRs with not just the point of contact that you have, but also maybe peripheral, adjacent teams and their leaders that you normally wouldn't influence. This does help for expansion selling, of course. 

But bringing those other characters into the story versus just a short story of, to your point, one, two, three person I'm talking to all the time. Use that one person as an ambassador into deeper parts of the organization that you know you need to be talking to and you haven't, but then also outside of their organizations when you get into more public forums and events are great 

examples. The CS teams usually come in as attendees. They can come in and work, right? They can come in and say, hey, I want to set up some sessions just for customers, and I'm not talking just training, I'm talking about tabs and EABs and the ability to have um, exec advisory boards and symposiums with [00:28:00] execs and non-execs at the customer bases that normally don't sit either in your budget versus marketing or have not even been conceived yet in your company to actually act on. This is what a lot of big companies will do. But if you can play big, even when you're a small company, and apply those types of tactics to your CS plan or

strategy on engagement with one-to-many versus one-to-one, the marketing team can be your friend, partner, advisor, all of that to say, hey, we can lead or follow, but we'll help you set it up. 

Or we'll tell you, coach you like, Hey, when you have this conversation, make sure you use this messaging or upsell this product. We're going to release something in three weeks. I think that relationship, and that's a strong word we should say is relationship between CS and marketing is very embryonic and it shouldn't be. And these are some of the tactical and strategic ways you 

can get involved in enabling CS teams, I think, uh, help within their client organizations and then also at the macro level in the industry. [00:29:00] Does that answer your question? 

Taylor: It does. Thank you so much. I really appreciate it. And all I get my ears just hear opportunities, you know, like you said, I love the word embryonic because that just, you know, there's potential there. 

Neil: I think we have to do our part too, Taylor. There's ways. Marketing gets pulled into sales too much. Not too much. It's never enough, but it can't be one-dimensional is the learning lesson I've had talking with folks like you. 

Taylor: Amazing. Well, thank you so much. Before we let you go, we're going to have a little fun with some quick hits. You ready to roll? 

Neil: Okay, let's do it. 

Taylor: All right. What is something you wish you could spend more time on in life or in work? 

Neil: I'm a former sports writer, like I said in the beginning, so writing. There's all sorts of novels and books that I have in my head that I want to put down on type and paper. And then I can never spend enough time with, I have, I have two twin [00:30:00] girls that are going into high school and I can already hear the clock like in four years they're out of the house, can never spend enough time with them. Those are my two aspirational wishes. How about that? 

Taylor: I love that. I love that. On the absolute opposite end of that spectrum, what part of your work life or home life do you wish you could automate, if you could? 

Neil: Wow, that's a good one. From the work side, maybe I'll try to make it relevant to CS. It would be great, and maybe this is a startup idea for you and me, Taylor, to have an automated tool that can aggregate And amalgamate all client and market trend information for your team and mine versus us having to go to analyst firms, sales teams, execs, our networks to try to cull everything and rodeo it together in one, one, one lasso, right? That would be brilliant. If someone could just say, hey, automatic, Microsoft is, man, you get me, so, okay, here it is now, here's a version of the record. [00:31:00] That would save you and me a lot of time, wouldn't it? 

Taylor: It sure would. It sure would. And the last one here, what makes you feel successful? 

Neil: You know how humans have six senses? And it's hard to kind of pinpoint what that really is defined as, but you have a vibe and you feel. Success to me is when my sixth sense starts to

flare up saying this person is satisfied and happy or ecstatic with either a service or some kind of deliverable or some kind of partnership or engagement that I had with them. And that goes for family, friends, not just work and colleagues. But when I make someone happy, uh, and make someone feel good about themselves, that is my biggest KPI slash metric. It's not checking boxes about did I get this marketing plan done or what have you, it is a very human answer, Taylor, because that's what we do at the end of the day, it's human to human, right? 

Taylor: Well, I hope you've gotten some of that sixth sense today because I can't thank you enough for everything you've shared. [00:32:00] Truly. I mean, there's so much more to talk about and so much more depth there, but I just, the insights you provided are fantastic. So thank you so much for your time. 

Neil: It was my pleasure. And I appreciate you, you all having this forum too. It's obviously important. So thanks so much. 

Taylor: Big thanks to Neil for sharing his insights with us today and a Special thanks to all of you who tuned in. If you enjoyed this episode and found value in our conversation, don't forget to spread the word to your CS friends. You do not want to miss our next episode. We're looking at what it takes to build CS at different stages of company maturity. Before you go, I'd love to hear your thoughts. Find me on LinkedIn at Taylor Johnston, or LinkedIn.com/TLJohnston. Leave us a rating and review on your favorite podcast platform and check us out on YouTube. Your feedback means the world to us. See you next time.

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