I’m a startup enthusiast through and through; give me a seed stage unicorn over Google and Facebook any day. In my particular field, Customer Success, there’s something magical about creating the systems — sometimes the first of their kind — that a small business will use to connect with its customers. My job can look drastically different depending on the product but it also looks different depending on the stage of the company.

As someone who has dedicated their tech career to helping small companies thrive, I can easily say they offer a world of opportunity anyone looking to break…

I’ve been in Customer Success for about six years now and I’ve had the pleasure of working with dozens of amazing, competent Customer Success leaders and teams. I took every opportunity I could to learn from them. What made them successful? What made them good? Why did their customers love them?

High performance is crucial in Customer Success, especially in the realm where I work; early stage startups that require their CSMs to wear many hats. It was in these hectic, disorganized, beautiful environments that I learned how to be effective, efficient and excellent. …

Customer Success Managers are masters of empathy. It’s often on our shoulders to show the customer the company cares. But empathy goes beyond kind and understanding email responses. Empathy enters behind the scenes of the face to face interaction. I practice Actionable Empathy, which reminds me that one valuable way to show care to a customer is by making moves on their behalf and getting results.

Here are three ways you can be actionable in your empathy.

Imagine the Outcome

Customer Success is outcome focused and value driven and our empathy should be too. It’s not enough to just understand the customer’s issue…

Interviewing is a nerve wracking, stressful process for many job seekers. Vague questions like “Tell me about yourself” can leave anyone struggling for an appropriate answer. But when you have a strong brand, you have a strong career story and “Tell me about yourself” or “What are you looking for” become easy hurdles to get over. Here’s how to tell your story effectively.

Identify Your Offer

Understanding what you bring to the table is the heart of your brand. Do you “create engaging scalable marketing strategies”? Perhaps you “design eye catching products with a customer first mindset”. Whatever it is you do, pinpoint…

There’s a lot of pressure in Startup Company Culture to increase your output — but when input is already high, how can you up your game without depleting your energy?

Contrary to what you might believe, being high performing is not necessarily about working harder, it truly is about working smarter. So here are four ways you can work smarter to improve your performance in a startup environment.

Understand Your Professional Brand

You might think your professional brand is only worth working on when you’re looking for a job. How do you describe yourself to hiring managers, how do you explain what you do…

Although Customer Success is at the forefront of countless business discussions, many founders will say their Customer Success org is still messy and unorganized. It’s understandable, especially in early stage companies. How exactly do you manage a relationship against an ever growing and changing product — or a product that might not be at it’s best?

Stop Saying “We Don’t Have a Customer Success Department Yet.”

As leadership, you might default to claiming there is no customer success on your team of 5–10 people cramped in a tight office, fighting for air space over each other’s phone calls. Support calls might be handled by anyone from the Office Manager to…

As the world faces a global pandemic, many people are finding themselves without jobs — either suddenly or with some leeway. At any rate, the economy is suffering, hiring has slowed and millions of Americans are affected. In addition, we’re all stuck in the process of grieving our normal way of life.

Despite all this, we still have bills to pay which means that despite a drop in available positions, there has been a rise in candidates. How do you find hope as well as a job in a semi-frozen, over saturated market?

Polish Your Professional Brand

Professional branding is my specialty and I’m…

In light of COVID-19, many tech companies switched to remote work overnight. While the day to day might easily lend itself to out-of-office environments, people aren’t always so easily transitioned. Remote employees have to be in the proper mindset to stay focused, comfortable and connected while working from home. For some, this comes naturally, while others need a bit of guidance.

Among the handful if issues that can arise when transitioning to remote employment, a big concern can be communication. An in-person meeting is replaced by Zoom or Skype, slack communication can get messy and when exactly *do* you have…