Beyond the Resume: Rebecca Novetsky on Product, Customer Success, and Startup Life

Welcome to the Customer Success Pivot Your Career Podcast. I'm Alex White. My co-host is David Locheats. Our podcast is focused on people looking to get into customer success profession or move up in customer success if you're already in the field. So how are you doing, David? Hey Alex, I'm doing great. How are you doing? I'm doing good. Still looking for a job? It's kind of tough out there. A lot of people available. A lot of people I'm talking to that don't have jobs are in a similar position, but I do see people getting jobs, but it hasn't fallen my way yet, but still trying to keep the positivity. But other than that, health-wise and everything else, I'm taking time to take care of my health and all that and all. So what's on your mind today? I'm glad you're taking care of your health and getting grounded. I think sooner or later somebody's gonna recognize all the value you bring on so many different fronts that they'll hire you. So whoever it is, is going to get just an absolutely wonderful asset to their organization. I'm glad it ended up with asset. I worried there for a minute. I'm like, I'm going to edit that out. So what's on my mind? There's two things that are on my mind. The first, which we're going to get to when we get to Rebecca in the interview, is what are the right things to say when you're interviewing? What are the right things to present or how to present yourself. I think you're a perfect example of that in the sense that whoever's doing the first round of recruiting may just pick a word here and there and not look at the whole big picture. So, I think they have a myopic focus and not a broad enough picture to understand what truly is value in what an individual may bring. So, we'll probably get into some of that today, I'm hoping. And Rebecca's going to have some really good insights as to from where she's coming. I'm looking forward to that. But the other part is just from an overall customer success. And we've been doing the podcast for a few minutes now, and we talk about renewals, we talk about the customer experience. And over the last month since our last podcast, I've had 3 interactions with 3 very large organizations regarding renewals, and they just don't care. It's interesting to me, and when you start talking about telecom or you start talking about insurance companies, they're so large that you and I don't make a difference if we don't renew. Nobody really seems to care. And the experiences I've had were, one, in one case, just poor service, poor reliability over years and years and years. And we went with another competitor. And just to cancel the service literally took 24 minutes to cancel online while chatting with someone, because all they wanted to do is keep harping on, well, why didn't you call more often? Why didn't you push us? Why didn't you? Well, it fell on me to do it. It's your problem. It's not us, it's you. Yeah, exactly. But I had already said, we've already changed. We've canceled. I'm not here for debate, but the individual strung it out for 24 minutes. So almost felt like it was a sport to see how long they could keep me on. The other two instances were not dissimilar. One was my parents bought an iPhone and their carrier, they paid cash for it, for the phone. The carrier had whoever helped them at the store actually signed them up for a 4th phone number, which they didn't need. They didn't even know they had agreed to that. The cost of their policy went up, doubled in a month because they had a 4th line. So there's 2 lines on their account that they had no idea with. And then when you talk to the carrier, they're like, oh, well, you agreed to that. Well, that's not what they thought they agreed to. So it's in the fine writing what the individual presented to them. Even when we went to another store to help us find out, they couldn't figure out what was done and why. And they changed the primary phone number from the two phones that we use, or my parents use. So it's just crazy that they can slip these things in. And granted, some might say that's fraud. I just say it's at least a deceitful practice to the elderly. If they're not going through and understanding every nuance, that's really not real good customer success story. Yeah. Well, that kind of goes back to the bank situation, a large bank that was opening accounts. So I think the lesson there that companies should think about is when you create incentive plans, validate them, right? Start going back and randomly calling a few customers and say, "Looks like you opened a few more accounts. Just wanted to make sure you're happy with it." And they go, "What?" Right? Instead, you just say things are great. All of a sudden everyone's making all these great commissions. The red flags are around you. You're seeing why does this one person have this huge commission that they're getting and everyone else is down here? It's like, Those are things that the directors and VPs should be monitoring. Yeah. And so from my perspective, having to follow up and deal with this day in and day out, whether it's for us or for colleagues and friends, or in this case, my parents who are well into their 80s, it's taxing, it's tiring. You get really jaded or frustrated. And these are companies that will put advertisements on television about how great they are. We hear you. We guarantee this. Well, it's all shallow. And again, they're so big that they don't either care or they don't have visibility. And one person covers for the next. It's a shame. Anyhow. It's interesting though. I mean, one of the things that's great about AI and things is they are— these companies, and if I focus on a company that actually came out of stealth mode, I went to their kickoff party in San Francisco yesterday. You go in there and it reads the emails, it reads the Slack messages, it reads the meetings because you have the meetings recorded. It goes back to usage. It does all these things. And you just go into the CS platform and say, right now, tell me who are the top 10 customers at risk of renewal. And it, within a minute, all the details, what actions they recommend exactly on what to do that. So it's not, and the thing is, as customer success people, we're not the only ones talking to them. Someone else is talking, salesperson called them about something else because they have a, they worked with them for a long time, they're just following up, make sure they're happy and blah, blah, blah. And you pull that all together and you get a pretty good picture of where the customer is. And if you're getting— and you can analyze probably in these systems, go down to the analyst level if you see something weird happening and be able to culminate that and have AI bring it to attention. A lot of people don't like AI, but you know, AI can take in a lot of information to help these big companies to say, show me anomalies going on. Show me the reps that have the huge commission. And the number of accounts they have and what percent, right? They can do all this stuff now and just talk to the system and it'll give them the results and they need to start taking advantage of that and implementing it. I agree. I think it's, again, it's like anything with technology. We've been around a long time. There's always been a new wave of some technology that's always caused some consternation for people. It causes adjustments in what does the workforce look like? What type of jobs are out there? But once you learn how to leverage the tools or the processes that are in place as a betterment, it should help you. I had a really positive example of AI just bringing things together quickly. I didn't do it. We were working with a customer, we are working with a customer, and she asked her direct reports to compile a list of feedback from each one of them. So she had 4 direct reports. That each created their own email response to it. They were all in different formats. And she says, "Give me 10 minutes." She had AI take all 4 emails, compile the feedback into one single form. She proofed it 'cause you don't want to just trust verbatim what it does. She proofed it and said, "Here you go." And it was so nice of her to compile it. I would've done something similar, but the fact that she took ownership of that and is using the tool to compile something like that, is a great use of it. So I have to say I had a great experience with that this week as well. Yeah, it's interesting. And what we're talking about is we're not talking about replacing a person in those examples. The one that I talked about is something that you could never really do today. You just lose people or you get these trailing indicators that, oh, over the last year, these people had these accounts instead of monitoring it real time, which you'd never do. It's not like you're eliminating a headcount and what you're talking about, they probably would have never done that. They would have sent the 4 emails. You would have struggled through it. It's a time saver, definitely, but it doesn't eliminate someone's job and being able to do that. So, but to be crass, and I can be crass a little once in a while, with the way I was treated in one of those cases, which was really easy, cancel the service, please. That person doesn't really deserve to be in that position because he doesn't represent the organization, number one. Number two is AI could easily have done that without any problem canceling my service. They could even use AI to interact with somebody to validate it without the pain, the suffering, and dragging it out for 24 minutes and the associated cost, let alone the net customer experience. Because what if I decide to come back? You just put a heck of a stake in the ground that says, right, it's not happening. So in those cases, Alex, I gotta be a little cynical and say that type of person, for a couple of reasons, should be replaced. Yeah. Look back to their incentive program. He probably works with deleted accounts. He might've been having a slow day. He doesn't have a queue or anything. So he's like, oh, let me just try to push it to the limit with this one person. The incentive program of trying to save people versus just saying on 1 to 10, What's the likelihood that you stay if I talk through it and look at your rates? And you go, the chances are 0 to 1. Okay, I'll delete your account. It's just like, and then you might go, whoa, whoa, whoa, wait, what would you provide me? Now, maybe you've opened it up to a conversation, right? But something to make it a little bit easier for the customer. Yeah. And that type of training and discipline needs to be nurtured by these companies. So anyhow. Yeah. That's what was on my mind. Thank you for allowing me the therapy to get it out of the table. Yeah, absolutely. It's fun to have random discussions like this about customer success and how you can relate it to technology and what we do and what our listeners do. So, all great. With that, why don't we get to the episode? Our guest today is Rebecca Novitskiy, a leading voice in CS as recognized as a top Top 100 CS Strategists in 2025 and recently listed as the number 5 best customer success podcast in 2026 by topcsjobs.com for her Next Hire podcast. Check it out on Spotify or check the landing page on our LinkedIn. Additionally, Rebecca scaled the customer success function at several companies over the last 18 months and has leaned into the early-stage companies 3FourLabs, Open Policy, and MRGN. Rebecca has increased product adoption by 35%, reduced onboarding time by two-thirds, and successfully transitioned a product from pilot to paid subscription. Welcome to the show, Rebecca. Thank you so much for having me. I'm looking forward to talking with you today. As are we. Why don't we get started? Give us a little bit of your background and what led you into customer success, and we'll go from there. Yeah, sure. So, I started my career in product development, and the entire time I was working there, I was curious, who is the end user? What is the point of this product? Why are customers coming to us? From that role, I did a complete 180 and moved into a customer-facing role. It's my first customer success job where I was thrown into the field 6 weeks in, and I haven't looked back. Every customer was an awesome learning opportunity to hear about what their motivators were, learn about their questions, learn more about the industry they were in. And I continued down the path of customer success. I then moved back into product management, of all things. And during my time as a product manager, I was in charge of some strategic accounts that we were doing white label products for. We had a physical product, and my monthly touchpoints with those strategic accounts were the highlight of my time as a product manager, which was definitely indicative that I needed to move back into a more customer-facing role. So from there, I transitioned back into customer success, and I have not looked back. Awesome. Rebecca, welcome to the show. We're excited to have you here. I find your podcast quite exhilarating. But before we dive into the approach on the podcast, I find that the back and forth between your customer success role and product management role for me, it's really enticing. There's a lot of substance that you gain from having experience in customer success and then playing the role of product manager and back and forth from a learning perspective. If we think about product management, what we're trying to do is, is understand what are the features, what are the services that are the greatest impact and how can we solve that? And that dovetails beautifully with customer success. I would like, if you would, for our listeners and me especially, help share some of the learnings from product management and customer success and how they've melded together to who you are today. And then I'd love to dive into the podcast and how that spawned from your experience. Yeah, certainly. So, I've learned a lot about being an advocate for the customer, but also learning what's possible by the product team. So, kind of advocating for both sides. And digging in deeper to the customer to learn their why and not just presenting every suggestion that comes by way of the customer. So, why is this important to them? Maybe there's a workaround I can present, or perhaps that they're going to churn and leave because we don't have a feature that a competitor has. So, maybe that's something we need to prioritize to make available to our customers. So there's just been a lot of learning in terms of communication. I've also been privileged at one of the startups I've been at recently. I've worn so many hats, literally from marketing to sales to customer success and product. I've worked super closely with a technical product manager and gotten to basically prioritize the roadmap, the entire roadmap. So that's been really fun and getting to see a lot of customers have that aha moment, wow, you're listening to us. I see my dreams coming to light. Their jaw drops and they see the more value out of the product and they're able to utilize it and have greater adoption in their company. And Rebecca, maybe share a little bit about how do you leverage now that you have that product experience when you have quarterly reviews or talk with customers, do you present that roadmap to them on a regular basis? Sounds like you can actually get into some depth of what's being worked on and why certain things are shifting out of quarter. Yeah, sure. The last 18 months I've been in a complete builder mentality where QBRs have not necessarily been the most front and center or front of mind for me. It's more having regular touchpoints, having honest and open touchpoints with the customers, finding out how they're doing, not just as a check-in, but providing value. So, Driving value by saying, "Hey, here's what's on our roadmap. Here's what we're actively pursuing for the next month. It could look like this or this," and getting the customer's feedback. As I mentioned, I transitioned a product from pilot to paid subscription. So, that's where I've really been digging into our existing book of business to help guide the product roadmap, as they're our power users. So, having that open line of communication with product, knowing what's feasible and what's not, but also learning from product. This is an extremely hard thing for us to— a huge lift, or this is an easy thing. Let's move this forward quickly because it's an easy hurdle and we'll get customers very excited about the product. So, Rebecca, just from my perspective, closing out, having all those different views in and playing that role, being able to speak languages across the board, that translation really connects, especially from an empathy perspective. I know what each part of this solution is going through. Helping to meld that, I would imagine, helps overcome some of the roadblocks. It helps speed up the process. We always heard sometimes you need to slow down to speed up, but the fact that you've worn the multiple hats gives you insights and say, oh, they're saying this, that translates to this. So you're able to bridge that, I would imagine, quite well. Yes, that is correct. I think I really have a unique seat at the table where I can advocate for multiple parties involved. I also, just one other thing I like to share is I studied physics and math in school, so I have a pretty technical acumen when it comes to learning complex products and understanding the inner workings of them. So, I enjoy the challenge and welcome the challenge of translating what the customer's requesting into breaking that down into actual feature requests. We won't discuss what I studied in college. It wouldn't be appropriate for a customer success broadcast. Physics was not going to be a high point of mine. So, well done. Alex, you were going to come in. Well, I was going to say, I was actually going to ask you about that and how that parlayed into customer success, so you beat me to the punch on that. I also see that you're in the figure skating club. So how long did you do figure skating? And that takes a lot of discipline and dedication. That's funny that you're touching upon that. So I figure skated elementary school, middle school, high school competitively. I was doing individual ice dance and synchronized ice skating. When I went to college, I joined the synchronized skating team there and continued competing, representing my university. It was something that was important to me. It gave me a community in school. I think having a community around you is always important. So I think that's helped shape me where I am in terms of my career, in terms of what I want to build, in terms of who I interact with in general. So Rebecca, one of the things we talked about while we were prepping for the podcast is about startups in general. We share a lot of enthusiasm for startups, the dynamics of it and everything. So maybe if you could talk a little bit about when you go into a startup that might have little to no CS and you're the first one, where do you start? What's the first thing that you evaluate and start, and how do you evolve that into getting some processes and some things in somewhat out of chaos into somewhat of order to move the company forward? That's a great question. I think The first couple of things you need to do are have a sit down with everybody, all the team members involved. So I was privileged to join one startup. I was employee number 10, and I sat down with the go-to-market. I sat down with the, the C-suite, the founders, the engineering team, the product manager, and really to see where everyone was aligned and where there wasn't an alignment. They also thought that customer success meant support when I first came in, so I was just handed 'Hey, this customer complained about this. Can you follow up?' And instead of just building some helpdesk articles, I'm like, 'I'm going to bring a lot more strategy to this.' So, I took the time to look at what was currently being done and where all the gaps were. I really made note that customers were joining the company and then basically going into the big black abyss. So, what were the touchpoints looking like afterwards? What was driving product adoption? And what was it? Really, when you start a new relationship with a customer, you have to start out on the right foot. So, that meant taking a couple steps back with existing customers and defining some, what success looked like for them. Not in terms of the company I was working for, but in terms of the customer. What were they hoping to achieve by having a partnership with our company? So, that was the first thing. And then, as more customers were coming on, building out an onboarding playbook. So that we could establish the right cadence, the right communication, the right type of rapport with these customers so that they would turn into customer advocates. And bringing in additional team members under customer success and post-sales so that the customers felt supported in their endeavors. The, the company I was working for was fairly unique in that it had a service offering as well as a platform offering, and the service was utilized a lot more than the platform. So, they were still building the platform to help take over some of the service offering. So, that made it an interesting dynamic building the rapport. But again, the service and the product offering or customer success needed to work in tandem so that there was open communication to make sure all the customers were achieving the results they were expecting. That's interesting. So, it was basically a service that was just, I guess, human-powered, moving to— Human and AI-powered. Okay. And then the product part of it was then taking over more of a structured type thing. Is that where you're— Correct. Correct. So, it was in the government tech space, helping make people aware of policies globally that could be affecting their business in the cybersecurity and data and AI space. Right. So, really keeping businesses abreast to any changes that were going on. And so you could be working in the US, but if you have a customer in Brazil, whatever changes are happening in South America or even in Europe could be affecting what their product roadmap is going to look like, what their marketing efforts are going to look like, what their sales efforts are going to look like, and making sure that they're setting themselves up for success by keeping them aware of all the global changes. Yeah, Alex, that really dovetails into the conversation we had on our last podcast about the overall implications of cultural differences in customer success. What do you need to know, et cetera. So that really dovetailed into our conversation, especially the fact that the way you're using AI and helping to teach it and so it can continually keep everybody abreast of what's going on globally. Yes. Good catch. That was a good conversation we had in the last podcast. With Sudi about international cultures and the things you have to take into consideration. So Rebecca, a little bit earlier in the conversation, you mentioned about wearing a lot of different hats being in a startup. Can you talk about those different roles and expand a little bit upon that? Yeah, sure. So definitely support, because when there's no support function, everything falls on you. I have also touched upon sales. So whether that's filling the pipeline of customers to potentially close or leading the sales pitches and the sales demos, being the technical go-to for the salesperson, even if there is an account manager you're partnered with, I was still running all the demos. So really having my hands in every aspect. Again, also working closely with the product team and driving that. After every customer conversation, I was always going back to the roadmap to reprioritize things. And shift things around, ask questions, and get better clarity on the direction we were moving in. Rebecca, I find your history really fascinating. And as we've gone through your journey here, and including some of the stuff we talked about offline prior to, you talk about community, you talk, you've talked about getting involved in the community, you talk about mentoring and coaching people, and you also created this podcast that really is focused on helping individuals find their next job, be prepared for that. So what I would love to hear from you is how, through all this experience you have and joining the community, how it triggered your mindset to creating the podcast and why. Yeah, sure. So the podcast was really born as a way to thank my community. I was unfortunately went through 2 redundancies in a very short span of time. And during that time, I leaned into my network and they showed up in amazing ways, whether it be for a mock interview, a resume review, someone saying, hey, I know someone, you should talk to this person. And then that stems into another conversation and you should meet this person. And it's like a snowball effect. And I just keep talking to more people or even just a conversation to vent and build up my confidence again. The job market is really tricky. And during the second time I was looking, I just kept thinking, how can I pay this forward? I've had so many people show up for me in amazing ways, and I just want to pay this forward. Well, I was driving home from an errand and literally the idea for Next Hire popped into my head. So a lot of job applicants are asked to record short Loom videos to send as intro messages to hiring managers or as part of a job application. And I found that to be incredibly intimidating. To be recording myself, and then I'd take another take and another take, and I could never get anything perfect. But I thought, what if this was a conversation? Approach as a conversation rather than just putting yourself on a screen. And I called it an experiment. I reached out to a couple of people who I saw had the open to work bubble up, or on LinkedIn, or they were posting that they were actively seeking work. And I said, do you want to partake in this experiment. I want to record a short-form podcast that's going to give you an opportunity to share the story behind your resume. You're going to help shape what the podcast looks like. Basically, they get to choose their questions. So the conversation is really all about them. I'm just there to help facilitate and share it with my growing network on LinkedIn. And a community came from that. It was really just organic. People are always looking for people who are going through similar things in life, similar stages. And that's what came of this. And it's been beautiful. Yeah, Rebecca, when we had talked, I just absolutely love the concept and the way you run your podcast. And I have actually shared it with two individuals that I coach. I just think there's something organic in the conversation. Okay. So as we get into it, when you interview your guests. I'm wondering, do you have, or what type of feedback you've gotten from them? Because the podcast is great. The question, the way you go back and forth is fantastic. And I have to believe that you're working on behavior. You're working on how they're getting trained and how to respond. I'm just wondering if you've gotten feedback at different checkpoints with them. So I wouldn't say yes, that I've gotten feedback, but I definitely see people grow in confidence. There was one individual who I interviewed and wow, he bombed it so bad. And I tried to edit it and I was like, would you like to rerecord? And it took him a month. He got the confidence up. I did not release the episode and He was like, "You recorded that when I was hitting rock bottom." And basically me reaching out and asking, giving him a second chance meant so much to him that he picked up the pieces and really turned a new page and was ready to reapproach, reinvigorated his job search. And I think it was 6 weeks after that he got a new job. So whether my gifting to the community is building people's confidence, or whether it's getting them seen in front of the right person at the right time. I take no credit for somebody landing a job, but if I can help be any part of that, then I see that as a win. I love when people send me— people do keep in touch and they share with me when they've gotten a role, and that's something I do like to celebrate with them. The visibility is one thing, and you're getting them exposed to the right connection. However, the two things that I think are critical when you go into a job is number one, the confidence. So the fact that you're working on that, giving them the platform and the forum to be able to gain their confidence. And the second is truly understanding what are the right words to speak as to who I am. Because you can tell a story, but you have to be able to use the right words because words matter. And when you're telling, especially a story about yourself, we're not trained. It's not in our DNA, most of us, to be able to articulate in a humble manner who we are and what we do and how it relates. So, I think those are key elements to success. I think— this is my way of thinking— is you've got a mid-year podcast where you could bring in 4 or 5 people, have a roundtable discussion as to their learnings. That would be absolutely brilliant. Again, that's just how my mind is working. I definitely want to dig deeper into that thought, take that conversation offline, but I do love that. I do want to share is it can also be thought of as a mock interview. We're building the foundation for these job seekers. And after the call, we don't hang up after the recording. We stay on the line and I discuss, how do you think that went? And they might say, can we please rerecord question 1? And they get another chance. Or if they took a misstep, I can edit it out. They don't have to be perfect and that's okay. And it's also, people are always their harshest critic. So one person recently said to me, "Wow, I was expecting this to be terrible. I thought I bombed it." And they did amazing. And I, they just have to see the finished product to see themselves shine. And one other thought I wanna share is I also give them constructive feedback. So if something job seekers often struggle with is they don't like to take ownership of what they've accomplished. So I often hear them saying, we did this, we did that. But by giving them the piece of advice, just a simple thing like take ownership of what you did. I use the word I, I did this, I did that. I'll give them a little bit of feedback. And I think that that does go a long way as well. Brilliant. That's awesome. And the great thing is you've honed the skill of how to do those so you can give good advice since you've done— how many episodes have you done now? We are closing in on 100 episodes. Wow. That's awesome. We only do one a month, so it's going to take us years to get to that. But anyway. When I first started, I was doing two a week. It was very intense. Last July, I dropped to one a week and that's been a steady momentum that I'm able to better carve out the time to do. Yeah, it's amazing how long it takes. You and I can commiserate about editing. Awesome. One of the things that I saw is one of your posts, which kind of dovetails into the Next Hire podcast as well. You posted about something your resume never tells about you. So what part of your story doesn't fit into a bullet item that fits on your resume? I think there's a lot of things that don't fit in. To a bullet. Your resume bullets are supposed to be about your achievements, and that never tells the full story. It's 10, 15 words that fill up one line or two. I think that leaning into my product and CS crossover and that hybrid that I experience, that I have, I think that's something really special that's really hard to translate to paper. I think the Being on my podcast, I think that's also something that is difficult to translate to paper. I also am a coach within the community at a local elementary school. I coach a girls running team. That's also something that doesn't necessarily make it to paper. So there's a lot of things. I think it's always fun to ask the deeper questions, learn about how people are and how they tick, especially outside of work, because you can learn The best people for the job show up the same way they do in their everyday life. So if I'm able to be honest with myself and say, I enjoy coaching, I coach outside of, out of my professional life, it's something I enjoy. Well, that's something I can bring to the table within my professional life as well. That's awesome. Yeah. I looked at your volunteer activities and I find it fascinating. Quite the array. Also, the look like you're a ski instructor for Special Olympics. And some other things. My next question kind of dovetails into the whole thing, which can go a lot of different directions, but it's a very simple question. What brings you joy? The simple things. So my Zen time every morning brings me so much joy. So I get up before anyone else in my house. Sometimes it's dark out, sometimes it's 10 degrees outside. Sometimes it's 95, sometimes it's pouring rain, and I go running 6 days a week and just have a half an hour to myself to collect my thoughts for the day. I just enjoy it. I set my day up for success. Some people drink coffee. I hit the pavement. That's awesome. The other thing that brings me joy is snow. I love winter. Yeah, I miss that. I grew up in New Jersey and I moved out here to California and we can go visit snow and come back, but I do miss that. I spent a couple years in the Boston area as well as Chicago and Wisconsin. So definitely the cold is my vibe. Yeah. Awesome. We have a daughter and her husband and grandkids that live in Northern Utah. So we get a fair share of snow when we want to go visit. And what gives me great joy is watching the grandkids shovel the snow. Not play in the snow, shovel the snow. They will, but it ends up being target practice at grandpa. So, so Rebecca, this has been fun. We enjoy it and there's a lot to learn. Out of curiosity, because you've got a deep amount of podcasts in your arsenal right now, what are some of the learnings that have come out of your podcasts? Because you don't do as many podcasts as you've done without some bumps bruises, trials, tribulations. So any learnings would be awesome to hear from you. Yeah, sure. So I definitely say I'm consistent. So I put together a framework that works for me, that works for my availability. But outside of that, I have grown in confidence. It's been a huge learning curve for me. I would talk to people who— other people who had a podcast, and I said, what are you doing? What works for you? What doesn't work for you? And what they— what works for them, I tried. And if I liked it, I continued doing it. If it didn't for me, pivot and adapt and try something new. I have one episode that I recorded on a different way than I typically record my episodes. I didn't like it, so I pivoted back and went back to what had been working for me. But again, like I said, my first couple of episodes, you can probably hear it in my voice. I'm shaky. And now I, not to toot my own horn, but I feel like I exude confidence when I talk to people. I'm comfortable having conversations. I feel like had we talked a year ago, I would've been in such a different place. I probably would've been like, I'm not sure. There might've been hesitation to talk to you guys. And now I'm happy to have conversation. And the other thing I love is I keep a pen and paper next to me during every episode I record, and I learn something from everybody. I'm always jotting something down. So, oh, I've talked to 10 people looking for CSM roles in the last month. It doesn't matter. Everyone shares something unique, a book they've read, something they're practicing, something they're working on, a strategy that I haven't tried before. So I jot that down and I've got a whole notebook full of ideas that I have in my arsenal to, to keep close to me. I do something similar. I have stickies everywhere. So what I do is, as you're going, I'm taking notes, then I'm posting them here, and then what I'll do is compile it later on. But I live in the colored sticky world. Yeah, and same here, the podcast. It's one of the reasons why David and I are doing this, because we get something from every episode as well that we go and use in our backgrounds as well. That's awesome. Okay. So, Rebecca, as we start to wrap up this podcast, what's next for you? What are you looking to do next? Well, I look forward to continuing to record Next Hire episodes, continue to keep boosting people up there, and continuing on my own journey in customer success. I really enjoy being part of the startup world. There's no two days that are the same. So just continuing to put myself out there and take one day at a time. Awesome. Sounds good. And our last question that we give to all our guests with LinkedIn, a lot of people go out there to look for people or look for articles. Is there any recommendations on posting or their profile or any suggestions that they should do or not do? I think LinkedIn can be a great resource, but it can also be a terrible one. I am a huge advocate for people keeping it professional. When people turn their LinkedIn page to their other social media pages, it's somewhat of a pet peeve of mine. If they list or they're constantly posting pictures of their families, I like to keep it professional so that people can take away something for their professional development, or if there's job seekers to help lift them up. I try to keep LinkedIn to be a place of positivity. So when people are spiraling, it's a good place to lift them up, not to shut them down. Awesome. Totally agree. We appreciate Rebecca, your time and for you being on the podcast. So thank you. We appreciate it. Of course. My pleasure. Yeah. Yeah. Thank you very much. This has been fun. Thank you. I love your energy. Thank you. Bye. Well, that was informative and a fun interview. I really enjoyed our visit with Rebecca today. What stands out for you, Alex? Rebecca is a really interesting person. When we talk about all the different things she's done in her life and what she continues to do from the physics and mathematics major to figure skating. She's coaching kids for the 5K, all these different things. It really culminates in one of the things that we talked about was that post about your resume doesn't really convey your whole story. And that's an interesting background to think about those things and how that contributes to her being a customer success manager within the organizations and helping build out startups like she had mentioned. So I find that interesting. And It really is. If I think more recruiters, and I guess this is just my personal view, and especially with AI, they're just going to start looking for the keywords. Did you say agile? Did you say value? Did you say these things versus really understanding someone with a lot of experience? How well do they bring in confidence into a conversation? How well do they know how to individualize creating a relationship with a customer? All these things play into it. And those are only the things when you have a real in-depth conversation with someone versus just a high-level, I did this with NNRR, I did this with adoption, blah, blah, blah. You're dead on because when you interview individuals, everybody will want to talk about what did you do with Account A? How did you deal with whether it's renewals or upselling or retention. But there's a lot of, and we've talked about this, there's these soft skills that you have to have. Are you good at communicating? How are you at understanding different layers of communication styles? Are you a born leader? Have you had experience leading? So, just the fact that she's a ski instructor for Special Olympics, flags me if I'm interviewing Rebecca or somebody like that. I'm like, this is somebody that has extreme patience. They're used to working with individuals that might have some sort of communication gap. Those are really strong skills that are needed to support your technical knowledge. Yeah, absolutely. So those are some things that— and obviously the product experience that she brings as well kind of adds a new nuance in there. I'm trying to think. We've interviewed people that are product people for software companies, but She's truly a product person within a customer success of working for a role versus a product person where we're interviewing and talking about their product. So a little bit different take on that. It was a fun conversation. Anything else that you think stands out? The only thing— well, there's lots, and I hope the listeners enjoyed the episode as much as we did in doing it. But the one thing that continues to sit with me is when she's working on her podcast, when she's interviewing and doing the mock interviews, with her guests, it's how to convey a story and really feel and understand how to put yourself out there. The representing I did this versus we, it's the ownership in a very humble manner. It's really critical and important because if you continually put we, you're going to lose the interviewer. So the way she works on that, that just resonated really well with me. And in doing it in a way that's humble, not arrogant and cocky. Yeah. And that's a balance I struggled with in that conversation because realistically, it's a team that gets things done. You may be a leader of the team to help direct and coach people, but there's little pieces and conversations that go on that teams build things and get results. Interesting kind of thing that I always get very caught up in, especially when I get into performance reviews and stuff that, oh, I have to take ownership for all these things, but how do I give my team credit? I think that's a personality of customer success people in general as well. They want everybody to be a part of the camaraderie of we did this, bring in the salesperson that brought in the right customer, bring in the marketing that had that marketing thing go out right at the right time for that customer that made it easy for you to renew and actually get the expansion. It's interesting concept I need to think more about. Yeah, and I could very much visualize saying, I worked on this and I did this, and here's how the team interacted with as part of that. You can bring that together because I think it's important to come across as, I did this, but we interacted and collaborated as a team. Because when you start talking about the communication, the collaboration, and the success, it does take the full team. And how do you bring people along? How do you bounce ideas? But you also have to sit there and put yourself out there as a tip of the spear sometimes. All too often, you and I have worked in this industry a long time. All too often, somebody say, "I did this, I did this, I did this." Wait a minute, you were part of the team and you really didn't contribute that much. So, you're trying to take more credit. You and I see a lot more customer success people that are willing to give the credit to people to help boost them along. So, you're right. There's a fine line there. But you got to take some credit anyhow. Well, thank you to Rebecca for being on our podcast. We greatly appreciate it. I hope our listeners enjoyed the episode as much as we did. There we go, we versus I. We hope you have a great day. I'll talk to you soon.