The Scarcity of Being Human: Catherine Blackmore, Oracle's Group VP of Customer Programs and Employee Success on CS in the Age of Agents

Speaker A: Coming up on the Thread podcast, we have got a great episode. My neighbor and dear friend, Kathryn Blackmore, group vice president of customer programs and employee success at Oracle, jumps on the show and this is a, ah, it's a great episode. We get into her path, uh, to Oracle, but it's anything but a straight line as she'll talk about in the interview. Um, moving m from advertising consumer packaged goods. She did a stint working with Costco Financial Services and then a startup that turned into Salesforce, Badgeville and Bluenose. So the thing I really appreciated about this conversation with Kathryn is she's got such an awesome blend of both startup scale up experience and now running, um, one of the largest software companies in the world. Um, we get into what customer success got fundamentally right over the last two decades. The high touch model and defending the moat, and what we got collectively wrong. We talk about the golden record, the data silos, and the red yellow greenhouse score where every account somehow ends up yellow. And then we, uh, we round out the conversation. We go deep on the question everyone is sitting with right now is what happens to human connection in the age of AI agents? And then we talk about her son Max. He's graduating college. What, uh, what should young college grads be thinking about as they enter the workforce? So there's a lot in this one. You're going to love it. Um, and, uh, I'll let her words speak for, for her, but, uh, without further ado, let's get into the show. Giddy up.

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Speaker A: What is going on? Threadheads? Happy Friday. It is your host, Justin Vandehay here at the Thread podcast where every week we have exceptional operators builders on the show talking about how they're helping their organizations grow and scale their customer and revenue Function. This week on the show we've got amazing guest in actually a neighbor of mine from a local from right down the street here in Westland, Oregon. Uh, Katherine Blackmore is the GVP of customer programs and employee success at Oracle. Catherine, welcome into the thread podcast.

Speaker C: Oh, it is so great to be here. I am looking forward to this conversation and how often does that happen? Like your next door neighbor is actually on your podcast.

Speaker A: I know we had a mutual, well now mutual friend Nils who uh, had on the show was like, you gotta talk to Katherine, she's great. And then lo and behold, you know, right down the street we were able to meet up for coffee to, to catch up in person, which is super cool.

Speaker C: That's great. Looking forward to it.

Speaker A: Yeah. And, and so, um, and what's really cool about this is I know we'll get into this in the interview. Um, but we were, we didn't know each other back in the day, but we were in sort of like similar circles as you were coming up in the early stages of Martech and now. So anyway, I won't steal your intro for you, but I'd love maybe just to open it up with a general introduction on yourself and. Yeah, and the path to Oracle.

Speaker C: Yes. So I know Justin, we had a chance to connect. I would say that what we have similar, not just in our zip codes and where we live and our background and also what we've done career wise. But I would say you being a serial entrepreneur, I would say I would definitely consider myself to be in that same vein. Although what I think about when I think of innovation and what I've done in my career is building programs, building programs that wrap around the technology, thinking about people and process and all of that. Um, but my background is probably not very traditional. Um, for those that follow me and have heard me speak before, they know that I got started actually outside of technology. I started off at a very curious time when it was maybe like now where it was very challenging. Although unlike now, I think we'll probably talk about this in a little bit. But what was tricky was finding that first path and so how would I net it out? I started off with a degree in communications, advertising and psychology. Okay, that is pretty interesting. Going from advertising, marketing, struggling a bit to try to find that first breakthrough. Um, ended up going into a consumer packaged goods company, still applying skill sets, building products that we would sell to various channels. Um, which led me into an opportunity in the financial sector, which is kind of strange. Interesting hop then into marketing and advertising and Then into a startup that turned into Salesforce, that then led me to a company that you knew about, Badgeville, um, then Bluenose where I was chief customer officer, which I sold to people doing my job every day, which was leading customer success teams and then into Oracle. So a lot of different stops, a lot of interesting parts of my journey that really have helped me get to where I am leading teams, leading programs and helping transform how we think about the customer employee journey.

Speaker A: What is really cool about that, I mean I love the stories too of folks that have just experimented and tried a lot of different things early on in their career and just naturally kind of find, you know, find their path and uh, um, you've definitely. That's what's. I just have so much respect for folks that have done the startup thing and then have figured out how to just navigate and operate at so many different levels. It's, it's awesome to see. I joked about this. I was like, for myself personally, being a serial, uh, entrepreneur means I'm just serially unemployable because it's just like a very, very, very comfortable in the early stages. But then, you know, it's uh, yeah, anyway, so I just have a lot of respect for that. It's very cool. And you mentioned, so we, you, you highlighted a couple different, similar circles that we worked in together. So Badgeville days and we talked. I remember selling this when I was at Gigya was this whole concept of engagement. It was sort of the, you know, the buzzword that everyone was trying to operationalize. So if you look back at, you know, your time at Badgeville and Bluenose and now with Oracle M, what is one thing in customer success that we, you know, that you think was fundamentally right at the time and what's one thing that you think was just collectively, you know, wrong about that?

Speaker C: Yeah. So I'm going to go back a little bit, um, which will explain the. Right. Because I think I need to explain a few jumps that kind of led me to that. So as mentioned, Justin, when I first got started in the realm of customer success, it was in 2007, which by historically that was the same year as that we had the first iPhone launched. So just imagine what times were like back then and the amount of data that we didn't have, um, technology at our fingertips didn't have. And I was actually recruited into the space of customer success which the co founder, CEO of then Jigsaw was like, okay, I'm hiring you because I know you know about account management. So before that in consumer packaged goods, I led very large teams that were centered around developing products that we would sell into channels. And while that was kind of interesting in and of itself to develop product, what really was attracted, what Jim Fowler was attracted to, my background was really understanding how do you center around the customer? Because we're having this thing called churn. We're having this problem where we need to figure out how to keep customers customers, and we don't think it's going to be done through support. And we certainly have to scale our sellers. And so that was the business context at the time. And everything we did in consumer package goods was around servicing the channel. And while you would think every retailer would stock brands like Kellogg's or Nestle, um, one of the stints I had is actually working with Costco and those that know Costco, it's a limited SKU environment. There's only so many products m you can actually rotate in at any given time. And so it was very important for us to be thinking differently about data. What would help make the retailer successful, how do we position our brands and then what would be the reason why and how we could have those brands stay for longer periods of time. And it was all about understanding how to meet our customer, where they were, talk in their language, service them in a way that they found value out of what we were delivering. And I'm saying it this way because that was in many ways the translation into how to build a customer success organization. How do you take what sales has done, keep a customer customer? How do you not get into the realm of support? Even though I know a lot of CSMs at the time were doing that and that's where we got started. So what did we do right? Big backstory to get there. Justin. What I would say what has been right is a high touch model. Now, I know not all teams do this, but I want to maybe explain what I think we got right when we think about where you get started. When you first launch a product, you're trying to secure your first hundred customers. You're trying to make sure that customers stay customers. And there's a moment where obviously you would know this. As a CEO and a co founder, you can't scale yourself. You're going to have to figure out how do I hire someone that's going to help me do that. Um, I don't want my sellers to do this. I need to have them continuing to sell to the next 200,000 customers. So when I think about high touch, what we got right about that was this concept, defending the moat, giving the company time to be able to develop that moat and that fortress around the product so that you are not going to have the next competitor come in and rip out what you just stood up. Um, so I think that is still important. I think that's what we got right. But what's interesting, well, now we have the vision of knowing what's in front of us with technology. What we got wrong was the way we thought about scale. And I can't tell you, Justin, how many projects, time and energy we spent towards things like the golden record. Building the golden record, believing that there's like this golden record that's going to give us this perfect 360. Oh, uh, my gosh. We've chased bridging data silos, we've chased getting everybody into one tool. We've chased the perfect red yellow green model, uh, again, so many times, so much. And even the startups that I've been involved with, whether we were building tools around this, we spend a lot of time, a lot of motion to do this. And of course what we know now is that in many ways might been threads where you've got it right, but in many ways we got it wrong. Meaning we're not going to convince people to go to it all in the same tool. People are going to live in their tools. They love their tools. We know that there's going to be probably 20 instances of GE and in your CRM, um, and that to govern all the data is going to be a challenge. Um, we know that tracking every single data signal known to man that's going to tell us whether or not a customer's ripe for upsell or they're going to churn and trying to feed that into a red yellow green model is going to mean that probably every customer is going to be yellow. So that's where I think, Justin, we got it wrong. Because now we know that there's a different way forward, especially in the nugentic world that we're living in.

Speaker A: Yeah, that's such a good insight. And it's related to, um, I mean, I know we've, we're now finding ways, obviously, like you said, to find ways to scale and automate a lot of this. Um, and you, you've said in the past, I know if you don't, if you don't have employee success, you don't have customer success. And so on the CSM side, I know we're seeing a lot of that, right, where CSMs are getting, finding ways to scale A lot of their work. But I'm curious to see, uh, you know, hear from you on what you're seeing on the employee side of that as well, and sort of like, what is, what does that look like? What are the intersection of those two worlds look like?

Speaker C: Oh, yeah. And don't we live, like, in a really scary time? I mean, for folks, when I say that, there's lots of conversations I have with people that work for me, work around me, work outside of the company. And I think it's just because this is a great unknown. Um, I think that given the rate of change, and you know this better than anyone, Justin, the pace of change is amazing. Uh, and yet you want to tell people, well, just work, don't worry. But that's almost not even the right advice. And I want to go explain that a little bit. Um, I think that as human beings, when we try to prepare for the unknown, we try to pattern match. We try to think about, is there something that I've gone through in my past that relates to what we're going through now? And I think the hard part is I don't think there is. And I think that what's challenging is we don't know. We don't know. Maybe the only thing that we do know, and this is definitely not the same situation. But you think back to, you know, like, the pandemic, and that was probably another, like, incredibly fast changing event that changed the face of how humans showed up for work and we had to adjust quickly. And I remember that time. I remember as a leader of a very large team, you barely had time to put on your own oxygen mask before you had to help others with it. And I had no. I didn't live through. I'm not 100 years old. I didn't live through another pandemic. To know this is how we're going to get through it and how are we going to get through it now. So I think that those things, I think are going to be challenging for leaders because we just can't predict the future. And that's what we want to be able to do in order to help our organizations get to a point of success. But here's another piece too, because I think we're all looking for signals and signs. Um, I don't know if, um. I'm sure many of your folks here listening subscribe to New York Times. There was an interesting article over this last weekend that was published by Ezra Klein, and it was a very buzzy, um, title that said the AI Job Apocalypse probably Won't happen. Talk about clickbait. Especially for those of us in technology. And I'm sure it's debatable and many folks will probably have words to say about this, but what I thought was incredibly hopeful about what we do in servicing customers and in customer success is that when you look at all of the, since the dawn of time, all of the massive disruption moments, there's always going to be a scarcity model in any of those scenarios. And I think where we are headed is the scarcity model around human connection. I think that is probably pretty clear. There's an example that isn't necessarily a success example. More about healthcare. Hey, yes, I have a wearable device as I can find out things about my health and I'm tracking signals and I can engage with AI and I can have all of the data coming back to me. There's a moment where I might be actually kind of freaking out about all this information. I want to talk to somebody and I'm getting information, but I also want to run, maybe want to run it by a human as one of the examples or in some cases I just might crave human connection to empathize, to have them understand me, to get me. And knowing that that could be in scarce supply, I think is actually very helpful for customer success managers because I think the thing that we oftentimes do best is this relational aspect. I think that could be very interesting in terms of what becomes most valuable. But here's the thing I would say setting CSM teams up for success, thinking about in order to have customer success, you have to have employee success. Of course we can talk about there's change to help people get ready, Justin. But I think that helping people still work on soft skills. How can I meet customers where they are? How can I develop my EQ around servicing a customer, my communication skills, um, my business, financial and strategic acumen so that I can speak their language. Uh, I think that all of those areas, Justin, are still very much needed and if anything could be scarce in the future, which would be very hopeful for csm.

Speaker A: I, I couldn't agree more with you on, I mean the human connection piece in particular. And I can't tell, maybe it's because, I mean with, with our venture as a founder building a lot of, in the, in the early days is we, you know, you say lead bullets, right? It's just the first step in going from zero to one. But it's a lot of the early relationships that help build the foundation. So you are right. Like I've Man, I've sat on three or four demos because, uh, to your point, I'm trying to find ways to get leverage and scale. So, you know, I'm full in on Claude. I use Claude cowork pretty aggressively. I've figured out ways to automate a lot of different ways to just get a lot of the administrative work off my plate. But the thing that I, I don't know, I keep coming back to is I'm trying to build relationships with folks in, you know, different operating partners or technology integration partnerships. It's like the, I don't know, even just the general personalization of a lot of the tooling doesn't truly facilitate a deeper, uh, connection. And it still requires me to do the hard work to try to find common ground or at least have some sort of foundation to establish it. Right? Because I don't know, you can just read through and something like that feels transactional and fake. Even if I don't know and I know there's, I know the technology will get better, but I don't know, I'm still really surprised by how much, how valuable that piece of it is. And being able to find common connection, find common ground, it still requires a lot of work and effort. Um, and I think you're right. I feel like people are going to crave that as we move into this next wave of, uh, innovation and what AI is going to unlock for us.

Speaker C: So true. I think there's another thing too. Just to share with you. I was talking to a colleague of mine today. We were chatting about how, if anything, this high touch model, which again I believe we got right, but I think the M1 to many or low touch model, um, it could be an interesting blend, Justin, where because AI agents, I think about a, uh, CSM in the future, also building your leadership skills. I think you could be leading a team of agents, but being able to think critically around what's needed, what's happening within my own business environment, what's happening with my customer's environment. What could I be challenging AI to do next? Not like robotically, cookie cutter. I think that's another potential challenge. Uh, CS leadership is thinking like, let's keep thinking the way we've been thinking of. Try to roll out AI in such a way that we just create a team of robots. Guess what? If you're creating a team of robots, you don't need humans. You're going to have agents. But if you have this high touch, what customers value. I have my leadership skills leading this team of agents and I Think we're starting to think differently. Also, what I was talking to my colleague about is that we're still thinking that the models that we've used in the past to deploy resources. Oh, okay. High touch means I only can serve these number of companies or customers. I think that's going to get totally blown out. I think we can potentially deliver. As a human, I could be talking to many more companies if I have a team of agents working for me. Um, so I think it's something to think about. How do we scale the human touch, knowing that that will be very valuable.

Speaker A: Yeah, for sure. But to the earlier point that you made too, it's really interesting. Um, it's the expression that history rhymes. It doesn't necessarily always repeat. Uh, because I kind of went down the rabbit hole too, and there was some level of existential, um, am I part of the problem? Am I part of the solution? I've read a couple of the Doomsday podcasts or listened to a couple of the different PODC podcast. Um, and then I was reading, um, I think it was not, not speaking on any of the model companies. This is just a general statement. I, you know, I read, uh, Sam Altman had published the AI. It was, it was basically the New Deal of. And I was thinking back to, you know, thinking about the New Deal and FDR and the reform that went on during that time. Right. And like, you can start to see there's been these pivotal moments that have really shaped what the next generation has to face and work through. Right. Like we never. This is the first global pandemic that I've ever been through, but there's elements of it that have rhymed. And I always feel like the human piece of it eventually finds a way through and persists and, um, finds a way to make it happen. So I'm, I'm, I am. I do think that there are concerns for sure, but I also, I remain optimistic. I will be, you know, I'm optimistic. But yeah, um, anyway, yeah, so I, uh, I love. Okay, so there's shifting gears a little bit. I know you mentioned. I know you're focused a lot on customer programs, um, now and thinking about customer, uh, advocacy as a strategic asset. I know it's not just simply marketing and that's, that's, it's a huge strategic lever. Um, so as you. When you log into LinkedIn, there's just slop everywhere. Ah, content floods, channels. Um, and so I know we talked about this on the employee side, but it's becoming harder now to manufacture Authentic content. And so I'm curious, uh, as you think about the future of where that goes, if you have any thoughts on the future of creating, um, more authentic content and customer related content and then how should CS leaders be thinking about making investments in that today?

Speaker C: Yeah, absolutely. I think the fact that there is so much AI generated content flooding every channel, there's a lot of slop. Um, and I think that that is a reason why, um, in many ways, uh, trust is low. What is authentic to a brand, to a company, um, and quite frankly what I believe to be true is why customer advocacy is even more important. Um, and why we need to be investing in our customers, telling the story. And so, um, Justin, as mentioned, um, one of the customer programs I take care of at Oracle is our customer reference program. And I learned a lot about what we've done and how we're putting things together, but also the value of telling a story. And I think that when we think about customer success organizations, we probably haven't put enough emphasis around the ultimate state of what we're trying to accomplish, which is a referenceable company, a customer, a Persona, a person, a cfo, a CEO, a CRO, someone that can stand up and talk about your product. They can write about it, they can talk to, press about it, they can, um, do paid advertising with you, um, quotes, banners, all of it. You know, these are brand building opportunities for companies. If you can co market with someone that can really shape the way that the world sees your brand and knowing that this is the end state of customer success. Um, now at Oracle we have a very specific function dedicated to this. But many companies, your customer success manager should be taking care of this. Um, so like anything like John Doe would say, measure what matters. If you are not measuring this, then it must not matter to you. But I am telling you it should matter to you because this is the point of it all. This is the double funnel where you get customers helping evangelize what you're selling and they become your best salespeople. Um, so you know to me you're going to have to invest time, effort into building a proper program. And I think of it, you know, from a couple of different lenses. I think that just like how customer success models and what I guess I said we got right is the high touch, you need to understand your most strategic customers. Those that are, are market making, the ones that you're really investing in, um, part of your investment should equal customer reference outcome. It just should. You know, if you're investing all these dollars and many Companies don't charge for customer success. Um, the opportunity here by putting all that time in should be a co marketing opportunity. And I think that especially when you're getting started with early customers, I think they get that. I know I've been an early customer of startups before and I get that. And you can develop a good relationship through that effort. Um, but I think that needs to be part of it. But then you also need to scale it and this is where AI can help. I mean it's not going to be all necessarily, um, humans doing all the authoring, but I do think that AI can help you get to first draft, um, of content. I think it can help you, um, scale signals that could help you make sure you've got the right targets and right moments that matter to a customer. Um, when you're talking about the volume of stories, especially for larger companies that need to actually have various types of stories, um, that serve your sellers. Um, but really at the end of the day it's going to require humans to develop a relationship with the customer and make the ask. I just don't see really any way around that. And I think that's part of the human touch where we want to have relationships. You know, I'm sure, Justin, if you were asked to be a reference for a company, um, you would probably value somebody talking to you about the opportunity and what that could look like and how we're going to appeal to some of the things that you're trying to get out there to elevate your company. Um, more so than an agent trying to close a deal with you and have you sign a permission form.

Speaker A: Yeah, it's so good because, I mean even think I had, um, one of our customers offered to be um, a reference for one of our, uh, upcoming investor conversations. And the first thing that went that this, it's a good investor. Like the first prospective question they went to was, well, what outcome did it deliver? Right? Like what were you hoping to move? What were you hoping to. And thankfully he had it unlocked. Like he knew, he was like, this is the goal, these are the outcomes we were trying to achieve. And I don't know, I feel like that really coincides with a lot of what you're saying is it feels like there really is this shift around to. And maybe it's again, maybe it's always been there, but it just feels like customer outcomes are so much more important now. Um, and I can't tell if it's because it's related to. There's been a lot of Talk about future business models and moving from seat space to consumption. And now it's like, okay, now we're pricing on outcomes. It just feels like it's sort of. It's like all kind of heading in that direction.

Speaker C: It's so true. We just had our Oracle Excellence Awards, where we were able to highlight our customers that have done amazing, amazing work, um, in EMEA and jpac and, um, also, uh, in the US as well, in North America. What I thought about a lot, and I actually have written some articles about this, um, is that when you're thinking about innovation, and again, especially with the rate of change of what we're going through, you can only do so much as a company to explain to the market, to explain to prospective customers. Here's why you should buy. Here's what your path could look like, here's some ideas of what this could mean for your business. And certainly we can give you all kinds of advice and recommendations and resources. But I know what matters most is seeing a company that has done it and seeing this is a company just like me. I've seen how they've scaled. I've seen how they've gone through all of the different iterations and got to a point of success and their outcomes. That's what's believable. That's what really gets me, leaning in and wanting to carve out resources. Do the deal. Bring on the si. Let's go. I want to be just like this customer on stage.

Speaker A: Yeah, I love that. Um, all right, so we're rounding out, uh, more on the personal, family side of things. Um, I had a chance to connect with your son, Max. Uh, I know he's coming out of school here, CS degree here in Portland. Uh, super sharp guy. Not surprised at all. He has so many different potential paths in front of him to take his career. Uh, you talked about the evolution of the workforce, and so I was just curious, you know, both as a. As a m. As a mother, but also someone that's crushed it at Fortune 100 Smaller Companies. What sort of advice are you giving him? And I guess, what advice are you giving the parents of, uh, other kids that are about to enter the workforce that's being reshaped as part of this movement?

Speaker C: Well, hopefully I give a little more helpful advice than Elon in that interview he did a while back. But listen, I know it is definitely top of mind. Um, and thank you for your kind words about Max. Super proud. Um, go Beeves. Um, definitely got an incredible future ahead of him, but it's scary Just like we were talking about how I got started. It's a scary time. And he's certainly coming to me for advice and how to get started. And so there's three categories that I thought might be really helpful of how I've framed my advice to him. And it's also how I've really governed my career. Um, the first one is, um, maybe one that's grounded in science, um, and maybe a bit Darwinian in the sense that it's not the strongest or the smartest that survive. It is the one that is adaptable to change. And I think that couldn't be more true. And when I think about that for Max, I think about you. Just, it's not always a straight line when you think about career progression. I know it wasn't for me. Um, in fact, when I joined the technology startup, I went from being a VP to a director. And many people would think, well, that's crazy talk. Why'd you do that? That seems very strange, but I did that because I knew that I needed to learn, I needed to grow, I needed to take a seat on the bus so that I could learn something very different than what I'd done before in consumer packaged goods and in advertising. And yes, I move very quickly beyond that, but I think sometimes it just always is in a straight line. And then all these different stops, as I explained, helped form what I would say is the second piece that I think is super important as advice, which is maybe more of a math equation. And so the math advice is that the sum of my experiences equals my existence. The greater my experiences, the greater my existence. So especially. And I don't think it stops. I mean, some people say, oh, in the first 10 years of your employment, you should really just be going after experiences. I think you just still do it. I mean, Justin, you said this. I mean, think about all the things that you're doing. I mean, yes, you can't put a pin in it because that's what's most valuable. You know, you can do all these things. And I often joke, if nothing else, I can go run a restaurant. I mean, it doesn't. You collect these experiences to form what will help you round out as a leader. I mean, that's the other thing I'm really trying to emphasize with Max is I think leadership skills are essential. Leadership skills give you the ability to adapt because you can take a look at things more pragmatically. You can think about how businesses operate. And so, for example, in addition to a CS degree, he's taking Accounting classes. He's also, you know, they're encouraging him. Maybe he wants to stay in extra year and be an econ, uh, major. Um, but the point is he's getting a lot of experiences that are just within the academia side of things. But how does that translate into the working world? Um, maybe one other tip. I would say there's a woman I always promote. Her name is Susan Colantono. She has a great TED Talk about the career advice that you probably never received. And that is, she is a firm believer, as am I, that you need to continue to hone your business acumen, your financial acumen, and your strategic acumen. I think that will always be the case. And so that's something I'm definitely stressing with Max and others. But, uh, then the last thing I will say is probably more of an economics philosophy, which is the concept of opportunity cost. Because just as you can want to accumulate a lot of experiences that are some experiences that are probably not worth their time. And so sometimes you can get really in love with an opportunity and maybe it's time for you to move on because you've completely extracted everything you could possibly learn or grow or, or maybe there are opportunities, you're just not going to learn as much. And so, uh, when I, when I coach people, I often think about the game within the game. The game that's the broader game is the job I'm doing right now that I'm getting paid to do. But the game within the game is, how am I growing? Am I growing? Is this challenging me? Am I getting to a new level of skills or thinking? Am I getting exposure? And I think people can easily get stuck. You can get stuck in a company, um, for many years. You can get stuck in a certain path even within a startup, if it's a small company. I think you just always have to be looking at opportunity cost and knowing that it is about gathering the right experiences.

Speaker A: I love the anchoring in on the quant framing too, like the sciences and the math. That's like such a, that's such a solid way to round it out and structure it. Um, I was always thinking too. I'm glad I have my video filter on because you could see all of the. During COVID I had a lot of failed hobbies. So when we talk about like wasting time on stuff that you probably, you know, it's like the opportunity cost is real. So all of the instruments that are sitting here and unused, um, uh, a lot of that, A lot of that resonates for sure. Um, really good advice. Uh, Katherine, this is awesome. Thank you so much for making the time. Uh, just lovely to connect with you. Talk about your experience here. Have uh, a friend now locally, so.

Speaker C: That's right.

Speaker A: Um, excited to, yeah, just excited to see the journey that you've been on. I wanted to give you some space at the end here to, to see if there was um, just what's next for you and if there was anything else that you wanted to plug in.

Speaker C: Yeah, I think it goes back to like always be learning. Right. How am I going to continue to learn? One of the top things I actually read about that leaders do. Um, and these are the most successful leaders, they actually spend time giving back to themselves first. And I think that's something that's absolutely on my mind. How can I continue to learn and grow so that I can be better for my team, better for the company. Um, and I think a lot of it right now is around the soft skills of what are we doing to continue to prepare for the future. Things that we've already talked about. But a lot of what I'm investing in are things like leadership development, um, courses, um, for myself first and foremost, but continuing to best of my team. Things that will help us be better at individual leadership skills, things will be better at team leadership and then organizational leadership. Uh, I think these are things that we always have to be sharpening the saw. And Justin, I think that's where uh, if I think about opportunity costs when I'm making a decision, what could I, what could I not be doing right now, but what could I do to try to give back and be, be able to invest in myself so I can be better for my team and for my company and for those around me.

Speaker A: Awesome. Well, thank you so much Katherine. Appreciate you. Ah, making the time, investing the time here, um, forever a thread head. Uh, I got to get some swags out. Once we get a little bit of budget in here, um, we'll just see the, the thread hats all over, all over laco. Um, but uh, but anyway, thank you so much. Uh, and we'll have to have you back on the show here in not too long.

Speaker C: Look to it. We'll see you then. Thanks Justin.

Speaker A: Thanks Katherine. All right, that is a wrap again, huge shout out to my neighbor Katherine Blackmore. The uh, entire team at Oracle appreciate her uh, jumping on the show and being so generous with the uh, hard won lessons and just so many solid recommendations in here that I'm sitting with. I loved her point around uh, the personal human connection, the idea that the real scarcity in this AI focused world is human connection. Uh, the best CS people are going to be the ones that lean into the relational work that agents don't fake and the picture of a CSM in the near future leading a team, team of agents scaling that human touch instead of getting replaced by it. And then her point around the importance of customer, uh, love customer stories. It's not just a marketing afterthought, it's the end state of cs. It's that double funnel where your best customers are actually your best salespeople. So if you are coaching anyone entering this workforce, go back and listen to her advice again. Uh, the sum of your experience equals your experience resistance. I love that line. And always watch the game within the game. Uh, if you got something out of this conversation, if you do me a favor, follow the show, share it with one or two operators who you think needs to hear it or even recent college grads. Leave a quick review. It, ah, really helps us land amazing guests like Catherine. Uh, we've got another one of those coming up here scheduled, uh, to release here in two weeks. So be on the lookout for, for that thread heads. In the meantime, keep hustling, keep grinding,

Speaker B: keep getting that money. Assassin state of mind hustle, grind See them dollar signs Assassin state of mind Assassin state of mind Hustle, grind See them dollar signs way above the bottom line Assassin state of mind this ain't money, y' all over everything, everything Engaged in the game Shopping for a wedding ring salary startups, crypto, stock exchange Appreciate every penny I can change One phone call and your life can change what's your love? Language can't do business if it ain't reciprocated Closing deals on the daily, weekly, monthly Real recognized real. You nudes is acting funny. Don't waste our time. Um,