London Live: An Intimate Evening with Daphne Costa Lopes

In a beautifully set Hook’s office in the heart of London, Women in Customer Success hosted our first-ever live podcast recording, an intimate and immersive experience with a familiar voice: Daphne Costa Lopes.

Daphne, HubSpot's Global Director of Customer Success - Strategic Accounts and Founder & CEO of This is Growth podcast, shared her journey, shaped by a disciplined upbringing, expat life, and a relentless drive for growth. She revealed the daily habits that keep her focused, how climbing Kilimanjaro helped her find closure after losing her father, and why her next challenge, Mount Everest Base Camp, reflects her approach to both life and career.

Of course, we also talked Customer Success. Daphne shared insights on leadership, career growth, and the evolving role of Customer Success in business, including AI-driven shifts like the move from utilisation-based to consumption-based payment models.

Our audience came prepared with questions on the future of subscription models, managing feedback, and effective customer advocacy strategies.

Tune in for an inspiring, real, and deeply human conversation.

Follow Daphne Costa Lopes

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About Women in Customer Success Podcast:

Women in Customer Success Podcast is the first women-only podcast for Customer Success professionals, where remarkable ladies of Customer Success connect, inspire and champion each other.

Follow:

Women in Customer Success

• Website - womenincs.co/podcast
• LinkedIn - linkedin.com/company/womenincs
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/womenincs.co/

Host Marija Skobe-Pilley

• Website - https://www.marijaskobepilley.com/
• LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/mspilley/
• Get a FREE '9 Habits of Successful CSMs' guide https://www.marijaskobepilley.com/9-habits-freebie

NEW - Women in Customer Success Courses:

• Thriving as a First-Time People Leader - https://womenincs.co/thriving-as-a-first-time-people-leader
• The Revenue CSM - https://womenincs.co/the-revenue-csm

Chapters

• 0:00 Introduction to Women in Customer Success
• 8:30 The Origins of Women in Customer Success
• 22:00 Masterclasses and Resources in Customer Success
• 37:45 An Introduction to Daphne Costa
• 45:30 Daphne’s Journey from Science to Customer Success
• 1:02:00 Morning Routines That Propel Productivity
• 1:15:00 The Importance of Customer Engagement and Advocacy
• 1:30:30 Lessons Learned from Managing Across Different Levels
• 1:45:00 Closing Thoughts and Audience Q&A

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:08

Hi everyone. This is Maria Scobepile and you're listening to Women in Customer Success podcast, the first women-only podcast where remarkable ladies of customer success share their stories and practical tools to help you succeed and make an impact. If you want to learn more about customer success, get career advice and be inspired, you're in the right place, so let's tune in.

Speaker 3: 0:42

A very warm welcome to all of you. Thanks for coming, natasha, thank you and Hook very much for welcoming us today. If you haven't already heard, there was, I would say, a wonderful episode, but I may be biased with Natasha. I think it is number 111 of Women in Customer Success podcast. I think it's very worth tuning into it because she's giving so much awesome advice about leadership and how to lead teams. But why we are here tonight? Oh, hello ladies, welcome to London. It's actually great to see so many of you coming from afar. That's one of the beauties of having event just the night before a big Customer Success Conference, so we can just welcome everybody and have some nice intimate time.

Speaker 3: 1:28

Before Women in Customer Success started it will be five years ago in a couple of months time with the sole purpose of doing this really showcasing wonderful women in customer success, all of your successes, your wins, your challenges, and giving everybody a platform to share those experiences with the world. Throughout the years we have been, I would say, very faithful to our mission, but almost every year there is something new and something different that we do. Almost every year there is something new and something different that we do. So from last year we started introducing enablement, basically lots of different master classes and masterminds. I think some of you, penny, has been taking part in some of our master classes. All of that is on your paper you can have a look at, but this is planned for this year as well. We want to make sure that we have enough resources for you to really learn and grow in your careers.

Speaker 3: 2:28

Now, while we are here tonight, I know it's about time you're not here to listen to me, so I was trying to think how do I even introduce this amazing lady that we will hear today, and then I realized what do I know? Let me better that she tells her, that she can tell you more about herself. But definitely I would like to welcome the lady who is behind this is growth podcast. This is growth newsletter. The lady who is the most influential customer success leader, strategies and influencer in Europe and wider director of customer success at HubSpot. A person who climbed Kilimanjaro and who is going to do so many more awesome things this year that we are gonna hear about. Ladies, let's welcome Daphne Costa-Lopez. Have a seat. Okay, it's time to sit down and, by the way, this is the first ever Women in Customer Success podcast liveaphne.

Speaker 3: 3:38

It's been almost five years since we spoke first time on women in customer success podcast. If you are curious, it is episode number 14, back in the early days, and so much has changed since. In those days, daphne was blogging and she was talking about going from science into customer success. And how was her journey from science? And when we look at her now and her career, it's like boom skyrocketed and it's just amazing. For me, it's an amazing privilege to be able to speak with Daphne tonight, because I'm personally very curious about so many things that she does and so many things that you will not see on LinkedIn. Daphne, can you please do something? Congrats, daphne for getting engaged. Yeah, that's one of those things that you can't find on LinkedIn. Daphne, how would you like to introduce yourself to these wonderful ladies?

Speaker 4: 4:54

I'm embarrassed. That was an amazing introduction. I feel like I need the recording to play every morning as my alarm rings so I can get that vibe from you. I think you talked a lot about a lot of the things that I do. So I'm the founder of this is Growth, which has now turned into a media company. It is a podcast, a video podcast. Now I have a newsletter, I issue a report every year, so loads of different media forms and pieces of content. I'm putting together a course, so loads of stuff going on there.

Speaker 4: 5:36

Recently, I've become the regional director of not regional global director of Customer Success HubSpot. I've been in HubSpot for five and a half years. It's been an amazing journey. I feel really, really privileged to work for a company that truly puts customer success at the center of what it does, so much so that our chief customer officer became our CEO, which is incredible. And then, outside of customer success, when there is any time left outside of customer success, I love the outdoors and I think that that is how I ground myself, how I keep sane, how I de-stress sane, how I de-stress. So trail running, hiking, surfing, anything that's outside I'm up for it. So that's a little bit about me. I think, yeah, I'll leave it there.

Speaker 3: 6:41

Okay, I'm interested to know what drives you like, what motivates you when you wake up in the morning, because I can also ask is it not enough to be director of customer success in one of the coolest companies in the world, but you need to be all of those other things, which is incredible really, but you need to find some proper drive and grit for it. So what is it for you?

Speaker 4: 7:01

I keep going back to something that happened many years ago now about 13 years ago, which was this moment for me. My background is product and I had a realization at some point in product that it didn't matter what we built if people didn't use it, what we built if people didn't use it. So you know, when you think about traditional metrics of customer success, things like retention, usage etc. Those are not things that we were talking about in product. We were talking about how much we were releasing and the time to release, the quality of the release, etc. But it literally ended at the point that you put it out in the world and it was never really in the environment that I was in. It was never really talked about what happened after that product went to the real world and I always had a passion for it. My father comes from a small business where he knew every single one of his customers and kind of bent backwards and forwards to support them, had that really close relationship with people and helping people connect with what is the reason why they bought and helping them realize those things and find those aha moments and achieve their goals. Actually, one of my favorite things to this day is when I meet a customer that says that because of the project that they work on, they got promoted or they got a new job because they got the skills from this technology that they were using in this area and now they can bring it to somewhere else. I thrive on those win and personal stories.

Speaker 4: 8:58

You talked about a word of the year. I selected my word for the year. The year I selected my word for the year. My word for the year was bold, is bold and it all. It's about making bolder decisions, being more, taking more risks. So I think that that is, for me, again, something that I've always admired and wanted to do, but I don't feel like I necessarily lived up to it. So that that gets me out of bed right now. It's finding the places to be a little bolder.

Speaker 3: 9:29

And now, when I think about places that you will be a little bolder, oh my gosh. But we'll leave it for a few minutes after. There is so much that I can talk about with Daphne and I have probably material for three hours, but I don't think everybody wants to sit here and I thought, thought, what shall we start with? So what I'm thinking when I see Daphne, when I see your, your post, when I see your, your work in general, I'm thinking, okay, what has to happen throughout the day, from early morning, that makes you give the output to the world in the level that you're doing it? So tell us, maybe, how do you start your days and what are some of those habits that you are constantly having that allow you to perform to the level that you're performing constantly?

Speaker 4: 10:16

I think one of the biggest hacks, if you will, that I implemented a few years ago and I've kept honest to it, is what I call paying myself first. That I implemented a few years ago and I've kept honest to it is what I call paying myself first. So when I wake up, obviously I do what everybody does I get a cup of coffee and all of those things but when I'm ready to get started, I don't open my inbox, I don't open Slack, I don't open social media, I don't open any of the things that I know have the potential of sucking me in, and I work on the most important thing that I need to do that day. My team knows that there are no meetings that get booked at 9 am on my calendar. There's a block in there because I want to make sure that every single day I work on the hardest thing and the thing that I know that has the longest, the highest value in the long term. So I do that every morning and I do that for me and I do that for HubSpot. So I start with, like, the Daphne task, and that might be I'm writing the newsletter, or it might be I haven't gotten my post for the day ready, so I'm going to spend the time there. Or it might be something bigger. For example, I'm preparing a course right now, so I need to keep myself working on a certain pace to meet a few milestones. So I'm working on one day is the course curriculum, the other day it's like a script for a video or a framework or the design assets, whatever it will be that first thing that I'm going to do, and then the HubSpot thing that I need to do, and then I open my inbox and then I open my Slack. And it's not like I'm only opening at like 1pm in the afternoon, it's still like 10.30 or 11, because I'm not blocking this massive block of time. It's like one hour of uninterrupted work. It's actually quite effective. So I do that. That's one of the like. Religiously, I would do that.

Speaker 4: 12:20

Then the other thing is I produce a lot of content, and I don't use AI to produce my content. I do use AI to refine it. I do use AI to edit. Ai is very useful, but I don't use AI to generate the point of view that I have about the world. So a lot of it is about creativity, and creativity doesn't strike me when I sit down in front of the laptop and I have to write a post for today. Creativity strikes me when I'm out hiking, when I'm running, when I'm in the gym. It's not when I'm sitting down to write the thing.

Speaker 4: 12:58

So I have this log. Every idea I have goes into the idea log, every idea I have goes into the ideologue and like if you were to read my ideologue, you would laugh at me, because they're like only I can understand what's in there. But it's literally like if I'm in the treadmill and I have this idea for a post, I will write there like the most basic version of what I'm trying to do and then it will be there for me so that when I do sit down to write something, I have that starting point, which I think is the hardest thing to get, is the starting point. So the idea log is on my phone, is on my notes app is nothing fancy, is literally bullet points, but it's such a hack for creating content and I think that that helps.

Speaker 4: 13:43

But I do like to be honest with people. This is not nine-to-five. Like you don't have a global, demanding job plus a media company, plus conferences, events, things like that. If you do nine-to-five, it's not for everyone to do all those things at the same time, because some weeks are 80-hour weeks and I am in a phase in my life where I can afford to do 80 hours a week because I have no kids. I have nobody that depends on me. You know, all my time is my time, so I'm happy to invest it that way.

Speaker 4: 14:23

There will be a point in my life where that is not going to be true. I do want a family, for example. So I know at some point 80-hour weeks are not going to be something I can do. So I'm very, I think, about balance as a long arc and you know, in general there'll be balance in life, but there's no balance every day. Some days are 12-hour work days, some days are 12 hour work days, some days I'm out hiking. You know what I mean. So I think I have that longer term view of balance, which I think helps me manage my own burnout and overwhelm, because I'm not expecting and putting the pressure on myself that every day is going to be perfectly balanced and I'm going to get everything in. So, yeah, that's, I think, a few things.

Speaker 3: 15:08

So many life hacks already. Where shall I start unpacking, winding down, going back to the beginning? Yeah, not starting your day with inbox Probably number one mistake that so many leaders and CSMs are doing. I've been on a course a few years ago where I never thought about it in that way until the person said if you start your day with inbox, this is just a river that keeps on flowing and you absolutely can't get anything else done.

Speaker 3: 15:39

And I guess it's always easy for CSMs especially, and for leaders, to spend the day answering emails and answering slack and you feel I'm doing something constantly, I'm so busy, and then by the end of the day you just don't do anything. Actually that was worth doing, simply because you don't get that time to the first thing. So I really like your principle that you live by in the morning, do what's important right, do the big rocks, do the strategic things that can actually propel you forward. I was also thinking what do you do before, like, do you go to gym in the morning? What's the first thing you actually do? Is it gym, then shower? Is it what it is?

Speaker 4: 16:20

I honestly don't have a morning routine in that way. Um, you know, sometimes if I open the window I live in dublin, which is always raining, literally always raining, and it's at this time of the year is dark, and when you wake up is dark, when you finish work is dark. So, you know, if the if I open the window and the weather is nice and I have a little bit of time, I'll go out for a run in the morning. But if the weather is awful, I'll look at it and be like great, I'm gonna go do something else. So I don't, you know, I I think ideally would be so nice to start every day like outside walking, with a workout or something like that, but it's just, I just can't motivate myself when the weather is so bad.

Speaker 4: 17:01

So what ends up happening for me is that I actually work out in the evenings versus the morning, and it is quite nice because I work from home most days. So by working at home I end up not walking a lot, which is not good. My whoop keeps telling me I need to improve my walking, my steps. But in the morning, then, if I have this time before the time that I allotted myself to work, I might just read a few pages of a book, sit down with my partner and have a coffee where we have a conversation with each other. Ideally an easy morning, I think, is the best. I don't wake up at 4.30 am, none of those things. I value my sleep too much.

Speaker 3: 17:50

I'm so happy to hear that my burnt-out days were waking up 4.30 in the morning. Not because I ever wanted, it's just because my to-do list was not allowing me to sleep any further. But that's changed. I'm not in that place anymore. I like when you said like you start reading a book or something.

Speaker 3: 18:10

I found myself last year, maybe in the middle of the year, that I started waking up early, six o'clock. I'm not 5 am club, I'm not advocating for it, but I was intentionally waking up early, not looking at the phone, which is really difficult, but not taking it as the first thing, and instead reading a book, reading something. And I started writing not a gratitude journal, just some kind of a journal putting some thoughts down, and I have seen a huge difference, like from Burnt-out Maria to much different Maria. So the way you start your morning can make or break your day and I think it's incredibly important to start thinking about that. The way you can show up for the world, the way you can show up for your team and for yourself, starts much before you start work. So that's something probably to start thinking about in the new year. I wanted to ask you, but there are so many things you didn't tell us very much. In short, how did you actually end up in customer success?

Speaker 4: 19:20

If we go back to the career, area now actually end up in customer success. If we go back to this career area now, it's been over a decade now. So I went to college to study chemistry so a scientist by degree. I worked for very, very few months in the industry and kind of had an absolute identity crisis. After studying for so long in university and, you know, getting a degree, you go into the field and you say I actually don't like this, I don't want to do this for the rest of my life. And I decided to move countries and you know, kind of study abroad, pursue a post-grad degree. Really just try and figure out what I wanted to do. All throughout that I worked in retail to pay the bills and actually learned a lot in working in retail. I actually had some of the best bosses I've ever had in retail, if you can believe it, and learned so much from, from from them. Um, and then decided to um, go into the startup world.

Speaker 4: 20:25

When I finished my, my post-grad and kind of had started a master's, but a research master's this is a really good timing to do that joined a one-person business like literally, like it was very like a very early stage startup. It was a concept really Helped build that business to 50 people kind of multi-million dollar business. And the business started with the idea that companies, in order for companies to be successful with technology adoption, they need to nail their onboarding. If you get onboarding wrong, if you don't launch successfully, the likelihood of you succeeding with that product over the remaining months of your contract is near zero. So with that idea, what we built ended up being a services agency where we helped people implement and change project management practices in their business, helped them bring new technology, integrate technology, all that kind of stuff. So it was very kind of high touch consulting. And over time what we realized is by the time that people actually reached out to us to help them, it was too late. It was usually because they had failed the first implementation and then now they were looking for a consultant to come and fix the mess. So it's much harder to do that.

Speaker 4: 21:58

We decided that we were going to start earlier in the journey, partnering with the technology company to help the first implementation succeed. And as we partnered with technology companies, an interesting thing started to happen and I realized that it was happening in multiple different projects and it was this idea that even during the implementation phase, customers were upgrading their packages, so they were buying whatever SaaS platform that they had. They buy quite conservatively and then, as you're implementing, you are uncovering new use cases, new teams, et cetera and things kind of grow. At the time time we didn't have the term success qualified lead, which is now very common as a metric to track. But what we started doing was we started tracking success qualified leads because we wanted to go back to the technology companies and say we're creating all this revenue for you, we're a valued partner, we're adding value to your business.

Speaker 4: 23:00

We wanted to have more strategic conversations with those partners and by doing that, I realized just how much money we were making these companies through expansions and cross-sells and for me, that was what consolidated in my mind. This is like I don't know, 2012,. I think that customer success this whole idea that customer success is there to make customers happy, to build relationships that that was bullshit. We were there to generate revenue. We were there to deliver value and to demonstrate to the customer that we can do even better if you adopt more of our solutions. So, with that faith in in my heart, we kind of like just pivoted a lot of our offering, well, how we position ourselves, etc. And that was like my, my starting point towards customer success. So it was kind of going from consulting more into cs product and consulting and cs.

Speaker 3: 24:01

Okay, now you're on another side of that career, right when you were a highly successful customer success leader. And now, honestly, were there moments when you just wanted to give up and go out of customer success and never think about it.

Speaker 4: 24:21

Oh my god, there are still moments that I feel like that. Anyone else yeah?

Speaker 4: 24:26

yeah honestly, yeah, totally, being customer facing is really tough, you know, even as a leader, when you are actually even more as a leader, because what you get is, by the time a customer situation gets in front of you, it is the worst of the worst. It's everything that could have gone wrong has gone wrong. Nobody else can sort it. The manager didn't sort it, the senior manager didn't sort it. Now it's like in my basket and the situation is it's often not great. So in those cases sometimes you do want to pull your hair out and it's difficult. It's also difficult because being in customer success, sometimes, like I said, I feel privileged to work in a company like HubSpot, where customer success is truly part of the G&E of the business, like our. One of our metrics of success is gross retention. Who owns gross retention? Technically, on paper, is not success, it's product. Officially, in our strategy, they own it. We are obviously contributors and we help deliver that retention, but the product team actually owns it. So there's a lot of cross-functional partnership. There is a lot of just putting the customer at the center of everything that we do. So I feel really, really privileged.

Speaker 4: 25:49

Before coming to HubSpot, I headed up customer success in another company and it was like pushing water up a hill. It was like nobody wanted to know about customer success. They were like you know what? What? Just go make the customer happy, we don't want to hear about it. If you do your job well, we don't hear about those things. So it wasn't like a partnership.

Speaker 4: 26:16

So many times I've wanted to pull my hair out and leave, and I've been tempted by departments that get more respect in the organization sometimes things like sales. So that has crossed my mind. But ultimately, I think what keeps me in customer success is that I genuinely care about customers getting value from the products that they buy, and I don't think we are. We're not there yet in terms of the industry, and I think there's a lot of work to do for us to talk more about what value means, how we measure value, the value realization journey, how AI is going to change. I think that there's so much work, good work to be done, and such exciting work to be done that I stay for that reason, but I'd be lying if I said that I didn't think about moving every now and then.

Speaker 3: 27:15

You stay and you do great things, so tell us how this growth started, why and what was the journey until today.

Speaker 4: 27:27

Well, this growth started really just because I always enjoyed the community side of my career. Anything I did, I was talking to somebody during the networking phase in this event and when I started in customer success, there was literally no meetups, there was no events, there was no podcasts, nobody was writing on LinkedIn, and I literally went around on LinkedIn finding people who had customer success titles and I wrote to them. One of those people was Peter Lyon, who was co-founder of the Success Network, and I found a really, really supportive community of people that were so generous with their time, their knowledge, their resources and I just loved that and I wanted to be part of giving back Anything that I learned I wanted to share with people, because I knew that I had those questions in the past and I couldn't find the answers for them. Now we're in a much better place. There's a lot of content out there now a lot of customer success courses, people building, incredible podcasts like yours, or courses, books, you name it. There's so much available right now, but at the start, there wasn't, and one of the things that I always did was share online. I had a blog, I wrote a lot on LinkedIn, I wrote a lot on LinkedIn and then because of that, because I did so much content creation, I always got a lot of messages from people, things like how do I do this thing, or how do I build my career, or how do I transition into customer success, like. I always got so many questions and they were repeated questions. A lot of people wanted to know more or less the same things. So I thought to myself what is a better way of actually delivering that content to people in a way that they are gonna consume, enjoy it's gonna be personable, et cetera.

Speaker 4: 29:34

And I was inspired by people like you who had podcasts at the time and I was like well, I feel like that would be a fun thing to do. You know, I love having one-on-one conversations. If you see me in an event, I'm really awkward around, like many people. But if it's like one person and we're sitting down, like you leave me there for three hours and when you come back, like I will be talking about their childhood traumas, I'll be like I know their mother, I know like literally I enjoy that. One-on-one conversation is something I really love. And I think a podcast, my podcast episodes, are like an hour, an hour and something, so they're not short conversations. I'm not good for the short ones, but that's where I think a lot of the value is from my perspective and I think the audience that connects with it praises that as the depth that I am able to go with people, things like how you build your career.

Speaker 4: 30:30

My entire first season of the this is Girl podcast was all about careers. It was people who came from different industries into customer success. It was unveiling how hard it is to grow your career Like I wanted the truth. I wanted tell me, like, when you got like that really hard piece of feedback, how did you take, how did you action it, how did you learn from that moment? And I wanted to know the hard stuff about how people grew, because I felt like LinkedIn was very much. You know, if you go into my profile, for example, it looks like my career HubSpot has been like this right. So it's like she was a manager, then a senior manager, then a principal manager, then a director, then a global director. It just looks. It looks perfect and everybody looking at that thinks it was that way. It was like that. I was told no, in interviews I've gotten really constructive feedback from people. There are projects that I did that completely flopped. Nobody knows that. It's not on my LinkedIn timeline. So then it looks to everybody that my career is perfect, but it's not. So I think that that was like the catalyst for me was like people need to know what's behind what they think is a perfect career.

Speaker 4: 31:54

So I started my first season of the podcast all about careers, but then it evolved because it became more about what are the things that people are trying to do in customer success that are more complex and that needs talking about. Like, if you achieved an incredible result in your company, how did you do that? How did you scale your team? So it became more about those topics and I just rebranded my newsletter from this is growth to unconventional growth, because I think we're in an era where everything that we know about how to grow businesses is changing. If you go and you apply the customer success playbooks of two, three, four, five years ago today, you're not going to get the same results that you used to and you're going to be doing it wrong, because a lot has changed. We have access to better tech, to better data. So I think we're in an era of unconventional growth.

Speaker 4: 32:58

I think customer success is going to change a lot because of how pricing is going to change. I think SaaS pricing is going to change a lot because of how pricing is going to change. I think SaaS pricing is going to be disrupted drastically. And this idea of locking customers through contracts I think it's going to die. I think we're going to lock customers through value and through usage. So, again, the playbook isn't geared to that. It's all geared towards the massive event of the renewal. So I've just rebranded again. I'm energized and excited about this new phase.

Speaker 3: 33:28

So that's kind of a little bit of how it came to life I remember your newsletter coming out and I thought, oh, that's nice, that's cool. Week after week, oh, daphne is showing up, it's every single week. Oh, look at that, daphne has podcast. Now, this was really awesome, I do.

Speaker 3: 33:46

I'm sure that most of the people here are wondering what is your content methodology and how do you actually keep continuously producing the content that is going out every single week? I don't know about you. I may write on LinkedIn for five days and then be completely silent for five months, and I know there is plan and there is everything that comes behind the scene. How do you really structure your content and how do you even keep on going?

Speaker 3: 34:21

One thing that I was always always impressed about you and your business growth was that laser-focused like you did only newsletter and then you did podcast and then you started posting every single day or every work day, maybe every day, on LinkedIn. But I knew what I could expect from you because it was always there and it was always constant, which is incredibly hard to achieve, and that's where most of the people kind of flop. You do something, you get energized and then you forget all about it because you have a bad day and you don't have morning time for thinking about your post. How do you keep your content so consistent and completely laser focused on those two or three things that you're doing, without thinking of all the other things that everybody are bringing to the scene that can distract you?

Speaker 4: 35:12

I definitely think about all the shiny objects. There is another document not my idea document which is like what are all the things that this growth could be, and how I would grow it as a business one day, etc. So it's not. The shiny penny syndrome is not lost on me. I just channel into the document, it goes into the document. But I think consistency is something that I value a lot and I think it's one of my strengths and it's all because of my grandmother.

Speaker 4: 35:51

So when I was young this is just going to go around now when I was young, every summer my mom and my aunties used to ship us for summer holidays to my granny's house and it used to be six of us all in my granny's house and my granny was like military, okay, you wake up. Everybody has a job in this house. Your job is. My job was to clean. She had this shelf that had loads of glass figurines and every day I had to dust the glass figurine. That was my job every today in my house. I like I have literally a house that has nothing. My house is like a minimalist heaven because I, if you ask me to dust one figurine, I will lose it. But it was like this thing of um, every like you, you, you have your job and you do your job, and after you do your job then you can go enjoy yourself or whatever. And I think that was like instilled in me in small ways through my granny in one way. But my dad was literally military. My dad was in the Air Force and he was literally military. So he was also all about commitment. If you said you're going to do something, you're going to do it. So sometimes I, you know, like any kid probably I wanted to sign up for jazz class and it was like it's going to be Tuesdays and Thursdays going to have to invest on the shoes and the outfit. And my dad used to say to me you want to do it? Great, you're going to do it, but you're going to go to the classes every class. You're not going to give up halfway through the year and say I don't actually like jazz anymore. No, you're going to do it. It's one year of commitment and you'll do it. So that was like how I grew up.

Speaker 4: 37:40

So now I almost have the same approach to to my content, my work. It's like I'll commit to something for a year. I will do it, I will show up and I will do it every day, sometimes to my detriment, sometimes like, yes, it's 11 pm on the Thursday night and the newsletter needs to come out at 8 am next day. I'm writing the newsletter on Thursday night and the newsletter needs to come out at 8 am next day. I'm writing the newsletter on Thursday night with a glass of wine. So that is. It's not perfect by any means, but the commitment to get it done is there.

Speaker 4: 38:11

And what I do then is I create reflection time for me, usually in October, where I'm like, is this working for me? Like, is this still serving me? And at that point then I give myself that window of reflection and analysis to say, actually, I'm gonna have to pivot, this is not, I've given my best shot at this and I'm not getting the results I want, or, you know, I'm not excited by it anymore, or so at that time then I allow myself to move on. So what you said about, you know, the newsletter, then the podcast, then it was literally those reflections coming up and saying, well, the newsletter is working, I'm enjoying doing it. I think I could make it better if I did this other thing.

Speaker 4: 38:55

So you always see me usually committing to something for a year and then either kind of doubling down on it because it's working and I'm enjoying it, or saying it actually needs pause and needs transformation. And I did that with my podcast last year. I didn't actually put a podcast out for months because I was like you know what I? I don't know if it's working for me, I don't know if I'm enjoying this anymore.

Speaker 4: 39:20

It's a lot of work and usually with content, what happens is LinkedIn is the kind of catch-all like 50,000 people, et cetera. You get millions of views, then a smaller portion of people sign up to your longer form content like a newsletter, then an even smaller number of people sign up to something like a podcast. An even smaller number of people will buy a course, for example. So it's like a. You know the old funnel story. That that you see in in most tech companies and for me is. When I was looking at those numbers on the podcast, I was like you know, is it? Is it actually worth doing it if only a thousand five hundred people listen to this podcast? Is it worth doing so?

Speaker 3: 40:04

I is it worth? Are you checking the numbers or are you checking the impact or the feedback that you're getting now, when you are on this side of it, having launched a few different seasons and a few different of those products?

Speaker 4: 40:20

it's a good question, creating content in the way that I do, which is mostly like I just put it out in the world, the feedback mechanism is something. It's like you're talking at the eater, you know, you throw an idea out there and it's like how many people actually engage with it and talk about it and respond, et cetera. That's how you get your feedback. So numbers are important to me at least. Um, but what I? What I get, which kind of motivated me to come back to the podcast and do a new season and kind of reflect on what it is that, what value adds to the world. It was because, um, people kept asking, like there were, there were kind of loyal fans who were like what is happening with the podcast and are you going to bring something out?

Speaker 4: 41:10

And I miss listening, and that was kind of like the feedback, as you will, that it was something that people valued. So, yeah, there's a little bit of doubt sometimes on the method, but if people like it, usually it's a good sign for me. If they miss it, if they comment on it. I get responses from my newsletter. This is one of my favorite things to do. When people respond to the newsletter, they respond and I'm like, oh my God, somebody actually responded to the newsletter. That doesn't happen often, but when they do, I think it's always a good feedback loop.

Speaker 3: 41:45

You know, someone once told me, especially when it comes to podcasting, you have to be consistent, because people are probably planning their morning runs or their walks with your podcast. There's no chance you can't just release an episode. He says I'm glad to hear that you're getting the feedback and please carry on doing it because I'm loving those episodes. You're on my headphones, typically on a plane to Dublin so it's your Irish welcome oh, I want to ask something I forgot.

Speaker 3: 42:14

Now, ladies, obviously we will have a time to ask for questions, but not yet. What I wanted to say for this is grow. Yeah, obviously. How many years has it been since you launched this is growth three, I think. Okay, so in numbers, how much did that change your career or your personal brand?

Speaker 4: 42:43

It actually changed a lot. One thing that changed was perception. I used to get comments like oh, how's your little thing going? How is those little posts that you do on Instagram, on LinkedIn or whatever, and that always kind of bothered me. I'm like, or whatever. And like that always kind of bothered me. Like you're a little, I'm like whatever. So when I actually went and I branded it and it became a brand per se, I think people started talking about it differently and see it differently.

Speaker 4: 43:21

So in terms of my career, I'll be honest with you when you have a personal brand outside a job, it's Marmite. Some people love it, some people hate it. And the people that love it, they are the people who are going to come to you and say, oh my God, I read your post. That was amazing. Are you trying that in your team? God, I read your post, that was amazing. Are you trying that in your team? Can I learn from you? Like people really engage with us. And then the people that don't like it they're the people that go.

Speaker 4: 43:53

What work is she doing? If she's writing newsletters every day, how is she like? Is she getting anything done? Like, is she all talk? Is this just hype? Why isn't she doing some of these things in her team?

Speaker 4: 44:07

You know, because a lot of what I talk about is quite futuristic in the sense not like big tech stuff, but it's actually stuff that a lot of customer success teams should be doing but they're not doing, including mine. So you say something on LinkedIn and it's not something that you're doing in the company. People are like, yeah, but that's not the way you do things, you know. So I think that it is my mind and but I think the how I like to think about it is is is that I am not a.

Speaker 4: 44:45

My identity, my career identity, isn't tied to being an employee in a certain business. It is where my passion lies, is where my ideas flow, the things that are important to me, et cetera. So I try to just say, well, I'm being honest, I'm being honest to myself, I'm being true to my vision and the people that like it will like it. If it's genuine feedback and it's good feedback, I'll listen to it. Like I've had people reach out with feedback to me that was like, look, I don't think that would work in practicality because of A, b and C, and I'm like you know what? I never thought about that. And then next day I'm writing another post to say I know I said this thing, but actually you know.

Speaker 3: 45:34

I love that. Thanks for inspiration.

Speaker 4: 45:36

I have more content now I know, yeah, yeah, yeah, People are like we can't have a conversation with Afrin. It's going to become a LinkedIn post, Probably will. But you know, I'm really really open to feedback If it's feedback about the what right it's. What I wrote is an idea. You're debating it. I welcome that. I want people to challenge me. I'm not right about everything. It has never happened that I'm right about everything in any aspect of my life. So I want people to challenge me and have conversation. In fact, if it's inspiring conversation, it's doing exactly what I want it to do. It's getting people to think and explore new things, what you think and explore new things. But people who are I don't want to say malicious, because I don't know if malicious is the right word, but if people are just complaining because they don't see how they could possibly do it, then that's up to them to figure out how they get it done.

Speaker 3: 46:40

It's interesting when you say, if there are comment, oh, does she do any work? That's like the typical, the good one, right From the people who think that they are just working so much nine to five, when possibly they can take 10 minutes and write a post. It's not your fault, it's their fault that they can't sit down and write a post, because literally you can do all of those things pretty easily. Depends just what is in your mind. What is it that you're thinking about? But now tell us, when are you actually writing those posts and newsletters? Can we expect some funny newsletters on Friday morning, after you know, late Thursday night with wine, or is it when it's more structured and planned? When is it actually?

Speaker 4: 47:21

happening. So I try to, on my perfect calendar block that I have, I try to always write the newsletter on a Monday evening, and the reason why I do a Monday evening is because usually is when I probably have the most energy in the working week. You know, it's like only a day of work. Mondays are usually easier, quieter days from a meeting perspective, so I haven't spent the whole day talking and I feel like I have the bandwidth the mental bandwidth to write. So that's where the block is in the calendar. It doesn't happen every week, but that is where it gets written.

Speaker 4: 47:58

Now I have a content calendar for the newsletter, things that I'm gonna post. So I'm not sitting on Monday night not having any ideas of what you write about. So I usually have a theme, something that I want to explore. Maybe I just launched a podcast, or maybe it was a question I got from a GM or something like that. So I always have, like, the content calendar in place. But sometimes Monday nights don't work because I might have a late meeting that crops up, I might have a personal appointment, something might happen, and then I try to fit in another time. I've written newsletters on the weekends, on Thursday nights, if I've had a glass of wine, the newsletter is probably more honest. It's more straight to the point, less stories. So if you see a really hot take, it's probably a glass of wine, very good.

Speaker 3: 48:48

Inspired. So do we have a better chance to message you on Mondays with all of the different questions we've got, or towards the end of the week, when you're thinking of the next newsletter, to include it or to become your LinkedIn post?

Speaker 4: 49:02

I think towards the end of the week you're thinking of the next newsletter, to include it or to become your LinkedIn post? I think I think towards the end of the week, because by the time Monday comes, if I'm organized, I already know what I'm writing about. So end of the week cool.

Speaker 3: 49:12

Thanks for sharing all that about. This is growth. Tonight you mentioned probably five to seven times word feedback. Now what was the hardest feedback you have ever received in your career?

Speaker 4: 49:26

You know I had one boss for most of my career in HubSpot which is really not normal, like you know, having a boss for five years because as he grew, I grew and, kind of you, we stayed connected in our growth journey and his name is Philip McHugh. He's probably the best boss I've ever had and he was so bought into my growth, he believed in me so much that he gave me the hardest, the harshest, the most honest feedback somebody can possibly give somebody, but I always knew that he was doing it from a good place, which made all the difference in this situation. And there have been many, many pieces of feedback that I got that were kind of difficult, but I think probably the hardest one was I am an execution machine. If you give me something to do, it gets done, and for that reason I end up usually putting my arms around things and running at them, usually putting my arms around things and running at them, and that sometimes means that I leave people behind because I'm moving too fast and people didn't buy into it or didn't understand or got lost on the way. And you know there was a project that we were working on and that was happening. I was losing people because I was moving too fast. I was very concentrated on delivering on the task and not so much on the people.

Speaker 4: 51:05

And I have to say people have never been my forte. I'm a leader of people, but it's not where my natural strength is at. My natural strength is in the idea, the getting the stuff done, the project management. That's where my strength is. So I have to work hard to be a good people leader. But he gave me some really really direct feedback in that project and I remember closing the laptop.

Speaker 4: 51:34

The one-on-one happened. I closed the laptop and I cried. I cried and I was like I am horrible, I'm like what am I doing? And my partner obviously in the house, and he was like you're awesome, I'm like you don't know me, you don't know me at work.

Speaker 4: 51:55

So it was yeah, it was harsh because I actually, even though people generally is not my forte, I actually care a lot about people and I care about how people feel and I care that people, that it's a safe space for them, that they feel like they're part of something bigger, because I want to be part of an environment like that.

Speaker 4: 52:20

So I see it as my responsibility to foster that for other people. And hearing that that wasn't the case, like it felt, it hurt, it stung, but I rather have heard it and being able to go back to the team and say I'm gonna press pause, I'm gonna reset, I wanna apologize to you. This is where I delivered poorly to you and here's what I'm doing about it and I'm going to show up differently. And the team was really like super supportive of that. And I think showing a little bit of vulnerability is actually a superpower when it comes to people, because when your team sees you as a human being who is flawed and know that they're flawed and wants to get better, then they want to help you get better. So it was hard, but it was a good moment better.

Speaker 3: 53:10

So it was hard, but it was a good moment. Well, imagine if the team thinks that they have a perfect leader, who is military, who just needs, who is interested of getting things done, not even who is doing it, but just getting everything done. Of course, it's so much better for them to understand that, oh well, you're human, you messed up, you have feelings as well, and it will help them feel better about your relationship and just better about them doing their job, especially if they can't follow so quickly simply because they work on different ways. Shall we shift gears?

Speaker 4: 53:42

Yes.

Speaker 3: 53:44

Why Kilimanjaro? Oh, so why?

Speaker 4: 53:47

Kilimanjaro. Why not Kilimanjaro?

Speaker 3: 53:52

I mean why the?

Speaker 4: 53:53

hike. Okay, so I grew up in Sao Paulo and Sao Paulo is a massive city, tall buildings, like you know, 21 million people. It's not a place that you see nature. You know you have to travel out of Sao Paulo to see some nature. And so I grew up like my weekends weren't in the mountains, hiking, and like I never had that. So when I moved to Ireland, which is a place where there is a lot of outdoors and mountains, et cetera, I was always curious about that. But I genuinely had never gone on a hike until my 20s. I had gone on nature walks, but never a hike. And I was single at the time and I met somebody and he was like, oh, let's go on a date. I was like great first date, amazing, really like the guy. And then the second date he was like do you hike? Will we go to a hike? And I did what every sensible young woman that likes a guy would

Speaker 4: 55:10

say, Of course, Of course, I love hiking. Oh, oh, my God, yeah, I've done loads of hikes. So so I lied and then I spent the next week like Googling everything that was to know about hiking, Cause I didn't know anything. Do you have shoes? I know exactly. I had to buy shoes, a cute outfit, Like it was a whole mission of the week to try and get ready for this hike. What was the color of the outfit? Cute one. Well, it was black. Most of my stuff is just black, but anyway. So I actually quite emphatically said how much I liked hiking.

Speaker 4: 55:46

So he was very excited that I liked hiking, because he liked hiking. So he was like, great, I have this really cool hike that we're going to do so. When he picked me up in the morning, I looked the part because I had the shoes, I had the Patagonia stuff, I was ready. And then he was like we're going to do this hike and it's a 21-kilometer loop and it's like all this elevation, we're going to do three peaks in the Dublin mountains. And like he might as well have been speaking Chinese, because I didn't know what that meant really. When he talked about elevation, I'm like, is that hard, Is that easy? I don't know, I don't know. So, anyway, we go on this hike and about 10 kilometers in I'm'm struggling, Like I am really struggling. And so he was looking at me and he did not look like he was struggling, he was fine. So this was obviously an easy hike for him, but it was a very tough hike for me. So he was like so how often do you hike? And I was like it's been a while, you know. Anyway, after a little bit I just broke. I was like I need to tell you I've never hiked. And he just he had a great time with it. He was like why didn't you say that, Like, this is a really tough one, or whatever. And we ended up cutting it short. So we cut it at like 12 and a half kilometers. We went back, we had dinner, we had drink. He was able to laugh about it. He didn't think I was a psychopath, don't know why.

Speaker 4: 57:14

But that day everything changed for me because I just got this feeling for, like, what it is like to hike and be outdoors. So after that I actually went on loads of hikes and I started initially with easier ones and then I got better and I started doing harder ones, multi-day ones, etc. So I just kind of slowly but surely got into it and then in 2021, the first year of the pandemic I lost my dad, and my dad was living in Sao Paulo in Brazil and it was the first year of the pandemic. There were no COVID tests. Nobody knew if you could fly through where you fly, because everybody has different rules and nobody knows how to tell you anything. So I actually missed my dad's funeral because it took me too long to be able to get home.

Speaker 4: 58:02

So I didn't get closure from my dad's death. It was like getting the worst phone call of my life to then getting to San Paulo and I have like ashes and it was just like I didn't have anything in the middle. So I did a lot of therapy and my therapist was like you need, you need to find some closure and it's not going to be the closure that other people have in the sense that is, um, you know the funeral and like getting dashed, kind of like seeing that you know somebody get buried, so I'm getting very morb, that you know somebody get buried, so I'm getting very morbid. But you know you're not going to get that level of closure. You're going to need to find your own way of finding closure. So I thought you know what is my way of finding closure?

Speaker 4: 58:43

And me and my dad always talked a lot about the sky, stars, and it was something I was really interested in as a child. So I said I think for me to find closure I need to be close to the stars and because I love hiking, I started looking into like a hike that I could do and it turned out that this hike that I did was the sunrise of the day of my 30th birthday and it was just. It felt like it was going to be like the perfect transition and it was. It was like one of the hardest things I've ever done.

Speaker 4: 59:19

It was tough, it was moochy day. The altitude gets to you. I did it at a time when it's kind of like rain season, so at the top of Kilimanjaro it just means blizzard. So you see photos of people and it's like the lovely photos at the top where it's all blue sky and it's amazing and it's the top of Africa. My photo is me on a blizzard and you can't see anything at all. But it was the hardest thing I've ever done, but it did. Actually, it felt like a transition moment for me where I was able to get some closure, and then this year I decided that I was gonna do something different.

Speaker 3: 59:58

I think I need the drum rolls for this, because I just wanted to say they just speak so much about you and what you do in life, like you don't just go for a hike, you just climb Kilimanjaro, because why wouldn't you? Because it's like just a second hike in a neighborhood, which is awesome. But now what you're doing this year. Oh, I forgot to tell you my little son, arian, who is six after you say he actually has a question for you, because for him that's like oh my god, do those people exist? So what are you doing this year?

Speaker 4: 1:00:34

You. You're making it sound too big, though I feel like I'm gonna let people that I'm gonna do Everest base camp. I'm not gonna get to the top of Everest, everyone I'm getting I'm doing base camp. Yeah, now I'm excited about that.

Speaker 4: 1:00:50

So HubSpot has this program called sabbatical program, where when you were there for five years, you get to take a month off on top of your holidays for that year. So I qualified for my sabbatical sometime last year and I've been thinking about what to do and I always thought that I was going to go to New Zealand. That was the plan. Like five years in HubSpot. Every like day one. I was like I'm going to go to New Zealand when I do five years in HubSpot. That is the plan. And then when the time came for me to decide what I wanted to do, then I was like do I want to go to New Zealand or do I want to go somewhere else? And I do want to go to New New Zealand at some point.

Speaker 4: 1:01:27

But that is a challenge that, since Kilimanjaro, I've been thinking a lot about, and it takes 21 days in total. So it's like it's a long, like it's not just a holiday that you can take. So I was like, okay, I have this full month off, it's a perfect time. I'm gonna go do it. And so April, you're gonna hear it on LinkedIn at some point when I make it. I'm going to be like I made it everyone, but I'm excited, it's going to be awesome. Well, 21 days Gosh.

Speaker 3: 1:02:02

No, that's amazing. I'm going to ask you something after you are back, because my little son is obsessed with Mount Everest, and can people fall down from it and all those things?

Speaker 4: 1:02:11

Yes, they can. He should watch Everest the movie, that is. I mean, it's probably not six-year-old suitable, but at some point he should watch Everest the movie.

Speaker 3: 1:02:22

You know what I'm gonna pretend and he will think of me as another hero, because I know a person who is gonna climb Mount.

Speaker 4: 1:02:28

Everest. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, that would be a a good. It will win you brownie points with with the sun. Um, it's funny. So you think I'm impressive. I'm not impressive. My. So my fiance's mom. I'm gonna brag about her now. Like the woman has done everything, so like there is I have, like I have somebody to meet. So she is. I find that that is the person I think who is very impressive in my life. You're marrying well. His mom is a big part of it.

Speaker 3: 1:03:16

Oh my gosh, that's awesome. And you did half marathon first time. Was it last year?

Speaker 4: 1:03:19

Yes, it was my first half marathon and, my god, I was broke. It's not even like that. Like you run properly, like you're a runner, you are a runner. I just did a few, a few. I just did a few.

Speaker 4: 1:03:36

Now you're being humble. You are the runner. I literally just stumbled Like it was the worst experience. I can hike for a long time, but my God, running for like that amount of time 18 kilometers, 10 kilometers I was feeling so good. I was like this is the best I'm enjoying myself. 15 kilometers I was like I'm just about done right now, like this is where the end. And then my AirPods battery ended at 18 kilometers and I had to raw dog three and a half kilometers.

Speaker 3: 1:04:07

That was awful awful On my last one, I think, around 18th kilometer it was a little elevation and I just started I mean, my spotty valise just goes on, but in that moment there was Girl on Fire song and, oh my gosh, I was able to do it. But half marathons, I think, are easy because you can run so slow you can do it, and so slow that you you're barely feeling that you're running, but you just keep on going. I got a spot on London Marathon.

Speaker 4: 1:04:38

That's the experience.

Speaker 3: 1:04:41

Thank you, I never thought I would get that spot and now I actually have to do it and I'm terrified. I feel like, will my heart actually? Will something happen? Because it's like four hours or more of running, which I've never did in my life. But now, when you say you're going to Mount Everest, I guess I can survive this one.

Speaker 4: 1:04:57

Oh no, I feel like a marathon is just like in another level, because it's like the mental fortitude you need for it, I just think is incredible. But I mean to kind of tie all of this adventure into business. What you just did right when you sign up for something and you're like now I've signed up for this thing, I'm going to have to do it I actually think that's a great motivator and I've leveraged that in my life in different points where it's just like I'm going to tell everybody I'm launching a podcast and now don't, I'm gonna be too embarrassed so.

Speaker 4: 1:05:31

I'm gonna do it.

Speaker 3: 1:05:33

So that's, you know that's a hack, but it's amazing. That is the first step, very often, of starting to do something, because now you have accountability and you need to show up for people. Thanks for letting us know you're going to Mount Everest now. Everybody know you can't escape it now. Okay, ladies, would you like to ask questions now? I have a whole list of questions that some of you already submitted throughout the registration. Shall I start with some of them? No, I don't need to start with some of them, because we have a question already, which is great. I'm Ali. I'm an Enterprise CSM at Multiverse.

Speaker 7: 1:06:07

It is not a successful question, though. I just wanted to know whether your fiancé is the guy from the date.

Speaker 4: 1:06:16

No, no, no, that was like many, many, many moons ago. No, eventually lying didn't work out for me.

Speaker 5: 1:06:27

You mentioned before that you envision in future that the subscription is going to die or change. Value is going to be the most important. Are you saying that the sales is going to have less importance and CS will finally have the importance that they have? They literally needed and required or not, um, I don't.

Speaker 4: 1:06:53

I think sales will always be important, but I think, um, for anybody that thinks cs is a nice to have, because maybe they have a very uh, you know strong position in the market, or maybe they're, like, the only in their category, or because it's very hard to change platforms, you know people that have that safety, that retention is going to stay strong because of that foothold.

Speaker 4: 1:07:18

I think that's going to change, which means that I think customer success will raise in importance even more. Like my opinion is already extremely important, of course, but I think it's going to become very evident because without it, I think what's going to happen is usage is going to become the currency right? You, you pay for what you use and if there is no usage, there is no revenue. So you might sign a contract with a customer that has a, let's say, almost more like a projection of how you're actually going to spend with our business and a commitment for the long term and our commitment to you and SLAs, etc. But actually realizing the value of that contract will probably be much more tied to the usage of the platform, the value they get. I've seen some interesting pricing models that are tied to value, which I think for most companies, they'd be too scared to do that today, right yeah. So I think customer success is gonna become even more important and essential.

Speaker 6: 1:08:23

When the two of you were talking, there was something that really intrigued me that you said. You said something about that. When you're writing in your newsletter, your vision like this is how things should be, but then sometimes you're not actually doing it in your own team and I was really curious about that. And are there things in particular that well, it wouldn't be a match and so I don't do it? Or is it something like how am I going to work on that? You have some things in mind that you would want to start to do once you start to realize through these other extracurricular things you're doing like, oh, this is something it's going to take time and transformation but I want to do.

Speaker 6: 1:09:06

Or maybe just like, yeah, that's not going to happen.

Speaker 4: 1:09:11

No, no, no. I think I try to anchor anything I say with reality. I think one of the things that I get complemented for my content is that it's practical and realistic, and I want to keep it that way. So whenever I'm talking about things that we're not doing internally yet, there's either a reason why we're not doing it. For example, we went through an incredible journey of a year to get our entire data architecture in the right place to be able to measure some of the things that are more important to our customers. Our operations team is amazing. They did all that work. This was not my work, it was their work, but without that work, we wouldn't be able to be in a position to talk about value instead of usage or features to the customer, because we didn't have the data. So some things are more like they take time to set up, because that's not how you build your business.

Speaker 4: 1:10:14

To this point, if I'm saying something in the newsletter, on LinkedIn, etc. It's usually because I have conviction that that is the right thing to do means that in many cases, I've been talking about that very thing for quite some time in HubSpot or in more private forums like gathering information, learning. So by the time I'm putting it out there to people. It's usually well thought through, it's not perfect, it's never gonna be perfect, but it's well thought through.

Speaker 4: 1:10:48

And I think that the place where sometimes the I think reality doesn't match what's on the page, on the newsletter, it's usually because there is a very real technological gap or process gap or a cross-functional alliance issue.

Speaker 4: 1:11:11

You know like there's always a reason there for not existing in the real world and my teams, etc. But one of the interesting things that I found through writing and through actually gaining a following people that engage with the content, is that sometimes I might say something for a long time internally in the business, I might have many meetings about this thing and try to get people on board etc. And it doesn't move forward because of all those challenges etc. But then I'm writing it publicly and that is getting traction etc. And then suddenly you get somebody that's like oh my, my god, I saw your post and that's so interesting. And then you get an internal ally to move that forward. So that has been very valuable as well not that I'm doing it purposefully for that, but it has happened. So yeah, I think that the gap exists in my business and many businesses, but it's usually a that. It's a reasonable one.

Speaker 3: 1:12:12

I really like your perspective on like that's my conviction. I remember how many opportunities I have missed and I haven't written about something that I really felt strongly about thinking, oh, but we are not there yet. So will I be sounding like a hypocrite to my company because I'm projecting something that we are not doing? But thanks for the reminder because we can have conviction that doesn't matter. All of that has to happen.

Speaker 7: 1:12:37

I'm glad you mentioned the word both bold for 2025, and when I think about your posts, some of them are very bold, so, and many of the ones I with, I'm sick and tired of. My question to you is did you ever get in trouble for posting something on LinkedIn and, if so, how did you deal with it?

Speaker 4: 1:12:59

I don't want to get in more trouble by answering this question. Yes is the answer. It's what I said about. I'm always open to constructive feedback and for somebody to challenge my idea. I genuinely have said things in posts that somebody then said to me like I don't think that's reality because of X, y and Z and this is why this can't happen, or this is why this hasn't happened, and I've had many very, very constructive conversations with people.

Speaker 4: 1:13:33

I think when I started writing about customer success, one of the things that I kind of anchored on was this idea like customer success is the most important thing in the business.

Speaker 4: 1:13:44

It's like customer success is the heart, is everything, and the more I've grown in my career career, the more business acumen I've got, etc.

Speaker 4: 1:13:54

The better I understand that. This is that there's so many circumstances that makes department more important than other at different times, like if you're early stage startup, the customer success is not a thing because customer success for you is I need to find market fit with my product and I need fast feedback from customers through the sales process, sales and marketing, like to validate our positioning, etc. Yes, when you start getting customers, you're listening to your customers, but it's likely like somebody that's like a jack-of-all-trades in CS etc. Et cetera. So I've started to mature my ideas and understand more about the world and I try to stay open to that and invite discussion. So if somebody said, even on my comments, if you go in, I now have followers enough that I have haters that comment on my posts, I take that as a compliment. They come into every single one of my posts and they come in to disagree and not, you know, don't like what you said, et cetera, but they come into every single post. So I'm like just unfollow man.

Speaker 4: 1:15:10

Like, if you don't like anything I say just don't follow, but anyway. But even on the comments, I try to engage in conversation with people that have descending opinions and challenge my vision, because I do want people to do that. I don't want to ever feel like, oh, I'm above being wrong. I've been wrong so many times, I've said some crazy stuff, so I've been wrong a lot and I will be wrong in the future. So I want people to say it to me. But yeah, it doesn't come without getting in trouble sometimes.

Speaker 7: 1:15:46

Hi there, I really enjoyed the talk so far. My name's Izzy Bishop. I work as the head of brand at Weiser Elite, but also founder of a customer success community called Retention Seekers, and you mentioned one of your metrics of success was God.

Speaker 7: 1:16:00

I'm not sure how to write it down gross retention, thank you. So I bet customer advocacy plays a huge part in that, and this is a topic that's spoken about quite a lot in our community, and I'd love to hear from you what are some really effective ways that you encourage customer advocacy at HubSpot.

Speaker 4: 1:16:17

Yeah, so the segment I work in right now is what we call our strategic accounts. So they're our largest, biggest, fanciest brands, busiest brands, so it matters that we have them in our portfolio. Sometimes they're like the logos that are on our website and you know so it's very important, important customers. So we do look again, hubspot's a massive company, so we have people whose entire jobs is to write case studies, engage with customers to get them into our events and you know all that kind of good stuff. But for us as a customer success team, what we're always trying to find is we're trying to find opportunities to highlight what great looks like. So if we have somebody that is crushing it, they're doing a great job. We want to put them in our event. We want to put them in front of other customers. So if we have a small, intimate event like this, which we host, sometimes we want them to sit in the seat and tell their stories, like we try to highlight them as much as possible.

Speaker 4: 1:17:25

We have an entire engagement strategy for executives, so not the people that necessarily do the work, but the people who make the strategic decisions in the business that are signing the check. So we want their advocacy as well. So it's like a massive teamwork effort in HubSpot to make that happen. I think our marketing team plays a huge part in it. The CSM kind of have the eagle eye to find an opportunity. We have an official program where we put customers where we want to have a more structured approach to marketing together, et cetera in there. So that's kind of a little bit.

Speaker 4: 1:18:05

There's no like metric for advocacy in HubSpot. Yeah, as far as I know, we're a big company so sometimes you know you have somebody that's like no, I do. Actually I have measured it out. Not that I know of, it's definitely not one of the things that will be on my radar. But one of the things that I talked about is like, why measure net promoter score instead of actually measuring the people who actually referred you to? People Like you should be able to have that data right. It's like not just, I intend to do this one day if I can. It's like no, I've done it. What's the percentage of our customers that actually brought in other businesses, or the people who left companies and then bought HubSpot in the new company that they're in? So I think there are much more interesting ways of measuring it, but I'm not doing it today in my teams? Not yet, but hopefully I'm.

Speaker 7: 1:19:00

Claire I write the newsletter, the Onboarding Lab and I focus on customer onboarding. I have a regular debate with people about where onboarding should sit, and I wondered what your opinion was. Should it be a dedicated customer onboarding team that runs the program, or should it be a CSN Also similar.

Speaker 4: 1:19:27

Gosh, it depends is the answer. I know it's like the compact answer, but it really does depend. Because if you think about if your product is very complex and it requires a lot of technical expertise in order to deploy it properly, if it's a longer project, because it's gonna connect to legacy systems and this, and then I think the expertise of a CSM and an onboarding specialist are completely different. So I would say like absolutely those should be different teams and, if not, like a different organization, a partner who's specialized in just that thing. You know, if you're a sas company, you're in the business of sas, you're not in the business of consulting. So I'm a huge advocate of partners in that process. They have industry knowledge that you know it can be very, very valuable, um. But then in other cases your product is simple and easy and it's like you turn on and it's showtime and there's no real deployment, and then the onboarding might just be like a few setup tasks and that could be very lightweight. So that could be just one person. So I think it really does depend on on what you have in front of you and the challenge. I always try to say to people don't just do it because everybody else did it this way. It's not because every company that you watch is like they have a jack of all trades CSM, and then they have an onboarding specialist and a CSM, and then they have an onboarding specialist, a solution architect and a CSM. It doesn't mean that you have to do all those things too. So be focused on what the problem is, be focused on what the customer needs, and I feel like the organization structure kind of reveals itself to you, because you're solving for the customer, not for the team.

Speaker 4: 1:21:28

But then the other thing, I think, which is one of my recent topics that I've been thinking a lot about and in HubSpot, our new senior VP of customer success is really, really passionate about, is this fact that onboarding isn't a one-and-done thing. Yes, you have an initial deployment of your platform or your product, but you're deploying new features all the time. You're launching, you're releasing, customers are evolving, their use cases are getting bigger and better, et cetera. So you're kind of like ever boarding the customer. So it's like what is your strategy to help your customers continue to unlock value?

Speaker 4: 1:22:10

Because there is this really interesting report that I saw from Gartner which really opened my eyes to this problem was the fact that SaaS companies are deploying more and more product and customers are still using the same tools that they use. Therefore, the percentage of product utilization is going down and down and down, but at the same time, pricing is going up and up and up because we're deploying all these features and we're adding more value to the product and customers can do much more and is more powerful, and you have all these reasons to put the price up. But now that you're charging more for the same thing that the customer used to do, because they're not adopting all these new fancy things that you put out in the world, so the math doesn't math anymore for the customer, because the value equation starts to shift. So how do you get the customer in this journey where you're not just one and done onboarding but you? You finish that initial use case and then you have a plan for what's the next use case and the next thing, and the next thing, so that you can continue to drive the value of your product.

Speaker 4: 1:23:19

So I think that the presence of the onboarding team like for people that have a onboarding team, a traditional, you know, in three months of onboarding, like if for folks that are still working like that. I think one thing to think about is you know what? Where else in the customer lifecycle can that skill of onboarding customers be useful and add value to the customer? So this is a really roundabout way of not actually truly answering your question and just spilling out what I'm thinking about onboarding, but I think it truly depends the secret about leadership.

Speaker 2: 1:23:59

We spoke a little bit about your career growth, your career journey at hubspot specifically. I'm curious what your transition was like, or what your observations, growth opportunities etc. Was like shifting from being a manager to managing managers. I feel like this is a topic that's not covered as much. I didn't introduce myself, by the way. I am a manager of CSMs and RMs at user testing for EMEA and. Apac, so I've personally managed capacities, multiple capacities, but not managers, and I've always been curious to get your take on this question.

Speaker 4: 1:24:32

Yeah, you know what? I think managing managers was a harder transition for me personally than it was to go from being an individual contributor to managing a team. And the reason is, with managers, you want to empower them as much as you can to lead their own teams, make their own decisions, and sometimes you're going to disagree with the path that they're taking, but you have to let them go down the path and learn their own lessons. So I found that when I started managing managers, I had an approach that it was kind of like this is what worked for me as being a manager. So, you know, I want my, and I did a really good job at like hitting our numbers and getting our KPIs, and so I'm like I nailed this job, I know how to do it. So now my job is to teach this person how to do this job too, when the reality is that I think there are many flavors of management and doing it my way it's not gonna work for everybody. So I had to really switch. Like, of course, I was like coaching individual contributors to find their own answers and stuff, but I think with an individual contributor, sometimes it's like the answers are more clear and less ambiguous. Therefore, like there is, there is a path to getting them to realize how to do something in a way that you feel comfortable, that that's the right path. And with a manager, sometimes you're like I really wouldn't do that that way, but I suppose if you want to give it a go, like you know, I had people launching competitions that I was like I read I don't know if that's the right way of motivating people. I don't think if I don't know if this is going to work, and then they do it and it's amazing and I'm like, oh okay, like that, that that's something, that that's something that they've done, that will be very different than what I did. So, yeah, I think, with managers, I think it's much more kind of getting them to find their own ways and solutions and giving them confidence, especially if they're a new manager. You know, making decisions isn't easy, so it's giving them the confidence that they, you know that they can make decisions and make, you know, good decisions, and teaching them more frameworks on how to think and how to think about the business, versus like saying to them this is the right way or the wrong way or whatever. So, yeah, I found the transition slightly harder.

Speaker 4: 1:27:13

The other thing I think with managers is the career pathing for a manager Like you can like from an individual contributor perspective, if you know that you want to be a leader like it feels very the path feels very known to become a manager. But as you grow in the organization, first of all there's way less opportunities. Right, it's like it's a pyramid, so it's like it narrows and narrows, but also like a lot of the career paths will be lateral paths. So, for example, if somebody said to me, like you know, I'm really interested in product marketing, I know nothing about product like well, how do I help this person get you know, get there and develop the skills that they need and give them the feedback that's gonna help them. Like it's a very it's a very hard thing to do. So I found I found it a little bit more tricky, if I'm being honest. But now that I've been doing it for quite some time, I really enjoy it because I feel like with a manager, I can be way more blunt and honest about things, that there's less softening around some of the messages you can. Just I feel like I can be much more honest with the manager because they have the business acumen to understand what I'm talking about and to make peace with things.

Speaker 4: 1:28:44

I think one of the things that I really disagree and commit to something managers do a lot. You know the business makes a decision. You're kind of asking yourself why? Why are we making this decision? You kind of understand the bigger picture but your team is now in a bad position because the decision is affecting you negatively. A manager has to show up in front of their team having bought into that, because now they need their team to buy into it. So this, like very quickly getting, very quickly getting over your feelings, is something managers have to do a lot, and I'm sure that you understand that. So again, like helping people find that place where they can very quickly navigate the change curve, etc. I think that I found that hard, I really did helping people find that place where they can very quickly navigate the change curve, et cetera. I think that I found that hard, I really did. So I've gotten better, but that was tough for me.

Speaker 3: 1:29:41

Thank you for the questions. I thought that I was reading the room because from the back I saw some stretching some bags. I know we've been sitting for quite some time. Thank you very much for joining us tonight. Just few information. I would love for you to carry on the conversation. We will still have some time here after we can wrap it up. Also, as all of you registered through Luma, now, the guest list is made visible, so now you should be able to see each other's names and now you will be able to connect even better after this meeting. Also, I believe that at 10 o'clock in the evening you're going to receive an email from me asking for a review. Please do me a favor and just be honest, because that will help us arrange more of those events and many more other types of events.

Speaker 3: 1:30:38

But this was the first one of this kind and I kind of liked it. Did I pick it up? Did you write that you loved it too? Yeah, I think we can definitely do more of those. Please make sure that you have your goodie bag. If you still haven't taken yours, there are a few somewhere around. Also, if you're interested more about Women in Customer Success programs, from mentorship through different courses and masterclasses. It is all in your postcard. Feel free to contact me at any time. Yeah, as we wrap up, I know this is not my place, but I think that we are fine to move the chairs a little bit there if you want a little bit more space to mingle here, if it was a bit narrow, while you're still having your drinks and food. I hope that's okay. And now I just want to say Daphne, thank you so much for coming. Can we have a big applause?

Speaker 4: 1:31:41

DAPHNE KELLEY SCHMIDT You've done an awesome job. I need to say this Putting together an event in person is not a mean feat. To get all of these women here today to get an office and a sponsor to organize Goodie Bags. It's a lot of work and thank you so much for what you do for the community. It's seen, it's heard, it's felt. We're better because of you. I'm entertained, thank you.