There’s a certain type of manager you meet early in your career who teaches you something important, not through their brilliance, but through their absence of it. In my first SaaS role, over five and a half years, I cycled through a handful of managers. All different. All memorable for different reasons. But one sticks out because she was genuinely lovely, warm, positive, thoughtful, the kind of leader who asked how your weekend was and actually cared about the answer. She w

Lately, I’ve been thinking about timing, not the “trust the universe” kind, but the real-world timing inside startups and scaleups that determines whether you move forward or stall out. After 13 years in SaaS, I’ve seen a consistent pattern: Companies rarely suffer because they make the wrong move. They suffer because they make the right move far too late. You see this everywhere: Waiting to hire Waiting to fire Waiting to buy the technology Waiting to invest in onboarding, e

When I first started in SaaS, Sales Kickoff (SKO) was this mysterious, high-energy event I wasn’t invited to. It was the Super Bowl of Sales, strategy, targets, enablement, and a whole lot of celebration. At my first company (where I spent nearly six years), SKO was exclusively for Sales. No Customer Success, no Services, no Support. Just the folks with quotas and commissions. So imagine my shock when, at my next company, I learned Customer Success was included. I thought, “W

I perform my best when I have a clear goal and a plan. I’m an executor. A rule follower. A do-the-work-and-get-it-done kind of person. When I was in college, I chased A’s. I remember graduating with a 3.98 GPA because of one single A- in a journalism class, and I was furious. I missed my goal. Still Summa Cum Laude, still an incredible GPA, but in my head… not the goal. During my senior year, I landed my first job before graduation. My professors told me that if I completed a

Some of you may not know this, but my daughter Adriana is actually my stepdaughter. When Anthony and I got together, she was just three years old. She only knows life with me and Anthony… and then with her mother. In our house, we’ve never used the word step. She is my daughter, and I am a mother. Period. But in the beginning, it was hard. Really hard. I was trying to find my place, what was appropriate, what wasn’t, how to show up as a parent without overstepping. I wanted t

Early in my career, I didn’t know the differences between large corporate companies, small independent companies, and startups. My priority after college was simple: get a job. Ideally something that matched my major (or at least sounded like it did). Check. After a few years working for a large publishing company, I decided to take a chance and join a small marketing agency, private and profitable. Then, I moved to a large public company. Then back to publishing. Then back t

We can all agree that people matter. In fact, it’s the people who make or break the success of any partnership. So imagine walking into a high-stakes customer relationship… and realizing you don’t actually know who’s who in the zoo. That was me. My very first conversation as VP of CS with one of our largest, most strategic customers. I hop on a call with our main point of contact, a “Director.” Naturally, I assume that means middle management. Important, yes. But not the exec

In 2009, I was a mid-20-something marketer just trying to figure it all out. I was using a software platform that helped manage my...

When I started in Customer Success, we were trained to say things like: “I’m your trusted advisor.” “I’ll be your main point of contact.”...

I didn’t grow up in a white-collar home. My parents owned and worked in a delicatessen for over 45 years. Together, they ran that...

We often blur the lines between leadership and mentorship, but here’s the truth: just because you are someone’s leader does not mean you...

We spend so much time talking about customer journeys, business outcomes, and retention strategies but what about our own team’s...

Customer Success has always been about helping customers realize value: understand the use cases, configure the solution, drive adoption,...

One of the biggest challenges we faced with our customer base was this: on the surface, things looked fine. Customers had configurations...

I remember my first CSM role when the business really started to scale. Suddenly, “risk” became the centerpiece of every conversation. At...

For as long as I can remember, I’ve been ambitious. Every job I’ve ever had came with a built-in, personal side project: designing the...

In Customer Success, we spend a lot of time talking about value realization. But over the years, I’ve come to realize something just as...

Let’s get one thing straight: Renewals don’t just happen.   They’re not a due date. Not a Salesforce stage. Not a task on your CSM’s...

When I started my first role in Customer Success, I thought I had it all figured out. I had been a power user of the product.I knew the...

There was a time in my career when I believed that “wow” moments came from building everything from scratch. Every onboarding flow. Every...