Hi, I'm Tim

Many people don't believe they can actually achieve it, so they don't start. It's not the lack of knowledge or opportunity that prevents anyone from achieving their goals, it's mostly self-delusion.

There is self-delusion in the actual work they are willing to put in.

But there is also self-delusion in what they can actually achieve. This is interesting because everything has already been done before. Whether that's starting a business, or writing a novel, or being on broadway, one thing is for certain -- someone had done it. If they can do it, why can't you do it? 

So a key to this is having the vision to know what you want then seeking out the people who've already done it. Learn from them, copy them, steal from them, reach out to them.

The playbook is already there. You just need to follow it.

This morning I tweeted a list of accounts I've been following for some time. These accounts are focused on finance, investing, and personal growth. It got tons of engagement. It was the best performing tweet of mine by far. Two thing stuck out to me.

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First, people just want to connect with like-minded people. Just tweeting your appreciation for others who are discussing similar topics is enough for others to engage. People want to work with people they like. They also want to share in common goals. Let this be a lesson to anyone just getting started. Even if you have little to offer, and no experience to speak of, just showing up and participating and listening is enough.

Secondly, these folks create everyday. They ship their content everyday. They have large followers and are on top of their niches. This is the biggest takeaway for me. It's not that they always produce incredible content. No, the content they produce everyday isn't always the best. But they produce tons of content. They show up everyday and they figure out away to get results.

Success is a numbers games. It's simple. It is showing up, never giving up, not listening to others and shipping your art. If you haven't started yet, then your problem isn't your great idea, or your execution, it's your "at bats". You just haven't swung enough times. Instead, focus on shipping daily.

Earlier I spoke about the power of online courses. This is a prime example of that.

Here are free videos from David Perrell on building audiences with Anthony Pompliano, building a twitter following, and how he uses twitter. This is extremely valuable information that is available for free! This is available to anyone who is ambitious enough to study it and apply it.

Below I'll summarize the major takeaways.

Persistence

The most consistent message throughout all of these is the important of posting often. It's vital to consistently post content on Twitter. Pomp originally posted 10 times per day, for 3 years. David posts 5 times. On twitter, the volume of data is what gives you an edge over other accounts.

Niche

‍Find what you will post about and don't post about anything else. This is the hardest part. What will your niche of niches be that makes you unique and allows you to stand out? Your goal is to understand what this is and never post about anything else. Only as you increase your followers and engagement can you slowly start to widen your topics.

This is hard stuff

The first lesson from Pomp is to "don't even try". Because growing a twitter audience or an audience on any platform is a grind. It's really difficult stuff. It requires a ton of hard work and persistence. It won't happen tomorrow. It's vital to understand why you want to grow your audience and twitter following, otherwise you won't make it.

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Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday.

It’s worth the family debates. It’s worth the traveling and putting up with your in-laws, your drunk uncle, and god forbid the noise of Detroit Lions somewhere in the background.

Unlike other days it has avoided the consumerist trap. It’s not too patriotic or kitschy. Nor does it drag on — it is a single day, a nice day-off on Friday, and then you’re back.

It’s red wine and stuffing and game meat and family. It’s simple. It’s also the first step into the holiday season, like a Thursday before a great weekend, you just need to wrap things up Friday. The worst part of Thanksgiving is likely self-induced: you ate too much, drank too much the night before, or picked the fight with that drunk Uncle.

I am thankful to have a family I can enjoy this day with. Many others do not have that family. And for them this day is painful - a reminder of what is lost or never was. I am thankful despite how hard family can be. Families are challenging, strange, and often just disappointing. Family can challenge your faith in family and make you wonder what all the effort is for. But it is worth the trouble.

How valuable a day that requests you pause and reflect on what you have versus the alternative - scrambling for that which you don't. No gifts, no cards, no rituals, just sitting and eating.

In my twenties I enjoyed reading self-help and motivational books. The greatest of these authors and speakers are well know, such as Zig Ziglar, Jim Rohn, and even Gary Vaynerchuck.

My all-time favorite is Jim Rohn. This video was a huge inspiration to me. It is four hours of knowledge and wisdom and not to mention a masterclass in public speaking. It set me on a path of developing my own philosophy.and while I fail to always embody it, the kernel is there. I revisit my notes and rewatch every so often.

It feels good to get a fresh dose and revisiting this old content. But today I receive little value from self-help and motivational content.  Maybe someday that will change. Today the content is repetitive and the messages along the lines of ‘being successful’ provides less value because it’s all internalized.

Literature and Biographies

As you read more you upgrade your reading. You move onto more difficult reading that requires deeper thinking and reflection. This is what separates the great books from the bad books. Today, I receive much more value from literature. The great stories in history nudge open the door to deeper truths and meaning that simple directives cannot.

Reading the Moviegoer, for example, a book whose character is on a quest for finding meaning in life, is more powerful and impactful than a book simply telling me how to find meaning. I experience the nothingness, emptiness, and self-delusion that Binx feel. I heed its lessons and come way  changed.

Another great genre is biographies. I’ve written about this before, but they are vastly underrated for their teaching of history. You cannot tell the story of FDR or Lincoln without also setting the context of the Civil War or WW2. And better yet, they are superior in providing lessons on life through the mistakes and triumphs of their subjects.

If you let customer success function towards risk — to fight fires, to placate risky customers, to triage support issues, sales support — it will become that.  Even if you don’t believe it, that will become your role. I've made this mistake before and I'm tired of that approach. I choose a different path.

"Growth" teams get the attention and are sexy while "customer success" can feel like back office operations or an extension of support. Yet customer success is the biggest growth lever companies have. I think it's because the error teams make in their mindset, whether they know it or not.

What’s more fun is focus on growth — focus on the wins, the client stories, and transformations your customers receive — that is when you change the view of your importance as a function. When you view it as an engine for growth and a chance to not only keep your customers, but sell into that customer base and grow it, does it really begin to be fun.

But many customer success leaders still struggle to get a seat at the leadership table. It’s surprising since renewal dollars after a few years of solid growth easily eclipse new sales.

So it’s time to change your mindset….

Focus on your best customers. Focus on what makes your top customers your most loyal, top performing, enthusiastic story generators for your company. Interview them, learn from them, write stories about them and share those with your average and low performing customers. Rather than placate your most challenging customers, or bad fit customers, or frankly most challenging customers, inspire them instead. Point the way and lead as a functional group.

It’s much more fun this way.

When you do this right, the next time you are on that call you’ll chat about your customer’s business, what they’re focused on, their problems and goals, and generate ideas. You won’t be discussing the missing feature or how that X, Y, or Z features work.

Motivate your customers to become the best version of themselves and they’ll be motivated to learn your product, do without features they don’t need, and put in the effort.

If you work in customer success you have heard of health scores. Customer health scores provide a standard scoring system by which you measure the performance of your customers. These scores help drive measurable outcomes with customers, help inform KPIs of your success org, and help your CSDs be more effective and efficient. Without these your client success organization is flying blind.

As I mentioned before, it is a long road in requesting, receiving, and organizing the customer data your teams needs to implement scoring and proactive triggers. Over the last year, we laid the groundwork with our leadership team to prioritize the integration of product data to form a cohesive view of the customer.

How did we know what data we needed?

Start with what you know

Your teams already know what make customers successful. Start there. Your client success teams are already likely using benchmarks and KPIs to measure effectiveness with customers. Below are a few steps you can take to help gather this information.

• Ask your CSMs - Ask them what they use with their customers. What would they use to score customers? Ask them for a few examples of top and bottom performing customers
• Ask your customers - Reach out and ask customers how they measure their performance. Do they have KPIs they report to their leadership? Are there metrics you're not considering? It's okay to show customers your scores, these don't need to be secret.
• Customer Data - Do you have data already on customers? Start documenting the sources. If you can, quickly summarize the major data points.

At Bazaarvoice, we already had a framework for communicating customer performance in business reviews. It was only a matter of validating these and requesting the same data from product.

For example, Bazaarvoice customers collect user-generated content to share across their retail partners. We know that volume, coverage, rating, and rejection rate were the KPIs that would make up the scorecard measure.

Building an MVP

Now that we had a general idea of our health scores, it was time to build an MVP. Starting manually in spreadsheets is recommended. This is harder up front but allows you to validate your health scores against actual client data before configuring anything. Here's what we did: 

• Ambassadors - We created a team of CSM ambassadors. These CSMs chose 5 customers each. They met with us bi-weekly to validate our scoring algorithm against their actual customers.
• Score Table - List out all the health scores, weights, and definitions in one sheet.
• Customer List - Apply these scores using health score definitions and weights in first sheet. Then actually score these customers using the framework.
• Calculations - Use functions to build the scores. It takes manual work up front, but then it becomes very easy to tweak weights and calculations to assess how scores should be calculated

Iterate

We went through several cycles of updating score formulas, assessing with ambassadors, receiving feedback, and making changes. Then we decided to end the MVP phase once changes were becoming less frequent and any major objections or concerns were address.

A key here is to not wait for consensus. This may kill your project. Receive feedback from your ambassador team, work towards your goal of maximum clarity and validity, but don't let perfection and group consensus thwart your progress. The goal of the ambassador group is not approval, it is feedback.

‍Build

Once you have your working health scores the build portion is easy. You simply ensure the data is flowing where it needs to be and configure the scores based on your model. The only gotchas here worth mentioning are: 

• Data - Is the data in the correct format that you expected?
• Changes - If you have existing health scores, be sure to communicate changes across your organization. Get with leadership to discuss this communication
• Iteration - I recommend launching and making quick iterations upon this first version. But limit major changes (adding, removing scores) to longer-term 'sprints'. But if your calculations just need adjusted, make them quickly.
• Document - You will inevitably receive questions from the field. Be ready with documentation or training on how scores work and are calculated

There you have it. A short guide on creating and launching a health score MVP in your client success org.