The 3 Things That Keep Customers From Churning — Jayden Warnick

If you have imposter syndrome, stop acting like an imposter. It literally was a mental game for me. As soon as I told myself, "Oh, I've been given permission to act this way," so now I give myself permission, and I now show up, and I can speak in rooms without being nervous, and I can talk about what I've done.

My guest today, Jayden Warnick, spent seven years at MX, a company that helps banks and credit unions turn their customers' financial data into growth. And she's essentially grown up there.

Started near the bottom of the corporate ladder, as she admits, but she consistently beat quota and ended up running some of the largest accounts and pulling together product, engineering, and marketing to get things done.

Essentially living the role of a leader before she had the title or the name for it. Well, eight months ago, she got the title, and she got the name for it. She's now the director of customer success.

So she's in the middle of what I think is probably the hardest shift in corporate life that there is, going from the person who's great at doing the thing to the person that makes everyone else great at doing the thing.

So in today's conversation, we get into what I would call trust as a system. We're going to talk about the three things that Jayden looks at when she's keeping accounts alive. And one of my favorite topics we dive into is how she's using AI to buy back time for the most human parts of the job.

But as we kind of weave and turn throughout all of today's conversation, Jayden shared something that still just kind of resonates with me. I think you're going to love it when you hear it.

She says that scaling trust with your customers actually has to start somewhere else other than the product or the company name or the brand or the title. It starts with trusting yourself first.

I cannot wait for you to hear this part of the conversation. It's going to be fantastic. Let's get into it. Jayden, welcome to the show. It's so great to have you. Yeah, happy to be here. Thank you for having me.

We got to meet, as one does off of LinkedIn DMs and conversations, and- Mm-hmm ... this year has been a pretty big year for you in a lot of different ways. But one of the things that struck me most is you are in the thick of the journey of transitioning into really CS leadership. You're now the- Yeah ... director of customer success at MX, and I was just struck by that, and also just what you're doing, what your company, your organization, and team's doing. And I was hoping today maybe, one, you could share a little bit about your journey, and then we'll dive into maybe some of the lessons learned, things that you're seeing in real-time as you- Yeah ... really grow into your own as director of CS here at MX.

Yeah. Great. Yeah, happy to introduce myself. So my name's Jayden Warnick, and I am a mom of three. I am the leader of a customer success team at MX, and I'm also a little bit of an entrepreneur in my personal life as well.

So I spent a lot of time in customer success the last seven years at MX, and only the last eight months I became a leader over the team that I was on originally. And so the evolution of my work and my career, I feel like I started really young in my career, and I kind of grew up in my career at MX, which gave me the benefit of molding my skills and success that tailored really well to MX as a company. And our mission and our values and everything kind of drove my key learnings and grew me into a leader.

So it's been a great journey, and I've loved every day of it so far. That's wonderful. And you are very modest. I think as you- Yeah ... as I was getting to know you and did a little bit of research for our first conversations weeks ago, I was thinking about it, and you had some really interesting stats.

I will probably butcher them, but it was like consistently exceeded annual quota over 100%. Mm-hmm. You had a multimillion-dollar line of business and pipeline that you were managing as a client executive or an account executive.

Mm-hmm. You were already putting together cross-functional teams and working with the product team and engineering and marketing there at the company. It felt like you were already maybe living the role long before you were promoted into it.

Yeah. So it's funny that you bring that up because I've been at MX for so long, and I started at one of our lowest levels. I had never been bored. I'd always gotten a new client, a new challenge that pushed me and continued to help me grow.

But towards this last year, I started to feel kind of bored. I was managing one of our largest books of business. I had several of our largest accounts that I was managing, and although there were some challenges that I was still learning through, it seemed to feel like same challenges, different day, to where I needed to do things that continued to push me and help me feel like I was thriving at work and adding value to the company.

And so I started just taking on projects where I'd see gaps and working to try and better myself, better my team, and make MX a better experience for our customers as well. And during my interview for this leadership role, I was meeting with our chief customer officer at MX, and something that he said really resonated with me was leadership roles don't...

You can't act in your day-to-day and then apply for a leadership role and expect to get it. He said leadership roles kind of come to you when you're the first person in their mind when a leadership role opens up because of the way that you've acted and behaved.

Mm-hmm. And something you and I talked about a little bit was manifestation and how it ties into that. And something that I love about manifestation is that version of you already exists in some capacity, and you have to just align your mind and your behaviors to that version of yourself. So if you want to become a manager. Or what is the version of you that is already a manager doing today?

Mm-hmm. And align your actions to that, and then it just aligns you to your purpose at the end of that. And it's something that I've lived by in various ways. But once he had said that to me in my interview, it kind of clicked that it's not only in your personal life, it's in your professional life.

And that was a big reason I would say why I got the leadership role is because I was acting as if I already had it without being asked and without getting paid to do so. So many unlocks there. We may need to just start a separate show, Jayden, you and I, all around- Yes ... all around this.

Identity is, I think, is a big thing right now, and it's interesting in the world that we both live in, enterprise technology, AI- Mm-hmm ... all the stuff that all of our teams are faced with right now.

Mm-hmm. Thinking about the role and the value and the uniqueness that a human brings now. You're kind of alluding to your identity story. I was operating as though I was that already because there's a version of me that was.

I think about that and as technology outproduces us, if our identities- Mm-hmm ... are wrapped up in production, then what's left? And it seems like you bring these intangibles or maybe these human qua-- just truly a humanness to the position where the things that make you most human are the things that shine, and that's the thing that you're able to transfer to the team, perhaps.

Maybe there's something there. I don't know. Maybe we should do a deep dive on- ... on that at some point. So let's dive in on that particular piece, too, because- Yeah ... you're right. Of all of the functions within the organization, everyone's combating a bit of transformation right now. Entire teams are saying, "We have to justify headcount in ways that we hadn't had to justify before."

Mm-hmm. We're being asked to do more with less, like we always have been, but now we really are. Yeah. But you just touched on something that was really interesting around the customer success piece being the humanity of the business in a way.

How do you see that play out right now? When you say that, what caused you to say that, I guess? How do you see that play out in your day-to-day with you and your team? Yeah. It's human nature to want to have connections with humans. So there is components that AI really just cannot replace. It's not a human.

And so we should just leverage AI to our advantage to make us easily connect with our customers. So if we're talking in this industry specifically, the way we're leveraging AI today is we're leveraging it to do all of the research that we were manually doing.

And so if, say, we want AI to 3X our output, we work a 40-hour workweek. Say we had 120 hours that we could work on each week for our customers. What would we be doing? We would be scanning LinkedIn.

We would be scanning posts, maybe their personal social profiles. We would learn everything there is to know about their company and their use case and what they're trying to accomplish and do.

There's so much more we would be able to go outside of just managing the day-to-day, or even if we can get one level deeper of talking about their business objectives and high-level understanding their business.

The further we get down that rabbit hole of what this business is and understanding them holistically and the people we're working with, it's easier for us as humans to connect. And so I think that's where AI is super powerful in the customer success realm is AI can do all of that research that would take hundreds of manual hours to do for every one of your customers, that it can then funnel all that data in and give us all the points that we need to know to make a really impactful connection with the humans on the other side.

I love that, and also the durability of it. Mm-hmm. Being able to hand off accounts or do different things- Absolutely ... and you maintain that history. Whereas I remember working with sales teams on the enablement side of sales, and it's like your rock star leaves, and then it's like all that institutional knowledge just walked out the door.

So it's like AI- Absolutely ... gives you a way to manage that and de-risk some of the loss there. I guess, thinking about connection, thinking about how you excelled so well at managing accounts- Mm-hmm ...

what were you actually doing that really, aside from operating as a leader before you were named one, what were you doing that maybe others on your team weren't? What do you think- Mm-hmm ... made you so successful at managing accounts and post-sale pieces of the puzzle, or even the expansion pieces of the puzzle as well, where you were selling?

I've thought about this a lot. I think one thing that I have naturally, it's in my nature, is to have a strategic mindset. I feel like I can connect with people really well, and I think about things outside the box.

Mm-hmm. And I think of strategic ways we can approach something or accomplish an objective that we're trying to solve, where maybe the puzzle pieces don't fit in perfectly, but we can approach it in a unique way that does.

Yeah. And it's funny because I think you and I talked about this, but we are all raised in this world where we go to school for, at a minimum, 12 years, and that's not including college.

Where we show up, we have a schedule, we sit down at a desk, we're told what to do, we're graded on that. And so it builds this tactical mindset. You're telling me what to do, I'm doing it, I get graded on it, and get rewarded for that behavior.

And it's repeated over and over for years that I think it eliminates the free thinking, and it kind of takes away that free-thinking mindset. And I've honestly seen, we have incredible employees at MX- And our CSE team is amazing. Everybody is so great to work with, but a lot of our CSEs are very tactical by nature and not strategic by nature.

Mm-hmm. And so breaking that silo of thinking has been very difficult. It's really difficult to train tactical thinkers to think strategically. They feel overwhelmed by it. And it's- Mm-hmm ... at the end of the day, if you break it down, you can break down strategic thinking into tactical steps, but getting them to that point feels overwhelming for a lot of them.

And so it has been challenging to figure out how to do that. I, in nature, have that strategic thinking, and I honestly think that's what set me apart in a lot of ways to help my customers be successful and build trust with them, and then see MX as a partner versus just a vendor.

Yeah. And I think that is the huge difference in how to be successful as a customer success representative. I love where you were going with that. So I'm going to keep pulling that thread if that's okay.

Sure. Yes. Walk me through the, if you were to help me understand how you would approach, let's say a new account- Mm-hmm ... it just closes, and we're in handoff, and we're- Mm-hmm ... putting together whatever the success plan looks like or what those pieces are.

It feels like maybe you're saying that handoff, that exchange, those initial success planning or milestone formation for that new account, is that where you see that... Is that the biggest challenge? If you had to put it in the timeline, is that moment the challenge, or do you see it more of like a long tail, like staying engaged with the account strategically? Is it both?

Mm-hmm. How would you frame up the exact problem you're trying to solve? Yeah, I would say it's both. And I think I shared this with you as well. MX is very technical, and we have a lot of product suites, and every integration is unique. And so MX is very unique for our industry. So I will add that caveat.

I know a lot of what I will say might not resonate with a lot of people in the industry, but I would say it's both. So at the initial handoff, when you're strategizing with them, typically at this point, they've already decided how they want to integrate our product and technology.

Mm-hmm. But if it's not according to best practices, you're going to immediately face challenges of adoption and engagement. If it's a couple clicks deep, because we work with banks and credit unions providing PFM tools, and we're a data provider first and foremost. But if it's not integrated properly, the adoption engagement for end users is really low.

Mm-hmm. And at that point, it's hard to convince them to change their integration and invest the time and money to do so because they already aren't seeing much ROI. And so that becomes a challenge, and that's when you have to get really strategic and very persuasive and come to the discussion with a lot of data to convince them otherwise, right?

Yeah. And so that's definitely a piece. But I would say it's more of come renewal time, or if we're trying to cross-sell or upsell a net new product or just a different product in general, again, it goes back to thinking strategically and understanding your customer holistically.

What are their business objectives? What's important to them? Who are your champions? What's important to your champions, and how do we make them look good? There's so many components there that go into it.

Mm-hmm. And then leveraging all that information to create a plan of how MX fits into the picture and tailoring your message so that it resonates with your decision makers. How do you think about champions or building champions?

Do you have any art or science to that, or ways that you think about that as you're onboarding someone and you're saying, "Okay, here's a new account." Yeah. "Here are some things that we want to keep in mind." What are those, if you have them? I'm curious.

Yeah. I don't have a list, but I would say the number one thing is building trust. It's following through with what you say you're going to follow through with, show up on every call, go above and beyond to send out notes and follow-ups, and stay on task.

And then sometimes a lot of the times the job as a customer success rep is babysitting and making sure everyone else is doing the job that they said they're going to do, right? Yeah.

Because you are the one that is going to take the blame and the responsibility at the end of the day. And so I think the biggest foundation that you can build is trust. And as soon as you have that, you get a lot more people that are willing to go to bat for you.

They're willing to introduce you to other people within the organization, and they're also willing to share more behind the curtain sometimes, where you get a little bit more insight into the politics that are going on or- Mm-hmm ... other discussions going on within the company that you can then leverage to make your message better.

Yep. I love that. In thinking about that specific piece, how does that tie into how you think about account health and account management and things like that? Often I've seen, I guess in my own life, I've seen technically we may have lots of users, or technically we may have lots of data flowing through the system, or we start to look- Mm-hmm ... and if you looked at our product utilization, it's pretty high, but it feels like the biggest risk to the renewal conversation that you mentioned is somebody simply just walking out the door.

Leadership changes, board changes direction. Mm-hmm. Something like that happens, and more often than not, I've seen meaningful accounts to the business transition out as a result of that.

So how do you think about cultivating that- Mm-hmm ... those relationships and then predicting or choreographing the account health? How do you think about that? Yeah. So there's probably three main components, I would say, is one is getting high and wide. I'm sure you've heard that term before, but it's getting higher within the organization and wider.

So if your main point of contact does leave You still have relationships here, here, and here, and even above them, right? So high and wide is very important. I would say data is the foundation of everything.

If you have solid data proving that your product has value and how it's correlated to their business objectives or what's important to them, no matter if everyone you know leaves, that data speaks volumes, and you can then re-educate the new leaders coming in of why your product is valuable. And then the third one is ROI. So ROI is very important to be able to speak to. And again, that comes down to data, but also just making sure, again, your message is completely tailored to the right people.

And sometimes that's challenging when you have new leadership come in, and you don't know exactly what they're wanting to do and how they're wanting to change. But oftentimes, they're wanting to cut funds and make themselves look really good.

And so again, if you have the data and ROI to back why their money is worth the investment in your company, that hopefully should not be too big of a problem for you. I love it. The fact that you have three distinct buckets that you were just ready to go with on that- ... super abstract question, it explains all that I think we need to know as to why you were successful in the role.

Because you were like- Right. ... "Here's the three things you've got to do." That's it. Oh, I love it. And I guess thinking about that, how do you convey this to your team now? Like you are- Yeah ... you're not in transition. You're beyond the transition, but you're living it every day now, and- Mm-hmm ... you're growing up team members now in this way of thinking. How do you equip them? Are you currently shadowing them?

Are they running solo- Yeah ... and you're doing reviews or you're doing role-plays? Like- Mm ... how do you grow the team that way? Yeah. So, just a little context, because I have not been in leadership before, I wasn't sure what my leadership style would be, how I operate.

And I don't know if this is common, but what I've noticed is I tend to lead the way I like to be led. I am very proactive. I like to have the trust and lead with that and not be micromanaged.

I have a very specific way that I like to lead because of how I operate, so I tend to lead that way as well. And so far, my team has really appreciated that. They like the trust that you build.

And there's a story actually that has resonated with me. I heard this years and years ago, but there was a guy who had a hotdog stand in New York City, and he had a line down the road, right?

And he wanted to figure out how he can do it quicker so he can get more customers through, and people didn't want to wait in line. Mm-hmm. And so what he did was he put a change jar on the end, and he said, "Just pay me, take your change.

I trust you to take the change that you owe or that I owe you, and then you can go. And kind of just pay for yourself so I can get more hotdogs done." Well, obviously there's a risk there that people steal and take more money or don't pay him the right amount for the hotdog.

But after, at the end of the day, he counted how much money he had, and people actually left more money. And so he actually made more money by doing this, and it's because he gave the people the trust. And because you give people trust- Hmm ... they usually honor it. Not everyone, but most of the time they honor it. And I remember hearing this story years ago, and it totally resonated with me, and I think it ties in really well here.

If you trust your team, if you're building a strong team that you trust and then you allow them to do what you think they need to do, and trust them, obviously audit and be there to help them, but typically they'll outperform better than if you just micromanage and you dictate everything they do.

And so that's kind of the way I've led, and so far it's paid off well. But I do, I listen to their recorded calls, and I will send them some tips and tricks, and we always meet weekly. I have two newer employees that I meet twice a week at a minimum, and I help them strategize on their account, suggest ways to approach things. Some need more help than others, but I just tend to lead with trust and give them the tools that they need, and then they can add their own flair to it and know that I'm there to support them when they need me.

I love that. I love that. I've been on teams where it was built with lots of entrepreneurial-type people, and it's kind of like we all have our own little orbit, and our orbits will intersect, and we'll help each other- Yeah ... as we need to, but everybody's kind of like in their own orbit. And then I've been on teams that are very top-down directional, and you have to execute certain things certain ways, and- Mm-hmm ... yeah, different strokes, I guess, depending on the team.

But I love that. It feels like the... I guess let me take it back. I don't want to assume. I guess, are there any signals or warning signs or things like that? Do you have key indicators then that you would look for as you let people fly and as they're doing their own thing?

Do you have key signals? Do you have technology that gives you those signals? Is AI a part of that stack? What's kind of the warning system that you've put in place so you know how to course-correct as things sometimes go off track?

Yeah. No, unfortunately, we've not gotten to the point where we're leveraging AI from a leadership perspective outside of we do have some recording tools where it can give you suggestions of how to coach your team.

Outside of that, there's nothing that prompts me to go do so. Yeah. Hopefully we get there eventually. But I do, I listen to their calls. Salesforce logs every email, so I'll go in and audit emails, especially because my team that I manage is our mid-market team, and so oftentimes they're newer in their career or newer at MX, and so they might need a little bit more handholding.

But honestly, my team ... is so awesome. I've been so proud of them. And we have a sign around our company, and it was one of our co-founders, Brandon Dewitt, it was a quote from him, and we've made it into a poster, and we post it everywhere.

But it says, "Make mistakes of boldness, not timidity." Mm-hmm. And that's kind of our MO at MX. We want you to make decisions and feel empowered to make these decisions. Obviously, leverage data, run it by me if you think there could be a significant impact, but also if you have data and rationale behind the decision that you made, I'm going to support you 100% and fight tooth and nail for you, alongside you, if needs be. And I think my team knows that I have their back as well.

I don't have key indicators by any means, but I try to create a very transparent community with my team to where I always ask them for feedback so that they feel comfortable giving me feedback.

And then they know that they will get feedback from me, and I make that very clear because no one likes to know if they're doing a good job or not, or does my manager like me, are they upset with me or not?

My team knows that if I wasn't happy with something, I will tell them. And I prefer to be communicated that way with as well. And so again, because I enjoy that, I tend to operate in that manner.

I like that. It's good to know where you stand. Sometimes when you're in- Yeah ... ambiguity land, that can be tough. For sure. And even thinking about the role of CS, it's removing ambiguity at scale. Like, "How are things going? Where are things?

Here are things that we're seeing. Are these things true for your business?" So- Mm-hmm ... maybe it's just like a waterfall effect here of that. Yeah. Absolutely. I am curious about, well, I'm curious about a lot of things, but I'm interested in a few other things as well. I guess thinking about the relationship side of the business, though, how would you say, mainly just because of the nature of MX, how much of the customer success is an engineering and kind of product-like- Mm-hmm ... services sort of component, like helping people from a technical perspective- Mm-hmm ... versus helping people strategically or use case or guidance sort of related. Would you consider your team more of guides? Do you have a services component to it as well?

How do you think about the mix, and what does that look like today? Yeah. I don't know how heavy CS is relied upon in other companies, but MX, we are the liaison between literally everyone and everything.

If something doesn't have someone to assign it to, it falls to our team. The expectation, too, for our team members to be technical and be able to answer very technical questions is very high.

Mm. And so we have to be able to do, honestly, all of that, and be able to be the advocate for our customers internally for product and engineering. And in order to resonate with product and engineering, you have to be very technical. You have to know how your products work in and out so that you can advise either your customer or internal product to suggest ways that we can maybe approach it in a different manner, or talk through best practices with your customer.

It could be either way. And so, yeah, typically, usually our day-to-day contact is definitely more strategic thinking in nature, and we're planning on how we can leverage our products, how we can improve adoption engagement, et cetera, with them. But then we always do work with a technical team under them as well, and we're part of all of the calls, and we're looping in our product and engineering teams as well to help with any questions there. And so we're honestly part of all of it to where it does, one, help with our knowledge because we're in those calls day to day, but it also helps us be able to communicate, like I said, back and forth between our customers and our internal folks to ensure that we're taking care of our customers.

So did that answer your question? It did. No, it did. And I think a lot about the role of CS, the opportunities for monetization of CS- Mm-hmm ... the structures that have to be in place for different industries, right? Like financial services or technology within the financial services and banking and- Mm-hmm ... space versus logistics and shipping.

I think about all these different things and I guess, is the CS offerings at MX, are those currently monetized? Is that part of what people are purchasing in the overall annual multi-year license agreement with you all?

Like- Yeah ... what's the mix there as you deliver all of this? Yeah. So, it's a great question. So we have two enterprise teams, and those are customers. We kind of have a threshold, but basically $100,000 a year or more, you do have a CSE assigned to your account, kind of giving you that white glove experience. And then we have about 400 customers in our digital CS team, which is what part of my team manages. And these are about 400 accounts that pay us anywhere from $0 commit up to 100K a year.

And so we do have a shared inbox that those customers can email into, and then my team helps manage it, as well as they have their own small book of business that they manage as well.

And so that is kind of how we break it up. Regardless, you do have a customer success manager you can reach out to. It just might be a different experience than our enterprise accounts.

Interesting. Okay. That's fantastic and so neat. And I guess as you think about the onboarding, especially from a digital perspective- How do you equip customers, or how do you think about equipping customers with the roadmap or the success plan? Like you mentioned- Mm-hmm ... early on, the initial integration to get the data in the right structures to the right pieces of the infrastructure are critical.

Otherwise, like everything else downstream, it doesn't matter how many new updates we have or new things. Mm-hmm. If it's not on a solid foundation, then things can be tough. How do you think about that from the digital side, in mid-market or smaller accounts? How do you think about that?

What frameworks have you put in place to make sure that step one is actually really good, if it's a different experience than the enterprise folks? Yeah. So for the integration component, our team actually doesn't really get involved for our more long-tail team until post-integration, unless they pay for professional services.

So we do have TPMs and solution consultants, solution architects that can be involved during the integration phase, and they are responsible for making sure they are taking advantage of best practices and how to integrate and helping them through that.

The CS team doesn't get involved until post-sale. If it's an enterprise account, we do help. We're included in the onboarding. We're consulting them. We're along their side through the whole process.

But if it's more of our long-tail customers that pay us that 100K or less, we don't actually assign a CS team member to that customer. And typically, they can email our inbox, we can help with things, but they won't have that same white glove experience from my team.

Mm-hmm. That makes sense. That makes total sense. And having the implementation piece be a separate carve-out, that's smart. That's interesting. Yep. So they can pay for professional services to have that white glove experience during integration.

Obviously, always integrations, we include a project manager, and that's always included in their setup fee. And so they have the help from our side. But from a CS perspective, unless they're enterprise, we don't typically get involved.

I love it. Yeah. I guess thinking about things that you've seen work really well, things that you wish you knew day one of being- Yeah ... director. What would you tell Jayden eight months ago as you take on the director's hat, or the director's chair? I'm not sure.

The director's role. We'll just leave it there. The role, yes. The role. Yeah. So I guess I'll get a little more personal for this answer, but one thing during my interview, when I interviewed with three C-suite executives at MX, a lot of the feedback I got was, "Is she ready? We know her work, and she's doing really well." But the way I showed up and presented myself was very timid. It was almost like I didn't allow myself to, or I didn't give myself permission to take up space and be the leader in the room and tell them what my goals were.

I continued to kind of diminish all the research and work I'd put in over the last year- Mm ... several years, honestly. And it led to them questioning if I was ready for the role. And my manager, who's the VP of customer success, she's worked alongside me for the last five years, and she had all the faith in me. And I feel like she stuck her neck out for me because she believed in me and knew what I was capable of.

And honestly, as soon as I got that role, I almost gave myself permission to then show up and be that, and take up the space, and be the subject matter expert. But- Yeah ... I continued to hold myself back in my career because I didn't want to come off as like I know everything or too confident.

It was just this weird internal battle that I had dealt with for years. Yeah. And so if I could go back to myself, my younger self, even before this role, during the interview or even years before, it would just be like give yourself the permission to take up space, and be okay if you're wrong, and don't be afraid to be wrong, and don't be afraid to speak up.

And those are things that I feel like, honestly, I probably would've been ready to be a manager years ago, but I continued to hold myself back because of that. And it's something I, now, my team that I manage, 75% of my team is women, and I'm starting to see a little bit of the same pattern. So it's something I coach them on consistently, and it's hard because you know. You can hear the words, and you know what they're saying, and you agree with them, but it's one thing to put it into place.

And so I'm just trying to save them years of holding themselves back in their career as well. I think you just added a whole new layer to scaling trust, Jayden. It's like not scaling trust externally.

It's like trusting yourself- Yeah ... and scaling that. Yeah. That is interesting. That's fascinating. I would say you are not alone in that. I would say I've lived that- Yeah ... a version of that as well. The idea of permissionless-ness or whatever that...

I don't know what the right wording is. I wish I had a perfect word for it, but yeah. It's like imposter syndrome. Yeah. There you go. I heard a quote the other day. It said, "If you have imposter syndrome, stop acting like an imposter."

Which I love because, again, that's easier said than done, but- Right ... it literally was a mental game for me. As soon as I told myself, "Oh, I've been given permission to act this way," so now I give myself permission, and I now show up, and I can speak in rooms without being nervous, and I can talk about what I've done.

And I also noticed that as soon as I flipped the narrative of me bragging about myself- I kind of changed it to saying, "I'm informing them of all the work I've done so they know that I'm ready for this leadership role."

Mm-hmm. And as soon as I kind of reframed that, it changed the game for me as well. I'm not bragging. I'm not talking about how great I am. I'm just mentioning facts of things that I've done that have led me to where I'm at today, so.

Oh, I love that. I need that personal reframe myself. It's like visibility in a way is service. Yeah. Having it be visible- Yeah ... is a way to serve others, and if they don't know it.

I love the way that you said it. You're almost like, "It's my obligation to make sure you know the effort that we've put in," or I've put in. 100%, yeah. So. And I have no problem bragging about anyone else, so I don't know why I don't just share all the work and things I've done.

Yeah. There you go. Oh my goodness. Well, I hope you've enjoyed the time. I know I certainly have. Oh, same here. This evolution of your career within the company in a really interesting space that is just ever-changing and fast-moving, I think- Mm-hmm ... you handle it with grace. You present so, so well.

So there you go for giving yourself some permission. Wow. Thank you. And you have shared some, I think, mindset, some strategic or tactical pieces. Some really good takeaways that I think the audience is really going to enjoy.

I would say for anyone that is listening, we often have lots of listeners that are Series A, Series B companies. People that are- Yeah ... wearing multiple hats that are just now- Mm-hmm ... starting to take over the role of CS, and so I think- Mm-hmm ... the words that you shared, just kind of the insights, the here's what I lived and here's where I'm at things, I think will resonate with lots of folks and hopefully make all the difference in their journey as well.

So thank you for- Yeah ... making time, Jayden. I appreciate it. Yeah, thank you. I appreciate the opportunity. And I will just say one last thing. I think the best way to be successful with customer success is just remembering that everyone has their own world they're operating in. Everyone's human.

Everyone has their own insecurities. And the more human you can make yourself in any interaction, whether it's as a leader or with your customers, the more success you're going to see.

I couldn't agree more. So Jayden, thank you so much. Hopefully we can have- Yeah. Thank you, Matt ... you back again as your career continues to blossom, and I can't wait to hear how you're doing this time next year.

I'm sure it will be a list of stats that are going to be impressive on LinkedIn- ... on every page you can imagine. So thanks so much, Jayden. Yes. Let's hope. Take care. All right. Thanks, Matt. Talk soon. Bye-bye.