Speaker 1: 0:40

Just a bit of context. So I probably created my LinkedIn account 20 years ago and I've only really been active on it, I would say, about eight months or so. In the last maybe month or so, I've had other clients reach out to me and say hey, I know you're a LinkedIn influencer, so we'd really like to pick your brain about how to get started, and my initial reaction was thank you. I have no idea what I'm fucking doing.

Speaker 2: 1:06

Once again, welcome to the Digital Customer Experience podcast with me, Alex Turkovich. So glad you could join us here today and every week as we explore how digital can help enhance the customer and employee experience. My goal is to share what my guests and I have learned over the years so that you can get the insights that you need to evolve your own digital programs. If you'd like more info, need to get in touch or sign up for the weekly companion newsletter that has additional articles and resources in it. Go to digitalcustomersuccesscom. For now, let's get started. Hello and welcome back to the Digital CX Podcast. My name is Alex Terkovich. It's so great to have you back this week and every week.

Speaker 2: 1:44

This is episode 69 and we've got a very special guest for you today in Bob Mathers, who you probably know from LinkedIn CS circles. He is no stranger to the LinkedIn selfie. What's behind the LinkedIn selfie is a ton of incredible content that he puts out on LinkedIn on a regular basis because he is such a wealth of knowledge and experience. He's a consultant. He's also a podcast host. He has a non-CS podcast called Growth Mixtape in which he has amazing, wonderful conversations with just people who've been through stuff, and so it's really cool. We talk about that, a bunch of CS stuff, we talk about personal branding a little bit, and I just really enjoyed this conversation with Bob, and I hope you do too. Bob, how do we first get introduced? I don't remember who introduced us. Was it Rob that introduced us?

Speaker 1: 2:46

That's hilarious that you mentioned that, because I was trying to figure that out too. Yeah, I think it was Rob Zambito, because I had yeah, because Dylan and Rob and JP invited me on to their Lifetime Value podcast, the Daily.

Speaker 2: 2:57

Stand-Up Yep.

Speaker 1: 2:59

And you're right. Then I think it led Rob to introduce me to you. Then I think you introduced me to Sarah Roberts, who I also love and talk to. So, yeah, it's been an interesting path that's led us here.

Speaker 2: 3:10

It's like, yeah, the CS network.

Speaker 1: 3:13

And there is some good that can come out of LinkedIn, even though it can be a really isolating and lonely place. Sometimes it can result in conversations like this. It's definitely the necessary evil yeah that's a good way to put it.

Speaker 2: 3:26

Yeah, it's necessary evil. And like you're a very prolific LinkedIn poster, you and you subscribe to the selfie video post as well. I like to post kind of selfie video, but you also like post as well. I like to post kind of selfie video but you also like I think there's something okay, there's probably a whole thing we could get into about this whole thing, because I've been on this thing recently about how digital communication apropos digital customer success doesn't necessarily mean that there isn't a human involved in that communication, and I think what better way to communicate digitally but still be human than to like do a quick video of yourself or, you know, have a selfie with, like that expresses kind of emotion as part of the post. But I think you subscribe firmly to that kind of philosophy, right?

Speaker 1: 4:19

Yeah, it's interesting. If you come across me on LinkedIn, I do selfies on most of my posts and I'm trying to post four to five times a week. There was a post that I responded to like a month or two ago that said you know what's with all the selfies? Why is LinkedIn turning into Instagram? And I responded to that and there is some method behind it.

Speaker 1: 4:40

You know, when I've really only been active on LinkedIn for maybe eight or nine months, but I connected with somebody her name is Casey Jones. I connected with her. Her content was amazing and when I finally realized that I needed some help, she's the one that I reached out to. But when she did basically selfies with every post as well, and when I got on the call with her, it was like we were continuing a conversation that we had been having for months, even though it was the first time we met. And I'm like, yeah, that's a perfect extension, like that's a perfect. That's how I want my audience and the people that I connect with to feel. I want to say, yeah, this conversation was exactly what I was expecting. You're exactly who I thought you'd be, and there was something just really eyeopening about that.

Speaker 2: 5:23

So I because you'd seen her posters. Yeah, you'd seen her basically having the conversation with you yes exactly that's interesting, and I'm sure there are people that reside in the camp that's like why are people posting selfies, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. What's next? Pictures of your food or whatever.

Speaker 1: 5:42

Well, and I'm not going to lie, it did feel a little cringy and it's just, you know, on the list of things, that I had a fear, of things that I had to overcome, putting myself out there more.

Speaker 2: 5:51

Yeah, that's fascinating. Well, look, we kind of jumped right into it, but I'd love for you to introduce yourself to the audience and who you are and what you do and what led you to CS and all of that kind of fun stuff.

Speaker 1: 6:03

Yeah, I work with founders, ceos and CS leaders. I do a combination of coaching and consulting to help them retain customers, grow customers and enable their sales organizations with the customer stories that they need, to accelerate their logo sales, even on the new business side. So those are really the three main financial motivations behind customer success that most leaders have. And if you're thinking well, that sounds like a hundred thousand other people that I see out there. You're not wrong. I've got a different collection of experiences and tools and templates and you know I put myself out there a lot because, at the end of the day, we just need to connect with people and one day, when people need help, I might be on the shortlist of people they call and we'll see if you know, there's a fit and I've been doing this long enough that, to a large extent, I get to. You know, work with people that I love working with, doing work that I love to do. So that's pretty amazing. Yeah, that's cool.

Speaker 2: 7:04

And you're also on the list of CS folks who have a podcast. However, your podcast is not CS focused business really at all, maybe, but growth mixtape is a really cool show that like digs into like unique people's lives and whatnot. I've listened to all of them, but the few I've listened to have been like really impactful. I still think about them to this day.

Speaker 1: 7:26

Well, that really means a lot. Yeah, I, uh, I. Well, a podcast was on the list of things that I had. You know, I wanted to kind of identify fears of mine and and kind of try to knock them down, and I thought I sat down, I thought, you know, what do I want a podcast to be about? And my only rule was I don't want it to be about customer success. I just wasn't sure I had much to offer, and I thought about the kinds of podcasts that I really found most rewarding, and they were often from conversations and guests, from people that I had never heard of, that I'd never normally come across, but that I had so much to learn from. And so I thought, hmm, that'd be interesting. What if I could string together a list of guests that I would never normally come across? I've talked to musicians and professional athletes and scientists.

Speaker 2: 8:20

Yeah, former police officers.

Speaker 1: 8:22

Yeah, exactly, and that have had just amazing experiences. I'm not. I think by the time people listen to this probably listen to you know you'd probably be 60 episodes in at least. The most interesting thing that's happened is it is about customer success, like it really is.

Speaker 1: 8:38

It does come full circle to overcoming whatever obstacles stand in your way, and sometimes it's ideas which your podcast, for example, will give people great insight to. But sometimes we have the ideas, we just don't have the confidence, courage, creativity, whatever it is to do anything with them. It's the magic combination of those two things that I'm really enjoying.

Speaker 2: 8:59

And the humanness of it. You know, yes, it's like the story, I think. A lot of times we go into these customer conversations forgetting that we're actually speaking with humans.

Speaker 1: 9:11

Yes, wow, that's so true. In fact I just had a post about that this morning because I'm kind of binging on a book called a curious mind by brian grazer, who co-founded imagine entertainment with ron howard oh, and he talks about these purity.

Speaker 2: 9:26

He's the guy with the spiky hair right. Yes, yeah, kind of the weird looking guy.

Speaker 1: 9:30

Right, he talks about that too, and just how to, how like? And I don't think that definitely the pandemic didn't help, right, because we used to, it seemed to be there was more room in business meetings for these more personal conversations. But now we get on a Zoom and it's like okay, let's spend 90 seconds saying hello and talking about the weather. And then it's like what's our agenda? And we're plowing through and it's all about outcomes and agenda and there's so much we've lost.

Speaker 2: 9:58

Yeah, it's true. One thing I love to lead off with on calls is, like, you know, red, amber, green, like sometimes I'd be like, hey, I'm, I'm kind of amber today. How are you feeling, you know? And it kind of opens you up, it humanizes it a little bit. It's not just the weather, it's like how are you doing today? And let's be honest about something. So I'm half Austrian, so I go back every once in a while and one of the things that I'm always taking it back if you go to Europe, but specifically Vienna, if you ask somebody how they're doing, you better be ready for an honest answer and you better be ready to have a conversation about it. While that's very jarring to the American and I guess the North American psyche, like it's kind of nice in a way, but also like oh my God.

Speaker 1: 10:50

That's awesome and I have noticed. I just want to acknowledge you for that because I have noticed in our conversations you usually do start off with that and it's really memorable, which means it's something that not a lot of people do and it really gives me pause. I'm like oh, and I don't think he's asking me like hey, how you doing. It's like I think he's really asking me how am I doing now, have you ever said I'm a red?

Speaker 2: 11:15

Yeah, oh yeah. Or sometimes I'll be like, hey, I'm not feeling this today and I have a lot of respect for people. That it's interesting, because I have a lot of respect for people who do that. But also there's this, I think if you go into certain conversations and you're in the red, I don't see how that can be productive, unless it's a conversation with somebody that you really trust and like and can confide in, and maybe they're in the red too and y'all can just get each other to the amber.

Speaker 1: 11:45

I've bowed out of conversations because I was like hey, I can't do this right now now good for you it's hard to do in hustle culture yeah, yeah, I can see that I really like that idea, though I'd love to test that out with regards to kind of your background is.

Speaker 2: 12:00

You're obviously Canadian based. You're in Ontario. It's probably safe to assume that you played hockey as a kid. I think I did see some like hockey coaching that you did at some point as well. Do you still play or do you still coach, or are you still involved in hockey at all?

Speaker 1: 12:17

So what's really quite hilarious about that is I never played hockey growing up you didn't I don't remember why I didn't, but you know I'll never forget being in grade six.

Speaker 1: 12:27

Like gym class, when we go to the arena and everybody straps on their skates and I had been on skates before but I could skate from one side to the other and slam into the boards because I couldn't stop or I couldn't turn and I was cool. There were a lot of things that I wasn't included in growing up, even you know, going through college and everything so but I've got two sons. Both sons were in hockey and so when I was maybe 30 years old, I took a, I joined a class to learn how to play hockey and it was me and a number of new Canadians and, wow, that just gave me such a incredible respect for the sport. But it was funny. You're right, I did coach on my younger son's team and probably both of my son's team. It was just a way to get a little bit more involved in all the time that we were spending there. I had absolutely nothing to offer Like I, and so you know if you do these sports?

Speaker 1: 13:24

no for sure in the stopping department, but it was. It was just for a way for me to get closer to it. But you get to a point where they do actually need real coaches, Like they don't just need somebody to tie their skates before the game or refill their water bottles, or tell them you know, tell them that it's okay if they missed on a breakaway or at some point. They need coaches, and that's where I had to let the real people that do something about hockey, take over.

Speaker 1: 13:46

But I've learned a lot about it and I am a big fan.

Speaker 2: 13:49

Yeah, and that translates to kind of current state where you know at some point a lot of companies just need a real consultant and that's where you come in right.

Speaker 1: 14:01

Wow, that's a brilliant segue, yeah that's really good.

Speaker 2: 14:02

Well, I mean, a big part of what you do is you help. You help orgs really focus on and drive growth and those kinds of things. And I wanted to dig into that a little bit from the digital perspective, because it's a digital CX podcast. Are there go-to things that you often see are a miss or go-to recommendations that you have when you go in and advise these companies and these founders and leaders from a digital perspective.

Speaker 1: 14:36

Obviously, it really depends on what stage they're in, because I tend to work with a lot of early stage companies and then scaling companies that are 50 million ARR and above. Certainly, for the early stage, I do think of maybe not the only two, but two of the big pillars of the digital CS stuff is data and technology, and I find that a lot of people really only think about the technology side, because it's just so easy to go sign up for a tool and plug it into your website and all of a sudden you've got some onboarding workflows and you check that box and move on to the next thing, right, and so I think the biggest miss is what data underlies, like how are you informing what to do and when, and do you know what good adoption looks like on hour one after signup, a day after signup, three days after signup, five days after signup? And so that tells you where people are getting stuck or what you really need those technologies to do once you've got them plugged in.

Speaker 2: 15:37

Yeah, that's a great point. So many people think of digital as like it's an email flow, it's a welcome email, it's a pre-renewal, something or other. But, like dude, it's so much more than that and I think in a lot of organizations digital and CS ops are almost like synonymous and sometimes they're the same team right that are running all this stuff, because you got to have the data to support your digital motions, but then also you want to make sure you're pulling out the insights and the data to support the program, support your CSM, support your executive conversations and all that stuff.

Speaker 1: 16:10

I'm curious because I love sitting on this side of the table of the podcast because I get, because. I do get to do it every once in a while, but not so often. What are the biggest misses you see on the digital side?

Speaker 2: 16:21

Data, yeah, I mean. So I have this thing called the digital sweet spot and you hit on two of the three. It's like a picture of Venn diagram in the center is the sweet spot. Picture of Venn diagram in the center is the sweet spot, and you know, in it I talk about data being one pillar, automation being the other one, and so you know you're akin to technology, I suppose and then customer journey being the other one. And so, to answer your question seriously, though a lot of times you know there will be some technology stack that's been purchased to help to do the automation. Okay, great, you have the tools that you can do.

Speaker 2: 17:01

Ideally, that would be the last step. You don't necessarily have the data to support it. You haven't spent a lot of time really figuring out what your happy path is. Definitely not like per persona or per industry, is definitely not like per persona or per industry, and those and I think those, those two things are definitely like the table stakes. You know, to back it up even further, a lot of times orgs haven't really figured out exactly what they want to achieve out of a digital program, right, right, they do the whole thing of not starting with the goals, like what are the outcomes you're trying to achieve with this whole thing? And then, out of that is okay, where does this fit into the customer journey? And now that is like, okay, what data do we need to support that? And then comes like all right, how do we put this?

Speaker 1: 17:42

in place. Yeah, and certainly I love the way you put that, and I do think obviously you'd think that the technology would come last. It's usually a thing that comes first and then that it's like well, we got to find a way to justify our investment in this, or is this the right tool? It's like I don't even know if it's the right tool, because you didn't really decide what you wanted it to do or how we're going to measure success. So then you're in the business of kind of untangling things instead of just doing it.

Speaker 2: 18:08

Yeah, or you walk into a situation where the predecessor has done a whole bunch of stuff and you're like, yeah, trying to figure it all out. And why was this decision made? I don't know oh yeah yeah, it's super fun.

Speaker 2: 20:42

Or you know, as a consultant too, like coming into those situations where you're really trying to get a quick handle on. You know what's the current state and what's you know like what's really happening on the on the ground level. I would imagine that you know you're, having done it for so many years your your skills on discovery around those things are pretty keen.

Speaker 1: 21:08

Yes, yes and no, and that's a really interesting question. I've always got to fight against this kind of validation bias because, you're right, I have been doing this a long time and I can. Usually I'm not 90 seconds into a conversation where I'm like, yeah, I've heard this a thousand times, like, oh, my God, I can't believe we're having this conversation again, right, but? But I'm really not doing anybody any favors by leaning into that, because it's very easy to go. Oh yeah, you know, just wait for my turn to talk, and then I'm going to tell you everything that I think you should do to and there's always a reason, it's that way down and understand more of the context, because the things that worked for me might not work for you. The things that didn't work for me might work for you. Like it's much more complicated. But yeah, I very quickly find myself trying to battle against that bias that I think we all have.

Speaker 2: 22:11

Hey, I want to have a brief chat with you about this show. Did you know that roughly 60% of listeners aren't actually subscribed to the show, on whatever platform they're listening to it on? As you know, algorithms love, likes, follows, subscribes, comments, all of that kind of stuff. So if you get value out of the content, you listen regularly and you want to help others to discover the content as well, please go ahead and follow the show, leave a comment, leave a review. Anything that you want to do there really helps us to grow organically as a show. And while you're at it, go sign up for the companion newsletter that goes out every week at digitalcustomersuccesscom.

Speaker 2: 22:50

Now back to the show. Yeah, I guess it also depends on who you're working with and what environment you're working with, because you can't always sit there and do five whys around every corner and really analyzing something to death. Sometimes the best thing to do is gather the information you have, make a quick judgment call on what you need to do. But I think sometimes the enemy of progress is overanalyzing, trying to figure out how it's broken or what led us.

Speaker 1: 23:16

There is like now we're just gonna like wipe the table clean and start fresh for sure, and you're right, it is a bit of, it's certainly an art in in sort of listening and sharing some stories and things that have worked and things we, you know threads we might pull on and it's there's a lot of back and forth, yeah, so it's something you learn over time.

Speaker 2: 23:37

Yeah, exactly, are there some digital motions that you've seen in your clients or you've helped clients build, or things that you've seen in the wild that you are, like you know, particularly like excited about or you're like, oh, that was really cool.

Speaker 1: 23:52

I'm definitely working with some clients that are doing some really innovative things. You know, for example, a customer portal that houses a success plan. So our objectives together and our measures. So that's really on the strategic side, because right now I will tell you, it's very disjointed from their sales force, from their support, right From their marketing and their email campaigns. So the vision of how this will work is really impressive, and that vision is even something that I don't think most companies have gotten their heads around.

Speaker 2: 24:23

And.

Speaker 1: 24:23

I learned 90% of what I know from working with clients, so every client is doing a lot of amazing things and things they need help with. That's just one of the examples. Interestingly enough that digital motion is owned by marketing, not by oh, interesting.

Speaker 2: 24:41

Wow, that's interesting. You know, you bring that brings to mind um something that I've marveled, which is why CSPs in general don't really have a consistent customer facing aspect to them, like you think you know most. Csps. There might be the opportunity to share something or other, but they don't really have like a strong kind of customer facing thing, like ever after you know kind of portal platform kind of situation.

Speaker 2: 25:18

It's all, like you know, very internally focused, maybe by design too. But if I'm just, I scratch my head a lot as to why that is because you would think that the natural extension of a customer success platform would be to be customer facing, you know.

Speaker 1: 25:34

Yeah, I don't know if I've ever thought of that. Now that you mentioned, it just seems so painfully obvious that that would be something. Yeah, I have worked with clients that had that ability but were always reluctant because they're. Maybe it's because they don't have confidence in their data and they're terrified that the client will be exposed to something that they don't want them to see.

Speaker 2: 25:55

Yeah, it could be.

Speaker 1: 25:59

And so that fear of oh my God, can you imagine what would happen if one customer even saw this shuts the whole thing down.

Speaker 2: 26:05

Yeah, really quickly, and I mean that's why we don't see more people doing, you know, virtual QBRs and all that kind of stuff is because, again, it goes back to one of those pillar pieces of not having the data to support it necessarily, which is a common thread. Common thread. It was interesting. There's a lot of motions out there that I've been encountering that do a really good job of combining the human and the digital together. One of them I saw recently was QuickBooks. Actually, we were setting up online for the side hustle situation and they offered, they had a nice digital flow and their in-product stuff is good and although they have really good documentation I mean, intuit is quite known for their CS stuff but then we got the opportunity to set up like a structured onboarding call and this was for their $20, $30 product. You know like they're literally throwing humans into the mix to help with that onboarding flow and I thought that was so amazing because they're losing money on it. I mean.

Speaker 2: 27:13

I can't even imagine what the break-even point is if you're literally spending an hour with a $20 a month customer, you know, and all the tech spend behind that and whatnot. But I thought that was interesting. I don't know if you've encountered similar things or you know you have some of your clients that are doing similar things around onboarding, but I thought that was cool.

Speaker 1: 27:34

Yeah, well, what's most interesting about that as I hear you talk about that is, I wonder how many different things they tried before they landed, before they realized that this thing that on paper looks like the worst investment they would ever make, is actually going to pay for itself.

Speaker 2: 27:52

They got funding for a team. I mean, there was a business case made somewhere.

Speaker 1: 27:57

Yeah, and how many different things they've tried. They tried different, you know, completely digital motions, or back in the day they probably had people doing it.

Speaker 1: 28:04

And the pendulum swings back and forth until they find this sweet spot in the middle, which is just kind of a learning process that I think everybody has to go through. I see a lot of companies try to move too quickly to digital. I see companies hold on to human led experiences for too long that obviously don't scale and sort of collapse. But I have been. I am noticing more and more of that, those interactions, not the way that you described it, but at least for like a human to answer a chat. Yeah, so it's like I'm I'm halfway through onboarding and I can, and I can enter a chat and talk to somebody, and that person knows where I am, news, knows who I am because I'm logged in, knows what I've tried and is there to help me get over the next two or three things I need to do to get unstuck yeah, digital, but human.

Speaker 2: 28:50

digital can support the humans in that agent who's manning the chat to your point doesn't have to go ask who it is and verify the account and look up stuff. They just know, and they know what page you're looking at and all that kind of stuff. And they do that because you have some pretty cool tech behind the scenes powering that stuff. It's an exciting age that we live in, I think.

Speaker 1: 29:11

Well, yeah powering that stuff. It's an exciting age that we live in, I think. Well, yeah, and one of the definitions of digital customer success. I might even have shared this with you, with this client that I'm working with now had some really interesting language, and because it's led out of the marketing organization. You know they agonized over every word, which I really value, and so they're talking about how digital experiences I wrote it down I really value, and so they're talking about how digital experiences I wrote it down digital experiences connect, reinforce and elevate the interpersonal and offline experiences with our brand and I love the connect, reinforce and elevate.

Speaker 1: 29:45

And then the interpersonal and offline and I think that goes a lot to what you were just saying tech touch or whatever we were calling it back then. It was like the high touch. Customers never got emails. They never got campaigns. They never got anything. It was just the one to 600 customers that got everything through email and there's just a blend there now that everybody's trying to figure out yeah, and I mean, ultimately this stuff is the is your brand voice.

Speaker 2: 30:11

So in a way it makes sense that the marketing team is owning some of that, because you know it is your brand voice.

Speaker 2: 30:14

So in a way it makes sense that the marketing team is owning some of that because you know it is the brand voice and I think those things can live in multiple different places and still be successful. I think that's interesting. On the QuickBooks thing, a funny anecdote is that at the end of this onboarding call I asked this lady who was doing the call. I was like, hey, do you mind if I ask you a couple of questions? Sure, and she, she was like okay, weirdo, like no, no, I do this for a living. Like I want to know, like how you know? How's your team structure? Like what, what were you hired for?

Speaker 1: 31:00

And all this couple of seconds.

Speaker 2: 31:03

I need my smoke break. I do want to go back to like what we were talking about initially, before we even introduced you and all that kind of stuff about you know, like LinkedIn and personal branding and things like that. I think you know you have put a lot of conscious effort into branding yourself and getting yourself out there and posting on LinkedIn the necessary evil or whatnot, and having put so much energy towards it, I was curious if you might share some advice or thoughts on people who are thinking about doing the same thing or wanting to really brand themselves a little bit more. What kind of advice might you give them?

Speaker 1: 31:40

I do have two or three helpful takeaways always post selfies, I know I yeah, I know you're all about those and I will commit to those, but before I get there, just a bit of so. I've probably I probably created my LinkedIn account 20 years ago and I've only really been active on it, I would say, about eight months or so. In the couple last maybe month or so, I've had other clients reach out to me and say hey, I know you're a LinkedIn influencer, so we'd really like to pick your brain about how to get started. And my initial reaction was thank you, I have no idea what I'm fucking doing, so the fact that you think I do, I'm flattered. That does feel good.

Speaker 2: 32:25

Okay, here's the deal. Sure, you've got a selfie on there, whatever, and the selfie police can go to hell. The content that you're posting is based on your experience. It's well thought out, it's well written, it's well paced, it's readable, it's digestible, really relevant, really timely content. But I think that's the edge and that's why you've been successful at putting yourself out there is because it's actually like super relevant stuff.

Speaker 1: 32:55

Well, I do really appreciate that and that means a lot to me. It's definitely been a journey. I was just I wasn't really sure why anybody would care what I had to say. What new do I have to offer?

Speaker 1: 33:07

The conversation and there was a lot of reflection and kind of work on what do I want to be known for, and some of it is eventually just overcoming that fear of kind of putting yourself out there, and that's something that eventually, if this is important to people, they'll have to get over. I would say, if people want to do it, spend some time on your personal brand, spend some time on that profile, right Like cause. If you start commenting and people start in your profile views or go out like what, what are people going to see? What is your banner? What's that tagline? What are they going to read about your experience? I mean, that's kind of like table stakes stuff. But I just started commenting on just commenting on, you know, a reflection or a personal experience of mine and that really helped me get my confidence up.

Speaker 1: 33:51

But an interesting thing happens every once in a while you'll be like, oh, that's actually a really good comment and so you just copy and paste that comment into somewhere else and that can be a post for something. You kind of work on that, and so I think that's the path that I took. Linkedin is really good at making you feel like everybody's got the answers, but you just take some comfort in the fact that even the people who seem to have it all figured out are still just kind of. I mean, there are undoubtedly there are some people that really have got their shit together, but most of us are just kind of experimenting and find two or three people that you just you're just drawn to their content because it's authentic, it speaks to you, and borrow as much as you can from them. Because if you're trying to listen to 10 or 20 people, you just get in this cycle of churn and you know everybody's contradicting each other and you just get lost.

Speaker 2: 34:37

It's less of a conversation and more of a shouting match.

Speaker 1: 34:41

Well, there's lots of them.

Speaker 2: 34:44

Oh man, that's cool. Well, as we kind of round down here, I do have a couple of additional questions that I like to ask everyone, which the first one is what are you paying attention to? What's in your content diet? You mentioned Brian Grazer's book.

Speaker 1: 34:58

But good question. There's been a couple of books that have had a big impact on me recently. One is Dopamine Nation. I forget the author, but it's really just about how the society we live in is kind of engineered to keep us addicted to notifications and social media and alcohol and whatever other vices you might be susceptible to. But I really enjoyed that because it's really eye-opening and it's a bit like that awesome Netflix show about social media yes. God, that was scary. Yeah, the Social Dilemma maybe Social Dilemma. Or am I getting that?

Speaker 2: 35:29

wrong. No, you got it. Yeah, yeah, I think it is.

Speaker 1: 35:32

That was really. I really love that, and the other one is a creative act by Rick Rubin which is sort of my Bible. I would get up every morning and read like a couple passages and it would just set my intent and then I would go for a walk and I would just let those words kind of inspire random thoughts and sometimes they'd be useful. I don't know what it is about that book, but it's yeah, it's great.

Speaker 2: 35:54

I have one on my bedside table, so I'll read it once in a while. And then I've got the audio book version, because it's Rick Rubin reading it, and Rick Rubin has this like so cool kind of like chill vibe about him. And so like yeah, it's like almost meditative.

Speaker 1: 36:10

I think he would be your list of dinner party guests. I mean, I think he's got to be on it, or just the way he talks and he's yeah man, there's something about that guy. And the other thing on podcasts, yeah, interesting. I usually wake up every morning and say what am I in the mood for? I asked myself two questions what I'm in the mood for and what do I need, cause sometimes I'm in the mood for something just lighthearted, but that's not really what I need. So it kind of varies between kind of meditative podcasts, just lighthearted. Listen to George Clooney talk about shitting in his roommate's litter box. You know funny stories like smart lists.

Speaker 1: 36:49

Or you know Conan's Conan's podcast or something, but mostly it's just about trying to stumble across conversations, kind of like what I'm trying to do with my podcast conversations that I are kind of outside my comfort zone, people that I'd never normally come across and see what I can learn from them. And armchair expert on thursday has his dax shepherd. They have their experts on experts. So it's not the celebrities they have the rest of the week it's authors, scientists and everything, and, yeah, I'm fascinated by that stuff recently yeah, that's awesome.

Speaker 2: 37:20

Yeah, who would have thunk dax shepherd would like?

Speaker 1: 37:23

it's a cool show, but I hadn't didn't have really good yeah, yeah, me neither. And every recent episode with him and amy poehler, she's super vulnerable and honest. I'm like god man, I could listen to this forever yeah, any shout outs you want to give um I really should have some shout outs one of my favorite sayings in life is don't should yourself yeah, well then I won't, because I could come to whoever's uh pops into my head and then, 10 minutes from now, after, we hang out, you'd be kicking yourself.

Speaker 2: 37:58

Oh my God, how can I? That's respectful. You can edit that out.

Speaker 1: 38:00

I didn't have anybody to shout out.

Speaker 2: 38:02

I respect that.

Speaker 1: 38:03

I've got a dozen list of people that I rely on for a number of things.

Speaker 2: 38:06

If you're listening, consider yourself shouted out.

Speaker 1: 38:09

Yeah, If you said oh, Bob Mathers and Alex, that's a conversation I got to hear.

Speaker 2: 38:17

Where can people find you, reach out to you, chat with you, engage with you?

Speaker 1: 38:23

Yeah, you can find me on LinkedIn. My podcast is the Growth Mixtape. It's everywhere you get your podcast fix, like this awesome podcast.

Speaker 2: 38:36

BobMathersca is where you can learn a little bit more about me. That's usually where I'm hanging out, that's good. Well, look, bob. I always enjoy our conversations and I especially enjoyed this one, and I can't wait to share it with everybody. But thanks for taking the time.

Speaker 1: 38:45

No problem, I enjoyed my 10 minutes of trying to stay still and contemplative and get my energy up for this. You're an awesome host. I really enjoy our conversations. This has been awesome host. I really enjoy our conversations.

Speaker 2: 38:56

This has been awesome. Thank you for joining me for this episode of the Digital CX Podcast. If you like what we're doing, consider leaving us a review on your podcast platform of choice. If you're watching on YouTube, leave a comment down below. It really helps us to grow and provide value to a broader audience. You can view the Digital Customer Success Defin word map and get more information about the show and some of the other things that we're doing at digitalcustomersuccesscom. This episode was edited by Lifetime Value Media, a media production company founded by our good mutual friend, Dylan Young. Lifetime Value aims to serve the content, video, audio production needs of the CS and post-sale community. They're offering services at a steep discount for a limited time. So navigate to lifetimevaluemediacom, go have a chat with Dylan and make sure you mention the Digital CX podcast sent you. I'm Alex Turkovich. Thanks so much for listening. We'll talk to you next week.