Customer Success Playbook Season 2 Episode 29 - Romand and Kevin discuss 50 Episodes

In this special edition reviewing 50 episodes of the Customer Success Playbook Podcast, hosts Roman Trebon and Kevin Metzger take a moment to celebrate a significant milestone. The duo reflects on their journey from the podcast's inception in March 2023 to their 50th release in August 2024, sharing insights into the evolution of their process, the challenges they overcame, and the unexpected joys of connecting with the global customer success community. They discuss their most impactful episodes, memorable guests, and the personal and professional growth they've experienced along the way. The hosts also hint at exciting future plans, including a live podcast episode, the possibility of their first repeat guest, and the continuous integration of AI technologies into their production process.

Detailed Analysis:
This milestone episode is a testament to the dedication and passion that Roman and Kevin have poured into the Customer Success Playbook Podcast. The conversation highlights the evolution of their podcasting journey, from initial concerns about guest availability to the surprising willingness of industry leaders to share their expertise. The hosts attribute much of their success to the supportive customer success community, which has not only embraced their efforts but also enriched their understanding of the field.

Key discussions include the role of AI in streamlining podcast production, allowing the hosts to focus on content quality rather than technical minutiae. They also delve into the impact of specific episodes and guests, such as Dave Jackson and Donna Weber, whose insights have directly influenced their approach to customer success. The episode serves as both a celebration and a roadmap for the future, with Roman and Kevin expressing excitement about upcoming initiatives like live episodes and deeper community engagement.

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You can also find the CS Playbook Podcast:
YouTube - @CustomerSuccessPlaybookPodcast
Twitter - @CS_Playbook

You can find Kevin at:
Metzgerbusiness.com - Kevin's person web site
Kevin Metzger on Linked In.

You can find Roman at:
Roman Trebon on Linked In.

Transcript

Kevin Metzger: 0:28

Welcome to the Customer Success

Roam Trebon: 0:30

Playbook Podcast. I'm your host, Roman Trebon, and with me always, Kevin Metzger. Kevin, we've hit a milestone, 50 podcast release. Can you believe it?

Kevin Metzger: 0:42

Yeah, that's kind of crazy. Can't believe we've hit 50 podcasts.

Roam Trebon: 0:47

I know, half a century, man. that sounds like a lot when you step back and it has been a fun little journey we've been on here.

Kevin Metzger: 0:54

Yeah, I think we talked initially in March of 23, where we started thinking about, Hey, this is something we might want to put together. And here we are in August of 24 later got to talk to some great guests. I mean, amazing

Roam Trebon: 1:12

guests.

Kevin Metzger: 1:12

Yeah, I think that was one of the most we thought that would be hard to do. We thought it'd be hard to get folks really found that people are really excited to have conversations and do the podcast. That was one of the biggest surprises to me. How about you?

Roam Trebon: 1:29

That is the number one, I think my biggest fear going into this was that everyone would tell us, no, that they'd be like, absolutely not. I don't want to talk to you guys, but that's been the exact opposite. It's been one 80, right? Like the customer success community, which we've now, I can speak for myself. I'm way more involved in than when we first started having the conversations around this. I find 99 percent of the time, everyone's amazing. They're all willing and open with their time, their knowledge. They love talking about customer success. They love talking about what they're doing in their organizations. And that's been reflective in us getting guests. We reach out, we say, Hey, we like to talk to you about X, Y, and Z. And everyone's been great about coming on the show. And the conversations have been terrific. Any other big surprises for you, Kev outside of the guests?

Kevin Metzger: 2:17

I don't know whether I call it a big surprise, but the process for doing the podcasts over time has evolved in such a way. And, you know, with, with all the tools and how the tools have evolved and help, help bring the podcast. When, when we started this, there was a learning curve getting into it and then The time that took to put things together, and that's just come down so significantly both because one getting through the learning process and kind of defining processes, but then secondly, really, the the tools have advanced so much because of some of the, you know, the AI technologies, all my ums and ahs. They get taken out by a tool. I don't really even have to go in from an editing standpoint. And yeah, our audience is like,

Roam Trebon: 3:04

what cab, they don't even know we say these because it's already edited out. Right.

Kevin Metzger: 3:08

I'm going to have to intentionally put these back in as we discuss. Exactly.

Roam Trebon: 3:12

to show

Kevin Metzger: 3:13

them.

Roam Trebon: 3:15

Yeah. The process is interesting, Kev. I'm glad you touched on the process. So for a little behind the scenes, when we first started doing this a year and a half ago, I had no idea what went into a podcast. I just knew people talked, for anyone looking to go into the podcast space I highly recommend doing it with someone personally, I couldn't have carried this on by myself, there's just too much work. Personal life, your actual day to day work job. And then you have the podcast as well, where you go kind of up and down in terms of momentum having you Kev has been amazing, right? I feel like there's times where I'm super busy with stuff and then you're reaching out to guests, you're doing the editing. And then I know there's times where you get busy and I can kind of pick up the slack as well. that's been terrific. And then just learning the new tools. I know you've been taking the heavy lift on that, but, All these tools we're using, Buzzsprout, which I never heard of beforehand, the stats you can see, who's listening, where they're listening, what platforms they're listening on. It's amazing how detailed you can get with our audience and how it's resonating in the space.

Kevin Metzger: 4:17

Yeah, and I actually asked about big surprises that I think that was maybe one of the bigger surprises. Just the reach that we've had, like, I mean, we've got people, Australia, we've got people, like, you've had listens all over the world, which has just been, that, that was a cool, cool experience to start seeing that in the, in the stats. That was really neat.

Roam Trebon: 4:38

We're big in Australia and Israel, Kevin. Now, a lot of our fans don't know that, but if you're in Israel and Australia, throw out a little customer success playbook, We actually get some good stats there, which I think is amazing. All right, Kev, let's do guest highlights. We've had probably 40 guests on. is there one episode that jumps out that may have had a significant impact on you or something that you've learned that really jumps out?

Kevin Metzger: 4:59

Well, one of the biggest impacts and honestly, it's been an ongoing relationship. Sue name is more had a very big impact early on. Right? I think she may be our 3rd or 4th guest. Yeah and I think she first, first off, she's out of Europe, right? our very first guest was also out of Europe. Dave Jackson

Roam Trebon: 5:20

yeah.

Kevin Metzger: 5:21

Which, so those were huge. Both of those were huge impacts. Dave's actual, but as a very first episode and having a conversation with Dave where I was coming into customer success from, I think Dave really helped me take a new look at customer success by saying, Hey, you really need to look at the operation numbers of running your customer success business, it's gotta be producing results in a way that is shown in the numbers. And when he talked about, you know the basically looking at your, your, your. Your costs and your what revenue you're responsible for. I, I don't think I had really looked at it that way. Previously. I looked at NRR, but I was more focused on, customer satisfaction and all that up to that point, I think Dave started really changing my focused on that a little bit and looking at it more as running a business when you run a CS organization and that business should be producing results. And I think Dave was the 1st person to say, say it in a way that made me really see it clearly. How about you?

Roam Trebon: 6:33

Yeah. Well, you've lifted up a couple of great ones and, now that you say it we hit the ground running with having Dave on that. episode was terrific. I'd say for me, I loved having Donna Weber on. sometimes Kev, we do the podcast recordings where we'll do like three in a week, just the way schedules line up But when we did the Donna episode, we had a little bit of lead time. And so I was able to actually read onboarding matters. Like, so I, I dove into onboarding matters. I was able to read it and I love the book. So to have her on after having read it, I love that episode. I, I think I've spoken on this. We incorporate a lot of orchestrated onboarding into my role today. We've taken a lot from that conversation. And incorporated. I love that. The other 1 again, Kev, we've when we 1st started talking about the podcast, you know, our objectives for it were, to connect with great, really smart, amazing people, We wanted to learn ourselves I think we also wanted to give back to the community, right? If there's things that we can do to help give back community. And I would say the episode one, two, you know, two episodes that I think are, they, they all, I think all of our episodes resonate today, just as much as when we recorded them. So you can go back and look at an episode from eight months ago. it ages well, right? It's not going to seem outdated but two that I would lift up are Carly Yeager. And Rachel Provan, I just think in this market, with, companies still, going through layoffs and people looking for jobs, I think those episodes, you know, they're great. If you're in customer success, I think they're great. No matter what space you're in to listen to those episodes how do you build on your personal brand in this market? I hope people got value out of those. And I think people will continue to get value out of those. those jumped out to me as episodes that I reflect back on.

Kevin Metzger: 8:21

Yeah, that's great. Let's see, what should we talk about next?

Roam Trebon: 8:25

Biggest takeaway, any lessons learned from doing the podcast? Any top lessons learned?

Kevin Metzger: 8:34

I think one of the bigger ones, like you said, You just mentioned the, the reasons we have for doing the podcast we talked about a little bit earlier too, just how willing people are to be guests and have conversations, this community, this type of work, the people who want to do this work where you're focused on Your customer and helping the customer achieve their goals and looking at how your products help them do their job better and how to teach them. I think that's huge. And I think that's reflected in the people in the community and the networking you get out of it. And from a networking perspective, I think that's been huge. it's been a really nice experience. the ability to give back and learn from all these people and, develop relationships beyond just a quick conversation. When we reach out, we're having conversations with people about what we want to do. We talk about how the podcast is going to go before the podcast occurs. Then we get them on and we surprise them with the five questions at the end. we try and prep people with, Hey, this is not what the exact questions are. Although. They've listened to an episode. I think they probably know them all, at this point

Roam Trebon: 9:48

It's interesting, Kevin, as you were talking, there's a lot of similarities between doing the podcast in real customer success, right. In terms of like the guest experience. What their sort of journey is like from going on to the show. And I think we've really evolved that, right? if we look back today, not to say we have this on autopilot by any means, but we have a template we use to reach out to guests Like, Hey, here's why we're interested in having you on the show. they schedule time to talk with us. We, the presentation and the pitch is pretty much down pat, you know, we pretty much, you could say it, or I could say it almost verbatim. Right. The lead into the show, we send our guests an email with their bio, the topics, the questions we may ask, that's all templated, right? we have that ability to take information from their LinkedIn or their websites, and then refine the theme and the topic and questions to ask. we've incorporated that in the process. And then, you know, the follow up emails, like we really have gotten that, that the efficiency really, really tight. Plus we're using tools to help support that. And it's just like in CS, right? Like we're always trying to be more efficient, get done more with less and for us, it's less time, right? Like we're both busy, so we got to do the show in the time we have available. it's amazing just how many similarities I find between the two. I also find it interesting when we talk now, we've talked on so many different topics, in that I'll get into a real life customer success conversation, be it a client, and I'm like the other day, someone mentioned an ideal customer profile. And I was like, Oh, I do a customer profile. Like I didn't say this, but I'm thinking we just talked to Kevin Malfur about this the other day. I already knew it, we talk about these things all the time. when they come up in my real world, I feel much better prepared. we've talked to all these experts in the space. And, you know, I didn't realize, Kev, I think when we first started doing that, the knowledge transfer that would happen, but it's really been significant for me. Like, you know, we learn all these stuff by having all these guests, not just on the show. We're talking to our guests leading up to the show. We're talking to them during the show. We're talking to them after the show. And we're learning throughout and, and man, for me, it comes through in day to day conversations all the time.

Kevin Metzger: 12:05

Yeah, yeah. And then, I mean, really with the guests a lot of the guests are topic specific and they've got their newsletters and things like that. I continue to learn from the guests after, after the shows, right? I mean, just because they, they're all focused on the field and looking at how to develop the field from their particular perspective. it helps us continue to grow, and make the shows more relevant as we grow too, right?

Roam Trebon: 12:33

Absolutely. And Kev, we're not done with 50 We're not stopping at 50. we actually have almost the end of the year booked up. we are getting close to filling the 2024 slots. Which kind of goes into how amazing the community has been, right? So you should be checking out our LinkedIn page, customer success playbook. we're going to have some items out soon on what's coming. not only do we have great guests lined up, we may do a live version of the podcast in real time. We can listen in and get your questions answered as part of the show. I know I'm excited about that. plus we have so many great guests lined up the second half and we may, we may actually have our, our first repeat guests. You know, we haven't had a repeat. We're knocking all these, all these new things out. Okay. We had one of my partners came on right recently. We had two guests on at the same time. We've never done that. We're talking about doing a live podcast, a repeat guest. We're knocking down a whole bunch of first at the back half of the year here. I love it.

Kevin Metzger: 13:33

can we announce the live guest and the date and all that?

Roam Trebon: 13:42

All right. So we are going to have a live podcast and we'll provide how to register, how to sign up, we're teaming up with CS Insider, if you've not gone to CS Insider, you got to go there. It's csinsider. co. You know, join that. There's 10, 000 plus other CS professionals that sign up for their emails. They send out two action packed emails each week. we are having, we're going to do a live episode. September 12th at 12 o'clock Eastern. Our guest is going to be Justin Chappell. He's with Growth Molecules. He's going to talk about customer enablement and education. And so, yeah, that's going to be awesome. So the way that form out of work, you'll sign up, you'll get a, a, a meeting invitation, you have the ability to interact with Kevin, Justin, myself, ask questions, get your questions answered. It'll be a lot of fun. we're going to turn that into a podcast as well. So that's going to be, a great new endeavor for us.

Kevin Metzger: 14:45

Yeah. Yeah. It's super excited about it. Justin, if, if you aren't aware of who Justin is, Justin is just. Awesome. He's, he's located here in the Atlanta area. It was at six cents. He's now with growth molecules and really, really bright guy. He's done some consulting with Bain or speaking for Bain consulting super excited about this conversation.

Roam Trebon: 15:09

Yeah. Justin you've heard on the show. we have our monthly pickleball networking events. Just had another one on Friday. Justin's a regular at those. last time he came, we were talking about all the stuff he was doing with AI and customer education enablement, Kev, I cannot wait to dig into this with a live audience. It's going to be amazing. He's doing some really cool stuff. Yeah, it's going to be great. We got a busy second half, so we can't stop at 50 let's use this as a jumping point. Before you know it, we'll do episode a hundred Who knows? That'd be crazy

Kevin Metzger: 15:37

That's what I'm thinking. it'll be soon.

Roam Trebon: 15:39

We got our own polo shirts. Now we have a logo. you're looking good with that shirt. I gotta get my shirt on. I wear a Vanderbilt shirt. Like I didn't even go to Vanderbilt, but I want to look 80 percent smarter than I actually am.

Kevin Metzger: 15:50

yeah.

Roam Trebon: 15:52

I love the polos. I love what we're doing. Kevin, I can't thank you enough, man. Seriously. Like I love doing this with you. It's been amazing. Fun journey man, I've learned so much and, been terrific doing it with you.

Kevin Metzger: 16:03

Yeah, I feel exactly the same great partnership. And like you said earlier, you know, there's times where things have been flow and having the partnership does make it just kind of, it's fantastic. And it's. I feel like we both have been able to really drive this to make it happen. And I'm excited about the fact that we're halfway to a hundred. let's keep going.

Roam Trebon: 16:28

Halfway to a hundred. One of our highlights, we have AI intro music now. we didn't talk about the intro yet. if you listen to the intro, maybe we'll hit a hundred. Maybe we'll change it up. Maybe we'll go a reggae intro. who knows? That's the power of AI. It can change so quick.

Kevin Metzger: 16:40

I might have to add some pictures that was dancing, but we never even

Roam Trebon: 16:45

By the time we get to a hundred, it may not even be you and I, this may be AI Roman and AI Kevin doing the show. And we'll just be sitting back. Things are changing fast.

Kevin Metzger: 16:54

We can do it.

Roam Trebon: 16:55

All right. Well, everyone, if you're listening to this episode, thanks so much, we really appreciate it. check out our LinkedIn page, customer success playbook. You'll find our guests and episodes there. At Roman Trebon on LinkedIn, reach out, connect at Kevin Metzger. We're always up for connecting, chatting. We'd love to hear what's on your mind, guests you'd like us to have on topics, et cetera. We really appreciate you listening and as always

Kevin Metzger: 17:21

keep on playing.