Customer Success Playbook Podcast S3 E58 - Kristen Nolan - Master Your Life with Practical Time Management Tips

In this eye-opening episode of the Customer Success Playbook podcast, hosts Roman Trebon and Kevin Metzger welcome Kristen Nolan, Senior Client Account Manager at Interview Valet. As a military spouse, mother of three, and active community volunteer, Kristen shares her battle-tested strategies for managing a packed schedule. Her number one tip? Taking control of your calendar through intentional time blocking. Discover how this simple yet powerful technique helps Kristen juggle professional responsibilities while maintaining flexibility for life's unexpected moments and personal priorities.

Detailed Analysis

Effective calendar management might be the most underrated skill in today's busy professional landscape. Kristen Nolan, who juggles multiple roles with impressive grace, offers a masterclass in time management that any customer success professional can immediately implement.

Kristen's approach centers on what she calls "Z to A thinking" - a methodology where she identifies all weekly tasks first, then strategically schedules them on her calendar. This proactive stance ensures nothing falls through the cracks while maintaining flexibility to adapt when needed. As Kristen points out during the conversation, this intentionality creates space for both productivity and spontaneity - a balance many professionals struggle to achieve.

For customer success professionals, Kristen's advice is particularly valuable. The demanding nature of client-facing roles often leads to reactive scheduling practices, where calendars become overrun with meetings, leaving little time for focused work. By implementing Kristen's time blocking technique, CS teams can carve out dedicated space for deep work while still maintaining client availability.

What makes Kristen's approach stand out is her holistic perspective - combining personal and professional commitments in a single calendar system. This integrated view prevents the common pitfall of overbooking and creates realistic expectations for what can be accomplished each day. For customer success teams looking to improve efficiency without sacrificing client relationships, this balanced methodology offers a practical framework that can transform productivity.

The customer success playbook continues to evolve, but fundamental skills like time management remain essential building blocks for professional excellence. Kristen's insights remind us that sometimes the simplest strategies yield the most powerful results.

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Transcript

Kevin Metzger: 0:05

Customer success.

Roman Trebon: 0:10

Hi everyone, and welcome back to the Customer Success Playbook podcast, your go-to source for actionable insights and real world inspiration. I'm your host, Roman Reon, joined by my co-host Kevin Metzker. Today we're talking with someone who lives the balancing act, daily career, family, and purpose. All with an intention and impact. Kevin, I'm excited about the guest we have lined up today. I, I know you are as well,

Kevin Metzger: 0:36

Roman. Our guest today is Christie Nolan, a senior client account manager at Interview Valet. Christie's background spins I. Tech and retail sales. She's known for building strong relationships that drive results. She's also a military spouse, a mama three, and an active community volunteer. So if anyone has earned the right to speak on time management, it's Kristi. Kristi, welcome to the show. Do you wanna share a little more about yourself?

Kristen Nolan: 1:03

Yeah. Thank you so much. I'm really excited to be here to talk with you guys today. As you mentioned, you know, I have a, a background, I'm in tech and and sales, but today my current role is at Interview Valet, where I look at myself as a matchmaker for podcast guests. I'm excited to dive in and talk about time management.

Roman Trebon: 1:22

And I'm sure you need it. I just heard as Kevin was doing the intro, Kristen, I was like, oh my goodness. Like your weekends must be insane with all you have going on with the kids and everything. So let's, let's jump right into it. Monday's our number one tip show. So since you're wearing so many hats, Kristen, what is your number one tip for our audience for mastering time management as a busy professional?

Kristen Nolan: 1:43

Yeah, so I'd say that it's really about taking control of your calendar. I'm sure we've always been there where we'll go to someone's calendarly to make an appointment and we see that they have like open availability every single day, seven days a week, and you click one and you're like, holy cow, they're not meeting with anyone. They have nothing going on. So my biggest tip is really to take control of your calendar, right? Don't give access to everyone. To have every minute of your day taken. So one thing that I do is I'm very intentional with my time. So I do something called time blocking, where I will put in focus time, I will plan specific projects that I need to get done. I use my calendar, I put my kids, um, activities on it. I put. Personal and professional things so I can keep everything in alignment and ensure that I keep the wheels moving with everything. Just as a background, you mentioned I'm a military spouse. I'm currently in week six of 10 of my husband being gone, so I'm at home doing everything. We're at week six, so we're in like that, you know, downhill slope, but it, it can get challenging and I think if you're planning ahead and knowing that not everything is gonna go very smooth in your day, whether you're personally or professionally, and. Having control of your calendar will really help for those things that pop up that are unexpected,

Kevin Metzger: 2:55

really something else. I know my wife, we have the online calendar, a wall calendar for the whole month, and then she's got a weekly calendar that she also posts to the refrigerator, which with all of our schedules, she's really good at it. Like she'll sit down every Sunday morning and do updates. And do you have like a time period, do you set down a time period for planning regularly on a regular basis?

Kristen Nolan: 3:20

Yeah, so my primary thing on Sundays, I'll, we'll kind of have family time and Sunday nights I'll, I'll use it to kind of prep for the week, right? What does my week look like? And then I sort of work, I call it like Z to a thinking, I think. I'm not sure where that came from. I didn't make it up, but that's my philosophy where I'll, I'll write down all of my tasks or to dos for the week, and then I'll plan it on my calendar. So if I have specific projects or due dates. I'll schedule the time to accomplish those. I found that when I'm able to do that versus just shooting from the hip, I'm able to be more intentional with what I'm doing. Right? If I have a friend and they're like, Hey, or my husband, when he's home, if he says, Hey, let's go meet for lunch. Well, then I can go, okay, well I have this block of time here. Where can I shift that? To make my schedule work and also find time to do things that I wanna do. So then I'll say, okay, I'm, I'm able to, to take this hour or two that I had here. Let me shift it to, maybe I stay up an hour later and I work on it in the evening. So I'm just more intentional so I can accomplish all my tasks. While still having room and ability to have those things come up that I wanna do, maybe for myself,

Roman Trebon: 4:24

I, you know, calendar management should be like a course in college. Like I, I, I feel like so many people and so like email, email inbox is another one. We can get to that like a dual course. Right? Like, you know my, but it's amazing how many times and I'm so glad to hear Kristen, your approach.'cause it's very, it took me years to get here. But it's very similar, right? Plan Sunday night, I plan out the week I put everything in one calendar. Personal business, I'm even a color code, or I'm big on the color code. Mm-hmm. So maybe I take it to like a, another level that's probably my OCD tendencies, but I put it all in there. Uh, but it's amazing. I, I talk to folks and they're like, I, I can't get anything done. And I say, why? And they say, well, because everyone keeps scheduling meetings with me. And I say, well, do you have time block to get work done? And the answer always is like, no. And I'm like, well, maybe we should start with the time blocking. Right. Which I know you mentioned is one of your, your tips, you gotta have focused time in that calendar to get stuff done. Right?

Kristen Nolan: 5:15

Yeah. And I, I work remotely, but I think people that work in an office setting, right, you consistently have people kind of coming in and knocking on your door. It's really difficult to focus on a task. I almost think that. Another benefit to having a focus time is like you put a note on your door and say, Hey, this one hour of the day, don't bother me. Like, come any other time during the day, but this is when I'm gonna focus. And that way you're able to really sit down and give a hundred percent of your attention versus stopping and starting, especially for those projects that really require you to have in depth thought, really hyper focus so that you're able to accomplish them more quickly and more efficiently. Versus just kind of diving in and kind of doing version of what you could be doing so that you're able to accomplish the task more quickly.

Roman Trebon: 6:03

Shut down the email, shut down the team's messaging, the Google chats, and, and, and actually you put it to work, right? So, Kristen, this is great stuff. You've given us more than one tip, which is typically what happens on this, uh, one tip Monday, right? But, but, uh, thanks for this practical and powerful advice. I hope our audience, if you're not doing what Kristen's saying with your calendar. Get to it. Sit down Sunday night, get to this, you're gonna find it's gonna be, uh, at least personally speaking, it's a, it's a real game changer. So, Christian, you're gonna come back and join us on Wednesday, I hope, right? We haven't scared you away yet.

Kristen Nolan: 6:33

Nope. That's good. I'll

Roman Trebon: 6:34

be here. So we're gonna be back Wednesday for our one Big Question episode. We're gonna talk about how you silence your in inner critic and build confidence that lasts. So I'm really excited for this topic, Kevin. Until next time.