Inspiring Future Leaders

About the Episode

This episode is a very open, authentic and vulnerable conversation between our host, Kellie Lucas and Sean Ruane. They cover some fundamentals in relation to the topics of culture and leadership before delving into the vulnerable conversation around mental wellbeing at home and at work.

Our favourite takeaway of the session: It's fundamental to see someone as a person first, their job role second.

Hear! Hear!

Sean, as always, it was an absolute pleasure to speak with you and already looking forward to the next time and the launch of your MInd Data platform.

Take a listen and let us know what you found most interesting and valuable from this discussion!

About Sean

After graduating from the University of Buckingham with a First class degree in Business Enterprise, Sean joined the two co-founders of Clear Review, an HR cloud platform.

Sean was responsible for building an award winning customer success team that took the business from pre-seed to acquisition.

Sean is currently HCM Director of Customer Success at Advanced, one of the UK’s largest software providers. He is also currently building a mental health start up, Mind Data, which aims to improve the existing counselling and therapy experience for counsellors and patients alike.

His life’s mission is to improve the mental health of 1,000,000 people worldwide.

How to connect with Sean and his initiatives

LinkedIn: Sean Ruane

Mind Data App: Coming soon!

About the Episode

Dan Steinman is often referred to as the Godfather of Customer Success and has a wealth of experiences to share with the world, not least about human-first leadership.

This episode is full of worldly advice and is no doubt the first of many conversations we will publish with Dan.

A few of the takeways that resonated with us were:

>> Live your culture and principles through your conversations with people

>> Leadership is about communication and vision; and the ability to bring these two things together to motivate those around you in a common, clear goal

>> Leadership is difficult to define but we each know it when we see it

>> Giving power to the powerless is very powerful

>> A great leader is always looking for ways to give more authority, opportunity, responsibility

Take a listen and let us know what you found most interesting in what Dan had to share with us all!

About Dan

Dan Steinman is the Chief Evangelist at Gainsight.

Prior to joining Gainsight as Chief Customer Officer, Dan was the first Vice President of Customer Success and Renewals at Marketo. Dan is a globally recognized thought leader in the Customer Success space, an active blogger and speaker on its behalf, and co-author of the seminal book on Customer Success.

How to connect with Dan and his initiatives

LinkedIn: Dan Steinman

About the Episode

Dale Roberts is a dear friend and colleague of mine and we often have business and culture conversations so this time we recorded one of them!

In this episode, we talk about Dale's five principles of leadership:

1. Lead by inquiry

2. Balance of confidence and humility

3. Natural motivation first

4. Resilience over repeatability

5. Business is Human

Grab a cup of your favoruite drink, settle in and listen to what Dale has to say - it's definitely worth a listen. 

About Dale

Dale Roberts has led customer success and professional services teams for over 20 years and has advised some of the largest businesses in the world on customer experience, customer success, analytics and digital strategies. He is the author of Decision Sourcing (Gower, 2013), World of Workcraft (Ashgate, 2015) and has contributed chapters to Leading the Project Revolution (Routledge, Edited by Darren Dalcher, 2018) and The Customer Success Pioneer (Practical Inspiration, Authored by Kellie Lucas, 2019).

Today, Dale advises rapidly growing SaaS companies on customer success programs and mediating win-win outcomes between digital businesses and customers in dispute or in stalled negotiations.

How to connect with Dale and his initiatives

LinkedIn: Dale Roberts

Twitter: @DaleSRoberts

Courses: Dale Roberts on Udemy

About the Episode

We're starting 2022 with an authentic conversation with Liz Shipsey where we explore topics such as leadership by example, vulnerable and human leadership and the mental wellbeing of all and how to support this.

About Liz

Liz has been working in the charity sector for 9 years, with a particular focus on volunteering and supporting individuals into employment.

Liz is passionate about: curating meaningful connections, encouraging local volunteering, supporting communities, listening to and developing people. She believes it's about real and lasting impact on individual lives and the diverse communities in which we live.

How to connect with Liz and her initiatives

LinkedIn: Liz Shipsey

Website: Octavia Foundation

About the Episode

Today's episode is small and mighty!

Tom Goodman is one of our favourite people and leaders and we're thrilled to have had him on the show.

We talk about:

** leading culture through well-defined, understood and embedded values, including shaping your people team from the start and your interview process around these values

** recruiting for values alignement and culture "addition" rather than culture fit

** providing a space for belonging and voices to be encouraged and heard

** leaders showing up every day, authentically and willing to listen, learn, fail and improve

** providing support and resilience to allow people to try innovative ideas with the security of knowing each success AND "failure" provides a learning opportunity

** placing personal development at the core of the business practice

** investing in young leaders with high potential

About Tom

Tom Goodman is the Director of Customer Operations at Goodlord.

He's also a Man City fan so feel free to connect with him to talk footie as well as Customer Success and interpersonal leadership!

How to connect with Tom and his initiatives

LinkedIn: Tom Goodman

Email: Tom Goodman

About the Episode

Another gem of an episode!

Today, we talk with Morika Georgieva around the neuroscience perspective and impact on business today.

She loves the discipline of Customer Success so much that she finds it difficult to shut up about it and can be found discussing as part of her day job, her involvement with the CSN community and in conversations with connections within and beyond Customer Success.

She's also passionate about finding ways to extend the reach and depth of Customer Success, not just as a field but as an embedded organisation-wide philosophy, to ensure success for all involved as well as progressing customer relationships to strategic partnerships rather than just as a vendor-supplier situation.

We really enjoyed hearing her perspective on these topics, including some really tangible steps to creating and promoting an open, inclusive and proactive culture.

About Morika

Morika Georgieva is Customer Success Lead, EMEA at Permutive and heads up the digital events team at The Customer Success Network (check them out on Linkedin and YouTube). 

Her career focuses on Customer Success for enterprise B2B SaaS start ups in a multitude of industries, including advertising, recruitment, and hospitality. 

She is passionate about Customer Success, not only as a key part of business growth, but also as a corporate philosophy that should guide how companies conduct business with their customers and partners as well as how they approach their culture and employees.

She has also just been voted one of the Top 100 Customer Success Strategists 2021!

How to connect with Morika and her initiatives

LinkedIn: Morika Georgieva

Join the Customer Success Network here!

About the Episode

I love this woman, her mission and chatting with her about all things business, leadership, culture and communications.

If you're reading this/listening before October 22nd 2021, make sure you join her #BirthdayBonanza in her FB group (link below) for lots of incredible prizes and thoughtful questions.

On this occasion we talked about authencitity, collaboration vs. competition, working to your strengths and within your zone of genius.

All the things about which I'm passionate. Take a listen, connect with Sara and listen to the recommended TEDx Folkestone talk (linkes provided below) and let us know your thoughts.

About Sara

Sara is a rebellious optimist: an entrepreneur driven by her desire to help other purpose-led changemakers to make a difference, make a living and change the world.

After 5 years of studying politics at Exeter, the LSE and at the Institut d’Etudes Politiques in Aix-en-Provence, Sara began her career in the Westminster Parliament. There she learnt about the corridors of power; how deals were made in smoke-filled rooms and that the ability to communicate is THE core skills required to truly make a difference and create change.

Since then Sara has dedicated her entire career to helping people, organisations and brands to communicate better. Over 26 years in PR and campaigning, she has advised some of the largest companies and charities in the world from UNICEF to Avon, from Kellogg’s to Variety – and start-ups including fledgling space missions and challenger bank Starling.

Sara is no stranger to the impact of crisis, chaos and global uncertainty on life, a career and a business. She managed to progress her career – reaching the UK Board of one of the world’s largest PR agencies - whilst navigating through divorce, cancer, at least three recessions, bereavement and a horrific accident that left her with injuries requiring multiple surgeries. She also co-founded her first entrepreneurial business in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crash - and grew it into a profitable independent communications consultancy with revenue over 7 figures in just 12 months - in spite of a global economic meltdown!

Sara now works exclusively with purpose-led entrepreneurs, business owners and coaches through her new company Actually. Sara uses everything she has learnt in her career, plus her coaching and training skills, to help you to harness the right mindset, skills and support you need to make a difference and change the world.

How to connect with Sara and her initiatives

LinkedIn: Sara Price

LinkedIn: Actually

Website: Actually.world

Facebook: Actually Making a Difference

Take the Communications Superpower Quiz!

"Love your Competitors" TEDx Folkestone talk (Alex Smith)

About the Episode 

This week, we speak with Anika Zubair, a veteran podcast host with not one but two successful Customer Success podcasts to her name (see details below). We talk about the power of appreciation and encouraging people to work to and develop their strengths to allow everyone to be the most authentically powerful person they can be, rather than forcing them to work on their weaknesses. One of the benefits of working in teams is to ensure each person plays to their strengths and achieve the best together.  We explore the concept of Learning as you Grow and how this applies to everyone, in all areas of life and each stage of life; how we progress as humans with space to learn, space to uncover and exploit those individual strengths. As leaders, it should be natural to provide this space, encourage those around us and to celebrate every win - no matter how small and in the knowledge that it costs little in time and effort and benefits the recipient exponentially. Above everything, we discussed how important it is to be unapologetically yourself. Thanks, Anika, for always being authentic, inspiring, impactful and unapologetically you! 

About Anika 

Anika Zubair, an industry thought leader, CSM LDN community co-founder, and podcast host, is currently VP of Customer Success at inSided, where she is building a world-class customer success organisation. Drawing from previous experiences at multiple SaaS B2B startups and scale-ups, Anika is no stranger to scaling Customer Success efforts and has built teams from the ground up across the APAC, EMEA, and US regions and is excited to scale the CS team at inSided. She also hosts 2 podcasts: The Customer Success Channel Podcast and The inSide Scoop on Customer Success, both podcasts are thought-provoking, and highly rated podcasts diving into important and relevant topics to help spread CS and community knowledge. 

How to connect with Anika and her initiatives 

LinkedIn: Anika Zubair 

LinkedIn: CSM LDN 

Podcast: The Customer Success Channel 

Podcast: The InSide Scoop on Customer Success

About the Episode

The concept of doing better business for global good is a fundamental motivation and passion for this podcast. It makes sense, therefore, that we will be talking to people from the private sector, communities, leadership, inspiring individuals of all ages and experience, beneficiaries and the charity sector.

Today, we talk with Megan Taylor about the differences and similarities between the private and charity sectors - in which she has deep experience of both, having founded her own small charity many years ago while also running a leadership and organisational development consulting community.

We talk about the Sustainable Development Goals and their predecessor, the Millenium Goals and the increase in awareness within individuals, communitites and businesses of not only their existence but how we can each contribute to achieving this goals by 2030. We discuss the encouraging trend of organisations willing to relearn how to listen to and provide a pleasant working and collaborative environment for their people, recognising that there is no one right way to deliver or travel on this journey.

About Megan

Megan is co-founder and Chair of Trustees for Move the World, a small charity working in Ghana on Global Citizenship Education. She is also Director and Consultant at RISE Beyond, a leadership and organisational development consulting community. 

How to connect with Megan and her initiatives

Linkedin: Megan Taylor

Website: Move the World

Facebook: Move the World

Instagram: Move the World

Donate here: MTW Movers

About the Episode

This is a gem of a conversation with Renata Kashiwaya Pinheiro.

In this week's episode, the discussion ranges from the pleasure of hiring a great team around you and the rewards you reap, when they surprise you every day with their proactivity, authenticity, trust and respect. We talk about the ripple effects of every person's choices and decisions and ensuring everyone, at every level, takes conscious and collaborative action.

Ever wondered what makes a safe space one you can actually believe in and trust? We talk at length about holding space for everyone to come to work and be completely genuine so there is no wasted energy pretending to be ok and putting up a facade. This includes driving a culture where questions are seen as neutral, perspective-finding and encouraged; mistakes are seen and actively used as learning opportunities.

And finally, we explored the strength which comes from being authentic, allowing others to see every part of us so we each learn from the examples displayed around us. We share our learnings from our own personal experiences with mental health and wellbeing over the years.

About Renata

Renata has been working with customers for the past 11 years in one way or another, from big Corporate companies to small tech start-ups. Renata loves creating and building highly diverse, scalable and autonomous customer success teams, ensuring that as the company grows they don't lose touch with their customers.

How to connect with Renata and her initiatives

Linkedin: Renata Kashiwaya Pinheiro