The Human Connection Podcast

“They’re going to use the product until they don’t, and then they’re going to leave.” — Andrea Mulligan

Your usage dashboard is green. Your NPS is fine. Your champion posts photos of her kids in your swag. None of that means they’re renewing. Full episode below.

Andrea Mulligan is a chief customer officer with 20+ years leading customer success, services, and support at VC- and PE-backed B2B SaaS companies. She’s lived through the moment every growth-stage leader dreads. Her loyalty-platform clients showed zero drop in usage before they churned, because they never turned the old system off until the new one was on. One of her oldest customers once gave her an NPS of 2. The reason: he’d already recommended her to everyone he knew (best bad score she ever got).

Now that AI budgets have customers signing up for experiments instead of partnerships, Andrea argues the classic “I’m your advocate” CS model can’t protect your gross retention. She lays out what has to change: the success criteria, the scorecard, the CSM job description, and the comp plan.

What you’ll get from this episode:

• Why adoption and NPS can look healthy right up until the account walks
• How to tell real recurring revenue from “experimental recurring revenue” in your book
• How to set measurable success criteria per contract, so you know at month nine whether it renews
• What “moments that matter” are, and how AI can flag accounts drifting off course
• Why CSMs need to push the client, not just advocate for them, and how to rewrite the role and comp to match

No matter if your business is B2B or B2C, it’s H2H — human to human. Happy connecting.

#HumanConnectionPodcast #H2H #ClientRetention #ClientSuccess #B2BRelationships

===

You can connect with Andrea Mulligan here:

www.andreamulligan.com/insights.html

You can connect with Karl Pontau here:

www.vouchedconnections.com

www.thehumanconnectionpodcast.com

https://www.linkedin.com/in/kpontau

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCUbf_bDWwB9KVrFn5Sj3u2w?sub_confirmation=1

Please like, subscribe, and share this episode with somebody you care about!

“Be more interested than interesting.” — Sandy Yu, Founder of Revenue Retention Advisors

Your customer just renewed for the tenth year in a row. That might be the most expensive account you have. Full episode below.

Sandy Yu spent two decades leading global go-to-market teams at Oracle, Cisco, and PwC. Now she works as a fractional customer growth executive for B2B SaaS companies doing 25M–100M ARR, finding the revenue that leaks out after the contract is signed.

She has plenty of stories. A customer who paid for software for two years and never downloaded it. A CRO who couldn’t say which accounts were up for renewal in the next 90 days. And a client renewed for a decade without ever hearing about the AI features built in the meantime, leaving millions in expansion untouched. Her fix starts with a human question most teams skip: what’s in it for them? (Also: please read the chat history before asking how you can help. Sandy has notes for Amazon.)

What you’ll get from this episode:

• The five post-sale phases where revenue leaks: handoff, onboarding, adoption, retention, and expansion
• Why daily usage isn’t a health score, and what “surprise churn” is actually telling you
• How to get a customer executive’s attention when they’re juggling 20 other vendors
• Why the sales-to-CS handoff is the first place relationships (and revenue) break
• Why remote-first teams never learned how to connect, and what leaders have to do differently now

No matter if your business is B2B or B2C, it’s H2H — human to human. Happy connecting.

#HumanConnectionPodcast #H2H #ClientRetention #B2BRelationships #RelationshipDrivenGrowth

===

You can connect with Sandy Yu here:

www.revenuecco.com

https://www.linkedin.com/in/sandysyu/

You can connect with Karl Pontau here:

www.vouchedconnections.com

www.thehumanconnectionpodcast.com

https://www.linkedin.com/in/kpontau

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCUbf_bDWwB9KVrFn5Sj3u2w?sub_confirmation=1

Please like, subscribe, and share this episode with somebody you care about!

“Because there’s so much noise, the trust level’s never been lower.” — David Zeff, CEO of Whistle

Your team can ship a product in a weekend now. So can 400 of your competitors. Full episode below.

Building a product has never been easier, and that’s exactly why it stopped protecting you. David Zeff runs Whistle, the world’s largest SDR company. Whistle supplies $16M in pipeline a month to 350+ B2B SaaS companies, so David sees what’s working in go-to-market before most leaders do. In cyber, e-commerce, and martech, he’s watching three things happen. Vendors are flying CISOs to Formula One races. Gatekeepers are selling access to buyers. And the smartest companies are quietly building communities. David says only one of those is fair (it isn’t the World Cup tickets).

He also admits he almost didn’t launch Whistle’s client community because he was scared of what clients might say to each other. Today it’s a 200-partner network, and its referrals close at around 70%.

What you’ll get from this episode:

• Why the product moat collapsed, and why go-to-market, partnerships, and relationships replaced it
• The three tactics winning in crowded markets, and the one David says actually lasts
• How a client’s suggestion and a WhatsApp group grew into a 200-partner referral engine
• Why you can’t rush or squeeze a community for leads, and what that means if you manage to the quarter
• The real risk of referral-driven growth: under-deliver once and you burn the client, the referrer, and your name

No matter if your business is B2B or B2C, it’s H2H — human to human. Happy connecting.

#HumanConnectionPodcast #H2H #B2BRelationships #RelationshipDrivenGrowth #StartupLeadership

===

You can connect with David Zeff here:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/davidzeff/

https://www.linkedin.com/company/whistleltd/

https://www.whistle.ltd/

You can connect with Karl Pontau here:

www.vouchedconnections.com

www.thehumanconnectionpodcast.com

https://www.linkedin.com/in/kpontau

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCUbf_bDWwB9KVrFn5Sj3u2w?sub_confirmation=1

Please like, subscribe, and share this episode with somebody you care about!

"All too often, early-stage leaders assume silence is the absence of conflict. Much of the time, that silence is really evidence of avoidance." — Dr. Jonathan Thorp

You ended the all-hands with "any questions?" Nobody said a word, and you logged it as alignment. At a 150-person Series B, that silence is the loudest signal in the room, and you just walked past it. (Turns out "any questions?" isn't a feedback mechanism.)

In this episode of The Human Connection Podcast, Karl sits down with Dr. Jonathan Thorp, CEO of Quantum Connections, an employee connection and performance platform built to measurably improve engagement, retention, and profitability. Jonathan brings more than three decades of leadership across:

• the U.S. Navy, as a 24-year aviator and flight instructor
• JPMorgan Chase, where he led organizational and talent development
• academia, as adjunct faculty in leadership and decision making at the Naval War College

His diagnosis: your company runs an operating system for finance, IT, risk, and data. It has no operating system for how people treat each other.

What you'll get from this episode:

• Why most companies are missing a "relational OS," and why disengagement is an expensive, sometimes risky, business problem
• Silence is data: three reasons your team isn't speaking up ("why bother," "I don't know how," "I'm not going to") and how to tell which one you're dealing with
• Why AI's endlessly agreeable support is quietly weakening your team's ability to handle real disagreement
• What happens when people "turn up the volume" in conflict instead of getting curious, and why being told to connect isn't the same as being taught how
• Trust can't be declared: how small, repeated experiences overwrite your team's old history with leadership

No matter if your business is B2B or B2C, it's H2H: human to human. Happy connecting.

#HumanConnectionPodcast #CompanyCulture #StartupLeadership #RelationshipDrivenGrowth #H2H

===

You can connect with Jonathan Thorp here:

https://quantumconnections.com/

You can connect with Karl Pontau here:

www.vouchedconnections.com

www.thehumanconnectionpodcast.com

https://www.linkedin.com/in/kpontau

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCUbf_bDWwB9KVrFn5Sj3u2w?sub_confirmation=1

Please like, subscribe, and share this episode with somebody you care about!

"We don't say we reach potential, because that doesn't make sense to me. You just golf the rest of your life and then you're done." — Mark Talaga

You've been "the founder" since the first Slack message. It's on your LinkedIn, it's how you introduce yourself at dinner, and it's quietly holding up your entire sense of self. So what happens when the company stalls, gets acquired, or AI starts doing half your job? (Karl found out the hard way when a previous business didn't make it.)

In this episode of The Human Connection Podcast, Karl sits down with Mark Talaga, a licensed professional counselor, speaker, and host of the Hopelessly Gifted Podcast. Mark leads the Center for Identity Potential, working with gifted, twice-exceptional, and neurodivergent people on motivation, identity, and mental health. His take for leaders: your identities are tools of expression, not a cage. When one label carries all the weight, losing it doesn't feel like a career setback. It feels like losing yourself.

What you'll get from this episode:

• Why tying your worth to one title (CEO, founder, visionary) sets you up for an identity crisis, and why AI disruption makes that fear existential
• The Fit, a four-part identity framework (validation, affirmation, affiliation, affinity) that pinpoints exactly where you're out of alignment
• How to stop managing five engineers as "five engineers" and understand what the role means to each one, which is how you build real loyalty
• Why "successful on paper, empty in practice" is a fit problem, not a motivation problem
• A first step for course-correcting mid-career: name the identity you want before you blow anything up

No matter if your business is B2B or B2C, it's H2H: human to human. Happy connecting.

#HumanConnectionPodcast #StartupLeadership #CompanyCulture #RelationshipDrivenGrowth #H2H

===

You can connect with Mark Talaga here:

centerforidentitypotential.com

hopelesslygifted.com

You can connect with Karl Pontau here:

www.vouchedconnections.com

www.thehumanconnectionpodcast.com

https://www.linkedin.com/in/kpontau

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCUbf_bDWwB9KVrFn5Sj3u2w?sub_confirmation=1

Please like, subscribe, and share this episode with somebody you care about!

"When data is not an issue anymore, the final control and the privacy will become a huge defining moment." — Jing Kuang

At a Series B–D company, your most valuable client relationships live in three people's heads and a CRM nobody updates. Then someone walks into a meeting and asks a question the other person already answered last time. (Karl did exactly this the day after a trip. Humbling.)

In this episode of The Human Connection Podcast, Karl sits down with Jing Kuang to talk about building business relationships in the AI era, without handing the relationship itself to a bot. Jing is building Cresca, a consumer AI startup creating a private memory layer for the people who matter most. She's also Founding Partner at Y+ Ventures, backing consumer AI founders from angel through seed. Before that she:

• Managed brands at Procter & Gamble
• Founded Jonstone Brand Consulting and built two DTC brands
• Led more than $50 billion in cross-border M&A as CEO of Yongjia Capital

She's watched every era where "the data is the product." She's betting this one belongs to whoever gives humans the final say.

What you'll get from this episode:

• Why AI should do the relationship admin (notes, follow-ups, meeting prep) so you can actually show up for the conversation
• The multitasking myth: why typing notes while someone talks quietly costs you the relationship
• How the "trust economy" is becoming the real moat for AI companies, and for any company holding client data
• Why privacy and human control are the defining product decisions of the AI era, and what social media got wrong
• How AI collapsed product-market-fit testing from years to days, and what early-stage founders should do first

No matter if your business is B2B or B2C, it's H2H: human to human. Happy connecting.

#HumanConnectionPodcast #B2BRelationships #StartupLeadership #RelationshipDrivenGrowth #H2H

===

You can connect with Jing Kuang here:

https://cresca.ai/

You can connect with Karl Pontau here:

www.vouchedconnections.com

www.thehumanconnectionpodcast.com

https://www.linkedin.com/in/kpontau

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCUbf_bDWwB9KVrFn5Sj3u2w?sub_confirmation=1

Please like, subscribe, and share this episode with somebody you care about!

"If the customer misses that sale, there's just gonna be another sale in a few months. And the customers know that, and we know that." Barry Moline has spent nearly three decades as a CEO. He can tell influence from manipulation, and so can your buyers.

In this episode of The Human Connection Podcast, Barry lays out a three-part test for ethical influence: it has to be true, it has to make sense, and it has to be wise. Wise means you'd recommend it to your own family. He explains why scarcity is the most misused persuasion principle, and why 25 handmade clay pitchers count as real scarcity while a Labor Day sale doesn't. He also describes how he structures deals so both sides have skin in the game. On the practical side, he shows how a single introduction ("meet Ginger, our couch expert") can do more for your sales team's credibility than any pitch.

Barry is a Cialdini Institute certified trainer who teaches ethical influence and leadership. He's the author of the award-winning CONNECT! How to Quickly Collaborate for Success in Business and Life, and he speaks and consults nationwide on leadership, team building, and AI leadership strategy.

What you'll get from this episode:

• A three-question test for whether your marketing and sales outreach builds trust or burns it
• Why fake scarcity backfires, and what real scarcity actually looks like
• How structuring deals around shared outcomes turns vendors into partners
• How to establish authority for your team by how you introduce them, before anyone makes a pitch
• Why your buyers skip straight to the one-star reviews, and what that means for social proof

#HumanConnectionPodcast #H2H #B2BRelationships #StartupLeadership #BehavioralScience

===

You can connect with Barry Moline here:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/barry-moline/

Website: https://barrymoline.com/

Email: [email protected]

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@barrymoline6530

You can connect with Karl Pontau here:

www.vouchedconnections.com

www.thehumanconnectionpodcast.com

https://www.linkedin.com/in/kpontau

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCUbf_bDWwB9KVrFn5Sj3u2w?sub_confirmation=1

Please like, subscribe, and share this episode with somebody you care about!

"It's easy, ironically, to forget the human in hiring." Christina Seime has spent 20 years moving from writing code to sitting in the room where hiring decisions get made. Across that whole path, the same gap kept showing up.

In this episode of The Human Connection Podcast, Christina explains why hiring teams keep screening for what's easy to find on a resume and miss what actually predicts whether someone will thrive. Her example is a consultancy with two core values, professional authority and warmth. Nobody could find warmth on a resume until the team agreed on what it looked like: workshops, conference talks, volunteer work. She also takes on a question most leadership teams haven't answered yet. If AI is now doing the intern work, how do you hire your future senior partners?

Christina started as a software engineer and moved into product management, agile coaching, and organizational design. She became Head of People and Flow on the executive team at Spacemaker. Today she's CPO and co-founder of Soolv, where she's building the hiring tool she always wished she'd had.

What you'll get from this episode:

• Why defining the signals for each trait before the job post goes up fixes alignment on large hiring teams
• How the same value word ("warmth," "experience," "team player") means something different to everyone in the room, and how to close that gap
• Why structured, explicit criteria reduce unconscious bias better than trying harder to be objective
• Where the "gold in your applicant pile" gets lost to surface-level ATS and AI screening
• How to hire for the human capabilities you'll need in five years, now that AI handles the grunt work

#HumanConnectionPodcast #H2H #StartupLeadership #CompanyCulture #Hiring

===

You can connect with Christina Seime here:

https://www.linkedin.com/company/soolv

https://www.linkedin.com/in/christinakseime/

https://www.soolv.com/

You can connect with Karl Pontau here:

www.vouchedconnections.com

www.thehumanconnectionpodcast.com

https://www.linkedin.com/in/kpontau

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCUbf_bDWwB9KVrFn5Sj3u2w?sub_confirmation=1

Please like, subscribe, and share this episode with somebody you care about!

"If I'm spending time with you, I'm going to be with you 100%." Vikas Prasanna learned this from his 11-month-old son. Then he noticed it was working on his customers too.

In this episode of The Human Connection Podcast, Vikas talks about what it's like to be a first-time dad while building a dental SaaS company in Ireland. The company is five years old, has raised a seed round, and is on its third pivot. He and his wife are immigrants with no family nearby. His shift to a commercial role meant a heavy travel quarter, and one of those trips came while his son was sick at home. Along the way he stopped holding three conversations in his head at once, and his commercial relationships got better because of it.

Vikas is a product leader with deep experience building healthcare and SaaS products. He's also a product mentor at Udacity, coaches early-stage startups, and holds an MSc in Digital Innovation from UCD Michael Smurfit Graduate Business School.

What you'll get from this episode:

• Why work-life balance for startup leaders is something you average over weeks, not a line you hold every day
• How running a startup on both a macro plan and micro execution translates directly to raising a kid (and back again)
• Why "this is a phase" is a real operating principle, whether you're in a pivot or a sleep regression at 3am
• How being fully present in conversations built stronger business relationships once Vikas moved into sales
• Why your team can tell when you're only half-listening, and what that costs you in trust

#StartupLeadership #HumanConnectionPodcast #H2H #HealthTech #BusinessRelationships

===

You can connect with Vikas Prasanna here:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/vikasnagprasanna/

www.smilegeniusdental.com

You can connect with Karl Pontau here:

www.vouchedconnections.com

www.thehumanconnectionpodcast.com

https://www.linkedin.com/in/kpontau

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCUbf_bDWwB9KVrFn5Sj3u2w?sub_confirmation=1

Please like, subscribe, and share this episode with somebody you care about!

"Be the place where the machine cannot reach, because the machine cannot read the future when it's unstructured. Because it looks at the future by defining the past." — Mohan Nair

You bought the AI tools to buy your leadership team some time. Somewhere between the first automated workflow and this quarter's board deck, that time got spent making the same work faster. (Speeding up a process that never made sense just gets you to the wrong place sooner.)

In this episode of The Human Connection Podcast, Mohan Nair breaks down leadership in the AI era for executives caught between fear and obsession. Mohan is the author of Unreachable: How Not to Lose Your Mind in an AI-Obsessed Era, CEO of the advisory firm Emerge Inc., an Edmund Hillary Fellow, and a former healthcare Chief Innovation Officer who helped create eight startups. His argument: being the best AI person in the room isn't enough. Be the best human transformational leader in it.

What you'll get from this episode:

• The three ways leaders react to AI (afraid, obsessed, enabled), and why the middle path beats both extremes
• Why "AI frees up time for relationships" only works if leaders spend that time on people and not on optimizing the business model
• What machines can and can't do: Mohan's take on Go's Move 37, and why he says AI looks at the future by defining the past
• Karl's case that speed burns bridges at scale: flooded inboxes, samey automated outreach, and a TAM going up in smoke
• Why insight ends up on the side, with an innovation team and beanbags, and how Mohan's teams started from inspiration before ROI (the egg and the golden goose)
• The "first opinion" test: what happens to your thinking when you offload it, plus why he wants a nutrition label on AI, not a warning label
• Why the "soft skills" leaders were told to delegate are now the real differentiators

No matter if your business is B2B or B2C, it's H2H: human to human. Happy connecting.

#H2H #HumanConnectionPodcast #StartupLeadership #CompanyCulture #RelationshipDrivenGrowth

===

You can connect with Mohan Nair here:

MohanNair.com

www.LinkedIn/in/mohanemerge

You can connect with Karl Pontau here:

www.vouchedconnections.com

www.thehumanconnectionpodcast.com

https://www.linkedin.com/in/kpontau

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCUbf_bDWwB9KVrFn5Sj3u2w?sub_confirmation=1

Please like, subscribe, and share this episode with somebody you care about!