Justin sits down with Nils Vinje, business growth guide and longtime customer success leader, to talk about the single biggest thing holding most growing companies back: everything still depends on the CEO.

Nils spent the early part of his career on the leading edge of the customer success movement — convincing his first employer to ditch the "account manager" title back in 2011 — and has since coached hundreds of CS and CX leaders through the challenge of making their function legible to the rest of the organization. These days he works with CEOs and their leadership teams using the Pinnacle system, a five-principle framework built around people, purpose, playbooks, performance, and profit.

In this conversation, Nils and Justin get into what running a CX org teaches you about leadership that no other function can, how to read the label from outside the bottle, and why the hardest decisions in any company are usually the ones everyone already knows need to be made.

He also shares what he'd ask anyone standing at a crossroads in their career — and why the answer has nothing to do with money.

Chapters

[00:00] Intro and What Nils Does Now 

[01:42] What Leading a CX Org Teaches You About Leadership 

[03:30] The Single Biggest Challenge Every CS Leader Faces 

[05:01] Who Nils Works With and When to Bring in Outside Help 

[07:08] The Pinnacle System — Five Principles for a Well-Oiled Machine 

[09:38] Delivering Hard Truths with Grace 

[11:00] The People Problem Most CEOs Won't Solve 

[13:08] Why Being Inside the Bottle Kills Objectivity 

[14:29] The First Question Nils Asks Anyone at a Career Crossroads

 [16:25] What's Next for Nils and the Growth Bottleneck Blueprint 

[18:34] Never Stop Adding Value