Jeff is joined by Carly Agar, who helps people land jobs in Customer Success. Carly spent many years as a high-performing CSM before starting her own practice. In this chat, Carly discusses:

• Her move from CSM to starting her own consulting practice vs going into a management role

• Career paths and making the right next step

• Transitioning from other careers into CSM

• Networking do's and dont's

• Startups vs big company

• Heavy stock paper resumes and the importance of zippered briefcases

This was a blast to record! Follow Carly at https://www.carlyagar.com/

Transcript:

 Computer. All right. Here I am with Carly Agar. Agar. Oh my God, I did it. I have to go back. , we just talked about that. We just did this for like five minutes. Carly's like, say it again. I'm like, agar. Agar

and Agar. Agar. Long. A .

Long a, but not agar. Don't, don't do that.

Yes. There's no invisible p it's just agar.

Right. So Carly and I met, I believe on Ingrow Retain we're, we are, there's some, there's a couple pools that we both swim in and mm-hmm. and and, and and, and Carly did a great job with our LinkedIn profile cause you are the number one. Basically customer how to get a job as a, as a customer success person a CSM or in the CS field.

And Carly definitely has walked the walk. She did a lot of times as the CSM and what, what I would classify as a lot of data insight companies, which is. It's, it's harder work sometimes and so I definitely want to give props to that. But then you sort of just switched into helping people find jobs, right.

So I'd love to just chat into that and we've got some some, some best practices and some conversation points that we got into, so we'll, we'll go from there. Awesome. Yeah. What made the big change happen where you're like, Hey, I'm gonna do this full-time

now? Great question. So there is a moment I think, in every c s M's career where.

All right. I'm outta fork in the road. I can move up into management, right? I can become a team lead. I can become a manager, a director of customer success. Great path, right? Yep. Yep. Very, very lucrative. But I did a lot of self-reflection and I think a lot of people actually missed this step in determining their next steps in their career.

and they wind up being a manager

and unhappy. Yes. and I, you know, I, I did a lot. I, I think maybe my time in research and data has kind of forced me into this, like, use data for every decision you make. So maybe I, maybe I overanalyzed it, but. . I mean, I looked at all of my manager's calendars. I sat in on all their meetings.

I really dissected like, what will my day-to-day look like? Mm-hmm. as a manager of a team, and it just simply came back down to the fact that I didn't want to do that

job. Yeah. I, and I hear you, and I think we might have talked about this when we first got together. But like having somebody walk into your office and they're like, okay, I am six weeks pregnant and I just wanted you to know that, so, because I'm missing me.

Like, you have all of those types of things where you're like, oh, wow, that is, you just cr you take on a lot of people's sort of burden. Right. And I don't, I mean, yeah, like it's a burden as a thing, but like you pick, you pick up a lot of your, your employees that you're managing. what they're dealing with.

And that can weigh on you if you don't know how to to deal with that, right?

Totally. Yeah. You have to really sit down and think about what are the activities that give me energy? Absolutely. And what are the activities that drain my energy? And for me, a big thing, if you talk to any of my past managers and any of them listen to this, I'm sure they're gonna laugh.

The thing that drains my energy most is internal meetings. Oh.

That's why I'm a, that's why I'm a consultant, cuz I, I, I'll gladly do the work, but I don't wanna do internal

meetings. . Yes. And so, you know, the reality is, as a manager, you, you are spending 90% of your time in internal meetings. Yep. And in thinking about that as a next step in my career, it just didn't make sense.

I didn't wanna feel like my energy was drained all the time. That also meant that I wasn't gonna be good at it. Right? Yep. If you're operating from a place of having no energy, you're not gonna perform and then your team's not gonna perform. So it, it didn't make sense for me to move into management.

Right.

So, so this is interesting because when we were putting our outline together for this, the first thing we were gonna talk about was career paths and making the right next step. But you just walked through how you. Mm-hmm. . Now, how do you work with the people that you know? I, so we've got, we've got a, a couple different things.

I, I think there's a lot of career transitioners, right. That you're working with right now. Mm-hmm. . Yeah. How are you helping them decide if, if, if going down this c s M path is the right way to go? .

That's a great question, and I'll be honest in saying, a lot of the folks that I work with have already done that work.

Okay. They, they have a baseline understanding of what customer success means and. , they're now at a point where they're ready to go all in on this as their next step in their career. Got it. What I will say, I am helping guide them through is, is it just a customer success manager role that I'm open to?

Mm-hmm. , or is it I'm potentially open to becoming an onboarding specialist. Got it. Or is it a renewal manager role? Right. It's still broadly customer success, but it's really finding those places where, again, they're, they're gonna feel energized. They're not gonna feel like their energy is being sucked out of them.

Absolutely. Another thing that folks also need help. trying to navigate is, do I fit in at a startup or do I fit in at a big company? Oh yeah.

This is what I'm going through. This is with my daughter right now for college. Like, do you want to go to a small school? Do ever you wanna go to big school?

Mm-hmm. , big school in a city. Small school in the countryside. Right. Exactly. Mm-hmm. . Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. And I think with that, that question becomes a little bit murky because I think there are. . There are a lot of generalizations that people make about, oh, if I join a big company, it means I'm just gonna be a number.

Ah. Or if I join a startup, it means I'm gonna be grinding all the time. I'm never gonna have a break. I'm not gonna have work-life balance. And in those scenarios, I think it's really important that you are asking good questions in your interviews to really uncover. . Okay. This might be a giant company, but their CS org might be really immature.

Right. So a CSM might actually be operating as if they were in a startup. Yep. . Whereas I've had the luxury of joining many startups where even though the team was really small, the, the CS leadership was very mature. Hmm. And so there were a lot of processes in place. It didn't feel like I was just making stuff up all the time.

So,

and you have to be comfortable with that, right? Because it is So, I, I think one of the biggest things in, in helping people. Particular decision is, you know, by the way, you might not be managed that much, right? Mm-hmm. know, part of the thing about being a startup is that like you might not have weekly one-on-ones and you might not exactly have the, that path directed that you need to, and you may just need to.

Exactly as you said. Kind of make some stuff and see if it sticks and things like that. Mm-hmm. .

Yeah. I think something that people often don't sit down and really reflect on is, how do I like to receive praise? Mm-hmm. . So some people like a, a salesperson, right? A really dedicated salesperson is very motivated by results.

Yep. By hitting numbers, right? Maybe even receiving public accolades for hitting or exceeding their numbers. . Some people like to receive accolades privately, like in a one-on-one setting. Other folks don't need accolades. They just like to feel like they're contributing to something. Yeah. And that can also play a huge part in where you belong and where you're gonna end up feeling happy.

Absolutely. So do you help you guide people whether they should go start up or big company

or, oh yeah. It's always a topic of conversation. Yeah.

That's great. Mm-hmm. . So when we were talking you, you said basically a lot of people just rely on their resume and actually you're pretty fired up about it, so So, so let's, let's get into that a little bit. In, in, in how you helped them as well, too, on that, on that subject.

Yeah. I'm glad you brought that up. And the reason. Gets me so fired up is because I think it's one of those old industry norms that a lot of people have maybe been afraid to or just haven't even thought about.

Kind of flipping it on its head and thinking about, well, wait a second. This is how we've done this for centuries, probably, right? Yep, yep, yep. This is the thing that we use to get our foot in the door at companies forever. , does this still make sense in today's job market? Does this still make sense given how prevalent social media is?

Right.

It's crazy. Yeah. I, I just on that note before I forget I'm gonna very much date myself here. The big thing, the big thing for me was getting like a really heavy stock paper. Oh

my gosh, yes. .

Oh my God. Like you'd walk into like some really fancy, like not staples. Now I'm too good for staples.

Where's the fancy paper store? Like pirates

or something like this? And you couldn't do Wait. Oh my gosh. This is bringing my,

it was like a laid, woven, now it's popping into my head. Yes. .

Wait, so it was, you couldn't. Stark white paper. Nice. Had nice slightly off white . It had to be thick but not too thick.

And when you showed up to interviews in person, you had to have like the black leather,

oh, zip up. It's got a little calculator inside it. Just in case you need to start breaking out some math on your salary negotiation right there. Oh gosh. That is

too

funny. Yes. You know I had the standard joke I would use every time cause they'd feel that paper and I'd.

Wait. I used this with business cards back in the day too. I'm like, oh. The best thing about this is that if, if you go out to eat and get a little piece of food in your teeth, you can, you can just

Oh my gosh. I am just now. Having all that anxiety, you

must have been on the tail end or, or have a fantastic moisturizing routine , because I can't believe you had to deal with the paper situation, so Oh my

gosh. The old ways of interviewing. Yeah. All the anxieties of making sure. Well, they told me that I'm gonna interview with five people, so I better have 37 copies of my roommate just in case

Right.

That's so true. Oh my god.

Yeah. Going back to your point, so I think it, it is one of those old industry norms where we have to start questioning it, right? Is this the most effective tool for getting our foot in the door? And I think in some cases the answer is yes. . Okay. If you, if you've got, if you're in customer success and you're trying to move into a U Cs position, your resume is still going to do the work for you.

Mm-hmm. . But when you're coming from any other career and you are a quote unquote career transitioner, if you think about it, there's always gonna be experienced CSM submitting their resumes too. Mm-hmm. . So you're always at a disadvantage. In, in those instances, your resume is doing nothing to help you.

Okay? Right. And if all we do as career transitioners is rely on our resume, we're basically leaving our entire job search up to hope and luck and timing. And we don't, we don't want that. Right? Yeah. We wanna take control of our destiny, so to speak. So I think I would say the number one, Mistake that career transitioners make is they, they rely too much on their resume.

Okay. Okay. Can you , since we're we're in the laughing mode, , we were talking about people doing some just like outrageous like metaphors of like, Manage it. I managed two kids, but it would turn into like what a CSM thing would be. It would be like you know, like, oh, responsible for, for four constituents.

Uh, . couldn't remember exactly, but it was like, it was like, okay, you're trying a little too hard on pulling out previous experiences and mapping them to CSM stuff. So, yeah,

I think so. What I see a lot. And I understand why folks make this mistake, but what I see a lot of is, oh, I need to translate my resume to more corporate speak.

Right? And so they'll kind of just do like a control F of their resume and swap out words and. Unfortunately that it doesn't help because number one, it, it doesn't necessarily mean that you understand what you're claiming. Mm-hmm. , right? And that's gonna show up in an interview right away. So rather than just control effing certain words and you know, replacing them with a new word like customers or clients.

Yeah. I think what you're way better off doing is sitting down. Dissecting any customer success, job description, and really asking yourself. First of all, do I understand what this means? Right? There's gonna be lingo in there that you don't understand as a career transitioner, and that's okay. Mm-hmm.

perfect opportunity for you to go do some research or go network and ask people in this space what these things actually mean. . Then once you have the understanding, you can move into a real self-reflection process. So it's okay now, now that I understand what this thing is in the job description. Mm-hmm.

I can now sit down and ask myself, have I done something similar? How do I do this? in my current world, and now I can take that information and rewrite a bullet point in my resume that not only speaks to recruiters and hiring managers in this space, but now you've also got the benefit of having a better understanding of what they're looking for.

Oh, yeah. I'm just gonna help you come time for your interviews.

Yeah, which will just eliminate a lot of those really bad first interviews or screeners or or whatnot.

So yeah. Yeah. Absolut. . Exactly.

Okay. We wanted to also talk about some network stuff and some dos and don'ts on how to work the network.

Here we go. Another firing topic for

another topic I get fired up about. So one thing I'll say about networking, and I think so many people don't realize this is. . You don't just, you're not just born a great networker. It's not just something that comes innately to people. Mm-hmm. it, it truly is a skill that you have to learn and develop.

And I think a lot of folks just get intimidated by the word networking and you know, they think, I've never done this. I don't know how to do this. And maybe some imposter syndrome sets in. Absolutely. Yep. But networking, it's a skill. Just like anything else, just like interviewing is a skill. My, I'll start with my don'ts for network.

Perfect. Yes. Don't do this. No, I would say number one, don't network yourself into a box. Meaning if you are, let's say you're transitioning from hospitality into customer success. Mm-hmm. , don't just network with people who have made that transition because now your network is not very, . Right. And you're now only if you are actually actively talking to these people, you're only gaining the perspective of people who have transitioned.

but you're better off networking with people who have been in the space for a long time. Absolutely. Or people who have come from sales or education into customer success. So you wanna build a really diverse network so that your knowledge of the space becomes more well-rounded. Got it.

And where, where's the typical, is it LinkedIn?

Are there other spots that you're usually helping people?

LinkedIn is my number one. Yep. It just feels so accessible and easy. .

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And, and I don't know if you agree with this, but I'm usually like, yeah, you gonna make that your job. You know, if you're looking for a gig, like it's an hour, put an hour a day in, or half an hour in the morning, and then half an hour in the afternoon or whatever.

Mm-hmm. and you know, and also don't be annoying and things like that, so. Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah,

yeah. Some other don'ts for networking, I would say. Don't focus on the, the number of connections that you have. Right. I see some advice out there where it's like, oh, you have to have 500 connections on LinkedIn to be taken seriously.

I don't, I don't subscribe to that.

I've never looked at that number. Yeah, it's, yeah, in these days it's almost like an anti thing. I'm like, whoa, what are you doing with those, you know, 5,000

plus connections, . Right. I think it's a vanity metric. It's kind of like Time on page. Yeah. It's like that old vanity metric that it really doesn't mean anything.

It doesn't tell you anything. Yeah. So rather than focusing on the number of, in this case, LinkedIn connections that you have, I would focus on the quality of those connections. So, , you know, ways to make your connections more of a higher quality is by actually getting on the phone with these people.

Right. And, and owning those conversations. Ask them really strategic questions that are gonna help you in your job search. I'd rather you have five quality connections than 2000 LinkedIn

connections. Got it. Yeah. That makes total. . Absolutely. It almost sounds like a due there. Are there any other dues to, to suggest?

Yes. I would say the biggest due that I see folks really hesitating, especially that first one, is ask people to get on the phone.

Oh, interesting.

Yeah. I think when you. And this gets into more Jews and don'ts, but if you just send a, a generic message and it's like, Hey, I see I used to get these all the time.

Hey, I see you work at Heap. Seems like a really cool company would love, but no ask

after that, right? There's just like, okay, great. Yeah,

there's no ask. And so I read it and I think, okay, that that's cool. Yeah. I love Heap. I think Heap is cool too. awesome. I'll accept your connection, but that's not doing anything for that person.

Right. , if someone were to, here's another, don't now send me 10 paragraphs. Mm-hmm. , and give me an autobiography about who they are and what they're doing, and what they're looking for, and they ask me for too much help in an initial message. . Now I'm gonna read that and I'm gonna go, well, that's pretty unfair, right?

Yeah. That's

what the archive functions for in

Winton, , . No. Not only are you asking me to spend 10 minutes reading this message, but you're asking me to do work. Right. And that that's not fair. Yeah. So I like to just keep your networking messaging very concise, but very specific. Yep. So even if you were to just say my name, , whatever.

This is what I'm doing. Would you be open to a 15 minute phone call? I just wanna ask you some questions about X, Y, and Z. It makes it really easy for the receiver of the message to say, okay, if I say yes to this ask, I know exactly what I'm signing up for. Yeah, right. , it's nothing more than a 15 minute phone call.

They've already given me a heads up on what we're gonna talk about. So now I can come prepared. And that's an easy yes. In my opinion. Yeah,

absolutely. Absolutely. So when, I've actually bumped into a lot of people recently that are, that are transitioning and they're, they're, I have boiled it down to two different careers that they're transitioning from.

I wanna see if lots of teachers, lots of sales people,

yes. . Yes. So teachers definitely, for sure. I would say 70% of my clients are coming from education.

Oh my God. Just, it just breaks your heart for the educa, you know, I got kids like, oh my god, the

teachers. Yeah. Yeah. It absolutely does. But everyone deserves, you know, that, that career opportunity, the financial freedom, the work-life balance, and.

They can't get that in education right now, then we should be helping them to find it elsewhere. Absolutely. Right. Yep, yep, yep. Yeah. Super interesting that you bring up sales because I've noticed that, I wanna say in October. Okay. It really started picking up. I'm starting to, that's

about right as well.

That's interesting.

And the number one thing, you know, I always ask like, why? Why do you feel called to customer success? Why do you wanna make this transition? And the number one thing I'm hearing is I wanna get away from living and breathing and dying by my quota. Quota. Yeah. Yeah. And I don't know if that has anything to do with just the way that the market is right now.

I'm sure it's more difficult for sales reps to meet their numbers. But definitely seeing that trend.

That's a great point. I'll also say that the sales people I've met were like heavy hitters too. It's not like, ah, you know, I did like three years as a bdr. People went to President's Club and all that other stuff and, and everything.

So I was just shocked on that. But that's, I think that that's probably a big point of it, is that, that quote and that's, that's, that's a tough, you know, you gotta be, That's, that's a, that's a tough way to live, and you gotta just be like, oh yeah, it's a different type of blood that courses through your veins

that way.

Right? Yeah. You have to be so resilient. Yeah, absolutely.

Yeah. So I know, you know, we were trying to keep this in a certain timeframe. Any other sort of tips out there, and then we'll get into how people can reach out and contact you and all that fun stuff, so, yeah,

yeah, yeah. So I'm lo I always love to encourage job seekers, and again, going back to my background in data, to really take a data back to approach to your job search, meaning you log on to LinkedIn, there's so much advice out there, right?

Some people say you should write a cover letter for every job. Some people say don't write cover letters, and I don't believe for anything in life, but especially for the job search, there's not one best Right. Only way to go about it. Yeah. The fact of the matter is every way is gonna work. It's just what's gonna work for you, right?

And so to help with that overwhelm of advice and to help you focus on one thing. , look at the data. Are you, are you applying to hundreds of jobs and not getting any interviews? Well, that's telling you that whatever you're currently doing, if it's, let's say you are writing a cover letter for every job.

Yeah. You're not getting any return on that time investment. Right. Right. . So maybe it's time to, to get away from the cover letter and try networking.

Yeah. Take that 15, 30 minutes a day that you were writing cover letters and start reaching out to people.

Exactly, exactly. So it's not all about spending more time, cuz if the things that you're already doing aren't getting you a return, spending more time on it is not gonna change

that Absolut.

Yeah, that's great. Well, I don't wanna have you give away too much of your secret sauce, right. Cause there's certain things I get on calls too. I'm, oh yeah, that's, that's the special stuff. That's that's gonna buy me a drink for that one. But but let's talk about and then we'll get some fun stuff after that.

How do people find you besides looking for the number one customer success career specialist on LinkedIn in the top 25 influencer

list? I love that. So, yeah, LinkedIn is definitely my, my bread and butter, so you can always find me on LinkedIn or you can visit my website. So it's just carly agar.com.

Yeah. And I have a ton of free trainings, free resources templates on there. So

I'll also just say f. Anybody just listening. Even if you're not looking for a job, just subscribe or follow Carly as well, because just really good content that's out there and that's how, cause I'm not looking and I, that's how I saw your stuff as well too.

I'm like, this is really good. So you're putting the effort in, so I wanna call it out,

so, absolutely. Thanks so much. Appreciate

it. So let's get into some fun stuff, right? All right. A non CS book that you're reading right now.

Oh my gosh. Shoot.

You really totally on the spot.

Oh my gosh, I can't remember the name.

Hold on. I have to think of it. Sorry. Just cuz all what we do is we read CS books.

Oh, it's called Rich Dad Poor Dad. Oh yeah. That's

a fantastic

book. Yes, yes. Such a good book. Yes. I'm really into the self-improvement genre, so that's usually what's fired up on my kind.

Oh, that's interesting. I, I went through that a few years ago, but then, then it's funny seeing how that stuff forks because guys do other stuff.

Like they don't want to hear self-help unless it comes from like a Navy Seal or something like that. . So, and you start seeing, I, some of my customers, I like, you know, I help 'em out on exec staff stuff and everything. They're like, we wanna see everybody with extreme ownership. I'm like, oh, you're. You're listening to Jocko now, like, got it.

You know what I mean? Yeah, yeah. Which dad poor. That's great. So awesome. And so holidays are coming up. Anything fun that you're lined up for for doing that?

Yes. So Christmas Eve, I have a big Italian family. Oh, the

fishes. Yeah, I'm half a tell you can't tell me my last name. I'm, I'm my half of my family's right from Italy.

Like I'm like second generation. So absolutely. I would say we're,

we're more of like the seven Proseccos kind of family as opposed seven . But I'm really excited because this is the first Christmas Eve in, I wanna say three years, where we're really doing like the big tradition just because of Covid and.

you know, the last few years. So I am so excited. I'm like counting down the hours to Christmas Eve. Oh, that's

awesome. And I, I, my Christmas Eve, I, cuz you'll appreciate this from the Italian side, I have to get to the pastry shop in Medford, which in Massachusetts is Medford, all Italian and . That's where my family moved to from Italy.

And my grandfather used to go there and you can't go to any place but this one, it's Arthur Pastry in Medford by the way. And and you have to get there literally. an hour before they open and the line just goes out the door all day long just to be able to get your pastries for, for, for Christmas.

It's amazing.

Yes, yes. We take our, we take our food assignments very seriously. Everyone will be waiting in their respective lines at their respective bakeries and deli's.

And, and we also did not we're not cooking the Italian stuff. We're going to like the best Italian place and we're just like getting traded.

Oh, nice. Yeah. You know, you got three kids. It's, it's, it's a lot of stuff, right? Yeah. Everybody's, it's make it easy on yourself, right? For sure. Yeah. Yeah. Well, Carly, it's been awesome. Hold on one second while we're gonna we'll post all the links and the, and the post and everything like that. And thanks so much for joining.

Thank you. And uh, hold on one quick second and we'll do a quick wrap up. Thanks a ton. Okay.