#TDSU Episode 257:

⏱️ Timestamps:

00:00:00 - Intro

00:02:25 - Merging humanity with business strategy

00:03:13 - Why founders procrastinate post-sale

00:04:16 - From anxiety to action: Rob’s framework

00:06:11 - Communication: the key to retention

00:07:06 - Courage and growth in the unknown

00:09:10 - Logic versus fear: managing founder anxiety

00:10:23 - Founders don’t know what they don’t know

📺 Lifetime Value: Your Destination for GTM content

Website: https://www.lifetimevaluemedia.com

🤝 Connect with the hosts:

Dillon's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dillonryoung

JP's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeanpierrefrost/

Rob's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rob-zambito/

👋 Connect with Brian Hansen:

Brian's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bhansenconsulting

[Brian] (0:00 - 0:19)

Speaking about the anxiety, it flips around on the other side too. So the buyer, I was talking with somebody yesterday about this. The buyers like all excited, they're coming into onboarding, but what happens with them?

They get distracted. They've got shifting priorities. And then all of a sudden, they're paying way less attention to the product that they bought for one particular reason.

[Dillon] (0:27 - 0:38)

What's up lifers and welcome to the daily standup with lifetime value where we're giving you fresh new customer success ideas every single day. I got my man JP with us. JP, do you want to say hi?

[JP] (0:39 - 0:39)

Hello.

[Dillon] (0:41 - 0:45)

And we have Rob with us. Rob, can you say hi?

[Rob] (0:45 - 0:50)

Salamat Pagi. Do you know Brian?

[Dillon] (0:51 - 0:57)

And we have Brian with us. Brian, can you say hi and tell Rob whether he's correct?

[Brian] (0:58 - 1:02)

He is correct. And JP, I think I'm the one you're looking for.

[Dillon] (1:04 - 1:11)

Okay. Okay. And I'm your host.

My name is Dillon Young. Brian, thank you so much for being here and for playing along. Can you please introduce yourself?

[Brian] (1:12 - 1:45)

Yeah, glad to. Thank you for having me. I'm making a transition here into being a consultant, which is how I connected with Rob.

Also connected over Boston, went to school at Northeastern. So know the city well. And yeah, really exciting time for me.

So Rob knows he already used some Malay. We're also transitioning to move to Malaysia over the summer and grow the business both in the U S and Southeast Asia. So the consulting that I work on is post-sale revenue driving retention expansions and making sure customer insights flow back to sales marketing and product.

[Dillon] (1:45 - 1:48)

Are you at all regretting making all of these decisions at the same time?

[Brian] (1:49 - 2:02)

It is a lot. No, no, I'm excited, man. 2025 is big decision land.

I operate well when there's execution to be done. And these are, these are monster executions. So I'm on it.

[Dillon] (2:02 - 2:24)

Hell yes. I like that. I like that attitude for me personally.

I'm terrified for you. I'll just keep that inside. Brian, you know what we do here?

We ask one simple question of every single guest, and that is what is on your mind when it comes to customer success, post-sale revenue. I like the way you said that you put it right in the title, the thing that everybody wants to talk about right now. So why don't you tell us what that is for you?

[Brian] (2:25 - 2:42)

I think the funnest thing for me is to combine business process and topics with humanity, how humans act, how humans think, how our brains work. And I just had a fun conversation a couple of days ago with somebody talking about procrastination in particular.

[Dillon] (2:42 - 3:12)

So this is interesting because I will, I'm going to build a ring around you and Rob, and I'm going to let you guys just fight it out. Because Rob, it sounds like you think about this exactly the same way, but you used a very different word than Rob typically uses. So I want to hear more about this conversation, how you think about this intersection.

And then I'm not even going to say anything, Rob. I just want you to come right off the turnbuckle and give Brian your best response.

[Brian] (3:13 - 4:12)

All right. So, so the topic was, so I'm trying to help founders focus on their post-sale revenue strategies. But my mini epiphany was, if I'm a founder, I know what marketing is.

I know what sales is. I know what finance is, and I know how to code and bang out code. Put on my headphones, I can bang out code.

All those deliverables have a solid playbook. They've been done a bunch of times. They're not terribly reactive.

And you just go. And the moment you're like, let me think about my post-sale strategy and how my customers are thinking about value and how do I focus on retention and expansion, it's confusing. So that moment of confusion makes me procrastinate.

And I don't then take a first step. And so a lot of what I've been thinking about is how to empathize with that, commiserate with that and say, Hey man, the first step is usually the hardest and I got you. Here's how we take that first step.

And then we go from there. So that moment of confusion is what I've been thinking about and how to take that first step and what blocks people from taking the first step.

[Rob] (4:12 - 4:13)

You just want me to go, go ahead.

[Dillon] (4:14 - 4:14)

DJ Bobby.

[Brian] (4:14 - 4:15)

Come off the top rope.

[Rob] (4:16 - 6:10)

Yeah, this is a good topic. Cause this is the same position that I meet a lot of founders in similar to you, Ryan, no surprise there. I think, I think one of my recent clients said it best.

He's like, he says verbatim in the case study that he did for me recently, he says, I come, I come from a background where I didn't know customer success was a function. No idea. I thought you build the product, you sell the product, and the chart moves up into the right.

And I quickly realized as soon as we signed our first customers, there is no customer journey. And there's, I don't know how to, how to even start researching this between onboarding and value creation and health scoring and renewals and churn management. And Oh, I guess we're supposed to be expanding these customers too.

That's what our board's saying. And then, Oh, you know, referrals those seem cool too. Why don't we get a bunch of referrals?

How do we build that out in a scalable, repeatable process? So, you know, I actually learned a lot when I read, do you ever read the book, getting things done? Any of you guys?

No, it's a really helpful book. It was written probably, I don't know, 20, 30 years ago. So it was written at a different time, but the principles are the same, which is all about getting things done.

Go figure. It's about breaking down the simple first couple steps that get you through that procrastination barrier that you were talking about Brian, where the core is confusion. And I would say even a deeper core is like, anxiety, there's anxiety.

Then there's confusion outside of that. There's procrastination outside of that. And so if you can, the one thing that can just cut through all those layers is if you can ideally identify the most single fundamental principle of what you're trying to do, which maybe it's make customers perceive value.

Maybe it's onboard customers. Maybe it's get customers to renew and collect revenue on, on the back end of that. If you can identify the one core principle that you're trying to achieve and the one next step that you can take toward that goal.

And if you do that enough times over, you can actually build a full on 30 60 90 plan that you can approach without anxiety. It's kind of nice. So that's like one of the things that I think people like you and I get to bring to the world.

Yeah. Which is pretty cool.

[Brian] (6:11 - 7:05)

Yeah. Yeah. And I would say like speaking about the anxiety, it flips around on the other side too.

So the buyer, I was talking with somebody yesterday about this, the buyers like all excited they're coming into onboarding, but what happens with them? They get distracted, they've got shifting priorities and then all of a sudden they're paying way less attention to the product that they bought for one particular reason. So we have to put ourselves in their shoes as well.

And be just be really honest and transparent. You're going to get distracted. Something's going to change and can we commit right now to say when those things are shifting that we're just talking, you know, to your point earlier, it's just like the fundamental principle of retention, expansion and customer value is communication.

You have to have that open line of communication between the vendor and the buyer and multiple stakeholders at best just to be able to talk as people like, let's be on the same side of the table. Like that to me is a really powerful visual that I like to use a lot in these scenarios.

[JP] (7:06 - 9:10)

JP, go ahead. Yeah. I was thinking about when you talked about that gap, you talked, uh, Brian, when you talked about, you know, sort of having all these wonderful skills, just tools, knowledge, what have you, and then having that gap right in that space.

And what my mind sort of went to, as I was hearing things was like getting on your own side, you know, I think that that's such an important thing. Like you came on and you really seem to have a strong, I perceive you to have a strong belief in yourself. There's no way you went to move to Malaysia and started couldn't do all this unless you believed in yourself.

Right. And now you are actually seeing things happen. And, but the fact is like, you know, there really is no crystal ball in life.

And what I mean by that is like, there's, you don't have the assurance that what you're doing is going to succeed or fail. And I think that that gap is where I see like, it's like the courage gap to me, because no matter how you slice it, it's an act of courage to ultimately take that first step into, into something unknown to be like, Hey, I'm going to go out there and do it. And I just think that even reflecting like my own journey and how I've been learning things about customer success over the years.

And yet it can seem like when you're confronted with the situation, it can be easy to throw everything out the window. You know, you're sort of like, Oh, you begin to doubt. I begin to doubt maybe my own knowledge or where I'm coming from.

But if I, if I take that courage to come forward, right. It's not as important about whether I succeed or fail in it. It's the ability to actually take that courage to actually go see, because without it, we don't, you know, we don't see it.

So I think that that's sort of what I got out of that is like, you know, can't spend too much time in that space of like anxiety and confusion or whatever, just because you don't know how it's going to turn out, you know, go out there, you're either going to succeed or fail, but that's where that growth is happening.

[Brian] (9:10 - 10:05)

Yeah, for sure. And then like, speaking of human, human brains, like that anxiety is there for a reason, right. It's to protect us from what could possibly happen.

So we stay alive and, but we can recognize that that's there for that reason. And for me it's, yes, it's courage, but it's also doing things logically, doing research, talking with folks like Rob, like I reached out to Rob to understand what a successful consultant does and how he operates, how he builds pipeline. So it's, it's not only the courage to do so, but it's also the step-by-step in order so that you're not, you're not messing up.

Prior to this call, I was talking to a marketing consultant. How do you market yourself? How do you market your skills?

How can I build on some of that? So, so I'm with you, JP, you got to have that understanding first that your brain is telling you one thing it's for a reason, but we've evolved to know that that exists for a reason and that we can act against it and then take some, take some steps that match the possibility with kind of logical process too.

[Rob] (10:05 - 10:23)

If I can add one thing too, that I've learned from experience, like I'm a chronic overthinker and I have learned so much more by just forcing myself to action and reflecting on that as opposed to dawdling forever and ever optimizing the decision. But it happens to me all the time.

[Dillon] (10:23 - 12:18)

This all makes me wonder, it seems so elementary to have an idea about a problem to solve, to build something that can solve that problem and then go find people who might also have that problem that you can sell that thing to. And it also seems like a very small piece of the pie as compared to what it takes to run your business once it becomes a business, which is basically you sell this product or service to a couple of people at least. So all of the like bookkeeping and the post-sale revenue and HR, it seems like all of that is a bit of a black box to the founder that you described at the very beginning, Brian.

And so I don't mean to downplay what it is that we all do, which is the post-sale operations stuff and customer management. But I think that there's a lot that founders don't know how to do and we would do well in our roles to just keep that in mind that they are not the end all be all, all knowing individuals that we often think because they are visionaries. They had this idea, they went and went after it.

I don't really have any like, you know, like learning that comes from that except that's, that's sort of what it made me think of is that there's so much more to the world of business than these guys originally think. And I think most people originally think, Brian, that is our time, very exciting stuff happening for you. I would love for you to come back and maybe let's just talk about Malaysia.

I want to hear what happens with that whole experience and how you manage a business that is at least in part anchored in the U S while working on the other side of the world. I'm mostly interested in hearing about that, but also your trials and tribulations as you build this thing out until that time, Brian, we do have to say goodbye. Yep.

I agree.

[VO] (12:24 - 13:00)

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