Carl Lenocker: What Top 1% CSMs Know About Revenue and Relationships #242

Hello, hello everyone. This is your host, Akhil Jabbar, and welcome back to another episode of SaaS District. In today's episode, we'll be talking about what do the top 1% of CSMs know about revenue and relationships. Today we have our guest, Carl Leniker, joining us. Carl is the Chief Unicorn at Rockstore Unicorn Consulting and a top-tier customer success executive. He has over 20 years experience in operating in high-stakes, revenue-critical environments. He has built his career managing and protecting multimillion-dollar relationships, focusing on executive-level conversations where outcomes matter more than optics and whether— where revenue is either secured or quietly lost, which we'll talk about more today. So Carl teaches customer success professionals to think and act like revenue owners and not support teams, which is extremely critical. And he's also the author of the book, which is Success Plan for Life, where he applies the same principles used to protect enterprise accounts— yeah, right there, we can see it— to career growth, wealth building, and long-term leverage, helping leaders earn trust, de-risk renewals, and break through professional ceilings. So welcome, Carl. Super excited to have you on the show today.

Hey, Akeel, thanks so much for having me, man. I'm a big fan of the show, and you just gave us a mouthful in terms of all the different things we could talk about today. I'm excited to be here.

Yeah, lots of interesting stuff. But I'd love to hear about your background. You said you spent 20 years in high-stake environments protecting revenue. It's super important. It's not talked enough in today's world, especially in the SaaS world. Maybe you could just speak a little bit about your background and what shaped your approach to customer success early on and got you to where you are today.

Oh, man. I mean, there's so much, right? If you spend a lot of time in this business, you get to see it from all different angles. And I certainly have. It's really been More like 30 years lately. I'll date myself by saying that. I'll make myself look older than I, I already look old and haggard on video, and I'll, I'll make myself look even older by saying that.

But, Mm-hmm.

you know, I started out many, many years ago on the customer side at Hewlett-Packard and, and, you know, working with vendors and kind of seeing things from the customer side and the client side in terms of, you know, solutions that were being brought to us to solve big, complex, you know, hairy problems and, you know, multimillion-dollar problems, to be honest. I mean, some really big deals. you know, came in on my watch. And at one point throughout my experience there, I thought, God, you know, I gotta get on the vendor side of this deal. I gotta be the practitioner of solutions, you know, not the consumer. I wanna do it from that side. And so eventually I, you know, found my way into the partner world and then onto the software vendor side where, you know, I focused on relationships throughout my entire career. I mean, I've always been a relationship guy one way or the other, going all the way back to when I was on the help desk in like 1998. You know, I was a relationship guy. And, you know, I found tremendous value in that throughout my career. And the more that I've kind of moved, you know, up in the world, the more I've understood that the relationships between vendors and their customers are just the most valuable things that any of us will ever touch. I mean, if you can own those relationships, whether you're a sales rep or you're an account manager, you're a CSM like me, you know, you will be invaluable to your company and suddenly you'll have leverage. And so when I started speaking at conferences, you know, a couple of years ago, CSMs would kind of rush the podium after I was done and they would say like, you know, how do I get to where I can be like you and I can manage a $50 million portfolio where I can make over a quarter million dollars a year? Like, how do I do those things? And, you know, I didn't know it at the time, but I was finding out very quickly that I was a top 1% CSM. I didn't even know it at the time. And everybody wanted to know, how do I become a top 1% CSM? So I've kind of focused my last year or so on helping people do that, you know, through coaching and consulting. And obviously I wrote the book. And it's just been a passion of mine to share what I've learned because I feel like this business has been so good to me over the years. I mean, I've done so much. It's a big part of my personal wealth engine. It's what's helped me create a multimillion-dollar net worth, and I want to share back now with the community. I want to give something back. So that's a big part of the reason I'm doing speaking, I'm doing consulting, I'm doing podcasts, I'm doing whatever I can to kind of get the message out to folks on how they can get their careers leveled up.

Absolutely. Love it. So, you know, people listening in who are maybe CSMs or have CSMs on their team, I imagine most people do who are listening on this podcast. You know, you talk a lot about the mind shift, mindset shift. You know, a lot of people think of their CSMs more like support teams, but you look at it more like operating like a revenue owner, which I love. And what is really the kind of that mindset shift that has to happen within most CSMs that maybe they haven't made and that you should suggest— you suggested them?

Yeah, well, there's a couple really. I mean, you know, the first thing is that, you know, a lot of folks— when I got into the strategic account side of the business, a lot of folks would come to me and they'd say, God, do you really want all that trouble? You really want to, you know, manage multi-million dollar accounts? Like, that seems like you could be fired at any minute if things go wrong. You know, that's a lot of stress. That's a lot of risk to carry.

Yeah.

And I said, are you guys crazy? I mean, this is the most leverage I'll ever have in my career in terms of, you know, getting raises, getting promotions, getting stock grants, getting options, getting all these things, and you guys are all afraid of this, right? That's it. So it became clear to me at that point that there is no real career ladder on the post-sale side of things. Over here, it's a little different than being a sales rep, right? Where you come in as an SDR and you work your way up to an account executive, and then maybe you're a strategic account executive, and eventually you get to ultra accounts or whatever, and you're making millions and millions of dollars. On the CS side, Folks didn't really grasp the concept at the time that, you know, maybe you come in as a commercial or a startup CSM and you work your way up to enterprise and then you get to strategics. And as the accounts grow, the more money you can make, the more wealth you can create for yourself, the more leverage you have in those annual conversations with your employers. So I think that that was kind of an important thing that I started exposing a while back through some of my keynotes and speaking was that, you know, hey, you guys need to really start thinking about You know, what do you want out of your career and how do you, how do you build leverage that will enable you to create that? Because, you know, being a top 1% CSM is not something you just fall into. It requires that you approach your career with a strategic angle, like you would approach, you know, accounts. And it looks completely different than say the startup or commercial side where you're focused on, you know, technical achievements and, you know, adoption and training your customer and all this stuff, right? On the strategic or the top 1% side, It looks more like a legacy sales rep where you're, you know, you're wining and dining customers, you're building relationships, you're gaining trust, you're trying to become the guy that when they have a real serious problem, you have a solution and you've got a whole team behind you that you can deploy and they trust you to do that. So it's a mind shift completely.

So what is it that, you know, you talk about managing, you know, the relationship is everything here, right? And as you know, somebody listening in, they want to become that top 1%, just like, just like you. What does it take to be able to properly, effectively manage that relationship and make sure you drive that renewal and expand that portfolio?

Yeah, I mean, a big part of it is being fearless. I would say, you know, that's the great thing about sales reps, right? They come up through this funnel where they start out as SDRs making cold calls and they quickly learn that rejection is just another part of your day, right? It's not a big deal. On the post-sales side, we don't, we don't really have that funnel. So a lot of our folks come into the business very scared. You know, very, you know, fearful of, oh my God, I, you know, if I reach out to this customer and I ask them to lunch and they say no, like, oh, are their feelings gonna be hurt? And are they ever gonna talk to me again? You know, or if I, if I offer to take this customer to dinner, are they gonna think that's weird? You know, like, no, like, you know, you gotta get over all that stuff if you wanna be a great relationship manager on the post-sale side. And you gotta start thinking more like a sales rep, quite frankly. So I would say, you know, kind of understanding the relationship side, the soft skills, basically all the things that are not taught, which is— Mm-hmm. You know, a big problem in CS land right now, right, where customer success does not pay for training for their people in general, right? I mean, they'll put you through technical training. They'll say, oh, you go and you learn our products, you do these things. But when it comes to like bringing CSMs to SKO, where they get to hear, you know, inspirational speakers and relationship experts, or, you know, putting them through like Sandler sales training, that type of thing, it just, it doesn't happen. So The best CSMs that I know that have wriggled their way into top 1% land have gone out and got this kind of training on their own. They've paid for it out of pocket. Maybe they've gone and found, you know, the best MBA programs that have executive presence and executive leadership programs, and they've gotten it there. Maybe they've gone out and they've taken sales training. I know a lot of folks who have a coach who's helping them with their speaking or just, you know, in general, you know, being more credible in front of more senior levels, right? Because I'd say that a lot of account executives that I've met, you know, on the sales side have no problem walking into a room with a C-level, right? And just throwing down, here's, here's what I can bring you, and, you know, here's what I have to offer, and let's have a discussion. But a lot of CSMs, if you put them in that same boardroom, they would just melt right away and they wouldn't know what they're doing. And it's not really their fault, it's that they haven't been exposed to the right training and they haven't had the right experience growing up because the CSM career ladder is completely broken.

Yeah. So you mentioned a couple of times, right, that part of that soft skills is, you know, facing those fears. I guess they have those fears and then being fearless. And one of that is like you mentioned, some real-world interactions, like going out to dinner, is acting, you know, like the sales folks going out and having those in-person meetings with the CEO or whoever you're interacting with. You know, what do you suggest to some of those folks who are okay, look, they understand and they're aware that they do have those fears, but they want to get out and improve that and Why does that maybe matter more than perfectly running? We should talk about QBRs.

Yeah, totally. I mean, so I'm not a psychologist myself, but I'm married to one, which has given me a lot of insight over the years, right? My wife has taught me about something called exposure therapy where if you're fearful of something, you should expose yourself to more of it. For example, if you're fearful of driving on the freeway, you should go on the freeway more, maybe just for one exit and then get off. Or maybe next time it's 2 exits and get off, right? Or maybe you should have someone else drive you and kind of get used to that experience of being on the freeway over time. Same thing with fear of flying or whatever. And I would say that the same thing goes for, you know, being in big important rooms with big important people. You know, one of the things that, that, that helped me get over those fears early on in my career were, you know, going with the sales rep, you know, when I was a young CSM, you know, and, and I would say, you know, oh, you're, you're going out to meet with, you know, the, the chief information officer, you know, do you mind if I come? I promise I won't jump into the middle of the conversation. I won't ruin your deal, right? Because sales reps are also paranoid always that CS people are just going to blow up whatever they're working on. But, you know, I just want to be a fly on the wall and listen. And, you know, if he asks a question, maybe I can answer it. And they were like, sure, yeah, I'd love you to come. And luckily I worked for a company at the time that supported that, right? It was great because, you know, they were like, yeah, in-person is everything. I think I had a boss at the time who said, in-person is insight. was used to be his motto, you know, that if you could get in the room with the customer, you could learn so much more than just over the phone or Zoom. So, you know, I started riding along with sales reps in the field and kind of just getting used to being in there. And then before long, I began to kind of develop confidence where when we would go, I would, you know, kind of take over maybe half the conversation with the customer. And then before long, it became most of the conversation because the sales reps that I worked with had this great understanding that if you bring a post-sale person with you, You know, they're not selling anything. They don't carry a quota. The customer's gonna be disarmed. They can have a conversation about solutions, you know, and not worry about how much is this gonna cost. And the—

Okay.

The rep could kind of tag along with me at that point. So that became kind of a trademark of my personal brand of customer success over the years. You know, as I, I worked at some of the biggest companies in the industry, and I still do, you know, the sales reps would look to me to create the meetings, get out in front of the customer, and then they would tag along with me to, to do their business.

And they would uncover a lot of, a lot of future incremental revenue that So, you know, so you mentioned, you know, obviously going out, getting that exposure, and, you know, if possible, going out to the field, meeting your customers with and tagging along with the sales folks. Now, you know, a lot of folks are maybe working, um, you know, remotely, probably most of them, and they're, you know, stuck on these digital Zoom calls, um, and probably their sales teams as well. Maybe they're not able to have that opportunity to meet with their folks. Is there anything else you suggest? Would you recommend to them to jump on Zoom calls with some of their sales folks while they're having meetings and ask them that? Or what else would you recommend to get that exposure and face that fear?

Yeah, 100%. I mean, you've got to be in every room or on every call that there's an interesting conversation going on. But I would say, like, we all know people right now who are in a travel ban or their company has frozen travel for CS or whatever, right? You've got to get creative in those situations until you can work for the perfect company that supports you doing those things. You've got to get creative. And one of the things that I like to do to get creative is go one-on-one with your customers in those situations. Right? Because everybody's got a cadence call where there's 10 people out there and you can't ask your customer in front of 10 people like a very important, you know, pointed question that could be an uncomfortable question. It's just not going to go well for you. It's going to look like, you know, the kid who went to, you know, high school and he got on the cafeteria table and asked a girl to prom in front of the whole room, right? Like, it's not going to go well for you. They're going to laugh you out of the room.

Right.

Or they're just going to clam up and you're just going to look terrible. So you got to get them off to the side, you know, kind of get them one-on-one. Texting has been, you know, a really great way to become intimate lately. I feel like a lot of folks would rather text than call, but I do prefer one-on-one phone calls when you can get them. And just building a relationship with the customer so that they learn to trust you and that everything they tell you, you're not going to run back and, you know, share it with the sales rep or, you know, you're not going to go tell on them to their boss that they said that they were unhappy about some company policy that they shared with you is preventing them from moving forward with adopting a feature or something of yours, right? I mean, it's, you gotta build trust over time. And so that's, that's the way you do it. If you can't, if you can't go in the field and take people to dinner and do fun stuff, then you gotta get 'em off to the side. You gotta kind of get 'em to trust you and then build a relationship. And then the other thing is deliver on what you promised, right? A really great sales rep that I used to work with told me that, you know, this business isn't complex. At the end of the day, we, we talk to our customers and we tell 'em what we're gonna do, and then we do it. And, you know, if we do those things, then the customer should trust us and they should want to work with us in the future. And selling them additional product or additional use cases or more value shouldn't be a big deal because they know that we're going to do what we said we're going to do.

Sounds so, so simple, right? And I mean, it sounds like so obvious, but yeah, it's not as— it's not as obvious these days as we do make it sound. So yeah, I appreciate you sharing that. Now, for those who are maybe, maybe looking ahead, you know, some of these roles in customer service or customer success is changing right now. With AI entering the picture, pretty excited about that with all the changes that are happening. What do you recommend and what do you see kind of happening with AI with the customer success teams and how can they adopt it and help them become better at their jobs?

So I think that AI is definitely coming for jobs, right? It is like, let's just get that out there on the table right now. Some of you guys 2 years from now that are listening to this won't have the job you have today because AI Took it, quite frankly.

Yeah.

And it really depends on what you're working on, like what your day-to-day focus is. I'll tell you that there's basically 3 kinds of CSMs that are out there right now that are operating. There's the super technical CSMs that are focused on technical adoption and fixing problems and getting broken software to work and training their customers how to use really technical software. That's one type of CSM. Then you've got this kind of bridge CSM that is a little bit of that, but also a lot of process, right? all about getting the QBRs out and they've got, you know, a success plan that they're always working on and they've got a program that they're managing and they share spreadsheets with their customers on a weekly basis and they're like, here's what we're gonna do. And maybe they see a customer once in a while and that's cool, but that's mostly, it's still mostly desk work. And then you've got the third type of CSM, which is more like what I do, which is a strategic CSM that, you know, you're involved at the highest levels internally with your sales team as well as, you know, your post-sale teams on strategy.

Mm-hmm.

You know, you're meeting with your clients in the field, building relationships. You're building trust all the way up to the C-level, you know, depending on who you're meeting with. You're, you're doing QBRs still, but they're much more strategic QBRs. And you're in rooms with very important people where they understand that we're talking about dollars here, like what you want.

Yeah.

And let's tie it to my product and let's create some dollar-based outcome for you, right? It's, it's extremely advanced stuff. And so I'd say under those 3 CSMs, the first 2, are kind of cooked right now, you know, with the way that AI is rolling out in the next 2 years. AI can already do, you know, answering technical questions. It can enable customers. It can create, you know, technical adoption plans. It can kind of do all that stuff right now. And so I think that a lot of those guys, unfortunately, they've done everything their manager told them to do. They said, go ahead and learn all this technical stuff, and they've been good employees, and they've done all the right things.

Mm-hmm.

But they're gonna lose their jobs because that's what they focused on. They didn't look outside of their, of their role to see what else they could do to become valuable. And then the same thing with that bridge CSM in the middle. I mean, they're doing process, they're doing success plans, they're doing all this stuff that could be automated right now with, with AI. AI can write better success plans than you can, my friend. I hate to tell you, you know, QBRs too. It can create QBRs right now that are prettier and, and nicer and they're tied to value. It can do all these things. So I think that that bridge CSM is also kind of toast, and a lot of their function is going to be folded back into the sales role at companies where those CSMs exist. And then at the much bigger firms, like where I'm at and others at my level, there'll still be a need for this very strategic, you know, post-sale account executive type, you know, strategic CSM. And the reason why is because they own relationships, right? The reason why is because they're in the field in front of customers. Because they invested in their soft skills. They learned, you know, sales, they learned consulting. Maybe they've all gone out and got MBAs. I mean, they're incredibly valuable, and it's not because they've done anything necessarily that their companies told them to do. It's because they're great business people at heart, right? And I think that's what you guys need to do. If you're, if you're watching this and you're thinking, how do I, how do I fortify my career against the AI tsunami that's coming right now? Start thinking about how can I become a better strategic business person who focuses on relationships in my job? Because those are the things that can't be taken by AI.

Absolutely. Yeah, love it. So I guess that's the advice that, you know, if anybody's listening in, they're looking to think ahead and how to plan for their careers and really get into that, you know, business relationship, get into the strategic and develop those soft skills like you mentioned. So yeah, love it. Love it, Carl. Great advice. Now, I also want to talk about your book, right? You wrote the book Success Plan for Life, which is now connecting these principles you talk about beyond just business. So can you speak a little bit more about that book and how some of these frameworks now apply to not only career growth, but also your wealth, relationships, and other areas of your life?

Sure. Yeah. I mean, I'll tell you a little secret about Success Plan for Life. It's actually not a book about customer success, even though I, I have a lot of customer success principles in there and I show folks how I use those principles to live my life and become a multimillionaire in enterprise software and find love and raise strong independent children. I mean, I used all those things, but that's not really what the book is about. It's about the fact that my daughters, my twin daughters were graduating college last summer and I found myself texting them all the time lessons that I thought we'd covered in 23 years. Oh, do you remember this? And here's what you have to do and do this next, right? And get ready for your interview. And And finally, I thought, you know, I should just write these down in a book because I'll bet there's more folks that can share in these lessons than just my kids. And so, it became kind of a project for my kids coming out of college to start their careers. They're both SDRs now in the enterprise software world kind of coming up themselves.

Uh-huh.

And it became something that everybody can enjoy. And it's woven with my family's story. I grew up very poor. My dad was a long-haul trucker and my mom was a housewife. We had problems in our house like a lot of folks have that are very relatable in terms of addiction and never enough money. And, I was the first in my family to ever go to college and kind of had to fight my way out of kind of an impoverished situation to become who I am today. And, all of it, everything that I've achieved in life, I've determined has come from having a plan. Before I had a plan for myself, I just wasn't going anywhere fast. I was lonely. I was poor.

Yeah.

Couldn't manage money. I was always overspending. I, you know, wasn't sure what I was gonna do with my life, if I was even in the right field. And then, you know, when I started actually writing things down and planning, you know, just like I do on customer success, things kind of came together and I could see the future suddenly. And I could see that if I adopt these particular principles, this is where I'll be in 5, 10, 15 years. And so, you know, the book is, um, you know, just a, an incredible story and, and I'm so proud of it. And, you know, the reviews on Amazon have been Very positive. And it's been on the bestseller list now, I think, you know, several, several weeks over the last couple of months, which I'm, I'm really excited about.

That's awesome, Carl. We'll add the show, the link to the show notes as well. So people want to check it out, make sure to check out the book and buy it, Success Plan for Life. So you talk about plan. Just one question about that. You know, when you're planning, you know, when you were in these situations and you're making plans for your finances and where you want to go, are you generally planning, you know, if you're kind of lost, people listening in, Are they thinking 1 year, 5 years, 10 years ahead, or how far are you making plans to help you stay on track?

Well, I have predictive analytics built into a spreadsheet that I've developed for myself that can look out as many years as I want in terms of what my future wealth will accumulate to. And it's based on actual data because I've been tracking data since 20 years ago, basically on a spreadsheet. And I go into it in the book on how I do this, but essentially, it's very old school. And I use the logarithmic features that are built into Excel that do it. And once you kind of begin getting into the habit of every month you go in and you update your spreadsheet, you put on there, here's what my stocks are worth and here's what my credit card debt is and here's what my assets are, and you kind of have a net worth number. If you track that more than, say, a year, you can get pretty good with predictive analytics on where that wealth is going in the future. And so, it's really neat to see because you guys who are out there who are just getting started in enterprise software, You can make so much money in this business. It's just amazing, right? But when you get past that first $100,000 in net worth and then you get past $1 million, the line becomes parabolic and it just starts going almost straight up at one point. And it's like, how much longer do you want to work? How much wealth do you want to accumulate? What are your goals? And what are you going to do with that wealth in terms of helping family? One of the big things that I talk about in the book is that when you're gone, do you want to be remembered as— Just another person in your family who tried their best, or do you want to be remembered as the person who changed it all for everyone, right? You know, the, you know, the Rockefeller or the Kennedy or, you know, the Carnegie, somebody who came along and they made such a difference that it lasts even until, you know, today in terms of charity and, you know, things that you've done for your children and your grandchildren and, you know, family members that, you know, were very extended from you. I mean, it's just— I don't think that most people think that big when they're young. And a lot of folks are just in survival mode. And again, it all leads back to not having a plan, right? Nobody ever teaches this stuff in school. Nobody ever says in high school, you need to have a plan maybe for what do you want to do with your life? And what does that mean? What does that look like? And how much money does it cost to live that? And all these things. So, I just think folks should think about that a lot more.

Yeah, I think at that point you're always thinking about, you know, your plan, your own survival and kind of your own growth. But then, you know, once you get to a certain age and level, then you can start thinking about impact and legacy and future generations of like what you can leave behind and how it can impact, you know, future generations. And I love the book Die With Zero, also a great book as well. And if you've read that, but also things, you know, helps you think a lot about, you know, how to, you know, spend money with your families and experiences too in a healthy way in the best time as well.

So.

Love it.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely. I mean, one of the big goals that I had that I closed the book out with was that, you know, for my 50th birthday, I wanted to be in the best shape of my life and with all my family and friends on a luxury yacht in Cabo San Lucas. And we just did that last month. It happened. It happened. So if you guys read the book and it's at the end of the book that I'm predicting that I'm going to do this, just know that we did that. And I got to say that when you realize a goal like that, that's been part of your plan, I mean, it just feels so good. I'm just standing on the shot with my wife and kids, and we got family and friends that flew down for this big party. And I'm just thinking about how wonderful it was. But then at the same time, being who I am, it came into my mind at one point, like, God, what am I going to do next? How am I going to top this over the year? And to be honest, I'm still figuring that out as we do this book tour and we do more podcasts and talk about things. It's like, God, I got to think about what my plan is now for the next decade, for the next 20 years, because I only went up to 50 with my plan so far. And I've accomplished everything that was on the list. So that's fun.

What's next? They have all these, all these options. Was this for your birthday or just, just an event that you put together?

Yeah, just my birthday in March was my big 50th.

So love it. Love it. Congratulations. Well, Carl, I want to shift gears here and move to kind of the more personal rapid-fire questions. You ready for that?

Sure.

Yeah. All right, Carl, what's one activity you enjoy outside of work that gets you into a flow state?

Well, I'm a huge backpacking guy. I live here in Colorado and we got a club and we go at least twice a summer and we do 3 nights and we call it the 72-hour effect because you got to get out and sleep under the stars and drink pure water and breathe clean air for at least 72 hours and you come back completely refreshed and feeling amazing.

Yeah, love it. Carl, what's one piece of advice you wish you had known? And, if you can go back, you would tell, let's say, your 25-year-old self, which is half your age now, if you can go back?

Yeah, I would say 25-year-old folks that are out there listening right now, if you're not married yet, be very thoughtful about who you pick to marry and who you pick to have children with, because it'll impact your life for long after you think about it. A lot of folks just kind of fall into this and they think it's fate, or it's like a rom-com that they watched on TV or whatever, but it's actually not. You should probably be a little bit more strategic. about these things. I wrote a little bit about this. Actually, there's a chapter in the book about this, about how you really should try and find somebody who's a partner. Find someone who's a fellow builder who wants to actually build something that you want to build, like shared values, shared goals, and someone that you can talk to openly about things like money. Because I can't tell you how many coaching clients I have who tell me that they can't talk to their partner about money at all. And maybe I'm trying to help them create a success plan for their life, and part of that is personal finance. And I'm I'm going, what do you have in retirement? What does your husband or vice versa have? And they can't even tell me because they don't share that information. It's kind of really hard to undo that when you're 10, 20 years down the road with somebody versus when you're 25 and you just want to pick the right person. So I would say get used to asking questions about things like money and goals and career upfront because it becomes very difficult to unwind some of that stuff when you just ignore it and you put your head in the sand for 10, 20 years and you realize you're married to somebody that you, you can't have difficult conversations with.

So. Absolutely. Yeah. And it catches up, right? And I think, I think like 60 or 70% of relationship frictions and issues is around money. So yeah, so I think it's a super important piece.

Yeah. Yeah. And I mean, so many people keep secrets about money too, and it's crazy. You don't want to get into that habit either.

So. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Carl, what are some of the biggest challenges you're currently facing in order to continue to grow, you know, your life, your career? Meaning what keeps you up at night these days?

You know what keeps me up at night, you know, again, is, is really kind of deciding what's next for me, right? I mean, you know, I've achieved top 1% in the CS world, which means that I carry a book of business that's over $50 million and I make over a quarter million dollars a year. And it's, it's kind of like bumping up into a glass ceiling at that point. You know, you're not gonna be able to ever make a million dollars a year as a CSM. You know, I realize that. I, I understand our business the way it works, but at the same time, God, it's been good to me. And I love it. And I love taking care of customers post-sale. And I, I wanna do this as long as I can and as long as, as, you know, my company will let me kind of continue to do business as I always have. I certainly think about the evolution of our business in the future in terms of, you know, what's gonna be seen as more valuable and where can I make more impact and, you know, where can folks my age kind of evolve into a, you know, a higher level. And, and I do think there's such an opportunity on the sales side that a lot of folks ignore, you know. in our business. They wanna do other things. Maybe they're technical, maybe they're post-sale like I am, or maybe they're a manager or something and they're scared or they've been scared to go into sales cuz they don't wanna ask people for money and have uncomfortable conversations.

Yeah.

Recurring theme in their life maybe. And I feel like, God, that would be something interesting to explore for me and others at this point. And in terms of the evolution of our business, maybe sales is where we all end up because like we talked about earlier, AI, comes in and it kind of takes away all the busy work, all the easy stuff, all the, you know, the comfortable conversations. And then all that's left is trust building and uncomfortable conversations at some point, right? So I would say that folks who are listening, like, have an open mind about what's going to happen in the, you know, SaaS world over the next 5, 10 years, because it may look completely different than what it looks like today.

Yeah, absolutely. It's going to— it's moving fast and it's going to move even faster. Carl, who or what are some of the best 3 resources? This can be books, mentors, or people you follow in the space who you'd say have been most instrumental to your success over these last few years. Oh, wow.

Well, I would say on the entrepreneurship side, Robert Kiyosaki's Rich Dad Poor Dad completely changed my life, right? When I read that 20 years ago and, you know, I started buying rental real estate and accumulating wealth through real estate, and it just was an eye-opener for me. Like, because again, a kid who grew up with nothing, who had parents who couldn't really teach him about money. Like, when I read that book, it was like I suddenly had a rich dad and he was teaching me all these secrets that the wealthy teach their kids about how to build wealth. So, I would say that that was a really big one. The other one was Awaken the Giant Within by Tony Robbins.

Tony Robbins, yep.

I read that when I was 17. And, I was actually standing in a bookstore cutting class and my mom caught me cutting class and came in and swatted me on the bottom. I turned around and she was beet red. She was so angry. And I was reading this book. And so, I went right to class, but I came back and I got the book later and I read the rest of it. And it was in terms of how to take action on the things that you want in your life and kind of some of the early goal-setting mentality that I practice today. I'd say that Anthony Robbins was just incredibly instrumental. And folks write him off sometimes because he's a little bit motivational, but I feel like at that time in my life, As a young man, that's exactly what I, what I needed, you know?

Mm-hmm. Yeah.

So, and if you want a third one, I would say, um, you know, CSMs and, and sales reps can actually get this book. I've got it sitting right over here. I'll show it to you guys. It's sitting on my, on my shelf. Power Questions. If you guys haven't read the book, it sits on my desk all the time. It's by Andrew Sobel, and it's full of 337 essential questions that you can ask people in your life. You can ask your customers, you can ask your colleagues, you can ask your, your spouse. these questions and it just opens them up and it gets them talking about things that are important to them. And I, I find myself referring back to that book. It's been here on my desk probably for 10 years and I refer back to it like at least once a month.

Oh, that's a great book. I haven't heard about it, but I imagine there's some great questions on there we can ask on the podcast as well. So I appreciate sharing that. We'll add that to the— add the link to the show notes. Carl, what does success mean to you today? You know, at this age, whether it's personally, Business, financial, life, there's no right answer.

Yeah. I think that success when you're my age, it comes down to a few different things. I mean, on the financial level, it's working because you love working still, right? It's not that you feel like there's a gun to your head and that you have to work anymore. It's because you enjoy it and you're building something and you enjoy the people that you're working with. I would say the relationships throughout my life that have come through work, have been just such a huge part of my life, you know, from the beginning to the end. Um, my wife actually said the other day that that book that I wrote back there is, is actually a love letter to all the people in my life who, who kind of made me. And I, I feel like that's so true because so many of them were, you know, friendships that were made at the office or customers who became friends or things like that. Um, I think about, you know, my kids, you know, being strong and independent. You know, I mean, they, they graduated college and my God, they're paying their own bills. And I don't know how many parents can say that.

Mm-hmm.

Kids are 23, but mine are and I'm so proud. I wrote an entire chapter in there on how to raise strong kids in a soft world or a world that rewards softness. And, I think that raising strong kids has been one of the things that's paid dividends in my life. And, when I talk about them and I brag about them and the things that they're doing, it makes me so happy. And, when somebody tells me that, hey, Carl, your daughters take after you, it's the biggest compliment that I've ever received in my life. I feel so good about it.

Yeah.

Of course, having a strong marriage, you know, at the end of the day, I mean, if you don't have someone to come home to when you're on the road and, you know, late night flights and you're grinding it out and you're, you're, you're doing all these things that, that, you know, you have to do to be successful, you know, the cost of success in this business is so high.

Yeah.

If you don't have someone at home who supports you and, you know, who you can come home and you can share your stories with and you can, you know, share goals with and, and, you know, Understand each other on an intimate level like that. I mean, I— it, it, it's just, you know, it's a— it's been incredible for me. Uh, my wife has, has enabled me to do things in my life that I didn't know that I could do, and her support has definitely carried me to the next level in my career, with raising our family, you know, all these things. So I would say you've got to do the trifecta. In the, uh, the movie Jerry Maguire, the, the client Rod Tidwell says you got to have the quan. You know, it's not just about the money, it's about the family, it's about the respect. It's everything, right? I would say that those 3 things are my Kwan.

The Kwan is what makes success. Yeah, love it, Carl. This has been great. I appreciate everything you've shared, Carl. And, uh, for anybody listening in, audience want to get in touch with you, learn more about you, um, or find your book, where's the best place to learn more about you and order your book?

Go ahead and connect with me on LinkedIn. You can reach my LinkedIn just by going to rockstarcsm.com. It will take you directly to my LinkedIn. And then my book, Success Plan for Life, is available on Amazon and Audible, and you can find it just by going to successplanforlife.com and it will take you right there.

Awesome. Thank you so much, Kyle. Appreciate the show today and answering all our questions.

Thanks for having me, Akeel. It was a blast, man. Let's do it again sometime.

Absolutely. Thank you all for watching this episode and joining SaaS District today. Don't forget to like, subscribe, and hit the bell for future episodes where we interview top leaders in the SaaS industry. If you're a SaaS company looking to grow and unlock the true value of your business, get in touch with us at Horizon Capital and myself or one of our consultants will provide a free assessment to help you get there and hit your goals. If you have any feedback or suggestions for this podcast, please comment down below and help us improve our content for you all. Thanks again and see you on the next one.