The CX Files

Investigating the mysteries and sharing the secrets of great customer experience with industry leaders that have seen it and done it.

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The CX Files

The CX Files #21 - Stacy Justino

October 07, 2025 • Ben Foden • Season 1 • Episode 21

How do you NOT prove the ROI of your customer support team? By not speaking the language of the finance department (management's best friend).

Recently I talked with Stacy Justino, Product Support Manager at Petdesk and she explained exactly how to get from cost center to value driver for the entire business.

In this episode Stacy breaks down:

The one skill to look for when hiring in a world flooded with AI
How you can turn L1 / Frontline staff into influence for your product/service roadmap
How knowledge management culture at your team drives AI and self-service results.

Stacy Justino is a veteran support leader with years of experience at companies like PetDesk, Wistia and as a mentor in the Support Driven community. She is also an expert in leveraging new technology and building high-impact support teams.

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Search "Helpfeel EN" on Google to learn how your business can solve self-service in 30 days with Helpfeel's customer support AI platform and managed AI optimization service.

#CX #CXai #customerexperience #customersupport #leadership #podcast #businesspodcast

Stacy Justino: 0:00

my dream is that every support team can point to, or illustrate how the support team, you know, contributed to like the top line, right? Um, so. Right now, I think the struggle is, is like it's not always easy to be able to connect support data to those things. And so like that's where I'd want, like that to me is the ultimate like end is that, you know, it's crystal clear and really easy for a support leader to show like, yep, this is the impact we had on our, on revenue, on our brand value. Um. You know, whatever those, you know, across multiple like facets on our product roadmap. Um, and so that to me is like the pinnacle, right?

Ben Foden: 0:55

Hi, welcome to the CX Files podcast. Today's guest is Stacy Justino. Stacy is an early adopter of support tools and software, and she's picked up various tools over the years. Uh, but throughout there's been a theme of being an early adopter and also being a mentor. Uh, she's been a member of the support driven Aspire Council for the past six years and has been a mentor in the program for six people. She works at Pet Desk where she's a product support manager. Um, over the years, she's had various experiences in her career, but throughout has been focused on leading the adoption of new technology and of course creating results for customers. Uh, Stacy, thanks for joining today.

Stacy Justino: 1:39

Thanks for having me.

Ben Foden: 1:42

So I wanted to ask you about, uh, some of your past experiences, um, when you were first starting your career. Like what were some of the things that surprised you?

Stacy Justino: 1:53

Uh, well, one of the things that surprised me is that I never thought of myself like a technical person. and so when I got my first job in customer support, um, I didn't think that was necessarily gonna be my career. I wanted to get into usability. And I realized that I really liked solving problems and I already knew I liked helping people, right? I originally thought maybe I wanted to be a teacher. did that in Korea for two years teaching English, and I realized that I liked teaching kids. I did not like teaching the same subject material over and over again, and I couldn't really imagine myself doing that for. 30, how many of odd years. Uh, and then when I got onto the customer support team at games, um, you know, started out doing accounts, billing stuff, then you move into doing technical support and, um, you know, through all of our public facing help articles. And I was really sort of, I mean, a, a really curious person. So I think what was kind of surprising to me is that like hard technical skills coming in the door with those, um. Isn't necessary for every single support role. And you can, it's more important that you can learn and, um, be adaptable. And so I, I really didn't know that going into it.

Ben Foden: 3:14

Yeah, I definitely think that there's, there's this idea that people have, that they have to be super technical and they have to have all of these, you know, kind of credentials and, and things that they can point to. I think if you're hiring, what you really care about is that enthusiasm and kind of willingness to learn, um, to dig in and, and figure things out. Um, and that goes a long way, maybe more than people imagine. Um, is there, is there one, you know, memorable experience, um, a time when you felt like you really helped someone in, throughout your career?

Stacy Justino: 3:53

That's a great question. I think if I think on a smaller scale, like one of the, I, this is what I always like go back to when I'm working with people who are trying to like level up and customer technical support, customer support and are, you know, feeling like they don't have opportunities in their sort of. Frontline role to really showcase their abilities and showcase that like, Hey, I'm ready for a more elevated role in this team, whether it's more like a tier two or senior role, or a team lead or manager role. And I always go back to this example where I was working in our Mac support queue because, um, high performance had been pretty good in our tech general technical support queue. So we had two folks on the team who are considered MAC support specialists. did I know that Mac support is way easier 'cause there's less way fewer configurations for a Mac computer or laptop than there is for like every sort of iteration and combination of a pc.

Ben Foden: 4:52

Mm-hmm.

Stacy Justino: 4:53

I was like, oh, this is actually much more sim more, more simple. But, um, we had a game all of a sudden we were getting reports that this game was crashing at the specific level. We couldn't reproduce it. Our QA team couldn't reproduce it. And, you know. In this role, I was answering like 80 to 90 support tickets a day, right? So pretty good pace going. And I remember like getting this ticket come in and the person that said, Hey, this happened after I updated QuickTime. And I was like, oh, that's an interesting piece of information. to our testing laptop or testing Mac, and I went to go check what version of QuickTime the machine had realized there was an update. Apply the update. Launch the game, booted it up, opened that chapter, boom, the game crashed. And uh, you know, I was able to, um, escalate that to our TRT support team who, um, filed like updated the, the QA team. And, um, ultimately we decided that we're gonna wait till the next QuickTime update because QuickTime updates regularly. But the reason why this was happening, and we didn't see it on machines is QuickTime is a software on a Mac that doesn't auto update. Necessarily unless there's like a, like a mandatory update. So you could be running an older version of QuickTime and you won't necessarily get prompted to update the new one. Or it won't like auto update in the background like some of the other, um, applications that are like pre-installed, like come with the Mac. that was sort of this really strong example for me of like, oh wow. Like I figure something about nobody else on my team that. Two, A team hadn't been able to figure out, and really it came down to just like active listening, right? I could have just been like, oh, you're having this issue. Sorry about that. Here's a coupon so you can get another game. But I was like, oh, I don't know if we considered that. Let me go check it out. And, uh, that to me is like, you know, I was able to help customers 'cause we were able to explain what was going on and be like, Hey, this will be resolved once, uh, apple releases a new version of QuickTime. Um, and so that to me kind of sticks out as an example. But if I think in my time as a leader, um, some of the that, like, one of the examples I'm most proud of is when I was at Wistia, um, you know, really. able to, um, work with one of my team members who wanted to become an engineer and help him on his path to moving onto the engineering team. But the, the thing about that is, um, when he had expressed this to me, I said, oh yeah, of course. This is amazing. Let me talk to the director of engineering. I slacked the director of engineering and he was like, okay, when could he join our team? Uh, he already is an engineer, like because of some of the work he'd done on, on the sports side. He built, uh, like a web application that allowed us to test out the APIs that we used at WIA without having to like, go into an account and like get it all set up

Ben Foden: 7:43

Mm-hmm.

Stacy Justino: 7:44

a test environment where you could like play around with him and make the API calls, um, in like a really easy webinar face for the team to easily use. And, um, this is from someone who. Joined Wistia in our support team and had, did not have, well, actually had no previous customer support, technical support background, and in years an engineer.

Ben Foden: 8:07

That's great. Yeah. I think, you know, there's, there's this transformational. Aspect of support where it transforms people's careers, but it transforms the, the experiences of customers as well, right? And whether you can directly solve a problem or if you can simply understand and kind of relate with somebody who's having a problem, there's this transformation that can occur. And I think there's something about that which is inherently addictive and kind of exciting, right? It's like when, when you see people struggling and you're able to help them and like. That's just the story of that. Um, it's just very rewarding. Um, I think, you know, the, the technical side of things, obviously it depends on the business. I mean, if you're selling toothpaste or something, it's gonna be very different from, you know, somebody who's selling, you know, uh, you know, video marketing tools like Wistia, for example. Um, but there's, there's an opportunity there. Um, if you're providing support for technical products to, to increase your skills, right? In the, in the case of this individual who, who changed into being an engineer, um, they built those skills on the job in support. And so whether whether people wanna stay in, support their whole career or they wanna move on, I think that there's, um, increasing awareness of the connectedness of support to other departments and other, and other skills. Um, how do you, how do you kind of think about. You know, in the present, in the present day, in this, in this era that we're in, um, the current environment, how do you think about this? Like the evolving, technical side of support, the evolving, uh, technical understanding that's required to deliver support today? I.

Stacy Justino: 10:02

Um, that's also an excellent question. think you kind of have to come at it from a few different fronts, right? You need to make sure your team is like and has the knowledge that they need, but not that they just have the knowledge. Like you could have like. Really great training, but if your training isn't backed up by good process and good documentation, um, you know, kind of put a lot of time and energy into training people, but they need to be able to, uh, find the information they need in their moment of need. Right. And that's up for customers too, right? Like in their moment of need, can they find the answer or can they figure out what they need to do next? Um. I think that that is pretty important. I. think as you, you know, especially if you're supporting a product that has a, a, a large surface area, if you will. Um, and any products really like, what I always kind of say is like we can't expect people to remember everything that is, that that is a recipe for disaster. so you have to be able to make it. enough for them to find the answers and the time, the needs, and provide them the tools that they need to be able to the work and have an understanding. I think one of the things that people kind of like miss is like get set, setting that, figuring out what the baseline level of like knowledge is. Somebody needs to do the job successfully. Right? do they like? How deep does their like. Understanding of how the product works, not just what it does, right, like does for your user and what the user can do, but like under the hood, how much do they really need to understand to be able to provide excellent support and to be able to like things back to product and engineering. Um, and I think that that's a piece that not. A lot of orgs probably put the time into, right. They, you can build out all these awesome resources, but if end of the day people don't really understand fundamentally how the underpinnings of everything work, then how, how can you expect them to really understand and figure out when something goes wrong?

Ben Foden: 12:22

Yeah, I, I think that there's, it's definitely a balance. I mean, you can absolutely overload people, and I think, you know, we're, we're all bombarded every day with so much information, um, that it is just, you know, overwhelm is very real. Um, and, and, you know, it manifests itself in, you know, a difficulty focusing on what matters, you know, an an inability to kind of, like you said, you can't remember everything. Right. Um, so kind of. Presenting information in an accessible way in a, whether it's it's onboarding or ongoing training, um, presenting it in a way that's, that kind of, um, can be digested. Right? Um, but the, but then going deep enough at the same time, finding that balance going deep enough to where, you know, they do understand, oh, this is not just like. A black box and we, you know, just magic results come out of it. Um, you know, this is sort of how the pieces are moving internally. Um, I think that's absolutely critical. Um, you know, the, there's, there's increasing complexity in technical products. Um, there's increasing complexity in the tools, increasing capability in the tools that are available for customer support. Um, whether that's the self-serve tools, the knowledge tools, um, ticket management, all these kinds of pieces, um, you know, vendors are developing more and more all the time, obviously. Um, but with the rise of bum, bum bum ai, um, how do you see the, the shift. Happening, um, day to day. Like, you know, there it used to be, and I've worked in frontline customer support before it used to be just like, okay, here's a backlog of tickets. You know, smash the backlog as fast as you can, and we're just gonna slam you with more tickets the next day. You know? Um, but, but it's, it seems to me that it's moving more towards, okay, what are the conclusions here for our knowledge base? How does that kind of ticket to knowledge to self-serve, how does that cycle kind of work? What, what are your thoughts on, on the, the, the trend here or, or the, the corner of the changes that are occurring?

Stacy Justino: 14:46

I think, uh. Like at a, like, like if you look more high, not high level or whatever. Uh, one thing that I think a lot of people are realizing is that, um, for, I mean this is true for most software, not just AI software, right? That like is only good, as good as like how you implement it, the change management. How you maintain it, right? Um, most tools, even simple ones are not set it and forget it. It is something that you have to constantly sort of, not constantly, but regularly, make sure like, Hey, is this still serving our needs? Okay. Our business has shifted, our priorities has shifted. Hey, we need to make sure that the tool set we're using is still serving, uh, us. And so I think that with ai, that that software that. Is even more critical. And a lot of the times, like we just started implementing, uh, uh, AI software on our team, for example. And, um, realizing like, okay, we need to really lock down our process for keeping our knowledge updated, both our external and our internal knowledge. Um, and so recently we've kind of been working through like, okay, let's actually get templates for our guru cards so that they're all formatted the same way. Um. And yes, that's only part of it, but like thinking about those things and so that like let's develop a culture that everybody on our team really feels empowered and has the time and bandwidth and expertise to be able to update articles so it's not just falling on the of senior people on your team, because that's going to make our AI software more effective. And that's going to then, yep, some time for us to work on those. Content creation and content management side of things. So I think that that is one piece. And I think the other kind of piece, especially with AI software is that, you know, we already touched on this earlier, that like hard technical skills isn't necessarily, uh, must have for someone to be successful at technical support. I think a lot of those sort of, you know. Tier one type tickets are going to go away, whether it's because your help center is much better, whether it's because of and tools, um, whether it's your support platform or AI agent tech, AI software, um, people are going to get their answers. Hopefully more often before they actually reach the human beings on your team. And so when they get to the human beings on your team, it's gonna be the, the more complex issues that require really amazing people who are on your support team. And so I think that that goes back to like, well, what are we hiring for? And then that means that they need better support and resources too, so that they can tackle those challenging problems.

Ben Foden: 17:43

Absolutely. Yeah. I, I think that there's, there's a major shift there. Like you said, I think a lot of the, the level one needs are gonna be automated. They're gonna be self-serve, um, if not already, and. There's a shift there, there's a major shift in the, the focus, um, towards these knowledge operations, um, to kind of power the, you know, the tools for the, for the level one stuff, especially. And then, and at the same time, there's a deepening, uh, requirement for the, for the technical aspects, those edge cases, those really difficult needs, those things that are. Two, they have too many different moving pieces to be solved by single, um, you know, self-serve answer, for example. Um, and that, that's a major shift, isn't it?

Stacy Justino: 18:40

Yeah.

Ben Foden: 18:42

Um, when, when you think about this requirement, the new requirements, like if you had like a, like a dream. Uh, you know, job posting and you're, you know, you're gonna hire like the perfect person. Like, what, what would you be looking for? Like, the person who's kind of ready for the future, you know, or ready for the, the leading, uh, you know, the, the environment at a leading company today.

Stacy Justino: 19:12

Yeah, I think, I mean if I was think thinking about this, I think, you know, thing is people who are like sort of excited by new technology, right? Um, I think, you know, you doesn't necessarily be the person who, like, I built my own computer. Like I never built a computer in my life. Um, but I, you know, like learning how things work. So I think when I actually have thought about this. the past, the thing that comes to mind is people who are good at systems level thinking, because is, I mean, a lot of software, most software, it's a system, right? And, um, in your product there's layers like, you know, of systems within systems. And so if you can have like an understanding of being able to figure out how the system works and you can understand when it's not working, um, and. You can gain that sort of expertise in many avenues. Right? Many different jobs. So it's not like a specific job or role that I would look for, but it's that systems level thinking.'cause when I think back to people who have done really well in support, um, moved into not necessarily technical roles, but in other roles within support or outside of support, it's the folks who have that sort of. Understanding of systems and how the systems work together. Um, and can see when they're not working together and sort of peel back the layers of the onion, so to speak, and be able to like pinpoint where something has maybe gone off the rails or not working as expected. And so it's more that it's that systems thinking, systems level thinking.

Ben Foden: 20:55

Absolutely. Yeah, that, that makes a lot of sense to me. And I, I agree with you. I, I think that like the. The, the human nature that the instinctual kind of reaction is like, you know, the, on the surface level, like, I'm experiencing this pain or this, there's this problem or something that's going on. Um, you know, the, there's the, the, the lived experience, right? It's like what I'm seeing in front of me, but the root cause. Is not so obvious in most cases. And the more technical the product is, the more technical the environment, the more you need that system's thinking to kind of, to peel it back and, and kind of dig in and understand root cause. Those, those interactions between the different moving pieces

Stacy Justino: 21:37

I think the other piece

Ben Foden: 21:38

Stacy Justino: 21:38

sort of like pattern recognition too. Like put those things kind of put together. But I think even, I. think more important or it's equally important is that sort of being really. Driven by helping customers and improving the customer experience. Um, because, you know, that to me is actually what makes hiring for a technical support role so difficult is, um, that's like a, that middle part of that Venn diagram of like, got the technical chops, but also have the customer experience chops like, yeah. That, that ve that the middle part of that Venn diagram is not as big as like I would, uh, I, that I have had, would've thought in the past. But I think that goes to your point about the level of like technical expertise and depth that is going to be needed, is needed with these sort of shifts, um, is sort of resulting in that. Um. Little slice of that diagram being a little smaller than it was, uh, say 10 years ago.

Ben Foden: 22:48

Yeah, and, and I, I think these, you know, especially the. The recent wave of AI tools is so, it's coming so fast, it's, it's arrived so quickly that anybody who tells you they're an expert. You have to be a little skeptical'cause like are you really, are there really any experts in something that's only been around for a few years? I mean, we're, you might be relatively expert to somebody else, but if you compare that to like, you know, a medical researcher in a field that's been around for decades, like the level of expertise here is pretty variable. Um, and we're, you know, myself included, we're all kind of figuring this out. And obviously, you know, I. I've spent a lot of time thinking about these things the last few years, many, many hours, um, of independent, you know, study by myself and also through my, you know, daily operation. But I think that when you're hiring, when you're looking for team members, when you're thinking about maybe if you were trying to get a job as an individual out there, um, you know. How much time have you dedicated to this in recent years? Right. Um, have you been trying to really stay, like, be an early adopter, like stay up to date? Like are you hungry for new information or are you kind of sitting on the sidelines saying, oh, you know, this AI thing? I'm not sure. Right.

Stacy Justino: 24:08

Yeah, and I think like even, I think the thing that some people struggle with with that is that like their personal sort of. Standpoint is that, you know, not interested, if you want to, you know, be competitive, like right now, like being a support leader, looking for a job is really tough. And so I think, I think, I don't think you have that option to be like, gonna opt out of this. Because personally I just, 'cause I understand it, I feel guilty. I, for my personal life, I only try to use, uh, AI solutions if like, I know it would take me. Through to twice as long to to do the thing, um, without AI assistance, because I still, you know, feel a little bit bad about the like environmental implications and sort of the ethical implications. But, um, like, I think it's sort of like non-negotiable that you need to, because I mean, I've looked at a lot of job postings just 'cause, you know, I'm always trying to help people I know, uh, send relative relevant postings their way and stuff. And I would say like, I would think 80% of those jobs have some mention of like, you know, implementing AI software.

Ben Foden: 25:25

Absolutely. Yeah. I, I think that there's, there's an understandable hesitation and there are various concerns people have for different reasons personally, um, which are totally justified. I, I think that, that the, um. I wanna, I wanted to explore a little bit this idea of like, what is the ideal again, and, and what is the gap between, you know, kind of the situation today and the ideal, um, specifically in terms of like, you know, the ideal role of customer support.'cause if, if you have the, the kind of the legacy of customer support, again, it's kind of like, alright, here's a ticket backlog. Crush it as fast as you can, try to make customers happy while you're doing it. Um. Maybe spend a little time on, on the knowledge base. Maybe there's a few other little things. Yeah. And, and like do it all on like a shoestring budget. Right. Um, but like what do you see as like the, the, the final best version and, and where are the gaps between where we are today and like, what that would look like?

Stacy Justino: 26:33

I think that, you know, if I think about like yeah, the final best version of what support is and should be, um. A, I think that it's like a value add, right? like? that it is not just, you know, I hate the term like cost center, but,

Ben Foden: 26:49

Mm-hmm.

Stacy Justino: 26:49

that, you know, there's A wealth of information that comes in through your support team, more than a, you know, you get from other areas of the business.

Ben Foden: 27:01

A hundred percent.

Stacy Justino: 27:02

being able to surface that to the business. And be able to, um, like my dream is that every support team can point to, or illustrate how the support team, you know, contributed to like the top line, right? Um, so. Right now, I think the struggle is, is like it's not always easy to be able to connect support data to those things. And so like that's where I'd want, like that to me is the ultimate like end is that, you know, it's crystal clear and really easy for a support leader to show like, yep, this is the impact we had on our, on revenue, on our brand value. Um. You know, whatever those, you know, across multiple like facets on our product roadmap. Um, and so that to me is like the pinnacle, right?

Ben Foden: 28:02

Definitely, and I, I think there's some progress in that direction and it depends on the tools that the team is using and the tools that the team can use. Um, but I think there's also just a thought process there. Which is evolving, uh, pretty rapidly. I, I think, I mean, I, I've spoken to other support leaders like yourself who, who've echoed kind of similar sentiments, um, about what they would like to see. Um, so I think there's some increasing understanding of this, uh, broadly. But, um, you're right. I mean, being able to connect action to impact. For the business, right? In, in, in the, the language of the business that the other departments understand that management understands, right? It's like, here's the profit and loss, right? Like this is, this is not just like, oh, you know, fuzzy like we're, we're playing around. No, it's, it's like straight line to profit, straight line to loss. Here's the money we saved, here's the money you gained. This is why investing in this, you know, this is why giving me a promotion or, you know, hiring this person, whatever, this is why it's justified, right? Um, and I, and I think. There's, there's been this kind of underdog status of support for a long time, and that narrative is shifting, um, you know, slowly, but it's, it's shifting. And, and I, I think that things like, you know, at attributing the data, right, showing the numbers, showing the impact, that's a big piece of it being part of those conversations. I think there's a general, um, kind of internal salesmanship skill. Being able to sell the results internally. Um, being able to speak the language, um, is really big. And that's, that's kind of business acumen that I think, you know, we all can continually improve. Um, but I, I think that there's, there's a real capability with the tools these days to connect the dots and to say, you know, person came in, they took this action and then this action, and then had this result. For the business. Um, and that is possible today and maybe more so than people imagine.

Stacy Justino: 30:06

I think that, you know, I think that for, it's definitely possible today, but I think depending on the resources your support team has, how your data is structured, uh, and sort of who has access to it also. And, um, it's not, I would say easy to do that today. But kind

Ben Foden: 30:27

Hmm.

Stacy Justino: 30:27

back to speaking your, their language. I remember going to first like support conference I ever went to is Elevate cx like. A long, long time ago, and one of the talks was about, you know, how do you get the other of the org to understand, like, to care about what customer support is like saying, and the takeaway was, use their language. And the thing is to me, I was like, duh, of course. Uh, this is what I tell my team all the time. Use the language our customers use. they're going to understand what you're trying to explain much more easily. They're going to like, feel heard. And why wouldn't I have like, thought to apply that to when I'm like emailing, uh, a game producer or, uh, the, the QA manager, right? And so it was, it, I thought it was just really, um. Uh, funny that you had mentioned that because yeah, that was like one of those things I was like, oh yeah, my point isn't getting across when I'm just talking about like number of tickets created and the increase in tickets. But when I connected to like how many days these players are out locked out of their game and how many of them are. Paying players and like that translates to like revenue loss, loss in monthly active users. Um, and so it was just sort of like one of those aha moments for me was like, Yeah, like intuitively I, knew this, but I needed to hear it to be able to like put it into practice.

Ben Foden: 32:04

Yeah, I, I think you know, it, it's hard to imagine sometimes what's possible, uh, without seeing some examples. Um, and this is true for everybody across disciplines, but I, I think that like the. The opportunity, and you mentioned this before as well, the opportunity to, to act on the data that that customer support has is massive. And if you take the initiative, you take that data that you uniquely have in front of you that you know day to day, you know both the numbers, but also your experiences talking to customers. You take that, take the initiative and. Maybe do a little homework about, you know, the terminology that the marketing department cares about or maybe, you know, some of the, the aspects that the product team cares about, and then build a little report for them. It could be a simple one page, like over the past month we observed this, this, and this. Here's how we project. This can impact profit and loss, right? Or, you know, whatever the department goals are, marketing or whoever, you know, whichever department cares about, there's an initiative going on in the company. You could connect it to that, but if you, if you write that one page report, it wouldn't take you a terribly long amount of time. But, but if you go into that conversation or if you send that email. With, Hey, here's something that we found that you care about. I know that you care about this in this department. Here's something important, invaluable for you. Well, suddenly you've elevated your status. It's like, oh, I'm a ticket taker. You know? No, you're going far beyond ticket taker into like, oh my God, we just learned something that's gonna have a big impact on our, on our bottom line. Um, you know, that, that totally transforms the conversation, right?

Stacy Justino: 33:46

Yeah.

Ben Foden: 33:48

Um, so before we go here, I wanted to get your thoughts, like if you, if you wanted to give some advice to people who are looking to advantage their career, either as a customer support leader or people who are, or looking to get that next promotion, what would you, what would you recommend people look into or, or focus on?

Stacy Justino: 34:12

I mean, I think it can be a little dependent on what your like, sort of ultimate goals are, but I think in general it's how can you have an impact in the role you have today? Right. And I think, you know, I touched on this a little bit before, is I think a lot of people are like. Answer tickets, calls, chats. Like, how am I going to like show? I mean, you can show there's areas and opportunity to, you know, step up, be proactive. I think it's like being proactive first eight, number one, kick butt at your current job. Right? That is like, I think that's, it should go without saying, but I think a lot of times that people. Who are eager to advance, which I think is amazing. Forget that like part of what you're being sort of evaluated on is how awesome you are at the job you have today. Right? So that's like baseline, right? Really, really become a master of your craft at the job you have today, even if it's not the job you wanna have forever, right? because a lot to be said for that, right? And I think like when I'm thinking about people hire, I'm like, wow, this person is incredible. the job. And then, you know, if you, once you have that, you know, like I am like the top of my game at my, my role, and then find opportunities where you can sort of, you know, provide a solution to a problem that has had the team stumped, right. Becoming a subject matter expert at something on your team where there's like a big knowledge gap on the team. Right. Um, and. know, continually being that have, being proactive and sort of like really nurturing your curiosity, right? Because that's the things that are going to be beneficial in pretty much any, almost any role you might wanna move into kick butt at your current job. And, you know, find opportunities where you can sort of stretch yourself, become an expert in something, um, sort of fill a gap, right? I think that's the thing, right? Like if you. of proactively realize that there's like a knowledge gap or like, Hey, we don't have any documentation on this thing. Or, you know, there's gotta be a better way for us to handle this type, this specific type of escalation. And you say, Hey you, I've identified this problem. Here's my like proposals for how we could do it. Or you know, just, Hey, I solved this problem three times. I'm pretty sure, like I've tested, I feel pretty good about it and you kind of share that, document it. Um, so it's like kind of filling those needs and gaps that are like exists on? your team because every single team has those. and depending on the structure of your team there, it may be something that isn't officially owned by anyone. And so that's like, those are real, like. Amazing opportunities for you to really showcase how awesome you are, um, and how you are ready for that next step. But it always goes back to still being awesome at your, the job you have. And I think also being seen as a, like a resource, right? Like being helpful to your teammates I think is also really critical. whether it be moving into like. A support engineer type role or lead manager role, or into another team. Like those are the things that people talk about when you're not in the room, right. Is, oh my gosh, Ben was so great at, you know, mentoring these new people on the team. Right.

Ben Foden: 37:46

Thank you.

Stacy Justino: 37:48

so I think that those are the sort of, those three things being like to your teammates help, genuinely helpful not just to customers, but to the people around you, being. Kicking butt at your you have today, and then being able to find those sort of gaps that exist or where things could be improved and you. know, figure out how to make them better.

Ben Foden: 38:11

Definitely. Yeah. I mean, and, and documenting along the way too is really big, right? Like being able to show, you know, sort of like the, uh, the brag document, right? It's like, look, I did this and this and this and this. Um, I. That's one technique I picked up recently that seemed to help. Um, I, I think the, um, the landscape is changing. Um, the. The requirements and the opportunities are changing. But I see, um, I see that there's, there's a lot of truth to what you're saying that, that these people who are willing to fill the gaps, people are willing to take the initiative. Um, especially if you can document it, you can communicate it in the language of the managers, you can communicate it in the language of results, right? You have data for your arguments. Um, people are gonna see a big impact in, in their career opportunities and their advancement, um, as a leader. Um. Thank you so much Stacy. I wanted to just shout out before we go that for everybody listening, um, Stacy is in addition to a mentor, um. With a lot of experience in the field. She is also a career coach and she provides, uh, services to people who are looking to advance their career through her, uh, personal business, which you can check out at doublejumpenterprises.com. Um, and yeah, and, and Stacy, um, thank you for joining and uh, for everybody out there, we'll see you again soon.