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If your Customer Advisory Board feels like a presentation, you’re doing it wrong. Irene Yam joins Alyssa to explain why the most effective CABs ditch the slide deck and prioritize real conversation. Drawing from 20+ years of experience leading executive programs, Irene shares what makes CABs work—from building trust to making room for off-script moments that change the game.

Whether you’re mid-market or enterprise, you’ll walk away with a clearer blueprint for turning your CAB into a strategic growth lever—not a checkbox.

Irene Yam is the author of How to Build a World-Class Customer Advisory Board. She’s spent over two decades designing strategic customer programs for high-growth startups and global enterprises, working with clients spending $20M+ annually. Irene’s approach emphasizes human connection, customer-led feedback, and creating spaces where strategic conversations can thrive.

Key Takeaways:

• The best CABs feel more like jam sessions than board meetings.
• You don’t need enterprise dollars to get enterprise-level insights.
• Real feedback starts when you give customers permission to be honest—and stop trying to impress them.

Key Moments:

00:00 Introduction and Guest Welcome
00:28 Irene's Origin Story
01:44 Customer Advisory Boards vs. Focus Groups
03:12 Value of Customer Advisory Boards for Mid-Market Businesses
06:24 Starting a Customer Advisory Board
07:44 Successful Customer Advisory Boards
16:58 Virtual Customer Advisory Boards
18:07 Innovative Meeting Ideas
21:18 Conclusion and Contact Information

Follow Irene on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ireneyam/

Welcome to The Growth Signal, where we’re throwing out the old playbooks, and reimagining the Customer Experience.

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When the pressure’s on, most leaders default to speed—but moving fast without thinking clearly is what gets companies stuck. In this episode of The Growth Signal, Alyssa Nolte talks with Charles Browne, a seasoned executive and leadership coach, about the overlooked cost of rushing to solutions. Drawing from decades in the Navy, nuclear ops, and national labs, Charles shares a framework for slowing down strategically, aligning your values, and empowering your team to make better calls—faster. If you're leading a growth-stage org, this is your playbook for sustainable scale.

Guest Bio:
Charles Browne is a leadership expert and deputy director at Los Alamos National Laboratory, where he leads complex, high-risk initiatives. With a background in nuclear operations, Six Sigma, and executive coaching, he specializes in helping technical leaders become high-impact decision-makers.

Main Topics Covered:

1. Why Speed Isn’t Strategy – How defaulting to action creates shallow solutions—and what to do instead.
2. Building a $2,000/Hour Leadership Mindset – The mental shift leaders need to stop doing $20/hour work and start building scalable systems.
3. Authenticity at Scale – How defining your values (and sticking to them) builds trust across teams and with customers.

Key Moments:

00:00 Introduction and Welcome
00:15 Charles' Origin Story
02:24 Current Roles and Responsibilities
03:47 Common Leadership Blind Spots
12:00 Defining Core Values and Decision Making
16:32 Implementing Core Values in Business
19:15 The Pitfalls of Micromanagement
19:49 Defining Business Focus: Customer, Product, or Operations
20:38 Southwest Airlines: A Case Study in Operational Decisions
22:14 The Importance of Consistency in Leadership
25:41 Aligning Personal and Company Values
28:48 Serving the Customer with Integrity
30:45 Identifying and Serving Your Ideal Customer
33:09 Adapting to Change and Seizing Opportunities
34:34 Final Thoughts and Resources

Welcome to The Growth Signal, where we’re throwing out the old playbooks, and reimagining the Customer Experience.

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In this episode of The Growth Signal, we sit down with Bob Mathers—customer success coach, keynote speaker, and host of The Growth Mixtape—to explore the emotional toll of working in high-pressure CS environments. What starts with a conversation about trauma, perspective shifts, and boundary-setting quickly evolves into a deep dive on why CS professionals are hitting peak stress younger than ever, how our work habits are reinforcing the burnout cycle, and what it really takes to reclaim our energy and impact.

If you’ve ever found yourself answering Slack messages at 9PM or wondering why your “relationship-driven” role feels more reactive than strategic, this episode is for you.

Guest Bio:
Bob Mathers is a customer success coach, keynote speaker, and podcaster with decades of experience helping CS leaders—from scrappy startups to $100M SaaS companies—build sustainable, revenue-driving customer organizations. Known for his no-BS insights and deep empathy, Bob brings clarity to one of the messiest, most misunderstood functions in SaaS.

Main Topics Covered:
Why CS Burnout Is Getting Worse, Not Better – And how the “always on” culture and lack of clear ownership are accelerating it.

The Real Role of CS in Revenue – Why being “relationship-first” doesn’t mean avoiding the number—and why pretending it does is hurting the profession.

Designing Your Calendar Around Energy, Not Urgency – Bob’s framework for mapping energy highs and lows to the right kind of work, and why it might boost your productivity 30%.

Key Moments:

00:00 Introduction and Guest Welcome
00:15 Personal Stories of Overcoming Challenges
03:37 Work-Life Balance and Boundaries
07:39 Customer Success Insights
17:12 Productivity and Energy Management
23:37 Final Thoughts and Contact Information

Welcome to The Growth Signal, where we’re throwing out the old playbooks, and reimagining the Customer Experience.

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In this episode of The Growth Signal, host Alyssa Nolte welcomes Sabina Pons, CEO & Chief Customer Officer at Growth Molecules, for a real, human conversation on the evolution of customer success—and why being a trusted advisor doesn’t mean avoiding revenue.

Sabina shares her unconventional journey from PR to SaaS leadership, the gut-punch of getting laid off during the 2008 recession, and how that moment sparked a career grounded in empathy, adaptability, and operational rigor. From scaling CS orgs to building a million-dollar consultancy, Sabina brings the receipts.

You’ll hear:

• Why “Customer Success is Dead” misses the point
• How trusted advisors can own renewals without losing trust
• The difference between value as a feeling vs. ROI as a calculation
• How to make CS teams easy to work with (and why that’s underrated)
• A wild, full-circle moment that proves the power of long-tail relationships

If you’ve ever wrestled with the tension between advocacy and accountability, or wondered how to make CS more strategic without becoming salesy—this one’s for you.

👥 Connect with Sabina:
👉 Sabina Pons on LinkedIn

💡 Quote of the Episode:
"Even if you don’t own the revenue number, you’re still responsible for keeping the customer." – Sabina Pons

Key Moments:

00:00 Introduction and Welcome
00:36 Sabina Pons' Career Journey
01:48 Transition to Customer Success
06:41 Building a Career in B2B SaaS
12:10 The Role of Customer Success Managers
18:07 Human-Centric Approach in B2B
21:34 Influential Figures and Personal Insights
23:44 Connecting and Following Sabina Pons

Welcome to The Growth Signal, where we’re throwing out the old playbooks, and reimagining the Customer Experience.

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In this episode of The Growth Signal, host Alyssa Nolte is joined by Alex Turkovic—customer success leader, podcast host, and the mind behind the Digital CS Maturity Model—for a hands-on conversation about how CSMs can stop running in circles and start making meaningful progress.

They dig into:

• Why the most strategic CSMs don’t work harder—they work smarter
• How templatizing repetitive tasks creates long-term leverage
• The compounding power of small systems (and how to start building yours)
• How to think about AI as augmented intelligence—and why CSMs who treat it that way are pulling ahead
• Why internal chatbots and tooling should be battle-tested before going customer-facing
• The underrated magic of prepping on Friday to hit the ground running on Monday

Alex also shares some creative ways he’s using tools like Perplexity and Zapier to fuel better, more consultative customer conversations—and offers a pointed challenge to every CSM stuck in reactive mode.

Key Moments:

00:00 Introduction and Guest Welcome
00:33 The Key to Customer Success
01:34 Templatization and Efficiency
05:28 Personal Productivity Hacks
08:46 The Role of AI in Customer Success
14:04 AI Chatbots and Brand Impact
17:09 Leveraging AI for Industry Insights
20:12 Influential Voices in Customer Success
22:18 Final Thoughts and Contact Information

👉 Connect with Alex: linkedin.com/in/alexturkovic

Welcome to The Growth Signal, where we’re throwing out the old playbooks, and reimagining the Customer Experience.

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In this episode of The Growth Signal, host Alyssa Nolte sits down with Jean Pierre (JP) Dumas, a seasoned sales and CX leader with a track record of turning chaos into best-in-class teams. From his childhood selling seeds door-to-door in LA to leading massive CX transformations across telecom and travel industries, JP shares the pivotal leadership lessons that shaped his philosophy: take care of your people first, and everything else follows.

They dive into:

• The wild experiment that taught JP the true cost of ignoring employee experience
• How one employee writing “Union” on a whiteboard sparked a cultural reckoning
• The link between low EX scores and high churn—and what leaders can do about it
• Real-life stories of pandemic-era innovation driven by employee-led action
• Why the best customer experience begins far behind the frontlines

JP doesn’t hold back. He unpacks the hard-earned truth: if your people don’t feel seen, heard, and supported, your customers never will.

🔥 Key Takeaway:
EX is not a soft metric—it’s your first customer. Treat it that way, and you’ll build a flywheel of loyalty, trust, and growth from the inside out.

💬 Connect with JP:
LinkedIn: JP Dumas

Welcome to The Growth Signal, where we’re throwing out the old playbooks, and reimagining the Customer Experience.

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Introducing The Growth Signal: The Podcast for Revenue Leaders Who Play to Win.

Hosted by Alyssa Nolte and Amber Moore and designed for customer-facing teams, this podcast tackles the challenges of reactive growth strategies and offers proactive solutions. Each episode features insights from top experts who are transforming customer-facing teams into effective revenue generators. Join us as we cut through the noise with practical, tactical advice to help you drive real change and growth in your organization.

00:00 Welcome to the Growth Signal Podcast
00:05 The Need for a New Playbook
00:26 Introducing the Growth Signal Approach
00:32 Who This Podcast is For
00:41 Expert Insights and Tactical Advice
00:56 Join Us on the Growth Signal Podcast

Welcome to The Growth Signal, where we’re throwing out the old playbooks, and reimagining the Customer Experience.

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Apply to be a Guest at TheGrowthSignal.com