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The second-oldest of 10 children in an Orthodox Jewish family, Eli Weiss didn't set out to pursue a career in customer experience—but his love of travel led him to work for a luggage Kickstarter campaign, where he leveraged his skills as a generalist to transform the business and its customer service philosophy.
In this episode, Eli—now the Senior Director of Customer Experience and Retention at Jones Road Beauty—reveals his many career learnings, including how to present yourself as a specialist instead of a generalist; how to best appeal to hiring managers; betting on yourself by treating your career as a long-term investment; and how building your personal brand can help you land a new role.
Everyone's career path is different, built by pivotal moments and choices. We're on a mission to amplify those stories and examine how our decisions shape our careers.
Nonlinear is hosted by Dave Fano, Founder & CEO of Teal—a genuinely consumer-first platform designed to help people grow and manage their careers. Our goal is to empower people to land jobs they love with free tools that guide and automate the process. Learn more at tealhq.com.
Eli Weiss: [00:00:00] It took, you know, whole bunch of, not hearing back to realize that I need to start narrowing down what I'm interested in and make a very compelling case on whether it's cover letter or resume, like make a very compelling case. Why. This is something I'm uniquely interested in because I think most people don't think about the fact that HR gets hundreds of applicants.
They can tell very easily who has applied to one role versus 300 roles. And I, instead of applying to 80 roles, I'm like, how can I pick five and apply very, very, very intentionally. So I remember having that conversation and thinking, you know, what is the one thing that I'm better than most.
David Fano: Hey, everyone.
Welcome to nonlinear a podcast about the decisions that shape our careers. I'm Dave, the founder and CEO of teal and the host of this show. If you're enjoying the conversation on this episode, please make sure to subscribe, share, and rate us wherever you're listening to the show. It really helps shine a light on these amazing careers and increases the chances of us learning from each other.
Again, thank you so much and let's jump into this [00:01:00] amazing. Hey everyone today, we're with Eli Weiss, who I had the pleasure of meeting as being one of the first people to either respond to one of my tweets for teal. I don't even know how he got it, but has been a huge supporter and have been able to follow along his career over the last two years.
And I've just watched him flourish in such incredible, incredible ways and become a real leader in his industry. And so I'm super happy to have him here today, but it's best to hear from him directly. What is this?
Eli Weiss: It's great to be here, Dave. Yeah. I feel like we connected very early on and I saw you tweeting about helping people get careers.
And I was like, wow, that sounds impactful. And I, I remember one of your investors sharing it and I reached out to you and you were like, let's hop on a call. And the rest was history. That's probably, yeah, a little over two years ago. I am the senior director of customer experience at Jones road beauty, which is a new brand started by Bobby Brown.
But I've just. Almost two years at, as director of customer experience at Ali pop, which is a new kind of soda and a, and [00:02:00] a massively growing company, but have been, been a generalist most of my early career in very early stage CPG slash D to C startups. And if now really niche down into the world of customer experience and retention.
So that's a little bit about
David Fano: me. I feel like you've got the perfect intersection of interest and about. Right. And just like seeing the way you talk about, and I feel like that's really what everyone should strive for in their career. Not in the finite way. You can change your mind whenever you want, but like always be iterating towards this intersection of interest and ability.
And I think when we first spoke you maybe weren't there. So I'd be curious in, in your career, when was that first time where you're like, I think I'm going to do this and I'm gonna start to take deliberate action towards that. And then obviously we'll talk about where, where you got to today, but what was that first time you thought about your.
Eli Weiss: Yeah, I think that, you know, my, my background is definitely somewhat different than, than most. So let's, let's start a little early on. I grew up as [00:03:00] number one of 10 children in a very ultra Orthodox Jewish world and have like, had, you know, most people in that universe end up basically becoming, you know, either they work within that world or they end up joining, you know, a company that's based in that world.
At the age of like 15, 16, you know, always introverted, very excited about people, less. So talking to people more. So the science of people and what makes them tick, definitely somewhat of a manipulative child, figuring out how to get where I wanted to. And basically, yeah, obsessed with people in the science people at the age of like 15, 16, took a road trip with my older brother across the country.
It was my first time out of like New York, New Jersey area was incredibly obsessed with humans. Saw that people across the country are. Wildly different, but so similar to us and basically was super excited about the idea of traveling even more. It didn't have a ton of money moved to New York at 18 and.
Lawrence about points and miles on reddit.com and walking to a chase bank in Washington Heights and asked the branch [00:04:00] manager, if he can teach me how this works, and this is pretty weird, but sure. A year, a year, and a bit later I had, you know, 1.2 million miles and the rest of the story goes from there, but I just started traveling like a crazy person and had no high school education, no college education.
Did my GED diploma equivalent at the age of 21, 22. And, you know, just got in as, as living in Israel at the time, Godden in, as I can speak a native English and a company that has a bunch of startups and I didn't need any sort of, what, what will you do? It was like, I can speak English and I'm quick at learning.
So just throw something at me and I'll figure it out. And I think that at that point in my life, I was like, can I figure out a way to at least get a job? And I think that was the first time where I started thinking about what do I do, but it took so many years until I figured out what am I good at? And I think in the realm of things, you know, figuring that out in my mid twenties is pretty early, but as a 21, 22 year old, I had no idea what I [00:05:00] would do or what I would want to do.
It's just like, can I get a job? And that's really where it started.
David Fano: That's such an awesome story. I love it. I love it. So, so cool. So you just like, it was just about working. Not even to stress about what it is I'm happened to be in Israel. There's a lot of startups tech, I can speak English that makes me marketable and I'm just gonna go wherever I can work.
And all right, cool. So, so you, you succeed at that. You go get a job somewhere and, and how did that get the kind of career momentum rolling.
Eli Weiss: Yeah. So what was fascinating to me at the time after traveling a bunch was. I love the idea of anything related to travel, because I thought that I understood travel and found a luggage company.
It was a Kickstarter brand and I was like, oh, luggage travel. That's a no brainer. It took me like four years to realize I really hate luggage. I can travel on a plastic bag. I love traveling, but you know, started at this, you know, this was a Kickstarter campaign. They had launched in 2014. When I joined 2016, they didn't even have a [00:06:00] product.
So everyone wanted a refund. It was like the pinnacle of just a really, really. You know, aggressively, terrible situation. And I was like the guy that they tossed in front of the computer and, and, you know, I was always, I always felt like I had some sort of leg up around, you know, understanding and communicating with people because I understood how to read between the lines and, you know, and everyone's asking for a refund through a Kickstarter campaign, you know, th when you back at camp, You don't really necessarily need the product tomorrow.
You want to be part of the building of the product. And my hypothesis was if we can be more transparent and say, like, we've been dishonest, here's what's really going on. And we can rally these people behind us and get to a better space. And we did that. And over like a year and a half, we ended up like getting to the finish line, launching a V2, 90, 70% of people hopped into V2.
And I was blown away that like customer service and experience transformed the business from failure to success and, and, and iteration. And then, you know, for years, At a company like that went from 17 employees to, to raise a couple of mill, spend a couple of mil and [00:07:00] just did every single role at the company other than finance and design.
So did like Amazon ads and, you know, ops and logistics to shipping to 64 countries, investor relations, trade shows, brand strategy, email copy. So really touched everything. And I think we got till 2020 before. Decided to niche down. And I think niching down was partially a conversation I had with you and the TLT and very early on where I applied to 80 something roles and couldn't even get a reply.
So not, not an interview, not even a reply. You know, you read so much about generalists and you read range by David Epstein and you're like generalists, that's the holy grail. But turns out that most companies that have more than three employees are not necessarily looking for generalists, they're looking for somebody that's really, really good at what they're doing.
And I think that was my moment of reckoning, where it was like either pick something that you're really good at, or you'll just, you'll, you'll be FunEmployed instead of, you know, instead of impolite. So, uh, that's, that's kinda where I, where I started thinking, as you know, Is there [00:08:00] one single thing that I think I'm better than 95% of people at, and that, that, you know, thinking about what customer experience was and what my vision of what it could be and how that integrates with marketing and retention was something I felt like I had a unique story around and that's, that's how I broke into, you know, food and beverage and CPG.
So
David Fano: that's so, all right. So I, I always like. Show that there was a thought process in careers. And unfortunately it's usually only evident in retrospect because it doesn't feel it in the moment, but there was an intentionality is okay. I like traveling. And so, you know, I kind of break it down into like context level and ability.
And so you said context is the thing that excites me right now, it's traveling. So I'm going to sort of look in the domain of travel, which then led you to luggage, which is like hardware products, you know, in terms of like occupation, it was general. But then through that exposure, you found customer.
Experienced customer success, customer support. And what what's the what's the, you can tell us the kind of [00:09:00] current way to frame it, but you found that as a, as a function or occupation that actually really called to you. Yeah. I
Eli Weiss: think, you know, when I was working at this luggage brand, what I was seeing is that.
Something, that's generally the corner of the office with a fire extinguisher, this very reactive put out fire roll. That's often a cost center and outsource can actually be the single thing that turns a business around. And, you know, when I, when I was looking at the space and in 2016, I was seeing that, you know, Zappos and chewy were super famous for delivering experiences, but that was where the bar was.
So like having a support team that's in the U S picking up the phone was like enough to write a book about and thinking about the fact that like, why are so many brands. It's you know, spending hundreds of millions of dollars on marketing, but nothing on support. And that's kind of where, where I looked at the broader space and realized that SAS companies have created this role called customer success since the nineties where they're paying people six figures to effectively do what customer experience reps should do, which is be [00:10:00] proactive about the experience, understand what would make somebody leave and keep them excited and engaged so that they spend more money.
And the difference was that there was more money on the line with customers. But that was in its infancy of Facebook ads. And the arbitrage days where, you know, people were spending $20 to acquire customer has spent 80 as Facebook turned that dial and Snapchat turned that dial and, and that arbitrage date was over.
And all of a sudden it costs $150 to acquire a customer that spends 50 on order one, you start thinking about LTV and th the only way to keep a customer around, you know, like product is a big factor. Experience and brand is so important, but if you outsource customer experience and it's a very, you know, very annoying experience for the customer, that's the single reason for them to hate you as a brand.
And I had the inkling in 2016 that this might become a lot cooler than it was, and it took a couple of years, but, but we are seeing this increase in brands, hiring for chief success, officer chief experience, officer senior director of CX, like these, these roles that didn't exist 10 years ago. We're now seeing the importance of [00:11:00] creating these memorable experience.
David Fano: This, this is great. I mean, cause I, one of the things we're trying to do with teal is like really highlight how the body of a job description might be 99% the same, but the job title is all over the place and people search for all sorts of different job titles. So what would you say is the family of job titles that are kind of functionally the same role and, but like how does each domain or context use it to.
Eli Weiss: Yeah, I think that's a great, great point. You know, what we've seen broadly in the, in the realm of SAS companies is that customer success is this hybrid role between sales and support. You know, like the BDRs and SDRs are pretty straightforward sales and, and this customer success is, is hybrid of sales and support.
In, in the more T to C realm, you're seeing a lot of different growth titles, whether it's like growth marketing or paid marketing, or, you know, like there's a bunch of titles that are somewhat in the, in the, in the, in, uh, you know, in that realm. Creating more revenue for [00:12:00] brands. I think very, very often people are scared off.
I don't know Facebook ads and what they don't understand is they can pay $200 and take a course and learn everything about Facebook ads. And it's about the interest more than it's about the experience, the downside to all of this, and, you know, retention also, right? It's like retention and lifecycle marketing.
Like those can be the same exact role. They can be wildly different, but in a lot of businesses, they are the same role lifecycle marketing SMS. And like, they're, they're usually grouped together, but the most important thing that I've learned. In con in conjunction with some conversations in the early days of teal, was that the hardest, the hardest step of creating any sort of connection within a new potential opportunity is getting your foot in the door and that, you know, obviously you need a great resume and you need a warm connection, et cetera, et cetera.
But the difference between, you know, even the conversations I had with my, with my role, I just started, you know, I was competing with somebody that had 10 plus years experience at Tiffany. I have worked at a soda company for two [00:13:00] years. Right. It's and it's like the diff the, the differentiating factor between me and everyone else that was going up against this person from Tiffany's is that I knew Bobby son through Twitter.
So connection I made through Twitter was impactful enough to get me through the side or back door that got me into that conversation. Once I have that conversation, and the question becomes, why are you better than this person who has 10 years of experience in Tiffany's? I can say, well, Tiffany is the same old.
I don't think you want same old. Do you want to do this differently? Here's how I can do it. That conversation, that, that conversation with HR goes wildly different, right? So it's like getting through the door is the most important part. Almost everything else is learnable. And I think I'm probably a decent example.
David Fano: Oh, that's I love that story. All right. So you do the luggage, you understand you don't like luggage, but you like customer support. And, and so now you're, you're looking for the next thing, so, okay. And sort of talk us through that. I, I talk a lot about what I call the career growth loop. You, you search for what you're looking for, then you transition and then you [00:14:00] develop and what happens is develops starts to plateau.
And then you search again. So talk me through that moment where you were kind of at the end of the develop and you're like, all right, time, time for a new.
Eli Weiss: Yeah, I remember it pretty vividly. I think this was like in the early months of COVID it was pretty clear that travel wasn't going to be a thing for a hot minute and selling luggage, you know, like luggage in a world of no travel.
Isn't really a commodity. So I can remember it was like a slow train wreck where I was like, I gotta pay rent. I gotta figure this out. Gotta make a move. But you're comfortable. You're not necessarily excited to make that move. Slowly, but surely you start looking and it goes from, you know, passively looking to actively looking and you start searching for, you know, marketing and then you start searching for operations.
And I'm like thinking through my head, like, what are the things I'm good at? And I was doing a bunch of different things. So I started searching for roles in the realm. I remember looking at ops associates, role roles, and I was looking at, you know, customer experience manager roles and it was looking at.
[00:15:00] A lot of cuss. I remember applying for a customer success role at slack, and I wasn't sure if I liked large companies or small companies, I had no idea what I was looking at. And I think it, it took, you know, a whole bunch of not hearing back to realize that I need to start somewhat narrowing down what I'm interested in and make a very compelling case on whether it's cover letter or resume, like make a very compelling case.
Why. This is something I'm uniquely interested in because I think most people don't think about the fact that HR gets hundreds of applicants. They can tell very easily who has applied to one role versus 300 roles. And I, instead of applying to 80 roles, I'm like, how can I pick five and apply very, very, very intentionally.
So I remember having that conversation and thinking, you know, Like we spoke about earlier. It's like, what is the one thing that I'm better than most at? And ops was definitely a way to make more money. It was definitely something I was decent at, but what I felt about customer experience was I was telling a story around the importance of customer experience and how it effectively is a powerful retention marketing tool [00:16:00] that most people weren't.
And I felt like, you know, I was thinking ahead, like I gotten into an interview with the CEO, what's the story or the pitch that would get me over the finish line. And it was definitely in the realm of customer experience. It was what I felt passionate about. And then I kind of re reformulated my whole, my whole experience, whether it was like my LinkedIn and my resume.
I reformulated everything to highlight my specific customer experience goals. And. Accomplishments and my passions and you kind of re, re uh, a whole new spin on my story. And then. Realized that I would start all the way from step one. I'd start as an associate, but this time around, I would choose a company that people know, because what I realized is that my four years at a luggage company that I felt was a mate, was an amazing real life.
MBA meant zero to any cool company. Cause they want to hire the guy from Airbnb or the guy from. W w you know, Allbirds, et cetera. So that was my goal was like, let me start from the bottom, but in a better company where they feel like they get a good deal on [00:17:00] finding somebody who has great experience, that's looking for an associate role.
And then from there I can kind of climb up. And that was like my, my calculated approach thought it was. It's five, six years, a few months, but that was my, my calculation, you know, starting to search again. So I'd love to
David Fano: talk about that. And I mean, there's so much, really powerful stuff right there that you did.
That was incredibly deliberate and, and I think really wise, so one was specializing. Right, because I'm a person who likes to do a little bit of a lot of things. And so I read the range book and I'm like CC, but I'm also a person who knows that you need to present as a specialist because at the end of the day, people don't want to hire generalists.
It's different, like to beat. Once you get in, you can actually act as a generalist and they will see value, but in the moment of hiring. People don't want to hire a generalist. Like very few job descriptions are for a generalist. The majority are for a specialist because they've got an acute problem and you need to [00:18:00] solve it.
And so I'd love to talk through, through that for a minute. This, this kind of realization that I like a lot of things I can do a lot of things, but for the purposes of this intention, which is getting into a company I need to present as a specialist, kind of like. Like how, how stark was the difference from like when you made that switch to your ability to have conversations, all those kinds of things?
Eli Weiss: Yeah. I think I spent most of my career thinking about the things I want versus the things that I want to be wanted for. And when I, when I think about the hiring, you know, the person that's making the hire. People hire for needs. And the only time there's a need for a generalist is day one. Like if you're the first employee, they want somebody that can like figure things out and do a lot of different things.
When you're hiring for a CX manager, like you're saying, like being a generalist at the job is not, is not harmful. It can be helpful, but being a generalist, applying for the job to most people means you're not the best at CX you're moderately good at a bunch of different things in [00:19:00] CX as well. And when you think about, you know, the next level of that is people are hiring, thinking that the person will.
Stick around and be there for a while. And if they're hiring a generalist that is wanting a job at a cool company, because that's the job that's open. That's not somebody that'll stick around. So it, you know, I was thinking like, how can we align on like, what makes the most impactful employee for the company instead of what's the most impactful job for me.
And if I can align my story with what they're looking for, that's the only way. And, and, and it, it it's, you know, now, you know, we look back and we're like, oh, that was pretty intelligent. But I, I learned that because. I made a thousand mistakes along the way of like trying to be the generalist thinking like, no, I'm, I can figure my way around the Shopify store.
I can build, you know, on WordPress. Like I can do so many things that are cool for a company that has five employees. They wouldn't even have to hire other people for, but for them that's not the way they're thinking. And I think that realization was enough for me to start thinking differently as like, can [00:20:00] I be good at a lot of things, but still highlight the things that they're looking for.
And the other thing, Dave is. The, and, and I'm sure you know, this better than most. It's like the point in your interview process is also like if you brought up that I'm a generalist and I can do a lot of things at the last interview where you're like, by the way, I can also do X, Y, and Z, not a bad thing.
Bring that up to HR. You're an X. So that's the other thing I started thinking about is like, I want to talk about that. I obsessed with retention, but I want to talk about that to the CEO, not to the HR manager. So that's really the.
David Fano: That. I mean, that's such a, that's a black belt level understanding of the.
And cause, you know, I think we communicate things quickly and everything's the size of a tweet we really need to like simplify it. And so we give out these like one liner bits of advice, but the truth is context is everything and, and time. And so there's a right time and a right place. To give information.
That's what I think people get really hung up and [00:21:00] adversarial around the resume and it's like, no, no, it's job is to get you in the door. Like, that's it. So if you have to only present 10% of yourself, that's fine present the 10% that gets you in. And the other 90% sort of slowly reveal it at the right time throughout the interview process.
So I think that's really, really good advice. The other thing that you did that I think a lot of people struggle. Um, I'm going to put you in the category of career investor, like you were making career investments, you aren't playing the short game and you took a step back to step forward. And I was like equated to like, when we jumped, we squat and then we jumped or before we run, we sort of lean back and then we thrust.
So you did that. And I think for a lot of people, that's very, very hard. So can you talk through, I mean, you kind of described it on how you thought that. You know, change the trajectory, but talk us through a little bit about your thought process there, and then we'll talk into like how it's actually playing out.
Well,
Eli Weiss: first of all, thank you. Um, second of all, it was brutal. You know, you think about [00:22:00] just about everyone in the working world has something they can lean back on. I think about that as a college degree in very rare instances. So rich dad, in some instances, it's a friend that owns something like. For me, I had zero.
I had my GED, no college degree. I had nothing. I, all my work experience was in a foreign country, so I really had nothing to lean back on. So it made it even scarier. It was brutal because I went from this, you know, ideating strategy place to like 5,000 tickets in the inbox place. And I expected it. I think what, what, the way I was thinking about it then is, you know, Now looking back, I can say, yeah, it was, it was this whole plan, but then it was like, what I'm doing is clearly not working because I'm applying for these roles.
I'm not getting anywhere. The reason why even the one or two interviews I got, they said like, yeah, this, this isn't really a fit because you're not X, Y, and Z. And I figured, you know, from a hiring manager's perspective, what's the most impactful thing, you know, what do you feel really good about for [00:23:00] most like junior or like not very experienced leaders?
The thing that you get super excited is a good. And when, you know, now at the place where I'm at, it's like, I don't want, if I hire somebody and think I have a good deal, they're going to realize that they are a good deal and they'll be gone in four weeks. But I think a lot of people are still in the phase where if they can get a really good deal they're in.
So like imagine somebody with four years of experience coming in as an associate and they're paying you associate levels. Like I thought that would be a no brainer for a business. So starting, you know, I was like, I thought it would be two years of eating, you know, eating shit and then eventually I'd figure it out.
But. It took a couple of months, but I think when I started as an associate, it was like, I'm just going to buckle down and do what I have to do, because I do have this multi-year vision of like, where I think CX can go. And I was seeing that even back then, people were appreciating the things I was sharing on Twitter, et cetera.
But you know, the, the vision was. I kind of had the steps I needed to take. Right. It's like get that [00:24:00] credibility of being at a cool company, get my years of experience under the belt, get connections, and then I can kind of go up from there. So I do, I do definitely think that back then, I was like, I'm setting myself back a couple of years.
But in the realm of things, you know, being in my, at that point, I was in my, in my mid twenties. I was like, if I set myself back a few years and it gets to where I want to be five years later, like I still have a chunk of my career there and, you know, COVID was, was a thing. So it's like, I might not have a job for months and everyone might slow down from hiring.
Let me just take something. So I know I'm, I'm set. And I think, you know, heading into it after, after like a short few months, I realized. The way I was thinking about jobs and career was somewhat near-sighted. You know, now, now I look at it as I don't at all have a five-year plan. I have a 30 year plan. Am I?
My 30 year plan is like, how can I build, you know, build an opera. Fantastic brands that can prove out [00:25:00] that putting customer first is actually profitable. And I think that, you know, in that realm of like, I want to build an operate brands. I can start a company in 15 years or in 10 years or in five. But as long as I can continuously collect the two things I'm looking for now is experience and connections.
If I can, if I can score any of those two, I'm set.
David Fano: I love that. And I'm going to put a different word on what you said. I'm gonna call it a career because it's more of like a guy. Right. It's uh, this, this ideology and that's experiential. It's like, I want to be working towards that and time I could, I come, I'm willing to always be doing that.
Then I want to make sure I'm still doing that. And then obviously you can, you can change your mind. So I think that's super, super powerful. Another thing that you did that I think is really cool is you were recognizing value in different ways. You've said it a couple of times. I want to work for a cool company because you had this understanding that, that cool company on your resume.
Carried value beyond the dollars as something that you could take with you? I don't think a lot of people realize that right. [00:26:00] Being in the first 100 employees at Google Facebook, Salesforce, that actually gives you like much higher, higher ability in the future. Then I think people realize, and it's almost like acting like an investor in picking companies at that stage.
So can you talk through a little bit about that because maybe you did take a comp pit, but you were recognizing value in.
Eli Weiss: Yeah, I think compensation is, is by far the trickiest thing, because we see very often that people, you know, they'll have two offers. One of them will be a fantastic company, great team, you know, great potential.
And the other one pays an extra 5,000 or $20,000. And so many people end up choosing the one that pays a little bit more. And I think, you know, obviously everyone's situation is different. Some people. Life, and that costs money and they need to make the decision that's best for their family, et cetera, et cetera.
But if you are in the situation where you can think a little bit ahead, you know, the, the, the, you know, and I talk about this with my, with my wife pretty often is like, if you, if you zoom out for a [00:27:00] year, like the difference between, like, let's say, 50 and $60,000 after taxes over a monthly basis is so minimal that it's like, it really, really isn't changing the game.
And I think, you know, investing, like you're saying like that event, And, you know, for me, it's like the credibility, connections, learnings like that to me is like, it has always been worth. It is like, I can take a little bit less money. And develop myself professionally. And the other thing I've thought about back then is ironically people have no problem spending $50,000 a year towards their MBA and have no problem spending $35,000 a year at Boston university or Cambridge or whatever.
But for some reason, Small hit to go to a better company. Now, obviously companies should pay, well, nobody should take a hit, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, putting that on the side, like the ability to, to choose a company that pays a little bit less, for some reason has been totally not acquainted with the [00:28:00] cost people spend at college and people can spend, you know, $200,000 for a piece of paper.
It doesn't even necessarily get them into a door. So that's really what I thought about is like, if I can learn. That's a tiny drop in the bucket of what I saved at, you know, not going to school.
David Fano: Yeah. And I think the other thing you did, and it's a really tricky, sensitive subject because like, I think everyone should be paid fairly.
There's obviously a lot of people, like, I love this coming from you as a person who like has a GED, you know, you didn't have a silver spoon. I think a lot of people are able to do that for very privileged reasons. In your case that wasn't the case, you were taking a risk. But so let's say those things being equal, which is a very broad thing to say, But at its core, you were betting on yourself.
You're like, I'm going to make that 10 K back. Like, it's just not going to happen right now. And I'm going to get it even more. I'm going to take this hit of, you know, we'll just keep using the 10 K even though that wasn't the real number, but, you know, I could have, I'm going to, I'm just not gonna accept this offer versus I'm going to take a bet on myself.
Also, this was two years ago, right? The market's very different today. So [00:29:00] you may not even have to do that, but I just philosophically this idea of. This, it's not this company shortchanging me, even though they might be, it's more, I'm going to reframe it. So I'm going to bet on myself. I'm going to go in there.
I'm gonna make the most out of this opportunity where I'm going to get values. This is going to be a great logo on my resume. I'm going to build great connections as a great founder. That's going to refer me in the future. And you know, I'm just, I'm thinking about where this is going to take me what opportunities it's going to create.
And I feel like, you know, too many people get stuck in the, the trying to short change. But again, I don't want to trivialize it. Some companies are legit trying to shortchange people, so that's not excusable, but then they start to lose sight of like, what are all the opportunities that the situation can bring.
So, so you, so what was that? You went to this cool company and you got the great logo on that. Like really then like catapulted your career into like CX proper.
Eli Weiss: Yeah, I think, you know, it was, it was probably a bunch of different things kind of cumulating at [00:30:00] once, but you know, one of the things early. In my career was, I was, I had a conversation with, with the, with the new friends and he was like, you know, your thoughts around CX are somewhat different than the rest of the people I've spoken to.
Why don't you share more about it? And I was like, well, like nobody really gives a shit about CX. And he was like, well, share it on Twitter and see if it resonates. And I think a lot of, a lot of my, you know, the last couple of jobs I've gotten were through connections I made on Twitter. So whether that's Twitter or LinkedIn or whatever anyone wants to use to share thoughts, I think that was extremely powerful in those connections.
So I think. It was, it was that plus doing, you know, like working at a cool company, like doing the work. I was excited about it at a company that was doing really well. And I remember, you know, it was a couple of months after we were starting this, this new role in food and beverage that somebody reached out and said like, oh, you work at this company.
I love what they're doing. I'd love to talk about CX. And we had a conversation he's like, I'm actually hiring. And I'm wondering if you're willing to leave. And I was like, oh, I'm actually. Ready to go. Now, my bags are packed and he was like, well, uh, I'm not ready to hire now, but you should talk [00:31:00] to my friend, Steven who's at Ali pop.
And I had no idea what all he pop was. But, um, after doing some research, I saw what they're doing is massive. And I had a couple of conversations and I think for me, when one of the things I think I do pretty well is understanding people. And I think having a conversation with leadership and seeing their conviction around the space and the money they raised and the, the, the team they put together, I, I felt like.
They would do well. And when I say they would do well, you know, I think about as my personal brand grows, as I think about CX, if I were to do the work I'm doing at a company that nobody knows of, but was making a few thousand dollars more, it, the work would just, it wouldn't resonate with people because people like seeing that succeed, like if polyprop wasn't super successful, the work I would be doing, wouldn't be seen by many people.
And that in actuality is actually. Not doing wonders for my own career. So it, you know, making the extra couple of, so making the extra couple of thousand dollars working at a company, nobody knows would mean that my own brand. Like when I go to [00:32:00] the next company, I want to show off the work I've done.
They're not looking at my pay stub. They're looking at show us the work. And that is also like, if I'm not doing it, a company that's growing that I can actually say like, look like Ali pop went from zero subscriptions. More than 10,000 subscriptions and retention was super, super high and turn was low.
Like if I can show all those things and it's like, this is all due to my vision around CX and retention, the team I put together, like that's so much more of a compelling story. So I think it's, even for me, it was like less about the money and more about like my career vision and. If I want to, you know, my broader vision is like, I want to change the way customer experience is viewed.
I want to, I don't want it to be an entry-level role that gets $35,000. When a growth associate makes 75. Like if I want to change the way that that works, it takes two things. Number one, I have to work at a company that values CX and is willing to pay the CX associates 60 or 70. Number two, it has to be at a company that's actually going to grow and I can do my best work there so I can show that it came from them.
And I guess the last thing is like the more that the [00:33:00] company scales, the more people look at what I'm sharing and then it builds my own personal brand. Massively underrated in terms of finding a new role. Like, you know, that, that's the thing that's not spoken about enough is like your own brand, like who you are as a person, we view it, like know like an influencer.
You're not an influencer. Like every person has a brand. Like your brand might not be on Twitter or LinkedIn. It might be how people that know you talk about you, but everyone has a reputation. I think brand and reputation are somewhat, somewhat in the same sentence here, but, um, that's kind of the way I was thinking of.
David Fano: Yeah, I love it. And I, again, it's this, I just feel like you've taken this investment long-term view and that's something I really want people to take away from this conversation is that there's this, I'm just, I'm just seeing it a lot. When I talk to people is like, oh, I have to use Twitter now, or I have to be on LinkedIn.
So you don't have to do anything. What you're investing your time and energy on an asset that belongs to you. And you develop those relationships. You develop that network, the company doesn't own that actually in the more strength you have in your voice and your asset and your [00:34:00] ability to connect with an audience that's going to, that's something you can yield off of forever.
So it's not an obligation come in, you know, now do companies like it. Sure. But it doesn't mean you have to do it. And so I think that was a really wise investment on your part and to start to put your ideas out there and it takes courage, you know, to do it. So we'd love to wrap on that. I mean, yeah.
Building your brand, building your following. You know, I think you've really established yourself as someone, as a voice in the industry of customer success and customer experience. Like what advice would you have for someone who was kind of in your spot being like, Hey, I need to, you know, I kinda need to pick something, but I don't want to pick something, but you know, I'm worried about it, you know?
And, and just like getting those thoughts out there to, to, to make that leap.
Eli Weiss: Yeah. I think about this in two ways. You know, number one, you know, we think about personal brand is like, you need to be this loud influencer type of person. I'm an introvert [00:35:00] would rather be at home than, than be anywhere else. So I, for me, it's like when I have a thought that I want to share with people and see if it resonates a great place to test that.
And I view it as like, it's a, it's a personal billboard where I can share something I'm thinking about and people get excited about. I think the, the, you know, it's number one, like you don't have to be an extrovert to share your thoughts with others. Number two, I think that is something not spoken about enough is thought leaders and thought leaders are a diamond doesn't on every platform with fancy cars and on, you know, on Instagram, on Twitter, it's a whole bunch of threads on LinkedIn.
It's skipping of lines, you know, like they're, they're a dime a dozen. And I think that the size of your audience is so non-important. Compared to like, you can have 150,000 people that want to read your threats about the market, but if you're not looking for a job and the New York stock exchange, it doesn't matter.
And I think that's the most, the most important thing is like pick a niche, pick a niche. And that doesn't mean you can't be yourself and make quirky dad jokes. You can do [00:36:00] that as well, but like pick a niche of something that you are excited to work within and share your thoughts on that specifically.
Like we've seen so many people that build a massive audience on Twitter. They'll post something and nobody engages with it. And they have like 0.01% engagement because nobody cares because they didn't sign up for your thoughts on, on, you know, whatever's going on in the, in the real world, they signed up for your thoughts on growth marketing.
And I think that's like the most important thing I'd say is like, pick your niche, share your thoughts about it. And you know, what. If people are interested, share more. If people aren't interested, maybe you find something that people find interesting. But I think it's, it's to your point that you mentioned before, David's like the only thing you own, other than whatever you say worked for you, the only thing you actually own that you can take from job to job and stays with you forever is your own brand and your own reputation.
And again, like whether it's like you're following on LinkedIn or. Things that you wrote down on your own, you're your own notes app, like focus on [00:37:00] yourself and everyone that works for a job focuses on like, how can I add value, add value, add value, without focusing on like, what do I have to keep for myself?
And it's definitely like, even within a brand of the size of lollipop, like there's 70 people. Most people only know of 2, 3, 4 people that work there because they are the only ones that choose to share. And EV and I keep telling you, I kept telling my team at all. You did amazing work, share that on LinkedIn, like share that on Twitter and they do, and they'll get like thousands of views and hundreds of thousands of impressions, and then they get excited about it and they share more.
And ultimately it's, it's your billboard and whether or not you're looking to leave tomorrow or in 10 years or when they exit or whenever that case is. Thinking about like your own personal reputation. Like I think Brandon reputation is, you know, brand sounds like you're an influencer reputation. Sounds like you're a person, but, um, reputation is, is, is, you know, like the only thing that matters, like when I am looking for a role and people ask around what they hear about.
This is what matters by resume. Doesn't matter as much. So I think
David Fano: that's a [00:38:00] great place to end on. So how can people follow along with all the awesome content you're putting out there? Occasionally, a few little videos of your adorable son walking. What's the best way for people to.
Eli Weiss: Yes, I appreciate it.
It's uh, at Eli Weiss with an extra S so it's E L I w E I S S S on Twitter or Eli Weiss on LinkedIn. And this has been such an eye opening conversation. It's like every podcast I do is always just about the same for CX questions and taking a pause to talk about the past is so refreshing, because I think most of us anxious folks just think about the future.
Um, so this has been very refreshing, so I appreciate you having.
David Fano: Cool. Thanks for doing it is such a cool category of an occupation. And I think that's going to be one that's growing. So I'm really thankful for, for the work you're doing to lead the charge. So we'll link in the show notes, how to follow Eli.
Definitely follow him on Twitter. Really great content, really great thought leadership on the category. And again, Eli, thanks so much for your early support with teal. [00:39:00] And thanks for being on the show. Of
Eli Weiss: course.
David Fano: And that's it for this episode of nonlinear. If you enjoyed today's conversation, make sure to subscribe, share, and rate us wherever you're listening to the show, you can learn more about teal on our website, teal hq.com.
That's teal like the color T E a L H q.com. Or follow us on social. At teal underscore HQ. Thank you so much for joining us. And please tune back in to keep hearing about how we make the decisions that shape our career. The teal career paths podcast is produced by rainbow creative with senior producer, Matthew Jones and editor and associate producer, drew Powell.
You can find more information on them at rainbow creative dot C O. Thanks again. We'll see you next.