Erica Kuhl's Recent LinkedIn Posts

Bragging doesn't come naturally to most women. A few weeks ago, I asked a room full of women to do something simple… and kind of uncomfortable. The rules: Introduce yourself and give me something you're proud to brag about. Not a humble brag. A full-out, no-deflecting, about-YOU brag. You could feel the shift in the room immediately. Smiles. Nervous laughter. That pause where everyone’s trying to figure out how to say something about themselves without sounding like… too much. Even with explicit instructions, the qualifiers crept in.  “Here’s my not humble brag…” “I mean, my team really - ” “It wasn’t just me, but…” Each time, I interrupted. Course corrected. Reminded them that this is a safe space. Let it out. It was uncomfortable for about 30 seconds. And then… something changed and it got electric. Schools built. Millions raised for charity. Program budgets doubled. Awards won. Communities scaled. A room full of women who had been quietly carrying extraordinary things - finally saying them out loud. Without apologizing for it. This shows up in the workplace too. Self-promotion often feels uncomfortable, even risky. We default to "we" when the situation calls for "me." We pull the team in out of genuine gratitude - but sometimes at the cost of our own visibility. And it can cost us. Promotions. Recognition. Opportunities. This might be an unpopular opinion, but…being good at your job isn’t always enough. Bragging and being gratuitous aren't the same thing. You can own your wins AND be a team player. They're not mutually exclusive. That doesn’t mean becoming someone you’re not. Or taking credit that isn’t yours. It just means getting comfortable saying: “I did this.” “I’m proud of this.” “This mattered.” That little exercise? It felt like a small crack in a norm that's been in place for a long time.

My first job out of college, I had a boss tell me, “Sometimes you have to eat sh*t and say yummy.” I was 22. Bright-eyed. Brimming with theories from my business classes. Fully convinced I was about to *wow* this team with my big ideas and boundless enthusiasm. My mom called me her “corporate cutie,” and I thought I was ready. Spoiler: I was not. He told me I was too eager. I didn’t listen enough. And that passion without patience wasn’t helping anyone. I was crushed. (Honestly almost quit on the spot.) But I didn’t. My stubbornness kicked in. And I decided I’d prove him wrong. Here’s the part that’s taken me decades (and across many different companies) to admit: He was right. The delivery? Terrible. The lesson? Spot on. It’s really hard to do this well when you’re early in your career. You want to contribute, and to be seen. You want to justify why they hired you. But trust is earned in quieter ways. – By listening more than you speak. – By asking good questions. – By learning the context before trying to rewrite the playbook. Especially if you want to build something from scratch someday – or influence at the exec level – you have to understand the room before you try to lead it. Now, when I mentor people entering the workforce, I share the same advice… just with a lot more empathy (and a lot less profanity). Start by listening. Be curious. Learn the history. Build trust. Then bring your ideas forward when the moment – and the credibility – are there. You don’t have to shrink yourself. You just have to sequence it the right way.

Most companies still treat community like a silo. A single team with its own segmented metrics and goals. The best ones don’t. They treat community like a Center of Excellence acting like a shared service that touches every part of the business: Product, Support, Marketing, Sales, Education. That’s what I’m sharing tomorrow at Community Week Toronto: how to sell the value of community across your org, build cross-functional momentum, and tie it all to metrics execs actually care about. Because real success isn’t when community “belongs” to one team, it’s when people feel left out if they’re not part of it. If you’re in Toronto for Community Week, come say hi. Let’s trade stories about what it really takes to make community the heartbeat of your company. 🗓️ October 23–25, 2025 📍 Startwell, Toronto 🔗 https://lnkd.in/e2HCPc9f

I used to wrestle with product leaders to get them to engage with community feedback. I truly believed (and still do) that the best products are co-created. That PMs feel most alive when they’re building WITH customers – not just shipping to them. I truly believe that insight hits differently when you hear them in a customer’s own words (instead of a summarized doc). And then… plot twist. Now I’m the product leader! And if I’m being honest? I’m not 100% practicing what I used to preach. 😬 Not because I stopped believing in it. But because it is really hard to do well. Calendars get packed. Priorities stack up. I caught myself recently and thought, “Well damn. When did this happen?” So I’m naming it. For myself, and for Gainsight. This year, I’m making co-innovation a real priority again. Not as a philosophy, but as a behavior and a formal program. ✅ More PMs having direct customer conversations.  ✅ PMs spending more time in our Gainsight community.  ✅ More listening without an agenda. It won’t be perfect. But it will be intentional. If you’re a product leader and this feels uncomfortably familiar… you’re not alone. Me actually wrestling with my product leader at Salesforce - Shawna Wolverton (one of the best product leaders of all time 💪)

I’ve been in this space long enough to know one thing: community managers can’t be everywhere at once. I still remember the early days at Salesforce - we were flying the plane while building it. If a post went sideways, it was on me (or one very tired teammate) to catch it, de-escalate, and hope it didn’t flare up overnight. Exhausting. And honestly, not sustainable. That’s why this announcement feels like such a big deal. Gainsight just launched a Moderation AI Agent built specifically for community teams. It’s designed to help communities stay safe, on-brand, and human—without burning out the people running them. Here’s what I love most: it’s not about replacing human judgment. It’s about giving community leaders back time and headspace so they can focus on the work that really matters—nurturing connection, sparking conversations, and helping members feel seen. I’ve always believed moderation is one of the hardest, least glamorous, yet most essential parts of this job. Seeing tools built with that reality in mind feels like progress. How are you handling moderation today? Is it manual? Shared across the team? Or do you already have AI in the mix?

I have not one – but two – kids graduating this year. One high school. One college. How is that even possible? When did that happen? Apparently this is the moment you’re supposed to “inspect your identity” as you approach empty nesting. And sure… there’s some of that. But what’s really showing up for me is something else entirely: Independence. The good kind. The years when my kids were 7 & 10 through 14 & 17… those were HARD. Mentally. Physically. All of it. That’s when I chose to start my own consulting company. I needed to own my hours, my clients, and my energy. I needed flexibility (and I didn’t feel like apologizing for it). Less than a year ago, I was evaluating a role at Gainsight knowing full well it would be 10x harder. I wasn’t sure I was ready. But I felt a pull - almost a responsibility - to help build the products I wish I’d had when I was a practitioner in the trenches. Around that same time, a close friend said something that stopped me cold: “The timing is perfect. You’re about to have a lot more time. And maybe you want something to keep your mind off missing the kids.” She wasn’t wrong. As both kids head out into the world, the constant in-your-face mom guilt quiets down. I can really dig in now, work hard when it matters, without feeling pulled in ten directions at once. And as a small but meaningful bonus… Chuck Ganapathi got me a Starlink for Christmas! Which means we can do this empty-nesting thing from wherever we want. Somewhere sunny. Or snowy. Just not wandering around empty bedrooms pretending I’m fine. For those who’ve been here before, how did you “empty nest” well?

I used to think, “Marketing talks AT people. Community happens WITH them.” Turns out, that belief was holding me back. I actively leaned away from marketing language. I had this underlying assumption that marketing and community just didn’t mix… And for a while, that story felt right. The problem showed up in an unexpected place. Our community members were thriving. Engagement was strong. The value was real. But internally? Confusion. Skepticism. A lot of “I don’t really get what this is for.” At first, I chalked it up to people not paying attention. Then came frustration. Then… a few internal tantrums. What I finally realized was uncomfortable but important: This wasn’t a community problem. It was an awareness problem.  And it was MY problem. Employees are an equally important type of community member. And just like customers, they need guidance + context. A clear understanding of the vision, the priorities, and the role they play. Without that, engagement doesn’t happen (not because people don’t care, but because they don’t know HOW to show up). That’s where marketing messaging changed everything. Not campaigns. Not hype. But clarity. Messaging helped define the core pillars of the community - what it is and, just as critically, what it is not. It created structure around programs and actions. It gave the organization a shared north star to point to when decisions got hard. This is where a lot of community teams struggle. We stay deeply focused on the customer experience and forget that it’s just as important to bring our own company along for the ride. Internal clarity is what allows people to position the community, understand its value, and start building it into the DNA of how the company operates. That shift changed everything for me.

Community feels like it’s at an inflection point. Not because of a new platform. Not because of AI. But because the expectations have changed. A few years ago, community often lived as a siloed forum off to the side. Today, it’s expected to drive scale, influence support costs, shape product decisions, drive customer stories, and contribute to retention. That’s a VERY different mandate! Community isn’t smaller than it used to be. It’s bigger. More cross-functional. More scrutinized. More strategic. Join me as I’ll be unpacking all of this with Todd Nilson at the Community Outlook 2026: Trends and Predictions webinar on February 25th

I had a real “aha moment” during Skilljar’s Release Week. For years, I led teams at the intersection of customer education and community – wanting better tools, clearer stories, and releases that actually reflected how customers learn and move across experiences. Now, I’m leading from a different seat…helping bring together product, marketing, and engineering to turn those ideas into something real. And this week, it all clicked! This was my first Release Week at Gainsight (shoutout to Skilljar for starting the wave) working across our Digital Customer Hub products, and it felt like so much of what’s been building during my first year here is now fully in motion. Skilljar closed out the week by stepping into agentic learning with the NEW AI Tutor! Because learning isn’t just about content anymore (content still matters, but I’ll save that for another post 😉) →  It’s about how learning is surfaced. →  How it earns credibility, especially in a world shaped by LLMs. →  How you use learner data to guide them, not info dump every course at once. With our open beta of AI Tutor in Skilljar, we’re taking a real step toward learning that adapts, connects, and meets people in the moment. That’s what agentic learning represents to me: THE BRIDGE. If a rapid-fire Release Week says anything about where we’re headed this year…buckle up. Here’s to the incredible team I get to build with. Thanks for making this happen! 👉 https://lnkd.in/gBSwbySb

A National Geographic researcher, a temp agency staffer, an HR Generalist, and a museum sales rep all walked into the same retreat. I was swapping origin stories at my table during the Customer Education Leaders Retreat: “How’d you get into this work?” One by one, the answers were random, winding…and definitely not linear. And yet, every single one of them is now a top Customer Education leader. AI has all of us thinking about how jobs are changing. Roles that exist today won’t exist in five years. And jobs we can’t even name yet will become new career paths. Customer Education is proof. Most of the best leaders in this space didn’t plan to be here. They stumbled into it. Said “yes” to something adjacent – and stayed. But as we kept talking, a pattern emerged: Every one of them is a lifelong learner. They’re deeply curious, empathetic, patient, resilient, and they THRIVE in ambiguity. They also have grit. They’re competitive and persistent. And at their core, they genuinely want other people to succeed. That’s the throughline. Over the course of the event, the conversations kept reinforcing something I’ve believed since my early days building programs from scratch:  This work isn’t just about content. It’s about humans. It’s *really* hard to do this well. And it only works when you keep people at the center of learning - even as the tech evolves around us. Their careers weren’t linear. Mine wasn’t either. But I’m so glad they landed here - and I feel genuinely lucky to have spent a few days learning alongside them!

I was a shy kid growing up – but my mom never let anyone call me that. It’s kind of funny, because if you know me now, “shy” probably isn’t a word you’d ever use to describe me. But until I was about 13, that’s exactly how I showed up. Hanging back, watching everyone else go first instead of jumping in. My mom saw it. But she hated labels. She never let anyone call me shy (or anything else). And looking back, that might’ve been the gift. Because when someone puts a label on you, it creates a box. You either shrink yourself to fit it… or you exhaust yourself trying to escape it. My mom gave me a third option: time. No pressure to “be different.” No subtle message that something needed fixing. My confidence actually started on a roller coaster. Specifically, the Tidal Wave at Great America. I was there with my best friend. I must’ve told her a hundred times I wasn’t going on the ride. She didn’t push or tease me. She was just excited to be with me. And when I finally said yes? She was all in. We rode that roller coaster five times that day. And something cracked open. Not that it magically made me fearless - but because I learned something important: I wasn’t stuck. I could change my mind. I could SURPRISE myself! I didn’t walk off that ride confident in everything. But I stopped assuming “this is just who I am.” So if you’re raising a “shy” kid - or if you were one - growth doesn’t always come from forcing bravery. Sometimes it comes from patience, safety…  and one really well-timed “yes.”

I took one of those career tests in high school. You know the kind - answer a bunch of questions and a computer tells you who you’re going to be when you grow up. Mine said: “Greeting card writer.” I didn’t even know that was a job. Meanwhile, everyone else was getting doctor, lawyer, programmer. Very official. Very impressive. Even back then, I remember thinking… nah. I’ve never been great with being told what I can or can’t do. Call it stubborn. Call it grit. Probably a little of both. But the moment someone tries to define my ceiling, something in me wants to push back harder. Honestly? If I’d listened to that test, my life would look very different. And sure - I’d probably be a great greeting card writer. No shade. But here’s the thing I keep coming back to: When we tell people who they are, we shrink the possibility of who they might become. Potential doesn’t fit neatly into a multiple-choice quiz. It never has. And maybe the most greeting-card-worthy truth of all… “Congratulations on becoming exactly who you were meant to be.”

This one feels especially meaningful. Gainsight's Community product just hit some major milestones - analyst recognition, incredible customer growth, and new AI innovation that’s redefining how companies connect with their customers. As GM for Community, I get to see the work up close. The late nights, the “what if we tried this” moments, the small wins that add up to real impact. Watching our teams (and our customers!) push the boundaries of what community can do has been the best part of the job. But this isn’t just about features or rankings, it’s about proving that community is business-critical. It drives connection, learning, retention, and growth in ways no other motion can. Huge gratitude to our customers who believe in this vision and to the Gainsight team (Joris Dieben & Gil Michlin) who’s building it with heart and purpose. Read more about what we’ve accomplished together 👉🏼 https://lnkd.in/gkktpPyA I’m so proud of how far we’ve come and even more excited for what’s next.

I’ve launched more than a few super user programs in my career—and I’ll be the first to admit, I didn’t get it right every time. Sometimes I leaned too much on flashy rewards. Other times, I underestimated how much structure it really takes to keep momentum going. But every misstep taught me something, and over the years I started to see the patterns of what actually works. That’s why I put together this new piece on how to build a successful super user program. It’s a mix of lessons learned, updated tactics, and the kind of practical advice I wish I’d had back when I was flying the plane while building it. If you’re building or refreshing a program this year, I hope it gives you some ideas you can steal: https://lnkd.in/gwnD9EhS

Today, on International Women’s Day, my daughter turns 21. And I’ve never felt more sure about the choices that once made people question me. When she was little, I chose a high-intensity career. Big roles. Big travel. Early flights and late-night calls. I was building teams and programs from scratch. She didn’t love that I traveled. There were hard goodbyes. Moments I questioned myself in quiet airport terminals. There was judgment. Some subtle. Some not. The narrative was familiar: You can have ambition. You can have young kids. But having both? That’s selfish. Risky. Too much. But here’s what I know now. The time we had was intentional. Intense. Fully ours. When I was home, I was home. Big talks. Real talks. The kind where you look each other in the eye and actually see each other. She grew up watching me care deeply about my work. Watching me lead. Watching me recover when things didn’t work. Watching me stand in rooms where I had to earn my voice. Now she’s 21. Fiercely independent. Kind. Crazy smart. Emotionally connected. She knows who she is. We don’t always see eye to eye - we’re very different women - but there’s deep respect there. On both sides. She’s told me she understands it now. That seeing me build a life I believed in shaped her more than my constant presence ever could have. I was judged for my choices. She never judged me. International Women’s Day can sometimes drift into slogans and highlight reels. But for me, it’s this: women supporting women. Especially when their choices look different than ours. No scorecards. No side-eyes. Just respect. Because there isn’t one right way to be a woman. Or a mother. Or a leader. And I can’t think of a better way to spend today than celebrating the woman she’s becoming and recommitting to being the kind of woman who makes space for other women to choose their own path.

People have commented on my height for as long as I can remember: “I didn’t realize how small you were.” “You have tall person energy.” Height has been a thing my whole life. I danced for years. Tap was my jam. I wanted to be a Rockette SO badly – until my dance teacher gently told me I’d need to be at least 5’8”. Dream…over. And then there’s work. Short can read as “young.” And young can read as “inexperienced.” It’s exhausting at times, but it also sharpens you. You become hyper-aware of how you show up – and how you command a room. Competence has nothing to do with height.  But perception? Perception is real. Early in my Salesforce days, I delivered training over GoToMeeting (audio only). When customers finally met me in person, they almost always said, “Oh wow, I thought you’d be taller.” (And blond. Not sure what that was about…) Maybe because I’m small, I built a bigger presence. A stronger voice. A little extra steel in my spine walking into rooms where I was literally looking up at everyone. But I’ve been thinking…why do we equate confidence with height in the first place? Why does “presence” get described as “tall”? Competence doesn’t live in inches. It’s exhausting enough to work so hard just to prove yourself. Add in that quiet pressure to overcompensate for how you physically show up? And it’s a lot. Oddly enough, Zoom has been the great equalizer: Little squares. Same size boxes. For the first time in my career, no one’s towering over anyone. Height is completely outside my control. I can’t help being short. But I can help how I think about it – and how I show up.

I opened my very first board meeting with: “Show me the money.” Yes, I quoted Jerry Maguire. Board meetings are new territory for me, and I wasn’t fully prepared for how much work goes into getting them right. The cross-team collaboration. The weeks of prep. The slides and analysis that never make it off of the cutting room floor. And the uncomfortable part - going back to teams who worked their tails off to say, “We didn’t end up using this.” It’s oddly both aligning and isolating. What surprised me most, though, is how much a successful presentation comes down to energy and confidence. If you speak clearly, confidently, and with conviction, people sometimes don’t scrutinize every slide - they lean into the story you’re telling. That’s not a hack… it’s a reminder of how powerful storytelling really is. I’ve been pushing myself to bring a little more of me into it too. Still leading with data and substance but not sanding off all the personality. That’s been a fun (and slightly uncomfortable) edge to explore. Data earns you a seat at the table. How you show up determines whether people follow.

“I don’t want to start a community. It’ll just turn into a complaint forum.” I’ve heard that more times than I can count. And honestly… I get it. Opening the door to customers talking to each other – and about you – feels risky. Especially if you’ve ever watched a Reddit thread spiral or seen your product trending on Twitter for the wrong reasons. But here’s what I’ve learned after years of doing this: The conversation is happening anyway. They’re going to talk no matter what. So I’d rather they talk where I can see it. Where we can respond – and actually do something about it. This might be an unpopular opinion, but contentious conversations aren’t a reason to avoid community. They’re a reason to build one well. I learned this firsthand at Salesforce. When Analytics Edition was announced, the backlash to the pricing model was immediate. Blogs lit up. Twitter threads exploded. Community posts surged. Customers had a point. It would’ve been easy to clamp down. Over-moderate. Defend the decision. Instead, we leaned in. I worked with a group of trusted community leaders to aggregate feedback so leadership could clearly see the impact. We enrolled super users as partners – not as a PR shield, but as an extension of the moderation team. The goal wasn’t to shut it down. It was to make it collaborative, not combative. It was uncomfortable. No one loves reading pages of criticism about a decision their company just made. But that discomfort led to something powerful. Our COO published a blog that said, plainly: “We got it wrong, and we sincerely apologize.” Pricing was revised. Features were repositioned. And one of the most vocal critics responded publicly: “It’s an amazing example of a company listening and responding quickly.” That doesn’t happen if the conversation is happening behind your back. When you nurture a community well – with clear guidelines, strong moderation, and empowered super users – it becomes self-regulating. The community will protect itself from bad actors. And they’ll tell you when you’ve missed the mark. It’s really hard to do this well. But avoiding hard conversations doesn’t make them disappear. It just means you don’t get to be part of them.

There’s something special about stepping out of the chaos of Dreamforce and into a courtyard filled with old and new friends with wine in hand, the fall light catching just right, and real talk about what actually makes (or breaks) our communities. At JAX Vineyards yesterday, we gathered for a Dreamforce-adjacent conversation that felt more like a reunion than a formal event. We laughed, we grumbled, we celebrated, and we got honest about metrics. I made some bold statements like: “If you’re not tying community to business metrics, you won’t last.” We dug into what that really means. The hard truth that great stories and basic stats only go so far if they don’t ladder up to the business. But we also talked about how possible it is to bridge that gap with the right framing, the right allies, and the courage to speak the language of business. Everyone asked such thoughtful questions, and honestly, I felt like we could’ve gone on for hours. Maybe it was the food. Maybe it was the wine. Maybe it was just the kind of company that fills your tank instead of draining it. I loved every minute of it. If you were there...thank you. And if you weren’t…well, we’ll definitely do it again.

The most intense prioritization exercise of my career happened in a windowless conference room in Hawaii… arguing about whether Trust or Customer Success mattered more. It was a Salesforce leadership offsite – Marc Benioff plus ~400 leaders – and my first real exposure to a V2MOM. Ever since, I’ve used and refined the V2MOM framework because of what it forced us to do in that room. At Salesforce, V2MOM wasn’t a feel-good planning doc. It was a forcing function. It made tradeoffs explicit – and uncomfortable. From execs all the way down to ICs, everyone could clearly articulate: – what mattered – why it mattered – and just as importantly, what wasn’t getting done That last part is where most teams fall apart. What I’ve learned is that V2MOM doesn’t fail because the framework is flawed. It fails when it turns into a document you fill out, save to a shared drive, and forget. A strong V2MOM governs your year. It gives you air cover (and language) to push back when new work shows up: “Happy to add this… what moves off?” “What priority does this replace?” “What decision are we actually making?” But it only works if it’s ALIVE. The best V2MOMs show up in 1:1s, performance reviews, and at the start of strategic meetings. They become the grounding reference point for decisions, feedback, and tradeoffs as things inevitably change. I’ve seen V2MOMs work at the company level, for individual teams, on single projects – even for personal goals. The real power is shared clarity and permission to say no with context and alignment. This year, Chuck asked me to help roll out the V2MOM process to all of Gainsight for FY27… and I promise to do it in a bright room full of windows! I pulled together the best practices we’re using into a short PDF (linked in the comments) in case it’s helpful as you think about your own approach.

I once got hired as a ski instructor in Aspen. But there was one problem: My skiing wasn't good enough. After a couple of years teaching PeopleSoft, I decided to take a swing at a lifelong dream: becoming a ski instructor. So I tried out for the Aspen ski school. The process was no joke. On-mountain ski drills, off-mountain physical tests, and the final "exam" was picking a random topic to teach an experienced instructor to prove your teaching ability (being the daughter of a dentist, I taught them how to floss). At the end of it all, they gathered us to deliver the verdict. One guy in my group was the best skier I've ever seen. He grew up in Telluride, could ski anything, but also had an ego the size of the mountain. He was cut immediately. Then there was me. The girl who grew up skiing low-key hills in Tahoe. Standing there, I was convinced I had no chance. They told me my skiing needed work…but my teaching was strong. And in their words, the job was about 60% teaching and 40% skiing. Spoiler: they hired me! That experience changed everything for me – and teaching became the backbone of my entire career. The parallels to my work in education and community were impossible to miss: 1️⃣ You meet people where they are, not where you wish they were: One-size-fits-all instruction doesn’t work. Beginners and experts need different pacing, language, and reassurance. You need to read the room and adjust so people actually feel successful. 2️⃣ Confidence matters more than perfection: Good instructors build trust first. In education, learning sticks when customers feel safe asking questions, trying things, and getting it wrong. 3️⃣ Success is when they don’t need you: Great instructors teach themselves out of a job. The win is independence. So whatever you’re building in 2026, don’t underestimate this part. Lots of people can do the work. Far fewer can teach it in a way that leaves people feeling more confident than when they started.

Dreamforce week is a BUSY time and I'm excited to cut through the noise to talk about what actually drives community success...the plays, the metrics, and the stories behind them. Not a keynote. Not a large breakout. A real conversation. I’m hosting a small, focused session called “The Hidden Metrics of Community” where I’ll share the frameworks I used to turn the Salesforce Trailblazer Community from a side project into a business engine—and how those same ideas are shaping Gainsight's community strategy today. We’ll swap stories, compare notes, and dig into: - The hidden metrics execs actually pay attention to - How to tell the story behind your numbers - And the simplest ways to prove impact without overcomplicating the data If you’re craving a space for an honest, tactical conversation with other community pros, this one’s for you. 👉🏼 Register here: https://lnkd.in/g2kpNQYD

Gift giving is my love language - because the best gifts don’t impress you. They make you feel seen. I was recently gifted a custom monogramed robe and a big “E” mug from the Champion team. When I opened it, I just… paused. Because it was so thoughtful. So specific. So clearly me. And it reminded me why I care so much about giving gifts in the first place. There really is an art to being a great gift-giver. It teaches you to listen closely. To write things down when someone casually says, “I’ve always wanted one of those…” If I’m out running errands and something screams someone’s name, I’ll grab it and tuck it away for the right moment. Sometimes I forget about it and rediscover it years later. Still works. (Still fun.) The real gift is the look on someone’s face when they realize you were paying attention. My parents modeled this for me. Random packages. No special occasion. No reason. Just a “saw this and thought of you.” And one of the best lessons they taught me was simple: Give, not to get. I’ve passed this along to my daughter. She once made a thoughtful gift basket for a sick friend - really poured herself into it. And didn’t even get a thank you text. That one stung. For both of us. But she didn’t stop. She kept giving. And she’s found her people now: the kind, loving friends who show up the same way. So when I’m on the receiving end of a thoughtful, unexpected gift? It hits differently. ​​The art of giving isn’t about the thing. It’s the attention, the memory, and the quiet decision to care out loud. And that kind of thoughtfulness matters everywhere - in community, in leadership, in friendship. Because being seen is powerful.

I keep hearing “community is dead” and “customer education doesn’t matter anymore.” But that’s not what I’m seeing. At a recent CXO summit, one stat jumped out at me: 47% of Chief Customer Officers now own community and education. That’s a big jump from even a year ago – and I don’t think it’s a blip. Headcount is tighter. Expectations are higher. Teams are being asked to do more with less… while still delivering a high-touch, personalized customer experience. That tension doesn’t get solved by more humans. It gets solved by better systems. And content has become one of the most foundational systems we have. But not just any content. The most effective content I see today doesn’t come from polished PDFs or generic help articles. It comes from communities and academies: – Real customers – Real questions – Real expertise – All shared at the moment someone actually needs it Layer in AI and this becomes even more interesting…we’re officially swimming in AI slop. As LLMs flood the internet with manufactured content, search and discovery engines are starting to reward human-generated, experience-based knowledge. That makes community conversations and education content MORE valuable than ever, not less. Digital Customer Success isn’t new – we’ve been talking about it for years. But what is still emerging is community and education as core pillars of that strategy, not just side projects. Customers want to learn where they want, when they want, and how they want. Async. Live. Peer-led. Structured. Messy. All of it. Reaching them is harder than ever – and authentic engagement has quietly become a real differentiator again. So no, community and academies aren’t dead. They’re just finally being taken seriously.

I had no idea I was becoming a community builder. My title was "application instructor." I was standing in a Salesforce classroom teaching early admins how to use a product changing faster than any of us could keep up with. But something kept happening: people didn't just want training. They wanted to talk to each other. Share ideas. Be part of a movement. That realization has driven everything I've built since. The blank check era of CS is over. But customer expectations are higher than ever. The old model with fragmented content and siloed teams isn't holding up. Here's what I know after 20+ years: AI is only as good as the data it's trained on. And the most valuable knowledge your company has lives in your community, your academy, your help center - created by people who've actually been there. AI can't replicate that. But it absolutely depends on it. I got into all of it - what's breaking, what's working, and where this is all heading in a piece for Enterprise Times. Check it out 👇🏼 https://lnkd.in/g-hiWn7A