Speaker 1  0:00  

No news is not good news. When a client goes quiet, most of us tell ourselves everything is fine. They’re busy. They’re happy. If something goes wrong, they’d say so. My guest today would tell you that silence is not sign of satisfaction. It’s an exit ramp for that client, and every single one of us in business-and I would completely agree with this-should be caring about it, not just the customer success person. It is much easier for someone to quietly disappear than to tell them you’re leaving, right? Alicia Esmell is the founder of Latch AI and two days guest. She is AI native. She has built an AI native client retention engine, and that’s why she’s talking to me today about client retention, and why everybody in the business needs to work on it. This woman has a fascinating background. She is not your normal founder. She has spent years working international development. She built an award-winning coffee company off the back of that, but she realized that the most important thing was customer retention, and that most companies are doing that really badly. And in 2026, an era where new businesses are popping up left, right, and centered that aren’t always done very well, but they’re all powered by AI. Retention is now the most important job for every single leader, but it’s often treated as somebody else’s job. Slails close the deal and moves on. Customer success gets five minutes of airtime to make sure that that person enters the top of the funnel. Product does not always talk to customers. Engineering relies on product, and meanwhile, the single cheapest revenue available to your business, roughly seven times cheaper than acquiring someone new, is quietly walking out the back door. If you’ve been around long enough listening to my podcast, you’ll know that every single leader should be playing a part to every part of the business. So my lesson for you today, before we even get started, is that you need to care about customer retention, irrespective of your job title. So let’s get Alicia onto the show to discuss all the things she’s learned around customer retention, the best and worst advice she’s ever been given, and her answer that she would tell to her younger self ruthlessly attack fear something we could all do a bit more of. So, without further ado, let’s dive into the show. Welcome to the Leading Women in Tech podcast, the show that celebrates women in technology leadership. I’m your host Tony Collis, and this podcast is the result of my passion for building better tech by diversifying the leadership of the technology sector. Join me on this journey as I discuss all things leadership, what it takes to be innovative, breaking through the glass ceiling, be a great leader, and how to navigate the unique experiences we face as women in tech. So sit back, grab your headphones, and get ready to be inspired to become a better leader. Welcome to the show, Alicia. Thanks for joining us today. Thanks for having me. I’m excited to dig in. But before we get into all the nitty gritty details, start by giving everybody an overview of your background and how you came to care so deeply about customer retention, which is one of the key things I know we’re going to be talking about today.

Speaker 2  3:08  

Absolutely, I’ll tell you a little bit about me and my story is a bit funny, and I I got to tech in a very roundabout way. Let me take you back to my international development days. I spent about seven years working overseas in places like Haiti, South Africa, Nepal, Jordan, Panama. It was a privilege to travel that much, and I was in charge of leading teams of four to 16 people at the time. I don’t know why people gave me that much responsibility for three to four months at a time, and we did some really cool work. We were in charge of executing on clean water projects, running primary healthcare clinics in very remote locations, and of course, food security was a big part of what we were doing as well. And so that’s actually where the passion and love for my first company came to be, where I saw coffee farmers firsthand, and I’d get to know their farmers and their families, and I’d drink tea with their grandmas, and I started to learn from them that coffee grew on a tree and how it was processed and how it was dried and then packaged eventually for export to arrive to places where I lived. And these people were some of the happiest, most joyful people in the world, but they often didn’t have their basic needs met, and that would just break my heart. And then eventually, you know, every time I’d come back to the the West, I’d spend five bucks on a coffee in the airport, and I I didn’t want to see that disconnect anymore. And I thought it was pretty unjust and pretty uncool. And so, with a lot of naivety, I moved back to Canada, where I was born and raised, and I started my first company as a way to bridge the gap. That was really cool. We built out direct supply chains around the world. We built out our own microloan program to help move coffee farmers out of poverty into independence and freedom. Crazy story on why that even started, and we did some really meaningful work through that company nationally, and and then ended up landing in tech because I started to see way too many people work hard to build their companies and then lose their clients because the back door was open.

Speaker 1  5:20  

I don’t know. That’s why one of the reasons I wanted to get you on the show because I believe every person in a business should worry about retention. Ultimately, we only get paid because the business makes money until we come up with some other grand scheme, right? That’s the nature of working in a corporation, however big or small. Even a startup, ultimately, the startup is trying to demonstrate to its investors it can make money, even if it’s not actually making enough to make profit. So I believe every person, down to the lowest level employees, entry level, should care about retention. Why did you start down this road of retention? Is the focus of what I want to be doing? Like, what was it that you were like? There’s a gap here.

Speaker 2  6:05  

Honestly, it goes back to almost losing our biggest client. So we had this really big client with the coffee company, and they were 50% bigger than any of our other clients. And I know you’re not supposed to do that in business, but I was still pretty young, and I didn’t know that you know having a client that big with a bunch of small clients was was a vulnerable place to put the company in. Obviously, learned that lesson. But

Speaker 1  6:30  

hey, we don’t try. We don’t listen.

Speaker 2  6:32  

That’s exactly right. So here’s the thing: I’m sitting at the dinner table with my family, and I get one of those dreaded emails where the subject line was “We’ve decided to go in a different direction, and as I mentioned, they were 50% bigger than the rest of our clients, and my stomach dropped. I was immediately overwhelmed, stressed out, thinking, you know, that hit in MRR is going to make a big dent in the company. What am I gonna do? I excused myself from the table to try and collect myself. I’m probably probably had a pretty good cry, and and that’s when it hit me. If I wanted to build a sustainable, successful coffee company, which is you know one of the most saturated markets in the world, I needed to become a retention expert, and so that started me down that journey of listening to podcasts, reading all the books, deep diving, hiring coaches, and really getting into the essence of client experience and what makes that stickiness factor.

Speaker 1  7:34  

What is that stickiness piece, right? And today, you and I have chatted before with this, and and today one of the problems with stickiness factor is AI. How are you seeing, as a retention expert out there working with all sorts of companies, how are you seeing AI change the landscape of customer retention?

Speaker 2  7:54  

I’m seeing it starting to change already. When I get on calls with people, this is happening almost daily, if not weekly, where clients and and potential you know clients are telling me, “Hey, Alicia, we just lost one of our biggest clients, and we had no idea it was coming. I thought everything was good, and that’s that’s that same feeling that you know that I had at the dinner table when I read that email, and so I relate to it. The scary thing is, I think we’re just beginning the war on clients, and I think what’s happening is, you know, good, bad, or ugly, everyone and their mom can just whip up a quick app right now in Cloud Code and start selling it. And some of the stuff out there is absolutely incredible and game changing, and some of it is complete crap.

Speaker 1  8:43  

Yes, and

Speaker 2  8:44  

that’s just the truth.

Speaker 1  8:45  

Are you seeing people you’re working with losing clients to rubbish tech? That’s are you seeing that? And do those do those customers then boomerang, or is it just it is actually customers doing their own research and they they are moving for good quality, or do we not have a clear picture yet?

Speaker 2  9:02  

I think the the picture is still a little fuzzy. I’ve seen a bit of both, to be honest. So I’ve seen some boomerang and come back, and others they’re still in that process of like, is this the quality? I think one thing. This is a funny story that just happened a couple weeks ago. One of our clients was working with a different AI company in a different part of their business, and the company that they were working for actually decided to shut down because they were tokens based, and as you know, the price of tokens leased right now has been skyrocketing, and all of a sudden their business model doesn’t make sense, so instead of pivoting and figuring it out, they’re just shutting it down. And now this company-that’s their main like ERP system. They have to completely change what’s driving them.

Speaker 1  9:53  

I mean, I do think one of the things that we don’t talk about enough with the AI boom is that if it does go bust, like. You know, a lot of people are predicting. Some people saying has already started. Is these kind of add-on consequences? It’s not just people in the stock market losing money on things they’ve bet on, investors losing money on things they’ve bet on. It’s also small companies like myself who are using technology. We’ve embedded a particular technology into our business, and then we lose it because a company goes bust. What do you think that from the other side? Like, how can you help customers realize, hey, this team here, this is a safe bet. You need to stay with us through this storm. Like, how do you get that messaging across?

Speaker 2  10:39  

We do it in a couple ways. I think one is the relationship piece, right? Like people work with people they like. I’ve told my teams for probably 15 years, like people don’t break up with people they like. Yeah, yeah. It’s you know, it’s our job to make sure we’re building that relationship, we’re compounding on it, and that ultimately people feel seen and heard. I think the other side of that is, though, is creating more openness and transparency. So for us, we share with our clients a bit of our roadmap. We don’t tell them everything because we also have to set expectations, and we don’t want them to get frustrated if we haven’t built out a certain feature yet. But letting them into a bit of the roadmap and really where we’re going, I find is at least a good starting point for that bridge.

Speaker 1  11:24  

I think I’ve seen so many companies. I’ve worked with I don’t know hundreds of companies at this point over the years. I see far too many companies lose customers because customers are like, I’m paying the same amount, and all your competitors have brennan you haven’t. You might be cheap, but wear my shiny new objects, kind of thing. Like finding finding a a thing that works and then holding onto it for the rest of time doesn’t work. Everybody expects stuff to grow. I’ve certainly left tools behind that were working, but I can see more opportunities on another side. It’s a big deal for a bit small business like me to like invest the time to bring in a new technology, but it at some point you kind of like it makes business sense, right? Do you see that with customers? You with your customers? Do you see them kind of like coming to you where they they’ve not updated their technology?

Speaker 2  12:17  

We have sometimes. Honestly, you’re probably gonna laugh at this, but some of the business that we started working with still run off spreadsheets. So that has surprised me.

Speaker 1  12:26  

Wow! I mean, it depends. It’s a small company. I’m I’m a big. I know. I I help leaders become coaches sometimes. In like the other half of my business is training coaches, and I do help them with entrepreneurship. And I do say like, you do not need lots of fancy things. You need a spreadsheet and you need a LinkedIn profile. You can get going with that, but like once after a certain point, that’s not going to work anymore, right?

Speaker 2  12:50  

I I agree. I I’m curious to hear your thoughts. So on this, where do you think the line is between getting bored with the main you know main features versus the bells and whistles, like how do you find that middle line?

Speaker 1  13:06  

Oh, I love that question. I love that question because I think I’ve been through that as a CEO trying to find the right tech for my team. Here’s the thing: I often like the safety of like the boredom of like this still works, and I will typically prefer to add something on, test it, and then realize that add-on actually does everything this other tool does as well. I’m fairly in that sense fairly risk averse because I got burnt by ditching one thing and bringing another, and actually it didn’t do the thing we were promised it would do. And I’ve done that three times since I started this business, and some of them have been very painful to exit contracts for like something I was promised it doesn’t it didn’t exist, and we’ve ditched another technology in the meantime. And I’m like, that gets expensive very quickly, so I’m a little bit burnt, and so I’m a bit more cautious. But suddenly, I would say I go for bells and whistles actually because I got a problem with the tech that I’ve got. It doesn’t do something often. It doesn’t do something my competitors are doing, and I need to do. I’m realizing my competitors are operating in this space. As a CEO, I then have to work on my shiny object syndrome. Do I need to be competing in that space? That’s why I have a coach, and coaches should always have coaches, by the way, people. So you know, is it shiny object syndrome? But if it isn’t, if this is like this is where the industry is going, I need to be in that space too. Then I’m look, and my tooling isn’t giving me that. That’s really why I look at shiny objects. Then I’m certainly open to shiny objects, and I could be very easily swayed. But I think it’s what you came back to before. You mentioned people stay with people. People leave people. People don’t look at alternatives if they’re happy. I only look when I’m unhappy with the solution at hand. Right? Would you say that’s true or not?

Speaker 2  14:55  

I think it is true for the most part. You know, you start getting bored. Disappointed, whatever the reason is, and you start looking elsewhere. I think it’s hard nowadays because so much is getting thrown at us. Yeah, right. Like I don’t remember the exact statistic, but like back in the day, it was like we saw 2000 pieces of marketing a day, and now it’s like 200,000 or something.

Speaker 1  15:17  

If you go on any platform, like I spend far too much time on LinkedIn, as anybody listening probably knows, because I probably messaged you at some point, right? And and also like then on YouTube personally, and God, the amount you don’t you don’t see things you’re intending to follow anymore. It’s just marketing. It’s insane. It’s true, and everything is like this thing. This is going to change your life, which brings me back to like thinking about a lot of the listeners here are responsible for building products in some way, building or selling. Whether it’s the actual engineering of a product or software, or it’s the you know design, what functionality we should have. What should they be thinking about in terms of retention? A lot of these people are not necessarily customer success folks. What should the everyday employee across the company, ideally a leader, because there’s a lot of the the leaders who people are listening are leaders. What should they be worried about? Why do they care about retention?

Speaker 2  16:15  

Oh, this is like this is my favorite topic. I I think first off they need to be looking at the data more, there is so many assumptions that we often make when it comes to retention. We just assume if someone’s quiet that they’re good. You know, no news is good news. It’s the opposite. No news is bad news. It’s not a. It’s not a positive. It’s an exit ramp because then they can just quietly slip away and not have to deal with the conflict of actually breaking up with that person, essentially, right? Or like canceling the service because it’s way hard to tell you, “Hey, I don’t want to work with you anymore, than just like quietly disappearing. Yeah. So first off, I think we need to wake up and stop making assumptions, and then the second thing is we need to be spending more resources on this, right? Like everybody’s focused on pop of funnel sales and delivery. We give retention and expansion revenue like five minutes of airtime.

Speaker 1  17:09  

I know, and I found with my business every year I’m in business, I find it easier to make money because honestly, so much my revenue comes from retention. Like I serve people well, they come back or they recommend, or I don’t think businesses understand how important that really is, and customer success. This is the other side of it. I’ve seen so many customer success folks let go in the last two years. I would say with AI, it’s one of the things that’s really taken a hit. Yeah, I’ve been kind of shocked because to me, in an age where there’s more competition, I would think custom success is everything, and I’ve worked with so many custom success leaders in the last couple of years who’ve been let go, which should be the people caring about it the most. They should be the ones talking to product and be like, “This is what we need. This is why it’s not working. Are you seeing that? Have you seen that at all on your side?

Speaker 2  17:55  

I’ve seen whole teams shrink like a lot, especially in tech companies that I’ve I’ve been working with and that I’ve been around, a lot of people have made the like we’re just going to cut this or just get AI to handle it. But I’ve also seen the reverse happen where they’ve done that and then they regret it because all of a sudden they’ve pissed off 1000s of customers because they thought they could just whip whip something up in AI that is replacing an entire team of people, and that I think that’s a dangerous place to be in right now. Where all of a sudden, like I know a handful of companies that have taken that nosedive and are trying to pull the plane back up.

Speaker 1  18:35  

I’ve seen that. I mean, obviously, customer success is one particular area. I’ve seen. I think I’m starting to see reversal of these layoffs. The big one I care about is middle management. A lot of middle management was squeezed two years ago. I’m now seeing more directors being hired back. There’s more positions for directors than I think there has been in two years. I don’t have the actual data on that. That’s kind of like what I’m seeing through my work, and I think I think we’re realizing like all these functions still have a place like HR and talent also got like massively squeezed. But just going through to like your comment, throwaway comment there about you know customer success was cut because they thought they could whip something up in AI. You whipped something up in AI, didn’t you? So let’s talk about that. Let’s talk about what successful whipping up in AI looks like, if you wouldn’t mind. There we

Speaker 2  19:22  

1. Yeah, I first tried just whipping it up with cloud code, and let me tell you, that didn’t end well because to build something properly still takes a lot of time, effort, and the right people in the right seats. So that was a good reminder for me this past season. We built something really special at Latch. What Latch is is an AI-native retention engine, and we’re not taking you know the human out of what only the human can do, but we are taking 95% of the work that doesn’t need to be done by a human, and doing that for our clients. And it’s based on four main things, really. So did. Detecting drift. When are clients starting to pull away? When are they starting to go silent? Where are the gaps? You know, like can we catch them after one canceled appointment instead of three, and they’re not coming back? The second part after we’re detecting drift is scoring each client. So every single week, Latch keeps an eye on your clients, and we categorize them in four main areas: who’s at risk, who’s slipping, who’s steady, and then who’s ready to expand. And I think that expansion ready part is something that’s really missed in businesses. You kind of alluded it in your own journey and story of how you’ve had clients for years and they’ve continued to work with you, but a lot of companies are just replacing clients with new clients, right? Instead of continuing to serve them and grow with them and add more value. And then the third piece is the safe play. So running a good safe play, and you can’t run a good safe play if you aren’t detecting drift and you know where the client’s health is actually at, and Latch writes the specific message in your tone and voice for those clients to bring them back in, and then the the fourth one is capturing the win, so turning those happy customers into upsells, upgrades, and referral asks, because as you know, referrals are still the best way to grow.

Speaker 1  21:20  

They are. They’re absolutely the best way to grow. Somebody who’s been referred is the easiest person to convert. They’ll also start hit the ground running, which means I love working with them more. And I think when you’ve got a referral for a product, even like they’ve they’ve already emotionally bought in. But I also so there you let’s just go back a second to this, you know, opportunities. How how do you know that they’re ready to expand? And I think this is where like every lead in the organization should be paying attention because I think a lot of the time, product doesn’t always go out and talk to customers, or engineers are just relying on product a little too much without realizing what’s really needed is sales are notorious. Like every non-sales leader I talk to complains about sales selling something that doesn’t exist. Every non-marketing leader tells me that marketing will market something that doesn’t exist, and you know everybody. Everybody can. By the way, in my line of work, everybody complains about every other function in the company. Everybody does this because we’re all frustrated by the perceived ineptitude. Maybe another part of the company, but I feel like retention is something that everybody should care about, and that scoring of the clients and realizing where there’s an opportunity for the product to improve retention, I I just think those are not joined together a lot of the time. Do you are you seeing that with the customers you work with?

Speaker 2  22:49  

Absolutely, I think you’re I think you’re right, and I love that you said that. It’s something that we’re absolutely not connecting the dots enough on in companies. It’s not you know, it’s very disconnected, as you mentioned, sales doesn’t care about retention. Once they close a deal, you know it’s on them. Good luck, support team. There’s so much that could be happening, and a lot of the gold already exists. So what Latch does is we’re connecting to the data that’s already out there, and I’m gonna be honest, it’s fragmented and it’s messy. Most people that we start working with, their data is an absolute mess, but it’s okay because in that mess is the moat. And if clients could just take that mess, clean it up, and pay attention to the gold in there, I think they would have clients that literally work with them for like decades.

Speaker 1  23:41  

For decades, and that’s the beautiful thing. I love it when I have people that work with me for a long time. Something else as a coach, I get to see them grow. The biggest gift I get is when I get to watch somebody came in working with me as a senior manager and director. I I’m with them the whole way to the executive level. Like that to me is like the most glorious thing. And I think a business should grow with its clients. And I think if you’ve had a client for a decade, whatever the product is you have, whether it’s a service product like mine or it’s like a widget, I think if your product can grow, like okay, just gonna my aura ring. Like I’ve had this for years and years and years, but the technology has moved on. The I’m not advertising it; they are not. There are alternatives out there, but they’ve kept up with what I’m after as the technology, as as the process have evolved, and they clearly listen to their customers as well. Again, you know there could be improvements, but I I see a change. But there’s other technology I’ve got around my house where there’s been no such thing. If somebody’s listening to this and they’re they’re nodding along and they’re saying yes, well, I agree with you, Alicia, but my boss.dot.my, CEO dot dot dot. How can people start collecting information data that’s going to help them influence this topic at the level above them?

Speaker 2  24:58  

I would start by. Simply looking at the clients you had last quarter or last year, depending on the how big the business is and the the style, like is it a customer that you typically have for three months or a year? Look at that relationship timeline and then match the latest quarter or latest year. And we did this we do this with all of our clients when they come on board as their baseline. One of our clients we did this for last week, and we we did the first quarter of the year when they first came on, and then we did this last quarter, and we helped them grow by 3.5% across their entire book of business. Now that’s that’s pretty significant, right? But if you just see if you just map one quarter to the next, you’re gonna start seeing where the drop off is, and you got to just ask yourself why. Like even take that to your your leader, right? Like, hey, we’re having this drop off in this specific location. Why is this happening? What do we need to do to close this gap? And then, if you want to get really crazy, you can look at how much you’re spending to acquire new clients, and it’s going to be-I guarantee-it’s going to be around seven times cheaper to keep your current clients than get the new

Speaker 1  26:10  

one. I mean, now we take this a step further for anybody listening who’s like, “Yes, but I’ve-I’m not in custom success. There’s the account managers who manage this kind of stuff. I’m a engineering leader. I would still like take the angle of you’re an engineering leader. How’s your functionality being used? You have metrics for like software. Software is my my jam because that’s where I came from. I would want to be looking at like is everybody using all the functions in the in the software? Are any is anybody dropping off consistently? Like we should care about that from a bug perspective, but I don’t think enough the companies put usage metrics in their code to see which bits of functionality are being used because that’s like the kind of retention data that even as an engineer I would care about. I just there’s so many opportunities missing. Sales leaders should be caring about this from like, unless they’re only responsible for newly like like cold lead gen. I would be looking at what’s your what’s your percentage of referrals? What’s your percentage of upgrades? Obviously, sometimes that’s like a different team. Like, where are the different sources of revenues? If you’re responsible for more than one source of revenue. Are you looking at that? Because if not, there’s a problem. And I, I just, I wish more companies would be really joined up. Every leader should pay attention, right?

Speaker 2  27:31  

I agree. I agree. We actually, literally, in the last two weeks, just rolled out a new way to monitor usage because what you said about usage is super important. If your clients are logging in every day, but they’re not using your key feature and they’re using different features, that also might help you know change your product and roadmap or have more client conversations. Like, okay, you’re not using the main features, but you’re using all these like side features. What are you getting here that you’re not getting here, and that’s another opportunity for gold.

Speaker 1  28:04  

Yeah, 100% I mean, I’ve got a commercial leader I’m working with right now, and she’s so frustrated because nobody in the business is listening to her. She has a lot of conversations with customers about the functionality they actually use, and the business is intent on selling this whole package, and she knows that customers are inhabit because they’re paying for this whole thing and they only want this thing right now. They’re the only people in the market doing it, but she knows that’s changing. Yeah, and it’s that kind of thing. Listen to all the other leaders around you as well. Like that commercial leader has knowledge, and nobody is paying attention to her because her job is to go and talk to customers, and so she’s kind of like seen as like, well, we just bring you in to close deals. Okay, I want to before we wrap this up, I want to ask you a question because you’ve had one of them. We’ve had a lot of people on recently with varied careers, but I have to say, I don’t think I’ve had anybody who’s gone and worked in a true kind of international development role, like you have, and dangerous places, small teams doing that kind of crazy work for a large portion of her career as well. Not just like I did it for a summer. That’s not very. That’s not the same. I know it’s not the same. So tell me this: if you could look back through your life and give young your younger self advice that you’ve learned today as a leader and founder, in particular, what advice would you give her?

Speaker 2  29:25  

Ruthlessly attack fear. I think a lot of people. I’ve been thinking about this lately. Actually, a lot of people think I am wildly courageous and bold and passionate, and I am all those things. I also still let fear and and have let fear in previous seasons hold me back more than I want to admit, and now I’m in a season where I am ruthlessly just chasing after what I believe in, trusting my gut more, not looking for approval, not. Letting fear of you know rejection or or what people think hold me back and just going for it and if I could tell younger Alicia to scrap fear and just just trust your gut and go for it that that’s what I would tell her

Speaker 1  30:14  

I love that so much I really do well let’s move on to the quick fire round I’m sure we’re going to have some more great takeaways from this. What is the worst piece of advice you’ve ever been given?

Speaker 2  30:25  

This one comes to me right away. The worst piece of advice I ever got was someone telling me it was a mentor at the time telling me that life is going to be harder for me because I’m a female and a person of color, and I wasn’t insecure about those things until they told me that, and then it became an insecurity for me instead of just normal.

Speaker 1  30:49  

Oh wow! And the thing is, like that was probably meant with the best of intentions, because I mean, certainly one of my jobs-I hate to do it-but one of my jobs is to help women understand the reason they’ve not been promoted three times compared to their peer is quite possibly some unconscious bias that shouldn’t determine who we are, but it should give us the lens for hey, I need to tackle this differently. But when it becomes an insecurity, that’s a problem. When it becomes something to be super angry about, that’s a problem. It’s it’s one of the hardest conversations I have,

Speaker 2  31:21  

I believe in, and I think it’s an important conversation to have. I think what was missing that maybe turned it into insecurity is it was the honesty without the coaching, because the younger version of myself didn’t know what to do with that.

Speaker 1  31:35  

Yeah, right. So it just becomes a thing. It’s it’s like being told you have a diversity hire. Oh my god, the amount of insecurity that gives you-it’s-it’s horrendous. That one happened to me multiple times. It wasn’t diversity hire, but it was you’re blonde and female, and I was like, “You’re you’re kidding me. What is the best piece of advice you’ve ever been given? The

Speaker 2  31:58  

best piece of advice I’ve ever been given is a mix of what’s the worst that can happen, and you can walk away at any time. Being a CEO is incredibly hard. Being a founder is incredibly hard. And on my hardest days, one of my mentors has always been really good at being like, “Hey, let’s play this out. What’s the worst that can happen? Yeah. And then the same person will also ask or or remind me, you can always walk away if you think you’re done, if you think you’ve hit your limit, and it’s just too hard, or you’re tired of the challenges, you’re allowed to walk away from your company.

Speaker 1  32:33  

100% I mean, I love the question as a coach. One of my go-to questions when I got somebody spiraling is, “Well, what’s the worst thing that can happen? Because often, the worst thing is not as bad as you think it is when you actually bring it front and center. It becomes this. I talk about this big amorphous monster in the corner of the room, just getting bigger and bigger because you’re not looking at it. While you’re not looking at it, it becomes enormous. As soon as you bring it, it’s like, oh, it’s just a tiny little thing. I can deal with that. I can deal with the worst. Yeah, we often are too afraid to look at it, though. Where can we find you online? This has been an amazing conversation. So, where can we find you? Where can we find out about Latch, your tools as well? Where can we find you?

Speaker 2  33:10  

You can find out about Latch at yourlatch.com, and you can check me out on LinkedIn, of course, where we all like to hang out, and on Instagram, Alicia Esmail, or check out my personal [email protected].

Speaker 1  33:22  

Brilliant! Thank you so much. As we wrap up, what final thoughts do you want to leave folks with today?

Speaker 2  33:28  

I think I would go back to the advice I would give my younger self: don’t let fear hold you back. I think getting to the end of your life and asking the those hard questions of like the things I wish I would have done would would really be the loss. No matter what your passion is, if it’s music, being a stay at home parent, being a lawyer, a founder, whatever your thing is, pursue that passionately and rigorously, and say yes and see where life takes you.

Speaker 1  33:59  

I love that so much. What a beautiful way to wrap this up. On I wanted to wrap this conversation up with ruthlessly attacking your fear. That’s something that really struck me. But I do. I just want to circle back for the audience as we wrap up today about the importance of retention. That’s why I got Alicia on the podcast. It is something I have seen so many businesses struggle with over the last five years, even before AI became a thing, and I really want every single one of you listening to go away, whatever your role, and ask yourself, what can I do about retention in this business? And remember what Alicia said: people don’t leave because they are happy with the product. People leave because they’re unhappy. They might do it very, very quietly, but ultimately they they leave because they are unhappy. So have a look. What aspect of the business are you responsible for that you can work on the happiness of your customers? And people aren’t going to leave just because another company’s got bells and whistles. They’re going to leave because those bells and whistles are. Something you’re missing, or something you aren’t telling them is coming. If you can work on that, you can change so much about the future of your organization, which is only ever going to benefit you in your career. And on that note, as Alicia said, don’t be afraid of that fear. Attack it. Be bold. Be passionate. But don’t fail to face your fear head-on because you can chase anything if you set your mind to it. Until next time, listeners. Remember, you have the ability to change the world. You’ve just got to take hold of it and make progress one step at a time. Bye for now.