Hire that old-hat Freelancer.

I love hiring former freelancers (and current side-gig freelancers), especially folks who have been doing it for at least 5-10 years, and bringing them into my support teams.

That’s probably because my teams work best when people are like me: I know what I’m good at, and it’s not marketing or coding from scratch. But if you hand me something and tell me it needs marketing coding from scratch, I have both experience and insight into the VALUE of good marketing or ex nihilo coding.

I even have stories to tell of times that I did both, with shades of quality.

I’m a CX expert, but my interests and experiences in “running my own thing” have given me ample insight into how CX can (and should) *interface* with all of those other business functions.

I don’t want to market it. I want to support it in a way that gives marketers the confidence that what they are selling is a thing they can shout confidently from the rooftops about.

I don’t know a better way than to have had the experience of my flailing marketing attempts to be able to tee up a rockstar marketer (who lays awake thinking about marketing in the same way I think about removing friction from the customer experience) to kick butt at their job.

Sustainable Support works only because it’s irrevocably tied to and embedded in all of the other systems in the company. Somebody who’s run their own thing has direct experience wearing all of those hats.