699 WORDS | READ TIME: 3 MIN | CHANGE FLAG: MASTERY Interruptions are only annoying if they're interruptions When you walk into a store and a saleslady sidles over and asks how she can help, what's your reaction? Well, it depends. If you're shopping for your niece's birthday and you have no idea what's trending in the world of teeny-bopper-dom, you thank Saleslady and let her show you the selection of custom phone lanyards. But if you know the exact shade of chartreuse that Niece wants, plus...
18 days ago • 3 min read
EP. 3 | CHANGE FLAG: MASTERY You can be right and you can be dead Here lies the body of William Jay,Who died maintaining his right of way. He was in the right as he sped along,But he’s just as dead as if he’d been wrong. Shoutout to my hometown, this famous joke was first published as a poem in the Detroit Free Press. And it's what came to mind as I edited today's episode. Because when we read reviews that are wrong – when the customer is complaining about something that exists in our product...
26 days ago • 1 min read
READ TIME: 4 MIN | CHANGE FLAG: MARKET / PARADIGMS The Done card Thanks to Claude and Notion, my whole business runs on a wicked Kanban. Everything that's worth anything shuffles through Upcoming, In progress, and Done. When a card hits done, it's out of my filtered view, so I just don't see it. And every week, Claude archives Done cards, and I never look at them again. Michelle Green says she thinks in boards. She's the Director of Product at Cohley (a content marketing platform that matches...
about 1 month ago • 3 min read
EP. 2 | CHANGE FLAG: MARKET / PARADIGMS I rated the NPS a 10. Then I left. I raved about "Waterly" to everyone. Then their competitor shipped an AI feature. So I left. Classic AI-gap-we-need-to-move-faster story, right? Actually, it wasn't really about the feature. Because just 2 weeks later, "Waterly" shipped the same AI feature. It wasn't an AI gap, it was a communication gap. And that's one of the best ways to solve for the craziness of AI-gap-we-need-to-move-faster: Ep. 2: Why accounts...
about 2 months ago • 1 min read
When good comms aren't good enough I may not be Deloitte or Michelin or Unesco or any of the other cool accounts that use Paperform, but I still think I'm a dream enough customer. I've recommended the form builder to basically everyone I work with, I've hosted some products there for years, and back when they had a referral program, I had a little pitch that I'd copy and paste from my Stickies. Yet, I missed one of their biggest launch in years (an entire new product!) for four entire months....
about 2 months ago • 3 min read
I pick a fight with how we read customer feedback in the intro of my pilot Churn Flags episode: "The SaaS playbook trained us to read feedback one way: as a feature request... But it misses what feedback is often really doing — waving a flag that something changed for your user." And then, just a few minutes later, our guest, Paperform co-founder Diony McPherson tells me that the review that I handpicked to prove my point IS in fact a feature request. Gulp. Spoiler: we land on an even better...
2 months ago • 1 min read
Welcome to Churn Flags. I've been waiting to say that since last August. (Well, I didn't have the name back in August. Nor the show concept. Just the "I need a new podcast" fire. Though I guess it was a slow burn, not a raging blaze – it took a long time to get here.) So, what is Churn Flags? Now that it's finally making its debut? Fun: I present my guest with a customer review where the user clearly missed something about the product, we dig into why they missed it – and then we build an...
2 months ago • 1 min read
Cover art for my new podcast is down to 3 choices. Which one would you want to see go live? Or better – which would you actually click into while scrolling Spotify? Click your favorite above (or one of these links): Vote A: The Marquee Vote B: The Constellation Vote C: The Slide Can’t decide / want more options – Nikki 🗳️ P.S. Curious about the design notes? I read design briefs the way some people read wine bottle descriptions: half the fun is the how it's explained, no? A: The Marquee....
3 months ago • 1 min read
I have a love-hate relationship with goal setting.On the one hand, there’s the fire and fun of getting everything lined up, of focusing, of creating, of going all in. And on the other hand… there’s all those cancelled gym memberships come Feb 1. So this year, I’m playing with a couple of new ways to plan 2026. 4 ways so far and looking for more. Can you let me know which one of those 4 resonates? Or other methods you’ve seen success with? You can hit reply or just respond in the LI comments....
8 months ago • 1 min read