Behind the Mic: OpsCast's 100th Episode Celebration

Hi, I'm Michael Hartman.

I'm Naomi Liu. And I'm Mike Rizzo. And this is OpsCast, a podcast for marketing ops pros and rev ops pros created by the MoPros, the number one community for marketing operations professionals.

Tune into each episode as we chat with real professionals to help elevate you and your marketing operations career.

Hello everyone. Welcome to another episode of OpsCast brought to you by marketingops.com, powered by the MoPros. I'm your host, Michael Hartman, today with a I guess we could call this a special episode, but it's still another episode with just the 3 amigos. We've got Naomi Liu and Mike Rizzo and me all together. I'm gonna do it. Say hello.

Yep, we're here.

Hello.

We're all together. It's amazing.

It is. And these are always fun. This one is especially, I think we thought it would be good to kind of do some reflections on the milestone that we just recently hit of getting 100 episodes published. So We are probably not gonna spend a huge amount of time here, but as soon as I say that, we'll probably go long, you know. But anyway, yeah, so congratulations, y'all.

Yeah, it's amazing.

Big milestone.

It is. It's a huge milestone.

Yeah.

I wish I, like, I'll actively Google while we pull a talk or something, 'cause I feel like there's a stat out there that says like most podcasts don't make it past like 3 episodes or something like that, right?

It's, yeah, 10, the 10 is what I remember. I don't remember the details of it, but I was like, getting to 10 is like a huge milestone. And well, it's funny 'cause I was driving around today listening to one of my— one of the podcasts I like to listen to, Freakonomics, and it happens to have episode numbers and they're like at, I don't know, 700. And another one I was looking at is 400. And I'm like, we're actually not that far. Like, I mean, 700's pretty far away, but like, 400's not that far away.

Yeah.

And I was like, that's actually like, I feel pretty good about that even because really truly, truthfully, like we could be further along, I think, 'cause 2023 just for a variety of reasons, right? We just didn't get as much out the door and published. So anyway.

Yeah. Yeah. I've been sharing with folks that, you know, ask about the show. You know, we peaked, I think we like hit an all-time high. It was actually north of 2,600 downloads in a month. was like our highest peak ever. And, uh, but then I always like come back and I say like, you know, that's not like the norm necessarily, right? We took a little bit of a break, which, you know, we need to do from time to time. Um, but yeah, we've been— I think now that we're sort of back on a fairly regular cadence again, I think we're like 1,200, 1,300 or more, like on average.

I think we'll get back to that. Yeah.

Yeah, it's cool.

I'm excited.

I was just pulling up some of these numbers too. Like, yeah, yeah, that was, that was about it. It was, uh, I think the Google, uh, response immediately from podcast statistics and trends in 2024 says only 107— sorry, wow, don't know how to read. Only 720,000 podcasts have more than 10 episodes. And There's a— like, there was over a million podcasts produced at one point in like 2020 alone. So, you know, very, very low volume of total podcasts out in the world that actually make it past 10.

That's crazy.

Geographically, where are most of the listeners coming from?

Well, I was just gonna— I was just gonna bring that up. I mean, so no big surprise if you look at countries, the US is by far the biggest. Um, and then it's, uh, UK, Canada, India, and Germany kind of round out the top 5. And then if you go further, it's Australia, Spain, France, Ireland. And I think that gets us to like, 11th. What I thought was interesting, so not only that, like, so one, we're global, which I like. If you look at it by continent, we actually have downloads happening in every continent except for Antarctica. So there's a gain.

Dang it.

I just don't think they track it, right? They're using VPNs down there.

Yeah, yeah, they're bouncing.

But I— so do you, Mike, I know you're— you may be looking at this, but do you want to take a, take a guess at the top city?

Oh.

This surprised me.

The top city?

Yes.

In the US?

No, just top city globally.

Top city globally.

It is not a US city. I will give you that clue.

I have a feeling I might remember. Is it Bangalore?

Yeah, is that is that it says Bengaluru, but I think that's Bengaluru. Yeah.

Okay. Yeah, I was I had that floating around in my head because I remembered because I think the year before it was actually Sydney. Yeah, I think could be. So I found that really surprising too because we were like the top listeners were in Australia and I was like yeah. Bro, wow, that's awesome.

And it's all time, right? So I mean, then you get right after that, it's all US cities, kind of mostly California, Florida, Virginia. So yeah, so yeah, pretty cool.

It sort of holds true to what we've been seeing in the community too. Like, you know, we are absolutely like US, Canada, right? Like, Predominantly, like, that's where most of our members are coming from in the community in general. But I've noticed like a pretty steep up into the right climb from both APAC and EMEA, like almost equally, like they're both like kind of growing. So I don't know if we've like reached some sort of tipping point or Google's finally like showing content to people in other parts of the world, how that works. Yeah.

No. So I think, and I think, you know, like we, I know we, we've had guests pretty much all over. I don't think we've had anyone in Africa yet. So if you're in Africa and you want to be a guest, like we'd love to get you on, or South America. I don't think we have anyone from South America, but—

Yeah, that'd be super fun.

Yeah.

I'd love to like hear what's going on there. I'll tell you what, there's a lot of like activity happening sort of globally as it relates to marketing operations and marketing technology for sure. But like, my goodness, the amount of like startups and in the martech space, and then some of the practitioners in Tel Aviv specifically has been like, like very much on my radar. Like they're— I've communicated with at least a dozen or more people, which, you know, probably isn't that impressive to, I guess, when I say it out loud, but like it is because like I didn't know anybody in Tel Aviv up until like the last 6 or 7 months. All of a sudden I met all these people that are doing really cool things over there. So, I don't know, I think you can maybe glean at times that there's investments that are happening in startup ecosystems in different parts of the world at different points. And maybe I sort of think that that's what's happening. I wish I knew more people there. I gotta get beyond 12 so I can ask these questions.

Maybe, you know, we need to all work our network, you know, Seriously, Naomi, you need to start getting on this.

Yeah, I know, right? I need to be, I need to be more of a community builder than Mike is, especially in that area.

No, no, that's funny.

We're all doing, we're all doing our part. I think what matters is that we're not alone anymore.

Yeah, no, it's, it's huge. Um, so it's interesting also, I think, Mike, you already posted about like top 10 episodes and all that. And yeah, I think it's— I was just going back through that a little bit and, you know, I think it's interesting. There's a mix of relatively new stuff and some stuff that's, you know, been out for a while. It's fascinating to me that, you know, our episode with Amy Goldfine continues to stay at the top. I think it's been up there for a while. Maybe the first one will hit 1,000 downloads of just that episode. It's over 700 at this point. But I think that speaks to like just, you know, for the reminder, right? It's WTF is marketing ops, right? Or something like that. And that I think speaks to just like people still struggle with how to describe what it is they do if they're in marketing ops or want to know what it is. So—

I wish we could get demographics on that one, right? Like, like by title, right? Professional title. Yeah, it's like, wouldn't it be funny if it was like, it was like all CMOs and CFOs and CROs? Like, what is this? Probably not.

But yeah, so, so I'm curious, any— so I've been thinking about this a little bit. I may actually— I think I may write a blog post for you, Mike, here about sort of just lessons learned. But like any, like Have either of you have any sort of things that, wow, I didn't expect this as we got into it, or, you know, some sort of surprises, either positive, negative, or just surprises in general? No, no sort of judgment on them.

I think for me, like, I, it's not that I didn't think people would listen, but I am surprised at how intently people listen. And I get a lot of messages on LinkedIn saying, hey, I just listened to, or even on the Slack, in the Slack group. saying, hey, I just listened to XYZ episode and you mentioned something about this and I want to follow up on that. And I have to be like, wait, what episode was that? What did we say? And I had to go back and listen and be like, wait, wait a minute, what was that? And then I'm like, oh, okay, okay. And then we'll have a call and then we'll have this conversation. And yeah, I've just made some really interesting connections from listeners and people who follow along. And I have recurring calls with some of folks and just where we just mind share and talk about industry stuff. And it's just been It's interesting because it's been really great as a connection tool for something that we just have a conversation about. We don't necessarily see who's listening to it, but then maybe 6 months later someone will come back and say, hey, I listened to this episode that you recorded 6 months ago. And I've just found that to be really— yeah, I've just really enjoyed that, right? Especially looking back and sometimes your opinion changes too, right?

Yeah.

And I've had conversations where I'm like, you know, yeah, I did say this, but I actually don't feel that way anymore, you know? And then having that discussion too.

That's fascinating. Yeah. Yeah. It's, I mean, naturally, like we learn more, we grow, we change, right? Our opinions are gonna adjust over time. Technology changes, whatever. But I hadn't thought of that angle yet.

Like, yeah.

Like I'm positive I said something that I probably don't necessarily agree with today.

Kind of looking back at old photos of When you were, you know, early 2000s, you're like, ooh, why did I wear that?

Why did I do my hair like that?

Yeah. Ooh, weird.

There's definitely a good photo of me, like completely bleach blonde hair.

And I thought— Did you have them all—

The Guy Fieri tips? Did you have the blonde tips?

Yeah. That's not what this episode is about, Naomi, but—

It could be, Mike. We never follow a script, so.

I know, I know. Yeah, no, it was pretty funny. It was just that time and, you know, everybody was doing their hair all blonde or whatever. I thought it'd be a good idea because like my eyebrows are dark brown and I was like, oh, maybe I should try to lighten those up. That was a bad idea, folks.

Oh, we need this photo. It should be the COVID photo for this episode.

There you go.

I took it a step further later, but I think by the time I was a freshman, um, I ended up like just bleaching the tips, but I, I made them red. So I had to go bleach blonde first to wash all the color out, and then I colored them red.

So my hair was on fire.

It was a great Wow.

Oh my God, it's terrible.

Mr. Heat Miser. I'm— no, myself.

Hartman's like, why did you copy my vibe?

Right, exactly. Can you see that?

Right, you see that?

All my tattoos everywhere.

And I do have a half sleeve. Um, and now lots of people, thanks to Mopstopalooza and the Emmy Collective, have tattoos all over themselves. Yeah.

So how about you, Mike? What's been surprising to you?

Yeah, I mean, I think I'll echo a bit of what Naomi said. Like, it is— I think all of us went into this having zero expectation of what the heck to do here and how it would go. And it's been really quite fascinating to see how much of this particular type of content is consumed. And then that, like, it's a very one-way type of communication, right?

Yeah.

Like, versus, you know, what we're doing in the community, which is super, like, connective and visible. And so we don't know who's listening. And then you do get that playback where suddenly someone sends me an email or LinkedIn or a DM on Slack on the community and is asking, you know, for more information about a topic we were talking about. And I think that that You know, if nothing else, if someone, if someone who's like a podcast producer out there listens to this episode, they're gonna like pull clips from it and be like, see, I told you podcasting is a good idea. Because like, look at what it could do for you. And, and to like, to that point though, um, like I have learned that this absolutely— I guess that's sort of my takeaway is really like, this is absolutely one of the best ways to meet the people that you potentially want to like work with or just, you know, want to learn from or whatever. Um, I think, you know, maybe there will be a time where, you know, I, I would argue some marketers think podcasting is already saturated and everybody does it, but I think the, um, the unique thing about audio as a channel, um, even if we go into video, right, but But what's unique about all of this is that each of our voices are very unique, right?

Mm-hmm.

And I mean that both in the way that they sound and the things that we say and the way that we think. And that means that every show has its own vibe and energy. And I, you know, I don't think that that'll necessarily get tired, right? Like, if that were true, then Television shows and movies wouldn't work either, right? Like, because—

Sure.

We're not creating content anymore. And so I, I think podcasting is here to stay, um, and I think for those that want to focus on it as a vehicle for connecting with other businesses or other experts in their field, almost everybody's flattered to come on a podcast, right?

Yeah.

There's a ton of people that have never been on a show.

Yep.

I love that part. I remember the first time I was on a show.

Woo.

I was so nervous.

Absolutely. Yeah. So, so you're hitting on kind of what I think my biggest surprise, and it was, it was again, like looking through the, the data, which by the way, that's one of my other surprises is how little data we have, right? About these. So for people who like, like it's really hard to get insights, especially if you publish across multiple multiple platforms, podcast players. But I think for me, I think going into it, if I was going to— if I could think back about what I would have been most concerned about this having any kind of longevity would have been just having enough people who wanted to be on it. And it's been almost the opposite. When I think about like we've got 100 now, 101, 102 episodes, I think there's only been a handful of people have been on more than once. Truly, right? And there's, there's probably half a dozen maybe of those, which means that's a lot of people we've talked to. And sometimes I forget everybody we've talked to. So it was kind of fun going through the list recently. But that's actually absolutely not been the challenge, right? The bigger challenge has been just trying to make the time to get them all on and to have an opportunity to share their knowledge with the rest of the community. And I, and I love having these first timers. We just— We just recorded an episode that'll be coming out shortly. It'll be out before this one with somebody who, first time that he's ever been on a podcast. And it was, yeah, I, I do feel like we've done a pretty good job of making it easy for those people to, to come in and, and feel comfortable.

I agree.

And not be intimidated by it.

Yeah, I agree. I think podcasting has a different flavor on every single show as I just got done illustrating or saying, and I think our show— I mean, I'm proud of what you've done with the show, Michael. Like, you've, you've made it what you feel is the right approach, and I totally am aligned. And I, I think I speak for Naomi. She feels very similar, obviously, because we're still doing it together. But I think our show makes it comfortable.

It's good.

Like, it's— I like the, um, lack of structure and just a dialogue because it lets people speak freely. And, you know, it's okay, we might take it out if you tell us to. But, you know, for our listeners, if you haven't heard us say it before, um, we don't edit the show. Don't know if you can tell, but we don't edit it at all, pretty much. So, um, I think that's, that's what— that's like our— a bit of our secret sauce. It's kind of fun.

And I think in the future, hopefully that, you know, the comment that you made, Michael, about how we don't technically have a ton of insights or data on listeners and just like podcast downloads and things like that. In the future, I hope that will change, right? Because like, I hope that with platforms out there that are becoming and are super popular, Substack being one of them, right? Ghosts. things like that, I think it's really important for content creators to have access and keep their own data, right? And so hopefully these podcasting platforms take notes and make some changes that allow us to be, you know, 'cause it's motivating, right? When you see, hey, a rise in your listeners and you want to then create more content that resonates with them. But data drives some of these decisions that we make, right?

Yeah.

You know, it's just hopefully those things will change.

Yeah, no, it— so the whole tech stack for doing podcasts reminds me a little bit, Mike, you and I were talking just the other day about event tech, right? Is there's like lots of players and there's not a lot of consistency and they all do different little pieces of it. And so to put together, you know, if you're doing events, right, it's just really hard to sort of cobble together the the technology pieces that you need to enable it.

Yeah.

So I'm, I'm with you, Naomi. I, I do hope that there's some, some changes that give us better insights because it's the one, the one thing I wish we got more of, and I'm not necessarily looking for people to just start cramming us with feedback, but it is, we don't get much direct feedback. I mean, when we do, it's generally been positive. I think there's one episode where I got like, hey, that was interesting, but probably not the best thing. And it was one that, like, it was fun. It was an experimental one. It's the one that we did early on, relatively early on.

Oh, the brand stuff?

The audio, the audio branding.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Which I thought was very interesting.

I thought it was super interesting. Hey, that's no shame on you though. Yeah, no, no, no, totally okay.

So that's like, I— but that's like, it was useful to get that feedback, right?

Totally. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

It might also be the way that people consume podcasts though, right? Like, I don't know about you, but I, I'm consuming it when I'm at the gym or on a driving somewhere or running errands. After I listen to it, I then kind of like file it away and I'm not necessarily, oh, I'm gonna send a note to X person, right? It's like you're not directly in front of your computer. It might just be something that, you know, it's just the, it's just the nature of the, the medium, right?

Yeah, no, it's, I mean, it's a, it's a nice passive way of learning, I guess, if, if, if hopefully we are providing stuff that's helping people learn. But I would like— so I don't want to dissuade people from giving us feedback. I do. It would be great to get feedback.

Yeah, I totally agree. So maybe that's something that these tech platforms could take too, right? Like, yeah, like, gosh, if I were to— yeah, I think I've said this before, maybe to both of you, I don't remember. But like, I feel like if we band together like a number of marketing ops professionals, we would probably create like a way better marketing automation platform that's been created, right? Because like, we're practitioners that have like seen every like dark corner. I feel like it's similar in this podcast thing. Like, if I could come up with a bunch of different ways to make this a little bit better for the creator, I mean, and then on the, with all this AI stuff that's happening now, imagine like your podcast player that you're streaming through, queuing up a prompt to you that says, hey, like categorically speaking for OpsCast, you tend to listen to this, this, in this type of category, like, the most. Like, do you want to write, you know, the show— the show host's feedback about these 2 categories so that, you know, or these other ones that you're not listening to, to share why? Like, that wouldn't be rocket science for, for these companies to do, right? Like, they could— GPT, like, what would the theme of this episode be? And then, you know, present that information back to you. Anyway, I'm getting off my— Random AI topic now. I don't know. So it's fun.

I love it.

I do think, you know, to what you were saying a moment ago, Naomi, about the stats that motivate you, right? Just generally in marketing, that's true. But for part of our downfall, which is also a secret sauce, is that we aren't structured.

Right.

That's also like equally like a bit of a downfall for us because like categorically speaking, we don't really have like a theme or something that we're pursuing or measuring against either. Like we could look at all these episodes and surmise roughly what the trend is as to what people like the most, but like it's going to take some sort of AI for me to do it because they're not broken out in any category right now and I don't want to sit there manually figure that out.

Sure.

So that is a little bit of our downfall too, because we're like, oh, it'd be interesting to like dump it.

Yeah, dump it into ChatGPT and like figure out what the— yeah, that would be super interesting. I, I use— speaking of ChatGPT, I do have to say I have— I used it for something I thought was quite ingenious over the holidays. I used it to create a seating chart.

Oh, really?

For a dinner. I, I put in everybody's name a little bit about them. These people didn't know each other, right? A little bit about them. And I said, you know, in a roundtable, where should these people sit so that they would have really great conversations with the people next to them and directly across from them based on common interests? And these are— this is what they do, this is their hobbies. And it made me like the seating chart, which is amazing. And then I told everyone afterwards, I'm like, I used ChatGPT. They were like blown away.

That's fantastic.

That's such a good use of AI.

Yeah, it was wild. It was pretty— and then it got the more— obviously, the more detailed I was with everybody's little bio blurb that I put in the— and I also said, give me a reason why they should sit next— tell me why you think they should sit next to each other.

Yeah, that's so cool.

I love that stuff.

I could just see Naomi doing that, right?

Totally.

I can't, I can't. I GPT so much stuff. So, but that's, I have not done any like GPT for my personal life. It's all just work.

Mostly I've done it just for randomly random stupid fun stuff like writing rap songs.

I can never do a poem.

Yeah.

Well, I do, like, I think, I do think that part of the special sauce is just though, Mike, you brought it up, right? That we all 3 bring different perspectives. But I actually think that, I don't know about you, but I like to think of you guys as friends and like more than just, you know, colleagues on this. I mean, I think we've, we've gotten to know each other pretty well and we've, you know, I think that comes out in how we interact, even when we disagree, which we do quite often, I think. So yeah, thank you.

I don't agree with that. Just kidding. I agree. Thank you. I think it's been a ton of fun. And yeah, for the listeners out there, please send feedback and come on the show. I do think we're going to have some repeat guests here soon because it's been a while since we've had some folks on that have some new things that they should be sharing with our listeners. You know, I might be knocking on your door at some point here soon. Naomi, theme. We're thinking about doing a theme. And so we're gonna, we're gonna plant the seed now with anyone who actually listens to this whole episode.

And now we'll know who's actually listening the whole way.

Yeah. The theme is like, we're gonna like pull together some go-to-market, like the trends in go-to-market strategies right now, like community-led, partner-led, People-led, there's a few of these.

PLG, the whole bit, right?

PLG, all of that stuff. And then get them to share a little bit about like how they're working with marketing ops and rev ops practitioners to implement these go-to-market strategies so that we can better learn like what they're about and how to support them and that kind of stuff. So what do you think? Real time.

I think that's great. Yeah, yeah, sounds good. I mean, it's topics that I'm interested in too, right? So lots of that. More attribution stuff, analytics reporting. I think for me, like if we were to do topics around, or themes, I guess, around managing expectations and how do you present things to the SLT. So a hot topic, and I believe there's a webinar or attribution webinar? Is that— has that happened already or is it happening?

We, we had one just the other day and then there's another one coming up, you know?

Yeah. Like, like, so I get— I think for me it's not so much like that stuff is great, but then what happens after? What do you do with this information? How do you then disseminate it to the people that actually need to see it? And how do you explain it in a way that makes sense to them? I think those kind of themes would be great too. Right. So it's like kind of stepping a bit outside of our marketing ops bubble and how do we effectively communicate to the people that need this information but don't necessarily work in our space.

Yeah.

Oh man, this harks back to summer camp, huh?

Yes, that's exactly what I was thinking. No, I, so I think it's kind of a, maybe it's a tangential to that, but I think, Mike, you and I talked about even it'll come out in this podcast just prior to this. But there's been a lot because we're at around the new year, right? People are actively trying to figure out what are the right measurements for marketing ops. And, you know, I think there's that. I don't think that's something that we've really covered at all, really, which is kind of a surprise. So I do think there's something there. And Naomi, you can't miss that one because I think you've Got some great things that you do. So yeah, that one, I mean, I think that's generally that, like, how do you know if you're being effective? And then tie that with how do you communicate that to the rest of the organization?

Yeah, yeah, I totally agree. I think that'd be a ton of fun. It's— and with MopSapalooza 2024, we're actually gonna like bring back some of that subject matter. So, um, I'm excited about that piece too because like I was just on with Jess Cow, uh, 2-3 hours ago today, um, Naomi, and that exact subject matter was, uh, the topic of discussion for either a presentation, um, or a course, and more likely a course. So bringing some of that workshop stuff that we did with her back at summer camp.

In 2022. Yeah, I, I think that was, to me, that was one of the highlights of the summer camp from '22 was just really getting that really like immediate feedback about how I thought I would present it, where I thought I was doing a pretty good job of translating it to CMO speak and then being shot down. Like it was very humbling.

This is what I heard.

Yeah.

Yeah, yeah, I, uh, I totally agree. I think, I mean, and for, for all the listeners, um, the— if you're a pro member of our community, that session from Summer Camp is available to you. Nothing will replace being there in person, of course, but if you do want to go consume that content, that entire— I think it was like, what, 2, 3 hours of content or something, um, of a session. That entire engagement with Jess Cowe and Nancy, who was the CMO guest in that room on that day, is available to all of our paid members on the website and you can go consume that. But yeah, I think it's one of the hardest things to do is try to translate that kind of stuff. And so yeah, I think it'd be a good idea for us to talk more about that on the show too. Okay.

All right.

Look at that. We thought we wouldn't do a whole episode.

I know. Look at that.

But we did.

Well, thanks, y'all. I really, um, y'all mean a lot to me, and, uh, I couldn't think of anybody else I'd rather be doing this with. So appreciate you.

Yeah, same here. Back at you both.

Anyway, seriously.

Seriously.

Seriously. All right.

Everyone's like, these guys are weird.

Yes, we are, in the best kind of way.

Yeah.

Um, all right, anything else before we wrap it up?

I don't think so. All right, ping us anytime, listeners.

Yes, send us your feedback. We're still looking for more guests. We've got a number of people who I still owe follow-ups on, so Just know that it may not be super fast, but we're working on it. Anyway, thanks again everyone for your support, getting us to 100 episodes and beyond, and we look forward to more. Until next time, bye.

Bye.

Bye.