Building MOps in Highly Regulated Industries with Danielle Balestra

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 RevOps 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 and powered by all the MoPros out there. I'm your host, Michael Hartman, flying solo as we are getting closer and closer to Mopsapalooza 2025, which unfortunately I'm not going to be at. So if you're going to be there, I'm in jealousy mode right now. So the FOMO is real. All right. But today we are exploring what it takes to build and run effective marketing operations in highly regulated industries. So think finance, healthcare, legal services, things like that. To do that, my guest is Danielle Bilestra, a seasoned fractional marketing technology executive who has built stacks and teams across both regulated and non-regulated environments. She and I are going to dive into the unique challenges of operating within legal and compliance constraints, how to earn trust across functions, and what leaders should look for when building an ops team that works well, either within the— with or without those constraints. So Danielle, welcome to the show. Thanks, Mike.

Thank you, Michael. I'm so happy to be here.

Yeah, this is fun. I'm glad we could do it. All right, well, let's start, start maybe big picture here. What do you, especially since you've been in both regulated and not as regulated industries, like what's, what makes highly regulated industries unique when it comes to marketing and marketing operations?

A lot of the technology you're working with in the highly regulated industry might still be on-prem. And if you think about it, it makes sense because they have very sensitive data, either be health records or your banking account information. So they kept a lot of that information in their own servers and they maintain them there. So there's firewalls. And to build these custom experiences, you have to be very creative about how to get information from the secure locations without compromising any data security. But still giving our customers a really good experience. So that's a huge hurdle that you have, and you have to be willing to try new things because the normal playbooks of like just plug and play an API in might not work.

Right.

Oh, it's going to make you different.

I'm going to get Zapier and just throw that in the middle, right? Not going to work for you.

No, not going to work for you. You might be hearing words like FTP, uh, FTP sites, and you're going to be like, what are you talking about? Yep. You might be sending cold CSV files from server to another. You're going to be making, you know, codes or a little— I'm missing the word today, but you're going to be making codes that can actually connect and take away identifying information from your on-prem server to, you know, your cloud-based information. So, a lot of creativity there. The other big difference is the speed to approving a vendor. So, because of those security hurdles, every technology you're going to need to approve or bring on board can take anywhere from 9 months to over a year to get cleared. So, a lot of those highly regulated companies will be looking at platforms that have multiple offerings for you to use as a service.

Oh, yeah. So, because if you're going to commit to a vendor, Right.

You're going to be going with an Adobe, a Salesforce, an SAP, an Oracle. Like, that's usually where they— where it's easiest because they have the most offerings across the board with their products. So, and for somebody who needs those services, it's easier to just pull something that's already approved as a vendor. Whereas, you know, if you're doing a point solution, they have to be really strong and they have to be very secure. Like, you need to know that they're not going to be sold in in 6 months or, um, change their, their company name. Like a lot of those things can cause major disruptions on the onboarding of a new tech.

Yeah. I suspect there's gonna be a number of people listening to this episode. They're gonna like, hey, what does SFTP mean? Well, we're going to leave that as a mystery for them, right?

We can.

Um, not familiar with it. Still use it occasionally. Believe it or not. So, and not even in a highly regulated environment, but a big organization. So, all right. So, maybe let's talk about this. Like, that's really eye-opening because I think my assumption of what you were going to say was going to be around having to deal with things like legal review of marketing materials, right? Which is kind of an obvious—

I mean, that's there. I mean, that's there, but I think for managing your full stack, it's not, that's not, That's not part of it. The harder thing is to get the tools you need in-house first.

Yeah.

Once they're there, I'm going to say honestly, the relationships you can build with your compliance officers and your legal teams can actually make things move faster. Like when I was working at a bank, we had 2 different compliance groups. There was one for the consumer-facing materials and there was one that was for our commercial-facing materials and We worked out, um, different sort of checklists and processes. We knew what we could or could not say in our communications and emails. Things were sent, um, and reviewed and, you know, we, we moved things along quickly and it was easy enough call for me to pick up the phone and, and reach out to any of those compliance officers if anything got stuck.

Yeah.

So, to me, that's actually like not as big of a hurdle. And I know—

The point, you know, if you're in this is like, that's actually really a big deal. Right these days.

So, well, you, I mean, everyone would think everybody's in the cloud, but that's not the case.

Right. Yeah. You still have server rooms with like heavy, heavy locks on them and stuff. Right.

So, a lot of air conditioning.

A lot of air conditioning. Um, it's very interesting stuff. Yeah. All right. So let's take it down maybe to a level of, if you, if we've got people who are thinking about, or maybe about to go into an organization that's in a highly regulated industry, like from a MOPS Team structure. So, like, how does, like, how does that affect, um, like, what you look for in team members, structure, the way you operate?

I'm looking for people who are very much learner mindsets. So, and what I mean by that is when I talk to an individual, if they are confused why there's an ops team within this industry, that to me is a little, like, red warning flag. Because what you want to have is you want to have somebody that can take the principles of marketing operations, being it either processes or just, you know, data principles, have that base, but now apply it to what might be more relationship focused. So a lot of these highly regulated industries like your bank doesn't— think of yourself in your, in your own shoes when it comes to banking or your, your medical provider. You're not concerned about being passed on to be sold for more services like Your health is your health. Like, you need to know important things about the conditions you might be concerned about that either have or genetically, you know, potentially could have.

Right.

You don't want them passing your information on to certain people or, you know, trying to encourage you to go get this testing or this whatever. So it's just, it's more about relationship, building trust, making people feel comfortable with your, you know, you as a service provider. And with that, You know, you're going to have to take different principles to that data, but the foundations are all the same. Like, you still need to have data knowledge, you need to be able to build systems, you're going to have to connect systems in a really unique way. So, that's why I said the creativeness is very important. So, those are the things that if somebody's looking to come into it, they need to be sort of open and curious, want to know what they can learn in this space, what they can apply from their previous experiences, there will be no SDRs. There will be no sales team. There will be different people who are getting this information, and it's important for them. So, creating a unified experience, that's really important. So, how do you get into the data, making sure all the data's in a state where you have one person represented for whatever services they're supposed to be receiving or whatever products they're receiving?

Sure.

So it's a lot of conversations with different groups, but again, being curious, being open, and then what type of challenges the organization have. Are they trying to build their marketing tech stack? Do they have one existing and it's challenged and it's not giving the right customer experience? So I did recently identify some different personas to help people understand where they could sit and what they are excited about. So depending on where the organization is, Those different personas make sense. So you'd have to, in your interviewing process, find out like, are you introducing new technology? How long has the technology you've had on hand been there and how well is it working? Because that will tell you, are they looking for a builder? Are they looking for somebody to come and fix something that's broken? Those are very important. So that will help give you that. The data analyst, everyone's needing to get insights, so that's very important. And it's even more so because there's different data places, like I said, on-prem versus in the cloud. And then hopefully you're getting a leader who's helping guide you through it as a strategist. So that's what I think when it comes to moving into this space and what to be looking for.

Right. So, so one thing you mentioned in that you talked about in the banking world where you have the consumer, right, retail banking, clients and commercial banking clients, probably 2 different things, right? One's more of a, I'll call it B2C, one's maybe more B2B. I see them in the medical world, depending on where, there might be a similar thing where you need to be able to straddle both of those. Is that another, do you need people who can kind of go between consumer-facing stuff and more B2B-facing stuff and kind of Go there? And if this is where I don't know, like, are the tool sets different for those?

Not usually. So, you know, when I was at the commercial bank, we used the same marketing automation platform across everything. The difference was the data sources we were working off of. So like some of them were sales-facing, like almost like sales-facing. So they did have Salesforce. So you'd have a commercial banker or you'd have, you know, these different, like we had equipment financing, so we'd have equipment finance bankers there. So, those people were using Salesforce, but when it came to like the actual consumer side, those were all in data warehouses and in data secure places. So, like, that's a whole different world. And we had to work with our data science team on doing insights and information.

Yeah.

The principles are all still there. Like, what everyone has some type of goal, like, are we trying to increase account openings? Are we trying to increase balances? Are we trying to increase Loans, what are the goals? And then you just work with each data team. It's fun because it's challenging. It's almost like working for a couple of different companies at once when you work through that spectrum of B2B, B2C. Not every bank's the same. Some of them don't offer that wide breadth of services. The healthcare is interesting from my experience because it was a provider, so it was a hospital.

Right.

But when you think about the hospital operating, there's so many stakeholders that are in place. So you have the patients, you have the caregivers, but you also have the doctors. And we had this amazing referral program that we were able to trace like where most of our referrals were coming from. And we established sort of like a doctor-to-doctor referral, like meetings. So like we try and increase the relationships of the doctors in those regions with our doctors on hand so that they could refer patients as things came up. for us to help them with. So that was like a very interesting B2B type of play in a B2C world. So that's why this is a fun, creative space if you're willing and you feel confident with your base knowledge. Like, this is a really interesting experience to play as a marketing ops professional.

Yeah, that's a really interesting scenario there. So you've kind of maybe touched on this a little bit though, but like what, like from a culture standpoint, I think a lot of people listening feels like we are heavy in this community that leans toward SaaS or tech companies or early stage, things like that, right? So there's like probably cultural norms that are there. What are you, what have you seen in terms of maybe whether it's between regulated and non-regulated or across the different regulated industries where you've seen, like, what are the cultural things that you've seen that are maybe different and how those might affect ops professionals when they're in those?

I don't know if it's so much regulated versus non-regulated, but what I did notice a difference is when you go from like 50 or 70 employees or 120 employees to 4,000 or 7,000 or 16,000 employees, that's a huge difference. And when you're in a small and mighty team, everyone could be a little bit matrixed and everyone understands each other's roles and they're just running and going at whatever the direction is that the company's giving them. When you're in enterprise, when you're in a large organization, even the department you're sitting in might be very siloed. So, you know, when I was at the healthcare organization, there was over 157 people in the marketing department and communications department. That's a big department.

Yeah.

So, like, you have to feel comfortable with networking and talking to people. Hopefully, you have a good director in charge who is, you know, sort of guiding and creating paths for you to meet others and to find opportunities for you to help with. That's why I liked working in the enterprise environments is like, you can start finding new projects within your own company and share the value of this technology you're investing in that they don't even know about. My joke was like, I used to love going to, we had ServiceNow, one of my employers, and All the technology was listed in there, so I'd find out like what MarTech other divisions have and call them and be like, "Hey, I see that you're using XYZ. Could we have a conversation? Because I would like to see if we can expand it to my division." So I mean, like it's a very different experience. You have to be a little bit more open to having conversations. It can be very siloed, and that's where it gets to feel like a little like claustrophobic because you want to be helpful for the organization. But sometimes people feel like they have to stay in a lane, but. Really most people are willing and open to having, uh, you know, work on projects. One of the best projects I had was I found about— found out about in the, in the coffee room. And when I was working in the bank, like, it just— I kept hearing the word Salesforce. I'm like, who's talking about Salesforce over here? And I introduced myself to them and say, oh, I'm in charge of the marketing automation platforms that are connected to your system. What are you guys doing there? So like, that was like a natural lead. And not that I think a lot of people are in the same building anymore, but that was a great way to like meet more and expand. So, it's really the size and the silos that are probably the biggest cultural challenge that I've seen.

It's funny, you and I were talking before we started hitting the record button about how I actually miss being in an office, right? And it's, it's part of it is those kinds of scenarios where you just sort of serendipitously You know, have conversations or walk in on a conversation that can have kind of, you know, minor or major impacts to, you know, what you're doing or your career. Curious though, like all I've— what you're saying about like networking, having conversations all resonates with me. I suspect there's going to be people who are listening who are going to be Whether they're telling themselves a story or not, right? It's like, I'm more like, that's uncomfortable. I don't know what to say. Like, do you have any tips for how to, how to kind of how to approach that if they're, maybe they feel like they're an introvert or whatever?

I would say just start small. Don't go feel like you need to talk to everybody. Just try and have like a coffee meeting. Like if your organization offers something like that, I don't know how big your, the organizations are, but like I think about, I used to help out at Amex, um, as consultant and they used to have the coffee chats. They had a bowl and you put your information in the bowl and people would pull information out and they would call you and just have a random conversation. So, depending on like what organization you're in, like there used to be a Slack channel for a marketing ops community that used to do this thing called Donut where they would just randomly, you know, bring you to somebody else. So, I think just start small, just try and meet one person and if anything, the best question to ask is, do you recommend me speak to anybody else? So that you have a warm introduction to the next person in the organization. Me, I've always been ballsy, so I'm like, oh, hey, these are the 5 people that I need to talk to. I'm just going to get on their calendar. And I would start with an email, and if they don't respond, I put a meeting. And some people, like, that's the thing, like, you don't know how they're going to react. Some people don't respond to emails. Some people are happy that you put a meeting on, and they're like, Thank you for setting this up. You're just like, I emailed you 3 times, but you're welcome.

Yeah. Do you, um, when you do something like that, this is getting very tactical, but do you do like 15 minutes, 30 minutes, an hour?

It depends on what the conversation is. If it's really for me to understand tactically what the, what they're doing, what they're trying to achieve, what their department goal is, I try and leave longer time cuz I also wanna share a little bit about myself, not just be like, gimme all your information and thank you. Bye. Like, I also plan on, you know, sharing why I reached out, what I'm trying to figure out, and why, you know, this is important for us to have a conversation. So, you know, there are great books out there about also just networking. Um, it's funny, I just read The Long Game, um, by Dory Clark.

Oh, you did?

And, uh, she talks about like long-term goals. So like, some of it might be relevant in the work environment, but it is good for just general networking, uh, just about like how to work through that and how to, use it not just like as a, like a transactional experience, but more as a relationship building experience.

Yeah. I think the one thing I might add to your idea there is, you know, you're probably already interacting with a number of people that are outside of your kind of core area, right? So like there's already a connection, right? And so reaching out and asking for, hey, I'd love to learn more about what your day or week looks like and How we can maybe learn from each other. I think, you know, there are going to be people who are not interested in it, but I think my experience has been if you ask, like people are, most people are more than willing to share.

Right.

And actually, they actually appreciate that. Um, and I like your point about like trying to make it reciprocal a little bit. Like, what can I do for you as well is a good thing. And then once you do that, like, I mean, like What I've learned, and it's kind of what I try to do with my own children to some degree, is like the anxiety and fear about all the potential like things like they may say no, like, A, yeah, they may, but like, what's the worst? Like, that's, you haven't lost anything if you do it in a respectful way, right? So.

You hope that they don't say no too, 'cause that also reflects on them. Like you hope they're open and willing to share, but Most people are, most people are more than happy to share and talk about themselves and help you out by giving them, giving you the knowledge they have.

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think that's the point, right? Is like, it is this, if all you do is dwell on all the worst case scenario, right? It's, you're never going to do it because it's like the fear of that is, is going to overwhelm you. But like, I said, like, You know, strap on a little courage and go make the ask. Do one.

Just do one. I guess, I guess the same thing applies if you wanna play with AI. So, I, I hate to turn this into AI, but the— I know everyone's talking about AI, but I bet people are dabbling on it and they are interested in it. It's the same thing as learning from somebody else. Like, there's no reason why, you know, just asking a question, it doesn't have to be a long conversation. Like, some executives I don't even spend a full 15 minutes with. It's just like, hey, How are you doing? Or, you know, quick, quick, like, you know, questions. They're happy to answer it and then you keep going and then you already established a relationship. So the next time you ask for time, it's easier to get on their calendar.

Yeah. Well, and I think it's interesting that you bring up AI because I have done that myself. Like I've been playing around with it, but I see or hear other people who seem to be further along in that journey of understanding it. And I've reached out to people, it's like, hey, are you willing to spend 30 minutes, like, you know, help me accelerate my learning. Um, and like, my experience has been what I expected, right? They were more than willing to do that. Um, there was a limit and I didn't want to, you know, uh, ask more than I felt was good, but they were all willing. I've learned from every one of those. So.

Yeah.

I, yeah, totally, totally agree, agree with that. Um, All right. So let's go back to this whole like regulated industries. And you touched on this about like compliance teams and legal teams. Um, talked a little bit about how you've worked with them, at least in one scenario. You know what I think? There's going to be some people in marketing or marketing ops who try to like avoid, avoid the attorneys, like, like the plague. Um, which is weird for me because I'm married to an attorney or recovering attorney, as she would say. Um, and I've always, I've been fortunate that most places I've been, I've had like high, like good attorneys and legal teams and compliance teams to work with who are, yeah, in general, like there's a line where they say no, absolutely no, we can't do that. But most of the time there's a lot of gray area and they're willing to work with you in it. So, how have you approached working with those teams and maybe guided the rest of your team on, like, as their, as part of their career progression, right? To, to build those kinds of strong proactive relationships with those teams.

I always loved the, um, the legal teams. I think, 'cause I'm also, even though I'm in this space, I am very concerned about my own personal data and my children's data. Like, I'm very much like, It's not really for anyone to have and to use. I need to give it to you and you need to have permission to use it when it comes to personal. When it comes to commercial, like, I do expect to get sold to all day long about being a marketing operations executive. Like, that's fine. I expect that.

Right.

But I don't— I do think there are some spaces where we should be respectful of our customers or prospects. And that's why I think I come to the legal teams and share that like if a new regulation came into effect, which I was in highly regulated industries when GDPR came into impact.

Yep.

In a New York-based hospital, it's like, why are we spending so much time? It's because we did do a lot of research and we were working with international hospitals on the research we were doing for cancer. So GDPR was very important, more for the research piece, not as much for the marketing piece, but we were, I still participated and I still sat with all the legal team and I still talk to them today. They'll see me in the, in Grand Central every once in a while and be like, hey, how are you doing? So, it was like we just established really good relationships, and they knew that I was just as concerned about providing a poor experience to our prospects and customers. It made them feel comfortable with myself and my team to know that they could trust that we're not going to, you know, do anything that would compromise the organization's position in those data regulations. Um, same thing with when, uh, CD— um, oh my God, it was the California protection. I'm now, I'm forgetting my acronym.

I can't remember what it is.

Is it CCPR?

Is that right?

Yes, something. It, I know it changed because there was like a data aspect to it, but when that was going into effect, we had a California bank and I was at a bank and we had California clients. So like we had to do it both ways cuz we had actual organization in the state of California and then we had clients in the state of California. So we had to do a whole bunch of fun things there with how we were approaching delete, how we had to keep, you know, for operational purposes, certain aspects of delete. So it was very interesting. Again, right up there with our, you know, chief data privacy officer working through the terms, working through how our systems work, figuring out how we could comply with those laws. Any regulator, any complaints, like we immediately would take action on it. So, though, I think I was fortunate that I was there when these regulations were coming out and worked very closely with those teams, and they knew how much I was concerned about it as a consumer, as well as a person operating. So, I think that created some confidence. I think we just need to be conscious of that. Like, even though this is data, and maybe you can have access to it, but does the customer want you to have access to all of it? Just take a seat. Just take a stop and think. Like, we can't assume because, you know, Google's doing it, that means it's right.

Right.

We need to think about what does the person on the receiving end feel about it? And they've indicated they're not happy. That's why these regulations are coming about, because they don't want you to just blanket email them all day long or just assume that you need a service or a product from them because of XYZ item. So, I think that's how I've created good relationships with them and also be like personable a little bit, like find out like what you might have in common. Could it be a sports team? Could it be, you know, a TV show? Like, could it be anything that makes them more human and you more human so that it's an easier relationship to have?

Yeah. One of the things as you've been talking that also, like I've been involved with lots and lots of contract Negotiations, right? And typically legal teams. It's actually the one time where I had a bad experience at one place where I felt like I was negotiating against my own attorney, right? I felt more on the client or vendor side. But I think that's another place where you can, I think they also want to see that you have some competence too, right? They don't, I don't think they expect you to understand the laws or the regulations in any kind of detail, but I think they want to see that you understand the nuance of it and Um, 'cause I think that it's another one of those scenarios where you can build your credibility, which then when it comes to where there's maybe, maybe not even gray area about regulation, but like take GDPR as an example, right? I think there's, um, there's like, there's a spectrum of levels of which you could comply, right? Depending on risk tolerance, right? So like, we're—

It's also by the regions, like each region has their own level of GDPR. It's not one centralized that anymore, like Luxembourg and Germany and Germany or Belgium, Belgium are stronger than France and stronger than England. So like, it's, it can be confusing when you're in actually the marketplace, and you have to figure out like, what is their consent? Is there double consent? Is it more commercial versus consumer?

And like, there's a challenge, there's a legitimate business decision that could be made that says, do we want to, quote, fully comply? Or take on the risk that we get a complaint and we have to pay a fine, right? So, I mean, there's obviously the other parts like damage to reputation, yada, yada, yada. But my point is like, I think if you build that kind of trust that you're willing to like go through that exercise of going like, what are the trade-offs between, you know, 100% compliant across all these different regions that are unique? that's super expensive and convoluted versus something that's like 70% complete, but it exposes us to a little more risk, right? Is that like, but it's a significantly lower cost and impact. Like that's a trick. Like what I found is more that the attorneys I like to work with are willing to have that kind of conversation about those trade-offs, right? Now, at the same time, I guess like, but was I just like, there's a point where they go like, no, absolutely not. We cannot, like we have to do this.

Well, it's also like, does your organization have a bullseye on its back right now? Because that's another thing, like, there's so many factors to think about that risk spectrum, and the more you talk to your compliance or legal teams, the more you understand where you guys, where your organization is at that time, and like how, you know, how risky can you be.

Yeah.

The customer experience should always be everyone's concern, and that should be a top priority, but sometimes it's not. Sometimes it's a lower priority, and they just, You know, awareness is a very important thing for them. Like, so putting yourselves a little bit at risk or annoying the prospect or customer a little bit is in some team's mind lower than getting the, you know, 100 people who forgot about you attention.

Yeah, totally. Yeah. That's, I think that's the point. Like, it's a, it's another example for me where I talk about this a lot, right? The world is very, there's very few things in life that are very clear-cut, you know, right or wrong, black and white, whatever, pick the, you know, the very binary sort of thing. Like there's lots of gray area and a lot of it has to do with trade-offs, right?

Oh yeah.

And so that falls in that same category and the best attorneys I've worked with recognize that, right, in the way they operate. So, Okay. I'm trying to decide where to go from here a little bit. Maybe let's go next into, like, you mentioned that cultural stuff is driven by organization size more than industry maybe, or even regulated versus deregulated. So in my experience with like big organizations, you know, it requires a lot of collaboration, patience, Persistence, right? Do you find the same thing? And—

Oh, yeah.

Again, kind of like, are, do you see any differences when you've been in regulated versus non-regulated industries or lightly regulated?

No, it's the same.

Yeah.

No, it's the same thing. It's, you, you have to be coming in curious all the time. Your, your manager might not even have the same experience as you. So, like, you can't come in and say, well, this person's, you know, in charge of Salesforce, so they must have, years of Salesforce experience. Whatever. That was not the case for me once, and I was just like, okay.

Yeah.

So, um, I guess never assume, always be curious and even ask questions. Like, if somebody is giving you direction, clarify, just make sure alignment's there. Um, I know these are all sort of like soft swag word, uh, jargon words, but like, this is really important is like, make sure everyone's rowing in the same direction. Like, what are we all trying to see achieve? It's amazing how sometimes certain words, everyone has a different meaning for it. Like innovative could be meant 3 different ways to 3 different people. So find out and make sure that like—

I had a conversation earlier today about the term micro segment. I was like, what does that even mean? Anyway.

But yeah, be curious, have a lot of conversations, be open. Don't come with your previous judgments. Um, try and be as open as you can to get to understand what they're trying to get to and accomplish what's trying to be achieved.

Okay, got it. Yeah, sounds, sounds consistent with everything else we've talked about. Um, so in that same vein about like, um, being patient, I assume like, do you have to build in, in your like, like go-to-market process stuff, extra time for things like reviews and approvals and that kind of stuff? Like, how does that affect Those kinds of processes when you're in a highly regulated industry?

Well, I mean, unless there's like an absolute hard deadline, like, are you releasing a product that has to be announced that day? Yeah. Most things are self-made deadlines and we can get it out when we can get it out. Like, to try and rush something out on a Friday makes no sense. We can hold it until Monday. And a lot of, uh, you know, compliance reviews, we do pad in as much time as we can. So that puts more pressure on the creative and the campaign teams to like make sure they have clear messaging, their copywriting's already completed, the images already cleared. They already know what will trigger a violation, so they should already have like a bank of like pre-approved type images that they could use in the, in the creative.

So interesting. Like, I wouldn't have even thought about the images, but I could imagine. Certain ones, right?

You can. Yeah. Because like certain representation, um, you know, there's a lot of laws that like fair lending and all these things, like you have to know that like you can't do certain things. So, you know, all those pre-approved images, the copy, the language within the copy, and we usually give them like, you know, most teams are, they're also understaffed. The compliance team doesn't have an endless number of people, but they are going to be And they might be looking at multiple versions of things for multiple divisions. Depends on how big the organization is. Most of the time we gave them like, I think a day, day and a half, and I think sometimes we can get it a little bit faster, but just give them the room to also do their job. Um, again, everyone's running a tight ship, so they might not have the bandwidth to do something rush or to get it out. And if you are launching a big product, usually everyone's aware and they're all marching towards that.

Sure. That makes sense. Yeah, it's so interesting about the images. I hadn't even really thought of that as being a part of a, like a compliance kind of review, but it totally makes sense. I could see that. Do you, so just curious, do you, like this also to me ties back to the, this building a relationship with those teams, right? Because if you do need to come in and say, hey, this one needs to get bumped up, If you've built that relationship, right, there's usually, they'll either go extra or they'll work with you on, hey, let's, this one takes priority. The one you were working on that we said was due today, get it tomorrow or the next day, right?

Yeah, no, and that does help and that does happen. Because what you don't want is like, I would, I might get a phone call saying like, you know, this person did this. And I'm like, all right, well, I think they didn't explain fully why. So like, Give the context of the prioritization changes if there are changes happening. You know, because what you don't want is you don't want those compliance or legal teams calling your boss or your boss's boss or the person they know to say like, "What's going on? Why are they doing this?" And start complaining because those people don't have context of what's happening. So you want to have as much information and and sort of share to say like, "Hey, I'm sorry this is." you know, confusing, but this is now a priority. I've been told this is no longer a priority. Could we switch? Could you get this done sooner? Yeah.

Yeah, that makes sense. Well, why don't we wrap up here? We've talked a lot about some of the uniqueness of highly regulated industries. If there's anyone who's listening here who's either transitioning from one to the other maybe, but in particular, I think moving from less regulated to more regulated industry, um, and kind of working through, or has made the transition, is trying to kind of make things more compliant. Like, what's your best advice to them? Like, how to approach that?

I would suggest first reading The First 90 Days. That's a great book.

Love it.

Um, for anyone who's starting a new job.

Yeah.

Start there. But I would suggest being, to go a little slower. So, if you are coming from a fast pace, that's going to be a huge change. It's like jumping into a cold ocean, going from like run, run, run, emails all weekend, emails at night to, you know, I was at the healthcare organization, I didn't get an email past 4:30. I was like, what is happening?

Right?

Like, it's such a nice work-life balance. So, be curious as well. Like, you know, come to all of your meetings with curiosity, be eager to learn, be very patient with others and with yourself. You might also have lost some tasks and responsibilities you had at a previous organization. They might now need you to really just focus on one vertical of what you're working on. It's good to share, but also remember to like, you know, have them come to you with questions. But I'm sorry, my cat just now wants to come in front of my camera.

That's the life we live in these days, right? Yep. There's— there you are. All right. There we go.

Uh, sorry about that. Um, so yeah, I would tell them, be curious, be patient, and definitely just, you know, be open to learning new stuff. You have a lot to offer, so be excited to bring that, your experience. Um, but just know you have to probably retool it to what the organization, the new organization needs.

Yeah. You know, it's interesting you brought up about like going to meetings and being curious. Kind of a nuance for me is because I generally try to avoid meetings when I can. The one time when I generally like accept everything is when I first enter, especially a big organization, because so much about that is building relationships and knowing who does what and trying to learn and absorb as much as possible. So I tend to be like over do that, even though it's not my normal tendency. Um, and so, cause what I find is a lot of big organizations, people tend to be, uh, they overinvite people to meetings because they don't want hurt feelings. I'm like, I always tell people like—

I also, I feel like some people don't know what other people do. They're like, maybe we should include them, or they've always been in this meeting, so we keep them in the meeting.

Yeah. And I'm like, I, I, I, I'm like, I tell people all the time, if they're like, Yeah. I'm invited to a meeting. I'm like, I don't know that I need to be in this meeting. So like, carry on without me. Like, if you do need me, like maybe keep me on the invite and I'll be— we use Teams, right? I'll be on the Teams chat or the Slack channel or whatever. If you need me, I'll hop on or we can talk about it separately. But like, I don't feel the need to— like my ego is not caught up in whether or not you're going to include me in a meeting, especially for one where I'm like just sitting there. Like, I don't, Yeah. It's about the like biggest waste of time. And when I see that in a big organization, I see all these heads that are just like doing what I'm doing, looking down at their phones and not paying attention or whatever, right? Or not on camera. It's like, you don't need to be here, right? It's okay. So that's like one cultural norm. If I could make that change everywhere I've been, where it's been a large organization, I would do it. 100 out of 100 times. So anyway, well, hey, I know we are short on time, Danielle. So, so much fun. Um, like really enjoyed it. Um, I wish I was going to see you at Moxiepalooza.

Um, I know I'm going to miss you. Yeah. For those who are going, I can't wait to see them.

Yeah. Well, anyway, it was a lot of fun. If folks want to connect with you or learn more about what you're doing these days, what's the best way for them to do that?

They can find me on LinkedIn. Um, my Danielle Balestra is, I think, the handle at the end of my LinkedIn URL. So definitely just connect.

Perfect. Sounds good. I, I think I almost don't know that I should ask that question anymore, cuz I think the answer is, is the same, but I'm always surprised as soon as I stop.

Yes.

Maybe something different. Anyway, well, thank you again, Danielle. Appreciate it. I, I think everyone listening is gonna be, uh, learn something from this. As always, thanks to our audience out there. Continue to support us. If you have ideas for topics or guests, feel free to reach out to Naomi, Mike, or me, and we'd be happy to get the ball rolling on that. Until next time, bye everybody.