EP 15 - Marperations: the Intersection of Marketing and Operations

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 episode 15 of OpsCast by the MoPros. We're glad you're here and joining us on this journey. I am Michael Hartman. I am joined today by one of my co-hosts, Mike Rizzo. Mike, say hello to everyone.

Hey everybody.

So as you know, we, the MoPros community is a pretty active one. And if you haven't already heard about summer camp coming up This summer, uh, this is 2021 for those listening after the fact. Uh, we still have room for folks to sign up for summer camp in Atlanta or the Atlanta area, July 14th through 16th, and in the Seattle area for August 4th through 6th, 2021. You can get details at www.themopros.com if you're interested. It'll be right there front and center. So on with today's episode. Today we are excited to have Arjun Sen, the CEO of ZenMango, which is a branding and marketing firm. He's joining us to talk today about the intersection of marketing and operations. Arjun is a former Fortune 500 executive at Papa John's as a VP of marketing and operations for the worldwide chain. He led the 3,000-restaurant chain to 4 years of record growth. He also hosts the podcast series Secrets to Win Big. He is also the author of the book Customer Karma and a regular speaker at both corporate and public events. Arjun, thanks so much for joining us today.

Truly a pleasure to be here.

Awesome.

So Arjun, you and I have talked before. I was on your podcast, but we, we talked as well. But one of the things I think was really interesting to me in, in learning about your background is that you had kind of coined a term, Marperations. Did I get that right? Hopefully. And, um, I think it would be great for, for folks to sort of understand what you mean by that. And how you think that applies today since you sort of coined that term, I think, several years back. Why don't you walk us through that?

Yeah. So initially at Papa John's, I was VP of marketing and had a different point of view. And where I woke up thinking the world is all about marketing. When it worked, it was all us. When it didn't work, I felt, you know, those operations guys don't get it. But then things changed. Once I was in charge of both marketing and operations, that's the time I realized that, you know, this one team, that was what was missing. Because the restaurant manager on day one told me, Arjun, if there's one thing marketing can do when you roll out something new, can you tell me what not to do? So I really realized that the vision is to work together to make the customer win. The big thing, you know, in that journey, what my operations concept came with That it's the intersection that matters because marketing can hit all the numbers, operation can hit all its numbers, but we both lose if customers do not win. Like, think for a second. You know, this is an interesting random fact is so many accidents primarily happen at intersections of streets. In a relay race, teams falter at the handoff of the baton. So, it's all about the intersection. It's not about great marketing or operations. It's all about, you know, marketing to me is about making the promise. Operations is about keeping the promise. And the brand is defined by the promise a brand keeps. So, I really feel it's all about Marporations or the intersection of marketing and operations. And together, we can win.

I think we just found our clip that we'll be pulling from this episode right there. Well said, Arjun.

Thank you.

Yeah, no, and I think you hit on a very key point that I find so many marketers, and I have been guilty of this as well, who talk about the buying cycle or they think of all these things from an internal standpoint rather than the customer's viewpoint. You know, I often tell people as an operations person, right, that they, you know, we'll get requests for some things that are crazy and innovative and fun and sound great. And sometimes I think simple solutions actually that have a real direct impact on the customer's experience can have a much bigger impact on the, both in the short term and the long term. So I really like that it's about keeping the brand promise.

Absolutely.

That's, that's interesting. So one of the things we talk about in marketing operations in particular, so that part of operations is, you know, one of the only consistent things that is probably in a marketing operations domain is that it's kind of the IT for marketing, right? The IT part of it.

Mm-hmm.

You know, if we made the assertion that, you know, marketing ops is both marketing and IT, And it's an operations function, so there's other components as well, right? You know, what do you think is, for folks who are in marketing operations, especially as having been a marketing leader, how much do you think we should spend our time thinking as like being kind of having our general marketing hat on versus having sort of our IT operations hat on, right? What's the right blend that you would like to see from folks who are in marketing operations?

So, you know, if we for a second take these 3 words out, marketing, operations, and IT and put everything from a customer or guest point of view. And it doesn't matter whether it's a B2B or a B2B2C or a B2C, everywhere it's exactly the same thing. Marketing's role is all about the promise that we talked about to get customers excited to visit. The world of overpromise does not work, which means operations' job is to deliver on the promise. And IT's job is assisting operations in delivering the promise. It's like 3 legs of this incredible table. And as you mentioned, there are other legs too. So that's the part where if all 3 of us do not understand the same promise we are making, it's a disaster. Like, I'll give you a simple, real disaster example is Even though you had overcommunicated to me about the location of this podcast, I clicked on some goofy link where I was sitting there. So both of you were going to the right destination. I thought I was at this cool place. I was sitting there. Then I checked your email. And that's the part where I just feel all 3 really need to work together on what is the same guest experience. Because at the end, the guest experience is defined by when the guest leaves, if they have that moment, wow, I just can't believe you did that. And then the marketing and the ops and the IT and everybody else high-fives and sees what their contribution to that was and what can they do to help each other. I really think that's the spirit of this whole journey.

Yeah, I would agree with that. And I think If we could add maybe a follow-on question to that, Arjun, through your leadership experience, how do you find ways to bring a marketing operations professional and an IT professional into the fold of what promise you're trying to deliver on? So, you know, the reality is most of the time marketing operations sits in a silo pretty distant from like the strategy at hand and there's requests that come down the pipe. We hope that that behavior is changing where folks in a marketing operations function are brought in a little earlier to better understand the business outcome and the campaign objective and the promise that is being made. I certainly don't know how often IT is involved in some of those promises, but in thinking through how do you bridge alignment? Did you have programs in place, or did you, you know, maybe just have a meeting occasionally, or was it just coming top down? I, I'd love to hear your thoughts on how to bridge the gap between what promise you're trying to deliver and making sure everybody's on the same page.

Yeah, you know, to me, I would take you back to my days at Papa John's, and, you know, what I realized was good organizations have great IT departments who work primarily to project manage a project once it has been started. But great organizations have the leader of IT be present when we are thinking of a strategic initiative. The year is somewhere, you know, I'm really going to go back in time, 1997, '98. You know, people used to still order on, you know, over the phone, 45 minutes of wait time on a Saturday or a Sunday. And as we started looking at, you know, other 2 brands, Pizza Hut, Domino's, they did some amazing marketing solutions. One getting, I think, Garth Brooks to record an on-hold tape. The other one had an operation solutions 1-800 number. When we sat together, what we wanted to get to is zero wait. And that was the time the IT department talked about Why can't we move to online ordering? So as you start going through, you know, many a time we have this whole turf protection that big ideas need to come first from marketing, then operations will implement and IT will be, you know, it's like IT is the assistant coach, you know.

Mm-hmm.

And I feel there's a role later for each one of us to do our work. But at the very beginning, when bigger ideas are built, having a team of C-suite leaders— and that's the time there's no functionality in that C-suite leadership team— because I find bigger success happens in organizations who see beyond. Both of you have started this podcast A lot of others have contemplated, but you both saw a value that you bring to all of us that others haven't, and you act on it. And that's the part where I really love this question because having this inclusive mindset where no idea is a small idea and we push each other to see beyond as a team, and then we implement. And as we implement, we assist each other because the journey is never as it's planned. Because that's the part where including IT, In the bigger picture, big sky thinking is very important, especially in today's world.

Yeah, yeah, I completely agree. It makes me— I kind of—

I gotta—

we should try to find somebody, uh, you know, Arjun, your, your experience in the marketing and operations world, marperations, love that coined term. But as, as you were saying that, I started thinking about other teams that are architected this way, and I'm thinking, you know, The only way to get to the moon is by having a cross-collaborative team of experts in the room really talking about the execution of how to get there. And I'm wondering, like, what other frameworks we could lean on and who we could talk to about this. But your experience at Papa John's sounds spot on, Arjun, being able to go online and get down to like a zero wait time to process your order. That's what a fantastic mission, and I'm sure you guys had a lot of fun getting there.

Yeah, and, you know, if I may add one more thing, I love what you're talking about because there's no person in a team who is less important. Because think, if this is the holidays, you are with your family, so, you know, putting this puzzle piece together. You think there's any piece of the puzzle which is not important? Because if there's one tiny piece missing, at the end, your family will be looking for it everywhere— under the couch, every possible place. Because the piece is never complete without every person. And that's the reason I really think we are all in the customer team, the customer win team. That's the only flag. And seeing how each other connect to that common goal is very important because that's that one goal. Each one of us seeing a path and each one of us being supportive of each other in that win is very important.

Yeah, absolutely.

Yeah, this, you know, it's what you, you bring up a couple of, like, there's so many things going in my head with you, what you just talked about. But one of them is, yeah, I worked with somebody who once, uh, another leader who said, you know, I don't think I have a monopoly on great ideas. And I think that's what you're talking about. So it takes confidence to be— to not only like do something that's great, but it takes even more confidence and some humility to recognize that someone else might be able to— the one who comes up with the great, the better idea, and being willing to sort of work through that with, with another team. And I— and your point about— because I think though, for folks who have more of an IT bent in marketing ops or have had IT experience, right, they're going to hear that story and go, yeah, I wish that there were more stories like that that showed how we were a strategic partner with the rest of the business to enable like a Really big mission point, right? I think that's a really important piece to this.

So, can I add something to that? To make it real, it's tough for operations or IT, and I'm just being very blunt the way corporate world works. It's very tough for these guys to bulldoze their way into this big sky thinking, which means whoever owns the ideation, innovation, has to open the doors. Like when I work with clients, when they do, and both of you have seen this, is this very cool brand architecture, you know, brand vision. Having that within marketing is useless. If I created that as head of marketing and I come to you, head of operations, by saying, hey, this is what our brand promise is, let me get you excited about it. What does it mean for you? How will you live this every day? What can I do to help? Then I go to IT by saying, this is what the brand promise is. Because I really feel sharing your excitement makes it better. But getting each person's buy-in into that journey is so important. And, you know, I love that concept as you're talking about every department. But each of us need to open the door for others to come in.

Yeah, that's tremendously critical.

Yeah, I totally agree. Yeah, I was just going to say, just being open to feedback and having the opportunity to collaborate with others is so critical. I haven't encountered many teams in my career that don't want to collaborate, but I've definitely encountered individuals, right? And it makes it really hard to push the business forward.

Oh, I've definitely run into both. Yeah, fair enough. And it's no fun, right, when ideas just get shut down for no great reason. You know, I think one of the things, there's this book I got years ago at a group marketing meeting, a global marketing meeting that was called How to Be a Marketing Superstar. And it's a, I'm a big fan of it. It's kind of a Who Moved My Cheese style book, right? Very pithy, short chapters. And there's this one chapter that I have, For those who know me who are listening will remember this. I have just for years now kept near or in my office a copy of 2 Facing Pages, 1 Chapter. And it basically says, this is customer money, right? And it essentially says everybody's paycheck should say, this is customer money. And it really, for me, it changed the lens of how I thought about things. I've always, and it's one of those things where it's just this little like, you know, pee under the mattress thing, right? For me where— The idea that they're internal customers is one that I appreciate the intent, but I'm like, the real customer is the one who's gonna write us a check, you know, pay online, whatever it is, right? They're the ones who are making our jobs possible. And the more we forget about that in the process as part— so I think that to me, that ties into the brand promise too, right?

Mm-hmm.

And do you see, So Arjun, let me— I was— the other part I wanted to get into is you kind of brought in the example of just getting onto this podcast today, right? We had some challenges there. But so clearly handling situations where the brand promise is maybe not met, right? Is it going to be a key to how do you, you know, either enhance or, you know, reduce the value of the brand promise? But where, like, do you have some examples on the flip side where you've seen people, companies handle it really well? Like, who would you stand up as they handle both the brand, like defining the brand, the brand promise, and then executing and supporting it in the way they actually operate from a day-to-day standpoint?

So, to me, I think it's a question of not which brand. Every brand, when they do it right, it's amazing. It's a question of what percentage of time can you do that because consistency defines Trust. If today we were instead meeting face-to-face, I would know— try to find out what each one of you like and take you to a restaurant where I am nearly sure that we will have this most amazing experience. And we being human beings, there are times things do not work right. And what do you do at that point? Earlier this week— I've just moved to Houston— I got this piece of mail from USPS. And usually when I get a mail from USPS, I never, ever open.

Right.

But this one came in a window envelope. And inside is some direct mail piece from some brand, which was partially torn. And what USPS did was it didn't even have my zip code. Somebody manually found my zip code, put it there, handwrote it, and they delivered it to me. And I started doing the math. On a given day, USPS, you know, we don't always look at USPS to be a cool brand. You know, we just take them for granted. They deliver 200 million mails they process. With 200 million mails, mistakes can happen. But when they have put a process in, and the very fact they put it in this window envelope, that was brilliant of marketing because otherwise I wouldn't have even seen the torn piece inside. And when I got it, I really did this invisible high five with USPS by saying, dude, dudette, you actually delivered. The care you went through. And I really think that is what is very important is to understand together, as we are building the brand promise, what can we do to be consistent every time? What can we do when things don't work? to do it right the brand way? Because those all become very important in the journey as you start taking it forward. I'll give you another example. Of course, by now, you know my favorite industry is a little biased towards food. We were working with Domino's Pizza. And we felt it's happening everywhere else. It's happening with Amazon. When you place an order, you know where it is. It's happening with any delivery service you can track. Like right now with Amazon, they even tell you it's 10 stops away, 8 stops away. It's not that I need to know, but if I want to know, I can find out. So what we realized in that process was that we can create a pizza tracker where a mom with 3 kids orders the pizzas. The pizza is 48 minutes away, which means mom has 46 minutes to do what she wants— listen to music, be on the treadmill.

Answer the question, when's the food going to be here?

Yeah, is it here yet? How many times? But mom knows. And 48 minutes is 48 minutes. If the food comes in 15 minutes, it doesn't work. So now this Domino's Pizza Tracker was an amazing blend of marketing, operations, IT to every person working together. And this wouldn't work without IT. If the Pizza Tracker did not have your actual time, if it has an average time, it doesn't work. So the trust for the pizza tracker to work, for operations to deliver, for marketing to promote it like the coolest thing ever was hinging on operations getting the importance of this and building it. And this was bigger than just a pizza tracker because it helped Domino's build the trust back. And think, at the end of the day, the MVP for the win, the trophy should have gone to the IT team, and IT can make a brand. And I love that example because, you know, we were part of the Domino's Pizza Tracker from the idea, but ideas are useless till you have this incredible team delivering it flawlessly because that's what makes it successful. That's where the customer win happens.

One of the things I like about your US Postal Service example there is actually that it's not a technology, right? There's virtually no amount of technology that would've solved that mistake And made it right, right? And I think, I think that's another mistake that a lot of organizations make when it comes to marketing, in particular marketing technology, right? Because there's so many vendors and players out there and it's easy to get caught up in like technology is going to solve our problem. And I'm a big believer that, you know, sometimes it just takes people and effort and process and it's not really— technology is not going to make it better. In fact, it can make it worse or make a bad situation Just happen faster, right? So that I like that, and I think the corollary there. Let's let's switch gears a little bit. So you are a former you know CMO marketing leader. You're working with a lot of you know companies now in different spaces. You know if if you were you know you know you were to join a company now and head up marketing and and you had sort of a blank slate. You know how one of the questions I think our our audience would really like to understand is how would you think about the prioritization of different functions that you would bring in, in particular, like when do you think you would bring in marketing operations or marketing technology folks onto the team, you know, as opposed to say a field marketing or demand gen or content, you know, the traditional disciplines?

I think it's day minus one. And I'll give you an example. When I joined Papa John's, one of the first persons I hired In the marketing team was Christy Jones, a super cool restaurant manager. She had just one job. Her job was to literally sniff out BS as we were building these promises to our customers. Because what we felt from day one, having Christy in the team made us more effective and efficient Because otherwise we would have taken an idea for 2 to 3 months and then taken it to a restaurant and it wouldn't have worked. So that kept us really humble because what Christy did for us from day one was one, sniff out any BS. Secondly, she started in the process sharing with us what were common challenges. I'll give you a very simple example what Christy did, which we would have never ever sorted or solved without her. We created this customer satisfaction report. We even called it ASC, connecting it to the 3 core values: attitude, superiority, and constant improvement for the company. And ask the customer, it's clever. We were very clever. And it had every possible code. Like if a number is low, it's red. Green is good. Every possible thing. Christy looked at it. She said, wow, you guys are so smart. Then she said, "But do you realize that we have only a few minutes to look at it because operations never stops?" I'm like, okay. So she literally says, "If you show, you know, just like she used her hand sloping up and said, 'If you show a number is sloping up, that means it's good. If it's sloping down, it's bad.' So that's all we need." Then she says, "Arjun, do I even need the report?" I said, "What do you mean? Reports are so important." She said, "No, can you not? I trust you, Arjun. Can you not give me the one thing to celebrate and the 3 things I need to work on. I'm like, wow, we don't even need a report. She comes back 5 minutes later. She said, Arjun, if you're super brilliant, for the 3 things we need to work on, can you connect it to training, the right training module which pops up so automatically we go into that? Now, you know, each one of us have our cool moments, okay? I, I'm very proud of what we have accomplished as a team, but I have to be honest with you that these incredible, brilliant insights as we were starting our journey wouldn't have come without that operations person. And as I talked earlier about Papa John's Online, that wouldn't have happened without IT being part of it from day one. So I really feel that, you know, for each one of our departments to win, To getting that check day minus 1, day 1, as early in the process really makes us not work on things that have no chance of working and makes us really successful.

So you're saying don't build a field of dreams and hope they'll come, right? You want to make sure they're going to come before you build the field of dreams. Totally.

And I believe being blue collar is very important. Don't— I'm, as a marketing guy, I love having this brilliant idea. Okay. But that's an ego. But the bigger thing is when you together build something which has the highest chance of putting a smile on a customer's face and everybody's fingerprints are there on that, that feels better, bigger, long-term. Like Christy and myself, when we meet after nearly 20 years, I still cannot stop praising her, how brilliant she was. Of course, she, her husband, now her kids have grown up. They all say, Arjun, you are her biggest fan. And I said, of course I am, because Christy, you made me successful. Without you, we wouldn't have reached those levels.

So, you know what I love? Again, I, I'm going to go back to, right, I love that this, that, you know, the, the feedback you got from Christy was, helped you focus on What was simple, what was practical, what was going to actually stick with the folks who are getting this. And instead of doing some new, really fancy, innovative thing, it said, let's leverage what we already have, right? Like the connections to existing training and how do we make it simple for people to use it. And I think very often that is not what happens. So let me— I want to dig in on this a little bit. Great. Christy clearly, right, was a terrific person to have on your team because she provided the kind of feedback you really needed. So for the folks listening who are marketing ops folks, you know, what advice would you give them to be more like Christy, right? To be that sort of counselor consultant back to the marketing leaders that they report to or You know, revenue leaders that they report to in their organizations?

So I think not everybody every day is lucky to find a Christy. Okay, let's be totally honest. Christy is a very rare team member, and I was very fortunate to find her, which means I would request you to do a few things. One, wear the hat of other departments at least once a week. Once a week, start seeing the world from operations point of view, from IT point of view. Just start looking at is what can I do at what point of time if I was running operations, I could make things easier. You know, the thing that I talked about is the general manager, Kathy Gruntles, she had talked about is, Arjun, can you tell me what not to do before you get me the new idea? Knowing that early would have really helped me be a better support to IT. And the second, I think, is the most fun job any person in any business should have is be a customer to your brand at least once a week. Like, if you're not doing either one of these things every week, it's just very easy to get caught into your own way of thinking. Like, the being the customer is very important because the customer is a human being. And, you know, at Zen Mango, the whole thing for us is based on we are in the feeling business. Humans have feelings. And to get to the feeling, once you're a customer, you will see that there are 4 steps: be human, think human, Feel human and act human. I have seen brands act as if the individuals at the senior management are customers. They are not. You're too high paid to be even in my demographics.

Amen.

And, and that's the part where having that humility— wear a cap which reminds you, I'm no longer Arjun. Read the profile of who your target is. Walk in with that mindset. Walk in as that soccer dad who just has 14 minutes after a soccer match with the 3 monkeys to feed them and put them back in the car without losing any kids. Be like that mom who has to run between 2 Zoom meetings to pick up the food. Once you put them in that situation and you see the world, all of a sudden you'll start having simple ahas. And that whole thing about see beyond, see what others have not seen. And seeing from the customer's eye will totally change your world.

Yeah, I couldn't agree more. And it's kind of the same thing, right? That, you know, put your shoes in the customer, like that mindset that the customers are the ones who are funding your job. And I think that's really important. And I like your idea, like, go ahead.

Can I add that? It's just putting the shoes does not work. You have to put the shoes and walk a little. And that's one of the things I've learned from my wife is when she would first tell me, I wouldn't listen to her. I'm the guy, when I buy a shoe, I would just put the shoes on. Oh, it fits. And also, it looks kind of cool on me. The shoe found Arjun. Arjun found the shoe. Branding guy. She would keep saying, no, Arjun, walk a little, please. And when I walk a little in the store, it feels totally different. So that concept you talked about, Put the shoes on, but walk. Walk the steps of the customer. Please, please, please. Best ROI ever, guaranteed.

Yeah. You know, I like that too.

I think that's brilliant.

Go ahead, Mike.

Sorry, I just— it reminds me a little bit of— I'm going to blank on the name of the book right now, which is horrible. But in the Jobs to Be Done framework where they're The book that kind of introduces this concept of how to understand what your product's job is and who it's competing with and what it's trying to solve for. I think one of the very first examples they provide in the book is essentially following the same line of thinking where it's like, walk in the shoes just a little bit of what you're trying to solve for. And the example, to make a longer explanation much shorter, is that The goal of the customer was to feel satiated in their— speaking of food, Arjun, to feel satiated and full on their drive to work. And so when McDonald's, in this case, if that's the organization that we're talking about, was trying to figure out how to make a product that could compete with the bagel or the breakfast or a donut or a cup of coffee, They were trying to understand what, what they could do to improve the product. And what they learned was that their customer was on a long drive, sometimes 45 minutes to an hour and a half to work, and they wanted something that satisfied them, that gave them pleasure, that would leave them feeling full by the time they actually got to work. And the thing that solved for that the most was by changing the ingredients in the makeup of the cup that they delivered in and the actual product inside the cup, which ended up being the milkshake. And what they realized is that the job to be done was to create a product that could withstand the drive and give somebody pleasure at the end of their journey, along the journey as well. And the only way that they could do that was by trying to understand and literally walk, or in this case, drive in the shoes of their customer. To create a better product experience, right?

So think about what both of you are doing. If both of you were just having a conversation with me, it would be a totally different conversation. It would have been about us, totally different. You both know who your audience is, and you are creating this podcast discussion not for you, not for you, Mike, not for you, Michael, But for every individual, like, you have decided and defined that if each person gets one nugget from this conversation, your journey is very successful. And when you're talking about restaurants, I was working for a drive-in restaurant chain. Okay, this I would have never found if I didn't act as a customer. I parked the car, and what I realized was, in a drive-in, if you want To throw the trash. There's no place to throw the trash. You have to keep the trash with you in a car on a hot day. Problem one. Secondly, in a drive-in, after I parked, I wanted to take a quick snooze, a little nap, plan my rest of my day before I'm back. And they blare this bad music through broken outdoor speakers, the worst thing you can do. Like, I realized if you, one of you, were taking a nap at my couch in my living room, I would not blare bad music through broken speakers at you. So that whole concept of being a customer is so important because once you live that, you find the goofiest of things that come out.

I love that example.

Best intentions gone bad, right? So just one little thing, one other corollary to the walking in the customer shoes, because I love that. I do think this is a case where internal Walking in other people's shoes matters too. So for me, I always tell like my view on marketing and in particular marketing operations is informed by having been in sales for a while, right? So I think there's that. The other is I work for an organization that actually not only encouraged but actually required occasional—you basically spend a day with somebody in another organization. another part of the organization so you could understand what it was like, like what a day in the life of was like. And both having had people sit with me and kind of observing and going and doing that was really, really valuable. So anyway, so I think that's, that's a great one. So let's— you mentioned clearly like the majority, at least on the surface, it seems like the majority of your experience, Arjun, is in B2C. And in particular industries, but I'm sure you've worked with some B2B, some B2C, and I'm kind of with you that you know at the end of the day we're all selling and marketing to individual people whether they are representing themselves or an organization. But so do you do you are you seeing any difference in terms of the impact that marketing operations can have on an organization if it's B2C versus B2B? Or B2B2C, if you want to throw that in there as well.

Yeah, to me, I think it all depends on how frequently you see the C, the guests. If you see the guest often, it's easy for you to relate to the guest. On the other side, if you don't see the guest often, it's easy to take for granted. In a B2B, sometimes we can forget There's a C at the end. And when we were talking about all the customer, putting your shoes in our customer shoes first, it works in every business.

Okay.

I was speaking at an elderly care place as I chose to be a patient, to live there, a resident. Okay. And I would ask either one of you to ever try this out. Okay. What you'll see is they don't trust Arjun to not to have accidents in the bed, which means the mattress has double or triple layer of plastic. So as I'm laying down to take my first nap on this place, I turn left, I hear myself turn left. I turn right, it's a different sound. Like, how the heck am I supposed to sleep? Like, I came back and this is what I did in my home. My wife and myself, we slept in our guest bedroom that first night. We have never slept in the guest bedroom ever, and we realized this bed is so uncomfortable. Like, so even though there are infrequent guests who come to our house, they never tell us. So here's something I request everyone to do. If you have a guest bedroom, sleep in that guest bedroom one night, and that will change your mindset. Like, do something different, take a different perspective. That is very important in any industry, whether it's B2B, B2C. It starts with— Not to see, it starts with your eyes, your perspective, you wanting to see differently, you will start seeing things differently.

That's great. I think the biggest thing I'm taking away from our conversation today is how we as marketing ops, marketing operations professionals, we need to be advocates for our customers, right? So when we get requests from marketing or sales or other parts of the organization, we need to be championing The the customer's experience as much as we are, you know, the goals of of the company, right? And there's a balance there. I get it. Wow, this has been really interesting, Arjun. Thank you so much for your insights today. If if folks here are listening want to learn more about you and Zen Mango, where can they find you? And is there anything that you've got coming up that they could see you at?

So to me, you can come to zenmango.com. Zen Z E N mango like the fruit dot com. And if you get a chance, go also to secretofwinbig.com. That's where my podcast is, and that's the place where I have the coolest seat in the house talking to incredible VIP guests like Michael Hartmann and others.

I'm blushing. Um, so thank you again, Arjun. Thanks. It was, it was really interesting, um, for us to get this. Uh, thanks also, Mike, for you joining us. We— I know we missed Naomi, but, uh, thank you for being part of this. Thank you for everyone who's listening to this. You're an incredibly important part of the journey here. If you do have suggestions for either topics or guests, or you want to be a guest, feel free to reach out to Mike Rizzo or me, Michael Hartmann. You can always keep track of what's going on at themopros.com. And if you want to know about the OpsCast, you know, subscribe to this podcast, you can always do that at opscast.themopros.com or through your favorite podcast app. And always, as always, help us to share the word, share about this, and subscribe, rate, and review where you can. Thanks everyone, until next time.

Thanks everybody. Thank you, Arjun, much appreciated.

Thank you.