From Campaigns to the Boardroom: Rethinking Marketing Ops with Lauren McCormack

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 all the Hello, pros. I'm your host, Michael Hartman, flying solo in this holiday season. Today, I'm excited to talk with Lauren McCormack, lead strategist for the B2B experience platform at Kaiser Permanente, and someone who sits uniquely at the intersection of marketing ops, rev ops, paid media, and sales. She's a multi-time Marketo champion, a speaker at Mopsapalooza, and a leader who has spent her career helping organizations earn a true seat at the revenue table. She and I are going to talk about data alignment, attribution, financial literacy, and how modern marketing teams can elevate their decision-making as we head into 2026. Lauren, welcome to the show.

Fabulous, Michael. Thank you for having me. Thank you so much to the extended Marketing Ops family for having me as well.

Well, I'm glad at least one of us also has like holiday festive stuff in the background.

Yes.

So, it's always nice. So, as we, what, mid-ish December? 2025 as we're doing this.

That's right.

All right. Well, let's, why don't we start with, I mean, I gave the highlights there, but like you've worked across a lot of these different areas, marketing ops, RevOps, sales, paid media analytics, which is unusual. So, how is like, how are those different experiences, the breadth of them shaped how you think about modern ops and marketing, maybe marketing and overall?

What a great question. And yeah, I'm a weird one, right? People, I think, try to pigeonhole marketers into niche specialties. And I think it's kind of a function of silos being accepted workplace characteristics, you know, and I tend to defy that notion, which is sometimes wild, I think, for people to understand, but I've been an account executive held to a commission structure, broke a couple commission structures in my early 20s. That was fun. And I've had, you know, a territory and then I've been a journalist, you know, I was a writer, so.

Oh, interesting.

Yeah. And I transitioned into marketing after sales and that kind of helped me, you know, it was direct response and that helped me understand how to create demand, especially, you know, with digital properties. And I've been playing with paid media experiments and web experiments and conversion optimizations, you know, for almost 2 decades now. So, kind of an early adopter there. Early adopter when it comes to marketing ops, I was moved from direct response into a company that was running B2B SaaS in early days for B2B SaaS in the suburbs of Chicago. And their marketing department was doing Donut Cart Fridays and pictures with the Easter Bunny and the annual company picnic. And I mean, I love those things, don't get me wrong, but, uh, it was when Maria Pergolino was at the helm, uh, for Marketo.

Okay.

Early days, long before the IPO. This is like 2012.

Okay.

And she's pitching this notion that marketing should have a seat at the revenue table. And I'm like, Interesting. And so, I'm in direct response and I'm doing my thing. And my husband works for this software company and my dad is looking for a new career opportunity. He's like thinking that maybe getting away from having like epic at the healthcare system, like implementations and having a pager go off at 2:30 in the morning, maybe he's just kind of ready for something new, a little bit more chill.

You know?

Right. And so, my husband brings home these job recs and there's one in there for a marketing manager and it's completely different from all the other ones. Someone has taken the time to hand curate every word and make it exciting and dynamic. And I noticed this and I'm like, tell me again about your benefits. You know, tell me again about what it's like. Would you wanna share a commute? Like on a lark, you know, none of the recs matched my dad, but this one sounded pretty good for me. When I got into the interview, You know, I mean, Salesforce was still new-ish and Marketo was real new. Like, you would only see pockets of utilization in San Francisco and New York, nothing in between, and mainly startups. And so, this company was really, you know, the VP at the time was really forward-thinking, and he asked me in the interview, have you ever heard of Marketo? I'm like, absolutely no, but I'm a quick learner. And, you know, like, that began the story. And, You know, it pivoted pretty quickly because I think to your question, having been in sales, I was like, man, what would it have been like if I had, instead of an accordion folder and, you know, like an, a list of contacts in my phone, which I think embarrassingly enough at the time was a BlackBerry.

A literal Rolodex.

I wasn't quite Rolodex material. I was BlackBerry material. So, like one step ahead.

Yeah.

Of the paper. But like, what would it have been like if people, instead of me just showing up places, could cultivate an interest and get like a stage set for my conversation, or heaven, God forbid, book an appointment for me to show up at a given place and time and for sure find a decision maker? I'm like, this is cool, you know? And so, I think instead of seeing it like, This is for newsletters. I can email. This is Constant Contact. This is Mailchimp. I think I was like super fascinated by the notion of using it as a demand engine and like before demand gen or heaven forbid RevOps as a term was even a thing.

Sure.

I just could see the synergies and then paid media, same, you know, like of course, like that's just such a powerful lever if you can train the platforms It's so fascinating the ways that, you know, something—

When you get very quick feedback, right? Like if they're working with—

Well, not always, but I think it's really interesting the way that you can work with an organization to better define exactly what they want to photocopy, what they want more of, and what they never want to see again. And those algorithms, if you work with them really rigorously, can find you people that match very specific parameters at scale, you know? And I love that, the idea that the platforms will work while you sleep, while you're off, while you're on vacation overnight to grow the businesses that you're trying to support, you know?

Yeah, I think it's interesting. So I was for a hot minute in sales at a point where I probably really wasn't ready for it. No, if It's fucking hard and it's— It is, but you can break through. Very humbling. And it gave me a very deep appreciation for what that role is like. And I say this often on this and other conversations where I think a lot of marketers have a perception and disdain for sales. And I think that's because they don't know what it really takes. And I think for me, it's always informed, especially from an operations standpoint. What's really interesting to me though is your journalism background. And the reason that is curious to me, not because you have it, but so one of our early guests was Brandy Sanders and she said that something about like to be good at marketing ops, you needed to understand chess and human psychology.

Yeah. To tell a story, right? It's so powerful to be able to— Yeah.

And I would like, the storytelling is such, like, I still feel like storytelling, which is ironic that marketers do a terrible job internally in so many places.

Yeah, not always, but yeah.

Not always, but a lot of them do, I think.

My favorite kind of hire because they know how to get to a succinct, like journalists know how to get to a succinct lead. They understand how to build a case for something when a case is needed to persuade internally or externally. They know how to create a journey, like, and to captivate, right?

Yeah.

And deadlines, so deadline-oriented.

Oh yeah, I can only imagine.

Yeah, almost to a fault.

Right. Okay, so kind of in that vein, yeah, so you just recently spoke at MOPSpalooza, right? It was Owning Your Fate as a Marketer. I wish I had been there. So, when you say that, like, what do you mean and why do you think that's important? Is it part of this storytelling bit or is it something else?

I love that that was the soundbite that came away from the session. I think it was officially around building a demand gen engine, but when I think about it as owning your fate as a marketer, you're the driver in that car, right?

Yeah.

So, I think more now than ever, after all of the waves of restructuring and layoffs and everything that we've seen, to be able to confidently lean into your capability and your appetite for contributing revenue, that's what's gonna determine your upward mobility. that's gonna, what's it, if you can't, to steal my friend Jess's phrase, convert geek speak into the C-suite.

Yeah.

You're not gonna be able to have upward mobility for yourself or for your team. And I think that's the part, you know, for people that are reticent to be like, I'm gonna commit beyond my goals for clicks and opens to a number of pipeline that I'm going to contribute and close and win, or heaven forbid, regression analysis and forecasting around what you're gonna get for what you spend.

Yes.

Where I love to be. If you're not willing to do that for yourself, okay, but if you're leading a team of people, that's your responsibility. It's almost like running the finances for your home. You have to be accountable to those numbers because you're taking care of people. Those people are trusting you with their families and their futures. So, I think owning your fate is an interesting way to perceive leaning into that seat at the revenue table. I guess if we go full circle there.

Yeah. Yeah. I think it's interesting that point, and Jess is great about that translating geek speak to sports.

She's awesome.

And I thought I was decent at it until we did an exercise at summer camp a few years ago, and I was like, oh, wow. It's very interesting to get that perspective, because we had somebody else in the room, a CMO, and how she thought was very intriguing and helpful. to hear. It's the one, I think, addition I might make to yours, like your thought of this is that there's a seat at the revenue table, but also there's this revenue at all costs is not going to be sustainable either, right? So there's also like, when I, and you kind of hinted at it, like if I spend a dollar, what am I going to get out of it?

That's right.

It's easy to recoil from that question because it's so hard, like it's hard to answer.

It's loaded, but it's also, I think the more that you aren't avoidant with it, the more that you embrace the fact that these are the fundamental questions that the CMO is going to get from the board.

Yep.

The more that you can manage upward and downward, or better yet, carve out a path toward budget and headcount and sanity and safety and my new department tends to call it reasonability, right?

Yeah.

Managing expectations too. So, if the board is asking something wild and they've just taken a dart and thrown it at a dartboard to say 15% growth in 2026, work that math backward once you get comfortable being in those spreadsheets to understand, or those forecasts, whatever your tool is, or your Power BI, you know, but whatever your methodology is, Working those numbers forward gives you the power to work them backwards. So, you can say, okay, 15% growth. Interesting. Here's our conversion optimization at best-case scenario for sales, and this is what sales needs to be fed to hit that number, and this is what it looks like for my budget for 2026.

Yeah.

For us to confidently hit this target with a margin of error. And once they see that you can be accountable, Either they adjust this, like maybe they adjust the expectations or make them more reasonable, or you get the funding and the investment and the infrastructure that you need to make your team successful. Either way, you can't avoid the inevitability of those expectations.

Yeah. Well, I think the point I've heard, to put it bluntly, is that they don't care how busy you are, because that'll be the complaint. You're like, you're asking me to do all this work, but you're not giving me the headcount. If you can't speak to the financial outcomes.

You don't get the money.

Right.

Yeah.

Like, it doesn't even necessarily, like, I think to your point, like, is it reasonable? You show that you're understanding and thinking about it maybe as much as you need to do. I mean, that's not everything, right?

Yeah. And I mean, like, the status quo is not necessarily what I'm advocating for there either. So if you look and do your regression analysis around what your deal sizes and the close-win ratio is for your sales team, and you work that backwards through your top-performing channels, and you think about, you know, what the cost per opportunity looks like in those top-performing channels and what the lead volume needs to look like to give the at-bats to the team to hit the home runs, they need to hit those numbers.

Right.

Sometimes there's waste. You know, sometimes you have to optimize your return on ad spend. Sometimes you have to think about renewals and churn. Like, there are more factors. It's not as linear as it sounds, but just showing that you've done the math and that you're continuing to analyze is owning your fate, I think, professionally and being responsible with the fates that are around you, you know? Yeah.

So, I totally agree on that. One of the things you mentioned a little bit ago was Something about silos and I think in marketing in general. And so, so why do you think that's an issue? Right? Because it's pretty much the way it is everywhere. And like, what, what are the downsides of that and how do you address it?

We're all in the same boat and we can make choices around if we're all rowing in the same direction. And it, impacts, if a heavily siloed organization is more obvious to people on the outside than it ever is to the people on the inside, and that is a liability.

That is really interesting.

Yeah, it's that solution selling. I was fortunate enough to go through that program as an AE and as a marketer. Yeah.

Oh, interesting. Yeah.

It's really good. And it's, I mean, it's a little, you know, time-tested, but it's like the concept of NIHITO, nothing important happens in the office, and that's not work from home and that's not PTO, but that's like the decisions that influence the growth of your team happen when you're not around. That RFP process is going down when you're not in the room. And it's like, what are people, what's the impression that you're making on people that you can quantify and qualify? Like, um, When the important moments matter, have you accidentally sent 2 emails and used the wrong name of the decision maker in one of them in Salesloft? You know, as—

Yeah.

Have you forgotten to respect the prospect and customer experience to the point where it's gonna damage your deal? And I think the only way, if we're omnichannel, if we're thinking about personalization at scale, if we're thinking about what the future of good marketing looks like, how on earth are you gonna stay siloed? How are you gonna say, I only focus on webinars? Like that operation in a vacuum, the space for that is gone, right? And, you know, I think sales and marketing alignment, I still see massive amounts of dysfunction there. And it's like some of the fundamentals are missed. And I can guarantee you, if you're not willing to have at least a couple people that are crazy enough like me to extend across aisles and have conversations that maybe aren't mandatory, your competitor does, your competitor is, your competitor will. That agility and not like just like agile, project management, but like that nimbleness to have a marketer that's actually seen what it looks like when one of their crappy leads goes sideways or one of their good leads converts into a deal. Like if you operate in a world where you're just chucking stuff over the fence and then just hoping that it's valuable, it shows in your bottom line, your top line, it shows in your churn. And it shows Most disturbingly in those conversations about whether or not your prospects and customers want to choose you or somebody else that's doing it better.

Or internally, what kind of reputation you and your team have, right?

Oh, that's interesting. Yeah. I know your personal brand. I never thought about that, but that's interesting. Yeah.

You're right. Yeah. I mean, I do coaching with people in particular who are, I love coaching people who are moving into their first leadership role. And I tell, one of the things I tell them all the time is like, one of the things you're gonna be surprised about is how much talk there is about everybody that you've never heard about before. 'Cause it's happening, guaranteed, it's happening all the time, right?

Yes.

And I think that—

And I think that's smart. And it's really about those people that say good things about you in rooms where you're not. Like, that's been my mantra lately is like, Find the people that when you're not around, sing your praises. And that's for your company, right? Those evangelists for your brand, that's for your personal career. And that's even just at the family and friend level, like.

Yeah, sure.

Yeah, but definitely interesting that you coach around that kind of reputation management.

Well, not only that, but I think one of the things that like new leaders, I think are, they know, The reason why I like coaching is because when I first stepped into a leadership role, no one told me all these, you know, new expectations that were unwritten. Yeah.

The school counselor.

Yeah. Like—

The referee.

Yeah. I know, you know, I heard somebody talk about your job as a leader when you were a, I think it was a Simon Sinek thing. When you were an individual contributor, your job was to do your job. very well, right? And now your job is to manage the people who do the job you used to do, right? And there's just this letting go part that has to happen, which is really hard for— it was hard for me. And so I like helping people get— not go through all the same pain that I did.

That's fascinating. That's a cool way to spend your time, like helping people because they're going to help so many other people in return and it just kind of exponentially multiplies.

Yeah. I mean, I think I'm a big believer that like people don't leave companies, they leave managers.

I think that's an interesting and wise take. I remember when I, in one of my previous roles where I was a VP and I had a lot of people, you know, that I was trying to help and cultivate, like my philosophy is just to Enable people to be their most successful selves, right? Not necessarily to manage them, but to empower them. And I freaked one lady out pretty bad because I told her I trusted her judgment. And she had been used to being absolutely henpecked and micromanaged to the point where she second-guessed like whether or not 3 sentences in a reply. were going to align with expectations. And I think when I first told her that, she thought I was dismissing her, but I was absolutely trying to help her find her light and to find her confidence. And after I left that role, she sent me a card and it's like right here on my desk. I keep it to this day that just absolutely made me cry because she was so grateful for that kind of energy and that management style, and it was helpful to her. So I hope you have a stack of cards like this, and I'm sure you do.

I wish I did. I've definitely had, maybe not, I don't think I've, whatever, maybe it's a generational thing, but I don't think I have cards, but I definitely have messages that resonate like that. And I'm with you. I think it's funny that you said, I trust you, because there's another thing I tell people. It's like, You need to, like, if you believe that, you should say it, say those words.

Yeah. They need to hear it sometimes.

Right. Cause like it doesn't, yeah. I mean, don't assume they just know anyway. Like I could do a whole, maybe I need to do another podcast about that. I don't know. We'll see.

I would tune in. I would, I would share that content.

You could be a guest. We could riff on that. How about that? I love it. Um, so, okay. Speaking of telling stories and change, so it feels like every, there's these cycles where it becomes a hot topic and it goes away, it comes back, but it never goes away completely is attribution. And I think the phrase you used when we talked before is, is a waste of calories when it becomes a blame game.

That's right. If you're arm wrestling over credit, absolutely.

It's a bad thought. I guess, is there a right way to think about attribution? If so, what is it? And like, what's the level you should get to?

Yeah, great question. Age-old question.

Like, I got a question the other day, like, which attribution model do you like? I was like, I don't think it really matters, right? Just pick one, stick with it.

Consistency is key. I mean, there's something beautiful about having an entire data science team that's able to implement, wield, and derive wisdom and business intelligence from multiple like a U-shaped, a W-shaped, a time decay. Like, if they can get nerdy with it and they can make it tell a valuable geek speak for the C-suite story that actually informs better business procedure, good on you, you know? I mean—

Sure.

But I would tell you that out of the organizations I've seen over the years in consulting, from startups to the enterprise, especially the enterprise, Nobody really is living that dream. And I think a lot of people will buy software to solve this problem. It is an inherently human problem. It is, software will help be a means to an end for measurement, but you define the accounting structure. You define the logic, the rules, the reason. And if you are not in a position where you've desiloed sales and marketing and they're all rowing in the same direction, in the same boat, it's an arm wrestle for who took, you know, somebody's nephew's uncle out after soccer practice for a coffee one time, and it's just a bad look, you know, but I think influence and attribution and sourcing and conversion optimization are contingent on you not getting overly cerebral and starting somewhere, right? So, if you can't accurately Put into place standardization around UTM source. This is like a fundamental level 1 exercise, and you can't look by channel and say, my top converting channel for the month of December 2025 is, and my cost per qualified lead, my cost per sales accepted opportunity, my cost per opportunity, per channel is not, if you don't have that at your fingertips in near real time, you need to work toward that. But if you're down to the point where sales is cold calling old lists from your database that you're sending a newsletter to, and there's an argument that escalates to senior leadership about whether or not to give the cold call or the newsletter, the credit for the whole deal, you're thinking about things wrong. It should be a cerebral question around allocation of resources and improvement of process, not stars, gold stars on a chart for favor in the moment.

Yeah. I mean, so it's interesting because my general response to attribution is I don't have a problem with attribution itself. I'm with you. It's a super exercise for, the way I shorthand it is making, like, it's for marketing to understand what's working well for a particular audience, a particular channel, and change, you know, making bets based on that. They're informed. I don't think it's great for, um, telling the financial benefit story. My preference would be, you use this word contribution, right? So, right.

Influence and attribution, I think, are 2 different concepts, and you can have influence on a deal without having direct sourcing attribution be the goal.

Okay. Okay. So good distinction here because when I'm thinking attribution, I'm thinking influence. So that's— It's the same. But when I think of contribution is somewhere along the way, we've got an agreement with sales, marketing, maybe support if you've got renewal retention kind of stuff. Say like, we are going to just agree, this is how we're going to measure where something came from, pipeline revenue. And we are going to accept the fact that in some cases, marketing's going to get credit for something that probably could have been sales, or sales is going to get credit for something from marketing, and so on, right? But we're okay with that, right? We know like there's a margin of error, but it's not what we care about. We care about the overall, like, are we as an organization reaching the goal? I would rather talk about that than influence in a broader group. Yeah.

It's a team sport, but I think when you do get attribution and influence, Iron out, and I mean, you nailed it when you said that you have to get agreements around how you're going to define your accounting structures, essentially, like how you're going to count the beans for who gets what, when. That is the piece that software doesn't do for you. And I think that's where so many companies fall down is they, that, because that, to your point, that requires somebody that's cross-functional that sits across multiple silos. Or a tiger team with a leader that can decouple the silos to make those kinds of business agreements. And it usually needs to be a leader in some capacity or someone with the advocacy of a leader that has influence to make operational change management happen and stick.

Yeah.

It's not gonna be a solo sales force admin or a marketing ops manager That alone can change a corporate culture to think about these topics, but they can start the conversation. And I think that's part of what I was talking about too, and at Mobso is owning your destiny by, you know, starting the conversation. You don't necessarily have to be the CMO to get the ball rolling. You just have to pitch it. Well, to the CMO and have their advocacy, you know?

Yeah. I mean, I think the reason I talk about the agreement so much and why I focus on the fact that inherently there's going to be things that are going to be, quote, be wrong. I think a lot of people think of this in terms of like, you mentioned accounting, right? Accounting, there's very common rules and practices and controls so that if you're looking at financial statements across industries, across businesses, right? They're more or less the same. I know there's nuance.

They get audited, we don't.

Right. And I think what gets lost here with this whole idea of being, quote, data-driven is that there's this sort of built-in assumption that sales and marketing data, especially in complex B2B organizations, has the same level of commonality in terms of definitions, conversion variables, all that stuff, that it's just not there. And that's— so, it starts with this false assumption. So, recognizing that makes me go, that's why, like, if we just all agree it's not going to be accounting-level quality and completeness.

If you can't get accounts, like contacts associated with opportunities, how in the heck are you ever going to be—

Right? You know what I mean?

And like, but that's the part where everybody has to agree on the the motive of business intelligence, the benefit of business intelligence, the fact that we can double down on successes and put more money in the pockets of people that are commission-based. That's how you get the buy-in, right? Maybe that goes back to my time in sales is like understanding what is compelling to us.

Yes.

You know?

Yep. Yep. No, I remember I remember having a conversation with a, like a, I guess he was in sales enablement who had been in the sales team. And I was getting frustrated with that team not really engaging with some stuff as a marketer and not, you know, moving things. And I randomly asked the question like, how are they paid?

Yeah.

I assumed they were commission-based. Well, it turns out they weren't, right? They were, you know, base plus bonus, right? But it wasn't commission bonus. And I was like, oh, now I, I need to change my approach to getting them to do things.

100%. That's how you would behave too, if you were on the other side of the fence. Maybe you just don't know it yet.

No, it's like, it's, uh, it, the mentality I've, I, this is why I recommend to marketers all the time. If you don't know what it's like to sit in that sales seat, um, go find someone who will, they will probably let you sit in on a call or two. Do a ride along. Yeah. Watch a recording.

Gong is amazing for that kind of stuff. You know, we've got technology where you don't even have to be the fly on the wall to be the fly on the wall.

Yeah. I mean, I think, I think there would be so much value to so many marketers to listen to go like, especially the good salespeople who you get frustrated with, who aren't using your on-brand templates, et cetera, et cetera. Right. And go like, what is the word? Like, what words are they using that are different? Yeah, that's good stuff.

That's how I built a career. It was like being actively curious about, and that was part of what solution selling, I think, put forward too, was the whole notion of like win-loss interviews and like find, and that led me to interviewing innovative poster children of sorts for the company I was at that I used as fodder for like omnichannel campaigns. And, you know, when I left that company, the EVP, of enterprise sales got kind of misty. Jim didn't, Jim wasn't a sentimental fella, but he was like, we're gonna miss you. But it was the storytelling of the customers that have the magic mojo and the salespeople that knew what to say, when to say it, and how to work the art of persuasion around the features and benefits that were distinctively unique to the company.

That's— Yeah.

If marketing isn't tapping into that, Magic. What are we up to, right? What story are we telling?

What I learned in my short period of sales is like the very best salespeople are not the caricature that I think a lot of us are here because the best ones—

Very glamorized kind of folks.

Well, they all can, they're all comfortable speaking, but when they speak, the best ones ask really good questions.

That's right. They listen.

And they listen, which is not what people think of Um, that's what, there's way more bad salespeople who don't do that.

That's 100% true. And I think I would add to that, and I think the way that I was able to, to wield, um, you know, um, conversations successfully when I was on that side of the fence is they keep their promises.

Yes.

You know what, you don't promise something if you can't keep the promise. And if you promise it, you keep it no matter, you know, hell or high water.

Yeah.

Dude, that's it. And that level of rapport, I think, is huge, you know?

Yeah. Well, the other thing I noticed with the best salespeople is they're financially literate too, right? Especially on big purchase things. Um, how, so one of the things I harp on a lot is that I think there's a lot of marketers and we kind of touched on this, like, um, What you say, I think you said you would emphasize financial literacy and I agree. Like, what's your, like, what's your take on like why that would be so important that we maybe haven't already covered for both marketing and marketing ops teams?

Why I would advocate that they have a modicum of financial literacy?

Yeah.

Usually they're trusted with budgets. Yeah.

Yeah.

And so, I think it's certainly important at some point, even it, so I've seen organizations that have services or products or offerings that succeed despite themselves, despite a whole lot of internal procedural dysfunction and dissonance and misalignment and Random Acts of Marketing. I've seen that show, and you can skate by maybe for decades if you have a really good product or a really exceptional service. Eventually, somebody sees you succeeding as a company and says, I have an idea on how to do this better, how to do this differently, how to eat their lunch. And if you tolerate a lack of literacy in marketing for a while, you might get away with it. And it might be like, yeah, I don't need— there's no reason for me to own these conversations or to understand my contribution to the company. Eventually, Rome falls and someone will challenge your comfort and they will probably put you back on your heels if you don't have the answer, but someone will eventually come calling for Hey, that money I gave you, how did it do? What did we get for it? Maybe not now, maybe 5 years from now, maybe 5 months from now, but I've never seen an organization succeeding despite itself where incremental revenue or profit margins, or especially in the wild inflation environments we're living in today, where somebody didn't wanna know eventually. what the return on the investment was for whatever you're trusted with. Maybe you have to defend, maybe a platform investment needs defense, maybe your headcount needs defense, maybe your personal like budget allocations, maybe that's not in your remit for your role right now, but eventually if you'd like to have upward mobility, those are the kinds of things that'll differentiate you.

Yeah, and I think The other piece is there's a bit of discipline that needs to go with it. I think there's, I think marketers are often viewed from a, as a, like the perception is that they're sort of free spending, right?

Yeah. Cost center. You have to shift to a profit center.

Yeah. Well, but even if it's not a profit center, you can't just, you can't just spend money recklessly.

Some can, you'd be amazed.

No, I know, I know some can.

Not forever though, I guess is the thing.

No, no, no, not forever. I think I agree with you. At some point there's going to be a time of reckoning.

Yeah. And it, I mean, it'll look different in every org. I mean, it might just be like, I've seen wonderfully well-intended marketers and it looks different everywhere when that day comes when there are questions about the spreadsheet. Maybe, you know, a venture capital firm comes in. And runs an audit, maybe there's an acquisition because y'all are so successful despite everything, but when the M&A happens, questions, right?

Yeah.

Or maybe it's a leadership change, maybe it's a new board member. I don't, gone are the days that I think being at least somewhat articulate around the P&Ls, gone are the days that that was optional, I think, for marketing.

Yeah, I think that's a good thing, truly.

Yeah, probably.

So, all right, why don't we, like, let's maybe wrap up here. Like, we're approaching the end of 2025 as we're doing this. What are some of the trends you're seeing that are gonna shape ops, marketing, RevOps, whatever, in the next year, 2026?

Goodness. Well, I think it's interesting because I know all of my peers instantly are like, Bam, AI. And for me, I think what I'm seeing looks a little different. And it's around the notion that during the early, like when you think about like the technology adoption curve or whatever, where we're at in that kind of chasm before mass adoption, where people have already adapted to a very volatile market, especially in the States.

Yeah.

And they've done these mass, like, staff reductions or reorgs, and they've let go of people that had a certain amount of institutional wisdom or proficiency. And they've thought, okay, well, we'll automate this, or, okay, we can hire somebody more junior for less money for this role, because this isn't necessarily a role that requires a whole ton of years of experience, in that vacuum, in that delta, I'm seeing a really big uptick in a pivot toward just being able as a company to deliver on the fundamentals of the investments in technology that have already been made. I think from a security standpoint, When we see AI, the compute speeds and the infrastructure demand that we're seeing for the sort of superintelligence that everybody's hungry for, there's a disconnect between what the industry can deliver against expectations. So, I think we're going to start to see a bit of a pendulum shift away from incredibly wild and maybe slightly perceived as security risk-based technology investments, back in the whole notion of, well, when we divested in talent, what did we miss in the fundamentals of what we've already invested in? And especially since these tech companies are facing Exponential expectations from their boards, prices for these fundamental platforms are ever increasing. It's a super competitive landscape. Competitors are challenging status quo and RFPs are abundant. I think you're going to see people that are like, what do we have? What can we use? And what are we not up against the limitations of for what's already installed? And you're going to find that there's an appetite to to really level up on the capabilities that are already inherent, the talents and the tech that's already, you know, I think been invested in. Hopefully, that's, I'm hoping people can land the fundamentals before they decide to innovate the hell out of this industry, you know?

Yeah, I mean, my analogy is American football for international listeners. I think everything starts right in the trenches, right? I mean, so many companies get clever or do something, and it's the fundamentals are like, that's what you have to build on.

That's right. AI is coming, but not in 2 weeks. And there's gonna be an interim period here while a level of trust and reliability, a POC of sorts, is built out by the more daring out on the tightrope. But the enterprise is not gonna be I don't think, I think the enterprise has some soul searching to do around where they're hoping for a magic bullet and where capabilities are actually at.

Interesting take. All right. Well, Lauren, it's a lot of fun. I'm sure we could have gone on longer. I feel like I say that every time, but if folks want to continue the conversation with you or just be able to follow you or learn more, what's the best way for them to do that?

Find me on LinkedIn. I am only a stone's throw away. I'd love to chat with anybody, everybody. I do actually read and respond to my messages. So, offer, standing offer for anyone out there that would like to bend my ear. I probably won't buy your products or services if that's your intention, but I certainly will have an actual conversation with actual people.

Yeah, there you go. I appreciate that. That's a good caveat. All right. Well, Lauren, again, thank you. Appreciate it. As always, thanks to our longtime and new listeners and viewers, I guess at this point. We appreciate all that. If you have ideas for topics or guests or want to be a guest, you can reach out to Naomi, Mike, or me, and we'd be happy to get the ball rolling. Till next time. Bye everybody.

Bye-bye. Thanks, Michael.