From Social Media to Marketing Ops to VP of Marketing w/ Kacyn Goranson

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 the MoPros. Today I'm joined with one of my co-hosts, Mike Rizzo. Mike, say hello.

Hey everybody. You're also joined by a leaf blower in the background for those who might be able to hear it. We might be able to edit it out.

Oh, and a dog. And a couple of dogs.

We love live shows, just so everybody knows.

Yes.

Yes.

Real life. Real life is happening here.

That's right.

All right. So today's episode, if you're a longtime listener and if you're not and you haven't got this one, might want to go back and check out the episode we had with Vivian Chan. She, when she was on our show, she made a provocative, or I would call it provocative statement that the future CMOs would rise through marketing ops. And so today we have someone who actually has traveled that path. I don't think she, I guess she doesn't have the CMO title, but she's a VP of marketing. Today we are talking to Kaysen Goranson, VP of marketing at CM Group. Kaysen has been with CM Group for over 3 years, starting as a leader in marketing ops and adding responsibilities over time until a recent promotion to VP of Marketing. Prior to joining CM Group, Kacen held various positions in marketing and digital marketing. Kacen, congratulations on the recent promotion and thanks for joining us today.

Thanks for having me and thank you.

We're excited about this. Okay, so I'm sure our listeners are, are now all ready to take notes because they all want to know, how do I get to that, to that level? So let's get started. So let's maybe do this. I know when you and I talked before, you talked about how You think your path is a little bit unusual, particularly, particularly, I think, at your age. So why don't you just like walk through your career path and maybe what were some of the key steps or points in there that are people maybe even that were part of that process?

Yeah, happy to. So I think my path has been, I'd say, unusual more because I started in social media. Which is not a commonplace, I feel like, to start to then get into the marketing operations background. My first few roles were all social media focused. Um, did a little bit of email marketing, but really just focused on social media. From there, I never said no to anything. If I didn't know how to do it, I was going to figure it out, whatever it was. And I just kind of kept I always joke that I absorb responsibilities, so I just kept absorbing other responsibilities, whether it was reporting, it was starting lead nurturers, whatever it looked like, I just kept absorbing. So eventually that took me more to the digital marketing path. It was actually kind of a, kind of a, I'd say, ballsy move. I walked into my boss's office one day with a job description. that I wrote of a new role and a checklist of everything that was my original job description and what I was actually doing versus what I was hired to do and kind of told him, I'm not doing what you hired me to do anymore, so you should change my role.

I'd say that qualifies as ballsy.

That is. Yeah, I'd put that up there. I, uh, we're like peas in a pod. I did that once. I could tell you that it was a little bit of a hairy discussion after that, but, uh, but it was positive at the end of the day. They were like, wow, okay, yeah, tell me more about this, but put time on my calendar next time. Don't walk into my office.

Mine was during a one-on-one, so it wasn't—

Okay, fair enough. I literally barged in.

No, mine was officially calendared. Um, they were very receptive to it. I will say, say that that manager at the time, he was, he was a little caught off guard. That I came in and said that. But when he turned around and talked to our CMO about it, she was not caught off guard. She was very open to it. Her only pushback was, I want her to do all of these things, but I also want her to take on our marketing automation. And if I was willing to do that, she was willing to meet me where I, where I wanted to be. Perfect timing because we were migrating platforms and someone needed to take on that responsibility. So, so I kind of was like, yeah, let's do it. Uh, moving into that marketing automation then became my favorite thing.

That's awesome.

Everything about it. And eventually, you know, that became my main role. And then when I exited that company, it was hired to focus on the full tech stack and operations and automation. And so I would definitely say that was a key moment, but never saying no and always saying yes.

It's funny, like, I'm glad you're— so I love that you're bringing this up. For the more tenured marketing ops professionals out there, we joke all the time about how to say no without saying no, because usually the requests are just They're overwhelming, right? And so, um, your earlier part in your career, you're saying like, hey, like, I just absorbed a lot and I kept saying yes. And, and I sort of fell into this, like, now I need to be taking on more of the digital, like, channels. And then I actually went out and sought it. And here we are. I now have this responsibility. And then I'd be curious to know if, like, eventually the, the absorbing and always saying yes slowly, like, changed to, like, Yes, but, or, you know, anything else? Because oftentimes we just, we, we're like, have you seen my backlog? Like, I don't have any time for this.

Um, I wish I could tell you it changed.

Oh, you're, you're a better person.

There's 2 buckets. There is the project bucket, and that, it's a sliding scale. There's a backlog. I'm gonna say yes to everything. It's just When and how much are you willing to pay for it? That will change the date that I'm— me or my team are willing to do it. Me as a person, I think that's how I continued to— that's still my MO. So since moving to my current company, CM Group, I said yes to an email marketing team, a web development team, an inbound SDR team. A data research team, most recently 3 of our brands in our portfolio and leading the brand strategy there and various teams kind of on an interim basis. So I still don't really say no. And I love it. And I think it keeps me learning.

Of course.

New things and pushing the comfort zone. So yes and no are my answers.

You sneak it, you sneak a no in occasionally. Michael, I'm sure you have plenty of things and paths to take us on, but I just, I sort of, I don't know if this is later queued up later in the discussion or not, but I am fascinated by this transition you've made from social to, to sort of marketing ops automation at large. And now this VP-level role, which is tremendous. Curious to know, like, do you feel that there are elements of that journey that really set you up for success in this function other than your insatiable hunger for learning? Right. And you're always saying yes. Are there elements that you picked up along the way that really made it possible for you to, to say yes to applying to that role to yourself? Right. Like, hey, I want that job. And then yes to being able to like You know, I can fulfill on that. What, like, what along the path made you feel confident in taking on that next level VP of broader marketing?

Yeah, so definitely I have a former CMO, one of my biggest mentors, advocates throughout my career. Early on in working with her, we kind of started setting down Roughly quarterly, and we would literally talk about skills that she feels like I've mastered. And they weren't always skills. I say skills loosely. Sometimes it was just things I needed to experience, um, things that maybe I was working on or in progress, or I've started experiencing but hadn't yet, and things I still needed to do. So some of those, just to add color, it's important. Some of them are negative, but it's, it's important to, you know, Have you had to fire someone? Have you had executive exposure and felt comfortable pushing back on executives? Some of those, they're not really skills, but they were things I needed for different steps. And we would quarterly go through those, and we would career path, what are the things I needed for different types of jobs? I would comb on LinkedIn and just put them in a word cloud. And things that popped up, I was like, oh, I need to work on this skill. I need to work on this skill because they're popping up in jobs that would pique my interest. And I did that even when I wasn't job hunting, just so I always knew what was the next thing I needed to learn. So, I think that always helped me feel ready and helped me honestly feel empowered to advocate for myself and my career. Because if I saw those skills or those words popping up in every job description, I knew I needed to tackle it and learn something about it at least. And I did that. So, I think that, that's probably the biggest pivotal moment, I would say. There have been some others that have been definitely interesting. A very interesting one was a team restructuring where I would say there was, there was maybe some concerns from a few people on the team, myself included, on the way we were organized in leadership at the time. And we actually kind of restructured the team working with our senior leaders. And it was, I was the director at the time. So it was, we did not have a CMO at this point. So it was me, 2 other VPs, kind of restructured the team into a really positive direction, reported to our CEO. For a good number of months, and the 3 of us were responsible for leading the marketing team and hitting our goals and initiatives. And honestly, in those 6 to 8 months that that was going on, definitely learned a lot about my personal capabilities, things I needed to learn a little bit more about. And yeah. So I think in that, being bluntly honest with myself about what I'm lacking has also helped me feel compelled to move forward.

I think it's really interesting. We actually just had a kind of just a casual conversation with Mike and Naomi and I a couple of weeks ago about kind of having mentors and people there in your corner. And I think that's a really good point. I think everyone I've ever talked to who's had any kind of success, and it didn't even really matter if it's marketing ops or other kind of other areas. I think there's— that's one of those consistent themes is that they all have people that, that they can lean on and pour into them and give them advice and be there. And I think that's huge. I think— and I think I also, I do some mentoring myself now with people, especially people who are kind of moving into new kind of leadership roles. And I really want to give back because I think there's, you You, I don't know if you initiated it, if that CMO kind of pulled you in, but I, I've been impressed by the people who just recognize, like, I know that I need some help and I probably need somebody who's sort of not in my, it's not my, my spouse, it's not my best friend, it's not my boss, right? It's somebody else who can kind of have a sort of an arm's length perspective. And I think that's really valuable. I would say so. I think I'm going to turn this around a little bit. This was not a planned question for sure, but are you doing that now for other people that are kind of in your network or throughout? And, you know, how's that going, kind of being on the other side of that for you?

Yeah, so I am doing that with a few people in my network. I think it's very mutual and people take that for granted. They think it's mostly for benefit of the mentee, but both sides get to learn a lot of what they don't know, how they never thought of it, perspective shifting. So it— I honestly think I— no shade to my mentors currently or former, but I think I may be learning more from my mentees now than I ever, ever did. But especially, I mean, the rate of how things are changing is just going so quick. They have so much to teach me, and they are eager to show what they know. So, it's great. I always tell them, and I always feel this for myself, what you don't like and what you're not good at may be more important than what you do like and what you are good at, especially in your career. And like, having those, those true conversations in a mentor-mentee relationship help you call out. I know you really like doing this thing, but you're just not good at it. Or if you don't like it, why are you doing it? Friends, spouses, to your point, they're, they're not gonna usually give it to you that straight and that blunt.

No, they definitely won't. Um, no, I think, I think you're— and you're right. I think one of the things that I always— I think it's important to know what, what you do well too. So I think a big part of what I try to do with people, whether it's mentoring kind of consistent basis, or I just had a conversation with somebody who's thinking about changing jobs and careers. And a big part of what I focused on was, what is it you like? If you could paint the perfect role and situation, what would it look like? Because I think if just going through that exercise was a really important thing for that person to do before just jumping at anything, you know, like, it's, it's not If you're running away from something, it's easy to find something that looks a little better, but you never know what bear trap is around the corner. So this is fascinating. I love the idea that there's the mentor things. You know, one of the things I love, the idea of saying yes, and I feel like there's like a movie, like there's a marketing ops movie that needs to be made about saying yes or something like that. I don't know, maybe that's been taken. But the, you know, are there One of the things I think that I get from you, and this is that you, in saying yes, you're doing a couple of things, right? One, you're stretching yourself, but you're also having to kind of prove that you can learn and take on this additional responsibility. I think one of the things that a lot of the folks who listen to our podcast in marketing ops still feel like, and I think Mike kind of alluded to it, right? We're getting this backlog of requests that just feels like a an avalanche coming down and, you know, just trying to keep that from burying us is part of like survival mode. But I think every one of us wants to feel like we're more of a strategic part of the business. And I think somehow you've managed to do that, is my guess, right? You wouldn't have gotten to where you are. So are there— do you have any recommendations on— are there things beyond just saying yes that you think are things that you could share with the rest of the listeners that would help them in trying to become more of that strategic business partner if that's something they want to do?

Yeah, I think it's also how you say yes and when you have to say no, how you say no. Like a yes, but in we could do this better, or it's not actually going to have the end result you want, or any of those, those stipulations definitely change the yes. And a not just flat out saying, no, we can't do that, but giving a different solution or anything like that helps. I do think some of the things that I have done that have helped me kind of change from just a doer to more of that strategic lens is every team, every department, they're going to have bandwidth issues. They are not going to know what they don't know. So connecting the dots between people helps them feel more seen and has helped us get to just better answers. And so just connecting the analytics team to a Salesforce team or conversations that are happening so that overall they can have just really good discussions, I think that has helped people feel Like they should invite me or members of my team into meetings because they know we're privy to those different discussions so we can have a more conclusive answer or help collaborate on whatever's being decided or how we're brainstorming on things. I would also say I'm very honest and very transparent about what we're doing that is working and is not working, but also what I don't know. We could do that. I don't know how we're gonna do it, or let's just try it. Anything it is, I'm very honest and very transparent with my team. So they know that they're not just gonna get fluff from me. They're not just gonna get a flat out yes. And then I would say in that, especially in campaign meetings or strategy meetings, especially early on in my career. And early on in the ops portion of my career, I felt like I was there to execute, not to offer my opinion. I cannot honestly tell you when that changed or what that changed. Maybe I was having a bad day and I just couldn't take it anymore. But I started sharing feedback on what they were talking about. And in a very polite way, but how do we change things? Because at the end of the day, most operations teams, have seen every single campaign that is executed on. They've also done the analysis on those campaigns. They know what works. They know what doesn't work. They know what we've tried. They are dying to try it a different way. So if they can just say their opinion and we maybe can think about doing it a different way, chances are high we're going to have a different result than we have in the past. So I think I just started speaking and eventually someone listened.

Well, I think you've hit on something I agree with, like a number of things. One, I always try to include people. I love the idea of, if I understood it right, one of your first things you talked about was rather than looking to be added to strategic discussions, when you had discussions about that went across, would have affected multiple teams, you were out there bringing those people in and sort of setting that example. Of wanting to collaborate. And I think that is a good one. I'm with you. There's ways to say yes. I don't like saying yes, but I like saying yes, and this is how we can do it. But I see too many places where I've been where everything— the art of communicating, I think, is being lost a little bit because we're so reliant and trying to move so fast.

Yeah.

Slack is a great tool. Email is a great tool, but it's not the right thing when there's nuance and complicated stuff that you're trying to work through. And I think that's— there's opportunities there to bring people in. So I appreciate that. That's really good. And then, gosh, there was something else that you said that I wanted to pick up on, and now I've lost it because I'm rambling. Yeah, I know. You said that folks listening can't see the looks I'm getting now from from Mike and Kason. So that's great. No, I appreciate that. I think we touched on this a little bit when Mike was asking, but, you know, from your— I think I want to tighten it up a little bit, but in your current role, kind of, you know, heading up a larger portion of marketing, if not all of marketing, you know, how do you think that your experience in in the marketing ops, marketing tech function? How does that help? How did it help you get there? And maybe how is that informing kind of how you're making decisions and leading right now with a broader sense?

Yeah, so I will be very honest here. I am probably extremely biased to the operational side, especially in brainstorm discussions. I think overall it helps because so often I know strategy teams or brand teams, however, however that company is designed, they will have brainstorms and they'll come up with an awesome campaign. And then they take it to the web development team or the marketing ops team. And it's just not feasible or it's not compliant or whatever that is. We have to deconstruct the campaign and then reassemble it. And it almost doesn't even look like what the brand team had originally proposed. So now that I'm in those conversations, I know what we can do and what we can't do. So our brainstorm, not that it's limited or it has guardrails, but we can come out with something that exactly what we leave that brainstorm with can be executed. So it's kind of shifting the team to think about, oh, what if we include this element too that we normally wouldn't think of, but because Kacen's team manages the tech stack, she knows we could do this.

too.

And I think, I think it's just we're able to think outside of our normal lens. And then for my team, or my marketing ops team, they're brought in to more conversations now than they probably used to be. I know for a fact that they used to be because I wasn't brought in either.

That's so— excuse me, that is so Key, I think. And it, it sort of warms the heart to hear that, like, because of the operational background that you have, like, you know, I sort of agree with the terminology guardrails. Like, I know that that feels a little restrained, but like, there's a reason that process is put in place, right? Process like begets efficiency as long as it's a good process. And so when you understand limitations and you have guardrails to operate in, in sort of a framework to operate from, you can actually move much more efficiently as a group, particularly in a brainstorming session. Um, and so I think like guardrails is a nice way to think about it. Um, but in a lot of ways, your guardrails are somebody else's, like, um, totally like Pandora's box, right? Like, oh, oh, we can do that. Like, A lot of time what the operational team can bring into conversations like the ones that you're having with the rest of the brand team and the rest of your teams, they start opening up this, oh, I didn't, I didn't know we could do that. Right. And because they just sort of— it's— I'm trying not to pigeonhole other teams. Right. But like a lot of times you just operate from your, your little kind of what is known.

Right.

Oh, I know I can send a tweet, but like, did you know, like, if this thing comes in from this form and it's this particular action and we know, like, we can actually direct message this person and send them that, like, all of a sudden when they see the interconnectivity of what a Zapier can do for them, they're like, wait a minute, wait a minute, what? And, and that opens up a whole new set of opportunities, which I think is just, it's awesome that you guys are doing that. I am curious, we talked on The last OpsCast After Dark, just, you don't have to go too deep, but like, how do you project manage your team? Like, what do y'all do? Because project management is a pain and you are in a position to run a lot. So really curious.

Yeah. So project management also falls under marketing operations as one of their responsibilities. So I can picture their faces right now and they're probably laughing out loud. But so we do use Asana. For our project management. For things outside of marketing, we have a, just one of the Asana request forms. It asks a series of questions, you know, what is this, what brand is it for, priority, normal questions that automatically gets routed. We go through and then I meet with kind of the directors across marketing and the senior leaders on about a monthly basis to just go through what are your priorities for the month and reprioritize as needed based on the teams that those workloads are going to affect. Our project management, I will say, gets kind of messy because within the company we have, you know, 9 different brands. So it gets a little messy because there are some employees who are dedicated to one, some that are dedicated to all 10. So I have a lot of conversations about prioritizing. At the end of the day, it comes down to the data. What are we doing that is, you know, going to make the biggest impact either to customers, to prospects? Does it relate to compliance or anything legal needs? And we go from there.

That makes a lot of sense. Do you sort of act as the final kind of, or one of the final decision makers relative to those kind of key performance indicators that these these requests might impact? And second part of that is like, does that effectively make you like the top level like portfolio project manager or do you have a dedicated like project manager to help oversee all the projects?

I wish we had a dedicated project manager. We do not. So a member of my team, she, I would say, is kind of the lead project manager. When it comes to overall prioritization, we do have a marketing leadership team that is A director, a senior director, myself, and then our CMO, and we will make the decisions at the end of the day if it comes down to it. But honestly, most of the time, our directors, when they're talking between each other, they are able to kind of establish that priority just in normal conversation. You're right; that's going to have a bigger impact to your brand and to pipeline. We can go second. So most of the time, it's it's not an issue, and they kind of self manage.

That's really cool. Thank you for enlightening us, me, and the audience on managing, like, many brands and project management. It's a hot topic for everybody.

I would say data, data helps, and data is hard to argue.

Yeah, I think I may have to just have a one-on-one call with you where you can kind of talk me through it because I'm going through trying to figure out what we need to put in place where I'm at. So That is definitely awesome. Perfect. All right, so let's go to maybe a little softball question. So, you know, one of the things you've told me is like you're in a senior leadership role now, senior executive, and you're probably, I think you told me, the youngest and maybe the only female in the room in a lot of cases, or you have been. So how has that been?

So yeah, uh, it definitely— there have been some meetings that have stood out in the past where I was the youngest in age, in title, in everything in the room. But also, yeah, looked around the room, I was the only female. Um, I, I won't lie, shared these questions with some coworkers. They flat out pushed back on this question and said no one asks a man what it's like to be the only man in a room of women.

Fair enough.

The old guy what it's like to be old.

So. Totally.

So. Totally reasonable.

Yeah. I love that you're actually bringing that up and you shared that with us. And Kacen, like, we are actually— I wish Naomi was here with us because we were just talking about, like, we want you to share your story about why it's important to not have to have these questions be asked to, like, No, you're right. Like, those kinds of questions shouldn't come up. And nobody could see us shaking our heads when she said, yeah, I'm oftentimes one of the youngest persons and also happen to be a female in the room. I'm shaking my head, you know, and I'm immediately going to a place where I really hope that you join us for the takeover where Naomi and all of the female leaders that are in marketing ops and leadership in marketing actually take over OpsCast. Because we want everybody else to like go tell their stories of like how you got to where you are. Because it's like, yeah, you're right. Your colleague is absolutely right. Like spot on. Sorry, I wanted to like interject and just say like totally with you 1,000%. Like Michael and I are 1,000% with you.

He's not lying. They're both nodding their heads. So they were in utter agreement. But the reality is, And I'm sure I will get shamed for this. The reality is we notice it when we are the only woman in the room. We're like, this one of these things is not like the others. And, and sometimes, not always, but men get to speaking in that room and it is very hard to interject a word edgewise, especially when they just keep going and going and going. So, so there was some self-doubt, there was some anxiety, but at the end of the day, I had to, you know, give myself a little pep talk and remind myself, I know what I know. They— I am in this room for a very important reason. And while they are all, you know, experts in their areas, they are not experts in my area, and they don't know what I need to say. So I just started speaking up and making sure that they heard what I needed to hear. And now I'm always included in the room. And you guys are right, slowly there are more and more women being added to these rooms. And eventually, maybe we'll get a whole conference room. You never know.

I'm chuckling and shaking my head like, you should already have a whole conference room. What are you talking about?

Absolutely. You should.

You should. You really should. You remind me of— I've worked for some—

You hear no argument from me.

Yeah, right.

You should have a whole conference room.

Totally. I've worked for some really incredible female leaders, sometimes just team leaders, but also organizational leaders. And I have to say, you remind me a lot of them. A lot of the words that you're sharing are very similar to the words that I've had in one-on-one discussions with them, of course. And I won't name names, but a lot of the sentiment that you just shared openly, and you said you might get a little push pushback on, yeah, it comes out of everybody. And it's, look, I'm glad that you're sharing it, and I hope you come back to continue sharing your story with us, with Naomi, and all of our listeners, because we have a lot of incredible female leaders that need to be learning from each other, and we appreciate it, that's for sure.

Absolutely, anytime. I think me and some of my teammates, we have this conversation, and it is kind of very stereotypical about women, but it is also very true. Sometimes instead of empowering each other to have those conversations, we look at, you know, the corporate ladder or that, that job opportunity as we're directly competing with each other.

Hmm.

We're not. We're competing against every single resume in that stack. Man, woman, dog, whatever it is, we are all competing for the same job. But also, there's more seats at the table than are currently at the table. So if we help each other, Can we, you know, there's 10 chairs instead of 8.

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah, that's awesome.

Just maybe we need to make the pie bigger.

That's right.

There we go. Yeah, I'm so glad you, you called us out on that. So that's, that's good feedback. So, and, and we need to hear it. So, um, and I echo Mike, so I hope you do continue to share that, that story. Um, okay, so Kind of, I want to also connect the dots to another one of our episodes that we, or, you know, a couple of episodes actually where we had a couple of discussions about one from really Mike and me ranting, I guess, about our perspective of what it's like to be on the buyer side when being sold marketing technology. And then from that, we had a couple of salespeople who kind of joined us and shared their side of the story. And I think, you know, truth be told, like I was a little bit nervous about what that was going to be like. And I think we all ended up walking away like, oh, We all learned a little bit of something about what the other one's perspective is. But I think it'd be interesting to get your perspective because you're at a company that sells marketing tech, right? So, but yeah, what is it like being there and kind of, you probably see both sides of it then too, because you're being sold to, plus you've got your supporting selling of the service. So kind of what's that like being in that part of the business or that business?

Yeah. So honestly, it's really fun. Because it's also really meta. I am marketing marketing technology to other marketers who are almost exactly like me. So, so it's it's also easy because I know I am the buyer, so I can look at it. What would I respond to? Because you're literally selling to people like me and my team, and I know what they're going to respond to. But we get to you know it's fun. We get we get to. Try all of the tools, try to be on the cutting edge, try to focus on the best practices and innovations. But there is, there is a level of pressure, I would say, because, you know, we're marketing technology targeting other marketing technology professors or professionals. So the expectation is that we have the best of everything, everything is done in the most innovative way, and we're the first to every new trend, when in reality, we still need to experiment, we still need to test, we still need to, you know, look at, look at the conversion rates and fit within a budget and hit our KPIs, just like every other marketer out there. So in that, I mean, Mike, you mentioned it, we have a backlog, we all have priorities. So in that, There's, there's kind of that pressure where the expectation is to be the first and the best and the fastest. The reality is, you know, we're still humans and we still have to project manage and do everything. So, so it's, it's all sides.

Yeah, it seems like there's this— that's the kind of the dark secret of marketing tech companies is that they actually aren't all that much better sometimes than those of us who are buying their their platforms, right? So they still have their challenges as well.

Yeah, the secret is now out.

Yeah, I speak with— we're so fortunate as a community to be, you know, agnostic of any particular organization. So we get to talk to a lot of partners that want to help support what we're working on here. And a lot of times I get to like just peek behind the door a little bit, the curtain or whatever you want to use. And I'm like, oh yeah, you're just as crazy as any other organization that I've been in. Even though you're like really good at, you know, doing the product that you build for this audience, your behind the scenes is just as disorganized as mine or any other org, you know what I mean? Like, it's just, it's funny. We all think looking at, you know, any of the big enterprise companies that are out there that like they've got their S together. And that's not necessarily true. They're just as crazy as we all are. It's pretty funny.

Yeah, yeah, totally. Um, okay, so this has been, this has been a really great conversation. A couple of questions left. So one, just like open-ended, like, is there, if there's anything that you would like to make sure that our audience hears about your story, uh, lessons learned, suggestions, what, like, what would you, any, anything you'd like to share Before the very last question.

Um, I don't know. I feel like we've covered a ton. I'll be honest with everybody. When, when we first talked about kind of interviewing me, I was like, my, my story is no different than everyone else's. There is nothing compelling here. So I think at the end of the day, it's— you have to remember and feel confident in what you're doing. If you know you're doing a good job and you are doing the right things, can you do them differently? Can you highlight them more? No one's going to advocate for you but yourself. And I honestly think that has a lot to do with my success and then reaching and advocating for my team and whether it's them as individuals or getting them budget or headcount or You know, fewer projects in their, in their queue, whatever it is that has let them do their best work. Honestly, I would be nowhere if it wasn't for surrounding myself by great people, whether it's mentors and it's my team. So it's really just how do you collaborate and listen to other things and Don't be afraid to say you don't know a thing.

See, all of that that you just shared is tremendously valuable. Also, totally disagree. Your story is super unique. It's yours. And like someone else out there is like starting in social media right now and going, whoa, like I could, you know, become a VP of marketing or better, you know, or more or higher or whatever you want to say. And I'm just doing social media right now. Like, and maybe one of the ways that I could do that is by saying yes to things and You know, hopefully not overloading my plate, but definitely saying yes to a lot. So we appreciate it. Your story is unique, and someone out there is listening to this saying like, "That's that's me, right? That's my path. I'm gonna follow Kason." They're probably gonna follow you now on LinkedIn. So you know, or Twitter, or wherever you're at.

My LinkedIn game, but also thank you for that.

Well, I learned something today, so I appreciate it.

Well, I think the biggest thing I took away from that actually, and through the conversation you've hit it a couple of times, was the fact that I think a lot of us think that, you know, don't give ourselves enough credit about how unique our knowledge, skillset, experience, whatever it is, is and how it can be, have an impact on other people. And that, you know, for me, like that took a long time for me to go like, oh yeah, I actually belong in that room. just like, yeah, kind of like, you're like, I should be in that conversation. I have something to add and I could think, think I could make it better. And I think there's probably a lot of people who that message will, that message alone will be worth listening to this. Okay. So last question, we haven't done this in a little while, but it's one that we've been trying to do consistently because one of the things that the community, MoPros community is trying to do is provide resources and ideas. But so there's not currently really a marketing ops professional certificate or any kind of thing like that. There's starting a couple of I know some places are doing some things that get toward that. But if you were to design something like, what would you like want to say like this non-negotiable, this topic or this, this skill set needs to be a part of that if it's going to be— have any credibility at all?

That's a hard one. I almost want to go really basic and say like Google, understanding how to use Google Analytics. And not just how to use it, but interpret it. What does this mean? Like, if Google Analytics should be the basic one, I would say, because if you can then understand at least how to interpret that, you could get into insert your CRM here, or the data from whatever BI tool or marketing operation or analytics or any other tool. If you can understand GA, You can probably understand data elsewhere.

I love to hear when I say like, I like fully expect you to be like, you have to be an expert at Twitter. No, I'm kidding.

Obviously you have to be a base. You have to know how to use Twitter, right? I say that I honestly haven't tweeted in like, then I'm out. I'm ashamed to say how long it's been since I've tweeted.

I think the only reason I ever have tweets go out from me now is like literally because I'm retweeting something that was scheduled from Mo. So I'm not a very good example of that.

Mine are usually sports related. They're not even—

There you go.

Relevant to anyone but angry fans.

Yeah, that's funny. I love it. That's a good call out. I think, uh, I'm really passionate about understanding Google Analytics and how analytics gets funneled automatically into the channels based on the pre kind of canned guardrails that Google put in place for you. And once you start figuring that stuff out, I love that. That's a really solid, like basic fundamental thing that should maybe be included in that. So appreciate that.

Yeah. I, and I think the understanding of analytics and data and statistics, if people have listened to this, they know that I kind of harp on that. So this has been fantastic, Case. And so you already mentioned that people, it's just, is LinkedIn the best place for people to kind of connect with you or learn from you? Is that, or is there something else you'd rather have them do?

No, I think LinkedIn is the best place. Fantastic.

Well, this has been really, really— it is unique. Your story is great. I'm so glad you agreed to come on here. So thank you so much for our— Mike, thanks for adding to this as well. And to all our listeners, thank you for listening and supporting us over now almost a year. So hard to believe that we're getting there. And we definitely look forward to many more. We actually have, I think, a number of folks lined up with similar things where we're going to share people's stories. So this is going to be, I think, a great one for everybody. So continue to support us, provide your feedback, suggestions. If you've got guest ideas or want to be a guest, reach out to me or Mike or Naomi. And until next time, we'll see you later. Bye, everyone.

Bye, everybody. Thank you.

Bye, all.