January Recap - What's Happening in Marketing Ops?

Hi, I'm Michael Hartman.

I'm Naomi Liu.

And I'm Mike Rizzo.

And this is OpsCast, a podcast for marketing ops pros and RevOps pros, created by the MoPros, the number one community for marketing operations professionals.

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

Hello everyone, welcome to another episode of OpsCast brought to you by marketingops.com powered by the Mopros. I am your host Michael Hartman, joined today with my two compadres, Nami Lou and Mike Rizzo. And I think this is our first one to record just the three of us in '23.

I think so.

Yeah, I think so.

Do we, do we have a— I know last year was the year of the Mopro. Is it still the year of the Mopro? It feels like it should be the year of the no pro. No pro.

Well, LinkedIn categorized this year The, you know, RevOps, the head of RevOps, right? They're like fastest growing role. It's like, good for you.

That's really interesting. Yeah, maybe we'll get into that a little bit.

I've really felt like validated though. Like, I, I can't remember who posted it, uh, first when it was on like Good Morning America or some, some news channel that was like featuring it.

And most of those people had no idea what that was, I'm sure.

Oh yeah, without a doubt. But I think the comment back to me was like, do you feel seen? And I was like, kinda.

That's great. Do you feel seen? It's like a therapy session. Yeah, it was like, this is great.

The thing we talk about all the time is like on a major news outlet of some kind.

Yeah, it's too bad that didn't come out before. So our last guest was Lorena Morales, and we were talking about RevOps and sort of her journey where she is. So it would have like It would have been good to be able to tie those 2 together. Um, you know, because that was part of the discussion was like, how do we work better together with ops teams? And I think she's also got a unique perspective. Um, so we talked, I talked to her in late 2021, which is like, I couldn't believe it when I realized that. And it, and it was January of '23 when we talked to her again. And she was talking about how things have changed and her perceptions have changed over that course of time. So.

Yeah.

Anyway, so.

Yeah. Yep. Oh well, timing. There's just been so much happening. Like, that's what we were riffing on, right? We were all just trying to like, for a moment coming up to this episode, for all the listeners, like, I think to Hartman's point, like we all jumped on this Zoom that we're looking at each other on right now and we all went, oh. So if you're all feeling like that, After this January, like, yeah, we're all feeling the same way right now.

Yeah.

It's been rough.

It has been.

I just think it's, it's a whirlwind of a time, that's for sure.

Yeah, I don't know, uh, Naomi, it didn't— you didn't really say it, but has it felt like, like a different January than usual?

Yeah, definitely. It's— it—

there was—

there's no— there was no, like, slow lead-up and, you know, walk into the new year. It was just like bam, right from the start.

I'm usually pretty good about being able sort of block, block off in my mind, you know, over the weekends. And even this, like this January, I just have not been able to do that. Like it just always felt like, oh, I've got to go do some, make some progress on something or the week's going to be awful.

Yeah.

Isn't that tough? Like, and like, I know for a fact, you know, all of us here are not in this, like, we don't necessarily subscribe to hustle culture. Like, please take your time off.

Oh yeah.

Please, please, please do that. But like, I feel you. It's definitely been, uh, every weekend or something is like in my brain space. And I think it was just 2 nights ago, I was sitting there and like my eyes trailed off for a second and my wife was like, stop it. So you could tell I was like going into thinking about some problem we needed to solve for Right. I was like, oh boy, I should probably grab an adult beverage or something and take a break.

I thought very seriously about doing that when we were coming on to here, but it would have been even early for happy hour for me. Yeah.

So it's 2:00 Pacific, so I feel like I would have been like scolded.

Yeah. At least you're not doing Dry January and then it's all compounded on top of each other. It's true.

It's true. Could have been worse.

It feels like, like especially this January would have been really tough to do Dry January.

Just like the struggle is real. Yeah, I, I don't know. There's just like the lands, like the macro environment is wild.

Yes.

Like we, our tech sector is— the dogs are into it. They're barking. Um, But, you know, like, I think, I think I'm still optimistic about like the way that the year will shape up, um, despite its chaos and its really rocky start. But like, I do have signals coming into the community, uh, around like hiring and sort of like trends in that nature. So, you know, I know there's been a lot.

Yeah.

happening in the world of layoffs.

Yep.

I think, I think the year will shape up nicely, you know?

Yeah, I, I'm feeling pretty— I mean, I am too. Like, it's been a rough, uh, January for a number of reasons, but, you know, personal standpoint, feeling pretty, pretty good about where things are going into '23. And I, I was fortunate I had a call with somebody today, sort of a networking thing, and it was somebody who had just recently lost a job. But today I got a verbal offer, so I was really excited. It had been only a few weeks. So hopefully that's a sign or a trend that we will see that, you know, these things won't last too long. And because there's still, there are still people hiring, just maybe not in the sectors that people, you know, think of when they first think of it.

Yeah. And I think for all of this community, the marketing and RevOps space, like you're, you're still really sought after. Like, a lot of organizations are going to realize quite quickly that nobody knows what the heck is going on in the systems, right? And I had 3 or 4 people reach out to me directly as they were, you know, going through their career transition of some kind, right, a layoff at that. And many of those folks are actually getting offers now, sometimes for really A stronger role, like in a—

That was the case of one I heard today.

So yeah, so, you know, for those of you that are impacted in that, in that scenario, as I have been, um, you know, just keep your head up. It's super, it's super rough and daunting and a bit eye-opening when that happens, but there are things that none of us can control. But like, this community is really, really great at supporting everybody. I know that. And if I can help, or Naomi or Hartman, I know we're all here for that.

Absolutely.

But we're working actively on that program right now. So we're building out an entire sort of ecosystem for what we call matchmaking, which I'm really excited about. So I think by the time organizations finally realize how much pain they're in from not being able to run marketing—

You're saying it's like, it's like, it's like Bumble for marketing ops, is it?

No, we're, um, if I, if I could summarize it a little, it's like, you know, this, this community, like this profession, first of all, is, uh, a bit of a unicorn, right? Like, it's, it's hard to find people that know this. We've all tried to hire for it, uh, and sometimes you, you get stuck in what you don't know, right? Like, I don't know about you, Naomi, but like, How many times have you had recruiters or hiring managers in your world say like, oh, we, you know, we need somebody to do all these different things. And you're like, wait, that's not, that's not at all what I should be doing in this function.

Well, that's like 5 different people's jobs.

Yeah, you just described like 5 different people. And so the idea for us, you know, we started with our job description guides. We've got those on the site today. People download those actively.

I've used those.

Right.

Yeah.

They're built by our community. We're pulling together our certification advisory board and we're actively talking about what does it look like to be a certified professional in this space, agnostic of the tools you use. And then if we educate the market on sort of the boundaries of marketing operations, now how do we create an environment for the marketing ops professionals who are open to those opportunities or actively seeking them?

Yeah.

to be discovered or discover those opportunities rather. And so if I can create this sort of space, a safe space for you to be discovered for your talents, that's sort of what I'm looking for. And what we're really leaning in on is like the idea that you wanna obfuscate some of the inherent bias that comes in with some of the recruiting process today. And so I think that'll be something that's a little bit of extra special You know, you shouldn't know really much about, you know, the individual before you first start looking at, you know, what are the qualities and the role, the actual job responsibilities first and foremost, and does somebody already sort of fit into that, you know, category, so to speak, right? Are they really a marketing ops professional or what have you? And then from there, are they open to opportunities and that kind of stuff? So I'm excited. That's great.

Rumble?

No, but like Match maybe.

Match?

Yes. No matchmaking. Yeah. So yeah, I don't know.

Yeah, I was just— it hit me the other thing that maybe this could be the theme for '23, because I feel like one of the things that came up over and over in our recordings or episodes in 2022 and just continues to be a theme is the importance of data and insights and how marketing ops and rev ops folks, they're sort of uniquely positioned to do it. I still believe there's a bit of a gap in terms of the skills and experience within the community to be able to do that in a lot of ways. But it feels like that's an area where there needs to be, I think if you're talking about certifications, right? I think that's an area that probably is one that— If people were, you know, throughout the community were honest, they probably would say that's an area that I feel like I could— I need to learn more about, particularly if it comes to things like getting the storytelling out of it. Right. So what do you— what do you all think?

Yeah, I, I tend to go a little too into the weeds. Like I keep trying to uncover the like, is that really the right data? Is that data really telling the truth? I definitely like question, well, how did that data even get there? So the ability to like try to pull back from that and then build a narrative around like what's the question that you're trying to solve for? What's the answer you're looking for? And like how do you find the data to advise that story? I think is super, super— I mean, we're seeing that with Syncery right now, like Not to name drop an up-and-coming startup, but like they're doing a pretty good job of trying to drive home this message around like, you know, ops and data people, there's a super heavy overlap there.

Mm-hmm.

And both can learn from each other very actively. And there's a very strong chance that some of those data folks who maybe don't know the full operations side of things, because we've talked about this, like the 3 of us, right? Or, and maybe with other guests too.

Sure.

You know, when a data person doesn't necessarily know the backstory of where that data came in or how it works, then it's like hard for them to do analysis. They have to be informed about that, right? And so they inevitably like need to get those details. And I think that's valuable, right? So if you can start learning their craft a little bit, And teach each other some things. I think that could definitely be a theme for '23 for sure. Yeah.

I was, you know, I was just, I was just getting into that. It made me remember Summer Camp '22.

Yeah.

And the session that Jessica Cao led. I think it was so good. It's so good. I thought, I thought I was pretty good. I thought I was pretty good at this stuff until, until then. I was humbled.

Yeah, when you like have to try to— so that for the listeners who, who didn't make it to camp, um, and want to know about that session, first of all, it is available on demand to anybody that's a pro member of the community. You can go check it out. It's on the website under our learning tab. Uh, but beyond that, the gist of it is how do you describe sort of the outcome of an activity based on data To a CMO, and we happened to have a CMO in the room, and everybody had to take a chance at describing what it was that they were trying to describe. And the CMO had to say whether or not that was actually a valuable sort of description or she understood it, that kind of thing. It's really, really powerful. But yeah, I think—

Yeah.

She's also— I know Jess is about to do another session on that, actually. Probably in and around the time that this episode airs, but oh great! They'll be coming back to Mopsapalooza, and she'll probably be involved in some way there. So hopefully we'll be able to have a similar type of learning environment.

So what's the talk a bit more?

Yeah, I was gonna say you should talk a bit more about Mopsapalooza. Nice little segue there. I see what you did.

I see what you did there.

See, we're almost we're kind of like professionals now on this, right?

We're starting to figure you queued yourself up, Mike.

Yeah, well. I don't know. Uh, yeah, Mop's-a-Palooza is— planning is underway. You want to talk about a rough January? I've had it. I've had a go of it. I traveled to Dallas to try to look at venues.

Woohoo!

Yeah, Hartman was really excited about that. Heather too. Uh, she's like, sweet, that'd be great. Um, San Diego didn't pan out, as I sort of made clear to some folks that were asking and have seen the landing page now. I did end up coming home on my birthday, visiting a spot in Anaheim right next to Disneyland that I really liked, and they fought pretty hard for our business. So it's looking more like it's going to be there, but I will tell you that planning an event of any size beyond 50 people is like a whole new ballgame, and it is wrought with challenges.

So we're trying to work through all the details, but it is not for the faint of heart.

No, no, not at all. And I would not be able to do it without some really incredible, like, experts that are actually helping to pull it all together, that, like, this is their jam, right? Like, they love the staging and the lighting and the tech prep and all that other stuff. Like, no, not for me. But from a content perspective, the Speaker submissions are still open. Anybody who wants to potentially join us and speak at MAFSAPalooza, it's looking like it'll probably be the first week of November. But please submit your speaker intent to speak or your desire to speak rather. Naomi, Kacen, and Jess will be helping us select the speakers. It'll be community-led. So You'll be able to learn from other practitioners, no pitch slapping allowed from our vendors. And yeah, we're trying to pull together a really good learning environment on a scale of 300 to 500. My target would be 400 to 500 attendees to be able to come together and talk shop about marketing ops for about 3 days.

Amazing.

I'm excited. It'll be magical because, you know—

Oh God, please. Really?

Do you want me to do the Mickey Mouse voice?

Sure, why not?

Oh boy.

That's actually quite good, Mike.

Uh, someone's gonna try to make me do that on stage and I won't be able to do it.

Anyway. Naomi's trying to figure out how to, how to work her computer.

No, we're gonna overlay that now onto everything.

It's like, are we recording this?

We better be careful because they might come after me now and be like, you cannot impersonate our primary.

But then you'll just have to say, that's just how I normally speak. And then that's, you'll just have to.

I just do that at an interview.

Right.

Exactly.

So I know I'm, now I'm actually curious, like, is that something that is like a skill that you've honed for years or is this a thing since you've had kids?

No, I've been doing that voice for about 10 years, probably.

All right, there you have it, folks.

I used to just do it as a joke with my friends, and then it became that— it's— yeah, as an adult that can do a Mickey voice, you can imagine the things, the types of scenarios you can be in that can be very entertaining.

Uh, yeah, for sure.

Uh, yeah, so I'm excited. Uh, Mopstapalooza is well underway. Um, and hopefully, you know, call for speakers, call for attendees, call for sponsors. We need your help. We want to make it happen.

Yeah. Maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe we can crowdsource, uh, getting all of us there. Well, you'll be there, Micah. Naomi, you're going to be there, right?

Um, yeah, should be. Yeah.

Yeah.

Well, I, I, I'm still a little up in the air, so maybe. Okay, maybe I'm not. All right, so maybe we do a live episode. How about that?

Like, oh, I, I think that'd be super fun. It's fun. I was talking to Sydney and Lauren, um, yesterday, day before.

Yeah.

And they were like, hey, maybe we could do a live podcast episode, not like OpsCast, but our show.

And I was like, yeah.

Go for it. Yeah, nothing's stopping you. I think their show is called Pretty Funny Business. We're gonna have them on the show soon.

That's, uh, Sydney Mulligan and Lauren— Lauren, you know, I can't pronounce it. Yeah, I probably messed it up.

Yeah, she's gonna text me later and be like, that was terrible and deserved.

Um, that's okay.

Um, great. I think we should live episode.

That would be fun. Maybe we do it during happy hour.

I would— I think that's a great idea, actually.

Yeah, take questions from the— take questions from the audience.

Yeah, that would actually be really fun.

And then if nobody asks questions, we act like a teacher, we're gonna call on them. We could do that.

I think we could. I don't know, so we'll see. Um, there's a lot on the horizon this year. There's like, you know, if you thought Mopsepalooza was going to be the only thing that I have to share with the this year, he thought wrong. There's, there's a lot more that I'm looking to bring, uh, bring to light with the team that's, that's working on it. So, um, I'm excited.

It's great. Um, what about— does that mean you didn't say anything about summer camp?

I know. Um, so the fun— if anybody listens to this and they're thinking about Mopsepalooza and they're thinking about camp, It is becoming more and more clear that camp is not going to be a thing this year. More and more. Oh no. The way that hotels want to book rooms is not conducive to supporting a small event on the front end of a larger event. They would rather it be on the back end. And I'm going to be real with everybody, like, I doubt anyone wants to go to a big event and then Go into a day and a half of deep learning, deep discussion content after that.

Yeah. So no, that sounds terrible actually. That sounds horrible.

Yeah, that was exactly my feeling on it too. I told every hotel, I was like, it has to be before the big event. Then they were like, no. And I was like, oh, thanks for that.

So, well, I'm sure, well, for those, those, those of us who have been to one of the summer camps, I think we'll, we'll, we'll support it when you want to bring it back.

So it'll come back next year for sure. So the, the, the goal here is to do MAPSA in, in the fall of this coming year, right? This year, right now. Then we would shift MAPSA into the spring and we would do camp in the summer. And so we'd have 2 activations, spring and summer moving forward. And that would be the way that things sort of shake up. moving, you know, into the future. If anybody did already look at like a camp pass, your camp pass is not actually lost. There's something else special that we're going to do for anyone that decided to take advantage of that early bird camp plus Mopsepalooza pass that's available on the site. So I would encourage you to snag that if you— especially if you can get L&D budget, because there will be a really special networking activity that we pull together. And you can imagine if we're in and around the Downtown Disney space, it may involve some activities around there. So I would encourage you to think about still grabbing one of those because we would bring everyone together for a special sort of professional networking activation.

Awesome.

Yeah.

So it's not lost. And Hartman, you're going to be there.

I'll be there. Okay. Yeah.

What I want is for you to wear Mickey ears, Rizzo, and do your Mickey voice.

You know, I might have some.

Really?

I can get the Mickey gloves too, I think.

Yeah, exactly right.

Oh my gosh. Like, I'm— now I've got this vision of you with Mickey gloves on.

Give it to Mickey. I mean, Mikey.

I mean, maybe.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Oh man.

Oh, I just set myself up for so many jokes later.

Oh yeah, it's just, it's all coming.

The rest of the year is messed up for me now.

Yeah.

That's okay. Any, any other sort of, uh, things that you guys have so far this year? Trends you're seeing?

I don't know, trends-wise. I don't know. I think the data piece is a good one.

The RevOps stuff is interesting. Although I still, I still, I still think there's a lot of confusion about what that means. Yep.

Yeah. And that's what I was going to say too. Like, great that that happens to be the thing that's on the rise, but like, I'm not confident. Speaking of like being confident in the data, like not confident that the, uh, actual underlying function is well-defined and understood yet. And, and hey, that's what we're all here for, right? Who better than all of the professionals out there to help shape it correctly?

Well, and I know there's another one that, um, another— I think hopefully for me at least, I think it's— I'm, I'm really curious to see if it becomes more of a trend— is the idea of a marketing chief of staff.

I, I'm very excited about that. We actually— I was sitting with— I went to the Sendoso event, um, a couple weeks ago, and there was like Sangram was there and Melissa McCready and, um, Stephanie from, from—

Valenti.

Valenti. Um, we were all sitting around talking shop, and, and that was one of the things we talked about was like this possibility of the, um, chief of staff type of role for marketing ops, but also that there needs to be sort of a shakeup at the COO level. Like, the COO function hasn't really been redefined or like rejiggered to be understood since the sort of evolution of tech started hitting, right? Like the traditional COO, when you go sort of dig into it or what have you, was certainly around ever since who knows long, how long, right? Industrial era for sure. But when you start to bring in tech, should the COO role have a shakeup? Like, could it potentially be more tech-oriented and understanding of the landscape of the go-to-market function and the requirements that are needed to be able to do that? I don't know. So I think it was a really good question. So it was— we were teetering back and forth between like this idea of chief of staff or some sort of C-level. And the group there was like, maybe it's COO.

I was like, yeah, interesting.

What do you think, Naomi?

COO? I mean, I, I would love that. I think that's amazing, right?

You could be a COO.

Totally.

I think so. I'd like to think so. You guys think so?

Totally. I think so. Yeah.

Yeah.

I mean, think about like contract negotiation.

Oh my gosh.

Yes. Go-to-market function. Like, People, man, like all of it, like finance, IT.

Now you're speaking my language.

Yeah, you're totally speaking my language. I'm picking up what you're putting down.

You could totally be— I think it's a thing.

Yeah, absolutely. So, well, cool. Um, any other final thoughts? This is— this has been a little bit of a catch-all episode, so I think, I think we're all like looking forward to like, hopefully February won't be quite like January.

Yeah, but it's such a short month.

True. Ah, yeah, that's all right.

We'll get through it. It'll be good. No, it was good to catch up though and think a little bit about what's going on in the landscape.

Yeah.

Hey, call for speakers— or not speakers, call for guests on the show.

Yeah, podcast guests.

Yeah, please.

Definitely.

Reach out to us.

Come chat with us.

Yeah, we definitely want to chat with you.

Otherwise, you're just gonna have to listen to just us.

Or you'll have to be subject to an entire episode of Mickey Voice.

Okay, definitely people come on the show for sure.

All right, we should wrap.

You want— you're gonna do a rap, is that what you said?

No.

In Mickey voice?

No.

Oh my gosh.

Good.

No.

Okay.

Gracious, no.

I'm not gonna do rap either. I could, I could lip sync a rap maybe, but I'm not gonna do a rap.

They did a rap at the Sandoza event. Some people went upstage. I think Sangram wrote a rap or something. It was great.

I can only imagine.

You had to be there.

Were there any videos?

I think someone got a video.

Yeah.

So did I— have I ever told you a story about being in a flash mob? Sorry, this is totally— it is, it is marketing ops related because it was at, it was at an Eloqua user conference. No, pre, pre-Oracle. It was right before the Oracle acquisition, actually. Yeah, there was. So the, and the reason I know it's that is because the salesperson that we bought from, like, she called me to get me to go, hey, will you do this flash mob thing we're going to do one day? I was like, fine, I'll do it. Really no interest in it. It was dancing. So that's the other thing. And then she didn't show up. I was like, it turns out she was, she had been selling to Oracle, right? Selling the product. And that turned around to Oracle wanting to buy Eloqua. And so she wasn't there, but yeah, it was actually a lot of fun. Totally would do it again. So we need to— maybe we need to do a flash mob at— oh, see, I just gave it up. Can't do it now.

I mean, but it's, it's just an idea. So maybe someone will organize it secretly and we will have no idea. Maybe it'll be you, Hartman.

No, won't be me.

Why was the flash mob dancing so bad? Oh, Hartman.

Organized. Yeah, I, I was a choreographer.

I'm just kidding.

No, it's totally true.

The whole thing is just jazz hands.

I love it. Yeah, so there you go. I could do that. I could do jazz hands or, uh, you know, the, the, uh, parade wave. Oh my gosh.

I was like, what's he gonna say? Oh, the parade wave.

Okay.

Yeah, no, it's, it's PG, maybe even G. All right. So we'll end there. I've just, uh, my things you didn't know about Mike, Michael, um, icebreaker is now gone. I'm gonna have to come up with something else.

Yeah. Uh, apparently there's a bunch of like little hidden secrets in this one. I think the episode will be like Mickey joined the show and Hartman tells us about his dancing skills. Tune in. Yeah, Naomi's like, why am I on this show? Although there's gonna be something she's gonna come out and share something and we're gonna— oh my gosh, jaws will drop. Yeah, yeah.

Well, she's already— she— what, you've, you've given some away, some secrets, like how to actually get a meeting with you. I know that, so—

oh yeah, so I can't give it all away.

So, all right. Well, I think we are all ready for the— and so for our listeners and audiences, it's a Friday afternoon. So I think we are all about done.

Yep. I'm done. I actually have like 2 more calls I have to go get on, one starting in 3 minutes, but you know.

All good.

All right. Thanks everyone for listening and, uh, continue to support us. As we mentioned earlier, we always are interested in hearing about new guests or ideas for guests, or if you want to be a guest, so reach out to us. We'd be happy to talk. Until next time, we will talk to you later.

Bye.

Bye, everybody.

Bye, everyone.