Lessons Learned Hiring Marketing Ops Agencies with Jessica Kao

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 in your marketing operations career.

Hello everyone, welcome to another episode of OpsCast brought to you by marketingops.com, powered by the MoPros. I'm your host, Michael Hartman, flying solo today. Naomi and Mike will be back soon, I'm sure. Today's topic was inspired by a LinkedIn post from a couple of months ago that I think it was Mike who actually posted it. So we're recording this in late February 2024, so it was right before the new year, and it's all about hiring contractors and agencies in marketing revenue ops. So I will make sure that we share the link in the post in the— or post it in the show description so that you can reference that. Hopefully LinkedIn will maintain that. Although I've seen mixed results from that. So joining us for the conversation, joining me for the conversation today is Jessica Cao. She is currently the Senior Director of Marketing Operations and MarTech at Cloudflare. Prior to her current role, she has held a number of roles both in-house and in marketing operations, marketing technology, general marketing, and demand gen. She also has experience as a consultant at Digital Pie. She is a marketing operations and analytics thought leader with 10+ years of experience inspiring a nation of marketers through authenticity. including at Mopspalooza 2023, hopefully 2024, and Summer Camp 2022, which was a highlight for me, I know that. And I saw at least one overcapacity session at a Marketo Summit, it may have been Adobe Summit by that time. So Jessica, thanks for joining us.

Thanks for having me.

Yeah, so, all right, so we are lucky to have you here. Let me, you know, one of the things that I keep running into is people have these random backgrounds who end up in marketing ops. And I know that you, I think you've even talked about this before, But you actually studied biology, and I didn't know this, music in college, and you have a PhD in cancer biology. So how did you transition from that kind of educational background into marketing and marketing operations? And is there anything from that educational experience that you actually apply in your job today?

Oh my God, all day, every day. And I get asked that a lot. Like, people are like, oh, they always have to be like, oh, let me ask this question. So it's always, it's always fun. It's always super fun. But yes, I have a bunch of—

Am I just repeating the same question that everybody else asks you?

No. Yeah. But it's always fun. It's always super fun because people are like, how did you get from so far away? And it's actually directly and 100% relevant. And then when I tell them, they're like, oh, I finally get it. It's actually the same thing. So I love telling that story because all of us in marketing operations somehow stumbled our way into marketing operations. And, you know, we just all like to be together because we love data, right? And we love to nerd out about technology and data. And so that's exactly what my degree is in. So, I, my background is, my PhD is in cancer biology. I spent probably 15 years of my life in a lab doing research, looking at cancer cells in a Petri dish. And so, for those of you that know who I am or know me in real life, I'm a people person. So, that being stuck in a lab and scraping cells off a Petri dish was really not my idea of fun, but got me to where I am today. My, my, actually my dissertation and thesis is actually in predictive modeling. So probably something that, yeah, right, right. There you go. There you go.

Yeah. Yes. See, our audience can't see this. I'm nodding my head vigorously here. So yes.

Right. The light bulb just went on. Yeah. So, so my thesis and my papers are, and my published papers are on predictive signatures of breast cancer. So if you think about it, what does, what does that mean? That means looking at patients with different varying aggressiveness of breast cancer from, you know, less aggressive to more aggressive and looking at all of the tens of thousands at the time, tens of thousands and now millions, right? Data signals to understand a signature, right? Building a predictive model.

Yep.

To understand, right? You have your test set and then you have your, no, but you have your like model set, your modeling set. to build the model. And then you have a test set to, like, to test, like, okay, can I predict if this one was going to be more aggressive or not? Because a lot of today's oncology is still a lot of trial and error medicine, right? So building the data—

Sure.

Predictive data model. So to predict, like, hey, if this— if your signature is going to look more aggressive, let's start with a more aggressive treatment instead of trying a bunch of treatments and then failing and then losing that precious time and then trying different things. And so with my degree, or in my degree, in my time as a research scientist, basically I would do the, you know, here's a predictive model. And then with all of the signals, trying to tell a story and stitch, well, what could we tell story-wise?

Yeah.

Why are we seeing this pattern of signals and trying to piece together that story. So if you think about it, it's exactly the same as what we do today, right? If you replace patients on one axis with their DNA, RNA, protein signals, patterns, and you replace it with prospects and customers on one axis and all of the data points and signals and intent data and this and behavioral data, demographic, and et cetera, et cetera, it's exactly the same thing because Then you have this predictive model, right? And then as a marketer, you're trying to tell the story. Why are these people like, right? Finding more people that look like customers or that will be customers, predicting who a prospect will more likely to become a customer.

Yep.

And telling the story of what data points, right? That they like hit the demo button, they download the Gartner report, and then they do this, this, and this. And those are the people, right? Telling and stitching that story.

And so right now you understand why they're highly, highly correlated to the next step, right? Yeah. So it's interesting, as you're saying that, it's just occurring to me, and maybe this has been in the back of my mind, that my degree also is not in anything related to marketing. It was in— well, the graduate program would be called operations research, which is sort of like industrial engineering. And people who do it do things like work for shipping companies to optimize some something, some variable for their shipping. So whether it's fuel consumption or time for the route, stuff like that, or edge case or interesting case that came up recently in the last few years is helping the NBA schedule all their games. There's lots of constraints and, you know, requirements. So, and I think it's a similar thing. And I started my step into marketing was working alongside what today would be called data scientists doing predictive modeling. Right. In this case, it was this B2C thing and it was predicting churn, predicting likelihood to become a customer, all those same things you were describing. And so, yeah, I can appreciate that. And it, I guess I keep thinking of these things like science-based degrees as you get up higher in your— go further in those, those, it's a lot of data analysis, which makes— so that makes total sense to me, right? So I get that. That's fascinating. I don't think we've actually talked about that before. So this is like, I knew that there's the biology component, but I didn't, don't think I've heard the full story. So thanks for, you know, just letting me go through that. All right, so let's get started. So I don't remember all the details of the post that we, in LinkedIn that started this, but, you know, one of the things I think about when we're talking about hiring external resources for marketing ops or revenue ops And I think of different scenarios that we— that may be everything from sort of individual contributor type contractors to full project teams, right? And there's probably a number of things in between.

Yep.

Yeah. How, how do you, like, do you think of those as different kinds of scenarios and how do you, how do you decide what is more appropriate in terms of the mix of those external resources or should you bring it versus internal resources? In, in those different scenarios.

No, absolutely. And this is a topic that I'm super passionate about, which is why, probably why we're here today.

Yeah. You know, I think, I think, I think for our listeners, right, you and I probably could have just recorded our, our prep call and would have been just as good.

Um, and, and, and basically having been on both sides multiple times, right? Like, so I, um, and it's almost like, you know, I have this Lucidchart decision diagram in my head of like best practices of when to bring in what and what kind of What kind, when to use a hybrid, when to hire what, when do you hire an individual contractor? When do you hire an agency and all the different permutations? And there's no one right answer. And I also feel like a lot, and I've learned a lot in the 14 years that I've been in marketing operations and demand gen, having been on both sides. So I've been on both sides, but on top of that, I've been at a startup, 200 to 500 person company. I've been in-house on that side. I've been at the enterprise side. So like both startups and enterprise and the in-house side. And then you take the flip, which is I've been on the consulting side at an agency for both startups and for enterprise companies. So basically, if you do a 2 by 2 box, I've been in every box that you can think of. And then I've also owned, right, like more than just marketing operations consultants. Also, I have owned a PMO organization and have hired consultants to do project management, things like that. But that's not what we're really talking about today. Right. So I kind of want to go through maybe that 4-box. Is it 4-box? Like the 2 by 2?

Well, I mean, I, I have even in marketing ops brought in individual project managers for large-scale things where I just needed additional horsepower there because I could do it, but I didn't have the time.

Exactly. Yeah, exactly. We could go, we could, we could talk for hours about this.

Yes. I, so I agree.

Yes. And also, and then there's the added aspect of like, Okay. So if you're looking to hire agency versus hybrid, like when do you do FTE? When do you do not? And then I've also done offshore teams, right? So I've had India teams, I've had Eastern European teams, right? Like, so then there's the in-house, but then it becomes even a, I don't know, a 4-dimensional thing, right? Which is then you have in-house, is it US-based onshore versus offshore? and maybe throw in nearshore there.

Yep.

And then the other part is, okay, if you hire agency, is that low cost, you know, offshore versus onshore, right? So you've got that dimension.

Yep.

And then when you're looking at building out your team, whether you're a startup versus a mid-market versus an enterprise, what is the mix of full-time, Versus agency, right? So like, if you think about all those permutations, I've experienced basically every single one of those permutations and have thoughts and opinions on all of those permutations. So, you know, there's, we can start in so many different places, but I think, I think like you, I've had— where do you want to start?

Right. I, well, maybe, maybe the biggest one, if I was to guess, most people who are maybe new in leading a team is getting to the question of when do I Make— how do I, how do I make a decision about hiring a full-time person versus bringing in, whether it's an agency or individual consultant, right? Yeah, I don't think it matters that much, but I think, I think that scenario is probably, especially right now where people are, you know, kind of limited on what they can do with, with FTEs.

Yep.

Yeah, that's probably the most likely scenario people are going to be going through. So And I could add to my experience once you kind of go through it and see where you land.

Yeah, okay. So, you know, having led a lot of marketing operations organizations, right, you're leading the function. And what's really interesting is that whether you're a small startup or a large enterprise company, the problems are exactly the same, right? You still have, right?

100% agree.

And so you still deal with the exact same number of problems. The scale of the problems are different, but the number of problems are pretty much the same. So, if you think about it, right? But the resourcing that you have is gonna be different when you're a smaller company, SMB, mid-market company, right? And so, what a lot of people, you know, when you're leading a marketing ops organization and you're in a smaller company, you're leading it, you've got your rolling up your sleeves, you're doing it. And maybe you have 1, 2, maybe, and then you never have enough. people to do it. Now, my biggest thing, especially for folks, right? I mean, most people aren't going to have like, hey, I also have a consulting background and I've been Marketo consultants for a really long time, which is what people, where I see people not fall down, but like where they really need to realize is it is a completely different thing to build a Ferrari versus driving the Ferrari. So a lot of times where I see a lot of mistakes happen is that, hey, I'm a leader of a marketing ops team. I'm going to hire my first FTE. I'm going to go hire someone that's pretty junior, that's got gusto and like they can go figure it out. Let me tell you, figuring out how to drive the Ferrari and figuring out how to build the Ferrari are 2 totally different things. So if you think someone is going to, like, set up your instance in a best practice so you can scale, or set up a best practice so you can, like, you know, not so much scale, but, like, function very efficiently—

Yes.

—is a recipe for— let's just be honest, it's a recipe for disaster, because that is an unattainable goal, right? And so that is where If you are, if your system is not in best practices, if it's not like set up with a solid foundation, the first thing you should go do is ask for help because you need that mechanic. And that's the consultant, right? Who have done it 5, 10, 15, 20, 30 times. You are never going to be able to hire an FTE that has done that unless they're an ex-consultant. And we'll talk about like when you hire ex-consultants, because that's another permutation of that.

Yeah, absolutely.

And so you have to Like, and this is where we can do another podcast about how you champion the value of getting the budget and funding for hiring, you know, external help to go build the race car. Now there's 2 types of people that you can go get and there's pros and cons of each, right?

Mm-hmm.

So a lot of times, if you're a startup, there's not a lot of funds, you're gonna be scrappy picking an individual consultant, but picking the right individual consultant. And I wanna put in air quotes that you can't see, the right individual consultant, because they're going to be, at a lower cost. They're going to not carry the overhead of like project management hours that you're gonna have to pay for. Right? Because if you're hiring an individual consultant, they're just billing like straight time of like, this is my time. And, you know, it's probably good enough for what you need, but you gotta remember how to pick the right one. And that's a whole other conversation. That's like the third podcast that we'll do. Right?

Right. Right.

And then there's like going towards an agency, an agency, right? Like, so if your individual consultant goes on vacation, they go on vacation and that's it. There's no backup.

Right.

That's, you know, however, if you hire an agency, there are people, there are backups, there are like, what if it doesn't work out? You know, you can have the say to be like, hey, I want a different person. The flip side to that is the, the, the, the, the, um, num— the hour, the hourly rate is typically gonna be higher.

Yes.

Um, and then they're also, for agency, they typically throw a project management person, an account person. So like, you don't necessarily know who you're gonna be working on. Your account person that is gonna be your main point of contact, that's like the lead person, is most likely depending on the size size of the agency, right, is going to farm that out to like some lower cost person, right?

Yeah.

That isn't, you know, that's gonna be like more junior. So you don't necessarily know all the hands that are gonna be in your instance. So that's, you know, those are the pros and cons. It's really gonna be, you know, from a budget constraint perspective, but those, you have to know those going in. And also you have to be proactively managing your agency or your contractor. And as long as you know how to do that, you're gonna be able to get a lot of things out of that. But you have to be proactive about how you manage them.

Yeah.

But that's kind of the decision tree between individual contractor, you're a startup. If you find the right, go for the referrals, come to the community, we'll give you referrals for like what's a good individual contractor. Agency's gonna be more expensive. It's gonna be a little bit more stable, but I've hired both and I've had good and bad with both. So, you know, totally agree. That's, that's kind of the, that's kind of the deal when you're like budget constrained.

The, the one thing that you haven't touched on that I think I would add to this is in my experience, in mine, most of mine has been mo— especially in-house has been at larger organizations. And I think one of the things, if you have, if you have control over your budget, you're— you probably have more flexibility over your budget for external resources that are not full-time employees because there's not all the liability and overhead cost that goes with a full-time employee. So sometimes it's easier to get into the business case, I think, to do that, especially if it's a relatively well-defined scope. At the same time, I think this is where you, you really have to, you have to put yourself in the shoes of, okay, if I'm, if this is something that is 6 months, is it really something that's 6 months or is it something that's 12, 18, 20? Like if it's a longer term thing, then I think you need to be thinking about how do I fit that into my budget as a full-time employee component? And at different size and stage of companies, what I've found is that the level of, just be blunt, like the bureaucracy and BS you have to go through to go from a contractor, which is a different kind of cost that's tracked by the company versus a headcount. It's a really hard thing to swap. You usually can't just move money over to headcount.

They're two different buckets.

Yeah.

You have to think about those two different buckets. And so I really, you know, like what we just talked about was really kind of the, hey, you're starting out, you're budget constrained.

Yeah.

Right? That's the scenario. So, let's actually like flip to the enterprise because enterprise is a totally different thing. So, my last 2, my current role, my last role enterprise. And then when I was a consultant, I was basically doing like really as a consultant for the enterprise company. So, that's a totally different ballgame. So, let's talk about that. As an enterprise company, always, always, always, I believe 100% in the hybrid model. Why? Because with enterprise, the problems are the same number of problems, but the problems are bigger and more complicated. Yes. You know, you might have a lot of people on the team, but again, building the Ferrari and driving the Ferrari, like I, my team spends more time at an enterprise company driving the Ferrari. And because the Ferrari is a lot bigger and it's a lot more complex and we have a lot more stakeholders and we're spent a lot of time in meetings.

Yes.

That, you know, at a smaller company, I could probably like, you know, be also the mechanic for the Ferrari. At a larger company, you have to, have to, have to outsource that. And it's more, it's Not only is it more impactful, but it's more critical that you have a mechanic, right? Or the builder, you have to build the Ferrari in the best way.

Yeah.

But you also have to tune. You have to do tune-ups, right? Every single day. And so, an enterprise company, I have always 100% make the case, you need to do it for hybrid. And so, from there, there's 2 categories of people that you need. for a hybrid, which is you need the— you do need the mechanics and the architects. So, I always keep a team. You need the mechanics, you need the architects, you need them tuning up your system every day, and you need them laying a foundation every day. Because enterprise, they accumulate. There's all kinds of dead bodies in there.

Yeah.

And they accumulate dead bodies at a very fast rate. So, if you're not on top of it, you know, someone's constantly— like, the buildup of cobwebs is a lot. Second thing is, at an enterprise level, you also want to have outsourced, like, hands-on keyboard, right?

Yep.

Low-cost, hands-on keyboard builders from enterprise because of the sheer volume, right? So you're at an enterprise, and typically it is a centralized model. So you have a lot of stakeholders that put in a lot of requests. And then there's, there's no, not that there's no way, but like, it's very challenging to keep up with the building, the campaign operations piece.

Yeah.

At a large company with the sheer volume. And so that's where you need 2 aspects of that hybrid, hybrid area. And even though, even if you have the luxury of having people that can build the Ferrari at an enterprise, you don't have time. And that's where again, hybrid role for both the strategic and then also the driving of the Ferrari. Like, you just can't— there's too many Ferraris to go drive and you have to have some FTEs and some amount of agency done. And I've seen the majority of enterprises always, not basically close to always have the the offshore, nearshore, basically agency, not FTE, do the build because you will always, you always need burst capacity, right? That's the other thing with enterprise, the fluctuations, the burst in what you need is so— the amplitude of the burst, which no one can see on this video as I'm like amplitude, like up and down waves.

Yeah.

Will fall, will, will you will have moments of like, you cannot handle that from an FTE perspective. So you need to be able to have burst capacity. And you also, and the complexity of the projects are like, usually you need that like very specialized expertise, right? Like, so think about it. If you were building a house, you don't need a full-time architect or a full-time plumber or a full— and you were gonna remodel a house, you don't need a full-time architect, plumber, tiling guy, wiring guy, electrician. You bring 'em in 10% of the time, right? When you have a problem.

Of course.

The water's not flowing, you call, you have them on speed dial. They're there to tune up your house. Right. So the same thing, you, it is prohibitively not reasonable, flexible, not, not like prohibitively expensive to basically have an architect as your roommate and a plumber as your roommate and a, and an electrician as your roommate just to like hang out and live at your house when like something breaks. Right. So the same reasoning, why wouldn't you have?

I totally agree with you. I like that. I like the, what'd you call it? Burst and then the amplitude, because I've, I have also had good success with a hybrid model like that as well. Not always with offshore, nearshore, but sometimes. So I've had some of both, and in both cases I think you can make it work. And the thing I think that is, over time as a leader, you have to get good about is predicting what those spikes and dips are going to be like in change of the amount of work that's going to be coming. So that requires, which is I think what you were talking about, that requires you to be out in the business. communicating with lots of people who could influence that, the timing of when those things are going to happen. So that way you're getting better at predicting when those, those spikes and dips are going to happen. So I think, I think I'm in total agreement with you, I think, on all this, because in my experience it's the same thing, right? Is it the— for the more, the larger your team becomes, the more you're spending time, you know, helping to build and grow and develop the team and the people and the relationships outside of the organization that you're Leading, and you don't have time to be in the weeds. And so you do need people who can do that, and you need expertise occasionally, is what your point is, right? And so I think that is pretty much on par with what I've seen be successful as well.

And I think the other thing too is, as you know, I see a lot of enterprise companies, they might do FTE offshore versus agency offshore. And so It's very— there's a hidden cost to FTE offshore, which I've owned in my past. It's just, you just have to know about it. It's not like, it's not, you know, it's like, you just have to be aware of it, right? Where it's like, oh, you know, we can offshore, we can offshore to India and, you know, it'll be a much lower cost.

Follow the sun.

Right. I always do a follow the sun model, but here's the thing. When they're FTEs, then you have to, there is an overhead to manage, right? You also, you have time zone and then managing the offshore team is, you have to be, it's very different, obviously. I mean, for those people that have done, there is an overhead to manage, you know, an offshore team where someone still needs to do the translation. There is still, you still burn a headcount. You still burn an FTE headcount to be the go-between, right?

Yes.

And so you're, It's, you know, you have to add that headcount in order to, hey, I'm gonna, if they say you're gonna move like 3 builders from a high-cost area to, you know, an offshore but FTE area, then you need to, it's not that, it's not just that, right? You have to also plus 1 a headcount to have a person do a go-between, right? 'Cause there is a cost.

Yeah. Yep.

To do that. Right. Versus if it was, you know, and then you have to, you have to do, you have to do the balancing act. Right. And so this is where you would, you know, again, there's a hybrid model for that. Now, a different, a different way that I've done it, and I've done it both ways, which is do offshore nearshore agency where I'm also hiring an agency to go manage the offshore part, which actually might be better. Not better, but like, depending on where you are, might be a better fit for your current situation. Because I've done it every which way. There's no right or wrong. It's just knowing like what will make sense in your company, in your situation, in your resources, in your funding, in the climate, in the culture, in the environment, all of those things. All of those things have to be taken into consideration, right? There's no right or wrong, but it's more like I want to give your listeners basically like this almost like Lucidchart decisioning diagram in their head.

Right.

Like, okay, do I do this or that? Well, it depends which one is going to be easier. You know, do you have, it's basically which bucket of funds do you have? Do you have, you know, natural offices over in the areas that you would do it? Is there expertise? Because you might have an offshore or you might have a low-cost area in a different part of the world, but like those skill sets might not exist. So that's a whole other thing, right?

Yeah, absolutely. So yeah, no, it's, and I think there's cultural differences that you have to account for. And so what I've seen when I've had offshore headcount is you have— and I think this is what you're alluding to— is like, not only I had to have somebody in that locale be the manager of the rest of the team.

Yes. Oh, absolutely. You have to have a local manager. Yes. And then I have to have a person in the, in like US base to interface with the local manager on that team. So you're going to burn 2 headcounts. Yes. Right. You have to have a local manager. That's for me, non-negotiable. Yep. Because it's good. Otherwise, otherwise it just, it's like, there's no, but you're just gonna dig yourself a hole in my opinion.

But again, yeah, I, no, I agree.

You have to burn a US headcount to do that, to do the go back and forth. Yep. Maybe not a full headcount, but like, it's, it is a significant, like, let's, let's just say 30, 50% of that person's time. Mm-hmm. That's—

Or yours.

Taken out if you, yeah. Or mine or a person's time. A person's time. Yes. But you know, one thing that I did wanna, um, kind of like tangentially is, right, like, to understand how long something takes, right? Because you kind of alluded to like, oh, you have to be able to predict burst capacity. Well, in order to predict burst capacity, you have to be able to scope.

Yes.

And one of the, like, lucky or like kind of happenstance byproducts of being a consultant, as I'm sure you know, Michael, is it's a skill set of like, You know, for 6+ years, I learned how to track my time in 15-minute increments. Yes. And so because I do that and because I wrote a lot of SOWs for my clients where I'd have to swag how long something takes with very little information, I got really, really good at it. And it has been an amazingly helpful skillset to lean on in order to predict, right? Like looking at, you know, my stakeholders' roadmaps and what they wanna do. I can very quickly and easily swag how many person hours it's gonna take and how many like actual time, like, oh, it's, you know, 40 person hours over 2 months, right? Like, so I'm almost like, and then that'll also help you understand like how to justify budget and resources for going out and getting an agency versus full-time and understanding. And so I've kind of been on this new kick of like, okay, Just because you don't work for an agency doesn't mean you can't build this skillset. And so, you know, getting your FTEs or like your in-house, right. And having your team, right. Especially when we're trying to do sprints or story points, which you have to scope the number of working hours. I can tell you right now, it took me 6 months when I was a brand new consultant to figure out how to capture, how to log my time. And so I'm kind of like a big fan. I'm really a big fan of like bringing that into an in-house team and not to like big brother people and like not to just, hey, I want to see where your hours go. It's more like to get them to understand because it took me 6 months to understand like, wow, I can really only have 5 working hours in an 8-hour day.

Yeah, it's, yeah, it's interesting because I'm thinking back to when I started my career was in management consulting. And one of the things, especially when I started managing client relationships and I was reviewing the billing and everything else is Yeah, I would always have to go back to the team and say, charge all your hours, but don't go over budget. But really the big part was charge all, like, bill all your hours, put them all in. I may then as a manager go, okay, I'm going to discount that because you're a newbie and it shouldn't have taken that long, but, and I don't want the client shouldn't have to pay for that. But I needed that insight to know what it really took so that we could get better at At predicting what that would be the next time we had a project like that that we were bidding for. And I think that's what you're talking about, just doing it with inside a company.

Just doing it inside a company. Because if you think about it, like, we have to do capacity planning, right? Like, so the question will become like, okay, well, if you're trying to figure out, oh, I need to go hire an agency to go and do whatever, I need to go like get budget for it. It's very like, you want, you go to an agency and you're like, oh, can you swag me and charge me for whatever, whatever it is? Because you have to go to the agency to get I would tell them. But if you have that skillset, you can get, this is how you can get the budgets. Like, hey, I can swag, or like how you get headcount. Hey, I can swag. Like we have, we're at 120% capacity of what we can build. This is why, and here's the, and like, and you know, right? A ticket, a ticket is like 25% PM time and 75% build time. And then, you know, it's like, oh, well, if I'm at 75% PM time because my stakeholders are doing this, this, and this, I know one, where to press on to go fix processes, but then also I know how to go ask for— go change it or go ask for more capacity from an hours perspective. And I think if you think about it from a capacity, from an efficiency and a capacity perspective, if your team understands how to scope their story points better so that they can, right, like, or also get them to realize where the inefficiencies of their time is, not to say it's their fault, but like, Right. Like here, here's as a consultant, this is what you learn. If you work a 40-hour week, your billables are about 33 to like 30 to 33. You have to try real hard to get 35 to 40. You cannot get 40 billable hours in 40 hours of a work week. Like that is really hard.

Yep.

So you understand that concept. Then if you're in-house, my swag of it is like, there's like the in-house things, right? HR, team meetings, la la la la la. Right. That aren't billable. And so my guess is that as an FTE, I can really get 27 working hours out of like an IC, right? So then we start with that as currency, 27 working hours. Okay. What are you guys gonna do in 27 hours? What are the things that are gonna matter? Right.

Right.

And so if you get your, I think one, as a leader, if you understand how long things take, then you can go and figure out what you need from an agency or hybrid perspective.

Yeah. So I'm going to take this another direction, I think. And this is, I think, a pretty good segue, is that— so I think another sort of, uh, benefit of that kind of experience and knowledge is that it also helps you have sort of a bullshit meter, right? Like when you, like, you know what things really should— like you have like, this sounds reasonable, this doesn't sound reasonable. And then I'm not saying like it's not 24 versus 22 hours or something like that. It's like, yes, it's in within kind of what I expected or didn't. And I think that's the thing you do, but. So putting kind of putting maybe a little different hat or a different take on this, how do you really evaluate consultancies, agencies, contractors, you know, in terms of trying to understand, because you mentioned it earlier, like getting the right one in is important. Like how do you define right and how do you suss that out?

I mean, and it's hard. It's hard. And I think, you know, the things that I look for or the thing, the agencies that I like to work with are the people that are gonna help me reach my goals. Of course, all the agencies will take your money and help you reach your goal. But like, here, here's, here's how you, here's how you get rid of the bullshit meter, right? If people are gonna do a fixed bid on a project, especially in mops and martech, I'm like, too good to be true. either you're gonna go over and you're gonna be asking me for more money, or you're gonna deliver me like half a table because you, you, you would like, you wouldn't, you wouldn't know. Like I scoped so many projects as a consultant and like, Yes. Literally you're asking me to put, you know, a dollar and a number of hours amount on something that I don't know what, like what is, and it could, the gamut could be all kinds of things. Right. And so, The first kind of how I like to work is really understanding like what their billing practice is or like how are they scoping, right? Is it a fixed project? Because if you're going to come and tell me, hey, this is going to be $10,000, I'm like, I don't think so. Right? Like if an implementation, typically my rule of thumb is the implementation will be equivalent to the cost of how much the tool costs, if not more.

Oh yeah. Easy.

Right? Like easy. Easy. So someone can't—

Yeah, I think, I think that's actually low in my experience, but—

It's actually low. I mean, like sometimes 2, 2x, 2 to 3x because like getting a tool set, depending on the complexity of the tool.

Absolutely.

Right. But like basically if you get a bid, um, that is lower than the cost of the tool, then you're, you're sitting at like bullshit, right? Like that's, that's, so that's step one, right? It's like, is it too good to be true? Because if it is, it probably isn't. Right. I think the second thing is like, look, you, when I'm, when I'm picking, I've been on both sides. When I'm picking up an agency, right, I'm staking my reputation on this. Right. And a lot of the decisions having been on the other side, it's like, it's a fear, right? It's like, okay, I'm hiring you. I'm making a decision. Like if, if they fail, then I'm gonna look bad. Right.

Yes.

So like, it's that fear. It's that fear. And I really like to work with, with agencies that are gonna be a partner that are really about Hey, you're going to teach me how to fish, right?

Yes.

They're going to earn my business, not because I have to. If they want to keep my business and it's— and if you look at the model, right? If they've over-engineered something, if they plan on over-engineering something, so like basically I can never walk away from them, that's to me a ginormous red flag. I want to know, how are you going to get me self-sufficient? Like, how are you going to teach me how to fish? So like, if I want to walk away from you, That's part of your model. And then as a consultant, that is the way, that philosophy that I always use, which was, I want you to want to work with me. I want to earn your next business. I want to earn your trust.

Absolutely.

So that you love the work that I've delivered for you. And I've taught you something new and you can be self-sufficient on what I taught you. But hey, we're constantly innovating and pushing the next level and the next, like, like innovation that you're gonna keep coming back to me cuz you want to, not because you have to. And there are agencies that fall into one or the other of those camps. And I tend to like to favor working with agencies that are going to make me smarter and teach me something I didn't know. Right. A, a, a, the opposite of a red flag is, hey, if an agency's gonna be honest with me enough to say like, hey, I know you want this and I know you wanna pay me this, but this isn't really the right way to do it. I wanna save your money cuz you're gonna be wasting your money. That to me is a sign of a good agency. Yes. Right. Who's not gonna take my, just take my money and like that there was no hope of success. Right. Like that. Yeah. You know, that, that's, that's, and those are hard. And those are hard to suss out. And a lot of it is gut feel, right? 'Cause it's about trust. It's about people.

Absolutely.

It's about trust. And I like to look, it's like, okay, how much of a say do I get? On who I work with. Can I interview the people that you're going to put on my team? I like to ask, like, of the people that is actually going to be building that, that might be like not my main point of contact, how long have they been with the company? What's their training? What's their certification? What's their accreditation? Right? Because, you know, those people that are working on your stuff might have joined last week.

Yeah. I mean, I, right. So I will say, I think, I think I would lean towards more about their specific experience than their accreditations. Because to your point, right, they could have just started last week.

That's what I mean. Not accredited.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

But I, experience, like, it's all, it's almost like, it's almost like, can I, can I interview, you know, kind of like on a light interview, the people that you would like to, the candidates that you would like to propose to be on my team, I'd like to interview them and I'd like to have a say on who gets to, like, do I, or more basically, like, how do we, it's the ways of working with an agency. Like, hey, are you amenable to this? And then, then there, then there goes into things like, you know, do I have an account person that I mainly work with? What is their tech? Like the—

Right. How do they, how do they tip? How do they work well with clients? Like when it's been successful, right? I think that's an important thing to understand. Right.

And then also how technical it is because it's like, is my main point, like, are you gonna, Am I dealing with the PM who's not technical, but that's my main point of contact? Or am I dealing with a technical architect? What is their percentage of being on the account? I also ask, how many accounts are each of the people on my team working on? Because if someone's working on 13 accounts, that's gonna be very different mindshare than like a person's like, hey, this person is dedicated to your account. I want them to also feel like they're part of the team. Right. I want them to have skin in the game. I want them to have, right. Or like, you know, depending on your relationship with, with, you know, the different, the different agencies, right? Like, so it's all of that kind of culturally, is it a match?

Yeah, I agree with that too. I think, trying to think of like practical things that I've done in the past to try to get to some of those things about, I think trust is the word that comes to mind every time we talk about this. You know, I think one of the things I try to do both with people who work for me as well as consultants or agencies that I bring in is, you know, I want people who are comfortable pushing back with me. You know, I'm confident and sometimes I'm opinionated. I try to be open to the idea that I'm wrong about stuff too, and I want people to be comfortable speaking up. And if, to me, I think it might, when I was in consulting, I always thought part of my job was to tell the client what they needed to hear, not what they wanted to hear. here, because sometimes that was more valuable and sometimes that meant not getting work. But I think it ultimately ends up being better for both parties.

No, I mean, I mean, the whole point of having consultants is, right, you know, as a consultant being on both sides, like, teach me what I don't know, teach me something that I don't know. Yeah. Make me smarter about my job.

Yeah. And also minimize, minimize my risk, right? I'm not, I don't care about your risk that much. Like, to be blunt, like, I want my reputation. our financial exposure, our ability to deliver, right? I want all those things to be as minimal, as minimized as possible. I get that you can't 100% eliminate risk, and that's just part of the real world, but I want people who will work with me on how to do that and prove that they can do it. Because ultimately, if I spend, you know, that dollar with you, that means I can't spend it somewhere else typically. So I'm like, it's a bet.

Like, I'm banking, I'm banking my reputation On, on, on my decisions. Yeah, there's a lot of unknowns. There's a lot of unknowns, right? So I need to feel good about my decision.

Yeah, absolutely. Well, let's get to like maybe one more topic because I think we're gonna run out of time here. To your point, I think we could have talked about this for a couple hours over a couple of different episodes. But what is your— what's your take on the whole RF RFI, RFP process on both sides, right? Is it, is it, is it—

I've done it on both sides. I have done it on both sides and I do not like, right. The purpose of an RFP, right, is to have a fair playing field and you ask all the same questions and et cetera. And having been on the other side, it's like, it is incredibly difficult to be able to ask the same questions to let's say 3 vendors to get like what you're trying to get to, right? Because it is very difficult as a, as being on the other side and having had to fill out those questionnaires, like, well, how do I force fit my answers into a box that's like, that's not what we're like. Let me show you what we're good at. Let me, like, I'm trying to earn your trust through a piece of paper. You're trying, I'm like, if I'm doing an RFP, I'm trying to assess Right? Because I've done RFPs on the other side for like vendor technologies and I'm like, this, none of this is going to help me make a decision on which one to go to, right? Like—

No, it's all going to be about the experience with those people.

Exactly. And I think you, you, you basically summarized it so well. It's like, it's about the experience and it's about trust and how can you put it on a piece of paper? And also just because the people that you would trust, It might not be, and having been on the other side, it's like, it might not show itself or be evident, right? Like, you know, like I try to make my customers, my clients feel like they can trust me. How is that gonna come across when I try to write that in an RFP? How do I— It is nearly impossible, right? You put me in a room, we talk about it, and then you can decide, am I a right fit for you or not from a consulting standpoint? And I, on the flip side, like I need to talk to the agency. Like, I'm like, and actually ask them poignant questions and take the conversation in different places, right? Like having like, oh, how many clients do you have that are similar to us? 5, 10, 15. Like that doesn't tell me anything about whether I can trust you or not.

Right.

Like, you know, obviously you're gonna backchannel, but like, tell me, right? Like it's, it's really getting in a room and talking to 'em and hearing them and pressing them. And so I'm, I guess it's a long way of saying I don't— the RFP, if your company requires you to do an RFP, please don't put so much emphasis on making your decision based on an RFP.

No, I think, I think I recently ran an RFP process because I was kind of forced to, and I was not a fan of it. And I will say that I think the way that we handled it revealed a couple of things. One, don't assume the RFP is going to be complete or understood because it won't. Yeah, so I think having conversations after the fact, once it's issued, any agency that wants to have a follow-up conversation, you should absolutely have that. And if you learn something new that— or clarify something for them, it should go to all the other continuing, you know, companies that are bidding. The other thing I think it did, it did enable us to really have conversations with the agencies who wanted to bid. And really look at them differently and have those— the conversation part of it was way more important than the actual written stuff that went back and forth. So I think that was huge. On the flip side, as a, as a consultant or agency, I mean, I've, I've done the same thing. I've responded to RFPs and generally I wouldn't put a whole lot of effort into it unless they're willing to have those conversations.

So then, so then, right, like what good agencies are you missing out on?

Yes.

By forcing an RFP, right? Because a lot of times, like, look, like, yes, we want the business, but like the RFP was so onerous that it's like, yeah, okay, pass. Right. But we might've been a good fit.

Yep.

So what are you, what junk are you pulling in? What good things are you leaving out? Right. False positives, false negatives. And so I understand that, you know, company, you know, a lot of companies require the RFP, but then maybe you don't make it so onerous that you might be losing out on really good agencies that might be a really good fit.

Yeah, I agree. Well, I think we're gonna have to cut it there, Jessica. And this has been a fun conversation. I've enjoyed it the second time around, maybe more than the first time when we had it. So this is great. Thank you so much. If folks want to kind of follow up with you or follow you or keep up with what you're doing, what's the best way for them to do that?

Yeah, you can always reach out and connect with me on LinkedIn. Drop me a message on like, you know, where, you know, what you're, you know, I get a lot of LinkedIn connections, right? So always like drop a message in there to just put context around, you know, the connection. And then for those of you that are going to Adobe Summit, I'll be speaking at Adobe Summit on translating geek speak to C-suite. So don't miss out on that.

Oh, that's like the best. Like, I wish I could be there, but it's not in the cards this year. But I'm sure it'll be great because I've seen that a couple of times at different marketingops.com stuff.

We're gonna do a, like, it's gonna be an upgrade. It'll be new stuff, right? So just like you saw it at Mopsapalooza, it's gonna be like next, we're gonna add new stuff to it.

Kick it up a notch, right? All right.

Oh yes, exactly. We're gonna kick it up a notch at Adobe Summit in Vegas at the end of March. So come check me out there.

Sounds good. All right, well, thanks everyone. And we look forward to continuing to get you more content like this. And thank you for being supportive, and we will talk to you next time. Bye, everyone.