Ops Cast 2022 Lookback & Looking Ahead to 2023

Hi, I'm Michael Hartman.

I'm Naomi Liu.

And I'm Mike Rizzo, and this is OpsCast, a podcast for marketing ops pros and rev ops pros created by the MoPros, the number one community for marketing operations professionals.

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

Hello everyone, welcome to another episode of OpsCast brought to you by marketingops.com. Powered by the MoPros. I'm your host, Michael Hartman, joined today for this look back at 2022 with Naomi and Mike. Naomi Liu, Mike Rizzo, please say hello. Say goodbye to the year of the MoPro.

We are officially saying goodbye.

Yeah. Right? Yeah, I was looking back at— before we get too far into this, so for our listeners, this is early 2023 that we're recording this. And we wanted to take a look back at kind of the show and what's happened over the course of 2022. And one of the, I think, things that jumped out at me was our first episode that we published for this year was, yeah, is 2022 the year of the MoPro? And I think it's going to be interesting as we go through. I'm really curious to hear what your thoughts are for the two of you, but for our listeners. So what that meant for 2022 was I think we got a lot more consistent about publishing stuff and there's some stuff in the background, Mike and his wife helping with that. And so we've really gotten a little more consistent about that, but that meant we've got 40 episodes published in 2022, which is I think a little more than half of what we've published over time. But I think what's more significant is that I think the volume of listening and downloads and things like that has gone up to the point where— Do we have a drum? Can we do a drum roll? Like, do we need a drum roll? I wish there was.

Like, here, I'll just do it.

Yeah, so it wasn't quite in 2022, but on January 1st, 2023, we hit a milestone of 20,000 downloads all time for the podcast. So big shout out and thanks to all of our listeners, our guests, and of course to the two of you for making that happen.

So, well, really the kudos, Hartman, is You know, for, for those of you listening, like, Hartman spends a ton of time, uh, working with you as a potential guest, really just trying to uncover what it is that we can, um, talk about that will provide value, uh, to all of you listeners, right? And, and there's a lot that goes into planning and scheduling with all the guests. You can imagine, all of you busy MoPros out there, like, We're all busy too. And so scheduling this stuff is certainly not easy. And then taking time out of your busy schedules to then provide value back to all the listeners is really incredible. So kudos to Hartman on—

Round of applause.

2 years of dealing with this crazy schedule.

It's crazy.

And making it happen.

Thank you. Well, I appreciate it. But it's been, as I tell people all the time, it's a labor of love and It's, it's something that, you know, 2 years, it's crazy to think. So we're, this is January 3rd, 2023. Our first episode was January 15th, 2021. So it has been almost 2 years. And I don't know that I could have predicted what it would have been like back then, where we are and all that. So.

Oh, definitely not. And I always remember, 'cause it's the day before my birthday was like our very first recording. And, um, it, it helps me like remember how old I am now. It's like a, it's like a, it's like a milestone. It's a mile marker.

It's a mile marker for you.

Yes. But, you know, fun fact, I want to actually share, speaking of the 20,000 downloads all time, 14,000, over 14,000 of those happened in 2022. So just think about that for a second. Like we, like, like. What is that number, like 80% or 40%? I don't even know what— I'm bad at math. But like the vast majority of the downloads just happened in 2022. And on top of that, we were actually recognized in Spotify. For those of you who maybe missed all of our like celebrations on social, we were recognized on Spotify as one of the top 10% most followed podcasts. And one of the top 10% most shared globally podcasts in the Spotify app.

Amazing. For a little—

for a marketing ops podcast.

It's just a little podcast.

So watch out, Joe Rogan. We got it for you.

Here we come.

Yeah.

But this episode isn't just about us gloating about how cool the show is. It's really to uncover what was going on and what was interesting and what all you listeners might want to go back and listen to if you hadn't had a chance to.

Absolutely. So, Naomi, we were talking a little bit before. I think you had some good insights. What stood out for you from 2022?

I just, so the thing, I just laugh at this, right? Because, you know, it's something that people who work in marketing ops always talk about. Oh, it's so hard for us to explain to people who aren't in the industry what we do. But clearly looking at the, you know, the amount of episodes and the, like, we have no shortage of guests who want to come on and talk about everything marketing ops. It's very easy for us to talk about what we do. very hard to explain what we do to people who aren't in industry, right? And, you know, something that I have really, um, that I'm very, you know, quite pleased with is, you know, despite the frequency of how we're— of when we record, we have a wide range of topics. And there's very few times that, you know, the exact same thing gets, you know, episodes overlap or, you know, there's just such a wide variety of perspectives and, you know, how people got into the industry and, you know, know, where they hope the career and, and, you know, marketing ops takes them. It's just, it's really interesting to see, definitely on my side.

I have to agree. And I think like, you know, one of the things that stood out to me as we were recording at roughly a frequency of one a week, right? What was really interesting, again, just echoing what I said a moment ago around, hey, Hartman gets on with our guests, and we try to figure out what it is that we're going to discuss that could be potentially interesting for the audience. There happens to be, like, unsolicited, unadvised by us, right? There happens to be consistency in the transition of topics over time. You'll see even that, like, in looking back at some of our episodes, there were like at least 2 or 3 different chunks of recordings that happened throughout the year, where there was like, suddenly there's this big focus on compliance or on, you know, analytics and then PLG and It wasn't because we were purposefully trying to find guests to go talk about those things. It was that people were raising their hand and they wanted to talk about those things. And so that was really fascinating, right? This like consistency of like, I don't know, like the dark funnel coming to life, like people just talking about these topics on their own without, you know, us pushing it on.

Well, and I think, I think what's interesting is that, you know, our now most downloaded episode at this point in time is the one that we did in I want to say it was the middle of the year. Was it June, July with Amy Goldfine? The WTF is marketing operations, right? Which is, I mean, echoes a little bit of what Naomi was talking about, like how broad this kind of function is and how wide-ranging it is and how many different facets there are, how many different perspectives there are. And I think that it's clear that that kind of struck a chord. The other thing that I think is interesting is I think If it's not the next most downloaded, it's still consistently downloaded as our very first episode, which was also about like, what is the definition of marketing ops?

Yeah, like how do you describe, right? Like, what is marketing operations and how do you describe it? That was when we used to just like have people come on as random live guests. Yeah. Let's see how that works.

Yeah. So if you're, if you're a relatively new listener and you really want to get like, go back to those first, you know, I think it was like 10 to 15 episodes where we were doing live and we had really no idea.

None whatsoever. But I do think that that whole concept of like describing like, what is this function, you know, going back to, is, is, was 2022 the year of the Mopro? I sort of feel like we did a much better job as an organization, as a community, right? Like a collective of professionals in this space of trying to put more content out there that describes this stuff. And so I do feel like that despite the changes in the economy, and certainly wide-ranging layoffs, which were super unfortunate to see happening, you know, there was still, at least from my perspective, an increase in demand or awareness of the fact that this function is so critical to the teams. And for me, you know, despite the economic changes, like, it really did end up being the year of the marketing operations professional in that there were a lot of people that were getting recognized as like core to the team. I don't know about that. I don't know about you, Naomi, but I feel like that was one of the things that really stood out.

No, definitely. Yeah, I would, I would 100% agree with that. Yes.

And right now a lot of folks are, you know, I'm seeing like RevOps, you know, we've all seen it for the last couple years, but I'm noticing even more so in our community, our actual members are trying to align themselves to RevOps too. And I think that's important, right? Like, it's fun to probably like lean in and say, hey, like as a RevOps professional, like you are at the end of the day, all of you MoPros and marketing ops professionals, you are a RevOps professional. And arguably, we've said it time and time again, we can do a lot of the things that a sales ops person can do, but a sales ops person can't go the other direction. And so that might make you even more of a RevOps professional in some regard. But like, don't forget how core, like, the function, the key pillar is of marketing operations. And let's keep trying to drive home the importance of that function.

Well, I think going back to the economic situation and people who are impacted, I think it was timely that we had 2 back-to-back episodes in late August, early September of this year that were sort of two sides of that coin, right? One was if you're looking for a job, like what are ways to do about that? And the other was, yeah, why is it so hard to hire? So if you're a hiring manager, because it's really hard. And I mean, just in general, right, I would say the whole hiring process is broken. I don't know how to fix it, but I know it's really, really hard to, especially in roles like this because they're so The definition of what the scope of for marketing ops at any given organization can be so vastly different to the point where I think coming up in '23, one of the things, and I think we've touched on this a little bit, is I think we also had a number of things about career pathing and what's the next step for marketing ops pros. And I started seeing, to your point about is this the year of the MoPro, I started seeing more VP titles. For marketing ops and rev ops and things like that, which is, I think, a relatively new phenomenon. But then what's the next step after that? I think that's the future. And one of them that I think may be out there is things like chief of staff roles, which I think make a really good transition for people who are especially in marketing ops, where they have this sort of broad understanding of the full function of marketing, what makes it work, what makes— what's working, what's not working. understanding how it ties in with the sales process, all those kinds of things that really could position somebody to be a really good right-hand person to a marketing leader, if not a revenue leader.

Yeah, I actually, pleading a little, like a lot of ignorance on this one. I was like, I have no idea what a chief of staff does. But the first time that we brought that up, I started sort of looking into it. And I was like, Gosh, you know what, that actually makes a little bit of sense in terms of exactly what you said, right, Hartman? This idea of you have a broad understanding of what's going on in the business when you're in a marketing ops function. And as you gain more seniority and you're involved in more of the, what does it take to do the go-to-market motion, and you're part of implementing new technologies and new frameworks, That lends itself pretty nicely to that right-hand person at the C-suite level and that chief of staff really filtering out the noise and making sure the strategy is being executed on. At least that's how I've been interpreting it. And so for those of you that haven't gone and looked into that function, I think it's pretty interesting. Do yourself a favor and go Google chief of staff functions and see if that's a path that you want to go down. I don't think it's for everybody, but, you know, certainly possible. So speaking though of career pathing and all that other stuff, Hartmann, do you want to share a little bit about like how we're thinking about OpsCast in 2023?

Yeah, I mean, I think one of the things that we're— we have been so fortunate to, you know, I think both of you have said this, right, that we've had no shortage of people who've wanted to share, which is an amazing gift for us and our listeners, is that we've got so many people and great insights and all from different perspectives. I think that's how we've covered topics in a way that allows us to have multiple episodes on sort of a general topic like analytics or career and things like that. So one of the things that we're at least hoping to do a little more of going into 2023 is to start to have multiple episodes kind of back to back that delve into, say, a theme or a topic area so that we can get really pack that together in one timeframe. So if you really are interested in a particular topic or theme, we can point you to here are 3 episodes kind of linked together. Maybe not— it would be different guests and things like that probably, but getting into some of those in a deeper way with a little more purpose. So rather than being a little opportunistic about who's raising their hand or us going, hey, there's this topic, can we find people who are interested in talking about it because it's hot in the industry? Like we did, we grabbed somebody you talk about PLG, right, which was super enlightening for people like me who have not really been in those kinds of environments and hear a lot about it.

Mm-hmm.

So that's what we're trying to do. You know, some of them are going to include things like how do marketing ops folks work with other ops functions? So one that I'm really hopeful that we'll get soon is one that is like customer success ops or customer support ops, because that's one that personally I don't know a whole lot about. And I think it would be really valuable to hear more about that, how we can make a difference on retention and things like that. And then we want to do things about how to learn and grow. I think we're going to do some more episodes. I think we've— what we think we found is it's really interesting to hear people's stories about how they came to be in marketing operations because I've— there's not— I still don't— can't find any consistent pattern.

Yeah, no.

Right. I think there are some consistent characteristics of people who really gravitate towards it. But beyond that, I don't know that there's a consistent path. So I think that'll be interesting. And then, oh gosh, I'm missing one. But anyway, those are some of the themes we're trying to get to. Okay. I just thought of it. The 4th thing is keeping up with innovation. So if you are interested in kind of hitting on any of those topics or know somebody who'd be a good guest for any one of those, just definitely reach out to us and let us know. I also, one thing I think that, again, going back to the, if you've got ideas for, I think this is one that could be good, is like, how do we attract more people into marketing ops is one that could be of interest because I think that maybe that goes to stories about how people do it, but I think one of the challenges we have is this is tied to careers and hiring and finding new jobs is I think there's, it's really hard to find people who are interested early on or know that it's even a thing. So curious what your thoughts are about how we can take this and make it a resource for people who are maybe don't know about marketing ops, maybe in college or even earlier.

Well, funny you say that, Michael, because at the beginning of December, I had the opportunity to actually chat with, it was an all-girls school. And I had the opportunity to chat with about 150 or 200 senior high school students about, you know, being a woman in tech, career pathing, salary negotiations, and what the heck is marketing, or WTF is marketing ops. And I can guarantee, I can tell you right now that none of them knew what I was talking about. Maybe a couple of them who had parents who worked in the tech industry, but You know, even then it was like, it was a bit of a stretch. So, you know, I feel like even just educating, you know, the next wave of people who are entering university and what they're choosing to study, um, the, the range of, uh, ages was between grade 10 and 12. So definitely there was a good portion of them that were, you know, in the, on the, uh, of the mindset where they're, you know, picking schools to go to and, you know, what they wanna study and whatnot. And I think it was really like the feedback that I got afterwards. Um, for those that came up to me or tried to connect with me on LinkedIn was that, you know, it just really opened their eyes as to, you know, the possible jobs that are out there. And, you know, it's not always just a, okay, well, I need to go to school and study accounting and I'm gonna be an accountant, right?

Mm-hmm.

It's not like such a one-to-one situation. And I was like, yeah, you know, the exactly what you're saying about Michael earlier about, um, people who kind of came into this industry or this role, it's never really been the same. And I definitely, um, Uh, reiterated that or talked about that as well, um, during the talk. There was tons of Q&A. It was like a Q&A style session where they could submit questions beforehand and I would answer them. And then there were also questions, um, afterwards. And it was just, it was a really great experience. And I think it was definitely very eye-opening. And I feel like the more opportunities that people who are in the industry have to do things like that, just to, you know, lend a different perspective, I think is always going to be super beneficial.

Yeah, yeah, I, I definitely want to see— I was so thrilled when you told us you were going to do that session, um, just because it's just, it just doesn't happen enough, you know. And thankfully, thankfully you have the opportunity to do stuff like that. And we're, we keep trying to find more relationships with, uh, educational institutions, whether they're higher ed or otherwise, um, to try to advocate for Finding more, you know, learning opportunities for these students to figure out what's out there. Like, I certainly had no idea.

Yeah, it just— the way it happened was like kind of random. I, you know, I was at a lunch gathering and I met this woman who was, um, she was a— I'm gonna butcher her title, but she worked at the high school and she, um, ran like the ed— uh, education like courses or learning and education courses. And so I had mentioned to her, because I think before COVID that they had, um, they were, they were doing these like in-person speaker series type situations. And so I said to her, well, if you ever need a speaker, I'm happy to do it. And then a couple months later, she reached out, hey, that's awesome, we're still on the table.

That's amazing.

So for all the listeners out there, yes, just kind of just say what—

put it out in the universe, right? Say, yeah, put it up there, put it on your vision board.

If you have one of those, I don't know.

Or if you're not comfortable doing that yourself, but you happen to know somebody who's in education, I think either high school and college are both great. If you know somebody, say, in a marketing department at a university, I think I would— I know I would love to have an opportunity to talk about this. I'm sure Naomi or Mike or a number of other people in the community would as well. But I think that would be a huge win for the community.

Um, and if I had more time, I would continue to drive the— like, I kicked off a conversation with the head of marketing at Cal State Fullerton, and he's like, yeah, just send me what you, what you wanted. This is like a year ago now.

I'm like, yeah, maybe, maybe we just have them— we share, you know, if you, you can have people share the, uh, WTF is Marketing Operations, you know, episode, or the— our first one, and just like So they— you can kind of get—

Required listening to pass this course, right? If you're going to graduate with a marketing degree, you have to listen to this episode of OpsCast. That'd be awesome.

Yeah, be a lot of fun. How about anything else that has sort of jumped out from '22 that you—

Um, no, I think just the idea of Taking all of this collective sort of knowledge and trying to categorize it a little bit and then put it back into the world, you know, in a way that helps educate the space, both people discovering the role and the professionals looking to hire the talent in this space and get their arms around what does that really mean. I think that organizational structure is became a little bit more clear to us, I think, at the end of the year. And I'm excited, you know, to see what happens in 2023. I think if, uh, what do you— what do y'all feel about calling this year like the year of MOPSA since we're doing MOPSApalooza?

As long as we all— as long as we can all spell it the right way every time.

Yeah, yeah, the Canadian version and the American version.

Well, we'll just, we'll just do the hashtag version. Hashtag M-O-P-Z-A. There you go. No, I think Mopzapalooza is better, but you know, but it's too long to type.

I'm an old fuddy-duddy. That's funny. I'm curious. I'm, I'm, I'll put you on the spot here in a second, Naomi and Mike, but I was going to say, like, I was trying to think of other things, like from the, these episodes that we did this year, was there anything you learned that you actually then took and applied to your current role? And I know the one that I did, I used was, had to do with sort of rethinking how my current team is structured and responsibilities. And I used some of the stuff that came out of that Amy Goldfein episode and others to kind of think about like, what are the types of areas that we need the team to cover? And then sort of going, okay, well, here's the current team and here's what's missing, right? Here's where, so how do I fill those gaps? Or consciously make a choice not to fill those on a permanent basis. So yeah, whether you call it the 4 pillars or whatever, but I think for me that was like an actual— like I took something from one of our recordings, at least one, and applied it almost immediately to my current role, which is also like I think super valuable. Anything like that for either of you?

I mean, I've had it from the reverse when I've— the one thing that comes to my mind for sure is the When I share about the QBR stuff.

Yeah.

Um, I've had a lot of messages about that, definitely.

Yeah.

Either on Slack.

Including me.

Um, or on LinkedIn. Yeah. Just like I actually have a, when people are asking about, you know, template or like an outline or whatever, I just, I, I send them the same, you know, I just, I, I have a canned response now because I've gotten asked about it so many times that I'm like, here, this is what I do. This is kind of outline, adjust it to your needs. You know, can't really send you a template cuz that's It would just be a blank deck otherwise. But, you know, and every organization is going to be different, but kind of like the structure, cadence, things like that. So I would say that definitely. And it, you know, makes me happy to hear people are, you know, taking that and utilizing it, right?

It's great.

Yeah, it's a, you know, it's a little different, I think, for me because I try to understand the ebb and flow of the content we're recording holistically to understand how do we as a community-led sort of organization continue to provide a benefit to our audience at large. So sometimes that manifests itself in the form of, you know, the job guide templates that we ended up creating and releasing after our State of the MoPro research happened last year. Sometimes it manifests itself in courses and trying to find additional professors within the community to go teach courses. And other times it's, you know, just net new content programs that need to be created or some sort of offering to the, to the community to try to drive more value. So really, like, all— every session gives me a little taste of what's going on. It's a pulse check. How do we continue to make sure that, you know, we're all working together to make this vocation survive and thrive. I do think the one thing though that stood out a lot was really around— I like to look at the landscape of technology as a whole, and I really enjoyed the conversations with some of the product leaders around PLG and even like the Future of Marketing Technology episode we did with George.

Yep.

And just getting to noodle on the concepts of warehouse-native technology and some of the shifts in the landscape there. I like to see that stuff. And because it just, it opens up a world of opportunity for all of us as practitioners in this, in this role to decide how we can be impactful in some of these cutting-edge environments, whether they're net new technology infrastructures or you know, dealing with problems around GDPR and compliance, just getting a sense of what's going on at the industry at large, that stuff. I think as a personal, like, professional in the space, I think that's really telling. And it sort of opens up my mind to what could I focus on now?

Yeah, well, I think our, you know, State of the Union of the marketing operations platforms was, it was a good one. I think, to me, you just made me remember, like, we just had sort of 2 episodes on, I guess what I would call like kind of old school tech stuff, which was email and deliverability, right? Both of which I thought were really, really valuable and could help almost immediately for anybody who's dealing with it because email's still there. It's not going away clearly, right? So yeah, I think those are good. I'm curious, what do you think? Do you think we need to start thinking about having a topic going on technology stuff about AI? Like the whole— There's been so much going on about— was it ChatGPT, right?

ChatGPT.

So, uh, I don't know, like, I don't want to say—

I don't want to, like, say I don't want to jump on the bandwagon, so to speak, because, like, it is a thing. It is here. It is going to make an impact. In fact, I use ChatGPT to, like, process some of the video script that I ended up, like, Because I needed to write a video script for MopS-A-Palooza's launch, and I fed it some information and it ended up coming up with its own location and dates. And I was like, wow, that's, that's like creepily accurate.

That's crazy.

I'm gonna use that. Um, but I don't know, I, I'd like to see where it's going. I'd like to bring in folks that are tinkering with it and really putting it to use. I think that would be valuable for us. Yeah, but I don't want to just like theorize on its possibilities. I want to see like, you know, Stephen Stouffer, like he's doing some really cool stuff with— yeah, the AI there, right? I'd like to see the practitioner-level stuff.

Then I've seen some people talking about how they're using it to— I don't know that it's necessarily, yeah, creating content, but augmenting or helping them with ideas, right? So yeah, different stuff like that.

What about you, Naomi? AI?

I mean, I feel like it's one of those things where if I say nah, 12 months from now.

Yeah.

So I'm just gonna, I'm gonna be Switzerland. I'll be a little neutral. Like, whatever you guys want.

Wait and see.

Wait and see.

Yeah. I think it'll be good. We could probably, we could probably stand to find a few people that are really putting it into practice. So If you have a plan to put it into practice and you're listening to this, let us know.

Yeah.

Because I'd like to hear how you're making it valuable.

Definitely. Well, cool. Well, I, you know, I think this was fun to look back at '22. It's, yeah, in the grind of doing it, you know, kind of forget about all this stuff that we covered. So it was kind of fun to look back and think about that. So thanks, y'all. Any last thoughts before we wrap it up here?

No, just thank you everybody for listening, uh, for the last 2 years and last year broadly. Really appreciate it. And please submit content ideas yourself. Join us. We would love to talk to you.

Absolutely.

Definitely.

Oh, you know what we didn't cover, Naomi? How about this? So for me, one of the big milestones for me this year was not being on an episode or 2. Which was weird.

Oh yeah.

Oh yes.

How can I forget about that?

Naomi, right?

Like, I know I, I, I, I, I, you know, have big— you left big shoes to fill. So, um, yeah, that was a great experience. Did a women's takeover episode and I just thought it was really great, um, hearing from some women that I really admire and hearing about, you know, their, what they consider to be their superpower and, um, you know, being a woman in this industry and how they navigate some of the challenges that come with that. And yeah, it was great. experience. And, you know, I think they definitely all had a lot of fun. And something that I— one of my— that I felt really great about was, um, you know, one of the guests beforehand, she was like, oh, I'm a little bit nervous, but it's, it's something that, you know, has been on my goal list to be on a podcast and get out of my comfort zone and to do more, you know, external-facing things like this. And I was like, oh, that's awesome that we can be this platform for people to, you know, even check things off their list of to-dos. And I thought that was great. And, you know, I think everybody had a great time, and I thought the episode was really well received.

That is really cool. I love, I love it when we get to end up being a, uh, an outlet for someone in that regard, right? Like, giving them that opportunity. I remember the first time—

Completing their vision board, right? It's on their vision board, and then, you know, we've checked it off for them.

Yeah, so cool.

And I, I I don't always go back and listen to our episodes, and that was one I definitely listened all the way through, and I was— it was, it was great. I learned something from it too.

You had to.

Absolutely, I had to.

So, well, that's the format for next year, right? We're gonna try our best to— if we're not all on every recording, we're each gonna try to reflect back on the previous set of recordings, and you'll get an episode sort of recap. So if you like the TL;DR version of the, uh, of the content sessions we're recording. Hopefully Naomi Hartman and I will be able to give you the TL;DR of like a handful of sessions once a month.

There we go.

It'll be fun.

Cool. Well, thanks y'all again. Happy New Year. Happy New Year to all of our listeners out there. Thank you for allowing us to, uh, you know, get into your ear— head— ear space and, and take up some of your time. We enjoy it. We always enjoy having great guests on. And so if you are interested in any of those themes or topics we talked about, or even something else that might not— we don't have to— there'll be opportunities to fit other things in there as well. But definitely raise your hand, let us know you're interested. Or if you know somebody else who would be a great guest, please let us know that as well. So we're, we're always looking for that. And with that, it's a wrap. Looking forward to a great 2023. Bye everyone.

Bye everybody.

Bye everyone.