Why the Next Generation of CMOs Will Come from Marketing Ops with Richard Wasylynchuk

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, and welcome to another episode of OpsCast brought to you by marketingops.com and powered by all of those MoPros out there. I'm your host, Michael Hartman, flying solo as we're getting closer and closer to the end of 2025. Hard to believe. And close to 5 years of this podcast. So watch for news about that coming up in early 2026. Okay. My guest today is Richard Wasilinchuk. I knew I was going to screw it up, Richard, so you can roast me on that.

Got it.

VP of Marketing Operations at Trulio and currently serving as the interim head of marketing. Richard has lived both sides of the equation, deep operations experience, and now executive level marketing leadership. And we are going to talk about why more future CMOs may come from marketing ops. I'm sure that'll be interesting for everyone who's listening. What's changing in the environment and how ops leaders can prepare themselves for executive roles, even if they never thought that was on the table. So Richard, welcome to the show and accept my apologies for butchering your name.

No, you got it. Thanks for having me.

Yeah, I'm looking forward to this. I know we talked a while ago and I'm grateful that we have guests lined up for enough time that we haven't talked in a while. But so maybe let's start with just the story. Like you stepped into this interim head of marketing role after leading marketing ops. Curious what surprised you about you being the person who got kind of pulled into that role and why do you think that the organization looked at you as an ops leader for that role instead of maybe What I would guess most people would just see like a demand gen leader or something like that, a more general marketing person.

Yeah, I think, like, I think the thing that surprised me most is honestly, it's nothing that I was ever chasing. Like, I never really thought of myself as moving into a marketing leadership role other than, you know, a leader in that ops pillar. My background, you know, I spent a lot of time in demand gen, moved into marketing operations. I even segued into revenue operations and the role before this role at Trulioo, I was a broader biz ops leader. So, you know, owning things like IT, BI. So I've always had a very operational-minded focus. So looking at systems, bottlenecks, enabling teams. So when this first came up, my honest reaction was, really, me? A little tentative, but, you know, when I took a step back, it actually does make a lot of sense. I think ops is really one of the few functions that sees the entire ecosystem from end to end.

Yeah.

So you are thinking through things like data strategy, you're thinking through the funnel, You're thinking through technology, you're thinking through performance and friction points. So, you're not just thinking and focused on what's happening, but why it's happening. And so, I think in moments where there is change and transition, not just internal to an organization, but I think broader in the industry, which I think everybody knows with AI and everything that's going on, like, Things are fundamentally changing and shifting. And I think in those moments, I think companies are really looking for somebody who can bring clarity quickly. And ops leaders are typically trained to think that way and identify root causes very quickly, make sure that there's alignment across teams, build the predictability and the scalability. And those are really A lot of those executive muscles that you need to build. So, you know, when I took a step back, I'm like, okay, yeah, actually maybe this is the natural progression when you're in an ops role. I think, you know, 5 years ago, we probably would've been having a conversation of like, is it even possible to be a VP of operations?

Right.

Of operations at an organization? I think things are moving so quickly now. That yes, like full scale.

There are some, yeah.

Marketing, but even ops, like leaning into your career progression actually is full scale leadership in marketing. Like I think that's a fundamental shift.

I was talking to somebody yesterday and they asked me like, what's my view of marketing ops? And I said, you know, like it's a really interesting question because I hadn't heard it asked that way, right? My initial reaction was like, is this, you know, my family asking me what, at holidays, right? What do you do for work? And have tried to explain that, but it was a slightly different one. And I think of it as, I've always thought of it as an enabler kind of function.

Yeah.

But what I said is like, I think it's more than that and it should be more than that. It should be like a consultant, almost like an internal consultant, because you did, like, to your point, you see across all these different parts of the organization, you have to deal with them. It's part of what I love about it.

Yeah.

And it was, even for me, it was like, I hadn't really thought about it that way. So I think you're right in that respect.

Yeah. And I think it's, it's, you know, the ops function and the leadership that I think companies are looking for from marketing now is a fundamental shift that you have to be a systems thinker, right? Like it's all about scale. It's all about profitability. It's making the right investments.

And you have to think of the ecosystem that you're thinking of trade-offs and yeah. So I wanna kind of drill on that a little bit, but just curious, I'm gonna put you on the spot maybe. Like, were you actually like initially resistant to the idea?

Yes. Funny story. About a year before, somebody on the team had actually said to me, well, you know, like, I think you'd make a great CMO. And I was like, nah, like not something that I really even want. And yeah, like I would say I still have a little bit of resistance to it, but yeah, I think initially there was the resistance of like, I'm happy to pitch in and help out as every ops person is, you know, like we'll get in there and we'll get it done. But there was that level of resistance.

Yeah. Interesting. Yeah. So it's interesting that you brought up that like they're now VP of marketing ops roles, and I think that's right. But at the same time, I also see basically teams of one, right?

Yeah.

And the title doesn't really reflect it, I think. And so I hope that there's more of that. But one of the things that you and I talked about and was kind of the trigger for this conversation was the idea that you believe that future CMOs, that there's a real opportunity for them to come from ops backgrounds. Like, what makes you think that that's the case? And like, you touched on system thinking, but what makes you, because on the one hand, I think you're right. On the other hand, I don't, I still see, I feel like I still see more people going into those marketing, most senior marketing leader role, CMO, head of market, VP marketing, that don't come out of an ops background. So are you seeing something that's changing that I'm not? Just curious.

I, I think I am. And I mean, this is really not evidence-based by any means.

No, I mean, it feels like there's anecdotal stuff all over the place.

Yeah, I think, I think there's a couple of things at play, right? I think, um, you know, coming out of, uh, coming out of COVID I think a lot of things have changed. I think the current economic and political conditions, right? Like the money that was in the market from an investment perspective before COVID was a little fast and free. I think now there's a lot more tied to it. So there is an increasing pressure on the drive for predictability, making the right investments and making sure that you're scaling a business appropriately. And I think Like the old way it was, yeah, let's invest a million bucks in brand, right? Like let's do all the things, let's make the splash. Um, and I think a lot of, um, a lot of marketing leaders in that, that world forgot to pivot, right? So it's great, you're doing a lot of the, the brand work, but then at some point you have to pivot to growth. And I think that's where a lot of leaders that don't have that solid operational background get caught, right? So I think now that there's that focus on profitability and efficient and effective scale, like an ops person is well suited because you are always switching gears, right? And you're always thinking of What do we need to do to get to that level of growth and that predictability and that scale that we need to do? It has to be that balance of growth and brand, right? And they play off of each other. And that's very hard to, if you're not a systems thinker, it's very hard to like measure brand, to understand the impact. To communicate that. So I think, I think an ops person is just wired a bit different from a systems and an ecosystem perspective. And that's really fundamentally in their DNA to be thinking about the data, the funnel, the tech, the workflow, and the economics behind what we're doing, right? So—

Yes.

There are not a lot of other functions in marketing where you're actively having conversations with finance around things like, CAC and margin and investments. So that's already part of a marketing operation, a good marketing operations function. You're already there.

Yeah. It's funny because like what's going through my head right now, and I agree with you on all that, is that I think what gets in the way of many marketers is they get focused on things that, what I would call things that only marketers care about, right? And it ends up becoming about Outputs rather than outcomes.

Yes.

So, and I have a real life example that happened recently actually with someone very close to me. I won't go into details, but where it just, I had to go like, this is fight the fight, but this is something that only a marketer cares about. And if you can get over it, that's good. But it's, you know, you may have to negotiate through that a little bit. So.

Yeah. I, you know, on that point, it's an interesting one because there, Yeah, there's a lot like, it's important for marketing, but it's not really important for anybody else. And I think also like when you're in an ops role, like you have that hat on where you're like, this conversation can't happen over there, right? Like this is just for marketing.

Yes.

I always come back to like, you know, I don't wanna bring it up, but I'm gonna bring it up. Like atrophication.

That was the one I was like, that's exactly my take, right?

That, that word should never be used upstairs, right? Like everybody has a different connotation of what that means and you spend all your energy trying to just corral that conversation. Like attribution is for understanding marketing performance, right? Like that's what we use to base our decisions off of. We don't need to lift that up to an executive level and say, oh, our W-shaped model is telling us that now.

Yeah.

Like, that's way too much.

I had this exact conversation yesterday too, right? It was like, which, like, which attribution model do you care? It was like, okay, here we go. Like, like at the end, I also like, I, I don't think it really matters that much, right? Pick one, stick with it. But more importantly, don't try to avoid taking it outside of marketing. Like, there are better ways to communicate outside of marketing than an attribution model because No one believes it. The math gets complicated. And as soon as something comes out that's an anomaly, people start to question it and it's an uphill battle.

Yep.

Yep. Absolutely. So, okay, so I'm with you on all that, the systems thinking. I do hope that there's some change there in what we start seeing in the market for people getting in those roles. You mentioned, you touched on this a little bit too earlier. You talked about like the unique, somewhat unique perspective that marketing ops folks have. How do you think that also helps for someone who's in marketing ops as being kind of being more prepared for a senior role that goes across all of marketing?

In terms of like having that experience to see Broadly across. Yeah.

Yeah. I think you used the phrase like hub of the wheel, right? Yeah.

I think, you know, I think every, like if I think broader across marketing, every function has a focus and they really are focused on that function, right? So, you know, events person is really about like, how do I execute on this event? You know, webinars, same thing. Ops is the underlay across all of that, right? So you are the one that is seeing all of that connective tissue. And in past ops roles, you know, when you start thinking of the number of touchpoints that we have to have from marketing to get us over to sales and to an opportunity, Like everybody needs to start thinking about the throw, throw to. So like you run a webinar, what are you thrown to next? Right? So I've done a lot of work in the ops framework to say, here's the sequencing of touchpoints that we understand that will get us to that point. And that's not something that you see in, in other functions, right? Like that's typically not how Some of those functions work. I think that is changing with AI and how, you know, marketing is gonna look in a year or 2 from now, right? But I think that, you know, in that ops role, you are that connective framework. So what that opens up and what that unlocks is that visibility allows you to start to understand and make decisions or recommendations that are not biased, that are based on data, that are more a reflection of the reality of the outcome than, hey, I did a great event. Like, it shifts the focus off of we're doing all these great things.

Right.

Right? It's like, really, what is the outcome? So you could have something like a program that's not performing very well, but hey, if that's actually feeding into something else, Maybe there's a use case to keep it, right? And those are the conversations I think and the mindset that come from an ops person versus a program manager that would be, hey, I don't think this is performing well, I'm just gonna cut it.

Yeah, I think it's interesting to me. I think the 2 connective points within an organization that marketing ops tends to have over other marketing functions would be The obvious ones, right? Sales and sales ops.

Yeah.

You know, and I think to your point, right? If we do this thing that's going to generate something, right? So what, right? What's the next, like, how's that tied into the customer journey? The other, and you touched on this, is finance.

Yeah.

And I think I've worked with or run into marketing leaders who I think are pretty good with finance and numbers, but I've worked with probably more, many more. I don't know that I could put a percentage on that are really, they really don't get it. And I think that's, to me, no, our longtime listeners will not be shocked by this. Like, I think that's a real miss and I think it's a really important skill that we should all, everyone should be finding. Do you find like, do you think those are 2? I mean, legal's another one, but like it's—

Legal and product. Yeah, those are big ones.

But I think the sales one, because I think everyone wants to go like, how do you bridge the gap between marketing and sales? There's always friction. I think a marketing ops person, someone with that background is uniquely positioned to have a better chance of understanding where they're coming from.

Yes. Yes. I think that alignment and that connective tissue, It is like the further you get away from marketing, the harder it is for people to get there. So like, if I think of that connective tissue, like we're fairly in lockstep with sales, right? Because that's our handoff, right? But if you get further down the road, like, okay, like we close a deal, we've got a customer up and running. Now we're talking about like margins, payback period, CAC.

Yeah.

Like that, that's further away from where we need to be. So a lot of, I think a lot of ops professionals or marketing in general, like it's, it's very hard to get there or get that exposure because it is further away. But I've always had the, the opportunity to be very close partner with finance.

Me too.

And you know, interesting conversations, right? Because they also don't— finance also doesn't 100% understand the marketing world, right?

Right.

Um, you know, I remember not at, at Trulio, but at a previous organization having, um, a bit of an awkward conversation with a finance team because they wanted to know the conversion from MQL to opportunity. They just wanted the number, right? I'm like, well, it's not one-to-one.

Yeah.

They're like, well, what do you mean? I'm like, well, we can have an account that has multiple MQLs on it. One op.

Right.

How are we calculating this? Right. So I think it's because we're also so far away, like the inverse is the same, right? So when you have junior people in finance that you're talking to, like they also don't have a lot of that exposure. To the guts of marketing and how things work. They often just see— they just see a million bucks on brand. What's going on? Right.

With no, with no, they see all the I, they don't see any of the R in our— Yeah.

Right. Yeah. And so I think there is a, there is a skill in there in operations on how to talk to different areas of the organization in different ways. Like, again, what's important inside of marketing is not going to be important with finance. Right. So you have to figure out like, what is it that, um, that we need to communicate to finance? And it's, it's interesting, like, as I'm saying that, 'cause I never, like, coming from an ops background, like, I never consider myself a storyteller.

Mm-hmm.

But as I'm saying that, I'm like, oh, actually, yeah, you are. Right. Uh, because you have to figure out like, what is the story that we're, we're, or what is it that we're gonna be communicating with finance? It's very different. than talking about program performance.

We had some guests on a couple months ago. One was a senior marketing leader, but both of them were. And the senior marketing leader, we talked about this, like, because my assertion is that there's a lot of marketing leaders out there who are really good at storytelling with everyone except for their own organization. And it was interesting because this guy had been a CMO. He's like, Yeah, like actually the best finance leaders are great storytellers. 'Cause if you listen to how they talk about stuff, if it's a public company in particular, right? To the investors or to the markets, they do a really good job of telling a story about data. And I think that is a, like, it was a really big like, oh wow, like I can't, like I would not have said that. But as I thought about it, I was like, that's actually really, really true.

Makes sense, yeah.

Yeah. So like I tell people all the time, like I do coaching with people who are maybe moving into leadership roles, particularly in ops. And I said, if you don't understand finance, you should start learning the basics and become friends with your finance partner. Like really try to understand what they care about because it'll help you down the road. Yeah.

And they, like my experience with finance, they always want to partner with you, right?

Absolutely.

They always, I mean, Yeah. Yeah. They're always open and they're open to the questions. They're open to understanding. They're open to debate. So it's, you know, I always say that too to people that have been on my team, like you want to make good friends with finance.

Absolutely. Yeah. I mean, otherwise they look at you like you're the ones just writing checks from like nonstop, right? It's, and you don't want to be that person.

Yeah.

Because it'll be really easy to go, if you can't tell the story about what's happening from that money actually going out the door, then it's going to be a really easy target to cut.

Yeah.

When times get tough. And, you know, it's not a fun place to be.

Yes.

So, yeah. Okay. So that's, I think we're on the same page there. Another thing you touched on a little bit ago is this shift. I think the word, the way I would phrase it is like, there's like, especially in the kind of PE-backed early-stage growth companies, like growth at all costs, right? Top line is the most. It feels like what I'm seeing and hearing is that the shift has really been to adding the word profitable, like profitable growth is now what they're looking for. Are you seeing the same kinds of things? And then maybe tying that back to like, how do you think that bodes well for marketing ops folks who are interested in A broader leadership role.

Yeah. I mean, I anecdotally am seeing that with other marketing colleagues, right? Like there's an expectation to be doing more with less, whether it's headcount, whether it's budget. I think again, like fast and free money is gone. You really have to be focused on building something that is scalable and efficient. So I think, you know, there is, I think there's a different expectation from boards as well. Like coming back to, it's not just being able to tell the story, it's being able to measure and prove and show. And I think that is, you know, if you think 5 years ago, marketing ops really was positioned like you're the right hand of the CMO, like you're feeding all the data, you're feeding all the insights. You're making sure like things are operating the way that they should be. Like it should have been a natural progression that the right hand moves in, right? So I just think that with that focus on efficiency, I also think with the seismic shift now with AI and not just in marketing, but how businesses as a whole operate, Like everybody is going to have to be dealing with that. How do you, how do you drive more efficiency? How do you focus on the right things? And again, that comes back to ops. Like we've been sitting in that world for years, right? Like attribution, how do we measure this? What's the data strategy? Do we understand what's going on? What are the sequences? What are the patterns? What are the signals versus what's the noise, right? Like, yeah, all of those things that we've been dealing with. lean in heavily to how do we make sure that we're doing things the right way. And, you know, coming into the, the, this role, like we also had to do a restructure, right? And that was very like, for me, I've, I've had to do that in previous roles as well as the ops person where a CMO is coming to you to say, where can we find money?

Yeah.

Where do we find the money? Where do we find the money that's not going to impact our KPIs, or it's going to have the minimal impact on KPIs? But then also like both from a people and capacity standpoint, like, are we maxed out or we not maxed out? Like, that's always been a question that a CMO would feed to an ops person.

Yeah.

And so I think like we're already there. We've been there for years. So it only makes sense that like we should be that natural lift into the leadership role because we, we are well suited. We have the muscle.

Yeah. I, I, I tell people often, I'm like, I'm creative, but not in the way people think of marketers as being creative. I'm creative in how, like how to maximize the, like the limited resources we have, people, money, you know, solutions, whatever.

Yeah. It's a different, it's a different level of creativity, right? I'm glad you brought that up because most people don't think that ops people are creative. I mean, we're a special bunch, yes, but there is a lot of creativity, right? And I think about, you know, like when a project completes, like you're already spinning through, how would I have done this differently? Like, where could we have been better if we're going to do it again? And that's a lot of creativity to think through that.

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I like, I go back to my, before I was in ops, I did IT consulting. At one point, I kind of was an architect for a very boutiquey kind of software platform. And I always was thinking about, well, longer story is like, there was somebody on the team who was really, really creative, like came up with really cool stuff, but they, like, there were always holes in the solution. So I was always the one closing the holes, but he always, like, I loved it. Like it was a good partnership, but like I was always looking for how can we be more efficient, you know, like optimizing stuff. And I think that's what you're talking about.

Yeah.

And then if you get into like somebody comes to you and says, that's another thing I coach to, you know, be ready to answer the question, where would I cut X amount? Or if you're lucky enough, like what would you spend the next dollar on? Like those are questions that you should be thinking about.

Or haunt.

Yeah, things that are like that. I mean, I think that's a good skill to have.

Yeah.

So I'm curious, you talked about you had to do a restructure. Like how did you, how do you think you thought about structuring it? I assume there was some, a little, some of that was maybe cutting. I don't know. You didn't really say that. Maybe that's what you meant, but also like maybe it was moving roles around or shifting things. Like how did you, how do you think you approached it differently than like, Maybe I'll call it a traditional CMO with a different kind of background.

Yeah, I think the fundamental difference is just in that ops mindset, like you're thinking about the outcome, not the action, right? So rather than thinking we need this title, we need this title, we need this title, it's taking that step back and saying, what is the organization asking us to support? And then how do we set up the system to support that? Whether that's people, whether that's a new type of role, you know, with, you know, the impacts of AI, right? Like, I think as I'm starting to take a step back and the way we restructured really was we needed to make some room to rebuild the right function for the organization. And as we're doing that, like, it's a very different profile that we're looking at. Like, everything has to have a flavor of AI, right? But I think also, like, as you're thinking through the future of marketing, it's no longer gonna be, I just do this function, right?

Right.

Like, I think you need to, as a marketer, broaden what you're bringing to the table, right? And thinking Like we had a session with a team yesterday, a workshop, and I was like, listen, like we have a very exciting opportunity in front of us right now to re-envision how we work as a marketing team, right? And again, if you're thinking of like who's great to lead that, it's probably the ops leaders because you understand the connectivity, right? So if somebody in their function is like, I don't think we should do this, you're already thinking, oh yeah, but over there, that's where the impact is gonna be, or that over there, or, you know, like now we're gonna create some friction points somewhere else. Not necessarily.

This is like, I think at one point this was called the T-shaped marketer, right? And I think what's going through my head is like marketing ops folks were sort of forced to do that. Just because of the nature of the role.

Yep. Yep. 100%. 100%. So, you know, like, I think, I think it really, you know, like, as I'm like re-envisioning and as I'm interviewing people, you know, I was interviewing for a product marketer and I was like, okay, how is AI gonna change product marketing? As an interview question, right? And it's, you know, the answers are very interesting, right? But I think, marketing in general is going through a pretty seismic shift in how it's operating.

Yeah. And I think maybe this is where you were going to is like, there's a little bit of, you've almost gotta be a little bit of an architect for change.

Yeah.

And so understanding how all these things work together and where things could break down and how to kind of minimize that risk and all that. Those are like things that the best marketing ops folks think about naturally to some degree or forced to. That's really interesting. Are there any, I mean, I don't wanna put you on the spot too much, but are there any particular titles or roles that you think are unique to what you've structured or?

We ha— I wouldn't say that we've like changed the titles per se, but the profiles are very different. So, you know, if you're looking for a content marketer, I'm like, well, how are you— like, my first question is gonna be, how are you leveraging AI?

Yep.

You know, when we did the restructure, I giggle on this one a little bit. When we did the restructure, yes, we did have to part ways with some people. And we had a capacity constraint and a lot of pressure from the business. And in the space of a couple of hours, I wrote a 12-page white paper and I'm not a writer.

Right.

Like that's the fundamental shift that's happening right now. So like if we are gonna hire a content marketer and we've got an FTE capacity, What are you doing with AI? And then what does that, like, this, the space you're saving, what are you filling that up with? Right. So, um, that, that profile is shifting. Have the, the titles themselves changed?

Not really, but, um, the expectations are, are different.

Yeah. And, and that will change, right? Because, you know, like, what, what are you filling up if you get, 50% efficiency using AI as a content producer, like, what are you doing with other 50%? Now, is it a, like, does it become a hybrid role? Like, you know, like a lot of these things are, are very fluid right now. Like we are having discussions. It's even like, like where does customer marketing sit?

I'm glad that you're even just talking about it because I think a lot of organizations focus so much on You know, new, new logo. New.

Yeah. Which is a miss, uh, in my opinion, right? Like a lot of organizations I've been with, yeah, marketing budget, new, go new.

When I got into marketing, that was in the heyday of when everyone would say like the cost to acquire new customers way higher. Like, I don't remember the, the multiplier compared to retaining a customer. Like, you guys, I, I don't think that's really fundamentally changed. Yeah. Right. So it's a miss in my book for the companies that aren't thinking about it.

Yeah.

I'm curious, there's, this is a little bit of an aside as a, in your hiring philosophy, like one that I say a lot is that I would hire for attitude over aptitude pretty much everywhere. So in other words, like I want someone who is coachable, willing to learn, will work hard. Like those are not skills, right? Versus aptitude, which I think of as skills. Do you, because I think it can teach a lot of that. I mean, there are certain roles where there's gotta be a, like a minimum, but after that it's like, I've seen people who maybe didn't have all the skills I really wanted for, but I could tell like the attitude was there and they've just, you know, done great. Do you think about that at all when you're hiring?

Yes. Uh-huh. 100%. Like it, it, um, Yeah, like for a role, there's the baseline of skills that you need, right? So like you're not gonna get to the interview if you don't seemingly have the baseline of what we're looking for. But I think really what goes a long way is the soft skills, the EQ, being able to understand and make the connections within an organization or within the team. You can, you can skill, you can upskill people, right? Like you can teach somebody new tricks if they don't like those, those, um, those EQ traits are very, very, very hard to, to train somebody up on, right? Like if somebody doesn't have self-awareness, like that's going to be a very hard challenge.

And, and, and I agree and I disagree. I think, I think, I think it's, it may be, it's I think you, as a leader, you can't just give up, right? I think there's—

No.

It doesn't mean that somebody is going to be the best, but I think people can become more proficient to the point where I almost sort of recoil at the idea of the term soft skills because they're just skills.

I mean, that's, I mean, we could probably do a whole session on that. Um, I, yeah, I agree. Either you can train people up on soft skills, but I think, uh, you know, coming back to what you said, like that, that openness, right? I think maybe that's what I'm sort of referring to in the self-awareness, right? Like if you don't recognize that you don't have those soft skills, um, when you get feedback and— Are you open to that? You get into a very uncomfortable space with your direct reports. Like, I have somebody on my team that is very open to the feedback and desperately wants to upskill their soft skills. And it's great, right? Like—

There's so much you could do with that. So much you could do with that.

Yeah, like, there's— it's exciting because, like, there is so much you can do and you can see the progress. Versus somebody who may not have an understanding that their soft skills aren't quite where they need to be. And when you have those conversations, they're closed off. That's—

They get defensive. Yeah. Yeah, totally.

To your point, good point that they are soft skills, right? So you should be able to train people or coach people on soft skills.

Yeah. I mean, I've even got to the point, like just that baseline skills, I've tried to get it as like low that bar as as I can. The simple one is like, if the default job description says must have a college degree, if I can get the HR team to agree to take that off as a hard requirement, I will do it. Yeah.

Well, I mean, what is— yeah, I'm of the same opinion, right? Like, I mean, there are certain jobs where you do need that level of education, but Um, yeah, it's, it's, uh, if, if you took that off, yeah, it is arbitrary, right? Like if you took that off and you didn't see that in an application, would you be able to determine it through the interview process? I mean, depending on the role, maybe.

I think then that's when experience takes over, right? Yeah. It's not that, um, it's kind of like, to me, it's, um, it's a little bit like certifications in which I don't necessarily give a whole lot of stock in those, but they do, like all things being equal, it shows a level of commitment to craft or to like learning that I think does speak to it.

Yeah.

Plus I would also be a bit hypocritical because I have very few certifications and—

As a guy who has a lot of certifications, it's just, I don't know, I'm stubborn and competitive, so I'm always like, I need to get one. It, I think, yeah, to your point, it is an indication of commitment to your craft. But I will say like a lot of those certification exams are just about how you take a test.

Yeah.

Not what you know. Right. So, um, and, and I place more value on the practical experience, right? Because just because you have a cert does not mean you know what you're doing.

Yeah. So one of the things I think we didn't quite talk about this, but we touched on it. I think this bit is like the point I made, like the only things that marketers care about is a little bit of, it feels like there's a lot of marketers who their ego is tied into what they produce, right? And what they create and works or not. Like, how do you think that is? I mean, I'm proud of the work I do too, and I'm self-critical and all those things, but do you think that there's a little bit of a different mindset?

Yeah.

That you see generally, this is all generalizations of course, between marketing ops professionals and call it general marketers? Yes.

So it's, you know, it's interesting, like marketing tends to, you know, you're attracting creatives, you're attracting people who wanna build things. My undergrad, talking about degrees, my undergrad degree was actually in fine arts in visual communications. Um, and I, I go back to like week over week you're doing critiques where you're putting your work up on the board and people are tearing it to shreds, right? Um, and you start to develop a thick skin, right? But a lot of people don't have the benefit of going through that, that process. Um, and I think when you're creative and you put all of that effort in, um, your identity gets attached to that artifact. And so, when people start to give you feedback on that artifact, it can become very personal.

Yeah.

And I think, you know, when you come back to an ops mindset, it's not necessarily about the artifact, it's about what's happening with the artifact, right? So, you're again, like conflict resolution, stay away from the emotions, focus on the data, right? Like, an ops role, you're breaking that cycle because you're like, okay, like let's look at what it did. You could have an artifact that people are like, oh my God, it's the best thing we've done ever. And it falls flat. It doesn't perform, right?

Yeah.

So again, it's that shift from activity to outcome. It's the neutrality of looking at how that's supporting scale and really delivering the outcomes for the business that we're looking for.

Yeah. And that is, it's funny because I think about when I was running search marketing for an organization and I see this a lot where people get caught up in, is the grammar correct in the ad, you know, the copy and especially on search. Like I have found more, probably equal, right? Where good, well-written, good grammar performs well and times when Shitty grammar, right? Poor punctuation, misspellings actually works as well or better.

Yep.

And so to me, like, I don't care.

Yeah.

Like, I just, and I also think about, this is, I think, another mindset thing that I think about, 'cause I've had to coach very often in marketing teams where I see, you know, there's a lot of pressure to get a lot of stuff out and it's, you know, people get frustrated. It takes too long. Why hasn't it gone out? Blah, blah, blah, blah. And when I look at it, you go like, the process is broken internally. We've got way too many people involved or too many review processes. And I say, what I tell people is like, you need to start thinking about these in different levels of review, right?

Yeah.

So if you've got something like a search ad that you could literally change in seconds, why are you spending so much time trying to get it perfect? Because it'll never be that way.

Yeah.

Like, get it out there fast and learn from it, adjust, cut it, Modify it. And I think if you think, I think if they thought about it differently, right?

Yeah.

I think that's like, there's this, this, to your point, this ego is caught up in the perfection.

Yeah. It's perfection over progress.

Yeah.

Yeah. And then you can get caught in it. Right. And I think, but I think also like part of that is, is providing the psychological safety for the team to make mistakes. Right. Like, When you're talking about that approval process, like, yeah, we, we get in our own way. I like, at every organization that I've been at, we get in our own way, right? Like, so what I try and do is, is, uh, make sure everybody knows, like, I got your back, right? If shit hits the fan, like, I'll stand in front of it. Yeah, I'll take it, right? Uh, I just—

My only, my only ask there is, like, just try to give me some warning that it's coming.

Yeah, I was just about to say that. I'm like, you just need to give me a heads up, right? Because the last thing I want is, like, wait, What now? Like, I have no idea what's going on here. Um, so like, you know, already in the last couple of months I've seen the team where, where they're like, do I need to? And I was like, no, just do it, right? Like, we, we want to run fast. You know, all organizations are, we want to run fast, we want to do this, but then everybody wants to get involved. I'm like, you want to go fast, you go alone. If you want to go far, you go together, right? Like, so it's that balance.

Yes.

There are certain things that we need to do together. But yeah, like a search ad, just go, right? Like, yeah, we're also like, as we're trying to figure out ways to better harness what's going on with LLMs and search and, you know, we're getting into Reddit and, and I had somebody on the team, they're like, well, can I just start responding to posts? I was like, yeah, right? Like, just go, right? Like it, but like, just keep me in the loop. So yeah, something does hit the fan, like I can get in front of it.

Mm-hmm.

But yeah, like you want to, as a leader, you want to provide that psychological safety and everybody understand that, yeah, okay, you got my back. But that also rests on having that level of open communication.

Richard, I wish we could keep going, but I think I have to cut it off. I feel like we barely just touched the surface of some of this stuff and we didn't even get into a real debate about hiring. But, you know, this has been, I think, really fascinating and I would encourage, hopefully this is encouraging to the people who are in marketing ops wondering like, what's the career path for me? Is it always going to be in this ops thing? Could it be something broader? Because I think there's a lot of potential there and I hope that there's some marketing leaders or just business leaders in general who start to pay attention to this because I don't feel like it's quite there yet. It's getting there, I think there's a lot of potential.

Yeah.

So why don't we end here? 2 questions for you. Was there any other things that we didn't touch on that you might want to just think about this for the people? And then after that, maybe what's, if people wanted to kind of continue the conversation maybe with you or at least understand, learn more about what's going on in your world, what's the best way for them to do that? I'll leave those 2 questions and we'll wrap up.

Yeah, I think the first one is, is, um, yeah, I would agree with you. Like, we're not quite there where it's like, oh, the ops career path is a shoe in a CMO. Um, I think there is hope though. Like, I think a couple of years ago, you know, I'd start to see a lot of ops people move on from ops, which is really unfortunate, right? You see people go back to demand gen.

I know of one person who's actually has been a guest who got out of marketing altogether and is doing like bookkeeping.

Yeah.

Accounting.

Yeah. And I think that I honestly, like, I think the burnout is real, like post-COVID, but I do hope this offers a little bit of hope for everybody, right? That there is progression in ops and keep fighting the good fight. In terms of getting ahold of me or wanting to talk more, like connect with me on LinkedIn. I'm always happy to have a quick coffee chat or what have you. Or Michael, if you want to do round 2, doing another episode.

So we should plan on that in 2026. How about that? Yeah.

See where I've ended up.

Yeah, there we go. We could do that. That would be great. Richard, thank you so much. I think this would be a great— I do. I think it would be encouraging for our listeners, especially as we're kind of heading into the end of the year and getting ready for next year. So thank you for that. Appreciate it. Thanks to our audience out there for continuing to support us. If you have ideas for topics or guests where you want to be a guest like Richard, please feel free to reach out to Naomi, Mike, or me, and we'd be happy to get the ball rolling on that. Until next time, bye everybody.