My Marketing Ops Journey with Carissa McCall

In this episode we talk with Carissa McCall about her journey through roles in sales/inside sales, customer success and customer success operations, product marketing, and channel partnerships before landing in marketing operations.

Carissa shares lessons about:

• Self-awareness – knowing what kind of work she enjoyed (and didn’t)
• Being opportunistic and persistent
• Leveraging resources to learn about new topics

If you are new to Marketing Ops or just considering it, you can get some inspiration from Carissa.

Recorded Live

Hi, I’m Michael Hartmann, I’m Naomi Lou, and I’m Mike Rizzo. And this is ops cast, a podcast for marketing ops pros and rev ops pros created by the MO Pros. The number one community for marketing operations. As 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 the MO Pros. I’m Michael Hartmann joined today as mostly usual with Binameer Lou and Mike Rizzo. Mica hosts, please say a low. Everyone. This is actually take two a, which you’re not here, I guess, take one. Michael, Michael accidentally stop recording.

So this is calling me out on it and it’s only appropriate. So I guess the last one we’ll record before we will pass full year since we’re on January 13th. So we’re not experts yet. Good point. Yes, no, not at all. Not at all. So, uh, we are not in the, in the class with, well, I don’t even have a name, other big name podcast hosts because he knows what that would do.

Um, so, but today we’ve got another person joining us to tell her story about how she got into marketing opposites. Joining us today to tell us about that journey into marketing Optus, Chris and McCall. Who’s currently a marketing operation specialist at stream. Chris’s path to marketing ops is a unique, like many are.

And that prior to her role, she held roles in sales, inside sales, customer success, and customer success operations, as well as product marketing and channel partnerships. Carissa, thanks for joining us today. Hi, super happy to be here. All right. So, uh, as I did outlined in the, in the intro, right, your path to marketing ops was not a straight line for sure.

So why don’t you, why don’t you start with sort of an overview of your career path and how you ended up in marketing ops today? So, um, whenever. Started thinking about this? I actually, it was, it was a bit amusing, uh, for myself when I looked back as far as like where I started in college and things like that.

So I was studying marketing, uh, with a minor in like retail management. I thought I wanted to do marketing for like a department store or something that was kind of like my vision in college. And then, um, I also had like, A minor in classical studies, you know, like Greek mythology, Roman mythology, lots of fun, stuff like that, but that’s another story for another time.

And then, uh, once I graduated, my first job out of college was that like a Florida Gators clothing store. I’m a Florida Gator alum. So naturally I thought that was my first step into a retail. And I was an assistant manager. It was actually my part-time job during college. Graciously hired me after I graduated.

Um, and then I, it only took one holiday season before I was a little bit of miserable being away from my family because I was working on holidays. Um, that made me realize I wanted to do just something else. For once in my life, I didn’t have a plan for anything. Um, and I didn’t know what I was going to do.

So I just started applying to like every like nine to five office job that I could possibly find I had no preference. I almost got a job as like, um, an insurance sales agent. Like it was just, anything was on the table and for whatever reason, the day that. The offer to do like the insurance sales job. I just turned it down.

I don’t know why I wanted that job so badly. And then whenever I got it, I was like, Ugh, I just, I dunno, it doesn’t feel right. I’m not going to do it. So I kept applying, kept applying. Then I saw this sales job at a tech company pop up and I was like, Hm, tech sales. Okay. I don’t even know what that even means because I don’t understand.

Like, I didn’t understand what SAS even was at the time. Um, but I put it in an application. Filling out a ton of applications and they call me back and they were like, well, you know, the role that you actually applied for was a little bit more senior. Um, it was for an account exec job and they’re like, but we have like a business development representative job.

And I’m like, what? In my mind, I’m like, I don’t even understand what that even is, but okay, sure. You know, I’ll, I’ll interview for it. And so I got the job, it was super like entry level at like, and I. Thought like this is fine. Like I’m just talking to people. I’m writing emails, I’m making phone calls. Um, and then I realized a few months, like maybe six months into it that I didn’t actually really enjoy talking to people all that much from like a sales perspective.

Um, I enjoyed writing the emails. I enjoyed testing new cadences. I enjoyed writing out the processes that we were, um, Showing other BDRs when they were coming onto the team, like documenting everything. And I loved that. Um, and so I’m like, okay, well, you know, maybe I shouldn’t be doing sales. Maybe I should, you know, I got a marketing degree, maybe I should be in the marketing department.

So I was like, okay, I’ll just, I’ll wait till the job opens up in the marketing department here, you know, at the same company. And, uh, I’ll, I’ll try to do that. And so they had a roll over. That was for tech partnerships. And I’m like, really don’t know what that is either. Uh, but that sounds cool. And it was just, again, like, you know, talking to people, it was, um, kind of forming relationships between other companies that had a similar use case to us.

So really it was off page SEO, right. There was a, um, backlink exchange, domain authority play. And once again, I didn’t really enjoy talking to people all that much. I really enjoyed. Kind of organizing my spreadsheet and kind of finding different ways to. Reach out to people, but I wanted other people to help me actually do the reaching out park.

Right. So it was, it wasn’t the actual doing it, but it was the structuring. It was the organizing. It was like kind of building my forecasting. So I thought to myself, if I reach out to a hundred people a week and I get 10 answers and I get five yeses and I get to like, Solidified tech partnerships. Like I was like building a funnel and that was like the most fun part because I, it was just like, it was a math problem to me at that point.

And, um, I absolutely loved that job and I did it. About a year. And then, um, they needed at the same company, they needed somebody to kind of fix up the affiliate partnerships and like customer customer reviews and like reputation management stuff. And I was like, okay. It’s like messy. It’s something else for me to organize.

Cool. Um, and so it was really just like checking leads as they were coming in. I love the recurring theme here, by the way, like there’s a mess, I’m organizing it. And, and now I’m going to look for something else to try to do. This is a mess I’m organizing myself. And then they asked me to do this thing because I’m really organized and know it, but like, I w so she’s like a first responder, right?

She’s going to fire, not away from it. It’s so good. And I think for any, anyone listening to this, like, as if you’re not sure if you’re. Going to go into a marketing officer role or not like this is so clear, like every step of your journey, it was clear to me that you probably found a really happy spot in your life.

Now, marketing ops, rev, ops, whatever you end up in. Like, it sounds like you’re in where you should be. This is, this is good. Anyway, I cut you off bit recurring theme. So you got to organize the chaos of reviews is what. Fun because it was my first actual exposure to ops because I got to partner with customer success ops in order to get like our NPS, um, and seeing kind of what customers we’re good to reach out to and ask them if they were okay with leaving us a review on G2.

Tara or wherever, and which ones actually needed to be routed and flagged by their account manager that needed a little bit more love. Right. So that was kind of my first experience with customer health scores, um, which was just, it was kind of like seeing that in that like a real, like. Environment for the first time.

And I’m like, this is really cool. I don’t know. This is super technical and I don’t understand any of this, but this is super cool. Um, and I D I only did that for a few months cause I had to talk to customers all the time and I got super burnt out. Um, And I was just like, okay, I really, really liked the structure part of doing this though.

Maybe I should look for something like this. And so I started like, kind of looking outside the company, looking for something that maybe even at like a, I ended up at a smaller tech company, like another small startup that they needed someone to be an account, both an account manager. And kind of like that ops minded person at the same time to build out like the processes because it wasn’t built yet.

And so that’s how, like the job was pitched to me. And I was super excited about that. I’m like, am I super excited being an account manager? Like, yeah, whatever. But like I get to, I get to make things like it took processize like and operationalize things. And it was kind of my first real experience with that.

And. It turned into this whole thing where not only was I writing out, like, you know, when we should be sending like, like organizing customer gifts at the end of the year and, um, doing QPRs and writing out like what that QBR process should look like and how often we should check in with people. And.

Doing like a product. Oh my gosh. That was my first real, like setting up an email and doing a product newsletter send from HubSpot for the first time it was a wreck. It was awful. Um, but I learned so much and I was so happy to be doing it. Um, and it was just, it was, it was nice. And it sounds like we need to have you on a MOOCs episode.

Oh really? Is there a story there? Did you make a mistake? You don’t have to do was, oh, I th I mean, I didn’t. Steak, but it took me like three emails. I mean like three days to stop the emails from breaking during my testing, because I had no idea what I was doing, like three straight days of like working on it.

So, um, but yeah, so that’s kind of a little side story. There brings back memories to like, when I sent my first email for the company that I had worked with previously, um, in my first real marketing ops role and, you know, just like the sweaty palms and the. You know, waking, I think all marketing ops folks can attest to, at some point in the middle of the night you wake up, it’s like 2:00 AM.

And you’re like, did I check those links? Is there an unsubscribe? Like, did I, yeah. You’re like, am I sending this at the right time? And you like, literally drag yourself out of. Like, I guess I can’t see without contacts. I’m like, oh my computer bright light. Double-checking all the links, resending myself approved, like, is this right?

And then just like having like

that classic 4:00 AM, you know, every single person knows exactly what I’m talking about. Oh, yeah. I feel like we have to like anyone who’s listening to this is thinking like, again, going back to it, you know? Yeah. Do I want to do ops, like so far listening to Chris, that makes it sound like, you know, this is maybe the right path for me.

If I’m tearing in and this sounds appealing, but then Naomi dropped that on us and we’re like, oh, I don’t even know do I did it, but the people who do this, like they care about this too. So I think they’re going to like that, like,

Um, so like I, um, so I did that for a while. I got to work really closely with like, um, a product team and trying to build like an internal billing tool throughout all of this. So it was like, I felt like I was doing like five jobs, five jobs at once. And I was so exhausted all the time. And I just wished I was like, as I was doing this, I’m like, I kind of want to do all these things, but like, I mean, I’m still not using my, I was still like, at that point in my life where I was like, why am I not using my marketing degree?

And I’m like asking myself, like, why are you not using your degree? Like, what are you doing this? Isn’t like, uh, like building processes is like, not a real job because I just didn’t understand what ops was at the time. And so I’m like, okay. I, I think I’m done with this. I’m too exhausted all the time. Like, you know, startup life is hard.

We all know that. Um, So I started looking for jobs at a marketing agency. I was like, I’m going to, I’m going to learn like PPC. I’m going to do like where you would get less tired. And then you learned that was just as exhausted. Well, here’s the funny thing is that I get. And I tell them, I’m like, you know, I really like, I’ve done all these.

I’ve done such a different variety of things. It’s like ridiculous at this point. Um, I want to learn new stuff still. I think I really want to like lean into PVC and like learn how to do that. And then I, I want to learn, uh, like technical SEO too. And then a couple of months after being there, this agency.

They start taking on operations like clients and operations projects. And so not only are they like the standard, like, you know, digital marketing agency, they do websites, um, standard like marketing agency type of services. They also have this operation like outsource operations. And I’m just like weird.

Okay. Um, I kind of want to help with that. Can I, can I help with that? So they, not only did I get to do it, but I got to do ops for different, you know, different clients, different projects for marketing, for sales and customer success. I got to experience all three and I was like, this is really cool. Like, this is where I live.

Like, this is where I’m happiest. And so, um, they got to the point where they needed to like hire a rev ops strategist, um, for the team. And I looked at that job description and I was like, okay, the years required on this, not me. I don’t have enough years yet, but I read the rest of it. And I was like, okay, this is it.

Like, this is all of this. Like all the marketing, the sale. Like I. I really liked all of it. All of it felt good. And so I just wanted to figure out how I could do that full time. So I just started researching, like, I was like, what skills do I need to have to become this person? I know I’m not this person yet, but I really want to be this person.

Like, and I just became obsessed. And I was just researching all the skills that I needed, like hard skills, soft skills, everything. And throughout that research is when I came. Upon the, um, the job, the marketing ops job at stream. And I read that description and I was done. I was like, yeah, that’s it like, that’s the job.

That’s, that’s what I place for you. Yeah. And so, yeah, I have so many questions for you now. So let me start with, I’m gonna start with one just because I think there’s one overlap in my, my career path to that was with yours, where I did some work in sales. And I always think that in that, that. Is that a part of the lens of how I look at marketing ops is because I’ve been in sales and that connection with sales is so important.

I’m just happy you think your experience in sales and then customer success. Right? How does, how do you think that has affected or kind of informs what you do when it comes to marketing ops? It gives me empathy. Like we need the empathy, empathy full stop, right? I, yeah. I really feel that that’s what we need to like be.

Like, that’s how you connect the departments is by trying to like understand them all. And I actually quite literally understand all three of those perspectives because I had to do it. Um, and that’s how it, that’s how it affects like my job day-to-day because like, if I’m hearing like a pain point, I’m like, okay, what can we do?

Like in like the marketing department to make that. You know, like to not, um, make anybody’s lives in any other department, more difficult, but rather to like elevate it and like, you know, make things better. All right. Yeah, I think in the shoes I don’t know about, I don’t know about you, Michael and Naomi, but I’m I’m too.

I had the pleasure of, um, our mentorship kind of automated matching program. We have at MO Pros Karissa’s in, and I had the pleasure of, of getting a chance to talk to Chrissa. Uh, just the other day. But I feel like I’m now hearing this through yet another, um, kind of different view. And as I’m, I’m able to see, you know, our list there’s no, we can see each other.

I feel like I’m watching Naomi and Michael, and I’m wondering if you’re thinking the same thing I am with. Carissa, you’re probably gonna get like, uh, I don’t know, at least a dozen calls from recruiters and hiring managers, this interview, if they listened to this cause like your insatiable curiosity and the way for someone who’s come up into marketing ops and you’re, you’re still pretty, you know, new into it.

Right. You actually say a lot of things that demonstrate you haven’t understand. That frankly, for how early you are in your, in your journey right now, I’m kind of, my eyes are kind of going, wow, you you’re, you’re, you’re using some terminology that I didn’t, I wouldn’t have expected you to just throw around.

Uh, and I’ve been looking for people who I’m trying to hire. Right. And the first quality I always look. It’s curiosity, always questioning things, not always going after the status quo, like, you know, all of that stuff. So I totally agree. Yeah. So, so for you, Chris, uh, kudos on that, uh, for listeners insatiable curiosity, curiosity can be really useful.

I’m paying my, the kind of the way I think about it. Like, we need people with certain levels of aptitude, but nothing can re like you can’t really without the right attitude. Right. So I’ll take people with the right attitude and want to learn who are curious or willing to try stuff, not afraid to fail all that kind of stuff every time.

Right. As long as they have the basics, because I know that if they, if they’ve got all that they can, could teach and learn anything. So. I agree, Mike. Yeah. I was probably had that in back of my head too. That’s such a kind of compliment two years. No, no, uh, yeah, no reason to, um, to be worried about where you’re going next.

If you keep that curiosity up, uh you’re you’re gonna find yourself in some pretty awesome places, but I am curious, like, you know, you talked a little bit about. Um, researching skills, soft skills, all of those things. Um, did you end up coming upon any that really helped move the needle for you or are helping move the needle for you in your kind of career trajectory right now, as you step into this role at stream and the prior roles that you kind of moved out of?

I, I felt like I read so many things cause I, I. And you know how there’s like there’s sales hacker for like, you know, sales and then there’s, um, like I feel like for revenue operations, I read a lot of content from Clary. Um, it’s just like finding like something that speaks to you that you, you want to keep listening to watching reading, like whatever it is.

So there’s a couple like those that I mentioned that I really liked. But honestly, I was combing through so many websites at that time, like trying to consume so much and I still do that. I don’t even always pay attention to wherever. ’cause I just, I will read for hours at a time, which sounds a little obsessive and it’s because it is, but, so, so through all this, through, through the journey to getting to where you are, is there a particular like skill set that you honed in on?

Like you, you talked about learning PPC and technical SEO and things like that. Is there a particular skillset that you have acquired or are acquiring now that you feel like is really starting to. Yeah. So I think I really clung to trying to understand workflows and report. The most, um, and understanding where like data was connected.

So whenever I wasn’t sure, like kind of what direction I wanted to go in, whether it was like marketing ops, sales ops, or customer success ops, um, I kind of clung to Salesforce a lot and studying like Salesforce admin related material. Because to me, the way that I look at that system is that it has been around for so long.

Whenever you look at how Salesforce is structured, It, every marketing automation platform, every sales platform, almost everything is a derivative of Salesforce. And so that is how I kind of studied all of those things. And that’s how I learned. So now when I step into almost any platform, I can get acclimated a little bit quick, like a little bit quicker, I think, um, because I tried to understand the structure of how that was built.

Um, if that makes sense. Oh yeah. That, that makes tons of sense. I think that’s a really strong recommendation for folks. Yeah. Well, you use Mike, you, you honed in on the same, same followup question I had about like, where did she go for researching? So I want to go down a little bit of a different path on your career.

Um, cause I don’t think I picked up on this along the way, but you know, uh, maybe there’s a little bit like, but were there certain. Were there any people that you, you know, who you had as mentors or people who you worked with, or for that were big influences on how you made some of these decisions along the way and your.

Yeah, definitely. Definitely. Um, I had some really good managers, really good coworkers, really good friends along the way. Cause I mean, I think when I was at that first tech company and I was doing all these different it’s like they needed someone to like untangle something that someone else didn’t want to touch.

And I was like, I’ll do it. Like, it was just like that. I had a manager, tell me one time, whenever I was having a really bad day. And I felt like I wasn’t really good at anything because I didn’t think to myself, like, oh, I can really make a living out of being really process-oriented and really structured and really like untangling things.

And she said, she told me that I was the person who, you know, took the tangled, likes out of the box and made them pretty again. And that like stuck with me. And I like kind of, I follow that, like that follows me and I will still like say that every way everywhere I go. Um, because it kind of makes sense actually, it’s things that like have been tucked away and, you know, like whether it’s a messed up Google sheet or it’s a messed up database or something like, people just don’t want to touch it because it seems like this box that is so.

Rough and, um, messy and scary that people were just like, you know, it’s probably just best to like, not bother with that. And I’m like, no, that sounds like fun. I’ll do it.

There’s a lot of people sticking with the sticky, with a theme there for a second. There’s a lot of people who would look at that tangled light box and be like, I’m going to go buy a new box of lights, guilty as charged. I mean, that’s true in tech too. They’re like, you know what? This MarTech like this, this Marquetto environment looks like chaos.

I’m just going to buy a new one. And that’ll be easier. I do love a good, like burn it all down if it’s absolutely necessary, but I will always try to salvage things first. Um, because I feel like if someone built it to begin with like it, there has to be something valuable in it. Otherwise it wouldn’t have worked to whatever degree it was working for as long as it worked.

Right. You’re assuming. Okay.

So part of it might’ve don’t know until you like really, really go through it, but yeah, that’s, that’s true. Assume I made it into the system. Yeah, that means my form works fab.

Um, but, um, but as far as like, there was, and then there were a couple of other people that were just like, especially I I’ve been, um, I think I was so unsure of myself for so long that, you know, I had a couple people reminded me sometimes that being organized is a super power that it sounds so simple, but not everybody has it.

And like don’t minimize. Um, and then I got told that a couple of different times by a couple of different people. So yeah, there are definitely people that kind of helped guide me in like a really simple, but like very empowering way. Well, now you’ve just guided a bunch of our listeners to feel empowered by their ability to organize things.

We talk a lot about project management here, so probably not enough, probably not enough. That’s true. So let me, uh, okay. Flip the script a little bit, you know, you, you can achieve make the, may the step into marketing ops versus some of those are options. So then you talked about a lot about some of the sales roles and other roles where you were interacting, you know, have to do a lot of calls and like, but are there parts of those other roles that now that you’re sort of full in, on marketing ops that you miss like that you wish you still had the ability to do?

Occasionally, at least. Genuinely nothing. No, I, uh, all of every time I’ve had a new job, it’s been a little bit better than the last one, which is what do we hope for, right. But all the favorite parts of all the previous jobs that I’ve had are now in my day-to-day job. And I feel really lucky to be able to say that.

Um, but like the other elements of my previous jobs were kind of that customer or prospect like interfacing piece that just, it drains me and it makes me like, it doesn’t bring out the best version of myself. And those are the only other pieces of those jobs that I remember. So there’s nothing I miss about that.

They’re there. They’re just part of the, part of the path that got me here. And I don’t blame you. That is draining. And it like, it can be really, really exhausting. I it’s funny. I, I specifically said, um, that I didn’t want to go into a sales role because I could see people just jumping ship for the next paycheck.

Uh, you know, like at the time, I mean, you still see it happen pretty regularly now, but at the time there was a lot of sales folks who would come in and they’d be there like six months in the industry that I was in. And then they’d go get a higher salary offer at the next same kind of like competitive company.

And they just jumped ship. So I was like, I’m never, man. Like I want to build a brand. I want to stay in and really commit. And then like my track record. Certainly hasn’t shown that I’d definitely have moved around myself, maybe not every six months, but I’d stuck. I stuck more on the sort of brand building side.

Uh, but yeah, it wasn’t because I thought I’d be exhausted. It was cause I was thinking that I didn’t want to be looking at, I didn’t want to look like the person that just left every six months. Yeah. I get that. Like wanting to, uh, build stability is kind of what that feels like.

That’s an interesting take. I think that would be an interesting conversation if we get a group of people together, um, both from a people in your role, as well as people who are in the hiring role, like, like Dewey, do we, as a hiring person, Uh, would it be useful for you to know, like how do we, how do I look at that?

When I see someone’s job, tenure is yeah. Say six months or a year, and then six months or a year versus someone who’s five or six years and 10 years and all that. I think there’s, I don’t know that there’s one right answer. Yeah. I think, you know, Uh, Naomi, you’ve probably interviewed folks. I would imagine that have had some movement, but for me, I, if, if the person looks, uh, appealing on paper, despite maybe a little bit of movement in their roles, uh, in, in terms of ten-year timeline, um, I just looked for the story like.

What happened and, and part of that’s because I went through experiences like that. Right. But I don’t know about you now. I found that, um, you’re right. I have interviewed a lot of people from marketing ops roles and, you know, um, it’s something that I actually have. I’m quite, I guess, proud of to say that, like, there’s been a lot of folks that I’ve watched grow in their marketing ops careers and learn so much.

And, and it’s just, it’s really like it’s of course, like super rewarding. And I would say that, um, for the folks that I’ve interviewed, if they’ve kind of gone to a few different companies or kind of like worked in like various marketing ops roles, but, um, uh, have moved around a lot of the time it’s because, or at least the consensus that I get is that they’re.

Direct manager is not a marketing ops person and doesn’t understand what they do. So they either felt like they weren’t getting the mentorship or the guidance or that their contributions were being minimized, which is unfortunate. Like regardless of what role you’re in your contributions, you know, should never be minimized like that.

Um, or just, you know, feeling like they didn’t have growth or development or the autonomy to. Kind of expand in the field that they chose to work in. Right. And so, you know, I think there’s three important things that you have to have when you were working in any career or job it’s autonomy, mastery, and purpose.

And if you don’t have those three things that makes, you know, work kind of challenging. So. I like that. I think we found our title for this episode, the autonomy mastery and purpose that again with Naomi and Carissa.

Yeah. Okay. So I let’s keep going down this a little bit. Um, so. You said that you, like, you keep, you get kind of moved into different roles and you feel like the best parts of those who went along with it. But, you know, my experience has been that like every job has certain aspects of it that I would rather, if I didn’t have to do them, I would love to like upload them.

Like, what do you, what parts of marketing apps so far that you’ve been doing that, are you like, well, I know I have to do this, but I, you know, I’d rather be doing this other thing, right? Yeah. So I think like, at least favorite part of marketing ops is when you. You see a lot of overlapping tech and there are people that love each of these different pieces of tech and you don’t know exactly how to go about trying to downsize and maybe consolidate the Stack a little.

Um, because it’s almost like, like HubSpot has like, you know, the ability to send out like, um, sequences, like email sequences and stuff, which is very similar to outreach. And outreach has got like different functions that, you know, sequences doesn’t have all these different things. And it’s like, in my mind, I’m thinking like, why do we have all these different overlapping things?

But it’s like, I haven’t gotten to this place where I can rationalize or even tell someone at a certain point, like, Hey, we need to get rid of this thing. Like, and I’m still trying to figure out how to navigate stuff like that because like some of it’s just. It feels like wasteful spend sometimes, but at the same time, there are just things that even though they look the same, they might not be able to do the exact same thing or have some of the same like bells and whistles.

Um, so I’m still learning that I think as far as like what’s overlapping out of necessity and like what’s overlapping that just, um, you know, needs to be consolidated. And I feel like I don’t, I don’t really understand that part yet. And I’m still trying to figure that out and it’s probably like, I it’s my least favorite part because I don’t really get it.

No, that makes sense. I mean, it’s an, and it’s not hard, especially if you’ve come in. Like, I have a number of places where you’ve come in and something’s already in place. And it’s like, it’s that? It’s the it’s, you know, the tango lights in the box. And you don’t know if you unplug one set from another, is it going to break something?

Right. Cause he, you know, the last thing you want to do is do that. And then all of a sudden leads don’t make it into Salesforce. Yeah. Well, yeah. Well, yeah, like let’s, let’s not turn off the forums. Keep all the forums on.

Yeah, of course. I think if you do figure that out, let me know, I guess, cause uh, consolidating tech there’s so much that comes with that. Um, it’s I think, I don’t know if you’ve, if the three, all three of you have experienced this or not, but oftentimes I feel like, um, when you try to make that consolidation play.

Um, there can be a perception that your suggesting this purely because like that, like, whatever it is, you ended up sort of like saying you should focus on. You’re suggesting it because that’s just what you like. And it, like, it doesn’t matter how much effort you put into explaining the business reasoning behind it.

It’s just that like, no, that’s the tool that you like. And so there’s this weird, like, struggle with like, they think it’s your personal preference when in reality, you’re, you’re trying to. Just do better for the stack overall. Uh, you know, sometimes it works out that it is your personal preference, that particular tool selection, but sometimes it doesn’t.

Um, so I don’t know, but Naomi, have you experienced that where like you try to go to a consolidation and it, people sort of pushed back saying like, well, that’s just the one that you’re most familiar with or something. To be honest. No. Um, because I

mean, to be honest, I don’t because like, uh, I, I control the tools, so,

and usually what did I say? Autonomy mastery and purpose. Right. So autonomy being the keyword there. Um, but no, in reality, like whenever. You know, whenever a platform comes up for renewal or we’re at the end of a, you know, um, a contract or whatnot, you have to, in your mind, let go of like, um, uh, uh, technology bias, right?

It’s like, yeah, I’m totally familiar with this. I’m in my comfort zone, you know, I’ve been certified on XYZ and my entire team knows it. So let’s just do the easy thing and renew the contract. Right. But that’s not always going to be. The thing that’s best for the organization, because, and I like to remind people of this, that like, you know, tools are going to be usually within an organization longer than the person that made the decision to put it in.

Right. So you really have to kind of like determine, okay, is this, and to be honest, a lot of times pricing comes into it too, because if you’re going to replace something that also has a huge cost and there’s time cost and, and sweat equity and all that stuff. Right. But, um, Um, no, I think it’s always good to pull the business.

Is it still good for, and the reason this is front of mind right now is because we actually just recently, um, we actually kicked off this week and you serve any platform that we’re, we’re going to be implementing survey monkey, or I guess it’s, they’re called momentum. I think we did a name change

totally forever. Momentive we just had that today. And, uh, you know, we’ve been on our prior platform forever and. It’s not exactly the ideal time to change, but we’re going to do it. And, uh, yeah. So. I think you all really described that a lot better than I initially did. Like you all really captured the pain.

It was like trying to describe, we’ve been, we’ve been failing in awhile. I think your current Chrissy, you hit on something when you just describe why you struggle with is cause you like, you look at it and you see like, is this a weekly, essentially money going out the door that could be used for other purposes?

And that’s, I think that’s a good way to. Take it or think about it. The other, the other thing I would say is, I think we actually have a couple of episodes from early on where we talked to people about like the process of going through and doing a regular review of your tech stack and tracking that and stuff like that.

So. If you want to learn, right? You might want to go back and look at our archives, trying to, I can’t remember off the top of my head. Um, Mike’s usually my real time researcher here. I was just going to go pull it up, but I don’t remember what episode it was, but I do know that we did a workshop with Joe Marr who talked about sort of understanding your tech stack and evaluating it and how they’re interrelated and all that stuff.

I’ll have to link to it in the show notes.

When I think, and I think that, I feel like was it the episode we had was with, was it, was that the one with Chloe pot maybe anyway, I’m sure we’ll figure it out. Um, but we’ve, we’ve done some stuff on that as well, but yeah, that’s a, that’s a tough one because. Yeah, we all get to this spot at a certain point.

Right? I don’t remember what the numbers are. Now. The folks at cabin M could probably tell us or others rate how many people, like how many things are in people’s typical tech stack, right? And into that number gets pretty large, pretty fast. It’s the interrelationships about them and the effort to swap one out for another.

Becomes not trivial in a lot of cases. And that’s, that’s the challenge. So it’s not like you’re just trading out one cost for another. It’s also like taking one out, make sure you’ve like capture all that history and retain it somewhere. And then the extra effort of implementing a new one and testing it and all that kind of stuff.

So, yeah, definitely. There’s a lot to go with that really interesting. Um, okay. So.

What, you know, I guess just in general, like, you know, like for those folks who are listeners here, you know what, um, What are your kind of any, any other insights, if there are people out there? I think this was, this was a great episode for people who are maybe thinking about getting a more marketing ops or not have not been in marketing eyes, but I feel like you, like, they’ve got this attraction to the problem solving pieces of it and fixing processes and, and all that, like other, like, are there any other things that we haven’t hit on today in this conversation that you think would be useful to share with the audience?

Um, so like we kind of talked about the, the piece that I mentioned earlier, as far as like the researching, I think, um, I have a little bit of a personality that I can become obsessed with things. And that’s how I kind of really kind of went down this path is, um, just researching as much as I could trying to find everything about it that I possibly could.

Um, so there’s that, but there’s also like the personal piece of like yourself, um, Like build those skills that you need to build, but also like don’t just going to go deep here alone. Don’t let anybody tell you that you’re not ready or that you’re not there yet. Um, You are, you are so, so, so much more capable than you realize if you’re at that cusp, like asking yourself if you’re good enough or if you’re ready enough.

So honestly, my advice keep going and be completely relentless. Until you get there. I love that advice too. That was, that was excellent. I want to like create a whole theme around relentless. Like now I just want, I just want, I see that on like, but that word is now like enlarged in my mind. I’d be like, all right, how does, how do we tell.

The story of every single Mopro out there in this, in this year, this year of the Mopro right. A year, the Mopro every episode has to talk about how it’s the year the Mopro by the end of the year, everyone’s going to start saying it. And it’s just because we kept saying it on every episode.

So I, this is actually a really important theme. I, I, you know, this, this, and this is sort of a personal knit of my, like, I, I, I think people get, you know, they’re afraid, right? You know, and they think that the people like Caressa are fearless, my guess is she’s full of fear as most people are. But because of that religious nature and the courage, right?

Like being scared as normal, like in those people that we always look at and these stories who we think of as fearless, I bet if you really ask, like none of them was fearless, right. They were all, but they had the courage to do something despite the fear. And I think that’s a really important characteristic.

I agree. Yeah. So I completely agree. We were at summer camp, um, last summer and, uh, it was the very first one we were doing. And one of the, uh, one of my kind of members who was there, he says, I’m about to kick the day off and welcome everybody. And he says, Hey, is this your. Like, do you like, do you like doing this stuff, speaking in front of people and like mind you, he’s been watching the pace back and forth for 30 minutes outside the room.

I’m like, no. Not even a little bit. And, and then I actually walked into the room and I said, yeah. So so-and-so just asked if this was my jam and I’m just going to be honest, like, no, I am terrified. So if I stutter and I stumble like work with me, but let’s make this a really great event and, you know, do the best he can.

So everybody’s afraid. Right. And we have absolutely. Yeah. I, my, um, my go-to thing, um, when. Um, I will always ask for like feedback after I’ve given like a presentation of some kind, like I just, I want to be better obviously. Um, And people will joke with me sometimes they’re like, you wouldn’t know that you were nervous.

It doesn’t like, come off that way. And I’m like, okay, cool. So you see how I always wear like these high, like I always wear high colored shirts it’s because like, chances are my chest is broken out in hives because I’m so nervous. So no, you can’t see how nervous I actually, I don’t want you to see.

Yeah, that’s fine. That’s fine. But it’s like, we do it anyway, right? Like we have. Yeah, yeah, no, that’s fine. And this is, yeah, this is the dad making it out now, but it’s like, I asked my kids, like the fear of doing something is usually way worse, like way worse than what the actual result is. Right. So you’re scared to try something when you try it.

It’s usually not as bad. It’s sometimes great. Right? Yeah, totally. I, I wanted to like. I didn’t. I ended up not posting this on LinkedIn the other day, but I wanted to like, and the reason that I didn’t is because I just don’t like frivolous, like silly posts that really are that feel like they’re just meant for like attention.

It just that’s what it would’ve felt like to me. Yeah. It would’ve felt weird for me to do it. It just, it feels off-brand for. Me, but I wanted to just like, it almost felt like a tweet. Like there’s these people that get on and some members of our community that are doing some, like, you know, selfie, video messages out to, to their LinkedIn audience.

Um, and all I wanted to say was like kudos to you for being brave enough to put yourself on a selfie camera and put yourself out there. That’s that’s scary. Like anytime I, I think about like doing like a message to our community, I get nervous. And I just wanted to say like kudos to that person. But, but by posting that on social, it felt, uh, not genuine.

Like I might as well just reach directly out to that person and say like, Hey, good for you for, for doing that. Right. But you know, the whole. I don’t know. So I don’t remember why I wanted to share that just, but isn’t it kind of nice to like, re almost like, say that stuff out loud and like reconcile between people that we all are so nervous about our interactions, like 95% of the.

Yeah. Yeah, we do. We want to say the right thing. Like we want to do the right thing, but there’s always going to be like this element of like fear. Like, should I really do that? Did I? I think, yeah. That’s, that’s where that was coming from for me. Thank you. You sort of got me back on track there for a second.

I, where that came from for me was you go on these feeds on LinkedIn, right. And you’re watching people put content out there. And I think we all know. But we all are guilty of being a little judgy, uh, from time to time. Right. You might look at something and be like, oh, like what the heck are? And you know what, at the end of the day, if you’re not brave enough to try, like you shouldn’t judge.

Right. And that’s why I wanted to put that out into the world. But I was like, ah, that’s not for me to say,

look, Chris, this has been a place. It’s truly, it’s been great to get to know you, it kind of in real time here and thank you for sharing your story and being kind of open about it as great. So if folks want to. Find you like. So when you’re out there, you know, doing your LinkedIn posts and whatnot, right.

Or whatever, wherever you are, where can they find you? I do not post on LinkedIn, but I would love to connect on LinkedIn. Um, please find me. I will give my link to, uh, Mike and Michael, um, Naomi to have, uh, we’ll we’ll, we’ll share it when we put, when we promote all this, but so you don’t post on LinkedIn.

I’m terrified. That’s why.

Well, I mean, honestly, I it’s, um, it’s so it’s so weird, you know, I I’m, so I’m so afraid that, um, I’ll contribute to conversation, I think, but I always worry that what my. My organic thoughts. Like what I initially have to say that nobody wants to hear what I have to say, but I’m happy to talk about anything is kind of how I am.

Maybe I’ll grow out of that. I don’t know. But as of now, not much of a poster. That’s the one day get to feel opinionated enough. You’ll you’ll you’ll start saying inevitably. Yeah, I was there too. What’ll happen, inevitably. Is that enough? People will keep asking you the same questions that you’re like.

Okay. Like obviously people are interested in this topic, so I’ll share some stuff. Yeah, definitely. Well, good Christa. Thank you so much. A thanks to all our listeners for joining us again on this, um, as always send us your feedback. Subscribe. Uh, if you’ve got suggestions for, for, uh, episode topics or guests, or if you want to be a guest, reach out to Mike, Naomi or me, uh, with that.

Thanks everyone. And we’ll talk to you next time. Bye. Thanks everybody.