Podcasts about global marketing operations

How do you juggle a high-powered global career and single motherhood — and still show up for your child with presence and purpose? In this inspiring episode, Justin speaks with Sarah Armstrong, Vice President of Global Marketing Operations at Google and author of The Art of the Juggling Act: A Bite-Sized Guide for Working Parents. Sarah shares practical insights on setting boundaries, overcoming mum guilt, building a support network, and navigating divorce with grace — all while raising a well-rounded daughter. KEY POINTS: Setting and protecting boundaries is critical to successful work-family balance. Communicating your boundaries to others is as important as establishing them. Mum guilt is real — but grace and self-talk like “I’m doing the best I can” help reframe it. A solid support system — whether formal or informal — is essential for working parents. Children benefit from being included in adult conversations and exposed to diverse role models. A “good divorce” is possible through conscious, respectful co-parenting and emotional self-regulation. You can't control others' behaviour—but you can control your own responses, especially around your kids. QUOTE OF THE EPISODE: "Our kids deserve a few hours of our undivided attention. I didn’t just set boundaries — I protected them." – Sarah Armstrong RESOURCES MENTIONED: The Art of the Juggling Act: A Bite-Sized Guide for Working Parents by Sarah Armstrong Visit: happyfamilies.com.au ACTION STEPS FOR PARENTS: Define your non-negotiable boundaries (e.g., family time, tech-free windows). Communicate those boundaries clearly to work colleagues, clients, and family. Build a diverse support network — friends, neighbours, co-parents, and community members. Practice grace-based self-talk: Remind yourself, “I’m doing the best I can.” Include your kids in adult life — expose them to positive role models and conversations. In separation or divorce, prioritise your child’s emotional safety by regulating your own behaviour and language around them. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Ever feel like you're juggling fire while blindfolded? You're not alone—and you don't have to do it perfectly. This week, Rebecca sits down with Sarah Armstrong, Google's Vice President of Global Marketing Operations and the powerhouse author of The Art of the Juggling Act: A Bite-Sized Guide for Working Parents and The Mom's Guide to a Good Divorce. With warmth, wisdom, and lived experience, Sarah shares practical, real-world strategies to help working parents balance work, family, and self-care—without chasing perfection. ✨ In this empowering episode, you'll learn: ✅ Why “balance” is an ebb and flow, not a fixed state ✅ The secret power of the compartmentalization muscle ✅ How to set and protect boundaries—and why you must communicate them ✅ How “Grace Time” changed her parenting—and can inspire yours ✅ The genius of the three piggy banks: Spend. Save. Give. ✅ Why volunteering doesn't mean doing everything—just do one thing well ✅ Simple self-care reframed as a non-negotiable recharge Quote from Sarah: “Balance is different for everyone—we all have to define what it looks like for us. Don't compare your juggle to someone else's.” If you're a working mom trying to do it all—or wondering how to let go of the pressure to be perfect—this episode is a must-listen. Sarah reminds us: We can thrive. We can be present. And we don't have to do it all to do it well.

This episode is power-packed with author and VP of Global Marketing Operations for Google, Sarah Armstrong. Sarah has bite-sized advice for moms who work who desire to enjoy the balancing act between motherhood and career hood. This episode is a gift of a conversation for our community. Sarah Armstrong takes on the art of the juggling act in her trademark “bite-size pieces,” meant for working parents who are trying to figure out how to manage career and family on a day-to-day basis. Written in a conversational tone, Armstrong shares insights into “organizing the logistics of life” and provides practical guidance based on her experience raising her daughter. Throughout the book, working parents will find invaluable advice across 140 topics to ease the stress from juggling the demands of work and home.Sarah Armstrong has spent more than 25 years in global marketing and is now v-p of global marketing operations at Google. She is widely acknowledged as  an industry leader in her area of expertise. She is also the author of The Mom's Guide to a Good Divorce, appearing on more than 75 podcasts and other media. She lives in San Francisco.Please check out her book: The Art of the Juggling Act by Sarah Armstrong.

When you love what you do and you also love being a parent, how do you strike an appropriate balance between the two?Vice-president of Global Marketing Operations at Google, Sarah Armstrong, made sure that she was the mom she wanted to be, and the mom that her daughter Grace needed, by being incredibly deliberate in how she balanced life and work. In this podcast episode we dive into Sarah's book The Art of the Juggling Act: A Bite-Sized Guide for Working Parents, that breaks her approach down.Some of my key takeaways are:* Birthday Questions to ask your child and record each year* Be deliberate with how you want to end each day* How to set time, physical and mental boundaries (with work, that is)I hope you enjoy this conversation with Sarah.Big HugRichP.S. a great question Sarah suggests to ask when you're transitioning your career is: “What do you want to talk about everyday?”If you'd like to find out more about Sarah click here and to check out Sarah's book click on the image below. Get full access to The Dad Mindset at www.thedadmindset.com/subscribe

It's time to change the conversation about divorce. And that's exactly what our guest today is trying to do. Sarah Armstrong is a Vice President of Global Marketing Operations at Google, and she never expected to be in this situation. However, based on her personal experiences, she decided to write 'The Mom's Guide to a Good Divorce: What to Think Through When Children are Involved'. She defines a good divorce as one that puts the children first. For anyone wondering how they will ever come out the other side of a divorce and keep their family whole, Sarah is an inspiration. She offers practical tips and advice for moms (and dads) by sharing her inspiring personal stories and provides sage advice for taking practical steps to work toward the best outcome in the midst of the worst of circumstances. https://www.momsguidetogooddivorce.com/

Jaime is joined by Sarah Armstrong, VP of Global Marketing Operations at Google and author of "The Mom's Guide to a Good Divorce." In this episode, Sarah shares her personal journey of navigating divorce while prioritizing her daughter's well-being and focusing on the mindset of divorce being a positive life change. From managing day-to-day logistics of co-parenting a child living under two households to pausing when emotions run high, she shares her strategies for minimizing disruptions to children's lives, living through the year of firsts, and building your support network. Tune in to learn how to approach the process with the goals of creating a supportive, stable environment for your children and being as happy, healthy, and positive on the other side of divorce.Need help from Sarah? Check out her book here.If you are in need of legal assistance in North Carolina, contact us at Gailor Hunt by visiting www.divorceistough.com.Like this show? Rate it here!  Register to attend the Easterseals UCP | Port Health Miracle Moments Luncheon - Raise funds and awareness of the life-changing direct services provided to more than 40,000 children, adults, and families living with disabilities, mental health, and substance use challenges so they can live their best lives.https://my.onecause.com/event/organizations/sf-001C000000urUkiIAE/events/vevt:c1e20ef8-13a6-4d20-97f0-5c1532a4f134/home/story

What's up everyone, today we have the pleasure of sitting down with Debbie Mayen, Head of Marketing Operations at Logitech.Summary: Debbie went from dreaming of diplomacy to steering the global martech ship at Logitech and takes us through a masterclass in making well timed bets and the art of simplifying martech. Her marketing operations mantra includes clear processes, open lines of communication, and giving her team the reins to shine. She walks us through why she's big on the whole marketing-meets-IT vibe, pushing for teamwork that taps into the best of both. And how her focus on celebrating wins and building an anti-fragile culture is key to withstanding chaos and uncertainty in a profession riddled with burnout. About DeborahDeborah got her start as an International Project Manager where she led big IT projects, and later pivoted to international MARCOM projects and bizdevThis led Deborah to a pivotal role as Marketing and comms manager at Encyclopaedia Britannica where she would spend 7 years managing marketing activities in Latin America and BrazilShe also spent 5 years as a Marketing Automation Project Leader at Molex – where she was focused on optimizing tech stack and lead generation processesToday, Deborah is Head of Global Marketing Operations at Logitech, where her team drives operational excellence for Logitech's B2B Marketing team focused on strategy and automation, segmentation and ABM Embracing Nonlinear Paths into MartechDebbie's foray into the world of martech is a tale of unexpected turns and adaptation. Growing up with a nomadic lifestyle due to her father's career in the oil industry, Debbie was exposed to diverse cultures and languages from an early age. This multicultural upbringing sparked an initial desire to pursue a career in international law or diplomacy. However, as she ventured through university, the reality of the constant movement and its impact on family life led her to reconsider her career trajectory.Opting for a more stable living situation, Debbie still yearned to maintain her connection to the international sphere. This longing eventually steered her toward the realm of international business, landing her a role at Encyclopedia Britannica, focusing on the Latin American market. It was here, amidst the challenge of managing a vast geographic area with a limited budget, that Debbie stumbled upon martech.In the early days of martech, with fewer than 200 vendors and most tools available only in English, resources were scarce. Yet, this did not deter Debbie. Leveraging tools like Silverpop, she ingeniously maximized her small budget to achieve significant impact across Latin America. This experience not only honed her skills but also ignited a passion for martech, drawn to its capacity for measurable results and efficient campaign management without the need for expanding her team.Debbie's entry into martech was born out of necessity but flourished into a deep-seated love for the field. Her journey reflects a seamless blend of her identity and her professional path, showcasing how embracing change and leveraging available resources can lead to unexpected and rewarding destinations.Key Takeaway: Debbie's transition from aspiring diplomat to martech enthusiast underscores the power of adaptability and the unexpected paths our careers can take. Her story is a testament to the impact of embracing one's background and challenges as opportunities for growth and innovation in the ever-evolving martech landscape.Navigating the Dawn of MartechDebbie's entrance into the martech scene came at a time when the landscape was vastly different from today's sprawling ecosystem. Reflecting on Scott Brinker's landscape charts, she recalls a period of consolidation and the nascent stages of martech, drawing parallels to the current explosion of AI tools in the sector. For Debbie, the early days presented both challenges and opportunities. The relatively small number of tools available meant she could delve deeper into the resources at her disposal, turning limitations into advantages.This era of martech was marked by significant acquisitions, such as Silverpop's integration into IBM's portfolio and Pardot's acquisition by Salesforce, signifying the beginning of industry consolidation. For Debbie, being part of the martech field from its inception allowed her to develop a comprehensive understanding of marketing automation platforms, a knowledge that would set the foundation for her future expertise.Her early start in martech endowed her with the ability to navigate the ever-expanding landscape without getting overwhelmed by the plethora of choices available today. Debbie's journey underscores the importance of foundational knowledge and the advantage of focusing deeply on available tools before branching out. As the martech landscape continues to grow, her experience offers valuable lessons in staying grounded amidst the noise and the allure of new technologies.Key Takeaway: Debbie's early experiences in the evolving martech landscape highlight the benefits of deep specialization and a focused approach to technology adoption. Her story is a testament to the power of leveraging limited resources for maximum impact and the importance of discerning evaluation in the face of rapid industry expansion.The Art of Simplifying MartechDebbie champions a philosophy of simplicity in navigating the galaxy of martech tools. She believes in a measured approach, cautioning against the allure of new technologies without a clear understanding of organizational needs. For Debbie, each addition to the martech stack represents not just potential benefits but also added complexity and potential debt. She emphasizes a cost-benefit analysis to ensure the advantages of any new tool significantly outweigh the costs, considering factors like team workload, system integration, and the tool's alignment with the company's evolving goals.This practical mindset extends to prioritizing work-life balance for her team and ensuring that any new technology seamlessly integrates into existing systems without creating unnecessary burdens. Debbie's old-school martech perspective of "less is more" serves as a guiding principle, advocating for a focus on what truly adds value and drives forward the company's objectives.Key Takeaway: Debbie's strategy in martech selection is grounded in simplicity and practicality, underscoring the importance of a discerning approach to tool adoption. Her advice encourages a balance between embracing innovation and maintaining a streamlined, effective martech stack that aligns with both immediate and long-term business goals.Navigating the Challenges of Marketing Operations at LogitechAt Logitech, the marketing operations team faces the intricate challenge of serving various internal and external stakeholders across different groups and brands. Debbie highlights that the key to managing these challenges lies in recognizing the team's central role as a service arm within the organization. With each business group having unique demands, it becomes crucial to maintain a bird's-eye view of all requests, ensuring no group is unaware of the others' needs.Process orientation emerges as a fundamental strategy for the mops team. By adhering to well-defined processes, the team not only safeguards the quality of their work but also empowers themselves to manage and prioritize requests effectively. Debbie stresses the importance of clarity and communication in this dynamic environment. She encourages her team to engage in open dialogues with stakeholders, offering the ability to push back on requests when necessary, provided it's done with clear reasoning and possible alternatives.This approach fosters a culture where markete...

Today Leah and Paul are talking with Sarah Armstrong, Google's Vice President of Global Marketing Operations and author of The mom's Guide To A Good Divorce:  What To Think Through When Children Are Involved.   Her book on how to have a "good divorce" was created from her own life experience, in an effort to help other mother's in the same situation.  Sarah explains that 13 years ago she and her ex husband went through a divorce, when their child, Grace was seven years old.  She and her ex husband were determined to make sure that their divorce had the least amount of impact on their daughter as possible.  In doing so the two of them worked very hard at making sure the process was amicable and little strain on Grace's life style.  After successfully pulling off a "Good Divorce" and years of lending advice to her friends who were going through divorce with children, she choose to write this book to help other mother's who are where she was.Sarah had so many great tips to assist in the process.  Tips that we should all be implementing in our lives, whether you are going through divorce or not.  There are discussions around how to set boundaries and share them aloud, how to plan out family calendars, and how to make dedicated time for your kid and for yourself.Visit Sarah Armstrong on her website www.momsguidetogooddivorce.com/ or on LinkedIn.  Her book, The Mom's Guide To a Good Divorce: What To Think Through When Children Are Involved can be purchased in hardback through Amazon, Barnes and Nobles, Ibooks, and Book Depository; or listen to it on Audible.Support the showWe continue to try our best to bring you all worthy content to help you put your life first. If you like the content we are creating and are interested in helping to support the show, please consider visiting our Buy Me A Coffee page www.buymeacoffee.com/lifeworkbalance And thank you for your loyalty, we appreciate you all!A big thank you to our unofficial sponsor the creator of "The World's Best Cookie". The Cleveland Cookie Guy. His cookies can be purchased on Instagram @CleCookieGuyFor more information on Paul Conley's Life Work Balance Business and Success Coaching Practice reach out to him on LinkedIn or email Pmconley34@gmail.comLeah Starkey can be found on Instagram @l_k_starks, Facebook, or by email Lkstarkey@gmail.comWe are always accepting new speaker and topic ideas for the podcast. Message us on Facebook at Life Work Balance Podcast with Leah and Paulor emailLifeWorkBalancePodcast@yahoo.comor at Pmconley34@gmail.com

Abby interviews Naomi Liu, Director of Global Marketing Operations at EFI (Electronics for Imaging), a worldwide provider of products, technology and services leading the transformation of analog to digital imaging. Naomi tells Abby about EFI's target audience, and how her team relies on strong data to drive marketing efforts.

This week on The Bizzimumzi Podcast, Ashley is joined in conversation by Sarah Armstrong. Sarah is the VP of Global Marketing operations for Google and author of 'The Mom's Guide to a Good Divorce: What to think when children are involved.' Sarah has been on a mission to help dispel myths about divorce, especially as they affect women, and those myths persist despite widespread acceptance of all kinds of blended and nontraditional families.    Sarah warns that the stigma of divorce remains, especially for women. Often in the workplace but also on the playground. Sarah offers practical tips and advice for moms striving to create a good divorce and to buffet stereotypes about divorce.    In this Bizzimumzi podcast episode we discuss:    Dispel the myth of the miserable divorcée by showing your success and happiness with your head held high. Attend your children's events and school meetings with your ex, gracefully acknowledge your children's time spent with your ex as an important time for development for your children, and focus on self-care for yourself.   Half-truths about your divorce can mutate and spin out of your reach. Share your situation with a limited number of people, especially at work and among friends too, so that you can control the flow of information and protect your children from misinformation about the details of your divorce.   Gossips fuel the myth of the inadequate divorcée. Surround yourself with “energy givers,” Sarah says, not energy takers, which is what gossip is. Don't imbibe them.   The media loves an ugly divorce, which fuels the myth that all divorces are ugly. Dispelling this myth is essential to the health and welfare of the children involved.   Sarah offers personal stories of how she herself has worked to dispel the myths of being a divorced mom and provides sage advice for taking practical steps to work toward a good divorce.     This show is lovingly supported by the fabulous sustainability app., Nudj. Not only are they supporting the podcast they want to support and teach you how to live a more sustainable lifestyle. Click here to download the Nudj App: https://tinyurl.com/Nudjfreeapp       The Bizzimumzi Podcast is brought to you by coffee-infused host Ashley Verma. This show is created to share all the ups, downs and all arounds of being a mom, owning a successful business and truly managing being an un-single single mom, attempting to balance all aspects of family life! Each week Ashley will be joined by a fellow inspiring, thriving and surviving Bizzimumzi - who will share their own journey. This podcast is your weekly opportunity to take a deep breath as we try to navigate the wild world of parenting; think of this podcast as the safe space where we are not too hard on ourselves, we share our humility and relish in overcoming the inevitable failures that simply happen. This is a show for those Mom's that are not trying to be shiny and filtered. This is a podcast for those who are unapologetically, at their best and worst, Bizzimumzi's!           We want to hear from you! Any questions or collaborations please reach out to us at: info.bizzimumzi@gmail.com   Resources: Ashley Verma: Facebook | Instagram | Twitter    Nudj App: https://tinyurl.com/Nudjfreeapp 

Are you currently going through a divorce? Do you know anyone going through a divorce that may benefit from it being a "Good" divorce?In 2022 44.1 percent of marriages end in divorce. This episode is not promoting divorce but it was made to empower those in the process.Empowerment takes many forms, but for Sarah Armstrong, "good divorce proponent," v-p of global marketing operations at Google and author of 'The Mom's Guide to a Good Divorce,' learning to use your "compartmentalization muscle" will take you far in getting what you want, keeping a positive mindset and making sure your children take priority. For self-care, the compartmentalization muscle is essential.As vice-president of global marketing operations at Google, Sarah is a widely recognized for her marketing acumen, and she is a committed mentor as well. On the board of the Jack & Jill Late Stage Cancer Foundation, she recently moved from Atlanta to San Francisco for work.How does she do it?Sarah says women in particular—and it's a lesson we can all take to heart when we're trying to balance life, work and life transitions—need to exercise the “compartmentalization muscle.”In fact it was a therapist-friend of Sarah's who told her she had one of the most ironclad abilities to exercise this most important muscle.For dealing with divorce and raising children, it's an especially effective technique, Sarah says, to keep the environment healthy and mindsets positive.Sarah shares practical tips and advice on how to utilize and develop your “compartmentalization muscle,” all for the good for you and your children.Website: https://www.momsguidetogooddivorce.com/LinkedIn:linkedin.com/in/sarah-madden-armstrong-5432887Contact OliviaEmail - olivia@oliviatmcook.comLink's and freebies- https://linktr.ee/Oliviatmcook20 minute strategy session - https://calendly.com/oliviatmcookcoaching/strategy-session

Marketing operations play a specific role in organizations, and especially events. So what does it take to be a good partner to the team, whether you're a vendor or a part of the company? In this episode, host Alyssa Peltier is joined by Cvent guest-hosts Emily Dick and Carisa Bartelt. They speak with Darrell Alfonso, the Head of Global Marketing Operations for Amazon Web Services (AWS) and author of The Martech Handbook, on all things marketing operations, from its evolution to how event marketers should think about their tech stack. In 2020, Darrell was named one of the top MarTech marketers to follow by MarTech Alliance and is currently ranked as one of the top marketers in the US. Press play if you want to learn more about planning for 2023 and understand what we should prioritize regarding MarTech and event tech.

Episode Description In this new episode of Demand Gen Chat, I spoke with Darrell Alfonso, Global Marketing Operations at Amazon Web Services (AWS) and author of The Martech Handbook. Darrell has been at AWS for over three years, and his team empowers thousands of marketers around the world to do their best work. We spoke about marketing ops don'ts and the most common mistake Darrell sees when B2B marketers run A/B tests. Darrell also shared how ops can set KPIs to work towards things they'll be proud of, versus spending all year putting out fires and fixing issues in other marketers' campaigns. Show Notes Follow Tara: https://www.linkedin.com/in/taraarobertsonFollow Darrell: https://www.linkedin.com/in/darrellalfonso/ Check out Amanda Natividad's content: https://twitter.com/amandanat About Demand Gen ChatDemand Gen Chat is a Chili Piper podcast hosted by Tara Robertson. Join us as we sit down with B2B marketing leaders to hear about the latest tactics and campaigns that are driving pipeline and revenue. If you're looking for tactical ways to improve your marketing, this podcast is for you!

Promoting a major motion picture in the entertainment industry has its own specific marketing needs and challenges, but there are distinct lessons for the wider marketing community. On this episode Ross Necessary, Senior Vice President of Global Marketing Operations and Exhibitor Relations at Lionsgate, joins us to share how some of our favorite films get promoted and distributed. In this insightful discussion with Ross, we'll explore: What are some of the key steps in movie marketing Global and domestic differences in marketing approaches Leveraging creative efficiency in marketing products and operations Keep connected with us by subscribing on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or anywhere you get podcasts. Check out our website at Taylor.com.

What should always stay top of mind for marketing operations?   One is that businesses die without revenue and two is that happy customers make all the difference.  Hear our conversation with Darrell Alfonso , Global Marketing Operations at AWS: Why marketing operations should care deeply about revenue The urgent need for transferable skills for marops problem solving Translation, tech, and the customer's hierarchy of needs   More information about Darrell and today's topics: LinkedIn Profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/darrellalfonso/   Company Website: https://aws.amazon.com/   Darrell's blog: https://www.darrellalfonso.com/   Keep connected with us by subscribing on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or anywhere you get podcasts. Check out our website at Taylor.com .

In today's podcast, we speak with Kenneth Bayton, the newest member of the Maryland STEM Festival Board. He talks about his interest in STEM started and his roles at Under Armour as Lead Project Manager for Global Marketing Operations. https://www.underarmour.com/en-us/

Sarah Armstrong went never thought she was going to go through a divorce.  No one does.  Until they do.   So one day when standing in a CVS with her daughter, she had an aha moment.  Her daughter pointed to a People Magazine where JLO and Marc Anthony were on the cover.  The story was about their divorce.  She asked her mom "Is that a good divorce or a bad divorce?"  When Sarah asked what she meant by that, she went on to describe what that meant - and referred to her and her ex.  She knew then and there that she had to write a book.  Now, as the Vice President of Global Marketing Operations at Google, and her daughter a freshman in college, she is super busy, but still so passionate about her mission about spreading the word about what a good divorce looks like.   She's written a super insightful and helpful book on the topic and is joining me today to talk about how to have a really good divorce - even when you have a narcissist on the other side.  Listen in to hear what she has to say!   More about Sarah Sarah Armstrong, good divorce proponent and author of The Mom's Guide to a Good Divorce, is vice president, global marketing operations, at Google and proud mom of Grace, who is currently a freshman in college. Sarah is a mentor to other women in business, and longtime volunteer at various nonprofit organizations, including Jack & Jill Late Stage Cancer Foundation, Georgetown Alumni Admissions Program and Trinity Table Soup Kitchen. Prior to joining Google, Sarah was a partner at McKinsey & Co. and worked at The Coca-Cola Company in global marketing for twenty years, where she led Worldwide Agency Operations across 200 countries. Sarah started her career at Leo Burnett (Chicago) in Media. Sarah's work has been recognized around the world, resulting in her being named one of Ad Age's “Women to Watch” and included in Ad Age's Book of Tens (“Top Ten Who Made Their Mark in 2009”). Website:  https://www.momsguidetogooddivorce.com/author Grab her book, The Mom's Guide to a Good Divorce: What to Think Through When Children are Involved, on Amazon right here   THIS WEEK'S SPONSOR INFORMATION:   Soberlink is a comprehensive alcohol monitoring system. Combining a breathalyzer with wireless connectivity, Soberlink automatically documents proof of sobriety in real-time, which gives clients a sense of accomplishment while rebuilding trust with others. Features Adaptive Facial Recognition technology Technology to detect physical tampers Real-time text message reminders and Alerts Customizable scheduling Automated reporting options Get an exclusive $50 off your device by emailing info@soberlink.com and mentioning Negotiate Your Best Life ____________________________________________________________________ For more information on REBECCA ZUNG, ESQ. visit her website www.rebeccazung.com and follow her on Instagram: @rebeccazung and YouTube! GRAB YOUR FREE CRUSH MY NEGOTIATION PREP WORKSHEET RIGHT HERE!  SUBSCRIBE TO MY YOUTUBE CHANNEL RIGHT HERE.  Grab a copy of Rebecca's book, Negotiate Like You M.A.T.T.E.R.: The Sure Fire Method to Step Up and Win (foreword written by Robert Shapiro).   It went straight to being a #1 bestseller the first day it was launched!  Find out what everyone is so excited about - get the book RIGHT HERE!  To get your copy of Rebecca's bestselling book, Breaking Free: A Step by Step Guide to Achieving Emotional, Physical and Spiritual Freedom, please visit the Amazon website to order it RIGHT HERE.      THIS WEEK'S SPONSOR INFORMATION:   Soberlink is a comprehensive alcohol monitoring system. Combining a breathalyzer with wireless connectivity, Soberlink automatically documents proof of sobriety in real-time, which gives clients a sense of accomplishment while rebuilding trust with others. Features Adaptive Facial Recognition technology Technology to detect physical tampers Real-time text message reminders and Alerts Customizable scheduling Automated reporting options Get an exclusive $50 off your device by emailing info@soberlink.com and mentioning Negotiate Your Best Life ____________________________________________________________________ For more information on REBECCA ZUNG, ESQ. visit her website www.rebeccazung.com and follow her on Instagram: @rebeccazung and YouTube! GRAB YOUR FREE CRUSH MY NEGOTIATION PREP WORKSHEET RIGHT HERE!  SUBSCRIBE TO MY YOUTUBE CHANNEL RIGHT HERE.  Grab a copy of Rebecca's book, Negotiate Like You M.A.T.T.E.R.: The Sure Fire Method to Step Up and Win (foreword written by Robert Shapiro).   It went straight to being a #1 bestseller the first day it was launched!  Find out what everyone is so excited about - get the book RIGHT HERE!  To get your copy of Rebecca's bestselling book, Breaking Free: A Step by Step Guide to Achieving Emotional, Physical and Spiritual Freedom, please visit the Amazon website to order it RIGHT HERE.   

In this episode, host Shahin Hoda chats with Darrell Alfonso, Global Marketing Operations at Amazon Web Services, about how marketers should approach their martech strategy to drive revenue and higher ROI on their investments. Darrell starts by advising marketers to begin with their objectives and work backwards to discover the martech they need to create a great customer experience. He also talks about why marketers should take the education provided by martech vendors with a pinch of salt and that listening to sales might not always be the right way to go. During the conversation, Darrell drops many golden nuggets about customer experience, managing data and ways to prioritise marketing projects. He concludes by advising marketers to practice writing content as much as possible to achieve clarity of thought and vision. Read the show notes: https://xgrowth.com.au/blogs/aws-martech/ ABM in APAC survey: https://www.xgrowth.com.au/survey Join the Slack channel: https://growthcolony.org/slack

Thank you, Sarah Armstrong, for joining me on this episode of the Born To Talk Radio Show Podcast. Sarah's Background. Sarah never expected to write a book.  She has a degree in marketing and played volleyball on a scholarship at Georgetown University.  Currently, Sarah is Vice President, in Global Marketing Operations at Google. She is... The post Sarah Armstrong appeared first on Born To Talk.

Jeff Kew, Director of Global Marketing Operations at Magnitude Software, joins our host, Camela Thompson, in this episode of the Revenue Marketing Report. Jeff shares how he has scaled marketing ops teams, how to help your team avoid burnout, and tips for newbies who wish to join the marketing ops world.   To check out some of the communities we mentioned in the episode, visit MO Pros, RevOps Co-op, MOPs Pros, and the Growth Ops Community.

Have you ever asked yourself what is a good divorce? And if it's even possible to have a “good divorce” or a “good separation” when you have children. Nikki Parkinson is joined Sarah Armstrong, Mum of Grace, Author of The Mom's Guide to a Good Divorce: What To Think Through When Children Are Involved and marketing expert whose work has been recognised worldwide, she is currently Vice President of Global Marketing Operations at Google.  Nikki and Sarah discuss - No one gets married to get divorced but what can you do to make conscious decisions through the divorce process. A good divorce versus a bad divorce. How to make sure children are the focal point and not collateral damage. Where to start to have a good divorce. How to fill the gaps. Preparing your child to become the "Professional Traveller". Host: Nikki Parkinson. Divorce and Separation Hub Website. Guest: Sarah Armstrong. Website. Facebook. LinkedIn. Buy the book HERE. Join our community of like-minded people @thedivorcehub on Instagram and Facebook.  Executive Producer and Editor: Tiffany Richmond. You can contact Tiffany via her website and on Instagram @tiff__richmond.

In this episode with Abby Ryan, Head of Global Marketing Operations and Technology at Nexthink we discuss how do you align marketing ops with customer success and who should marketing ops report to?

Naomi is Director, Global Marketing Operations at EFI, a 3,000+ person tech company in the printing industry. She's based in Vancouver but she's been working remotely long before it was cool. She has 12+ years of experience leading high-performing global B2B demand generation teams. Before EFI she ran Marketing Ops at Sophos a cybersecurity enterprise company. Naomi is also one of the founding members of “MO-Pros”, the biggest Slack community for marketing Ops pros and recently launched a platform/site.  She's been interviewed by prominent podcasts for her efforts spearheading a large scale enterprise migration to Marketo. David Lewis, the godfather of marketing ops podcasts says that Naomi is in his top 10 marketing ops people he's ever worked with. Noami dives into the 3 things that stand out in most marketing operations profesionals:  ask a lot of questions and think outside the box ability to explain complex technical concept to non tech people multi task skills, sometimes the sky is falling Most marketing job postings should be read as a guideline and not taken as a prescription. The most important thing to demonstrate is your ability to learn something. When Naomi is hiring on her team she's looking for a balance between:- technical chops- cultural fitIn the interview process, it's key to get to chat with people from other business units to assess that cultural fit. Take home assignments are not super common for entry level roles, you can get a ton from how someone answers a question. Naomi values curiosity, looking for data opinions. How do you test that in an interview, what attributes shine?The attribute that allows you to suceed is you have to be curious and always ask why. You have to be willing to break things down and rebuild it better fast and stronger. Open ended questions get interesting conversations. Let candidates explain problem solving. Look for condidates that demonstrate personal bias recognition. What's it like being a Director level MOPs at an enterprise company?Aside from lots of meetings (lol), understand where business partners want to go, can our current tech stack support those goals. Tech adoption, get everyone to use Marketo to most potential.How can people who want to stay in the IC path develop a long term career growth?Naomi sets up her team with subject matter experts. Things change too fast, having experts on specific pieces, web, email, data, so they can stay on top of those areas and bring it back to the team and educate the rest, share knowledge.Here are key elements of Naomi's onboarding strategy:  Marketo university  1-1s with key stakeholders  Viydyard videos for short training  Make sure person is plugged in and fits in  Training the data model, week by week What should marketers do in their first job:  always asking questions  how can we do this better or not  why do we do this this way If you're interested in marketing tech and you aren't a member of The MOPros community, you can signup here.--Intro music by Wowa via Unminus

If you haven’t already committed to building a robust and full-fledged marketing operations function within your organization, then this is the year to do so. In this episode, Naomi Marr, Senior Director of Global Marketing Operations at Datto, shares why 2021 is the year to invest in marketing operations. Listen as she details how the marketing operations function has evolved over time, what marketing operations priorities you should be focusing on, and how to get started with analytics and reporting so that you can convey the impact of your marketing team’s efforts.Check out these other resources!DemandGen Resources Hub: https://bit.ly/2N3myz1 DemandGen Blog: https://bit.ly/3cVwnt9 DemandGen TV: http://bit.ly/37Ds3PS Manufacturing Demand book: https://bit.ly/37zkhVw

It's one thing to formulate and define a marketing strategy, realizing all those ideas in practice is a completely different ballgame. This is exactly what marketers in marketing operations do according to Darrell Alfonso: getting things done! In this episode, Elias and Mark have a chat with Darrell Alfonso, the Global Operations Manager at Amazon Web Services (AWS). Darrell has a strong background in marketing technology and has experience with tons of tools, including Marketo. We discuss the following: The role and importance of marketing operations  What marketing metrics to measure for success Measuring against 'what if we did not do any marketing efforts?' Trends in Martech for 2021 The importance of marketing attribution LinkedIn Darrell Alfonso: https://www.linkedin.com/in/darrellalfonso/  Website Amazon Web Services: https://aws.amazon.com/  If you want to be on this podcast or would like to know more about Marketing Technology, visit our website at marketingguys.com or contact Elias Crum at e.crum@marketingguys.nl

Hear from Adele on marketing operations and digital transformationAs Managing Director at Lapis Angularis, a consultancy specialising in digital transformation and marketing operations, Adele Ghantous explains why marketing principles from 15 years ago are still relevant today, and what brands should do to maximise their processes across international markets. Tune in for her insights.

Throughout the most of this year during the pandemic I’ve had the opportunity to speak with executives at a number of technology companies serving the small business community. And while there are a number of themes that have recurred with many vendors and across the months we’ve been dealing with COVID-19, the ones that have resonated with me have been the descriptions for small businesses I’ve heard over and over again: innovative, creative, resilient and inspired. And during a recent conversation with Melissa Schneider, GoDaddy’s VP Global Marketing Operations & Product Marketing, she went even further in detailing a couple of real life examples of just how resilient and inspired small businesses have been in order to survive and succeed in the midst of the coronavirus.

Mary Bermel, VP of Global Marketing Operations and Analytics at LogMeIn, has played a huge part in developing the measurement framework that allows her marketing team to prove their effectiveness and contribution to the organization. In this podcast episode, Mary shares her approach to getting started with marketing analytics and reporting, how to establish KPIs and identify important marketing goals, important tools and key roles needed for getting analytics right, and more.

For this week's episode of fwd, we have a very special guest, Naomi Liu, Director, Global Marketing Operations, at EFI (Electronics For Imaging), a billion-dollar company developing breakthrough tech for the printing industry. Naomi has been in marketing ops since the early MOps days back in the mid-to-late 2000s, and has successfully built high-performing teams from the ground up. We were lucky enough to sit down with her virtually and discuss her perspectives on career growth, and what it takes to build a strong marketing ops team. We really enjoyed this conversation and will be bringing more interviews to our fwd video series. So, if you'd like to chat MOps with us (or know anyone), please let us know.

The marketing operations role has evolved over time from simply being a function responsible for technology onboarding and enablement into a part of marketing that now has a huge impact on defining and delivering a cohesive customer experience. Avnita Gulati, Sr. Director, Global Marketing Operations at Visa, talks about this transformation of marketing operations and shares what the future of marketing ops looks like. Listen as we talk about how to identify gaps in your stack, how to maximize the investment on your technologies, and more.

Guest: Nicolas Draca - Chief Marketing Officer @HackerRank (Formerly @Twilio, @LinkedIn, @Infoblox) Guest Background: Nicolas Draca has over 20 years of experience in sales and marketing. He is currently the CMO at HackerRank. Prior to HackerRank, he was the Vice President of Marketing at Twilio. Prior to Twilio, Nicolas spent five years at LinkedIn, holding the position of senior director, global marketing operations. Before LinkedIn, in 2004, he co-founded Ipanto and served the same company as the chief marketing officer. Ipanto was acquired by Infoblox in 2007, where he spent another 3 years as a Director, building their Demand Marketing function globally. Nicolas holds a master's degree from ICN Business School, France. He is also an advisor and early investor in several startups and incubators (like Y Combinator). Guest Links: LinkedIn Episode Summary: In this episode, we cover: - The Science of Marketing Playbook - 4 Pillars (Talent, Insights, Operations, and Lifecycle) - The Formula for Hiring, Onboarding, and Developing Successful Marketing Teams - Critical Alignment w/ Your Manager and Stakeholders: What is your job? - Data and Measurement - Moving from Data to Intelligence - The Account-Based Marketing Method Full Interview Transcript: Naber:  Hello friends around the world. My name is Brandon Naber. Welcome to The Naberhood, where we have switched on, fun discussions with some of the most brilliant, successful, experienced, talented and highly skilled Sales and Marketing minds on the planet, from the world's fastest growing companies. Enjoy! Naber:  Hey everybody. Today we have Nicolas Draca on the show. Nicolas has over 20 years of experience in Sales and Marketing. He is currently the Chief Marketing Officer at HackerRank, who have raised $58 million in capital. Prior to HackerRank. He was the Vice President of Marketing at Twilio. Twilio IPO's back in 2016, and they currently have a $17 billion valuation. Prior to Twilio, Nicolas spent five years at LinkedIn holding the position of Senior Director of Global Marketing Operations. LinkedIn IPO'd back in 2011, and they were acquired by Microsoft in 2016 for $27 billion. Before LinkedIn. In 2004, he co-founded Ipanto and served the same company as the Chief Marketing Officer. Ipanto was acquired eventually by Infoblox in 2007, where he spent another three years as a Director building their Demand Marketing function globally. Nicolas holds a Master's Degree from ICM Business School in France. He is also an advisor and early stage investor in several startups and incubators like Y Combinator. Here we go. Naber:  Nicolas, awesome to have you on the show. How are you? Nicolas Draca:   I'm doing fantastic. Thank you for having me. Naber:  Yes, I'm so glad to have you. Hearing your French accent makes me think about the French holiday I just had, the French holiday that you just had, in addition to being in Greece and having all the amazing food. I am so excited to have you on. I've learned a lot from you in a short space of time when we've worked together in the past. Gotten to know you a little bit personally. Many of the people I've worked with have gotten to know you personally and professionally, and there's just so many good things to say about you, as a person and as a professional operator. So I'm more than excited for the audience to hear what you have to say. So why don't we jump in? What I think we'll do is, we'll get into some of the professional jumps that you've had through your career, talk about your career, as well as a bunch of the frameworks, the mindset you have, some of the methods that you've gone through and used in your playbook, if you will. But first, I think it'd be helpful, if it's okay with you, is to start to get to know you a little bit personally so that they can build up the same fascination as I have with you as an individual, and maybe we'll start back in the day, if you will. Maybe, we'll start in your childhood. So why don't we start with...I mean, you grew up in France, you were based in Strasbourg, you were born in Strabourg and grew up there, you were based in Frankfurt, then Strasbourg again, San Francisco, you've got so many global experiences. What was it like as a kid growing up as Nicolas Draca? And what are some of the things you're interested in? Nicolas Draca:   Yeah. So I grew up in France, in Strasbourg - border with Germany - East. And what was it to be Nicolas Draca? Well, I would say not much, pretty shy kid. Just following my friends wherever they would go. I was not the leader, that's for sure. I was average in every single sport. I was okay with it, no ego there. It's just, like, anything I would play, I was just average. I think that summaries what it was when I was young. I think school, I was average. Sport, I was average. I think great friends. I lived in the countryside. So after school, I was more about going outside, playing in the forest, playing with my bike. And that was my life as a young kid. Naber:  Very cool. And what were some of your hobbies, your interests as you were growing up? Nicolas Draca:   It was being outside, and I think this is still the case today. We lived in a small village. There were like 200 people, in my class were nine, on my level. Being with friends, outside, playing whatever, playing soccer, running around, jumping on our bike, whatever you can imagine. Naber:  Very cool. Very cool. And as you're going through high school, were there certain subjects or anything you acceled at where you thought at a young age, you were pretty good at it naturally? Nicolas Draca:   Yeah. I specialized pretty quickly in math and physics. I have boys. I was a boy. I was just going with the flow. I'm just no big plan, no ambition, no nothing. To be fair, ,when I talk to friends today, and they look like where I am today, they struggled to connect between what I was when I was young, and what I do today. Like, really? That's what you've done and that's who you are. So yeah, just I go back to that just an average kid. Naber:  It's funny, I'm laughing so much, and I have to hold it in because of the microphone, but I'm laughing. That's really interesting...What did your parents do for a living? Nicolas Draca:   My father was a Sales guy, and my mother was a teacher. And then my father moved from Sales in consulting to building his own company. Actually he created two companies, two startups. Naber:  Wow. So that was in your genesY Nicolas Draca:   Yeah, I think so. Yeah. Part of the education was you started in a job early, starting when you're 16 - it's like, first job, same for my sister, I have one sister. And you're going to have to work. Yeah, that was in our genes, that's for sure. Naber:  Very interesting. And what was the first thing you did to make money? Nicolas Draca:   The first thing I did to make money was to work in a restaurant as a waiter. And then the second thing, I ended up driving ambulance. Naber:  Whoa. Nicolas Draca:   Yeah. That was my summer job. So this was when I was 18, you'll can only drive in France when you're 18. That was something really unique, learned a ton from it, specifically on the people side. And I think if I didn't have started computer science at that time, maybe I would have moved into being a doctor or something in the medicine field. Naber:  Wow. What were some of the things that you learned? You're probably about to say that. Nicolas Draca:   Yeah. Wow. So when you drive when you drive an ambulance, you drive people from home to the hospital, or you drive them back. So quite quickly you understand and you see where they live, and you see all type of people, all social aspects of it. And so that was one part of it, which when you're young, I was like 18, 19, that's just wow, it was pretty surprise, I'd say. The other thing is, we will also doing ER type of thing, I don't know how we say it in English, but like we would go...there are car accidents, and we would go there and pick up the people. And yeah, we did a couple of ones where...once we went for somebody who committed suicide to pick 'em up. Naber:  Wow. Nicolas Draca:   so it's a, I mean a, you guys can go a little bit on it to give you an idea, but the, you arrive there and the person tried to, cut is they yeah. And yeah, but, but survived it. And so it was really a weird kind of set up because you arrived, you don't know the person, so you're completely disconnected. whereas there's a lot of drama going on around the seminary. You come here and you just try to do your job and then you have those weird part of the story where actually, which we have to do is to chase a cat with trying to leak the blog. We're story, but we ended up running in the k frame to chase that cat was trying to lead all the blog. yeah. Yeah. It's just kind of weird setup slash weird experience and we had many of those, which I'm not sure I want to share. Naber:  Oh Wow. That's an amazing short story. You walked into a storm on a bottle and you have to write into the bottle every single time. Yeah. Yup, Yup, Yep, Yup, Yup. Wow. That is, that's probably the most interesting answer I've gotten to that question. That's a really good answer. Nicolas Draca:   It says a, it was a unique experience actually. I a I still remember that, that job and I think I got lucky to get that job for a couple of months, a few years. And yeah. Do you find a lot? I think where I am today. Naber:  Very cool. Wow. You always learned something really interesting about somebody. You have these types of conversations, so you're in Strasburg, driving ambulances, working at restaurants, being, being, being, being a average, probably not average. You're probably overselling the average part of it. But, so then you're making decisions about where you want to go to school for university. how, what's the decision you make at that point? And tell us, walk us through, your decision around school. After, after high school Nicolas Draca:   I started, I had the chance of a started coding when I was young, like 11 year old. I'm 46 today, so 11 mean like in 84. at that time, you do not have access to computer, but we were lucky that intermediate school, we had computer. I think there was somebody who was passionate about it, was able to get a couple of computer for us. And so I'd have passion for it. Then decided quickly to move into computer science. I'm a major, and then got my bachelor in computer science. And then, my idea was you're going to find this weird, I wanted to work in a golf. I played golf. I loved it. I taught my other job, my third job on the weekend. And super weird. So I interviewed for a golf school, to be in management. And at the same time I interview for interview for a business school, meaning to go through the process to be accepted and went for business school and went from my business school aftermy computer degree, the master in business and then, took my first job. Naber:  Wow. Not In the Gulf company. Nicolas Draca:   no, not a in a golf company. I still, I don't play actually anymore. but at that age, I don't know. And my parents were highly supportive. They're hey, you want to go? Even though you graduated for computer science, who went to be in the gold business? Go for it. so I had the oldest support up to me to make some decision, super happy about what happened. Naber:  Nice. Cool. I wouldn't want to, I wouldn't want to compete with you on the links. I'm sure that you're much better than you're saying you right now. So let that, does that get us to GE Capital? Is that the first role out of school? Nicolas Draca:   Yeah. Out of school. My first job was, a Sales guy at GE Capital. And here I was selling infrastructure, so laptop, desktop servers, printers applications, for a large company in the east of France. So that's what my first job and that's where I met. I started the same day somebody called a Duchenne. Why cool. Founded a pencil, later on with Naber:  very cool. And so you were up, that's really interesting story. I'm sure we'll get to that in a second also. And you were obviously quite technical walking into that role. Was that really helpful walking in as with the quite technical mind to get into an account management slash Sales role at GE Capital and for it solutions? Nicolas Draca:   Yeah, it was, it was a, it wasn't nice to have actually two is not that complex. A, it was a new laptop computer, right? Yeah. To have a passion for it. So I had a passion for it, but not treating immediate at that stage. like here was really hardcore Sales. It was my first job, in back in the day you would start, there was no internet then I'm going to speak like an old guy. So actually you had the yellow pages. That's what I remember. And I was pretty shy. Like you have to remember that the, why am I in trail? Good question. and on a on day one, I get the yellow pages, which is not the best way to onboard somebody and say, hey, good luck and go and try to sell. And I had the number of to deliver on. Nicolas Draca:   the story is as well as the on friends factors actually what is happening in inferences. Sometimes they do a writing test where they analyze how you write. I think it tell them that country, I'm not sure. Yeah. Long Story Short, I started day one and then my boss come to see me and saying, hey, they just finished on an icing your the way you're right and we cannot keep you because more or less a summary, you get a report, three pages on the report. and the reports say you're a loser and you will never be able to handle pressure, and grow in your career. So are, you're going to have to leave tonight, and you can not stay. And I'm what? So it came back pretty upset to meet with the VP of Sales of GE. Nicolas Draca:   Excellent. its in Paris and then hey, that, that's not how it's gonna play out. Right. You were first from a legal standpoint, you're not allowed to do that. Number two, it's highly, disrespectful to onboard needs to get started to two and then decide after day one based on how I write. I agree with that. My writing is terrible, but then decide who I am as a person. so I kept that, I kept the report, and I showed it to my kids later. I'm yes, that's what your dad was. That's where happened. So that was my first job, actually. They one I came back home. Naber:  Well Nicolas Draca:   I'm I'm I was already withmy wife. Naber:  Yeah. Oh my gosh. so in a marathon you're not supposed to pre sprint from the start, but we are sprinting with good stories so far. This is hilarious and great. It's just excellent. So, what is the, what's the biggest thing you learned at GE Capital? And then we'll talk about your jump to CSC. Nicolas Draca:   Yeah. So a g tactical here was, so, I learned what it cost to be on the first real job and being a Sales person, what it took and how to be a, leave you smart. And what I mean by that is how can you make your quota the fastest way possible. and here we add professional services on one end, which was like 30% margin. We had a infrastructure which was 5% margin. And of course my quota was based on a much more genuine would bring to the table and decided where as we were in a selling hardware emotion in the company, decided to do all of my business in services, and professional services, sorry. This is my learning is what is the fastestto achieving, to beating quota was the learning of spending a couple of years at GE. Naber:  Yeah. Nice. That's great. Yeah. You've quoted a couple of times. whatever you're doing, somebody else's probably done it better than you. Don't reinvent the wheel, learn from others and be lazy, smarter. Yeah. I really liked that quote. And it's obviously something you can learn really early in your career. okay. Yeah, Nicolas Draca:   I actually have the, it's a, it's a big, big one is a, it's trying to look and does, this is what I did unconsciously though looking around me and there was one Sales rep who was highly successful and one was working really hard but not like I was working like 14 hours a day, but not being as successful. So I loved that the successful one. And I tried to understand the dynamic of the deals then and learn from it, then cloned it. Naber:  Nice. Excellent. Okay. So you're at GE Capital, you're learning a lot about what it's like to carry a bag, be a Sales person for the first time, you're making a jump to CSC. What did you make the jump to CSC, and what were you doing at that job? Nicolas Draca:   Yes, so CSC, one of my friends was leading one of the team at CSC, Computer Science Corporation, it was in the outsourcing business and it was focusing on transformation. And transformation at CSC will assign hundred of millions of dollars of deals where they will start outsourcing both infrastructure and people, and moving them into CSC. And our friend was putting a team together to help him through this transformation phase. And so you will work on an account for like 6 to 12 months max. And your job would be as fast as possible to be able either from an infrastructure standpoint, from a people standpoint, from a process standpoint, to migrate to CSC. So here it opened up to all of Europe because all of those contracts where across Europe or across the world and more of an international angle to what I was doing before. Naber:  Very good. Okay. And so you made that jump, and Program Manager. So day to day, what are you doing? Nicolas Draca:   Yeah, day-to-day the way it would work is we would be in charge of projects, all of those transformation projects. And depending on the project we had lined up, or our goal would be to work with a set of people...I had a couple of project manager working for me, you will have infrastructure people, you will have architects, you will have procurement, and so on. And just being able to orchestrate and to coordinate all of it to deliver on time. So the way it would work is as part of the process before starting on anything, you would send a quote to your customers saying this is a how many hours I'm going to spend, and this is how much it's going to cost. So you just ship within the hours you're committed to. Naber:  Are you creating that estimate or is someone else creating it and you're delivering on it? Nicolas Draca:   No, I have to create that estimate. And it was like massive, like millions of dollars every time. So, it was the first time I worked on really, really large contracts, so pretty exciting. Naber:  Yeah. Excellent. Okay. So you're at CSC, this is what you're doing day to day, and you are six and a half, seven years into your career at this point, your belt to make your first major entrepreneurial jump for Ipanto. Tell us about why you decided to start Ipanto, and the story for how it started, as well how you're ultimately acquired by Infoblox, which sounds like a great story. Nicolas Draca:   Yeah. So what happened is...one of the projects we were managing - so I was still working with my friend Eric from GE, we went together to CSC - and one of the projects we were working on is IP address management. So what was happening is people were trying to find a way to manage their IP addresses on their network. And they were using spreadsheets, which seems surprising, but that was more or less the go-to. And if you think about it like every single device, like your laptop here, your printer, whatever, has an IP address. And as you can imagine pretty quickly, you can not keep up. If you have 5,000 employee, and I don't know 3-4 IP addresses per employee, you cannot manage IP addresses in a spreadsheet. Then we looked at it for a customer and realized, that there was only one company that was doing that as a software, and they were charging per active IP per year, and it was $1.50. And with the explosion of IP addresses, we looked at it and were like, oh man, we have to create a company. So we started looking what other competitors were doing on the side, and at some point decided to create our own company...We had hired...So what we're doing is more or less, we stayed at CSC as consultants. So we work for them. So our daytime job was CSC. Our nighttime job was building our company, which many people do. So it was all bootstrapped and it took us like a couple of years to get an MVP and we started closing customers. And we did a decent job I think on the Marketing side, we did a decent job on our footprint where people believed we were a large company. With Skype you could open...we had, not fake, but we had numbers in Australia - a phone number in Australia, we have numbers in the US - phone numbers. So, as we had global reach, we will send quote like across the globe, and we would time our email to look like we were in the region. We also created a set of names, so I had multiple names. I was Shawn, the product manager. I was Nicolas, the CMO. I was also John, from support. And so emails we're going out, and we automated all of it, to make you believe that we were a large organization, but to ensure that people could engage with us through support, which we call customer success today. Or through the product team, saying hey, what do you think about the solution? And so on and so on. So, yeah, that's what we did. Naber:  So you're effectively like the equivalent of a chatbot with all of your names, and you are your own follow the sun model, as in like you did everything probably 24 hours during the day. How many people did you eventually have a on the team? Nicolas Draca:   So we went up to 10 employees, mostly engineers. So we build a small engineering team in Strasbourg. And then we had that rule, as a Sales leader you would appreciate it, and this was coming from my father. So my father, had a rule for a Sales rep that if you go to Paris at that time, you need to have three meetings a day. If you travel three meetings a day. We applied the same rule at the European level. So if we had people pinging us from any country, and we were able to secure a free meetings a day, we'll go and we'll take a flight. So we went to Dubai multiple times. We went to Saudi Arabia. We went to Turkey. Meaning that's where inbound was coming from. Was it rational in terms of like weighted pipeline and how much money we would make, it was not, we did not have that experience. What is it efficient in term of meetings? Yes, it was. And then we were having long meetings and we built partnerships across most of the Europe, which was pretty cool at that time, and got us to meet some great prospects. And then at some point, we decided...two things happened. I'm going to get you to Infoblox. One is...I don't know for what reason actually, I can not recall...we decided to raise funding. And the plan was, with my associate, he said, hey, you know what, you're going to go to the valley, and you're going to meet with VC. And I never met with VC before, nor have I ever put a business plan together the way a VC in the valley would expect it. So, one of the leaders in the space, Infoblox, just raised 20 million at that point. We send an email through some connection, and we end up with like 20 meetings in one week. I'm like, rule of 3, works. Jump on a plane. And I went there alone, when I think about it, it's pretty, I don't know if it was stupid, but it was interesting. Went there alone with my deck, seven slides. And my first meeting, I think it was Accel, I end up with like five people in the room, like partners. Tell me about your company and so on. I go through the meeting, I explained what I could explain. Was pretty weak on the finance side of the deck, which was the last part of the deck, focusing more on the customers we had, and the dynamic of the business, and the size of the market. But more or less, I did one meeting after the other like this. We didn't raise any funding, to be clear. Somebody told us unless I can call you at 11 first to have lunch together, we're not gonna work together...But we learn a ton through the process. We started discovering how people think here. How do they see the world? How do they manage their businesses? And actually, on the last two or three meetings, people just starting giving us advice, which I highly respect the US for...anybody, like trying to grow a company or be an entrepreneur in general. And people are really nice and friendly to give us advice about what we should do next, and how we should think about our business...And in parallel what we did is we ended up working on a deal with a company called PG&E. So coming from France, I have no bloody clue who PG&E was. It's not that I haven't done my homework, but we had all that inbound and we were just...And so we ended up in final on PG&E against a company called Infoblox. And we didn't win, whereas we had the support from the engineering team. And then Infoblox reach out to us getting really upset just starting to see us in deals, incuding that large PG&E deal. And the BD person, as well as the GM for Europe, Karl, ping'd us and said, I need to meet you. I need to spend time with you. I need to understand who you are. And this is where the initial discussion started. Naber:  Wow. Really interesting. Someone to reach out to directly from Infoblox and said, we need to meet you. Were you pretty guarded with those conversations? Did you feel like it was a com-partnership, or did you feel like it was more like them kind of feeling you out as competition? Nicolas Draca:   Yes. So we already had another competitor in the space who approached us, and our first feedback was we're not going to talk to. Like, we don't want to talk to you. And Karl, Karl changed our life somehow. We saw him at a show, and he's like, I want to see your product, like, show me, show me, show me. And we're nah, dude, we don't want to, we already had this. It happened two weeks ago. We were again pretty young, and we're like, no way, we're not showing you your product. That's not going to happen. Screw that. And then he pushed again and got the VP of Marketing and the VP of Sales to ping us and they say, hey, you know what we're going to do? Actually we're going to fly to Santa Clara. And you're going to come and present, and we're going to sign an NDA, pay for your travel, and everything. And at that point we're like, okay, again the rule of a couple of meetings, let's go to the valley. And then based on our learnings, meeting with all the VC in the valley, we were really set up for success in the meeting we would have there - understanding how they think, understanding how they approach things, and being able to engage in the right way through all the meetings. So it ended up being a successful week. There was really a good fit between their team and our team. They really love our technology and loved the way we were working. And then we quickly within a few months closed the deal, sold the company, and moved everybody in California, the engineers, and so on. Naber:  Wow. That's great. You've been a part of...you were required Infoblox at Ipanto, you had Talentoday that you're an investor in who was acquired by Medix in 2018, you've been a part of multiple IPO businesses. Do you have any advice for people going through that acquisition process, especially as a founder, especially as a Senior leader on the exec team? Nicolas Draca:   I think when when you go for that process you need to be...so a couple of things. One, we were pretty clear that based on our skillset, and based on our capacity to raise funding, we could not grow the company more. Okay. It didn't end up being a large company, it was a small startup, but we were aware and self aware that hey, we reached our limit. And so we decided to go on the path to...It's not like a week before Infoblox ping'd us we were like, we're going to sell. Like I think we built and designed the company for six months with a path to sell the company. So that was one. There was no ego involved on this one - that was the second one. And number three goes back to what you want to do as part of that opportunity. Right? You as a leader, do you want to be part of the adventure still? Or, I'm going to sell and stay six months and go. For us, again, we were clear we wanted to sell. We still believe in our product, and we wanted to push it and get that product / solution successful and growing, becoming the leader on IP address management. That's what our dream. And we executed on it. The last piece is of course, culture fit, or the fit with the team that are going to acquire you. Pretty often what you see, you get acquired and then everybody disappears, right? And you're not even sure your product is gonna survive that acquisition. And here for us it was really, really important that, we would get on well with the people that are acquiring us, that we were clear that we would be part of the adventure moving forward, and we could still execute on our vision to lead or yeah, to own IP address management, which was what we were doing. And this is what we did. Naber:  Nice. Excellent. It's a really good segue into Infoblox and you building the Demand Marketing function there. So as someone that went through an acquisition, you're founder or co-founder of the company going into that new company, tell us about what you were doing at Infoblox. And can you give it to us from the perspective of someone who just got acquired? Because someone that is thinking of their business with an exit strategy, it might be good for them to also hear it from a lens of, we were acquired and this was what it was like in the aftermath or the afterlife in the new company. Nicolas Draca:   Yeah. So first we were acquired. It took us some time to understand that...it was by a smart team. We did not realize - we just moved to the Bay, we had no sense of the dynamic here. It took me like a couple of years actually. I understood they were smart, but those people, it was their 4th IPO. They we're trying to go to their next IPO, they've done three of them. I was like, cool, what is an IPO? Congratulations. But the quality of talent that they assemble and the success they had in the past, I think just facilitated the vision of how we would work together. But again, this we didn't know about, right. I learned it later. But quickly, we agreed...We had a bonus structure based on revenue of our company, revenue of our product, sorry. And what happened, and I think you're going to love that one. So, Ipanto the IP address management product, was a highly successful lead gen product. Why? Because replace your spreadsheet to manage IP addresses was something everybody would understand and would get excited about, versus the other products that Infoblox that had at the end of the day are not that sexy, and actually you're competing with free. So it was kind of a Trojan horse. And the Sales strategy, which I didn't know, was to use our product to enter into accounts, to start a discussion. But the goal is to sell the other products. Naber:  You're the land. Nicolas Draca:   Yeah, I'm the land play, but on the discussion, not even selling it. And I got pretty quickly upset about it because again, we had with my buddy a vision that we wanted to lead IP address management, and they were using our leads just to do that, which is to land a discussion. And the piece you're gonna like is what I'm going to tell you now, is at some point this was also channel business. Okay. And they were not managing all the leads. And I found a channel partner to take over all the leads. So I went to see the Head of Sales, and I'm like, Hey, your team doesn't seem that excited. I have a bonus tied to it. And we went to execute on the vision, it's all good - and I was like, Director in that company, Director of Demand Gen, I was a nobody - and I'm like, I'm going to move over all the leads to that channel partner, and actually I'm going to Seattle to train them next week. Okay. And at that point, my boss, the VP, Marketing came andsaid hey, we are we going to have a timeout - like, you have to stop. And I'm like, why?...We understand you have a bonus tied to everything. We're going to pay your bonuses, we're good. And we are going to stick back to our strategy. But I think they did appreciate the commitment and the passion around that, saying, hey that's cool. Now can you do what you do to the rest of the business, and not focus only on your world? Naber:  Wow, really interesting. I mean you brought an entrepreneurial, founder mindset and you went in hot with an executive that's the Head of Sales. And that is not an easy thing to unlearn that mindset once you're running a startup, once you're a founder of a business, that is not an easy thing to unlearn when you go into a larger environments. I'm sure they really appreciated both the structure and method of the problem solving, as well like you said, the dedication to solving the problem, which is great. Nicolas Draca:   Yeah. And it's not being a jerk as part of the process. What I say sometimes to my team...we were at some point, agreeing in our disagreement on the vision, and it's about having a discussion saying, Hey, this is the issue, the way I'm going to solve is okay, I'm gonna move on. And I think being able to have that level of discussion in a constructive way, and agreeing in your disagreement, is always a good thing to decide what to do next. Naber:  Nice. Excellent. And I'm sure that'll play a little part of talking about some different pieces of your playbook a little bit here. So we're gonna jump from Infoblox into LinkedIn, Twilio, and HackerRank. Heavy hitting, awesome, really interesting hyper-growth organizations that you've joined at very different stages, and endured for very different stages. And you've just done such amazing things at these businesses. So why don't you talk about the jump into Linked, what you were doing at LinkedIn, maybe for a couple minutes. And then I'll pull up, I want to talk about a couple of what I know are your superpowers, as you're going through both that role...and you can jump into examples before you get to Twilio, before you get to HackerRank. But just jump into how you joined LinkedIn and what you did there. Nicolas Draca:   Yeah. So when I joined LinkedIn, I focused initially on the Talent Solution business. It was before the IPO, again, I know you're pretty familiar with that business. And here if the goal was to build a Demand Gen engine to support that Talent Solution business. And if I recall it correctly, I'm not 100% sure about the number, I think our prior year the revenue was like 80 million. And I come, I think their Marketing team was like 30 people all together, reporting into Nick, and my team was like two people. And I look after two weeks, and I put a plan together, super proud of how fast I did my plan. You'll see what happened next. I go and meet with the CMO of LinkedIn, and I'm like, Hey, here it is. Here is my vision, this is how we are going to grow from...I'm going to build an organization to support $500M, from $80M. And he looks at me, and he's like, I like your plan. It's a good plan. It's not ambitious enough. And I say, what? I'm like, 80 to 500. He's like, yeah 10x. Like the rule at LinkedIn was like 10x always. And I'm like, what about 10x? He's like, year, you need to build a plan for to support a $billion because Talent Solutions is going to be our first billion dollar business. And I'm like, you're joking, right? He's like, no, no, I'm not. Can you please come back next week with an update on your plan? And I'm like, of course. So I go back to my cubicle work on my plan. Then he pings me, Hey, can you come to see me in my office the day after. I come to see him the day after in his office, he's like, Hey, I really liked your plan. This was Talent Solutions. It's like I just hired a lead on the Marketing side for Marketing Solutions, and I love for you to help her to build a Demand Gen engine again. And I'm like, what are you talking about? Yesterday you told me to go from 80 to a $billion, now you asked me to to focus on this. I'm like, I cannot do that, I have two people. He's like, nah, figure it out. And this is how is has been since day one. And this is where you learn the scaling muscle, hyper-growth muscle. More or less, I mean you've been through that journey, being on a high speed train and building the tracks at the same time, at scale. Naber:  Yeah. Speed. The ultimate function of speed. Nicolas Draca:   Speed. I think it's the ultimate function of, okay, speed and demanding excellence, which is a core value. Because whatever you're going to do as an experiment, if it's works, you're going to have to 10x that experiment. And 10x can mean the same thing you build in the US is going to have to work in Europe, in Australia, in Brazil, or it's going to have to scale across the organization, across all business lines. And when you are initially...I remember the first couple of months being exhausted. But not exhausted because I was working, I wasn't working 16 hours a day, not in like number of hours. It's the intensity of the meeting. Like in half an hour, and again you've been through that, you'll have a meeting in half an hour, and you come with a V1 of something, after half an hour you would be at V5. And if if you had to check your phone for two minutes during the meeting, you would be lost. Like if you did not follow the discussion, you're like what are you talking about? That's level to speed, yeah, you went back to it. Speed, demanding excellence, and all the core values of the company. Yeah, it was incredible. Naber:  Amazing. Okay. So you're at LinkedIn and you're undoubtedly iterating on and building new pieces of your playbook. One of the things that you've talked about in a few different forums, you've been interviewed on this, you've been on stage talking about this, is your Four pillars of the Science of Marketing - Talent, Insights, Operations, and Lifecycle. What I'd love to do is start picking apart each one of those, because we're at LinkedIn now and I know you've developed quite a bit of muscle fiber putting together a lot of the playbook there, and then ultimately exercising it more and more, and iterating more and more at Twilio and HackerRank. Can you go through, the basics of those four pillars, and give us a little bit of sense for how your frameworks work within each of them. So maybe we can start with talent, and then move from there. Is that okay? Nicolas Draca:   Yeah, of course. So talent is about, I mean it's number one. And it doesn't come from me, it comes from LinkedIn as the driving force for success. And it's something I learned at LinkedIn. I appreciated at Twilio, and I appreciate it even more at HackerRank. It's about how you're going to build your team, who you're going to hire, and how are they going to be able to scale, right? Not having any compromise on who you're going to hire. And the process we had, and I think it was across the company, but you can tell me, was when you hire somebody...So first we want to somebody for their current job or their job description, but we're hiring somebody for their capacity to grow, and scale, and be in a job two years from now... But when you are in a high growing startup, you never hire people for what they're going to do the next six months. That's not gonna work. And the number one thing is, people who will go through the interview process will decide who will test on what, but at the end of the day when we will regroup after talking to a candidate, 100% have to be a yes. I know it was the same on your end, I think. 100% have to be yes. Otherwise, we'll pass on the candidate. It doesn't mean the candidate was a bad candidate. The guy could be like super smart, super...it's just, it did not work. But two things that are really important. Number one is people knew that if the said no, there will be consequences, right? Meaning that person would not get hired, right? So you have to work with people who understand that. Number two is if somebody said no, you can go back, if you have one out of seven people saying no, you had the opportunity to get back to that person and say, Hey, you are the only no, just doing one last check that you are 100% no, because we're going to pass on this candidate. And the person has to be, I'm going to say smart to even maybe come back and say, hey actually let me re check my notes. Let me check that, and maybe I was wrong, which not many people are able to say. Or I was right, and I picked my my view...And I was wrong, I'm actually a yes, and let's move forward. So first is no compromise on hiring talent and spend the time between needed to find the right person. The other one is hiring is a full time job. And initially when you build a team, it's not the thing you're going to do at seven at night. You just want to block your calendar to just have that muscle, and spend the time partnering with your recruiter, looking yourself in your network, and so on. But it's a full time job. And then when you've done all that job of hiring, next step is onboarding and after it's nurturing, right? It's how you going to help people understand who they are as a professional, and what are they good at, what are they less good at, and it starts there. And what is the path for them to grow? It can be a year plan, a 2 year plan. Whatever it takes to ensure that you assembled the best team possible, a team that is going to collaborate. I think collaboration is at the heart of it. I think specifically in Marketing, I'm not going to talk about other organizations, but in Marketing you are the center of so many things that if you don't have like collaboration / communication skills, it's going to be a little bit hard to succeed. So that's one. The second one for me is demanding excellence. Demanding excellence across anything you do. And the third one is passion. Passion for your job. I can talk more about it, but I think when people ask me what do you look for in a candidate? I'm like, okay, you look for the skills and so on. I'm going to look for culture fit and passion. And both are going to be equally important. Naber:  Yeah. Excellent. When you were going through these interviews...ABP always be pipelining, like you said, just building that muscle all the time. You're the CEO of the hiring process, you own the hiring process. As you're going through, and you're going through the interviews, what was the calibration exercise like after that? What were the nuts and bolts of that method you use to calibrate with the rest of the team after you were done with the interviews? Nicolas Draca:   Yes. So they way it was working is, we do this today at HackerRank, we have something called job guidelines. When we agree what are the skill set that are needed for the job. And we defined the skillset and what we expect from them. And the same way I love to had passion for the company, passion for the job, which I have two different, which are different. And then I had culture, values as part of the scorecard. Okay. What we do is everybody has to...so there no like, oh yeah, I didn't have time to update, and I'm just sending you an email and this thing is going to be okay. No, everybody has to [complete] the scorecard. It is super important. At HackerRank, and depending upon your entry level, if it goes Director and above, actually the entire package goes to our CEO, he wants to review it. And it's really, really... Like if you don't have the package ready, he's not going to approve it. Like he's not even going to interview with the person. And if he's not part of the interview process, he's not gonna approve the package. That person would never get an offer and a reference. So it's pretty core. So we have alignment and discussion, a pre-interview process. Not for every interview, but when start a job search. And then what we do, which takes time, but it's worth it, when you interview a couple of candidates is that meeting debriefing session. I do believe that often the first two or three candidates you're going to bring on sight could be for calibration, calibrating the team. What is happening when you are going that path is you have many new hires, and you're going to have to understand their interview style, and what they value, and what they don't don't value. And I think those post interview meetings, meeting with the team of interviewers and just agreeing and - saying, hey, I he was strong of that, and somebody else saying, no, he was like super weak, and ensuring that everybody's on the same page on what we expect, and how we value those skills, is really, really important. So calibration on a couple of first candidates is my take. When you have a more junior team or a new team within the organization. Naber:  Yeah, yeah, that makes sense. Your teams at such hyper growth businesses, those teams are always new, always getting used to the process. Also a smaller business, obviously always getting used to the new process. So as you're bringing people on board and you're onboarding them, do you have any couple of tactics you use to make sure you bring them onboard and starting to onboard them most effectively? Nicolas Draca:   Yes. So actually took me time to find the right onboarding process. Of course you want to put that document together. That's what you then have to do. And I think that recently, I finally, found a good way to do it. And what is happening now is on my team when you start, you know on day one, it's already on your calendar actually when you start, there is day 30 - you have to present to the entire Marketing team. Naber:  Very, very cool. Nicolas Draca:   And what do you have to present? So we provide them a template. I'm a big template guy. And the template is... What is your job - you're familiar with that - in less than 15 words? What did you understand is your job? Less than 15 words. To execute your job, I have something called Relationship 15 - who are the 15 people for you to be successful? We can go deep on that. And list those people. You have five people which are for you to be successful, five for your team, and five for you to grow in your career. Then a stop, start, continue. And people are surprised by it. They're like, I just started. I'm like yeah, but I hired you based on your expertise. If you're super junior in your job, I'm sure you have a point of view on what we should Stop doing, Start doing, Continue doing. Naber:  And fresh eyes. Fresh eyes. Nicolas Draca:   Yes. And give your point of view. And it's just to empower people to say, tell me what you think. Like actually, I'd love to know what you think. And the last one is, what are you gonna achieve at the 60, and what do you plan to achieve at day 90? So this is a forcing function for many, many things to happen before the presentation. Because by doing that, by presenting this to the rest of the..So they presented the entire Marketing organization, to my entire team. And the goal is not like to boo them, and say this and that. That's no what it is about. It is about the person to be accountable for what they are going to do. Number two is to understand why they were hired for, and just set a high bar. Like not day one, but it's kind of like you're going to have to do that. And people realize that that presentation better be good. It just sets the bar for how they're going have to deliver and ship moving forward. And three is, for people in the team to understand who they are, and what they're going to do, what the new hire is going to do. So it solves a lot of things, and have those meetings & milestone day 30...Wherever I go next, I'll repeat that because I'm happy with it myself. Naber:  It's in the infamous Nicolas Draca playbook. So there's so much to pick apart there. Two things I want to you to expand on just a little bit. One is, you talk about, what is your job? I think it's from Fred Kaufman's Conscious Business - 15 words to define it...That you talk about, and when looking at some of your content you've referenced that in the past. You talk also about how that as an exercise can be a good calibration and way of helping manage up within your job? Can you explain that a little bit? Nicolas Draca:   Yeah. So what is happening, and it happened to me at the Twilio. I worked with somebody called Francois that I know really, really well. And it took us four months to be on the same page on what my job was. And you might find it silly, it's not silly. It's just that, you come as a new hire and you have a vision for what you want to do. And when it grows that fast, and it grows at that speed, you're going to have to be pretty, pretty clear about what you're going to do. And I think you have to be more clear about what you're not going to do. It's as important. And I think the key to it is being on the same page as your boss on what is your job? And we spend four months with Francois discussing it, where even on my one-on-one, I would bring it on a biweekly basis saying, hey, this is what I'm going to focus on. And I will get that feedback saying yes, but maybe. And I'm like, wow, we really have to get to the end of it. And the why of the discussion is pretty simple. One is, let's assume you do that. You decide by yourself and what your job is without agreement with your manager, meaning without sign-off and really being on the same page. After 12 months, you're going to do a 12 months review, and you're going to claim victory! You're going to think you're going to claim victory. You're gonna say, Hey, this is what I did. It is amazing. And the person is going to look at you and say, this is not what I expected from you. And you're like, what? I've been working my ass off building that team, shipping A, shipping B, shipping C, delivering here, moving that KPI. And if you replay it in your head, I'm sure it happens to many people in the past, where the person is looking at you saying, yeah, Nah, that's okay, congrats. And so you want to avoid that type of gap or misunderstanding on what you need to solve for. It's not only about your personal review, and progression in career, and everything, it's just about being sure that you tackle and address things that you were supposed to, in alignment with your boss. Because he or she may have other things to solve for, and they have a bigger vision, they have information you don't have, that needs to be to be solved when thinking about the overall strategy - which you could miss a piece. I had another boss at LinkedIn, it was the same like Nick, where I'm kind of intense, and I move fast, and I love to do things, an so on. And I close on the topic in a meeting, and two weeks later he would come back and say, what about that? And in my head I'm like, I don't understand. We already talked about that. I thought we we closed on it. And then you need to - listening is a big, big thing - pause, listen, and say, okay, it looks like I missed it. And the goal for you is not to push it and just repeat what you need two weeks ago, it's more to clarify and say, okay, what is the gap? What is the issue? And what do you expect from me? And you will see that, and I've seen it multiple times...Where people, and I do it the same with my team...If I have something bugging me, I'm like how can you solve that? And they're yeah, of course. And then they don't do it. And two weeks after I'm going to come back to it because I had it top of mind for me. I'm like, what is the progress on that? And they look at me like, what are you talking about? And so I think driving that alignment, managing up...It's more about aligning than managing-up I think, and setting up expectation, is key to success in a collaborative relationship. Naber:  Nice. Excellent. And one more quick side note on that. You had mentioned, so thinking about managing stakeholders, and we'll get to that in a second here. But managing close stakeholders in your close sphere - managing up, managing sideways, and managing down. You talk about this also it has an application to managing sideways and managing your stakeholders, correct? Can you explain that a little bit? Nicolas Draca:   Yeah, yeah. thanks for that, I forgot to mention it. Yeah, good catch. Yeah...So by being clear on what is your job... So first you're clear with yourself, which is a good starting point and this is where you want to start. You have managing up, and then again when you're in a company growing that fast, everybody has priorities, everybody has work to do. And you want, and I ask my teams do that when engaging on projects, when asking for bandwidth, and time from somebody else on your team or not on your team, you want to explain every time the why. Okay, you want to spend time and say, hey, actually I'd love for you to spend time with me, or allocate x hours of your time to my initiative. And let me explain the why and impact it's going to have. It's kind of a Sales pitch internal, it is a sales pitch. And to ensure that that person is going to focus more time with you that they would on another project. And I think explaining clearly the why, and what is your job is part of it, people will appreciate it. And if they disagree, or if they don't understand, just pause, put yourself in their shoes, try to understand what they have to solve for, what are the issues they have and why they're not getting it, and spend the right amount of time on that. When you build a a big Initiative, large initiative, you want to ensure that people are inspired by the project you're trying to lead and push. And I think this will help one, you get successful, two, people understand why they should spend time on it, and three, deliver and ship at scale. Naber:  Excellent. Thank you for that. Really good tips and insight. And then the last one I want to talk about within Second last thing I wanna talk about within talent. You mentioned the Relationship 15. Can you explain a little bit more about that? You kind of grazed over it, but I do think it's important. So the five, five, five, can you explain a little bit more about that? Nicolas Draca:   Yeah. So, what we do here is we try to get a sense and invite people, I invite people on my team or I do this across the company, also sometimes I did it here at HackerRank...Is can you please list...And I invite everybody to do that. It's always an interesting exercise...who are the five people for you to be successful personally, that work in our company. Then who are the five people for your team - and the team can be the team you belong to within Marketing... - to be successful? And who are the five people to help you grow in your career. Okay. And all of these people are mutually exclusive. So they are like 15 different people, right? And afterwards you do a 2x2, everybody loves a 2x2. One is connective tissue - low versus high. And the other one is core versus strategic. And you put the 15 names in that 2x2. It's up to you to decide on low versus high and connective tissue. Connective tissue doesn't mean that you need to talk to them on a daily basis. Okay, let me be clear. But it means that if you contact them, or you send them an email, they would reply to that email and make time available for you. So when you do that, people came to come to a realization most of the time that they have gaps. The first they are sometimes unclear about who should be those people. They realize that they have gaps. They realize that, hey, actually those 10 people within the company, they don't know what my job is, and these are the people you should interact with and explain because they are key to your success. They'd better know what you're solving for. And then as people put together a plan to say specifically, there is a gap on the not in your company for you to grow. And they put together a plan saying, Hey, I need to force myself to go to user groups, to conferences, and make friends, or get to start knowing people and learn from them to be able to grow. Again, it goes back from the assumption...Meaning in my day to day life, when when I work on a project, if it's a big initiative, one of the first thing I will do is I will ping between five and 10 of my friends saying, Hey, I'm thinking about that. That's how I would like to do it. What's your thought? What's your 2 cents? And I can tell you like within a day I get everybody's feedback. I listen to feedback. That's really important. That's another part is just not asking for feedback for the sake of it and process it, package it, and get your idea from V1 to V5 or V10, and learn from it. Naber:  Nice. Excellent. That's great. Okay. let's stop into, so we talked about talent, talk about hiring, onboarding, talked a little bit about about developing a dart, developing that talent as well. Understanding them as people where they want to go. from a, from a development perspective, let's hop into insights. you've talked about, moving from data to intelligence and you also have talked about smart data versus, not just big data. Explain the insights pillar to your, of your science, of Marketing pillars. Nicolas Draca:   Yeah. So on the Marketing side today we are, we are lucky because we have more and more data. We have data for everything. There is no lag of a, of metrics. on, on one end we're lucky on the other end it's overwhelming. and why? Because there's too much data and now you can spend your days and just looking at spreadsheets to everybody and a, as far as they know, you don't need a business by just looking at spreadsheet. All right? 12 hours a day. So here are the eight year is first based on your priorities and everything. I come from the science of Marketing. it's to be able to, and dishpan how are you going to measure success early on? and maybe the first time you do it, you don't have the right number. But I invite everybody to try it. Nicolas Draca:   And they're, I'm pick a number. and maybe their first quarter is to test your capacity to deliver up to that number, but what you wanted a success as to being controlled and then descend the dynamic of how you're going to get there. And w w when you are able to do that, the first time, then you'd be able, you're going to be able to build on it and become, become better. But I believe for that, for whatever you do in general, there is a measure of success that you can apply. and you should apply that measure of success, learn from it. My framework all the time is I have a high KPI and then I have free metrics reporting that KPI. I know I'm saying conceptual than meaning is there so many, as I mentioned, you could apply and when you have these under control and when this is working and you are able to predict, okay. Plus minus 10% what you're doing, it's to move to the next level. And being able to leverage meaning machine learning, data science, depending on the, on the team you have, if you have good Ascentis working for you to be a model is a big drewhich is to predict capacity of people to buy or to predict something unless at the time predict capacity of a customer too to buy your product. Naber:  Yeah. Excellent. And when someone has very little data or limited data, what's the mindset that they should have as they're getting started doing that? Nicolas Draca:   Yeah, so I think they are. so I don't, so first most of the time of people I have the data,and why? Because you have historical data and so the feedback everybody's gonna share is oh yeah, but they stopped. I'm yeah, okay. But it's still really, that's it. And so every time I build something, I'm going to go like hardcore Demand gen here. You're okay, well many SQL Sales qualified qualifying today, deliver next quarter. And I invite people, I'm like back and they're it's sex. I'm yeah, I got that part. Look back, it doesn't matter. And try to make a guess about how many and then try to define a target for yourself and you show you the next quarter and how many you want to deliver and you will, you will learn. So that's one. because looking at historical data, you always add something to learn. Nicolas Draca:   There is no perfect data and nobody, no marketer will tell you like you have the best data in the world. So, you just have to put your ego aside and just process of past data to try to understand what's going on. Or you can look at benchmark. of course, they are, there is no lack of website with benchmark data. I think as a core, you should look at historical data. And my guiding principle here is you just want to become better quarter of a quarter, right? If your number was 50, the way you want it to become 60, like something higher and let's these 10%, that's how I look at it. And you need to take into consideration the cycle that it wouldn't take you like three to six months, which is okay to understand it and to be able to grow it. Success all the time is being in control. Agasomething I learned in many companies is you can miss something like the word assist mess and not being in control and not understanding the why. If you're in control, it's a great starting point for you to become better at what you do. Naber:  Nice. I love that. That's great quote. You can put that on a, put that on a license plate, put that on a, on a tattoo, something like that. So two more pieces I want to talk about with an insights. one is, I mean, I don't know if people know this about you. You have six U s patents. I mean that's, that's ridiculous. So one of those patents that comes from the use of data insights and moving back against an account based Marketing model, yeah, you've gone from a data to intelligence and applied that to how can I impact revenue as much as possible. Can you talk a little bit about, your account based Marketing thought process structure, the mindset? yeah, but let's start there. Nicolas Draca:   Yes. So on the ABM you want me to talk about the patents, like what we did, how did we get there? Okay. so what we do, I go back to the talent buckets that we ensure that we spend 20% of our time experimenting, always. and why is because we live in a world where things are changing fast. and whatever you did and whatever failed six months ago doesn't mean it's going to fail today. So we, we build a culture, all empowerment where you can succeed or fail. And actually if you fail, it's okay. As long as you know why? that's why we go back to, yeah. You need to know why you need to be in control. And so by doing that, there are some experiments that are going to fail and and died and some other that are going to be highly successful. Nicolas Draca:   And here we were working with a teon the Sales op side, data science side and business insights. Okay. We'd love to predict propensity of an account to buy. And what we did initially, we started on a a on a Friday putting on a whiteboard. Like how would we score an account? And and today everybody in Sales and Marketing you the framework, your called decision, a demon waterfall. And that demon wonderful framework as a little bit of an issue is there's not yet you move from it lead a contact I mentioned to an account I mentioned. So more or less he does not really connect because in a perfect 12 you want to do a funnel, which is a full account funnel from Marketing qualified accounts. That's where the new concept of the time up to your SQL and close one business. So looking at this, we're okay, we need to identify, defined something called working quantified accounts. Nicolas Draca:   I think we called it ais. I count into our score. Initially the idea was to say, okay, let's look at all the contacts associated to the account, their level of engagement, and do kind of a weighted nps average on how, the account score should be. I'm geeking out a little bit, but as you can see, it started more with a brainstorming with somebody on my team called fat and saying, Hey, how should we think about that? And then explaining the why as a vision, partnering with Sales operation, partnering with a data fence theme and some of the tewe assembled this team saying, okay, this looks pretty cool. let's put some science behind it. what we did is what started an experiment, ended up being a success because it was one of the dimensioned core to how we will plan into account or location or account follow up. Nicolas Draca:   moving forward, at LinkedIn and with all the support of the company. We went through the patent process and after I think, I'm sure, you also when on the product side, where people looked at it and maybe integrated it in their algorithm. I'm not sure about that. I don't know what they did with it, but, that it was a great story. There's a, an experiment on a Friday afternoon discussion culture of hey, let's push it to the next level, see if it works. Partnering with people who could operation and being able to put it together. Naber:  Yeah, the common, yeah, that's what I was thinking. The combination of collaboration, cross stakeholder management, cross stakeholder partnerships and projects that you had to work on in order to get that done. Plus it's the vision that you had in order to get that done. It was, it was really impressive. so, one more, one more thing I want to talk about around data. Let's pull it up a level and we're going to talk about stakeholder relationships for

This podcast interview focuses on product innovation that has the power to transform the impact Marketers can make by generating more leads, of higher quality, with less effort. My guest is Yonatan Snir, Co-founder and CEO of CliClap, an AI Powered autonomous lead generation and qualification solutionHe is an expert in data driven marketing with over 16 years of experience, helping organizations utilize technologies to improve business performance. In 2016, he founded CliClap together with Arie Zaks, who now acts as their CTO.Prior to CliClap he opened a marketing agency, focused on helping brands transform their marketing operations into a data driven organization. And before that, he served as the Director of Global Marketing Operations at NICE Systems.It was this big idea behind CliClap’s product that triggered me to invite Yonatan to my podcast. We explore why so after so many years of marketing automation the tools we use still suggest visitors to our website the wrong topics of conversation (which is awkward) or ask people for their commitment way before the time is right (which is annoying and pushy). We then address how technology such as AI is offering us a completely different approach to the challenge, one that delivers results almost too good to be true.Here are some of his quotes:“We have a lot of traffic on the website that's not converting today, and many tools and many new tactics are being used to try and fix that. But eventually, we see that only friction converts.The numbers the benchmarks that are stated today by Forrester, Marketing Sherpa and other research, is that we looked at talking about 2 to 4% converting to leads, and only half percent is converted to opportunities.The reason for that, at least from what we found, is that on B2B you give the same experience to everyone.The fact is, it's not a one size fits all. A lot of people are being missed out, because they're not used to getting this kind of experience in today's world, where everything is becoming much more simple in our consumer head.So, the idea is to try and understand for each visitor when, and what's the next best thing. And when it's ready, ready to stick and move to the next level of engagement. Not too soon, not too late.”By listening to this interview, you will learn three things:How, by staying curious and challenging the established and accepted ways of doing, it is possible to deliver remarkable impactHow in a crowded, red-ocean market, it is very possible to get customers to shift from a competitive solution to yours by having clear differentiation.Why the traditional cloud solutions for marketing have been focused on the wrong metrics of delivering scale and quantity (i.e. output), where the real impact is created when you focus your product strategy on quality (i.e. outcomes). See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Mike McKinnon, Sr. Director of Global Marketing Operations at LogRhythm, has been in marketing operations for almost 15 years and he knows how to manage a CRM and implement data management practices better than most. Listen as Mike talks about some of the new governance practices he's working on implementing to ensure his database has the highest data quality possible. From enacting a data committee to restricting sales reps from creating opportunities, learn what the team at LogRhythm is doing to combat duplicate and dirty data. In this episode, we also highlight how to make your CRM system more efficient and share tips for evaluating and purchasing new technologies in the new year.

Amy's career certainly didn't start out on the natural path to marketing operations. However, today, this former Navy Flight Engineer, T.G.I.F General Manager, and Scuba Instructor is the Vice President, Global Marketing Operations at Infor, a 3 billion-dollar software company with over 16,000 employees. In this episode, I talk with Amy about what it took to be an Agent of Change at Infor that has completely transformed marketing by facilitating cross-functional operations alignment, implementing a well-run MarTech stack, and leading a global marketing operations team that she's built literally from scratch.

Jeff Rummer has been instrumental in helping Medtronic transform from a primarily sales driven culture to a balanced (and aligned) marketing and sales driven business. Jeff’s and his team’s responsibilities include the planning, execution and measurement of all integrated marketing campaigns and digital experiences along with managing and optimizing their marketing technology stack. In this episode, Jeff and I talk about what it takes to be an agent of change and several other insightful topics for you including: Jeff's quick rundown of his favorite DemandGen Radio podcasts and why What does it mean to be a marketing hero? Does Jeff feel like one given all the transformation that’s taken place at Medtronic? What advice would Jeff give his former self knowing what he knows now in marketing operations and change management? What is the reason for Medtronic's expansion into ABM centric demand generation?

How large should your company be before you start thinking about hiring a marketing operations person? What KPIs should your SaaS marketing team have? Cristina Vetere-Saunders, the Co-Founder of CS2 Marketing, talks to the host Shira Abel about what a B2B company needs to succeed at marketing their own business. About Crissy Vetere-Saunders • Crissy Vetere-Saunders is the Co-Founder of CS2 Marketing, a B2B marketing agency based out of San Francisco, CA. Before starting CS2, Crissy started her career managing marketing operations at Marketo, managed Global Marketing Operations at Jive Software, and and ran revenue operations and demand generation at a security startup called Agari. • Today, Crissy helps B2B tech companies, mostly based out of the Bay Area, strategize, execute, and scale their marketing operations and demand generation efforts. • In her free time, Crissy enjoys being outdoors with her dog, cooking, or writing for her personal blog Whoandfrom.com. Key Takeaways: • Marketing Qualified Leads are now all about generating enough engagement and interest with the right people from the right accounts. • When you're marketing, think about whether you would want to be marketed to this way. Would you want to be spammed, or read that content? • Marketing is as important after a sale, as it is to qualify a lead. Please rate this podcast. About Shira Abel Shira Abel is the CEO and Lead Strategist at Hunter & Bard (http://www.hunterandbard.com), a PR, marketing and design agency. Clients include: Folloze, Totango, Cyara, Sarine Technologies, Pushbullet, AXA Tech, CloudEndure, Pitango VC, Allianz, and more. Creator and host of the SaaS Insider podcast. Mentor at 500 Startups. Former professor of Marketing for Startups at Tel Aviv-Jaffa Academic College. MBA from Kellogg School of Management. Loves family time, cooking, and traveling. Hates writing about herself in the third person. She lives with her husband, teen and tween sons and a very large Great Pyrenees. If you would like to be interviewed on SaaS Insider - please contact Shira at the URL above. The SaaS Insider podcast is brought to you by Hunter & Bard, an agency specializing in PR, design, branding, and marketing strategy – helping SaaS companies develop mindshare. It’s also a member of the C-Suite Radio Network. Check out Hunter & Bard today at http://hunterandbard.com Tags and Keywords: saas, marketing, ABM Facebook Status: Crissy Vetere-Saunders, the Co-Founder of CS2 Marketing, shares her thoughts with the host @shiraabel on AMB, setting up marketing operations, and necessary tools. Tune in to #SaaSInsider to learn how they can help your B2B business. Twitter Status: Crissy Vetere-Saunders, the Co-Founder of CS2 Marketing, and the host @shiraabel discuss #AMB and setting up marketing operations. #SaaSInsider

Spoiler alert for Modern Marketing Experience 2017: Director of Global Marketing Operations at Avaya, Mike McKinnon, stops by to teach a few acronyms and a lot of lead management tips. Before you hear him speak at the conference, tune in and get the details on how Avaya went from a lead management program of zero to having nurture campaigns across all product levels. Find out how Mike raised the program from zero to a 9% Inquiry to qualified lead rate, 15-20% closed/won rate, and a 60-70% SAL to SQL rate.

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