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What's up everyone, today we have the pleasure of sitting down with Lindsay Rothlisberger, Director of GTM Innovation at Zapier.(00:00) - Intro (01:23) - In This Episode (02:00) - Sponsor: Knak (03:08) - Sponsor: MoEngage (05:49) - How Zapier's RevOps Team Built Its AI Foundation (19:43) - Why Visibility Has to Come Before Governance in AI Adoption (24:58) - Sponsor: GrowthBench (25:58) - Sponsor: GrowthLoop (29:48) - How Zapier Fights Context Rot in Its AI Shared Brain (35:55) - How Zapier Governs Shared AI Skills from Review to Long-Term Ownership (39:27) - What Happens to RevOps When Everyone Around Them Can Build (45:05) - The Director of GTM Innovation Role and the Sharing Problem Nobody Has Solved (50:47) - What Keeps Lindsay Grounded in the Middle of All This Change (52:00) - Lindsay on Getting Buy-In and What She's Reading Summary: When a startup claimed in April 2026 that it invented the marketing engineer role and that RevOps professionals "just do tool integrations," Lindsay Rothlisberger had heart palpitations. Her team at Zapier had been building AI into GTM workflows for years before the announcement. In this episode, she walks through the 6-component AI governance model she published publicly: a golden path to Cursor, a structured shared brain in Google Drive, data policies built with the security team, a visibility layer powered by a custom Zapier agent, a context engineering strategy that fights context rot, and a red-yellow-green skills review gate. She also names the part of the model that's still broken, and it's more honest than most AI governance conversations allow. If your team is figuring out how to govern AI at scale without killing the momentum, this is the inside view from someone who's done it.About Lindsay RothlisbergerLindsay Rothlisberger is Director of GTM Innovation at Zapier, where she leads the company's AI-powered GTM transformation internally and works alongside customers navigating the same shift. She spent 4 years building Zapier's RevOps function from zero, scaling it into a cross-functional engine covering AI, systems, analytics, planning, and enablement, and growing ACV 10x in that time. Before moving into the innovation role, she led marketing operations and lifecycle programs at UNiDAYS across B2B and B2C markets. She writes on LinkedIn about what Zapier is actually shipping, what works, and what doesn't.How Zapier's RevOps Team Built Its AI FoundationMost RevOps teams doing serious AI work have been doing it longer than the current conversation suggests. The tools are newer and the terminology has changed, but building automated workflows that take unstructured data and produce structured, actionable outputs for salespeople and marketers? That's exactly what good RevOps teams were doing before anyone put a trending name on it.Lindsay's team at Zapier started experimenting with AI several years ago, when it was first becoming accessible. Zapier gave its RevOps team the tools to experiment early, and rather than waiting for a strategy to materialize, they picked a specific, annoying problem: sales handoffs. Salespeople were going into first calls without enough context about the lead. The team pulled all the relevant unstructured data, engagement records, support tickets, email threads, and used AI to generate clean, contextualized briefing materials. The result was a measurable lift in lead-to-opportunity conversion rates, and a pattern the team has used ever since: find something specific that's visibly broken, prove AI fixes it, then apply that logic somewhere else.That early foundation matters now because the landscape has shifted in a way that affects RevOps directly. Claude Code, Cursor, and similar tools have made it possible for people with no engineering background to build real things. Sales managers are writing AI skills that generate quarterly revenue strategies for reps. CS reps are building account monitoring tools. Lindsay's read on this is that the RevOps team's job isn't to slow that down. It's to give it a governance structure so it can scale without creating a mess, and to be the team that built the foundation those builds are operating on.At Zapier, that governance structure is anchored by an AI center of excellence led by a chief AI officer. The architecture is a hub-and-spoke model: the central team sets the frameworks, the guidelines, and the enablement resources; Lindsay serves as the spoke into go-to-market, with a partner who works alongside her. The 2 of them act as a feedback loop between what's happening on the ground in sales, marketing, and CS and what the central team needs to know. The center of excellence is small, just a handful of dedicated people, but it reaches into every function through the spoke structure.The first thing the center of excellence built for non-technical GTM employees was the golden path to Cursor. Cursor had already been adopted by Zapier's product and engineering teams. For GTM, the barrier wasn't the technology itself; it was the setup. Someone who's spent their career in spreadsheets and CRM doesn't automatically know how to configure a development environment. The golden path is step-by-step onboarding: from installation through a fully configured Cursor environment with the right MCP connections (Databricks, Zapier), the right rules, and the right context already loaded. The whole point is removing the 2-hour configuration overhead that otherwise kills adoption on day 1.That context is the shared brain: a structured Google Drive hierarchy with company-level, department-level, team-level, and working group-level folders. The first iteration meant converting existing documentation into markdown files and organizing them into a folder structure that agents could traverse predictably. Lindsay describes the experience of setting it up as oddly satisfying for an ops person who has spent years wishing the organization's institutional knowledge lived somewhere findable instead of scattered across a Google Drive that nobody had cleaned up in years. The goal of the initial build wasn't completeness. It was a working foundation that gave people enough context to get value from their agent setup without needing to build from scratch.The companies operating furthest ahead in AI adoption right now are the ones that treated the shared brain as infrastructure rather than a side project. Getting every GTM employee configured, context-loaded, and working from a shared knowledge base is unglamorous work, but it's the layer every other build depends on.Key takeaway: Before anyone on your GTM team builds anything with AI, create a centralized setup guide that handles environment configuration, approved MCP connections, and context loading from a structured knowledge base. Start with the tools your technical teams are already using and build a version of that golden path for non-technical employees. The 2-hour configuration friction that stops people on day 1 is a solvable problem, and solving it once prevents you from solving it individually for every person who tries to onboard.How Long It Actually Takes to Build a Shared BrainThe shared brain question that comes up in every version of this conversation is a practical one: how long does it actually take? Zapier's first rollout was a 4-week sprint, and the design of that sprint was deliberate about scope. Rather than trying to capture everything the organization knew, the team focused on what Lindsay calls the slow layer of context: things that don't change often. Company strategy documents. Ideal customer profile definitions. Lead and opportunity definitions. Basic playbooks. These documents already existed. The sprint was mostly ...
What if the biggest risk of AI in marketing isn't about job replacement, but about creating more fragmented, siloed work?Agility requires more than just adopting new tools; it demands a fundamental rethinking of how teams collaborate and orchestrate work. When a technology like AI promises to accelerate individual tasks, true agility means ensuring that acceleration translates into collective momentum, not organizational friction.Today, we're going to talk about moving beyond the hype of AI experimentation and into the reality of its operational impact on marketing teams. We'll explore what happens when AI graduates from being a personal productivity tool to becoming an integrated part of a team's workflow, and how that shift changes everything from campaign execution to the very structure of marketing itself.To help me discuss this topic, I'd like to welcome, Prachi Gore, CMO at Asana. About Prachi Gore Prachi Gore is the Chief Marketing Officer at Asana, where she leads the company's global marketing strategy and brand development. Prachi brings extensive experience scaling product-led B2B organizations, having previously served as SVP and Chief Marketing Officer at Checkr, where she built the company's demand engine, elevated its brand, and launched its product-led growth business. Prior to Checkr, Prachi led Marketing at SmartRecruiters, guiding the company's evolution from an SMB-focused product to a leading enterprise talent acquisition suite. This diverse background across consumer, SMB, and enterprise markets gives her deep expertise in demand generation, brand strategy, and AI-enabled go-to-market innovation. Prachi is passionate about creating marketing that combines human creativity with rigorous, data-driven execution, and is committed to helping teams work more effectively and tell clearer stories. Prachi Gore on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/prachigore/ ---------- Resources ---------- Asana: asana.com The Agile Brand podcast is brought to you by TEKsystems. Learn more here: https://aglbrnd.co/r/2868abd8085a9703 We're proud to be a media partner for #MAICON26 - Oct. 13-15! Learn how AI can power your marketing and business and help you grow smarter. Use code AGILE150 to save! https://aglbrnd.co/r/7fe458ced0f04658Reach your customers with Reddit. Spend $500 in ad spend, get $500 back in ad credit! Learn more: https://advertalize.com/r/491818c79fb1873fDon't miss We Make Future - the International Festival of Innovation in AI, Tech, and Digital Marketing, June 24-26 in Bologna. Learn more: https://aglbrnd.co/r/c80991afff416bb2The most influential minds in software, AI, and engineering leadership will be at WeAreDevelopers World Congress North America, September 23-25 in San Jose. Learn more: https://aglbrnd.co/r/60a7299222a7bcf1 Enjoyed the show? Tell us more at and give us a rating so others can find the show at: https://aglbrnd.co/r/faaed112fc9887f3 Connect with Greg on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gregkihlstromDon't miss a thing: get the latest episodes, sign up for our newsletter and more: https://aglbrnd.co/r/35ded3ccfb6716ba Check out The Agile Brand Guide website with articles, insights, and Martechipedia, the wiki for marketing technology: https://www.agilebrandguide.com The Agile Brand is produced by Missing Link—a Latina-owned strategy-driven, creatively fueled production co-op. From ideation to creation, they craft human connections through intelligent, engaging and informative content. https://www.missinglink.company Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Text us your thoughts on the episode or the show!For years, the hard part of ops work was building the technology. Now the tech is getting easier while the people and process side is getting harder. So why are so many organizations still stuck debating AI instead of activating it?In this episode, host Michael Hartmann sits down with Andrea Tarrell, President of the Tech Services line at Trilliad and CEO of Sercante. Together, they discussed the human side of change in the AI world with speed, trust, risk tolerance, and the trade-offs GTM teams are making right now.In this episode:Why the technology got easier, but the people and process side got harderHow much of AI adoption is really a trust and change management problem, not a tech oneFear of job replacement vs. plain organizational inertiaAI may not replace your job, but someone using it well may outperform someone who refuses to adaptSolving the tension between "move faster with AI" and "watch out for the risks."What companies get wrong about risk management and tolerance for risk in the AI worldWhy old governance frameworks may not fit a world of fast experimentationAnd a lot more...Whether you lead an ops team or sit inside one, this is a timely conversation about innovation, speed, governance, and practical business reality.If you enjoyed this episode, subscribe, leave a review, and share it with someone in the ops community who would find it valuable.Episode Brought to You By MO Pros The #1 Community for Marketing Operations ProfessionalsSupport the show
What if the biggest risk of AI in marketing isn't about job replacement, but about creating more fragmented, siloed work?Agility requires more than just adopting new tools; it demands a fundamental rethinking of how teams collaborate and orchestrate work. When a technology like AI promises to accelerate individual tasks, true agility means ensuring that acceleration translates into collective momentum, not organizational friction.Today, we're going to talk about moving beyond the hype of AI experimentation and into the reality of its operational impact on marketing teams. We'll explore what happens when AI graduates from being a personal productivity tool to becoming an integrated part of a team's workflow, and how that shift changes everything from campaign execution to the very structure of marketing itself.To help me discuss this topic, I'd like to welcome, Prachi Gore, CMO at Asana. About Prachi Gore Prachi Gore is the Chief Marketing Officer at Asana, where she leads the company's global marketing strategy and brand development. Prachi brings extensive experience scaling product-led B2B organizations, having previously served as SVP and Chief Marketing Officer at Checkr, where she built the company's demand engine, elevated its brand, and launched its product-led growth business. Prior to Checkr, Prachi led Marketing at SmartRecruiters, guiding the company's evolution from an SMB-focused product to a leading enterprise talent acquisition suite. This diverse background across consumer, SMB, and enterprise markets gives her deep expertise in demand generation, brand strategy, and AI-enabled go-to-market innovation. Prachi is passionate about creating marketing that combines human creativity with rigorous, data-driven execution, and is committed to helping teams work more effectively and tell clearer stories. Prachi Gore on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/prachigore/ ---------- Resources ---------- Asana: asana.com The Agile Brand podcast is brought to you by TEKsystems. Learn more here: https://aglbrnd.co/r/2868abd8085a9703 We're proud to be a media partner for #MAICON26 - Oct. 13-15! Learn how AI can power your marketing and business and help you grow smarter. Use code AGILE150 to save! https://aglbrnd.co/r/7fe458ced0f04658Reach your customers with Reddit. Spend $500 in ad spend, get $500 back in ad credit! Learn more: https://advertalize.com/r/491818c79fb1873fDon't miss We Make Future - the International Festival of Innovation in AI, Tech, and Digital Marketing, June 24-26 in Bologna. Learn more: https://aglbrnd.co/r/c80991afff416bb2The most influential minds in software, AI, and engineering leadership will be at WeAreDevelopers World Congress North America, September 23-25 in San Jose. Learn more: https://aglbrnd.co/r/60a7299222a7bcf1 Enjoyed the show? Tell us more at and give us a rating so others can find the show at: https://aglbrnd.co/r/faaed112fc9887f3 Connect with Greg on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gregkihlstromDon't miss a thing: get the latest episodes, sign up for our newsletter and more: https://aglbrnd.co/r/35ded3ccfb6716ba Check out The Agile Brand Guide website with articles, insights, and Martechipedia, the wiki for marketing technology: https://www.agilebrandguide.com The Agile Brand is produced by Missing Link—a Latina-owned strategy-driven, creatively fueled production co-op. From ideation to creation, they craft human connections through intelligent, engaging and informative content. https://www.missinglink.company Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
What's up everyone, today we have the pleasure of sitting down with Ashley Langford, Marketing Operations and RevOps Leader.Summary: Ashley Langford has every credential the MOps job search advice says you're supposed to have: 2 Marketo Champion designations, a decade of B2B SaaS experience across multiple industries, a strong community presence, and a track record of building functions from scratch. She's still getting auto-rejected within minutes and ghosted by companies she was genuinely excited about. In this episode, she breaks down what the MOps job search actually looks like in 2026 from the inside, including how she uses Claude to build an interview packet before every meeting, why she has a hard line against unpaid take-home projects, and how the director-level search carries friction points that most job search content ignores entirely. She also says something most practitioners won't say out loud: she realized she was performing confidence instead of having it. If you're in a search right now, or know someone who is, this one is worth your full attention.About Ashley LangfordAshley Langford is a Director of Marketing Operations and 2-time Marketo Champion who has built and led MOps functions from scratch across B2B SaaS companies including LastPass, Integrate, HackerRank, GreenSky, and Waystar. Her work spans fintech, insurance, biotech, and HR technology, with deep expertise in Marketo, Salesforce, 6sense, and Looker. Adobe's Marketo Champion program selects around 40 practitioners globally each year; Ashley has earned the designation twice, in 2020 and 2023, and is also a Marketo Revvie Award Finalist.What Nobody Warns You About When You Get Laid OffThe shame of a layoff hits in a specific, quiet way that almost nobody includes in the public job search conversation. It doesn't look like despair. It doesn't stop you from applying, updating the resume, or showing up to the networking calls. It just tilts you. You overexplain the layoff in interviews. You hedge when confidence is what the moment requires. You walk in grateful to be considered instead of knowing what you're worth.Ashley Langford is 4 months into a search that should, by any rational measure, be going better. She has 2 Marketo Champion designations, a decade of track record across multiple industries, and genuine community presence. Her time at LastPass ended in a layoff that was clearly business-driven following the company's public turbulence. None of that insulated her from the quiet voice that arrives anyway.She didn't recognize it immediately. It took a few conversations before she saw what was happening. "I was performing confidence instead of actually having it," she says. For someone whose professional identity is built on expertise and results, that admission is uncomfortable. But naming it is where you start. You can't correct what you haven't acknowledged.The market doesn't help. Ashley has the credentials, the community ties, and the network. She's done what the standard job search advice prescribes. She's still getting auto-rejected within minutes and ghosted by companies she was genuinely excited about. "I haven't been ghosted this much since I was on Tinder like 12 years ago," she says. "At least then I knew why."The honest accounting: being well-credentialed matters inside the MOps community, where a Marketo Champion designation opens doors with people who know what it means. Outside that community, there are plenty of doors where it doesn't register. And the external recruiter pipeline, which used to generate steady inbound interest for practitioners at her level, has gone almost completely quiet. That drought is a real signal about what's happening in this market. The job posting numbers don't capture it.The practitioners who move through a senior search with the most clarity tend to be the ones who name what they're carrying early. The public-facing posture, excited about what's next, lots of great conversations, is one layer. The private reality of a Wednesday afternoon is another. Closing that gap starts with honesty about the performance, not just the tactics.Key takeaway: Name the performance gap before your search does it for you. After your next interview, write down 1 moment where you hedged, over-explained, or undersold your work. Identify the specific claim you avoided making. Draft the version with a number attached, and practice saying it without softening it until it sounds like your default.Where the MOps Job Search Actually Happens in 2026The job search advice is consistent about channels. LinkedIn, niche job boards, the hidden market through direct outreach and community presence, networking as a KPI. The framework is reasonable. What's harder to find is how it actually plays out for a practitioner with a specific profile in a specific market.Ashley's day starts on LinkedIn. New postings first, then the feed, because hiring managers sometimes announce open roles informally before they list them. From there: VC-backed job boards, which surface companies building fast. She's tried the Ashby job board search technique and found listings that hadn't appeared anywhere else. Greenhouse, the ATS platform, now has a cross-company search function that most people haven't found yet.After all of it, where are actual responses coming from? LinkedIn. The hidden job market is real and worth working. It's also producing less than the visible one right now. Anyone spending most of their search trying to unlock doors not listed on job boards while ignoring the platform still generating replies is optimizing against their own results.On conversations as the primary KPI, Ashley's take is more nuanced than the standard advice. She's gotten jobs through her network before. The approach works. But it requires having the kind of network that actually moves for you: people who will pick up the phone and make a call, not just say they'll keep an eye out. "The ratio depends on your network that you've actually built, not the one that you wish you have," she says.There's a structural wrinkle for MOps practitioners specifically. MOps people tend to be industry-agnostic, which is part of what makes the role valuable. Ashley has worked in fintech, insurance, biotech, and HR tech. That breadth is an asset in the market. It's also why her first-degree connections aren't concentrated in any one industry or company cluster. The broader the career path, the more spread out the network, and the harder it is to find someone who happens to know someone at the specific company hiring right now.The conversations-versus-applications question resolves the same way for most people: you need both. The ratio just depends on what you've actually built, and being honest about which bucket your network falls into before committing to a strategy built around the other one.Key takeaway: For 2 weeks, track which channel produces each actual response, not each application sent. If LinkedIn is generating replies and Ashby isn't, redistribute your time accordingly. Add the Greenhouse cross-company search to your daily routine and check it alongside LinkedIn. Both tools are free and most people haven't found the second one.What Hiring Managers Actually Look For in a MOps ResumeMost job seekers are guessing at what the other side of the table actually looks for. The tactical advice is everywhere: tailor your resume, use keywords from the JD, follow up with the recruiter. What's far less available is the hiring manager's actual perspective from someone who's done both in the same search.Ashley has built MOps teams. She's reviewed application stacks. She knows exactly what she skims past and what makes her stop. Now she's running that same lens on her own materials, which is a sharper fe...
Marketing leaders are being asked to drive more growth with less budget, fewer resources, tighter timelines, and more pressure from every direction while AI is being treated like the shortcut to replace entire marketing teams. But AI will not fix bad strategy, weak alignment, poor customer understanding, or broken marketing fundamentals. In part two of this master class conversation with Matt Hummel, CMO of Pipeline360, the focus moves into what it really takes to become the kind of CMO AI cannot replace. Not by chasing every new tool, adding more MarTech, or hiding behind automation, but by understanding the business as a whole, building trust across departments, speaking the language of revenue, and creating alignment between marketing, sales, product, leadership, and the customer. To lead marketing in a volatile market where expectations keep rising and the old playbook is no longer enough, you need to know how to: • Make sales an ally instead of your bitter rival • Build shared pipeline ownership across marketing and sales • Communicate risk without becoming defensive • Connect marketing decisions to the larger goals of the business • Set clearer expectations with your team and leadership • Understand resource constraints without using them as excuses • Stay close to customers while leading strategy • Create momentum without pretending there is an easy button The best marketing leaders are not just managing campaigns, tools, reports, and dashboards. They are translating complexity into strategy the business can trust. The reminder is clear: AI will not fix bad strategy. More MarTech will not fix bad marketing. The CMO AI cannot replace is the one who understands the business, earns trust, aligns with sales, leads the team, knows the customer, and gets back to real marketing when everyone else is hiding behind tools. (P.S. If you haven't, listen to Ep. 149 for part one of this masterclass episode) Beyond The Episode Gems: Connect With Matt Hummel on LinkedIn Listen To Troy On Matt's Podcast, Pipeline Brew: The Evolving Role of CMOs & Community Building Visit Pipeline360 website to learn more about how they solve B2B marketers' biggest headaches Buy Troy's Book, Strategize Up: The Blueprint To Scale Your Business StrategizeUpBook.com Discover All Podcasts On The HubSpot Podcast Network Get Free HubSpot Marketing Tools To Help You Grow Your Business Grow Your Business Faster Using HubSpot's CRM Platform Support The Podcast & Connect With Troy: Rate & Review iDigress: iDigress.fm/Reviews Follow Troy's Socials @FindTroy: LinkedIn, Instagram, Threads, TikTok Subscribe to Troy's YouTube Channel For Strategy Videos & See Masterclass Episodes Need Growth Strategy, A Keynote Speaker, Or Want To Sponsor The Podcast? Go To FindTroy.com
Text us your thoughts on the episode or the show!Today, most teams aren't just struggling to build their AI strategies. The real struggle begins when they try to execute their strategies. In this episode of Ops Cast, host Michael Hartmann sits down with David York, Chief AI and Innovation Officer at Helix CXM, to get practical answers about what it really takes for GTM organizations to move from talking about AI to operationalizing it.David has spent years working at the intersection of marketing operations, RevOps, automation, and AI transformation. Together, he and Michael discovered an uncomfortable truth about how most teams are already overwhelmed by manual work, fragmented processes, shadow systems, and operational debt. Piling "figure out AI" on top of all that creates more chaos. In this conversation, you'll hear:Why the gap between AI strategy and implementation is so hard to closeWhat operational excellence actually looks like in practice, and why it has to come firstWhy mapping how work gets done today is the critical first step before introducing AIThe real difference between automation and "automation plus intelligence"How to identify low-risk, high-value AI use cases (like partially manual lead routing) versus harder onesThe hidden costs teams underestimate: tooling, LLM costs, maintenance, and human monitoringWhere human judgment is still absolutely requiredPractical advice on where to start if you're feeling overwhelmed by AI pressure right nowWhether you lead a scrappy SMB or a specialized team inside a large enterprise, this is a grounded discussion about the reality of AI in modern GTM, beyond the hype and the LinkedIn hot takes.David also published a new book this week, AI-Powered Growth: A 7-Step Adoption and Transformation Framework, which goes deeper into how Marketing Ops leaders can systematically prioritize and operationalize AI initiatives. Grab a copy here: https://www.amazon.com/AI-Powered-Growth-7-Step-Adoption-Transformation/dp/B0H2QCZG5M/Enjoy the episode!Episode Brought to You By MO Pros The #1 Community for Marketing Operations Professionals MarketingOps.com is curating the GTM Ops Track at Demand & Expand (May 19-20, San Francisco) - the premier B2B marketing event featuring 600+ practitioners sharing real solutions to real problems. Use code MOPS20 for 20% off tickets, or get 35-50% off as a MarketingOps.com member. Learn more at demandandexpand.com.Support the show
Marketing leadership has become one of the most volatile seats in business. CMOs and marketing leaders are often expected to create immediate pipeline, prove instant ROI, fix deeper business issues they did not create, defend brand investment, align sales, understand customers, translate strategy across the organization, and still become one of the first functions questioned, blamed, or cut when growth slows. In part one of this master class conversation, Matt Hummel, CMO of Pipeline360, brings a clear reminder back to the table: great marketing starts with trusting the buyer, knowing the customer, and simplifying how you market. In a market obsessed with performance data, attribution, automation, dark social, buyer signals, and immediate results, more complexity does not automatically create better customer understanding. For aspiring CMOs, current CMOs, marketing leaders, founders, and business owners, this conversation is a valuable look at how to lead marketing without getting trapped in the pressure cooker. It challenges you to rethink what it really means to put the customer at the center, not as a tagline, not as another automation workflow, and not as another dashboard filled with signals, but as a deeper responsibility to understand the person, pressure, timing, risk, and decision behind the purchase. The conversation moves through buyer trust, brand versus demand, customer empathy, attribution, sales alignment, CMO pressure, market timing, and the difference between chasing pipeline and building LTV. It is also a reminder to get out of your lane, understand product, spend time with sales, listen to customers, and learn how the whole business works. Because the best CMOs are not just campaign operators. They are translators, mediators, trust builders, and business leaders who know how to connect marketing to revenue, customer experience, and long term growth. Beyond The Episode Gems: Connect With Matt Hummel on LinkedIn Listen To Troy On Matt's Podcast, Pipeline Brew: The Evolving Role of CMOs & Community Building Visit Pipeline360 website to learn more about how they solve B2B marketers' biggest headaches Buy Troy's Book, Strategize Up: The Blueprint To Scale Your Business StrategizeUpBook.com Discover All Podcasts On The HubSpot Podcast Network Get Free HubSpot Marketing Tools To Help You Grow Your Business Grow Your Business Faster Using HubSpot's CRM Platform Support The Podcast & Connect With Troy: Rate & Review iDigress: iDigress.fm/Reviews Follow Troy's Socials @FindTroy: LinkedIn, Instagram, Threads, TikTok Subscribe to Troy's YouTube Channel For Strategy Videos & See Masterclass Episodes Need Growth Strategy, A Keynote Speaker, Or Want To Sponsor The Podcast? Go To FindTroy.com
What's up everyone, today we have the pleasure of sitting down with Jason Dobbs, Head of Marketing and GTM Engineering at Kumo AI.(00:00) - Intro (01:24) - In This Episode (01:57) - Sponsor: MoEngage (02:54) - Sponsor: Knak (04:35) - How Undefined Data Definitions Make AI Confidently Wrong (08:18) - Why Context Engineering Replaces Prompt Engineering as the AI Bottleneck (12:59) - The Five Non-Negotiables for AI Readiness in Marketing Ops (15:42) - Why Marketing Ops Is the Context Architect in an AI-First GTM Stack (24:50) - Which Data Problems Block AI Deployment and Which You Can Ignore (28:29) - Sponsor: GrowthLoop (29:32) - Sponsor: AttributionApp (34:24) - What Goes Wrong When Agentic AI Optimizes Directly on Warehouse Correlations (42:02) - When to Ship AI Before Your Data Is Ready and When to Fix the Foundation First (48:23) - What GTM Engineering Actually Means When AI Automates the Middle (50:55) - How Jason Dobbs Decides What Deserves His Energy (53:08) - What Jason Is Reading: Intelligence History, Mind-Opening Nonfiction, and Dune Summary: Jason Dobbs spent 7 years assembling intelligence briefings for the President, and he says most AI failures in martech are the same problem he was solving in 2003: teams acting on context they never actually agreed on. In this episode, he breaks down the 5 non-negotiables of minimum viable readiness before you deploy any AI agent, explains why the marketing ops function is becoming more critical as AI takes over execution, and argues that unbounded AI autonomy creates more risk than warehouse data ever will. He also defends GTM engineering as a real discipline rather than a rebrand, and closes with a Dune analogy that lands better than it has any right to. If you think AI readiness is primarily a data engineering problem, this episode will change how you think about your team's role in it.About Jason DobbsJason Dobbs is the Head of Marketing and GTM Engineering at Kumo AI, where he leads go-to-market for KumoRFM, the world's first relational foundation model, which generates accurate, explainable predictions directly from warehouse data. Before Kumo, he served as Global Head of Revenue Marketing at Logitech, where ABM and advanced segmentation drove 40% of B2B sales revenue and 79% YoY ARR growth. He also co-founded Trypp, an autonomous UX research agent for continuous post-ship product monitoring, and has held marketing and analytics leadership roles at Seagate, HTC Vive, Apple, and Google.Jason spent 7 years as a United States Air Force intelligence officer, including work on the President's Daily Intelligence Briefing, an experience that shapes how he thinks about assembling trustworthy context for high-stakes decisions under uncertainty.How Undefined Data Definitions Make AI Confidently WrongEvery marketing ops team has heard the warning: AI is only as good as the data you feed it. You've nodded along. You've probably said it yourself. But the warning leaves out the most important detail, which is what the failure actually looks like when the model is running.Jason Dobbs knows what it looks like. He learned it from a crash. He rides high-speed F1 electric skateboards at 50 to 60 miles an hour, and he's fallen before. He can tell you he's never fallen the same way twice. When he greenlit agentic and predictive workflows at Kumo AI before the data architecture was ready, the failure followed the same logic: unexpected, and avoidable only in hindsight.The model returned results that looked operational. Scores came back precise. Summaries sounded coherent. Recommendations felt grounded. The failure was invisible to anyone who didn't already know what correct should look like.The weakness surfaced when someone pushed. Ask the follow-up question, why did you score this account, what data drove this decision, and the logic fell apart. The definitions feeding the model had never been agreed on across the business. Sales and marketing were not working from the same idea of what a qualified lead meant. The AI had scaled an unresolved internal argument into what looked like a confident answer.Jason traces the failure to a structural problem that predates any model decision. When a system cannot explain its own outputs, and when nobody in the room has standing to say what the correct answer should look like, you have built a very polished way to be wrong. That is dangerous precisely because it passes a surface inspection. People who were not close to the data trusted the output. Nobody pushed back.What he carried out of that experience was a reframe of what marketing ops actually produces. The shared definitions, the trusted data sources, the named owners, the workflow guardrails: that is the product. Every AI initiative sitting on top of unresolved questions about what the business means by its own terms will generate outputs that look credible right up until someone has to act on one. Speed to AI deployment and quality of AI output run in opposite directions for teams that skipped the definition work. The ceiling on any AI system is the clarity of what the business agreed it was optimizing for before anyone touched a model.Key takeaway: Run this diagnostic before signing off on any AI or analytics initiative: can a human reproduce the logic behind the output and explain who owns the decision that follows? If nobody can answer that cleanly, the system is automating an unresolved argument. Start by documenting shared definitions for your 5 most-used business terms (pipeline, qualified lead, active customer, opportunity, churn) and get explicit sign-off from sales, marketing, and ops before any model sees them.Why Context Engineering Replaces Prompt Engineering as the AI Bottleneck"Context engineering" is appearing in every AI strategy conversation right now. Scott Brinker devoted a report to it. Conferences are building entire tracks around it. The framing is right, but for most teams the phrase still points at a feeling rather than a concrete set of decisions.Jason Dobbs's version is more precise. "Fix the data" is the directive most teams have been living under for years, and the structural problem with it is that it makes the work sound like a single epic project with a clear endpoint, a Holy Grail that teams have been questing toward since before the first CRM went live. The warehouse always has gaps. The CRM always has problems. The right question is narrower: what minimum context and control does this specific workflow actually need to produce a trustworthy output?That reframe narrows the scope from an organization-wide data quality initiative to a workflow-specific requirements checklist. For any given AI decision, the context bundle has 6 components: the definitions the system is operating from, the data sources it has access to, the tools it can invoke, any memory it carries between sessions, the guardrails on what it can do autonomously, and the escalation path when confidence runs low. Those requirements are specific to each workflow. They're answered by asking exactly what this workflow needs, not by cleaning the warehouse in general.The shift from prompt engineering to context engineering reflects how the bottleneck has moved as the models matured. A prompt is the last instruction a model receives. Context is everything it's working with before that: the definitions, the data access, the scope of authority, the path back to a human when a decision exceeds what the system should make on its own. Teams tuning prompts while leaving the underlying context undefined are optimizing the most visible variable in the system while the one that actually governs quality sits untouc...
Text us your thoughts on the episode or the show!What separates a marketing team that drives growth from one that just stays busy?Ondar Tarlow came into marketing from the business side rather than the traditional marketing path, and that lens changes how he reads a P&L, how he allocates budget, and how he earns credibility with finance and the executive team.In this episode of Ops Cast, host Michael Hartmann sits down with Ondar, marketing consultant and former CMO, for a practical conversation about thinking commercially. They get into why so many marketers struggle to articulate how their company actually makes money, how to translate strategy into a budget and investment plan, and how to secure buy-in from the people holding the purse strings without getting blindsided in the room.Michael and Ondar discussed:Why coming from the business side reshapes how you approach marketingThe reason so many marketers can't explain how their business makes moneyWhat separates growth-driving teams from teams stuck executing activityHow to turn strategy into a real budget and investment planThe biggest mistakes leaders make when seeking buy-in from finance and the boardBalancing spend across acquisition, retention, partnerships, and brandWhy minimizing surprises is a hallmark of strong operatorsWhere AI is already creating a practical advantage in research and learningHow cheap access to strategic knowledge changes career development, and its risksWhat community building (Fast Lane Drive, Worn & Driven Magazine) teaches about retentionWhat makes a brand partnership strategically valuable versus just promotionalIf you've ever wanted to be the marketer the executive team actually listens to, this conversation is a roadmap for getting there.Episode Brought to You By MO Pros The #1 Community for Marketing Operations Professionals MarketingOps.com is curating the GTM Ops Track at Demand & Expand (May 19-20, San Francisco) - the premier B2B marketing event featuring 600+ practitioners sharing real solutions to real problems. Use code MOPS20 for 20% off tickets, or get 35-50% off as a MarketingOps.com member. Learn more at demandandexpand.com.Support the show
Working with family sounds like either a dream or a disaster. This episode is proof it can be the former — but only when the foundation is right. Amber sits down with her oldest daughter, Lilly McCue (Director of Operations and Marketing Operations at Amber McCue), and longtime business partner Joanna Tiger for a candid conversation about what it actually looks like to build a business alongside the people you love. This was recorded at the request of a client who wanted to know: how does it go? And does it really work? Spoiler: it does. But not by accident. In this episode you'll hear: How Lilly got her start — pulling quotes for Twitter at nine years old — and the quiet-quitting moment in 4th grade that set the tone for their whole working relationship Why clear roles and deep trust are the two non-negotiables for making family dynamics work in a business What "assuming positive intent" looks like when it's actually lived — not just written on a values doc The unspoken rules that hold their team together (including who's not allowed to touch the CRM) What Amber would tell any business owner considering hiring a family member — including the conversation to have before you start If you've ever wondered whether letting your worlds collide could actually work for your business, this one's for you.
SUMMARY What makes a brand sell memories instead of merchandise? Mike Brevik sits down with Mark Jaworski from HOMAGE Apparel to find out. Since 2007, HOMAGE has built a cult following by tapping into the emotional power of sports, pop culture, and the things people grew up loving, from Starter jackets to vintage NBA logos. The conversation covers why nostalgia is picking up speed across generations, how the analog era made retro culture feel rare and real, and how HOMAGE uses storytelling as its primary filter for every product decision. If you have ever felt that gut-punch of seeing an old jersey for the first time in years, this episode is for you. KEY TAKEAWAYS Nostalgia is not a fad. It is a tradition passed down through family, fandom, and shared cultural moments that transcend generations. HOMAGE runs every product idea through a storytelling filter first: does this story matter to people and will they connect with it? Scarcity and limited access in the pre-digital era made retro items feel rare and meaningful, and that emotional weight does not fade. Wearing a vintage logo or old-school colorway is its own form of identity, even a quiet act of rebellion within your own fandom. Navigating controversial figures takes case-by-case judgment, and HOMAGE gravitates toward stories of perseverance over polarization. WHO IS THE GUEST? Mark Jaworski - Director of Marketing Operations, HOMAGE Apparel Mark Jaworski is part of the marketing and storytelling team behind HOMAGE Apparel, one of the most recognizable nostalgia-driven apparel brands in sports and pop culture. Since 2007, HOMAGE has built a loyal following through retro-inspired designs celebrating iconic moments, legendary athletes, classic movies, wrestling, music, and vintage Americana. Mark helps shape the storytelling, brand voice, and emotional resonance behind everything the brand puts out. HOMAGE Apparel HOMAGE Apparel is a retro-inspired apparel brand built around storytelling, nostalgia, and emotional connection. Known for its ultra-soft vintage-style tees and deep-cut sports and pop culture references, HOMAGE celebrates the people, places, teams, and memories that shaped generations. From classic NBA logos and old-school wrestling to cult movies and Americana, HOMAGE has become a leader in modern nostalgia branding. LINKS AND RESOURCES cyberdogzmarketing.com brandretro.com homage.com KEYWORDS nostalgia branding, retro apparel, HOMAGE Apparel, vintage sports, brand storytelling, retro culture, sports nostalgia, pop culture branding, vintage fashion, emotional branding, retro logos, sports fandom, nostalgia marketing, authentic branding, Brand Retro Podcast, Mark Jaworski, vintage Americana, brand identity, memory marketing, retro sports EPISODE HIGHLIGHTS [00:01:49 - 00:02:27] Mike asks at what point HOMAGE realized it was selling memories, not just merchandise. [00:02:28 - 00:04:03] Mark explains how nostalgia was baked into HOMAGE from day one through founder Ryan's vintage collecting roots. [00:04:46 - 00:06:12] Mike and Mark dig into why younger generations are gravitating toward retro culture from 30 and 40 years ago. [00:06:13 - 00:08:33] The conversation turns to vintage as identity and rebellion within fandom, and the battle of the decades. [00:08:34 - 00:10:00] Mike and Mark explore how pre-digital scarcity made retro items feel rare and emotionally powerful. [00:10:01 - 00:11:50] Mark walks through HOMAGE's storytelling filter and the trial-and-error behind figuring out what truly resonates. [00:12:05 - 00:15:56] A candid conversation on navigating controversial athletes and how HOMAGE reviews each situation individually. [00:17:04 - 00:19:29] Mike and Mark bond over living through the Jordan era, the steroid debates, and the 1998 home run chase.
What's up everyone, today we have the pleasure of sitting down with Alex Halliday, Founder and CEO at AirOps.(00:00) - Intro (01:19) - In This Episode (01:54) - Sponsor: Attribution App (02:57) - Sponsor: GrowthLoop (04:19) - How AirOps Pivoted to AI Content Engineering (08:23) - The Real Definition of Content Engineering and Why It's Not About Publishing More (13:14) - What a Content Engineer Does That a Senior Content Marketer Does Not (27:31) - What It Actually Takes to Get AI Content Past a Human Editor (30:52) - Sponsor: Knak (32:00) - Sponsor: MoEngage (43:21) - Why Review Becomes the Bottleneck After You Automate Content Production (47:13) - Why Enterprise CMS Integration Is Harder Than the Content Quality Problem (51:07) - Why the Agent Runtime Is the Next Competitive Battleground for Content Teams (55:02) - What the Case Against Content Engineering Gets Wrong About the Role (58:08) - What a Content Engineering Team Looks Like in 3 Years (01:03:45) - How Alex Decides What Deserves His Energy Summary: Alex built AirOps to help teams access company data, then a conversation with Sam Altman and a cramped middle seat on a flight to Atlanta changed everything. In this episode, he breaks down what content engineering actually means — not just generating more AI content, but building the systems infrastructure to maintain quality, freshness, and brand accuracy across everything a company has ever put online. He makes the counterintuitive case that great content engineering puts more humans into the content process, and explains why 98% of AirOps's pilots convert to annual customers while most AI content pilots fail. If you think AI content is just a faster way to publish more, this episode will change how you think about it.About Alex HallidayAlex Halliday is the Founder and CEO of AirOps, where he leads the development of AI content engineering systems that help brands build visibility in AI search. Before founding AirOps in 2022, he served as Head of Product at MasterClass, where he was the company's first product hire and helped scale revenue 10x. As a Venture Partner at SparkLabs Global Accelerator, Alex has made early investments in OpenAI, Anthropic, Groq, and Discord.How AirOps Pivoted to AI Content EngineeringIn early 2022, the LLM moment hadn't happened yet. Not publicly. GPT-3 existed but was barely on anyone's radar in marketing. Most "AI for marketing" conversations were still about sentiment analysis tools and basic chatbots. The prevailing assumption was that software had rules, rules had limits, and those limits were the floor you designed around.Alex Halliday had an unusual vantage point. As a venture partner at SparkLabs Global Accelerator with early investments in OpenAI and Anthropic, he was closer to what was actually happening than almost anyone in his world. He still wasn't ready for what came next.It started with a conversation. He was in San Francisco with Sam Altman, something he made a habit of — whenever they crossed paths, Alex asked the same question: what's sparking your imagination these days? On this particular occasion, Altman's answer was different. The AI stuff was getting really good, he said. When Alex pushed for specifics, Altman told him they were getting close to AI that could read all your emails and tell you what to do for the week. It sounded completely insane.Alex filed it away. Then, a few weeks later, he was on a flight to Atlanta, sandwiched in the middle seat between 2 large men with nowhere to go and nothing else to do. He finally opened an OpenAI account and started building.That experience in a cramped middle seat sent AirOps in a new direction. The company had been founded to help non-technical employees access company data — a broad, useful product with no obvious north star. Knowing the paradigm was shifting and knowing what your company should actually do about it are different problems. Alex had to translate that conviction into a focus, which meant making a hard call. When a space is growing as fast as LLM applications were in 2022 and 2023, trying to be everything to everyone is a trap.The answer came from the data, not from a whiteboard. When the team looked at their heat map of usage, 1 cluster burned hotter than anything else: technical CMOs, leaders of 50 to 100 person marketing orgs, working nights and weekends inside AirOps building ambitious content systems. High-taste users with strong opinions and no patience for tools that couldn't meet their standard. The market was doing what markets do when they find something they want — it was insisting.By mid-2023, AirOps had committed fully. The customer was the high-taste marketing professional who wanted to build content systems at scale, not just generate more content. Every decision since has been built around that person. The most important pivots rarely happen in planning sessions. They happen when you actually use the thing, look at the data honestly, and trust what the market is telling you over the story you had planned to tell.Key takeaway: Look at your usage data and find the cluster of users who are working hardest and complaining most specifically — they are telling you who your product is actually for. Make time to try the tools reshaping your industry with your own hands. Alex's pivot started in a cramped middle seat he couldn't escape. Any open hour will do.The Real Definition of Content Engineering and Why It's Not About Publishing MoreMarketing teams have been chasing the wrong metric since LLMs went mainstream. The race defaulted to volume: how many posts, how fast, how much can you automate. That framing made sense in an era where more content meant more crawlable pages, more keywords, more surface area for Google to index. The era has changed.AI agents now sit between buyers and brands. When someone asks ChatGPT or Perplexity a question about your product category, an agent synthesizes content from across the web — your owned pages, third-party publications, Reddit threads, review platforms — and returns a single answer. That agent is not counting pages. It's evaluating quality, depth, freshness, and what Alex describes as information gain: the degree to which any given piece of content adds something new to what the model already knows.That's a meaningfully different standard. A 2022 blog post with outdated product language, stale statistics, and broken links doesn't rank lower in AI search — it's absent from it entirely. Webflow, 1 of AirOps's customers, saw what investing in content refresh workflows does to those outcomes: 42% more traffic and AI-attributed conversions performing 6x better than standard organic. That's a maintenance story, not a content production story.There's also a conflation doing a lot of damage in this conversation. Content written with AI assistance gets lumped together with content generated by AI with no original grounding or context. The studies that say "AI content performs poorly" tend to define AI content as the second category, and the conflation goes unexamined in most LinkedIn commentary. The distinction matters enormously. Content that draws on real interviews, proprietary data, internal expertise, and company-specific context performs differently from content that's a model recombining what already exists on the internet.The brands performing well in AI search right now are treating their content library as a living system with real quality standards — a garden that requires ongoing maintenance rather than a publishing archive. They're building workflows to keep content fresh, surface internal knowledge that's been sitting in Google Drive unused, and maintain what...
Text us your thoughts on the episode or the show!Why is it so hard for teams to say what they actually think?We nod in meetings, then raise concerns in Slack afterward. We approve work, then reopen it at the last minute. We pile up version 20, 30, 40 of a deliverable, wondering why nothing ever feels finished.In this episode of Ops Cast, host Michael Hartmann sits down with Kira Troilo, founder of Art & Soul Consulting, who brings two decades of theater experience into the world of team collaboration. Her insight is that most teams are stuck in "performance mode," being careful and polite, when what they really need is "rehearsal mode," where it's safe to be messy, disagree early, and surface the truth before it gets expensive.Michael and Kira discussed:Why politeness is a hidden source of inefficiency, and what the "silence tax" actually costs organizationsThe real reason approval cycles balloon into endless rounds of revisionsHow theater's "first rehearsal" tradition translates to designing better team kickoffsWhy tools, workflows, and AI don't fix the underlying communication problemPractical tactics teams can adopt this week to give honest feedback earlierWhether AI and automation make these collaboration challenges better or worseHow leaders can shift from managing output to designing how their teams work togetherIf you've ever felt that rework, fire drills, and misalignment are symptoms of something deeper on your team, this conversation will give you a new lens and a starting point.Episode Brought to You By MO Pros The #1 Community for Marketing Operations Professionals MarketingOps.com is curating the GTM Ops Track at Demand & Expand (May 19-20, San Francisco) - the premier B2B marketing event featuring 600+ practitioners sharing real solutions to real problems. Use code MOPS20 for 20% off tickets, or get 35-50% off as a MarketingOps.com member. Learn more at demandandexpand.com.Support the show
Zatrudniasz marketera po raz pierwszy albo kolejny raz wychodzi ci tak sobie? Ten odcinek jest dla ciebie.Z 203 odcinka podcastu Business Marketer dowiesz się:Dlaczego nie warto zmieniać człowieka, nie zmieniając systemu – i dlaczego bez segmentacji i pozycjonowania żaden marketer, nawet świetny, nie ma szans się wykazaćCzym różni się wąski specjalista od generalisty – i którego z nich powinieneś szukać jako swojego pierwszego marketera (podpowiedź: to nie jest specjalista od PPC)Jak wygląda „one man army" z prawdziwego zdarzenia – jakie cechy są kluczowe, dlaczego zdolność mówienia „nie" na wrzutki jest ważniejsza niż znajomość narzędziJak budować zespół marketingowy krok po kroku – co powinien robić zespół 2-, 3- i 4-5-osobowy, gdzie potrzebny jest Marketing Operations i kiedy warto myśleć o paid media wewnątrz firmyJak zaplanować pierwsze tygodnie nowego marketera – dlaczego szef firmy musi poświęcić kilkadziesiąt godzin na odboarding marketera i dlaczego pierwsze rozmowy nowego marketera powinny być z klientami, nie z handlowcamiJeśli jesteś po stronie rekrutera – dowiesz się, jak nie trafić w przepaść między oczekiwaniami a możliwościami. Jeśli jesteś marketerem B2B – poznasz argumenty, których możesz użyć, żeby negocjować warunki, które pozwolą ci skutecznie i spokojnie pracować.Chcesz wiedzieć więcej o nowoczesnym marketingu B2B? Odwiedź naszą stronę: https://businessmarketer.plZobacz moje szkolenia i webinaryMasz pomysł na odcinek podcastu? Chcesz zostać partnerem podcastu? Napisz do mnie: lukasz.kosuniak@businessmarketer.pl
What's up everyone, today we have the pleasure of sitting down with Elizabeth Dobbs, AVP of Marketing Technology, Data and Growth at Databricks.(00:00) - Intro (01:18) - In This Episode (01:47) - Sponsor: Knak (02:55) - Sponsor: MoEngage (04:16) - Why Velocity Beats Permanence in Marketing Data Architecture (12:00) - Why Databricks Embedded Data Engineers Inside Marketing (15:02) - Inside Databricks' 3 Marketing Ops Agents (18:56) - How Databricks Built an AI Analyst That Marketing Teams Actually Trust (26:13) - How Agent Tagatha Cut Months of Manual Content Tagging to Hours (30:07) - Sponsor: AttributionApp (31:09) - Sponsor: GrowthLoop (34:48) - How Agent Atlas Replaced the Rules-Based Segmentation Wheel (39:28) - Why Marketers Don't Care Whether You Call It an Agent (43:32) - How to Get Data Warehouse Access When Your Team Doesn't Own It (48:36) - What Databricks Is Actually Testing for in Marketing Hires Now (54:04) - What Gives Liz Energy Outside the Office Summary: Elizabeth Dobbs spent 6 years at Databricks doing something most marketing leaders only talk about: building the data infrastructure before deploying the AI on top of it. She's shipped 3 production agents (Marge, Tagatha, and Atlas) and she'll tell you exactly what broke first and why the team kept going anyway. You'll hear how a marketing lakehouse becomes the foundation that makes every agent actually work, why the agent label debate is a distraction, and what Liz is genuinely testing for in marketing interviews now that AI-polished resumes all look the same in Greenhouse. If your AI ambitions are running ahead of your data foundation, this episode is going to reorder your roadmap.About Elizabeth DobbsElizabeth Dobbs is the AVP of Marketing Technology, Data and Growth at Databricks, where she leads the team responsible for the company's full marketing stack, including data engineers and data scientists embedded directly in marketing. Promoted to AVP in February 2025 after more than 5 years building Databricks' marketing data infrastructure from scratch, she architected the company's marketing lakehouse and deployed 3 production AI agents serving the entire marketing org. Before Databricks, she spent nearly 7 years at Khoros in a series of marketing operations and demand generation leadership roles, including Chief of Staff to the CMO.Why Velocity Beats Permanence in Marketing Data ArchitectureIf you work at a company called Databricks, you assume the marketing data is fine. The word "data" is literally in the name. When Elizabeth Dobbs was interviewing 6 years ago and someone in sales ops told her straight up that the data was a complete mess, she thought they were being politely humble. She took the job. She found out they meant it.What she encountered fit the startup playbook exactly. Agencies hired for agency's sake because headcount was thin. Systems that barely talked to each other. Stacks of what she calls "human middleware," people spending their days manually bridging gaps the infrastructure couldn't close. Databricks was probably no worse than any other high-growth startup at that scale. But fixing it meant accepting something most marketing teams resist: building for permanence is a waste of energy.When Liz and her team sat down to fix things, they made a call that runs against how most marketing orgs are wired. They stopped trying to build the perfect foundation. At 1,000 people, you might get away with it. At 10,000, perfection is a distraction. By the time you finish, the company has changed shape again. So they optimized for velocity. Centralized data imperfectly. Built shared definitions that not everyone followed consistently. Accepted the bubblegum-and-duct-tape reality. And they stayed intentional about exactly 1 thing: knowing which decisions you cannot walk back.The one-way door framework is how they sorted the rest. Some decisions hurt to make but compound over time. A marketing lakehouse, all first-party data in 1 governed and catalogued place, is the example she keeps returning to. There is no SaaS tool you would buy, no agent you would deploy, that wouldn't benefit from having that foundation underneath it. That makes it a no-regret decision even when it's brutal to build. The other category, the rip-and-replace bets, is where you move fast and hedge. Agents might automate an entire workflow in 18 months. They might not be ready. You place smaller bets there and iterate. What you don't do is apply the same level of commitment to decisions that actually shouldn't last.6 years later, the core of Databricks' marketing stack looks a lot like it did when Liz started. LeanData. Familiar prospecting tools. The same basic webinar infrastructure. The vendors who survived are the ones who grew alongside the team, who stayed flexible as Databricks scaled well past what their standard playbook assumed. In a market that treats every tool as disposable, the ones that last are the ones that earned it. The companies that build durable AI systems in marketing will be the ones who made the unsexy architectural call first and let everything else follow from it.Key takeaway: Before committing to any AI agent or new platform, split your roadmap into 2 categories: one-way doors and reversible bets. A centralized, governed marketing data layer goes in the one-way door category. Pour resources into it without condition and treat every setback as a speed bump. For everything else, including which agents you deploy and which tools you layer on top, move fast, hedge small, and iterate. Run that filter on your next planning cycle and you'll stop debating tools and start building the foundation that makes all of them actually work.Why Databricks Embedded Data Engineers Inside MarketingMarketing ops leaders who don't have embedded data engineers spend a lot of time explaining to others why they can't move faster. Liz's team has data engineers and data scientists who report into marketing, not into a central IT org. Most people assume she fought for it. The actual story is less dramatic and more instructive.It came from 2 leaders giving the team room before they could prove the full return. Her CMO Rick and CCIO Mike Hamilton were direct about it: we have our own fires, you know enough to be dangerous, you know where the lines are. File Jira tickets if you need something outside your lane, but otherwise go run. That kind of organizational trust is rare. What made it stick was showing the velocity difference on something concrete. Bring in 1 or 2 data engineers with actual marketing domain experience, and the speed gap becomes obvious. Marketing data has its own rules. MDF means different things to different teams. ROAS has regional variations. Pipeline attribution is a political minefield. Someone who has lived in that domain moves 10 times faster than someone learning it in place.That observation turns out to apply directly to the agents Liz's team built later. You spend months onboarding a new hire with marketing domain context. That person leaves before the investment fully pays off and you start over. Agents don't do that. You train them, you give them the context, they hold it. What Databricks figured out with internal resourcing, they've since encoded into how they think about deploying AI. The parallel is direct and Liz draws it explicitly: the reason domain knowledge matters for people is the same reason it matters when you're configuring an agent.The team that resulted from this structure is part of why Marge, Tagatha, and Atlas were even possible. You can't build a marketing lakehouse without engineers who understand what the data is supposed to represent. You can't deploy an agent ...
Most leaders see Marketing Ops as the team that keeps the trains running on time, essentially the plumbers of the marketing department. But what if I told you they're actually positioned to be the architects of your company's most durable competitive advantage?Agility requires moving beyond the transactional nature of campaigns and technology. It demands building a durable, responsive ecosystem around your brand, one that can listen and adapt not just quarterly, but constantly.Today, we're going to talk about how to reframe the marketing operations function from a cost center or tactical execution engine into a strategic driver of growth. And we'll explore a powerful, and perhaps counterintuitive, way to do it: by building a genuine community, not just as a marketing channel, but as the core of your go-to-market strategy.To help me discuss this topic, I'd like to welcome, Mike Rizzo, CEO at MarketingOps.About Mike Rizzo Mike Rizzo is a career marketing operations professional passionate about using a people-first approach to building scalable and efficient solutions to the challenges faced by marketing, business operations, and client success teams.With his extensive background in marketing Mike helped build, launch, manage and optimize Mavenlink's first user community and Client Advisory Board programs.In 2017 he also founded the growing community of MO Pros - a place where thousands of Marketing Operations Professionals connect, collaborate and help elevate the practice of Marketing Ops. He is also the co-host of the podcast called Ops Cast.As the founder of MarketingOps.com, Mike is taking a community-led approach to building a platform purpose-built to elevate Marketing Operations Professionals. Mike Rizzo on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/aharze/ Resources MarketingOps: https://www.marketingops.com The Agile Brand podcast is brought to you by TEKsystems. Learn more here: https://aglbrnd.co/r/2868abd8085a9703 Drive your customers to new horizons at the premier retail event of the year for Retail and Brand marketers. Learn more at CRMC 2026, June 1-3. https://aglbrnd.co/r/d15ec37a537c0d74 We're proud to be a media partner for #MAICON26 - Oct. 13-15! Learn how AI can power your marketing and business and help you grow smarter. Use code AGILE150 to save! https://aglbrnd.co/r/7fe458ced0f04658Reach your customers with Reddit. Spend $500 in ad spend, get $500 back in ad credit! Learn more: https://advertalize.com/r/491818c79fb1873fEnjoyed the show? Tell us more at and give us a rating so others can find the show at: https://aglbrnd.co/r/faaed112fc9887f3 Connect with Greg on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gregkihlstromDon't miss a thing: get the latest episodes, sign up for our newsletter and more: https://aglbrnd.co/r/35ded3ccfb6716ba Check out The Agile Brand Guide website with articles, insights, and Martechipedia, the wiki for marketing technology: https://www.agilebrandguide.com The Agile Brand is produced by Missing Link—a Latina-owned strategy-driven, creatively fueled production co-op. From ideation to creation, they craft human connections through intelligent, engaging and informative content. https://www.missinglink.company Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Most leaders see Marketing Ops as the team that keeps the trains running on time, essentially the plumbers of the marketing department. But what if I told you they're actually positioned to be the architects of your company's most durable competitive advantage? Agility requires moving beyond the transactional nature of campaigns and technology. It demands building a durable, responsive ecosystem around your brand, one that can listen and adapt not just quarterly, but constantly.Today, we're going to talk about how to reframe the marketing operations function from a cost center or tactical execution engine into a strategic driver of growth. And we'll explore a powerful, and perhaps counterintuitive, way to do it: by building a genuine community, not just as a marketing channel, but as the core of your go-to-market strategy. To help me discuss this topic, I'd like to welcome, Mike Rizzo, CEO at MarketingOps. About Mike Rizzo Mike Rizzo is a career marketing operations professional passionate about using a people-first approach to building scalable and efficient solutions to the challenges faced by marketing, business operations, and client success teams. With his extensive background in marketing Mike helped build, launch, manage and optimize Mavenlink's first user community and Client Advisory Board programs. In 2017 he also founded the growing community of MO Pros - a place where thousands of Marketing Operations Professionals connect, collaborate and help elevate the practice of Marketing Ops. He is also the co-host of the podcast called Ops Cast.As the founder of MarketingOps.com, Mike is taking a community-led approach to building a platform purpose-built to elevate Marketing Operations Professionals. Mike Rizzo on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/aharze/ Resources MarketingOps: https://www.marketingops.com The Agile Brand podcast is brought to you by TEKsystems. Learn more here: https://aglbrnd.co/r/2868abd8085a9703 Drive your customers to new horizons at the premier retail event of the year for Retail and Brand marketers. Learn more at CRMC 2026, June 1-3. https://aglbrnd.co/r/d15ec37a537c0d74 We're proud to be a media partner for #MAICON26 - Oct. 13-15! Learn how AI can power your marketing and business and help you grow smarter. Use code AGILE150 to save! https://aglbrnd.co/r/7fe458ced0f04658 Reach your customers with Reddit. Spend $500 in ad spend, get $500 back in ad credit! Learn more: https://advertalize.com/r/491818c79fb1873f Enjoyed the show? Tell us more at and give us a rating so others can find the show at: https://aglbrnd.co/r/faaed112fc9887f3 Connect with Greg on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gregkihlstrom Don't miss a thing: get the latest episodes, sign up for our newsletter and more: https://aglbrnd.co/r/35ded3ccfb6716ba Check out The Agile Brand Guide website with articles, insights, and Martechipedia, the wiki for marketing technology: https://www.agilebrandguide.com The Agile Brand is produced by Missing Link—a Latina-owned strategy-driven, creatively fueled production co-op. From ideation to creation, they craft human connections through intelligent, engaging and informative content. https://www.missinglink.company
Text us your thoughts on the episode or the show! Most RevOps advice assumes your organization is already halfway in your success journey. But what happens when you're starting from zero, with no clear blueprint, inconsistent data, and a team that can't agree on how revenue actually works? In this episode, host Michael Hartmann sits down with Chelsea Gill, CMO at Resultant, who recently expanded her role to include RevOps and Customer Experience. What started as a need for better data and process quickly revealed a full-scale management change challenge across the entire organization.Chelsea and Michael discussed:What Chelsea expected when stepping into RevOps and what she actually foundWhy most RevOps frameworks assume more maturity than most teams haveWhat a "beta" version of RevOps actually looks like in practiceHow to change behavior across sales, marketing, and leadership (not just process)The role of empathy and storytelling in building organizational trust around dataWhether marketing has contributed to its own credibility problem inside the businessIf you're going through the messy middle between marketing, sales, and operations, or trying to build RevOps without a roadmap, this episode is a must watch for you.Episode Brought to You By MO Pros The #1 Community for Marketing Operations Professionals MarketingOps.com is curating the GTM Ops Track at Demand & Expand (May 19-20, San Francisco) - the premier B2B marketing event featuring 600+ practitioners sharing real solutions to real problems. Use code MOPS20 for 20% off tickets, or get 35-50% off as a MarketingOps.com member. Learn more at demandandexpand.com.Support the show
Most leaders see Marketing Ops as the team that keeps the trains running on time, essentially the plumbers of the marketing department. But what if I told you they're actually positioned to be the architects of your company's most durable competitive advantage?Agility requires moving beyond the transactional nature of campaigns and technology. It demands building a durable, responsive ecosystem around your brand, one that can listen and adapt not just quarterly, but constantly.Today, we're going to talk about how to reframe the marketing operations function from a cost center or tactical execution engine into a strategic driver of growth. And we'll explore a powerful, and perhaps counterintuitive, way to do it: by building a genuine community, not just as a marketing channel, but as the core of your go-to-market strategy.To help me discuss this topic, I'd like to welcome, Mike Rizzo, CEO at MarketingOps.About Mike Rizzo Mike Rizzo is a career marketing operations professional passionate about using a people-first approach to building scalable and efficient solutions to the challenges faced by marketing, business operations, and client success teams.With his extensive background in marketing Mike helped build, launch, manage and optimize Mavenlink's first user community and Client Advisory Board programs.In 2017 he also founded the growing community of MO Pros - a place where thousands of Marketing Operations Professionals connect, collaborate and help elevate the practice of Marketing Ops. He is also the co-host of the podcast called Ops Cast.As the founder of MarketingOps.com, Mike is taking a community-led approach to building a platform purpose-built to elevate Marketing Operations Professionals. Mike Rizzo on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/aharze/ Resources MarketingOps: https://www.marketingops.com The Agile Brand podcast is brought to you by TEKsystems. Learn more here: https://aglbrnd.co/r/2868abd8085a9703 Drive your customers to new horizons at the premier retail event of the year for Retail and Brand marketers. Learn more at CRMC 2026, June 1-3. https://aglbrnd.co/r/d15ec37a537c0d74 We're proud to be a media partner for #MAICON26 - Oct. 13-15! Learn how AI can power your marketing and business and help you grow smarter. Use code AGILE150 to save! https://aglbrnd.co/r/7fe458ced0f04658Reach your customers with Reddit. Spend $500 in ad spend, get $500 back in ad credit! Learn more: https://advertalize.com/r/491818c79fb1873fEnjoyed the show? Tell us more at and give us a rating so others can find the show at: https://aglbrnd.co/r/faaed112fc9887f3 Connect with Greg on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gregkihlstromDon't miss a thing: get the latest episodes, sign up for our newsletter and more: https://aglbrnd.co/r/35ded3ccfb6716ba Check out The Agile Brand Guide website with articles, insights, and Martechipedia, the wiki for marketing technology: https://www.agilebrandguide.com The Agile Brand is produced by Missing Link—a Latina-owned strategy-driven, creatively fueled production co-op. From ideation to creation, they craft human connections through intelligent, engaging and informative content. https://www.missinglink.company Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Most leaders see Marketing Ops as the team that keeps the trains running on time, essentially the plumbers of the marketing department. But what if I told you they're actually positioned to be the architects of your company's most durable competitive advantage? Agility requires moving beyond the transactional nature of campaigns and technology. It demands building a durable, responsive ecosystem around your brand, one that can listen and adapt not just quarterly, but constantly.Today, we're going to talk about how to reframe the marketing operations function from a cost center or tactical execution engine into a strategic driver of growth. And we'll explore a powerful, and perhaps counterintuitive, way to do it: by building a genuine community, not just as a marketing channel, but as the core of your go-to-market strategy. To help me discuss this topic, I'd like to welcome, Mike Rizzo, CEO at MarketingOps. About Mike Rizzo Mike Rizzo is a career marketing operations professional passionate about using a people-first approach to building scalable and efficient solutions to the challenges faced by marketing, business operations, and client success teams. With his extensive background in marketing Mike helped build, launch, manage and optimize Mavenlink's first user community and Client Advisory Board programs. In 2017 he also founded the growing community of MO Pros - a place where thousands of Marketing Operations Professionals connect, collaborate and help elevate the practice of Marketing Ops. He is also the co-host of the podcast called Ops Cast.As the founder of MarketingOps.com, Mike is taking a community-led approach to building a platform purpose-built to elevate Marketing Operations Professionals. Mike Rizzo on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/aharze/ Resources MarketingOps: https://www.marketingops.com The Agile Brand podcast is brought to you by TEKsystems. Learn more here: https://aglbrnd.co/r/2868abd8085a9703 Drive your customers to new horizons at the premier retail event of the year for Retail and Brand marketers. Learn more at CRMC 2026, June 1-3. https://aglbrnd.co/r/d15ec37a537c0d74 We're proud to be a media partner for #MAICON26 - Oct. 13-15! Learn how AI can power your marketing and business and help you grow smarter. Use code AGILE150 to save! https://aglbrnd.co/r/7fe458ced0f04658 Reach your customers with Reddit. Spend $500 in ad spend, get $500 back in ad credit! Learn more: https://advertalize.com/r/491818c79fb1873f Enjoyed the show? Tell us more at and give us a rating so others can find the show at: https://aglbrnd.co/r/faaed112fc9887f3 Connect with Greg on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gregkihlstrom Don't miss a thing: get the latest episodes, sign up for our newsletter and more: https://aglbrnd.co/r/35ded3ccfb6716ba Check out The Agile Brand Guide website with articles, insights, and Martechipedia, the wiki for marketing technology: https://www.agilebrandguide.com The Agile Brand is produced by Missing Link—a Latina-owned strategy-driven, creatively fueled production co-op. From ideation to creation, they craft human connections through intelligent, engaging and informative content. https://www.missinglink.company
Colleen Meenan is an Executive Vice President at Publicis Media, where she focuses on leading media strategy, client partnerships, and integrated marketing solutions for major brands. She is recognized for her leadership in modern, data-driven media planning and helping clients navigate the evolving digital and advertising landscape. Brad Feinberg is Vice President of Media & Marketing Operations at Molson Coors Beverage Company. He oversees media strategy, digital marketing, eCommerce, analytics, and consumer engagement across the company's portfolio of brands. Feinberg is known for leading innovative campaigns, expanding first-party data capabilities, and helping modernize Molson Coors' media and marketing operations.
What's up everyone, today we have the pleasure of sitting down with Tata Maytesyan, Growth Consultant, Keynote Speaker, and AI Trainer.(00:00) - Intro (01:08) - In This Episode (01:46) - Sponsor: GrowthLoop (02:50) - Sponsor: Attribution App (04:34) - Which Marketing Tasks Are Actually Worth Automating (13:07) - Why Deep Generalists Outperform Channel Specialists in Marketing (26:07) - Sponsor: MoEngage (27:04) - Sponsor: Knak (35:06) - Why Marketing Org Charts Are Not Getting Flatter (43:01) - Why Change Management Determines Whether AI Adoption Actually Sticks (48:03) - The Fear of Automating Yourself Out of a Job (53:13) - The Voice Diary Technique for Tracking Your Own Energy at Work Summary: Tata Maytesyan runs an AI bootcamp for marketers on Maven and consults with scaling companies across Europe. In this episode, she breaks down why the best AI automation targets are the boring, repeatable tasks nobody talks about on LinkedIn, and why the specialist-to-generalist shift in marketing is already happening whether your org chart reflects it or not. She also gets direct about what's really going on inside companies claiming to go flat, the 100-hour threshold for building genuine competence across domains, and the self-preservation fear she hears from leaders every week. If you have ever wondered whether you are building your career around the right foundations, this episode is worth your full attention.About Tata MaytesyanTata Maytesyan is the founder and CEO of Grow Global Tech, where she builds AI-powered marketing systems for tech scale-ups and runs a hands-on AI bootcamp for marketers on Maven. She spent 15+ years leading growth inside Nike, Deloitte, and Picsart, including a stint as Head of Product Strategy and Operations for Picsart's content and AI division, a platform with over 100 million monthly active users. She has since advised more than 40 companies across 12 countries on go-to-market strategy and AI adoption, and consults primarily with CMOs and CEOs at companies between a few million and $200 million in annual revenue.Which Marketing Tasks Are Actually Worth AutomatingThe wrong starting point for AI adoption in marketing is inspiration. Most marketers scroll LinkedIn for jaw-dropping use cases: ad creative generated at scale, competitive analysis in 10 minutes, entire campaign briefs written by agents. It looks impressive. It's also almost never applicable to your specific job on any given Tuesday. Tata has spent years watching this pattern play out with consulting clients and bootcamp students. Her fix is deliberately boring.At the start of every engagement, she asks everyone in the room to close their AI tools. Then she opens Miro and maps how the team actually works. From there, 3 questions run against every process on the board: how often the task repeats, how acceptable an imperfect output would be, and whether it's something you actually enjoy doing.Those 3 questions quietly eliminate most of what people think they want to automate. Frequency kills off exciting-but-rare workflows not worth touching. Risk tolerance separates contexts where imperfect output is acceptable (most content tasks) from those where it isn't. Tata advises a healthcare client where certain work is patient-facing, and mistakes there carry real consequences. The enjoyment filter protects the parts of the job people actually like, because automating something you love is just spending money to make work less interesting.Her own example from the day this episode recorded: she built a script to pull LinkedIn post metrics (impressions, comments, likes) into Notion. Before that, an assistant handled it. Before that, she did it herself. She describes the task with open contempt, which makes it the perfect candidate: something done constantly, where imperfect output is acceptable, and which requires 0 joy to hand off. She calls it boring is sexy. "Figure out the workflow you do repeatedly, and then if mistakes are manageable and you're okay with them, delegate and automate with AI."People get frustrated when they hear this. You show up to a bootcamp or hire a consultant expecting to leave with something impressive. Instead someone hands you a whiteboard. But Tata is direct about the tradeoff: "It takes time and it slows you down, sort of feels like it slows you down. In fact, it speeds you up."The same logic applies to how people first explore AI tools. Pure tinkering has value: testing a new model, playing with a capability outside any work context. That's curiosity, and it's worth protecting. But when something needs to work reliably in your actual job, setup is non-negotiable: context files, folder structure, clear instructions. The AI can't fill in what you don't give it.The most durable AI workflows come from people who got honest about which parts of their week are boring, repetitive, and low-stakes. LinkedIn will give you inspiration. Your Miro board will give you your actual starting point.Key takeaway: Map your actual workflow before opening any AI tool. For each repeated task, ask whether mistakes are acceptable and whether you actually enjoy doing it. Frequent, low-risk, low-joy work is the right first target. Build from there.Why Deep Generalists Outperform Channel Specialists in MarketingThere's a running debate in marketing about whether to go deep in a specialty or build broad across domains. The specialist argument has genuine weight: if you've never actually run an SEO campaign, how do you know when an AI is confidently producing garbage? Tata sees the point. She also thinks the framing is wrong. Specialization built around channels is the vulnerability, and channels keep changing.Her term for what marketers should actually become is "deep generalist," a phrase she found on the internet and adopted because it captures something the T-shaped marketer framework mostly misses. A deep generalist has real expertise in at least 1 domain but deliberately builds breadth around it. The depth is still there. The difference is the deliberate horizontal stretch.She watches this compression play out in her bootcamp every cohort. At the start of cohort 6, a participant said her team of 4 had been cut to just her. As the remaining content writer, she was now responsible for everything: SEO, social, website, the whole thing. That's not a future prediction. It's already the operational reality for a large share of the marketing workforce, and the people who trained deep in a single channel with no adjacent experience are the ones struggling most.The channel argument is where Tata's case gets sharper. An "SEO specialist" built around Google search has a real problem now that AI Overviews are reshaping how search works. Nobody building a "TikTok specialist" career a few years ago expected it to become a top-performing B2B SaaS ad channel. But 1 VP of business development recently told Tata that's exactly what's happening at their company. Channels are fluid. Betting deep on any specific 1 locks you into an increasingly narrow position.Her own example: at Picsart, 1 division had no SEO function and no budget for an agency. Tata spent 2 months doing the SEO work herself, learning enough to direct AI through the process. When the business eventually hired an SEO agency, the agency was impressed by what was already in place. She had put in enough time to know what good SEO looked like and how to direct AI against that standard effectively.The underlying skill that makes all of this work is judgment. Generating an image is table stakes. Knowing whether it's good, whether it fits, whether an agent's output is trustworthy enough to use: those require domain awareness that a speciali...
Text us your thoughts on the episode or the show!In today's episode of Ops Cast by MarketingOps.com, we're going beyond systems, processes, and technology to talk about how Pros are actually doing and executing the work. Marketing has grown into a measurable revenue engine, but that transformation has come at a cost, and the pressure on operators is now constant, unrelenting, and in many cases, unsustainable.Our guest is Debbie Qaqish, one of the original pioneers of Revenue Marketing and Marketing Operations, and the founder of her new venture, The Growth Factor. Debbie has spent years helping organizations turn marketing into a measurable driver of business growth, and now she's tackling the human side of that shift, focusing on resilience, leadership, and how marketers can perform at a high level without burning out.Key Topics Include:The evolution of Revenue Marketing and where most companies get stuck todayWhat comes next after accountability and measurement defined the last eraHow AI is rebuilding the role of marketing ops and the expectations placed on teamsWhy does the pressure on marketers feel different now than even a few years agoWhat resilience actually looks like in practice for marketing ops and RevOps rolesHow "caveman brain" shows up in high-stress work environments and affects decision-makingSimple resets operators can use when stuck in fight-or-flight modeWhat effective leadership looks like when pace and pressure are this highHow operators can move from surviving to performing at a high levelIf you've been feeling the weight of constant pressure, changing expectations, and the demand to do more with less, this episode will give you a different lens on what's happening and what to do about it.If you're ready to think about performance, leadership, and resilience in a way that actually fits the reality of modern marketing ops, tune in!For leaders looking for a reset, here is the 10-Minute Leadership Reset™ Ops Cast (https://www.growthfactor.us/opscast)Be sure to like, share, and subscribe to join the conversation at MarketingOps.comEpisode Brought to You By MO Pros The #1 Community for Marketing Operations Professionals MarketingOps.com is curating the GTM Ops Track at Demand & Expand (May 19-20, San Francisco) - the premier B2B marketing event featuring 600+ practitioners sharing real solutions to real problems. Use code MOPS20 for 20% off tickets, or get 35-50% off as a MarketingOps.com member. Learn more at demandandexpand.com.Support the show
On this debut episode of Beyond the Wrench, Chris Lollini speaks with Cody Damp, owner and president of American Home Pros, a Tulsa-based HVAC and plumbing company with 17 trucks on the road. Damp breaks down the company's approach to marketing, including a major push to dedicate 40% of marketing spend to brand recognition.
Summary: This episode closes Phil and Darrell's 3-part series on the marketing ops job market with the question they've been building toward: what do you ask the company? Darrell shares a firsthand account of taking a job under financial pressure, ignoring red flags he recognized in the moment, and landing in a toxic environment within months. What follows is a structured set of interview questions across 6 categories, from leadership self-awareness to what happened to the last person in the role, designed to help you separate the job offer from the job reality. If the only question you've ever asked at the end of an interview was about growth opportunities, this episode is going to change how you think about that conversation.In This Episode:(00:00) - Intro (01:09) - In This Episode (01:42) - Sponsor: MoEngage (02:40) - Sponsor: Knak (06:06) - What to Figure Out Before You Ask a Single Interview Question (12:19) - How to Test a Hiring Manager's Self-Awareness in a Single Question (18:14) - How to Find Out If a Hiring Manager Can Handle Being Wrong (24:37) - Sponsor: GrowthLoop (25:41) - Sponsor: Mammoth Growth (26:46) - Why "When Did You Last Take a Vacation?" Is the Most Revealing Culture Question (32:09) - How to Find Out If a Company Sticks to Its Priorities or Changes Them Every Quarter (36:31) - How to Find Out What a Marketing Ops Role Actually Requires Before You Accept It (46:04) - Why Fear in a Peer Interview Is the Red Flag You Should Never Ignore What to Figure Out Before You Ask a Single Interview QuestionThe US healthcare system has a way of making bad career decisions feel necessary. When you're laid off with a family depending on employer-sponsored coverage, the clock starts immediately. Every week without an offer is another week closer to COBRA. That pressure doesn't make people irrational. It makes the math of a job offer feel different than it normally would.Darrell Alfonso was in that position last year. A few months after getting laid off, he received what looked like a career comeback: a higher title, more responsibility, better pay, and benefits. The package was attractive enough that he pushed aside doubts surfacing during the process. He knew some things felt off. He took the job anyway. Within 2 months, he was having near-anxiety attacks, sleeping poorly, and barely present with his family. He left quickly. He has no regrets.Most interview prep points in a single direction: getting the offer. Candidates research companies, rehearse answers, and practice looking calm under pressure. The harder question, whether the offer is worth taking, gets almost no airtime. Phil frames this episode as being for people with enough options to ask both. That might mean multiple offers in play, the ability to keep searching while still employed, or simply enough runway to be selective. If you're in survival mode, some of this will still apply. But the questions work best when you have the leverage to actually act on the answers you get.Before choosing which questions to ask, decide what you're trying to find out. Phil and Darrell use what makes you happy at work as the starting filter. For some people it's ownership and interesting problems. For others it's stability, predictable hours, or family-friendly flexibility. Darrell puts the manager relationship at the top. Your boss marks your performance, sets your priorities, and shapes whether it feels safe to admit you're stuck or struggling. Career advice tends to understate how much that single variable determines whether someone thrives or burns out, regardless of how strong everything else looks on paper. The candidates who ask the sharpest questions are usually the ones who did that harder internal work first.Key takeaway: Before your next round of interviews, write down 3 things that would make you miserable in a role. Be specific: not "bad culture" but things like "a boss who overrides my work constantly" or "no flexibility on hours." Use that list as your filter when deciding which questions to prioritize. If a company can't answer those 3 things in a way that gives you confidence, the decision gets harder than it needs to be.How to Test a Hiring Manager's Self-Awareness in a Single QuestionThe most common reason people leave jobs is their manager. That gets cited often but rarely changes how candidates behave in interviews. Most people assess for chemistry from the vibe of the conversation, look for red flags in the standard answers, and hope the hiring manager turns out to be reasonable. Phil uses a more deliberate approach.His bank of questions for probing leadership self-awareness:What's something leadership got wrong in the last year?, What feedback do you get most often as a hiring manager?, What decision would you revisit if you could?, What's changed about how you lead over time?, What's something you're still figuring out about your leadership style?The first 1 does the most work. Every leadership team makes mistakes. If a hiring manager can't name 1, they're either hiding something or genuinely can't reflect on their own decisions. The answer that matters isn't the mistake itself. It's whether they can describe it clearly, explain what they took from it, and say what changed.Darrell pushes the same idea with a different angle: ask what issues a hiring manager has had with a former leader, or with a former direct report. If the answer sounds carefully managed, nothing too specific, nothing too negative, that polish is informative. People who have actually led teams through difficult stretches can name them. They have timelines, outcomes, and lessons. Vague answers suggest either limited experience or a preference for impression management over honesty.Phil's version of the final question in this category is direct: describe your worst boss ever, and why were they the worst? A hiring manager who answers with a real story, including what it cost their team and how they changed as a result, is giving you the most reliable signal available in a 30-minute conversation. Darrell used a version of this in a recent interview. He was upfront with his prospective boss about coming from a toxic environment. She responded by citing 2 specific bosses who had made her professional life difficult, described what each 1 got wrong, and connected it to how she tries to lead now. That answer built more confidence than the rest of the process combined.Leadership self-awareness is a practice developed through confronting moments where instincts were wrong and the team paid for it. The managers worth working for have had those moments and can talk about them specifically. The ones who can't usually haven't processed them.Key takeaway: Ask your next hiring manager: "What's something leadership got wrong in the last year?" Write down the answer verbatim as soon as the conversation ends. If the response is vague, hedged, or completely absent, you now have a data point that no amount of external research could give you. The managers worth working for have made real mistakes and can describe them specifically.How to Find Out If a Hiring Manager Can Handle Being WrongThere's a version of leadership that gets tolerated more than it should: the manager who hires people with deep expertise and then ignores them. The org chart implies delegation. The day-to-day contradicts it. You spend months delivering work that gets overridden by someone who hired you for your judgment and then second-guesses every call you make.Phil's set of questions for this goes directly at the pattern. Rather than asking whether a hiring manager is open to feedback in the abstract, ask for a specific instance: can you describe a time when s...
Text us your thoughts on the episode or the show!In today's episode of Ops Cast by MarketingOps.com, we're breaking the misconception that digital accessibility is just a compliance issue. Instead, we're exploring why accessibility should be viewed as a strategic advantage, a lever for better customer experience, stronger performance, and sustained growth.Our guest is Mike Barton, the leader of Corporate Communications and Content Marketing at AudioEye. He shares how accessibility isn't just about ticking boxes or worrying about lawsuits; it's about enhancing the experience for all customers, creating more inclusive content, and ultimately driving business success.Key Topics Include: • The real definition of digital accessibility and why it's often misunderstood • How accessibility impacts revenue and growth opportunities when ignored • Why designing for accessibility improves the overall customer experience for everyone • Where Marketing and Revenue Ops teams should focus on accessibility through email programs, websites, campaigns, and more • Best practices for ensuring accessibility across different channels • Quick wins for Ops teams to implement accessibility changes without getting overwhelmedIf you haven't thought about accessibility in your workflows, this episode will show you exactly where to start and how to implement changes that will have a lasting impact.If you're ready to take actionable steps to make your marketing, web operations, and campaigns more accessible, tune in!Be sure to like, share, and subscribe to join the conversation at MarketingOps.com.Episode Brought to You By MO Pros The #1 Community for Marketing Operations Professionals MarketingOps.com is curating the GTM Ops Track at Demand & Expand (May 19-20, San Francisco) - the premier B2B marketing event featuring 600+ practitioners sharing real solutions to real problems. Use code MOPS20 for 20% off tickets, or get 35-50% off as a MarketingOps.com member. Learn more at demandandexpand.com.Support the show
What's up everyone, today we continue with part 2 of a 3 part series we're calling The Martech Job Hunt Survival Guide. Part 2 is: How to stand out as a candidate with AI prep, portfolios and tools.Summary: Phil and Darrell spent this episode breaking down what actually moves the needle when you're searching for a role: building the portfolio that almost no marketing ops professional bothers to save, navigating the AI experience question, knowing when to take a contract role instead of holding out, and skipping the AI job-search tools that make you look like everyone else. The honest observations from Darrell's own recent job search make this one worth listening to, including why the colleagues most reluctant to make a lateral move are still searching months later.In this Episode…(00:00) - Intro (01:01) - In This Episode (01:30) - Sponsor: Mammoth Growth (02:36) - Sponsor: GrowthLoop (05:24) - Why Hiring Managers Can't Actually Evaluate Your AI Experience (08:26) - How to Build a Marketing Ops Portfolio When Your Work Is Buried in Tools (17:56) - Why Creating LinkedIn Content Works Even When Nobody Is Watching (25:32) - What Hiring Managers Notice First on Your LinkedIn Profile (30:10) - Sponsor: Knak (31:13) - Sponsor: MoEngage (34:13) - Why Contract Work Is a Strategic Move for Marketing Ops Job Seekers Right Now (44:02) - Which Job Search Tools Help and Which Ones Waste Your Time (56:18) - How a Video Introduction or Visual Resume Gets You Into the Next Round Why Hiring Managers Can't Actually Evaluate Your AI ExperienceEvery marketing ops job posting in 2026 has the same line buried somewhere in the requirements: "proven experience delivering results with AI." Walk into any interview and within the first few minutes someone will ask you to describe what you've actually done with it. That question sounds reasonable until you realize the person asking usually has no idea what a good answer looks like.Darrell came out of a recent job search with a clear read on this. The interview questions had shifted entirely. The old MarTech interview, the 1 that asks about your tool stack and campaign history, has been replaced. AI is now the primary filter. Companies want proof of results. But AI-driven marketing ops, as an actual practice, barely existed 3 years ago. Phil put the absurdity into 4 words: "5 years of AI experience." Everyone in hiring knows it's a joke. They're writing it anyway.The talent pool has gotten harder at the same time. Amazon's most recent layoffs displaced over 10,000 people. Layoffs at Google and across the broader tech sector added more. You're competing against that cohort now, which means the undifferentiated application is in worse shape than it's ever been. Everything has to be sharper.But the opening Darrell is pointing at is real. The hiring managers writing "proven AI experience required" often can't define what good AI usage looks like for a marketing ops role. They're expressing a priority while lacking any rubric to test it. When they ask the interview question, they're listening for someone who sounds like they know what they're talking about. Most candidates coming through don't. You feel it during prep, that uncomfortable awareness that you don't know exactly what they want from you. The honest truth is they don't either.That gap is yours. Research what AI actually does in marketing ops workflows: lead scoring automation, campaign orchestration, data governance, intent signal processing. Build 1 small example if you have the time. Frame your existing work in terms of where AI would fit and how you'd measure it. Darrell's framing: you can position as a credible AI enthusiast with very little preparation, because the bar inside most marketing orgs is low and most candidates aren't clearing it.The industry required AI fluency before building any way to evaluate it. That's not a problem. For candidates willing to do the homework most skip, it's the whole advantage.Key takeaway: Research 3 specific AI use cases in marketing ops before your next interview: lead scoring automation, campaign workflow agents, and CRM data deduplication are good starting points. Prepare 1 concrete story connecting 1 to work you've done or would do. If you haven't built anything yet, describe the workflow you'd build and how you'd measure its impact. Candidates who speak specifically and confidently about AI applications win these conversations, because they're often the only ones in the room who prepared.How to Build a Marketing Ops Portfolio When Your Work Is Buried in ToolsMost marketing ops professionals have spent years doing meaningful, complex work. They've built lead scoring models, managed platform migrations, architected multi-channel campaign workflows. And if you asked them to show you any of it in an interview, most couldn't. The templates are gone. The diagrams were never made. The results are a rough number someone mentioned once in a meeting.Darrell has sat on the interviewer side of enough conversations to be direct: the portfolio problem in marketing ops is almost universal. Candidates describe their work verbally, and the person asking often can't follow it. There's nothing to point to, nothing to walk through, nothing that makes the experience tangible. In a field full of technical, visual, process-driven work, almost no 1 has anything to show.The bar to stand out is genuinely low. Darrell's starting point: if you've built a custom GPT, a Google Gem, or a basic AI agent using Zapier, that alone puts you ahead of most candidates. It takes about 10 minutes to build 1. It demonstrates something concrete about how you think and work. The same logic applies to documentation that almost no company does well: a clean diagram of your current or former tech stack, before-and-after views of a migration you led, a lead scoring template, a product requirements document for a tool evaluation. These are ordinary outputs of the job. Almost no 1 saves them.Phil's preferred format is the case study. Take a project you led, strip the confidential details, and walk through it as if you were an outside consultant brought in to solve the problem. What was the situation before you arrived? What did you do? What did it look like after? Specific numbers and percentages help, but they're not required. A clean diagram showing a tech stack before and after a migration, or a flow chart of a campaign workflow you built, communicates competence without a single metric. For quantifying impact when the numbers are murky, Darrell's suggestion is to use AI to reverse-engineer the math. If you cut campaign launch time by 20%, work backward through campaigns per quarter, leads generated, and pipeline influenced. You can build an intelligent, defensible estimate, and most candidates don't even try.The format doesn't need to be elaborate. A Google Slides deck linked from your resume, tracked with a Bitly vanity URL so you can see who opens it, is more than enough. The bigger benefit of building a portfolio at all is what it does to your interview prep. Reviewing your own work, articulating outcomes, distilling a project into a problem-action-result narrative means you've already done the thinking before anyone asks the question. Phil's point: the exercise of building the portfolio and the exercise of preparing for interviews are the same exercise.Key takeaway: Start with your most recent project and build 1 case study: the problem you walked into, what you built or changed, and the measurable outcome. Add a tech stack diagram if you don't have 1. Link both as a Google Slides deck from your resume and track opens with a Bitly URL. Even a basic portfolio puts you in ...
Text us your thoughts on the episode or the show!What happens when you throw out a nearly finished $500K rebrand… and rebuild it in two months for $22K?In this episode of Ops Cast, Michael Hartmann sits down with Michael Yehoshua, CMO at WiseStamp, to discuss a decision that most marketing leaders would never make and why it worked.Michael walked into an 18-month rebrand that looked polished on the surface but was fundamentally disconnected from real customer insight. Instead of finishing it, he scrapped the entire effort and rebuilt the brand using AI in a completely different way.What followed was not just a faster rebrand, but a change in how decisions get made. From analyzing customer conversations for emotional signals to rethinking how content is structured for LLM-driven discovery. This conversation challenges many of the assumptions behind traditional marketing, SEO, and brand strategy.This is not a tools discussion. It is about how marketing and operations teams need to rethink data, signals, and decision-making in an AI-shaped environment.Topics covered include:• Why a nearly complete $500K rebrand was scrapped• How AI was used to listen to customers instead of just generating content• What analyzing tone, intent, and “aha moments” reveals beyond transcripts• How Marketing Ops teams should think about capturing new types of signals• Why optimizing for LLMs is different from optimizing for traditional search• The shift in content, backlinks, and site structure for AI-driven discovery• Why traffic can drop while conversions improve• What metrics matter when traditional SEO signals become less reliable• Why brand may become more important, not less, in an AI-first worldIf you are in Marketing Ops, RevOps, or growth, this episode forces a hard rethink. Not about tools, but about how decisions should be made going forward.Be sure to like, share, and subscribe to Ops Cast, and join the conversation at MarketingOps.com.Episode Brought to You By MO Pros The #1 Community for Marketing Operations Professionals MarketingOps.com is curating the GTM Ops Track at Demand & Expand (May 19-20, San Francisco) - the premier B2B marketing event featuring 600+ practitioners sharing real solutions to real problems. Use code MOPS20 for 20% off tickets, or get 35-50% off as a MarketingOps.com member. Learn more at demandandexpand.com.Support the show
Text us your thoughts on the episode or the show!Welcome to another episode of Ops Cast by MarketingOps.com, powered by The MO Pros. Host Michael Hartmann is joined by co-hosts Mike Rizzo and Naomi Liu for a candid, no-guest conversation about one of the biggest questions in operations right now, which is what are we actually getting from AI?With massive funding announcements, rapid product releases, and constant noise around AI, it is easy to assume everyone is seeing results. But when you look closer, most teams are still struggling to measure real impact beyond surface-level efficiency gains.In this episode, we discussed the gap between hype and reality, exploring why ROI is so difficult to quantify, where AI is genuinely useful today, and the expectations that users have for what the technology can actually deliver.In this episode, you will learn:1. What OpenAI's massive funding signals for the future of AI and operations2. Why most teams cannot clearly measure ROI from AI initiatives3. The difference between time savings and real revenue impact4. Hidden costs of AI tools that make ROI harder to track5. Why AI adoption often fails without proper change management6. The belief gap, skill gap, and expectation gap are slowing teams down7. How fear and uncertainty are shaping AI adoption inside organizations8. Why the “AI gold rush” does not guarantee real business value9. What AI agents can and cannot do without human oversight10. Why strong operators become more valuable in an AI-driven worldThis episode challenges the assumption that AI automatically drives value and offers a more grounded perspective on how operators should think about adoption, measurement, and long-term impact.Episode Brought to You By MO Pros The #1 Community for Marketing Operations Professionals MarketingOps.com is curating the GTM Ops Track at Demand & Expand (May 19-20, San Francisco) - the premier B2B marketing event featuring 600+ practitioners sharing real solutions to real problems. Use code MOPS20 for 20% off tickets, or get 35-50% off as a MarketingOps.com member. Learn more at demandandexpand.com.Support the show
Text us your thoughts on the episode or the show!Conflict is part of every operation's role, but most people avoid it. However, the best operators learn how to use it to their advantage.In this episode of Ops Cast, Michael Hartmann sits down with Anna Lecat, CEO and Founder of Bridging Global and author of the upcoming book Loving Conflict, to explore why conflict is not something to eliminate, but something to understand and navigate.If you work in Marketing Ops, RevOps, or any cross-functional role, you are constantly operating between teams with different priorities, incentives, and perspectives. The question from this conversation is whether you avoid it or learn how to work through it effectively.Anna brings more than 25 years of experience leading multicultural teams and working across global organizations. She shares practical ways to reframe conflict, build trust, and turn difficult conversations into productive outcomes.Topics covered include• Why conflict naturally shows up in operations roles• The concept of “loving conflict” and what it actually means in practice• How different teams operate with different “languages” and priorities• Why people feel stuck in the middle and how to shift that mindset• How to prepare for difficult conversations with stakeholders or leadership• Common mistakes that escalate conflict instead of resolving it• How strong operators and leaders handle tension differentlyThis episode is not about frameworks or tools. It is one of the most overlooked skills in operations, the ability to solve conflict in a way that builds alignment rather than breaks it.Loving Conflict by Anna Lecat If this conversation feels relatable, Anna's book goes deeper into the ideas discussed in this episode. This offers a practical framework for turning tension into trust, alignment, and stronger relationships across teams. Here's the link to buy the Loving Conflict: https://www.amazon.com/dp/1966629974Be sure to like, share, and subscribe to Ops Cast, and join the conversation at MarketingOps.com.Episode Brought to You By MO Pros The #1 Community for Marketing Operations Professionals MarketingOps.com is curating the GTM Ops Track at Demand & Expand (May 19-20, San Francisco) - the premier B2B marketing event featuring 600+ practitioners sharing real solutions to real problems. Use code MOPS20 for 20% off tickets, or get 35-50% off as a MarketingOps.com member. Learn more at demandandexpand.com.Support the show
Text us your thoughts on the episode or the show!What happens when an Ops leader thinks like a marketer?In this episode of Ops Cast, Michael Hartmann sits down with Julie Hamada, Chief Operating Officer at Monarch Dentistry, to explore the connection between marketing, operations, and customer experience.Julie's path from marketing into operations shapes how she leads today. She views marketing as promise-making and operations as promise-keeping, and she focuses heavily on retention, customer psychology, and the full journey from first touch to long-term loyalty.This conversation challenges the way many organizations think about growth. It looks at why retention is often overlooked, how operational design directly impacts customer experience, and why some of the most valuable insights come from conversations rather than dashboards.Topics covered include:• The transition from marketing into operations and executive leadership• Why the gap between marketing promises and operational delivery matters• Retention vs acquisition and why most companies get the balance wrong• Designing operations around the full customer or patient journey• How understanding human behavior improves internal leadership• The limits of dashboards and why conversation-driven leadership matters• Practical ways to break down silos between marketing, ops, and frontline teamsIf you're leading or working in Marketing Ops, RevOps, or business operations, this episode offers a different lens on growth. One that starts with the customer experience and works backward into systems and execution.Be sure to like, share, and subscribe to Ops Cast, and join the conversation at MarketingOps.com.Episode Brought to You By MO Pros The #1 Community for Marketing Operations Professionals MarketingOps.com is curating the GTM Ops Track at Demand & Expand (May 19-20, San Francisco) - the premier B2B marketing event featuring 600+ practitioners sharing real solutions to real problems. Use code MOPS20 for 20% off tickets, or get 35-50% off as a MarketingOps.com member. Learn more at demandandexpand.com.Support the show
Text us your thoughts on the episode or the show!Why do marketing teams keep adding approvals, processes, and controls… yet still struggle to move faster or perform better?In this episode of Ops Cast, Michael Hartmann sits down with Joe Bockerstette, Partner at Business Enterprise Mapping, to discuss what is really happening inside modern marketing organizations.Joe brings over 30 years of experience helping companies redesign how their business systems function. A former PwC partner and CPG leader, he focuses on mapping entire operational systems to reveal why teams produce the results they do and where friction actually lives.This conversation goes beyond surface-level process optimization. It explores how hidden system design drives delays, why adding more controls often makes problems worse, and how marketing teams can diagnose the root causes behind slow execution and inconsistent outcomes.Topics covered include:• What a “business system” actually means in a marketing context• Why organizations are structured to produce their current results• How approval layers and control mechanisms create bottlenecks• The difference between documenting processes and mapping systems• “Red Clouds” and how they expose operational friction and missed opportunities• Key differences between in-house teams and agency operating models• Practical ways smaller teams can start improving their systems without external helpIf your team feels stuck in cycles of rework, delays, or constant firefighting, this episode offers a clear framework to understand why and what to do about it.Be sure to like, share, and subscribe to Ops Cast, and join the conversation at MarketingOps.com.Episode Brought to You By MO Pros The #1 Community for Marketing Operations Professionals MarketingOps.com is curating the GTM Ops Track at Demand & Expand (May 19-20, San Francisco) - the premier B2B marketing event featuring 600+ practitioners sharing real solutions to real problems. Use code MOPS20 for 20% off tickets, or get 35-50% off as a MarketingOps.com member. Learn more at demandandexpand.com.Support the show
Text us your thoughts on the episode or the show!Social media is changing fast. Platforms are becoming search engines, video continues to dominate, and AI tools are rebuilding how people discover brands and information online.In this episode of Ops Cast, Michael Hartmann speaks with Stephanie Gardner, a freelance social media and marketing strategist who works across B2B, B2C, nonprofits, and small businesses. Stephanie focuses on helping organizations build purposeful social strategies that align with real business outcomes rather than vanity metrics.The conversation explores how social platforms like Instagram and LinkedIn are evolving into discovery engines, why brands need to think in terms of searchable intent instead of hashtags and trends, and how the lines between search, social, and AI-driven discovery are rapidly disappearing.Stephanie also explains why follower counts and engagement can be misleading indicators of success, shares real examples of how smaller but more targeted audiences can drive better results, and discusses why executive visibility and employee amplification are becoming essential trust signals in B2B environments.Topics covered include: • The shift from social media feeds to search-based discovery • How Instagram, LinkedIn, and YouTube are evolving into search engines • Why intent-based visibility matters more than hashtags or trends • The difference between vanity metrics and real business impact • How smaller, targeted audiences can outperform large follower counts • The growing role of executive visibility on LinkedIn • How Marketing Ops teams should think about social, search, and AI togetherIf you work in Marketing Ops, RevOps, or digital marketing strategy, this episode offers a practical look at how discovery behavior is changing and what organizations should start preparing for now.Be sure to like, share, and subscribe to Ops Cast, and join the conversation at MarketingOps.com.Episode Brought to You By MO Pros The #1 Community for Marketing Operations Professionals MarketingOps.com is curating the GTM Ops Track at Demand & Expand (May 19-20, San Francisco) - the premier B2B marketing event featuring 600+ practitioners sharing real solutions to real problems. Use code MOPS20 for 20% off tickets, or get 35-50% off as a MarketingOps.com member. Learn more at demandandexpand.com.Support the show
The work we produce gets all the attention.But the real question is: what's happening behind the scenes that makes that work possible?In this episode of The Handbook, Harv sits down with creative operations expert Nicky Russell, co-founder of WDC, We Deliver Change, and chair of the Creative Operations Summit in London. Together they explore the discipline of creative ops – the systems, culture, and leadership required to help creative teams do their best work. What starts as a conversation about creative teams quickly expands into something bigger: how operations leaders create the environment where great work can actually happen.Here's what we dive into:What creative operations actually is – and why it's becoming a strategic role inside agencies, brands, and consultanciesWhy ops is fundamentally about culture – not just processes, workflows, and systemsWhy happiness and psychological safety matter more than most leaders realise when it comes to producing great workHow creative ops and business ops are converging as technology and AI reshape how work gets doneHow learning to speak the language of different stakeholders is often the key to unlocking real influence.Whether you work in a creative environment or not, the themes in this conversation will resonate with any ops leader trying to build a healthier, more effective organisation.Additional Resources:
Text us your thoughts on the episode or the show!Many Marketing Ops professionals eventually hit a ceiling. The work is important, the systems are running, but the influence over the broader go-to-market strategy remains limited.In this episode of Ops Cast, Michael Hartmann speaks with Jackson Fisher about what it takes to move beyond execution and step into a more strategic role inside the business. Jackson recently completed ten years at the American Hospital Association, where he began in Marketing Operations and later moved into Product Development. As an early member of the MarketingOps.com community and part of the Founding 100, Jackson shares how his operations background helped him transition into a role focused on pipeline structure, revenue performance, and product strategy.The conversation explores how operators can translate their skills into business impact by connecting marketing activity to pipeline, pricing, and financial outcomes. Jackson also explains what it looks like to introduce pipeline discipline in organizations that lack a clear revenue structure and how Marketing Ops professionals can learn to communicate in the language of finance and revenue leadership.Topics covered include: • Recognizing when you have hit the Marketing Ops ceiling • Translating Marketing Ops skills into broader business impact • Building pipeline discipline in organizations without clear revenue structures • Connecting marketing activity to pricing, Salesforce data, and revenue outcomes • Creating strategic impact with a lean tech stack • Moving from order-taker to trusted GTM partner • Preparing for leadership roles in Revenue Operations and GTM strategyIf you are a Marketing Ops professional thinking about the next phase of your career, this episode offers practical insight into how operators can expand their influence beyond campaign execution.Be sure to subscribe, like, and share Ops Cast, and join the conversation at MarketingOps.com.Episode Brought to You By MO Pros The #1 Community for Marketing Operations Professionals MarketingOps.com is curating the GTM Ops Track at Demand & Expand (May 19-20, San Francisco) - the premier B2B marketing event featuring 600+ practitioners sharing real solutions to real problems. Use code MOPS20 for 20% off tickets, or get 35-50% off as a MarketingOps.com member. Learn more at demandandexpand.com.Support the show
In this honest and strategic conversation, Nick and I pull back the curtain on what's really happening behind most online businesses. We talk about why marketing is not just social media, why operations matter more than you think, and how entrepreneurs unintentionally light money on fire by skipping foundational steps. Nick shares what he's learned from 15+ years behind the scenes of major brands, events, and digital products. We break down the simple but powerful marketing flow most businesses are missing, and why driving traffic without capturing it is one of the most expensive mistakes you can make. We also explore the emotional side of entrepreneurship. The loneliness. The ego. The pride that says “I can do it alone.” And why the most successful entrepreneurs rise together, not in isolation. This episode is an invitation to stop guessing, stop reacting, and start building with strategy. In this episode, we explore: • Why 90 to 98% of website visitors never come back • The biggest mistake entrepreneurs make with social media • What a lead magnet actually needs to do to convert • Why long, overwhelming freebies hurt your credibility • The psychology behind quick wins and buyer trust • The difference between brand marketing and operational marketing • Why driving traffic to your homepage is usually a mistake • The purpose of a low-ticket offer and how it builds momentum • How to increase lifetime customer value through ascension and add-ons • Why most entrepreneurs feel alone and how to fix it • The common trait Nick sees in top-performing founders • How mentorship shortens the learning curve and prevents costly mistakes • Why transparency and integrity win in the long game Catch up with me on socials!Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/melissadlugolecki/Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/melissa.dlugoleckiLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/melissa-dlugolecki-b24988141/TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@melissadlugoleckiYouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@MelissaDlugolecki
Text us your thoughts on the episode or the show!The traditional B2B marketing playbook is becoming irrelevant. At the same time, AI is fundamentally transforming how buyers research, evaluate, and purchase.In this episode of Ops Cast, Michael Hartmann is joined by Naomi Liu and Mike Rizzo for a wide-ranging conversation with Jon Miller. Jon co-founded Marketo, helped define modern Marketing Operations, later co-founded Engagio, and is now the Co-Founder and CEO of a stealth AI startup focused on the future of buying behavior and revenue systems.This conversation challenges long-held assumptions about campaigns, MQLs, attribution, and the systems Marketing Ops teams have relied on for over a decade. Jon explains why rules-based automation is not sufficient now, how AI changes what marketing platforms must do, and what it means to move from campaigns to AI-orchestrated experiences.The panel also explores buying groups, lifecycle orchestration across anonymous and known buyers, and how Marketing Ops can operationalize trust, brand, and customer experience in a world where AI filters much of what buyers see.The topics that we covered include: • Why the traditional B2B playbook is no longer working • How AI shifts marketing from campaigns to orchestration • What it really takes to operationalize buying groups • Why MQLs and last-touch attribution are losing relevance • How Marketing Ops can build infrastructure for modern buying behavior • The evolving role of Marketing Ops in 2026 and beyond • Where AI is genuinely useful today versus oversoldIf you work in Marketing Ops, RevOps, or revenue leadership, this episode will push you to rethink the systems you are building and how artificial intelligence can transform them.Be sure to like, share, and subscribe to Ops Cast, and join the conversation at MarketingOps.com.Episode Brought to You By MO Pros The #1 Community for Marketing Operations Professionals We're an official media partner of B2BMX 2026 — the B2B Marketing Exchange — happening March 9-11 at the Omni La Costa Resort in Carlsbad, CA. It's practitioner-focused with 50+ breakout sessions, keynotes, and hands-on workshops covering AI in B2B, GTM strategy, and advanced ABM. Real networking, real takeaways. And because we're a media partner, you get 20% off an All-Access Pass with code B2BMAOP at checkout. Head to b2bmarketing.exchange to grab your spot. MarketingOps.com is curating the GTM Ops Track at Demand & Expand (May 19-20, San Francisco) - the premier B2B marketing event featuring 600+ practitioners sharing real solutions to real problems. Use code MOPS20 for 20% off tickets, or get 35-50% off as a MarketingOps.com member. Learn more at demandandexpand.com.Support the show
Text us your thoughts on the episode or the show!In this episode of Ops Cast, we explore a side of operations leadership that rarely appears in roadmaps or system diagrams but determines whether teams thrive or burn out.Kimi Corrigan, Vice President of Marketing Operations at Huntress, joins Michael Hartmann on our latest Ops Cast episode. Kimi shares her perspective on servant leadership, psychological safety, and the emotional intelligence required to lead effectively inside fast-growing, complex organizations.The conversation goes beyond tools and processes to focus on the human side of operations. Kimi discusses how to lead with empathy without lowering standards, how to navigate difficult conversations with honesty and accountability, and how to create sustainable team rhythms in environments that often default to constant firefighting.They also examine how ops leaders can enter new organizations thoughtfully, read culture before pushing change, and decide where to invest their energy early. Kimi shares where AI can genuinely support leadership development, not as a replacement for judgment, but as a tool for reflection, communication, and clarity.What you will learn: • How to balance servant leadership with high performance expectations • Why psychological safety is essential in ops teams • How to lead through growth and organizational transition • Ways to build sustainable team trust outside of crisis moments • The non-technical skills that prepare operators for leadership roles • Where AI can strengthen communication and self-awarenessIf you are leading a Marketing Ops team or aspiring to step into leadership, this episode highlights the interpersonal skills that often matter more than technical mastery.Be sure to subscribe, rate, and review Ops Cast, and join the conversation at MarketingOps.com.Episode Brought to You By MO Pros The #1 Community for Marketing Operations Professionals We're an official media partner of B2BMX 2026 — the B2B Marketing Exchange — happening March 9-11 at the Omni La Costa Resort in Carlsbad, CA. It's practitioner-focused with 50+ breakout sessions, keynotes, and hands-on workshops covering AI in B2B, GTM strategy, and advanced ABM. Real networking, real takeaways. And because we're a media partner, you get 20% off an All-Access Pass with code B2BMAOP at checkout. Head to b2bmarketing.exchange to grab your spot. MarketingOps.com is curating the GTM Ops Track at Demand & Expand (May 19-20, San Francisco) - the premier B2B marketing event featuring 600+ practitioners sharing real solutions to real problems. Use code MOPS20 for 20% off tickets, or get 35-50% off as a MarketingOps.com member. Learn more at demandandexpand.com.Support the show
Text us your thoughts on the episode or the show!Balancing change and continuity in Marketing Ops is one of the hardest things to get right, especially in global organizations with fast-moving goals and limited resources. In this episode of Ops Cast, Michael Hartmann is joined by Adele Kurki, Senior Marketing Operations Lead at Aiven.Adele shares how she has led global Marketing Ops teams through major shifts like funnel redesigns, go-to-market evolution, and operational transformations. She opens up about the challenges of driving technical change while keeping the engine running, the importance of transparency in distributed teams, and the real limits of frameworks like Agile.The conversation covers how to lead change without disrupting execution, communicate with executive stakeholders, and create a growth path for your team in a high-pressure environment. If you are in the middle of building or rebuilding a Marketing Ops function, this one will hit close to home.What you will learn: • How to manage run versus change in Marketing Ops • Why transparency matters more in global teams • When Agile helps and when it gets in the way • The risks of layering transformation on top of BAU • Tips for earning leadership buy-in • How to help your team grow during times of fluxBe sure to subscribe, rate, and review Ops Cast. Join the community at MarketingOps.com for more conversations like this.Episode Brought to You By MO Pros The #1 Community for Marketing Operations Professionals MarketingOps.com is curating the GTM Ops Track at Demand & Expand (May 19-20, San Francisco) - the premier B2B marketing event featuring 600+ practitioners sharing real solutions to real problems. Use code MOPS20 for 20% off tickets, or get 35-50% off as a MarketingOps.com member. Learn more at demandandexpand.com.Support the show
Got a story idea for Bloodworks 101? Send us a text message February marks the 100th anniversary of Black History Month, a time to reflect on the achievements and contributions made by Blacks in this nation. But as Bloodworks 101 producer John Yeager found out, it's also a time to look at some "pretty sobering numbers" when it comes to Black Americans and blood donation. For today's editon of Bloodworks 101, John spoke to Harry Thomas, Bloodworks Northwest's Vice President of Marketing Operations and Planning about those numbers and a new study of Black donors.Support the show
Text us your thoughts on the episode or the show!In this episode of Ops Cast, we dig into what it really takes to build demand generation and revenue marketing capability inside a large enterprise organization.Michael Hartmann is joined by Rachel Roundy, Product Marketing Lead for AI at Snowflake. Before Snowflake, Rachel spent more than four years inside a legacy enterprise technology company, where she helped lead a cross-functional tiger team tasked with building modern demand generation and revenue marketing capabilities at scale.This conversation explores the reality of enterprise marketing, where strategy and execution often live far apart, tech stacks are outdated, ownership is fragmented, and meaningful change must happen without direct authority. Rachel shares what it was like working inside systems that felt frozen in time, uncovering unused or partially implemented tools, and compensating for missing fundamentals like attribution and source tracking through manual processes and spreadsheets.You will hear how marketing and operations teams often struggle to understand each other's worlds, why that gap persists in large organizations, and what happens when those two sides finally align. Topics covered include: • Building demand generation inside large enterprises • Leading cross-functional change without formal authority • The gap between marketing strategy and operational execution • Working around outdated or underutilized tech stacks • Lessons from enterprise transformation efforts • How marketers and ops teams can become better partnersThis episode is especially relevant for Marketing Ops, Demand Gen, and Revenue Marketing leaders working inside complex, legacy organizations who are trying to modernize systems, processes, and mindsets.Episode Brought to You By MO Pros The #1 Community for Marketing Operations Professionals MarketingOps.com is curating the GTM Ops Track at Demand & Expand (May 19-20, San Francisco) - the premier B2B marketing event featuring 600+ practitioners sharing real solutions to real problems. Use code MOPS20 for 20% off tickets, or get 35-50% off as a MarketingOps.com member. Learn more at demandandexpand.com.Support the show
Katie Jones, EVP of Marketing Operations at PathFactory explains how PathFactory personalizes content delivery for buyers, allowing them to navigate their purchasing journey without traditional barriers like content gating. The discussion highlights significant changes in B2B marketing over the past four years, particularly the advancements in AI capabilities. Katie emphasizes the importance of focusing on pipeline generation rather than traditional lead metrics and the necessity of building strong relationships with sales teams and CFOs to measure marketing success effectively. About PathFactory Providing the right content to the right individuals at the right time has become essential to enabling B2B teams to hit revenue targets. PathFactory is a content intelligence and personalization platform that enables B2B marketers to create personalized content experiences for both accounts and individual buyers. With PathFactory, go-to-market teams access the industry's deepest and most detailed content engagement analytics to track buyer and content engagement throughout the entire buyer journey. About Katie Jones Katie Jones is the EVP of Marketing and Operations at PathFactory, responsible for leading the company's marketing strategy and operational execution with a clear focus on pipeline and revenue impact. With more than eight years at PathFactory, she has built and scaled a strong marketing organization grounded in data, personalization, and buyer-centric experiences. Katie lives outside Toronto with her husband, two daughters, and their dog, Hank. Time Stamps 00:00:17 - Guest Introduction: Katie Jones from PathFactory 00:01:50 - Overview of PathFactory's Services 00:05:43 - Addressing AI Concerns: Hallucinations and Accuracy 00:12:37 - Measuring Performance and Overcoming Delays 00:15:41 - Shifting Towards B2C Marketing Strategies 00:18:50 - Future Trends: The Evolution of Websites 00:21:55 - Key Marketing Advice for Success Quotes ""You need to build a really strong relationship with your CFO. If your CFO doesn't understand the strategy and the way that you're going to market... then you're never going to be successful in your company." Katie Jones, EVP of Marketing Operations at PathFactory. "You need to really understand your product and how that drives the strategy of the company. If you don't understand your product, you can't market it." Katie Jones, EVP of Marketing Operations at PathFactory. "Understanding the product is huge in order to grow. Tools will keep changing, but the strategy in which your business is built on is the thing that will endure." Katie Jones, EVP of Marketing Operations at PathFactory. Follow Katie: Katie Jones on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/katie-jones-0188a12a/ PathFactory website: https://www.pathfactory.com/ PathFactory on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/pathfactory/ Follow Mike: Mike Maynard on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mikemaynard/ Napier website: https://www.napierb2b.com/ Napier LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/napier-partnership-limited/ If you enjoyed this episode, be sure to subscribe to our podcast for more discussions about the latest in Marketing B2B Tech and connect with us on social media to stay updated on upcoming episodes. We'd also appreciate it if you could leave us a review on your favourite podcast platform. Want more? Check out Napier's other podcast - The Marketing Automation Moment: https://podcasts.apple.com/ua/podcast/the-marketing-automation-moment-podcast/id1659211547
Curious about motor sourcing? Join us for an inspiring conversation with Jill Wallace, the Director of Marketing Operations at eMotors Direct. Jill shares her journey in the industrial motor industry and how eMotors Direct is transforming the way customers find and purchase motors. We discuss the company's focus on digital marketing, including SEO, paid advertising, and branding, to position themselves as experts in the field. Discover how eMotors Direct leverages customer research and feedback to continuously enhance their website experience. Get ready to be motivated by Jill's leadership insights and her passion for delivering exceptional customer service.
Text us your thoughts on the episode or the show!In this episode of Ops Cast, we are talking about metrics, but not dashboards, tools, or attribution models for their own sake.Michael Hartmann is joined by our guest Josh McClanahan, Co-Founder and CEO of AccountAim. Josh brings a business operations perspective to reporting and analytics, working closely with leadership teams to identify which numbers actually matter and how to use them to make better decisions.This conversation focuses on the shift from reporting activity to driving action. Josh shares why many teams produce technically impressive metrics that fail to influence leadership, and how Ops professionals can reframe data in a way that connects directly to revenue, profitability, and how the business truly makes money.You will hear Josh break down which metrics executives care about most, including financial measures like LTV and CAC, how those metrics change as companies mature, and why explainability often matters more than precision.The group also discusses how Ops teams can decide when data is “good enough” to act on, how to prepare for executive conversations beyond pulling numbers, and the common mistakes teams make when data is presented without context.This episode is especially relevant for Marketing Ops, RevOps, and BizOps professionals who want to move from being seen as report builders to trusted business advisors.Topics covered include: • The gap between reporting and decision-making • Metrics that matter most to executives • Financial literacy for Ops leaders • Explainability versus complexity in analytics • Communicating data in a way that drives actionMake sure to watch this episode if you want to better align your reporting with business outcomes and elevate the impact of your Ops work.Episode Brought to You By MO Pros The #1 Community for Marketing Operations Professionals MarketingOps.com is curating the GTM Ops Track at Demand & Expand (May 19-20, San Francisco) - the premier B2B marketing event featuring 600+ practitioners sharing real solutions to real problems. Use code MOPS20 for 20% off tickets, or get 35-50% off as a MarketingOps.com member. Learn more at demandandexpand.com.Support the show
The marketing teams winning with AI today are not the ones chasing every new model release. They are the ones who found the boring, repetitive tasks their teams hate and automated those first.Nir Pochter, Co-Founder and CMO at Lightricks, joins Stephanie Postles on Marketing Trends to break down what AI actually means for creative workflows and why most teams are still using it wrong.You'll learn:- The "algebra problem" of AI adoption- How to save your design team 80% of their time- Why the gap between marketers who use AI well and those who don't is widening fast.- How to use an LLM scoring system to pre-review documents for you- The dangerous trend of "AI Marketer" job titles- What's really in store for the future of video+AI Key Moments:00:00 — Why AI Hasn't Improved Creative Output Yet02:06 — The Algebra Problem: Tools vs. Knowing How to Use Them07:27 — Nir's Background: AI PhD to Lightricks and FaceTune09:46 — What Used to Take Weeks Now Takes Minutes13:35 — Why Automating Everything Failed Miserably16:38 — Start with What People Hate Doing20:08 — The LLM Scoring System: Nothing Gets Reviewed Without an 8521:43 — Train Your LLM to Be Mean, Not Nice23:32 — Building Custom GPTs with Company Guidelines26:30 — The Pitfall: Using AI to Please Leadership28:47 — From Toys to Tools: Why Text-to-Video Isn't Enough31:05 — Coca-Cola's 70,000 Prompts (Was It Worth It?)34:41 — AI Won't Replace Creatives, But This Will37:04 — The Two Critical Skills: Prompting and Curation37:55 — How AI Multiplies the Skills Gap (7 vs 10 Example)42:47 — What CMOs Should Be Asking Their Teams46:20 — Why "AI Marketer" Is LinkedIn Fluff This episode is brought to you by Lightricks. LTX is the all-in-one creative suite for AI-driven video production; built by Lightricks to take you from idea to final 4K render in one streamlined workspace.Powered by LTX-2, our next-generation creative engine, LTX lets you move faster, collaborate seamlessly, and deliver studio-quality results without compromise. Try it today at ltx.studio Mission.org is a media studio producing content alongside world-class clients. Learn more at mission.org. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.
Text us your thoughts on the episode or the show!In this special episode of Ops Cast, Michael Hartmann is joined by Mike Rizzo and Naomi Liu for a wide-ranging, unscripted discussion about the origins of Ops Cast, the early days of live audio experimentation, and how the show has evolved alongside the Marketing Ops profession itself. What starts as a casual anniversary conversation turns into a thoughtful look at what has truly mattered over the years. They reflect on memorable episodes, first-time speakers finding their voice, career-changing moments sparked by the podcast, and why honest, vendor-neutral conversations have always been central to the show.Most of all, this episode is a thank you. To the guests who took risks, the listeners who showed up, and the community that turned a passion project into a platform for learning, validation, and opportunity.In this episode, you will hear about:How Ops Cast started and why it stayed intentionally unscriptedThe hidden emotional labor of Marketing Ops workCreating space for first-time speakers and underrepresented voicesWhy were some of the most impactful episodes the least predictableOverrated and underrated topics in Marketing Ops todayWhat five years of conversations reveal about the professionWhether you have been listening since the beginning or just discovered the show, this episode offers a rare behind-the-scenes look at how Ops Cast became what it is today and why the conversations are still far from over.Episode Brought to You By MO Pros The #1 Community for Marketing Operations Professionals MarketingOps.com is curating the GTM Ops Track at Demand & Expand (May 19-20, San Francisco) - the premier B2B marketing event featuring 600+ practitioners sharing real solutions to real problems. Use code MOPS20 for 20% off tickets, or get 35-50% off as a MarketingOps.com member. Learn more at demandandexpand.com.Support the show
Text us your thoughts on the episode or the show!In this episode of Ops Cast, hosted by Michael Hartmann and powered by MarketingOps.com, Michael is joined by Ivelisse Arroyo, Marketing Operations Leader and Executive Advisor on Go-To-Market Operations. Ivelisse brings a business-first perspective shaped by a background in accounting and deep experience across manufacturing and healthcare insurance. Her work focuses on connecting Marketing Ops, RevOps, and Business Operations into a single, cohesive system that supports revenue, efficiency, and customer outcomes. The discussion explores what happens when marketing is embedded across the business instead of being treated as a standalone service function.Ivelisse shares why operational disconnects often explain underperforming marketing, how regulated industries expose these gaps faster, and why executives are paying closer attention to GTM operations than ever before.In this episode, you will learn:Why marketing struggles when it is isolated from business operationsHow embedding marketing into revenue, finance, and delivery changes outcomesWhat Marketing Ops professionals can learn from Business Ops and financeWhy starting with revenue and cost impact resonates with executive leadershipHow modern technology and AI are reshaping Ops career pathsThis episode is ideal for Marketing Ops, RevOps, and GTM leaders who want to expand their influence beyond marketing, align more closely with the business, and help organizations operate as one connected system.Episode Brought to You By MO Pros The #1 Community for Marketing Operations Professionals MarketingOps.com is curating the GTM Ops Track at Demand & Expand (May 19-20, San Francisco) - the premier B2B marketing event featuring 600+ practitioners sharing real solutions to real problems. Use code MOPS20 for 20% off tickets, or get 35-50% off as a MarketingOps.com member. Learn more at demandandexpand.com.Support the show
Text us your thoughts on the episode or the show!In this episode of OpsCast, hosted by Michael Hartmann and powered by MarketingOps.com, Michael is joined by co-hosts Mike Rizzo and Naomi Liu for a thoughtful conversation on a topic that rarely gets enough attention in Marketing Ops: values-based leadership.Their guest is Jaime López, Head of Marketing at Ververica. Jaime's background spans engineering, machine learning, technical marketing, and operations, along with leading global teams across Europe, Asia, and the United States. He brings a deliberate, human-centered approach to leadership that focuses on clarity of values, adaptability, and building cultures that support both people and performance.The discussion explores what values-based leadership actually looks like in practice, how it differs from traditional performance-first management styles, and why it is especially critical in high-pressure Ops environments where ambiguity is constant.In this episode, you will learn:What values-based leadership means in a Marketing Ops contextHow to intentionally define and shape team cultureWhy leaders must adapt to individuals rather than forcing conformityHow to navigate misalignment between values and behavior with honesty and empathyWays Ops professionals can lead with values even without formal management rolesThis episode is ideal for Marketing Ops leaders and practitioners who want to build healthier teams, improve performance through trust and clarity, and lead with intention in complex, fast-moving organizations.Episode Brought to You By MO Pros The #1 Community for Marketing Operations ProfessionalsSupport the show
The most future-ready marketing leaders aren't the ones chasing trends… they're the ones who can reinvent themselves every time the industry changes.Michelle Huff, Chief Marketing Officer at Alteryx, joins Marketing Trends to break down the mindset that kept her relevant through every major tech revolution, from Web1 to cloud, SaaS, PLG, and now AI. She explains how to balance curiosity with focus, why AI is really about automating judgment (not just tasks), and how she's redesigning her marketing org around agents, automation, and new workflows.Michelle also shares early results from Alteryx's AI experiments, how she's rebuilding a 700,000-person community, and why great leaders still start with the end user even as their buyer audiences expand. Key Moments: 00:00 – How to Stay Relevant Through Every Tech Shift03:42 – A Career Spanning Web1, Cloud, SaaS, and AI06:58 – Curiosity Is the Ultimate Career Advantage10:12 – When Leaders Should Tinker and When to Delegate13:28 – Building a Marketing Culture That Experiments16:41 – Why AI Is About Judgment, Not Just Automation20:07 – Inside an AI-Powered SDR Outbound Workflow23:34 – Do AI Agents Replace People or Elevate Them26:58 – Upskilling Teams in an AI-Driven Organization30:17 – Why Most AI Content Fails to Break Through33:36 – How to Stand Out in a Noisy B2B Market36:52 – Why Enterprise Brands Lose Touch With End Users39:48 – How Alteryx Built a 700,000-Person Community43:06 – Turning Community Into Competition and Learning46:32 – Early AI Wins That Drive Real Pipeline Impact This episode is brought to you by Lightricks. LTX is the all-in-one creative suite for AI-driven video production; built by Lightricks to take you from idea to final 4K render in one streamlined workspace.Powered by LTX-2, our next-generation creative engine, LTX lets you move faster, collaborate seamlessly, and deliver studio-quality results without compromise. Try it today at ltx.studio Mission.org is a media studio producing content alongside world-class clients. Learn more at mission.org. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.
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