January 15, 2025 • 54 mins
Text us your thoughts on the episode or the show!
Ever wondered how a podcast can thrive amidst chaos and unexpected interruptions? From fire alarms to lullabies, our journey with OpsCast over these past four years has been anything but ordinary. Born amidst the uncertainty of the COVID-19 pandemic, our podcast grew from a live talk radio concept to a platform for raw and unfiltered marketing operations discourse. We've shared laughs, learned from mishaps, and embraced the charm of unscripted moments, all while exploring the evolving intersection of marketing and technology. As we reminisce about our beginnings and the quirky anecdotes that have shaped our identity, we extend gratitude to our listeners and guests who have been part of this wild ride.
Join us as we celebrate milestone episodes like "WTF is Marketing Operations" with Amy Goldfine and explore the profound impact our content has had on listeners’ careers. The heartfelt stories of transformations and professional growth fuel our passion, even when analytics remain elusive. Encouraging personal and professional goal-setting, we look forward to new challenges and fresh insights in the year ahead. We also delve into the shifting trends in education, particularly the surprising decline in computer science applications, and how AI perceptions may be reshaping career paths in tech.
The future of OpsCast promises exciting shifts as we aim to bring more B2C perspectives into our discussions, delve into personal narratives, and forge deeper community connections. Inspired by personal stories like those shared by Kyle Lacey, we're eager to explore the human side of professional journeys and offer spaces for shared interests beyond work. With an eye on both professional development and personal growth, we invite you to share your experiences, feedback, and ideas as we continue to evolve and expand our content. Here's to another year of unscripted moments, valuable insights, and meaningful conversations!
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hello everyone, Welcome to another special
episode of OpsCast brought toyou by MarketingOpscom.
I'm your host, Michael Hartman,joined today by my two
compatriots Naomi Liu and MikeRizzo.
Happy New Year, Happy.
Speaker 2 (00:14):
New Year, yeah, for years.
Speaker 1 (00:19):
So we are getting together, getting the band back
together, which we don't get todo as often as I'd like.
I mean, I miss, I miss talkingto you guys regularly.
So I miss you too, michaelthank you, um, but this is we.
We kind of realized that we areabout to hit four years of
(00:40):
doing this podcast, so westarted in.
If I remember, mike is this, isit your birthday, january?
Speaker 3 (00:46):
it's like the day before my birthday okay, so you
know happy birthday, mike yeah,a little bit early um we started
doing a cameo
Speaker 2 (00:56):
that year sent him a cameo yeah yeah, oh, did
somebody do that?
Speaker 1 (01:01):
Yeah, michael.
Speaker 3 (01:02):
Tucker actually uh like organized um that, oh gosh,
the co-founder of uh Apple umdid a cameo.
It was actually kind of fun andspecial.
Speaker 1 (01:15):
Oh, that is too funny yeah.
Wow I forgot about cameo.
Maybe that'll be part of.
Speaker 3 (01:21):
What we talk about is like all the things that have
changed since january of 2021what was the thing with all the
audio experiment, the audio chatroom thing that was happening?
Speaker 2 (01:32):
yeah, when oh oh, what was that call?
Now I'm so curious.
Oh good gosh, I know you'retalking about.
Speaker 1 (01:40):
I never understood what it was.
Yeah, you, you figured out, butI but I remember, like I when
we started this clubhouse.
That was it did you ever do it?
Did you ever join a clubhousesession?
Speaker 3 (01:53):
I joined one or two I never did, trying to see what
happened.
Speaker 1 (01:57):
I never quite understood how that they should
have sold the second that theygot that offer.
Speaker 3 (02:03):
Oh yeah, it's a lot of money?
Speaker 2 (02:04):
no, I don't know.
They got an offer.
Oh yeah, it's a lot of moneythey get offered.
Speaker 3 (02:05):
No, I don't know, they got an offer to get
acquired like right away by likepretty quickly, but I think it
was like by x at the time,twitter right, or maybe somebody
else, I don't remember, butthey turned it down, should it
take that's crazy, yeah.
Speaker 1 (02:19):
So think back four, four years ago, 2021.
We were still kind of kneelingfrom the covid and the lockdowns
and all that.
And we, when we started do youremember this?
We started as a, as a like talkradio.
Right, it was a live show.
We had an audience.
As much as we tried to getpeople to come on in in real
(02:42):
time, you know, to join us.
That didn't they mean it was.
The online chat part was good.
We still had that interaction.
Uh, yeah, it was fun.
Speaker 3 (02:50):
I liked that.
I liked that aspect of the showand it it sort of became the
DNA of why the show is what itis today, like this raw sort of
unfiltered discussion, I meanfor our listeners.
If you're listening to thisepisode, you know there's a
quite a bit that goes into doinga show as you might imagine um,
(03:12):
but, like you know, some prepwork right, like hartman does an
incredible job of uh, gettingon and saying, hey, what should
we talk about with you?
What's your passion, what'syour?
And there's a bit of an outlinethat we follow, but generally
it's just sort of a loosediscussion and it's meant to go
exactly wherever it needs to go,like a live radio show, and
(03:36):
that's where the DNA of our showcame from.
Yeah, I don't know, but I thinkthat I enjoyed that aspect of
it.
Those were fun days.
Speaker 1 (03:46):
I think it was it, was it was at the Daryl Alfonso
episode, we had where, like in afire alarm or something, went
off in the background.
Speaker 3 (03:54):
Yeah, his literal smoke alarm went off and we
didn't mute it.
Speaker 2 (03:59):
Yeah, and Michael, I think you and I were on one
where, um, I can't remember whoit was, was it AJ?
I think you and I were on onewhere I can't remember who it
was.
Was it AJ?
Might not, it might've been, Ican't remember who it was, but
someone had a, a baby, likealarm that went off, that saying
like twinkle, twinkle littlestars.
Yeah, the entire episode and wecouldn't figure out where it
(04:19):
was coming.
That was not AJ oh right, it'slike I don't know the kid.
What are you?
Speaker 1 (04:27):
talking about no.
What's his name?
Speaker 2 (04:31):
Raja, raja, yes, yes it was like a very low level
twinkle, twinkle little starsthat played the entire episode
and I was like, is that comingfrom my neighbor's house?
Like where is that Right?
I remember that.
Speaker 3 (04:44):
We were just trying to lull everybody to sleep.
Speaker 1 (04:46):
You know it's so funny.
Yeah, all those things you know.
But I think it's I don't know.
Yeah, I'm sure that sometimesthat's distracting or annoying,
but to me it's part of the like,it's just part of the ethos.
I'm glad we keep it that way.
I you know, I think there'strade offs.
Either way, right you can.
Speaker 3 (05:07):
You can really do a lot of work to to clean things
up and uh, totally, yeah, Do allthat kind of stuff and it's, we
say it's a, we say it's a show,that's so you know, we are
marketing operationsprofessionals by trade.
We are not podcast producers bytrade, right?
Uh, thankfully the tools arehelping us make it a little bit
(05:30):
easier a little bit better.
Speaker 1 (05:32):
Although I don't know about you, I I have had a
couple of people ask me for,like they, I want to start a
podcast.
What can you tell me about it?
Right, what you know?
Speaker 3 (05:44):
totally so I mean, I will say that we have learned a
lot about what it takes to spinone up, and I think we, I think
if we were to take a stab atrevamping the show or launching
another show, we would probablydo it differently this time,
probably partially because it'sjust interesting to try a
different approach, right?
Absolutely but but yeah, I thinkthere's a lot of learning.
(06:07):
I get that question a lot,though, michael, like what tool
do you use to publish?
How do you distribute?
You know all that kind of stuff.
Yeah, to answer that questionfor all of you, uh, we record on
riverside, shout out to themthanks for the product, it's
been great.
Yep, we pay for it.
They don't give it to us, uh,and we publish and distribute to
(06:31):
all of the media streams thatyou are tuning in from via
buzzsprout.
So, yeah, that's how we do it,but oh, and, we do a bit of
editing in descript.
Yep, to like truncate any deadspace if we have dead space, or
whatever they're our podcastingtech stack yeah, that's our
(06:51):
podcasting text texting.
There's a hubspot rss email thatgoes out once a month to those
that are subscribed with thelast episodes that went live in
the prior month.
There you go and comes from.
Speaker 1 (07:03):
Does it say it's coming from me?
Speaker 3 (07:06):
I think it still says it comes from you.
Speaker 1 (07:07):
Yeah, because I remember the first time one came
out and I was like oh, look atthat, I'm sending somebody,
sending myself an email.
Speaker 3 (07:15):
Gotta love automation .
Speaker 1 (07:17):
That's right.
Yeah, but it's, I'm with you.
I think we've covered a lot ofground in terms of different
topics and, yeah, but I'm withyou, I think we've covered a lot
of ground in terms of differenttopics and it was clearly well,
it's interesting because Ithink there's a lot of topics
we've covered.
There's a lot of things that weall have passion about that I
think we'd like to cover more,maybe even.
(07:38):
So, yeah, we're always open tonew ideas and I mean the biggest
to me, the biggest, one of thebiggest changes right now is
just, yeah, I'm still I'mstarting to see more of our
guests or potential guests,people who've raised their hands
or said had interest, bringingup things like AI.
(07:59):
We've had some greatconversations with people
talking about mental health andNaomi you, health and uh, naomi,
you, you had.
Well, we also we didn't haveMopsapalooza or summer camp
before we started all this stuff.
Speaker 3 (08:15):
So that's all new.
Speaker 2 (08:17):
Yeah, I mean in terms of like topics to cover, right,
I think we've had a reallyamazing and varied range of
guests and topics that have comeacross the show.
I think something that waseye-opening for me was during
this past MOPSA, where Audreyand I hosted the women's
breakfast, mopsa Mimosas that wehad an intake forum where women
(08:42):
who were interested in comingto this breakfast was still in
an intake forum with just someinformation about what they
wanted to talk about and a lotof recurring themes around
diversity in the workplace,leaning in, getting a seat at
the table, work-life balance,mental health those were all
recurring themes that a lot ofthe attendees those were all
(09:11):
recurring themes that a lot ofthe attendees wanted to discuss
and talk to other women at theirtable for networking on those
topics.
So I think it would be good toexplore some of those topics as
well for future episodes forthis year, whether it be, you
know, having a maybe we havelike a roundtable with some of
the women who came to thewomen's breakfast or we bring in
a guest speaker.
I don't know what that lookslike, but um, yeah, I just think
(09:31):
that would be something thatwould be really interesting for
some of our listeners y'all needto do the women take over thing
again, like we had the womenyeah, that would be really fun
time we need to do.
Yeah, that would be.
Speaker 3 (09:42):
We should extend it to like the whole month, though
like yeah, we could do that youjust run it for like the whole,
like four weeks, for at leastfour episodes or something.
Speaker 2 (09:51):
I'm done with that, yeah yeah, it makes my job a
little easier.
Speaker 3 (09:55):
Yeah I was looking at our uh, our stats all time
stats for for top downloads.
I'm sure we shared some ofthese things in a social post,
but for those of you that havebeen diehard listeners and fans,
first of all, thank you.
Speaker 1 (10:15):
Yes.
Speaker 3 (10:15):
Second of all, top stats what the fuck is marketing
operations with Amy Goldfrey?
Still, it's two years, it'sover two years old, it went live
june 14, 2022 and it is 784downloads.
So shout out to amy for that'sright.
Awesome episode that obviouslyresonates to this day.
(10:36):
Uh, what else is on here?
The evolution of marketing opsin the age of generative digital
experience with paul wil.
That's about a year old now.
It's actually over a year oldfrom July 24th of 2023.
I'll give you the top five.
We'll stop there.
A marketing ops maturity modeland more with Simon Daniels.
(10:56):
So analyst extraordinaire,simon Daniels came on.
That was great.
That was May 22, 23.
That has 616 downloads.
Uh, the great attributiondebate with andrea lb, andrew
smith.
Uh, can't get enough of andreaandrew throw down, that was a
fun one.
(11:16):
Um, that is almost two years oldas of march 27, 2023, and it's
558 downloads.
And to round us out, bring ushome top five is attribution
ruining marketing with carriepicklesimer.
And that one is over two yearsold, september 19th of 2022.
So apparently we didn't knowwhat we were doing in 2021 at
(11:37):
all.
Uh, because, no, I'm justkidding.
Speaker 1 (11:39):
The next one on the list is from 2021 yeah, yeah,
when our very first episode isis just a scooch under uh,
scooch, is that the right wordjust under 500 downloads.
So I mean, for that's anotherthing, for that I tell people
all the time starting out doingthis, I would have assumed that
(12:00):
how was how how many podcastsand stuff there are, that the
metrics would be incredible andthey're pretty terrible.
Speaker 3 (12:08):
Yeah, oh yeah.
The way that you get reportingfrom these tools, yeah, it's
horrible.
You can't tell hardly anythingunless you go to a specific
streaming provider to get statsor whatever.
Speaker 1 (12:20):
Right and it's partial at that point, yeah,
which to me like.
So one of the things that weoccasionally get is feedback
from people, and we've beenfortunate enough that most of
it's been positive, almost allof it's been positive, and I
(12:41):
always thank those people,because we really don't get
anything else.
Like it's really you're sort ofthrowing this out into the
ether and you don't know if it'slanding, you know.
So it's always nice to get thatfeedback.
Speaker 3 (12:55):
Yeah, yeah, I mean good or bad, right, like we
always want to hear fromeverybody, but it's so rare to
get either yeah, and so weappreciate whatever we get from
anybody.
So it's been yeah, it's been alot of fun.
I do know I spoke to one of ourcommunity members recently who I
(13:15):
shall run remain nameless, andshe said she's a long time
listener.
I'm hopeful to have her on theshow soon, but, um, a lot of
like the content, the gueststhat have come on um, so all of
you who've ever been guests,like thank you.
(13:35):
She uh and and she joined thecommunity um, she has now built
her career around all of theadvice coming from everybody in
this community across and itreally like a lot of it stemmed
from her discovery of uh, thispodcast and and she ended up
joining the live workshop withum uh, one of our instructors
(14:02):
and she.
It was a leadership workshopthat she took and she discovered
that because of this podcastand she now feels even more
equipped to take on a newleadership role in her
organization.
I mean, she's literally likebolstered so much of of her
career around everybodysupporting her from the content
you all contribute on the show,right, absolutely, if it's who I
(14:25):
think you're talking about.
Speaker 1 (14:26):
I do believe we have that person scheduled for an
episode, so oh yeah, that's all.
Stay tuned that's great.
Speaker 3 (14:34):
So anyway, the point of me sharing.
That is that it's.
It's awesome that, though werarely get the feedback,
occasionally, weasionally we getinspirational moments like that
.
And yeah, and I hope we allhope that this is helpful.
This stuff is helpful to you,yeah.
Speaker 1 (14:54):
I don't know, definitely a labor of love.
So when we get that kind offeedback, it helps re-energize.
Speaking of re-energizing.
Speaker 3 (15:04):
Yes, yeah, we're in a new year.
Like what are we?
What are we thinking about thisyear?
Personal goals, professionalgoals, what are you?
What's?
What's on the docket for Naomithis year?
Speaker 2 (15:20):
Well, so I wanted to raise something with you guys,
so over the holidays.
Speaker 1 (15:25):
Yeah, I feel like we're in trouble.
No not only am I using my, am Iusing my mom voice, my stern
voice can of worms I am a momnow, you know so yeah, that's
right.
That's one of the big changessince we started, that's the
biggest yeah that's a huge yeah.
Speaker 2 (15:41):
I my husband and I we adopted our daughter, brought
her back in may 2023, and thatwas experience.
I've now learned that I canjust say no.
No is a complete sentence, justno.
Why?
Because I said so.
Anyways, over the holidays I hadsome friends visiting from LA
and one of my girlfriends sheworks in admissions for a
(16:07):
polytechnic university inSouthern California and she was,
you know, just talking abouteducation and work and my job,
marketing operations and whatnot, and she was saying that for
the computer science department,they saw this year, compared to
(16:28):
last year and all previousyears, a double digit, almost
50%, decline in applications.
And they just thought, okay,like what is this, you know?
Like is it just us?
Yes, is this just us?
(16:49):
Or what's going on?
So they went and and I guess alot of these schools are
affiliated with one another sothey went and, you know, talk to
peers and colleagues at otherschools and to see if it was
just them and what was going on.
Was it an anomaly, somethingwrong?
And no, all of these otherschools are seeing the same
thing double digit, massivedeclines in applications for
computer science, undergraduateor graduate or both undergrad.
(17:12):
And they did a little bit moredigging, right, like what's
going on.
So apparently this is all justlike hearsay, right, but this is
what they're, they're trying tofigure this out because this is
obviously concerning, right.
So apparently what's beenhappening is a lot of these
students that are coming in,they're seeing the rise of AI
and they think that there's nofuture in computer science
(17:35):
because you can just type intoan app and tell it to build you
something, or basically theyfeel like AI is going to take
computer science jobs.
So instead, what they're seeingbecause these students have to
go somewhere, right what they'reseeing is that there has been
an increase in applications forengineering, and I asked my
(17:55):
girlfriend actually this morningto and I'm just going to pull
this up what is that split?
So there's been this is at herschool only a 20% increase in
applications for electricalengineering, a 10% increase in
applications for mechanicalengineering and a 15% increase
in applications for electricalengineering, a 10% increase in
applications for mechanicalengineering and a 15% increase
in applications for civilengineering, but a double digit,
(18:15):
almost 50% decline in computerscience.
And that's concerning to me,right.
So for myself, you know, myoriginal declared major was
computer science.
I switched about halfwaythrough to communications and
marketing, but the overlapbetween computer science and
programmers and developers, Ifeel is very tangential,
(18:36):
integrated into people who workin operations and I don't know.
That's kind of terrifying forme.
I don't know what you guysthink.
Like I don't want an entiregeneration of you know unchecked
AI happening right, like youknow a lot of, a lot of a lot of
folks that they've been talkingto, or right like you know a
lot of a lot of um, a lot of uhfolks that they've been talking
to, or potential, you know,applicants.
They're very interested inrobotics, they're very
(18:58):
interested in mechanicalengineering, mechatronics, all
of that.
You still need a computerscience background to be able to
power these.
I don't know what do you guysthink curious so a lot of that.
Speaker 1 (19:10):
So I don't remember if we've talked about this.
I can't remember if I've talkedabout it on the podcast either,
but I'm.
So I graduated from anengineering school, uh, in a
program called which thegraduate degree would be
operations research, which issort of tied to industrial
engineering.
So I'm now curious like what,what's the change in industrial
engineering if that school hasit?
But I can't talk aboutspecifics, but in general I
(19:35):
would say well, one of thethings I know is happening I've
heard this multiple places, notjust with the, because I'm on
the board now with that programand the engineering school that
I graduate from, but there'sthere's a definite decline just
overall in college like peoplegoing to college, in particular
(19:57):
boys, men um, they're not goingas as much.
So I think in general collegecampuses there's definitely more
women, yeah, more women.
Speaker 2 (20:06):
More women now in universities than men.
Speaker 1 (20:08):
Yeah, and then there's in general.
It's been interesting to seesome of the numbers, but it's a
mixed bag.
When I've seen the engineeringnumbers in computer sciences and
the engineering school where Iwent, where I went, one of the
(20:29):
things they're seeing is there'sbeen more of a rise in
applicants and growth inundergraduate business programs
that are somewhat affiliatedwith it too.
So you've got MIS, which wouldbe more of a business school
program as opposed to managementscience, which is the
engineering equivalent, which isa little more heavy on
(20:51):
programming things like that.
But I've been trying to pitchthe idea that the degree program
that I graduated from actuallylaunched really well with
operations and marketingoperations in particular,
because it's very much aboutoptimization and analytics and
(21:13):
process and all the things thatwe go through.
It's just I don't think peoplehave thought about marketing as
a place where that lands.
So I'm interested in that.
I'm surprised about that.
It's such a significantyear-over-year change because
I've seen it more as a trend.
I don't remember off the top ofmy head the numbers I've seen,
(21:33):
if they translate to that samedegree, but they're definitely.
They stand out and it reallycame out of part of it came out
of the pandemic right and then Ihaven't seen impacts.
I haven't been hearing anybodytalking about impacts from AI
yet and the concerns that that'sjust going to take all the jobs
.
Speaker 2 (21:53):
Yeah, well, I think that that's why they were so
concerned.
They're like Whoa, is it justlike a glitch?
But then, once they startedtalking to other schools, they
realized that they were seeingthe same thing and that the the
rumors that they have I don'tthink they have hard facts right
now is that the students thatare coming out of university, or
, sorry, coming out of highschool, are thinking that, you
(22:17):
know, there will be no future incomputer science.
That's what they're, that'swhat they're assuming right now.
Speaker 1 (22:22):
So I don't know, fascinating.
Speaker 2 (22:25):
Yeah, I was like, and it just evolved into this like
conversation where like wow, andso I immediately thought of you
guys.
I'm so like I'm curious whatthe two mics think yeah, I don't
know.
Speaker 3 (22:38):
I mean, I I wonder, I kind of wonder who you know.
To your comment, naomi, likewho's gonna?
Who's gonna make sure thisstuff's doing?
The right way.
It's like, it's like, it's kindof like you know, martech
stacks without any marketing opspeople like except for a little
(22:59):
more scary right, exactly, ohgod I don't know.
I feel like they're yeah itthere seems like we're in for it
.
If that trend continues, there'sprobably going to be you know
that old, I graduated with abusiness degree and so I think
(23:19):
of economics and unit economicsand supply and demand curves all
the time.
So not all the time, but that'swhere my head goes in this
conversation the time, butthat's where my head goes in
this conversation.
And it seems like if that trendcontinues, there's going to be
a supply and demand issue andall of a sudden, we're going to
start seeing the uh, thecomputer science majors, uh,
earning salaries that areprobably two, two and a half x
(23:43):
what they would normally havebeen.
If you know, because the supplywill be low right, like there
just won't be that many peopleand they're going to want to pay
them top dollar to do that, andthat'll be kind of like circa
2017, era of what developerswere to startups in that
ecosystem.
(24:04):
It was actually probably 2015,2016.
I mean, that trend continuedfor a while.
Do you remember that peoplewere getting paid crazy money
when you?
were you were skipping schooland going to a boot camp because
you could go make 200k afterthe boot camp a year anyway.
Speaker 1 (24:24):
Yeah, I mean I think it's interesting because there's
these like meta trends that arehappening in education and jobs
.
I think part of the draw best Ican tell part of the draw that
is taking young men out ofcollege or drawing them away
from college.
There's way more facets to itthan I think I'm going to say,
(24:49):
way more facets to it than Ithink I'm going to say, but I
think part of it is a view thatcollege education is not worth
what it costs.
Saddling yourself with debt isnot, whereas if you go into, say
, a trade, in particular, sometrades that are, I wouldn't say,
totally recession-proof, butthey are much more stable over
(25:13):
time.
Right the, the fluctuations arelower.
If you were, say, a plumber,right, um, and you can start
making money right away, even ifyou're an apprentice, and then
become your own, and then youcan start a business like.
So I think there's there's thisperception out there that
there's that as well.
Now, yeah, it's not foreveryone, but yeah.
Speaker 3 (25:39):
So I don't, I don't know.
I mean I struggle with the.
I have no background orunderstanding of why, um,
individuals that are males ordeciding to, you know, forego
the college experience orcollege education system or
whatever.
But I mean that one makes senseto me to some degree.
(26:00):
Like I think colleges have beenstruggling for a really long
time on the, the prices havebeen going up and the, the value
to society.
I mean the, the value tosociety.
I mean like the baseline valueto society isn't changing.
So like the unit economics oflike what it costs to go get the
(26:20):
same education that somebodygot before isn't like, it's just
, it's interesting, right.
Like we have to pay five X whatwhat someone else did 10 years
ago or more, and it's the same,the degrees, the same piece of
paper, the information islargely the same, like not much
(26:41):
has changed.
Yeah, you go to businessmarketing school and you learn
about international marketingand yeah, they're going to tell
you some stuff that changedbecause international law
changed or whatever, but likethe foundations of what you,
what you learn anyway.
So I think I don't want to likeprop up that college is a waste
of money, because I no, Ithoroughly enjoyed my college
(27:02):
education.
Speaker 1 (27:03):
Yeah, I think it was wonderful for my ability to get
to where I am but no, I thinkthere's like, I think, the value
of it and I'm right in themiddle of it, right with kids,
in that age range but yeah, thevalue of it is beyond the
education purely right or thefinancial part of it.
There's socialization, there'slearning to be on your own, like
(27:25):
all those kinds of things thatare hard to quantify.
Speaker 2 (27:28):
Depends on the degree too.
I mean, I hope my doctor wentto university.
There's just some jobs that youyeah.
Speaker 3 (27:37):
Right, yeah, right, there are certain things.
Speaker 1 (27:40):
So, naomi, you brought this up.
I'm curious what was yourreaction when you started
hearing all this.
Speaker 2 (27:48):
Honestly, I was fascinated, right, and I don't
know how much of it is thedifference between, like us
schools and canadian schools,because obviously I'm coming
from a canadian perspective andyou know my, my husband.
He's a high school um teacher.
When he started his career hewas hybrid math and technology
(28:10):
and for the past past few yearshe's been purely tech.
He purely teaches computerscience because there's been
such a, the demand is so high,right, and so and this is kind
of a bit counter to what she issaying because there's such a
high demand for tech, granted,we are in Canada, this is is he
(28:30):
teaches at an all-girls school.
So is there a difference there?
Um, I'm not really sure it'sjust it.
Would we just had thatconversation, right, because
it's not what he's seeing, um,and it was just interesting well
, where are they going?
They're going to engineering.
Why is that?
Is it just because of where youare geographically located?
I don't't, there's.
There's so many things, right,and it's such a small sample
(28:52):
size that it's, you know,difficult to extrapolate
takeaways from that.
But I just thought that wasjust a very interesting thing,
especially because it wasn'tjust their school.
They had seen it with, likeother schools and other
admission departments that theyhad talked to.
Is this part of a bigger trend?
I don't know Right, but talk to.
Is this part of?
Speaker 1 (29:11):
a bigger trend.
I don't know right, but it justgets you thinking like what
would happen.
No, I do.
I do think it's interesting ifthat is part of the mindset that
they're hearing is that peopleare shying away from computer
science because they believethat the ai is going to
essentially replace that kind ofjob.
Speaker 3 (29:26):
I'm with you, right, I I I'm not sure I want ai to
kind of go off and truly run onits own without some sort of
intervention but yeah, right,and I think why one of the
things that I would share outinto the ethos, into the world,
(29:50):
into the void, is I'm prettysteadfast.
I mean, maybe I'll be provenwrong and then that's what
happens, but I'm steadfast inthis idea that marketing
operations professionals aren'tgoing to get replaced by AI like
overnight by any stretch, and Idon't think they're going to
(30:10):
get replaced.
Replaced, frankly, I think youhave to understand the art of
the possible and then you got touse ai to extend your
capabilities right and do stufffaster and better and, with you
know, more accuracy or whatever,and I think that that should be
true of of computer sciencedegrees and and those that are
(30:31):
looking to head into that field.
Like this is a way to if youunderstand the art of the
possible and you know how thesethings can work, then you can
get to your end destination moreefficiently.
No, I think.
Speaker 1 (30:49):
I think, one thing that I'd be interested.
So for our listeners out there,if you've got a point of view
or experience right, I thinkthere are becoming more and more
tools out there that can enablenot only marketing, ops
professionals, but kind ofeveryone to eliminate some of
(31:10):
the the things that you do thatdon't really require creative
thinking as much.
Right, and you can, you can,you can expect, you know, make
your, you know your capacitywill increase right To be able
to do those things, and I thinkthere's, I think there's
opportunities there,opportunities there, and I'm
bullish about that.
I also think that there aregoing to be opportunities for AI
(31:36):
to go beyond that and to startto enable us to.
Again, I can't keep going backthe idea of getting better
insights in our data, as messyas it is, especially in the B2B
world.
I think there's stuff there.
So I I would love for us to getmore discussion on that, should
we?
Speaker 3 (31:55):
yeah, but um did either of you to speaking of
messy data and ai?
Did either of you happen tocatch the like, the small little
like back and forth that stevenstouffer and I had on linkedin
the other day.
Speaker 1 (32:12):
It was like no, it was in public like or whatever
comments.
Speaker 3 (32:17):
Yeah, he, he posted about this idea that, like the,
the idea of data quality and umbeing so necessary to leverage
AI is like a farce.
I agree, and I was like see, Ilove this, I love that, I love
that you agree.
(32:38):
And I was like, well, hang on asec, cause he, like he gave his
example right, like, oh, I've, Ifed it all this information and
it was able to more quickly, uh, help me, identify the
duplicates, right, right, like,out of all these records that
looked identical or very similarto each other, like which one
was the right one to sort oflike maintain, right, I was able
(32:58):
to take all this informationand it used some of the
information like last contacted,create date, whatever some of
this stuff when I was like, butyou gave it good quality data
for it to be able to make thatdecision.
(33:18):
And and my point was, if youdidn't give it the create dates
and those things and you justsaid which of these looks like
the right thing, it doesn't havesomething to leverage.
You have to give it somethingthat is good in order for it to
have an opinion of how to giveyou the right output that yields
(33:42):
the result that you would lookfor.
And the good in this case wasI'm leveraging the recency and
the to to help identify accuracy, and that's so, at the end of
like the, the argument sort oflike diluted down to what is the
definition of quality and good.
It's really what it sort of feltthat I was like at the end of
(34:02):
the day, it's still good qualitydata, that you found it to make
a decision.
I don't know, it felt like abit of a Socratic argument, but
anyway, you agree Michael.
Speaker 1 (34:14):
I agree, I agree, like here's why I say I agree
Right, I think there's a lot ofpeople I have not, I have yet to
find anybody who says mySalesforce data or my marketing
data is pristine, right, right.
And I hear a lot of people talkabout holding back on, like we
(34:35):
can't do, we can't trust ourdata, we can't do reporting, and
so you're going through a lotof this effort.
My view is, uh, it's neverfirst off expecting it to be
clean and perfect or whatever,whatever.
Whatever that means is afallacy.
It's just not.
It's just not the outside offinancial data, where there's
(34:56):
lots of rules and regulationsand controls in place, you know
about what can happen.
Pretty much all the rest of thedata is going to have anomalies
and errors and problems and youjust have to, like, assume that
.
So that shouldn't stop you fromdoing reporting, because what I
think is, if you start doingreporting, it's going to
(35:16):
highlight where those errors areand if there are root causes
for common things, you can goaddress those.
Over time it'll get quotebetter, but it will probably
never ever be clean likefinancial data as an example.
Yeah, I agree, so I think that'swhy I was like well, ai, if AI
(35:36):
can help accelerate that part ofit, that improving it.
Now, the danger, what I see themistake people make, though, is
, instead of saying I'm going tostart reporting, like we're
going to build this greatdashboard which is like the
first way to like shoot yourselfin the foot when you're trying
to build this great dashboard,which is, like the like, the
first way to like shoot yourselfin the foot when you're trying
to get insights.
Speaker 3 (35:55):
I think it's a waste of time yeah, yeah, and I and,
and I think to you know, and youknow, I love, I love talking
like steven, like loves pushingthe boundaries on on all this
capabilities and stuff.
I just the stuff he puts out islike awesome.
So if you don't follow steven,go follow him on.
Yeah then, but um, and I thinkI think the what is important
(36:20):
about all this stuff is to say,and you know, if I was to
rephrase, or you know, play backsome of what you're saying
michael's, like you know, don't,what is the?
There's a turn.
Michael's, like you know, don'tlet what is the there's a turn
of phrase for it.
Like it's like don't letperfection impede your progress,
kind of a thing.
Right, like you just don't.
You can start tinkering withthese things and get a lot of
value out of that without itbeing what you think is perfect
(36:44):
right now.
Right.
Speaker 2 (37:13):
What do you think, naomi, is data quality
constantly just fighting?
Right, it's, it's you, youbring it, it comes in and it
replicates across all yoursystems if you can't catch it
properly, and it's in yourbackups and you know, it's just
something that it's like.
Sometimes it feels honestlylike one step forward, 10 steps
back.
Right, yeah, like you've got apretty good handle in it, and
then, oh, we just went to atrade show and now there's like
a massive data load or you know,it's just, it's just something
that is just constant and Idon't have.
(37:37):
I don't have an answer for what.
Like how does something you'reright, michael, like nobody can
say like, yeah, my data ispristine and perfect, right, it
just right, it just doesn't.
No, I don't know any, but itdoesn't exist.
Speaker 3 (37:55):
No, yeah, um, it's just some, it's one of those
things you just have to, youjust have to deal with, yeah,
and I and ai can definitely helpyou get there faster, right,
like if you are looking attrying to solve data problems.
I think it's a great as long asyou do it within the
limitations and the boundariesof what is safe for your
business.
Speaker 1 (38:12):
Full disclaimer use ai safely.
But this goes back to why ai.
I don't think ai and I'mprobably somewhat wrong in this
will not replace people, andwhat they do is because I think
we've all heard of examples ofwhere AI spits out either
nonsense or made-up stuff, right, think about ChatGPT in
(38:34):
particular.
But I do think and I dostrongly believe that you still
need, especially on the dataside, people who understand data
where it comes from, how itworks together, how people are
interacting with it, to be ableto go what you generated is
nonsense or it's interesting butwe can't really do anything
(38:56):
with it, right?
Those kinds of things, I think,are still going to need people
who understand that data, andit's part of why I keep harping
on you know the few things I doright, understanding finance,
understanding statistics,because I believe more and more
like that's going to really makeyou stand out.
(39:16):
Even in a world where AI isdoing some of the heavy lifting,
people need to understand whatthe output means.
Speaker 3 (39:23):
Yeah, I mean.
To me that just goes back tothis idea of, like you know,
quality can take on just likethe word.
The damn word campaign can meana million things to a million
people.
I think this idea of dataquality is the same.
The same in that you know youcan feed a system a bunch of
information, but what it mightdraw as a conclusion or as like
(39:50):
an output is not relevant to theway that you think about your,
your business and and you didn't.
If you aren't really like hyperspecific about sort of like
your aspiration for whatever,whatever it is that you're
pursuing, right the answer to aquestion um, you, you should
probably know your data prettywell, which means you have to
(40:12):
feed it quality inputs to get aquality output right.
There's a but.
For those of you that don'tfollow Brinker, I suggest you do
Scott Brinker.
Speaker 1 (40:24):
Scott Brinker, Not Brinker International, which is
a fine company but verydifferent.
Speaker 3 (40:29):
Yeah, follow Scott Brinker.
Some of his a fine company, butvery different.
Yeah, follow Scott Brinker.
Some of his stuff is really,really interesting.
There's a really good thread, ora comment, that was added to
one of his more recent posts onLinkedIn by Justin Norris, who
shared this article that wentreally nerdy and really deep on
this idea of AI and how youstring together different um
(40:53):
agents.
Uh, it was published byanthropic.
I can put it in the show notesfor all of you, uh, but it is
fundamentally what it gets downto.
Is is kind of what we'retalking about here.
Is that like breaking down?
Um, when you think about an AIagent operating on your behalf,
it ultimately comes down to likebeing able to like get it to do
(41:16):
very specific things reallyreally well, and in order to do
that, you have to have like somepretty clear steps and like
guidelines and you stringtogether.
In some of these differentmodels, they actually string
together different parameters sothat it can operate, uh, within
those parameters independently,and then they bring them back
together in an aggregator model.
(41:37):
That's just fascinating stuff,right.
Like you're basically likeisolating these really specific
outcomes and then bringing itall back together once each of
them have completed their job uh, no, I the whole concept of
agents and agents that followyou around like career coach or
whatever, like the students,right that's.
Speaker 1 (41:56):
I'm fascinated by that and how that might play out
, because it's like it's hardfor me to even wrap my head
around with that.
From a practical standpoint,what does that look like in my,
in, in our lives?
I?
Speaker 3 (42:08):
don't even know what to expect from all this stuff
2025, this is going to be ourwhole world, I mean if it could
help everyone get outside andmove more.
Speaker 1 (42:15):
I think that would be a good thing.
Speaker 3 (42:17):
That would be great.
That would be great.
Speaker 1 (42:19):
I've been on a.
Speaker 3 (42:20):
LinkedIn kick.
Lately there was somebody thatI have no idea who it was.
Somebody posted that their goalwas to spend a thousand hours
outside with their family.
Speaker 1 (42:31):
Oh, spend a thousand hours outside with their family
oh, I thought it was um oh goshwhat was her name?
I?
Speaker 3 (42:35):
know, I know exactly you're talking about.
Yeah, I was like good on you.
Speaker 1 (42:37):
That is amazing she hit her goal this year with her
and, of course, ops persontracking it, so yeah, well, that
was I was where my head went.
Speaker 3 (42:45):
Immediately it was like but how did you track that?
Like, what tool did you use?
Yeah, did everybody just go login that they played for an hour
outside?
I don't know was it anaggregate, or was it individual?
Yes sorry, yes the answer isyes, um, all right.
Speaker 1 (43:04):
so where where do we see all this going?
Yeah, four years into it,what's what's next?
What do y'all?
Where would you like to see usgoing with this?
Speaker 3 (43:16):
The show.
Speaker 1 (43:17):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (43:18):
Does the?
Speaker 1 (43:18):
show continue.
Does it morph into somethingelse?
I don't know, I don't know.
Speaker 3 (43:25):
I don't know.
Speaker 2 (43:27):
I feel like I mean it's organic you know, yeah, I
love, I love our show.
Speaker 3 (43:31):
I, I I certainly I don't know if it's reached its
shelf life and it needs to besunset just yet, but I think, uh
, you know, as long as peopleare interested in sharing their
career paths and their learnings, we want to share their stories
.
I love that idea, but I do seeopportunity for us to
(43:53):
potentially string togetherother show ideas.
I mean we have so many showideas you do, I mean I do.
Speaker 1 (44:05):
You're an idea generator, mike.
We know this, I know.
Speaker 3 (44:09):
It's a problem, I have, it's a gift.
This, I know it's a problem, Ihave, it's a gift.
It's the glass half fullversion.
People on my team are like stop, stop.
Yeah, I don't know.
I would like to see even morepeople come on and share.
(44:35):
I'd like to see more of the B2Cside come in and share a lot of
their challenges.
They're different, they're thesame and they're different
they're the same and they'redifferent, but they've been
doing marketing technology andautomation stuff operations for
longer.
Speaker 1 (44:56):
I mean, my first move into marketing was to build a
50 million household databasefor a company.
Speaker 3 (45:03):
Yeah, it's been around for longer.
It's been bigger challenges, soI'd like to see more of that.
I'd like to see a continuedpush for the advancement of,
like what does it mean to becertified?
That's obviously on my agenda,so I want to have more
(45:24):
conversations around that forour audience, you'll see more of
it from us, but yeah.
Speaker 2 (45:34):
But you know, I mean I, yeah, I mean, mean I agree
with everything you guys aresaying.
I think I would love to.
The b2c part is interesting forme specifically.
Um, most of the people that Iknow in real life, locally, they
are in the b2c spacedirect-to-consumer goods and I
know never to call them or textthem during Black Friday or
(45:54):
Boxing Day sales or anythinglike that, and that's just a
completely foreign world to me.
But they use a lot of thetechnology in a very similar way
, just on a different scale.
So I think that that's reallyinteresting.
I definitely think it would beinteresting to have more
discussions around some of thetopics that we had covered
(46:17):
during the Women's Breakfast,during WAPSA certification as
well.
I often get questions onLinkedIn about how did I get
into this role?
What are some suggestions ortips that I can give to people
who are looking to get into thisrole?
What are some suggestions ortips that I can give to people
who are looking to get into thisrole?
Because, unlike a lot of othercareer paths, there isn't a okay
, I'm going to study this andthen I'll get a job in marketing
(46:38):
ops.
Right, it's not always so clearcut or so defined.
So I think topics that kind oflean towards those areas are
things that I would definitelybe interested in.
Also, I just love originstories, right.
So guests that we had had, youknow, for example, johnny from
(47:01):
Slack and Vivian who had startedSlack Sleep, now known as Will
it, you know, like it's justconversations like that around
their entrepreneurial spirit, Ithink is always going to be
interesting and to hear howbusiness, to hear how they
started their businesses, thechallenges that they have as
(47:22):
small business owners.
I think there can be a lot oftakeaways and parallels, right,
when it comes to marketing, ops,people and how we digest
information and I don't know.
Speaker 1 (47:32):
Just lots of topics that I think that we haven't
covered, that I think we cancover too yeah, two, two
additional thoughts, or maybeit's a little slight difference
to what you just talked about,naomi, but one that just
occurred to me through ourconversation.
I wonder if it would be usefulto get some people from colleges
(47:53):
and universities to talk aboutwhat they're seeing in terms of
trends and how that could tieinto it and maybe even help
elevate the profession withinthe universities as a viable
career path.
Speaker 3 (48:05):
Oh, that would be killer.
That's a great.
Speaker 1 (48:07):
Yeah, that would be great and I think through our
connections, it sounds like weall three have some connections
to university folks, so I thinkthat would be an interesting one
.
The other one, and this is onethat so one of our past guests,
kyle Lacey, who I'm a big fan of, he for a while had a podcast
(48:28):
that he did.
It was I don't know, eachepisode was maybe 15 minutes and
what was really fascinating washe was talking to revenue
leaders and he would get reallydeep into kind of personal
stories and not about work stuff.
But, like you know, a guy was arecovering alcoholic and they
talked about that.
(48:48):
I mean, I think these deeperthings I'm not sure if it's this
may be one where it makes moresense, like, if we want to get
into stuff like that aboutpeople's stories from that
standpoint, right, the personalside of what it's like to be a
professional and dealing withthings might be an interesting
one.
And we've had a few people whohave opened up about challenges
(49:21):
that they've faced, whether itwas losing loved ones or going
through, you know,stress-induced kinds of things
or whatever.
But I think that might be kindof an interesting one.
And my guess is, naomi, youprobably heard stuff like that
in the intake forms you talkedabout for the women's.
What did you call it?
Mops, and mimosas.
Speaker 2 (49:37):
Yeah, I think it was called mops and mimosas.
That was Audrey's.
Speaker 1 (49:41):
I hadn't heard that yet.
I just heard the women'sbreakfast.
Speaker 3 (49:45):
We deliberated on what that name was going to be
and she landed on mops andmimosas.
I loved it.
I was like that was great.
Speaker 1 (49:51):
Yeah so.
Speaker 3 (49:52):
I think it'd be interesting to hear.
Speaker 1 (50:06):
So I guess maybe we end here with a shameless
request to our listeners, foragain, we always love getting
the honest feedback.
It's always good to know thatwe're connecting with you one
way or another for not helpingus get that, but we love your
ideas too.
If you want to see us go deeperinto certain of these subjects
or other ones that we didn'ttalk about, let us know.
Reach out to us.
I think we're all nodding ourheads here Like we are very open
(50:27):
to input and ideas, in fact.
In fact I um, I was interactingwith someone who wanted to be a
guest just today, who brought upsomething.
I was like, oh, actually we'venever talked about that and I
get it would be an interestingone for our audience and it
could be.
It wouldn't happen to be, Ithink, where it could go into a
practical like this is how I canuse something today or tomorrow
(50:49):
, so I learned could go into apractical like this is how I can
use something today or tomorrow, so I learned.
And other ones are big picturethings, you know more esoteric,
and I think we're open to allthose yeah, yeah, I totally
agree.
Speaker 3 (51:00):
If you've got a idea or you feel like you want to
share your story, we would love,love for you to come on and do
that.
I I personally I was justthinking about it this morning
again.
I was like maybe I'll spin up achannel for those that are like
I know it's a new year soeverybody does the like I'm
going to get fit or I'm going todo this or whatever.
(51:22):
I really am on a totallydifferent journey of my health
right now and I was like maybe Ilike that part of like we're
already in a community full ofpeople with like similar
interests in the, in thecategory of martech, but I like
getting one layer down to like,yeah, let's all support each
other for the, for the otherthing right like you're a
(51:42):
marathon runner, maybe you're acrossfit enthusiast or a
mountain biker.
I was like, maybe I'll spin up achannel for so anyway, I it all
.
That is to say, if you've gotother interests and you are game
to share them or you want toshare your background story.
I think that's what makes itpossible to relate to each other
(52:03):
in this field.
Yeah, because we all got heresomehow.
So, yep, yeah, anyway, well,four, Somehow so.
Yep.
Speaker 1 (52:10):
Yeah, anyway, four years.
I appreciate the two of you inthis.
We appreciate you together.
It's crazy.
It's like when I realized itwas four years, I was like four
years, is that right?
Speaker 3 (52:23):
Yes, blowing my mind too.
Yeah, I looked like a verydifferent human being four years
ago, I don't know, constantlyexhausted.
Speaker 1 (52:36):
That's mostly because I had a newborn, but you know
that's okay, and I'm on theother end where I've now got
ones that are in college orabout to head off to college.
Speaker 3 (52:46):
Yeah, we're running the gamut.
Speaker 1 (52:49):
So Naomi's got a new name as a new parent New-ish.
Speaker 2 (52:55):
New-ish.
Speaker 1 (52:57):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (52:58):
That's good.
Speaker 1 (53:00):
Well, good, well, this is fun.
Hopefully our audienceappreciates this sort of open
book view, like of where wethink things are.
So anything else before we wrapit up no, no, no no see y'all.
Speaker 3 (53:19):
Let's bring fling in may.
Let's go spring thing.
Speaker 1 (53:24):
all right, well, that sounds great.
Well again, always, always funtalking to you too and to all of
our listeners.
Thank you again for yoursupport.
As we said, we're always opento ideas and feedback and
suggestions, and if you have anidea or want to be a guest, talk
about something, we're all ears.
(53:44):
So bring them on to any of usand we be glad to talk to you
about it some more.
So until next time, byeeveryone, bye everybody.
Speaker 2 (53:55):
Bye everyone.
Hello everyone, Welcome to another special
episode of OpsCast brought toyou by MarketingOpscom.
I'm your host, Michael Hartman,joined today by my two
compatriots Naomi Liu and MikeRizzo.
Happy New Year, Happy.
Speaker 2 (00:14):
New Year, yeah, for years.
Speaker 1 (00:19):
So we are getting together, getting the band back
together, which we don't get todo as often as I'd like.
I mean, I miss, I miss talkingto you guys regularly.
So I miss you too, michaelthank you, um, but this is we.
We kind of realized that we areabout to hit four years of
(00:40):
doing this podcast, so westarted in.
If I remember, mike is this, isit your birthday, january?
Speaker 3 (00:46):
it's like the day before my birthday okay, so you
know happy birthday, mike yeah,a little bit early um we started
doing a cameo
Speaker 2 (00:56):
that year sent him a cameo yeah yeah, oh, did
somebody do that?
Speaker 1 (01:01):
Yeah, michael.
Speaker 3 (01:02):
Tucker actually uh like organized um that, oh gosh,
the co-founder of uh Apple umdid a cameo.
It was actually kind of fun andspecial.
Speaker 1 (01:15):
Oh, that is too funny yeah.
Wow I forgot about cameo.
Maybe that'll be part of.
Speaker 3 (01:21):
What we talk about is like all the things that have
changed since january of 2021what was the thing with all the
audio experiment, the audio chatroom thing that was happening?
Speaker 2 (01:32):
yeah, when oh oh, what was that call?
Now I'm so curious.
Oh good gosh, I know you'retalking about.
Speaker 1 (01:40):
I never understood what it was.
Yeah, you, you figured out, butI but I remember, like I when
we started this clubhouse.
That was it did you ever do it?
Did you ever join a clubhousesession?
Speaker 3 (01:53):
I joined one or two I never did, trying to see what
happened.
Speaker 1 (01:57):
I never quite understood how that they should
have sold the second that theygot that offer.
Speaker 3 (02:03):
Oh yeah, it's a lot of money?
Speaker 2 (02:04):
no, I don't know.
They got an offer.
Oh yeah, it's a lot of moneythey get offered.
Speaker 3 (02:05):
No, I don't know, they got an offer to get
acquired like right away by likepretty quickly, but I think it
was like by x at the time,twitter right, or maybe somebody
else, I don't remember, butthey turned it down, should it
take that's crazy, yeah.
Speaker 1 (02:19):
So think back four, four years ago, 2021.
We were still kind of kneelingfrom the covid and the lockdowns
and all that.
And we, when we started do youremember this?
We started as a, as a like talkradio.
Right, it was a live show.
We had an audience.
As much as we tried to getpeople to come on in in real
(02:42):
time, you know, to join us.
That didn't they mean it was.
The online chat part was good.
We still had that interaction.
Uh, yeah, it was fun.
Speaker 3 (02:50):
I liked that.
I liked that aspect of the showand it it sort of became the
DNA of why the show is what itis today, like this raw sort of
unfiltered discussion, I meanfor our listeners.
If you're listening to thisepisode, you know there's a
quite a bit that goes into doinga show as you might imagine um,
(03:12):
but, like you know, some prepwork right, like hartman does an
incredible job of uh, gettingon and saying, hey, what should
we talk about with you?
What's your passion, what'syour?
And there's a bit of an outlinethat we follow, but generally
it's just sort of a loosediscussion and it's meant to go
exactly wherever it needs to go,like a live radio show, and
(03:36):
that's where the DNA of our showcame from.
Yeah, I don't know, but I thinkthat I enjoyed that aspect of
it.
Those were fun days.
Speaker 1 (03:46):
I think it was it, was it was at the Daryl Alfonso
episode, we had where, like in afire alarm or something, went
off in the background.
Speaker 3 (03:54):
Yeah, his literal smoke alarm went off and we
didn't mute it.
Speaker 2 (03:59):
Yeah, and Michael, I think you and I were on one
where, um, I can't remember whoit was, was it AJ?
I think you and I were on onewhere I can't remember who it
was.
Was it AJ?
Might not, it might've been, Ican't remember who it was, but
someone had a, a baby, likealarm that went off, that saying
like twinkle, twinkle littlestars.
Yeah, the entire episode and wecouldn't figure out where it
(04:19):
was coming.
That was not AJ oh right, it'slike I don't know the kid.
What are you?
Speaker 1 (04:27):
talking about no.
What's his name?
Speaker 2 (04:31):
Raja, raja, yes, yes it was like a very low level
twinkle, twinkle little starsthat played the entire episode
and I was like, is that comingfrom my neighbor's house?
Like where is that Right?
I remember that.
Speaker 3 (04:44):
We were just trying to lull everybody to sleep.
Speaker 1 (04:46):
You know it's so funny.
Yeah, all those things you know.
But I think it's I don't know.
Yeah, I'm sure that sometimesthat's distracting or annoying,
but to me it's part of the like,it's just part of the ethos.
I'm glad we keep it that way.
I you know, I think there'strade offs.
Either way, right you can.
Speaker 3 (05:07):
You can really do a lot of work to to clean things
up and uh, totally, yeah, Do allthat kind of stuff and it's, we
say it's a, we say it's a show,that's so you know, we are
marketing operationsprofessionals by trade.
We are not podcast producers bytrade, right?
Uh, thankfully the tools arehelping us make it a little bit
(05:30):
easier a little bit better.
Speaker 1 (05:32):
Although I don't know about you, I I have had a
couple of people ask me for,like they, I want to start a
podcast.
What can you tell me about it?
Right, what you know?
Speaker 3 (05:44):
totally so I mean, I will say that we have learned a
lot about what it takes to spinone up, and I think we, I think
if we were to take a stab atrevamping the show or launching
another show, we would probablydo it differently this time,
probably partially because it'sjust interesting to try a
different approach, right?
Absolutely but but yeah, I thinkthere's a lot of learning.
(06:07):
I get that question a lot,though, michael, like what tool
do you use to publish?
How do you distribute?
You know all that kind of stuff.
Yeah, to answer that questionfor all of you, uh, we record on
riverside, shout out to themthanks for the product, it's
been great.
Yep, we pay for it.
They don't give it to us, uh,and we publish and distribute to
(06:31):
all of the media streams thatyou are tuning in from via
buzzsprout.
So, yeah, that's how we do it,but oh, and, we do a bit of
editing in descript.
Yep, to like truncate any deadspace if we have dead space, or
whatever they're our podcastingtech stack yeah, that's our
(06:51):
podcasting text texting.
There's a hubspot rss email thatgoes out once a month to those
that are subscribed with thelast episodes that went live in
the prior month.
There you go and comes from.
Speaker 1 (07:03):
Does it say it's coming from me?
Speaker 3 (07:06):
I think it still says it comes from you.
Speaker 1 (07:07):
Yeah, because I remember the first time one came
out and I was like oh, look atthat, I'm sending somebody,
sending myself an email.
Speaker 3 (07:15):
Gotta love automation .
Speaker 1 (07:17):
That's right.
Yeah, but it's, I'm with you.
I think we've covered a lot ofground in terms of different
topics and, yeah, but I'm withyou, I think we've covered a lot
of ground in terms of differenttopics and it was clearly well,
it's interesting because Ithink there's a lot of topics
we've covered.
There's a lot of things that weall have passion about that I
think we'd like to cover more,maybe even.
(07:38):
So, yeah, we're always open tonew ideas and I mean the biggest
to me, the biggest, one of thebiggest changes right now is
just, yeah, I'm still I'mstarting to see more of our
guests or potential guests,people who've raised their hands
or said had interest, bringingup things like AI.
(07:59):
We've had some greatconversations with people
talking about mental health andNaomi you, health and uh, naomi,
you, you had.
Well, we also we didn't haveMopsapalooza or summer camp
before we started all this stuff.
Speaker 3 (08:15):
So that's all new.
Speaker 2 (08:17):
Yeah, I mean in terms of like topics to cover, right,
I think we've had a reallyamazing and varied range of
guests and topics that have comeacross the show.
I think something that waseye-opening for me was during
this past MOPSA, where Audreyand I hosted the women's
breakfast, mopsa Mimosas that wehad an intake forum where women
(08:42):
who were interested in comingto this breakfast was still in
an intake forum with just someinformation about what they
wanted to talk about and a lotof recurring themes around
diversity in the workplace,leaning in, getting a seat at
the table, work-life balance,mental health those were all
recurring themes that a lot ofthe attendees those were all
(09:11):
recurring themes that a lot ofthe attendees wanted to discuss
and talk to other women at theirtable for networking on those
topics.
So I think it would be good toexplore some of those topics as
well for future episodes forthis year, whether it be, you
know, having a maybe we havelike a roundtable with some of
the women who came to thewomen's breakfast or we bring in
a guest speaker.
I don't know what that lookslike, but um, yeah, I just think
(09:31):
that would be something thatwould be really interesting for
some of our listeners y'all needto do the women take over thing
again, like we had the womenyeah, that would be really fun
time we need to do.
Yeah, that would be.
Speaker 3 (09:42):
We should extend it to like the whole month, though
like yeah, we could do that youjust run it for like the whole,
like four weeks, for at leastfour episodes or something.
Speaker 2 (09:51):
I'm done with that, yeah yeah, it makes my job a
little easier.
Speaker 3 (09:55):
Yeah I was looking at our uh, our stats all time
stats for for top downloads.
I'm sure we shared some ofthese things in a social post,
but for those of you that havebeen diehard listeners and fans,
first of all, thank you.
Speaker 1 (10:15):
Yes.
Speaker 3 (10:15):
Second of all, top stats what the fuck is marketing
operations with Amy Goldfrey?
Still, it's two years, it'sover two years old, it went live
june 14, 2022 and it is 784downloads.
So shout out to amy for that'sright.
Awesome episode that obviouslyresonates to this day.
(10:36):
Uh, what else is on here?
The evolution of marketing opsin the age of generative digital
experience with paul wil.
That's about a year old now.
It's actually over a year oldfrom July 24th of 2023.
I'll give you the top five.
We'll stop there.
A marketing ops maturity modeland more with Simon Daniels.
(10:56):
So analyst extraordinaire,simon Daniels came on.
That was great.
That was May 22, 23.
That has 616 downloads.
Uh, the great attributiondebate with andrea lb, andrew
smith.
Uh, can't get enough of andreaandrew throw down, that was a
fun one.
(11:16):
Um, that is almost two years oldas of march 27, 2023, and it's
558 downloads.
And to round us out, bring ushome top five is attribution
ruining marketing with carriepicklesimer.
And that one is over two yearsold, september 19th of 2022.
So apparently we didn't knowwhat we were doing in 2021 at
(11:37):
all.
Uh, because, no, I'm justkidding.
Speaker 1 (11:39):
The next one on the list is from 2021 yeah, yeah,
when our very first episode isis just a scooch under uh,
scooch, is that the right wordjust under 500 downloads.
So I mean, for that's anotherthing, for that I tell people
all the time starting out doingthis, I would have assumed that
(12:00):
how was how how many podcastsand stuff there are, that the
metrics would be incredible andthey're pretty terrible.
Speaker 3 (12:08):
Yeah, oh yeah.
The way that you get reportingfrom these tools, yeah, it's
horrible.
You can't tell hardly anythingunless you go to a specific
streaming provider to get statsor whatever.
Speaker 1 (12:20):
Right and it's partial at that point, yeah,
which to me like.
So one of the things that weoccasionally get is feedback
from people, and we've beenfortunate enough that most of
it's been positive, almost allof it's been positive, and I
(12:41):
always thank those people,because we really don't get
anything else.
Like it's really you're sort ofthrowing this out into the
ether and you don't know if it'slanding, you know.
So it's always nice to get thatfeedback.
Speaker 3 (12:55):
Yeah, yeah, I mean good or bad, right, like we
always want to hear fromeverybody, but it's so rare to
get either yeah, and so weappreciate whatever we get from
anybody.
So it's been yeah, it's been alot of fun.
I do know I spoke to one of ourcommunity members recently who I
(13:15):
shall run remain nameless, andshe said she's a long time
listener.
I'm hopeful to have her on theshow soon, but, um, a lot of
like the content, the gueststhat have come on um, so all of
you who've ever been guests,like thank you.
(13:35):
She uh and and she joined thecommunity um, she has now built
her career around all of theadvice coming from everybody in
this community across and itreally like a lot of it stemmed
from her discovery of uh, thispodcast and and she ended up
joining the live workshop withum uh, one of our instructors
(14:02):
and she.
It was a leadership workshopthat she took and she discovered
that because of this podcastand she now feels even more
equipped to take on a newleadership role in her
organization.
I mean, she's literally likebolstered so much of of her
career around everybodysupporting her from the content
you all contribute on the show,right, absolutely, if it's who I
(14:25):
think you're talking about.
Speaker 1 (14:26):
I do believe we have that person scheduled for an
episode, so oh yeah, that's all.
Stay tuned that's great.
Speaker 3 (14:34):
So anyway, the point of me sharing.
That is that it's.
It's awesome that, though werarely get the feedback,
occasionally, weasionally we getinspirational moments like that
.
And yeah, and I hope we allhope that this is helpful.
This stuff is helpful to you,yeah.
Speaker 1 (14:54):
I don't know, definitely a labor of love.
So when we get that kind offeedback, it helps re-energize.
Speaking of re-energizing.
Speaker 3 (15:04):
Yes, yeah, we're in a new year.
Like what are we?
What are we thinking about thisyear?
Personal goals, professionalgoals, what are you?
What's?
What's on the docket for Naomithis year?
Speaker 2 (15:20):
Well, so I wanted to raise something with you guys,
so over the holidays.
Speaker 1 (15:25):
Yeah, I feel like we're in trouble.
No not only am I using my, am Iusing my mom voice, my stern
voice can of worms I am a momnow, you know so yeah, that's
right.
That's one of the big changessince we started, that's the
biggest yeah that's a huge yeah.
Speaker 2 (15:41):
I my husband and I we adopted our daughter, brought
her back in may 2023, and thatwas experience.
I've now learned that I canjust say no.
No is a complete sentence, justno.
Why?
Because I said so.
Anyways, over the holidays I hadsome friends visiting from LA
and one of my girlfriends sheworks in admissions for a
(16:07):
polytechnic university inSouthern California and she was,
you know, just talking abouteducation and work and my job,
marketing operations and whatnot, and she was saying that for
the computer science department,they saw this year, compared to
(16:28):
last year and all previousyears, a double digit, almost
50%, decline in applications.
And they just thought, okay,like what is this, you know?
Like is it just us?
Yes, is this just us?
(16:49):
Or what's going on?
So they went and and I guess alot of these schools are
affiliated with one another sothey went and, you know, talk to
peers and colleagues at otherschools and to see if it was
just them and what was going on.
Was it an anomaly, somethingwrong?
And no, all of these otherschools are seeing the same
thing double digit, massivedeclines in applications for
computer science, undergraduateor graduate or both undergrad.
(17:12):
And they did a little bit moredigging, right, like what's
going on.
So apparently this is all justlike hearsay, right, but this is
what they're, they're trying tofigure this out because this is
obviously concerning, right.
So apparently what's beenhappening is a lot of these
students that are coming in,they're seeing the rise of AI
and they think that there's nofuture in computer science
(17:35):
because you can just type intoan app and tell it to build you
something, or basically theyfeel like AI is going to take
computer science jobs.
So instead, what they're seeingbecause these students have to
go somewhere, right what they'reseeing is that there has been
an increase in applications forengineering, and I asked my
(17:55):
girlfriend actually this morningto and I'm just going to pull
this up what is that split?
So there's been this is at herschool only a 20% increase in
applications for electricalengineering, a 10% increase in
applications for mechanicalengineering and a 15% increase
in applications for electricalengineering, a 10% increase in
applications for mechanicalengineering and a 15% increase
in applications for civilengineering, but a double digit,
(18:15):
almost 50% decline in computerscience.
And that's concerning to me,right.
So for myself, you know, myoriginal declared major was
computer science.
I switched about halfwaythrough to communications and
marketing, but the overlapbetween computer science and
programmers and developers, Ifeel is very tangential,
(18:36):
integrated into people who workin operations and I don't know.
That's kind of terrifying forme.
I don't know what you guysthink.
Like I don't want an entiregeneration of you know unchecked
AI happening right, like youknow a lot of, a lot of a lot of
folks that they've been talkingto, or right like you know a
lot of a lot of um, a lot of uhfolks that they've been talking
to, or potential, you know,applicants.
They're very interested inrobotics, they're very
(18:58):
interested in mechanicalengineering, mechatronics, all
of that.
You still need a computerscience background to be able to
power these.
I don't know what do you guysthink curious so a lot of that.
Speaker 1 (19:10):
So I don't remember if we've talked about this.
I can't remember if I've talkedabout it on the podcast either,
but I'm.
So I graduated from anengineering school, uh, in a
program called which thegraduate degree would be
operations research, which issort of tied to industrial
engineering.
So I'm now curious like what,what's the change in industrial
engineering if that school hasit?
But I can't talk aboutspecifics, but in general I
(19:35):
would say well, one of thethings I know is happening I've
heard this multiple places, notjust with the, because I'm on
the board now with that programand the engineering school that
I graduate from, but there'sthere's a definite decline just
overall in college like peoplegoing to college, in particular
(19:57):
boys, men um, they're not goingas as much.
So I think in general collegecampuses there's definitely more
women, yeah, more women.
Speaker 2 (20:06):
More women now in universities than men.
Speaker 1 (20:08):
Yeah, and then there's in general.
It's been interesting to seesome of the numbers, but it's a
mixed bag.
When I've seen the engineeringnumbers in computer sciences and
the engineering school where Iwent, where I went, one of the
(20:29):
things they're seeing is there'sbeen more of a rise in
applicants and growth inundergraduate business programs
that are somewhat affiliatedwith it too.
So you've got MIS, which wouldbe more of a business school
program as opposed to managementscience, which is the
engineering equivalent, which isa little more heavy on
(20:51):
programming things like that.
But I've been trying to pitchthe idea that the degree program
that I graduated from actuallylaunched really well with
operations and marketingoperations in particular,
because it's very much aboutoptimization and analytics and
(21:13):
process and all the things thatwe go through.
It's just I don't think peoplehave thought about marketing as
a place where that lands.
So I'm interested in that.
I'm surprised about that.
It's such a significantyear-over-year change because
I've seen it more as a trend.
I don't remember off the top ofmy head the numbers I've seen,
(21:33):
if they translate to that samedegree, but they're definitely.
They stand out and it reallycame out of part of it came out
of the pandemic right and then Ihaven't seen impacts.
I haven't been hearing anybodytalking about impacts from AI
yet and the concerns that that'sjust going to take all the jobs
.
Speaker 2 (21:53):
Yeah, well, I think that that's why they were so
concerned.
They're like Whoa, is it justlike a glitch?
But then, once they startedtalking to other schools, they
realized that they were seeingthe same thing and that the the
rumors that they have I don'tthink they have hard facts right
now is that the students thatare coming out of university, or
, sorry, coming out of highschool, are thinking that, you
(22:17):
know, there will be no future incomputer science.
That's what they're, that'swhat they're assuming right now.
Speaker 1 (22:22):
So I don't know, fascinating.
Speaker 2 (22:25):
Yeah, I was like, and it just evolved into this like
conversation where like wow, andso I immediately thought of you
guys.
I'm so like I'm curious whatthe two mics think yeah, I don't
know.
Speaker 3 (22:38):
I mean, I I wonder, I kind of wonder who you know.
To your comment, naomi, likewho's gonna?
Who's gonna make sure thisstuff's doing?
The right way.
It's like, it's like, it's kindof like you know, martech
stacks without any marketing opspeople like except for a little
(22:59):
more scary right, exactly, ohgod I don't know.
I feel like they're yeah itthere seems like we're in for it
.
If that trend continues, there'sprobably going to be you know
that old, I graduated with abusiness degree and so I think
(23:19):
of economics and unit economicsand supply and demand curves all
the time.
So not all the time, but that'swhere my head goes in this
conversation the time, butthat's where my head goes in
this conversation.
And it seems like if that trendcontinues, there's going to be
a supply and demand issue andall of a sudden, we're going to
start seeing the uh, thecomputer science majors, uh,
earning salaries that areprobably two, two and a half x
(23:43):
what they would normally havebeen.
If you know, because the supplywill be low right, like there
just won't be that many peopleand they're going to want to pay
them top dollar to do that, andthat'll be kind of like circa
2017, era of what developerswere to startups in that
ecosystem.
(24:04):
It was actually probably 2015,2016.
I mean, that trend continuedfor a while.
Do you remember that peoplewere getting paid crazy money
when you?
were you were skipping schooland going to a boot camp because
you could go make 200k afterthe boot camp a year anyway.
Speaker 1 (24:24):
Yeah, I mean I think it's interesting because there's
these like meta trends that arehappening in education and jobs
.
I think part of the draw best Ican tell part of the draw that
is taking young men out ofcollege or drawing them away
from college.
There's way more facets to itthan I think I'm going to say,
(24:49):
way more facets to it than Ithink I'm going to say, but I
think part of it is a view thatcollege education is not worth
what it costs.
Saddling yourself with debt isnot, whereas if you go into, say
, a trade, in particular, sometrades that are, I wouldn't say,
totally recession-proof, butthey are much more stable over
(25:13):
time.
Right the, the fluctuations arelower.
If you were, say, a plumber,right, um, and you can start
making money right away, even ifyou're an apprentice, and then
become your own, and then youcan start a business like.
So I think there's there's thisperception out there that
there's that as well.
Now, yeah, it's not foreveryone, but yeah.
Speaker 3 (25:39):
So I don't, I don't know.
I mean I struggle with the.
I have no background orunderstanding of why, um,
individuals that are males ordeciding to, you know, forego
the college experience orcollege education system or
whatever.
But I mean that one makes senseto me to some degree.
(26:00):
Like I think colleges have beenstruggling for a really long
time on the, the prices havebeen going up and the, the value
to society.
I mean the, the value tosociety.
I mean like the baseline valueto society isn't changing.
So like the unit economics oflike what it costs to go get the
(26:20):
same education that somebodygot before isn't like, it's just
, it's interesting, right.
Like we have to pay five X whatwhat someone else did 10 years
ago or more, and it's the same,the degrees, the same piece of
paper, the information islargely the same, like not much
(26:41):
has changed.
Yeah, you go to businessmarketing school and you learn
about international marketingand yeah, they're going to tell
you some stuff that changedbecause international law
changed or whatever, but likethe foundations of what you,
what you learn anyway.
So I think I don't want to likeprop up that college is a waste
of money, because I no, Ithoroughly enjoyed my college
(27:02):
education.
Speaker 1 (27:03):
Yeah, I think it was wonderful for my ability to get
to where I am but no, I thinkthere's like, I think, the value
of it and I'm right in themiddle of it, right with kids,
in that age range but yeah, thevalue of it is beyond the
education purely right or thefinancial part of it.
There's socialization, there'slearning to be on your own, like
(27:25):
all those kinds of things thatare hard to quantify.
Speaker 2 (27:28):
Depends on the degree too.
I mean, I hope my doctor wentto university.
There's just some jobs that youyeah.
Speaker 3 (27:37):
Right, yeah, right, there are certain things.
Speaker 1 (27:40):
So, naomi, you brought this up.
I'm curious what was yourreaction when you started
hearing all this.
Speaker 2 (27:48):
Honestly, I was fascinated, right, and I don't
know how much of it is thedifference between, like us
schools and canadian schools,because obviously I'm coming
from a canadian perspective andyou know my, my husband.
He's a high school um teacher.
When he started his career hewas hybrid math and technology
(28:10):
and for the past past few yearshe's been purely tech.
He purely teaches computerscience because there's been
such a, the demand is so high,right, and so and this is kind
of a bit counter to what she issaying because there's such a
high demand for tech, granted,we are in Canada, this is is he
(28:30):
teaches at an all-girls school.
So is there a difference there?
Um, I'm not really sure it'sjust it.
Would we just had thatconversation, right, because
it's not what he's seeing, um,and it was just interesting well
, where are they going?
They're going to engineering.
Why is that?
Is it just because of where youare geographically located?
I don't't, there's.
There's so many things, right,and it's such a small sample
(28:52):
size that it's, you know,difficult to extrapolate
takeaways from that.
But I just thought that wasjust a very interesting thing,
especially because it wasn'tjust their school.
They had seen it with, likeother schools and other
admission departments that theyhad talked to.
Is this part of a bigger trend?
I don't know Right, but talk to.
Is this part of?
Speaker 1 (29:11):
a bigger trend.
I don't know right, but it justgets you thinking like what
would happen.
No, I do.
I do think it's interesting ifthat is part of the mindset that
they're hearing is that peopleare shying away from computer
science because they believethat the ai is going to
essentially replace that kind ofjob.
Speaker 3 (29:26):
I'm with you, right, I I I'm not sure I want ai to
kind of go off and truly run onits own without some sort of
intervention but yeah, right,and I think why one of the
things that I would share outinto the ethos, into the world,
(29:50):
into the void, is I'm prettysteadfast.
I mean, maybe I'll be provenwrong and then that's what
happens, but I'm steadfast inthis idea that marketing
operations professionals aren'tgoing to get replaced by AI like
overnight by any stretch, and Idon't think they're going to
(30:10):
get replaced.
Replaced, frankly, I think youhave to understand the art of
the possible and then you got touse ai to extend your
capabilities right and do stufffaster and better and, with you
know, more accuracy or whatever,and I think that that should be
true of of computer sciencedegrees and and those that are
(30:31):
looking to head into that field.
Like this is a way to if youunderstand the art of the
possible and you know how thesethings can work, then you can
get to your end destination moreefficiently.
No, I think.
Speaker 1 (30:49):
I think, one thing that I'd be interested.
So for our listeners out there,if you've got a point of view
or experience right, I thinkthere are becoming more and more
tools out there that can enablenot only marketing, ops
professionals, but kind ofeveryone to eliminate some of
(31:10):
the the things that you do thatdon't really require creative
thinking as much.
Right, and you can, you can,you can expect, you know, make
your, you know your capacitywill increase right To be able
to do those things, and I thinkthere's, I think there's
opportunities there,opportunities there, and I'm
bullish about that.
I also think that there aregoing to be opportunities for AI
(31:36):
to go beyond that and to startto enable us to.
Again, I can't keep going backthe idea of getting better
insights in our data, as messyas it is, especially in the B2B
world.
I think there's stuff there.
So I I would love for us to getmore discussion on that, should
we?
Speaker 3 (31:55):
yeah, but um did either of you to speaking of
messy data and ai?
Did either of you happen tocatch the like, the small little
like back and forth that stevenstouffer and I had on linkedin
the other day.
Speaker 1 (32:12):
It was like no, it was in public like or whatever
comments.
Speaker 3 (32:17):
Yeah, he, he posted about this idea that, like the,
the idea of data quality and umbeing so necessary to leverage
AI is like a farce.
I agree, and I was like see, Ilove this, I love that, I love
that you agree.
(32:38):
And I was like, well, hang on asec, cause he, like he gave his
example right, like, oh, I've, Ifed it all this information and
it was able to more quickly, uh, help me, identify the
duplicates, right, right, like,out of all these records that
looked identical or very similarto each other, like which one
was the right one to sort oflike maintain, right, I was able
(32:58):
to take all this informationand it used some of the
information like last contacted,create date, whatever some of
this stuff when I was like, butyou gave it good quality data
for it to be able to make thatdecision.
(33:18):
And and my point was, if youdidn't give it the create dates
and those things and you justsaid which of these looks like
the right thing, it doesn't havesomething to leverage.
You have to give it somethingthat is good in order for it to
have an opinion of how to giveyou the right output that yields
(33:42):
the result that you would lookfor.
And the good in this case wasI'm leveraging the recency and
the to to help identify accuracy, and that's so, at the end of
like the, the argument sort oflike diluted down to what is the
definition of quality and good.
It's really what it sort of feltthat I was like at the end of
(34:02):
the day, it's still good qualitydata, that you found it to make
a decision.
I don't know, it felt like abit of a Socratic argument, but
anyway, you agree Michael.
Speaker 1 (34:14):
I agree, I agree, like here's why I say I agree
Right, I think there's a lot ofpeople I have not, I have yet to
find anybody who says mySalesforce data or my marketing
data is pristine, right, right.
And I hear a lot of people talkabout holding back on, like we
(34:35):
can't do, we can't trust ourdata, we can't do reporting, and
so you're going through a lotof this effort.
My view is, uh, it's neverfirst off expecting it to be
clean and perfect or whatever,whatever.
Whatever that means is afallacy.
It's just not.
It's just not the outside offinancial data, where there's
(34:56):
lots of rules and regulationsand controls in place, you know
about what can happen.
Pretty much all the rest of thedata is going to have anomalies
and errors and problems and youjust have to, like, assume that
.
So that shouldn't stop you fromdoing reporting, because what I
think is, if you start doingreporting, it's going to
(35:16):
highlight where those errors areand if there are root causes
for common things, you can goaddress those.
Over time it'll get quotebetter, but it will probably
never ever be clean likefinancial data as an example.
Yeah, I agree, so I think that'swhy I was like well, ai, if AI
(35:36):
can help accelerate that part ofit, that improving it.
Now, the danger, what I see themistake people make, though, is
, instead of saying I'm going tostart reporting, like we're
going to build this greatdashboard which is like the
first way to like shoot yourselfin the foot when you're trying
to build this great dashboard,which is, like the like, the
first way to like shoot yourselfin the foot when you're trying
to get insights.
Speaker 3 (35:55):
I think it's a waste of time yeah, yeah, and I and,
and I think to you know, and youknow, I love, I love talking
like steven, like loves pushingthe boundaries on on all this
capabilities and stuff.
I just the stuff he puts out islike awesome.
So if you don't follow steven,go follow him on.
Yeah then, but um, and I thinkI think the what is important
(36:20):
about all this stuff is to say,and you know, if I was to
rephrase, or you know, play backsome of what you're saying
michael's, like you know, don't,what is the?
There's a turn.
Michael's, like you know, don'tlet what is the there's a turn
of phrase for it.
Like it's like don't letperfection impede your progress,
kind of a thing.
Right, like you just don't.
You can start tinkering withthese things and get a lot of
value out of that without itbeing what you think is perfect
(36:44):
right now.
Right.
Speaker 2 (37:13):
What do you think, naomi, is data quality
constantly just fighting?
Right, it's, it's you, youbring it, it comes in and it
replicates across all yoursystems if you can't catch it
properly, and it's in yourbackups and you know, it's just
something that it's like.
Sometimes it feels honestlylike one step forward, 10 steps
back.
Right, yeah, like you've got apretty good handle in it, and
then, oh, we just went to atrade show and now there's like
a massive data load or you know,it's just, it's just something
that is just constant and Idon't have.
(37:37):
I don't have an answer for what.
Like how does something you'reright, michael, like nobody can
say like, yeah, my data ispristine and perfect, right, it
just right, it just doesn't.
No, I don't know any, but itdoesn't exist.
Speaker 3 (37:55):
No, yeah, um, it's just some, it's one of those
things you just have to, youjust have to deal with, yeah,
and I and ai can definitely helpyou get there faster, right,
like if you are looking attrying to solve data problems.
I think it's a great as long asyou do it within the
limitations and the boundariesof what is safe for your
business.
Speaker 1 (38:12):
Full disclaimer use ai safely.
But this goes back to why ai.
I don't think ai and I'mprobably somewhat wrong in this
will not replace people, andwhat they do is because I think
we've all heard of examples ofwhere AI spits out either
nonsense or made-up stuff, right, think about ChatGPT in
(38:34):
particular.
But I do think and I dostrongly believe that you still
need, especially on the dataside, people who understand data
where it comes from, how itworks together, how people are
interacting with it, to be ableto go what you generated is
nonsense or it's interesting butwe can't really do anything
(38:56):
with it, right?
Those kinds of things, I think,are still going to need people
who understand that data, andit's part of why I keep harping
on you know the few things I doright, understanding finance,
understanding statistics,because I believe more and more
like that's going to really makeyou stand out.
(39:16):
Even in a world where AI isdoing some of the heavy lifting,
people need to understand whatthe output means.
Speaker 3 (39:23):
Yeah, I mean.
To me that just goes back tothis idea of, like you know,
quality can take on just likethe word.
The damn word campaign can meana million things to a million
people.
I think this idea of dataquality is the same.
The same in that you know youcan feed a system a bunch of
information, but what it mightdraw as a conclusion or as like
(39:50):
an output is not relevant to theway that you think about your,
your business and and you didn't.
If you aren't really like hyperspecific about sort of like
your aspiration for whatever,whatever it is that you're
pursuing, right the answer to aquestion um, you, you should
probably know your data prettywell, which means you have to
(40:12):
feed it quality inputs to get aquality output right.
There's a but.
For those of you that don'tfollow Brinker, I suggest you do
Scott Brinker.
Speaker 1 (40:24):
Scott Brinker, Not Brinker International, which is
a fine company but verydifferent.
Speaker 3 (40:29):
Yeah, follow Scott Brinker.
Some of his a fine company, butvery different.
Yeah, follow Scott Brinker.
Some of his stuff is really,really interesting.
There's a really good thread, ora comment, that was added to
one of his more recent posts onLinkedIn by Justin Norris, who
shared this article that wentreally nerdy and really deep on
this idea of AI and how youstring together different um
(40:53):
agents.
Uh, it was published byanthropic.
I can put it in the show notesfor all of you, uh, but it is
fundamentally what it gets downto.
Is is kind of what we'retalking about here.
Is that like breaking down?
Um, when you think about an AIagent operating on your behalf,
it ultimately comes down to likebeing able to like get it to do
(41:16):
very specific things reallyreally well, and in order to do
that, you have to have like somepretty clear steps and like
guidelines and you stringtogether.
In some of these differentmodels, they actually string
together different parameters sothat it can operate, uh, within
those parameters independently,and then they bring them back
together in an aggregator model.
(41:37):
That's just fascinating stuff,right.
Like you're basically likeisolating these really specific
outcomes and then bringing itall back together once each of
them have completed their job uh, no, I the whole concept of
agents and agents that followyou around like career coach or
whatever, like the students,right that's.
Speaker 1 (41:56):
I'm fascinated by that and how that might play out
, because it's like it's hardfor me to even wrap my head
around with that.
From a practical standpoint,what does that look like in my,
in, in our lives?
I?
Speaker 3 (42:08):
don't even know what to expect from all this stuff
2025, this is going to be ourwhole world, I mean if it could
help everyone get outside andmove more.
Speaker 1 (42:15):
I think that would be a good thing.
Speaker 3 (42:17):
That would be great.
That would be great.
Speaker 1 (42:19):
I've been on a.
Speaker 3 (42:20):
LinkedIn kick.
Lately there was somebody thatI have no idea who it was.
Somebody posted that their goalwas to spend a thousand hours
outside with their family.
Speaker 1 (42:31):
Oh, spend a thousand hours outside with their family
oh, I thought it was um oh goshwhat was her name?
I?
Speaker 3 (42:35):
know, I know exactly you're talking about.
Yeah, I was like good on you.
Speaker 1 (42:37):
That is amazing she hit her goal this year with her
and, of course, ops persontracking it, so yeah, well, that
was I was where my head went.
Speaker 3 (42:45):
Immediately it was like but how did you track that?
Like, what tool did you use?
Yeah, did everybody just go login that they played for an hour
outside?
I don't know was it anaggregate, or was it individual?
Yes sorry, yes the answer isyes, um, all right.
Speaker 1 (43:04):
so where where do we see all this going?
Yeah, four years into it,what's what's next?
What do y'all?
Where would you like to see usgoing with this?
Speaker 3 (43:16):
The show.
Speaker 1 (43:17):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (43:18):
Does the?
Speaker 1 (43:18):
show continue.
Does it morph into somethingelse?
I don't know, I don't know.
Speaker 3 (43:25):
I don't know.
Speaker 2 (43:27):
I feel like I mean it's organic you know, yeah, I
love, I love our show.
Speaker 3 (43:31):
I, I I certainly I don't know if it's reached its
shelf life and it needs to besunset just yet, but I think, uh
, you know, as long as peopleare interested in sharing their
career paths and their learnings, we want to share their stories
.
I love that idea, but I do seeopportunity for us to
(43:53):
potentially string togetherother show ideas.
I mean we have so many showideas you do, I mean I do.
Speaker 1 (44:05):
You're an idea generator, mike.
We know this, I know.
Speaker 3 (44:09):
It's a problem, I have, it's a gift.
This, I know it's a problem, Ihave, it's a gift.
It's the glass half fullversion.
People on my team are like stop, stop.
Yeah, I don't know.
I would like to see even morepeople come on and share.
(44:35):
I'd like to see more of the B2Cside come in and share a lot of
their challenges.
They're different, they're thesame and they're different
they're the same and they'redifferent, but they've been
doing marketing technology andautomation stuff operations for
longer.
Speaker 1 (44:56):
I mean, my first move into marketing was to build a
50 million household databasefor a company.
Speaker 3 (45:03):
Yeah, it's been around for longer.
It's been bigger challenges, soI'd like to see more of that.
I'd like to see a continuedpush for the advancement of,
like what does it mean to becertified?
That's obviously on my agenda,so I want to have more
(45:24):
conversations around that forour audience, you'll see more of
it from us, but yeah.
Speaker 2 (45:34):
But you know, I mean I, yeah, I mean, mean I agree
with everything you guys aresaying.
I think I would love to.
The b2c part is interesting forme specifically.
Um, most of the people that Iknow in real life, locally, they
are in the b2c spacedirect-to-consumer goods and I
know never to call them or textthem during Black Friday or
(45:54):
Boxing Day sales or anythinglike that, and that's just a
completely foreign world to me.
But they use a lot of thetechnology in a very similar way
, just on a different scale.
So I think that that's reallyinteresting.
I definitely think it would beinteresting to have more
discussions around some of thetopics that we had covered
(46:17):
during the Women's Breakfast,during WAPSA certification as
well.
I often get questions onLinkedIn about how did I get
into this role?
What are some suggestions ortips that I can give to people
who are looking to get into thisrole?
What are some suggestions ortips that I can give to people
who are looking to get into thisrole?
Because, unlike a lot of othercareer paths, there isn't a okay
, I'm going to study this andthen I'll get a job in marketing
(46:38):
ops.
Right, it's not always so clearcut or so defined.
So I think topics that kind oflean towards those areas are
things that I would definitelybe interested in.
Also, I just love originstories, right.
So guests that we had had, youknow, for example, johnny from
(47:01):
Slack and Vivian who had startedSlack Sleep, now known as Will
it, you know, like it's justconversations like that around
their entrepreneurial spirit, Ithink is always going to be
interesting and to hear howbusiness, to hear how they
started their businesses, thechallenges that they have as
(47:22):
small business owners.
I think there can be a lot oftakeaways and parallels, right,
when it comes to marketing, ops,people and how we digest
information and I don't know.
Speaker 1 (47:32):
Just lots of topics that I think that we haven't
covered, that I think we cancover too yeah, two, two
additional thoughts, or maybeit's a little slight difference
to what you just talked about,naomi, but one that just
occurred to me through ourconversation.
I wonder if it would be usefulto get some people from colleges
(47:53):
and universities to talk aboutwhat they're seeing in terms of
trends and how that could tieinto it and maybe even help
elevate the profession withinthe universities as a viable
career path.
Speaker 3 (48:05):
Oh, that would be killer.
That's a great.
Speaker 1 (48:07):
Yeah, that would be great and I think through our
connections, it sounds like weall three have some connections
to university folks, so I thinkthat would be an interesting one
.
The other one, and this is onethat so one of our past guests,
kyle Lacey, who I'm a big fan of, he for a while had a podcast
(48:28):
that he did.
It was I don't know, eachepisode was maybe 15 minutes and
what was really fascinating washe was talking to revenue
leaders and he would get reallydeep into kind of personal
stories and not about work stuff.
But, like you know, a guy was arecovering alcoholic and they
talked about that.
(48:48):
I mean, I think these deeperthings I'm not sure if it's this
may be one where it makes moresense, like, if we want to get
into stuff like that aboutpeople's stories from that
standpoint, right, the personalside of what it's like to be a
professional and dealing withthings might be an interesting
one.
And we've had a few people whohave opened up about challenges
(49:21):
that they've faced, whether itwas losing loved ones or going
through, you know,stress-induced kinds of things
or whatever.
But I think that might be kindof an interesting one.
And my guess is, naomi, youprobably heard stuff like that
in the intake forms you talkedabout for the women's.
What did you call it?
Mops, and mimosas.
Speaker 2 (49:37):
Yeah, I think it was called mops and mimosas.
That was Audrey's.
Speaker 1 (49:41):
I hadn't heard that yet.
I just heard the women'sbreakfast.
Speaker 3 (49:45):
We deliberated on what that name was going to be
and she landed on mops andmimosas.
I loved it.
I was like that was great.
Speaker 1 (49:51):
Yeah so.
Speaker 3 (49:52):
I think it'd be interesting to hear.
Speaker 1 (50:06):
So I guess maybe we end here with a shameless
request to our listeners, foragain, we always love getting
the honest feedback.
It's always good to know thatwe're connecting with you one
way or another for not helpingus get that, but we love your
ideas too.
If you want to see us go deeperinto certain of these subjects
or other ones that we didn'ttalk about, let us know.
Reach out to us.
I think we're all nodding ourheads here Like we are very open
(50:27):
to input and ideas, in fact.
In fact I um, I was interactingwith someone who wanted to be a
guest just today, who brought upsomething.
I was like, oh, actually we'venever talked about that and I
get it would be an interestingone for our audience and it
could be.
It wouldn't happen to be, Ithink, where it could go into a
practical like this is how I canuse something today or tomorrow
(50:49):
, so I learned could go into apractical like this is how I can
use something today or tomorrow, so I learned.
And other ones are big picturethings, you know more esoteric,
and I think we're open to allthose yeah, yeah, I totally
agree.
Speaker 3 (51:00):
If you've got a idea or you feel like you want to
share your story, we would love,love for you to come on and do
that.
I I personally I was justthinking about it this morning
again.
I was like maybe I'll spin up achannel for those that are like
I know it's a new year soeverybody does the like I'm
going to get fit or I'm going todo this or whatever.
(51:22):
I really am on a totallydifferent journey of my health
right now and I was like maybe Ilike that part of like we're
already in a community full ofpeople with like similar
interests in the, in thecategory of martech, but I like
getting one layer down to like,yeah, let's all support each
other for the, for the otherthing right like you're a
(51:42):
marathon runner, maybe you're acrossfit enthusiast or a
mountain biker.
I was like, maybe I'll spin up achannel for so anyway, I it all
.
That is to say, if you've gotother interests and you are game
to share them or you want toshare your background story.
I think that's what makes itpossible to relate to each other
(52:03):
in this field.
Yeah, because we all got heresomehow.
So, yep, yeah, anyway, well,four, Somehow so.
Yep.
Speaker 1 (52:10):
Yeah, anyway, four years.
I appreciate the two of you inthis.
We appreciate you together.
It's crazy.
It's like when I realized itwas four years, I was like four
years, is that right?
Speaker 3 (52:23):
Yes, blowing my mind too.
Yeah, I looked like a verydifferent human being four years
ago, I don't know, constantlyexhausted.
Speaker 1 (52:36):
That's mostly because I had a newborn, but you know
that's okay, and I'm on theother end where I've now got
ones that are in college orabout to head off to college.
Speaker 3 (52:46):
Yeah, we're running the gamut.
Speaker 1 (52:49):
So Naomi's got a new name as a new parent New-ish.
Speaker 2 (52:55):
New-ish.
Speaker 1 (52:57):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (52:58):
That's good.
Speaker 1 (53:00):
Well, good, well, this is fun.
Hopefully our audienceappreciates this sort of open
book view, like of where wethink things are.
So anything else before we wrapit up no, no, no no see y'all.
Speaker 3 (53:19):
Let's bring fling in may.
Let's go spring thing.
Speaker 1 (53:24):
all right, well, that sounds great.
Well again, always, always funtalking to you too and to all of
our listeners.
Thank you again for yoursupport.
As we said, we're always opento ideas and feedback and
suggestions, and if you have anidea or want to be a guest, talk
about something, we're all ears.
(53:44):
So bring them on to any of usand we be glad to talk to you
about it some more.
So until next time, byeeveryone, bye everybody.
Speaker 2 (53:55):
Bye everyone.
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