January 27, 2025 • 47 mins
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Explore the journey from stage acting to marketing operations with Cory Huff, Marketing Operations Manager at Discogs, as he shares insights on storytelling, personalization, and emotional intelligence in marketing. The episode highlights collaboration and the nuances between B2C and B2B marketing environments.
• Investigation of storytelling as a powerful marketing tool
• Discussion on personalizing marketing messages
• Examination of the transition from B2C to B2B marketing
• Insights on data challenges within marketing operations
• Importance of team collaboration in marketing execution
• Role of emotional intelligence for marketers
• Strategies for implementing change within organizations
Link to the book Team Habits: How Small Actions Lead to Extraordinary Results here
Episode Brought to You By MO Pros
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 2 (00:00):
Hello and welcome to another episode of OpsCast
brought to you byMarketingHousecom, powered by
all the MoPros out there.
I am your host, Michael Hartman, joined today by my co-host,
Naomi Liu, tapping up there inthe Pacific Northwest.
Speaker 3 (00:12):
Blue skies today Definitely doesn't feel like
winter right now.
Speaker 2 (00:15):
It feels like winter here in Dallas, Although we
somehow it was the straightestof the week of the snowstorms
and ice storms along the GulfCoast that somehow didn't hit us
just north of that, which isreally bizarre.
So snow on Galveston Island andin Houston Weird stuff.
So joining us today is CoreyHuff, currently Marketing
(00:40):
Operations Manager at Discogs.
Is it Discogscom?
We'll have to clarify Before hebegan working in marketing.
Corey spent more than 10 yearsas a professional stage actor
and director.
His background makes him trulya story-driven marketer with an
enthusiasm for tech.
He has worked on data-drivencampaigns in B2B tech, fine art
and B2C music.
His book how to Sell your ArtOnline is a perennial bestseller
(01:02):
.
Corey, thanks for joining ustoday.
Thank you so much for having meand it is discogscom.
Speaker 3 (01:08):
Everybody says discogs and the name is short
for discography.
Speaker 2 (01:14):
Sure.
Speaker 1 (01:14):
So, discogscom.
Speaker 2 (01:16):
Yeah, I think.
I could take us off on a verydeep rabbit hole if we started
talking about music, and I darenot do that, you know, I feel
like we've had a lot of guestson, and I've always loved
hearing origin stories.
Speaker 3 (01:28):
But I think we're the first theater to bridge that
gap between that chasm I guesschasm, or however you pronounce
it between theater and but he'snot, but he's not.
Speaker 2 (01:42):
We've had at least one other person who has a
theater connection I think he'sthe first who has uh been on the
stage right on a regular basison the stage.
Yeah, yeah, so you had someonewho was more, uh, kind of the
directorial side of it.
I don't know my area ofexpertise, so I don't know what
to call it.
If I remember it was, it was aplay in tetherton, maybe I can't
remember um anyway.
Speaker 1 (02:04):
So I am like you like .
Speaker 2 (02:06):
I've always loved hearing these origin stories, so
why don't you?
Speaker 1 (02:10):
we start there, corey , with your like what's your
story?
Speaker 2 (02:12):
career journey, how'd you end up at where you are?
And, uh, I always like to hearyou know what were their pivotal
moments or pivotal people thathad an outsized impact on your
career.
Speaker 1 (02:25):
Yeah, you know, I came to marketing in a very
roundabout way.
You know, when I was in highschool I knew that I wanted to
go to college, but nobody elsein my family had gone to college
and everybody in my family wasvery blue collar, like my
stepdad was a welder and a truckdriver, my uncle was a roofer,
(02:46):
and so nobody I didn't knowanybody that knew how to like
get into a professional career,right, so I just sort of
followed my interests, whichincluded stage and and theater
acting stuff and I was in atouring shakespeare troupe as a
teenager, so that was just whatI was interested in.
Speaker 3 (03:06):
And I ended up going to college for theater.
Got my BFA in acting from theUniversity of Utah and promptly
graduated into the 2007-2008financial crisis.
Speaker 1 (03:39):
So jobs were few and far between and I knew that I
didn't necessarily want to moveto New York city because my
interest in theater was notBroadway, it was more like I
want to do weird adaptations ofShakespeare and's a few cities
around the country where weirdtheater nerds can exist and have
complimentary careers, whereeverybody in the theater company
has a day job and then they doweird theater at night.
Speaker 3 (04:02):
And so that's how I started my career out.
I moved to.
Speaker 1 (04:04):
Portland and I.
My first job was working for amarketing agency that was
running Google ad managementservices, and this was just.
Speaker 3 (04:14):
you know, probably two years or three years after
Google ads even came out.
Speaker 2 (04:19):
So, it was still very new, I remember those days.
Speaker 3 (04:21):
Yeah, and so nobody knew what we were doing, like we
were all just making stuff upas we went along.
I remember those days job fitswell with my plans to do theater
in the evening and that kind ofworked.
And I did that as aprofessional stage actor for a
(04:52):
decade after I moved to Portland.
And I still do shows here andthere, but it's not my primary
focus anymore just because Ilike to have money but.
Speaker 1 (05:03):
I do really enjoy making theater and telling
stories, and I still do thatwhen I, when I get the
opportunity, once, once a yearor so that's awesome.
Speaker 2 (05:12):
I'm curious what's your?
What was your favorite?
Uh, shakespeare play that youdid an interpretation of uh,
it's hard to say one favorite,but I did, we did a production
one summer where I
Speaker 1 (05:26):
got to play.
We did Romeo and Juliet in repwith Hamlet.
Speaker 2 (05:31):
So that means we alternated weekends.
Speaker 1 (05:33):
We did Romeo and Juliet one weekend, hamlet.
The other weekend I got to playone of Hamlet's friends the two
kind of idiots that run alongwith Hamlet in that show.
And then in Romeo and Juliet Igot to play Tybalt, who is the
guy that Romeo kills and thenhas to flee town because of it.
(05:56):
And then I was the fightcaptain, for that meaning that I
was the one that worked withthe fight.
Choreographer to set and stageall of the fights and then train
all the actors on safety andmaking sure that we get the
fights correctly.
In my background I also havedone hundreds of hours of stage
combat with swords and all kindsof hand-to-hand weapons, so
(06:20):
that was one of my favoriteproductions, because I got to do
so much stage combat for thatone, uh.
And then we also did, uh, acollection of Ray Bradbury short
stories that we adapted for thestage.
We did it in a very big garage,so there was literally like 10
seats but, it was just a passionproject that we wanted to do
(06:41):
and we knew that not a lot ofpeople would come.
Speaker 3 (06:44):
So that was super fun .
Speaker 1 (06:45):
But then I did like I directed Seussical the musical
for a church in my community andwe have like 2,500 people see
it over the course of threenights.
Speaker 3 (06:56):
So I've done.
You know small theater and bigtheater.
Speaker 2 (06:59):
It's really fun.
Yeah, I am not a Shakespeareperson in general.
There's a great Shakespearetheater here in Dallas.
I haven't been to in years andjust realized it, but I remember
.
I don't know Hamlet, but theydid a version of Hamlet that was
like Hamlet in five minutes,which was pretty ridiculous,
yeah, so ridiculous.
(07:22):
But fantastic at the same timeso well, good, let's, let's talk
about so if I, if I'mremembering from our
conversation before when you Ican't remember who was- at
discogs or somewhere else.
your kind of entry into, I guessmarketing ops was really just
(07:44):
email marketing and then it'sevolved from that.
So what is it?
A?
Did I get that right?
If not, correct it?
And then you know what are someof the lessons you learned
along the way there.
Yeah, that's not necessarilywhere I started with marketing
ops.
Speaker 3 (07:58):
I was at, so after the, agency that I mentioned.
Speaker 1 (08:00):
I went to work for a tech, a VC-backed tech startup
called Jamry, and at the time wewere building identity
solutions.
So I was a very early employeethere and had a couple of
different roles, but where Iended up was marketing strategy
(08:20):
and since we were building dataproducts mostly what that meant
was working with our clientmarketing ops teams to figure
out how to use the data that wascoming across from your
Facebook or Google login tocreate personalized marketing
campaigns campaigns.
(08:45):
So we would do things like wepartnered with UMG on the Lady
Gaga Born this Way album launchand figured out how to take all
of the millions of people thatwere registering for that event
and create some personalizedmarketing campaigns for those
folks.
And then I just kind of wentfrom there.
I worked at a couple ofdifferent data startups,
including a CDP, then went anddid my own thing for a little
while and then, yeah, I came toDiscogs coming off of a startup
(09:08):
that didn't make it and I wassort of looking for a way to
downshift and make my life alittle easier for a little while
and took on an email marketingrole which quickly expanded to
basically being now the head ofmarketing apps there.
Speaker 2 (09:28):
Do you happen to have , like I'm curious about this
right, so do you have a strong.
Speaker 1 (09:33):
B2C network that you can lean on, Like is there a
MoPros for B2C?
Speaker 3 (09:39):
Slacker that you're a part of right.
Well, yeah, the answer's no.
I've been looking around, so ifanybody knows of one, please
let me know.
That's not entirely fair Frommy time as a startup founder and
consultant, I do have a lot offriends who have done some B2C
stuff.
Speaker 1 (10:00):
And the e-commerce field team is pretty interesting
, but that's primarily forfounders.
The e-commerce field team ispretty interesting, but that's
primarily for founders, right?
Speaker 3 (10:12):
So they didn't let me stick around after I was no
longer a founder.
But that's a joke.
I do have some folks that arejust kind of in my network that
I will ask questions and talk to.
Speaker 1 (10:20):
But yeah, I'm not aware of any B2C marketer
communities like Mopros?
Speaker 3 (10:26):
Why do you think that is?
Speaker 1 (10:28):
It's a great question .
I don't really know.
I think B2B this is me riffingright, I don't have good data
backing this, but I think partof it is that B2B marketers are
involved in team selling fromthe beginning.
(10:48):
Right, we are working as a teamto create an outcome.
You know, whether you're doingABM or whatever, you really have
to collaborate pretty heavilywith other marketers and with
the sales teams.
So I think that maybe B2Bmarketers are a little more
prone to collaboration in thatway, but B2C marketers often you
(11:13):
are working on a pretty largescale and you're either at a
little tiny e-commerce shopwhere you're the owner and you
maybe have a marketing assistant, or you are at a big retailer
and you just have your role andyou just do that and maybe
there's not a lot of need forcollaboration or community in
that way.
Speaker 3 (11:33):
I see yeah.
Speaker 1 (11:34):
That makes sense.
So have you ever thought about?
Speaker 3 (11:37):
making the jump to B2B.
Speaker 1 (11:39):
And do you think maybe from your perspective,
right being part of the MoPros?
Speaker 3 (11:43):
community.
What do you think that?
Speaker 1 (11:46):
jump would be.
Do you feel like it would be?
Speaker 3 (11:48):
oh wow, I'm totally out of sorts here or just by the
nature of being in thecommunity and osmosis and
whatnot.
Well, I started at a B2B right,so that first tech startup that
I mentioned.
Speaker 1 (12:00):
You know, I started in an account management role
just because they neededsomebody to stop talking to
prevent our clients from talkingto the engineers.
So I started in accountmanagement, and then I was
working in marketing strategy,which is kind of a unique B2B
role where I was helping bothour marketing team with building
(12:21):
strategy, but also working withclient marketing teams and
helping them understand how ourtools work and what to do with
our tools and the data right andthis was like 2010.
So a lot of big scale datacampaigns were not common at
that time.
Speaker 3 (12:38):
Do you think it would be more difficult for somebody
to go from B2C to B2B or theother way?
Speaker 1 (12:44):
around.
I don't know.
One of the hallmarks of my owncareer is that I just kind of do
whatever's interesting to meand like I will often tell
people that my core skill set isactually just learning stuff
really fast.
Speaker 2 (13:00):
I think that there are some challenges going back
and forth right Like.
Speaker 3 (13:05):
Michael and I had this discussion before about
whether or not data fidelity andcleanliness matters more in B2B
or B2C?
Speaker 1 (13:14):
I think there's an argument to be made either way
and I think that theirattribution is probably harder
in B2C because there's so muchhappening and so many channels
involved and so many peopleinvolved and you get into data
sampling issues and all thatkind of stuff.
Speaker 3 (13:31):
But I think that there.
Speaker 1 (13:33):
The other one is probably that B2B marketing is a
lot more buttoned up, at leastin the customer-facing version
of it.
Speaker 2 (13:41):
And as somebody who tends to be.
Speaker 1 (13:46):
But you mean like more formal, yeah, yeah.
Yeah, if you're selling, youknow, million dollar contracts,
uh, million dollar sas contracts.
People tend to be prettyconservative about how they talk
about things, uh, whereas ifyou're selling music or selling,
you know uh, retail furnitureor something, you can be a
(14:06):
little more casual and goofy.
Speaker 2 (14:09):
Yeah, I mean.
I would argue that there couldbe less buttoned up
communication.
Speaker 1 (14:14):
I'm with you there.
Speaker 2 (14:15):
So I have an opinion about your question now, Bate.
Yeah, biting my tongue a littlebit, but I remember talking to
somebody years ago because myoriginal, my first step into the
marketing world was in a B2Cone and it was short-lived.
Most of it has been B2B.
And I just, I think thetransition from B2B to B2C, to a
(14:38):
B2C environment would be easier, and that's because I think B2B
is just inherently a more thisis why I want to clarify when
you said buttoned up, corey islike I don't think from a
process of people and like Ithink there's, just it's just
it's kind of a mess on the B2Bside, Whereas on the.
Speaker 3 (14:57):
B2C side yes, there are challenges, and there's
certainly scale is probably.
Speaker 2 (15:03):
The scale is significantly different but the
complexities of things like.
Building a database that youidentify people who are part of
a household is a prettywell-known thing, right.
But trying to do that on theanalog, on the B2B side, of
trying to understand who are thepeople within an organization,
(15:24):
their role.
It's a really complicated thingand usually you've got a bunch
of human entered stuff wherepeople are incented.
There's no real incentive tofocus on the quality of the data
.
So there's not much right is areal challenge.
I'm not saying one is betterthan the other, but I do think
that if you were coming from B2Cto B2B and you didn't, I think
(15:47):
that could be overwhelming, eventhough the volume of data was
much lower.
Speaker 1 (15:51):
Yeah, I think it also depends on the stage of your
career and how much experienceyou have, and whether you're
going from an equivalent role.
If you're going email marketingin B2C to email marketing in
B2B.
I think that's probably arelatively easy transition, but
if you're going email marketingin B2C to email marketing in B2B
, I think that's probably arelatively easy transition.
But if you're going CRMoperations, across those that's
(16:13):
probably going to be a prettytough transition because that's
going to be pretty wildlydifferent.
Speaker 2 (16:17):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (16:20):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (16:21):
I think you're right.
Tools and platforms are alittle different.
Say, on email, right, becauseyou've got tools that are made
for the scale that you do at B2C, that are different than B2B,
and all that Saturation rulestoo, yeah, I get like I don't
know every single day Two timesa day.
Speaker 3 (16:44):
Saturation rules hit a bit different't know Every
single day, two times a day fromthe same retail Saturation
rules hit a bit different yeah.
Speaker 1 (16:48):
We have all kinds of controls and limits on how many
times we message people, becausein retail you get whale buyers,
right, people who are going tobuy a ton of stuff anyway,
anyway, and then identifyingthose people and limiting how
many, how often you message them, even though they're going to
trigger more messages becausethey're buying more and they're
(17:09):
on the site more uh, figuringout how to not piss off your
whale buyers is uh pretty uniqueto bdc, I think yeah well, it's
funny, because that whole ideaof that frequency of
communication.
Speaker 2 (17:23):
Nami reminds me.
So again, when I first movedinto marketing I would call it
direct marketing.
So I was involved with buildinga huge database for a company
that was still doing direct mail, telemarketing.
And really email was not reallya thing at that point, it was
at least not a significant thing.
And really email was not reallya thing at that point, it was at
(17:46):
least not a significant thing,but one of the things that I
learned along the way is that itwas actually like Visa one of
the Visa companies that soldVisa cards had figured out
because they monitored veryclosely what happened.
It was typically the thirdmailing that generated the most
response.
So their whole goal was ifyou've got a target of people
(18:06):
you're going to send stuff to,you, send the first two very
quickly back to back and thenthe third one is where you hope
to get.
I don't know if those numbersstill hold true today, or it was
a long time ago, but I thinkthat probably still, there's
something probably comparable tothat on the email side, which
is why we you and I, we all getlots of emails from retailers,
or you know consumer orientedcompanies.
Speaker 1 (18:31):
Yeah, I mean we run flash sales at Discogs, where
you know a large portion of oursellers will put a big chunk of
their inventory on sale for 24,48 hours and we will send you
know an email in advance givingeverybody a heads up.
And then we'll send two orthree emails in that two-day
period and the final email isthe one that usually drives the
most sales, because there's anurgency, like the sale is ending
(18:54):
and people go okay, fine, I'mgoing to buy the stuff that I've
been looking at.
Yeah, that's interesting.
Speaker 2 (19:00):
Yeah, that's interesting.
So you've worked in both B2Band B2C.
Speaker 1 (19:11):
We've already touched on a few things that are
similar in nature, some thingsthat are different.
Speaker 2 (19:16):
Are there other things that you, from your
experience, have seen, that arethings to consider that are
different for B2B and B2C?
Speaker 1 (19:25):
Yeah, we talked about the data scale problem.
You know if you're adecent-sized retailer, it's
relatively easy to get a fewmillion people a month on your
website and if you've beenaround like Discogs is 25 years
old this year, so you canimagine we are the de facto
recorded music marketplace right, we get millions and millions
(19:47):
of people.
So I'm interviewing right nowfor a marketing ops specialist
role and I've been asking peoplelike what experience do you
have writing SQL queries for adatabase that has millions right
?
Because that requires adifferent kind of approach than
you know a couple hundredthousand or something, and a lot
(20:09):
of marketers just don'tunderstand, like the, the
challenge and how time consumingit can be to comb through that
kind of data and find signalsthat are uh useful and figuring
out how to identify whichsignals are the most important
is a challenge.
(20:30):
And if you're a small company,like I've been on B2B teams
where the whole company was like150 people and the marketing
team was like five people andit's relatively easy to kind of
know basically who's in your CRMand all that kind of stuff.
At Discogs we know maybe thewhale buyers and we know our top
(20:54):
sellers, but getting to knowhow the mass audience responds
is pretty challenging.
Responds is pretty challenging.
And we're trying to balance thatwith creating personalized
campaigns so that we're not overmessaging people and creating
messages that are unique andrelevant to people.
Do you you?
Speaker 2 (21:17):
mentioned attribution .
We just had another guest onrecently that also has B2C
experience, so I'm glad we'regetting multiple people.
But it felt to me like therewas something we talked about
where I'm surprised you calledit attribution, because I think
she used another term and Idon't remember what it was.
(21:39):
There was a sister who was likeoh, this is like the challenge
with attribution in the B2Bworld.
Right, there's this likebuilding that linkage from.
Speaker 3 (21:47):
We did this activity to.
Speaker 2 (21:48):
This was the outcome Ideally, some sort of revenue
right and time linking.
That is actually really hard.
You find that same thing, is it?
And you said I think, it'sharder in the B2C world.
Why did you say that?
Speaker 1 (22:02):
I think because you're just dealing with more
data, so there's more noise.
Speaker 3 (22:06):
So in the.
Speaker 1 (22:07):
B2B world if you're doing last touch attribution,
you might see that somebody gottouched by a LinkedIn ad and you
met them at a conference andthen you sent them an email and
they signed up for a demo.
Right On the B2C side, somebodymight see your ads on any of
(22:30):
five different platforms.
Right, we're on Google and Metaand some display ad networks,
and then we're also runningemails and a bunch of other
stuff.
So running emails and a bunch ofother stuff, drilling down to
that individual is very timeconsuming.
(22:50):
So we try to do it in cohorts.
And when you start trying to doattribution in cohorts you know
you're talking.
Do we do mixed attribution?
Do we do last touch?
How do we attribute thosethings?
And then you run into samplingissues where if you're using
Google Analytics, especially GA4, everything is sampled.
(23:11):
So you have to export all thedata if you want to start
getting granular with it and itgets pretty daunting, pretty
quick.
Speaker 2 (23:21):
Yeah, it's interesting.
You've worked in agenciessounds like you did some of your
own consulting and stuff likethat and you've been in-house
with um what?
Kind of same question right,what are the some of the
similarities and differences inthose, those two environments
that you've seen?
Speaker 1 (23:43):
I think that probably every in-house marketer would
benefit from working as aconsultant or maybe at an agency
just because, as an in-housemarketer, you think about your
role right, I work in emailmarketing and I'm just going to
worry about email and I don'treally think about the broader
(24:04):
role.
Right, I work in emailmarketing and I'm just going to
worry about email and I'm notgoing to.
I don't really think about thebroader picture, right?
But as a consultant you have toquickly get in and learn how to
identify whatever the problem is, whatever problem you've been
hired to solve.
You not only have to understandwhat that problem is, but the
underlying root causes of thatproblem, at least if you're a
good consultant.
Speaker 2 (24:23):
Or uncovering what the real problem is.
Yeah, that's not what was toldto you.
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (24:35):
Oh, my very first experience as a consultant, I
was referred into how there is aFortune 500 company that they
were building websites for cardealerships so when we went in
there to talk to them,ostensibly the problem was, we
were trying to figure out how toput social media icons and
other features.
How to?
Speaker 1 (24:56):
integrate those into websites, and nobody on the team
really knew anything aboutsocial.
Speaker 3 (25:00):
So I brought in another friend who was a website
designer and we went in andstarted looking at everything.
Speaker 2 (25:07):
The actual problem was that the team hated each
other.
Speaker 3 (25:10):
Like they just couldn't talk to each other, and
so like what I ended up doingwas spending all of my time like
interviewing team members oneby one and then going back to
the head of the team and sayinghere's what I found out Like the
reason your team can't figureit out is because they can't
talk to each other.
Speaker 1 (25:27):
And that was a pretty awkward conversation because I
was young, I was I wasn't even30 yet and I was figuring out,
like, how to navigate those teamdynamics.
Speaker 2 (25:38):
I think it's also important to acknowledge, though
, too, that some of it can bepersonality, a personality trait
too, as well, right so?
Speaker 3 (25:47):
in-house right there are going to be marketing ops,
folks that are want to be onlyindividual contributors.
Speaker 1 (25:54):
They want to, you know, get their tickets and work
their projects and send outtheir emails, and that's really
kind of what they want to do.
Speaker 3 (26:01):
Maybe some troubleshooting but not
necessarily ask questions,because that's just.
They just want to do the workright, Sure.
Speaker 2 (26:08):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (26:10):
And I feel like there are also you know some of the
agencies that I've worked with.
Speaker 3 (26:14):
There might be, you know, the customer facing
consultant that I'm working with, but they generally will have,
you know, one or two peoplebehind the scenes that are also
doing some of that work too, andthey're they're not the people
that I'm generally interfacingwith every day.
Speaker 1 (26:28):
So I think I do want to call out to that.
Speaker 3 (26:30):
Absolutely.
It's valuable to have um.
Both sides, but you could alsobe an individual contributor at
an agency too right, and just bethat person doing that you know
behind the scenes work my team.
Speaker 1 (26:43):
She wants to do a great job and she's extremely
detail-oriented and she's savedmy saved me a whole bunch of
times because she just catchesevery detail and knows what
(27:05):
we're doing, back and forthtotally.
Speaker 2 (27:08):
I could not agree more on that um I don't know was
there other things that youkind of see as similar or
different between in-house?
Speaker 3 (27:19):
and consultants world .
Hmm, I mean the broader scope.
Speaker 1 (27:26):
Can I say no?
Speaker 2 (27:28):
Yeah, there probably are, but I can't think of
anything.
Speaker 3 (27:30):
Nothing immediately comes to mind I think my
challenge is I can't help butask a lot of questions so
anytime I go in a housesomewhere and start asking
questions, it's the same thing Ido as a consultant, because
that's just the way my brainworks so I tend to ask a lot of
questions, which means that Iend up getting pushed into,
(27:52):
pushed out of individualcontributor roles and into
organizational or leadershiproles.
Speaker 2 (27:59):
I guess neither role this is more of a, not even
related to being an announcer orconsultant.
Do you have you uh everencountered scenarios where uh
cause it sounds like you have?
Speaker 1 (28:17):
where you've had to be like a translator and it can
be.
Speaker 3 (28:19):
It can be a uh for instance.
Speaker 2 (28:20):
So for instance you're, working with say uh,
more of a tech team and you'retrying to solve a problem for a
business.
Enable some campaign thatrequires some something to be
done within the technologyplatforms.
You've got to do it.
Um and uh terminology likeyou're in a meeting terminology
between the two teams everyone'ssaying the same words, but you
(28:44):
walk away and like two verydifferent understandings of what
, what we just talked about.
How do you, how do you dealwith that?
Speaker 1 (28:48):
uh, I feel like that's been the core of my whole
career.
I I came into marketing opsbecause that first tech startup
that I was at they hired me asan account manager but we didn't
really have like roledefinitions or like do this or
don't do that, literally when Iwas hired on day one.
(29:09):
Uh, the head of sales handed mea folder full of uh client
contacts and said hey, can youjust make sure these guys don't
have to talk to engineeringanymore?
And so my job there was okay,feel the client call Okay, I
hear you You're upset about thisor you need that Okay whatever,
Go talk to the engineering team.
Speaker 3 (29:31):
Hey client wants this .
Speaker 1 (29:33):
Engineering manager tells me X, y, z, and then I
have to ask 10 clarifyingquestions because I didn't
understand it, and then I goback to the client and say
here's what the engineering teamcan deliver.
Speaker 3 (29:42):
And try to figure out how to be clear enough to the
engineers that they understandwhat the requirements are, but
be diplomatic enough with theclient to help them understand
that what they're asking for isor is not reasonable.
So that was kind of how I gotstarted here.
Speaker 1 (30:13):
So that was kind of how I got started here and then
in every organization that I'vebeen in that has an engineering
team and a marketing team.
There is a wildly divergent wayof working on those two teams
and marketing ops usually sitsbetween those two things, right,
and so right now, at discogs,we are in the middle of figuring
out what that means for us.
Right, like we, we now havemore engineering resources, okay
, does that mean that engineerwho does engineering report to
uh, what is?
the product process for thatlike is marketing a product
owner or are we, uh, you know,going through the product team
(30:35):
to request things like figuringall of that stuff out, and then
you know when, when a marketingproduct team to request things
like figuring?
Speaker 3 (30:41):
all of that stuff out , and then you know when, when a
marketing leader says, hey, whycan't we just X, y, z?
Speaker 1 (30:44):
And then I have to go well before.
Speaker 3 (30:46):
I go talk to the engineering team about that.
Speaker 1 (30:49):
maybe you can help me clarify some things, right,
because engineering is going toask what does that mean?
Six times?
Speaker 2 (30:55):
Yeah, yes, hopefully they ask actually rather than
assume.
Speaker 3 (31:00):
I've run into that before.
Speaker 2 (31:02):
No, I feel like half of my job is just like.
This is what you said.
Speaker 3 (31:10):
Is this what you mean ?
And playing it back in adifferent way, then I go to turn
to the other team and go.
Speaker 1 (31:14):
This is what I heard, you hear the same thing, you
know until we get heads nodding.
Speaker 2 (31:18):
And it requires I think it requires some technical
expertise.
So if you're talking aboutthings like systems and the
terminology that's used in, say,Marketo versus Eloqua versus
HubSpot versus, Salesforce right.
There's just the word campaign.
Speaker 3 (31:36):
That's always my best example.
Speaker 2 (31:37):
When people use the word campaign, there's about 10
different meanings that they canhave, and it's really.
It leads to all kinds of chaosif you, if you don't clarify
that.
Speaker 1 (31:47):
So or what the heck is a javascript tag?
Speaker 3 (31:49):
yeah, you don't hear about eloqua very much anymore I
do do you?
Yeah, I, I don.
I don't generally hear thatanymore, but that's a different
discussion.
Speaker 2 (32:00):
Yeah, I mean in the general space in the general
marketing ops space.
I think you're probably right,but there's still a lot of big
companies.
It's probably meant for moreenterprise.
I think it's built under thehood for that.
Like I always say, there aretrade-offs with all these
(32:23):
different platforms.
I feel like it was reallystrong at certain things,
whereas Marketo is stronger atother things and there's not
much overlap, generally speaking, in my experience.
So it kind of depends on whatyou need.
And then HubSpot I just don'thave an opinion because I
haven't worked enough in it andnotice I didn't bring up part of
that let's not Whatever it'scalled.
Speaker 3 (32:45):
We don't talk about part of that.
Speaker 2 (32:47):
It's like my club.
Speaker 3 (32:52):
When you were describing what you were doing.
Speaker 2 (32:53):
I had this office space image in my head, right.
Speaker 1 (32:56):
What would you say you do here?
Yeah, you're doing.
I had this office space imagein my head, right.
What would you say you do here?
Speaker 3 (33:01):
yeah, um, I am fascinated by the sort of cult,
of work, like the culty behavioraround the different marketing
automation platforms right, Ididn't mean to open a can of
worms and derail the wholeconversation.
This could be another podcastepisode.
I just heard telephone.
My ears perked up.
(33:21):
I'm like whoa, I haven't heardthat for a while.
I went to a conference a coupleyears ago and it was in Boston,
so those who are listening willknow what conference that was.
And I was there and I kind ofsat there and observed and
thought this is weird behaviorLike there's a whole bunch of
people that are like superexcited and like cheerleading
(33:41):
for a marketing automationsoftware platform, that's pretty
weird.
And a couple of the bigautomation platforms have built
up like that.
Speaker 1 (33:51):
They intentionally nurture that experience and I'm
over here going.
I've used like eight differentmarketing automation platforms
over the course of my career andthey all are good or bad at
various aspects of what we'redoing and I don't feel
emotionally attached to any ofthem.
(34:11):
Do you feel that way with otherproducts?
I'm curious Do you have aloyalty to a specific brand of?
Speaker 3 (34:20):
car Are you?
Speaker 2 (34:22):
an Apple fan.
Are you more Android?
Because I find that.
Speaker 3 (34:26):
I think people like to belong to a community, sure.
Speaker 1 (34:29):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (34:33):
So I'm curious if that extends to everything or
just….
Speaker 1 (34:35):
There are certain products that I am loyal to that
.
Speaker 3 (34:38):
I buy over and over again Like I'm a gigantic
chocolate nerd so I buy a lot ofchocolates.
Speaker 1 (34:46):
But when I buy chocolate for like day to day,
like baking or making hot,chocolate.
I usually buy Valrhona becausethey're big enough that I can
buy in bulk, because they're bigenough that I can buy in bulk.
But there are niche chocolatemakers that I love buying, like
Maru, but they don't make like.
They only make tiny little bars, which are incredible and super
(35:08):
tasty.
But I wouldn't want to pay $12for a three-ounce bar of
chocolate to make a cake, right,right?
So yeah, like there's like thatum that, I'm definitely loyal to
I am.
Speaker 2 (35:23):
I have very few loyalties like that there's a
couple but they're very like cardealership that we use and that
the family like they're.
They keep using them, right andthey've done nothing to sway me
.
Speaker 1 (35:37):
But it's not not loyal to the brand of car, it's
more to the dealership yeah, Iwill say like a lot of companies
don't do a very good jobbuilding community but like
discogs where I work, if I walkaround pretty much any city in
the us, and I'm wearing thehoodie that I have on right now,
which is a discogs hoodiepeople see that logo and they
(35:59):
come up to me and they go wheredid you get that Discogs hoodie?
And I'll tell them that I workthere and we'll have a 10-minute
conversation about how cool itis to work there.
Speaker 3 (36:07):
And it's the first place I've ever worked where
people think it's cool that Iwork there.
Speaker 1 (36:11):
So that sense of loyalty that people have is
really, really fascinating to me.
Well, so the one that's likethat for me with the wearing
something else.
Speaker 2 (36:23):
Actually I tell this so.
I live in Dallas.
I went to SMU here in Dallas.
If I wear an SMU shirt aroundtown I rarely get any kind of
commentary.
But my son goes to theUniversity of Arkansas, which is
not that far away with a lot ofalumni in the area if.
I wear one of those shirtsguaranteed at least one person
(36:45):
will say something to me it'sjust like it's that kind of I
don't know if it's the samething, but yeah, it's really
interesting so
Speaker 1 (36:56):
well so.
Speaker 2 (36:57):
I want to get on to one more subject with you think
for sure, because we talked alittle bit about this, maybe
even hinted around it a littlebit.
Is this idea?
Of us being change agents andhow challenging that can be,
regardless of size, stage of thecompany, company.
(37:22):
What's been your experiences inthat kind of role as being a
change agent and any lessonsyou've learned that have either
helped you or like I'll never dothat again?
Speaker 3 (37:28):
Yeah, there's been a couple of good ones.
When I came on board at Discogsthe marketing function, the
marketing function, was prettynice.
Speaker 1 (37:41):
The team was a lot smaller than it is now, and
email marketing there amountedto a newsletter that got sent
out once a week.
And so we started looking at howcan we evolve this email
marketing to something that'smore personalized?
How can we do something that'smore targeted, more relevant to
(38:06):
a larger number of people?
And so I just started askingquestions like why are we doing
it this way and how would youguys feel if we decided to
change it in this way?
And then a lot of people,especially in established, older
companies, can be concernedabout making changes.
They might have well if wechange that.
Then people will be confused andthey'll wonder why we're doing
(38:28):
that and that kind of stuff.
And so the way I've learned toapproach it is by saying okay,
well what's the smallest versionof that that we could do and
what's a good hypothesis or testthat we can implement.
So you know, with email it wasokay.
Well, what if we sent apersonalized email to fans of
this one artist and we just didit one time just to see how
(38:52):
people reacted?
Speaker 3 (38:53):
Yeah, and then you circulate that with everybody on
the team and say you know thatwent pretty well.
Like here's the conversion ratePeople you know not a lot of
people unsubscribed.
Speaker 1 (39:05):
Here's how I think we could do that at scale.
And here's some of the steps.
The trust with the team to sayhere's here's how we could
automate some of this.
(39:25):
Here's how we can get this tothe point where we're reaching
you know, 50% of our audienceinstead of 10% of our audience,
right Uh?
but it really is about buildingrelationships with your team,
showing that you know whatyou're doing.
But it really is about buildingrelationships with your team,
showing that you know whatyou're doing and making sure
that everybody understands thethings you're trying to do,
because otherwise you'll getleadership saying no, don't do
(39:47):
that.
Speaker 2 (39:57):
Yeah, to me this is like the idea of right and then
you can yeah, if it doesn't gowell then, you haven't really
damaged things from asignificant standpoint, and
usually it can go faster, whichI'm a big fan of.
So what about you know?
You mentioned this time whenyou had to have that
uncomfortable conversation witha client because the problem
(40:18):
that you uncovered was not theone that they came to you for.
Yeah, how, how have you?
I mean, it sounded like thatwas relatively in your career.
How has that helped you asyou've moved along, was it like?
Is this something you werenaturally good?
Speaker 3 (40:30):
at, or did you have to like?
Have you had to?
Speaker 2 (40:33):
exercise that muscle, so to speak.
Speaker 1 (40:36):
I think I'm a probably an above average
communicator, but there's I'vecertainly improved a lot.
Right, I've read a lot of booksand taken some trainings and
things like that and learnedfrom some really great mentors
on, uh, how to communicatebetter, but I do think that I
have always been more interestedin why people behave the way
(40:57):
that they do and how I can helppeople uh achieve whatever goal
they want Right.
I love coaching and developingpeople.
I love seeing team members thatI think are really talented or
really smart or skilled andhelping them work towards
something that they would findreally fulfilling.
Um, being able to just havesome emotional intelligence with
(41:22):
people that you work with canget you a long way towards
whatever your goals are, and itjust makes it a better
experience for everybody Ifeverybody feels like they can
trust each other and belongtogether.
Speaker 3 (41:38):
Yeah, I agree.
No, that's a good that's.
I wonder if, like, do you feellike that's always been innately
in you or has that developed?
Yeah, I mean, we get into, likewe could get into some deep
deep psychology, right Like my.
Speaker 1 (41:50):
uh, my fiance is a therapist and so we've had some
deep, deep conversations aboutwhy each of us are the way that
we are.
And I've done a fair bit oftherapy, you know, and I think
that I grew up in a householdwhere I had to be really aware
of how the other people in myhome were behaving, and that I
could if I was paying attentionkind of nudge them towards
(42:15):
behaving in a way that was morepredictable or safe for me.
And so there's certainly likethat was in me from a very young
age and then as I aged into theworkforce and started taking
jobs and stuff, I would run intobosses who were maybe a little
tyrannical or just not veryemotionally intelligent, and I
had to learn how to navigatethat and say, okay, if I talk to
(42:38):
them this way and communicatethat way, then I'll be safe and
my job will be safe, and therest of the team will be able to
function better like that kindof stuff, all of our interesting
personality.
quirks come from our childhood,so yeah this is something that
I've been doing for most of mylife, and I think it's that mix
of like emotional intelligenceand interest in technology is
(43:03):
the core of what I've done in mycareer.
Speaker 2 (43:09):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (43:12):
It's interesting because I see a lot of I'm just
going to call it.
Speaker 2 (43:17):
I think it is whining .
These people are doing thisthing and it's just so stupid.
Why are they doing this?
I have to hold back a lot oftimes because I do think part of
that is just not taking thetime to go put yourselves in
their shoes, or try to putyourself in their shoes and
understand what might bemotivating them.
Good example right.
Probably everyone willunderstand when you get
(43:37):
struggles in their shoes andunderstand, like, what might be
motivating them.
Right, you know, is a goodexample.
Right, probably everyone willunderstand, like when he
struggles with sales teams.
Right, you know, why won't theyupdate their opportunities on a
timely basis?
Speaker 1 (43:48):
well, like the reality is incentives not there
right they're not going to getpaid more or less?
On that right but, you're goingto get paid on his.
Did I win or?
Not and if you don't recognizethat?
Speaker 2 (44:00):
it's going to be hard to motivate them to make change
, so you've got to find anotherway.
So could you get frustratedabout it?
Yeah, would it help change athing?
Speaker 1 (44:10):
Probably not, so if you want it to change, you have
to think about how they might bethinking about this situation.
Yeah, I think the challenge forall of us is to be curious
instead of judgmental.
Speaker 3 (44:26):
That question of why are they doing this has to go
from being a statement ofjudgment to an actual question.
Speaker 1 (44:32):
Why are they doing this?
Speaker 3 (44:34):
They've been told, so why are they doing this?
Speaker 2 (44:37):
If you're just talking about Ted Lasso, I'm
just.
You know, Ted Lasso is a greatexample.
Speaker 1 (44:43):
I was thinking I should mention a couple of
things that I think are helpfulfor marketers who might want to
be a little more emotionallyintelligent, and I think that's
one of them.
I love Ted Lasso.
It's a great show, ted Lasso,it's a great show.
Also, shout out to one of mygood friends, charlie Gilkey,
who wrote a book called TeamHabits that I think is really,
(45:04):
really effective.
We've implemented a lot of whathe suggests in his book at
Discogs.
Also, I think studying anypsychology or Buddhist thought,
the writings of Thich Nhat Hanhhave been really influential for
me in understanding how to sitwith my anger or how to
(45:26):
effectively communicate withpeople when feelings are high
right.
Speaker 3 (45:32):
All of those things benefit people who want to have
more satisfying careers.
Yeah, wow, that feels like areally good place to stop so.
Speaker 2 (45:44):
Corey, thank you so much, it's been great and thanks
for joining us.
I'm glad we could make thatwork out.
So, corey, if folks want tolearn more, from you and what
you're up to, or just aboutDiscogs, and want to talk about
music?
What's the best way for them todo that?
Feel free to reach out to me.
Linkedin is a great place.
Speaker 1 (46:03):
I'm on linkedincom slash Corey Huff, C-O-R-Y.
There's no E in my name.
Speaker 3 (46:10):
But you can also email me, corey Huff, at Gmail.
Speaker 1 (46:13):
I'm happy to talk to anybody about whatever.
I just like talking to people.
Speaker 3 (46:18):
So feel free to reach out and if you want to talk
about music, you know, I'm happyall day.
Speaker 2 (46:27):
Well, you're also on the marketingappscom Slack too.
Speaker 1 (46:30):
Oh yeah, hit me up on Slack as well.
Speaker 3 (46:33):
Okay, and then we'll need to make sure that you get
us some info on that book.
You referenced.
Speaker 2 (46:37):
I'd love to share that with our audience in the
show notes.
Appreciate it.
Well, thank you again, corey,Thank you Naomi, thanks to all
our listeners out there forcontinuing to support us, as
always.
If you have ideas for topics orguests, or want to be a guest
or want to share a topic, reachout to Mike, Naomi or me and we
would be glad to talk more aboutthat Until next time.
Bye everybody.
(46:57):
Bye, Bye everyone.
Okay, I'm really worried thatit didn't record the two of you.
Speaker 3 (47:04):
Oh, Maybe it is, but it says 0% on my side.
I've normally seen that 99%uploading and I don't see it
here.
Hello and welcome to another episode of OpsCast
brought to you byMarketingHousecom, powered by
all the MoPros out there.
I am your host, Michael Hartman, joined today by my co-host,
Naomi Liu, tapping up there inthe Pacific Northwest.
Speaker 3 (00:12):
Blue skies today Definitely doesn't feel like
winter right now.
Speaker 2 (00:15):
It feels like winter here in Dallas, Although we
somehow it was the straightestof the week of the snowstorms
and ice storms along the GulfCoast that somehow didn't hit us
just north of that, which isreally bizarre.
So snow on Galveston Island andin Houston Weird stuff.
So joining us today is CoreyHuff, currently Marketing
(00:40):
Operations Manager at Discogs.
Is it Discogscom?
We'll have to clarify Before hebegan working in marketing.
Corey spent more than 10 yearsas a professional stage actor
and director.
His background makes him trulya story-driven marketer with an
enthusiasm for tech.
He has worked on data-drivencampaigns in B2B tech, fine art
and B2C music.
His book how to Sell your ArtOnline is a perennial bestseller
(01:02):
.
Corey, thanks for joining ustoday.
Thank you so much for having meand it is discogscom.
Speaker 3 (01:08):
Everybody says discogs and the name is short
for discography.
Speaker 2 (01:14):
Sure.
Speaker 1 (01:14):
So, discogscom.
Speaker 2 (01:16):
Yeah, I think.
I could take us off on a verydeep rabbit hole if we started
talking about music, and I darenot do that, you know, I feel
like we've had a lot of guestson, and I've always loved
hearing origin stories.
Speaker 3 (01:28):
But I think we're the first theater to bridge that
gap between that chasm I guesschasm, or however you pronounce
it between theater and but he'snot, but he's not.
Speaker 2 (01:42):
We've had at least one other person who has a
theater connection I think he'sthe first who has uh been on the
stage right on a regular basison the stage.
Yeah, yeah, so you had someonewho was more, uh, kind of the
directorial side of it.
I don't know my area ofexpertise, so I don't know what
to call it.
If I remember it was, it was aplay in tetherton, maybe I can't
remember um anyway.
Speaker 1 (02:04):
So I am like you like .
Speaker 2 (02:06):
I've always loved hearing these origin stories, so
why don't you?
Speaker 1 (02:10):
we start there, corey , with your like what's your
story?
Speaker 2 (02:12):
career journey, how'd you end up at where you are?
And, uh, I always like to hearyou know what were their pivotal
moments or pivotal people thathad an outsized impact on your
career.
Speaker 1 (02:25):
Yeah, you know, I came to marketing in a very
roundabout way.
You know, when I was in highschool I knew that I wanted to
go to college, but nobody elsein my family had gone to college
and everybody in my family wasvery blue collar, like my
stepdad was a welder and a truckdriver, my uncle was a roofer,
(02:46):
and so nobody I didn't knowanybody that knew how to like
get into a professional career,right, so I just sort of
followed my interests, whichincluded stage and and theater
acting stuff and I was in atouring shakespeare troupe as a
teenager, so that was just whatI was interested in.
Speaker 3 (03:06):
And I ended up going to college for theater.
Got my BFA in acting from theUniversity of Utah and promptly
graduated into the 2007-2008financial crisis.
Speaker 1 (03:39):
So jobs were few and far between and I knew that I
didn't necessarily want to moveto New York city because my
interest in theater was notBroadway, it was more like I
want to do weird adaptations ofShakespeare and's a few cities
around the country where weirdtheater nerds can exist and have
complimentary careers, whereeverybody in the theater company
has a day job and then they doweird theater at night.
Speaker 3 (04:02):
And so that's how I started my career out.
I moved to.
Speaker 1 (04:04):
Portland and I.
My first job was working for amarketing agency that was
running Google ad managementservices, and this was just.
Speaker 3 (04:14):
you know, probably two years or three years after
Google ads even came out.
Speaker 2 (04:19):
So, it was still very new, I remember those days.
Speaker 3 (04:21):
Yeah, and so nobody knew what we were doing, like we
were all just making stuff upas we went along.
I remember those days job fitswell with my plans to do theater
in the evening and that kind ofworked.
And I did that as aprofessional stage actor for a
(04:52):
decade after I moved to Portland.
And I still do shows here andthere, but it's not my primary
focus anymore just because Ilike to have money but.
Speaker 1 (05:03):
I do really enjoy making theater and telling
stories, and I still do thatwhen I, when I get the
opportunity, once, once a yearor so that's awesome.
Speaker 2 (05:12):
I'm curious what's your?
What was your favorite?
Uh, shakespeare play that youdid an interpretation of uh,
it's hard to say one favorite,but I did, we did a production
one summer where I
Speaker 1 (05:26):
got to play.
We did Romeo and Juliet in repwith Hamlet.
Speaker 2 (05:31):
So that means we alternated weekends.
Speaker 1 (05:33):
We did Romeo and Juliet one weekend, hamlet.
The other weekend I got to playone of Hamlet's friends the two
kind of idiots that run alongwith Hamlet in that show.
And then in Romeo and Juliet Igot to play Tybalt, who is the
guy that Romeo kills and thenhas to flee town because of it.
(05:56):
And then I was the fightcaptain, for that meaning that I
was the one that worked withthe fight.
Choreographer to set and stageall of the fights and then train
all the actors on safety andmaking sure that we get the
fights correctly.
In my background I also havedone hundreds of hours of stage
combat with swords and all kindsof hand-to-hand weapons, so
(06:20):
that was one of my favoriteproductions, because I got to do
so much stage combat for thatone, uh.
And then we also did, uh, acollection of Ray Bradbury short
stories that we adapted for thestage.
We did it in a very big garage,so there was literally like 10
seats but, it was just a passionproject that we wanted to do
(06:41):
and we knew that not a lot ofpeople would come.
Speaker 3 (06:44):
So that was super fun .
Speaker 1 (06:45):
But then I did like I directed Seussical the musical
for a church in my community andwe have like 2,500 people see
it over the course of threenights.
Speaker 3 (06:56):
So I've done.
You know small theater and bigtheater.
Speaker 2 (06:59):
It's really fun.
Yeah, I am not a Shakespeareperson in general.
There's a great Shakespearetheater here in Dallas.
I haven't been to in years andjust realized it, but I remember
.
I don't know Hamlet, but theydid a version of Hamlet that was
like Hamlet in five minutes,which was pretty ridiculous,
yeah, so ridiculous.
(07:22):
But fantastic at the same timeso well, good, let's, let's talk
about so if I, if I'mremembering from our
conversation before when you Ican't remember who was- at
discogs or somewhere else.
your kind of entry into, I guessmarketing ops was really just
(07:44):
email marketing and then it'sevolved from that.
So what is it?
A?
Did I get that right?
If not, correct it?
And then you know what are someof the lessons you learned
along the way there.
Yeah, that's not necessarilywhere I started with marketing
ops.
Speaker 3 (07:58):
I was at, so after the, agency that I mentioned.
Speaker 1 (08:00):
I went to work for a tech, a VC-backed tech startup
called Jamry, and at the time wewere building identity
solutions.
So I was a very early employeethere and had a couple of
different roles, but where Iended up was marketing strategy
(08:20):
and since we were building dataproducts mostly what that meant
was working with our clientmarketing ops teams to figure
out how to use the data that wascoming across from your
Facebook or Google login tocreate personalized marketing
campaigns campaigns.
(08:45):
So we would do things like wepartnered with UMG on the Lady
Gaga Born this Way album launchand figured out how to take all
of the millions of people thatwere registering for that event
and create some personalizedmarketing campaigns for those
folks.
And then I just kind of wentfrom there.
I worked at a couple ofdifferent data startups,
including a CDP, then went anddid my own thing for a little
while and then, yeah, I came toDiscogs coming off of a startup
(09:08):
that didn't make it and I wassort of looking for a way to
downshift and make my life alittle easier for a little while
and took on an email marketingrole which quickly expanded to
basically being now the head ofmarketing apps there.
Speaker 2 (09:28):
Do you happen to have , like I'm curious about this
right, so do you have a strong.
Speaker 1 (09:33):
B2C network that you can lean on, Like is there a
MoPros for B2C?
Speaker 3 (09:39):
Slacker that you're a part of right.
Well, yeah, the answer's no.
I've been looking around, so ifanybody knows of one, please
let me know.
That's not entirely fair Frommy time as a startup founder and
consultant, I do have a lot offriends who have done some B2C
stuff.
Speaker 1 (10:00):
And the e-commerce field team is pretty interesting
, but that's primarily forfounders.
The e-commerce field team ispretty interesting, but that's
primarily for founders, right?
Speaker 3 (10:12):
So they didn't let me stick around after I was no
longer a founder.
But that's a joke.
I do have some folks that arejust kind of in my network that
I will ask questions and talk to.
Speaker 1 (10:20):
But yeah, I'm not aware of any B2C marketer
communities like Mopros?
Speaker 3 (10:26):
Why do you think that is?
Speaker 1 (10:28):
It's a great question .
I don't really know.
I think B2B this is me riffingright, I don't have good data
backing this, but I think partof it is that B2B marketers are
involved in team selling fromthe beginning.
(10:48):
Right, we are working as a teamto create an outcome.
You know, whether you're doingABM or whatever, you really have
to collaborate pretty heavilywith other marketers and with
the sales teams.
So I think that maybe B2Bmarketers are a little more
prone to collaboration in thatway, but B2C marketers often you
(11:13):
are working on a pretty largescale and you're either at a
little tiny e-commerce shopwhere you're the owner and you
maybe have a marketing assistant, or you are at a big retailer
and you just have your role andyou just do that and maybe
there's not a lot of need forcollaboration or community in
that way.
Speaker 3 (11:33):
I see yeah.
Speaker 1 (11:34):
That makes sense.
So have you ever thought about?
Speaker 3 (11:37):
making the jump to B2B.
Speaker 1 (11:39):
And do you think maybe from your perspective,
right being part of the MoPros?
Speaker 3 (11:43):
community.
What do you think that?
Speaker 1 (11:46):
jump would be.
Do you feel like it would be?
Speaker 3 (11:48):
oh wow, I'm totally out of sorts here or just by the
nature of being in thecommunity and osmosis and
whatnot.
Well, I started at a B2B right,so that first tech startup that
I mentioned.
Speaker 1 (12:00):
You know, I started in an account management role
just because they neededsomebody to stop talking to
prevent our clients from talkingto the engineers.
So I started in accountmanagement, and then I was
working in marketing strategy,which is kind of a unique B2B
role where I was helping bothour marketing team with building
(12:21):
strategy, but also working withclient marketing teams and
helping them understand how ourtools work and what to do with
our tools and the data right andthis was like 2010.
So a lot of big scale datacampaigns were not common at
that time.
Speaker 3 (12:38):
Do you think it would be more difficult for somebody
to go from B2C to B2B or theother way?
Speaker 1 (12:44):
around.
I don't know.
One of the hallmarks of my owncareer is that I just kind of do
whatever's interesting to meand like I will often tell
people that my core skill set isactually just learning stuff
really fast.
Speaker 2 (13:00):
I think that there are some challenges going back
and forth right Like.
Speaker 3 (13:05):
Michael and I had this discussion before about
whether or not data fidelity andcleanliness matters more in B2B
or B2C?
Speaker 1 (13:14):
I think there's an argument to be made either way
and I think that theirattribution is probably harder
in B2C because there's so muchhappening and so many channels
involved and so many peopleinvolved and you get into data
sampling issues and all thatkind of stuff.
Speaker 3 (13:31):
But I think that there.
Speaker 1 (13:33):
The other one is probably that B2B marketing is a
lot more buttoned up, at leastin the customer-facing version
of it.
Speaker 2 (13:41):
And as somebody who tends to be.
Speaker 1 (13:46):
But you mean like more formal, yeah, yeah.
Yeah, if you're selling, youknow, million dollar contracts,
uh, million dollar sas contracts.
People tend to be prettyconservative about how they talk
about things, uh, whereas ifyou're selling music or selling,
you know uh, retail furnitureor something, you can be a
(14:06):
little more casual and goofy.
Speaker 2 (14:09):
Yeah, I mean.
I would argue that there couldbe less buttoned up
communication.
Speaker 1 (14:14):
I'm with you there.
Speaker 2 (14:15):
So I have an opinion about your question now, Bate.
Yeah, biting my tongue a littlebit, but I remember talking to
somebody years ago because myoriginal, my first step into the
marketing world was in a B2Cone and it was short-lived.
Most of it has been B2B.
And I just, I think thetransition from B2B to B2C, to a
(14:38):
B2C environment would be easier, and that's because I think B2B
is just inherently a more thisis why I want to clarify when
you said buttoned up, corey islike I don't think from a
process of people and like Ithink there's, just it's just
it's kind of a mess on the B2Bside, Whereas on the.
Speaker 3 (14:57):
B2C side yes, there are challenges, and there's
certainly scale is probably.
Speaker 2 (15:03):
The scale is significantly different but the
complexities of things like.
Building a database that youidentify people who are part of
a household is a prettywell-known thing, right.
But trying to do that on theanalog, on the B2B side, of
trying to understand who are thepeople within an organization,
(15:24):
their role.
It's a really complicated thingand usually you've got a bunch
of human entered stuff wherepeople are incented.
There's no real incentive tofocus on the quality of the data
.
So there's not much right is areal challenge.
I'm not saying one is betterthan the other, but I do think
that if you were coming from B2Cto B2B and you didn't, I think
(15:47):
that could be overwhelming, eventhough the volume of data was
much lower.
Speaker 1 (15:51):
Yeah, I think it also depends on the stage of your
career and how much experienceyou have, and whether you're
going from an equivalent role.
If you're going email marketingin B2C to email marketing in
B2B.
I think that's probably arelatively easy transition, but
if you're going email marketingin B2C to email marketing in B2B
, I think that's probably arelatively easy transition.
But if you're going CRMoperations, across those that's
(16:13):
probably going to be a prettytough transition because that's
going to be pretty wildlydifferent.
Speaker 2 (16:17):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (16:20):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (16:21):
I think you're right.
Tools and platforms are alittle different.
Say, on email, right, becauseyou've got tools that are made
for the scale that you do at B2C, that are different than B2B,
and all that Saturation rulestoo, yeah, I get like I don't
know every single day Two timesa day.
Speaker 3 (16:44):
Saturation rules hit a bit different't know Every
single day, two times a day fromthe same retail Saturation
rules hit a bit different yeah.
Speaker 1 (16:48):
We have all kinds of controls and limits on how many
times we message people, becausein retail you get whale buyers,
right, people who are going tobuy a ton of stuff anyway,
anyway, and then identifyingthose people and limiting how
many, how often you message them, even though they're going to
trigger more messages becausethey're buying more and they're
(17:09):
on the site more uh, figuringout how to not piss off your
whale buyers is uh pretty uniqueto bdc, I think yeah well, it's
funny, because that whole ideaof that frequency of
communication.
Speaker 2 (17:23):
Nami reminds me.
So again, when I first movedinto marketing I would call it
direct marketing.
So I was involved with buildinga huge database for a company
that was still doing direct mail, telemarketing.
And really email was not reallya thing at that point, it was
at least not a significant thing.
And really email was not reallya thing at that point, it was at
(17:46):
least not a significant thing,but one of the things that I
learned along the way is that itwas actually like Visa one of
the Visa companies that soldVisa cards had figured out
because they monitored veryclosely what happened.
It was typically the thirdmailing that generated the most
response.
So their whole goal was ifyou've got a target of people
(18:06):
you're going to send stuff to,you, send the first two very
quickly back to back and thenthe third one is where you hope
to get.
I don't know if those numbersstill hold true today, or it was
a long time ago, but I thinkthat probably still, there's
something probably comparable tothat on the email side, which
is why we you and I, we all getlots of emails from retailers,
or you know consumer orientedcompanies.
Speaker 1 (18:31):
Yeah, I mean we run flash sales at Discogs, where
you know a large portion of oursellers will put a big chunk of
their inventory on sale for 24,48 hours and we will send you
know an email in advance givingeverybody a heads up.
And then we'll send two orthree emails in that two-day
period and the final email isthe one that usually drives the
most sales, because there's anurgency, like the sale is ending
(18:54):
and people go okay, fine, I'mgoing to buy the stuff that I've
been looking at.
Yeah, that's interesting.
Speaker 2 (19:00):
Yeah, that's interesting.
So you've worked in both B2Band B2C.
Speaker 1 (19:11):
We've already touched on a few things that are
similar in nature, some thingsthat are different.
Speaker 2 (19:16):
Are there other things that you, from your
experience, have seen, that arethings to consider that are
different for B2B and B2C?
Speaker 1 (19:25):
Yeah, we talked about the data scale problem.
You know if you're adecent-sized retailer, it's
relatively easy to get a fewmillion people a month on your
website and if you've beenaround like Discogs is 25 years
old this year, so you canimagine we are the de facto
recorded music marketplace right, we get millions and millions
(19:47):
of people.
So I'm interviewing right nowfor a marketing ops specialist
role and I've been asking peoplelike what experience do you
have writing SQL queries for adatabase that has millions right
?
Because that requires adifferent kind of approach than
you know a couple hundredthousand or something, and a lot
(20:09):
of marketers just don'tunderstand, like the, the
challenge and how time consumingit can be to comb through that
kind of data and find signalsthat are uh useful and figuring
out how to identify whichsignals are the most important
is a challenge.
(20:30):
And if you're a small company,like I've been on B2B teams
where the whole company was like150 people and the marketing
team was like five people andit's relatively easy to kind of
know basically who's in your CRMand all that kind of stuff.
At Discogs we know maybe thewhale buyers and we know our top
(20:54):
sellers, but getting to knowhow the mass audience responds
is pretty challenging.
Responds is pretty challenging.
And we're trying to balance thatwith creating personalized
campaigns so that we're not overmessaging people and creating
messages that are unique andrelevant to people.
Do you you?
Speaker 2 (21:17):
mentioned attribution .
We just had another guest onrecently that also has B2C
experience, so I'm glad we'regetting multiple people.
But it felt to me like therewas something we talked about
where I'm surprised you calledit attribution, because I think
she used another term and Idon't remember what it was.
(21:39):
There was a sister who was likeoh, this is like the challenge
with attribution in the B2Bworld.
Right, there's this likebuilding that linkage from.
Speaker 3 (21:47):
We did this activity to.
Speaker 2 (21:48):
This was the outcome Ideally, some sort of revenue
right and time linking.
That is actually really hard.
You find that same thing, is it?
And you said I think, it'sharder in the B2C world.
Why did you say that?
Speaker 1 (22:02):
I think because you're just dealing with more
data, so there's more noise.
Speaker 3 (22:06):
So in the.
Speaker 1 (22:07):
B2B world if you're doing last touch attribution,
you might see that somebody gottouched by a LinkedIn ad and you
met them at a conference andthen you sent them an email and
they signed up for a demo.
Right On the B2C side, somebodymight see your ads on any of
(22:30):
five different platforms.
Right, we're on Google and Metaand some display ad networks,
and then we're also runningemails and a bunch of other
stuff.
So running emails and a bunch ofother stuff, drilling down to
that individual is very timeconsuming.
(22:50):
So we try to do it in cohorts.
And when you start trying to doattribution in cohorts you know
you're talking.
Do we do mixed attribution?
Do we do last touch?
How do we attribute thosethings?
And then you run into samplingissues where if you're using
Google Analytics, especially GA4, everything is sampled.
(23:11):
So you have to export all thedata if you want to start
getting granular with it and itgets pretty daunting, pretty
quick.
Speaker 2 (23:21):
Yeah, it's interesting.
You've worked in agenciessounds like you did some of your
own consulting and stuff likethat and you've been in-house
with um what?
Kind of same question right,what are the some of the
similarities and differences inthose, those two environments
that you've seen?
Speaker 1 (23:43):
I think that probably every in-house marketer would
benefit from working as aconsultant or maybe at an agency
just because, as an in-housemarketer, you think about your
role right, I work in emailmarketing and I'm just going to
worry about email and I don'treally think about the broader
(24:04):
role.
Right, I work in emailmarketing and I'm just going to
worry about email and I'm notgoing to.
I don't really think about thebroader picture, right?
But as a consultant you have toquickly get in and learn how to
identify whatever the problem is, whatever problem you've been
hired to solve.
You not only have to understandwhat that problem is, but the
underlying root causes of thatproblem, at least if you're a
good consultant.
Speaker 2 (24:23):
Or uncovering what the real problem is.
Yeah, that's not what was toldto you.
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (24:35):
Oh, my very first experience as a consultant, I
was referred into how there is aFortune 500 company that they
were building websites for cardealerships so when we went in
there to talk to them,ostensibly the problem was, we
were trying to figure out how toput social media icons and
other features.
How to?
Speaker 1 (24:56):
integrate those into websites, and nobody on the team
really knew anything aboutsocial.
Speaker 3 (25:00):
So I brought in another friend who was a website
designer and we went in andstarted looking at everything.
Speaker 2 (25:07):
The actual problem was that the team hated each
other.
Speaker 3 (25:10):
Like they just couldn't talk to each other, and
so like what I ended up doingwas spending all of my time like
interviewing team members oneby one and then going back to
the head of the team and sayinghere's what I found out Like the
reason your team can't figureit out is because they can't
talk to each other.
Speaker 1 (25:27):
And that was a pretty awkward conversation because I
was young, I was I wasn't even30 yet and I was figuring out,
like, how to navigate those teamdynamics.
Speaker 2 (25:38):
I think it's also important to acknowledge, though
, too, that some of it can bepersonality, a personality trait
too, as well, right so?
Speaker 3 (25:47):
in-house right there are going to be marketing ops,
folks that are want to be onlyindividual contributors.
Speaker 1 (25:54):
They want to, you know, get their tickets and work
their projects and send outtheir emails, and that's really
kind of what they want to do.
Speaker 3 (26:01):
Maybe some troubleshooting but not
necessarily ask questions,because that's just.
They just want to do the workright, Sure.
Speaker 2 (26:08):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (26:10):
And I feel like there are also you know some of the
agencies that I've worked with.
Speaker 3 (26:14):
There might be, you know, the customer facing
consultant that I'm working with, but they generally will have,
you know, one or two peoplebehind the scenes that are also
doing some of that work too, andthey're they're not the people
that I'm generally interfacingwith every day.
Speaker 1 (26:28):
So I think I do want to call out to that.
Speaker 3 (26:30):
Absolutely.
It's valuable to have um.
Both sides, but you could alsobe an individual contributor at
an agency too right, and just bethat person doing that you know
behind the scenes work my team.
Speaker 1 (26:43):
She wants to do a great job and she's extremely
detail-oriented and she's savedmy saved me a whole bunch of
times because she just catchesevery detail and knows what
(27:05):
we're doing, back and forthtotally.
Speaker 2 (27:08):
I could not agree more on that um I don't know was
there other things that youkind of see as similar or
different between in-house?
Speaker 3 (27:19):
and consultants world .
Hmm, I mean the broader scope.
Speaker 1 (27:26):
Can I say no?
Speaker 2 (27:28):
Yeah, there probably are, but I can't think of
anything.
Speaker 3 (27:30):
Nothing immediately comes to mind I think my
challenge is I can't help butask a lot of questions so
anytime I go in a housesomewhere and start asking
questions, it's the same thing Ido as a consultant, because
that's just the way my brainworks so I tend to ask a lot of
questions, which means that Iend up getting pushed into,
(27:52):
pushed out of individualcontributor roles and into
organizational or leadershiproles.
Speaker 2 (27:59):
I guess neither role this is more of a, not even
related to being an announcer orconsultant.
Do you have you uh everencountered scenarios where uh
cause it sounds like you have?
Speaker 1 (28:17):
where you've had to be like a translator and it can
be.
Speaker 3 (28:19):
It can be a uh for instance.
Speaker 2 (28:20):
So for instance you're, working with say uh,
more of a tech team and you'retrying to solve a problem for a
business.
Enable some campaign thatrequires some something to be
done within the technologyplatforms.
You've got to do it.
Um and uh terminology likeyou're in a meeting terminology
between the two teams everyone'ssaying the same words, but you
(28:44):
walk away and like two verydifferent understandings of what
, what we just talked about.
How do you, how do you dealwith that?
Speaker 1 (28:48):
uh, I feel like that's been the core of my whole
career.
I I came into marketing opsbecause that first tech startup
that I was at they hired me asan account manager but we didn't
really have like roledefinitions or like do this or
don't do that, literally when Iwas hired on day one.
(29:09):
Uh, the head of sales handed mea folder full of uh client
contacts and said hey, can youjust make sure these guys don't
have to talk to engineeringanymore?
And so my job there was okay,feel the client call Okay, I
hear you You're upset about thisor you need that Okay whatever,
Go talk to the engineering team.
Speaker 3 (29:31):
Hey client wants this .
Speaker 1 (29:33):
Engineering manager tells me X, y, z, and then I
have to ask 10 clarifyingquestions because I didn't
understand it, and then I goback to the client and say
here's what the engineering teamcan deliver.
Speaker 3 (29:42):
And try to figure out how to be clear enough to the
engineers that they understandwhat the requirements are, but
be diplomatic enough with theclient to help them understand
that what they're asking for isor is not reasonable.
So that was kind of how I gotstarted here.
Speaker 1 (30:13):
So that was kind of how I got started here and then
in every organization that I'vebeen in that has an engineering
team and a marketing team.
There is a wildly divergent wayof working on those two teams
and marketing ops usually sitsbetween those two things, right,
and so right now, at discogs,we are in the middle of figuring
out what that means for us.
Right, like we, we now havemore engineering resources, okay
, does that mean that engineerwho does engineering report to
uh, what is?
the product process for thatlike is marketing a product
owner or are we, uh, you know,going through the product team
(30:35):
to request things like figuringall of that stuff out, and then
you know when, when a marketingproduct team to request things
like figuring?
Speaker 3 (30:41):
all of that stuff out , and then you know when, when a
marketing leader says, hey, whycan't we just X, y, z?
Speaker 1 (30:44):
And then I have to go well before.
Speaker 3 (30:46):
I go talk to the engineering team about that.
Speaker 1 (30:49):
maybe you can help me clarify some things, right,
because engineering is going toask what does that mean?
Six times?
Speaker 2 (30:55):
Yeah, yes, hopefully they ask actually rather than
assume.
Speaker 3 (31:00):
I've run into that before.
Speaker 2 (31:02):
No, I feel like half of my job is just like.
This is what you said.
Speaker 3 (31:10):
Is this what you mean ?
And playing it back in adifferent way, then I go to turn
to the other team and go.
Speaker 1 (31:14):
This is what I heard, you hear the same thing, you
know until we get heads nodding.
Speaker 2 (31:18):
And it requires I think it requires some technical
expertise.
So if you're talking aboutthings like systems and the
terminology that's used in, say,Marketo versus Eloqua versus
HubSpot versus, Salesforce right.
There's just the word campaign.
Speaker 3 (31:36):
That's always my best example.
Speaker 2 (31:37):
When people use the word campaign, there's about 10
different meanings that they canhave, and it's really.
It leads to all kinds of chaosif you, if you don't clarify
that.
Speaker 1 (31:47):
So or what the heck is a javascript tag?
Speaker 3 (31:49):
yeah, you don't hear about eloqua very much anymore I
do do you?
Yeah, I, I don.
I don't generally hear thatanymore, but that's a different
discussion.
Speaker 2 (32:00):
Yeah, I mean in the general space in the general
marketing ops space.
I think you're probably right,but there's still a lot of big
companies.
It's probably meant for moreenterprise.
I think it's built under thehood for that.
Like I always say, there aretrade-offs with all these
(32:23):
different platforms.
I feel like it was reallystrong at certain things,
whereas Marketo is stronger atother things and there's not
much overlap, generally speaking, in my experience.
So it kind of depends on whatyou need.
And then HubSpot I just don'thave an opinion because I
haven't worked enough in it andnotice I didn't bring up part of
that let's not Whatever it'scalled.
Speaker 3 (32:45):
We don't talk about part of that.
Speaker 2 (32:47):
It's like my club.
Speaker 3 (32:52):
When you were describing what you were doing.
Speaker 2 (32:53):
I had this office space image in my head, right.
Speaker 1 (32:56):
What would you say you do here?
Yeah, you're doing.
I had this office space imagein my head, right.
What would you say you do here?
Speaker 3 (33:01):
yeah, um, I am fascinated by the sort of cult,
of work, like the culty behavioraround the different marketing
automation platforms right, Ididn't mean to open a can of
worms and derail the wholeconversation.
This could be another podcastepisode.
I just heard telephone.
My ears perked up.
(33:21):
I'm like whoa, I haven't heardthat for a while.
I went to a conference a coupleyears ago and it was in Boston,
so those who are listening willknow what conference that was.
And I was there and I kind ofsat there and observed and
thought this is weird behaviorLike there's a whole bunch of
people that are like superexcited and like cheerleading
(33:41):
for a marketing automationsoftware platform, that's pretty
weird.
And a couple of the bigautomation platforms have built
up like that.
Speaker 1 (33:51):
They intentionally nurture that experience and I'm
over here going.
I've used like eight differentmarketing automation platforms
over the course of my career andthey all are good or bad at
various aspects of what we'redoing and I don't feel
emotionally attached to any ofthem.
(34:11):
Do you feel that way with otherproducts?
I'm curious Do you have aloyalty to a specific brand of?
Speaker 3 (34:20):
car Are you?
Speaker 2 (34:22):
an Apple fan.
Are you more Android?
Because I find that.
Speaker 3 (34:26):
I think people like to belong to a community, sure.
Speaker 1 (34:29):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (34:33):
So I'm curious if that extends to everything or
just….
Speaker 1 (34:35):
There are certain products that I am loyal to that
.
Speaker 3 (34:38):
I buy over and over again Like I'm a gigantic
chocolate nerd so I buy a lot ofchocolates.
Speaker 1 (34:46):
But when I buy chocolate for like day to day,
like baking or making hot,chocolate.
I usually buy Valrhona becausethey're big enough that I can
buy in bulk, because they're bigenough that I can buy in bulk.
But there are niche chocolatemakers that I love buying, like
Maru, but they don't make like.
They only make tiny little bars, which are incredible and super
(35:08):
tasty.
But I wouldn't want to pay $12for a three-ounce bar of
chocolate to make a cake, right,right?
So yeah, like there's like thatum that, I'm definitely loyal to
I am.
Speaker 2 (35:23):
I have very few loyalties like that there's a
couple but they're very like cardealership that we use and that
the family like they're.
They keep using them, right andthey've done nothing to sway me
.
Speaker 1 (35:37):
But it's not not loyal to the brand of car, it's
more to the dealership yeah, Iwill say like a lot of companies
don't do a very good jobbuilding community but like
discogs where I work, if I walkaround pretty much any city in
the us, and I'm wearing thehoodie that I have on right now,
which is a discogs hoodiepeople see that logo and they
(35:59):
come up to me and they go wheredid you get that Discogs hoodie?
And I'll tell them that I workthere and we'll have a 10-minute
conversation about how cool itis to work there.
Speaker 3 (36:07):
And it's the first place I've ever worked where
people think it's cool that Iwork there.
Speaker 1 (36:11):
So that sense of loyalty that people have is
really, really fascinating to me.
Well, so the one that's likethat for me with the wearing
something else.
Speaker 2 (36:23):
Actually I tell this so.
I live in Dallas.
I went to SMU here in Dallas.
If I wear an SMU shirt aroundtown I rarely get any kind of
commentary.
But my son goes to theUniversity of Arkansas, which is
not that far away with a lot ofalumni in the area if.
I wear one of those shirtsguaranteed at least one person
(36:45):
will say something to me it'sjust like it's that kind of I
don't know if it's the samething, but yeah, it's really
interesting so
Speaker 1 (36:56):
well so.
Speaker 2 (36:57):
I want to get on to one more subject with you think
for sure, because we talked alittle bit about this, maybe
even hinted around it a littlebit.
Is this idea?
Of us being change agents andhow challenging that can be,
regardless of size, stage of thecompany, company.
(37:22):
What's been your experiences inthat kind of role as being a
change agent and any lessonsyou've learned that have either
helped you or like I'll never dothat again?
Speaker 3 (37:28):
Yeah, there's been a couple of good ones.
When I came on board at Discogsthe marketing function, the
marketing function, was prettynice.
Speaker 1 (37:41):
The team was a lot smaller than it is now, and
email marketing there amountedto a newsletter that got sent
out once a week.
And so we started looking at howcan we evolve this email
marketing to something that'smore personalized?
How can we do something that'smore targeted, more relevant to
(38:06):
a larger number of people?
And so I just started askingquestions like why are we doing
it this way and how would youguys feel if we decided to
change it in this way?
And then a lot of people,especially in established, older
companies, can be concernedabout making changes.
They might have well if wechange that.
Then people will be confused andthey'll wonder why we're doing
(38:28):
that and that kind of stuff.
And so the way I've learned toapproach it is by saying okay,
well what's the smallest versionof that that we could do and
what's a good hypothesis or testthat we can implement.
So you know, with email it wasokay.
Well, what if we sent apersonalized email to fans of
this one artist and we just didit one time just to see how
(38:52):
people reacted?
Speaker 3 (38:53):
Yeah, and then you circulate that with everybody on
the team and say you know thatwent pretty well.
Like here's the conversion ratePeople you know not a lot of
people unsubscribed.
Speaker 1 (39:05):
Here's how I think we could do that at scale.
And here's some of the steps.
The trust with the team to sayhere's here's how we could
automate some of this.
(39:25):
Here's how we can get this tothe point where we're reaching
you know, 50% of our audienceinstead of 10% of our audience,
right Uh?
but it really is about buildingrelationships with your team,
showing that you know whatyou're doing.
But it really is about buildingrelationships with your team,
showing that you know whatyou're doing and making sure
that everybody understands thethings you're trying to do,
because otherwise you'll getleadership saying no, don't do
(39:47):
that.
Speaker 2 (39:57):
Yeah, to me this is like the idea of right and then
you can yeah, if it doesn't gowell then, you haven't really
damaged things from asignificant standpoint, and
usually it can go faster, whichI'm a big fan of.
So what about you know?
You mentioned this time whenyou had to have that
uncomfortable conversation witha client because the problem
(40:18):
that you uncovered was not theone that they came to you for.
Yeah, how, how have you?
I mean, it sounded like thatwas relatively in your career.
How has that helped you asyou've moved along, was it like?
Is this something you werenaturally good?
Speaker 3 (40:30):
at, or did you have to like?
Have you had to?
Speaker 2 (40:33):
exercise that muscle, so to speak.
Speaker 1 (40:36):
I think I'm a probably an above average
communicator, but there's I'vecertainly improved a lot.
Right, I've read a lot of booksand taken some trainings and
things like that and learnedfrom some really great mentors
on, uh, how to communicatebetter, but I do think that I
have always been more interestedin why people behave the way
(40:57):
that they do and how I can helppeople uh achieve whatever goal
they want Right.
I love coaching and developingpeople.
I love seeing team members thatI think are really talented or
really smart or skilled andhelping them work towards
something that they would findreally fulfilling.
Um, being able to just havesome emotional intelligence with
(41:22):
people that you work with canget you a long way towards
whatever your goals are, and itjust makes it a better
experience for everybody Ifeverybody feels like they can
trust each other and belongtogether.
Speaker 3 (41:38):
Yeah, I agree.
No, that's a good that's.
I wonder if, like, do you feellike that's always been innately
in you or has that developed?
Yeah, I mean, we get into, likewe could get into some deep
deep psychology, right Like my.
Speaker 1 (41:50):
uh, my fiance is a therapist and so we've had some
deep, deep conversations aboutwhy each of us are the way that
we are.
And I've done a fair bit oftherapy, you know, and I think
that I grew up in a householdwhere I had to be really aware
of how the other people in myhome were behaving, and that I
could if I was paying attentionkind of nudge them towards
(42:15):
behaving in a way that was morepredictable or safe for me.
And so there's certainly likethat was in me from a very young
age and then as I aged into theworkforce and started taking
jobs and stuff, I would run intobosses who were maybe a little
tyrannical or just not veryemotionally intelligent, and I
had to learn how to navigatethat and say, okay, if I talk to
(42:38):
them this way and communicatethat way, then I'll be safe and
my job will be safe, and therest of the team will be able to
function better like that kindof stuff, all of our interesting
personality.
quirks come from our childhood,so yeah this is something that
I've been doing for most of mylife, and I think it's that mix
of like emotional intelligenceand interest in technology is
(43:03):
the core of what I've done in mycareer.
Speaker 2 (43:09):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (43:12):
It's interesting because I see a lot of I'm just
going to call it.
Speaker 2 (43:17):
I think it is whining .
These people are doing thisthing and it's just so stupid.
Why are they doing this?
I have to hold back a lot oftimes because I do think part of
that is just not taking thetime to go put yourselves in
their shoes, or try to putyourself in their shoes and
understand what might bemotivating them.
Good example right.
Probably everyone willunderstand when you get
(43:37):
struggles in their shoes andunderstand, like, what might be
motivating them.
Right, you know, is a goodexample.
Right, probably everyone willunderstand, like when he
struggles with sales teams.
Right, you know, why won't theyupdate their opportunities on a
timely basis?
Speaker 1 (43:48):
well, like the reality is incentives not there
right they're not going to getpaid more or less?
On that right but, you're goingto get paid on his.
Did I win or?
Not and if you don't recognizethat?
Speaker 2 (44:00):
it's going to be hard to motivate them to make change
, so you've got to find anotherway.
So could you get frustratedabout it?
Yeah, would it help change athing?
Speaker 1 (44:10):
Probably not, so if you want it to change, you have
to think about how they might bethinking about this situation.
Yeah, I think the challenge forall of us is to be curious
instead of judgmental.
Speaker 3 (44:26):
That question of why are they doing this has to go
from being a statement ofjudgment to an actual question.
Speaker 1 (44:32):
Why are they doing this?
Speaker 3 (44:34):
They've been told, so why are they doing this?
Speaker 2 (44:37):
If you're just talking about Ted Lasso, I'm
just.
You know, Ted Lasso is a greatexample.
Speaker 1 (44:43):
I was thinking I should mention a couple of
things that I think are helpfulfor marketers who might want to
be a little more emotionallyintelligent, and I think that's
one of them.
I love Ted Lasso.
It's a great show, ted Lasso,it's a great show.
Also, shout out to one of mygood friends, charlie Gilkey,
who wrote a book called TeamHabits that I think is really,
(45:04):
really effective.
We've implemented a lot of whathe suggests in his book at
Discogs.
Also, I think studying anypsychology or Buddhist thought,
the writings of Thich Nhat Hanhhave been really influential for
me in understanding how to sitwith my anger or how to
(45:26):
effectively communicate withpeople when feelings are high
right.
Speaker 3 (45:32):
All of those things benefit people who want to have
more satisfying careers.
Yeah, wow, that feels like areally good place to stop so.
Speaker 2 (45:44):
Corey, thank you so much, it's been great and thanks
for joining us.
I'm glad we could make thatwork out.
So, corey, if folks want tolearn more, from you and what
you're up to, or just aboutDiscogs, and want to talk about
music?
What's the best way for them todo that?
Feel free to reach out to me.
Linkedin is a great place.
Speaker 1 (46:03):
I'm on linkedincom slash Corey Huff, C-O-R-Y.
There's no E in my name.
Speaker 3 (46:10):
But you can also email me, corey Huff, at Gmail.
Speaker 1 (46:13):
I'm happy to talk to anybody about whatever.
I just like talking to people.
Speaker 3 (46:18):
So feel free to reach out and if you want to talk
about music, you know, I'm happyall day.
Speaker 2 (46:27):
Well, you're also on the marketingappscom Slack too.
Speaker 1 (46:30):
Oh yeah, hit me up on Slack as well.
Speaker 3 (46:33):
Okay, and then we'll need to make sure that you get
us some info on that book.
You referenced.
Speaker 2 (46:37):
I'd love to share that with our audience in the
show notes.
Appreciate it.
Well, thank you again, corey,Thank you Naomi, thanks to all
our listeners out there forcontinuing to support us, as
always.
If you have ideas for topics orguests, or want to be a guest
or want to share a topic, reachout to Mike, Naomi or me and we
would be glad to talk more aboutthat Until next time.
Bye everybody.
(46:57):
Bye, Bye everyone.
Okay, I'm really worried thatit didn't record the two of you.
Speaker 3 (47:04):
Oh, Maybe it is, but it says 0% on my side.
I've normally seen that 99%uploading and I don't see it
here.
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