Building a MOPs Team (ft. Garrett Erny)

Speaker A: Foreign. And welcome to another great MOPS confession series. So I have a very special and awesome guest with me that uh, I've worked with uh, quite closely with in the past. Um, my friend Garrett, uh, uh, who's done a lot of work in the past working both in house then on agency side and ah, as some really kind of new things, really fun, interesting things. So without further ado, I'd love to introduce yourself, Garrett. Give us a little bit of an intro.

Speaker B: Yeah, thanks so much for having me. One Sasha and Nick though, so great to be here. Watch the series in the past. Um, yeah, my background as you mentioned, um, it's the past five or six years I've been agency side. Before that I was in house but always mops even before it was cool per se. Uh, so about a decade of mops experience and that goes across the board and Pardot, HubSpot and Marketo. Just um, one of those things with naturally in the right place at the right time. Um, and had some good mentors along the way. Um, so yeah, after you know, being years as a consultant, uh, MOPS consultant, uh, agencies, I took a director of Martech role recently spent um, about a year in that role. Really got to meet the people I need to meet and the key players in it, all right, the CMOs, the VP of Marketings and see it from a higher level. Um, that being said, MOPS is my passion, you know, and when I, you know, got down to it, um, I saw a need for you know, a strictly, you know, MOPS related consultancy. Um, where we're not a full service agency or consultancy, we focus strictly on operations. Um, and that's my background now. Um, as of January, I started my own llc, um, and have a team of contractors where us and them just through strictly MOPS work.

Speaker A: Yeah. And I think along this path and along this road, something that we kind of talked about in the, in our prep session was around this concept of, you know, what skills kind of need to be stacked up for a team. And you kind of brought up this great analogy that I'll let you kind of like talk about a little bit of. How does, uh. How do you think about this analogy of like a team and in relation to kind of ops?

Speaker B: Yeah, well, uh, the team analogy, you could really use any sport. But uh, I use soccer. That's the one I grown up and you know, and just in generally on analogies, you know, it's a great way to take something very technical and dumb it down for lack of a better phrase or um, To a non technical audience. So anyways, you know the example I like to think of ah is attribution. Um, and this theory of playing a team sport and the, the um, example I use is soccer. So the person who scores the goal often gets the most credit. Their name in the newspaper, um, if they still have those, you know. Right. Usually um, gets the most credit. Uh, that being said, um, a team sport, there's always something that happened before that. Um, in this analogy maybe the goalie made a great save and then a um, a roll out pass to a defender who dribbled up, a certain um, pass I made another passer across. Or maybe the defender made a great slide tackle to win the ball back. Um, and maybe it touched all 11 players, you know, before the goal was actually scored. Right. Um, so this analogy is really like the finishing or that uh, crossover the line, the goal and the analogy or the, the close one up. Um, in marketing and sales, um, that doesn't just happen because you know that salesperson made a last call. There's tons of touch points. And the idea behind attribution, there's different models. Um, but that's the analogy I love to use because it's so simple yet um, so relatable. As you know we've all usually played uh, sports one point in our life, but also different team sports. You know really any team sport would work in that analogy.

Speaker A: Yeah. And I think I really like this analogy because it really builds on this idea that I've heard quite a bit in the op space is kind of this idea of kind of stacking a team or stacking your skill set. I would love to get kind of some of your thoughts around how you're thinking about kind of the roles and responsibilities that MOPS has kind of purview over these days. Right. It seems that it used to go from a model of an anchor system like a M marketing automation platform like HubSpot, Pardot, Marketo, then kind of moved a little bit more onto the customer relationship marketing, you know, customer relationship CRM side of like Salesforce, Zoho, HubSpot, etc. And now it feels like even more things are on top of those two anchoring systems now. You know, ops folks have to figure out uh, data warehousing, they have to figure out kind of other systems that kind of build into the ecosystem. Um, so how do you think about kind of stacking up a team with these different competencies? Like how should teams or how have you seen kind of companies deal with this kind of growing responsibility list Specifically in Ops.

Speaker B: Yeah, I mean I think I've seen winning versions or what I would say is a winning version of the formula. And I think I've seen the opposites. Whether that be no action or just not recognizing, um, that this is exploding. Right. As you mentioned, it's not just the CRM and the marketing automation platform anymore. Um, you know, what do we do from here? So to really get the right people in the right place, right. Uh, there's an old analogy. Get the right people on the right seat, on the right bus before you start driving it. Right. Um, we have to really kind of think of it in and silos. And I like the Kanban board, you know, um, in terms of roles and responsibilities. So, um, you know, as you mentioned, the marketing operations person is now kind of crossing that threshold in the sales ops, doing a little bit of rev ops, you know, probably doing a, uh, like data, uh, management. They, they probably shouldn't be doing anymore, whatever it is. Um, and then there's um, executive level folks not really, um, communicating down the line in terms of when they're thinking about making these purchases or even just making these purchases for some of these third parties. Um, what happens then is like you could probably go back to them and say, no, well, we could have done this. With what the tech stack. We already have. It's a little late now, so I guess I'll learn this tool I never heard of. And so, and so, so the put the, you know that it starts at the top. It really does. Um, but to put the right people in the right place after that, um, is somebody's got to be the czar of tech. Right? Um, you know, I don't know if it falls in like a CTO type role, but um, there needs to be a, almost the VP of Marketing operations, but at least a Senior Director marking operations. And that person needs to be the one that kind of dictate. And I almost see it as a, you know, Google Doc or spreadsheet, um, where it's like, okay, you know, here's all our whole tech stack. You know, um, even like you want to go down, don't, don't be shy until what it is. Like even name the CMS and anything related. Right? Um, who's the owner for it, right? Um, whether that's a team or a person. Um, if it's a team, then name the person on the team and then within that keep going and say okay. Does that make the most sense? Are we weak there? Meaning is somebody doing it that really shouldn't be or is doing us a favor because they, because if they didn't take on this tool, everything they built in the past might fall down. Right. So um, it's really about getting that like uh, figured out and siloed put on paper. Um, obviously as the director of marketing ops or Martech, you go up and you roll that up to a VPC level person and say, this is what I really think we need to succeed. Um, again I've seen this happen and I seen it to an extent most of the time, um, the C level, uh, folks will agree with and maybe you won't get everything you need, but you'll be a lot more scaled than you were before you had this conversation. And then I've seen it where like, well you know, Johnny or Sally has capacity. So why don't we put them on there that's not their expertise and by the time we get them ramped up and even ask them learn, that's really not even their expertise to be uh, able to take that on. We need more operations type person. So the answer to the question, you know, I think everybody has their, you know, their role and responsibility. It's just like when that's not defined and you know, agreed upon kind of from top to bottom, you know, that's where it gets messy.

Speaker A: And where do you see kind of on that topic, where do you see kind of from the different perspectives of your experience of agency versus in house of how it's been kind of represented? We talked about this notion of like you know, mops people or folks in the operations space are typically people pleases where they want to take on additional responsibility, sometimes to the detriment. And on the agency side you see a similar behavior where you're, you know, you have this nomenclature of like full stack where you can do anything and everything for every use case almost, which um, you know, I'd argue in my own personal experience that that's almost never the case. Right. We all have specializations. Um, how do you, you know, how do you think about from those two kind of perspectives, like how do you take on um, a new technology, a new initiative. So right. On the in house side, whether it's, you know, again, ideally it's talked about across the organization, it's a mutual decision, but a lot of the times it's not right. So sometimes things are just dropped in your lap. And then on the agency side there's a lot of times where you're coming into a client where there's usually a need of some kind. But you know, each situation is new. It's like uh, ah, we have done this, we've bought this vendor, we've bought this webinar platform or we bought this thing and we need to make it work even though it doesn't natively work. How do you, you know, from those two kind of perspectives, how have you seen folks like basically kind of retool ramp up on something new, whether it's a new skill or it's a new, just like technology and process that you have to kind of incorporate into a request basically?

Speaker B: Yeah, that's a great question. And they certainly have differences in house versus agency. I think I'll start with agency and this theme of like um, generally when you take off on work, you know, you know in an agency it's not everybody. I think I've seen enough to say there's more going to be yeses than those and not really thinking about the team you have in place. It's, it's more kind of like um, let's make the cell, then we'll get a contractor, we'll figure it out after the fact. Right. Um, and that you know, that puts some folks in a bad place, particularly MOP sometimes. So and then as you just discussed, we get in there, they have xyz, they bought it, they're not using it, they're not optimizing it. Somebody set it up wrong. Um, so what do you, what do you do as you know, the head of MOPS or mops, person that falls in responsibility. You know, I, I think what, what I've always, you know, had the, the idea of saying, you know, when is too much too much. So you know, um, if that skill set is not um, either on your team or within you, if you're asking these specifically done, that needs to be brought to your attention right away because um, unlike at an in house place, there isn't, you know, we're dealing with multiple clients. Right. So if I can't focus on my time and effort and energy and worry about one project that I probably would struggle to get done or I've been put in a bad place, um, to even start with or maybe you know, they made a bad decision purchasing a smaller third party that doesn't integrate. Right. Or doesn't have any documentation, whatever it is. But that, that's the, you know, the primary difference, um, you know, between the two I would say is at an agency you're not going to get um, much of a chance to react. Um, it's on to the next thing. Um, and I'LL get to the theme of what's different on the in house side in a second. Um but the flaw within the agency side is while you would want to document um, and put processes in place and templates for the next person loom videos uh and we talked about this our uh press session. It's, it's what I've taken my time personally to free up time and make sure I do because it saves so much time in the, in the long run. And you could argue like being at the agency side right there's different every, you have different clients, different industries, there's different things happening but you're overall selling the same projects and redoing things and like why there's so many third party tools. Like if you think about a ah lead routing tool is a you know you could probably chunk them out in the categories. Um so anyways with the agency I just feel like you know folks are running from uh thing the thing, the thing. Um, really not taking the time to digest it. If it's a new tool they're learning it as quick as they can. They're watching you. They're Googling um and being a Google underrated Googling skill is or under skills Googling. Um, you know they're asking if there's have a network, um, they're asking the network if they have um, you know availability into the MOP Slack channels or things like that. They should be doing that but I feel like it's a very more um, individualized, personalized approach on the agency side on that person to say well this is on me or my team. Um, you know we're the, the MOPS branch or the Martech branch of this agency, this full service agency. Nobody's coming to save us. Um and we're not going to go hire another agency. You know best case scenario we're going to have to you know get a contractor in here um, at an hourly rate that knows what they're doing. So just to go on the other side real quick, you know in house I think time really slows a little bit more and don't get me wrong, it can pace at times but I think um, you know the value, it's much easier to present the value of coming up with said documentation because that documentation could be around for many moons and many moons and you have you know, um, again you're a one focus. You might have different departments or different you know areas of focus within one company but it's still under one brand. Um and this, this theme of consistency um it's really low hanging fruit more so at the, you know, the in house level to be able to document all that. You know, you have the drive, one drive, right. And, and from there as you get new folks, you introduce them to this process very long during their onboarding process, which again back to the agency, you know, not many agencies do great onboarding. Ah, it's a lot of sink and swimming. I mean let's be real. Um, but you know, if you go to in house there's onboarding process, you know, you, you know, teach somebody early on, whereas it's so much, it's like the old, you know, you can't teach an old dog new tricks. Like it becomes ingrained. You know, if a newer employee or a junior level employee level. Um, you know, you'll really thank uh, yourself in the long run.

Speaker A: Yeah. And how do companies start so with I imagine what the benefit of the agency world is that you have a little bit of that community aspect, you have probably other teammates to kind of leverage on. Right. When you're learning new skills and new tech stacks. Right. In a lot of situations, especially on the upside or even if more broadly rev ops or like the ops profession in general, there seems to be, you know, there's a few communities, there's a few forms that you can go and you can get some advice. But for the most part a lot of things are done in silos or even silos like both from a, solving a problem and, and also like working across teams of like, you know, you have ops over here, you know, usually sales ops over there. If you have that department and then you have a bunch of other stakeholders kind of in between that you have some cadence with, but not the best, like not the most ideal cadence.

Speaker B: Right.

Speaker A: Because of time and such. How do you, you know, how do companies think? Should, how should companies think about like staffing and hiring the right people when you know, maybe it's their first ops hire or they're, you know, they're trying to build out even the team and they don't have that, you know, maybe that leadership in, in place to like be able to vet folks properly. And is there anything that you know, in house or companies can take away from like how agencies find talent? Uh, is there, is there a difference?

Speaker B: Yeah, no, that's a great question. I mean, you know, I think what has changed and recently is the, the mops folks and the operation folks are getting a bigger seat at the table. Um, that's happening more on the uh, in house side than I would say it's happening on the full service agency side, albeit it is growing. I mean, you know, if you have a think of a full service agency, there's going to be different branches as you, you know, kind of alluded to. There's, you have to work as a mops person, you know, not only with executives and you know, but uh, content, right. Is usually one branch. Um, you know, maybe graphic design, you know, you're working with for design purposes. Um, and you know, obviously that last one is client services now, you know, to make sure there's more pressure on the agency side because of these billable hours. Right. So when I think of hiring and I think of agency and I've been you know, at both again, um, you know, it, it doesn't make as much sense to hire more junior people at the agency level because there's not that time to build up, um, and like take their hand and you know, usually you're, when you're hiring for a full time at agency, you're probably behind. But if I am looking at, for that person at an agency perspective, I'm looking for somebody, you know, they have to have the uh, Excel background, right. I don't need, you know, agency, right. Is say you're doing marketo partot and HubSpot work, right? You're kind of, you know, all over the place. I don't need somebody, you know, that's uh, a part out person or a marketo person. And we know some agencies are marketo shops or whatever that is. I look, I looked for specific sets of skills. Um, you know, while you needed the bare minimum you needed to be in, you know, create uh, a salesforce campaign, right. And be able to do list imports and things of that nature. It was more like um, did they have the technical on the. I asked questions like as they go as simple as like um, you know, give me something, a scenario where you took something very technical and dumbed it down to another audience. Or give me a scenario where you thought you were stuck and you found documentation or workaround online. Give me a scenario. Um, do you know what a vlookup is? Um, and do you know what do you know how to manage data and really be able to put in pivot tables and express that data and tell a story? Um, so if you get all things like that, um, then you're looking for, to be honest, kind of a, a um, you know, you can usually tell somebody's more technical or not just from a general perspective. Um, whether that be like um, you know, what do you do, you know, hobby wise. I mean it could even that. But you know, there's a particular, you know, range of, you know, skill set you're looking for. Um, that has to have basically I would say, you know, Excel background, good communication skills is a must. Like I know that's key for client services as well. But I need to, I need somebody to be able to be comfortable with me, comfortable with the client to an extent and comfortable presenting what they, and confident of what they found. Um, you know, but I think, you know, where I'm going here is it's, it's much tougher on the agency side from a full time perspective because most folks don't have agency experience. Um, and going to another agency is, is, you know, that's tough. Um, but if, if they don't, you know, they're going to be drinking from the fire hose for a little bit. But it's more like looking at that skill set of, you know, are you a quick learner? Um, do you have a basic CRM marketing automation background? And then like we're talking about this whole theme like are you a T shaped marketer, if you will, at a high level. Right. Like if I told you like to go into LinkedIn ads, could you figure it out? Like you know, be able to, you know, connect LinkedIn ads, the HubSpot? If I told you like, you know, um, one question I asked is like drift in intercom. Like how would you describe them? And like of course they're conversational marketing tools. Or like, you know, these three uh, you know, s. What does six Sense do? And like you don't have to know but like I'm just naming off, you know, some of these more popular third parties. I don't need them to say, yeah, I'm an expert and I've been in there all the time. Because that's probably a lie anyway. But it's like. No, I know what it does. You know, okay, you know, account based marketing. I know it's a big, you know, obviously a big theme and you know, whatever it is. So if I just get little cues like that, um, they go a long way on the agency side. Um, so switching to the in, in house, you know, I think you get more of a seat at the table. I think you, if you have a good relationship with the right people, um, always become, you know, uh, I feel like, you know, the, the web dev guy or girl is always friendly with the mops person, the sales. So there's a small group. So power numbers. If you can convince you know, get together and convince, you know, upper management that there's a need and this is all connected. And more importantly this is all connected to revenue because sea levels love to hear about revenue. Um, here's why we need to hire, here's what we need. Um, I feel like there's more of a, uh, you know, an opportunity to again like when you need somebody at an agency, usually need somebody yesterday, um, typically, you know, and, and the market's crazy now, but you have a little bit more time to vet and hire. So going into that interview process. Right. Um, you know, you ask those types of. I'm looking for the same types of questions from the agency side but probably at this point, um, on in house I'm giving um, I'm probably giving like a take home assignment or a take home quiz. That's just a short level of questions, um, you know, to make sure they really, the conversation I'm having with them and they're not just you know, yes, manning me or saying what I want to hear. Um, that's when I can add, you know, again for the time sake and the vetting perspective, you can add, you know, another layer or two there and maybe do a second interview to say, all right, there's a lot on the line here. Um, to be frank, with agency there's, we know the turnover is probably more um, frequent than at an in house. So I don't want to turn over in house. That's the last thing I want to do is bring somebody on and not be a good fit. So you take it to another level there where I, I've done like brief, like even five questions. Right. We don't, we don't want to bore folks and cause them to be disinterested. But just like in this scenario what would you do and you know, um, why. But open ended type things, um, you know, to really get their mind thinking about how much changes day to day. Ah. Um, you know, in the world of marketing operations.

Speaker A: Yeah. I would actually want to like take a pause and dig a little bit deeper into that because I, my own POV on assessment is like mixed. When I was like earlier in my career, you know, I'll uh, do them right just because I kind of had to now, you know, kind of later, you know, and a few other folks have, have like, kind of like strong opinions on this on you know, whether it's LinkedIn or Communities and whatnot. But it feels like the, the assessment is it gets you only a certain type of person. Right. A certain type of person who is willing to spend the time to do an assessment. And I feel like there's kind of this. A little bit of a chasm. Right. There's a gap. Right. For the folks that can do an assessment really well and in depth and within a time frame, like within the time, like the few days or week that you give them are likely the people that are most annoyed by doing an assessment. Whereas the folks that you're, you're really trying to potentially weed out and, you know, could do a good job, but would take much longer. I feel like an assessment seems like a barrier of entry, like, I guess kind of like from what you were saying, kind of. What is your thought on this process? Like, can you evaluate skills from like other industries and get the right mindset without having somebody have the right ops experience? In the sense that, as we all know, there's so many technologies now. There's, you know, 8,000 and the latest smart tech.

Speaker B: Yeah, I know we see that, uh, quadruple every year, it feels like.

Speaker A: Right. And sure, there's some, some major anchoring systems, but I think one observation that, you know, we've seen with our, some of our customers and something that I've seen observed in the space that those anchoring systems eventually start to move. We already talked about kind of this move from MAP to CRM to data warehouse, where it might be something else in the future. Right. And if you're going very heavy, whether you're like, you know, you're only a marketo shop, you're only a HubSpot shop, you're only this and that, it feels like you're in the long term kind of pigeoning your whole yourself a little bit, like as a specialist versus more broadly, you know, uh, a generalist that has enough knowledge, enough context and enough things to be a leader and to have like a certain set of skill sets. But I guess, like, what, what are your. Some of your thoughts on? It seems that you like, you know, pro assessment, right? Because I've always seen the. Yeah, uh, uh, it's, it's a hard barrier of entry and it feels like really what you're getting after is you're trying to de risk the decision that somebody is going to have the right mindset. Um, yeah, but it feels like you're doing that, especially in a hot market with a lot of friction. Like, I don't know, what are your. Some of your thoughts?

Speaker B: So, yeah, I kind of talk out of both sides of my mouth on this, to be honest. And I, you know, it has, you Know I've done plenty of assessments more earlier in my career like yourself, but I think the assessment, if you're going to give it um, and the caveat is like you know, and it's about gut too. Right. If, if you found that person, there's no doubt about it and they blow you away and they have the right resume and the salary is in line with the expectations, you know, that's you know, a no brainer. But when you're, you're like I'm um, down to three people or four people. I'm still not sure the assessment for me I would never give um, like a long winded one. Like when I, I think I mentioned like five questions, maybe 10 questions. Okay. If the, if it's a five question one, it's probably you know, open ended answers and I'm not really looking for essays. Right. I'm looking for the right answer, clear and concise answers. I'm looking for where I'm going with it or you know, maybe they open my mind and they give me uh, open ended thought. Um, or the second one, like it's just a multiple choice type thing to say. Okay. Like do you really get it? And like um, I need to know that um, you know, from the, from the technical and moss perspective, uh, um, okay, that's tough to take home an assessment and do something and give them access to a tool or a demo version. How do you take that and put it in the multiple choice format? It's not easy but uh, I have something and we've all done it in the sense that we've all been certified in something and HubSpot, Marketo, they managed to put it in the multiple choice questions. Um, to your approach, you know, uh, to your point, I, I don't have a disdain or you know I'm not pro or against the assessment. I think it's you know, gotten um, a little bit more than a bad rap it deserves. I understand that, you know the, the market is crazy. The supply or the demand certainly outweighs the supply. Beggars can't be choosers. Um, but like if I have a hard asset um, to get and something that's gradable, there's like no really, um, well there could be an open ended type question that may be a different but really there's no right or wrong. I have some, something tangible to show again more on the in house the show. Especially if there's a board of directors. Right. So that's how you know the assessment is not by any means. Um, you know, the. The deal breaker. It's just, um. If there is a layer of indecisiveness that you still have, I put something in my back. Back pocket to say, um, instead of going back to square one, you know, and going back to the recruiter myself, you know, can I get garner anything else? And maybe they all, you know, get three out of tens on the multiple choice. And then you say, oh, well, you know, maybe you, uh, know this. I do have to wait. So it's just another layer to have in your arsenal. But to your point, I would never go. There was things. I'm sure you did, too, that took hours. I mean, when I say hours, like, three, four, maybe five hours, um, you know.

Speaker A: Well, yeah, like, really concentrated hours, where it's like, you know, are you able to do it? Sure. Like, I am fine. I think in, like, concept, I'm fine with a proctored or, like, a structured, you know, situation type of assessment, right? Where you say, hey, walk me through your chain of thought. So I kind of understand how you would approach different problems, even if you haven't done, um, you know, the specific, like, you know, smart campaign trigger and Marketo, right? Like, that thing can be taught. And there's some things like, yes, like, you know, these products have gone very large and very complex, and you definitely want to have some way to understand, like, where somebody is, like, are they beginning to start with Marketo? Are they, like, really, like, talking of APIs, right. Same as Salesforce. Are you, you know, can you administer user profiles? Are you, like, coding an Apex? Right?

Speaker B: Like, big difference.

Speaker A: Do you want some, um. Yeah, you do want some, like, gauge there, But I guess I like what I've. What I've seen in the past done is, like, very intensive. Like, you know, create a presentation, analysis, data. Uh, and it's like, it's not just, like, about the situation. It's more of a, like, I mean, they're real business situations, but they're like. They take quite a bit of time, right? Like, two. Get to the place where you can translate something from an ops perspective. Like, for example, why take, you know, if you had, let's say, uh, something outrageous, like a hundred lead sources, and then you got that down to, you know, 15 or five or something more reasonable, right. For most folks. And I, for the record, I've seen that happen. Um, how do you translate that up? Right? And I guess that's the question I like. That, to me, is an interesting, like, situation of, like, okay, how do you, like, think about this and what does it mean. Right. Do you understand that like a lead source is a tool or a way to capture basically demand or like where somebody came from when they were the most interested. Right. And there's like those kind of like concepts that you can kind of pull out by like.

Speaker B: Yeah, exactly.

Speaker A: I don't like the idea of like I'm going to go through this really in depth deck and process and like I've done a lot of thinking where it's taking, you know, a great ops person hours to do.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: And like some more junior same level probably maybe days to do. Right. That's a lot of commitment for like a maybe.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: And that's where I have a little bit of uh, A uh, that's where I have a little bit of heartburn from like that process of like it feels like we have this like huge kind of like again you kind of mentioned the supply and demand gap where you have folks that are kind of more senior who can kind of get it pretty quickly and then you have folks trying to enter the space and

Speaker B: there's not a lot, there's no middle folks. Right. Yeah, that's the. And how do you close that?

Speaker A: Well, yeah, how do you, how do you gain? Right. Because you of course in a uh, in a company you have different roles you're hiring for and, and you all admittedly need different kind of skill sets to be built on top of it. Right. Like you need, maybe you need someone who specializes in that demand gen kind of paid acquisition strategy. Right. Where you're dealing with maybe like Google, Facebook, LinkedIn and other networks. Yeah, right. And so I guess like on that same vein, kind of coming back to it full circle to kind of like this team analogy, how would you, in this like space, if you could, how would you design a team? Like, what would you need to do? Like I've always thought of like ops is gone, more of a seat of a table. Have become more important over the years. Um, but it feels like with the advent of more integrations, the complexity of projects I've heard around, like some teams start having like a project manager assigned to like a ops, uh, huddler group, you know, some engineering resources or some like analytics resources. Again, these are things that like in my wish list that I had, I wish I had in previous roles. Yeah.

Speaker B: Ah, I guess.

Speaker A: What would be your take? Like what would be like some of the DNA makeup of the team? Like how would you stack the team with these different competencies, not just in ops, but like to complement ops as well?

Speaker B: Yeah. Again it goes Back I think of it as like uh, kind of that Kanban board and everybody's got a role, responsibilities and across the top I would break it down like marketing operations is one, you know, and uh, content as a team, um, client services as a team. Although I'm a big believer in everybody's on the client services team. Right. Um, you know again it would keep going. I need my own web dev team. Um, and these teams don't need to be big but I need somebody at the top that's responsible for you know, the head of the department per se. Um, and then you know, however many they trickle down, um, and even like these folks, I don't think there's um, I don't think there's an issue with the head of web dev doing some actual hands on work or the head of MOPS doing some hands on work. I know it's like taboos for you know, directors that you know, get in there nowadays. But um, I think you know, sometimes it's you know, um, I can do it, I can record it right and teach something to my team. Sometimes it's just easier based on you're having a direct conversation with the client. Simple. Knock it out. But anyway, so keep going. Web dev paid uh, ads you mentioned. I don't think, I think mops falls in the. I've been dealing with like there's some sort of issue with a LinkedIn ads for a client and, and like they have their own digital agency and I'm like, I don't know why that's my problem. Like and now I have to go in there and like get on that call with them and like it has nothing to do with me but I think it just falls like um, because we think of HubSpot, you know, we have a nice neat connector where we can see Google Ads, uh, Facebook ads and LinkedIn's ads right there. Um, so you know I would in terms of you know, CRM, ah, I would do have a sales ops. Um, I don't think I need designated uh rev ops at this point but I'm looking for ahead of each department. Um, you know that's their specialty. And then under that, you know those folks, I would recommend they hire one person at least that's like you know, web dev or their respective specialty is there. So you kind of have like your, you know, your lieutenant if you will under that and then from there like you're running out of again. We talked about that gap in the mid level talent. Not um, there isn't some there but it's really few and far between where it meets up the salary expectations. Especially um, you know again 85,000 doesn't go as far as it used to be for a full time salary mops. But anyways, um, if, if you have the uh, you know the head of the department was ultimately in my uh, my opinion responsible for, for everything from the templatizing and documentation, uh, to knowing what's going on within their respective teams to talking to the other heads of the departments to make sure that cross reference is flowing. Right. Um, but anyways after the head of the department and the second in command, you know there's, from that point I think you're just looking for those junior people now and the skill sets. Uh, you know I, we, we started you know, rather young in this and build it up. Uh, so without, you know, and that's been 10 years in the works or whatever it's been. You know there's going to be a next generation. There's things like highway education and all these great you know, education specific MOPS programs now. Um, that these kids really have a head start. Um, so you know, if you want somebody less junior but more um, specific, you know, you can see. Start to look at th, those types of things. Um, but I really think you know, if you're, you're looking for one, a good human being of course, like you know they, I'm not a huge culture guy, right. But I mean they you know, they have to be a good human and you know, do the right thing. Right? Um, somebody who's honest and transparency. You know, I don't like people who try to hide things. Mistakes happen. You know, let's, let's see what happened. Try to put something in place the block and move on. And then that's when you get to the point where. All right, those are like the two requirements. You know, let's start looking. Are they technical? Um, are they better with content? Um, what was their background in college or their recent job? You know, maybe they were client services, but maybe they're good copywriters. You know, let's give them a shot. So. Or maybe we put them on the client services team and give them a shot of writing copy. So I think it becomes like um, you know we have these, these combat board type silos and like there's a threshold if you will, where a project passes over from one. Now that's easier said of what that threshold really is. And people to the dawn of time will be arguing of whose responsibility it is. But again if you Have a clear and concise documented. Somebody comes in and you preach it. Day one, you practice what you preach. As a leader, I think, you know, chances are you're going to follow. Whereas you, you let something go for a year, especially agent side, agency side, it's, it's too late. People are just going to do what they want.

Speaker A: Right. And what do you think about this concept of flexibility and almost moodability in some capacities. Right. Like kind of what we've been talking about so far is spreading yourself into different areas and being able to, you know, I don't know how to do this today, but I'll learn and I'll figure it out kind of mindset. M. Right. And I think it's very much prevalent definitely on the agency side I imagine, as well as kind of the in house side. How do you think this kind of plays into uh, I'm almost going to coin it like the new age MOPS person or the new age agency or whoever that is. Like how modular, how flexibility, how much flexibility does they play into? I don't know either a job description or responsibilities. Like kind of. What are your some reactions or thoughts to that?

Speaker B: Yeah, it's, this is a great question because like I think the average or the, the normal MOPS person now has to be more of that Swiss army knife. Right. Do a little bit of everything we talked about that. Um, that's not going to be on the job description. Right. Like job descriptions are, are in plain paper. You know, it's, it's really tough for like a marketing operations role to be put there. Um, so, you know, how flexible can you be or how flexible should you be? Um, you know, in all transparency, I'm not one to talk because you know, especially earlier in my career I just took things on to your point. Like I, I was a yes man and I took on you know, um, things that people didn't want and worked with people that, you know, may have not been people's favorite and you know, did things that I had like you said before I googled it, I had really no idea what was happening. Um, but I learned them. Right. And I, you know, I took that next and I was able to repeat it and that's how like, you know, you kind of become a T shay marketer, um, across the board and things like that. Now how flexible should you be is up to, it's really up to the individual. But I would say like to the point where there's a point where you're getting taken advantage of too though, and you got to put your foot down. And if you keep saying yes as a mops person, um, I think naturally this, you know, executives will think it's okay. But because like, you know, they don't know, like they're handling it must not be that big of a deal where if you're working 16 hour, you know, 12 hour days, 16 hour days, that's really not realistic. It's really doing multiple jobs. So there's a fine line. Where is that line? I think it's like, you know, if you find yourself, um, if you find yourself saying, you know, how questioning, how is this, you know, related, uh, to my, you know, daily, um, assignments or, you know, even how is this related to marketing operations? Or how is this related to the big picture? If you ask yourself those questions, um, the big picture, what I'm doing in my role, um, and if you get nothing back or you can't really track it back to, you know, what it's doing. So for example, like, um, you know, I wouldn't, you know, feel the need to write, um, copy for a client because we're short. I think that's a little bit much. Um, you can ask me to troubleshoot some HTML. Um, I know basic, like most, uh, moss people do now, basic HTML. But, um, I will not do a template for you now. I could probably look it up and build a Pardot template or whatever it is, but it would take me so long. You're asking me to do something, um, out of the realm and uh, executive might think, well, Garrett knows Pardot. He knows Pardot. Build the template in Pardot. It's all partot. Right? Uh, but it's not. No, that was a web dev task. Right? Um, that's, that's totally different. But so you got to take advantage or you gotta watch if you're being taken advantage of. And sometimes it's purposeful, sometimes of course it's not. But it's like, you know, watch your time, know what you're getting paid to, going back to the salary. Um, but also think, is this at all relevant to what I expected to do or have been doing the last, let's say three to six months have I been at this role?

Speaker A: Right. And how do you think about kind of unplanned time or flex project time? Time for ad hoc projects, you know, however you want to classify, but basically semi scheduled or built into the, you know, how much you can handle in a month and a week, etc. Like your project management load. Right? Like your workload. How do you think about the Relationship between, you know, kind of unexpected events versus ops typically have this perspective of like, I give, you know, some folks give very conservative estimates and some people say, like, if everything works perfect, here's the timeline which, you know, I don't personally buy into because naturally, like life happens, right? Businesses happen, right. Things aren't easily planned, uh, one to one. Like, you can look to engineering sprints and you can see how much things get pushed off, right. Like, do you feel like there's an opportunity to take from some of that engineering culture of, you know, creating sprints and creating roadmaps, but still having flexibility for, you know, bugs and issues to come up? Like that maintenance, you know, or how do you see that relationship specifically in ops of, you know, between. I have a roadmap, I have a planned commitment versus, you know, things happen, sometimes happen have to happen quickly, right? Market changes, external factors, right? Like there's always going to be something that like, oh, God forbid one of your connectors breaks. That's uh, sure.

Speaker B: That's a priority, right? There's uh, Right. You're festing business systems. You got to fix it. Sure. No, you know, it's, it's. If I had the answer to this one. But you know, we, I, I always recommend a roadmap, right? Having that again, that good documentation, putting something in there, like a timeline perspective, you know, assuming like, I don't tell folks ever. Like things are, you know, assuming things go swimmingly. I don't really like to use that phrase myself. Um, but you know, I think it's uh, one, you got to have a relationship with the client where they understand, like, um, they know, like the life's not perfect. Other things come up, you know, from the agency perspective, you're not their only client. They should know that. So have that buffered in and you know, uh, you have a good relationship, even better. Um, but then like the second piece of it is like give yourself always. I always give myself like an extra week. Whatever's in my head. Like, I give myself an extra week or two because it, I feel like we always over promise on. I, I, you know, I would love to get out of this, but I always over promise and undeliver. Um, I have a bad habit of saying, you know, because I can see it on their face. You know, they want it so bad, they need it so bad. You know, they need it so quick, they need it yesterday. And I'm like, oh, well, if I can't get it by end of day today, I'll get it, you know, to you by end of day tomorrow. When realistically are they know and I know our SLAs are minimum of 48 hour turnaround. But you know, it's just one of those things where you want to be a good person. You can see it from a human perspective. But anyways, um, going back to the roadmap, put your roadmap together, you know, make sure it's shared with everybody, key stakeholders. It put in like clear writing. It's not a set it and forget it type thing. And then like you know, when these things happen and when the serious delays do come up, if it's a day or two, I uh, typically don't really, you know, are you the client?

Speaker A: Don't sweat it.

Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, right. I don't sweat it or. And I don't really like give the client a heads up, you know and they come out and ask. That's different. But you know, if you're a day or two off, that's different than being a week or two or you know, even more off at that point. Like I usually do a small analysis, nothing crazy. Um, I rather have, I usually do it in a doc, but it could be over email of what happened and why we're delayed. Um, and how, you know, by pausing it now we're saving our doing the right thing and saving ourselves time in the long run to get it right now and blah blah, blah. So like also that, well, why is this? You know, I needed a yesterday I told the board like, well if we did rush it and roll it out, I would have to come to you and say we gotta pause it, let's say and you know, redo it or tear it back, whatever it is. So it's really putting that in the strategic perspective and the long haul perspective, you know, why something is delayed. But yeah, I mean roadmaps you spend, we spend so much time putting them together. Right. I feel like clients and you know, even internal folks sometimes don't spend enough time as they should looking at them. Uh, but you know, it's at least something to go off of and keep yourself honest as a mops, you know, team leader or MOPS person in general.

Speaker A: And I guess to close us out in our final topic and we have, you know, time goes fast here. But when you're kind of thinking about coming back to the sport analogy, kind of thinking about a soccer team, you kind of mentioned this point around almost a post mortem or looking back and understanding why something happened. Right. Whether it's a pushing on a roadmap or you know, communicating a delay of some kind or, you know, whatever it is, or even, even completing a project and saying like, we did it or we didn't do the goal we set out, here's why. Right. How do you think about the importance of that? Right. Like, if I think about the team analogy of like, you know, the game is done, the score set, somebody won, somebody lost. Right. In a business, you either did accomplish it or you don't. Right. From a goal, like an OKR framework perspective or KPI perspective, however you buy into that.

Speaker B: Yeah. Let's be real. Usually you, you achieve the goal or you didn't. Right? Yeah. Uh, right.

Speaker A: It has to be black and white. One, and then two. How do you think about the, like, the framework, like, how do you think about the next play? How do you improve? Like, if I was a soccer team and I was managing a soccer team, how do I go from just like, each game focus to like the championship focus? How do I think about, how do I get better each game so that I, you know, win the sum of all the games rather than just like one game in particular? Like, how do you think about that from like an OPS perspective or project standpoint?

Speaker B: Yeah, it's a great, great, uh, way to wrap this up with the team analogy. So like, yeah, usually, you know, if you think about, uh, championship season, it's a long seasons, there's going to be people, peaks and valleys. Um, and, and we're weighing that, the marketing, there's going to be, you know, missed goals and, you know, high points. Right. Um, what I'll say is, you know, uh, a person and from a leader perspective, you can't get back what you say. So we have to be very careful with our words. So when things go awry, if I'm putting blame or having a negative attitude, that doesn't just carry in that moment, that carries over to the next game, if you will, or the next day, next week. Um, and it carries over an attitude and it starts to look at, you know, is, you know, uh, if he doesn't believe in us or, you know, it should, we believe in it and things like that. So it's definitely, you know, a, it's a long haul. You know, we're all in this. I think we all get caught up in the day to day and how stressful each day and moment is. And um, but it is a long haul. Um, how you, what you do in the moment, uh, will be remembered many moments from now. Um, so you can't be too high or too low. Um, you know, and then, like, from a leadership perspective, um, you know, you want to be able to say, um, you know, win or lose, right? Um, you know, you want to have a winning attitude and be able to say, when we did, law didn't lose, what can we do better? You know, in a sports analogy, maybe in basketball, maybe you shot horribly that night, right? But the, uh, to leave it as there, you know, there is tomorrow. Or, you know, maybe you didn't shoot hardly. Maybe your effort, your focus wasn't there. Or maybe, you know, you, you could have, um, played better defense. Things that are, you know, work on, um, able to work on, you know, and get better at. I think that's the same, you know, operations, because nobody knows everything and nobody will know everything. As we talked about the exploding tech stack and third parties. So it's just like, you know, how as a, as a person, as a leader, how, um, can you take that next person to get there where you've gone and as an individual moss person trying to, you know, work their career up. Um, you know, learn from the best and learn from those people you trust. Um, but if you come every single day like a sport and work at it, work at it, work at it, ask the right questions, um, you know, the advantage I had growing up playing sports, I always got injured, you know, is I'm not getting injured here. Right? So there's a, there's a, you know, where most of us won't be professional athletes, there's not really a cap in this market to say, you know, it's kind of what you want to make it. If you want to keep going, go for it. Um, but going back to the team. Yeah, not every day is going to be a win. Um, I really believe any business exists or any good marketer, you're going to have plenty more good days than bad and good moments than bad. But it's how you act in those bad moments, um, with each other. Right. And also in a, like an agency perspective, how are you reacting in the moments where they're complaining or they're upset? Um, that tells a lot, um, to them of, you know, how you're responding. So I hope that answers.

Speaker A: That was a, uh, great way to close it off. Garrett, thank you for coming on the show. Uh, where can people find you after the session?

Speaker B: Yeah, thanks so much for having me, Sasha. So, um, you know, I'm on LinkedIn, obviously, but poppiestechade.com Poppy's, uh, Tech8, LLC is my. A business. You know, we, we focus on, obviously, mops um, and Martech Consulting, but also do training for teams, group training, team training, and even individual training. So, uh, yeah, please visit our website or Visit us on LinkedIn.

Speaker A: Thanks, everybody.