Speaker 1: 0:25

Another episode of OpsCast brought to you by MarketingOpscom, powered by the MoPros. I'm your host, michael Hartman, joined today by my compatriot Mike Rizzo. Early morning.

Speaker 2: 0:36

Yeah, early-ish, early-ish, early-ish.

Speaker 1: 0:39

I guess it depends on your definition, all right, so today we may jump into this a little bit quicker, but today we are going to tackle the topic of mental health for marketing ops professionals. This is something we have talked about in the past, but a couple of different things. So joining us for that conversation is Andy Mullings. He is the global director of BlueprintX. He has over 15 years of experience in marketing technology. He is passionate about empowering businesses and individuals to achieve growth and success through innovative solutions and best practices. As the global director of BlueprintX, he leads and supports teams across all functional areas, delivering high quality projects and services to clients across diverse industries and locations. He has a deep and broad experience with demand operations, lead management, content supply chain and marketing data analysis. He has multiple certifications from Marketo and Oracle, and he is recognized as an Adobe champion for 2022 and 2023. And for him, it is now late afternoon, early evening. So, andy, thank you for joining us today.

Speaker 3: 1:38

It's a pleasure, thank you.

Speaker 1: 1:41

Yeah, and I guess one thing I left out of that is you also have a passion, I think, for this topic of mental health, for marketing ops folks, which is kind of leading us into it, and I think it was interesting we might want to share with our listeners here. Right before we got on, we were talking about things in our own lives that were kind of tied to mental health, but also like physical health, and so, mike, you said you're bypassing a workout right now. I've been struggling with some health issues and befriending me from working out and, andy, you're the one who's showing us all up so what did you?

Speaker 1: 2:15

just what did you say?

Speaker 3: 2:16

you just did yeah, just completed a challenge. It's called the um the national three peaks and we have to climb the three highest mountains in the uk within 24 hours. So the first ones in's in Scotland Ben Nevis it took us five hours to complete that. Then a six-hour drive to Scarfell Pike. It took us about three and a half hours to complete that, but we had to do it in the pitch black. And then down to Snowdon in Wales another five, six-hour drive and another three-hour hike. So extremely challenging. But I do feel like a different person this week. I feel like you could throw any challenge at me and I would be ready for it. So you know, I think these um challenges you can participate from can can certainly help alleviate stresses and anxiety.

Speaker 1: 3:03

You know you may be under at work yeah, I just so, just curious, and we didn't get to talk about this before we started. But did you do this? I'm sure there were other people around but did you do this in like with a group of people that you knew, kind of going through the suffering together?

Speaker 3: 3:21

yeah, there was a. The head of the customer org, david ferguson, at blueprint, did it with me. He was raising money for the british red cross, and then another group of like-minded individuals, girls and boys, so about 10 of us all together on that journey. That's fantastic. Only 0.04% of the population of the UK actually complete the three peaks challenge, so really small percentage of individuals actually make it through that one.

Speaker 2: 3:54

That's just crazy, that's just like mind-blowing to me.

Speaker 1: 4:00

Well, it's funny that you said that, because the reason I asked about the other people is there's this guy I follow on instagram or whatever jesse seitzer, I think is his name. I probably have it wrong, but he just did with a group of friends in the united states, uh, at the grad canyon rim to rim to rim, so like from one rim down over up over to the other rim and then down and back. You know, same kind of I don't know if it was 24 hours or less or more, but same kind of thing. Right, I think he came out of it as like, like, just like I can do anything right and and built these super stripe, strong bonds by going through that with other people yes, certainly the team.

Speaker 3: 4:43

I really like to do something with it, with them again, I do feel like we you know that little bit of a family bond to them all and we've still been talking throughout the week, even though we'd never met each other before. You know some of us and the only reason I know the stats as well is because we were traveling to the final hike and I could see that everyone was tired and really feeling it. So I was using chat, gpt to ask questions and find out interesting things and then sharing it on the chat group to get everyone motivated. So I was like we're in a small percentage of people guys, come on, we can do this. So you know, I only found out those stats by um, trying to get the team up, beaten and in the right mind frame for the for the final challenge that's amazing.

Speaker 2: 5:27

I do have one logistical question does somebody drive you? Yeah?

Speaker 3: 5:32

or is it a question to drive yourself? Because that is very dangerous yeah the crazy thing is that the minibus drivers he's got his own challenge. So when we're hiking he's sleeping, when we're resting in the van he's driving. So he he had a you know different type of challenge as well, as he's a really good guy called dave and apparently he's done it a couple of times for for different groups, so he was experienced in the route and, you know, knew where to go that's cool, that's really cool.

Speaker 2: 6:00

Yeah, I was like that. That would make it very extra dangerous to do this. If you had to drive yourself as well, I don't think you would get there I don't think the legs could handle it.

Speaker 3: 6:10

The legs were not in good shape afterwards so, um yeah, I don't think driving would be.

Speaker 1: 6:16

I wouldn't recommend that to anybody no well, let alone just like mentally right it's. It's hard to stay focused after a point with that kind of you know, physical output plus the just sleep deprivation and everything else, Mm-hmm. But congratulations. That's like what did you say is 0.04% of the population, or something like that. I missed the exact number.

Speaker 3: 6:41

Yeah, so yeah, thank you very much. Definitely feel that sense of achievement. That's incredible.

Speaker 1: 6:47

All right, Now that we've made everyone listening feel terrible about their own routine. No, all kidding aside, I think there is this. I mean, I guess I've known for a while, and I think it's pretty well documented, that there's this connection to physical health and mental health. But let's talk about mental health and some of the challenges specific to our core audience marketing ops, professionals. So I mean, we bring this up and I think, Andy, you're one of the ones who's really trying to bring this to the forefront, which I'm super grateful for. What do you see as? What do you think is the driver behind the things that cause the challenges of mental health for people in marketing ops? I mean, I'm sure that's the same for others to some degree, but marketing ops in particular, I think, has its own unique set of challenges.

Speaker 3: 7:40

Yeah, the biggest challenge I see is unrealistic expectations. Particularly in the regulated industries, you know, such as you know, financial services, medicare, healthcare there's an expectation of perfection. You know you cannot get a piece of content wrong and that's completely unfair. You know I've worked in teams and seen very talented people leave organizations because you know they've made maybe one or two mistakes after maybe five, six year good run and those mistakes have really made them feel the pressure that the comments that have been made to them, the emails they've received, have just crumbled the confidence and I've seen them walk away from great salaries, great positions in the team. Team have lost a great team member. I've actually got a really good example. There was a team that I was working in and had a team member based out of Pune. He was absolutely brilliant. We actually did an assessment called Clifton Strengths, which is like a personality assessment, and he was super high on productivity and I had dashboards where I could actually see I'm a big fan of this.

Speaker 1: 8:55

It's a strengths finder, right?

Speaker 3: 8:56

yeah, yeah, I'm a big fan it really helped me mold the team and put people in the right place. So he was really high on productivity. So I put him in charge of the delivery of um emails within the marketing operations team and luckily I had a dashboard so I knew how many he'd completed. And he made one mistake. He called me straight away Andy, I messed this email up. I'm sorry. I said, don't worry, I'll sort it for you, no problem.

Speaker 3: 9:23

But then a barrage of emails came in this is unacceptable, et cetera, et cetera and his confidence really crumbled. He fell apart and it took me a while to build him back up. But I managed to get in front of the stakeholders and, luckily, because I had dashboards, I told them the bigger picture story. This was a guy that had done roughly 400 emails that year and only made one mistake. And I did say to the team we take it back to sports again. I think we'd all agree probably Michael Jordan's one of the best sportsmen ever and I don't think he could take 400 shots and get them in every time. So I felt like the guy I'm talking about should have been getting pay rise and praise, not the type of emails he received. But this is something that we see often in marketing operations teams and one mistake can really affect someone's career and direction, and it really shouldn't do with the volume of work that they're undertaking and participating in they're undertaking and you know, participating in.

Speaker 1: 10:34

Yeah, I mean, I, there's a, there is that you bring in michael jordan, I think there's a. I can't remember the exact quote, but there's something. Like you know, I've I've taken many. You know last second shots and made some of them, but like I I've I've missed every one I've never taken. Maybe I'm mixing things up between people, but I think that's a great story. I mean, I have personal stories where I've had a direct manager who would call me into her office and maybe someone on my team who had been working on emails, right, and go just slap something down on the desk in front of us. What's wrong with this? What good is this going to do? That is not helpful at all and I said you know it was extremely demotivating. As you can imagine, that was a pretty toxic place.

Speaker 2: 11:28

I'm wondering if the quote, or maybe you're thinking of a different one, but I think it was gretzky wayne gretzky that said you miss 100 of the shots you don't take right yeah, I was thinking I was mixing up something with gretzky.

Speaker 1: 11:40

Yeah, I was like.

Speaker 2: 11:41

I was like there's another there is. I was like I'm pretty sure that's a gretzky quote quote.

Speaker 1: 11:45

Yeah, rather yeah, so, but another one, right. I mean, I think the thing that, like I've been, I've been sort of obsessing over kobe bryant lately for some reason, just like I was never a huge fan of his for whatever reason when, because I was in the age when, when I think of when the nba was great, right, the Jordan Bird, magic era, all that. But the more I've learned about Kobe, the more I'm impressed by how he was so dedicated to his craft in many different ways. Not only did he continue to make himself better, he helped make his teams better, which I also think that Jordan did too, in different different ways. I know less about gretzky, but clearly he was, if not the best, the best hockey player ever so, um, yeah I think it's about that.

Speaker 2: 12:41

that's what it's about. Right is like finding, you know, I love that you did, you brought up the clifton strengths finder. It's like finding how to, you know, lift everybody up around you, right, it's not just you know, there are people that sort of stand up but to your point, like getting getting uh, uh, just sort of beat down, for like one mistake that you make is just it's it's hard to stand up against that. And I think you know we had our own way of trying to, as a community, I guess, like make fun of that in a way, right, like bring some lightheartedness to it. We call it Moops TV, right, and that's really just a way for us to celebrate, to, to celebrate those mistakes as learning outcomes, right, and let everybody know that you're not alone. In fact, like I, I argue that you're probably not truly a marketing operations professional until you've made some kind of mistake, because you just well, I think you just have to. You know you earn your stripes.

Speaker 1: 13:44

I think that pressure is real. I mean, if Naomi was on she'd probably be saying, cause she said this multiple times. I know that, waking up in the middle of the night thinking about that email that was supposed to go out, it's going out in the morning, like, did I get the audience right? Did I miss a comma? All this stuff that you're truly concerned about and you understand the impacts at the same time.

Speaker 1: 14:06

This is one of the things I try to do with my teams understand the impacts at the same time. Like this is one of the things I try to do with my teams is like, look, and it helps I literally have a friend who literally is like a neurosurgeon, right, a brain doctor like, and I I still am. Just, I am blown away about how he maintains some level of just normalcy in his life, because I can't imagine the kinds of I mean the implications of his decisions and his actions are truly life affecting, if not, you know, potentially fatal. So I mean that's that's what drives me crazy when people give reactions like you did, andy, like this is unacceptable, like yeah, like no, like nobody wants to make these mistakes.

Speaker 3: 14:51

I think as well what you just touched on. Then you know the girl that was overthinking the audience and did it go out at the right time that overthinking can ultimately lead to, you know, stress and anxiety. You know it can be something that you're spending time with your family. You know I've been there myself, my wife's talking to me, but my head's in a different place. You know I'm thinking about work and I shouldn't be thinking about work that that is the start of the problem.

Speaker 3: 15:18

But what I also like to remind people is the reason that you think like that is because you care and remember. It's a good trait. It's because you want it to go well, because you're trying to do the best for yourself, the organization, your family. I think if you can try and twist it in that direction, it can become, you know, a positive. You know understanding why you overthink these things and make sure that they're going right. Um, you know it is because ultimately, you, you care, and you know, if I was going to have a team of people around me, I would want them to care, so for me. That's, that's a trait that I'm looking for.

Speaker 1: 16:06

And on the other I go I still want you to care, right, I don't want you to just not give a shit about the work and the quality, and I want you to do, I do want you to care, but there's a, there's this like balance that you have to find that's right for you, right, I also try to. I think it's one of the reasons why I it's funny I use the word balance because I'm about to say I hate the term work-life balance, say I hate the term work-life balance. So one of the things I truly believe is that there are just times when certain parts of your life are going to be more dominant than others. Right, you're going through a personal struggle, you're going through, you know, a family issue. You've got, you know it's intense time at work, right, and those things come and go and it and it's it's a little more of a. I think I believe in like there's this idea, that like there's a flow and as, if you can remember that this point in time, it doesn't always have to be it's 80% work, 20% life, or 50, 50, even, right, and in in some people, by the way, like they want that lopsided one, right, they may want to be focused on work all the time, and there's nothing wrong with that. That's. I think that the mistake that is made by there should be some right in quotes, right, right, balance, and I just don't think that's realistic. The other corollary to that is I also think it's really, really hard.

Speaker 1: 17:22

Andy, you kind of highlighted like separating personal and professional life as a human being is extremely hard, and you know it took me a while as a people manager to kind of get that into my head that you know I was as a people manager at work, right, I wasn't just managing the person at work, I was managing the whole person and trying to help them be the best they could at work, but also not undermining their personal life, if I could, right, I mean, that's never been my goal, and so I don't, you know, not trying to like pat myself on the back, but I do think that most managers would say they want to do the same thing I.

Speaker 1: 18:01

Just there are some that just truly don't care, I'm sure, but which, which leads me to like the idea of grace, right. So you, you, I think you showed grace to that person who made the one mistake out of 400 emails he had done that year. Clearly that wasn't the case with some of the other stakeholders. So I'm curious though how did the conversations go with both the stakeholders when you sort of addressed that on his behalf and then with that employee? Like, how did you manage those conversations? Because I'm sure it wasn't just a one conversation and you're done kind of thing. Right, it was an overtime thing.

Speaker 3: 18:43

Yeah, there's a couple of different stages to it. So the first one was just talking to the stakeholders to settle people down, and I honestly believe if I hadn't have had a data-driven approach, it wouldn't have paid off for me. It would have been an opinion versus an opinion. I don't think I would have got the result that I wanted. But when I displayed the data, I was using a system Adobe Workfront and I built really nice dashboards to show productivity by individual, broken down by channel, how many they've been receiving each day completed, how many of errors. So it was really easy to talk to stakeholders through it and they did change the mind at the end of the conversation. They did agree that they had been a bit too harsh and, you know they jumped too quickly into a conclusion. But ultimately in these regulator companies, we still did have to go through a, you know, a regulation review uh, operational risk review, it was called. So we still had to go through, you know, a little bit of a painful process, but we did manage to, you know, um, you know manage those stakeholders and, you know, change their opinion, which I think was definitely a win. But then the next part of it is then, you know building up you know the gentleman I was talking about his confidence, you know and that that took time as well, so I sort of had to take him away from his role initially. Um put someone in place to support him and then slowly transition him, you know, back in and there was a couple of one-to-one conversations throughout that, you know to um, let him know that I believed in him and, you know, felt that you know he could do this.

Speaker 3: 20:20

The individual was based in india as well and you know I know a little bit about indian culture. I've got some very close friends there and um, again, indian culture is a little bit different to it is than north america or in the uk where you know mistakes are seen slightly differently. So you know that compounded the issue as well and you know telling his family and things like that, you know. Again, you know drains that confidence level and when people don't have confidence, you know that's when they're going to make you know another mistake. So you know I was very protective of that individual for a period of time, but we got through it, and I of that individual for for a period of time, but we got through it and I think we definitely educated the business a little bit. Um, you know, and if that happened again I think they would, you know, come to maybe me first, rather than just firing an email out, to understand the bigger picture that's great.

Speaker 1: 21:11

I mean, those cultural differences are all. Yeah, that's true. I've had teams and people who've worked for me in different parts of the world and that's something that you don't always get how significant that kind of reaction is to those people. It's not, you know, the radical candor doesn't work so much in certain, in some cultures right, like it would in the us or uk or others all right so. So I think we could. I think we all and probably all of our listeners have had, could, could resonate. You know, some of these stories resonate with us. We've either been through it or no people have been through it. What, what are some of the things that you recommend people can do to try to? I won't say eliminate that, because I think that's a pipe dream, a bit right, you can't always eliminate some of these things, but you know, reduce the likelihood some of these things are going to happen in an effort to try to maintain a better sort of a little more stability in mental health yeah, it's a great question, let me.

Speaker 3: 22:14

Let me take it back a little bit further and tell you how I sort of ended up in this position, talking about mental health as well, because I think it's a key part of the story. So I was working for a New York-based investment management firm mo amory mcconnellan was a name, someone I massively looked up to, and, um, another lady called alex pang as well, who won't mention won't mind me mention her name either and both of those individuals noticed in me that I was very organized, always strong-minded, and they started to ask me questions around oh, what's your like routine and you know how do you approach things. And then I started to open up, and something that I do is I take a lot of notes, which I think is really important. But I also do certain activities outside of work as well, which break up. You know, when you finish work, you do something and then you go into your normal life, and I find that massively helps manage my mental health. So I do Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, and what's cool about Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu is it is mental and physical, so it's not something like where, if you just choose to go for a walk in the woods, you can still think about things. But with Jiu-Jitsu, if you switch off off, someone's going to put you asleep with a choke, so you've got to be mentally and physically switched on. But the conversations I had with them then led to hey, andy, you know we'd love to use to share some of the things that you do in your routine. With the team on mental health week. I was like, okay, okay, that's interesting, I would like to do that. Yeah, no problem. And that led to me really breaking down the things that I do and trying to understand myself in a bit more detail. I didn't realize some of the things that I was doing were even benefiting me. They were just sort of things that I've always done. And there's two situations in particular I think most people struggle with and I struggle with these as well. We touched on one of them. So it's overthinking something that's already happened and overthinking something that hasn't even happened yet. And there's two different approaches. I do for both. So overthinking something that's already happened.

Speaker 3: 24:36

So maybe you've had a one-to-one with your manager or, you know, just a bad day at the office. I think it's really important that you just don't go straight back into your normal life. You need to break it up. You need to do something first. You need to clear your mind. You know whether that be a yoga session. You, like I said, you know doing jiu-jitsu. You know you've got to break it up, you've got to have something in between that so you're not then taking all those you know pains and problems home. You may be being frustrated with the kids and then it just gets worse and it spirals out of control. So I highly recommend that you build some sort of activity. You know and I do recommend physical activities. I know that not everyone's a physical person, but you know there's definitely something out there for everyone. You know Pilates, yoga, martial arts, running. You know we can all get behind something. It will massively help in terms of managing. You know mental health. But then the other challenges you know, sorry sorry, sorry, just to interrupt.

Speaker 1: 25:37

I went to a. There was a point in my life where I thought I wanted to start get into fitness, like into the fitness industry somewhere along the way. And I went to a conference and somebody said something that really stuck with me, which is, uh, well, two things. It's better to be fit than fat. So basically the whole idea is like you can still be a big person, but as long as you move right, your body's made to move. But the other one was walk the dog every day, even if you don't have a dog right again, like that whole point of like you can just like just get up and move is a really important thing. That, especially like I I I know this is a great background story, but I'm curious, one of the things that I have been concerned about with the coming out of COVID sort of positive, the positive part of it, I think for so a lot of people is that there's more opportunities for remote work and things like that, which I think a lot of people really look for and like the downside that, or the risk to me with that is why I think I believe in trade-offs is that there's this no separation, literally, unless you have something, you have to force yourself to create a separation, whether it's mental or physical, from work to outside of work, and I think that's a real challenge for a lot of people.

Speaker 1: 26:50

Preach.

Speaker 3: 26:53

And again, I think it's about routine. Maybe, know, maybe you work a whole Monday, tuesday you go and work from a coffee shop for a couple of hours, you know. So you meet people, you speak to people, you know go for a walk every morning, you know make sure you take a lunch break. I think being disciplined with your routine is key, you know, and building in the activities that I mentioned as well.

Speaker 1: 27:17

Yeah, agreed.

Speaker 3: 27:17

I as well, and then Agreed Sorry, and.

Speaker 1: 27:18

I? I know I interrupted you.

Speaker 3: 27:20

The other scenario is then. So we talked about Overthinking something that's already happened. The other one that I struggle with is overthinking something that hasn't even happened yet, you know. So I've got like a, a workshop coming up. I want it to go right again. It's that. Yet you know. So I've got like a workshop coming up. I want it to go right again. It's that, you know, because I care, but it's running through my head, you know, million miles an hour, and I'm not focused on life or family. I'm sitting at home and I'm still thinking about.

Speaker 3: 27:48

I think to deal with that situation is slightly different, and what I like to do there is take notes. And you know how am I going to approach that meeting, what are the questions that I'm going to cover, what's the outcome that I want? And I find that when I close that notebook, I can forget about it because I know I can open it again in the morning and everything's prepared and ready. However, don't do that preparation. Sometimes I'll even wake up in the middle of the night and write a question down that I've just thought of. That's like running through my head. So I find it really important If you've got something important coming up, plan for it, write it down, go into some detail and then you can close that notepad and you can forget about it for 24 hours and enjoy life.

Speaker 1: 28:44

So they're my sort of two tips you know activities and you know taking detailed notes and they work relatively well for me. Often I hear that journaling is supposed to be a really helpful practice for people to manage things like those mental sort of pathways that we tend to go to as humans typically follow the negative path. But I have tried multiple times to do it and it's just it is not. I don't know, it's just not been able to do it. Do either of you do journaling?

Speaker 2: 29:20

Do you find it valuable? I curious, I do not. Um, okay, I, I have tried. Um, I will. I will share that. I've tried that. Um, I did journal, journal when I was. I explored different ways uh to um explore my own sort of emotions and thoughts and feelings earlier in in my life. Um, we're not trying to make a big sob story here or anything like that and I don't want to overshare it, but I lost I lost mother figures early in life, um, and then and last year I lost my mother, as as many of my community members know now, and and so I've sort of ebbed and flowed through different uh growth phases, uh emotionally, as I, as I've grown up, and I found journaling didn't get me there.

Speaker 3: 30:13

Um, I can't think the same for me. I don't know.

Speaker 2: 30:15

So I just couldn't but. But I also have been an athlete most of my life, so that that uh, camaraderie, that aspect of like um and I was self-motivated enough where I didn't have to go to a gym necessarily with a group of people, I will admit, now I've, you know, when I crossed 30 and having two kids and everything else, like that, oh, I'm going to go with someone, is actually much more exciting to me than it used to be. I didn't need that before, um, you know, and I don't have anyone to go with right now, but um, it's uh anyway. So that was a long answer to say I don't journal, but I do have other outlets now for myself yeah, so what about you getting on the spot?

Speaker 3: 31:01

sorry, I'm fine to answer um, generally no, but I do have three notebooks for different things. So one is for my jiu-jitsu. I take my notes and what they I want to improve on. Other ones for work. So, like I said, planning out those meetings, you know the tasks I've got to complete. Then I do have what I call a gratitude book. I don't fill it out every day but I just write down like three things that you're grateful for. You know it could be having, you know, a beautiful wife, amazing family, you family, blessed to have a roof over my head. The next week it could be something different. I'm blessed to have amazing work, colleagues around me that support me. So I find just something simple like that can put things in perspective for you every morning and make you realize that it is just work and there's a lot more important things in life and so and it's quite simple and easy to do as well that's interesting.

Speaker 1: 32:03

So, uh, I know we talked about this in a recent episode. There's a one of my favorite podcast, or sorry, ted talk. Ted talks is a guy named sean Acor. It's like about happiness, and one of his, one of the things they found, one of the I think there were like three habits that are best at sort of developing a happiness in people. One of them is journaling and it's specifically writing down three specific things you're grateful for from the last day, so that I mean I, that one I know is part of um research backed kinds of stuff as well. So that's, that's good to hear. So, okay, sorry, I totally I took us off track, I mean, but I, I was, you were talking about the writing, and I'm just always curious because it that the idea of journaling, just as, like you, mike, it just never seemed to work for me. It always for me, it always felt a little bit disingenuous, maybe I don't know. Yeah, I don't know.

Speaker 2: 33:07

I experienced emotions like that too, where I was like sort of forcing myself to try to come up with something to say. I think it's I don't want to call it easy to be like grateful for three things, but you know cause it takes work, which is why that research uh is is probably supporting that, that type of behavior. But yeah, I often found myself just like you know maybe it's, I don't know, it's just it was just harder for me to like uh tap in that way and it's like I was forcing a behavior that wasn't coming natural to me. And I think that's true for other folks too. Dan on our team he definitely journals and we've talked about active journaling techniques and we're both gamers too right, we both enjoyed playing. He's a D&D dungeon master and I played a game with. I'd never done that before in my life, so I gave that a shot, which is great, you know. So I think there's different outlets for different people to try to like find that mental flexibility right.

Speaker 3: 34:10

We've all got to find our own path and I think but it is good to take advice and learnings from from different people. You know tony robbins probably the first person I ever come across that was doing some sort of like structured routine, and you know I don't follow the tony robbins routine. But you know, I think having a routine and a couple of things that you deploy when you're under pressure is is keen.

Speaker 1: 34:36

You've got to find what's right for you well, I I like your, your description of jujitsu and I'm not in jujitsu, but it that that it rung true with me with something that I've tried to describe to people who don't understand it like I. We my wife and I started doing fly fishing before we had kids and we've kind of come in and out of doing it. But one of the things I tell people about fly fishing that is counterintuitive is how relaxing it is and I think, for some of the same reasons, is like if you're not like to really do it, well, you have to be focused in and that sort of forces you to like let everything else go. And it sounds like jujitsu offers some of the same thing, with sort of maybe bigger, you know more, more immediate consequences, although in fly fishing I have turned my back on the river and filled my waders, which is not fun in, you know, just above freezing water yeah, jiu-jitsu, the best people are more mental and physical.

Speaker 3: 35:35

They're definitely in more of like a flow state. But if anyone is going to take up jujitsu after you listen to us talk and then I would advise that the first six months are going to be tough and you might not get to that flow state immediately. So you have to push through a few hard weeks before you start to settle in and, you know, can relax and and it takes a little bit of time- all right.

Speaker 1: 35:58

So we've we've talked about, like something physical or some of these other things, that kind of work for you, and there's plenty of people out there who have great kind of ideas for that. Um, yeah, are there any things that maybe let's bring it back to the workplace a little bit right? Are there things within kind of the work environment that our listeners could, could apply, that maybe are separate from this, like creating a separation and and doing something that is a break from it, that requires focus or whatever works for them?

Speaker 3: 36:29

yeah. So I think I think in the workplace, you know something that is causing, you know, more and more pressure and this is probably not just in marketing operations but right across different departments within all businesses is that we're seeing a lot of um, you know, headcount cuts and also budget cuts, so budgets are smaller than they've ever been before. You know, teams are smaller, but teams are being asked to do the same volume of work and obviously that is going to cause, you know, huge amounts of stress and pressure and you know what can stakeholders do to change that. And we are in a time where technology is evolving fast again, similar to sort of when the internet was launched and we've seen a huge evolution in technology. And now, with AI, we're seeing sort of the same push.

Speaker 3: 37:22

And there's a solution that I work on called Content Supply Chain. It's the end-to-end process of creating, managing, distributing and monetizing content across different platforms. So, rather than processes being manual, we're using workflow management tools. There's a couple at ilikemondaycom Workfront, and they can automate tasks and alert the next person to obviously take over and pass the baton, keep things organized. Then you can bring in AI, you know so. Then you can maybe put a piece of thought leadership in, and create introduction text for social and email. So I think that's automation and workflow management can massively help. Teams under pressure and stakeholders should be looking at these solutions.

Speaker 3: 38:13

I think one thing I'm a little bit disappointed about in the market, though, is that the driver for change is always revenue and risk rather than culture, and I don't think people realize that the culture will impact revenue and risk relatively quickly. If you don't address it, you know either you'll lose a key person that is super skilled and knows the business well, or people will start to make mistakes because they're not enjoying what they're doing. So you know an ask for stakeholders out there is. You know, if there are cultural issues in your business, make that the driver for change, because it is going to impact your business, and if you can address it with something like content supply chain, which can automate mundane tasks, you know it can be a massive win for the business, and you know your team are going to appreciate that, and I'm sure they'll get on board with an initiative like that.

Speaker 1: 39:03

Yeah, I mean, I can't remember who was it that said was it culture eats strategy for lunch? Was it the saying? But so okay, so can you? Can you like what? When you say a content supply chain, you mentioned some like project management type tools, what you know what. Could you have an example of what that would look like within an organization where you've applied that?

Speaker 3: 39:30

I'll talk you through it. Let's go through the email one that we've touched on. So in a workflow management tool it all starts off with a request form. So somebody in product marketing, channel marketing, sales can say, hey, I want an email, you know, to talk about this new product. So you fill out the request. It goes into the system. The team obviously have a queue. They look at this request, say yeah, that's something we can do.

Speaker 3: 39:56

And then what happens is you automate the creation of a project to obviously complete that email and obviously within that project it's got all the different tasks that you need to build an email your banner image, your from address, your disclaimer, your body text, your CTA link, your tracking and the tasks are predefined. So you're not building the project on the fly. You've already designed that project for the creation of that asset. So straightaway the project tasks are there. It initiates and messages the people who need to work on those tasks. The information is then submitted into the tasks so all the information is collected as metadata and then you can actually use API integrations to actually push the metadata into like an email tool and create the email from scratch. So the teams are not copying, pasting text, you know, or messing around with email editors that have never been easy to use. You know you always make a mistake and wonder why there's a space where it shouldn't be.

Speaker 1: 40:56

Well, the worst is you copy from Microsoft Word into your email editor and you forget that there's all kinds of hidden like formatting Characters and stuff. Yeah, Thank you very much, Microsoft.

Speaker 2: 41:11

That's one of the. I mean even at Google, really right, but that was one of the most frustrating things. That I learned as a junior marketing house person was the simple solution. My manager was like put it into a text editor, right, Like sublime text or just like a standard remote text editor first paste it there and then copy paste it out of that into the thing.

Speaker 2: 41:36

That was my trick as well, or yeah, I was like or command shift v, uh, if you're on a mac and that removes formatting when you paste, uh, just for anybody else that's still doing this method. Yes, but it's so frustrating. Anyway, it's a good idea.

Speaker 3: 41:52

Push data via tools, the cool thing about content supply chain. So I give you some numbers as well. So there's a business I'm working with who are producing 1600 assets across email, social, and the 1,600 assets being produced each year. We introduced content supply chain and we managed to free up 12,000 hours, so basically, two full-time people freed up. But instead of just freeing up two people, what we did was we freed up a little bit of time for everybody on the team. What we wanted was BAU requests to be roughly 50% to 60% of people's time, because what I've seen in organizations is, if you're responsible for the creation of assets, it can sometimes feel like a modern day factory and after a period of time, people just leave. You know it's not enjoyable. You're not learning and growing. So what I aim to do with content supply chain is reduce everybody's time down a little bit and then that free time, push in innovative and growth projects to those individuals. So, like you might have an individual, you say, hey, you've got a bit of free time. What I'd like you to do is just analyze some data. You give me your opinion on where we can improve as a business or hey, we're going to do this. Really cool integration with linkedin. Here's a guide. I'd like you to do it and you're going to learn some new skills along the way, and then the team then really feel that they're getting that career growth.

Speaker 3: 43:18

You know, and I even had a another funny story. There was a guy working for me and, um, we got the content supply chain right. The team was ticking and he came to me and said he just had a job offer. The salary was 20% higher. And I said go, you should go, it's an amazing opportunity. And he took a week to think about it and he came back and he said I'm not going.

Speaker 3: 43:40

I said why Are you stupid? And he said because I love working here, andy. He said this is the first time, as First time is someone who's really focused on helping me grow and give me tasks that you know challenge me. And he said I really enjoy that part of it. I feel if I stay here for another few years, you know I can go on to something you know bigger and better. So you know, if you can get that balance right in the teams by freeing up time using automation, you know you can really change the culture of a team where people are enjoying coming to work every day and they feel like they're learning and growing, and I think that's really important in today's world.

Speaker 1: 44:16

Yeah, it's so comment and a follow up question. So my comment is that it's a really I think that's a really good point about like the like freeing up time. I think a lot of people, if they were saying I'm going to go after, build a business case to implement this technology, to do automation and there's got to be some sort of quote, cost savings right, which the implication there is essentially you cut people right and that's not really what you're taking is what I've used before, which is, by doing this, you're investing and you're going to change the nature of what these people are doing from the mundane stuff to the things that are interesting to them, and I've done it in the context of customer support and I've done it in other places. So I think that's a really good point to make is that there's this, I think, a tendency to do just this sort of pure ROI financial modeling which I don't discount because Mike knows this, your ROI financial modeling, which I don't discount because Mike knows this, like I am a big fan of. Like people in this space need to understand finance and how the financial teams, finance teams think and to build a case. But there's. I think there's these other consequences of these things that you need to be able to talk about as well. That can be benefits and risks and challenges. So take that for what it is. So. So one of the like I like I like the automation piece. I like that you can, you know, increase, like you can free up people's time to do more interesting, creative stuff, try new things.

Speaker 1: 45:37

What what I have run into, regardless of the tools in the process in some places, is that there's a combination of too many I call it too many cooks in the kitchen, right. Too many people involved with these things, and then, specifically, too many people who have sort of veto, veto power, right. So especially late in the game. So if you're building this content, it's gone through approvals and then at the end somebody says, no, you know, start over Now. Now you're like you've.

Speaker 1: 46:10

That's hugely demotivating. It's also inefficient and keeps you from working on other stuff. So how do you? So to me, like the technology piece of it, but there's got to be like this I hate to call it just process, but like being really clear about roles and responsibilities and setting expectations about the level of inspection on some of these things. So email versus web content. To me is a good example. Right Email, because once it's gone, it's gone. You can't get it back. Probably you probably should actually apply more discipline to reviewing it in detail than you should with a piece of web content that you could change almost instantaneously if there's a mistake, so anyway. So how have you dealt with that kind of challenge?

Speaker 3: 46:51

Maybe you haven't, we have, and this is a challenge that actually content supply chain solves. So I've had organizations say to me that you know we have lost productivity because there's too many cooks in the kitchen, there's too many opinions, and then things are going out delayed. So one of the things that you have to do with the content supply chain is you have to map out all your processes first. You know, somebody taught me a valuable lesson. They said if a process does not work outside of technology, it doesn't work inside the technology. The technology doesn't fix broken processes, it simply helps to automate them and make them more efficient and effective. So let's take, for example, the scenario that you gave in relation to like proofing and final approval. So the cool thing about mapping out the process is we decide first who is responsible for that and we define those roles and responsibilities.

Speaker 3: 47:47

There's normally two approval flows that I recommend. The first one is a peer-to-peer marketing review and that can be used for, like seasonal emails that are not product related, not performance related. So let's say it's just a happy Christmas or a happy Easter that does not need to go to a senior stakeholder in the business. You know, we can have two people from marketing approve it within a workflow management tool and it should be good to go. And obviously we define those people within the workflow so you can only select two people you know and you build that out and then you hit approve.

Speaker 3: 48:23

The other type of approval is where it is something more important. You know, in financial services, performance information is key that it's checked because there's regulatory fines. So you bring in someone from risk and compliance so you've got the peer-to-peer marketing review and then risk and compliance. So you know, once they've approved it, risk and compliance approve it it's good to go. So I think by defining those roles and responsibilities up front, getting everyone to agree and sign off on them and then building that into the automation, you know again solves that problem of too many cooks in the kitchen.

Speaker 1: 48:58

Yeah, yeah, I mean so this. To me this ties back to the point about culture. It also because, to me, to make that work because I think everyone would, everyone's head would nod, yeah, that's what we should do is limit the number of people, yada, yada, yada. But it requires trust. Trust that people are going to do what they say they're going to do, that they're going to make smart decisions. And without that, which is a culture thing, it's not so much a skill right. It's hard to accomplish that. So that's to me like underpins a lot of this.

Speaker 3: 49:34

I think trust is key, but also, you know, visibility. So I'll give you a couple of examples of what I've seen happen in this process. So, because these systems can produce rich analytics, you know, I know how long somebody has spent on a compliance review and I can therefore start to look at that data and decide whether they are putting the appropriate amount of time in to check those assets. So I did have an example where I spotted a few assets that had been just checked in milliseconds, basically just approved straight away. And you know, I called those individuals and I said listen, is there a problem here? Was there an issue with the system?

Speaker 3: 50:19

You know, I was just looking at the data and noticed these approvals happened really quickly and I think once people start to realize that you know that type of data is available, it holds them accountable, you know, and of course I it holds them accountable, you know, and of course I don't want to micromanage anyone or, you know, put them under pressure, but a job has to be done correctly and sometimes you again, we were talking about data driven approaches before and again. This is a great data driven approach where you can sit down with those individuals and say listen, I would like you to spend a bit more time on that. You know, know I think something you know, closer to a couple of minutes checking everything over, you know would be appropriate and you know we'll keep an eye on that. We'll check in again on the month and you know I'd like you to improve in that area and I think, again, using that type of approach, you can get the right output from teams without, you know, affecting the culture know, affecting the culture.

Speaker 1: 51:14

That's great well. So, andy, I think I think we're gonna have to cut it. It's it's getting late for you and I know mike and I both have other things we have up on our docket, but this has been great. I think this has been both hopefully helpful for our audience from a general standpoint as well as like some specific things they can take back to their workplace. So, andy, thank you for for sharing. If, uh, if, folks want to kind of keep up with you and what you're doing, what's going on with blooper next? What's the best way for them to do that?

Speaker 3: 51:38

yeah, probably linkedin. Um, if you, if you follow me on linkedin, send me a little message and I'll definitely follow you back. I'd love to leave everybody with a little quote as well. It was a gentleman that I met when I was doing the Three Peaks Challenge, and I think this quote is really relevant for people who are, you know, feeling the pressure at work, and the quote is the magic is in the things that you're not doing. You know, like we said, you know building in activities into your routine a bit more discipline, and I think that's where you're going to find the magic. So I would encourage everyone to really think about the things that you could do that you're not doing right now, and you know, if you can make a few small changes, I'm sure it can make a big impact yeah, there's.

Speaker 1: 52:34

Uh, I think it's thomas sowell, who's his economist, who said, uh, there's no solutions, there are trade-offs, right, and I think, like the trade-off you're talking about, there's trade-off there, about it's like opportunity cost, right, choosing to invest time or energy, and one thing means that there's probably not time for something else. To a point.

Speaker 2: 52:46

Yep.

Speaker 1: 52:47

Totally agree. Yep, andy, this is great, thank you.

Speaker 2: 52:50

I really appreciate you coming on and hopefully we can get you all over the pond. Mopsapalooza, I think we talked about it, but even without that I know there's a lot of people that are really excited about this chapter stuff and I'll be reaching back out to you, I think soon, here, because we've got a bunch of folks in your neck of the woods that would love to get together under the community sort of framework.

Speaker 3: 53:18

Anyway, I appreciate you, really appreciate the time and effort you guys have made as well, and I really love the community that you build and I think it's something that's going to be really important in the future for everybody.

Speaker 1: 53:29

Absolutely. I could not agree more, and thanks to all of our listeners for continuing to support us as always. If you have feedback or suggestions for guests or want to be a guest, reach out to us. Let us know we are open to all feedback. Until next time, everyone. Bye-bye.