Speaker 1: 0:23

Hello everyone, welcome to another episode of OpsCast brought to you by MarketingOpscom, powered by all the MoPros out there. I am your solo host, michael Hartman. Today, again, mike is in this. We're like, literally, I think, a week away from well less than a week away from Mopsapalooza 2024 starting. He's wrapped up in that and Naomi will be with us soon, I'm sure. So hopefully we will see everyone, or we'll have seen by the time this gets out. Hopefully we'll have seen everyone at marketing at Mops Palooza. So, without further ado, joining me today is Gareth Robinson, founder and CMO of RevXL, a marketing and ops strategy consultancy. Prior to founding RevXL, gareth held leadership roles in demand generation and marketing operations at multiple companies, and before that he had roles in sales operations, marketing operations and Salesforce consulting and in-house teams. Gareth has also started several companies in the past and, maybe more importantly, served in the US Army for three-plus years. So, gareth, thank you for joining and thanks again for your service.

Speaker 2: 1:26

Yeah, thank you, and thank you for having me on.

Speaker 1: 1:30

Yeah, absolutely so, just so we can set things up for our audience. Today we're going to be talking about how folks who are in marketing operations, who maybe feel like their role is not as viewed as strategic, or feel like that they're just order takers but want to be doing more, how their role can evolve. But, as we like to do here a lot, before we get into that, we'd like to have you share a little more about your career path with our audience, and I didn't prep you for this, so unfair warning. I guess that one of the things I look for if you can think of it along the way, as any sort of key moments, right, or key people that were part of that, so who maybe had an outsized influence over the direction of your career Be curious to hear about that.

Speaker 2: 2:20

Yeah, and you know, my career started started, interestingly enough, I had started my first business in college and we did really well with that and it was a service-based B2B business doing general contracting, property management, and I fell in love with sales, marketing and sales through that. And at the time going to school, I wasn't learning what I really wanted to learn. It was kind of you're opening the book and your homework's like, go read these 12 definitions and memorize them. We're going to take a test on them and I'm like, well, this doesn't really help me build the skills that I'm really looking for. So a friend and I decided to start our business. We did really well with it and through that business I made a lot of connections and started to get really interested in tech. As we were building out our business we were starting to bring the tech piece in to automate our marketing, automate some of our sales, and from there I just really fell in love with the tech side of things and that kind of got my wheels spinning a little bit. And so after we graduated we ended up selling that business to a competitor and I was fortunate enough to get my start in the financial services world slash insurance world doing Salesforce consulting for banks and credit unions, and I fell in love with it from the get-go. And if anybody's worked in financial services, the industry as a whole lags behind tech and some other industries, and so a lot of the work we were doing was very high impact, especially when it came to the customer journey, especially when it came to optimizing the sales process, etc. And I had a lot of fun doing that, and so that's where my love for technology and operations really started was there Just because I could see the impact that just like even marginal gains in efficiency could have, you know, for a company and the kind of momentum that it can help build.

Speaker 2: 4:35

So from there, you know, I got recruited and went and worked with Microsoft and Kroger on a really large project, and we were, you know, we were taking a digital shelf AI solution across to 13 international markets, and so my role there was to work with the Microsoft team to build out our go-to-market plans for each of those markets and develop the sales plans for the executive briefing centers that Microsoft had in each of those markets. We hear so much about efficiency and optimization, this, that and the other, and working with Microsoft for those 8 or 9 months was absolutely probably still, to this day, one of the best experiences of my career, because to see an organization that large perform at the level that they do, even downstream, was pretty incredible. I mean, they really have things dialed in, especially from a team management perspective managing projects, managing partners, everything is really dialed in and if you've ever worked with them, you've probably experienced that yourself, and so, again, that experience kind of sparked the idea of like, ok, I really love what I'm doing here. I would like to kind of, you know, go from working with these more established enterprise level companies to get into the startup space, and I got into a startup company.

Speaker 2: 6:04

I was really fortunate to get to get into a rapid growth company here in Indianapolis, and I would say that was probably where everything really started clicking for me and really got me engaged with go-to-market as a whole, versus just the marketing and operations piece. We scaled that company year over year something close to 50%. We went from a $28 million company to a $55 million company, having stripped down the entire tech stack, rebuilding the entire sales process, while at the same time revamping our go-to-market strategy, really going from a lead gen based model to a demand gen based model and a partnership driven model, and so that was one of those experiences and I think we all have one of these where it's, like the 18 months that I was there felt like 10 years of experience.

Speaker 1: 7:03

You know it was incredible. It was one where it felt like it went by super fast, but it also felt like it took forever Right.

Speaker 2: 7:10

It lasted forever it was amazing and you know, when I made the decision to leave, it wasn't because I didn't love being there, it was just that you know, I wanted to go take on a different, a different challenge, a little bit of a harder challenge, and but you know that company and the experience I got there just the leadership team that I was able to learn from world-class leadership team and it was one of those situations where everybody just seemed to be on the same page and we were just pumping out campaigns like a well-oiled machine.

Speaker 2: 7:45

It was just like plug and play.

Speaker 2: 7:47

And this was a little bit pre like, you know, covid era. We were performing like a COVID era company before COVID, or a growth at all cost era company before that era, and just to see how and we were going up against some pretty large companies you know Nutanix and Veeam and VMware, et cetera and we were just outperforming them. And a large part of that was, you know, our approach to the ecosystem, our approach to partnerships and our approach to you know how we, you know really how we built our relationships with customers, and so that changed everything for me. It's one thing to learn the tactics and the strategies and stuff at different spots and you get some behind the curtains looks at why things are running at such a high level. But this was very hands-on, very in the weeds, and so building out some of that myself and being a part of a team that just performed at such a high level like that, and a leadership team that really allowed you to take ownership of the outcomes um, that changed everything for me.

Speaker 2: 8:57

And so from there um, you know, I went into another company and it was like the complete opposite that it was a struggling AI company that had kind of been an industry leader for 20, 25 years and, you know, had just quickly lost a lot of ground to fast, agile startups that were really well funded, coming into the TTS space, the LLM space, and so that was a totally different beast. That was, hey, we're basically a recovery phase company that really needs to turn the ship around, and so you know, From a, I guess, stage-wise very different, but size-wise were they much different from the one right before that.

Speaker 2: 10:45

They were probably three or four times larger from a revenue perspective. So they were doing about $350 million a year in revenue. The company I was at before that was doing about 55, 60. So there's you know, the dynamics were a little different too, because it was a European based company and not an American company, and I was one of the only Americans on the team yeah.

Speaker 1: 11:07

Yes, I think we've talked to people before about, like, the differences in cultural differences globally and how that can impact things. So, like I had worked at a I worked at Texas instruments, right, and I worked a lot with people in Asia, china, japan, so on and uh, then I went and worked for a company that uh worked for the America's division I guess you would call it for a-based company and working with headquarters in Japan versus headquarters in Dallas or in the US with people in Asia two very different dynamics and culture was easily a challenge if you really weren't, you know, perceptive about that. It also made a big difference to be able to go over there and meet with people in person.

Speaker 1: 11:55

This is all before yeah well before covet and before even like doing a video call would have been a highly unusual thing, and now it's you know you'd have to have a special conference room and all that um yeah I just uh, I don't know.

Speaker 1: 12:08

I think you're pretty close to the end there, but, um, one of the other things that struck me and always strikes me when I think about it is when you talked about when you're in college and you're interested in sales and marketing, but you feel like you weren't really learning. I'll paraphrase it you weren't really learning practical skills, right, yeah, but what really stuns me still is how few. I used to say there were none, but I think there are a handful of places that do formal college type education around sales. Marketing is at lots of places. Virtually every business school has it, but almost no place has sales. And it just always stuns me because, at the end of the day, there are so many people that go into sales and maybe that's why it's hard to train for is because there's some value in having people with lots of different sort of backgrounds and yeah diversity in that in that sense.

Speaker 1: 13:03

but it's still like I just am blown away because I know there's sales training and sales methodology and things like that. But you can't like in general, right, you can't go get a bachelor's degree in sales.

Speaker 2: 13:17

Yeah, you know, what's interesting is we had I'm thinking of like my two to three favorite professors, and the interesting part about them was they had all been in enterprise sales. They most of their career was either at Heinz or, like Nabisco or you know, johnson and Johnson, et cetera, like at these you know really large enterprise level companies, you know running sales teams or running regions, et cetera, and so they were also teaching marketing. They had some, and so it was really interesting to have their perspective throughout that versus just you know, I had, you know I took a branding course and you know the guy was a brand manager at whatever company and you know just top brand management and branding and but the sales, the sales, the professors with the sales background definitely brought a little bit more juice to the education. As far as hey, like this is what it's going to be like out in the real world. This is like the reality of like how marketing and sales need to work together. So I definitely, I definitely see what you're saying there and in fact you know, uh, not to veer off here, but, um, my junior year I'm taking this, like you know, branding course and, um, you know my professor's teaching it and she was someone who had been in enterprise sales and so when that started, I was like you know what? I'm just going to start an e-commerce brand. I'm just going to like do it hands on, you know. And you know we're like 12 weeks into the course and I come into class one day and I've got these, like this product that I've ordered and you know, vetted and tested from Alibaba. I've got my, my custom, the whole nine yards. I built a website, this, that and the other.

Speaker 2: 14:55

And she was like I come to class 10 minutes early one day and I was like, hey, I just wanted to get your opinion on this. I've been building this pseudo company, this mock company, on the side this entire semester, but I think I'm going to take it to market and actually try to see if I can't build a profitable Amazon business out of this, which we ended up doing. But, um, she was just like you know all my years of teaching and you know she, she'd been there 15, 20 years. At that point she was like I've never had a student actually build a company throughout the course of you know, the semester. And I was like for me it was like I, I'm just so practical, hands-on type of person, of like it's never gonna stick with me unless I just go do the damn thing. Um, yeah, so those.

Speaker 2: 15:40

That experience for me was um, I'm really fortunate. You know, we were talking about colleges. Before we hopped on, I got to go to indiana university and I think where you know some of these schools shine is you know their, their curriculum is more built for the enterprise level type of companies, and so you do lose a little bit of that. You know real world. Well, this is what actually happens for the rest of us. This is how things kind of play out, you know, in these smaller industries or these smaller segments, and so it was nice to kind of have that experience of building one company and then building an e-commerce company. Kind of wrapping this up and talking about my background, you know I built three e-commerce companies. Two of them did pretty well. One of them completely flamed out. You know, learn that lesson. I got a little cocky and tried to go sell sunglasses.

Speaker 2: 16:32

The customer acquisition cost on those is yeah, yeah, yeah, the, the CAC on that's pretty high, yeah, so I took that, I learned that lesson and then, um, so to get to where I'm at now, about a year and a half ago, um, I just realized like I, I I've I've learned so much in corporate America but at the same time, like I really like the variability of consulting, being able to work on multiple different types of projects and not just being married to one company and one project and you know, like one outcome, just kind of like behind the scenes, just kind of started building my personal brand, which was awkward at first, getting on LinkedIn and posting for the first time and putting some content out there and just you know, kind of that, what am I doing with my hands? Moment of life. But it's been amazing so far and you know, getting to meet you and the connections that I've made on LinkedIn and you know, in other communities.

Speaker 2: 17:27

It's been incredible and we're having, you know, know, amazing impact with our clients um being able to help multiple you know, founders and startups win at the same time.

Speaker 1: 17:37

There's so much fun and excitement that comes with that, and so that's how we kind of got here today yeah, so I think you touched on a little bit of what we wanted to cover right in your, in your career path were some of these different scenarios and both how it was living in a marketing automation, marketing operations role within different types of environments. Um, as well as what the perception, what you, what you believe the perception was for them and I think most of our listeners who've been in this will have either are either experiencing or have experienced one where they felt like they were not appreciated, not seen as strategic, not, yeah, not, you know, just essentially like, told what to do and then you didn't go do it. Um, and you, yeah, your recognition was when something broke right, as opposed to, yeah, making sure everything was working smoothly. Um, which, by the way, I just the reason I asked you about the different size of those two companies where you had sort of the different experiences. Yeah, one of the things that I've experienced is, although I haven't really worked much in this in a startup or early stage company, I've been in one before I was doing marketing operations and I think there's this the ability to move quickly, to be agile and to move things through even if you have a relatively well-defined process right, it's relatively easy because there's not many people who are involved.

Speaker 1: 19:07

And there's something where I think people are surprised leaders in particular are surprised about when you get big enough. Right, there's this point where you can continue to perform at that pace, but at some point things start to slow down. Right, when you get big enough, yeah, because there's just more people lack of knowledge, less experience, whatever it might be, and it takes time. In my mind, you know a level of trust in people that is not always there as you get into, like enterprise organizations, that people are going to move quickly. So you get in all these extra, extra reviews and lots of people who can veto things, but may or may not like, uh, lack of clarity about how decisions are made. So, yeah, it's, it's a frustrating bit that I think many people deal with, especially at large organizations.

Speaker 2: 19:57

Yeah, I totally agree and I think it's the reason why a lot of you know, especially in today's world, I think we've seen the job market shift so much in the last few years to where I think people are kind of decoupling this idea of I've got to be at the same company for five years. I can't just like. But I think now that you know a lot of companies are embracing that, hey, like you know, there's people like me out there who you know I would struggle being at the same company for 10 years. I would be bored in most cases, unless I'm sure there's some outlier cases there. But for me it's like I enjoy that variability.

Speaker 2: 20:33

I can come in, I like to work fast and I can have this impact. I know what I can do. Just because I. You know, if you looked at my resume, on the surface I've left two or three companies after 18 to 24 months and it wasn't because I didn't love what I was doing there and I didn't love the people I worked with and the experience I was getting. It was just, hey, I've kind of hit this point where my day-to-day is the same thing. Every day, every week feels the same and for me that's my sign of like okay, it's time to go find that next challenge.

Speaker 1: 21:08

It's funny, I think I've got this weird combination. Yeah, I think I've got this weird combination where I like structure and process, but at the same time, I do not like doing the same thing every day, same. You know it's just like they don't seem to go well together, but but it's just like. That's how I'm wired. Um, yeah, because, but part of it is because I, when I think of structure and process, I think I think some people think of structure and process. I think I think some people think of very, very rigid very, very detailed, like step-by-step.

Speaker 1: 21:40

You must do this, whereas I'm much more of a what I like to think of as like. I like principle-based processes and flows. That gives people like here are the guardrails. That leaves some up, some up to not only interpretation right, but also up to like how you work right. So I don't want to define. It's funny, being a parent is like this, right, like there are ways that I have done things like load a dishwasher and, by the way, there's still a right way to do it, but I've been told differently. But you know, there are things that you know I'll be doing. I've done something, something the same way, and I'll see one of my kids doing like why are you doing that? And they're like, they explain to me I'm like oh yeah, that's actually better, right, like, so like, or it works better for them.

Speaker 1: 22:25

So, even if like, even if I don't think it's better, if that's how it works for them, okay, right, that's fine yeah and I think and that's how I like to think about it I was telling somebody I've client, I was telling somebody the other day, like I like to build stuff, like I want to reinforce the spirit of the law, not the letter of the law yeah you know what I mean yeah, I, I call it for me, I call it like the bullet.

Speaker 2: 22:48

I guess if I would name it anything, I'd name it like the bullet point method. And and it takes me back to, like you know, college, where you're giving all these like 20, 30, 40 minute long speeches. You know, and I just, I love speaking in front of people. I do not mind being in front of an audience and speaking and, um, you know, I remember one time I was like you know, I practiced and I had this rigid like this is how I'm going to practice for this, I'm going to do it every day and this, that and the other. And then when I got in front of everybody, I was just super nervous and like everything I thought about had like broken down. And so the next time I went to do it I was like I'm just going to have these bullet points on my slides and then I'm just going to I know, I know that, I know the topic, I know I can speak to the topic, so I'm just going to use bullet points. And then when I get to the next bullet point, I'm not necessarily winging it. I have like a little bit of a structure in mind, but I'm more so playing off of, like, what's the vibe of the room right now? Do people look interested? And so it allows me to kind of be a little bit more agile in the moment, right.

Speaker 2: 23:52

And so I've always used that for, like, public speaking and you know, other areas of life. Uh, like I used to, I used to like plan my workouts the night before and be very detailed with them, but then I found myself I like wake up and I'm like, well, I don't want to do that today. But you know, I'm like, well, I got to adhere to this program, I got to adhere to this protocol, but I'm like, well, I don't want to do back today. My back's really sore, like I would do something else. And so over the years, I've gone from like having a very rigid framework, like, or you know, doing things very rigidly like that, to just like, hey, I think life, you got to be a little bit more agile because it keeps things you have. You have the guardrails but it keep.

Speaker 1: 24:35

You're able to keep things a little bit more interesting and a little bit more fun that way at the same time. Yeah, yeah, the workout thing. So I do. Well, I'm kind of on IR right now, but I've been doing for a couple of years this thing called F3. It's men's workout group, but part of it is everybody leads workouts on their own, and I'm pretty I usually have a lot of structure, but we were doing this crazy like almost full day thing that included four different workouts of 30 minutes each, with like runs or rucks in between, and I had the third one, and I had kind of made a plan for it and I had it on my phone.

Speaker 1: 25:09

But I had left my phone with the guy who was kind of doing support right, bringing drinks and stuff. Well, he didn't show it, like he was off somewhere else. My phone was in his truck. I didn't have it. I hadn't memorized it.

Speaker 1: 25:20

I knew enough about what I wanted to do, though, that I just made it work. I just kept it simple, yeah, and I asked the guy who was leading the overall thing about it it, and I said you know how did? How do you think it went? He's like it's great, right, you keep it simple, like some of the other guys had overthought what they had done.

Speaker 1: 25:36

So like it's interesting because, like to me, that idea of having that that what, what some people might find is unstructured or unplanned right it's. It's not that you're not preparing, right, yeah, but you're preparing in a way that gives you that like, here are the main things I really want to make sure come through right, but how I deliver them can be a little different. You know, it might be a little bit like I. I don't know if this is the way it is, but it would be interesting to hear from people who are have been in touring bands, right, I you know, I think bands would tend to do a lot of the same set lists, right from city to city or location to location.

Speaker 1: 26:16

But I, you know, I still suspect that, like every one of those, for the bands that I would be interested in would still have something a little bit different, right, because they're playing to that crowd and it's not just hey dallas versus hey indianapolis, right. It's like something about that night like one guy was like just feeling it right and a solo, and another night, wasn't it Like I don't know right. But there's like you still got through the set list.

Speaker 2: 26:43

You know, like even when I was in the military, you know you always have a battle plan. You know if you're going out on a road march or you're going out on a nighttime operation or whatever it may be. You always have your core battle plan. But then you also plan for all of these other things that could go wrong. That could. You know. What if they're not in the village that we thought they were going to be in? What if we? Okay, let's look at this mountain range, where could we? You know where are our blind spots? You know you have to.

Speaker 2: 27:14

You can't have a plan that's so rigid that when you get into you know your nighttime operation and things don't go as planned, that you know your guys, your team, can't adjust on the fly. There always needs to be that that ability to adjust on the fly without having to go through a bunch of bureaucratic. You know levels to do so and so, like that kind of ties back into giving those frontline people some of that ownership to make those decisions and trusting those people, cause you've you've put in the planning every. You know if you've done it right. There's been the executive level, the manager level, the frontline planning and everybody's on the same page and everybody understands their role in the plan. I'll just tie this in the military. Everybody understands their role in the mission. They understand how they can affect the outcome of the mission and, at the same time, they understand what everybody around them is doing and that allows people to take a little bit more ownership and to be a little bit more agile, because what if one person goes down?

Speaker 2: 28:14

What if two people go down? Well, we need people who understand what their role and responsibility was as well, so they can backfill, and so being in the military really taught me that it's not all about having these rigid battle plans. You've got to be open to anything can go wrong at any time and all of these unforeseen circumstances. You have to be able to give your people ownership in those, because you can't call into you know the talk and bog room and wait 30 minutes to get get a go signal on. Hey, we need to adapt this battle plan on the fly. You just got to be able to do it. You got to trust that your people are making the right decisions.

Speaker 1: 28:52

Plan on the fly. You just got to be able to do it. You got to trust that your people are making the right decisions. Yeah, so I think that's going to be a good tie back to where we need to go. Actually, the one last thing like was it is it Mike Tyson who said something like everyone's got a plan until I get hit in the face, or something like that. Right yeah.

Speaker 1: 29:08

Yeah, okay so it's interesting because I listeners we actually do have an outline of a plan as we come into these, so we'll peek behind the curtain, but today we haven't really followed that plan. And it's okay because actually, I think what we just talked about is going to bring us back to some of the things we talked about we want to cover. I think about this right. We want to cover, I think about this right, which is, you know, if you're feeling like you don't think you're appreciated, you think the perception of you as a marketing automation team or RevOps is not seen as strategic and you're not getting pulled into early stages of projects, you know, I think there's things that you can do to try to make change on that as well. And then also there are things that, if you're a leader in those roles, right that you can provide an environment, kind of like what Garrett just talked about to give people that room to be able to maneuver with the support they need in the training um, yeah, with the support they need in the training.

Speaker 2: 30:17

You know, tying, tying this back into, like the tech, yeah, tying this back into the tech world, I think you know. The way I kind of look at it is you know, as a leader if, whether you're on the executive team, whether you're a, you know, director, vp, whatever you know, I think the hallmark of a great leader is somebody who is able to be coached up by someone below them, by somebody that they might see as their subordinate. And I think, from a frontline manager perspective, you have to develop the skill and it's hard and it's nuanced and you're going to feel weird sometimes doing it, but you have to develop that skill of leading up or coaching up, because at the end of the day, that just makes everybody better.

Speaker 1: 31:01

Yeah, I couldn't agree more. It's funny that you say that because I like to believe that I provide, as a leader, that kind of environment. So I've probably told this story many times. My kids would tell me I've probably told it a thousand times because they tell me I got to tell the same 12 stories over and over.

Speaker 1: 31:19

So this is a work one where I had somebody who worked for me who had not been in this kind of role before. It had come from a different function I had hired into my team and we were going into one-on-one planning on talking about a particular problem, and I had my head of what I thought was an appropriate solution, and this person really came into it with like I think we should do this other thing, and it was like explain more. Like I was like just tell me more, tell me more. Eventually, uh, we went with that solution not mine and my first reaction was not to go. Well, I'm a dummy, right was to go. I went to my boss and said this is a great day because this person, you know, came up with an idea that was different than mine but fought for it and it was. It was the right thing to do and that, like I'm, to me, that is like that's the best sign for me that I'm I'm really providing environment like that.

Speaker 1: 32:15

It doesn't always happen Right, sometimes I still will go like well, I still think this other solution is, like it's part of, like, the challenge of being a leader. Managers, like, sometimes you have to make decisions, and sometimes it's not going to be one that everyone is happy with, but if I had done that right, I believe that this person would realize, like, at least they had to have the opportunity to put to, you know to, to fight for that and provide the case. Um, the thing I always ask for people for from that, though, is when, once we get that decision, uh, it's, yeah, we all need to support it, even if it wasn't our, like, our preferred direction, right, we all have to support it. Otherwise, if you go to a battlefield scenario, right, if you got one person like, oh, that battle plan is terrible, we should not have done this right, now you've got a place where there's a chink in the fence.

Speaker 2: 33:04

Yeah, you know, a pivotal moment in my career was, you know, one of the companies I was working at here locally Rapid Growth Company, and we were launching this big campaign. And this was a campaign they'd kind of ran three or four years in a row and kind of had the same results. And you know, it's the night before we're getting ready to launch this campaign. We've got these really beautiful like html, like emails built out with beautiful headers and graphics and this, that and the other. And you know, the night before I called my marketing director at like 8 30 at night and I said, hey, man, listen, you know, I think we need to ab test this in the morning with plain text email, plain text landing page etc. And he's, you know he's kind of need to AB test this in the morning with plain text email, plain text landing page, et cetera. And he's, you know, he's kind of like what the hell are you talking about? It's like eight o'clock at night the night before and he's like, do you have any copy written up? You know this, that and the other. And I was like, yeah, I've got, I've already got an email and a landing page copy kind of put together, but I want to AB test these, just see, because I had a gut feeling. I couldn't really articulate it well at the time, but I had a gut feeling of like you know, we're sending this out to like system admins. You know they don't care about all that, all that other stuff is just distractions to them. They just they want to know what, what am I getting out of this? And so you know, we AB test it in the morning, we send the first AB, we send the test out to like 5,000 or 10,000 subscribers or leads, something like that, and the plain text email and the click-through rate and everything.

Speaker 2: 34:38

It literally double outperformed all of this beautiful marketing we've been repurposing for three or four years. And that was part of my angle of like we've been running this kind of same messaging and the same graphics, et cetera, for three or four years. You know it's not really good. In my head it was like you know, people are going to get tired of that offer, so why not just strip it down and get straight to the point? And so it just blew the doors off and I think traditionally that was a campaign that did two or three million. And you know, 30 days later, you know we captured 4.8 million and that new revenue from it, and it was one of those moments where I didn't think about it at the time. But looking back on it now, my marketing director put a lot of fricking faith in me and he allowed me to be to let that be a moment of either sink or swim of this is either going to work and it's going to fucking crush it, or I'm sorry I'm sitting here. I apologize. We never claimed to.

Speaker 2: 35:31

I'm sitting here, that's okay, I apologize we never claim to be family friendly, it's okay yeah, um, you know it's gonna crush it or, um, you know it's gonna be a total dud and I'm gonna look like an idiot. And I was so afraid it was gonna be a total dud and I was gonna look like an idiot. And that was such a big moment in my career because it gave me the confidence I needed of like, okay, I, I know how to make smart decisions, I know how to articulate, like, hey, this is why I think this, that and the other. And it was just such a big moment for me because it was that moment where a leader allows you to really take ownership of something and just run with it.

Speaker 1: 36:10

And I think so many people don't really get that support I think there's a couple of things that our listeners should take from this. So this is a great example to me, because I think about how I would react if I was a leader to someone coming to me like, with something like that and I mean the timing was not great but at the same time, I think you did a number of things that I think our listeners, who are in a spot where they feel like their voices aren't heard, should take note of. One you had a belief that something could be different. Right, whether it's based on data or based on instinct, right, or just you know. Whatever it is right and it could be one or both.

Speaker 1: 36:48

Two things that you did you did a little extra work to prepare, right. So if you got the okay with what you thought should happen, you were ready to move quickly. So you did that extra work. The second thing you did is you did an approach that minimized the risk, right. I don't know if the A-B test was on the full audience, where you said 5,000 to 10,000. I'm assuming that was a partial audience.

Speaker 1: 37:12

It was it's like?

Speaker 2: 37:13

10%, something like that.

Speaker 1: 37:15

Yeah. So even if it failed, it was a minimal impact, and if it worked better, even marginally better, it's a win. It doesn't even have to be that successful, much more successful. So to me, this is the kind of thing that if you're if you're in a position where you feel like, oh, I'm not being listened to, I think there's a better way to do this. Try to find ways where you can get something in place, even if it's, if it's a more complicated process. Right, maybe, test it out. Right, put something together, test it out.

Speaker 1: 37:46

Yes, it's going to be extra time, you're not going to get a lot of credit for it initially, but if you do that and then you build your build a case around something like you know, it's a relatively low risk. Ask You're more likely to get a. Yes, it's not guaranteed, right, nothing like nothing's guaranteed, but I think you're setting yourself up to get a better chance to do that, and the more you do that, the more likely it is that you'll get other chances to do the same kind of thing. Right, and I think that's one of the things I get very frustrated with people who I see online or or or um, or in our Slack group or whatever, who, like I think, are whining.

Speaker 1: 38:29

And, by the way way, I don't think it's marketing epsilon, I think it's marketers in general are yeah, kind of yeah, for sure punch and, in general and I'm like this is like part of this is you like you stepping up and like you know, and showing that you can, you can build a case for something that is has a little bit of business sense to it.

Speaker 1: 38:50

So, like you, like during earlier in the conversation, you mentioned CAC, which I'm going to assume that maybe most of our audience knows what CAC is, but maybe they don't. And if they don't, go look it up. And, by the way, it's an acronym for CAC, so go look it up. You should be familiar with these kinds of terms, because these are financial terms sort of in this case, but they're, they're key metrics that, um, if that are drivers for your business. If you don't understand what those are, then you need to go try to figure it out. This is like to me, like if you, if you really want to be seen as strategic, you need to be starting to understand the terms that affect the business, how it runs, how these other teams work.

Speaker 2: 39:32

I think this is. I think this is the evolution of marketing in general. I think where I've probably had a little bit of a competitive advantage as a marketer over the last 10 years is having built three companies of my own, and doing so very early on. I really understood like, hey, I'm hiring employees, I'm managing 20, 30,000, $40,000 contracts, this, that and the other. I really have to be a CEO level type of person because I'm working with billion dollar property management companies and so my entire marketing career in corporate America I've always tried to look through the lens of the CEO, the CMO, like if I owned this company, what would I want to be done here? How would I want my marketing team to approach this? How would I want my sales team to approach this? And so what's always helped me is being able to work backwards from that and say, okay, why would this make sense to do? Why should we invest in this versus this?

Speaker 2: 40:34

And then, kind of hitting on your point, I think if there's one gripe I would have about marketers is most marketers just simply don't understand finance.

Speaker 2: 40:43

They don't know how to read a corporate balance sheet or a K-10 or whatever it might be, and those things are really important you should be able to whether or not you know whatever, whatever it might be, and those things are really important, like you should be able to, whether or not you're a public company or a private company, I think all marketers should be able to read, you know, the financial statements and make sense of those, because, at the end of the day, that's indicative of your job performance and it's indicative of, like, how is marketing actually taking the dollars that we're investing in the marketing and sales and turning this, turning that into revenue and turning that into profitable revenue at the end of the day, and if you're a marketer who's in a startup, or you know you're in a company that's looking to exit at some point, or you know, be acquired or merge, whatever it may be, like, you have to understand, like, okay, you know this balance sheet is a big predictor of what that might actually look like.

Speaker 2: 41:36

And if you have employee stock options, you know your job, you know the outcomes that you produce directly affect. You know your ability to maximize what you're going to get out of that. So I think there's a lot of angles to really look at that through.

Speaker 1: 41:54

Yeah well, our longtime listeners know I will 100% agree with you and I would take it a step further. I think, going beyond being able to read a financial statement you know financial statements I think it's important to understand the language that finance uses. Finance uses right. So when you get it down to the level of you know, um, if we've got, you know, a thousand dollars to to invest or spend on something, right, how is? How is finance thinking about where the best use of that money is Right, which, by the way, one of the one of the options is always we're going to hold onto it, right? So if, if you, if, if you don't know, know what your, how, your finance team thinks about that, because if they, they're going to expect a payback, right, because there'll be some sort of an option for them to put it into a financial instrument that would yield some sort of return. And if you, your use of that dollar, can't outperform that with with like understanding that there's risk associated with it, then your challenge is harder. It's not just like whether or not another team wants to use it for something else, which is also your competition, but that's like that's the other part of this, is like understanding that language just within a day-to-day operations of a, of a, an enterprise. So I think we're going to like I think we've covered so much ground, like indirectly if folks were to look at the outline we have for this like we like we have not come even close, but I think we've covered everything. The one, the one, last bit I w I want to reinforce, uh and maybe you can jump into Gareth, because I think you've been in a couple of different environments. We touched on this a little bit. I think if you're a leader in marketing or marketing ops or revenue ops, I cannot encourage you more to be open and maybe even solicit from your team's input all the way down to the lowest levels of your organization on what's working, what's not working and then giving people opportunities to test that.

Speaker 1: 43:57

Not everybody is comfortable speaking up in a group meeting. Do it in one-on-one, Do it like whatever works for those people and it's your job to figure that. Like I tell people in my coaching all the time, we're going to be managers and new managers. Your job is to adapt your style to your team, not the other way around. So I think this is just a part of that.

Speaker 1: 44:16

Right, if you've got people who are vocal, you probably won't have any problem If you've got some people who sit back. You're going to have to go work to get them to trust that you're going to listen to them. And then you're going to have to not only earn the trust, you're going to have to earn the trust. You're going to have to continue to earn the trust. Right, so you can't, you cannot commit to doing everything they say. That would be foolish. But you can at least be honest, Like I would like, solicit that input. You'll be. I think you'd be surprised. People are like I found in multiple places. People are like I've found in multiple places. People are called boots on the ground. Right, they know way more about stuff than I did.

Speaker 2: 45:00

Yeah, well, you know it's. It's interesting. I think we're, you know, the tech slash ops. People struggle the most is they get siloed into well, you're ops you know what I mean Like you're just there to build the systems right, but really, you know, these are the people who are at the ground level. They're the ones inside of the CRM, inside of the marketing automation platforms, et cetera. They see how things are working. They're looking at all of the data. I mean, if they're doing their job, they're looking at all of the data. They, they know that they whether they're in biz ops, sales, marketing or go to market at whatever their label is, you know number one they should have, you know, the ability to have weekly standups with you know whoever's leading biz ops, sales ops, marketing ops, et cetera customer ops Like those four or five people should be meeting together every week without the executive team having to be involved in all of this other minutiae. You give them that opportunity to really work together and collaborate. You really move the business forward. I think that's a big piece of it Giving people.

Speaker 2: 46:04

I've been in companies before where I was a marketing ops person and I reach out to the sales team to schedule a meeting with the sales director and you know I get really negative feedback for it. I'm like, hey, nobody asked you to meet with sales to talk to sales. And I'm like in my head I was like that's such a key part of this, like my entire job is supporting the sales team, even though it says marketing ops on my title. My entire, my belief in marketing is marketing should be out in front of sales, not behind sales, but in front of sales. And um, you know so I've dealt with that in my career at two different companies where it's like no, no, no, you're just relegated into this role and this is what you do and you don't go outside, you're not allowed to like.

Speaker 1: 46:47

You have to talk to somebody in another organization. You have to talk to somebody in another organization. You have to go up, go up the food chain and down the food chain. It's like such a waste of time.

Speaker 2: 46:55

I've been there.

Speaker 1: 46:56

Hated. It Wanted me to blow my head off. Actually, I'm a big believer that going and spending time with people in these other teams that you work with, where you feel like they're not listening to you, is take a step, you reach out and go spend a day with them, watch what they do, watch what they have to go through and understand a little more about what they're doing. I almost guarantee you that will pay huge dividends, with certainly the smart liars out there. But people want other people to understand what they're going through, and the more you do that the other thing is, again, this ties back to how does your company actually make profit at the end of the day, but how does it make revenue? If you understand how all these pieces work together, you're going to make better decisions on the area that you have core responsibility about, because you'll understand how it all works together 100%.

Speaker 2: 48:04

It has to, especially with marketing, ops and the onboarding, the employee onboarding process. It has to go far beyond the flow charts and this is everybody's like let them get involved, let them go meet other people in the company, let them have those conversations, because that's how, that's how real innovation happens. It's through constant communication and collaboration, not through siloed, you know efforts and everybody just sticking sticking to exactly what the job description says. So that's kind of my view on it.

Speaker 1: 48:35

Yeah, all right, I could easily go on a rant about how bad job descriptions are too, but I'll stop there. We're out of time. This has been a fun, meandering conversation, but that's kind of the way I like it, so thank you again for joining us. If folks want to keep up with you or what's going on with RevXL, what's the best way for them to do that?

Speaker 2: 48:55

Yeah, you can find me on LinkedIn, gareth Robinson, g-a-r-r-a-t-h. Or you can find me on Twitter at Gareth underscore R.

Speaker 1: 49:05

So we're getting our LinkedIn channel set up and running.

Speaker 1: 49:08

Not Twitter anymore. Come on, elon's going to come down and get us. I know running, but not not twitter anymore. Come on, elon's gonna stop. You know he's gonna come down and get us. I know, I know all right. Well, garrett, this has been a lot of fun. Thanks to uh, our audience, for continuing to support us and, uh, if you uh have an idea for a topic, are interested in being guests or an idea for a guest, always reach out to na Naomi, mike or me on LinkedIn Slack. Wherever we are, we will follow up with you Until next time, everybody, we'll see you later, bye.

Speaker 2: 49:41

Thank you.