Speaker 1: 0:25

Hello everyone, welcome to another episode of OpsCast brought to you by MarketingOpscom, powered by all the MoPros out there. I'm your host, michael Hartman, flying solo as Mike is right in the thick of Spring Fling 2025, the inaugural one, and then Naomi's tied up and so we are going to power through. So joining me today to share about his career journey is Rick Collins. Rick is currently Vice President of Demand Generation at ConnectWise. Rick started his career in IT, eventually as the head of IT CRM and more with United Way of Central Ohio. When he joined ConnectWise, he pivoted to a role as a Senior Marketing Systems Analyst. Since then, he has moved into leadership roles within marketing operations and then into his current role of vice president of demand generation. So, rick, thanks for joining me today.

Speaker 2: 1:10

No, thanks for having me.

Speaker 1: 1:12

So this is going to be fun. So we talked before and I look forward to sharing the story with everybody who's listening because we want to get into this conversation. But I think a lot of what was really intriguing and what I think I reached out to you to be on is I think it was interesting that your path went through marketing operations into a more general marketing leadership role, and I think a lot of people are always thinking about, like, if I'm in marketing ops, what's the next step and what's the next step of that? And I think it hasn't always been clear and sometimes there hasn't been a lot of belief that you could move into more of a general marketing leadership one. So I think that's part of why I was curious.

Speaker 1: 1:54

So why don't you maybe talk through your career I did a very high level right. Talk through your career in a little more detail. Know that one of the things I'm always interested in is if there are like pivotal moments or decisions or people that had maybe an outsized impact in you know the trajectory and direction of your career yeah um, no happy to uh and uh yeah um.

Speaker 2: 2:19

Is marketing ops marketing right? Is that where we're going to go?

Speaker 1: 2:22

down. Oh no, no, we we've covered that. But yeah, if you want to go there, we can no, I'm kidding, I'm kidding, um, I've seen them all.

Speaker 2: 2:30

Uh, they've been fun dialogue, uh, no, I, you know I was I was never. I never saw myself kind of going down into an it path, even though most of my career was kind of down it I was. I was more of a. It was an international business and spanish major. At college I thought I was going to be, I don't know, an importer, exporter or something related to like business within Latin America and, uh, doing something related to that. Really didn't have it mapped out. It was just kind of a. You know an aspect of where I thought I'd go.

Speaker 2: 2:59

And when I graduated college many, many years ago, um, I uh started to try to find out where am I going to land? What is this going to look like? I just happened to find myself in IT and was pretty good at it. I picked up systems really well. I was able to understand applications. I was in QA is where I started, and so even what you're talking about, what pivotal moments that year and a half that I had in a telco in QA is. I was working directly with developers, I was testing systems, systems. I was learning um automation. I learned how to do light coding.

Speaker 2: 3:35

Um, I was that I didn't have a computer, uh, at my house growing up. I wasn't one of those people who was like super into it. I just kind of picked it up. I I guess it just fit for me, um, and so I kind of parlayed that into my next role and I was implementing software for a software company. So I got kind of my first taste of SaaS.

Speaker 2: 3:55

This is like the early 2000s. It's a much different world, but it was a lot of moving from mainframe computers to client server-based applications, computers to client server-based applications. And so I got into SQL and really was kind of liaison between the tech and business. And so that's where I kind of found my niche. Was I fit well, kind of balancing and understanding the business world and being able to work with non-technical users and people, people. A lot of the people I was working with at that time in that role was, uh, county government, uh employees, and so a lot of um, a lot of people have never used a mouse before uh and transitioning them from a, you know, green screen mainframe computer. Some of the listeners probably don't even know what that is but oh, I do, yeah, I'm sure you do right.

Speaker 2: 4:47

Uh, so they were going from hp 3000, these old old school mainframe, uh, green screen applications, and moving them to a client server based application. And so I was training them, I was implementing the software. Um, I would have to remote into their machines, uh, at times, and they'd have to. You know, is the modem plugged in? Try this, it's all that kind of stuff, um, and and really that's just highlights kind of that um, that bridge that I kind of served between the technical and the non-technical, because then I was working directly with the developers. Hey, here's what we're seeing on the ground, here's the areas that we might need to do.

Speaker 2: 5:20

I was building the databases, um, we'd have a local copy of the database, and so I would set things up based on the requirements of the the user, so it was a lot of that, which I definitely took that into once I got into a more marketing role and kind of leveraging that business impact and understanding the impact and the end user aspect of things, and so when I got to.

Speaker 2: 5:42

United Way. I was over IT, I had multiple roles throughout the software company. I was over IT, I had multiple roles throughout the software company. And then when I went to United Way, it was really kind of a it was sort of marketing ops before we knew what marketing ops was. But it was a little more than that because it was kind of it was a CIO essentially with an outsourced IT company, a managed service provider kind of took care of the day-to-day IT. And I just looked at, you know, looked at holistically, but a big part of it was building out um crm and marketing uh automation platform and so was heavily involved with the, the worldwide organization of united way, trying to build a, a common um donor management system powered by salesforce uh.

Speaker 2: 6:25

And so got very heavy on the marketing side, decided I wanted to move to Tampa.

Speaker 2: 6:30

It was too cold in Ohio, I'm a Buckeye, and so decided my wife and I were like let's go to the beach and start over. And so when I found ConnectWise, found a role there in marketing ops didn't know what marketing ops was really, but the way it was described, the way the role was described, it's like, yeah, that's kind of me. I remember talking to the CMO at the time. He's like we're kind of looking for a unicorn, someone who understands tech really well and can dive into the systems and the process but can understand the users and work with the business on sales and marketing, and I'm like, well, well, let's kind of feel like that you're describing me um and so kind of fit. Well, uh, and and I saw a lot of upside there and so you know I was, I was a one-man, uh, marketing ops person didn't mean we didn't have those functions, some of the functions that eventually came under me under marketing ops we had email, right, we had, uh, cms, uh and kind of the, the front end web dev and that kind of stuff.

Speaker 2: 7:30

We had some project management, but this is like 2017. So, marketing tech I don't know what Scott Brinker's slide was. It probably was not more than 1,000 at that time. It was small, so it just hadn't become a reality. But I think I joined at the right time time and it was kind of the explosion and the formalization of marketing ops. And so I, you know, proved my value pretty quickly and kind of made the case. I I'm the one who approached the CMO about formalizing marketing ops into a team.

Speaker 2: 8:03

He, he, aligned with that and so we started to kind of build that out and build out a team from there and we acquired companies got acquired by pe, so a lot of things, uh, it's kind of good timing as well as um just the the landscape changing so I guess I think it's a couple things that so first, like three things that came kind of caught my attention in that like one.

Speaker 1: 8:26

So first off, my wife. We were talking about this right before we got on. She's involved with nonprofits world and so I am now, because of that, becoming familiar with Salesforce's version for nonprofits. It's a lot of the same things, but there are certain things that are different.

Speaker 1: 8:43

It's an interesting learning experience, but it transfers right. So that's like another thing, right, like I can help. I can still help her when she's trying to like, I need a report that does this right, I can find my way around. Um, I think it's interesting that you came out of college without a like what would be like typical, like a computer science or engineering type degree, and you ended up in that role. It reminds me of when I first got out of college, because I did, I came out of an engineering school and sort of uh, something adjacent to computer science, and so I started at price waterhouse in the consulting practice, and one of the things they did is they sent um new, new hires off to learn like how to, how to code the way they do it right, how to do it projects.

Speaker 1: 9:29

And I remember in my cohort this, this one woman who really stood out to me, who, like most of us, had some sort of at least experience with computers, and yada, yada, this one girl, she, um, sorry, one woman, she was, had been a, she was a religion major at Duke, and I remember just being like, oh, she is going to struggle, but she didn't, and it really sort of changed my viewpoint. Like that, I think there's this just because somebody's got on paper right what looks like something that doesn't make me make a match, like there are other characteristics are important. She knew how to think, she knew how to learn, she had to ask good questions, like all those things applied, and I suspect you probably had something like that as well, right?

Speaker 2: 10:14

Yeah, you know, I think a lot of people in marketing ops and in marketing in general is we talk about kind of the curiosity, and I think someone who is naturally curious and who wants to go deeper and understand, I think that's. I look for that when I'm hiring people, whether it's for marketing ops or rev ops or a general marketing role in demand gen. I think that just sets people apart. When they do that. I think it can drive so much innovation and digging.

Speaker 2: 10:45

I definitely had that and I learned it at times, but I also kind of had that. It was a little bit that and I um, I learned it, um, at times, but I also kind of had that. It was a little bit innate. And so I remember, you know, early in my career, uh, going to a developer and you know, a customer had an issue and so, hey, here's, here's the issue, that describing what's going on, it's like, oh, you, you know, did you check this? Uh, no, I didn't check that. We need to check that. Did you check this? And so he's kind of giving me like, here's the way to solve, to try to narrow down and diagnose what's wrong, and so it's almost like, all right, I can do that.

Speaker 2: 11:14

So then I started to back into things and then you know, if it was a store procedure, fix and sequel, like all right, show me how you did that. And it's like not just taking.

Speaker 2: 11:24

I haven't heard a story procedure in so long, Wow, Going way back right, I'm older than I look. But that was kind of what took me down this path of I'm not just going to wait for somebody to answer it, I'm going to find the solution myself and I'm going to learn how to do these things. And so I really started that journey early on in my career and that kind of fueled me as I, that journey early on in my career and I that kind of fueled me as, as I advanced up into two different roles as well.

Speaker 1: 11:53

So the. So I said three, that's two. Two. The third thing that was interesting to me is the story about how you ended up at connect wise. In that did you say it was the CEO or the CMO that that described like what they were looking for as a unicorn the CMO, yeah. So I think it's interesting that, um, like what do you think that? What do you think happened that helped him see that you even though on again, on paper you didn't look like you would probably be a match, that that gave him a confidence, that would, that would work yeah, it's a good question, I think so.

Speaker 2: 12:25

I interviewed with man I feel like 10, 11 people there. It was a I remember going through a barrage of interviews and it was digital marketing. It was their web develop resource, their internal development resources, all their VPs of marketing him that. There were a ton of different audiences that I was interviewing with.

Speaker 1: 12:47

That's a huge number.

Speaker 2: 12:49

I know it was a lot of people.

Speaker 2: 12:50

Wow, it was, uh, it was an intense interview process, um, and and I think they had interviewed I what I'm pretty sure if they uh, if I remember right, this was a while ago, it was eight years ago, um, but they had been through a ton of people and every person they would interview they were either too technical and didn't connect with the business side, or they weren't technical enough and they at least from the interview process, they felt like they were kind of lacking in one area too much that they didn't think they could pull it off.

Speaker 2: 13:20

And so I guess I blended that mix pretty well I was able to connect with the more dev heavy or IT technical resources and then with the business side. I was really able to connect with the more dev-heavy or IT technical resources and then with the business side. It was really able to connect there. And so I think that he understood that and saw and said I think this is the person that we're looking for, that kind of fills, both of those roles and, ultimately, what he had a vision for I think that a lot of this credit to him. He had a vision for what the role could be and what he was looking for. And yeah, the rest is history that's great.

Speaker 1: 13:52

So in that transition period, um, yeah, it's so like you were a team of one, so maybe you had some connections to people who had other sort of skills that you could lean on as well. But like what, um, can you talk a little more specifically about maybe skills from your prior experience that you were able to leverage as you moved it from I don't want to call it, maybe it's general, it kind of support to the marketing domain?

Speaker 2: 14:22

yeah, I mean the troubleshooting, uh, troubleshooting skills, uh, it was like immediate um, I think that. And then requirements, uh like understanding requirements, high level requirements and how to how to challenge, um, a vendor or, uh, an external resource. I think those are two stories I I can remember uh vividly that were maybe the first month that I started. So, um, lead routing, lead management, was a big um issue. That that we were struggling with at the time had a lot of complex rules, had a homegrown system, and so I spent probably my first few weeks, months really understanding the system and how it worked. And then I remember we had an external group that was bringing in a tool like a partner management tool that they wanted to implement. We had a homegrown CRM system, a homegrown lead management system.

Speaker 2: 15:13

At the time we weren't on Salesforce or Marketo like we are now, but they wanted to create a custom integration. And so I went to this meeting with our head of internal development and they had sent over some requirements ahead of time. So I read through other requirements and then build out like, all right, here's the questions I have that this is how our system works. How are you going to do this? And kind of just not. I don't think it was anything too crazy, but it was just kind of like I understand how our systems work and the month that I've been here for the most part and here's what I think we're going to need to do for how you're trying to connect with us.

Speaker 2: 15:55

It's different than Salesforce and having a lead object, a contact object and a company object like those types of things, and being able to show that knowledge. I think that helped like okay, this guy knows what he's talking about to our internal development lead and that those relationships I think I think my relationship building was something I really pried myself in and really kind of concentrated on and trying to branch out into different aspects of the company. So I think that was one. The second scenario is we have multiple products or multiple business unit company and one of our products has a try. It's more of a PLG motion. We didn't call it PLG back then but yeah, you get into a trial and you get trial nurture and then you convert to purchase. We were having trial issues. The trial was not working and nobody could really diagnose what was going on From a product standpoint.

Speaker 2: 16:43

Yeah, so like signing the form you know, nobody knew. Is the form Nobody knew, is the form wrong? Why are we having issues? It was basically a prospect would call into sales and say, hey, I can't get the trial to work, something's wrong. And somebody a web resource would go on the page and say, nope, works for me.

Speaker 2: 17:03

And then it was like that's it. They're crazy, there's something wrong. And so somehow it ended up. They're like hey, rick, here, here's a project I want you to work on. And so I got really deep into it and just kind of the troubleshooting skills we talked about earlier, like using some of the technical resources, talking to the sales team what are they telling you? And then starting to diagnose what, um, what was going on. And all of a sudden it was my project and now I owned making sure that the trial would work. What are we going to do to ensure that the trial is available and working at all times? And we mentioned we had a lot of homegrown systems at the time and so it wasn't like let me go to the Marketo community and see if anybody else has had this error.

Speaker 2: 17:42

This is our own system trying to diagnose and work with Dev, and so I think those are two early scenarios that earned a lot of trust in the company for me and with my boss and the CMO and then the rest of the organization. So I think I kind of parlayed that into into a few different things. And then you know he was really big on what. What can we bring? How can we really advance ourselves from back then a lead scoring model that we didn't really have? How can we advance this? How can we engage with sales a little bit better, get a tighter connection with sales? And I had been working very closely with the donor management team in my United Way year, so very different nonprofit, but it's still sales. So I had those strong relationships. I think those kinds of things I tried to to use and that you know that that relationship and trust that I was gaining with sales to to help them. So, like I am an, I'm a resource, I'm a value add to you, not just somebody trying to throw something down your throat.

Speaker 1: 18:44

Yeah, I think it was interesting, I was, I was gonna, I have a follow-up for you, not just somebody trying to throw something down your throat. Yeah, I think it was interesting, I was going to, I have a follow-up for you, but I was, you just kind of touched on it. Like, the ability to build I would call it trusted relationships, right? Is, I think, an important skill that I think a lot of, especially people in early in their career, are maybe not as comfortable with. And I think one of the nuances there like I do a lot of coaching and one of them I do I have to work with people on regularly is use the word challenge. Right, you just like challenge vendors, I think. I think sometimes you have to do that internally as well, right, with people who have a bigger title than you, right and like, is that something that you like? Did you also challenge internally in this process, like and like? We could talk about how you did it if you want, but I mean, I know how I would approach it.

Speaker 2: 19:31

Yeah for sure. We had a weekly meeting with our head of digital, our head of internal development, our head of web development and there were a few other kind of VPs of marketing in there and I got pulled into it and and that essentially all we were doing was kind of challenge, challenging things, and I I got comfortable very quickly with that group. But I, you know, I formed relationships initially to try to understand and kind of took more of a let me understand first before I try to challenge anything. But once I felt like I had a good grasp you know two months in which that's hard to say, like nobody knows that a company of size in two months but I felt like I had a decent understanding that I could start to, to push back on things and question things.

Speaker 2: 20:17

My, I'm not like a in your face type of person, that's just not my personality. So I think more, uh, I use questions to try to challenge things. So tell me more about that. Why do you think that way? Or why should we approach it that way? If we look at some of the data behind that is you know, things like that are all leveraged data to try to show like, hey, you know, it's not a bad idea. Here's what I was looking at. Is there a reason this wouldn't work? That's kind of the approach that I've typically taken and certainly was not afraid to do that.

Speaker 1: 20:55

This was eight years ago, so my memory is failing in terms of an example, but I think that's how I approached it. Have you always been comfortable with when you get challenged as well?

Speaker 2: 21:03

Yeah, I'm very much a show me, prove to show me, you know, prove to me. It won't work, then let's do it Like I, and there's no sacred cows in my world. Um, I'm very much, uh, in favor of um. You know, if someone has a good idea and my idea is not right, tell me why and let's talk about it. And okay, let's try different approach. So, um, I'm sure I did, I I'm I don't remember an example of it, but we definitely uh yeah, I'm definitely not afraid of that I, I, I try to do the same thing and think about it in terms of team leadership stuff.

Speaker 1: 21:40

But I had somebody work for me who I can't remember what the details were, but we were working on a problem. We were going into our one-on-one which normally I let them set the agenda, but this one we, we had a specific thing we were trying to work through and I came into it with a like I think this is what we should do, mindset and um, this other, the person who worked for me, really like challenged that and had a different idea and um, convinced me that that was the better one and that's what we went with. And my first reaction was to celebrate right and go tell my boss like, hey, this is a good day. You know, this person challenged me, was right, fought for it, and that's what we did Like to me, that's a good thing.

Speaker 2: 22:22

Absolutely no, I think. I mean, I think you're spot on. I think people are especially early in their career. Oftentimes someone can be uh uncomfortable with that, like this is, and and I invite the challenge, uh for my team now right, like, um, I want them to push back to like guys. This is what I'm seeing, this is what I think like tell me I'm wrong. I like, like I'm okay with that, and I feel like we do have um a a culture at connect wise that that invites that Um. I do think, as a leader, uh, in a role that I'm in, that I need to like welcome that. And and again, you're, you said celebrate.

Speaker 2: 22:58

I think that's a great way to to approach it, like we should celebrate when someone pushed backs and doesn't doesn't give, give in, just because I have a bigger title than them and said we should do this and when they know that's not right, they just do it, then we're all worse off.

Speaker 1: 23:15

If that's the case, so I think that's a really good point. Yeah, 100%. So you started as a team of one and then at some point you saw that it actually could be something more, or needed to have something more, and you went and pitched the idea of growing the team. What was that process like? I mean, I'm going to expect right there's, you are going to have to come up with some sort of business case for maybe not an ROI, but some sort of like reasoning that people could sink their teeth into and go, yes, we need to do this. So what was that like and how did it go from there?

Speaker 2: 24:02

Yeah, and there's a few things that were happening in the business that helped. I would advise anybody who's kind of looking at their career there's. Certainly you control a lot of that, but the state of your business and the external factors that are happening within the business. The opportunity has to be there and the timing was right for me. We had just gotten acquired by private equity so we were on a move to move off of our homegrown systems onto Salesforce and Marketo. We had just acquired another pretty large company too. So like the multiple things were happening within the business that were kind of driving the need to change the structure that we had. So I think those were part of it. Now I had started talking to my CMO about it before then. Back then we were pretty heavy Serious Decisions users and really got involved pretty heavily with them.

Speaker 1: 24:58

Well, that's interesting just by itself. I mean Serious Decisions.

Speaker 2: 25:01

clients are usually really big enterprises, yeah right and we talked a lot about our maturity. How do we get more operationally mature? What are the things we need to do? How do we put the? I mean just think of the demand waterfall, the old school demand waterfall that existed back in the day. We were heavy, I don't know advisors to that, or that was kind of where we took things.

Speaker 2: 25:27

Well, I leveraged a lot of their resources on marketing ops and here's what a marketing ops role would look like, here's what a team structure would look like. So I had some help on that front for sure, um, but I use that as kind of a guide and I think, um, you know, I was able to um show some wins that we were having just by having this formalized under our marketing ops umbrella that me plus a few others, and the combination of the acquisition, the private equity, as well as just some of the wins that we had able to make a case like, hey, what if we formalize this? Here's what it would look like, what are your thoughts? And I think he was open to it pretty quickly. So it wasn't like it took a ton of convincing that I had to build out a huge business case. It was more. This is the structure that we do it in. And here's what, especially when I was hiring that new role, so we formalized some existing roles. So the email team came under me, which was under a different team, was under digital before, and so we kind of formalized it. That way, Project management came under me. But then I need a role in net new role that does not exist today to just scale what I'm doing, and it really was just another person.

Speaker 2: 26:36

And tech drove that a lot too. We were expanding our tech stack pretty significantly, as pretty much everybody was in 2018, 2019. And so that I think that drove it a lot. Like, hey, if we're going to acquire any type of tech, we need a strategy around it, of course, but we also need someone to optimize it, not just be an admin to add users, but really, how are we going to leverage this to its fullest? And I think that drove the business case even more. If we're going to spend $100,000 on a tool, it makes no sense to just not have anybody own it, because if nobody owns it.

Speaker 2: 27:13

Nobody, nobody's going to use it and we're just going to have um shelfware yeah, vaporware, shelfware, whatever you want to call it right, yeah, so it's interesting to me.

Speaker 1: 27:20

Um, it totally makes sense that there were sort of external factors or you know catalysts, that you know. When the time was right, it made sense. But I I don't want our listeners or audience to to walk away from us thinking, oh, I need some sort of external thing to happen, because you also talked about, you started conversations, I don't know what was it, months, you know maybe it was months in advance.

Speaker 2: 27:43

yeah, it was before it actually came together.

Speaker 1: 27:45

Yeah, yeah, yeah, and I think that's a really good lesson to learn, because you know, one of the things that I've tried to do when I've tried to like pitch something big and maybe not an organizational change, but maybe a big project that's in that new thing is, by the time it becomes like you need the formal decision to say, yes, you can go. You know, do I want that to be a no brainer right? All the work that goes into ahead of that is really, really important, so that you don't want surprises when you get to the formal discussion about approval. Right, you want all the heads who are going to have to nod yes or already on board.

Speaker 2: 28:25

Yeah for sure. No, I think you're spot on. I mean, you don't want to wait till an external factor. And then like, hey, I see it, I think you know I was pretty factor. And then like hey, I see it, um, I think you know I, I was pretty, uh, proactive and just like, all right, I see an opportunity here.

Speaker 2: 28:44

I, I chatted with some of the relationships that I had within the organization. Like, hey, I feel like there's a need here. Am I off on that? So I approached it that way is like, tell me if I'm missing something. So, relying on some of those relationships I had and I, you know I had good buy-in and good relationships that could tell me, no, you're, you're crazy. You shouldn't do that, because here's why, um, I didn't get that. I, I got support, and so I think that helped too. Um, but I, I had a really strong relationship with our CMO.

Speaker 2: 29:11

I think I was able to to show value that that I was able to provide and I hate saying I, because it was really a we. It was not me doing this on my own. There were other people very involved in this. But I think, centralizing that and just kind of the expansion that we were going to. Back then we were calling it digital transformation. We were able to show some really good value from the digital transformation effort. That made sense to start to expand and then, once we got one person, it was just like oh wow, bit of data. And then they need more and they keep asking and they don't know how they lived without it. Before. It was kind of that where we started to do some things and we saw how valuable it was so now we need more, and to do more we needed to scale.

Speaker 1: 30:13

Yeah, I don't know about you, but one of the things I've struggled with before is when I see that there's a need and it seems so glaringly obvious to me and that I don't, then when I get, when I didn't follow that practice I just described of like preparing ahead of time with all the people, I would get into the formal thing, and then I get all this like resistance or questions or whatever, and it was because I hadn't done the legwork of helping. There's two ways, right, there's two, two parts of this, and one is me helping them see the same thing and, b, helping me understand, uh, why they might like, because of their perspective, right, why they might see it not as big a need as I do.

Speaker 2: 30:56

Yeah.

Speaker 1: 30:56

So it can help you refine the way you communicate and tell the story.

Speaker 2: 31:07

Definitely. I think you you touched on something really important is like try to uh, try to determine or um predict what pushback you might get. How are they going to um to react? What are the questions you might get asked? What, what are the holes in your uh, your approach? And then see if you can find the reasons why ahead of time, so that you're already prepared like, hey, that's a good question. I thought about that and here's why I think this still makes sense. For you know, whatever the reason is um, and and it's I mean go back to like traditional marketing, um, um, it's persona based. So this persona, the CRO, is going to say this and this is why cause this is what he or she cares about the CMO is going to think this way. The head of your demand gen team is going to think this way.

Speaker 1: 31:46

And the CFO is getting a whole nother perspective the CFO.

Speaker 2: 31:49

Absolutely. If your CFO is involved there, you better start talking CAC and and you know cost per everything and understanding that if you're going to get on that route and really being intentional, I think you you called it out like you know do the homework ahead of time so that you're ready for those conversations.

Speaker 1: 32:05

Well, and and and maybe the one thing I would add to that is don't I mean, if you feel like you can't put yourself into those shoes cause you don't know that, be humble and go. Oh yeah, go ask for that input, right, and just, I've got this idea. Um, because I think every time I've done that, because I would be afraid to do that in the past, or like unsure, like why do I bother these people? I found that most people, if you have, if you've put some thought into it right and you're not're not coming in totally random, unless or if you set it up as hey, I've got an idea I just want to bounce off of you and it's like an open-ended conversation that, like, you're going to like people, they want to, they want to help.

Speaker 2: 32:46

No, I think you're the way you approach those conversations. I don't think I've ever had a conversation like that where somebody was like no, screw you, like move it on Right it's. It's a really good way to do it, and I think people are more than happy to um, to have that conversation and to to give you feedback when it comes to that.

Speaker 1: 33:07

Yeah, absolutely, I think that's. That's so true, all right, so show you at some point I can't remember exactly when, but you're now in this role out of DemandGen About two years ago, two years ago.

Speaker 2: 33:26

So I went from individual contributor on marketing ops one person to senior manager, to a director, to a senior director all in marketing ops and so build a team from me to, essentially at 15 at the end, when I was still in marketing ops, at 15 at the end, when I was still in working ops.

Speaker 2: 33:39

And then our head of demand gen left, our VP of demand gen left, our CMO approached me and said hey, I would like you to consider taking over demand gen and was not necessarily the career path I had laid out. I was like I don't know if I really see myself as a demand gen leader. Okay, let's talk about it. And so we talked about it. And so we talked about it and said, all right, let's, I'll do it for 90 days. Um, and then after 90 days, when I decide I don't want to do this anymore, um, you know, if you, if you decide you like I'm not doing well with it and it's not the right role, or if I decide that this is not the right fit for me, um, I would like to be able to reconsider, like going back or what are we going to do. And so we agreed like that's, that's the right approach. Um, and uh, here I am, two years later still doing yeah 90 days times.

Speaker 2: 34:25

Uh, whatever the exactly right to 24 months, right?

Speaker 1: 34:29

um, yeah, that's interesting. So it was, um, it was a kind of a mutual decision, but it actually started from your CMO, is that right?

Speaker 2: 34:40

Yeah, it was definitely not my idea. So she was in town and wanted to have breakfast and so I'm like, yeah, sure, let's have breakfast. So she's like I know the VP of Demand Gen put in his resignation. I was like oh crap, oh right, okay, what are we going to?

Speaker 2: 34:58

do like you know, trying to think like, who could we find? And she's like, well, I want to talk to you about that. But I was like, well, who do you have in mind? And she's like, how about you? And I was like, what do you mean? How about me? Why would I do this? And so, yeah, it was, it was a good conversation. It she was she. She's awesome.

Speaker 2: 35:14

She's not here anymore but she, you know, really intentional about career pathing and career planning and what, where do you, how do you want to approach your career and what's your next step? And kind of thinking about that, especially with her direct reports and leadership team, but really for the whole marketing team. And so she, I know she was very intentional about that for me and, talking through what I know, she was very intentional about that for me. And talking through what you know, do I want to go down the traditional RevOps route and take on more of a, a leader of RevOps? So, going from marketing ops to RevOps, do I want to be a CMO? Do I? You know what's the right path and I've always been. I always feel like there's two kinds of paths that people take in their career Some who know exactly what they want to do and they are like I'm going there and I'm aiming to that target and I, every decision and role that I take, is aimed for that.

Speaker 2: 36:01

And then others are like I really like what I do. I'm ready to do more, but I'm not really sure what that is and when the opportunity presents itself like yep, that sounds good.

Speaker 2: 36:08

I'm going to move and I'm certainly more of the latter. I've never been like I want to be a CMO and that's all I want to do, and I'm going to keep going there. If you told me, you know, 20 years ago, 30 years ago, I said CMO. I didn't know what a CMO does right it certainly wasn't the path or anything like that, but it just you're the opportunist, not the planner. Yeah, I think that's a good succinct way of saying it.

Speaker 1: 36:31

Yeah, I, I, I think there's a little bit of that in me as well. So now MarketingOps doesn't report to you, right, correct. How is that now, where you're kind of a I can't believe I'm going to use this word internal customer of theirs?

Speaker 2: 36:47

Yeah, no, it's a good call. So when I moved over, MarketingOps reported to me for those 90 days. When I moved over, marketing ops reported to me for those 90 days and then, fairly soon after, we had a separate marketing ops, separate sales ops, separate customer success ops teams. We brought into a formal kind of go-to-market ops team, merged it all together, centralized everything. We soon after that decided to just go rev ops instead of go, instead of go to market ops, sales ops, marketing ops together. So that's how it's been since then.

Speaker 2: 37:20

Um, I won't say it's been easy. I think, um, some of the being embedded in marketing, I think it can work in other cases. I would always start there Like you can, any a company can can have a centralized RevOps function, it can be fully functioning work rate and a company can have a dedicated marketing ops function. It could be horrible and not work well and I think a lot of it's involved with the people and the, the approach that people take. I think it we have been challenged, I think from a resource perspective and I think just getting that kind of like not letting sales consume everything which can you know that's?

Speaker 2: 38:01

a tendency that I think a lot of people have seen right. Sales consumes all the resources because the CRO is who everybody is looking towards to drive the business, because that's where bookings come from. So it certainly has been a change and a challenge. I have to be pretty proactive with kind of pushing to be a little more proactive on their side of where. Before I think we saw a little bit more of that. Where we're embedded in marketing, we were looking at the data a lot more closely. We're in the systems day to day. We're partnering together a little bit more closely. I'd say in the past four months three, four months it's gotten a lot better. We've really been intentional about making some strides there. We still have some gaps, so I think it's different. I think the good is that I can.

Speaker 2: 38:47

you know, I know the systems and I know the data, and so I will get into the data when I need to and you know if I'm not in a lot of meetings, which is all the time yeah, my, my, uh, my role or my uh day-to-day has shifted a lot, but, um, I can find some of those and then call those out to them and and, um, and look at it that way, I think the other thing maybe that, um, I have some empathy for what they go through and where they're at, and so I try to convey that to them, but also to my broader team.

Speaker 2: 39:16

Like you know, somebody is frustrated with a lack of response or whatever it might be. I can be like, well, let me give you a little context. Here's why it's not as simple as just they click a magic button and it's done. Here's all the steps that they have to take, and so, like, I agree, it's frustrating, but here's why that, um, maybe that's the case. Or here's how we can be a little bit more, uh, descriptive and give them the full scope of what they need to do.

Speaker 1: 39:43

I, I'd say like help them, help us right, absolutely like if.

Speaker 2: 39:47

If we can help give them these answers, then they're going to be able to respond quicker. That kind of.

Speaker 1: 39:51

Yeah, uh, you just touched on like the way the nature of your day-to-day work or week-to-week work has changed since you've gotten into into. It's probably changed from going from an individual contributor to managing people right, and now you're managing other managers. So, like, what are the big? What are the big things that, um, you've you've had to like learn to be more effective, but and maybe I think we've talked to a number of people who are like managers of people, which is great. I'm curious about that. But I'm also like we haven't talked to a lot of people who are managers of other managers and in my experience, that's got its own set of sort of additional nuances. That, um, because you think you're like coaching a person, about how to coach another person, sometimes right things like that. So like what, what are the kind of the skills that you've had to kind of really um, invest in getting better at in your new roles?

Speaker 2: 40:46

yeah, I I would say, if you so, someone that is managing just managers, um, versus somebody that is managing managers and individual contributors, that's probably the hardest. The latter is. Managing managers and individual contributors, that's probably the hardest. The latter is just because and it just depending on the scope and the skillset of the individual contributor and the managers, when you're having to go both sides, it gets really tricky because you have to get a little bit more tactical and more into the weeds and it's that is probably the most challenging aspect of as you move up in the career is, like you're, you know I'm in meetings all the time with our cmo, our cro, our uh head of rev ops, and you know, last night I was in meetings with our cfo and our c?

Speaker 2: 41:28

Uh, our ceo, and so you're the the level of discussion that we're having and the I'm producing a lot of information and reporting and PowerPoint decks and that kind of thing. Like it's a very executive level summary, like here's, I have to distill all this information that's happening in a, two slides and tell you simply, succinctly here's what is happening, here's the trend, here's what we need to do about it, and I might get five minutes of your attention, because you got a thousand other things to do, right.

Speaker 2: 41:55

But, then if I have to go to an individual contributor and talk through like here's, here's the email that you need to send in the list that we need to get, so let me help you get to that, that is very challenging and so I I don't have that now. I have had that um where I had kind of a combination of the two Um. I think that the focus it really is like the managing up, managing down and the level of communication, that what, how detailed you get, how you roll up the information. So I think what I have to do now a lot is take eight different, nine different sources of information and what people are telling me's what's happening. Here's what I'm seeing in my different channel or my area.

Speaker 2: 42:38

Summarize that try to see the trends. Okay, so if I, um, if I take you know this thing happening, all right, so roughly 80 of the stuff is this, and so if we focus on that, we can change 80 of the business. So we're going to focus there and trying to take all that information, distill it down so that I can show the trends and talk to my boss, talk to our CRO, talk to the rest of the team. Here's where we need to put our focus on, here's what we're doing about it.

Speaker 2: 43:04

Trying to get in front of that, I think, is where I spend probably most of my time. It's probably 60 or 70% of my time is in building, uh, building presentations and board decks and that kind of thing, as well as in meetings and talking through, like, the trends and how we're going to fix things. And then the other time is spent with my leaders and just uh, working with them and and helping them. I have an amazing leadership team that, uh, they're easy to to lead because they're really good, um, and so I I think we have a really good team. I'm, of course, biased, but I do think that that helps and it makes my life a lot easier.

Speaker 1: 43:39

Yeah, that's great. Yeah, I mean I wish we had more time, because I would love to go deeper in a lot of that. Unfortunately, we're going to have to probably wrap it up here, but, Rick, thank you so much. It's been interesting and I think it's going to be really helpful for a lot of people who are out there listening or watching. If folks want to, you know, is it okay if they reach out to you or follow you? What's the best way for them to do that?

Speaker 2: 44:06

Yeah, LinkedIn is probably the easiest path. If you're not connected with me on LinkedIn, send me a message or just send a connection request. It's Rick Collins.

Speaker 1: 44:16

Reference the podcast. How about? How about that?

Speaker 2: 44:17

yeah, there you get reference the podcast.

Speaker 2: 44:19

Um, if you, I I've uh spoke at uh masa palooza in uh in the fall, or I guess it was the winter that was the fall sale it was in november, right, um, I told I told people that were in the session that I spoke at, like, if you have a sales title, just reference that you were here, because I get a lot of sales outreaches. And so now I love my sales people, but I get so many outreaches I typically won't accept it, because if I'm going to get pitched right away then yeah, that's not really what I'm looking for. But so if you do have that, I'll still connect with you. If you let me know that you heard me on the podcast.

Speaker 1: 44:52

There you go. Awesome. Well, I appreciate it. Um well, which means they also listened all the way through, which is great.

Speaker 2: 44:57

There you go, that's right.

Speaker 1: 44:58

Yeah, Um, yeah. Well, great Rick is, it was time to let tough on. I'm so glad we were able to make this work. I appreciate it, Um, so anyway. So, yeah, to our, to our audience. Again, thank you for uh supporting us. Uh, thank you for your ideas for guests and topics and, as always, if you have a suggestion for a topic or a guest or want to be a guest, reach out to Naomi, Mike or me and we'd be happy to talk to you about it. Until next time, Bye everybody.