My Marketing Ops Journey with AJ Navarro

Description H

Our guest in this episode, AJ Navarro, shares his career journey from Sales to Marketing Ops and consulting, including how his experience with producing music taught him about marketing tech. If you’ve ever wondered what music production has to do with Marketing Ops, or what it’s like to work as a consultant – this is the episode for you!

AJ shares his lessons learned, including:

  • How he learned via community and others who shared
  • The value of mentors, including Pete Furseth (check out our episode with Pete)
  • Being curious and relentless to learn

We also touch a little bit on the question of “what is marketing ops?” during our discussion.

Recorded live.

Hi, I’m Michael Hartmann, I’m Naomi Lou, and I’m Mike Rizzo. And this is ops cast, a podcast for marketing ops pros and rev ops pros created by the MO Pros. The number one community for marketing operations. As professionals tune into each episode as we chat with real professionals to help elevate you in your marketing operations career.

Hello, everyone. Welcome to another episode of OpsCast brought to you by the MO Pros. I am Michael Hartmann joined today with one of my co-hosts Mike Rizzo. Mike say, Hey everybody, we’ve got to work on that mic. I know every time let’s we need, we need like, uh, we need like our own catchphrases, maybe. Yeah, our own.

W what was it? Sonic, uh, Sonic signatures. Is that what it was we talked about? Yeah, I don’t remember it. I think I’ll just open every year. The Mopro the year of the Mopro. There we go for the whole year. I’m just going to say that. So, speaking of the year, the Mopro, so joining us today to talk about his journey in the marketing opposites.

AJ Navarro AJS is currently a marketing slash marketing ops consult with shift paradigm. I think that’s a formerly lead MD prior to his current role at J has held various roles in marketing, marketing operations, both in-house and as a consultant and like some others we know has also had a little bit of sales experience.

JJ. Thanks for joining us today. I’m really excited to be here. And I will you guys and talk everything, marketing ops. Awesome. All right. So, uh, just for those listening, so for a change, Texas is holding for it on this one, right? So AJ and I are both in Texas. So. Yeah. Yeah. All right. So let’s get the story.

So, you know, um, AGA as we were kinda mentioning to you, like one of the things I’ve enjoyed about this series, where we’re talking to people about their journey, marking options, just seeing all the different kinds of paths. Like all the rest, right. Yours is also a different path. So I think one of the things that’s been really helpful is for everyone to sort of just sort of walk us through their career path and how they ended up in marketing ops, what attracted them to it.

And I think in your case, right, maybe the, um, Getting to the marketing ops and in consulting world. Right. Talk us through how you got there. Yeah, absolutely. Um, so like various other members and this industry, uh, it was a very unique way. Um, really, I would say my first hands-on experience with like a CRM or anything like that started back when I was working in sales, uh, at T-Mobile, you know, ways away when I was in college.

Uh, that was my first hands on experience with just something like a system like Salesforce. Um, and it was one of those where like, you’re kind of scared of it, cause it’s just such an intimidating system at first. But. Maybe and curious, and just nerdy, just played with the system and just kinda liked it.

Um, and that just kind of grew to like S like just more of like a side hobby of just learning systems and things like that. Um, outside of that, I. Uh, as a hobbyist, I was working with like music and stuff at the time. And that really liked to like, learning about content management systems and just some of those easy things, you know, for making Instagram posts and all sorts of things.

And that ironically, just kind of circulated to like dabbling in like Marquetto or like HubSpot for like just small startup companies that were around the city of San Antonio. So it was stuff that I kind of just dabbled in on the side, but I still really didn’t know much of it. Probably in, in January of 2020 is when I, um, landed a Marquetto administrative role.

Um, you know, outside of doing just all the side work, a lot of my ended a Marquetta administrator role with a company called digital defense. Um, and that was really. The catalyst of just what really propelled me. Um, I had a great manager, Joe bras, and I also got to meet Pete versa from aura and technology soon just to this day, both of them.

So just as my mentors and, um, really, I got exposed to not only to what it meant to be an in-house consultant, but just understanding the like, or just really soaking in all the different avenues that like marketing operations that I, that I never really even knew. That like, you know, you could spend countless hours on the internet searching for and never really.

So that was awesome. Um, then that led to, uh, being an independent consultant for Tyler technologies also out of Dallas, Texas. Um, so I did that for a little while, which was really great, you know, I got to be really hands-on, um, you know, learn, you know, there’s different avenues. You’re either in-house independent or consultant agency.

And then lo and behold, one day I got. Um, from formerly lead up to you, which is now shift paradigm to join the team. Um, and I’ve joined the team and have been there and have loved it. It’s, you know, I could not write a bit, a better fairytale. Um, it’s just been phenomenal and learning and just being there with the leadership team and being really immersed into this marketing.

Um, I have to give, you know, a shout out to also in between those transition periods between the, some of the career changes. I spent a lot of time, like, as I was understanding Marquetto and stuff, I spent a lot of time just joining any webinars that I could find on LinkedIn, you know, which is how I can, you know, across Mike rezone or Michael Tucker, just the Marketo champion.

And I just, just indulged and just jumped in and that sense of community, you know, I remember the first drone. I never knew what they were talking about, but it was just like, man, this sounds really cool. And now it’s, I still feel that way most of the time. And it’s just, it’s really cool. Cause it’s, it’s such like a close knit community and community just has played a big role, but that’s kind of my short story of how I got to where I’m at.

Wacky world of marketing ops. I think everybody’s journey has a wacky wacky track record. It seems like, but I. It’s. Yeah. It’s so it’s so interesting. I, uh, uh, from a timeline perspective, you know, without Googling you and looking at your LinkedIn profile, or what are we talking about in terms of your sort of journey there?

Was it like a couple of years? Yeah. I’d say, you know, officially I, for me, you know, I, while we, I did the side stuff for me my day, one of, like I said, that the catalyst was probably what I started working at digital defense. That’s what I would consider by. Real day one. Um, so that’s been about, that was January, 2020.

Um, so it’s just over a year, you know, I officially I’d say, what are we talking 21 almost starting 22, 20, 22, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. It was a long decade. I know, but yeah, with everything going on, you know, the, it was just kind of flat, so yeah. So going about to. Officially, I’m counting all the side stuff.

I’d probably add about another year and a half of just kind of hobby work and just sitting in and doing T you know, sitting with teams and different things like that. So all in all, I’d say three and a half years. Just about right? Yeah. I have kind of a follow-up question that too. So maybe the same thing.

I don’t think, I remember, like, what did she study in college? Or like, was it anything related to this stuff at all? Absolutely not, no. Um, I went, I went to originally be an accountant and I figured out from the first class that I needed to change that that was not going to work out perfectly. Okay. Um, but uh, I ended up studying a double major in communications and marketing.

Um, and so, you know, you learn about marketing and stuff, but it’s never, there isn’t a clue, a course of Salesforce one-on-one or CRM one-on-one or. By our person, you know, there’s buyer personas, but nowhere near the level of like marketing ops, you know, you don’t really get exposed to that. So to me, you know, and, and marketing is like, you know, for lack of a better word, I, I feel like field marketing just comes into your head, like, oh yeah, I do marketing for Crohn’s.

It’s like, you’re standing at a table handing out koozies or something, you know? And there’s just so much more, yeah. That’s crazy. Yeah. So it was just, it’s just interesting. I think we’ve got part of why I was asking is the, you mentioned that you did music and recording and that kind of stuff. And I think, uh, I have no like zero musical talent, but I really appreciate music.

Lately started following people who really break down songs and stuff like that. And I’ve found like I’m very, very interested in the whole process now about how they’re built and I can see there’s probably some parallels. Right. So, uh, do you see that, like, from your experience of doing music to this? Oh, definitely.

Definitely. Where, like I said, where it really cross paths. And like I said, why, where I think helped me in my interviews, um, was the thing about the music stuff is I did a lot of the technical side. So I did a lot of the mixing and mastering and things like that. So the one constant in that is you’re using various amounts of software.

And, you know, I didn’t go to school to become a recording engineer. So of course, like, like MarTech, you’re picking up a book and you’re, you know, you’re Googling and YouTube-ing left and right. And it was the ability to learn a software. And then once you learn it, you know, whether it’d be like something that made an Instagram story pop or just anything like that was now to use it strategic.

So all of that, like hoot suite and just those little tools came around full circle on just a much bigger scale, you know, like I was using things like, uh, for fundraising, for groups that I was in, in college, like we were using things like MailChimp and just things that, you know, survey monkey or just things that are real life tools.

But it’s just funny how they just all connected. And I think that played a big strength was just the ability to learn a software efficient. Um, and to be able to troubleshoot. Cause I feel like that that is the running joke in marketing ops is you fix one thing and break three. Yeah. I think there’s been a number of memes about just different versions of like the cobweb or the pipes all over the place or whatever it is.

Right. So. Um, that’s really, so it’s really interesting. I I’m glad I asked that question. Cause it w for the people who, who have not been on, right. We do a fair amount of preparation for this, but we kind of see where this goes, but the, I was, I was not sure what I was expecting when I asked you about the music thing, but your answer doesn’t surprise me.

Knowing that you’re now in marketing ops and why you’ve kind of were attracted to it because it’s that problem solving, figuring stuff out, curious, like all those things, right. Or I think elements for someone to be successful in marketing ops. Yeah, absolutely. Michael, I think had a little smile on his face.

When he, when he said, when you said that you were, uh, going into the accounting side of things at first, and then you ended up in marketing ops because he said repeatedly that everybody in this function needs to have some fundamental understanding of accounting practices, you know, whatever. Oh, all right.

I feel like they’re the same. Trust me. You talk to people who in finance, they do say that’s fighting words where to go, where to go, Mike, showing your ignorance. But I mean, I think they’re definitely related, right? So you can’t have, you can’t really have one without the other, but, um, Yeah. So this is really, I I’m fascinated now about this.

So you mentioned, and this is another thing I think has been a consistent theme with people we’ve had on, is having had mentors. Right. Can you talk through like what role those people have played and kind of how they ongoing and then we can maybe talk about the community aspect as well. Yeah, definitely.

Um, so first and foremost, I mean my immediate mentors, you know, that, that really just. Come top of mind is B you know, the person that initially hired me, which was, uh, burrow , um, she was my manager and just, she had been in the demand generation space for quite some time still is. And, um, just really learning from her, learning from her to not only.

Be a leader, but I got a lot of that, like trust and verify and like the conversations we would have when we were problem-solving or just, you know, in that critical, you know, think Tate type think tank type of mode was just very, very valuable. Um, and she actually introduced me to Pete. Um, Pete had done some previous work there with, with the company at the time.

And so when I was first kind of getting onboarded. I had just kind of like a run-up call with Pete of, okay. Hey, this is how everything works. This is more or less what you should look for. And that just kind of became, you know, a check-in for me, um, where I could just ping P like, Hey, well, what are you thoughts about this?

Or, you know, and you know, both Jill and Pete were check out these resources, check out, you know, this community get involved here. You know, it was just constant support and education, um, to where, you know, that led me to the fantastic team that I’m at now, which, you know, it shift paradigm and, you know, uh, talking about mentors, like, I, I really.

You know, without sounding cheesy, I have to give the whole team at shift paradigm, like the mentorship match, because the learning doesn’t stop. The leadership team is just, it’s fantastic and supportive. Um, just, just on all levels. Um, really like when I came in knowing they made me just better, you know, and, and all sorts of ways and, um, you know, they’re there and they’re just very supportive.

Um, and so I’m very happy to be there, but I would say, you know, Those are probably the big three for me, you know, my current team, Jill and Pete then get into me where I’m at and also knowing that I can trust in where I am going, because all of those three areas or those three people do care about my future and my growth.

And likewise, I care about theirs. So that’s awesome. And I. I’m so glad that you had mentors along the way. And I encourage everybody in our community to, you know, to whether that’s just direct messaging someone in the forum or on LinkedIn, or if you’re a premium member, you know, tapping into the MeetSee program.

Getting automatically introduced to people like those things are exactly what they’re there for it’s to help accelerate you and your growth, but, but shameless plug aside, like, uh, interesting, um, for you to be in this agency role now. Right. I saw a post the other day on LinkedIn, uh, from one of our other community agency leaders.

And, um, she talks about how being in an agency is like dog years, right? Like you, you accelerate growth, really fascinating. Arguably, it’s very similar for a startup life to you. You tend to accelerate learnings, um, a lot more rapidly when you’re having to do a lot of things all at once. Um, so I’d be curious to just hear your thoughts on you’ve.

You kind of were on the in-house side, you’ve been in your agency role for a little while. You’re getting a lot of exposure to probably lots of different things. Um, does that resonate with you? Like tell us a little bit about the kind of life of mops in, in what you’re doing now. Oh yeah, absolutely. Yeah.

I personally, I love it. I love the fast face, but this stems back from, I am naturally born and bred a salesman at heart. You know, I was a manager and all that. So like, I’m for the hustle and bustle. I like being in the huddle. I liked being there for down in inches and, you know, I’d make a lot of sports references, so I’m out there to win super bowl and stuff.

So the competitiveness is really cool. And it’s funny because this is one of the things that, you know, W unwilling, unknowingly, you know, there’s kind of those three areas on how to do this job. It’s either you’re, in-house, you’re independent or you’re part of some type of agency. And within my short three years, I’ve kind of been able to experience those.

And this is something that, you know, uh, VMP conversation I had when I was first joining the team at lead a D or formality to be, it was exactly that, you know, his words were, Hey, you’re going to learn at a pretty rapid. You know, see if you like it, go for it, you know, and yeah, I love it. I, uh, the challenges are unique.

Um, you know, it keeps me on my toes and I am constantly learning. Um, but I think what I really appreciate about at the moment. Is the ability to one, I have full trust and confidence from my leadership and my team, but I think the really thing that just sells this and sells this across the industry just for me, is I love being on the call with the client, with these high level, you know, executive teams and being in the huddle and just be, you know, being that trusted advisor like, or that friend and that part and say, Hey, like, Hey, let’s.

Let’s try this route or why isn’t this working? Like, how can we get you there? Um, and yeah, I love being in that huddle and it, for me, it’s, it’s, it’s just addicting and I get a lot of that at, at shift paradigm. Um, and I get a lot of opportunity to do like self-learning and professional development. So yeah, as my life in the agency, it’s, it’s just been great.

It’s phenomenal. Yes, really. Um, I think it’s so important to be in a place. Well, I think learning and having a desire to learn you along with our, our, our last guest, both kind of talk about, we both sort of independently talked about how you on your own pursued resources to help you learn and grow, um, in addition to sort of building a network.

So I think that’s a really important lesson that is coming through these conversations as well. Um, Just so I’m curious. So you mentioned that you’re a salesman at heart, or you’ve got done that, right? I, I definitely can see that in you. Uh, but I’m curious, so, you know, there’s, you know, I kind of look, I’ve done a number of different jobs in my life.

And so I was like, there’s some that I think have fewer things that I disliked than others. Right. Um, but there’s always some aspect of just about every role that. Didn’t like, so just curious, like, you know, what are your least your fame Mo what do you like the most about being in marketing ops? And maybe it’s a little different in the agency world, and what do you like the least, and then maybe like, what do you miss about some of the other roles you’ve had in kind of more in air quotes, right?

Peer marketing or sales. Yeah. I, I started with what I don’t like, and it’s really not even what I don’t like it, but I think it’s just the constant challenge that we all face is. The ever-changing technology, you know, it’s, there’s so much more tech out there. Like I am in, I don’t know that if I could say, you know, besides like learning the big three, like HubSpot, Marketo, and Salesforce, like, if you were to say, you need to know this, this and this, and you’re going to be Gucci, or are you going to be fine?

I don’t know that I can give you that because there’s just so much, depending on. What you were trying to do as an organization and how you’re attacking the market. So that is the constant challenge is just keeping up with, um, so there’s a lot of self-learning, you know, off the clock, you know, if you’re someone like me, I enjoy reading those blogs and stuff, but I think, you know, to keep your competitive edge is that’s something that you have to keep up with.

What do you, uh, what do you think. I don’t, we haven’t really had a chance to talk about, you know, like I know you’ve got mentors, so you probably have conversations about, you know, career growth or maybe different roles. Are there things that are, you think are becoming more important for you? From a skill and experience standpoint that go beyond sort of the traditional, I’ll say traditional marketing ops or MarTech stuff that you think like whether it’s leadership or, um, in your case re how to work with clients and have difficult conversations, that kind of stuff.

What you, what do you like? What are the things you’re working on that are related to that? Um, I would say it’s, it’s, you know, it’s, it’s just constantly growing and having those difficult conversations, those don’t really ever go away. And those aren’t ever a bad thing, but I think the constant thing that the repetitive theme that like should always be worked on in general is just really understand.

The why’s on why a client has implemented a technology or the truly desired outcome, because sometimes, you know, when we’re, when we’re helping somebody is. We think we know, Hey, this, I was pitched at this tool is going to get me here. And as you kind of poke holes or you ask questions and you just understand, well, okay, well, how are you attacking this market?

And what do you want to happen? It tends to just expand and open up this world of like so much more and kind of give you more just context and, and how they’re truly trying to use these tools. And so I think like that, that is something that should just focus on. It’s just really understanding the why’s, whether it’s com come into like segmentation or like implementing like a journey, like, you know, automation cycle or lead scoring, just anything like the full, why not just because, you know, I try to always stay away from, okay, here you go.

It’s done. You know, I really want to enable that, but that comes from again, when we talked about like, When I work with you or get to work with you, I truly feel like a part of your team and your, your success is my success. And this is truly, you know, and you learn this in school. Um, this is truly a, a people first business and it, you know, it’s my goal to like, I want you to feel the, you know, there’s going to be marketing hurdles.

That’s never going to go away. You know, that’s the nature of any business that you’re in or any of them. But working together, we know that like when, when, when push comes to shove, that there’s trust that I know that this person can get it done. And that helps just ease at night because these are executive leaders that you’re dealing with.

And there’s just so much going on. And I have come to learn when someone can know is that they are, can trust you and they can rely on you. That relationship is just so much more. In depth with that, and it really goes on. And that’s how you develop that mentorship or that’s how you become just even lifelong friends past the, like I’m your client or you’re my client.

And you’re paying me to be here and you have one hour to give me your problem cycle. You’ve got it. You’ve got an hour of my time and now I’m going to fix it. Yeah, I think, um, for me, my takeaway, you know, just filtering this a little bit, um, if I was tuning into this episode, I think one of the things that resonates for me is that while you’re kind of speaking from the purview of, you know, this, this individual has to interface with clients and it’s a people first business as that, um, that is not any different for the internal person as well, right?

Like it is absolutely unequivocally, totally the same experience you are servicing other parts of the business and other team members. Uh, and you are trying to make, you know, the best of the technology to make them. Problems their situation, more manageable, more scalable, more efficient, more effective, whatever sort of descriptor you want to put out there.

Um, and I, I think that that is, um, a really valid way to describe that. Sales individuals are often taught that, right? That you are. You’re trying to build relationships with people. Uh, at least the really good ones build relationships with people. And then the technology kind of comes after. And if you, if you take that approach, um, along with some of the other things that I agree with in terms of being broadly skilled, And other areas of marketing, you can accelerate your growth and marketing operations.

Um, and so I think that’s a strong takeaway for anybody sort of tuning into this. Like, you know, just because AIG is on the agency side doesn’t mean that you’re not actually also servicing, um, you know, people first. Right. Um, and so I think it’s, it’s worth, hadn’t really thought that as soon as you said, I was like, oh, Can obvious, right?

One of the it’s part of why I like these ops roles is because you have connections to so many other parts of an organization. If you’re internal, if you’re an agency, right. You’re working with lots of different types of organizations, potentially, and people, um, would, I would, I appreciate from AJS, uh, kind of view of how he looks at his clients and how he wants that relationship to be built.

I appreciate it. You know, selected and hired and brought in agencies in the past. Rick, I, I, on the, on that, on my side also want them to be, feel like they’re a part of an extension of the team. Um, clearly the relationship is a different kind of one and say with an employee, but at the same time, I want to make it as close to that as possible because I want them invested in our success as well as theirs.

And so I think that’s a really important thing for. Yeah, I think I would encourage anybody who’s in the position where they’re going to be hiring people like AIG or, you know, stuff like that, that they, they think about it that way, as opposed to just a transaction. And I would agree to whether you are in-house or you’re independent, or you’re at an agency you’re making an impact.

You know, you are making an impact to the overall business funds. You know, to, to sales and marketing alignment, which is, which is just huge. And, you know, and that’s why I always preach, you know, to any of my friends, Hey, you gotta check this out or check out this industry. And you know, it, it w it is, it’s very life-changing and there’s just so many avenues to it, you know, it’s, it’s, it’s almost unfair to be so untapped.

You know, um, but with that, you know, back to our conversation about like mentors and just seeing like that with that is, you know, if I could give any advice I would say is. Find sort of the things you like, find the things that maybe draw your ear, whether it’s just watching some videos or a blog or something, and then just kind of start attending a webinar or just learn more about it and just kind of start dabbling in those things and try it if you don’t like it, but you still want to be in the American world.

There’s so many other avenues, but my advice is just to just throw the line out there and see what you get back. And kind of navigate it because I could not tell you, but you know, when I was first getting started, like, yes, in-house is the way to go or yes. Uh, by yourself consultant, independent consultants, the way to go or yes to agency is the way to go.

I still probably couldn’t tell you because I had a great experience in all three right now with where I’m at. It’s been fantastic. So, um, You know, I would just say that it’s just to experience it and just immerse, immerse yourself in it and yeah. Fully getting it well. And I think even if someone is maybe considering a move to marketing ops for at least getting exposed to it, it’s going to help them.

If they’re going to stay in any, I was going to say marketing, but I think really any. Um, any of the, sort of the revenue focused parts of an organization, whether it’s sales, marketing, customer success. Uh, so ADA, I’m just, I’m kind of curious now. So one of the things I think that does sort of put off some people, or is a challenge for those of us who were in marketing ops is that we get people coming to us like, oh, we need to do this thing or that thing, you know?

Um, and I just personally, like I’ve had ABM or. Chat bot or whatever that were, you know, the technology part of it is something that you’re like, well, again, I go do this, but I’m like, that’s just the technology part. Right. So I think there’s, I think there’s a number of things in the, in the space that marketing ops covers, there may be over-hyped under hypes.

And what do you think? Uh, in fact there was somebody who posted, I think it was a. Darryl Alfonzo today. I posted something on LinkedIn about like, what’s the most underrated or like kind of thing. And I have my opinion on that, but yeah. What did I do? You, based on your recent experience, you’re seeing lots of clients, right?

Who’s like, what is the topic that’s coming up? You’re like, well, maybe it shouldn’t be as big of a topic right now or, or vice versa. Right. What’s not coming up. It should be. Yeah. I would say the most over-hyped and the most is. The set it and forget it mentality. Uh, just anything when you’re doing programs like, you know, a while it’s ease of use, nothing is really set it and forget, you know, in my mind, if you’re setting up initiatives that are for 20, 22, you should be reevaluating those in 2023, you know, Look back, like, how did those work?

How can, you know? So you make adjustments and, and, um, and to the contrary, the thing that I think is severely under utilized is data hygiene and, and clean instance. Um, you know, I can’t, I, I need like some sort of like, Late from the sky music coming, uh, that doesn’t make any sense light from the sky, but me, you know what I mean?

Right. I know what you mean. Oh yeah. You know, cause a lot of things, you know, especially with systems, you know, and this is something that I’ll share with my clients and you know, whether we’re just going over basic folder structure or anything is I always try to pull up those real-world scenarios. Like, Hey, think about it in two or three years from now and you’re making another program and you’re going to say, Hey, what was that one program that we did in 2022 that really worked?

Got it. You know, By simple labeling it. It just makes things, your database, your instances, they’re going to grow over time as they should. All your marketing efforts are taking an impact and it’s, everything’s gotta be scalable. And what helps students become scalable outside of good strategy is just keeping it clean and organized as best as you can.

And I’ll even double down on that. And. Documentation documentation, documentation, documentation. Cause without that, everything just gets lost in the ether. And what tends to happen is when we, when you ask a question, it, the response is, well, it’s supposed to be this or this is the process versus. No, this is the documented process.

And that’s usually where I see the imbalance of like, you can’t see that. We can see that. Like Mike and I are both nodding our heads vigorously. Yes. Vigorously. I’m experiencing it currently. Like why is there no documented? Right that I, myself wrote. Yeah. You, and when you set stuff up to whether you, like I said, no matter what type of role you are in a consultant, like documented, because I can’t tell you how many things that I build.

Like, oh, why did I do it this way? Oh, okay. Uh, somebody scenarios while some of the same summer, so different just based off of the workspace that you’re in or based how they have things set up. And it’s just helpful. You can’t keep, you know, a million tabs on everything in your mind document it. Totally yourself.

Try to be organized and it’ll help you tremendously. So I think being organized is disciplined about that is way underrated it’s so it’s interesting. You said the Senate forget the. But immediately to, I don’t know if it’s the other side of the coin or the corollary to that, which is this sense that we have to build something exactly.

Right. Or we’re not going to be able to do it. Right. So there’s always this pursuit of what I called perfection. And I think it gets a lot of people caught up in not being able to actually get stuff done. Because of that, right? They don’t realize that certain cases, that there are certain things that you like once an email goes out, right, it’s gone.

You can’t get it back, but you can change a webpage. You can change your ad copy. You could like, there’s lots of things you can change over time. If you’re are debating about two different words to use in the ad copy, for example, or a web. Yeah. Yeah. Go ahead. Go ahead. I’ll say to piggyback off that, like I, in my mind, I totally, I don’t think, you know, profession just doesn’t exist and in my mind we should chase innovation.

Because, you know, and I’ll use a sports analogy. Again, you had a fantastic season that you want a super bowl, but you should be focusing on, okay, what efforts can I get to win two Superbowls and three Superbowls in four Superbowls? And if things are working, you know, if you have a lead scoring model that did really great measure that and measure that against your benchmarks and metrics on, okay, where can we tweak this and how can we improve it?

You know? And if you made $1 million this year, great. Now how do I make two. And then I made two and I, how did I get to 3 million? And it’s just constantly innovation across all those things. When you, you know, when you talk about emails, like, okay, we’ve had some good response, how can I mix it up with some AB testing?

And, and again, back to documentation, let’s document those results. Let’s see what we’re doing. And to me, that that’s just how you stay on the edge of the, you as a company, but also. You’re you have to be aware and embraced your team’s strengths and weaknesses and where you understand, okay. Hey, we’re, we’re great at this, but we’re not so good at this and call that out.

That’s perfectly fine, but then let’s make a plan and, and turn those goals. Attainable action items and hold yourself accountable and just innovate, innovate. Don’t choose perfection, chase, chase innovation. Yeah. It’s progress over perfection is kind of the mind. So, um, I love that. Yeah. So, okay. So ADJ, this has been really good.

I, I think this is going to be a really good last question for you because. Your, how much you pursued other sort of training and education on your own. But one of the things that we talked about a lot with the community, with the MO Pros and what Mike set up and what we’re eventually trying to get to is, you know, a place where people can learn.

Yeah. What does it mean to be a marketing ops pro and how do you get there? If you, you know, if there was a certificate or a tray, a formal education, like, what do you think would be the non-negotiables this has gotta be a part of that basic training to be a marketing ops pro.

It’s a very interesting question. Um, we get that a lot. Yeah. I say first and foremost is first. Understand what. Marketing and operations is like, what does it even mean? And what does attribution mean? And the terminology and those things, um, in terms of resources, you know, where you can go and, and how you can get those things, you know, shameless plug paradigm.

We have a ton of blogs and a ton of great resources for all of that. Now that, you know, MO Pros like ton of blogs attend the webinars and stuff. Um, But if I had to say, like, for sure these are the definite things that you’re going to come across, I would say, be familiar with the big three, you know, those don’t really ever go away, you know, Marquetto and your HubSpot and, and your sales force, um, I’d say, learn about, uh, uh, what’s the word I’m looking for here?

Um, You want to say finance? Don’t you, you want to say finance? No, I’m looking for, um, I can’t think of the word. Maybe you guys can help you like the tools that help, uh, data enhancement like that to help enhance your data, stuff like that. Um, I think goes a really long way. Um, intent marketing, ABM marketing.

I think those are really useful. So we’re, you know, we talked about this a little earlier, too. I think having some broad understanding across, you know, when you think about that T-shaped marketer for those that maybe are new to that term, go look it up and, uh, you know, having a broad understanding of those things.

I, I agree. I, I, I think that that really helps set some standout marketing officer pros apart from others. Yeah. I just have a general sense there. Okay. I think that once you kind of understand, okay, this is what this area does or what this avenue looks like, then I think as time goes on, you. Say, okay. This is where I want to go.

I want to be in revenue operations. I want to be in marketing and operations. I want to beat, you know, I want to do this with my operations or maybe I just want to focus on data and analytics, like, but I think to kind of make that decision, play with, play with everything and just have a general understanding because with the calls and things that I’ve come across, like regardless of where you are in this.

There’s going to be a lot of cross collaboration and the more, you know, it just kind of helps and it helps you stay creative and strategic, like just when you’re approaching and you’re adding your piece of the pie to the overall, you know, effort. Good stuff. Yeah. So just also shameless plugs. So what is marketing ops?

Very first episode of OpsCast. Was that was the exact topic we had. Um, it’s still one of the most popular episodes. So that’s one. And then, uh, you mentioned, uh, agent mentioned his mentor friend, Pete , who was also a guest in the past talking about, um, so now that you have attribution modeling now, what?

Right. So. Tons of good stuff. Yeah. So we’ve we’ve yeah, I think we hit on some of those things in here and there’s all these, the community AAJ. It was a pleasure to get to know you a little more and share your story with us and our listeners. If Pope folks want to get in, you know, get in touch with you or follow you, what’s the best place for them to do.

Say my LinkedIn, um, just go and type in AIG, Navarro or Allen, Jacob Navarro. I think it should show up either way should say they are. Oh, right. So there you go. Awesome. Well, when we do, when we publish the podcast, I’ll make sure to share it there, you get those things. So we appreciate it. And we appreciate you coming on, man.

Thank you very much, very much. So appreciate the opportunity now is great. Um, like I said, whenever I could contribute to the community, I’ve always tried to cause. I be like, Mike knows this. I said this a million times, knowing when we first met, but I wouldn’t be here without, without community. And this whole industry, regardless, like I said, a VC innovating consultant, whatever, like it’s been phenomenal.

It’s been life changing and it’s just, it’s an awesome, awesome ride. So I’m just holding on and enjoying every bit of it. Awesome. Thank you. Yeah, well, I thank you to all our listeners and our, our guests. This is a, it’s been a fun ride. We’re looking forward to a fun 20, 22, few more of these stories and additional things.

If you ever have suggestions for guests or topics, uh, or want to be a guest, reach out to Mike, me or Naomi, and we’ll, we’ll see if we can make that happen until next time. Thanks everyone for listening. Continue to support us in. Review rate, um, et cetera. Thanks everyone. Bye. Thanks everybody.