Ops Cast (After Dark) with Courtney McAra

In the latest episode of #OpsCastAfterDark, we had an open conversation with Courtney McAra. We talked a little about her path to Marketing Operations and then into consulting. 

We also talked about reaching some milestones with Ops Cast as this is the 40th episode and we recently went over 5,000 downloads.

And, you get a little insight into:

• Photoshop and HTML hacks
• The best SDR outreach ever
• What the connection is between the Backstreet Boys and Naomi

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. This is OpsCast after dark brought to you by the MO Pros. I’m Michael Hartmann joined today by Naomi Lou and Mike Rizzo. My co co host here, Mike, Naomi, you want to say hello? Hello. I do want to say hello? You do. Okay. All right. All right. Well, and this is a, this is a first for a ops guests after dark.

We have a guest. So joining us today to talk shop is Courtney McCarran, who has her own marketing tech slash marketing ops consultancy called Mustang MarTech. He’s also held several different roles of marketing, MarTech and marketing ops for her career. And she’s an advisor to highway education who, um, we had on a few episodes ago, Courtney, thanks for joining us for ups guest after dark.

Thank you so much for having me.

Well it’s overdoing it. Yeah. So, so, so we actually have a lot to celebrate your Courtney. It is so like, it is a, this is a milestone episode for us in a couple of ways. One earlier this week, we hit 5,000 downloads for the podcast. We’re pretty excited about that. And, and this is our fourth. Episode. So some big, big times here.

So, um, for those, for those of us, those of you listening, this is a OpsCast. If dark is a little more of an informal, we don’t really have an agenda, but I think let’s like, Mike Naomi, like what have you, like, what’s your reaction? Like we’ve this is something that. I don’t know that we ever could have predicted that we’d get to this point.

There’s a, I think, I think I heard something like, I don’t know what the numbers are, but a significant number of podcasts start and never make it past like 10 episodes. So I will chime in, and I am part of a podcast that has been stale for a few weeks or months. So I understand the behind the scenes, the discipline and dedication, it takes so kudos to you guys for keeping it.

That’s all kudos to Mr. Hartmann. I just keep sending people. Yeah. And our, and our listeners who like continue to give us feedback and support us. So yeah. It’s totally you Michael. And like everybody who’s just like, is so eager to want to like, share or is like open to the idea of like, just hashing it out with you and figuring out like, what can I share?

That’s. Yeah, it’s a, it’s a community thing for sure. That’s true. There’s incredible. 5,000. That’s a lie. If you think about kind of the market of how many. You know, mops professionals or out there, or, you know, back in the day, I used to know how many Marquetto customers there were. There’s not that many. So I feel like 5,000.

It’s gotta be a really big percentage of the market. It feels that way, but you know, Michael and I know that. We don’t have a ton of reach in like, um, outside of the U S and Canada. Like, it’s not, it doesn’t go super far. Um, but doing things with other, other mops leaders out there in the UK and Australia has really helped like, uh, Juan Mendoza from the MarTech weekly, he writes a wonderful newsletter for those of you who aren’t subscribed to it, like definitely check it out.

He dedicates a ton of time to that. Um, and then France, uh, Fail to . I always mess his last name, but he’s doing a lot with Scott Brinker on and kind of in, uh, the UK area on marketing ops and stuff like that too. So involve getting involved with them, uh, promoting them, you know, so that hopefully everybody sort of learns from all these different outlets, not just us, um, has been helpful, but yeah, it is a big number, but.

There’s a lot of mops people out there. Yeah, totally. And well, one of the things that I know, the 5,000, it’s hard to really gauge like where that sits in the whole realm of podcasts or podcasts, even in marketing or mark MarTech mops. But, um, one of the things that that always strikes me is Mike, I think, you know, Trading messages about this is that one of the top downloaded episodes is still our very first episode, which was like, I think all around what is the definition of mops and the fact that that’s one of the top downloads and continues to have more downloads is.

Tell us tells me a little bit about just how, you know, people want to feel like they’re, uh, there’s a little clarity around it. They want people to know what it is they do and, um, how we can do how we do that. So anyway, I I’m excited. You know, when this started, had no idea what it was going to do, Courtney you point out, right.

It’s, it’s a labor of love and there’s probably more work than people realize. Isn’t it just like all parts of marketing ops too. Right. But, um, it’s, uh, it’s, it’s been, it’s been a fun ride, so, uh, But since we’ve got you here, Courtney, maybe, uh, maybe we continue this a little bit and just tell us a little bit about your, your path.

Like, how did you get into marketing ops and eventually get into doing consulting and what’s that, what’s that story? I think just the classic story of, I just fell into it because no one ever studied mops in school. It wasn’t even an option. Um, I. I finished my MBA in the summer of 2008. And that’s when there was no jobs and the economy was tanking and it was very, very difficult.

And I remember sitting in coffee shops with my friends, you know, sending out resume after resume and cover letters and just begging for anything and was hiring, wanted to be at a tech company. You know, even though in my MBA program, I did, I remember learning a little bit about a CRM, but actually hating that experience.

I really enjoyed the supply chain management class, but I wasn’t going to go work at a supply chain factory. And I ended up getting an interview with this small tech company, um, in Seattle and actually the cover letter. I sent them at the variable. I put PS, please hire me. Trust me. I’m awesome. Because I was like, I need a job and it was so hard.

So I got a very entry-level marketing coordinator role. Um, I actually reported to the CEO because she was very hands-on in marketing and really kind of was a gopher. I, you know, schlepped boxes of collateral around and fixed the Xerox machine and kind of all of those things for a while. And eventually they did have Salesforce.

It was one of those companies that probably bought Salesforce when they didn’t really need it. And no one really owned it. A lot of people had gone in and messed some things up and they had a really messy way. Of entering some data, they sold to dentists and very frequently, they never knew the dentist’s first name.

It was always like Dr. Smith, Dr. Something, and someone had didn’t realize that first name was a required field for some reason. So they just put the word needs in the first name, field, and E. Like they need the name. I feel like there’s a MIPS coming down. And I remember the first couple of times I was trying to figure out how to do an email blast and they had vertical response and MailChimp and, you know, I was kind of teaching myself those things.

I’m like, what is needs? I don’t understand. And someone told me, oh, we need, we need to get their first name. Like the next time someone’s on the phone with a dentist. We want to, and I was like, there has got to be a better way. And I just jumped in. I think I was so glad. You know, be filling the coffee machine again.

Then I was like, let me join, figure it out. I like Excel. I like spreadsheets. And the supply chain experience and the MBA program kind of made sense to me, Mia, sending an email and waiting to see who clicks or sending an autoresponder and that kind of thing. And it was a wonderful experience.

That’s crazy. Okay. So did that for awhile, did that for a while I joined Seattle’s like Salesforce user groups and went to Dreamforce and kind of started drinking all the Kool-Aid and eventually kind of got poached by Expedia, which is in Seattle. Um, and then. In a role where they had had Marquetto for about a year or two, and it was like on and running and going, and I got the keys to it and then started doing Marchetto user groups.

And that’s really where I was like, oh, finally, I found my people and this all makes sense. Um, and that was definitely. That actually job was really more of a demand gen job, but we didn’t have anyone doing mops. And I remember every week I’d go to my boss and she’d be like, so how are those, you know, demand gen campaigns going?

And I’m like, oh, they’re okay. But look at this data normalization thing that we can, all these other things. And I started to realize I’m not really a demand gen person. I don’t like to write copy and not, I guess I get some. Anxious about doing that kind of stuff and like feeling responsible for pipeline, for sales.

I really enjoyed fixing the integration for webinars more. Um, so eventually led to wanting to be really in mops. Um, and then kind of took off from there. So I want to hear from you guys though. Did, I mean, did everyone kind of have this roundabout weird way into getting into this career? I think they’ll be.

Um, yeah, I definitely did not think that. Uh, you know, when I was going to school, like my declared major in university was originally computer science. And, you know, I, my, I have a very, I guess you could say medical family where, you know, it definitely raised a few eyebrows and my dad was like computers.

Like, what is that about? Like, you should be a doctor, you know, doctor, lawyer, or accountant. Those are your only options. And he’s like, computers. What is that? And then, um, About halfway through. I kind of was like, you know, I just, I don’t see myself being a developer or software engineer or anything like that.

And so I switched to communications and, um, but I actually am very glad I did that because I feel like it’s given me the ability to kind of see both sides. Right. And I kind of act now as a translator between it and the business. I kind of toe that line between, you know, being. Yeah, it can be technical enough that I’m very dangerous in that sense, but I’m also, you know, can speak.

I have good business acumen too, I guess you could say. And so oftentimes I’m in these meetings where I’m like, no, no, no, no, that’s not what they mean. This is what they mean. Right. And I really liked that because it kind of gives me that balance between there’s days, sometimes weeks where I just want to be very technical.

Right. I want to be in the weeds. I want to be in the data. I want to. You know, look behind, underneath the hood and look at code. And there’s other days where I’m just like, give me a high level strategy and that’s like, what’s going to make me happy. So I like having both sides. Um, but how I fell into it is to be honest, like.

This was in 2000, I want to say seven. Um, a friend of mine who, uh, was working at a tech company, reached out to him and was like, Hey, um, you know, there were a computer security company and they were like, Hey, you know, we’re looking for somebody to help us build and send emails, you know? And at that time, you know, I, I had not really done emails.

I built websites, you know, I built. Backstreet boys fan site on geo cities. When I was a kid, you know, that’s all I taught myself HTML. I know.

No. And I have, and this is a sidebar, but the best S um, SDR outreach email I’ve ever received was from this, this woman who sang me, uh, she wrote a song. Um, and saying it to the tune of Backstreet boys. I want it that way to convince me to take a call with her because she had listened to another podcast where I’d mention.

But she’s done her research within the last year, right? Yeah. I remember this. Yeah. It was pretty amazing. And when I posted it on LinkedIn with her permission and, um, that was, yeah, honestly, it was the best. And I think I had one other person trying to sing me a song after it, but I was like, no, that’s not.

He gets the kind, no. Yeah, exactly. So, um, I was like, yeah, sure. I can do that. And this is, I think we’re using. Pivotal market first or something. It’s not even a product anymore. And it was like the wild, wild west of email marketing. You know, what is GDPR? What is castle? Let’s just like send 200,000 emails on a Friday afternoon.

Oh, man, I have to piggyback on that. Cause I remember when I was doing these vertical response emails with Salesforce, the first time we did it, we sent it to like 200,000 dentists and then it flooded the sales team. And then they came back to me. They’re like, no, we want you to just to send, you know, 20,000 a day for the next 14 days.

So I made this whiteboard calendar and was, you know, doing it all manually taking Excel sheets and slicing and dicing. And then that’s when I was like, okay, There’s gotta be a better way. There’s gotta be people out here that know how to do this. Cause I’m really like flying blind. What do you mean it’s not easy to just like randomly select 20,000 people at a time and not accidentally email somebody twice.

Yeah, exactly. And then one day, you know, the, there’s not a big response weight rate. And so they’re like, oh, can you send 40,000 tomorrow? Cause today was really quiet and it was just, yeah, again and there was no footer on half of the emails. I’m sure there was no unsubscribed, like ink, like it was the wild west for sure.

Oh, yeah. I think those were the days when the metric that the email marketing team said was the volume of emails they sent as opposed to anything else. Yeah. We spent, you know, a million emails, a million,

you just spanned the whole world. Thank you for that. Uh, so glad we have rules in place. Now, guardrails, last episode, we talked about guard rails. They are great. Let’s keep that. Yeah, Naomi, was that everything, is that was that your whole story there? It’s just, I mean, and then so, yeah, so I worked there for a handful of years and you know, it started w where w we sent one newsletter a month and that was like this amazing, like milestone of, you know, just this like accomplishment where the market automation platform wasn’t tied into a CRM at all.

We were using Salesforce at the time to. Being exposed to doing an entire, um, uh, vendor evaluation. And how do you integrate it? And at the time we had picked, um, kneeling, which was then acquired by Adobe and rebranded to Adobe campaign. So, yeah. And then from there just like ended up building a team, working with some really talented people.

And then I would say that it wasn’t until about five years later that. I started to hear the term marketing operations, um, thrown around pretty seriously. I don’t know if you guys kind of like, I feel right now that still the term marketing ops does not get the same kind of like, um, recognition or, um, sense of oh yeah.

I understand what that is as sales ops does. Right? So like, if someone says to you, I work in sales operations, you generally know what it is that they are doing. Whereas if you say marketing ops, That term, depending on the size of your business and how mature they are in terms of technology adoption, it can be anything from like demand gen to copywriting, to, you know, actual, true marketing ops.

So it’s a bit kind of, and I think the complexity of the role is what sort of like continues like it’s a persistent complexity, which like, sort of like. Exacerbates the problem, right? Like, oh, because I could, like, I actually still don’t understand what you’re saying. You’re like UTM medium leads to source leads to the, uh, now just, yeah, just, can you just build the rapport for me?

Like you hear that from people and like, I don’t want to try to understand you. And so I saw that I could sort of like exacerbates the problem with like, yeah. I don’t really understand what you do. You do really crazy things in marketing, right? By my Fort, my Fort family, like my mom and my dad. They’re like, yeah.

I just tell people you’re in marketing. Like yeah, that, that works like that is perfectly okay. You can say it for marketing. Yeah. I’ve used that a little bit, but even then they’re like, so you fix computers

yeah. It’s so, so bad. It’s interesting. So, but I don’t know that I’ve shared my story to marketing ops, but my, so when I started my career way before any of you even thought about it probably is that I was doing. It management consulting and doing stuff in the financial services where we were doing data warehousing stuff.

And, um, I got an opportunity to go work for a company that needed someone to come in and help build a customer database or a targeting database. Uh, so my first sort of exposure to marketing databases was building a 50 million household database. Um, for this company, it was telecom company GTE. Now part of Verizon, right.

Um, Because they had early entry into competitive markets. And so they need, they, they needed to sort of build out a database where they could go pursue that. And back in those days, all that data was being fed to direct mail and telemarketing call centers and stuff. Right. There was like, it was a different world.

And that was a huge thing. But for me, I was like going from highly structured, you know, controlled data from a financial standpoint to customer data, which is. Okay. Complete mess, even in the best case, right. Was actually really intriguing to me. And then I also like kind of being closer to where customers were and then over time, right.

It just sort of evolved from doing consulting in the same world. And then, um, eventually going to work at companies where I had to sort of web stuff and then eventually it also. Merged together where I had web, but I had the eat, whatever the email platform was and eventually the kind of the whole flow of stuff, and then reporting and analytics, and then it just sort of expanded.

And then in the last couple of roles I’ve been, I’ve actually had, I think, sort of tangential things like I had a demand gen title, so I always actually had an SDR team inbound and then currently have a. Uh, digital marketing under my role, like we’re at paids paid digital stuff. So it gets, I think it’s like, I’m comfortable with the whole process of marketing and how marketing ops fits in and, um, extra somewhere in the middle of there.

I also did some sales, so, which I think was really valuable. Um, I have, I have as, as much as we like to bag on salespeople, cause we’ve done that before here. Um, I actually appreciate just really how hard that job. Because it is not easy to do cold outreach and get hung up on or blamed or whatever, and deal with like people ghosting you or negotiating red lines on stuff.

I, yeah. I give kudos to all the salespeople out there. It is not easy. Now that doesn’t mean that they’re allowed to be jerks to marketing. They should smell respect. Totally agree. But, uh, but yeah, their job is not easy. No. Yeah, I totally agree. The, the role I, like, I very intentionally said, I’m not going into sales.

And, and part of that was like, that is hard. Um, not that like, what we do is easy, but like that type of difficulty is not for me. This type of difficulty is kind of like what you said earlier before, right? Corny, where you’re like, ah, the demand gen games, like being stuck to a number and writing copy all these things.

Like, nah, but I really like fixing stuff that breaks or like integrating new systems and like the puzzle that comes with that. Right. So definitely like very intentionally moved away and part of that. So my journey into moms and I’ll, I’ll, I’ll try to be as brief as possible, but like the idea of mops for me started with like, Uh, I was at an ad tech company that ended up buying my space and I was learning how to basically like code, like display ads for their ad server so that we could, you know, spam the world with, with retargeting.

Display ads, which gave me the confidence that like, oh, I underst like I can read HTML now. And so like, I’m going to go learn how to build a website. Uh, it wasn’t as cool as building a Backstreet boys like fan site. Um, but I definitely like went and tried to figure out like, all right, how do I build a website?

How do I build the emails from scratch? I legit remember being in my first role, which was like, this company brought me on. They were like, Hey, we just need to send a newsletter once a month. Very similar to a lot of, you know, But we also need you to be like in charge of like getting us to in front of these conferences.

So I was in this like hybrid role and that stuck with me for actually it’s. I mean, look at me now. I mean, I’m in this hybrid role today, I’m trying to put on events. Uh, but like I’ve, I very specifically remember. Taking out a piece of paper and writing down a table, like, like codes, carrots, like, so table tr TD and like visualizing, like how code structures, emails that you’d like, I’m having.

The palpitations from that, like, it’s painful to think about that. Right. And so I, I definitely did that a number of times over because I was like troubleshooting my own code and I was like, no, no, no. Like these are all the tables I have, like what’s going on. And eventually like you, you know, now we don’t have to do that as much anymore, but it is helpful.

To have gone through the experience. And so I sort of fell into it to where I was like, yeah, I’m going to like, figure out how to do these newsletters. And I, you know, I, I also remember like, uh, hacking my way through Photoshop to like, how do I create a rounded edge on a Photoshop? But like, without getting the pixelated edges, mine was a drop shadow.

I was like so excited when I figured out how to do a drop shadow. Five or something. I don’t even know what version it was at the time. Uh, isn’t that a funny, I bet you, it was a bunch of like secret Photoshop stories out there. Like I hated it. They were like these like faded, like pixelated edges. I didn’t know how to do a curved edge.

It bugged the crap out of me. So I finally figured that out one day and I was like, oh, PNG. So I fell into it. I ended up sticking with events and marketing and automation and all that stuff through the rest of my career. And it was, yeah, no, that’s totally is like my passion project. Let’s see, here we are.

We’re talking about it on a podcast. Well, I actually have a question. I wonder, you know, we all fell into it, but the next, now that it is a career and it is, you know, a channel or whatever, how do we get the next generation of people? Like people, we don’t want people to just follow into it anymore. How do we know who to look for that are, you know, the fresh college grad.

My, and it’s like a loaded question because I already have my answer. I remember the like kind of famous Google billboard, where they put. Like a E equals PI squared puzzle thing on a Google build word. And if you could solve that, it took you to a website with another puzzle that went to like their recruitment team.

And I feel like I want to do something like that, but like with a logic statement, like, you know, one or two and three and four and five for like job title and, you know, geography and, you know, persona and all that stuff. And if someone could figure that out, it kind of shows that they might have the aptitude to enjoy mops, whether it’s.

They studied marketing in college is irrelevant because it’s not really about, you know, that kind of educated curriculum. Um, but what do you guys think for like the next generation? Where are these people gonna come from? Are they going to be computer science majors that come over into mops?

I think for me, when I’m looking to hire people on my team for me, the most important thing is someone who asks questions. Um, and someone who’s really able to get down to business requirements, um, and someone who’s also really good at project managing both small and large projects and expectations. And of course, there’s always going to be a baseline of technical aptitude.

That’s going to be needed, you know, at a baseline HTML, the ability to build and send emails, landing pages, things like that. But for me more, most importantly is kind of that expectation management project management curiosity piece. Do you think there’s like a. So I, I mean, I think back it’s funny because my very first job out of college, I thought is that the place I Al I still think about had the best model for assessing people’s sort of progression through career.

And it was basically everybody there’s all these competencies that you had, there were expectations to do. So you just sort of outlined a few and then for different levels of, and this was a consulting world, so it was pretty well-defined right. Consultant, senior consultant manager. So on. If at each level, they said like, for each of these competencies, this is like to move from one level to the next, the expectation is that your competency within this particular thing would be at a certain level.

Right. And it was pretty well-defined. And so I feel like some of that is missing here and it almost, we were chatting before this. Right. I think it leads what it’s led to is a little bit of, um, You know, title inflation and, uh, you know, it’s like, it’s really difficult to describe what someone’s doing. Um, you know, roles are thrown out there that the expectation is this is going to be one person who does like the, really, if you read it, it’s like, oh, this is like actually 3, 4, 5 people’s jobs.

Right. Or. They’re going to be working nonstop. I think that’s a missing period. So that’s actually part of the problem here. Yeah. I think there’s some, I think there’s some title inflation, but I almost feel like it’s more of the opposite where I don’t know if it’s the hiring manager or HR or where the disconnected, but they’re like, oh, it’s a manager role, but you’re responsible for the entire platform, the entire life cycle.

All the campaigns, you’re supporting demand gen and you’re doing, you know, data warehouse and you’re going, you got to help the sales team with their product led growth initiatives, but we’re just going to make it reporting and insights, right? Yeah. So I feel like there’s titled deflation as well. And it’s just there to me at least is what I have felt in the market is there is a disconnect on what is realistic for one person to do.

I think people think, oh, but you, you have your tool to do that. You, your platform does that, but you still have to have a. Architecting the platform. It’s not a magic one. You don’t just hit a button and say, give me analytics.

Yay. Was that the secret code of the episode? No, I just like, I was like, you were like, I I’m reflecting back on this, like whore again, not a content writer guy. Right. So like wrote a blog post, trying to like convey the message that like marketing tools. There’s no magic, like flip of the switch thing that like.

You know, bless your heart sales folks out there that make it sound wonderful, but like, Hey, it’s not a thing. You don’t just turn it on. And it works. And like I talked about this magic switch thing and you use magic wand, but like, it was the same relatively the same language. And I tried to convey that message.

Like you need people. Do these things and like, trust me, it’s not going to work unless you have somebody to actually manage the whole thing. I agree with you. Like, I think there’s, I think there’s deflate like, like role deflation, title deflation, but we’re starting to see more of it. Right. So like, try not to be a total negative, negative, whatever.

Um, like. We’re seeing VP level roles, right. Come up. And I, and I wonder if part of the deflation bit of this whole thing has a lot to do with the fact that the market doesn’t have data to support like, oh, like we should maybe consider calling this person a director or a VP. Just purely because the data doesn’t exist.

And so like, yeah, I don’t know. You’re just a marketing manager or whatever marketing operations manager. Um, and so thankfully, you know, there’s folks out there that are earning those roles, fighting for those titles and then like creating a path for the rest of us. Uh, but to answer your question from earlier, like I, I do think that, you know, I’ve talked to with, uh, Andrea from what is now shift.

Um, and they work a lot with the Arizona collegiate system. Cause they’re based over there, at least a number of them are. Um, and they, they do, um, pull out of a lot of the, uh, kind of engineering roles, like, um, whether it’s computer science or what have you, because so many of them understand logic and, you know, simple steps.

And so I think we will see a lot of that. Um, I also appreciate some of the job postings that are out there where I’ve seen a number of these, like someone takes a Marquetto, uh, like program or, or what have you. I’m not a Marquetta user, but I think it’s called the program. And then they write in all these like job descriptions and details and steps into each one of the like little steps.

I think that’s super clever. And it’s like, if, you know, I guess if you don’t know what Marquetto is, then you don’t appreciate it as much. And so it’s sort of targeted at the audience that knows Marquetto, but, but it’s similar to your idea, right? Or any like where Google put up a budget, big billboard. And like, if you can figure that out, like your, your aptitude for this role is maybe maybe strong.

So I don’t know. Yeah. I sometimes look around the marketing department and you could have a content writer and demand gen person or a paid ad person. And, you know, maybe. They do have that aptitude for mops. So they don’t even know it, but like if you put a puzzle out there, that’s like, you know, the job title and contains or is, and if they are like, oh, I can figure that out.

Or they, again, like what Naomi said, they have the curiosity. To want to try to figure it out versus someone who might just look at it and be like, that looks crazy. That looks too hard. I’m not interested. I’m going to go work in, you know, graphic design or do AB testing or something like that because marketing is so broad.

There’s so many different pieces. So. But I think we have the best piece. I like, I personally think, I agree with that. I think we have a really strong, like, it has a tie in to so many different components of the business. I think Naomi, you touched on it earlier, right? Like strong business acumen and project management, understanding how to work across those functions.

I just think it’s such a fun, unique role. Like, yeah. Anyway, I agree. We’re all drinking our own. Kool-Aid over here.

Um, there was a go ahead, Michael. No, I was going to say like, so one of the things I, I, you know, I don’t know, I don’t think this will come out publicly until after the, the, the virtual job fair for both pros, but maybe, maybe, uh, it would have been good to share this with everybody. Who’s going to be either recruiting there or on yeah.

All this feedback. It would be, I think it would be beneficial for everyone as they’re going into this. So hopefully that the combination of this and the job fair will help. Some people figure out what, you know, where they want to go. Yeah, totally. And so like, well, you know, tomorrow is, well tomorrow, today, whenever you hear this recording December, whatever 10, 10 of this, uh, 2021 is the career fair.

It’ll actually be live for 30 days and then I’m sure I’ll find a way to move it. And it’s like amazing content that everybody recorded with us, um, into some sort of archive. There’s a lot to learn from there. Um, but yeah, like for those of you that didn’t have a chance to attend live, like it’ll be live til the first week or so of January.

So if you’re hearing this and it’s not January 10th of 20, 22, like go check it out. Um, but. Yeah, I I’m, I’m really excited and where we will look to do more of those things. I think this community and the platforms we have access to, it’s the exact thing that one of the exact things that we should be doing to educate and elevate the, the need for bigger titles, better pay more accuracy and job descriptions and so forth.

Um, even advice on whether or not you should go into consulting. Right? So lots of people are talking about that. And people are talking about how to go into management and what you need to think about. So I’m tuned in for that, but yeah, I think, you know, in general, really excited about it, Courtney, thanks for sharing your journey with us.

Like really appreciate it. Well, thanks for inviting me. I have her first OpsCast after dark. Like I hope that. Story before. So I’m curious if I need to archive that and come up with a new one or if that’ll be fresh for people, but, um, and I’m still friends with some people I met in that job. And, uh, it seems like every time we get back together, that story comes up again.

Do you remember needs in Salesforce? And it just will live with me forever, but thanks again for the invite and congratulations on 40 episodes in 5,000 downloads. Good job. Thank you. Yeah. So Courtney, since, since your honor, if people want to connect with you, what’s the best way they can do that. Uh, LinkedIn is great.

I’m on LinkedIn and Courtney MCARA. I also have a website Mustang, martech.com. Um, and there’s a, there’s a form on there and it goes right to my inbox. So you can fill that out as well. So Courtney is super cool. She actually helps support our very first summer camp event. So, you know, if you need even more reason to think of her as somebody, that’s awesome that you should go check out.

Like that’s another reason she actually supported our very first as my small little one person business, I was like, I’m have sponsorship dollars somewhere. The thought of summer camp was such a great idea. It was such a fan. I have. It’s such an amazing time. I raved, I think I came home from that with like a full heart, which I don’t know if I’ve ever came home from a conference feeling that way, but I was like all warm and fuzzy and I can’t wait for the next one.

So, oh my God. Now I have really big shoes to fill. I got still hearts. Uh, I still, I still wish I could have made one of them this last summer, so I will make it well, we’ll do another. That’d be great. Um, all right. Well, I think we’re going to call it a call it then for tonight and other a ups cast after dark.

Thanks everyone for joining, uh, Mike Naomi, thank you as always. And, uh, thank you to our listeners. Appreciate it. Uh, continue to support us. We are really excited about where this is going and continuing to make this something that’s valuable for you and your career, and, um, continue to help. So as always, we want your input, your feedback, uh, your suggestions for guests and all that kind of stuff.

So with that, thanks everyone. Bye for now, everybody.