So Long, Farewell – The End of an Era

After nearly 250 episodes and more than five years of conversations, Ops Cast is signing off, at least in its current form.

In this final episode, Michael Hartmann is joined by longtime co-hosts Mike Rizzo and Naomi Liu to look back at how Ops Cast began, how the Marketing Operations profession changed alongside it, and what they learned from hundreds of guests who shared their experiences, ideas, challenges, and careers with the community.

Rather than focusing on technology, analytics, or another Marketing Ops framework, this conversation reflects on the people behind the profession. The hosts revisit episodes that tackled leadership, career development, mental health, parenthood, workplace pressures, and the personal realities that inevitably become part of professional life.

In this episode, we discuss:

•  How Ops Cast grew from an experiment in 2021 to nearly 250 episodes
•  The conversations and guests that stayed with Michael, Mike, and Naomi
•  Why understanding human psychology remains an important Marketing Ops skill
•  Giving first-time podcast guests a platform to share their experiences and build confidence
•  Some of the more personal conversations around parenthood, mental health, career challenges, and life outside work
•  How remote work changed the separation between professional and personal life
•  The growth of Marketing Ops, RevOps, and the wider operations community during the life of the podcast
•  How the Marketing Ops podcast space expanded over the past five years
•  What the hosts learned from CMOs and other executives about how they view Marketing Operations

The episode is also a reminder of what made Ops Cast work in the first place: there was never one prescribed path into Marketing Operations or one correct way to approach the work. Across hundreds of conversations, guests brought different backgrounds and opinions while repeatedly returning to the importance of curiosity, authenticity, human connection, and learning from one another.

While this marks the end of Ops Cast in its current form, the conversations, relationships, and community built around it continue. Thank you to every guest who shared their story, every person who helped produce the show, and everyone who listened over the years.