Marperations: the Intersection of Marketing and Operations

In this episode we talked with Arjun Sen, the CEO of ZenMango and former CMO at Papa John’s about the concept of “Marperations” that he coined. We covered what that means as well as how Marketing Operations professionals need to be advocates for the customer as much as they are focused on enabling the business. 

Recorded live on June 30, 2021.

Hi, I’m Michael Hartman, 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 episode 15 of ops casts by the MO Pros. We’re glad you’re here. Joining us on this journey. I am Michael Hartman. I am joined today by one of my co-hosts Mike Rizzo. Mike say hello to everyone. So as you know, we, uh, the MO Pros community is a pretty active one. And if you haven’t already heard about summer camp coming up this summer, uh, this is 2021 for those listening after the fact, uh, we still have room for.

Folks to sign up for summer camp in Atlanta or the Atlanta area, July 14, through 16, and in the Seattle area for August four, through 6 20 21. You can get details at www dot MO Pros dot com. If you’re interested, it’ll be right there, front and center. So on with today’s episode today, we are excited to have Arjun San, the CEO of Zen mango he’s, uh, which is a branding and marketing firm.

He’s joining us to talk today about the intersection of marketing and operations. Arjun is a former fortune 500 executive at Papa John’s is a VP of marketing and operations for the worldwide chain. He led the 3000 restaurant chain to four years of record grit, record growth. He also hosts the podcast.

Secrets to win big. He is also the author of the book, customer karma, and a regular speaker at, uh, both corporate and public events. RJ, thanks so much for joining us today. Pull you a pleasure to be here. Awesome. So Arjun, you and I have talked before I was on your podcast, but we, we talked to as well, but one of the things I think was really interesting to me in, in learning about your background is that you had kind of coined a term mark, mark operations.

Did I get that right? Hopefully. And, um, I think it would be great for, for folks to sort of understand what you mean by that and how you think that applies today since you sort of coined that term, I think a several years back. Why don’t you walk us through that? Yeah. So initially at Papa John’s, I was VP of marketing and had a different point of view and where I woke up thinking the world is all about marketing.

When it worked, it was all us, but it didn’t work. I felt, you know, there’s operations guys. But then things changed once I was in charge of both marketing and operations. That’s the time I realized that no, this one team that was what was missing because the restaurant manager on day one called me Argent.

If there’s one thing marketing can do, when you roll out something new, can you tell me what not to do? So I really realized that delusion is to work together, to make the customer. The big thing, you know, in that journey, what my operations concept came with that is the intersection that matters because marketing can hit all numbers.

Operation can hit all its numbers, but we both lose. If customers do not win. Let me think for a second. You know, this is an interest in random factors. So many accidents primarily happen at intersections of streets in a relay race. Teams falter at the handoff of the back. So it’s all about the intersection.

It’s not about a great marketing. When an operations is all about, you know, marketing to me is about making the promise. Operations is about keeping the promise and the brand is defined by the promise a brand keeps. So I really feel it’s all about my operations or the intersect of marketing and operations together because.

I think we just found our clip that we’ll be pulling from this episode right there. I like well said Arjun. Thank you. Yeah, no, and I, I think you hit on a very key point that I, I, you know, I find so many marketers and I was, have been guilty of this as well. Um, who talk about. Uh, they talk about the buying cycle or the, you know, they think of all these things from an internal standpoint, rather than the customer’s viewpoint.

And, you know, I often tell people as an operations person, right? Th th you know, we’ll get requests for some things that are crazy and innovative and fun and sound great. And sometimes. Simple solutions actually that have a real direct impact on the customer’s experience can have a much bigger impact on the, both in the short term and the longterm.

So I really liked that. It’s about keeping the brand promise. Absolutely. That’s that’s interesting. So w what are the things, uh, we talk about in marketing operations in particular? So that part of operations is, you know, what are the only consistent things. Probably in a marketing operations domain is that is kind of the it for marketing, right?

The it part of it. Um, you know, if, if we made the assertion that, you know, marketing ops is both marketing and it. Um, and it’s an operations function, so there’s other components as well. Right. You know what, you know, what do you think is for Pete folks who are in marketing operations, especially as having been a marketing leader, how much do you think we should spend our time thinking as like being kind of having our general marketing hat on versus having sort of our it operations hat on, right.

What’s the right blend that you would like to see from, from folks who are in marketing operations? You know, if we, for a second, take these three words. Marketing operations and it, and put everything from a customer or guest point of view. And it doesn’t matter whether it’s a B2B or a B2B to C or a B to C everywhere.

It’s exactly the same tape marketing role is all about the promise that we talked about to get customers excited to visit the world of over promise does not work, which means operations job is to deliver on the promise and its job is a system. Operations in delivering the promise. It’s like three legs of this incredible table.

And as you mentioned, there are other legs too. So that’s the part where if all three of us do not understand the same promise we are making, it’s a disaster. Like I’ll give you a simple, real disaster example is even though you have. Over communicated to me about the location of this podcast. I kicked on some goofy link where I was sitting there.

So both of you were going to the right destination. I taught, I was at this cool place. I was sitting there. Then I check your email. And that’s the part where I just feel all three really need to work together on what is the same guest experience, because at the end, the guest experience is defined by when the guest leaves.

If they have that moment. Wow. I just can’t believe you did that. And then the marketing and the ops and the it, and everybody else high-fives and sees what their contribution to that was and what can they do to help each other. I really think that’s the spirit of this whole journey. Yeah. I would agree with that.

And I think, um, if we could add maybe a follow on question to that are done through your leadership experience, um, How do you, how do you find ways to bring a marketing operations professional and an it professional into the fold of what promise you’re trying to deliver on? So, you know, the reality is most of the time marketing operations sits in a silo, pretty distant from like the strategy at hand and there’s requests that come down to the.

We hope that, that, that behavior is changing, where folks in a marketing operations function are brought in a little earlier to better understand the business outcome and the campaign objective and the promise that is being made. I certainly don’t know how often it is involved in some of those promises.

Um, but in thinking through how do you. Bridge alignment. Did you have programs in place or did you, you know, maybe just have a meeting occasionally or was it just coming top down? I’d love to hear your thoughts on how to bridge the gap between what promise we’re trying to deliver and making sure everybody’s on the same page.

Okay. In a tweet, I will take you back to my days at Papa John’s and. You know, what I realized was good organizations have great it. Departments who work primarily to project manage a project. One, it has been started, but great organizations have the leader of it be present when we are taking off a strategic.

The year is somewhere, you know, I’m really going to go back in time in 19 97, 98, you know, people used to still order on over the phone, 45 minutes of a week time on a Saturday or Sunday. And as we started looking at, you know, other two brands speeds, our Domino’s, they did some amazing marketing solutions.

Uh, one getting, I think, got Brooks to record an on-hold tape. The other one had an operation solutions, one 800 number. When we sat together, what we wanted to get to is zero weight. And that was the time the it department talked about why can’t we move to online ordering. So as you start going through, you know, many times we have this whole.

The ARF protection that big ideas need to come first for marketing, then operations will implement an ID will be, you know, it’s like it is the assistant coach had, you know, and I feel there’s a role later for each one of us to do our work. But at the very beginning, when bigger ideas are big. Having a team of C-suite leaders.

And that’s the time there’s no functionality in that C-suite leadership team, because I find biggest success happens in organizations who see beyond both of you have started this podcast. A lot of others have contemplated, but you both saw a value that you bring to all of us that others haven’t and you act on it.

And that’s the part where I really love this question. Having this inclusive mindset where no idea is a small idea. And we push each other to see beyond as a team. And then we implement. And as we implement, we assist each other because the journey is never as it’s plan because that’s the part where including it in the bigger picture, big Skype thinking is very important, especially in today’s.

Yeah, yeah, completely agreed. It makes me, I kind of, I kind of, we had to try to find somebody, uh, you know, Arjun your, your experience in the marketing and operations world. Mark operations love that coin term. But as a, as you were saying that I started thinking about other teams that are architected this way and I’m thinking, you know, The only way to get to the moon is by having a cross-collaborative team of experts in the room, really talking about the execution of how to get there.

And I’m wondering if like what other frameworks we could lean on and who we could talk to about this, but your, your experience of Papa John’s sounds spot on Arjun, being able to go online, uh, and, and get down to like a zero wait time to process your order. That’s what a, what a fantastic mission. And I’m sure you guys had a lot of fun.

Yeah. And you know, if I add one more thing, I love what you’re talking about because there’s no person in a team is less important. Let’s think if this is the holiday, as you are with your family. So, you know, putting this puzzle piece together, you think there’s any piece of the puzzle, which is not important because if there’s one tiny piece missing at the end, your family will be looking for it everywhere under the couch, every possible.

Because the piece is never complete without every person. And that’s the reason I really think we are all in the customer team, the customer win team, that’s the only flag and seeing how each other connect to that common goal is very important because that’s that one goal. Each one of us seeing a path and each one of us being supportive of each other in that win is very important.

Yeah, this, you know, it’s what you, you bring up a couple of like, there’s so many things going in my head, what you, what you just talked about, but one of them is, yeah. I worked with somebody who was a, another leader who said, you know, I don’t think I have a monopoly on great ideas. And I think that’s what you’re talking about.

So it takes confidence to be able to not only. Do something that’s great, but it takes even more confidence in some humility to recognize that someone else might be able to the one who comes up with the great, the better idea and being willing to sort of work through that with, with another team and I, and your point about, because I think for the folks who have more of an it bet in marketing ops, or have had it experience, right, they’re going to hear that story and go.

Yeah. I wish that there were more stories like that that showed how we were a strategic partner with the rest of the business to enable like a really big mission point. Right. I think that’s, that’s a really important piece to this. I add something to that, you know, to make it real, it’s tough for operations or.

And I’m just being really blunt. The way corporate world works is very tough for these guys to bulldoze their way into this big sky thinking, which means whoever owns the ideation, innovation has to open the doors. And when I work with clients, when they do, and both of you have seen this is this very cool brand architecture brand vision.

Having that within marketing is useless. If I created that as head of marketing and I come to you head of operations by saying, Hey, this is what our brand promise is. Let me get you excited about it. What does it mean for you? How will you live this everyday? What can I do to help? Then I go to it by saying, this is what the brand promise is because I really feel sharing your excitement, make it better, but getting each person’s buy-in into that journey is so important.

You know, I love that concept as you’re talking about every department, but each of us need to open the door for others to come in. Yeah, that’s critical. Yeah. I was just going to say, just being open to, to feedback and having the opportunity to collaborate with others is so critical. Like. I haven’t encountered many teams in my career that, that don’t want to collaborate, but, um, I’ve definitely encountered individuals.

Right. And that makes it really hard to push the business forward. So, oh, I’ve definitely run into, um, um, and it’s, it’s, it’s no fun, right? When, when ideas just get shut down for. For no, no great reason. You know, I think one of the things, um, I there’s, there’s this book I got years ago at a group marketing main global marketing meeting that was called how to be a marketing superstar.

And it’s, uh, uh, I, I’m a big fan of it as kind of a who moved my cheese style book, write very pithy short chapters. And there’s this one chapter that I have for those who know me, who are listening, will remember this. I have for years now. Uh, near, near, or in my office, a copy of two facing pages, one chapter, and it basically says, this is customer money.

Right. And it’s, uh, essentially it says everybody’s paycheck should say, this is customer money. And it really, for me, it changed the lens of how I thought about things. I’ve always, it’s one of those things where it’s, it’s just this little, like, you know, P under the mattress thing, right. For me where the idea that their internal customers is one that I appreciate the intent, but.

The real customer is the one who’s going to write us a check, you know, pay online, whatever it is, right. They’re the ones who are making our jobs possible. Right. The the F the more we forget about that in the process as part. So I think that to me, that ties into the brand promise too. Right. Um, and do you see, so RJ, let me, that was the other part I wanted to get into is you kind of brought in the example of just getting onto this podcast today.

Right. We had some challenges there, but, um, so clearly handling. Uh, situations where the brand promises maybe not met. Right. Is it going to be a key to how to you, to either enhance or. You know, reduce the value of the brand promise, but we’re like, do you have some examples on the flip side where you’ve seen PE companies handle it really well?

Like who would you stand up as they handle both the brand, like defining the brand, the brand promise and then executing and supporting it in the way they actually operate from a today’s day-to-day standpoint. So to me, I think it’s a question of not which rent every brand when they do it. Right. It’s amazing.

It’s a question of what percentage of. Can you do that? Because consistency defines trust. If today we were instead meeting face-to-face, I would know Craig find out what each one of you like and take you to a restaurant, but I am nearly sure that we will have this most amazing experience. And we being human beings, there are times things do not work.

Right. And what do you do at that point? Earlier this week, I’ve just moved to Houston. I got this piece of mail from USBs, and usually when I get a mail from USBs, I’d never, ever opened. Okay. But this one came in a window envelope and inside is some direct mail piece from some brand, which was partially torn.

And what USP did was it didn’t even have my zip code. They, somebody manually found myself. We’ll get there. Hadn’t ruled it. And they delivered it to me. And I started doing the mat on a given day USBs. You know, we don’t always look at USBs to be a cool brand. You know, we just take them for granted. They delivered 200 million mails, the process with 200 million males, mistakes can happen, but when they have put a processing and the very fact, they put it in this.

Envelope that was brilliant of marketing because otherwise I wouldn’t have even seen the tongue piece inside. And when I caught it, I really did this invisible high five with USBs by saying, dude, do that. You actually deliver the care you went through. And I really think that is what is very important is to understand together as we are building the brand promise, what can we do to be consistent every.

What can we do when things don’t work to do it right the brand way, because those all become very important in the journey as you start taking forward. I’ll give you another example, you know, of course, by now, you know, my favorite industry is, you know, a little bias towards food as we were working with Domino’s pizza and we felt, you know, it’s happening everywhere else.

It’s happening with Amazon when you place an order, you know where it is it’s happening with any delivery service you can track. Like right now with Amazon, David tell you it’s 10 stops away each stop. So it it’s, it’s not that I need to know, but if I want to know, I can find out. So what we realized in that process was that we can create.

A pizza tracker where a mom, the three kids orders, the pizza is the pizza is 48 minutes away, which means mom has 46 minutes to do what she wants. Listen to music, be on the treadmill. No answer the question. When’s the food going to be? Is it here yet? And fucking had managed this 40 advantage that the food comes in 15 minutes.

It doesn’t work. So now this Domino’s pizza tracker was an amazing. Of marketing operations it to every person working together. And this wouldn’t work without it. If the pizza tracker did not have your actual time, if it has an average time, it doesn’t work. So the trust for the pizza tracker to work for operations, to deliver for marketing, to promote it, like the coolest thing.

Was hindering on operations, getting the importance of this and building it. And this was bigger than just the pizza tracker, because it helped Domino’s build a trust back and think at the end of the day, the MVP for the win, the trophy should have gone to the ITT. And it can make a brand. And I love that example because you’ve been part of the Domino’s pizza tracker for the idea, but ideas are useless.

Do you have this incredible team delivering it flawlessly because that’s what makes it successful. That’s where the customer win happens. One of the things I like about your us postal service, uh, example, there is actually that it’s not a technology, right? There’s virtually no amount of technology that would have solved that mistake.

And made it. Right. Right. And I think, I think that’s another mistake that a lot of organizations make when it comes to mark in particular marketing technology. Right. Cause there’s so many vendors and players out there and it’s easy to get caught up in, like technology is going to solve our problem. And I’m a big believer that, you know, sometimes it just takes people in effort and process and it’s not really, technology is not going to make it better.

In fact, it can make it worse or make a bad situation. Just happened faster. Right. So I liked that. And I think the corollary there let’s, let’s switch gears a little bit. So you are a former COO barking leader. You’re working with a lot of, you know, companies now in different spaces. You know, if, if you were, you know, uh, you know, you were to join a company now and head up marketing and, and you had sort of a blank slate, you know how one of the questions I think our, our audience would really like to understand is how would you think about.

The prioritization of different functions that you would bring in in particular, like when do you think you would bring in marketing operations or marketing technology folks onto the team, you know, as opposed to say a field marketing or demand gen or content, uh, you know, the, the traditional disciplines, I think there’s day minus one.

And I’ll give you an example of guns. The one of the first forces I hired and the market Dean was Christina. Uh, super cool restaurant manager. She had this one girl, her job was to literally sniff out BS as we were building this promises to our customers, because what we felt from day one, having Christy in the team made us more effective and efficient because otherwise we would have taken an idea for two to three months and then taken it to a restaurant and it wouldn’t have.

So that kept us really humbled because what Christy did for us from day one was one sniff out any BS. Secondly, she started in the process sharing with us. What were common challenges? I give you a very simple example of what Christine did, which we would have never, ever seen. Or solve the Docker. We created this customer satisfaction report.

We even call it a C connecting it to, you know, the three core values, attitudes, and constant improvement for the company and ask the customer, you know, it’s a clever, you know, we were very clever and you’d have every possible code. Like if a number is low it’s red, green is good. Every possible thing.

Christy looked at it. She said, wow, you guys are. Then she said, but do you realize that we have only a few minutes to look at it because operations never stops. I’m like, okay. So, so she literally says, if you show, you know, just actually used our hand sloping up and said, if you show a number is stopping up, that means.

If it’s still being down in this bag, so that’s all we need. Then she says, do I even need the report? I said, what do you mean reports are so important? She said, no, can you not? I trust you. I didn’t, can you not give me the one thing to celebrate? And the three things I need to work on? I’m like, well, we don’t do a Nita report.

She comes about five minutes later. She said I was doing the first super brilliant for the three things we need to work on. Can you connect it to. The right training module, which pops up. So automatically we go into that now, you know, each one of us have our cool moments. Okay. I am very proud of what we have accomplished as a team, but I have to be honest with you that these incredible.

Brilliant insights as we were starting our journey. It wouldn’t have gone without that operations person. And as I talked earlier about Papa John’s on land, that wouldn’t have happened without it being part of it from day one. So I really feel that, you know, for each one of our departments to win, to getting that check the minus one D one as early in the process.

Really makes us not work on things that have no chance of working and makes us really successful.

So you’re saying don’t build a field of dreams and hope they’ll come, right? You want to make sure they’re going to come before you build the field of dreams. And I believe being blue collar is very important. Like, not that I’m the marketing guy. I love having this brilliant idea. Okay. But that’s an ego, but the bigger thing is when you together build something, which has the highest chance of putting a smile on a customer’s face and everybody’s fingerprints are there on that that feels better bigger.

Long-term let Christian myself, when we meet after nearly 20. I still cannot stop praising her how brilliant she was. Of course she, our husband, now, her kids are grown up. They all say, Arjan you are her biggest fan. And I said, of course I am because Christie, you made me successful without you. We wouldn’t have reached those levels.

You know what I love again? I mean, to go back to your right, I love that this, that, you know, the feedback you got from Christie was helps you focus on what was simple, what was practical, what was going to actually. Yeah, stick with, uh, the folks who are getting this. And instead of doing some new, new, really fancy, innovative thing, it said, let’s leverage what we already have, right?

Like the connections to existing training and how do we make it simple for people to use it. And I think, you know, very often that is not what happens. So let, let me, I want to dig into this a little bit. So Christie had clearly right. Was, uh, uh, Terrific person to have on your team because she provided the kind of feedback you really needed.

So for the folks listening who are in marketing ops folks, you know what, you know, what advice. Would you give them to be more like Christie, right. To be that, um, sorta counselor consultant back to the marketing leaders that they report to, uh, or, you know, revenue leaders that they report to in their organizations.

So I think not everybody everyday is lucky to find a Christie. Okay. Let’s be totally honest. Christie is a very rare team member that I was very fortunate to find her, which means. I would request you to do a few things. One where the hack of other departments, at least once a week, once a week start seeing the Lord from operations point of view from it, point of view, just start looking at is what can I do at what point of time, if I was running operations, I could make things right.

You know, the thing that I talked about is the general manager of Kathy grantees. So you had talked about his origin. Can you tell me what not to do before you get to the new idea? Knowing that early would have really helped me be a better support, like, and the second I think is the most fun job. Any person in any business should have is be a customer.

At least once a week, like if you’re not doing either one of these things every week, it’s very easy to get caught into your own way of thinking like the being the customer is very important because the customer is a human being and Zen mango. The whole thing for us is based on we are in the feeling business, humans have feelings and to get the feeling, once you’re a customer, you will see.

That there are four steps, be human tink, human, feel, human and act human. I have seen brands act as if the individuals at the senior management are customers. They are not too hypey, even in my demographics. Amen. And that’s the Parkway having that humility where cap, which reminds you, I’m no longer on.

Read the profile of who your target is. Walk in with that mindset walking as the soccer dad who just has 14 minutes after soccer match with the three monkeys to feed them and put them back in the car without losing any kids. We like that. Mom who has to run between two zoom meetings to pick up. Once you put them in that situation and you see the world, all of a sudden you start having simple ahas and that whole thing about see and see what others have not seen and seeing from the customers out with totally change the world.

Yeah. I couldn’t agree more. It’s kind of the same thing, right. That, you know, put your shoes in the customer like that mindset. The customers are the ones who are funding your job. And I think that’s really important. Um, and I like your idea like that. It’s just putting the shoes does not work. You have to put the shoes and walk a walk a little.

And that’s one of the things that I’ve learned from my wife is, you know, when she would first tell me I wouldn’t listen to her. I’m the guy who, when he buy, when I buy a shoe, I would just put the shoes on Alex fits and also it looks kind of cool on me. You know, the shoe found out, do not get found the shoe in a branding guy.

She would keep saying, no, I’ll walk a little please. And when I walk a little bit in the store, it feels totally different. So that concept, you talked about, put the shoes on, but walk, walk the steps of the customer. Please, please, please. Best ROI ever get. Yeah, but, you know, uh, I think I like that too. And I think that’s brilliant.

Sorry. I just, I, it reminds me a little bit of. Uh, I’m going to blank on the name of the book right now, which is horrible, but in the, in the jobs to be done framework where there that the book that kind of introduces this concept of, uh, how to understand what your product’s job is and who it’s competing with and what it’s trying to solve.

Um, I think one of the very first examples they provide in the book is essentially following the same line of thinking where it’s like walk in the shoes, just a little bit of, of what you’re trying to solve for. And, and the example to make a, a longer explanation much shorter as is that the goal of the customer was to feel satiated in there.

Um, you know, speaking of food, Arjun, uh, to feel satiated and felt full on their drive to work. And so when McDonald’s in this case, you know, if that’s the organization that we’re talking about was trying to figure out how to make a product that could compete with the bagel or the breakfast or a donut or a cup of coffee, they were trying to understand what, what they could do to improve.

The product. And what they learned was that their customer was on a long drive, sometimes 45 minutes to an hour and a half to work. And they wanted something that satisfied them that gave them pleasure. That would leave them feeling full. By the time they actually got to work. And the thing that solved for that the most was by changing the ingredients and the makeup of the cup that they delivered in and the actual product inside the cup, which ended up being the milkshake.

And what they realized is that the job to be done was to create a product that could withstand the drive and give somebody pleasure at the end of their. Along the journey as well. And the only way that they could do that was by trying to understand, and like literally walk or in this case, drive the shoes of their customer, uh, to create a better product experience.

Right. So. What both of you are doing it, both of you were just having a conversation with me. It will be a totally different conversation that it would have been about us, you know, totally different. You both know who your audience is, and you are creating this podcast discussion. Not for you, not for, you might not for you, Michael, but for every individual, like you have decided and define that if each person gets one nugget from this current.

Your journey is very successful. And when you’re talking about restaurants, I was working for a drive in restaurant in this. I would have never found if I didn’t act as a customer, I parked the car. And what I realized was you’re not driving. If you want to throw the trash, there’s no place to throw the trash.

You have to keep the trash with you in a car on. Probably in one, secondly, you know, drive in, after I parked, I wanted to take a quick snooze, a little nap planned my rest of my day before I’m back. And they’ve blared this bad music through broken outdoor speakers. The worst thing you can do, like I realized if you, one of you were taking a nap at my couch, in my living room, I will not Blair bad music to broken speakers at you.

So that whole concept of being a customer is so important because once you live there, you find the goofiest of things that come up. I love that example, best intentions gone bad. Right? So it’s just one little thing. One other corollary to the like walking in the customer’s shoes. I love that. Um, I think I do think this is a case where internal.

Uh, walking in other people’s shoes ma matters too. So, uh, for me, I always feel like my view on marketing and the particular marketing operations is, uh, informed by having been in sales for a while. Right. So I think there’s that the other is I worked for an organization that actually. Like not only encouraged, but actually required, uh, occasional.

Um, he basically spent a day with somebody in another organization, uh, another part of the organization. So you could understand what it was like, like what a day in the life of was like. And, uh, both having had people sit with me and kind of observing and going and doing that was really, really valuable.

Um, so anyway, uh, So I think that’s, that’s a great one. So let’s, let’s you, you mentioned, um, clearly like the majority, at least on the surface, it seems like the majority of your experience Arjun is in B2C and in particular industries, but I’m sure you’ve worked with some B2B, somebody to see it. I’m kind of with you that, you know, at the end of the day, we’re all selling and marketing to individual people, whether they are representing themselves or an organization, but, uh, So, do you, do you, are you seeing any difference in terms of the impact that marketing operations can have on an organization, if it’s B to C versus B2B, um, or B2B to see if you want to throw that in there as well?

Yeah, I think it all depends on how frequently you see the, see the guests. If you see the guests often, it’s easy for you to relate to them. On the other side, if we don’t see the guest often, it’s easy to take for granted in a B2B. Sometimes we can forget there’s a C at the end. And when we were talking about all the customer, putting your shoes, you know, customer shoes for us, it works in every business.

I was speaking at an elderly care less as I chose to be a patient to live there. A resident. And I would ask either one of you to ever try this out. Okay. What you’ll see is they don’t crust origin to not to have accidents in the bed, which means the mattress has double or triple layer of plastic. So as I’m laying down to take my first nap on this place, I turn left, I hear myself going left.

I turned right. It’s a different sound like how the heck am I supposed to speak? Like I came back and this is what I did in my. My wife and myself, we slept in our guest bedroom that first night we have never slept in the guest bedroom ever. And we realized this bed is so uncomfortable. Like, so even though there are infrequent guests who come to our house, they never tell us.

So here’s something I request everyone to do. If you have a guest bedroom sleep in that guest bedroom one night, and that will change your mindset, like do something different, take a different perspective. That is very important in any industry, whether it’s B to B, to C, it starts with not the C. It starts with your eyes, your perspective, you wanting to see differently.

You will start seeing things through. That’s great. I think the biggest thing I’m taking away from our conversation today is how we as marketing ops marketing operations professionals, we need to be advocates for our customers, right? So when we get requests from marketing or sales or other parts of organization, we need to be championing the, the customer’s experience as much as we are, you know, the goals of, of the company.

Right. And there’s a balance there. I get it. Uh, this has been really interesting. Arjan um, thank you so much for your insights today. Um, if, if folks here are listening, want to learn more about you and mango, where can they find you? And is there anything that you’ve got coming up that they could see you at?

To me, you can come to Zen mango.com, then Z E N mango like the fruit.com. And if you get a chance go also to secrets to win big.com. That’s where my podcast is. And that’s the place where I have the coolest seat in the house talking to incredible VIP guests like Michael Hartman and others. I’m blushing.

Uh, so thanks again, Arjun. Thanks. It was, it was really interesting, um, for us to get this, uh, thanks also, Mike, for you joining us, we, I know we missed Naomi, but uh, thank you for being part of this. Thank you for everyone. Who’s listening to this, uh, you and an incredibly important part of the journey here.

If you do, uh, have suggestions for either topics or guests, or do you want to be a guest, feel free to reach out to Mike Rizzo or me and Michael Hartman, you can always keep track of what’s going on at the MO Pros dot com. And if you want to know about the obstacle, you know, subscribe to this podcast, you can always do that at dot com or through your favorite podcast app.

And always has always, uh, help us to share the word, share about this and subscribe, rate, and review where you can thanks to everyone until next time. Thanks everybody. Thank you Arjun much appreciated. Thank you.