50 episodes of Operations! We have officially hit the half-century mark for our show, and that would not have been possible without the brilliant Operators who have been so generous with their time and their lessons on this show.After 50 episodes, we thought it was only fitting to look back at the top 5 lessons we’ve taken away from our guests. So whether you’ve been with us from the beginning or you’re just checking out Operations for the first time, these lessons are enduring and impactful.Our 5 lessons come from the following guests:Brett Queener, Partner at Bonfire Ventures (Episode 3)Sylvia Kainz, Director of Global Productivity Partnerships at Airbnb (Episode 9)Melanie Fellay, CEO and Co-founder at Spekit (Episode 26)Rachel Haley, CEO and Co-Founder at Clarus Designs (Episode 39)Karen Borchert, COO at ROKA (Episode 19)Like this episode? Be sure to leave a ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ review and share the pod with your friends! You can connect with Sean on Twitter @Seany_Biz @DriftPodcasts

When we first started this show, there was one podcast out there about Operations that people told us we should check out. That podcast is called “Second in Command." The host of that podcast and our guest today is Cameron Herold. In addition to his podcast duties, Cameron is the founder of the COO Alliance, the former COO of 1-800-GOT-JUNK, a keynote speaker, author, and one of the foremost thinkers and leaders on the work of COOs and their relationship with CEOs. In our conversation, Cameron and I talk about the 8 core areas that a COO should be measured on, how Operations teams can execute a company’s Vivid Vision, and why his team’s stand-up meetings were religiously scheduled from 10:55am to 11:02am. Like this episode? Be sure to leave a ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ review and share the pod with your friends! You can connect with Sean and Cameron on Twitter @Seany_Biz @CameronHerold @DriftPodcasts

When a new leader joins your organization, there is often an exercise to review and revisit all of the key metrics and indicators of the business. This can be a difficult exercise if you’re used to the way things are or you were the one who picked out the original metrics in the first place. On this episode, we talk to a leader who is in the midst of that exact exercise. Our guest today is Allison Metcalfe, the new Chief Revenue Officer at Demandbase. Allison’s approach as an incoming CRO has to do with all of the different world clocks you might see on the walls of a bank. In our conversation, Allison and I talk about a specific method she used to quickly understand Demandbase’s business, prioritize where she wanted to focus, and how she managed to get a $100M business aligned around the same leading and lagging indicators. Like this episode? Be sure to leave a ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ review and share the pod with your friends! You can connect with Sean and Allison on Twitter @Seany_Biz @AllisonMetcalfe @HYPERGROWTH_pod

We have spent most episodes of this show looking at the work of Operators. Where we haven’t spent enough time is on the career development of the Operators themselves. Today, we’re going to change that by looking at a specific role that could be a future landing place for those in Ops today: the GM. Our guest is Ryan Toben, the SVP and GM of EMEA for Gainsight, and also someone who started his career in Ops. Ryan leveraged his Ops experience to make the jump to sales leadership and ultimately become a GM at one of the most notable hypergrowth companies today. In our conversation, we talk about what exactly a GM does, how Ryan still leans on his Ops experience in his work today, and why it’s so hard to shake the imposter syndrome of having never carried a bag in sales. Like this episode? Be sure to leave a ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ review and share the pod with your friends! You can connect with Sean on Twitter @Seany_Biz @HYPERGROWTH_pod

In this special crossover episode, Sean is joined by Maggie Crowley (host of Build) and Matt Bilotti (host of Growth) to take you behind the scenes of Drift’s podcast program. You’ll learn how the hosts prepare for new episodes, the biggest lessons they’ve learned after recording 50+ episodes each, the best piece of advice they’ve received from their guests, and what listeners can expect in 2021. Want to learn Operations’ origin story? Listen to the full episode to hear Sean’s initial pitch for the show and what made him switch gears. Like this episode? Be sure to leave a ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ review and share the pod with your friends! You can connect with Sean on Twitter @Seany_Biz @HYPERGROWTH_pod — Want to hear more from Maggie and Matt? Subscribe to Build With Maggie Crowley here: https://buildpodcast.drift.com/ Subscribe to Growth With Matt Bilotti here: https://growthpodcast.drift.com/

The best teachers and leaders share their hard-earned lessons so that those who come after them don’t make the same mistakes or experience the same pain that they did. The rest of us just need to listen and pick the right people to learn from, and this episode is one such opportunity. Our teacher on this episode is Jamie Sloan, the Senior Director of Marketing Operations and Digital Marketing at InVision, the digital product design platform. In our conversation, we go deep in the trenches alongside Jamie and her team to explore one of the most critical, foundational changes a Marketing Ops team can make: migrating to a different marketing automation platform. We learn what it takes to move a database of 8 million people, the true slog and attention to detail required for these migrations, and how Marie Kondo’s philosophy of only keeping the things that spark joy in your life can possibly apply to campaign clean-up. Like this episode? Be sure to leave a ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ review and share the pod with your friends! You can connect with Sean on Twitter @Seany_Biz @HYPERGROWTH_pod

Hypergrowth companies are constantly reinventing themselves. At Drift, we often say, "what got us here isn’t going to be the thing that gets us to the next stage.” On this episode, we’re exploring one of those significant moments of transition: how companies move up-market and start to sell into larger, enterprise companies. Our guide through that transition is Anil Kumar. Anil is the VP of Go-to-Market Strategy & Operations at Carta, and prior to joining Carta, he successfully helped three other companies, Sift, Atlassian, and Quantcast, move up-market. In our conversation, we talk about the focus required to move upmarket, why the Enterprise sellers you’ll need in your organization should be Pioneers, not Settlers, and how your Post-Sale model likely needs to completely change to service these enterprise customers. Like this episode? Be sure to leave a ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ review and share the pod with your friends! You can connect with Sean on Twitter @Seany_Biz @HYPERGROWTH_pod

Every single Customer Success team says that they want to become less reactive and more proactive. But few CS leaders will admit that it's a long journey to get there. Our guest on this episode, Emmanuelle Skala, takes us inside that journey. Emmanuelle is the Senior Vice President of Customer Success at Toast, the restaurant technology juggernaut trusted by tens of thousands of restaurants for their POS system, online ordering, payroll and more. In our conversation, we talk about the tricky balance of organizational efficiency and customer experience, how Toast creates hospitable moments for their customers through data, and Emmanuelle's unique career trajectory from Operations to Sales to CS. Like this episode? Be sure to leave a ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ review and share the pod with your friends! You can connect with Sean and Emmanuelle on Twitter @Seany_Biz @elleskala @HYPERGROWTH_pod

Managing tech stacks inside of hypergrowth companies can often feel like a precarious game of Jenga, hoping you can pull out the next block carefully enough so that the whole tower doesn’t come tumbling down on top of you. On today’s episode, we’re talking to someone who has mastered the Operator’s game of tech stack Jenga: Brad Smith. Brad is the co-founder and CEO of Sonar, a tool that enables teams to manage your tech stacks from a single source of truth. In our conversation, we talk about avoiding tech stack bloat, what Operations Teams can learn from Product teams about managing change, and we get to learn about the time Brad accidentally wiped out $18M in revenue from his previous company’s Salesforce. Like this episode? Be sure to leave a ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ review and share the pod with your friends! You can connect with Sean on Twitter @Seany_Biz @HYPERGROWTH_pod

Operators are often referred to as unsung heroes. But there's a group of unsung heroes within the unsung heroes: the Data Team. For companies in hypergrowth, the volume of data requests and the variety of data sources to access can be daunting. So we've turned to Drift's own Data team for help in navigating the world of big data. Together, Arun Venkateswaran, Senior Data Engineer, and Kyle Thelemann, Senior Manager of Business Intelligence, form the two-lane highway of Drift’s data team. In our conversation, we talk about how they’ve thoughtfully crafted their partnership, learn about the 4 V’s of Big Data, and talk through a real-life example of how they translated a tough business problem from something very technical to something simple and digestible. Like this episode? Be sure to leave a ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ review and share the pod with your friends! You can connect with Sean on Twitter @Seany_Biz @HYPERGROWTH_pod