Humans of Martech

What’s up everyone – today on the show we’re joined by exceptional martech mastermind: Dave Rigotti. He’s the co-founder & CEO of Inflection.io, a marketing technology startup focused on helping companies with product-led growth.Before building his own company, Dave has had a fascinating career in marketing. He got his start at Microsoft working on the Bing marketing team just as the search engine was launched. He quickly discovered his love for growth and B2B marketing.Hen then spent half a decade at Bizible, a marketing attribution platform where he worked his way up to VP of Marketing – and was part of the successful exit to MarketoHe spent a year at Marketo running ABM and demand gen before they were famously acquired by AdobeAt Adobe, Dave was Director of Account Based Marketing focused on Marketo and Magento productsLast year, while working on Inflection, he also launched the ProductLed.Marketing community which has more than 700 members and is continuing to grow.Dave, we’re excited to have you on the show – thanks for taking the time. Questions we asked Dave:What is Product-Led Marketing or Product-Led Growth?What’s the substance of PLG? What’s the difference between PLG and customer led growth?How is PLG different from all the buzzwords that hit marketing over the years?People in tech love to find new ways of avoiding calling marketing marketing. Growth hacking, conversational marketing, community led growth and now product led growth… What do you say to all the folks who claim this is just another buzzword that will fade?How is PLG different from freemium and why does this instigate such brutal Twitter wars?Traditional: generate leads and serve sales.PLG: using your product as part of your GTM. More customer centric.Jon isn’t active on social but I’ve witnessed my fair share of PLG debates on twitter.What do you say to folks who claim PLG has been around for decades (appcues, mailchimp) and that it’s simply a repackaging of freemium and free trial models… that its the old marketing playbook for the SMB segment?  Where does a PLG model make sense? Can this be done with enterprise software that requires integration and onboarding support?How do you shift to a PLG strategy when you’re selling a B2B to enterprise and you require 1-2 weeks of integration and setup before end users can get a glimpse of the product in action.Do you think some B2B buyers prefer the sales led model? Sometimes I don’t always have 14-30 days to pork around in a product and figure out on my own if this will meet my company needs… sometimes I need someone to show me around and tell me how itll solve my problemsWe can skip the MQL vs PQL debate, but how do you define a PQL when your product is constantly changing?Product usage data is the holy grail of data for PLG marketers. How do you see teams forming their marketing strategy around product usage, activation, and engagement?How is PLG a whole new game?You wrote an awesome piece for OpenView Partners that PLG is a whole new game for marketers. Can you walk us through what this new game looks like? What do you say when you hear the phrase PLG is just a product that sells itself? What are marketers in PLG companies doing differently to accelerate growth and revenue? How will PLG influence marketing technology over the next 10 years? What are your big predictions? Shifting gears, Dave, you've worked at some of the most recognizable marketing technology companies on the planet. Not only have you held senior roles in those companies, but you’ve been on the inside of two major acquisitions. Give us a sense of your career story and how you ended up as a co-founder and CEO in this space?What differences do you see working at enterprises versus running a startup? What lessons do you apply to your own startup, and what things do you try to do differently?Dave, you’re a super busy guy. You’re a dad, a husband, a startup founder, and community leader – one question we ask all our guests is how do you remain happy and successful in your career? How do you find balance between all the things you’re working on while staying happy?--Dave RigottiTwitter - LinkedInProduct-led marketing communityInflection.io✌️--Intro music by Wowa via UnminusCover art created by SLB

What’s up folks, today on the show we are joined by Adriana Gil Miner.Born and raised in Venezuela, she’s a 20+ year marketing exec who got her start as a data analyst and went on to work at American Express. She then worked with some of the top brands in the world after moving into PR and digital strategy at Weber Shandwick, an A-list agency according to Ad-ageAdriana then ended up going through a wild growth ride leading Brand marketing at Tableau– a well known analytics platform. Today, she’s CMO at Iterable, one of the top customer-led marketing automation platforms on the planet.Adriana, it’s a pleasure to be chatting today, thanks so much for your time.In-house marketing vs agencyYou’ve had a fascinating career bouncing from agency to in-house roles. Agency for 2 yearsIn-house for 5 years at AmexFreelance for 2 yearsBack to agency for 5 years at two different firmsBut along the way you got the in-house itch again and joined Tableau where you ran Brand marketing for 6.5 years. And you’ve been in-house ever since, getting the CMO gig at Qumulo and now Iterable. Talk to us about what you loved and hated most about in-house vs agency and why you ultimately settled on in-house.Follow-up: At what point in your journey did you decide you wanted to be a CMO? Was there ever a point where you considered staying IC and focusing on data vs leadership and people management?How ‘hands-on’ do marketing leaders need to be in the product they sell?Jon and I are no strangers to the world of BI having both spent parts of our career at an SMB focused dashboard tool in Klipfolio. As the SVP of Brand Marketing at Tableau, how close were you to the product and how skilled would you say you had to be in data analysis? CMO of 2030 -- what should they be working on today? Storytelling, data and technologyYou’ve said in several places that you love bringing together the art of storytelling, technology, and marketing. Talk about some of your most memorable breakthrough campaigns that exemplify this idea bridging story, tech and marketing. The power of storytellingLet’s dive a bit deeper into that. Storytelling is one of the most powerful ways for humans to learn. The best content and brand marketers know this and use it to persuade the rational and the emotional brain. How can marketers get better at storytelling? How can we make stories more relatable – practically, how can stories be more real, vulnerable when you’re selling a B2B tech product?Spotting up and coming marketing superstarsYou’ve written about having a lot of pride in discovering and nurturing up-and-coming marketer rockstars. Walk us through your approach for discovering some of these future rockstars and what are some of the early signs and qualities you look for.Customer advocacy and community marketingSomething that was a big part of your time at Tableau was prioritizing community marketing. Walk us through some of the benefits that this can have on brand growth and customer advocacy opportunities. The relationship between how we use marketing technology and community? Why is community such an integral part of successful B2B products? Branding gets a bad rep“I don’t believe in brand marketing. If you build a good product and people love it, they will share it.” I’ve heard too many technical CEOs say this. What do you say to a business leader that doesn’t believe in brand marketing and how would you respond to that if – as CMO – your CEO walked in a room and told you that? Follow-up do you think there’s anything marketers can do to change a founders mind if they don’t believe in branding? Do you think founders and CEOs need to create the brand so that marketers can drive the brand?Branding vs positioning vs GMT vs demand genMarketers get a bad rep for all the buzzwords we throw around but don’t all agree on what we mean when we say them:BrandingPositioningGo to marketDemand generationFor professionals who are supposed to be good at communication, we don’t do a good job at making ourselves understood. Walk us through your definitions and how we might better align with how we use them?Future of marketingThere was a viral tweet on the future of marketing last week that I thought was interesting and would love your take on. This is from George Mack, “Don't try to create great content. Instead, try to create Red Pills (dramatically transformed perspectives) that groups are thinking about but nobody is talking about.” How can marketers create more Red Pills? Being in the marketing automation space for a bit now, what do you think are some of these perspectives that need to be transformed?LatinX women in techYou’ve written bravely and powerfully about your experience as a Latina immigrant and shared your thoughts on the Caucasian male narrative that dominates much of the world. Talk about your change in mindset when it comes to the importance and power of checking that box despite not always feeling like you fit the stereotype people often have.Time management /staying happyOne question we ask all our guests is how do you remain happy and successful in your career? How do you find balance between all the things you’re working on while staying happy? --Adriana's Twitter: https://twitter.com/agilminer Adriana’s LI: https://www.linkedin.com/in/agilminer/ ✌️--Intro music by Wowa via UnminusCover art created by SLB

What’s up everyone, on the show today we have one of the planet’s leading search engine marketers. We’re joined by Mike King. He’s the founder and CEO of iPullRank, an awarding-winning SEO agency. In 2020 he was named Search Marketer of the Year by Search Engine Land, and has been a Global Associate for Moz for more than 10 years. He’s been on the cutting edge of technical SEO his entire career, and he’s currently working on an upcoming book, the science of SEO: Decoding Search Engine Algorithms.He’s a confident introvert and proud Philly native, but these days he pulls rank in a cabana in South Beach, wearing Nike Air Max 1s, and listening to Snoh Aalegra. Mike’s also a Dad, a freestyle rapper, and a highly-engaging keynote speaker. Mike, it’s great to have you on the show – thanks so much for your time.Career path to starting your own agencyYou got your start as a webmaster working for Microsoft in 1996. Since then, you have worked in-house in numerous different SEO roles. Eventually, however, you founded iPullRank, an award winning agency. What prompted you to start your own agency? You started iPullRank 8 years ago, today your team is 15+ full time people. You’ve said that you love your team, but not in the “we’re a family” kind of way but rather in the "I respect these people and I want us all to win together" way. Talk to us about the kind of agency you built and what sets you apart?The art of an SEO auditI remember a few years ago when we worked with you and you and your team presented us with what I can only call an epic SEO audit. One thing that impressed me the most was that everything you outlined was practical and had clear implementation.Audits get a bit of a bad wrap. I’ve seen a few reports passed off as SEO audits which are effectively S.E.M.Rush or Ahrefs audits with a logo replacement.What should all SEOs be thinking about when they start a client audit? What’s the secret sauce of a great SEO audit.SEO is the testing we did along the wayA theme in your approach to SEO is testing rather than relying on the data provided by Google or other tools. Everyone is familiar with A/B testing things like landing pages and subject lines.What does testing in the SEO context look like? Can you give our listeners a primer?To code or not to code?I’ve been learning to code for a few years now. While I haven’t found too many practical applications to coding in my day job, I’ve personally found it fun to learn and gratifying to speak more at eye-level with devsYou have a strong background in coding. Do you think it’s an important or even an essential skill for modern marketers? What advice do you have for folks thinking about learning to code? The end of Universal AnalyticsThe one constant in SEO land is change. Though the end of Universal Analytics seems to be hitting everyone a bit different. What’s your take on this shift to Google Analytics 4? How are people preparing? Are people prepared?Future-proofing for SEOAlgorithm changes and updates are effectively part of the SEOs daily regimen. The only constant is change. How do you future-proof your website/brand against future updates? Is there a technology solution such as adopting modern frameworks like React and Gatsby with a headless CMS or is it by acquiring a certain set of skills as a contributor to be proactive (when possible) and reactive (when needed)? Top SEOs of 2032 In 2020 you were named Search Marketer of the Year by Search Engine Land. First, congrats on the accomplishment! Second, I’d like to get your perspective on the future of SEO and what it’ll take to be named Search Marketer of the Year in 2030?What skills will the top SEOs have in 10 years? If you were starting today, where would you invest in yourself?Technical SEO & Modern Digital MarketingIn 2016 you wrote a piece for the Moz blog on the technical SEO renaissance. You cover a lot of ground in that piece, but reading it now, it holds up incredibly well. Some of what you wrote verges on the prophetic, particularly when you think about Core Web Vitals and the importance of page speed and user experience.Modern SEO feels remarkably similar to developing a SaaS application – web teams need to focus on UX, performance, utility and, of course, content. If you were to write that piece today, what would your call to action be? Science of SEO BookYou’ve got a book coming out next year titled the “The Science of SEO: Decoding Search Engine Algorithms”What inspired you to write this book? What do you hope SEOs will get out of this book?Happiness, balance, successThe first line in your Twitter bio is dedicated to your daughters and you’re a firm believer in family over everything. You run a multi million dollar digital marketing agency, work with some of the top brands on the planet, regularly speak at conferences, you’re writing a book, and rapping on the side…How do you find balance in your life? What does happiness and success look like to Mike King? ✌️--Intro music by Wowa via UnminusCover art created by SLB

What’s up folks, today on the show we are joined by India WatersBased in Atlanta Georgia, she’s a community management expert with a deep appreciation for startups. She got her start running community at Memoir, a NY-based startup that built a photo sharing app. The startup eventually pivoted to focus on photo sharing for the wedding industry and was later acquired by The Knot – one of the biggest wedding brands. India currently leads growth and technology partnerships at MessageGears, a customer marketing platform for enterprise customers. India thanks for taking some time to chat with us today!Early startup daysWalk us through some of the early days at Memoir, I read that you got 2 rounds of funding which included prominent investors. You spent 4.5 years there and I’m sure things changed quickly and often.The importance of trying new thingsBefore landing at Memoir – You graduated from UGA in the middle of a recession with not very many jobs available. Walk us through some of the earliest jobs you did and what advice you’d have for folks in similar positions today.Constantly changing strategies in startupsSo that eventually brought to startup land – Phil and I are no strangers to working for startups and needing to consider pivots and changing strategies. What lessons do you have when it comes to adapting to frequent strategy changes?Target customersYou first started working at Memoir which was an app for consumers and was probably hard to segment as it could be used by anyone. Then the company (Veri) refocused to pivot the app for the wedding industry which led to the acquisition. Now you’re at a tech company selling marketing software to marketers. Talk about how different it is to sell a product with product market fit or a more focused target customer?Community-led growthSome of your earliest focus areas were community growth. What did community-led growth look like 10 years ago vs today?Working up to different roles at a bigger companyYou’ve been at MessageGears now for a little over 4 years and you’ve held 4 different roles there. Starting with Market research analyst and biz dev to Growth manager, to senior growth manager and now Associate Director of Tech partnerships. Oftentimes folks will leave a company to get a promotion but your the perfect example of working up at the same company. Talk us through some of the ways you were able to get promoted and yeah walk us through that journey a bit.MessageGears – on premise vs SaaSLet’s talk about the product for a bit. You’re one of the 300+ names that show up on G2’s grid of marketing automation software but you describe yourselves differently. ‘the first and only customer marketing platform that connects directly to our customer’s enterprise data warehouse.’ Talk us through that, the first and only platform that connects directly to your DW On premise software vs SaaS and cloud based tools Connecting and using DW data vs (API) operating on a copy of your dataMessageGears vs Pardot and MarketoI noticed in one of your job openings that MessageGears actually uses Pardot to send marketing campaign emails?Work with Demand Generation team to execute lead generation, nurture and conversion programs in Pardot.What’s the difference between Mg and Pardot and why doesn’t MG use MG?Baby podcastYou started a new podcast with a colleague from MessageGears, tell us more about that!Time management /staying happyOne question we ask all our guests is how do you remain happy and successful in your career? How do you find balance between all the things you’re working on while staying happy?--India’s twitter: https://twitter.com/indialandwaters India’s LI: https://www.linkedin.com/in/india-waters/  ✌️--Intro music by Wowa via UnminusCover art created by SLB

The great resignation phenomena has taken over mainstream media, but what does it really mean? Is it simply a buzzword for saying, more people than ever are sticking to remote work and not going back to the office? Or does it actually mean that more people are taking the leap and leaving bad workplaces, and toxic jobs? Let’s call it the great realization or the great awakening. COVID and the pandemic didn’t just open up the eyes of CEOs and managers to remote work, more importantly, it awakened a class of workers who’ve been sucking it up in a bad job thinking  it was normal and that things aren’t better anywhere else. But these people are awake now. And better jobs and companies do exist. Here’s todays main takeaway: Hustle culture is dying. You deserve better pay, more flexible hours, less meetings, better benefits and better leadership.Last season in episode 048, we told you when to quit your job. In today’s episode, we’ll walk you through a simple playbook for finding a good job, with a company you love.JT are you ready?—The importance of networking in finding a job and how this doesn’t mean what it used to.Most leaders are looking for known quantities, and want a reference from within their circleDo good work at your current company, be someone others want to work with, complete your tasks on time – people will recommend youNetworking isn’t becoming an influencer; it’s getting to know the communityProvide value, and you will get value in return—I’m part of several marketing communities, one I’ve heard great things about and just recently joined is ALL IN, a free Slack community for in-house marketers created by Brendan Hufford, the guy behind SEO for the rest of us.One of the coolest channels is the #career channel where you can post questions about specific challenges. Recently a fellow member posted about having a hard time finding a new role. He mentioned applying to a bunch of places but not hearing back from any of them.I helped some of my former students in this exact situation and I’ve boiled it down to a simple blueprint for this episode. —LOL - I'm incredibly anti-social. I'm not part of any community -- I stay in touch with past colleagues;I will reach out to folks in community to do mind-shares -- that has resulted in most of my consulting opportunities.—Alright I’ll share the blueprint in it’s simple form and then I’ll go in depth on each step… you’ll see it’s pretty simple but it’s been super powerful for me in my career.Keep a nice list of companies you'd love to work forFind the hiring managers on LinkedIn and follow them (not the same as req connection)Add links to each HM’s activity feed in your list and check it out twice a week or more oftenLike their posts, reply to them when you think you can add valueKeep an eye on job postings they shareBefore you apply, reach out to the hiring manager and ask if they can answer questions asyncSend them thoughtful questions about how to stand out and what makes a great candidateCrush the application process—I like the advice on having a companies you’d love to work for. I imagine this requires a bit of soul searching on what you want out of your own career. How did you figure that out? And what does that list of companies look like for you? –Yeah I’m not super active on social in terms of spitting stuff out, but I’m what you could call a doom scroller… I read too much. So I’m fairly in tune with new companies or companies that are standing out. When I discover one of these companies, I add them to my list.Before getting a gig at WordPress, some of the companies I was actively keeping an eye on we’reZapierNotionBufferAhrefsAppcuesConvertkitCustomerioIterable1passwordVidyardBrazeGrammerly… —How do you come up with the list?—It’s a mix between the folks they attract, their products, their size and also that they’re fully remote. Everyone’s list should be a bit different whether you prefer big companies or small or fintech vs martech. –Alright, so you gotta list of dream companies, whats next?–Step 2 is finding their linkedin pages and figuring out who are the hiring managers on that team. So if you’re a marketer, look for the VPs and the director of marketing or growth or whatever you’re into.The key thing here is don’t just flat out cold ask for a connection request. Some of these folks are super friendly and they'll accept. But you don’t have a relationship yet so you’re better offer clicking on the “follow button”.Once you’re on their profile, scroll down to the activities section and click on See all activity, then hit Posts. That’s a direct feed to everything they post on LinkedIn. Grab that URL and add it to your spreadsheet next to the company name and the hiring manager’s name.As an extra step, you can search twitter to see if they are active on there too.–Up to you how often you want to do this but you can skip this stpe if you’re on LinkedIn everyday, chances are you’ll catch their posts anyway but in the spirit of digital minimalism, carve out 10 or 20 minutes in your day, once or twice a week and check out their posts.They key thing here is engaging with their posts, start with a few likes and eventually if you have value to add, add some comments to their posts.In time, the hiring managers will get familiar with your name, they might even check you out.–What you want to look for here is job postings obviously. All linkedIn hiring managers will share their jobs on LI… it’s the most common type of post. Many of them even bump their friends’ hiring posts as well. When you see something you want to apply to, reach out to the hiring manager before you do. Don’t ask them for a coffee or a quick intro, be direct and offer to let them answer async. Have some thoughtful clarification questions about the role and show your passion for their work/company.You want to standout ahead of applying here with some thoughtful questions and feel free to even ask for tips on the hiring process.And then let the magic happen, crush those interviews.—If you keep doing this even after you have a job you love, you’re essentially building relationships with your peers. You can offer to chat with them and ask for advice on a problem you’re dealing with.Eventually you won’t need to apply to jobs anymore and all these connections you’ve made will naturally evolve into new opportunities.✌️--Intro music by Wowa via UnminusCover art created with love in Canva

What’s up everyone! Today on the show we’ve got one of my favorite email marketers and arguably the funniest marketing twitter account to follow, we’re joined by Samar Owais. She’s a top Email pro and female entrepreneur based in Karachi, Pakistan. She designs email strategies and writes email copy for SaaS & eCommerce clients with a simple goal: increase conversions and reduce churn.She isn’t your average consultant though. Samar is a model of courage and heart, known for being fiercely independent, doing excellent work, caring about results and always telling the truth. She’s worked with big brands like Drip, Pinterest and Hubspot, as well as solopreneurs like Paul Jarvis, Fix my churn, Copyhackers and a growing list of smaller Ecomm businesses. She runs an awesome email newsletter where she picks email fights and questions the status quo of how things are typically done in the email world. She also runs an ecomm bootcamp to help folks become email pros.Samar, we’re grateful to have you on the show.Pivot from content marketing to emailI have a lot of friends who started in email and ended up moving into content, sounds like you did the opposite. Give us the long story :)Discounts and emailsSomething I’ve learned from you is how to think about discounts in email. Discounts get a bad rep because they eat away at your profits, bargain brand perception, attract shoppers that are deal-focused and avoids addressing actual issues. Do you ever make exceptions to your no discount rules like bundled discounts in dtc or shipping delays… How to email marketing - without using discounts, especially when your sales team is requesting them or you’re starting a role where it’s just business as usual?Email approachAside from no (or as little as possible discounts) you’ve shared your simple strategy for email marketing also consists of extra focus on CX and open to experimentation. I’d love for you to expand on that a bit:https://twitter.com/samarowais/status/1486534280725602305 Email should be owned by everyone at the companyYou’ve said this before on a few podcasts, how do you operationalize that in bigger teams with growing opinions?Growing traffic that’ll convert into email subsOne of my favorite tweets of yours is when you claim too many folks obsess about growing an email list vs growing traffic that will convert into email subs. What’s the difference and what advice do you have for early marketers responsible for email and lead gen.https://twitter.com/samarowais/status/1487200305515274245?s=20&t=nZYTI902PZupV-xvupvH7g Ecomm email bootcampI love your ecomm email bootcamp landing page. “This is not a get rich quick scheme” and “I don’t teach anything inside this course that you can’t eventually learn and figure out on your own.” This is a very humble way of saying, “yo I’ve been doing this for 10+ years and I’ve crammed hundreds if not thousands of hours of experience and research into a digestible course so I can save you a shit ton of time.”Talk to us about your process for building an email course from scratch, how do you decide what’s important enough given the limited amount of content you can cover?follow-up:You tweeted about some of the email challenges as part of your bootcamp/workshop. One thing you said was being so proud seeing some of your students emerge as email strategist. What are early signs that tell you someone has “it”https://twitter.com/samarowais/status/1489243917476192266 Saas bootcamp course one day?I loved your tweet about maybe creating a similar email bootcamp for Saas but it would be a deep dive into pouring over customer research until you find the real problem and then figuring out how to fix it with email.In all seriousness, many SaaS are completely blind to this and we don’t have to talk about the importance of understanding your customers but ‘how do you fix things’ with email, can you give us some practical examples?https://twitter.com/samarowais/status/1483513135499780097 Email newsletter platformsYour email teardown newsletter is powered by Converkit, but I know you’ve been in a bunch of other platforms. Talk to us about your favorites and what makes a great email automation tool.Who you don’t work with.I love that on your site you have a section about who you don’t work with. “I’m not the email strategist and copywriter for you if you’re a tobacco, gambling, alcohol, or an arms and ammunition company.” What advice do you have for early freelancers that don’t want to work with specific companies but are afraid of being that bold this early?Girl educ...

What’s up everyone! Today we have a super special guest on the show, this interview is more than 12 months in the making – You probably already follow him on Twitter – I’ve personally learned a bunch from him and know you’re going to get a lot of value from our conversation today. Today we’re joined by Corey Haines.He’s a full time creator and the former head of Growth at Baremetrics. These days he keeps busy with many different things. He runs a weekly newsletter, And a growing marketing community, He also manages multiple podcasts, he wrote a few SaaS marketing courses, he built-sold-and bought back a marketing jobboard and he’s a startup marketing consultant/advisor. Most importantly, Corey’s all-round great dude with a world class beard.Corey, we’re grateful to have you on the show – thanks for taking the time.September 2020, you quit your job at Baremetrics to become a full time creator. You wrote about this and described it like you strapped on a spacesuit, launched into space and your plan is to figure out where you want to go from there.  How has the journey been 1.5 years later? Do you know where you’re going yet?Yeah. Oh, man. The last year has been a whirlwind. I guess it's almost been like a year and a half now since I left. The North Star guiding goal has been to get into SaaS myself, start a SaaS company, maybe even a couple of products, and just have a small portfolio of bets and multiple things going on at once and see where they all kind of take me. I knew that doing that with a full time job is pretty hard, especially when I didn't want to step on your toes at Bearmetrics since we sold other SaaS startups. So I didn't want to build something that ended up competing with one of our customers. So I just kind of knew, like, that wasn't really an option for me. I didn't want to get another job and then start working on those side projects as well. But also, I wasn't really even close to building anything quite yet anyways. But I just wanted to kind of pull the trigger and jump and strap onto the rocketship, get into space. And then I could figure out where I was going from there. And on a personal level, very, very challenging. And like a lot of learning on hey, here's how to manage cash flow for all the different kinds of feasts and family cycles of freelancing and consulting. And just like knowing where to kind of find money and all the different revenue streams that you have when you're on your own, you don't have a paycheck really coming through the door. From a time management perspective, I've really learned how to be super ruthless with my time. I would say for the first four or five months I imagined once I left, I was like, I'm going to be free. I have so much time, I'm just going to get so much done. All these things are on my list. And then I didn't get anything done for like four months. I was like, what is happening? And because I had so many different meetings, so many admin things. I was busy doing emails, I was trying to chip away at small things here and there, but I was never really moving the ball forward in any one direction. And so I learned to be really ruthless. Now I do most of my meetings, like 95% of my meetings on Wednesdays. The rest of the week is completely wide open and I set what I want to get done, and I get those things done. And sometimes I work late, sometimes I work early. But you have to be really ruthless. It's been a great learning experience because really through the startups that I've worked for, consulting, advising, freelancing. Now I’m basically the marketing lead for Savvy Cal as well. So that's kind of helped bring back some stability in my life. And I see them all as just kind of practice rounds and getting in the reps and sets for learning how to build and grow a SaaS startup for when I want to do that for myself and for my own, especially the last year and a half, it's been like an invaluable learning lesson. Bootstrapping SaaS is really hard. You have to put yourself in the right position. Honestly, I wouldn't say that going the VC route is easier because I think raising money is really, really hard and it's a grind. And once you're on that track, there's a lot of expectations and it's a whole different game. But in the early days, it's easier because you have money, you pay yourself a paycheck. You hire the people to work with you. Bootstrapping is not easy. And so I would count this last year and a half as a part of my bootstrapping journey for building SaaS because it's all the work you have to do in order to be able to be financially stable, to put your time on something else completely without your whole world kind of exploding and going broke or, like, maxing out your credit cards. So I'm doing the best that I can, but I think I’m doing a pretty okay job so far. Multiple eggs in different basketsOne thing I want to ask about – you kind of mention the various different projects you're working on, like the idea of having multiple eggs in different baskets. What is the appeal of that for your personality? And how do you manage that as you're pushing these projects forward? I think that it's not necessarily, like, shiny object syndrome. I think that's what a lot of people conflate with having a lot of projects. You start one thing and then jump to the next one before you really kind of see the potential of it. I'm not really like that. It's more that I'm just mega impatient, and I just want to see all these things exist, and I want to do them and I'll do them all at once. My life is kind of, like, chaos sometimes. That's also why I leave four days out of the week completely wide open to get a lot of work-work done. I just want to see those things exist. I just want to work on them. I'm kind of a yes person and where I want to have my cake and eat it too. I just don't really like compromising and leaving something for later. So that's more the thought and the spirit behind multiple things. It's not really diversifying my income and multiple revenue streams and millionaires have seven sources of income. It's more just like, I want to work on all those things. I think they're fun. I want to see them exist, and I don't want to do them sequentially. I want to do them currently. What would it take to get you back in-houseSo, in-house, freelance, consultant, entrepreneur… Now you're getting a taste of all of them at the same time. Maybe someone in the audience right now is kind of thinking to themselves, I want to hire this Corey Haines guy that maybe this is not likely to happen… You possibly get a lot of offers to go back in-house. What would it take to get you back in-house? Or how would you design your ideal in-house role? Or scrap the question completely and tell me why the entrepreneur journey is the only way to go. Okay, well, I'll give you a Humans of Martech exclusive, because I haven't talked about this really anywhere else. So for last year, I've been working with someone who we were going to build SaaS together, and it's sort of like that was like the main thing. I'm putting most of my eggs in this basket. Long term, I want to work with this person. Then it turned out, his other businesses became too successful to really be able to step away from it even part time. So basically it came to a point where like, hey, we're good friends. We would love to do this, but it's just like not going to happen. It's just not realistic for this stage of our lives. That's a huge bummer because I was kind of j...

What’s up folks – we’ve been away for a while but we’re back and in full swing for season 2 with even better content than season 1.Today we’re going to tease some of our early season 2 episodes and catch you up on what we’ve been up to since our break.JT, in August of last year, your world changed in two huge ways. Your wife gave birth to twin boys Felix and Clyde.You might hear them in the background of a few episodes as we usually coincide with feeding time.Man – a huge family of 6 now, 2 girls, 2 boys… are things starting to settle down a bit now having crossed the 6 month mark?As a hopeful parent one day myself, I have many questions, the first is: with your twin boys, did you ever mix up which baby was which and just went with it? Is it true that even in identical twins, belly buttons are always different and the best way to tell them apart?Walk me through the routine of managing a tsunami of children. When does Jon go to bed, between all the diaper changes, do you get any time for yourself, are you still finding yourself able to get up super early?You’ve said to me that having a 4th baby is like being handed a baby while you’re already treading water… Do you still agree that going from 0-1 is the biggest transition?Tell the listeners about your freaking sauna and how it’s changed your life LOLSo after your parental leave – you took back the helm of leading Klipfolio’s marketing team. What’s exciting you the most about what the team is cooking up over there these days?Phil, you started at Automattic / WordPress.com in June last summer, you’re coming up on 10ish months now. Having only ever worked in startups before, how’s it been adapting to a 2,000+ person org?It’s been pretty wild honestly. Automattic is like a mini Berkshire Hathaway – a holding company of sorts that houses many different products and brands under one roof. I have colleagues that work on Woo Commerce (the open source Shopify), Tumblr (Taylor Swift’s favorite social media platform), and some that work with me on WordPress.com. But we also have WordPress VIP, JetPack, Long Reads, Simplenote and during my early days there we acquired PocketCasts (the best podcast app) and DayOne (a journaling app that I’ve been using for many years).So wpcom isn’t a 2,000 person company, we’re like 400 but yeah biggest marketing team I’ve ever been part of for sure. Biggest transition period for me was less about working with a bigger team and more about working asynchronously across multiple different teams. We use a tool called P2, its an open source collaboration app built on Gutenberg/WP and it’s how we mainly communicate with each other.Aside from a few HR emails, I don’t think I’ve ever had an email from a colleague. Everything is on P2 or on Slack. We do have some synchronous zoom calls, but any key decisions is always posted back on P2.Missed a week because of a vacation, you don’t need to have a colleague catch you up in a meeting, you have a nice list of unread P2 posts and you’re right back into it.It honestly feels like a different world… but I think it’s where the world is moving.What excites you the most about working at WP almost hitting the 1 year mark.I’ve sharpened my growth experimentation skills and my email copywriting skills but I find the product fascinating. I got to take a tiny part in rolling out FSE, WordPress’ big 5.9 update which came with some huge changes to the product. It’s already been downloaded by 60M sites across the world and it’s been really fun tagging along and seeing the next lineup of changes.So with all the stuff going on, we definitely leaned on guest episodes to start season 2 and we’ve got some big names, some folks are huge on twitter, some folks are c level in big tech, some are up and coming super stars, you know us, we've got a nice mix of folks with wide ranging topics and opinions.✌️--Intro music by Wowa via UnminusCover art created with help via Undraw

HUGE thank you to all of our awesome guests. In celebration of our 50th episode, we're rounding up all the answers to the most important question we asked every single one of our guests: what advice do they have on how they've managed to balance everything life throws at them and how they stay happy and sane at work.This is our 50th episode. Most of our episodes were actually just the two of us, jamming on a topic. Sometimes we went deep in a technical topic like email deliverability or lifecycle. Sometimes we talked about the people skills, working in tech, working remote. 15 of our 50 episodes had guest interviews. We showcased martech folks from different roles and seniority levels. But for each of our guests, we finished by asking the same question: What advice do you have on how to balance everything life throws at you and how do you stay happy and sane at work?Our guests share their answers back to back, time stamps below:02:00 - Lauren Sanborn (05: Happiness at the intersection of sales & marketing)"Happiness is all about your perspective, 25% your situation and 75% how you look at it." 05:22 - Brian Leonard (07: Be friends with engineering with open source Martech)"The secret of autonomy and purpose is to work on something that is important. Find a way to write your own job description so that it lines up with your purpose and mastery."06:16 - Nick Donaldson (10: Curiosity, learning & success in your MOPs career)"Prioritize your family and your friends. Turn off notifications outside work hours and dedicate time to doing things you enjoy." 07:40 - Jonathan Simon (11: Do you still need a degree to have success in marketing?)"It’s hard. Exercise and mental health is incredibly important. Pick up hobbies, do what makes you happy, find time for yourself." 11:02 - Julie Beynon (17: Making marketing analytics not intimidating)"You have to be proactive. You’re the only person that owns your happiness. If you’re not happy, you need to fix it, not someone else."13:10 - Steffen Hedebrandt (19: Reaching B2B attribution nirvana)"Having a kid makes you become really good at prioritizing. I ask myself, does this make me happy or does this correlate with more revenue yes or no?" 14:40 - Naomi Liu (25: How to ace your first marketing job)"Tech is my love language, and I get a lot of satisfaction using it to solve other peoples problems both in my personal life and business."15:08 - Melissa Ledesma (26: Melissa Ledesma: Women of Martech)"I encourage you to step away and talk to your friends about your job. They will not understand a word of what you’re saying, and let them show you their own excitement and absorb that. There’s so much more for us to be invigorated by if we take a moment to remember what we’re actually doing." 16:45 - Erin Blaskie (27: Startup marketing, in-house vs freelance)"Ditch everyone else’s definition of success. Nobody cares that you drive a BMW and it likely won’t amount to additional happiness. Focus on what would make you feel successful as a person and don’t be afraid of having a non linear path." 19:11 - Shannon McCluskey (37: Searching for remote martech pros)"Ever since I’ve become a mom I’ve been learning by necessity and actively keeping my working hours 9-5. Remote work is always around the corner but it’s important to get that distance to make sure you connect with family."20:37 - Pierce Ujjainwalla (39: Creativity in marketing is under attack)"I never work past 5. I never work on the weekends. I attribute happiness to pleasure and challenges. Pleasure is golfing and skiing and I find a lot of challenge in my work but also some hobbies. Lawn care gives me a mental break. Digging out weeds is very relaxing." 22:33 - Manuela Barcenas (41: From first marketer to team manager)"To stay balanced and happy, find activities that make you feel good, block time in your calendar for specific tasks and get into journaling."24:38 - Roxanne Pepin (44: Startups and the ability to learn RevOps)"Having a separate space in your house for where you work. Being able to “leave” and not have to bring your work with you in other places of your house. Oh and take Slack off your phone!"26:54 - Danica Bateman (46: A day in the life of a Marketing Automation Manager)"Surround yourself with positive people. People that are invested in your success and want to see you grow and thrive." 27:48 - Vladlena Mitskaniouk (47: Grow your marketing career one data mystery at a time)"Acknowledge that things came in waves. When the clam is there, really embrace those moments. Don’t always try and push yourself through every moment. Book vacation well ahead of time and check out. Book time for your lunch, book time for your workouts, book time in the morning to do a checkin with yourself. No one else is going to save that time for you. "✌️--Intro music by Wowa via UnminusCover art created with help via Undraw

Half of all podcasts have fewer than 14 episodes. When we started Humans of Martech, we were determined not to become a statistic.As we near the end of our first season and approach our 50th episode, we wanted to give you a peek behind the curtain to see how we think about this show.For us, at least, the idea of hitting 50 episodes is a big milestone -- and anyone thinking of starting their own shows -- whether it’s a personal project or for your company -- needs to be prepared to put in some work.Let’s dive in!Show thesis & missionWhy is your show worth your audience’s timeWhy is it worth your timeYou have to be motivated to do this week after weekEquipmentQuality is important; get a good set upMic; A cardioid (heart shaped) polar range eliminates unwanted background noise from behind and the sides, making this an affordable mic that's suited for podcastingAudio-Technica 20 SERIES AT2005USB Cardioid Dynamic Microphone amazon linkI read a lot about mics and tested a few out, I don’t recommend the Blue Yeti mic despite so many podcast guides recommend it. You will suffer from something called proximity effect. The Blue Yeti is a Condenser Mic, not a dynamic mic. Condenser mics will pick up sounds a mile away, and there are indeed valid concerns around air conditioners running etc.Get a pop filter, practice how to mindfully not blow air in the mic when you pronounce Ss and Ps and Ts.Zoom — but also tried riverside. Riverside was amazing quality, but too amazing. We needed to clean up too much of the audio because it highlighted too many imperfections for my taste. Zoom gets the job done, make sure in your settings you boost audio input from everyone, you don’t reduce too much background noise and that you record separate audio files for each participant. Editing -- Garageband for the win. I usually clean up the audio files in Audacity, I have a few plugins that clean up some audio, especially when we have a guest that comes on recording from their laptop mic.  DistributionTransistor.fm to auto distribute and host everything for usAnchor, soundcloud also optionsApple PodcastsSpotifyPocket CastsGoogle PodcastsA lot scrape Apple thoughApple isn’t a great service when publishing, any edits take a while to update the RSS, best to publish earlyStyle of showWe love having guests on but only about 40% of our episodes are run by a guestWe worked a lot on the show formatresearching and writing episodesone person as subject matter expert, one person as hostThe lost episodes5 or 6 episodes that were recorded and on Phil’s computerTook a while for us to get our groove. even the early episodes of this season we notice a big improvementPromotionThe part of the show we invest the least amount into. Our mission is to help marketers be happy & successful — we believe in that mission and that over time the show will build an audience by providing valueWe did experiment with a few things:Mailchimp listTwitter and LinkedIn posts weeklyHeadliner and audiogramsOwler for translationsIndividual episode artworkCohost vs solo: it’s really nice to have a cohost when interviewing guests — get a moment to think as you go; if there’s an awkward pause as you think of your next question the host comes in. Advice if you’re starting a podcast for your business or on your own:- Develop a strong thesis -- it’s the beating heart of the show and will keep you motivated in the long run