That One Time at Marketo Summer Camp ft. Rachel Noble Squire
Join the gals as they chat with very special guest Rachel Squire (also featuring very tiny guest Mazie in her podcast/world debut). Rachel is a well known member of the Marketo Community and Marketing Ops world, with a career spanning IT (listen for her iconic IT moment funnelling fans into the server room when the AC went down), Marketing Ops and Data Analytics.
Get to know Rachel and the coolest things she's ever built as a consultant, what her real thoughts on ChatGPT are, and what the rain coat of choice is in the PNW. Stick around to hear about that time we all saw Will Smith but not each other, when Rachel ate In-and-out with all the Marketo execs, and why Lauren got got by an instagram ad.
Podcast Summary
The podcast features Sydney Mulligan and Lauren Aquilino interviewing Rachel Squire, a guest and one of the newest members of Emmie Collective. During the introduction, Rachel's daughter Maisie makes a brief appearance. Lauren talks about her son and how their school district in Ohio has canceled school because of the girls’ high school basketball team advancing to States, which is a big deal in a small town. The conversation then moves to Rachel's experience as a freelancer in the Martech/MOPs world and her reasons for choosing this career path. The hosts also discuss Rachel's varied experiences in the field, including analytics and platform work.
The three ladies then share their funny conference or work trip stories. Rachel shares her experience of following a random group of people she met at a concert into the penthouse suite of one of the C-suite executives from Marketo, where the whole room was covered in french fries, and people were throwing burgers while live music was playing. Lauren shares her story of attending Jessica Cross's party, where Will Smith unexpectedly showed up and started taking selfies with people. Lauren also confesses to rubbing Will Smith's arm without his consent when it was hanging down over the DJ booth. The hosts joke around and invite listeners to subscribe to their non-existent Patrons to hear the full story.
They ask Rachel about the top two or three people she would love to work with again, and Rachel mentions Allison and Michael from Freeman; and Jonathan and Jennifer and Carmen from OSI as they threw some of the most exciting projects at her. She also talks about the analytics overhaul she did for Freeman and the Marketo migration for OSI. In the next segment, the hosts ask Rachel about something she wants, something she needs, something to wear, and something to read, using the Christmas/holiday present philosophy. Rachel mentions that she wants a new car, then Lauren and Sydney have a low-stakes argument about the environment and what is worse - flying on a private plane or ordering things from Shein.
They then get to know Rachel a little bit more with the PFB on the streets segment, with topics: Chat GPT, Business travel, Remote work, LinkedIn, and Instagram.
Full Podcast Transcript
Sydney: Hello and welcome to Pretty Funny Business. We are so excited for the episode we have today because we have a very special guest. I am Sydney Mulligan.
Lauren: I'm Lauren Aquilino
Sydney: And we have with us - very exciting - Rachel Squire
Rachel: Hey!
Sydney: Thanks for being here Rachel. Also, we have a secret special guest - hi tiny Maisie. Hi Rachel's daughter! How old is Maisie now?
Rachel: She will be four months tomorrow.
Sydney: Oh my gosh. So exciting.
Lauren: Do you wanna see my first baby? Michael, come here for the audience. Come here. Come here. There's a baby on the call. I want you to just sit on my lap too and just come in here.
Sydney: Oh,
Lauren: Can you see the eye roll? Alright, go sit down.
Sydney: Hot tip. Maisie, that's how you do a good eye roll for your mom.
Lauren: Yes. Yes. I thought it was so cute that you said that you were running a little bit late because I was too and I wanted to wait to tell the story because my son's gonna be 10 and you're just starting.
Sydney: Lurking back there.
Lauren: So yeah, for the listeners, my son is now peeking back and forth on camera. He told me earlier today, he's just really excited to get on the internet one day. But we were running a little bit late because well, you were running a little bit late because.
Rachel: I got pooped on
Lauren: And fast forward to your life 10 years from now is that our school district canceled school today, on Sunday night, because our high school girls’ basketball team is going to States! You know, you’re from a less crowded state, although Ohio is much more crowded. Are you from Montana?
Rachel: I'm from LA but I spent a lot of time in Montana
Lauren: Oh, LA! You spent time in Montana. So LA this, they would not cancel school for this, I don't think, but in Ohio, in small town Ohio, they are canceling school because the high school girls are going. And then my kids are not in high school. And I’m like are you taking them with you? Who's gonna watch these children?
Michael: I'll watch myself.
Lauren:You're gonna watch yourself. Exactly. But he requested lunch / breakfast and he requested to go to this shop that is called Perk Cup Cafe. Okay. You're done. You're done. We'll, we'll do more later. I'll put you on the internet later. And it's called Perk Cup Cafe, and he was like, we have to go there. They have this breakfast special called the Berea, which is the name of the town that it’s in, it is so good. And we get there and we sit down and I open the menu and the Berea is two eggs your way with a sausage patty and toast. And I'm like, no dude, I'm about to pay $9 for something I could have spent probably $1.33 at home. No thank you. But they're a small town breakfast place, the entire town is here for breakfast. And we were there for those two eggs for 97 minutes.
Sydney: Oh my Gosh
Lauren: And so I was like, we gotta go, we gotta podcast. And then I saw “oh, my baby pooped on me”. My baby kind of pooped on me too, honestly.
Rachel: Poop.
Sydney: More a metaphorical poop.
Lauren: A metaphorical poop, right? Welcome! We are so excited to have you not only on the podcast, but as one of the newest members of Emmie Collective.
Sydney: So exciting. Emmie Collective is where we do serious business stuff and Pretty Funny Businesses where we do nonsense. But we're gonna do a little bit of both today because I do want everyone to have a chance to get to know Rachel if you don't already. She's to be famous. I love Rachel, if you could just introduce yourself a little bit, talk about why you decided to start freelancing, and why you decided to join Emmie.
Rachel: Absolutely. I am Rachel. I've been in the Martech / MOPs world for I guess 11 years now. It feels like it's been not that long, but it's been a while. And I have a new baby, her name is Maisie. She's with us today and she's the main reason I'm going into freelancing cause I wanted some more flexibility with my life, and so far it's been fantastic. Apparently she has mixed feelings about it herself.
Sydney: I love it. I feel I'm not surprised that you've been doing this for 11 years, cause I feel you've gone through several different kinds of iterations of what you like to do at MOPs. You went more analytics heavy for a little bit and now you're kind of going back to the platform, or maybe a little bit of both?
Rachel: Yeah, I actually started out in the Martech space, but not in Marketing Ops, doing stuff at PFL. I was in three different departments before I found the marketing department. And the last one was IT. That's how I found out I liked technology and then it kind of was a natural transition. We all agree that we liked the transition into Marketing Ops, it's been kind of a journey bouncing around the different roles I've done. The website side, I hated that. I've done the Marketo side, love that. And most recently focused on the analytics BI side and that's kind of been where I've been hovering between those last two over the past year or so.
Sydney: Very cool. Lauren, did you ever dabble on the website side? I feel I also dabbled in the website side long enough to learn that I either hated it or was not very good at it. Did you ever make your way over there?
Lauren: No! Thank god for Squarespace. Oh. Weird stuff. One of my first jobs was dressing up as Lady Liberty for Liberty Tax Agency and holding a sign out in the middle of February.
Sydney: You learned how to spin it and twirl it all
Lauren: No, no, no, no, no, no. I actually got hired with my brother who dressed up as Uncle Sam and we got fired cause we were hitting each other with the signs.
Sydney: What an iconic brother sister moment. That's fantastic. Well, that's the coolest thing Lauren's ever done at work. Rachel, in all of your different roles and different types of MarTech jobs you've had, what is the coolest thing you've ever built? Have you ever built something and then at the end of it you were like, I wish more people could know about this, other than my co-workers who probably don't even care that much?
Rachel: Well, I'm gonna tell two stories cause the first one's not related, but I love the story. So when I was working in IT, in the middle of the summer, all the air conditioning shut off and I built this system of fans and airflow to help cool the server room.
Sydney: What?
Rachel: That was a fun day, but that's not why we're here. From the MarTech perspective, my favorite thing, and I've done this multiple times at different jobs cause I loved it so much. I've started this flagship project that I love to do where I just take all the different things. Social ads, and then of course you've got the email marketing, the direct mail, all of the website personalization, all the different things that you can do to reach out to people. You know, if you've got the outreach script automations, building those smart automations. So if someone is showing “I'm interested in this product” and “I'm this far along in my level of interest to have specific targeted ads and emails and stuff”. Speak to them where they are, you know, so cliché. But that's my favorite thing is having all of that messaging be coordinated and come into one single message from all of those different channels. Because honestly, I hate when I get marketed to in any other way. So it kind of just brings me to the way I wanna be marketed too.
Lauren: You're hired.
Sydney: You're hired
Lauren: I mean, you already are hired, but you're hired again.
Sydney: The worst marketing you guys have gotten lately? First of all, I get probably 25 direct mailers every time I open my mailbox and they all go directly in the trash. I hate them so much. I can't make them stop. I don't know how.
Rachel: Yeah. And they're all full of lots of trash, literal trash sometimes, all the padding and, and bubble wrap and stuff. It's kind of crazy sometimes.
Lauren: I was kind of thinking of this today, actually. Good question, Sydney because I am well, I guess we're just gonna be super transparent here, but being evaluated for ADHD, which we're pretty open about here. Any diagnosis, we'll just throw it on the table and I'm like, is it fair. It's great. It's good news, bad news. I feel that people who create products for people with ADHD, are also a subscription-based product. They're like we know this is the perfect audience because
Sydney: you’re never gonna remember to cancel
Lauren: you're gonna forget that you did that
Sydney: Mm-hmm.
Lauren: Actually, I feel like there was one app that was like, listen, after seven days we're gonna charge you. But if you ever come to us and just say I am so sorry but I totally forgot, they just refund you. That's real. She loves it. She loves that.
Sydney: Hated that. She hates that.
Rachel: I'm getting help here.
Lauren: I'm getting help. Help.
Sydney: Maisie. Bye Maisie. We love you.
Lauren: So I would say that's the best and worst Instagram marketing that I've gotten lately. I'm like yes, I need this. And I'm like, wait a minute…
Sydney: I feel prey to some similar Instagram marketing. Well, first of all, I'm, I'm a sucker. We've talked about this before, but Lauren’s husband Mikey and I are both suckers for all Instagram ads.
Lauren: I get got by Instagram ads every single day, all the time. Name the brand that you've seen a thousand ads for and Sydney has purchased.
Sydney: I got it. Yeah. The first time that we were ever together in person. We went to Florida last year. Lauren looked at my toiletries bag and was like, huh, Glossier, Billy Razor. I don't even remember what else it was, but it was all, every Instagram as you could think there. It was all laid out.
You ever wanna try a product that you've seen online? I probably have it. I'm happy to give you a full review. Anyway, so I got got by an Instagram ad that was also for looking for a therapist for ADHD, and it was not as forgiving in the way that the app that you described was. Although I did sign up for that app, but I remember to cancel it. You go through this questionnaire and it's like you can have your first appointment for $10. And I was like, oh, great. And I booked it, and then they were like, we're gonna charge you $180 48 hours before your appointment. And my appointment was already within 48 hours and I could not cancel it. I know it was terrible. And then I had the appointment. I guess I'm gonna have this appointment because I'm gonna pay for it no matter what, but I don't even wanna do it. I tried to cancel it. I reached out to the customer service. They never responded. Anyway, I had the appointment, it lasted 10 minutes and it was extremely unhelpful. And then I filed a complaint with a better business bureau. That was probably actually the worst marketing I've ever received, because it was actively harmful. And then I had to file a consumer complaint.
Rachel: Yeah, deceptive marketing is its own separate, bad of bad.
Sydney: that was the worst, the worst. Yeah. I don't know any other bad marketing we've seen lately. Rachel, you got any bad marketing? I feel once you have a baby, it's an onslaught
Rachel: Yeah.
Sydney: I'll tell you one baby product that pisses me off.
Rachel: I only see baby stuff anymore.
Sydney: The baby product marketing that pisses me off is the Newton Mattress. You know exactly what I'm talking about, don't you?
Rachel: Oh yeah. Mm-hmm.
Lauren: my gosh, I'm a geriatric mother.
Sydney: Yeah, you're a geriatric mother. The Newton Mattress, I think their marketing preys on first time moms who are scared because their whole thing is SIDS prevention and that their mattress is fully breathable, so if your baby falls asleep, face down on the mattress, they can actually breathe through the entire thing, which never happens.
Lauren: How is that approved ?
Sydney: And that never happens. Your baby doesn't, even if your baby did fall asleep, face down, they have survival instincts. If they cannot breathe to turn their head
Rachel: Maisie was doing that last night. I woke up and she's face down nose against the mattress. But you know what? She's breathing in a regular rhythm
Sydney: She's fine. She's fine with a regular mattress
Lauren: Also PSA that is suffocation, not SIDS. So they should not be marketing it that way
Sydney: Yeah, it's not. I agree. I hate it, but so many people have it, especially in New York. It's just the most expensive thing you can find. So that's the parenting philosophy here. And everyone has the same Newton mattress. Not me though. I got the cheapest shit I could find on Amazon.
Lauren: No, that was totally me with my son Michael, who you just met. He got the best of everything. In fact, we just got rid of his crib which I paid $500 for. And my daughter, who was born exactly two years later, got the $99 Amazon crib.
Sydney: Yeah. . Yeah. . IKEA crib.
Lauren: Sorry baby. Yeah.
Sydney: IKEA
Lauren: Guess what? It worked just as well.
Sydney: Yeah, it's all the same. You know what? They all have to meet the same exact safety standards. Here's our PSA. The government regulates safety standards for all things related to children. And it's all the same shit. It's all the same. You can pay more for it if you want to, but it's all the same shit.
Sydney: All right? Anyway, that's the worst marketing. Worst marketing ever. Largely parenting.
Lauren: Well now this podcast is turning into the worst marketing ever. If we don't get going. Sydney was legitimately offended. She was like, wait, wait, wait. We can't do that.
Sydney: No. I went to HubSpot's conference in 2015, I think, it was the first time I'd ever been to a marketing conference and someone on the stage referred to it as marketing people Summer which I thought was hilarious cause that's exactly what it is. You just go to hang out with your friends and play and you see the same people every year. So anyway, I know that all three of us have had that experience at Marketo Summit, may she rest in peace. And I am pretty confident that everyone has a funny conference or work trip story to share.
Sydney: So, Rachel, lay it on me.
Rachel: You know my favorite story is from a Marketo Summit. No surprise, probably one of the earlier years that I went or 2016 maybe. You know how they have that big party at the end of the conference every year and they some headliner band, and back in the day when it was a super party instead of just a concert, and it was so much fun. And somehow at the end of a concert I ended up following this random group of people. Safety: don't do this in general, but I followed these people that I met at this concert upstairs into the penthouse suite of one of the C-suite execs from Marketo. I don't know how I ended up there or why this group of people was going there, how I got invited, no idea. All I remember is I'm in this room, in this penthouse looking over, and the whole room's covered in In&Out french fries. People are throwing burgers and there's live music playing and I have no idea how it happened. I don't remember the resolution of that event, but that memory will be in my mind for the rest of my life.
Lauren: I am incredibly jealous. That's better than anything that's happened to me at any of the conferences
Sydney: We should have made you go last. That was the best. Okay, Lauren, tell me your best.
Lauren: I have many. One of them I would need permission from my co Funny, which would be Kimmy Corgan to tell you. I'm not gonna put it on the internet, but
Sydney: Oh, keep her anonymous and tell it.
Lauren: I just said who it was.
Sydney: Cut it out, Tim. Cut it out.
Lauren: No, you would know.
Sydney: You would know.
Lauren: It's not that bad, but it is very funny. And you know what, maybe we'll keep that for our patriots
Sydney: Can you please subscribe to the Patreon? We'll tell you the Kimmy story.
Lauren: We don't have one of those, but if you listen to the last episode, you would know that we are now calling our patrons. So my best story, the one that I would tell someone, which is what's happening right now is of course when Jessica Cross hosted the best party in Vegas with Jeff and the pool.
Sydney: at the roller skating thing. Oh no. That one.
Sydney: Cross hosted that?
Lauren: Yeah, I think it was her
Sydney: It was
Lauren: Maybe she was at EverString. Confirm it. It was her. Confirm it, it was her. Yes.
Sydney: Gonna slack her. I'm gonna slack her.
Lauren: Slack her right now and ask her. So, I remember the story. She said they had booked in DJ Jeff to DJ the party before Will Smith was, who was like the big celebrity of the conference. And so when that happened I was like, listen y'all, there is no way that Will Smith is not showing up at this party. There is absolutely no way. So we went as early as we could to this party. I was hanging with Lauren Pozak and sure as poop, Will Smith shows up to this party and everyone goes bananas because, well this is the most epic conference story ever. Actually, not my story, but just the fact that this happened because they immediately started doing whatever song it is that they do together, and I think it's that one, their big one. They just started doing it and it was, it was iconic
Sydney: That's when Marketo Summit peaked. It was never more fun than that year.
Lauren: No it wasn't. But Lauren and I made it to the front and Will Smith was grabbing phones and taking selfies and I got one, he took my phone and took a selfie with me and Lauren in the background and a couple other people. And it was funny cause at the time I posted it on Instagram and the people I knew that were in it, and someone else was like “yay that's me, I'm so glad that you posted that”. So it was not somebody that he knew, actually, I think it was maybe a bouncer or something
Sydney: God.
Lauren: But I actually immediately texted my husband, I want you to know, I rubbed Will Smith's arm for a while, it was hanging down over the DJ booth, it was hanging down over the DJ booth and I was rubbing it a little.
Sydney: you didn't tell him about it.
Lauren: I'm confessing to everyone because if my arm was hanging over a DJ booth and Will Smith was rubbing up, well it was not Will Smith.
You know, this is just a really, it's a complex story, but what I wanna say is, Will Smith, I am sorry I did not ask for consent before rubbing your arm for at least five seconds. It was a long time. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Again, Rachel said, don't do this. Don't do what I do. All right, Sydney, you're up.
Sydney: I was also at that party. I'll tell different stories. I was, but I was also at that party and I did get in the pool with all my clothes on and float around on a swan float and someone was in the pool already. I do not, still to this day, do not know if that was just a random person that was in the pool, but they were pulling people around on the floats. But I know that I was having a great time. I had gotten some gold tattoos all over my forearm, carrying my clutch in my elbow pit for a while, and the gold tattoos got all over it and ruined it.
And then I got in the pool with all my clothes on with a flower crown and it was fantastic. Great time. Incredible. There's also another part of the evening that I was recently reminded of, rather rudely by someone that I was there with, sliding into my LinkedIn DMs and sending me a picture of me and her and our other friend - I am going to keep them nameless to protect their own safety - laying down on the floor at the casino and one of their dresses is fully over their butt, spanks hanging out, and I think that she slipped and fell, and they both fell down together and then I just laid down on top of them in solidarity.
Yeah. Okay. So anyway, my actual story is, I think it was the year after that. It was the year that there was the Train concert and it was back in San Francisco. I think it maybe was the last year of San Francisco. It was the last year of true Marketo Summits
Lauren: That's the last one that I've been to
Sydney: Yes, because you had just had Pippa
Lauren: In 2019 I had Pippa and then, then Covid. Yeah.
Sydney: then Covid. I was super pregnant at that one. So this was kind of the last one that I really had fun at, I was at the Train concert with a bunch of people. Should I keep them nameless? I don't feel the story's actually that bad. No, it was Joe Reitz and Jenn Di Maria and Rachel Egan - they all have different last names now I'm not gonna remember them I'm sorry - And Ande Kempf and a bunch of other people. And we somehow met Steve Lucas in the lobby of a hotel and he had recently become the CEO of Marketo. And we were like, oh hi, we're the Marketo Champions. And he said, what's a Marketo Champion?
Rachel: What? Boo!
Sydney: We went to this concert and Joe was very convinced that we were allowed to be in the VIP section because we were Champions. That was absolutely not the case.
Lauren: I was a champ that year. I wasn't invited
Sydney: No. So we went up to the VIP section, which was an elevated platform above the rest of the people that had an open bar. And Steve Lucas appeared when they were not letting us in, and he was like, they're fine, just let them in. So all of us went up there, had a great time with the open bar, really fantastic time. I love Train because I am a millennial woman, and Train was a formative experience for me. I actually, it's not the first time I had seen Train in concert, probably won't be the last.
Lauren: We talked about this before and I was like, wasn't that terrible? And you were like, no!
Sydney: Drops of Jupiter, are you kidding? I was scream singing Drops of Jupiter. It was amazing! Great time. Then we left there and we decided to all go to Denny's together, and my friend McKenzie, stole one of the pillows that said Marketo Summit on it and took it with us to Denny's. And someone from that group who I will leave nameless to protect their anonymity, threw up on the escalator at Moscone. They didn't make it to Denny's. The rest of us went to Denny's. I kept ordering more food at Denny's because I forgot that we'd already ordered, or I felt it was taking a long time. So I would order something else that I think would come faster. I don't know why, but we ended up with so much food. Anyway, it was a great time. Had a really fun time. Good night. I feel that's just a classic summer camp, marketing summer camp kind of experience. Someone has to throw up on the escalator. We have to get illegal free alcohol. It was a great time. I don't even know who the VIPs actually were. They were up there, I talked to them. I don't know how you actually got VIP, but it seemed like the kind of thing you had to be invited to. And we were perhaps invited on the fly so as to avoid a scene.
Rachel: I think I actually snuck into that area because I went to see that Fabio experience, and they gave us these purple wristbands and then they're like, you can get into the VIP areas if you have purple wristbands. And I'm like, oh yeah, I've got one. And they like, let me in.
Sydney: Good. Counterfeit wrist band.
Lauren: Do you think it was Fabio that you followed up to the In-N-Out penthouse?
Rachel: There’s probably a story, and I wouldn't be surprised.
Lauren: yes.
Sydney: That was incredible. Didn't Fabio show up to multiple Marketo Summits?
Lauren: Okay, so I think it's Stensul that hires Fabio. I don't remember the first conference that I saw him at, but it was something not that big.
Sydney: Hmm.
Lauren: I feel there's a story there that someone was either like, Fabio's my dad, like we're just gonna do this, you know.
Sydney: Fabio's my dad.
Lauren: Because it wasn’t Summit 2018 or 2019 where they had a bigger booth and hired Fabio, this was their shtick for a very long time, is that Fabio came with them. I need to know.
Sydney: It's only Stensul. You've never seen Fabio at any other booth?
Lauren: No.
Sydney: Interesting.
Lauren: But I think I've seen him three or four or five times with Stensul.
Sydney: Stensul marketing team, we would love to hear from you. If you can email us at lauren at emmieco.com and just tell us the story about why Fabio is a primary marketing channel for you. We'd also love to hear about the marketing attribution for Fabio.
Lauren: And while we are talking about Stensul marketing, I should add - and I think I've said this before- that at Content Marketing World which is in Cleveland, (I’m trying to think of how old my daughter is, she's gonna be eight) so like let's say it was four years ago, maybe five. A friend of mine knew that she really liked sloths and she saw a stuffed sloth at your booth and brought it home from my daughter. And she has, as Sydney calls it, imprinted on the sloth. In fact, the T-shirt, you can take it off, but she has not, like that is his clothes and I hope that they have a before picture of what he looked like before because she sleeps with this thing every night. And, his name is Sloffo because she has a lisp and she can't say it’s sloth though. So we spell it S L O F F O. And she's had pink eye all over this thing, she's barfed on him, he's been washed 1,000 times. So I need a before picture from them, and then I will give them an after picture of what four years of sloffo love looks like.
Sydney: Rachel I hope that you enjoyed that sneak preview into your future also - the pink eye, the vomiting, the sloth
Lauren: On a sloth. On a hairy sloth
Sydney: Well, it's got pretty long hair too. I've seen pictures of Sloffo
Lauren: it’s long, it’s matted and gross.
Sydney: It's a furry…if you were to pick the lovie for your child, it’s not the first choice. You can just see this thing going into the washing machine, it’s not good. You wanna pick something with very little hair and accoutrement, and you wanna buy three of them
Lauren: I bought those little blankets that had the stuffed heads on them little, and I bought the set that came with five.
Sydney: Oh yeah. Smart. Yeah. Yeah. Smart, smart
Lauren: She didn't want those. She wants the one.
Sydney: Of course not. No. They never want the thing that you picked. They pick the most random thing, that's ugly, that’s not cute, it’s hard to wash, it’s gonna get disgusting. Kids are the best!
All right. Well, that's great. I think that there are a few people that came up in these stories as they are - no conference story happens in a vacuum, most fun things happen with our pals - I would love to hear from you Rachel, of all of the many people that you have worked with: clients, coworkers, maybe even people who have been your consultant. Who are the top two or three people that you would love to work with again?
Rachel: Ooh. See, I could name probably 50 plus people that I would be super psyched to work with again.
Lauren: Go for it. Just don't, can't take too long.
Rachel: I'll spare you all from my scroll of names, but honestly, thinking back through my career and my time doing marketing ops, specifically Marketo and Salesforce stuff, the people that I would say taught me the most and that I got the most out of the working relationship, were actually clients when I worked at Digital Pi, because you just never know what they're gonna throw at you and the type of work that you're doing when you're consulting. People don't come to you, at least in my experience, they weren't coming to me like can you help me figure out to change the font? Right? They're like, I have this cool thing I wanna figure out how to do. And so we would work through it together and throwing some names out there and I am definitely missing people, but Allison and Michael from Freeman, and Jonathan and Jennifer and Carmen from OSI Soft, I remember that those two groups threw some of the most exciting projects at me, I would absolutely work with them again.
Sydney: What was it? What'd you build and what was so great about them?
Rachel: I think for the Freeman side, one of the biggest things that I loved doing was, we did this huge analytics overhaul, and you all know me - I love the data! It was a fun time. We rebuilt a lot of stuff just to have the data come through and lots of iterations of a lifecycle, which kind of sounds like hell for some people, to be honest. But for me it was great. And OSI was my first migration, we just did Marketo to Marketo, but it was really fun.
Sydney: never forget your first
Rachel: Nope, it sticks with you.
Sydney: Okay. That's great. Love it. I love it. All right, next segment. This is something that we do with all of our guests. Now we're gonna do it with you and then say that we do it with all of our guests. But I don't know if you have ever heard the present buying thing for kids. That's something you want, something you need, something to wear, something to read. You know, only buy them four Christmas presents. I try to do that and then I buy my kids 55 Christmas presents each cause I'm psychotic and I get got by every Instagram ad of all time. But I’d love to hear from you: something you want. Could be anything. Could be for yourself. It could be for Maisie. It should be something for you though. And it can be a thing or a concept. Anything. Something you need, something you are wearing. Maybe not literally in this moment, unless that's relevant, but just a thing that you like to wear right now and something you're reading.
Rachel: Yeah. I could probably answer a lot of those with the same answer, but I'll come up with some different ones. Unique solutions.
Sydney: Love it. Look at those skills. Transferrable
Lauren: Look at this. Yeah, look at us.
Rachel: Okay, well let's be real. One of the things that I want that I'm trying to decide which one is the car seat that we have, we didn't measure it and so it fits in the car, but when we go places, it is not a fun drive. We have one car, we're one car house, so you know, we'll be getting a new car this year. I'm putting that under the want because technically we have one that works and that's that.
Sydney: What kind of car do you want? What are you gonna get?
Rachel: I wanna full size SUV. So the reason we don't have a new one yet is I want a full size and my husband wants a mid-size because rightly so, he cares about the environment. I think that's great. I care about leg room, so we'll see how this goes.
Lauren: You know what? I also care about the environment, but some things when you become a parent, you just have to be like for the environment and for the future I birthed this child, they will take care of someone one day and I'm so sorry, but I need a bigger car. What? I mean, I could be worse! I could buy three cars for the three bodies in my house, but I'm not going to, I'm just gonna have one. And you already are only a one car household. That's amazing!
Sydney: That's great. You've done your time, you've done your time. Lauren and I have been in a low stakes argument for a few weeks now about the environment and what is worse. Flying on a private plane or ordering things from Shein?
Rachel: Oh yeah,
Sydney: because Lauren's husband made some reference to flying on a private plane and I said no we don't do that it's bad for the environment. And then I bought an outfit for the Taylor Swift concert from whatever that website is called, knowing that I'm gonna wear it once and throw it away. I did not wanna spend more than $25 on all three pieces of the outfit. So, who's worse for the environment? I still think flying private is.
Lauren: I'm saying no to both of them. I say you are both bad.
Sydney: it's best to do neither. It's definitely best to do neither
Rachel: agree.
Sydney: Definitely best to do neither. Okay. Rachel, something you need?
Rachel: yes. I need a massage, and thank you for asking, because I'm gonna go get one now.
Sydney: Good for you! Hell yeah! You definitely need it, you're hunching over breastfeeding all the time. You definitely need a massage monthly subscription.
Rachel: Absolutely. Is that a thing?
Lauren: unless you have ADHD, then don’t do that
Sydney: Don’t forget to cancel. Okay. Wait, can I tell you one story about this? So do you have Massage Envy where you are?
Rachel: Mm. No.
Sydney: It's like a dry bar, but massages. You can have a subscription where you can go a certain number of times a month and get a massage. And one of my friends signed up for it one time and then immediately regretted it and then got her doctor to write a note that she needed to get out of her subs. Massage Envy wouldn't let her cancel it unless she moved more than a hundred miles away from any Massage Envy location or something. And she got her doctor to write an oath that said that she had to be allowed to cancel it. And they did.
Rachel: That's awesome.
Sydney: Yeah. So maybe don't do that. They're a little scammy. But you should go regularly. Subscription or no, make yourself a subscription, a personal one. Repeat appointments once a month.
Lauren: I went to a Massage Envy for a head massage once, and they literally played with my hair, literal played with my hair, which was not all bad, but it was just not what I paid for. So be specific.
Rachel: Yeah
Sydney: braiding it and brushing it.
Lauren: No, they're more like doing a little bit of this
Sydney: well.
Lauren: Petting. It was more like petting me, petting my head.
Sydney: What were you expecting in the head massage?
Lauren: Have you had a head massage before? At least what happens when you get your hair shampooed?
Sydney: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I have a dry bar subscription that's my version of Massage Envy, although they're much less scammy and also my mom pays for it, I love you so much mom. And you can get a scalp massage add-on once a month, so I do that once a month, it is very hit or miss.
Lauren: Do they pet you?
Sydney: No, I would say that it's much more painful, yanking. Yeah, that's the bad experiences, fingernails and pulling and I'm like, oh my so glad I paid for this. Hope they don't see my tears, and blood. Yeah. Yeah.
Lauren: All right, Rachel,
Sydney: something to wear?
Rachel: Oh, let's see. I recently splurged and got myself a really nice raincoat. Because I live in the Pacific Northwest now, and I didn't own a raincoat and that was stupid so I bought a bright yellow knee length raincoat and it was my “I gave birth gift to myself” and I love it.
Sydney: Good for you. Your own push present.
Lauren: Do you mind sharing?
Rachel: It's Pendleton.
Sydney: Ooh, cute. Isn't this a British brand?
Lauren: that’s Paddington
Sydney: No, I thought Pendleton was British too. Maybe I am thinking of Paddington. Okay, great. Where do you live? Are you in Oregon or are you in Washington?
Rachel: I'm in Washington, but I'm just across the river from Portland.
Sydney: Okay. That's what I thought. I associate you with Portland, but then somewhere in my brain I thought maybe you lived in Washington and that is exactly why because that is the situation. Okay. Something to wear! No children's books allowed.
Lauren: No. She wears Pendleton.
Sydney: Oh, I'm sorry! Something to read! No children's books allowed.
Lauren: No Paddington!
Sydney: No Paddington!
Rachel: Let's see. Well, okay, I've got two answers for this because obviously I talked about my baby constantly and I'm breaking that rule, but I bought a book called Computer Engineering for Babies a month ago, and I can teach my baby on and off and not, and it's awesome. Random plug. I'm currently re-reading the Lord of the Rings because I had read so many self-help instructional parenting books from the past year, I wanted something that would not make me think very hard and I've read LOTR a few times and so I thought, you know, let's revisit. And I'm not very far into it yet. I'm halfway through the first one, but all the feels are coming right back.
Lauren: It’s such a good idea.
Rachel: Yeah.
Sydney: I also have something from that. I think I know what book series you're talking about for babies. I have Bayesian Probability for Babies
Rachel: That's amazing.
Sydney: Mm-hmm. My husband's a data scientist, so I got my son Bayesian probability for babies when he was little and they do something about probability based on how many M&Ms are in a cookie. And he just calls it the cookie book and he really just wants to look at the pictures, because that’s my child!
Rachel: I love that.
Sydney: All right. Our last segment is called PFB on the Streets
Lauren: Rachel, have you, are you familiar with Billy on the streets? Billy Eichner.
Rachel: Okay. Yeah. You had to say Billy Eichner, but now that you say his full name
Lauren: So he just runs around New York City, right? And shoves a microphone in people's faces. It's for $20 and just yell something random.
Rachel: I’ve seen the reels. Yeah.
Lauren: Yeah. Yeah. So that's what this is. But you get no money
Sydney: You get no money. I'm sorry. I'm just gonna tell you some things and then you give us your first reaction. You ready? Chat GPT?
Rachel: Oh my gosh. Too many opinions. That is my response
Lauren: It's my opinion.
Sydney: We do not need my opinion. There are too many already.
Rachel: Every time I open the news or Reddit or whatever, anywhere, internet screen on, that's the first thing I see. I'm like, oh my gosh, people calm down. That's my first thought.
Sydney: I love it. I'm a fan. Remote work?
Rachel: Love it. Been doing it since 2017 and have no intention of ever going back.
Lauren: Remote before it was cool
Rachel: Oh yeah. I made the Brady Bunch Zoom comparison years ago, and everyone's like, that's so stupid. And now it's a meme, and I'm just like, I said it first. Thank you.
Sydney: Before it was cool. You heard it here first folks. Business travel?
Rachel: Mixed feelings, I love a good Marketo Summit. You know I'll go. I love face time with the right people and I'm happy to do it. I think pointless travel is stupid and I think everyone agrees with that. It's just your definition of pointless that people, you know, disagree about. But we don't need to get into all of that.
Sydney: Instance migrations.
Rachel: Love it. I love doing migrations now. I love doing it from the outside. I hate doing it at my own company, but if someone's like I need help we're migrating, we're getting a new Salesforce, we need help, yeah, I love that.
Sydney: Love it. LinkedIn?
Lauren: Why do you -hold on, hold on - well, now she's gonna think about LinkedIn instead of answering my question. Oh my gosh. Oh my gosh. Oh my gosh.
Sydney: Go Lauren. Say it.
Lauren: I don't remember. Go LinkedIn.
Rachel: I've been away from LinkedIn for a few months actually, I’m just getting back into it, and my whole professional career, when you have to start building up your LinkedIn presence and all the clichés that come with that. I spent a lot of time working on that when I was earlier in my career and then, this sounds terrible, but I stopped caring as much over the past few years and then really stopped caring once I had my baby. And I've been on LinkedIn more the past couple of weeks. I'm like how, how do things change this much? Chat GPT, that's all I see on LinkedIn too. Anyway. Fine.
Sydney: It hasn't changed that much. It's still just mostly a broetry that no one wants to read, people repeating the same things over and over.
Lauren: It does change though once you're a freelancer, you feel a lot more freedom to just say whatever you want
Sydney: Oh yeah, that’s our LinkedIn brand, fully unhinged
Lauren: No one is gonna fire me
Rachel: So true.
Lauren: It's me.
Sydney: Okay. Last but not least, Instagram?
Rachel: Instagram. Personal use only I guess I would say. And that's not necessarily true because now that I'm thinking about it, it’s not something that I've ever done, but I love scrolling through Instagram for personal use, whereas I would scroll through LinkedIn for professional development, whatever, networking… Also partially because I'm addicted to the reels because I’m a millennial, so there’s that.
Lauren: And you have a baby, you need stuff to keep you
Sydney: you need the Instagram parenting influencers to tell you all the things you’re doing wrong
Rachel: Right! And to keep me awake at night because I can't fall asleep otherwise
Lauren: Mm.
Sydney: Yeah, that's true. Plus, they need to tell you what mattress to buy when Maisie starts inhaling street mattress
Rachel: Oh, yeah right. Like doesn't wanna breathe mattress?
Sydney: Just wanna breathe mattress.
Lauren: I breathe mattress every night, I sleep in my stomach. I love it.
Sydney: See, and Lauren's just fine. She doesn't need a Newton mattress either. All right, well that's it. That's our show, really. Rachel, any final parting thoughts?
Rachel: Just thanks for having me. I like both of you, and it's been too long.
Sydney: We love having you here. This was the best. Also, thanks for bringing your baby. That was the highlight of my day.
Rachel: Thanks for letting me bring her
Lauren: All right. Bye!
