What is it that you do exactly? ft. Mike Rizzo of MarketingOps.com
The man, the myth, the legend.... Mike Rizzo of MarketingOps.com! Join Sydney Mulligan and Lauren Aquilino as they discover how Mike first got into Marketing Operations, HubSpot, and community building. Then, hold on tightly while they move REAL quickly into some Dick's Sporting Goods lore which sends Lauren into a fit of laughter from which she cannot recover. Sydney goes on to share her love of working retail as well.
You'll also here other nonsensical things like:
An infinite loop workflow for babies
What's in the the 7 sealed boxes behind Mike's desk
The custom license plate his wife won't let him have
Why he will likely have to take out additional insurance for MOps-Apalooza. (Spoiler alert: it's me, hi, I'm the problem it's me.)
Podcast Summary
In this podcast, the PFB hosts Lauren Aquilino and Sydney Mulligan are joined by Mike Rizzo, entrepreneur and founder of the marketingops.com community. He is told the only reason he was invited on the podcast was to see if he was funny.
The interview starts with us learning about Mike, how he explains what he does, and how he got into the community building industry. The chat then goes down a domain rabbit hole, where Sydney points out that many people with an entrepreneurial mindset collect domains. It turns out that Mike has a lot more domains than Lauren, and the group reminisce about when the Marketo domain was up for renewal and rescued by Travis Prebble, and how Pretty Funny Business got named Pretty Funny Business due to domain restrictions.
Mike then shares a bit more about how he used domains to get into community work, how he started with Hubspot, as well as his history with Chicks Sporting Goods, bought by Dick’s Sporting Goods, which blows everyone’s minds - so much so that the episode continually refers back to it. We then learn about teenagers Mike and Sydney’s past lives working in retail.
The team then jump around various topics such as CRM migrations, crazy - or in Mike’s case pretty tame - work conference stories, MOPsapaloosa - aka - MOPsypoo, merch, Mike’s wife’s delicious sounding, non-pot, and local only cookie business - Stash!
As always, there are freebies to be had so tune in to learn how to claim your copy of Ann Handley’s latest book, and even a treat or two that Mike has stashed away behind his desk. Mike and Sydney review the results of their various personality tests and discover they are more alike than they imagined. The group discusses the pros and cons of various database and CRM platforms such as Airtable and Hubspot, then Mike shares more details about MOPsapalooza, which will be in Anaheim in November 2023.
Get your copy of Anne Handley’s book
Full Podcast Transcript
Lauren Aquilino: Hello everyone and welcome to Pretty Funny Business. I'm Lauren Aquilino
Sydney Mulligan: I'm Sydney Mulligan
Lauren Aquilino: and today we have with us: Mike Rizzo.
Mike Rizzo: Oh that's me. Hey everybody! There's this weird thing happening where it's making it look like there's audio that's being picked up on the screen but I wasn't talking, so you know, sorry for the static noise
Lauren Aquilino: But you were breathing
Sydney Mulligan: it's just the silent disco headphones, you know it picks up on the party vibe
Mike Rizzo: It does.
Lauren Aquilino: Whatever you're actually listening to under those headphones, we can hear it in case you didn’t know
Mike Rizzo: [makes beatbox sounds]
Lauren Aquilino: man Mike, we are super excited to have you on the podcast. You are a very smart and exciting entrepreneur, founder of marketingops.com, and this is a silly ridiculousness podcast. So we're really happy to have you here and see if you're funny at all?
Mike Rizzo: Am I funny at all?
Lauren Aquilino: we're not sure yet.
Mike Rizzo: I'm pleased to figure out if I'm funny.
Lauren Aquilino: Yeah, that's why you're here. You didn't know but
Sydney Mulligan: I’ll send you a report card later today.
Lauren Aquilino:Yep, but so be it. You probably need no introduction, but do you mind giving us like a little spiel? I mean, I think I told Sydney before that you had just posted an article on LinkedIn called “what is it exactly that you do”? So maybe you can tell us a little bit about yourself and answer that question.
Mike Rizzo: Yeah, I did post that article cause I recently became available having left a W2 sort of full-time role. And so people kept reaching out, like, what is it that you're looking to do? And I think that's a pretty common question for folks in MarTech in general, especially marketing ops. Like, how do you actually describe what the heck you do to people? But in addition to that, because I have this community background - where I've built B2B user communities and customer advisory boards and things like that - and now the Community of practice with the MoPros Community it's sort of like I have this split personality - where I wear multiple hats kind of thing. I have a passion for both. And so I did this article trying to describe “I don't really wanna pick one lane necessarily”. I would very much enjoy marketing ops work, but I also very much enjoy helping people figure out how you do community. And at the end of the day, the answer is: you build something of value and you have to talk to your people, either your clients, your internal team members that you're working with if you're an embedded marketing ops professional, or the community that you wanna build. Just go find them and talk to them and ask questions. But yeah, that's essentially what I do. I've been doing community for four years, maybe a little longer professionally, and then marketing ops for over a decade now.
Lauren Aquilino: So did you thrust yourself into the community world? How'd that start?
Mike Rizzo: No. So I got laid off from an agency about five years ago
Lauren Aquilino: this keeps happening. Maybe it's not them, maybe it's you.
Mike Rizzo: It's very possible. I question it often.
Lauren Aquilino: I don't mean that. I'm just kidding. In the middle of all these layoffs
Mike Rizzo: Is it me? Is it really me? No, to be honest.
Lauren Aquilino: We say it every time.
Mike Rizzo: The two times I've been laid off, honestly the first time I certainly didn't see it coming, but it really wasn't that much of a shock. I took a massive pay cut to go experience the agency world, it was just something I wanted to try. And so I was already priced out of where they wanted me to be, righ, and they were paying me more, but not where they wanted me to be originally. And so it made sense: eventually things got a little tighter and it was like, “Hey, we need to sort of button up”. And you know hindsight's 2020, right? They're all wonderful people, I still interact with many of them. And it was right around then that I was like the MoPros community had been around since 2017. People had been sort of like discovering the Slack community and the blog post that I wrote about it. I had endeavored to create a number of things that, low and behold, were all community oriented. So I created a thing called millenniare.co and it was very much a way to try to tell the success stories of millennials and prove that we're not lazy people, cuz I was tired of hearing that all the time.
Sydney Mulligan: Wait a minute. Wait a minute, Mike, I have to ask you a question. How many domains do you own?
Mike Rizzo: Ooh. I could actively go look that up. I don’t know.
Sydney Mulligan: Okay, Lauren, I want you to look yours up also. And we're gonna see who has more. Lauren has a hobby that I think is, as it turns out, not uncommon for entrepreneurial type people where she has an idea and then she just goes and buys a domain for it.
Mike Rizzo: Yeah
Sydney Mulligan: Not the first person I've met to have this trait
Lauren Aquilino: The WORST thing that could happen would be you decide to actually do this thing and the
Sydney Mulligan: domain is gone.
Lauren Aquilino: It was there and now it’s not!
Sydney Mulligan: You know, that's why our podcast was called Pretty Funny Business because what was it?
Lauren Aquilino: Funny business was taken, of course
Sydney Mulligan: Fine clean fun - whatever it was not available.
Lauren Aquilino: We did find fine clean fun, but then I decided it was gonna be good clean fun. But then I was like, you know what, it's probably not gonna be good, it's probably gonna be just fine. So it was fine clean fun for a while, but then I transitioned it to pretty funny business when you started at Emmie and I wanted it to be a little bit more business focused. Before it was
Sydney Mulligan: Yea but there was something else that it was gonna be, it was just going to be funny business
Lauren Aquilino: I wanted funny business. Yes, I wanted funny business. And then Hover was like, no, it's taken, of course. You know, it's a typical word. But
Sydney Mulligan: pretty funny business, probably more accurate anyway! You only have to be pretty funny. You do have to be pretty though.
Mike Rizzo: I own… Why am I here?
Sydney Mulligan: I don’t know Rizzo, I guess we'll find out.
Lauren Aquilino: you know when you asked if it was a video podcast the reason that it was only sometimes is
Mike Rizzo: Right? It's like, Mike, you put a hat on and you ended up putting your sweatshirt on and you didn't shave. Nice. I have 20 domains currently
Lauren Aquilino: Oh, wow. That definitely beats mine.
Sydney Mulligan: Okay. All right.
Mike Rizzo: Yeah.
Lauren Aquilino: like it's not a problem with domains, I think it's a good thing, but - that's not right. That's not right. Oh. I have seven.
Sydney Mulligan: Seven.
Lauren Aquilino:They're cheap.
Sydney Mulligan: Yeah.
Mike Rizzo: they are cheap. Well, except for marketing ops.com.
Sydney Mulligan: Yeah. That was expensive.
Lauren Aquilino: I have one that is a little more, I have one in my mind that I wanna buy that I'm not gonna say out loud because
Mike Rizzo: Yeah don’t let anybody hear it
Sydney Mulligan: don’t curse i!. Don't let anyone know. Travis Prebble where are you? Please, could you rescue our domain?
Lauren Aquilino: Actually, if Travis probably wants to come and park the domain that I want, I will pay him a low interest upon that.
Mike Rizzo: Lots of fun facts about domains, you can lease the rights to your domains as well.
Sydney Mulligan: Oh?
Mike Rizzo: Of course you can. It makes sense, right?
Sydney Mulligan: it’s a thing you own, so you can lease it to anyone. Yeah.
Mike Rizzo: yeah, the person who owned marketingops.com once leased it to Dave Rigotti, who was at the time working at Bizible
Sydney Mulligan: Airstream?
Mike Rizzo: I think it was when he was at Bizible. They had built one of the first marketing ops communities. It was on the -whatever that community platform is - Mighty Networks!
Sydney Mulligan: Is it Engagio?
Mike Rizzo: I don't know.
Lauren Aquilino: I think he was at all of these places.
Sydney Mulligan: Okay,
Mike Rizzo: I think those are all true, but I'm pretty sure it was it was when he was at Bizible
Lauren Aquilino: They're all true. Yeah.
Mike Rizzo: And so I was like, “Hey whatever happened to the domain?” And and he goes, “oh yeah this person owns it”. And so I reached out to that person
Sydney Mulligan: Who is this person? Is this just a random person?
Mike Rizzo: yeah, some random person owns it.
Lauren Aquilino: it was Travis
Sydney Mulligan: Is it Travis? Travis call me!
Mike Rizzo: But I was like, can I buy that? And they were like, sure.
Sydney Mulligan: Mike, you know Travis Prebble, right? Of the Marketo lore. You're a HubSpot guy, so this is not as traumatizing of a moment in time for you, but you know
Lauren Aquilino: Do you know who Travis is?
Sydney Mulligan: Know the yeah, yeah, yeah
Mike Rizzo: the moment you said the Marketo lore, I was like ah!
Sydney Mulligan: Yes. The guy and the Marketo let their domain expire, and Travis Prebble rescued it. And that's it. That's it.
Mike Rizzo: Yeah. It's pretty magical that that happened.
Sydney Mulligan: Magical is one word for it.
Lauren Aquilino: You did not wanna be a consultant that day. Pretty much, at least at that time my clients thought I was Marketo, like it was my fault that they could not log in
Mike Rizzo: ooh
Sydney Mulligan: Oh that's a bummer. Yeah. I wasn't a consultant when that went down
Mike Rizzo: And now Marketo's gone. I mean, literally the domain
Sydney Mulligan: Marketo.com yeah, I think it's gone.
Mike Rizzo: They retired it. I was on this thread with their team, the Adobe team, when they were going back and forth about retiring the domain. I was like, am I supposed to know this information?
Sydney Mulligan: Do you realize I'm still here?
Mike Rizzo: yeah. They were sponsoring our research and so they just happened to be a back-and-forth about some things they were working on. And I was like, oh eh, how do I exit?
Sydney Mulligan: Hi, I'm just gonna
Lauren Aquilino: ear muffs, ear muffs!.
Sydney Mulligan: Archive the email. yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Mike Rizzo: But yeah, so I started millenniare.co. It was a community oriented thing where I wanted to tell the success stories of millennials. I met my now co-founder Dan through that. I only interviewed like four or five people, and then I realized I'm not a journalist, nor do I have any skills whatsoever around pulling this together in some meaningful way. So I was trying to see if I could get someone to help me. And then I had also started yet another one of the domains, a site called productfeedback.io. Sounds exactly like what it was. It was a way for you to provide feedback on products. Since people ask me for that all the time, I was like, there's gotta be a whole group of people out there that would want to get paid for this, right? And this is like prior to the user research.com sort of taking off - kind of. So I was probably starting it right around the same time that that was getting started. There was a lot of traction there, but again, community oriented, right? Like pulling people together around this common theme. And then my jumpstart into community building was when I sort of boomeranged back over to Mavenlink, which is now Kantata. And I went to work for the client success division there. And I helped them build their first community and advisory board program. So yeah, I had been doing all these things community oriented, had always created ideas that were around community, not realizing that that was probably what they were all oriented around, I got an opportunity to do it, and then the rest is history!
Lauren Aquilino: When did you - go ahead Sydney.
Sydney Mulligan: How did you get into HubSpot?
Mike Rizzo: How did I get into HubSpot? I got my start in Ad Tech and so when I was doing ad trafficking, I learned HTML which gave me the confidence to do very basic stuff - rudimentary - like put the ad onto the ad server. And I was like “oh, this isn't that hard” and so I went and learned how to build emails and websites and code them, or what have you. And that progressed into - I a relationship with this individual who used to come - I worked in retail for like seven years when I was a kid, like 15.5 to 22.
Lauren Aquilino: Sydney too.
Sydney Mulligan: all of this very similar. Go ahead
Mike Rizzo: That's funny. So I worked on the West Coast there was Chicks Sporting Goods
Sydney Mulligan: Oh, wait a minute.
Mike Rizzo: Which then got bought out by Dick's Sporting Goods.
Lauren Aquilino: No! No! No! No! No!
Mike Rizzo: You can go look it up
Lauren Aquilino: I didn't know that we were gonna have this conversation today
Sydney Mulligan: I was not prepared to receive this information. It was literally chicks and dicks.
Lauren Aquilino: No! No! No!
Mike Rizzo: Yeah. Yeah. That was a thing. Yeah. So Jim Chick
Lauren Aquilino: Is chicksanddickssporting goods.com available?
Mike Rizzo: Yeah. So
Sydney Mulligan: chicks and dicks Sporting …
Lauren Aquilino: how do you spell chicks? C-H-I-X?
Mike Rizzo: Nope, it was C-H-I-C-K
Lauren Aquilino: No. I dunno why this isn't your entire platform, Mike. Mike!
Sydney Mulligan: Lauren, I just want you to know that ChicksandDicksSportinggoods.com is available right now, but not if Mike gets to it first.
Mike Rizzo: maybe we can like start a petition to bring back chicks.
Lauren Aquilino: Chicksanddickssportinggoods.com is $7.99 or less
Sydney Mulligan: Does the Dick’s Sporting Goods marketing team know about this history in the Dick’s Sporting Goods lore?
Mike Rizzo: I'm positive they do.
Sydney Mulligan: How is this not something they do on April Fool's Day every year?
Lauren Aquilino: How is this the first time I'm hearing about this?
Mike Rizzo: So Chicks Sporting Goods is a retailer in SoCal only and they had 15 stores. And I worked there for a long time
Sydney Mulligan: you worked there for seven and a half years, is that what you said?
Mike Rizzo: I think it was like seven and a half or six and a half. I forget.
Sydney Mulligan: Interesting. I would love to know more about your retail experience and then I'll tell you about mine. Did you love it? Why did you work there so long? Why were you at the same store the whole time?
Mike Rizzo: I was. I worked in Tuston, California, in a branch in retail there
Sydney Mulligan: Did you move up?
Mike Rizzo: Yes and no. I mean, I started in like backstock and then eventually made my way into team sales.
Sydney Mulligan: Yeah, yeah, yeah. All right.
Mike Rizzo: I was outfitting all the little leagues and all the high school teams with all their equipment, like that kind of stuff. I used to do all the Letterman's jackets
Sydney Mulligan: Wow, adorable!
Mike Rizzo: I did a lot of heat press, lots of names went on jerseys. I had lots of angry parents yelling at me.
Sydney Mulligan: because you spelled their kid's name wrong?
Mike Rizzo: No, because their jerseys weren't ready before opening day or whatever, because we had 20,000 jerseys to do between four of us.
Sydney Mulligan: Fascinating! I worked retail for five years, but I worked in an outlet mall that was next to a NASCAR speedway, and I worked at Airy, which is the American Eagle - it was a brand new brand when I started there - but it was like American Eagle: bras and underwear and some PJ's.
Lauren Aquilino: At the time it was underpants
Sydney Mulligan: It was really just underwear and pajamas, now it's clothes - it's like another brand. I still shop there, I love it! But yes, I worked there for about six years and it was great. I met my best friend there - we're still best friends! I loved it. I loved talking to people all the time. I did not start in backstock or they would've fired me immediately, that's not really my skillset. But they could put me on the floor and I would go talk to absolutely anyone. I started working there when I was 16 and I stayed through college until the very end, when I had to go get a grown-up job. And that was a bummer. But there are days that I kind of long for the simplicity of retail - and I know it's not actually true because my best friend that I met when I worked at that store still works retail and she's like “no man it’s bad, I wanna do what you do” - but there are times where I think, I had a lot of fun. I really enjoyed it. I loved talking to people.
Mike Rizzo: it’s such a straightforward thing
Sydney Mulligan: Yeah. You know, you're just like always moving around and I love shopping and I love clothes
Mike Rizzo: my feet would get tired.
Sydney Mulligan: Yeah
Mike Rizzo: I don't really wanna walk around anymore. I'll be honest.
Lauren Aquilino: No more walking!
Sydney Mulligan: But then you don’t have to fit your workout in cuz you're just walking around
Mike Rizzo: I got my steps in today!
Sydney Mulligan: you got your steps in. Yeah. Anyway!
Mike Rizzo: 100,000 of them!
Sydney Mulligan: Okay so I also started in retail and I also found my way to marketing ops via needing to learn HTML for something, and then that led me to … it was at a summer internship! I kept having to rely on someone else to do this HTML work for me. And I was like, “this is stupid, I'm just gonna learn how to do this”. And then I went back to school and I added a computer science major as a second major. And then I somehow made my way into email marketing and then Marketo fell in my lap, so there it is.
Mike Rizzo: It was very similar for me. One of the clients that was regular for the team business, like I did his son's jacket, all this stuff. He had a - you know at the time SaaS was still not real. It wasn't even a thing, right? It was like on-prem is pretty much the only way software was done. But they were revitalizing this medical bill review software company. And I didn't know that they were really strapped, but they brought me on and they said “Hey, we need someone to figure out how to send a newsletter”. And I was like: “oh great”, so that was a fun one cause it was like my very first foray into newsletter marketing creation stuff. I literally moved them cuz they were like bootstrapping their business back to life. I was like, why are you paying for Salesforce? Like, you don't have the budget for this right now. So like, we moved from Salesforce to Sugar, which is like, would anybody do that?
Sydney Mulligan: Oh, saucy! Salesforce to Sugar.
Mike Rizzo: yeah. So we did that and then we went and got ourselves Pardot, right?
Sydney Mulligan: Yikes.
Mike Rizzo: three months later, Salesforce was like - hey we're gonna buy Pardot.
Sydney Mulligan: oh my God.
Mike Rizzo: I was like, ugh. I literally migrated from Salesforce to Sugar, got onto Pardot, and then I found out that cuz they're not gonna support the CRM
Sydney Mulligan: No.
Mike Rizzo: So I went, I went the other way. I was like, okay, we're gonna go get Act-on.
Sydney Mulligan: Ah, okay. All right. Abandon Pardot.
Mike Rizzo: We did that,
Sydney Mulligan: Interesting.
Mike Rizzo: and then they're back on Salesforce now. I'm positive
Sydney Mulligan: I started on Exact Target also right when Salesforce acquired them, and then my boss was like, I hate Salesforce and now they're charging me too much money for this. I heard about this thing called Marketo. Maybe we should buy that. The rest is history.
Mike Rizzo: Yeah. Well I really fell in love with the inbound methodology at that time. I was like totally sipping the Kool-Aid when it came to sort of, you know, inbound content creation
Sydney Mulligan: Oh, inbound being like HubSpot Inbound.
Lauren Aquilino: Yeah.
Mike Rizzo: Yeah. So I attached myself to that journey I guess
Sydney Mulligan: Nice
Lauren Aquilino: Okay. I think we need to like float here for a little bit too. One of the questions that we like to ask our guests is what's your favorite marketing conference moment? Have you been to Inbound?
Sydney Mulligan: what’s the best, funniest story from a conference or work trip yet? Have you been to HubSpot Inbound? Or you can talk about another conference if you want to. We're talking about Inbound, so…
Mike Rizzo: I've been to Dreamforce, I've been to Inbound
Lauren Aquilino: we just need to know the funniest story or like the most shocking story or we had another guest who just told the most wholesome stories, but they were still pretty good.
Mike Rizzo: The funniest, shocking story about a conference?
Sydney Mulligan: Come on Mike! Are you just going back to your hotel room and going to bed every night?
Mike Rizzo: yeah. I didn't, I don't, yeah. like I'm too busy
Sydney Mulligan: if you’re not going to the parties, nothing crazy's happening.
Lauren Aquilino: did you run into a celebrity?
Mike Rizzo: No, definitely not.
Lauren Aquilino: oh no.
Sydney Mulligan: Did you go to any parties?
Mike Rizzo: you know who I did meet at at Dreamforce on the streets of San Francisco?
Sydney Mulligan: Taylor Swift!
Lauren Aquilino: Here it comes. I'm ready for the story.
Mike Rizzo: Jomar
Lauren Aquilino: Oh yes! Did Jomar have his dog?
Mike Rizzo: He did not have his dog at that time because this was like over 10 years ago, but I was following Jomar because he was working for like Marvel Marketers. I was exploring do I want to go to the agency side? And then I recognized him and I was like, “Hey Jomar, I'm Mike”. And we met and we've been in touch ever since. It's so crazy - in fact, he literally just sent me a message last night cause his book's coming out soon and he was like, look I want you to see the spread that I gave you
Lauren Aquilino: oh, nice.
Mike Rizzo: that's super sweet of you. But he was like, you know you've always been so friendly and nice and all these things. And I was like, “dude, you're incredible”! Like this community in general is incredible.
Lauren Aquilino: Yeah.
Mike Rizzo: does that count as wholesome? I guess that counts as wholesome
Lauren Aquilino: Yes, it's good.
Mike Rizzo: Yeah. So that's, that's my favorite story
Lauren Aquilino: Sydney’s not thrilled, it's not because of Jomar. It's because… I don't know?
Sydney Mulligan: I want something spicier
Lauren Aquilino: cuz you hesitated. Maybe
Mike Rizzo: I really have nothing else!
Lauren Aquilino: I wanted something spicy too!.
Lauren Aquilino: so we are sponsoring and will be attending MOps-Apalooza
Sydney Mulligan: Oh yeah. This is where we're gonna get Mike
Mike Rizzo: You actually said it!
Sydney Mulligan: Yeah, well, MOPsypoo that's just what we call it privately.
Mike Rizzo: I’m surprised you said it
Lauren Aquilino: I'm trying to be kind. This is gonna be public.
Sydney Mulligan: MOps-Apalooza, also known as MOPsypoo.
Mike Rizzo: Yeah.
Lauren Aquilino: also known as, what do you call it internally? MOPsa?
Mike Rizzo: I just call it Mopsa. Yeah. It's easier
Sydney Mulligan: MOPsypoo, so much better!
Mike Rizzo: Yeah.
Lauren Aquilino: Yeah it’s easier, even though it's longer, it's easier.
Sydney Mulligan: harder to type.
Lauren Aquilino: MOPsypoo, harder to type! True. Yes. So maybe we'll have to create, you know, we will lay down the foundation. We will give plenty of opportunity for there to be a great story
Sydney Mulligan: Chicanery. It's gonna be great. Mike, you're gonna come out with us. He looks terrified. This is one of those moments that it should be a video podcast
Lauren Aquilino: I wanted to say that when we signed the contract to do this, there is a line that's like, you will not harm the reputation of marketingops.com. And I was like, well…
Sydney Mulligan: I dunno that we should promise anything!
Lauren Aquilino: what do you mean by reputation? And you said, you guys are fine. I know what we're getting into.
Mike Rizzo: Yeah. Yeah. I did. I knew what we were getting into, but I did just look like, as Sydney said, I had this look on my face. I was like, okay, I need to go back to that site where I bought my insurance and I should probably update it
Sydney Mulligan: increase the insurance. That's a good idea. More insurance!
Mike Rizzo: Needs more insurance.
Lauren Aquilino: we won't actually do the bad thing, but we are enablers.
Sydney Mulligan: Yeah.
Mike Rizzo: Here's the thing, you're gonna show up with shirts that say chicksanddicks.com, find out more.
Sydney Mulligan: I'm just gonna buy chicksanddickssportinggoods.com and have it re-route to EMMIE Co.
Mike Rizzo: Yeah, there you go.
Lauren Aquilino: No. That's the name of our merch shop. I'm sorry.
Sydney Mulligan: Oh my God yes!
Mike Rizzo: Speaking of merch, you guys should go and get yourself some shoes, some MOPsypoo shoes
Lauren Aquilino: Shoes? We haven’t seen them!
Mike Rizzo: Oh come on, what? How is this a thing? Have you not?
Lauren Aquilino: I don't know. We're working on our, we're, I mean, I think this is, we've, it's been a long time coming, but we're working on our own merch right now, that’ll be really fun when it happens. I'm having some executive dysfunction in that area currently, but I am inspired now that I'm going to purchase chicksanddicksportinggoods.com
Sydney Mulligan: Wow.
Lauren Aquilino: and.
Sydney Mulligan: Socks. You know, Lauren has a whole thing about socks.
Lauren Aquilino: I do. I think they're sexist. Those are cool! They're just - I know those are the brand colors, they’re not in my seasonal color palette. I’m a dark autumn
Mike Rizzo: I walked into Starbucks. I wear mine fairly regularly cuz I really like 'em and they're comfortable. But I was walking into Starbucks like two weeks ago and this woman, I don't know, she's probably like, kind of like closer to my age, like maybe forties, I don't know. But she's just like, those are some really fancy shoes. Like, where did you get those? And I was like, oh, I made 'em. And she's like, oh, what's your company called? And I was like, marketingops.com. She's like, I'm sorry, what?
Lauren Aquilino: What is it that you do exactly?
Mike Rizzo: Exactly! So yeah, we also make shoes. As I wear my hat and my swag
Lauren Aquilino: and shoes.
Sydney Mulligan: and shoes.
Mike Rizzo: People love the shoes though. Amber has a pair of the shoes. She works for Shell Gasoline. She’s awesome.
Lauren Aquilino: Who's Amber? I don't think I know Amber
Sydney Mulligan: I don't know Amber.
Lauren Aquilino: Is this your wife?
Mike Rizzo: You would love Amber. No, no just, no. Her name's Amber. She's a member of the community and she works for Shell, and she’s awesome.
Sydney Mulligan: that's cool. I wanna know more about your wife's cookie thing. You know, I would just like to just take him one moment and say that every man that we have had as a guest on the podcast, we have attempted to befriend his wife instead. So I just want you to understand that that's a risk that you're accepting going into this. But we might decide we like her more.
Lauren Aquilino: Sydney is like a baker. Sydney is a baker.
Sydney Mulligan: I am a baker.
Mike Rizzo: Yeah? Well
Lauren Aquilino: Tell us about the cookies!
Mike Rizzo: Yeah, for at least 10 years we've been, maybe it's a little less, but I feel like it's been 10. We've been trying to convince my wife to just like start selling her cookies cuz everybody every time they take a bite of her cookies, they say: these are amazing!
Sydney Mulligan: what kind of cookies are they?
Mike Rizzo: They're just chocolate chip cookies.
Lauren Aquilino: Mmm.
Mike Rizzo: She’s now making others as well
Sydney Mulligan: Are they from Nestlé Toulouse
Mike Rizzo: Ha, no. But they are chocolate chip cookies. She made some that were like white chocolate chips and Oreos the other day
Sydney Mulligan: Mmm.
Mike Rizzo: And then she's done a few other little recipes here and there, but yeah, she's finally like starting to kick it off.
Sydney Mulligan: That's cool.
Mike Rizzo: I helped her come up with some of the branding stuff, which was fun.
Sydney Mulligan: that’s fun.
Mike Rizzo: You wanna know the story? Should I tell the story?
Sydney Mulligan: I do, tell me.
Mike Rizzo: So they're the only cookie that you want to hide away from your spouse or your significant other. That's the tagline essentially. And so we're calling it Stash.
Sydney Mulligan: That’s cute. They also sound like they should be pot cookies, are they pot cookies?
Mike Rizzo: It'll be Stash Bakery. I'm sure they could be. But yeah.
Sydney Mulligan: You’re in in California. That could be a business
Mike Rizzo: All of the ingredients are going to be like Stash-n like the letter n abbreviated. So Stash-n chocolate chips, stash-n Oreos, whatever.
Sydney Mulligan: That's cute. I love this.
Mike Rizzo: I’m excited for her.
Sydney Mulligan: Is she shipping?
Mike Rizzo: I don't know how we would do shipping just yet, so maybe one day.
Sydney Mulligan: Local area only? Partnering with local coffee shops, etc? Does she have a cottage license to bake out of your house?
Mike Rizzo: I have no idea what that means.
Sydney Mulligan: it's the license you have to have to have to sell food that you make in your home.
Mike Rizzo: Oh, we'll see. Look, we learned something new, Honey!
Lauren Aquilino: could be the state of New York.
Sydney Mulligan: Otherwise
Mike Rizzo: cottage cheese license
Sydney Mulligan: it's a state by state thing, but I would guess California, you know, they probably require that.
Mike Rizzo: I don't know. They're like, if they have pot in them, you have to get a license probably
Sydney Mulligan: Definitely, definitely.
Mike Rizzo: No, I'll look into it though.
Sydney Mulligan: Honey!!!!
Lauren Aquilino: Right.
Sydney Mulligan: My husband just got a guitar and now he is is talking about starting up some kids' music classes, so I'm also helping him brand his kids music class
Mike Rizzo: Yeah, you gotta get some insurance for that too.
Sydney Mulligan: Nah, I just do it in the park. We're going under the radar. This is like gorilla marketing where we just show up and say: 10 bucks everyone!
Lauren Aquilino: You kids want some candy?
Sydney Mulligan: come over here.
Mike Rizzo: they're like, we don't have any guitars. It's fine.
Sydney Mulligan: It's fine.
Mike Rizzo: Just come over. I'm just
Lauren Aquilino: We need money. Oh man.
Mike Rizzo: it’s a weird hack to try to get paid for your musicianship on the streets.
Sydney Mulligan: It's trying to spread the word. All you gotta do is book a few birthday parties and this thing comes pretty lucrative.
Lauren Aquilino: So funny. All right, Mike, so one other thing we ask our guests is you know, we have, like you've mentioned, you would know better than anyone that, wait, are you sharing something?
Mike Rizzo: I, I just decided that I would show off the baby onesie that is Baby's first Workflow documented.
Sydney Mulligan: Wow.
Lauren Aquilino: very cute.
Sydney Mulligan: This is an infinite loop.
Mike Rizzo: Yeah, it is. never ends.
Lauren Aquilino: Sydney. This is how you know she's a good consultant. She's like…no.
Sydney Mulligan: No bad Workflow baby. Much to learn.
Lauren Aquilino: This is, she started sweating. Did you see that? She's like, does he know what he did? How do we stop this campaign? Backlog!
Sydney Mulligan: Jep! Jep something is broken!
Mike Rizzo: I mean, that's kinda the point. That's kinda the point. There's no off buttons for babies.
Sydney Mulligan: okay. Well, this is also not a video podcast. So what it says was: cry, drink, bottle, wait five minutes, cry. Which is an infinite loop, but you know, that is an accurate representation of your experience with a newborn baby. Life is an infinite loop, and that is why there's a maternal mental health crisis in this country.
Mike Rizzo: For reals. Sorry, I cut off your next question.
Lauren Aquilino: No, it's fine. I, I knew I was, I was like, is someone else joining? Why are there suddenly four screens
Sydney Mulligan: We have, no one has ever shared their screen in Riverside with us before, but because no one has ever used Riverside before, except for Mike and Mike is in here like, do do do, this is what I do for my podcast. Beep bloop. I'm gonna share my screen. Okay.
Mike Rizzo: I mean, I was was gonna start doing audio clips and like making sound effects
Sydney Mulligan: No one's gonna see it, but I love it.
Lauren Aquilino: like you can do that?
Sydney Mulligan: Wow. Like a radio station where you could make sounds?
Mike Rizzo: There's literally in the bottom right corner, whoever is in the studio right now, look in the bottom right corner and there's like, a little audio effects
Sydney Mulligan: Here's the thing, only Lauren is in the studio and she cannot look at something like that, or we're gonna lose her for the rest of the podcast.
Lauren Aquilino: The day. I'm out for the day.
Sydney Mulligan: Nope. No. Lauren!
Lauren Aquilino: Mike, sorry. I did it.
Sydney Mulligan: What was your question?
Lauren Aquilino: Sorry. The question was gonna be who, this is unrelated, but guess we'll just get right back into it. You know more than anyone that the community, the MOPs community is amazing. That, I don't know if it's because it's such a niche thing and everyone is asking us what it is exactly that we, what we do, but everyone is super supportive and I think that we collect just amazing people along the way as well, that you kind of go back to over and over again. Obviously you are that for Jomar. But are there a couple of people that you would love to work with again that you've worked with before?
Mike Rizzo: It's like all the people who I've ever worked with are like, if I just say no one, are they all gonna be offended or like, what's gonna happen right now? I feel very, like, I feel very non-inclusive.
Lauren Aquilino: Learning a lot about your personality type right now. Say this is like three out of the 300.
Sydney Mulligan: If anyone feels like they were left off of Mike's list then you were and it was a mistake and he meant to include you.
Mike Rizzo: Yeah. I've, I've been a team of one on marketing ops always. So, when I name other folks that I've enjoyed working with, it's often in, you know, other marketing sort of functional areas, demand gen or what have you. I totally loved working for my friend Tony. Like, I helped, I helped her get hired at Mavenlink or whatever. I told her about the company, and she eventually got hired there. And I really enjoyed working with her. Gosh, I don't know. I've adored working with the CS team. Sabina Pons, she currently runs as a partner of Growth Molecules, so they do client success consulting now. But working for her as a leader was absolutely phenomenal. John Reese was really helpful. He was our VP of Marketing and really helped me understand what it might take to build a B2B marketing team. Since, you know, I wasn't on too many larger teams, it was nice to get that lay of the land from him. So I'd say those are three folks that I really, really enjoyed working with.
Lauren Aquilino: Awesome. Congratulations
Sydney Mulligan: To those of you who made the cut,
Lauren Aquilino: You'll be getting a copy of Ann Handley's latest book!
Sydney Mulligan: If you heard your name on Mike's list, and please email us lauren@emmieco.com with your address and mention this podcast and you will receive a copy of Anne Handley's latest book. We have attempted to give these books away. This is the third time. I just want everyone to know none of them have been claimed, although if you have previously reached out and requested a copy of Anne Handley's book and have not heard back, Lauren does have 26,000 unread emails in her inbox. If that is the case, please email sydney@emmieco.com with your address and I will apologize to you and make Lauren mail you your book.
Lauren Aquilino: And every time we bring this up, I have to say this is no fault of Ann's.
Sydney Mulligan: Ann we love you.
Lauren Aquilino: Ann is a lovely human.
Sydney Mulligan: The book is fantastic.
Lauren Aquilino: It is fantastic. And the whole reason that we have them is because I tried to buy three and Amazon sent me six, and it's fine. I am currently trying to give away three copies for free at no shipping.
Sydney Mulligan: We will pay your shipping. Mike, do you have some books to give away?
Mike Rizzo: Yeah, I do too. Weirdly enough.
Sydney Mulligan: If you, wait, wait. wait. This is great. If you were on Mike's list, you qualify for a copy of Ann Handley's book. If you were not on Mike's list and you feel wronged, please email mike@emmieco.com with your address and he will mail you a copy of this book. What is it, Mike?
Mike Rizzo: It is From Backroom to Boardroom by Dr. Debbie Qaqish.
Sydney Mulligan: Tell us more about this book.
Mike Rizzo: I don't know. It's all about earning your seat at the table.
Sydney Mulligan: Tell us more about this book that is not in the words on the cover.
Mike Rizzo: But I'm reading it to you right now.
Sydney Mulligan: Why do you have 60 copies of this book?
Lauren Aquilino: Why do you have an unopened box behind you?
Mike Rizzo: I have, I have not just one. I have oh my God, two, four… I have seven of these unopened boxes
Sydney Mulligan: Why??
Mike Rizzo: With these books
Sydney Mulligan: Space in Southern California must not come at the same premium as it does in New York City.
Mike Rizzo: Yeah, they're all in my closet.
Lauren Aquilino: Are we just not reading? Is this a generational thing?
Mike Rizzo: These books because I was going to give them to all the new members that signed up to marketingops.com as a member gift.
Sydney Mulligan: And then?
Mike Rizzo: And, you know, the incentive wasn't incentivizing, I guess.
Lauren Aquilino: You have had no new members?
Mike Rizzo: No, we do have people signed up still. It's just I took the like campaign down. Because I didn't wanna leave it up for like, for like huge, like months at a time. But I think I'll bring 'em to MOPsa and we'll help give 'em away there.
Sydney Mulligan: What you should do on the keynote stage. Just stand and then throw the books out into the crowd.
Lauren Aquilino: Heads up
Sydney Mulligan: Well you said you were gonna increase the insurance.
Mike Rizzo: Oh, right. Yeah, we're fine. We're fine. Yeah.
Lauren Aquilino: This is one of those ideas that you have to be wary of.
Mike Rizzo: Yeah,
Lauren Aquilino: Yay, yikes,
Mike Rizzo: Let's not do that. So anyway…
Sydney Mulligan: if we make it to MOPsa and we still have these three copies of Ann Handley's book, you can find them.
Lauren Aquilino: Three people are getting hit in the head with them,
Mike Rizzo: I'm pretty sure Ann suggested that she wanted to come to MOPsa.
Sydney Mulligan: And if we make it to MOps-Apalooza and none of you jokers have claimed these books yet, then Ann will autograph them because Mike has just guaranteed us that she will be there and willing to autograph the books.
Mike Rizzo: No guarantees. I said I hope.
Lauren Aquilino: And then I'm taking them back and keeping them.
Sydney Mulligan: We’re not even gonna give them away at that point.
Lauren Aquilino: No, they're mine.
Sydney Mulligan: We'll display them proudly.
Lauren Aquilino: Exactly. Oh boy. Alright. What else do we need to do here.
Mike Rizzo: This is a very informative show. I think if anybody had to take anything away from this episode, it's that you can buy lots of domains and do nothing with them.
Sydney Mulligan: And you can buy lots of books and do nothing with him. Can't even give him away.
Lauren Aquilino: Millennieres.com should know that although millennials have been successful, we are not reading as much as anyone thinks we are. And the millennials that are trying to promote reading are getting it wrong too.
Sydney Mulligan: And that brings us to our next segment–
Lauren Aquilino: Wait, wait. I'm very sorry. I'm very sorry. I wanted to say that while you two, while we were, while you two were talking about retail, I don't know if you noticed, and I forgot about this, I meant to tell you before, but I was gone because I could not collect myself after the chicks and dicks situation. It was one of those things where like, I'm better, I'm better. And then I just thought about it again and I was not, and so I didn't want to distract. I just put myself on mute and went away. And then I bought chicksanddickssportinggoods.com.
Sydney Mulligan: No you didn't. Are you serious? Oh my God. Okay. Here's what we're gonna do. Here's what we're gonna do [laughter] Here's what we're gonna do. I'm gonna set up chicksanddickssportinggoods.com to redirect to a page on the EMMIE website that has a form. And if you go to chicksanddickssportinggoods.com and fill out this form, you will get a copy of Ann Handley's book.
Mike Rizzo: I was just gonna say, is this where it's going?
Lauren Aquilino: This totally is where it's going.
Sydney Mulligan: Then we'll know if Lauren's inbox is really the culprit.
Lauren Aquilino: New bit, new bit.
Sydney Mulligan: Okay. Anyway since none of us are reading, let's talk about what you wanna read. This segment is called something you want, something you need something to wear, something to read, something that you, Mike, having also having young children may be familiar with as a gift giving philosophy for whatever birthdays, the holidays, whatever.
Are you in millennial parent Instagram? Yeah. Okay.
Mike Rizzo: I don't Instagram, but you know. That's fine.
Sydney Mulligan: Something you want can be, anything, can be like a thing or not a thing. Something you need, something to wear, something to read. I am going to put some guidelines on here for you, which is that you cannot wear any merch that you have created and you cannot read Anne Handley's book or the 60 books that you have in that box behind your desk.
Mike Rizzo: Wait, so I have to, like I have to read it?
Sydney Mulligan: Yeah, you were picking, this is what you want. Something you want, something you need, something to wear and something to read.
Lauren Aquilino: Yeah, a recommendation of what to wear. What do you like, what would you recommend to someone
Sydney Mulligan: Or for yourself. What do you wanna read? What are you reading? What are you wearing?
Lauren Aquilino: Just to get to know you
Mike Rizzo: Okay. So something I want. I wanted to put a vanity plate on my car that says marketing ops on it, cuz I'm obsessed and my wife won't let me, won't let me get the one that I want.
Sydney Mulligan: How much does it cost?
Lauren Aquilino: Why?
Mike Rizzo: Because I wanna do the black colored one. And she's like, that's ugly. And I was like, man, it's not even worth it then.
Sydney Mulligan: Hmm
Lauren Aquilino: Sorry.
Mike Rizzo: I kind of agree though. I get it. It is a little, it's like black and yellow. It's like, yeah, it's not, it's not great.
Sydney Mulligan: You’d look like a taxi.
Mike Rizzo: Yeah, marketing ops, taxi, hop on in. We're going to automation land.
Sydney Mulligan: It could be like the Cash Cab, but instead of giving away money, you can give away some of those books from the box behind your desk.
Mike Rizzo: That's what we could do. Or I could give away advice on how to build infinite loop workflows.
Lauren Aquilino: Next!
Mike Rizzo: Something you need? I need, I don't know. I need more time. There's not enough time.
Sydney Mulligan: That’s what our last guest said too. It's kind of sad.
Mike Rizzo: Really? Oh, well I'm super busy, so I feel that last guest’s pain, you know, especially with little ones. Just need more time.
Sydney Mulligan: Yeah, just need more time
Mike Rizzo: Something to wear. You said I can't even wear my merch. Like. That's crazy.
Sydney Mulligan: I just feel like we've already made many references to you wearing your merch, so I want some fresh content.
Lauren Aquilino: Okay well the audience. You're also like wearing, you have a [marketingops.com] hat on.
Sydney Mulligan: Mm-hmm and you have the wall thing behind you and you're wearing your shoes and your hoodie. Oh, okay. Is your hoodie marketingops.com?
Mike Rizzo: This hoodie fun fact I got when I was like 19.
Sydney Mulligan: Wow.
Lauren Aquilino: That is something.
Sydney Mulligan: Did you get it from Chicks and Dicks Sporting Goods?
Mike Rizzo: I got it from Quicksilver over in Laguna Beach. You know where that show was filmed? Yeah.
Sydney Mulligan: Yeah, the show, Laguna Beach?
Mike Rizzo: Right. That's why. Yeah. Right. Something to wear. I would say I actually, I literally pretty much only have, Either like completely plain tees to wear, which is fine. Or like, Swag from like, like you name it, like Mad Kudu, Mavenlink.
Sydney Mulligan: What extremely California white male tech bro energy you have.
Lauren Aquilino: Mm-hmm. Good for you.
Sydney Mulligan: You gotta know who you are.
Mike Rizzo: I literally just have either shirts that are completely plain or swag from companies, from tech vendors. So send me your swag. Go ahead. I'll wear it.
Sydney Mulligan: Great. Ours is mostly pink, so we'll send it to you.
Mike Rizzo: Have you seen my logo?
Sydney Mulligan: Great.
Mike Rizzo: Something to read. So I think I should probably start reading this after this podcast. It's called The Five Dysfunctions of a Team.
Sydney Mulligan: Wow. Mike, was that a dig at us?
Mike Rizzo: No, I feel like I do need to read this though. It's, it's been recommended to me multiple times and I haven't had the chance.
Lauren Aquilino: I read that as a new manager probably when I was like 24 years old. And what is shocking about this book is you'll read it–
Mike Rizzo: So like last year you read it?
Lauren Aquilino: Right. Thanks Mike. You will immediately be able to place the people you've ever worked with into the different categories that they mentioned. Like you have this type of person on your team, you have this type of person on your team, and you're like, oh my gosh, yes, I do.That is exactly this person to a t.
Mike Rizzo: That's fascinating.
Lauren Aquilino: I mean, I wouldn't read it now.
Sydney Mulligan: Is Mike going to read this book to diagnose us?
Mike Rizzo: I might.
Lauren Aquilino: No, I think it's more like people you work with, like all the time. Like group projects.
Mike Rizzo: I think I took it, yeah. I finally took it off of my about on LinkedIn I used to list like what my personality profile traits were or whatever.
Sydney Mulligan: Oh, tell us.
Lauren Aquilino: We love this.
Sydney Mulligan: Okay. What's your Myers Briggs and what's your Enneagram and what's your Strengths Finder?
Mike Rizzo: Oh my gosh. I have all of them saved. I'm just gonna take me a while to find them.
Lauren Aquilino: Why don't you know them?
Mike Rizzo: Because I don't remember those things at all.
Sydney Mulligan: Spend too much time reading business books and not enough time being self-involved.
Mike Rizzo: No. I read half of a business book and then I say, oh, okay. I get it, and then I stop reading it. That's my, that's my toxic trait.
Lauren Aquilino: I recently started using Blinkist, which has been really interesting. It's audio cliff notes. That's awesome. They're like 20 minutes long and I'm like, you know what? I did something today.
Mike Rizzo: I have that on my thing, same kind of thing on my phone, but I think mine is called Imprint. Yeah, I think it is the same concept though. My Clifton Strengths are analytical, relator, strategic achiever, connectedness.
Lauren Aquilino: I don't know that one. Sydney, do you know that one?
Sydney Mulligan: Yeah, mine's activator, communicator, Woo. Two others.
Mike Rizzo: Nice.
Lauren Aquilino: I didn't take it.
Sydney Mulligan: Good. You gotta pay for it.
Mike Rizzo: My DISC index
Sydney Mulligan: Oh, you did the DISC? I did the DISC too!
Mike Rizzo: Yeah like DISC plus or whatever, and I was a high C
Sydney Mulligan: Ooh, I'm a high D.
Mike Rizzo: Then like completely moderate across the rest, like almost even.
Sydney Mulligan: Mm-hmm. I was like almost completely D and then everything else was almost nothing. D is like dominant, dominating. Something like that.
Mike Rizzo: Yep. It's funny, my adaptive personality is to be a D. Like I adapt to become a driver. But like my natural state is to be very, very cautious, which is why I am a little surprised that I signed that agreement with you so fast. [laughter]
Sydney Mulligan: You were a little stressed,
Lauren Aquilino: These people started a business with each other before they even met.
Sydney Mulligan: True.
Lauren Aquilino: Should I sign this agreement? Why not.
Sydney Mulligan: Why not?
Lauren Aquilino: So far so good.
Mike Rizzo: I forgot this was recorded.
Sydney Mulligan: Okay. Enneagram?
Mike Rizzo: What is it?
Sydney Mulligan: Your Enneagram.
Mike Rizzo: I don't know what that is.
Lauren Aquilino: Alright.
Sydney Mulligan: Okay. Myers Briggs?
Mike Rizzo: I definitely have that somewhere. I just can't find it right now.
Sydney Mulligan: Okay. That's fine.
Lauren Aquilino: Myers Briggs for me was the one that I was like middle of the road for all of them, like introvert and extrovert. So ultimately I'm an ISTP, but P was the only one that I was like 100% p and everything else was just by like one point on.
Sydney Mulligan: I know this is gonna surprise you, but I was 100% E, like 0% introvert, 100% extrovert,
Lauren Aquilino: Talk to me!
Sydney Mulligan: Please. I am so lonely. I'm an, I'm an ESTJ.
Lauren Aquilino: I'm so glad you're a T.
Lauren Aquilino: That’s why this podcast gets mean sometimes, by accident.
Sydney Mulligan: I've probably taken the Myers Briggs a dozen times, and it has always been exactly the same thing.
Mike Rizzo: ESTJ-A.
Sydney Mulligan: Mike, we're the same!
Mike Rizzo: I don't remember what site it was that gave you the little caricatures that you could, so it said that I was like, I was Rob Stark and John D. Rockefeller
Sydney Mulligan: How about that?
Mike Rizzo: I was like, I don't, okay. Like, cool.
Lauren Aquilino: I have so much Googling to do.
Mike Rizzo: Sorry, Rob. Did I say Robs? Yeah. Rob Stark.
Sydney Mulligan: Not Tony Stark.
Mike Rizzo: Definitely not that
Sydney Mulligan: Bummer.
Mike Rizzo: Ostentatious. No.
Lauren Aquilino: Did we do all of them where And read? Yeah, we did
Sydney Mulligan: Yeah we did it. Okay, so now the last segment and then we gotta wrap it up. I gotta go pick up my kids.
Lauren Aquilino: Yep. Okay. So are you familiar with either what we've done on this podcast before or Billy on the Streets, which is Billy Eichner just running around the streets of New York, shoving microphones in people's faces and asking them ridiculous questions. So really how this segment works is that I just drop some word or phrase and you give your immediate, like, gut reaction to what we're saying and we can move on. So don't overthink it. Just give a comment or an opinion and we'll move on. Or we'll interject if you're, you know, if there's a good story there, somebody will ask you about it.
Mike Rizzo: Okay.
Lauren Aquilino: All right, so this segment's called Pretty Funny Business on the Streets, number One LinkedIn.
Mike Rizzo: Ha! Silos.
Sydney Mulligan: Elaborate
Lauren Aquilino: What does that mean?
Mike Rizzo: It creates artificial silos and it makes it really hard for you to move between industry functions.
Lauren Aquilino: Hmm. Puts you in a box.
Mike Rizzo: It is one of the things that I want to tackle, like as an entrepreneur one day, is creating a better career pathing solution. Literally, careerpather.com is something that I own. We're bringing a full circle, folks. Let's go.
Sydney Mulligan: What a callback.
Lauren Aquilino: Boom.
Sydney Mulligan: We talked about domains at the start of this podcast.
Lauren Aquilino: We should do it. Every podcast,
Sydney Mulligan: Yes. This is a new standard interview question. How many domains do you personally own?
Mike Rizzo: Yep.
Lauren Aquilino: I think it says so much about you.
Sydney Mulligan: It really does.
Lauren Aquilino: All right, Mike, Disneyland,
Mike Rizzo:[in Mickey Mouse voice] Oh boy!
Lauren Aquilino: Whoa. Are you or are you not Mickey himself?
Sydney Mulligan: I was not expecting that.
Lauren Aquilino: Me either.
Mike Rizzo: Most people don't, but I can do that.
Sydney Mulligan: Wow.
Lauren Aquilino: Are you a Disney adult?
Mike Rizzo: No, but I've got kids now, so, you know, we're gonna be at Disney a lot more, but it's not my first choice typically, but seeing it through their eyes is a lot more appealing these days.
Sydney Mulligan: How far away do you live from Disneyland?
Mike Rizzo: 30 minutes.
Sydney Mulligan: Oh wow.
Mike Rizzo: That is why MOPsypoo is in Anaheim
Lauren Aquilino: Yeah. So you don't have to ship all those books if you were going to have it somewhere else.
Sydney Mulligan: Throw that in the back of your marketing ops car.
Mike Rizzo: Yep.
Lauren Aquilino: A thousand dollars and ship these books to New York? No, man, we're having it here.
Mike Rizzo: Yep.
Lauren Aquilino: All right, Mike. Purposeful duplicates.
Mike Rizzo: Why?
Lauren Aquilino: Thank you. Correct.
Mike Rizzo: There's so few times that that's a thing.
Lauren Aquilino: All right, I'm gonna give
Mike Rizzo: Is that equally as bad as having a lead object? Like
Lauren Aquilino: Oh, yeah. But you know what? Lead object at least is like standard. And so you have to work hard to like not use it. Purposeful duplicates are a choice, man. That's a choice.
Sydney Mulligan: A bad choice. You had to work hard to make that mistake.
Mike Rizzo: I don't know. Like the water in my house can get scorching hot, but it doesn't mean that I do that. Right? Like, I don't ever turn it to a point where it's gonna burn me. Like, just because the lead–
Lauren Aquilino: No, no, no, no, no. It'd be like, am I using the hot water at all or am I not? Because it's there.
Mike Rizzo: Mm. Maybe.
Lauren Aquilino: Also it's the default object upon integration. You know? Like you gotta deal with it even if you don't want to.
Mike Rizzo: You could, you could just not.
Lauren Aquilino: Just No. Anyway, that's for another day.
Mike Rizzo: I run my biz on HubSpot. No Lead object there!
Lauren Aquilino: Well true. Why don't you just have the one platform?
Sydney Mulligan: We run our whole biz on Airtable. And you know what? You make every single object you want from scratch, baby
Lauren Aquilino: Airtable call us.
Sydney Mulligan: Airtable. Call us. We need sponsorship. Airtable. I just want to be able to turn on my automations.
Mike Rizzo: Airtable. I have lots of credits. Can I give them to them?
Lauren Aquilino: Can you transfer them? You know Mike, do you know what it takes to make a new object in Airtable?
Mike Rizzo: Uhhh no.
Lauren Aquilino: Nothing. New tab.You did it. It is amazing.
Mike Rizzo: Yeah. You know it's pretty easy in HubSpot too, just saying.
Lauren Aquilino: Alright, well, they're not comparable tools. HubSpot, call me anyway. Last thing, I'm gonna let you talk for as long as you want him out, this, but you are pulling together an event for this year. So I'm gonna lay down the word and I want you to go for it. MOps-Apalooza.
Mike Rizzo: Well, most of the Marketo community lost the ability to have speaking opportunities when Summit was taken over. So a lot of those folks came to me and said, is there any chance we could do stuff with you? And I said, well, sure. Like we could try to figure that out. And thus, MOps-Apalooza was born, and of course, it's not gonna be just Marketo focused, it's gonna have an agnostic view of what marketing and revenue operations is all about. I am pulling in speakers from client success operations, sales operations, partner ops, and demand gen functions as well. So you will be able to hear from all kinds of speakers from different backgrounds that you as a marketing operations professional have to interface with. On a hopefully fairly regular basis, cuz that's what makes you an excellent marketing ops professional is when you can actually align all those teams. And so we need to learn about how to do that. We will have keynote speakers like Scott Brinker who will do our opening keynote. So come check that out. I'm really excited about that.
Lauren Aquilino: I wanna know if Scott Brinker has all of the MarTech [landscape] like, I want a tattoo of the map. Does he have like a long–
Sydney Mulligan: A tattoo? He doesn’t have enough skin for that.
Lauren Aquilino: That's what I'm saying, like 10 years worth of marketing technologies just written maybe like in Hebrew, down his back. Japanese.
Mike Rizzo: I can't, I can't get rid of all these.
Lauren Aquilino: This tattoo, but in Japanese characters.
Mike Rizzo: Japanese characters.
Lauren Aquilino: Okay, so tell us like what's the, where are the dates? Who should attend and where can they register?
Mike Rizzo: The dates are November 5th through 8th in Anaheim, California. So for most of us in the US in other parts of the world, it should be pretty nice weather in California to come hang out in November after all the chaos of, you know, Inbound and Dreamforce and all those things. So it'll be a good time. About 400-500 folks. It's right behind Disneyland as I was saying earlier. And yeah, for who should attend. Look, if you are in marketing ops, rev ops in general, or looking to break into it, or you are in a demand gen and you think you want to be more involved in marketing operations, this is definitely a place for you to come and learn from. Literally, like the best in the industry are gonna be there inclusive of these two wonderful humans that are on the show.
Sydney Mulligan: And if you register for MOps-Apalooza and use code PFB at checkout, you'll get a free copy of Anne Handley's book. And when we run out of those, you'll get one of the books Mike has.
Mike Rizzo: That is a lie. You might get my book, the Dr. Debbie book, but you're not gonna get their book. I don't have a code for that.
Sydney Mulligan: If you come find me and Lauren at MOps-Apalooza and tell us that you registered after listening to this podcast, we will give you a copy of Ann Handley's book on the spot, and it will be autographed, maybe by Ann, maybe by us.
Mike Rizzo: Wow. That’s pretty stellar.
Lauren Aquilino: [laughter] Oh man.
Mike Rizzo: Yeah. I'm excited about it. It's gonna be, it's literally the riskiest thing I've ever done in my life in terms of, Business, everything. I'm nervous as all get out. I will probably about pass out by the time I have to say hello to everybody when y'all are there.
Sydney Mulligan: What are you nervous about? Do you want me to call the therapist in and we'll do a separate session or can you just talk about it now?
Mike Rizzo: It's a lot of people to pull together and it's a lot of money, like very transparently, like this is close to a million dollars and we are a bootstrapped organization that doesn’t have that kind of money. So I need the ticket sales and I need the sponsors.
Lauren Aquilino: Taking donations.
Sydney Mulligan: GoFundMe!
Mike Rizzo: Hey, like seriously, because we have such a great community here and like we're pulling together such great content, like we can absolutely pull it off. But you know, we're not a venture backed business. We're not doing this because we had a bank roll. So hear that for what it is and realize, we're really trying to make this a special thing and y'all should be there. We're gonna try to do it every year. The future of it will be really interesting. Should I tell you what I think that might be?
Lauren Aquilino: Yeah. Which domain is this?
Mike Rizzo: Haha, none of them! MOps-Apalooza definitely borrows its name from the Lollapalooza Music Festival, correct? We do think that MOps-Apalooza could actually become a week long festival of micro user conferences so that you can learn marketing ops, but also attend your favorite vendors’ micro user conference over like a half day as salient content.
Sydney Mulligan: Love it.
Lauren Aquilino: I thought you were gonna say music festival.
Mike Rizzo: No.
Sydney Mulligan: Okay, see, here's the problem. Mike has never been to any of the parties or concerts at conferences apparently.
Mike Rizzo: I have, I just don't have any juicy stories. I went to the Sercante one last Dreamforce and they partnered up with somebody else and there was a giant fairy on stilts walking around.
Lauren Aquilino: Boring! Apparently…
Mike Rizzo: I was there!
Sydney Mulligan: Do better! Where’s Fabio?
Lauren Aquilino: Where's the real life sloths?
Sydney Mulligan: Alright, well, I think we gotta I think we gotta wrap it up there. See everyone at MOps-Apalooza. Mike, thank you so much for coming. Lauren is gonna go laugh until she pees her pants about chicksanddickssportinggoods.com, and also the real life sloths that have been guaranteed at MOps-Apalooza.
Mike Rizzo: Wait what?
Lauren Aquilino: I'm just thinking like is Stensul sponsoring? Is Stensul signed up?
Mike Rizzo: Yes,
Sydney Mulligan: Are they gonna bring the sloths?
Mike Rizzo: They will bring the sloths
Lauren Aquilino: But I want a real one.
Sydney Mulligan: Are they gonna bring Fabio?
Mike Rizzo: GNW is gonna bring the lions.
Lauren Aquilino: Are they gonna bring Fabio ?
Mike Rizzo: GNW is bringing lions, Stensul’s bringing sloths, and I don't know who else is bringing what?
Sydney Mulligan: But is Stensul bringing Fabio?
Mike Rizzo: I have no idea.
Lauren Aquilino: Alright. I'll ask. The problem is I have zero contacts at Stensul, so I will be talking to you offline about this Mike.
Sydney Mulligan: Mike, can you put us in touch? We just want to know about Fabio.
Mike Rizzo: I know some people over there.
Lauren Aquilino: We just wanna chat, just wanna sell some sloth merch. Okay. So I just was gonna say thank you Mike for joining us today in this nonsensical fun. Sign up for MOps-Apalooza, I'm excited to be there! It's gonna be the first in-person conference I've been to since 2018, Five and a half years. Yep! I've been lonely since then. So that's that. Good luck out there, little podcast.
Sydney Mulligan: Bye!
Mike Rizzo: Bye.
