[00:00:00] Phil: I've seen companies like spend more time hiring a junior coordinator than they do vetting a 100 K tool per [00:00:06] year, signing up for a two year contract. [00:00:08] Samia: we invest heavily in our tech stack and it costs a lot of money. and so it requires, the same level of rigor and scrutiny as it would hiring, an individual. [00:00:17] In any kind of interview or evaluation of candidates or Martech, you obviously need to ensure that it has the fundamental features and it's able to address the gaps that you're, looking to solve for. [00:00:27] the other piece that's always interesting is hearing, other companies experiences with, that product. [00:00:33] ​Intro [00:01:00] In This Episode --- [00:01:00] Phil: What's up everyone? Today we have the pleasure of sitting down with Samia Ed, director of Growth Marketing at Dropbox. In this episode, we unpack the analogy of treating MarTech like your HR and recruiting efforts, like don't buy the tool until you've scoped the job back. Channel MarTech vendors like your hiring a vp. [00:01:19] MarTech choices are also culture choices. Every tool deserves a performance review and proof of concepts are like take home projects for tools, all that, and a bunch more stuff after a super quick word from two of our awesome partners. [00:01:33] ​ [00:03:46] Phil: Samia, thanks so much for your time today. I'm really excited to chat. [00:03:49] Samia: Thank you so much for having me. I'm excited to be here. [00:03:52] Phil: In our pre-interview chats, you shared a lot of really cool content ideas that we could jump into, but there was one that really jumped out to me and it was [00:03:59] Don’t Buy the Tool Until You’ve Scoped the Job --- [00:03:59] Phil: treat your tech stack like your recruitment and HR efforts. This is the first time that I heard anyone say that and I even Googled it after and I couldn't find, uh, any like articles, uh, uncovering that a lot of people are familiar with the treat your tech stack like a product, have a roadmap, and like engineers, blah, blah, blah. [00:04:17] But this is a really cool angle and there's so many different ways that we can slice up that analogy. [00:04:22] Samia: So maybe start by just like. [00:04:24] Phil: the core analogy, uh, how that kinda came to be. What if every new tool had the same scrutiny as like senior hires? I've seen companies like spend more time hiring a junior coordinator than they do vetting a 100 K tool per year, signing up for a two year contract. Why do you think companies often apply less rigor to six figure MarTech investments than hiring decisions? [00:04:48] Samia: Yeah. And, and it's interesting you picked that analogy 'cause I think there's so many ways that we can kind of dive into it. Um, and I think you, you nailed it. Like we invest heavily in our tech stack and it costs a lot of money. We're committing [00:05:00] to at least a year's worth of contract. Um, and so it requires, I think, in my experience, the same level of rigor and scrutiny as it would hiring, um, an individual. [00:05:09] Maybe it's not as. High care, obviously with humans, you need to have higher care, but it, it does for certainly warrant just as much of a high touch experience, uh, in my opinion. And, you know, the reason why I've kind of formulated that opinion and that analogy is because I think over time and over my years of experience, I've seen how quickly, uh, and rapidly we adopt tech stack and oftentimes it just end up, ends up leading into tech debt. [00:05:33] For a lot of companies, unless you do kind of that upfront due diligence and that, um, you know, really thoughtful, um, intentional approach to investing in your tech stack, I think you're oftentimes setting yourself up for, um, a lot of issues down the line. And so I think that's, that's really where it, it all stems from is having that same level of intentionality, having that same level of rigor in, um, investing in tech stack as you would in your people. [00:05:58] Phil: Totally agree. I think it's like [00:06:00] a, a cool way to think about it. Like we're obviously the, the Humans of MarTech podcast. It's a really cool analogy that's, that's on brand for us. Um, maybe we can shout about job description. So obviously like one of the first things that I. You figure out when you're gonna hire a new person, you have an open rec, you're trying to figure out like what are the roles, responsibilities. I've never really thought of it this way for buying MarTech, but I think it's very similar to creating a job description for an open rec and making a list of like, what are the things that we need to do? What are the use cases that this person or this tool is gonna end up doing? You're thinking through, you know, features and requirements. What process do you think you have that that's similar to like a job description? First coping out the role of new MarTech tools, and how do you avoid this idea of like buying a solution or hiring someone in search of a problem. [00:06:50] Samia: Yeah, that's a really good question. And I think even taking a step back before you get into the official job description and the specific features you wanna get, you almost need to do a bit of a [00:07:00] scoping exercise. And so, you know, using that HR analogy again, I think anytime you wanna create a headcount. [00:07:05] You have to back it up with a business case and justification of why you need that headcount before you can even go through the process of developing a job description and starting kind of your recruitment process. And so similar with MarTech, I think you need to identify the need as part of your scoping exercise. [00:07:23] And so I kind of look at it, um, as like three levels of, uh, three levels of need. You know, you kind of have your operational need, so what is the gap right now that you are trying to address, or what is the gap that you currently have? Um, the second level of need is really the opportunity cost. So what is it that you're not able to achieve because of that gap that you have? [00:07:43] And then the third is, I think, uh, sort of that strategic, uh, impact. So what does this gap, if you're able to fill it, what does this unlock next? How does this level your company up? How does this level your tech stack up? And so really, um, identifying those. Three levels of need and ideally quantifying the [00:08:00] impact of those, you know, three levels of need. [00:08:01] So what is the actual opportunity cost, you know, based on efficiencies or like additional campaigns or like dollars, whatever that looks like for you. What is the strategic quantifiable impact? I think that really rounds out a justification and validation, not just for yourself, but also for. Executives or like decision makers in your companies to say, okay, you know what, this does warrant an investment. [00:08:22] So that to me is like almost a prerequisite step before you even get into the details of like the features and the specs and like scoping out different candidates, um, or technology to really um, assess like what's the best fit for you. [00:08:36] Phil: Yeah, I totally agree. I think that's the right way to do it. But I've been with companies in the past where. the script was flipped a little bit, so like [00:08:45] Your Martech Stack Is a Mess Because Mops Wasn’t in the Room Early --- [00:08:45] Phil: it would come top down or, or bottom up sometimes. So, you know, in the middle of the year or something for an unplanned role, like to your point coming up with like, why are we like hiring for this person? [00:08:58] Why do we have the need for this [00:09:00] person? I think that makes sense. But. Like from a longer term budget, like cycle standpoint, marketing gets handed a new number from the top down next year for budget. Sometimes there's like a bit of back and forth negotiating what that number might be based on new tools that you want to buy. [00:09:15] Or maybe sometimes you get handed a bigger number and you're just like coming up with tools that are gonna renew or not renew. And similar to head count, like sometimes. know, there's discussions about business numbers and objectives, and then there's back and forth. And then to hit those numbers, the marketing team will say like, well, we need two extra head count. [00:09:33] We're kind of making that business case a little bit there too. And [00:09:36] Samia: Yeah. [00:09:37] Phil: is what leads to tech debt sometimes where we get handed as budget and marketing and then we figure out after what are the tools that we want based on that budget versus doing it the other way around, whereas. These are the things we're trying to do next [00:09:53] Samia: Yeah. [00:09:53] Phil: These are the gaps that we have in being able to accomplish that from a person, a people, and a tech standpoint. And this is the [00:10:00] budget that we need to make those goals. Have you been on like both sides of, of that discussion? Do you relate [00:10:05] Samia: Absolutely. Yeah, that's so relatable because I think that is unfortunately how a lot of tech companies operate in a very reactive, um, sort of a manner where, hey, we need, these are our goals. We need, uh, tech or people to make it possible. And you make really quick, um, sort of unthoughtful decisions when you fall into that trap. [00:10:26] Um, and, and so I think when it comes to MarTech specifically, this is why I feel that. MOPS leadership or just like your MOPS team needs to have a seat, but not just a seat, a voice at the table of these strategic conversations. And oftentimes I find that that's the, the team or the marketing org is just not set up that way. [00:10:45] The partnership becomes much more transactional, um, and reactive and like almost service oriented to say that, Hey, MOPS team, we need to execute this. Go help us do it, and then they kind of figure it out rather than having them in be involved as part of the conversation [00:11:00] upfront. And then they can actually guide the team to say, okay, well this is, you know, based on our goals, this is what our current capabilities are and how we can support, this is where we're gapped. [00:11:08] And then they can kind of develop a, a more, um, in well-informed, uh, roadmap for MarTech to support the, the strategic goals. And they can also counter certain things as well if they have that early, um, early voice upfront. And I find that the reason why oftentimes. Mops doesn't have a seat or a voice at the table of these strategic conversations. [00:11:29] It's usually one of two reasons. One, either you don't have a strong MOPS leader in place to really, like, they might have the seat at the table, but they're not actually like. You know, using their voice and really sharing those insights with other senior leaders and cross-functional leaders. Um, and then the other, which is I think the more common reason is your systems and your workflows and your processes are just not set up to provide mops that seat at the table. [00:11:54] It's very much, your processes are very much, Hey, once you have everything figured out. Submit a [00:12:00] brief and then send it over to your MOPS team. And so with that kind of a system in place, you're just not giving your, you know, MOPS teams the opportunity to actually engage in that dialogue and that strategic dialogue and, and really work towards a more unified, um, roadmap and plan for your company. [00:12:17] Phil: Yeah, definitely. It is a topic that comes up a lot with guests on the show. This idea of marketing ops being more strategic and. Making part in those decisions versus being just the execution center, like the ticket center where we just help marketing and sales teams, you know, get campaigns for the door. I think to your point, there's totally an argument for having marketing ops folks having a seat adds strategic discussions, especially budget discussions when those happen frequently throughout the year, especially in the year end cycle. Where we do have discussions about like our metrics are increasing by 30% next year, and we need to do these five new things that we've never done before. We don't know how much these tools are gonna cost to get [00:13:00] us to do that, or how much extra people we're gonna need to do that, but let's just put a number in the budget. Let's see if finance approves it or not, and, and we will just kind of go with it versus having. A marketing ops person scope out this thing that we're trying to do next year. [00:13:13] Someone who has experience potentially doing this in the past or has counterpart or is willing to do the research to figure out from a tooling standpoint, what do we need? Where are the gaps? Where are the people gaps? I think that that, that makes a lot of sense there. Um. [00:13:26] Samia: Yeah. [00:13:27] Phil: I had on that was like, [00:13:28] Build Your Martech Stack Like You’re Hiring a Team --- [00:13:28] Phil: the questions that you would ask during the interview process. [00:13:31] So like we, we've got like, uh, approval for headcount or for new, uh, tech tools next year in the budget, we scoped out the description. We're starting to like chat with vendors. We're doing the shopping stuff. interesting questions do you like to ask during the evaluation process? Um, maybe for employees, but but also for, for MarTech tools that anything that comes to mind. [00:13:54] Samia: Hmm, that's a really good question. I think, you know, it obviously differs heavily for [00:14:00] employees versus, um, more tech. I, you know, can. [00:14:03] Phil: analogy starts to break a bit. [00:14:05] Samia: Yeah, I think, you know, at, at the very core, basic level, you know, in any kind of interview or evaluation of candidates or MarTech, you obviously need to ensure that it has the fundamental features that you're looking, um, and it's able to address the gaps that you're, uh, looking to solve for. [00:14:21] I think, um, the other piece that's always interesting is hearing, um, other companies experiences with, um. With that product. And, and so these aren't necessarily, you know, curated, uh, references or curated customer stories or testimonials. But these are very much like, um, reaching out to people who I know have used this product and having a very, like, honest and frank conversation. [00:14:45] And I think we'll probably get into this a little bit later, um, more, but I really like to, you know, do my own kind of due diligence on the side, even outside of the interview. Um, process to understand how, you know, how this MarTech has landed with other companies who [00:15:00] are in a similar situation or who are facing similar problems or who are looking to, um, grow in similar ways. [00:15:07] Phil: Yeah. One thing that I find similar w with like employees and MarTech in this context is, let's say we, we, we have an open rec and we don't know exactly. If it's better to hire a data person or it's better to hire a technical marketer or it's better to outsource some of those things. 'cause we have outsourced budget and the full-time person we hire is like your traditional marketing generalist. [00:15:32] Like we don't really know what is the right rec to, to kind of post up. And we sometimes, like don't really know all the time, like who are the right people out there for a specific skill. So maybe we'll like post all three postings and then we'll kind of compare people. I, I see that similarly with MarTech too. [00:15:48] Like sometimes we just assume, alright, we want to do real time personalization. We just gotta get a CDP. Like everyone talks about A CDP for that use case. That's just a thing like, we'll, we'll [00:16:00] post an RFE for for A CDP and we'll start like shopping for CDPs. But then there's the other angle of like, what else is there out there that could accomplish the same use case, that could be way cheaper. [00:16:12] That could give us a lot more flexibility to do something later down the line and plug in different tools. And it's only like when you think I. Strategically about like what tool could do this specific use case. And so when you're going to shop there, um, you know, maybe a composable CDP is a better [00:16:30] Samia: Yes. [00:16:30] Phil: being more flexible. And so that, that angle there is, is a bit trickier. But I, I still see the, the analogy kinda [00:16:37] Samia: Yeah, like far too many times I've been involved in recruitment cycles where you're hiring for one particular role, but as the, you know, recruitment cycle progresses and you start to actually talk to candidates, you're like, oh, you know what? It'd be great to increase the scope of this role or evolve the scope based on this person's skills and you know, actually like tackle this problem that we have as well and lump it all together. [00:16:58] And so we face [00:17:00] kind of like similar challenges with. MarTech. I think one thing you have to kind of think about beyond just like the problem you're solving for and the solutions that are out there and the specific features, you almost kind of need to zoom out a little bit as well and really question and challenge yourself. [00:17:15] Like, is this something that compliments the direction, um, that we wanna head into as a company? And you know, we, you know, on the side we talked about a little bit about like maturity and um, versus like complexity of MarTech. I think that's an area that, you know, I'm personally like very wary of the very shiny platforms that promise a lot of like deep functionality. [00:17:36] But if no one on your team has the capacity or resources to handle that, then you kind of have to. Put some breaks on that and maybe, you know, to your point, a more simple flexible solution is actually what's gonna be more impactful for you at this time and at this stage of your company. So you do have to kind of make those trade offs. [00:17:54] Um, and, and those are very, uh, nuanced by each company and each product. Um, and so you [00:18:00] have to kind have that reality check with yourself. [00:18:02] Phil: Yeah, that's such a good point. I, I've often been like. Like the one person marketing ops team at smaller companies and we, we talk about like, oh, what do you think about this tool? We could use it for this and for that. And we already have a stack of like 16 tools that I'm the admin on for all 16 of them. [00:18:19] And yeah, we're just gonna buy this new tool. Phil, what do you think about it? who's gonna own this tool? Like at what point do we say we need more than one person on marketing ops to administer and set up and train people on this tool? Like there's so many things to consider from a people standpoint [00:18:35] Samia: Yes. [00:18:35] Phil: buy that MarTech. Uh, but I totally relate with your point about like, yeah, sometimes we're deep into the discussion process with a candidate and we discover like, all right, like maybe let's tweak the role for this person because. they're a former data engineer. Maybe we're only hiring for like a, a lifecycle person, but this person is hungry for lifecycle activation, but they're also a data engineer. Let's like tweak that role a little bit. I've seen that [00:19:00] so often to kind of justify why a [00:19:02] Samia: Yeah. [00:19:02] Phil: might be better for another one, for a multitude of reasons. [00:19:06] Why You Should Backchannel MarTech Vendors Like You're Hiring a VP --- [00:19:06] Phil: Um. we first talked about this analogy though, one of the first things that jumped to mind, um, was this idea of like backdoor references when we're later in the interview process with a couple of candidates. Um, this like a bit of a, you know, opinionated subject. Some people hate backdoor because it's like incredibly biased. But some people love it and swear by it. Um, I had Chris Golich, the former founder and CEO of Demandbase on the show, and he's hired like a thousand plus people in his career. And I asked him this question, like, what's the one thing you could recommend to people to avoid making hiring mistakes? [00:19:42] And that was his number one recommendation, like doing backdoor references when you're at the later stages with one or two candidates. Reach out to your VC network or like friends of friends who have worked or maybe you know, worked in the same company as that person, knowing that maybe [00:20:00] their experience is highly biased and it's not fully representative of what that person might be offering. If there's like similar stories from person to person about this individual who portrayed themselves really well in the interview process. There's something there to unpack as like yellow flags at the very least. How do you think that applies to MarTech, because I think it's easier said than done to find people in a similar company as yours [00:20:24] Samia: Yeah. [00:20:25] Phil: use cases who have also used that tool, because there's so many tools that do very similar things. What are your thoughts on the backdoor references for for MarTech? [00:20:33] Samia: Yeah, I love that question and I think it's so interesting that, you know, that was one of the top, uh, recommendations. 'cause I, I do agree with it somewhat, although I haven't put it to practice in my own recruitment efforts. As much as, you know, maybe it's, it would've been valuable, um, when it happens organically where you kind of like naturally know someone and it just comes up that, oh yes, I'm actually talking to this person, I'm interviewing them for a role. [00:20:57] And then you kind of like get the real gist [00:21:00] that is truthfully like, where you really get to understand how this person operates, what their true weaknesses are, not what their like interview answer weaknesses are. Um, and you really get to the nitty gritty of like. How are they gonna operate when things get chaotic and messy, which in tech, you know, you have to be resilient to all of that. [00:21:19] And so I I do really love that, you know, that that's what he, uh, emphasized. When it comes to MarTech, I think it's, uh, it's similar and I think it's actually easier to do because to your point, you know. Tech is fairly small in the sense like the tech community is fairly small in the sense, and people are very vocal on LinkedIn or just on all these platforms sharing their opinions for free on all of this, um, technology. [00:21:43] And so it's easy to find people in your own network, even who are actively using a particular technology that you're considering or have used it in the past or know someone who's using it. And so, um, having those outreach, um, efforts, I think really does, uh. Pay a lot of, uh, value to your [00:22:00] overall, like, uh, forming your opinion and your decision. [00:22:02] Now, that being said, I think to your point. I definitely am not the type of person who's gonna let one opinion sway my decision completely. I'm big on like statistical significance and making sure that, you know, my sample is sufficient. But to your point, it does, um, enable you and encourage you to investigate a little bit further. [00:22:20] Like if you hear of a really negative opinion or a negative review, it does um, force you to get a few other sample pieces to, to really validate that or invalidate that. [00:22:31] Phil: I've, I've been in that position, like one of my favorite ways to do that is jump on a Slack community in, in your niche. There's a lot of marketing ops Slack communities out there, and I'll search for this set. ED tool or this like other tool that I'm looking to get back to or references on, and I'll find someone who's posted about that tool or has asked about that tool or maybe they were in that same evaluation process. And then I'll just like call DM those people on the Slack community being like, Hey, I'm thinking of buying this tool. [00:23:00] is my use case. What did you love about it? What did you hate about it? And sometimes people will be upfront and saying like, Hey, we didn't use it for this use case at all, but these are the things that we didn't like. [00:23:11] We ended up ditching it because of this and because of that. And so it's just like more information for you to have throughout the, the process that, is it coming from the salesperson [00:23:21] Samia: Yeah. [00:23:21] Phil: uh, the, the, the solutions architect who is obviously, you know, incentivized to. Tell you that, oh yeah, that feature we don't have right now, but it's on the roadmap. [00:23:31] It's coming super, super soon. And then you chat with this person on Slack and they're like, yeah, they told us the same thing two [00:23:35] Samia: Two years ago. Yeah. [00:23:36] Phil: not there yet. So those, those are things that come out from, from, uh, backdoor, uh, references there. But I. [00:23:43] Why Martech Choices Are Culture Choices --- [00:23:43] Phil: The other thing that's interesting, um, in this analogy that, that I thought of was like the culture fit and the MarTech fit that you have for your team. Um, like culture fit and culture add, uh, for companies. The big part of hiring, obviously, I think the same thing applies for [00:24:00] MarTech. [00:24:00] Samia: Mm-hmm. [00:24:01] Phil: A few folks have said this on the show too, that they think that teams are a strong representation of their tech stacks and like, not to diss the older legacy MarTech tools, but a lot of folks I look up to eventually move on to a company that is playing or like purchasing the leading tools or, you know, innovating and trying market leading solutions as opposed to just like. Staying with an old school package solution all in one. Like yeah, there's no AI features on this tool yet, but you know, they have it on the roadmap for three or four years down the road. And I don't really care about the ui. Like DUI is okay, even though it's not changed in like 10 years. Um, [00:24:40] Samia: But [00:24:40] Phil: to ask you, [00:24:42] Samia: how. [00:24:42] Phil: think about culture fit when it comes to evaluating tools? Are you looking for something that fits your existing workflows or one that might be like pushing you to level up and think about things a bit differently? [00:24:53] Samia: Yeah, that's a really good question. I think when it comes to fit in general and like, I guess, yeah, culture [00:25:00] fit as well. I think there's two levels of like fit when I'm assessing. So one is yes, that culture fit at the organization level, and I do think your tech stacks does a lot about your culture as a company. [00:25:11] You know, are you. Centralize. Are you democratize? Are you flexible? Are you, you know, like what, how do you operate as a company? How do you think as a company, how do you grow or not grow as a company? And so I do think it's important to ensure that, you know, the tech stack that you're adopting is, um, in line with your values and representative of, um. [00:25:32] Your brand and how you wanna be perceived. Um, and then the second level of fit is how this tech stack fits into, or how this technology fits into the rest of your tech stack and the rest of your ecosystem. I think that's also a really important evaluation that, you know, oftentimes when we're just like testing and learning or like experimenting with this technology or that technology, we we're not as like intentional about that. [00:25:53] But when you're actually looking to integrate something into your ecosystem for the long run, you have to think about how it fits in with the rest [00:26:00] of your technology. Is it going to, you know, force you to invest in other technology to like, you know, reverse ETL or to like, just make sure that everything is connecting? [00:26:09] Um, is it gonna like Yeah, force you to have like more of an investment in other technology, uh, rather than just like this one technology that you're thinking about. So you have to kind of think about fit. At both of those levels. The, you know, company culture fit, and then just your like, tech stack ecosystem fit. [00:26:26] And so those are I think, two really important fields. But then one other one that I think often people miss is beyond fit, does this tool create friction? And I think that's, it kind of goes hand in hand with like when you're assessing your tech stack and how it all fits in and, and connects into that. [00:26:43] But you know, really thinking about like, will this tool challenge us in the right ways? Will it force us to raise our operating standard? Or is it just gonna end up becoming a blocker and something that people don't wanna use? And they're like, oh, like we have to like go through this thing and like, you know, fill out this and deal with [00:27:00] that. [00:27:00] Um, so I think finding that sweet spot of like a tool that respects where you are but doesn't. Let you stay there, if that makes sense. You know, like continues to like elevate you and ensures that you're making progress towards, um, the things that you're trying to improve and the problems that you're trying to solve for, but also does it respectfully, [00:27:20] Phil: Yeah, yeah. Such a good point. I think that's why it's important to have. The users, like the end users that are gonna be using this tool as part of the decision making [00:27:28] Samia: yes. [00:27:29] ​ [00:29:20] Phil: You know, martech is lucky enough to be part of that buying committee, and we're deciding, you know, like this new CRM add-on tool that we're adding, that our sales team is gonna be using. We need to have those salespeople in, in those conversations and be part of the demos and evaluate whether they think this is something they see themselves using. And there's like a trade off there too, right? Like there's a whole change management process to things where, you know, at some point you, you can't always have the salesperson or the end user saying like, no, I don't see myself doing that. [00:29:53] Like, my current process is fine. Like. At some point, we do need to change if, like, most people in the room agree that this is [00:30:00] the better way of building things or the better way of doing something. And so, uh, it, it's a bit of a trade off there. But I was thinking of like the devil's advocate on this whole idea that like, um, the, the team is a strong representation of your tech stack. Because as I was saying that, I was like, shit, like this is true for the teams that are the ones empowered to make decisions about the tech stacks. And I feel like those teams are pretty rare. E especially in the companies I've worked at. Like oftentimes the frigging senior management team is the one, like with the final word on MarTech decisions and. the last person that's gonna be using the tool. They're the last person who is well informed about the future of MarTech and what is the right way to do things. I. But they have an investor on the board who also uses that tool. And you know what, like if they're using it, we're gonna be using it. [00:30:54] And you spent like months and months of research evaluating and then you're down to two tools. You're advocating for one, and then [00:31:00] senior management comes in, they, it's like, ah, you know what? We're, we're gonna use that one. Like, thanks for all the, the blood, sweat and tears you poured into that research. And so I feel like sometimes that's a representation more of leadership. Like the tax stack side of things. 'cause like you join a company and the person in marketing ops is just like, yep, I actually hate this tool. And we've tried moving off of it like seven times and we've been blocked by senior leadership because they're the ones making the call and stuff. [00:31:25] Samia: Yeah. And I think that that's unfortunate, but I think, you know, to kind of take back control, uh, for let's say like a MOPS team or the team that's like directly involved in the tools like Daily, daily daily management, you kind of have to take ownership of providing your leadership with insights on ROI of this tool. [00:31:47] And I think that's a step that's often. Missed. You know, when we think about humans and people like we at our employees, you know, we have performance goals and we have very like, uh, structured, uh, performance [00:32:00] reviews and like rating structures and all of that. And, you know, there's a systemic way for us to be evaluated on a regular basis and have that feedback shared back with leadership to figure out our game plan. [00:32:09] Like, are we staying? Are we going, are we. Growing. Are we getting promoted? You know, whatever that looks like. Are we getting put on a development plan? Um, we don't have that same level of reporting back to leadership when it comes to our tech stack. Oftentimes I've seen that as a huge gap. And so, you know, I think leadership in general, they talk money. [00:32:30] And if you're able to kind of show them that, hey, this is not, this is just burning out money, this is causing a lot of tech debt and, um, it's not really providing any incremental value. I think with that kind of backing, I don't see why you wouldn't be able to persuade them in, in a different direction. [00:32:46] But I think the onus is, uh, oftentimes it has to be on, um, your, you know, marketing operational leaders to provide those insights in a more real time, regular, consistent way. And eventually they'll get the message. [00:32:57] Phil: Yeah, that was actually one of the questions I had [00:33:00] on my list, like [00:33:00] Every Tool Deserves a Performance Review --- [00:33:00] Phil: the topic of, of KPIs, uh, compared to MarTech versus people that we're hiring on the team like this is, I. Somewhat of a similar process in a sense that like you need to think about the ROI of MarTech and, and assigning specific KPIs to new tools. In a sense, sometimes it's easier said than done. Uh, you often have assigned KPIs for new employees and like team wide KPIs, so maybe they're just like fitting into the lifecycle team and they have like product adoption and retention as part of the team wide metric. This is a bit trickier with MarTech though, because you're trying to measure efficiency sometimes, [00:33:36] Samia: Right. [00:33:36] Phil: the effectiveness of, uh, an existing use case. [00:33:40] And so it's easier said than done a lot of times. Like how, have you tackled this? Like when you're building that business case for the job description, for a new MarTech tool and you're trying to assign a KPI to it, because eventually you're gonna get asked that question, all right, you wanna buy a lead routing tool or you wanna buy a reverse detail tool? [00:33:58] What is the ROI of that? And [00:34:00] sometimes I. You know, you can kinda like piece it together and, and estimate like what that ROI, what might be, you [00:34:06] Samia: Yeah. [00:34:07] Phil: data all the time. Like what are some tactics that you've gone around that when you were faced? [00:34:12] Samia: Yeah, you're right. It is a lot trickier and tougher to measure the ROI of MarTech. Um, it's easier said than done, and I think that's why oftentimes, especially MarTech that you've had. As part of your tech stack for like five years or 10 years. No one is looking at those, no one is questioning those anymore. [00:34:30] Um, whereas I think new or MarTech you're a little bit more on top of. Um, but I think there's always sort of proxy metrics that you can start to lean into as early as day one or week one or month one. And so I usually like to start with, um, the very like basic adoption metrics. I would say in the first. [00:34:50] 30 days. And, and 30 days is like a, a very like generalized um, statement. You know, when you have, um, a much more like robust, uh, technology, then obviously 30 days might not be [00:35:00] sufficient to measure even like adoption, but whatever that right threshold is, timeline, um, I think adoption is a good way to start getting a directional sense of one is your team using it, which. [00:35:10] Tells me like, are they finding it useful? Is this like somewhat useful? And then once you have a good, you know, grasp on like, okay, it's, you know, successfully being, it's onboarded, people are using it, the people are activated on it, then you can start to kind of move to, I would say like some of the more performance based metrics. [00:35:29] And those also become. Pretty hard to to measure, I would say. But ultimately you wanna use a metric that you're gonna be able to say, are we better off because of it? And that's a very like blanket vague statement, but better for you could be, um, number of campaigns that you're shipping in. A given month, you know, is it going from like 10 to 30? [00:35:52] Is it going from 10 to 12? Is it just going from 10 to 10? And there's really no change as of yet. And then investigating, okay, why is there no change? Is it [00:36:00] because you know it's still taking time, your cycles are longer, um, your reporting cycles are longer, or whatever that looks like? Or is it truly because this isn't actually moving the needle and continuing to. [00:36:10] Collect that data every month, and I would say by month six, again, loose timeline di differs heavily from, you know, technology to technology. But by month six, you should start to have a more stronger opinion on the prospects of this tool. And I think, you know, the, the biggest mistake I see is. You know, waiting until the end of your contract to then make that evaluation at that time. [00:36:35] So when the account executive reaches out to you and say, Hey, let's renew your contract, and you're like, oh, um, okay. I guess, yeah, we'll, we'll look into it and we'll, we'll see. And you just, you don't have the insights to make an informed decision. And, um, we know how busy every marketing team is and. You kind of make that decision really quickly and say, okay, cool, we'll just renew for another year and then we'll kind of see how it plays out. [00:36:56] Um, but instead, you can go in from like month six to 12, you are [00:37:00] already racking a lot of data and insights and have a real pulse to say, okay, this has actually moved the needle on the problem that we're trying to solve. And then be able to have a more productive conversation with the account executive to discuss the whys and the why nots. [00:37:13] Phil: Yeah, such a great answer. I love the point about having milestones with key dates when you're implementing a new tool and you tie those milestones to the use cases that you originally got approval to, to purchase that thing in the first place. Like there was an ROI picture that you painted to get approval for it in the first place. And that was tied to use cases and what are we actually gonna do with this thing? Send more campaigns or send less campaigns sometimes and better campaigns, more optimized. So sometimes like a segmentation angle or [00:37:45] Samia: Yes. [00:37:46] Phil: there. And so you would tie those milestones to those use cases. We said we were gonna buy this tool to do X and y. By month six, we're gonna have all of our data fully integrated from the warehouse in there. And by like month [00:38:00] eight, we're gonna be sending out at least three optimized campaigns, posts, uh, acquisition, blah, blah, blah. And so like at least you're able to show we purchased this tool, we said we were gonna buy to do X, Y, and Z. Here's proof that we hit these milestones to do X, Y, and Z. And now we're reporting on whether those things are actually like driving revenue or not. But that, that's a whole other. [00:38:22] Samia: Exactly, and it's, it's also like, it's tough because, um, oftentimes you're using that type of a technology for the first time and so you don't necessarily have baselines to say, you know, definitively at the time of scoping that you are gonna increase the quality or like susceptibility or deliverability of your campaigns by X percent. [00:38:43] You know, it's hard to say that. So you're using kind of industry benchmarks or benchmarks that maybe the vendor has provided you with, uh, to. Set those baselines. And so you have to have a little bit of a flexibility in your, um, KPI measurement to say, okay, you know what? We didn't get to this industry [00:39:00] standard, but we, this is the progress we've made and we see this continuing to improve. [00:39:04] We continue to invest or expand in this way. So you have to be a little bit flexible with your approach. Not super rigid, but at the same time having, I think to your point, those milestones and those metrics along the way is really helpful. [00:39:15] Phil: You mentioned adoption metrics also, and, and getting feedback from people earlier, um, than like later in, in the renewal process when you're implementing a, a new tool, and I've done this at a bigger companies, like in smaller companies, it's harder to do 'cause we're in the entry level plan and I. vendors don't offer this like trial period or like a sandboxing period. [00:39:37] But, um, I'm, I'm always a huge advocate of trying to figure out a way to get feedback from team members early on in the process. Even before you're implementing that tool, [00:39:46] Samia: Yeah. [00:39:47] Phil: it in a sandbox environment, you're doing a proof of concept for like 1, 2, 3 months or whatever. It made me think to like, all right, what's the analogy with, uh, hiring someone and like treating MarTech, like, like [00:40:00] your recruiting efforts? And [00:40:01] Proof-of-Concepts Are Take-Home Projects for Tools --- [00:40:01] Phil: I'm curious to get your take on this idea of, of POCs for people. Like, take home projects and, and even like stretching that a bit further into like trials. So I, I had a short stand@wordpress.com at Automatic, and they, they take this like very seriously. So very much like you would purchase MarTech, like you do the evaluation, interviews, whatever, you have a candidate that you wanna hire, but instead of sending them a contract and then seeing like how they're gonna do in the first 30, 60, 90 days. They actually make you go through a take home project that's actually like a trial project, and it's really like I'm opinionated because oftentimes people are applying for these roles and they have a full-time role already. So you're asking this person to spend like 10, 15, 20 hours per week with a second company. [00:40:50] Sometimes it's like there's cross contract obligations there. But anyways, it was a really interesting project and I saw a lot of analogies with like. The right way to build a proof of [00:41:00] concept and, and sandbox when possible with some of your tools, I know it's not always possible with like regulated industries or whatever, but what are your thoughts on like, take home projects and like even like this idea of like having a trial period with someone and getting to know them, getting feedback from people and like, Hey, this person's not a nice, uh, a good fit. [00:41:19] We don't have to go through the whole process of like doing a performance improvement plan in the first like 30, 60 day, 90 year period maybe as like probation. What are your thoughts there? [00:41:27] Samia: Yeah, I, I feel like I'm in the camp of not being a huge fan of these really heavy take home exercises when it comes to people recruitment. Um, and simply because I think I. The, the thing that you're trying to answer is, can they do the job and how effectively can they do the job? And I think, um, when it comes to, you know, people, you can get a lot of that answer through the time commitment that they've already made through various rounds and stages and panels of interviews with you. [00:41:58] Some circumstances can [00:42:00] warrant it like a very technical type of a role, but, um. Generally not a fan. Now that being said, for MarTech, I think this is where my opinion differs a little bit and it, it differs even. It's more nuanced, you know, within the type of MarTech that you're investing in. Um, again, if it's just like experimental and a very like, um, minute part of your overall product and customer experience or your internal employee experience, then maybe doesn't require that level of rigor, you can. [00:42:27] Um, or maybe it's not like as much of a budget commitment either, or like a resource commitment. You can kind of go in with. Not necessarily your blinders, but like you can still kind of take some risks there. Uh, whereas I think if you're investing in technology that's gonna be an integral part of your business, um, and your overall like operating model, um, you do need to kind of take an extra step to do your due diligence. [00:42:48] I'll share an example of this. Um, we did a couple of years ago, this was actually before my time, so can't take credit for this, but I think it's a good example nonetheless, about a topic that I'm very passionate about, which is contact [00:43:00] enrichment. Um, and so. A couple years ago, we were, uh, you know, looking at a few different vendors to integrate into our pipeline that would enrich the leads that are coming in with all the different fields that we wanted to be able to kind of route them effectively and send them on the right personalized, nurture, experience and all that. [00:43:17] And, um, I think the three vendors that we were, uh, you know, uh. Kind of like, uh, validating this with was Clearbit. ZoomInfo, and Demandbase was the third one. I won't share my, um, share like our insights, but essentially what the team did was they provided sort of a sample. List of contacts to the three vendors. [00:43:35] And then, and this is a very, like, scrappy, but like, you know, provides like a bit of a proof of concept. They provided, uh, just a generic list of, uh, contacts and then just observed, um, and analyzed the enrichment rates across the three different platforms to see which one kind of had the winning, um, you know, winning impact for the fields that were most critical for us and our business and our routing rules and all that. [00:43:58] And, um, you know, [00:44:00] ultimately, like the team only had the capacity and the, the budget to integrate one of the three. We couldn't like integrate multiple at that time and so. We ended up picking the one that drove the highest results. And you know, when you look at these, um, a lot of these, uh, solutions on the surface, they're all very similar. [00:44:17] They all, they're all credible, you know, they have great reputations. Um, they have great reviews, um, you know, really solid proof points and customer testimonials and case studies and all that. So on the surface, everything looks very similar. Their pricing models are similar as well. Um, so you almost have to kind of like do that extra step of due diligence. [00:44:35] To make that final call, um, and that final distinction of what's gonna be best for your business needs at that time. So that was an example that I thought was, um, a good one to kind of showcase how you have to kind of go that extra mile and provide almost a take home assignment to your, um, technology solutions. [00:44:51] Phil: Very cool. Yeah, I appreciate the, the practical example there. Um, yeah, three really cool vendors, a really powerful use case there. And [00:45:00] I, I think that one specifically for that niche, like subcategory of MarTech is I. A very valid one for, for doing like a quick like POC. Let me send you a couple of leads. Um, another one that we had on the show recently was, uh, Allegro. They do, uh, like contact, uh, contact validation, like email validation plus more stuff. So like they tell you the likeliness that someone is like not a good contact to reach out to if [00:45:24] Samia: Oh wow. [00:45:25] Phil: stuff, like how likely is that person to mark you a spam or how likely are they part of like an inbox provider with a ton of like, safety net rules, blah, blah, blah. And so you can quickly do a proof of concept with them, same format, send 'em a subset of your list, and they come back with like, yeah, these are like 150 people that you should never email in the future. And just that alone like, improves [00:45:48] Samia: Powerful. [00:45:48] Phil: some of your stuff. So, yeah. Yeah, the proof of concept for sure is easier said than done in, in certain scenarios. [00:45:54] And, um, yeah, I, I, I mostly agree with you with like this idea that, you know, take home [00:46:00] projects and, and doing a trial. asking so much from the candidate, like the onus often is on you to do the evaluation process in the like, 3, 4, 5, 6 rounds of interviews you've already had. [00:46:12] Samia: Yeah. [00:46:12] Phil: Um, but the other angle to that is like, I actually enjoyed the prospect, uh, the, the process from a candidate standpoint at automatic because. How often have, and and I know you, you've been at like, um, Shopify for, for quite a bit of time. You were at Dropbox for, for quite a bit of time. I, um, you know, if you look at my resume, I'm a bit more of like the, the red flag. Like this person bounces between roles like here and there. And like what I found is like sometimes the interview process from my point of view, like, looks great. [00:46:41] Um, the, the senior management team looks amazing. The team members look great. The tech stack looks great. Promises of like greener pastures and then you join and within a couple of weeks you're just like, what did I do? Like this is a mess. And every company's like not perfect. Everyone has like things, but like there are [00:47:00] certain things that come out really early when you join a company that you're just like, yeah, nobody told me about this and the interview process. [00:47:06] And I wish that was an extra data point in my evaluation grid. 'cause maybe I wouldn't have taken that leap and. shit comes up in the trial process. Like I got to like work for two weeks with my hiring manager who would eventually become my boss, and I got to meet the data team who I would be working with on propensity models, and I got to meet the engineer who's building the in-house custom data data platform. And so I, I don't know, like the experience was really cool 'cause I got a lot more information than I would've from a candidate standpoint in the interview process. Very similar kind of way. But I dunno, you flip that with like the MarTech analogy and it's like the vendors really care about getting to know potential customers. [00:47:48] Not really, like the analogy breaks a little bit there. [00:47:50] Samia: Yeah, like I think it's different needs or like motives to go that extra step. But I think, um, you know, the, the actions or the way you do it is similar and I think it [00:48:00] goes back to our talk conversation about, back to our references. I think there. Applicable just as much to the hiring manager as they are to the candidate as well. [00:48:08] Like you should be asking people in your network like, Hey, gimme the real deal. You worked here for a while. Like, what, what was the experience like? How, how toxic is the culture? And, you know, how do they deal with change? And so, um, how's the leadership? And so I think, yeah, the back to reference comment is, is really helpful to both the candidate as well as the recruiter. [00:48:26] Phil: Yeah. Uh, [00:48:27] Every Tool Needs a Hiring Manager Too --- [00:48:27] Phil: one of the other areas that the, the analogy starts to break a little bit for me is with hiring managers. So when you hire a person on your team, there's typically a hiring manager who ends up being the direct report for that individual. I. Not all the time. Like sometimes the person doing the leading the interviews and writing the job description doesn't end up like leading that person. [00:48:47] But I, I think most of the time, the person who's gonna report to that eventual hire is part of, um, that the decision making process, uh, in the interview process. Um, just like in MarTech, there's often [00:49:00] many voices on the decision making committee. A lot of people in the interview process. But what I've seen often with like a hiring manager for MarTech, if you will, isn't always the person who ends up owning the tool post purchase. Do you kind of see that, uh, in, in, in your experience, like what are your thoughts there? How do you decide who owns a MarTech tool after you purchase it? Do you ever see tools gonna fall through the cracks because no one, no one kinda stepped up post purchase. [00:49:27] Samia: Yeah, that's a really good point. And I think, um, you know, being in a B2B environment, we, we know that, you know, even as a business trying to sell to customers or being a customer, trying to purchase MarTech, you know, that there's multiple personas and user types, uh, throughout that buyer journey. You know, you typically have. [00:49:46] An IT decision maker, you have your, um, you know, your procurement team. You have an, you have the economic buyer, and then you have the ultimate like admin or owner or whatever you wanna kind of call them. And then you have your power users or, and then you have the, the [00:50:00] non-users. And so you kind of have to, if your organization is. [00:50:04] You know, large enough where you have a lot of these roles, you do need to like define them early on to understand how each, um, role kind of plays into the various stages of the buyer journey, but also the, the adoption journey as well of that, um, tech stack. Uh, and I think that's, you know, often amiss. [00:50:21] I've seen that happen at companies where. They're either early stage or they're like growing and, you know, rapidly changing their org structures or there's layoffs happening, um, which happens in tech all the time. So oftentimes you lose that ownership of, um, a particular tool, um, for, you know, various reasons. [00:50:40] And, you know, this happened for us, um, uh, you know, at, at the time of, uh, we were launching a product and, you know, one of the, the lead gen sources that we wanted to have was, um, a live demo. And it ended up being kind of the, one of the highest lead generators for us. Um, so it was really powerful. It was a very simple tool that we kind of invested in, [00:51:00] you know, nothing like super fancy, but just like, you know, did the job that we needed it to do and we stood it up really quickly. [00:51:06] But then, you know, after a number of like reorgs and, and changes that we had, we, we lost a clear owner of that tool. And I think that, you know, loss of ownership. It really was, uh, kind of led to an opportunity cost of us not maximizing the full potential of that tool by, you know, optimizing and iterating on it. [00:51:24] And people had a lot of great ideas, but those ideas fell through the cracks because they didn't know who to go to to make those updates and optimizations so. I think, you know, I, I see this happen quite often is, um, with all of those changes and that chaos, uh, you do lose ownership. But I think as a MOPS team or as a marketing org, a marketing leadership team, you need to always ensure that every technology has a tool, has a backup, uh, or has an owner, and has a backup owner as well, to ensure that you're continuing to be accountable for it, and you're continuing to get the most value out of it. [00:51:57] Phil: Yeah, such a good point. I feel like that's what sometimes. [00:52:00] Makes MOPS teams or like sometimes the one person mops person [00:52:04] Samia: No one mops. [00:52:05] Phil: yeah. Have a really good like retention power on the team. Like they are the admins of some of the core infrastructure tools that you have in the company. And you know, if they leave, we need to figure out a backup solution here. [00:52:20] And oftentimes the default is. Right. Let's, let's post up a rec, let's backfill the role. But in the meantime, like we need someone to figure that stuff out. So [00:52:28] Samia: Yeah. [00:52:28] Phil: outsource it and we find an agency to come in, backfill for a couple months even help us with the hiring process and then we hire that person. But the whole like backfill discussion is, is an interesting comparison. To the analogy because like, just like in hiring, sometimes you're not, it's not a new tool or it's not a new role, you're back filling, um, or you're trying to like upgrade sometimes you're, you're like moving on from, uh, a, a tool in the MarTech world. [00:52:55] Like that means a massive migration project. And we're chatting about this before [00:53:00] we press record. Um, folks who've had the pleasure of, um, several battle scars or migration projects like the both of us have. And some all in big teams, like these are massive projects and, uh, I've seen this all the time. [00:53:12] Like I'm at a company, we like our stack, like things are fine. New senior leader joins and they're just like, oh, you guys aren't using X tool. Like, I've used X tool at two of my last companies. I, I'm pretty sure it's better than this. Or like, and they [00:53:25] Samia: They don't take [00:53:26] Phil: interviewing people and like, if the current stack is okay and they're just like. The first thing I'm gonna do as a new senior leader team is just gonna rip out a couple of things from the stack. And when they ask me like, [00:53:36] Samia: what [00:53:36] Phil: done? Like, ah, I saved a bunch of time and money by like ripping out these two tools and I'm bringing in this new tool. Um, I [00:53:44] Samia: I. [00:53:44] Phil: there's like, for sure a migration of project and tasks and ownerships that you have when you have a backfill employee, but it doesn't feel as like intense as migrating a key MarTech tool. [00:53:54] What do you think? [00:53:55] Samia: Absolutely. Yeah. I feel like the unfortunate times that I've [00:54:00] been part of migrations at, you know, throughout my career, it's always been a, it continues to be a, a triggering point because it's never like a happy, fun experience to go through a migration. And oftentimes these are multi-year projects that continue to extend timelines, continue to get pushed. [00:54:17] And then I think the hardest part of it is. Is dealing with the transition, so like the carryover from, you know, your old technology and all the mess there and like, you know, the new and how it all kind of comes together in a seamless way and. Oftentimes, you know, I've seen that we wrap up the project and for like years to come, that mess is still not fully clean. [00:54:40] And like, you know, people are still, like, new people are joining the team. They're like, what is this? Like, what does this mean? Like this is not completely misaligned or inconsistent with how we're currently reporting or how our data is currently enriched. Like, what does this field mean? And it is, it is tricky. [00:54:53] And I, I haven't, to be honest, like seen. Any one example from my [00:55:00] like, you know, years of experience to say that migration went so smoothly, everything went fantastic, there were no issues, and we're just like smooth sailing. So yeah, migration is not fun. Um, and yeah, it's weirdly easy with people. Um, you know, oftentimes you have people going on mat leave or paternity leave or whatever that looks like, and. [00:55:22] It's easier to kind of fill in that gap short term, even though it might not be as good, or maybe it's a little bit better, who knows? But, um, it's easier to do that with people than it is with technology because technology gets so, um, ingrained in your company's DNA and your overall operating model and your systems, that it's harder to make that change versus I think with people sometimes, um, depending on like their level of seniority and their overall impact, it, it can be a little bit easier, unfortunately. [00:55:48] Phil: Yeah, I, I've, I, I, I will say I've never done a migraine. Ation at your scale, uh, compared to like Shopify and Dropbox. Like, I can't imagine. I think like some of the bigger ones too, like might have [00:56:00] come from acquisitions and then this new acquiring team has their own tech stack and it's like, all right, how are we merging those two things together? Um, yeah. Lots of folks have, have chatted about that. I, I agree. I don't think there's ever been a migration project and MarTech where it went a hundred percent smoothly. [00:56:18] Samia: Yeah. [00:56:18] Phil: is like where agencies I feel like are perfectly suited to come in and just be like. We have a plug and play process for this. [00:56:25] We've done 17 migrations from that tool and that tool. That's exactly what you guys are doing. We're gonna do the whole setup for you guys. You guys will focus on like that transition period and. But [00:56:38] Samia: I. [00:56:38] Phil: there's still like so much context to it and nuance to what you're doing, and they're like trying to audit your systems and they're like, all right, like what, what are these 17 nurture flows? [00:56:48] And do we still need all seven to recreate in the new one? And then you have to spend time explaining what those were created for, and maybe the person who created them isn't even what the team anymore. [00:56:57] Samia: Exactly. [00:56:58] Phil: of like cutting, [00:57:00] improving, optimizing. Um, yeah, I [00:57:02] Samia: Yeah. [00:57:03] Phil: I, I hit a nerve there a [00:57:04] Samia: Yep. [00:57:04] Phil: uh. [00:57:07] Samia: You definitely did. [00:57:08] Phil: This has been super fun. Um, [00:57:10] Samia: Yeah. [00:57:10] Phil: that there's, there's probably a bunch of other, uh, areas that maybe listeners are thinking about, um, how to treat their MarTech stack, like recruiting efforts, like HR efforts. Uh, it's probably a co a couple areas we, we could have jumped in there, but, um, [00:57:23] Why Chasing “Perfect” Will Ruin Your Career and Your Weekend --- [00:57:23] Phil: I got one last question that we ask everyone on the show. [00:57:26] You obviously a director of growth. You're a team leader. But at home, you're also a mother and you're an outdoor fanatic, an avid hiker. One question we ask everyone on the show is, how do you remain happy and successful in your career, and how do you find balance between all the stuff you're working on while staying happy? [00:57:41] I. [00:57:41] Samia: Yeah, I love this question and I love that you ask your guests this. 'cause I think it just gives an insight into, um, you know, how they, how they think and operate and personally outside of work as well. I think for me, um, honestly, I, I feel like earlier on in my career, or like even in like my twenties, it was very much about [00:58:00] striving for perfection and you know, that's how I was kind of like raised that you have to like, aim for perfection and. [00:58:06] I found that anchoring on perfection as your metric for happiness. Was setting yourself up for unhappiness. And so for me it's really become more about progress over perfection. And that's really where I get my, uh, source of happiness. So whether it's progress at work and you know, making sure that I'm doing work that's impactful, um, how the team is progressing, how they're growing, how are, you know, getting closer to our goals. [00:58:32] And then same with my personal life, you know, how I'm developing is, um. A person and how I'm seeing my daughter grow and learn and develop every day. I think seeing that Delta is the sweet spot for me in, in finding that happiness. And I've, you know, I've learned that the hard way, you know, anchoring on perfection, but I've realized over many years that nothing is ever gonna be perfect. [00:58:50] And so you kind of just have to focus on, um, the progress that you're making as an individual, as an employee, as a family, you know, mom or a dad or [00:59:00] whatever it is. Um, and really lean on that for your source of happiness. [00:59:04] Phil: Love that answer. Samia, I really appreciate your, your time today. Thanks so much for sharing that analogy, introducing folks to it and all your, your stories and and practical examples. Really appreciate your time. This is super fun. [00:59:15] Samia: Yeah. Thank you so much for having me, Phil.