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Future-proofing the humans behind the tech. Follow Jon and Phil on their mission to help marketers level up and have successful careers in the constantly evolving world of martech.
Philippe Gamache 0:00
What's up guys, welcome to the humans of martec podcast. His name is John Taylor. My name is Phil ganache. Our mission is to future proof the humans behind the tech so you can have a successful and happy career in marketing
Philippe Gamache 0:25
What's up everyone? Today we have the pleasure of sitting down with just Cynthia Francisco director of marketing operations at Lucid Software. Just Enya started her career in finance at Merrill Lynch and Bank of America and she later pivoted to the nonprofit space joining the Association of Latino professionals for America where she started to get into fundraising operations. She was later recruited by NewSchools Venture Fund and moved out to the Bay Area and had the opportunity of rolling out Salesforce across her organization. She then joined the opportunity fund as a development operations manager focused on improving donor acquisition processes and marketing automation implementation. And just then you then made the mega move to Asana where she was started in sales ops and later pivoted to marketing ops and eventually leading martec programs and becoming head of marketing automation. Today, she's director of marketing operations at Lucid Software, the creators of the popular flow chart and diagram tool Lucid Chart just yet. Welcome to the show. Thanks so much for your time today.
Jessenia Francisco 1:30
Yeah, thank you, Phil, and John for having me on today. This episode is brought
Philippe Gamache 1:34
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Jon Taylor 2:16
just have it, you've spent a considerable part of your career supporting honorable causes, like helping Latinos build their careers reimagining public education, so all children have access to schooling. Also providing small businesses run by entrepreneurs of color immigrants and women access to capital and coaching. That sounds super cool. Talk to us about the challenges of working with nopper Not for profit causes, and also some of the benefits that you've had personally and and in your career.
Jessenia Francisco 2:41
Yeah, I mean, it's so funny, as you were talking about my background, I was like, oh, man, I sound like a saint. I think really where I was in my career was I start, as you mentioned, I started off my career in finance. And like most people, they realize this is gonna be long term. And so I wanted to find the complete opposite and run from finance. I think it gave me like a really good foundation to my career, but I was really looking for purpose. When I moved into the nonprofit space, and I found such a rewarding experience, the escape was really moving away from conversations around profit and loss, right? And really, how do I create impact in someone's life? Or how do I create systematic change, and that's what I was seeking at that point in time. And it's funny, even as I was reflecting on the conversation we were gonna have today, think I was doing operations before operations was the term because even back in finance, part of my job was to be an analyst. But the other part was actually to do business analysis and operations type work. So some of the work that I do today just reminds me of all of the foundational work that I did even back in finance. But to think about the nonprofit space, I've really found myself, motivated, inspired by the stories of the communities that I served in those different nonprofits, which was super helpful for me, because that's what I was seeking. I wanted to see the impact, see the change. And what I found myself, like really being enamored with the nonprofit world was that they pulled my heartstrings and really made me love the work that I was doing, because I could be so close to that story. So close to the person, the business were the change that was happening overall. And so one moment that I remember really fondly was when I was working at NewSchools Venture Fund. And it's a mouthful as you talk about new school. Yeah, what they are is an education, venture philanthropy and so when you think about a venture fund, and like education, nonprofit, there's a merger that actually one of the pioneers around it, and so they basically asked for money, to get money to give money to educational, educational ventures, and they could be for profit but they could be nonprofit. And what that meant was they had a portfolio around three key initiatives. One was how to create change in school systems. So whether they be a charter school or a district school, how are you innovating? And how do we see that innovation? The second was around how do we integrate technology into education. And that can be like, helping kids, like know how to build a robot that could be how to use rap, to teach vocabulary, which was actually a venture. And then the third was around how do you support people of color, and the representation of them in those communities, whether it be educators, whether it be being serving on a board, or administrators. And so one moment that I remember pretty fondly is we went to do a on site at a school that provided project based learning, which for most people, is that think about, like industrial learning within the US, right? You go to school, you read a book, you get tested on it, and rinse and repeat. Project based learning is actually you have a large project that you give to kids across all ages. And they go through the systematic process to come out with a learning that is a compensating Math, English social studies. And that's how they learn is like BioProject overall. So we visited one in Napa, and like the impression that just really spoke to me was we went to kindergarten class and the kindergarten class was going through a project around like velocity and gravity. And I had a kindergartner, Nur come up to me explain what velocity was, which was like, mind blowing, I was like you? Well, you know what velocity is. And so it was just really seeing like funding to that type of initiative. And just seeing just the impact, even at such an early age, that I found so impressionable. And so that was like, again, the great thing that like, spoke to me, as I thought about in the nonprofit space. Some of the other things around the benefits of being in the nonprofit is like there's a lot of opportunity to grow in the nonprofit space and really take on stretch projects. And so at that time in my career, I wasn't implementing CRMs. They're like, Hey, do you some software, go implement the software. So that really gave me a lot of the foundational knowledge to really build on my sales ops in my marketing ops career where, in several instances, I implemented Salesforce on my own, like tinkering around and using some temp agencies to help and then implementing marketing automation tools, where before that it was just like, oh, no, don't we use MailChimp? And it's like, how do we get to more sophisticated scaled versions of that. And so I think opportunities are really rapid within nonprofits. And it's a great place to grow really quickly, if you can really identify those opportunities. Um, I think the other aspect is creative problem solving. And so one term that I've always used is like champagne taste on a beer budget type of thing, right? Like, how can you be really scrappy and do things really well. And I think that the nonprofit world really showed me that which was like, how do you implement something like a Salesforce in a really scaled way? And how do you get creative about the roadblocks that you can actually have? Whether that be technical that can be funding? That can be like a number of things? And like the ability to say, Huh, yeah, okay, I got this, right. Can you do this for free for me? And being able to really like in blow, what meant well, once you have like, clarity around what solution would be so I think, like, those were all benefits. I think with every like, with every industry, there's a pros and cons. And I think for me, like some of the places where I struggled is under resourcing in certain places where I think technology can sometimes be the last place that a nonprofit and invest in, and that's a struggle, think career gross and diversity can meet the ceiling. And I think in my case, at least in my story, I found myself at a place where I was like, okay, I can continue to implement Salesforce over and over again. We're not where I can get something that's a lot more challenging, or how do I build a data warehouse to connect and integrate, how do I deal with more complex challenges, at least technically, and I just found myself as I was, like, perfecting my approach to implementing Salesforce, they're like, Okay, yeah, I need you. Could you implement Salesforce again, and I was like, or I could build your data where house. Do you have that until Yeah, I think you can have a ceiling. And then the last thing that I think can be really be a downer is like politics and this line and up leadership, it's not uncommon to see leadership turnover, like in any industry. But I think certainly in the nonprofit space, when you're in like a tight market, you can have leadership that have no concept of what you're doing, especially if you're in the office space. And then sometimes politics can really make or break the work that you're trying to do overall.
Philippe Gamache 10:33
So great answer just anything you so much for walking us through the journey there. I didn't have as deep experience early in my career and MPO, like you did, but that's where I started my internship career, if you will, when I was in university. So I worked for an agency that helped and POS was like a marketing agency that worked with NPO, specifically in like the green space, like environmental marketing was like really big back then. And so graduated with that experience. And I was like, I'm going into the marketing world. And I'm going to work for MPOs. And I'm going to play with the coolest tech, and I interviewed with a few MPOs. And obviously, the entry level salaries were different than tech and the tech stack was way different than some of the tech companies. So I ended up wanting to play with cool new tools. But I'm happy to say that I've turned that back a little bit later on in my career, I still work in tech, but similar type of how do we make the world a better place? We're conquering addiction that I'm my current startup. So super important mission, but I love what you walked us through like the benefits and the kind of more like struggles of can we get more budget? Do you have NPO pricing? So I get a lot of that. And I'm curious, like when when you transition to tech, a lot of your NPO experience was working for smaller companies, right, like usually the case for a lot of MPOs. I know they range from like 50 to 150 people. But when you went over to tech and San Fran, do you join big enterprise teams, not sure how big Asana was when he joined in 2019. But they're well over 3000 people today, lucid is also over 1000 people. What advice do you have for folks that are maybe in startups or SMBs? Today, or even the NPO space that are considering going into enterprise tech? Walk us through that?
Jessenia Francisco 12:18
Yeah, it's so funny that you say that because I feel like there's a misnomer that like small is not the place to be. And so like just for scale, when I started at Asana, it was probably around 350. Mark in terms of WoW, which is crazy to say now, sometimes I joke around and I was like, Oh, I started at Lena in terms of my tech career at a small company called Asana. And they're like, that's not small. We grant a little bit of a cult classic to a certain extent. But yeah, fairly small when I joined. And I think that kind of going back to that misnomer, like sometimes groves happen so quickly that you don't even realize that business has changed, or that the needs have change, like smaller companies have such an intimacy to them, whether it be like a small company, or a small team, people's quirks, like some something that I really enjoyed was like, Oh, the seat likes to drink Diet Coke, like That's right. If you ever need to sweeten the deal, give it to her with a Diet Coke, right. So that's some of the like, pieces of being at a smaller company. Overall, I think you have access to people even across levels. So people feel within rage, I think at a smaller company have the ability to drive, roll up your sleeves, and also see the immediate change to the business as you're being like that player. And so the other misconception that people have at a smaller company is that like privilege and pedigree doesn't exist in a smaller company. And I think like an example to scale, like, the hottest company that's being talked about is like open AI. They're around 200 or 500 people right now. I could see them easily being that Osama scale where it's 200 300 now 3000 In a year, and this is essentially what can happen. So yeah, so I think pedigree and privilege can still exist at a small company. And that's a one of the misnomers there. For example, I worked at an organization where we were 30 people mad. But most of the leadership was like ivy league MBAs, which was something that was like, Okay, sure. And it skewed towards Harvard, like the CEO was Harvard business professors, Harvard grad. And so really smart woman like you never wanted to really get it like little me. I was like, I never want to get into the beat. This woman knows average. And so but it did invoke impostor syndrome on me. And one of the best lessons that I learned was that when a company of privilege and pedigree hires you, they're asking you to be part of their 80 because they Oh, you can't deliver on the 18th. And sometimes you think that because you're around that privilege and pedigree that, like they hired you for the beat Team, there's no between. So I think that was one great lesson that I learned being part of a smaller organization, and especially like, an organization. And the same thing was for Asana as well, so many smart people. And sometimes you can get caught up in saying. And it's like to be part of a team. So you have to bring your A game because they know that you can do it. But I think as I think about the original question around like scaling, I think as a company grows, like some of these aspects that are really unique to a small company can really fade and expectations can grow. And that can pull in terms of different directions overall. So I think the following things have really helped me so like meeting people and the business where they are, right. So just really understanding like, where are we now? And how do we tailor to that, as opposed to thinking, How do I tailor to when there's 3000, right. And sometimes that's like a crawl, walk, run approach. But oftentimes, what I'm doing is I'm checking my assumptions and checking for understanding. And I'm leading with empathy, right? Because even some of my stakeholders might have the expectations of being at the 3000. Mark, when we're little old 200 person company, we have more time to iterate when we get to that 3000. And I think the other piece around this is like not thinking that just because it worked for you elsewhere, that it will work here. And so something to be mindful of is specifically around just because of work at x company, like a work here. I tend to be like technology, agnostic, and people's tend to say like, we must bring this software here. And I say, is this software the best for our situation, not just because you've used it. And typically, that's with leadership, where they're like, I'm of this house, and, sure, but now you're at this place, what works here. So I think that's one piece. The other advice that I would give in that situation is like, feeling yourself and process. So like moving from small companies to large or just being at a larger company, you have a larger charter, you have more stakeholders, you have global offices, and this is really a test of scale. Right? And so if your processes are failing, you need to go back and really iterate.
Jon Taylor 17:37
I had a follow up. And then I want to ask my question about Lucid Chart, but like you touched on something that I thought it was really important, and some of our listeners will probably key off of which is this idea of imposter syndrome. And yet you're providing this like extremely grounded approach in terms of how you ground yourself in an organization and you find yourself battling the tides of complexity, being tool agnostic, recognizing the level that you're at, but also the next level that you can reach to. I'm sure some listeners maybe like myself have dealt with impostor syndrome over your career, like in marketing operations. We work with lots of smart people, data engineers, developers, and so on who can make us feel not so smart? How have you tackled impostor syndrome for yourself? And now that you manage teams, how do you recognize that within your team members and help them overcome those obstacles, I
Jessenia Francisco 18:26
skew towards emotional intelligence. And so I'm constantly in a like, reflecting period. And I tend not to react to the situation at hand. And sometimes that means, hey, there's a concept that's like blowing my mind and meeting. I need some time to digest right? And come back with a formed opinion. I think that the theme here is collaboration. It's a team effort, right? So when you acknowledge that you have to pass the baton, it changes things in that mentality, overall. And so I think I've just come to realize that I can't do it alone. And I think, professionally, what I've done is ask for help. Right? And that's break down this concept for me for my technical partners. And that can be humbling, like, Hold on. Let's read this again. Okay. And let's break this down. And actually, that has been a bridge builder, as opposed to a blocker, where I've worked with technical parts where I was like, Hold on, I really want to understand this. break this down to me, let's work through what's the current set? What's the analogy and really understanding that so yeah, so I think asking for help, and I think professionally, I've done it that way. Personally, you pointed out to a couple of times, I've pivoted. I have been really intentional that as I've pivoted, I've created communities around me to really support me in those aspects. And so just finding myself when I am hitting topics that I don't understand, like just reaching out to the kids Unity. And so I think like, during COVID, like communities, especially moms communities, like completely blew up. And so I would often tell my team or people that I worked with, here's a 13 black communities that I'm part of. And when I don't know what topic I'm like, What is this, please help me raise a beat with me, at least for some virtual copy. And just asking there or researching enough to make an opinion into I think, like, to the other point that you talked about, like, No, I have teams under me. And so the thing that I iterate to them over and over again, is the most important aspect of the work that we're doing is for you to have an opinion around your subject matter expertise, because I can't be in every room. And if you have no opinion, you're going to come back to me and say, I'll just send you what's your opinion. And the most important thing as a leader is that I don't have all the opinions, because I can tell you my opinion, I wasn't very opinionated, maybe. I was very opinionated to my parents, I would be like, I don't think that's how they should do and they're like, What do you know of the world? So I have tons of opinions, but I think the most important opinion is often the opinion of my team and opinion that people can rally around. And that's not necessarily my Oh, yeah,
Philippe Gamache 21:17
love that Jonah's for opinionated babies at home. So I'm sure Oh, my word talking about oh,
Jon Taylor 21:22
I've got tons of opinions especially but what we're having for dinner every night it's anyways but we just choose it the bosses in the house make it and we serve it.
Philippe Gamache 21:31
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Jon Taylor 22:12
just any of you touched on so many kinds of interesting concepts. And I think it gives me a nice little segue to nerd out a little bit about Lucid Chart. So years ago, I was a marketing operations consultant no more. But one of the things that I had working with my clients was explaining things in my head, about how things work under the hood, one of my old bosses used to say to me all the time, John, you can, you can explain things to people, but you can't understand it for them. But for me Lucid Chart became a way for me to explain these things. So like, I became a power user of a Lucid Chart, actually, your sales team reached out to me and I pitched an idea that I never followed up on my fault. I called a kung fu marketing with Lucid Chart, because I felt like a martial arts expert like punching and kicking way above my weight. But I did find mops has this challenge of being able to explain the complex processes to other stakeholders, something we talk about so often when the show is just like, how does mops communicate the little wins to people. And sometimes our little wins are really technical. So maybe you could talk a little bit about the challenges of communications in mops?
Jessenia Francisco 23:16
Yeah, that speaks so much to me, mainly because oftentimes, the work that we're doing is explaining complex concepts to an average user, or stakeholder. And it's often like a, what I feel was a translation problem or communication issue. I think, for me, like I speak multiple languages. So I'm always constantly translating between this is what we would say in Spanish. But that's not a one, two, what that means in English. And so I think there's a little bit of empathy there. And oftentimes, I use a couple of tactics. So one read on the nose, like Lucid Chart is a great way to like visually conceptualize things for people. And so it's a great bridge builder. I think like, it can be so powerful if it's done correctly. And sometimes it can be done incorrectly, right? Like, you can still make a really complex Lucid Chart and bring it to you like, oh, all I see is wiggly lines to know what I meant to do. This is just the complexity in a visual format. But I think it's a couple of things. So one, like we're in our own world. So I think as like an operator, it's hard to break out of like being in our world and being able to share a concept or like the importance or the why. And so I think for me, I tend to use analogies and tailor visuals or documentation to the audience because they think we blanketly say, oh, there's an audience. It's one audience. And in reality, you're speaking to multiple audiences, and you really need to ground them. And so I think visuals when it makes sense, I think sometimes visuals can deter in some cases. And then I think that analogies is a good one for me, I think going back to another knowledge, champagne taste on a beer budget, right? Like, everybody knows what that is, right? Small budget, or friendships, but you want Salesforce, that's hard. So analogies tend to really work for me. And then I would say the other piece that has been really helpful is around terminology. And you'll be surprised around I just had a conversation this morning where we were talking about lead lifecycle with someone on my team, and they're like, what does that mean to you? And I was like, this is a great grounding conversation, right? Because how do you expect with such a broad term for everyone to really understand what that mean? And really define expectations in the same way. And so one key thing that I've done to like presentations, or even visuals is have a term sheet, especially for enrichment. I've done this where it was like, enrichment has introspecting, right? It has an intent to data, those are all different things. Like, there's firmographic demographic, and so pulling those out, because when you're talking about these concepts, if they all feel like it's bundled, you're never going to be able to land on the concept. So putting in DAX like, key terms, having some visuals, making sure their symbol, and then bringing in as many analogies as possible is super helpful. I also will say that one and done all those things. There's just times where people are just like, I don't know what you're talking about. And as you grow in leadership, influencing to be able to do that. And sometimes that means like prepping an executive to tell their other executive friend, like, Here's what she needs you to know. And I've done like bullet points, like, here are the five things I need you to hit. Here's a visual, tell it to your friend. Very
Philippe Gamache 26:54
cool. That's super powerful advice. There's, yeah, there's a bunch that I want to pull the thread on there. But I love your point about analogies, especially in marketing ops, it can be so powerful. And one analogy that's actually been key a key theme for me in my career is this idea of eating your own dog food. I've worked at companies, not specifically geared to marketers, but I got to use the product and understand how it works like from a BI tool to CRM. And when I was at WordPress, I used WordPress extensively, like our podcast site is created on WordPress. So you're similar in the sense that haven't been an employee at Asana and lucid. You've experienced using the products from an internal perspective, I'd love for you to unpack like, how has this influenced your day to day in marketing ops? Specifically?
Jessenia Francisco 27:42
Yeah, I would say, in both cases, like marketing Ops is like a key persona. So I've used it in the most extreme sense. And I think, in both cases, and lucid and Asana, like we use it for things that we normally shouldn't be using. And maybe you should think about this other tools doesn't
Philippe Gamache 28:02
matter. Let's stretch it, let's see if it works.
Jessenia Francisco 28:05
Or not another competitor. I'm not saying to go to a competitor, but we can't search in this tool book. Yeah, I think the definition of collaboration is just different. It takes on a different meaning. Because I've worked in collaborative software. And so that means for me, like I'm highly relying on automation, like poor functionality of tools. at Asana, we had projects for intakes with extreme automation to the point where, for example, campaign operations across the regions, anytime something came in from email that got auto triggered to that person and region, right, which most people would be like, Oh, just triage, but not when you have maybe 20 to 50 tickets come in a day? Nope. I think that lucid what that means is like, it's visual, a lot of the time. And so just finding that healthy balance in terms of what is visual versus what actually needs. Words, can be like the thing that we utilize. But I think there's a power and actually collaboration tools and integrations together, for the most part. And what I would say is like finding a foundation in the collaboration tool of our choice, and then partnering and integrating with other tools to really supercharge our workflows has been really at the center of my work overall, were probably one of the primary use cases of both of those software's, and also the biggest advocates like dogfooding overall. So I've been in multiple instances and saying this wouldn't work for like a marketing use case. Or here's the things that you need to know for this persona, specifically, and so I've had the privilege of being able to like dog food truly, and really see how these collaborative collaboration tools can like supercharge your workflows, and I think I use it too extreme sense in both aspects of fat lucid. And when it was at some
Jon Taylor 30:06
just switching gears a little bit, one of the things I was looking through your LinkedIn threads and I saw you brought up a couple things around leads and contacts. And one of the things that came to mind was like, in marketing ops, this is a bit of a joke, but serious, one of the most challenging questions you can ever get is how many MQLs have we generated this year. And that's like a moving target report that people have to build and it can break brains, many mops people have died trying to solve this equation for you depends on how many you want. I've seen you write about other martech tools like lean data ringlead. Like, there's so many ways to solve marketing operations problem sometimes is building like a really cool Tableau dashboard that merges all the data together. So I think this is something that can be really challenging for marketing ops people, like we live in this wonderful era where there's 75 billion martech tools coming out every day. How do you choose between just like implementing new martech solutions versus doing something the old fashioned way? rolling up your sleeves? How do you choose where you solve your problems and marketing operations? Yeah,
Jessenia Francisco 31:05
I think it goes back to really understanding what the stakeholder wants. And I feel like this is an age old problem where sometimes you have marketers, at least in marketing ops bring you a solution. They're like, what I really need is this tool. And you're like, why? And they're like, because the tools cool. You're not one pay six figures for that call isn't on the business case. So I think it's just really getting down to like, what is really the need? And going through several iterations of that, and really understanding that really well, I think, and most people in marketing operations will agree like the tool will never really solve your problems, right? Especially off the show, actually, the one person and this was back in my nonprofit time. The one person who I found who was really happy with software was because he was at a venture fund. And basically, they gave him a budget to create his own tear. I mean, he's, I love it. And I was like, of course, you know, you have armed engineers, which you showed me like a functionality where he could like upload pictures. He's this is the coolest thing. I was like, Yeah, because you have unlimited budget, and aren't we? I would love it too, but could vote my CRM, we will CRM on my spare time. So So yeah, so I think it's about religious understanding what the need is, and having options, I'm a big proponent of options and guiding people along the way to really find what the right solution is. And in most cases, especially going back to like smaller and larger organizations, I'm at much larger organizations where we have to work with business systems or enterprise technology teams. And they're also like, don't bring me a solution. So I just bring three options. And I'm like, great, you pick the best or, or give me your option that doesn't exist, but I think is going back like for the stakeholder really understanding their need, bringing multiple solutions to the table, and then coming together and really bringing people especially if you're working with other teams like that, to really come up with the best solution. Once you've weighed pros and cons there, it can be really easy to say, I know how to fix this. And I try to avoid that and say, Okay, there's three to four ways that we can go about this. Let stress test until we really meet your need, and let go. And sometimes that's hard to let go of that tool. And really test if that tool is going to really meet your needs. There have been some other approaches, especially for more niche or no longer, like bodies of work that I have said, Let's pilot, let's test if these tools can do that. And that's a privilege. Not every person has that. Right. You're like, we can bang on our brand neck recognition to get a proof of concept up. But I think in some places, for example, the community space, there's not a lot of tooling there. So how do you figure out what tooling is going to give you the big bang for your buck, or really meet the need of what your community program is? And the value that it provides? Because community means so many different things. And then I think the other places like generative AI as well, trying to figure out what's going to really work for us because they're like, check GBT and not especially from a legal sense. I don't know. Legal is gonna let us have access to this unlimited. Yeah, yeah.
Philippe Gamache 34:41
Yeah, no, you made the segue to our next question. Super easy. Just said yes. But I was gonna like pick up on the thread about piloting tools and getting a POC in place before you commit to something especially when someone's coming in saying, I don't really know what problem this is solving. But this is a cool tool and I want to give this a shot. But I feel like in the next few years, there's going to be a lot of that with AI and Gen AI. One thing that we've noticed a lot talking with guests on the show recently is this idea that mops teams are in this interesting position to be the stewards of AI tech within their companies. mops works at this kind of coolants intersection between a lot of the martech, but also sales tax and revenue tech. So in your opinion, do you think mops teams can be this champion of AI initiatives? And if not, is it another team's that kind of just Counsel of other teams? And curious, what skills do you think listeners should be working on when thinking of I want to be someone who is deploying new AI tech at my company?
Jessenia Francisco 35:44
Yeah, I think is one really understanding the landscape in which those tools work. So what I would say on our end is like, we tend to be conservative around AI specifically, because there's just a lot that's unknown. And privacy, such a big ask to hear. So like when you put those two unknowns, legals, my best friend, we talk all the time, pretty excited, because yes, I think mobs can be stewards of them. But I think, if you're just saying that it's like you're on the coal train, you're not gonna get very far, because once you get into a conversation with legal, they're gonna ask you the hard questions. What is this? How is the AI training on data? What type of data? And so I think religious understanding those concepts really well as you navigate, wanting to champion those tools itself, really having a good understanding of the tech stack? And what is because I think everyone's jumping on like, I joked about it recently, where I was like, everyone's calling their AI like copilot right? So really just understanding like the features that are coming out in existing tooling, right? To really understand that overlap, do you need to get another AI tools, if on your roadmap, there is already AI components being embedded, and some of those tools and how to get ahead of that curve, I think is super important. Understanding the concepts and understanding really where the value is. And so what I would say, one, like, quick and easy way, this is like a common problem at multiple organizations is like sales, writing emails, we all know, they are not, I'm not gonna generalize. But not all salespeople are great at writing their own emails, or content. And I think that AI there or even like, content marketing, is really a great place to be a champion in the low hanging fruit. I think we're still in the early stages, I have to say, the last tool that I bought, that was generative AI was probably like a year and a half ago. And I was very skeptical of it. And it was really because we were having a problem with content and content being delivered globally, for sales. And so we jumped on the bandwagon with a proof of concept to buy a tool to help us scale, especially when you're talking about sales departments 100. So right, like how do you get the message, right? And how do you give personalization at scale to a sales organization across not only that many people, but also regions and localization? And I think we're just still in the early stages of it. I haven't seen a lot of tools that can really localize content for global organizations really well. I can think of one example of one tool that I heard that they can do it and I'm really interested in because even some sales enablement, tools, can't pick up different languages. And when you're in a global organization, I don't know what it said in Japanese. It looks like they're at all this. Bright. So I think yeah, I think generative AI for content, I think is a great low hanging fruit that people can really explore and get some wins in. I think it's hard to see some of the other automation pieces because I'm of the mindset that sometimes when you over Automate, you can create more havoc in certain places, because you can't see everything you can't control it.
Jon Taylor 39:22
One of the one of my follow up questions for this is we've covered AI on the show so much, but you touched on a few things that I thought were valuable for us to just unpack and maybe just one aspect of that is this like hype cycle versus the use case. I'm a power user of AI. I use it constantly for way too many use cases. But I also don't think it's the answer to all of our problems. I just made a post on LinkedIn. Where I'm like, It's a tool but if you think it's a hammer, then everything's going to start looking like a nail. How do mops leaders start to understand where does this tool fit into the overall use case? What kind of process or thought thought exercise can people put in place to actually get through the hype? Get through all the prompt engineering stuff that's out there and get to something of substance and value for your team. Yeah,
Jessenia Francisco 40:11
I think about repeatable processes and scale if you're having a scale problem. And so like in that use case, when we did do that pilot, we were having a scale problem. Like we had one content marketer per region, supporting too many from a ratio perspective. And then being able to provide personalization, which I think a lot of companies struggle with. And so in that case, that's where I was like, I think that this is what can be applied. And it was something that like a user brought to us. And when I first heard it, I was like, You can't do this. And then I did see the power of it. And I think, yeah, stress testing, I think scale overall, I think is a good place. But I think understanding where there's human intervention, in the case of AI, I use chat, GBT, I actually showed my sister how to use it. She's currently doing her Master's. And she was like, struggling and she was like, Oh, I have to create, like, a one page paper on a summary of this, but I hadn't bullet points, and I just need an output. And I was like, Oh, you're just used chat. GPT. And she's like, chat, GBC. I was like, Please give me the inputs, will spit it out. And 15 seconds, we spat it out. And she's Oh, send me the link to the chat. GBC. And I was like, Yeah, okay, don't worry, I'm pretty sure you'll use this for more of your master's
Philippe Gamache 41:34
site. I'm thinking of or AI transcription tool is going to have a fun time figuring out what jet GPC is. And GVT. But yeah, I think that's a great point on thinking about the fundamentals, like, what are the things that are gonna help us scale? There's a lot of shiny objects right now, especially with AI tools, and how do we like prioritize the list of things that will help us reach our business goals versus just trying to dry something and do a POC, because someone at the company thinks it's a cool tool? But yeah, just any idea? Like, we could probably have a whole separate podcast episode on GPT, or AI topics. We're getting close on times, I want, we have two last questions for you wanting to save a bit of time to ask you about women and revenue. And you're part of that the group and one thing you do there that you're very passionate about is mentoring. And I'd love for you to talk to the audience about what is this idea of mentoring with women in revenue that is really shaking things up for women tackling the tough spots in revenue roles, whether it's sales or marketing? Like, in what ways? Is it a game changer for some of the mentees that you have in terms of their career paths?
Jessenia Francisco 42:47
Yeah, until one of the things I really love about women in revenue is it's Women Helping Women. And I think that, especially in terms of women in the workplace, there are examples where women are really helpful. And there's also examples of where women haven't been helpful. And I've had examples in my career of women who I thought would bring me up. And in some cases, they were Walker. And so women in revenue contained pretty much executive women, and then women on the rise for the most part. And so what I love about it is that I have access to CMOS, CROs and people who are just really tenured. And when I had those questions about career growth, and how to navigate these things, those were my community. That's who I reached out to. And I think, as a woman, sometimes you're in rooms full of men. Right? So how do you navigate those dynamics? And I think what I've really learned is, how to navigate those with gray, by learning from those other women. And then also how do I give to other women who are seeking that as well. And so personally, I've mentored we have a mentoring program, really robust one where we've done that for probably, maybe Florida yet, like four years with women in revenue, we have a platform we match people were a global organization as well. We have people in Asia, Pac and email were mentors, and part of our community. And so there's a lot of diversity there, in terms of people's experiences people's tenure, and can really just share their experience in how to grow overall. And it's just been really rewarding to connect with other marketing operations women and just help them navigate what's the next step help them navigate. I tend to call it like gendered conversation. That sounds a lot more serious. What it is just a really navigating those conversations with grace and sense of technical conversations or just boundaries often, so it feels like a sisterhood, honestly, and it's so funny. I have a friend in women in revenue and she was she's older and definitely more 10 I heard and she was like human to me. And I was like, Oh, wow, I didn't even realize what I was giving in the value that I'm providing. Because it's been so selfless to give to a community that has given me so much in terms of direction, and just say direction. And I'm trying to find what the other word is. But grace, knowing stats, competence, I think as well, because they've broken through that layer for me to come through that and come through that knowing and probably a little less bruise than they did. So, so yeah, so it's been fantastic. And like, our membership is free. And so there are no barriers to really joining. And again, going back to that sisterhood, it keeps me coming back and coming back for more in terms of giving and also when I'm in the privilege to be receiving as well.
Philippe Gamache 45:52
So it's a cool community. Thank you so much for sharing that. I think the part that John and I can do is refer the women in revenue to our colleagues. And I've done so already in the past. Like I spoke with Chrissy from CSU, who's also part of women in revenue, and she spoke very highly about the group as well. So yeah, thank you for sharing that super powerful. JT last question. Yes, then. Yeah,
Jon Taylor 46:14
just Enya, thank you so much for joining us on the show. This has been a really fun episode for us. We asked all of our guests this question your mops, Director, women and revenue board member, a mentor, a recent dog mom, ceiling hobbyist, also a candle maker. You have endless hobbies to match your deep curiosity. One question we ask all our guests is, how do you remain happy and successful in your career? How do you find balance between all the things you're working on while staying happy?
Jessenia Francisco 46:41
Yeah, I think I've always found myself in a place where too much of one thing is bad for you. Like they take that philosophy everywhere. Too much of work is bad for you. Too much overindulgence in your personal life is bad for you. And I think over the last probably year and a half, what I've tried to do is listen to myself and where I find joy. Overall, I think sometimes you can lose yourself in work. And that can be detrimental. How? mental, physical wise. And I found myself in those situations. And I think too, like that balance point is like, how do I get a little bit of everything done? And then how do I connect with joy? And I think joy can feel like such a term that's out of reach. And I mean, it in the most simplest sense, like this last year and a half. I've put myself in places where I would experience and just say, How do I smile, like smile authentically, where I'm shining bright. And that's brought me to all those different things that I do with him and revenue, being a dog mom, just finding joy and like finding myself like truly ready me smiling and saying, Oh, that means I'm on the right path. And so I think I try to listen to myself as much as possible. I try to take on what I know I can handle and and then try to say no, I would say I'm not perfect at doing that I sometimes can be overwhelmed. And when I'm overwhelmed, I just shut out. And I think what I've been practicing over the last few years is like how I'm saying like, here's my boundary, and I just don't have any more to give beyond that. And that's okay. Like, human. I don't come with unlimited giving passively. So that's been my practice, like just finding joy. And it's so funny because I took a road trip I was sharing with you that I took a road trip over the last couple of months as I moved from California to the East Coast. And I found myself reflecting on pictures as I drove across. And there's so many pictures of me just smiley, right and saying perfect on the right path. Right and just like how do I smile and know that I'm on the right path doing exactly what I need to
Philippe Gamache 48:56
amazing answer just you've made both of us smile a lot throughout the conversation on the show here. I know. I'm sure a lot of our audience did as well to thank you so much for joining us really appreciate your time. And yeah, I will share links to all this stuff you guys got going on at Lucid but also women in revenue and really appreciate your time. Thank you so much. Thank you
Philippe Gamache 49:24
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