[00:00:00] Darrell: You've said before, John, that point solutions can actually distract marketing teams [00:00:04] Jonathan: It's, it's the shiny object syndrome, We see all of the new things that are coming out, the new ideas and it completely distracts me from focusing on. The things that actually matter, [00:00:13] Phil: But if you have a strong marketing ops team that wants to build for niche use cases, you can't really do this without at least a few point solutions [00:00:22] Jonathan: When you're sitting on a consistent data model, everything is more seamless. It's easier for your internal teams to onboard quicker. They're able to do things on their own. [00:00:31] Phil: But most teams end up only using just like three of the 56 things in the feature catalog. [00:00:36] Darrell: We as users have not been happy with the rate of innovation for a long time. [00:00:40] Jonathan: are we subscribing to the point solution to be innovative or are we doing it to put a bandaid on something that we just neglected [00:00:47] Phil: when it comes to support, everyone listening that has used a platform, has submitted a ticket [00:00:52] finally, they get a response please go to this support article to find an answer yourself. [00:00:57] Jonathan: One of the strongest arguments, four point [00:01:00] solutions. with. Platform. The switching cost is so much higher, where with the point solution, they're fighting for retention every time you get on the phone with them. [00:01:08] ​ [00:01:35] In This Episode --- [00:01:35] Phil: What's up everyone? Today we have the pleasure of sitting down with Jonathan Kazarian, founder and CEO of Excel events. In this episode, we debate all in one platforms versus point solutions and the marketing operator's dilemma. [00:01:47] The arguments we explore include flexibility, innovation, speed, and customer support, quality, contact based pricing, interoperability, and shiny object syndrome, all that, and a bunch more stuff after a super [00:02:00] quick word from one of our awesome partners. [00:02:01] ​ [00:02:59] Phil: [00:03:00] John, thank you so much for your time today. Really excited to chat. [00:03:03] Jonathan: I, uh, I've been looking forward to this since we started putting the doc together. I, uh, I was actually on a sales call this morning and got to name drop. You guys got a lot of good, uh, good response from that. [00:03:15] Darrell: Awesome. Awesome. I love this industry. It's so much fun and, and, uh. Uh, I'm a, I'm a fan too of the platform, John. So I, I actually did a workshop for marketing ops.com. We ran it on Accelevents live. We breakout rooms, um, um, very easy to use, like everything we needed. So, so kudos to you, to you in the company. [00:03:38] Jonathan: Well, appreciate that. [00:03:39] Darrell: yeah. So let's get into it. [00:03:41] 1 - Are Point Solutions Actually a Distraction for Marketing Teams? --- [00:03:41] Darrell: So MarTech runs in cycles. Startups pop up with point solutions to solve specific pain points. A few of them take off setting this like best of breed standard, but most of 'em don't make it. The ones that do often get acquired by larger platforms, then the original founders spin out and start the next wave. [00:03:58] It's a fascinating loop. It also [00:04:00] creates chaos. You've said before, John, that point solutions can actually distract marketing teams from solving the real high impact problems. Let's dig into that. So what do you mean by that exactly? [00:04:10] Jonathan: Yeah, and this is, uh, I know there's a lot of opinions on this topic, and that's why I'm excited to have this conversation. It's, it's the shiny object syndrome, right? Like we all spend a lot of time on LinkedIn. We see all of the new things that are coming out, the new ideas personally, like I'll see something, I'll get excited about it. [00:04:29] I'll be up to 3:00 AM playing with the thing, and it completely distracts me from focusing on. The things that actually matter, right? Like focusing on our positioning, focusing on how we communicate with customers, focusing on making the core platform usable for, when I say platform, the the MarTech stack, we work off of usable for the rest of the company. And it's not to say that these tools aren't important and that they're not necessary or adding value, but it's easy for them to turn into distractions. [00:04:59] Phil: Yeah. [00:05:00] Yeah, it, I think it's a sound argument, and when you said that in our peer interview chats, I was just like, Ooh, let's, let's dig into that. And I think it'd be a fun episode to play devil's advocate here. Um, obviously we've got a lot of supporters on, uh, the sponsorship side that are point solutions. [00:05:16] So I'm gonna be playing, uh, the advocate for point solutions. And throughout my career I have built a lot of stacks that, that were point solutions and still got a ton of respect for, for the platforms, the legacy players in the space that were kind of the incubates for a lot of these categories. Um, but I was trying to figure out a way to have this debate with you without it turning into like a Well, it depends on the company because ultimately that's what it kind of calms down to a lot. [00:05:42] Like this definition of what is adequate as a feature or a solution is super subjective and, and it depends on. You know your marketing sophistication. Are you just a vanilla marketing team? Do you have a bunch of different like custom needs? Your sales ops team? Like my take is that [00:06:00] your marketing team, if your marketing team is vanilla and really standard, then I think platforms are fine most of the time. [00:06:07] But if you have a strong marketing ops team that wants to build for niche use cases, the power growth, like you can't really do this without at least a few point solutions in your stack. What do you [00:06:18] Jonathan: This is where I, I already. Agree. When we think about the stack that we're building or the way that our customers are buying, so for context, we're an event management platform, right in, in our minds that is a category, it's a platform within the realm of, of MarTech, right? You marketing on automation platform, CRM, et cetera. [00:06:38] But events are a standalone solution. You can't really hack that together with your marketing automation platform or your CRM. There are things that can be hacked together, right? There's different tools for doing things like capturing calendar bookings or demo requests on your website where your CRMs may have some of those solutions already [00:07:00] to bring it back. When we think about the core platform, the idea isn't that you don't need some of those point solutions. It's that the platform should allow you to implement those point solutions on your timeline. So there should be something there that can get you launched and moving forward with the bigger picture so that you're not delaying implementation because you gotta connect four different applications together and all of a sudden you're five minutes into a deployment and the business team's not actually using the platform for the thing that it was meant to be using it for. It should be, uh, uh, a, a buy and gradually build, not a, we have to do everything at once type of implementation. [00:07:44] Phil: Yeah. Uh, I, I think that's fair. Like the, the example that comes to mind, like when I said that, you know, a lot of our supporters are our point solutions is this, that. You're right that like most traditional setups, like we, we don't wanna like shit on HubSpot. I'm a big fan of HubSpot. I used it many times, but I'll use it as an [00:08:00] example of like the, the platform here for CRM and marketing automation. [00:08:04] Like you said, HubSpot has lead gen forms. They have like calendar booking tools and they also have like a bunch of other shit. But like email template builders, let's like pick those two. Solutions or features. There are many teams that like, the basics of those are fine. Like they, they get by with it no problem. [00:08:21] But there's a lot of teams that there are some complexities and potential areas for growth where other point solutions could come in and kind of help out. So I'll give you two examples. Um, on the lead send side, like maybe they have a complex sales setup that's split up by territory. They wanna show combined availability of. [00:08:39] All the reps in that territory when a lead from that region wants to book HubSpot doesn't do any of that. Doesn't even come close to it. Like their default forms don't meet that niche Use case revenue Hero does. Revenue Hero is a point solution sponsor of the show. Um, another example is like maybe the company has 40 different languages that they're trying to cater [00:09:00] to and they want to translate every single email they need to allow every team member to collaborate, make changes on the email templates, keep brand guardrails in place. [00:09:08] HubSpot doesn't do any of that out of the box. You need to have NAC to do that. So those are like two examples and, and I get your argument, but like for a lot of teams that get to a stage where they are gradually adding more stuff to the stack, sometimes the platform just like doesn't meet the needs for it. [00:09:24] Like you can't do it without certain point solutions. [00:09:29] Darrell: I have a couple things, so I, I, I, I like both of your points. [00:09:32] 2 - Data Models Can Decide Platforms or Point Solutions --- [00:09:32] Darrell: I have like two interesting, like, sort of like analogies. One is kind of like the iOS versus Android analogy where, you know, sometimes people like Android because you can customize a bunch of stuff, but then a lot of times the core stuff just doesn't work well and that's why probably everybody on this call has an iPhone. [00:09:51] I don't know. But you know, I I, I love it when you, you buy a new Apple device, like, like, uh, AirPods or whatever, and it just connects or [00:10:00] works beautifully already. And I think that there's something to be said around that. You know, sort of like the core platform or the CoreOS being the same. On the other hand, I will say there's sometimes, like there's some specific needs like deduplication, you know, that you just kind of need something to help you out. [00:10:18] So I, I don't know. I I in this like, um, I would say in this debate of point solutions versus point I, I'm like on the fence and I would love one of you to convince me to sway. Where are we on the, the other. [00:10:31] Jonathan: Yeah, so, so I think you, you bring up a couple interesting points, like email, right? Your iPhone has an email app built into it. In my case, in my, you know, bottom menu bar, I've got the Gmail app. To me, that's not a point solution. My G Suite is in another platform that I'm connecting to my iOS, which is so, so basically bolting two platforms together, or in our case, our customers are bolting Accelevents, their event management platform onto HubSpot or to Salesforce. [00:10:59] But you're connecting [00:11:00] two platforms that are filling that entire vertical together instead of these individual components. Of that. Phil, going back to one of your points where a lot of these point solutions end up getting acquired. If you look at Salesforce for example, they're a company where through acquisitions, it's been love Salesforce, love HubSpot don't mean to dunk on either of them. [00:11:25] There's my disclaimer, but there's been circumstances where third parties have been more well integrated than acquisitions have been. [00:11:35] Darrell: Yeah, totally. Yeah. I knew exactly where you were going when [00:11:39] Jonathan: model, and this is why I love the platform play, right? When you're sitting on a consistent data model, everything is more seamless. It's easier for your internal teams to onboard quicker. They're able to do things on their own. They're empowered. You don't have these owners of these different solutions that have to come in in order to make the tool usable, and you don't have the [00:12:00] data issue, right? [00:12:00] Like even if you talk about something like lead gen forms on your website. The, the way that you're capturing, say, UTM data or your conversion tracking data, all of that has to be mapped, and it often doesn't follow into the native way that the platform was designed for actually capturing that information. [00:12:20] Phil: Yeah, the, the data model argument is interesting, like that one again, like it depends on the team. Like if I've got a team that has a data engineer on staff and we're a warehouse first stack, like I don't need the platform to do any attribution for me. Like I'm doing that and my own custom tools, I've got. [00:12:39] Bypass set up or I've got API integration set up with it. Like I don't really care if it's all in one platform 'cause I own it in the warehouse. And, and that's where like, it depends on the team because I think like your counter argument to that could be like, well not every team is using a warehouse. [00:12:56] Not every team has a data engineer that's surfacing marketers. [00:13:00] And this idea of like a single data model sounds really great until. It's the wrong model for your business, and you're forced to figure out a way to use it, like platforms in a sense, force conformity with that argument. Like point solutions kind of adapt to whatever reality you have, but it's, it's an interesting argument for sure. [00:13:19] Jonathan: But you're always adopting to something, right? Because the counter is now we're adopting to, frankly, job security for the person who's implemented that. [00:13:26] Phil: Mm. [00:13:28] Darrell: That's a good point. I, I also think too, one of the other possibilities is that point solutions often solve problems that are like, could have been solved with better operations and infrastructure to begin with. I think that is, is something that I've, I've been thinking about. It's kind of like, oh, well, we have duplicates. [00:13:49] Well, why didn't you set up your data sources correctly to, to, to, you know, why, why are there duplicates to begin with? Like, you, you did it wrong. Or I think that there's something to be said around point solutions, treating the [00:14:00] symptoms rather than the root cause, you know, and I like in, in our, in our daily life, a lot of times, we'll, like people turn to like drugs or caffeine or like all these things to like get psyched up. [00:14:11] But the core problem is you're just not sleeping low. You have to sleep. Humans need to sleep. So, so I, I don't know, that's something I've been thinking about too. [00:14:20] 3 - Contact Based Pricing Skews Platform Versus Point Solution Costs --- [00:14:20] Phil: So let, I wanna ask you, Joan, about like the pricing argument here, because like, you know, platforms often one of the arguments is like, they're really expensive and underutilized often. Like the, the other angle to this is like you get an all-in-one tool. It's all great single data model. It's all in one, but most teams end up only using just like three of the 56 things in the feature catalog. [00:14:44] And if you were obviously to replace that platform with 56 point solutions, for sure, it would be cheaper to have the platform. Teams don't need all 56 features and they replace the platform with like four, five, or six. And the more like an all in one platform [00:15:00] becomes, the more it becomes all for no one. [00:15:03] Uh, like the Seth Godin example there. But like I've run into plenty of point solutions, John, we're like stacks we're. Much less expensive than running on HubSpot. And there's like, obviously it depends on the company or whatever, but I'll walk you through that example and it's, it's kind of like niche a little bit. [00:15:19] Um, but we were chatting ahead of this and you were like, gimme an example of like where this was less expensive. So I. As was at a startup, we had a fantastic organic content reach, so tons of visitors. We had a huge database of contacts for our size of company, and we moved from HubSpot, uh, marketing Suite plus their CMS, and we were paying over 150 K per year there. [00:15:42] Most companies at our size at that time, we're probably spending less than like 50 K per year because they don't have the contact database that we have. So that's kind of like the, the [00:15:51] Jonathan: volume, the context if we're talking. [00:15:53] Phil: We're talking about like 900 k, like almost a million, uh, database emails. Uh, so we [00:16:00] moved from HubSpot as the suite to ghost as our CMS. [00:16:04] So we had our, all of our blog on HubSpot, CMS from like day one. Tons of work to, to migrate that to ghost. Uh, but Ghost is as health hosted platform platform. So we were paying $250 per year to, to self-host with Ghost. Um. The, the way to do the forms, like we are still gating a lot of that stuff. So we went with ConvertFlow, tiny little company. [00:16:27] Um, they're costing us about 4K per year to host all of our forms on there and push all of that data connected with Zapier. We're spending a lot of money with Zapier because we had a lot of volume, a lot of triggers and, and all that stuff. So like 12 to 15 K per year just on Zapier. And so like what we are we replacing email workflows with? [00:16:47] So this is where it gets a little interesting. So. We were using a customer engagement tool on the product team already to do a lot of like our product emails. And my goal was to try to figure out like, can we stretch that customer engagement tool to also [00:17:00] cover our top of funnel content leads idea? And we were in super early customer of, of that customer engagement platform. [00:17:07] So we got them to honor the legacy pricing that we had, but still with like almost a million emails in, in the database, we ended up spending like in that like 50 k range. Still all in about 70 K ish per year on the Point Solutions stack versus 150 K with HubSpot Niche example. But that, that's my example [00:17:27] Jonathan: I don't think that example is applicable because you just didn't need HubSpot, like you weren't a good fit for HubSpot. If you were say like active campaign, then I think that would be a more applicable example, but I think the pricing would've been a lot closer. [00:17:39] Phil: because Active Campaign doesn't have usage based pricing. [00:17:42] Jonathan: I don't, I don't, you know, I haven't looked at the pricing model in a while. Um, [00:17:45] Phil: Why do you think like we weren't a good fit for, for HubSpot? Just 'cause we had too many emails. [00:17:50] Jonathan: it's, it's too many marketing contacts. It. Yeah, it's just a different business [00:17:56] Phil: that that's, that's fair actually. But like when we started with HubSpot. [00:18:00] Like it, it was our first tool. Right. And like the price point was super affordable then. And, and like SEO organic, uh, got into play and here we are and now we need to do something about it. 'cause the 150 K doesn't make sense. [00:18:12] Yeah, fair [00:18:13] Jonathan: But, but I, I think that's a different debate than like, that is the wrong platform. And frankly, you probably didn't need a platform, right? You needed these three point solutions, but. It doesn't sound like that was a, like a sales led motion where you have even the CRM Object. Object. [00:18:34] Phil: we are using closed CRM as, like the, the, the CRM kind of attached to that. Um, yeah, the, the startup was closed, so we, we were paying $0 for, for using close. [00:18:44] Darrell: Well, [00:18:44] Jonathan: Right. So that's bulk not factored into the pricing. [00:18:47] Phil: But like, actually HubSpot, CRM is really affordable. Like they, they charge you per seats versus per contacts in the database. So last time I checked, like, uh, even if you have like 10 seats in the HubSpot, CRM, [00:19:00] it's just like, I dunno, 5K per year. It's, it's pretty affordable. [00:19:03] Jonathan: Not an enterprise, but [00:19:06] Phil: Well, what don't want to turn this episode into hotspot pricing breakdown. [00:19:10] Jonathan: the, right, one of the reasons that we appreciate the platform side of that though is that we don't want the silo between marketing. Sales, like the way the world is moving, the whole top middle, bottom of funnel motion, it isn't what it was 10 years ago. So looking at a contact record that starts in the marketing automation platform and then migrates into the CRM, like the model isn't always that way. [00:19:36] And when we look at our funnel reporting, that's not how we want to think about things anymore. [00:19:41] Darrell: I think so the other thing, [00:19:44] 4 - Integration Depth Can Decide Platforms Versus Point Solutions --- [00:19:44] Darrell: if I put the, if I put on like my Phil hat and I'm on Phil's side now, is that I think sometimes, especially with a lot of the like legacy mainstay players of marketing technology and marketing automation, I think that we as users have not been happy with their innovation, the, the, the rate of their innovation for a long time. [00:20:07] And you know, John might say something like, well switch platforms, that's not that easy. Um, and sometimes we are locked in, whether it's because of technical debt or whether it's because executives just say, use Salesforce, everybody else does. So you need to use it. And I think that that's where we start to go, like, man, like we wanna do something new. [00:20:31] We want to add value, we wanna do something different from our competitors. Hey, there's this point solution. It does something different. And I think that that's where I'm starting to see like why there is a, a case for, for, for point solutions is when the, the legacy players aren't innovating fast enough. [00:20:49] Jonathan: I, I subscribed to that argument. But Darrell, it also goes back to what you were saying before, which is like, are we subscribing to the point solution to be innovative to [00:21:00] try a new channel, or are we doing it to put a bandaid on something that we just neglected to get right on the platform side? [00:21:08] Darrell: Hundred percent. Hundred percent. [00:21:10] Jonathan: I think there's, there's also a whole nother argument to be had around like, why does that innovation stop on the platform side? And I'm kind of dunking on point solutions here, but we started there. Every one of these companies did start there, so. I don't, you know, I, I, I, I don't mean to be knocking on it from the perspective of all the companies that do have the opportunity to evolve, evolve into, into being a, a, a platform, but, um, there's also the side of it, which is that this isn't to say that platforms need to pretend to be truly all in one and try. [00:21:48] Sell themselves on this narrative that, Hey, we're gonna be able to fix every one of those problems. Like, no, you're not. The reality is that customers are going to need point solutions for cer certain things. Again, let them do it on their timeline, get [00:22:00] them launched, give them the tools they need to get started. [00:22:02] But integrations like this is one of our mantras on, on the product side. Integrations are built for customers, not for marketing. The integrations actually need to be there with a level of depth that makes them usable and doesn't create noise. Between that point solution and the platform. And by noise I mean duplicate contacts, messy data, uh, inadequate tracking, whatever, whatever it might be there. [00:22:26] Phil: Yeah, no, that's a great point. Like on integrations and the whole like, interoperability argument, like that's often, and, and I'd agree with like the, the platform side of this here, like it, it is a lot more simple for marketing ops admin to run everything and run platform versus like have it be in four different tools when it comes to like connecting shit together. [00:22:48] And when it comes to like. Figuring out what broke, like if something broke, you have to log into one tool and you can diagnose like one system. And if you have a point solution stack and there's like seven different tools [00:23:00] connected and something is breaking, like you have to teach QA on like seven different tools, log in, and obviously like maybe you have better setup there, but. [00:23:09] Um, yeah. What are your thoughts on like, interoperability as, as like the argument here? Because like, I feel like this argument for some cases is a bit dated in a sense. Like it might be true for some, it's not true for the folks like we talked about at the start, that are building their stacks around the data warehouse. [00:23:25] Um, like the data you need. All of your point solutions should also be in your warehouse. It's not rocket science anymore. When it comes to unifying that data and de-duplicating it, uh, with DBT and with Snowflake and pushing it to the tools that you need, what are your thoughts there? [00:23:41] Jonathan: Well, it's not rocket science for you, but as as a MarTech founder, I'm inevitably in that sort of marketing ops role within our company. Like, yes, we have other marketing ops people, but I was the first person to set things up and. Again, I, I inherently wear that hat, [00:24:00] so I get the request from the team. And for me, what I want to do is empower our salespeople, our account managers, our CX team, our marketing team, to do things on their own without having to tap me or somebody else who is responsible for that point solution. [00:24:17] And when they have to use a whole bunch of tools or figure out where did something come from, or how do I get into this solution? It just, it just impacts velocity. [00:24:27] Phil: Do you have a, a data team that supports marketing use cases for, for stuff like that? [00:24:32] Jonathan: No, we. [00:24:33] Phil: No. Do you, do you see that as kind of future state? A little bit. Like, uh, I don't know how, how willing you are to share some of this stuff here, but like Darra and I talk about like warehouse native and building stacks around that, and we realize that like. [00:24:47] We're a bit ahead of the curve versus a lot of people like, uh, when Darrell polled his audience on this, like, what's the source of truth for you? Is it the CRM? Is it marketing automation? Is it the warehouse? Is it the CDP? And majority of [00:25:00] people still think it's the CRM, but like us and Brinker and a bunch of other people are betting on the data warehouse. [00:25:06] But yeah, curious your, your thoughts there. [00:25:09] Jonathan: Do you think, before answering that, do you think that there's a difference with A-A-P-L-G or self-serve motion versus sales led motion [00:25:16] Phil: Yeah. Yeah, yeah. That's actually often one of the comments there, like can we break up the answers on that poll by like PLG or or B2B sales led versus people that you know are maybe a bit more lenient towards the PLG model? Yeah. [00:25:31] Jonathan: we are, we're sales led. High touch a lot of our Word event platform, right? In person events, like a lot of our interactions happen in person. It's data that isn't, yeah, certainly you could put in Data Warehouse or CDP or anything else, but the data goes into the CRM anyway. So for us, the CRM is. [00:25:50] Darrell: Yep. Yep. Yeah. PI think, yeah, PLG. Um, sales and versus sales led is, is a really big difference. The, the data needs are different. [00:25:57] ​ [00:27:59] Darrell: I think [00:28:00] the, I think going back to John's like original comment on, hey point solutions, distract from, you know, the main goals. I feel like there, that, that to me is like the, uh, such an underlying point. [00:28:14] Um. We, I, I worked at this company before and webinars just weren't going well, and the solution that the marketers had was to switch out the webinar platform or to buy new things. And, and, and this is like a very real concept, and it, it oftentimes just does hide the fact that there's something fundamental that's just not working well or that's just not good. [00:28:39] Like I, I think that. You know, with something like, like events, you know, and, you know, I'd, I'd love, I'd love to hear your take because events are complex and sophisticated and there's a lot that goes into to, to great events. Like I'm, I'm, I'm not, I'm not, you know, discounting the, the, the hard work that, that it requires. [00:28:57] But there is something very simple about [00:29:00] events is that, whether it's virtual or online, is that if it's good, people will come and, and they will stay. And the, the metric for me of events going well is that people continue to come and more and more people come. And it's, it's a very, very simple, um, thing that I, I think so many marketers just don't really understand. [00:29:20] And, um, you know, like I personally run events and that's, that's the North Star metric that I always think about is like, do they, do they show up and do they have a good time? And do they keep on coming? You know? And, and, uh, uh, I, I. That was one of the things too that, that was really big on my mind when, um, I remember Phil, that you were running the, the MarTech spotlight. [00:29:40] Like, I, I was always thinking about that. I was thinking about the audience. I was like, like, are they, are they getting a lot of value out of this? And um, um, it's just that fundamental thing of like, you can't buy something to fix a fundamental problem. [00:29:58] Jonathan: No, no [00:30:00] disagreement there. We're all on the same page with that one, but you did, you did uh, sort of prompt something else that I think is worth talking about. Going back to that idea of like a point solution versus another platform. So in our case, a lot of our customers are, are purchasing us because they are a little bit siloed from Yes events often live under marketing, but they are a little bit siloed and either the marketing team or the marketing ops team will try to gate keep. The marketing stack from the events team, and the events team wants a, they, they need a home, they need a place to live. Like that's the platform that they're going into every day. It's their CRM of all of their contact information, the way that they're interacting with their attendees, the, you know, the, the comms that they're sending out, emails, push notifications, whatever it might be. [00:30:48] And yes, all of that data needs to flow back into the CRM for doing things like attribution reporting. Maybe they do want to send emails from the CRM, but ultimately it has to be this, this [00:31:00] all-encompassing platform powerhouse for those event organizers to be able to operate on their own. Because unfortunately the events seem there's, they're often at the bottom of the stack when it comes to getting resources for marketing ops, and frankly, I think it should be opposite because they're like the actual one that has a hard deadline. Un unlike like the CEO set deadline, there's something that's actually like, you're gonna have 1200 people show up. Like things do need to work on time. [00:31:28] Darrell: totally, completely agree. Completely agree. [00:31:32] 6 - Point Solutions Provide Faster and Smarter Support Than Platforms --- [00:31:32] Phil: Um, the other argument to this, John, about point solutions versus platforms is when it comes to support, I think everyone listening that has used a platform, has submitted a ticket with the CS team or the support side of the platform, and they've waited a week, two, three weeks. [00:31:51] Finally, they get a response and it's like a vanilla candid response. Like, please go to this support article to find an answer yourself. You already read that [00:32:00] support article three times and you're like at the same dead end you were three weeks ago. I've used a couple point solutions where the team is a startup. [00:32:07] They have Slack Connect, so in my own slack org I can reach out to someone on Revenue Hero and I hear within an hour or two there's like three people responding to me. And if it's not something I can do today, like they're adding it to the roadmap and they're actually listening to me and it's gonna be part of the product. [00:32:25] What are your thoughts on, on that argument for, for platforms versus point solutions? [00:32:30] Jonathan: One of the strongest arguments, four point solutions. And you know, if I look at how we do, we, we do 24 7, 365 support, real people, no AI responses. And our training, it's not just the, the software, it's a lot around our customers. What challenges do they have? What problems are they trying to solve? Because the events industry is very unique but also very flexible. [00:32:56] What happens when you have these big platforms is all the training becomes around [00:33:00] how to use the software, how to answer questions from the software, where to get resources. You know, you say that that request goes in and takes to get a, takes a week to get a response. 'cause it gets routed to the CX rep from that product line who then has to kick it back to the product manager who has to ask the engineer a question. [00:33:17] Then it goes back round Robin. And that doesn't happen with Point Solutions because it's not just that they understand the software. It's that they also understand the business use case that you're trying to solve for. And even if somebody's been at a company like HubSpot since pre IPO, since inception, that it, it's so large now that they're not gonna know everything. And when you have a horizontal product where it can cover everything from a pizza shop to Yeah, a multi-billion dollar SaaS company, the use cases are also so different. So you don't have the industry insight to be able to solution engineer the same way either. [00:33:54] Darrell: I think the point solutions, a lot of times the teams can be hungrier too. Like I [00:34:00] think that oftentimes they, they're playing the role of the underdog [00:34:03] Phil: Yeah, they're scrappier. They want to keep the lights on. [00:34:06] Darrell: Yeah. Yeah. And I think a lot of them too, you know, and I've worked at small companies, I've worked at big companies and, and I, I will say, you know, being part of like a scrappy team that's all very mission driven and like you can, you can quickly see the results of your impact is very rewarding and very motivating. [00:34:28] And, um, you know, each call I think you can, makes a bigger difference where. Where maybe with some companies with a a thousand reps that are answering the phone, it's kind of like, eh. So I, I will say that there is something to be said around the, the, the attitude and the mentality of, of the, of the point solutions. [00:34:47] That could be a big deal. [00:34:48] Jonathan: Definitely. I mean, there's also with. Platform. The switching cost is so much higher, where with the point solution, they're fighting for retention every time you get on the phone with them. The other, the other [00:35:00] element of it is that like there's a, there's a culture that comes along with whatever it is that you're serving. [00:35:05] So in our case with the events industry mentioned this a few minutes ago, but because. Our customers are preparing for this very discreet point in time at Kiy where people are showing up on thousands of people are showing up on site. That sense of urgency that our customer has has to be matched by our customer experience team, so there's a culture around that as well. [00:35:27] Darrell: Yeah. I think too, you can, um, like oftentimes just naturally, and maybe your team does this, John, but I I find that with, with point solutions and startups, your team almost becomes like this consulting group for the customer. And it's like, you know, with, with a big company, you have to pay for that. Like you have to pay for professional services. [00:35:47] It's like two 50, $300 an hour, and they, they'll, they'll, they'll nickel and dime you, but with point solutions oftentimes. They'll, you'll, or startups, maybe not just point, but with startups, their team is like [00:36:00] invested in your success and they'll start to advise you, not only on like how do you use your tool, but like they'll often advise you, like me and Phil, uh, uh, met this company one time and we realized that their services weren't that much from a technology perspective, but they were literally doing like business consulting for their clients. [00:36:18] And, and we, our, our theory was that's why they're doing so well. They're literally helping customers. In more ways than just, uh, from a technical standpoint. Yeah. [00:36:28] Jonathan: And, and there's a couple of reasons for that. Um, one is because that's every, every one of those conversations is an opportunity for them to learn. And because they're smaller, they're able to actually translate that into product enhancements. The other element is the mission-driven component, right? Like I was telling you guys before I got on a call, 9:00 AM this morning with a prospect, our team knows that I really, really like marketing ops. Andrew, one of the people on our sales teams is like they wanna chat about [00:37:00] Salesforce integration because of an issue they're having with the Salesforce integration with one of our competitors. So I get on the call and they're like, so why is the CEO on the call? Andrew starts giggling, and I'm like, because I just love these conversations. [00:37:15] Like it's fun for me to do that solutions engineering on the fly. And again, it goes back to that mission driven element. You build a team and a culture around people that want to partner with you and solve that problem. [00:37:28] Phil: I love it. [00:37:28] 7 - Documentation Shapes Point Solution Stacks --- [00:37:28] Phil: I, I think it's also cool that you have such empathy for the role because you wore that hat in the earlier days. You were the person like setting stuff up and I want, yeah. [00:37:38] Jonathan: I hope I never, like, as soon as I remove myself from that, then the empathy is gonna die. [00:37:42] Phil: Yeah. Yeah, [00:37:44] Jonathan: I'm advising, uh, uh, I dunno if you know, like the all in podcasts. They run their events on our platform. I'm also an advisor to them, and one of the reasons I do that is because I need to get my hands dirty. [00:37:56] Like I need to be in the realm of hosting events like I used to large scale [00:38:00] events using our product to actually do it, to go through the same things our customers are going through myself, not just hearing it from our customers. [00:38:08] Phil: How, how much do you think the role or the adequacy of the person in marketing Ops has to play in the point solutions versus platform debate? Like one of the arguments for platforms is that. You don't want to build this Franken stack or like a, a bloated tech stack with a bunch of disparate tools, all kind of like, can I connect it together? [00:38:30] It's like a spaghetti mess of a diagram. And that's how like a lot of people point, uh, paint point solutions. But for me, like bloated tech, tech stacks aren't really a tool problem. It's more of a marketing ops or a leadership problem. You need a systems. Person owning and adding the purging of tools. Like I've run plenty of point solutions that were lean and documented, but I've seen plenty of scenarios where it wasn't the case and it was [00:39:00] broken and it was kind of a Franken stack. [00:39:01] But do you, do you think like part of this argument is actually more about the person kind of owning some of this stuff? [00:39:06] Jonathan: Let me take the question back to you. Do you think that there's a, a minimum number of people that have to be an owner of each of those coin solutions? 'cause what's the business risk when there's a single owner for those coin solutions? [00:39:19] Phil: I, I think there would be a minimum as the company scales, like if you've got a point, stack of 10 plus tools and you've got that all built on a single marketing ops person supporting a company of 500, you're doing yourself a disservice for sure. [00:39:36] Darrell: And you're gonna be screwed if they leave. [00:39:38] Jonathan: that's, that's the concern, right? [00:39:41] Phil: Yeah. Yeah. No, it's, it's fair and. Like I, I think documentation is a big part of the argument here. Like when you are smaller and, and more nimble, you're moving fast and you don't have time to document a lot of stuff. And like Darrell you just said, like if that person. Ends up leaving and they haven't documented [00:40:00] stuff like, you know, whose fault is that? [00:40:02] Is it the leader on the marketing side who that marketing office person is reporting to? And they didn't do the documentation. They didn't ask him to do the documentation. Like that's, I've been in roles where I, I, I was moving too fast. I didn't like, have time to [00:40:14] Jonathan: Oh, we all have, [00:40:15] Phil: is that my fault? Is that my boss's fault? [00:40:17] Like, who owns like the notion of documentation when it comes to like building a stack. [00:40:22] Jonathan: I think there's a, there's another problem there, which is that you don't know what the right answer is in the first couple of months of implementation. 'cause you're gonna change things so many times. So like what's the forcing function to go back and document it at that point? The other side of it is that. [00:40:34] Those things aren't static, right? Like even with our integration with HubSpot for the contact endpoint, they just rolled out V three of that API, and we have to maintain those things and update that even if you're using an IPA solution. So, um, yeah, there's ownership on the maintenance side too. And then you could be in a situation where, okay, you've got these two competing point solutions that need to be maintained at the same time, but you have one point of [00:41:00] failure that one individual who knows both of those. [00:41:05] Darrell: I think when it comes to documentation, I'm hoping it gets better, you know, with the, in the age of ai, I suppose. And, you know, a lot of people from what I've seen, have been using, you know, platforms to record their screen while they, while they do certain things, while they do setup, while they do. So I, I think documentation can get easier. [00:41:23] I think that, um, it's also just like a mentality thing. I, I, I, when if you have a good culture of documentation, it makes it. It, it actually enables your team to go faster because you can bring people along with you faster. You can hire people to replace you, you can hire, you know, um, um, you know, more junior folks that can learn. [00:41:46] So, uh, so I, I think that people forget that there's more value in documentation than just, um, in case someone leaves. We know it, what's going on. I, I, so I think it's like a culture thing that people really need to, to understand.[00:42:00] [00:42:01] 8 - How to Manage Shiny Object Syndrome in Marketing Ops --- [00:42:01] Phil: One thing we talk a lot about on the show. John is this idea of like in marketing ops, the best ops pros are people that are super curious, like they're constantly learning. They have a growth mindset. Part of that is like. Having a bit of shiny object syndrome, like always being hungry and checking stuff out and playing around with it, but also playing the role of being the grumpy ops person on the team who has to often say no to people and wrangle people back down to earth and say like, that's a really cool idea. [00:42:30] And you don't want to squash that curiosity and encourage them to keep learning other shit. But you have to say like, this is the shit we're focused on. We can't purchase this tool right now. This other thing in HubSpot is good enough for us right now. What are your thoughts there? Like how do you kind of like say no to some of that stuff and block out shiny object syndrome without like being known as the grumpy ops person who's like always saying no to shit. [00:42:51] Jonathan: I think you nailed it. Number one is curiosity. Like if you're hiring a marketing ops person, number one is curiosity. Number two is the capacity to say no. It's as simple as that. [00:43:00] Um. There's a difference between, Hey, this tool's really cool. I'm gonna spend four hours tonight playing with it, learning it inside and out, and then making the decision on whether or not I'm gonna say no. [00:43:12] Like, get your hands dirty with a tool, but don't get the rest of your stack dirty until you're confident that that is the right direction to go. And that the incremental improvement that that's gonna have on the rest of your stack is sufficient to justify, um, the ongoing maintenance edit. It's like any other product management role. [00:43:33] You're, you're constantly de, you're constantly in this decision of build vert buy right where to implement prebuilt solutions into your existing product versus building from scratch. And then the other side is every time you say yes to a feature, it's not the whatever hundred story points or three weeks of dev time to build the feature. [00:43:58] It's. The one [00:44:00] hour of maintenance that we have to account for on a go forward basis for the rest of our lives. [00:44:09] Phil: Yeah, such a good point. The whole, uh, build versus buy debate is a whole other like sub debate that, that we could go down on, but that's probably [00:44:16] Jonathan: but I, I think about it the same way, like you're building your, you're as a marketing ops person, you're building your stack and. You're either building within your existing platform or you're buying some third party that has some specialty that can come in and and bolt on and do that thing better, arguably better than whatever it is that you were able to hack together in your platform. [00:44:38] And yes, they're gonna continue to innovate on that, hopefully in the same direction that you know, their product vision aligns with your needs. Can't guarantee that, but hopefully that's the case and that's one of the things you'll flesh out in the evaluation process. [00:44:54] Darrell: I, it's, I I like what you said about, about the focus and about how, you know, sometimes if we [00:45:00] build something we're gonna have to main, you know, maintain it forever and it, and it's, and it's essentially like a weird version of tech, tech or main maintenance debt, I dunno what it's called, but, um, I think it's, it's just, it's really tough. [00:45:12] It, it's, it's because I, I'm a big advocate of focus. But what I really like what you said around like, let's do some of the ground, the legwork to understand what, what, what are the choices that we're making? And like, you know, will this fee, will this tool that we buy or that we build actually produce results? [00:45:30] And you know, I I, I think that sometimes, especially in marketing ops and I, I've been guilty of this, sometimes we can just say no by default, you know, and it's just like, no. Like, that's a, there's a new, there's a new thing. No, I don't wanna look at it. We're, we're, we're, we're 100% focused on this. And I think every now and then, though something does come, whether it's a solution or a tool or a new way of working that does change everything, you know? [00:45:54] And, and it, and it does level up the entire team. So I, I, I struggle with that. I struggle [00:46:00] with, you know, um, um, trying to find that balance of like. Keeping our heads down and focused, but also being open to new ideas that could kind of change the way that we work. I don't know if that resonates with you, John, or you [00:46:12] Jonathan: Well, it's, are you saying no because of the tech debt it's creating, or are you saying, or are you actually evaluating the business opportunity and then saying and and weighting that against the tech debt? [00:46:23] Darrell: I, I think that like, you know, like, like, like for example at work, like I'm investigating new tools that could. Um, I wonder if my, my team's gonna listen to this, but I'm investigating new tools that could like, improve our pers the personalization of our campaigns and like, um, you know, uh, in increase the speed in which we do AB testing. [00:46:44] And a lot of people on my team are like, we don't even have time for that kind of stuff. And, and I'm just like, okay. I, I get it. I love how focused you are, but especially like today with everything changing, I feel like it's important to know what, what kind of capabilities are out there [00:47:00] and if it could really improve the work that we're doing. [00:47:03] Jonathan: And that's where the curiosity comes into play, but it's not jumping on everything like. [00:47:09] Darrell: Yep. [00:47:09] Jonathan: Right. Look at, look at, um, look at the trends on LinkedIn over like the past, whatever, the past three years, right? You've got, I, I think I put a couple of them in the, in the notes here, but like every three months, two months, there's another thing that comes up and, you know, dark social, PLG demand, gen over lead gen, rev ops, Web3, enrichment AI, SDRs, SEO versus a EO. [00:47:35] Darrell: GTM engineering. [00:47:36] Jonathan: Yeah, exactly right. Every three months there's something else and there's a dozen products for each of those things. And I think it's worth being curious. Try three of them every time there's a new cycle, but you don't necessarily need to jump on every one of those things 'cause you don't have the capacity and your marketing team doesn't have the capacity to actually run with it. [00:47:54] So like be willing to try things. But you don't have to try [00:48:00] everything and it may not make sense for your business model. Some of those things make sense for PLG motions. Some of them make sense for sales led motions, and it's easy to get excited about something because everybody, every LinkedIn influencer is talking about it. The other, the other side of this question that we didn't talk about is, as a marketing ops person, when does adding another platform? Or another product actually mean it's gonna reduce the work on you because it's gonna become a self-serve product. And you know, again, event management tools are a great example of this. [00:48:34] When a company that was hacking together their events through their CRM onboards, a platform like Accelevents, the event people stay out of the hair of the marketing ops team. So there's actually another win there. So that's another thing that you should be considering when thinking about, um. About building your stack, [00:48:53] Phil: Yeah, sometimes adding a tool doesn't mean always adding complexity in more time. Sometimes it's shit that you're [00:49:00] doing manually already or or breaking things together that that's gonna like save you a bunch of time. [00:49:06] Jonathan: right? It saved you a bunch of time 'cause you're having to build it for these other internal teams, or those other internal teams are coming in and breaking your stack, or they're having to add custom objects to your CRM to support their. Business use case and pulling data like meal choice for an event that you just don't need in your CRM, right? [00:49:27] That just, that's just noise. [00:49:31] Phil: Yeah. Yeah. Totally agree. Uh, yeah, time for like two more questions, John. [00:49:35] 9 - A Founder's Admiration for Marketing Operators --- [00:49:35] Phil: Curious to like, let you plug the product a little bit. Like talk about the customers, the stuff that you've learned, like you've been doing this for quite a bit of time now. I know the platform wasn't the same in the early days. Talk about like the, the journey there and, uh, the, the marketing ops folks that, uh, are so close to your heart. [00:49:52] Jonathan: Yeah. Um, I guess the reason marketing ops is so. Fun for me [00:50:00] is, of all, marketing ops people build really cool products, like we talked about these different cycles every three months. These cycles are always fun and interesting to dig into, and the marketing ops people tend to build products like you'll have marketing ops people'll split off from some company and go launch their own startup, but they're like actually building products to solve a need. [00:50:20] It's, it's like need first, as opposed to. Where you get like an engineer who launches a company and it's like, oh, this really new cool technology is available. Let's see how we can turn this into a product where it's like you're, you're building a product around a solution, not around a problem. So I just like that angle of where marketing ops people come from. [00:50:40] Um, as for us as a company, yeah, we've, uh, we, we just hit 10 years in business, uh, in January. Um, so we've grown quite a bit. Uh, we're a little bit over 60 folks now and, um, and have, you know, grown to work with some of the largest companies, GitLab, uh, Zapier, IEE on the [00:51:00] association side. So, um, these companies, they could be running, you know, three events a year or sometimes even one event up to, you know, 800, a thousand events per year. [00:51:10] Some of those events are 40,000 plus people, so it really runs the gamut. We, um, we certainly did have that move to, to virtual as did many others in 2020 to kind of 2022. But today we're about 85% focused on, on, in-person and, and hybrid events. [00:51:28] Darrell: Love it. Love it. Yeah. And, and so one of the things that I, I had, I had a question on, and I really did mean it when I said like, I, I enjoyed using the platform to, to run the workshop. And I don't know if you like, but I'd love for you to like walk me through this because when my, when Mike first showed it to me, I was like, dude, why do I need this? [00:51:46] I was like, why can't I just do this on Zoom? [00:51:48] Jonathan: Yeah. [00:51:48] Darrell: And, and, and then, um, and then I got into it. I, I enjoyed the features, but I, I'd love to let you tell me, you know, like. For you to [00:52:00] actually like kind of share like if, if, if that's, if that was a, if, if you were Mike and I, and I, and this, and I'm Daryl trying to run a workshop and like, uh, with, with breakout rooms and all that kind of stuff, like w why not just use Zoom? [00:52:14] Jonathan: So, so Zoom massive company, right? At the end of the day though, like they're, in my mind, they're a point solution, right? Like, same with like DocuSign, another massive company, but they're here for one specific thing, and events in, in my opinion, are a category. They're a platform where you're interacting with those folks a lot. [00:52:40] Communication pretty and post event, it's, it's, there's a lot of lead up to it. There's the managing the event program throughout the year. There's the in-person and the virtual experiences, and then there's all the different technology components that are part of that mobile app for attendees, the badge printing experience for onsite, all of these things are not, [00:53:00] uh, frankly, most of 'em are not even available as as point solutions. [00:53:04] A part of the reason for that is that data model. Doesn't really, it's not designed to work that way. And in this case, you're creating an experience for an attendee that has all of these different touchpoints, online, touchpoint in-person, touchpoints, touchpoint that are in person, but through staff. And you have to ensure that you have that consistent experience throughout. [00:53:28] Length of that journey and that you're able to capture all of that data and act on that data and inevitably send it back to your CRM or your data warehouse. Um, so it's really about bringing all those experiences together. And there are some companies in our space that have grown through acquisition and it's created some of those more disconnected experiences, both for the attendees but also the event organizers. [00:53:52] And I guess to go back to your question, like why is that necessary over Zoom. If you're talking about just hosting a webinar, [00:54:00] we have a number of customers that do that with our platform. Sometimes they want it for the branding elements, they want it for the more unique experience and, and similar the granularity that it can offer their attendees. [00:54:13] But if that's all you're looking for is just a webinar, there are plenty of point solutions out there. It's for folks that are looking to really think about that holistic, you know, where, where do events fall within our, our, our marketing. Uh, journey. [00:54:30] Phil: Super cool, ma. Makes a ton of sense. Appreciate the, the breakdown there. John, uh, conversation has flown by. Appreciate you, uh, joining us today and, uh, playing one side of the, the debate hat. Uh, I think it's super fun. Um, we, [00:54:42] 10 - Why Continuous Growth Keeps Founders Balanced --- [00:54:42] Phil: one last question for you. You're a decade long founder, CEO, well traveled speaker, respected leader, LinkedIn, top voice. [00:54:48] You got the badge on LinkedIn. Uh, you're also a father and you have a, uh, another one on, on the way. Uh, you're also a frequent sailor and, uh, work out all the time. Like one question we [00:55:00] ask everyone on the show, all the stuff that you have going on in life, like how do you remain happy and successful in your career, and how do you find balance between all of those things while staying happy? [00:55:10] Jonathan: Uh, let's say ex sailor, there's a lot of things that you do, hobbies that you do lots when you, uh, when you become a dad. But that's, that's okay. That's a good thing. Um, I guess. We've probably all seen these quotes around like the, the number one thing that drives happiness is, is, is growth, right? It's like forward movement. [00:55:30] And as long as I'm continuing to feel like I'm progressing in life, in business, in health, then that keeps me happy. But as simple [00:55:42] Phil: Short answer, but makes, makes a ton of sense. Easier said than done though sometimes, but, um, I like the, the simplicity there. [00:55:50] Jonathan: Yeah, I mean, look, there could always be setbacks, but think at the end of the day, like you have the capacity to drive a lot of that. And, um, like [00:56:00] sticking with it, uh, we look, we, we banged on point solution for an hour. We Accelevents started as a point solution and that was over 10 years ago. And we continue to push forward and grow and recognize that the category has the capacity and is very much a platform in itself. [00:56:20] And that's the direction that we pushed forward and grew into. And, uh, again, it's just that, it's that continued growth in every element of life. [00:56:28] Phil: Love it. Appreciate your time, John. This is super fun. Uh, we'll, we'll link out to Accelevents and, uh, all the content you're, you're building around, uh, supporting marketing ops folks and, uh, field marketers and all the event folks in the world. Thank you so much for joining us today. Really appreciate it. [00:56:42] Jonathan: Yeah, this was fun. [00:56:44] Darrell: Thanks, John.