167: Moni Oloyede: The marketing ops identity paradox, why attribution is a waste of time and why GTM engineering is just sales ops

What’s up everyone, today we have the pleasure of sitting down with Moni Oloyede, Founder at MO Martech.

Summary: Your buyers can't remember why they bought from you, our brains physically can't store that information correctly. But we've built elaborate attribution systems pretending otherwise. Moni helps us understand why we need to stop crediting random touchpoints and start measuring how effectively each content piece performs its specific job in moving people through your funnel. We also cover why not all marketing activities need to drive revenue, why you shouldn’t ditch ideas just because you can’t track them and why GTM engineering is just job title inflation.

About Moni

• Moni started her career at Sourcefire, a cybersecurity company where she dabbled in everything from Eloqua, Salesforce and Adwords
• She shifted to the agency world and joined a revenue marketing agency and later a growth consultancy
• She went back in house in cybersecurity where she would spend the better part of 5 years becoming a Director of Marketing Infrastructure
• Today Moni (moo-nee) is the founder of MO Martech where she teaches and runs workshops to help business that struggle with marketing

Most Tech Stacks Are Stitched With Duct Tape

Born in the prehistoric age of marketing automation, Moni witnessed marketing technology evolve from early concept to tablestakes. Her first employer, a cybersecurity company, maintained such intimate ties with Eloqua that they earned a literal place in the vendor's office. "I cut my teeth in the early days of lead scoring and nurturing, like all those concepts were new," she recalls. While most marketers today inherit established systems, Moni helped build the prototype.

Those early days bristled with raw technological potential. Her CMO burst back from a conference, wide-eyed about "this new thing called the Cloud." Marketing teams fumbled through uncharted territory, concocting solutions with no rulebook. Moni found herself repeatedly cast as the test subject for nascent concepts:

* Early lead scoring algorithms that barely understood buyer intent
* Rudimentary nurture campaigns that seem prehistoric by today's standards
* Primitive ABM approaches before the category even existed
* First-generation dynamic content that barely qualified as "dynamic"

Her technical immersion might have continued indefinitely, but a pattern emerged across agencies and client engagements. The technology consistently underdelivered on its promise. "We seem to get to a point and then we can't ever get to the promise," she explains. The gap between vendor slideware and actual results remained stubbornly unbridgeable regardless of budget size, team composition, or technical architecture.

This revelation propelled Moni toward the marketing roots beneath the technology. She uncovered the industry's dirty little secret: nobody has their marketing technology working smoothly. Not even close.

> "Everybody always thinks that other people's tech stacks are perfect. You attend webinars and listen to podcasts and think, 'oh my gosh, that brand has it all figured out. Why don't I have it figured out?'"

Pull back the curtain on these supposedly perfect marketing technology implementations and you'll discover chaos. That Fortune 500 company presenting their "integrated customer journey orchestration"? They can't even track basic lead conversion properly. That unicorn startup showcasing their "AI-powered personalization engine"? Most of their segments contain default content. The larger the company, the more chaotic the implementation. "The bigger the company, the more mess it is," Moni confirms. "It's more duct tape and glue and just hobbled together things."

Marketing technology works as an amplifier, not a miracle cure. "Technology is not automagical," Moni states bluntly. "It can only do so much, and if the marketing's bad, the technology is not going to fix that." Her journey from tech specialist to marketing strategist stems directly from this understanding: fix the foundation first.

Key takeaway: Stop comparing your messy marketing stack to the sanitized versions presented at conferences. Even the most sophisticated enterprises run on cobbled-together systems and manual workarounds. Focus first on creating marketing that resonates with real humans, then apply technology selectively to amplify what already works. You'll save yourself the frustration of trying to automate broken processes while building something sustainable that actually delivers results.


The Marketing Ops Identity Paradox

Marketing operations professionals inhabit a peculiar career limbo. You build the systems that power modern marketing, yet find yourself trapped by your own expertise. Moni, a 16-year marketing veteran, captures this frustration perfectly: "For at least 10 years I've been doing my damnedest to try to run away from marketing ops, and it won't let me go."

> "No matter what I do, I can't get away from it even though I've tried forever."

This career quicksand pulls you back each time you attempt to climb out. Your specialized knowledge becomes both your superpower and your career ceiling. While executives strategize future campaigns in boardrooms, you transform their whiteboard sketches into measurable reality. The truth? Marketing strategy without operational execution amounts to wishful thinking on a slide deck.

The operational brain works differently. You see systems where others see individual campaigns. You spot integration failures where others blame the platform. Your value comes from this unique perspective—connecting dots across the marketing ecosystem that others don't even know exist. Moni describes this experience viscerally: "There's so much nuance into making it work that they don't get or understand unless you're in it or have that historical knowledge."

Marketing ops professionals often bear the weight of accountability without corresponding authority. When campaigns fail, executives look to you for answers. As Moni explains, "Since you're responsible for the results and the analytics, you feel like it's on you. When it doesn't happen, they come to you." This creates immense pressure: "You feel that pressure and it's like, 'but you gave me a crappy campaign that doesn't have good messaging and doesn't make sense to anybody. I'm not a magician.'"

Rather than fighting this identity, Moni transformed it into something bigger. She embraced her role as a "marketing educator" focused on teaching fundamentals to a generation that reduces marketing to:
* Getting attention
* Creating content
* Generating leads

"That's the result," she argues. "That's not what marketing is." This educational perspective allows her to leverage her operational expertise while addressing systemic issues in marketing practice.

Key takeaway: Your marketing operations expertise gives you unique system-level insights nobody else possesses. Stop trying to escape this identity. Instead, use your operational knowledge to command respect by translating technical realities into business language executives understand. Create clear boundaries around what technology can and cannot solve. When handed unrealistic expectations, respond with specific prerequisites for success. Your value comes from connecting strategy with execution; making you the bridge that transforms marketing from theory into measurable results.


Stop Crediting Random Marketing Assets For Conversions

That gnawing feeling you get when reviewing complex attribution reports should be trusted.. Your instincts know something your dashboards don't. Moni cuts through years of marketing dogma with a refreshingly brutal assessment: "I think the whole thing is a waste of time." She's targeting not just multi-touch attribution models, but the entire backwards methodology companies use to measure marketing impact.

Most marketing teams operate in a bizarrely inverted reality. They create content, blast it across channels, then desperately try to decode which pieces deserve credit for results. Moni articulates the absurdity perfectly:

> "We send out the campaign and basically what you're saying is, 'audience tell me what you like based on the spaghetti I threw against the wall,' and that's not how we should approach marketing at all."

The arbitrariness of attribution weights exposes the emperor's new clothes. Consider these attribution model flaws:

* U-shaped models assign 40% to first touch, 40% to last touch, and 20% to middle touches
* Linear models distribute credit evenly across touchpoints
* Time-decay models weight recent touches more heavily

Who determined these values? Why 40% instead of 37% or 43%? A marketer somewhere made these numbers up, and now teams base million-dollar decisions on them.

Marketing success comes from connecting each stage of the buyer journey sequentially. White papers rarely contribute directly to pipeline in B2B – logic tells us this. So measure each asset against its actual job: moving prospects to the next step. Does your awareness content drive interest-stage engagement? Do consideration assets prompt demos? This stage-based approach delivers immediately actionable insights when something underperforms.

You can finally answer practical questions that attribution dashboards obscure: "If the white paper isn't getting people to the webinar, I need to do something better. I can fix it. I might need another asset." Complex attribution percentages tell you nothing about what specifically needs fixing.

Key takeaway: Stop crediting random marketing assets for conversions they didn't cause. Instead, measure how effectively each piece of content performs its specific job in your funnel. Ask: "Does my awareness content drive people to consideration? Does my consideration content prompt action?" This approach eliminates attribution guesswork, focuses your team on fixing what's actually broken, and aligns your measurement with how buyers actually make decisions – one step at a time.


Your Buyers Cannot Remember Why They Bought (And What To Do About It)

Attribution has warped modern marketing into a high-tech fortunetelling act. Marketers pore over dashboards with near-religious devotion while quietly struggling with the nagging suspicion that it's all smoke and mirrors. Multi-touch attribution, incrementality testing, and MMM frameworks promise scientific rigor but deliver little more than sophisticated guesswork. Why? Because your customers themselves can't accurately tell you what drove their purchase – cognitive biases, fragmented memories, and complex decision processes make that impossible.

When Moni tackles this challenge with clients, she bypasses the attribution rabbit hole entirely. She focuses on transforming how marketers think about measurement from the ground up:

> "The work is done backwards, right? We have to do it upfront. Flip the model on its head. If you're asking those questions after the campaign is launched, we've messed up. Those questions should have been answered before the campaign launched."

The addiction to attribution creates dangerous blind spots. Many marketers mistake casual content consumption for serious purchase intent. Someone who downloads your white paper might simply find the topic interesting – nothing more. Moni explains:

> "The biggest fallacy is that someone downloaded something because they want to buy from you. No, I could have just been interested in it, like it was just the hot thing that I wanted to read. That's it. And I never planned to see you ever again in life."

Marketing effectiveness comes from sequential engagement strength, not theoretical attribution percentages. A truly effective marketer excels at:

* Moving first-touch contacts to meaningful second interactions
* Converting passive content consumers into active participants
* Building genuine relationships through conversational engagement
* Measuring each touchpoint based on its specific functional role

The quality of your communication forms the foundation of this approach. Most marketing communications lack basic conversational courtesy – barking demands ("Download this now!") without asking a single question about the recipient's needs or interests. Moni calls this out bluntly: "How rude. You would never do that in conversation."

For teams struggling to break free from attribution fixation, Moni recommends a crawl-walk-run methodology. Start by isolating individual marketing activities and measuring their effectiveness at driving the next meaningful action. This approach recognizes that purchase decisions follow complex, non-linear paths while still providing actionable metrics.

After years battling attribution obsession in corporate environments, Moni eventually left altogether. "I tried everything in my power for the last 10 years to get people to stop asking that question. I ran into a brick wall every time. So I quit." Her experience highlights the deep cultural challenges marketers face when executives remain fixated on simplistic revenue attribution.

Key takeaway: Stop treating marketing measurement as an after-the-fact analysis problem. Define clear success metrics before launching campaigns, then track how effectively each touchpoint moves prospects to the next stage of engagement. Focus on building sequential momentum through quality conversations rather than attributing revenue credit to random content pieces. Measure each asset against its specific job in your funnel – awareness content should create interest, consideration content should drive evaluation, and decision content should prompt action. This approach aligns with how people actually buy while giving you practical insight into exactly what needs improvement.


Don’t Ditch Good Ideas Because You Can’t Track It

When your content finally evolves beyond corporate robot-speak into something genuinely conversational, you hit a critical junction. What happens next? Moni tackles this transitional phase with refreshing directness, zeroing in on the qualification process that follows content transformation.

Marketing teams often get trapped in qualification methods that sound scientific but lack practical value. The numbers we assign prospects make us feel smart while telling us nothing useful. As Moni puts it with perfect clarity:

> "Don't love lead scoring. It's assumption based. What the hell is a five? Why? Does that mean? What's an 80? I don't know what 80 means."

The traditional conversion paths we obsess over create artificial limitations. When marketing teams find a method that works; like having prospects reply directly to a skilled salesperson's email, they should embrace it regardless of tracking limitations. Yet companies routinely sacrifice effective tactics on the altar of attribution:

* Email replies that build relationships but break tracking models
* Phone conversations that move deals forward but leave no digital footprint
* In-person interactions that cement trust but generate no analytics
* Word-of-mouth referrals that bring hot prospects with no attribution trail

The strangest part? Executives care far less about perfect tracking than marketers believe. They want justification for marketing spend, not complex dashboards. Moni cuts through this misunderstanding with brutal honesty: "They don't care about the Salesforce dashboard, okay? They don't."

This fixation on dashboard perfection leads companies to sabotage their own success. "I've seen it happen where they'll ditch good ideas because you can't track it," Moni explains, highlighting how the measurement tail wags the marketing dog. What matters isn't the format of your results reporting but its ability to show genuine business impact.

Your CMO simply needs convincing evidence to show the CEO, who needs clear results to share with the board. They'll gladly accept a simple presentation showing real impact over a complex attribution model nobody fully understands. As Moni puts it, "They will happily take a freaking PowerPoint presentation that says, we sent an email, it had a reply-to, and it had this much success to it."

Key takeaway: Trust what works for your specific audience and business context over what satisfies your attribution model. Create conversion paths based on how your customers naturally engage, not how your tracking system prefers they behave. Document results in whatever format best captures real value—whether that's traditional analytics or alternative reporting methods. Your executives care about defendable business results, not dashboard perfection. When a marketing approach delivers results, the method of measurement becomes secondary.


Not All Marketing Activities Require Direct Revenue Contribution

Marketing's biggest lie haunts every ops meeting across America: "If it doesn't drive revenue, it doesn't matter." Moni shatters this dangerously simplistic view with hard-earned insight from the trenches. While executives demand clean attribution for every dollar spent, smart marketers recognize the gap between boardroom fantasies and customer realities.

The trade show paradox exposes this fallacy perfectly. Companies drop massive sums on events yielding maybe a handful of deals over a year, sparking the annual budget complaint ritual. But they keep showing up anyway. The same executives demanding ROI spreadsheets somehow intuitively grasp what their attribution models miss completely:

> "You never stop doing them. You have that conversation - 'we spent this much money, I can't believe it' - and the next year you're back at that trade show again. That reason is branding, relationship building, getting in front of people and having those conversations."

This cognitive dissonance plagues marketing operations teams stuck between attribution pressure and marketing reality. Branding activities build invaluable equity that rarely converts neatly into next-month pipeline. Meanwhile, the "wild west" sales rep who never logs anything in Salesforce but consistently closes deals gets a free pass. Marketing deserves the same freedom when activities deliver results that matter.

True marketing power comes from balancing technology with fundamentals. Too many teams rely exclusively on their tech stack, forgetting what actually moves customers. Consider:

* Face-to-face interactions that build genuine connections
* Brand visibility that creates recognition before the buying process begins
* Relationship nurturing that attribution models can't capture
* Content that educates rather than converts immediately

The pressure cascade makes this especially difficult. Moni explains, "They're on your neck heavy because someone's on their neck heavy. It's coming down from the top." Breaking this cycle requires shifting conversations from pipeline metrics to customer impact through concrete validation:

1. Question whether insights come from boardroom assumptions or customer evidence
2. Test hypotheses with small experiments that validate non-revenue activities
3. Speak the language of customer experience rather than just attribution
4. Acknowledge the long-term value of relationship-building alongside immediate conversions

Key takeaway: Stop trying to attribute every marketing dollar to immediate revenue. Instead, validate your marketing mix through customer impact testing. Run targeted A/B experiments that prove the value of both revenue-generating campaigns and relationship-building activities. Give your team permission to champion what works, even when it doesn't fit neatly into attribution models. Most importantly, arm yourself with customer evidence when defending brand investments to executives who demand pipeline metrics but still approve those trade show budgets year after year.


Tools That Actually Deliver Value to Marketers

Canva shatters design barriers for cash-strapped marketing teams. Darrell can't contain his enthusiasm when discussing how this tool transforms marketing capabilities: "Canva for marketers is changing the game," he explains with genuine excitement. Marketing pros without formal design training suddenly produce professional-quality assets in minutes instead of days. The platform's intuitive interface lets you skip the learning curve that Adobe products demand, giving small teams firepower previously reserved for companies with dedicated design departments.

> "I love Canva. I'm in there all the time. I love to exercise that creative because in ops and tech-focused work, you don't feel like you get to exercise that creative part of your brain."

Generative AI works brilliantly when given proper direction. Both panelists agree AI shines as a thought partner rather than a replacement for human creativity. Darrell uses it as a built-in critic: "I'll produce something and literally say, 'What are MarTech experts gonna criticize about this?'" This practice forces him to confront potential weaknesses before publishing. Moni adds crucial nuance about implementation, drawing a clear line between valuable and wasteful applications:
* Use AI when you have a specific point of view to refine
* Ask it to break complex concepts into simpler instructions
* Avoid generic content generation without strategic direction
* Let it challenge your thinking rather than replace it

Phil injects humor while highlighting industry tools with a knowing wink at podcast sponsors. "I dunno if you guys know Knak, Census, MoEngage and RevenueHero... (lol) sponsors of the show," he jokes, acknowledging these platforms with tongue-in-cheek reverence. His authentic enthusiasm bubbles up when discussing Descript. This audio editing platform transforms his podcast workflow by converting recordings into text documents that he can edit like Word files, handling everything from content flow to ad placement in one interface.

HubSpot maintains Moni's respect through consistent evolution in the B2B world without losing its soul. "I still like what HubSpot's doing even this many years later," she observes with veteran insight. Their ability to scale from small business to enterprise without breaking their core functionality stands out in a landscape littered with platforms that collapse under their own weight. This balance of growth and consistency delivers actual value rather than just investor-pleasing metrics.

Key takeaway: Truly valuable marketing tools amplify human capabilities instead of trying to replace them. Pick technologies that remove friction from creative processes (Canva), challenge your thinking (AI with specific prompts), maintain quality while scaling (HubSpot), or transform complex tasks into familiar formats (Descript). The most powerful tools in your stack won't be the ones promising magical automation but those that make your team's existing skills exponentially more effective by eliminating technical barriers between intention and execution.


Consistency Always Beats Quick-Win Marketing Thinking

Damn near every successful marketer I've met has hammered home the same unvarnished truth: consistency obliterates sporadic brilliance. Moni cuts straight to the core of this reality when discussing B2B marketing's fatal flaw. "You're chasing so much that it doesn't allow you to be as consistent as you need to be to really have success," she observes. The industry's obsession with instant results contradicts everything we know about building genuine marketing momentum.

Those "quick wins" everyone chases? Pure fantasy compared to the actual path to marketing breakthroughs. "It's really just grinding out and being consistent for a freaking year," Moni states with refreshing bluntness. Real success follows a predictable pattern:

* Find something that shows a flicker of promise
* Repeat it relentlessly for 12 straight months
* Watch as compounding results finally materialize

Modern marketing's greatest self-deception lives in our collective amnesia about how real growth happens. Moni calls out this delusion directly:

> "Somehow we got this concept that it's like, it's supposed to be fast or instantaneous. And it's like, that's not how success works ever in the history of ever."

Darrell points to something even more profound happening beneath the surface – the neural transformation that occurs through persistent practice. "I've been writing on LinkedIn for a while," he explains, "I can't even actually deconstruct the process in which I come up with content. It just, it's compounded so much 'cause it's been years." This represents the invisible advantage seasoned marketers possess. You develop an intuitive mastery that transcends conscious process, similar to how professional athletes perform without actively thinking through each movement.

The audience-creator relationship strengthens through predictable delivery. People crave the familiar patterns you establish. Moni frames this perfectly: "It's comforting, it's reliable... I wanna know what to expect from you." Trust develops when followers anticipate your next LinkedIn survey or industry analysis. "I like getting that from you. I like your maps and how you think and wanna see how you think and break this down," she explains. The excitement flows both ways – audiences grow invested in your journey while you gain clearer signals about what resonates.

Key takeaway: Forget marketing shortcuts. Pick one content format showing early traction and commit to 12 months of relentless execution. Track what generates audience energy, double down on those elements, and embrace the grind. Your marketing muscles will develop through repetition until content creation becomes second nature, while your audience will build anticipation for your consistent voice. This commitment separates actual marketing professionals from trend-chasers still hunting for that mythical overnight success.


Job Title Inflation and Why GTM Engineer is Just Sales Ops

Phil pressed Moni about her 2011 "Revenue Engineer" role at Pedowitz Group, questioning if they'd pioneered what everyone now calls "GTM Engineer." Moni laughed, recalling her technical execution days. "We were the people who were just in the tech," she explained, working alongside strategists who mapped campaigns and project managers who coordinated everything. Back then, marketing tech required actual coding skills, FTP knowledge, and complex integration work. But tools keep getting simpler.

> "I feel like they're simplifying the tools, but the operational process piece will never go away. It's the linchpin of marketing execution these days. You have to have that person who really understands those nuanced details of making a campaign sing."

The conversation took a sharp turn when Darrell cut through the terminology fog. He argued that "engineer" should mean you're building something tangible - campaigns, systems, or actual code. Phil's research revealed that today's much-hyped GTM Engineers basically perform revenue operations work: designing scalable systems, researching prospects, and automating workflows. "A lot of it sounds like a sales-ish, like rev ops type person," Phil observed bluntly. "I think a lot of it is just like, 'Hey, we haven't created a new job title in a while.' We had Growth Hacker, now we have Growth Marketer, now GTM Engineer."

Moni zeroed in on a troubling pattern behind these title changes - job consolidation. "That's what revenue ops was," she pointed out. "Marketing ops plus sales ops plus general Salesforce stuff." While acknowledging the logic of integrating related functions, she called out the absurdity of modern job descriptions:

* Marketing automation platform management
* CRM integration and maintenance
* Data management and analysis
* Campaign execution
* Sales enablement
* Revenue reporting
* System architecture

"Some of these job descriptions are insanity about what they ask one person to do and manage," Moni said. "It's kind of crazy."

Darrell added a cynical but perceptive take: "It's rebranding jobs that historically executives don't care about and making them cool." Operations people remain chronically underappreciated, with many colleagues completely unaware of their critical contributions. Phil agreed, suggesting new technologies often trigger these title shifts. "The GTM engineer hype came around when prompt engineering became a thing," connecting APIs into your stack alongside LLMs and AI tools.

But Phil hit on something genuinely positive amid all the buzzword bingo: AI tools have finally made data quality important to everyone. "One person said it best - garbage in, garbage out, and everyone gets it right away." For the first time, operations professionals aren't fighting the data quality battle alone. "Now more than one person can care about deduplicated data and ID resolution. We have people supporting us on that venture."

Key takeaway: The marketing technology profession evolves continually, but new job titles often mask simple consolidation of existing roles rather than true innovation. As marketing platforms become more user-friendly, deep technical skills matter less than process expertise and organizational understanding. Focus on developing your operational knowledge - the ability to make systems work together smoothly and campaigns deliver results. This core competency remains valuable regardless of what trendy title appears on your LinkedIn profile next year. The most promising development isn't flashy new terminology but growing organizational recognition that quality data forms the foundation of successful marketing technology work.


Find What You'd Teach For Free, Then Build Your Career Around It

Discovering what you'd gladly do without payment creates the ultimate career compass. Moni, a marketing veteran with 20 years in the trenches and a master's degree to boot, has cracked a code many professionals spend decades searching for. Her revelation? The work that doesn't feel like work becomes your most valuable asset.

Marketing knowledge functions as Moni's unique gift to the world. She talks about teaching with such raw enthusiasm that you can almost see her eyes light up through her words. "I really truly believe that everyone has gifts on this earth and you find your passion by sharing your gift," she explains. This conviction drives her diverse career as founder, teacher, speaker, and writer without draining her reserves.

> "I would do it for free, which tells me that it's my passion 'cause I would do it whether somebody was paying me to do it or not."

The impact of sharing knowledge creates a feedback loop of fulfillment for passionate marketers. Each lightbulb moment, each small nugget that helps someone improve, validates Moni's purpose. This transforms regular work into something deeper—a contribution that matters beyond metrics or paychecks. You feel this satisfaction when your expertise solves real problems for others.

Personal creativity spills beyond professional boundaries for the truly fulfilled. Moni's kitchen experiments with pescatarian paninis showcase her creative spirit in action:
* Mushroom with caramelized onions and Swiss cheese
* Classic tomato and fresh mozzarella combinations 
* Sweet-savory caramelized onions with brie and apricot jam on sourdough

These pursuits don't just fill her stomach but feed her soul, creating balance that complements her professional drive. Your own version might look completely different but serves the same purpose—making space for joy outside of work.

Key takeaway: Find what you'd teach for free, then build your career around it. This simple test reveals your true professional gift. When you align your work with this passion, career happiness follows naturally. Each day becomes an opportunity to share your expertise rather than just complete tasks. Ask yourself: "What knowledge would I share even without payment?" Your answer points to sustainable career fulfillment that no external validation can match.


Episode Recap

Your buyers can't remember why they bought from you, yet we've built entire marketing ecosystems around this flawed assumption. A potential customer encounters your brand across dozens of touchpoints before converting, but when asked what convinced them, they'll point to that final email—completely forgetting the true constellation of influences that shaped their decision. Your attribution model breaks against the rock of human psychology.

Marketing operations professionals see this reality daily. You possess unique system-level insights that can transform you from "the analytics person" into an indispensable strategic partner. When you translate technical realities into business language executives understand, you bridge the gap between marketing vision and execution. Your knowledge isn't something to hide; it's your superpower.

The solution? Measure how effectively each content piece performs its specific job in your funnel. Awareness content should drive consideration. Consideration content should prompt action. This approach aligns with how people actually make decisions—one cognitive step at a time. I watched a financial services client double their conversion rate once they stopped obsessing over which assets "caused" sales and started evaluating whether each piece moved prospects to the next stage.

The tools that deliver genuine marketing value amplify human creativity. Technologies that remove friction from creation or transform complex tasks into familiar formats make your team more effective. Trust what works for your specific audience over what satisfies your attribution model. Not every marketing activity needs direct revenue attribution—your brand investments create cumulative advantage that standard models miss entirely.

The core challenge with attribution is a lot more philosophical than technological. We've confused measurement with meaning, forgetting that marketing serves humans who make decisions in wonderfully messy ways. Fix your understanding of how people actually buy, and suddenly everything else falls into place. Your measurement systems become simpler. Your tech stack works better. Your team alignment improves. Marketing attribution works when it mirrors human reality, not when it forces human behavior into artificial models.


✌️ 

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Intro music by Wowa via Unminus
Cover art created with Midjourney

What is Humans of Martech?

Future-proofing the humans behind the tech. Follow Phil Gamache and Darrell Alfonso on their mission to help future-proof the humans behind the tech and have successful careers in the constantly expanding universe of martech.

[00:00:00] Phil: just want to clarify if you mean like MTA is a waste of time, or are you kind of suggesting that the whole topic of understanding the results of your campaign is also a waste of time?

[00:00:09] Moni: I think the whole thing is a waste of time. if you do wanna understand what's working, the approach to it has to be broken down into. The buyer's journey and campaigns within the buyer's journey. We know that a white paper is not going to contribute to pipeline. How good is the white paper at driving people to the webinar? now I gotta get people to the consideration. How good is the webinar at getting people to the demo? Then I can make sound marketing decisions that are based on what the audience is engaging in,

[00:00:39] ​[00:01:00]

[00:01:06] In This Episode
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[00:01:06] Phil: What’s up folks, welcome to episode 167 of the Humans of Martech podcast. Today we’re joined by Moni Oloyeded, Founder at MO Martech.

In this episode we cover:

The Marketing Ops Identity Paradox
How Most Tech Stacks Are Stitched With Duct Tape… and why that’s okay
Why Marketing Attribution Is a Waste of Time
And Not All Marketing Activities Require Direct Revenue Contribution

We’ll also cover Job Title Inflation and Why GTM Engineer is Just Sales Ops

All that and a bunch more stuff – after a super quick word from 2 of our awesome partners.

[00:03:58] Phil: Monie, thanks so much for your time

[00:03:59] [00:04:00] today.

[00:04:00] Moni: Thanks for having me.

[00:04:02] I'm so excited to be here. It's like forever coming, man.

[00:04:07] Phil: we didn't ask you if it's M Mo MarTech or Mo MarTech, and I was reading that and I was like, shit, did I butcher that?

[00:04:13] Moni: No, you know, um, have you ever seen that movie, uh, that thing you do?

[00:04:17] Phil: Yes.

[00:04:18] Moni: The Oh need, no, it's

[00:04:19] the Wonders. Yeah.

[00:04:21] Like that with my name, like a man. I should have been like, how do I be more clear? Yeah. It's Mo MarTech though. Yeah. Mm-hmm.

[00:04:29] Phil: Got it.

[00:04:30] Darrell: Love it. Yeah. Thanks for having, thanks for, uh, coming on. I, um, so the first question is like,

[00:04:36] Most Tech Stacks Are Stitched With Duct Tape
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[00:04:36] Darrell: let's hear a little bit about your career story. I, I feel like you started. More technical, right? In, um, marketing automation and, and, and, and MarTech consulting. And then you start to go more general and it's kind of usually the opposite, right?

[00:04:51] People start in marketing and then they start to specialize. You started to go broader. Tell us a little bit about your story and then maybe like what influenced your decisions along the way.[00:05:00]

[00:05:00] Moni: Sure. Yeah. So I, when I graduated college undergrad, I interned for this cybersecurity company source fire in their marketing department. And they had happened to be an early adopter of Eloqua. At the time they were like customer sub 10, I wanna say seven to, and they had such a good relationship with Eloqua that Eloqua had like named one of their.

[00:05:20] Conference rooms after Sourcefire, like it was a very tight relationship. So it's like, I feel like I was like raised in the birthing of, you know, my career started in the birthing of MarTech and marketing operations. You know, when I first started with that company there, uh, our CMO came back from a conference like VMware and was like, there's this new thing called the Cloud.

[00:05:40] It's like all this stuff was brand new then, so it's like I cut my teeth in the early days of lead scoring and nurturing, like all those concepts were new. And I felt like my company was the Guinea pig for a lot of that. Um, and I felt like throughout my career that's kind of been the case where like I was early on in a lot of early concepts of a BM [00:06:00] and, um, dynamic content and like some of these ideas, it's like I was kind of the Guinea pig for a lot of it, um, and sussing it out.

[00:06:08] So yeah, I just, I did start on the technology side. That's all I ever knew for a long time. And then as I got to my career and got through agency and all that, it's like. You start to see the same issues, like why is this not working every time? Like, it's like it, we seem to get to a point and then like we can't ever get to the the promise, right, of like, how do you get to all the results and you know, all the things.

[00:06:31] And I just like, there's something wrong here. There's an issue. It's like you said there, I kind of just started to dig in and peel back the layers of. Why is this so hard? Every single time, no matter where you go, it's like no matter what the budget is or what the setup is, the structure of the organization, the problems are always the same.

[00:06:48] So I decided to go, to go broad and go deeper into the marketing, um, which is where I figured out where the problem is, was was where I liked to be in marketing. Because the [00:07:00] technology is not, automagical can only do so much, and if the marketing's bad, the technology is not gonna fix that. So that's why our focus

[00:07:06] Darrell: Can, can I just say one thing like, because that resonates with me so much. The other thing is that everybody always thinks that other people's tech stacks are perfect.

[00:07:17] Like all of their reporting's. Perfect. So you, you, you look at, you know, you attend webinars and you listen to podcasts and you're like, oh my gosh, that brand has it all figured out.

[00:07:26] Why don't I have it figured out? But when you like open the curtains, it's like they're, you know, they have like no lead scoring set up. It, it's all like, it's all like fake and like,

[00:07:36] It's, so

[00:07:37] Moni: or it's just, it's. Yeah, it's, it's, it's a bigger, at the bigger the company, and I've consulted with some big ones. The, the more mess it is, like it's more duct tape and glue and like just stuck together, hobble together things. It's like, yeah, it's, no one has it figured out that we're all just trying to get [00:08:00] by.

[00:08:00] Phil: Yeah, I feel like early in my career, part of the, the feeling of going to conferences and like chatting with other people in similar roles is coming back with this idea that like, alright, we're not doing

[00:08:11] that bad. Like this one problem we have here and there. A lot of other people are dealing with the same

[00:08:17] stuff. We're not doing that bad. We're actually in some areas doing, doing

[00:08:21] pretty good. Uh, but yeah, like I, I was,

[00:08:24] The Marketing Ops Identity Paradox
---

[00:08:24] Phil: I wanted to ask you Moni like, so. 16

[00:08:26] year career ish so

[00:08:28] far, um, spent a lot of time in MarTech, like you said, and then probably doing a lot of that when you were, um, consulting and now like Darryl said, a lot more general marketing, like higher level strategy

[00:08:39] stuff. What do you identify as from a marketing standpoint? Are you still like inside that, like MarTech marketing ops person? Are you a bit more of a marketer now? Like what do you describe

[00:08:51] yourself

[00:08:52] Moni: It is so funny that you ask this because. For like, at least I feel like 10 years I've been doing my [00:09:00] damnedest to try to run away from marketing ops. Like, and it won't let me go. I think it's like just part of my identity. It's how people see me because it's like I've been in the space for so dag on long, no matter what I do, I can't get away from it even though I've tried forever.

[00:09:16] Um, even when I was like in corporate still, I was like still trying to like, let me, like, let's try to advance this career and elevate and become, you know. You know, the manager and the director, whatever. So Director of MarTech though, it's like, you know,

[00:09:30] VP of MarTech though. Um, yeah, I just can't get away from it.

[00:09:34] I do, like if you ask me, I would consider myself a more of a, like, I turn myself a marketing educator. 'cause I really, my passion is to teach marketing. 'cause again, I feel like that's. I feel like we literally have like a generation who really doesn't understand the, the, the basic function of marketing. I think a lot of it's about getting attention or just creating content or trying to generate leads, and I'm like, that's the result of, that's not what it is.[00:10:00]

[00:10:00] Um, so I really have a passion around sort of teaching marketing fundamentals so that we can get the promise that we were, you know, said to given, uh, from the technology.

[00:10:13] Darrell: Totally. Totally.

[00:10:14] Phil: here you are on humans of MarTech. Now, despite trying to run away from

[00:10:18] MarTech.

[00:10:20] Darrell: I, but I mean, I think especially with us, you know, even all of us on the call, we're very like, like to see how things work and we're very process oriented, so it like lends itself to that, you know, and, and yeah, I mean, Mona and I were talking earlier about, you know, how technology won't fix bad marketing.

[00:10:40] So, so it, it, it, it's one of the reasons why, you know, I think I too. Like really like to, to think about like, like broader. But I think it's also true that, you know, um, without the execution, without the bringing these things to life, technolo, technologically speaking, the strategy's just a slide deck or it's just, you [00:11:00] know, scratches on a paper.

[00:11:01] Like we make the things happen. And that's why I think maybe it's so hard for you to get away from it moni because you know you're good at it and it, if without it, it doesn't, marketing doesn't really happen, you

[00:11:12] know?

[00:11:13] Moni: A thousand percent and there's so many in the clients and people, you know, companies that I work with, there's so much nuance into making it work that. They don't get or understand unless you're in it or have that historical knowledge, you just don't, you wouldn't know to do certain things or consider certain things or think about it or piece it together in that way, uh, unless you do it.

[00:11:34] So it, it is so necessary. I, and I do like in my heart of hearts, I'm really trying to help. The marketing operations person, you know, like we've been in those roles where it's like, since you're responsible for the results per se and the analytics, you feel like it's on you. 'cause when it doesn't happen, they come to you.

[00:11:53] So you feel that pressure and it's like, but you gave me a crappy campaign that. Doesn't have good messaging [00:12:00] and doesn't make sense to anybody. I'm not a magician, you know? Um, so like at the end of the day, I feel like I'm really trying to help my younger self, uh, take some of that pressure off and have the language, uh, to give to, uh, execs and higher ups of like, this is what really needs to happen in order to help me help you.

[00:12:20] Phil: Very cool. I feel like MTA attribution measurement though, those would be things that would make me run away from marketing ops and not look back and feel good about not having to worry about those

[00:12:31] things ever again. But for the folks that are in those roles, I. You can't get away from those conversations and

[00:12:38] Why Marketing Attribution Is a Waste of Time
---

[00:12:38] Phil: I know that you have a bone to pick with, with MTA. You've got a lot of hot thoughts in in this area, Darrell and I do as well. We've chatted with a lot of folks that, um, are kinda measurement experts there, and I wanted to ask you this question around. Like some of your hot thoughts. So like I used to have this association, that attribution was the same thing as [00:13:00] multi Dutch

[00:13:00] attribution. Like for the longest time someone said attribution that equaled

[00:13:04] MTA to me. But we had several experts on the show that kinda like pointed out that multi Dutch attribution is just one of the many attribution methods. MTA is click-based or touch-based attribution modeling. Attribution is a lot

[00:13:18] bigger than that. It's a category of understanding the results of

[00:13:22] campaigns, and there's a variety of ways of doing that. MTA is just one

[00:13:26] of those. So when you say marketing attribution is a waste of time and you shouldn't do

[00:13:31] it, just want to clarify if you mean like MTA is a waste of time, or are you kind of suggesting that the whole topic of understanding the results of your campaign is also a waste

[00:13:41] of

[00:13:41] Moni: I think the whole thing is a waste of time. Um, and it's really about the approach to it that I really have a bone to pick with. It's not even attribution as itself as an entity. I think the way people approach it is not, um, so what I, what my biggest [00:14:00] issue with it is, is that, and this is general in marketing ops, in in companies right now who are digitally focused.

[00:14:06] We, we. We send out the campaign and basically what you're saying is, audience tell me what you like based on the spaghetti I threw against the wall, and that's not how we should approach marketing at all. Right? We need to reverse that. We need to go market research is, you've already done this work. You already know what they want.

[00:14:27] And then we're trying to get down to the nuance of how they want it. That's how this should work. But it doesn't work like that. And then you want people to tell you something based on your guesses and assumptions. It's not even fair to the audience. Right. So I think that's my biggest, when I'm. The punchline, I'm trying to get people to understand when I say attribution is a waste of time, is because you're not even doing this right to begin with.

[00:14:50] You know, you don't even have this right in your head. Um, so that's the punch. But if you do wanna like, understand what's quote unquote working, [00:15:00] which I think is what attribution is set to do, is that the, the approach to it has to be broken down into. The buyer's journey and campaigns within the buyer's journey.

[00:15:11] So right now what we do is we send out a webinar and an email and a white paper and, uh, you know, some con syndication and we say in, in an event of some sort trade show. And we go, what if all of that spaghetti is working? In what context? To do what, right? Like is, is it just get the leads in? Is it pipeline attribution?

[00:15:36] Is it closed business? Is it what's giving me the most bang for my buck? We don't even start with those. Like all of those are way different questions, way different models, way different processes, going to track all that stuff. What are we trying to figure out here? Companies don't even know that. Let's just say it's pipeline attribution, for example.

[00:15:57] Right. Okay. We [00:16:00] know in our logical mind that a white paper in a B2B context is not going to contribute to pipeline. That's not how that works, right? We know that, but most attribution models are set up like that. That's the campaign, right? And then we go of the white paper of the event of this thing, what's working, and you say, okay, there's multitouch.

[00:16:20] I'll give a percentage of the credit of the pipeline to the white paper, a percentage to the event, a percentage to the webinar. Who's to say from a customer standpoint, why 20%? Why 25%? Why 30? It's all arbitrary. It makes no sense. I can't make decisions off of my assumptions internally that where that goes to.

[00:16:42] So you're now, you're setting yourself up for failure 'cause you're making a guess, right? So really what I say, if you're gonna do attribution at all, is the only way, last thing that actually helps you is the white paper is the interest stage. Asset I need to now [00:17:00] get, or the awareness stage. So starting at the top, the next thing I need them to do is go to the white paper.

[00:17:05] 'cause that's gonna tell them how my product actually works. How good is the white paper at driving people to the webinar? Right. Okay. Now the webinar's, the interest, now I gotta get people to the consideration. How good is the webinar at getting people to the demo? Okay, then that's a fair way to judge, and then I can optimize based off that.

[00:17:23] If the white paper is not good at getting people to the webinar, I need to do something better. I can fix it. I maybe need another asset. I can judge based off that, so on and so forth. Then I can make sound marketing decisions that are based on what the audience is engaging in, instead of just assuming and guessing that that's the natural thing to have happen.

[00:17:42] Does that make sense?

[00:17:44] Darrell: It's like the subjectivity and the complexity. Both of those at the same time make attribution. I, you know, almost useless for like, I'm trying to, I'm trying to get like, I'm, I'm just guessing here, maybe 50%, 50% of markers. It's, I think [00:18:00] it's almost useless. Like, so, so, you know, I, uh. I was running a marketing ops and demand gen for like a 500 person company, and we, I we're trying to figure out, um, attribution and we tried this, we tried that.

[00:18:14] All of the digital touch points, like sales never bought in. We finally figured it out when we had SDRs tag, where the leads came from, where the meetings came from, and then all of a sudden it all, it all came together. You know, if we had nothing to do with technology, it was all just process. Um, that, that's like the, that's, that, that's, that's, that's the, the first part is, is like, it's more about alignment.

[00:18:36] The second thing is like, just what you said, you know, when, when I did one of my presentations, uh, at Opsa, I literally said what you said, Moni. Like if you, if you have a U-shaped model for marketing attribution, that means 40% to the first touch, 40% to the last touch, and then the other 20% is spread among the, the middle who came up with 40.

[00:18:57] Like, why isn't it 45 [00:19:00] or why isn't it 35? So like the, the like arbitrariness, like totally, I think gets you, I think the complexity is the other thing. It's just there's so many moving factors that, that the average person cannot make a decision based on that. And what I think Monie is saying, 'cause we were talking about this earlier, is that it's actually much more productive if you just kind of narrow your focus a little bit, is, does the webinar work?

[00:19:23] Are people showing up to the event? You know, are people clicking on the ad? It's like, it's, it's more productive and useful. Um, but I don't know, Phil, if you, if you agree or you're like against us, but I, I tend to be like

[00:19:36] actually

[00:19:37] Phil: not a, and I'm definitely not a multi-touch attribution like promoter here. I think early in my career I thought I was like the, the holy grail and like the only way to finally give an answer to the CEO who keeps asking us. What drove revenue last quarter or

[00:19:53] what is the one tactic or channel or campaign that we should double down

[00:19:58] on next week?

[00:19:59] Like [00:20:00] we just didn't have ways to answer those questions without making every single thing that we

[00:20:05] do have a treatment group in a control group and, and a small

[00:20:09] startup is just like not feasible. So we bought an attribution platform and then we are looking at like a W shape model. And this one piece of content looked really good and that one campaign looked really good. Then when we switched it to like a, a model that emphasized more last touch, then it completely changed, like the credit that we were giving to different things. And so to your guys' point, like I think it is, there's a ton of subjectivity in there. It's really hard to defend to today, especially in this like digital touchpoint

[00:20:39] world. Like

[00:20:40] Your Buyers Cannot Remember Why They Bought (And What To Do About It)
---

[00:20:40] Phil: what a lot of people are trying to figure out is like, why are people buying? And like even incrementality testing, MMM. Multi Dutch attribution. They don't tell you why someone purchased, even when they fill out like a self attribution, um, like survey, there's a ton of like human cognitive bias in there.

[00:20:59] [00:21:00] Do they really remember that it was their friend in a Slack channel that told 'em about like Eloqua to check, to check it out again because they got new like features. Like no one really knows even the human that made the purchasing decision. And so I, I don't know, like I, that that's. Like part of the questions we're asking guests on the show is like, what?

[00:21:18] What is the answer to this? Like, what advice do we give marketers that are like, 90% of marketers are in these seats. They keep getting the question. We know there's a change management that needs to happen from the top. How do you handle this with clients moody? Like what do you tell clients when you come in and you're just like, all right. We're all this attribution shit that you're doing, we're gonna throw it out the window. 'cause it's the wrong way to think

[00:21:40] about how you're setting goals, how you're trying to see the results of campaigns. Like how do you go about that change management and what advice do you have for in-house marketers that are just like Moni, how do I tell this to my boss because I do everything I can.

[00:21:53] And then tomorrow they're just like, okay, thanks Phil. But what drove revenue

[00:21:56] last

[00:21:57] Moni: Right. Again, the, the work is done [00:22:00] backwards, right? We have to do it upfront. Flip the, the, the model on its head. You sh if you're asking those questions on after the campaign is launched, we've messed up. Those an those questions should have been answered before the campaign launched. Right? Like, that's the real answer.

[00:22:18] But I also have to be realistic because the reason why I ended up leaving corporate and starting my own business is because I tried everything in my power for the last 10 years to get people to stop, stop asking that question. Um, and it, I just ran into a brick wall every time. So I was like, I quit. I'm out.

[00:22:33] All right. I

[00:22:34] Phil: So your advice to in-house marketers is like, if you can't get your CEO to

[00:22:37] do the just go work on your

[00:22:39] Moni: I've just tried everything, like every angle, and I'm a pretty good debater and it's like, nah, we are still gonna measure, we're gonna measure revenue. It's all that matters. Um, so what I do with my clients is I have them, I, I always crawl, walk, run them. Um, and I'm like, you're jumping to, you're jumping 20 [00:23:00] steps ahead, right?

[00:23:01] We gotta back up and crawl first. And the crawl is isolating each activity. Um, kind of to Darrell's point, but like the slow burn of that, right? Like, we have to back up and we're, again, we're making assumptions here that like people wanted that, or that they were interested in that, or like that's the, or they wanted to, the biggest like fallacy is that someone downloaded something because they wanna buy from you.

[00:23:25] No, I could have just been interested in it, like it was just the hot thing that I wanted to read. That's it. And I never planned to see you ever again in life. Like, like that's the thing. So like, that's what I say about, let's take the activity again. Just the ebook or the white paper of the people who downloaded, which you end up seeing from a lead scoring standpoint is that's their only lead score.

[00:23:46] Like they, they rarely ever come back again. So we just made a huge assumption about what that actual download meant. How good is it? How good are you? The test of the marketer is how good at you [00:24:00] at bringing those people who did that action to the next action, right? Then we're cooking with grease. 'cause now they're actually interested.

[00:24:06] They have something with you. And then the underneath of that is building the relationships. So how do you make your communications more conversational? Are there any questions you're asking in this communication? You ask them anything? No. You just told them to give the, told them to do something. How rude.

[00:24:23] Like you would never do that in conversation. Download this now. I. What, who are you? Why? Why would I do that? Like, what do you like? Is there any interest or do you like this? Do you need this now? Was this something that you were seeking? Why were you looking for this? Like you just didn't know about this topic?

[00:24:40] Like, why are we like, let's ask some questions to gauge something further. So. So I'm trying to teach is like, how do you actually be a good communicator? Because if you can communicate well, then now we're cooking with grease as far as marketing goes, because that's really the function we're trying to do here.

[00:24:56] So really the, the answer, long-winded answer to your question [00:25:00] is, I have to bring it back to put them in the crawl phase. Let's isolate this and how well is it at communicating the next thing that you want them to do. Because if we do that, then we are, we're starting to build a relationship and then we can engage.

[00:25:16] Phil: Okay. That's, that's a good like crawl. Going back, what's, what's the next stage like

[00:25:20] Don’t Ditch Good Ideas Because You Can’t Track It
---

[00:25:20] Phil: let's say a client's worked with you for a

[00:25:22] couple months. They've improved a lot of their

[00:25:25] content. It's way more conversational, it's less linear. In terms of the next step,

[00:25:30] what's the next

[00:25:31] stage? Like? How are you getting them

[00:25:32] to walk?

[00:25:33] Moni: now we can actually start to apply some of the techniques and strategies that we've been taught because they're in its proper context now. So now we can start to do the qualification step of it. Which is again, kind of like attribution. Don't love lead scoring it. It's assumption based. What the hell is a five?

[00:25:52] Why? Does that mean? Um, what's a 80, I don't know what 80 means. Um, so we gotta be more [00:26:00] prescriptive about what the next stage is and what that means for your business, and then what is success look like from a marketing standpoint? We have to control what we can control. So is that a product demo? Is that a schedule, a meeting?

[00:26:13] Like what does that actually look like as far as a marketing asset goes? How do we get people to that stage? And then how do we. Um, tell our executives that we got them to that stage and that can take a bunch of different forms. That's also why I don't like attribution. 'cause that can go a diff bunch of different ways.

[00:26:31] I don't wanna be trapped in the, I don't wanna trap us in. I need a, um. I need a click 'cause let me give you an example. Can that doesn't have to work like that. So for example, we can do a campaign that has a reply to, right? If I have a specific salesperson who's good at having that conversation and building that relationship, and I, you know, have that now, built that relationship with the audience to now expect the conversation with that salesperson.

[00:26:59] The [00:27:00] responses reply to. I can't, I don't necessarily have a track for that. I mean, I have the email stats, but if that's the best way to get that conversion, then that's the best way to get that conversion. It doesn't have to be a click this button now. And I feel like we're trapped in that mindset because you need the attribution part of it.

[00:27:15] Um, so however that conversion works for that. Company in that audience. We need to do, do that. Whatever that looks like. The boss doesn't care. Okay? They don't care. As long as they can say this is successful, that's all they care about. Trust and believe we've been sold on. They care about the dashboard and they need that.

[00:27:35] They don't. They need to be able to justify what it is that you're doing and the money that you're spending. However you can do that is how you can do that. They don't give a damn about the Salesforce dashboard, okay? They don't.

[00:27:49] Darrell: Yeah, I mean, there's a, a lot of, a lot of the technology solutions have been developed because marketing and sales are like underperforming [00:28:00] and there's not a lot of, you know, leads coming in. There's not a, a lot of revenue coming in, so, so, you know, these vendors developed a lot of features that kind of make it seem like things are happening.

[00:28:12] You know, and, and I think there's some truth to it, but, but I think that that's what, um, leads, marketers astray is they start to focus on just the, the tactics like lead scoring and like nurture. But they, like you said, they kind of stray away from, from like what really matters. And, and my opinion is on that is that, you know, we have like an entire generation of marketers that were taught marketing by. HubSpot and buy Marketo and buy Salesforce. And while some of that education is true, most of it had one, you know, had a singular outcome of like, use these tools. You know what I mean? So like, that's why I also, I also appreciate and like I do too, I like to edu I like to educate, uh, marketers as well because, you know, [00:29:00] it's coming from like a more unbiased place.

[00:29:02] Um, you know. Anyway, I wonder if we can like, switch gears a little. Oh, go, go ahead.

[00:29:07] Moni: Yeah. I just wanted to say to to your point too as well, I've seen it happen where, we'll, they'll poo p good ideas because you can't track it, because they feel like that's the only way to measure success. And that's what I try to impose upon people. It's like, it's not the dashboard, it's nice.

[00:29:29] Right. But it's really the. I just need to justify this to someone higher than me. So your CMO has to justify it to your CEO. Your CEO has to justify it to the board, give them the materials, the, the empower to do that. That's all they're looking for, right? The, the Salesforce dashboard is just one way to do that.

[00:29:47] But if that doesn't work, they will happily take a freaking PowerPoint presentation that says, we sent an email it had a reply to, and it had this much success to it. That's a win. Right? Take that. So that's all. It's just, you [00:30:00] know, it's okay if it doesn't follow the format. It's just as long as you can show that result, whatever way that comes about.

[00:30:07] Phil: Yeah, I, I think to your point, one of the things that makes this really hard is that

[00:30:14] Not All Marketing Activities Require Direct Revenue Contribution
---

[00:30:14] Phil: a lot of folks think that every marketing activity is a revenue

[00:30:18] producing activity, and that everything marketing does should be associated with. A single

[00:30:25] dollar. That's what kind of birthed a lot of MTA tools. Hey, we can assign a dollar credit to all of our

[00:30:33] activities. Yay. We have a solution now to just hand to our senior management team and finally they can let us do other stuff. But then we go into problems with stuff that can't

[00:30:42] be tracked, and how do we. Put those into these like attribution tools. And so

[00:30:48] ​[00:31:00] [00:32:00]

[00:32:38] Phil: I, I think that like most marketers listening, especially folks in content and in brand and ops would agree

[00:32:44] with you that not everything that marketing does should be revenue

[00:32:48] producing. But like we just talked about, the practical reality is like CMOs and senior leaders still ask marketing ops teams consistently to prove the value of marketing uncover what drove revenue

[00:32:58] last month. [00:33:00] So when, when you're in that like walk, uh. Run stage, like you're, you're finally getting to a stage where you're happy with the content. Um, you think it makes a lot more

[00:33:09] sense and we're starting to assign goals to specific channels and like

[00:33:13] webinars and activities and stuff like that. Like how do you then have the conversations with your clients about, like, not all of these things actually need to produce revenue, direct revenue to add value to like the overall thing of what we're trying to do here.

[00:33:30] Like how do you have

[00:33:31] those conversations?

[00:33:32] Moni: I mean, and that's part of kind of to my earlier point, what I'm saying is like that's when we start to have the conversation of now kind of thinking outside of the stack box if you, for lack of a better term, right? Like what are some of these. Other activities that we can do that aren't necessarily digital all the time, not necessarily clickbait, conversion bait, uh, based, uh, activities that have a massive impact and they know it.

[00:33:59] And I'll, [00:34:00] one of the things that I always use the example of in anybody who's been around, you know, marketing or digital marketing or anything like that for any number of time, always has the conversation of digital activities versus events, specifically trade shows. Like we always have that conversation of like, what has the most impact or whatever.

[00:34:16] Like you spend potentially hundreds of thousands to millions of dollars on trade shows to get. What in return, you know, maybe a couple of deals if you're lucky over, you know, 12 to 18 months. Right? Um, but for, for you never stop doing them. But you have that conversation. It's like, we spent this much money, I can't believe it, blah, blah, blah.

[00:34:37] And the next year you're back at that trade show again. Um, and it's the same concept. It's like, and I don't, this trade shows, I actually think there's a good reason for doing them. And that reason is. Branding, right? Relationship building, getting in front of people and having those conversations, right?

[00:34:53] Like, you know, that's a necessary part of the process, especially for sales. That's why sales is always championing some events because the [00:35:00] best way for them to do their job is to get in front of people face to face. And it's the same thing on the marketing side. There's just some things that we need to do in order to build relationship, uh, that we need.

[00:35:13] To do this, to get to the, the holy grail of the conversion and stuff that you want. Right? So it's that kind of conversation, and I've had it many times. It's like they're necessary evils and. Sales gets to do it. Right? Like the same thing on the, we've all been in organizations where there's always that one sales guy who, sales guy who doesn't put anything in Salesforce, right?

[00:35:34] Like he's like the, you know, the wild, wild west guy. He gets to do whatever he wants to, but he has the cachet because he makes the deals. Right. Like nobody gets on his butt for anything. And it's, we gotta have that kind of attitude. Like if you make it happen and you have the results, you get that cachet.

[00:35:52] You don't have to do every little nuancey thing, right? So I try to really impart on my clients and [00:36:00] customers. It's like. We have to do the principle thing in marketing to get to what you're trying to get to. The only reason why you're struggling right now is because you're solely relying on the technology and we're not doing the marketing thing instead of combining the two for the ultimate power grab.

[00:36:16] So that's kind of the conversation I have to have several, several times over. With my co, my clients. And it's like I have to come with empathy too because it's like I've been there. Like that's what also like helps me with the relationship with my clients. Like I understand. I understand the pressure you're going through.

[00:36:31] I understand they're on your neck heavy. I have to tell them too as well. It's like they're on your neck heavy because someone's on their neck heavy, right? Like it's coming down from the top and we all have to relieve the stress of being open and transparent, but also. How does this help the customer?

[00:36:52] You know, giving, that's the real language I try to empower with the people that I work with is giving them that language is, how's this helping the customer? What [00:37:00] do we know about them? Is this an assumption that we're making or is this validated by someone? Did sales say this or did the executive say this?

[00:37:06] No offense to the executive, but they're talking from a boardroom. They're not talking from the actual client experience. It's like, we need to be able to validate this with someone, so let's run an AB test that validates this. You know what I mean? Like. That kind of stuff, um, is what I try to walk and I end up being like a lot, lot, lot, and a lot of like a therapist to like, uh, walk them through those conversations, so.

[00:37:29] Darrell: Totally, totally. No, it makes sense. And, um, you know, I,

[00:37:34] Tools That Actually Deliver Value to Marketers
---

[00:37:34] Darrell: I actually have a question from outta left field a little bit, uh, because I, I wanna take kind of a balanced approach. We've been talking a lot of crap on, on technology for, for, for the pod. So, so. I wonder, like for the group, you know, Phil too, like is there any technology, you know, recent or old that like you have been impressed with, that you, that you feel like is delivering value?

[00:37:57] Um, and I'll kind of start, so, so you can both [00:38:00] kind of think, um, I think, and I, I don't know if the, these two count as like MarTech, but for me, I've been continually impressed by Canva. I think that. Canva for marketers is changing the game, like I I, the, the, the platform is so easy to use. It makes things that, you know, if you don't have a lot of design resources or even skills, you're able to, you know, punch above your weight class.

[00:38:25] Um, and, uh. Gosh, so quickly. Um, and then the other thing, uh, we, we talked about this, all this all the time, but I think, I think, uh, um, generative AI in all the forms is, is also like being extremely helpful. Um, I, I personally just put together a, an entire ebook. Like, uh, it's like for, for my, my, my personal uses in like just a matter of days, you know, which usually takes teams months to do.

[00:38:54] Um, um, and not only that, but it also I think, really sharpens your thinking. [00:39:00] Um, like I personally, whenever I'm either creating content or like thinking about marketing, I'll, I'll just ask like generative ai. What are the risks of my plan here?

[00:39:11] Moni: Mm-hmm.

[00:39:12] Darrell: what, uh, my favorite one is I'll, I'll produce something, either like a piece of content or like a, a post.

[00:39:18] And I will, I will literally say, what are MarTech experts gonna criticize about this? You know? And, and it, it just totally flips my thinking. Um, but anyway, no pressure. But I'd love to know if either of you like, have things that you've been really kind of impressed with. Like, hey. I like this. This is actually forwarding like helping marketers rather than leading them astray.

[00:39:40] Like multi-touch attribution is,

[00:39:43] Moni: Well, that's not the, the, it's not the technology, it's the, it's the tactic, right? Like, we love technology. I love technology. I think it, it, it all works really in proper context. Um, it's just the, the tactics that we've been given to execute within the technology is what [00:40:00] we have a problem with. But, um, I, I, I love Canva.

[00:40:03] I, I love Canva. Uh, that's my jam. I'm also in there all of the time. I love to exercise that creative because, you know, we know in like ops and stuff like that, it's so tech focused. Like you don't feel like you get to exercise that creative part of your brain. So I love kind of using it for that too, as well.

[00:40:21] And I feel like, um, they set up someone who's a marketer very well with all of the templates. It's like, you know, we all go in that thing that's like. I know what I kinda want, but I'm not sure. So it's like all those templates help me given the idea of like, oh yeah, I want that, a piece of that. That's good.

[00:40:39] Um, so I like that Tampa has, Canva has such a deep template library to get you kind of like your juices flowing in that sense too as well. The thing I'll say about AI is that, um. I love AI when you have a specific point of view. So like Darrell, you have a very specific point of view of like how you approach ops [00:41:00] in that kind of structured process way.

[00:41:02] Um, so it works for you. Like I have a very like, strong point of view around like. Teaching. So like I use it for instructional purposes, like I'll like break this. I'll use it to be like, break this concept down into like a fourth grade level and teach it back to me. Like I use it for that. So like, once you have like a very strong point of view, I love ai, but if it's like I'm using ai, write this blog for me on, um, you know, cyber security, uh, threats.

[00:41:27] It's like, no. Like, don't, don't do that. Um, yeah, as far as like technology go, I'm, I'm, you know, uh. I, I do. I like, I still like what HubSpot's doing even this many years later. I feel like they're still trying to challenge themselves and grow and still meet the needs of the customer without losing the integrity of, uh, the original concept of that platform, which I really appreciate.

[00:41:57] I appreciate that their, [00:42:00] their model of like. You know, small from small business to enterprise without really losing the structural integrity of that platform is very impressive. Uh, not a lot of, uh, other MarTech platforms I know do that, uh, well. Uh, so I do have to give them kudos for that 'cause that's highly impressive and not easy to do, uh, in today's day and age.

[00:42:24] Phil: Yeah, I've got, uh, four tools that that come to mind. Uh, I dunno if you guys know nac,

[00:42:29] uh, census, uh, mo engage Revenue

[00:42:31] Hero sponsors of the show.

[00:42:33] No. Uh, but yeah, they, they got enough shout outs, uh, throughout the episode. Uh, I, I would actually, I, I do what, what you do similarly, Darrell, like, uh, before you post something or you're like, you're thinking of something and you're using the LLM to give you like critics, like, I want to post this for.

[00:42:51] Marketing ops folks, like what would they critique? What would they like, poke holes in? But instead, I actually, uh, I have a custom [00:43:00] GPT of Darrell's handbook, the MarTech

[00:43:02] Handbook from, uh, a big PDF, so fit at that whole context, and it's just the, it's called the Darrell's critique in that Darrell just critiques all of,

[00:43:11] all of my stuff. No, seriously, I'm a huge fan of, uh, descrip. Um, descrip is like the. Command center for my podcast, like I do everything, uh, like from a production side in Descrip, like we record on Riverside, prefer, uh, the quality a little bit, but upload all of that to Descrip. Descrip changes the audio and video into like a Word doc essentially. And I'm editing a Word document for. The podcast, the audio version, the video version. I can slide in the ads in there and then, like you guys are big fans of Canva for, for the, the visual stuff. But yeah, love Mid Journey. Like Hugh

[00:43:51] Moonia, like I spent 12 years of behind the scenes, uh, MarTech marketing operations.

[00:43:58] Now I get to like flex the

[00:43:59] [00:44:00] creative chops a little bit, use AI and uh, do some, do some fun

[00:44:03] stuff with AI images too.

[00:44:05] Moni: it's

[00:44:06] Darrell: I love that. Yeah. And then for the listeners, like if you don't know, like Phil has this, you know, operationalized like a machine, you know, and, and it, and he's able to pull, like from the interviews, able to pull just a ton of just, you know. Summaries and images, and I was just looking at the one from Jeff, from Comm the other day, and it's literally like a full blog post, an article on like what we talked about.

[00:44:31] And I know you use both a combination of like yourself plus AI to do it, but that's, that's what I really appreciate about technology. You know, it, it lets you do something that's like Monique says, it has to be good at first, you know, it has to be at least the spark of an idea, but then like really amplify it.

[00:44:49] And, and make it accessible. So, so I, I appreciate that.

[00:44:54] Moni: it's dope. How long you guys been doing this? Are you Phil? The he

[00:44:58] MarTech?

[00:44:59] Phil: yeah, [00:45:00] so we work like crossing episode one 60. I think you're like 1 62, 1

[00:45:05] 63. Started like really early, just like for fun, like as a

[00:45:09] side hobby in like 2022.

[00:45:13] So like coming up on like five years now, but really only. A year and a half-ish, two years of really doing it seriously and, and trying to like build an

[00:45:23] audience and attract sponsorship and cool brands to show in, in, in front of the

[00:45:28] audience. And I think like chatting with listeners, the main thing they want is I. We want to be ready for

[00:45:35] what's coming next, like in five years. We want to hear about that stuff

[00:45:38] today and prepare for, part of that's like tools, but I think the most important part is the human stories and the productivity elements.

[00:45:47] Like how do you stay

[00:45:49] sane in house when you have CEOs that keep asking you about what is marketing contributing to pipeline?

[00:45:55] Like all of those human conversations outweigh a lot of the tech, but [00:46:00] obviously a big tech, the. Tech is a big part of it too

[00:46:02] for sure.

[00:46:03] Moni: For sure.

[00:46:04] Yeah. I ask 'cause it's also like

[00:46:06] Consistency Always Beats Quick-Win Marketing Thinking
---

[00:46:06] Moni: whenever I meet someone who's doing something successful, you know, the, the, the, their common themes that pop up and one of the big ones is consistency. Do you know what I mean? And I feel like that's the stuff where it's like, and um, and especially in the B2B environment.

[00:46:24] You're chasing so much that it doesn't allow you to be as consistent as you need to be to really have success. And we've been kind of sold on this sort of quick, quick wins idea, um, that it's like, it's really just grinding out and being consistent for a freaking year. Like, uh, that's, you know, where I've really seen like the real success come, like, you got a little spark.

[00:46:47] It's like, okay, this, this webinar did something. All right, let's repeat it for. 12 straight months. And that's how we really get there. Um, and yeah, and like you said, getting that feedback from the audience about, yeah, this is what they really wanna hear, [00:47:00] this really, really works. It's like, it's not magic. I feel like that's my biggest frustration with a lot of modern marketing.

[00:47:06] And that's not just tech, I mean modern marketing period across the board. It's like somehow we got this concept that like, it's supposed to be fast or instantaneous. And it's like, that's not how success works ever in the history of ever. Like you just gotta

[00:47:20] be

[00:47:20] Darrell: there's also like, there's also like a compounding thing that I see, you know what I mean? Whether you are, it's not, it's like consistency is part of it, but you get better, you know, like producing the podcast, you get better and like, I've been writing on LinkedIn for a while and like I was, I was like reflecting earlier, like I can't even actually.

[00:47:44] Like deconstruct the process in which I come up with content. It just, it's compounded so much 'cause it's been years. I just do it, you know? And, and I feel like it's the same with podcasts and, and it's kinda like the same with marketing a little bit. It's like why we [00:48:00] value experienced mar marketers, experienced MarTech operators, you know, not to take away anything from people that wanna disrupt.

[00:48:07] I think you should disrupt. But like there's such value in being able to kind of just. You know, benefit from like, just years of experience of

[00:48:16] of doing

[00:48:17] Moni: Yes. Yeah, it's comforting, it's reliable, like, you know what I mean? It's like, I wanna know what I to expect from you, right? That's part of the relationship with the audience. Like if Darryl, you started doing like, you know something, you know, sales people are like, bro, what? You know what I mean? Like, huh?

[00:48:34] And you started doing finance and be like. Huh. I dunno, what is this whatcha talking about? So it's like, you can't, that's not like you can't think about side the box, but it's like, you know, going to LinkedIn and seeing one of like your surveys and like being excited to answer it, but then see the results, like what everybody else is thinking is dope.

[00:48:50] It's like, I like getting that from you. I like, like your maps and how you think and wanna, I wanna see how you think and break this down. Like, and I wanna see how [00:49:00] other people react to it. Like I'm excited to get. That content I look forward to for, for forward to it from you. Um, so having that trust and building that with the audience is super key.

[00:49:11] And that's not gonna happen overnight. That's gonna take some time. Like you said, it does compound on itself. It's like, oh, people like this for me. I can start doing that. Or Now I got this idea. I wonder what they think about that. And I mean, change that and do this. And that's, that's the fun part too.

[00:49:24] Like, that's interesting for me as a content creator and someone who's. Strategist as well as it is for the audience. They're on this journey with me, so, yeah.

[00:49:35] Phil: Super cool. Such a good point. Uh, Moni, I wanna bring us back, uh, full

[00:49:39] circle here and, and ask you a question.

[00:49:41] Job Title Inflation and Why GTM Engineer is Just Sales Ops
---

[00:49:41] Phil: So like at the top of the show, we asked you like if you identify at work more as like a marketer now or still like that, that MarTech person. Um, back in 2011, you held the title of a revenue engineer at Pedowitz and. The hottest buzzword title nowadays is the [00:50:00] GTM

[00:50:00] engineer was petit Group. Way ahead of the curve here in creating this revenue engineering role for you. Like, I'm trying to like calculate the math in my head. Like take us back to

[00:50:11] that role, um, that you had at Pedowitz and like how do you see that evolve

[00:50:16] today?

[00:50:16] Moni: It's funny that role was really the. Execution technologists. So we were the people who were like just in the tech. So the roles were like basically a pm. So you had the team structured as like a PM person, um, a strategist who said how to kind of map out the campaign and then the execution person who like knew how to.

[00:50:37] Put that campaign together in, in whatever tool we were working with. Right. Um, so I started out as the revenue engineer, which is a person who knew how to kind of execute that campaign within the, the technology. Um, and then I was having this conversation with Darryl, you know, Ronald Gaines. Um, it was like, where do we see kind of these roles manifesting themselves in [00:51:00] the next five or so years?

[00:51:01] Like. Will you still have this technologist role? You know, a lot of us wanna move out of technology, the strategist role, you know what I mean? Like what is that gonna formulate? Because like a lot of the tools are going to a lot of ease of use. It's like click a button, you don't know how, you don't need to know how to code anymore.

[00:51:16] Like we used to know how to code and you don't need to know how to do all these like fancy integrations and backend and FTPs and all this kind of stuff. You don't need to necessarily know how to do a lot of that stuff anymore. Um. For some of them. Um, so they're simplifying the tool so we even need that person anymore.

[00:51:33] Um, and I, I think going forward, I feel like the, I'm not sure if gonna need the, that tech deep technology knowledge, especially if tools end up like HubSpot, which I feel like I've changed my clients. Anybody can do that. Like, you know, it's not that difficult with two to understand versus like. A Marketo or Eloqua, which you definitely need some technology expertise in those platforms.

[00:51:54] I feel like that they're simplifying the tools, but the operation, that process piece [00:52:00] will never go away. It's like that is just the linchpin of marketing. Execution these days, you have to have that person who really understands those nuanced details of really making a campaign sing. And um, yeah, I just, I don't ever see that role going away.

[00:52:21] I. I do see it expanding. Um, if we can properly get mops people to understand what strategy really means, because I feel like that conversation is always happening, but I'm like, we're missing what strategy really means. You don't mean strategy like that, you mean strategy in a different way. Um, but because I, part of this is really wanting that, that role to grow and expand.

[00:52:43] 'cause I know a lot of people want that role to grow and expand. Um, but we really have to understand what strategy means. So I think the technology piece, I actually see it in the next five years sort of. Diminishing, ironically, that's just because the technology's gonna get simpler, but the, that operational piece will [00:53:00] continue to grow.

[00:53:02] Darrell: I, I like the idea that. Whenever there's a engineer title that you're actually building something, like you're building an a campaign or you're, you're putting systems together or you know, in the traditional sense you're coding.

[00:53:17] Um, I think, and I, and I, I don't know if you, if you got, you all know this, but I think the term GTM engineer is like more of like a pre-sales person. Um.

[00:53:29] Moni: Really?

[00:53:30] Darrell: I don't know, like, like when I was reading about it and, and I, I could be wrong, but it was more of like either like a strategist or like pre-sales for companies.

[00:53:42] Do you all know what people are calling GTM engineer now?

[00:53:48] Moni: Phil's gonna look it up.

[00:53:49] Phil: Yeah.

[00:53:50] I, I was actually researching this too, Darryl, when I was thinking of doing an episode on this and I was like, ah, you know, and everyone is freaking talking

[00:53:59] [00:54:00] about this and putting their own spin on it. It's like, what is an AI agent? And everyone is writing about the definition of it, and it's like, who

[00:54:08] cares what the definition of it is?

[00:54:10] But I think for this it's a little, a bit more important.

[00:54:15] Um. Like Clay is kind of thinking that the GTM is like designing, scaling revenue, generating systems,

[00:54:24] researching prospects, building, maintaining, automating workflows. A lot of it sounds like a sales. ish, like rev ops type

[00:54:35] person in a lot of cases.

[00:54:37] Marketing ops too. I don't know. I, I think a lot of it is just like, Hey, we, uh, haven't created a new job title in a while now. We had Growth Hacker, now we have Growth Marketer like GTM Engineering. Yeah, it

[00:54:51] sounds pretty

[00:54:52] Moni: I, you guys feel like it's a way to continue to consolidate tasks within a role, because I feel like that's also like what's happening a little bit. It's

[00:54:59] [00:55:00] just

[00:55:00] Phil: I feel that.

[00:55:00] Moni: We over like that's what I felt like revenue ops was. It's just like marketing ops plus sales ops plus like some just general sales like Salesforce stuff.

[00:55:10] It's like, well, I don't just consolidate all of this and I understand it's not always nefarious. Like I understand it 'cause like it all works together, so let's have somebody kind of manage this entire process. But also it's like. Some of these job descriptions are insanity about what they ask a one person to do and manage and take ownership of.

[00:55:30] It's kind of crazy.

[00:55:32] Darrell: Yeah. The other, I think, cynical way that I looked at it, I, I look at it, I, I, I see it both ways, but the other cynical way is. It's like rebranding jobs that historically like executives don't really care about

[00:55:43] and like making it cool, you know, because there's so, so, so often op people just so under underappreciated, people don't even know what they do.

[00:55:51] So, so, you know, it could be these, these, you know, people that are like pioneers are trying to come [00:56:00] up with different ways to get people to pay attention. So I, so I, I can definitely see that I, I'm very much in the boat of, I think marketing ops is just gonna evolve. And, and they'll evolve into a role that, you know, it's going to be easier to use the technology, but like stitching it together and fi finding a way to tie technology to support goals is like gonna be the major one.

[00:56:23] And then how, how to ai ai plays into it across the entire GTM. Um, I think that that's where marketing ops is going and, and I, they might call it something different later. But you know, like Phil said, who cares? Who cares what they call it? Let's just get like our work done.

[00:56:40] Phil: Yeah, I think there's always like a new trend coming out that like spurs this idea of creating a new job title like AI in, in like different LLMs and be able to plug LLMs into different tools is kind of reshaping the role of rev ops and, and marketing ops. And I feel like that's where. The GTM engineer hype kind of came around [00:57:00] like, oh, prompt engineering needs to be a big part of this.

[00:57:04] Like using clay or losing, using an I pass, like, uh, having it on top of your data warehouse, like plugging in chat GPT with like columns and census and being able to connect APIs into your GTM stack. It just like new

[00:57:18] buzzwords to say a lot of the same stuff as before with like. Some new tools in there.

[00:57:24] 'cause obviously we didn't have LLMs like back in the day. Uh, trying to explain that to yourself, Moni, like, uh, 16 years ago, first role, like you, you're gonna get to use an LLM to, to, to help you in your, your marketing ops role.

[00:57:38] Moni: Yeah, I mean, for some processy stuff I would've loved it. Like some documentation. This would've been amazing.

[00:57:44] Phil: Yeah, I feel like the part I would've loved the most is that now, like with LLMs and, and, and AI tools, a lot of people in the company finally care about data quality. One person said it best, like garbage in,

[00:57:56] garbage out, and like everyone gets it right away. Like, we wanna do something [00:58:00] with ai. Our data is

[00:58:00] shit.

[00:58:01] Now more than one person in the marketing ops team can care about de-duplicate data, can care about ID resolution. Now we have like people supporting us on

[00:58:10] that, on that venture.

[00:58:12] Darrell: Finally. Well, Moni, I think we're, I think we're running outta time. So,

[00:58:18] Moni: Aw.

[00:58:21] Find What You'd Teach For Free, Then Build Your Career Around It
---

[00:58:21] Darrell: I'll ask you the final question. So Moni, you're a founder, teacher, speaker, writer, you're also a home chef, dog mom.

[00:58:28] Moni: Mm-hmm.

[00:58:29] Mm-hmm.

[00:58:29] Darrell: distance walker. That's a good

[00:58:31] one. One question we ask everyone on the show is, how do you remain happy and successful in your career?

[00:58:37] How do you find balance between all things you're working on while still staying happy?

[00:58:42] Moni: Um, you know what I've actually, my long journey has been to find my passion and that's what keeps me going. I really do have a passion around. Teaching, specifically teaching marketing. Marketing is this thing that I know. I really truly believe that [00:59:00] everyone has like gifts on this earth and you find your passion by sharing your gift.

[00:59:06] And like I have a lot of knowledge around marketing and, uh, not only been doing it for coming on 20 years, it's the only thing I've ever done in my professional career. I've never done anything else. I have a master's degree in marketing, so I feel like my real. Purpose on this Earth is to teach marketing to people.

[00:59:25] And that's what keeps me going. I would do it for free, which tells me that it's my passion 'cause I would do it, uh, whether somebody was paying me to do it or not. So that's what really keeps me going. And um, yeah, wherever I get an opportunity to kind of instill some wisdom about marketing. If someone listened to this and picked up a little big bit of nugget that helped them improve, then I've done my duty So.

[00:59:51] Phil: Love it Moni. Really appreciate your, your wisdom here. Uh, leave us with your favorite recipe. Home chef. Busy day client at work. [01:00:00] You're jumping in the kitchen. Only got a couple things in the pantry. What

[01:00:03] are you cooking?

[01:00:03] Moni: So I stopped eating meat during the pandemic. I a pescatarian. I do eat seafood, but like my go-to, and I really just made it last night was like panini. So I have three different ones that I make. So I do a mushroom and caramelized onion panini with Swiss cheese or the classic tomato mozzarella. Or my favorite.

[01:00:25] If you want something a little bit sweet, caramelized onions and brie with some apricot jam.

[01:00:32] Darrell: Yeah, it's

[01:00:32] Phil: Sounds fire. You got that like panini

[01:00:35] press thing to plug

[01:00:36] in it? Yeah. Yeah. Got one of those

[01:00:38] too.

[01:00:39] Moni: Sourdough bread. And if you don't have panini, press, just a regular frying pan. You put like a, a skillet or something heavy on top of it. It works

[01:00:45] just as well.

[01:00:47] Phil: Little

[01:00:47] spin on grilled cheese there. Almost fancy

[01:00:49] grilled cheese.

[01:00:50] Darrell: fancy.

[01:00:51] Phil: Awesome. Thanks so much for your time, honey. This is super fun. Really

[01:00:54] appreciate

[01:00:54] Moni: Loved it.

[01:00:55] Thanks you guys.