#355: Should You Run Marketing Like a Product Team?

#355 | Dave sits down with Maria Scheifler to talk about why your marketing team might be getting less done as it grows — and what to do about it. Maria makes the case for running marketing like a product team: two-week sprints, a prioritized backlog, and a lightweight intake process that kills approval bottlenecks without losing control. She walks through the context-switching exercise that proves multitasking is destroying your output, how to push back on random requests from across the company without saying no, and why getting team buy-in before rolling out any operational changes is the step most marketing leaders skip.

Timestamps

• (00:00 ) - - Intro: the problem isn't your strategy, it's your operating system
  
• (04:38 ) - - Maria's background
  
• (07:38 ) - - Why teams get bigger and somehow get less done
  
• (10:07 ) - - The multitasking exercise that proves context switching kills output
  
• (17:36 ) - - Running marketing like a product team: the mindset shift
  
• (20:24 ) - - Building a working agreement with your team
  
• (22:56 ) - - The experimentation guardrail template: killing approval bottlenecks without losing control
  
• (28:26 ) - - Building a prioritized backlog
  
• (32:47 ) - - How the backlog helps you push back without saying no
  
• (39:36 ) - - Two-week sprints: how to plan, commit, and ship
  
• (41:48 ) - - Daily standups: how to keep them short and useful
  
• (42:39 ) - - Sprint reviews: showing the rest of the company what marketing does
  
• (44:20 ) - - Retrospectives
  
• (46:19 ) - - Where to start on Monday

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Dave [0:00:01]: You're listening to the Dave Gerhardt Show.

Dave [0:00:02]: Your marketing team is probably busier than ever right now, but are you actually making progress towards the annual goals that you set?

Dave [0:00:24]: Maybe you hired more people, you added more tools you're in more meetings and yet somehow the team has burnt out and the CEO is in your DMs asking why nothing is getting done.

Dave [0:00:34]: My guest today says the problem isn't your marketing strategy.

Dave [0:00:37]: It's the marketing operating system how you do the work.

Dave [0:00:40]: Maria has led marketing at Series a startup up, a two hundred fifty million dollar public company and an education membership Oregon.

Dave [0:00:47]: Now she's a fractional marketing leader, teaching B2b marketing teams how to run marketing just like the product team would.

Dave [0:00:53]: In this episode, we get into why your team might be getting less done as it grows.

Dave [0:00:57]: The multitasking exercise that proves context switching is killing your output she made me go through an exercise and I failed at it miserably.

Dave [0:01:05]: How to build the backlog that actually gets prioritized why two week sprints beat annual planning, and the lightweight tool she uses to kill approval bottleneck without losing control.

Dave [0:01:15]: She also shows you how to push back on all those random requests you get from across the company without having to say, no.

Dave [0:01:21]: I like to think of this episode as spring cleaning for your marketing team enjoy my conversation with Maria on how to do better work and be more effective and run your marketing like a product team.

Dave [0:01:33]: So you can say that again if you want.

Dave [0:01:36]: So you you said you've been a member of Exit Five for a minute?

Maria [0:01:39]: Yeah.

Maria [0:01:39]: Yeah.

Maria [0:01:39]: Probably two, three years now.

Dave [0:01:41]: Yeah.

Dave [0:01:41]: And you did a brave thing, which is you sent me a good email about coming on this podcast.

Dave [0:01:46]: Yeah.

Dave [0:01:47]: Do you remember what you said?

Maria [0:01:49]: Yeah.

Maria [0:01:49]: I said, hey, Dave.

Maria [0:01:50]: Like, this is what, like, something I'm passionate about, and I believe, like, people in your community really need this because I had posted on the community and, like, those posts had had quite a bit of likes.

Maria [0:02:01]: So...

Maria [0:02:02]: Yeah.

Dave [0:02:03]: Okay.

Dave [0:02:03]: And who are who are you?

Dave [0:02:04]: People can hear your voice.

Dave [0:02:06]: This is Maria.

Dave [0:02:06]: Maria.

Dave [0:02:07]: How do I say your last name?

Maria [0:02:08]: S.

Dave [0:02:09]: Maria S.

Dave [0:02:10]: She's in.

Dave [0:02:11]: Denver, Colorado right now?

Maria [0:02:13]: I'm in Denver Colorado.

Maria [0:02:14]: Yes.

Dave [0:02:15]: K.

Dave [0:02:15]: And you have been head of marketing a VP marketing across a bunch of companies in Sas.

Dave [0:02:20]: Can you give me your brief backstory?

Maria [0:02:23]: Yeah.

Maria [0:02:23]: So fifteen years leading marketing teams.

Maria [0:02:25]: I started on the agency side, before going in house, and that's Joined a Japanese korean tech company, competitors with Whatsapp, leading marketing and comes for the European market.

Maria [0:02:36]: I was there when the company Ipo, and that was back in Spain because I'm originally from Spain if you can't tell by my accent.

Maria [0:02:43]: Then I moved to the states, and I joined an education membership organization.

Dave [0:02:50]: Okay.

Maria [0:02:50]: To lead their global marketing efforts.

Maria [0:02:51]: And then from there, I joined a Series a startup, as Cx based, builder marketing foundation from the ground up and then big large public organization, two hundred and fifty million dollars at VP of Global marketing.

Maria [0:03:04]: And today, I'm a fractional marketing leader and T creator.

Dave [0:03:10]: There was a actually a hot discussion in the community I saw last week about the pros and cons of hiring a fractional marketing layer.

Dave [0:03:16]: Did you see did you get in the mix on that?

Maria [0:03:18]: I didn't get.

Maria [0:03:19]: I need to go into it.

Dave [0:03:20]: Yeah.

Dave [0:03:20]: Do you have a a strong opinion there?

Maria [0:03:23]: I mean, since I transitioned into that role, Right?

Maria [0:03:26]: Like, I I do.

Maria [0:03:27]: I think that we bring the experience, and especially those companies that can't afford, like, you're at a at the range, like, seven to thirty, fifty million dollars in Arr, and you just can't afford a full time CMO or VP of marketing, then that's your solution.

Maria [0:03:42]: I definitely think that.

Dave [0:03:44]: Yeah.

Dave [0:03:44]: I wonder I wonder if that's more of a trend.

Dave [0:03:46]: I wonder what that trend will look like because of Ai and impacting marketing teams, will we see more.

Dave [0:03:53]: Like, could you have a CMO that is working with two or three other companies?

Dave [0:03:58]: And Ai.

Dave [0:03:59]: Interesting.

Maria [0:04:01]: Right.

Maria [0:04:01]: I mean, my case, I only like to work with one or two companies at the time as fractional.

Maria [0:04:06]: And then I do advisory and and other types of engagements, but, like, I don't know.

Maria [0:04:12]: I have seen, and I I know people who have four clients at the time and...

Maria [0:04:15]: I'm not sure that is for me right now.

Maria [0:04:18]: Yeah.

Dave [0:04:19]: Right.

Dave [0:04:19]: I have two kids.

Dave [0:04:20]: That's what I feel like when I see people that have more than two kids.

Dave [0:04:22]: I'm like I don't know how you

Maria [0:04:24]: I only have one, and it's actively.

Dave [0:04:28]: Okay.

Dave [0:04:28]: So you've been a...

Dave [0:04:29]: I'm just...

Dave [0:04:29]: I just was doing that to be like, you've been a...

Dave [0:04:31]: You've been a VP marketing in the space that a lot of people who listen this podcast have come from.

Dave [0:04:36]: And then we kinda aligned on...

Dave [0:04:38]: There's almost a theme to the stuff that you're gonna talk about today, which is it's it's a lot around, like, the the operating system for the marketing team, internal marketing.

Dave [0:04:47]: So we're gonna talk about maybe this has happening to if you're listening.

Dave [0:04:50]: When your team gets bigger and somehow less gets done.

Dave [0:04:53]: I've been there, and it's the worst feeling in the world, especially when you hire everyone and the CEO is constantly messaging you being, like, we got so many more people now.

Dave [0:05:01]: Why are we not doing more?

Dave [0:05:02]: So been through that.

Dave [0:05:04]: The second one is getting the team bought in, why it's important to get the team bought in before you roll out any operational changes.

Dave [0:05:10]: That's a good one.

Dave [0:05:11]: I've made and messed that up for sure.

Dave [0:05:12]: And then the third topic is running marketing, like, product team.

Dave [0:05:16]: I love that.

Dave [0:05:16]: So we're gonna see where this time takes us, but we're gonna...

Dave [0:05:19]: Let's let's dive in.

Dave [0:05:20]: So first, let's start with this topic number one, R.

Dave [0:05:23]: When your team gets bigger and somehow gets less done what happens here.

Maria [0:05:28]: I think it's because you have too many priorities, like, the team gets bigger, and then you don't have an intake process that you used to have when you only had, like, three, four people.

Maria [0:05:36]: You have new layers, new direct reports as you scale.

Maria [0:05:40]: Right?

Maria [0:05:40]: And you start having less visibility into the work, and you start adding more status meetings, sometimes like, oh, now, you have lots of one on once and, like, you start discussing more, like, operational things I a one on once so where's the space for for that personal growth and our career growth, things like that.

Maria [0:05:58]: And you end up just being very, very busy, but, like, what you mentioned like, earlier, like, you're not shipping as much.

Maria [0:06:04]: Like, you feel like, oh, we weren't more effective before.

Maria [0:06:07]: Then we are...

Dave [0:06:09]: Well, and just the asks the asks keep piling up, like, all of a sudden, they would be, like, oh, actually, can you, you know, carve out a week of designers time because you need to, like, help the Hr team with some, like, recruiting thing that we're doing.

Dave [0:06:21]: Okay.

Maria [0:06:23]: Right.

Maria [0:06:23]: And I think no one has trained marketing leaders or, like, we just, like, you go to college, you start working, maybe agency, maybe in house, and you start learning from your peers, your boss, but no one really taught you how to act action.

Maria [0:06:37]: Work.

Maria [0:06:37]: Like, you go to college for, like, strategy or, like, you you come to this community for for that strategy and things like that, but no one really tells you.

Maria [0:06:44]: Okay.

Maria [0:06:45]: Once you start growing that, once you're the boss, like, this is, like, you go to leadership actually Like, courses and things like that, but what's what's the system underneath.

Maria [0:06:53]: Right?

Maria [0:06:54]: Yeah.

Dave [0:06:54]: Yeah.

Dave [0:06:54]: It's interesting.

Dave [0:06:55]: I've spent...

Dave [0:06:56]: I spent a lot of time, like, here interviewing CMOs and marketing leaders and seems like as everyone kinda goes on...

Dave [0:07:02]: If you look at someone who's been really successful and still doing it and maybe has had, like, a twenty or thirty year career.

Dave [0:07:08]: They very clearly have...

Dave [0:07:10]: It's not a playbook for the marketing tactics, but they very clearly have, like, a operating system for how they like to run marketing and and there's that happens for a reason because you wanna try to, like, have a system for something.

Dave [0:07:22]: I understand more now because everything can be marketing.

Dave [0:07:24]: All of a sudden you're, like, you got a podcast.

Dave [0:07:26]: You're posting videos on social.

Dave [0:07:27]: You started a Tiktok channel.

Dave [0:07:29]: You're doing events.

Dave [0:07:30]: You're just doing anything can almost fit under the umbrella of marketing, and this just seems to be this becomes more important as you go on.

Maria [0:07:37]: Right.

Maria [0:07:37]: And I think for teams that are, like, in Saas and, like, those two work close to engineering and things like that, it seems like a little bit more inherent, like, trying to bring some of those practices, which is what I'm gonna talk to you about later.

Maria [0:07:51]: Sure.

Dave [0:07:51]: Okay.

Maria [0:07:52]: But before we do that, I wanted to do a practical exercise with you.

Maria [0:07:57]: It's a multitasking exercise to show you, Like, no.

Maria [0:08:01]: Because you said earlier, like, oh, you get, oh, why don't you do this quick design or at this quick sales enable men, one pager and like, oh, just like, the context switch.

Maria [0:08:12]: And, like, I wanna show you.

Dave [0:08:15]: Okay.

Maria [0:08:15]: It doesn't seem that much, but, like, this exercise is gonna show you, like, the damage that it does to you into your productivity like context switching.

Maria [0:08:23]: If you're okay with that.

Dave [0:08:24]: I am okay with that.

Dave [0:08:25]: I...

Dave [0:08:25]: I yes.

Dave [0:08:25]: I know the answer.

Dave [0:08:26]: I'm ready to be feel ashamed.

Maria [0:08:29]: Cool.

Maria [0:08:29]: Do you have the document that?

Dave [0:08:31]: Yeah.

Dave [0:08:31]: U.

Maria [0:08:33]: Erin?

Maria [0:08:33]: Okay.

Maria [0:08:33]: Yeah.

Dave [0:08:34]: Let me go into that?

Maria [0:08:35]: So I have a timer next to me here because I'm gonna start timing you?

Dave [0:08:39]: Alright.

Maria [0:08:39]: So the the point of these exercises is like I mentioned earlier, I want you to see the cost of multitasking.

Maria [0:08:45]: So this is a very common exercise.

Maria [0:08:48]: And so the first time what I'm gonna ask you to do is to fill the rows here.

Maria [0:08:54]: So row number one, two, three and then sequencing the number.

Maria [0:08:58]: So first is number one, to, like, one, and then you go number one roman numerals, then letter a, then two would be...

Maria [0:09:06]: The row two would be two, then two, and then b.

Maria [0:09:09]: Right?

Maria [0:09:10]: And so...

Maria [0:09:10]: Yep.

Maria [0:09:11]: I'm gonna time you and I have my timer somewhere here.

Maria [0:09:14]: Wait a second.

Maria [0:09:15]: I'm gonna time you.

Dave [0:09:17]: Why am I why am I nervous right now.

Dave [0:09:19]: My heart rate is

Maria [0:09:22]: Sorry.

Dave [0:09:22]: Well my heart rate is.

Maria [0:09:25]: Nope.

Maria [0:09:25]: Like, the this...

Dave [0:09:27]: Alright.

Dave [0:09:27]: Let's go.

Dave [0:09:28]: I'm ready.

Dave [0:09:28]: I'm ready.

Maria [0:09:29]: Okay.

Maria [0:09:29]: So you do that, and then we're gonna do the ce or size in the second page, and we're gonna do it a little bit differently.

Maria [0:09:34]: So...

Dave [0:09:35]: Okay.

Maria [0:09:36]: One to three.

Maria [0:09:36]: Go.

Maria [0:09:36]: Nope.

Maria [0:09:39]: Nope.

Maria [0:09:39]: Nope.

Dave [0:09:40]: No can't do that.

Maria [0:09:41]: You're cheating there.

Dave [0:09:44]: I was trying to figure out the most efficient way to get it done.

Maria [0:09:49]: You're good.

Maria [0:09:49]: You're good.

Maria [0:09:50]: You're almost there.

Maria [0:09:50]: And then we'll go to the efficient way.

Maria [0:09:54]: Don't worry.

Maria [0:09:54]: There you go.

Maria [0:09:56]: One minute.

Maria [0:09:57]: I'm gonna put it here one minute and eleven seconds.

Maria [0:10:01]: Okay.

Maria [0:10:03]: So now I'm

Dave [0:10:05]: I want...

Dave [0:10:05]: I wish I could tag.

Dave [0:10:06]: I wish I could call my whole team in and have them.

Dave [0:10:08]: I wanna each go right now.

Dave [0:10:09]: And I want this to become a competition.

Maria [0:10:12]: You can do that.

Maria [0:10:12]: You can do that after this call.

Maria [0:10:13]: Yeah.

Maria [0:10:14]: And now we're gonna do the same exercise, but what if I told you that by delivering the first column, you're already delivering value.

Maria [0:10:21]: Right?

Maria [0:10:22]: So now you're gonna do column one, then you're gonna do column two, then you're gonna do calm And I'm gonna time you every time you finish each column.

Maria [0:10:30]: And I'm gonna reset the timer, and I'm gonna...

Maria [0:10:33]: So now when you told me.

Maria [0:10:35]: I wanna do the efficient way.

Maria [0:10:37]: So go ahead and start I'll I'll time you.

Dave [0:10:40]: K.

Dave [0:10:40]: So clear this out.

Dave [0:10:41]: Alright.

Dave [0:10:43]: Are you ready?

Maria [0:10:44]: Yeah.

Dave [0:10:45]: K.

Dave [0:10:45]: Here we go.

Maria [0:10:46]: Go.

Maria [0:10:46]: No.

Maria [0:10:48]: I'm not seeing you.

Maria [0:10:49]: Are, you in the second?

Maria [0:10:51]: Oh, you're in this...

Maria [0:10:52]: Okay.

Maria [0:10:53]: You went top one.

Maria [0:10:54]: Can you

Dave [0:10:56]: Hold on.

Maria [0:10:57]: Okay.

Maria [0:10:57]: No don't worry.

Maria [0:10:57]: Leave it as it was.

Dave [0:10:58]: We need the record of this.

Dave [0:10:59]: Okay.

Dave [0:11:00]: Alright.

Dave [0:11:01]: Here we go.

Dave [0:11:02]: I'm ready.

Maria [0:11:03]: Okay.

Maria [0:11:03]: You're in the second one?

Maria [0:11:04]: Okay.

Maria [0:11:04]: I'm gonna start.

Maria [0:11:05]: Wait to say.

Maria [0:11:05]: Okay.

Maria [0:11:06]: Ready.

Maria [0:11:06]: Set go.

Maria [0:11:06]: Okay.

Maria [0:11:09]: You're done.

Maria [0:11:10]: Okay.

Maria [0:11:11]: So look at this.

Maria [0:11:12]: It's took cute in total twenty two seconds versus the other one Q.

Maria [0:11:17]: One one minute and eleven.

Maria [0:11:18]: Dang.

Maria [0:11:19]: Right?

Dave [0:11:20]: Yeah.

Dave [0:11:20]: That's so great.

Maria [0:11:23]: And then on top of that, so notice the the the round one you can't keep anything until all the thirty cells are done.

Maria [0:11:31]: And so you're not shipping until all the cells are gone are done and you're...

Maria [0:11:35]: It took you one minute at eleven.

Maria [0:11:37]: And here, see by second six.

Maria [0:11:40]: So this is actually seconds.

Maria [0:11:42]: You were already done with this, and you were already shipping this.

Maria [0:11:46]: Right?

Maria [0:11:47]: And then...

Maria [0:11:47]: Yeah.

Maria [0:11:48]: You were already, like, second row thirteen seconds.

Maria [0:11:51]: And so So that was a an...

Maria [0:11:53]: Like, it was actually another six seconds or or seven seconds to do this one.

Maria [0:11:58]: And, you know, so it took you three times less to continue to deliver the whole thing.

Maria [0:12:04]: Right?

Maria [0:12:05]: And On top of that, if I told you that by delivering this one, you were already delivering value, Like, can you understand the cost of context switching?

Maria [0:12:13]: Now?

Maria [0:12:13]: Like, that's this example?

Dave [0:12:15]: You mean what do you mean delivering value?

Maria [0:12:17]: Think about this is a campaign.

Maria [0:12:19]: So this column, think about this as a campaign.

Maria [0:12:22]: And when you're working on, like, three campaigns at the same time, and you wanna deliver them at the same time, like, it took you one minute and, thirty, like, one minute that in eleven seconds to deliver the three companies.

Dave [0:12:35]: Right.

Dave [0:12:35]: First if I was allowed to just focus on that one.

Maria [0:12:38]: If you were allowed to focus on the one and deliver

Dave [0:12:41]: job yeah.

Maria [0:12:42]: And you would have done the three, Like, it's it's not about just not doing because at the end of the day, you do the three campaigns.

Maria [0:12:47]: Right?

Maria [0:12:47]: Yeah.

Maria [0:12:48]: But look at that.

Maria [0:12:49]: Like, it...

Maria [0:12:49]: It's.

Dave [0:12:50]: There's also...

Dave [0:12:51]: I I can't articulate it perfectly, but there's totally a feeling in my mind of the second one feels so freeing.

Dave [0:12:58]: It feels...

Dave [0:12:59]: It feels like a really easy puzzle to solve.

Dave [0:13:01]: It's just open and you just gotta go.

Dave [0:13:02]: I gotta go through through it's hard to go this way because your brain is going one through ten, and then you just kinda one through ten?

Dave [0:13:09]: You're like, what's the Roman numeral rule for seven.

Dave [0:13:11]: Okay.

Dave [0:13:11]: And then then where am I in the alphabet?

Dave [0:13:13]: There's, like, you are switching into a different set versus if you're operating within this one lane?

Dave [0:13:17]: This is an awesome way to to show this.

Maria [0:13:20]: Yes.

Maria [0:13:20]: So you can ship three times faster and it's not about working faster, not just about working faster it's about finishing.

Maria [0:13:27]: And what I like to say and we like to say is start finishing.

Maria [0:13:31]: And then stop starting because lots of times like you start start, oh, that's a great idea.

Maria [0:13:36]: Let's get start...

Maria [0:13:37]: Like, you start and you start and you start and you just end up with like, so many things at the same time.

Dave [0:13:42]: This is a perfect example.

Dave [0:13:43]: So many things in my life.

Dave [0:13:44]: I can make an analogy to to parenting, but my daughter will just start a project, and I go nuts because we haven't even finished or cleaned up the other project that we did in the other room, which is half done And then there's, like, a half, you know, there's a thing of orange juice half opened on the sink, and I'm like, let's just pick well let's clean everything up.

Dave [0:14:05]: Let's pick one thing.

Maria [0:14:08]: Yeah.

Maria [0:14:08]: I know.

Maria [0:14:08]: I totally relate with my daughter too.

Maria [0:14:10]: She doesn't like the clean, and, like, she's really quick to go on into the next thing.

Dave [0:14:15]: Alright.

Dave [0:14:15]: So so what's the marketing lesson here?

Maria [0:14:18]: So...

Maria [0:14:18]: And I think here the the why behind.

Maria [0:14:21]: So you saw how fat...

Maria [0:14:22]: Like, you can get things faster, and you can deliver value quicker.

Maria [0:14:25]: Right?

Maria [0:14:26]: And why is that important?

Maria [0:14:28]: Why should you care as a new head of marketing?

Maria [0:14:30]: And I think this is because you need to adapt to the market without burning out your team?

Maria [0:14:36]: Because at the end, you just keep dumping things to your team and, like, you get request from sales and from product and you just...

Maria [0:14:43]: They start burning out, the the more worth they they they get.

Maria [0:14:47]: Right?

Maria [0:14:47]: So the pressure to adapt to the market has always been there.

Maria [0:14:51]: But right now with ai ai, everything is faster.

Maria [0:14:55]: Like, this past year, like, I see...

Maria [0:14:57]: I go to Linkedin and you start saying, like, oh, our product became irrelevant with the last cloud update.

Maria [0:15:03]: Mh.

Maria [0:15:04]: Right?

Maria [0:15:04]: A Saas company that was doing whatever, like, customer support or whatever.

Maria [0:15:08]: Oh, our product just became relevant.

Maria [0:15:10]: So you need to be quick to adapt and learning the operating system not only for your marketing team but for the organization is gonna help you be more adaptable to the market.

Maria [0:15:21]: Right?

Maria [0:15:22]: Does that make sense?

Dave [0:15:24]: Mh.

Dave [0:15:24]: Is there a system that you're creating?

Maria [0:15:27]: I mean, so I'm taking the the basis of, like, an agile methodology to bring it to...

Maria [0:15:32]: I adapted that to the marketing team.

Maria [0:15:34]: So you already see that your product team or your engineering team work that way, and that's what we're gonna talk about later, a little bit of those practices.

Dave [0:15:42]: Okay.

Dave [0:15:42]: So so the whole...

Dave [0:15:43]: The big takeaway here is, like, one of them is the multitasking thing.

Dave [0:15:47]: The other pieces you should be running marketing, like, a agile development organization.

Dave [0:15:53]: Can you can you explain that?

Dave [0:15:54]: That's that's worth talking about.

Dave [0:15:55]: I think people will wanna hear.

Dave [0:15:56]: She keeps...

Dave [0:15:57]: She keeps talking about this operate this operating system you need to have.

Dave [0:16:01]: Okay.

Dave [0:16:01]: Okay.

Dave [0:16:01]: So what does that?

Dave [0:16:02]: How...

Dave [0:16:02]: What does that?

Dave [0:16:02]: How does it work?

Dave [0:16:03]: Or why do it?

Dave [0:16:04]: What does it look like?

Maria [0:16:05]: So it looks like delivering value quickly to your customers to your stakeholders so that you can adapt and you can move quickly.

Maria [0:16:14]: And you...

Maria [0:16:15]: When you plan, you don't have to plan for the full year.

Maria [0:16:17]: Like, and we all know this.

Maria [0:16:19]: Right?

Maria [0:16:19]: Like you wanna plan for, like, shorter streams.

Maria [0:16:21]: It's it's not just your immediate two weeks, but you gotta think short term and long term, but you gotta you don't need to plan with all the details because you gotta be able to adapt because the market is gonna change.

Maria [0:16:33]: You know that.

Maria [0:16:34]: And there's gonna be a new competitor, and then all the work you put into your positioning into your narrative.

Maria [0:16:39]: Like, it's gonna...

Maria [0:16:41]: You're you're gonna need to pivot anyway.

Maria [0:16:43]: So you need to build a team that is adaptable.

Dave [0:16:46]: Yeah.

Dave [0:16:46]: This is good.

Dave [0:16:47]: This topic comes up a lot of topic around, like, planning.

Dave [0:16:49]: And so what you're offering up is a way to think about strategy and a way to think about planning because it's common for...

Dave [0:16:56]: I gotta work on the marketing plan for the year.

Dave [0:16:59]: And what I'm hearing from you and hear from others also is, like, so much changes over the course of a year.

Dave [0:17:06]: That's just an exercise and that's setting us our our ourselves up to fail.

Dave [0:17:10]: Maybe we can have goals directional that we're achieve over the course of the year, but, like, what are we gonna be working on next month?

Dave [0:17:17]: I I don't know yet.

Dave [0:17:18]: We're in the middle of a two week sprint right now?

Dave [0:17:20]: I love this because it is paralyzing.

Dave [0:17:22]: There's so many different things to do.

Dave [0:17:24]: I love the idea of, like, let's just...

Dave [0:17:26]: What if we had everyone a rallied around this, like, this idea of, like, two weeks sprints?

Dave [0:17:30]: What's important?

Dave [0:17:31]: What are we working on right now?

Maria [0:17:33]: Right.

Maria [0:17:33]: And so I'm not saying you don't need to plan because of, absolutely, you need to have your business goals you need to plan with your go to market team?

Maria [0:17:40]: Like, where's the revenue gonna come from?

Maria [0:17:42]: Where your what are your plays and what are you gonna be your marketing goals and your strategies.

Maria [0:17:46]: But then your tactics my might vary.

Maria [0:17:49]: Right?

Maria [0:17:50]: And those can vary throughout the year and you you will know more, like, the the closer to you are the...

Maria [0:17:55]: You're planning for your quarter and not necessarily for the full year of everything that you're gonna do?

Maria [0:18:00]: Mh.

Dave [0:18:01]: How do you like the structure the the work here?

Dave [0:18:03]: Like, what what gets bucket?

Dave [0:18:04]: If you're if you're doing these kinda two weeks sprints in in marketing?

Maria [0:18:09]: So...

Maria [0:18:09]: First of all, I wanna talk about the actual mindset because I've heard so many people tell me, no.

Maria [0:18:16]: That doesn't work for me.

Maria [0:18:17]: I've tried that.

Maria [0:18:18]: I've tried having a a a backlog.

Maria [0:18:20]: I've tried doing the stand.

Maria [0:18:22]: Like, that doesn't work for for a company for industry for product.

Maria [0:18:25]: No.

Maria [0:18:26]: That doesn't work.

Maria [0:18:27]: And it doesn't work because you don't have the right mindset because you're not building the right culture for your team, and it starts with a leader.

Maria [0:18:34]: Right?

Maria [0:18:35]: What I mentioned earlier, why do you care you want you want to adapt, quickly to to changes in the market, so you want to be able to experiment, and you wanna build a culture of trust in your team so that you can experiment quickly and you focus on that over perfection.

Maria [0:18:52]: And you focus on shipping, over, oh, we need to have all these three columns done before we ship.

Maria [0:18:59]: Right?

Maria [0:19:00]: And so to build that trust, you need to do certain things with your team.

Maria [0:19:05]: Like, I I like to talk about, like, getting it right versus being right from B Brown, Like, that was a an eye opener.

Maria [0:19:11]: Right?

Maria [0:19:11]: Like, you keep working towards the getting it right.

Maria [0:19:14]: And so they're certain things that I like to do with my team, for example, a working agreement?

Maria [0:19:20]: You you bring in your team and you all create a document, and it's a share document where you align on the expectations on how the team operates?

Maria [0:19:29]: How do that you communicate?

Maria [0:19:30]: How do you make decisions?

Maria [0:19:32]: You know?

Maria [0:19:32]: Like, so you document everything, and you have the conversation.

Maria [0:19:35]: What does that mean?

Maria [0:19:36]: And you keep digging and you won't end up agreeing?

Maria [0:19:39]: Because some people like to slack or sometimes some people like to, you know, send a calendar invites or, like, whatever that is for communication or email.

Maria [0:19:49]: Like, let's agree on what that is for our team because that's gonna make us more effective and more efficient, and we are starting to build trust.

Maria [0:19:56]: So that...

Maria [0:19:57]: That's one of the the tools.

Dave [0:19:59]: I just like to say this is how I work and you have to figure out how to work with me.

Dave [0:20:03]: That sounds like too much voting on with...

Dave [0:20:05]: No.

Dave [0:20:06]: We...

Dave [0:20:06]: We...

Dave [0:20:06]: I know I know, it's not up to you.

Dave [0:20:08]: We're using this tool.

Maria [0:20:10]: Well, I'll I like to be the type of leader that is a little bit more like, okay.

Maria [0:20:15]: Let's...

Maria [0:20:15]: Like we're a team.

Maria [0:20:16]: Right?

Maria [0:20:16]: At.

Maria [0:20:16]: That's

Dave [0:20:18]: to to each their own, Maybe, you know, we we each have our own flavor.

Maria [0:20:22]: Yeah.

Maria [0:20:22]: But I mean, maybe there's there's a common ground.

Maria [0:20:23]: And if if all your team, like, you do a better job.

Maria [0:20:26]: And maybe it turns out all your team likes to communicate and slack and do everything.

Maria [0:20:29]: But...

Maria [0:20:29]: Yeah.

Maria [0:20:30]: Let's and and the as the steam team team starts growing.

Maria [0:20:32]: Like, oh, now we start putting things in Google Drive and in the...

Maria [0:20:35]: Whatever other tool.

Maria [0:20:37]: Right?

Maria [0:20:37]: And things get just wild as you grow.

Dave [0:20:39]: They do.

Dave [0:20:39]: For sure.

Maria [0:20:41]: So having those agreements.

Maria [0:20:42]: And another thing is, a tool that I, call the experiment experimentation guard rail template.

Maria [0:20:48]: This is kind of a lightweight ra tool that empowers people to to have that freedom to experiment, so you know where can you to do things by yourself, where do you need someone's buy in.

Maria [0:21:03]: Right?

Maria [0:21:03]: And I can show you that to if you want or we don't look at it?

Dave [0:21:06]: Yeah.

Dave [0:21:06]: What does that mean?

Dave [0:21:07]: Light lightweight ra.

Dave [0:21:08]: Can you explain that?

Maria [0:21:10]: I mean, you know, like, a ra that's kind of a more robust thing where you decide like, how the team works with all their teams and what are the responsibilities.

Maria [0:21:18]: Right?

Maria [0:21:19]: And here, it's just more of a lightweight thing we're here.

Maria [0:21:23]: Let me show you much document here.

Maria [0:21:28]: So here, for example, and I created this a while ago.

Maria [0:21:31]: So don't take all these examples as, like, this is what it needs to be like.

Maria [0:21:36]: You need to adapt adapt to your team.

Maria [0:21:38]: Right?

Maria [0:21:39]: But basically, you have on the left side, the types of projects and on the top, you have the the types of approval.

Maria [0:21:47]: So more individuals, something that is more, like, you need to have team buy in versus director VP, other teams or CEO, for example.

Maria [0:21:56]: When you're writing articles for your blog.

Maria [0:21:58]: Eventually, like, at least me as a leader.

Maria [0:22:01]: I always want the individual to have, like, we've said the the guard rails, we know where we're going.

Maria [0:22:06]: So just go ahead and publish it.

Maria [0:22:08]: You don't need...

Dave [0:22:09]: Yeah.

Dave [0:22:09]: This is helpful because it's like death by it for me it was always like, death by a million approvals, and it's, like, this person needs to prove this thing this person needs to prove this and you're saying, hey, for this for this thing, like, you have the freedom to be able to ship it.

Dave [0:22:22]: If it's if it's this, that we're deciding on the venue for our event of which we're gonna spend a million dollars on it.

Dave [0:22:28]: Like, these three people need to be involved in that decision.

Maria [0:22:31]: One hundred percent.

Maria [0:22:31]: So here this is like that lightweight decision making tool, And so for example, here, By article to go for the CEO.

Maria [0:22:39]: Like you said, finding an event location.

Maria [0:22:42]: Of course, the CEO is gonna have the final approval.

Maria [0:22:44]: But for for things like some ads or some social media posts or or a ad campaign.

Maria [0:22:52]: So maybe here you want to have that decision in the individual.

Maria [0:22:56]: You enable them to make that decision, or hey, this actually needs to go to the team or these, you know, event selection.

Maria [0:23:03]: These needs you need to have the VP involved in these ones.

Maria [0:23:06]: Or actually, for these bio enable men, you will need a feedback from the director of product or from the director of engineer.

Maria [0:23:13]: But this is something that you can decide and as a team, everybody agrees.

Maria [0:23:17]: And this is a leading document.

Maria [0:23:19]: So this you create this now, but in three months from now, actually, you know, these people have grown, like, we've we don't see the need for this approval.

Maria [0:23:26]: Let's change it.

Maria [0:23:27]: Right?

Maria [0:23:27]: But it it allows them to experiment quickly.

Maria [0:23:30]: Without those bottlenecks.

Dave [0:23:33]: Got it.

Dave [0:23:33]: Okay.

Dave [0:23:33]: Cool.

Dave [0:23:34]: Helpful.

Maria [0:23:35]: Nice.

Maria [0:23:35]: And so this is, like I said, I call it the experimentation guard rail template clip because I like to, you know, have the experimentation side there.

Maria [0:23:44]: So that's another tool to build that culture, and you need to avoid those unnecessary layers, like, you know, that when the team grows, like this another thing.

Maria [0:23:57]: You started as head of marketing, you hire two, three people, then the company starts to scale.

Maria [0:24:03]: Oh, now I need more Pm or I need...

Maria [0:24:05]: Or, certain to do channel marketing.

Maria [0:24:07]: And so now I need to hire these people.

Maria [0:24:10]: And it starts to grow.

Maria [0:24:12]: So when do you start having layers underneath.

Maria [0:24:15]: In my opinion or the way I like to build my teams is like, let's try to break the layers and perhaps just the one until it becomes, like, too large of a team that you can't do that that you can no longer do that.

Maria [0:24:28]: But these a mindset and the practices that we're gonna talk about later will help you have a lean team.

Dave [0:24:36]: Okay.

Dave [0:24:36]: Alright.

Dave [0:24:36]: Keep going.

Dave [0:24:36]: I think you have a vision for what stuff you wanna get to.

Dave [0:24:39]: So go ahead.

Maria [0:24:40]: Okay.

Maria [0:24:40]: I think those are, like, the basics for building that mindset and the...

Dave [0:24:45]: Do you wanna...

Dave [0:24:45]: Well, I think we're we're kind of...

Dave [0:24:47]: We've we've talked around it a little bit, but I...

Dave [0:24:49]: Later in our notes we have this idea of, like, running marketing, like, a product team, but that's kind of

Maria [0:24:54]: the wrap for every

Dave [0:24:56]: about.

Dave [0:24:56]: Let's talk about that.

Maria [0:24:57]: Yes.

Maria [0:24:57]: To build your...

Maria [0:24:59]: To run your team as a product team or engineering team, you need that mindset, and now you...

Maria [0:25:03]: That's where you start using some of the practices.

Maria [0:25:06]: First of all, you need a backlog.

Maria [0:25:09]: What does that mean?

Maria [0:25:10]: A prioritized list of work.

Maria [0:25:12]: Prioritized is a keyword here because all the work is gonna be in order.

Maria [0:25:17]: And for that, you're gonna start...

Maria [0:25:20]: And I can show you another a backlog, what it looks like.

Maria [0:25:23]: Here's an example.

Maria [0:25:24]: I posted this.

Maria [0:25:25]: I think, two years ago in the Exit Five community as an example.

Maria [0:25:28]: When you start a new job as head of marketing.

Maria [0:25:31]: This is how you you build your backlog.

Maria [0:25:34]: And you have different columns here.

Maria [0:25:36]: So on the left side, you see long term initiatives, and you focus here three to twelve months.

Maria [0:25:42]: So this this is a back burner of your ideas, projects, tactics, it can be big as an epic or smaller as the task.

Maria [0:25:50]: It doesn't matter because this is hasn't been refined.

Maria [0:25:52]: Right?

Maria [0:25:53]: And they're not necessarily in order.

Maria [0:25:55]: Then you build another column here that is more short term backlog.

Maria [0:26:00]: So these column has epics, so Epics mean big projects and tasks that are smaller pieces of work, and this is constantly being reviewed and ordered by the marketing manager or the person who's in charge of the marketing.

Maria [0:26:15]: Department here in in agile terms, it would be the product owner owner.

Dave [0:26:19]: Got it.

Dave [0:26:19]: So much of marketing is kinda like, always on, like, you're always running.

Dave [0:26:25]: There's an Ass you're you're trying to rank for certain keywords to grow traffic or You're always running ads?

Dave [0:26:30]: Like, where does that?

Dave [0:26:31]: I've always wondered where does that fit in something like this?

Maria [0:26:35]: So here, if if you go another column to the right, that would be the sprint backlog, and that's what you're doing for your next two weeks.

Maria [0:26:42]: And here, it's a lot more refined.

Maria [0:26:45]: It's been ordered.

Maria [0:26:47]: The team has agreed on what that this is what they're gonna do and finish.

Maria [0:26:51]: And here, we would add the most, like, the...

Maria [0:26:55]: Those lights on type of campaigns.

Maria [0:26:56]: In...

Maria [0:26:57]: For some teams, depending on how much of that is part of this, You can label it differently, like, you know that is an always on campaign.

Maria [0:27:05]: So you can play...

Maria [0:27:06]: This is a trello board, but you can do this in Jira, like, all the other project management tools.

Maria [0:27:10]: And here you can see how I created some tags for different types of campaigns like demand generation versus partner marketing versus product marketing more.

Maria [0:27:20]: But you can build those, like, tags with whatever you want.

Maria [0:27:24]: Yep.

Maria [0:27:24]: The important thing is to have that visible because those things that are your lights on, they take time from your team and maybe that's twenty percent of your time or whatever amount it needs to be be visible because you...

Maria [0:27:35]: When you prior ties.

Maria [0:27:37]: You need to decide, okay, What are we doing versus not doing?

Dave [0:27:40]: Is there someone to someone on the team own this or it's like, the team, the team is, like, hey, We need to manage all of our work in here.

Dave [0:27:46]: Here's the system.

Dave [0:27:47]: Everyone's responsible for updating this.

Dave [0:27:49]: And then each you know, each week you're looking at what work is coming in.

Maria [0:27:53]: So the the marketing director VP whatever, like, the person the head of marketing here needs to own this, and that's that the payroll role, and they need to be on this.

Maria [0:28:03]: And and the team can add their add their work.

Maria [0:28:06]: Like, they're...

Maria [0:28:07]: They need to be adding the work and with the ai.

Maria [0:28:09]: There's a lot, like, there's a lot of automations that you can create after a call, you can automate, you know, the summary and creating tasks in any tools, But at the end of the day, you need to have the director, like, making the calls like, okay.

Maria [0:28:22]: No.

Maria [0:28:23]: These needs to go higher up.

Maria [0:28:24]: These needs to go lower And you can have that conversation with the team.

Maria [0:28:28]: Right?

Maria [0:28:28]: And so the spring backlog, that's what you've committed to do.

Maria [0:28:32]: For the next two week.

Maria [0:28:34]: Then here's the doing, and this is where we go back to the exercise we did earlier.

Maria [0:28:38]: It's essential to limit work in progress because if you're doing ten things here are too many things here, then you're not completing.

Maria [0:28:46]: So...

Maria [0:28:46]: Yeah.

Maria [0:28:47]: Don't have more...

Maria [0:28:48]: Depending on the size of the team, but don't have more than three to five to ten things in, like, cart.

Dave [0:28:55]: I think it it's really helpful to just, like, I I like how I usually rotate against stuff.

Dave [0:29:00]: I'm more, like, just ideas are gonna win and let's execute, but I do make a mistake of, like, there's just so much stuff going on, and I often unintentionally send people in lots of different directions because I'm just like a fountain of ideas good and bad.

Dave [0:29:13]: And it all seems important.

Dave [0:29:15]: I like this idea of, like, the head of marketing.

Dave [0:29:17]: Really the job is to, like, manage the work of the marketing organization.

Dave [0:29:22]: And so it's not...

Dave [0:29:24]: You know, you you run this, and then it's really helpful to be like, yeah.

Dave [0:29:27]: Actually, wait.

Dave [0:29:28]: We're Look at how much stuff is on our board.

Dave [0:29:30]: Look at how much stuff we're doing right now that's in progress.

Dave [0:29:32]: Everyone's burnt out everyone's stressed and we're not hitting our goals.

Dave [0:29:36]: Like, this can't be right?

Dave [0:29:37]: Like, we gotta move this around and it must be...

Dave [0:29:38]: It creates a calmer way of working also when you can see, like, Here are the two big things we're working on right now.

Dave [0:29:43]: Here's what's coming at up next.

Dave [0:29:45]: I I can I can get around to this?

Maria [0:29:47]: Absolutely.

Maria [0:29:47]: And this is the best tool to kind of not push back on on your sales team or anything, but, like, someone comes to you.

Maria [0:29:55]: Someone who what ranks you.

Maria [0:29:57]: Comes to you and is asking for, hey, can you do this quick one pager for me?

Maria [0:30:02]: Oh, we really need to do this?

Maria [0:30:03]: Like, okay.

Maria [0:30:05]: We're gonna put it on the backlog?

Maria [0:30:06]: And we're gonna prioritize it against the rest of the things we have going on.

Maria [0:30:10]: Right?

Maria [0:30:11]: And that was the tool Like, I was talking to a CMO of the thirty six people marketing team.

Maria [0:30:16]: And this is the the tool they used.

Maria [0:30:17]: Oh, we're gonna put it in the backlog and then prioritize it against the rest of the work.

Maria [0:30:21]: And so you're not telling them no we're not doing this.

Maria [0:30:24]: We're telling them, okay, we need to see how these compares to the other work we're doing to the other priorities.

Dave [0:30:29]: Yep.

Maria [0:30:30]: And so besides these doing column here, let me continue.

Maria [0:30:32]: We have the dependencies column.

Maria [0:30:34]: And here, This is a new one that I've introduced for my teams, especially when you work with other with other teams, like with sales with products, like, depending...

Maria [0:30:44]: Or and you're...

Maria [0:30:45]: Or with even with vendors, like, when you work with vendors, and you're depending on them sending you something.

Maria [0:30:51]: So this is where you you wanna let the team know that, hey, I can't move forward with this project because I'm waiting on the approval from someone.

Maria [0:31:01]: Right?

Maria [0:31:02]: Like, from the head of sales or from the product or from the vendor.

Maria [0:31:05]: And so if it's visual, the head of marketing, can come here.

Maria [0:31:09]: I'm like, okay.

Maria [0:31:10]: Every day once we have and I'm gonna tell you tell you about the stand up, but it's gonna come here and you're you're gonna raise the concern.

Maria [0:31:16]: Okay.

Maria [0:31:16]: I'm gonna go talk to that person and tell them we can move forward because of this.

Maria [0:31:21]: Right?

Maria [0:31:21]: Like, and the more you have this, the more, like the the role of the head of marketing becomes like, removing those impediments.

Maria [0:31:28]: That the team, like, maybe they didn't know until you have the one zero one and the person tells you about it, or maybe they send you a an email, it gets buried.

Maria [0:31:37]: You know, this is a space to really like, focus on we need to deliver this quickly, and we can't because it's blocked by this.

Dave [0:31:45]: I I want you to talk more about the, like, you know, stand ups and the run...

Dave [0:31:49]: Like, how how we run this.

Dave [0:31:50]: But before we...

Dave [0:31:51]: I I think I under I understand all this this is good.

Dave [0:31:53]: One thing that keeps coming to my mind when I see this though is, like, Is there...

Dave [0:31:57]: There don't...

Dave [0:31:58]: There needs to be another thing, which is, like, here are the main goals for our company and team right now.

Dave [0:32:05]: Right?

Maria [0:32:06]: Yeah.

Dave [0:32:06]: Because then that...

Dave [0:32:07]: That's how you would rank these accordingly, which is, like, we're doing this because this maps back to this bigger goal.

Dave [0:32:11]: Can you just briefly touch on how you do that?

Maria [0:32:14]: One hundred percent.

Maria [0:32:15]: So what I do is you create the...

Maria [0:32:16]: Your strategy on a page with your business goals and revenue goals.

Maria [0:32:20]: Right?

Maria [0:32:20]: Then your marketing goals, then your strategies and your tactics.

Maria [0:32:23]: So here, every time, you're you're gonna have for example, for the Spring backlog, you're gonna have your...

Maria [0:32:30]: What the goals are for those...

Maria [0:32:32]: That specific sprint, but that is connected to a, kind of bigger epic.

Maria [0:32:36]: I don't know if I have it here.

Maria [0:32:38]: Here you'll have a bigger epic that explains this is connected to these corporate strategy and these goals, and this is why.

Maria [0:32:46]: And then you have that big one and then the smaller courts that connect to that one.

Dave [0:32:50]: Got it.

Dave [0:32:51]: Okay.

Maria [0:32:52]: This is the backlog, and then there's different things that you do.

Maria [0:32:55]: Like, the concept that I mentioned earlier, you want to limit work in progress similar to what we said with that exercise that we did.

Maria [0:33:02]: Right?

Maria [0:33:03]: Yep.

Maria [0:33:03]: Yep.

Maria [0:33:03]: So you don't wanna have too many cards in this and this column, and you want...

Maria [0:33:08]: When you're chunking up the work, you want to chunk as a minimal viable increment incremental of of value.

Maria [0:33:15]: So think about...

Maria [0:33:17]: Okay.

Maria [0:33:17]: A campaign, for example, Tell me, give me an example of your in your company, Dave.

Maria [0:33:22]: I could company that you're running some some type of work that someone in your team is doing.

Dave [0:33:26]: Sure.

Dave [0:33:26]: Right now, a big campaign would be selling tickets for drive twenty twenty six, which is our event in September.

Maria [0:33:33]: Okay?

Maria [0:33:33]: So for selling that, you're doing certain things.

Maria [0:33:37]: Right?

Maria [0:33:37]: Like, you're just certainly, like, what what are you doing, for example?

Dave [0:33:41]: Yeah.

Dave [0:33:41]: Everything that would fall into there would be, like, finalizing the speakers getting the content, the run of show, like, the the what, the packaging people need to know the packaging for the product, all the way through, like, the website, the landing pages, the emails, the ads, the offer, the promotional strategy, all of those things would fall under that.

Maria [0:34:00]: Okay.

Maria [0:34:00]: So think about the minimal amount of value that you could deliver?

Maria [0:34:05]: Like, do you need to have all the speakers set up for you to promote the event, for example, or do you need to have all the emails and all look, like, everything done before you start, like, moving forward.

Maria [0:34:17]: What is the minimum thing that you could do for that campaign that you would create those little...

Maria [0:34:23]: Those smaller tasks that when you move them to dom in two weeks, we've already delivered value.

Maria [0:34:28]: You've already gotten approval, like, from from some sponsors, like...

Maria [0:34:33]: And it's different in in in each company and for each...

Maria [0:34:36]: Even within the company for different types of work.

Dave [0:34:40]: Well, it's funny.

Dave [0:34:40]: It's funny.

Dave [0:34:40]: This is literally I was raised by product founders.

Dave [0:34:45]: And so I guess I've unintentionally, this is how we operate always, so it's interesting to hear you teach this back, and I do think what people need a dose of this, which is like, my brain always goes to what's the minimum viable thing here.

Dave [0:34:58]: For example, like, in the drive example, we could have waited for all that, but we just sent people know this exists.

Dave [0:35:03]: We we've we've sold, like, a hundred and fifty tickets with no content.

Dave [0:35:06]: Already, which is amazing.

Dave [0:35:08]: Right?

Dave [0:35:09]: And when I worked for this was at drift when I worked to the two founders, David For our product guys.

Dave [0:35:13]: Everything was always...

Dave [0:35:15]: I was a first marketing person there.

Dave [0:35:17]: And so everything was always, like, pushing back on me if I were like, okay.

Dave [0:35:20]: We're gonna...

Dave [0:35:21]: We need new website.

Dave [0:35:21]: Like, well, yeah, it's gonna be, like, ninety days and Like again, No, but you could literally just get a squarespace account and change the homepage tonight couldn't you, and I'm like, Yeah.

Dave [0:35:28]: Okay.

Dave [0:35:30]: And that was such an...

Dave [0:35:31]: It's a such an amazing way to build because marketing, like, should be...

Dave [0:35:34]: It it taught me that marketing needs to be just iterative like that.

Dave [0:35:38]: So it...

Dave [0:35:39]: And I was thinking when you were saying that in my head, it's very easy to have all the objections in the world Whoa...

Dave [0:35:43]: Well, the the...

Dave [0:35:44]: We don't wanna do the minimum viable thing here because, you know, we need this, and we need this.

Dave [0:35:48]: I think those are all just usually excuses.

Dave [0:35:50]: There's almost always, like, everything builds on each other and you get you get product feedback that way.

Dave [0:35:55]: Used to say that, like, you need to give your ideas oxygen.

Dave [0:35:59]: And so if just, like, all the stuff is just sitting in your trello board and and...

Dave [0:36:02]: In marketing, like, I love your your idea of, like, taking it back to, like, what's the quickest thing?

Dave [0:36:07]: What's the quickest time to value?

Maria [0:36:09]: Yeah.

Maria [0:36:09]: Absolutely.

Maria [0:36:09]: Because Yeah.

Maria [0:36:11]: It goes back to the example earlier.

Maria [0:36:12]: Like you're already delivering value.

Maria [0:36:14]: And the way you do this.

Maria [0:36:16]: So some of the example, like, you have the backlog.

Maria [0:36:19]: Right?

Maria [0:36:19]: It's prioritized and you have the head of marketing that is gone through that.

Maria [0:36:23]: Like, everybody has access to this and you even wanna give access to other people outside of marketing so that they see what you're working on.

Maria [0:36:30]: Right?

Maria [0:36:30]: So...

Maria [0:36:30]: But you you start planning for two weeks, and you do two weeks sprints.

Maria [0:36:34]: First you do a refinement depending on how big your team is and depending of, how many, like, specializations you you might have you might do refinement individual, like individually or smaller groups.

Maria [0:36:46]: So, like...

Maria [0:36:46]: But everybody needs to know what they wanna achieve the next month, and they have, like, the big epic and then start reducing that into those smaller chunks of work.

Maria [0:36:54]: And then once you bring them to the to the planning, you have everyone together.

Maria [0:36:58]: And you want to guide them.

Maria [0:37:01]: Okay?

Maria [0:37:01]: This is the goal, this is how it's connected to the larger company goals, and this is when needs to get done.

Maria [0:37:06]: And then you start adding the the cart to your sprint, and then the team starts saying, well, actually, if I wanna do this, I'm gonna need a designer.

Maria [0:37:15]: Okay.

Maria [0:37:15]: So the designer knows that he's gonna be the doing that and the writer and the whatever, you know, Like...

Maria [0:37:22]: Yeah.

Maria [0:37:22]: All, the people involved.

Maria [0:37:23]: And with Ai things change.

Maria [0:37:25]: Right?

Maria [0:37:25]: Because you might...

Maria [0:37:26]: The smaller the company is, the the more, like, you do everything.

Maria [0:37:30]: But as you grow, you're gonna have to relay on other people in your team.

Maria [0:37:34]: Right?

Maria [0:37:34]: So you need to commit here.

Maria [0:37:35]: And then The other person is gonna say, no, Actually, I have all these other things to do.

Maria [0:37:39]: I can't I can't do that.

Maria [0:37:41]: Okay.

Maria [0:37:41]: And the head of marketing comes in there.

Maria [0:37:44]: Like, we have the conversation.

Maria [0:37:45]: Okay.

Maria [0:37:46]: You're right, then we're gonna we're gonna have to to not do this or actually no.

Maria [0:37:50]: This is the most important thing though...

Maria [0:37:51]: So Let's look at the other things that you're going...

Maria [0:37:54]: Do you have going on, then what do you think can be dropped.

Maria [0:37:57]: Right?

Maria [0:37:57]: So it forces that conversation and the transparency around the whole team.

Maria [0:38:02]: So everybody knows what everyone else has to do and it's accountable for

Dave [0:38:06]: it.

Dave [0:38:06]: I think it's also just healthy because it's, like the more frequently you check in on the work that's going on.

Dave [0:38:11]: There's so many things.

Dave [0:38:12]: It's, like, recurring credit card charges that you don't even know that you're paying for and you don't go audit it and you're like, oh, I'm not paying.

Dave [0:38:19]: I'm still paying for this app.

Dave [0:38:20]: We just we take on so much work in marketing that it's healthy to revisit, like, what are we actually doing?

Maria [0:38:27]: Right.

Maria [0:38:27]: And so you plan.

Maria [0:38:28]: And then you start working and then you have daily stand ups and here, like, I'm not telling you you have to do this.

Maria [0:38:35]: Like, because some teams do it like, everyday, ten minutes on video call, especially if you're remote or if you're in person, you just do it in person in front of the board, or you could do it in Slack or if someone can join, they can just send their update in slack.

Maria [0:38:51]: But basically, in your daily stand that you tell them, what you did yesterday, what I'm going to do today and any blockers.

Maria [0:38:57]: And that's where that depends.

Maria [0:38:58]: These column that I was telling you about is really...

Maria [0:39:00]: Yeah.

Maria [0:39:01]: But this is supposed to be super quick.

Maria [0:39:03]: Like one, two minutes per person to don't start explaining the history of everything that you're doing.

Maria [0:39:08]: Right?

Dave [0:39:09]: It should be a meeting that everyone can go to because it's like you could you just join it from anywhere and in five, ten minutes you're done.

Maria [0:39:17]: Exactly.

Maria [0:39:17]: Exactly.

Maria [0:39:18]: So you do that.

Maria [0:39:19]: And then by the end of the sprint, you do a review.

Maria [0:39:24]: And here, I've done it in different ways and depending on how big the company is.

Maria [0:39:29]: For example, at a Series a startup up, I had four people.

Maria [0:39:32]: I did the review with with my team, and I invited the stakeholders.

Maria [0:39:36]: I invited the Sierra and the head of sales.

Maria [0:39:38]: Right?

Maria [0:39:39]: And and customer success.

Maria [0:39:40]: And so we would review the work the outcomes, and we always start with a why how every campaign is connected to your goals so that everybody understands the the value, and you explain in your review, and then you let your your team...

Maria [0:39:54]: Like, your sales team like, ask you questions.

Maria [0:39:56]: So why didn't you do that?

Maria [0:39:57]: And and so they're involved what you're doing?

Maria [0:39:59]: Right?

Maria [0:40:00]: And you're evolving what they're doing as well.

Maria [0:40:02]: Right?

Maria [0:40:02]: I've done this in my last company, public company, like, five hundred people, I didn't invite the sales team, but we did record the session.

Maria [0:40:13]: So we had a one hour session with twelve people, and we were all explaining what we were doing, and then we had a summary, but we packaged it send it to everyone in the organization could have access to it.

Maria [0:40:24]: And so you could see what is marketing actually doing.

Maria [0:40:27]: We tell you what we're gonna do, and we we tell you what we've done every other week.

Dave [0:40:32]: Yeah.

Dave [0:40:32]: It's just, like the...

Dave [0:40:34]: That's why the engine...

Dave [0:40:34]: Engineers are...

Dave [0:40:35]: Engineers are great because they wanna be able to track all the things that they're doing to show that we did...

Dave [0:40:42]: We did them in marketing.

Dave [0:40:43]: If you This gives you just a better paper trail for all the stuff that that you're doing.

Dave [0:40:47]: And also forces you to organize it in in the right way.

Maria [0:40:50]: Right.

Dave [0:40:50]: Okay.

Dave [0:40:50]: So there's daily stand up.

Dave [0:40:51]: You do these two weeks sprints.

Dave [0:40:53]: We talked about the board.

Dave [0:40:54]: We talked about the dependencies.

Dave [0:40:56]: Yes.

Dave [0:40:57]: Planning what else?

Maria [0:40:59]: What else?

Maria [0:40:59]: So the retrospective.

Maria [0:41:00]: And this is only exclusive...

Maria [0:41:03]: This is an exclusive session for the team to review how they've worked and what has worked, what hasn't worked So you do, like, there's different ways of running a retrospective, but basically, it's about, like, what has worked where hasn't worked what do we need to start doing?

Dave [0:41:18]: Yeah.

Dave [0:41:18]: Oh, that's good.

Dave [0:41:19]: It gives you, like, a, a space to kinda talk honestly about, like, how things are going in more real time and take some of the emotions out of.

Dave [0:41:26]: Also.

Dave [0:41:26]: Right?

Maria [0:41:27]: Yeah.

Maria [0:41:27]: And here, you talk about the actual campaign, but if you also talk about the team dynamics.

Maria [0:41:31]: Like, hey.

Maria [0:41:32]: Just didn't work.

Maria [0:41:33]: Like, this person was out all week.

Maria [0:41:35]: And so that really hurt us.

Maria [0:41:37]: Like, we need to plan better if we know that someone is gonna be out or like...

Dave [0:41:41]: We We ship we ship this thing, but it was like, such an insanely stressful and busy week and everyone's pissed off at each other now and, like, clearly, this something is broken.

Maria [0:41:49]: Yeah.

Maria [0:41:49]: And this helps, like, build again that trust in the team.

Maria [0:41:53]: Like, going back to the mindset that I mentioned earlier, it's just...

Maria [0:41:56]: You reinforce that constantly.

Maria [0:41:58]: With all these little events and these little things that you do.

Maria [0:42:04]: This seems so obvious to you, David, because you've...

Maria [0:42:07]: Like you mentioned earlier, You've been in close to product teams, engineering teams and Saas team, like Saas companies.

Maria [0:42:14]: They're inherently, like, more Savvy.

Maria [0:42:16]: That's maybe what one third or one fourth of all the marketing teams out there?

Dave [0:42:21]: Oh, for sure.

Maria [0:42:22]: So many other marketers in Exit Five that just don't...

Maria [0:42:25]: Haven't even heard about this.

Maria [0:42:28]: Right?

Dave [0:42:28]: Not an Exit Five, but other places.

Dave [0:42:30]: Probably.

Dave [0:42:31]: Yeah.

Maria [0:42:31]: Okay.

Dave [0:42:32]: No.

Dave [0:42:32]: Just being silly.

Dave [0:42:32]: Yeah.

Maria [0:42:33]: Okay.

Maria [0:42:33]: No.

Dave [0:42:34]: I think I think I think it's true.

Dave [0:42:35]: There's a lot of...

Dave [0:42:36]: This is what...

Dave [0:42:37]: This is what's frustrating for a lot of people who like marketing as a as a job.

Dave [0:42:41]: It's is, like, some sometimes the work, the internal work gets in the way of doing the actual stuff you like to do, You know?

Maria [0:42:49]: Right.

Maria [0:42:49]: Right.

Maria [0:42:49]: I guess my take and here, Dave, we can go move to the, kind of the last part of the episode where is to like, what is the one recommendation?

Maria [0:42:59]: What can these heads of marketing do when they go back to work on mondays?

Maria [0:43:04]: They they've been thinking about this on the weekend?

Maria [0:43:06]: They're like, this.

Maria [0:43:08]: How do I do this?

Maria [0:43:09]: Like, Yeah.

Maria [0:43:09]: It's So my recommendation is like, to stop start thinking, reflect on...

Maria [0:43:13]: Okay.

Maria [0:43:14]: If you could actually focus on three to five things that have the most impact for your organization in the next couple of weeks, What would that be?

Maria [0:43:25]: So think about that?

Maria [0:43:26]: And say, okay.

Maria [0:43:28]: Why?

Maria [0:43:28]: Why is that?

Maria [0:43:29]: And then, could I do something even smaller than that?

Maria [0:43:32]: That could get me closer to those goals?

Maria [0:43:35]: And so start thinking through how can you start making things smaller, those smaller in inc increments incremental value?

Maria [0:43:42]: And if you're ready to kind of start bringing that, transparency to your teams?

Maria [0:43:49]: Yeah, create a board.

Maria [0:43:50]: Start adding that some of these chunks.

Maria [0:43:52]: Start, like, start small.

Maria [0:43:54]: These will help you just understand that there's a better way of working that is gonna make your life easier and your team's life easier.

Dave [0:44:02]: Yeah.

Dave [0:44:02]: This is like, This is good timing for this.

Dave [0:44:04]: Let's let's position this says this is, like, spring cleaning for your marketing team.

Dave [0:44:08]: Like, you need to listen to this episode.

Dave [0:44:11]: Think about some of the things that Maria is talking about, and the takeaway is like, pausing and being, like.

Dave [0:44:18]: Does my team?

Dave [0:44:19]: Do we know what the two or three big goals are right now.

Dave [0:44:22]: Do we have our work planned out?

Dave [0:44:24]: Should we be trying to operate in two weeks sprints?

Dave [0:44:27]: Like, is there value in running retrospective?

Dave [0:44:29]: Like, those types of questions that would be That's a huge victory for me if someone listens to this episode and does that and now take the time, and then I love what Maria just said there, which is, like, instead of being paralyzed by the whole planning of it, even just going back to our multitasking exercise, like, Most likely there's one or two things, Dan and I in our company, we call them big rocks.

Dave [0:44:48]: There's, like one or two things that if you just nailed that thing?

Dave [0:44:52]: Would that make the rest of the other things like not matter so much.

Dave [0:44:55]: You know when you, like, smash that big thing on your to do list.

Dave [0:44:57]: It's like, all the other little notes you made yourself are, like, oh, that's that's not really important.

Dave [0:45:01]: Like, accomplish my big thing, and that's where eighty percent of the value comes from, you know?

Maria [0:45:05]: Right.

Maria [0:45:05]: Yeah.

Maria [0:45:06]: So if if you're able to do that and also keep in mind, like...

Maria [0:45:10]: At the end of the day, why do you wanna do this?

Maria [0:45:13]: Because you want...

Maria [0:45:14]: You don't wanna burn out.

Maria [0:45:14]: You wanna be able to adapt?

Maria [0:45:16]: You want to be able to move quickly.

Maria [0:45:18]: Right?

Maria [0:45:19]: So keep always that in mind because, otherwise, these just can be, like a bunch of tactics that you're like, why am I even doing this.

Maria [0:45:26]: Doesn't work for me, but always keep mind the why.

Maria [0:45:28]: Right?

Dave [0:45:29]: Yeah.

Dave [0:45:29]: This is great.

Dave [0:45:30]: Look, Okay.

Dave [0:45:30]: So if you could find find Maria on Linkedin, connect with her, send her message or find her an Exit Five.

Dave [0:45:35]: And tell her that you listen this episode, and you got inspired to, like, go clean up your marketing work.

Dave [0:45:41]: And she has a bunch of resources and tips.

Dave [0:45:44]: I'm sure if you'd, you know, connect with her or or or DM her, she'll be happy to answer your questions.

Dave [0:45:48]: Maria, thanks for reaching.

Dave [0:45:50]: Thanks for doing this episode.

Dave [0:45:51]: We definitely needed to do an episode on this topic of organizing your work and why you should think about running a marketing team like a product team.

Dave [0:46:00]: So I'm I'm glad you did it, and it was good to see you and connect with you here on the pod.

Maria [0:46:05]: Thank you, Dave.

Maria [0:46:06]: This is great.

Maria [0:46:06]: Thanks.

Dave [0:46:08]: Awesome.

Dave [0:46:08]: Alright.

Dave [0:46:08]: Hey.

Dave [0:46:13]: Thanks for listening to this podcast.

Dave [0:46:14]: If you like this episode.

Dave [0:46:16]: You know what?

Dave [0:46:16]: I'm not even gonna ask you to subscribe and leave review because I don't really care about that.

Dave [0:46:21]: I have something better for you.

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Dave [0:46:37]: And there's no better place to do that than with us at Exit Five.

Dave [0:46:41]: There's nearly five thousand members now in our community.

Dave [0:46:44]: People are in their posting every day asking questions about things like marketing planning, ideas, inspiration asking questions and getting feedback from your peers, building your own network of marketers who are doing the same thing you are so you can have a peer group, or maybe just venting about your boss when you need to get in there and get something off your chest.

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