Ops Cast

Text us your thoughts on the episode or the show!

What does it really take to build a successful consulting business while keeping a full-time job?

In this episode of the Ops Cast, hosts Courtney McAra and Grant Gregorian sit down with Tom Keefe, Director of Marketing Operations at Engagio (now part of Demandbase), to discuss his experience building a consulting practice as a side business.

Tom shares how he launched his first consulting engagement, why referrals became his primary source of new business, and the lessons he learned about pricing, scoping projects, and managing client expectations. The conversation also explores the practical realities of moonlighting, from balancing a full-time career with consulting work to understanding taxes, LLCs, retainers, and hourly pricing.

Whether you're considering freelance consulting, growing a side hustle, or planning to transition into independent consulting full-time, this episode offers an honest look at the opportunities and trade-offs that come with the journey.

In this episode:

• Why Tom started consulting while working full-time 
• Managing the balance between a W-2 job and freelance clients 
• Landing consulting work through referrals instead of outbound marketing 
• How to scope projects and run effective discovery audits 
• Hourly pricing vs. retainers: when each model works best 
• Common pricing mistakes new consultants make and how to avoid them 
• Setting boundaries and expectations with clients from day one 
• Understanding the hidden costs of consulting, including taxes, insurance, and LLC expenses

If you're looking to build a consulting business, take on freelance projects, or simply better understand the business side of MarTech consulting, this episode is packed with practical advice from professionals who have been there.

Subscribe to the Ops Cast for more conversations with experienced consultants sharing real-world lessons on building a consulting practice, serving clients, and growing a successful career in MarTech consulting.

Episode Brought to You By MO Pros 
The #1 Community for Marketing Operations Professionals

Streamline your webinar programs and tap into more data, more content, and far less manual work. Save time, simplify your workflow, and integrate Goldcast.io with your stack.

Support the show

Text us your thoughts on the episode or the show!

What does it really take to become a successful MarTech consultant?

In this episode of Stories from the Martech Community (SMTC), Courtney McAra and Grant Gregorian share the realities of building independent consulting careers, from leaping out of full-time roles to navigating the business side of consulting.

Drawing from their own experiences, they discuss the freedom, challenges, and lessons that come with running a consulting practice. Whether you're considering consulting for the first time or looking to strengthen your existing business, this conversation is packed with practical advice and honest reflections.

Topics covered include:

•  Making the transition from employee to consultant 
•  Building confidence before taking the leap 
•  Pricing your services and finding your first clients 
•  Legal, financial, and operational considerations 
•  Staying productive while working remotely 
•  The value of networking and community support 
•  Lessons learned from years of MarTech consulting 

Consulting is about far more than technical expertise. It's about building relationships, creating trust, and continuously learning as your business evolves. Courtney and Grant offer practical guidance for anyone looking to carve out their own path in the MarTech consulting world.

If you enjoyed this episode, subscribe to SMTC, leave a review, and join the conversation with fellow MarTech professionals.

Episode Brought to You By MO Pros 
The #1 Community for Marketing Operations Professionals

Support the show

Text us your thoughts on the episode or the show!

AI is becoming part of every Marketing Ops workflow. But what if the most valuable skills in the future aren't technical at all?

In this episode of Ops Cast, Michael Hartmann sits down with Debby Mayen, Global Head of Marketing Operations and Analytics at Logitech, for a thoughtful conversation about balancing technology with humanity in the age of AI.

Debby has spent her career leading global marketing operations teams through major shifts in technology, but her approach stands out because she intentionally creates space away from screens. Through reading physical books, exercising, creative pursuits, and meaningful human connection, she believes the best leaders strengthen the skills that AI cannot replace.

Together, Michael and Debby explore how AI can expand human potential without replacing critical thinking, why creativity and communication are becoming even more valuable, and what today's Marketing Ops professionals should focus on to stay relevant in an AI-enabled workplace.

Topics covered include:

•  Why balance is essential in an AI-driven world 
•  Using AI to challenge your thinking instead of replacing it 
•  How AI amplifies both strengths and weaknesses 
•  Why creativity, communication, and human connection are becoming competitive advantages 
•  What hiring managers are seeing as AI becomes mainstream 
•  Helping teams embrace AI without creating fear 
•  Practical advice for early-career Marketing Ops professionals 
•  Why stepping away from technology can make you a better leader 

Whether you're leading a team, building your career, or simply trying to use AI more intentionally, this episode offers a practical perspective on staying human while embracing the future.

Be sure to subscribe, rate, and review Ops Cast, and join the conversation at MarketingOps.com.

Episode Brought to You By MO Pros 
The #1 Community for Marketing Operations Professionals

Streamline your webinar programs and tap into more data, more content, and far less manual work. Save time, simplify your workflow, and integrate Goldcast.io with your stack.

Support the show

Text us your thoughts on the episode or the show!

AI is changing Marketing Ops. But the biggest change may have nothing to do with technology.

In this episode of Ops Cast, Michael Hartmann is joined by Abby Koble, Vice President of Global Marketing Operations at Cornerstone OnDemand, and Ashley Langford, VP of Marketing Operations & AI Technology at Ashley Langford Marketing, for a timely discussion about how AI is transforming careers, hiring, leadership, and professional development.

What began as a LinkedIn connection between Abby and Ashley evolved into a broader conversation about the realities of today's Marketing Ops job market. Ashley shares her data-driven approach to documenting her leadership job search, while Abby offers the perspective of a hiring executive navigating hundreds of applicants and an increasingly AI-influenced recruiting process.

Together, they explore where AI helps, where it hurts, and why human skills may become the biggest differentiator for the next generation of Marketing Ops leaders.

Topics covered include:
• What today's Marketing Ops leadership job market really looks like
• Why candidate ghosting happens and where the hiring process breaks down
• How AI is changing recruiting, career growth, and professional development
• The difference between using AI as a force multiplier versus a crutch
• Why foundational experience still matters in an AI-assisted world
• The growing importance of communication, confidence, and leadership skills
• Whether hybrid and in-person work still play a role in developing future leaders

Whether you're hiring, actively searching for your next opportunity, or thinking about how AI will shape the future of Marketing Ops, this episode offers perspectives from both sides of the table.

Be sure to subscribe, rate, and review Ops Cast, and join the conversation at MarketingOps.com.

Episode Brought to You By MO Pros 
The #1 Community for Marketing Operations Professionals

Streamline your webinar programs and tap into more data, more content, and far less manual work. Save time, simplify your workflow, and integrate Goldcast.io with your stack.

Support the show

Text us your thoughts on the episode or the show!

Your GTM tech stack is probably costing you more than you think.

Not because of software licenses alone, but because of underused tools, overlapping platforms, broken processes, and hidden revenue leakage that quietly compounds over time.

In this episode of Ops Cast, Michael Hartmann sits down with Gaurav Palande, founder of Prune and a marketing and sales operations leader with more than 15 years of experience, to explore a different way of evaluating technology investments.

The conversation explores how organizations can measure the business value of their GTM technology, identify hidden inefficiencies, uncover revenue leakage, and make smarter decisions about AI investments before difficulty spirals out of control.

Topics covered include:
 • Why tech stack value matters more than tech stack cost
 • A practical framework for evaluating GTM technology investments
 • Common sources of waste, duplicate spend, and underutilized platforms
 • How neglected systems and broken processes contribute to revenue leakage
 • Where AI creates genuine value and where it simply adds complexity
 • How to approach the growing "buy vs. build" decision in the age of AI

Whether you're managing a handful of platforms or an enterprise-scale ecosystem, this episode offers practical guidance for turning your tech stack from a cost center into a measurable business asset.

Be sure to subscribe, rate, and review Ops Cast, and join the conversation at MarketingOps.com.

Episode Brought to You By MO Pros 
The #1 Community for Marketing Operations Professionals

Streamline your webinar programs and tap into more data, more content, and far less manual work. Save time, simplify your workflow, and integrate Goldcast.io with your stack.

Support the show

Text us your thoughts on the episode or the show!

What does mid-2026 actually feel like for the people running marketing and revenue ops? And has AI made the work better, or just harder in new ways?

Michael Hartmann is back with co-hosts Naomi Liu and Mike Rizzo for one of their rare three-amigos episodes, a wide-open conversation recorded at the halfway point of 2026. No guest, no agenda, just three ops practitioners talking honestly about what's happening in the field, what they're seeing in the community, and where things feel like they're heading.

The conversation moves from the present state of AI in marketing ops to the bigger, harder questions underneath it. These questions are about the gap between AI hype and actual operationalisation, what it means to lead teams through expectations that keep changing, and what none of them know how to tell their kids about the world those kids are going to inherit.

Topics covered in this episode:

• Whether AI has made marketing ops and revenue ops easier or harder, and why "harder" might be the more honest answer
• The gap between how educated people are on what technology can do and how difficult it still is to actually operationalise
• Findings (early) from the MO Pros AI assessment benchmark study, including how bots contaminated the data and what human intuition caught that the AI missed
• Jensen Huang's pushback on CEOs blaming AI for layoffs, and what the ops community thinks about that framing
• How the current AI moment is different from previous technology waves: it is changing who does things, not just how they get done
• The post-scarcity economy concept and what it might mean for the future of labour and value

Episode Brought to You By MO Pros 
The #1 Community for Marketing Operations Professionals

Streamline your webinar programs and tap into more data, more content, and far less manual work. Save time, simplify your workflow, and integrate Goldcast.io with your stack.

Support the show

Text us your thoughts on the episode or the show!

Despite massive investment in AI, many organizations are struggling to generate meaningful business impact. Why? According to Paul Shirer, most companies are treating AI as a tooling problem when it's really a workflow and adoption problem.

In this episode, hosts Michael Hartmann sit down with Paul, Founder & CEO of Infinite Ideas AI and Director of AI & GTM Technology at Bridge Partners. Together, they discussed where AI adoption goes wrong, how leaders should think about workflow design and decision-making, and what it actually takes to move beyond experimentation toward measurable value.

In this episode:

• Why AI is a workflow and adoption problem, not a tooling problem
• What's really causing the high failure rate of AI initiatives
• How to tell useful AI adoption apart from "agent sprawl"
• Why Paul moved away from end-to-end automated workflows, and what changed his mind
• What a connected workspace looks like in practice
• Balancing flexibility and governance when every team wants a custom solution
• Why the data layer matters even more in an AI-driven environment

Whether you're being asked to justify AI investments or trying to turn experimentation into real results, this is a practical conversation for operators closing the gap between AI hype and AI impact.

Learn more about MarketingOps and The MO Pros community at MarketingOps.com.

If you enjoyed this episode, do subscribe, leave a review, and share it with someone in the ops community who would find it valuable.

Episode Brought to You By MO Pros 
The #1 Community for Marketing Operations Professionals

Streamline your webinar programs and tap into more data, more content, and far less manual work. Save time, simplify your workflow, and integrate Goldcast.io with your stack.

Support the show

Text us your thoughts on the episode or the show!

What if the biggest marketing problem in your organization isn't the marketing team at all?

In this episode, Michael Hartmann sits down with Charral Izhiman, Head of Marketing at Bayobab and author of The Marketing Movement, for a conversation about why so many organizations still misunderstand what marketing is supposed to do, and what it takes to fix that from both sides.

Charral's perspective is refreshingly different. Her book isn't written to teach marketers how to market. It's written to help non-marketing leaders understand how to actually work with marketing. 

That framing opens up a rich discussion about the gap between strategy and execution, and why Ops professionals may be the best-positioned people in the business to close it. In this conversation, they discuss:

• The outdated assumptions organizations still hold about marketing, and how marketers unintentionally reinforce them
• Why Ops teams sitting at the intersection of marketing, sales, finance, and leadership are uniquely positioned as translators across the business
• The SHAPE framework, and why "Activation" is the overlooked layer between planning and results
• Why organizations romanticize strategy and celebrate execution but skip operational readiness in the middle
• The Formula 1 metaphor for marketing leadership: everything that has to come together before you can even compete

Whether you're in Marketing Ops, RevOps, or marketing leadership, this episode is full of ideas for anyone trying to bridge the gap between strategy, operations, and the rest of the business.

 The conversation doesn't end here. Explore the full SHAPE framework and more in Charral's book, The Marketing Movement: https://themarketing-movement.com/

Episode Brought to You By MO Pros 
The #1 Community for Marketing Operations Professionals

Streamline your webinar programs and tap into more data, more content, and far less manual work. Save time, simplify your workflow, and integrate Goldcast.io with your stack.

Support the show

Text us your thoughts on the episode or the show!

For years, the hard part of ops work was building the technology. Now the tech is getting easier while the people and process side is getting harder. So why are so many organizations still stuck debating AI instead of activating it?

In this episode, host Michael Hartmann sits down with Andrea Tarrell, President of the Tech Services line at Trilliad and CEO of Sercante. Together, they discussed the human side of change in the AI world with speed, trust, risk tolerance, and the trade-offs GTM teams are making right now.

In this episode:

• Why the technology got easier,
•  but the people and process side got harder
• How much of AI adoption is really a trust and change management problem, not a tech one
• Fear of job replacement vs. plain organizational inertia
• AI may not replace your job, but someone using it well may outperform someone who refuses to adapt
• Solving the tension between "move faster with AI" and "watch out for the risks."
• What companies get wrong about risk management and tolerance for risk in the AI world
• Why old governance frameworks may not fit a world of fast experimentation
• And a lot more...

Whether you lead an ops team or sit inside one, this is a timely conversation about innovation, speed, governance, and practical business reality.

If you enjoyed this episode, subscribe, leave a review, and share it with someone in the ops community who would find it valuable.

Episode Brought to You By MO Pros 
The #1 Community for Marketing Operations Professionals

Streamline your webinar programs and tap into more data, more content, and far less manual work. Save time, simplify your workflow, and integrate Goldcast.io with your stack.

Support the show

Text us your thoughts on the episode or the show!

Today, most teams aren't just struggling to build their AI strategies. The real struggle begins when they try to execute their strategies. In this episode of Ops Cast, host Michael Hartmann sits down with David York, Chief AI and Innovation Officer at Helix CXM, to get practical answers about what it really takes for GTM organizations to move from talking about AI to operationalizing it.

David has spent years working at the intersection of marketing operations, RevOps, automation, and AI transformation. Together, he and Michael discovered an uncomfortable truth about how most teams are already overwhelmed by manual work, fragmented processes, shadow systems, and operational debt. 

Piling "figure out AI" on top of all that creates more chaos. In this conversation, you'll hear:

• Why the gap between AI strategy and implementation is so hard to close
• What operational excellence actually looks like in practice, and why it has to come first
• Why mapping how work gets done today is the critical first step before introducing AI
• The real difference between automation and "automation plus intelligence"
• How to identify low-risk, high-value AI use cases (like partially manual lead routing) versus harder ones
• The hidden costs teams underestimate: tooling, LLM costs, maintenance, and human monitoring
• Where human judgment is still absolutely required
• Practical advice on where to start if you're feeling overwhelmed by AI pressure right now

Whether you lead a scrappy SMB or a specialized team inside a large enterprise, this is a grounded discussion about the reality of AI in modern GTM, beyond the hype and the LinkedIn hot takes.

David also published a new book this week, AI-Powered Growth: A 7-Step Adoption and Transformation Framework, which goes deeper into how Marketing Ops leaders can systematically prioritize and operationalize AI initiatives. Grab a copy here: https://www.amazon.com/AI-Powered-Growth-7-Step-Adoption-Transformation/dp/B0H2QCZG5M/

Enjoy the episode!

Episode Brought to You By MO Pros 
The #1 Community for Marketing Operations Professionals

Streamline your webinar programs and tap into more data, more content, and far less manual work. Save time, simplify your workflow, and integrate Goldcast.io with your stack.

Support the show