In this episode of the Unsubscribed! Podcast, Knak number-cruncher Christopher Chan talks about his passion for hiking and rock climbing, and a recent expedition to Baffin Island. Before joining Knak as Controller in 2019, Chris looked after the company accounts at Ottawa-based accounting firm Logan Katz. With a Commerce Degree in Accounting from the University of Ottawa, and a Certified Public Accountant (CPA) licence, Chris quickly proved he had a head for numbers. He was instrumental in improving Knak’s financial maturity and central in efforts to secure Series A funding. Catch Chris in conversation with Pierce Ujjainwalla.

In this episode, you’ll learn:

1) About Chris’s passion for hiking and rock climbing.

2) How Chris spent 40 days in a frozen and remote part of Canada.

3) Why the Baffin Island trip came about and how Chris ended up there.

Highway Education is a public benefit corporation that offers aspiring digital marketers a faster and more affordable career pathway. Right now, there’s probably no one in the industry doing more to boost the marketing operations talent pool than Highway Education founder, serial Internet entrepreneur, and author of the State Of Marketing Operations 2022 – Toby Murdock. Whether you’re hiring or looking to get hired, listen to this edition of the Unsubscribed! Podcast, to hear Toby talking to Pierce Ujjainwalla about the current talent crisis, some of the challenges that lay ahead, and ideas for moving forward.

In this episode, you’ll learn:

1) About the current state of play in marketing operations.

2) Why the industry needs to build a job-ready talent pipeline.

3) How no-code martech like Knak can help bridge the skills gap.

In this episode of the Unsubscribed! Podcast, Pierce Ujjainwalla welcomes Randy Frisch,  Chief Evangelist of Content Experience, Co-founder and President at Uberflip — a martech company that’s a leader in content experiences. As well as being an entrepreneur, investor, and a best-selling author, Randy is also a fellow marketing podcaster with his show ‘The Marketer’s Journey’. With Uberflip recently passing the 10-year milestone, Randy reflects on how perceptions around content have changed and its increased importance at every step of the customer journey. He also shares his insights into how to make the most of your existing content, and how to create a more personalized customer experience at scale.

In this episode, you’ll learn:

1) About the key inflection points in the evolution of Uberflip.

2) How attitudes towards the role of content have changed.

3) What it takes to create a great personalized content experience.

If you’re in marketing ops, and you’re on LinkedIn, you’ve almost certainly heard of Chris Willis. His thought leadership pieces are fabled. Chris is a Marketo Champion and Senior Marketing Operations Manager at Trimble, a company that specializes in connecting data, people, and processes across a range of industries, from construction to agriculture. One of his goals is to help marketers leverage tools and processes that drive return on investment. In this episode of Unsubscribed! Podcast, Chris chats to Pierce about his experiences, experimentations, and how he makes the most of Marketo email using Knak.

In this episode, you’ll learn:

1) About the experiences and experimentation that have shaped Chris’s career so far.

2) How Chris uses Knak to exercise creative control and creative flexibility over email.

3) Why experimenting with different messaging, layouts, and graphics is so important.

Very few people can claim to have had the same impact on software — in this case, marketing automation platforms — as Jill Rowley. A social selling evangelist, Jill was one of the first hundred employees at Salesforce and then spent 10 years at Eloqua creating the marketing automation category. After short stints at both HubSpot and Oracle, Jill became Marketo’s Chief Growth Officer. Not just a part of marketing movements — like social selling — Jill is the movement. We’re thrilled to have her on this edition of the Unsubscribed! Podcast alongside Knak’s very own Pierce Ujjainwalla.

In this episode, you’ll learn:

In this episode of the Unsubscribed! Podcast, Pierce sits down with award-winning marketing operations leader, mom, coffee connoisseur and Olympic weightlifter, Kimi Corrigan. We’ll let you digest that for a second.

In her role as VP of Marketing Operations & Strategy at Expel, Kimi is pumped to be building her marketing dream team. Join Kimi as she shares her marketing ops journey and how she loves blending people, process, and technology to make magic happen.

In this episode, you’ll learn:

1) How Kimi’s career grew out of her passion for marketing automation.

2) About the challenges of building a successful marketing ops team.

3) Why ownership and integration are important for a MarTech software stack.

In the mid-nineties, Insight Partners had a hunch that software was going to be a game changer. And they were right. For 25 years, they’ve provided investment, guidance, and an expansive support network to software ScaleUps including Calm, Shopify, Trivago — and Knak. Philine Huizing has been with the company since 2016, first on their Insight Onsite consultancy team, and currently as Principal. In this edition of the Unsubscribed! Podcast, Philine sits down with Pierce to discuss her journey into venture capital, and her passion for growth-stage tech, sharing sage advice for both aspiring venture capitalists and founders of software ScaleUps.

In this episode, you’ll learn:

1) About Philine’s journey into venture capital for growth-stage software companies

2) How venture capitalists (VCs) evaluate the founder’s pitch

3) What makes an effective investor-founder relationship

People who do business in Ottawa know the Ottawa Business Journal (OBJ). With its insightful coverage and coveted awards, the OBJ covers everything from the latest happenings to the infamous 40 Under 40 list. President of Great River Media Inc., Michael Curran is a respected leader in print, digital, and events — and the person that’s been behind the OBJ for the last 23 years. In this episode of Unsubscribed! Podcast, Michael takes a look back at his career to date, exploring how creating and distributing business news has changed, and the value that local business brings to our communities.

In this episode, you’ll learn:

1) What content marketers and journalists have in common (quite a lot, as it turns out).

2) About the value of regular short form pieces alongside less frequent long form content.

3) How technology has impacted business news and reporting since the late nineties.

When it comes to Ottawa’s business community, Pascal St-Jean is practically a household name. As a serial entrepreneur — and a serial mentor — he’s been a key contributor to Canada’s business landscape, helping to bring new ideas to life and guiding other business owners to do the same. During this episode of the Unsubscribed! Podcast, Pascal joins Pierce to talk about his journey as an entrepreneur, the value of entrepreneurial mentorship, and how “tracking the numbers” has changed his life.

In this episode, you’ll learn:

For Robert Baldwin, VP of Business Development at Knaxis, the real driver behind sales is a passion for helping people. If your goal isn’t to help people solve their issues (ideally with the product you’re trying to sell), then you’re in it for the wrong reasons. The thing is, people can tell if you’re trying to just push a product on them so that you can cash out on the transaction. They can also tell if you’re clearly invested in enabling them to do what they already do, but better.

In this latest episode of the Unsubscribed! Podcast, Rob walks Pierce through what it means to run a leading business development team, how BD and marketing can work together and why it’s so important not to default to the obvious messaging. Check it out.

In this episode, you’ll learn:

1) What effective business development is

2) Why it’s so important to surprise your prospects with new information

3) What it looks like when business development reports into your CMO