Ariana (00:00:07) - Welcome to Secret Ops, the podcast uncovering the world of business operations. One episode at a time. I'm your host, Ariana Cofone. And today's guest is Joanna Lin, a B2B marketing consultant, specializing in developing marketing functions within businesses. Joanna, welcome to Secret Ops. I am beyond thrilled to have you as a guest today.

Joanna (00:00:29) - I am super excited to be here because I love hanging out with you.

Ariana (00:00:33) - Same. Also, we talked about this before hopping on this episode. I am really excited to learn from you because I know very little about marketing, especially all of the operations that goes into it. So I can't wait to just pick your brain and get a peek into what your day is about. It's gonna be great.

Joanna (00:00:52) - I mean, I'll tell you a little secret as well. Most marketers know very little about marketing cuz there's a lot to cover. So I will do my best to cover as much as I can.

Ariana (00:01:02) - All right. You're making me feel a little bit better, but I'm sure the level of expertise is vast. So I wanna start out with your journey into marketing, especially because your degree is in very different topics, but I believe that they probably influence what you do today. So can you talk about where you started from an educational standpoint and how your career developed into doing marketing consulting?

Joanna (00:01:28) - Yeah, so I didn't really go into school knowing what I want, like most people. And at some point I decided, oh, I wanna become a business person. Not knowing what a business person means. I was just happy to do it. And I went to the University of Michigan and at the time to apply to business school, you apply after two years of school, so you apply after your sophomore year to get into your–

Ariana (00:01:55) - Oh Interesting.

Joanna (00:01:56) - Junior year and senior year. So it's like mid undergrad. And I thought, okay, I'm gonna do that. Of course I didn't make it, but at the time I was really enjoying all of the other things I was studying. So I was an anthropology and Japanese studies major do not ask me to speak Japanese. I honestly don't remember any of it cuz when you don't use it, you lose it.

Ariana (00:02:18) - I promise I won't. Don't ask me to try and speak my Spanish after like 10 years of trying to speak it. It's horrible.

Joanna (00:02:25) - This is what happens. You study language and yeah, you just don't keep it unless maybe you study abroad. But I didn't end up doing it.

Joanna (00:02:33) - Regardless. I studied these two things, but I still had it in the back of my mind that I wanted to do something in the business realm. I didn't really know what that meant and it blossomed out to doing internships. So I think it was my junior year, maybe it was my sophomore year, I did an internship, abroad. Actually this is my junior year abroad in Taiwan, where my family's from and I worked at the National Palace Museum and there they didn't really have an idea as to what, what working there meant. They kind of just wanted to educate us. So I created my own program because they were talking about opening a new exhibit and I was like, oh, I can help you like figure out how to drive like traffic there and blah blah.

Joanna (00:03:18) - And it kind of turned into like, oh actually I'm really interested in marketing. And so I did that for a summer, came back, took a marketing class out of the business school that was for non-business school students. Really enjoyed it. Did an internship that was a marketing internship in product marketing, at this company called Valassis. They used to do, they probably do a lot of different things now, but they were like the coupon people that they put coupons in like newspapers and magazines. They did like the poly wraps around newspapers. You know the ones that get thrown on your lawn? Yeah. And they had all these ads on it. That's what it was.

Ariana (00:03:52) - We were big coupon people in my household.

Joanna (00:03:54) - So you probably remember.

Ariana (00:03:56) - Yes. Yep, yep.

Joanna (00:03:57) - So I worked with them and you know, I just really enjoyed it and I knew like after school that's what I wanted to do and I applied to, gosh, over a hundred jobs and you know, I'm from the Midwest. I like, thought I was gonna move to Chicago. So I applied to probably 99 jobs in Chicago and I applied to like one job in New York and I got an offer to work at Time Inc. In New York, in their consumer marketing group. So I worked for Fortune and Money Magazine, at the time. And my job was to do retention for them on their subscriber base. So a lot of data modeling, a lot of just like AB testing, a lot of just figuring out how do you keep subscribers, how do you increase, how much you're charging them, how do you get them to renew earlier, all of those.

Ariana (00:05:19) - Were you also doing digital subscriptions as well as physical subscriptions? Because at the time that was when there was a big transition happening, right?

Joanna (00:05:28) - Yes. I remember because we started launching the digital properties at that time. This is how old I am. This shows your age. We had started launching digital properties at that time and there was no digital audience group until I joined. So we were doing everything via direct mail and we didn't even have email. We didn’t do email subscriptions at the time it was all direct mail. I remember because part of my job also was sorting through all the mail pieces I sent out, which was hundreds. Cuz I manage like so many different segments, like 50 segments per title. And each segment had anywhere from eight pieces of mail that you would get to maybe like, I don't know, 25. And I would manage all of the mail and check them. So I would get boxes of direct mail pieces and go through them to make sure that they were correct and that the offers were good. I would keep samples of the ones that we needed so that when a test went well, we had that example on file.

Ariana (00:06:23) - Recycling must been an absolute nightmare.

Joanna (00:06:25) - A nightmare, yeah! Cause it was a company that made magazines. We got every single edition of the magazines. So I had–

Ariana (00:06:32) - Wow.

Joanna (00:06:33) - tons of magazines!

Ariana (00:06:36) - Oh my goodness. I know that also is kinda my dream to get stacks of magazines. That is like my little kid dream as well.

Joanna (00:06:44) - Well it was amazing to work there because it's a time in life building and on top of that it’s where Mad Men also like films. So you kind of felt like you were like in it, you know, you were in this place, they had a lot of history. It was like really cool. And because we had Time Magazine and People Magazine, and all these big titles, a lot of famous people would come to our building. So like, it was like amazing to be a young 20-something at this job, despite the fact that I spent a lot of time in the mail room and in Excel. Sure. Just like living the dream, I didn't know what I got myself into.

Ariana (00:07:21) - Were there any famous people that you saw that you, that just sort of like blew your brain a little bit when you were like, oh my God, I can't believe I just saw them.

Joanna (00:07:31) - It was so funny. So Ariana Huffington was like in there and I met her and they also did sessions for the employees. So I got to meet her. That was super cool. I met Malcolm Gladwell, that was super cool. I met Tony Shea who founded Zappos. Who else is there? I saw the cast of Gossip Girl, the original cast.

Ariana (00:07:55) - So you see Blake Lively and all that?

Joanna (00:07:57) - Yeah, they were walking through, but they're a lot shorter than you think. TV makes them even look taller, even though I don't think that's true. But, they were a lot smaller but they were going up to the People offices.

Ariana (00:08:13) - Woah, yeah. Kind of Cool. That is exciting. I'm nerding out and geeking out over here. That, that sounds like a thrill.

Ariana (00:08:20) - So how long were you there and where did you transition to next after that? Yeah,

Joanna (00:08:25) - So I was there for three years and I went through the 2008 recession. So a lot of layoffs, I survived them, but the structure in which I worked wasn't like really healthy because what they did was they downsized, but it is the same amount of work. So they cut their workforce. It's really not great as a young person who kind of got thrown into it…I didn't do well in that structure. I had actually moved up my career really fast. I got there, I went from being like the lowest level to manager within a year and I had people working for me. So I'm like 23, 24 years old managing people. That's kind of crazy. And I didn't really have training so I also didn't know what I was doing.

Joanna (00:09:12) - I was kind of good at doing my job and I didn't have the maturity to do any of this well. And then you lose people so then you kind of lose that foundation. So essentially I decided to leave kind of cold turkey. Honestly, I didn't have a job laid out for me cuz I was like, I need a break. I would give the advice, don't do that when you're that young cuz it can be really scary. And it was scary. But I started applying for different jobs and I didn't know anything about B2B. I didn't know anything about tech space, pure play tech. And I got this job at this company called InterClick, I was at Time Inc. I had the six months off, quote-unquote. It was really me like scrambling to find a job as a young person. I landed a job in an advertising technology company ad tech called InterClick. This is weird to think about how long ago this was, even though it wasn't that long ago. This was emerging tech at the time, advertising online was like new.

Ariana (00:12:24) - I just remember that being a huge shift in ordering. I mean I think until my mid twenties I was more magazine based paper, newspaper based and then all of a sudden everything just went digital overnight. It felt like. Obviously it didn't. Right. Because being behind the scenes, I'm sure it took a lot of effort to get there, but it felt like all of a sudden everything went digital.

Joanna (00:12:44) - Right. And it's funny to think also like at that time pop-up ads were bad and so this was actually a shift from pop-up ads are bad into like, okay, how can we do better? Display video wasn't even really a thing at the time. So video advertising, like YouTube was in its early days. We were still trying to figure out how to do audience targeting. So how do you have these segments of audiences and there are a lot of privacy concerns. So this is really, I mean this is 2011. So really early days internet, advertising internet that I had joined.

Ariana (00:13:24) - You were in like the wild, wild west of–

Joanna (00:13:27) - That's exactly what we called it. The wild wild west. Really?

Ariana (00:13:30) - Really?

Joanna (00:13:34) - I was in that space for 10 years, as I said at various companies. I went from there to…oh yeah that company got acquired by Yahoo. So I was at Yahoo which doesn't even exist anymore. Which is also crazy that Yahoo went from like heyday to where it is so I was there and then I was in the video space a couple times. I was actually in kind of a SAS business, for agencies and then the last company I was in ad tech was like a verification company doing like brand safety. I'm sure you're hearing a lot about brand safety because of Twitter and the brand safety space. And then there's like fraud, which you hear a lot about with bots also Twitter. And then I also did viewability.

Ariana (00:14:44) - Are those spaces currently developing the, the fraud space because of more data privacy things that have come up? What's causing that space to be created?

Joanna (00:14:55) - I mean the space was created originally just because of bots. Like bots and scams and so on. Privacy of course is a concern, but advertisers just don't wanna pay for bot traffic obviously. So that's why they would use the verification service to make sure those impressions like aren't bots.

Ariana (00:15:15) - Wow. Scammers making, the whole industry turn. That's interesting.

Joanna (00:15:20) - Yeah. I learned a lot about bots during that time. I mean, the information's probably quite dated cuz that was like four years ago. Cuz like that technology only gets better and better cuz scammers get much more sophisticated over time. Which is funny. I think I'm a pretty smart person. I almost got scammed the other day with the phone call and they're just–

Ariana (00:15:42) - Really?

Joanna (00:15:43) - they’re literally getting better. And I couldn't discern whether or not it was a legitimate phone call or not because they were so good about it. They're so scripted, really elegant, really well done. Shocking. So you

Ariana (00:15:55) - Have to be on your guard constantly, right? Constantly. Cause once you know what the method is, then they'll change the method. You know that’s just how it goes.

Joanna (00:16:05) - Well the insanity of that was like, they called me from a number that was a legitimate number. They had spoofed like a very real number. And that's what scared me the most.

Ariana (00:16:15) - It seems like the ways that we would get scammed even 10 years ago are like quaint and kind of cute compared to today.

Joanna (00:16:23) - Like I'm a Nigerian prince. Oh, that's sweet.

Ariana (00:16:26) - Yeah so you have had an experience not just in so many different parts of marketing, but also you've seen the industry shift from more traditional sort of print into the digital realm going into video and all of these different aspects. So to bring it into operations, cuz you know, that's my happy place and, and the secret ops happy place. I feel like a lot of us see the outside of marketing and we hear about sort of the end result of marketing, but we really don't know what goes on behind the scenes to make all of that possible. And that's really what your specialization is at and where I get really excited to talk to you because there's so many gears that are churning behind the scenes to make it happen. So when we say the words operations within a marketing function, what are you doing within businesses to develop that?

Joanna (00:17:17) - So I think there's a couple ways to look at it. I think most people probably think of the most traditional sense that it's about creating efficiencies. I think that's probably like the most normal typical definition you'll probably get. But I've kinda come around to it being less about efficiency, but more about what's effective. Like what can you do in your program? Because the thing with marketing is that there's so many different things that you can do to market that you can get easily overwhelmed. And marketing is generally under-resourced. And because they're a big cost center, people freak out about how much marketing is spending, especially in B2B. I will say in B2C it's probably a bit different. But in B2B, it's expensive to do marketing. You're spending money on sponsorships, you're doing events. It costs money to print things. It costs money to buy swag to give out. I used to manage budgets for these organizations. It's a lot. I know when budgets get cut because they're like, what are you spending it on? How do you prove roi? Marketers all know that in general it's very difficult to track unless you have a very good way of tracking and the business is aligned around it.

Joanna (00:18:37) - When I think of doing marketing well, especially from the operations perspective, I definitely think about effectiveness more because I can be as efficient as possible, but if I'm not making the right impact on the bottom line, it doesn't matter at the end of the day. And I focus a lot on efficiency in the past, creating process stock after process stock, which is great because it's repeatable and so on. But then at the same time, if no one's following it, then what does it matter? And I think it's interesting because you know, you and I were chatting earlier about what operations includes and operations includes people. It includes, what you say people, processes, tech.

Ariana (00:19:17) - Technology and data, little side of data.

Joanna (00:19:21) - And I think the thing is, you can control processes, you can control technology, but what you can't control is people, and everyone operates using that word differently. So for me it's like, okay, I can't take a process and create one company and apply it to the next. It's just not gonna work. You have to understand what the goals are, what people's motivations are, how they work together. And then you have to determine from there, how are you gonna make the most impact on the bottom line. And that might not be the most efficient way to do it. So when it comes to me being…I didn't really get to this, but like at my last job at Natech, I was, I owned marketing operations and demand-gen for this business. For me it was figuring out all of those things and making it work smoothly, even if it wasn't efficient.

Joanna (00:20:12) - But maybe it is efficiency when you're making it work smoothly. But like making it all work together so that we all were able to get the things that we needed to get done in the right way. That’s anything from campaign creation or deciding how much money to spend? Or how do we run an event and then how do we make sure we can track how do we make sure we're talking to the other teams so that everyone is bought in? That was all marketing operations for me.

Ariana (00:20:39) - I was just gonna say, I'm really digging the nuance between being effective versus being efficient. So a lot of the times when, when you hear operations efficiency is key, automation streamlining, right? And that's part of it. But you can't always go that route if you actually want it to be effective. And there's a difference there. When it comes to being effective, how much of determining that is in the first step of working with your clients? Meaning setting goals, setting metrics, setting key performance indicators that are showing that this is effective. How much of it is just literally figuring out what that means versus enacting it?

Joanna (00:21:27) - Yeah, so I also didn't say…so now I'm a marketing consultant. I do this with a whole bunch of different companies from seed stage all the way to large companies. And my first step is always kind of the same. I talk to 'em about what's the outcome that you want? Envision what you would like and let's talk about how we get there and how we get there may not be a straight line from A to B, it might be a meandering path a bit because it depends again, on people, on resources, on time. So it might be a little sloppy and a little bit messy, but we still could get the most wonderful outcome that you want. So that's, to me what operations is. It’s getting results and like getting there in a way that makes sense for that business. If I focus too much on creating that straight line, then I might not even make it to where they want me to be.

Ariana (00:22:20) - Totally. Operation is more of a tangle. It's like a knot of necklaces and you're trying to untangle all these little pieces together to get everything in a place that makes sense. Actually, I had another guest, Marc Janssen who said the same thing. And he's a data scientist, which is operations only make sense when it's effective and there's outcomes and there's actions. It's not just create structure to create structure, it's actually meant to impact people.

Joanna (00:23:26) - So part of my job also as a consultant and also historically as marketing ops, is to educate the organization about how marketing is actually a really good partner in growing the business. And you can't think of marketing as making things pretty or the things that marketing traditionally are positioned as. So I spend a lot of time talking about how can we help your business outcomes? How can I thread the line between what I do all the way up to what, our investors are thinking about or what the board is thinking about how the CEO is thinking about the business, how do I make sure that they understand that what I'm doing is part of the bottom line so that I can take myself out of problems and move into making things increasingly better and growing the business.

Joanna (00:25:31) - So I don't know. It's hard because I haven't really been in too many organizations where it's like, yeah, let's figure out that piece.

Ariana (00:25:39) - It's interesting the educational piece.

Joanna (00:25:42) - Yes, the educational piece, but B2C gets very lucky because generally when you're in a B2C org, marketing is incredibly important. And so you get the resources to build and optimize and so on. And there's such a great growth mindset there. And B2B just often plays a lot of catch up.

Ariana (00:25:59) - Yeah, I've seen both. And I would agree. The strategies are so different, right? And the focuses, and where you need to put your budget can be, can look very different based on whether it's a B2B or a B2B. So this gets, I think going back to the trifecta of people processes, technologies, again, operations for me, that's the essence there when I think of marketing, because that is not my strength. I always think of the technology piece because I don't know, I'm a millennial and that's kind of the piece that I think of. And I always see marketing in relation to technology solutions. So I guess when it comes to marketing and choosing technology, what considerations go hand in hand there?

Joanna (00:26:47) - I think…I hate to say it, the first thing that always happens is cost. So let's just take cost out of there. The second thing is generally, what's the ven diagram between how easy it is to use and how you can train a team where you don't need specialization with crossover with how many things can it get done for you? So when I'm sending out an RFP or I'm viewing demos and so on, I'm really questioning…okay how easy is this gonna be for my team to adopt? Yeah. Because I've adopted technology that's amazing, like outstanding technology, but when there's too much of a learning curve, it doesn't get used. And I've had to drop that technology.

Ariana (00:27:32) - Yeah. I've learned those difficult lessons. And for technology to appeal to a broader audience, right? Your technology that's being created is not just for technologists or developers or data scientists, but they're for broader audiences. They're for people who have all the marketing strategy knowledge, but maybe don't have those technical skill sets. You have to be able to bridge the gap between both of those. Do you have any favorite tools that you'd recommend?

Joanna (00:28:00) - I think it depends on, on what we're talking about, right? I think if you're talking about data management and so on, I think using a tool like Segment in combination with your CRM is great. Just because you can map all your data back and forth, you can see what's going on. Segments in this category are called customer data platforms. I actually worked in the customer data platform for a non-segment for another business that was in the space. It's just a fascinating space to see how much data is being collected, where it goes, and how much is actually lost and not analyzed and nothing's done with it. So I think it's really important for marketers to think about that. From like a marketing automation platform standpoint, there's really only a couple players. I used to be a Marketo person, which is a big name, they're owned by Adobe.

Joanna (00:28:52) - But these days I think HubSpot, even though there are some things about HubSpot that aren't as robust, or easy to use, and I think that's the key, right? You can get your most junior person who knows nothing about marketing automation to easily understand it. Versus Marketo, which is much harder to on ramp onto. And even me who I've been using marketing automation platforms for like eight years, I get into Marketo and I get confused, but HubSpot you can figure out, which is nice. Other tools, I mean, there's so many. I love Miro. I love Notion. I love Slack. Communication is key. Marketers love diagramming. Give us a whiteboard.

Joanna (00:29:37) - Give us a whiteboard and a marker. We'll diagram things out. You know, I love that.

Ariana (00:29:41) - I know what to get you for your birthday. Just like a really pretty whiteboard .

Joanna (00:29:46) - But I will say honestly, I love Miro. Figma is great too. Like lots of cool stuff out there, and I'm sure there's a lot of new cool stuff out there that I haven't even touched on.

Ariana (00:29:58) - Yeah, I could honestly spend two hours just talking about tools, but I will check out Segment. I have not looked at Segment itself, so I'm gonna dive into that. So technology, I get the piece now. People, we talked about people being the hardest part to wrangle because you can't control humans, right? So what are your considerations within marketing operations and the people component?

Joanna (00:30:28) - I think number one is getting to know everyone that you work with is so critical because you spend so much time with them and everyone has their nuances and different ways of working. So when I build out a team or I start in a new team, or I'm even part of a bigger team, whatever it is, my number one recommendation is like, just spend time with people and understanding who they are, how they work, what they like to do, what their motivations are, that kind of thing. Obviously it's not an interview, you're not interviewing them, but you'll find those things out over time. With my teams, I've historically done…everyone has to write a little intro to themselves and answer how I like to work. Am I someone who, you ask me a question and I'll respond, you know, I can respond on the fly or you need, I need a little time.

Joanna (00:31:16) - Like that kind of thing. How do you best schedule meetings with me to get things done, whatever. I think that's important to know. But you know, I think people, to me the most important thing is that they're curious and interested in what they do. And those are always been, those have always been my best hires. They're just like to ask lots of questions and wonder about why things are the way they are. I think for me, you can get like a really, really good marketer who knows how to do X, Y, Z in a specific way, but that specific way might not work everywhere else. So I like people who definitely question even their own, you know, constructs at work.

Ariana (00:32:01) - Curiosity is infectious. And we talked about just in the last, like since 2011, how much has changed within this space? I think that is why curiosity is so important. Cause within one year, the entire space that you're working in can change. So what you knew as a truth all of a sudden has just shifted under your feet. And if you don't have that level of curiosity, your knowledge becomes stagnant. It becomes old. And it's a hard truth cuz I've had to train people who worked in their particular industry for 10, 20 years and I'm like, everything that you know, is changing and you have to keep up. And it's hard. I mean, I don't know about you, but some days that's the most exhausting part is learning, constantly learning about new things, new tools, new ways of looking at things. It's also the best part of it too.

Joanna (00:32:51) - I'll tell you the way that I do marketing today, I learned in the last three years, so like, I've been working for 15 plus years and it's not that the foundations I have don't work. It's that the new technology and the new ways of operating, the new ways of measuring, you really have to think about it and grow with it. And so what I do today…I couldn't imagine, 15 years ago.

Ariana (00:33:20) - In my first main operations role, I was using fax to get orders, like a fax number to get orders. So to go from fax numbers into what is happening now. I mean, and that's less than, that's maybe eight years. Like, that's even shorter, right? So much is changing so quickly. But man, I'm just grateful we don't have to use fax anymore. I'm happy to not have to use that. I mean–

Joanna (00:33:48) - I had an old clunker of a computer that like could barely process Excel and I remember every time I hit save, just to save the file, the fan would start blowing and it would blow all the paper from the cubicle.

Ariana (00:34:11) - Oh my God.

Joanna (00:34:12) - I used to print out data models and like highlight on them.

Ariana (00:34:16) - Yep.

Joanna (00:34:17) - It was a weird time.

Ariana (00:34:19) - It was a different time. It was a different time. Hopefully we're saving some trees along with all the digital stuff. But, last piece for the trifecta…process, I think process is maybe one of the scariest of the pieces for people. I think some people when they hear process, they nerd out and they get excited. Other people completely shut down. So marketing processes, how do those two work together?

Joanna (00:34:43) - I love process. I know that not everyone can follow them. So it hurts me sometimes when I build these beautiful diagrams that have every single step mapped out. And I know someone has barely gone through, they've gotten to like step two and I've lost them. So it's love hate because marketing, you get tons of different personalities. You get a lot of creatives and a lot of dreamers who cannot follow process at all. So when I think about running an efficient marketing team, you almost need a producer on each team that can, manage the people who aren't going to fall into process. Who can chase and remind and so on. And I think that happens in every org of the business, but I just find that a lot of creatives end up in marketing and it's just always gonna happen. So you can't get upset about it because they have their job and they're excellent at it and people who are much more process oriented, have their job and they can be good at shine there too.

Ariana (00:35:47) - Definitely. There is, there is that learning curve, at least for me too, where, you know, I'll make this kick ass process map and I'm nerding out about it, how awesome it's, and no one really understands it, right? If they're not that kind of brain, every once in a while you'll stumble upon somebody. I think you and I are in the same way where we nerd out and get super excited. But again, you can't always assume that that's gonna be the situation. And instilling that is key. I also love the, the pro tip of having a producer. I think it's the same with a project manager, a product manager, having somebody that is the glue between the actions and the process/documentation. You have to have somebody that can manage both of those together. And those are special people like producers and special people. Project managers are special people. They have to have a whole range of skills. Yes. And also be able to navigate every type of personality. Which is not an easy task.

Joanna (00:36:43) - It is a hundred percent not an easy task. And it's funny, I think in my career I've only found a handful of people who are very good at that. You are a lot of people in roles who are assigned that and you're like, okay, I can kind of see it working. But the people who are excellent, keep those, find those people and keep them.

Ariana (00:37:03) - It almost, it almost seems from the outside like that they're not doing anything because they make it look so easy. That's, you know, that's the level of acumen that they have for that role.

Joanna (00:37:12) - Right. The plate spinner, the cat herder, find those people.

Ariana (00:37:16) - They're wearing all those hats all the time. Yep.

Joanna (00:37:18) - Yep.

Ariana (00:37:19) - Now before we get into the last bit, I wanna just get some insight scoops. So this is where we like, are the cool aunts, and we talk about the things that nobody really wants to talk about. So the first thing is, what do you think people get wrong about operations, particularly within a marketing function? What is a piece of common knowledge that you would wanna debunk?

Joanna (00:37:41) - I think in, in the, in marketing…that it's boring. I think that marketing ops to me is actually super creative in the way that you're problem solving. And you can come up with different ideas and different ways of doing things. You may not be designing something, but you're designing something in the way of a process or how it works or how you can drive revenue for business. It's, kind of cool to see what the outcome could be and how that impacts the rest of your team. So I think that's definitely the big one.

Ariana (00:38:14) - Yeah, I think that's a big, that's a big point to highlight because operations is creative. Period. Because of all the different factors you have to deal with, you're most likely creating a solution that you've never fully created before in any sort of situation that you get into. Cause the problem is different and the needs are different you think outside the box.

Joanna (00:38:36) - And I was gonna say, if you wanna design something, just design a very colorful flow chart. There's your design.

Ariana (00:38:41) - Get all the colors I want all the highlighting colors, please. Let's rainbow coordinate that. Yes, yes. Now what do you think is the hardest piece of your day-to-day job? Like, what's the thing? Like obviously you dig what you do, what is that thing you're like, oh God, I gotta do that again.

Joanna (00:39:01) - It’s funny, I love and hate working with different people because they're the wild card. And I think when you're an operations person, you love control and you want to be in control and you cannot, like we have said, control people. So whenit's a good day and things are going smoothly, you're like, this is amazing. It's all like coming into like what I imagined. And when it's a bad day, you're like, oh my God, I'm gonna throw my laptop out of the window.

Ariana (00:39:35) - Yep.

Joanna (00:39:35) - Love hate, love hate

Ariana (00:39:37) - Love hate, love hate. Yep. I mean, I laugh because I feel all the things when you say that. There's days that you feel like you're flying, like you are invincible when everything comes into play and then there's some days where it's like, Rome has fallen, there's chaos, what is happening?

Joanna (00:39:54) - You're like, process, everything is working smoothly. And then you find one thing and you're like, oh no. And it feels like the whole world is crumbled .

Ariana (00:40:04) - Yeah. Because all of a sudden it's a rabbit hole that you didn't see initially. Now that you've gotta go down. Last piece of the inside scoop. For people who are listening to you and they wanna be like you, they wanna be Joanna, and be that marketing operations guru, what would you recommend? How, how should they transition into this? Where would you start if you were to begin from step one today?

Joanna (00:40:31) - I think the number one thing that has made me very good at operations is I ask a lot of people a lot of questions. Whether I work with them or I am talking to people I've just met or been introduced to, what's your job? Like, how do you, how do you do it? Blah, blah, blah. And then start trying to weave together how to make those things, work together. How to make them more like we were talking about effective and impactful and so on. And I think, what has made me really good in marketing, especially, I've done a lot of the roles in marketing. I did PR comms, I've done sales enablement, I've been a product marketer, I've done content marketing that's unusual for marketers. Most marketers kind of stick to one thing and that's their career. They might be a content marketer from their most junior role to their most senior role. But for me I was like, no, I wanna try this, I wanna try this. And I got lucky. I had a mentor that I worked for for 10 years at five different companies and she allowed me to do it. So I would say that's–

Ariana (00:41:32) - Incredible.

Joanna (00:41:32) - Right? And I'm very, very lucky to have her. She's actually one of my clients now, so, love it. I think, you know, I asked her a lot of questions and she let me do those things. So good mentor, asking a lot of questions, understanding how things work. And it's not just within marketing. I like to know how finance does their job. I like to know how, you know, the IT people do their jobs cuz how can marketing impact those groups? How does HR do their thing? I mean, just be cur– again, be curious and, and ask questions because then when you get into a role like operations, it's not the same at every company. So definitely–

Ariana (00:42:08) - You know,

Joanna (00:42:08) - When someone's asking you, oh, how would you do this? You could say some scripted answer, but it might not make sense if you don't ask questions about how things work. And then you're not trying to like, okay, maybe we do it this way or maybe we do it this way. You don't think about the alternatives or the options. So ask the questions, think about how you would solve it, and then that'll make you a better operation, marketing operations person in the long run.

Ariana (00:42:31) - Definitely. Because of things changing so quickly, that's also why you have to always ask questions. Because what was happening a month ago could even be different in a week or two weeks later. It's always about just asking those questions.

Ariana (00:42:50) - Alright, we're gonna wrap up with some rapid fire questions for you. Okay. This is one of my favorite parts cause I get learn a lot about Joanna as the human. Okay. So first one, you ready? Like, I feel like I need to do a drum roll or something. First question, what morning rituals do you start your day with every day?

Joanna (00:43:11) - I spend a lot of time petting my dog in the morning because I feel very bad that I'm in this office a lot on the phone, on calls, and I don't spend enough time with her. And she's not a cuddler, so she won't come into the office and come sit in my lap. I have to go get her. So I will go to her, of course she's a princess and like of course spend time with her. That's my biggest morning ritual.

Ariana (00:43:36) - Well, how do you wind down at the end of the day? What is, that's the next question. What is the thing that kind of gets you into dreamland?

Joanna (00:43:48) - You know what, it's terrible. Recently, I think I've been doom scrolling a little bit too much. And then even more recently, I end the night usually with the phone call to my boyfriend, which is nice. And then I just go sleep. Nothing, nothing crazy.

Ariana (00:44:05) - Love it. So start the day with the puppy you loves and the day with someone that puts you on a positive note. Just keep those good vibes around you all day, right?

Joanna (00:44:13) - Yes.

Ariana (00:44:14) - As far as reading, what book are you currently reading? What's, what are you sort of filling your reading time with?

Joanna (00:44:21) - Oh my gosh, this is embarrassing. I'm reading this book called Permission to Come Home is about Asian Americans and mental health. It's interesting because I feel like I'm a pretty mentally healthy person, but culturally there are a lot of nuances that I'm still trying to untangle about me and who I am and how my worldview is. And one of my best friends is also Asian American and we've talked about a lot and she's like, oh, I'm reading this book, you might benefit from it. And I'm reading it and it's like, oh my gosh, all of these things that I thought were true from when I was young, this is pointing them out. And II've definitely encountered a lot of these things through therapy, but I'm like, ah, it's in a book. I'm not so unique in my experiences, other people are having experiences because culturally, if you're like Asian American and you grew up, in, you know, Asian American household in America be pretty similar when they're bringing this culture over. So that is one book I'm reading no business books right now though, unfortunately..

Ariana (00:45:24) - Wow, that's, I mean, listen time and place, but that's absolutely wonderful. And after lots of therapy, I'm with you. The whole cultural component is a different can of worms to open up and take a peek at. I'm gonna take that. What is your favorite quote? Do you have one?

Joanna (00:45:43) - My favorite quote? It's not even like a quote, it's just, so I, again, I worked for the same woman for 10 years at multiple companies and she used to have these like things that she'd say a lot and they're probably from somewhere else. They're definitely from somewhere else. They're not unique to her, but like perfection is the enemy of good. Something that like is in my head a lot. Get shit done, which isn't even a quote is like something that is in my head a lot. Like little things like that like get repeated when I'm doing things, but not, I don't have a specific quote unfortunately. I'm not that…that person.

Ariana (00:46:21) - Well, they're more mantras. Right. You've gone more of the mantra route, which is like these sort of snappy things that kind of bring you into that present moment. In your life. What do you think is the most important lesson you've learned so far?

Joanna (00:46:36) - Oh my gosh. To be mentally present. I think because of the way that I am. I worry a lot and I, and I don't have a ton of anxiety, but I guess worrying is a form of anxiety. I worry a lot about the future, so I'm a planner and then sometimes when you're planning you are missing out on what's going on. So I think that's the number one thing. Take a minute, look around, you enjoy it even if it's really hard. So I'm trying to practice a lot more mindfulness, not my strength. Oh my gosh, it's so hard, but I realize I need to do a lot more of it cuz it's important to pay attention to what's going on around you.

Ariana (00:47:14) - Yeah, it's a, it's a beautiful thing and time just flies. I'm with you on that. What do you wanna be when you grow up?

Joanna (00:47:22) - Oh my gosh. I really would just like to…it’s funny. I always wanted to be in hospitality but not working at a hotel group or anything like that. I would love to run my own Airbnb type thing, type situation. I love to have a farm with nature where I could serve farm-to-table food, this whole like kind of like own my little hospitality, like an inn almost, but not quite an inn. That's what I would love to do eventually.

Ariana (00:47:56) - Listen, I would line up to be one of your first guests. So if that ever happens, you know who to put on your short list there.

Joanna (00:48:03) - Thank you.

Ariana (00:48:04) - This has been wonderful. Last question, which is, where can people find you? Where, where should we go see what you're up to?

Joanna (00:48:12) - So my consulting business is Primary Marketing Collective. You can find that at primarymc.com. You can email me@joannaprimarymc.com. That's probably the main place to find me. Or you know, you can also find me on Twitter as well. Joanna Le Lin is my Twitter handle.

Ariana (00:48:32) - Lovely. Yeah. Joanna, thank you so much for being so generous with your knowledge and giving us a peek into your world. I just appreciate it so much. To the audience who's listening, thank you so much for listening to Secret Ops. Please follow us wherever you find your podcast and check us out secret-ops.com. We'll see you next time.