From Moonlighting to MarTech Consulting with Alden Dale

Mike Rizzo (0:00)

Hi, I'm Michael Hartmann.

Naomi Liu (0:01)

I'm Naomi Liu.

Mike Rizzo (0:02)

And I'm Mike Rizzo. And this is Ops Cast.

Naomi Liu (0:06)

A podcast for Marketing Ops Pros.

Mike Rizzo (0:08)

And Rev Ops Pros. Created by the MoPros, the number one community for the marketing operations professionals.

Naomi Liu (0:15)

Tune in to each episode as we chat with real professionals to help elevate you in your marketing operations career.

Courtney Makara (0:23)

Hello, I'm Courtney Makara, and this is the Society of Marketing Technology Consulting Podcast. SMTC has joined forces with the marketingops.com community, but our mission is still the same, to educate and support anyone involved in the MarTech world as a consultant.

Mike Rizzo (0:39)

Hey, this is Mike from marketingops.com. If you're thinking about going into consulting or you're already a successful consultant, join us online by becoming a member. As a pro member, you can join the SMTC and other private networks at marketingops.com.

Courtney Makara (0:55)

In this podcast series, Grant Gregorian and I interviewed guests on their journeys as consultants. We discussed all that it means to be a great MarTech consultant from setting up their business or joining an agency and how to find new clients and keep their existing clients happy. I hope you enjoy the interview.

Today Grant and I are joined by Alden Dale, who is currently working at Inverta, which is based in Boise, Idaho. Thanks for joining us.

Alden Dale (1:22)

Great to be on board today, Courtney.

Courtney Makara (1:25)

Wonderful. So let's get a little background on your Mops world and experience. It was the first time you were introduced to marketing technology.

I'm assuming you were in an in-house role at the time and they were like, hey, here's this platform that you're responsible for. That seems to be how most people are introduced to it. Is that how it came into your world?

Alden Dale (1:47)

A little bit. I actually started in a sales and marketing role and was unhappy with the limited use of Salesforce I was given. I built out an automatic emailing tool and Visual Basic using Excel. I took one look at that and he said, you know, we've got something called Eloqua. That's awesome.

At that point, they realized that a little bit more of a passion for that and transitioned over to Eloqua. That was really where I kicked off in the marketing operations side of things.

Courtney Makara (2:21)

That's great. This podcast is obviously all about the life between a full-time employee versus an agency versus consulting and freelancing.

When we were talking to you before recording this, you mentioned you started kind of moonlighting, doing that like nights and weekends on the side consulting. Is that kind of how you dabbled into this world at first?

Alden Dale (2:43)

Yeah. I had a client-side position I was certainly happy with, but at the time, Marketo was really growing a lot. I had a decent amount of Marketo skills and in connections with a local users group and just through networking, I had met a number of people who needed help with Marketo from time to time. I actually approached my full-time boss and said, hey, can I pick this up here and there?

She gave me the blessing as long as I didn't work during company hours. She said she was fine with lunch breaks or evenings or that kind of thing. I started taking handful of jobs here and there to supplement the income and just kind of honestly, it was fun just expanding the network and getting a chance to see other marketing teams and systems and that kind of thing.

Grant Gregorian (3:31)

Totally.

Alden Dale (3:33)

Yeah.

Grant Gregorian (3:34)

That's actually kind of surprising.

Can you talk a little bit more about this idea of approaching your boss? Because I mean, I've heard it both ways. I've heard it both being blessed by, like did you feel the, okay, just tell me, did you approach, why did you tell your boss and what was the thinking behind there and why not just do it on the side anyway? Like who needs to know?

Alden Dale (4:01)

Yeah, so I did take a glance at my employment contract and whether I was allowed to do that was, it was a little, you know, it wasn't overly clear from the employment contract and I just wanted to make sure we kept things on the up and up.

It helped that at the time I had approached her for a raise and she came back and wasn't able to give me quite as much as I was hoping for and I think kind of justified a higher wage but she basically came back and said she had budget constraints that didn't allow it. That actually was a good conversation because then approaching the, you know, can I start moonlighting, you know, was this, hey, I love working here. You know, it's a great company. I understand you guys can't bring me quite up to what the market would bear. So there was a little bit of a, you know, a trade-off there where I would be a little bit more understanding about the less than aggressive pay raise I was hoping for. So there was a little back and forth. I definitely wanted to keep it on the up and up, especially because the employment contract was a little iffy, whether or not that was allowable without permission. Yeah.