State of the MOPro - Mid 2026/with Naomi, Mike, and Michael

**Michael Hartmann** (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.

**Michael Hartmann** (0:06)
A podcast for Marketing Ops Pros.

**Mike Rizzo** (0:08)
And Rev Ops Pros.

**Michael Hartmann** (0:10)
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.

**Michael Hartmann** (0:25)
Hello, everyone. Welcome to another episode of Ops Cast, brought to you by Marketing ops.com powered by all the MOPros out there. Today, I'm your, well, first, I'm your host, Michael Hartmann. Joined today by my partners in crime, Naomi Liu, Mike Rizzo.
How's it going? Hello.

**Mike Rizzo** (0:40)
It's going. It's going. It's been a while.

**Naomi Liu** (0:43)
Last time we chatted, I think, was the three Amidos. Last time I chatted, anyways.

**Michael Hartmann** (0:48)
Could have been.

**Mike Rizzo** (0:49)
I want to say that it's also true for me. Poor Hartmann, just running solo.
We're actually just going to shoot a whole entire new intro for the show, because it's really just like, instead of the three of us, it should just be Hartmann. We'll just cut our two voices out.

**Michael Hartmann** (1:05)
Nah, it's all good. It's all good. You guys know, like I just stopped trying to work around your schedules because it's just too hard.

**Mike Rizzo** (1:13)
I know.

**Michael Hartmann** (1:15)
No shade. It's all good.

**Mike Rizzo** (1:18)
I keep saying yes. The worst part is I say yes, and then I'm like, dang it, I can't make that one either.

**Michael Hartmann** (1:25)
That's the worst. Yeah. So I think when we started, we talked about getting on to the, I always enjoy these. It is now, let's see, last week or so of June 2026 It's weird that I have to say the year these days. Right now.
But it's kind of a mid-year thing. You just kind of see where things are, like almost like a mini State of the MOPro. And see where, like, I know we've talked a little bit before we start to record about a couple of things, but where do you want to start? Should we start with like, is the world just gone AI crazy?
Yeah.

**Naomi Liu** (2:06)
I mean, do you think that AI has made marketing ops, revenue ops, everything ops? Has it made it better, worse, or the same? Neutral.
I don't think it's neutral, but I guess depends on who you ask, I guess.

**Mike Rizzo** (2:27)
Yeah. I think it is dependent upon who you ask. So I have a slight, I don't have all the data compiled and the written report done, but we did this AI assessment benchmark study. It's coming together now. No surprise, we had a whole bunch of bots fill out the forum, so we had to go.
Yeah, right. We had to go scrape out the data to make sure we were just looking at what we believe is truly valid inputs.
And there was a question in there around hiring and headcount and support for the role. And I don't have the exact numbers in front of me, but I can tell you that at first glance, it was pretty clear that for those that at least participated in that study, AI has not made things much easier necessarily, in terms of advocating for headcount or anything like that. They certainly are leveraging it to do what we heard for many, many years, which is like do more with less. But I think just to lend my perspective on it, then my response to your question is, I think it's harder. I think it's a lot harder.

**Michael Hartmann** (3:55)
Do you think that's because it's actually like a bunch of new stuff or the expectations are that it's going to make things so much better so quickly or?

**Mike Rizzo** (4:04)
Yeah, fair question. I think it's harder because it feels, I think it's a mix of two things.
If we go back in time and we look at like the MarTech landscape and the explosion of marketing automation and we kind of remember that now, at least for those of us that have been around long enough to have seen most of it, there was a level of excitement about the opportunity in front of you back then. But it was an unknown sort of territory. And so that excitement carried you into this I'm going to try these new tools and learn new things and adopt new things. And I think there's elements of that that are present today in this current environment with AI. But the difference now, the second part of why it's harder, is that people are generally more educated on what is possible around technology.