#22 The value of community ft. Mike Rizzo

Mike Rizzo, founder of the 2,000-member MO Pros community, joins Pierce to talk about how important it has been for him to engage with other marketing ops professionals at various stages of their careers. Together, they talk about how isolating it can be to work in marketing ops, especially when no one else at your organization speaks your language.

In this episode, you’ll learn:

1) The “why” behind the MO Pros community

2) How community-led growth has shaped what he’s doing

3) Mike’s vision for the future of his community

Show Notes

In this latest episode of the Unsubscribed! Podcast, Pierce has a great conversation with Mike Rizzo, the founder of marketing ops community MO Pros. During their chat, they cover everything from the story behind how Mike grew the community to 2,000 members, what makes this space unique, and the vision he has for it moving forward.

It all started when he took his first marketing operations role at MavenLink. During that time, he was the marketing ops and events manager, responsible for both getting his team to events and managing their marketing tech stack. As the only marketing ops person in the company, it often felt like he was alone and that he didn’t have anyone to talk to about where else they could go from a marketing ops standpoint.

“When I would go to somebody in the organization and try to explain my challenge, they wouldn’t know what I was talking about. So, I started a Slack channel and wrote a blog post about it. That Slack channel is where most of the community now comes together and talks almost every single day.”

To Mike, the unique value that MO Pros brings to the table is that it’s a community of practice that’s been built for marketing ops professionals by other marketing ops professionals. This means it’s platform-agnostic, and it has widespread participation from members that have different areas of expertise. So, if you ask the community a question, chances are someone (or a lot of someones) will have an answer.

The other trait that defines it is that it’s a truly community-led space. Having transitioned from being a marketing ops professional to a community leader, Mike works closely with members to understand what they want to get out of the space. He gets their insight on how they want to engage with each other, and he does the work of connecting those dots for them. Moving forward, Mike’s goal is to continue working with community members to figure out how to keep nurturing and educating everyone, regardless of where people are in their journey. It’s a mandate that we’re keen to see fulfilled.

Follow Mike Rizzo on LinkedIn and Twitter.