ship it Anyway
Socks, Skunks, and Systems That Break
Beth Peterson
Obviously this woman did not leave her straightening iron on. It was fully away. That had not happened. And I'm just sitting there thinking, it is 4:45 in the morning. I am soaking wet. I'm in a senator's house right now for absolutely no reason. And it was just this moment where I was like, I cannot believe this is what I went to school to learn how to be in a journalism political science world to do. This is ridiculous.
I went to college for this!
Wendy Hurst
Welcome to Ship It Anyway, the show from HeroDevs that's part game show and part conversation. Two guests will compete in a series of games about real tech quirks, fails, and features with hot takes in between about those times in life when things might not be perfect, but sometimes you just have to ship it anyway. I'm your host, Wendy Hurst. Today, I've invited two guests from HeroDevs to compete for the winning title. In one corner, we have Beth Peterson, who joins us from North Carolina.
She's the director of revenue operations at HeroDevs, but she definitely didn't take the express lane to get here. She once worked for a US Senator, pulled espresso shots during a what am I doing with my life phase, and eventually built a career helping tech companies clean up their sales and data chaos. Before HeroDevs, she ran her own rev ops consultancy, which probably means that yes, she has receipts for everything.
Beth, welcome to the show. What do you think is more dangerous? A data integrity issue or a barista with something to prove?
Beth Peterson
I think all baristas have something to prove, or they feel like they do, so I'll say data integrity issue, because I think the other one is just by default.
Wendy Hurst
In the other corner, we have Taylor Corbett who joins us from Texas. She's a content marketing manager with a decade of experience in journalism and the Texas government, which means she can fact check your campaign slogan and your barbecue recipe. These days, she wrangles brand voice editorial calendars and her deep seated belief that it's pronounced Reese's not Reese's.
If you say it wrong, she will feel it in her soul. Taylor, welcome to the show.
Taylor Corbett
Thanks for having me.
Wendy Hurst
When someone says, can you just write something real quick? Do you hear it in slow motion like a horror movie?
Taylor Corbett
Not anymore because of AI. I'm like, okay, I can't. Ten years of life, I would be like, all right, but now I'm like, it’s fine.
Wendy Hurst
Great.
Thanks for being here. We're going to start with a game called This or That.
It doesn't have any winners. It's just a fun way to get to know you. I'll say two things and you just say which one you would choose. Taylor, you're first.
Write the copy or design the campaign?
Taylor Corbett
Design the campaign.
Wendy Hurst
Deep dive in analytics or trust your gut?
Taylor Corbett
Analytics.
Wendy Hurst
Fight one horse-sized style guide or 100 duck-sized inconsistent drafts?
Taylor Corbett
One big one. No way.
Wendy Hurst
Journal in a notebook or voice note your thoughts?
Taylor Corbett
Both, depends on what level of ADHD I am that day.
Wendy Hurst
Yep. Fair. Long walk or long talk?
Taylor Corbett
Why, again, both, why not both? Get on the phone, call somebody you seen, walk for four hours, done that many times.
Wendy Hurst
Sure. Weekend getaway or stay home with Takeout and Netflix?
Taylor Corbett
Weekend get away.
Wendy Hurst
Last one. Spend a weekend alphabetizing someone else's spice rack or watch a documentary about someone doing it wrong?
Taylor Corbett
I want to organize it. I'm actually about to do that like this weekend. Like it's fun.
Wendy Hurst
Perfect. Alright Beth, over to you. Inbox zero or inbox infinity?
Beth Peterson
Zero for sure.
Wendy Hurst
Same. Fix a broken system or build a new one from scratch?
Beth Peterson
Very rarely do I get to build one from scratch, so I'll say build one from scratch, but most of my life is fixing things.
Wendy Hurst
Color-coded calendar or controlled chaos?
Beth Peterson
Color-coded calendar because my brain's always trying to create chaos like for me. So I need as much organization as possible to create some guardrails.
Wendy Hurst
Travel with a plan or just wing it?
Beth Peterson
I do love winging it when I'm traveling. Just kind of like running around a city is one of my favorite things.
Wendy Hurst
Coffee before conversation or conversation before coffee?
Beth Peterson
Definitely coffee before conversation. My barista life made that very, very required for the next, the rest of my life, I think.
Wendy Hurst
Solve a puzzle or binge watch a show?
Beth Peterson
Mmm, I have cats so they don't really like puzzles. They kind of steal the pieces So I'll say binge watch a show because it's way less stressful chasing a cat with a tiny piece is not fun.
Wendy Hurst
Do you just like tackle them?
Beth Peterson
Genuinely, I have had to like catch them because one of them has a Lego all I mean so many times so many times They're so sneaky. They just come up and just steal and run.
Wendy Hurst
Yeah. Do they, do they eat it or do they just play with it?
Beth Peterson
No, they'll just keep them in their mouth and then they growl when you try to take them away because they think that they got something, right? And so you go and they're like this friendliest cat on the planet, but they're like, and they get so mad and they don't want you to steal it. So it's a whole thing.
Wendy Hurst
I'll be honest, I've never had to battle a cat before.
Beth Peterson
They are feisty, so it's fun, but a little scary.
Wendy Hurst
Last one. Silently soak in a hot tub on a summer day or sit on the porch holding a cup of tea and whispering, “We needed this,” while it rains?
Beth Peterson
Second one I think. I'm really pale, so the first one would require so much sunscreen.
Wendy Hurst
The second one's less hassle.
I'd to learn a little bit more about how you got here. Taylor, what do you do at HeroDevs?
Taylor Corbett
I am the content marketing manager. So my job is to make sure all of the content is relevant, SEO rich, and address the problems that a lot of our customers have. So that way, if they want to do their own independent researching before getting on a call with a salesperson, they have enough resources at their disposal. to always write.
I was big writer, second grade through my whole life. would compete and like win all these writing awards. So I wanted to be like write books. And then everyone was like, that's not how you make money. And so I was like, okay, I'll try journalism. But that is also not how you make money. But people didn't make that as clear to me. But I spent 10 years there because I felt like I was making a difference. I was like saving people from hurricanes. I was an adrenaline drunkie and I loved it.
But after COVID I didn't anymore because sucked my soul out and it was just so much so much happening at once and I made an exit and I went into Texas politics which somehow was more chill I don't know how ⁓ and I was there for about a year until I got into tech and I went Apple first I was a contractor for Apple for about a year ⁓ and then I went into a freelance kind of role doing influence marketing but I realized really quickly I don't like freelance as much as I thought I would.
Just because, ugh, I don't know how to do anything simple. I do everything 250 % and then you just burn out. But when you're working for other people, it's a lot easier to like take a step back and just like fulfill your role. So I was looking around and actually, HeroDevs reached out to my husband first because they wanted to poach him as an AE and he was like, oh no, do you have anybody who is in marketing that you need?
And they were like, yeah, yeah, we do. I'm like, I know this really good marketing girl and I'll give you her deets. And so I got to the end where I met up with the person who had that conversation with him. And I was like, by the way, I'm his wife. And they were like, and I'm like, yeah, yeah. So that's how I got here.
Like my I do have a real salesman as a husband like legit even to the point of selling me.
Wendy Hurst
And in a very legal, ethical, and moral way. I love it.
Taylor Corbett
The viewing sequence was the way that benefited me.
Wendy Hurst
Glad that you're here. Beth, what about you? What do you do at HeroDevs and how did you get here?
Beth Peterson
I'm the Director of Revenue Operations at Here Are Doves. when I first got out of school, I went to school for journalism. So kind of similar to what Taylor's saying. ⁓ And political science. So in my head, I had an exact career trajectory, which, spoiler, did not include being in tech for 10 years, which is what I've done since then.
I kind of did what I exactly thought I had to do to get the job I wanted. So I interned in the US Senate office and started working in their press office and then started working for the Senator's re-election campaign and I thought this is what my life is. Like I did it, I made it. The kind of way that you think at 22 you've sorted your life out, right? No. But I really didn't like working on political campaigns. I had never done that before.
I really wanted to be in a legislative office and work in a press office like that was really what I had in mind and I think I Didn't realize how much the switch was gonna change what I was doing every day So at some point I was just like I can't do this anymore and I quit I didn't know what I was supposed to do next I thought I had you know gone to school for a thing then got a job in that same industry and I didn't know what to do with it now that I didn't want to work in that anymore. So I was a barista and started managing a coffee shop and it was really fun and I love that and I think one day when I retire from tech I'll have like a little coffee trailer or something. I love it. It's so fun to talk to people and make coffee and drink coffee. ⁓ But I did that for a while and then I realized I lived in Washington, D.C. and it was extremely expensive place to live. And that was not a job that had a very high ceiling for pay. So I switched into tech and I've been doing it ever since. I've worked at a lot of open source technology companies, actually. So small ones and bigger organizations that were publicly traded.
I've gone public with a tech company before. And then for the last two years, I was a self-employed revenue operations consultant after that last company that I went public with. I think I just needed a little bit of a break where I could control my own schedule and not have a bunch of direct reports. I think I just needed to breathe. And then here devs came calling and it was really good opportunity because I was kind of trying to figure out what I wanted to do next with the consulting thing. Like, did I like what I was doing, did I want to pivot a little? ⁓ yeah, so then it was kind of a nice transition where I was sort of in the place where I was maybe considering looking around for something else. And then I didn't have to think about it much because every person I talked to at HeroDevs was amazing.
Wendy Hurst
I didn't know that Beth was in journalism too. That's crazy.
Beth Peterson
Yeah. I never used it, like, for real journalism, though. I was only writing press releases, so it was kind of like, I think, the less legit version of using a journalism degree. Yeah.
Taylor Corbett
You still write. You just don't have to deal, you just never dealt with the intensity of breaking news happening back to back to back. But you still had to do all the writing. So it's adjacent.
Beth Peterson
No. Yeah, a lot of writing and talking to each other, like I talked to a lot of journalists and that was a kind of a strange part of that job.
Wendy Hurst
What's the craziest story you remember from a previous job?
I know that you both were in politics. Sometimes you just can't share those stories. What's the craziest story you remember that you could share?
Beth Peterson
It's not the wildest story I have then, but it's probably the one that can be told right now and it'll be a good story. So when I worked in the Senate, there were tons of rules.
So and I was really young I didn't have a lot of context for like why these rules existed other than things I had read in textbooks, right? But they were really specific about like who could do what and when, depending on whether or not the senator I worked for was doing something related to her day job or related to her campaign. So there was tons of weird overlap where someone would be helping her with something and then all of sudden, because of the way that her schedule was set for that day, they could no longer do that because it was legislative and they were on the campaign or vice versa. So one thing that I very often did because of that was really weird errands for her. And so this is why I'm saying it's like totally different than your question, but it's so strange. So for example…
One time she called me at four in the morning and she told me she was very, very sure that she had left the straightening iron that she was using on in her bathroom. It was full blown pouring rain. I did not have a car. It was prior to the metro when it starts running for the day. And she was like, “You have to go over there because I think my entire brownstone is gonna be caught on fire.”
I'm like, okay. I'm only one of two people in the city that have keys to her house. So I go get on my bike because that's the only way I can get there. And this is like pre-Uber, right? Uber was a thing, but it was like only the black cars. I didn't get paid enough to take one of those. So was like, my answer is definitely this bike. So I'm like, being poured on, get over there, bike over.
She lives in a very nice part of DC. I obviously did not live in her neighborhood. So we're like, I'm biking over there. It takes me forever. I get inside. Obviously this woman did not leave her straightening iron on. It was fully away. That had not happened. And I'm just sitting there thinking, it is 4.45 in the morning. I am soaking wet. I'm in a senator's house right now for absolutely no reason. And it was just this moment where I was like, I cannot believe this is what I went to school to learn how to be in a journalism political science world to do. This is ridiculous.
Wendy Hurst
You're like, I went to college!
Beth Peterson
I was so frustrated, I went to college for this!
And then on top of that, she was like, okay, cool, so like, you just go to the office afterwards. And I'm looking at myself, I'm like, no, I have to bike all the way home, take a shower. Like this is, my whole day has to restart from this moment because I'm not ready to do any, I'm not in my like work clothes, that's not a thing. So it's just tons of stuff like that, was a very weird part of my job.
Taylor Corbett
At the station the only weird thing that we had to do was a lot of like animal stuff so our station used to be like in a field and so there was a period of time where these skunks were like terrorizing our employees because they would come out at night and we have employees that would work like all night because the last show would end at 11 p.m. and so they would come out and it was like a kind of like a wheelchair accessible like ramp so they would come out and they would start hopping because the skunks would be underneath the like bushes on that side so I just started hopping them out and we had to like put up all these traps and we caught them and then I was like I don't know what to do with this and they're like so we had to like find a man because I'm sorry I know that's not super fitness to me.
So I had to go find a man. I'm like, this is not my duty. It's not my job. I do content. This is you. We had to get that off and then we also found like a giant rat snake in the Newsroom and that's not I don't do snakes. I don't do snakes at all. So our marketing director is insane and she literally went up there and pulled it out of the ceiling and then wrapped it up and it's just a rat snake but that doesn't matter to me that still terrifies me and she like went didn't kill it which I was like I don't care if this is offensive. I'm like no all snakes should die. I spent the whole time being afraid of the – every time I walked out that snake was gonna like come back and like specifically get me because it smelt my fear. But that never happened.
Wendy Hurst
The snake imprinted on you?
Beth Peterson
Yeah.
Taylor Corbett
The only other thing is like one time one of our reporters came into the newsroom sobbing. I'm like what happened? She's like there's a bat. I'm like there's a bat? I walk outside She had hit a bat in her car and it was in the headlight and it was partially alive But it wasn't gonna make it so we had to it just there's no way like it was just it was end. So I had to pull it out and give it a funeral which was so devastating and sad Yeah, lots of weird. and hawk. We had to capture a hawk one time.
Beth Peterson
Did... Did... Wait!
Taylor Corbett
We made a whole new story about it, but yeah, was like clipped in our parking lot. Just this big old hawk.
Beth Peterson
Wait, wait, did you have to get, yeah, me too. Did you have to get rabies shots for the bat? That's my first question.
Wendy Hurst
I have so many questions.
Taylor Corbett
It was not required, but it probably should have been. With the amount of animals, I was just like, I work in journalism, I'm not a zoologist, I'm not a termite, like, pest person, but I felt like it half the time. And I'd always get these videos of like these skunks and all of these animals and they would be like, Taylor, this is a problem. And I'm like, I'm not maintenance.
Beth Peterson
So. Yeah. You're like, how is this my job? Like, what do you mean?
Taylor Corbett
It was just like, well you're a director, you're a department head, and I'm like, of content. I guess you can't put that in place of my body of animal wrangling.
Beth Peterson
That's really funny.
Wendy Hurst
So you had a funeral for a bat.
Taylor Corbett
Yeah. For the environment and what not.
Wendy Hurst
You're like, of all the things that you asked me to do that are outside the range of my job about funeral is something that you could just like you know you could handle that one.
Taylor Corbett
Well, it's just respectful.
Beth Peterson
Yeah, that makes sense. I like it.
Taylor Corbett
It was so sad.
Wendy Hurst
I liked that story.
Beth Peterson
Yeah, that one was really good.
Taylor Corbett
Yeah, I mean there's some things I did was like devastating sad sorrow you need an EMDR to get through it this one was funner.
Wendy Hurst
What's something from your previous work experience that influences your approach to decisions today?
Beth Peterson
So it's from my earliest jobs in tech.
I had this leader that I worked with that was so, so good at.
Like, I don't know, he just, I was so impressed with the way that he kind of could build out strategies, but also manage his people in a really like thoughtful way. And I hadn't seen a lot of people be able to do both of those really well. There'd be these people that were visionaries, but then their people skills were horrendous or they were really, really good at talking to their people, but nothing progressed. And he kind of was the first person I worked with where I was like, wow, you can do both. And it's really amazing.
And one of the things that he told me just in passing one day was that his recommendation, like his advice to people when they were kind of starting where I was at the time, was to be consultative in the way that you approach everything that you do.
And I hadn't really considered that at the time. That had never really been a way that I thought about how I interacted with my coworkers and people I collaborated with. But I think taking a step back, I really needed to hear that in that moment because I was the kind of person that would come in and make a lot of assumptions based on things I had heard other people say or just like connecting the dots. Maybe not in the right way, but I was junior enough to not know that it wasn't the right way. So I would be really confident about something that was in retrospect, probably completely incorrect. But that was sort of the way I approached everything and hearing this. I don't think he meant for it to be any sort of learning moment that I was going to take forward for the next decade. But I really don't work the same way that I worked then now.
And it's entirely because of this single moment of very in passing, like we were waiting for a 300 person meeting to start and he was just chit chatting. And I think that was combining that moment of him just saying it directly with the way I had seen him kind of be unique in the way that he was organizing this organization.
I think it fundamentally changed the way that I am. And revenue operations, like there are tons of stakeholders, so, so many stakeholders, anybody in a sales process, marketing, customer success, know, product teams care about what I'm doing because it's all about the go-to-market function and making sure that like end-to-end we're creating a good experience for the customer. So you can have a lot of people in your ear all the time making requests from their specific vantage point. And if you don't take a minute to ask the right like big picture scoping questions and kind of get a sense of like, are their goals? What are their strategies? How are they being measured? What are they trying to achieve with this? You might build something that's really shallow and can't scale. It meets their like very specific request, but it wasn't the right way to approach the problem holistically.
So I think being consultative has fundamentally changed the way that I approach just any communication I do at work.
Wendy Hurst
That's really cool. I love in passing advice that changes someone's life. That's really cool. Yeah.
Beth Peterson
Yeah, right? I know if he heard this, he'd be like, what? Like, I can't, he probably doesn't remember this happened at all. Yeah, genuinely. Yeah, he would be like, that didn't happen. Like, I don't remember even that meeting. I don't even remember the 300 person meeting. That would be what he said for sure.
Wendy Hurst
He felt like eating a snack, he's like blah blah blah. Here's some golden advice and then he finished his lunch like...
Taylor Corbett
Mine is similar to like what Beth said in terms of like something that happened in passing. For some reason, I knew at a very young age that like when you start your career you have to be very vocal about where you want to be because I had seen so many people in my life just complain and whine because they're not where they want to be but they never took action, they never were audible about it and so I was a very ambitious.
19 or I guess I was 21 years old and so when I started at my internship in news I was writing for 50 different television stations across this company called Raycom. And I made it very clear that I wanted to be a digital director ASAP and I knew I was young and I knew I was female and that was like very it was very a new time for female leadership to be in journalism. But my boss happened to be a woman and so I was very cleared with her like what my dreams and ambitions were so she sat me down one day and she's like the one thing you know to be like a good leader is never ask someone to do something that you wouldn't do.
And it's the same thing. That was one of the many golden advice that she gave me that day. But that one has stuck true with me every moment because I'm also someone who questions my own motives, just so that way I make sure that I'm being a fair leader. And so when I would ask something, people are going to have reactions. They're going to be like, I don't want to do this. And I would literally sit down and be like, would you do this too? And most of the time I'd say yes, just because I'm not someone who asks. But if it's something, I'm like, I wouldn't do that by myself. I would always jump in and help.
And that to me, I just feel like it made my teams always happier. They felt more supported. And it didn't feel like someone just bossing them around that had no idea what was.
Wendy Hurst
“Never ask someone to do something you're not willing to do yourself.” I like that advice a lot.
Beth Peterson
Yeah, me too. I've never really thought about it like that.
Wendy Hurst
Can I share mine? Is it silly if the host says it too? Can I share mine too? Okay.
Beth Peterson
Yeah, please.
Wendy Hurst
The thing I learned when I got here came from our president, Aaron Mitchell. I was doing a lot of the project management for professional services at the time. I've been a project manager for a long time. I don't know what the point, maybe 10, 11 years at that point. And we would have projects that would run off the rails. I'm a very enthusiastic person. And so just kind of exaggerating and like being very emotive is like part of my personality when I would is explaining project statuses internally. And I'd be like, well, the train's off the tracks again, y'all. Like, I don't know how to figure this out. Like the caboose is in the front now and I just don't know what to do. And the advice that he gave me was...
That even though I'm not in control of everything, I can't control what a developer does or doesn't do, how long a project takes, what roadblocks we find. I can't control any of that stuff. One would argue that a project manager really doesn't have control of anything except the next steps. So his advice was like, you control your next steps to destiny. He didn't say it in those words, but like, that's how I summarize it. You control your steps to your next destiny. Be calm, be clear. If the plan's off the rails, recommend the new plan.
Admit when you don't know something and then offer them the next step. I don't know the answer to that question, but I'm going to go look it up. I'm going to go figure it out. Let me go back to my team and we will figure out a plan and we'll come back and meet about it.
“You control your next steps to destiny.” It was like the simplest thing, maybe in a five minute conversation. And that's it. It completely changed how I approach my professional life. My project management got better. My clients felt a lot more confident in what we were doing. And even like in my personal life, how I address things like with my kids or with my husband or whatever it is, I feel more calm and confident as a person when stepping into the unknown.
Taylor Corbett
That's a really good way to think of it. Because I do, I'm also someone who gets really overwhelmed. Like, for example, if it was like problems with weeds in my driveway, I want to get it done early because the more weeds that show up, I become overwhelmed and then it gets going to get worse because I can't continue. And that's probably something I need to think about too. It's just the next step. You don't have to solve it like you were going to the first time. But then when my first plan doesn't work out, I get twitched.
Wendy Hurst
Mm-hmm.
Then you make a new plan. And another one and another one.
Looking back on your life, knowing where you are right now, are there signs earlier in your life that would suggest like, you know what, tech might be for me, but you just didn't know about it until later?
Taylor Corbett
How I could say that is when I was a kid, I could type faster than everyone else. I could understand computers faster than like adults. I always was like number one in my computer classes and my digital graphic classes because it all just like made sense to me. Like just sitting down looking at something and just made sense. ⁓ So I kind of always like had fun with new technology and like learning new things and like playing with it and breaking it and all kind of rebuilding it.
But I always thought it was more about creativity, more than the system, but now I'm like, nah, I think it was the system too.
Wendy Hurst
Cool, what about you Beth?
Beth Peterson
That's a good question. I think the thing I do like in tech, being in revenue operations, I think I could have probably predicted I would have been good at something like this, though I had no idea it was something you could do and it didn't actually exist that long ago. Because I think one thing I'm good at and I've always been pretty good at is creating a process to meet a goal. So I'll give you a very very simple example.
When I was little, this also will make me look a little bit ridiculous because it sounds a little like it sounds like I'm being really authoritative. I wasn't, I promise.
So when I was little, I got all of my neighborhood kids to sign an agreement to be part of an organization that I was leading. And the goal wasn't to be in charge. And I had paperwork. When my parents moved out of my childhood home, they found the paperwork. I had a manila folder full of the paperwork, like 15 years later.
My goal for this wasn't to be in charge of all these other kids. It was because we had this little competition with the kids on a street in the back of our neighborhood, and I felt like we weren't organizing our forces correctly for our victory. So my thought was, if I got all of us to be on the same page and agree that this was the process we were gonna follow to win this fake battle with these children that everything would work better. And I was organized.
I was stealing my mom's Gatorade and hiding them in the back of our house like in our backyard because in my head we would need electrolytes to compete with these children. So I was like taking snacks and taking food and putting things in the backyard so that we would have access to them. And my mom was like, “Where's all this food? I'm going to the grocery store and getting.” And I was like, “I don't know that's so strange,” but it was because I was giving them to this group of children I had organized into a very efficient process. So I think in retrospect I should have thought like I love process building, getting everyone on the same page and meeting a goal together. I should have known that.
Wendy Hurst
You organized a neighborhood legion of children and thought through all the way to like fuel them so that you could win this battle. How old were you again?
Beth Peterson
That's right. Yeah, that's right.
Taylor Corbett
That's so impressive.
Beth Peterson
I think I was nine-ish. Yeah.
Wendy Hurst
Oh my god. Okay. Not just that, but you like you wanted it in writing. That is next level. That is next level operational commitment. I have no words for that. That's amazing.
Beth Peterson
Right. Like I wanted their commitment. Yeah.
Taylor Corbett
That is very impressive. I love that. The only thing I can think of me that's close is I filmed over all of our family videos when I was younger because I would produce movies with my siblings and I'd write scripts and I would direct them. And so my, don't even remember really doing this because I was so young, but my mom finally found a way to watch the home videos and she started playing them and they were just my little skits.
Wendy Hurst
Hahaha! Look at you making content.
Beth Peterson
That's so cute. I love that.
Taylor Corbett
Yeah. So yeah, I ruined all of our memories by making different memories that were just mine.
Wendy Hurst
That's hilarious.
Taylor Corbett
Yeah. But I would do costume design too. Like my siblings would be dressed up and they would like have conversation. I did like different angles and like close-ups and wide shots. Um, yeah, I was just nuts.
Beth Peterson
I love that, that's amazing.
Wendy Hurst
I love that. My respect for both of you just like went up. And it was already pretty high. I'm impressed. My answer is much less entertaining. I was just really good at finding patterns in things. Whether it's like playing the matching game. was like, I get it. There's only so many places that these certain little pictures of pizza or whatever, like, you know, kid matching games. Like I just kind of figured out.
Taylor Corbett
Great.
Wendy Hurst
The fewer pieces, like the easier it is to guess where they are. I was like five getting older, like when I would use applications and my mom, my mom had an old computer from like it was called Tandy. I don't know if you guys even remember like what brand that is. It's a Tandy branded computer. You had to put like the floppy disk in there and then you had to turn the crank to like close it. Otherwise it wouldn't function. Didn't even have a mouse. You like had to know what the function keys do, and so like video games wise, I was very behind the curve. That was into the early 90s. We didn't have a Game Boy. I was just really good at finding like what are the keys? What's the combination? What's the fastest way I can type this out to make it this machine work?
That was…well I just dated myself.
Fast forward to much later. I became a power user of the app that was designed at this one company that I worked at. And any time something would go wrong, I'd be like, how did I make that happen? How do I show it to someone else? And how do I work around this problem? Which, for someone who's not in tech, that seemed like a weird thing to think. Like, I found a bug. That was really exciting. How can I find another one? I love breaking systems and I love like reporting bugs. It's so satisfying. You're like, I found this one. That's because of me. I found it. if I had realized its impact on like how it can translate to tech, I think I would have chosen technology and computers a lot sooner.
Taylor Corbett
These conversations just show me that our company is only neurodivergent people. All of us don't think that's weird, but when normies watch this, they're going to be like freaks.
Wendy Hurst
Ooh.
Beth Peterson
Yup. Yup. Yup.
Wendy Hurst
Seriously. All right. Speaking of HeroDevs, even though we weren't actually speaking about it, we do have to talk about HeroDevs for just one second. Here's a quick word about what we do. Over to me.
Beth Peterson
That's so good.
Wendy Hurst
And back to me. Welcome back to Ship It Anyway. So loud. Stop laughing! (laughs)
Beth Peterson
Oh my God, I tried really hard not to laugh and I couldn't stop myself.
Wendy Hurst
It's okay.
All right, let me try it again, Beth. Here we go. All right, I'm gonna hold my headphones in this time so they don't flip out of my face. Here we go. And back to me. Welcome back to Ship It Anyway. We're gonna get back into our show with a game. called App Trap.
Beth Peterson
Okay, yeah, yeah, we've got it. I'm so sorry. Okay.
Wendy Hurst
In this game, I will name three tools or platforms.
They might all sound like they do similar things, but one of them is the odd one out. It's up to each contestant to figure out which one doesn't fit with the others and why. answer earns one point. Wrong answers earn judgmental silence or bonus points if your reasoning is really convincing. Are you ready?
Beth Peterson
That sounds hard, but okay.
Wendy Hurst
Which is the odd one out? Is it A, Slack, B, Microsoft Teams, or C, Calendly?
Beth Peterson
C, calendly.
Wendy Hurst
Tell me why.
Beth Peterson
Slack and Teams are very similar direct, like immediate messaging platforms and Calendly is a scheduling tool. Yay.
Wendy Hurst
Correct! That's one point for Beth. Number two. Which is the odd one out? Is it A, Trello, B, Asana, or C, Grammarly?
Beth Peterson
C, Grammarly.
Wendy Hurst
Correct. Why.
Beth Peterson
Grammarly might do a ton more stuff now, but my basic understanding of it is that it does like recommends …Like you write something and it kind of recommends like where you maybe shouldn't have phrased something the way you did, or if you have an actual grammatical error, where the other two, those are project management tools. Yeah. Yeah.
Wendy Hurst
Nailed it. Last one, round three. Which one is the odd one out? Is it A, HubSpot, B, Buffer, or C, Jira?
Beth Peterson
I'm gonna guess HubSpot is the odd one out, but I have no idea.
Wendy Hurst
Incorrect. I know, the answer was C, JIRA. JIRA is built for engineering and issue tracking and not marketing campaigns. I don't know what buffer is either.
Beth Peterson
Bummer. What is buffer?
Taylor Corbett
I know Buffer, but I've never used it for email marketing campaigns. It was always a social media scheduling platform for me. That's what I used in journalism.
Wendy Hurst
Okay, Beth has two points. Taylor, you're up next. Are you ready?
Taylor Corbett
Yeah, let's do it.
Wendy Hurst
Number one, which is the odd one out? Is it A, Notion, B, Miro, or C, Canva?
Taylor Corbett
C, Canva.
Wendy Hurst
Correct. Why?
Taylor Corbett
Because the other two, dang it, I did what Beth did. I threw them away in my memory. The third one though, Canva is like making graphics and the other two were not.
Wendy Hurst
That is correct. Great answer.
Number two. Which is the odd one out? Is it A. Zapier, B. IFTTT. I hope I'm saying that correctly. Or C. Figma.
Taylor Corbett
I've never used B, but I'm pretty sure it has to do with graphics.
Wendy Hurst
I've never used B either, but that is incorrect. The odd one out is Figma. Figma is for design collaboration and not automation.
Number three. Which is the odd one out? Is it A, Google Calendar, B, Calendly, or C, Typeform?
Taylor Corbett
C.
Wendy Hurst
That is correct. Why?
Taylor Corbett
The other two are scheduling tools. And I already know what type form is, but it's not coming to me at this moment. But it's not a scheduling.
Wendy Hurst
That's OK. Typeform is a form builder for surveys and data collection, and the other two are a scheduling calendar tool. All right, Taylor has two and Beth has two. It's a tie. That's OK. We have another game coming up in a minute and we will figure out who the real winner is.
All right, we've talked about your past job experiences and now I'd like to hear your take on the work behind the work. Beth, you work in operations and Taylor, you work in marketing. Some people might call those invisible work and make it look easy type roles.
Why do you think people expect you to get things right all the time?
Taylor Corbett
When you do something that everyone uses every day, like social media, reading blogs, everyone gets to be an expert because they've never done it before. So I think a lot of the times people think I should get it done because it's like, I write tweets all the time. Like, why can't you do this in five seconds? And which, yeah, I could write a tweet in five seconds, but there's like a whole campaign behind it and there's a lot more going on.
Like the actual tweet itself is the easiest part, but it's all the thought behind it And so I think like any shop I've ever worked in marketing. That's just like something I don't think any marketer doesn't have that at their job where people don't understand why anything takes time because they're like I tweet in five seconds I just put whatever things in my mind like you go and I'm like, yeah if I did that company might have problems.
Wendy Hurst
The tweets quickly become, just go to HeroDevs, like whatever. That's it.
Wendy Hurst
What about you, Beth?
Beth Peterson
I think part of it is because I work with a lot of people in sales roles or in like some instances, a little bit less here just because Wendy, you're here and you're amazing. like often marketing or revenue operations includes a lot of marketing operations. Like that can be quite common.
And I think because a lot of times you're working with marketers and salespeople who are using the systems and processes you're building every day to do their job, right? Like it's just a tiny piece of their day. They're talking to customers and they need to generate an order form and they want that order form very understandably to be generated every time consistently and quickly so that they can, you know, send it and get onto their next customer call or whatever else they have going on. And so I think because of that, because it's so foundational to them and because it's only a tiny snapshot of their day, they don't realize how much work goes into making that simple for them.
And so I think a lot of it is just I always say this, and I'll probably say it again while we're talking about all of this, but good rev ops is boring because you really only notice it when something's broken. So for if you're an end user, you want your perception of the revenue operations team to be, they're just kind of building things. Problem solving, but there aren't that many problems to solve. The idea that if you are really thinking about rev ops a lot in a role that isn't that team, it's probably because there's some kind of process problem that's been causing a challenge for you.
Wendy Hurst
What's something people assume is easy about your job that really isn't?
Taylor Corbett
Yeah, I feel like a lot of my answers are going to be that everyone thinks it's easy because they do it and they think, I like content, so I know why I like it. And it's like, no, you don't. You don't know the manipulation behind why you like it. Or you don't know how the algorithm chose for this to go higher. So that's just like a problem you constantly have. And I don't think that that's ever going to be solved because everyone is going to think if they use something daily, they know it as much as you do.
Beth Peterson
Yeah, I think my answer is similar. And yeah, you're probably right, like a little bit of overlap with the last one, but I think.
Yeah. Wow. Restate that question. I might have to like try that all over again. I genuinely thought I had an answer. And then I just like, my dog walked by and my ADHD was like, you're looking at the dog. And then we were gone. Yeah. It's like genuinely.
Wendy Hurst
Sure. That's okay.
Wendy Hurst
I had a dream last night where someone was talking to me about something and then I like got distracted by mountains in the distance. I have ADHD in my dreams, so, and I created it in my brains. I don't know what else to do.
Beth Peterson
Yeah. One of those moments where you're like, and that's how you know this is a real thing I didn't make up. Like I am still experiencing in my subconscious.
Taylor Corbett
That's so funny.
Beth Peterson
I think everyone assumes that people requesting something or revenue operations are all largely requesting the same thing. And I think in practice, all of those requests, even if they have a similar goal in mind, are actually quite different. So I'm always balancing what's the appropriate thing for the business? How do I meet this end user's need? How do I meet this like maybe sales leaders need or just executives need and the individual end user? And I think people think, well, you we all want the same thing. We want growth.
For HeroDevs, want to hit our quarterly targets for sales. For sure, the way that everyone has an idea to get there is a little bit different. so think balancing all of that and still creating something that works to get to that goal is harder than it looks from the outside.
Wendy Hurst
What's something that your team depends on that they probably don't even realize that you're doing?
Taylor Corbett
Yeah, there's just a lot of like...
Having to understand a community that I'm not a part of, that I have to do, and understand what they care about and what they care about today. For example, ⁓ today Marco put something in a chat about something going on with GitHub. I would have never known that was going on. And I was able to use my journalistic integrity ideas to just grab that real quick, write something, and have it on our site. So that way we join a conversation. And so a lot of the times I'm looking for conversations to join.
So that way our impact is going to be further than just the SEO and it can be more of a conversation. A lot of what I do is SEO scraping, but getting a part of an active conversation is a lot more valuable and so you have to really track those.
Wendy Hurst
As someone on your team, can confirm that I did not know that's something that you are doing. What about you Beth?
Beth Peterson
I think this is maybe a boring answer, but a lot of the technologies that I'm responsible for, especially for the sales team, they all kind of come out of the box with integrations with each other. So, you know, we'll have a CRM and a sales sequencing tool and you know, some automation that helps them do more on social media and all of those things if you were just to look them up.
Their websites would say, yeah, they all integrate directly with all of your major CRMs. But in practice, getting all of that to work in a way that is useful for end users, useful reporting, useful for predicting how things will work in the future is actually quite hard because very often all of these different tools that are all connected, they're all kind of competing for updating very similar information in like central data repositories. So I think that can be it seems easy, like of course, you just click the button and then it's connected. And it's like, okay, yes, data will start coming in, but you don't want it to just come in in whatever way it feels like. You need to make sure it makes sense for the business. I think it looks so easy because the button is so tempting. It's just right there. You just gotta click connect, but that's not quite how it works.
Wendy Hurst
How do you measure success when your job is to support other people doing their job?
Taylor Corbett
I think for me it's how much MQLs we get based on organic search, which has been doing well. So if I ever saw that drop off, that would be an indicator that my stuff's not working. Because I care about conversions more than views, honestly. So ⁓ I get a lot of views, that's great. But if I'm really making a difference at this company and helping us move forward, there needs to be MQLs.
Beth Peterson
Mine is similar in that I, it's like a, usually I'm using a tracked metric, like a kind of established metric in like, for example, it varies, but days to close is a really common one that I'll use to try to identify whether or not my process is working. And think that thing that's a little bit hard is metrics like that. They're like hugely impacted by things outside of my control, right? How well these conversations are going with salespeople. But if my stuff, the way that I think about it is like if my stuff breaks, then that will take longer because just they can't generate the order form they need. They can't move an opportunity into a closed one status so that we can actually invoice a customer. Those sort of things, when they break, they're really noticeable in commonly tracked sales metrics. And when they improve, they also will show improvement in those commonly tracked sales metrics. It's like, “Well, it's not entirely my metric.” And I have things I do to try to like, you always need the metrics that you got in the back of your pocket to justify why you should definitely still have your job.
Like a different thing, but when it comes to like how I'm overall showing general progression of revenue operations, it tends to be shared sales metrics.
Wendy Hurst
I'm the growth operations manager. So a lot of my personal success is just kind of like, is my team able to do what they need to do when they need to do it? I'm moving all the blockers out of the way. That's kind of my job. But I do miss the days back when I help project manage a migration.
Because it's kind of you have an estimate of how long you think it's gonna take you so my my personal measurement of success Was two things one is the project like moving along the way that I expected and then I could look at a graph I'm a graph person. I really like numbers I could look at a graph and be like I estimated based on the capacity of my team and the feedback from my team that we would be at this point at this point in the project and
It's so satisfying to see like the graph like line up exactly where you estimated because you've you've really honed in on your what your team can accomplish. And that means that like your spreadsheet that you used to make that estimate is correct. It's so gratifying. It gives me chills how good it feels like that's power right there. Okay.
Beth Peterson
Get more satisfaction out of that. That would make me, I think that would be a helpful thing for me to start feeling satisfaction from. I like that.
Taylor Corbett
I will say that you're really good at analytics, but your sock estimation is off.
Wendy Hurst
(laughs) Okay, I’ll explain.
I go to a lot of conferences that's one part of my job and at one event we wanted to give away some socks and we order we I we had done a lot of conferences at this point and we bring a lot of stuff HeroDevs is very generous when we give away our swag like we take swag very seriously.
Just look how many ducks I have. We take swag very seriously. And part of that is also using metrics to see like of all the 2000 pieces of swag I brought to this event, how much did we actually give away across all the different events? Because we end up with a lot of leftover boxes that we just didn't plan on and we have to ship them back. That's expensive and it takes time. It takes extra effort.
When I was ready to take like socks across the ocean to go to a conference in Barcelona, was like, I am not bringing 2000 pairs of socks to an event. I know that we're not going to give away 2000 pairs of socks. So I have to carry it. Like with customs and all that stuff, it just it's less complicated if I bring it, which means that it's my suitcase. I have to deal with all the stuff. I'm a small person. have a big personality, but I'm still a small person. I can't be lugging around five suitcases with me.
So I was like, I'm going to use data to solve this problem. So for every conference we had done up to that point. How much we ordered, how much we actually gave away, and percentages, right? And I narrowed it down to roughly 33 % of the group, of the expected attendance is what we actually give away. It doesn't scale. If you're gonna go to a conference that has 10,000 people, you're not gonna bring…whatever, 33 % of 10,000 is. I'm not even going to embarrass myself and make an estimate, okay? I'm really bad at math, but I'm really good at spreadsheets.
Anyway, at this particular conference we going to, it ended up being like 350 or something socks. I was like, OK, I can figure this out. So I unpacked all the socks that come in little wrappers and I opened up my big suitcase and I like carefully lined them up in different rows and I counted every single one and I found that you can fit almost 400 socks into a single checked bag like standard size checked suitcase. I could fit almost 400 but I didn't really like it was over the weight limit and I didn't want to pay the 65 extra dollars for like five extra pounds so I took out as many socks as I could to like, you know, make the numbers match. And I think it landed around 342 to be just below the limit I need a little bit of buffer. That's my project management mindset. OK, I needed some buffer. 342 socks. We gave away every single sock and didn't have anybody come by asking for extras. I nailed it down to the exact number and it felt so good.
Beth Peterson
I love that story for a lot of reasons, but also just like there's a moment when you're describing not wanting to pay the extra money for the over like the overweight luggage. That's like the most tech startup thing that I've ever heard in my life. Like how do I minimize the cost of this, but maximize my impact in like the most hilarious way.
Taylor Corbett
And then when you think about it in like contextually, it's like, I don't think that's how you're supposed to say the word, but that's how I said it today. Like shipping that would be like thousands of dollars. So 65 dollars would have been really low.
Beth Peterson
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Wendy Hurst
Yes! So insignificant!
It was a matter of pride, y'all. It was a matter of pride. And you know what? Nailing it, just, it was worth it. It was worth the feeling and worth the effort about something so simple. That's how I measure success.
That was fun, thanks for letting me tell that story. You just teed that up for me and I just couldn't resist.
Wendy Hurst
Taylor, you get a lot of requests for not just content, but like also doing some more research about things. And Beth, you're in operations, which means that like wild card, they can ask you for anything. How do you decide what's worth doing when everything feels important?
Beth Peterson
I think that that's something that's really difficult and truly not to be like, I'm so good at my job. I'm not saying it like that, but I think it's what distinguishes good revenue operations professionals from maybe more mediocre ones. Because a lot of times people bring requests and they genuinely think from their vantage point, it is so urgent. Like something very weird just happened when they tried to follow a process or they tried to do something and they couldn't and it feels so, pressing to them. And the way that they describe it, if you can't take a step back, assess within the big picture, how much does this matter?
You're gonna feel their urgency. And so I think it's a lot about not your urgency as much as I care about you as an end user and requester isn't my urgency and I try as much as possible to align my urgency reasonably objectively to the business's goals. So like my thought is always how does this help us hit our fiscal year goals? How does this help us hit a goal that we have this quarter? And is this something that needs to be taken on right now in order to meet that goal? If not, it may not be for now. And the one, I will say the one caveat to that is if somebody is doing something that is...
If somebody raises something to me that isn't maybe something I wanted to work on that day, but it does genuinely feel like it's a blocker for them that doesn't have a real workaround that I can suggest, that might be one place where I deviate and say, okay, that might not be exactly what I needed to do today to enable us to get to this quarterly goal, but it is weird enough that I'm gonna try to take this on for you. So I think that's kinda how I do prioritization for the most part.
Taylor Corbett
So for me, it's interesting because I spent so much time in politics and journalism where there is no revenue generation. That's not really what you're doing. And so my priorities from that are just so vastly different because it would be what's breaking news, what's getting the most attention. But for here, since this is a revenue generating role, it's really about one, what products bring us the most revenue. And those are the ones I'm going to spend the most time on. And then there's also the ones that we spend a lot of money on, but we're not getting the revenue we need from it and so those two are always gonna be my priority I am NOT gonna spend any extra time on something we don't spend money on and that we don't make a lot of money on like…
That's just not a smart marketer move, right? So because we have so many products, know which ones, when something comes by, I drop everything and focus on, and I know some that I just kind of put in the parking lot. I'm like, that's a really good idea, that'd be really good for that product, but it's not gonna really make the impact that we need. And so if I get an extra moment, absolutely, but it's just not for now.
Wendy Hurst
Do you ever feel like you have to protect your team from too many good ideas?
Taylor Corbett
Yes.
Wendy Hurst
I expect Taylor to say yes. I'm not sure about Beth but I expect Taylor to say yes.
Taylor Corbett
Every time we have a new hire that is associated with marketing, is the same. It's the same thing that I went through too. Like we are building the marketing team here and we're all really good at our jobs. So you will walk in and see a million holes and you just try to fill them all at once because that's going to feel good. You're like, I'm doing my best. And every time I have to reel them in and say fundamentals, fundamentals, fundamentals, we're building, we need a foundation and we will add more people and we will get to do more fun stuff after we build this foundation.
So like when I first got hired I was like how am I gonna do social and I just was everywhere there's so many opportunities ⁓ but then I finally breathed and I took a step back and I'm like, the number one thing that is making conversions is our website. That is the platform that is working. So why would I put all this extra time into social media and stuff and not nurture that until it is living at its full potential? So my entire first year was just SEO. And then we had obvious success. they were like, oh, Taylor, would you like another person? Hayden, would you like another person? We're like, yes, absolutely. And we put them in social media. And literally, think yesterday, we got our first organic social MQL since she started and so it's just building a block upon a block and it's gonna take time And if you try to do everything at once you're gonna do nothing well, so that's kind of where I'm at on that.
Beth Peterson
So I think a lot of what Taylor said is very relatable to me in a different context, but I will say here, okay, this is gonna sound negative at first and it's not, it's actually really positive. I have found that to be less true at HeroDevs than other places and that's not because all of my coworkers have terrible ideas here or nobody's raising good ideas. It's more that.
I've found so far the relationships I've been able to build at HeroDevs with the people that I work with. I've been able to build a relationship where they have a good idea, they may flag it to me, but they're not going to go escalate it with their leadership, show it to somebody, and then all of a sudden I'm on the hook for getting that into...
Like working order way too quickly in a way that I wasn't able to like properly plan and schedule for. I found that just doing some initial relationship building when I first started, I've been able to try to let those good ideas trickle in and not necessarily with like executive buy-in urgency in a little bit more organized way, which I genuinely really appreciate. Because lots of people have really great ideas related to revenue generation, ideas that I would need to be a part of, but it's just a matter of maybe not servicing those ideas to people that are going to say, of course, go do that, we want to make more money, without checking to see whether or not I have any time to build that out.
Wendy Hurst
My answer is I absolutely do. Everyone wants to has it has a new idea for marketing whether it's something creative or it's something more tactical like why aren't you doing this why aren't you doing that well here it is they work very lean I mean I care a lot about 65 dollars even though maybe I don't need to care so much about it as passionately as I do, but I really prefer to squeeze as much potential out of the people that we have as possible before I'm gonna try to look outside our department for support or help or hiring more people. I really wanna make sure that I'm tapping as much of what I've got. So I protect our team from stuff all the time. I won't ignore it, but prioritization is certainly important.
What's something that would be easier if more people knew how your role really works?
Taylor Corbett
Product launches.
Wendy Hurst
Follow the product launch process. That really helps.
Taylor Corbett
Yeah, I don't really think I need to elaborate on that, but yeah, product launches, like if we were like, ooh, strategy sounds nice. I mean that in a loving way.
Wendy Hurst
Earlier, Taylor, you mentioned that you're writing a lot of content for a world that you've never, like for a life you've never lived. You're not an engineer, you're not an architect, you're not a chief information security officer, but you're trying to write and communicate to these types of people. We have the right combination of people within our company to like, put the pieces together but really your job is just to of like take all the pieces and make it into something that makes sense.
So without proper research in advance before it even comes to you, it's really abstract and can be really hard to do your job. I've seen it firsthand.
Taylor Corbett
And there's so much opportunities you have to look deep and form. I it's just deep research to really find a lot of these opportunities. Luckily, we do have AI, and it's been helpful. But it still takes time to work through all the information that it finds and find the angles that you can take advantage of.
Beth Peterson
I think one thing I've been running into a lot right now, and I think I have little bit of a recency bias with this answer, but we're in the middle of a CRN migration, and that's been challenging in all the ways that it would be challenging. And when I started, I knew that this was going to be something that I would need to help with. So I had a sense of what I was walking into when I started in December, I think it's very now that, we're at a place where our sales reps are in our new CRM and they're trying things out and they're still, still in the final stages of the like migration and there are a lot of pieces and they're making requests for improvements. They're all really reasonable, but the timeline that they're expecting them to get turned around in doesn't really meet.
Like, it's not a realistic expectation, unfortunately, because at the end of the day, like, I'm a solo rev-up shop right now, and there are lots of people that can work on things with me. Wendy, you've been amazing in all of things we've been working on together. And there are lots of other people at HeroDevs that have been really great to partner with on this.
But at the end of the day, we don't have that much in-house expertise about building automations and processes in our new CRM. So I end up being kind of the gatekeeper of what can get done when, because I need to do some of the building myself, or a lot of the building myself, and I think it's been hard, because I get it, you're excited about something new that you're learning and you're seeing the opportunity with, but at the end of the day, your request can't be turned around same day, it probably can't even be turned around the same week, and I think that can be really hard to understand, especially in a company as agile in a lot of ways as Here Devs, it's a hard thing to hear.
I agree with that and I absolutely cannot start working on that for you until probably middle of next week. I think it'd be kind of surprising and startling to hear.
Wendy Hurst
Now that we've talked about what you both know best, we're going to move on to our final game of the show called Not My Job.
I'll ask you three questions that have nothing to do with your job in the real world or anything we've talked about today and everything to do with what you know about movie plots where tech went wrong. Each correct answer earns one point.
The score is 2-2, which means it's a tie. Hoo. Beth, I'm gonna have you go first. Are you ready?
Beth Peterson
I'll try my best.
Wendy Hurst
Which one of these was a real movie? Was it A. A smart fridge gains sentience and falls in love with the homeowner, eventually freezing her fiancee? B. A man falls in love with his operating system, which then leaves him for a better version of itself? Or C. A hacker uploads his consciousness into a fax machine and becomes a vengeful printout?
Beth Peterson
I think it's B.
Wendy Hurst
That is correct! The answer is B! The movie is called Her from 2013.
Beth Peterson
Wait, that's what I thought it was. Wow, okay, that made me feel good. Because I was like, I think that's her, but I'm not positive. Okay, I like it.
Wendy Hurst
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
That would be devastating. Like, in the real world, you've already been rejected by everyone, and then eventually the computer rejects you too, which is programmed to like you. Like, that sucks.
Beth Peterson
Yeah. I do think that I saw that movie probably around then and I found it to be really, really upsetting. I'm really bad about seeing a movie and not remembering a single bit of the plot points later. Tommy, my partner, will describe it to me and I'll be like, no, I didn't. I've never seen that. And he's like, yes, we have seen it. But I think that one stuck for me because I thought that movie was really, really devastating, devastatingly sad at its core. Yeah.
Wendy Hurst
Yes! At its core! How awful.
Here we go.
Taylor Corbett
I also like movie immediately, but I know if I liked it or not. And that's it.
Wendy Hurst
Okay, so you may or may not be really good at this game. We'll see.
Beth, question number two. Which of these was a real movie? Was it A, an AI powered doll goes rogue and turns into a murder influencer? B, a dating app becomes self-aware and begins ghosting everyone in real life? Or C, a team of engineers creates a holographic assistant that gets trapped in a PowerPoint presentation?
Beth Peterson
These sound ludicrous and also like something that a low budget film would absolutely be made for, but I think it's A.
Wendy Hurst
Correct, the answer is A. It's called Megan, spelled M and then the number three and then G-A-N from 2022. That's the limit of what I know about that one.
Beth Peterson
I have not seen that.
Taylor Corbett
So scary it scared the poop out of me. I'm afraid of dolls though. I don't know if it's an infant or it would be weird but it was a doll it's a doll that this kid gets and then they like the doll starts to protect it and kill everything that it thinks is upsetting the child including parents.
Wendy Hurst
Is it a murder influencer?
Beth Peterson
Yeah.
Okay, that's what I thought it was, but the only context I had was Peacock continuously trying to suggest I maybe wanted to watch this movie. And I was like, I don't, I don't. And it just kept starting the trailer over and over again. And I was like, make it stop. I don't wanna see this one. Like, how do I say not interested?
Wendy Hurst
When I hear murder influencer, I either think like influencing other people to murder or like an influencer that's like on Instagram or something. That's like, this murder is sponsored by fill in the blank company.
Taylor Corbett
Yeah.
Beth Peterson
Actually one of the most famous free speech lawsuits of all time related to whether or not a book about, I think, killing people could be considered convincing people to kill people. And it was like whether or not you can actually legally write a book like that and what happens in the aftermath if somebody uses it to do what they're not supposed to do.
I can't remember the corcus. That's like really deep in my brain, like from college. I just had a moment where I was like, wait, no, that's real, think. I think there was a real thing about that. We should cut that.
Wendy Hurst
Wow, that's heavy.
Taylor Corbett
I see why.
Wendy Hurst
Okay. All right.
Taylor Corbett
I'm gonna let the demon out.
Wendy Hurst
We're gonna go to question number three. That's cool. That's cool. I'm gonna still do questions for three for breath. All right. Last one, number three. Which one of these was a real movie? Was it A, a tech CEO clones himself via 3D printer, but the clone only understands memes. B, a virtual reality game sucks in its players and forces them to fight each other in a digital wasteland or C, A computer virus causes appliances to unionize and demand rights. Oh my God. I didn't read these in advance.
Beth Peterson
I'm gonna guess B, but I don't know.
Wendy Hurst
The answer is B, Ready Player One from 2018. Though technically it's not a wasteland, it's the digital survival theme. That's what it's called, but my. If A Computer Virus Causes Appliances to Unionize and Demand Rights was a movie, I would watch that.
Taylor Corbett
I'm saying future opportunities.
Beth Peterson
I would absolutely watch that. I'd be fascinated. Like, how would they collectively bargain? Tell me more about how this works.
Taylor Corbett
We'd have to pay a SaaS every month fee for using them. Like, you see the Black Mirror episode where like his wife dies and they're like, oh no, we can bring her back. And then it's like, they keep changing the SaaS level. So they have to keep paying more and more to get features.
Wendy Hurst
Ugh. That sounds terrible. That sounds like a nightmare.
Taylor Corbett
Yeah.
Beth Peterson
It does sound terrible.
Taylor Corbett
Yeah it was.
Wendy Hurst
Beth, you've got five points because you got all of those correct. You're at five points now. Taylor, you are at two points and you are up next. Are you ready? Here we go.
Taylor Corbett
Yeah.
Wendy Hurst
Which one of these was a real movie? Was it A, a man accidentally sells his soul to an AI assistant in exchange for the perfect productivity setup? B, a smart home traps its residents inside and tries to raise the family itself? Or C, A machine learning robot becomes addicted to cat videos and refuses to do its job.
Taylor Corbett
I'm guessing it's the Disney original Smart House.
Wendy Hurst
Correct, Smart House, Disney Original, 1999.
Beth Peterson
Yep. I was like, I've seen that movie. I was definitely seen that movie.
Wendy Hurst
Definitely, the special effects were just…terrible for 1999. Let's just be real. (laughs)
Number two! Which one of these was a real movie? Was it A. A tech worker downloads an AI workout coach that begins controlling his sleep schedule, diet, and relationships. B. A voice-controlled house tries to destroy its owner's life after being insulted during setup. Or C, A man has a chip implanted in his spine that takes over his body to get revenge on his wife's killer.
Correct! That's your C for the movie Upgrade in 2018.
Taylor Corbett
I've seen all of these movies and that is not how I describe them.
Wendy Hurst
That last one, like the real one, the answer one, it kind of feels like one of those like lifetime channel movies where they just like keep going and adding the drama. That's okay. Last one. Here we go. Which of these was a real movie plot? Was it A, a robotic vacuum cleaner becomes self-aware and starts emotionally manipulating its owner? B, a rogue AI is hired by a tech company as their CEO? Or C, A social media app rates people's popularity, which begins to affect their entire life, including housing, jobs, and social standing.
That's correct, the answer is C. It's from a show called Nosedive from Black Mirror in 2016. So technically it's part of a TV anthology, but it's often treated like a standalone film in cultural references. So even though it was kind of a trick question, you still got the answer.
Taylor Corbett
Weird AI stuff, I've watched it all, it fascinates me. But if A was a real movie, my dog would never let it happen, because he would kill it. He tries to kill the vacuum now.
Wendy Hurst
Amazing.
Beth Peterson
Yeah, that's fair.
Wendy Hurst
Easy, you just use a A pet influencer. Okay, it is a tie. Beth has five, Taylor has five. I do have a tiebreaker question. If you both get it right, then we end in a tie. Either one, like both of you get a chance to answer. You can get the same answer if you think that's the right answer. Here we go. Which one of these was a real movie plot? Was it A, a man plants a chip in his brain that lets him control electronics with his thoughts until it turns on him? B, A smart oven tries to gaslight its users by rearranging kitchen items at night. Or C, a biotech startup clones extinct insects that evolve into human sized predators in an office building.
Beth Peterson
Oh my god, this is a ridiculous list.
Wendy Hurst
These are hilarious!
Taylor Corbett
I'm gonna go C.
Beth Peterson
And me…I'll go A so we don't end on a tie.
Wendy Hurst
The answer is A! Beth gets the point. The movie is called Mind Gamers from 2015. A man implants a chip in his brain that lets him control electronics with his thoughts until it turns on him. But damn, I got to give chat GPT credit for B, which was basically a pun. A smart oven tries to gaslight its users by rearranging kitchen items. Come on.
Taylor Corbett
Wow.
Good call, Beth.
Beth Peterson
I could genuinely see that movie get made and it would be horrible, but it like, they would, I would watch it.
Wendy Hurst
It sounds like the makings of a cult classic, if I'm honest.
Final point count. Beth has six points. Taylor has five, which means Beth is the winner! Yay! Congratulations, Beth!
Beth Peterson
I feel so accomplished in this moment. Yeah, it's a really nice victory. I'm excited.
Wendy Hurst
As you should.
That's all for this episode of Ship It Anyway. Big thanks to Beth and Taylor for playing along and sharing their insights. If you enjoyed this episode, you can find more entertaining tech content from HeroDevs on LinkedIn, X.com, YouTube, and anywhere else podcasts can be found. We'll see you next time. Goodbye!
