We’re less than ONE WEEK away from World Certification Week 2023—so George B Thomas, owner of George B Thomas, LLC and longtime HubSpot Academy advocate, joins the show to walk us through the role HubSpot Academy has played throughout his career and life journey, and the impact he’s seen from achieving certifications by the dozens. We get into this year’s World Cert Week event, what his plan is, and his recommendations for others to approach it with intention. And knowing George has navigated...

The countdown to World Certification Week 2023 has begun! From May 15th through the 19th, HubSpot will donate five dollars for every certification awarded during that week to nonprofits dedicated to expanding access and opportunities for education around the world. So it makes sense that for this week’s episode, Penina Shtauber, a Director of Digital Marketing at ScaleOps, comes on the show to talk about her team leverages HubSpot Academy certifications to scale new hire onboarding efforts...

Rod Moynihan, CEO of B.A.C., joins the show to share insights from his years of experience sitting on both sides of the SaaS partnership table. He offers his perspective on what solutions partners need to operationalize to be ready to engage with corporate, enterprise, and upmarket buyers—and how they can “earn the right” to have a seat in those discussions. We discuss the importance of deeply understanding your customers, domain, and industry—and how those evolve from serving SMBs and...

Sam Anderson, CEO and cofounder of Origin63, joins the podcast to discuss her journey in becoming a technical consultant for upmarket HubSpot customers. Sam walks us through the team's original pivot to technical consulting services and how the needs of upmarket business change, become more specialized, and require thorough, post-implementation support. As Sam mentions, the actual implementation of technology is only 50% of the actual rollout—and successful change management is what truly...

Yamini Rangan, HubSpot’s Chief Executive Officer, joins the show to share her vision for the HubSpot solutions partner program, HubSpot’s own strategic objectives for 2023+, the opportunities ahead for solutions partners, and her recommendations for how partners can thrive in the ecosystem. We start by checking in with her original vision statement for the partner program from a few years ago—and get her take on how HubSpot and partners are doing in realizing that vision together. We then...

Jim Delaney, CEO of Traction.ai, who’s here to talk about his perspective on revenue operations, HubSpot’s Operations Hub, and the importance of a connected platform. We start with Jim’s definitions for both connection and revenue operations—and the relationship between the two. He also shares how businesses can self-evaluate when their business may be ready for RevOps support (or the types of questions partners should be asking to uncover the need). Jim also shares how he sells the value...

This week, we have on Dustin Brackett, CEO and Founder of Hive Strategy, and author of the brand new, just-released book “Market Like a Human”. In our conversation, Dustin explains what it means to "market like a human" and how a focus on quality over quantity can solve the problems prevalent today in marketing and sales strategies. We also talk about the crisis of disconnection and how Dustin’s methodology helps reestablish connection with your audience. He also shares how he thinks about...

This week, we have on both Connor Jeffers, Founder and CEO of Aptitude8, and Brandon Greer, Head of HubSpot Ventures, to discuss the launch of hapily. Last week, HubSpot announced an investment into A8 Labs, the app studio founded by Aptitude8, to launch as its own software company—which has now been rebranded as hapily. Brandon walks us through the history of HubSpot Ventures and his perspective on hapily’s addition into our investment portfolio. He shares what sort of criteria the team...

We're joined by Patrick Biddiscombe, CEO of New Breed, who just recently was announced as HubSpot’s North American Partner of the Year. Patrick joins the show to talk about New Breed’s shift from traditional marketing agency to a revenue performance management firm. He offers his perspective and definition of revenue performance management, what led to New Breed’s shift, and how it has impacted service offerings, ideal client profiles, prospecting and pipeline management processes, and his...

This week, we have Patrick Thorp, co-founder and CRO of Ebsta, on the podcast to discuss the move upmarket and the importance of deep, actionable sales and revenue intelligence. Patrick starts the episode with tips and tactics for go-to-market teams looking to effectively engage upmarket businesses, including moving from lead-based to account-based strategies, the importance of phone calls over emails (and other saturated channels), the right metrics for measuring productivity, and the value...

Katie Street, founder of Street Agency, comes on the podcast to explain that marketing is oftentimes the solution to a business’s sales problem. Katie starts off by explaining why, and how marketing (specifically, content and brand marketing) can meaningfully contribute to an org’s sales efforts. We also talk through, and unpack, the successful event-led strategy Katie and her team leverage, through both in-person and virtual, webinar-based events, to accelerate her sales efforts—and how...

This week, we’re joined by Paul Roetzer, founder and CEO of the Marketing AI Institute, who breaks down the emergence, and seemingly overnight sensation, of ChatGPT and how it’s set to disrupt agencies, services providers, and HubSpot solutions partners in 2023. Paul starts by explaining what ChatGPT and generative AI tools are, what they allow users to do, and how to design your prompts for the desired outputs. He then shares how AI tools like ChatGPT present an immense opportunity for...

This week, we’re joined by Emma Lynch, Managing Director and Founder of BBD Boom, who comes on to discuss her team’s growth through a successful apprenticeship program. Emma starts with where and how it started and carries us through what it looks like today. She shares what she looks for when seeking out a local college or university, and the things she finds make a good college partner. We discuss the programs and candidate pools, and effective ways for finding and selecting the right...

Stuart Balcombe, Product Marketer at Arrows, joins the podcast to discuss how organizations can run customer success functions in HubSpot and why it can be so valuable in delivering a connected customer experience. Stuart highlights the benefits of using HubSpot for customer success, including ease of process creation, cross-org visibility of data and the customer journey, efficiencies and opportunities automation, and more. We discuss customer-facing plans, what they are, their importance in...

Phil Vallender, Director of Blend Marketing, joins the show to discuss changing B2B buyer preferences and his team’s method for adapting. As Phil notes, buyers are attempting to remain as anonymous as possible, with a strong partiality for data privacy, the avoidance of cold calls and spam messages, and a general disinterest in a seller’s “lead nurturing events”. Phil offers his read on changing preferences and what his team does to enable buyers to self-serve through the buyer’s journey and...

Mandy Thompson, Founder and CEO of Digital Reach Online Solutions, joins the show to talk about both her approach to building a globally distributed team and a big bet the team is making on productizing the complex end of HubSpot services—like API integration deployment. Mandy starts with her approach to building global teams, including the human-centric principles the team anchors to, the methods for establishing a company culture, and how she drives accountability across the team. From...

Sean Katz and Carlos Pantoja, co-founders of Optima Solutions, joined the podcast to talk about improving sales performance, and accelerating sales velocity, with automations. They first set the scene on their ICPs, or ideal customer profiles—sharing the types of orgs, sales team sizes, org chart makeups, and key problem areas—that benefit most from their team’s automation services. We then get tactical, with Sean and Carlos walking us through which tasks and functions are prime for...

Nick Redding, Managing Director of Reddico, joins the show to talk about his organization’s journey to being certified as a B Corporation, or B Corp. As Nick explains, B Corps give as much consideration to their social and environmental impact as they do to their financial returns, and so he starts our conversation off with explaining what this means for Reddico, the process it takes to become eligible and then certified, and what about becoming a B Corp was attractive for his team. We also...

Ben Rubin, VP of Revenue at Remotish, joins the show to share his perspective on the age of the connected customer and the resulting big bets he sees his organization making as we prepare for 2023. Ben digs into the importance of human connection, and how it manifests itself in sales calls, client engagements, and hiring pipelines—citing that even in B2B communications and interactions, it’s human-to-human. He also digs into the value of a connected platform and access to data that covers the...

Dax Miller, Head of Product for A8 Labs, joins the show to talk about app development and the opportunities in front of solutions partners. He shares his thoughts on how partners should be thinking about, and leveraging, the app ecosystem as a conduit to sell more services and improve the value they bring to their clients—including use-cases and success stories A8 Labs has seen with other partners. Dax then shares his perspective and process for public app development—and whether more...

This week, HubSpot Academy’s own Kyle Jepson joins the show to talk about HubSpot admins. As HubSpot’s resident admin advocate, champion, Kyle shares his definition of a HubSpot admin, the responsibilities they own, and things they must know inside of HubSpot. Kyle talks through the differences between admins and solutions architects—and how he views the distinctions, contrasts, and overlaps between those two functions. And through that lens, he also shares what opportunities exist for...

Natalie Furness, CEO of Rev Ops Automated, joins the show to talk about revenue operations. Our conversation though starts with data, how triaging disjointed and unactionable datasets helps solve the crisis of disconnection spoken about from INBOUND22. We also talk about tech stack audits and consolidation—how she manages that process for clients, how it differs based on customer size, maturity, and complexity, and how it represents such a large opportunity for a quick, and significant return...

Coming to you from the partner space at INBOUND22, Karim Bouras, the founder of Nile, jumps on the show to share the big bets his team is making as we approach 2023 as a means of triaging the saturation and commoditization of inbound services. Karim highlights two major bets—first, specialization around an industry and a deep investment into the marketing strategy for this specific industry. Karim shares the channels in which he focuses his time to connect with these best-fit...

This episode was recorded LIVE from the Partner Hub at INBOUND22. Becky Murphy, Managing Director and co-founder of BabelQuest, joins the podcast to talk about the big bets her team is making as we approach 2023 as a means of triaging and saturation and commoditization of inbound services. Becky shares how she’s thinking about the channels and means of engagement her team is using for their next stage of growth. Specifically, she explains how formalized partnerships with complementary...

Today, we have on Justin Graci, Principal Marketing Manager at HubSpot. Justin is responsible for a number of enablement initiatives for our solutions partner community, and today, he previews the exclusive solutions partner experience at INBOUND. Justin starts by explaining why INBOUND is such a special and exciting event for partners specifically, walking us through opportunities available for networking, knowledge sharing, prospecting, and delighting clients. He shares how our partners can...