George B. Thomas and his #HubSpot Journey | Mark Kilens

Who is George B. Thomas?

Yeah. Yeah.

By night, I'm just George Thomas. Trust me, my wife, my children, they don't call me George B. Thomas. But by day on the Interwebs, George B. Thomas is just a simple inbound marketing Jedi who works for the sales line. Sidekick to Marcus Sheridan, co host of the Hubcast podcast.

How did you find Inbound? Or how did Inbound find you?

Ah, yeah, I would actually say inbound found me. So in 2012, HubSpot did a classic inbound marketing deal with the world's largest webinar. We had never heard of HubSpot. All of a sudden, there was this contest. If you watch this webinar, they would pick a top amount of people to give free tickets. Our social media guy, his fingers were on fire, tweeting out the hashtag. We ended up winning tickets, and we took a journey to Boston for the first time.

So you've been to a lot of the inbound events? We do, yeah. It happens every single year.

Yeah.

You guys should. You folks should come.

You really should.

Please come. What's been one of your most favorite moments at the inbound events in 2015?

I knew it was time to come up to the HubSpot Academy table and just really show, as hard as it was like, not to get emotional, to show my gratitude for changing my life and my family's life.

You got emotional.

I did.

I will never forget that special moment I think a few of us had together. Some Academy folks that you've known and really grown to know over the last few years, Describe that moment.

Well, first of all, my heart was racing, but I knew that you guys put in an obnoxious amount of work. And I know humans were very bad at saying thank you, especially when there's that digital screen in between us. And so I just felt like it would be easy as a HubSpot Academy professor to get burnt out, to wonder why we're doing this. And I wanted everybody just to realize I or you are why you guys are doing this. And so I guess I was trying to add a little fuel to your fire so that the academy would be like, let's do it.

We have a purpose on the team. We have a guiding purpose. And it's to educate and inspire people.

Yes.

And when you came over at Inbound in 2015, it made that so real for us. It really did. And, yeah, it's. I still get a little emotional about it now, just about. Cause I was a homespot customer back in 2009, and the economy was as you know, bad in 2009 and I was nervous for my life to some degree because I just got out of College in 2007, almost decided to go to grad school. Thank goodness I didn't do that because I would have left grad school with some debt and probably no job prospects. But luckily I was able to use HubSpot at the company before I joined HubSpot and I saw the impact it had on me. And then to see that same thing from someone who I never met before 2013 and really just through online interactions because you attended all the webinars was just so, I don't know, gratifying.

Yeah.

One thing that you just said that I think we need to capture is that you talked about getting additional education and that you'd be going in debt. What everybody sitting out there needs to realize that over four years of time and you may be able to do it faster. If you're watching this, do it faster. But over four years of time, I've been able to give myself an education that has changed my life for free. For free. The HubSpot Academy should monetize. No, they shouldn't. It should be free. But you see what I'm saying, there are colleges out there that, that don't teach as much about how to market and sell in 2017, 18, 19 moving forward than the HubSpot Academy does.

Can you explain to me how you now going from five years ago, wild boy, you have clients, commitments, you're maybe lacking some of the education and resources to really do that well. And I'm sure that might have straight on you.

Yeah, absolutely.

Family to like now how your family has changed just because of what you've been able to do with this now, you know, new education and this new passion and this whole new life basically.

Yeah.

Mark, the best way for me to explain this is that five years ago I felt tied down. I felt tied down to a building, I felt tied down to a job. I was down for the hustle, I was down for the grind. Right. I didn't mind putting in the 50, 60 hours, but I didn't realize to the detriment of my family what was happening there. Now we live a completely different life. It used to be about can there be some type of work life balance? Work life balance is bullcrap. It just is. It's life. And we're able to now live life. And what I mean by that is let's a look. Take, take this summer. This summer I will go on business trips. My kids will not be in School. My kids will go on my business trips with me. We will hop in a van. I will go out and give HubSpot intensive training workshops, video workshops, sales workshops. They're gonna get to go along with dad. They're gonna go see things. Like last summer, they went to Hershey, Pennsylvania, while I was doing a workshop. This year, they came to Boston while I was speaking inbound. And so the family is not at home wondering, where's dad at? The family is enjoying the ride.

Right.

Because what we all need to realize is it's the journey that we're on. We only got one journey. And so I choose because of the education, because of where I'm at with HubSpot inbound and the sales line and working for Marcus Sheridan, to be able to just live life with flexibility and freedom and never do I feel tied down.

What did you do and what advice would you give the folks listening now to do what you did over the course of four years? How should they approach this learning of inbound?

Yeah.

The first thing I want to do, Mark, is I want to give back to everybody who's trying to do this. I don't think it should take four years. And so one of my favorite parts of my inbound 2016 talk was. Was actually presenting a set of slides that I worked on, and I was like, here it is. I'm gonna lay it out for them. I'm gonna give them a roadmap. Literally, a roadmap. So there's a slide that you see where I talk about, if you're a marketing professional, here's the five certifications that you should take and the time that is allotted. I believe it's 21.5 hours to become marketing. Just guru, right?

Yeah.

I also did a sales roadmap. It's 19.5 hours. And then the last slide after that was, here's how you become world class. It's nine certifications. It's 42 hours. 42 hours. What. What took me four years to accomplish? If you just sat down, like. Like, look, if you're sitting here watching this and you're unemployed right now, in 42 hours, you could dramatically be, like, a thought leader in the inbound space. Because HubSpot Academy has that. Because we've set up at the sales line and in this inbound talk, roadmaps for marketing, sales, and then the world class roadmap.

That's awesome. We're really trying to democratize education.

Yeah.

Here at Hubsbug Academy. And I'm just so thankful that it's Impacted you. That impact has really come through for you and that you can now take the impact we've had on you and spread that to others.

That's my goal.

And that's like, that's my goal to help others spread the movement, spread the impact. You're also one of very few people that we've actually here at HubSpot Academy accredited as a trainer.

Yeah.

Has that helped?

Oh, it's funny because, you know, if you get in front of a crowd of people and you can say, hey, I'm George B. Thomas, I've got these certifications. I'm also one of about 40 people on the planet who is a HubSpot accredited trainer. And people will be like, oh, accredited. So it has helped. And it's. It's a great thing, right? It's almost an elite status.

Yeah, right.

But again, you work hard for that elite status. Like, you gotta. You gotta know. You gotta know.

You know, Right?

So it's been, it's been fun and it's been helpful and you got to apply.

You said it's gonna take about 42 hours. I think that's exactly right, actually, folks. But how would you recommend people actually try this stuff?

Yeah.

Should they just learn it all and then try it?

No.

Should they just, you know, what's the approach?

No, no, no, it's not. So here's what you can't do. You can't watch all the videos to take a test and have a certification and not have done something like, you have to be. You have to have a playground.

Right?

HubSpot, I love it. They either say you have to drink your own Kool Aid or eat your own dog food, which one is cool and one's slightly gross, but it is what it is. So you should learn a strategy and then go pull off the levers and the buttons inside of HubSpot to actually be able to do that. The other thing that I'll say, and we haven't talked about this at all today, is along with the HubSpot Academy educational piece, is HubSpot projects. I mean, come on. Like here we're gonna educate you and we're gonna give you the steps so that you can be successful with the education. I mean, why doesn't the Academy just come to your business and do your marketing for you? Like, that's what they're doing from afar.

There'd be no fun in that, though.

There wouldn't be because you couldn't learn and then you couldn't become, like, the best you you can be.

Exactly yeah, you gotta grow. And it's all about growth. Growth for people at those businesses or folks wanting to join a business that does stuff with inbound or HubSpot or would like to do things with inbound and HubSpot. But then also the business is going to grow. As the people grow, others grow, and then the business can grow.

Like, look, Mark, man, it is totally about that, right? You're sitting in an office and you realize if I educate myself in this manner, the people around me are going to change, the business is going to change, the business changes, the community changes, the community changes, the world changes. It goes back to 2012, where, like, if you want to do business in a better way, if you want to make the world a better place, start with the most important thing. Yourself.

Amazing. Any final thing you want to say to everyone that's listening right now?

Yeah.

So last thing I'll say is, my kids have coined a phrase for me. It's called orangitis. And orangitis is this disease that you feel like you need to get every certification that this little orange sprocket puts out. And so if you're sitting there and you don't have the inbound certification, the HubSpot certification, the email, the contextual, I could go on and on and on, figure out where to start. Look at the roadmap that I provided in the talk, and just do it. Just like, the only way that you're gonna win the game is move the first piece.

Commit.

Absolutely.

Thank you, George.

You bet, Marcus.