HubSpot Is Now a Customer Platform ... But What the Heck Does That Mean? [HubHeroes, Video EP88]

No, we don't need that. Also, by the way, before. Before I get into the actual true intro, ladies and gentlemen, the chat pane. Can I just say, first of all, Chad, he says. Can I just say that after a difficult week, I always love coming to sit to the live recording of the Hub Heroes podcast. This is a place where I can really enjoy a great conversation between leaders in the industry and relax while still growing as a working professional. Chad, can we just please get that as an actual testimonial and put it on the Hub Heroes podcast page? Also, Max, he says, where's the croutons and the racing wheel, exclamation mark. He wants to know.

He wants to know. He wants.

Which, by the way, if you're watching this live and you're like, croutons, go back, watch a historical episode. It's a whole crouton episode. So I'm.

I'm participating live and I'm like, croutons?

Yeah, croutons. So, okay, let's go ahead and get into the. The real deal holy field. So we've been talking a lot over the past few months about how the HubSpot platform has changed. I mean, we've been going at this conversation from a number of different angles, if you will. We've talked about the rollout of the new content hub and what that means for the future of HubSpot as a CMS platform for business. We've even talked about how the inbound methodology has evolved over the years, both due to advancements in technology and global events, as well as added complexities around what the customer experience with your brand should look like. But what has been very interesting about the messaging of HubSpot is a subtle shift in how they are talking about what HubSpot itself is. You see, for many of us, HubSpot began as an inbound marketing platform. Then it was for marketing and sales, and HubSpot began as this, like, you know, growth marketing and sales platform. And if I'm honest, I could just say, and so on and so on and so on and so forth to the place that we're at now with all the hubs that we have, they started even pushing this idea of grow better as a battle cry for businesses. And because it's not just about making money, growth should be sustainable and should be a result of creating genuine value, you know, solving real problems, not those imagined ones that some of us maybe see other organizations creating noise and nonsense around. It's about genuinely being of service to the humans. That's right. I got it. In right in the intro through education and whatever it is that we do or sell. Now we've all recognized that these changes have occurred, but it's only recently that HubSpot has put a more defined label that represents the shift. They now call themselves a customer platform. And this is a much broader and more holistic term than we've ever heard used before. What makes this even more interesting is that in many ways HubSpot has expanded to provide automation tools and internal 4 internal teams. Now perfect example of this are the Commerce Hub and the operations Hub. Hubs that on their surface do not seem to be customer facing. And yet here we are with HubSpot and the customer platform. And Chris, as you know, I talked about this in the super admin training today for over 90 minutes of the the Commerce hub and how it kind of fits into customer experience, customer platform and things like that. So what is this subtle shift in how we talk about HubSpot, what it is really mean and what is a customer platform anyway? Why does understanding this language matter and how will this shift what we think about HubSpot as we go forward? That's exactly what we're going to be talking about today with one of our favorite friends of the podcast, Chris. Carolyn. Hey, today. That's right. Give us some applause. Max, today. We're thrilled to have you here. Chris. Let me just tell if the viewers listeners don't know, from what I've gathered, you're a seasoned expert in the industrial marketing and revenue growth. Chris is also the founder or co founder and head of revenue at Conveying your message, an agency dedicated to helping industrial and manufacturing companies thrive in the digital age. 15 years of experience, I think I saw 15 HubSpot certifications over there too. And you have a unique background that spans material quality control, analytical instrument sales and digital marketing. So I guess that makes you not just a marketer but he's a problem solver I think too. Do you like to solve problems?

I do, yeah, I do.

And you know the intricacies of HubSpot and the industrial business that. Chris, is there anything that I should have added or I missed in your intro to so people know a little bit about you.

I mean all that to say I have been waiting for HubSpot to serve this whole platform role effectively ever since 2017 when they started rolling out sales hub and service hub. And you know, but in your intro when you say it's not just about the revenue and cash anymore, it's actually never been about the revenue inside of HubSpot until you had access to something like commerce Hub. Right now we can actually see and feel it because I can tell you on the outside of the marketing and sales department, when people are working in accounting systems and ERPs, I don't care what your deal says for closed one amount, that doesn't matter to me. Now we can bring that stuff in. We can start bringing those teams in. It is a great, great time to be using HubSpot and I love it.

I love that. So, Chris, I'm actually going to start with you because as everybody now knows, the topic of Today's podcast is HubSpot as a customer platform. And I want to know what. Why are you excited to talk about this topic? Because one could say that it's, well, it's a label or HubSpot is creating a category. But why is this important? Why are you excited to have this conversation today?

Man, I bet Max has never in his life been in the role of the man, right?

The man who's the man.

But in the case of what a customer platform is versus the DNA of the ecosystem being very point solution and it's the marketing tool, right? When I hear Max say things like, you know, but you could use it for, for just, you know, emailing people if you wanted to. Knowing that Max prides himself on customer satisfaction and setting expectations. I'm not sure that we can tell people anymore that. You can just use it for one thing.

Hold on.

For emails like, what's happening?

Hold on, you're gonna get smacked in the face. Told me it's okay. Then I ever said it's okay to just use it for email. Chris, do you have any idea how much I fought that battle when I was doing implementations? And people are like, we got to send a newsletter. And I'm like, what the you doing? No, you know, I'm not okay with that.

Do I have to separate the beards?

I love them. This is why I can talk this way because this is my boy right here.

You've been hitting on this several times and for good reason, because we're running into this stuff all the time now. Bad onboardings, just bad expectation setting because a lot of people just aren't familiar with what customer platform means. And like, hey, when you're. You still can buy HubSpot and people will sell you HubSpot just to do. Yes, emailing or sales, right?

There's a problem there because sales reps, I love them. HubSpot sales reps, I love you.

I love how you looked at the camera for that piece Right there.

Love you, baby. Love you. Anyway, so the, the. There is a problem, and it's. I don't think it's because of, of how HubSpot sales reps are. They're the ones that sell the product, right. But their incentive is to say, what's the specific problem that you have? Yeah, we can solve for that. Do you want to buy it? Not what's the specific problem that you have? Yeah, totally, we can do that. But like, you also do all this other stuff. You should be super excited about it. Make sure when you get it that you're also doing this to get the most out of the thing that I'm selling you to accomplish your basic thing. Right? And it, it takes a certain type of person that can see that and get other people super jazzed up about it and excited. But the sales rep's job is to get the deal over the, over the hump and get the close one. Right. The thing that gets problematic with that, and I suffered of this when I was a solutions engineer because I was the guy that came in that said, yeah, sure, you could do all this stuff, but like, there's so much more you can do with it that you're not even thinking about. The problem with that is that gets them overthinking it, right. And slowing deals down. In this economy, companies don't want to do that. Right. So it's, it's. It's tough feeling too, is like HubSpot sales reps, they don't understand the depth of the. Sorry, most of them, especially newer ones, right. I've played with this thing a lot. Right. You know, don't understand, like the depth of what you can actually do with the thing. Right? Because how can it just. The hugest tool of all time, you cannot expect the sales rep to come and be like, I know what every single corner of this thing can do. So it's hard to expect them to be able to do that. Like someone who's been consulting you for a long time and sees the bigger value of it. Right. And you compound that with. Your job is to close pipeline, and you need to do that in the fastest, most efficient way possible. That means it's going to leave it up to folks like us to get them to expand their mind on it. Right. It's. It's hard to do the sales process unless you have partner guiding you through the first initial purchase of HubSpot that can see the forest through the trees. See that? Oh, you came to be saying you wanted to send a newsletter, but like that is the last thing you should be thinking about, right? This, all this other stuff, you know, so it's a weird dynamic, but, like, I agree with you. But that's like, what's causing that, you know what I mean? Yeah.

So I love this idea of expanding their mind and expanding the knowledge, which, by the way, as I asked this next question, I am going to. There's there, there are some amazing words that happen in the chat pane, and I'm so happy that now, because of some updates to the platform that we use, we can share it with the audience. Chad says the cash hitting da bank is king, by the way. So everybody can jot that down in your notepad. But, but here's the thing. This is for all of us, but I'm going to ask the question. Maybe Chris, you go, Max, then you go. And then I'll follow up on this one. And that's that when, when we hear the term, and maybe we go from the angle when we hear it or when customers hear it, HubSpot customers or potential HubSpot customers, the term customer platform, in your mind, what does that actually mean? So, Chris, you go first, and then Max, you can follow up.

The customer platform is the place where your customer processes start and end.

Damn. Just that.

And that's it. Okay, I'm, I, this is tough because.

You guys are going to probably cook me because you're the, you guys are the customer.

That's what makes a good show, right? That's what makes it.

You guys are going to yell at me so much. I, I, I don't know. Right? Because, like, the thing, there's part of my brain that's just like, is this like a new term that we're, we're, we're trying to come up with to make it seem more special than a CRM system, which it is, obviously, right? Because it's like, you know, the most basic example is like, when is the tool that builds your website also powered by your CRM? Like, no one else does that. At least that I know of. Right?

Yeah.

And part of, part of your customer's whole, like, experience. And you know, experience isn't in the word customer platform. Right. So I almost think there's, like, some ways that that terminology hurts it versus helping it. Right? Because you got to remember, like, you got to keep up with what customers are actually calling this thing, Right. They're looking for a CRM system, right. It goes, well, we're not a CRM, we're a customer platform. And that might make people think about it on like a nuanced level, go. And that's not what I'm looking for. I got a CRM. Right. The other thing you got to think about too is like where your customer processes start and end. I like that because I think you're 100% right. But the question is, is like, are you doing anything differently now that it's a customer platform versus like what it has been? And I think, I don't know if they call themselves a CRM or if they've officially kind of changed the name to customer platform yet, but it's, it's not so much like, oh, well, you're still doing all the stuff that you're doing in HubSpot today, but we're calling it a customer platform. So like, what does that really change? Nothing. I think it helps change the mindset of the users though, which I think is incredibly important. Right, because it gets them out of the idea of like, oh, this is a tool our team, our sales team uses to log their opportunities. Right. And it gets them more to the mindset of you create the entire experience journey processes all of it within one system and it touches all these things that need to be touched, right? Your customer service and success process, your whole sales process, how your marketing team is operating, all that kind of stuff, plus the outward facing stuff that your customers are experiencing. Your website, any sort of web experience that you create, all this kind of stuff, it touches everything, right? So I just don't, I don't know because like I remember for a while ago, like I remember hearing Dharmesh talk about it, right? Where he's like, you're going to see HubSpot move from customer relationship management system to a customer data platform, right? That was the kind of big CDP, right? And there are other CDPs out there. Like that is a category, right? But a lot of it is like, you know, really high performance data store and like, you know, tracking a billion different like events and plugging all these other things that are feeding stuff into it and stuff like that. But it's not a CRM like HubSpot is, right. It's more like data housing and using that data and how you get it different places and sucking in and you know, all that kind of stuff. Yeah. So like that didn't describe HubSpot, I don't think. Even though that was also when the whole conversation of like, you're all on one platform thing was also kind of getting out there. Right. And then, so when you think customer platform, I get it. I, I sure Think you could call it that. And that describes it. But the question is, does the outside world understand what that means? They've already had a tough enough time wrapping their heads around what HubSpot is today. Right. So I'm not sure. I don't have wild opinion on it.

So there's a couple things and I love, by the way, I personally, Max, am not gonna cook you. We'll see if Chris decides to still cook you after this. But here's the thing. There's so much that I love about what there's. There's so much. I know he was kind of going for you. It was like in the right corner. Beard number one. Yeah. So here's the thing. There's so much that I love about what you were talking about. One, you're right. Originally there was words like customer data platform being thrown out there. Those already exist, by the way. There's already customer experience platforms. Those exist. So the fact that we slimmed it down and it's just a customer platform, I love this idea. I love the terminology. And Max, to your statement of we, they don't know what it is. Sweet. That's why Chris, myself, and other HubSpot partners are making it a venture to actually educate people what a customer platform is. Hence why we Even started a HubSpot user group that is around customer platform. So literally, you can go to YouTube, you can go look at the first HubSpot user group that we had where it was like a conversational group. We were really talking about what the heck is a customer platform. And Max, the thing that I love most about that, you are rattling around in your brain. And I was like thinking of you historical episodes and Devon historical episodes, because you brought up the whole, well, I'm looking for a CRM, but it's not a CRM. No, no. It's a customer platform that has a CRM, a cms, and all of these other AI assisted by AI tools.

Right.

So it's literally the launching pad for the things that you can talk about that it is. But what I think it being called customer platform helps is this problem right here, recreating your historical platform in HubSpot, because now what happens is you're not mentally thinking CRM to CRM, so let's make it just be what we had. But in here, you're not thinking email to email. So let's just make what happened there over here, you're literally saying, as an organization, if it's positioned right, if it's educated on right, we're moving From a. And I'm using air quotes for all of you that can't watch this and are listening. A dumb CRM to a smart customer platform. We're moving away from a dumb CMS air quotes. Air quotes to a smart customer platform.

Right.

And we are moving to a customer data platform. We are moving to a customer experience platform, but it just happens to be called the HubSpot customer platform platform. So there are actually so many good nuggets in what you were saying. And I'm like, yep, yep, yep. So Chris, what were your thoughts?

Yeah, like one of the reasons I'm so passionate about like, okay, it's going to be customer platform. Let's try to define it is I got lucky a little bit after inbound when I first became aware of this phrase that they had it. You know, it's one of. It's one of those casual, like slide ins. We're going to start. We're changing what HubSpot is as a category now. But I got to be on this AMA with Andy Petrie and there was only like five people on the call, so it's like face to face. And I just got to ask him like, why, like what's the plan?

Wouldn't that be a. Aaa Ask Andy anything.

Yeah, there you go.

I like that.

I didn't mean to interrupt you. Go ahead. So I'm cooking.

I'm cooking he yourself. And he said like, it was very purposeful. You're not. It's not a CRM anymore. I'll say outside of the usual spaces, Max, you say CRM. CRM doesn't have a lot of street cred, you know, in some of the manufacturing spaces. So I'm fine with not trying to play that game. Especially when you have ERPs and Monday.com and everybody's a CRM all of a sudden.

Yeah. I like what Nick said in the chat, though. Serum is a noun. It's not a verb or isn't a noun. It's a verb. Right. Where it's like it's something you do. Customer relationship, man. You manage customer relationships in it. And I think you still do that if it's a customer platform. Like that's the action you're performing when you do any of that stuff. Right. But you know. Yeah. Anyway, I'm not. My brain trailed off then because of.

Who I try to serve. I'm constantly trying to protect HubSpot from, you know, these other systems that say they are CRMs or do customer management or whatever. Like ERPs especially. And what's been successful is basically if you're using CMS or not. Right. If you're not using CMS and it's not contextualizing your website, then it is a customer communication platform that you're using. Because I haven't seen anything yet. I haven't heard of anything that can touch HubSpot when it comes to true communication management across all internal and external stakeholders.

Right.

If you add CMS on top now, it is a customer experience, you know, management platform and that seems to like get the attention because the next step and what I realized early on is like if I can't get the CEO of C Suite to understand what HubSpot can be for their business, they, they can't stop looking at it from a quick wins perspective. And it's like, oh great, we, we saved this, we saved the sales team some time. Oh, we got, we got to sen email blasts. Like that's where it's like at that point, it is a point solution accessory tool that is not integral to the business. And if I can get them on board and they usually make it there to this customer process because like we can use like customer process or CRM, like marketing automation, like all these different terms. But for the people that don't, that aren't in SaaS and don't know a lot of this stuff, if you say define your customer process, they will always be able to answer that question. Yeah, right. If you try to go like how do you manage your CRM or customer relationships or like it just adds a lot of different stuff to it and that's what you know. So that's where I've had success like understanding that it can be a bunch of things. So I do think it's the challenge. Like there is nothing out there called like customer platform only. And that's why like I love the path and that's where it is our, it's on us to, to define it.

So this is, this is. So what's interesting here is like I think, you know, if you're someone who's selling HubSpot and I think this is more for like a partner to do because I don't know if direct reps are going to like do this just because the nature of what their metrics look like, they have to close pipeline, right. And they have to do it fast in complicated, frictionless way. Right. But like I think getting people to see the bigger picture, right. It's the conversation that needs to happen is it's not what's ailing you right now. Right. It's like, oh, I, you know, I cut my finger, right? Well, what you need is a band aid, but I'm going to sell you a whole hospital, right, that has a band aid in it. That's not great, right? But I think what you need to be asking folks is more so regardless of the software you use, take software out of the, out of the conversation, right? What's like the long term goal for the business and what's stopping you from getting there, right? Because it's what's stopping them from getting there is not like the sales reps hate sending the same email over and over again. And so we have this thing called stipits, right? It's, this is where we want to get the business to. And here's all the things in between that are stopping that from happening. And when you know what that is, right, Then it's easier to get to someone to be like, okay, all those things you just described that are gonna, that are impeding you in your progress down the yellow brick road to like get to this ultimate place you want to be.

Oh, we're going to Oz.

All right.

This platform solves for all of those, right? Sure. Your, your sales reps need to be more efficient. Like whatever it is, great. But like if, if you want to be able to sell someone the vision of what a customer platform can do and what HubSpot can do as a whole versus just saying I've got this point solution inside of this gigantic solution that solves a million other things, right? When you only need that point solution piece, they're never going to get the full value or see the full picture, get the full understanding of it, right? So a lot of times, like how you frame the conversation problem with sales reps is they're not going to do that. They can't do that like that. That just slows everything down for them and it makes it really, really tough. So they have to do the let me sell you a hospital to fix the cut on your finger instead of just the band aid, right? Or disguise the hospital as a band aid, which is impossible, right?

And it, and it's interesting, Max, you say sales reps, but my mind this time when you said that and it hadn't historically done this, sales reps could make mean HubSpot sales reps. Sales reps could mean actual partners who have sales reps who are trying to do demos. So, so like this isn't just a HubSpot problem. This now becomes a ecosystem problem because it threads out through the partner ecosystem and conversations as well, okay. Okay. So I want to. I want to dive what I'll think is a layer deeper because my question, and it's kind of a two part question, but really the main point is the last question I'm going to ask, and that's like, does seeing HubSpot as a customer platform now, opposed to whatever we thought it might be before, mean anything? And what I'm really asking in that is, does this mindset shift from what we thought it was to now it's a customer platform? Does it translate into any increased ROI of any kind?

I know a cool app you made recently that does not. Oh, does it? Yeah, it was pretty sick. So wait, I'm trying to like, Chris, if you have thoughts on this, go. Because I'm trying to understand fully the question because I hate talking about ROI in every way possible. Nothing's a perfect.

That's it.

That's the problem. Like roi. And this is a part of this challenge. ROI is one of the hardest. Like, it's always the thing that, like black and white, it's like, oh, yeah, this is like 10x or you're gonna cut it by 10. It's like on paper, like, especially before this, like seat pricing change where like, it was no contest. Almost anytime you compared HubSpot to Salesforce straight up, it was like, you're gonna save a bunch of money. Like, why are we even talking about this? But roi, since it's not easily like, it requires calculation. So inherently it's just a harder conversation to have because everybody views return and investment differently. Yes, but.

And it's sometimes stuff you can't put into a math equation. That's the problem.

And that's where like, one of my favorite places to go, that that should work. And it just, it doesn't. For all the. A lot of the reasons that we're talking about is like payment links. Right. Everybody that is a HubSpot user has access to this tool.

Yep.

For free. If they're willing to use HubSpot payments and Stripe. Or stripe. Right. And I was testing this back in 2021 and I got CFO approval immediately. Right. But I had to start talking to the financial team, which like 95% of the ecosystem is not used to doing. And they actively try to avoid exactly when. Because I had to tell them, I was like, hey, I'm not asking for a whole sale process change here. This is what's going to happen. We're going to get like 10 extra transactions. And this person who does reconciling at the end of the month has one extra statement. It's going to take her five minutes to reconcile. Yeah. If we do this, we are satisfying our sales team who is tired of quoting these simple parts, our service teams, who's tired. These processes take days. It's going to impact, you know, resell metrics, upgrade all the goals that we say that we have. Right for this tool that we already have access to, right for free. And that's where like. And that's the difference. That's why I think Commerce Hub is so impactful and why it's actually different now. Because that would, that revenue clarity was not in HubSpot. It just wasn't. And that automatically reduced the value of HubSpot to everybody after closed one. Right. So that is a difference. But you know, kind of bringing everybody in. It's like the same people that are asking customer facing teams to work out of an ERP like that should click right away. It's like, oh, they get to work out of HubSpot instead. Of course there's time, effort, ROI there, but it just never works the way that we want it to. Right?

Yeah, well, yeah, I mean, kind of like Chris said is like I always thought the ROI conversation is. So it's not, I don't want to call it pointless, but I always just think it's silly. It's a trap. Yeah. But you know, again, some people, when they say, well, what's the ROI of HubSpot? They literally mean how much more money am I going to make, right? Base, you know, compared to what am I spending on this thing. And it's like, how, how the hell should a, should a sales rep have any, really anyone have like any sort of authority to answer that question? Because like you, like, how am I supposed to know how well you use the thing, right? How am I supposed to know, you know, the future, right? Like what happens if things outside of it happen in like you know, that you can't help spot, can't control, all of a sudden you can't sell anything. Right. We had something happen recently that probably threw off a lot of people's ROI production, right? Called the pandemic. Right. Like it's so goofy because I could never feel like genuine answering that question because I'd be lying to someone, right? And you know this. And even too, like, I just felt like when I got asked him, I, the majority of people that would ask me that question, when they would just say, what's the ROI of HubSpot? It's like, do you even know what you're asking, you know what I mean? Like, do you literally mean, like, because. Because to ask that question means I know how much more money this person should know how much more money my reps and my folks and my whatever is going to generate in the future, right? Which, sorry, no one's a psychic, doesn't exist, right? Like, so it's just such a goofy question and then on. But, like, what Chris said too, I would have people that say, what's the ROI of HubSpot? And I'm like, oh, well, it can give you, like, the HubSpot marketing, like, ROI calculator on the website, which is just like, don't get me wrong, well designed, totally beautiful, really cool. But like, idiot falling for that. Like, only an idiot is falling for that, right? And someone who doesn't really care about the genuine, like, what can we do that could be really great with this thing? It's like, oh, I got to justify it to people that are asking what the ROI is because it's a question you got to ask to check the. The box, right? And the other thing too. So like, sometimes, like, wait, are you asking for ROI from like a money in, money out, this much more increase, whatever perspective? Or are you saying is. Is like, what is the return to you? What is the investment? What does that mean? Is the investment literally what you're paying for the software, or is it in the investment in the time and the effort and the. Whatever it takes to get it to do something and is return more. Oh, well, now you can do this, this thing easier or better or more efficient or you can communicate with people in a different. Is that the return or we talking? I hate the conversation so much. And maybe it's because I'm too stupid to understand that I am totally okay with that being the case. Right? I failed all my accounting classes in college, but I just, I. It's so cringe because there's no way I could give you a genuine answer. And I don't lie to people. I don't. And it's like, I couldn't do that part of the sales process because it's just like, I know it's all, you know, bull. It's, it's whatever. But I don't know.

I'm so, so it's funny because I, I love where you guys went with this. And I'm gonna go ahead and just kind of what you all. What both of you have been dancing around is this idea of ambiguity, right? And, and so here's the thing. What's the ROI of A football in my hands. Not much. Walter Payton, Tom Brady. A metric butt ton. A metric. I did it for you, Max. A metric butt ton of ROI. What's the ROI of HubSpot in your hands or mine? Yeah, because in my hands there's going to be a lot of ROI in your hands depending on who you are and how long you've been using the system and what you know from tactics, strategies and building relationships. I don't know how to answer that, but. So we got to be careful because I agree there's this level of ambiguity. However, what I will say is that when I think about HubSpot and when I think about this transition to customer platform and I think of return on investment, where my brain has gone for years when I hear that is I am with you too. I hate roi, but I love ROR return on relationships. And here's the thing, the customer platform will allow you to build better relationships because you're going to be focused on creating better experiences for what HubSpot is calling the customer platform. But I today am standing out on a mountain and letting you know that it's a human platform.

Right?

It's a human platform that you're going to use to build relationships which then you're going to actually drive more revenue and then you can say, woo wee. We got a lot of ROI out of that, their HubSpot customer platform. That's how this is going to go. All right, so the other thing though that I want to hit upon is Chris, you talked about and dude, you went right by it, like just threw it out there and kept on rolling. You started to have conversations with humans that you hadn't historically had to have conversations with the finance department. This goes into. I have been talking, Max, I think the first time I said it was like a couple months ago on one of our podcast episodes. Stop using HubSpot like it's HubSpot because it's not HubSpot anymore. It is a different beast.

It's like your granddaddy's HubSpot.

This ain't your granddaddy's HubSpot. So what I want to lead into is where does your guys brains go in terms of how the idea of HubSpot customer platform shifts our mindset of how we think about and more importantly how we use HubSpot. Because now we start to, in our mind, think about it as a customer platform that happens to have a cms, that happens to have a data platform that happens to have a CRM, that happens to have service sales and marketing tools in it. Like, what. What are the changes in the brain that need to happen?

I'm gonna let Matt get this one right first.

The changes in the brain, I think, like, it's. Dude, you know how many people that I've talked to that have just been stuck in the Salesforce universe that still just think HubSpot's a marketing tool? Right? That's the thing. People won't be able to wrap their head around customer platform because they. They. They forgot everything. They didn't see everything HubSpot turned into. Right. So it's easier for people who have been in the ecosystem and watched this for a long time, right. And go brick by brick. This thing is being able to be a lot more than just like a marketing tool.

It's easy.

It's the.

Who is it easy for? I'm not seeing anybody. No, I'm just saying the people that.

I'm talking. Dude, I'm talking about the people that, like, follow this and like, lick. Lick the screen every time Kyle drops a new video. You know what I mean?

Those people, they're saying it's easier for those.

It's easier for those people than the folks who've been living in the. In the big blue cloudland forever and just think, this is the thing that makes lead show up in my Salesforce. Right? Obviously, like, it's going to be easier for those. And the thing that I think of Salesforce is gigantic. I feel like there's a lot more people in that category then a lot more, you know, people who look at the product updates page and like, check it first thing every morning when they're having their. Their. Like there's a total difference between those folks. I'm just saying it's easier. I'm not saying you got it all figured out. Right. But they're at least people that have paid attention. Attention to the evolution of this thing versus people that could be great users of HubSpot and could be great champions of HubSpot, but they've existed in the world that has told them for years. This is just like the marketing tool. It's kind of better than Marketo or Pardot or whatever. Right? And they don't know what has happened over here while they've been living in Salesforce the entire time and just hearing tons and tons of people go, you grow out of HubSpot eventually or doesn't scale or oh, it doesn't do this. Right. Like, you know, brainwashed. Right? So that's what I'm thinking.

Yeah. It would be Nice to have some help from HubSpot on this one, like, because they definitely created this problem by making a magnificent product very quickly that's way different than it ever was before. But they clearly have no control over the narrative of what HubSpot is and the position of HubSpot in the ecosystem right now or in the. In the market.

Why do you think all the spicy comment wars that happen between Salesforce super users and HubSpot super users are sometimes the only thing you see on your feed when you're existing heavily in any of these ecosystems? Right. It's because they think that we're playing with a Fisher Price, you know, cooking set, right? When we're over here with, you know, a Ferrari Lamborghini Diablo V5, whatever the heck. Right? But they still think we're playing with poise, right? Because all they know is, like, we're on the superior platform. Like, so. Yeah, it's tough.

So. So there's a couple things. One, y' all drove me to download a new sound. Like, hey, if you hear that sound, it's go to your corner. Holy crap.

It's beard versus beard.

We're not fighting.

I'm passionately agreeing with this guy.

So. So. So here's the thing. There's. There's so much goodness, though, in this episode around this thing. Max. It's funny because literally, you're making me recall a conversation that I had with one of our clients who we were doing onboarding for, and he literally said, why would I drive a blue pickup truck when I can drive an orange Ferrari? In the understanding that the ecosystem has changed around the way that you have to think about these tools and platforms that you're putting into your. Your business. And so. So I'm. I'm loving this conversation. We're going to keep it going because. And again, I. I think we've created these questions, and we're throwing them out in a way that you. You guys. I am personally passionate about this.

George, hold on. George. I think I cut Chris off, though, when I went on that last diet tribe. So I want to make sure, Chris, you finish your thought if I did cut you off, but I can't tell. Okay.

Okay. Beautiful.

Beautiful.

I like how flexible you are on the show, Chris. That's amazing. That's amazing.

So it tries to make it better human.

Humans historically hate change, right? So when we think about this change, what do you guys think about the shift in what HubSpot has become and where it's presenting itself that we're going like, I'll just ask that first. Like, what do you think about where we've been to, where we're going? When I, when I asked that question, what are your thoughts?

I mean, it's okay. It's already, it's already where it needs to be for me in terms of like, it's. It's circled the square. It has closed the loop, at least in baby step functionality to actually provide a unified view of the customer, like, has never existed before, like in any other platform in a way that you can deliver it to somebody and they can maintain it themselves. They don't need some managed services agreement which automatically makes it the most affordable way to do it than has ever existed before. So now it's literally when, when I saw them going this route, but also I'm always paying attention to this knowledge gap. The only thing that stops success at this point is HubSpot and its own ecosystem. Like this, this tool is so good. Yeah, obviously I'm, I'm excited about where we're going and the way they've integrated AI. Like, and just like, how lucky are we to have somebody like Dharmesh that can just like spin up and just focus on AI and, and start just manhandling it into the platform, Right? Like, man, we haven't.

So, Max, what, what are your thoughts?

Like, where the platform's going?

Well, where it's been to, where it's going. The journey. What do you think of the journey?

Well, the jury, I mean, it's been just really cool to freaking watch how it's just like, you know, it said, okay, cool, we got really good at getting people here, which was like seeing the marketing hub mature, you know, to this point. And then it was like, okay, cool, all these people are getting here, all these contacts are coming in, all this attention is being created and this demand is getting generated. But, like, we didn't really have a way to then have the people that actually do the selling, like, talk to them, right? So, like, the CRM came out, sales hub started to come out, right? It's like, cool. We could start getting the sales reps, like, super efficient and everything. And then like the kind of end of the road, there was like, these people turn people into customers, right? It's like, oh, well, how do we take care of them, right? It's like service hub came around, right? And like, the whole customer journey could go get extended and a little bit further and like, it could handle more of it. Right. And so it's interesting is if you look at it as the flywheel, right? Which I still think is like, you know, the ultimate basic. You have to at least do these three things to like survive at all as a business, right? Like it, it has that full circle, right? I think what's going to be interesting is like how it goes deeper into the different chevrons of that circle, right. You know, of course they do things more like around customer experience and stuff. It's just how much better the CMS is actually getting or sorry, Content Hub is actually getting like with all of that, right? And I think that's a really good example of them taking this thing that already existed but going like 10 times deeper onto it. Right. You know, I think a lot about things like your, your delivered platform, Chris, where it's like, I can't imagine the amount of custom dev work it goes into build something like that. But dude, when is it going to be where it's like you can build these customer experience like applications, what's the word? Declaratively, right? Where it's like I don't have to hire a dev to come in and do all this stuff, right? That's going to be really, really interesting. And then of course, yeah, the advances with like AI and stuff and more big brained applications of how we can use information from all over the platform versus being like a specific feature for one specific sliver of the tool but a million different times, right? Because it's, it's everywhere. That's going to be really neat. Like, like I talk about all the time where it's like man, I can't wait for the day where someone that comes in to audit a portal and you could just say hey Portal, what's wrong with you? And it goes, man, let me tell you, these guys suck at creating properties and actually using it or like whatever it means, right? Like so in the back office now a whole lot more, right? And actually like help it become the operating system for your business. For sure, what your customers can see, but then all the stuff that your customers don't see but you as the business leaders and people at the business see and need to run, right? Because it's like the flywheel stuff is like really how you're interacting with your customers. But there's lots of elements of running a business that you don't see on the flywheel, right? Just because it has nothing to do with how your customers perceive you or go through some kind of journey. It's more like how you operate, right? And so I used to say this thing to people who would ask like oh, what are you most excited about is like when I said it's going to be really wild when you see what HubSpot has learned about how it interacts with the outside world and takes all that knowledge, experience, ideas and stuff they built and turn it inward. Right. And like that's where I first started thinking about man, user objects to be a lot better. Right. And you're seeing it happen, which is crazy. We just got custom properties for user objects like that. That is that huge, huge stepping stone. It seems some so basic. Like when you, when you, when you watch HubSpot for a long time and you see how they build things brick by brick by brick by brick, and then all of a sudden they can do this big monumental thing.

Yeah, it's happening. I mean the fact, really cool. The fact that most people aren't even understanding that workflows and lists are now objects in HubSpot and what that might mean in the future. Like, there's just so, so. But here's the thing about this.

Think about one day if like HubSpot handles like how you pay your employees and then it could automatically factor in commission from deals because it's all in there. Right.

Like, or if it's HR and it's actually payroll because you're getting paid and paying out.

Right.

In HubSpot. So here's the thing. I got a couple more questions I want to ask. But Max, I love your flywheel analogy. And what's funny about this is that I actually, I don't know why my brain works in a weird way. But you talked about, you know, the things that you don't see on the flywheel, and that's because it's either the stick or the air. Those teams are the things that actually stabilize the flywheel or make it move. That's what those other teams are doing. So they still have a part to play in the flywheel moving. So it is a, it is a unified, full circle customer platform that we're headed down into. Okay.

But someone's gotta hold the flywheel up is what you're saying.

Yeah.

And if that person is like loses a leg, it's gonna be harder to balance. If that person, you know, is, is, is waving around, it's not gonna, you know, catch the wind perfect. Like. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So now I can't wait. I'm gonna hang on. Yep, yep. It's still working. It's still working. So we're here. We've arrived at that, this point right now. What makes you guys nervous?

The lack of education. Like, it's just. And this is where like, I think they've got so many of the pieces in place, like I hope to God before they do anymore any back office stuff, like, because I don't think anybody truly realizes, like, as long as it's difficult to explain what HubSpot is and what it can be for a business, it confuses the market and puts everybody as to selling it, asked to sell it in the point solution mindset, because that's the only possible way I'm gonna be able to sell this thing easily. And I feel like they've got this just ginormous product team which happened to be super knowledgeable about the products that they are building. So could we just. Just like, you know, just. Just tap the brake or just let up on the gas just for like a month or two and get some of those experts on their products to just tell us about what the hell they're doing. So Jepsen is not the only person doing it. Like, yeah, that's what makes me nervous because we hear it every day right now. Onboarding's going bad, you know, just misrepresented. Expect left and right and not. I guarantee not everybody is finding one of these, you know, night and shining armor agencies that we also can't stop hearing about to clean up the mess that somebody else made. And you know, this agency might be great at cleaning up messes, but then this agency is talking about how bad that agency is creating messes. Right. Clearly this is happening enough where it's like how I just want them to care a little bit more about that. I know it's a challenge.

How do you incentivize care when you're incentivized by a commission payment? It's hard.

Well, no, that's where it's not on the sales guy. It's not on the customer success people. This is a leadership thing where that's where like, hey, maybe there's enough money in enterprise and mid market and we've got a timeline and, and just acquisitions. And that's clearly here.

But here's what I'll say. Here's what I'll say before because by the way, Max, you're not getting off the hot seat. I want to know what makes you nervous too, which, by the way, it sounds like what makes you nervous, Chris, is what you want to see more of. But I'm going to circle back around here in a minute and ask that question as well. But if you are, I wish I had a zoom in like, Max, if you are a HubSpot employee and you work on the product team, call us. We will have you on the show. We will ask you dope questions, we'll create amazing content together, and we'll educate the masses together so that they can truly align their brains to the awesome products that you're creating. It's hard to stay serious when Max is zooming in like that. Oh, my God. Okay, Max, every day you can have.

As many slots as you want.

We're here. There's. There's nothing that'll make me clear a calendar slot quicker than a.

A.

A HubSpot product manager. Right. Wanting to share their extremely valuable time with me. Yeah, right. Like, you want feedback? I got. I got buckets. Loads. Bucket loads, my guy. And always willing to share it with you guys. So please, my time is your time. I will do anything for you.

There you go. Okay, Max, what makes you. From us arriving here now? What makes you nervous?

I mean, nervous about the. Well, I get nervous, like, make it relevant to the whole, like, customer platform naming thing. What. I mean, what gets me nervous is, like, did we fully see the transition of them being recognized as a CDP when they wanted to do that? No. I don't know if it was something that they tried to, like, very, very publicly, like, push or if it was just more internal conversations happening, say where it is, but, like, is, when is HubSpot going to, like, solidify its identity? Because we just moved to Smart Sierra. Right? Right. We just started calling. It was a new thing in Inbound last year, right?

Yeah.

And, you know, I remember, like, talking to Ses being like, yeah, so we didn't know about this Smart CRM thing now. And I got people coming up to the booth for a demo saying, well, what makes it a smart CRM? And they're like, like.

Give me a second.

Let me Google something real quick. Helps you not do dumb, dumb stuff in it. Like, you know what I mean? And so it's. It's tough because getting everybody behind a complete, like, identity shift of something as big and gnarly as HubSpot is. That is hard. So there's a piece of me that gets really worried that, like, it'll never land at where its identity is. I don't know if that's not a problem, because maybe, you know, the identity of something that's constantly changing every single freaking day. It's, oh, okay to kind of say it's this now, but it's going to eventually be this, and one day it will be something else. Maybe that's okay. I Just, I don't, I don't know. Right. So that freaks me out. I don't know why it freaks me out as much. But, you know, the big thing that we talk about is like, oh, how do we get everyone on the same page of what the heck this Fring thing freaking is. But maybe we don't have to if it's different things for different people. So.

No, no, no.

I don't know.

Business 101, let it brew a minute positioning like, like if you aren't clear on your. That's how every plan is supposed to start. Like, how many posts have HubSpot themselves? And they. I can't find anybody in there right now.

Yeah.

That can give me a clear definition of their position.

So here's the, here's the pushback that I give for you. Some businesses just can't, straight up, can't afford what it is as a whole. You know, can only afford a couple seats of the sales hub. And maybe that's what they need at that moment. Right. You know what I mean? So it's, it's, it makes it tough because it's like, yes, HubSpot is big. Awesome big.

But here's the thing. Here's the thing. It kind of falls.

I have to push back. I have to push back. A meeting I have right now.

Well, no, we're almost done. We're almost done. I'm. Here's the thing. I can have rooms in a house. I still know it's a house. So, like, you can have. What needs to happen is the house. HubSpot needs to be known, the identity of it. And sure, you can sell it in a way, which by the way, is I'll go back to what you've heard me say a couple times on this show. It happens to have this room that is a cms. It happens to have this room that is a CRM. It happens to have this room that is a data layer. It happens to have this room for sales to be awesome and marketing to be awesome. But it's a house. So here's the thing. We're. We're basically structuring the house as a customer platform. But now please educate us. Give a Zillow listing of what the frick that means on this house. How many acreage does it have ac? Does it have a pool? Like, what the is it? It's still going to be a house. It can still be HubSpot and have rooms. Okay, here's the thing. Quickly, what do you want to see more of? And then I'M wrapping this bad boy out so Max can get to his meeting and everybody else can get to the rest of their day. HubSpot, by the way. Holy crap. Pertaining to HubSpot, what do you want more of? Because it isn't croutons. The answer is not croutons, Max.

I want. I want them to, like, double down on their investment in the ecosystem thing. Right. You know, especially when it comes to, like, app stuff. You know, it doesn't. It doesn't run like, you know, the app store on the phone, on your iPhone does it?

Doesn't.

Like, there's a lot of things that, like, make it clunky and, like, difficult for app developers to kind of, like, you know, do what they need to do. I'm not going to get into, like, the whole list or anything, but, like, if they want that marketplace to succeed, they've got to double, triple down on that thing and, like, really make it change the narrative of, like, you know, it's. You know, the product's gonna do, like, you know, a lot of different things are universal. More people. But, like, the point is you install apps, you install other stuff to make it unique to exactly what you need to accomplish, whatever it is. And I don't know if, like, the HubSpot, you know, community in the. In a. In a massive sense is kind of like, thinking about that way, which is, like, funny because that's how it's always been with Salesforce. Right. You know, So I don't know. I think this just needs to be a lot more done on, like, the ecosystem side of things. I wish I had a more specific answer.

What do you want more?

I think that's the answer, too. And to help with the education, you know, maybe there's something like a HubSpot coach, you know, partner type out there or something to kind of fill this gap. Like, we definitely need people out there. Like, don't get me wrong, we need lots of people out there selling and servicing HubSpot because people are buying it and they need that help. But not everybody needs to buy more HubSpot and they can build stuff themselves. There's nobody in the ecosystem right now denavised to help them help those people.

Yeah. And you know what, Chris? Just add something real quick because I got my stuff pushed back. Is like. At first when you were explaining that idea to me, I was like. Like, it sounds like a solutions partner to me. Because they're consultants, right? In a certain sense. I know it's. I know I've reversed my thinking.

All right?

And I agree with you. Because the other thing you got to think of too is what's the entry point for one man army consultants that don't have the bandwidth to do everything that a full agency with like a team of developers and a team of delivery people and a team of sales folks do? How do those people break into the ecosystem as someone who can really sit down and help someone craft out their vision and change people's minds and get them to look at HubSpot in a different way? Right. That's one gonna probably be more affordable for smaller companies or even bigger companies that like, you know, need to be able to like afford, you know, a one person army versus like a giant team of devs and, and all these other people that just need to build something out and like give them the keys. Right? But it's also just like how do folks just getting into the ecosystem and are passionate about maybe one day being a partner agency or, or you know, being able to make a name for themselves. How are those people getting like surfaced and getting a spotlight on them and getting endorsed by the community? Because that is a very different thing than, you know, a, you know, a HubSpot, you know, sensei that understands like how it all works and can have the right conversation with folks for people who want to be able to say, hey, we don't want someone to do it for us. We want someone to enable and empower us and make sure we're going in the right direction. I do think that's something different than just a HubSpot solutions partner that's going to go do a bunch of custom work and build some stuff and hand you the keys. Right? So I know that's not how all partners do it.

Hit the applause button.

Yeah, I know we need the applause button on that. So it's funny because Max, I totally agree with you as somebody who has been teaching people how to fish since 2014. Pertaining to HubSpot, there needs to be more of what Chris is calling for coaching. By the way, this is what I would want too. I would want more coaching. I would want easier ability to build things. I would want easier ability to build relationships, easier ability, easier ability for it to be visible across the entire organization, adding transparency and unification to the internal humans. But here's the thing, ladies and gentlemen, we have had a great conversation. What I love about this episode of the podcast is we went from the battle of the beards to them actually agreeing with us with each other at the end. So hopefully you agree with us. Let us know by the way, let us know what platform you're watching this on as we're now going live and have the audience chat and we're super loving it. But remember, until next time we meet, by the way, next Friday at 3pm on the live channel that you're watching now or we'll watch.

Wait, aren't we, aren't we Wednesday next week?

Huh?

Aren't we scheduled for Wednesday next week? Or am I insane?

What?

Yeah, Hub heroes on the third. July 3rd because it's July 4th, UN American.

That's right, that's right. So next week it's Wednesday because there is a national holiday for us Americans, but usually it's Friday at 3 o' clock until we see you next Wednesday. Remember that. I get to do this. I get to close because usually Liz does something in a poem. But ladies and gentlemen, remember to be happy, helpful, humble, human and did some happy hubspotting along the way.