Should You Work with a HubSpot Partner? [HubHeroes, EP64]
George B. Thomas joins hosts Liz and Devin to explain HubSpot's three partner types and when to hire one. Partners audit your setup, fill expertise gaps, and speed scaling. Avoid them if you lack internal capacity, are cash-strapped, or expect 30-day miracles.
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Do you live in a world filled with corporate data? Are you plagued by siloed departments? Are your lackluster growth strategies demolishing your chances for success? Are you held captive by the evil menace Lord Lack? Lack of time, lack of strategy, and lack of the most important and powerful tool in your superhero tool belt knowledge. Never fear, Hub Heroes. Get ready to don your cape and mask, move into action, and become the Hub hero your organization needs. Tune in each week to join the League of Extraordinary Inbound Heroes as we help you educate, empower, and execute Hub Heroes. It's time to unite and activate your powers. Before we begin, we need to disclose that Devin is currently employed by HubSpot at the time of this episode recording. This podcast is in no way affiliated with or produced by HubSpot, and the thoughts and opinions expressed by Devin during the show are that of his own and in no way represent those of his employer.
How will I know? Yeah, how will I know if Devin's opinions matter or not?
I'm hurt here. Have we played that? When Noah puts it in the podcast. Anyway, anyway.
Yeah, see, now the live audience.
I just broke.
I was all getting. It's like when your favorite part of a song comes up and then the DJ cuts it before the beat drop. Like, that's what you just did. You cut my safe harbor.
Language, George. I'm failing.
We haven't even gotten into the episode. We have not even gotten into the episode and you're already a little chaos Gremlin. What is going on?
Well, what's funny is Salim says everything that Devin says today is HubSpot endorsed. Just so.
Right.
Okay, not sure the nice things he
said about me before we started.
Yeah, for the record.
So wait, wait. Are you saying HubSpot doesn't also think I'm a delightful flower? That is hurtful.
Of course they do.
Oh, that's probably Yamini's direct opinion and position. I. I'm certain.
Yes, Yes, I would agree. And if not, it should be before we started.
Okay, George, you're pandering and it's working, but I'm going to say I'm noting the pandering.
Noted. Noted. You're noted.
Noah, you have to leave all of this in. I hope you know that. Anyway, welcome back to another episode of Hub Heroes. We are down a Hub hero this week, Ma. We miss you, buddy. We hope you feel better, but this week, I am excited about this topic. This was something we were tossing around earlier this week when we were thinking about what are some of the things that we want to be talking to going into the end of the year.
Right.
And as organizations start plotting what they're going to be doing in 2024, it's not just about their strategies. It's potentially about who they're going to be getting help from, if anybody. So this week we're going to take a step back from, from the tools, from the tactics. We're actually going to step out of the HubSpot platform entirely and talk about HubSpot partners. Now, Devin, I know this is a topic that you are particularly passionate about.
It is.
I have two questions for you to start off this conversation. One, let's just get real clear. What is a HubSpot partner really? Because I don't think a ton of people are clear on that. And then the second thing I would love for you to address is something you mentioned earlier, which is you don't think people understand the benefits of really working with a HubSpot partner. Why do you think there's that confusion? Well, so let's dig in.
Sure. First, let me go ahead and put on my orange hat. For those of you who don't know, I actually work in the partner program at HubSpot and before that I worked in leadership at a few different HubSpot Solutions partners agencies. So this is definitely something that's near and dear to my heart. Chad asks if my hat is sprocket shaped and the answer is of course. So there's actually a few different kinds of partners. First, you have the solutions providers who, they work with HubSpot customers, but not to the extent or frequency that you have the HubSpot Solutions partners. HubSpot Solutions partners are partners that sell service HubSpot. They work with people on generating strategy, they work with people on creating solutions, be they marketing, sales, service, or all of the above. And sometimes they will even work with another kind of partner which is an app partner. An app partner is a partner that is very technical and will create bespoke technical solutions that will solve a problem. And in some cases these solutions are so innovative and helpful they will resell the service in the app marketplace. So the HubSpot partners in general are, to me, and again, this is my personal opinion, the cornerstone of someone being successful using HubSpot. Because like we always say, HubSpot is a tool, it's not a person and it's only going to work as well as you work it. So Chad did point out, yeah, if only Max were here, he could just talk about being an app partner with happily all day long as he is the Chief evangelist. But, yeah, being a HubSpot partner is very rewarding because one thing they all have in common is at their core, their goal is to help customers grow better using the HubSpot platform.
Well, well, let's hope.
Let's hope that that's rainbows and sunshines over here, George. Rainbows and sunshine.
I hear you, but I want people to be careful because first of all, I love all of the definitions that you just gave us. I actually think that that's probably a blog article in the future of what is truly a HubSpot partner and what you need to know. But here's the thing. They're not all the same.
They are right. And they are not.
They're not all the same.
They're not all created equal, unfortunately.
Yeah. And. And here's the thing. What I'll say is, hopefully part of this conversation we'll have in the future during this episode is how do you know if it's the right one? Because I'm not even saying when I say that, that good and bad, which there probably is good partners and there probably are bad partners. I remember in 2013, 2014, where there was only a handful of us and we were all like, just marching the cause of, like, it's a blue ocean and it. And we're all going to help each other, but the more humans you get, the more pockets of interesting places start to occur in the ecosystem. So let's not even talk about good and bad, though. Let's talk about right fit, wrong fit. And what you might want to be asking yourself if you are entertaining the idea of bringing on one of these types of partners for something that you're trying to do in HubSpot. So again, we'll just assume positive intent that everybody's amazing.
Okay. Well, before, first of all, hot takes. Coming off the line early. Coming off the line early.
Can. Can I. Yes. Drop a stat here that I seem to. Yeah, yeah. I am not.
It might be a first. It might be a first. We're dropping a stat.
A live stat drop.
Sorry, I wish I could.
Now I'm sitting on the edge of my seat.
Hey.
What?
Live stat work is important work.
So I actually have some stats about working with solutions partners. Customers are likely to see 38% more inbound leads, 141% more deals created, and 91% more deals closed. When they're working with a solutions partner.
I feel like I need to get a partner. Geez, out.
It's like that thing. I need an adult. No, I need another adult. Preferably one that's a HubSpot partner.
Chad had a great question. Like automation, it's process. It's because process is lined out, documented. It's not something you have to figure out. It's not only teaching you how to use the tools, but teaching you how to use the tools in a way that's best for your organization and your process.
Yeah.
Okay, so here's what I want to dig into here a bit, Devin, because when we brought up this conversation earlier this week, you said that you don't think enough people understand the benefits of working with a HubSpot partner. Now, before we get into the benefits, I want to go back to my original question here. Why do you think there's confusion about HubSpot Solutions partners in general? Are people just not talking about it enough? Do people not understand what it is? What's the gray area there? And George, feel free to weigh in too, as well.
Yeah, I think one of the things that I've run into with people when we're talking about partners, one, unfortunately, some people get a bad taste in their mouth after having a bad experience. But that's not just exclusive to HubSpot. That's just with working with an agency in general, regardless of the flavor, they will work with someone who promises the moon and delivers nothing. And so if they meet a partner, like, even if they had been working outside the HubSpot ecosystem, come into the HubSpot ecosystem, working with a partner in general can be a bit scary. Another thing is that there are different ways that partners can work with you. And people don't always understand that. Like, they think, oh, we're just hiring them to do our social media. We're just hiring them to do our Facebook. You can literally just hire them to write out a strategy for you and walk away. Like, these people can just say, hey, here's what you need to do. Here's how you need to do it. Okay, see you later. You can keep them on to not only give you the strategy, but to help you execute on it. They can help you. And again, we're not just talking about marketing, talking about sales process, automating your pipeline, growing your pipeline, helping you calculate your pipeline metrics and help you analyze where you need to apply force in your flywheel. All of these things are things that partners can do working with you. And it's these people don't understand that there are a lot of problems that can be solved in an organization by working with an outside consultant and HubSpot Solutions partners. If HubSpot is the cornerstone or at the center of your tech stack, then you should definitely call in somebody even just to evaluate how you're using it and make suggestions on how to improve.
Yeah. So there's a couple things that I want to pick in there that Devin just said and kind of. Yes. And to. To a couple of them. First of all, the bad taste in your mouth and therefore being turned off on partners is, is a real fact to the point where historically I've literally had HubSpot employees say to accounts that were going to churn, at least let's give you a shot with George B. Thomas and see what happens. And I've been able to take those accounts and turn them around and then be fans of the tool because of getting them into a better place, getting them educated, getting them moved in the right direction. So. So Devin. Yes. There are agencies out there that and to maybe no fault of their own. Right. Like you've got great leaders that have scaled or grown too fast, maybe out of necessity that processes get lost, new people are hired and so they don't get like what they thought they were going to get in the process of getting what they're trying to get now. More importantly than that, there's another phenomenon that's kind of happened is that when the HubSpot partner ecosystem was created, it was really HubSpot marketing hub. And so therefore it created a lot of HubSpot marketing agencies. And so my fear is that when somebody hears the word HubSpot partner, they go oh yeah, them marketing agencies. And here's the fun thing is if you look at what most partners did is they went from being a marketing agency to a marketing and sales agency and then to a marketing sales and service agency and then to a rev ops agency. And like they tried to grow the agency to what the actual HubSpot platform created, which is okay if that's who you are and what you can do and you have the ability to do that. But let's be honest, some of you who originally created marketing HubSpot partner agencies, because that's all there was, were actually dope salespeople that when the sales tool came to fruition, you should have just transitioned into we're a HubSpot sales hub partner agency. We're a service hub partner agency. You see, at one date, niching down meant that you were just going to be a HubSpot partner. But we live in a day with a whole massive butt ton of partners where now it's like you could niche down into a hub and still Make a great living, still provide a better service, because now you are more targeted in what. What it is that you're actually going to do. Now, that might sound like terrible to some of you out there, but you have to ask yourself, have you created, and I'm talking less to the customer that might be listening to this and more to the partner that might be listening to this. Have you created a system of chaos because you've tried to collide three or four universes into one instead of creating the most dope universe, singular, that you could? And that's something to think about in 2024 and beyond. From the partner side of it, from the customer side of it, unpack everything that I just said and ask yourself, because I don't know if they necessarily do this at a deep enough level. What is it that you truly need? The default answer is going to be, I need website traffic, I need more conversions, I need more deals closed, because we need to prove ROI on everything we're trying to do. Is that really what you need? Or are there underlying factors that need fixed and changed to enable those things that you think you need to happen? So from the customer's perspective, think about, do I need somebody that is tougher in sales or tougher in marketing, or do I need that agency that is from tip to top, rev ops, focused, friction force, all the words that they're going to use when you get to their website. Downstream, upstream, like, do you. Is that the partner agents you need? Who do you really need?
Bamboo. And real quick, before I continue, I just wanted to point out I got a notification on my phone that said the Chicken Run sequel is now on Netflix. Just needed to let somebody know that.
Oh, and the show. Let's go watch.
You heard it here first, folks. We've got live stat drops, movie updates, and if you were in the chat, Devin, I saw you make a fast and furious reference. I saw it.
Let's go.
You made it on. He made it unironically. George.
I made it just for you. That was for you. I wouldn't do that for anyone else.
I love it. I love it. Anyway, we could clock out, I guess, right now, because we could.
But I have other questions for you jokers, so. Nice try, George. I understand that we're recording this on a Friday afternoon. I understand that. And it's almost the holidays, but I have more questions before I'm allowing you to leave class today, so.
Oh, wow.
Let's dig into what the actual benefits are. This is our chance to have you guys talk directly to people who are looking at their 2024. Maybe they've been burned by a partner agency, maybe they haven't. What are the actual benefits beyond we will upscale your downstream upstream revenue explosions like what what are the real benefits here?
The number one benefit of working with a solutions partner is perspective. You can't see outside of your problem while you're still in the midst of it. Having someone come in from the outside looking in and who isn't plagued by the daily stressors of your current situation. Who can take an objective look after detailed discovery and say here's what we've seen, here's how it's working, here's what we recommend should change and here's what we think will happen when you make that change. That in and of itself is worth its weight in gold.
Yeah, like the the Force through the trees whole thing Devin is without a doubt like it's so hard. Like and there's even times where I'll challenge myself of like maybe I should get somebody to just look at the jam that I'm creating to see if it's actually as jammy as I think it is. Right? Like and having that ability to self reflect on you and your business to understand that it is time to maybe get a new set of eyes. I totally agree with the other pie that I'll say in here as far as a benefit is just the speed to scale or what the better way to maybe this would be is to expedite the things that must be because here's the thing what I don't think everybody realizes that there's things that would are nice to have and there's must be and I can't tell you how many portals I've gone into as a HubSpot agency partner and seen completely broken must bes sitting in the portal for what has been 1, 2, 4 years. Most mere mortal humans don't understand blog subscription and subscription types and don't understand even how to get the right email created that creates the right form so that the subscription system actually works in the proper way that it should work. Many mere mortal humans don't understand that when we say the word Persona we don't mean the book that was created and written about how to create a dope Persona or that we want you to create some type of fictional representation, presentation slide and posters that you spread throughout your office space. Like that's not what we're talking about. We're talking about a way that you can create a property that helps with segmentation triggers, reporting and Just automated communication, right? Like we're talking about the engine of the freaking inbound machine. And it just sits there and nobody ever puts gas in it, they don't put seats in it, there's no steering wheel. And they're wondering why is this junk not working? Like these are main have to be must be's that partner agencies that have seen hundreds of people make those mix mistakes before know to immediately go look at it, call it a hot topic and start to work on it. Mere mortal humans don't realize that they can create a folder, create 18 lists and actually have a data hygiene process to know when people should have a physical postcard be deleted or whatever action should be taken inside their HubSpot portal. Like these are the, these are the benefits that you get from getting somebody who truly knows HubSpot and what I dare say would know business and Devin, the word you use, perspective business and being able to look at it at different perspectives because of helping accountants, helping app developers, helping like all of these different business use cases. And now all of a sudden you've got this modular mindset that you can plug into the business as soon as you see how they are and understand, oh, this is how we're gonna wrap HubSpot around your business. I got it, now let's go ahead and implement it.
I love all of these different benefits, but it does leave me wondering, you know, there isn't, there isn't a right time for everything, right? It's not always strategically going to be the right time to bring someone in. So what are the ways in which you would encourage organizations to self identify or self assess when they are ready to work with a HubSpot partner? What are those inflection points? What are those questions they should be asking?
Yeah, see, I got to push back on that one. The thing is, is that it might not be time to enter into a partnership or into a retainer agreement, but there is always time to have someone come in and assess and look at what you got going on. Even if all they're doing is helping you see what's broken and giving you ideas on how to fix it. I'm going to go ahead and shout out a partner I to work for digital J2, shout out to ET and all those guys. He had this wonderful thing where before he would enter into any sort of retainer, the first thing you would do is do a strategy. It would be discovery and strategy. And the first part of discovery was see whether or not he wanted to work with you in the first place. And Then the other part was to help you develop a strategy for success. And at that point, you can continue to work with them, or you can move on to someone else, or you can implement it yourself. But either way, at that point, you would have a better understanding of whether or not you need to bring someone in. Because the thing is, the question is, do you want to make more money? If the answer is yes, then you need to evaluate working with people who can do that. And it is at a fraction of the cost of headcount, like for the price you're paying for an entirely new staff member. You can have an entire team of people devoted as a fractional resource to your organization. But at the end of the day, you need to know that something's broken. And there are so many people like there. Check this out. Talk about broken process. I have a friend who lives in Florida. I'm not going to say the name of the company that she worked for. One, because they're stupid, and two, because they fired her after she pointed out their broken process. So screw those guys. But here's what happened. They, their sales process is one, when, when a lead comes in, the lead would go to the lead salesperson, the head honcho, the, the, the big closer, right? After two weeks, if he does nothing to close it, if he can't close it, it goes on to the next person. Then after two weeks, it goes on to the next person. And then after two weeks, it goes on to the next person and it just goes down the list. And this guy, this number one guy, shockingly, is making millions of dollars in, in by closing people. And it's like, with these commissions through the roof, it's like, oh, yeah, I want to be like that guy. But you're getting his leftovers and then everyone else is getting everyone else's leftovers. It's like that one prison movie on Netflix where the food just kept going down the prison and at the bottom, people just ended up with scraps or starved. And it's like, it is the worst process of all time. But you can't tell these people anything different. Like, like, not even just the sheer stupidity of just like filtering these leads through this stupid favoritism funnel. But when also combined with the fact that someone might not be ready, especially given in their industry, people aren't going to be making these massive changes to their homes without, you know, in two weeks. And so if they're not buy ready in two weeks, all this guy's doing is cherry picking. And it's like, so if they're not buy ready in two weeks and they're not selling. They're not sell ready. But when they come back, they find out they have to talk to a completely different person who may or may not be an expert in what they're doing. It is so, so stupid. But to work there, you wouldn't think it's stupid because your idol is making all this money, but an outside consultant would come in and slap you with reality gauntlet and just be like, no, stop right now. And yeah, somebody's going to have to stop buying yachts because they're not going to be making as much money. But if there's no one who's going to come in and tell you that, then, oh, gosh, see, now I'm angry. Go ahead, George.
First of all, first of all, omg, like, you're creating a cultural. By the way, this is more for the partner agency, less the customer. You are creating a cultural nightmare with the system and scenario that we just listened to. And here's where, like back in the day when I was in sales, we used to call these folks lay down Larry's, meaning they would come in and they would already have their credit card in hand. They were ready to buy. My job was just, don't screw it up, don't screw it up. Sales guy ready to buy. This person is simply scraping the lay down Larry's off of the sales funnel and letting everybody else try to do actual sales work. That's what's happening here. And not that they might not have a little bit of sales jobs, they might have a lot of sales jobs, but man, that is so dysfunctional. Now I want to get back to the original question, Liz, because Devin mentioned it's always good to get like, listen, when's the right time to have a mechanic look at your car before you don't have any oil in it or your transmission is blown up? That's the right time, like, before those things happen. So Devin mentioned, like the audit. And so one of the things that, you know, we're messing around with and entertaining as we're making some big changes in 2024 with what we're doing and how we're doing it is we've got this idea where we're talking about this visualizing the client journey, visualizing our customer journey. And we're going with audit action. Automate, Accelerate. Right? So there's literally the start of anything that we're going to do from a training perspective, from an implementation perspective. We're going to do an audit. We've got to pop the hood. We've got to see if the oil is low. We've got to see if the transmission is about to blow up. We've got to look at the blog subscriptions, the Personas, the data hygiene. We've got to. These are must do's that we've got to see. So we're going to do that audit. Then we're going to tell them the hot topics, the actions that we immediately need to take. Then we're looking at automation and acceleration. But here's the thing. If you're about to cancel, I'm going to give you another scenario. By the way, if you're about to cancel HubSpot because you haven't been able to see the ROI out of the system, I would dare to tell you that the one step before you actually do that is maybe try to give a partner a 6 month, 9 month, 12 month opportunity to see if it was in their hands. If all of a sudden this wouldn't become the godsend that you originally thought was for your organization. Yeah, but now you're disenchanted because it's not the silver bullet that you thought it would be because well listen, I can get inside of a NASCAR car, I'm gonna wreck. I'm not a NASCAR driver. I'm gonna. First of all, I'm probably gonna do myself on about the second turn because I've never done this before. And there are a lot of business owners, C suites, marketing and sales folks that are too proud to say that they're in turn two or three and they're sort of kind of with HubSpot by the way. And they're kind of doo doo ing themselves because they've never done this before. They've never built the sales pipeline with deal stages, they've never customized custom contact and company and deal records. They've never. And by the way, they've never even really thought about taking the time from their weekend to dive into the HubSpot Academy because they don't necessarily really have a growth mindset because they're not really owners. They're maybe more employee mindset. Like there's just a whole lot of psychological human that gets in the way. Pardon me, I don't mean to swear I usually don't do that on the podcast. But there's just, listen, there's just humans that sometimes get in the way of the success that you could get with a platform because you never get the process put quite in the way it should be put in and a partner can make sure that that's happening.
I have to ask a follow up question here, George. And I know it's something you and I have been on the receiving end of because you and I have been in the agency space now for over a decade and Devin also has that experience as well, is that I've seen organizations go to partners as a last ditch resort, but they're like, we need to make something happen in 90 days or we're out.
Right.
Is that too short of a run?
Yeah, it's a very short Runway and usually here's what I would do and I don't agree or I dis, I don't disagree. Sorry. With Devin's. Absolutely. It's not too short of a Runway to at least get some quick wins or more importantly, to paint a picture of how broke their ish was. And therefore because they realize their ish was broken, them to extrapolate more time for us to actually try to do what they're trying to do. That's really the thing. If they come at us like that, it's like, let me show you why you need to give us more time. Not let me go ahead and try to do it in the time that you just gave me, but it is too short.
This is where I feel like we need to have an episode in future at some point. That's just two HubSpot partner agencies. Because the double edged sword of that is that when you are a customer who really leans on the quick wins as your what you're defining as success right out of the gate, that will make your HubSpot partner agency mostly focused on getting you quick wins instead of establishing the long term foundation you need for inbound success. So it gets, it's a really dicey thing. It, I, I, it makes me anxious whenever I hear folks talking about like, well, we need to see something immediately or we're out. You know what I mean? But anyway, moving right along, I would also want to know from you guys, how do you know which partner HubSpot partner is right for you? Because, Devin, at the top of this, you were saying, you know that HubSpot partners come on all sizes, shapes, colors. How do I know who I should be working with?
That's a tough one. So the first stop, of course is the solutions directory and reading reviews, doing interviews, talking to people, asking for quotes and just getting to know people. They know your industry, they've worked with people into your industry. Great. If you can get references, that's great. But it's like hiring somebody for a job. I mean there is a lot of people out there that can do the job and it's about finding the one that can do it the best and finding people who are specifically familiar with what it is that your problem is. And this is my personal hot take. If you find somebody who's willing to work with someone else who is willing to bring in like if you have a complex issue and they don't have to be experts with your all aspects of your issue, but are willing to partner with other people who are like my favorites are the solutions partners who can work with an app partner to develop a bespoke solution to solve a complex problem. Those, those ones are my favorite. But as far as determining which one is right for you, it's. It's an interview process.
Yeah. And I think we can go a little bit deeper with than that. Like I do agree with you, Devin. You get to that interview process and by the way, you can Google search this, you'll find that smart partner agencies probably have blog articles that talk about these things or this topic. But at the end of the day, when you're doing those interviews, when you're going through this process, you need to think about a couple things. One is experience and expertise. How long have they been using HubSpot and what expertise do they have pertaining to the problems, hurdles or aspirations that I'm trying to get to the other one, when you're going through those inner pro view processes, you have to sit back and ask yourself, customer, do I feel like they got it? When I say got it, do I feel like they truly understand my business? Because if I've explained my business in the discovery call in this interview and they look like a deer with the headlights right on them, that might not be a good fit. Also I would look at what is their strategic approach, right? Are you a Donald Miller fan and like, you know, story brand? Are you a Marcus Sheridan fan and like Taya, they ask, you answer, do you, do they even know about those strategies? Do they implement those strategies? What, what, what strategy? Are they still doing the old school? 12 blog articles, a pillar page and three CTAs for $7,000 a month because that'll get you going. Or are they flexible and actually can pivot and transition? Like do they offer any level of service and support or what does that look like? Listen, last week we talked about help desk moving forward. I would ask them, do you have a help desk? What channels are attached to it? Is there a way for me to easily book a meeting as a customer? Like how Quickly, can I get a ticket created that you can fix my ish. Like, where are they at with that? Or are they like, oh yeah, you can slack us or you can send us an email. Like how, how mature in the service and support area are they, do they have case studies? The amount of HubSpot partner agencies that you go to their website and you might not be able to find case studies might actually shock you when you start to search for this. But what I'm saying is are they getting results, are they reporting those results or and are they sharing those results? I would also see if you like the freaking human. Like, do you like communicating with the person during the interview? Does it feel like it's somebody that you actually even care about collaborating with? Because sometimes you have to have that human element where you just like, like, listen, my wife has said you don't have clients. You have people that get on calls and they like to pay you money. That's what you have, you know, because there's the human element, there's the collaboration, the communication.
Right?
Here's the other thing. Are they still doing old school ish or are they super innovative and are they able to adapt with things that change? Because listen, in marketing and sales stuff changes, like are they talking about meta? Are they talking about TikTok? Are they talking about AI? Have they created and I gosh, I can't even believe I'm saying this, have they created an AI policy yet for the fact that they're going to be using AI to actually do some of your work for you? I said this in a Facebook post earlier in the week and somebody said policy question mark. I was like, oh God, like we gotta do some catching up for some folks, man. Pricing, are they in your price? Are they in your pricing tier? Are they a cultural, Are they hilariously
below your pricing tier?
Oh my God, be careful of that.
Be careful.
So like, those are some things that you should be thinking about, questions that you might ask along the way in those big buckets that I just shared.
My goodness, man, you're right on my couch. I was talking to this one guy today, this morning who was talking about his, the agency that he's working with. He's not a HubSpot customer, but he was talking about they're doing blog posts and they're going to be doing extra small type in order to sneak in keywords. And I'm like, are you kidding me? What is this, 2004?
I'm twitching, I'm twitching right now.
Devin, feel free to put them in touch with me so I can just stare at them for an hour and then send me the name of the agency so that I can then stare at them for two hours until they stop doing that.
I was like, I am offended.
As our resident content therapist, I am offended. I am aghast. I am. I am.
I was shocked.
I cannot shocked.
I was shook. I could not. When. When those words were brought up and. And the tactics were brought up, I just. I could not. I could not.
I don't.
I don't even know where to go from here. I'm like, I'm physically getting.
I'm emotionally.
People say such stupid things with confidence. It's. Oh, my gosh.
How does it feel to be so wrong about so many things all at once to that unknown agency? Are you for real right now? Are you? Okay, moving on.
You know what? You know what? They're probably the same agency that decided it would be good to put the email footer where it's manager preferences. They put white text on a white background. Until HubSpot said. Until HubSpot said, hey, you can't do that. Oh, my God. Because it literally will yell at you now. But that. It's probably that wrong with people.
Oh, my gosh.
I don't. This is why we can't have nice things.
Facts.
This is why we can't have nice things. Okay. All right, Liz, get back to your outline. Outline is truth. Outline is safe. When is it. When is it not the right time to work with a HubSpot partner? I know earlier you guys doubled down and said, it's always a good time, but there have to be some exceptions. There has to be a time where there's. Where it's smarter to pump the brakes before you make a decision.
Yeah. So I'll go first, Devin, because I'm gonna say something that I don't know how many people would actually say, and then you can. You can follow up on this. Look, I'm going to tell you right now, if working with me as a partner agency or working with another partner agency even gets you in the mindset of it might be the financial stone that is going to bankrupt the company. It is not time to tag in a partner. I don't want that on my conscious. I know other partner agency owners don't want that on their conscious. Like, that means if you're at that point, it is time to triple down in HubSpot Academy. Triple down in lynda.com. triple down in the amount of hustle in a healthy way. Hustle that you're putting towards your business and get it to the point where it can drive the amount of revenue needed to hire the talent that's going to be able to then take you to the next phase, not necessarily the first phase. Now, if you're flush with cash, you're a startup and you've gone through, you know, a couple series and you got a couple milli. Just burning a hole in your pocket. Right time, right?
Totally me. Totally me.
Oh, yeah, go on. So that's that. I say I, I don't ever want to have a client that, like, we bankrupted them. That's just. No, no, don't want to be part of it.
Yeah, that's all I got. I can't, I, I, that, that's all I can. I got nothing. Like, unless you literally cannot afford it. And like you're, you're, if you're broke, then you're broke. But outside of that, I can't really think of.
I'll give you a couple more. Yeah, I'll give you a couple more. We actually, we actually mentioned one. We said, yo, if it's like 30 days and you're like, turn the ship around and get me to the promised land in 30 days, just don't, don't hit up a, don't hit up a partner agency.
Oh, here's one.
And don't trust the one who says yes to that.
Yeah, if you're not in a position to utilize them once you bring them on, that is. I've actually had a job and gotten fired because of that. Well, I'll say laid off. I wasn't fired. It was actually great people, great team. The thing was, is I wrote this massive, it was like this nine page document on what I think our strategy should be. And I turn it in to the VP and CEO and they both look at it and they're like, this is fantastic. The only problem is that we don't have the infrastructure to support what it is that you're trying to do because we are firing our salespeople. And it was like, wow, okay. And they're like, well. And then unfortunately, you clearly are a genius and you know this stuff, but we can't afford to have you on and not doing what it is that we know you can do, so we gotta let you go too. And it's like, huh, that actually makes sense. Yeah, because it was just, they're in a situation where I have this plan and they can't implement it because they don't do it. They can't do it. Or if you're in the wonderful problem to have when you're, you know, are in a position where you'll have to scale quickly and you don't have the, the infrastructure organizational operation to scale quickly and you need to rebuild internally first before you can think about expanding and growing. Those are other situations.
Yeah. Let's check a couple off the list real quick. If you go to my about page on the George B. Thomas website, you will see that there is one rule, one rule only. To rule them all. No douchebags allowed. If you are a narcissistic butthead, hard headed, just keep on listing those words. Then just keep on, ease on, ease on down the road because this probably is not the place or any other partner agency that isn't the place for you. And I have to call out and was going to state but Saleem in the chat pane. Yes, we have live listeners and watchers. You could be one of those too. Head over to community.hubheroes.com see what I did there. Anyway, here's the deal. If you are a know it all and not a learn it all, having a healthy relationship with an agency partner is going to be very difficult.
You have one more time for me, George.
If you are a know it all instead of a learn it all, the relationship with a HubSpot agency partner is going to be difficult. We are going to give you strategies. We are going to push you out of your comfort zone. Because where does true growth in life itself come from? In discomfort, in challenges. And so if you, if you know you have the right agency partner, you've realized that they're not an order taker, but they're a drill sergeant pushing you to your best.
Love that. All right guys, last question of the day. What should organizations be asking themselves before they decide to work with a HubSpot?
Are we using HubSpot?
Gosh, I hope so. That'd be awkward.
If you're using HubSpot, it's like, are we using HubSpot? Do we have a HubSpot expert on staff who is not just a HubSpot marketing expert, but actual, you know, HubSpot admin, a HubSpot architect, someone who knows the system and has the expertise to build the processes that will allow us to effectively use the system in order to grow? If you, if you don't have a unicorn working for you, then you need a partner.
Yeah, it's funny. I'm gonna double down on the unicorn piece. Real facts like you need to, you need to see if it Makes sense to just hire the talent within. This might be a very unpopular position that I'm gonna throw out there. There are many, many magical HubSpot super admins that right now work for agencies that work for HubSpot partner agencies. There are many, many, many HubSpot partner agencies that unfortunately may have a toxic environment. Which means there are many, many, many HubSpot super admins that if offered an in house job where they didn't have to manage 17 clients, weren't worried about the politics of it all and could get a fair wage, might actually say this unicorn, this stallion, if you will, has found a new barn to relax in, to work in. Right. So like, like I want, I want the customer side of this to realize that the talent is out there and there are places that the talent could be pulled from. So do you want it to be in house? Does it have to be in house? Can you afford for it to be in house with insurance and 401k and all that? Or does it just make sense to find a healthy culture with humans who like what they're doing that you can kind of plug in? And when I say plug in, what I mean is not a 500,000foot extension cord, but plug in as it feels like they are right there with you doing what you need them to do, understanding what you need them to understand.
I love it. Gentlemen, another great discussion in the books. I think another great episode of Hub Heroes in the history books. Ladies, gentlemen, hubspotters listening out there. Don't forget you can join us each week. George already mentioned this. You can watch us live. Go to community.hubheroes.com to learn how and if you love us, leave us a review on your preferred podcast platform of choice. Helps us get found, helps us know you love us. And we all love affirmation, but George, Devin, until next week.
Yeah, I'll let you know next week how much hate mail I get from partner agencies.
I'm very excited.
Okay, Hub Heroes, we've reached the end of another episode. Will Lord Lack continue to loom over the community or will we be able to defeat him in the next episode of the Hub Heroes podcast? Make sure you tune in and find out in the next episode. Make sure you head over to thehubheroes.com to get the latest episodes and become part of the League of Heroes. FYI, if you're part of the League of Heroes, you'll get the show notes right in your inbox and they come with some hidden power up potential as well. Make sure you share this podcast with a friend. Leave a review if you like what you're listening to and use the hashtag hub yours. Podcast on any of the socials and let us know what strategy conversation you'd like to listen into next. Until next time, when we meet and combine our forces, remember to be a happy, helpful, humble human. And of course, always be looking for a way to be someone's hero.
