Unlock Business Growth with HubSpot Reporting: Expert Insights with Nakul Kadaba | Sidekick Strategy

Welcome back to another educational episode of Sidekick Strategy Expert Interviews where we dive deep into the craniums of industry leaders to bring you insights and strategies that can transform your business. That's right. We're doing it for you. I'm your boy, George B. Thomas. And today we have a special guest who's a maestro. I was trying to figure out what cool word I could put in there. And in the world of data analysis reporting within one of the most influential platforms in the marketing and sales world, I'm going to like, give it a pause. I think most people can guess, of course, HubSpot. Which other platform do you think I was going to say? And joining us today is Nako Kadaba. I'm just going to say Nicole, from here on out, but who manages a North American customer success team at HubSpot and was formerly a strategic consultant in their professional service organization who carved a niche. Niche, maybe niche anyway, for himself. By leveraging data to drive decision making processes in organizations, Knuckles expertise lies in painting a comprehensive picture of business dynamics through the lens of data. Something that many of us find confusing and we feel like it might be nerdy, but we're going to try to fix that today. His insights have not only helped business optimize their strategy, but have also been a beacon of for those looking to understand the intricate dance of data in shaping business. Today we're going to pick your brain on the importance of reporting in HubSpot, unravel the layers of HubSpot reporting features and dive deep into advanced reporting and tricks. And I'm sure you have a ton of tricks that we're going to actually dive into. I'm super excited. This might be, honestly, let me just pause for a second. This might be about one of the most selfish episodes that I've ever created just to be able to download your brain on some of this stuff. Anyway, ladies and gentlemen, whether you're a novice in the world of HubSpot reporting or looking to sharpen your skills, I believe this conversation is bound to entertain, educate, and maybe even enlighten you a little bit along the way. So without further ado, welcome Knuckle, to the Sidekick Strategies Expert interviews. It's great to have you on the show today. First of all, let's just start with what's important. How the heck are you today?

I'm good. Hey George, thanks for. Thanks for having me. Admittedly, I actually am a little nervous, so I'm glad I actually dressed up for this, you know, because you gave me a really phenomenal intro So I hope I can, I hope I can live up to it.

I think you're gonna do great. I love the fact that you dressed up a little bit. It's funny, earlier today somebody asked me if today was dressed down day. I said every day is dressed down day for George V. Thomas. So I don't know what to tell you.

Yeah.

But let's go ahead and dive into the good stuff. Let's get the education rolling because I have the sneaking suspicion that there's going to be a plethora of information that we're going to be able to provide over the next hopefully 40 to 45 minutes. And so let's go ahead and do this. First, let's start with can you explain why reporting is a critical component for businesses using especially HubSpot and how kind of it can I say can. I want to use the word should, but I'll stick with the word can impact their decision making processes.

Yeah, for sure. And you know, again, thanks, thanks for having me. So, you know, the one thing when I think about reporting is that all reporting is, is a way that you can organize your data.

Right.

So if you're in HubSpot, it's a way of being able to organize your data to help answer questions about your business. So what's going well, what's not going well? At the most simplistic level, it shows you those things. But it also shows most important, in my opinion, where you have gaps in understanding your organization, that is what data you're not collecting that may be influential towards a business goal, a team metric, a key behavior that you're hoping to see out of an individual contributor all the way up to somebody in the C suite. Reporting subsequently helps to really counter one's biases. Regardless of whatever your position is at a company.

Right.

On understanding growth and risk opportunities within, you know, an organization of any type. I would say it's kind of the short answer, but I know there's going to be a lot more questions and discussion about this.

Absolutely. And I actually want to go off the beaten path for a second because you mentioned the word gaps.

Yeah.

And I'm, I'm super curious in your opinion, like how important is it to find and understand those gaps? Like think about if, you know, business owners, marketers, whoever. I think sometimes we're just trying to paint a picture instead of digging into the gaps to fix stuff like talk me through that just a little bit.

You know, gaps sometimes are not necessarily something that you're aware of at the time.

Right.

And it can be done by anybody. You know, it can be done. It can. I can, I can even show this.

Right.

The whole point of having something like reporting is that it adds a basis to the story that you're trying to convey or the message you're trying to convey. So if you have gaps, right, you, you're not able to collect a particular data point. That's something that you should be actually upfront about to say, hey, we haven't actually collected this. This is something that we should collect because it would be able to give us insight into. I'll just use what I said at the beginning, like earlier, right? An individual behavior, a team's metric, or a business goal or an organizational goal.

I love this conversation and especially since it's in the direction of reporting and analysis and metrics. And one of the things when I've been training humans with HubSpot is to try to get them to look at the contacts, companies, deals and tickets default properties in HubSpot.

Yeah.

So that they can actually see what isn't there, AKA the gaps to then create it for their organization to be able to report on it later. Anyway, for those that are new to HubSpot, what are the foundational steps, in your opinion, that they should take to start leveraging HubSpot's reporting capabilities? I'll just use the word because I'll be gentle, I'll be gentle here.

But effectively you actually took some of the answer with the default properties, which is great. I actually think that's a critical resource. Even before you touch the custom report builder, the can reports. I think the first thing to do is just understand conceptually where your areas of force and friction exist. Right. Everybody, everybody remembers the flywheel, right? That actually has some real life implications because it tells you exactly where your organization is doing well and where it's not doing well in terms of the handoffs, in terms of interacting with customers, in terms of interacting with each other.

Right.

And then second, you want to translate that into your organizational goals. It doesn't matter what methodology you end up using, in my opinion.

Right.

You can use smart goals, you can use okrs. My cousin the other day was talking about big hairy, audacious goal bhag. You can use any of those things, it doesn't matter.

Right.

It's that you actually write it down and actually make it so that you understand what needs to be collected in order to show progress towards it. Then you go into the data model of what HubSpot has.

Right.

Understanding your core objects.

Right.

Thanks for the assist there Contacts, companies, deals, tickets. There's a couple of more, right? All of those knowledge based articles which show and list the default properties with the definitions can tell you immediately. You don't have to worry about those things. It is collected for you and a lot of times it's actually set automatically for you. Then you think, okay, do you need something beyond this in terms of a data model to build the data infrastructure that you need, right? If you're a real estate company, do you need to have a custom object for properties? If you are a company that has, let's say an onboarding process, do you want to make a particular pipeline, whether it's a custom object or somewhere else, for an onboarding process or onboarding stages? If you are trying to make a channel program, how do you want to have that represented? Is it a separate pipeline? Is it, is it just additional deal stages, right, to actually give attribution back to the people that your company is working with. There's so many other different examples, but the whole point is, is that how do you want your data model to reflect your organization? And for this I do want to make a plug for the data model tool within HubSpot that shows the relationship between, you know, the core objects that you had listed. George, but, but then also others, right? Like activities, for example, is a really big one to just understand, okay, this is what I have right now. Do I need anything extra? What is the relationship that I want to have to my core objects, for example, and then integrations, data, right? What other systems do I have in my tech stack? Then at the, at the end of all of that, that's when you look at reporting, right? Or reporting as one may define it traditionally, right?

As.

Okay, let's go into the data visualization strategies. Let's look at canned reports to see if it's already there. Just like with default properties, as you mentioned, if it's not there, okay, then let's look at custom reports personally. Start by visualizing your business goals just, just so you have it and you can start viewing the progress. And then you can follow it with supporting metrics, behaviors to then show how is everything adding up to each other. But then it comes back to that first question we were talking about, right? Where are the gaps? What's missing? What are we doing? Well then you can start actually iteratively improving from there.

Yeah, ladies and gentlemen, I think we probably reached the first rewind point. To be honest with you. My brain's going 100 million miles an hour. Like there's so much good Stuff in that last section where kind of knowing where you're going and what does success look like, doing research and understanding what HubSpot already can do for you? What realizing the gaps is actually how you're going to wrap HubSpot around your business. Thinking of this as the kind of general way that reporting has been looked at versus, like how you might look at it in the. There's just so many good pieces in there. Again, doing this for almost 12 years and talking to a lot of HubSpot users, one of the things that I hear over and over again is that HubSpot reporting is their Achilles heel, not their superpower. And so I want to take this time to kind of start a little bit of a conversation to maybe help some folks with that. I just want to know, like in, again, in your opinion, what are some of the common challenges or even misconceptions that HubSpot users face when they begin working with HubSpot reporting or thinking about reporting in HubSpot based on kind of what we're handed as far as a set of tools?

Yeah. The short answer is I think a lot of users think that they have to do more work than what's already laid out for them. A really easy example is just just looking at the canned reports that you do have available.

Right.

Based on your subscription.

Right.

And not realizing that a lot of what you may actually need is already there. You may have to edit it in terms of filters and, you know, looking at specific time periods and setting specific properties, but it's basically there that ends up meaning that you don't have to spend so much time actually making the report, but you should spend more time actually reading it and then taking action based off of it.

Right.

To keep improving, to keep iterating based on what, you know, your organizational priorities are. The second I'd say challenge is something we were just talking about, George, where one's tech stack is not necessarily always consolidated, that's like poorly worded. But one's tech stack is not always connected to each other. And I say what that ends up creating is more gaps, right. Where if you are using a particular external system or maybe one of your teams are, and your front office teams, you know, or your rev ops team or whatever it is is using HubSpot, for example, but there's no connection between it, that's a huge gap that you're not really able to collect, even if it means that you're reporting in just the other system. But they're connected, that just gives you a lot More clarity for being able to communicate with each other and say, this is what we're doing well, this is not what we're doing well on. Here's where the gaps are. There's a lot more things with regards to visualizations, but if you don't have those things down, you gotta really stop because you can't really touch much of the visualization tool because you're not going to realize all the benefits of it, I would argue.

I love this and I definitely. It's funny, my brain was transported in that first part of your answer to the question. When you're talking about they, they think that they have to do more than they have to do. And it's funny because when I'm teaching folks about HubSpot reporting, I break it down into three things. Curate, collect, and create. What I mean by that is if you're listening to this or viewing this and you don't know where every single one of your analyze tabs are inside of HubSpot that you can curate the reports and hit save to report and put it on a dashboard, you're probably doing yourself a disservice if you haven't gone into the actual bank of reports. And again, depending on how many hubs you have, it might be 185, it might be 243. And collected the reports that are already built for you based on all the default properties, again, you might be doing yourself a disservice. And again, around those gaps and those custom properties, well, that's when you start to create. Or if you want to see where those custom properties and default properties actually have data intersects, again, that's where we might go. So, so good that you can kind of break this down to like, there's already so much stuff done for you. Let's say we're getting started. We realize there's analyze tabs, we can collect reports. We found the gaps. Let's dive into a little bit of the deep end of the pool. So yeah, I like the idea, the analogy of the pool. So can you dive into some of the advanced reporting features in HubSpot that users may not fully be utilizing? Because you kind of teased out like, if you don't have that, then don't even. But like, what are some of those advanced pieces that people kind of maybe aren't utilizing?

I would look at some of the. Some of the canned reports, but not in the report library to really start off because it's a good starting place for anyone at the C suite to really start aligning together and start lining outlining a set of behaviors that they'd like to see their teams do in order to interact with each other and contribute to an organization. So traffic analytics is a very easy one. It's advanced in the sense of the insights that it provides, but it's very simple and easy to access because it's that first spot for any leadership team to really understand. Hey, what's the return on my website? How much traffic am I getting? How many net new contacts am I creating? How many customers am I getting from that? It goes deeper into sources by original source web pages of interest countries. You know, if you're a global, globally focused company device type, there's, there's a couple of others. The counterpart to that, especially for sales leaders, I would say is sales analytics. There's a great tool in there that provides a lot of those easy, easy tools and easy reports for sales leaders to quickly apply, filter and then add to their dashboards for forecasting purposes. Retrospective meetings on why we lost particular deals, how many deals we've lost, right where they need to strengthen their sales motion, what they need to keep doing doesn't always have to be negative, right? It can always be. It can be positive too because that's a good feedback loop to really keep going to other teams and say, hey, we need to keep doing this, we need to stop doing this or we need to slow down on this. The overarching message, right, that I think you're getting at and I know I'm getting at, right, George, is you want the reporting disperse some action that you do have available, right? The last thing I'm going to say for advanced reporting features is going to be some of the more prescriptive reports such as Multi Touch Revenue attribution, Customer journey Analytics. Those are the things that are really going to give you a complete picture rather than say I want to just look at one spot here in terms of this team is going to concentrate more on this. This team is going to concentrate more on this. Multi Touch Revenue Attribution and Customer Journey Analytics, I would say together really could interest everyone in a marketing sales service, probably even operations organization to be able to say how am I going to attribute all the revenue I'm getting? And then subsequently where are they falling off to not get there to respectively tied to the two. Because then you can use that to start really driving some real change in your organization and you're using a report to actually show it.

So good, so good. I hope that the viewers and listeners heard you say this and he and you just like, flew right by it. But this idea of aligning behaviors, and I'm super curious, I want people to think about how many times do you show up at work in the morning and say to yourself, what can I do today to align the behaviors of my team? I'd love too, that you dove into kind of these core concepts of like traffic analytics, sales analytics. By the way, I have to give sales analytics its props because it was one of the first tools that actually added in the about this report tab and a description because it realized HubSpot being the. It realized that just because you're a sales rep or a sales manager doesn't mean you're a sales reporter. And you might want to know the context of the thing that you're actually supposed to be good at based on the data that you're looking at. So that was super dope that they did that. Also, I would be remiss if I didn't say you've written some articles around some of these concepts, and I'm pretty sure you wrote one around customer journey mapping. And we'll make sure that we put that in the show notes so people, people can dive in a little bit deeper as well. Attribution, ladies and gentlemen, if you're not paying attention to that, then again, disservice to you, your team, and what you're doing moving forward. But then before I ask this next question, and it's got to be. It's got to be, always got to be. And if it's a punch in the face, I apologize. But all of what we're talking about today is about being able to see the thing that gives you insight to then drive to an action. And that's what this is, is all about for your business. So with that said, let's go ahead and dive in a little bit deeper to like, the custom properties or custom reports. And so how important are custom reports in HubSpot? And. And maybe even along with that, what are some tips that you can offer that will help people? Because there's creating a report and then there's creating impactful reports. So just unpack your brain on that a little bit.

Yeah, for sure. So the short answer of how important customer reports are in HubSpot, the short answer is extremely. So, just like we, you know, want users to customize the CRM instance to be specific to their organizational model. It should relate to your visualization as well, how you're going to visualize it. So, and the way to do that is through custom reports. So the most Most customizable way is to do it through custom reports. I would say, you know, the big tips to really think about is understand your property types even for you know those default properties that you do get. Because when you're then going into the custom report, it can impact the type of visualization that you may want to choose to enable or strengthen the message you're trying to communicate, not necessarily hinder it. So for example, you may not want to have a number property on an axis for a bar or column chart because it's going to look kind of weird. Open line text properties generally going to be pretty problematic for visualizing, right? Unless it's in a table or in a table like form. If though for example you have you know and use close1/loss reasons like those properties on the deal pipelines. First off, kudos to you because that's, that's a very easy quick win. Second, as a way to really demonstrate this example further, make sure that property or those two properties, I should say also default on the deals object. Make sure they're a pick list or an enumeration property type. Because what you actually can do is you can get the common reasons that you win or lose business and then you can subsequently report that a lot lot easier in order to get a quick insight to drive action. And if you need that additional detail, that's when you can maybe use a custom property to say okay, I need to say closed one reasons, you know, secondary reason or details as a multi line text to be able to actually have a sales rep enter you know why particular customer thought yeah, your solution is worth it because of X, Y, Z. Great note that I'd say, you know, so property types is a really big one and I, I say that is probably where you should spend a lot of time, especially if you're a rev ops person because that it's a lot of quick fixes to really have a lot of easy success on the, on the back end. I would say use your filters strategically. Filters can help clarify that message. It helps simplify the visualization. When I was a data analyst, a former manager actually gave me this book called Good Charts by HBR Harvard Business Review. I recommend that to anybody, you know, trying to just strengthen their own thinking around data visualization. And the big overarching message that really comes about from a book like that is just make it simple. The best reports are just very simple in terms of visualization because that's all you really need. You just need a simple way to convey your message. And subsequently if you have a bunch of reports on a, on a dashboard, right, like for a sales team, service team, marketing team. The dashboard conveys the story or multiple pieces of multiple messages, right, that you can use to drive or actually convey. Hey, this is how our team is performing this quarter. This is how our team is performing in this time period or with this caveat or, you know, whatever, whatever the situation is, using filters strategically, you know, structuring the dashboard. And the last thing I would say is help to automate that data management so that you're not honestly diving into properties every single time to correct clean up data functionality with an operations hub, workflows. Need I say more, right, to help copy stamp properties, custom or default. You also have calculated properties, right, that you can think about and setting. And there's some more like advanced things that, you know, if you need it, we can talk about. But I would say those are probably the tips of, you know, think about your property types, use your filters, structure your dashboard, and then think about where you can automate because it just ends up saving you time. And it's things that you don't really have to think about, you really convey about. Think about the action that you take from that report and go and do it.

Man, I hope you got your notepad out. I hope you're jotting notes. I mean that's, that's second rewind. The place of gold right there. I mean, there's a couple things. All of it, by the way, just yes, double click on plus up, vote, whatever. All of it. There's a couple things that you said that really rang into my brain where I'm like, ooh, simplify the visualization. It's always a superpower if you can simplify the complex. And we have to realize that while we might be the people who can create the report, making it simple for mere mortal human beings to then understand it. But especially when you added this layer in there, you said storytelling and I was like, oh my God, like I've never asked anybody, are you being a storyteller when you're building your dashboards? But, but immediately that changes the way. Because here's what I usually see. People just kind of throw some stuff into a mix and throw it on a dashboard and call it a day. And are you doing it in a way that it actually tells that story that you need to tell? And then this idea of using automation past, just lead, nurturing past the general processes. And how do you use automation to report and set? Oh, it's so good. Like that part right? There if people would start to dive in after this interview and research how they could do that for their organization, probably dramatically going to change what they were going to be able to see and do based off of that. So speaking of that, because it kind of alluded to like, oh, that's, that's kind of a mindset that we really haven't ever talked about is like as a reporting professional being us. And when I say we, I really mean me. You might have talked about this your entire life being a storyteller, right. With the, the data and the visualizations and the understanding of that. But that leads me to like what other mindsets do we as HubSpot users need to adopt to really maximize the value not of the HubSpot reporting tools only of course that, but to the data, the insights, the action. Like what, what are these kind of major mindsets that we should bring to the table?

Well, the first thing is, you know, to in line with that simplicity, right. A report, each piece of data visualization or a report should answer a specific question for you. That should help clarify for users who are trying to just put so many properties in to a particular report to say no, no, no, no. What are we trying to answer?

Right.

That also for what it's worth is going to tell you what objects or data groups you need to pick when you're in, let's say the custom report builder. I'm trying to view the marketing qualified marketing's contribution to revenue, that is the contacts and or companies that became customers who were tagged as marketing qualified leads. Okay. So right there I know I'm definitely looking at contacts and deals or If I'm a B2B organization, companies and deals and I know the properties. I'm going to grab Lifecycle stage as a filter.

Right.

But I'm going to look at close one revenue and I'm going to look at total revenue like one and I'm going to show it over the deal's close date over time.

Great.

That just showed me a very simple way of being able to visualize a powerful message of we are closing this much from marketing qualified leads or we are not closing enough for marketing qualified leads. It could go the other way.

Right.

But it tells you a very, very simple and specific question or answer to a very simple or specific question and that determines kind of the usefulness. Right. You, you were talking actually George, you were saying something that I, I see very often people using any platform, not just HubSpot.

Right.

It's where there's a dashboard and there's reports on it. I'm like, cool that there's sometimes tons of reports. And I'm like, you know, at least when I was talking to clients still I say, are you reading all this? And they would honestly say, no. I said, well, you should delete them because. And that's part of the other, you know, to help answer the question on the other end, it's like, make sure you actually are embodying that growth mindset that, you know, we at HubSpot really talk about. I know the partner ecosystem yourself really talk about. That's the exact. That's how you demonstrate it.

Really.

You're going through, okay, maybe not every day, right. But you're going through on a periodic basis with your leadership team or with your colleagues and saying, you know, what are the things that we need to really shift as an organization? If an organizational goal has shifted? Okay, what does that mean for reporting? Do we delete things? Do we add things? Okay, great, go and use that as the impetus to create that change. Because then once you set everything up and once you're ever evolving, you're going to more likely not have too much information or information overload in your brain, which, you know, it tends to happen a lot of the time.

Knuckle inquiring minds want to know, what's your favorite reporting feature inside of HubSpot? And to add to that, why do you find it particularly useful?

I'm going to cheat because I'm going to. I'm going to give two and I'm going to give two features. We've talked about this before, actually, so multi touch revenue attribution reporting is one and I'm going to say customer journey analytics is too. I think those things can really transform the way that any organization can analyze the health of their customer journey, no pun intended. They show the way that we'll credit your marketing and sales activities right towards closing revenue. You know, the multi touch, you can go through the different models, it's really well laid out and then subsequently where that dropped off in terms of customer journey analytics, it gives you that holistic picture of your journey and then it gives you impetus to take actions on the areas of improvement. Those are easy things that, especially for those who are held to a revenue target or those who are thinking about revenue, can immediately say, great, I need to look at those things. And then for multi touch revenue attribution to say, great, we're doing great here. We need to just keep doing it.

It's interesting. I almost want to say, I want to do an interview with you based on that answer, I almost want to do an interview with you again in like three to six months and have you come back and see if it's the beta AI reporting assistant. Because that's something that I have my eye on where I'm like, and what is that actually gonna help us do anyway? Not why we're here. We might have to do a take two of this in the future and talk about that. But let's dive back into this. What do most and we say, people, obviously we're talking about HubSpot users get wrong about HubSpot reporting and how can they correct these misunderstandings? And how do you think users can overcome the challenges that make most of this HubSpot reporting experience somewhat. Maybe a little dicey sometimes.

I mean, the biggest, the biggest challenges hearing right is again, just really not understanding that data model and then thinking that, well, this is all I have, so this is what I have to work in. Custom objects are available, right? Custom properties are available within any of those.

Right.

You can do different types of associations between your custom objects and you already have a good association built out with your core objects that you can particularly use to your benefit, especially if your organization has different quirks and nuances, just like any other organization does. Right.

It.

It's what makes right. Your organization special.

Right.

And unique. Because you do. You all do things a certain way.

Great.

Let that reflect in your CRM, let that reflect in your data model because then you'll be able to convey the story using the storytelling theme, right? The theme that, the story that you need to really convey in this case. I know we're going to talk about it soon, but you know, the, the integrations, you know, getting all the other connected systems in, you know, your HubSpot instance, it just, it just accentuates that message that much more.

And let's just dive right into that. Actually, I'll ask the question to get us to head right down that road because I do think that's one of the super powers of HubSpot is this kind of all on one platform mentality. So how can businesses integrate data from various sources here, there, everywhere within HubSpot to really create more comprehensive reports?

Short answer is three broad ways businesses can integrate data systems to HubSpot. And yeah, as you said, create more comprehensive reports. The first way is if we have an integration, we offer it and support it.

Right.

You know, integrated natively. There's the. Our ecosystem team does an amazing job really publicizing all the integrations that we have Available and we support natively. They even go into the data, that specific data synced. Who supports the integration, their contact information for support. How you can use both systems cohesively. Usually if there's something like that, the UI doesn't necessarily have to change. You could probably stay in your HubSpot instance. And it usually means there may be some options within your HubSpot instance on how to manage the integration effectively. And so that's a really easy way to do it if a native integration is not available. Option two is using an IPAAS system I pass stands for integration platform as a service to help link the two systems together. So I always thought of an IPASS as a translator. If one person's speaking one language, another person speaking another language. Your IPASS is your translator of being able to say, I'm the, the intermediary. This is, this is where all the data is going to come in and I'm going to be able to start organizing it for you to have it flow one way, another way, or both ways in this case. So because of this, IPasses usually, IPAs systems usually have a more aesthetic UI you can get used to and you can concentrate more on the data flows. In this case of like, what data do I need to go over, like, what properties on what objects and where does it go to the other system? You know, those examples are like Zapier, Workado, tibco, Automate, IO, Informatica. SAP also has certain options, right? There are tons and tons more, you know, that I can't even get to here because there are too many. Finally, no native or IPASS options available to link systems. A custom integration is that third method that you can look into to connect both systems together. When you think custom, it means that you likely need a developer resource in order to complete this, because you're starting from scratch, right? You're creating a connection between two systems, you know, from. From nothing really. You also need, for what it's worth that other system to have capabilities to connect to HubSpot. So, for example, do they have open APIs, right, in order to actually connect to HubSpot. But I mean, despite this, the advantage that you usually get with custom integrations is that you can build it however you'd like. So it's actually a very, very conducive. If you do the planning right and you do have developer resources to set aside to build it, to actually structure the data flows exactly how you need it to be structured so that you can get it into the right properties on the right Objects custom or default. And, you know, you were talking about, you know, advanced. You know, we were talking about George, like advanced reporting features. I would actually go back to that and say one other advanced reporting feature that people don't really take advantage of reporting with integrations, data. So if you integrate with, you know, another system where you have data coming in to HubSpot linking, that is the most. One of the more direct references to showing alignment within your tech stack. So if you have, let's say, another team who's living on another system, but you're able to actually show that data in, let's say, a HubSpot report.

Right.

And you can actually export that dashboard, I can't imagine the positive conversations that hopefully ensue. You know, even if it's not a good message that's being conveyed.

Right.

We're not doing well. Well, great. At least you have the data to show you where you're not doing well.

No.

Where can we concentrate on going forward? Because you did the hard part of just needing to connect the systems and show it.

Couple things. One, the first time I saw an air called dashboard in HubSpot, I was like, ooh, now we're getting somewhere. And the other thing is, I've had Salesforce teams where they're like, I wish we could show this in salesforce. And I'm like, but you can make it a monthly reoccurring dashboard that sends to them out of HubSpot. And they're like, oh, my God. And it was like the second coming or something. It was crazy. That section that you were in where you talked about the app marketplace, which, you know, native integrations, if you're watching this or listening to this and you haven't gone over to the app marketplace to see what you can actually tie in that you might already be using, definitely do that. It's funny. I also, during that section, realized how much of an absolute nerd I am, because when you started talking about the translator, I was in my brain going, or maybe the communicator from Star Trek that lets other aliens, like, actually. And I was like, okay, George, you're losing it. Like, just knock it off. But then custom integrations that my brain goes to, those are whiteboard moments. Like you. You said strategize, right? Whiteboard. Set it up before you just start Deving something and. And going for the gold there. So, okay, let's kind of wind this down, land the plane a little bit. What. Are there any resources, tools that you would recommend that the viewers, listeners, HubSpot users look into, to kind of deepen their understanding of. And I'll say HubSpot's reporting, but even just reporting in general, like literally, you mentioned a book in this episode. I have the book and the workbook for the book sitting on my bookshelf over there. So, like, what are just some resources where we can learn and dig and dive deeper into this conversation?

Yeah.

For from a HubSpot perspective, I'd say the reporting certification is one thing to look at. It's a great place to start. It's, it's quite comprehensive. It gives you information about the functionality, what's possible, how you think about it from a theoretical perspective or conceptual perspective, and then says, here's how you can think about our data infrastructure, things that we talked about today.

Right.

The second thing, and again, major props to you, George, for already bringing this up.

Right.

The knowledge base articles that list core objects and the default properties in those core objects, contacts, companies, deals, tickets, line items, activities. It just gives you an idea again of like what you don't need to create in terms of custom properties or custom objects. And psychologically, I feel like it'll get you thinking, I'm already further ahead than I thought I needed, than I. Than I was.

Right.

Which is always a really nice boost.

Right.

Especially on a Friday afternoon and where you can pull in the platform. I'd say in terms of, you know, in terms of other resources, Good Charts for me is really the big, the big resource that I liked. There's, there's a bunch of other books out there on data visualization and if you want to go more technical and go into more data heavy integrations, there's, there's other books out there that if people are willing, I'm happy to recommend separately. But I think Good Charts is a great place to start because it really focuses on the type of reporting that HubSpot has, which is descriptive reporting that's trying to get you and your front office teams to take action and align better. I'd probably start there past that. Then you got the blog, you got our knowledge base, you got the community, there's, there's tons of other users who are always publishing, hey, look at what you can do with this report and this particular visualization type. And you know, there's, there's tons of things out there that you can really use to kind of enhance your knowledge a lot more.

More.

Yep. And we'll definitely try to link some of all of what you talked about, but some of the other stuff in here as well, for an ultimate resource so that we are helping the community learn and get better at this. So it's time for that secret question. I always love kind of putting a question that people don't know what I'm going to ask. My secret question for you is if you could boil this entire interview down to one thing, what would be the one thing that you hope people take away today?

Reporting is your friend. If you keep it simple. If you keep it simple and you keep it organized, I think that's the only other thing I'd add. It can be your friend. It can help you convey a really effective message and it can help you identify where you got to take action.

Right.

Then the next thing you got to do is just do it. Go and do it.

Love it. Reporting can be your friend. If people want to reach out, where do you want to send them? Maybe they have questions, maybe they want to know about those other books. Heck, after the amount where, where do we point them to?

You can reach out. Feel free to reach out to me on LinkedIn. I'm always trying to share more resources around data management, you know, infrastructure, visualization. You know, with my network, I, you know, I'm really happy to connect with others and just point them in the right direction. If not, you know, give them the answer if I have it, get them moving in their day to day, so. I know, I know, George, you and I always are starting to geek out a lot more. So I'm hoping that, you know, we'll, we'll have a lot more really cool conversations about this stuff.

Absolutely. In the future we will be doing some different things. Talk about all of this because it's just a piece that people have a difficult time with. But ladies and gentlemen, that wraps it up for today. This insightful, educational, entertaining edutainment. I don't know, we'll see. Sidekick strategy expert interview. A huge thanks again for joining us. Knuckled, for joining us today, for sharing your deep knowledge and expertise of HubSpot reporting viewers. I hope you found this conversation as educational, possibly inspiring as much as I did. The amount of times we mentioned insight and action. I mean, let's go. Whether you're just starting out with HubSpot or looking to elevate your reporting game, there's always something else we can be learning, by the way, always something else we can be implementing. So dive into those resources and when you think there isn't, by the way, this is just a little gotcha. HubSpot releases an update and then it's time to start learning again. Don't forget to tune into our next episode for more expert insights and strategies that can help you transform your business or the businesses you work for. Because not only the CEOs or CFOs or CMOs should have growth mindsets, all of the employees should. And of course, until next time, remember to be a happy, helpful, humble human and do some happy hub spotting along the way.