What The Heck Is HubSpot Commerce Hub? With Jack Coopersmith [HubHeroes, EP56]
Jack Coopersmith from HubSpot explains Commerce Hub, a new product that handles payments, invoicing, subscriptions, and reporting inside HubSpot's CRM. The team walks through how it streamlines business workflows and integrates with existing HubSpot tools.
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.
We are taking a trip today in the Wayback Machine. Are we ready? Because four score in like, I don't know, three. Four weeks ago, George and the other Hub heroes returned from a memorable popsicle laden triumphant Inbound 23 event in Boston. Now, for those of you who are longtime listeners, first time callers, you may remember from our recap episode that George noticed something sneaky suspicious, even a sly little non announcement dropped by HubSpot, the Big Orange sprocket in a week known for being an exciting waterfall of product announcements. Right. Big shifts. George spied the mention of a new hub on a slot HubSpot Commerce Hub. But no one said anything about it. Until now, that is. That's right, everybody listening. This week on Hub Heroes, we are on the case. The HubSpot Commerce Hub case. What is the HubSpot Commerce Hub? Why did HubSpot create it? What problems does it solve for companies committed to growing better? And who is it right for? We are joined today by the one, the only, Jack Coopersmith of HubSpot.
Yeah.
To get the inside scoop on the answers to these questions and more. Jack, welcome to the pod. How the heck are you today?
I am fantastic. Hope everyone has had an awesome week. Very happy to be here. I had a great inbound. I hope you all did too. Popsicle laden in Inbound. Sounds awesome. I'm partial to the Creamsicles. I don't know about you all.
I'm a creamsicle guy myself.
Yep, yep. It's hard to argue with that one, I'd say. But yep, super excited about Commerce Hub. It's something that we've been working on for Quite some time. I hope you all are as excited about it as I am, and I know we'll get into some specific things, but it is HubSpot's sixth product line and it's a new thing for us in a lot of ways. And I'm sure we have some folks who are listening internationally as well. I know what you're wondering. When can I use that? Just give us a couple more months. We're going to be rolling out slowly over the next couple of quarters. So for anyone who's outside the United States and you're wondering, I'll go ahead and just tackle that head on right now. But super excited to be here and super excited to chat with you all here today.
Let's go.
Let's dig right into this. You know, let's do it. Let's do it.
Let's do it. So, Liz, Liz, One second, one second, one second, one second. Before you get into the conversation, I need to talk to Max for a second because I'm officially scarred for life. I didn't know that I was scarred for life, but I realized I'm officially scarred for life because as soon as you mentioned the word popsicle, I heard the name Tony. In my mind, I heard the word Tony.
Justice for Tony.
And his name was John. Dang it. His name was John. Anyway, go ahead, Liz. I just know that I'm mentally scarred for the rest of my life around popsicles and the name Tony. That's all.
George, you just said what we were all thinking. So that was an interjection required. Because you know what? Justice for John, justice for Tony. I don't know what to think anymore. I don't know what to believe anymore. But you do. You want to know what I do know? I know Jack is going to tell us why we should be excited about Commerce Hub. What is it? Why should we care?
Yep, yep. Great question. To lead us off. So Commerce Hub is an opportunity to revenue platform built within the HubSpot CRM that is all about allowing your business, your organization to get paid faster, save time and increase revenue. And so we've had HubSpot payments and I'm sure some listeners are familiar with that. As that tool has matured over the past couple of years and really grown, we thought it was time to package it up in a hub, especially because we have a new stripe payment processing option as well. So the tools have grown quite a lot. And of course we'll get into the nitty gritty of everything. I'll be honest, I kind of think about it like I think about the CMS in a lot of ways. We've always had website pages, we've always had landing pages, but as we've continued to really invest in that and as those tools have gotten really legit over the years, we decided to package it up into a CMS hub. I think it's a pretty similar motion this time around on the commerce hub side of things. So we've had HubSpot payments. We've expanded a lot of the tools though, in a big, big way. And we're all about allowing for your business to really run your commerce process within HubSpot because ultimately you manage your customers within your CRM, but you bill those exact same customers outside of your CRM. And that just doesn't make any sense at a high level. There are a bunch of different taxes involved with the cobbled tech stack and inefficiencies between your front office and back office. I have plenty to say about all of this, as I'm sure you all can already tell. But. But we want to centralize efforts within the HubSpot CRM as much as possible in order to allow for your business to be as efficient as you possibly can be.
George, I actually want to turn to you for a second because not only are you Hub Hero Alpha number one, you are also obviously a business owner yourself. You are the owner of a HubSpot agency and you've been using HubSpot commerce products like payments, like invoicing, all of these different things. So when you think about how you position the value of this and what excites you about this becoming a full fledged hub hub as a business owner, not just like a HubSpot advocate, what comes to mind for you?
Yeah, I mean there's so many things that come to mind, Liz, to be honest with you. But the thing if I boil it down to is the knowing of a process not needing to worry and it not being complex. Meaning, you know, there was a day where I would have had to have gone out and got like a credit card processing system or been forced to use something janky like PayPal, which doesn't look professional or you know, like it just. Man, it just used to be difficult back in the day and to be able to hop onto HubSpot, be able to for a while now be able to make payment links to do quotes, you know. Now invoices are somewhat new. Like I've had them for a while, started in beta, but like just the building of these things to one, allow some of my customers to self Serve themselves. They don't need to talk to me if they want to buy consulting hours, they don't need to talk to me. If they just want me to audit their HubSpot portal, you can literally purchase that and then, boom, we're off to the races. Now, if we do have a conversation, what I like is there's literally in the same software that I'm using for everything else, a way to give them a quote to sign and an invoice to pay. And what that means, because it is in HubSpot. And the thing that excites me the most is the ability to report and the ability to automate. And we're going to talk about some of those things as we go through here today. But like, listen, if, if you can contain your entire, like, here's my products, you just paid for them. Now they're in my QuickBooks or whatever you use. If you're not doing that right now, you realize how special that sounds.
And George, I'll even add on top of that. So I totally get disjointed systems like PayPal, for example, that can definitely slow you down. That's actually a step ahead of where so many businesses are right now. It's 2023, and there are still more than a third of businesses out there that collect their money via paper checks. So people are literally still relying on the USPS in order to deliver it in order to get paid by their customers. I don't know about you folks. I literally still have the same checkbook that I got when my mom took me to open a bank account when I was like 10 years old. I just don't use paper checks anymore. I know, that is nice, but at.
The same time, they asked me for a check recently and I was like, what?
Oh, gosh, what box? And then I have to look up like, okay, what exactly do I put where? Which one is the check number, which one is the routing number? It's just something that is a 20th century artifact, in my humble opinion. And so, yes, inefficiencies through and through when it comes to other online platforms, for sure. But there's still so many folks who are literally relying on paper checks in order to run their business. And so we see a lot of opportunity, especially in the B2B side of things, to streamline operations.
That's outstanding. So I know we're going to be talking about, when I asked this question, I want to hold on invoices for a bit because I know we're really excited about that and I know we also want to talk about integrations. I want to tackle that separately. But aside from those two things, what are some of our favorite features of the hub, aside from the invoicing piece and the integrations piece that we're going to get to here in a bit.
So George, I'd love your take as someone who does use these tools and is really actually running a business. But I'll pick up on some of the few things that you mentioned. You can create payment links and put those literally anywhere that you can put a hyperlink link online. I've talked to so many businesses that are like, you know what? I've always sold through sales reps. That's the only way that I can grow my business is by selling through sales reps. Respectfully, I think you are wrong if you are thinking through that mindset. I've seen divorce lawyers selling their services touchlessly online and folks I know, but like you just have to be a little bit creative. You have to kind of think outside the box. You also have to embrace the, the digital age that we're living in. Three and a half years at this point, post pandemic. And so when it comes to payment links and the whole concept of selling touchlessly, one quote from our former chief product officer that's always really resonated with me is HubSpot builds software. We also help people build careers as well. Like we can make internal heroes in other businesses. Not to overuse the term hero here.
We are a big fan of that here.
You exactly. But like if you are sitting in a given company and you're like, you know what, I think we can open up a completely new revenue stream online that is significantly more efficient than the rep assisted sale that we have right now. You're a hero in your, in your business internally immediately. So I want to make more heroes. I want more people to lean into the payment link side of things. Especially George, you mentioned like an audit. How about you just connect to payment, link to meetings, get paid for your time as it literally is the most easy thing that you can possibly sell and then call it a day there. And so those are some of those few features that I feel like anyone out there could be using and opening up new revenue streams for their business. Another thing, George, that you mentioned that I'd love to see a lot more people lean into and I think a lot more people will be leaning into is the workflow side of things. We're representing commerce data as CRM objects. That is really. So if you wanted to create a subscription based workflow, an invoice based workflow or a payment based workflow. You can do so incredibly simply just like every other workflow. I've talked to so many CFOs that spend hours a week going through spreadsheets saying, oh, we missed that invoice. We need to follow up with that person. There's no reason in the world that invoice based workflows shouldn't just be serving up those notifications to folks internally. So those are just some of the low hanging pieces of fruit that I see with the Commerce Hub platform right now. And if you haven't started to explore those tools, would highly recommend doing so. They look and feel like everything else within HubSpot.
I wanted to, I wanted to go back to when, when, when Jack was mentioning like, you know, people are still using like checks and stuff like that. I think, you know, I think you guys have probably heard me use that saying that, you know, your, your future buyers aren't growing up on, on, you know, Google anymore. They're growing up on like TikTok and Twitch. Well, I mean the next generation of B2B buyers are also growing up on Venmo and Cash app and things like that. And they're not, they're the ones that have never sent a check or wrote a check in their entire life. Right. So just like, you know, marketers should be thinking about, you know, where are we reaching people these days and how are we delivering our content in which medium, you know, are they kind of conditioned for. You got to start thinking about the same thing for the folks that are going to be writing the checks in the future. Right. Or not writing the checks in this case. Right. In terms of like my favorite like feature is really kind of like HubSpot payments and commerce Hub and things like that. You know, Jack, you talked about the rep assisted sale. I do love the tight integration with like deals. The fact that I can like create a deal, use my line items, like do all that kind of stuff and then I can like instantly, you know, spin up a payment link for that quote that gets created. Right. And it all just kind of like works together. That's awesome. Especially if you're a company that like doesn't have their shit together around like, you know, payments and you're used to doing it the old way. Right. Like, it's really easy to spin that stuff up. Especially if you're like a services company too as well because that's, those are like pretty simple line items, you know what I mean? Like, and it's really easy to get just up and running with that super fast. So, yeah, I think it's like mostly with. And this is, you know, kind of a cop out because it's my same, you know, sentiment. I give her like a lot of other features and HubSpot, it's just the way that it works together with everything else is the beautiful piece.
Shout out to Chris in the chat for two reasons who just echoed you. I spent maybe five calories spinning it, spinning it up. A beautiful thing. But also we got to take it back a few minutes. And just so you know, if you ever want to join us for a live broadcast, one of us will always drop a link on LinkedIn so you can come and hang out in the chat pane while we get weird and chaotic. But shout out to Chris for making me giggle. How do I put a check into the phone again? Just gotta. I just thought that was funny. George, let's kick it over to you. What are your thoughts?
Yeah, so. So what's funny? That. That is funny because I'll never forget when I actually asked one of my kids, hey, did you check the mail today? And they said, why? And I said, I have a client that's sending a check. And they're like, what? And to even go through that process, like for them it was just like a foreign concept. But here's the thing. I want to kick it back to some things that really excite me. One thing that really excites me is that I have a client who has actually been on his accountant's rear end to be able to go to QuickBooks online. Because the fact that there is an automated process for us to do invoices and QuickBooks together and make his life easier instead of having to download a CSV and send it to his accountant of the payments that have gone through inside of HubSpot. So that will all go away and make his life easier and the accountant's life life easier. The other thing that I'm excited about, and this is going to sound small, but if you understand me, you understand that I love customer experience. And one of the things that I like is how payments actually work. If you pay attention to what you can click when you're using the HubSpot CMS. Let me explain. There is a button that you can drag onto the page and it's the payments module. And when you get that payments module onto the page, you can do something special because here's how everybody usually thinks about the payment flow. I'm going to put some information on My website, I'm going to use a payment link. They're going to go to this special page and they're going to go ahead and buy it and then I'm going to redirect them to another page. Ladies and gentlemen, if you use the payments button, you can actually make that ish. Just slide up on the same page that they're actually on, purchase it and it just goes away and they're back in the same experience that they were. Now here's where it gets real interesting. When you have a chance to talk to Jack Cooper Smith, who is the man, the myth, the legend. One of the things that we did for another client is we actually did line items, but decided to make both line items optional because then the person could pick the package that they actually wanted to buy. And so now sudden, you send them to a landing page for the product, they push a button, it slides up, they pick the product that's right for them, it goes away, You've got the money, the invoice goes to your accountant, you fall asleep and take a nap because there's nothing else to do.
Optional products are awesome. Like who doesn't love a good old upsell? Or options for folks, of course, as well. I'd love to pick up a couple of things that you all put down here. Max, you mentioned like the who is buying nowadays? I saw a number recently that 44% of B2B decision makers are now millennials. I personally fall into that generation. I can tell you I don't want to talk to anyone for anything. I just want to like move forward with my day.
And this is difficult for me right now. This is a lot.
I really enjoy talking to you folks.
I really enjoy talking. No, I love you guys. I love you guys. This is miserable. Not going to lie.
Low barriers, all about low barriers through and through and making life easy for folks. And there's one thing I'm very confident saying. Demographics are demographics. And so that 44% number will only get larger just by definition. Please argue against that because it's not going to happen. Another thing on the buyer experience side that I've kind of heard a lot of folks mention, George, I would argue that, that through the whole customer life cycle, the most important part is actually collecting your money and billing it and actually getting paid. Because ultimately that's kind of what businesses are all about. Not to be too, you know, much of a cold hearted capitalist on that front, but if you have an amazing customer experience for your customer through and through, and then they get to that moment where they're like, I want to pay you, and you make it difficult for them, and you're like, oh, just wait for my finance team. Team. They're on vacation right now, but they'll send that invoice next week. It just makes no sense. And so we also. I'd made that comment earlier around, like, opportunity to revenue. We want you all to make sure that all of those opportunities you have actually turn into revenue and make sure that you can meet your buyers where you want to. Where they want to be met.
I have a few thoughts about this.
Can I jump in real quick before your thoughts. Okay, so there's a couple things, and then, Liz, I promise I'll shut up and you can go.
I'll interrupt you next time.
Yeah, yeah.
There you go.
So this is why I love talking to people.
I just want to hit upon a thing that I think it gets intriguing right when you start to think about this, because, Liz, you always talk about buyer repellent. Anytime you remove something from the process that you've built and make it difficult, then all of a sudden it's like they can't. And to just be able to have the quote, the invoice, the process, the payment link, the. The slide it up, put your, you know, in whatever. It's like, it's there and, you know, it works. But here's the other thing that I want to lean into on this process, because we talk about ex. External experience and external process. One of the things that also excites me about having it all capsulated in HubSpot, because Inbound did, by the way, talk about some AI stuff just a little bit. One of the things that they talked about a little bit. Just a little bit. Just a little bit. But one of the things they talked about was AI forecasting. And you're only going to get good AI forecasting if your entire thing. Well, I shouldn't say only. You're really going to get easy and powerful AI forecasting for your business. If you're doing hit from get right quotes, invoices, money's there, you can report on it, you can track it now, you can forecast it. And that's going to mean so much to modern businesses as we move forward for, like, being able to understand what they can and can't do in future months that they're gonna be driving revenue. Liz. Sorry, go ahead.
No, don't be sorry. Speaking of driving revenue, Max, where are we driving, buddy?
Flavortown. I couldn't think of anything. Sorry.
Are you picking up popsicles?
Way to bail me. Go for YouTube. No. So, okay, Jack, you cut, you touched upon a couple of things and George, you started going where I was going. What I love about the things that you mentioned here, few things. Number one, you're right, people are wanting more autonomy, not only over the decision making process. I think we have to now start thinking about inbound differently a little bit. Right? They don't just want autonomy over the decision making process. They now want the ability to say, I want to start right now. Right. And I think it also, from a business perspective, think about how less likely you are to buy something. The more clicks you have to go through, the more time that you spend. Sit there with that thing. Like I was the queen of when I was younger. I'm like, I'm gonna save up money to buy this purse and I'll obsess about the purse for like six months and then by the time I got there, I'd be like, wait, but this purse is like 400 Tina's burritos. And that money stays with me and I end up getting burritos. Right? Like, and that's what happens. The longer you sit with a large buying decision, the more you are, more likely you are to talk yourself out of it. Whether that or not that's a good thing. And this is where being the content nerd that I am tying back to another episode. This is why being more human in your content is so important. This is why I just published an article actually for George this week that talks about visual formatting of your content. And one of the things I recommended people doing is fire up like Wistia, fire up loom and do like quick one to one videos that summarize sections. Because the companies that understand that they need to be able to take, take micro parts of the stuff that they sell. Because I guarantee you there are people listening. I run a service based business. I can't possibly do that. Listen, Susan, yes you can. If George can do it, so can you. Right? You can offer consulting hours, you can offer things that can be packaged in more immediate transactional ways. So you're not leaving as much money on the table. But the only way you do that is if you're creating an online product presence. If you're creating content that not only focuses on the humans you're trying to serve, but showcases your own humanity. Who are you? What do you do? What do you value? Not just what you sell. Do you know what you're talking about? That is the edge. So let's go into, well, hang on one second.
One second.
Yeah, I could add on top of that too.
So hang on a second. Yeah, so first of all, mind space stupid. Max, while you're driving to Flavortown, can you stop by the store and pick up some WWGD bracelets? What would George do so that people know that they can sell stuff online too?
That'd be great.
Can you pick those up for me?
Okay.
Yeah.
On the way to mrrville, baby.
And to all Susans out there, I love you. I have a very good friend named Susan. It's just a great name to say when I'm feeling sassy. It's not a slight against Susan.
Sassy Susan.
No, I'm good. I'm good. Jack, go ahead and layer on top of all that goodness that we had, content still matters.
No doubt about it. But Liz, George, I'll kind of bundle your comments recent comments together here. People are. People have said, like data is going to be the new oil. Data already is the new oil on a lot of fronts. In our world where Moore's Law and computing power just continues to become more powerful, in a world where you have your customer data living here and then your commerce data living somewhere completely different again for those same people, then you are just immediately undercutting yourself in a big, big way. And the way they think about Commerce Hub within our system is it's really an amplifier to the rest of the hubs. I don't honestly see anyone just using Commerce Hub. It really does make all of the other platforms a lot more powerful. And so, Liz, in a world where we're thinking about like real personalized content to the right person at the right time, if you know what they've purchased and what they're most likely to purchase afterwards because you have all of this data in one place, could you in theory use automation to serve up? Hey, do you want to buy this? What about this? A lot of people in your circumstance would consider this package with us or that type of thing. And so you're able to really use all of this data and serve it up. And so it really does amplify the rest of HubSpot in a big, big way. You're not able to do that if your commerce data is siloed in the back, back corner of the back office of your organization, definitely.
Max, have you pulled into the integration rest on your way to. On your way to floating?
Maybe a little bit. One thing I want to add, like more just general, is I love that because I've watched this part of HubSpot over the years, even prepayments. This, this whole, I'm sure everyone has heard the notion or made the complaint that quote, HubSpot sucks at reporting monthly recurring revenue. And what I think is really cool is that we are in the post HubSpot sucks at recurring revenue era because with things like the subscription object you see in HubSpot payments or even the subscription object that we bring in. Right. To as well. Right. The concept of that has kind of taking us out of that argument. Right. And you no longer can say that, which I think is really, really cool. Because, you know, once you have a dedicated subscription object, right? Which is something that's fundamentally different than a deal, fundamentally different than some properties on a contact or a company record, right. All of a sudden, once you have that data structured in a way that makes sense, HubSpot all of a sudden magically becomes a really, really good tool for measuring monthly recurring or annual recurring or any sort of recurring revenue. Right. And when you do cross object reporting across the contact record that's associated to those subscription objects, all of a sudden you have this like wonderful marketing data that you can then use to like, you know, split up, like, where's my MRI coming from? Where are my new subscriptions coming from? Where is the one off revenue coming from in terms of like the marketing channel that it's going through, right? Like we're no longer in that era. And I remember being that solutions engineer or way worse going way back in time being that, that implementation space specialist, where when someone said, how do we track our monthly recurring revenue? I would go, you don't and you can't. And I'm uncomfortable having this conversation with you now. There's no excuse whether it's a HubSpot payments or a zebra with stripe or a custom object just called subscriptions, right? The data structure is there for you to do it and there's no excuse anymore. Right. And so I just think that's like super cool that we are now firmly in that world and we're out of the scary monthly recurring revenue era that a lot of us lived in and didn't want to talk about.
27 minutes and 38 seconds. To get to the fact that subscriptions are in there, I want to quickly just piggyback on the fact if you go into your HubSpot portal and you're interested in subscriptions and you go to the product updates and you go to the beta, you can layer on that people can use payments. It can be either be a payment or it can be a subscription. Either way, it can create a deal. Now you've got a deal for your team but you also have whether subscription or payment invoice for your accountant. So you're literally covering all the bases with all the things inside of HubSpot.
It's awesome.
We actually got a question from the audience here about subscriptions real quick. Speaking of subscriptions, would love to learn about the new index page and deal.
Card Jack, two seconds to unlock. Understand and frankly like whether you're using Commerce Hub, whether you're using. There will be an open invoice too. I've already chatted about invoice automation that will easily enable you all to chase that down. Of course the subscription status is changed from active to unpaid as well. So if you wanted to manage that however you see fit, maybe tying back to my comment around it amplifying other hubs you want to use a web hook to deprovision the license to your platform. For example, if a given payment through bales. I'll give you all a little peek behind the roadmap curtain. Not positive how much I'm supposed to do this, but I'll do it anyway.
Let's get Jack.
Here. We're not going to tell anybody.
Yeah, it's not going to be published at all, but not at all.
This is private. This is just us.
No one's watching live.
No, it's not.
No, it's not.
And I would love for Jack to keep his job. I, I would love for Jack to keep his job. And this, this is very public.
But let's at least, let's let's at least get Jack like a nice stern one on one after this. That's what I want.
Give us a little taste people.
I think you can see the writing on the wall here, folks. We're going to be creating those invoices for subsequent payments as well. When it comes to milestone billing that you milestone billing structures that you create subsequent subscription payments as we continue to move forward invoices. You want to use a web hook to deprovision the license to your platform. For example, if a given payment fails, I'll give you all a little peek behind the roadmap curtain. Not positive how much I'm to supposed. Supposed to do this, but I'll do it anyway.
Let's get Jack out.
Keep going. Everything's safe here. We're not going to tell anybody.
Yeah, it's not going to be published at all, but not at all.
This is private. This is just us.
No one's watching live.
No, it's not.
Don't worry about. No, it's not.
And I would keep his job. I, I would love for Jack to keep his job. And this, this is very public.
But let's at least, let's, let's at least get Jack like a nice stern one on one after this. That's what I want.
Give us a little, give us a little taste, people.
I think you can see the writing on the wall here, folks. We're going to be creating those invoices for subsequent payments as well. When it comes to milestone billing that you. Milestone billing structures that you create subsequent subscription payments as we continue to move forward. Invoices has been a huge project for this year. We're not done with invoices yet. Invoices are really going to become that atomic unit of all things commerce within HubSpot. And like. Well, yeah, we definitely do have that reporting. That is, it was very hard to get when Max and I were both on the onboarding team way back when.
Oh yeah, you were in the trenches with me going through that shit.
Yes, I remember those questions. I remember them too. Create a deal for a separate pipeline. I know all the workarounds. We've done all of that. But ultimately, if we have invoices that speak to an accounting system that you're using, that have a status, a due date, and an amount that gives you what you need, and so we're there already. We're going to continue to invest in this direction, though, and you all will really see invoices become that atomic unit of all things commerce within HubSpot.
All right, gentlemen, are we finally ready? 17th time's a charm. Who's excited to talk about integrations?
Let's go, Max.
What do you got? What are you excited about? What do you see the potential for here?
Well, I mean, well, when you, when you're talking about integrations, I mean, you know I'm wearing the hat, right? But you know, it's, it's zebra is almost kind of like an alternative to Commerce Hub, right? So I don't want to call it like a integration into Commerce Hub. So if Jack, you have any like specific integrations, I mean, I could probably put together some thoughts here. But if you have specific integrations around HubSpot payments and like commerce and what that's doing and integrating with other systems like your, your QuickBooks of the World, data sync, stuff like that.
So can we talk about just for a moment how it was so cute. I tried to tee up Big Popsicle and Big Pox Popsicle just kicked it back to Big, big.
We're friends. We're friends and we love each other. That's the. That's the thing. Yeah.
George, what do you got? What's on your mind?
Yeah, but here's the thing. So, because, Liz, when we were. Because I don't want you to come to me about integrations. Like, when we. When we were planning this episode, I literally wanted a at the feet of Jesus moment, meaning at the feet of Jack. And Jack could talk to us about QuickBooks and other integrations that either are possible for people using this or. Yeah, no pressure, Jack. You're not genius, Jack. But at the feet of Jack. Right? And Jack can explain, like, listen, this is what we're thinking as far as integrations with everything that we're building. This is what excites us. This is what you can use it. Like. That's literally where my mind went for this episode.
Yeah, that's what I want to hear about. Talk to us, Jack. Jesus.
Jack Christ Jesus Coopersmith. Yes.
I saw the Hub Heroes ad before this, and, man, I'm getting some serious accolade.
Getting some serious Jack and his amazing Technicolor dream.
You should see the Hub Hero cartoon we made for you. It's just you just in a robe, tied up to the sprocket. Yeah, anyway, sorry, just looking like you had a great. This is where we get canceled.
I need some disciples. I need some disciples. I need some disciples. Well, hey, let me first say, just on the integration side of things, kind of picking up on. Max, what you just mentioned a minute or so ago. If you are currently using Stripe, and you're deeply integrated into the stripe APIs, and you're running, for example, open a Marketplace or a SaaS platform that is very dependent on the stripe APIs. As much as I'd love to see everyone use Commerce Hub, I'd rather people use the tools that are best for them that will help their business be as efficient as possible. And so, yeah, we're going to be looking to the zebras of the world for some of those things. And so, you know, you're wearing the hat, Max. I'd mention that even if I didn't, as I love you and the rest of the Happily team. But if you are really entrenched in the stripe integration ecosystem, we can still solve for you all. You can still manage your commerce process within HubSpot and capitalize on all of the data that we've been chatting about. So I do just want to, like, call that out to make sure that everyone can see the full Landscape of everything. Anything you'd add there. Max, I don't want to just like call out your.
No, totally. And you said it beautifully, right? Like, if you're deeply entrenched in Stripe and like what that would translate to is that you're probably building your subscription logic in Stripe. You have your a product library in Stripe. You are making API calls to Stripe, you are building your payment infrastructure on Stripe and you can't exactly rip that out and move it to HubSpot payments. Then Zebra's gotcha, right? And like, what's cool about this is that, you know, Zebra and HubSpot payments aren't competitors. We serve two totally different types of customers. Right. But what's even better about this is that like, there are so many different options to get your commerce information into HubSpot. Whether HubSpot's running it, you're using like a third party tool like Zabra to get the Stripe stuff. Or heck, I mean, look at the APIs. Like you can, you can, you can custom build it too. You know what I mean? Like, it's flexible, so I think that's like super dope. The only other thing that I would say about like integrations as well is like, when you look at some of. For me, it's Data sync because like HubSpot payments is, you know, creating quotes, it's creating invoices. Like, I know invoices is part of Data Sync for a lot of stuff, right? Or at least they're starting to work on it. I don't know if is quotes on Data Sync also, is that a supported object or am I or is it not?
We're thinking a lot more about invoices and Data Sync nowadays than Quotes. You can also convert quotes into invoice.
Oh, even better. There you go. Right?
Yeah, yeah.
It's so like, so when I think it's like, what's beautiful about this is like we're getting all these objects like standardized onto HubSpot and able to integrate them with like so many other different systems because of Data Data Sync. But then when you look at HubSpot payments, it's like you're adding so much more functionality to these objects, which is like the super exciting thing to me too as well. So like, when those objects exist in HubSpot, they're not just records of objects, they're rich, interactive things you can use. Right. And that, that power your whole experience. So that to me is like what really, really excites me.
Okay.
All right, so, so Jack, I want you to go into Integrations. But I gotta jump in here because I gotta show for a big, happily, big popsicle, big whatever, for a hot minute too, because I want to give. I want to give somebody a glimpse into something that. That might make sense for their business. One of the things that just revel. Because Jack, you said turn a quote into an invoice. Here's the thing that I want everybody to realize that is absolutely amazing, especially for what we're doing. We have a lot of folks that they're kind of paying us to do the same thing month over month over month over month. And we don't want to put them on a subscription. We want an invoice that we can send. We want them to be able to pay. But here's the thing. Because of happily, we can go into, let's say, September's deal, and we can clone that deal. And that deal can be cloned with the line item that we need to charge them. And then as soon as we clone that deal, because Jack and the team is awesome, we can convert that deal into an invoice. And so it's literally like two buttons where we're cloning a deal and converting the deal to an invoice and sending an email to our clients. Listen, ladies and gentlemen, I used to spend a metric button of time to invoice all my clients, and now it's gotten so simple that my wife can do it in like 30 minutes. And it's amazing. Amazing.
And that that app is called Clone Attack, if anyone's wondering. And you can get it on the HubSpot app marketplace. Thank you.
Dude, I couldn't. I couldn't have served it up for you any better. I was waiting for you to jump in and give the name of the tool.
Yeah, I appreciate the show, my friend. We're just glazing big plato over here.
As a business owner myself, that excites me a lot because. And this is where I think we get to the true value of commerce Hub. Because I think a lot of people look at HubSpot and because it's cemented its place with SMBs who are leveraging. Inbound is marketing, sales, service. And now it's starting to leak into operations and commerce and all of these different pieces. When I think of myself as a business owner, as an open entrepreneur, I want to spend more time marketing, selling. I'm a content person, so creating content. And do you know what sucks all of that time up? The fact that I'm dying on bill.com and it just makes my life. I'm not here for big bill.com. it's not happening. It makes me just want to just sink into the floor and become one with the carpet. So when I think about HubSpot Commerce Hub, particularly if you are like. Or HubSpot. Sorry. When you think about HubSpot Commerce Hub and you think about all of these different things, I want you to think about, think about the time you got back in your day in marketing, things you were able to market or automate on marketing, things you were able to automate on sales, things you were able to automate on service. And now suddenly you can do that to the administrative side of your business and make it easier for people to do the thing where. Jack, I know you apologize for this. I'm not gonna. You're gonna make it easier for people to give you money in exchange for goods and services. Like that is a. Yeah.
Think about how much time you're saving your customer. They don't have to go write a check and lick an envelope and put it in there like a freak.
Never say the word licked. Okay, moving on. Invoicing.
I know we're running a Integrations.
Integrations.
We can jam on some integrations stuff.
Whoa, whoa, whoa.
George doesn't have this.
We never got to integrate. We never. Jack never talked.
I have some integration thoughts. I have some integration thoughts. I'd also say though, Liz, like, I'd much rather you and other entrepreneurs spend their time building relationships with their customers. And also, if we're just being honest with ourselves, the whole billing process internally, it's just not that fun. Like, you would rather be spending your time doing creative work and things like that. I don't want to speak for you, but, like, I think that's a safe assumption. In general. It's boring as shout about integration.
It's.
It's not, it's not the most interesting part about the whole go to market function as a whole. That's. That's for sure. I'm confident in saying that. I have a lot of people ask me, like, jack, is HubSpot gonna like build an accounting system and start to Compete with the ERPs and accounting systems of the world? Who knows what will happen, like into the future. But like, I can tell you all pretty darn confidently, no, we are not going to be doing that in the near medium term future. Really. Like, we are going to lean into integrations on that side of things. So we definitely integrate with accounting systems right now. I'll be honest though, folks. We're thinking a lot about these accounting integrations and this is really one of our top priorities from a product perspective as well because we want to allow for your front office teams to have their life and their, and their day to day workflow streamlined in a big, big way. We also do want to make sure that your finance team is super happy and super confident with all of the data passing over there. I kind of alluded to we're thinking a lot about data sync nowadays as a product team in relation to invoices. I'll kind of leave that there. Feel free to reach out directly if you do want a little bit more information on that front. But we definitely have accounts having integrations right now. We definitely have integrations with those ERP systems. We're not done building in that direction though, especially as we do start to expand our tools internationally. I totally recognize that it's a pretty complex financial ecosystem outside of the United States and so we're definitely going to be looking to solve for that. I'd also say we're thinking a lot about APIs on the Commerce object side of things as well nowadays. So like, who knows exactly where this is going to go in 2024. But for any partners who are listening in, for anyone who does build on top of HubSpot, could I see a world where we enable you all to create custom integrations using our commerce objects?
Totally.
I can see a world where we start to cross that bridge. So stay tuned. There's a lot more. I really do think I'll use a baseball metaphor as it is, you know, approaching playoffs time here. I really think we're in like the second or third inning of the commerce process and life cycle within HubSpot. Curious to hear. George, Liz, Max, if you all like, agree. But I really do think we're still early on this. We have a lot more cool stuff coming.
I agree. It feels like this is just the beginning. Yeah, no, I agree. It feels like this is, you know, it's. It feels like just the beginning, but like it's an extremely, extremely robust and solid beginning is what I'll say. Like these have been a strong first few innings. So to think that like, damn, this is kind of just like the tip of the iceberg. I'll use a Titanic reference here then as a stupid joke.
So it's a sinking.
No, no, not that.
I don't know. What's the movie? Penguins. Penguins. I don't know what's the.
Wasn't there like a Jesus didn't do.
It, but I'll use a Happy Feet reference. How about that? A Happy Feet reference. It's the tip of the iceberg.
There we go.
You know, so yeah, it's. I don't even know where I was going with this. It's. I think it's, it's cool to know that there's still like a lot of room I think to expand on it and we don't feel like we're getting to what the, what we envision is the end of what commerce looks like when within a CRM. Right. Because you really haven't seen commerce within a CRM, at least natively before. I don't think. I'm not, I'm not sure what, you know, sort of, what sort of like equivalent of whatever this is in Salesforce would be. That's not a third party product there. There is not yet cobbled, not crafted right. And you don't want to cobble, not craft your commerce sets for damn sure. Right. So it's, it's cool to think there's a lot more on the horizon that really excites.
So I'll keep this in the HubSpot ecosystem with my comment and Liz with four or three minutes to spare, we might have to do an episode two of the Commerce Hub because there is so much.
We knew that HubSpot Commerce Hub was.
Going to be so hot just in the second and third inning by the way too.
I'm just so. Here's. Here's what's, here's what's amazing to me. It. First of all, it is a very exciting beginning and again I want to keep it into the HubSpot ecosystem here. Since using HubSpot since 2012, I've seen a lot of hubs be born. As a matter of fact, I've seen all the hubs be born because when I started it was just a marketing platform with blog and keyword tool. This is probably one of the most exciting starts to a hub that I have seen be released for HubSpot because of the power that it gives you to just transform the way that you're gonna do business online and transform the way that you're gonna be able to interact with your accounting and finance people. It's absolutely amazing and I get giddy.
Can we talk about.
It's a sleeper hint though because they mentioned it and didn't mention it.
This. That's the thing to me I just wanted.
I'm so happy to hear that, George. That actually, you know, for those who are just listening in, I think the biggest smile on my face ever hearing.
That'S like the Paul Hollywood handshake from great British baking show that you just got from George P. Thomas on a hub. It's pretty sick.
That's huge. That's huge. But I'd also say big blueberry muffin guy myself, of course. But I'd also say, like, HubSpot has a couple of competitive edges that we've maintained over the past, like 16, 17 years. Thought leadership is, I think, one of those biggest ones. We literally wrote the inbound marketing book. The whole concept of the flywheel was something that, you know, if you hopped on that train back a few years ago, you probably don't regret hopping on that train. Kind of speaking for myself here, but when it comes to like thought leadership chapters in HubSpot's history, this does really seem like chapter number three in a big way when it comes to like combining your commerce and your go to market efforts on the CRM side of things. So I'm really happy to hear that, George. Again, we're not done yet at all. We're going to continue pushing forward this new thing and if we can support anyone listening, we are here to support. So feel free to reach out. I'd love to chat with you and help guide you here because I do recognize commerce is important. This is literally your money. It can be a little scary to change things up. I'm the first person to recognize that. But at the same time, I genuinely believe that this is the way of the future and so hop on this train now. The folks who hopped on the flywheel train and the inbound marketing train do not regret doing so. This is our third train, I think.
So freaking exciting. And just like Chris in the audience just said, this is my spirit episode. Is that a thing? Like a spirit I freaking love? I'm not kidding, guys. I knew we were gonna have like a great conversation about this, but it is amazing to me that this is the hub that was announced, but not announced at Inbound, but it's the one we're the most excited about. There's an incredible amount of potential here. So, Jack, we're obviously gonna have to have you on for a purpose too, because we need to talk about invoicing, we need to talk about limitation. There's so many different things that we want to talk about with you, but for today, as a little teaser, thinking of our listeners right now, we've got a couple in the audience who are already excited, ready to go. Right. But you also may have folks who are saying they're going like, I don't know, I don't know whether or not this is worth exploring for my business. What is the one thing you want people to know right now at the bottom of the third, on the iceberg with the penguins? What is the most important thing they should be keeping in mind right now about HubSpot Commerce Hub? If they remember nothing else?
I'd encourage folks to not think about, okay, my marketing process is broken. My sales process is broken. My service process is broken. I think that's an outdated way to think about things. I really would encourage folks to think about their entire go to market motion. And commerce very much underpinned that. And so don't just think through the lens of individual teams and silos. Think about the entire customer experience that you're trying to push forward. And the commerce motion very much impacts that. The final thing that I'd say is try it out. We really want to bring in barriers to adoption as low as possible. And folks, this isn't the type of thing that you need to pay $2,000 per month to use by Inc. Any means, if you have a HubSpot account, you can use these tools. So I really would encourage you all to just try it out, run a test transaction so that you can see how everything comes together. It's like it is. It is straightforward. It looks and feels like everything else within the system. It is super powerful. But just try it out. It's not. There's low adoption, low barriers to adoption on this. So think about your go to market, swing the hammer a little bit here and try these tools out.
Fantastic.
Can I kind of just plug something real quick?
Go ahead. She'll basically do it.
Jack is actually going to be joining the team at happily to do a webinar later this month in October. I don't have the exact date in front of me, but we're doing a webinar where, you know, we kind of explain HubSpot Commerce Hub and then zebra, which one's right for you, the different differences between them, kind of who it serves, all that kind of fun stuff. So by the time this episode goes out, I think it'll be after that. So there should be a recording for anyone to go back and check out too, as well. If you are trying to figure out what the best option is for your.
Situation, I'll make sure we link that in the show notes. But for now, gentlemen, thank you so much for joining us for another fantastic week of Hub Heroes.
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 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.
