World Certification Week

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.

Hi. Welcome back to Hub Heroes Once again, I am Liz Murphy. That's really the only person you need to know on this podcast. I'm just kidding. Actually, no. I do want to take a moment to honor one of our Hub Hero pod podcast hosts. Devin, you are not here this week. You are. You are off educating the masses in the great state of Wisconsin of all. And I wrote a poem. I wrote a poem by that. I made a robot write a poem. Are we ready?

Oh, we're starting with that?

We're starting with it, not ending with it.

Does it reference cheese at all?

Sadly, no.

Wow.

But okay. It's a haiku.

Oh, okay.

Devin. Devin, where are you? Podcast without your jokes. Bites silence ain't funny. Heart, heart, heart, heart.

Oh, wow. That was. Yeah. Of all weeks for him not to be here, too. That's what's fun.

I know. Even Max said something earlier. Remember? We're talking about World Certification Week. The thing that our man Devin got hyped for the last few episodes, right?

Really hype.

Feels weird not having him here for this one.

I know, but. Oh, well, we're going to have to do it.

We'll get him. We'll get him for the recap.

Yeah. There we go.

Well, we'll get him for. We'll get. What's his name for the recap. That's right, David. He's wonderful. Anyway, hi. Welcome back to yet another episode of Hub Heroes. We've already let the cat out of the bag. We are talking about HubSpot World Certification Week. It is almost here. It is May 15th through 19th. We've got a ton of stuff going on Here it basically, it's an entire. You know what, George? I'm actually going to turn it over to you. I'm going to give you a little bit of MC space, a little bit of lane to run here. I wanna, I wanna hear, I wanna hear the George sizzle describing World Certification Week.

Oh, man. Well, thanks for giving me the reins to me. Actually, don't get used to. Oh, I won't, I won't. I know. It's only temporary. It's only temporary. So the sizzle. It's funny because a, there's so much to actually talk about in this episode and there's so many good reasons to, like, pay attention to World Certification Week, but I have to, of course, you know, draw it down to its simplest form. And for me, the siz this year, this week, World Certification Week could be the thing that changes your life forever. The amount of certifications that you get, the amount of information that you put in your brain, the things that you'll unlock for yourself, for the company that you work with or for or the agency that you're at, the difference that it could make in the ecosystem of your surrounding is what fascinates me. And, and I, I know that people go at this and we're going to talk about it even as like, well, it's five bucks for certification and also I'm getting my Certs and I'm like, you know, it's checking two boxes. It's checking more than two boxes. You sometimes you forget that you're a box that needs to be taken care of and checked, man.

Okay, so we're leading with a pretty powerful metaphor there. Guess what, everybody? We're boxes this week.

That's right.

All right, but that's exactly why we're dedicating an entire episode to this. This. So for all of you longtime listeners, first time callers, you, you know that here on Hub Heroes, like, we are huge fans of HubSpot Academy number one. But even more importantly than that, we are just overall committed education for humans advocates. HubSpot, anybody, doesn't really matter. So that's why we are taking this week's episode to dedicate an entire, well, episode to the incredible inbound education opportunity that we all have before us. Just in a few weeks, we're going to be talking about what it is, why it matters, and how to make the most of this opportunity. But I want to lead with a question and I can just imagine that there's somebody out there in the audience listening right now to this, going, okay, y' all this is a company who is incentivizing people to take certifications on their platform. This is corporate shill written all over it. Gentlemen, what say you?

I mean, corporate shill, I think, would be kind of a weird way to. To point at it, considering they're not selling anything here, really. I mean, I guess you could make the argument that more people taking it, more people getting their eyes on HubSpot. Yeah, I'm sure there's nice benefits that'll come from that. But, I mean, here's the way that I'm. I'm kind of thinking about it. HubSpot Academy is great. There's, like, a lot of awesome educational stuff on there. Whether you want to lean into, like, the strategy side of things in our universe or the product side of things in our universe, like, whatever. But the thing is tough for some people is that, like, it is. It is. It is overwhelming. The amount of stuff is in. That's in there, and the different paths you can take and the different places you can go and what you can learn and the journeys you can create for yourself from an educational perspective as you bask in the fields of all this, you know, content, glory that's in there. But I think, like, what's really neat, beyond the incentive to do these certifications so you can, you know, do it for the kids, right? Get. Get that money donated, help HubSpot hit its goals there. But I think if you were ever looking for an excuse to expose yourself to a lot of this content, and you've always been in a place where it's either been too overwhelming for you to start. Cause you don't know where you should start. I think what's really interesting is, like, you're seeing them build all these different, like, events around this that just helps you, like, navigate this stuff, right? Because, you know, sometimes we can get a little bit of analysis paralysis and, you know, avoid this great learning opportunity we have in front of ourselves. But, like, now there's, like, really no excuse. Cause they're really gonna be guiding you and holding your hand through how you should approach all this stuff.

So.

So I think it's a great opportunity for. For even that just by itself.

And I'll say this like, first of all, if you're full of excuses, because I think I heard Max say the word excuses, like, I don't know, five, seven times just a second ago. Like, you got to knock that junk off. Like, you just got to realize you have a limited amount of time to absorb the amount of education that you need to get yourself to the place that you want to be in life. And by the way, what I'm saying here is we are what we read, listen, or watch. Right? And so I. I like to talk things, you know, in ways that are kind of weird and different. But, you know, is this the year that you actually start to subscribe to education Trump's entertainment? Are you gonna use World Certification Week to be the jumping off point of, like, I'm gonna focus on all the things that I need to learn to become the person that I want to be, and I think it's a great opportunity. And. And again, Liz, you talked about shilling for corporate shill for yourself, freaking chill for yourself for a week. Like, oh, my gosh. Yeah.

And hey. Well, I was just gonna say is like, yeah. Is this a marketing thing that HubSpot's doing? Yeah, absolutely. But it's also injecting some good into the world, and it's also giving you a really good opportunity to really learn how to wrangle this and take advantage of it. So take advantage of it. Right.

Which, by the way, not marketing things aren't bad things. Listen, the world certificate, or not the world Certification, but the world's largest webinar in 2012, was it a marketing plan or attack or scheme or strategy? Yes. Did it bring a bunch of people in who were the foundation of the HubSpot and inbound ecosystem? Absolutely. Did it just change the trajectory of where HubSpot is today? Without a doubt. And that's why I'm saying that World Certification Week can be that same thing to you, the listener. It can be that catalyst moment.

Okay, I look. Sidebar on the word catalyst, nobody else knows this but you and I have been battling over the word catalyst for over a year. We have you already. We. We already hashed it out three months ago. I think it's a great word. Now I'm on board with it. Moving on. Thank you for rubbing that one in there. Really appreciate it.

I had to just slide it in there.

Just had to slide it in there. I appre. You know what? Honestly, respect respecting the salt on the wound game, man.

I got reigns and respect today, Max. I am batting a th.000. I should just clock out right now and let you guys. The podcast, actually.

Yeah, that would be great, George. We actually don't want to hear anything else from you today. That would be wonderful. No, you know what I actually really find frustrating about that question. The reason why I put that question in there is actually somebody asked me that recently, and the Immediate reaction I had is, okay, so number one, so what it, yeah, it's a company. But also number two, how cynical, how cynical of a thought. Because here's what I'm thinking. And this takes me back to our HubSpot Academy episode where we were just talking about the idea of HubSpot Academy overall. Who says that a for profit organization cannot be of genuine service and helpfulness to their audience? And I think HubSpot, whether we're talking about HubSpot Academy or we're talking about World Certification Week, really leads by example of this is the power of selfless education. Sure, yes, it's going to bring people to the platform, but people can also earn certifications, they can put on resumes to go to companies that have nothing to do with HubSpot. You can learn about SEO, you can learn about website design, you can learn about social media, paid advertising, chat marketing. Like anything you can possibly think of, you can learn there. And so the reason why I wanted to leave with that is that like, if you're listening to this and you're immediately going, world Certification Week, it's an event. It's people making a podcast about an event because it's a relevant topic to have. No, honestly, if this wasn't worth its weight in gold, somehow we would not be talking about it.

See, and I don't get that. I don't understand why people think that way. Because, Liz, let's be honest. Do you think that Netflix has a TikTok, a YouTube channel or whatever, because they're like, oh, we just want to give you a little bit of free, like, entertainment? No, it's about the subscription. Right? So like, we, we deal with it all the time in other different ways. So why, when a company and instead of focused on entertainment is focused on education, why is all sudden there this like, negative vibe that heads into the conversation? I don't understand that. I just, I don't get it.

Some people just want to watch the world burn. But also, like, if you think about it, it's a win for everybody. Like, what's great for HubSpot is like, sure. Are, are they, are they getting people to like, go and get on their platform maybe for the first time because of this and possibly selling some more HubSpot? For sure. Are they also enabling a big chunk of their user base to become even more skilled and proficient with HubSpot so they can go do more with it and keep their companies around longer? Absolutely. But are all those people who are taking advantage of it learning a lot more skills and being able to do a lot more with their skill set and hopefully make more money and get better jobs and further their career and. Absolutely. Right. Is this also going to generate some money to go to the kids? You bet. Right? No one's losing in the situation. But Certification Week is a big w. It's.

It's a big win.

But.

But, Max, we even have everyone. We even have to go another layer deeper to that. I don't know. If you've been in the space for a while, you might realize there's a little bit of what I would call talent shortage. Is World Certification Week actually going to generate something. Some more inbound humans that we can hire? Because I'd love to see some of those folks that haven't been in the space for eight years and $150,000 bazillion to work at an agency. But somebody's new. They're in college, they go to World Certification Week, they come out, they're happy to make 40 to 60 thousand dollars a year, and they're down with the inbound methodology and strategies. Yes. I'll take more of those, please.

Break into HubSpot. Forget break into tech.

Just break into HubSpot. Just break into HubSpot.

With a crowbar or with.

Okay, no, so you didn't mean with your brain. With your brain and your heart. Sounds like soul.

I will have one thing you brought up also, Max, that I want to make sure we touch upon. Like, they're literally giving money away to a charitable organization for every certification awarded.

Yep.

So, like, I just don't want to hear. Anyway, so let's switch gears a little bit. You know, when we were riffing before we started recording, you guys were both taking a look at the new World Certification Week website, which just rolled out when we started recording this.

Yeah.

Talk to me about what you saw there, because, George, I watched you multiple times go, oh, yeah, yeah.

So. So, first of all, and this is going to sound really design nerdy, I don't think I've ever been to a website where I look at the top hero section, and I feel like the website is breathing. And what I mean by that is if you go to the website and you look at the orange and yellow bars in the hero section, it literally feels like it's the same pace in which I am breathing where it's slowly going up and down, up and down, inhale, exhale. Like, I'm sitting here staring at it, and it's this relaxing the crap out of me. And it's just a design Tasty piece. But at the end of the day, if you go above that, that's where the important stuff lives. Where it talks about grow your career, talks about learn new skills, get certified during the third annual. By the way, I can't wait till it's like the 30th annual World Certification Week, but the third annual World Certification Week. And there's a place where you can sign up. There's even a place that you can add it to your calendar and listen. If you're listening to this look in advance, try to block off as much time as you can. Hit that sign up button, add it to your calendar and start to figure out a strategy of certifications you can get. But. But again, past the breathing, Liz, there's like, what is World Certification Week? There's numbers and stats because marketers and professionals like numbers and stats of like the amount of donations. Almost $500,000 in donations, 95 plus countries, 100,000 active certified users. There's a world certification across the globe section that you can actually hover and interact with. There's how to participate. A 1, 2, 3 step. Everybody loves a 1, 2, 3 step step when they're trying to actually get into something. Explore the free certifications. A good call to action. Oh my gosh, it's like a marketer put this page together, I swear an events calendar that you can look at. There's which certification should I take? Which, by the way, I am a big fan of this section. Which one should I take? Individuals or partners? And everybody should know that we're big fans of this. We literally did an episode on HubSpot Academy. We literally dropped an article of like roadmaps that people could take around certifications that they might want to get. And so this is like a nice little bite sized version of that. And then your impact. Go ahead. Go ahead, Max.

Well, I was going to say also take a look down at the bottom. Built by Spinfluence, a HubSpot partner. So shouts out to Spinfluence. Looks like you built this for HubSpot. It's gorgeous. We love it. We love you.

Look at that Spinfluence.

I'm going to become happily partners probably.

Okay, all right, calm down.

Chilling.

Chilling for him. How did you get, get the shill in there? Real gosh.

Has your, has your, has your corporate shill members only jacket shown up yet with the popsicle on it?

Max sending it to me in the mail.

No partner for him.

Look at George pretending to say I swear again.

Well, again, again. Anyone attending World World Certification Week. You. You should definitely go to this website. Especially if one of you were one of those people that I was talking about at the beginning that has been overwhelmed by the amount of content you're seeing on there. Because you can literally go down to the events calendar and all of the different events that they're running are literally ways that can help enable you on how you navigate the enormous amount of content that you have at your fingertips. Right? So if you're struggling to find that path on what to learn, why to learn it, how to kind of manage your time and structure your journey, there is plenty of stuff here enabling you on how to figure that out. It's not just the certifications themselves because your learning lasts past this week. Right? So, sure, you could approach this in just the. I'm going to rack up as many, you know, certifications as I can so I can brag about it on LinkedIn and get as much money sent to these kids as possible. Sure, you could absolutely do that. But the big value that you're going to get out of it long term is when you really, really figure out how you structure your journey around this stuff so you can keep making progress on it past World Certification Week and not just during this week, because it should be a year long, year round thing. Right? Not just one week. Right.

Yeah. So, and here's another thing. I didn't even mention the testimonial section. Right? So, like you got. Because listen, we. We can show, we can say we love HubSpot. Everybody knows I'm a HubSpot Academy evangelist. Never worked for him, but love him to death. But to see other folks like Pablo Morales, right, say HubSpot Academy has helped me deepen in different topics that comprise my day to day life and are of vital importance. Moreover, it always guides me through the challenging processes to execute them correctly. It is a great support and information center for everyone. Real humans. Wait, wait, real humans with real words. I'm just saying.

Words, Words, word, words, words.

Speaking of words.

Sorry, keep getting you on the. I was just going to say, you know what? The certifications have a lot of words.

They do have a lot of words. Words. Yeah. Wow.

Did everybody know that the word is.

Hang on, hit me with that. Yeah, Max, I, you know, I didn't ever really want to pull this out on the podcast, but that right there really deserves just a. Just a. Just a big old fat.

Oh, I was hoping I'll get the drums.

Suck it, Max.

There we go. Oh.

You'Re welcome, everybody. Awesome. So, okay, now that we've done. We've sufficiently spent a lot of time talking about how great this website is. And I'm not diminishing that because I think it was really important to walk through each of those elements. I do now want to dig into to World Certification Week itself. We've talked about the what of World Certification Week. We've talked about like how they're rolling it out and what they're talking about. Now let's talk about. We're arriving at World Certification Week. Right. Virtually speaking, of course. What are you most excited about for World Certification Week this year? And I'll put, and I'll let you answer either way, either for yourself or for the masses, or both.

Yeah. So I think for me it's actually maybe three different layers of, of excitement, to be honest with you. The first one, and not that it's the most important, but the first one, I'm, I am excited for me because. And almost two pronged on that, to be honest with you. But I'm excited for me because over the last 11 months of, of starting a business, running a business, helping people with their HubSpot, I went from a guy that, well, let's just say used to have like what, 40 HubSpot certifications to a guy who needs to research a whole crap ton of them and, and re get another whole crap ton of them because I'm down to like a handful. And I just, I know it's time for me to take that time to research re get them because I don't want to be a hypocrite. I want to make sure when my clients go into their portals and they look at people that said, hey, you gotta talk to this guy. He's the HubSpot guy. They don't look and see like a completely blank, like no certifications. How's he the guy? Like, that's the proof in the pudding right there. So I'm excited to spend some time personally and like, get that be back up. But I'm also super excited for the team. Right. And when I say the team, by the way, the reason this is so important, Jorge Fuentes has been kicking butt and taking names and getting certifications, but also unknown to many people, like I've hired at this point, what, 75, 80% of my family. And so when I, when I say, when I say team, I'm also talking about my two daughters, you know, my two sons. Like, I know that they're in the HubSpot Academy. They're all heads down, they're all getting Certification so, and so just the amount of certifications we can get as a family, AKA the businesses. George B. Thomas excites the crap out of me because we know that we're giving to each other. We're giving to the, you know, the kids and the, the $5 per certification and just being, being able to be a person who can give the, the room, the space for, for education to be vitally important. You know, I should probably write an article about that, Liz. Like why education as a business owner or agency owner is important and how to go about that. The third reason that I'm super excited about World Certification is I am a big fan of being a blessing bomber and the idea of being able to put some work in myself and for the family and us to be able to bless others around the world with what HubSpot Academy and the certifications and the donations are going to be able to do moving forward. Like I'm just, again, if you get a chance to be a blessing bomber in life, man, that's, that's next level stuff right there.

Papa. Bless Papa. I'm excited. I'm, I'm excited for anybody who's been plagued by that analysis paralysis but is really, really wanted to dive into the content to kind of get what they need to really start that journey. That's, that's one thing I'm excited about. Personally. I'm excited for me because I'm, this is a really good excuse for me to kind of get back into the certification swing of things.

Let's.

Because, you know, as a seven year employee of HubSpot, being surrounded by HubSpot 24 7, being literally inside the belly of the beast and at the forefront of things changing on the product and having to know it like the back of my hand. I didn't necessarily rack up that many certifications like at all. Right. Believe it or not. You know what I mean? So one thing that I've really kind of been struggling with ever since I left is saying like, how do I keep the, the sword sharp? How do I make sure I'm, I can validate that I understand these things and how can I relearn a lot of this stuff that I've learned in, in, in you know, more unorthodox ways rather than just getting certifications? Because I was, you know, on the inside, if you will. So I'm, I'm super excited to kind of start racking these certifications up and really kind of testing the knowledge or the preconceptions I've had around a lot of this content, which will be super cool, you know, so I'm stoked to actually start getting into the swing of actually getting certifications again. And, you know, we should be proud of that.

And, you know, we should do a little challenge. We should do a challenge.

Oh, you're going to smell.

Let's. Let's see who can have the most certifications by inbound.

It'll be you. But here's the thing.

No, you know what? Here's the thing. No, no, no, no. Hold on, Max. You hold on.

You hold on.

No, George, you and me. I'm gonna.

I'm gonna go for it. Oh, okay.

I'll watch that.

Come on.

You know you want.

Here's another get in the game.

A weird, deeply. All right, I'll try. Here's another deeply personal one for me, right? This is the first world certification week where I am. I have my sleep apnea being treated. Oh, right. Now, the reason I thought you were.

Gonna say, like, not at HubSpot.

I'm like, that's.

Well, yes, true, true. Right. But the reason why that's important, and I'm sure plenty of people were just like, what the hell are you talking about? Is before I started getting treatment for my sleep apnea and using, like, a CPAP machine, I couldn't read through a page of text without falling asleep. I couldn't watch a video at my computer without dozing off, right? So a lot of the educational experiences and content that I was interested in that I really wanted to learn, I literally felt physically could not sit down and just consume information for a while because I would be like. And literally fall asleep. And it really sucked because I didn't have the ability to, like, learn the way I used to. And so now, since I can actually pay attention and I'm alert during the day and I'm not just falling asleep every two seconds, I can sit down in front of something like a certif. Like a HubSpot certification and actually, you know, ingest what's happening and stay awake for the entire thing and remember what I'm watching, Right? So for me, it's. It's. It's cool because I'm in a place where I'm taking care of myself enough, where I can open myself up to new learning and stuff, Whereas before, that was really, really hard for me to do.

So I'm actually really happy that you went down that road because, one, I'm just happy for you, my dude. The fact that, you know that you're going to be able to leverage into that. But the other thing is there could be hundreds of people listening to this podcast going, oh, God, do I have sleep apnea? He if you think you might go get checked out because it's a real deal. Holyfield. I'm just throwing that out there.

Dead acid. It changed my life. Going on a CPAT machine changed my life completely and it saved me. So.

Liz, we're trying to help people. Don't be giving us that look. We're trying to help people.

People need sleep heroes for a reason. Okay?

That's right.

Hub heroes. Part of it's getting a nice good night sleep.

We're being heroes right now, Liz.

We're here for. We're here for sleep apnea inbound education.

Yeah. Podcast is taking a weird pivot. Yep.

Yeah.

Okay, so guys, we're gonna, we're gonna bring it back. We're gonna bring it back for a moment. So I want to now take us down the line of recommendations for folks who are gearing up for World Certification Week. And I want to put two trains of thought in your head. There are going to be the folks who are taking the certifications and then there are going to be the folks who are potentially managing, leading, running the business in within which humans may be taking these certifications. How do they prepare? What recommendations do you have? I want to double click on one thing first though, George, because I saw you get excited and I'm going to make you wait this time. I do want to double click on one thing you said earlier though, which is you made a casual reference to this ultimate HubSpot certification guide that you created, by the way. It's amazing. Completely ungated. It goes by role, by topic. George gives, I think more than 35 certifications, hand selected recommendations. Definitely check that out. That'll be linked in the show notes. But with that little bit of table setting, George, please, go right ahead.

Yeah, I think so. I, I know you said two veins. I really think that I want to hit upon one. I, I mean, I, I don't know. I probably will end up going down both, but dang it, my brain is like literally screaming right now to the. The owner of the company or the owner of the agency and being able to again, give your people the space to become the best versions of themselves possible. And again, if you can figure out what is the future ROI of the education that they'll be putting in their brain versus the revenue that you're spending for this one week period or portions of this one week period, I would, I would beg you to Understand that most likely the output or the ability of things that they will be able to do and know will be far greater. And they will be very appreciative of actually working for a company, a boss that put something that enables them to be the best human they can be at the forefront of the culture of the organization. And so many times we get as business owners stuck on the conveyor belt of what needs to be done for who it needs to be done for, we forget about what we need to do for our employees. And I just think this is a great opportunity to do something great for your employees. Like literally, I'm trying to email all of our clients and ask them to come along for the ride with us. I want the clients to be so focused on getting certifications and educating themselves that they're in the battle with our team as we're getting educated along the way as well. And so as much time as I can open, as much freedom I can give the employees, that's what's going to happen, at least in our organization. Because I want to create a space like that. And you have to sit there and ask yourself, owner or manager, do you want to create that space for your people?

I'd say one of the biggest things is if you are going to be someone who's taking multiple certifications this week, which, you know, I think that's very much in the spirit of World Certification Week. Try to do what you can to, I guess what's the easiest way to put this Stack your knowledge within certain categories by tactically stringing together certifications that are of similar subject matter in the correct order. Right. So when I say this, something that I always used to tell customers when I was onboarding them as an implementation specialist, back then we were mostly working with the marketing tools, right. And back then there was an inbound marketing certification and then there was a HubSpot marketing tools like certificate, like HubSpot marketing software certification. And you know, when you look at a lot of the certifications and content in HubSpot Academy, there is some stuff that is very heavily focused on the tool and it's meant to get you better at the HubSpot product and how to click the buttons and click them the right way and do the things with them. But then there's plenty of content that has nothing to do with the product and it's all about strategy. But the thing is those product based certifications hit way differently when you have the context of the strategy you're deploying with that product. So what I mean by this is, if you're coming into this week and you're going, man, I really want to get the sales software certification or I want to get the, you know, I want to get the marketing software certification. What I would recommend that you do first, if you haven't already or even if you just need a refresher, take the strategic course first and then do the tool based course in that category. Because when you go and like get that nice refresher or learn of like what inbound marketing actually is in its essence and in the strategy and in the ethos of it, right? When you understand the nuance of those marketing motions and then you go and take a product focused certification where it's showing you how to use all the tools, tools that deploy that strategy, you are going to be armed with so much more context than if you hadn't done that, that when you go and learn about these tools, you're going to go, I know why I'm learning about this now. I can think of ways that I would practically use it. Not just know how to use it, but why to use it and how to use everything in more of a symphony rather than just a bunch of different things I can do within the product. Right? So try to layer the strategic to give you the context, right? The more strategic courses and then the actual product ones after that because it'll, it'll. I think they'll play very nicely into one another.

So Max, I love all and everything that you just said, all of it. I upvote it. However, I will say this too. I had a chance to be on Agency Unfiltered with our boy Kevin Dunn to talk about world certification vacation week. And I gave him an answer very close to what you kind of said. And this like, go, go, you got this. And then I jokingly said, or you can just take all of the shortest certifications possible and get as many as you can to which then for the kids, which then my brain went to, man, it would be nice if and then my brain went to, oh, actually can we hack this? And I don't know if anybody pays it to attention to HubSpot Academy this much or not, but you can literally go into HubSpot Academy. You can select award type and say only show certifications. Then you can go over to duration and you can say show me the certifications that are an hour to two to two hours. So if you wanted to start and you're a partner, by the way, because some of these are partners, some of them are not. If you Wanted to start with 1 to 2. There's guided client onboarding, platform consulting, and digital advertising. Then all of a sudden, you could bump it up and be like, well, show me the ones that are two to three hours. Well, now, you know, you can jump into contextual marketing, marketing Hub implementation Inbound, and. And the Salesforce Integration certification, if you have access to that. And then. Then you can go and open it up to the 3 Plus, which gives you all the other certifications. But you literally have a little bit of a hack that let me start with the shortest and work my way to the longer at kind of towards the end of the week.

Yep. And, hey, here's the thing. World Certification Week is what you make it.

Oh, yeah.

You can go in with different sets of goals. You might be the person that wants to go and say, hey, this is the time I really get serious about my education. And if it helps some kids out in the process, that's fantastic. I've got all this extra enablement from HubSpot Academy in terms of how I'm planning this out. And I'm going to do it in a. In a. In a very strategic way, and I'm going to pace myself. Right. Great opportunity to do that. But also, if you're just like a HubSpot psychopath and you want to go in there and just rack certifications like you're putting deer heads on your wall. Right? Yeah. Let's go. You can get it done.

Come on.

Right. I just want to go in there and be a complete demon and get those certifications. This is your week to shine, baby. Go out there and just take it. Take advantage of it. Carpe the dm. Seize the carpe. Catch them all. That's right.

Catch them all, baby.

So I have a question. I was really excited originally to have this conversation about World Certification Week, but you guys are just really like, should I have picked a more interesting. An interesting topic? You guys are just.

I mean, I need a nap.

So, I mean, I did start talking about sleep apnea, so I guess so.

You 100 did. All right, so let's flip. Let's flip the script here a little bit, guys. What are some rookie mistakes that people should watch out for and be careful of? Because you. You. Max just said something interesting there. He said World Certification is what you make of it, and that can cut both ways. It's the good stuff you do, and it's the accidentally not so good stuff that. That you do.

Yeah. I would say it's. It's missing out on what this week can set you up for. In terms of everything you're doing after it. Right. If you're. If you're. If you're someone who's new to this and you just go, oh, I feel like I need to go get a billion certifications. And, like, that's all you do. And you don't take advantage of any of those, like, extra courses and webinars that they're doing about how to structure your learning journey with HubSpot. That, to me, would be a huge L. That's someone would take in a big mistake.

Yeah. So for me, a rookie mistake is forgetting to hit the resources tab. Right. So, like, if I take, for instance, Jory Monroe, the HubSpot reporting, literally, when you go into the collecting meaningful business data section, which has like, five videos in it, there's a resources tab which allows you to download the slides and download the transcript. So a. You can read it and you can look at the slides for, like, the major bullet points they're talking about. But then also under there, there's a blog post. The ultimate guide to integrations and why your business needs them. Getting started with Data sync by HubSpot Demystifying integrations, platform audit worksheet Top rated apps by, like, there's just so much additional resources that you can dive in. Everybody historically has kind of talked about, at least in circles that I've roam. Maybe it's different for other people, but I have talked about the certification being the ending point. The certification is the beginning of what could be a far greater journey if you were to leverage some of those additional resources and keep going in the things that you're actually learning through the certification.

I love it. It sounds like really, the only mistake really you can make with this is to just not do anything. Well, one little thing, even doing one.

Little s. I mean, well, no, but I.

Come on, guys. No, I'm being 100% serious. It is one of those things where it's like, there's this wonderful opportunity there, how much you are able to do. Because when I think about one of the biggest mistakes you can make is see, like, hearing us go back and forth about the fact that, like, we're gonna go out and do this and do that, we're gonna get 18 billion certifications and be so much fun. Like, for you, that win might be just one or two certs, one or two lessons, whatever that is. So I want. My biggest thing is, like, set realistic goals for yourself.

Yeah, yeah.

And share them with somebody. Right. Because as you're talking, Liz I'm like, yeah, I'm saying all this and then all of a sudden I got a pit in my stomach right now where I'm like, oh, what happens if I get past this week and I didn't get any certifications? And all a sudden they asked me if I got any certifications.

Oh, God.

Wait a minute, wait a minute. Wait, wait, wait. Do we need a Liz versus George Hub Heroes HubSpot certification scorecard for 2023 leading into inbounds.

Oh, but, yeah, but see, here's the thing. We're setting ourselves up for success because we're telling somebody about our goal. We're challenging each other. And I'm curious, like, if you're listening to this, can you put something in your organization where you put a challenge? So, yeah, you're giving $5 to the kids through HubSpot Academy, but is there some type of challenge you could put in your organization for the. The person that comes out of the week with the most learned things? You know, I don't know. You do what you want to do. You do, you boo. But I'm just saying, maybe, maybe there's a way you gamify the crap out of this in your organization.

Yep. I'd also say for the individual though. Right. You know, again, if the numbers are your. Are your goal, that's great. But, you know, for. For someone who hasn't taken a lot of certifications. Right. I think the best thing you can do is just ask yourself what you want to get out of that week versus saying, how many can I get done? Because, like, ultimately the important thing is, is that you walk away from this week with skills and knowledge that you didn't have before that you can tangibly put to use in some way shape or form in your career. Right. Don't forget you're making this time commitment for yourself. It's great that the kids are getting money. That's awesome. We love that for them. You're going to help that, like, make that happen. Right. But you also got to say, hey, I'm making a big time commitment here. What is it gonna do for me? How is it gonna help me out? What's a realistic goal I can set for myself? What do I wanna learn this week? Right. Focus on that. Everything else I think is gonna be a good byproduct from it, you know? But just don't set yourself up for failure. Because the last thing you wanna feel at the end of the week is like, man, I put all this time and effort in and I didn't do friggin 10 certifications. It's like, hey, man, just learn something, right? You could do more certifications later. It's not like it shuts down after this week, Right? The whole point is set yourself up for sustainable success.

You can do more certifications later. You can do more certifications later. So there shouldn't be a guilt moment even if you do set that higher goal, which I hear you, Max, because I like to go for those be hang goals, those big hairy, audacious, like, I'll never reach that goal, but not in a way that I'm going to disappoint myself in a way that I know that I can continue on even if I miss it. Because if I put a, like, if I put a half okay goal, then I kind of feel bad because I was like, you know, I probably could have done better, but if I put it like bhag goal out there, I know I am far further than I ever would have gotten without it. And now I can just chug along a little bit, you know, a little bit longer. 1% each and every day, boom. Finally reach that goal.

Yeah, I mean, I'll tell you my goal this week. I just want to get the advance the reporting certification.

Let's go. That's it.

I've been. I mean, I've been wanting to do that one for years. There's even a piece of content I made originally when I was a implementation specialist that was used in at least the first iteration of it. I'm not sure if it's actually in there or not. So that was kind of cool. So want to see whatever that evolved into. But like, I've been wanting to take that certification forever and I've just never gotten around to it. Well, hey, there's no time like the present, so I don't have like a crazy number goal certifications. I just want to cross this one off my list that I've been eyeing and eyeing and eyeing and procrastinating and procrastinating. I want to get it done.

Hey, Max.

And now I need to, because in my new role, I got to be really good at reporting. And I'm not.

So.

Hey, Max.

It's gonna have some tangible stuff.

Max, I'm gonna give you another thing. First of all, first of all, Max, just to wit. All right, but past that now, the listeners will have to go watch the. The replay. But from where we're sitting right now, Tuesday the. Let me look at my calendar. Tuesday the 2nd. Okay. Yes. No, maybe. Hang on. Yes. Tuesday the 2nd at 11:00am I don't know what you're doing, but there is a reporting deep dive webinar that the Kyle Jepsen Super Admin hug is putting on that you could actually go register for. If you're listening to this. After that, go to the Super Admin Hug page, because all the historical trainings are on that page. And if you're like, yeah, Max, I hear you on reporting, that's going to be another place you can get some education.

Gentlemen, let's round this out. If you could give everybody one piece of advice and this is the only thing they remember from this entire episode about World Certification Week. What is it and why?

Pace yourself. You can still get a lot done by pacing yourself, but if you pace yourself and not just barrel through this right, I think you're going to walk away with a lot more than just a number of certifications. Right? And that's always going to be ten times more valuable. Right? So pace yourself.

Listen, education trumps entertainment. Superman and Lois will be there. Sons of Anarchy will be there. American Idol will be there. The Rookie will be there, Whatever. Your favorite love island. I'm not. I'm not judging. Maybe it's the Bachelorette or Bachelor. It'll be there later, too. You can stream that junk some other time. Educate, educate. Actually, educate, Execute, educate, execute. That's what I would ask you to do. And just slow down on the entertainment. Quit flipping through Tik Tok and every real system that social has and social platform and just Max and I are.

Trying to get engagement on Tik Tok. Come on now.

Unless it's our Tik Tok, like, just.

Get off Tik Tok. I'm just telling you, just put this in your brain. Education Trump's entertainment.

I'm gonna leave everybody with this parting thought, which has nothing to do with World Certification Week and everything to do with the fact that I was today years old when I learned that Little John and Pitbull put out a new song and everybody should go listen to it. It's a banger. That's right. I have nothing good to contribute. That is what I am leaving us with.

So funny, because I was, like, real nervous for a second because I thought it was gonna be like, God, I'm getting, like, in trouble now.

And no, here's what makes it so amazing. Pitbull and Lil Jon made a song sample and jump around. It is so good. Go put that on and then listen to it while you're getting your certification. Jumping.

Jumping.

Okay.

Yeah.

Okay, now I'm literally Googling this now. And who's it going? Little John and Pitbull.

Pitbull and Lil John. Not Little Lil. You got a little.

How many times does he say Dolly in it?

Doesn't say Dolly. I was so surprised.

I don't want to listen to it then.

Yes you do. Yes you do. George. How. How long does it take to take Jump.

Yo, yo. First of all, that's not what came up. Like I had to add Pitbull and Little John to it, but it's. It is now up on my screen. I'm going to play it very loudly when you finally let us be done with this episode.

Wow. Wow.

Hurtful.

We're done then.

End of the episode.

Liz.

Peace. Peace out. Get us out of this hell.

Okay, Hub Heroes, we've reached the end of another episode. Will Lord Lack continue to loom over the community or. 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 hubheroes 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.

Go.

We've officially started this thing, so let's go.

Let's go.

Let's bleeping. Go.

I'm just waiting for the day we get shut down for that. But you know.

Yeah, I was having so much fun. Why do you hurt me?

I don't know.

Didn't ESPN just do layoffs?

Thank God.

Maybe they can't afford layoffs for copyright.

I wonder how many talking about layoffs. I wonder how many of how many of the ESPN layoffs are attending World Certification Week.

Layoffs? Layoffs.

Not talking about layoffs.