How to Avoid the Subculture | Ep. 07

Hello and welcome to another episode of the Beyond Business podcast. My name's Charles Mackay. I'm your host today. Today we had the pleasure to speak with David shepherd, who's the country manager for HubSpot in Sydney, Australia. Dave shepherd has come from the U.S. he started at HubSpot over 10 years ago and you know, over 10 years ago HubSpot was a reasonably small company when he started, under 50 employees and now to over 4,000 employees around the world. Dave has had all sorts of sales roles within the HubSpot organization and pre HubSpot as well. And he goes through the journey of what that process looked like to become the country manager for Australia. And then when he hit Australia and became the country manager, how he'd been around for three or four years and it had hit a bit of a subculture as such, or, you know, they may have hit a ceiling. And it was fascinating what Dave found out, what he thought was the problem at the time to then what really became the problem and how they went through and solved it. If you're into leadership, growing teams and building sales organizations, then this episode is absolutely for you. Dave's got some great insights and shares some really interesting stories about the journey. Without further ado, I'm going to hand over to Dave and myself. Enjoy. David shepherd, what a pleasure it is to have you on the show, mate. So tell me, Dave, whereabouts are you sitting at this current time?

I'm in beautiful, manly. Although it's a bit overcast at the moment. Yeah. On quarantine. I think this is week seven for us.

Yeah, right.

I think we were a bit early to the whole game. Spent some ups and downs there, to say the least. But this week is a good week, so your catch will be on a high.

That's good, that's good. What's been the one thing that you've been doing to keep yourself up and about and in a good space?

I would say two things. Kind of, you know, a regular schedule of walks, kind of start the day and end the day with at least a 20 minute walk. And then I've been cooking a lot, which has been, which has been great for her, being a little more healthy these days. But yeah, I just think, you know, with no commute, you have a little more time to cook some food.

Absolutely, absolutely. So, Dave, thank you for joining us today. It's a real honor to have you on the show. You do seem to have a bit of a funny accent. So tell us a little bit about your accent and whereabouts you're from.

Yeah, yeah. I'm from the U.S. the Northeast. Grew about two hours north of Boston in the middle of nowhere, then spent a bunch of years in Boston both for university and then joining HubSpot not too long after university. And I'm coming up on 10 years with them, but somewhere in the mix there, they decided to send me out here to Sydney and what was supposed to be a one year contract has been over four years now and I've totally fallen in love with, with Australia and mainly in Sydney and have no plans on going anywhere.

That's awesome. That's awesome. So let's backtrack a bit. You said you studied at university in Boston. What, what did you actually study there? And how was that for you?

Yeah, I was so I was one of those guys who took as long as possible to decide what I was going to actually major in. And so I picked late and I picked economics, but if I had, if I could have picked business or entrepreneurship, that's what I really would have liked to do. And there was a new program back then, you kind of get a minor and I don't know if that, all that kind of terminology makes sense here in Australia, but yeah, so get to kind of an econ and entrepreneurship thing. Trying to figure out how to get into business and always thought I was going to be a startup guy, but joining on with HubSpot just been such a great, such a great run. Learned so much, couldn't be happy with how things turned out.

Yeah. So how did you, you know, you finished, finish uni. How did you end up landing that job at HubSpot? Was it, did you even know what HubSpot was 10 years ago? Like, how did that happen?

It's kind of a fun story actually to tell. So I had a goal to always learn how to speak Spanish. So after I graduated I actually went to Argentina for basically like a whole nother school year. So I left in September, kind of came back in May and it was, it was a great time, you know, kind of scared to kind of go overseas for the first time all by myself, that sort of thing. Didn't know anyone there. Wasn't going to stay with a host family, all that stuff. And that worked out great. Made some great friends. And when I came back, I actually landed my dream job, what I thought, at a commercial real estate development company. So these guys were like just the best of the best in the Boston area. They built all sorts of really big projects across all sorts of different styles of buildings, whether that was like industrial stuff or commercial or retail or multifamily stuff. And that was 2008. So you can imagine what happened. I get this great job. And they were smart. They said, listen, you're hired but we're going to put you on a 90 day kind of contract because we haven't really picked up any projects this year and we're just a little nervous. Don't worry. We pick up a project, you know, you're in, you're hired. But we just want to be frank with you that like we're going to have a hard time keeping people busy if we don't, we can't get something going here. And they knew way ahead of time that something was off with the economy. And so I was there for about four or five months and then obviously that came to an end because I wasn't doing anything and kind of no one else was either.

What were you hired for? What was that role?

Honestly it wasn't really defined. It was more of like, hey, we believe in you and we're going to kind of groom you into something and you're going to help out and you're just going to, you know, if you can work hard, this will work out really well for everyone. Yeah, uh, I think honestly they had, they were really tight knit group and many of them had worked together for 20 years and I think that they were kind of trying to look, to inject a little bit of youth into the organization because I think they kind of remember themselves as being the youthful, you know, go getters and felt like they could, they could benefit from a little bit of that. Yeah, so I basically, I don't get fired but like it just comes to an end. And yeah, there's nowhere else in real estate to get a job because like the banks have totally frozen, no one's given out loans. So the whole industry just comes to a flat out standstill. And you know, I was getting some mixed advice by some mentors about, you know, stick with it, you'll find something. And others were just like, well, you know, maybe need to move on. And so I ultimately just said to myself, like, my goal has always been the same, which is to start my own company. And I was like, I've heard that you have to learn how to sell. So I basically took the first sales job that came my way, which was selling life insurance for a really good company, a company called Northwestern Mutual, kind of largely considered the best life insurance company maybe in the world. And I did really well. I won a bunch of awards and hated every single day of it. I was working as hard as you can possibly work. Yeah. And it just sucked. I hated it. I didn't like the way you did business. You had to, like, I would meet with you, Charles, and I would get to the end and be like, hey, did you get value out of this? And of course you're gonna say yes. I'd be like, okay, well, give me your whole Rolodex of all of your friends and family and I'll call them and try to sell them too. And I just hated that, that dynamic.

Yeah.

Of you having to vouch for me.

What was the, like, purpose behind that? Like, other than just selling, you know, selling widgets? Call it anything. But what, what was driving? Was there anything behind it.

In terms of like, my motivation?

No. What the business had sold into you.

Oh. You asked me like, what was like the, like, why did I take the job in the first place?

Or more like. Yeah, so you're young, you take the job because you need the job and, you know, you got the work ethic, you're going to do it. But what was the, like, obviously you won all those awards, but what was the defining piece where you're just like, I hate this because something internally was not aligned with your machine.

You know, it's, it was, it was one of those funny things where I knew that I wanted to do sales, but I, I could just tell that it was not something that was like, interesting me. And nor did the way the business operate, nor did like, the mission really matter to me. Like, like I own all the products still. Right. I've been paying for years and like, so I've had them since I was, what, 20 something years old. And who needs life insurance when you're 20 something years old? So it was, it didn't, wasn't that I didn't believe in the stuff.

Right.

But it was, I just didn't. Yeah, I was just like, this is a no brainer. Like, if you're a responsible human, you get life insurance. This is not something I want to spend my life doing. I just didn't like, it wasn't like a huge calling to me. So I tried to quit like 10 times. Like, honestly. And I think my, my logic brain just didn't listen to my, to my heart. And I wouldn't trade it because it was so hard that everything else afterwards has seemed really easy, both by the hours and just like the toughness it took for me to go through that. And so that kind of was the launching point. And then, so through that whole thing, I decided That I was going to look for jobs. I wanted to get into tech. And I met a guy named by the name of Joe Sharon, who was the recruiter at HubSpot.

Yeah.

And I'm just like, this is the first company I've ever met that really gets it. They believe in systems and processes and they were super smart and they were driven by mission. It was clear that the culture was important to them. And I was like, this is the first group of people that actually get it. And I don't know like what get it means, but it was like I'd read a couple of books about entrepreneurship and I told you I studied that at university. And it was just like, this is what people talk about when they talk about a great company. And I just knew it. And I get all the way to the interview with Brian Halligan, who's the CEO, and it goes terribly. I was like, it was, it was just the worst. Like in hindsight I was probably a shoo in to get the job if I hadn't screwed up that interview. And I was just thinking, I've met with 400 people this year in a sales capacity and all of them have gone pretty well. And that was probably the worst meeting of the year. And so, you know, Joe and the recruiting team, they never quite told me no, but it was clear that I didn't do well with Brian. And so I actually end up taking another job. And literally on my six month anniversary of taking the new job, Joe calls me up and says, hey, you should, you should look at interviewing again at HubSpot. And I was, and I kind of played it cool, like I wasn't interested, but I was totally interested. And so that kicked off the whole set of thing. And part of the reason why I didn't get the job in the first place was back then it was really important for HubSpotters to be what Brian would call a digital native. Meaning that you had a blog, you knew how many Twitter followers you had and you were just doing the thing right. You really believed in it. And I was totally a digital native. Like I was one of the first people on Facebook, but I didn't have a blog. I didn't know how many friends I had, I didn't know how many Twitter followers, didn't know how many connections I had on LinkedIn. And so the second time I was ready, I had a blog. I've been blogging for six months. I knew everything. And so I get back into the interview with Brian and he walks in and classic Brian style He goes, didn't I already tell you? No. And I started laughing guy. He was like, yeah, you did, but I'm back. And so he goes through his whole spiel and asks a bunch of tough questions. And, you know, about 15, 20 minutes in, he goes, all right, you're good. And he just walks out of the room. And that was kind of the beginning of the journey. So it probably took me nine plus months to get into HubSpot, but yeah, I was always going to try to find a way to make it back. HubSpot.

Yeah. Yeah. And what was that? So that first role, was that like inside, outside sales or bdr? Like, what was it?

Yeah, so it was kind of an inside sales account executive. Yeah, we didn't. Back then, we didn't really differentiate in terms like who you were selling to too much. We had some slightly kind of. You just got. Actually they hired as a pool, and then after you went through training, they then assigned you to a manager. Yeah. And so I was, I had. Was a regular sales rep carrying a bag, working hard, trying to figure out how to. How to sell software. So I'd never done that before.

Yeah. And leading into the problems at the end of the day, because the bigger the problem generally the better off you're gonna go. So in the early days, what was the problem that you thought you were selling to? I suppose when it started to click and shift that you went, oh, this is the actual problem that I'm solving.

Yeah. So both my parents own their own businesses. Right. So my dad builds houses, my mom sells houses, which is probably why the commercial real estate job was like my dream job. Right. You don't far from home. And, you know, I'm a huge fan of small business owners. I think they work really hard. I think they tend to do an amazingly good job at whatever they do. You know, whether you're building houses or you're a plumber, or you're a chiropractor, whatever. Like, they tend to just do a great job. Right. And they really care about their customers, they care about the business, and it's really their whole life. But I think where they struggle is to find customers. And I just always thought that HubSpot was the best way to get customers in our new world. And so back then, we had to convince people that their customers were online. And that was not always easy to do because this is 10 years ago. It seems obvious now, but back then it wasn't. And so one of the first people I sold was my mom. And I think the problem that, you know. You know, you could say that what we were doing is we were selling kind of an SEO software or a blogging platform for business or other stuff. But really it was all about helping companies get leads. Because most small business owners, I think, like once you get a lead like you, you know what to do to kind of get them to turn into a customer and then usually great at, you know, customer service and so forth, otherwise you just don't stay in business. Right. Yeah, you kind of fail out.

Yeah, yeah. I think to the, you know, we all know about the methodology that HubSpot built, but that was the game changer. And it's obviously evolved a lot since then. But that core problem at the end of the day is going to be some sort of growth of whether it's people, you know, internally or externally. So tell us about some of the like, obviously, as your roles evolved from, you know, inside to, you know, now country manager of, you know, apac, what's that shift in problems and what's, you know, I suppose HubSpot, you know, they're very good at having clear focus without letting the noise come in. Like, how is HubSpot scale just so well globally while keeping on focus and that core mission?

Yeah. So, you know, I think the secret to HubSpot is kind of what I first sensed in some of those first interviews, which is, you know, they, they certainly hire the very best people. We hire the very best people, but we believe in, in kind of doing things that can scale and kind of building process. And so if you just think about like a sales funnel, for example, you know, you start with, how do you generate leads? And there's a whole bunch of steps that happen before then, but really that's the first step in the process in order to grow sales. And so for us, we built out the whole inbound methodology and we followed it to a T. Right. You create content. The more content you can create, the better you socialize it on all the different social media sites. You build a community by commenting and by interacting people, whether that's on your own blog or whether that's on the social media sites. And you just like that stuff it builds. It's like a title. Compounds. Yeah, compounds. Yeah. And so that's how you generate all the visitors and then you got to create really great content to turn those into leads. You know, I probably don't need to go through each step of the inbound process, but then you turn that over to the sales side and then you have a couple other processes. You have to kind of figure out. So you got leads as the first process. The second one is probably the hiring. You gotta be able to hire really great people that can turn those leads into customers. Then once you hire them, you gotta figure out a way to onboard them, get them set up in your culture, get them set up in your ways and your processes and how you do things. And then the last part is you gotta continue to iterate on the sales process so that as things change with your customers and your prospects, that you have a sales process that mirrors what is needed there, but it's also compelling and builds urgency and shows your product in the best light.

So I want to dig into this a little bit on the people component, especially the sales component, because that's one thing that I have. You know, I'm not trained in sales. I didn't do sales. You know, it wasn't my first job. And the thing I found about nearly everyone that deals in sales at HubSpot, you wouldn't say they're the traditional salesperson. And, you know, some of your best have been introverts. Don't like public speaking. Like just totally off your traditional playbook. So tell us a little bit about how and when that sort of sort of happened that you saw the, you know, alter ego sales rep. Yeah. Flipped.

Oh, man. So there's so much to. So much to talk about. Okay. So I think the first step to finding great people is to work out what are like the fundamental values or attributes that someone has to have in order to be successful. And I think as you're a startup and you're growing, you don't really know those things. You start out, you try to figure it out, but then you end up hiring all sorts of people. And you realize that all sorts of people can be successful, but there's some common core that is the same across all of them. So some of the things that HubSpot looks for is like curiosity, a commitment to win, being coachable among many others. Right. And when I think about that sort of stuff, like you're really. What you're really doing is you're trying to find people who view the world in the same way that you view the world now. They can come from all sorts of different backgrounds, they can have all sorts of different, you know, shapes and sizes, be extroverted or introverted. But like, if you're an introvert or extrovert just because you use that as an example. Both. There are people in both those groups who are just dying to win. Right. And who are super Curious and who are super coachable. Those their outward way that they deal with the world, introvert or extrovert or how they kind of gain their energy. That doesn't really have anything to do with any of those things. And so I think we build very long interview processes to try to tease out what exactly is this person kind of made of and do they think about the world in the same way we do and do they have those kind of those attributes that we're looking for? So I think that's step one.

It's fascinating and I couldn't agree with you more. You get that mission aligned and you get the right person in that session. It doesn't nearly matter what they do and have done if they're bought into it and are passionate, curious, coachable. I was listening to something yesterday actually on especially in this current time, like think of elite athletes where the dates have just disappeared from their life. So there's no Olympics, there's no football, there's no tennis events. So the ones that are actually going to come out of this period stronger are the ones that actually treat it as a process. Every day they get up, they do their work, there's no date. And would that be something that's quite common or a common theme too that you know, it's all about the process, not necessarily the result?

Yeah, I think there's, I mean it's, it's, it's hard to give you a full on yes to that one because.

Yeah.

You know, as, as a salesperson there's, there's nothing I like more than a deadline. Right. And I know, you know, as a, as a salesperson you always, you always have a bit of a weird relationship with quota and end of the month or end of the quarter or whatever it is. But I do think that does help us take action. Yeah. But I, but I agree, I think that when I look at our best sales reps, it's the ones who are consistent on a day to day basis. You know, they don't have, they don't necessarily have good days and bad days all often. Right. They have steady days, they don't let themselves have a bad week. They figure out how to course correct if things get off to a bad start or they hit a hiccup in the middle of the week. And I just, so I do think that the process, and especially for sales rep, like so much of it comes down to just creating pipeline. And that can't be a sporadic process. That has to be an everyday thing. And I don't care what level of selling you're at, whether it's, you know, you're selling to small businesses or you're selling to enterprises, you have to be creating pipeline every day.

Yeah, no, you are. You are spot on. What's a classic story that comes to mind where it's been an epic failure?

I can go a couple of different ways with that. I don't know, I think maybe one of my most. I don't know, one of the stories I'm most proud of, I guess. So this was more recently, maybe a few years back. I had been a director for maybe about a year, had finally kind of figured out what that was like, having kind of managers sit between me and the individual contributors. And we, you know, in Australia, December and January is a bit of a tricky time to sell because, you know, you have Christmas and just the way the culture is, you know, people take at least a week, sometimes two, three, four weeks off at that point in time. You know, kids are out of school, it's middle of summer, the weather's great here. It's a good time to take time off. And so everyone kind of goes into what they call this, like, you know, silly season kind of somewhere in November to kind of late January, where things just kind of slow down.

Yeah.

And we just do really, really poorly in January and February, and it's not looking like it's going to go well in March. And so we jump in, we do a whole bunch of analysis, and the analysis basically comes back that essentially our reps, our sales reps just didn't go to work. They didn't do that consistent daily pipeline creation. So if you looked at the graph, it was like, October and November are up here. December drops in half, January drops in half. And then you're like, okay, well what's going to happen in February? And February is like a small uptick. So you basically have, like, December and January are the same amount of activity to create pipeline as just one month in November or October. Right. And so now you're already behind the eight ball. Because we're on monthly quotas and because we're American company, the end of the year, December is like a huge push to get some extra deals in. And so you pull deals from January into December. And so January and February are just absolutely terrible. And I'm sitting there at the first week of March being like, what's going on? And so you do the whole analysis. And in some ways, luckily, it wasn't a change in the market because that's a lot harder to fix. But to discover that it's just because your team is not putting in the effort, that is a. That just. That's a kick in. In the gut. And so I'm thinking about it and we've done a whole bunch of things to try to stimulate activity and stimulate pipeline generation because we know this is a tough time of year and it's all just falling on deaf ears. And I have this. I have this little epiphany, right. And by the way, there's like, to give you the level of failure that this is, this is like me worrying about whether I'm gonna be able to continue as a sales director. This is like a total face flop. As bad as it gets. That's how bad the results were, right? Yeah.

And you guys too, if you run two months not hitting there's red flags. Flag. Yeah.

Yeah. And it was such a bad miss both months that it was, it was, it was like total red flags. High alert. Everyone in the company is talking about it. Lots of scrutiny from all sorts of people across all sorts of divisions. Like, not just sales that's worried about this because, you know, the Sydney office has a meaningful portion of the global revenue. So this is on all hands on deck. And you know, one of the key stats we found was that when BDRs were creating deals, right, they were going through the sales process just as well as if a rep created a deal. And so that was a good signal for us that there was nothing really wrong with our sales process, nothing really going on in the market. But the whole level of activity in terms of just like creating ops and creating pipeline was way down. And so now I got to figure out what to do about this. And you know, the worst thing you can do is just say, hey, the reps are lazy. And so my. The epiphany I had was what? Just a single question. What if the low activity is not the problem? What if that low activity is actually a symptom of something bigger? And so I started to kind of ask people questions and kind of work with that in my mind a little bit. And basically where I came back to was at that point, I think the Sydney office was maybe three or four probably. Yeah, somewhere like that, three and a half years old or something like that. And I started to think back about the guy who founded the office, another American guy, Sam, who you know very well. And the original team, almost all of them are still with us today. And the mission originally was to put Sydney on the map, right? They had a mission to prove that they were as good as any other team. And for two years in a row, which basically ended in December, they were the best team in the globe. Right? Like highest performing. And I think what started to happen towards the end of that year was like the mission of putting Sydney on the map and to proving to everyone internally at HubSpot that Sydney could do the job had worn off and now you had a whole bunch of people who were looking for the next steps in their career and they hadn't lived that high growth scenario before and they didn't know what was to come in 6 months, 12 months, 24 months or even beyond that. And so what I really decided was that we had an identity crisis in Sydney that like our identity as an office was, you know, tied to something that was in the past. And no one really understood where we were going or what was ahead or what the opportunity was. And so I sat down with at that point just the sales managers who were the majority of the office, but not the whole office. And we decided on trying to figure out a bigger vision for, for the, for the company. And we said this like we did, we kind of did some quick modeling and said, okay, if in five years we just do what we're supposed to be doing, we'll be at X number of revenue. What's our big stretch goal? And so the managers, you know, being sales managers, picked a really big number. I remember going home that night and I remember just being like, what have we done? Have we just. Have we just way over committed?

Yeah, you haven't, you haven't shared this with the rest of the company yet though. You've just done it in the. Yeah, yeah.

And so I was looking at the Sydney offers as kind of its own little business unit because we kind of take after the whole Australia, New Zealand market. And it was really about trying to paint a picture about what it was going to be like for our team to be Hubspotters over the next five years. And we settled on a revenue number. I don't think anybody was happy with that. I think we much would have. Which much would have rather have settled on something that was like, you know, customer impact or impact on our employees. But the only thing that we could have really we knew we were going to be able to measure was revenue because there were so many things were changing within the business and if we went back two or three years, you know, we couldn't have possibly have determined the metrics that were super important to us at that point in the business. So we're going to Pick a five year goal. There's just no way we're gonna be able to pick the metrics that are gonna be super important at that point in time. And so we went with the revenue one. Yeah. And I basically prepared a whole TED talk. It's like 15 to 20 minutes, no slides. Talked about the problems, talked about the future.

Yeah.

And it was pretty emotional talk, to be honest. But we launched it a few years back and I don't honestly know how it was received on day one. My guess is there were some people were just like, this is total bs. You know, I got this American guy doing a little bit of the rah rah thing, which is, you know, slightly frowned upon in Australia. Not terribly, but slightly. Yeah, less so with my Irish friends. Irish guys are way more skeptical, I feel like. So, yeah, we get that kicked off, but then we make it a part of our regular cadence. And you know, I had a coach at the time and he was just like, my worry is not whether you can execute on the vision. My worry is not that you can't do the presentation. My worry is not that you can't get people bought in. It's that can you get the rubber to meet the road? And so we implemented this thing called Traction eos Entrepreneurial Operating System, which I know you're a huge fan of. And that's been how we've kind of been able to keep the vision grounded in the day to day, week by week, quarter by quarter thing. And it worked. So we now have this huge goal, right? And we've talked about it in terms of revenue, but similar to our Flywheel, which I actually have like this little thing here in case people don't know what Flywheel is, we've kind of said that the goal is the middle orange part. And what that means is that we're going to have to be more innovative in Sydney than anywhere else in the world in order to hit our goal. Because it's such a big stretch goal. And what that does is if we're innovative and we do that right, we'll be able to get more customers and have a bigger impact on our customers. And if that goes right, then there'll be even more opportunity in Sydney for our people. And so if there's more opportunity, that leads to more innovation and on and on. And it will kind of spin. And it's worked out great. It's exactly what's happened. Like, we've been able to build a brand in Sydney that we're willing to test things and do innovative things. It's also a nice size market for HubSpot as a whole. And so we like to test things in Sydney and the team here is, you know, most of the time you would say that sales reps don't want to test things. They just want to be like, hey, leave me alone, let me sell, let me get to quota, let me get to president's club. They make a bunch of money. But that really hasn't been the case since. We've really had a really fantastic adoption of some of these innovative projects or tests, experiments, however you want to think about it. And it's going really well. So that actually fixed our activity problem. It was really a vision problem in the end. People didn't know how they. And you know, I would have to say that over the last couple years we've iterated on it, but activity has never been higher than it is now and it seems to be getting better quarter to quarter.

It's fascinating especially too with a business that has such a good vision and has all of those things. But in a branch or a sub branch, how subcultures can exist and it's like, well, how do you get that buy in? And it just shows vision at any level, in any office. Having worked in businesses that have multiple branches too, like there is a subculture within those branches for sure.

Yeah. I think it's such an important point to make, Charles. Like if you were to say like, oh, we don't have a vision or a mission at HubSpot, like that would be crazy. Like you know so well, like that's like everything to us. And so when we, when I settled on this idea of what we called as a vision for the Sydney office, I was, I was actually really surprised. I didn't think that was going to be the answer because we have a great culture, we win all these awards as best place to work and, and everybody, every HubSpot can tell you what HubSpot's mission is. But really the gap was what does that mean for me on an individual level? And I felt like the missing gap there was like having something that was just for the office that would break down that big global mission into something a little bit more meaningful to them. And then from there we could start to tell the stories about individuals and how their careers are moving forward and all of that. And it worked. Again, it's worked out great. And I think it was really the missing piece to let people fill in their own stories and really understand where the boundaries were and how they can make a life for themselves. Within this big global mission with 4,000 people, I think now at HubSpot, something like that.

It's amazing and so empowering for people as well. Like you're giving them their own purpose and setting their own little mission within the company. I love it. So that was like three and a half years ago that you did that. And probably a pretty defining moment for you too in your career where you've just gone and said, you know, you've always wanted a business or you've always wanted, but you've literally said, oh, this is my business now. I'm going to just treat it like it is. Which I think is a really good thing to do. Like, at the end of the day, every business is your own business. You're dealing with people, you're building relationships. What, you know, that vision that you set to the journey, it's been like. And you said that they probably thought you're a bit crazy initially, but we all know that it takes seven to 20 times for it to actually sink in. And eventually over your quarterly, it's going to get more exciting, more momentum. Everyone buys in harder. Has the vision exceeded or like, what has happened from where you'd initially set it?

Yeah, we're basically right on pace. Although the way we did the plan, the first two years were going to be the easiest two years, to be totally honest. And so this third year is now really the. The first really tough one. But the truth is we're right on pace. You know, I haven't looked at the last maybe a month or two of data yet. And so, you know, Covid has probably put a little bit of a dent in that, but we'll, you know, I think we'll largely get through that. But it hasn't. It hasn't. It isn't actually the way we anticipated it. So the way we did the modeling was we have to hire X number of reps per year.

Mm.

We have to have a certain amount of MRR retention and then we have to improve the productivity of the reps in the last three years of the plan. And so without getting to like all the numbers, like what that was, it was really only three metrics. And, you know, we've. We've largely been able to figure out so far how to improve those, those metrics and kind of stay on path. So we, we've actually hired more sales reps than we thought. Our retention has been pretty good, but not maybe exactly where we had wanted. And now we're gearing up for that productivity piece. And so, you know, we're really looking into like all of the moving parts that really can impact that from attrition to, because our more senior reps sell more than the newer reps, to products, to innovative sales, you know, processes and making things simpler and all that stuff. And so that's, that's kind of the big, the big challenge in front of us now is like, how do we just improve the productivity of the reps because we've hired more. And so that can be a huge leverage point for us to kind of continue to scale and grow.

And like I can bet you January productivity was down anyway just because like the fires, like it was a full on. We found it really hard to, you know, you got to have so much EQ and empathy and just want to talk to people and then the COVID stuff. But I actually think now with COVID I can bet you if you looked at your internal metrics, your activity would be through the roof for the last six weeks.

So it's been odd actually. We've had like moments in the last six weeks. It's been really up or really down. So last week was our best week ever of all time. We do measure on a weekly basis, but if we went back like five or six weeks ago, it was one of our worst weeks ever. I think it was kind of the week when everyone started to go work from home. It wasn't quite when everyone, everything shut down was like maybe the week before and the week after. But there were, there was a two week span in there where it's like people just didn't even show up to their meetings. And I think it was just like people were doing the awkward commute from office life to home life and probably didn't have the systems and their schedules were all out of whack, all that stuff. So yeah, I think now we're on the up and I think people are more willing to talk and maybe they have some more, I want to say free time, but like they've, they've maybe settled down. They're now thinking a little bit more strategically, hey, how are we going to deal with this? And because we're a business that helps people grow, I think that's on everybody's mind right now. And so it's, you know, and our job is to try how do we interact in a way that is, you know, polite and empathetic and really centered on helping people and educating people as opposed to being, you know, opportunistic and just using a bad scenario to our advantage. And I think that I don't think it's necessarily hard to get that right, but it's certainly, when you have a quota, easy to try to solve for yourself as opposed to your customers, 100%.

And I think everyone at the minute is too, assessing everything. Like, is this what I wanted to do? Is my business where it was taking me? Like, what is important to me, which I think is a good thing as well, because, like, everything, you can look at everything in two situations, either bad or good. And, you know, I'm optimistic I will look at everything in a good way. And what can you learn and what can you come out better from that scenario? Which sort of leads into my next point. You know, HubSpot redid their mission of we want to help millions of organizations grow better. You know, I think. I think that's. It's a really. It's a strong mission. And, you know, at the end of the day, that's what this whole podcast and conversation is about, is all organizations trying to do things in a better way. So what are some stories that you've seen and what HubSpot are actually doing to not just we can sell millions of software licenses, but how is that actually going to make the place better and shed some light on what that means?

So I think. So there's a couple things in there. So one of the things I mentioned was like, you're. One of the things you're trying to do in life as a business is find people who believe in your version of the world, right? I've kind of, like, believe what you believe. I've kind of said that before about the hiring, and I think that's super important. But I also think that's what you're trying to do when you're acquiring customers. And, you know, yes, you do have to evangelize what you're doing at times, but that's ultimately what you're trying to do. You're trying to find people who have a similar view of the world. And I just think that we largely sell to small businesses, right? Companies under 500 employees. We have loads of customers that are more than that, but that's generally our group of customers. And that's really the backbone of every economy. And both my parents owning their own small business. I have just always loved the idea of helping folks like that. You know, my mom has what, 12, 15 employees, something like that. And I just know what it's like to be that business owner, having grown up in that household. And I just think that. I think they're doing a great job for the World, like, they employ people, they give people a place to a community, they give people a mission, they give you a purpose. They're helping their customers. They're really doing everything they can. They're trying to do everything right. And so, like I said before, I do think that one of the hardest things about business is getting customers. And I think HubSpot helps with that. And so I just see those small business owners, and I think if we can help them, I find that to be a really noble cause. So I really identify with the small business owners or the CEOs of companies and just I know how much effort they're putting into things. And really, all of the leaders in these companies. And so for me personally, I just think that this idea of helping millions of organizations grow better is actually a really noble cause. You know, I think in aggregate, there are definitely people out there that think that growth at all costs is a really negative thing for our world. And I totally understand that. I think most of those folks would be more upset with big business as opposed to small business. And I don't know if I'd be as excited about our mission if we weren't targeting or we weren't working with small business. There's something very special for me about that group.

Yeah. And I think too, in this current environment, things are going to go more local. Like, globalization is going to be there, of course, but things are going to localize. With consumables, 100% just makes sense. You know, we've all done it. Who hasn't got a fruit box from their local grocer in the last six weeks? And how many people are going to keep doing that because the food's better, it's local, you're supporting farmers, like, all of that stuff. So I think it's really compelling. And when you guys shifted to it, like, at the end of the day, you look at your partner community and your apps and who's connected with you, and it's without a doubt true that there's a value alignment and there's a mission that everyone seems to be behind, subconsciously or consciously. Some probably don't know. And I think you would find the ones too, that don't last. There's a disconnect. So, you know, I've talked about this a few times, is every relationship, there's balance, and as soon as it becomes unbalanced, it'll break. So, you know, what's that guiding mission? To keep the balance. Right? And I think, you know, as you've grown and evolved, it shifts and pivots, but at the end of the day, it's keeping that balance. And I think you guys have done that really well.

Yeah, I think. I think you could look at our mission and just be like, oh, that's just a really, you know, that, that's. That's a thinly veiled. Way of saying we, we just want to grow because, like, if we get more customers and we have millions of customers, then, like, how's it going to grow? But, you know, I think, you know, anytime you try to boil something down to just like the most succinct thing, you know, it does get a little bit, maybe close to a cliche, but that's just the way those things are. But I think it's more about your actions. Right. And I think we do an exceptional job at HubSpot of trying to live out really solving for our customers. And, you know, I think in this time, I think that's really kind of come out in spades. And I couldn't be more proud of our executive team and some of the tough decisions they've made to really support our customers and our partners like yourself. Honestly, I've been very proud that we've maybe not necessarily taken the thing that would help our balance sheet or our P and L in the short term, but by kind of thinking about the whole HubSpot customer ecosystem in our partner world as being part of the business and part of the group of folks who are trying to help over the long term. I think that will pay off in the long run too. And just. I'm super proud.

I couldn't agree more. And I actually watched something not that long ago from Brian Halligan around. You know, lots of people in the world are trying to buy and. Or build and sell stuff like fling it and sling it. And they're in it for the long game and they want to be. The decisions I've made will get them to be the. Get them through the long game, like massively, especially in the last few months. So, yeah, I couldn't agree with you more. You've sort of touched on it throughout the last 20 minutes of this conversation. But what's the tip? One tip that you would like to share with the audience, you know, if you chief revenue officer or, you know, CEO or a sales manager or marketing manager, like, what would the that core tip be?

I think I probably have two. So the first one I would say is like, take accountability. I think a big difference as people move up any organization is every level that you go up requires a new Level of accountability, of taking responsibility for things that are really outside of your control. So, you know, don't point the finger. And then I think, I think the next one is like, ask yourself questions. Like, don't search necessarily for the answers. But the way I got to that epiphany with that question was like, I literally was just sitting down, I was like, ask myself. I was trying to get to a point where I was asking myself a hundred questions without answering them. You just asked the question and.

That.

Honestly, like you do learn stuff from not answering the questions but just asking them. And then that really kind of was like I said, like the epiphany that was like the moment where everything changed. And then it's very easy to figure out, okay, like, what have you learned from this? What's the next step? What are you going to do about it? But I really think if you, if you don't take accountability and you don't do a kind of a proper reflection and asking all those questions, it. You become reactive and you, My experience is you just tend to do the same shit over and over and over again in different flavors. Yeah. And you get the same results. Exactly right. And so, yeah, one of my favorite things is like, you know, if you want to get what no one else has, you have to do what no one else does. And you know, I don't know if like the story we've been telling this whole, this whole time is exactly a perfect example of that, but it does kind of fit in with my recommendation.

Yeah, yeah, I totally agree with you. It makes a lot of sense. And I suppose to share your, you know, last 10 years at HubSpot and what you've achieved and all of that is your most, you know, biggest success story. Is it actually setting the vision or is it actually getting the rubber to the ground and making it come to life?

Yeah. So I have a hard time distinguishing those two. Like, they're one in the same for me. But I would say, yeah, that. I would say like the biggest win of my leadership career for sure is that whole scenario. And you know, I couldn't be prouder of my team of leaders. I couldn't be prouder of my team that are kind of on the front lines on a day to day basis. Like, they're really the ones who do all of the great work. But I do think that leadership matters 100%, you know, like going back to the accountability thing, one of my favorite books about that is called Extreme Ownership by Jocko Willink. And man, like, I think There's a. He has a quote in there that there's no such thing as. There's no such thing as bad teams. There's only bad leaders. And I think that's a really. That's a really tough thing to say out loud when you are the leader. But ultimately I think that is really true. And so I do think leadership matters in a big way.

I 100% agree with you. The amount of, you know, obviously a lot of people may or may not have watched the current Jordan Netflix documentary, but when it clicked for them too, like, you're not. It's not about you, Jordan. It's about the team. Like, how do we make the team? And that leadership that Phil had, that, you know, is phenomenal. And the amount of sporting, like, I love actually relating back to sport because it's, you know, business and sport are so aligned in my eyes. And, you know, champion teams are a team of team. Like a champion team, not a champion, sorry, a team of champions. So fascinating. Fascinating. Dave, this has been awesome. We better start bringing it to ground. So 10 years at HubSpot. Amazing journey that you've done. You know, congratulations and all the work you've done. And thank you for all the work you've done as well. How to. You know, you said you started a blog and built some content. So what is your blog and how do people find you these days?

That's a good question. So I'm in the process of launching a new one. You can find me at daveshep.co. that should be up in the next couple of days. So my guess is by the time this gets launched, that'll be up and ready, so you can kind of find me there.

Awesome. Love it.

Dave.

Well, thank you again. I've really appreciate it. It's been a great conversation to learn about your journey. Until next time. We'll chat to you soon.

Charles, pleasure as always.