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Welcome to the Women of HubSpot, a podcast celebrating the voices shaping marketing, technology, and the ever-evolving HubSpot ecosystem. Hosted by George B. Thomas from Sidekick Strategies. Each episode brings you the stories, strategies, and superpowers of the women driving this industry forward. It's their time. It's their mic. This… is Women of HubSpot.
Welcome to the Women of HubSpot Podcast, the show that celebrates the voices shaping marketing, technology, and the ever evolving HubSpot ecosystem. Hosted by George B Thomas from Sidekick Strategies. Each episode brings you the stories, strategies, and superpowers of the women driving this industry forward. It's their time. It's their mic.
Intro:This is Women of HubSpot.
George B. Thomas:Alright. I'm super excited to be back here for another episode of Women of HubSpot and, of course, excited because Lauren Ryan is here. Lauren, how the heck are you doing today?
Lauren Ryan:I'm doing good. You know, it's my son's six month half birthday. It's almost halfway to a year. So, big day here in the Ryan household and I am stacked with demos today. So, having a good Monday.
George B. Thomas:There you go. Good Monday. And you should take all of those days of all of the children and make them special because trust me, as a guy who has kids that are adults now, time flies by. So let's go ahead and set the scene a little bit because obviously we're digging in, we're finding out a little bit more about you, what makes you tick, Why you are so amazing at HubSpot or in HubSpot? Because we put out a post a while back, and we're like, tag somebody who's amazing that uses HubSpot, and your name came up.
George B. Thomas:So here's where I wanna start. If we could go back in time and we could meet young Lauren Ryan, just starting out, one, what would we see and what would she be most surprised by about where you are now?
Lauren Ryan:I first started using HubSpot Salesforce actually on the same day in an internship I had, I think I was 19 at the time. So about eleven years ago, I was working for a three d printing company and I was helping leverage tools to assist sales reps on the road as they went to different road shows, trade shows, etc, using the tools. I would be really surprised that I had a career in this field. So at the time, I was a psychology major. My bachelor's degree is in psych and my master's degree is in business with a focus in marketing.
Lauren Ryan:So at the time, I had no idea what my future looked like career wise. I had started school wanting to be an attorney. I had pivoted to nursing briefly, didn't like that. And I had chosen psychology because I loved connecting with others and really seeing how the human psyche worked. And then I saw a parallel between that and marketing.
Lauren Ryan:And my dad always said, Do something in business. So here I am. During that position and others, I started to see the interconnect between psychology, marketing, business, all of that, and kind of rang with it as I built my career closer to marketing. I did event marketing. I did email marketing.
Lauren Ryan:I've worked in different industries. I think what will be most surprising to me, day one of HubSpot and that internship, is that I have built my entire career around HubSpot. One, that's pretty surprising, and two, the fact that I'm in marketing technology, and three, of course, I'd be shocked that I actually work at HubSpot now.
George B. Thomas:I love the journey, and it's funny because everybody that we've asked that question to on this series, it ends up being like this bowl of spaghetti that ends up eventually straightening out and getting you to the place where you are, and it's so amazing. Speaking of journeys, Lauren, who are some of your biggest inspirations or mentors along the way, kind of from there to getting where you're at today?
Lauren Ryan:My grandfather passed away when I was 13, but he's very much been kinda a guiding light throughout my career. He spent his life taking care of others and putting other people first and left a very strong legacy in that way. And so as I've grown throughout my career, I've always lived from a principal perspective the way that I think that my grandfather did and the way that he would respect that I lived. As far as more tactically, I've had some amazing managers along the way that have pushed me to deepen my knowledge in HubSpot. I had managers who took me to my first inbound conference in Boston a while ago, and that really blew my mind stepping onto the show floor for the first time, especially since I was in trade show marketing at the time.
Lauren Ryan:I can speak to a few HubSpot agency owners, Connor Jeffers, Trish Lessard have been really helpful for me in my agency days. I'd say Jilly Fratt from HubSpot has been a huge, huge, huge proponent of my success both in the HubSpot ecosystem and also the person who referred me into my current position. So I wouldn't be where I am today without her specifically. I can say that. And I would say that my sisters, my little sisters, are always like my motivators.
Lauren Ryan:Like, I have five younger siblings, and whenever I look around, I always wanna make sure that I am succeeding, excelling, setting a good example, and building a path that's unique enough to be, like, interesting to follow, but also, like, repeatable enough that it might inspire them to do something similar.
George B. Thomas:It's interesting to hear you go in that direction because I've heard you listening backward, dad, grandfather, but also then projecting forward like the little sisters. And also five big family. That's amazing. I thought we were killing it with four, two boys, two girls, but you guys are crushing it over there. You also did a great job dropping some names.
George B. Thomas:Connor Jeffers, Trish Lessard. I love both of those folks. And Jilly Fratt. Oh my gosh. Goat.
George B. Thomas:We'll just throw that out here. I need to get her on one of these for sure. As you've kind of gone through this journey, you've had these mentors, but I'm super curious, has there been any hurdles or biases that you've had to overcome in your career? And if so, how did you kind of navigate those moments in life?
Lauren Ryan:The easy way out of the question is I'm a young woman and there's a lot of hurdles that you overcome coming up in the business world, especially owning your own business and entering different rooms and being maybe the only woman there or the only woman on the trade show floor, the only woman on the sales team. Like there's different ways that that's impacted my career throughout the years. That's definitely the easy answer. I would say a harder answer would be trying to start a business in my 20s and not seeing the forest for the trees, like not seeing the big picture, not seeing where it's going. I started my business on a whim whenever I started Coastal Consulting in 2021.
Lauren Ryan:I had had a series of bad managers and my last manager was the most toxic of them by far. I had a really terrible conversation with him. I went out and I had a surgery. And then while I was recovering from that surgery, I decided that my well-being was worth more than this job. And I quit my job and I started Coastal Consulting that day.
Lauren Ryan:And so I didn't really have a business plan. I'd just been freelancing for years. And I was like, you know what? People need help with the HubSpot Salesforce integration. I'll do it full time.
Lauren Ryan:And that grew and grew into becoming a diamond partner and winning a technical expertise award and eventually being acquired by RevLack recently. And it grew to a lot of great things, but I very much made every decision by this is the next best decision. There was no business plan, there was no formality, even coastal consulting. I now live in Central Tennessee. So naming something for where I lived at the time, there was just a lot of things that I didn't see.
Lauren Ryan:And I think that that created a lot of challenges while I was in it. As far as who I've hired, what I chose to do next in the business, how I chose to allocate funds, like there's a lot of things that I was just naive about, and there's a lot of things that I learned along the way. So I really think that my naivety is just like a young business owner. Definitely presented some obstacles, but I definitely have had the time of my life solving them and figuring it out. And I decided to put that aside now that I'm a mom and focus on something where I can really grow within a structured organization.
Lauren Ryan:Because having very little structure in your work life and also raising a baby, there's no structure anywhere. And I really need some structure somewhere.
George B. Thomas:I love that answer so much. It might be a rewind point already, by the way, for people watching or listening to this because there's so many good nuggets of, like, I just took a leap. I valued myself. You know, I figured it out along the way. And and so so amazing just to kind of get to know you a little bit deeper in the journey that you've been on.
George B. Thomas:I want to dig in a little bit deeper, kind of in the same vein, and I want you to take me back to maybe a moment where you felt, let's just say, underestimated or maybe even overlooked or out of place, maybe even in the industry as you're kind of getting, you know, psychology into marketing. Take me back to that time and maybe how you handled it.
Lauren Ryan:I think the best example of that is just like the last exchange I had in my previous job with my, like, last boss before Coastal, before HubSpot. I had essentially started at a company. I was hired to implement HubSpot. HubSpot didn't have SOC two yet. HubSpot does have SOC two now and it's great for financial services, but it wasn't at the time when I worked at a credit union.
Lauren Ryan:And so we ended up having to choose Salesforce Marketing Cloud, which I didn't have experience at the time. And so I was hired as a HubSpotter, tasked with Marketing Cloud. I've had to teach myself how to use the platform from the ground up. So I learned AMP script coding. I learned how to do SQL.
Lauren Ryan:I learned how to integrate with our core system and Financial Services Cloud. Pulfin built it out and I presented to my boss who had changed from the time that I had started the company to when I left. All these things that I'd learned and these skills, upskilling I'd done and did a market comp analysis on my role and had shown that I was basically being paid 50% of what I should be in this role. I asked if there's a way that we can build a plan to get closer to that. And he said that my value to the organization would stay as it is today, and that wouldn't really change the value for this role.
Lauren Ryan:And that he would appreciate it if I would stay there for two more years, and then he would write me a recommendation for my next role. I definitely felt undervalued in that moment, and also completely misunderstood by management. If you've implemented a tool like Salesforce Marketing Cloud, or even HubSpot integrated anything with Salesforce, you understand that there's complexity that goes there. Also, if you have a deep expertise in one platform and you're tasked with learning a new one, there's a lot that goes into that. And to be able to present all the data, not just saying like, Oh, I think I should earn more.
Lauren Ryan:Presenting the data as far as the positions and just being dismissed entirely, I think that will always stand out to me as a quick pivotal moment in my career where I learned exactly how not to lead people, how to be kind of forced to make a decision, like whether you're going stand up for yourself or not. Thankfully, was able to make that just like shit switch and leave the company and stand up on my own and move forward. But yeah, that's always going to stand out as a moment for me where I felt very underlooked, underappreciated and definitely challenged as far as my value.
George B. Thomas:Yeah. And I mean, shoot, if we put the layers on it, you you started out with like psychology and then you were listing out those things and I'm like, oh, plus nerdiness, okay. And you brought data like that conversation. Listen, if you're listening to this, I literally, like, bowed my head. But if you're watching this, you saw the visceral response that happened when when you were telling that story because it's just it's crazy.
George B. Thomas:This next one, Lauren, it can be business or it can be personal. I know I have personally had what I I call those, like, gut punch moments in life. And it's interesting. You have to have the valleys to get to the mountains, but have you kind of experienced a significant failure or even what you might call a setback, a a gut punch? And if so, like what did you kind of learn from it or what happened during that time?
Lauren Ryan:December 2022, I had grown my team at Coastal to six people. I don't believe I've told this story before, but I'd grown my team to six people and I absolutely loved the team that I had. I had such a diverse group of people like thinkers, people that would challenge the status quo, like great executors in HubSpot and Salesforce. And we had a very large client that was set to pay. They weren't happy with something that was going on in the work that they had, and so they decided they wouldn't pay for an additional month.
Lauren Ryan:They're essentially saying, No, we're not paying for a month. And there's not much you can do whenever you're a small company and a larger company just decides not to pay you. And so they had essentially come and said, We're not paying. At the time, they were by far our largest client and we didn't have by waiving me, I didn't have the reserves financially to cover the team that I had. And I ended up having to do layoffs in order to cover, like, the gap, essentially.
Lauren Ryan:And I remember the day that I had to lay off the majority of my team was probably the worst day of my adult life. And I don't laugh as if it's funny. It's just nervous laughter because it was truly just the worst day. Having to sit down and tell people that I've curated, worked so hard to find, I can no longer keep you because we don't have payment was pretty terrible. And it taught me, one, that there's a lot more that needs to go into the financial planning for a business, for sure.
Lauren Ryan:And that you never want to have all your eggs in one basket, especially in the consulting world. And usually we didn't usually we're diversified. Usually we had more pipeline. The economy at that point, if you're a HubSpot partner, the end of the year 2022, kind of everyone was doing layoffs. And I was like refusing to follow suit.
Lauren Ryan:Like I was like, I'm not doing that. And then middle of like second payroll cycle, December, I had to lay off my team and it was truly, truly terrible. And it took me about a year to bounce back confidence wise from having done that. And it was truly a pivotal point for me as a business owner of like, okay, I don't want to have that level of responsibility, at least for a while. Like there is a possibility that I'll work for myself again in the future, but there's a lot of planning that I want to put into beforehand, because I never want to relive the weight and sadness of that day.
George B. Thomas:Yeah, those are good words for that. It's something as a business owner that I don't fear a lot, but I fear that conversation ever having to be reality. So when you say wait, I I can totally understand where you're going. So alright. Let's shift gears a little bit because I'm super curious.
George B. Thomas:Again, part of the reason I'm doing these interviews is because it was Super Bowl. It was the Eagles versus well, I don't even know when somebody will be listening to this. Anyway, the moral of the story is I was talking to my daughter, and the quarterback of the Eagles has an all female team. And we were talking about how cool that is and how she loved the fact that here was a person who was empowering women to be the team that drove his social and all the things that he does. And so I've been asking everybody that we've been interviewing this question, and the responses have been very interesting, so I'll just go ahead and ask it of you.
George B. Thomas:What does empowerment mean to you, and how do you pass that on to others in your field?
Lauren Ryan:I think of empowerment and enablement very similarly, So if you're in the HubSpot world who are very familiar with sales enablement, as far as giving people the tools they need to do their job, I feel like empowerment is giving people the tools they need to take whatever next step they're looking for and also being the champion that they need to get there. So like, I'd say Jilly Fratt empowered me in the HubSpot world. I started HubSpot. I'd never had any sales experience before. I started being a HubSpot partner as soon as I became like a freelancer working on my own.
Lauren Ryan:And she taught me how to build out a sales pipeline, how to run like a discovery call, how like the basics of sales. And so in that aspect, she gave me the tools to do my job. But for the past over four years now, she's been like almost a daily cheerleader of like, hey, I know you're going through this. Like, let's do a pipeline review. Let's see what we can do.
Lauren Ryan:Let's like hit up your install base. See what we can do here. And so not only did she give me the tools, but she was also like sideline, like in the trenches, like coaching me through it and like giving me motivational calls at night when I was going through these layoffs and these different things to like keep me motivated to move forward. Partially because she was my cam and my pipeline was her pipeline, but much more so because women helping women and like she really wanted to see me succeed. And I really feel like she is a great example of empowerment, but that's kind of what I see empowerment as.
Lauren Ryan:Like it's really giving people the next step they need if they have a goal, whether that's business, personal, otherwise, and then also like kind of holding their hand and empowering them to do it. Like I've told you what to do. You're going do it on your own, but, like, I'm right here with you so you don't have to do it on your own.
George B. Thomas:I love that so much. And I want to kind of dig in a little bit deeper to maybe like a specific moment. And you kind of just shared, you know, what you're going through and like how Jill was helping and and stuff like that. But I still want to see if there's a thread that we can pull here because we kind of talked about the flip side of like being overlooked or something like that. And so I'd love to know if there was a a moment in your career where you just felt especially empowered or proud of something that you had achieved.
Lauren Ryan:I'm the proudest of as far as, like, my career deliverables. It has very much been the integration course I developed for the HubSpot Salesforce integration. I spent probably five months ideating this course and talking to it all the time, like we need a low entry cost thing for people needing help with integration, people who need to solve it themselves, people who can't afford an agency, whatever. And I spent hundreds of hours of my life putting together this course, the resources, writing the scripts, getting it filmed. And I remember whenever I did filming, I didn't like, scamp on filming costs, just something I probably would do if I redid it.
Lauren Ryan:But I rented a beach house, I brought my whole team together, and we had a week where we played like Dungeons and Dragons at night and like made breakfast together. Me and like the other leader on the team like split a bottle of wine on the back porch at night. Like it was just such a nice like connected feeling of like that you don't really get in life. Like I think college is kind of the last time we really have that type of feeling of really connected and trusting and leaning like friends that are working towards a goal. Anyway, leaving that week where we were filming the course was one of like the proudest moments of my life of just being able to bring these people together, have created something that could financially sustain creating a course like this, and also the feeling of like all the impact we were gonna have on people who started their career like me not knowing what to do from a technical perspective and like knowing that we had created from these like great minds that I'd found this awesome resource that's gonna help people moving forward.
Lauren Ryan:And I really felt like I was gonna be able to empower others with this integration and kind of help them move forward and be there and assist them on their way. But really that feeling that I got in the beach house that week, I had my birthday that week, we were filming the course. It was just such a awesome moment. We also celebrated one year in business that week. So it was a really cool time.
George B. Thomas:Yeah. The stars were aligning. I love the fact that it's around you were bringing something to the world to empower others. And I'm telling you, I've learned so much about you, psychology, a little bit of nerdiness, some Dungeons and Dragons, a little bit of wine. Like, this is this is shaping up to be a pretty cool, little interview.
George B. Thomas:So I I love it.
Lauren Ryan:I gotta say. I gotta say. That was the one and only time I've played Dungeons and Dragons.
George B. Thomas:That's right.
Lauren Ryan:That is not part of my story. But it was important to me that everyone felt represented on that trip. So we had two super nerds that were in a Dungeons and Dragons. So I had them like, I can't even think of the word, but build out a world and give us roles and stuff to play. So it was super I
George B. Thomas:love it. Okay. That's so fun that you're like, hang hang on a second. I've played, but not all the time. So if you could go back and you could change, well, not even go back.
George B. Thomas:If you if you could change one thing about how women are supported in the industry that we're in, what would it be?
Lauren Ryan:I think there's a really good opportunity for mentorship, like in every respect. Like I've always, I did Big Brothers Big Sisters in college. I'm a huge advocate of the power and value that mentorship adds in the world. And I really think that at every company and every agency, far and wide, whatever industry, like position, there should be a mentor for you. This is somebody that's not your boss, like someone that could be same level or above.
Lauren Ryan:I always think that there should be peer to peer women, like female mentors that are helping you drive forward, helping you bounce ideas off of, helping you build a plan towards what's next. I think that it's so easy, especially as a woman, to undercut your value or understate your worth. And it's so powerful to have a mirror next to you saying like, Hey, no, you actually did a really good job on this. You should add this to your resume. Or, Oh, I would actually position this this way when you're applying to that job.
Lauren Ryan:Or, Did you see this position open up? You'd be great for it. Like it's really important to have someone stamping you and someone that you're attached to, whether you find them or they're assigned to you. Mentorship is so important. And it's very rare that you reach out to a woman that's in your ethos or some, like in some way and ask for mentorship and they're like, No, I can't.
Lauren Ryan:They might say they're too busy. But as far as like not interested or not like worth their time, that's never a response that I've gotten.
George B. Thomas:I love that mentorship. And I think if you are listening to this or watching this and you haven't historically done that, figure out a person that you can ask. Go through that process. The more that you do it, the easier it is. And it is by far one of the most impactful things that I've been able to do as well, just like having a mentor and and somebody to help guide.
George B. Thomas:I'll I'll use the word guide. Alright. So let's get a little bit nerdy because we are on a interview around HubSpot Women of HubSpot. And so I'm super curious right now, Lauren, are there any kind of particular tools, strategies, trends in HubSpot? And I'll even say HubSpot or inbound ecosystem that are exciting you right now.
Lauren Ryan:I'm super excited about AI. I know it's the buzzword of HubSpot. Not only HubSpot as a product, but also just the ecosystem around AI. It's been really cool, especially in this new role that I'm at in HubSpot to see how I can use AI to really superpower my work and what I'm doing at work. My main role right now is doing product demos of HubSpot to help people see if it's the right technical future for them or not.
Lauren Ryan:And using AI to present my demo story and like everything that I have coming up and having AI challenge me on some point to like give me some ideas of other things to like show or ask. It's been so cool. It's just like if you really use it correctly, it's kind of like you have an extra coworker that's just dedicated to you all the time and giving you feedback. And I think that initially AI was presented like as a threat or as something that's kind of just like Google, but really AI can be a teammate. And it's really cool to turn it into like your own train to think and look for the things I'm looking for.
Lauren Ryan:And it really saves time, especially if you just upload call transcripts and run through it. AI is super, super powerful. And HubSpot's really leading the way in the CRM space as far as making AI agentic and working for you to help not only HubSpotters internally be AI forward, but also HubSpot customers be AI forward. I think it's really cool to be a part of that. I felt like I'm part of HubSpot for years, but now actually working on the HubSpot team and seeing the inside of it has just been such a cool time of discovery for me as a HubSpot nerd.
George B. Thomas:I love it. This idea of being AI assisted, an additional coworker, the fact that you kind of were leaning into like powerful or, you know, analyzing or even personalizing at scale, if you will. So super amazing. Now let's go back to humans. For you, how important is networking with other females?
George B. Thomas:And are there any certain strategies that you use to kind of build connections along the way?
Lauren Ryan:Networking has always been very important to me throughout my career. The type of person and the type of networking that I do has changed greatly throughout the years. So when I first started, I was just looking for like women with a job. Like, let's just start very broadly, like who's gonna find someone with a job? And I really think that the trend has been looking for someone that's where you wanna be throughout the years.
Lauren Ryan:And like always just like a few steps ahead, not someone like I wouldn't look at like Yamini as like a direct mentor for me. Right? Because she's the CEO of HubSpot. I might look at like a sales leader and start there. And so I think that it's important to kind of level set when you're looking for a mentor, like what is my next goal?
Lauren Ryan:You should always know that before you find someone because it's never the mentor's job to just like give you the path. It's their job to say like, oh, you want that? Like, here's what I can do to help you get there. But like right now, the biggest thing that I've looked for in recent history is moms. So I had a newborn, I need to find a mom with a three month old, like, tell me what's coming.
Lauren Ryan:Like, am I going to get my life back? Answer is maybe. Probably not. And now that I'm like, I have a six month old, like I'm looking for moms with like a one year old and like, in general, like in my neighborhood, I just moved to a new place. I'm looking for people who have kids at all.
Lauren Ryan:So the type of networking I'm doing right now is very much focused on like how to be a mom and how to be a working mom. And that's really who I'm drawn to at the moment. Whereas in the past, it's been like female business owners or when I was looking for a job over the past year, the last year, trying to figure out what I wanted to do next, people who had changed jobs or people who had sold their agents, like different people like that. So I really think that networking is very important and how you go about that is very much dependent on your goal from networking. You should always have some sort of outcome and not that people are means to an end, but to find the right person for you to talk to at the time, you really need to have an end goal in mind of what you're trying to achieve or the area you're trying to grow in.
George B. Thomas:Yeah, I love that you tied it to goal. What I really love too is the entire time you're talking about that, the freedom to have flexibility to be networking with the people that you most need in your life. I think that's super powerful. I've got a couple more questions, and as we land the plane here, let's go ahead and dig into these. It might be a little bit of reflection.
George B. Thomas:It might be a little bit of inspiration, but I'm super curious, like, what has been the most rewarding aspect of your career?
Lauren Ryan:The most rewarding aspect of my career has been seeing the moment for people. Something that I've been uniquely skilled at in the HubSpot ecosystem is taking really complex situation systems and breaking it down to, in terms of non technical people can understand. And I've done that through social media courses, learning, consulting. And in all of those different venues, I've been able to see things click for people like, Oh, okay, that's how I'm supposed to do this. Or, oh, I've been missing that.
Lauren Ryan:Like, just like the light bulb turns on, the door opens, everything's great. That combined with people coming up to me and saying how much, like, I specifically have helped them in their job. Like going to inbounds, didn't go this past year because I was pregnant, but the year before I went and I was live filming sessions. Like I would go into a session and live recap it and post it on TikTok and LinkedIn or wherever else. And I would have people come up to me while I was doing that.
Lauren Ryan:They're like, oh my god, your content's been so helpful. Like it helped me get a promotion or it helped me solve this challenge or it's we've had like ROI because of this. And the fact that I've had been able to impact people enough that they would like go up to a stranger at a conference and like interrupt what they're doing and say something about it has been really, really rewarding for me. Because whenever we're in this remote culture and you're working from your computer, it's hard to see the impact you're having beyond the screen. So many times you just feel like someone that's sitting alone in a room and just pushing stuff off into the void.
Lauren Ryan:So whenever you have moments of connection and people come back and say like, thank you, like I subscribe to your blog, I follow you on LinkedIn, I do whatever because like your content is helping me move forward, that's incredibly rewarding.
George B. Thomas:Yeah, I love those inbound moments where you get a glimpse into, Oh, this is why I do what I do the rest of the year. So that's amazing. Lauren, what advice would you give other women who might want to choose this career path? And what I mean by that is either working at HubSpot or something in marketing, but what advice would you give them?
Lauren Ryan:I think that everyone needs to be a content creator in some way right now. I think you need to find a way to get your message heard, whether that's small, like through LinkedIn posts or if you have a whole platform that you own. I think finding a way to take your message, your thoughts, your value prop, and start putting it into word video content in a way that connects other people is essential to succeed today. I think that people who are able to take big things and interpret them for others are invaluable. So if you have like a computer science tech background and you're trying to get into the CRM space right now specifically, I would take like a psychology class or a teaching class, something that allows you to connect with people more.
Lauren Ryan:Because the more that we've leaned more into technology and more into solutioning, some people in this industry have lost that human element and how to connect with others and like have lost the power of a story and storytelling. And all of that is so, so, so important, especially in CRM. Because if you think about the stakeholders in a CRM, you've got sales, marketing, leadership, end users. There's so many people that you have to engage as part of the CRM ecosystem. It's really important to be able to connect with and resonate with people and not just build technical solutions.
George B. Thomas:So good. So good. Just rewind it. Dang on it, ladies and gentlemen. Alright.
George B. Thomas:Curious. You've talked about being a mom. We've talked about your career. But when you sit back and I ask this question that you had no clue I was going to ask you, what are your long term goals?
Lauren Ryan:I would love to own a plane someday. My husband's a private pilot, so that's a big part of our life is travel and journeying. Long term vision would be condos throughout the world and a plane where he flies us around. That would be great. But as far as like long term vision for my career, I think that leadership is something that I'd like to be in in the future.
Lauren Ryan:I'm really loving being an individual contributor right now because it's very like, this is your job, like get it done focus, which is what I need right now because I need heavy structure at work. Because again, when I walk out of this room, it's just like the chaos of a teething six month old. But in the future, I'd really like to step back into a leadership role and help champion others and help them grow. Ideally, within the HubSpot ecosystem, HubSpot has always been a, like, I don't even know the term for it, but like a moonshot company for me as far as getting an opportunity to work here. And so now that I do, like, I'd love to stay here as long as they'll have me.
Lauren Ryan:And so ideally, I will have more of a leadership position in the HubSpot landscape, like, the future to help the company keep growing and the people inside it growing as well.
George B. Thomas:Yeah. I can see that happening in the future without a doubt. Okay. I'm super interesting on this next one. I think we've got this in maybe, like, one more question, but I I'll tell you why I'm interested.
George B. Thomas:You've mentioned owning a plane. We've mentioned Dungeons and Dragons. Let me just get to the question. What's a surprising or a little known fact about you that people might not expect?
Lauren Ryan:Grew up on a farm. I think that's kind of surprising whenever I'm in like tech and I carry around Kate Spade versus, but I grew up on a farm in Tennessee. I used to be a show jumper, horseback riding back in the day. So that's always like different from my childhood. I was a cheerleader in high school, but I think that that goes better with like sales and speaking.
Lauren Ryan:So that's more like believable. But earlier in life, I was really into horses, being out on the farm, being more like country grown. And then I moved to New Jersey. So for a long time, all of my content had Manhattan in the background. So that's usually surprising to people when they find that out.
Lauren Ryan:If that's not surprising to you, I'm also first generation American on my mom's side. She is British. So first gen on that side.
George B. Thomas:Very cool. By the way, I love the little known fact because I grew up in Montana and a little unknown fact is I have, in my life, been a certified Western and English riding instructor for people who So, ride anyway, that's a lifetime or three ago. So let's let's land the plane with this last question. Finish this sentence for me, Lauren. Success to me means blank.
George B. Thomas:Legacy. Success to me is how people speak about you when you're not
Lauren Ryan:in the room, making sure that you've left behind a legacy of giving and support and helping others. To me, is very much a reflection of how you've impacted others and how you've moved their lives forward or the mission that you're a part of forward. I think success also means like, able to support yourself, stuff like that. But for me, when I look at being successful in the future, my goal is really making sure that I have supported others in ways that are memorable and tangible to know that really I did what I set out to do, which is I try to be a people first leader, a people first employee. I can really focus on helping others and driving change.