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The built hapily podcast is about building apps, companies, and relationships in the HubSpot ecosystem. As HubSpot grows, so does the opportunity - and this podcast puts you in the room with the people making it all happen.
Hosted by Dax and Max, built hapily goes behind the scenes with HubSpot developers, solutions partners, startup founders and community leaders. Each episode delivers tactical insights into launching and scaling businesses around the HubSpot platform.
However, this podcast is about more than just building software. It's about building authentic connections, fulfilling careers, and lives you can be proud of. Guests share their personal journeys, hard-won lessons and philosophies for not just achieving success, but finding purpose and happiness along the way.
After all, this is about more than making apps. It's about building hapily - and you're invited along for the ride. Join Dax, Max and their guests to construct the life you've been dreaming of, one conversation at a time.
bhp S3E1 - Kyle Jepson - Full
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[00:00:00] I'm desperate for content at this point. And so I just made a video like, Hey, surprise, you can do this now. And it became one of my most popular videos up to that point. Not because anybody cared about putting UI in Italian, but because it was such a novel idea for HubSpot to release a new feature and someone to tell the customer base like that, I think it never in the history of HubSpot happened except on the inbound stage.
[00:00:23]
[00:00:41] Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the inaugural episode, season three of the Built Happily Podcast, and it's a special one. We finally, finally, finally, after two whole seasons, got the man, the myth, the legend, my good friend and yours, [00:01:00] Kyle, something, Jepson.
[00:01:03] Kyle, what's your middle name?
[00:01:06] Anthony,
[00:01:07] Kyle, Anthony, Jeff.
[00:01:09] KAJ is in the building.
[00:01:12] you.
[00:01:12] the cage.
[00:01:13] We're gonna talk. Yeah. Cage. A k. A cage is in the building. Dude, Kyle, how are you doing, man?
[00:01:22] Good. I'm excited to be here
[00:01:24] I'm so excited.
[00:01:25] after two full seasons of my agent pounding on your door. You finally let
[00:01:28] Exactly. We finally get, we finally made a room in our calendar.
[00:01:32] Yeah. I mean Mr. Jepson was number two probably on the, when we first were like, we need to do this cast. Probably number two is like, we've gotta get Kyle, okay, next
[00:01:42] Yeah. I don't know why it took
[00:01:43] year, later.
[00:01:45] I'm gonna be so honest, Kyle. That's on us. That's on us. I feel like, you know, you and me do the live show every Monday
[00:01:51] Yeah. No, it's, you know, there's only, there's only so much Kyle you can take in your life. I get it. It's fine.
[00:01:57] listen, I can, I can take an infinite amount of Mr. [00:02:00] Jepson. Okay. But, um, but I, I think I probably was just like, oh, we had to have had Kyle on, right?
[00:02:05] I think that was actually the conversation. I think we were like, we've had Kyle on, right? And we're like, no, and wait, really? Are you serious? Um,
[00:02:12] afraid to step to Mr. Jepson's neighborhood and just try to do something, but we just, it's good. It's a
[00:02:19] I did. Yeah.
[00:02:20] well. We, we mean, yes. I didn't make that up. was for real. So I'll start this off now. I'll start this off. So I always feel that. I've been in HubSpot for an eternity.
[00:02:34] That's what it feels like, right? Because of all the things that have changed and all the ups downs all around in the HubSpot universe. But tell us about how you got into the HubSpot universe. Because it's been longer than me, which is like 2019
[00:02:47] Yeah, so I, uh, I actually. It's, it is fitting. We're recording this in June of 2025 'cause I hit 10 years at HubSpot, beginning of this month. And, uh, 2015 [00:03:00] HubSpot was basically still a marketing platform. They had just launched the CRM the inbound before and it was still very lightweight and very beta. Um, and I joined as a support rep, um, for that little sales thing.
[00:03:16] Uh, we were experimenting with. Uh, I'd, I'd worked in SaaS before in, in customer sports, so that's how I got in and, uh, had no idea. Huh?
[00:03:29] Back when it was sidekicks still.
[00:03:30] Yeah. Yeah. I, I was a sidekick support rep. That was, that was my name and
[00:03:35] Did you work with David Ick, or David? Uh, ic. I can't pronounce his, I can't
[00:03:40] Oh, yes, I did. Yeah.
[00:03:42] David, right? Yep. Yeah. Oh, I still remember that he started with me,
[00:03:46] Oh, did he? Okay.
[00:03:47] been doing the thing for a little while When we, when we, when we came on?
[00:03:50] Yeah. Yeah. So he, he joined the team a few months before I transitioned over to Academy. But yeah, when I, when I joined HubSpot as a a s support rep, I, [00:04:00] I had no idea what my career was in for, by, by coming here.
[00:04:04] Dude, what was, what was that like? Uh, supporting a product that was like in HubSpot, but not quite HubSpot yet, but like almost HubSpot, but like planned to be part of HubSpot. What was the, uh, you know, those, those early days, like running support for Sidekick?
[00:04:25] it was, it was interesting 'cause we were in this little space in the Cambridge office and, uh, I, the support team, we, we were there. Also the, the sales team, the people who were trying to sell this little $10 a month thing called Sidekick for business, were in that room. Yeah. It was basically like, we didn't have sequences yet.
[00:04:47] We didn't have the meetings booking tool yet. Sidekick for business. Basically just like,
[00:04:52] Email opens, right?
[00:04:53] uh, I, I think, I think you got email opens for free, but like. They, uh, you could only see like a week into the past [00:05:00] and you paid $10 a month and then you could see the full history or something like that. It was, it was not much of a product.
[00:05:06] The, the, the CRM was basically just like contacts. Contacts and companies, index pages, and the deal board view tickets didn't exist yet. Like it was, it was small. Um, it was, it was pretty cool. It was all email based support. So we were all just there. We get questions and. We could, the sales team was around us, like calling and trying to sell this thing.
[00:05:28] And, um, we had direct access to the, the product team that was building it. Andy Petri, who's now like head of all things product at HubSpot, was just a product manager on this new CRM thing. And uh, and I really just felt in it, you know. Um, and, uh, it's funny, uh, there was this guy who would come and, and, uh, Mike Peachy was head of the little sales team, and there was this guy who would just come and talk.
[00:05:53] Just chat with Mike endlessly and I remember I got so close to being like, Hey, can you quiet [00:06:00] down? I'm trying to work here. Turns out it was Brian Halligan, like I didn't know who he was. Uh, CEO, co-founder of the company. He was just really invested, making sure this little sales experiment we were doing was working.
[00:06:11] Um, and it did work. And eventually he announced at a company meeting, Hey, we've been operating like two businesses. We gotta stop that. We're gonna have one support team who supports everything. We're gonna have one sales team who sells everything. One engineering team who builds everything. And HubSpot Academy's now gonna teach people CRM and sales stuff. And the people on the academy team were like, we're gonna do what? Like none of them had ever used the CRM. None of 'em really knew what Sidekick was. They were all marketers. Um, and I had done a little bit of really lousy outbound sales when I was fresh outta college at a SaaS company. Um, and I had, I had gone grad school, uh, and, and had some teaching experience.
[00:06:50] And so when Brian Halligan asked Mark Robbert, who led the whole little sales division, like who, who on this team do you think could teach this stuff for HubSpot Academy? He, he [00:07:00] nominated me and I just basically got a walk on role in the HubSpot Academy. I, I hardly knew what it was. Um, and that. That really changed everything for me.
[00:07:07] Yeah. That's what kind of, because that's like when, when I was at HubSpot. The way I kind of found out about you is through Academy, right? And seeing the Sales Academy videos and, and things like that. Dude, what was it like building your very first, actually, what was your very first academy course?
[00:07:27] So they told me like at that point. HubSpot Academy really had just two offerings for the general public. We, we had a little thing for, for partners also, but as far as the general public was concerned, we had the inbound certification, which was really just inbound marketing. And we had, we called it the HubSpot certification, which taught you how to like, send emails and build landing pages and workflows.
[00:07:52] Right. Um, and they said we need some sort of CRM something. We need to teach people how to use this CRM. For [00:08:00] me, having been on a support team, not for very long, but for like six or eight months or something, I knew what questions we got over and over again. I knew what people didn't understand. I just kinda pulled that together into a, like, these are the main tools I think we need to highlight.
[00:08:17] Um, and the first version, it was like four very short lessons about, one about contacts and one about deals, and one about email tracking and, it's interesting. I think I, I, I suspect, I don't know for sure. HubSpot Academy had only existed for like three years at this point, and for the first year of it, it was just like, uh, I, I, i, two or three people running webinars, right? This idea of prerecorded training was, was still very new at HubSpot.
[00:08:46] And uh, and I think we kind of had this idea we would publish things and they would kind of be static for a while. But the CRM was so young in developing so fast. I launched my first course. And within six months it was like [00:09:00] horrifically unre, uh, unrecognizably out of date. And so I, I had to kind of, the HubSpot Academy had to invent this idea of how do we update things?
[00:09:11] How often do we update things? What does it look like and the like for the first couple years, every six months, I just rebooted the course from scratch because it wasn't a matter of just like adding a few little x like entire new tools. Came out and, and, and then it, it grew. We came up with this idea of marketing Hub and sales hub.
[00:09:29] That was not a language we had before. And these tiers of, of, uh, starter Pro and enterprise, what were they before there was like basic and
[00:09:37] Oh yeah.
[00:09:38] like, anyway.
[00:09:39] small and big for a period of time, or am I thinking of something
[00:09:43] Small, medium, large.
[00:09:45] Yeah.
[00:09:46] was something, I can't remember what it was. It was like a marketing hub here or something like that. I.
[00:09:50] I. My, my intuition and I don't know 'cause I wasn't at HubSpot before, but my sense is that this era when, when sales hub [00:10:00] was invented and not even called sales hub yet, that's what kicked off, that's what brought us into this world of HubSpot changes so fast we can't keep up with it.
[00:10:06] And uh, and that has kind of been my experience at this company the whole time. Like we internally couldn't even keep up with it. I have no idea how our customers were supposed to keep up with it. It has only accelerated over time as we have invested more and more in, in r and d and the size of our product team and stuff.
[00:10:21] And so, um, I've never thought about it, but that's actually a really interesting place for me to begin my journey at HubSpot. That's,
[00:10:27] Yeah. And so, so how long were you, um, I mean, well you're still on the academy
[00:10:33] yep, that is
[00:10:34] but there was a really, I feel like there was a stretch between you joining Academy. You're pumping out a ton of content and, and then I think you. You started doing more of the evangelism stuff right around the time of the pandemic,
[00:10:52] Yeah. So, um, I, uh, uh, it
[00:10:57] to lead us to, I'm trying to tell us, I want the, [00:11:00] the, the Kyle Origin story, right? Uh, leading up to when, when HubSpot Tips and Tricks started, right? Because that's the
[00:11:09] That's the tipping point.
[00:11:10] on the Built Happily podcast like we. We celebrate things that people have built on HubSpot, be it communities, uh, careers.
[00:11:19] Right? Uh, and you've done both of those things, right? And so like, I want to tell that story like right up into it and then talk about what that actually looked like, right? Um, but also give people a sneak peek of, of the Kyle behind the scenes, right? So like, yeah.
[00:11:36] I, I joined HubSpot Academy and, um, like I said, it was a new team. We, we had just. Hired Steven Fisk as a videographer, like two or three months before that, uh, before I, I joined the team. Before that, they were literally just like putting their phones or camera, maybe like an actual camcorder on like tables and recording themselves.
[00:11:58] They didn't have a teleprompter. They just have the [00:12:00] script off screen, memorize a couple sentences, and then shouted at the camera and changed the angle. And, and, and so I started writing my, my scripts for this, this certification course about the CRMI was gonna create. And I was like, should someone like proofread these or something?
[00:12:16] And this was a novel idea. It never occurred to anyone. And, and so I like did a read through of my scripts to my team and, and they, like, they gave me feedback. Right. And it's sort of ironic that I'm the guy who pushed for that because very rapidly as we began to, to grow at this point, uh, we started expanding into other languages and we, we built this.
[00:12:35] Kind of editorial review team to make sure everything was good for localization and, and HubSpot Academy started. It went from this very scrappy thing in just a few years to a, a, a place with very robust, fairly rigid content production, uh, guidelines and protocols, and that I sort of chaffed against that.
[00:12:57] I, I, I bumped heads with these content [00:13:00] editors a lot. Because like I'm just excited to tell people about HubSpot, and if we take three or four months to say something about HubSpot, then it becomes not true by the time we get it out the door. Right? Um, and, and so there, that was a point of tension, uh, for a a, a year or two, I would say.
[00:13:17] And then the, the pandemic hit and I was locked down and I was working from home and I'm filming stuff in my own house and near the end of, uh, 2020, just as kind of like a. These processes are too restrictive for me. I started making unscripted videos and, and posting them on LinkedIn. It's interesting, another interesting time.
[00:13:38] It was
[00:13:38] Are you saying HubSpot tips and tricks acted out of a bout of of rebellion?
[00:13:44] it was Rebell. Yeah.
[00:13:46] You seem such the rebellious type as well,
[00:13:49] I don't see. I don't, I'm, I don't know how to tell you guys this. I'm sort of a prima donna. Like I am really confident in my ability to create content [00:14:00] and I, it's really hard for me to, to accept any sort of input from anyone else. Just like, trust me, I'm gonna do a good job.
[00:14:08] I'm the same way. It's trust me, bro. Just across people like it.
[00:14:12] Yeah, I
[00:14:13] And.
[00:14:14] will be just fine.
[00:14:16] Right. And, and I, I do think it's actually really good for me to be accountable to a content team who's thinking about things like, like brand voice and how will we translate this and, and how, all those things. But I don't like it. Uh, it's, it's, it's medicine for me. Right. Um, but it's interesting in late 2020.
[00:14:35] Dan Curran actually, uh, co a co-founder of Org Chart Hub, um, posted on LinkedIn and said, uh, what's your, what's the, what's your favorite HubSpot feature? Like, what's the most underrated feature? Just like, tell me in the comments, what feature do you wish more people knew about in HubSpot? Um, and I was gonna say snippets.
[00:14:52] 'cause I think snippets is a great tool, but someone at all rates said snippets. So I said the deduplication tool, which is crazy because at that time [00:15:00] that barely existed. It, it was not. Cool, but it was new, right? You could de-duplicate records in Hubsoft. What a wild idea. And so I post that comment and two or three people responded and said, Hubsoft has a deduplication tool.
[00:15:13] Where is that? You know? And so I like sat down to type out a comment First, click on this second, and I was like, you know what, I'll just make a video. So I made this little video and posted it on LinkedIn. It was like, Hey, turns out, some of you don't know about the deduplication tool. Here's how you find it.
[00:15:27] And it was like literally 25 or 30 seconds long. It took me maybe a minute to create. And, uh, I had been on HubSpot Academy at this point for uh, four, almost five years. And I had, I had spent that whole time connecting on LinkedIn with anyone who like posted a HubSpot Academy certification. So I had like 2000 connections who were all like certified HubSpot users, right?
[00:15:50] And so if you say to that crowd, Hey, here's a HubSpot tool you're paying for, you probably don't know you have access to. They like it, especially at a [00:16:00] time. HubSpot did not have any sort of product updates page. Um, a product catalog has always been a hard thing for us. Um, people were like, wow, that was really cool.
[00:16:10] Liked this video. It's only 30 seconds long. You should make more like this. So for a couple weeks, I just mind the comments on Dan's post, right? Oh, someone said they like this tool. Here's a 32nd video about that. Someone said they like this tool. Here's a 32nd video about that. And, uh, general consensus was people liked it, they wanted more of it, and so
[00:16:30] Does Dan know that he accidentally started HubSpot Tips and
[00:16:34] that's a good question. I, I feel like he should brag about this more than he does.
[00:16:39] That's hilarious. So, all right. All right. This, so you're starting to, you're starting to, you're going through Dan's post. You're, you're, you're farming content off this post. You're starting to make videos. Where did, where was hashtag HubSpot Tips and Tricks birthed?
[00:16:59] [00:17:00] So, uh, Dan's post was like late in November, 2020, and I was like, I bet I can post a video on LinkedIn every day from now till I go out on Christmas break. And so I did that. At the end, I was like, people didn't get tired of it. People, people seemed to like it. And so over Christmas break, I was like,
[00:17:22] It's almost as if all the content on LinkedIn sucks and you put good stuff on there. People actually enjoy it, right?
[00:17:28] yeah, uh, but while I'm just hanging out with my family Christmas and New Year's, I was like, I should start a hashtag. And I, I called it HubSpot Tips and Tricks because that was my plan. I was like. In 2021, I'm setting a goal. I'm gonna make a video every day and tell people something they don't know about HubSpot, and I made it like halfway through January before I was totally out of ideas.
[00:17:53] Like,
[00:17:54] So how did you, so, okay, so, alright. So originally it was ideas, right? But then it,[00:18:00]
[00:18:00] yeah, that's why I call it tips and trips. I didn't call it like HubSpot updates, you know?
[00:18:04] yeah. Um. So then you, there, there was a like a transition point where, um, you, you re, you, you really leaned into the updates, right? I almost, almost like you as like, you're like the Aaron Parnas of like HubSpot updates, right?
[00:18:21] Like instead of, I don't know if you're gonna Aaron Parnas, he is like a big TikTok or who reports the news that everybody likes, right? But it's like the second a story comes out, he goes and breaks it to everyone and like breaks it down for people. I feel like you do the same thing for HubSpot product updates.
[00:18:34] So I mean, like I said, I, I made it through two, maybe three weeks of January and then it was like, I'm out of stuff. There's nothing else I can say. Um, and so I went from like. Daily to like three times a week to like two times a week and, but people were still engaging. And then one day, just like it was a week that I hadn't published anything and I really needed a video internally in HubSpot for a long [00:19:00] time, way before we had any sort of public feed for this.
[00:19:03] We have these, these, we call them prod, notify emails, product notifications about new features that have been released. And I think the intent was just to like. Let the customer service team know. So if someone calls in with questions, they can know that this thing happened. Um, but one of those came through and it was like the HubSpot UI is now available in, I forget, like Italian or something.
[00:19:25] And I was like, I don't know if I'm connected with anybody in Italy. Uh, but I need, I'm desperate for content at this point. And so I just made a video like, Hey, surprise, you can do this now. And it became one of my most popular videos up to that point. Not because anybody cared about putting UI in Italian, but because it was such a novel idea for HubSpot to release a new feature and someone to tell the customer base like that, I think it never in the history of HubSpot happened except on the inbound stage.
[00:19:53] Right. And and that's when I realized like, wait a minute. I, I get, I get these emails just [00:20:00] cluttering up my inbox. I find them sort of annoying every time the product team ships every anything, but there are users out there who would love to get their hands on this information. Um, and I wish I could remember, I bet in early 2021, pro notify emails were coming out like three or four times a week.
[00:20:20] Um, it it, but I had a, a huge backlog of them, right? And so I was able to do this daily cadence. For a long time as HubSpot really started ramping up to, it's wild to think there was less than an update per day in 2021. And now in 2025, it's like easily four or five a day, right? Like I have a whole separate folder in my Gmail.
[00:20:43] Those prod notify emails still come out and it is, now I get to pick and choose the ones I want. Right? And I've been DA doing daily, uh, HubSpot Tips and Tricks videos or essentially daily for, I don't know, like four years now and.
[00:20:57] Four years.
[00:20:58] Yeah, well that's the thing, right? Like [00:21:00] everyone with content creation, consistency is key, right? Consistency is the key. When you create content, like when, if you do one post, you're never gonna, nothing's gonna happen. You have to do a hundred before anything happens. Do a hundred. You've gotten well thanks to HubSpot and it's this flywheel of innovation of everything or every single nook and cranny being updated.
[00:21:21] Um, there is you, you
[00:21:24] unlimited content farm.
[00:21:25] up and you got breakfast product update, lunch, product updates, midnight snack product update.
[00:21:31] Yeah. And, and it's really interesting. Like I don't, I don't know how other content creators build, like a brand and a platform that people subscribe to. Um, I've never had to put very much thought into it, right? Like I, uh, people a lot of times. Like wanna get started with video content and they immediately start thinking about, you know, fancy microphones and, and fancy cameras.
[00:21:56] And for me, for so long I was wearing like my, [00:22:00] my HubSpot issued headset as a mic and it sounded like a telephone call and I was just, yeah, yeah. Um, I was just using the built-in. Camera on my webcam. And, uh, it was so scrappy. The production value was so low and it's unscripted single take, like 30 to 62nd videos and that worked.
[00:22:24] That was great. Right? And, and going back to the point of this being a bit of re an act of rebellion. Meanwhile, over in Hubs Law Academy, everything we were producing was carefully scripted and edited and translated into five languages and read off a teleprompter and edited by a professional editing team.
[00:22:41] It, and it, it took months to get this out the door and it was always like six hours long when it got there, right? And I, I think there is still a huge need for that. I love HubSpot Academy. I think we provide immense value, but we were not doing this timely, uh, news style. [00:23:00] Here's what's up with HubSpot right now.
[00:23:01] And it was just a huge gap. Nobody was doing it.
[00:23:04] Yeah, let's establish that like HubSpot wouldn't exist the way it does today without Academy like that, like. HubSpot Academy is the way I found HubSpot in the first place. Right. But like, I don't think anybody on earth, any company on Earth has ever done a better job at building a product while also building the strategy and the education that helps that product thrive.
[00:23:28] Right. Uh, and quite frankly, the HubSpot community wouldn't exist without HubSpot Academy. Right. So it's like. HubSpot is HubSpot Academy. And HubSpot Academy is HubSpot. Like they're, it's, it's just as important as the product that, you know, they, they built. Right. Um, now. You. So, okay, so well, here's some. I, I want to hear what your experience was with this, because I remember when the pandemic happened and I started my sort of unhinged content journey on LinkedIn and TikTok and all that kind of stuff.
[00:23:59] [00:24:00] Uh, the experiences that I had internally were very interesting, right? Um, everywhere from like. Marketing reaching out to me, being like, oh, you know, uh, you know, the, the, the, the C-suite wants you to go do ads for Service Hub. And like I did service hub ads on Instagram and stuff like that, even though it wasn't like my job all the way to like, my boss being like, I just wanna make sure you're actually like focusing on your job.
[00:24:24] And I'm like, I'm doing my job sleep. So yes, I am. Like, it's not that hard. Um, you know, like, so like I had a lot of very interesting, uh. A lot of people reaching out with me, wanting me to work their deals and like all this kinda, like, it was a very interesting internal experience. What was like the internal sort of like, experience you had becoming this very well-known figure in the HubSpot, uh, world by like, doing a lot of this content, like outside of the, you know, the, the, the normal, I mean, what people are used to, which is the courses and stuff like that.
[00:24:56] Yeah, so it's interesting. Um, [00:25:00] I, I don't, I don't know how. Famous people find out they're famous. I, I assume, like if you talk to like George Clooney or Brad Pitt, they, they, they probably have some story about the first time they went to the grocery store and the person bagging their groceries was like, wait, are you in the movies?
[00:25:18] Right? And like, that was that moment like, oh, it happened. And for me, like, yeah, I could see people were engaging with the stuff on, on LinkedIn. I knew especially solutions partners, really liked what I was doing. And I would, I was, I remember. In early, I guess I don't remember exactly what year it was, but at some point I was on a a, a podcast with a partner and they're like, how do you maintain this daily velocity with your HubSpot tips and tricks posts?
[00:25:44] And it must have been like first half of 2021, because I remember in my mind being like. Right now I'm posting like two times a week. I'm really glad you think it's daily because I feel like I'm falling off the wagon here. Right. Um, but the, where it really hit was inbound 2022. I gave a talk [00:26:00] called Things Every HubSpot Admin Needs to know.
[00:26:02] And this was a time when, like internally, it was pretty hotly debated. There were plenty of salespeople at HubSpot who were like, I. The way you win deals against Salesforce is you hop on the call and be like, if you buy Salesforce, you're gonna have to hire an admin. If you buy HubSpot, it's so easy, it runs itself.
[00:26:16] You don't need a full-time admin.
[00:26:18] I was one of those people
[00:26:19] that was that, that was the talk track. And so it was, it was pretty spicy take to say things. Every HubSpot admin needs to know. Just assume HubSpot admin is a person, is a type as a career. And I was really glad the inbound team took it. What happened was I got this, uh, 90 minute deep dive session in a room with 250 seats, and it, it, it filled up.
[00:26:38] And so they gave me an encore session and the encore session that like, they had student style seating, like, uh, chairs and things. They, they moved out a bunch of furniture and, and shoved the chairs together and put in more rows. And there were lines of people down the hall and like around the corner and like.
[00:26:55] People were posting pictures on LinkedIn, like Kyle Jeffson has Disneyland style lines [00:27:00] outside his and like. who could not come in, went to the academy space and like verbally accosted my manager and said the whole reason I came to inbound was so I could learn what I need to know as an admin and I can't get into this session.
[00:27:12] And like, it just, it blew up. It was wild. I had no idea there was gonna be that many people interested in it. I thought it was gonna be sort of a niche session, but it turned out there was this hunger for, for admin content for HubSpot and it.
[00:27:29] Dude.
[00:27:30] It was a surprise to all of us. And so I, I, I posted on LinkedIn like, Hey, sounds like a lot of you were not able to get into my session.
[00:27:38] Don't worry. I'll, I'll do it as a webinar. Just gimme a couple weeks. And that's, that's how I started the admin hug. I just needed a, a place to do my, uh, my, my inbound, uh, speech as a webinar. Um, and about that same time, HubSpot was, was in early iterations of changing its main nav. Um, and [00:28:00] I, I was like, well, I have a hug now.
[00:28:01] Hugs are supposed to meet, uh, quarterly. I bet I can do a quarterly webinar. And so I, I reached out to the team that was doing the main nav. I was like, Hey, do you want to like come present to some admins? And they were like, sure. And then other product teams started reaching out to me like, Hey, we heard you have a group of admins that the NAV team got to present to.
[00:28:18] Can we present also? I was like, sure. So I put together the spreadsheet. It had four lines on it, one for each quarter of 2023. And I shared it in the product manager Slack channel. I was like, Hey, if you're interested, sign up. And it filled up. So I expanded it to 12 slots, one a month, and that filled up. So I expanded it more to weekly and that filled up.
[00:28:38] And I was like, well, we can do this, but weekly webinars are gonna burn people out. There's no way people are gonna keep coming week after week to talk about admin stuff for HubSpot like that just. But fine, you know, there's interest on the product side. I will, I will produce these events and now, I mean, uh, we, it, it just steadily grew right at, when I launched that hug [00:29:00] in, in, uh, fall of 2022, uh, I asked the, the hug team, what's the biggest hug in the world?
[00:29:06] And there's one in London that has 2000 members on the books, and that's sort of an outlier. And like I, I surpassed that and like. Four or five months. Right. And by the, uh, I, we have like seven or 8,000 members at this point. And, and on a weekly basis, we easily have two or 300 people actually logging into the webinar just to talk to product teams and find out what's happening at HubSpot and give feedback and get their questions answered.
[00:29:34] And the thing that's really magical there is the admins are so eager. To have an inside look at the product and, and the thinking behind it, and to give their feedback and to know what's coming so they can prepare for it. And the product teams are really desperate to connect with users, to get feedback, to ask questions, and, and so like, this is another place I don't, it really takes no effort for me.
[00:29:54] I just need to create room for. For the product people to meet the admin people and the admin people to meet the product [00:30:00] people. Um, and it's been a remarkable success. And people ask me sometimes, like, Kyle, love what you've done with the admin community. How can I build a community like that? It's like, it's not, it's not something you do, it's not like you build really great content, or it's not like you get really famous people to speak.
[00:30:15] It's that you sort of serendipitously find two people who have, uh, co, co, uh, needs that compliment each other. And you bring them into a space together and they show up week after week. And so that's, uh, that's been that.
[00:30:29] And all of this kind of spurred a new role for you at HubSpot, right? Like you are now a product evangelist, or, I don't know the exact word for it. I think
[00:30:40] yeah, by, by the end of 2022, between doing daily social posts and weekly webinars. Um, and, you know, speaking on, uh, on, on podcasts and things like I was not really doing my job as an academy professor. I was missing [00:31:00] deadlines on the content I was supposed to be producing. And I remember, uh, I had lots of conversation about this with my direct manager, but I remember a call I had late in 2022 with, uh.
[00:31:10] Uh, with, with, with Courtney, who is the head of all of Hubs Squad Academy, Courtney Sr. And I said to her, I don't know what to do 'cause I am, I'm not doing my job as, as a professor, so I guess you would be well within your rights to fire me, but I'm not gonna stop doing this social stuff in the webinars because. I'm the only one doing that and everybody loves it and I don't know what to do. Um, and she in, at the end of 2022, you know, with, when we're planning 2023 and people are talking about headcount and stuff, she put together this proposal, said we needed to find a new role. We need to move Kyle out of the professor space, let him figure out what this evangelism thing looks like.
[00:31:54] Um, and she, she ran it up the chain of command and, and got it, uh, got it approved and they [00:32:00] gave, invented this new job and they were like, Kyle, figure it out. And that was the beginning of 2023. And, uh, yeah, two years
[00:32:08] Now we're here.
[00:32:09] out, but.
[00:32:10] So, yeah. What was the, so like, what is the, um, I guess kind of like, what do you, what do you kind of see as like the, the future of that role and like the stuff that you want to kind of like accomplish as like the evangelist over at HubSpot? Like is it more community stuff? Is it different types of content?
[00:32:30] Is it expanding the team? What is the, what's the. What's your roadmap looking like? Dude?
[00:32:36] that's a great question. So, one thing I really love an exercise, not an exercise that's really formal, but like a question my manager asks me a lot is I. If we think five years down the road, uh, and, and evangelism is now no longer just you, Kyle, it's a, it's a team who is on that team. How many people, what are the, what are the jobs?
[00:32:57] How, what do we need to do to get from here to there? [00:33:00] And my question on that has evolved a lot over the couple years I've been doing this now, but I think it's pretty clear that I have really carved out for myself. A, a niche in the HubSpot ecosystem that is very focused on admins and bends toward new functionality.
[00:33:19] Um, there is no one at HubSpot doing the kind of work I'm doing to help new users fall in love with HubSpot. There's no one doing the work I'm doing specifically focused on marketers or sales teams or, you know, like. I have taken a very particular chunk of the HubSpot pie. Um, and I feel like over time I'm just reinforcing that more and more.
[00:33:44] Um, I'm continuing to, uh, experiment with like new types of, of content and new places to speak, but I always kind of come back to admins and new functionality and I think there's a lot of evangelism type things that could be done. To, to help people who are new to [00:34:00] HubSpot, to help people who are considering HubSpot, to, to help people who have a role that is not an admin role.
[00:34:06] And, um, I suspect someday if we have more than one evangelist here, it'll be people who are, are working on that, right? We'll have someone who can just really speak to sales teams in HubSpot, right? Who can really just get that VP of sales fired up about deal stages or whatever it is. Um, and,
[00:34:25] think you're, you, you're really right. Because as we with, with people and teams that are leveraging our apps, right, like an event happily where there's an event manager using it, but also finances, using it for, um, expenses and getting outta a spreadsheet and bringing more things into HubSpot, I think opening those doors to those other departments non.
[00:34:43] HubSpot admin, like we bleed orange. We know everything all the time. We're just trying to further our knowledge. It is the introduction of here's why your company is using HubSpot now, and how it helps you and those individual kind of satellites around the ment. It's just, it's, again, it's like a you, you bring it [00:35:00] into, as an hr, I would say a HR functionality, but making it a part of the company's onboarding.
[00:35:05] That this is the, this is our mother brain. This is our source of truth. This is how you use it. Here's how it affects you. Rather than putting that vis-a-vis the. Admin learning about it from a hug or you directly or LinkedIn or partners, right? Like the global AK records of HubSpot knowledge. Going into that, getting it from directly from HubSpot, like Max, how you found HubSpot through the academy when it wasn't even anything you were around.
[00:35:29] I think that is a big like step towards people understanding at an organizational level that HubSpot is kind of core to the organization rather than a tool a piece of the organization uses.
[00:35:42] Yeah. Yeah, and I mean, I, I, I tell people explicitly a big part of my job is just. To help people love HubSpot, right? I, if you're a customer and you're watching my content, I'm not trying to upsell you, I'm not trying to cross sell you. If you just have Marketing Hub Pro and that's all you have, man, I wanna teach you all [00:36:00] kinds of things in, in workflows you didn't know workflows could do.
[00:36:03] So you're gonna love workflows. So if the conversation ever comes up of like, Hey, should we maybe move off of HubSpot? You'll be like, no, I can't live without it. Right? Um, and, uh, I, but I, I do it pretty broadly, and again, I'm, I'm talking primarily to admins and like, if you are. To your, for your example, an event manager, right?
[00:36:21] You will occasionally find an admin hug session that is relevant to you. You'll every now and then find a HubSpot Tips and Tricks video that is somehow tangentially related to that. But you could probably really benefit from like someone just talking specifically about that, uh, that topic, right? And uh, and I think.
[00:36:42] I don't know what the, the big ones are. Admin was a surprise, right? I just stumbled into that one. It could be, there was some huge pool of another type of user that HubSpot itself doesn't even recognize is there, and like, if someone just creates the right piece of content, the right talk at Inbound, they'll suddenly realize, oh wow.[00:37:00]
[00:37:00] We, we, we, we should be talking to these people.
[00:37:02] I think, yeah, I think you need like a, like a sales evangelist, right? Like someone who is, 'cause you know, like, it, I think classically the, the, the people who were always like really tough to kind of work with when I was, uh, doing, you know, onboarding was like. Getting on that call with the sales team and trying to get everybody stoked about doing something a little bit differently, right?
[00:37:26] Like I think, you know, if you're saying like, who's that next niche, if you could find a super HubSpot nerd that really knows how to talk to salespeople and what's really important to them, right? And I think like you did this when you were the sales, 'cause you were the sales professor, right? Like, you know, you did that.
[00:37:45] Now you're more broad HubSpot, right? But like someone who really knows how to like talk to sales teams and get them as stoked on HubSpot as you do for admins, right? Speak to in their language. Right. Interesting.
[00:37:59] and I [00:38:00] think like. Yeah, I produced a ton of sales courses for HubSpot Academy, but I was primarily a sales researcher. Right. I would talk to people who were in the job. I would talk to anyone. I could, I would, I would read books and blog posts and things. I would distill that into a script, which I would then read as charismatically as possible.
[00:38:19] Off of a teleprompter. Right. But if you sat down with me and like you're a VP of sales, and you're like, yeah, we're facing this challenge, how would you fix that? I would be like. Gimme a minute. Let me check my notes. Right. And that's not what you want from an evangelist. You want someone who's like, been in the, the, the belly of the beast with
[00:38:37] Someone you can relate to. Yeah. Someone you can relate to
[00:38:41] Yeah, yeah, yeah. And, and
[00:38:42] your shoes.
[00:38:43] feels it and has been there and can speak to it. Um, and it's interesting when I have these talks with my manager about like someday when we, we hire evangelist number two, how will we do that? One thing I've. I've, uh, pointed out and I, I think is really true. When we look to [00:39:00] hire a professor at HubSpot Academy, we look for someone who can communicate really clearly, who can, who can teach ideas simply who has a passion for teaching and like, if they don't have a deep knowledge of HubSpot, I.
[00:39:13] That's fine. We can teach you how to use HubSpot. We cannot teach you how to be a passionate educator. Right? That's not a skill we can give you. And with a, with an evangelist, I think it's almost exactly the opposite. If we could find someone who is just. Bonkers in love with sales implementation of HubSpot, and they're not a great instructor and they aren't a super clear communicator.
[00:39:36] Like, we will take your enthusiasm and passion and we will, we will help you bridle it and direct it in a good way. Right. I, uh, we, I think this, the idea of evangelism as HubSpot is defining it, is just this really genuine. Sincere. I just, for whatever reason, I am just madly in love with HubSpot as a product.
[00:39:54] Right. And my heart goes out to all these admins who are trying to make it work for whatever business they're in. And [00:40:00] people feel that, right? Like, I don't need a teleprompter to help me do this.
[00:40:04] I feel the same way. I couldn't ever go and evangelize a different SaaS product. I, I was like, when I was a trainer, you would never catch me going and being a trainer at a different SaaS company because I didn't give a shit about those other products. Right. I genuinely gave a shit about HubSpot. That's why I could do any role that has to do with it.
[00:40:23] Right. Yeah. Like I, I don't know if like I, I have a Workday or Okta came to me and was like, we will 10 x your salary. If you can do for us what you've done for Hublot, I would be like, I'm happy to take your money, but I don't care.
[00:40:39] Yeah, totally. Yeah.
[00:40:40] Like, I don't, I don't love either of those platforms.
[00:40:43] Yeah. I, I had someone, Microsoft came to me when I was here, max, and they wanted me to go be an evangelist for Microsoft products, and I'm like, I could care less about Microsoft products. Like how do you expect me to go there and be. [00:41:00] an Enthusiastic evangelist about something I don't give a shit about. Like I just can't, I, I couldn't do it.
[00:41:05] And this is a thing that actually really distresses me. I feel like, uh, the, the world as a whole, and tech in particular is getting this idea of evangelism. We want someone who just can't help but take to social media and say how great our brand is. And the approach the big brains are taking is let's find an influencer on TikTok or Instagram or whatever platform the kids are using today, and let's pay them a large salary to come promote our brand.
[00:41:32] I don't, I don't think that's a good strategy because even if they fall in love with your product and are sincere, which is not a guarantee, um, they are now just a higher gun. It's the same problem with like stealing the best sales person from your competitor, right? Like if someone comes along with a higher salary, they can offer you lose that person.
[00:41:53] And like so many of the, if, if, if these are influencers who are real influencers. They're making pretty good money on their own. They don't really [00:42:00] need your salary. Right? And so like how do you entice them to come do anything for any length of time? Like I you, you've gotta find someone from within either, either someone who's already an employee or someone in your ecosystem who just takes to the web and can't stop talking about how great you are and then just make it their job.
[00:42:19] and I'm really glad that like the HubSpot YouTube page kind of like figured that out because like, I remember when I was still with the company, like the YouTube team hired some like. Makeup influencer to come be like YouTube talent. And I remember training them and I was like, this feels like a mistake.
[00:42:37] Like I, I, I dunno. But now it's like you go on there and it's like, it's you, it's Mark. It's like, you know, professors, it's a diet tree. It's like the people that actually know about Hub HubSpot and the people that are building HubSpot, like properly guiding the content that's like on there. You know what I mean?
[00:42:53] And I think they finally figured that out for it. Why are you having these people who don't know what HubSpot is? [00:43:00] Channel doesn't make.
[00:43:02] What are the kids doing nowadays? Like whatever platform there are, and this is the generation that's upcoming that people are listening to or are creating audiences and they themselves wouldn't be able to jump on a ship that they don't care about. Um, that's, you have to be able to tie into a true, I do this anyway, so I might as well.
[00:43:21] Help you get better because I want, I, I want HubSpot to grow. I want X platform to grow because I care about it. And most of the real big programs for affiliates and influencers do that. They build the community of people that are supporting it. Like there is a HubSpot ecosystem, right? Like we all know each other, talk to each other, see what we're doing.
[00:43:40] And that kind of bubbles up the intention of people spreading the gospel ridiculously because it's just. Part of our bloodstream. We're all connected by this, this sprocket. I'll say it. Um, and that's, that's the biggest thing, man. Well, I can't even, I can't even express how great it was to have you on the show, Kyle.
[00:43:58] Uh, we like to ask a few questions [00:44:00] before we sign off. My number one question for you, which is I'm sure it's burning in everyone's ear, is, what's your favorite, favorite fruit?
[00:44:09] Ooh,
[00:44:09] Favorite fruit?
[00:44:10] Favorite fruit,
[00:44:13] Fruit.
[00:44:14] like the
[00:44:15] Ah, oh food.
[00:44:17] The favorite
[00:44:18] Yeah, literally the fruit. It usually comes from trees or vines.
[00:44:21] asks three completely random questions at the end of every episode to get to know you better.
[00:44:26] I really, I really, really love grapes. I. I cannot.
[00:44:32] or red?
[00:44:33] in the ocean.
[00:44:33] I don't. I'm, I'm, I'm not. I, I don't, I don't, I don't. I, I, grapes all grapes. Any grapes. I love
[00:44:39] Like a concord. Like a Concord grape.
[00:44:43] I don't
[00:44:43] I don't think he, he studied the grape, but is the number one. Number two, question. Kyle Breakfast. Cereal of choice
[00:44:52] A lot of food heavy questions today, doc. I love it. Yeah.
[00:44:55] is where we get into the, um, uh, I don't know, like the. [00:45:00] Uh, the, yeah, this odd quirk. I, my standard breakfast every morning had it today, have it every day. I take a bowl, I put just some raw oats in it. I put some raisins in and I put some nuts in and I pour milk over it and eat it like cereal.
[00:45:17] I don't cook it and turn it into oatmeal. Just raw oats and nuts and fruit,
[00:45:22] You say that, which is super funny because I frequently have done the same, literally take bag. Yeah. Just because you're, I'm just lazy. It's like, ah,
[00:45:31] Yeah.
[00:45:31] it's all good.
[00:45:32] it is actually really great. I like it a lot.
[00:45:35] What's a raw oat?
[00:45:37] You
[00:45:37] just like I, I mean, yeah, just like oats, like normally you would put oats in a pot with water and boil it and turn it into
[00:45:44] Soften. Like stalking it and stuff. Yeah,
[00:45:46] Yeah. This is just oats straight outta the bag.
[00:45:50] I think you just described cereal
[00:45:52] and kind of, but it's not processed, right? Cereal's like all
[00:45:55] like cereal, it's all ground up into powder and
[00:45:57] like granola,
[00:45:59] shapes.
[00:45:59] [00:46:00] granola is a form, but
[00:46:02] Or like oats before a oatmeal. Oats,
[00:46:05] Correct.
[00:46:06] like it still looks like a wooden leaf. Like that kind of
[00:46:09] Is accurate description, not a oat of sorts, like where you have No, this is, this is post.
[00:46:15] right? It's a wooden leaf.
[00:46:18] I
[00:46:18] now made a new brand. Wouldn't leave, wouldn't leave with the brand. I need to make
[00:46:22] t-shirt. That last question, Kyle. We'll let you run the last time that you cried. Happy tears
[00:46:30] Oh.
[00:46:31] Cried, happy tears.
[00:46:33] indeed.
[00:46:36] I, um,
[00:46:38] Sandbox, pushed a sandbox, came out.
[00:46:44] uh, something funny kids did. Yeah. I don't know. I, I, uh. I got four kids, baby number five is coming soon. I get weirdly emotional at like kids events. Like if my son, like he did the spelling bee and like, I don't [00:47:00] know, I just like get choked up seeing about their spelling words that I know he can spell already, like,
[00:47:06] That's the thing. Yeah. When you have kids, those are the moments.
[00:47:09] yeah.
[00:47:10] I would've been shocked if it wasn't child induced. But, but Tiz. But either way, Kyle,
[00:47:17] on
[00:47:18] congratulations on number five. Now you're way outnumbered. You're way outnumbered. Um, well we appreciate you jumping on, man. Um, everybody knows who you are.
[00:47:29] Everybody knows where to find you, and we're gonna be staying tuned. So thank you for what you do. I've learned quite a few things. I mean, every single day I'm like, oh, what did you release? I already know what Kyle came out with, and that's. I appreciate it and appreciate you
[00:47:42] and for anyone who's listening, don't forget to tune in every Monday morning where Kyle and myself do the Monday morning briefing. If you wanna. Just annihilate your Monday morning with a fire hose of all of last week's HubSpot product updates. We'd be, uh, [00:48:00] overjoyed to have you tune in. Yeah, man.
[00:48:02] Anything else you wanna plug, Kyle?
[00:48:05] No, this, I mean, I'm about to go on leave, so I don't have anything to plug at this point.
[00:48:12] The plug is get ready for Kyle not to be here for a little bit. He is taken some deserved time off to be with number five, so. Awesome man. Well dude, thank you. This has been a long time coming. We appreciate you being the very first of season three, uh, and I can think of a better guest to do it with, so appreciate you, man.
[00:48:29] Got
[00:48:29] guys. Thanks for having me.
[00:48:30]