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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.
[00:00:00] The best product does not win. Is Supered the best product? Maybe. Is quote hapily the best product? Maybe. The best products don't win.
[00:00:06] The best go-to market does and sometimes the best go to market will create the best product 'cause they get the fastest feedback loops. So we spent a lot of time. A lot of time in just creating a butt ton of content.
[00:00:19] On today's episode of the built hapily podcast, we have someone that's been staying Supered, Matt Bolian.
[00:00:25] Matt joins us today to talk about his story of how he got thrust into the HubSpot universe and built one of the favorite apps for partners out there in the ecosystem. Supered. You'll hear the story of how it started as an idea and actually came to fruition and everything in between. All that and more on this episode of the built hapily podcast.
[00:00:44]
[00:01:01] Mr. Matt. Long is long time coming. Superstar in the industry. Shake it like you make it
[00:01:09] I think number one, I think also number one on the original list when we wrote that. So I don't know how much Dax told you about the show.
[00:01:21] Just threw a random podcast invite onto my calendar and
[00:01:25] what the
[00:01:25] even ask if it was the right, like it worked.
[00:01:28] No context. Nothing. Great.
[00:01:30] We do it. That's how we do it, because you know you're real people.
[00:01:33] Yeah. I just said, Hey Dex, I talk more. And he is done. And then
[00:01:37] Sick.
[00:01:38] Yeah. This thing showed up.
[00:01:39] Well, this is perfect, Nat. When we originally conceived this show, I. We wanted to talk to people who've built, originally it was just built apps on HubSpot, right? Dax. Right. And we had we had the original, we got a giant list of people. Right.
[00:01:58] we went through.
[00:01:59] Giant [00:02:00] list of people.
[00:02:00] But then we were like, ah, there's people that built more than just apps on HubSpot. Right. And what we really do is we talk to people who have, who build. Anything in this universe that's worth talking about. But you do bring it down to the core kind of essence of the reason we put this show together is we wanted to talk to people in the ecosystem that's built some really fricking awesome stuff.
[00:02:23] And you, my friend, I'm one of your biggest fans. I'm sure I've told you this a million times in the past. No, seriously. Because I think what you've built. Possibly one of the most consequential things to happen to both the app and partner ecosystem out there. Right. And the big thing that we try to do on this show is obviously people come, talk about your stuff, right?
[00:02:47] But we wanna, we want to hear the story, you wanna hear the origin story, you wanna hear what was like going through your head when you were first thinking about this thing and all the steps it took. From oh man, I've [00:03:00] got this really good idea to, oh wow, we've actually built this thing. And I know that's a long story, right?
[00:03:06] 'cause you guys have been in this for a while now, right? But we wanted to make sure that we have the ability here to build the time and space to tell the Supered story, right? And celebrate the Supered story, which is what we do on this show, right? So. Before we get started, for anyone who's in the ecosystem and has been living under a rock especially if you're a partner and you haven't heard of Supered yet Matt, tell the people what Supered is and tell the people who you are.
[00:03:38] And then me and Dax are gonna have you Quentin Tarantino your story back to the beginning. But we'll prompt you and we'll tell you. But just so we can start there, what is Supered. For anyone who doesn't know.
[00:03:49] Thank you for a great intro, max.
[00:03:51] Yeah. Thank you for being here.
[00:03:53] I, what is Supered. Supered is my response to trying to build [00:04:00] a service company in the HubSpot industry.
[00:04:03] Interesting. You wanna elaborate more?
[00:04:06] No, that's it.
[00:04:07] That,
[00:04:07] Man, that's what it is.
[00:04:09] that's it is Supered, is my response. It's everything I wish I had when I was building and not everything that's too strong. But
[00:04:16] Okay. Sure.
[00:04:17] At, its at its fundamentals. It's. The problem I saw with CRM implementations and getting them to work
[00:04:25] And create retainers, that problem.
[00:04:29] And so Supered's my response to that. and my response is not done. So it's hard to say what
[00:04:33] Yeah. Yeah.
[00:04:35] what it does today isn't what it always, it'll do more tomorrow. and so I think part of the story is. here's what it did when we started. Here's what it does now.
[00:04:43] And here's what we, here's what we, here's how we plan to tackle on the future.
[00:04:45] Hell yeah.
[00:04:46] so this is, keep seeing this over and over again about this service to software jump right? if you find HubSpot, you can do some stuff or somebody asks you to do some stuff because you're the nerdiest person in, within arm's reach. [00:05:00] They're like, yo, can you do this?
[00:05:01] And then you end up seeing the gaps or the kind of technical downfalls, missing pieces, and you build them because no one else is, 'cause no one else has step one, which was implementing it in the first place. So where did you come from and how did you get into the HubSpot ecosystem implementing it?
[00:05:19] Here's how I got into the HubSpot ecosystem was, Not on purpose. And so does a, that's, I think that's a common portion of HubSpot. I think it's less common, but it was, it is, it was very common when people started. I was in the military for six and a half years.
[00:05:32] and when I got out, I ended up being chief of staff for a for a tech company down in Mississippi where I'm from. And that they, we started doing mergers and acquisitions and I was ahead randomly with no. No reason, no thought, probably a bad idea. I was the head of the quote to cash implementation of taking companies that we merged and adding them to our correct tech stack. So I didn't know what Salesforce was, but we had Salesforce, and so I was getting 'em in [00:06:00] Salesforce. I didn't know what NetSuite was, but I was getting it into NetSuite and put 'em into our ERP and all the tools that went with that and our tech stack. I did that for a hot second for two years.
[00:06:12] Then he moved. The person that hired me moved to a company in Atlanta called Connectivity Wireless, brought me over said, Hey man, I want you to run our revenue systems. I came over and read the revenue SY systems. We had Microsoft Dynamics there and everything that comes with Microsoft Dynamics, which is worse than Salesforce, just so we're all clear.
[00:06:30] True.
[00:06:31] And so I was got very in debt in into that. and then I was helping run the sales team. I was essentially doing rep, this was before rev ops was this big term everybody talked about. It was more called business operations. So I I was head of the business systems, what was actually called, not Revenue Systems. about a year into that job, my, the person I followed left and everybody, it was a PE company. It was owned by a PE firm. This is my first res, this is my first interaction with. companies and like funds and being like a number on a head count, fired. [00:07:00] Everybody that came with him. So it was about 55 people and we, it was around the 200 person company, fired every one of them in the next week except me. in my mind I'm like, what the heck?
[00:07:10] You just got a promotion.
[00:07:11] one of the higher pay, I was one of the higher salaries. And I, and it wasn't, it was not me. It was not me. And I was what? and so I started, I was like, okay, I gotta get out. This is a really bad call. I'm a number and I'm just waiting to get off.
[00:07:21] But why didn't I get fired? It's a question I kept asking myself and I found out is people came after me otherwise, and sales team members were like, Matt, way. You're the reason where we can do everything we can do in this CM you've helped me so much. I can actually do these approval.
[00:07:36] Like you're, the reason this thing actually works, it'd be ERP pushing it through. Unbeknownst to them I'm out there doing interviews and I'm trying to get a job in the Salesforce ecosystem, as a rev ops guy. And I literally got to a hire and just kept, I kept being told, Matt, you don't have enough experience. are not good enough at rev ops in the Salesforce ecosystem. And I could not get a job getting out, [00:08:00] couldn't do it. That's when I met randomly at a wedding, one of my friend's wedding Brendan to Tolleson. That's where I met him. just become CRO. And then Covid hit recently got fired being Sorrow.
[00:08:11] And I was like, Hey man, I think there's something to be said about this rev ops thing, and I think we can do it as a service. I think we can act like a sas. so I went around and tried to find, and I wanted this idea of this all in house. No one has to pay anything. and, I would standardize on active campaign. Because it was the cheapest and I could do it. They had just bought, gosh, I forgot what that company was called. They had just bought one of these companies. It was a CRM, Started getting clients and they had Salesforce and I would take 'em off.
[00:08:37] I was trying to tell 'em off hub Salesforce, but then one of them is like our fourth client had HubSpot and I was actively trying to get them off HubSpot and in my act of pushing buttons in HubSpot, because I thought HubSpot was fake, I thought, I literally thought like I'd been brainwashed by the Salesforce mafia. I love Salesforce people, I'm a Salesforce person. That's where I came from. But I had been told. I literally have been told in
[00:08:56] The mafia.
[00:08:58] says, we built for sales teams, [00:09:00] HubSpot's built for marketers. Like it is a subpar, suboptimal, not good enough solution for people that don't know what they're doing. So I came in with that mentality and I was moving them off, and I was like, man, this is so easy. If my teams would've had this, like there's, I would not suffer from getting them to do things in the same way. And I
[00:09:19] Ugh.
[00:09:19] Brendan. I say, Brendan, we are, I was wrong. Because he was selling. I was I was wrong. we need to go all-in in HubSpot. There's an, I know there's an arbitrage because I've been brainwashed and so I know nobody knows how good this is right now. This was four years ago, five years ago. Nobody knows how good this is. Right now we have to go in on this
[00:09:35] Yep.
[00:09:36] need to go to sales teams because they have no clue how good it's with sales teams. So that's how we started getting into, that's how I found HubSpot because I was trying to build a business and I realized that it's the easiest thing to adopt, period.
[00:09:48] Yeah. The adoption is no matter
[00:09:51] Well,
[00:09:52] run into the adoption like rabbit hole, because I have a tool that you've made that is ridiculously great for adoption. Hey, you [00:10:00] forgot how to do this. It's right here. When you're gonna do it, it's gonna tell you what to do.
[00:10:03] yeah.
[00:10:03] how to create an event in HubSpot.
[00:10:05] Here's how you do it, and here's how we do it as a business. Right?
[00:10:08] Yeah.
[00:10:09] have to get that it's, you're taking away adoption as a concept, basically like deprecating adoption because it's force fed. a baby in your mouth.
[00:10:17] Yep.
[00:10:18] what's interesting too is what was it, right? Because if this was 20, 20 ish right?
[00:10:23] Covid style, what about HubSpot? Was it the easy use, the ui like we get that's prettier than HubSpot, looking like Windows N NT or Salesforce looking like that? but what did you, what were you clicking on? What was the process that you were trying to rip out?
[00:10:38] It is, I think this is an overused analogy, however, I think very helpful. HubSpot has an opinion about their software, and it's over time gotten easier to customize that opinion, but it starts with an opinion
[00:10:51] Salesforce and Microsoft Dynamics do not.
[00:10:54] Yeah they're blank slates. I love how you said that analogy too, because. I always [00:11:00] say software should have an opinion and one of the greatest softwares of opinion and the ex, the result of that opinion is when windows, when you click somewhere, you're not supposed to. You do that all day.
[00:11:09] That is an opinion. It's you should not be clicking here. I'm gonna make this annoying as hell for you if you click here.
[00:11:14] opinions. And HubSpot has a pretty glaring. obtuse opinion,
[00:11:20] Yeah.
[00:11:20] used to be what kept them from winning. It kept them from winning enterprise deals, but they knew that and now they've made it more and more customizable that's the opinion was, we're going to go both down market and we're gonna both go to the s and b market and enterprise at the same time. We're gonna build everything in house to work well. and that over time, that opinion just gave a more fluid feel and emotion. And in that moment when you don't know where the freak to click and you don't know what to do, that's where you lose people. It's those like tiny micro moments and HubSpot just has less opportunities to have that happen.
[00:11:56] Bet. Can you isolate down and tell us about the [00:12:00] moment that the first concept of the idea of Supered like popped into your head?
[00:12:07] good question. Y'all good at this? You have done this a few times.
[00:12:10] We had,
[00:12:11] I say we want the nuanced moments that no one talks about,
[00:12:14] When Brendan and I started rev Partners he came from company he was at before and the company he'd come from where he, he created a he was the, he came at a $3 million company. He was the head of channel and he went and they went to a hundred million dollars and he was there for that entire journey building. the power of this idea of partnerships. And so he is that's just where he is geared, that's what he thinks about. That's number one. Number two, so we were talking about, that's all we talked about. So when we grew the business, it was always through partnerships. It was never, it was very rarely through direct outreach to end users, it was always through some kind of partnership, like using hap doing a tool like hapily and building that in and actually winning.
[00:12:48] 'cause that's where you make money as a partner. If you don't,
[00:12:51] Yeah.
[00:12:51] if you don't do that, guys Yeah. One to many. And it's Superedior to all the best distribution wins. The best distribution wins. But, and number two is he had grown up in the Atlassian [00:13:00] marketplace. That's where he was at as well. And I think HubSpot has great respect for that, as they, as everyone should. The Atlassian marketplace had large partners that then started creating lots of apps. And he worked at a company before he came called app Fire, and all they used to be a service company and then they became a. They just started eating up all these software and they have this almost like a, it's a hapily like model, right?
[00:13:21] Where you build like these very useful utility apps you just build them really fast, faster than Atlassian can themselves. And over time it creates a momentum. And so in his mind, and both of us is the only way you can know to do that. It's what you said earlier, Dexus. The only way we can know that is just pain. You must suffer. You can't come into an ecosystem and say you're gonna build utility apps, you'll fail. You must. First suffer
[00:13:44] Yeah, all of our apps are built on pain.
[00:13:47] Just.
[00:13:48] be built on like felt need pain. Right. Like you, you tried to do it. So part of rev parts was always, in the back of our minds was, when at least me and him starting was, gonna do this with the intent of. [00:14:00] Building apps, so we just need as many reps as possible. So that mutated, when we got into HubSpot in the ecosystem and we saw where was going. And I two things happened because you can't, I can't get through this and I'm gonna get to your, when did the moment with
[00:14:15] Sure. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
[00:14:16] is, of the things I felt missing, the HubSpot ecosystem, and this is long, this is again, three, four years ago,
[00:14:21] Long time, right.
[00:14:23] so long in the, so long ago I have is I was like, man, I have come from fire breathing. blue underwear wearing like Salesforce place and you slap, you get an admin towel on your butt, like you mean you straight up, like you get called, you go to Trailhead, you put all these badges on your face, you have it, you go everywhere.
[00:14:41] I go to HubSpot, everyone's really nice, but not this like level of I'm gonna build my entire career on this. Like, where's our, there, there was no herd. It had a bunch of nerds, but not really a herd. That was the things we, the first things I was like, Hey, if we ever wanna do any type of thing, we need to build a herd.
[00:14:57] And so that's when We're like, Hey, let's build [00:15:00] Sprocketeers Just to create a herd. And so we, created Sprocketeers self-funded through Rev Partners and never used it for recruiting. Just people thought we were absolutely crazy. We was like, Hey, we just, we gotta have this. It's like good for the entire ecosystem.
[00:15:12] I don't think anybody actually believed it was just for good, but yeah, like we actually just did it for good. and so that was like thing number one and we're like, okay, It's gonna be really hard to have a software company if we don't have an organization outside of HubSpot. 'cause everything's curated and everyone's on their best behavior.
[00:15:27] You have to get something outside so people can say F words and curse people, say bad things and good things. so that was step one.
[00:15:34] Step two, we didn't know we were gonna build. knew I wanted to build. And and then we had this weird, I just got really frustrated with running a service company, got really frustrated running a service company. you've ever been in a service company it's really hard to scale. It's really hard to create. Reoccurring outcomes. and it's because you're scaling two things, people which are very hard to curate and recreate experiences with [00:16:00] and processes. I had this elaborate idea of how do we do that?
[00:16:03] We created something called playbooks internally, and we created something like 50 playbooks where we could just hand a playbook in linear fashion. And this idea of standardizing. Delivery. And it worked. It was good. but it's, people still didn't follow it.
[00:16:18] It's humans. Whatcha doing?
[00:16:19] because humans and it's, and no matter, and like the training, like people, like we lost, people would lose. You get into a quality control, you get something and just quality ha. How quick this opera, how quick you respond to things when something's broken, how do you do training and how do you do documentation? It always was almost every single time The experience you give people dictates the lot, like what, how they feel and whether they stay with you.
[00:16:46] I start saying, how the heck do I recreate experiences at scale over and over again? And spent a lot of time thinking about it. We had Miro, we had Loom, we had Clickup, we had all these softwares [00:17:00] internally to make this happen. And it never, it just never worked. It was like working with, it just never worked.
[00:17:06] Did it work? Does it work? Yes. But it was never sufficient. You always have people complaining.
[00:17:10] You never kept working.
[00:17:12] doesn't work. Like it works, but it doesn't work. And you have this constant retention problem and you feel like you're going one step forward, two steps back over and over again, and it's brutal. And out of that's just suffering is where I said, man, I wish could just rep. I wish I could just turn people into Superedheroes. that's like that idea, like I wish people, I wish they could just, I wish that person, I wish I could recreate these couple of employees. And from that is where Supered was born.
[00:17:45] Ohh I like it. Gotcha. Okay. So the,
[00:17:50] got a couple, I got a couple questions. I
[00:17:51] yeah, hit it. Hit it.
[00:17:53] so. When you have a software company, right, obviously completely different than service, you get same kind of [00:18:00] challenges. 'cause there's humans involved, right? Like you could have a software that does the best thing, but if you don't open it, you don't install it. You don't set it up, right? You get the blame.
[00:18:08] Yep.
[00:18:09] They're like, Hey, this thing didn't do what I thought it was supposed to do. Right? Keyword thought they didn't read the manual, right? The manual's still in the bag always. They're like, oh, open. Plug and play. What Supered does amazingly is it puts if installed and set up correctly and whatever, right? It allows HubSpot to do what the admins, the mission calls for. What challenges did you, what challenges did you go through to get people to get Supered going and installed correctly and built out? Because it's the meta of how do I get the onboarding tool onboarded.
[00:18:45] Yeah.
[00:18:46] Do use Supered to get Supered going, but then how do you set the first Supered?
[00:18:49] Then it goes down the rabbit hole. Curious on adoption and onboarding of your own software as its core mission is to solve the implementation and onboarding process.
[00:18:59] Yeah, onboard an [00:19:00] onboarding product.
[00:19:01] it's a meta thought. Like the product's meta, so like how do you get people to do it? So we, I'm gonna, I'm gonna say three things to give it structured in some way, and you'll ask follow up questions. So thing number one is we said, okay, where's the most glaring? And so. story before I get into it. I met somebody named, randomly met somebody named Steve Bussy. He, yeah, he was,
[00:19:22] he built 80% of SalesLoft and they had just got, they had just been acquired by gosh, Vista, I think at this big, it's a big P firm. And so he was exiting out of that. He was looking for his next adventure.
[00:19:34] He had just started another app. He built this, by this way, this app he built, and you don't know what it's called, clove customer love. It's literally, literally. Deal rooms. That's what it was three years before deal rooms existed. Like really? And he just didn't have a go to market.
[00:19:51] Was looking for somebody to go, looking for somebody to go to market with 'cause he can build anything. I get introduced and was, okay I have these playbooks. and [00:20:00] I need to, like, how do I operationalize that? Because we're thinking about doing like small, we thought we were gonna do data migration and create little apps. He's man, y'all think way too small. He's you know what?
[00:20:07] I wanna build that takes every Salesforce app and turns it, auto configures it so it works. In a HubSpot. I was like, oh, you're thinking big. Real big. I was like, I didn't know that's possible. He's yeah, I got a, like a sample testing. I built a few I was like, what? he took this and so we started, we had this huge list of what is the mesh problems?
[00:20:27] And so we had playbooks, one of 'em that kept me an adoption and he came. I say that set the stage, so when we say 1, 2, 3 is the first thing is what's the most glaring problem that we can fix? And we had to go to market strategy, we're gonna go to partners first, then we're going to end users
[00:20:41] All the adoption problems. I'd call them almost more, by the way, process compliance problems. So you need a methodology to enforce. And so that's the issue. Dex Dex, it's it's the, you have to have an implement. You have to have a methodology to enforce. So when we started is what's the biggest issue? We're gonna go to HubSpot. What's the biggest issue is? Everybody had these [00:21:00] builds. Hey, I, 'cause this is what I had playbooks, I had lifecycle builds and, sales pipeline builds or workflow builds and whatever it is, right? But you had to rebuild them every single time. what is the first step of adoption?
[00:21:11] It's to freaking get to the stage of adoption.
[00:21:14] And so so one of them is, okay, how are we gonna help people think about training? First it's to stop thinking about building first and the standardizing like, and then standardize, so you can customize. That was the first standardized. So you can customize. we, we started going there. We built what we, the first thing we called portal duplication for in HubSpot. And that was where we started. I may say this out like that. That's probably, if I look back, it got us to where we are. Got us started. But the thing we're recovering from is that we're not a portal duplicator.
[00:21:44] It is not. Do we help do that? Yes, but only to the end state of getting through to training and enablement
[00:21:50] Your IT tools. That's number one.
[00:21:53] number two. So we have this big thing is we're gonna build so that you can, and we're gonna do it internally. Everything's Supered on Supered. So [00:22:00] Supered is a combination of five tools and we can all do that because Steve can build anything faster than most people can. he's one a 20 x developer. So we built something like. scribe how, ' cause you need to document processes and step by steps on your screen. And so we built that into Supered. We built a, sequential task we call action plans, which is what step by step onboarding that leads you to the correct place that can link, which it looks a lot like a deal room, right? That where you can like step-by-step practices, which is another tool. We have a. document based, because you must be able to search you need, which is what a guru we did embedding where you can embed on pa like on, on the screen so you can see it. And so there's all these things you have to do with adoption. And so we internally, we just said, what are we struggling with? And whatever we wanted to do next to get adoption of our own freaking processes, we built it into Supered. So he is Hey Matt, how did it. you do [00:23:00] is we just use our tool and anything we don't like or need next, we build next to get compliance, to have a methodology and to comply and to get adoption of that methodology, period. That's what we do.
[00:23:13] Yeah.
[00:23:13] number two. and number three is, I think this is important is is a great product y'all do a good job of this. The best product does not win Is Supered. The best product may maybe is quote hapily the best product, maybe the best products don't win.
[00:23:26] The best go-to market does and sometimes the best go to market will create the best product 'cause they get the fastest feedback loops. So we spent a lot of time. A lot of time in just creating a butt ton of con content. I only say that because that's part of our compliance and part of our methodology.
[00:23:44] And so how do we, when you see Hub Supered GoTo market, it's actually every net new person is not a one plus one. It is a multiplier. And so you have one person, and we now produce like 10 more pieces of content every week because of our methodology that we use internally with Supered.[00:24:00]
[00:24:00] And I wanna, I also wanna say too is you bring on these folks and you let them create. Content in their own way where their personality really shines through and they can build the stuff that they're really passionate about building when it comes to the content side of things. And I think that's a really fucking hard thing to do.
[00:24:20] And you do it with every single person that joins your ranks and it's pretty amazing to be honest with you, that you're able to. Really enable these folks to do this kind of stuff. From a content side of things. I just wanna put that out there.
[00:24:35] well Dex, we Dex you said it's hard. It's not for everyone. I'd say we have a point of view at Supered and if you don't wanna produce content, then you can't work at Supered. So there it is. Like we put it in, it's it's not for
[00:24:45] Part of the job?
[00:24:46] people come out of our sales cycle and I say, sales cycle come outta our recruiting cycle. It's you mean I have to do? I'm like, yes. They're
[00:24:52] Yeah. Part of the job.
[00:24:54] I'm glad you know that now.
[00:24:55] and so I love that. Can I, all right, real quick. there's something I wanna say about Supered that is to [00:25:00] me is like really just the fundamental, most amazing part of the entire thing. And I hope it will help, I think partners get it for the most part, But I really do wanna speak to end users for a second.
[00:25:12] I wanna speak to. The HubSpot admin out there that, maybe they're doing it on their own, they're not really working with a partner, and they're struggling. They're hearing the words from management, oh, we need to drive adoption. Oftentimes not really understanding what that actually means.
[00:25:26] when I was an implementation specialist, the question that I got from literally everybody was, what's the best way to train my employees on how to use this thing? 90% of the people that you would ask, that question to, I think, would, back then this is, we're talking like 2015 to 2018 ish, the answer they would give is, oh, HubSpot Academy, it'll teach you how to use the entire thing. Sure. HubSpot Academy's great. Like you compare it to a lot of other software vendors out there and the education that they have and things like that. Sure. it'll do a really good job teaching you how to push [00:26:00] the buttons and telling you which buttons do which things.
[00:26:03] Right. But Yeah.
[00:26:04] the latter. Which button do which things?
[00:26:06] Yep. But what I would tell people,
[00:26:08] do I need to do?
[00:26:09] What I would caution people is, Hey, This is really great if your people want to go into HubSpot and say, okay, this button does this, but that's maybe only about 50% of that conversation. because whereas, sure, HubSpot Academy can tell you what they call a marketing qualified lead or what this and that lifecycle stage means, or what this deal stage mean or whatever.
[00:26:35] That doesn't necessarily map onto what your company. Thinks it is and the process your company has built and everything that's unique to your business and the way you do things and how you work with your customers, right? It's not gonna have any of that context about what makes your company unique in it, because it can't.
[00:26:56] All it can do is tell you what it knows, which is how to use the software, But how [00:27:00] to use HubSpot is an extremely complex question when you think about how sure a lot of people use it in the, in ways that rhyme. Everyone really does it differently and things mean different thing to different people.
[00:27:11] I think the most beautiful. And so what I would tell people is listen, you gotta come up with ways to train folks on what's unique to you, right? The academy will get you so far, And then you guys came along and the thing that I think is so awesome about it is that you can take all that stuff that I was telling people, listen, you gotta be able to figure out how to train.
[00:27:34] In this kind of way, you gotta figure out how to inject your uniqueness about your company, your process, your customers, your business, into the training you provide. You can use Supered to quite literally drop your company's culture processes, internal, like tribal knowledge, everything that's unique about your business and overlay it onto the experience someone has as they're actually using the platform.
[00:27:59] [00:28:00] And I think that is like. That like when people say, oh, make HubSpot your own dude, you can only make it so much your own by changing around some pipelines and adding some custom properties, but when you can quote literally inject the heart of your company and everything that everybody knows.
[00:28:16] translate everything into the context of your business directly into the screen as people are using it. They go, oh, what does this mean? Oh, this is what this means in the context of us. Oh, how do I do this? This is how you do it in our world through our process, What does this stage mean?
[00:28:35] This is what we define this stage as. And you're just eliminating. All of the guesswork of how do I do my job and what does all this shit mean? Because you're literally presenting to them right there. the thing that fundamentally changes the experience of using HubSpot more than a.
[00:28:51] Anything out there. So admins, if you are struggling to define how you're supposed to use this [00:29:00] thing in the context of different people's jobs and all that kind of stuff, this is probably the big missing piece that you've been looking for. Okay. So I just wanna say that because to me it was like a, it's a fundamental like game changing idea to sure, you can get this piece of software, you can customize it, but that's way different than.
[00:29:18] Kind of the extreme that you guys take it to where you can actually make it your own. just wanna mention that. Sorry, D go ahead.
[00:29:25] I got a
[00:29:26] again. Yes.
[00:29:27] say yes. That is the thing. It is the thing. It's pretty it's remarkable. And the last thing I want to chat on is the, not even gonna say the elephant in the room, but it is pink. Is this concept of being comfortable in your own skin. This is this is a trait that I smell from a mile away expressing individuality.
[00:29:50] Give a fuck what anybody thinks. because you've been there and you know what you want to do, you wake up in the morning, get dressed for yourself. it's very evident [00:30:00] that a company like Supered is very comfortable and is not going by any. Oh man, this is LinkedIn. I should talk about business and not toilets or what,
[00:30:09] Talk about business.
[00:30:10] Yeah. The one thing that we did that I always like, look, I'm like, I'm trying to turn, I'm trying to turn LinkedIn into Mad tv.
[00:30:17] Yeah.
[00:30:18] why not? And have a good time because we only gonna live once. We're getting, we're not teenagers, we're not like elementary school. People around us are like, their lives are coming to a close. And we only have so much time. So you better shine what comes to the inside. I'm not going to ask, do you do that because it's clear that you do, but what is the driving force around exuding personality and how do you help? You don't let people in the door if they don't have a piece of that or are eligible to do that, have the aptitude do it, but how do you speak on the gospel of being yourself within the company and sharing that kind of with everyone
[00:30:55] That's a big question, Dex, who's
[00:30:56] tiz, because it's about, it's damn near close to humanity. Like, why [00:31:00] are you alive?
[00:31:00] like asking, what's the purpose of life,
[00:31:02] Correct.
[00:31:03] Why do you exist?
[00:31:04] Yeah.
[00:31:06] I have a thought about that. Before is, I'm gonna, I'm gonna sit for one second on this because I think it'll get into, having a belief and being able to have, be convicted en enough about a belief to proselytize it, right? If you would like. And so
[00:31:19] A belief and then you have a conviction and then you share that conviction and people believe in that to together. a few beliefs and so. Everything about Supered is gonna be, you're gonna have a very specific belief or point of view to it. So example, we're not building AI because I don't want to build AI
[00:31:35] we deliver last mile and we will make the human point and the touch point and we will exemplify the human because that's what I want to do. As an example. So we spent a lot of time thinking about last mile delivery and not thinking about I think AI will be a, ubiquitous tool that everybody uses, but the last mile that people are forgetting about an out now will be where the real frontier is for people. so these point of views, like how do we take these? I've thought a lot [00:32:00] about recreating humans. I did this at Rev Partners. I'm doing this at Supered, it's called Operating Principles. the reason I like business is because you do things that you could fail at,
[00:32:11] Could be wrong, I think it's really important for people to be willing to be wrong. Which means there has to be risk, which means you could fail at something. So I like private sector, because in business and for-profit institutions, because you have to have a risk inherent. And when you have risk, you can have shared suffering and through shared suffering, meaning as a company, you can have and you can create, period. Okay. Now let's look, how do you recreate and give people the space and the place to be and understand have something to add and they're valuable? Like, how do you do that? There's a book I love it. In ro it's called The Five Functions of a Team.
[00:32:52] He also wrote that's Patrick o the, and he has something called The Advantage, which is organizational health is the only thing that matters and it has this [00:33:00] idea that. you're gonna do something that's gonna be a common mission, it has to be big enough to matter.
[00:33:05] So Supered's Hey, we're gonna be a hundred million dollar org. just something big, hard, could happen, could not happen. Then you have shared suffering. The only way the org will get there that like creates time and places for people, is you must have shared and you, I think Dax, you'd call it shared humanity. I would call it shared vulnerability. And you must, so like you must be able to say. I'm wrong. You're right. And I love you. so I wanna
[00:33:31] Oh.
[00:33:31] and spaces, which is of reconciliation. And so if you can create places and spaces of reconciliation, you will have great growth and people that feel confident in their own skin to say something. 'cause it doesn't mean it's like kindness means like giving your opinion. So we have these operating principles, we operate, but I can go deeper, but it's really that, and I can go we have a very prescriptive way we think about that, about how do you make sure people feel comfortable to fail? How do you give them the room to fail? How do you bring [00:34:00] them up? We don't call out, we call up, like how do we do all those things?
[00:34:02] We spend a lot of time, a lot of time thinking about that. So my mission is to unlock latent potential in people, period. Everything else is a distraction.
[00:34:12] And everything else is prescribed, as in what should you be posting? Well, what the world says I'm supposed to be posting,
[00:34:18] Yeah.
[00:34:19] whatcha supposed to be wearing? Oh, I'm supposed to be wearing what you wear at a convention.
[00:34:25] yeah, well, the way we'll think, if you're gonna get the bras, tacks, if someone's asking me about posting, I'm like, Hey, w is, you have something awesome to share with the world, if you don't think that's okay right now, you will think that, or you won't be here because, and you do.
[00:34:38] Okay. You will. And you do. and it's well, what is it? What is it? It was like, stop. what thought are you having right now? And they're like, well, I just don't feel like I have anything to add. Write about it right now. Write about it. I feel like I don't have anything to add. And about that. your interactions. And we just give people, it's a journal injury. LinkedIn is a straight journal [00:35:00] injury. Often it's talk about something that was really hard that you didn't know how to do, or something that you've gone through, you wanna share with people. And if you do that in life, not just LinkedIn, in life, you will you, you will it'll be a gravity to you, right?
[00:35:11] There's a gravity to it.
[00:35:13] Matt, I wanna know before Dax is gonna hit you with some random questions in a bit, but before we get to that dude, I want to know what's the future? What's the future? What's your vision? What's the what should we be looking out for, dude? What's the what's coming?
[00:35:31] Our plan for last has always has been we build for partners first,
[00:35:35] With 80% of everything we build for a partner is almost like building for an end user because they serve the same functions often, whether
[00:35:40] Sure.
[00:35:41] manager, sales manager, but because of that we have like very specific partner stuff.
[00:35:45] The others just wouldn't ever build
[00:35:46] It slows down. Building, we're almost and so our first will say, we're gonna get 200 plus HubSpot partners, and we're gonna have it ingrained. And then once we have that, we will then build and go to end users, and we'll never have a hundred million [00:36:00] dollar company going just through partners. So the next thing that we're building is we talk about this word adoption. I may change the word adoption to, process compliance and enablement,
[00:36:11] In adoption. And so we are gonna help people that have methodologies, whether you're a partner or an end user, you will be able to, in, you will be able to operationalize your methodologies in HubSpot, in Salesforce, in any CRM. So we already have people using Supered that don't have HubSpot. They literally use it for their product.
[00:36:37] Teams. They use it for their own service teams to help teach people how to use their product. They have nothing to do with HubSpot.
[00:36:44] Yeah.
[00:36:44] The future is we're gonna help people take processes, take methodologies, operationalize those, and help people win.
[00:36:52] Yeah. I think.
[00:36:54] So you can customize.
[00:36:56] Well,
[00:36:56] I, we gotta talk, well, we gotta talk about that word adoption too, because I, to [00:37:00] me, I've found the word adoption like super cringe. w depending on how people are using it, right? Oftentimes when I've heard people come to me saying oh, my leader leadership team says we need to drive adoption.
[00:37:10] And I go, well, what does that mean? And they go, I don't know more confirmed people using it. And I'm like, okay. So like people logging in. It's it's often not like really thought past the word of we need to drive adoption. Like it's, it almost seems as like a scapegoat of things are bad and if we get people to use the software, more things won't be bad.
[00:37:30] And if we can just call it adoption, we don't have to think too hard about the problem. And you gotta think about who does it, what does adoption actually, who does that solve for? Right. And yeah, to me, I. Adoption. It should just be a byproduct of something that you've built that makes somebody do their job better, makes somebody enjoy doing their job a little bit better, right?
[00:37:52] And maybe even decreases burnout, right? you gotta start thinking of like, how not just am I getting people to use this thing? [00:38:00] It's can I go talk to the people that use this thing and they go, I love using this thing because it makes my job easier to do. And it makes me feel more fulfilled and I feel like I can actually help people and it's helping me, and it's not a hindrance.
[00:38:15] That's what you should be going for, right? Not how many people logged in, right? And
[00:38:21] software that are doing it right and building software companies in the correct way, there
[00:38:25] To that. Aha moment. It is a metric that it's I need them to click this. I need them to do this four times. And by the seventh time they click here, they're in, they're cooked, they're cooked.
[00:38:36] They're smoking the crack forever because that is a measurement path that I would've hope Supered does that. I'm sure you guys do. You're like, if they do this much, if they just do these things,
[00:38:46] The
[00:38:46] they will be lifelong.
[00:38:47] we don't do that right now.
[00:38:49] Well, you.
[00:38:49] that's the next, that is the next it's in development now period. It's it will be in, so when I
[00:38:55] You here to hear first folks.
[00:38:57] if you have a methodology, you can now say, [00:39:00] I'm at this percentage of following the methodology and I'm now at X percent of following the methodology. And it would be in HubSpot. You can see
[00:39:08] Or anywhere.
[00:39:10] Yep.
[00:39:10] getting that's why I think compliance you need to hit people right when they have pain points.
[00:39:16] Yeah. By the way, max, I think you're a hundred percent right. I'll say this is people confuse KPIs and
[00:39:21] Yep.
[00:39:21] optimizing for KPIs and they
[00:39:23] The heart. And so adoption is really driving it, the heart. And you just ask a user, Hey, do you like using. X. You should name your CRMs by the way. I like, Jill is a great name. do you like working with Jill? And he is no. It's then you. That's like adoption's bad find out y.
[00:39:39] Yep.
[00:39:40] discussion,
[00:39:40] Yeah. High adoption should be a byproduct, right? And like the, yeah, we, we said it. I had a thought and then I trailed off.
[00:39:47] So, Dax, do your thing, man.
[00:39:49] is, again, we're on the same page. That's a, that's an upcoming feature. 'cause when we built the H, like we knew it was a SEO link building, we knew that if they logged in. Three times a week and they bought two [00:40:00] packages in three months and then they looked at the reports four times.
[00:40:03] That's the user. Do everything in your life to get them to do that.
[00:40:08] They get there, they're gone. They're gonna be here for X amount of years.
[00:40:11] Slack has some famous, I forget what it is, but it was literally just, did they send, I think, I can't remember the number. I think it was like, did they send 12 messages within the first 72 hours? It was something crazy. If you do that, then you know they're gonna be there for life and yeah, it's just getting those, what are the key moments that make it say it's useful?
[00:40:31] Everything is about getting that KPI, but it is true, like I wanna get humans to feel the need to do this, right? Not make them do it. I want them to, I wanna understand what's going on so that is a piece of them feeling good about what's going on. That's the game. Well, Matt, is always over long overdue.
[00:40:48] Ridiculous pleasure. I got three questions for you are random. one. You said you like to dance. What is your favorite dance moment that you've witnessed? [00:41:00] Live YouTube in person. What was it? Don't say the moonwalk.
[00:41:04] Oh don't watch other people dance. I just like to dance. And so, there was period I remember I was sitting at our, an after party and I looked to my left and there was doing the electric slide beside me. That was fun. That was fun. I just so we talked about I just like to create moments and places and spaces where people just have fun release.
[00:41:29] And that was fun to see.
[00:41:31] is the human body exerting the natural rhythm that is prevalent for that per that moment in time.
[00:41:37] Yeah.
[00:41:38] You shake it.
[00:41:39] Oh yeah.
[00:41:39] question. I need to know your favorite late night snack.
[00:41:43] Ooh,
[00:41:44] My
[00:41:44] just need something late.
[00:41:46] night snack if I have it. I get Costco. There's this giant I think they're called Boom, Chicka boom. And they have they're the sweet ones and they have the pink bag, big boom Chicka Pal.
[00:41:56] oh, the popcorn.
[00:41:57] giant, yeah, giant pre-done popcorn. I [00:42:00] get this giant bowl, so I like playing a video, like watching, we were playing a video game at night and I'm just
[00:42:04] What flavor?
[00:42:05] him. Sweet.
[00:42:07] The kettle corn one? Yeah, dude. Yep. Yep.
[00:42:11] I say number two is and I say this, I think it's important, is when I was, deployed tie number two. It was a weird deployment. I was in Germany anyway. They it was every night I played league legends a lot of video games overnight,
[00:42:22] There you go.
[00:42:23] And every single night I would go, I would get a giant, I don't know why this, I got a giant bag jalapeno Cheetos.
[00:42:31] Oh yes. There we go.
[00:42:33] Yep. And the, and the and the chili dipping, not the chili, but the cheese sauce,
[00:42:38] Yes, in the can. In the can.
[00:42:40] just I would eat that and when I finished, I'd stop and it not healthy, not good, but it was
[00:42:45] Nah.
[00:42:46] I didn't ask for a diet recommendation. I just wanted to
[00:42:48] Now, are you a pc? PC gamer? I heard League of Legends.
[00:42:52] I'm a PC gamer and I
[00:42:54] Yeah.
[00:42:54] have a PC 'cause I got,
[00:42:55] Oh, geez.
[00:42:57] recovering.
[00:42:58] You gotta fix it. Yeah, [00:43:00] you gotta relapse. You gotta relapse.
[00:43:01] Yeah. Yeah. When I need the relapse. Lemme I'll give you a call
[00:43:04] Yeah. Yeah. Lemme know.
[00:43:05] man. Last question. So what is your favorite new HubSpot product update? Just to tie it off, the newest thing you can do at HubSpot that you're just like, yo, this is it.
[00:43:12] thank goodness I can name objects.
[00:43:14] I thought you were gonna say that one.
[00:43:16] It sounds stupid, like it's such a powerful, I can name an object and so I, you don't have any questions I've got in the past. It's well, this has context and I'm a, I'm, NGOs and they're like, or nonprofit and there's like
[00:43:28] Yeah. Yeah.
[00:43:29] and people and it solves a lot.
[00:43:31] Yeah.
[00:43:32] in being able to name an object.
[00:43:33] Well, God, I appreciate you coming on to Bill Happy Podcast. Where can we find you? they know. Where can we hear you? Where can we see the brightness?
[00:43:41] Most of my time, if you DM me on LinkedIn, I'm more likely to respond to you than if you text me. and then Do a lot of stuff on YouTube, but if you DM me on LinkedIn, I will like, and you send a meme or a gif
[00:43:53] It's key to your heart.
[00:43:55] I
[00:43:55] Making sure he is not, making sure it's not the robot throwing some bullshit over the fence.
[00:43:59] a random [00:44:00] text, I'm not, I'm probably not gonna do it.
[00:44:01] So
[00:44:02] That's the game. Well Matt, we appreciate you having us on, man. Looking forward to staying Supered dude.
[00:44:06] my pleasure, Dax and Max, appreciate y'all. Everybody
[00:44:09] Appreciate you, man,
[00:44:10] and keep taking bites of hapily.
[00:44:14] And stay su and stay Supered.
[00:44:16] I didn't see you and stay Supered hapily..
[00:44:18] Exactly.
[00:44:19]