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Welcome to the Women of HubSpot, a podcast celebrating the voices shaping marketing, technology, and the ever-evolving HubSpot ecosystem. Hosted by George B. Thomas from Sidekick Strategies. Each episode brings you the stories, strategies, and superpowers of the women driving this industry forward. It's their time. It's their mic. This… is Women of HubSpot.
Welcome to the Women of HubSpot podcast, the show that celebrates the voices shaping marketing, technology, and the ever evolving HubSpot ecosystem. Hosted by George B. Thomas from Sidekick Strategies. Each episode brings you the stories, strategies, and superpowers of the women driving this industry forward. It's their time.
Intro:It's their mic. This is Women of HubSpot.
George B. Thomas:Alright. So we're back for another episode of Women of HubSpot, and I'm excited. These have been some of the most amazing conversations that I've had. And I'm gonna tell you if this is the first one that you're listening to or watching. This all started.
George B. Thomas:My family was watching the Super Bowl. The Philadelphia Eagles were part of the Super Bowl. Who knows when you're watching or listening to this, so I'm not even gonna try to go back to the year. The important piece is the conversation that I was having with my daughter. She was talking about the Philadelphia Eagles quarterback and how he had an all woman team and how she thought that was cool and empowering.
George B. Thomas:And it just became a very interesting conversation to which I was sitting there and I'm like, why is this not happening in our space? And I threw out a LinkedIn post, zero strategy of like, hey, if you know a dope woman of HubSpot, tag him in this post. Post went crazy. I looked at my daughters after the Super Bowl a couple days later, and I was like, there's gotta be conversations that could be had here. Let's do something to actually change the fact that my brain went to why isn't that happening in our space?
George B. Thomas:So that's why we're here today with Casey Hawkins. Casey, how the heck are you doing today?
Casey Hawkins:I am doing well, George. I am excited to be here. George and I hang out every morning, but I'm curious how much you know about my my background and everything. So I'm
George B. Thomas:That is one of the funnest parts about this. I have learned some interesting things about humans that I thought I knew until we had these conversations, and then I really do start to know them. So, Casey, for the folks who are just tuning in and don't hang out with you every morning on the customer platform show like I do, Maybe explain real quick just who you are, what you do, where you do it.
Casey Hawkins:Hello. I am Casey Hawkins. I am a HubSpot and marketing consultant. I help teams make their marketing and sales processes work better, work more smoothly, more efficiently, specifically in the HubSpot space. And I am based in Annapolis, Maryland.
Casey Hawkins:Nice. Sailing capital of the world.
George B. Thomas:There you go. Okay. So let's go ahead and get into this. And I'll warn you, Casey. I've warned all the other amazing women who have come before you on the show.
George B. Thomas:It's a little bit of, like, a mountain and valleys question. And I promise you, towards the end, we climb up to the peak of the mountain, but we have to go through some of the trenches of life or valleys of life to get there. So let's just start at the very beginning, and that beginning can be totally up to you. But if we go back in time and we meet young Casey Hawkins, just starting out, what would we see and what would she be most surprised about where you are now?
Casey Hawkins:Usually, I start my journey just out of college. I was working at a local pool construction company. I had just graduated from college. I was interning there while I was still in college. And the owner of the company called me one day and said, Hey, we're about to fire our bookkeeper.
Casey Hawkins:Can you put a job on Indeed for a bookkeeper? And I said, Mike, I'm I'm kinda not really doing anything. Could I just do that instead? He was like, sure. He was like, I didn't know you wanted to do anything other than basically just hang out at the company.
Casey Hawkins:I So I spent a year as a bookkeeper at a small local pool construction company, and I hated bookkeeping. I tell my clients right now, my accounting team, who is me, is terrible at their job. Was just never something I liked. And so one day, I tweeted out, I hate my job. And one of my friends from college tweeted me back and said, come work with me.
Casey Hawkins:And she worked at a marketing agency based out of Columbia, Maryland. So couple weeks later, I put in four weeks notice at the pool construction company. And the same day, I went to interview with her company. And basically four weeks later, I started there. It was a, at the time, it was a diamond partner HubSpot agency.
Casey Hawkins:And I started as just a marketing intern. And I really leaned into a lot of areas That agency and I have kind of adopted this. I'm very into the YT marketing concept, where you know a little about a lot of marketing, and then you deepen your T into a couple areas. Obviously, HubSpot ended up being one of those areas of deepening knowledge for me. I think I would have would be really surprised that I was in marketing operations kind of side of things.
Casey Hawkins:I say this a lot too, especially if I'm talking to college students or new grads. I think it's a hidden side of marketing. I thought I wanted to be in social media marketing, which I guess I now a little bit for him. But I didn't think it would be LinkedIn, I guess. And so I think that side of marketing, just had no idea existed, and I would have been really surprised to be there.
George B. Thomas:So I am learning some things. Bookkeeper turned inbound expert, HubSpot expert. I also will agree with you. I am a big fan of the T shaped marketer and have talked about it for years. I think we're even getting to the point where there could be a T shaped HubSpot admin at this point, which gets real interesting if you start to break it down that granular.
George B. Thomas:But I love this idea of starting from the bottom and working your way up to where you are now, which is interesting to me because you basically run your own thing, you have your own clients. And so you've gone from like, again, the very beginning to where a lot of people may even dream about being able to get to as a human supporting people who use HubSpot. So along that journey from like very beginning to where you're at now, who are some of your biggest, like, inspirations or mentors along the way?
Casey Hawkins:So I mentioned my friend who I followed in her footsteps, Camille Bosley. She still one of my best friends. I was on a road trip last week and she was on the road trip with me. She's still one of my mentors and everything. And I very much followed in her footsteps at the time and to this day take her advice very seriously.
Casey Hawkins:We had a long chat in a Culver's around lead scoring. Nice. Nice. My husband kinda hates when we hang out because it's boring. But, definitely, she's has always been a big inspiration.
Casey Hawkins:I know this is gonna make you uncomfortable, but, obviously, George, you as well as Chris, have both, I feel like, taken me under your wings in many ways. Just last week, we had a conversation after the morning show, and, I mean, you both make a lot of great content and everything. And I mean, early in my freelancing career, I was following the Hub Heroes podcast very closely. And I just hold some friends this weekend. I think one of the things I've never liked about freelancing is coming from an agency background, you have this sense of community.
Casey Hawkins:You have this network. You have these Slack things. And when I started freelancing, I didn't have that. And I really missed it in a way I couldn't even, like, explain, I feel like, all the time. My husband would be like, so do you need help?
Casey Hawkins:And I'm like, no. It's not that I need help. I just miss having people to talk to. And even just the morning show, I know we record it, but still, it's just this like touch base with the same people every day. And, like, when I'm out of office, you guys notice and things like that in a way.
Casey Hawkins:And so it's just nice to have that community.
George B. Thomas:Yeah. I love this idea of being a a freelancer or, like, a solopreneur and having the feeling of community, people that care. By the way, thanks for mentioning my name. I did not pay Casey $20 to actually mention me as a mentor. But I do love being able to be that human where I just try to give myself to the folks that need it and and help along the way.
George B. Thomas:But it's very interesting to me too, as you kind of are navigating these questions, is there anybody else that you think of that you're like, yeah, this is and by the way, it could be pre HubSpot, but somebody that has been a mentor or made a massive impact in your life as well.
Casey Hawkins:I'm very close to my family. My mom and my sister are, I say all the time, my best friends. My sister is a very successful real estate agent in my hometown. And I definitely look I mean, I've always looked up to her. She danced in high school in middle school and high school, so I danced in middle school and high school.
Casey Hawkins:In college, she worked at the Olive Garden as a server. So I worked at the Olive Garden as a server. And now she does have her I mean, she has her own business. Obviously we're doing two different things, but when I go home and when I talk to her, we have such parallels between us. And I often even kind of talk about how interesting that is, that although she's a real estate agent, we have all these similar parallels where we're both, you know, agents, like these free agents that are selling ourselves in the public eye to do what we do best.
George B. Thomas:Yeah. I love that. Okay. So now we're dance, breadsticks, bookkeeping. Alright.
George B. Thomas:So I'm I'm starting to piece together the pieces of the puzzle that makes Casey Casey. Okay. So let's go back into kind of your journey that you've been going through. And, you went from bookkeeping to working in an agency. Either place or even before, whichever, again, is totally your story, have there been any hurdles or biases that you've had to overcome in your career?
George B. Thomas:And if so, how did you kind of navigate those?
Casey Hawkins:I think of this more in the agency side. And I think you know this about me, George I can be fairly quiet. I'm not going to necessarily always be the first one to speak up and things like that. And especially in the agency setting, there are a lot of, you know, especially men who are much more loud spoken than I am, much more eager to get their voice out there first, which I feel like for my entire career has been has meant that often we start doing one thing, and then I'm like, hello, the little mouse in the corner. Like, hey.
Casey Hawkins:I think maybe we're missing this other little thing over here. And that's something I've had to kind of work on personally because I can be kind of bulldozed over fairly easily. And so I think it's important, especially now that I'm, like, freelancing to make sure that I do make my voice heard and I don't get into these positions where I'm just following instead of leading, especially because people hire me because I have this expertise. And sometimes that can it can be hard for me to, like, own my expertise almost in a way.
George B. Thomas:Yeah. Yeah. Own it. Own it. Own it.
George B. Thomas:Own it. You have become an expert. I mean, again, just from our kind of conversation here, you started at the very beginning. You've worked your way to be where you're at. Deserve to have that voice, that expertise, be the leading indicator or factor of what's going on.
George B. Thomas:So I love that you're, A, you know that about yourself and can actively work on that. So, Casey, and again, these are part of the valley questions that I mentioned at the beginning. I swear we'll get to we'll get to the climbing the mountain and and to the peak questions here in a hot minute. But have you ever faced a moment where you felt underestimated or overlooked or maybe just out of place in the industry? And if so, how did you handle kind of that moment?
Casey Hawkins:Yeah. I'm a lot. Like I said, I'm not a loud person. I'm not someone that's going to, you know, I'm not gonna go to an industry event and start shaking hands with everyone. I'm probably gonna be in the corner and waiting for someone to speak to me in most cases.
Casey Hawkins:So I think that can happen. It can happen a lot. I mean, I think about a lot of client meetings that I had, especially at the agency and especially when leadership, was on them where sometimes leadership would start speaking on concepts and ideas. But I was boots on the ground, and I felt kind of overlooked and overshadowed in those instances where and even today, like, I try to focus my content a lot of times on, like, execution. And, you know, sure, there's a lot of strategy that goes into things, but I like to bring it down to like, okay, how do we actually use that?
Casey Hawkins:And I think sometimes the overarching strategies and things are flashier, but if you can't execute on those strategies and implement those things, then it ends up falling flat anyway. I try I try to keep things a little bit more, more grounded. You and I have been talking a lot about lead scoring recently, and there are some overarching concepts around who you should lead score, how you should implement that. I like to do sessions and content specifically around these are the buttons you should push, and these are the inputs you should put in, things like that.
George B. Thomas:Try to stay grounded was a phrase you just used. And it's interesting as you kind of talk about this, I'm I'm transported back to Gary Vee who did a video on like clouds and dirt. And and I always correlated that and know he's talking about strategy and tactics. And you are very much like me, where historically I've liked to talk about the tactical. Here's the buttons you push.
George B. Thomas:Here's the things that you do. Here's the way that you hack it. And so being able to lean into what I hear, by the way, is I lean into my strengths as Casey, and this is what I try to do to bring good stuff to the world, which I absolutely love. So let's get raw, let's get vulnerable. Have you ever experienced a significant failure or setback?
George B. Thomas:And if so, what did you learn from it?
Casey Hawkins:Last summer, I think I stretched too far as an individual consultant. I was billing fifty or sixty hours a week. And I think you know this, George, but if for the listeners, if you don't know, if you're billing fifty or sixty hours a week, you're working seventy or eighty probably. That was a lot of that was a lot of time. I was definitely, like, burning myself out, and I kept saying yes.
Casey Hawkins:And this is an ongoing problem of mine. And, specifically, I said yes to this audit of a fairly complex account, and I didn't have time. And so I cut some corners. I don't think I gave it my all, and the client 1000% noticed. I had a very painful call delivering this audit, and we ended the call with I was gonna go back in and revisit the audit.
Casey Hawkins:Even after that, I, like, walked away, and I ended up replying to them. And I was like, hey. I know we said that, but, like, I think you should find someone else to help. Like, if I can't do this audit well, then, like, the idea around the audit is first figure out what's going on with the account, then figure out solutions for me to help them. I had to just be like, hey, I clearly am not in a position to help you on an ongoing basis if I can't even get this audit kind of figured out.
Casey Hawkins:And that's been a huge lesson in freelancing, especially over the past couple of years as after I got my footing. I think there's just a switch at some point in when you're freelancing from when you're just grinding to when you have to figure out what's, like, scalable and what's, like, possible. And I have not figured that out exactly yet, but I do feel like I'm getting closer, and I am recognizing the signs sooner, on what that looks like.
George B. Thomas:I totally hear you. It is so easy to just say yes. Yes. Yes. Yes.
George B. Thomas:Because people need help, and you wanna be a helpful human. And and I know this about you. Like, you're rooted in, like, let me help them. And then you get to a point where you said yes so many times that you kind of that point you reach where you're like, Oh, what did I just do? Like, why did I say that?
George B. Thomas:And then all of a sudden you enter the mental minefield of like because you want to do the best you can do when you're helping the humans, and then all of sudden you realize that you've worked yourself into a place where you can no longer give your best. So learning that lesson of like, okay, or at least on the journey of learning the lesson of like, I've got to bill enough to survive, but I also have to be able to rest enough to survive as well, and have that balance of life. Okay. Beautiful. I love this.
George B. Thomas:So the word empowerment. Casey, what does empowerment mean to you? And and how do you pass that on to others in your field or in your life?
Casey Hawkins:I think empowerment to me means knowing your worth and knowing your strengths and feeling the ability to share those. I mean, we mentioned this a little earlier, like, knowing what you're good at and knowing that knowing that well enough that you are feel comfortable standing 10 toes down on that. I work with some more junior consultants. I like talking to people who either are new in consulting or want to get into consulting. People DM me probably a couple times a week, if not maybe less, maybe more.
Casey Hawkins:Depends.
George B. Thomas:Depends on the week.
Casey Hawkins:Depends on the week. People message me fairly regularly that are like, hey. I want to get into consulting. I just started getting into consulting. Do you have any tips?
Casey Hawkins:And I always give my meeting link. I'm happy to join a call talking about them. I'm an open book. And I think one of the biggest things people don't see when they start consulting is their value. And, like, I think people feel like they need to be a company to have that backing, whereas you just need to be a helpful human.
Casey Hawkins:And I tell people that all the time. I'm like, if you want to get into HubSpot consulting, probably any consulting, I've just never gotten into something else. I find the best thing I did was just start being helpful. And after that, I was able to pick up clients. People people saw that I was helpful, and that is what sold me as as a helpful human.
George B. Thomas:I like that you've now kind of defined for you what empowerment is. It's gonna lead me into my next question, but I but I have to at least park on this idea of, being a helpful human is probably the most powerful referral generator. Meaning humans don't necessarily need to see me on social, they don't necessarily need to see you in SEO, because they've literally seen you face to face and know how you can help, and therefore tell their friends about you, Hawkins, and how you can help. I also want to unpack this idea of like needing to be a company and being able to embrace the mindset of a business of one. You are a business.
George B. Thomas:You're just a business of one, which I think may unlock the brain for some humans if they just start to think about their consulting or freelancing as I'm a business of one, and then that kind of frames it differently. So, okay, let's get back to the word empowerment. Casey, can you share a moment in your career where you felt especially empowered or proud of something that you achieved?
Casey Hawkins:Recently, we did The Daily Show together, just you and I. Chris was traveling and he just wasn't in an ideal scenario. And I think that show went really well. And I think I realized I've been leaning on others as a crutch in a lot of ways. But I that was one instance where I felt like I was bringing value being me.
Casey Hawkins:Another is the first call in show. It was you, George, me, and then Kyle Judson. I respect you and Kyle Jepsen a lot. I've learned a lot over the years from you and Kyle Jepsen. But being able to get on that show and show you guys something that you hadn't thought of was definitely very empowering for me in that moment.
Casey Hawkins:And really just more recently being involved with these micro influencers in our space and holding my own there, I think has been has been really empowering.
George B. Thomas:I love the fact of, like, being able to get a maybe glimpse in the digital mirror of yourself is kind of where my brain went when you were saying that. It's interesting because it doesn't have to be this huge thing. It can be something that is, feels like to many, just like an average everyday thing. But then for you, it's like this mental unlock, which by the way, most of this of feeling empowered or empowering others is mentally driven. And by the way, if I think back to that call in show, you used the word janky, to which then I used the word genius.
George B. Thomas:I hope that other women or humans that watch this or listen to this, it's about owning your own. You said that in that last segment. Sometimes you just got to own yourself and realize the value that can come from you. And so that's very, very powerful. Okay, if you had a magic wand, let's say, and you could change one thing about how women are supported in this industry or just in general, what would be the thing that you would change?
Casey Hawkins:I have been, I definitely haven't told you this, George. I've been a little obsessed lately with the gender income gap and how closely that's tied to how much of the parenting role mothers take. George, you know this, but the audience certainly doesn't. I just actually, just on Friday, got my official approval to be a foster parent.
George B. Thomas:There we go.
Casey Hawkins:And I know that's gonna take a lot of time. And I'm already a little anxious about what that means. I work a lot of hours. I put in a lot of time on shows, but also on my client work and things like that. And I know that one of the contributing factors to the gender gap is that women take maternity leave.
Casey Hawkins:But also on top of that, when children are sick, it's often the mothers that are the ones taking off to take them to doctor's appointments and things like that. And I've just especially with preparing to be a foster parent, I've been a little obsessed with, like, what that will mean for me. My husband works an office job. His job's fairly flexible, but I'm at home. So like, even just that piece, like, my job and I work for myself.
Casey Hawkins:So my job is inherently more flexible than his with all of that. And so we've been and we don't know because we don't have a kid. Yeah. Yeah. But I've been thinking a lot about that.
Casey Hawkins:So I guess to put that in like what I wish was different about the industry, I wish that there was more consideration for that when looking at like, who's the hardest worker, who's showing up the most, that there is this like societal pressure and expectation that's often put on mothers. So I don't know, accounting for that in some ways.
George B. Thomas:Yeah. No, I love it so much. By the way, as somebody who all my children are like grown adults, 21 years of age, you just don't know until you get there, Casey. It's a day in, day out, figure it out long as you go. The thing that kept ringing my brain as you were stating that is like, yes, I totally agree.
George B. Thomas:The second thing that was ringing my brain was just this idea of realizing that you and your husband are raising a part of the future. And so like many things in business, we have to come up with, like, a priority list. And when you're talking about work, family, motherhood, I feel like the priority list gets shifted a little bit because it needs to, because it should. And sometimes my brain even goes to, like, man, they shouldn't feel guilty because, and they shouldn't be judged because, Because what they're doing is very important. Like, if if it wasn't for my mothers, because I have two, a mom and a stepmom, I don't know where I'd be or who I'd be.
George B. Thomas:And so just keep that kind of in your mind as you move forward, which, by the way, I'm super excited for you as a as a family unit as you move forward. Okay. Let's keep journeying down this road. This is called the Women of HubSpot podcast. So, Casey, I have to at least ask one question around HubSpot.
George B. Thomas:So are there any particular tools, strategies, or trends in HubSpot that excite you right now?
Casey Hawkins:I gotta talk lead scoring because it's all I talk about these days. We are talking 06/30/2025. HubSpot's legacy scoring properties are sunsetting on 08/31/2025. So teams have to move to the new scoring tools, whether that's the lead scoring tool or the health scoring. However, I think that there's a big opportunity to rebuild scores that actually matter in a way the traditional scoring actually wasn't set up.
Casey Hawkins:The scoring properties were set up to score based on properties and like ICP fits versus the new scoring tools take engagement into consideration, which is giving us a lot of opportunity to score based on really interest in your company, not just instead of the company being interested in the human in their CRM or the company in their CRM, it is instead taking into account if the human is interested in buying.
George B. Thomas:Yeah. I love that. And and if people aren't paying attention to lead scoring, you need to. And you should just check out Casey and all the content that she's been creating around that because it's absolutely amazing. If you need help as well, you might just wanna reach out and have a conversation with her.
George B. Thomas:So, Casey, when you answered a question at the very beginning, I thought to myself, what's gonna be real interesting when we get to this question in the future because I know what questions are coming. And you're like, hey. I can be the quiet one and I'd be in the corner. Here's my question because I know that you have to be doing some version of this, and I'm curious of, like, how important you deem it to be, but, like, talk to me about networking. And what I mean by that is how important is networking with other females or just networking in general to you?
George B. Thomas:And are there any type of strategies, especially as being the person who could be quiet and kind of shy in the corner, that you use to help build those connections?
Casey Hawkins:My entire career changed when I found the Sprocketeer community. I did feel like I was alone on this island. And then I found the Sprocketeer community, and I was able to just interact with people, even just on Slack, go back and forth on things. But it is so important to find your tribe, find people that are similar to you, and everything like that. I mean, I talked a couple weeks ago to Sarah Lane Hahn, who's, another freelance HubSpot consultant.
Casey Hawkins:She was on one of my LinkedIn lives. And before the show, after the show, I just kept like, we just kept talking. We just kept saying bye like five times. Just one of those things where like, we just both had so many things in common and things like that. And I think it's important to find those people.
Casey Hawkins:Sarah is pregnant right now. She's about to go on maternity leave. I was talking to her a little bit about what I was mentioning to you earlier around how maternity leave impacts career trajectories in many instances. And so I was mentioning kind of that and balancing that, especially as a freelance consultant where, you know, how do you take time off and then do your client and keep your clients? That's a really difficult balance, that she's working on right now.
Casey Hawkins:Once you find people in the similar situations to you, that's, that's really great.
George B. Thomas:I love this idea of almost like micro micro community. And you started, like, very broad sprocketeers community. And it it's kind of a micro community, but it's a community around, like, other people using HubSpot. But then you're like, and and also I have found this human or humans who might be dealing with the things that I'm dealing with in life, but also with HubSpot and, you know, being a consultant or something along those lines. So you don't have to network with everybody if you're networking with the right people.
George B. Thomas:So that's interesting.
Casey Hawkins:Yeah. And even in one of those I don't actually think it was Bracketeers. It was another HubSpot Slack community that I was in. Rebecca, she has her own agency, but she posted in one of those, like, welcome channels. And she said, like, you know, fun facts about her.
Casey Hawkins:She's a foster parent, and she's visited all the continents or something like that. And I messaged her so quickly because I was like, I think you are who I want to be. And, we had a conversation, and now we continue to have conversations. And she's been really helpful as I've been preparing. She's actually the closest person I know that fosters, and I met her in a HubSpot Slack community.
George B. Thomas:Yeah. See, that's amazing. That's an amazing story. Okay. Casey, think about this one because I'm super curious.
George B. Thomas:I think the viewers and listeners are curious too. What has been the most rewarding aspect of your career so far?
Casey Hawkins:I think going out on my own as a freelancer, truly, you know, because I didn't I didn't expect that at all. So I started freelancing full time in 2022. I had prior to that, I had one small freelance client. I switched to full time freelancing because my husband and I were living on our sailboat, and working a full time agency job didn't make sense anymore. And we were going to The Bahamas.
Casey Hawkins:We were gonna be there for three months. So I quit the agency. I told them at the time. I told myself at the time. I told anyone I was speaking to at the time.
Casey Hawkins:It was a sabbatical, and that I would probably go back to an agency, if not that same agency when we moved back to land. But we moved back to land a couple months later, and another freelance opportunity landed in my lap. I said, okay, I'll just see this out to the end of the year. And, you know, now we're three years out.
George B. Thomas:I love that story. First of all, let me kind of recap here for a second. We've got dance. We've got breadsticks. We've got bookkeeping.
George B. Thomas:We've got a sailboat in The Bahamas. Okay. I'm I'm learning some things. I'm putting the pieces of the puzzle together. That is Casey Hawkins.
George B. Thomas:This is this has been really this has been interesting. Okay. So let's put your mentor hat on for a second, because I asked you who your mentors are, but now you get a chance to mentor others. What advice would you give other women who might want to choose this type of career path that you've chosen?
Casey Hawkins:I would tell them to ask for more money than they think. When I bid my first freelance job, I was still working full time at an agency, and I had a meeting set up with this prospect. And I called my boss at the time and I said, Should I ask for $50 an hour? $75 $100 What should I do? And she was basically like, I don't know.
Casey Hawkins:I got on that call and, you know, he asked me how much money, and I just said a $100 an hour. And I think back on that as to, like, if I started at $50 an hour, like, where would I be now in my financial compensation? Because I would have been working up from 50 versus I started working up from a $100 an hour. Ask for more, and if they say no, everything's negotiable, say, okay. 75.
Casey Hawkins:Or they might come back and they might say, no, I'm not doing a 100, but I'm I'll do 50. And then you can say yes or no. And also tell people how much money you're billing. I'm very quick and open to telling people because I think why it was so hard for me to figure out how much to charge was because I didn't know. And so if you don't know what other people are charging, it makes it really hard so we can all help each other by being transparent.
George B. Thomas:First of all, I love the idea of being transparent, especially around pricing. I love the advice that you gave because it's something that we ended up doing as well. Like, when I was getting ready to jump ship from an agency, you know, I was like, well, this much an hour, which, by the way, if you would've asked me years and years before, it would've been a dream to even, like, bill at that rate. And then I had this crazy idea. Well, what about three times that?
George B. Thomas:Let me try to close this deal at three times that and see what they say. And they said yes immediately. And I was like, oh, snap. And so don't sell out of your own pocket. Like, it's easy to give a discount.
George B. Thomas:It's impossible to say, wait. Wait. Wait. Actually, let me charge you more. Like, that's not gonna go good as a comer so I love your advice.
George B. Thomas:I love your advice. Okay. We're gonna we got a few more questions here, and then we're gonna land this plane. You're at where you're at now. You've had an incredible journey, literally journey, sailboat, Bahamas, off land, on land, agency, not agency.
George B. Thomas:Now what I'm really curious of, like, you're in this place right now. What are your long term goals? Like, where are you where are you trying to go? Who are trying to be?
Casey Hawkins:Would like to go to a place where I'm working working less than I am right now. I'm put like I said, I I put in a lot of hours, and I tell people, I just had a meeting with an aspiring freelancer. She is a mom of a toddler, and she asked me how much I'm working. And I told her, I was like, I'm easily working sixty hours a week. That's not sustainable for everyone.
Casey Hawkins:I would like to get to a place where I am doing more, Chris would call it coaching. Coaching of HubSpot instead of doing as much hand on work, I would like to get to a point where I have a little bit more passive income through content, and I would like to get to a place where I can do school pickup and drop off and not feel like I'm missing out on opportunities.
George B. Thomas:I love that. All of it's doable, by the way. All of it is absolutely doable. Okay. So two more questions.
George B. Thomas:Casey, what's a surprising or little known fact about you that people might not expect?
Casey Hawkins:I already mentioned and people know that I have that on the website, on my website. My greyhounds are fairly well known. I've been to every continent except for Antarctica. See, I tell them I tell people all of my cool facts. I'm very braggy about my cool facts.
George B. Thomas:That's funny. I didn't I didn't know that you had been to every continent other than Antarctica, though. So
Casey Hawkins:There you go. We'll use that one then.
George B. Thomas:We'll use Okay. That So finish this sentence for me. Success to me means blank.
Casey Hawkins:Success to me means work life balance, enjoying life, but also feeling comfortable, and also feeling comfortable financially and time financially, if you will. Feeling like I get a lot of satisfaction from work. I don't picture myself as someone that's not working at any point because I like what I do. I like helping humans. I like working in HubSpot every day.
Casey Hawkins:But I think if I can find a better balance for me, where I can also take the dogs on walks in the middle of the day, do a run-in the middle of the day, things like that.