Adi Jagannathan, the CEO and co-founder of OpenFlow, joins the show to talk about OpenFlow's journey from being a CRM software and industry agnostic firm to deeply specializing in the cannabis and dispensary industry. Adi shares the challenges he faced while operating agnostically, the evolution of his agency’s business model, and how his category specialization (RevOps), industry specialization (cannabis), and software specialization (HubSpot) came to be. He also shares the unique opportunities that are present within the cannabis industry—especially around CRM, customer platforms, and the power of integrating dispensary point of sale data with customer data.

Lara Triozzi and Terri-Lynne Anderson, CEO and Sales Manager at Market Launcher respectively, join the show to talk about prospecting and lead generation. With both perspectives, we get to talk about both the broad evolution of B2B prospecting and the cyclical nature of how sellers must change their approach to reach prospective buyers and the tactical approaches that work best from someone on the front lines. We talk about the current state of prospecting, what businesses are looking for from sales reps and sales conversations, and what the Market Launcher team does today that can help others improve and/or accelerate their own prospecting efforts. And based on Market Launcher’s expertise in the enterprise, Lara and Terri-Lyne also discuss how these early sales conversations change as you move upmarket.

Christopher Nault, Founder and CEO of Growth on the pod to talk about balancing small teams and sustainable growth. Chris walks us through how his team navigated the transition from traditional marketing agency to revenue generation and ops consultancy, a move that I know many partners are either thinking about or actively doing themselves, including actionable insights for others to apply to their own organizations. We then get into sales, where we learn about how Growth’s sales efforts have evolved over time and the approaches and methodologies the Growth team uses today when actively prospecting, generating and connecting with leads, and working deals through their pipeline. We wrap with his point of view on the HubSpot ecosystem, the opportunities that exist for small services providers, and how best to carve out your piece of the HubSpot pie.

Rich Wood, Managing Director of Six and Flow, joins us to talk about a merger attempt that ended in a breakup. While never easy, Rich walks us through why they opened up a merger discussion with another agency, how the team integration went, and what ultimately led to the split.

Carter and Cameron, Partners at Creative Cave, come on the show to discuss paid ads and how they fit into their agency’s overall inbound strategy for clients. They discuss why agencies shouldn’t see paid ads and inbound as two competing channels—instead, view paid ads as a powerful channel for inbound ROI.

Alison Leishman, cofounder of Spitfire Inbound, joins the show to talk about her team’s onboarding process. She teaches us about why defining and documenting a process is so important, how she customizes onboarding tracks by role and function, and how she ties a defined onboarding process to happy clients and positive results.

John Elmer, CEO of Bayard Bradford, leads with a sales-first approach to their marketing services. John teaches us why helping clients build the system to store, manage, and close sales opportunities is so important before driving marketing leads—and how you can help improve clients’ ROI metrics with a sales-first approach.

Joining us this episode is Sheila Mitham: CEO of Inbound Fintech. Serving primarily in the B2B space, Sheila educates us on how she incorporates thought leadership into her client engagements to address customer pain-points and build valuable, credible content.

Alexandria Hart, founder of Good Joo Joo, joins us to talk scope creep: what it is, how to avoid it, how to course correct when it happens, and how to leverage it into a conversation around extending an SOW.

Travis White, Managing Director of Neighbourhood, just recently rebranded his agency. Formally known as The Raiders, Travis talks through his motivations for a rebrand, how he knew it was time, how he handled the full rebrand process, and what the next steps are for the new brand.

We make it back home to Boston, where Damien Cabral of TribalVision shares how his agency was able to improve their profitability. Specifically, how they’ve created formalized career paths to improve employee retention, how they’ve built an expansive freelancer partner network for low cost delivery, and how they introduced a lower-tiered retainer price point to help combat client churn rates.

As CEO of Campaign Creators, Bob’s story is an interesting one: in 2016, Bob had an employee embezzle three hundred thousand dollars from his agency’s payroll account. In this episode, Bob shares this story in full and how he was able to rebuild his agency by refining his services, building more structured processes, and updating the way their source and qualify candidates.

Mike and Nikole Rose of Mojo Media Labs join us to talk about open book financial management: a practice in which Mojo shares their financials with the team to have everyone think like business owners. We talk about why they incorporated this financial transparency, how it’s impacted the organization, and how interested agencies can get started themselves.

Tyler Samani-Sprunk, Chief Marketing Officer at Simple Strat, joins the show and pulls the curtain back on HubSpot Hacks—the highly successful YouTube channel the Simple Strat team manages to the tune of 18,000+ subscribers and 1.2 million video views. Tyler opens up to the history of HubSpot Hacks, where and how it began, and how it operates today. We discuss those early days, how the initial pilot was structured, how they measured success, and the methods used to accelerate its growth and scale their efforts. Tyler then explains how it's been integrated into Simple Strat’s systems and other go-to-market strategies, and he walks us through how a video view on YouTube turns into a paying client of Simple Strat. He also shares the quantifiable impact Simple Strat has seen from the channel across lead generation, opportunity close rates, revenue, and more.  We wrap with Tyler’s perspective on how others can uncover and leverage growth strategies like the one Simple Strat built with HubSpot Hacks—and he shares actionable tips for building your own growth playbook—whether it's through video-based content or otherwise. 

We head to Dallas, Texas where Scott Baradell of Idea Grove sits in to teach us how he successfully made the transition from traditional PR to digital marketing. He explains why he moved from PR to a full menu of digital services, how his processes and team structure changed to account for this transition, and why PR and digital marketing are a great fit for pairing together.

It’s no secret: clients have become more tech savvy and in tune with the digital landscape, which has the opportunity to add friction to your team’s ability to consult and drive strategy. Paul Brienza from Laughlin Constable explains what this growth in sophistication looks like, how he has tweaked his model to account for these advancements, and how he prioritizes continuous improvement for his team.

In this episode, Jill Wilson of Simple Machines Marketing drops by to discuss the value her agency has found in finding their niche. She explains how aligning around a niche can positively impact marketing, sales, and service. We then dig into running workshops and why “getting a look under the hood” is so valuable for her team.

Beth Carter of Clariant Creative teaches us about the importance of finding right-fit clients. She shares why it’s so important to qualify for fit, how she identifies if a potential client is a right or wrong fit, and what impact this has on the client experience. We also talk about when and how it’s appropriate to move on from bad-fit clients.

Christine Mortensen of Sprk'd jump starts our stay in Chicago by talking about how she's developed her agency’s mission. We dig into why it’s important to make an impact to society, how you can go about creating your own mission, how you get buy-in from the team, and how it impacts your go-to market.

After working with agencies across the globe to help scale, Pete Nicholls of HubDo comes in the studio to share his tips and tactics on how to navigate the most common roadblocks agencies face around marketing, sales, and client delivery.

Darren Ratcliffe helps break down growth-driven design, the data-driven re-imagining of web design. Learn how his team transitioned from traditional web design to GDD, how he updated his processes for delivery, and what GDD has achieved for his customers.

All the way from Santiago, Chile, Ranya Barakat of IDS Agency sits in to share how she’s been able to build an effective team for her agency. We talk about her candidate pipeline, her interview process, and her focus on professional development.

Jackie Hermes of Accelity Marketing teaches us the art of being “picky”, the benefits of pickiness, and the ramifications for not being picky. It can be hard to say no, agencies should be selective in the clients they bring in, in the services they offer, and in the hires they make.

Tommy Butcher of LyntonWeb joins us to talk about managing a remote workforce. He starts at the beginning with the initial decision and the benefits they’ve seen since. He then walks through how they’ve built their internal processes to set their remote team up for success.

Dan Moyle, HubSpot Advisor at Impulse Creative and the instructor for HubSpot Academy’s community building bootcamp, joins the show to share his perspective on community-led growth and why it's such an important concept and strategy for solutions partners to anchor to. We dig into the specifics around building communities, around your organization and as a paid service for your client’s organizations, and Dan gets into the tactics for turning community into a powerful growth lever. We discuss what is and isn’t community, where we draw the line between content and community, and more. We also talk about ICPs and how these ideal client profiles can help manifest into a community strategy—specifically, where & how you can be a contributing member to the communities that may already exist. We wrap with a look at how communities can be built and hosted on HubSpot with tools like Impulse Creative’s Cohortium.

Remington Begg of Impulse Creative joins us to talk through conversational engagement, how agencies leverage chat for themselves, and where they should get started. He then pivots to how agencies should position conversational strategy to their clients and how the service can be scaled.

Ingunn Bjøru joins us to discuss how her team approached the M&A and creation of Avidly, how she knew it was time to open the discussion, and what the transformation into Avidly meant for her leadership team, her employees, her processes, and her clients.

Daryn Smith of MPULL talks capacity management and his recommendations for monitoring, managing, and optimizing your delivery team’s capacity. We discuss the tools his team uses, the processes they have developed, and how he takes advantage of under-capacity teams.

Eric Baum teaches us about the Entrepreneurial Operating System (EOS), what it changed operationally for Bluleadz, and how other agencies can get implement it into their firm. He then navigates the history of his org chart and what the future holds.

Romi Dexter of Hype and Dexter, and her team, were able to take their agency from concept to platinum HubSpot partner in only nine months. Romi shares her learnings along the way, the processes they prioritized and mapped out first, and how they approach client delivery.

Ryan Malone discusses SmartBug’s team structure and how his agency’s org chart has changed over time to accommodate growth. We talk about team (or “pod”) structures, career pathing, and how SmartBug split up responsibilities by role.

Gabriel Marguglio of Nextiny Marketing joins us to talk video strategy: both as a customer service tool for your agency and as a service offering for your clients. Learn how to allocate resources and develop processes to start your own scalable video strategy today.

Gemma Price, CEO of HubGem, shares the history of HubGem and the path that led her towards specialization around the education space. We talk about the benefits of niche alignment for her team, her clients, and for the relationships she’s cultivated within HubSpot’s sales organization. Gemma also shares the risk partners face when making the decision to niche and the important considerations for after the fact—like hiring and training employees and resourcing accounts, to prospecting, sales conversations, and GTM strategies. Gemma also provides her perspective on the differences between “picking a niche” and “deep niche alignment” and what that looks like for HubGem. We wrap with Gemma's approach around HubSpot configuration for an industry that doesn’t have a traditional “sales” function you would envision adopting HubSpot—including some of the cool things she’s been able to build for her clients.

Kevin Barber, founder of Lean Labs, joins the pod to share his POV on the opportunities in front of HubSpot solutions partners with generative AI. He shares the ways in which his team has begun leveraging AI, what’s been replaced in their internal processes, and what’s been augmented and improved. We talk about the AI-prompt-powered solutions the team has both piloted and formally rolled out, like the Outline Optimizer and the Script Scrutinizer, and how Lean Labs handles the integration of these tools across their team and into their processes—from initial ideation, to test usage and prompt optimization, to ownership and involvement across the team, defining the completion criteria, and standardizing its usage and implementing it formally into their processes.

Neil Clarke, Digital Director at Quattro, joins the pod to discuss his process for building, maintaining, and prioritizing a small team—and how a lean operation has its advantages to both selling and servicing clients. Neil walks us through those advantages, value propositions, and how it manifests into Quattro’s go-to-market—including why & how it can be an attractive option for prospects comparative to larger organizations. We also talk about the intersection of team size and technical aptitude, the approach Neil's team takes for more complex engagements, and how team size isn’t indicative of a partner’s ability to effectively design and implement complex configurations of HubSpot.

Dan Tyre, a 16-year veteran of HubSpot, head of the Lion community, facilitator of Academy’s bootcamp strategy (most notably the Pipeline Generation Bootcamp), and longtime advocate, resource, and friend to many in the solutions partner community joins the pod to talk about the two things he says are the most important aspects of scaling your business as a HubSpot partner: culture and growth.For culture, he shares actionable steps and the things you can do *right now* to improve your ability to recruit, hire, motivate and retain the right executives, employees and partners. And for growth, Dan Tyre shares his own experiences in sales, marketing, and as an owner of a managed services provider himself—and the concrete steps partners can take themselves to sell better, scale effectively ,and address stagnant growth.

Dani Buckley, Vice President and General Manager of LeadG2, joins the show and shares with us her team’s strategies for securing sustainable growth as a services provider. Our primary discussion is around sales enablement, and while they offer sales enablement services to their clients, Dani shares what sales enablement looks like for her team, including the methodologies, resources, playbooks, processes, and technologies that have been put into place.  And as a remote, distributed team, we discuss what sales enablement, team management, and sales performance management looks like for them, what works well, and what tips she has for others.

Tara Gearhart, owner of T Media Consulting, joins the show to discuss (1) established relationships with “sister agencies” and (2) the strategies that have allowed Tara, as a small business owner, to achieve sustainable growth and to carve out success as a Platinum tiered solutions partner. For partnerships, we talk about how & why she’s sought out relationships, how these help support her menu of services, protect her key areas of focus, and how these relationships appear on the client-facing side. We also talk logistics—including how these are originally scoped & made, how payments and invoicing work, and how optionality is presented to the customer. On the strategy side, we talk about building and positioning contracts for long-term engagements, the means for establishing trusted advisor relationships, and her talk track and value proposition for HubSpot in competitive sales situations with other CRMs,

Jeff Bell, President of Mindscape, joins the pod to talk about Service Hub—and how they built in a client portal through Knowledge Base and Help Desk where clients can access embedded reports unique to their business, viewing recordings of trainings and videos custom built for them, submitting tickets to their points of contact at Mindscape, and more. Jeff shares structurally how it was built, how his developers unified the UX and menu with the Mindscape website, how private content is hosted and made viewable, and how client access is provisioned through automation. After we discuss what it looks like, Jeff shares the value his team now sees by transforming the way clients engage with the team—including time savings and efficiency gains, streamlined communications with clients and between departments, and improved visibility of work in production. We wrap with how Mindscape rolled this out, how they onboarded both their teams to the new processes and how they incentivized adoption from their clients.

Angela Pointon, President of 11 out of 11, joins the show to talk about employee extended leave—and offers tips on how you can plan for things like parental leave without destroying your P&L or the client experience. Angela walks us through her approach staff-wise, how she manages a mix of both full-time and contract employees to maintain flexibility, and when, where, and how redundancies and coverage models are established. We also talk about how it’s handled on the client-side—how they’re made aware, how the transition is positioned, and how Angela’s team mitigates any client concerns or reservations. Lastly, apart from staffing, we hit on the other operational measures and processes she’s put into place to ensure continuous service delivery.

Christopher Barnett, Founder of WORQFLOW, joins the podcast to explore solutions-based selling as a catalyst for scaling small sales teams. He explains its intersection with RevOps and how it can give partners an edge in competitive scenarios with other CRMs. Christopher also delves into multi-Hub selling, shares how it enhances the value of HubSpot, spotlights his favorite Hub "pairings", and compares it with the common "land and expand" strategy. The episode rounds off with his approach to software demos, where they live in the selling process, how they're structured, and how he provisions hands-on access to prospects.

Bryan Byler, Director of Solutions Architecture at Mole Street, is here to talk about artificial intelligence—specifically, how partners can navigate the growing proliferation of AI-powered solutions and technologies. He outlines a number of use-cases that partners should consider incorporating into their work streams, tools that enable those use-cases, and how he keeps pace with the rapidly evolving AI landscape. We then move over to Mole Street’s performance within the HubSpot ecosystem, and after coming in 2nd for North American Partner of the Year, Bryan shares his insights on the team’s sales engine—including their digital transformation initiatives and emphasis on expanding existing client relationships. We wrap with his recommendations for how small teams can find success in HubSpot’s partner program—including the resources, approaches, and GTM strategies that can yield great results.

Rich Wood, CEO of Six and Flow, joins the podcast to share his team’s experimentation with generative AI. He discusses what drove the initial interest, the guardrails he’s set for his team, and how he’s begun integrating it into his workstreams, processes, and more. Rich also shares some thoughts on how to onboard a larger team to generative AI use and upskill a team’s “AI-savvy-ness”—including prompt creation, templatization, and the human “sense check” reviewal of outputs. We then discuss how generative AI has helped the team—including the efficiency gains uncovered and the pull-through impact onto the client experience.

Samuel Banks, Head of Implementation at Fuelius—a solutions partner who has been awarded three accreditations, joins the podcast to share how he identifies the work his team does as being well aligned with a specific accreditation, and how others can determine their readiness and eligibility. He shares the actual application preparation process, including who was involved across the team, the project management approach applied, the time and bandwidth required, and how to leverage the preparation resources made available. He also goes into application design, with his tips and strategies for building applications with a greater likelihood of success. And we wrap with a discussion on prerequisite certifications, and how Fuelius assigns, tracks, and manages that process.

We’re less than ONE WEEK away from World Certification Week 2023—so George B Thomas, owner of George B Thomas, LLC and longtime HubSpot Academy advocate, joins the show to walk us through the role HubSpot Academy has played throughout his career and life journey, and the impact he’s seen from achieving certifications by the dozens. We get into this year’s World Cert Week event, what his plan is, and his recommendations for others to approach it with intention. And knowing George has navigated nearly all of the HubSpot Academy catalog, he offers up his tips for operationalizing the pursuit of certifications—including how he keeps up with new additions and updates, how he determines what to take and in what order, how to keep recertifications manageable to maintain certification status, and how to improve exam pass rates overall.

The countdown to World Certification Week 2023 has begun! From May 15th through the 19th, HubSpot will donate five dollars for every certification awarded during that week to nonprofits dedicated to expanding access and opportunities for education around the world. So it makes sense that for this week’s episode, Penina Shtauber, a Director of Digital Marketing at ScaleOps, comes on the show to talk about her team leverages HubSpot Academy certifications to scale new hire onboarding efforts and reduce the ramp up time for the team. She shares the benefits behind certification assignments, both for the team and as a pull-through to their clients, how assignments are handled between company directives and self-selection, and how they continue to layer in for continued employee development.

Rod Moynihan, CEO of B.A.C., joins the show to share insights from his years of experience sitting on both sides of the SaaS partnership table. He offers his perspective on what solutions partners need to operationalize to be ready to engage with corporate, enterprise, and upmarket buyers—and how they can “earn the right” to have a seat in those discussions. We discuss the importance of deeply understanding your customers, domain, and industry—and how those evolve from serving SMBs and midmarket organizations. Rod also shares what partners looking to move upmarket should anticipate on changing—from their service offerings, sales process, and overall go-to-market strategy. We wrap with performance management and how success tends to be defined in upmarket engagements—and how citable % shifts in efficiency gains can go a long way.

Sam Anderson, CEO and cofounder of Origin63, joins the podcast to discuss her journey in becoming a technical consultant for upmarket HubSpot customers. Sam walks us through the team's original pivot to technical consulting services and how the needs of upmarket business change, become more specialized, and require thorough, post-implementation support. As Sam mentions, the actual implementation of technology is only 50% of the actual rollout—and successful change management is what truly ensures long-term success for businesses—so she explains her team’s approach to change management and post-implementation support, and how it positively impacts Origin63’s bottom line.

Yamini Rangan, HubSpot’s Chief Executive Officer, joins the show to share her vision for the HubSpot solutions partner program, HubSpot’s own strategic objectives for 2023+, the opportunities ahead for solutions partners, and her recommendations for how partners can thrive in the ecosystem. We start by checking in with her original vision statement for the partner program from a few years ago—and get her take on how HubSpot and partners are doing in realizing that vision together. We then dive into the big bets HubSpot is making in its long-term strategy development—from product development (including generative AI), to its upmarket strategy, to its own flywheel strategy across marketing, sales, and services teams. We wrap with her recommendations for solutions partners, including recommendations around depth of knowledge on things like CRM customization and extensibility, collaborative selling and servicing of customers with HubSpot, driving customer value with deep connection and engagement, and a ton more.

Jim Delaney, CEO of Traction.ai, who’s here to talk about his perspective on revenue operations, HubSpot’s Operations Hub, and the importance of a connected platform. We start with Jim’s definitions for both connection and revenue operations—and the relationship between the two. He also shares how businesses can self-evaluate when their business may be ready for RevOps support (or the types of questions partners should be asking to uncover the need). Jim also shares how he sells the value proposition and key benefits of outsourced RevOps support, including tips on how others can improve their own offerings and positioning. We then pivot over to Operations Hub, where Jim shares some of his favorite Ops Hub-powered automations and RevOps activities, what it’s been able to do for his clients, and the types of powerful use-cases other partners should be seeking out.