Do you need an in-house HubSpot Super Admin? (HubHeroes, Ep. 26)

Over the past few months, we’ve explored as much of the expanding, vast HubSpot universe as is humanly possible. We’ve talked about the HubSpot Marketing Hub, the Sales Hub, the Service Hub, the Ops Hub, and the CMS Hub. 

We’ve also unpacked how much we love HubSpot for growth-focused companies and business leaders as much (if not more) than we did 10 years ago.

But here’s the thing about HubSpot today vs. 10 years ago — as evidenced by the depth and scope of conversations we’ve had about each individual hub (and the strategies you need to drive them), HubSpot is much more complex than it used to be.

Which begs the question for companies who are looking to grow better with fully aligned marketing, sales, and service teams — when is the right time (if ever) to hire in the in-house HubHero HubSpot super admin muscle you need?

Or, is it still OK for companies to have HubSpot knowledge delegated to an inbound marketing generalist or specialist who has other responsibilities?

Here's what we cover in this episode ...

• Is HubSpot actually more complex than it used to be?
• How do you know when it's time to hire a dedicated, in-house HubHero?
• How do you define the ROI of the in-house HubSpot Super Admin?
• When is it not the right time to hire a dedicated in-house HubSpot Super Admin?

... and much more! 

RESOURCES FOR THIS EPISODE

• Why go HubSpot Marketing Hub?
• Why go HubSpot Sales Hub?
• Why go HubSpot Service Hub?
• Why go HubSpot Operations Hub?
• Inbound marketing manager + HubSpot specialist job description

SHOW TRANSCRIPT

Intro: Do you live in a world filled with corporate data? Are you plagued by silo departments? Are your lackluster growth strategies demolishing your chances for success? Are you held captive by the evil menace, Lord Lack, lack of time, lack of strategy, and lack of the most important and powerful tool in your superhero tool belt, knowledge. Never fear hub heroes.

Get ready to don your cape and mask, move into action, and become the hub hero your organization needs. Tune in each week to join the league of extraordinary inbound heroes as we help you educate, empower, and execute. Hub heroes, it's time to unite and activate your your powers. Before we begin, we need to disclose that both Devin and Max are currently employed by HubSpot at the time of this episode's recording. This podcast is in no way affiliated with or produced by HubSpot, and the thoughts and opinions expressed by Devin and Max during the show are that of their own and in no way represent those of their employer.

Liz Moorehead: Welcome back, ladies and gentlemen. Everybody else out there in the HubSpot universe, my name is Liz Murphy, your Hub Heroes podcast host and Hub Heroes Wrangler, as well as your resident content strategist. As always, I'm joined by the George b Thomas, and we got Devin this week. Max, we wish you well with your new house, but Devin, good to see you, bud. Are you guys excited for this topic this week?

Yay. You guys excited?

Devyn Bellamy: I'm insanely excited. There are a few topics I have been more excited about than this one.

Liz Moorehead: Do you know what my favorite thing about you, Devin, is? You could literally be saying

Devyn Bellamy: What's that?

Liz Moorehead: I'm a little cold in here. I'm tired. This is the most excited I have ever been about anything in my entire life. And it is that same low key chill tone every single time. Like a Devin soundboard, I would buy in a heartbeat.

I'm tired. I'm cold. I'm excited. I'm in love. I'm happy.

All the same chill. Love it.

George B. Thomas: I wish I had that superpower because mine, like, it quickly esque to, like, something

Liz Moorehead: My favorite one is the one that George already has. Hit that button for me, bud.

George B. Thomas: Oh, do I have to hit the button? Okay. I don't know, ladies and gentlemen. Maybe it's just me. Maybe I'm stupid.

Liz Moorehead: That is my favorite because I remember I think that you did that I don't remember if you did that in last week's episode, but I remember hearing that going, wait wait a minute, his mouth didn't move. Are we in a kung fu movie? What's happening? But we're not here to talk about kung fu movies. As I teased, I've got 2 gentlemen who are very excited about today's topic.

So let's dig into it because for those long time listeners, first time callers out there, you know we have spent the past few months kicking over every single rock we could find as we explored the expanding vast HubSpot universe. We've talked about HubSpot Marketing Hub, we've talked about the Sales Hub, we've talked about the Service Hub, we've talked about the Ops Hub, we talked last week about the CMS Hub. And let's face it, we've also talked about how in the past 10 years so much has changed with HubSpot. There didn't used to be hubs, there was just HubSpot. So here's the thing though, our love for it has grown But we also have to acknowledge the fact that HubSpot of yesterday is not the same as it was today, right?

And that's evidenced by the depth and scope of the conversations we've been having about each of these individual hubs, as well as the strategies that you need in order to use them effectively and maximize them to their fullest potential, which begs the question. If you're a company right now who is looking to grow better, that's the big HubSpot promise, right? With a fully aligned teams of marketing, sales and service, all flywheeling around together to inbound glory. When is the right time, if ever, to hire your own in house hub hero, your HubSpot super admin, whatever you want to call it or is it okay still for companies today to have HubSpot knowledge and expertise delegated within a role that's more of content marketing manager, inbound marketing manager, manager generalist. Now I'm gonna break with one of my norms to kick off this conversation.

So normally what I love to do at the beginning of these conversations is I delight as I watch George get like more ramped up and more ramped up. And I could just see him being like, Liz, I am mentally telegraphing you. Let me go. Put me in coach. Will you please just let me flipping speak?

So today's first question, George, is for you. I'm gonna let you kick us off. Are you ready?

George B. Thomas: Yeah. I'm I'm ready. What's funny about being ready, though, is just told me that you basically like to take the bottle and shake it up and then just, like, let it go. And so so usually my, not having Devin's ninja, like, slow roll, like, super chip Your fault because you're literally aggravating, agitating, and and getting me to the point where I get hyped up in these episodes. So at least I know that.

But I I am ready because, you mentioned this conversation to me earlier in the week of, you know, here's what we're thinking, you know, ties. And me, personally, I am absolutely fired up to, a, hear what Devin has to say, but also to have this question because it is one of the most it depends type conversations that you probably could have around hubs. And what I mean by that is we have everything from well, could it just be a one human individual that happens to also do content marketing? Maybe. Should it be somebody at at least a minimum is what I would call a, you know, HubSpot champion or HubSpot advocate in the organization to try to pay attention to it?

Yeah. Probably. But it dep should it be somebody that now in today's, you know, hub land, ecosystem is called a HubSpot super app. Probably, but again, it depends. And see that's a everybody has these mindsets of one way or not.

And really, there are different layers of what a HubSpot hero could inside of your organization and what type of HubSpot hero you might need. And so my hopes is that we go through this episode and kind of start to dissect things like 1 portal versus, starter versus enterprise, type of humans that we actually have, you know, butts in seats and really help the, audience get value. Well, we maybe should have hired somebody 3 months ago or crap. We might not need 5 p or crap. Should we be working with an agency or not working with an agency?

Should be we working with a consultant or not with a consultant? Like, these are all questions that should be running around in everybody's mind as we sets into this week's

Liz Moorehead: I loved all of that. And also, George, I would like to point something out. Are you really that surprised that I intentionally agitate you beyond comprehension? So you just spit fire for a straight minute when I once I finally let you loose and plus also I just love watching you hop around and just being like, come on, man. Let me in.

Let me in. Let me in. Siggy, which I feel like I'm getting Devin's version of that right now. So Devin, I wanna pivot over

George B. Thomas: to you for

Liz Moorehead: a second. Second. George, you kicked off this conversation by talking about why you're excited to have this conversation, and also why we have a very much it depends scenario, which I know we're gonna be unpacking here later in the talk. But one of the things that I put in today's show notes as we were preparing is I made the statement that HubSpot is more complex than it used to be. And I want to turn it over to Devin because I know you have some nuanced thoughts around that because at a top level, maybe for someone like me, I'm looking at going well there's more stuff, so it's more complex.

But I feel like you have an answer that's a little bit more nuanced than that.

Devyn Bellamy: Yeah. The answer to whether or not HubSpot is more complex than it used to be is yes and no. George and I have been working with HubSpot for a long time. Liz, you've been working with HubSpot for quite a while. And the thing is is that we've had an opportunity to grow with HubSpot.

We've had an opportunity to kind of grow our skill set within the tool as the tool itself, as the platform itself grows. So we are fortunate in that that we've been able to grow our skill set at the speed of innovation. So let's say that we're bringing in someone new. Is the HubSpot that I use harder than, it's gonna be for them? Well, the thing is is that the cool thing about HubSpot is you can utilize a lot of the same skills across tools.

Like, if you know how to build a landing page, it's not that huge of a ramp up to build an email. It's not that huge of a ramp up to build a website. And so when you're looking at the different aspects of it, the tools user experience is pretty consistent around the tools. And if you've used one, you'll be able to figure out how to use another one. Or with a few questions, maybe either academy course or you just click the help button in the bottom, you you can get through what you need to get through.

The the the complexity in HubSpot doesn't necessarily come from the tool itself. It comes from trying to figure out what you wanna do and then meeting that goal. That's that is the complex part. And so at that point, becoming a HubSpot administrator and and basically being the person who manages that, you have to understand the why behind the tool and its usage. And if the tool isn't being utilized that way, how you can get it to be utilized that way.

And yours your your idea might be considered unconventional. It might be unique. But as long as it gets the job done, good on you. You're you're doing it right. Can we probably streamline it later?

Sure. But the thing is is that when it comes to utilizing HubSpot, the UX, the UI, it's designed beautifully. It's very intuitive. And so, yes and no. It's the it's not the tool that's become more complex over the past, say, 10 years.

It's the problems that the tool can solve have become more complex over the past 10 years

George B. Thomas: Yeah.

Devyn Bellamy: And the capabilities.

George B. Thomas: I I love this where you're going, Devin, because literally, it's usually the complexity is in the brain. And so a a great example of this is, helping somebody earlier this week get on a call, and they literally say, hey. We had this meeting internally. We're not sure if we need a developer for this or not. But what we'd like to be able to do is segment conversions based on they're a business or they're an individual, and we think we need to do some type of workflow with it.

And I said, well, hang on a second. So what are you trying to do if they're a business? Well, we want them to fill out a form. What are you trying to do if they're an individual? Well, we want them to book a meeting.

And I said, well, let's go over. They happen to be using HubSpot CMS, by the way. I said, let's go over to HubSpot CMS, the page, and let's stage that page. To which they said, what do you mean stage a page? Now there's a complex right there because I now know that the marketer has been cloning pages to create pages instead of staging them and actually pushing them them out the way that HubSpot wants them done.

But we got into the staging and got past that whole hurdle and mind blowing moment for that individual to which then I said, if we were to segment them at the past, there would be no need for the workflow that you would just totally feel like right now as a user is complex. So here's this module. It's called a tabber module. And what we're gonna do is on one tab, we're gonna have it be I'm a business. And on a second tab, we're gonna have it be I'm an individual.

And we're literally gonna embed a HubSpot form on one side and a HubSpot meetings link in the other side. And you would have thought it was the second coming of Jesus because within 15 minutes, she had exactly what she needed. Super simple, but the complex was in the understanding of knowing how to speak of and to pull off the strategy for the end result that they wanted. This is when I start to think about you might have a HubSpot champion in your organization, but you need a HubSpot super admin or a HubSpot ninja or a HubSpot guru to help translate what they're trying to do in their brain to what they're trying to do in the system.

Devyn Bellamy: Yeah. And and let me let me jump right back in here. I was helping a a friend build out a report, or a dashboard, in a series of reports, and he got this thing from his client where it was a giant spreadsheet. And it's like, hold on. This data is all over the place.

What are they actually trying to find out? You got lead counts from this person. You got lead counts from that source. You got lead counts about this, lead counts by time. And it's like, are you trying to establish what channel or who is most productive when?

Because I can tell you that Cindy Lou Hu is really good at closing people from 9:30 AM to 12:30 PM, and she does is most comfortable in the showroom. Is that is is that what we're trying to figure out? Are we we trying to figure out if if Colonel Mustard did it with the candlestick in the study? What are we trying to accomplish here? And the thing is is that while you're in your comfort zone looking at the sheet of raw data, it's not necessary.

We can if you wanna see what individual rep productivity is, we can create a dashboard for that. And it's gonna be way simpler than what you're looking at, and it's going to it's it's it's going to reduce anxiety. And in order to get people there, they have to understand how to use the tool because he's just ready to recreate the spreadsheet in a dashboard. So instead of an Excel sheet that's been printed out, you now have a a dynamic, reporting feature, within HubSpot, which is great, but we can take it to the next level and actually just answer the questions that they have instead of just completely overwhelming them with data. That's where being an HubSpot admin comes into play.

George B. Thomas: Devin, I'm so excited that you actually brought up a clue reference. By the way, it's always Scarlett with the rope in the ballroom. But but the reason that I'm truly happy that you brought this whole clue scenario is because it's another piece of that has to happen inside of HubSpot, and that is if you sit here and you're listening to this, and when I say, do you know how to sleuth in HubSpot? Do you know how to find who done it? Like, who modified that workflow?

Who changed that form? Who, like, who did the thing in the portal? If you're like, I have no clue how to sleuth, well, this might be the first time I'm gonna tell you, well, you're gonna probably need that HubSpot super admin or that HubSpot professional inside of your portal. So something to think about right there, a mindset and your understanding of your own self ability to sleuth inside of HubSpot.

Liz Moorehead: You know, I wanna dig in here because one of the things that we started to dig into is it depends. It depends. It depends. Fantastic. We started peeling back the layers on the next follow-up question is well, it depends on what guys?

So what it'd be curious to hear from you is what are the self assessment questions that marketing leaders leaders or business leaders need to be asking themselves right now because let's face it, right now we're in a very weird job market. Some people, some organizations are cutting, some organizations are growing. So there is a lot of uncertainty right now for company owners as to where and how they invest their dollars. They have to get their hires and their investments right. So what are the questions they can ask themselves right now to make that easier?

Devyn Bellamy: The very first question to ask yourself is is there someone who is capable of skilling into the position? Is there someone internally who is already in who who is already familiar and comfortable with HubSpot, who I can just invest a couple weeks in to to get them to where I want them to be as far as utilizing the tool is concerned. HubSpot admin is a fairly new concept, and it is a fast growing one, but it's actually been around forever. It's just we never really use the term. We always just refer to them as the HubSpot person or the HubSpot champion in an organization.

And that speaks to the ease of the tool when you can have an informal title like that. When it's just someone who can come in and just get it done, and they don't have to have letters behind their name. They don't have to have special qualifications. They can just come in and do it. If you have that kind of person in your organization, my personal advice would be to grow that person.

Invest in that person because they're they already are familiar with your company, what you do, your idiosyncrasies. That's that's something that people tend to ignore. What you sell, they're they're they're familiar with your your brand, your customers. All they need to do is help you utilize the tool, and they're familiar with the tool. They just need to get that last little going in order to to make it over to where where it is that you wanna go.

And the thing is is that if you're ready to take that plunge, it should also be a person who you're not just gonna treat a task monkey. The person who's gonna do this is gonna be a problem solver. So with that being said, it's like you don't necessarily always need to hire a dedicated person. Now if you don't have that person in, then it's like, hey. Should do we need to bring a person in?

It's okay. Well, do do you have HubSpot Enterprise on any portal or any hub? Then the answer is yes. Because HubSpot Enterprise has so many tools and features and capabilities that if you're gonna be shelling out that kind of money, you better be maximizing your usage on it, or else you're just spending for giggles. If you have 2 or more pro hubs or 2 or more teams that use HubSpot, you're gonna want somebody to keep that data tight and keep the processes clean.

And that, believe it or not, is not a full time position. That is, if you're doing it right, a couple days a week check-in to make sure nobody blew anything up. If you have more than 15 users, things can get muddled. At that point, you need to start looking at permissions and identifying who can do what because, like George said, you're gonna do a lot of sleuthing figuring out who did what. Our default coming into Hub spot is not everybody has access to everything in our hub spot portal.

I am a hub spot subject matter expert. I would gladly go to the HubSpot Olympics. I've won stuff in HubSpot Jeopardy. I cannot make emails in our portal, and it's just, hey. You gotta earn it.

You gotta need it, and if you need it, then we'll do it. If not, you don't really need to touch the tool. Fill out this thing, and we'll do a thing for you. Can't make forms because people were creating so many fields and so many properties and so many forms that were just really duplicates and derivatives of other forms. It's like, well, are you sure you actually need that, or can we just use this form to do what you gotta do?

And so that's when when the more users you have, the more you're gonna need someone to keep the portal clean, keep your data clean, standardized inputs. Like, that's that's the kind of thing that you're gonna need in order to be successful. Like, if if it was someone you would have needed a database admin for 20 years ago, 15 years ago, you're gonna need a HubSpot person for now. And and the biggest thing is that if your cross functionality is suffer. If your sales team is using it one way and your marketing team is using it another way, and it's the fastest way to get bad data, And what's gonna happen is that one team or the other is going to stop using it, and then you're going to end up just dealing with so many change management issues that would have been solved had you had someone that owned it.

So you don't necessarily just to bring it all back together, you don't necessarily have to hire someone to own it, but someone has to own it, whether that's a new hire, whether that's someone internal, or whether that's a solutions partner agency that you've teamed up with.

George B. Thomas: Yeah. I wanna jump in here real quick because I wanna double down on a couple of things that you said, Devin. 1, let's go back to the actual human and talk about the humans. Right? If if you're sitting here wondering, well, that sounds nice, bro.

But, like, how do I know if I have that human in my organization? There's a couple things that you can ask yourself. Do you have somebody who is a self educator? Do you have somebody who is a self starter? Does that person also like to tinker and test?

Because if they like to tinker and test and they've got the educational mindset and you don't have to babysit them, they can grow themselves into a super dope, super admin, or HubSpot champion, or whatever they become from a HubSpot 0 to a HubSpot hero, they they'll be able to do it. So if you know you have somebody in your organization, then roll with that. Also, I wanna double down on Devon, you said anything enterprise. And I think that listeners need to know anything enterprise because usually when you enter the world of enterprise, now you're talking about things like email send frequency settings. You're talking about business units potentially.

You're talking about private content. Right? You might even get in the world transactional emails. Like, there's a bunch of different email preferences because maybe there's a bunch of different and you integrate with Snowflake, yes, you should have a super admin at your organization. I'm just gonna throw that out there real quick because the data's getting nerdy and the things that you're doing around it.

So I would even add in that right there. If there are certain integrations that make you have to connect dots, just like Devin said, if you have 2 or more pro hubs, the mindset is how are we able to connect the dots between the things that are separated even though we're using HubSpot, the all on one or all in one kind of situation or scenario. So I just wanna double down on those things because I think if they start to hear specific tools and specific mindsets that that helps connect everything that they need to know as they kind of move through the rest of this episode.

Liz Moorehead: HubSpot Super Admins. You've been doing a lot of training and education on that recently. And I wanna ask you something about that before we pivot back to the discussion at hand. Although quite frankly, this is this is the discussion, right? HubSpot has been around for years.

The HubSpot super admin conversation is emerging. Why is that and why are you excited about it?

George B. Thomas: Well, so the reason why it's emerging is because there's just so many moving parts to what we can do. And, honestly, what I mean when I say moving parts is that there's a higher adoption rate of multi hub scenarios being inserted into businesses. So much more now than you used to see, you'll walk into an organization and they're like, yep. We got all 3, which by the way, that's a red flag for me because I know there's more than 3. But in their mind, yep.

We got all 3. It used to be that you'd work with somebody and they just had marketing, or they just enabled it for their sales team. So there's so much, like, just org wide that's happening, because of the adoption of HubSpot and the great job that HubSpot has done from a marketing and sales perspective and the partner program and the partners have done from just getting it out into the world. I'll tell you why am I excited about it is because, humbly, I have got an opportunity to work with HubSpot Academy and Dan Tire, and we've actually been doing for the past 5 weeks. This next week coming up will be the last week, A a 6 week boot camp where we had 300 HubSpot users sign up in 45 minutes because they wanted to go through the super admin boot camp.

Now the reason that excites me is because there are 300 people that in 45 minutes realize that they still need to learn and understand more about HubSpot so that they can do a better job for their organizations because they care passionately about the success of those around them. The other thing that excites me about that is that I am even on the ticket to even be asked to do that teaching. Like, the understanding of a decade of using HubSpot and and kind of how I've wrapped my brain around, all of the hubs, to be in that position has been super exciting. I'm also excited though because we're gonna do it again and again and again because we're on this mission to help make more super admin users that really can just kick butt and take names when they're in HubSpot portals. The thing that has been a really good life lesson through this, Liz, though, is that there are about 1200 different ways you can do the same thing in HubSpot.

And we've sue seen super admins, express in the Slack channel, talk about it in the after hours, and share ways that they've actually done things that, you know, most just can't kind of figure out. And so having access to what I'll call this higher level HubSpot users to see even the still need for advanced education and a community where they can, like, brainstorm just super high end dope ideas for their business, it's it's just been fascinating to me.

Liz Moorehead: So let's go back to my point here for a minute. I asked you at the start of this part of the conversation, you know, peep company leaders and marketing leaders, they have to get this right. This is not an economy right now where people I think are breathing easily no matter how healthy your revenue streams and your sales pipelines are. Nobody's breathing a huge sigh of relief right now. So let's say somebody has started asking themselves these questions and they're starting to point toward, we gotta hire somebody, right?

But if they're having that hedging moment, how do they understand or quantify or qualify the ROI of that kind of hire.

George B. Thomas: I mean, I don't work for HubSpot, so I can say these next words that are kinda come out of my mouth. Yo, people. HubSpot ain't cheap. Right? You can let that junk sit on the shelf as long as you want, and it's like flushing money down the toilet.

It's it'd be like buying a Nascar, car, like a, you know, a $1,000,000, car, a nazcar car, and sitting it in your driveway and never having somebody that could ever drive it around the track. What a waste of time. What a waste of money. And so when you're thinking like, hey. Do I try to do this myself and it's gonna take me 18 months to even get anything going?

Or do I buck up and actually get an expert in here who might be able to do it in a fraction of the time? Therefore, we get more juice, right, out of the squeeze of HubSpot that we're paying for. Like, that's the thing. Like, we're okay. I'm gonna go less HubSpot, more humans for a second.

We're really bad at diagnosing the cost of long term, like, laziness than we are, like, implementing fast paced, like, the ability to do things in the moment. And so what I would say is if you know you're honest with yourself and you're like, this is gonna take me 6 months to learn, 4 months to implement, another 6 months to tweak. Oh my gosh. We're like 2 years out. Do the math of what 2 years times your yearly or monthly HubSpot cost is, then reverse engineer how much would it cost me to get somebody in here that's a, like, super admin consultant or agency or employee or whatever direction you go, I bet the math works out pretty interestingly.

Devyn Bellamy: Well, I can tell you straight from Big Sprocket that one of the tools that we've pulled out for our partners is a cost of ownership, evaluation, and that is one of, the things that we're gonna be rolling out to partners to help them have a conversation about, the cost of ownership because, like, these things are expensive. The the alternative is more expensive. The thing is that you have these tools. You don't have someone in to manage them. You're not gonna do it as effectively.

You're gonna be losing money. And at that point, you have to decide whether or not you're going to try and solve the problem with what you have, which isn't always a good answer, or whether or not you, are ready to make it better. Because either way, it's going to be an investment. The thing is is that you have to figure out what is the best investment for you. Because at the end of the day, you have problems that need to be solved, and your CRM is supposed to be solving them.

And you can say, well, I'm gonna have to spend between 60 a 120 a year on, someone to run this. It's like, okay. But how much more are you going to make by running it effectively? How much more are you going to have if this person is able to help you increase your conversion rates, is able to reduce people time and and and hours spent working with broken processes. How much time is saved by not going through bad data or deduplicating because you're bringing data in from multiple sources, including fat fingered human beings.

The thing is is that you you you're it's gonna cost you more to not hire the person than it is to bring them in. And that's the end of the day, that's cost of ownership. And then when you're looking at the tool itself, we're only talking about bringing in 1 person. One thing that no one said on this yet is you're gonna need a team of people to manage, the different aspects of HubSpot. Like, no.

You're gonna need a team of people to manage the different aspects of your business operations. Sure. If if you're going to utilize HubSpot and make that the backbone of your, internal operations and your growth, then you don't need a team of people to utilize the tool or or or, be administrators in the tool. What you need is a team of people to figure out what's best for the team in its entirety, not just the siloed departments. And then you just need that person to bring it all together because it you don't need a team to manage HubSpot.

You need a team of people to do their jobs, but you only need one person to be the administrator and handle the maintenance and be that go to person as opposed to, like, if you're going with Big Blue, then you're gonna need a team of people who have, letters after their name and get really nerdy about, object relationship management and coding and, custom integrations. And and it's like, these are all things you can do in HubSpot, but you don't need to have them happen immediately in order to, achieve success.

George B. Thomas: The good thing, Devin, is if they're listening to this podcast, they already probably know that, Big Purple and big blue ain't what to do, but they should be shilling for big sprocket from here on out for sure for sure.

Devyn Bellamy: Absolutely. We bleed orange around here.

Liz Moorehead: Okay. Look. I'm the one who has the bad poetry game. Okay? I get that I'm being nice this week, George, but that doesn't mean that you get to steal my shtick.

George B. Thomas: Hey. If you give an inch, I'm gonna take a mile. I'm just throwing it out there because when, you know, when I can, I will? I can hear you. Your

Devyn Bellamy: headphones No.

Liz Moorehead: No. I really thank you, Devin. That was good. No. You you

George B. Thomas: Can you hear me?

Liz Moorehead: Used to be the favorite, Devin. Oh, I heard him.

George B. Thomas: Oh. I love

Liz Moorehead: to hear him.

George B. Thomas: You used to. Used to. Liz Liz literally said, Devin, just That's what she said.

Liz Moorehead: I would never say that to him. George, I was gonna ask you a question. Now I'm gonna ask Devin a question. Good job. Congratulate Well there we go.

Now it feels like normal. Now it feels better. Okay. So how do you find these people? How do you find these HubSpot super admins?

Where are they living? I would also add a follow-up in there. Do these Spot super admins even know who they are?

Devyn Bellamy: 1st, let me answer the second question first. You'd be surprised how often that one is no. Mhmm. There are extremely talented people that are in the tool every day that don't realize it's like Myspace and CSS. You don't realize you were playing with a 6 figure skill set until years later, when it was like, oh, yeah.

I knew how to do that. I should have capitalized that and focused on it, and maybe I'd be making more money.

Liz Moorehead: That was live job for me.

Devyn Bellamy: Thank you

Liz Moorehead: very much. But okay.

Devyn Bellamy: It's it's the same thing with with HubSpot. There are people who are genuinely talented with the tool, people who went through logic trees in college and and have an understanding of how workflows work. People who have the basic skills in order to take it to the next level, but just don't because they think of themselves as a content creator, or they think of themselves as an email marketer. And they focus on the channel, not realizing that if they just pivot just a little bit and focus more on the tool and and and don't treat it like it's just another tool in the toolbox or it's just another thing that we use, and really do a deep dive on, the tool itself, the the the opportunities just open. There there are so there there are more HubSpot portals than there are professional HubSpot admins right now.

And it's for me, the past, I'd say 6 years now, the entire cornerstone of my career has been around being a HubSpot admin. And I've been fortunate enough to be positioned as a thought leader in the space, And I've been able to do some pretty dope things and solve some pretty interesting problems having worked for various agencies. I started out using HubSpot as an individual contributor at a a SaaS startup. And so what we did is we grew our HubSpot professional or HubSpot admin internally. And so the thing is is that if you are a HubSpot user, you don't have to wait for permission to grow as a HubSpot professional.

You can take the initiative to go into HubSpot Academy, get the certifications, try something new, and then when you're in a meeting, you can say, hey, well, you know, we can solve this problem by doing that, this, and that using the tool, instead of the convoluted Rube Goldberg Looney Tunes machine that you guys were sketching out. We can just just do this. And poof, you'll make more money. And then the next thing you know is you're documenting it. You're gonna get hit by, headhunters and recruiters.

Because, like, I knew if something happened with me and HubSpot, I have no problem finding another job. Because I have a skill set that I can hang my hat on with no problem that every person who has HubSpot, every organization that has HubSpot needs. So my first thing is to grow someone with aptitude who understands the why. If you don't have the opportunity, then look for someone who has the aptitude and understands the why. There's a person who is on my team who comes from the Salesforce background.

They're certified admin or whatever the term that they use over there, and she has a lot of integration experience, a lot of tech experience, understands, like, if you put an ERD in front of her, she'll understand, like, oh, okay. So this object talks this object in this way. So she's already, like, 9 tenths of the way there.

George B. Thomas: So so let me jump in here. So for all of those people who are like, who, what, what, e r d, an entity relationship diagram is what you're gonna wanna Google after that because that's what Devon was talking about. But let me step in here for a second because I think fundamentally too, there's another piece of this that I feel like somebody or some people out there might need to hear. And that's I think some people don't connect with themselves as HubSpot super admins or HubSpot ninjas or HubSpot, like, amazing people because fundamentally, we just kind of deal with imposter syndrome. Doesn't matter how long we've used it.

Doesn't matter how much we've educated ourselves. We just always feel like there's somebody that's better than us. Well, I wish I could be like that person or this person or man, I wish I could be smart enough to do that or be you know, create that and stop it. Believe in yourself, educate yourself, understand your own value, and don't let that negative speak in your head make you not feel like you are the amazing hub hero, the amazing super admin that you really, really are? Well, they think that HubSpot is a shiny silver bullet.

It's a gym that you can go into and never work out and always lose weight, that you put 5 coins in and, you know, $50 come out. Other words, they're not ready to do the work. They don't think about the strategy first. You know, it's they're not passionate about truly what they're trying to solve the problem or for the humans, and they don't even take the time to really get the right people, in the organization to run HubSpot the way that it can run. Like, there's multiple ways you can jack this junk up.

Devyn Bellamy: Yeah. Yeah. I real quick. I just wanted to throw out there. Also, being either impressed by or intimidated by terminology.

I've I've seen people fail on both sides of that. I I just wanted to throw that really quick out there. People who are overly impressed by techno or by the terminology. There was a guy who always used to get, like, the sage head nods whenever he would throw out the term, a b multivariate testing. And here here here's the thing for those of you who don't know, that's not an actual thing.

That's like saying I'm driving my Ford Pontiac. It it it it they're 2 There's AB testing, which is where you're changing a thing and then comparing results off that change. And then there is multivariate testing, where you're changing multiple things and then comparing it against your control. But there is no a b multivariate. That's like saying, I'm going to use my left right hand to shake your hand.

It it's they're they're 2 completely different things. So I just I just wanted to throw that out there. It's the the concepts in these problems, while the person who's articulating how to solve them may not sound like an MBA, get past the words and the vocabulary and look at the foundation. And then direct that person to HubSpot Academy. They'll get the, vocabulary fine.

But the key is if they understand big picture in the moving parts, then they are a huge asset.

George B. Thomas: Yeah. If you try to sound smart, you might not be. But if you can simplify the complex, well, then you sure are.

Liz Moorehead: Well, I don't know how to follow that mic drop. I don't think I'm even gonna try, guys. I don't even think I'm gonna try. So here's what I want us to do to end this conversation today. And I'm sure it'll be a surprise to no one because it's pretty much the same question I ask every week.

Gentlemen pretend I have the memory capacity of a concussed drunk goldfish. If I remember nothing else from this conversation, nothing at all except one thing, What's it gonna be and why? Other than go see a doctor about my concussion.

George B. Thomas: I mean, you shouldn't you should take care of that. I'm gonna keep it real simple, and then I'll let Devin actually close this out this week. This whole episode, there's been something ringing in my brain the whole time, and that is we all have to understand, which, by the way, I'm super excited. I have my first employee starting on Monday, and, like, I'm I'm just ready to rock and roll. And so I think maybe this is also why this conversation is, like, fresh and hot, and I'm ready to talk about it because literally bringing in, an expert, having, what I'm about to say inside of the organization, and and knowing that everybody listening this needs to have this in their organization.

And that is if you're sitting out there, just realize 2 heads are better than 1. Four pairs of eyes are better than 2. You know, 2 hearts have more passion that like, it I can keep doing the math for you if you want. But other humans alongside you to do dope stuff with HubSpot is always gonna be a win win situation.

Liz Moorehead: Alright, Devin. My fire spitter. Bring us home. What's our one thing?

Devyn Bellamy: The one thing is always keep agencies in mind. They are the ultimate in fractional resources, whether or not you need fractional CMO, fractional rev ops, or just a fractional HubSpot admin. I literally have just gone in and fixed somebody's portal for them and straightened things out, and the retainer was I pop in once a month and unbreak what they've broken. And that's that's that's a real thing, where you don't necessarily have to grow someone. You don't necessarily have to find, to train in house, to scale up.

If you don't have that kind of capital, or you don't have that kind of time, then instead of trying to hire talk to an agency. I know a guy. He's got an agency. He also has a podcast that I'm on with him. You might know him.

His name is George b Thomas. He's he's a great guy. Yeah. Yeah. But if, for what of ever reason, if, you know, HubSpot expert, highly decorated Star Wars nerd doesn't tickle your fancy, you can always go on the, HubSpot solutions directory, and look at that.

It's been newly revamped. There's new filters, and it's going to be updating even more. But there are a lot of experts out there. Just find them. And if you can't find them, do what we've done and just become them.

Liz Moorehead: I love it. You know what? And I promise you, George did not put us up this. I don't know what did you spike my coffee this morning with, like, nice juice to you? Because not only am I going to second that emotion from Devin, I'm also going to throw out there, man, if you are someone who's looking to level up your skills as a HubSpot super admin, there is literally no other resource out there than George B.

Thomas, I got to throw that out there. Okay. Next week, George, it's back it's back in the dog house. I can't believe. No.

Don't get used to this. I see you smiling. I see you. You know what? Forget you.

Forget you. We're done with you George. We're done. But to everyone else, if you loved what you heard today, drop us a review. If you have an idea for an episode, drop us a review.

If you'd like to tell me how beautiful you think I sound, definitely drop me a review. But just for me though, just for me. And with that, we'll talk to y'all next week.

Devyn Bellamy: Bye bye.

George B. Thomas: Bye bye. Okay, hub heroes. We've reached the end of another episode. Will lord lack continue to loom over the community, or will we be able to defeat him in the next episode of the hub heroes podcast? Make sure you tune in and find out in the next episode.

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