Sarah Bedrick, Co-Founder at SaaS Academy Advisors

Speaker A: It's so funny when we were doing it like that was our goal, but we had no idea how big it was going to turn out to be. We just had really strong mission and vision and team principles and we were such a cohesive, gelled team. Um, we just gelled so well and I think that allowed us to have trust in one another.

Speaker B: Welcome to the B2B Digitized Podcast, where leaders of B2B technology startups and scale ups learn how to use digital transformation to differentiate, educate, build trust, improve competitive positioning, close sales faster without compromise, and scale revenue growth. Now here's your host, Joshua Feinberg from SP Home Run.

Speaker C: Uh, hey, it's Joshua Feinberg from the B2B Digitized Podcast. I have a very special guest here with me today. I'm welcoming Sarah Bedrick, known Sarah for many, many years, going back to her days at HubSpot Academy. Sarah is now involved as a co founder of SaaS Academy Advisors and Thrive Consulting. Thrive Coaching. Sarah, welcome to the podcast.

Speaker A: Hi Joshua. Thanks for having me.

Speaker C: Oh, ah, you're very welcome. Thanks for coming on the podcast. Um, the first place I usually like to start with most guests is if you can give us a little bit of your journey, how you got to where you currently are. Did you always know you're going to end up on this path when you're growing up and thinking about going off to school? Or did this just kind of happen through different circumstances? And how are, what are you working on specifically today?

Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, great question. So I think I was one of the lucky few who grew up knowing what I wanted to do. Um, as like, as young as I can remember, I was always starting little businesses, obviously the lemonade stand. And in second, uh, grade I had an origami, uh, origami paper business. And just a common theme throughout. Like everything I've done in my career has been entrepreneurial and starting something from scratch. Um, but a lot of like, the intricacies of what I've done, um, helping to start the HubSpot Academy team and scale that over six and a half years, um, co founding an HR startup, um, a lot of that, like I didn't plan out, like it just happened and just following the breadcrumbs of joy, if you will. Um, and that's really led me to where I am today, which is kind of combining all of that and putting it together. And now I'm working with two former HubSpot Academy team members and we're advising software companies on how to build their own and scale their own academy or University initiatives.

Speaker C: Yeah, I saw that. It sounds um, like a fantastic idea just given how rapidly digital transformation has accelerated during the pandemic and how it's so much more important to be able to help people get more value faster and being able to do that without necessarily the benefit of being physically in the same classroom.

Speaker A: Yes, absolutely. And just to add on to that, because I think that's a great point, um, building an academy or a university initiative like is something that all of the world class businesses today are doing or have done and so many more people are entering this, taking um, on this approach. But it's still so new that there's not a lot of people with the experience or the knowledge and the know how to get it done. Um, and so like what we saw from HubSpot Academy was so powerful for the business, but it was exponentially greater for all of the people who went through our training and were able to level up for free, get promotions, change jobs, like just leveling up their entire life. And that's really what we're so excited to help other businesses do for their uh, learners, their users, their people and um, yeah, their industry.

Speaker C: Yeah. I always, with leading the HubSpot user group over the years, I always, as I told people about HubSpot Academy and specifically about the training and certification programs, I usually set it somehow in the context that if you have a friend or family member who's the dean of a business school and you're currently selling a digital marketing program where people are taking a second mortgage on the house, you're going to be very nervous when you see just how amazing the free content is that comes out of Academy like that.

Speaker A: Totally. Yes, absolutely. And thank you.

Speaker C: No, it's terrific. Um, so given all of that for someone that is relatively new to digital marketing, that's relatively new to customer education and customer success, what advice would you give someone that's just getting started with all this on how to ah, get the ball rolling?

Speaker A: Yeah, sure. Um, I personally believe one of the most impactful things for my own career and for the careers of those who around me who have been tremendously successful has been having mentors. Um, and I don't think like, I think when you say the word mentor, a lot of people think like go out and ask people to be your mentor. Um, but what I mean more so is finding like your own council of experts, your own um, go to group of people that you turn to when you have business questions or when you have career related questions or when you need help, um, working through a Problem with maybe your manager, um, or deciding on a career path. And I think, um, having people that you can turn to that have either done this before or doing it at the same time as you is such a fantastic way to learn. Um, and then I think also like reading tons of books and blogs from people that you want to emulate their career or emulate them in some capacity. Um, so like Ariana Huffington or maybe Oprah or maybe Katie Burke, um, finding people that you really aspire to follow and just learning from them from afar. Um, I mean it'd be so hard to get one of them as a mentor. Uh, I don't wanna say impossible, cause nothing's impossible, but it'd be really challenging. So you can still learn from them, read their books, read their articles online. Um, and I think that's an excellent way to get started because you have the counsel around you who are with you for where you are right now, and then the inspirational leaders that you can learn from, um, and continue to develop your own models and um, just mindsets from.

Speaker C: Yeah, I think you hit the nail on the head. It is so much just the reading is that when you think about the bond that you have with someone when they're consuming video content, actually there's gotta be tens of thousands of people that went through courses that you created while you're at ah, HubSpot, um, that feel like in a lot of ways that you mentored them.

Speaker A: That's really, really kind of you to say. Yeah, and I, and I think um, yeah, video is so, so, so important for business owners, for people getting started, um, and sharing your own journey and, and I think it's such a great way to expedite or accelerate the trust that you have with people as well. So it helps them to get to know who you are, what you're like and um, if it's someone that you want to do business with or learn from.

Speaker C: I've always found that over the years is that when someone that you're having an initial meeting with a new customer or prospect or something and they've already consumed hours and hours of your content and heard you speak, it's like a lot of the anxiety, a lot of the nervousness, a lot of the, um, it's already been done. A lot of the heavy lifting has already been done. That's the power of great content marketing, that's the power of great training, great uh, academy. And um, when I look around in the SAS industry or the wider like technology industry, everyone still points to the amazing work and foundation that you and the team built at HubSpot Academy as like the world class gold standard for what everyone wants to emulate.

Speaker A: That's so beautiful. And thank you for saying that. And it's so funny. When we were doing it, like that was our goal, but we had no idea how big it was going to turn out to be. We just had really strong mission and vision and team principles and we were such a cohesive, gelled team. Um, we just gelled so well and I think that allowed us to have trust in one another like an improv team. Improv is so great because one person can take a big risk and it can fail miserably, but they know that their other improv team members are there to like, take that big fail and turn it into an even bigger success than it would have been otherwise. Um, and so I think that is part of the reason that led to our, um, just, yeah, really unique success.

Speaker C: Did you find that most of the people who had joined the team came from, uh, either a customer service, like tech support or customer success kind of background? And some people successfully jump into that context without having spent several months or a couple of years learning to walk in the shoes of the customers?

Speaker A: Yeah, that's such a good question. Our initial team members, like some of us had business backgrounds or had worked in software, but then a lot of people that we hired didn't. Um, one of the team members, Rachel Goodman Moore, came from like a neuroscience background. Like she had, she was a researcher, a scientist. Somebody else had studied history at Yale. It's a great school, but had studied history. Right. And so everyone had like this unique perspective that they were able to bring. And I think that's also something that's so beautiful, is when you take, um, history or science or researching really well and you're able to intersect those fields and those learnings with what we were doing to make what we were doing even more successful.

Speaker C: A lot of schools of thought too, on when you're hiring on a sales team, a lot of times they try to match the context of understanding a certain business model, understanding a certain size of the purchase size of the client. I imagine there's something to be said for that as well, with having some relevant career experience to really understand the Persona on a much deeper level. Even before you start getting into planning curriculum.

Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, certainly, for sure.

Speaker C: So for someone that is in this role that has been running an academy, that's been running a customer success, a customer education program for several years and is trying to figure out what to do to reboot and get back on track. Maybe they've just been through a rough year or two. Maybe there's been a lot of turnover within their company. What would you do to advise someone to help them, um, refine their way, reignite their passion, and, uh, help figure out where they should go next? With a program like that?

Speaker A: Yeah. And I just want to make sure. So you mean like, um, an individual who's leading some sort of academy initiative to get that back on track? Not like them personally. Okay.

Speaker C: Or someone that's working on a team like that. Yeah. That's faced a lot of struggles. Maybe the company is in a. Say, for example, they were selling SaaS to the restaurant industry, uh, that just faced a really brutal 2020 or hospitality or something similar to that. Um, and because of that, they felt a downstream effect because their customer, uh, base is so concentrated.

Speaker A: Yeah, Yeah. I think the most important thing, and this isn't just even in this situation, this is just in life, is having, um, making sure that you have the right mindset. Like, when you go through really challenging times, your business or you personally can be really easy to get down on yourself and get lost and get into this mindset. Like, of some people call it like, saboteur brain and things aren't going to work out, or I don't see any solutions. Like, I don't know what to do next. And that's a really disempowering state. So I'd say, like, first and foremost. Excuse me, first and foremost, I think really evaluating your mindset and making sure that it is one that's empowering, one that is compelling and exciting for you, and I think more tangibly after that is like doing an audit, like seeing. Seeing where you actually are today. Um, I mean, for the last 18 months or more now, since the start of COVID for a lot of people, things didn't shape out how they planned. And so looking at, like, what did I want to happen, what actually happened, and what's the learning here? And those little, like, learnings are like nuggets of wisdom that you can look back to and keep with you for now and forever into the future, because things are going to continue to change at a rapid pace. Um, so just learning from what you wanted to happen, what actually happened, and why it shook out that way. Um, and then I think, again, learning from others. Is there someone that is really doing an excellent job at something you want to do? How can you pull them in as an advisor, as a mentor, as a friend, to just have a one off call and help, um, you know, soak in their positive energy and also learn from them and, like, what they're doing, their mistakes. So you can take your learning curve from this down to here, suck it all, you know, shrink it all the way down.

Speaker C: Do you find in those situations, both looking through the shoes of others as well as even through career, like, we all have these inning, we have these, uh, chapters, we have these innings, we have all these different roles that we have, and eventually it all rolls together and what makes us who we are today. Do you think there's any clues in the past that help us find where we're going next?

Speaker A: Oh, my gosh, I could go on this forever. This is like, something I absolutely love. So, um, as you know, I'm also, you mentioned thrive coaching, so I'm also a career and life coach. And so, like, this has been for the past four years, something I've been deeply obsessed with. Because when I was trying to leave HubSpot or when I was like, deciding whether I wanted to leave, you know, on paper, everything was really fantastic. And, um, how could I leave such a great company? And I had built this great team with these great people, and we were doing such great things. Why would anybody in their right mind leave? Um, and I actually got the help of a career coach. And from that, oh, my gosh, so much powerful insights about myself and my learning and my growth came from that. And what I didn't realize was that just like we do in life, um, in work settings, we also pick up, like, career baggage, if you will. Um, so maybe an example is like, your boss undermines you in front of people you manage, or you get a really bad review and you're expecting a great review, or you get fired randomly. Um, all of that starts to create this mindset that you develop. And if you don't complete that process, what's happened, at least the negative if you don't, probably the positive too. But if you don't process what's happened to you, um, and you don't complete your past, you end up making decisions on the paths that you take in life based off of, like, an, an incomplete past or through the lens of, like, what had happened to you. So, yeah, I think it's really important for us as individuals as well as professionals, parents, wives, husbands, um, team members on a sports team, to just be really aware of, like, the things that pop up that are emotionally charged or even, like, emotionally traumatic and use that to, like, make us a more stronger team member, partner, um, decision maker, business Owner, marketer, whatever it might be.

Speaker C: Yeah, that adds a whole new dimension to this as well. Because you not only have your work family that's heavily involved in oftentimes infusing over into your life outside of work, but now with, with so many people working from home, um, at least for the last year and a half, maybe for at least for the next few months, it's like every day is bringing your kids to work day and bring your spouse to work day so they get to see the good, the bad, the not so good and.

Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Fortunately, my kiddo's at daycare right now, so he won't be popping in, but maybe next time.

Speaker C: And then there'll be that period of time when they get curious about what you do if they're, if he's not ready.

Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. Sometimes he'll come over here and be like, mommy, work, I work. And I'm like, oh my gosh. He like knows what work is and you know, he, he wants to work now.

Speaker C: What is this? A 10 year old started a, uh, YouTube channel about two years ago and he's been doing it on a while. I think he's been taking a break for the last several months. But it's really interesting that totally digital native, he's never known life without a tablet or stream.

Speaker A: Oh my gosh, can we just acknowledge 10 years old and he started his own YouTube channel. Like this generation, uh, you know, we better watch out for them.

Speaker C: Wanted to show his friend he was watching a lot of videos on how to get better at Roblox and Fortnite and he wanted to show his friends how to get better at Roblox. So he started.

Speaker A: That's awesome. Like and subscribe.

Speaker C: Yeah, uh, uh, it's interesting. We had to watch a little bit carefully too because a lot of the gamers that were creating the videos were teens and 20 somethings and some of them are a little less filtered than they should be. It's not all Disney and PBS down. So. Yeah, uh, it's been an interesting part of it too.

Speaker A: Good on you. Good on you.

Speaker C: Sarah, how would your advice change for how to approach this for existing customers? Like a customer success onboarding framework as opposed to using the training and the education as a lead generation or revenue growth engine with prospects.

Speaker A: Yeah, yeah.

Speaker C: Remember within the early days of like Inbound Marketing University and HubSpot Academy, a lot of, a lot of the training was originally focused on HubSpot customers that already had software. And then at some point there started to be all this great training that was completely platform agnostic.

Speaker A: Um, yeah, no that's a really really great point and I think, I mean there's actually, I think I saw something on this recently um, actually that was more focused on like how do you know if you should do self paced versus um or monetized versus free. Uh but yeah there's a lot of things to consider. Like there's a lot of inputs to decide. Um, what we see and what we work with mostly is like a lot of people who are trying to improve their customer retention, their product adoption and that usually starts from the customer success angle. Um and so a lot of people start there um, just because they also I mean there's so many different top line and bottom line metrics that can be improved from building an academy or university initiative, um, like support ticket deflection and helping uh, the CSMs manage even more logos or more accounts because they're able to better self service and better educate themselves. Um, but yeah most of what we're seeing is a lot of people are, most companies are starting with uh, the CSM angle and then they start and this is what happened with HubSpot Academy and then they start seeing well wait a minute, we're now in a more mature market, we're ah like a more mature business. We can start focusing on the brand and the larger industry focus or product agnostic as you said, training. Um, and that's uh, yeah that's what we did on the HubSpot Academy team. We started all on product. It was like the executives gave us a goal of focusing on the customers and leads just started coming or yeah like leads just started coming into our classes and we realized wait a minute, there's a huge opportunity to just bring this education to the greater market. And that's when we really started focusing on um, educating like all marketing professionals and inbound.

Speaker C: I remember we went through a similar type of aha moment with the user groups where they originally supposed to be primarily for customers and then they'd say wait, I want to invite my friend, I want to invite my boss, I want to invite my brother in law, whatever. And uh, there were so many people that were getting so much value out of it even if they were just kind of sort of thinking about getting the software in the future and the same kind of thing. So then ultimately it's up to the company to decide their priorities. Whether they care more about customer activation and retention and uh, helping to drive more expansion on usage of a platform or whether they're looking to drive more awareness and Growth for an easier sales process or ideally being able to rub your belly and pat your head at the same time.

Speaker A: Totally. And I would say don't do what I did, which was when I Co founded comp. Coming from HubSpot Academy, I looked around um, the HR industry and was like wow, there hasn't been much innovation here and SHRM is like the SO society um, for human resources management, like they were still the go to for all HR learning and um, certifications. And I was like wow, there needs to be some like newer energy and newer blood in here. And so I built Compt University and as a new business that had, we had taken a funding approach where we weren't taking on a lot of like large rounds of um, investment. And so we didn't have like, we ran really lean, we didn't have a ton of money to invest in something like that and we weren't a well known business. And there was also no one else doing what we were doing which was stipends. And so it was such a brand new concept like employee stipends. Like what is this? And so to launch something as big as a Compt University um, that was focused on educating the industry was just an enormous challenge. So like coming out of the gate that wasn't, you know, that was a quick learning on my part. I skinned my knees there quite a bit and was like all right, that didn't work out how I wanted to. Fortunately we didn't spend a ton of money or time um, and really helped to shape like what I ended up doing next which was way more successful than um, trying to come out the gate with an academy.

Speaker C: It's a tricky, deceptive thing to be able to navigate all of this because the out of pocket cost for like what you need with equipment and software is so absurdly nominal that um, especially out of the gate that you can really get faked out. I think it was Seth Godin, one of his books years ago, it was a linchpin or something like that where he talked about that the factory is now your laptop. Everyone can own the factory for $1200, $1500 and now uh, what do you do to differentiate?

Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, fantastic point. Wow. When you think about it that way it's like yeah, it can be deceptive how easy it would be.

Speaker C: Yeah, I mean slides in a Zoom account and in theory you can start teaching classes. But yeah, it's a matter of like how to organize it, how it serves the company objectives and not being pulled in too many different directions and Then, okay, now once you're maxed out m. You know, what does the team look like, what does the next steps look like and how are you going to measure to make sure that you're really making the progress you think you want to be?

Speaker A: Yes, yes. Yeah. Like industry maturation or your products, like your products. Brand, uh, awareness. There's a lot of things at play to decide. Yeah.

Speaker C: Smart goals. Right now they morphed into uh, More broadly the OKRs, like objectives and key results. Everyone so many times wants to measure the stuff that is difficult to measure and sometimes impossible to measure, at least with the current technology that exists today. And that's sometimes the most difficult part is that the stakeholders, investors and board is just trying to come up with a number and sometimes it's really, really hard to always find that number specifically and you end up going to what's easier to measure and that may not necessarily be the right answer.

Speaker A: Totally. Yeah. And if you're, if you're ah, like a, a smaller business or you're just a newer business, it can be really hard to get um. Yeah, it can be really hard to get to the numbers. Like to know the numbers. Especially like when we were starting comp, we were like, well, what's a good number of website visitors? Like what is good? It's like oh, we had a thousand this month. Like is that good? I don't know. And so I think it's always just like focusing on like yeah, beating yourself, like beating. If you're starting from scratch, like just trying to make sure that you're getting better and better. But then um, yeah, figuring out what the metrics are that you really want to track.

Speaker C: Website visitors is an interesting one too because if you're primarily growing organically, there's a really good chance that you're going to have global coverage, you're going to have geodiversity. You'll have. If the only market you can sell to is the U.S. but 40, 50% of your traffic is coming from outside the U.S. because it's all organic, then you have potentially uh, a loss factor to contend with there that doesn't match up. Whereas on paid you at least have a little more control. So there's uh, all those things that tend to come up, I think that trip up a lot of people.

Speaker A: Yes. And I'm so glad. I feel like the market's really getting more sophisticated in how they think about website traffic as well. Great point that you just brought up. And another one's like there was a period where everyone just focused on just as much traffic as possible. And it really became a vanity metric because if you're not converting them, if it's just irrelevant traffic or if it's just traffic for the sake of traffic, then really what's the point?

Speaker C: I think a lot of it too depends on the business's ability to monetize and how broad their addressable market is. Like in the category of HR is more than likely a country specific thing. Until you've physically figured out, okay, we're all set up for the state and federal regulations in the U.S. okay, maybe Canada or the UK or something like that is next. But then, you know, what do we do with uh, are uh, we really going to be able to port this to dozens of other countries?

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker C: So it has limited, so the paid and account based and all that stuff. What do you think is the biggest mistake that people make when they're just getting started with a, uh, program like this?

Speaker A: Oh my gosh. Uh, I think a lot of people think that just creating like turning a blog post into a video and then posting some sort of like academy or university tag onto the brand is education. Like it's. If you peaked. Yeah. So it's not just about turning blog posts into videos and like creating some sort of like, flow. If you peel back the curtain or you know, peaked behind the curtain of HubSpot Academy, it looks effortless and it feels effortless when you're going through it. But there's so much thought that goes into the background of the experience. There's so much thought that goes into the background of like creating the right curriculum. There's so much that go, like, there's so much that goes in from an instructional design perspective that most people aren't aware of and don't see. And like a lot of people today, they're like, we just launched our academy, go check it out. And it's just a video, like random videos of like tool walkthroughs or random videos of a person talking that was formerly a blog post. So it's not just about changing the format. So I think that would probably be the biggest mistake, um, people make is like not really understanding, uh, what they're getting into or not really understanding how to do this with success.

Speaker C: I think that's the mark of the true professional though is when most people sit and they turn on a, uh, baseball game or a golf match or tennis match or something. They're seeing the top of the top as performers and providing entertainment and cheering for. They don't necessarily see the Thousands or tens of thousands of hours that have gone into the reality of making that happen. So, yeah, I mean, the user interviews, um, figuring out the Personas, doing all the research to pull it all together, the scripting, editing the scripts and all redlining, all that stuff. Yeah. By the time they see the finished product, they just assume that, oh, you turned on the record button and go. And it was right out of the gate.

Speaker A: Yeah, Yeah. I think one thing that also a lot of people don't do, like, when they're just like, kind of pulling it together, they don't really think about the highest level of, like, what. Yeah, like, what is our goal? Like, what are we trying to achieve? And also what are our learners or our users or like, whoever we're educating, what is their goal? Um, on the HubSpot Academy team, like, we didn't just focus on education, we focused on inspiration as well. Because, like, education, taking in the knowledge, that's great. But we want people to be inspired to take action, uh, so they can go apply what they just learned. And so we made that like, a really big part of our, um, like, instructional design process. And like, how we put together content and how we. The scripts we put together, like, everything, the video, you know, the backgrounds, everything, the people we brought on for interviews thought about it through like, every lens.

Speaker C: I was like, the why, how, what? Circle, golden circle thing.

Speaker A: Yeah. Yes. Thank you, Simon Sinek.

Speaker C: It works, though. I mean, they're physically, by the time they get done the last section, they're actually seeing examples of what it's supposed to look like when they're all done.

Speaker A: Totally. Yes, yes, yes.

Speaker C: There's even a social proof element in there also. Especially if the example that they're seeing not only is an actual example, but they recognize have some familiarity with the company or the category of the company or something like that.

Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. Um, I could talk about this forever. I'm going to hold back so you can ask the next question. I could go on for a long time.

Speaker C: Where do you think all of this is headed next? If we were to come back and revisit and have this conversation three years out from now, five years out from now, what, uh, are. What's going on right now that's fundamentally going to shape how people approach building academies? Customer success, customer education.

Speaker A: Yeah, uh, sure. So I don't know how you experience every day, but I feel like in my everyday life, all of the B2C companies that I work, that I buy from, their experience of experience, have become so fantastic. They're frictionless Like, I can get in and get out what I need. And it's just so phenomenal. It's like the consumer grade of it is just so high. It's just very high quality. And I think there's a lot for B2B leaders. Um, like, basically anywhere you are in B2B. I think there's a lot to learn from the B2C world, um, and how to create a great user experience. Like, I think about when I need something from Target quickly, like, I just pull it up on the app, I buy it, I go drive up, I put my parking spot number in, it comes out to my car. It's seamless. And so it's really setting, like, a higher bar or higher expectation for what people are. People want in their experience when they're buying. And so I think there's a lot for people in the B2B world to pull from B2C. And the one thing I will say about that is, like, it can be so overwhelming when you look around and you're like, how do I create something like Target? Or how do I, like, create something like Amazon? Or how do I create something like, even on Facebook? Like, I don't know. It's so simple. They know me so well, and they target, like, the perfect ads, and I'm, like, so tempted all the time to buy everything that they show me. And it's just so simple. And the price is great. Um, and it can be so tempting to, like, look to them. And it's a great thing to do. But it's also really important to not get overwhelmed, because, like, if you look at these great experiences that these B2C companies are creating, it can be overwhelming. And I think it's really important for us to not just focus on that gap from, like, where you are to where you want to go, but also keep in mind, like, the gains that you're making. So, like, looking back every 90 days and saying, like, what. What are we proud of as a team? Or what are we proud of as a company? Or what are we proud of, like, in ourselves for the last 90 days and really focus on that, um, that gain. And Dr. Benjamin Hardy talks about this a lot, and I think he has a book coming out on it soon. Because the most successful people focus on the gain that they've had because that propels them to narrow the gap. And when you just constantly look ahead and you're like, we'll never get there, like, HubSpot Academy. Like, if we were trying to build our own academy, like, that is Just so far ahead. Well, it took 10 years to get there, you know, and so it can be really overwhelming to live in here. And so just constantly checking in and being like, you know, are we like what are we proud of? What's something we're proud of? And then use that to like be your motivator and motivation and inspiration for where you want to go.

Speaker C: Yeah, I think there's so much there to unpack with, like looking at the shiny examples of who has the world class experience and thinking that you can do that out of the gate. But there's little things that you can do along the way. Things as basic as like if people fill out a form on your website and they're going back and forth to try to set up a time with you, there's really an by in the year we are right now. There's really not a big reason to not have a self booking calendar to eliminate uh, some of those points of friction. I think there's a lot of software companies that are paying a ton of attention now to product led growth and thinking about how their business models can possibly adapt. Because if they're taking any kind of capital, there's a big obsession with talking about their unit economics and their cost of acquisition and lifetime value and anything they can do to collapse 16 sales meetings over nine months down to uh, someone just purchasing from essentially a shopping cart and getting started immediately or just getting a free version and starting immediately so they can get usage within the company and start to spread.

Speaker A: Yeah, I love you brought, just bringing this full circle. Um, you had mentioned like having really valuable content and videos for people to consume and I think that does a fantastic job at helping people to like experience your personality, experience how you do business and can shorten the length of the sales cycle tremendously. It's like if you're thinking about, if you're nurturing people, sending them the right content at the right time or just any helpful content that will bring them back so they can find like what's most helpful for them in that moment. Yeah, absolutely.

Speaker C: Idea of content to educate and build trust even goes back way before digital. People cite the example of Benjamin Franklin with the Farmers Almanac hundreds of years ago. But I remember even relatively early on in my career where I was selling hardware, basically putting together short white papers articles on comparing different things like how to pick the right specs for your PC or um, how to figure out how to pay for these kinds of things. All of that did a lot to open the doors and get people to feel not only are they learning something, but it completely context shifts out of them feeling like they're being sold to them, feeling more empowered. And I think that's a lot of what we've seen in the last eight or 10 years with the whole buyer's journey. Shifting is giving consumers, giving buyers more power. And the same way we went through the consumerization of it as we moved to SaaS and we moved to cloud, there's like this whole consumerization of everything B2B, where all the influencers and stakeholders and big B2B purchases are realizing that, hey, we're consumers too. Why can't buying this be as simple as buying from Warby Parker or Sleep Number or Casper or something like that? Or Target. Yeah.

Speaker A: Ah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I love that. I. It also made me think like people. I mean, obviously a big component of buying from an organization, especially for a more complicated, uh, purchase, is going to be trust. And I think when you're selling to someone, asking them powerful questions that get them to expand their thinking to like, the content's so great because it helps them to expand their thinking. And when you're selling to them, it's also like, challenging, you know, maybe not challenging, but getting them to think in a more expansive way. So how can you have your content to do that and how can you, uh, further reinforce that in your sales process as well? I love talking to people that expand my mind, that get me thinking about something differently. And if they can do that, I'm like, yeah, I'm going to give you my money. I might not even use what you're selling me. But it's just, it was so powerful to interact with you. And, um, yeah, it's just felt good. It's like the Maya Angelou quote. Like, people forget what you say, they'll forget what you do, but they'll never forget the way you make them feel. And if you can make someone feel great while they're in your sales process, um, they're gonna remember that. Turn back. Yeah. Come back to you.

Speaker C: And I actually think about in my own journey of inbound marketing and HubSpot and a lot of. I think the company's success was with timing. There were iPhone and iPad and everything coming out 2007, 2010 and everything. But it's hard to imagine HubSpot doing what they did without having this tremendous investment and execution on everything related to inbound marketing and content and thought leadership to basically create this whole category. Uh, I think in a lot of ways, the differentiation as the company, the differentiation with the culture. I can't imagine it happening without, um, an outrageously high value on and premium on creating great live and recorded video content, audio content, text content, image content, and just doing it at a massive scale.

Speaker A: Yes. And the blog content, like all of the content they put out, they were so creative. Like it. I think that's the other thing. I wish I could remember the Jeff Bezos quote, but it's basically about like, not, maybe you can fill it in later for me, but it's basically like, um, inventing your way out of a box. Like, the best constraint is. Sorry, the best way to innovate is a constraint. Um, and if like you're strapped for time or strapped for money, like, how can you get really creative so that you can stand out? Um, so I think HubSpot did a really excellent job. You think about some of their first videos they created and they were just really weird and so creative that you couldn't help but be like, that's cool, like they're going for it. Um, what a fantastic way to stand out.

Speaker C: Early streaming video, early viral videos. Yeah. I remember even when Academy switched over from doing webinars to the smaller chunked videos and I'm sure it made a difference with people's attention span.

Speaker A: That was like a massive inflection point for our team and our success. Yeah, absolutely. That was one of the biggest. Yep.

Speaker C: You needed the technology though, to be able to see the watch time. Because if you had no idea, like, okay, this is a 60 minute video or 20 minute video, how many people are actually making it to the end and if we cut it down and break it up in pieces, are the more likely to make it all the way to the end.

Speaker A: Totally. But I'll tell you, Joshua, like, we didn't have any budget back then. We were still such an early team. We're still considering experiment inside the organization. And um, I mean, I guess we were getting, we were growing our team so there was like, definitely some belief that things were going well. But we, we were using like still website pages for. To like host our videos. Sorry. We used Wistia to host our videos. We developed a partnership with Wistia and they were like, if we. I think it was basically like, if we can use some of your data and analytics to like inform our product, like, we'll give it to you inexpensively. Like, we got really creative on how we did that.

Speaker C: So everyone a lot of times looks at companies that they think are significantly better, bigger, and thinking that they have these bottomless resources. I worked for IBM during college. And it was a unit of IBM that was designed to sell discount hardware and software on campuses. We had next to no budget. Like to save money on photocopies, I would drive down to the office and use their photocopy machine. When it came to like bartering, people saw that, like, yeah, we were listed as a sponsor with the Rutgers athletic department, but it wasn't a cash sponsorship. We had hardware laying around and we loaned them PCs, which back, you know, 20, back when I was in school actually were expensive enough that there was significant value in someone loaning you, uh, hardware for a year or two, whatever it was. But yeah, a lot of times people. It's interesting too. Even I remember when I wrote the book for Microsoft, which was a subsidiary of Microsoft. And at the time everyone's like, Microsoft doesn't have bottomless. But no, it's a subsidiary of that and you have to provide value and get creative. And it's interesting how people make those assumptions.

Speaker A: How creative. Yes, yes, yes. And it's funny, the last thing I'll say, sorry, I clearly, I'm very excited right now and I think this is such a fruitful conversation. Um, when I left HubSpot, like I felt like when I was at HubSpot we were kind of trying to look small. Like we were such a big organization and we were really trying to like look small and approachable and tangible. Like. And then when I was starting comped, it was like, we're such a small business and we're trying to look so big. Like everything just. We were just trying to look so much bigger than we were. And I just, I think that paradox

Speaker C: is funny that the larger company is trying to show empathy for the entrepreneur and the small business and then the startup and the entrepreneur to have credibility with mid market and enterprise clients. But content helps with that a lot. Often said that, uh, a research report that's done well, that's insightful. Is it really perceived that much different when it's a startup versus when it comes from Gartner or IDC or Forrester? Yeah, it doesn't have their logo on it, but it also can draw the same a lot of times the same reaction, the same credibility, the same um, positioning with.

Speaker A: Yes, yes, you can do with it. I love that. One of the things that we did at comp that was transformational for our business was on the marketing side. We created pillar pages and those pillar pages, I mean I was like, you know, I was really getting out, getting like. How do I describe this? I was like really Just bringing my whole thought leadership game game. And I was just trying to really think big and like, think in different angles. And it just, I was really proud with how it came out. And then, um, CNBC saw one of. Saw the, uh, I'm sorry, CNBC saw one of our pillar pages and linked to it and a huge piece they did on stipends. And then another business, um, oh my gosh, was it Fortune, like another really big brand name, saw the pillar page and reached out and asked us if we, if they could do an interview. So we ended up having our CEO get interviewed by them. It was just so phenomenal for ex. Phenomenal for sharing our voice and our narrative and our thoughts, but also expediting, um, like our brand. This pillar pages, like just took us from who are they to now they're getting linked to and interviews with Fortune and NASDAQ and CNBC links. And so I think what a lot

Speaker C: of times what startup founders don't see the forest through the trees on is that content opens the doors and paves the way. Uh, Eric Greece and Lean Startup has a great example of that. I think it was someone that was trying to sell, uh, lawnmower or something like that. And some early conversation said, wait a second, Vineyards would be a much more productive, um, niche for you to go after, as opposed to universities more than one. It's the same kind of thing as that. When you create that kind of content and someone loves the content, that's what helps a lot of times. Gives you what you need to figure out the pivots that cause you to reinvent the business. Because they say, Sarah, I love this report that you put out. The insights are just fantastic. I've never seen anyone explain it like that. By the way, that product that you're working on, it's really good, but it's missing this one thing. And I know if you added this one feature, we're signed on yesterday and I have like six friends and other companies in similar roles, they would sign on like yesterday too. So. And all of a sudden you're like, jaw dropped and you realize that they just gave you seven figures worth of insight to help you figure out where the business is going to go next in this pivot that wouldn't have manifested itself if the thought leadership hadn't opened the door and, uh, opened them up to that kind of conversation with you.

Speaker A: I'm just nodding vigorously here. I could not agree more. I think back to how that happened to us many times at Comp to helped us to define where we were going with the product even better. And it started with pillar pages and content that we put out there that people downloaded and then ask questions and went to the next stage of the buyer's journey. So yes, yes, yes.

Speaker C: Even this process, a lot of times can be used really well. Like you podcast, you might ask different questions than you would in a, uh, user interview, like buyer Persona kind of interview. But the reality is a lot of what you learn, if you take have an editorial calendar and you're like, you know what, I want to interview 10 people, 15 people in this role over the next couple of weeks or next couple of months, there's a really good chance in the course of creating content that gives you video content, audio content and text content that you're also finding out some really valuable customer insights that'll impact your whole go to market strategy and potentially even your product roadmap.

Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, that's a great point. I feel like most people don't talk about that, but yeah, yeah, there's so

Speaker C: much value from just getting closer to customers with all of that. Um, but this has been terrific. Um, I'm so glad that we got a chance to talk. Glad we got a chance to reconnect. Sarah, what's the best way for someone to learn more about what you're currently working on at SAS Academy Advisors and Thrive coaching?

Speaker A: Yeah, just, uh, reach out to me on LinkedIn, Sarah Bedrick. There's not many Bedricks out there, so I'm pretty easy to find.

Speaker C: But yeah, I'll make sure I click the, uh, link for that in the show notes as well to make it easier. But yeah, thanks so much, Sarah for joining me today. I wish you all the best. It's really fascinating hearing how everything started with the lemonade stand and the origami business. So much of the things we, uh, start as kids. It's amazing the long life on that day. I look at some of the lessons I learned with product management when I had a paper route segmenting the market and expansion, revenue and outreach and customer service and pricing and everything.

Speaker A: Totally, yes. What a great way to like, come home, think about what you loved as like a child, um, and like what you found yourself doing for fun. And that's a really great insight to like, what brings you to life, what brings you alive, makes you alive for sure. That's funny. The paper root segmenting. This is awesome. Thank you so much for having me and, um, so much fun.

Speaker C: Thank you. Likewise. Definitely keep in touch.

Speaker A: Sounds good. Thanks, Joshua. Bye.

Speaker B: Thanks for listening to this. Episode of the B2B digitized podcast. To subscribe and leave a review, check us out@b2b digitized.com or wherever you like to connect consume podcast episodes, including Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, and YouTube.