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Episode 27 - Joe Freeman (Digitopia)

RevSpot · 2024-09-28 · 32 min

0:00--:--

Key moments - from our scoring

Substance score

34 / 100

Five dimensions, 20 points each

Insight Density8 / 20
Originality6 / 20
Guest Caliber10 / 20
Specificity & Evidence5 / 20
Conversational Craft5 / 20

Joe Freeman founded Digitopia (formerly a separate company that merged in 2018) as a revenue operations agency specializing in HubSpot implementation for B2B companies. Starting as programmers building web and iOS apps, Freeman and his co-founder discovered HubSpot's marketing automation capabilities in 2013 and realized most companies using the platform struggled to operationalize a full buyer's journey. This led to the creation of the "Digital Utopia Blueprint," a systematic playbook for inbound marketing. Digitopia's core philosophy centers on two principles: top-down optimization (fixing conversion rates closest to the point of sale before adding more traffic) and commitment and consistency (following a framework for 6-8 months before expecting results, rather than pivoting every two months). Freeman emphasizes that his technical background in Classic ASP, ASP.NET, and PHP directly shaped the agency's systems-oriented approach - treating marketing like code with algorithms, cadences, and branching logic. The company focuses exclusively on B2B because long sales cycles and multiple decision-makers require sustained nurturing workflows, not transactional campaigns. Digitopia's mission is making B2B marketing easier through installed revenue operations systems that outlast individual employees, ensuring companies own the process rather than relying on rockstar performers.

Key takeaways

  • →Top-down optimization means fixing conversion rates closest to the sale first before investing in top-of-funnel traffic - changing this one behavior can dramatically improve ROI without additional budget.
  • →Commitment and consistency for 6-8 months following a systematic framework is essential; most companies fail because they pivot every 2-3 months before results compound.
  • →HubSpot requires technical RevOps configuration beyond out-of-the-box setup to move leads from stagnant contact status into meaningful sales conversations and lifecycle stage progression.
  • →B2B marketing requires systems-based approaches with documented algorithms for cadence, branching logic, and prospect journey design - not creative ad copy or random marketing activities.
  • →Installing company-owned processes and systems makes teams resilient to personnel turnover, unlike relying on individual rockstar salespeople or marketers.

Guests

Joe Freeman

Topics in this episode

HubSpotB2B sales cyclesRevOps (Revenue Operations)Lifecycle stage definitionMarketing automation workflowsDigital Utopia BlueprintInbound methodologyBuyer's journey mappingTop-down optimizationLead nurturing systems

Questions this episode answers

How do you move leads from stagnation in HubSpot into actual sales conversations?

Digitopia configures HubSpot's technical foundations - automation workflows, lifecycle stage definitions, nurturing cadences, and dashboards - to systematically push contacts forward rather than letting them sit dormant in the database; most companies have the tools but lack the operational configuration to activate the buyer's journey.

What's the difference between top-down and bottom-up marketing optimization?

Top-down optimization means fixing conversion rates at the bottom of the funnel (demos, sales handoffs) first before investing in paid ads or traffic; if someone clicks your ad but has a low form-fill or demo conversion rate, adding more ad spend just wastes money on a broken funnel.

Why do most B2B marketing campaigns fail after 2-3 months?

Companies pivot too quickly before experiencing the results of their efforts; it typically takes 6-8 months to see meaningful returns from a committed marketing system, but most organizations lack the discipline to wait through that "triangle of pain."

How does a technical background help with marketing system design?

Programming trains you to think algorithmically about processes - defining cadences, branching logic, and conditional workflows the same way you'd design code; this prevents random marketing activities and ensures every step follows a documented pattern.

What's the risk of relying on rockstar salespeople or marketers without systems?

When that person leaves, the company loses their knowledge and techniques and must start from scratch; systems-based approaches instead create repeatable processes the company owns, allowing high performers to enhance the system rather than replace it.

What our scoring noted

Our reviewer’s read on each dimension, with quotes from the episode.

Insight Density

8 / 20

The episode contains two genuinely useful operational ideas - top-down funnel optimization and lifecycle stage definition/alignment across teams - but they are stretched thinly over 32 minutes with heavy filler, host anecdotes, and platitudes. The ratio of actionable content to throat-clearing is poor.

we preach top down optimization, meaning you should always build solutions for and optimize closest to the point of sale first
we start by understanding what is the definition of each life cycle stage for that company

Originality

6 / 20

The frameworks offered (consistency over pivoting, niche focus, funnel optimization) are standard marketing and RevOps orthodoxy, and the analogies used - gym workouts, overnight success, sports teams - are well-worn clichés. The one mildly contrarian claim about creative vs. sales copy is stated but never developed.

I don't think that creative copy has a huge place in marketing. I think it's all needs to be sales psychology rooted
There's no overnight successes. Yeah, we see them as overnight success

Guest Caliber

10 / 20

Joe Freeman is a legitimate practitioner - a CEO who co-founded and has run a HubSpot RevOps agency for over a decade, working with hundreds of B2B companies. He's not a pure thought-leader, but he lacks scale or seniority that would make him genuinely standout, and the interview doesn't surface deep expertise beyond agency-level HubSpot work.

I am Joseph Freeman. I am M. CEO of a company called Digitopia. Digitopia is a HubSpot Solutions partner, and we have been since about 2013
after working with hundreds and hundreds of B2B companies and we specialize in B2B

Specificity & Evidence

5 / 20

The episode is almost entirely abstract. There are no client revenue figures, no conversion rate improvements, no before/after metrics, and no named case studies. The only concrete specifics are the merger year (2018), a vague reference to Toshiba-type clients, and a tool name (Descript).

it was the Toshiba's of the world. And it was um, you know, a lot of like software, not software, excuse me, hardware, server farms
my favorite AI tool is Descript

Conversational Craft

5 / 20

The host leads with affirmations and shares his own anecdotes frequently, consuming time without extracting substance. There is no pushback, no requests for specific evidence, and no probing follow-ups when the guest makes vague claims - the conversation is essentially a friendly PR chat.

Yeah, that's, that's rad.
Yeah, 100%. I totally agree. And um, yeah that actually brings me to reminds ah me of one of the companies that I work very closely with

Conversation analysis

Computed from the transcript - who did the talking, and the words that came up most.

Share of words spoken

  • Speaker B77%
  • Speaker A23%

Most-used words

hubspot23sales22lead22marketing21start17started16digitopia13back13cool12first11solutions9love9system9different8journey8tech8

Episode notes

In this conversation, Joseph Freeman, CEO of Digitopia, discusses the evolution of his company from a marketing agency to a rev ops agency specializing in HubSpot solutions. He emphasizes the importance of systematic approaches in marketing, particularly for B2B companies, and shares insights on optimizing sales processes, commitment to marketing strategies, and the significance of defining lifecycle stages. The discussion also touches on the impact of a recent merger and future plans for Digitopia. Takeaways Digitopia evolved from a marketing agency to a rev ops agency. The importance of systematic approaches in marketing for B2B. Top-down optimization should focus on the sales process first. Commitment and consistency are crucial for marketing success. Defining lifecycle stages is essential for effective marketing. Lead scoring helps prioritize leads for sales outreach. The merger allowed Digitopia to offer full funnel marketing solutions. Understanding the unique challenges of B2B marketing is key. Creating systems ensures long-lasting marketing solutions. Narrowing focus to a niche can lead to better results.

Full transcript

32 min

Transcribed and scored by The B2B Podcast Index.

Speaker A: Perfect. Everybody, thank you so much for tuning in. We're excited to have another guest on the show here. Joseph, why don't you, uh, go ahead and give us a introduction of yourself and, uh, let the listeners know who you are.

Speaker B: Yeah, absolutely. Okay. I am Joseph Freeman. I am M. CEO of a company called Digitopia. Digitopia is a HubSpot Solutions partner, and we have been since about 2013. Um, so in the last 10, I guess, 11 years now, we've gone through many iterations of HubSpot. And we went from being originally just a marketing agency, um, using HubSpot, to really realizing that there was a need for something bigger and better in terms of growth in HubSpot. And we transitioned over the years into more of a rev Ops agency for HubSpot, where we're going in and creating technical solutions within HubSpot to really help move sales conversations from that lead that comes in all the way into a real, uh, sales opportunity, which, in our experience, a whole bunch of people using HubSpot actually get stuck at that lead level. They get contact in the database and it kind of goes cold and never nothing happens with it. So there are ways you can set up HubSpot to help push that along, and that's where we really spend a lot of our time.

Speaker A: Yeah, that's, that's rad. So I think definitely I need a lot of your help when I'm talking to people. A hundred percent, Joe, because there's a lot of people that I'm like, man, I need to reach out or there's some stuff here. And it's, it's tough. It's. It's tough to keep track of everything. So HubSpot does a great job with that. But, um, but how, how did you, um, start Digitopia in the first place? Like, what, what happened in 2013 to make you be like, yeah, we're doing this.

Speaker B: Yeah. So we weren't called Digitopia back then. We actually became Digitopia in 2018 as the result of a merger. So back in 2013, when we first got in bed with HubSpot, we had already been operating under that company name for about five years. And in that time, um, we had started it as programmers and we were building web apps, and we were building iOS apps, and we were building, um, project management software and different things. And one of the solutions that we were building was a marketing automation platform. We didn't really know it at the time. We didn't know it, you know, had that name or the acronym map. Map um, we were just building a solution that would allow for some marketing automation, some drip emails and what have you. And as we got into it and as we started, you know, building an internal server to host all of the technology that we needed to do this, we started realizing that other people had already gone down this path and were quite a bit further ahead of us. We, uh, started looking into those. And HubSpot, of course, was one of the solutions that we found out there. And we started poking around with it. We realized how cool it really was. Not only how cool it was for us to be using with our clients, but. But we ourselves realized there was a lot of value to be had from using HubSpot in our own agency for our own marketing, our own sales and marketing. Um, so we drank the HubSpot Kool Aid in 2013, and we, uh, you know, we bought into everything inbound methodology and everything else, and we got it. And, um, we were really excited about it. And then once we started using it, we realized it was a little bit of a blank canvas, that it was kind of a wild, wild west situation where it had all the tools, but we didn't fully understand how to wield the tools in a way that would bring to life a full buyer's journey. There was a lot of talk about it, there was a lot of education around the buyer's journey. But when it came to tactically, hey, what do we do? What landing pages do we set up? What types of offers do we set up? In what order? What cadence do the emails come in? What is the algorithm to actually deliver a delightful client or prospect experience, rather, through emails, through paid advertising? There were just no, There were no playbooks. So we started trying a bunch of stuff and documenting it. And as we documented it, we came up with what we call the digital utopia blueprint. It's basically just a playbook for bringing inbound to life in a very systematic way. Around 2015, 2016, the RevOps conversation started popping up. People were realizing that they needed to consolidate or at least integrate all of their technologies to create these tech stacks that were allowing them to actually see the buyer's journey in a real and meaningful way. Well, HubSpot actually had a lot of that already built in, but people, at least the clients we were working with, weren't really utilizing it that way. And so we then started taking our inbound methodology and wrapping into it a lot of the different, um, automation and dashboards and reports, all the things you needed to do to really govern the movement of a prospect's life cycle stages and report on it properly because time and time again we were getting in bed with clients that were, um, they had all the tools, they had HubSpot and they were like, we got a lot of data in here and it means nothing to us. We don't know what to do with it and we don't even know if we can trust it. So those two things are really bad. When you're paying a lot for a monthly subscription to a site, you look at it and there's. There's no insights coming out of it. That's a problem. So we then set out.

Speaker A: That's so cool. Uh, were you a coder? Did you develop too?

Speaker B: Yeah. So I started off as, um, Actually I started off with asp. Classic asp for anybody who's out there that knows coding. Um, it's been sunsetted since then, but Classic asp. And then I moved on to asp. NET and PHP and everything in between. Um, that's where I started. I don't do a whole lot of that anymore. But that is the background for what built a lot of the business.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: And I just.

Speaker A: Okay, so we could nerd out about this for a long time because I'm a coder too. I love it. But, um, but I want to ask your opinion on developing these kind of processes and going through this, this journey of creating the marketing automation playbooks and even diving into the sales section. And we'll probably get into that later as well. But do you think that your background in, in developing and coding has helped kind of systematize that in a way?

Speaker B: 100%. In fact, we hang our hat on that.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: When it comes to marketing agencies, you've got creative marketing agencies and they're doing beautiful work. Um, you have some copywriting agencies that are doing really good in terms of sales copy. Um, and I, I'm a huge believer in sales copy. I, I don't think that creative copy has a huge place in marketing. I think it's all needs to be sales psychology rooted. Um, and then you have some, I think, like Digitopia that are very systems oriented. Meaning, um, while you could be doing everything, a lot of companies have a single marketer or maybe a couple marketers in house. And the reality is you can't be doing everything. There's too much to do. There's too much social media, there's too much blogging, there's too many newsletters to write. You, uh, got tik. You've got like, there's just literally so much to be doing at one time, you can't do it all. And if you can't do it all, then you have to have, in my opinion, a system for doing the things that matter. And you have to commit to that system and do it over and over and over again. Just like going to the gym. You can go to the gym and you can kind of bounce around from all the different machines, whatever happens to be open. And you might make a little bit of progress, but it's not going to be hyper focus progress. And you're certainly not going to achieve any real goal by doing that. You're going to stay maybe generally healthy, but if you're trying to build biceps or if you're trying to do something very specific, you won't do that with that methodology. You have to have a program and a plan. And yes, you will be leaving a lot of other things on the table in terms of marketing activities, but you as a 1, 2, 3 person team are going to be so hyper focused on what actually matters. And what actually matters is getting people in the database and pushing them to a sales conversation. Yes, there's brand awareness and there's all these other things that need to happen as well, but there needs to be a plan. So I would say the programming part helped us think systematically, programmatically and really algorithmically about how you approach marketing. There is an algorithm to everything that you do. There are a certain cadence in which you should be sending your emails. When someone doesn't engage, there's a certain branch they should go off onto. There's a lot of, um, there's a lot of process diagramming that goes on in this world.

Speaker A: Yeah, 100%. I'm sure you guys are experts at like Lucidchart or Mirror or something like that too, where it's just like all of these crazy appearances. Um, so that piece, that's kind of like Digitopia's bread and butter. Then it sounds like it's just these, creating these processes, these algorithms for these companies. Do you guys use a cookie cutter kind of method where you're like, let's try this first and then we'll see what we need to adjust. Or do you go into each company and say let's look at everything and then we'll create something from scratch?

Speaker B: Uh, a little bit of both. So we certainly go into each company and look at everything they're doing. Um, the reality is after working with hundreds and hundreds of B2B companies and we specialize in B2B because there needs to be that long sales Cycle. In order for the type of marketing that we do, for that to work, you need to have somebody who is kind of going on a journey before they make the purchase, um, usually with a cohort of people making the decision. So um, when we go into companies, every, every company has their own unique things about them. But the reality is most companies are struggling with the same core issues and whether they know it or not, um, it's pretty textbook. And so we do always start with a framework. From the beginning. It's a framework that we already have and from there we start filling in all the things we know about the company. And wherever there's gaps, yes, we customize and branch off of that to make a, ah, solution that's going to work. But um, but it's, we start with a framework and we do that really intentionally because when you start with just a wild, wild west blank canvas, you are Digitopia in 2013, uh, getting into bed with HubSpot for the very first time and paying a lot of money and not getting a lot from it. So we see, um, exponential growth when you start following a process and religiously stick to it.

Speaker A: Yeah, I think that makes such a difference is just following the process. I mean like you said, I think the gym is a good analogy, but there's so much other stuff to life where I think people get stuck in the trap of like, I like to mix it up and do these things and it's like, well, sure, if you want to not like not go anywhere, then yeah, go for it. But if you want to get something done, like you have to do the process, you have to follow it and it's gonna be boring sometimes. Like you just have to accept that fact too. It's just, that's just how it is.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: Uh, I just, I think, and maybe you disagree with that, but that's kind of where I come from is the boring stuff is what really makes a difference, honestly.

Speaker B: So it does. And there's two things that, you know, anybody listening to this, if they only took away two things, I think it would be these, these are the things that I would hang my hat on. One is we preach top down optimization, meaning you should always build solutions for and optimize closest to the point of sale first. So we see a lot of companies who are first starting out with, hey, we need more sales, let's buy more advertising, let's send more money out to paid ads. Well, we, we run paid ads. So I'm not saying don't do paid ads. It's absolutely Part of the equation. But if you run a whole bunch of money towards paid ads and you have low conversion rates from somebody who sees the ad to clicks on it to fills out your form to then eventually talks to a salesperson, well, you're just dumping a lot of money at that top of that funnel, right? If you instead take that same amount of money or a portion of it and go build a revops related solution closer to the of sale, meaning a step back from where the salesperson is actually engaging with the uh, prospect. If you go in and fix that part and boost the conversion rates there, you don't even have to put more traffic in the machine. The traffic that's coming in the machine already is already going to convert at a higher rate. And once you've got that dialed in, move back one step and then move back one step and eventually you will get to the part where you are wanting to throw more money into more ads to get more traffic. But when you do, you know that they are going to convert at a higher rate at every single stage of the buyer's journey, which is going to net a whole lot more in terms of a sales conversation. So two things. One is top down optimization, always optimize closest to the sales first. And then the second thing is going back to what you were just saying. Commitment and consistency. It's the number one thing that has changed the way that all of our clients market where they are. When we usually start working with a client, they are running a bunch of different campaigns. And two months into a campaign, when it's not delivering results, they pivot and then they pivot again and then they pivot again. So all the time they're spending a lot of effort in creating new ideas, new um, offers, new campaigns and they're pivoting too quickly. They're not waiting, they're not going through that triangle of pain. They're not waiting through the time it takes to, to actually see the fruits of those labors. And so commitment and consistency is key. You have to have a program, a framework, and then you have to stick with it. And you have to know that it's going to take three or six months. And in that time it's going to be painful and it's going to be hard. When you go talk to the board and you say like, yeah, we've put some money into these things and they're not delivering results yet, but come six months, come seven months, come eight months, when you start to look back, you'll start to see that the commitment and consistency is starting to deliver. And oh by the way, that's going to snowball eight months from then. So once that snowballing, that machine is rolling, it makes the waiting period all the better. So commitment and consistency is huge. And then going back to the other one, the top down optimization, huge. Those two things, if that's all you changed in your marketing approach, um, you would see, you would see returns that.

Speaker A: Yeah, 100%. I totally agree. And um, yeah that actually brings me to reminds ah me of one of the companies that I work very closely with. Not like we're not like a client or like a, we just know them, you know, and we work in the same space because we're both part of the same portfolio company or portfolio, we're both a portfolio company from the same venture service team. Um, but they started reading the book. They ask, you answer. I'm sure you've heard of it. Marcus Sheridan. Uh, yeah.

Speaker B: And yeah, great book.

Speaker A: Super great book. And they didn't have really any like you're saying they didn't really have any results for like six months. And then out of the blue what it feels like, right? It feels like it's just from nowhere they started getting just an insane amount of people, same amount of interest and they just started blowing up. And it's really cool to see them be able to take this on. And now they've like hired a bunch of people and it's been, it's really cool to see them take off like this, uh, just firsthand be in the weeds every day with them, seeing what they, what they've been able to do. So I totally like attest to your, to your uh, to your hat hanging and uh, it's just an absolutely beautiful thing. So really, really cool. Absolutely.

Speaker B: I mean it's like the old anecdote. There's no overnight successes. Yeah, we see them as overnight success. We see our competitors, we see rock stars, we see movie stars that all of a sudden sprung up and overnight there's something huge. But when you go back to any of them 25 years, so there's 25 years of success. And if you want your marketing campaigns and you want your sales opportunities to boom, you need to do that. You can't pivot every three months.

Speaker A: Mhm. 100% agree. So um, we kind of talked a little bit about what you guys focus on. You're specific on the B2B realm is what you guys do best. How did you guys land on that?

Speaker B: Yes, I think it was the programming. So as programmers, company uh, was founded by two programmers, myself and another guy. Um, and we just, we spoke tech and we spoke tech and we spoke sales. And so it was really easy for us to go out and find clients in the software and hardware space because of that. Those were all B2B clients. We quickly realized, um, that B2B was quite different than B2C. B2C was very transactional. It was um, pretty easy to run a big campaign with a lot of uh, paid ad dollars to a specific product and tweak a few words and a few colors and you'd start to see results in terms of who's purchasing online right now. But when it comes to B2B and there's a 3, 6, 12, 18 month sales cycle and oh by the way, there's 3, 4, 5 people who have to be part of the decision making, um, that was a very different world. And so we had to quickly learn how to address that world because we were talking to technical companies, we were talking to back in the day. It was the Toshiba's of the world. And it was um, you know, a lot of like software, not software, excuse me, hardware, server farms and companies like that. Um, um. And so that's what got us into B2B originally. And then we just kept iterating on what works and what doesn't.

Speaker A: Yeah, and then the focus just got even more intense and your guys', I'm sure your guys's processes and everything that's really gone from, from zero to where it's at now is just dialed in, which is really, really cool. So.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: So uh, Joe, where, where is Digitopia headed? Like what are your guys plans? I, I want to hear a little bit about the merger as well because it seems like that was a pivotal moment for you guys. Um, but I'm curious to know like where you guys want to take it. What's the future look like? Tell me about it.

Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, it's a great question. So, um, real quick to touch on the merger. The reason the merger had happened was because one of the companies, the company that I came from, uh, we were all middle of the funnel, bottom of the funnel. Like I said, we were working with tech companies that were doing long uh, considered sales cycles. And so we were doing a lot of solutions around nurturing the database and um, actually setting up the transaction that gets them to a demo or gets them to some sort of audit or some sort of interaction with the salesperson. What we weren't really great at was the top of the funnel stuff. We Weren't great at the blogging and the paid ads and the SEO. So we went out looking for a solution that could, we could either acquire or merge into. And we found one. We found a company that was really good at those things. And so by coming together, we now had a full funnel offering. So that was the impetus for the merger. Um, since then we're now still full funnel. We rebranded as digitopia again in 2018. Um, and now where are we going? So we are on a mission really to make marketing for B2B marketers easier. That's it. We want to make it easier. And the way that we found it becomes easier is through systematic approaches. So everything we do, everything we develop as marketing, uh, landscapes changes, technology changes as we get into AI, um, everything we are looking to do is create systems for marketing. We don't want to just have technical solutions and we don't want things that um, easily come and go and work for right now we want to create systems that can be installed really on the sales operations and marketing operations side of the house. And as those come together, you've really got revenue operations. Right. You've got all of the, um, systems that are then governed by the technology that then create these long lasting solutions that far outweigh the benefit of a single person. A lot of companies go out and hire like a rockstar salesperson or a rock star marketer. And as soon as that person leaves, they're left at ground zero. They got to start over. But what we want to do is go in and put in place the right systems, the right technology, so that you can then have a rotating cast of characters on top of that. And they're always following the company's system. Not their own little black book or their own, little, you know, yellow pad of uh, uh, techniques that they use. We want to make sure the company owns the actual system, the actual process.

Speaker A: Yeah. So when you get somebody that goes rogue, like a sales rep or a marketer, do you, what do you do?

Speaker B: Uh, we usually come into the situation once that's already happened, fire immediately.

Speaker A: I'm just kidding. Yeah.

Speaker B: So no. And that can be a challenge. I mean, look at, it's like um, it's like a sports team.

Speaker A: Right.

Speaker B: A sports team has to work together and every once in a while you do have that superstar. And if that superstar only works on their own, the team doesn't do as well. But if that superstar can then learn to use their superstar powers but integrated into the team dynamic, man, then you're, you've Got a real winning situation there. So that is what we do. If we go in and there is a, uh, rogue salesperson or a rock star, you don't want to stop that because that's really valuable. But what you want to do is paint a picture for how to bring that into the system and utilize it and capitalize on it without breaking the system. But it just extends the system.

Speaker A: Yeah, 100%. Just learning to handle the Kyrie Irving's of the world is probably the best analogy.

Speaker B: Exactly.

Speaker A: Um, well, that's actually. Right. I love that. So, kind of coming back to this Rev Ops system, I'm really curious. We could go on forever. We're running out of time. But, um, the system that you guys put in place, that piece right there, I feel like, is what a lot of people kind of lack in their companies of like, what do I do? Where do I go? How, uh, do I make this happen? But when you have this entire. It's almost like a job description. But, uh, I really liked what you said about governed by technology, because now they have an actual framework to use it on and be like, okay, you can do your creativity, but just make sure it fits within these bounds. Right. And that's. That's really, really helpful. So when you guys. The. The question I have, I guess, is when you're putting together these systems for people, how do you. How do you go about handling that creativity and allowing them to be their own unique kind of salesperson or marketer, but also still follow these systems and keep that together?

Speaker B: Yeah. Actually, while they're related, they're. They're kind of separate things. So where we start, maybe this will paint the picture. Where we start in the relationship is, um, we start by understanding what is the definition of each life cycle stage for that company. And this is really interesting because if I come to you and say, hey, what's a lead, Tanner? Uh, you would have something to say about it. You'd say, well, a lead for me is somebody who is based out of the US Working at a tech company that is, you know, doing, um, maybe 50 million a year, and it's the marketer at that tech company. That's a leap. Well, if I went to somebody else in your company and asked them the exact same question, chances are, and this is just based on all of my experience with all the B2B's we've worked with over the years, chances are they will not say the same thing as you. In fact, they'll probably say something pretty different. There may be some overlap in Terms of we all know it's in the US and we all know it's at tech companies, but they're going to say something different. So that's at the lead level. If we then move to what does a qualified lead look like, what does a marketing qualified lead or a sales qualified lead look like? Or what does a true opportunity look like? How do I know if I go into my, my CRM, if I'm looking at a lead or if I'm looking at a qualified leader, if I'm looking at opportunity? Almost nobody has the same answer. In fact, I would say never have I found a company where everyone has the same answer. So we go in first and we map all that out and we say let's all agree. Let's all agree exactly on what, uh, a subscriber is, what a lead is, what a marketing qualified lead, what a sales qualified lead. We need to have definitions not only that we agree on, but that have observable characteristics that we can govern with HubSpot. So again, I'm speaking from a HubSpot standpoint, but you can do this in any CRM. We need to be able to see when the lead comes in, when the contact comes in, does it match our lead criteria and does it also match our qualified lead criteria? There's a difference. There's, there's leads and then there's ones who are actually taking actions that say, hey, I'm qualified to talk now. Um, and so we go through and we map all that out and then we go into HubSpot and we build all the automation, all the validation, all the segmentation so that we can clearly see that and clearly report on that. And that alone, that's just the first step. But that alone is a game changer. Once you have that, you can now easily pull segmented lists of who's where in the journey. And that now makes the marketer's job a lot easier because the marketer can say, now I'm going to rope in my creativity, I'm going to rope in my sales copy skills and I'm going to speak directly to where they are in their journey as opposed to just blasting the database with generic messaging. Um, this sounds a little one on one or 101. Excuse me, but you'd be surprised, or maybe you wouldn't, at how many companies kind of know this but have never done it. So to go in and actually walk them through this and then to build the technology to support this is such a huge win in and of itself. So there's a whole lot more that goes into building out a full RevOps solution within HubSpot. But that's where we start. And that's a great, that's a great win right there.

Speaker A: Yeah, I love it. That's fantastic. Good, um, good piece of, uh, advice for anyone listening out there is define your. Define your crap, everybody. Make sure it's all. Everybody's on the same page.

Speaker B: Can that be the, like the teaser for this podcast? Define your crap, everybody.

Speaker A: Yeah, we'll put the on the title. Uh, that's funny. So, uh, Joe, we're coming up here on the end. I just wanted to make some time for this last segment with, with some rapid fire questions, um, if that's all right. You cool with that?

Speaker B: Absolutely.

Speaker A: Okay. These questions are super fun and I actually, this first question has been my favorite because I have yet to hear the same thing. And so if you are listening out there and you go back and keep listening, um, you'll, you'll hear a lot of really cool answers from people. But so I've got just four quick questions that I ask, um, that are pretty simple and, you know, 30 second to a minute answers for each one. We don't want to dive too deep into any of these. But. So first question, uh, what is a HubSpot hack or a feature that you think is underutilized?

Speaker B: Uh, ah, okay. I've actually probably got a laundry list of these, but, um, I'm going to keep it to the ones that are not enterprise related because there's a lot of fun stuff in enterprise, but a lot of companies don't have enterprise. So I'm going to say not yet, not with the new price change. There you go. Uh, so we'll see what happens in the next year here. But, um, I would say the most underutilized is really what I was just talking about, which is life cycle stages. Some of them are being used, but not in a meaningful way. But what really makes them powerful is coupling that with HubSpot score or the lead scoring functionality in HubSpot. Um, we've worked with so many companies who know they need to be doing lead scoring. They have put some version in place in some ways, but all of them second guess it. Almost always they're like, we have it, but it's not really working or we don't have it at all because we don't even know where to start. And I would say that's one of the biggest, quickest wins if you can actually figure out what lead scoring should look like so that you're not wasting your time calling every single lead that comes in. And I don't even mean wasting your time for the salesperson. Um, the reality is a salesperson should be working hard to get a conversation with everyone, but most people just aren't ready to talk. And lead scoring can really help you understand who is going to actually pick up the phone, who is going to respond to that email. So it's not a secret, it's not a real hack. It's just a really good best practice is get your lead scoring dialed in so you can actually see life cycle staged movement in a meaningful way.

Speaker A: I, um, love, uh, it. Cool. So question number two is a rev ops or AI tool that you can't live without.

Speaker B: Uh, there's a lot that are really helpful these days. I think one of my favorite one right now, we're really on a webinar kick. We're really realizing that webinars are super helpful for moving people from that lead level all the way to that sales conversation. Um, um, They've been around forever. People have had varying degrees of success with webinars, but, uh, they're working really well for us right now. And my favorite AI tool is Descript.

Speaker A: Oh, yeah, that was called.

Speaker B: I think it's descript.

Speaker A: Right.

Speaker B: Where you upload your video into it. It takes away all the ums, takes away all the breaths. It can replace words with other words and make it look like you're saying it. It's like a real cool video cleanup tool. And that's been really good for our middle of the funnel content.

Speaker A: Cool. I love it. Okay, um, two more questions. Next one is, if you had a magic wand to change one thing in your business, what would it be?

Speaker B: Oh, my gosh. That's a great question. A magic wand to change one thing in my business.

Speaker A: Uh,

Speaker B: I think if I could. Gosh, this is such a good one. Uh, I would take that magic wand, I would wave it, and I would expand into Latin America.

Speaker A: Okay.

Speaker B: I think that if, if I could get the whole like us and Latam, um market together, that would be really fun and exciting for me because I worked with a few companies down there recently and there's just so much opportunity and not a lot going on down there. So I don't know if that requires a magic wand, but you've just given me a little bit of a inspiration to go do it.

Speaker A: There it is. Yes. That was. I love that. It's perfect.

Speaker B: Okay, last question.

Speaker A: I love this one. This is probably my favorite one. What advice would you Give to your younger self just starting out, let's say, back in 2013.

Speaker B: M. That's a tough one because I feel like all of the things that I. All the mistakes I made along the way have. Have been really good. And I don't know if I'd want to tell my younger self not to make them. Um, but I think. I think as a younger person, I think I would tell myself, don't try to do any everything. Find a thing to do and do it really well. So where that translates into business would be find a niche in the business. You know, go find a specific industry and solve a specific problem for them. In the early days, we were trying to solve everything for everybody. When asked, like, who do you work for? It's like, anybody who needs marketing. And I think what helped change that was when, you know, I mentioned we work primarily in the B2B tech space. When we really got into a niche and started speaking that language and creating solutions that we knew work time and time again for that, that was really helpful. But that took us like eight years to realize that. So if I had to go start over, I would say, hey, younger self, maybe just think about narrowing the actual services to something that you're really good at that you can actually get results with. Don't say you do everything and go after a specific problem in a specific niche.

Speaker A: Yeah, I love it. Perfect. Joe, thanks so much for being on the show. How do people come find you, connect with you? Uh, learn about who you are in digitopia?

Speaker B: Yeah. So, um, you can find me on LinkedIn. Joseph FreemanDigitopia. Um, but if you want specific help, if you want to learn more about some of the stuff that I'm talking about here, even if you don't have a budget or desire to work together, we have a lot of resources, um, and a lot of tried and true playbooks that we hand out all the time. So you can get those, um, by going to digitopia.agency/help. There's no dot com, just Digitopia agency slash help.

Speaker A: Love it. Perfect. Joe, thanks so much for coming on the show and thank you all the listeners for tuning in.

Speaker B: Absolutely. Thanks for having me, Tanner.

Speaker A: Yep. Okay. See you guys.

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