Chris Ronzio (00:36):

Hey everyone, I'm Chris Ronzio, founder and CEO of Trainual, and this is Organized Chaos. On every normal episode, you hear me talk about building your playbook. Well, we actually have an event every year called Playbook over at Trainual, and this session is a clip from Playbook 2022, that's our annual event at Trainual, and it features some of the top business leaders in the world. So we've reformatted these sessions for the podcast so that you can enjoy them wherever you are, totally free. This upcoming session is hosted by me.

(01:09):

All right, welcome back everyone. I am really excited for this next session. If you listen to my podcast, Organized Chaos, then you know I love every chance I get to talk with Dan Tyre. So we're bringing him back for another episode. I read once that you can never read the same book twice because each time you read it, you're a different person and so you receive it differently and you learn different things. And I think the same goes with interviews. So some of you may have heard Dan and I talk before, but every time we talk there will be new nuggets of wisdom, there'll be new questions, there'll be new stories that Dan tells. You can already see his energy in the chat. This guy's infectious. So let's talk about Dan, 14 year veteran of HubSpot.

Dan Tyre (01:51):

15.

Chris Ronzio (01:51):

15.

Dan Tyre (01:52):

Don't sell me short. Okay.

Chris Ronzio (01:53):

15.

Dan Tyre (01:54):

That's my old bio. I needed it upgraded last week, in June, I know, I celebrated 15 years at HubSpot. Amazing. It's like dog years too. It goes on forever. It's a grind.

Chris Ronzio (02:03):

Yeah. That's like 75 in SaaS years. So 75 years at HubSpot, that's what I'm putting in here. He was the first salesperson. He's expanded the sales through management and training the whole sales team. And he coined the term schmarketing, which we talked about the first time I interviewed him. He's also the co-author of the book Inbound Organization. Awesome book, check that out. How to Build and Strengthen Your Company's Future. So as always, welcome Dan.

Dan Tyre (02:30):

Boom. Chris, my friend, thanks so much for letting me join, man. This is exciting. I've been working the chat pane, right? Trying to understand whether this audience wants more content or more jokes, what do you think they said?

Chris Ronzio (02:43):

I don't know. I haven't seen.

Dan Tyre (02:44):

They said both. You got an overachieving audience, come on. They're not going to be just sitting back in the weeds. And I hope we got somebody moderating the chat pane because it's like a mosh pit. Let's go. We want a lot of energy, we want the questions. First of all, I should say I'm a huge Chris fan, right? I have been for a while. How long have we known each other my friend?

Chris Ronzio (03:06):

Four or five years, something like that.

Dan Tyre (03:07):

Yeah, I think it's five years. We met at a program that I was presenting at and you're like, "Yes. That's the way I'm trying to scale my company." I look around five years later, boom, all these customers, building a great culture. You're a great husband, you're a great man, you've got building a great company in Arizona and North America. And then we got a chance to connect because I was doing a program, HubSpot for startups in India. Remember that? And I'm like, "Chris, do you do a lot of business in India?" It was like, "Yeah, I do." I'm like, "Okay, give me a case study." And then I presented the Trainual scale up in India and people were like, "Yeah, that's good. That's what I want to do." So a great example for our entrepreneurs, startups, scale up, solo entrepreneurs and super excited to be here.

Chris Ronzio (03:56):

So someone in the chat said, "I think you're competing for the host spot, the moderator spot with this energy." And really, I don't have to do anything. I think you could just talk for the whole time so I'm just going to turn my camera off and we'll just let-

Dan Tyre (04:09):

No, it's the Chris and Dan Show, but what happens when we get together, it's like people may think that this is our public persona, it's our private persona too. I finish your sentences, you're like, "But Dan," and then we jump in and then I tell a few jokes and it's usually fairly entertaining so that's what we're going for today.

Chris Ronzio (04:25):

So do you have a joke to kick things off so that we can hit both right out of the gates?

Dan Tyre (04:29):

Come on, really? This is my fifth speaking engagement this week, what do you call a snarky inmate walking downstairs?

Chris Ronzio (04:37):

What do you call it?

Dan Tyre (04:38):

A con descending. Con, descending. Is that good? All right. Putting the chat pane, rate that joke. You're all going to steal it, I know. George saying good, good. I got a couple of, ooh, eight out of 10. Eight out of 10. 11 out of 10, okay. Balances out, right? I major in dad jokes, right? I go to dadjokes.com, right? It's not that hard. But in all my presentations, I think I'm up to 49 presentations so far this year, which I love doing. I love the podcast. Most people like the big energy. If you're an introvert, lower your volume a little bit and turn off your screen because it's going to be a hard next 25 minutes. But we're going to have some fun.

(05:19):

Becky sent me the greatest questions. Oh my goodness. Thank you very much Becky, and thank you Chris, because we're going to talk a little bit about growth, which both HubSpot and Trainual's all about growth. What you're trying to do is grow. HubSpot's mission statement is to help millions of small businesses grow better. And that means not just as your company, not just your bottom line. It means as individuals, as families, as leaders, as companies, and so that's why I'm here today is to spread that word to help people and to give them some guidance and support as they're on their journey.

‍

The Correct Sales Touchpoints

‍
Chris Ronzio (05:55):

Amazing, so let's get into it. So why don't we start where you started with HubSpot, which is sales. Sales has changed a lot in the last couple years, in the last decade, whatever we wanted to say. When do you think are the correct sales touchpoints in a process? And we can talk about the Inbound Organization, but when should sales be involved in the selling process?

Dan Tyre (06:17):

Ooh, that's a very good question. Let me ask you this, Chris. What percentage of the sales process do you want to go through before you talk to a salesperson?

Chris Ronzio (06:28):

I think 90%.

Dan Tyre (06:29):

Okay. All right. And as statistics, I've got statistics. In fact, I'm going to drop a few links into the chat pane if that's okay. Can I do that?

Chris Ronzio (06:37):

Yeah, sure.

Dan Tyre (06:39):

That says in most considered purchases, that's B2B considered purchases where there's multi touch where you have to figure out configurations. It's between 64 and 99%. So you ask a good question in the preview of that, what is the power of sales and marketing work together? And the term that we use is schmarketing. Do you know schmarketing?

Chris Ronzio (07:06):

Yeah, I know schmarketing. Schmarketing from you.

Dan Tyre (07:07):

It's because I invented the term. It's like a schmear of a bagel if you're in Brooklyn. And sales and marketing smooshed together more effectively describes the way to connect with a prospect, and it's a shared goal. It used to be in the old days, sales had all the glory and marketing was always in the doghouse. In fact, marketing was a built in excuse. If sales was doing good, it was, "Yeah, we're awesome." If we were doing bad, we'd say it's because we don't get good leads, so we threw marketing under the bus or if they gave us a lot of leads we're like, "There's too many leads. I don't know which one to follow up." So we throw marketing right under the bus.

(07:45):

And today, it's different. You have the right answer, today because of the change in behavior, of the way people buy. I asked this question while I was in Rhode Island last week, "How did you buy 10 years ago?" And the people in the audience are like, "I asked my parents." I'm like, "Okay, a lot of Gen Z people here." But how do you normally, how did you buy 10 years ago? And when you were trying to buy something like a car or something considered person, you had to go to a retail store. You bought a copy or you went to someplace to buy a car. How do you buy something now Chris?

Chris Ronzio (08:17):

You go to the website.

Dan Tyre (08:18):

Exactly. And what do you do when you get to the website?

Chris Ronzio (08:22):

You click on all the pages and then you get retargeted on every social platform.

Dan Tyre (08:26):

That's right. You read a little bit of the product, look at the reviews. There we go. Aaron say, look at the reviews. You understand a little bit about the user stories. You're like, "Okay, is this person or this company related to me? Do they service Canada? Will they provide some?" And you do all of your work up front, right? That means right in the old days, sales were the heroes. Now a good marketer is infinitely more important. Because if you can't bring the eyeballs to the website, you're [inaudible 00:08:56]. I don't care if you're the best sales person in the world in which I consider myself a top two percenter.

(09:01):

But if you don't get to my website and you are considering something else, right? It's going to be very difficult for me to break in there because people are so busy. And so when people get to your website, then the marketing process is to ingratiate yourself a couple of ways. Number one, you want them to understand a little bit about your mission and culture, which Trainual does very well, HubSpot does very well as well. We want to welcome you in. Number two, we want to make it super easy for you to understand what we do and how to get a little taste, which amazing. When I went to your website doing my research, I don't even have to put in a credit card. Here's all this free stuff. Why do you do that on your website, Chris?

Chris Ronzio (09:45):

We want people to experience it. We want them to touch it and feel it and decide if it's a good fit for them, because if everyone just signs up for a trial and gets in there, then it's going to work for a small, small percentage of the people. So we kind of want them to qualify themselves and actually something we can talk about. We just rolled out a demo on our website where you can actually interact with the product on the website before going into a trial. And so it's leaning even further in that direction, that test the product, play with the product before you're even signing up for a free trial.

Dan Tyre (10:13):

It's so great. That's why you've got an inbound heart. Even before you knew HubSpot or we met, right? You're like, "No, I want to help people." Which is the foundation for success in 2022. You're asking all these sales questions. There's this great book by this guy, Daniel Pink. You ever heard of Daniel Pink?

Chris Ronzio (10:29):

Yeah, love him.

‍

Stop Selling & Start Helping

‍

‍
Dan Tyre (10:30):

He wrote a book called To Sell is Human. I'm a little jealous because I wrote a book and his sold a hundred times more than mine did. And he is not even a sales guy, he's a researcher. And he cycles in and he's like, "I hear about closing deals and working the pipeline. What does all that stuff made?" And when he researched it, he's like, "Oh, every single human, every single day does that." Right now I'm buying or selling to your audience, I don't know which. Put in the chat pane whether I'm buying or selling. It depends. If you're going to do it every single minute of every day, you better be good at it. And so the way to sell in 2022 is decidedly different, with the advent of inbound and your website being your reception, your showcase. Now, you have to treat people like human beings, which seems weird that I have to remind people about that in 2022, but just look at my Twitter feed or just look at Facebook, right? It's crazy.

(11:25):

And then you have to help, not sell. Ooh, Camia says she sold. I like that. Boom, I know. The Inbound Revolution, which is the book that I wrote about organization is all about using modern techniques to number one, treat people like human beings, which let's have a reminder, super important, which HubSpot does very, very nicely. Number two, we want to make sure that you're helping, not selling. The tips that I'm going to give, there are any sales or marketing folks, when you connect with somebody for the first time, you don't connect to them to sell Trainual. You connect with them, first of all in a research fashion to understand how you can help. And everybody says, "No one picks up the phone anymore," which is wrong. I got the statistic on that. Help, don't sell. Nefati, yes, exactly. Because if I call Chris, and I'd say, "Chris, I work with CEOs of scaling companies in Arizona who are looking to jam pack 2,000, 20,000 people into their next virtual event." Does that sound like you?

(12:31):

You'd be like, "Ooh, who is this guy?" You couldn't control it, your lizard brain, right? You had Seth on. Oh my goodness, Seth taught and invented the lizard brain. Oh my goodness. And he's going to say, "Third tone in your brain will drip down." And you're like, "Wow, this guy, first of all knows who I am. Number two has estimated what my problem is going to be. Third asked to help." And those touchpoints make it so much easier. So the ability for you to be an inbound organization, nothing to do with HubSpot, an inbound organization means that you're human, you help, not sell. That you are the riches are in the niches. Have you ever heard that term?

Chris Ronzio (13:10):

Yeah, of course.

Dan Tyre (13:11):

Okay. Today it's if you want to go to the beaches, you have to work the niches, that's how they pronounce it. And it's the same thing in the old days, this was one of the questions you sent me. In the old days, you could be a generalist, you could work with everybody. Today, what most people want, they want a specialist. If you got a stomach ache, you don't want a general practitioner, you want a gastro immunologist, right? Because time to value, time to fix it, time to evaluate. And the easiest way to grow. This is very hard for entrepreneurs. Very, very hard, is to focus on a specific niche. You want to be that niche that I don't know all of the manufacturing companies in Maricopa County, 30 employees and $3 million worth of revenue. They come to you. And if you can establish just a small market share, then you get your word of mouth and flywheel moving so that everybody understands, so you're the go-to person.

(14:12):

Now it's just go to Chris, he's the person who creates this particular process, understands our vocabulary, seasonality, and you're going to get better value. And once you do that, it's easier to move from a lower market share to a higher market share and then you just take another niche and that's the way you scale in 2022. Then, you have to make sure that you are managing the customer experience, your only sustainable advantage. In the old days, people bought a product or service because you had a feature no one else had, right? Now, it's not like that, right? The pace of technology innovation is such that everybody's going to have the same features that you have. If Trainual has a feature that people like, your competitor's going to have it in six months, maybe a year. And so now the process and your competitive advantage is making sure that you're treating your customers like human beings, you're helping them, you're ingratiated.

(15:10):

It's easy to do this. To do that, you have to look at the data, which is the fifth component of an inbound organization. You look at the data, you make sure that you are delighting your customers, you make sure that the ratios are right, that the people come to your website, at least a certain, Thomas says good stuff. Yeah, this is all out of the Inbound Organization. It's all the stuff that I learned at HubSpot. It's all the stuff that Trainual practices. And the great thing is that it's essential for solo entrepreneurs, for scale ups, even for a hundred million dollar companies to practice. Because if you don't, you're going to get squished, right? It's a very competitive marketplace. Do you know the average number of competitors a US company has?

Chris Ronzio (15:55):

No.

Dan Tyre (15:55):

Guess.

Chris Ronzio (15:56):

1,000.

Dan Tyre (16:01):

Okay, so a little less, right? In 2014, the average company had six competitors.

Chris Ronzio (16:07):

Okay, I guess something in online. Okay, that makes sense.

Dan Tyre (16:10):

No, but you're right. You're headed, in 2022, it's 100. There's 100 competitors, right? Easy, I'm sure you do your competitor intelligence and everybody wants to be Trainual, but they can't, because you got there first and you provided value and you use that big orange heart of yours to go in and offer them this stuff, and then you delighted your customers. Son of a gun, the reason why you're scaling like a rocket ship is when somebody comes in, they're like, "Yeah, this is good stuff. It's easy to use, I like this stuff. They're not going to change." There's another product feature, you're going to find out pretty soon, you're just going to add it to your program.

(16:42):

And that is a recipe for success. You have leaned into the customer experience, which is great. Now, the final thing, which is also you've done so well. Sounds like I'm your PR firm, and we didn't even discuss this, but you're a great example. When I was doing my research last night, Becky sent me the questions, I'm like, "These guys just practice the process," is to create a community and you're running this program for two days, which costs a fair amount of money. Why are you doing it? Why are you helping out all these people with world class speakers in a program?

Chris Ronzio (17:14):

To help. To be helpful, to help them grow their businesses because then our product works better.

Dan Tyre (17:19):

Zach SD says, "Becky's a stud." I like that. It's a star if it's female, but good stuff. I know. Look at that. Hearts, hearts, heart. That's right. And so you're ingratiating yourself. First of all, it's good for humanity. Doing good stuff is just nice. Second of all, you're providing a great value of world class speakers, the lineup is awesome, to explain how they can apply it to their particular business. It'll all be recorded, you'll make it available to everybody. That is unique, and it's a great way to build this community of like-minded folks. Your chat pane is hilarious right now. You've attracted people that have the same kind of values because they like to hang out with the Trainual kind of culture. And that bodes very well for your continued skill. That was a little bit of a long-winded answer, but how much time do I have to? Do I have three more hours to talk?

Chris Ronzio (18:09):

Yeah, I think we got 20 minutes or so to go. Somebody have to give me the heads up when we're running out of time, but.

Dan Tyre (18:15):

Got it.

‍

The Customer Experience Is Critical

‍
Chris Ronzio (18:15):

Because I'll just keep talking to you forever. But okay, so many things that you just covered. First, customer experience. Shout out to all of our customer success teams, customer support, everyone that's talking to customers, you're seeing this love in the chat. And so if you've talked to someone on our team, you probably know that like Dan said, features are not differentiators, people are. And I think that the people that we've built are just incredible. So shout out to all of you, because I know you're watching wherever you're logging in from.

Dan Tyre (18:41):

Okay, hold on a second. That is not easy, right? Number one, you had to pick the right people. Number two, you had to focus them on, that's just a mission, right? I've met some Trainual employees. It's not that they're working just selling insurance. You have made sure that you surrounded yourself with people who really understand customer delight and you've given them the flexibility so that they can deliver, right? That's on you, Mr. CEO and founder, right? You and John are working hard to create that. That's not easy.

(19:11):

That means you have to take seriously your culture. On behalf of HubSpot, just Google HubSpot culture code. Very early in HubSpot experience, we realized that culture was absolutely essential and we worked hard. Dharmesh Shah, the co-founder of HubSpot, who's an amazing guy, he's the Dalai Lama of HubSpot. He just gave me a big hug last week at our INBOUND conference. He says, "If you want to make a million dollars, help a million people and ask for a dollar." Oh my goodness, that's so great. And he wrote the manifesto called HubSpot Culture Code.

(19:44):

And what it says is there are certain kind of ways that we recruit and apply so that our frontline employees can delight our customers. And it's hard to implement at a multi billion dollar level. But we've done it because we've attracted those kind of people who are mission driven and really want to help. And you've done the same thing. Those customer service thing, one of the thing, if you're a smaller company, the customer service is now the third employee that you hire. In the old days, it was the two co-founders and then you hired your first sales people. Now, it's got to be a customer service person because in the old days, this is kind of speaking a little out of school, but in the early days of HubSpot, we charged $250 for the product and it didn't work that well, right?

(20:33):

It was okay, but it's just wasn't world class software and we said it was in beta for 18 months and it was awesome. People cut us a huge break and we're like, "It's still in beta." We could never do that now. Now, with the proliferation of SaaS, and the expectations, if that product doesn't work immediately and somebody doesn't jump on it, you're done. Forget about it, I'm going to just download something else. And it's an amazing component of building companies to make sure that you have that solid customer support, success area, and they have to be empowered. So it's not just having the people. They have to be able to solve the difficult hairballs that arise every single day in a way in which doesn't have to escalate. One of the great things about HubSpot is we look at all of the bottlenecks, all of the critical points, and if we're doing something over and over again, we'll just eliminate. We're like, "Okay, you don't need to get that approval anymore. Just do it," right? Pushing those decisions down to the appropriate one.

Chris Ronzio (21:34):

Yeah. Culture fills all the gaps that standard operating procedures don't document. If you don't have a process of procedure for everything, you fall back on the culture to say, directionally, how do we behave as a company? Do we take care of people? And I think that's why I always recommend people start with the profile, Start with the overview of the company, the culture, because that is the basis for how you behave in every scenario. And then you get more granular with your standard operating procedures for the repeatable, consistent scenarios that you go through, but culture is the foundation.

Dan Tyre (22:06):

No question. HubSpot is very proud that we have one policy, there's one policy. Can you guess the one policy that HubSpot has? If you do this, I'll buy you a breakfast sandwich because it'll be amazing.

Chris Ronzio (22:18):

I bet it's something like be kind to others.

Dan Tyre (22:20):

Oh, that's so good. You get half a breakfast sandwich. You don't get any bacon. But I'll give you a bit, it's use good judgment.

Chris Ronzio (22:27):

Okay.

‍

Treat Customers Like Humans

Dan Tyre (22:27):

Use, oh, Vontania says be human. That's a good one and you're all around the same kind of thing, but it's use good judgment. We want to make sure that our employees feel that first of all, we've hired them with that culture in mind, and good for you. Number two, that they understand what the company mission and vision is, and then that they're empowered to make that change. And it's hard when you have 7,000 employees, but HubSpot has done a great job in doing.

Chris Ronzio (22:55):

Well, that's amazing that you've stuck to that at this scale. So I want to go back to something you said around this comment, be human. You said that if the website is kind of the reception and websites are not being human, not treating people like human, where are the pitfalls? Where are people's websites not human, that they should actually be changing how they're treating-

Dan Tyre (23:13):

Oh my goodness. If I come to your website and it's hard for me to find something, if it loads slowly or you got a big graphic on something and I can't get it on my phone immediately you got about, I don't know, three seconds and then I'm out of there. I'm going to the next person on Google. Number two, I want to know that you know who I am. And so if you can serve information where it says, "Hey, you're an entrepreneur and angel investor, I'm welcome." and I want you to show me specific information, and I want you to give me information where I feel welcome. If it's generic, if it's like we work with everybody, if it's not tailored to me, then I'm a little disgruntled either consciously or unconsciously.

(24:02):

But as soon as you say, "No, we help Arizona entrepreneurs who are angel investors who want to help scale other businesses." Now I'm like, "Ooh, these guys understand me." I want to make sure that it's easy for me to get free stuff. Put in the chat pane if you guys like free stuff. Yes, free stuff. No, free stuff. Oh, Becky. Yes. I know, I know. Come on. Quick, quick, everybody's listening. Yes, look at all that stuff.

Chris Ronzio (24:27):

Free stuff is my jam.

Dan Tyre (24:29):

I know. So we're going to give you some free stuff at the end of this presentation because Chris and I appreciate that. And I want to understand, it could be a checklist, it could be a podcast. Your podcast is awesome. I love listening to your podcast. It could be a PowerPoint presentation, there's a million things that anybody can give away, but I want to see it and I want some of it for free, that's your blog. And then I want some of it behind a squeeze pay so that you get me to type in the entire hubspot.com email.

(25:02):

And if you do that, then I'm like, "Okay, these guys get me." Then I want to make sure that you're sending me personalized, customized emails to get me back. You're like, "You like that Dan Tyre, Chris Ronzio podcast, we got a better one." Which is hard to believe, but maybe, And I want you to lead me back to stuff that interests me. That was one of the great questions as well. How do you tap into somebody's customer experience? You got to know if this is the first time I've been to the website. You got to know if it's the 15th time I've been to the website because then your email can be like, "Dan, you spend more time on my website than I do. This is the 14th time you're back in 2022, perhaps we should talk. You want to schedule a meeting with somebody who can accelerate your process for customer success or building training manuals."

(25:47):

And I'll be like, "Yeah, they nailed it." So the customer experience is, there's education process. Sometimes people will move to the decision process or consideration process and then the decision process and there's different content for each one. That's why it's so hard to be a marketer today, because in the old days you had one brochure. It was freaking like hard coating. If you lived in Boston, you'd use it to scrape the snow off your windshield. And no one ever really looked at it, but it was pretty. Today you have to have customized information exactly where I want. And the more specific you can get, the happier I am. And if you make me happy, then I'm not going anywhere, right?

(26:25):

In today's world with so much craziness going on, if you're a good vendor and you do what you say you're going to do, and you give me free stuff, then I'm with you forever. Not only that, but then I'm recommending you to everybody I know. I'm like, "No, don't build your own training, man. Go to Trainual." And they're like, "Who's Trainual?" I'm like, "You don't know Trainual? All right, go to this website." Now, what just happened is I'm a flywheel. Put in the chat pane if you know what a, yeah. Camia says it's true. Of course, it's true. If you know what a flywheel is. Yes, Flywheel, no flywheel, right? Quick, quick. Come on, attendees, you're lagging. Ooh, look at this. Yes, no, yes, no, yes, no. Okay, a flywheel. Are you a car guy, Chris? I don't know if you're a car guy.

Chris Ronzio (27:05):

A little.

Dan Tyre (27:08):

Okay. I don't own a car.

Chris Ronzio (27:09):

Like old cars. I don't know old, you don't own a car?

Dan Tyre (27:10):

I don't own a car.

Chris Ronzio (27:10):

What do you do? You Uber everywhere or Lyft?

Dan Tyre (27:15):

I have to ask my wife if I can borrow the car. I'm like, "Amy, can I borrow the car?"

Chris Ronzio (27:16):

I had a scooter. When I first moved to Arizona. I had a Vespa, I didn't have a car, but I had a little scooter and it's 110, 115 degrees here so I broiled in that thing just driving around in the summer.

Dan Tyre (27:28):

I bet you it was good gas mileage though, right?

Chris Ronzio (27:31):

Oh yeah, you go 150 miles a gallon or something.

Dan Tyre (27:34):

Yeah. Yvonne says she's in Brooklyn. No car. Good for you, Yvonne. It's a long story, but occasionally I'll ask my wife to borrow the car and she's like, "Where are you going, Dan?" And I'm like, "I'm going to the grocery store." She's like, "When are you going to be back?" I'm like, "I don't know, I'm going to the grocery store." She's like, "Okay, get your own car." Anyway, the process.

‍

Using Inbound Principles To Generate The Flywheel

Chris Ronzio (27:54):

Flywheel.

Dan Tyre (27:55):

If you're an auto guy. Yeah, I was trying to think how I got on that tangent. A flywheel in the automobile is what moves the pistons. And so there's a process. You also might be familiar with the movie Ghost with Patrick Swayze and Demi Moore.

Chris Ronzio (28:11):

Demi Moore, yeah.

Dan Tyre (28:12):

Right, and she's a potter. And a flywheel is also a potter thing. You push the pedal and the flywheel goes around more quickly and then you do the pot. I think Patrick Swayze's dead now, I think he's dead in the movie. Maybe that's why they called it Ghost. I'm not sure. Anyway, that flywheel works for your customers, because once I start talking about Trainual because I'm a pleased customer, your customers are more valued than your sales team. They will bring in more business. And HubSpot has this amazing woman, Christina Garnett, she runs our Hub Fans Advocacy program.

(28:48):

We cultivate that because we are appreciative of people who recommend it. And when a salesperson calls you, you know they have a vested interest. When a customer. Ooh, Jim Bergen says Christine is amazing, that's some positive reinforcement immediately. Team HubSpot, #TeamHubSpot, very good. And that is essential for all customers, For all of the people listening to this podcasts, You want to get your tribe, just like Chris and Jonathan have, just like Trainual has done, you want to define who your tribe is, and then you want to delight them in a way in which they're like, "This is an exceptional company," which this program is a great example.

(29:27):

And then you want to make sure that it's easy for them to recommend you. Doesn't have to be financial compensation, doesn't have to be pay a commission or anything like that. It's just like if you recommend or if you feel comfortable recommending to somebody. What HubSpot has done is there's a little gamification, things like that. You get tickets, INBOUND t-shirts, things like that if you support the initiative. And building your tribe, once you have that strong tribe and you have a very strong tribe, then it's harder for people to break in, because it's not about the software. It's about hanging with people who have the same values of helping human beings, of helping, not selling, and everybody having a good time to do what they want to do.

Chris Ronzio (30:14):

We asked Seth Godin about tribes yesterday, and one of the things he said that I think you just reinforced is that you don't have to create your own tribe. Not everyone has to create a tribe, but the tribes exist out there. And you have to align with the tribe and find a group, a niche that resonates with what you're building and then they're attracted to you. And so that's kind of that inbound philosophy that I think Seth was agreeing with you on.

Dan Tyre (30:35):

100%, and he's spoken at a lot of the INBOUND conferences that HubSpot has, and he's a brilliant guy. And you've got to be a little bit intentional about who you want to hang with. If you go to the auto industry, there's a certain type of person who works in the auto industry. If you go into healthcare, there's a certain type of person. They have certain values, they have certain thoughts, they have... They're kind of the same. That's why they go into the industry. And when you create-

Chris Ronzio (31:03):

Psychographics.

Dan Tyre (31:03):

It becomes very, very valuable from a business perspective, also from a human perspective. When I was at the HubSpot INBOUND conference with 10,000 people, it was amazing because they all have big orange hearts. They're all talking about how they're helping everybody else, and they're watching Jane Goodall and Barack Obama and all these people, and they're all just bonding together and amazing process. And by bringing all those people together, it just takes that feeling and it's like times 10. Amazing.

Chris Ronzio (31:32):

See, if you're doing your event last week and we're doing our event this week, we should be doing two for ones on speakers and stuff. We got to get more strategic next year.

Dan Tyre (31:41):

Right, let's go. I've always said Chris, anything you need, I'm all in. Like everybody else, I support all entrepreneurs. My mission statement is doing the most good for the universe, which I stole from my son Eli about 10 years ago. He told me when he dropped out of college, he's like, "I just want to do more good for the universe." What do you say when your 22 year old son says I just want to do more good for the universe? I'm like, "I'm stealing that line." He's like, "What?" I'm like, "I'm going to tell-"

Chris Ronzio (32:10):

I think that's what success as a parent looks like.

Dan Tyre (32:12):

I'm crying. I'm like, "Okay, that's the most beautiful thing you've ever said to me." And he's done it. He's socially, responsibly, someplace in Prague now trying to solve for humanity's existence. An amazing person. And you see at dantyre.com, it's doing the most good that I can for the universe, and I'm relentless about it. I'm an old guy, so I don't sleep a lot. I just nap in two hour increments. So it's three o'clock in the morning, what do I do? Either jump on LinkedIn or Slack or I prepare something like that.

Chris Ronzio (32:46):

You are always on LinkedIn. Whenever I'm on there, your comments are right back right away, so you must always be awake. I want to, one thing that you said that I want to-

Dan Tyre (32:54):

Go.

Chris Ronzio (32:56):

You said just give things away. Why do you think people are afraid to just give content away?

Dan Tyre (33:01):

Oh, it makes sense because they're worried that it's going to impact their business. And in the old days, we're very, very careful because that was your competitor advantage. I don't want to give away my secret sauce, but it doesn't work like that now. The more you give, the more you get. If there are hundreds of thousands of people who use HubSpot free software, just Google HubSpot free software, all of our software starts at free. And the reason we do that is number one, people like it. Number two, people need it. HubSpot has a solid balance sheet, and if you're just starting out, we don't want to take money from you. That's what the old companies do, that was the company start in the '80s and '90s. Let's milk every single dollar we can get from startup companies, and that's the way we roll. We're the exact opposite. I'm like, "We want to help people." If people need software and they don't have enough money to afford it, HubSpot has the number one CRM for scaling companies and it's free. It's always going to be free.

Chris Ronzio (34:02):

How about outside of software? Do you think service companies can use free too?

Dan Tyre (34:07):

100%. There is no reason why you can't go ahead and offer a free consultation. I do it all the time. I do office hours at the Henry, which is a local Phoenix based company, which you and I have met, do manufacturers use free, of course. My co-author for the Inbound Organization has three patents for lasers. Todd Hockenberry is the smartest guy ever and he was competing against a multi-billion dollar multinational who had all of these features. The one thing that people wanted when they bought a laser is they wanted quick turnaround. So what they did is when somebody sent in a spec, they would say, "Okay, we will build the prototype within 48 hours and send it back to them." And people are like, "What?" And they're like, "How much does that cost?" We're like, "We'll do it for free." They won 99% of the business. This is a frigging laser for crying out loud.

(35:02):

And that's where the niche came in. If it was a certain type of company, it was a certain size that had a certain demographic, they would win 99% of their time. They studied the data, which we talked about earlier, and then all of a sudden, boom, they were able to convert so many more. And everybody's like, "No, go to that company. Go to Todd Hockenberry's company. They'll build the prototype for you," anybody can do it. Now, the challenge is you don't want to lose your shirt. You want to make sure that the investment is commensurate with the return, and that makes it easier if you're niching into five or 10 or 50 companies that you can get the specifics and ratios attuned so it works well.

Chris Ronzio (35:45):

Yeah, so I would summarize this. I know we've got to wrap up, but I would summarize this whole idea of being free as helpful. If you're providing free content, if you're offering a free version of your software, if you're offering free services, if you're offering a free consultation, what you're trying to do is start by helping someone, show someone value. And when you create that value and you create that trust, then it makes them want to purchase from you as their needs expand and increase, and that's how you make sure you don't lose your shirt. And so whether it's free software or services, what we're really talking about is just being helpful, being human. And I think that's really been the theme for this presentation. So I want to thank you so much for coming on here again, because as always, we could just talk forever.

Dan Tyre (36:27):

It's awesome. Thank you very much. Congratulations on a great program. I'm a huge Chris Ronzio and Trainual fan. I just put my link in there. Florence, asked a good question. "If you're giving away your software, how do you make money?" There's separate tiers. Everybody starts it free. If you want to accelerate and get more value, then you got to pay a little more money. If I can be of value to anybody, I offer this to everybody, only 2% of the people take me up. Just ping me on LinkedIn, right? Be specific about your ask, right? To the extent of my bandwidth, I'm happy to help anyone, right? To my experience, it's the most fun that I have.

Chris Ronzio (37:01):

I love it. All right, Thanks so much, Dan. I'll talk to you soon.

Dan Tyre (37:03):

Bye.

Chris Ronzio (37:04):

For everyone else, I want to highlight that last point that he said right there, because he's right. And I think less than 2% of people actually take advantage of these kind of offers, that amazing speakers and experienced people like Dan have just thrown out there. If you want answers, if you've got questions, ping people directly on LinkedIn, on Twitter, on YouTube, on Instagram, wherever it is that they hang out. Go there, send them a message. I have people that send voice messages through Instagram or LinkedIn, and I love answering those. I'll answer them as I'm walking down the street, but it's a few and far between. For all the people that are here listening, only a couple will take action, so will you be one of the ones that takes people up on that offer? Please do. Go follow Dan and our other speakers, and I promise it'll pay off.