36: BLOC Party - Customer Education with Sarah Bedrick, Chris LoDolce, and Lindsay Thibeault

In this episode I talk to the founders of the Hubspot Academy, Sarah, Chris, and Lindsay about what it's like standing up a customer education academy, difficulties they faced, and fond memories they made. You are NOT going to want to miss the very first (but not the last) BLOC party episode!

Sarah Bedrick is an advisor for software companies looking to build and scale their Academy education initiatives. Sarah founded and grew the HubSpot Academy team from 2012 to 2017, and after that cofounded the fast-growing HR software company Compt. In her free time, Sarah is a personal and career coach, and enjoys exploring her new home in St Petersburg, Florida and living life through the eyes of her toddler.

Chris LoDolce spends his time professionally advising Customer Education/Academy Leaders of B2B SaaS Software companies on how to build and scale their educational content initiatives to drive top and bottom line growth. Chris was a founding member of HubSpot Academy in 2012 and in 2019-2020 as the Director lead the team to scale HubSpot Academy across the globe in six languages. Over 1 million people learned from HubSpot Academy between the time Chris helped found the team to when he left in the fall of 2020. 

Lindsay Thibeault is an advisor for SaaS businesses who are growing their education and training programs. Lindsay has been driving interactive marketing and brand strategy at global companies for over 12 years. She joined HubSpot in 2013 and for seven years was responsible for building HubSpot Academy's operations and content processes. She specializes in building communities that generate leads and retains customers through compelling and educational content. Lindsay has taught tens of thousands of marketers how to build scalable content creation, website optimization, and reporting strategies for their organizations.

If you want to work with Sarah, Chris, and Lindsay, you can contact them here: https://www.saasacademyadvisors.com/

Sarah, Chris, and Lindsay's suggestions for where to begin with customer education:

• Simon Sinek's How Great Leaders Inspire Action (https://www.ted.com/talks/simon_sinek_how_great_leaders_inspire_action?language=en)
• Brian Solis (https://www.briansolis.com/category/articles/)
• Julie Dirksen's Design for How People Learn (https://usablelearning.com/the-book/)
• Cammy Bean's The Accidental Instructional Designer (https://www.td.org/books/the-accidental-instructional-designer)

Connect with Heidi on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/heidiekirby/ or on my website: www.heidikirby.com

Thanks for listening to the BLOC!

Connect with me on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/heidiekirby/

Or check out what I'm working on over at https://www.getusefulstuff.com/

Transcript

Heidi Kirby: 0:05

Hello friends and welcome to the block the building learning and organizational culture podcast. I'm your host Heidi Kirby. And today's episode is a very special one because I don't have just one guest. I have three, three of the founders of the HubSpot Academy. Join me Sarah Bedrick, Chris Liddell J and Lindsey Tebow to talk about standing up of customer Education Academy. Obstacles encountered pleasant memories. They have tips for those working in customer education and l&d. You're not going to want to miss this episode, the special block party episode. Hello, everyone. I have more than one guest here with me today. And we are going to jump right in. I have Sarah, Chris and Lindsey here. And I'm just going to have them take turns telling you a little bit about them. Sarah, you want to go first?

Sarah Bedrick: 1:07

Sure. Thank you, Heidi, for having us. Hi, everyone. My name is Sarah Bedrick. And I am a one of the former founders of HubSpot Academy and spent six years really building out and scaling out that team. And over the course of those six years was the team's first instructional designer took our training from webinar based to video based, ran our certifications program and also helped build our learning management system. I'm incredibly excited to be here. super passionate about communications, internal communications, stakeholder buy in vision, casting roadmapping all the good juicy stuff that comes from like the business side of the learning design world.

Heidi Kirby: 1:57

Nice. Awesome. Lindsay, how about you go next? I'm just going in order of who's on my screen here.

Lindsay Tebow: 2:03

Yeah, more than happy to be here. Hi, everyone. My name is Lindsay Tebow. And similar to Sarah. I spent close to seven years on the HubSpot Academy team. And for those that now know HubSpot Academy, you probably know about all of the great certifications and courses and videos and how engaging it is. It took us many years and a lot of successes and failures to get to that point. So I spent a lot of my time working on the operations, the processes, the instructional design to now get HubSpot Academy to where it is today a very large global brand. So I love geeking out on talking about how people learn and instructional design and content management. So really excited to share some knowledge here today.

Heidi Kirby: 3:03

Awesome. I'm excited to have you and last but certainly not least, Chris.

Chris LoDolce: 3:10

Thank you Heidi excited to to be here today. I feel like I'm that person who shows up five minutes late to a party. When I'm here, so excited to jump in today. As Sarah mentioned, Sarah, myself and Mark Elans had the opportunity to start HubSpot Academy back in 2011. It was actually v3 of HubSpot Academy, Sarah had worked on a previous version as well. And we had the good fortune of being really at the right place at the right time when an industry was looking for ways to better improve what Now most of us referred to in the industry as the customer experience. And over the next 10 ish years, I had the opportunity to work with Lindsay and Sarah and a growing team and some of the areas that I really enjoyed. While working at HubSpot. And on the HubSpot Academy team was kind of defining this ever changing role of what an instructional designer that we call the professor actually did, and the different ways in which somebody can grow in those roles and take on different responsibilities both on the learning team as well as across an entire organization. And most recently 2020 through 2020. I worked as the director of HubSpot Academy, and that's where we had an opportunity to take and scale a lot of our education in ways that we had never initially planned we would need to which was a really cool learning experience and why Sarah Lindsay and I are all here today. And one of our biggest goals working with SAS b2b companies is how can we help people reduce the time to value when producing educational content? Because we have a lot of great learnings from the things that we did that focused a lot on solving for the short term, but not necessarily the long term. So we're excited to be here today. Thanks for having us.

Heidi Kirby: 4:58

Of course. So I have a ton of questions that just kind of come to mind. But the first one I want to ask, which is probably the most obvious is, how does one come about kind of deciding that there's a need for and then kind of like standing up a, an academy, an educational department body? What have you in an organization?

Sarah Bedrick: 5:25

Such a great question. I feel like Chris. I'm looking at you, friend.

Chris LoDolce: 5:31

Sure. I'm happy to jump in here, both from our experience at HubSpot and Sarah definitely add some commentary here. But for us, it was our co founders, Brian and Dharmesh, we're always and still are maniacally focused on the customer. And how can you create an ideal customer experience, and especially back in 2010, even 2006. When they started HubSpot, the idea of using the internet for marketing and sales was still very nascent, especially for b2b sales and b2b marketing. And so it was all around how do you educate the market on how to do this thing that can be an is so powerful. And so for our business, I think one of the reasons why we were able to get such a big head start is because our co founders understood the power and importance of education when developing a new market and a new category within a market. And so for us, it was you know, it was still difficult. And internally, there was a lot of hoops to jump through. But that was the big thing for for HubSpot was knew the power of education started with a blog before there was even any software. And this was the logical next step of how you create more long form educational content within a business. I'll stop there, and then we can definitely talk about 2021. How do you stand up an educational content team? Because that's definitely something that we see happening more and more often.

Sarah Bedrick: 7:01

Yeah, I think I'm just gonna jump in here. I think Chris really nailed it. Really talking about the like the big picture. And I think, in tandem, like there's so many businesses now that are seeing just how powerful an educational initiative can be in the university and Academy and how it can impact like every department, like almost every single department at their, at their company, like all the metrics, when we were when I was leaving HubSpot Academy, so many different parts of the business were being impacted from the HubSpot Academy team. And as Chris said, Brian and Omar, Dharmesh were so forward thinking, and I think now it's becoming much more of a table stakes thing. And a lot of businesses, especially in the software world are saying, like, we want to be a scalable business, and it's time for us to scale, we need to bring on education instead of more CSMs. Or instead of more onboarding specialists, like how can we make this a more streamlined initiative, while still solving tremendously for our customer?

Chris LoDolce: 8:06

And I think that's probably one of the most exciting things for anybody learning today who's thinking about getting into instructional design, getting into the SAS software side of educational content and providing educational content for software users? Is this progression. even five years ago, it was Hey, Chris, hey, Lindsay, Hey, Sara, can we understand how to start a team and educational content team and Academy and it was always like an individual marketer, and individual customer success, maybe manager, we're most likely just like an account manager being like, there's this need for it, we need to scale what we're doing. And that was five years ago. Now we're talking to, you know, CEOs, CEOs, executives, and sometimes even board of directors who are saying, you're getting your series B funding. One of the things we want to see this money spent on is building a scalable educational content program. And so it went from like, you know, no playbook to individuals and businesses identifying that and getting a head start. And that's a lot of the leaders you see today, in this industry. And now it's these executives who are saying, we know we need it, it's not even that it's not even an option anymore. We have to have this if we're going to scale and be able to basically have the metrics that we need to report on, to be able to get more funding to be able to go public, and hopefully get that nice shine report status. So it's an exciting time for this industry, on every level, whether you're just getting started or you're looking for your first director, the people.

Heidi Kirby: 9:40

Absolutely. What do you think has changed? What do you think there's been a shift towards B, you know, because if you've been in the field for a long time, oftentimes l&d is really like, Oh, they're an expense. They're a cost center. You know, what do you think has changed? Just that a little bit to make it more of an integral, one of the, you know, I've seen like you have startups are now, you know, after they lay the basic foundation of their MVP or or whatever, now they're bringing in lnd is one of the first things that they're standing up.

Chris LoDolce: 10:18

Yeah, I there's a lot of definitely you know that at the base of it is the technology. right can you know, 1015 20 years ago, the only way you could do this was training people in person like going to a business. And also that software was usually something that was downloaded and was stored locally versus in the cloud. So I think that was the first really big major shift. And then it was okay, now that it's everything's in the cloud, we're able to track product usage, we're able to understand how educational content is impacting the business. Now, all of a sudden, it went from a cost center to much more of a, quote unquote, revenue center, because you can show the impact of has on lead generation time to close deals, average cost per deals. And then on the retention side, of course, with software, since everything's a subscription, that's where I think the real trigger came in was like, Wait a second, we need to empower our users, so that they continue to use our software, use more of our software and attribute our software to a positive ROI. So I think kind of like those factors. And I'm sure Lindsay and Sarah are gonna chime in with even more in these different areas. But from a high level, those are the areas that I think, really started to help everybody wake up and say, okay, great when we're a small business or a startup to have white glove service, we can't afford for every single person who buys our software to have this experience as though they're flying first class. And that's where I think this educational content connects people and gives them the knowledge to be successful.

Lindsay Tebow: 11:54

Yeah, I think Chris, you I think that's great. Go ahead. Chris, I think that's spot on. And what Chris's point was earlier. And this was very much a big part of the culture at HubSpot was this known that the customer is really in control over the marketing, the sales and the service experience, everything we experience now is so driven by reviews, and really what the customer needs are. And so I think that's where for us, as we were developing HubSpot Academy, because it was already a part of the company culture, we saw that immediate need. And now more executives, more of the the C suite is asking for and putting together that that need that we happen to really have baked into our principles and our foundation right from the start. And I think because of that, whether people are putting metrics to it and thinking about time to value, we were always hyper focused on really not solely just building education, but the transformation that comes from that education. And I think that's what was really setting our process and our focus. Apart from that. People are going to be hearing more and more of this need and this demand for education. And to Sarah's point, we knew all of the metrics that this could impact from so many different levels of the business. But it truly not everyone's always said knowledge is power, this knowledge that can be provided to users and customers, is really what's going to allow that alignment of the customer being the center of all of this. And so for us, it continues to always fit so nicely together within this narrative. And it always feels like we're serving a much bigger purpose.

Heidi Kirby: 14:07

Great. So what were some of the biggest obstacles that you faced or that you've found?

Sarah Bedrick: 14:15

I'm gonna jump in here, because this one's always so top of mind for me. And because it's something that I feel like whenever we talk to other professionals in the space, it's something that everyone is, has a challenge with it to begin with. And I think for us, like a big obstacle was really understanding and being able to define, like, the value that we brought to the business. You know, Chris and I, in the very beginning, were running these live webinars teaching people about blogging and landing pages. And the feedback that we were getting was phenomenal. And we were building this incredible community of learners and everyone was like lifting each other up. But when, when it came down to it's like, well, what does this do to the business? Like how is this actually impacting the business? What are people are they using the software afterwards? Are they using it? Well, is their business being impacted like our sorry, our customers and their businesses also being impacted positively by this content and education. And for a long time, it was really challenging for us to identify like, what was the value that we were bringing to the business. And I think that was like one of the big inflection points once we identified some really key metrics, like that just set sail for so much momentum for our business for our business unit.

Heidi Kirby: 15:29

Nice.

Chris LoDolce: 15:31

And the technology, I'd say, to enable that reporting was something that now is definitely much more available, but still difficult. Like our VP shout out to our VP, VP, Frank kosher, who every single Sunday, sat at home and uploaded all of our reports to Salesforce, because Salesforce integration with the webinar software we were using, and the only way that we could show our impact was through someone who had admin access, which was Frank. So it was like, literally, from the top down, right, or VP, he has plenty of things he could be doing on a Sunday was updated, uploading all of our reports, and making sure that we can afford it. So that was a huge obstacle. And I think even today, I still see that with the businesses we work with, it's like they have, you know, Power BI or some type of analytical tool that allows them whether it's Looker, snowflake, mix panels, all these different places that they couldn't store their data and kill report on the data. But when it comes to actually getting somebody to set up the integrations, and then build those datasets in a way that they can report on, it becomes, you know, three 612 Plus month project. And with the executives wanting to show the results much more quickly than that, I'd still say today, that's probably one of the bigger obstacles is being able to report across the entire customer lifecycle, not just on the, like the learning objectives and whether or not the learning objectives were met with in a training for the learners? Sure,

Sarah Bedrick: 17:08

yeah. Oh, my gosh, they're now starting really come to the forefront. Another one. For the longest time. I mean, we couldn't, as I said, like, we didn't have the metrics to highlight our impact on the business. We also didn't have the right language to describe to our colleagues internally what we were doing. And so Oh, yeah, it was, it was a little bit of like, Who's that team over there? And like, what are they doing? And it feels like they might be doing some of our job? And like, how do we work together? Like what is the right way for us to work together? And for the longest time, Chris, I don't know if you remember this and Lindsey, but like, when team members had asked us like, how do I describe to other people, the company or my family? Like what is the HubSpot Academy team? And what did we do? It took us a while to really get that down. I mean, now it's just second nature to be able to describe it. But there was nobody else really that we could look to in the market that was doing this, like trailhead for Salesforce wasn't even around yet. And so we were kind of just like, building our path. As we were going, we're literally putting down the tracks like right before we were doing it. And I think a big part of it was not being able to communicate it internally to others and like how we can work together to really make a win win situation.

Heidi Kirby: 18:27

No, that's great. I think that that's, you know, not just for customer education, but l&d teams across the board, whether they're serving internal employees, or what have you that that's always kind of the struggle, right? And another struggle that I've faced is, how do you consider both the end user or the learner but also the business goals and objectives? How did you guys kind of balance that and find the happy medium?

Chris LoDolce: 18:58

Yeah, that's, that's a very insightful question. I would have to give, I mean, we would have to give the initial credit to Mark Hill and something that he really, really did a good job of, with the team and kind of getting us in the right mindset was really that our purpose, our existence wasn't for the user to use the software. That was the business goal. But we existed to help individuals be more successful in their careers and through their own personal success doing their jobs. They were going to grow in their careers and grow their business. And so for all of us, it was always focused, whether it was Sara running meetings where we took time to celebrate the successes of people who got promotions or grew in their roles or how that actually impacted the business. It always started with We exist to educate, inspire, to help transform the way business is done and we had a full kind of purpose and mission built out. But that was the I think the driving force between behind the success initially at HubSpot Academy to then having to definitely get a little bit more focused and have to, you know, be a little bit more strategic and how we use resources. And it's like, okay, sure. Everybody wants content, what content are we going to create? We know we could spend a whole year creating one course. How do we create something that's not just good enough? That's great. That's remarkable. But also isn't going above and beyond to a place where we're spending resources in a not wise fashion? Outside?

Heidi Kirby: 20:35

Yeah, for sure. So you know, customer first in mind, and then kind of using the bumpers of the business, if you will, if you picture it like bowling, right? You have like, they're the bumpers that keep you from going in the gutter. Right. Cool. So what does me think about how I want to ask this question? Let's say, I want to ask about like, the ideal team, but I want you to give it to me and like a must haves, and great to have this kind of kind of framework, right? Because, you know, some companies have a lot more limited resources than others. So who is the ideal team for an academy made up of? You three? Right.

Sarah Bedrick: 21:32

See, but I covered my mouth.

Chris LoDolce: 21:36

The ideal team, I think I could answer that start to answer that in terms of like the skills and attributes of the people that make up the team. Right now the industry, our learning, development, customer Education Academy, this industry, I think has to we haven't consolidated our job titles yet. So there's a lot jobs held a lot of different things. Yeah. But the areas I think are very, very important is first, from an attribute standpoint, people who are motivated by helping others more than helping themselves. That is a key thing that I find that people actually get satisfaction and gratification by saying today, or this month, or this year, I put all of this work in and here's the output of people who have been able to reach their goals in life. There's a lot of people like that there's a lot of people who aren't like that, finding those individuals, I think is a key piece to starting a program and really ingrain the right culture. Another one is communication slash stakeholder engagement. Like, especially with a team, like customer education, or learning development, you your entire entire business is your stakeholders. And you need to be able to spend the time and build the relationships across the business and understand that how you speak about your program, and the impact you have is going to be different. So that's another one, you know, the teaching aspect, which is, I think, very closely aligned with helping, but having people who truly love to teach and, and really wake up every day with that mindset, inside and outside of work, right? Like, if you read a book is your first that has gonna help you in some way is your first instinct to be like, I want to go tell everybody, or I'm gonna use this knowledge to help myself get ahead. Right. It's that hoarding versus sharing. And I think that that mentality of I now know, something that I can share and help other people be more successful is key. And then I think from there, I'll stop, but it really starts to spread out, right? Like if you're gonna do live instructor led training versus on demand trading. How fascinated to integrate that content? Is this something that you're trying to do the scalable way? International? That's what I think the team design is a little bit more specific, but I'm a big believer, people with the right attributes. And of course, competencies, like being able to execute on what they need to do is the right way to think about designing a team versus one l&d instruct one instructional designer, you know, yeah,

Sarah Bedrick: 24:09

I would also add in there. I mean, I feel like these probably go for most roles today apply to most roles today. But people who are adaptable, there's, I mean, to get something really successful off the ground, there's a lot of learning and iterating. And you have to be adaptable. And I guess that also ties nicely to being self aware, like being honest with yourself and saying, like, is this achieving the goal that we set forth? If yes, fantastic. But If no, then you need to figure out like, well, how can we pivot this or improve this or iterate on this so that it can continuously get better and better? I think Lindsey might have been the one who pointed this out. But I mean, what you see from HubSpot Academy today is like 10 years in the making, and a lot of changes iterations. And so so so many updates to processes and like new metrics, creating new insights, like there's just so much iteration happening. And so being adaptable and self aware, I think are two really important things to look for when bringing people onto your team.

Lindsay Tebow: 25:17

Yeah, I'm so glad you said that, Sara, because that we get this question so often, how should I structure my team? Or how much headcount should I be asking for, now that we have some executive buy in, and I think what we, to Sara's point about the adaptability piece of it is there is going to be a constant restructuring based off of how the program develops, and what the different training formats are going to be. So I don't think there's ever a perfect answer. But what Chris and Sarah both noted is, it's always going to be about some of those skills and those competencies of having those pieces. That's, I think, what we really all leaned into, and what we all brought to the the academy team, which was able to help it continue to expand and grow over those years.

Heidi Kirby: 26:16

Yeah, it sounds like you also have all kind of touched on a little bit that you also have to have kind of a thick skin, right? Because there's probably a lot of being told no, or being told find a different way or being told, that's not going to work. Is that true to? Oh, yeah,

Chris LoDolce: 26:38

for sure. For sure, and not just internally, externally as well, right. So five, or 10, great glowing reviews or stories, has been able to afford to fly their family across the world to visit family for the first time in 10 years, you get those, those, you know, the feedback that just like cuts to the center of your soul. And just understanding and being able to say, okay, you know, this, this person, maybe they're having a hard or whatever it is not taking it personally, that was something that not only all three of us had to go through, and how you probably have experienced this yourself is especially newer folks that are joining, but you put your heart and soul into trying to teach and educate people, and then you get this feedback that was just seems so ungrateful, and take that personally can can really, you know, be a limiting factor in your growth. So for everyone who's who's listening to who was going through this for the first time, or has yet to just know that it's part it's part of it, it's part of the job. And that, you know, focusing again, back on those exciting stories of people who've been able to understand what you're trying to communicate and take that and make it their own. And, you know, succeed. That's, that's the exciting piece. But yeah, the thick skin. So true, Heidi like it's internal, external.

Heidi Kirby: 27:59

We've all been there. Yeah, well, that's actually a perfect segue to my next question. And that is, I want each of you to give me a favorite memory or project or just favorite kind of, maybe it's something you worked on a particular project, maybe it's something funny that happened, or a particular story or piece of feedback, just give me like your, your all time favorite memory.

Sarah Bedrick: 28:30

That's big. I think Bob actually involves Lindsey, when we were going from our webinar based training to our video based we didn't have a teleprompter. We had, we didn't have a videographer on our team. And so we had, fortunately been able to borrow resources from another team. It was like, you know, 20 hours from an intern to like, try to make this video on demand stuff work. So Lindsay and I are both trying to memorize like eight pages of scripts to be recorded on camera, and I kept looking up to the right. And like Lindsey, and I just really bonded over that experience. But it felt like we we knew we were Yeah, it was I remember the day we got our teleprompter. I posted it on Instagram. It was like we made it. But it was so exciting, because we thought we were on to something really big. And it wasn't it was a challenge getting through those those video scripts on camera, but that really opened a huge door for our team. So I think that's one of my favorites. There's so many though I can't wait to hear what Chris and Lindsay's are.

Lindsay Tebow: 29:33

I can. I know that memory all too well though, Sarah, I can still remember what I was wearing. Having all of these different. I think the sales team was sitting near us at that point. So they were very distracted by all of our tastes. But I think sometimes some of the these great memories while they're definitely baked in successes, they're also where we learned To fail better, like I like to say, and helped us understand more of our needs. I love to celebrate the failures as much as the successes. I'm going to keep thinking on a memory because I still all of them of flooding to me. So I'm not sure if you have won top of mine, Chris.

Chris LoDolce: 30:22

Yeah, I know, definitely a tough question. But I think one memory that just always sticks with me is the instructor led live training when it wasn't scalable, how we did it, but there was nothing I love more than having your goal was 20 to 25. More than that, it was hard to engage with everybody for an hour and to be able to just watch the conversation start with, how's the weather today. And here's where I'm located to now I have a tool that can be used within my business for marketing, which was what we were teaching back then, that kind of experience and that memory, and being able to replicate that over and over again, was something that I think for, for me is not a traditionally trained teacher, well, my family is mostly teachers gave me that read that real time experience of being of having the opportunity to impart knowledge and someone so that was definitely the, I'd say the one that that really stuck with me the most.

Lindsay Tebow: 31:23

All right, um, so many memories. But what comes to mind is when to, as Sarah noted, we went from the instructor led to then the on demand, ran into a lot of bumps there. And then we realized we needed to make a big update to our foundational certification, which to this day is known as the inbound certification. And this, I was responsible for the project management of this. And I can remember it like yesterday from sitting down with both Chris and Sarah and having to present to them my plan and saying, trust me on this, I think this is going to make some big improvements, to then having to really teach that out and manage that out to the rest of our team, which at that point was close to I think 12 people. And this is when we had someone responsible for the videography, and going to help us edit to when we also had a teleprompter for the first time and started to script out our our trainings. But on top of that was when we really put a process in place, we didn't know it had a name at the time, we were using more or less like the instructional design format of Addie. But at the time, it was just a step by step process that the team was doing together. And it worked well, because I think it it really brought the team together. But it really put a process in place. And still was founded on this idea of we're looking to transform the way that the world does business. And I remember presenting to the team, okay, if we can do this, we may be able to reach our goal of getting 100,000 People certified. Like imagine what that could look like if that filled a football stadium. I think I even gave everybody like a candy bar 100 grand or whatever it is to like I love it remind everybody like, these are the numbers we can reach. And it wasn't about the number it was about like how much we can transform these lives. Now this certification reaches millions. I don't know if we ever thought it wouldn't be like that back in 2015. But I think that was such a special memory because it it started to put all of these things in place. And that to me was when like the metrics started to show everyone's hard work. And everyone started to really see within HubSpot, the impact that an academy can have on all areas of the business.

Sarah Bedrick: 34:21

That was awesome. Lindsay that was also great. Heidi, I just want to point out how fantastic of a question that was because, like we can all see each other. And I know that when people are listening and they will be able to see us but like each one of us individually lit up. And I think on the surface, it's like, what was your favorite memory but when you really peel back the layers of that question, it really highlights like the cohesion of the team and the sub culture of our team and like the dedication and each one of us brought to the table like the vision that the team like that was set for our team and yeah, I feel like it really captures all of that so nicely. I think That's something that's also like makes an education initiative so much more powerful and transformative when people can inject their personality, they can bring their whole selves to the table. We had a team principle, we had many team principles, one of them was like, Stay weird, with an asterisk kind of just allowed us to like be our own weird selves. And everybody's weird was different than each others. But like, when you create a space where people can be their weird self, like, we all take big trust, like, I don't want to say like trust leaps. But I guess it's like a trust fall when you feel like your team is gonna get you, you know, hold you up and make it better than it would have been otherwise, if you hadn't tried. So I just feel like each one of those stories really highlighted that in a different way. Yeah, for

Heidi Kirby: 35:51

sure. And I think it also lets people know that, you know, there probably are situations within that, that they can relate to. And maybe they're not quite there to the HubSpot Academy level yet. But if they could relate to some of the experiences that you have, and some of the skills that you've shared, that maybe they can realize, oh, I guess we're on the right path. And the best roles that I have ever worked in, were the ones where I could honestly tell my manager and my colleagues, like, Listen, 60% of my ideas are terrible, but I share 100% of them anyway, because maybe you can get something out of one of them. Yes, I like. I think that's great. I think that's great. And one question I kind of Lindsay made me think of was kind of, in my own experience talking about trying to create certification programs, right, because we think of something like HubSpot Academy that has a certification that carries a lot of weight. Salesforce is another company. But there were times when those certifications didn't carry a lot of weight. And I'm sure that there are other people working for smaller organizations where they're like, how do I start a certification program? When currently my certification doesn't mean much?

Lindsay Tebow: 37:12

Yeah, I think, Sara, I would love for you to to answer this. But I will almost intro whatever you might say, Sarah, by saying, when we started to build out the certification program, while we were very focused on quality content, having a solid exam at the end, Sara then was taking over that program with a solid growth marketer mindset. And I think to this day, so much of Sarah's hard work in some of it being very manual is a reason why there has been so much growth and so much reach with this certification. So I'm going to let you answer that, Sarah, but I have to give you a some significant kudos for all of that work that you you set the foundation for?

Sarah Bedrick: 38:05

Oh, thank you for saying that. And I would send that out to Alan Perlman who was like the first person ever who created the certification, and then Rachel Goodman more. Hi, I want to make sure I answer the question. I'm not sure I understand. So you're saying like, how do you

Heidi Kirby: 38:22

if you're training people, either way, what gives? What gives kind of like reputation to having that actual certification behind it? How do you get people to buy into that idea? of becoming certified?

Sarah Bedrick: 38:36

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I'd be curious to hear what Chris and Lindsey say here. I think a big a big part of it was, as Chris pointed out, the beginning, like inbound marketing was so new. And it was so transformative for marketers everywhere. They used to be the first fire and then they became the first to hire, they were back office functions. They were like likened to the car salesmen and lawyers. That's like the how much people liked them, right. And then so it changed a lot. And I think, as the internet was taking over, this was really growing and technology was changing the way that people were buying was changing. More and more people were like, I want to get in on this inbound marketing idea. And I think just having a certification at the end for marketers was so brilliant because it was a way for them to promote themselves and their own skills like hey, this company HubSpot, who is the industry leader in inbound software, they have created an educational program with a certification that I can now say, I know what I'm doing, I know how to use I know all of the principles. And here it is on my resume. Here it is on my LinkedIn. And so it just created this really wonderful flywheel of people starting to see each other putting it on their resume, seeing each other putting it on their LinkedIn and talking about what they learned blogging. about what they learned. So I think having marketers was also really fantastic for us.

Chris LoDolce: 40:05

Yeah, I think you kind of spot on right remark ability, like, if it's not worth making remark upon, is it actually worth being something you're gonna go and try to bring to market? And so I think that's the big thing. The other question to ask yourself, I think is the maturity of the industry. So Sara mentioned that. And then also, is this industry content, industry educational content that's you're being certified upon? Or is this product right HubSpot Academy started with product, we then actually went and open this up to everybody in the industry and remove the pie training part. So I think those are two big questions to ask yourself, and then you have the commitment that you need marketing commitment is you don't just build it, and they will come like you've really need to have a solid strategy. And if you are in a mature, more mature market, taking the time to do the research on what are the other certifications? Are there any legal requirements for a certification in your industry? There's, there's a lot, a lot to think through there. But it's definitely goes back to how is your content going to be remarkable? Because if it's not, doesn't matter if it's free, or paid, you're not going to get that final spinning. Sure.

Sarah Bedrick: 41:18

Yeah, those are great inputs. Chris, fantastic inputs dimension, just going to add one more in there. I know if somebody was like writing this down, then they'd have to kind of piece together for us. But another one be like the complexity of your product. I mean, you can create a whole ecosystem, Salesforce created a massive ecosystem around. Yeah, they're a complicated product and certifying people who can administer it to others. And it's because it's complicated. And so they have this fantastica. Yeah, ecosystem. It goes in the belt.

Heidi Kirby: 41:54

It's a good word for it. Yeah, absolutely. Okay, so I have one last question for you. And it's the same question I asked all my guests, and I'm interested to know everybody's individual answers. And it is, let me think about the spin I want to put on it. I think I want to ask, if you had one, video book course, person to follow on LinkedIn, TED Talk, whatever piece of media of your choice that you would suggest for people who are just starting to consider building their own academy getting their feet wet with customer education, getting their feet wet with scalable customer education? What would it be and why?

Sarah Bedrick: 42:40

I'm gonna steal the one that Chris and Lindsey would probably say, I'd actually appears here, there's a because my would be this Simon Synnex. Why how what TED talk, it's actually How Great Leaders Inspire Action, I believe it's called. And he talks about the Golden Circle theory. And that was how we created and based a lot of our, like, all of our trainings off of, and I think it's so powerful, as a way to understand how to communicate ideas and concepts to others. That would be my

Lindsay Tebow: 43:10

Chris, you can go next thing here.

Chris LoDolce: 43:16

I would say, if you're starting in the academy, I would just follow Lindsey Tebow. Because, you know, when it comes to content, Lindsay, Lindsay, runs the show now. Sarah, and Heidi, who? That's a really tough question. I was definitely gonna say, Simon Sinek. Like, here's the theory, it is a theory. But we it really, really, really did help us on how we structure our content. And it's not only educated, but inspired. Somebody else who I just absolutely love, who's more dubbed as a futurist, but Brian Solis, I found, the content that he published publishes to be very helpful when you're thinking about kind of trends, when it comes to marketing, educational content, how that can be applied. One of my favorite quotes that I remember him sharing at a conference was people don't buy what you do they buy why you actually though Simon Sinek. The I'm thinking of a different quote, but Z, I'm obsessed with Simon Sinek. Still, apparently, but no, Brian Solis, what he talked about was the interactivity of an iPad versus a magazine. And how kids in this generation, if you put a magazine in front of them, you know, they'll throw it away, that gets broken. It doesn't work, when it's like the education that content is still in that magazine, it is there does work actually, your brain will probably consume it better if it's not in an iPad, but then you have the interactivity of an iPad and all these different ways you can engage with learning. And now all of a sudden there is value to you know, this new way of thinking that your way most children are thinking about what works and what doesn't, and the interactive world around them. So that's just a little example. But I would say Brian Solis is somebody who definitely is a fun person to follow to read his research. Yeah, that would be that would be my person for now. Maybe I'll add it into my response. Great. I like it.

Lindsay Tebow: 45:12

And while I would definitely say people should continue to subscribe to your podcast, Heidi, and can continue to learn about the industry, I'll go a little bit more of the instructional design route. Trim, these are two of my favorites. But I'll emphasize one a little bit more. So one is like designed for how people design for how people learn. And then the other one is the accidental instructional designer. So this is kind of what I was saying earlier are actually what all of us have been saying earlier about these important skills that you really have to be curious and lean into that curiosity about how people learn. But I love the accidental instructional designer, because it feels very true to my experience, how I just fell into this, I had a passion for customers, and I had a passion for helping people. I had no idea of what instructional design even was. And at the time, I didn't even know that I was doing instructional design. So I think for anyone that's really passionate about this industry, and still figuring out that skill set and how that fits into future roles that they can insert themselves into. I really liked that idea of it being an accident, but very much aligned with one's purpose. So it's a really solid book on also introducing one to the world of instructional design and putting a lot of frameworks and ideas behind that as well.

Heidi Kirby: 46:48

Absolutely. Those are good ones good answers all around. Well, thank you all three of you for being part of my first ever Block Party. I've really enjoyed having you on the show.

Sarah Bedrick: 47:00

Thank you. This was awesome. Definitely a party.

Heidi Kirby: 47:05

Thanks again for joining me on the blog. If you enjoyed this episode, please share it with friends and review us on your favorite podcast platform. I hope you'll tune in again soon.