Episode 23 · 25 January 2023 · 49:57
How to Build a Killer Employer Brand: Expert Insights from HubSpot's Kyle Denhoff
How to Build a Killer Employer Brand: Expert Insights from HubSpot's Kyle Denhoff
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Lessons from sports teams for business
Small vs. big company culture and the HubSpot Culture Code
Employee voice and solving problems no one's discussing
Remote-first culture and HubSpot's post-COVID policy
From natural marketer to leader
Three traits of leaders who build great cultures
Tactical advice for employer brand and wrap-up
Show notes
How to Build a Killer Employer Brand — Expert Insights from HubSpot's Kyle Denhoff
This week on Truth, Lies & Work — Al and Leanne flip their attention back to organisations and what they can do to find, engage and nurture great people in 2023.
Al sat down with Kyle Denhoff, Director of Marketing at HubSpot, to nerd out about employer brand, workplace culture, and how one of the world's most recognisable tech brands manages it all. Then Leanne joins Al to unpick the conversation, pull out the psychology, and translate Kyle's marketing brain into practical lessons for leaders, HR teams and founders.
They dig into what employer brand actually is (spoiler: it's not just a careers page), why vision and values matter more than perks, the seven foundations of a great workplace culture, and why the best employer brands are built by marketing, HR and comms teams working together — not in silos.
🧠 What We Learned
1. Employer brand is what people say about you when you're not in the room
Kyle's marketing brain reframes employer brand beautifully: it's not your Glassdoor page, your careers site or your values poster. It's the reputation you build — internally and externally — through every interaction a person has with your organisation, from the job ad to the exit interview.
2. The Rx7: seven foundations of a great workplace culture
Al and Leanne introduce their framework for what every workplace needs:
- Reason — do people know why the work matters?
- Role — do people know what they're accountable for?
- Recognition — do people feel seen and valued?
- Resources — do people have what they need to do the job?
- Relationships — do people have healthy connections at work?
- Resilience — can people cope with pressure and change?
- Remote — does your culture translate across distance?
(Book a call with Leanne to discuss the Rx7 — link below.)
3. People don't leave companies, they leave managers
It's an old saying, but Kyle's insights back it up. Great managers and mentors are the single biggest lever on culture. You can have the best values in the world on paper — if a manager contradicts them daily, your culture is whatever that manager does.
4. Employee voice is the engine of employer brand
When Kyle talks about rolling out employer brand at HubSpot, he's not talking about a campaign. He's talking about listening — creating channels for employees to shape the story, not just receive it. The best employer brands are co-created, not dictated.
5. HR and Marketing need to be best friends
Too often, employer brand falls between two stools: HR owns the internal reality, Marketing owns the external story, and nobody owns the gap between them. Kyle's advice: get HR, Marketing and Comms in a room together, agree on the truth of what it's like to work there, and then tell that story consistently.
💬 The 7 Foundations of a Great Workplace Culture — The Rx7
Al and Leanne's framework for diagnosing and building great culture:
- Reason — purpose and meaning
- Role — clarity and accountability
- Recognition — feedback and appreciation
- Resources — tools, time and support
- Relationships — connection and belonging
- Resilience — wellbeing and sustainable performance
- Remote — culture beyond the office
🔗 Key Links
- Kyle Denhoff on LinkedIn: (see raw notes)
- Kyle Denhoff on Twitter: (see raw notes)
- HubSpot's Culture Code: (see raw notes)
- The My First Million episode where Sam Parr talks about selling The Hustle to HubSpot: (see raw notes)
- Book a call with Leanne to discuss the Rx7: (see raw notes)
🎟️ Upcoming: The Burnout — The Silent Epidemic Seminar
Theme: Burnout: The Silent Epidemic | Creating Sustainable Recovery through Equity (IWD2023 theme is #EmbraceEquity).
- Date: Wed, March 15, 11am–4pm EST / 8am–1pm PST (4 hours of content, plus speaker intros, breaks and networking)
- Keynote speaker: Brandi Olson, Organisational Agility Expert, Founder + CEO of Real Work Done, author of Real Flow
- Agenda: Keynote (45 min), 1 panel discussion, 3 × 30-min workshops, 1 × 30-min fireside chat
- Price: US$55 per ticket — use code IWD2023 to save 20% (valid till 2/1/23)
Details and registration: northstaratwork.com/iwd2023 · Promo video · Registration
Connect With Us
Get in touch, book a call, or find Al and Leanne on LinkedIn — all in one place: truthliesandwork.com/connect
Mental health support: findahelpline.com — UK: Samaritans 116 123 · Mind 0300 123 3393 — US: 988 — Australia: Lifeline 13 11 14
Truth, Lies & Work is part of the HubSpot Podcast Network.
Full transcript
Expand full transcript
Al ElliottThe dirty little secret is that most businesses think they know their customers. They have the data, the records, the history, but it's scattered across 3 teams and 4 systems. And in our case, it's about 216,000 spreadsheets, which means nobody can actually use it.
Leanne ElliottWhat you should be doing is using HubSpot, because why? HubSpot connects it all— every interaction, every support ticket, every conversation— into one platform every team can work from. So when sales talks to a customer, marketing already knows the full story. And when you know more, you grow more.
Al ElliottNice. Check out hubspot.com, the agentic customer platform for growing businesses. That was the only way this was gonna work, right? We can do all our research, we can talk to the whole team, but unless you have a strong leader that can execute against that vision and bring people together, Hello, and welcome to the Truth, Lies and Workplace Culture podcast. My name is Al, and I'm a business owner.
Leanne ElliottMy name is Leanne, I'm a business psychologist.
Al ElliottAnd the aim of this podcast is to simplify the science of people. First of all, if you're new here, which we've seen a bump in the numbers, so there is potentially you're one of those new listeners, this might be your second or third episode, then firstly, welcome. Nice to have you here. Welcome. Um, and secondly, the format of the podcast is very much that Leanne's the expert. I'm not the expert. So Leanne will be talking about people and culture. Um, she's a, she's an organizational or business psychologist, depending whether you're from Australia or, um, or sorry, Australia and the UK or America. Um, but I will be asking her questions to ensure that every, anything she says is translatable into and implementable in a smaller business.
Leanne ElliottYes. And it's lovely to have the, the gang back together again, sitting side by side recording. Uh, our last episode we did do a little bit differently.
Al ElliottIf you're not sure what I'm talking about, Go and check it out.
Leanne ElliottBut yeah, we're back, which is nice. And before we dive into this week's topic and very, very exciting guest, I just want to say a quick thank you, really. We've had such an incredible response the last 3 episodes on burnout and men's mental health. Really important conversations to have. So thank you so, so much for engaging with them. Thank you for engaging with our socials and posting and connecting. It really has been fantastic. And if I may, I'd just like to share one extra resource that has been brought to my attention since our burnout episode.
Al ElliottOf course.
Leanne ElliottSo I was talking, uh, to a wonderful woman called Meenakshi Lea, um, the other day, um, who is the founder of North Star at Work. They have their 4th, um, annual Future of Work conference coming up on March 15th. It's a Wednesday, um, and they're talking about burnout, the silent pandemic. Can you see the great minds there?
Al ElliottYes.
Leanne ElliottYeah, so they're talking about burnout, the silent pandemic, and creating sustainable recovery by embracing equity. Um, that's 11 AM to 4 PM, March 15th, which is a Wednesday. That's New York And it's all virtual, so wherever you are in the world, uh, check it out and I might see you there. And we've also very kindly been sent a discount code to share with our listeners. Uh, so full price tickets are $55 US, but you can get 20% off with code IWD2023 until the 1st of February.
Al ElliottYeah, so go and sign up for that. It sounds really well worthwhile.
Leanne ElliottWe'll put all the links in the show notes.
Al ElliottWe will.
Leanne ElliottSo back to this week's episode, we are flipping our attention back to organisations and what they can do to find, engage, and nurture great people in 2023.
Al ElliottNow, 2022 and 2023 have been difficult for business owners and leaders when they've been hiring, um, because of this, this what's so-called fight for talent. And also there's the quiet quitting as well. So not only you're getting, we're getting battered from both fronts, we're getting potentially people who are leaving, good people who are leaving, and then trying, struggling really hard to find good people, um, to, to, to attract to our business. Um, so we've been doing a lot of work around this and we've talked to a lot of people and There was a word which was a bit of a buzzword maybe a couple of years ago, but now is really important, and it's, and it's the words employer brand. Now, the idea behind employer brand is it's basically how you advertise your culture externally. Our research has told us that in order to attract and retain great talent, top talent, you need to have a robust and attractive employer brand.
Leanne ElliottYes, and to help us explore the topic of employer brand and its relationship with workplace culture, we have a very special guest joining us today. Kyle Denhoff is Director of Marketing and Media at HubSpot. He leads teams in building a portfolio of content brands to help businesses grow, including, including the podcast network, which is exciting.
Al ElliottWhich we're part of, of course.
Leanne ElliottWhich, of course. So Al spoke to Kyle last week and quizzed him on employee brand and culture at HubSpot. Kyle is really interesting. He's a professional athlete, which you'll hear more about. He's risen very quickly to the top at HubSpot after working for some other really big organisations like Xerox, We asked him what the similarities are between high-performing sports teams and teams in businesses, and particularly high-performing teams in organizations.
Al ElliottYeah, that's a great question, and something I actually talk about fairly often with folks who are managers on my team. I think within sports, there's a lot of clarity around your goals as a team, like what are we trying to accomplish together? And then everyone plays a very specific role in accomplishing that goal, right? If a coach puts you in a position where you're not strong, the team won't achieve its goal. Or if the coach asks you to do something you're great at and asks someone else to go in that position, and there's not alignment, then you fail as well. So I think the best thing about athletics is clear goals and objectives and finding how you contribute to a team to leverage your strengths. So when we talk about it on the business side of things, there's That clarity piece. I always try to go to my teams with, what is your core objective? What numbers are you trying to move every month? And then from there, when we talk about operating models, who's on the team? What are their roles and responsibilities? What are the deliverables that we're asking of them? And you start to build teams that have complementary skill sets. And the better you get as a leader in business, you start to understand, if I put this person on this team, they'll actually gel well and be able to achieve that goal faster and probably at a higher quality than another team that didn't have that skillset. So I think there's a ton of similarities between athletics and business, and certainly things that I learned on the athletic field that transfer over.
Leanne ElliottI think there are some really interesting similarities, or I guess lessons learned from sports teams and businesses teams, and that transferability of ideas. And it's something you see a lot. I think an analogy is also very helpful, and sports analogies do come up a lot. We talk about rowing employee engagement, don't we?
Al ElliottYeah, definitely. Or is it rowing? Is that what we're talking about?
Leanne ElliottWell, I guess if you've got disengaged employees, there might be some rowing.
Al ElliottOne of the most common questions we get about developing company culture is about the differences between smaller and larger organizations. So we asked Kyle about this, and he explains what smaller organizations and businesses can learn from the big ones about culture. I think it comes down to, like, when it comes to culture, It really is the principles and values that you stand behind. And those guiding principles and values then make their way into the entire organization. And if they're documented, if they're clear, if they're communicated frequently, you'll start to see them come through the work itself. So I think at HubSpot, for example, we talk a lot about HEART, and you can find our culture code on HubSpot's website. It's a document.
Leanne ElliottYeah.
Al ElliottI think it was created over 10 years ago, but continually updated and referenced and mentioned within employee trainings and onboardings. And these are the values that we stand behind as a company. And I think what's great about that is you start to think about, okay, how can these values be brought into my work? If it's our marketing department, we believe in offering free education and value before ever asking anyone to check out our software. We just believe that if we can help people, we will achieve our goals in the long term. If it's our sales organization, you find people who are very relatable in that organization, build trust quickly, very empathetic when they're talking to small businesses that are trying to grow. And we have better deal-to-close rates because we just have great people in sales who live up to these values. And then when it comes to your HR team, I think it comes through in the recruiting and hiring. So who are the type of people that we're bringing into the organization? So whether you're a small business or a very large brand like a Xerox or HubSpot, I think you'd want to take the time as a founder or a leadership team member and say, what are the values we stand for as a business? Let's write them down and then let's make sure we bring those to every team member within the business and make sure we live up to them.
Leanne ElliottI am standing, I'm applauding. I love that advice from Kyle. And this is something that I, I think is such a great thing for small and medium-sized businesses to start with. You have your, your vision and your values, and that's super, super important. How do those values come to life within your business? How do they translate into observable behaviors that we see? And how does that impact our morale and our performance and how our customers see us? And, and And then how we can recruit for culture-add, not culture-fit. So people who are gonna, gonna add something special to our culture based on the values we already hold dear and show day to day in our working lives. So yeah, brilliant advice from, from Kyle there. So as we said, employer brand is basically how the outside world sees our culture, and Kyle explains why that's important.
Al ElliottAfter Xerox, I spent some time at Fresenius Medical Care. It's a large dialysis services provider, and the Communications team and the HR team operated as one. And I think the reason the brand matters and important, more importantly, the employer brand is the values and messaging that you have to your customers and to the market should align with the values and messaging that you're sending to your employees because they are the ones who are interacting with customers and bringing your product to market. And so I think it's critically important to almost have the same branding. I know that when it comes to the employer brand, sometimes larger companies will do a recruitment campaign that has some different messaging or brand and creative elements. But at the core of it, I think you're talking about what is the brand for our company? And then from there, how do we adjust that and pivot that to speak to potential talent that we want to bring into the company? And how do we use those values to Dictate our messaging for onboarding new employees. What do we stand for? What are we doing here as a company? And then ultimately, when it comes to just growing your employee base, we want to make sure that in our trainings and in our development programs that we're bringing those values in as well. So I do think just the core brand for your company can go both ways as long as you tailor it to the audience that you're trying to serve. So I think what's really clear there is that we're talking about congruence. Like, you, you might, you might want to create like this fancy recruitment campaign showing how happy and wonderful everyone is in your, in your business. And if they are, then great, go ahead and do it. But if they're not, if they're miserable, if it's, if it's totally incongruent, then that is not your employer brand. That's basically something you've made up.
Leanne ElliottAnd I think with that, you know, if people are happy, why are they happy? What, what is creating this environment where people are happy and healthy and productive in, in their work? That might not be what you think it is. Um, so yeah, I think, I think you're right, Alan. I think this incongruence is a really big issue. We don't like incongruences as humans, as employees. Um, we all put up, um, with things that are transparent a lot longer than we will put up with things that just don't make sense.
Al ElliottYou've got a great— was it a great—
Leanne Elliottit wasn't a stat, it was like a saying about people, about managers So yeah, people will put up with a bad manager longer than they will an inconsistent manager. These kind of wild variations in leadership behavior or how they treat people, how they make decisions, that unpredictability is really unsettling for us and our wellbeing. So yeah, lesson one of leadership, just be consistent. Worry about that.
Al ElliottDefinitely. It's probably the same in marketing as well, being consistent and making sure there's no dissonance or incongruality. Is that a word?
Leanne ElliottYeah.
Al ElliottIs that a word? I've just made up a word.
Leanne ElliottNo idea, but I like it.
Al ElliottI'll be writing that down and using it later this week. So let's just talk tactically. Where does a smaller organization start in developing an employer brand? For me, I would probably start out by defining what is the vision? Where do we want to take the company? What's the mission of our company? Like, why do we exist in the world? What are the values that we look for in our people and that we stand for when we serve our customers? And document those and like take the time to do that. The best way to do it, to be honest with you, is to talk to your current employee base and to talk to your customers and ask them, why did you choose us? What do you like about working here? Ask those thoughtful questions to get a better understanding of who your company is today. And hopefully that aligns with the values you want to set as a founder or a leader. But I'm sure it'll also uncover some things that you didn't know about your company. And so I think Ask your employee base, ask your customer base, and then take the time to truly draft one or two, or a one or two page document that outlines what you stand for and what your values are.
Leanne ElliottWhat Kyle's talking about there is employee voice, which is so important, both in terms of creating great cultures, but also in terms of nurturing employee engagement and wellbeing, which in itself is gonna translate to an awesome employer brand. One of the biggest things that, that Gen Zs and millennials are looking for is a culture where they feel that they can contribute. You know, the typical Gen Z is, is creative and entrepreneurial and, and, you know, most importantly, a digital native. So how do we create a culture where everyone feels confident in bringing ideas to leaders? Well, this term won't be new to you regular listeners. The answer is psychological safety. So psychological safety is something that we, we experience where we're in environments where we're encouraged to share our ideas, give feedback, raise concerns, and collaborate and innovate together in a way that's not gonna put us at risk of being mocked or judged or, or any kind of negative consequences. And psychological safety is really important in empowering employee voice and importantly, coming up with solutions to problems that we might otherwise not have, not have come across.
Al ElliottWell, I think this idea of coming up with solutions to problems that no one's really discussing was, was like the core of, if you've ever come across a guy called Sir Ken Robinson, a British guy. He's— I think he's had the most TED— most watched TED Talk ever. And he basically talked about disrupting and revolutionizing education by coming up with these ideas. And these ideas that were coming to him, people were bringing him these ideas, and he was just giving them a platform. Of course, he had his own ideas. Now, in his early years at Xerox, Kyle actually met Sir Ken Robinson and interviewed him. Now, one of the key learnings that came out of that interview was good ideas can come from surprising places. In other words, if you implement a culture of psychological safety, like Leanne said, where everyone feels they can contribute ideas without worried about being ignored or even laughed at, then you're going to get some amazing ideas that perhaps you'd never even considered. So we asked Kyle how he implemented this in HubSpot. Yeah, that's a great question. Very timely as well. Something we're working through as we develop our plans for the upcoming quarters. I think there is a real skill in being able to pull ideas out of teams. And there's a balance between having team members provide you all the ideas that they can come up with, and then you have this laundry list of ideas that you can't really execute. And then being a leader who provides direction and kind of dictates where you want the group to go. And there's a place in the middle. Where I found success is being able to almost develop a problem statement for my team, put some constraints around that, and then allow them to come back with thoughtful ideas that meet that objective. So more just tangible advice there is, if I was, if I was working with a team of mine on a project, our core objective may be, how are we going to increase our YouTube subscribers by 10%. 500 subscribers by the end of the quarter, like a very specific goal and objective we're trying to accomplish. Then from there, I'll say, you only have $10,000 and our current team. How would you go about doing this? Right. And so that's where the constraints come in. So what's your budget? What are the resources you have? And then from there, maybe you add one more layer of information around the core messaging that HubSpot is trying to put into the market during that given period of time. And you give your team that brief and you say, I'd like you to go away for a week or 2 weeks and come back to me with a plan. How— what ideas do you have that not only are great ideas, but you think you can execute within these constraints to hit that objective we have aligned around? And I think whether you're a small business or a large business, that's just a great practice to be able to Bring super talented people together, align them to an objective, and then give them the ability to bring those great ideas. Because at least one thing I've learned as a manager and someone working inside some larger companies is there will be better ideas from your team working collectively towards a common goal than anything you can come up with by yourself. And so I think it's just an important practice. The team will come to you with really thoughtful ideas at that point. You've given them clear direction, you've put the constraints, you've actually given them the time to set aside and think about the problem they're solving when you give them a week or 2 weeks. And then when those ideas come back, they're that much stronger because they've already tested their 10 ideas and they brought you their 3 best. And so that's why I just consistently, whether that's Whether that's a marketing team, whether that's like a cross-functional team between marketing and sales, whether it's a cross-functional team with managers who are working on like, how do we improve onboarding for new marketers coming into the organization? Just that consistent process of clear goals, constraints, and timelines. It sounds a little strict, but it's— I think it's just strict enough. It gives you the borders to operate within. And then And you'd be, you'd be very surprised with how creative the teams can be. So this is really, really good. Basically, clear goal, clear constraint, clear timeline. And that's how you get brilliant ideas that are actually implementable rather than how about we hire a plane to drag our message across the sky or write it in the sky or something. Cool idea, but probably not really something most businesses can do.
Leanne ElliottYeah, I think there can be a misconception that that innovation— there can be no boundaries or rules to innovation. I think actually, you know, narrowing that field down a little bit can actually empower us to come up with the ideas that are going to work and be actionable. You know, what's that saying? An idea is only as valuable as the quality of its execution.
Al ElliottOh, I like that. I've never heard that before.
Leanne ElliottOh, I've probably butchered that and it's something completely different. But the point is, ideas are useless It's all about execution and solving the actual problem. Speaking of solving problems in terms of the current world of work, HubSpot is famous for having a remote-first culture, which in terms of employer brand, I mean, it is gonna be up there in terms of attracting the best of the best talent from across the world.
Al ElliottJust in case people haven't heard of remote-first, what does it specifically mean?
Leanne ElliottYou're busy, you're remote-first, you're, you're in terms of kind of where you work, remote is the first priority or option. For you. And they have some, they have some variances within what that looks like, but their priority is, or they're saying, is we're remote first, we support remote work first. And that within culture can have a really interesting impact. And I think what we've learned from our research into hybrid work or fully remote work and how that is working in practice for organizations, those organizations that have a really strong strong culture appear to be having much more success when it comes to remote work. Um, and with that, by success I mean the collaboration, the camaraderie remaining intact, the performance, um, of the business, and of course as well the well-being of, of people. I mean, very quickly, in terms of those, uh, kind of 6 areas that we'd recommend you look at first within, within your culture to assess, you know, whether— I guess with the, the thing being, if there's a challenge with one of these 6 things, that might be why remote or work is currently challenging for you. So to go through them quickly, they are reason. So does my team have a clear vision, clear values? And as Kyle explained so beautifully, are those values being translated into everyday working life? Second, we have role, and that might seem a bit, a bit of a boring one, but do we have clear job descriptions? Do people know what exactly it is they're meant to do at work? It's surprising how many, how many people actually don't. fully understand what their role is, but importantly, how their role contributes and connects to the overall mission and purpose of the business. The third is recognition, and there's a few different areas in this, but particularly in terms of employer brand, it's going to be looking at things like your compensation and benefits. So, as we've mentioned here, remote-first is a huge benefit that you can offer to employees, and that's going to go hand in hand with things like health insurance, employee support programmes, wellbeing, gym membership, there's a whole host, and we'll actually talk about that a bit more on next week's episode. The 4th is relationships, and this looks at relationships both between peers and of course between employees and managers. I say it all the time, if there's one thing to get right, it's having great managers in your business. They have such a huge impact on employee performance and employee wellbeing. The 5th is resources. So, this is about providing an environment in which people have the tools and, and systems that they need to do their job. It's also about making sure they have the skills and knowledge to do their job? How successful was your onboarding in terms of that? And finally, in terms of workloads, people, you know, need, need time. Kyle mentioned there in his example of setting boundaries, having a clear timeline and actual time to be able to engage in that type of activity is really important. If people have too high workloads, then giving them any kind of task, whether it be an exciting innovation and creative task, could potentially breed resentment. So yes, that is resources. And then finally, we have resilience, and this is where we talk about the various things we're doing within the business to support people physically and emotionally recover from work. So if you've got those 6 things working well within your business, chances are remote or hybrid work is gonna work really, really well for you. So we asked Kyle, how does remote-first culture work in HubSpot?
Al ElliottYeah, so within HubSpot, we rolled out a policy after, uh, the, the COVID challenges that we faced, which was we want our employees to be able to choose how they want to work. And so employees can work in office in many of our locations. Folks can choose to be what we call flex, which is they want to be in the office 2 to 3 days a week but work from home the remainder of the week. And we have folks who are fully remote, but at the beginning of the year, you get to choose How you'd like to work. And I think it's extremely helpful because it allows people to pick the best working style for them. If you're someone who needs structure and wants to get up early and do the commute and go to the office, and you know you'll be productive when you're there, you have that option. If you're someone who is able to focus in a flexible work environment and work from home, you have that option. So I think I think that was one thing I was really impressed with, with HubSpot that they rolled out, not only for helping people identify their working style, it helps with retention, right? It's like, I am excited about the job I'm doing and the way I'm able to do it. The other way it's helpful is in the recruitment phase. And so we're no longer limited. to a certain talent pool. So if there is a job that needs to be done, we want to find the best person for that job. And previously, you used to have to recruit people in your region or your state or your city. You no longer have to do that. You're able to find people all over the country, all over the world. We have some cross-functional teams between Dublin and Boston and Bogotá. And There's incredible talent everywhere. And so you're able to then find new people, bring them in, and then you're picking the best person for the job. And I can say, since we've gone this route of allowing people to choose the way they'd like to work and opening up our jobs remotely in multiple locations, we've been able to hire quickly and we've been able to find better talent.
Leanne ElliottDid you know that the UK's number one management podcast, That's us, by the way. And the UK's number one marketing podcast are both on the same podcast network.
Al ElliottWe actually have a lot in common. We both use behavioural science to help people do better at work.
Leanne ElliottAnd we both had to wrangle Rory Sutherland on an episode.
Al ElliottAnd 2 out of 3 of us are devilishly good looking. And you're not gonna say which. Fel, host of Nudge, UK's number one marketing podcast. It's brought to you— we need to do this in threes—
Leanne Elliottthe HubSpot HubSpot Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals.
Al ElliottSeamless. Seamless. Tell us about your latest episode, Phil. Uh, we've just done an episode on fake fandom and how New York indie bands are paying agencies to create fake TikTok videos about how much they like their work. And we talk about the behavioral science behind fandom and how that encourages people to enjoy the music and all of that good stuff and do some big things about how this affects the world. of politics, business, and brands as well.
Leanne ElliottIt is. It's such, it's such a good show. Of course, you'll hear all the stuff you want to hear about how to grow your business by using behavioural science in your marketing, but there's also just some really interesting episodes that'll be right up your street. Personally, I enjoyed Can Balsamic Vinegar Make Beer Taste Better?
Al ElliottIt can.
Leanne ElliottAnd Are We All Just Status-Seeking Monkeys?
Al ElliottI am. Go and listen to Lunch Break wherever you get your podcasts.
Leanne ElliottBut come back.
Al ElliottYeah, come Definitely come back because Nudge isn't as good as this. So come back.
Leanne ElliottI'll cut that out.
Al ElliottKeep that in. Now, this all sounds great. And I think you might be thinking the same as listening to this. Yes, of course, that sounds fantastic. But is it easy to implement? Well, one of the things I love about Kyle is just how honest he is. So I asked him the question, you know, what are the challenges with, with this remote-first type of culture? The culture piece is hard. HubSpot has a fantastic culture. It's— the company's been— I think it's been founded 15 years ago. I may have that, may have that wrong, but culture was baked in. It was something the founders really believed in and communicated and constantly revisited and brought forward to the employee base as the company grew. But now that you're fully remote, I have team members all over the country. I have folks in Wisconsin and Los Angeles and Boston and Austin, Texas and New York. It is incredibly hard to be able to build camaraderie within a team, especially someone who came from athletics. I'm used to being with my team and you know working together towards a common goal, and we've had to change the way we operate and communicate with our teams in regards to how do we make sure everyone knows what their goals are and objectives? How do we make sure that we create alignment across these teams while they're all remote? There's no more. Coffee chats, there's no more work lunches, there's no more after-work dinner and drinks to be able to obviously create the trust and relationships. So I would say I don't think we've cracked it. We've tried many, many different tactics, whether that be remote events, remote birthday lunches, get-togethers at the end of the day just to catch up on how life's going, whether it's a vacation or a birthday party. But it's hard. I would say that one thing we're starting to think about is how do we bring the team together at least a few times a year to make sure we have that, that touchpoint in person if we can.
Leanne ElliottA really honest view there, I think, of remote work and, and how we're coming to terms with it. And as Kyle said, you know, it is early days and we haven't quite cracked it yet, but what we do know is it's what employees want and what they're asking for. Asking for. And from the perspective of employer brand and well-being, there are benefits there. We just need to continue to work out how to make culture work too. So many of our clients start off as experts in a particular skill, and when their business grows, they find themselves as the de facto leader, or what we tend to call accidental leaders. And it's usually at this point that leaders will start to engage with coaches to look at building their self-awareness, their emotional intelligence, and engaging in effective leadership behaviors. Kyle went through a similar journey. He started off as a marketer and then transitioned into a leadership role. So we asked him if he thought he was a natural marketer who happens to be a great leader, or a great leader who happens to be a natural marketer.
Al ElliottI think natural marketer that became a leader. So I, at least for me, in athletics and in my marketing career, I'm always someone who's a little more reserved. I'm quiet. I'm probably the last person to speak in a meeting. But I think over time, as I had seen success and been able to build a portfolio of work that I'm very proud of, that confidence has come out. And so building my career, I was able to develop all of the skills that a marketer should have, whether that's Working in web strategy, acquisition, brand, and communications. And so I have the toolset, but after I've been able to work across multiple brands, multiple business models, multiple different projects, I've built my confidence up. I think I have a pretty good understanding of how to operate. And at that point, I think I got put in positions of management and leadership. And what I tried to do was bring over the things I saw from My favorite leaders and managers that I've worked with in the workplace and in lacrosse. I think there are many folks that I worked with in the lacrosse world, coaches, GMs, captains of teams that I envy and look up to, and I try to grab some of their attributes and bring that into my day. And so I think I've come into my own as a leader over the last couple of years. It's still something I'm constantly working So Kyle's talking more about his leadership influences, and, and this is one of the things that— I mean, we only spoke for about 40 minutes, but he just comes across as so authentic and like plenty of humility. He says, I don't know all the answers, and, and this is just really nice. And this is probably why he is such a great leader. He doesn't pretend to know everything. Um, so he's mentioned that he's massively inspired by the leaders he's worked for. I mean, and we all know that we're inspired because some of the best-selling books in business are things like Good to Great and Small Giants, these books that are written about leaders that we can then, we can then pull lessons out of. So we asked Kyle about his leadership inspirations. He first of all tells us about his lacrosse coach, then his current manager, which is Jordan DiPietro, who is the VP of Marketing at HubSpot. One from the lacrosse world was my coach, Tim Sudan, for my team in Rochester. He was someone I looked up to. He actually played professional lacrosse in my hometown when I was growing up, so I watched him play. And I played for many, many coaches over the years on different teams. And the one thing that I respected about— or 2 things I respected about him was, one, he knew he had a team of professionals, and so he allowed us to be very creative and operate in more of an open system. He said, here's the goal, here's the alignment, go do your thing, you're pros. And if you don't do your thing, You're not going to see the field. But if you do, we'll get some more playing time. And so I always respected his ability to build trust with his players and just be open and transparent. The other thing he taught me is he genuinely cared about every single person in that locker room, every single person in that locker room. And the way he looked at things weren't just some arbitrary statement about winning and trying to be a better team. He'd ask you about your birthdays, your girlfriends, your wives, your dogs, your— how things were going at work. He knew everything about everyone in that room, and he was able to build trust that way. And I think anyone, anyone would happily play for him and work extremely hard to win for him. So loved playing for him. In the work world, I'll pick one I'm working for right now.
Leanne ElliottJordan DiPietro.
Al ElliottJordan DiPietro, he's the VP of Marketing and Media at HubSpot. He was the Chief Growth Officer at The Motley Fool, the stock and finance newsletter. He came over to HubSpot and he had a very challenging job ahead of him, which was, we're going to build the HubSpot media division. We've acquired the Hustle newsletter, we have a content marketing team at HubSpot, and we need to bring these teams together. And I, I remember when he was asked to take on that role and build this team, and I was like, that is a tall task. And there's a couple of things that I take away from Jordan. One, similar to my coach, he genuinely cares about his team. He talks to everyone about their concerts, their birthdays, their vacations, their families. He wants to know who you are as a person and how he can help you grow in your career. The other thing that I think he taught me more about is how to get the most out of people. I think it's tough when you work in a big company and you want to be empathetic and help people along and grow, but there's also a job to be done, right? We're expected to hit numbers and it's a business at the end of the day. And he just strikes this balance between getting to know you as a person, being very understanding and trusting, and then saying, okay, as a team, we need to come together. and achieve these goals. And he pushes his team in a thoughtful way to think differently, to hit their goals. And so I constantly try to learn from him in how to direct my team and lead my team. I think he's a very strong leader and I've enjoyed working for him.
Leanne ElliottSome really great examples from, from Kyle there. And I guess just 3, 3 traits and behaviors that I see in leaders that Kyle talked about there to expand on and explain a little bit. He talked there about his lacrosse coach treating them as a team of professionals. This is all about giving people autonomy and control. You know, you've hired this person into your business for— because they have a particular skill set or competence. They need room to be able to, to use those skills and strengths that they have, but understandably, and as Kyle explained there, with consequences. And this is about managing by outputs rather than productivity, and which is just why HubSpot are smashing it when it comes to the remote-first We need to trust our people to do their work and produce the results that they need to produce. Secondly, Kyle mentioned there about both, both of his lacrosse coach and Jordan. They genuinely care about their team. They ask them questions about their lives and want to know what's going on. From a psychological perspective, this gives us a huge sense of belonging, and that in turn translates into our own personal well-being, but also discretionary effort going the extra mile in our role. And it's no great surprise. That by doing that, our performance tends to be higher. And then finally, Kyle talked about Jordan investing in professional development, getting the most out of people, and striking this balance between I care about you as a person and now I need you to rally and get behind this goal that we have to achieve. I think there's 2 things there. By genuinely caring about people, you're creating an environment of psychological safety. You're connecting on a human Um, and that helps people to feel safe and want to innovate. And equally, I think it's about authenticity. This balance can only really be, be achieved if we're leading in a way that is transparent and true, not only to our own values, but that of the organisation's.
Al ElliottOh yes, well said, Leanne.
Leanne ElliottLike that. That was good.
Al ElliottThat was brilliant. And I think that, I mean, we have to remember why we're in this business. What are what us entrepreneurs? What are we doing this for? So we're growing our business because yes, of course, we want you know we want to enjoy our work. Yes, of course, we want to create an amazing workplace. But most of us are entrepreneurs because we see a way in which we can solve a problem and then gain market share, and then usually it's they we acquire another business or we exit and sell to someone else. Now there are challenges with all those things, and as Kyle mentioned before, when they acquired The Hustle, which was the— a guy called Sam Parr owned The Hustle, which was a newsletter business. He started about the same time as The Morning Brew. I remember there was a podcast episode with both of them on it because Sam's got a podcast also on our network called My First Million. You've probably come across it. And they were like bitter rivals. And then it's funny now Sam's sold it, how he looks at the business now. He looked at it. But one of the key things things that Kyle talks about is how do you make everyone, all the incoming team, feel they're still a huge part of something important? And bear in mind, he talks about, I think, sort of 20 or 30 people at The Hustle going to an organization of many hundreds at HubSpot. So this is a difficult thing to do. So Kyle tells a story of HubSpot acquiring the newsletter and then how he implemented strategies to ensure that the culture was basically shared amongst all of, all the new I was involved after the acquisition. So at the time, the announcement was made that we were acquiring a media company. And with that, obviously, people were coming into the organization and we had new media products to operate, a couple podcasts, a couple newsletters, and a private community. I was in a role at the time working for our SVP of acquisition, And Kieran Flanagan, and my role was in strategy and operations. So I had 12 months to help him build an operating model for this new department. We had, I think, 25 or 30 people coming from The Hustle into HubSpot, and then we had 20 to 25 people on our content team at HubSpot. And bringing people together from very, very different backgrounds, very, very different cultures. All over the country for this challenge. And so what I worked on with Kieran was, how do we define what HubSpot Media is and what its objectives are? How are we going to build teams that are going to help us achieve those objectives? And then how do we make sure that the team feels that they're, they're part of something new and exciting and something we're building together? And so it was a, it was a long year. Of just talking to people, understanding what's working, what's not working, how they want to operate, what is their ideal team to be a part of. And then we started to put those pieces together. My role was more on the operations side where I was going out talking to the team members, coming back with strategic recommendations around goals and teams and programs within those teams. So where should we be investing our money? After I was able to do that, towards the end of that, Jordan came on board and that was the only way this was going to work, right? We can do all our research, we can talk to the whole team, but unless you have a strong leader that can execute against that vision and bring people together, that work will go lost. So I was the one building kind of the operating model and then handing that to He made a ton of adjustments, as you can imagine, coming in as a senior leader. But I think overall we've done a really nice job and our teams have hit their goals in 2022. There's a lot of energy right now this year. It's only our second year as a team, so I'm proud of that. I think we did a good job.
Leanne ElliottI think Kyle's being a bit modest there. From what I've heard, they did a great job. I think, yeah, when it comes to unifying cultures of 2 different organizations that come together, together into a merger or an acquisition, it, it is really challenging. And it's, it's, it's a timely conversation I was actually having with a fabulous people and culture consultant, um, who was saying that, you know, it is about the vision and the values and finding the symmetry and, and finding, you know, the areas that we might need to work on. But I thought she also made a really brilliant point. She's like, it can be as simple as just making sure everyone's got the same email address at the end of it. Like, that's huge if you've got a different email address to half your team. I think that's what Kyle was kind of saying there. You know, you need to dive into the operating model, how you're going to put teams together in it, and how you're going to, you know, create this more cohesive environment. But ultimately, it all comes down to the leader.
Al ElliottDefinitely. And I think that, um, I mean, one of the interesting things is that because Kyle is a marketer, then he understands, he seems to understand the idea of being a leader, but also in terms of recruitment, in terms of engagement, because essentially marketing is just persuasion. And so as a marketer, your, your main aim is to go and find someone who doesn't know about your, about your thing, about your product or service, and then just gently persuade them that their life would be better with that thing in mind. And if you do your job properly, then you actually stop just getting customers and start getting raving fans. If you ever go and talk to someone who owns a MacBook or an Apple fan and you, and you tell them how good the Surface, the PC Surface, the Microsoft Surface is, you're gonna have a bit of a bad time because they will— they are the most raving of fanboys and fangirls out there.
Leanne ElliottWhat's really interesting about what you're saying there, Al, is that's a lot like the HR function. You know, recruitment is about finding the right person for the right role, then convincing them that the role has all the things they're looking for, and then selling them on, on their future and what it will look like with the organization. You know, engagement is about turning employees into raving fans. That's exactly what it, what it comes down to. That's all an employer brand is, really. It's not a fancy website or professionally shot videos with those carefully chosen employees. It's about understanding your culture and showcasing it in a way that attracts people authentically and meaningfully into your business.
Al ElliottSo just to interject here then, Jeff Bezos from Amazon. Amazon, uh, very famously said that brand is what people say about you when you're not in the room. Now, of course, that seems to have backfired a bit recently, hasn't it, Leanne?
Leanne ElliottIt does, yeah. There's some strikes in the UK at the moment planned for Amazon employees based over, over pay, um, in terms of inflation disparity with their counterparts in the US who are paid more per hour. Um, and also, yeah, there's big words being thrown around like Amazon having a bullying culture. That's an example of employer brand gone wrong in practice, where things are happening and bubbling within the organisation. They overspill into the public realm. And yeah, from an employer brand perspective, that's going to harm their reputation.
Al ElliottIt is. But I mean, you have to remember that Amazon essentially are the greatest marketers on earth because they've now got the great, the biggest store on earth.
Leanne ElliottSecond to HubSpot.
Al ElliottSecond to HubSpot, of course.
Leanne ElliottStay on theme, Al.
Al ElliottSo talking of HubSpot, we go back to Kyle and we ask him, what can HR function learn from marketing and sales? Yeah, the places where I've worked where they've had the most success is on the marketing and communications team. Um, they had at least one person for internal communications, and that person, at least where I've worked, sat within the marketing team, but they were extremely close, extremely close with your HR and people teams. And so that bridge was extremely helpful. And then from there, the questions, if you're the head of HR, is what does our internal communications plan look like? How do we reach our employee base? What content matters most to them?
Leanne ElliottYeah.
Al ElliottHow do we not overwhelm them with training and internal communications? How do we make sure that we have a communications plan similar to the way the marketing team develops one to reach potential customers? How do we develop an internal communications plan where folks understand what our goals are as a company? Critical news makes its way throughout the organization. We're sharing things that are personal about the people that work for us that reinforce the values we've set. So I think that's probably, if I'm the head of HR, I'm talking to the head of marketing and comms and saying, how can we get a resource for this? And then how can we work together on developing a comms plan?
Leanne ElliottSome really great advice there from Kyle in terms of the more tactical execution of employer brand. I think one key thing he mentioned there is that it's as much employer brand, as much about how that's viewed internally as it is externally. Those 2 things need to be one in the same. Our only job as leaders is to create an environment where our teams want to work, where they want to work with others, and they want to produce amazing work because they believe in us and they believe in our mission. I think what Kyle has demonstrated is that the solution is to approach leadership with a mindset of how do I provide the best best environment, culture, tools, and resources to help my teams excel? As we mentioned earlier, our research has discovered there are 7 foundations of an amazing workplace culture that we can provide our people as leaders. It's something that we call the RX7 because those 7 things all start with R, and Al lost his little marketing brain when we figured that out.
Al ElliottAmazing. Loved it. Loved it.
Leanne ElliottSo if you'd like to learn more, go to oblonghq.com and book a free call with one So big, big thanks to Kyle.
Al ElliottThanks to Leanne for, for picking apart what Kyle said and pulling out some really cool points on there. As I say, this is not an advert necessarily for us, although why not? I mean, marketing, might as well throw an advert in there. Definitely get, get on the phone and book a call with Leanne. She knows her stuff, she's got experience, and she's amazing at all this kind of thing. So all the links are going to be in the show notes, and we will link to everything that Leanne's talked about, including Including the conference that Leanne mentioned at the beginning of the episode. Um, next week, Leanne, what are we doing?
Leanne ElliottNext week we have a really interesting episode coming up. We're talking about Britain's Healthiest Workplace Awards, uh, both the organization behind it and the organizations that won it. Um, and yeah, in terms of a follow-on conversation on employer brand, that's a pretty, pretty good way to promote your employer brand there, isn't it? I am one of Britain's healthiest workplaces. Um, does not necessarily mean that your organizations are exclusively British. They have a British presence, they have offices in the UK. There are lots of international companies in there as well. So it doesn't matter if you're not a business in the UK, because you might be part of a business that has UK presence, and you can learn stuff.
Al ElliottExactly. I think this has been one of, one of the weirdest endings to our podcast. But I think we'll leave it there. And we will see you next week. We would Love a review. If you want to go to Apple Podcasts and leave a review, 5 stars please. Don't, don't be that guy. Leave us a 5-star review and share it with your friends. And just jump on LinkedIn, search for Leanne or Truth, Lies, Work, and you will find us on LinkedIn where the conversation continues. Thanks again for listening. Love your feedback. Love you lot.
Leanne ElliottAnd thank you so much to Kyle and HubSpot for offering your expertise.
Al ElliottOkay, we'll see you next time. Bye-bye.