George B. Thomas
Rather listen to this post?
Recently, I had the distinct pleasure of being interviewed by Angus Nelson of the Evolve Leadership Show, which provides powerhouse success strategies to high-performers who believe in the importance of good leadership — without sacrificing happiness and true personal fulfillment. That's no easy feat!
Watch the full interview or listen to it on Apple Podcasts
I encourage you to listen to our full conversation, but I thought I would take a moment to share a few highlights from our discussion on the lessons I've learned on my path to becoming a whole-ass human, as well as the fears I've faced and my perspectives on leadership, success, and growth.
It's been a tremendous journey for me from my humble beginnings — a childhood in a one-room log cabin in Montana, a high school dropout who was encouraged to believe he wouldn't amount to anything — to where I am today as a business owner and a leading educator in the HubSpot and inbound marketing space. I hope you'll join me as we explore this journey together, in the hopes that some of what I've learned will serve you (and maybe your business) as you continue to pursue your own growth as a human and a leader.
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How did I get here? Well, it was a total fluke!
I didn't begin my journey toward HubSpot inbound agency owner on purpose; this all came about has a blessed and happy accident. I was a recovering youth pastor and an associate pastor at a church. Before us, we had a simple problem – we needed to learn how to build a website, and we also wanted to start using PowerPoint. That may not sound like much by today's standards, but back then, we were thinking big, folks!
Unexpectedly, I loved what I learned and discovered. In fact, I'll admit it, I totally started nerding out over what I was learning about website design. That's when I realized, "Man, I kind of like this design thing and this development thing!" Ultimately, this is what led me out of the church (as a pastor) and into agency life — but talk about polar opposites, my goodness.
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Soon, I was the website guy at a five-person agency in Massilon, Ohio — a six pack of Coke and a pizza going in on one side, and a powerfully built website coming out the other! Then, in 2012, I discovered HubSpot; again completely by chance. You see, one day, our social media guy tells us “some company called HubSpot” is putting on the “world’s largest webinar,” and we knew we had to tune in. Again, in 2024, that sounds like small potatoes, but that was a big deal back then.
During the webinar, they said they would give away free tickets to an event called INBOUND to the attendees who tweeted the most about the webinar. Immediately, our social media guy starts tweeting up a storm – and we won two tickets! I had no idea how my life was about to change.
The moral of the story here is you never know what you'll discover or what new paths will open up to you when you open yourself up to learning and new opportunities. In addition to discovering a new passion, I also learned through that experience that if you wait around for opportunities to land in your lap, you'll be waiting forever. Maintaining a posture of a lifelong student is how you keep yourself on a path of forward momentum, self-discovery, and meaningful growth.
From inbound zero to inbound HubHero
One of the reasons I am so passionate about sharing my story is I want folks like you to see that sometimes what you see as your greatest weakness is actually your greatest strength! I used to feel inadequate about how much I didn't know, how much education I didn't have. For a time in my younger years, I genuinely believed it when I had certain folks around me tell me that I wouldn't amount to anything.
But do you know what happened? At some point, I transformed that into fuel. Fuel that made me a hungry student, devouring as much self-guided education as possible. Fuel that made me someone who worked hard to transform complex ideas and topics into simple ideas that could be easily understood by all. Did I think of myself as an expert when I started my HubSpot tutorials YouTube channel (which got up to 8,000 subscribers!) when I was working with Marcus Sheridan?
Heck no. I was just a humble guy trying to help out other folks like me.
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I worked with Marcus for about five years, and I continued to put myself out there, just trying to help. I started speaking on stages and doing keynotes at conferences. My journey took me to other agencies, as well. But after 10 years of pulling back the slingshot of my own personal brand within other brands, I finally released it into the world with my own company.
Extraordinary from the ordinary
I'll be honest, I'm living the life of my dreams now. I value every experience I've had, but the ability to do what I'm doing now — working alongside my family, or the "FEAM" as we call it! — is something I never imagined would be possible ... or something I even wanted! Again, it's amazing what becomes possible when you allow your experiences to guide you to unexpected places, without judgment.
If you would've asked me 10 or 11 years ago where I could get or what I could achieve, and here's the thing I want everybody to know that it was nothing extraordinary. It was one podcast at a time. It was one video tutorial at a time. It was one social interaction at a time.
But the fact and what everybody needs to realize is it was 10 years because it was consistent.
That's what makes it extraordinary.
Too many people want to go viral instead of go value. Too many want it to be just immediate instead of something that is built on a firm longstanding foundation. When you build a brand that has the roots underneath it to stick, that's when you start to see success through significance.
Of course, I was scared!
OK, grab your earmuffs, because I've gotta swear here for a moment. Did this all come easy to me? Heck no! Listen, I was scared shitless. Listen, I was the type of guy who always said I'm a great number two to a great number one. I always painted myself as the Robin to a Batman for years. Big side character energy, you know what I mean? But I was the only one telling myself that. I was the only the number two because I made the decision to be the number two.
So, when it came time to make the leap, I was terrified. But then I heard these words deep within me — "You're going to regret this when you're 70 if you don't do it!" — and I knew I had to do it.
🔎 Related: Adopting an Owner's Mentality in Your Own Life
And so my incredible wife, Kelly, and I had a conversation. She set up two rules. We have to have medical insurance and you have to make sure there's a paycheck in the bank every two weeks. You're working a normal job. If you can figure that out, then I've always had your back. I got your back. Let's do this. And so I gave the agency I was at 60 days notice. Then we took a running start and we jumped off this cliff of "I don't know if this is going to work or not."
Because folks, if you wait until you're 1,000% confident to take action, you will be waiting forever. Sometimes the greatest reward only follows those moments when you choose to do it scared.
"You don't have clients, you have friends"
My wife once said about month four, you don't have any clients. I said, what do you mean? She said, you have friends who like to give you money because she would hear us on our meetings and yeah, we'd be talking about business, but we'd be talking about life.
We'd be talking about how we are going to generate leads, but we were going to talk about how we're going to impact those leads to get 'em in a better place. We weren't talking about the bottom line. We were talking about what's important, but that would impact the bottom line.
"You've just got friends that pay you money," she said.
But that's because what we do is about relationships. It's about being human. And when all of this is bundled in a nice, happy package, that nurture thing, it becomes easy. This is where most marketers go wrong. You forget to care. You forget you're serving humans, not ones and zeroes. You forget you're solving real problems and making lives better (in theory), not just increasing revenue or your bottom line.
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And I've had to check myself, too. Sometimes we put out content that if I stand back and I look at it, I'm like, we phoned that in. We didn't try. And every time we do that, there's a little part of my soul that dies. But I know when I write a piece of content that's from my soul, when I'm putting something out into the world and my heart is super transparent and vulnerable and I just share my shit — that's when people respond.
When was the last time you did that?
Today, I see my life as a gift
I didn't always see it that way. There were periods of my life marked by anger, resentment, and wondering out loud where my blessings were.
Now, I see it all so differently. Because I just don't know if there's many people out there that have been given the gift of my life, the hurdles, the hustles, the hills, the valleys, all of the things that have turned me into who I am. I can only do the things I'm doing today because of every chapter, milestone, detour, and perceived setback I experienced. I have been being prepared with purpose for the entire journey to be exactly where I'm at doing exactly what I'm doing.
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When times get tough, when you're truly in the weeds, it can be hard to see this context — the larger story that is unfolding before you. And that's OK. It's OK to feel your feelings, you can't always see where it is you're heading, and that's exactly how it's supposed to be. You're going to get to the final destination. You have some choices to make the pivots and transitions to get you there. But if you build the core philosophies and principles, you will get to where you're supposed to go.
There's a quote I love about getting stronger:
"If you do what is easy in life, life will be hard. But if you do what's hard in life, life will be easy."
What's funny about that is it's easy to say, I'm going to embrace the hard things in life so that they'll get easier. And that's literally what we're doing right now. We're embracing the hard things. We're tackling the hard things — which, by the way, if you think about that quote, that sure sounds like the narrow path to me. The narrow path is hard to find. It's hard to journey. There's going to be fewer people on it.
But that's the place to be. That's the road to success. That's the road to your future is through that hard narrow path that you need to go through.
