Jorge Fuentes
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Welcome back to another installment of What Jorge (that's me!) Learned over the past month. If you're new to this series, it's great to meet you! I'm Jorge, and I work with George here ... his sidekick, if you will!
Each month, you'll find me here, sharing new ideas, lessons learned, and more with all of you! Check out a few of the installments you've missed so far:
- 6 HubSpot and human lessons I've learned in my first 60 days
I talked about the importance of HubSpot audits, the secrets to great email copy, how to make client relationships great, and more. - What Jorge Learned: Microsoft Dynamics, newsletters, and community
Last month, I talked about one of the most common integrations with the HubSpot Sales Hub, how to get better results from your newsletters (with substance and structure tips), and the importance of community.
This month, I'm excited to share with you a few new exciting learnings, as George and I continue to serve our clients, so they can get the most out of HubSpot to reach their goals. Are you ready?
Adopting an owner's mindset as a specialist
When I first started working with George, I came in with the mindset of a specialist, an order-taker. Don't get me wrong, I was excited to roll my sleeves up to help George in every way possible to help others harness the superpowers of HubSpot.
But I didn't show up ready to proactively assert myself as a stakeholder who could advance a strategy forward. (Originally, I left this part to George, as he's the strategic mastermind around these parts.)
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Over time, however, that's changed a bit.
Is George still the strategy leader? Absolutely.
But one of the things I love about my work is I'm empowered to be accountable for so much more than just checking off repetitive tasks. Everyone wins because I've learned also need to understand the higher level strategy of each of our clients, to understand how those tasks influence their overall growth and advance their objectives.
Moreover, it's so important as a specialist to think bigger and more strategically for your career. Like I said, shifting to this more strategic "owner's mindset" is certainly helpful for the work we produce. But on top of that, thinking like an owner now helps me fast-track a lot of professional development.
I love that I'm challenged here to be that proactive, strategic, "owner's level" thinker as a specialist — I know that's not the case everywhere you work. I love that our clients get to sit back and relax while we rev their marketing engine, and I love that I can also feel myself growing at the same time.
If you're a specialist, challenge yourself to think bigger and more strategically about the work that you do. What areas of the work you're doing could benefit from you putting on a more proactive, forward-looking cap?
The importance of a great content user experience (UX)
If know anything about inbound marketing or HubSpot, you know how important content is. That's why we talk about it a lot here:
- Why you need to have a human-centric content strategy (and how to do it)
- What a great content strategy looks like (and how to create one)
- You need to write (and market) like a human (+ examples)
- 47 questions you need to ask yourself to build a great content strategy
You get my point ... content is kind of a big deal.
Even though I came here as an experience HubSpot specialist who knew a thing (or three) about inbound marketing, I've got to admit something to you:
When I started, I never considered it important for content to "look pretty."
I've always been the one taking raw notes in meetings, with disorganized Word documents hiding in my online files. It was to the point where I could understand my notes, but no one else could.
That was totally fine back then, but since coming here, I've learned there's a standard of excellence and quality that should be maintained in every piece of content (including your own notes). That's because visuals matter. How things are presented matter.
Put another way, you could have everything on the backend of a HubSpot portal setup perfectly — workflows are setup right, buyer personas are all loaded in, you've got a great framework setup for qualifying leads ... I could go on.
But if you've got errors or typos in your emails, or you fail to optimize your website's UX for mobile devices, you're going to have a big problem. Sure, maybe the substance of your email content and your website are undeniable — with a sterling HubSpot setup to boot — but your presentation and lack of care about how someone will experience said content will detract from all of the hard work you've done.
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Now, you may be wondering why my private notes even matter in a situation like this. Why is this where this lesson came from? Because I realized that even my own notes could serve others, and it's a beautiful practice to always craft a piece of content (no matter how public or private) with care, in case it can be of service to someone else.
So, as you go through your next work day, ask yourself if there are small (or big) ways you could up your content presentation game. Your clients, prospects, and coworkers will thank you, I guarantee it!
You can't ChatGPT your way to providing a human experience
There is a lot to be excited about when we think about how advancements in artificial intelligence (AI) — and tools like ChatGPT — I'm not denying that.
But here's the thing you need to keep in mind.
Being human is your #1 competitive advantage as a business owner, marketer, sales rockstar, or service champion. This is something we talk about a lot here with our clients. Yes, use automation and AI to help yourselves work smarter, not harder, but these tools are not meant to replace your humanity.
You still need to show up as, what George likes to say, "whole-ass humans" in your business, in your content, in your marketing, in your emails, and so on.
To be frank, I use ChatGPT for a lot of stuff, but it cannot help me complete most of my work. But I think that's the point right there. If you're looking at ChatGPT to replace the work you're doing, the emotional and mental effort you should be exerting to bring humanity into everything you do, you're missing the point of what these tools can actually do for you.
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Instead of filling ChatGPT with endless prompts to get it to write a blog article for you, you could use it to ask ChatGPT what the most common questions a particular buyer persona has about a specific topic you want to write about.
That will help you shorten the amount of time you spend creating an outline, and then you can dive in with your humanity in the content you create, without starting with a totally blank document.
But ChatGPT can't think for me. ChatGPT can't feign passion on a particular topic based on years of experience. ChatGPT can't join into client meetings and provide creative, outside-the-box solutions to complex problems that require a human touch. ChatGPT can't transform a piece of content from something "good enough," to a piece that is so human and helpful that it not only communicates information but shared values.
Again, I'm not trying to rain on the AI and ChatGPT parade here, but I think it's super important to remember how and when it should be used. Yes, you can take shortcuts and you can try to get it to do some of the "human" stuff on your behalf ... but you'll only be short-changing yourself in the long-run.
I'll talk to you all next month! 👋
