What is the HubSpot Flywheel? Is the funnel dead?

One sunny September morning in 2018, thousands of inbounders and HubSpotters were gathered in Boston watching HubSpot cofounder Brian Halligan's keynote, which revealed something wildly new that none of us were expecting ... 

... the HubSpot Flywheel, which is how HubSpot visualizes what's possible for an organization, in terms of their ability to "grow better," when everyone in your organization is aligned around delivering a fantastic customer experience.

It was quite a moment because, up until the great reveal, inbound marketers were (for the most part) worshipping at the altar of the inbound marketing funnel:

But HubSpot was now challenging us to set that funnel aside:

Images courtesy of HubSpot

Now, we've talked quite a bit about the HubSpot Flywheel before in previous HubHeroes episodes, as we conducted deep dives into different segments — attracting customers with great content, what engagement actually looks like, and breaking down who really owns customer delight.

But we've never gotten our hands dirty and talked about what the HubSpot Flywheel is because, truth be told, it's a messy topic once you start unpacking it.

For example, some folks thing the funnel is a nice idea, but what was actually wrong with the funnel? Did it really need to be replaced? Is the inbound marketing funnel dead like so many say? Others struggle with the funnel because they think it sounds great, but don't quite get how to unpack it for their organization. How do you align everyone so seamlessly? How do you track performance around the entire flywheel?

And that's exactly why we knew we had to talk about it this week. There's too much confusion, and it's time to end it once and for all. Does this episode get heated and passionate? Absolutely:

Do all of us agree with each other? No, we don't. 

However, I think this conversation is really going to help you and your teams understand what the HubSpot Flywheel really is and isn't, and what changes you need to make your mindset (and your team alignment) to see success in 2023. 

Here's what we cover in this episode ...

• Why did we need the Flywheel and what problems does it solve?
• Is the original inbound marketing funnel actually dead?
• Is the HubSpot Flywheel actually for everyone?
• Why do marketers continue to ruin absolutely everything we touch?
• What would it feel like to have the audacity of a tone deaf sales guy who can't read a room?
• Why is it so important to understand where you have force and friction within your organization?
• What happens when Devyn takes us to Inbound Marketing Church and preaches straight fire?

Buckle up, everybody! You have no idea what's in store for you in this episode.

YOUR ONE THING FROM THIS EPISODE

At the end of the day, whether you subscribe to the Flyweel or the funnel, you must accept that two things are true:

• Gone are the days when your teams (marketing, sales, service) can play around in their own little silos. The way you grow effectively as an organization is together; the more you're in silos, the harder that will be. 
• Your customers always matter, even and especially after they officially become a customer. Don't stop caring about the humans you serve just because you won the sale. The journey is only beginning for them ... and for you.

Or, put another way, in order to better attract, engage, and delight the humans you seek, you need to make sure the humans inside your own house are aligned first. You can't do one without the other.

RESOURCES FOR THIS EPISODE

• The attract phase of the HubSpot Flywheel (HubHeroes podcast)
• The engage phase of the HubSpot Flywheel (HubHeroes podcast)
• The delight phase of the HubSpot Flywheel (HubHeroes podcast)
• How HubSpot contacts mastery is your key to success with HubSpot
• What is HubSpot (really)? The definition most get wrong
• What is the Amazon Flywheel?

SHOW TRANSCRIPT

George B. Thomas: Do you live in a world filled with corporate data? Are you plagued by silo departments? Are your lackluster growth strategies demolishing your chances for success? Are you held captive by the evil menace, Lord Lack, lack of time, lack of strategy, and lack of the most important and powerful tool in your superhero tool belt, knowledge. Never fear hub heroes.

Get ready to don your cape and mask, move into action, and become the hub hero your organization needs. Tune in each week to join the league of extraordinary inbound heroes as we help you educate, empower, and execute. Hub heroes, it's time to unite and activate your powers. Before we begin, we need to disclose that both Devin and Max are currently employed by HubSpot at the time of this episode's recording. This podcast is in no way affiliated with or produced produced by HubSpot, and the thoughts and opinions expressed by Devin and Max during the show are that of their own and in no way represent those of their employer.

Liz Moorehead: Welcome back to the Hub Heroes podcast. Podcast. As always, I am Liz Murphy, official Hub Heroes, nerd wrangler, and the content strategist of this motley crew. And finally, we're not alone, George. Max and

George B. Thomas: Hello, hello.

Liz Moorehead: Max and Devon are back.

Max Cohen: We're back.

Devyn Bellamy: You guys are by yourself for what? One episode? Come on. 3.

Max Cohen: You did.

Devyn Bellamy: You guys are really good at the food. 3. You know

Liz Moorehead: what I love hearing, George? How much our fellow hub heroes pay attention to all of the knowledge bombs we're dropping. Daily and nightly and ever so rightly. Come on, guys.

George B. Thomas: Yeah. I guess they were really on vacation. Like, really, really.

Devyn Bellamy: True story. I was completely logged out of everything that wasn't Netflix.

Max Cohen: Yeah. Yeah. I was on vacation in a hotel with COVID. It was literally and figuratively. The best.

George B. Thomas: The best.

Liz Moorehead: You were just too much of a goat, man.

Max Cohen: I know.

Liz Moorehead: Meanwhile, George and I were, like, everybody's gone. What do you wanna do? Let's work.

Max Cohen: Let's do it. Yeah.

Liz Moorehead: It was super fun. Speaking of work kidding. That's a terrible segue. But I really wanna get right what we're talking about today, guys. I'm gonna be honest, I am bringing this topic up for me.

I'd like to think that there are other people out there listening to this who may care about this topic, but I won't talk about the flywheel. Now, we've mentioned it on this podcast before. We'll say things like, oh, yeah, it's the attract phase, or the engage phase, or the delight phase. And I'm sitting here going, guys, I remember being in the audience in 2018 at inbound when Brian Halligan stood up with that beautiful flywheel and went, look at it. The funnel is dead.

Long live the flywheel. And I'm like, that's great. What is this?

Max Cohen: Yeah.

Liz Moorehead: What? I'm sorry. What? This seems like a great way to rethink what I'm already doing. But am I supposed to be changing what I'm doing?

Am I supposed to be doing something wildly different here? And here's the thing, I know I'm not alone in thinking that. I have talked to so many people where it's like, flywheel funnel, it's all basically the same thing or I don't know, the flywheel is just a new way to say the thing we've always done or I'll even hear people who are flywheel evangelists and that includes you George who will say, oh, we gotta do something more closer to the bottom of the funnel. Yeah. And then there are people wait.

I wanna

George B. Thomas: give me one more thing.

Max Cohen: One more thing.

Liz Moorehead: And then there are the people who are like, we gotta go all flywheel. Funnel's dead. And then there are some people who say, flywheel isn't for everybody. So that's what I wanna talk about today. I want us to have a focused discussion on WTF as the flywheel.

George, do you have something to share with the class?

George B. Thomas: Yeah. Like, I I'm super excited to have this conversation. I can't wait to see where it goes. And because the thing that I want everybody to also put into context and, again, we're going back to 2018. We're going back to Brian Halligan on stage.

We're going back to the they pull out a big flywheel onto the stage. But before they did that, Brian used a guy named Jeff Bezos as an example. Now I want everybody to think of the irony to that. Because in 2018, HubSpot had not swam upstream and started a b for enterprise companies $1,000,000,000 company that now they're going to actually model their process around these 5 steps that were huge on a screen. Now with that, let's go ahead and start the conversation.

Liz Moorehead: Yes. And I'm just gonna put out a fair warning warning warning. Max, can you hit me up with a warning reverb, please?

George B. Thomas: Warning. Warning. Warning.

Liz Moorehead: Fantastic. So I'm a cheater pumpkin eater, and I already know that you ding dongs don't all agree with each other about everything about this topic. So if we're a little too chummy for too long, if everybody's like, oh my god. You're so smart and so right, and it takes too long for you all to start disagreeing, I am gonna start poking bears intentionally. The things like, George, I know you hate what he just said.

Tell me about it. I want discourse. I want a real and meaningful conversation about this because I think it's a great theoretical thing that people look at and then they'll turn their backs and go, but the funnel.

George B. Thomas: We're all gonna need therapy. We're all gonna need therapy after this episode.

Max Cohen: Yeah. I'll get it started. So, Liz, here's why you're wrong. Okay? Fantastic.

Liz Moorehead: Is it my beauty? Is it overwhelming the entire energy of the podcast? I knew it. Alright. How about this, Max?

Take away from my beauty for a moment and tell me what the flywheel is without using buzzwords.

Max Cohen: I always thought of it as the it is the evolution, if you will, of the original inbound methodology. And I think as HubSpot, the product started to evolve out of being, like, just a marketing tool and really morphed into being, like, a CRM front and center and then added in things like the service hub and that whole bit. I still think that the ultimate sort of, like, vision was to ensure that the strategy that we're building the product for, right, like, lines up with what the product actually is. And I think the original inbound methodology, it was the inbound marketing methodology. Right?

And it was very heavily focused as this, like, way of marketing. When reality, it was a way of really running the entire business because that little bit delight was always part of it. I know we talked about this a little bit in before in past episodes. So I see it's like a simplified natural progression of what the inbound marketing methodology was, but it puts an even amount of emphasis across all the different areas of your business and gives them, like, a pretty simplified framework of how to actually drive the overall strategy. And it's officially realizing that this is not just a marketing thing anymore.

And I think that's very important in the lens of, again, the HubSpot product because, again, we're building a product that is meant to support a strategy. And so it's just good to see those things aligned and that we've come to that realization that's more than just marketing.

Liz Moorehead: That's so funny. I and I'm gonna get into this later. I don't wanna be too fussy too right off the bat. I've already done that enough so far in this episode. But the idea that anybody ever looked at the original funnel and only saw marketing is a very big concern for me because that should have never been the case.

I at least have never looked at it that way. But Devin, I saw you doing a lot of head nods. What do you got for me? What's your answer to what the flywheel is from your perspective?

Devyn Bellamy: I think Max hit it right on the head with the evolution statement. Like, the thing is you look at HubSpot is for solving for disparate systems. The flywheel is about solving for disparate teams and bringing everybody into the same revenue operations goals by focusing on the customer from presale to sale and beyond. And just putting the entire org into a very clean ideology where the reason why people would think of the funnel as an only marketing thing is because marketers would think about the marketer the funnel about as an only marketing thing. Because once you reach the bottom of the funnel, you are no longer my responsibility.

With salespeople, you have your sales funnels, and HubSpot will call them the pipeline, but it's still the same ideology that once you're giving to me and I perform my duty, you are no longer my problem. And the same can be said of service, where the ticket comes in, I solve your problem, you are no longer my problem. With the flywheel, you have an understanding that this person doesn't cease to exist once you no longer interact with them. And then once you realize that, it allows you to think about your role more holistically. That's when you start thinking about marketing and post sales action.

That's when you think about selling to existing customers. That's when service is focused on creating advocates where you can go and have your community be on fire and be evangelists. They're paying you to be evangelists for you. That is, for me, the magic of the flywheel. Does is the funnel gonna work?

Sure. It's a great analogy. Top of the funnel, middle of the funnel, bottom of the funnel. But the problem is that the funnel approach is very siloed, as where the flywheel is about revenue operations in the organization, but most of all, the customer's journey as a whole.

Liz Moorehead: George, I've been watching you pace around like a heavyweight ready to get in the ring. So I'm just gonna take a step back.

George B. Thomas: In the red corner. Yep. Weighing in at an undisclosed weight. Anyway, so here's the thing. Devin, I love to kill silos.

I love it. Let let's eradicate them. Let's break them down. By the way, when I heard you say multiple times and, Liz, I love watching your face. I'm probably gonna have to pull a clip of this out.

When Devon kept saying, you're no longer my problem. You're no longer my problem. Ladies and gentlemen, if you have humans working at your organization with that, maybe you should have an inbound hiring methodology because that is not a platform funnel flywheel issue. That is a human's issue. It everybody is always your problem.

You have should have always been paying attention to the buyer's journey, the sales funnel, and the customer journey afterwards. By the way, in a little bit, I'll talk about how your business model should probably be more like shoots and ladders than anything that we're gonna talk about today. But here's the thing. The inbound methodology, by the way, when it was launched, let's just talk about what it was. It was an educational tool to teach people a strategy and it was positioned as an educational tool to teach people a strategy, a new way to do business.

It was never positioned as a business model. When the flywheel came out, it was positioned as a new business model, a way that you should run your sales marketing and service. It was not positioned as we've got a new way that we're gonna teach your people how to use HubSpot. It literally went in and said, the photo has some cracks. And by the way, let me just pause and just tell everybody how much I love Brian Halligan.

Brian Halligan is a boss player, but the funnel isn't broken and the funnel isn't for every business. The flywheel isn't for every business. There's a happy mix that we're gonna talk about during this episode, but the big problem that I have here, inbound methodology, tool, to teach. Flywheel, tool, to teach. The fact that we got off somehow and said that it's a business model.

Yeah. For Amazon who's focused on sellers for more selections, selections for better customer experience, customer experience drives more traffic, which drives more sellers. Yeah. But if I clean apartments, I just need people to buy my cleaning services.

Liz Moorehead: So I'm so glad you said this because that the reason why I was making so many faces is that if you have people in your organization who are hands off not my problem, there is no funnel, flywheel, wedge of cheese, octagon. It doesn't matter what you get a sphere, it doesn't matter what you do there that is a people problem that you're trying to solve. And I am in a 100% agreement with you there. I am watching Max and Devin. Did you notice, George, that they were, like, vigorously head nodding at each other?

The HubSpotters, like, yes, my orange sprocket friends.

Max Cohen: Yes.

Liz Moorehead: And they're looking at us like, oh, you children, you have no idea. What? I like that no one can see that. I'm not disagreeing with anything yet. Stirring the pot.

Devyn Bellamy: I mean, I disagree with some a a little bit with some things.

Liz Moorehead: Like, well, I don't know

Max Cohen: if George at the end you were trying to allude that the window washer or the whoever it was couldn't use the flywheel because 100% they do. Oh. 100%. 100%. Hold on.

George B. Thomas: Here's the thing. There's a difference, Max, between using something and replacing something. We had been asked to replace something that was broken, not add into addition some other things to help rev up the engine to get them to the place where they needed to go down the funnel or away an engine to pick them up from the bottom and, like, conveyor their ass back up to the top.

Max Cohen: I think but also too, there's, like, a lot of people that never quite understood what the funnel actually meant. Like, what a funnel actually was. So if you think of the window washer, at the end of the day, the window washer needs to somehow make people aware that he has a window washing business. And then he somehow has to sell to them the window washing services. And then he has to deliver good service and hope that they tell other people about it.

Even though that's a hyper simplified version, that's basically the flywheel. So when I think of the flywheel, it's more so like an overarching general like framework of simple physics that any sort of organization can follow. And some people will get a lot more specific in certain sections of it. Some people will spend more time or less time. But in order to really function, you have to do all 3 even if it's in slightly different ways.

And I think that's fine because what was that Joe Dirt? They had that saying home home while you make it. Right? Flywheel while you make it. But as long as you're doing those 3 general things in some way, shape, or form, you have to do that in order to grow or maintain a business and organization or whatever.

I'm gonna one more second here. I wanna say, like, even a nonprofit, you have to get people aware of your nonprofit. You gotta get people to build trust in your nonprofit. And you have to engage with them in ways that makes them wanna donate money to you. And then you have to go and actually do stuff with that money that's been donated to you and drive an impact and get people super stoked and excited about the work that you're doing so they go out and tell other people so that other people can find you and eventually build trust with you and give you money.

Almost any organization, whether it's school, a traditional business, or whatever, can apply this framework. But again, you start at the very sort of general physics of what's happening, and then you kinda hone in on which parts of it you pay more specific attention to or tackle in your own way. Now shut up.

Devyn Bellamy: Yeah. I wanna jump in on that really quick. The important thing that you have to understand with the flywheel or any framework or business model is that you can't lose the forest for the trees. You if you get bogged down in the minutiae of all the different things that can happen within each of those individual sections. It's going to be a nonsensical exercise for if you're a a one person shop.

But if you're just thinking of attract, engage, delight, and focusing on, like, for me, good example, I own a marketing company. My marketing company isn't even on LinkedIn. Nobody knows about my agency through advertising. Yeah. If you Google it, I doubt you'll find it, but I make money with it.

And the reason why I'm making money is because I'm very hyper focused on the flywheel within my own organization, where my business comes almost primarily word-of-mouth. But the thing is, all word-of-mouth is gonna do is get them to the door. I still have to talk through them with solving their problems, and then I have to help them solve their problems and delight them in such a way that I become a part of their social circles and are meeting other people who have similar problems. And so I I am constantly applying force using delight as well as just being awesome at what I do and getting people to engage and spend money with me using attract, engage, delight, repeat. Just that that's the difference.

So we can talk about how there's one person on the rev ops team whose only job is to look at analytics in an enterprise organization. The the thing about the both what HubSpot has and the Flywheel has, it's a foundation for scalability. And once you start generating revenue and you can start saying, okay. I'm gonna spend money here to reduce friction. I'm gonna spend a little money here to apply force in this area of the flywheel and go from there.

When Brian Halligan did his talk, one of the things he did is he started talking about flywheels within flywheels, and it got, like, really deep, especially for the audience. Like George said, SMBs. They most of them aren't ready for that. But the thing is that foundation will help you scale up to being able to do that.

Max Cohen: I wanted to throw I wanted to throw one thing in before just to make sure I don't forget that Devon said word-of-mouth. When I was onboarding people before they ever started using marketing technology, and I asked them, how have you been getting back then we're really into lead generation. Right? So I say, how are you getting leads so far? And they would all say, oh, it's just been word-of-mouth.

Guess what, dude? You've been doing a flywheel this whole time then. Because in order for that word-of-mouth business to have been generated. Right? Oh, yeah.

Here we go, George. Here we go. Get ready for it. Right? In order for that, you have been generated.

Hold the chill out. Right? In order for that to have been generated, that means that you sold to someone at one point. You did a good enough job taking care of them to the point that they told someone else to go to you, but before that person had to find you somehow. So even if you were doing a crappy job about it, there was a flywheel happening there.

Doesn't mean it was spinning fast. Doesn't mean it wasn't wobbling all over the place when it was spinning like a wheel that's about to fall off a car. But it had to have been happening. The physics had to have taken place for them to find you in the 1st place. You sold to them.

You did a good enough job, and then they told someone else about it. And that's where the word-of-mouth comes from.

Liz Moorehead: Oh, wobbly wheel is a flat tire to be. Number 1. Number 2

Max Cohen: True. True.

Liz Moorehead: Now, hold on. And the reason why The wheel though. The reason why we were all laughing is because I we've joked about Max bringing out weaponry on calls before and like hammers and nerf guns. And George literally just turned around and started punching the air. So George, cupcake, light of my life.

George B. Thomas: Yeah.

Liz Moorehead: Talk to me, bubby. What's going on?

George B. Thomas: No. I wasn't flywheeling. I wasn't flywheeling. I was doing business. I was doing the things that people do when they do business.

And here's the thing, I'm gonna tell you I love word-of-mouth. Word-of-mouth is 100% all of the things that I've closed in the first 6 months of owning my own company. Word-of-mouth. People that knew me, heard of me, or I've done something for historically. So I love word-of-mouth, but I wasn't doing flywheeling.

I was doing business. I was adding value. I was being a great human, educating and executing on things that needed now sure. If you wanna layer

Max Cohen: You were delighting.

George B. Thomas: You're of course. I always delight. That's how

Max Cohen: I roll.

Liz Moorehead: In the funnel.

George B. Thomas: But here's the it's but right. Here's the thing. It's not like delight showed up when the flywheel showed up on the scene in 2018. If we remember back and actually, let me tell you, here's where my brain goes, and it's a dangerous place to try to pay attention to. Delight was here.

The original inbound methodology. Way to do business potentially, but definitely a great educational tool was attract, convert, close, and delight. And even the word was born, which you can hate it or you can love it, but it hit the scene in the inbound audience. Right? Now here's the thing.

If we go to the flywheel, we've got attract, engage, and delight. Now here's the thing. We went to a model that actually removes something. It removes something. There is no convert.

It's just engage. We're not exactly sure what that means. If they're engaging you or we're engaging them, but they're like all of marketers, especially demand gen, lead gen, should have lost their damn mind because convert was ripped out of the model that we're all paying attention to.

Max Cohen: It's the first Chevron. I have takes on that. It's the first Chevron. It's where attract meets engage is where convert happened. At the end of engage, when going into delight.

It's a gray area. It can have shade. Okay? It can it it could be more of a spectrum that's fine. When it spins really fast, it gets blurry.

George B. Thomas: I'm gonna give

Liz Moorehead: it a second.

Max Cohen: It just hurts. Here's the point I wanna make. George George, you've been attracting and engaging for 10 years, my dude. You seriously Oh, I'm not too sure. You're

George B. Thomas: So now I can delight. Exactly.

Devyn Bellamy: You can delight people who you haven't closed yet. I absolutely love a good presale experience. And I have written I'll call them out. 1800 accountant. You whoever that sales guy was that you assigned to me sucked.

I hated. He tried to early close me. It was like that I don't care how good your business is. That dude made me feel greasy afterwards, and I'm not going with them. He had the audacity to call me back because I have a whole thing with that company.

But the biggest thing that I have was with the horrible presale experience.

Liz Moorehead: Oh, the odd to have the audacity of a tone deaf sales rep who can't read the room. Am I right, guys? But here's what I wanna I'm gonna cut in here for a moment too, Max. Because if we're literally acting octagon, hexagon, flywheel, whatever, until the flywheel showed up? That is no.

And I think this is where we lose a lot of people with the flywheel, especially people who are new to inbound now. A lot of these folks, they're not can they are not interested in buzzwords, they are not interested in what shape it comes in. But they have known for decades, years, that their number one source of revenue are the customers they already have in the door. That in order to win a sale, you can't suck the life out of the room and make them hate you before you even get there. Delight was already baked into it because it was simply referred to as customer service.

Not good, not delightion. It's just that's how they defined customer service. And going back to what George said earlier, I think this is where it gets confusing. The message was funnel is dead, long live flywheel. As if it we were radically changing how we did business when I wish it had been introduced more as a teaching tool.

Because often the way I teach it is okay, first you have to understand this funnel. This is the linear progression even if it ping pongs around, even if it's crazy. We know the buyer's journey is completely berserk. But then it needs to keep spinning and feeding itself and it's just a visual representation of how you take the model and keep it in motion. But these are things that everybody has already been doing.

So in a way, I disagree with you, Max. But I also agree with both of you. Because this is No, because this is something that we have been doing constantly all the time. It is a process we've been doing constantly. But we can't literally act as if the flywheel invented stuff that already existed.

Max Cohen: No. Not at all. And I would never say that. What I think that they're doing is they're emphasizing that that's a really important thing to do because for so many years, people only dumped all their money and thought and strategy into marketing and sales. And, like, things like customer success, customer support, actually delivering on your promises and paying attention to what happens after people give you the money was a complete afterthought.

There's a reason support people and customer success folks and anyone who works in customer service doesn't get paid commission because people think it's not important because they're not generating revenue. And that's the brain rot that I think they're trying to get rid of when they say, hey. Delight is just as important as these other and here's the thing. Companies that provided terrible customer service slowly killed themselves on great customer service. Right?

And, yeah, they were delighting this entire time. But, again, there's still that stigma there that and that's why the funnel thing is so popular because it's, oh, put all your money into marketing and sales and then you plop customers down at the end, but we don't really care what happens when they plop out of the end of the funnel. And I think what the and because, again, the old inbound methodology had delighted too as well. I think that was always just a saying, like, hey, guys. This part's really important.

You gotta focus on it just much as you focus on your marketing and your sales.

George B. Thomas: Max, here's the thing. I absolutely 100% agree with what you just said. I think that service team's customer success needed to be elevated. I think that they've been playing much more, a massive part of the business game than we ever gave them. So don't disagree with that at all.

Where I tend to have issue with this is that if you go back to the original video that I know Brian watched, and you can Google it by the way. Google Amazon flywheel meeting. It is on YouTube. And you watch the way that it was educated and taught about in that room, it doesn't apply to all businesses. And so not to beat a dead horse, I go to, I firmly stand behind if I'm educating sales, marketing, and service teams how to eradicate all of their historical silos and pay attention to the inbound methodology across all departments.

I'm cool with that, but I'm gonna teach it in a way that then I'm gonna talk about the original inbound methodology and how service can convert, how sales can convert, how marketing can convert, how service can delight, how sales can delight, how marketing can delight. Like, all of them can do all of the original four things. So if I use it for that, that's amazing. But, again, if you look at it as a, hey. It's a business model.

That's when I start to have issue with some like, listen. I've had conversations where companies like their owner and marketers went off the rails because of the confusion of the flywheel. And, Devin, I'm so glad you said this earlier. This whole mental what the freak did they just say force and friction? When that came out, people were like, wait.

What? What do you mean by that? We just added some more buzzwords that were I thought we were just supposed to be authentic humans. Now we gotta add force and friction?

Devyn Bellamy: Yeah. Because the thing that when you're talking about a flywheel, those are the 2 biggest things. Things that are slowing down your momentum and things that speed up your momentum. And you could be focused on trying to speed up your momentum all day, not realizing that you need to focus on what's stopping you from speeding up your momentum. And then the other thing to take into consideration is of all the things that we've mentioned, the one thing that we haven't mentioned is community.

And that is a huge part of Delight. Like, you look at, like, the evolution of go to market. Right? Like, in the 2000, it was inside sales. You trust us, and we'll help you.

And then 2006, inbound methodology. Go ahead. Do your own research. Kick the tires. Trust yourself.

And then you're going to 2016 where it's like product led growth, where it's like trust trust your teammates, trust the people who are working with you in doing this. And then now we're going into community led growth, where it's not just about trust us, it's not about trust yourself, it's trust your community, trust each other. And that is a major component of the flywheel. And when we talk about people dropping out of the bottom of the funnel, most companies, like most SMBs, aren't really that focused on community outside of posting to Facebook. That's their idea of community, not focusing on delight outside of maybe a referral program or not delight, but applying force to the delight section of the flywheel, where then we're talking about what we're doing to drive word-of-mouth, what we're doing to drive these evangelists and empower them to go forth on our behalf and basically bring us back leads.

That's one of the things that is an after the afterthought. That usually comes after focusing on customer service. And speaking of customer service, I still have yet to see a company where the customer service has a better office or even as good of an office as the sales team. The sales team, they get the office. They get the expense accounts.

They get to go. The service lives in a cubicle farm. And the things that that level of afterthought, like, these are things, yes, they've been happening, but the way the lens through which you've been perceiving these things is different prior to flywheel if you understand the flywheel methodology. So it's more than just force and friction as buzzwords. It's really the core of the flywheel.

You have to focus on what's grinding your customers gears, what's really making your revenue slow down, and then also focus on what's working for you. You really wanna work on SEO, but damn, if your Facebook account isn't jumping right now, maybe you should be applying to that. And that flywheel is allows you to have that methodology and is really what leads to having an act active and effective revenue operations person or team or just that mentality.

Liz Moorehead: You bring up a really good point there, Devin, because one of the things that is really jumping out at me right now is that we have overall let we could take the flywheel, the funnel, all of the shapes out of the conversation. For decades, pre Internet, sure, but the Internet absolutely accelerated it as information has become more democratized, as information has become more accessible. But thematically, that has only become more true and it's gobbling up more teams. And so I think the on the right side of this, the part of me that does make me pro flywheel and to be fair, I'm not anti, I just like funnel and flywheel. But the thing that I do like about it is that

George B. Thomas: in a

Devyn Bellamy: way agnostic.

Liz Moorehead: Shape and I am. I accept all shapes.

Max Cohen: One is What a fly triangle. To be fair

Liz Moorehead: Fly angle. The shape I personally from a physical perspective, I relate more to the flywheel and its roundness, but that's neither here nor there. But my point is that, like, overall, we have been moving toward a business setup where everybody's responsible. We play different functions in growth, but we are all kind of sitting around the same table. More people need to be invited to the table.

So I would really love to see us sit at a high level, move a little bit more away from it's just about sales and marketing alignment. Guys, we all gotta be aligned. This isn't just a 2 party system. Now, George, I have a question for you.

George B. Thomas: Hang on one second. Hold that question for one second because, yeah, anybody listening to this podcast, do me a big favor and just own your ish and realize that you're on a rowing team, not a relay, not an individual race. You are on a rowing team, and your entire company is trying to get to the finish line. Why? So they can make enough revenue that you don't get laid off and lose your job or they go out of business.

Like, it's that simple if you break it down to simplicity. Also, before that question, Liz, Devon, thank you for that brief moment of fire that you laid out about service and the offices and the mindset because I totally agree with that. It is so important. If you're a CEO or c suite and you're listening to this episode, your one action item is to go look at where your sales team sits, look at where your service team sits, and then ponder what your next step should be. I'm just gonna throw that out there.

Okay. Liz, I'm ready for your question.

Liz Moorehead: I cannot agree with you more, Devin. Honestly, I felt seen. I started my career as a Cube Farm customer service person, and I cannot tell you how many times I actually even genuinely wanted to help people, but our technology didn't work. I would access your account, ma'am, but it's down again. I bet your sales systems weren't down.

Bet your marketing was fine. Customer service, they're in a different building on a different planet. We don't know who they are. We don't know their names. We've outsourced it.

It's a 1,000 different things. But anyway, let's get to my question. George, I'm gonna guess your answer to the question is no. The flywheel isn't it's no. It's not dead.

George B. Thomas: God, no. No. Like, that's the thing. I laugh when Devon was, like, shape agnostic. I think everything has a part that it plays.

And, again, there's the flywheel. I think that's the overarching thing that you know is just spinning and you're paying attention to it and to go back to my chutes and ladders example. I really wish people could see inside of that flywheel spinning a couple other places that historically have been confusing. We talk about the buyer's journey, and we never really went far enough to talk about how there's a buyer's journey and there's a customer's journey because they're 2 different things, and the customer journey really aligns with this service conversation that we're having in onboarding and deletion and conversion on the service side of it. There's the buyer's journey, which is the marketing and sales side of this before they actually get to what?

The slide of the chutes and ladders, which is what? Our funnel. Because we're actually letting them slide down the stages and the conversations that they have to have with humans to buy the product that solves the problem or helps them to their aspirational point. So if you think of all of this as the flywheel is the playground and all the pieces that you need to do business, now we're getting somewhere.

Devyn Bellamy: I think one of the things that we aren't talking enough about when it comes to the flywheel are force and friction. That's what makes the flywheel work is having that mentality. Because it's just, like, for me, the funnel's not dead. It's just remodeled. But the problem is that from a physics standpoint, just at that point, it doesn't click in my mind.

People going out of the bottom, and then you run them around and come on top, or you just have a circle of funnels. Physics from a physics standpoint, that you're going to have a loss of energy. And not to say that is the perfect analogy to the company, but that's the whole reason why the flywheel exists is because it's a much better analogy and a much better lens at which to look at your business process. When we start talking about the flywheel, its purpose is to generate and maintain a momentum. When a flywheel starts spinning, it doesn't wanna slow down.

The only thing that will slow down a flywheel is friction. And if we're talking about the 2 major friction points in a flywheel, the first one is air resistance. The second one is the hub itself. And at the hub of the flywheel model that Brian presented, at the center of that is your customers. Friction comes from bad things happening with customers.

When they are having a bad presale experience and make you feel greasy afterwards, that friction comes from when they're customers and something goes wrong and they can't fix it. Even presale, when they're just trying to find more information and kick the tires, and it ain't there because your content sucks. That's all friction for your flywheel. So those are problems that you solve. What's generating churn?

What's making you lose revenue? What's lowering your MRR? But then when you look at what you can spend money on, because at the end of the day, that's usually what applying force is spending money. Where can you spend money to make it more effective? I overheard a conversation about a guy who sends a dude, wires him a $100,000 a month for his Google Ads, and he's mad because things are increasing for him.

It's because you're focused on the wrong part of the flywheel. You're applying force in the wrong spot. And then you in the same conversation, you're talking about how you have a ton of opt in leads, but they're not all marketing qualified lead. They're not all sales qualified leads. Maybe if you have a ton of opt in leads and you're converting on your page, you should focus on refining that and spend money on a copywriter to come in.

Spend money on someone who's UI and someone to analyze your copy and say, okay. Here's why you're attracting tons of nonqualified people. This is where you should be fixing it. This is where you should spend your energy. But you're dumping all your energy into this all top of the funnel stuff that you think you need when you should be looking at the flywheel, having your numbers and say, okay.

That conversion rate over there is too low. This conversion rate has potential. We can fix that as opposed to just trying to apply more money to a fire that's never gonna go out.

George B. Thomas: I just want everybody to know the pure joy that goes into my heart when when Devin starts to preach, I just start dancing. My head starts bobbing. I'm like Yo.

Liz Moorehead: We went to HubSpot Church just now.

Max Cohen: It was beautiful.

George B. Thomas: Yo. He Oh. He was spitting fire. I knew I might have needed a hanky for a hot minute. I was like, what is going on right now?

But here's the thing. I wanna be careful because there's 2 micro pieces that I wanna pull out what you said, and then I'm gonna shut up because I know Max has things to say. Going back to your center hub and it being the customers, the humans, when there's friction there, right, I want people to think about other episodes. We've talked about people, process, and platform. That's probably what's creating the friction.

That's 3 major places that you should start to look at of. Is that friction happening because of the people that we have in the seats, the platform we're using because it's piece or is it the process because we need to remodel that and rethink it? The other thing that I'm gonna say is probably a whole another podcast episode is that we have to be very careful because in that entire preaching session, we talked about friction as a negative. Friction can be a positive because fix because friction, your tread of your tire is friction against the road. That's a positive.

When you hit your brake pedal and you wanna slow down, that's a positive. When you realize you've only got 5 salespeople and enough inbound leads for 50, you need some good friction or else there's gonna be issues. So I want us to think about in the future as force and friction is not a positive and a negative, but it has positive and negatives on both sides.

Liz Moorehead: Yep. Because if we go back to that metaphor that Max is thrown around earlier about tires and stuff and wheels, like, a runaway train, shit needs to stop. Yeah. Otherwise, it's gonna crash into stuff and kill people. And that's real sad.

I really painted a picture with my words there, folks. I hope we enjoy it.

Max Cohen: Well, I mean, the other thing

Liz Moorehead: Did you actually have just something to change?

Max Cohen: It's I think another way of putting it is that if you think about a gearbox, that's literally just a series of flywheels, and sometimes you gotta downshift, like some Tokyo Drift stuff. But, Oh, I

George B. Thomas: love me some Telstra drift.

Max Cohen: Devin, I gotta say that that direct eye contact when you're preaching there is making my skeleton start to vibrate. That

Liz Moorehead: was I know. I I needed a moment. I'm really glad George was able to, like, pick up right after that because I was just sitting here fanning myself a little bit. It was a lot.

Devyn Bellamy: I have to watch this back. Yeah.

Max Cohen: It's gonna be a fun one.

Liz Moorehead: George was dancing. George was literally dancing.

George B. Thomas: Yeah, man. Yeah. It was the inbound spirit, bro. I need I was like, let's go. Here.

Liz Moorehead: IFO sound Jesus and me Jesus.

Devyn Bellamy: It was wonderful. That I'm gonna I'm

Max Cohen: gonna I'm gonna brain dump here because I'm I'm driving the ship as a nope. I'm flying nope. Building the plane as I fly it when I try to say what I'm about to say right now. That's like what I'm so, like, me, I try to, like, hyper simplify the shit out of the flywheel, which is, like, why I feel like I can make the case that any organization can do it. And if you're surviving, you're probably doing it to some extent even if you're not doing it very well.

And what's tough here too is, like, when we talk about funnels, dude, what is a funnel even now? I hate to be the definitions guy, but to be today, I don't know, like, funnels are what people call things when they're gurus trying to sell another marketing course to some poor small business owner. Like like, there are good funnels, there are bad funnels. Sometimes, even in marketing softwares, you have tools called funnels that are, like, workflows in HubSpot. Like, it's the same thing as a campaign.

What does any of this mean? So that's why when I think about the flywheel, I like to think of it as these big general guiding north stars of things you should be focusing on, but exactly how you define it can be open to a little bit of interpretation. So when, George, you get on the convert and close thing, my man, convert and close can look very different depending on your business or your organization. You know what I mean? And I think when we look in the flywheel in these more general terms, it allows businesses to say, okay, here's kind of the 3 big motions that we have to make in order to make this thing work.

What does it mean for us to attract? What does it mean for us to engage? And sometimes that's convert and close, depending on how you define it. What does it mean to delight?

George B. Thomas: So I gotta chime in Chime.

Max Cohen: But you I listen. You told me to be a little more combative today, so I'm doing it. No. He

Liz Moorehead: is first in here for it. Wait, George. Hold on.

George B. Thomas: Go ahead, Liz. Go ahead.

Liz Moorehead: I'm chiming first and then you chime because you've been watching me hold my head for

Max Cohen: weeks now.

Devyn Bellamy: George, shut the

Liz Moorehead: Are you telling me?

Devyn Bellamy: I love it. I love

Max Cohen: you guys.

Liz Moorehead: Guys, we're not fighting enough. I don't understand. I gave you a chance to

Max Cohen: to bring the heat and I'm bringing it.

Liz Moorehead: So let me let me get this straight, Max. Because marketers have ruined a buzzword the way we ruined everything, like authenticity, you're telling me we can't use funnel anymore? I'm sorry. Authenticity is still authenticity even if marketers have ruined it. Funnels is still a valid analogy and teaching tool even if there are buttheads out there ruining it because they don't know what they're doing.

It's like coaches right now. It's the new MLM. Every chick in a pink hat on Instagram is a coach who's going to teach coaches how to coach other coaches and it's very confusing. But that doesn't mean there aren't actual certified coaches out there doing stuff. So I get what you're saying.

I think there are people who just say the word funnel because they know how to spell it and good for them. But to completely disparage it as a teaching tool, to call it those to put it aside and just say, we've ruined this, Now we're gonna talk about flywheels. I don't love that. Now George, free feel free to chime before Max tells me how wrong I am. Oh, no.

He's doing it anyway.

Max Cohen: No. I'm not telling you you're wrong. I'm not telling you're wrong. But what's a funnel?

Liz Moorehead: It's something I pour sugar into in order to get into things where the

Devyn Bellamy: Oh, yeah. What time out real quick. What are you using a funnel to pour sugar into?

Liz Moorehead: That was a really bad metaphor because I was okay. My actual answer is this. My actual answer is this. I talk to people a lot about the all of the people you attract are not always going to be all of the people that you convert and it gets a little bit smaller each and every time. It is not the entire process but it is a great way to visualize a piece of it and explain I understand we're going to have a ton of organic traffic coming along but not all of those people are going to come along and be customers and not all of those people are going to close.

That's just the nature of the beast. It's why we have pipelines that we keep fat and healthy and happy because there is a percentage closed one rate, not a we get a 100% all the time.

Max Cohen: And I love that definition. The only thing I'm saying is that you ask that to a bunch of other people, they're gonna have a different answer. So all I'm saying is that when we talk about funnels, we need to define what we mean in the context of that conversation. Otherwise, people are just gonna get confused by it when they hear it. But I agree with you, Liz.

A 100%. I'm just saying it's another one of those words that we just need to be careful with when we talk about it. So people

Liz Moorehead: can Tell me I'm right again. Just say it. To say

Max Cohen: one more time. I think you're so right.

Liz Moorehead: Yes. Okay. So George, go ahead.

George B. Thomas: I finally get to jump in on what Max said. I'm sorry. I I hurt No.

Liz Moorehead: He told me it was my time

George B. Thomas: to try. I wasn't holding my head. I wasn't holding my head the time that Max was talking. See, because what I was trying to do, Max, is I was trying to jump in, be your cane to big show, your Ricky Steamboat to your Jay Youngblood, your Ric Flair to your Batista, if you will. I was trying to jump in because, brother, you uncovered something that most organizations don't uncover, that they don't get to.

Because most humans take thing at face value. They see the stage. They see Brian Halligan. They see the flywheel, and they only see the colors and words that are on there. And the fact that you went through and you make attract yours.

You make engage yours. You make delight yours. I am forever preaching on almost every meeting I have, and this is how you wrap HubSpot around your business. This is how you customize your contact records. This is how you create your custom properties because it is about your people, your process, and making HubSpot your platform that you can then implement the flywheel and funnel strategies with.

Max Cohen: And you can wrap that flywheel around your shit too. You know what I mean? Like seriously, it's like it's a circle for a reason. You go in the middle of it.

Liz Moorehead: While we're all feeling so agreeable and not shouting at each other anymore and wrapping things up in circles and bows and flywheels. We have talked a lot today about a lot of things. And we've shouted and we've hugged it out, but then we shouted again and then we've chimed and then yelled again and now we're rapping. As we're wrapping things up for people, what's the one thing they should be walking away with from today? Because the goal of today was to get people heads on straight about what the flywheel actually is, and why it exists.

So if nobody takes anything away from this conversation except one thing, they're like a drunk guinea pig waddling on the streets going, what? Like, what is the thing they need to remember?

George B. Thomas: First of all, sure why it's a drunk guinea pig.

Liz Moorehead: I don't know, George. You asked me to host.

George B. Thomas: Where does

Liz Moorehead: that get a drunk guinea pig, and you're gonna be happy about it.

Devyn Bellamy: I like that movie theater graphic after 9 PM. That's what that is.

Liz Moorehead: You've made choices, George. Live with them.

George B. Thomas: I love the choices that I've made. So here's the thing. I can't wait to hear what Devin, Max, and Liz, you say. I'm gonna go back to that. This is probably the most appropriate time after you hit the stop playing and you got your notepad out to actually sit and just take a moment to rethink everything, rethink everything.

Are we customizing everything to our processes around attract, engage, convert, delight, any of the stages, any of the versions of the inbound methodology, any of the shapes, have we put all of the shapes together in a way that makes sense for our business and our success? So so dumb it down right now. Rethink everything.

Devyn Bellamy: Here I was thinking I was the don't be afraid to nuke everything at the end of episode guy, but this time it's George.

Liz Moorehead: So what kind of guy are you, Devin?

Devyn Bellamy: Me? I enjoy sunsets, long walks on the beach, and the flywheel no. Actually, I hate walking on the beach.

Liz Moorehead: Me too.

Devyn Bellamy: I don't like outdoors. So, yeah, all of that. I guess you could say I enjoy making up autobiographical nonsense. But the big takeaway here is the core things that you need to know about the flywheels, not just the stages, not you need to know why we call it a flywheel and not the circle of stuff to do. The flywheel is all about friction and force and applying that understanding to your business, and understanding that you might be applying force in the wrong place, understanding that you may be trying to apply force when you should be focusing on overcoming friction.

You should step out of the we're a sales organization, we're a sales company, we're a marketing company. You should be focusing on we're a revenue generating company, and that's where the flywheel comes into play.

Max Cohen: I say 2 things. 1, if you haven't done it in a while, it might be a good little mental exercise to just look at your business one day and say, how are we attracting? How are we delighting? Oops. How are we engaging?

And how are we delighting? Just explore it. Maybe you might find some gaps to fill in. Last thing I'll just say is flywheel will you make it. Flywheel will

George B. Thomas: you make it. So hang on a second because, Max, I actually think that I may love your ups. Okay? And let me explain why. Because I don't feel like there's anything wrong with attract delight attract delight engage.

Attract delight attract delight attract delight engage. It's almost a playoff of Gary v's jab right hook. Right? They're like Devon said earlier in this episode, you can delight people before you convert them. So I don't mind your ups.

Max Cohen: Thank you for accepting my voice. And forever.

Liz Moorehead: We accept you and all of your oopsie daisies, Maximus.

Max Cohen: A flower wheel where you may.

Liz Moorehead: A petition for Joe Dirt to headline Endowed 2023.

Max Cohen: Oh, wow. Oh, wow.

Liz Moorehead: Call David Spade. Alright. My one thing is very simple. And, honestly, I would say it's probably a good synthesis of some of the things you guys have already said. But the reality is that whether you're talking about a flywheel or a funnel, these are just analogies.

These are analogies that are forcing you to get out of your cubicles, to start playing well with other children on different teams, to understand that you all have one common goal and you all need to be moving together. Like, where all of these teams now need to be moving together. We do not have the luxury anymore of service being over in service land and marketing being over in marketing land and sales being like, I do not understand why marketing keeps says keep saying brand awareness. That's something we give a damn about. We all actually need to come together, start listening to each other, start talking to each other.

And to your point earlier, George, about what you said about friction being good, sometimes pumping the brakes a little when we need to make a change before we're a runaway train who puts sugar down funnels for no reason because they're dumb.

Devyn Bellamy: The first place my mind went to was gas tanks. I thought that's what you were gonna say because I didn't know if you had crazy ex girlfriend energy. So Oh. Dang. You said sugar and funnel.

There's only one thing to say. Hurtful.

George B. Thomas: Oh goodness.

Liz Moorehead: That hurts me. Before we wound each other

Devyn Bellamy: more deeply,

Liz Moorehead: watch your gas tank, buddy. But on that note, everyone else listening, George, do you wanna give a quick recap on an event we have coming up before we say goodbye?

George B. Thomas: Oh, absolutely. If you are focused and listening to what we usually talk about, I I know we mentioned it on this one as well. Content doing content right. If you're trying to rev up that flywheel, if you are trying to eradicate the silos and get found and all the things that you could say, then you need to make sure that you head over to hub heroes.comforward/seo and check out that content SEO masterclass that we have coming up. Go ahead and sign up.

Seats are limited. Time's limited. And with that, let's I guess we're out of here.

Liz Moorehead: Almost. There's a promo code. You almost forgot.

George B. Thomas: Yeah. Don't forget.

Liz Moorehead: For our listeners.

George B. Thomas: Don't forget. Use the promo code hub heroes or hub hero, and you'll get a 10% off of the master class.

Liz Moorehead: Fantastic. And on that note, don't forget to leave a review if you haven't already. Let me know what's actually supposed to go into a funnel instead of sugar, and then also tell us how stinking smart we are. And with that, gentlemen, go away. It's Friday.

I am the tired. I'd like to take a nap.

Max Cohen: Also buy my hats. I don't have a promo code. I don't know

Devyn Bellamy: how

Max Cohen: to do it yet.

Liz Moorehead: Hey, Max. Is that delishin?

Max Cohen: I don't I I've never heard anyone say delishin, but all I'll say is I'm a solutions engineer at HubSpot, not Shopify. So no promo codes for anyone.

George B. Thomas: Okay, hub heroes. We've reached the end of another episode. Will lordlack continue to loom over the community, or will we be able to defeat him in the next episode of the hub heroes podcast? Make sure you tune in and find out in the next episode. Make sure you head over to the hub heroes dot com to get the latest episodes and become part of the League of Heroes.

FYI, if you're part of the league of heroes, you'll get the show notes right in your inbox, and they come with some hidden power up potential as well. Make sure you share this podcast with a friend. Leave a review if you like what you're listening to, and use the hashtag, hashtag hub euros podcast on any of the socials, and let us know what strategy conversation you'd like to listen into next. Until next time, when we meet and combine our forces, remember to be a happy, helpful, humble human, and, of course, always be looking for a way to be someone's hero.