24 min read

Episode 231: Reflecting on 2020

Episode 231: Reflecting on 2020

Welcome to HubShots Episode 231: Reflecting on 2020

This episode we change things up a little and end the year reflecting on the good, the bad and the future.

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Recorded: Monday 08 December 2020 | Published: Friday 18 December 2020

Shot 1: Growth Thought of the Week

Reflecting on 2020

This is our final show for 2020.

It has been a crazy year - when was the last time there was so much discussion about new words of the year (or not), including terms such as:

  • New normal
  • Unprecedented
  • Lockdown
  • Furlough
  • Flatten the curve
  • Superspreader
  • Doomscrolling

As we think back on the year - which for some countries is finally getting back on track, whilst others are unfortunately heading into even worse conditions - let’s:

  • Highlight the good
  • Acknowledge the bad
  • Look to the future

Shot 2: Quick Shots of the Week

Here’s a few quick items of interest we chat about:

  • Fatigue
  • Resilience
  • Adaptability
  • Unity
  • Gratitude
  • Planning for the year ahead
  • Getting your foundation in place
  • Unspent budgets
  • Regeneration - our environment restores itself and us

What’s the best thing that happened to you this year?

What’s the worst thing that happened to you this year?

Shot 3: HubSpot Marketing Feature of the Week

Getting back to planning and basics - the need to have accurate reporting, and actionable goals.

Setting goals in HubSpot

Is it Annual Marketing Review (AMR) time?

Is now a good time to be planning an Annual Marketing Review (AMR) for your business?

Check out the AMR Google doc from this page, that walks you through the process.

Shot 4: Surprise App Usage

YouTube.

Shot 5: Insight of the Week

Marketing is like Investing in Stocks/Shares

The point is you need to test and measure and then double down on the winners.

As Peter Lynch famously said: ‘A fantastic investor is right 6 out of 10 times.’

Shot 6: Quote of the Week

“If more information was the answer, then we’d all be billionaires with perfect abs.” – Derek Sivers

Shot 7: Follow Us on the Socials

Connect with HubShots here:

Connect with Ian Jacob on LinkedIn and Craig Bailey on LinkedIn

HubShots, the podcast for marketing managers and sales professionals who use HubSpot, hosted by Ian Jacob from Search & Be Found and Craig Bailey from XEN Systems.

HubShots is produced by Christopher Mottram from Podcastily.

Please share this with colleagues - it helps us improve and reach more marketers.

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Full Transcript of HubShots Episode 231

- Hi, everyone. Welcome to HubShots, Episode 231. In this episode, we are reflecting on the year that is 2020. My name is Ian Jacob from Search and Be Found and with me Is Craig Bailey from XEN Systems. Hi Craig.

- Look, I'm well. And just before we get started and get a little bit serious I just wanna say, I did not realize until earlier this week that I needed a $900 pair of headphones. Can you believe this?

- I know. And for US, this is, I think what's it? Like 600 or $500

- 550 in the US but I was looking at an Apple store in Australia where we are and it's like 899 for a pair of headphones. I'm just like-

- I don't know, does that sum up the year? The surprises are high and it's just kind of like, who's gonna buy those headphones? And the answer, lots of people. I don't think it will be me. And I wish one day when I can just have that kind of discretionary spend, but I just don't know what to say. So are the times.

- So Craig reflecting on 2020 and this is our final show listings for the year. There will be some little surprise episodes till we get into the new year, isn't it?

- That's right. We're gonna have some little mini ad hoc episodes. But I think this episode, we just wanted to reflect on the year. I will start by saying, look, everyone knows it's been a crazy year and so much so that most of the dictionaries couldn't decide on their word of the year. And in fact, some dictionaries decided, they weren't even going to have a word of the year because it was so crazy. But here's always like new normal, unprecedented locked down furlough. We've got to flatten the curve, but super spreader. And then of course the doom scrolling was the one.

- Doom scrolling?

- Yeah.

- I've not even heard of that one.

- Doom scrolling is we're basically just scrolling through your newsfeed on bad news basically. There's constant kind of underlying stress, but look, with that in mind we just thought let's end the show, we'll highlight the good we'll acknowledge the bad and we'll look to the future. And it's really our quick shots. We're gonna chat about a few themes aren't we Ian?

- That's right, Craig. So let's talk about the good. Actually, let me ask you this Ian. What's the best thing that happened to you this year? And what's the worst thing?

- The best thing that's happened to me this year, Craig is I think I realized what was really important in life. Having a young family and doing life and running an agency or a business really understood what the value was of our relationships with people our friendships, our relationships internally in our family. One of the really good things, in the period we've been through is one of my cousins who happens to live in the Philippines right now, connected all of our family globally from America to the UK, to Australia to wherever else our family is because we're all spread all over the world and just meeting there. When this got really bad, we were pretty much meeting every night and getting on there for a chat and we were praying as well, but he's kept that going. And now we do that even on Friday, Saturday, Sundays and different family members get to share even the kids get to share. And it's really been a great way to meet no family that I have not been in touch with for years. And even for my children and my family to experience my extended family, in a way that they would have never imagined. And I think it's just brought us so close. I like the conversations we have with each other just even knowing our extended family. It's been fantastic. So that's been one of the things I've been really grateful for.

- And what about the worst thing that's happened?

- Worst thing that's happened. I think for me really, I think, we've been really blessed and really lucky in Australia to get through this in a relatively unscathed manner. We've been looked after really well. And I think what I am sad about is to see all the people that we love and we know globally getting really affected and even some of our teams because our teams are all spread over the world that have been really affected by this and families. I've been lucky enough not to have any body get directly affected from what's been going on. So thank God for that. But that's really been my worst, we've lost some work, we've gained work. We have had a roof over our heads and I've been really grateful for that. And we've had a great family around us.

- Yeah, I think that's good and you've looked at a bit of a more wider kind of community and family view. I think for me, if I think about the best thing. I'm gonna make it more personal just to me individually, I feel like we made it through or the business made it through. I feel incredibly lucky to have a very supportive wife, friends, and you. We kept the podcast going remotely.

- Yes, we kept that consistent, yes.

- And all of that was thanks to you. You're very kind of taking the initiative reaching out to me. I'm much more, quite a more introverted and hiding or just retreating. But I'm really thankful we made it through. I managed to keep the team, we didn't lose anyone. We didn't have to put anyone off. I'm very thankful that and also proud. I worked really hard and I know the team worked really hard. And I think that also contributed to what I think is the worst thing for me, which was a combination of stress and uncertainty as business owners, we lack certainty. We often go into business cause we want that control. And during this time we haven't had control. A lot of things went out of our control and that brings with it stress. If you're someone that likes certainty then uncertainty brings stress so that's been the worst part for me and like you I'm thankful I've had no direct family who have suffered or died from this and I know that's rare. I know that's not the case for many of our listeners around the world and many have been affected and will have families and will have lost loved ones. So I think that's incredibly sad and a terrible thing but we have to acknowledge that. And that's been the year that 20 year is.

- And looking into the future, Craig?.

- It's gonna be interesting over the break. I'm really looking forward to break and listen, it's just in Australia we tend to have a nice two to three week holiday.

- This is our summer break.

- Yeah, summer break, which I know in the US they don't. They kinda just have a few days off but this is kind of like our Thanksgiving break but extended two to three weeks. I'm really looking forward to that, to just decompress. And I think all our clients in Australia they're all taking extended breaks. They're kind of like said this year was so difficult. And so they are, a lot of them are taking a break. I'm looking forward to that and just having mental space to think about next year, as you alluded to at the start, we're lucky in Australia, we're almost back to normal. We have in New South Wales and many of the States around Australia, we've had zero cases of COVID over the last 10 to 20 days. So it's very lucky. We seem to have it under control. And I'm aware that that can change very quickly. So Christmas, there might be a flare up. We might all be in locked down early next year. No one knows, but at the moment, we're very lucky, I think relative to many parts of the world. So with that in mind we can be thinking about the future, quite optimistically and setting goals and plans for the new year. So I'm looking forward to that and the future, I think 2021, of course it's only the last week or so that the vaccine news has come out and that's starting to be spread out. That'll will obviously take a while to be thrown out but it does seem as though 2021 promises a restoration and a return.

- Now, Craig, we were discussing of, one thing this is we love doing is we get together and we have dinner and we talk about things and that's really been something that I've really missed over this last nine months Craig is just unapologetically sitting with you and talking about all bits of our lives from business to how the week's going, how are sales going, I hoped I'd ask you that because I'm a bit more sales focused and just challenging each other. And I've missed that. And as we were talking today, there were some key terms that we came up with that could kind of sum up 2020. And so listeners, we're just gonna go through this. We're gonna share a story if there is one and just talk through our experiences of this year and so the first one is gonna be, we're gonna talk about fatigue, And it's so apt, what you talk about. We actually caught up, as you said today I had a burger together. We chatted about stuff.

- Yes.

- And the reason we can do that is because we're not locked in Zoom meetings. And that's where fatigue comes in. The difference between the Zoom meeting, chit chat or any kind of social is kinda considered, oh that's inefficient use of the time. Get on the Zoom call. Bang, bang, bang done with business, no time to think. Just time to push through things. You can't, by the way, just look away, you've gotta be engaged and then you're over to the next one. There's none of this time. There's no thinking time. And that's why it is fatigue. It's been a year of fatigue. It's almost like Zoom equals fatigue. Be interesting in years to come to ask people what the first word that comes to mind if you say the word Zoom. I think in the future it's gonna be a negative. It's gonna be fatigue or stress actually. I think that's gonna be the words. I wouldn't mind betting in the future that Zoom has to rebrand because the word Zoom will be associated as a negative. That's just my thinking but that has been it, it's been the fatigue of no time to think and just share a relationship.

- And I think fatigue on the other perspective Craig, also has been in managing their time because they have worked in the same space that they live in. And I know for a fact I've been so lucky and you, to an extent as well, we work in offices where people haven't been around. So we've actually been in our offices. But for those, we're not as lucky as us who have worked at home, My wife is one of them who has worked at home. It's been really difficult to know where that line is. And I still see her today getting fatigued. Like we were talking about this over dinner and she called and what was the first thing she told you? She said, I've got to go and do more work. It's like a day, never ends sometimes. And knowing where to draw that line or where to say no and where to stop because, you know what, it's exhausting just sometimes being with her it's exhausting because she is not replacing those batteries. And so, and I've seen this across lots of people who are my friends who have been visiting and talking to recently is they say they work longer hours because the expectation of, hey I'm not traveling to work. I'm not catching the train back here. And so therefore I keep working and I think we've got to be very intentional with our day. It's just, one of the little things was during all of this was going on because we could exercise and we could go out for a walk. I remember being very intentional with going for a walk with the dog and even taking my boys on some of those walks. And one thing I love seeing was that we saw other people in the neighborhood walking and we said hi to people. And we saw people, we would never see. So there were lots of good things that came out of it, but I think it was about being intentional with your actions in that perspective and not turning your computer on. If you're gonna turn it off turn it off and don't look at it again.

- I think that's an important point because we've become, all of us have become much more efficient, I've got air quotes here, and much more productive and that's true. We've been massively more productive and more efficient yet that comes with a cost and we're starting to see that play out. And I think that leads on to some of the other terms or the themes that we're thinking about resilience, adaptability. These are the words where we were thinking in terms of describing 2020. That's right and I look at this, and I was talking to you about this earlier. I think one thing that never seizes to amaze me is how resilient people are, how resilient the environment is. I still remember that story of in somewhere in India. They had never seen the Himalayas, I dunno, in so long and because everything stopped, nature was resilient and could regenerate.

- Regenerate yes.

- They were seeing the mountain that they had never seen before. They heard the birds singing.

- I think that's right. And that's another side to the coin, isn't it? The bad side that we've talked about, acknowledging the bad, but then the positive side is yeah. Actually pollution dropped, CO2 levels changed for the better, people were hearing birds for the first time in some neighborhoods, there've been some good things that have come from it. And I think adaptability too Craig, if you see how we have changed, the way we operate the way we work How people have adapted to life, adapted to the change in the way they shop, the way they interact with people. It's been a really interesting experiment, should I say, to observe what people have done? And out of times like this, you get some amazing innovation that takes place. Which leads us onto the next thing is about unity.

- We will, we'll chat about unity in a second but one of the words that we left off or the themes was acceleration and we've done that deliberately because it seems like everyone's talked about that, and then the new normal, how it's all changed.

- I guess we do have to acknowledge that's the case but we just didn't wanna dwell on it. When it comes to unity. I felt that it just seemed to me that in the past year people were divisive and on social more so than ever before, of course the election brought out a lot of that and we're still seeing that playing out. And I think the point that I really wanted to talk about and this does relate to marketing or HubSpot or whatever your passion is, is focusing on unity. And we were chatting actually over at dinner. Should I talk about that?

- Yeah, go for it.

- I was talking about how different you and I are. You're quite religious. In fact, would you describe it-

- I would describe myself as a religious.

- Would you say you're a Christian?

- I'm a Christian, yeah.

- Church guy.

- That's right, I believe in Jesus.

- Whereas I'm an atheist. And so we're quite different. We have different political views.

- Yes.

- And policy. And we have so many different views on things that we could use to be-

- To not be friends.

- To not be friends, to be divisive. We could be like that. But instead we choose to focus on our passions, marketing and HubSpot and the shared passions, shall we say? And here we are the best of friends for many years.

- That's right.

- In spite of all those things. And it just strikes me that now more than ever if there was one thing we can say to listeners and to people, it's a time for unity. We have to embrace the shared passions and look over the fighting that's going on especially on social and things. That's why I'm not on social anymore. I'm hardly ever there. I just find it so tiring, on top of all the Zoom calls to then jump on social and see people fighting about stuff. But I can say I understand it. People need this outlet. So embrace the shared passions I think is the thing I really wanna say.

- That's right. And I think Craig, we came from me saying that we actually got the opportunity to go to church for the first time this weekend. And you know what, as much as I love church and we've been doing it online, one of the things I loved about going to church as I walked through the car park and I walked through the building to go get the kids was all the people that I was so used to seeing, a lot of them are older than me who I've served with and just to see their smiling faces to see how they were. I had stopped so many times the car park. It took me like a good while to get from one end to the other. But you know what? I felt so enriched after that, after I'd spoken to all of my friends who I had not seen for ages just to know that they were well and they were going through life was so nice to see. And I just thought that was one thing I haven't really missed.

- I think that's right. And it's community, it's that connection with others. And one of the things that I wanted to mention, I think if we look back on all our episodes this year, when we've spoken about people who have sent us a message or they've left us a testimonial or a review or something, or-

- Correct.

- Or they're really thankful. They've been special moments for us cause you know why? And I'm not just talking about, oh yeah, ego. Yeah, we're great. It's a connection. There's something about recording the show and chatting with people and we connect and they connect back with us. And that's what I love. I've really loved those moments.

- So Craig, on that, there was one of our listeners Scott who connected with us and he sent me these messages, which I sent you. And this really made my day. So listeners, I'm gonna read this out. What Scott said to me and Scott said, Hey I started a new job this year that used HubSpot which I had no knowledge that even existed and then a couple of weeks into the role, a HubSpot guy left and I was past the responsibility to champion this within the business. Since then I've been learning everything on the fly and I can't express how happy I was that I stumbled across your podcast with Craig. It was exactly what I've been looking for. So glad you have over 200 episodes. And I have been binging on the commutes from work to home. Thank you so much for delivering this great content. I have already implemented a few of your tips and tricks. Keep it up. Scott, you know who you are. Thank you so much for sending that, that made such a difference to Craig and myself.

- It did. And I wanna encourage people, listeners just send a note to, I'm not saying to send to us.

- That's right.

- We love it as well, but just send a note to a friend or colleague. It makes such a difference, especially after a year of nonstop zoom calls that are all in the name of efficiency and productivity.

- Which really goes over well, Craig to our next point, which is gratitude. And I think one of the things that has taken me through this year has been gratitude and writing in my journal in almost daily fashion. Is what am I grateful for? If I flipped through my journal there are days when I have written, I'm pretty sure I've written, I am so thankful that I got to experience the sunrise. I see the sunshine today and I feel the warmth of it in the office. You know what? It just brings joy to my heart. And it's just the simple things in my life that have just been great. And it also had really refocused me personally to show us what we have. We have so much to be grateful for. And I think we can often forget the little things that we have in our lives. Like I always tell my family, we have to be so grateful. We have a roof over our heads. We get to eat really nice, fresh food. We're never hungry. You know what I mean? Why complain? Just be thankful for all the things we have.

- I think that's right and it can be the simple things that you mentioned, your plan, I was just gonna talk. I use the meditation app called Calm.

- Oh yes.

- I think you've heard of it. It's quite a popular meditation app, which I do every day and I find it I'm terrible at meditation by the way, but I find this very helpful at the start of each day. You just focus on your breath. You don't have to be good at meditation. That's the first thing you learn. The first lesson has been, how do you do it right. I've been doing this, I'll say a couple of years now but I've been gradually adding things. And one of the things is every day I'm prompted. What are you grateful for? I think I've done it for over 100 days now. Every day you write the three things that you're grateful for. And number one every day I have to say is, I'm so grateful for my wife, Michelle, but then there's, I think, you're in there quite a lot. Ian, I have to say, but then there are things like my team, their health, just the simple things and it grounds you. And so listeners, you might be wondering, what are these guys chatting about? I know you're talking about HubSpot. We probably weren't by the time we had to get this, so, but these are the things, these are the important things. After a year of just focusing on marketing and KPIs and learning new stuff and Zoom calls and all, we're just gonna have an episode where we reflect on connection and the important things in life. That's our reflection. You said right at the start of the show. What's the important thing? Yeah, friends, connection.

- That's right after marketing and sales have gone, what have we got left? So in talking about that, another one of these words that we came up with was planning for the year ahead. And when we think of this, we'll probably chat about this in some little mini episodes in the coming weeks but now is a good time. It is naturally that time of year when everyone gets into, especially around New Year's and resolutions and that but now is the time to just taking a little bit of step back, a bit of a breather planning for the year. There is a sense of optimism that 2021 should be much better, vaccine and all things going on. So now is the time maybe to just be planning for the year ahead. Let's chat about it in future little mini episodes. We'll chat about, that's not only work but of course that's important. That's why we think about it on this show but just health, life, getting all your areas of life in balance of which work and your business is just one part. And the next one is getting your foundations in place. Now, listeners, I think I might've mentioned this earlier but I think for a lot of people, this year with the chaos we've lived in has been a year of getting the foundations in place. So cleaning up their systems cleaning up their processes, putting in new systems. So you might have implemented HubSpot. You might've actually gained more people on your sales team. But when I was talking to my client, they said when they were taking stock and reflecting and thinking what are we doing for 2021? He made a really good point of saying this has been a year of foundation. We've cleaned up our website. We've made it better. We've made the speed faster, with mobile first indexing. And so he really feels like he's laid those foundations with his team to make the leap into 2021. And I think that's a really good perspective on things. So it's never too late. I would encourage people, think about what those foundations and what foundations do you need to fix or what foundations do you need to lay this year as we move into next year. And don't be afraid, just because we're going into 2021 soon. Don't feel like you missed the boat, start now because like we've said in a few episodes of recent, it's a compounding effect, right Craig?

- Yup, continual incremental improvement.

- What's the other thing, Craig, you said unspent budgets.

- And this is part of planning for the year ahead. I'm talking mainly of Australian market conditions but this could equally apply globally. What we've seen and what we're hearing from companies is that during the pandemic process, many of them pulled back on spend. So a lot of large corporates, they had their budget plan for the financial year, July through to June and yet in this half of the year, they've really pulled back. And what that means is in the second half, next year January to June, they've got all this budget, could be up to as much as 20% of their budget that they haven't spent. And they're then kind of push that back into the market because they see things improving. So what you're gonna have and I guess I'm just highlighting this. It's an opportunity for some. It's gonna be a threat for others, that be prepared to see increased ad spends going in from big corporates especially in the next couple of months. And that will increase ad prices. So you'll be spending more, getting less from it. So plan for that. And that's gonna be a little bit of a setback for people who are optimistic. Oh yeah, but it's all going new again, what do you know, ad prices have gone up. So we're expecting that. We're trying to plan that with our clients. So we're thinking about how our cutting budgets for some of our clients. That means that's why we're doing actually quite significant spend right over the Christmas and New Year break, taking advantage that when many people do pull out of the market as well. But I think it's something for me, marketers to be thinking about early in the New Year, planning for it. How can you use that as an opportunity? Does it also mean that that budget that you might have that's unspent instead of putting it into ad spend, you put it into things like content creation or other areas. Anyway just food for thought there.

- All right. And then we also had regeneration, our environment restores itself and us, which we talked about before. Now Craig, we can't go in this episode without having a HubSpot marketing feature the week. And this is really about getting back to basics and setting up goals in HubSpot.

- I'm not sure If many people are aware that you can set goals in HubSpot. There's a whole section in settings where you can actually go in and set goals. You can set up a sales pipelines, you can set it for traffic and set it for leads, all kinds of things. Why don't you actually put in some goals and start tracking against them if you're not already doing that. And I know most companies we work with, they're not even aware of it. So maybe now's the time to be actually plugging in some of those numbers and tracking against them.

- Now, Craig the next shot is the surprise app usage of the week. Now why I wanted to put this because we were looking at our behavior over this last few months. And I said to you, what's one app that you've been really utilizing recently? And to my surprise, you said YouTube, you know what? I have been the same. And then we went onto our iPhones and looked at the app usage and I have to say, listeners both Craig and myself have been spending a lot of time on YouTube.

- Yeah, I have. And, but intentionally so, because I've pulled away, I'm hardly ever on Facebook or Instagram or even LinkedIn these days. But I do, I was spending time on Twitter and I've really in the last month, tried to pull back on that. So I'm hardly on Twitter at all, just because I don't feel it's, it's like eating junk food, I just want healthy food for once. And the good thing about a YouTube is that it's starting to learn my interests well. It's nowhere near as good as Tik Tok in terms of its algorithm. But I am getting the kinds of content, which is typically educational content. I don't look at a lot of fun, entertaining stuff. It's really educational. I watch a lot of drum videos cause I play drums. I watch a lot on business and learning business stuff. I do watch some marketing stuff, although not a lot. It's more business, entrepreneurial and there's so much good content there and also a lot on financial and investing side of things as well. I've been spending a lot more time on YouTube because it's actually high quality content for my brain and I feel it's good. I wouldn't say it's eating vegetables. but it's not eating junk food. And I find it a good use of time. Yeah, I've just been surprised at that and how better I feel and less stressed. Just absorbing good content.

- Yeah, and you know what, I think I'm very similar to you. You know I have a passion for cars and Formula One racing. So I've consuming a lot of videos on Formula One. And one of the really interesting things I've been watching on YouTube is guys fixing cars, like buying wrecked cars and fixing it. And I would've never thought I would have watched that but I'm just observing and watching some of these. I don't watch it all because there's some cars I'm not interested in. One of them was a C62 AMG which I was really interested in. I've been watching that and it's been really fascinating just see people document their story as they've traveled along, fixing a car how they bought the parts, the things that they've done. And these guys have just done it really well. And each video is about 20 minutes long. But you know what? I actually ended up watching it all and I'm like, hang on, did I just do that? But it goes to show how much of the journey people love. And that's one thing I've just discovered watching these videos. I actually enjoy the journey of watching them go through the process and overcome some of the really difficult things that they had to do and just learn that most things are possible. It might take longer, it might be harder but there is a way through stuff. And that's one of the things I've loved and surprising that I still keep watching it. Now Craig onto our insight of the week. And you're gonna say or you said, marketing is like investing in stocks and shares.

- I thought this was a good reflection on the year. I can't say the name of the client, but big international client. We've been working with them a bit over a year now and I showed you a screenshot this morning, we've been having reasonable success with them through the year, but we've just really cracked it in late November, December. It's just taken off a combination of content and leads. And so we've gone from something like 20 to 30 leads a week. So about 100 or so leads a month to now just screaming up to 250, 300 leads. So it's doubled and tripled. Just by this combination. But if I showed you the whole year, it wouldn't look so great. And here's the point it's taken a lot of testing and measuring and there's been some campaigns around that in the year that just haven't worked right. They've got like no leads. Unfortunately this is a big enough client with a big enough budget, with a lot of testing and a long timeframe. And the reason I wanted to highlight this, it's kind of like investing in, I'm not talking about trading. I'm talking about investing where you kind of invest in shares or stocks and you pick some, some them don't work and they lose out, but all you need is a couple to really take off and in investing circles, again if you pick Tesla or Netflix, a couple of years ago you're a genius, investing genius but the point is, you just keep testing and measuring, you keep investing in campaigns. All you need is one or two to really take off and you achieve incredible results. That's the thing I love about marketing. So why am I mentioning this in the show and why am I mentioning it now? Of course we've had some success, so it's great. I couldn't mention this example three months ago. That's the thing listeners. That's the thing with marketing. You keep slugging away, testing and measuring and some of them pay off. So reflecting on the year and planning for the year ahead, the whole kind of growth hacker, silver bullet you'll get incredible results with one easy hack. It just doesn't exist. It's not true. I just haven't seen it happen. And it's the hard slog where you kind of test and you work really hard. And then finally one, two or three that they just take off. That's what it's like, That's marketing. So stick at it folks. And when you're planning for next year, extend your timeframes, set the goals, but then setting them realistically and work really hard to test and measure a whole bunch of things. And then you'll get the payoff. And Craig, finally, our quote of the week and this is from Derek Sivers. I love this quote. It says, "If more information was the answer, "then we'd all be billionaires with perfect abs." Need I say no more. Listeners, we hope you have a great end to this month as we lead up to Christmas. And we hope that this has been useful and you've enjoyed this episode. Over the next few weeks, we'll have some Ad lib episodes, isn't it Craig?

- That's right. And thanks for indulging us with this episode. We really wanted to, I guess, take a bit of time out and have a slightly different episode to finish the year. Hope that's useful. I would really love to hear feedback from listeners, if you found this helpful, I know some will think, oh this was a lot of guff. That was terrible, but others, if we connected with you, share with us, please, I'd love to read that. What were some of the great things this year that you can take out of what's been a terrible year and of course share some of the terrible things as well and what you're looking forward to and how you're planning the year ahead. I'd love to hear from you.

- That's right. So message us on LinkedIn or direct message us on Instagram. We would love to hear from you because we're on there, most of the time. Listeners, we hope you have a great 2020 as we finish the year and you finished the year well, as we go into Christmas there will be fewer episodes every week till we come back into January.

- And just before I finish, I wanna thank you again Ian for keeping this show going for your friendship, for your connection. You're a great support this year. I'm so grateful for what we have here.

- Thank you, Craig. And likewise, I think it's been one of those, how do I describe it? It's like one of those rocks in your life that keeps you anchored even through a period like this. I think like you rightly said, I think we have both spurred each other on and picked each other up when we've been feeling down, especially in business. There are some days when you just need someone to hold your hand and pick you up and tell you it's gonna be okay. And you've been that to me. So thank you because, you're sitting here in my office right now, so you know what it's like there's not many of us around here and we're all spread out over the world. And so I am very grateful. Thank you for another great year listeners. And as you know, we passed five years this year back in September, as we did an inbound virtually. And so I'm very grateful, Craig. So thank you very much for your friendship and your unwavering, I'm lost for words right now. Anyway, listeners just thank you, Craig. And thank you listeners for listening and we do hope that you have a great holiday. Until next time Craig.

- Catch you later Ian.

- Hey there. Thanks for listening to this episode of HubShots. To get the latest show notes, HubSpot tips and resources, sign up at hubshots.com. You can also book time with us to help you grow better with HubSpot.

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