Martech Masters: Being Intentional With Company Culture, Diversity, and Remote Work (HubSpot)

Listen to the Podcast version of this episode:

Highlights

1. About Katie and HubSpot (0:41)
2. Remote Work Within HubSpot (3:02)
3. What Are the Challenges of Remote Work? (4:59)
4. Keeping Remote Employees Connected (7:05)
5. The Challenges of Implementing Remote Work for an Entire Team (8:18)
6. The Importance of Empathy and Listening (12:06)
7. Finding Different Ways to Find Joy (15:18)
8. The Importance of Diversity at Work (17:27)
9. The Importance of Inclusion (22:44)
10. The Positive Impacts of a Diverse Team (24:08)
11. What Can a Company Do Today to Include Diversity? (26:41)
12. Where to Start Defining Your Culture (29:28)

Mentioned Resources

HubSpot

Episode Transcript

Gabriel: Hello, everybody and welcome back to Martech Masters. Today, I'm here with Katie Burke, Chief People Officer at HubSpot. I am so happy and excited about this episode. Hi, Katie. How are you doing? Thank you for doing this.

Katie: I am great thank you so much for having me. Thanks for being a HubSpot partner I'm delighted to have this discussion with you this afternoon we're gonna have a great time.

Gabriel: This is awesome, this is awesome. Why don't you tell us a little bit more—Chief People Officer. I know you went through HubSpot and had a lot of different hats. You wear a lot of different hats and you learned a lot about a lot of different things but why don't you tell us a little bit more about what you do at HubSpot and some of the initiatives you implemented there.

About Katie and HubSpot (0:41)

Katie: I'm more than happy to. So uh as you mentioned I'm the Chief People Officer at HubSpot which sounds a little bit like a made up job I think a lot of people think it's made up uh but essentially what that means or the way that I think about it is that I'm the product manager for our candidate and employee experience on a day-to-day basis.

So I think about our candidates our employees our alumni our customers and our partners all have vested interest in our employee experience even when people are leaving we want them to say great things about HubSpot we want them to have grown while they were with us and so I think of myself in a basic level as the product manager for our culture and employee experience.

Now to get a little bit more detailed on that it means that core HR compensation and benefits diversity and inclusion learning and development employer brand internal comms all those types of things roll up to my team and obviously recruiting so I'm really lucky to have a wonderful global team of over people who are doing great work and they are my they are my pride and joy.

Gabriel: That's awesome and we've seen firsthand what you do with partners when you communicate with us and how involved you are it's been amazing over the last years to see how your role has changed HubSpot into being so much better so I want to thank you to begin with because it's been it's been awesome this journey.

Katie: Well, really, I mean, the thanks is truly all ours and the way that we think about it is uh from our perspective we are of course selling software but we're also helping organizations - millions of organizations grow better including hopefully yours and your end customers and from my perspective as the software market gets more crowded one of our core differentiators and our competitive advantage is our people.

We want people—I can't tell you how many people I meet on the street that say I love your support team. I love my rep. I love my CSM and to me that is a really powerful tool in our brand flywheel so I thank you. Every time I meet a HubSpot customer or a partner I start by saying thank you to me you all are the reason we get to do what we do every day and you're the reason we get to keep growing our team so we're really grateful.

Gabriel: That's awesome, that's awesome. So, let's talk a little bit about remote work of course this is something that everybody has to do now but you've been working on it uh intentionally for so long so why don't you tell us a little bit about how you've been implementing you know remote work for HubSpot even before the Covid crisis started. you're being super outspoken and making it happen tell us more about that please.

Remote Work Within HubSpot (3:02)

Katie: Yes absolutely so I will take you back in a bit of a time machine when Brian and Darmesh first started HubSpot they still like so many entrepreneurs don't love silly rules they like to be able to do their own thing they don't like being micromanaged they want a lot of autonomy and flexibility themselves and so I actually think from the very start we've always had a flexible work culture we've always sort of said to people the results you create as an employee matter more than the hours you work or where you work um and so one of the things we've always allowed people to work flexibly.

I think full-time remote work uh we I think I would say three years ago we sort of woke up and we're like wait a second people don't want to commute as far they want to spend more time with their families the boundaries between work and life are starting to blend a little bit more and as a company in general we want to be ahead of our time not behind and so we saw it as a trend that we really wanted to adopt and so before Covid we were lucky enough to have over remote employees already and we have an amazing woman who's our remote program manager who's really helped us grow faster here.

I think Covid—if there's a silver lining in all of this which you know feels hard to find some days it's that I think we've found that we are still able to provide exceptional service support sales marketing HR you name it remotely and if anything I think we've learned some new things that we can do as a team and perhaps some silver lining so for example I think we've heard more from our introverts uh some people because they can get a word in edgewise in meetings.

I think folks who are remote are delighted that all of us have had the experience of working remotely and so I think remote work is a trend that's here to stay long after the global pandemic. I think the pandemic frankly has accelerated our investment there but I'm really fortunate that we were working on that well before this happened.

What Are the Challenges of Remote Work? (4:59)

Gabriel: That that's great. So what are some of the challenges that you've seen from implementing all of this again since the beginning not just for the crisis but some of the challenges that you've seen and some of the opportunities that came from those challenges that you have learned from it?

Katie: Yeah so I think the challenges I'll do in pandemic then I'll do out of pandemic so in pandemic I think working parents obviously have some of the hardest challenges just navigating child care and navigating full-time jobs I think has been incredibly hard and I would also say that I think folks who are working at home and have been quarantined solo for long periods of time has been really tough so I would say that's been a challenge so we've been hiring children's musicians and uh we have drag queens who have read to our kids population we're doing a bunch of cool stuff but that's been hard because your heart really goes out to our parents and to folks who are alone.

I would say outside of Covid- on the challenges of remote work um a few things I think are are opportunities I would say one is manager level of comfort with remote work so at HubSpot like many places we have we're really fortunate to have a lot of first-time managers and I think there's just a comfort of being able to coach people in person that's often how people grew up working and so adjusting to giving constructive and tough feedback over Zoom adjusting having people for example watch or record a gong for a sales call for example and listen back to it's a different coaching motion and so really training our managers to build remote teams and to coach remote teams I would say is an opportunity for sure.

And then the second thing I would just say is how we tackle isolation more broadly so I think when you're more of a hybrid model your remote team members especially if they're the only remote team member can sometimes feel left out and so how do we make sure that our culture our benefits our events long term are really inclusive and celebrate our remote population versus making them an afterthought.

Keeping Remote Employees Connected (7:05)

Gabriel: Yeah and and you I was listening to I think it was another interview you were talking about how it's important to make sure that when people are in the room but then you have other people connected remotely there's that disconnect between someone laughing or someone saying something so I love how you created that connection some people are connecting all remote even if they were not remote I heard that was amazing, great idea.

Katie: Well, I gotta tell you it's partially out of guilt I'm not gonna lie to you. I have a really loud laugh and I'm not known for being one of the quietest people at HubSpot and so for me like getting to know people before meetings I love doing it's one of my favorite times but I didn't realize how much my chit chatting about what I had for breakfast that morning or asking questions about how people's days were going was really making it hard if you dial in.

The first thing you hear is that you know sounds and you can't figure out who's talking and which person's talking what about what it's a hard way to start a meeting and so we've tried to be more thoughtful inclusive and for me working remotely for so long in Covid—has been a good reminder to even check my own ego on the stuff that I can do better even within my own team on this stuff.

The Challenges of Implementing Remote Work for an Entire Team (8:18)

Gabriel: That's awesome, that's awesome. You already showed a lot of the things that happened with Covid but through this this this crisis uh of course I can imagine that that going through the transition before helped but still probably bringing a whole team online brings a whole array of new challenges tell us a little bit more about what that transition was and what did you learn through those through those challenges.

Katie: Great question. I think we learned a lot as you said there's no playbook for this so even if you were a fully remote company working remote in a pandemic is still totally different and so I think the good thing about Covid or the good thing rather about HubSpot's culture is we're super adaptable so we were ready to do that but I will tell you exactly what happened. I was actually traveling to Dublin so we got early indications with the Coronavirus our APAC team not surprisingly was feeling it heavily first so we were really early on in doing a wiki post about resources and here's how we're tracking it and that kind of thing.

I don't think when we did that we had any idea that it would become a global pandemic and so we sort of thought of this as an HR issue that we are helping our Singapore and our Tokyo teams with and it wasn't you know perhaps foolishly it wasn't until I was in Dublin and at that point it had reached um EMEA it hadn't quite gotten to Ireland yet um but it was certainly clear that it was imminent there and it was starting to become a bigger story in the U.S. only then I think did we realize oh goodness this could actually be something - yes mind is blown is the best way to describe it the mind-blown emoji is exactly how I felt that day.

So um I flew back from Dublin at that point I still think we thought it was going to be okay Japan and Singapore are closed for a little bit we'll take precautions we'll limit travel between offices that kind of thing it sort of thought it sort of felt like we could stay in the middle ground for a bit and by the next Monday after that weekend it was abundantly clear that it was going to be a radical change even beyond what was in my wildest dreams.

And so um what we did was we pulled together a task force of security facilities legal core HR and then IT and basically we came up with a plan for what the framework was going to look like for example and our colleagues in marketing for canceling events that we're externally facing developing a travel plan developing clarity on how we were going to communicate things and so basically for the last three and a half months we've had a daily stand-up call we've shipped decisions we have communicated and so I think a few things that we've learned from all of it one is you want to involve a large group of people in giving their opinions but to actually make a decision you want a small group, much smaller group, and so our decision making group is actually usually about eight people on this stuff and I think that actually really helps so for decision making consult a lot of people but decide and ship with a smaller group.

The other thing is I'm a big fan of have one quarterback. We decided early that I was going to be the person comm- communicating out to the org you know that comes with some good things and some bad things but that way people were always hearing from people operations there was no lack of clarity and communication. And then the third thing we decided was we wanted people to see and hear from us often.

So in the middle of the pandemic your mind can start to play tricks on you right? So even in the absence of information you start to assume the worst. I haven't heard from HubSpot's executive leadership.

I wonder if they're planning to change course on retaining key staff? I wonder if they're still planning to make sure our partners looked after? I wonder how they're thinking about holding us accountable in our targets? And so we really made a point as a team to be visible on a weekly basis we did more company meetings than we've ever done more ask me anything sessions than we've ever done I've learned a lot about the mechanics of a global pandemic I've learned a lot that pretty much in a crisis everyone thinks that they're an epidemiologist and so I think it's been good learning but I think

"The key ingredient in any crisis is empathy."

The Importance of Empathy and Listening (12:06)

Katie: Our customers, our partners, our employees, our candidates, there wasn't a playbook for any one of them and so we really had to lean into empathy. And so if I had to look back and say one thing everything we did right was as a result of starting with empathy and everything we could have done better, we could have used an infusion of empathy for a group and making a decision even better.

Gabriel: That's amazing and that's such a good point listening and understanding and and and trying to put yourself into someone else's shoes and understanding what's happening with your teams and your employees and your and the company as a whole but also customers and partners there's so many layers of relationships and like you said everybody assumes the worst everybody's like oh they're going to get rid of this or they're going to not do this other thing that we were gonna do or events and uh communication is so crucial.

I feel like we all had to go again we're a people company and we had to go pretty much through the same process every company pretty much had to go through this process uh but but I believe that listening was key to all those decisions and understanding where everybody is and saying we are here and we want to help and be part of this conversation right

Katie: And I think it brings out our common humanity, right? So we have, as you know, we do customers and partner customer and partner panels on a regular basis and we did a customer listening session right in the middle of right in the thick of Covid—when it was really spiking in Italy and we had a customer from Italy who was living in Ireland so she was not with her family and she started to get emotional and it reminded all of us first of all our heart went out to her personally but also anyone on our team who's customer-facing at least once a day is dealing with someone who maybe they're personally impacted by the disease. Maybe someone in their family is maybe they're just worried about their own job whatever the stress is maybe they're isolated maybe their mental health is struggling whatever the case may be everyone is going through something.

So I think it's a good reminder to come back to your common humanity and I think it's good for people like to have a regular business meeting where customer feedback is just on the product and on our services would have felt so tone-deaf and so it was a good reminder for all of us of what our frontline teams were dealing with and we thought a lot about our employees and candidates not to forget your core audience of your prospects customers and partners in this too.

Gabriel: Be human, right? Like it's so simple but so much like people miss it so much because they get right into the sale of the product the whatever it is that they're doing being human and connecting. And I feel like it's also been a challenge for people to connect through video through Zoom through phones like it's not the same but we've all learned that it's possible also because we're doing it with our family and our friends and you know people on TVare doing it.

So it's like you said and I keep having these conversations with different leaders and and everybody's saying the same this forced us to be in the future and forced us to do something that we knew was gonna happen anyways and being able to connect and be human through these methods right?

Finding Different Ways to Find Joy (15:18)

Katie: And I think it's just a good reminder that you have to find different ways to find joy. It's a good reminder that joy exists in different pockets no matter how you live or where you live or what that looks like.

And so you know I miss seeing people in the office as much as anyone especially as an extrovert but I will tell you that for example today we had one of our employees do a takeover on HubSpot life our instagram account and she profiled life at home with her two boys and she and her wife and their experience of being two working parents in Ireland with two kids.

There are toys absolutely everywhere and I just have to tell you I was like I feel like I'm visiting their house in the best way possible and I wouldn't have gotten to do that even if I were in Dublin and so I'm trying to look at the pockets of joy that may not exist otherwise and the chance to be able to see someone's child or parent or loved one or whoever the case may be and maybe I wouldn't have gotten a chance to meet them otherwise.

That's amazing and in in at this moment when you were talking about that I know your job is probably one of the hardest jobs to have at HubSpot but but I'm envious of of those pockets of joy and how you connect with people so it's kind of like a a a a double edged sword it's weird situation where you probably have the hardest job in the world to make everybody happy but also you get the rewards of connecting with people at an emotional level that not a lot of people have at organizations right?

It's both and what I will tell you honestly is that I have the best job in the world and I don't take it for granted for one day but I will also tell you you have to take the job and realize that you can't make everyone happy. So I am a person who I'm a fixer I like to fix people's problems and so my first year in the job I almost burnt myself out completely by trying to make everyone happy and now I go in especially with Covid—I go in going hey making almost people happy is just not an option that's on the table here's how we're going to think about it here's how we're going to tackle it and I don't take uh negative or constructive feedback so personally because I know that I can't make everyone happy with our decisions.

The Importance of Diversity at Work (17:27)

Gabriel: Of course that makes sense. So let's talk about diversity. Diversity has been again it's not a new thing for you guys you have been intentionally doing this as at Nextiny diversity starts with me I'm an immigrant I'm - English is a second language as you sometimes can see when I'm talking uh the words don't come up and I'm like mumbling.

Katie: They sound beautiful. It sounds way better than my Boston accent. I can tell you that much.

Gabriel: Thank you I agree that—I appreciate that thank you very much every time someone says that I speak english uh I really appreciate it because I didn't when I was born. Of course as a as a company as an agency we have made uh a an intentional um thing to have women feel safe and and we we're like % women like that that's amazing it makes me feel so happy and everybody you know makes the same amount of money for their job like all of those things of course as a small agency.

Sometimes it's easy to do but we still have a lot to learn even though we have immigrants and we have you know women and in all other kinds of diversity in the company I also think that there's always room to grow and room to learn.

Tell us more about your initiative because if I'm like if I'm struggling with this matter as a people company I can't even imagine what it is to be doing it on people company or more and how you did it intentionally tell us more about that because I believe that's amazing that you've been working for so long on this on this one matter that's so important.

Katie: Well thank you for sharing your perspective and obviously we're super grateful to have so many folks who are first generation immigrants who are Latin-X we're really fortunate to have those folks among our customer and partner base and so from my perspective one of the key things that needs to change is moving diversity from a talent initiative to truly a business initiative and so every touch point in which people interact with our brand and with our business feels like it reflects the diversity of our customer base the diversity of the company we want to build.

Now what I will tell you is depending on the day there are days when you say you've been at this for a while and I think yeah we've made so much progress and we're doing it and then there are days where I look back and just go my goodness we've been working at this for so long and we have not made the progress we want and I think that's the biggest challenge. You know if you join a fast-growing agency or if you grow you join a tech company it's usually because you're a go-getter you want to fix things you want to check things off your list and diversity doesn't work that way.

There have been years when we've made huge progress on gender and not made as much progress on race. There have been years when we made huge progress on LGBTQ and parent inclusion but haven't done enough on age for example and so I think the way you have to think about it as a leader is it's a commitment you make for life and you have to have a growth mindset about it at all times and make sure that you're really rethinking your own approach. And so a few things I would encourage people to think about one as a company it's really easy to try and do everything again going back to trying to make everyone happy our most successful initiatives had been when we picked a specific goal or things to work up thing to work on and really rallied the company around that clarity and we did fewer things better.

"The second thing I will say is you really have to make sure that you're pushing some of that responsibility, education, and empowerment down to managers because they make so many decisions about who they hire and how included someone feels."

And then the third thing I always think about is you have to assume you can always do better so going along with the growth mindset um so a good example is black lives matter had such a profound impact on so many companies and so many leaders and so many businesses I've been doing this work for a while now and I had to rethink okay where are my blind spots where could I have pushed harder what could I have done better and I think the key to all of this work is really humility and always being willing to go back to the beginning go back to the start to admit when you're wrong and to do the work yourself.

But oftentimes my biggest advice to people who are thinking about doing this at their own company is people wait for it to be perfect they wait for so for example a lot of people will tell me we're thinking of starting women's initiative but we only have five women and I'm like well you're gonna have four women soon if you don't do any programming for them.

And so even if you have a small number of female employees or underrepresented minority employees you can bring in external speakers you can build the mentorship program you can do small things that make a big impact to show people that you care and so if you're going to do - just do something don't wait for perfection make some progress in the meantime.

And then the second thing I would just say is as you develop your plan because diversity is personal for so many people it can be really hard to say ‘actually we're not focusing on women right now, we're really going to focus on LGBTQ folks’ or whatever the case may be. I think you just have to get comfortable saying we're going to prioritize this to not get to other things and that's a hard conversation but it's really important to make sure that you get the focus and progress you need.

The Importance of Inclusion (22:44)

Gabriel: That's interesting and I love that you said that that progress is progress no matter what it doesn't have to be perfect progress is always great so even if you can't make the higher because it's not part of what you're doing if you run a show like this one bring women bring LGBTQ people bring immigrants and or or sons and daughters of immigrants and that is going to help because you're bringing those people into your group of people either through a show through a blog through content through an event whatever it is that you're doing.

It's not just about hiring people and of course that is very important because that will build your organization with diversity but also all the other initiatives that you have include people of these minorities and make sure that that's intentional right?

Katie: That's exactly right and one of the things I love, one of our VPs of product Angela Defranco she's a long time HubSpotter and one of the expressions she had at some point was she's like ‘I look for people who name drop interesting people who aren't Steve Jobs or Sergey Brin.’ Right so who are you referencing when you say I want to be a leader like when you say I read a book by is it all the same people are they all white leaders and so I think one thing I also hear from people is well I'm not the CEO of an agency or I'm not the CPO of a big company and what I always encourage people to do is like take Angela's advice name drop leaders who don't look like you and if all of us did that the world would be a whole lot better place and so I think focusing on what you can control versus what you can makes a big difference. That's amazing.

The Positive Impacts of a Diverse Team (24:08)

Gabriel: That's great advice. Thank you for sharing that. So uh again you've been working on this for a long time what are what are some of the positive things that you have seen? I want people to understand that diversity brings so much in so many levels so you've been working on it for so long with so many people. What are some of the positive impacts that you've seen from all of this?

Katie: Yeah, so positive things we are one of just one of companies globally that have three women on our board we've made double-digit improvements in our female director and VP population so truly when you walk into HubSpot you feel the management team looks pretty different from the management team a few years ago and from other tech companies which is great.

I would also say we've made some really strong progress in the programming that we provide that creates access in tech. So, for example, one of the programs I love most is our first generation tech program and the first generation tech program is literally designed to make sure that first generation college students first generation folks who have never worked in corporate America we really want them to consider roles in tech and I'm not sure about you growing up but I didn't grow up thinking like oh I want to work in tech sales or I want to work at marketing at HubSpot and so one of the things we really try and do with programming like that is make sure that people know what those roles are know how they can be uniquely qualified and provide a lot of panels up-skilling context resume reviews tips all that kind of good stuff for folks and so programs like that to me really make a meaningful meaningful difference.

And then I would say in the areas where we can continue to improve I think we have some room so one of the other things I should say we're proud of is our returners program. So returners is basically for folks who have taken a career break either to take care of kids or to take care of a parent uh to explore a different career.

Maybe you just took some time away and that program started out of our Dublin office and so that's a program that I'm really proud of too. I would say as far as areas of opportunity we like so many other companies in tech still need to improve our underrepresented minority diversity particularly at the manager and up level and so that's been a big focus of mine over the past few months and will continue to be a big focus.

And then I think the other thing that I'm really excited about and I hope you're excited about too is with Yamini Rangan the arrival of our first ever chief customer officer she and I have some big things planned to make sure that DINB is a big part of the HubSpot flywheel and how we talk about it and what that looks like so you can expect some some good things from us on the more customer and partner facing side thing.

What Can a Company Do Today to Include Diversity? (26:41)

Gabriel: That's great that's great that's great. So how can a small, medium, large company anybody can? How can you start this? And I you mentioned some of the things you know not just thinking about hiring if you're not leadership you don't make decisions talk to other people you know name drop people that are you know diverse so I love those those are great piece of advice what are some other things that small medium large companies anybody can start doing today to include diversity as an intentional thing in their company?

Katie: Sure, so first things first as you think about who you hire uh super important to be thoughtful so the first thing you can do is just think about slate interviewing. So the easiest way to think about slate interviewing is to make sure that you interview at least three to five candidates and that of those candidates they all look different from the current composition of your existing team.

That's the easiest way to think about it. And so at a bare minimum you are forcing people on your team to make sure that they meet with people of different perspectives so I you know I think anyone who's hired people has met someone and gone huh wow not the background I was thinking of but you would be better at this role and this is amazing and so committing to slate interviewing for every role that you post makes a really big difference.

Second is letting employees guide the way on content so our first events for all of our employee resource groups were just organized by our employees they said here's a speaker we'd like to hear from would you pay for food order pizza do whatever we said yes so let employees lead the way and then the third thing would be to involve and engage your managers in the conversation and give them some training and thoughts for how to build inclusive teams.

We waited a little too long on engaging our managers and I wish we had done a little bit more of that. That's great. I heard that you bring speakers that are specifically diverse to just talk to your employees too. I thought that was a great idea. We do and that really did start with just us saying to our employees who would you like to hear from? And so one of the other things is people think about diversity as something you add on to what you do think of the traditions in your company.

How do you just make them more diverse? So for example uh Hub Talks are the program you referenced we've been doing them for years we just weren't always as thoughtful around who was speaking and who was getting the microphone and that kind of thing and so over the past two years we've been much more thoughtful around the composition of those groups and what that looks like and it's made a huge difference in what we've learned and the takeaways that we get from those conversations.

Gabriel: That's awesome, that's awesome. Again thank you Katie this has been incredible I really appreciate you opening up about all these things. Anything else you want to share with us? This is your moment when you can talk about anything.

Where to Start Defining Your Culture (29:28)

Katie: Uh, no. My only advice is the question that I get the most from people. The single biggest question that I get most from people is where do you start on defining your culture if you don't have one? So if you're a small agency we want to build a culture code where do we start? And I would give people two pieces of advice on that.

One is to write it down but two is not to wait for everyone to agree and for consensus on it. So what I always see from most culture codes is that people say can I send you a draft and the draft usually says we want nice people who work really hard and like to have fun and I always think like what company has ever said we don't like nice people we don't want people to work hard? And so one of the things I always say to people is our culture code is as important - there are people who read our culture code and read about our commitment to autonomy and say I actually want to be told what to do I want more clarity I don't want more autonomy and they go you know what good for you not for me.

That's actually really intentional that's the goal and so rather than focusing on trying to get every single person in the world to come work at your company make sure that you're thinking about people who truly add to your culture versus fit it and then that just was my last point which is on diversity one of the biggest things you can do at any company is to right off the bat eliminate the word culture fit and instead add culture add because it makes sure that right off the bat you're thinking about making your team look different than you do.

Gabriel: Instead of closing it you're opening it for people to feel like they can add something to the company and not just if I don't look or act or be like them I am not part of their company right?

Katie: That's exactly right. It feels very exclusive, it feels very clicky and so if you think about it and you're trying to break into tech and you've never worked in corporate America before you've never worked in tech it's very daunting and oftentimes people won't even apply or they'll leave the company because they didn't feel like they were included.

Instead if you think about I always think about it as like you know your parents old recipe like if you think about your mom's chili recipe you want to make it better over time and so the people that you're adding to your team make it spicier interesting different you improve upon it over time you don't say ‘no this is the way it's always been and we've always cooked it the same way’ and so I think the same needs to be true of your culture.

So, training your team early to talk about it that way versus trying to find people who just listen to the same music you do or like to travel to the same places makes your team more interesting and immediately more dynamic right off the bat.

Gabriel: That's awesome, and and being outspoken too there's a place to businesses keeping certain things because you don't want to make people sad or angry about what you're saying but who wants—again I don't want a customer that hates a certain group of people or that doesn't think that women are the same as men.

At the same time, sometimes business owners and me myself with Jackie—Jackie and I my wife amazing wife and partner we run the business together and and we make decisions sometimes that it's like we've made them in the past saying well we don't want this person or that person at the end of the day we actually don't want those people to be part of our organization and continue to you know share either hate or this or that.

And I understand that in the beginning companies can't choose who they have as customers or or employees or other things but over the years we we started opening up and talking more and that's why you're here today talking about diversity because I want people that don't think diversity is important to not be my customers and not be my employees so I feel like being a little bit more outspoken and open to these things and you know how you support pride month and you know black life matters and things like that those things are important and it's so great to see a a big company like you guys uh going through these motions and sharing on social media what you're doing for pride month or or if you're being part of these things because it inspires us to do better too so I want to thank you for that too.

Katie: Well, honestly that's part of what keeps us going. So on the days when we feel like we're not making enough progress and where we feel like we can do more part of what we think about is if we are outspoken on this even before we're even close to perfect that our ecosystem, which we're so lucky to support so many people in growing their businesses, that we can be in some ways an example for people to prioritize that in their own organizations and to know that we really do care about the people behind your organization too.

Gabriel: Definitely. Thank you Katie this has been awesome. Anything else you want to share?

Katie: No, thank you. This is so fun to be here, your background is A+, you have one of the best Zoom backgrounds I've seen. The typewriters are fantastic.

Gabriel: They're real!

Katie: I absolutely love that my—I've always wanted if I ever owned a restaurant so if I had a side hustle I would own a stationery store that would be my desired job. Yeah. And so I always think about if I had a stationary company that I would have typewriters on the way out so people could leave a nice note.

Gabriel: They're the best thing in the world. We can talk about typewriters for hours later, don't worry about it. Thank you Katie for coming to thank you for sharing all this stuff and thank you again for such an amazing partnership with HubSpot and for everything you do for HubSpot and for the whole ecosystem bringing these issues uh you know to the surface so we can all learn and grow better together thank you.