September 17, 2025 • 33 mins
Join Eric Baum as he explores the transformative strategies that can help businesses scale with confidence. This episode focuses on the role of strategic partnerships and hands-on training in achieving sustainable growth through HubSpot and AI. Learn how to make the most of your tools and resources in order to propel your business forward.
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Connect with Eric Baum:
Instagram: @ericbaumbz
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ericbaumbz/
Connect with Chris Troka:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/christopher-troka-3a093058/
Website: https://focused-biz.com/
Website: https://christroka.com/ #brainwork #framework #business #resources #tools #training #transformative #strategies #hubspot
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Episode Transcript
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(00:00):
Look to where the market'sgoing and pivot that way.
This has been said a gazillion times.
I think Wayne Gris was thefirst person he is like, Hey,
skate to where the puck's going.
But the reality is youreally need to embrace that.
You are listening to Brainwork Framework,a Business and Marketing podcast,
brought to you by Focused-biz.com.
Welcome back to another episode.
With us today is the CEO of Bluleadz.
(00:21):
Eric Baum.
Bluleadz empowers companiesto revolutionize how they
market, sell and support theircustomers through HubSpot and AI.
So excited to have him on.
Eric, how you doing today and tell usmore about your entrepreneurial journey.
What were you doing before thatkinda led you into doing what
you're doing with Bluleadz?
First, thanks for having me Chrisand I'm doing incredible as always.
Be careful what you wish forbecause my entrepreneurial
(00:43):
journey is 30 years in the making.
The shortened version is I started inthe mid nineties, right outta school
creating a company called PSI, which wasa sewer contracting company with a college
buddy of mine and another friend of his.
And it was three guys tryingto make our way through the
(01:04):
world and figure this stuff out.
It was our very first company,obviously we bootstrapped it.
And I learned a couple oflessons at that company.
The first of which was like,sell first and then figure out
how to do what you sold later,
sales drives everything.
The downside is one of the hard lessonsI learned in that first company was
growth without a plan equals chaos,which then leads to failure and that
(01:30):
first company we grew to 25 people.
We worked in five different statesover a three and a half year period.
But I saw the writing on thewall and financially we were in
a quagmire and I sold my shareto those two partners exited.
I guess you can callthat a successful exit.
I didn't lose my butt on it but Iwas still like early twenties still
(01:52):
figuring things out and then fromthere I moved, I owned a bar in
Richmond, Virginia for a few years.
That's when I learned drinkingon the job can be really fun,
that was fantastic experience.
And then from there on, I moved downto Florida 2001 and actually went into
business again with a startup, with thefirst partner I had back in Philadelphia.
(02:15):
And we started a companycalled Perma Aligner.
And that was a manufacturing company.
We did really well.
It was a lot of fun during that time inmy life and I learned the importance of
culture building and an organization.
I learned about operations andprocesses and cost of goods sold
and margins and all that stuff.
And from there we actually starteda couple other franchise or I
(02:37):
should say, bought a couple otherplumbing franchises, which was in
the same kind of industry, grew thosein the Tampa and Orlando market.
And there I learned a lot about thefranchise model setting, systems up
processes understanding marketingand digging into the analytics.
How much does it cost meto make the phone ring?
(02:57):
What does that translateinto my job cost average.
You had to go to business school?
I didn't go to business school.
I graduated college witha criminal justice degree.
Was planning on being an attorney wayback when and I had to figure all this
stuff out and my business partner andI were figuring things out together.
We didn't know everything at that point.
Half of my journey.
I can go through the rest of it, but I'mgonna stop there 'cause literally we could
(03:19):
take the entire podcast going throughmy journey, which led to ultimately
Bluleadz in 2010, which is the companythat I now have for the last 15 years.
And hopefully I've perfected mostof or at least learned a lot from
the lessons along the way for sure.
That is a lot of great experienceand just the trial and error, having
to figure things out yourself.
(03:39):
The success comes roadblocks, butyou learn everything that, what it
takes to run a successful business.
And like you said, it's thesystems, it's the processes, it's
the people and kind of getting allthose to kind of work together.
I think a lot of business ownersstruggle to grow and then scale
without the systems or the processes.
Tell us more about Bluleadz and thenhow that helps people and the benefits
(04:00):
of using these systems, CRMs, the AI,to kind of bring this all together.
That kind of starts with when I foundedBluleadz was actually as a result
of looking for a content managementsystem to host my own website.
At the time, the Mr. Rooter plumbingfranchises that I had exited, the
manufacturing company, which was a hugedebacle and we can kind of set that
(04:22):
aside and get into that as one of thefailures in my professional career.
If you want to go down that road.
Happy to share the lessons there.
It was Mr. Rooter franchises, andI had two of 'em in Orlando and
Tampa that I owned both of 'ema hundred percent at that point.
And I'd started my own websitethere, hired somebody internally to
do SEO pay-per-click advertising,and immediately had 50 of the
(04:45):
other Mr. Rooter franchisees.
Throughout the country saying,Hey, can you do this for me?
I love what you're doing becauseI was in the Yellow Pages, back
then, this is in 2008, 2009.
Yellow Pages was primarily drivingbusiness for plumbing companies
at that point, and I was spending$25,000 a month in each market and
it cost me $345 to make the phonering and my job cost averaged $212.
(05:11):
You do the math.
I was losing money hand over fist.
I shut everything down.
It took me about six months to getthrough that process of getting out of
the yellow Pages, started my own website,hired somebody internally and got my job
call or the cost per call down to $45just by doing pay-per-click advertising.
And all these other Mr. Rooter franchisesasked me, can you do this for me?
(05:32):
I pivoted that person out of Mr.Rooter, put it into a new company.
Back then it was called AllMarketing Group and I immediately
had 50 clients for the gate.
And I went back to myfirst lesson of okay.
Sell and then figure out howto do it after that, they kind
of figured out to scale things.
I landed in the HubSpot world becauseI couldn't scale websites on HTML.
(05:56):
I had to have a developer do everything,update the the copy, do absolutely
everything, and I was like, this is crazy.
It's not scalable.
How can I find a contentmanagement system?
This is prior to WordPressbeing an actual content.
They hadn't developed that yet.
It was just a blogging platform backthen, and I was like, all right.
(06:17):
I looked at Jumela and Drupal.
And I landed upon HubSpot and HubSpotkind of just changed my world.
I remember, they had launched thisthing called inbound marketing and
this newfangled way of actuallyattracting people to your website and
doing the right thing and giving themcontent for free and doing all these
things and I was like, this is great.
(06:38):
I drank the Kool-Aid, went all in andthen rebranded to Bluleadz in 2010.
I became one of the very first HubSpotpartners, I think in the first 10.
And now we are top five globally in thepartner ecosystem outta 7,000 partners.
I attribute all of that successto just hanging in there.
(06:59):
Over the last 15 years, I thinkpersistence, perseverance through all
the trials and tribulations and thefailures and the struggles and the
layoffs and all the stuff that yougo through as a business owner if you
can get through that, you'll succeed.
You really will.
Absolutely.
You have to be resilient and takeaction, especially when those road
(07:19):
bumps and obstacles come in our way.
And most businesses start fromrealizing your own pain point.
How do I solve this?
And you realize that's a pain point formany other businesses and that's how you
were able to get those 50 clients rightaway 'cause they knew exactly what they
needed and how to solve that problem.
It's that perfect product validation.
The market fit where you say go sellsomething before you build it 'cause
(07:40):
I've seen people experience that as well.
They'll take all the time they havebuilding the system or a process or
developing a tool and realizing laterthat no one's interested in buying it
or they missed the mark somewhere andthey never even thought to ask a client
or a customer, would you like this?
Would you buy it?
Would you pay money for this?
And ironically, we've kind of movedup market with HubSpot as they've
(08:00):
gone from small businesses tomid-market to enterprise companies.
We've kind of grown with them, wedon't typically aren't working with
plumbing companies much anymore.
We're typically dealing with SaaScompanies and FinTech and healthcare
companies and we work with companiesthat do anywhere from a million
dollars in revenue, usually $5million up to $5 billion in revenue.
(08:22):
We run the entire gamut.
It's crazy.
And tell me more about thosebusinesses that you work with.
What pain points are they having with,and then how do you go in to help them?
Is this working on small projectsor is this kinda like a revamping
or just revisioning kind oftheir process and system and CRM?
Sure.
I think one of the lessons I learnedin business, and this translates
(08:43):
to answering your question is.
Look to where the market'sgoing and pivot that way.
This has been said a gazillion times.
I think Wayne Gris was thefirst person he is like, Hey,
skate to where the puck's going.
But the reality is youreally need to embrace that.
And for instance, we startedoff as a marketing agency.
And embracing the HubSpot platform andhelping companies to generate leads.
(09:06):
Create new website for 'em, dolead nurturing, fill their sales
funnel with qualified leads,SQL sales qualified leads.
That was the nature of our business forthe first probably five to eight years.
Fast forward 15 yearslater from inception.
We primarily focus on HubSpotonboarding and implementation.
(09:28):
We went from Hey, we'll generate leadsfor you to, Hey, we're everything
HubSpot, we are the masters.
We will get your team set up and thenwe'll continue to manage that for
you and do some of those marketingand sales activities if you choose.
But otherwise, we're gonna trainyour team and empower you to actually
utilize HubSpot for your marketing,your sales, your service teams, and
(09:51):
make sure that you're utilizing it andgetting the best ROI from it, we've
got a whole host of various servicesdepending on how deep you want to go and
how much you want to take on yourself.
Or you wanna lay off to somebody else.
But my business now is completelydifferent than when it was when
there was the first employee.
Now we've got 46 employees and growinggreat leadership team in place.
(10:14):
It's been a wonderfulexperience in the last 15 years
that is so incredible.
And for a lot of businesses whoare trying to grow and scale.
Yes, the marketing, the saleshave to be there, but I feel you
lose ROI or you leave money on thetable if you don't have systems or
processes that help support that.
And especially with CRMs, people are justin their head and they have these post-it
notes and maybe a spreadsheet when reallythey should be letting these systems do
(10:36):
all of that work and thinking for them.
Yeah, obviously we're in the age of AI.
It used to be called marketing automation,right before it got intelligent.
And we used to build out all thesesystems and process and automate
as much as we possibly could.
It creates efficiencies for customers,that's the name of the game.
The more efficient you can become, themore profitable you're going to be.
(10:58):
And now of course, it's justin the last three years.
AI has completely taken thisstuff to a whole different level.
And now the question isn't like, Hey,how can we automate things, but how
can we actually intelligently createsolutions and solve them without
much of a human interaction at that point.
(11:20):
And our business is we're actuallyone of the very few people that
kind of dove into AI early on.
We actually create customagents for customers.
Obviously in the HubSpot world their AIis called Breeze and Copilot inside of
there, and we leverage that for customers.
But it's really exciting.
There's a lot of marketing agenciesout there that have started 10 years
(11:42):
ago and they're scrambling right now'cause they don't know how to adapt
to the new reality, unfortunately.
Absolutely.
And speaking of AI, therehas been a huge disruption.
First it's cool as a copy generatoror I can ask it silly questions.
Then it became, it can writewebsites, HTML and computer code.
It can write Python script.
Now it is changing the world forcopywriters, graphic designers developers.
(12:07):
The list continues.
Where do you see AI going andhow are you gonna leverage that?
Man, that's a loaded question.
I think there's different levels of AI.
The way Bluleadz, the way Iapproach AI is, okay, well what's
the native AI functionality in anygiven platform that you're using?
HubSpot has theirs, of course,click ups got AI functionality.
(12:30):
There's all kinds of softwares thatplug in that integrate into your
CRM or QuickBooks or your accountingsoftware, whatever it is, they're
gonna have AI functionality built in.
That's kind of level one.
Being able to master that or inour case, be as an agency, be able
to actually train companies andindividuals on how to utilize that
(12:51):
to be effective in their workday.
That's level one.
Level two is, all the other plugins,anything that you're gonna integrate
into your main software and understandingthat AI functionality, then you need
to be able to utilize that as well.
Level three in my mind is well let's getinto the Chat GPTs and the Google Geminis.
Let's build out custom gpt and custom gemsthat can actually do a lot of the work.
(13:16):
And then level four is customagents that actually produce things
for you or take actions for you.
And I'll give you a perfectexample of level three.
I'm the CEO, I'm not the one inthere building the custom agents.
I'm the one being like, here'sthe use case and a problem
that we need to solve for.
(13:37):
Go build this for us.
But for me, I'm messing around.
I just started really putting myselfout there and getting on podcast.
You're a perfect example of, I just builta custom GPT that will go out and it'll
actually research your podcast yourself.
It'll pull out all the transcriptionsfor the last 10 podcasts.
It'll give me tone.
(13:59):
Standard questions thatyou're going to ask.
All kinds of these things.
It gives me a three or four page summary.
It's formatted exactly how I want itso that I don't have to go through
and do all this research myself.
I can listen to the podcast and Ialready listen to your podcast so
it's nice and easy for me but thatjust saved me hours worth of prep
(14:20):
so that I can come to an engagementlike this and be completely prepared.
Take that in every other aspect ofyour professional career and plug
it in, it's a complete game changer.
It's unbelievable.
You're gonna have an assistant focuson a single task and send them out
to go do your bidding and you canactually define what you want from them.
(14:41):
And there's nothing up in the air.
The AI agent is going to comeback with something different.
It's going to follow your guidelinesand the prompting that you use.
For 20 bucks a month that's unreal.
Now you take that to a levelfour, for instance we've got a
custom service agent that aboveand beyond what HubSpots customer
(15:02):
service agent has that's built in.
So nine times outta 10, mostcompanies are gonna be able to
just utilize the custom agents thatwhatever CRM they're using offers.
That's gonna work just fine.
But for those enterprise level customersthat want to take a step deeper or a
step further, building out those customagents that can retrieve all kinds of
(15:23):
di different information from behind,paywall, behind member ship subscription
sites and stuff like that, and be ableto service that up to your customer.
Another perfect example is a quoting tool.
On our website for instance.
You can go in and this is greatfor your sales team, it's great
for your customer success team.
I just can plug in information abouta customer and it'll say, here's what
(15:47):
the quote should be for these services.
Now you take that to the next level,there's service like Fathom AI.
I'm sure you're probablyfamiliar with Fathom AI.
It's a note taker, they're opening uptheir API and now what we'll be able
to do is have all of our customers,in particular customer have all
that customer calls inside a fathom.
(16:08):
The custom agent will actually go andscrub all those transcripts and on any
customer service call, we'll identify anopportunity for a cross-sell and upsell
based on our service offerings, and thenbe able to ping the CSM and the sales
rep about that, and also set up automatedemails in a campaign highlighting those
(16:29):
services that we offer to that customer.
It's like Amazon followingyou around everywhere you go
trying to sell you something.
It's unbelievable.
And just in the last few monthsthat we're able to do this stuff.
It's crazy.
That is really incredible.
It was one thing to have somepersonalization at scale.
Sure.
An AI agent can look at your spreadsheetand kind of infer some information and
(16:50):
then go out to the web to find some more.
But then now taking it to that nextlevel, it's like, okay, how do we create
these customer service sales agents?
It's understanding the painpoints, identifying that.
And you're not spendingfive to 10 hours doing this.
The AI agent's running the background andthen the humans come in with their own
touchpoints to then take it the next step.
But all that admin work thatwas just automated, done by an
(17:14):
AI agent, now it's incredible.
Another great example isthe prospecting agent.
HubSpot of course, has a prospecting agentthat will actually go out and based on
your database and your CRM will go outand research that company and it'll start
sending emails about whatever serviceyou want to promote to that customer.
And then it'll actually schedule ameeting with your sales team as soon as
(17:36):
that person's ready to raise their hand,
it's your little marketing buddy oryour business development rep, your BDR
buddy, just out there working on yourbehalf, then you can go to level four
and build a custom agent to do evenfurther, we've got a custom agent as
a prospecting agent that'll go out andresearch everything about that particular
customer, whether it's in your CRM or not.
(17:57):
And then it will alsocreate a series of emails.
Based on that customer's information,their website, any talk they've ever
given, anything you can find about'em on the internet and tailor all
of our services around their specificpain points because they can un
understand what pain points do theylikely have based on what you offer.
(18:18):
And tailor all these emailsto their pain points.
It's absolutely amazingwhat this stuff can do.
I just wanna sit back and watch.
Unfortunately I can't 'cause thisis my business, everybody's need
you to do this and this for me.
Okay, great team over here.
Get deploy.
Let's go.
But at some point therewon't be people doing it.
It'll just be people telling itwhat to do, and then we'll be
(18:41):
reaping the rewards from that.
It's gonna be really incredible.
Really incredible.
It really is a game changer tosee how the tech software is
just changing the game right now.
But there are a lot of marketingpractices that are the tried and true.
Examples of how we kind ofbuild our book of business.
Sometimes it's referrals,sometimes it's networking.
The classic SEO and PPC.
(19:01):
What has been the biggest driver ofgrowth for you and your business?
What would you suggest for others?
What should they focus onwhen they're trying to build
and grow their own business?
In terms of marketing
I will tell you that our perspective haschanged just in the last couple of years.
And even in the last 12 months,specifically, SEO is becoming
more and more difficult andless and less important.
(19:25):
And everybody's seen the kind ofarmageddon of traffic to your website?
The drop off last year,we were a perfect example.
We used to get 300,000 organic visitorsto our website every single month.
We'd get anywhere from two to 3000 netleads from that every single month.
And our organic traffic dropdown to 25,000 visitors a month.
(19:47):
And it's just the nature of thebeast things people are searching in
Perplexity and Chat GPT and Gemini forthe answers to their questions now.
And when they just ask, Hey,what are the top five companies
that can solve my problem?
And they'll find that company.
Then they'll go to that company's website.
For us to answer your question,channel marketing's been a bigger play
(20:10):
for us as in partnering with othersoftware companies working together
with a software called Crossbeam,where it's ecosystem led growth,
if you get big enough and you've gota lot of partners out there, you've
got overlaps with their customers andyour customers and their prospect and
your prospects going down that road.
(20:32):
I think has helped us kind ofovercome the noise in the SEO world.
And then also being moreefficient with your customer base.
So going back into and selling intoyour past and current customers,
the additional services that you'vecreated over the last year or two.
People forget that in their business.
(20:54):
They think I've gotta go and get new.
No, you can double or tripleyour revenue just by selling back
into your past customer base.
I mean, if you've been in business for5 years, or 15 years or 50 years, think
about how many past customers you havethat haven't heard from you in years.
Don't even know what you do anymore 'causethe people that you've dealt with are gone
(21:16):
go back and sell into that customer base.
I just wanted to jump in'cause I appreciate that
and I agree wholeheartedly.
A lot of people focuson, I need more leads.
And it's what about further nurturingthe leads you already have or going
back into that database of either yourpast customers or your past leads.
There's information and people readyand willing to hear more about you.
You just need to make that touchpoint and reach out to them again.
(21:37):
I totally agree.
Yeah, I mean even like the basic,call it website designer, being in
the digital world, everybody cancreate a website pretty easily today.
But even somebody that just focusedon website design, they've got
customers from 2, 3, 4, 5 yearsago, they need new websites.
Go back and talk to them, andI look at that for us at least
(22:00):
and the customers that we workwith, that's a huge potential.
Especially in today's economy.
Think about it like the macro environmentin the world we're living in right now.
Everybody's uncertain.
Your billion dollar companies are notmoving forward with initiatives right now.
They're stuck in the mud.
I don't know where to go.
We're hunkering down, we're saving cash.
(22:21):
And you see that throughthe economy right now.
And when that happens.
You've gotta look internally, Hey, wherecan we generate new revenue from existing
and past customers that already trust us,that already know what a good job we do?
That's our kind of takeon where we're going.
This for the rest of this year.
(22:41):
We'll see what happens next year.
Never know, man.
Absolutely.
It's all up in the air and we're justkind of figuring things out and I've
asked some other podcast guests justwhere they see that uncertainty unfolding
within their own business as well.
And I appreciate you sharing'cause my first thought is,
again, hunker down, save cash.
Don't put forward any initiatives.
And I've heard a few guestssay, I'm actually doubling down
on everything that's working.
(23:02):
I'm taking more risk now.
And there has to be a balance there,we're that logical left side of the
brain and the right side, just go for it.
Again, as businesses, I thinkwe're just pivoting and finding
out what's gonna be best for us.
'cause we don't want to be vulnerable.
We don't wanna throw money away,but we have to be aggressive
and proactive as well.
One of the lessons that I learnedover the last 30 years of having
(23:22):
six different businesses is don'tmake decisions based on fear.
When I say hunker down and conservecash, there's a lot of billion dollar
companies that are doing that right now.
I look at it like, where are theopportunities in today's marketplace?
How can I take advantage of that?
Because we've been fiscallyresponsible and we're not completely
(23:43):
cash strapped, we're able to takeadvantage of those companies, you
take a Berkshire Hathaway mentality,
and have cash and be able to deployit when there's opportunities but
also have an entrepreneurial risk.
A little bit of risk tolerance sothat you can take those opportunities.
For us, we're doubling down onthings that we know work, we've
(24:05):
got a marketing department.
We're not dropping marketing off a cliffand being like, we gotta conserve cash.
Get rid of the marketing department.
No, absolutely not.
We're not getting rid of our salesteam, but we do make fiscally
responsible decisions when themarket's down it currently is.
It's just something youhave to be mindful of.
And I love that you're not trying tothrow away sales and marketing 'cause a
(24:25):
lot of businesses will make that mistake.
They'll pull back on someof their marketing spend.
And I think when you look back atthe data, HubSpot is great for the
data analytics and try to understandeverything that's going on.
But you can see your channels ofgrowth and your return on investment.
And if you completely cut thatoff, you're not really gonna
continue or grow from there.
No, and I've got the luxury of being alittle bit older and being in the game
(24:48):
for the last 30 years and I lived throughthe Great Recession of 2008, 2010,
and did absolutely everything wrongduring that as a business owner and
learned a whole host of lessons.
But as a result of that and it almostbroke me almost broke my marriage
almost broke my business almost brokeme personally and financially, it
(25:12):
was really difficult to get through.
Because I had never at that point.
It never failed.
I didn't even knowfailure was a possibility.
My entire professional career.
I just kept going, I'dstumble, but not fail.
Anyway, long story short, when COVIDhit, my wife turns to me and I had
about 36 employees at that time.
(25:33):
And we had a great life., Life is good.
She turned to me and she was like.
My revenue dropped 25% in two weeks.
And she's like, what are you gonna do?
And I said, I'll tell you, I'm gonnado the exact freaking opposite of
what I did during the recession.
And I did, and I went back, I spenta few hours and it was what every
decision I made during that time.
(25:54):
What was it?
I know it was wrong, I pulled aGeorge Costanza, I did the exact
opposite and I was able to makeit through it in two months.
Stabilized back on track.
We did have to lay some peopleoff but we were able to bring
back those people inside of seven,six or seven weeks with back pay.
All because I did exactly oppositeof what I did in 2010, let's call it.
(26:19):
This is another one of those times, whenthe economy gets put on hold and people
are scrambling, I'm like, wait a second.
It's not actually that bad.
I've been here a couple times before.
Let's figure out what exactlywe need to do and we just create
what we call a recession plan.
If your revenue drops 25%, what do you do?
If it drops 30%, what doyou do if it drops 50%?
(26:40):
What do you do?
Pre-plan those moves so that whenyou're in it, when you're in it, you're
scared, you're making bad choices.
But if you have a plan beforethe everything hits the fan.
Then it's already done.
There's no emotion.
You're not making poor choices.
You've already planned this out.
Does that make sense?
Absolutely.
And I think a lot of businesses struggledduring COVID because some couldn't adapt
(27:03):
or pivot, and they didn't see the newopportunities that presented themselves.
I think even to hindsight for me, Ididn't realize how many businesses weren't
online yet and needed to get online orsome sort of online ordering system.
Those businesses, that was a hugeopportunity that people need to
realize and think of in advance.
That way you're just not kind ofbombarded with the craziness and
the uncertainty that hits you.
(27:25):
Yeah.
I will say one thing that did hit me outof COVID that I was not expecting is the
not coming back into the office.
We were being a HubSpot partner and inthe software game we had glass offices,
right on the Tampa Bay, ping pong tables,two kitchens, custom conference tables,
(27:46):
four conference rooms, all the stuff you'dthink at a SaaS company office we had.
And COVID hit.
Nobody wanted to come back inthe office for a couple of years.
I still hung on to thatoffice 'cause I kept going in.
I'm going to the office.
I love my office.
This is fantastic.
And finally had to give it up 'causenow we've got employees all over the
country, all over the world in fact.
(28:06):
And I worked from home, whichis a different joy for me.
I didn't realize how much I was missing.
Kids growing up and just beinghere gives you that pop in, I can
watch my daughter rides horses.
We have a few horses of hers andshe's jumping, I'm on a zoom and I can
see straight out through the pastureand I'm like, she's jumping a horse.
Are you paying attention?
Yes I am to the right thing.
(28:28):
Well, I heard dropping, jumping horses,but I didn't realize how much my
life is gonna change for the better.
But I still miss the ping pong.
Got the branded ping pong table,it's folded up in the garage
right now, which brings a tearto my eyes every once in a while.
Well, you can always do a teamretreat over at your house,
break out the pool, the ping pongtables, get nostalgia with it.
But you kind of discover new thingsabout yourself, your business,
(28:50):
just the way that we interact.
Again, the two weeks to flatten thecurve turned into two months into
two years into five years later.
And we're still seeing the articlesonline about CEO struggling to RTO
return to office or making mandates.
It's just one of the changesas we kind of develop and go
through one in business together.
But I think you foundthe right priority there.
(29:11):
It's enabled the team members tohave a different quality of life
that they never would've had.
And it's enabled us to bring onnew team members and new talent
that we'd never have access to.
'Cause we were based in the Tampamarket, which is a growing technology
hub, but we've got employees inOklahoma and Washington and all over
(29:33):
the country, and we'd never be able togive opportunities to people that if we
were stuck in an office all the time.
Absolutely, totally agree.
Now, for those listening who want to getconnected with you and find you online,
where should people go to connect?
I hang out in two places,LinkedIn is my primary.
But I I'm way late to the party hereon Instagram, but I will tell you, I've
(29:55):
been working with an Executive Coach, CEOcoach, and you need to be on Instagram.
I don't care if you don't likeInstagram, you need to be on Instagram.
, Fine.
I'll start doing stuff on Instagram.
My point is.
Find me on LinkedIn, Eric Baum bz.
Same thing on Instagram.
Just E-R-I-C-B-A-U-M.
Bz and I hang out on both.
(30:15):
Now as much as I not reallyenjoying Instagram, but
you're probably on Instagram.
Sorry if I'm offending you.
No, not at all.
I was just gonna say, we'll have the linksavailable down the show notes and the
description and you're not the only one.
I started my first Instagram accounttwo months ago and I'm a 36-year-old
millennial, so you're not the only one.
I think we just kinda reluctantlyget into, I think I made
(30:37):
a TikTok as well, but the
posting frequency is a littlebit different, but it's really
about finding your audience.
Where do you want to hang out?
Where do you wanna havethose conversations?
But it can be good for bothinbound outbound strategies
to have that presence online.
And as much as we don't like itourselves, we have to get out there.
Take the advice from yourcoach, consultant follow that
and then just stick with it.
(30:57):
That's really important.
But I want to ask you, Eric, what areyou looking forward to most in 2025?
We're about halfway through.
Are you bringing out anything new andexciting, a new pivot coming through
or you just sticking with everythingthat's tried and true right now?
We are pivoting heavily into AIservices, both in supporting the
HubSpot Breeze and HubSpot's AIfunctionality as well as custom agents
(31:20):
and custom solutions for our customers.
I know everybody and theirsisters AI this, AI that but
in our business it really does.
It's a smart move to embrace itrather than try not to or ignore it.
For us we're buildingout an AI department.
Believe it or not, our AI departmentis built, headed up by an 18-year-old
(31:43):
kid, still in college who's agenius and he just knows this is
his forte, this is what he does.
I haven't been able to findany other engineer that's as
qualified or as good as him.
He's building out ourteam here to execute.
And it's really incredible.
That would never havehappened five years ago.
Be an 18-year-old kid headingup a department where you're
(32:05):
primarily going with a company.
It just wouldn't have happen.
It's nuts.
And kudos to you in your businessto be open to those opportunities
'cause a lot of us gate keep thatbehind, these four year degrees, or
you have to have technical diplomasor a certain amount of experience.
Give people the baton.
Let them show you what they can do.
And oftentimes you'll be reallyimpressed if you're giving them
the tools and resources to succeed.
(32:26):
They can blow it out of the water.
Yeah, I say that there's a caveat.
He only has a job for as long as hestays in school until he graduates.
I'm trying to do the right thing too.
No, it's about being smart andresponsible at the same time.
Eric, we appreciate you coming on theshow to share your tips and tricks and
everything that you've built out today.
If there anything we haven'tdiscussed today that just wanted
to open up the platform foryou to share with our audience?
(32:48):
I don't think so.
I think I touched on it before, if you'rereally serious about the entrepreneurial
journey, it's perseverance, it'spersistence that coupled with putting
your ego in check and constantly learning.
I didn't go to school for this.
I learned all of this.
I read veraciously and watcheverything I possibly can.
(33:12):
And that's led to success for me.
The constant learning and never given up.
Absolutely some great advice.
Eric.
Congratulations on everythingyou've accomplished.
For those out there listening, makesure you go connect with him and
check out everything he has going on.
Great lifelong learner here.
Someone who is just kind of battlingthrough all the ups and downs
(33:32):
of entrepreneurship and owning abusiness, but it's the real life
experience and action that's gonnaget you to where you want to go.
Eric, we appreciate everything.
Thanks for coming on.
Thanks for having me, Chris.
Absolutely.
Thank you.
Look to where the market'sgoing and pivot that way.
This has been said a gazillion times.
I think Wayne Gris was thefirst person he is like, Hey,
skate to where the puck's going.
But the reality is youreally need to embrace that.
You are listening to Brainwork Framework,a Business and Marketing podcast,
brought to you by Focused-biz.com.
Welcome back to another episode.
With us today is the CEO of Bluleadz.
(00:21):
Eric Baum.
Bluleadz empowers companiesto revolutionize how they
market, sell and support theircustomers through HubSpot and AI.
So excited to have him on.
Eric, how you doing today and tell usmore about your entrepreneurial journey.
What were you doing before thatkinda led you into doing what
you're doing with Bluleadz?
First, thanks for having me Chrisand I'm doing incredible as always.
Be careful what you wish forbecause my entrepreneurial
(00:43):
journey is 30 years in the making.
The shortened version is I started inthe mid nineties, right outta school
creating a company called PSI, which wasa sewer contracting company with a college
buddy of mine and another friend of his.
And it was three guys tryingto make our way through the
(01:04):
world and figure this stuff out.
It was our very first company,obviously we bootstrapped it.
And I learned a couple oflessons at that company.
The first of which was like,sell first and then figure out
how to do what you sold later,
sales drives everything.
The downside is one of the hard lessonsI learned in that first company was
growth without a plan equals chaos,which then leads to failure and that
(01:30):
first company we grew to 25 people.
We worked in five different statesover a three and a half year period.
But I saw the writing on thewall and financially we were in
a quagmire and I sold my shareto those two partners exited.
I guess you can callthat a successful exit.
I didn't lose my butt on it but Iwas still like early twenties still
(01:52):
figuring things out and then fromthere I moved, I owned a bar in
Richmond, Virginia for a few years.
That's when I learned drinkingon the job can be really fun,
that was fantastic experience.
And then from there on, I moved downto Florida 2001 and actually went into
business again with a startup, with thefirst partner I had back in Philadelphia.
(02:15):
And we started a companycalled Perma Aligner.
And that was a manufacturing company.
We did really well.
It was a lot of fun during that time inmy life and I learned the importance of
culture building and an organization.
I learned about operations andprocesses and cost of goods sold
and margins and all that stuff.
And from there we actually starteda couple other franchise or I
(02:37):
should say, bought a couple otherplumbing franchises, which was in
the same kind of industry, grew thosein the Tampa and Orlando market.
And there I learned a lot about thefranchise model setting, systems up
processes understanding marketingand digging into the analytics.
How much does it cost meto make the phone ring?
(02:57):
What does that translateinto my job cost average.
You had to go to business school?
I didn't go to business school.
I graduated college witha criminal justice degree.
Was planning on being an attorney wayback when and I had to figure all this
stuff out and my business partner andI were figuring things out together.
We didn't know everything at that point.
Half of my journey.
I can go through the rest of it, but I'mgonna stop there 'cause literally we could
(03:19):
take the entire podcast going throughmy journey, which led to ultimately
Bluleadz in 2010, which is the companythat I now have for the last 15 years.
And hopefully I've perfected mostof or at least learned a lot from
the lessons along the way for sure.
That is a lot of great experienceand just the trial and error, having
to figure things out yourself.
(03:39):
The success comes roadblocks, butyou learn everything that, what it
takes to run a successful business.
And like you said, it's thesystems, it's the processes, it's
the people and kind of getting allthose to kind of work together.
I think a lot of business ownersstruggle to grow and then scale
without the systems or the processes.
Tell us more about Bluleadz and thenhow that helps people and the benefits
(04:00):
of using these systems, CRMs, the AI,to kind of bring this all together.
That kind of starts with when I foundedBluleadz was actually as a result
of looking for a content managementsystem to host my own website.
At the time, the Mr. Rooter plumbingfranchises that I had exited, the
manufacturing company, which was a hugedebacle and we can kind of set that
(04:22):
aside and get into that as one of thefailures in my professional career.
If you want to go down that road.
Happy to share the lessons there.
It was Mr. Rooter franchises, andI had two of 'em in Orlando and
Tampa that I owned both of 'ema hundred percent at that point.
And I'd started my own websitethere, hired somebody internally to
do SEO pay-per-click advertising,and immediately had 50 of the
(04:45):
other Mr. Rooter franchisees.
Throughout the country saying,Hey, can you do this for me?
I love what you're doing becauseI was in the Yellow Pages, back
then, this is in 2008, 2009.
Yellow Pages was primarily drivingbusiness for plumbing companies
at that point, and I was spending$25,000 a month in each market and
it cost me $345 to make the phonering and my job cost averaged $212.
(05:11):
You do the math.
I was losing money hand over fist.
I shut everything down.
It took me about six months to getthrough that process of getting out of
the yellow Pages, started my own website,hired somebody internally and got my job
call or the cost per call down to $45just by doing pay-per-click advertising.
And all these other Mr. Rooter franchisesasked me, can you do this for me?
(05:32):
I pivoted that person out of Mr.Rooter, put it into a new company.
Back then it was called AllMarketing Group and I immediately
had 50 clients for the gate.
And I went back to myfirst lesson of okay.
Sell and then figure out howto do it after that, they kind
of figured out to scale things.
I landed in the HubSpot world becauseI couldn't scale websites on HTML.
(05:56):
I had to have a developer do everything,update the the copy, do absolutely
everything, and I was like, this is crazy.
It's not scalable.
How can I find a contentmanagement system?
This is prior to WordPressbeing an actual content.
They hadn't developed that yet.
It was just a blogging platform backthen, and I was like, all right.
(06:17):
I looked at Jumela and Drupal.
And I landed upon HubSpot and HubSpotkind of just changed my world.
I remember, they had launched thisthing called inbound marketing and
this newfangled way of actuallyattracting people to your website and
doing the right thing and giving themcontent for free and doing all these
things and I was like, this is great.
(06:38):
I drank the Kool-Aid, went all in andthen rebranded to Bluleadz in 2010.
I became one of the very first HubSpotpartners, I think in the first 10.
And now we are top five globally in thepartner ecosystem outta 7,000 partners.
I attribute all of that successto just hanging in there.
(06:59):
Over the last 15 years, I thinkpersistence, perseverance through all
the trials and tribulations and thefailures and the struggles and the
layoffs and all the stuff that yougo through as a business owner if you
can get through that, you'll succeed.
You really will.
Absolutely.
You have to be resilient and takeaction, especially when those road
(07:19):
bumps and obstacles come in our way.
And most businesses start fromrealizing your own pain point.
How do I solve this?
And you realize that's a pain point formany other businesses and that's how you
were able to get those 50 clients rightaway 'cause they knew exactly what they
needed and how to solve that problem.
It's that perfect product validation.
The market fit where you say go sellsomething before you build it 'cause
(07:40):
I've seen people experience that as well.
They'll take all the time they havebuilding the system or a process or
developing a tool and realizing laterthat no one's interested in buying it
or they missed the mark somewhere andthey never even thought to ask a client
or a customer, would you like this?
Would you buy it?
Would you pay money for this?
And ironically, we've kind of movedup market with HubSpot as they've
(08:00):
gone from small businesses tomid-market to enterprise companies.
We've kind of grown with them, wedon't typically aren't working with
plumbing companies much anymore.
We're typically dealing with SaaScompanies and FinTech and healthcare
companies and we work with companiesthat do anywhere from a million
dollars in revenue, usually $5million up to $5 billion in revenue.
(08:22):
We run the entire gamut.
It's crazy.
And tell me more about thosebusinesses that you work with.
What pain points are they having with,and then how do you go in to help them?
Is this working on small projectsor is this kinda like a revamping
or just revisioning kind oftheir process and system and CRM?
Sure.
I think one of the lessons I learnedin business, and this translates
(08:43):
to answering your question is.
Look to where the market'sgoing and pivot that way.
This has been said a gazillion times.
I think Wayne Gris was thefirst person he is like, Hey,
skate to where the puck's going.
But the reality is youreally need to embrace that.
And for instance, we startedoff as a marketing agency.
And embracing the HubSpot platform andhelping companies to generate leads.
(09:06):
Create new website for 'em, dolead nurturing, fill their sales
funnel with qualified leads,SQL sales qualified leads.
That was the nature of our business forthe first probably five to eight years.
Fast forward 15 yearslater from inception.
We primarily focus on HubSpotonboarding and implementation.
(09:28):
We went from Hey, we'll generate leadsfor you to, Hey, we're everything
HubSpot, we are the masters.
We will get your team set up and thenwe'll continue to manage that for
you and do some of those marketingand sales activities if you choose.
But otherwise, we're gonna trainyour team and empower you to actually
utilize HubSpot for your marketing,your sales, your service teams, and
(09:51):
make sure that you're utilizing it andgetting the best ROI from it, we've
got a whole host of various servicesdepending on how deep you want to go and
how much you want to take on yourself.
Or you wanna lay off to somebody else.
But my business now is completelydifferent than when it was when
there was the first employee.
Now we've got 46 employees and growinggreat leadership team in place.
(10:14):
It's been a wonderfulexperience in the last 15 years
that is so incredible.
And for a lot of businesses whoare trying to grow and scale.
Yes, the marketing, the saleshave to be there, but I feel you
lose ROI or you leave money on thetable if you don't have systems or
processes that help support that.
And especially with CRMs, people are justin their head and they have these post-it
notes and maybe a spreadsheet when reallythey should be letting these systems do
(10:36):
all of that work and thinking for them.
Yeah, obviously we're in the age of AI.
It used to be called marketing automation,right before it got intelligent.
And we used to build out all thesesystems and process and automate
as much as we possibly could.
It creates efficiencies for customers,that's the name of the game.
The more efficient you can become, themore profitable you're going to be.
(10:58):
And now of course, it's justin the last three years.
AI has completely taken thisstuff to a whole different level.
And now the question isn't like, Hey,how can we automate things, but how
can we actually intelligently createsolutions and solve them without
much of a human interaction at that point.
(11:20):
And our business is we're actuallyone of the very few people that
kind of dove into AI early on.
We actually create customagents for customers.
Obviously in the HubSpot world their AIis called Breeze and Copilot inside of
there, and we leverage that for customers.
But it's really exciting.
There's a lot of marketing agenciesout there that have started 10 years
(11:42):
ago and they're scrambling right now'cause they don't know how to adapt
to the new reality, unfortunately.
Absolutely.
And speaking of AI, therehas been a huge disruption.
First it's cool as a copy generatoror I can ask it silly questions.
Then it became, it can writewebsites, HTML and computer code.
It can write Python script.
Now it is changing the world forcopywriters, graphic designers developers.
(12:07):
The list continues.
Where do you see AI going andhow are you gonna leverage that?
Man, that's a loaded question.
I think there's different levels of AI.
The way Bluleadz, the way Iapproach AI is, okay, well what's
the native AI functionality in anygiven platform that you're using?
HubSpot has theirs, of course,click ups got AI functionality.
(12:30):
There's all kinds of softwares thatplug in that integrate into your
CRM or QuickBooks or your accountingsoftware, whatever it is, they're
gonna have AI functionality built in.
That's kind of level one.
Being able to master that or inour case, be as an agency, be able
to actually train companies andindividuals on how to utilize that
(12:51):
to be effective in their workday.
That's level one.
Level two is, all the other plugins,anything that you're gonna integrate
into your main software and understandingthat AI functionality, then you need
to be able to utilize that as well.
Level three in my mind is well let's getinto the Chat GPTs and the Google Geminis.
Let's build out custom gpt and custom gemsthat can actually do a lot of the work.
(13:16):
And then level four is customagents that actually produce things
for you or take actions for you.
And I'll give you a perfectexample of level three.
I'm the CEO, I'm not the one inthere building the custom agents.
I'm the one being like, here'sthe use case and a problem
that we need to solve for.
(13:37):
Go build this for us.
But for me, I'm messing around.
I just started really putting myselfout there and getting on podcast.
You're a perfect example of, I just builta custom GPT that will go out and it'll
actually research your podcast yourself.
It'll pull out all the transcriptionsfor the last 10 podcasts.
It'll give me tone.
(13:59):
Standard questions thatyou're going to ask.
All kinds of these things.
It gives me a three or four page summary.
It's formatted exactly how I want itso that I don't have to go through
and do all this research myself.
I can listen to the podcast and Ialready listen to your podcast so
it's nice and easy for me but thatjust saved me hours worth of prep
(14:20):
so that I can come to an engagementlike this and be completely prepared.
Take that in every other aspect ofyour professional career and plug
it in, it's a complete game changer.
It's unbelievable.
You're gonna have an assistant focuson a single task and send them out
to go do your bidding and you canactually define what you want from them.
(14:41):
And there's nothing up in the air.
The AI agent is going to comeback with something different.
It's going to follow your guidelinesand the prompting that you use.
For 20 bucks a month that's unreal.
Now you take that to a levelfour, for instance we've got a
custom service agent that aboveand beyond what HubSpots customer
(15:02):
service agent has that's built in.
So nine times outta 10, mostcompanies are gonna be able to
just utilize the custom agents thatwhatever CRM they're using offers.
That's gonna work just fine.
But for those enterprise level customersthat want to take a step deeper or a
step further, building out those customagents that can retrieve all kinds of
(15:23):
di different information from behind,paywall, behind member ship subscription
sites and stuff like that, and be ableto service that up to your customer.
Another perfect example is a quoting tool.
On our website for instance.
You can go in and this is greatfor your sales team, it's great
for your customer success team.
I just can plug in information abouta customer and it'll say, here's what
(15:47):
the quote should be for these services.
Now you take that to the next level,there's service like Fathom AI.
I'm sure you're probablyfamiliar with Fathom AI.
It's a note taker, they're opening uptheir API and now what we'll be able
to do is have all of our customers,in particular customer have all
that customer calls inside a fathom.
(16:08):
The custom agent will actually go andscrub all those transcripts and on any
customer service call, we'll identify anopportunity for a cross-sell and upsell
based on our service offerings, and thenbe able to ping the CSM and the sales
rep about that, and also set up automatedemails in a campaign highlighting those
(16:29):
services that we offer to that customer.
It's like Amazon followingyou around everywhere you go
trying to sell you something.
It's unbelievable.
And just in the last few monthsthat we're able to do this stuff.
It's crazy.
That is really incredible.
It was one thing to have somepersonalization at scale.
Sure.
An AI agent can look at your spreadsheetand kind of infer some information and
(16:50):
then go out to the web to find some more.
But then now taking it to that nextlevel, it's like, okay, how do we create
these customer service sales agents?
It's understanding the painpoints, identifying that.
And you're not spendingfive to 10 hours doing this.
The AI agent's running the background andthen the humans come in with their own
touchpoints to then take it the next step.
But all that admin work thatwas just automated, done by an
(17:14):
AI agent, now it's incredible.
Another great example isthe prospecting agent.
HubSpot of course, has a prospecting agentthat will actually go out and based on
your database and your CRM will go outand research that company and it'll start
sending emails about whatever serviceyou want to promote to that customer.
And then it'll actually schedule ameeting with your sales team as soon as
(17:36):
that person's ready to raise their hand,
it's your little marketing buddy oryour business development rep, your BDR
buddy, just out there working on yourbehalf, then you can go to level four
and build a custom agent to do evenfurther, we've got a custom agent as
a prospecting agent that'll go out andresearch everything about that particular
customer, whether it's in your CRM or not.
(17:57):
And then it will alsocreate a series of emails.
Based on that customer's information,their website, any talk they've ever
given, anything you can find about'em on the internet and tailor all
of our services around their specificpain points because they can un
understand what pain points do theylikely have based on what you offer.
(18:18):
And tailor all these emailsto their pain points.
It's absolutely amazingwhat this stuff can do.
I just wanna sit back and watch.
Unfortunately I can't 'cause thisis my business, everybody's need
you to do this and this for me.
Okay, great team over here.
Get deploy.
Let's go.
But at some point therewon't be people doing it.
It'll just be people telling itwhat to do, and then we'll be
(18:41):
reaping the rewards from that.
It's gonna be really incredible.
Really incredible.
It really is a game changer tosee how the tech software is
just changing the game right now.
But there are a lot of marketingpractices that are the tried and true.
Examples of how we kind ofbuild our book of business.
Sometimes it's referrals,sometimes it's networking.
The classic SEO and PPC.
(19:01):
What has been the biggest driver ofgrowth for you and your business?
What would you suggest for others?
What should they focus onwhen they're trying to build
and grow their own business?
In terms of marketing
I will tell you that our perspective haschanged just in the last couple of years.
And even in the last 12 months,specifically, SEO is becoming
more and more difficult andless and less important.
(19:25):
And everybody's seen the kind ofarmageddon of traffic to your website?
The drop off last year,we were a perfect example.
We used to get 300,000 organic visitorsto our website every single month.
We'd get anywhere from two to 3000 netleads from that every single month.
And our organic traffic dropdown to 25,000 visitors a month.
(19:47):
And it's just the nature of thebeast things people are searching in
Perplexity and Chat GPT and Gemini forthe answers to their questions now.
And when they just ask, Hey,what are the top five companies
that can solve my problem?
And they'll find that company.
Then they'll go to that company's website.
For us to answer your question,channel marketing's been a bigger play
(20:10):
for us as in partnering with othersoftware companies working together
with a software called Crossbeam,where it's ecosystem led growth,
if you get big enough and you've gota lot of partners out there, you've
got overlaps with their customers andyour customers and their prospect and
your prospects going down that road.
(20:32):
I think has helped us kind ofovercome the noise in the SEO world.
And then also being moreefficient with your customer base.
So going back into and selling intoyour past and current customers,
the additional services that you'vecreated over the last year or two.
People forget that in their business.
(20:54):
They think I've gotta go and get new.
No, you can double or tripleyour revenue just by selling back
into your past customer base.
I mean, if you've been in business for5 years, or 15 years or 50 years, think
about how many past customers you havethat haven't heard from you in years.
Don't even know what you do anymore 'causethe people that you've dealt with are gone
(21:16):
go back and sell into that customer base.
I just wanted to jump in'cause I appreciate that
and I agree wholeheartedly.
A lot of people focuson, I need more leads.
And it's what about further nurturingthe leads you already have or going
back into that database of either yourpast customers or your past leads.
There's information and people readyand willing to hear more about you.
You just need to make that touchpoint and reach out to them again.
(21:37):
I totally agree.
Yeah, I mean even like the basic,call it website designer, being in
the digital world, everybody cancreate a website pretty easily today.
But even somebody that just focusedon website design, they've got
customers from 2, 3, 4, 5 yearsago, they need new websites.
Go back and talk to them, andI look at that for us at least
(22:00):
and the customers that we workwith, that's a huge potential.
Especially in today's economy.
Think about it like the macro environmentin the world we're living in right now.
Everybody's uncertain.
Your billion dollar companies are notmoving forward with initiatives right now.
They're stuck in the mud.
I don't know where to go.
We're hunkering down, we're saving cash.
(22:21):
And you see that throughthe economy right now.
And when that happens.
You've gotta look internally, Hey, wherecan we generate new revenue from existing
and past customers that already trust us,that already know what a good job we do?
That's our kind of takeon where we're going.
This for the rest of this year.
(22:41):
We'll see what happens next year.
Never know, man.
Absolutely.
It's all up in the air and we're justkind of figuring things out and I've
asked some other podcast guests justwhere they see that uncertainty unfolding
within their own business as well.
And I appreciate you sharing'cause my first thought is,
again, hunker down, save cash.
Don't put forward any initiatives.
And I've heard a few guestssay, I'm actually doubling down
on everything that's working.
(23:02):
I'm taking more risk now.
And there has to be a balance there,we're that logical left side of the
brain and the right side, just go for it.
Again, as businesses, I thinkwe're just pivoting and finding
out what's gonna be best for us.
'cause we don't want to be vulnerable.
We don't wanna throw money away,but we have to be aggressive
and proactive as well.
One of the lessons that I learnedover the last 30 years of having
(23:22):
six different businesses is don'tmake decisions based on fear.
When I say hunker down and conservecash, there's a lot of billion dollar
companies that are doing that right now.
I look at it like, where are theopportunities in today's marketplace?
How can I take advantage of that?
Because we've been fiscallyresponsible and we're not completely
(23:43):
cash strapped, we're able to takeadvantage of those companies, you
take a Berkshire Hathaway mentality,
and have cash and be able to deployit when there's opportunities but
also have an entrepreneurial risk.
A little bit of risk tolerance sothat you can take those opportunities.
For us, we're doubling down onthings that we know work, we've
(24:05):
got a marketing department.
We're not dropping marketing off a cliffand being like, we gotta conserve cash.
Get rid of the marketing department.
No, absolutely not.
We're not getting rid of our salesteam, but we do make fiscally
responsible decisions when themarket's down it currently is.
It's just something youhave to be mindful of.
And I love that you're not trying tothrow away sales and marketing 'cause a
(24:25):
lot of businesses will make that mistake.
They'll pull back on someof their marketing spend.
And I think when you look back atthe data, HubSpot is great for the
data analytics and try to understandeverything that's going on.
But you can see your channels ofgrowth and your return on investment.
And if you completely cut thatoff, you're not really gonna
continue or grow from there.
No, and I've got the luxury of being alittle bit older and being in the game
(24:48):
for the last 30 years and I lived throughthe Great Recession of 2008, 2010,
and did absolutely everything wrongduring that as a business owner and
learned a whole host of lessons.
But as a result of that and it almostbroke me almost broke my marriage
almost broke my business almost brokeme personally and financially, it
(25:12):
was really difficult to get through.
Because I had never at that point.
It never failed.
I didn't even knowfailure was a possibility.
My entire professional career.
I just kept going, I'dstumble, but not fail.
Anyway, long story short, when COVIDhit, my wife turns to me and I had
about 36 employees at that time.
(25:33):
And we had a great life., Life is good.
She turned to me and she was like.
My revenue dropped 25% in two weeks.
And she's like, what are you gonna do?
And I said, I'll tell you, I'm gonnado the exact freaking opposite of
what I did during the recession.
And I did, and I went back, I spenta few hours and it was what every
decision I made during that time.
(25:54):
What was it?
I know it was wrong, I pulled aGeorge Costanza, I did the exact
opposite and I was able to makeit through it in two months.
Stabilized back on track.
We did have to lay some peopleoff but we were able to bring
back those people inside of seven,six or seven weeks with back pay.
All because I did exactly oppositeof what I did in 2010, let's call it.
(26:19):
This is another one of those times, whenthe economy gets put on hold and people
are scrambling, I'm like, wait a second.
It's not actually that bad.
I've been here a couple times before.
Let's figure out what exactlywe need to do and we just create
what we call a recession plan.
If your revenue drops 25%, what do you do?
If it drops 30%, what doyou do if it drops 50%?
(26:40):
What do you do?
Pre-plan those moves so that whenyou're in it, when you're in it, you're
scared, you're making bad choices.
But if you have a plan beforethe everything hits the fan.
Then it's already done.
There's no emotion.
You're not making poor choices.
You've already planned this out.
Does that make sense?
Absolutely.
And I think a lot of businesses struggledduring COVID because some couldn't adapt
(27:03):
or pivot, and they didn't see the newopportunities that presented themselves.
I think even to hindsight for me, Ididn't realize how many businesses weren't
online yet and needed to get online orsome sort of online ordering system.
Those businesses, that was a hugeopportunity that people need to
realize and think of in advance.
That way you're just not kind ofbombarded with the craziness and
the uncertainty that hits you.
(27:25):
Yeah.
I will say one thing that did hit me outof COVID that I was not expecting is the
not coming back into the office.
We were being a HubSpot partner and inthe software game we had glass offices,
right on the Tampa Bay, ping pong tables,two kitchens, custom conference tables,
(27:46):
four conference rooms, all the stuff you'dthink at a SaaS company office we had.
And COVID hit.
Nobody wanted to come back inthe office for a couple of years.
I still hung on to thatoffice 'cause I kept going in.
I'm going to the office.
I love my office.
This is fantastic.
And finally had to give it up 'causenow we've got employees all over the
country, all over the world in fact.
(28:06):
And I worked from home, whichis a different joy for me.
I didn't realize how much I was missing.
Kids growing up and just beinghere gives you that pop in, I can
watch my daughter rides horses.
We have a few horses of hers andshe's jumping, I'm on a zoom and I can
see straight out through the pastureand I'm like, she's jumping a horse.
Are you paying attention?
Yes I am to the right thing.
(28:28):
Well, I heard dropping, jumping horses,but I didn't realize how much my
life is gonna change for the better.
But I still miss the ping pong.
Got the branded ping pong table,it's folded up in the garage
right now, which brings a tearto my eyes every once in a while.
Well, you can always do a teamretreat over at your house,
break out the pool, the ping pongtables, get nostalgia with it.
But you kind of discover new thingsabout yourself, your business,
(28:50):
just the way that we interact.
Again, the two weeks to flatten thecurve turned into two months into
two years into five years later.
And we're still seeing the articlesonline about CEO struggling to RTO
return to office or making mandates.
It's just one of the changesas we kind of develop and go
through one in business together.
But I think you foundthe right priority there.
(29:11):
It's enabled the team members tohave a different quality of life
that they never would've had.
And it's enabled us to bring onnew team members and new talent
that we'd never have access to.
'Cause we were based in the Tampamarket, which is a growing technology
hub, but we've got employees inOklahoma and Washington and all over
(29:33):
the country, and we'd never be able togive opportunities to people that if we
were stuck in an office all the time.
Absolutely, totally agree.
Now, for those listening who want to getconnected with you and find you online,
where should people go to connect?
I hang out in two places,LinkedIn is my primary.
But I I'm way late to the party hereon Instagram, but I will tell you, I've
(29:55):
been working with an Executive Coach, CEOcoach, and you need to be on Instagram.
I don't care if you don't likeInstagram, you need to be on Instagram.
, Fine.
I'll start doing stuff on Instagram.
My point is.
Find me on LinkedIn, Eric Baum bz.
Same thing on Instagram.
Just E-R-I-C-B-A-U-M.
Bz and I hang out on both.
(30:15):
Now as much as I not reallyenjoying Instagram, but
you're probably on Instagram.
Sorry if I'm offending you.
No, not at all.
I was just gonna say, we'll have the linksavailable down the show notes and the
description and you're not the only one.
I started my first Instagram accounttwo months ago and I'm a 36-year-old
millennial, so you're not the only one.
I think we just kinda reluctantlyget into, I think I made
(30:37):
a TikTok as well, but the
posting frequency is a littlebit different, but it's really
about finding your audience.
Where do you want to hang out?
Where do you wanna havethose conversations?
But it can be good for bothinbound outbound strategies
to have that presence online.
And as much as we don't like itourselves, we have to get out there.
Take the advice from yourcoach, consultant follow that
and then just stick with it.
(30:57):
That's really important.
But I want to ask you, Eric, what areyou looking forward to most in 2025?
We're about halfway through.
Are you bringing out anything new andexciting, a new pivot coming through
or you just sticking with everythingthat's tried and true right now?
We are pivoting heavily into AIservices, both in supporting the
HubSpot Breeze and HubSpot's AIfunctionality as well as custom agents
(31:20):
and custom solutions for our customers.
I know everybody and theirsisters AI this, AI that but
in our business it really does.
It's a smart move to embrace itrather than try not to or ignore it.
For us we're buildingout an AI department.
Believe it or not, our AI departmentis built, headed up by an 18-year-old
(31:43):
kid, still in college who's agenius and he just knows this is
his forte, this is what he does.
I haven't been able to findany other engineer that's as
qualified or as good as him.
He's building out ourteam here to execute.
And it's really incredible.
That would never havehappened five years ago.
Be an 18-year-old kid headingup a department where you're
(32:05):
primarily going with a company.
It just wouldn't have happen.
It's nuts.
And kudos to you in your businessto be open to those opportunities
'cause a lot of us gate keep thatbehind, these four year degrees, or
you have to have technical diplomasor a certain amount of experience.
Give people the baton.
Let them show you what they can do.
And oftentimes you'll be reallyimpressed if you're giving them
the tools and resources to succeed.
(32:26):
They can blow it out of the water.
Yeah, I say that there's a caveat.
He only has a job for as long as hestays in school until he graduates.
I'm trying to do the right thing too.
No, it's about being smart andresponsible at the same time.
Eric, we appreciate you coming on theshow to share your tips and tricks and
everything that you've built out today.
If there anything we haven'tdiscussed today that just wanted
to open up the platform foryou to share with our audience?
(32:48):
I don't think so.
I think I touched on it before, if you'rereally serious about the entrepreneurial
journey, it's perseverance, it'spersistence that coupled with putting
your ego in check and constantly learning.
I didn't go to school for this.
I learned all of this.
I read veraciously and watcheverything I possibly can.
(33:12):
And that's led to success for me.
The constant learning and never given up.
Absolutely some great advice.
Eric.
Congratulations on everythingyou've accomplished.
For those out there listening, makesure you go connect with him and
check out everything he has going on.
Great lifelong learner here.
Someone who is just kind of battlingthrough all the ups and downs
(33:32):
of entrepreneurship and owning abusiness, but it's the real life
experience and action that's gonnaget you to where you want to go.
Eric, we appreciate everything.
Thanks for coming on.
Thanks for having me, Chris.
Absolutely.
Thank you.
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