Weekend newsletter #11
The best of what I've read this week, about operations, training and education, communication, and more
Hello!
I hope anyone who celebrates holidays today is having a nice holiday weekend, or having a generally nice regular weekend!
Speaking of generally, I thought I had a great idea about a name for this newsletter.
A name that combined:
My name
My career journey as a generalist
Advocating for generalists to lose the stigma of being ‘less than’ specialists
My love of lists
The format of this newsletter is a list
“The Jeneralist”
BUT…sadly, after a quick Google search I saw this name is already in use by someone else. So to avoid copyright infringement and confusion, I am still thinking about a newsletter name and would love your input and ideas.
In other news, the Barbie movie trailer spurred some super fun images online this week, using its filter selfie generator. (or Jenerator, in this case, haha!) What a great marketing strategy!! During this newsletter creation, I took a break from reading articles in order to play with it. (I am not immune to shiny object syndrome!)
Onto the resources!
What I've been reading, watching, and listening to:
Leslie Greenwood answers a common question she receives about spending time making connecting
Justin Norris talks about one key to being successful: writing things down! Yes, documentation of many types! And knowledge management to find, edit, and share it!
Wes Kao posts about how to be a successful generalist (spurring that Jeneralist idea), and about high return-on-investment communication
The business process improvement group shares an article about documenting the outcome of the process improvement workshop
Gagan Biyani posts about 5 common mistakes when presenting data, and also about how creating the strategy and making sure it gets executed should be the same person
Greg Portnoy shares the takeaways from the Pavilion executive dinner we had in San Diego, including a partnerships discussion, his specialty. Speaking of referrals, if you’re interested in Pavilion, here is my referral link and I’m happy to answer any questions about it.
Scot Chisholm gives advice about reducing meetings down to these 3 essentials, with agendas
Liz Fosslien gives a humorous framework about what to do when you receive a non-urgent non-important request 😂
Grayson Faircloth shares a fun quiz about HubSpot skill levels. Be aware that each question is timed, so don’t try to write a comment at the same time as taking the quiz haha ⏰
Sarah Jane Morris tells you how to get involved in the HubSpot Developer Community
Joy Martinez posts about the CS2 PRODUCT method of leveling up ops (links to a podcast episode, too)
Bartz Consulting gives advice about how to define success metrics for your team
Logan Lyles chatted with Ali Schwanke about the hidden 90% of marketing, the unsexy side that acts as air traffic control – marketing ops.
Mike Rizzo had great takeaways from the Drift GTM Ops session – including documentation as the ruler of all things :) This will likely be in my reading/watching for next week after the recording is shared!
Chenell Basilio researched successful creators/entrepreneurs and found 5 traits: Consistency, Patience, Community, Start Niche then Go Broad, and Focus (seems to contradict the previous point but is mostly related to shiny object syndrome)
George B. Thomas published a helpful HubSpot certifications guide. There are a lot of possible certifications so a new Academy student may not know where to start! Read more in the Linkedin post.
Dan Moyle published a HubSpot community blog on leaving behind the binary, including for business decisions. ‘And’ not ‘Or.’ AND you can also read a great thread he shared from Ross Simmonds about speaking opportunities.
Speaking of speaking, Mike Allton posted that Agorapulse is looking for speakers for its Agency Summit
Christina Garnett wrote for Commsor Guild about turning customers into fans (like HubFans!)
Darrell Alfonso had a great tweet about learning in marketing ops. He’s been tweeting daily recently so it’s hard not to feature all of the posts :)
Amy Diehl, PhD tweeted about remote work in response to the trend to try to force workers to return to the office
Do you like seeing the tweet list like this, or do you like seeing the tweets embedded?
Articles, Reports, Guides, Newsletters
Sara McNamara talks bout her career path in and into marketing ops and career advice on Uptempo’s Lead with Confidence series
May Busch wrote about how to gain the respect of senior stakeholders
Julie Zhuo’s newsletter discussed user interviews, gaining wisdom, pitching a product, and more
Write the Docs writes about creating a documentation portfolio
Molly Graham’s Lessons newsletter teaches us about mapping your company's year: how to sequence the big processes
Alyson Krueger writes in The New York Times: That Meeting Was Too Long (and It Probably Could’ve Been an Email) ($)
Customer Experience Is Everyone’s Responsibility, says the Harvard Business Review ($)
Trainual has a great guide for a decision approval process
Elizabeth Yin wrote about the challenges of growth: where startups struggle and how to fix them, including a company operating system (documentation is part of the system!)
CFO Secrets gives a matrix for making better decisions (including fun emojis)
ClickUp has a helpful article about project documentation
Podcasts & Webinars
OG Ops Podcast: Office hours on mentorship, moving from strategic to tactical, ridiculous requests…
The Revenue Lounge podcast interviews Sid Kumar, SVP of RevOps at HubSpot
Featured Event or Class:
April 11: What You're Worth as a HubSpot Admin: Salary & Advancement Insights from HubSearch
April 11: How to Develop a Data-Driven Strategy
April 11: How High Achievers Overcome Their Anxiety —Harvard Business Review and Morra Aarons-Mele
April 13: Guiding Geeks—When You're Not One from Squirrel Squadron
April 20: How to get started in Revenue Operations in HubSpot
May 7-9: Write the Docs — software documentation conference in Portland
Featured Book:
I am looking forward to reading the next book in Travis Scott’s Winding Road book club: "How to Grow Your Small Business" by Donald Miller.
Contact Travis if you want to join this asynchronous voice message book club!
Organization Tip:
Today’s tip is extra random: Save a note on your phone with your car’s capacity/interior dimensions. Then if you find a deal on a piece of furniture or something large-ish, you know if it will fit. I have a hatchback car that has back seats that fold flat and it holds a surprising amount for a small car, so this has been a helpful tip for moving and more! (The car emoji is my actual car: 🚗 haha)
Bonus: The hatch opening is often smaller than the interior so make a note of those measurements, too. So you can actually get it into the car!
Featured Job:
Operations Nation is looking for a course manager for its COO course, if you live near London!
HubSpot has opened up a few very interesting jobs, including:
And more! If you know someone at HubSpot, you can ask them for a referral link to apply, so you both will benefit if you’re hired!
Self-Promotion of the Week:
One-day documentation writing workshop, April 20, 9AM-11:30AM Pacific time.
I would love for smaller businesses, including one-person businesses, to join this session to help me tailor a future version of the workshop!If you enroll in a workshop and then decide to take the full course, I will discount the workshop cost from the full course cost.
I am looking for resources about purchase power parity, offering different prices in different countries. Please reply if you are knowledgeable about this pricing strategy!
The next HubSpot RevOps bootcamp I created and co-teach starts in a few weeks! This 6-week live course is free for HubSpot customers and partners.
Thanks for reading! Please comment below with anything you'd like to see from these weekly newsletters.
This newsletter is brought to you by my new favorite emoji, the party document! Check out Slackmojis.com to find it!
