← Owning the Outcome
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- [00:01]
Kevin Dunn
Hi, folks. Welcome to December and welcome to agency unfiltered, the HubSpot Solutions Partner Podcast. I'm your host, Kevin Dunn, and Agency Unfiltered is a weekly web series and podcast that interviews the owners, founders and executives of agencies and services providers from around the world about whatever it takes to grow and scale. On this week's episode, we have on adi Jagannathan, the CEO and co founder of OpenFlow. But at the time of recording, Adi was moving into an advisory role as OpenFlow was being acquired by Quantum Business Solutions. So while we get Adi's perspective and rundown of the whole acquisition process, we also hone in on OpenFlow's journey from being a CRM, software and industry agnostic firm to deeply specializing in the cannabis and dispensary space. So Adi talks us through the challenges he faced while operating agnostically, the evolution of his agency's business model, and the unique opportunities that are present within the cannabis industry, especially around CRM, customer platforms and integrated tech stacks. You're listening to another episode of Agency Unfiltered.
- [01:29]
Adi Jagannathan
Hey, Adi. Welcome to the Agency Unfiltered podcast. How you doing, my friend?
- [01:34]
I'm doing great, Kevin. Thanks for having me.
- [01:36]
You know, by the time this goes to air, we're going to be winding down, you know, Q4, 2023. How are things going for yourself or your team for OpenFlow? How's everything going?
- [01:46]
Going great. Q4 is always the biggest quarter, almost always the biggest quarter, I would say for the company. It's a lot of, lot of our customers making big decisions for Q1, so we get to be part of the exciting planning process of next year. So it's, it's going great so far.
- [02:07]
That's excellent to hear. Yes. Equal parts trying to put a bow, have a really strong end of the year performance wise. But yeah, to your point, strategic planning and road mapping and thinking about what the new year has in store. So a busy time I can imagine for you, but also for a number of our listeners as well. Adi, two things I want to get into and we'll kind of get down into some more. You know, it will funnel through granularity wise. But first, you know, I'll be interested to talk to you about Open Flow and its origination, how it started. But as you were looking to anchor a menu of services to CRM platforms, correct me if I'm wrong, but OpenFlow was fairly industry agnostic and systems in software agnostic. You know, you wouldn't be on this podcast unless things may have changed. From there. And so let's dig into that and then underneath it we can talk about the industry specialization, the verticalization OpenFlow has as it relates to, like, the cannabis industry dispensaries. There's a whole slew of considerations and things both from just broadly niching, but also what the dispensary and cannabis industry requires. Indeed. So anyways, man, that's a lot to unpack. I'm excited to have you on. And so what do we think? Should we get into it?
- [03:18]
Yeah, let's get into it.
- [03:19]
Awesome, man. So again, let's talk about Open Flow's history.
- [03:23]
Right.
- [03:23]
And in previous conversations you and I have had, it was very much CRM and software agnostic and industry agnostic.
- [03:30]
Y. What.
- [03:33]
How did that bode for Open Flow? And were there any issues and difficulties that you navigate through? So talk me through it.
- [03:41]
Yeah, definitely. So we, we started off in 2016, February. And like most agencies, we started off just because we were good at solving digital problems, hence we became an agency. We were first just looking to help folks, you know, we. They needed a new website. They wanted us to get their social media ready. So it's the origin story of most agencies, I feel, which is an accidental agency.
- [04:11]
Whatever they need, I'm sure we can.
- [04:13]
Do, you know, we can do. Yeah, we just, you know, smart kids from college who understand technology, we can code, we understand, you know, some basics of these platforms. So I'm sure we can figure it out. So that's how we got our start, right? You, you get, you help one customer and then you help another one, you help another one. Before you know it, you're just helping all sorts of people. So I think that it's very natural to go through the stage of divergence when you're first beginning, because this is the phase of exploration and this is where you're basically seeing where you fit in. Because when you start in a service industry, unlike products, you don't have a product to begin with. You're using someone else's products to solve someone else's solutions. And the concept of product market fit doesn't sink in super early for service industries usually. So we started off pretty agnostic. We started building websites and WordPress. We started setting up social media, you know, infrastructure, SEO infrastructure, using SEMrush and Mars and other tools, and started running some ads in Facebook and started building some funnels. And as we were doing all this, we realized that what we were doing was called direct response. There's the name to it. Like, we didn't know we didn't even. We saw we were helping and we're making some money in the process. But there's, there's a term to it. It's direct response marketing, inbound marketing. We didn't know. So we were like, okay, guess we're a inbound marketing, direct response marketing agency. So we found that that was like our first label. Right. We are a inbound marketing direct response marketing agency that are tool agnostic and industry agnostic. We focus on base principles of direct response marketing. We run ads, do funnels, follow up with emails, retargeting ads. We'll get you your sales. Right. So that was working initially. We started going into the golf industry, started helping retired pro golfers in Arizona create new revenue streams online. Went into the dental industry, the jewelry industry.
- [06:31]
Because any golf coaches in the New England area that you recommend, any, any of them, you know, give, give really impactful lessons. I know somebody in the market for some lessons.
- [06:43]
Oh, I see mainly in Arizona was the golf scenes. And as we were scaling so 2016, just dabbling at 2017 is when we knew we were a direct response marketing company and inbound company. So we started scaling aggressively. 2017, 2018, started hiring employees, started making revenue and started going broad and growing pains started kicking in. I would say 2018 because we started, you know, realizing that, you know, it's. You can follow basic principles and take a customer in an industry you don't understand to a couple points above where they are, you can get them to pretty good. But if you want to build something great, you need to have deep empathy towards the customer, towards the customers, as customer towards the industry. Deep empathy. So it was at that point impossible because I was asking my people in the company to be first experts in two dozen CRM systems who all had their own problems to deal with and their own growing pains. And on top of that, I wanted them to build deep empathy towards brand new industries they'd never heard of.
- [08:12]
Yeah, right. It stretches the team fairly thin to your point, it's preventing you from going from good to great.
- [08:18]
Right? Y. Yeah. And that already it's hard in the service industry to differentiate now when you throw, you know, mediocrity and spread thin across multiple industries, on top of that, it gets really, really tough. So that was tw, you know, started realizing in 2018 and then in 2019 started exploring specific industries and specific products. So we knew that as a service company, to find product market fit, you have to find a product first. You're not building a product, so you have to Find someone's product and you gotta go with that and you have to go to markets. So we had to find both of these. So we went on a big explorative journey. We were active campaign partners. We were infusionsoft, they were called infusionsoft back then. Infusionsoft partners, Bucket IO partners. We click Funnels partners. We used mailchimp to, I mean every marketing automation platform you can think of. Then we've used HubSpot 2 of course, which is in the slightly higher category of CRM, not just the marketing automation. So we were exploring all the tools but we hadn't made a decision yet because we didn't know how to make that decision. And then while this was happening, we were exploring industries and we were. And to explore industries, the exploration was who has the biggest pain? Because these inbound and what we're doing, this isn't new. So this has been around for a while now. So this isn't a novel pain for everyone. So we had to find industries and folks that were struggling the most with this stuff. And as we were looking for several industries we just honestly stumbled across cannabis. Went to a trade association meet up in Arizona and it happened to be the perfect event to understand the landscape of the the industry. And I started going to multiple trade association events in cannabis. This was in 2019, pre wreck legalization and started realizing that cannabis as an industry revops was broken completely because the point of sale in a dispensary is not connected to any automation platform. So this was the first time where it was like, oh wow, this is, it's not even like we have to improve it. It's not even there. This, this is broken. The RevOps, they cannot do rev ops because they don't. Their data isn't connected. This is the shining example of siloed data not being able to do revenue operations. So I mean it's an ideal fit.
- [11:12]
For that idea of like, all right, which industry is going to have the biggest problem that we can solve. And then you see something as glaring, you know, and as broken as it sounds like maybe the systems of record are connecting customer data to point of sale data like that that was a perfect fit for services.
- [11:26]
So at least we found a vein which was a point problem and then started exploring why aren't marketing agencies doing this for the cannabis industry. And then cannabis industry is a, it's still like a really tribalistic industry where you have to be an insider, like you have to empathize and be an insider and it's. You have to understand regulatory stuff. You have to. There's so much more to understand in cannabis than you go doing marketing for a manufacturing company or just any. A company without regulatory standards is a lot easier to start in. So that's why people weren't getting into cannabis is because you had to put in a lot to even start. Because.
- [12:12]
Right. I mean, not all industries are going to be built the same as it relates to services provider specialization. Right. And to your point, yeah, there's a whole slew of additional considerations. Regulatory, legal, right. Like yes, there's a, there's a lot to unpack there. So I get why they would only want to work with businesses that are in that space and have that deep, deep domain of expertise.
- [12:33]
Exactly.
- [12:34]
And so let me ask you this super quick. I know you mentioned it was, you laid it out really well. It's like every, you know, agency start at this, you know, point of phase of exploration and we have to understand what we can offer and what we can do well. And then you start to hone in on like category specialization, I think for you is like direct response and inbound. Right. But then that the next wave or the next phase from there is like, okay, now we need to think about both industry or vertical and product specializations. You build on top of your categorical expertise, chicken or egg, which comes first? Is there an ideal order of operations? Do you need to know industry before you pick a product and ecosystem or is it vice versa?
- [13:14]
For us it happened industry and then product. For us at least I've seen a lot of people happen the other way. And again for us it happened accidentally because as we started helping the cannabis industry and we started scaling their marketing efforts, in 2019 we were getting banned from CRMs left and right because CRMs didn't quite understand what their stance on.
- [13:41]
It was responsible use of their systems and product. Right. Like yeah, yeah, yeah.
- [13:46]
So they just, they didn't. And then it was, it was bad because we couldn't do the automations, we couldn't scale it, we couldn't, we didn't want a marketing automation platform, we wanted a CRM. We wanted to tie it to the erp, we wanted to tie it to their vendor management system, wholesale system. So we wanted a legit CRM and then, then we were looking for enterprise grade CRMs that would, didn't ban us, that would be okay with cannabis. And we found HubSpot and HubSpot was, you know, HubSpot was extremely clear in what it does allow, what it doesn't allow. And was just extremely helpful getting us established on our first few customers onto HubSpot. And that was really the start. And then when that happened, we became a HubSpot agency, dropped every other tool, literally every other tool, and then transferred a hundred percent of our clients over to HubSpot from every other tool they were. And this was in 2020.
- [14:43]
How did those conversations go?
- [14:46]
It was actually easy because we had such conviction at that point and we had already put in quite a lot of effort in our own HubSpot. So we didn't just go to them without getting HubSpot for ourselves first, without doing a couple examples, without getting some expertise under our belt. By the time we went to them, it was very clear because our people, it wasn't scaling. Like it's too hard to expect your folks to be good at 67 CRM system. That's ridiculous. You know, it's just, unless, unless you're a massive company with extreme amounts of resources and you don't want your utilization rates to be that big. You just want your people.
- [15:27]
You're still honing in on like, like technology specialization. It's just maybe you have a team size that you can, you know, can accommodate multiple.
- [15:34]
Yeah, multiple. Because you have to grow back into that. Like it's the process of divergence and convergence and then divergence again. So we diverge. When we first started 2016 to 2018, 19, we had to converge and converge aggressively and HubSpot was the way to do it. And you know, I had some mentors who had started salesforce agencies before and then scale their salesforce agencies. So kind of had a blueprint on how to scale as a enterprise partner.
- [16:09]
So your name dropping a lot of other systems out here. We don't do free marketing for other platforms on this podcast, you know what I mean? There's you got to say the incumbents or the other, you know, but we gotta, you know. But all jokes aside, what does the. So you mentioned there's a lot of like, you know, the big CRMs, the big software platforms. You know, there was, there was issues with like banning use or not allowing cannabis businesses to get on their platform. Obviously you mentioned that HubSpot was a platform that allowed for that to happen. What did the software landscape look like for the cannabis industry? Do they have a ton of like industry specific point solutions? And then where and how did did you get HubSpot on the docket for these businesses? Consideration wise?
- [16:51]
Yeah, definitely we, there were several and there still are several industry specific CRM systems. Industry specific marketing automation platforms. But the issue is they were dealing with their own growing pains, and they still are, because these are newer platforms that are not as sophisticated or as excellent as HubSpot. Like, it's, it was in our evaluation when we saw where these softwares were and still are and what we would need them to do to provide sophisticated services like what we could do on HubSpot, we couldn't even see a horizon in which they would catch up. So, you know, we had to go with the more established solution that was through some of those growing pains already.
- [17:42]
You know, I mean, just the reliability, probably the rate of product enhancements and.
- [17:46]
Rollouts and everything HubSpot was releasing. And then also with, you know, Ops Hub coming out and the apex HubSpot's API becoming extraordinarily robust, there was just too much. We, we could do anything we wanted to do with HubSpot. And so it was, that was the only expertise we needed at that point.
- [18:08]
Now, Adi, you mentioned the APIs of HubSpot. And so my assumption, my hypothesis is that you've been able to help businesses integrate HubSpot data, vice versa, with their other, you know, whatever point of sale solutions, et cetera, et cetera. I'm sure there's probably some, some connected integrated tech stacks at play here. But you mentioned that the rev ops function for a lot of these businesses is broken. So what does the repair look like? Right. You're like, hey, we need to find somebody with a problem that we can solve. So what is your proposed solution? How do you fix that broken rev ops function for these guys?
- [18:38]
Definitely for cannabis. For cannabis. We have to separate the types of customers in cannabis as dispensaries, brands and all other businesses. This is really the three big categories.
- [18:53]
Brands being like the products that dispatcheries supply. Yeah. Okay.
- [18:57]
And the reason to separate them is because the amount of data you have access to is restricted legally. So a brand selling through some dispensary's license cannot get their customers data because it's probably HIPAA violation to extract it from a dispensary license. So you're looking at some serious problems. So for dispensaries, the way we solve the problem is by creating private apps and connecting their point of sale and E comm solutions into HubSpot. Because now you can do lifecycle stage management because before they would have their dispensary site and people would subscribe, that would go in as a subscriber, but you don't know when they became a customer that data doesn't come back.
- [19:47]
Yeah. Or how frequently they purchase or their lab, what, what products they're interested in. Like you don't have any of that data connected. It's just blind marketing or you know, like emotional. Yep, yes.
- [19:59]
It's just promotional blast. Because initially in cannabis the only thing you had to do was be in Google Maps and show up for dispensaries near me and then you're in business like you, that's it. Right. But as the market gets more sophisticated and this race to the bottom when it comes to pricing, when it comes to, you know, economies of scale on manufacturing is really sophisticated in cannabis to where you can't just compete with pricing and margins, you're forced to compete with customer experience. Now you're forced.
- [20:32]
Well, I mean, it's saturated, right? I mean, what used to be the dispensary in an area now has to be one of six or whatever the number is. Right. And so, okay, how do you differentiate?
- [20:41]
Yep, yep, yep. So we had to build private apps. Basically that was the solution is to take HubSpot, build private apps, bring data from their point of sale, from their e commerce and then also sink in their inventory management system into the product catalog inside HubSpot, use the deal pipeline to see all the deals coming through, tie it back to the contacts. Now you can do segmentation. Now you can do contextual marketing based on the products that they actually buy and you can give relevant sales. So this, this is pretty, you know, these are the basics, right? Like basics of CRM is lifecycle, stage management, segmentation and stuff. But it wasn't impossible for the industry. So private apps was way to solve that problem, way to at least enable more solutions for that problem.
- [21:39]
Now, I don't want to take us back a step in the conversation, but again, like it's, it's a light bulb is going off here too as we talk about the evolution or the phases an agency goes through. And we talked about category and then you start getting into like industry and product specialization. But initially, when, what was the year 2016, we were talking about direct response, we're talking about inbound. Now we're talking about private apps. Right. So was there also like a technical development evolution that you and the team made as well? Where and how did that journey.
- [22:08]
Yes, it did. And it happened in 2020. And again, it happened accidentally because it just happened to be the problem to solve at that point. And that's when we started hiring, you know, people with Python skills and Node JS skills and understanding middlewares and aws. And we were forced to get into that, to solve the problem of Revops. So we lucked out actually, because our business changed in 2020 into a technical CRM implementations company organically. And then our demand and direct response marketing services just dipped because you couldn't do direct response on cannabis, you can't run ads for cannabis. So situationally it happened to become that way, but it became a blessing for us because as you might know, the whole landscape of marketing agencies have changed so dramatically in the last two years to where now companies are forced to become more technical. So we had like a year and a half head start in becoming technical, I would say. But we still offer direct response and inbound services. It's inescapable, but it is amplified by the technical skill sets. And also without the technical skill sets, it wouldn't even be feasible for the customers we're helping.
- [23:38]
I think what you just outlined for the cannabis industry too is like they require, right, these systems to speak to each other in order to execute a direct response or inbound strategy. So yeah, it's now, it's, it's table stakes. If, if you're, you know, focused on the cannabis industry.
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Right, yeah. At least the, the initial focus made us technical. And then what ended up happening in 2021 as we kept our focus in cannabis and building our technical expertise, HubSpot just, HubSpot just started exposing us to more clients that needed technical services.
- [24:15]
Yeah.
- [24:16]
So now we were able to div. Again because now we could do middleware integrations, now we could use the API to do migrate API based migrations. And so now OpenFlow is, you know, giving technical services for other industries too. But again, it just happened organically for us.
- [24:38]
And then what's the read on the cannabis industry now and moving forward? Does it continue to just be, you know, open space and opportunistic? Knowing that, you know, legalization rolls out state by state, should other partners be, you know, seeking to get their piece of this pie? What's the, what's the read, what's the point of view on where the cannabis industry is going at least as it relates to the CRM support, you know, rev ops, etc.
- [25:02]
Yeah, I think the pie is going to grow significantly larger in the next 10 years and I think it's still just beginning because us and what the US government does with cannabis will serve as a, serve as a catalyst for what's going to happen with the industry globally. So the, the, the long tail of this industry, it's, it's, it's really long and not A lot of times do industries get bonded and then they go away, they get banned and then revive again and then flourish. So this is one of those interesting industries that's like an ancient industries that's making a comeback in this digital world and with a lot more connected, you know, world. So I think, I think the market's wide open. I think there's barely any education, so it's still open for inbound focused companies to help dispensaries and brands with education. Piece of it. That's still huge. The ecosystem of tech stack and cannabis is going to change so much in the next five years. So I think needing custom integrations is going to stay, you know, highly relevant for a while until tech stack in cannabis stabilizes, which could be a while. And then also just more sophistication of owners of cannabis and just, just the industry itself is evolving so rapidly. So, yeah, I do think there's a lot of opportunities for partners, but if anything it's, it's good for partners to start looking at these industries that have some type of a regulatory, regulatory roadblock so that the barrier to entry is not too easy and there's a lot of industries like that. So the opportunity is broader than cannabis. The opportunity is to look at industries that have barriers to entries, put in the work, get the connections, get the.
- [27:20]
Initial portfolio, that expertise, that knowledge, and then use that as the differentiator.
- [27:25]
Yes, yes. And then this can be repeated again and again. And that would be my advice.
- [27:30]
Yeah, it's a great tip. It's a great tip. Does the regular regulatory complications or some of those other considerations, how and where, if at all, does that impact, like the sales process? So if you're looking to close a brand or a dispensary, what does the sales cycle look like? Time to close, like any additional considerations there?
- [27:51]
Yeah, it is, I think, I think fundamentally understanding regulations is not going to affect the fulfillment of things too much, but during the sales cycle, it does magic. Like when you're talking to a business owner in cannabis, they are suffering because they're surrounded by people that do not understand their pain from every provider. Every provider. So the second you understand their pain and understand what they go through and understand how much they have to manage, not just in terms of their product, but in terms of regulation, you, I think, build a deep connection and trust instantly because it takes time and effort to understand those things. And when you articulate them to a business owner, it's almost like immediately saying, we're on the same team now. We just have to Figure out a financial model that works for you. Like it doesn't even be, it's not even a sales pitch at that point, it's a consulting session at that point. And that's the best.
- [28:55]
That's the ideal scenario. That's where you want to be. Right? That's exactly. You want to be on the same side of the table trying to map out how do we go from here. Right, where do we go from here?
- [29:02]
Exactly. And then also in every sales pitch, pulling up a blueprint of water dispensary just like them did and what happened when they did that is also like the best thing. And the only thing you really need to close them is just say someone just like you. This is what we did for them. And thankfully for dispensaries, they compete most likely in a 30 mile radius.
- [29:27]
So you don't have to like, yeah, you're not working with direct competitors too often. Which complicates. Right scenario potentially. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, yeah, I think it goes back to, it speaks to why, you know, agencies or services providers should niche down, find vertical specialization. Because again, prospective businesses, to your point, are always going to be open and interested in seeing testimonials, example work of businesses like ours. And so again, you know, by dedicating your work into cannabis specifically, you have those at the ready. Right. Super relevant and super contextual. As we come up on time, I want, if you'll indulge me, I want to squeeze in a few more conversations, but I might pull us away from, from cannabis. It might pull us away from that conversation, but I can't not at least talk about as of what the beginning of November. OpenFlow recently went through an acquisition. Tell us more about that.
- [30:22]
Yes, super excited. OpenFlow was acquired by Quantum Leap Business and Sean is the visionary and CEO of Quantum.
- [30:33]
Friend of the pod. Friend of the pod.
- [30:34]
Friend of the pod. Yep. Quantum and Shauna, exceptional at outbound and near bound. And with Open Flow's history with direct response and technical implementation, it was the perfect fit. And OpenFlow has been looking to now diverge again as we niche down initially and we got vertical expertise and then also category and technical implementation. Now it was time for us to expand. And this acquisition gives the company the roadmap and the opportunity and just the firepower to expand. So it's beyond exciting. Sean and the team, incredible. Have been incredible. We've worked with them in the past too and yeah, everyone's stoked. It's fun. Big company now. OpenFlow is the exclusive HubSpot division of Quantum. As Quantum keeps scaling its top of the funnel, OpenFlow will keep fulfilling all of the HubSpot side of things, you know, too.
- [31:43]
It's, it's, it's, it's a good next milestone of kind of this, like, agency journey that we're mapping. It's like, well, you start with exploration, you get categorical, you get industry and product specialization. And as you navigate that, you know, if you have deep product expertise, a deeply talented roster of employees, and a really strong client base, you know, obviously that's what makes you attractive for these types of arrangements and agreements, right? Adi. I know. Mergers, acquisitions, you know, consolidation within the ecosystem. Top of mind for a number of partners. A lot of the ones that I talk to, how did these conversations start to, you know, where do they happen? Who planted the seeds first? How did they start to become serious? Like, walk me through the early days of the, the agreement, it started off.
- [32:28]
A little while ago where we just started exploring the future of open flow. This was maybe like a year and a half ago where we started just talking to partners who've gone through exits to even learn what is a future for a company like us? Like, what happens to companies like us? What is the next step? So the conversations have been happening, I would say, since inbound 2022, but only, only in terms of how does this work? Like, who does, who buys it? And questions like that. And then the conversations really started intensifying and working out. Only in the last couple months, I would say, like, since this inbound, and for us, again, it just happened organically. It wasn't any big plan. It was. We just kept the conversations going with other business owners. And then when we were talking to Sean, Sean was talking about his pipeline and his expertise, and we were talking about our pipeline, our expertise. And after several weeks of conversations, we couldn't shake the feeling that it was a perfect fit. Like, it was. Again, it just, it was one of those things. It just happens to be a great fit. And so we just, we just let it happen organically. We didn't force anything. We. We had to make sure that everyone who's going to be doing it and doing it together aligned on the big vision and aligned on where they were going. And that was, that was the big one for the OpenFlow team and for Sean and his team to align together and actually, fully, deeply realize that combining the companies would exponentially multiply the output. So I think everyone had to come to an understanding. Everyone had to be excited about it, because these organic acquisitions, I think that's the only way to do it is if everyone's on board and everyone's excited and see the collective mission.
- [34:37]
Well, yeah, and so I was. You may have already answered it before I got the question out, but I was, I was gonna ask when two, when two, you know, partners and two businesses are kind of feeling each other out or if a business is sniffing around for potential acquirers or businesses to acquire. Like I was gonna ask what are the, what are the important considerations that drive the decision or finding a good mate? And I think you, you called out some of them, but maybe complementary expertise and skill sets. Sounds like harmony or alignment on what the long term or future vision should be of this new merged business. Any other key considerations? The vibes. The vibes, you know. Yeah.
- [35:13]
Yeah. I would say being on the same page about the business model, service offering, menu of services and such was definitely important because we wanted to make sure that the acquisition shouldn't remove any product market fits that were put in place before. So had to make sure that the friction of business models wouldn't be too much. Like we're not going to put any one company's customers through a habitual change or something drastic to where potentially we won't even know how many clients we might lose. You know, like we wanted as less turbulence as possible operationally. So, you know, sharing each other's tech stack, sharing each other's like operational sequences, onboarding sequences and such was definitely important. And again we lucked out because Sean's also a HubSpot partner. We are HubSpot partner. He runs his company on almost the same stack as us, so works out perfect. Oh my God.
- [36:25]
It.
- [36:25]
Again, it was, I think for us it was a lot easier than for some companies that get acquired by some other business model, some investment bank, VC firm, some other type of roll up. A lot more consideration might happen there. But for us it was will our clients love this? Is there going to be any big turbulences where any services are going to be discontinued? Or like any, like we couldn't. We had to make sure that our clients, they have to win exponentially because of this. Like it cannot dip even one person. So that was the, that was another really big thing. After we knew that our team would be excited and our tech stack would sync and our menu of services, telling all the clients and making sure that they're excited and they love it was a big one.
- [37:20]
No, I love the, the, the commitment to like how do we mitigate turbulence operationally? Both that our team would feel, but also our clients would feel like mitigating that and reducing that as much as possible is a key point of emphasis. It sounds like. Which I love makes a ton of sense. I know it's early days, at least at the time of this recording and so maybe it's not fully charted yet. But like in the spirit of mitigating that turbulence or reducing it, what does the integration path look like between teams? Tech stacks sound similar but I'm sure there's probably still some, you know, you know, changes that have to happen. What does that roadmap of integration look like? Team process systems, etc.
- [37:59]
For now there's like a year long roadmap. The, the ones that come to the tail end of that year are the really big ones. Like how are we going to consolidate our HubSpot portals? What are we going to do with the points? And so dealing with some of that is going to come in the tail end. But initially there's a lot of small tools that we are consolidating and thankfully we use the same project management system. And because there's a clean line of Quantum doing sales and openflow doing the fulfillment of things, there's not much change in anything. If anything, Quantum's X customers are getting just one new software that's helping them on board and so there's actually. Clients are not going to feel any changes.
- [38:53]
That's great. It's less like duplicative processes and work and it's more like. No, because they puzzle piece in so. Well.
- [38:59]
Yeah, we just have to like merge. Instead of having two of the same project management system, we have to make it one so we reduce the cost. So it's just consolidating it for reducing, you know, cogs and overhead. But other than that it's, I would say because it's a HubSpot company, it's. It's been a, it's been a easier. That's great transition.
- [39:24]
Yeah, no, that's awesome to hear and congrats again to yourself, to Sean, to the Quantum team. Exciting news, man. It's gonna be awesome. I'm excited for all, all of you. Obviously some big news. And then AI as we come up on time, I know I pulled us away from, I think the, the main topic we were hoping to talk about. But I want to wrap with the same question I use at the end of every episode. What's the strangest part of agency life?
- [39:51]
Strangest part of agency life, I think for me at least is I. I didn't know how intense the love hate relationship to service Itself will be. It's really weird. Like it's such a intense up and down swing to where it's like, I don't want to do services. This is thankless. This and do. This is so satisfying. This is. It's. There's nothing better than a client jumping on a call with you and saying how much you've helped your team, has helped them and what difference that's made. So that's strange and I think I'll miss it. And it's just a weird piece where it's just this like big wave of like.
- [40:37]
Yeah, yeah. The pendulum swings between love and hate and happy and frustrated.
- [40:42]
Yeah, yeah, it was. That's. I think I. That was the strangest thing, which is on how unstable that was and also to where it still strains that I can't predict how that cycle is going to be when it's going to go. Like, I don't think anyone. That's. I think that's the strangest thing for me is as an agency owner, like you have no predictability over your own feelings of this high and low. It's an independent variable from your revenue from. I could have the highest revenue month, but then something went off somewhere. Some client that I really love said something about something and something didn't go well. And it could be like emotionally the most devastating month where.
- [41:30]
Yeah, yeah.
- [41:31]
So it's just strange.
- [41:33]
So that's interesting too, the decoupling of performance from just the emotional sentiment of how a month, a day, month, quarter year could be. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. They're not related. Yeah, that's fairly strange aspect. Thanks for sharing. And then ADI so I think as we come up on time, there's a ton to unpack here. Obviously, at least I was kind of looking at it as a flow chart, but again, those key phases that an agency goes through, you know, as it matures, as it grows, as it specializes, and all the way up to, you know, potential acquisitions and mergers with other businesses. But then we obviously honed in on the cannabis industry domain expertise that you and the team have some, some considerations for that industry. Specifically, I think some helpful nuggets and takeaways about verticalization regardless of what industry. Anyways, man, there's a ton here. Super insightful. I appreciate you coming on the show and talking us through it.
- [42:27]
Awesome. Kevin, thank you for having me.
- [42:31]
And for folks that have tuned in today, this has been another episode of agency unfiltered.
- [42:40]
S.A. sAM.