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- [00:00]
A
My worst fear is if some other business came into our ads account or partner and went, they've been doing this wrong the whole time or this is a solution that's easier. I want to be the person who routes things out and go, there's actually an easier way to do this. It saves everyone time. I think that's been our USB and companies love that.
- [00:16]
B
In under a year, CEO Fabian Valado and his team at BFJ Digital went from new partner to platinum tier. Something Most in the HubSpot ecosystem could only hope to achieve. But for Fabian, it wasn't about speed, it was about focus. Focus on delivering cross functional value across marketing, design and CRM. Focus on growing through existing client relationships and most importantly, saying no to the work that wasn't a right fit. Today, Fabian shares the frameworks that fueled their rapid rise and how intentional growth, smart talent development and a bold ecosystem strategy helped BF scale on their own terms. I'm Sarah McDeritt and this is owning the outcome. Fabian, welcome to the show.
- [01:12]
A
Thanks Sarah. Should be fun.
- [01:14]
B
Fabian, you went from one tier to platinum in inside a year. That's something that most partners would aspire to. What were the kind of critical decisions or frameworks that you used to help you on that trajectory?
- [01:26]
A
For us, maybe it was a bit of cheating. We had existing clients, so BFJ was formed 15 years ago by founder Ben. We are foremost a digital marketing agency and we looked at our clientele and realized 95% of our clients are just other marketing managers, not business owners. It's just marketing managers who actually need serious help. I found a disconnect in marketing managers when we're trying to report Google Ads SEO. You know, our reports will say one thing, their CRM will say one thing. So we really focused on HubSpot because it's such a, a great tool, it's easy to learn. Market managers love it. We use that as our usp, as a central account management system. So for us, it started off as we were just selling into our clients. We push into our clients and go, look, this is the USP of having HubSpot one, our services are actually getting better. Your ads are getting better, we talk to you better, we report to you better. But also I have this brain and I've looked at your business and I've spoken to you for years, I can solve this thing for you. And from there it was just cross selling between everyone. Anyone who didn't have a digital marketing once they went through one of our projects via HubSpot or another service would love to look at other options in our business once we got the first couple projects through, it's just been a snowball effect.
- [02:39]
B
I love that you used the building blocks of a strong relationship to really expand the relationship and opportunity with HubSpot. That's fantastic for you as a leader. What's the ownership moment that really was a decisive factor in making Platinum possible.
- [02:56]
A
When we really started being at HubSpot, we had, I think we had seven staff and at the moment we've got 25. And it was just taking it early and going. We're going to embed HubSpot early into our core product, modeling into our account services and whatnot. And when we started to do that, it just really made our product whole and really helped it grow. And I think when for us it's when we have a client just doing reporting and the account manager can not only go, hey, we got you 50 leads from Google Ads, but HubSpot says 20 and here are the deals and here's the revenue. I don't think any other agency did that to them four or five years ago because that's when we started doing it and they loved it. It was just a, just a life changing. Our clients still with us and we're able to at this point their budgets have grown significantly because we're just proving revenue. We then can we engage with those clients to help nurture the lead into the revenue point through nurture funnels and workloads. So that was a big one for us is just watching not myself, but I build the process, gave it to an account manager and watched them do it. That was awesome.
- [03:58]
B
There's times you have to say no to things, to refocus on what you want to focus on. What did you say no to in this, in this process we always like.
- [04:05]
A
To say we're agnostic. So I think it really had to lean into like we really enjoy working with HubSpot. So we want to do more HubSpot. I think a big thing was looking at the other CRMs we were developing in and going well. Hold on. If our core business model is going to start pushing on HubSpot, let's consider going that route. And I think the next scope from there was really just taking on jobs we know we can hit 100% of the time. I think like any great lawyer, they're going to take a case, they're going to win. And I think that's not to. It's not that I won't solve challenges. I've got a supplier list if I Get a build brief and I'm like, this is too complicated for me, but I have this supply sold for you. I think that was really key. So we knew our limitations. There's not much but we do didn't know our limitations. So we just tried to make sure we took on projects we know will make the client happy with at the end.
- [04:54]
B
So no win, no fee, Is that what you're saying to me, Fabian?
- [04:57]
A
Pretty much. It's not in the sla, but you can give it a crack.
- [05:04]
B
I think a standard project is the Gasoline Ali Harvey Davison project that you have done and that's been a really standout moment for you. Can you walk us through what was the business challenge for the customer and how did your team show up for that and really own the outcome for the customer?
- [05:21]
A
GHD has been a client of ours for a really long time. We did their marketing at the start. We helped build their design their e commerce website to sell merch. And that was probably also one of our first big HubSpot projects as well that we still put our hands and shoulders with. And I think a big thing for those guys is we they had a system that was living on a server that's all their first party data, install purchases, bike sales, part sales, all of them, the server. So we built a system to pull it all out, pull it into HubSpot, mixed it with online orders and we built this ecosystem of service reminders and bike sale emails and happy birthday. And the big thing with any dealership, not just a pala gave it to or a car dealership, anything that's based on these products that need a community like you are buying into the brand that's community driven was that we understood that we need to really personalize comms. So that was a big use case for us is building that out and we built a really fantastic solution that focused on personalizations. It's got great ads running to the platform, to the website. If you buy merch, you're getting reminders to go check your bike out and go get you serviced at this dealership. So we're really focused on personalization and community and that's been a really big game changer for those guys and they've continued to grow immensely off that. So it's been a great business and that we keep working with these guys and keep building it. We've upskilled a lot of their staff as well to use HubSpot. So no more need for the mechanics to send reminders. The system does it automatically.
- [06:51]
B
How do you Structure your talent and balance that with the delivery that you need to achieve at scale with customers and maybe you talk us through. How has that changed with AI coming on the scene?
- [07:03]
A
When we started, I did every build, I did everything. I did when we really got started through it, I think every household build that came through, I managed, I delivered, I dev did, I did everything. So you can't manage what you don't know. You just need to know enough to call someone out. Is my management philosophy like if I'm gonna do a new channel, if I'm gonna. If I'm gonna have a new ads manager who's gonna run TikTok ads, I need to know just enough so that when I review their work I go, that's good. Or not. So I think the strategic benefit there was. I knew, I knew it. I built the process. So we started by hiring more so onshore Australian Brisbane hubs or devs. We got a head of Martech so that she's taken my project management philosophy. I can go from a sale and go, here's the project, here's the brief. You're good to run with the team structure. BFJ is a bit odd because we have all these services. We got design team, a dev team, ads team, and now we have a CRM team. So we really make sure that it's cross functional that these guys are in the office, they talk with each other, they're allowed, account managers are allowed to just throw them work that we don't need to quote for and go, this client's got HubSpot. Can you help me review it? Tell me what ads are performing best? Which has been great for the other services, but from the project side itself, it's just someone to replace me and myself to still. I call myself the safety net. When they get really technical, if they hit a HubSpot problem they just can't resolve, they'll always come to me. And I think that that safety net gives them this chance just to go, just to be innovative as they can. But essentially the head of Martech runs the project brief. We got the developer and the head of Martech's there to do the change manager as well. So a big thing about team structure is that you're moving anyone off a CRM. 50% of the job is in training and in change management and if you can't get that right, you're not going to get the build right. So we make the project manager in charge of talking to people and changing and then drawing great design so the developers can get all that right through. So that's been our team structure and sort of process in that way and I think that's been a big one for us.
- [09:08]
B
You mentioned change management there and it's something that a lot of partners struggle with actually managing for customers. What's your secret sauce when it comes to actually driving that change management piece within customer businesses?
- [09:21]
A
It's just that we always do like a capacity review at the start, like so we talk to the business owner and go, when we take on this project, what do you need to know? We can send you secret one to one so we can tell you how your staff are going, whatever the relationship is. Then we review the staff that are actually going to be using service hub or sales hub or marketing hub and understand their capacity. So we just mark, we put them on a 1 to 10 and so depending where they are, we know how much time we want to give that one person. So if we pick someone to go, this person needs a lot of love. We'll make sure that person gets a lot of love and push through a training. The big thing from there is a lot of great documentation. So bringing in some of the AI tools like Gemini Notebook lm, anything that we can use to restructure previous meetings and transcripts and make sure it's easy for them to see information. It's been a really big one for us as well. So we've got great templates, especially in Miro, we save all the templates and system designs again, they've got great little features just to repurpose designs. And then from that change management piece, it's just putting everyone in a 1 to 10 and all the tens. We like to make super users. And then at that point, at the end of the project we go, here you go, you've got access to our documentation. You can use any of these tools to call from it. But we're also going to make the other staff come to you because they see you as a leader and they see you as tech affluent and you don't want BFJ sticking around. Like a good fight should just leave. Like you don't want us sticking around. At the end of the day, like HubSpot's so easy to use. You don't. I love a CRM retainer, but the ultimate purpose for me is I want to retain the system. So we pick good stuff, we make them super users, make other stuff, leverage them, but we also early on we try and we picked out the people who really need a lot of support.
- [11:00]
B
I love your focus on change Management because it is something that many people forget about and it's absolutely key to a successful implementation. You mentioned before the different teams within your business and you have sales and then obviously you have delivery. I think many partners struggle with the balance between delivery and making sure that they are continually filling that sales pipeline. How do you make sure that you're focused on the pipeline but also don't lose sight of developing things like more technical growth?
- [11:32]
A
I think probably at the start I was probably in the struggle bucket because I was doing all the devs and then I was in also selling. So I think even though we had a big team of existing clients at the start also struggled like probably many other starting hustle partners where you've stuck doing everything. It just came into a point of just, just stick it out. You build the revenue out so you can hire the team to make your life easier. So I think it's really coming into. I would suffer most from delegation anxiety just non stop just to hand off a project that you sold and go. I hope it goes well. But the end of the day you set up great processes for weekly whips and briefs and just check in and provide that support. But delivering the sales side is just it. I think it just comes down to more bodies and it's or a clear split in your day. If you're going to go four hours of sales and four hours of project, you have to make that distinction early and stick to it and be able to know that I can do 20 hours of billables and projects and 20 hours in sales making sure that your billable project delivery is always full. So if I have staff, which I do, we track their project billables. I know they're scoped out for the next eight weeks. They got eight weeks work all lined up. That means I can keep selling knowing that the start date's this date and I just keep pushing through. But it's always just making that clear distinction on this is how much time I've got for building and selling. Never get rid of your selling time. You have to use it be it networking or outreach. You just have to keep working on your pipeline.
- [12:52]
B
Do you have T shaped individuals in kind of the technical sales or do you do kind of make a very clear delineation between those two roles?
- [13:01]
A
No, probably just merged. It's the dev can also sell is the point. I think that's what's, I think that's what helped our agency quite a lot. When you're talking to someone who actually knows what they're doing it's, it's been incredible for the sale just for us on our side. I think that's really helped us in our market. I think in other markets it'll probably be different but in Australia it's just been really helpful because they're just used to talking to people who may not be able to. And I think a big thing was just as if I'm in the meeting. I just try and help them at that point. The salesperson gives them tips along the way and that really seems to stick with that end user.
- [13:36]
B
You do operate in other ecosystems like Zoho. What was the thing about HubSpot that made you want to kind of give us more attention and more engagement?
- [13:44]
A
I think it's just where my clients live, to be honest. Like it's brutal. I think I remember telling my first PDM and then my second pdm. Every time I had that first call with them I go, I'm here for two things. I'm here because my clients are here and if your product is not great, I'm not here. Your product's great so there's nothing to worry about. But the. It's just. That's it. It's my, my perfect lead lives here because I do cross sell. So I know that the marketing manager hubs off grading. Marketing, sales, customer service, that's your bread and butter. That's my bread and butter. That's where I want my leads to be. Other systems like Zoho and Salesforce, you get bloated down in technical debt. Technical things where the end of the day I'd love to do. I just want to do good marketing and build great things and I want people to own the system and it infuriates my customers when they have to write a ticket and wait a week to see a nurture flow being done when they could just edit it themselves. So just came into being a great product that's easy to use and still really advanced in that mid market space. And then essentially having one of my perfect client lives.
- [14:44]
B
You mentioned technical debt there, which obviously as a service partner can be a good thing. How do you reconcile that as being a partner where technical debt obviously creates a lot of service opportunity but may not be the best thing for the customer and then you're trying to sell your value to the customer.
- [15:02]
A
That's a tough one. I think I use that as the USP like not to slight any other partner agency but that's, it's something we come in and go what if I offered you a service that doesn't rely on that. And I think a lot of companies go, sweet, let's sell into it so you can use it as a competitive advantage. Saying, I can offer a service that doesn't have technical debt. There are projects that do have technical debt because they're so complex and that's something I make really want to start. We're going to go down this route and you're going to be paying me an additional two grand a month to run your system. But here are the benefits. So we try to make that known early and we also just want to have a good solution. I think my worst fear is if some other business came into our ads account or partner and went, they've been doing this wrong the whole time. Or there's a solution that's easier. I want to be the person who routes things out and go, there's actually an easier way to do this. It saves everyone time. I think that's been our USB and companies love that. But also, yeah, it does hurt the bottom line at the end of the day because we're not creating those services to keep fulfilling. So I think it just comes down into finding more complex issues that need to be solved but will always come with technical debt. I think stuff like managing really advanced websites and for example, projects that need. That is stuff with API integrations nonstop, you're going to need us around to maintain them or if you need us to manage inventory or stock, that's when you need us. So it's. Those are the type of businesses that need the technical debt and help. Probably not the marketing team that's just running a few email chains and some service tickets and a basic integration. They should be learned to really grow.
- [16:37]
B
I think that fast time to value though for customers really is one of the key components of building trust and demonstrating your value. So I love that. We're listening now. We're all ears as HubSpot here. Fabian, tell me what could HubSpot be doing better to serve our partners in Australia at the minute?
- [16:56]
A
I think it's just more knowledge on Breeze and the AI tools at the moment. I think we were having a big. We were at the partner day yesterday and I was chatting to a few partners and I was just thinking, I'm like, well, I want to. I've been selling to health recently, a lot of aged care and the big thing is you can sell to the marketing sales team, then you're always going to be blocked by the IT team. Right? It's always going to be blocked and they want to know so much about Breeze and how it's going to read their data and all those things. So it's more information on the product itself, on maybe how the structure works, more ways to learn how to sell Breeze. And there were some great demo videos that I saw yesterday. I'm like, wow, these are great. I just love more and more technical documentation. The more we've got, the more it is easier to sell these products. That's the big thing for us is just seeing, just getting more ways to sell it, being more training courses, just more use cases, just more around Breeze. Because I think we would all really benefit on be able to whip up being in our demo account and having Breeze there with unlimited credits for us to test things, which might be an absolute long shot. But the idea is just that the more we can learn about AI and these products and learn to sell it better, it'd be amazing. Just more resources, I think, around it, more videos, everything.
- [18:06]
B
Noted. I mean, I'd love your perspective on when we talk about AI and the kind of strategies that you're using in Australia, how do you think they differ from what you're hearing or seeing? Maybe in the UK and the US.
- [18:18]
A
Markets, it is a big saying in Australia that the show is like 10 years behind US and UK at every point. It's. It's always been a saying here. We're always 10 years behind. You guys can adopt technology and we'll wait five years before our standards already. I think a big thing that we're seeing now is just that trust. So I think as many conversations as I have with clients on adopting any form of AI tools, using any form of AI or even just we're doing a lot on LLM optimization, right? So if someone looks up, chat, GBT or Bard, how can we be skewed as the top result? And we've found success and we've found formulas to make that work, but I think a big thing for us is just that trust factor is still building out. Same way I can turn on a car and my combustion engine's not going to blow up is the same thing as I know that my AI is not hallucinating, which I think still think is a global issue, but you're just dealing with probably stagnant business owners. Because Australia is quite fragmented, you will have really stagnant business owners that need to learn to trust the system. And I've met business owners who are so gung ho and so into it, which actually can be quite dangerous. They think it just can do so much and then there's so I meant this. I still don't want to touch it. I mean, you have to meet probably a business owner who's probably in the middle, who understands exactly what it's there to use. And I think that's a big thing. It's just that still needs so much more time to. For people to educate on those use cases.
- [19:37]
B
So what's the gap now? I mean, it can't be 10 years with the current environment. What do you think we're going to close that gap to?
- [19:43]
A
Probably like another four or five years to see proper adoption in Australia, really proper adoption. But even then, stuff like Breeze has such Great Lakes that I can see it standing pretty quickly. It just needs to be so. It needs to be laid out so simply for business owners to see it and go, this is how it works, this is what it does and this is what your team does with it. It just will put on a light bulb in their heads that they want to adopt.
- [20:07]
B
It's exciting to be at the forefront of that. So as you look forward into your diamond ambitions, what do you think are the projects and the clients that are going to get you to Diamond?
- [20:16]
A
We're really not far off now, so should be long till we're there. I think a big thing that we're focusing on is really probably larger media clients. We work with clients with really large budgets and they do brand activations. And I think a big thing for us is working more in that marketing pro hub and doing larger clients who may have half a million or million contacts and working with them on their digital strategy and their programmatic campaigns and brand campaigns and looking at all in HubSpot. That's going to be our bigger focus as we build out that and the attribution modeling and again also Breeze and using that to help to have proper. We're really good at talking to customers and I tell staff we're just 50% of your job is customer service and being a teacher. So if we can learn to really understand Breeze and talk to business owners and lay out really clean demos, I think there's a really great chance we can help adopt Breeze a whole lot more across the service industry as well, especially prospecting.
- [21:10]
B
As you look across the ecosystem, is there any partners that you can take inspiration from or anyone that you're kind of looking up to?
- [21:18]
A
I think Social Guarded is probably a good one that I see. I think they're the same business models, us, but they're huge, huge. Like they got a lot of stuff and they can do all the stuff with we're thinking of. And I look at them, I go, you guys have so much going on. It sounds like a nightmare to manage more than 100 people, but I'd love to see how that's done. And then I think there are other players who are probably in that gold level, like zestly digital or experience digital who are just doing so much technical and crazy work with data warehouses that I'm jealous of. And I go, there's a, there's a way that finding, looking at these guys going, how can you manage 100 people and deliver quality which you somehow, which you are. And then how can you be so technical and finding a way to be still in the middle of that where you grow stuff and be technical. So it's looking out at those guys and going, just keep an eye on them and go, I want to deliver the same level quality. I want to manage that many people and do the same say, well, Fabian.
- [22:12]
B
I will be willing you to diamond like many people and thank you so much for joining us today. If you're enjoying the content that you're hearing on owning the outcome, don't forget to subscribe.