A practical guide to evaluating marketing tools and AI against the work they are supposed to improve, with attention to workflow ownership, real adoption, and the cost of unnecessary complexity. This written playbook focuses on the activities and decisions demonstrated in the video, so you can adapt the approach without needing to copy the exact words or setup.
What this playbook covers
The video packages a practical working session around Hubspot sucks, actually. Read it as a guide to the underlying activity: identify the situation, choose the right next move, and build a repeatable way to do the work well.
Name the operating problem first
Do not begin with a feature list. Start with the recurring job that is slow, unclear, or unreliable, then decide whether a tool genuinely improves it. A platform should earn its place by reducing friction for the team and the customer.
Design the workflow around people
Automation still needs an owner, usable inputs, and a review point. Map who touches the system, what they need to know, and where a handoff could break. The best stack supports good judgment instead of hiding it behind software.
Measure adoption and usefulness
A tool is not working because it is installed. Look for the evidence: cleaner information, faster response times, fewer manual steps, better follow-through, or decisions that are easier to make. If the value is unclear, simplify before adding more.
Take the useful part into your own work
Use the framework, then tailor it to your audience, offer, capacity, and goals. The goal is not to reproduce the video. It is to make one useful improvement in your own work.
- Audit one tool your team uses weekly. Write down the job it performs, its owner, the metric that shows value, and one point of friction.
- Before adding software, test the workflow manually for a week so you understand the process the tool must support.
Continue learning
Explore more marketing playbooks from the Columbus community for additional field notes, tools, and retrospectives.
For a local conversation about the work, see upcoming Columbus Marketing events.
Watch the source video
Watch the full recording on Andy the Marketer on YouTube. The complete transcript remains available below for reference.
Read the video transcript
Kind: captions Language: en Okay, so I've done my very best to stay out of this HubSpot drama, but you know, today I just got roped in and I got a lot of thoughts to air out. So, if you're in B2B, earlier on in the summer, HubSpot had a bit of a PR crisis because they kind of unethically opted in a bunch of their existing customers to enhance data collection and they came back on it a few days later and Facebook said, "Hey, we made a mistake." And it did not do a lot of good things for them. There was, you know, a several day period there where everyone was posting, they were dragged through the mud. This video by my friend Ben City Grippy on their data enrichment is just so so good. So I highly encourage you guys to watch to kind of get up to speed here. But in terms of latest developments, as of today, August 28th, Dharmmes Shaw, the C founder and CTO at HubSpot, and of course, you know, Little [ __ ] Boy, Kip Bodner, and all the other mindless lmies that just shout everything that they're told to shout from all their media outlets, you know, without running things through a filter reposted it. Um, but in short, Dom Shaw says, "Woohoo, thrilled to announce Youbot, the AI notative solo CRM from HubSpot. Next, HubSpot. Next, TLDDR. Uspot is a CRM built for oneperson companies like founders, consultants, authors, freelancers, angel investors, creators, one-person companies. Angel investors. Angel investors are oneperson companies, guys. Yeah. It builds a second brain from your business context and remembers the things that you might otherwise miss. Intro price of $1 a month for the first 1,000 customers. 423 slots already taken. So, I just I'm a naturally skeptical person, but when I see lines like this, let me just bring this into my handy tool of choice, Mr. Excalad. But when I see something like this, you know, I just a lot of eyebrows go up for me. Um, and I only have two. So, it intro of $1 per month for the first thousand customers. Now I come from a lot of this audience is smaller marketers and we work. We're working on healthcare specifically and I am so familiar with you know Alex's offer framework creating a compelling offer. Whenever someone and I'll tell you this me to you walk in and listen up. Whenever someone tries to charge you $1 a month for anything it's because they want your payment information. They are trying to get their hands slide their hands solely up into your pocketbooks and make a much higher likelihood that you'll become a paying customer in the future. If you look at HubSpot's pricing for their main product suite, it is traditionally easy to enter and hard to weave. That's their whole product model. They want it to be super appealing at a free or very low paid rate and then once you reach a certain amount of data or contact, it instant it just jacks up so fast. So, it's free to get in at $0 a month for two users. And the moment you add on, you know, a certain number of credits, you get 500 HubSpot credits and a thousand contacts. You're already paying seven bucks a month. And the there's no gap between 7 and $800 a month. And it's not even that big of a difference between the two plans. You just get a bunch of these add-ons on top and all this AI [ __ ] that they want you to buy. But that's HubSpot's motto. And this is an even more extreme version of that because a lot of small businesses, a lot of you know oneperson businesses like angel investors apparently are building CRM and kind of vibe coding their own tools and HubSpot sees that customer return at the lower end of the market. So enterp um the AI native solo CRM built just for you. A self-building second brain for all your customer contacts if free. It just takes a minute. This is the way in. Yeah, this right here just AI swap. This whole page is AI swap. I hate the design and that's where it really pissed me off. I'm like, "Okay, you guys are an enterprise customer. You guys are an enterprise company doing millions of dollars a year. You can like invest into a landing page." Um, now we go to pricing. $1 a month. Again, let me let me get your let me get that credit card information. You know, I just I don't it's just $1. That's it. Just give me just give me a dollar. You know, you can use it for free. And in addition to that, they don't answer any of their company, their users questions on this totally vibecoded site. I guarantee you one of two things happened here. Mr. Darmsh kind of went off on a leash. And now the whole company is literally acting up to his PR campaign and saying, "Hey, we got to back our back our guy here. He's kind of going off on a whim." Or they're just like running around with chickens with their head cut off. But this is just really distasteful to me. I've never really liked HubSpot as a company. And this just kind of reinforces my existing beliefs. But let me know your guys's thoughts. You know, it's kind of piling on them a little bit admittedly with the whole enrichment drama and now something like this where they're just trying to basically get their hands in and get all your information. If look a little bit further at the post, he says you can connect Gmail, Google calendar, LinkedIn, X, Twitter, and other tools that you already use. You spot builds the context for you, who you know, what you've already talked about, what might need a follow-up, and which opportunities may deserve your attention. It can surface the relationships, follow-ups, and opportunities that matter instead of waiting for you to remember to update a record of creative task. These guys just want data, and you know, kudos to them. hiding it in a value additive appearing tool that we're saying we're only giving we're only going to charge you a dollar a month for is a much better way of saying of getting your customers data and getting new data rather than you know the subtle way that they did it before basically by opting everyone in and creating the whole PR crisis. So shout out to HubSpot, you know, doesn't surprise me. And if you're a marketer and want to transition off HubSpot, there's several other different options for you. And um yeah, it'll be interesting to track this and see where it goes.