Kipp Bodnar: The Unfair Digital Marketing Advantage That Drives Faster Business Growth | Marketing | YAPClassic

**Hala Taha** (0:03)
Hey, Young and Profitors, when I think back to the early days of YAP Media, I was way too scrappy. I'm talking about working out of coffee shops, bouncing between public Wi-Fi networks, and hotspotting from my phone just to get through on a client call without the connection dropping. But looking back, it was actually adding a lot of unnecessary stress, because you realize pretty quickly your business is only as strong as your connection. It's how you run meetings, serve clients, and keep everything moving. That's exactly why I wish I had AT&T Business back then. They're built for small business owners who need their Internet to work without second-guessing it. Once you've had that kind of reliability, you get real peace of mind. You can show up fully, close deals, serve your clients, and focus on growing your business without any of the stress. You need a provider that is as serious about your success as you are, like AT&T Business. Built to work, get AT&T Business at business.att.com.
Today's episode of Young and Profiting is sponsored in part by Shopify, Indeed, AT&T Business, and Northwest Registered Agent. Shopify is a global commerce platform that helps you grow your business. Start your $1 per month trial at shopify.com/profiting.
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**Kipp Bodnar** (1:53)
I don't have an MBA. I didn't work at McKinsey. I'm an untraditional marketing leader. Marketing is a game of Arbitrage. The best marketers in the world just figure out where their inefficiencies, where things are underpriced. They lean very aggressively into those things to get a really high return. The best entrepreneurs in the world are people who just get really irritated that a problem exists and just become maniacally focused and obsessed with solving it. You could do that whether you're a solopreneur, whether you're an executive at a company, doesn't matter.

**Hala Taha** (2:21)
I know that HubSpot actually coined the word inbound marketing. What inbound strategies are working?

**Kipp Bodnar** (2:28)
A few things.

**Hala Taha** (2:30)
YAP fam, you don't need the biggest budget to win at marketing. You need to spot the opportunity everyone else is missing. Today, we're bringing back my conversation with Kipp Bodnar, Chief Marketing Officer at HubSpot and one of the sharpest minds in digital marketing. In the YAPClassic, Kipp reveals why the biggest breakthroughs in business and marketing come from finding unfair advantages and seeking opportunities that others overlook. So if you're trying to build a brand that stands out in a crowded market, listen in. Here's my conversation with Kipp. Kipp, welcome to Young and Profiting Podcast.

**Kipp Bodnar** (3:01)
Hey, Hala. Thanks so much for having me. Excited to be here.

**Hala Taha** (3:03)
I am excited for this conversation. I love to talk about marketing and I was so impressed with your journey. When I was researching your story, I found out that you rose to CMO at HubSpot in just five years, which is absolutely incredible. So my first question to you is, what do you think set you apart from other employees at HubSpot and accelerated your career growth at the company?

**Kipp Bodnar** (3:27)
Look, I think accelerating a business career growth, it's all very similar. I think it's about how do you really focus on the small set of things that are going to give you the high magnitude of return? I think so often people get caught up in operational details or let everybody else kind of push their priorities on them, where you have to be like, you have to look at the situation and say, what are the three to five things that if I do, I will be ten times more successful than anybody else in the situation? And that's, I mean, it sounds simple, but it is the thing that I think matters the most.

**Hala Taha** (4:02)
Before you were joining HubSpot and you started there, you were actually an entrepreneur. So what were the advantages or disadvantages that you faced joining corporate already having entrepreneurship experience?

**Kipp Bodnar** (4:15)
I think the first side hustle entrepreneurship thing I had, I would go to like Sam's Club and Walmart and find like clearance items and flip them on eBay when I was in high school. And so I was always somebody who was obsessed with arbitrage, how to get by low and sell high, and where are the inefficiencies of a market. And one of the great things about marketing is that marketing is a game of arbitrage. The best marketers in the world just figure out where their inefficiencies, where things are underpriced. They lean very aggressively into those things to get a really high return. And so what happens when you go and work at a start up at the time, I think HubSpot was about 100 people when I joined, you go from just running really fast by yourself to needing to run really fast with a bunch of other people. And that's the biggest change.