Value-First Measurement - Mar 23, 2026

[00:02] **Introduction** Chris Carolan: Good morning, good afternoon, LinkedIn friends. Value-First Nation, welcome to another episode of Value-First Measurement here with Danielle Urban, talking about uh, data unification today. Danielle, how are you doing?

[00:16] **Monday Headspins** Danielle Urban: I'm doing great. I, yeah, my head is spinning already and I'm only halfway through a Monday.

[00:23] **Data Unification Discussion** Chris Carolan: Right? Um, and I think we find ourselves there sometimes because it's like people come, they're so like this is why we're doing Hubspot and we, we, we help them create these kind of grand goals like data unification, let's say. But then the how is like completely like separate from that. So something I've been thinking about recently is as you get teams or leaders understanding of like, okay, this thing needs to happen for you to everything you want, everything you say you want, will be served by, you know, bring your data together, bring your contacts together. Um, how do we know when we're done doing that?

[01:20] **Ongoing Scope Creep** Danielle Urban: I, I really struggle with that. That's where my worst scope creep is with clients because I'm like, oh wait, let's just test that. Let's just tweak that and it'll be fine. Uh, and I am doing that today pretty hardcore. But it's all in the name of like making an efficient system and making a system that makes sense to people. Um, and so when you pose the question, can you measure data unification? It's one of those like ambiguous metrics that maybe some HR team has figured out, but like the human efficiency and happiness in using the system that's unifying the data is really a huge piece of it because I'm, I'm deep in this project. I just spent two hours training everybody on the systems I built for them inside of Hubspot and it's also their very first introduction to Hubspot. Uh, which as someone who's architecting like crazy engineered enterprise systems on a regular, pretty regular basis to pull that down to like, here's what a contact record is and how it relates to other things and why this matters and how that plays out and how you interact with the tool. Um, is so important, but a huge piece of that and making it easy for them to use is just stripping out anything extra. I'm creating all these custom views for them that look across objects and are just answering the questions that they need when they land on that page. Um, and so the thing that I wish someone could tell me how to measure because then I would have like real numbers to put in front of prospective clients. It's like their, their relative happiness in using this tool compared to their previous stack will be massive, but I, that's not something I can put a number on.

[03:05] **Adoption Rates and Usage** Chris Carolan: Right. Yeah, I think that's definitely our challenge right now. Um, we do know that the concept of unifying data is related to like adoption rates. Um, and usage of the platform, which I think is, you know, when we're trying to keep everything objective, you know, you go to like how many people, how many times are people logging in and which tools are they using and like, but that often misses, you know, a lot in terms of if there's still things happening outside of the system, usually you can look to that to understand like, okay, clearly that part's not, not unified. Um, so and it's, and we also know it's not like just get all of the data in there, right?

[04:02] **Debrief on Data Architecture Work** Chris Carolan: Like so, as you, um, since this is so fresh for you, like what some takeaways, uh, maybe debrief a little bit like having to come down from this like data architecture heavy build level to talk to people about what a contact record is, like what was resonating? What was, what were you feeling in these moments?

[04:25] **Resetting and Revisiting Documentation** Danielle Urban: Um, it's a good reset. Like you, you really have to be able to explain what it is you're building at the most basic level. Um, and it's a good way to revisit documentation, which I hate to say out loud because everybody hates documentation. Um, but I live and die by my mural boards. And so I was pulling up my mural board to walk this team through what I had built and what connects where. Uh, because as I move across objects in their account from, you know, payment, subscriptions, invoices, deals, contacts, companies, all of that comes together in a single transaction. And I'm like, yeah, actually, this is, this is a lot, but I don't think I can simplify it because a lot of this is like system standard. Uh, and so here's how you use it. Here's what this means. Here's what you can ignore. Um, and it was a good test for me to make sure I had all the pieces connected, which I was like, maybe I need to just do this one more time beginning to end. Um, but I, I've built at least a, a version one of documentation to hand back to them that was looking at all of the objects and how they played together and that was sort of how I approached this project months ago when we started, um, to say what, what are we going to take advantage of in this system? What are we going to move from other systems into this system? Um, and how are they going to relate in a way that represents your business accurately. Uh, but is also approachable for a team who's never used this platform before. Um, and so now that we're at this sort of final stage of teaching them how it all works, there's this learning curve that I'm struggling to, to pull them through of like, this is how the platform works, but this is how you use the, the things that I built in the platform for you. So to get them from, you know, you can function and do your day-to-day job and, you know, tweak things and adjust your views and make it make sense for you to the point where they're building their own workflows or they're editing workflows I've already created for them and understanding how things connect. Like I do not expect them within the year to be able to build like an association workflow and bridge the gap if anything else comes up or breaks. Like that's, and I, I hate that. Like I, I very much stand by. I want you to have a complete system that works that you understand that I can hand back to you. I, I don't want a maintenance retainer, but at some point, there has to be just while they work through that learning curve and get used to using it. Um, and that's been something I, I really struggle with. Like I want to teach them everything, but there's only so much they can take in on a day by day basis.

[07:25] **Custom Record Views** Chris Carolan: Yeah, I, I think this, this resonates a lot because George on his podcast right now, they just started a series, him, Chad, and Max, like of customization of record views, right?

[07:41] **Custom Views Discussion** Danielle Urban: It's my favorite. I should go hang out.

[07:42] **Custom Views Discussion (Cont.)** Chris Carolan: Uh, which what we're, we're talking about here. Usually we build all of this stuff to make a record views themselves like easier, right? And but once you know all the different kinds of cards and all the different like configuration of conditional versus filter views and like who's using it when, like all of what we've always wanted is now possible. Yeah. And but as I'm hearing them go through like left sidebar and this is what, this is how you do this and this and this. And then middle sidebar. They didn't even get to the right sidebar. Like right. one episode. But as they get into the middle sidebar, it's like you could have this kind of card and this kind of card and like the week after they did part one, like Breeze Agents as a CRM record card shows up and it's just like, it could be, I know for most it's like, okay, that's just like to blow up your record.

[08:51] **Unified Customer View** Chris Carolan: Yeah. Um, but I, I already reached out and I said, George, let's like give me, like whenever it feels right, let me talk about Unified Customer View. Yeah. Because it is a frame framing to be like, okay, we can pretty much do whatever we want inside of a record view now. Yes. How are we going to decide what that is, right? And because that's also the bridge that needs to be built to enable teams to know how to use associations effectively and know that if they make a change over here, it's going to impact this team and this team and this team. Right. Um, so I think again, unified customer view strikes again, uh, as far as just a way to like help people not get um, I forget the word that you used. Like the, they, they need to move through this learning curve without overwhelm.

[09:59] **Overwhelm** Danielle Urban: Yeah. Because like the overwhelm is what gets in the way of the embracing the complexity. Exactly. required, right?

[10:09] **Learning Curves** Chris Carolan: So, if you like so what would you think a team like backing up a little bit, when you think they're not going to be ready until next year? Like what reasons are you seeing or reasons that you're used to, what they need to learn first before they would be ready?

[10:30] **List Management** Danielle Urban: Yeah, one of the things we've been stuck on is um, list management and segments because they've used other tools that are a list of emails. And so what they're coming to the conversation knowing is, I have a list of emails that I need to update to send email messages to. Like I have a list of email addresses, I need to update this list and then we send email messages to them. And so layering in the concept of active lists and contact records is like completely new. And I'm very excited about the potential and I have to stop myself from being like, and you can do this and you can do this and you can do this and look at cross objects and whatever. And I did touch on that and I've recorded myself at least four different ways of like how to sort of coach them through this process. But um, we were going back and forth about how to update active lists and why we're using active lists in one case and the way that it connects to all the other systems and why it's managed in active list is very important. Um, and we, we briefly talked today like, do we want to simplify this process to just be list of email addresses that we send messages to and ultimately landed on no because of the downstream impact and because of the work that we're saving everybody else in this process for their jobs. And we were in complete agreement, but we needed to sort of frame that understanding of like, here's why we built it this way, here's why you're seeing it this way and here's how you update it. Even though this is new and scary and different, this is how we're going to do it. It's not just because I'm being a jerk. Like it's just that it has such a wide reaching impact. And you know, helping them understand that a contact record is not an email address and that a list even though you name it something still has some underlying metadata that has like a list ID and that's what's linking the systems together. And so getting to the point where they could understand that on their own without me having to explain it in every case where it matters, I feel like is the learning curve that I don't know how to teach to overcome that. Like to go from this is what a contact is and how a contact ends up on a list, um, in various ways because there are lots of ways that that happens with active lists and static lists and workflows. Um, and then getting to the point where they could have made that decision themselves that no, we need to do it as an active list and manage it this way because it has downstream impact. Like that gap is what I hope to overcome with them and I, I would love to get them to the point where they have that level of expertise. Um, and I, I see a path because they've built some of this alongside me and they're they're understanding that and it's just sort of the the knowledge among the team, people have worked to to be able to get their jobs done or help me set up something relevant to their role. Um, but then getting that knowledge across the rest of the team to know these are how the pieces fit together. Um, I actually really loved, I was planning to do role-based training and they were like, actually, we want to invite everybody. I'm like, okay. So we did that, but I think it's really helpful. Even if people have to check out, I don't care. Like we have a recording if you have questions, but now everybody's at least getting a background track of my voice telling them how everything works and fits together. Um, and I my sister is a first grade teacher. I should have tapped into her for some lesson planning here. But um, we I just sort of launched into like, here's how your process works and thinking through it as role-based training. This is how you do X. This is what happens next. This is how it gets done. Um, because we've, we've covered some of the basic architecture, like what is an object. Um, but still to sort of carry them through that, here's how to do your job today to, here's how you build a system like this or maintain a system like this. Feels like there are a lot of steps that I may never cover because I won't have the opportunity to with this particular client, but you know, how necessary is that. Maybe they do just need to do their jobs and keep someone like me around. But that's not what I want. I want you to understand it.

[16:07] **Surface of Work** Chris Carolan: Well, that's where we go with like, I think where we all want to go with the record views. Um, and what Hubspot is making possible now is this single like surface of we're going to help you do your job in this moment. Like Yeah. We would love for you to see, we would love for you to understand how Hubspot really works. But is it going to get there, right? Uh, and it's almost like through osmosis because it's a complex relational database. And unless we make it easy for you to do your daily job, like you're never going to get to the next layer. No matter how bad you want to, right? As the user because we're going to start like Hubspot makes it so easy to be like, oh, okay, I understand that now. I'm going to add it here, right? Yeah. And then like all of a sudden your process changes and you don't understand why and it's because you didn't click in the same direction as you did last time, right? And now like if we can just get the context together, right? Is what the is where the exposure comes from, oh, now I'm starting to understand how a deal is associated and why the deal is going to impact my active list over here. Right. Instead of me importing the list from the trade show every single time we go to a trade. Like that stuff is happening everywhere. Meanwhile, if you get those relationships right, it activates all of Hubspot, right?

[17:52] **Avoid Tedious Work** Danielle Urban: And that's where I have to stop myself from getting so excited because I'm like, if you guys could just be lazy and question everything that you hate about your job every day, then you would learn how to use this system to the depth that I have because it's really just that I hate tedious work. I don't ever want to click in boxes and do the same thing over and over again. And that has led me over the course of what do we have? 13 years now of using this system to just constantly push the limits of like, man, this sucks, I don't want to do this. How do I make it easier? And there's almost always an answer and if there isn't, then I get mad and try to make an answer. But that also helps you learn how things work because now I have a deep understanding of the Hubspot APIs that I never would have before when I'm like, man, this sucks, I have to type everything in, I'm making typos, this isn't going to work. Well, let me just run a Google app script that auto creates everything for me. I would never have even thought to do that if I didn't get mad that I had to sit there and type things in. But I think that's the best way to at least position it is like, if you hate this, don't do it. Like question why you have to do it. And let's figure out a better way, whether it's my help, whether it's you Googling, using hub help or Harry, like anything, let's figure out the resources that let you offload the work you hate doing, which is a very AI sounding statement, but it's even true inside of like learning basic systems. It really helps you, you know, push the limits.

[19:18] **Hubspot Transition** Chris Carolan: Yeah, and that's is the hard part of the transition into Hubspot, like if you've never been here before, like it's a pretty nice place to be. Yeah. Compared to like every other system you might have experienced in business. Yeah. And we definitely take it for granted inside of the ecosystem, but like the the importability and maybe this is why people have built the habit of import because it is really easy to just do that over and over and then here's the list. You can do it. You can do the whole process right from the import screen to like email sent, right? And you don't need to know how the rest of Hubspot works at all, right? Um, but like to stop and just think like, should I be doing that like every time? And especially as you get more teams involved, right? That's where it starts to break in terms of people get really excited about the system working for them and then you import the list again and now all of a sudden like what I did last time isn't being applied to the work I did this time, right? Um, so I think we're going to continue uh attacking this specific issue. Uh, and if anything right now, I'm thinking like one of the ways that you can measure this situation because so much, so much of this is like, are we done migrating yet or are we done with this you know, implementation yet? It's like how many questions per week are you getting asked like, where is this or I don't see this or why why do I have to get this out of my inbox still, right? Like there was, I think there are some questions we, we can start to measure. Um, and again, AI comes in and starts to help you like take a look at Slack, take a look at wherever these questions are coming from and it can very quickly tabulate, you know, how much of this is happening. So we'll continue uh this conversation next week. Uh, excited that you got to kind of bring it down. Yeah. level.

[21:15] **Reporting Next Week** Danielle Urban: More coming too. We are, I think next time we're covering reporting is one of our things. So that'll really that'll really humble me. ability.

[21:27] **Closing** Chris Carolan: Oh, the journey continues. Uh, Value-First Measurement. Thanks so much, Danielle. Thank you. Great week everybody.