Day In The Life: Meet Jean-Bernard Baptiste of HubSpot
Jean-Bernard Baptiste
Customer Success Manager, HubSpot.com
Boston, MA
Twitter:@jeanbbaptiste
6:45am: Yawn. I stare blankly at the ceiling, then hit the snooze button once. (This took years of practice.) Next, I check my GCal to see what calls and meetings I’ve got on the docket. I also catch up on all my group chats, from WhatsApp messages to Facebook updates. I admittedly have some FOMO and want to make sure I’m on top of the latest.
7:05am: I jump in the shower, then lay back down in bed and look through work emails. I check the weather via The Weather Channel App to see what I should wear. I’m that guy who switches button-down shirts at least twice on average before deciding on one.
7:20am: Up and at it. I head to the kitchen to join my girlfriend, Kristen, and make lunch for the day.
7:40am T time. I’ve lived in the Boston area my whole life (with the exception of the four years I was studying at Hobart College in Upstate New York), and I’ve gotten pretty good at navigating the MBTA Green Line. It takes anywhere from 45 to 60 minutes to get from my apartment to HubSpot’s office in Cambridge. I use the commute to listen to a couple podcasts: Freakonomics Radio with Stephen Dubner and Bill Simmons’ The Ringer.
8:35am: I walk from the train to HubSpot’s newest Boston building, “2 Canal” (per the physical street address). 2 Canal opened in February as our second office – and it’s conveniently right across the street from our other building. It’s a great new space, complete with soundproof telephone booths, a large event space with bleacher seating and an industrial kitchen, a ping-pong room, an indoor beer garden, a private outdoor patio, and – last but not least – a café staffed with a professional barista. I get my daily fix of free flavored cold brew from our cold brew keg. Believe it or not, free cold brew tastes much sweeter than the coffee you pay for!
9:00am: I sit down at my desk and sign in to Front App to respond to the emails I glanced at earlier in the morning. Front App is a shared inbox management app that helps teams effectively communicate with customers using a single email alias. At HubSpot, my five-person team works with a group of customers – businesses with all sorts of marketing needs. We help them use the HubSpot platform to do what it does best: Allow marketers to efficiently handle and manage their efforts by bringing their tools to one place.
10:00am: I start making customer calls and end up having a good discussion with a customer who represents a health club. We chat through some opportunities to increase the club’s customer lead generation by creating quality content to answer FAQs. This is all part of the company’s larger inbound marketing strategy that helps attract more customers.
11:00am: Team meeting time! My team gathers in a conference room, and we run through highlights from the weekend. Next we go over the month’s priorities and goals. We talk through ways to help each other and review reports from Salesforce, the customer relationship management system we use to keep track of our customers.
12:00pm: I logout of my email and check out Reddit to read through trending sports and news articles before heading outside for lunch. I head across the street to Canal Park, sitting by the Charles River and eating. I try to avoid screens and just enjoy the beautiful surroundings.
2:00pm: Back in the office, I head into Product Nation, our monthly sales meeting. I think the name stems from the idea underlying the purpose of the meeting: to bring together people from all different departments to give their perspective and feedback on our product. We discuss a couple new HubSpot sales tools that our engineers are currently developing and get a sneak peek of what’s going to be released, which is sweet. When we’ve wrapped up, I go catch the rest of my team up on any major upcoming changes so everyone’s prepared to reply to our customers when questions come up.
3:00pm: Back to customer calls. I speak with a new VP of marketing at one of the companies I work with. It’s really useful to learn about his professional background and interests and to start building our relationship. Being a trusted advisor for businesses can be scary, but with time comes confidence. My favorite part of the job is working with different people to find ways to help their business grow through inbound marketing.
5:00pm: Work’s done for the day! I make my way over to the PubSpot, the HubSpot employee beer garden, after checking the @PubSpot Twitter feed to see what beer is on tap. The beer garden brings together employees from all across the company and is complete with a popcorn maker, a wine cooler fridge, beer, and snacks.
5:25pm: I ride the T while listening to a particularly hysterical episode of the comedy podcast WTF.
6:00pm: I get home and immediately jump into sweats. I flip on the TV and catch up on last night’s Silicon Valley, which I’m pretty much never able to stay up late enough to watch in real time (PSA: Adult life is nothing like college).
7:00pm: Kristen and I try to plan out meals for most of the week. Tonight’s menu: Cheese and chicken taquitos with fruits and veggies on the side. I’m tasked with handling the slicing and dicing.
9:00pm: ROMWOD time. You’re probably thinking, ‘What the heck is that?’ ROMWOD is a daily guided online stretching routine to help boost your performance and range of motion. Is it yoga? Kind of. It’s based on ancient Kung Fu techniques, and it opens your joints and helps with your flexibility and range of motion. Each day’s routine is different, and while it can be painful, it’s really rewarding.
10:00pm: I head to bed, scanning Twitter and Instagram one last time for the day. I set up Sleep Cycle, an app that analyzes your sleep patterns and sets your morning alarm for what it determines to be the optimal time (i.e. when you’re sleeping your lightest). Goodnight!
Images by Maggie Main
