Value-First Partner - Mar 26, 2026

[00:03] **Introduction** Chris Carolan: Good morning, LinkedIn friends, Value First Nation. Welcome to another episode of Value First Partner. Here with our favorites, uh, Value First partner, Crispy Barnett, how are you doing, man?

Crispy Barnett: Doing well. Excited to be here. It's be fun.

[00:21] **Discussing The Qualification Trap** Chris Carolan: It's going to be fun. Uh, it's been a little bit. So, to catch you up on our first episode, we talked about the qualification trap, uh, which is on the other side of Value First partner. And you know, big believer in uh, universe timing and all that stuff, um, that we get to talk about uh, you to start going through these commitments, uh, related to Value First partner, uh, at a moment where things are happening that are very interesting inside of the HubSpot partner ecosystem right now that may or may not be indicative of either traps or commitments, uh, that we're going to touch on. Um, but in usual fashion, when we're just talking about these manifestos and these commitments, I'm going to share uh, the commitment, uh, one of seven today, uh, and then we'll we'll dive in. But to set up the manifesto itself, and we believe partnership should create mutual value and shared growth, not extract value from one another. In our pursuit of transformative collaboration, we commit to these principles. Principle number one, we will create mutual value, not extract it from partners. We recognize that sustainable partnerships require both parties to benefit. We will design relationships where value flows in both directions, rather than treating partners as resources to be exploited for our gain. Um, what what come what comes to mind, man, as I read that out loud?

[02:47] **Partnerships Becoming A Game of Chicken** Crispy Barnett: Man, uh, a lot in the sense of uh, partnerships often become a game of chicken in the sense of who will be the first to show value to the other and it is very much anti that mantra between partners nowadays in our ecosystem.

[03:09] **Getting Hit From All Sides** Chris Carolan: Yeah, and I'm happy to talk to you about it because like you've been kind of hit it from all sides. Uh, you know, all the way from, you know, the individual, you know, days of just trying to get stuff done for people on Fiverr and like as a freelancer to like owning your own partner and uh, you know, exiting and moving across to to other partners and then at Super and now you're you're you're over here, um, with with um, Zipio. Uh, like what, why is this? Like what happens when you approach a partnership from this direction of of like let's get let's grow together.

[04:09] **The Issue with Partnering and Solution Partners** Crispy Barnett: Yeah, I I think one of the root causes of this, especially and I know this from when I was an app partner land is that most people do not understand how solutions partners work. Like agencies are not a hard business model uh by any means in the sense of understanding how they service customers to make money. But the thing that I think most app partners do not realize is that it's really hard to build a business around a new partnership in the HubSpot ecosystem when you're not a billion dollar company. That's the difference is that most of our HubSpot partners will build businesses around HubSpot because HubSpot has longevity, HubSpot has lead flow, HubSpot has partners, they rely on the partner program. And so it's hard to enter into the ecosystem with a partner program and expected it to be successful um in comparison to what HubSpot does directly. Uh the second part of that is that I believe solutions partners are unwilling to explore new partnerships in serious ways. It's very much a I'll sign up for Partner Stack and call it a day and then I'll get to it when I have time. Most solutions partners don't have time because people are your product. And so it's this vicious cycle of you can't grow your partner program without having either a deep connection to the way that solutions partners operate or have a really compelling offering that plugs into an existing service because when you try to get solutions partners to activate new things or build new services, their priority will always be finding new customers and servicing them, not learning about new partnerships that could potentially help them. That's just the way the way it is.

[06:13] **Seeing Partnerships As Another Sales Channel** Chris Carolan: Yeah. And is this the way it is just because it's always somehow it's always seen as like you know, sales channel, like first and foremost and then maybe we talk about other ways to work together.

[06:26] **Partner Networks and Lead Flow** Crispy Barnett: Yeah, essentially it's I mean it's very much a the only reason that an app partner would want to build a partner channel out is to drive leads and create a sales engine outside of their own business, which becomes a partner network. And usually it doesn't work unless you're a giant company that already has lead flow to offer as an olive branch if you will, in the relationship to begin. And then that lead flow will will reciprocate from those partners. But even then, it doesn't work all that much. Like I I don't see it happen very often. Um, unless the product fulfills a gap in HubSpot's functionality and the partner has to require it to solve for the customer. That's the only use case that I've really seen that is uh that that works in the Hubspot ecosystem. Like I think a Pandadoc back in the day mainly, like when I I was a Pandadoc partner. Um, HubSpot's CPQ solution doesn't, it sucks honestly, it's not good. Uh, and Pandadoc's Pandadoc does have a good CPQ solution. So only use case that I've seen where uh partners are forced to recommend things is when it fulfills a gap and a customer need, right?

[07:40] **Being Creative When There Isn't a Specific Pain** Chris Carolan: Yeah, and without that specific pain, um, you know, trying to get inside into the conversations, you know, where you want like the billion dollar company is driving the conversation and that solution, like you got to get creative. I I think, right? And um, so what have you like outside of just we definitely talked about in the first episode like, don't just show up with 20%. Like I don't care, like don't like usually not close to what I'm going to make in all these other ways. So if you're just showing up with 20%, you know, commissions like okay, cool to know you exist, but yeah, moving on to the next person. Like what do you have to what else uh do you have to bring?

[08:56] **Compelling Partner Programs and Go-To-Market Strategies** Crispy Barnett: Yeah, I think that um to build a really compelling partner program, you need to have very strong go-to-market offerings to partners because I think that in in the new age of the way that AI is evolving and tech is evolving and new systems are coming out. Like the amount of fucking DMs that I get on a weekly basis from people that are vibe coding platforms is shocking. And and so the way that tech is evolving and the way that you can just create whatever you want now, uh, go-to-market will become competitive advantage for people. That will be the thing that distinguishes companies is who has the best go-to-market. So, as a partner program, thinking about, how can you promote partners in the sense of content curation, go to market strategy, offerings that can be, you know, turn key as turn key as possible for them to give them that competitive advantage, both for the service that your product integrates in in their business and generally within their own market.

[10:11] **Approaching Partner Programs** Chris Carolan: Yeah. Then there's a bunch of people like wanting to approach it from that direction. And uh, it is kind of like this is where it's like if if you're used to the game of chicken where the value has been defined as some amount of money, right? It's like you can't play that game because they have not defined it as value on their side. Right? Because when somebody would show up and this still happens now, it's very easy for me to, you know, sort out like who I want to work with based on this. It's like, hey, I appreciate, you know, the system that you're working in somebody required you somewhere to tell me that you're going to give me 20%. But what if because I don't see you anywhere on LinkedIn, how about we just do an unboxing? And that's how we can provide value. And it's like some people are like, yeah, let's do that. Others are like, you can see it on their face, they have no idea how to evaluate that offer, right?

[11:24] **Competitive Advantage In Partner Programs** Crispy Barnett: Yeah. It's interesting. It's uh, you're you're totally right. And I think that uh, there's there's also this uh element of the go-to market strategy and and it becoming competitive advantage in the partner program is a double-edged sword. Because if you grow to, you know, 200 partners plus, it's no longer competitive advantage because you've saturated the market with a really good go to market offering and you've risen the standard within the market, which means it's no longer unique to anyone. And so uh, the best example that I've seen of how someone has solved this is Clay. Clay has stopped accepting new partners, which is awesome because right now they're in a redefinition phase of their partner program and they're going to weed out a whole bunch of people, or a whole bunch of companies that are not good partners and only focus on the, you know, top of the table in their partner program and give the go-to market strategy to those top partners. That is the best way to do it.

[12:40] **HubSpot's Partner Program** Chris Carolan: Yeah. That's a great segue uh into some choices HubSpot has been making uh recently. And even as we move over in this direction, like whether it's from the bottom or or from the top, I think like if you if you're in a spot where somebody could say let's let's co-market together and you have no idea how to evaluate that because your whole program's built around 20%, like this this is why these these commitments, mutual value instead of value extraction. You can literally ask me directly is 20% going to help me grow? And it's very likely that I that's an easy no, right? But the ability to just co-market and take a little bit of the burden off of like showing up in this way, huge, like yeah, that's more audience, like that's like guaranteed in those situations if you're not showing up and now you get to show up. It's it's more eyeballs, it's it's more exposure than than you would have had before and most of the time you can go back to you know, the leadership team and say, hey, this this is this form of growth. It's a different form of value but it makes sense because we've been struggling to, you know, get the name out there. Right? So from the bottom. Now from the top and uh, you know, go wherever you want to go with this. Uh, HubSpot and like the partner program, right? And I hope we get to, you know, defining the word partner is is important I think and just the many different ways that we can show up as partners in a market together, right? Because very recently, um, HubSpot said they're sunsetting the Solutions Provider program uh in August. And um, aside from the fact that it's always been kind of, you know, hard to understand Solutions Provider versus Solutions Partner and even within those lanes, like who are you? How much do you actually know about HubSpot? Like do the certifications you try like it's been hard to say, okay, you are going to be the partner that can help our business for sure, right? Which is which is a solve that like HubSpot's responsible for for solving that problem in my opinion. Um, and so, like if you can respond to that in terms of like the challenges you've seen and how you've maybe like, you know, advised your other, you know, uh colleagues within within your orgs, but even talking to partner, talking to HubSpot themselves, how they navigate to get to like helping with some of the clarity, you know, inside of the market.

[17:04] **Partner Motion In Hubspot** Crispy Barnett: Yeah, um, that's a good question. Uh, I don't think HubSpot fully knows what it's doing when it comes to partner motion all that much. Like a good example of this is um, so I was a provider first for like two days and then I became a HubSpot partner back when I began my journey because I quickly realized the competitive difference that partner had compared to provider was double the commission and it was lifetime at that point in time. So then now that no longer exists in any tier, which is like fucking stupid, number one. And then number two, when they came out with stuff like accreditations, which gives you, you know, prioritized uh routing of like leads and big deals that they work with. That further like corrupted the idea of what a provider would be. Like it basically destroyed the provider program at that point in time when accreditations were released years ago. But this was not a thing that was just random that should have surprised the ecosystem. Like providers have been getting suppressed more and more and more with the partner motions that have been happening. Uh, and I I have a a weird theory on this uh and I and I believe it's because partners know the product better than most sales reps do at HubSpot in my opinion and I would venture that out into most solutions engineers as well. Like the SEs at Hubspot are generally unimpressive in my experience. Like I'm just I've never been impressed by a solutions engineer that knows the product as well as anyone else. And I can say that as winner of the Ad Min Arena. Like I'm a fucking baller in Hubspot. I know that. And no one can touch my shit when it comes to solution to engineering. Like no one. And so focusing on the partner motion, I think they're forced to do so as a crutch to validate and prove the use case to their leads that they're their uh AE teams are working through partners because they're so good at designing the solutions and using that as a vessel to get deals closed, not the SE team that exists. I've always been unimpressed by SEs generally. And so providers, again, you're not accredited, you're not a partner, you don't have the same resources. You're usually a solo person if you're a provider. That combination of things means that you are not valuable as someone who can drive revenue for Hubspot. I think that's why the provider program shut down.

[20:17] **Channel Consultants and Mutual Value** Chris Carolan: Yeah. No, totally agree. And that's where it brings us to the sales channel concept and like how it's at odds with what we're suggesting like mutual value, mutual growth. Because the moment that I started talking to, you know, at that time it was channel channel consultant and channel sales manager, it was easy to see that this was being considered some sort of profit center or revenue channel coming into HubSpot, the partners themselves paying for HubSpot licensing, right? Or else why can't we just it's like, if if you guys had some tools that could help us, you know, sell this like a CRM or something, I don't know, it'd be cool to just, you know, you know, share it with us. Uh, yet the negotiations around pricing as a partner for HubSpot made it very clear that's like, okay, I'm just a customer at this point like during this conversation. Yep, right? And like when like related to all the traps we talk about and this is why Value First exists, like I get it when somebody's at the top saying, okay, this the the Solutions partner program, like there's a number there that we need this amount of money coming in from partners. Like I get why they have to like, you know, act like that. But it's completely counter to the feeling like are we supported? Like it's not mutual, it feels like extraction, right?

[22:03] **Retaining Customers In Hubspot** Crispy Barnett: Oh, for sure. Chris Carolan: And uh, this conversation that's been spun up. I agree with you, there should be no surprise to anybody. For me it's more of um, like since 2020, once you saw them decide enterprise and product at all costs. It's like everything that didn't touch that at the end of the year, it's like, okay, we're chopping that, right? And now like 2026 like Solution Provider program finally, finally got chopped, finally was high enough on the list. Um, but the way that that the conversation around it is interesting. I'd love your thoughts because we know and it's been understood from the inside and when you talk about retention and adoption challenges, but also like how that leads to success. There is an understanding of how important the individuals in the ecosystem are that have individual expertise that can come in and say, you know, we see it every day, you know, on the primarily marketplace where it's like, hey, like literally just yesterday somebody was posted like, we need Hubspot to work for operations. Right? We bought sales hub Enterprise. So we're getting the sales hub onboarding right now and it's clear that this person onboarding us cannot do this other stuff. So now they're looking for more help. Um, as this community of like coaches and consultants, like how would you, I mean does it resonate first like that there is value there for HubSpot uh in terms of we got the partner pro, we need to sell, we need as much help selling as we can get, totally, totally understand that. But it's clear that you also need that on the other side of like adoption and even onboarding in this case, a group outside of HubSpot that clearly understands, you know, specific market, vertical, horizontal, like whatever, however you want to put it.

[25:15] **HubSpot Is VC Roulette With The Partner Program** Crispy Barnett: Um, I I think HubSpot is almost playing like the the VC roulette game with the partner program to a certain degree. So a good example of this is uh partners could stop selling Hubspot altogether and that is still two and a half million dollars per year, maybe more, probably more to be honest, from the partner program with the way that they've designed it. So they've put all these little bets and all these little businesses that will continuously pay them every month. And the gravy for Hubspot is if those businesses become sales channels or referrers of other types of business, it just compounds upon itself. And so I think either way HubSpot wins, which is kind of the fucked up piece about it that people don't really understand. And the mindset that I'd recommend people go into it with is um lean into it. Lean into it, which is if you can become a real technical expert, that will be the competitive advantage in partner ecosystem is who is going to like I said I'm seeing these badges and all this stuff as of late where we see uh like they're industry certified or something like that. I think this is more I think it's more stupid bullshit that is forcing partners to play the rat race and play the political game so that people continue to build their business around Hubspot and the partner program does not collapse is what it is. It's very much a carrot that is being dangled in front of them. It's the same thing for when the um the MDF uh funds were created when lifetime commission ended and now partners are getting paid out yearly by Hubspot to compensate for that number. Same exact thing.

[27:31] **You Don't Have to Figure Out a Way to Measure Value** Chris Carolan: So, if you were, let's say, um so the thing that sticks with me is like again and Value First is specifically trying to take on this challenge of just because it's not measurable, doesn't mean one, it's not valuable and two, you don't have to figure out a way to measure it. Like, right? And because that's what I'm seeing where I I think the the conversation around $15 a month versus $400 a month. Like that's not a productive conversation at all. Like if you position yourself as an expert, like that should not be the stopper here, right? Um, but when you know that there is value being created from this group of people and they don't their value is not selling more Hubspot and it's not building Hubspot on behalf of people. It's helping people know how to use HubSpot so that they will stay customers and like there's value understood related to retention and adoption metric specifically, right? But they don't know how to incentivize this group of people because it's hard to measure, it's not sales. If you were in that position where it's like, hey, we need to like this this group is just as important as this group and we we can't like we don't just get to say, oh it's hard to measure, so we're not going to do it. Um, but it clearly doesn't belong in a sales channel because they're not selling. What are are there any other ways for Hubspot to say like and support, you know, this group of people or should this group of people just be like, we know that we're going to be fighting on behalf of Hubspot and we shouldn't expect any anything from their side.

[30:03] **Look Out For Your Own Business First** Crispy Barnett: I think it's wise to go in with the ladder mindset because you'll never be disappointed. And it's a very pessimistic attitude ultimately, but I can say this as someone who's now been part of three solutions partner businesses. And and this is my final one. I'll say that and I'm not building a business around HubSpot for a reason because I've been through this fucking rat race many times before and I know how the game is played and I know the political channels and the people and all these other things that carry the most amount of impact compared to technical depth or amount of revenue or anything like that. Political politics will always prevail, which is like fucking stupid. Uh, in addition, the thing to do, if we're thinking about value first is uh, the best partner look out for is your own business, number one. And figuring out how you can like kind of flip flip the table in the sense of how can I use this partner to drive value for me? And that's exactly how the Hubspot partner program works. Flip the mindset, treat yourself as the partner, treat yourself as the HubSpot. I would argue that most Hubspot partners, especially those in the platinum diamond elite tier, likely prioritize Hubspot above their own business, which is wild to me. Wild to me. Do not do that should be the lesson from this. Like your business is number one, not Hubspot.

[32:00] **Individual Hubspot Coaches** Chris Carolan: Yeah. Yeah, no, I I agree. Um, that said, and again, if you can come think of it like if there's anything to be had like Yeah. if Hubspot can help you, right, grow in any way because it's just the platform that we like and like for all the reasons that we're here in the first place, right? Because you really don't have to pay attention to any of the partner program stuff and you can still drive a lot of value thanks to Hubspot. And it's stuff like like if you're an individual coach or consultant like inbound correspondence, you know, program, right? Like can showing up in the community in different ways, right? To where you can where you can impact users directly. Reddit is another example. Like when you're showing up and you're just answering questions, like and you know that Hubspot's probably not going to do that. There's a huge gap there that they're leaving open for anybody because you also know Hubspot Solution partners are not incentivized at all to do that other than the go-to market strategy that like they're actually highly incentivized to do that. They're just not going to do it. Yes. Right? So there's a space. So I think the only way to get there is like, what do I need from Hubspot? And at the end of the day, if all we're going to get is Hubspot product, but if that also means access to Hubspot product managers and building these other relationships in the community, ton of value to be had. And that's where just like the partners that show up, the app partners that say, hey, here's 20%. It's like, okay, cool, how about this instead? If you show up in this way, like Hubspot really doesn't know what to do with these group, this group of people. Like in my opinion. And meanwhile, we know on the community side, like they're like, yeah, like come on in. Like let let their support is growing there that we've seen like inbound correspondence program last year. Um, and they need help. Like they are the billion dollar organization that needs help with understanding how to harness the community effort, right? And if you're willing to say, okay, being known in this community is going to help me, there's plenty of opportunity to go and make that happen, you know, for yourself, right?

[35:34] **Mutual Value, On Both Sides** Chris Carolan: So, uh, yeah. Timely, timely commitment number one here. Uh, I do think it's that simple, folks. Like mutual value, decide on what that can be on both sides, right? At the end of the day, helping people a platform like Hubspot, any SAS tool, using AI, right? It's going to drive value for that platform. They're not going to see you, they're not going to acknowledge you for doing it. But if that's all you get, you can show up in your way, right? Next week uh we're going to be talking about commitment too. Uh we will build genuine relationships, not transactional exchanges. Yeah. Uh so we'll be back next week for more spicy conversations around how to be better partners and value first partners. Uh thanks so much. It was a great, great talking to you, man.

Crispy Barnett: Sounds good. Thank you, sir.