A dreary, grey day in London, immediately maybe brighter as we enter Hypergrowth. Full of colour!
We start the day with coffee and pastries and are ushered into the main room. Boom! We start with Grace Savage who is a beatboxing champion to wake us up. Let me tell you - after that UK Garage mix, I was awake (if a little confused as to whether I walked into the wrong venue).
Then, the conference truly gets started. Drift, a tool which sits firmly in the inbound marketing suite, organises Hypergrowth in three cities across the world this year, bringing inspirational speakers and interesting findings. Let me tell you about the highlights of the day. The main things that resonated with me are:
- Be courageous
- Be human
- Listen
- Don’t be a spork
- Don’t risk too little
We start with a ‘fireside chat’ with Victoria Pendleton, CBE. She’s won three Olympic medals in cycling, then became a jockey and races at Cheltenham, attempted to climb Mount Everest and is currently training for a motorcycle race.
She seems insanely driven and always wants to learn more, experience life and everything it has to offer. What we learn from her is that magic happens outside of your comfort zone.
Charlotte Pearce is the founder of Inkpact. She speaks about love and why it is important in business, as well as in life - why businesses who succeed at loving their customers, will ultimately become those companies people come back to.
Nowadays, people buy into a brand’s mission. Becoming transparent and taking a stand becomes more and more important as customers are looking for a human connection. She uses personal experience to show us examples of how this works and you can tell it comes from a genuine place.
Right, time for a caffeine top-up.
Brian Halligan, HubSpot’s CEO made it to the event! He sits down with Drift’s CEO David Cancel to talk about how HubSpot has grown, where it is now and what he would recommend new starting businesses do.
He notes that actually,
“The key to scaling is not saying yes; it’s saying no.” and that “it’s no longer the business first to market that wins, it’s the first that brings the end-to-end experience”
Nowadays, USPs are very short-lived, as other companies swoop in and offer the same thing, so the way you deliver your service is what will stand out.
“Be an experience disruptor, not a product disruptor.”
And then, mid-afternoon…there it is! A new product announcement by Drift! They have unveiled the launch of Drift | Video, an addition to their conversational suite, to help easily create and share videos. Yes, other platforms already support recording and sharing videos, but their aim is for these videos to help start conversations. Drift | Video wants to create a better buying experience, by integrating video with chat. You can get a notification in real-time while someone is watching your video, then hop right in and say hello!
They offer a completely free plan which is available now on their website.
Before we end the day with a well-deserved glass of Pimms, we have one more speaker in Jimmy Chin. He’s the professional climber, who also directed Free Solo and WOW! What an inspirational story to end the day on. From expectations in early life through to doing what he loves and winning an Oscar for his film. He teaches us that:
“There are two great risks in life: risking too much, and risking too little. We are always aware of risking too much, but how do we know if we’re risking too little?”
A great way to end the day! After that, it’s time to have a drink, chat to new friends and reflect on everything we’ve learned today.
PS - Oh, and we couldn’t get away without a photo of course!
