Community Showcase: Ana Smith

Luis Malbas  
All right. Good morning, everybody. Welcome to the training, learning and development community. Thanks for joining us today. We've already got a nice group of people live and in the broadcast, it's who's here. Lisa Crockett is here, Mike peacock de Roda. Tom McDowell's and you sign on Jason Ryan, thanks for joining us. We have a another member showcase to bring you today. And this morning, our guests is Anna Smith and Anna is from HubSpot. And we've actually had her on the schedule for a while I think we reschedule a couple times. But I'm glad that you're finally here. And that we get to talk and I get to learn more about you and and and also introduce you to the community. So thanks for doing this today on it's gonna be an interesting conversation. We have about 30 minutes or so I've got 10 questions for you. We'll see if we can get through all of them. But are you ready for this? Ready? Absolutely. Thanks for having me. I'm excited to be here. Excellent. So we're gonna be talking about your journey. And sort of what you do for HubSpot, and sort of just share with people a little bit more about your life is is as an l&d professional. And so um, you know, when and how did you start your journey as an instructional designer? The big first question, What happened there?

Ana Smith  
Yeah, well, interestingly enough, I was a nurse, so I did not start at all as an l&d professional, as many people in the world, you know, find they just kind of stumble into it. And so I was a nurse for a good six or seven years. And then over the years, I got into, you know, staff management, clinical leadership, and I was tasked with training our new clinicians or new nurses coming on. And so that is really where the learning piece of it started. And so eventually, I kind of went off and did some consulting with with different practices. And then when did in government, so I was working for a software company, as a contractor did some work with health and human services. And really what our team did was, for all the software that our developers would create, we would then come in and make sure that our end users were learning how to use the different programs that we were creating. And then yet, from there, I ended up at HubSpot, where I am now as an instructional designer, visual designer. You know, the visual design piece just kind of came along with it. Because as an instructional designers, we often have to create visuals and graphics and videos, and I just developed a big passion for that aspect of it too. So I'd say it's kind of 5050 of both. And from my government contracting job, I ended up at HubSpot. And here we are.

Luis Malbas  
Wow, that's interesting. I did see that in your background you have like, it seemed like the visual design piece is something that that you are really interested in, because I saw it on your LinkedIn profile you've done? I don't know, I think some different certifications are their skills, and you're endorsed by people with having those skills. Like what's the deal with that? Is it something Do you have like an artistic background? Is it something I don't

Ana Smith  
I actually can't even like do a stick figure drawing. But it turns out that videography is kind of my thing. You know, I just think goodness for YouTube, you're able to go in there and learn just about anything. Sure, you know, surgery. So I started learning how to use Premiere Pro beyond Adobe Audition. I just think it helps me create more quality content. And you know, in this day and age, most of our learners especially at HubSpot, you know, we have a demographic where everyone's on YouTube, or on you know, their cell phones trying to do all their learning there and quick little bits. So video is just kind of a big aspect of our programs.

Luis Malbas  
Do you do Do you have a YouTube channel? I do not my kids would be very unhappy with that. All right, head check. I did check to see if you had something going there. So, um, so working at HubSpot, HubSpot? What kind of things are you doing now for them?

Ana Smith  
Yeah, so right now, you know, really focused on what we have in this upmarket ramp training program. And what we're trying to do is get our new hires ramped a whole month faster than how they are, you know, ramping now. So we're trying to give them all the training and knowledge and just kind of preparation confidence that they need to get out there sell to our customers meet their quotas, and feel prepared to succeed in the role. So they're, you know, we have a really great, great team of content creators and instructional designers, you know, go to market strategist and we get together we figure out like, what makes sense for them, what what are the priorities, what should we be teaching them? What do we need to get in front of them right now, and then you know, create these programs. It's over a month of five months for the most part where you'll go through this intense training and you don't get in front of our customers and get ready to sell

Luis Malbas  
HubSpot has a crazy library of resources right of training resources. Probably one of the more. I mean, I know that I've used HubSpot with a couple organizations I've worked with in the past. And it's like one of the first things they're like, just go in and just start learning, just get in there and go through their training resources. And not only that, but HubSpot has to be kind of at the forefront of things. So things must be constantly changing.

Ana Smith  
Constantly. You know, it's funny, I saw one of the questions was, what did you wish you had known? You know, and there are things I wish I knew in my career as a as an l&d professional. But at HubSpot, our product changes constantly for anyone I seen that in simple chat, you know, people use it, for those of you that have you know, that our product is constantly improving, we're always trying to solve for the customer. But on the back end, that means change is is the consistent, so we constantly have to, you know, adjust with that and change our content, change our learning programs to fit the the changes that are occurring on a regular basis. So it keeps things interesting. It's a challenge, but it's a lot of fun. And, you know, we try to make it happen.

Luis Malbas  
Yeah, because technology, marketing sales always changing in this day and age. So, and HubSpot is right there on top of all of it. So speaking of all that you have, like, I saw certificates and sales. And also you're a scrum master, how does this help you at HubSpot? Or does it at all?

Ana Smith  
Yeah, so you know, to be completely transparent, I didn't come from a sales background I have, I have no sales background at all whatsoever. So one of the things that I wanted to really get my feet wet, like I have spent the last couple years really trying to wrap my head around sales and that organization, you know what that consists of so the sales enablement piece was also to help me upskill and in also understand kind of a language and the world that my learners live in, you know, I think you really have to be able to relate to them in their day to day work, what they see in order to, to give good learning experiences. Yeah, definitely helped me a ton. And interestingly enough, as far as the Scrum Master, you know, when I was working in contracting, we use that a lot, you know, like, just in general, our software developers, that was the way that we did software. Um, but it has helped me here because, you know, people have a love hate relationship with with Scrum and agile and all that good stuff. But I think that it's one of those things that I've really taken it and applied it only as it fits like I kind of make it work for myself, my team universe, several other team members on the content team that have backgrounds and have brought agile into the mix. So we try to develop our content in our training in an agile like framework where we're doing little bits of time getting feedback, reiterating, and then sending it back out doing some more like chunking it up so that we, you know, if I'm talking about a curriculum that we develop, for someone that's going to be five month long thing, that's it's a big monster project. So being able to chunk it up and put pieces out there at a time, get that feedback, see what the learners are feeling, you know, is it effective, and then making those changes has been really, really huge in the success of the curriculums.

Luis Malbas  
That's interesting. Yeah, I feels like I've met other instructional designers that might have that background on the scrum side of things and understand, like agile methods, methodologies, and, and they're almost kind of a whole other sort of type of instructional designer, just the the thought process and stuff like thinking of Kristen Hayden safty, who's who's sort of does things along those lines. So that's really, really cool. So you feel like having that background has helped you over dubspot. And it's something that, you know, that you'd recommend for other folks or

Ana Smith  
Yeah, you know, I do but one thing I say is, you know, a lot of people think it slows you down. Because, you know, if you think about agile, sometimes people think about, like the stickies on the wall, and all of the stand ups and all the, you know, ceremonies and it doesn't need to necessarily be that way. I think that as learners, we can take the pieces that fit that help, and then leave the pieces that don't we don't we don't necessarily do daily stand ups. We do have sprint reviews, we have Sprint Retrospective. retrospectives. And um, you know, I do think that it helps in keeping us honest, keeping us organized and transparent. So it is something that I recommend, I think a TD also has certain programs for that, that are not as agile for software, but agile for learning. So I would I would definitely recommend.

Luis Malbas  
Okay, yeah, I didn't realize that I have to check that out. Kim's just asking, does knowing Scrum help you anticipate how the software changes roll out?

Ana Smith  
It does help you know, because it helps you get in the mindset of the developers, you know, the product owners, we work almost as a third party with them. You know, there's always like the strategy folks are in the middle for us. So I have that. But you know, it does help to be able to anticipate how they're thinking about products, you know, what their processes might be? Be in order to prepare for what might be coming on our end,

Luis Malbas  
right? No, definitely, definitely. Alright, so let's talk a little bit about this title of yours. I'm really curious, senior Content Manager global GTM enablement, instructional and visual designer. So let's start out with the senior Content Manager global GTM enablement. What does that mean?

Ana Smith  
GTM enablement is go to market enablement. So sales enablement, it's a term that's it's somewhat new, but it's becoming more common in, you know, in this world. And really what we do is enable our sales team, enable our go to market teams, help them remove any friction in the way to help them do their jobs. And so learning falls, you know, you have strategy under that revenue option, or that learning is something that that's part of that. So I report into strategy sales strategy. And, you know, we kind of take our direction from our leadership, and then figure out what are our priorities as a company? What are our priorities as a sales team? And then we enable on that, and so content wise, you know, it's just kind of overlooked. A lot of the curriculums that we have on the sales program side, you know, what content we have out there, making sure it's current, making sure it's relevant, making sure it's serving our learners in, you know, in the way that it's supposed to,

Luis Malbas  
wow, how much production do you do?

Ana Smith  
Quite a bit, actually only. Up until recently, I've sort of taken a little bit of a step back to do more project management, stakeholder management, planning, that kind of thing. But I've been churning out content. I feel like for the last couple years, it's just been amazing to look back. My manager and I were having a conversation the other day, he was on he was on maternity leave, and he came back. He's like, so what you've been up to, and when I pulled it up, I was like, you know, I've been to a lot. There's been a lot of production happening here.

Luis Malbas  
Yeah. Wow. That's very, very cool. It sounds like you must be really, really capable. Because I mean, I don't know. It just sounds like your job is huge. You're covering a lot of stuff.

Ana Smith  
It's a lot of fun. It's a lot of fun. And, you know, I have a great team, surrounded by brilliant people, they they make it look easy. They make everything look good. And you know, I think it's it's teamwork. I certainly couldn't do this by myself.

Luis Malbas  
Nice. Nice. So, um, the instructional design part, what is your favorite part about doing it?

Ana Smith  
Um, instructional design part for me. You know, I think it'd be more on the human side of things. I apologize. Let me turn off my slack. Because I hear it going off.

Unknown Speaker  
Yeah, you're like, Is

Unknown Speaker  
it me? Is it her?

Luis Malbas  
Like, oh, what are they asking me like? Oh, yeah, computer? Yeah, go ahead. Yeah,

Ana Smith  
yeah, I think I think the thing that gets me up in the morning, I love on the instructional design side is, again, I've never been in a sales rule. But from what I hear a lot of my team has been, you know, and what they tell me is, it's a very stressful, it's a stressful job, you have a quota, you don't know if that's going to pan out for you at the end of the month, like, Am I gonna have a job if I'm not meeting my quota, so I really enjoy being able to make a direct impact, through learning on their competence on their confidence to being able to show up and know that they're going to have the tools, the resources, the information, the knowledge they need, to execute, to sell and to, you know, meet their quota and exceeded at times. So that gives me a lot of, you know, I really take pleasure out of that piece of my job.

Luis Malbas  
Wow, no, that's great. And just as somebody who has done sales, that's like sound that's very, very kind of you to, to look at it that way. That's super helpful. And so coming back to that one question, what are some things you wish you had known when you had started out in your career?

Ana Smith  
Yeah, you know, I think one of the things that when I was getting started I, I looked at learning as everything there is to know what is everything there is to know that we have to put in front of this learner and I've got to somehow managed to package it up and make it interesting and get get that information to them. And I wish I had been thinking more along the lines of what do they need to know in this moment in time to perform their job? Like what is absolutely need to know versus everything there is to know, because that's helped me create better learning experiences better content, and you think about, you know, I don't know if you're familiar with five moments of need, you know, this is a really, really good structure for thinking of learning because you think about what do they need in that moment in time, everything else is background noise, let's remove it, let's make it knowledge. Let's make it resources and only put what they need to know environment because, you know, we only have so much capacity to intake and remember. So being able to prioritize, what that need to know is is what I wish I'd been focusing on earlier on in my career.

Luis Malbas  
Wow. Is that something that you've, you know, come to a conclusion like lately or is that something that you've been practicing for a while.

Ana Smith  
I've been practicing it for a while, over the last few years, but early on in my career when I was first doing learning and training for clinical staff in health care. You know, that's not something I was thinking, I'm particular in health care, everything you think is important, and it is, but it's like, Okay, well, what are the objectives, this learning objectives for this particular thing? Right? Well, let's remove noise and focus on what those are. And there's a lot of things that can be resources, you know, you can't expect people to remember every single thing. But you can teach them to know where to go find it, so that they're saving the space for the important stuff, and then just know where to go when, when the resources needed.

Luis Malbas  
Right, especially for like an organization where you're at right now like HubSpot. I mean, it's like that wouldn't be particularly relevant. No, that's great. I wish I you know, one of these days, I have to collect all of these, I wish you had known questions from, you know, the other member showcases, I've done and just put them in one big one big archive so people can get that because that's a that's a great one. Thank you for that. That would make a great article. I would love to read through that. So how about a training project that you're especially proud of that you can share with us? Uh, yeah, you mean like, share, share on screen. Now just to talk about something that you really like doing maybe something that you really enjoyed? It's more kind of, um, maybe gloating about something that you were super successful at?

Ana Smith  
Sure. Sure. Well, there's one I had a lot of fun with. I don't know if you know, you're familiar with Tiled.co,  it's a micro app. You can develop micro apps. For it looks like a website behaves like an app. But you don't need to be a developer, I certainly am not, I don't have that much brainpower. And so you can be a non developer and create super interactive experiences, micro apps, websites using tiles. So I think it was end of last year, I did a project on tiled and created a micro app for our mid market sales team where, you know, we just curated all the information that a new hire would need to know, all the information that an existing sales rep in that market would need to know. And it was just like a one stop shop landing page where they would go in and be able to branch off into playbooks or resources or, you know, content for new hires. So I was particularly proud of that one, because it, it definitely brought value to the sales team. It was a pilot, also, it was the first time we were using that kind of approach for that. And you know, as a designer, it also took me out of my comfort zone, it was not a application I had used before, I'd never heard of it up until this point, you know, it was kind of like, do you think you can do it, you want to give it a shot. And you know, I am a lifelong learner, I love you know, pushing myself out of the things I already know. And so for me, it was just a ton of fun to get in there, learn something new, and it's actually really flexible. You know, you can customize it a lot. So I've really enjoyed working on that project. Hey,

Luis Malbas  
let's, um, what's the what's the URL for that? Is there any way that we can put that in the chat? Yeah, okay. I just put the name of, of the company there. But let me give you the URL. Yeah, yeah, no, that'd be great. It sounds like, that was really, really nice. So so your team presented that to you and say, Hey, jump into this. Let's see if we can make this happen.

Ana Smith  
Yeah, so what happened with that, and I'm dropping the link in here for you, for you all. Now, what happened with that was, you know, we, our management, our sales, leadership management was using tiled, but they were outsourcing to tile designers, you know, so they were creating manager playbooks using tile. And so they would just essentially send a document and say, Hey, can you make this an interactive app for us, and they would send it out to our, their, you know, the tile designers to do it with? So we were outsourcing that. And so they were like, you know, what, if we bring it in house, instead of paying a designer to do that, for us, you know, do you want to give it a shot, and you can run a pilot and stuff. And so it was it was a ton of fun. If you know, your audience's haven't used it before, I strongly recommend you look into it, you don't have to be a software developer or visual designer for that matter. If you can make flat images, you can do it, you can just put that in there and then add interactivity to the different buttons. It's really cool. It's really customizable.

Luis Malbas  
Is it still running? To this day?

Ana Smith  
Yeah, it's still running, actually. And we've gotten a lot of requests to so like I said, we did this for the mid market team. We've had the small business team come out and say they want something similar the corporate team. So the you know, the desire for it is there. We're just currently evaluating, you know, what, what our program where it's heading in the next couple years. And so we're gonna call whether we continue with that pilot or not.

Luis Malbas  
Wow. So is it is it like a part of the onboarding process now for that group or

Ana Smith  
for that group? They that is their purpose, essentially, you know, they run through our onboarding program, the one I'm working on now, but this is their main, you know, homepage for all things, onboarding and beyond.

Luis Malbas  
Wow, that's great. Thanks for sharing that with us. That's a good one. So it sounds like you know, you've got a lot of stuff going on. It seems like you probably pretty busy. Is there anything is there something or like who or what Keeps you inspired.

Ana Smith  
Okay, well, my, my three boys keep me very inspired, I have I have three songs, my team keeps me super inspired because they're just all so brilliant and you know HubSpot, it truly lives and breathes learning, they want everyone to grow, they want our customers to grow. So, you know, they create the space and the energy for us to go out there and, you know, grow ourselves professionally. And so it also, you know, it fosters innovation and healthy competition on the team. So that keeps me super, super motivated. And, you know, on that innovation front, like, you know, just, for example, I'd love to see us begin using virtual reality in our learning experiences, like when you think about the 70 2010 approach to learning, in which you know, 70% of learning happens through direct experience 20% through others, and only 10 of that percent is through structured courses. As such, we often end up building a lot more, more than 10% on that structured learning. And I really feel that, you know, VR, for example, can help solve that challenge that we often face in l&d, because while the virtual world might not be real, the emotions that the learners experience in VR are just as real as anything that you'd experience in your day to day reality. So there, I don't think there's anything quite as powerful as emotion to help people create those lasting memories and create that understanding. And I think the AR it's been well, widely used in healthcare and military for hard skills. But I think there's a lot of space for that for soft skills like particularly in sales and putting him in that, you know, room and how that would be to interact with the prospect and whatnot. So I think the team and the fact that we're all constantly thinking about the future, and what comes next and innovating keeps me super motivated.

Luis Malbas  
Wow, that's interesting. So it's basically it's like results in innovation that kind of keep you inspired. Oh, yeah. Yeah. That's very cool. And you've got you've definitely got a kind of a geeky nerdy streak to you, don't you? I do. I'm a major. Yeah, that's awesome. That's other. So aside from a nurse, what other what other jobs have you worked? Ah,

Ana Smith  
well, that, you know, I was I worked as a receptionist as a hair cutter and hair cuttery when I was like, 14 years old. That's my grand career. But no, after that, you know, it was always nursing and then went into into this world went to, you know, private practices, consulting, government, and then here.

Luis Malbas  
So when you were a nurse, I mean, did you feel like sort of that draw to being an educator, when when you were when you're actually working as a nurse? Were you? was it was it like, there was some training involved in there where you're like, I would like to do that, or? Yeah, I

Ana Smith  
think I just, you know, I like working with people talking to people, obviously, you know, at one point, I was the one doing the learning when I was coming in fresh out of school and had no idea what was going on. And so you kind of empathize as you move and become more experienced you empathize with those new people coming in, and like remembering that feeling of being lost and not sure what's going on. So, you know, I had a natural tendency, I think, to just want to share knowledge, you know, and share experiences and what what was helpful to me getting started, and I think it the rest of it just kind of naturally fell into place.

Luis Malbas  
Very interesting. I'm going to ask you a question that isn't on our list, but I'm just really curious about this since you worked for HubSpot. Now, during the day you were probably in HubSpot all the time. That's probably just the constant tab that's open for you. But what else? What other kinds of tools do you use on a regular basis? Something that is constantly like, up on on screen for you?

Ana Smith  
Yes, so I can tell you that snag it is constantly up on screen for me. Um, you know, it's just it's the best way for me to grab screenshots create one pagers, you know, make videos and things like that. Premiere Pro, Adobe Premiere Pro is always up and open. So is Adobe Audition. Beyond I don't know how familiar this group is with Dion. But it's another great tool. If you're not a visual designer, you can make instructional videos or just videos in general, without needing to have that background. You know, they have templates and music and all kinds of stuff that I see someone just drop it in there. Thank you. They have all kinds of stuff to make it easy for you to create videos. So that's one that's also always up I'd say those are my my top four. Wow, those

Luis Malbas  
are just straight up production. You know, like, you're talking beyond premiere audition. And what was the other one? That was something else?

Ana Smith  
Oh, snag it. Yeah. And you know, one more and it's Asana. Asana is another big one just from the project management side and being staying organized because learner I need help seeing organized Asana is another one that sees open.

Luis Malbas  
Yeah, so there's Yeah, there's your There's your kind of your tasks, your to dues, your project management. That's great. That's that that's a good group, right? there. Yeah, very interesting. So, um, if there's one thing that people should know about you, I know what is it?

Ana Smith  
Well, I'm the daughter of immigrants. We were Colombian refugees. And I got here when I was three, my mom was a housekeeper. My dad was a painter, English was not my first language. So I'd say that certainly the odds were not in my favor. So, you know, there's listeners out there that might not be in the best circumstances. Alright, feel like, you know, you're going uphill, I think as long as you stay focused and motivated, and, you know, work hard. And I think you can do anything that you put your mind towards.

Luis Malbas  
No, that's great. Same here, English wasn't my first language either. I can't believe that. At some point. I could not speak this language. And then what I do, having to go to like a special school to learn English when I was a kid, so and that's just very, very cool. All right. Well, you know what, I think that's it that we've got through all 10 questions. That's pretty amazing. And you've given us a ton of information about you. Thank you so much for sharing. I just want to Yeah, I want to remind everybody, is it next week, we've got the summer community day where we're going to be talking about career development, check it out, you can get there I have it forwarded from cldc.us. If you want to take a look at what is going on next week for for community day, just added our keynote. Her name is Shelley Brown, she is an author she, she wrote a book called weird girl adventures. It's very, very cool. And she's absolutely amazing. I'm so glad I got to know her. And the schedule itself is ready to take a look at so check that out. If you're a member, you can get in for free. Please join. If you don't, we could use the support here until DC. And Ana, thanks once again for doing this. Really appreciate your time. Very, very fascinating story. And hopefully we'll see you again. I'm going to post your LinkedIn profile for other folks if that's okay. Yeah, absolutely. Great. Thank you for having me. It was really nice. Yeah, absolutely. Thank you. All right, everybody. Enjoy your weekend. I'm actually gonna be out for a couple days. If you try to get hold of me for the next couple of days. I'm going to be camping. So but everybody, thanks. See you next week. All right. Bye.

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