Hubsessed Office Hours - HubSpot Super Admin - Oct 16, 2026
- George B. ThomasHost
- Chris CarolanHost
Friday, October 16, 2026
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Casey Hawkins brought a question from her client work: a client wants a lifecycle stage before Lead, and they disagree on who belongs in it. We talked through a starting line stage, setting personas after a call, whose best practices fit, and audience as the first stage.
Clips from this session
12 short cuts from this conversation.
Portrait
9 clipsAdmins need a go-and-play mindsetAudience: a word anyone can look upSit in the pocket, or take their handLifecycle stages are a communication strategyA stage before Lead: the wayback machineEvery database needs a starting lineA hand raiser without raising a handBest practices are not black and whiteNo best practice should dehumanize the process
Key takeaways
Before redesigning lifecycle stages, check whether the portal uses the leads object: a Lead lifecycle stage may then need to create a record in that object too.
Give everyone in the database a starting line stage, whatever it is named, and let an engagement sequence and forms that ask for persona do the work of moving people forward.
Treat lifecycle stages as a communication strategy: the more is known about someone, the more personal the conversation can be, and the whole goal is a trusted relationship.
A persona does not have to come from a form: it can be set after a call, by hand or by an agent reading the call transcript, which is one less thing a person has to select on a website.
In Chris's view, the name of the first stage decides whether it is a solution: audience reads the same way to anyone who looks it up, while new is contextual to each business.
One first stage can hold both views at once, people who move forward once enough is known about them and people who move forward once they interact, when the next step for both is intentional engagement.
Ask whose best practice it is: George's point is that a practice that fits one organization may not fit another, and Chris's is that no practice that dehumanizes the process fits a goal of trusted relationships.
Any first stage needs two things to be true: knowing when to sit in the pocket and wait, and knowing when to take someone's hand and walk with them to the next step.
Questions answered
- 00:00Welcome, and why admins need a go and play mindsetTopic
- 04:14A client wants a stage before Lead, and what Casey wants to do and what the client wants to do are differentQuestion
- 06:03The way back machine: lifecycle stages before the leads object, and a starting line stageTopic
- 10:11Lifecycle stages as a communication strategy for building a trusted relationshipTopic
- 12:06You've been an advocate for personas, and they're not on your forms anymore: do you manually set it after the call?Question
- 14:50Stages built around one word, and why the name of the first stage decides whether it is a solutionTopic
- 15:56When someone gets in without subscribing to anything, through a signal or a social interaction rather than a form, where would they go?Question
- 19:07Whose best practices? Trusted relationships and the gray marginTopic
- 22:54A suggestion for Casey's client: audience as the first stageTopic
- 25:47What's the definition of audience? The client thinks people move forward once enough information is known about them; Casey says they move forward once they've interacted.Question
- 26:50Two things that have to be true: knowing when to wait, and when to walk with them to the next stepTopic
