Hey, it's Casey, again. 👋
I have a bit of a confession... Last week I nearly gave one of my clients the easy answer instead of the right one.
It happens. I'm human. And you'd better believe I'm sending them this newsletter before it even goes out.
If you've ever looked at a HubSpot portal and thought, "it would be easier to just start over," this one's for you. Maybe you just inherited it. Maybe you've been cleaning up after other people for years and you're tired. Or maybe your portal's in great shape, and you just haven't gone back to check what HubSpot can do now that it couldn't when you built it. Every portal is someone's future inheritance.
So here's what happened... My client inherited a pretty messy HubSpot portal. They asked me: if it were up to me, would I try to recover it, or start over with a new one?
I'm usually super confident here. Starting over is almost never the right answer. But this time, I said, "I don't know." I even told them that "I don't know" was a pretty strong answer coming from me.
Here's what made me hesitate, this portal has been passed down again and again and again. There are integrations that used to matter and don't anymore. MQL has meant a lot of different things over the years, and every version left workflows, lists and properties behind. A little while back I had to make one lifecycle stage change, and it took me about two weeks, because other workflows, some nobody even uses anymore, kept switching people back.
When I thought about why I hesitated, it came down to this: cleaning up is hard. Cooking dinner for friends is fun. Waking up the next morning to dishes everywhere is not. For me, building is way more fun, and a brand new portal looks a lot like a clean kitchen.
So I asked pretty much everyone I knew this same question last week. Two of them happen to be two of my favorite HubSpot humans: Trisha Merriam, during our Thursday LinkedIn Live, a series on what to do when you inherit a HubSpot portal (probably the perfect place to ask), and George B. Thomas at Super Admin office hours on Friday.
Both of them talked me out of it. Hell no, don't start over. They're right, and the rest of this newsletter is what I should have told my client:
Why Starting Over Doesn't Fix It
Trisha's reason: The integrations come with you. If integrations are part of the mess, plugging the same integrations into a new portal just recreates the same mess.
George's reason: The history. Before he answered, he asked me two questions: "how many contacts and companies are in that database" and "how many years of activity and data are in that portal."
Go ahead and look yours up. I'll wait…
Then he said, "So you don't easily get any of that back." For me, that’s years of email opens, clicks and page visits. Deals too: the conversations your team had, how each deal changed over time, whether it started bigger and shrank.
"But Casey, the data's so old. Do we even care?" Often you do. People look at a business for years before they buy. They visit your website, maybe buy from a competitor, and come back later. Some of that old data is unreliable, sure. Plenty of it still matters.
And my own reason, the one I should have started with: a new portal doesn't fix whatever made the mess in the first place. If nobody cleans up as they go, the new kitchen gets dirty too.
So here's how to clean up the kitchen you have, and keep it clean.
Step 1: Write Down How It's Supposed to Work
Before you build anything, Trisha's advice was to write down how each process is supposed to work. You'd have to do this in a brand new portal anyway, so do it for the one you have.
Start with whatever is causing the most pain. In a lot of inherited portals, that's integrations. Look at which ones are creating the most duplicate records, then figure out how that process is supposed to work before you start cleaning up the records it made. Otherwise you're cleaning up the mess while the integration keeps making more.
Same thing for definitions. If MQL has meant a bunch of different things over the years, decide what it means today and write it down before you touch a single workflow.
If your portal's already in good shape, this step is how you keep it that way. You're going to keep cooking, so how quickly are you cleaning up after yourself? If your key processes aren't documented yet, start there. HubSpot recently added a Documentation section to every property: a description and data entry instructions, which HubSpot says improve the results you get from agents.
Step 2: Find What HubSpot Now Does on Its Own
George said the other thing he'd look for is "what was a hack or workaround that is now default functionality that can just be removed."
Here's an example. Years ago, if you wanted a company's industry on its contacts, someone built a workflow to copy it over. Today you'd use a sync property, or skip the property entirely and just look at the associated company's industry. In plenty of portals, that old workflow is still running.
The hard part is that if you've never heard of sync properties, you'd never think to go looking. I read the HubSpot product updates every day. I know, that's not normal human behavior. So for everyone else, tune in to Another Orange Morning, the morning show Chris Carolan and I co-host every weekday to give you the lowdown on what dropped. And if that's not your style, here are more ways to keep up.
You can also just ask Breeze. Go into your portal and give it this:
Look through this portal's workflows, custom properties and any custom code for things that look like they were built to cover something HubSpot could not do at the time. Do not make anything up. For each one, tell me what it does and which current HubSpot feature might replace it, with a link to where it lives in the portal, so I can check it myself. Do not change anything.I tested this in a client's portal before sending this to you. Breeze came back with five strong candidates, and the first one it said to review was almost exactly the industry example: a workflow copying the company name onto contacts, which a sync property could replace. It also told me what it couldn't check, and that it hadn't changed anything.
It can still miss things, so check each item yourself before you turn anything off.
Step 3: Build the New Version Next to the Old One
This is the part I wish I'd said to my client. George doesn't think it has to be one or the other. In his words, "there's nothing that tells you you can't just go build a brand new pipeline or go build a brand new XYZ and then figure out how to migrate from that broken weird piece or a set of new workflows."
And if the answer really is to start over, you can still do that in the portal you have. You can replace the pans this week and the plates next week. Or you can build a whole new kitchen right next to the old one, get it running and shiny, and move in one day. Either way, you keep every contact and all of their history.
Here's what building next to the old one looks like:
Find everything that touches what you're changing. Open the property in your property settings and check its Usage tab.
Build the new workflows in their own folder, with something like "NEW" in the names so nobody mixes them up.
Test with a handful of test records before anything real goes through.
Looking back, that's what I should have done with that lifecycle stage. Instead of untangling every old workflow, I could have built the new process right next to them. Same kitchen. I just didn't need to scrub every pan before I started cooking.
If your org lets you use AI in your portal, it can do the finding for you. George would connect an assistant, have it list every workflow that touches lifecycle stage, and have it write a plan he reads before anything changes. Breeze works for this, or Claude if you have the HubSpot connector. Here's a prompt to start from. Swap in whatever you're changing:
I want to [describe the change, for example: add a new lifecycle stage between MQL and SQL]. List every workflow in this portal that sets, clears or reads the [property name] property, and tell me what each one does. Do not make anything up. Then write a plan for making the change that names which workflows need to change and in what order. Do not edit anything. I will review the plan first.Step 4: Turn the Old One Off, Not Out
Once the new version works, pick a day. Turn the new workflows on, turn the old ones off, and put "ARCHIVED" in the old ones' names. You still have every contact and all of their history.
Please don't delete the old ones right away, even if you're sure they're wrong. They might be doing something you haven't thought of, especially in a portal you inherited. Some of those things you literally won't know about until they come up, which is so, so fun 🫠 Once a couple of months go by and nothing breaks, then clean them up.
And go in with an open mind. It's easy to look at someone else's build and think they got it wrong. Usually it was just built differently, for reasons you weren't around for.
Do Your Future Self a Favor
If your portal is weighing on you and you have the urge to clear the whole desk and start fresh, answer George's two questions first. Then pick one small piece and work it through Steps 1 to 4.
And if you're in your groove and your portal is in great shape, amazing. Run that Breeze prompt from Step 2 anyway. Things tend to quiet down for a lot of teams over the holidays, so that's a good time to try it. I bet there's something in there you could clean up, and whoever inherits your portal next will thank you.
If something doesn't make sense, bring it to office hours. I'm on Tuesdays and George is on Fridays.
- Casey
Updates from last week worth your attention
Build fully custom reports with Breeze and save to a dashboard | All hubs and tiers | Private beta
Breeze can now build a report on any data in your portal, visualized however you want, and save it to a dashboard like any other HubSpot report.
Our take: Chris’s point is that leaders start asking for custom reports right away, often before anyone trusts the data underneath them. This makes those asks easy to say yes to, and that’s also the catch. Breeze doesn’t know which properties are the trusted ones unless you tell it, which is Step 1 again: the Documentation section on each property is where you do that.
What to do: Request the beta (HubSpot's product update page has the details) and try it on one report you've never been able to build.
Create social posts using Content Agent in Breeze Assistant | Marketing Hub Pro & Enterprise | Public beta
The Social Content Agent now lives in Breeze Assistant, with Facebook posts, bulk creation from a piece of starter content, and a conversational editor before you save drafts.
Our take: Chris's rule was "Before you hit that bulk button, double check the credits." We couldn't confirm the cost on the show, so check HubSpot's credit catalog first.
What to do: Run one post, compare it to your own writing, and fix the context Breeze works from before you ask for a series.
Improved Permissions Visibility on User Record | All hubs and tiers | Live
What a user can access now shows right on their user record, so you don't have to open the permissions editor just to see what's turned on.
Our take: This makes a quick permissions check actually quick. If you're the only user in your portal, it changes very little.
What to do: Open one person's user record this week and compare what they have with what their job needs.
These came off the daily morning show, Another Orange Morning, where Chris Carolan, Casey Hawkins, and friends go through all of the updates live.
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