Meet David O’Connor, Principal Mid Market Sales Manager in ANZ. A remote (or @home) employee based out of the Gold Coast in Australia, David has had an incredible career journey spanning almost ten years at HubSpot. Read on to learn all about sales at HubSpot, life on the Australian team, and how he balances work and his love for travel and adventure as a remote employee.

Describe your HubSpot experience so far…
I’ve been at HubSpot for almost 10 years. It’s been an incredible journey. I started back in 2014 as the first Business Development Rep (BDR) in JAPAC when we first opened the Sydney office and there were only five of us squeezed into a tiny little office room in the Central Business District. It had a great view of Sydney harbor and the buzz was electric. Now there are over 250 people on the sales team in ANZ and it’s been a truly incredible journey. I learned my trade as a BDR and was in that role for about 15 months. I then moved into the Account Executive role at HubSpot where I continued to fine-tune my skills with a relentless thirst for knowledge and a high-performance mindset. In 2017 I became the second ANZ Small Business Sales Manager where we transformed the performance of that segment by implementing some key strategic plays that enabled us to adapt our sales motion to match the way small businesses in Australia shop and buy. Following a few years in Small Business, I moved into the Mid-Market segment as a senior manager where again we transformed the segment and grew it to now five teams and JAPAC’s top-performing segment. 

You’ve been at HubSpot for nearly 10 years, growing your career on the sales team in Australia. What keeps you at HubSpot? 

I get asked this a lot and it’s three things: 

1. I have learned more over the past 9 years at HubSpot than at any other time in my life hands down. One day we might be listening to Brene Brown speak at INBOUND, the next I’m doing some course to help develop my business acumen or leadership skills. The learning just never stops at HubSpot and I’m so grateful for how much HubSpot has invested in me and my development. 
2. Selling a premium product that you know your customers get genuine value from gives you confidence and conviction when selling which is critical for success. 
3. The people. Everyone at HubSpot is super smart but humble, empathetic, and open-minded. This creates a place where you can really bring yourself to work, connect with great people from all walks of life, and have a strong sense of belonging. Having worked at different places where they didn't have an environment like this I don’t for one second take it for granted. 

When did you decide to become a remote employee? And what fueled that decision? 

Back in 2016, I was living in Sydney and I was working in the HubSpot Sydney office. My wife had a job opportunity she wanted to pursue on the Gold Coast in Queensland Australia. I wanted to support her with this so I developed a proposal and plan that I presented to my manager at the time on how I could smash my role as a Growth Specialist at HubSpot whilst working remotely from the Gold Coast. Remember this was well before working remotely was a thing, and to HubSpot’s and my manager’s credit, they were really supportive. So we moved up to Gold Coast and I would come back down to Sydney once a month to be with the team in the office which worked well. Fortunately, my wife Eve’s work was somewhat flexible too which allowed us to do a lot of traveling while working overseas which is where I guess you could say we caught the bug of the work and travel lifestyle.

How do you build and maintain connections with your team and colleagues as a remote employee and manager? 

Great question. Before Convid our team meetings would be very structured and focused on updates, strategic initiatives, and action items. Whilst we still have an element of this, as a manager I have made a conscious effort to prioritize a psychologically safe environment for the team and allocate half the meeting to share “how are you feeling and what’s happening in your world?”. This is just an open forum chat for everyone to share genuinely how they are doing in a safe space. If we somehow run out of time, it’s easy to follow up with action items after the meeting. I also try to get everyone together once a quarter in our Sydney office for a week and we have different ways within HubSpot to make this happen which is great. We have all agreed as a team that allocating our budgets toward connecting in person is invaluable, but every team is different.

Talking about work-life balance, how does remote work enhance your life? 

HubSpot is pretty flexible. I consciously focus on task-bulking my meetings and calendar to free up certain days in the week that allow me to spend more time with the kids and family or squeeze in a surf etc. It also allows me to be a bit more mobile and work from different places which really suits our lifestyle as well. 

HubSpot also has a great temporary mobility policy. My wife is French and we have lots of family friends in Tahiti so we like to spend three months a year there connecting with our friends and exposing our two kids Coco and Sacha to the French language and French Polynesian culture. I’m so grateful that HubSpot offers these types of programs. It's incredibly motivating as one of my personal drivers at HubSpot is to facilitate the lifestyle we want as a family. 

Have you ever had a remote work “fail” or a challenge as a remote employee? 

Yes, back in 2016 when working remotely as a sales rep I tried to run a sales demo whilst traveling on holiday leave through the Mentawais in Sumatra where the internet was terrible and it led to a poor demo experience. On reflection, I shouldn’t have run the sales process whilst on annual leave and it would have been better to pass it on to a teammate to run in my absence. I think this is super relevant today because in a remote work environment, it’s sometimes hard to define whether you are online working or offline, so I now focus on setting really clear personal boundaries and rules around this which has also made my personal time and activities more enjoyable as I’m not constantly checking my phone for calls and emails. 

If you weren’t in sales, what would you be doing? 

Wow, big question. One of my values is passion. I tend to get very passionate and fully immerse myself in the products I take on. Given my passion for sailing, I dare say I would probably sink my teeth into some competitive sailing project, or maybe sail around the world as a family… that’s certainly on the bucket list! 

If you’re interested in learning about a career in Sales at HubSpot or remote work opportunities at HubSpot, visit our careers website. And keep up to date with all things #hubspotlife over on our Instagram.