The Problem with Ghostwriting at HubSpot Today
I love ghostwriting. If you’d asked me a decade ago what I wanted to be when I grew up, I would have said Obama’s speechwriter. In college, I even bought the book White House Ghosts: Presidents and Their Speechwriters. It’s 616 pages and I’ve never opened it. It’s collecting dust, maybe worse. But I own it.
When Obama spoke, the hairs on the back of your neck stood up. Even if he was talking about the weather. No matter who you voted for or what you believed in, it was impossible not to hang onto his every word.
Well, I used to imagine writing those words. That powerful, but invisible, influence of ghosts always fascinated me. And it still does.
While I never made it to the White House (thank god), ghostwriting is something I get to do often. Over the past seven(ish) years, I’ve drafted, edited, rewritten, and tweaked hundreds of pieces of content. I’ve ghosted for executives, interns, and everyone in between. I love the challenge of putting a person on paper, of boiling them down into carefully chosen words. I love reading a draft and knowing exactly how to edit it to make the ideas linger with you.
The best part about ghostwriting, though, is the research. I’ve spent hours, probably months, listening to high-wattage people talk about their work. Every meeting is a chance to learn about a new pocket of the world. So, you end up knowing a little bit, about a lot.
I couldn’t give a lecture on LTV:CAC, but I know how to calculate your payback period and why investors care about it. You’d never want me to run your localization team, but I could hold my own at a cocktail party if we started talking about international expansion. And if you asked me how to build and ship a web application, I could help you get started.
Scratching the surface on topics has always served me well.
Until now.
Ghosting is getting harder at HubSpot. Going an inch deep and a mile wide on topics doesn’t work so well anymore because the breadth of thought leadership is growing. We’re no longer just writing about inbound marketing and unlimited vacation, we’re writing about app ecosystems and neurodiversity. We’re building new teams that do niche things, and hiring people with deep technical knowledge to guide us. HubSpot is richer than ever in ideas, learning, and innovation.
That’s likely why the past few drafts I’ve ghosted have been brutal. I wasn’t fluent, let alone proficient, in the topics. The words were there, but something didn’t quite fit — like a little boy wearing his older brother’s clothes.
I’m realizing that ghostwriting can help unlock brilliant ideas, but it can also dilute them. And I don’t want to become the ghost of bad drafts past. HubSpot has too many good ideas to share, and I care too much about helping people share them. I don’t think the solution is to try and become a deep expert in everything from APIs to sustainability. But I do need to go back to a beginner’s mindset as a ghostwriter. I need to learn how to synthesize foreign concepts quickly, ask better questions sooner, and expand my book of phrases. I need to spend more time learning the language and grasping the concepts before opening up a blank page.
Because HubSpot’s only going to grow, get smarter, and become more complex. And it’s only going to get harder for my team and I to capture those ideas at scale. But for ghosts, that’s an opportunity to learn, not a setback.
So when I think about the challenge of ghostwriting at HubSpot as we grow, I’m reminded of Obama’s words: yes we can.
Or, whoever’s words those are.
