As a society and individuals, we widely distrust businesses, governments, NGOs and the media. 

In fact, according to the 2017 Edelman TRUST BAROMETER, trust in these institutions to do what is right is at an all-time low. 

The situation is so bad that two-thirds of the 28 countries Edelman surveyed are now considered "distrusters" and the majority of respondents lack full belief that the overall system is working for them. This climate has increased people's fears both about society and the economy. We live in a trust crisis that's causing a systemic meltdown.

Such an environment, Richard Edelman explains, leads to a rise in populist action and nationalism as the mass population wants to take control away from the "elites". From an exalted position as a savior in the wake of the financial crisis, government is viewed today as incompetent, corrupt and divided, and is the least trusted global institution at 41 percent.

What I found most interesting, though, is that business is found to be in the best position of all institutions expected to make a change and somewhat trusted to make a difference. 

Last week, we covered the first part of Brian Halligan's and Dharmesh Shah's keynote at our HubSpot INBOUND conference from two weeks ago.

After learning from Brian about how to get from startup to scaleup, today we'll look at what Dharmesh, HubSpot's CTO and co-founder, shared on how to grow better consistently by looking at the three key functions - marketing, sales and customer service - and how they should be creating a delightful customer experience at each key stage they take care of - attract, engage and delight.

Dharmesh started with a personal story of how he got to spend a whole dinner with Elon Musk. 

As the evening was progressing, Dharmesh asked Elon an important question, namely "How do you work towards solving really big problems?"

Here's how Elon explained it:

"Let's say you're trying to get your company from point A to point B. Every person on the team is a vector. Your progress is determined by the sum of all vectors." 

Now Dharmesh was a bit puzzled and of course, got to do some thinking around this.

Let's look at this a bit.

Did you know that only about 5% of startups become scaleups? 

Last week, INBOUND17 took place and it was by far the best INBOUND I've attended, probably the best conference of all the ones that I've been to in my life so far. 

It hosted about 21,500 marketing, sales and other professionals from around the world. 

I'm proud of the event and I'm proud of our co-founders - Brian Halligan and Dharmesh Shah - who are not only leading our team at HubSpot but also leading where the industry is going, paving the way for marketing, sales and service companies to grow and scale. 

During their keynote at INBOUND17, they shared their learnings from starting HubSpot 11 years ago to scaling up to a 1,800-people company and 34,000 customers in 90 countries.

This week, I want to share with you the key insights from Brian's part of the keynote. (Next week, we'll run through Dharmesh's). 

How to Get From Startup to Scaleup

There are 3 phases that new companies go through from starting up to scaling (if they get there):

I've been looking at a lot of data lately. 

Last week we dug into some social media marketing numbers, this week we'll go bigger and look at some of the major internet trends from Mary Meeker's latest report. 

Let's start with a bit of a perspective.

There are 3.4B global internet users. And there are about 7.5B people in the world. That's a penetration of 46%. 

Is your head spinning? It certainly will be after we go through some of the major learnings I've picked out for you. 

Let's get started. 

I recently finished listening to The Coaching Habit: Say Yes, Ask More & Change the Way You Lead Forever by Michael Bungay Stanier. (It's funny to say "listening" instead of "reading" but hey, in our busy lives we optimise everything and so when I walk to work, I often listen to books. Thanks, Audible!) 

The book was written for managers to help them be better leaders, communicate more effectively with team members, provide better support and coaching and so have more impact. Achieving this comes down to seven key questions that the author identifies as the essence of leading. 

I believe, though, that these seven questions can be an effective technique in any business relationship that requires communication. 

When speaking to customers (especially over the phone or Zoom or skype), these seven questions can help you get to the bottom of what the problem really is and how you can help. The same applies to consulting. I've always said that the best form of consulting is question-asking.