AI Mindsets for Inbound + Why Most Attempts to Use AI Fail [HubHeroes, EP74]

Do you live in a world filled with corporate data? Are you plagued by siloed departments? Are your lackluster growth strategies demolishing your chances for success? Are you held captive by the evil menace Lord Lack? Lack of time, lack of strategy, and lack of the most important and powerful tool in your superhero tool belt knowledge. Never fear, Hub Heroes. Get ready to don your cape and mask, move into action, and become the Hub hero your organization needs. Tune in each week to join the League of Extraordinary Inbound Heroes as we help you educate, empower, and execute Hub Heroes. It's time to unite and activate your powers. Before we begin, we need to disclose that Devin is currently employed by HubSpot at the time of this episode recording. This podcast is in no way affiliated with or produced by HubSpot, and the thoughts and opinions expressed by Devin during the show are that of his own and in no way represent those of his employer.

You know what really sucks is when you hit that music to like, go for the episode and you realize, oh man, I don't have any beverage sitting in front of me. I don't have any water or coffee or.

Oh no, no.

Now I'm realizing that, George.

My God, that's because we just got off of a client meeting.

Suck it, losers.

Yeah, look at that. You see, now I feel bad, actually. I might have. I might have one beverage left in my refrigerator. Anyway, Liz, what, What. What are we doing here today?

Zooming in on. Wow. For those who join us live, we're getting an extreme. Wow, that was really. That was violently upsetting.

Max, if you've never gone to the Community, like, if you've never gone to Community, hu. You might want to do that just for the sure fact that you could actually see Max Cohen's tonsils. That's all.

That's. Oh, God. You had to.

Way to go with your oral health. Way to go with your oral health.

God.

You know what helps drive subscribes? Guys, talking about oral health and Max's tonsils. Max, I'm so happy you're hydrated subscribers. Holy crap, you're right, George. It is an exciting topic for today's episode. Anyway, ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to another episode of Hub Heroes, where clearly I am in control and definitely haven't lost control of this podcast whatsoever. I am your host, Liz Morehead, joined by Max Cohen, George B. Thomas. It's going to be a very exciting and interesting episode. In fact, this is the first episode in a series of topics around artificial intelligence.

Go figure.

Artificial intelligence.

You don't have a soundboard thing for.

That Max, I could have swore you would have had.

That's all I have. I just have one button for tacos. Taco Bell gone. That's all I have.

I mean, if that's the best kind of automation you've got, I'm here for it. I'm here for taco automation.

Tell them to bring out the whole ocean. Yeah, that one too.

We'll boil that. Son of a. Anyway, moving on.

Oh, my gosh. All right, gentlemen, are you hydrated? Because clearly. Do you need nap? Do you need a hug? Do you need Jesus? How are we doing?

I think I need Jesus. George just whipped out a probiotic yogurt drink, so I hope that's refreshing for you, buddy.

I didn't know Jamie Lee Curtis was joining us today.

Gut health and oral health cultures.

Gotta have those gut cultures.

I'm feeling so cultured right now.

I think it's because we've all forgotten how to be together. Because for so many weeks, either I've been out or Devin's been out or Max has been out, we've forgotten how to human, which is probably why we're doing a robot focused episode. So start things off there. We have some new features that HubSpot has rolled out that are AI powered, having to do with generated audio, players of content. And George is very excited. He's dancing about it. How excited are you, George?

Oh, man. When I saw it up, I needed a minute. I'm just saying. I'm just saying I'll tell the whole story if we actually get into it here in a bit. But I'm excited.

No, get into the story because here's the conversation that we're going to be talking about today. So Inbounders, if you are still listening, if you have gotten through Maxis tonsils, our hydration shortage and everything else that's been going on and you are still with us. There are a lot of exciting opportunities within HubSpot to use AI to make your inbound more effective, more scalable, reach more people, be more efficient at your job. However, before you start playing with all the toys, we need to talk about some of the rules. Because, George, you and I were having a conversation earlier this week. Actually, I think it was in our last episode where you and I were talking about AI and we were talking about some of the evergreen principles of inbound. And one of the things that you and I talked about was your favorite word, and that is humans. Can you give us one good humans for us?

Oh, yeah, it's all about the humans. Oh, yeah, yeah. I'm just saying bong stuff.

Oh, my God. But one of the things you and I talked about is we're starting to hear people say more and more, well, that was clearly written by AI. Like, that's not really going to be of any use for us. So we are going to touch a bit on some of the new tools that we have at our disposal. And because, George, I want you to tell that story, you are so excited. But we also are having a discussion today about the mindsets you need to go into with these AI tools that you can't just grab them. You can't. You can't just smash generate forever and say, look, I did it. My job is done. There's so much more to using these tools in a way that is smart. So, George, take us on a journey. Tell us your exciting story.

Yeah, so. So, first of all, it does come down to the humans. And one of the things that I've been doing on the George B. Thomas website, and it's been a process, by the way, we would literally write the articles and then we would take the articles and we would put them in Natural Reader, and then from Natural Reader, that would let us use an AI voice that we could actually then generate an MP3 file, and we would take that MP3 file over to Transistor FM, which would then give us a player, and we would swing back to the website and we would put the player on there. So if the human wanted to read, the human could read. But if the human wanted to listen, the human could listen to it. Because many of us try to, like, listen and educate while we're doing other things. That's what makes podcasts so fascinating. But the idea of turning every article into a potential podcast ish episode for your readers slash listeners at this point was something that I. I'm bullish on. As a matter of fact, I would love to envision a day where I go to a blog article page and it's actually the text, a video and audio of it. So no matter how I am or who I am, as far as a learner, I'm able to get that information in the way that I like to learn. Right? So that's a. That's a big piece of this. So this is why I got excited. I had a conversation several months ago with a person who works at HubSpot, and I explained that exact situation that I just explained to you guys and explained to the listeners and viewers of, like, this and this. And I get this to get that to put it over here, ladies and gentlemen, that's freaking timec consuming. But here's the thing that's I love the humans that are going to come to the site enough to apply the time to make that happen. So all of a sudden I'm sitting there, I'm minding my own business, and I see this update come through and it's a beta and it's around post narration and it's where inside of HubSpot, without needing to go to Transistor fm, without needing to go to Natural Reader, without, without need nothing. I don't have to do anything extra. I can literally hit a button and I can generate the audio version, pick a voice and actually pick a speed at which I want it to play back and then I can post it to my website. Here's what's cool. The very next day after that update, the theme that I use, the person is so on it that they updated the code that you had to have like a little bit of a code nerdiness to understand how to do it. They went ahead and added it to the theme almost immediately. And so now all of a sudden you could go to every page and you could have an audio player. And here's the funny part. I immediately emailed this human and I said, man, is it ever going to be possible that we would actually be able to have our own AI voice print to do this? And now I didn't get a yes or a no, but I did get this. I haven't forgotten the conversation we had where you said it'd be great if it would be my own voice. So I was like, oh, this is dope. I can actually provide a better experience to my readers, slash listeners, slash humans. And I can enable them to educate in the way that they like to educate. That's why this is so important.

So here's what I love about what is happening right now, George, you and the reason why I wanted you to tell this story, not only to give our listeners a heads up on some of the stuff that's coming down the pipeline with HubSpot AI, but also I think what you just showcased is the excitement a lot of people experience when they see these tools. They're like, oh my gosh, so much room for activities, so many possibilities. Everybody gets really freaking pumped and excited. And this is where I want to take a sharp right turn in our conversation. Right. Because the whole point of today's conversation is we have this excitement. How do we direct that excitement in a productive way, in a way that doesn't Create the worst possible case scenarios with AI.

Yeah.

So Devin, I actually want to start with you on this question and then we'll get to George and Max out in the wild. What are some of the worst examples you have seen of AI in practice with companies? The things that make you go, George and Max, what about you guys? What do you see in the wild? I'd love to get some specific examples.

I, I just hate, I hate seeing the, just the, the wave of, the wave of tools that are just kind of, you know, trying to fool people into thinking like, oh, if you can't write content, just auto generate all of it. And it's going to be great for search engine optimization. And like they're literally lying to people, which is, I think, you know, unfortunate that there's a lot of people out there that just hear AI and you know, it's the, it's the brand new buzzword and people just kind of freak out and don't know enough to be like, oh yeah, sure, and then they just do it. So it's like, I don't know, I think there's a lot of companies taking advantage of, you know, how hot AI is in the world right now and bastardizing it into a billion different products that you know are just going to fail in a year or two when, you know, all the search engines continue, they're already doing it, but like continue to crack down on crappy AI generated trash content. So it just, I, it's, it really annoys me seeing it.

It's interesting because I'm going to go the exact opposite way. The thing that I see in the wild that is interesting to me is numerous humans who are just blatantly refusing to actually even be part of the conversation. Just. Nope, it's a flash in the pan. It's like everybody's hyping it up. It's because SaaS companies want to do XYZ, the robots are coming, the world is ending, it's just going to spit out crap, so why should I even try? And that's what's freaking me out a little bit. Because there is, there is a set of employees, marketers, sales reps, humans that are actually going to embrace, learn, iterate, do what Devin said, add humanity, empathy, thought, leadership, the, the juice, the spice that can go on top of, if you have the right mindset around what's happening right now that does take it over the top. And then there's going to be this set that doesn't. And I, and I honestly worry about the set that is Ignoring it right now, that is refusing to @ least learn and play and have a curious mindset and have this idea of maybe I do need to pivot and. And see if it can do some things, not everything. It shouldn't be the end all be all right. Like Devin said, copy and paste. No, but what could it be to help you be a better version of yourself, faster version of yourself? How do you take what we are having, not having, but that we're going through right now? And I literally, I. I am aging myself, but I look at this and I go, man, there, there was, back in the day, was the $6 million, man. I have the potential to be the $6 million marketer because we now have the technology.

So it's interesting in hearing all of your answers, but here's where my brain is going to quote you for a second, George, because I think we've all had those instances where we see something like Devin said, right? And it's like, look. Look at that. Robot puke right on the screen. Look at that in the shape of a sentence. Isn't that delightful? Right?

But. But wait. But wait. But people have been issing on the screen since they started content marketing.

So here's. So this is getting to my point. Do we have a situation where we have a bunch of marketers who actively know they are publishing robot puke, which is now what I'm calling this. We're officially calling, like, unvarnished. I don't care what this says. Content from AI. That's robot puke. Okay? Do they. Are they doing this knowingly or do they not think about content in the way that they should? Or do they actually think it's good? Devin, talk to us.

They don't know any better. They don't know how to do it for real. And they think if they just go out and shout into the ether loud enough that people will come in. It's the same kind of people that buy lists. They think, you know, law of averages, if I talk to enough people, then I will make money off of someone. And the people that are just posting content for content, they're living off of, like 2006 SEO, where they think if they just have enough words out there, they'll exist. But it's like, dude.

And oftentimes I think it's like, how do I even put this? Like, if you're someone who's just generating a bunch of trash AI, robot puke, or whatever we're calling it, you were either misinformed by someone else or you really don't care about the content you're putting out there, or you were duped by somebody thinking that this cool new AI tool is going to help you do all sorts of SEO and you don't know what any of that means. You just hear AI and SEO and content and go, oh, this is how I should be doing it, right? You know, so it's just, it, I don't know, it's a, it's, to me, it's lazy one, right? But it's also like you just don't really care about the stuff that you're putting out there too. Like, I can understand how AI can assist in the content generation procedure, right? Like, for example, when, you know, HubSpot first had some of its AI generation tools, it wasn't writing you a whole article, it was helping you craft an outline. And for someone who's bad at creating content, that's a helpful thing because it's like, I don't know how I'm going to plan out this whole thing. I wasn't necessarily great at writing the five paragraph essays back in school or whatever, but if I can have something that just helps me kind of suggest some thoughts on how I might write about a topic and then I can fill in the blanks because it's provided me some structure and some guidance, that's great. But when it's just like, easy button, what do you want to write about? Hey guys. Hey leadership. Look, I wrote all this blog content and then you go, I used AI to generate it. And they go, wow, you're so smart. You know how to use AI.

And they're not saying that as far.

As the conversation goes, right?

Not saying that, no.

I'm saying the people who aren't taking this seriously or understand it or are misinformed about it, like that can happen.

Are you going to be okay?

I have pulled my mic off the stand for anybody who cannot see us right now. So I, I have a, I'm having a moment. So I agree with you. However, I want to advocate for our listeners a minute, for a moment because I think, you know, even I throwing out the term robot puke, right? We're, we're being, we're acting as if people are doing this from a place that is either actively deceptive or intentionally lazy. And I think of it more like, and it may, that may be true in some cases, but I want to advocate for the moment for the in house content marketer or in particular the agency content creator who is being billable, houred to death by where they are working. And I can envision something like this where they know internally what the best practices are. They know that they need to show up like a human. And then they get in those moments where they're like, shit, I have a deadline. They hit that roadblock. They hit that whatever. They hit that moment, and they're just like, you know what? I can use the HubSpot content thing, and it'll generate an extra paragraph, and it'll get me out of this very stressful situation that I'm in right now. Because I think what happens is it's less about an overall malignant attitude toward content in some cases, and more like a death by paper cut. Like, this one slice of cheesecake won't kill me. But then two hours later, if the whole cheesecake is gone, my dude, you have eaten an entire cheesecake. Like, it's the. I think it's sometimes that that's. That is definitely not based on a true story. But, you know, I think it comes down to these little micro moments where it can bail someone out of a tough situation, particularly if they are content marketers who are not set up for success in terms of the appropriate amount of time to get the work done.

See, and that's. But that's totally different than what I was saying. What I was saying is the people who are pressing generate entire blog. Boom, good, I'm SEO expert move. Not the people who are using it in the ways that it's like, it's truly helpful or I just need a little bit of help here or this and that. Like, I think that's different. Like, I'm calling the folks who are just like, oh, yeah, no. And it's more so the folks that are convincing people that, like, oh, dude, it's so easy now. You literally. It'll write the blog post for you. Boom. Send it out. That's different than, like, I need a paragraph here or, like, have some structure here, or I'm under a gun, so I need a little bit of help. Right? I'm calling that the folks who are, like, not using it in the way to kind of. Because you're. What you just laid out is assisting in the content generation process. Not. Not. So here's what I. Skirting it. Not, like, completely not being involved with it and hitting the easy button. I think that's way different than what you just said.

So, Max, you and I are violently. You and I are violently agreeing. So what I was trying to say is that in addition to that, I think another reason why we end up in A situation with bad AI is because of well intentioned people. I think there's the ill intentioned piece, there's the laziness piece, but then there are the circumstances in which somebody tries to bail themselves out, but they still end up taking a shortcut. George, I'm watching you go through all five stages of grief right now on my screen. Talk to me about your Fifi's bud. Bring them forward.

I just think that there's a couple things that I want to throw out here. First of all, there's been douchebag humans since the beginning of time. And there have been people who are going to try to find the easy way out since the beginning of time. And you know, if you do what is easy in life, life will be hard. If you do what's hard in life, life will be easy. Fundamental principle that you need to pay attention to. The problem is people are looking at whether it's well intentioned or they're just being a douchebag. Either way, they're looking at it as the easy button. What I'm saying is that we have to re, look at, rethink and reimagine when we say AI. What? And I am so glad that this is what I've submitted to talk about an inbound. And I am praying with all that is holy that the inbound gods will for a tenth time, ask me to come back and I'll be able to have this conversation. Because what we should be thinking about here is what are the things that I'm not good at and what are the things that take the most time? And we should be thinking about our content in maybe even a completely different way. Because when I start out in this process, I know that a lot of time is boiled into research. Of course, I also know that I'm coming from a place of thought leadership. So thought leadership is already going to be an element. I want to do some additional research. Then I can get AI to help with that. I also know that I look at whatever it gives me is. It's play. D'oh. I need to build with what it gives me, what I actually want it to be. So I'm literally sitting here like ripping things out, adding things in, asking it to say things different ways, typing in my own little piece of it, and it becomes this thing of like, listen, I had, I told somebody the other day, like at the end of the day, the most powerful thing for me about AI is it types a hell of a lot faster than I do. So if I can give it the right Research. If I can give it my voice. If I can start with a video interview of me talking and getting people to answer questions in the way that we've actually answered them in a good human way. Listen, another principle, ladies and gentlemen of life. Garbage in, garbage out. If you feed it good, good shit's gonna come back at you and it's not gonna be this, oh, that sounds like it might be robotic. That might be robotic puke on the screen. No, because we didn't start with the robot. We started with the content that you created. The transcripts, the research, the DOT leadership, and just asked it to be a typist for us. Like, we're thinking about this wrong.

I agree. I agree with everything you're saying.

I hope so.

I'm. I'm advocating against the folks who aren't, like, literally, you just talked about all this original content creation that you're doing, right? And you're having AI help you kind of turn it into these new things and create this additional stuff from it. I'm simply advocating against the person who's just hitting the generate blog post with, no.

My thing is, why are we even worried about that person? Why are we wasting.

Because. Because I don't want that person to shit up for themselves by be creating a ton of content that's going to tank them in the search ratings. I'm literally looking at Google Search Central right now, and it literally says using AI to generate content with the primary purpose of manipulating ranking in search results is a violation of our spam policies. If you go search SEO, AI content, there are a billion and a half companies out there just selling products that are like, here, the AI blog post, easy button. And, and like duping all these people into thinking like, hey, if you guys thought content creation was hard before, you can now literally just hit a button and generate content. It's going to be good for your SEO. And we're taking advantage of people who don't understand what any of that means and just think they need to do it right. And then they're. We're taking money as they actively do something that's like destroying their website and their authority online. That's when I'm mad. I'm not saying AI is bad. I'm just saying those companies should, like, people need to wake up and just think a little bit harder. Yes, Right. And you just can't be doing that stuff. That's the only stuff that I don't like.

I don't, I don't disagree with you, by the way.

Yeah, Max, we agree with you.

If I could.

Okay, good, good, good, good. People thinking I'm disagreeing with you guys are saying. And I'm not. I'm hyper focusing on some shit I really don't like that I don't like to see, because that's what we started talking about.

No, Matt, that's the thing. If I could go set fire, I'd go set fire to whatever. I. I don't disagree with you. What I'm saying is I would much rather spend time, and I'm not talking about this podcast, I'm just talking about in general, in my life moving forward. I would rather spend more time than pointing the fig finger and whipping people who are just blatantly doing it wrong because they're not doing this themselves. The service of actually educating themselves to a deep enough ability to make a smart decision. I would much rather like, teach people how to do it right, to think about it right, to leverage it in the ways that would make their life easier because they have put in the work they do have the understanding. They. They are a thought leader. They're using it for those things, but they're able to get a maximum output, not maybe in speed, but in the size and richness and value that they can. That's what I want to lean in and put my. My passion and my time into is like, let's help people make really, really, really, really good stuff moving forward.

I'm taking it all in. My thing is I love the idea of focusing on bad actors enough, just enough to let the bad actors who aren't aware they're bad actors know that they are, in fact bad actors. And so educating people on things that they might not understand noise the hell out of the rest of the world. It's that you'd be surprised how many people are just genuinely ignorant, thinking, oh, this is what I need to do to get in the door. And it's like they're not realizing that they're positioning themselves further away from the door. By doing that, you're not. You're not hacking anything. You're not, you know, finding a shortcut or some secret to success. All you're doing is polluting the Internet and flagging yourself as an SEO pariah. So to that extent, yes, I will inform people on worst practices, you can call them. But at the same time, like George says, I am all for helping people find new and creative ways to leverage tools. For instance, those of you who use ChatGPT or chat spot or something along those lines, look up the RICE framework R I, C C E the RICE framework is a really great.

George is taking notes.

Yeah, it's a really great tool that you can use in order to build out very thorough prompts that get AI kicking, exactly what you need and also help you organize your thought. And so that's the kind of information that I'd love for us to spend, you know, more time on when we're talking about AI and educating people and letting them know how they can achieve the best versions of themselves. Leveraging advanced technology.

This is where this conversation gets really interesting because I wanted to let the melee, the back and forth go for a bit here because it highlights, I think, the exact problem that a lot of our listeners are going through. On the one hand, there are the best practices that George is talking about and on the other hand, hand they're also getting enticed by very shiny solutions like Max is talking about. Then there are just the marketers that. I'm just trying to do my job. This is a complex problem. Why are we seeing robot puke on the Internet? There isn't a single reason. It could be one of these reasons. It could be a few of these reasons. It could be all of them. We don't. We don't know, right? Well, we do know. We don't know. It depends. But what I would like to get into now are some of these mindsets that should be guiding how these organizations are leveraging AI. Because one of the things that immediately jumps to my mind, George, George, Max and Devin, I'm sure you've all heard this. When I hear business owners talk about the promise of AI in terms of their marketing and their content, it quote, enables them to do more. More of what? Because in most cases you probably aren't getting content right to begin with. So what is the more of that people think they're going to be able to do or. Or should people even be doing more or should they be focusing on something else? There is this pursuit of this nebulous more that I do not quite understand.

Yeah, I have thoughts. So the nebulous more is an excellent way of putting it and it can lead to a completely different conversation about falling down rabbit holes. But at the end of the day, it boils down to inefficient time management and people are trying to cut time from wherever they can cut time from. And for a lot of people, myself included, content generation is a very time consuming thing. And even if it isn't always a time consuming thing, it always feels like a time consuming thing because it's not something I love doing. I get no enjoyment out of it. In time, both flies and crawls simultaneously when I'm doing it. It's just not my thing. I'm sorry, Liz, but if I were to devote more time to leveraging AI to help me pull. No, sleem, I will not take it back. Leveraging AI to help me create an outline, to get me going in a direction that I can take and create my own. And then, boom, more time. And then what do I do with that more time. All the other things that I feel like I don't have enough time for. And again, leading out of that rabbit hole. Then we start talking about, are you a workaholic or are you trying to achieve work life balance? But that's.

That's a sign. I can come in with a little bit of a positive take here to juxtapose some of my negative ones earlier, I think, like, I can't. While I can't speak for what CEOs say when they say, oh, we could do more with content. I mean, or, you know, more because of AI. I mean, I can think of, like, a pretty good example. You can do more with the original content you create because of some pretty cool tools out there. For example, I mean, we played around with the tool a little while ago. Can't remember what it was called, but, like, it was able to take one of my YouTube videos and then split it into a whole bunch of shorts, write a whole bunch of social posts promoting it, take the whole transcript and turn it into, like, a blog post, right? From the actual content that I actually created, right? I think that's a really cool way to say, like, hey, here's something that you built. You focused on the way that, you know that you can create content best. I can't write blog posts, right? Like, I. I can't sit down and just, like, write something. I can make a banging video, though, right? I can make a video. I can produce that content in the way that's, like, comfortable to me, right? And then I can have something take that medium where I know I best express myself and then do all the stuff that I'm not really good at, right? Chopping it up into something else. Writing, like, social posts to promote it, like creating written content or even just, like a transcription from it or something like that. That's cool. To me, that's like doing more with that original stuff that you actually create. It's kind of like what George was talking about earlier, right? So I can see that as like a pretty. You Know, sweet. Use case for it from, like, the content side of things.

I hope everybody strapped in because George has been pacing. George, do you have something to share with the class?

I mean, because you've been walking in.

Circles, rocking back on your heels, looking down like a father. I'm not disappointed and angry. I'm just disappointed and angry.

Yeah, but it's not, it's not about that. It's. I'm literally over here spinning in my head, am I fundamentally broken? Like, am I not like other humans? And, and let me explain. Let me, Let me, Let me just explain, because the, the, by the way, the conversation is around the word more, right? And so I hear Max talk and I'm like, max, I hear you, brother. As a matter of fact, two years ago, that was me. I'm the video guy. I'd like to make videos. That's the, that's my love language is creating videos, except with doing research and building on a process and leveraging AI in the way that I have been. It allows me to do more and believe more about myself. And actually, I love creating written content because the reason I hated it before is I thought I needed an editor. I thought I needed creative genius. I thought I needed all of these pieces that I've actually been able to piece together to get the spark of an idea and make sure that it doesn't end up going out on the Internet looking like, complete. So when I think about more, it's. It's allowing me to do more than I once was comfortable with. The other thing when I think about more is I'm not necessarily saying more content, but more meaning, better, taking the time that I do have to make the content better than I am creating, whether it's fresh content or optimizing the content that I already have. But I can leverage that for it to be more. More robust. Liz, you know, I've been literally working on content that we're going to drop here in the near future when we launch the new Sidekick Strategies website. And this content is literally more. It is more of anything than I've probably ever created before in my life. And I'm loving that process. But also, here's the other thing that I. I'm struggling with, how to actually communicate this. When I think about the word more. It's giving ourselves the ability to actually care more, create more, and, and put more love on those that are actually going to come to our site and digest those things, because nobody out there has more time. And it's funny the way my brain will work is because I'll literally find like eight disparate pieces of information around the same concept and go, well, why can't it all just live together here? And instead of people having to try to piece the puzzle together, I'm literally giving them the streamlined version of these eight pieces of content in this one area. Therefore giving them more day, more time back in their day, because we're creating something of more value. Like when I hear that word more, that's where my brain actually goes.

So this is where I think you bring up a very good point, and that's why I wanted to talk about this, is that when people are saying this will enable me to do more. Well, more of what you need to define what that more is. And I love where you went with that, George, about being more helpful. I think of it, I am able to serve more. I am able to extend the reach of genuine helpfulness.

Yeah, more like, let's take this completely out of the HubSpot space for a second. When I look at what we're doing and, and once we get some time back in our day and, and there's a site launched and the world figures out what just happened and where we're moving forward, I go to beyond your default and I think about all the podcast episodes we've done and all the written content that come could come out of that, and all the video scripts that could come out of that and the course that could come out of that. And if you start to like line these things up, you're quickly like, geez, I need to like clone myself. Well, if you're building assistance and you put the measures in to make sure that they're the assistance and not the end all, be all, you might actually be able to do that. And so it makes me excited to think about being able to have this content or these products or these things that would never be able to live in the world because they are rooted in a place of this will help somebody fundamentally be a good human or on the side that we're on right now, this will fundamentally help somebody be better at HubSpot, help somebody be better at their job. And I think that's the thing is like, if you're coming at, whether it be inbound marketing, content marketing, social media marketing, or AI in your everyday workload, if you're coming at it from the place where you're trying to be generally a good human who provides more value and can put it in a way that it actually comes out and isn't robot puke, then why not why. Why, like, anyway, I'll get off my soapbox.

George, do you care about this issue?

I really do. I really. I really. I really, really do.

Max, what were you gonna say, bud?

I was gonna say, I think there's this whole other wonderful conversation for us to have outside of just a content stuff, right? And maybe we're covering this on a different episode.

Take us on a journey. But where are we going?

I was going to say, like, I, you know, I've been admittedly very slow on the uptake for the AI stuff. Like, my, My. My most intense interactions with AI have been when my kids want a bedtime story where they just kind of make up the premise and OpenAI writes it for him. Or if Eliza wants to see what a combination of, like, a dragon donkey looks like, and I do it in dolly, and it's some of the funniest, you know, stuff ever. But, like, as I start to kind of see what AI is doing, to really just kind of change the experience that people have just working in the CRM, right? It's. That is. That is stuff that, like, really, really excites me. Like, I'm. I literally just searched AI and, like, the product updates, and I'm seeing stuff like the AI assistant call summaries, the AI Assistant, the content writer in Playbooks, which is super interesting because, like, that's, like, you don't need to worry about SEO there, right? You know, the. The stuff that they're doing with forecasting, right, where it's like using your deal data to help you kind of like, forecast sales, Things like that. I've. I was talking to this guy, Nico Lafak. I'm going to butcher his last name, but. Nico Lafakis. Yep, Nico Lafagas. I just want to be confident when I do it, right? And, dude, this guy is literally built like a custom GPT that is like writing custom coded workflow actions for people, right? Like, imagine the day that workflow, like, that AI works its way into workflows a lot more than it already have. I already. I'm going to butcher his last name, but Nico Lafagas. Yep, Nico Lafagus. I just want to be confident when I do it. No, it can help you write your description, which is beautiful because no one writes workflow descriptions, right? And finally, now you don't have an excuse, right? But, like, imagine a day where there is the AI workflow action where you literally just say, I want this workflow action to do xyz and it can just do it instead of, like, custom Coding it, right? That is going to be insane. Right. And let's be honest, we're probably not that far away from that being a reality. Right. You know, so. Or something like that, right? Or like even where we can say, hey, build me a workflow that does XYZ and just. It just does it. Like that is going to be bananas. Right? And something that I absolutely love finally happened to you guys have heard me complain about it for so long is Chat Spot is making its way into the HubSpot interface.

Yeah.

Which is going to be wild, especially when Chat Spot can look at the thing you're working on and take the thing you're working on into context for whatever prompts you give it. Right? It's like, hey, look at this contact record. Take a look at the, you know, conversations we've had so far. What should be my next best step? Tell me. Right? Tell me what to do. Tell me what, what I should do versus, like, just doing something for me, right? Like that, I think is going to fundamentally change the way we think about working with CRMs and doing stuff and building shit in HubSpot. Right? Beyond just the content conversation, there's a.

Whole episode around that is going to be a whole episode around all the things that you can do in HubSpot. Like there's. That's a whole nother episode, without a doubt.

Well, that's why we're doing this as a series. But, Max, to your point, what you just said, all of the excitement, that's why, even though we did have to say, George, not quite yet. Hold on. We're not starting the AI series with all of the products. We'll get to them. There's a reason why didn't like. There's a reason why. I know I didn't like it. Mr. Patience, we love it. George, how do you feel about waiting? Tell me more. I don't like it, but this brings me to my last question. Because, George, you're not going to have to wait for too much longer, right? Starting next week, we're going to start getting into some of this really fun product stuff. But I think we all heard and saw if you were joining us live, how Max started brings me to my last question. Because, George, you're not going to have to wait for too much longer, right? Lighting up at all of the different possibilities. Right. And that's hopefully how our listeners are going to feel as we continue to go through this AI series. They're going to get excited at the possibilities. They're going to start defining more in the correct ways. They're going to start seeing ways they can expand and scale and make more of what's possible, actually possible. But before they do that, if each of you could leave them with, like, as we go through this journey together and you get excited, never lose sight of blank, what would that blank be?

Don't stop believing.

Oh, Max. Good song.

Oh, sorry.

Steve Perry called. He said stop.

Wait, hold on, hold on. Before we go there, I just had, like, I just. I have to get this out of my brain.

Do it.

Because it's in my brain and I want to get it out of my brain. Like, we all know what it's like to step into a HubSpot mortal portal. Not mortal.

A HubSpot. Mortal Kombat.

Yeah. And you're about to do Mortal Kombat with a. With a, you know, a HubSpot portal. You're stepping into that. Let's say, you know, for lack of a better word, the driver was drunk in it before. Right? But just imagine a day where you're stepping into that portal for the first time because you got to go fix everything that's wrong and you. You're. You're starting to get familiar with it. What if you could literally just bring up chat Spot and just be like, hey, chat Spot, tell me what's wrong with this portal.

And then just chat spot starts crying.

I've been neglected Chat just to go, thank God you're here. Right? But, like, you know, chat spot, like, obviously, like that Chat spot can be trained on, you know, a ton of content around HubSpot best practices. It could be trained on everything it sees in the knowledge base. It can be trained on all the HubSpot Academy content. Right? Like, imagine if the portal can tell you what it needs.

The only problem, like, the. The only problem with that, though, is the fact that it can tell you what HubSpot does default portals need. It will not be able to tell you.

It could be trained on everything it sees in the knowledge base. It could be trained on all the.

HubSpot Academy content, the custom solutions that people have created or provided in their portal, which, by the way, I think the next show that we should create should be portal combat. Like that should.

Anyway, hold on, hold on, hold on. But, like, can't they train it against content that will give it that context?

Who's going to train it?

Can't it.

Max and George?

I don't know Max and George, the chat spot people. I'm sure they can figure. Are you telling me that, like, they can't Say, hey, chat spot, go take a look at all the HubSpot portals. Look at all the stuff written in it. From there you could probably figure out what industry it's being used in. Right? Here are some metrics of what like success looks like. And can it figure it out? I don't know. I think larger learning language models could figure that out if given the right material to kind of learn what best practices would be in certain industries. But also, George, I agree with you. Right. And that's why it has a good human in.

Those were the magic words. That's all he needed. Did you see how quickly came off his mic? He's like, oh, he agrees with me.

Oh, okay. But, but no, no, I, I, I'm just, I'm just pushing back on the idea that we wouldn't have the data to give best practices around like industry specific stuff. Like I'm sure you can, because there's a lot of people out there that create content about industry best practices. Right? There's a lot of stuff you see in a portal. And you could say these portals are manufacturing portals because of, I don't know, whatever portal. And you could say these portals are manufacturing portals because of, I don't know, whatever way they, they. I don't know how long large language models work like, but I'm sure there's ways that it can do it right? Because there is plenty of good example content out there, be it the form of analyzing a portal that it knows it's in certain industries or whatever that it could do something like that one day.

I don't know, George. Do not engage. Do not engage. Everyone step away.

Everyone way they. They. I don't know how long large language models work like, but I'm sure there's ways that it can do it right, because there is plenty of good example content out there, be it the form of analyzing a portal that it knows it's in certain industries or whatever that it could do something like that one day.

I don't know. George. Do not engage. Do not engage. Everyone step away. Everyone. Everyone step away from their mic. Because this is exactly what I was talking about, which is the whole point of this conversation is we could easily get way too far into the weeds, which we are doing on the rest of the series. But I want to end today's conversation. Everyone step away from their mics. Because this is exactly what I was talking about, which is with that point of before everybody gets excited, before everybody starts ripping these tools apart, figuring out what we can do with them, what is the one thing they need to keep in mind. Devin, why don't we. The whole point of this conversation is we could easily get way too far into the weeds. We'd start with you. Also, I love how Chad is like, Max, drive us to safety. Max is driving us off the high shoot we are doing on the rest of the series. But I want to end today's conversation with that point of. Before everybody gets excited, before everybody starts ripping these tools. He has taken us off a cliff. A really fun cliff with lots of really cool side tangents, but still lots of really cool.

Where is the steering?

Oh, here it is.

That's part of the problem. I don't think he was using the wheel.

I knew it.

I didn't. I didn't take my strip terror today.

And it's back.

Well, that's apart. Figuring out what we can do with them. What is the one thing they need to keep in mind? Devin, why don't we start with you? Also, I love how Chad is like, Max, drive us to safety. Max is driving us off the highway. Okay. Oh, good. And there's George.

All right, I'm sorry, Liz, the question one more time.

What's your hashtag? One thing.

What's the one thing someone needs to keep in mind as they're going through this series? Because as Max and George have showcased beautifully, and I'm not saying that sarcastically, it is very easy to get carried away and excited about these tools without keeping these best practices. He has taken us off a cliff. A really fun cliff with lots of really cool side tangents, but still lots of really cool.

Where is the steering wheel?

Oh, here it is.

That's part of the problem. I don't think he was using the wheel.

I knew it.

I didn't. I didn't take my street era today, and it's bad.

Well, that. Okay. Oh, good. And there's George.

All right, I'm sorry, Liz, the question one more time.

What's your hashtag? One thing.

What's the one thing someone needs to keep in mind as they're going through this series? Because as Max and George have showcased beautifully, and I'm not saying that sarcastically, it is very easy to get carried away and excited about these tools without keeping these best practices in mind. So what's that one thing you want our listeners to keep in mind as they go on this journey with us?

Think about your problems. Don't come at it. Look at the tool and let's figure out how we can use it. That's where tools go to die. What you need to do is identify a problem and then see how AI can fit into your solution. Or whether or not updating your workflow entirely to incorporate it might be an option. But what you don't want to do is start looking at all the different tools. What will end up happening is the tool you are looking for will no longer exist, or it will be something completely different, maybe owned by someone else. Or it'll just cost a whole hell of a lot more than it used to. But what you should do is start looking at your. Your workflow, look at the challenges you face, and then look at how artificial intelligence can be leveraged to help.

You know what I love, Devin? How you started with, like, you got to think about your problems. I'm like, how wasn't hooked enough as a child? Like, damn, George, how about you?

AI can help with that too.

Oh, God. Okay. Wow.

AI therapy.

AI therapy. Let's go.

Oh, no, no, no, no.

Anyway, I'm gonna send a link to my mom.

Let's put my complexes into a data set. That sounds smart, George.

Well, as being one of the co hosts of the beyond, your default podcast, no, we probably do not want to do that with you or I into a large model. Anyway, not why we're here. It's funny because there's like a bazillion things rattling around in my brain that I would want to talk about, but I think I'm going to drill it down to the simple. Don't lose the fact that this is all about communication. How you choose to communicate with your AI assistant in. In other words, how do you communicate with the humans right now that are helping you get stuff done in your organization? Or are you like most that we run into and they're afraid of actually having a conversation with humans? Like, the way that you communicate with it is going to be the way that it communicates back that you need. And all of this should be in an effort so that you can communicate what you're trying to communicate with the world. So, like, if you think about communication principles and start to apply communication principles into the workflow that we're talking about around AI, AI tools, then all of a sudden we're going to start to get somewhere real interesting. So it's about communication.

Max, light of my life, what's your one thing? Oh, no. Why are we giggling? Oh, no. Oh, no.

I don't know. I. I'd say don't be like me. Someone who has avoided the AI stuff and developed a very jaded opinion around it. Like, I have because as you can tell, my, you know, my whole thing is I saw people struggling with content creation and I was like, man, if people got really, really good at this and actually gave a shit about the content they were creating, they could do some really cool stuff. But now someone came along with an easy button and now I'm really mad about it. And it makes me not look into all the other cool things AI can do, right? Because I have such a. I'm just letting the past sort of dictate my curiosity around something that's really neat because I'm only looking at it from a really negative angle. Don't be like me, right? It's cool. Just, you know, sit back, relax, have a 7 up, and let your mind get blown by some cool stuff. You know, it's okay is not going to kill us. I don't know, it might, but it's probably not going to kill us. And if we do, we'll go through a really super cool, like, battle with robots and that'll be like a pretty chill way to go out.

Max, can you make me a promise? Will you never stop being our shows chaos Gremlin, I love you so much. I never. My favorite part is like, if your answer starts with a giggle or my favorite is when you start smiling 30 seconds before you start speaking. I'm like, oh, yay. Or oh, no. Or both.

Yeah, this is gonna be an edit or a clip. We're never really sure. But it's one of the two.

Edit or a clip. My John, tell them to bring out the whole ocean. Sorry, go ahead.

My one thing is define your more. Because whether you're talking about automation or AI or anything else, it reminds me of this conversation I had with a client a few years ago. And he said, you know, that's kind of the thing about automation. If the core of what you're doing is shit, all you're doing is scaling your capacity for shit. And so if you're not very it. Yeah. So if you're not clear on what your more is, if you are not clear on the why behind what you're doing. If George and I were sitting there talking about being more helpful, being more of service, and that was not resonating with you, you need to sit down and define what your more is. That, I think, is one of the most important things. Gentlemen, how are we all feeling after today's engaging conversation?

I feel artificially intelligent.

Oh, yeah, I'm. I'm ready to dive deeper like you, Devin. I can't wait to get to the original and the original plus version of this conversation to really help.

Well, George, you're gonna have to wait another week. You're gonna have to wait another week.

Or I could just do it by myself to nobody and then I just. But that's no fun.

Cut it. We're done.

Are we done?

We're done.

Really?

I don't know.

Are we ever in the perfect episode for a freaking AI poem. But you know what?

Oh, screw it.

Okay, Hub Heroes, we've reached the end of another episode. Will Lord Lack continue to loom over the community, or will we be able to defeat him in the next episode of the Hub Heroes podcast? Make sure you tune in and find out. In the next episode, make sure you head over to thehubheroes.com to get the latest episodes and become part of the League of Heroes. FYI, if you're part of the League of Heroes, you'll get the show notes right in your inbox and they come with some hidden power up potential as well. Make sure you share this podcast with a friend, leave a review if you like what you're listening to, and use the hashtag Hub Heroes Podcast on any of the socials and let us know what strategy conversation you'd like to listen into next. Until next time, when we meet and combine our forces, remember to be a happy, helpful, humble human. And of course, always be looking for a way to be someone's hero.