Allbound: Is It Inbound vs. Outbound Anymore? Do Labels Matter? [HubHeroes, Video EP92]

Nothing. There's no reason for that. Like, I can't wait till he's back.

Because he will be coming back.

And I can. Yes. And I can play the intro fully, but for right now, there's just no reason.

I miss him.

I know. Devin. Yes. I was. I was talking to Liz about this the other day. Like, man, where is he? Like, come on. But, you know, it is what it is.

We get it. Hold on. This is just one thing. One. One thing that I want to. That I want to witness at this year.

Oh.

The only thing that I have any vested interest in seeing happen is not products on this. Like, new products on the stage we didn't hear about. It's not, you know, seeing Friends and all this stuff. It is watching the moment where Devin meets Ryan Reynolds. Oh, my God.

Do you think he'll wear the Deadpool suit to inbound?

He better. Because if he doesn't, I don't know what.

I would be shocked.

I. That is just. Devin, if you're listening, I need to be there at that moment just to see what you do.

I mean, I'm envisioning like. Like a. Like, you know how girls, like, young girls are like a Bieber fan. Or like. Or like. Like, back in the day, it was New Kids on the Block. Or like, hell, yeah. I'm just.

I'm New Kids.

Yeah. Yeah. I'm envisioning like. Or like a Swifty. Like, I'm envisioning Devin, like, me not even knowing kind of who he is for, like, he's. The first couple of minutes of, like, Like Donald Glover.

It. Like. Like Donald Glover when he was Troy in community and he meets LeVar Burton for the first time and he just stops.

Yeah, that's what I think. It's going to be silent.

It's going to be beautiful.

He's a statue, a Devon statue in the middle of inbound.

Like, nature will be healing, folks. Nature will be healing. But we have a different. We have a. We have a different conversation we need to have today. And I'm so excited because, George, when we. When we said the word of what we were going to be talking about today, you're like, yes, I like this. And, Max, I don't like this word. Not necessarily what it represents, but we are going to have a little bit of a semantic argument. And Max likes. We don't need to get into them. Yes, we do. Yes, we do. Because, ladies and gentlemen, we are talking about the marriage of inbound and outbound today. Yeah, that's what we're talking about. And this is a topic we've not necessarily danced around in that we've been avoiding it. It's more that, you know, we've had, we've had guests on who represent more outbound opportunities. Right? We've talked about direct mail, we talked about SMS texting. We even, George, you and I, with our clients, we talk about the marriage of using paid advertising strategies to amplify inbound strategies, bringing those things together. And then when you and I had our conversation a few weeks ago with Kyle Jepsen talking about how HubSpot had changed, how inbound is evolving, he brought up a term that I love, a good branding term. I don't like things like smarketing, but he said the word all bound and I went, huh? And there's Max's feeling. Max, Max, before we get into the conversation around the blending of inbound and outbound, could you, could you put, could you put some words to those sides? Like let's, let's use our feeling words, buddy. How you doing?

I have no friggin idea how to define them. I mean this is like one of those things where it's like, I remember we had that person on to come around and explain, you know, what account based marketing was. And I don't know if like we were all thinking the same thing, but I was sitting there just being like, this guy just explained inbound. Like it wasn't even like abm, you know what I mean? And like we talked about it, we had a conversation around it. But like, I don't know, the all bound thing. Like if all bound is just doing in. I mean, I don't know, I don't know how people are defining it, but if the answer is it's doing inbound and outbound at the same time, I'm kind of sitting here just wondering like, hey, when we were like getting all these people into the idea of like doing inbound, it's not like they stopped doing outbound. So like, is this really a new concept? You know what I mean? And I feel like it's just another one of those things to just be another marketing buzzword to fuel the next generation of AI assisted, know, scraping and stuff like that. That it's just like, I don't know, it's kind of freaking me out a little bit. But I also don't know what it means. But I just hate like what did. Has everyone already forgotten about nearbound that we were talking about like not too long ago?

I've never heard of that.

I am today, years Old hearing about this was here.

That thing was here. Right. Especially when, I don't know that Reveal was talking about. There was this whole nearbound thing. And then I heard Matt Bulan over at super who. I love talking about like surround bound and like all this. I'm like, dude, how many do we freaking need, dude? And it's just like there's too many.

And I'm just Surround bound sounds threatening.

Yeah, it's this. It's the new putting.ly or.IO at the end of your, like, business's name.

What's the name of your company?

I'm saying, I'm not saying there's no dot. Right. But yeah, we're not. We're. We're no better. Right? But like, I don't know. Just.

So here's the thing.

I know what all bound is, but.

So, so here's the thing. Like, first of all, I think we're going to have that conversation of kind of what it is or at least when. When I hear the word and when Kyle says the. Where my brain goes. Because I want to step back for a second. I want to talk about humans. And usually us humans are good at one thing and not necessarily good another. And what I mean by that, Max, is most humans, if you stop and think about it for a second, we're really good at living in the land of or we're going to do this or we're going to do that. And I will tell you that I can remember when people started talking about content marketing. Then inbound marketing showed up. You would see articles about how print design is dead and it's dying and people quit placing ads in magazines and you can drive down the road. And because of what happened with inbound, there are a plethora of wooden large boards that have nothing on him down the freeway because people did. Or we're going to do inbound because we're not going to do what. What we thought we were doing no longer works. This is the new way. And again, humans live in the ore. What, What I think we're talking about today is that business has, especially in today's environment, it's. There's no other word. It's freaking challenging. Like, things are always changing. Humans are changing. Like, it's just crazy. And so I think what we're almost saying at a fundamental level is have we have reached a point? Not have we, but we have reached a point where, like, it's less about or. And it's more about and.

But.

But when we're talking about the inbound and outbound. It's inbound and outbound with modern buyer human human centric servant based strategies that can be measured in ways that historical air quotes. Outbound people weren't doing. So like, it's this and this with 2x3x amplifiers on the thing that we left behind long ago.

So here's what I want to jump in here for a moment so I know we're getting caught up in the semantics of it here. And Max, I do hear what you're saying. It's like every, what, two to six months? Some marketers. Yeah, somebody's. Somebody's running my turn of a. Yeah, somebody's running out of a. Of a meeting going, I've got it, guys, I've got it. I spent a bunch of time with whiteboard and a marker and I figured it out and they have a new name for something of something that we're already doing.

Are you making fun of me right now?

No, you just. You just like take a nap and found a company. Like, I have to watch. I can't. I can't leave you alone for too long or I'll start getting things like, hey, look, I wrote a whole book while you were asleep. And I'm like, what?

There might be a fourth company on the way, by the way. But anyway.

Okay, what's the third?

No, I'm just. Well, we've got George B. Thomas, llc, we've got Sidekick Strategies, and we've got beyond your default. We literally already have three companies, but there might be a fourth one coming. I don't know.

And then, and then George's wacky. All bound Emporium.

Yes.

Wacky waving inflatable arm flail men.

Hang on. Let me, Let me, let me check the. Let me check the domain if that's available or not.

Yeah, George's. George's wacky Wild all about Emporium.

I'm going to trade.

Can he set up. Can he set up a booth in club inbound with wacky waving inflatable arm flailing tube men?

See if someone's already bought. All boundly, please.

All bound late.

No, no, no.

I'm looking it up. Yeah, all bound Lee. Yeah, guys.

All bound.

Delete if it's available. There's a party happening. Like we're gonna pop bottles and let's see.

I'm going to go daddy. Let's see what they got. What do we have?

Real time domain searching. That's what you signed on for, ladies and gentlemen. We're. We're literally.

Remember that time I was driving. Remember that time I was driving the car?

Yeah.

Oh, my God. Guys, it's unavailable.

Somebody bought it.

Oh, my God. I might slightly be getting sick to my stomach.

So, like. Oh, God, I can't believe it. Seven. Seven offers for, like, a million dollars for that domain.

Yeah.

I literally hate everything. Oh, wow. IO's available according to Chad. That's wild. That's gonna be gone in two seconds.

Oh, my God.

Oh, shoot. Let me go buy that. Hang on. I'll be right back, guys.

Okay. All right, well, Chad, grab that domain.

I'll pay you back in sandwiches.

I'll pay you back.

Pickle and peanut butter sandwiches or whatever.

Peanut butter sandwiches at inbound. Yes. Yeah. Let's go.

So excited to try.

Not why we're here. We should. We should. Who's driving this car?

I don't know. What are you talking about? I don't look at you.

I don't even care right now.

No. Well, let's get away from the semantics of it for a second, because I think you bring up a really good point, Max. Like, we have this kind of, like, nomenclature. Do we like the name? Do we not like the name? It doesn't really matter. Let's step away from the name for a moment and talk about the principles behind it. Because we started in the inbound ecosystem of, like, outbound's bad. Don't do it anymore. The only way is inbound. You have to earn everything. And we're starting to see this creep back toward the center, this starting to creep back toward moderation. So, George, I actually want to start with you for a moment. Has your position evolved with the idea of inbound versus outbound or inbound and outbound? Like, did you start as a purist and then bring outbound methodologies back into the fold, or have you always been a. An all boundly kind of guy?

No. God, no. Literally, when 2012, HubSpot inbound, I was like. And by the way, you have to remember, I come from, like, print design. Like, first, like, that's my mentor, Eric Jacobs. Literally was like, we were design. And then in 2012, learning about HubSpot and inbound, I literally was a or guy. Max. That's why I brought that up. Like, I'm like, oh, let's go do this thing. It's shiny and it's bright and it's inbound. And it makes sense because I hate freaking phone calls when I'm eating dinner. And I. I hate spam messages and direct. Like, yeah, let's hop on this train and so literally to the point if, and if you, if you've been in this space for a while, there didn't always used to be an ads tool because ads wasn't inbound, ladies and gentlemen. Like, and then all of a sudden the ads tool showed up. No, no, no. There was many a year where ads was looked at by inbound purists of like, oh, that's kind of like a. I don't know, that's interruptive. Interruptive doesn't equal inbound.

I remember.

And so, so like I think about this and I literally was like an inbound purist. And then all of a sudden ish started to change and like some of the things that were just die hard tried and true inbound strategies, all sudden you start to hear people, which sometimes they were doing it for effect. XYZ is dead. And you're like, well, that's part of inbound. Like, how is, how is.

Yeah, the best part, the best part was when you'd see inbound marketing is dead and go read my blog post and download my ebook.

It's like, why?

And it's like, you're insane, like dude or dudette.

You're like an idiot. You're literally using the channel to talk about the thing that's dead.

Anyway, no, my personal favorite, hold on. My personal favorite is when everybody was going after SEO is dead. Here's why. But it was called SEO is dead because that's the term that people were searching for. So they were only getting all the traffic to the SEO is dead content by optimizing for SEO is dead. I just love it.

So here's the thing though, right? If I think about this, then all of a sudden I started seeing things working with clients where all of a sudden there was these massive successes. Like one historical client, we went ahead and did a print ad in a magazine and we sat back and we had like a oh God moment. I have another client right now that one of the best sources for lead generation billboards, I kid you not. And so all of these like historical outbound tactics that people left to the wayside that all of a sudden got real quiet because there wasn't a lot of competition. Now the folks who that are have embraced inbound, embrace the methodology philosophy of inbound, but also are starting to play or tease in these other non competitive areas that still have viewerships. Eyeballs can gain attention. Now all of a sudden there's becoming this understanding that there's actually probably a healthy mix of certain strategies on both sides that when combined create Potentially a more powerful strategy mix for a business than just inbound or just outbound. And therefore, we get to coin a phrase that makes Max itch called all bound.

Tell me more how you love that phrase, Max.

I don't love the phrase. I. I mean, so it might. Just to like, make sure, like, I'm understanding how we're defining it is, like, are we saying all bound? Oh, my God. Huge spider. Oh, my God. I don't like that at all.

Oh, yes. I love spiders.

Good God. How am I gonna do this now? Anyway? All right, so, I mean, is the way that I'm under huge, huge spiders?

Are you just gonna be worried the whole time you're gonna sit here trying to dispense, like, inbound advice? You're worried you're about to get eaten alive?

Oh, my God, I hate spiders so much, dude. Holy crap. Okay, what was I saying before? I saw that dog walk across my.

I think you were saying, like, how. How are we defining it? Right?

Like, so, like, you know, if we kind of had to smooth brain this down just for me, like, is it. Is. Are we just saying, like, all right, all bound is like, you're doing inbound, plus you're not doing shitty outbound.

Well, here. Here. Here's the deal. Like, inbound marketing, Max, revolves around.

Hold on. Because I feel like that's what I was telling everybody to do forever, even.

If they were doing inbound.

So I'm like, no, me. I'm sitting here.

I'm just like, wait, you might have been the creator. You might have been the creator of All Bound. You just didn't name it.

Founder at Inbound IO.

Yeah. Yeah. Founder of Allbound LI.

I was common sense because when I would get customers that would have the marketing hub and say, cool, here's a great way to, like, you know, get folks leads that actually want to talk to you. And they're like, you know, I don't think anyone ever said, should our salespeople stop doing what they're doing? And if they ever did say, I'd be like, no, this is just another way that they can get, you know, better leads back then, like, well, well.

First of all, we got to be careful, because as much as I love the humans, sometimes when we use the word common sense. Yeah, that doesn't seem so common. It's not so common sometimes because we. We're. Again, we're really good at getting blinders on and following the shiny object and having the squirrel moments.

But.

But, Max, if I can step back for a second, like, When I think about inbound marketing, Inbound marketing revolves around creating a mad, a magnetic force. Literally. If you remember back many, well, several inbounds on stage, they've had some type of magnetic or magnet in a, in a PowerPoint presentation that. And it's, it's to naturally draw customers to your brand. It's by offering helpful, relevant content and it positions your business as a trusted advisor, guiding potential customers through their decision making process. We call it the buyer's journey. And this method is more about engaging with the customer on their terms in a way that feels natural and organic. Okay, so if we take that thinking and then we're just like, let's run over here real quick to outbound. Outbound marketing is the classic approach where businesses broadcast their message to a broad audience, hoping to capture the attention of potential customers. It's more aggressive strategy often associated with pushing products or services directly to consumers, whether they're actively looking for them or not. While it can be effective for brand awareness and immediate sales, it often lacks the personalized touch of inbound marketing. So here's where we get to the crux. The because now we've like looked at inbound, we've looked at outbound. When we use the word. I'm gonna start doing that for Max just to give him a little extra oof with it. But all bound marketing.

I wasn't on mute when I just screamed, did I? Because normally I try to keep myself on mute.

Yeah, you are not muted.

You're like, oh my.

That was violent. That was violent.

So all bound marketing is this comprehensive approach that recognizes the strengths of both inbound and outbound marketing, but redefines them through this. And this is I think the important part that I would want everybody to get. It redefines them through a customer centric lens. And it's about using outbound tactics in a way that feels as of the personalized and valuable as we've been doing with inbound and making sure inbound efforts are as scalable and impactful as historical outbound ones could be. The all bound strategy ensures that every touch point with the customer is designed to add value, foster trust and be measurable, creating a cohesive experience that aligns with the customer journey. This approach not only drives growth, but also builds lasting, meaningful relationships with your audience. That's how I would take and chunk these three out amongst each other.

I have a question. Even though I'm the one.

Yeah, I have another question now.

Yeah, so, okay. Because I kind of, I see what Max is saying in that we're putting a fancy label on something that I think a lot of people also naturally, organically doing. But is this a situation where we spent what, almost a decade saying that inbound was not only the way, it was the only way, and we, we rejected everything else and now we're trying to kind of walk it back and be a little bit like, so my bad. We don't want to get rid of everything. We don't, we don't want to get rid of everything. And, and now we're putting a nice label on it and pretending like we founded something new.

I, I mean, you could, you could. Well, first of all, we got to be careful because while we might have been thinking this way, I can tell you that I've worked with hundred, if not hundreds of businesses that have not been thinking this way. And but if I go into what you're kind of laughingly saying, Liz, yes, we could, we could sum this up in, one might say that, yeah, like.

That'S, that's where it gets real. That's where this gets very interesting for me because, and what you just said there, right. I have not gone a single day, month, week or year in the inbound space without having a client or having a conversation where a blended methodology was either recommended, considered appropriate, or there was pushback on the just totally pure inbound only forever and ever type of approach. Right? And so it's, it, I'm, I know this is kind of like a half baked idea that I'm getting at, but it's like, did we just take ourselves to all Bound therapy and figure out as the practitioners of this that maybe we should have a more diverse toolbox?

I, well, yes, I do believe diversity in strategy, especially in the world that we live in right now, is at a, it's paramount because trust me, as somebody who is trying to do this and have happy humans inside, happy humans outside, and figure out all the ways to make it successful? I, I, I need more strategies. I need more ways to do this.

George, can you, can you read the tail end of that, like the last thing you were saying of how they were explaining, like the sales side of all Bound, where it was like providing value at these touch points throughout the, like, what was that last, like, sort of bit?

Well, so now that's interesting because you said sales and I never said sales, but sales, but I said, well, this is not specific to sales definition.

That was talking about the sales side of it.

No, that was outbound side of it. Outbound talked about the sales being more aggressive of Sales.

When I think outbound.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Which. And that's the thing. We literally did a whole video. I'm trying to think if we released it yet. But the outbound marketing versus inbound marketing and how.

And we have an article about it.

Yeah. And how many people think what outbound marketing is actually outbound sales. And outbound sales and outbound marketing are totally different. And I immediately, when we created the first video, I go, holy crap. We probably need to do a video that is outbound marketing versus outbound sales. Because people just so. So for some reason lump it all in. Like it's the same thing. It's not. But to get back to your ending that you asked for, it's the very last sentence of it says, this approach not only drives growth but also builds lasting, meaningful relationships with your audience. But yeah, and there's a part about value and fostering trust and all that stuff.

A little bit about that. I think it was like the part before that where it was like saying what you did by like, valuable touch points or something like that.

So here all bound marketing is a comprehensive approach that recognizes the strengths of both inbound and outbound marketing, but redefines them through a customer centric lens. It's about using outbound tactics in a way that feels as personalized and valuable as inbound and making sure inbound efforts are as scalable and impactful as outbound. The all bound strategy ensures that every touch point with the customer is designed to add value, foster trust, and be measurable, creating a cohesive experience that aligns with the customer journey. Blah, blah, blah, blah. You might have been chasing the spider was like.

That last part is just like. I feel like that describes every single strategy like this that we hear about. Like. Right. And like the other part too is like the outbound side of things to me also feels a lot like. I mean, remember when we had the inbound sales certification?

Right.

Like, well, seems kind of familiar. Like, you know what I mean? But it's just. Again, it's just like, that's why I just get so. There's like a big piece of me that it's just like when you say. Or like when I hear that, I'm not saying this is your definition. I'm saying when I hear that, I'm just like, we've heard this before. Like, just plain old describing inbound. Right? Like customer centric, valuable touch points, deepened relationships, like all this kind of stuff. But it almost just feels like they added the word outbound in there and called it all bound and it's like the same definition of inbound. Because if you were to say all that back to me again without the word outbound in there, I feel like it's also still just describing inbound. Right? Or am I crazy?

Well, I don't think you're totally crazy, but I think there's a subtle mind shift in slight directions both ways. And again, I think maybe the bigger part of this is trying to embrace the fact that. And I started with this by the way, we live in a world that instead of. Or we need to focus on and, and when we focus on. And it's. How do we. I think of like, what's that? Strengths, weaknesses, like swat SWOT analysis. How do you SWOT analysis inbound and how do you SWAT analysis outbound? And how do you make both of them, for your organization, be the dopest, most human centric, strategized, measurable thing that now you're, you're living like, in this kind of, I'll call it different world or different mindset. Because it's almost like. And again, I'm. I'm going in analogy mode. Right? It's almost like firing on six cylinders instead of four or eight instead of four. In this case is.

There's a piece of me that wonders and I think, I guess I'm okay with it if this is like the case. But do you think HubSpot kind of very intentionally introducing this all bound concept? Because here's the thing. Have you heard, like, can you go on HubSpot's website and see the word all bound? Like, is that a thing?

I've never, I've never tried to find it on HubSpot. Yeah, you have a look right now.

You haven't seen Brian Halligan spin an all bound flywheel, right?

Yeah, yeah.

They haven't like, said, we're all bound, we're all bound, we're all bound. But all of the sudden they release a card with the word all bound on it. The all bound timeline card.

That's the only thing I just found. Yeah.

Yep, exactly. And very interesting because 1. Talk about a completely pointless name for a CRM UI card. Right? Hold on. Well, I know, I know, I know. It's inbounded, outcoming stuff. I get that. Right.

Well, but be careful because HubSpot has not said this yet. The CRM is only a small portion of what is a customer platform. And if you are building a customer platform, you must pay attention to that. Some of your customers come from inbound and some of your customers come from outbound efforts. Therefore, you need to have a card that measures all Bound in your customer platform versus your CRM, that is the holding space for all data.

But all bound is this big, beautiful definition that we just gave. The card is saying, here are things that you sent out. Here are things they sent you. Is that like. You know what I mean?

I don't know if it's that simple.

No, no, it's just like, you could just call it like, the income. Like, you could just call it, like, the communication time, like the calendar. I don't know.

Well, even Nick said just a timeline. He literally just said just a timeline.

Exactly. Right. But why did they give it this name? Right? And there is almost a piece of me. Because here's the thing. When you look at it and you see all bound, which is this big, fancy word that none of us really have been using, and all of a sudden, it's a card in there. It's kind of awkward to name it that, because then it almost seems like when I first saw it, I was like, oh, is this like an integration with some other tool called All Bound? Right. And that's immediately what I thought. I was like, oh, wait, no, this is just like a native extension showing incoming and outgoing emails and calls and stuff like that. Right? In this, like, kind of awkward way. Like, I get it, it's cool, but it's like.

And calling.

It's like, here's a horizontal version of the thing that you're looking at. It's just up and down, like. And I almost feel like it was a way for them to test putting the word all bound out into the universe and see how it was received. Right.

Yeah.

Well, because I think what HubSpot has probably found itself in is being locked into this inbound narrative while the outside world is saying it's not just inbound anymore, it's outbound, LED inbound, and surround bound, and near bound and all these other bounds and inbounds getting left in the dirt. And I feel like HubSpot's noticing that. I think they're probably saying, hey, we have to change the perception that we're not just this inbound marketing tool. We also have all of these great outbound sales tools, and we're building a whole, you know, huge investment in AI. We went out and purchased Clearbit. We did all these, like. We're doing all these things and putting all this investment into saying, like, hey, we kind of realize people want more than just to, like, create content and get people to come to them, and they Also want their salespeople to be absolute vipers and have the tools that they need to go, go, go, go, go, go, go, and go outbound. Right. Because not everyone's going to get inbound spun up so quickly, and we've got to be able to sell the CRM on its own without marketing hub. Right. So, like, you know, because. So then where's the inbound thing there when you're just selling, like, sales hub. Right. And so, like, what I think they're probably doing is they're like. It just seems like kind of like a lot to call that time card. This big word that we've never seen that is way different than the one word we've always seen. Right.

Yeah.

And I almost feel like they're testing the waters to see how the community reacts to it.

Yeah.

And I think one day they will ditch inbound for all bound because. And I think this was them testing this. Now, Matt, realize it can't just be an inbound tool. It has to be an outbound tool.

Well, it is now a customer platform.

Yeah.

It's not an inbound platform. It's a customer.

I literally, I. Yes. So, Max, now you had an epiphany moment. You've had an epiphany right now.

What? I'm being.

Well. But it's good. That's. That's good. So how does it feel to be the first person creating a piece of content that's going to be testing the waters that we're paying attention to? What they're challenging and we're challenging, and we're using inbound SEO words that Max hates to put an article in an episode out.

I love the word.

Yeah, yeah. No all bounds. It's all bound. But. But how does it feel to know that you're part of a piece of content that we're creating right now? In the moment that we will have, people will come and read, come and listen, and they'll be able to weigh their opinion on if they love the idea of all bound, if they've been always using a mixed strategy, if they are some of those humans that live in the world of or instead of the world of, and like, we're on the ground floor of understanding customer platform, the new position of CRM, the fact that there is a new card in there with this term in it, like.

Why do you think we're here today, dude? I know. Like, I feel. I feel great. It's cool talking about it. I'm also slightly terrified that maybe I'm uncovering some massive Conspiracy and a hit squad can show up to my house because I'm, you know. But.

But here's the thing.

But I love the Hub Illuminati here. But.

But here's the thing. I love that kind of stuff. Like, I love being able to create stuff and lean into what we think might be happening. Because, like, here I. I told somebody the other day, the day that HubSpot launches the HR Hub, I have a clip from like, four or five years ago where I said, the next hub needs to be the. I will release that on the Internet and be like, told you. Same thing here. Like, I'm working with Chris, Carolyn. We have a HubSpot customer platform hug. We're knee deep in the trenches. We're paying attention to all the conversations that need to happen. There's. We're looking at like, oh, my God, things are shifting and changing. And when things shift and change, it's. It's from words and associated words and software start to move around and like. And I don't think enough people realize what is shifting underneath our very feet from a SaaS platform because they're paying attention to how the modern customer is buying and what they're paying attention to and where they're paying attention to. And they're doing their best to build a platform that fits all of those needs for businesses.

So I want to interject here, because I think what is interesting is that this reminds me of a conversation that you and I, George, have a lot with one of our clients where they get really squirrely when we use words like always or never.

Right?

And you know who I'm talking about. Shout out to Sean and his team at qds. We love you guys.

Hi, guys and gals.

Hi. You know, and. And he brings up a good point, because you never want to put yourself into a kind of an. Box yourself into an absolutist corner, because they're very strong in terms of the language they use about, we keep our promises, we have penalties around our. Like, they are very. They are absolutist in that way, in their purpose, in their mission, how they fulfill those promises. But, Max, you're bringing up a really good point here in that we have. And George as well. We. We did we absolutist box ourselves into a corner with Inbound. And now we're seeing the reaction, the expansion that going back into this idea of, you know, when I was first writing this episode and thinking about what I wanted to talk about today, that one of the questions I have here is, and you guys are Already answering it is, is it either or anymore? And the answer is no, it's not. And I think that's what we're realizing here. George, take it away.

Well, but be careful. Because what we have to realize is what we may have needed in the moment was inbound.

We needed an intervention.

We needed an intervention. Inbound was an intervention. It was, it was a movement. It is a movement, still should be. There was a methodology. There was literally a bible, the methodology to the religion. Inbound. Right. If you, if you really want to break it down, here's the thing though. Over this last 10, 12, 14 year period, cultures have changed, humans have changed. There was massive chaos, you know, years back that just changed the way that we think, the way that we act, the places we work. And so maybe now the smart people that knew we needed an intervention are realizing there's a next level, there's a new intervention, there's a shift, there's a change. Which by the way, if you pay attention to Brian Halligan's, this is not an inbound episode. But if you pay attention to Brian Halligan's historical keynotes, it was always about what was changing. And they were, let us letting us know it was changing before we actually kind of knew it was changing. And then all of a sudden we paid attention to that, it was changing. Very interestingly. We need to know things are changing and they'll continue to change. And those of us that can pivot and become transition specialists in our business. And again, what we're talking about today is all bound lean into a more and, and Liz, I can't get away from it now that I'm starting to use these H frameworks, a more holistic approach to what we're doing from a marketing and sales strategy.

I just can't help this feeling though, that like if any of our clients are listening right now, they'd be like, well, duh. This is not brand new information to us. Like our inbound marketers just waking up from a fever dream. That's, that's what. Because I'm, I'm genuinely challenging myself here. I can't think of a single client I work with, a single business I work with out there where I would be breaking their brains open in some sort of like lightning rod way saying, so, you know, we could do both. You know, it's very rare that I say something that makes you both silent. I've got to know what you're thinking.

Well, I thought Max started to say something, so I was like, let me hear what he where homies at right now?

Oh, no.

You just love this conversation. I can feel it with every fiber of my being. Or are you still hiding from the spider?

I'm looking. I'm actively sheep.

Is that. Did you get your bug gun? Oh, my God.

Yeah. He got a while back, he brought that in and I think it was Chad was like. Or maybe Nick was like. Do you feel safe now?

Does he safe now?

I feel very safe. Kind of a little bit safe. My dog's here, so hopefully she'll fight it.

Oh, the dog will eat it. You're good.

Yeah. Or it'll eat the dog.

I don't know.

It's pretty big.

Yeah.

I don't know. It's like, I do think it's. I do think it's just another example of like, you know, hopping on the here. We need a new name for something to make it sound new. But we're doing the same thing, right? I don't know if they do a whole new all bound flywheel or some other methodology thing. I don't know. I'm probably going to lose my mind because it's going to end up just being the same version of the same thing. Much like when they changed from the inbound methodology to the flywheel, it literally was the same thing, only they just combined two things and turned into a circle. Right. And it's like, I really just hope because like the flywheel is just. It's honestly just. It's perfect. It's perfect. And I don't think it can. It needs to get more complex than that. Right. But like, if we do something weird with an all bound flywheel and it's different or something like that, and it just makes it more complicated than it needs to be, I'm not going to be happy about it and I'm going to be verbal about it, but I don't know, I'm just. I'm just so sick of bound. Bound, bound, bound, bound, bound, bound, bound. Like, I'm just so over it.

We should make a song and just use. Oh, that's actually already a song. Isn't that.

Is that Elvira down to Bound Town?

Is that what you're doing?

I was doing Barbaran, but that's fine.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Beach Boys, actually. Yeah.

I do love this take from Nick and Chat. It says all bound is a way for them to reclaim inbound without being tarnished by outbound sick stigma. I agree completely. Oh, like, I don't, like, I don't think HubSpot wants to like, do the defeatist thing to say. Like, oh, you know, we were so hard on inbound the whole way. Right. And, and, and if there were any sort of public sense of like, here's what we want to do to help Outbound, what happens is the public backlash from that was like, oh, see, they were rugged the whole time about Inbound and us sales, bro. Doing outbound, smashing the phones, smiling and dialing and using AI driven lists we scraped off of, you know, the back of a van or whatever. Awesome. Warm up those IP address, guys. Let's do some cold email outreach. Like, they just don't want to look like they're losing to that crowd.

Yeah, right.

It's like what I feel like. So, you know, and they're not losing to that crowd. That crowd is cringe, like totally cringe. But like, you know, they're creating tools that like, serves that audience and serves those customers that want that stuff, that still don't want to do the tough work that inbound is. Right. Like, you know, say what you want about all the stuff that we've done with, you know, AI and content hub and like all this stuff. It's like creating content and doing inbound marketing is still 10 times harder than blasting a billion emails out like to a list of people. Right. Like, it still is harder to do, you know, while. Sure, there are things that make that stuff easier. Like, you still see people deploying it in like a really terrible way. Right. You know, because humans are, Humans are great at human, right? Oh, yes. Yeah, totally. I don't know.

This is the whole reason for the other side of things that we do. Humans are going to human. So we created beyond your default. Yeah.

But like, the thing is, is like, I don't think HubSpot needs to get away from inbound.

Right.

Inbound can be a strategy within a group of strategies you're deploying. Right. I think that's okay. I don't think we need to totally rename the idea of what all bound is, because all bound, if it means all things, then it doesn't mean anything. So it doesn't mean anything. It takes away the, the physical fundamental difference of what inbound is. Right?

Yeah.

People coming to you instead of you just going to them. Yes. Your salespeople are going to have to deploy a certain amount of going to them without them coming to you. There are good and bad ways of doing that. Sure. Right. But the fundamental process of saying, hey, are we creating reasons for people to find us, consume our stuff, trust us and buy, like, buy from us? Right?

Yeah.

Because they're coming to us, right. They're finding out we exist when they have no idea that we exist. We are helping them figure out that they have a problem that they didn't even know they had. We are educating them. We are creating things for them. We are building things for them. That is a whole thing by itself, I think, to just say, oh, yeah, it's all that. And plus, like, better ways of, like, getting your sales reps to go outbound on people. I think it totally devalued it, like, almost makes it. That is that much more important and that much easier than this other big thing.

Yeah.

When the truth is, that whole outbound thing is also really, really tough if you don't already have a good inbound motion. Because where's all this, like, wonderful content they say to use to create these valuable touch points with people going outbound? If you have no inbound motion, creating that content.

Right.

Like, inbound amplifies outbound so much.

Yeah.

Right. That it's really hard to just stand out outbound on its own without expecting to just, like, spend a ton of money on, like, paid lists or use some weird, sketchy data scrapers or, like, really do some crazy invasions of privacy. Right. But it's like, oh, it's all fine because it's AI assisted, and it's this and it's that and it's whatever, and it's the next big thing. Like, I just don't want the art of inbound to be devalued.

See, he's a purist.

It's the same thing as the. He is purist. He.

He is an inbound purist. So.

So, Max, I'm realizing this now.

Yeah. Yeah. He's an inbound purist.

No, no, no, no, no. But that's not me. I think a purist is someone who says, you just do this and you don't do that. I'm not that person.

Yeah.

I'm an inbound realist. Okay. Yeah.

This is, like, an art movement. We're moving from, like, inbound impressionism to realism. Okay.

Yeah. Because, dude. Dude, inbound is based a lot on, like, just the reality of how things work. I talk about inbound physics all the time.

Yeah.

How's someone gonna find you if they don't know you exist? They're not.

Right.

So they're looking for other stuff.

Okay.

Make that stuff that they're looking for. Right. That's realism.

Right.

Another part of the realism is like, yeah, sure, your marketers and your team and your whatever could do the whole inbound motion. Right. But one, is it going to take time to get off the ground? You bet your ass. Is it going to take a lot of experimentation to figure out what works? Yep, it bets. You bet your ass. Right. But do your salespeople need to sell in the meantime and also be deploying their own efforts in, like, different ways that they can do it without totally relying on what marketing's doing? Because, hey, guess what? Maybe you hire some inbound marketers, right? And they don't do that good. And it takes a little while to figure out how to get the right people on board that have the talent to create the content, put it all together in a good story, deploy it, get the right software, do whatever. Salespeople still gotta be salespeople without 100% relying on marketing to just feed them MQLs. Right? So you do got to figure out the right ways and the wrong ways of doing inbound. You got to do both at the same time. That's realism, not purism. So.

So there's a couple takeaways here. I just want to unpack this a little bit. One, it almost sounded like you said inbound enables outbound, which it like marketing. Inbound marketers enable or, you know, sales to do better, be better because of the content. So I love that piece. The other thing I heard is next week on Hub Heroes, Max is going to do the physics of all bound. He's got a slide already built out.

But.

But here's the thing. I also. Give me a second because I. I want to jot a note down in my travel guide. I officially have decided that I need to pack a defibrillator to bring to inbound, because when Max is in the audience and somebody from stage, Andy Petrie, Dharmesh, whoever it may be, Yamini. Yamini. When all of a sudden from the stage, somebody says the word all bound, I will run over, I'll use my defibrillator, and, brother, I will save your life in the middle of the crowd at inbound. Because I think you would have an aneurysm or a heart attack if you heard the word all bound come from the main stage.

It's going to. Dude, it's going to happen. I'm telling you, man.

Like, this is that.

What an unnecessary name for that CRM card, right? Like, it confused me, right? And it's just like they're testing the waters to the name of it. That's what I feel, you know? Yep.

Well, I don't think about how. Think about how we Heard about it, George. It came up so organically and naturally during our conversation with Kyle, and we did not.

Somebody who works in HubSpot.

Hold on. Kyle's the goat. I love Kyle. So they're sending their people out there to workshop the name and reporting back to. I want.

And, And I don't know if it was conspiracy, but here's the thing. I don't know.

It's the Illuminati.

Yeah. I don't know if it was on purpose, but here's the thing. For someone to use the word like they're used to using the word, they have to have been hearing the word. So it makes you wonder, which, again, is why we're here. There's a card with it. We heard it dropped for a brief second in another episode. And, And I was like, liz, Inbound versus Outbound versus All Bound. We got to do an episode. We got to unpack this conversation.

Next is going to be Found Bound. And it was just like a lead you found on the side of the road you decided to go. Found Bound is just when you find business cards and you call.

It's when you. It's when you pull all of the pants and pants, pens and stickers and all those things that you got at the inbound one year, and you're like, you just start cold calling people.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. It's when you call DM people and go, oh, I found your profile at LinkedIn, and I saw that you're also in the Internet technology.

Wait, hold on. Question. Do I need to create a custom object for Found Bound leads? Is that like a separate channel?

Yes, probably. Yeah.

It's right next to the gum underneath the table. Without a doubt. You know what?

It's all. It's clown Bound, my guy.

Hey, George, ask me again. Who's driving this episode?

Liz, who's driving this episode?

I have no idea because we've abandoned the outline long ago. We have. We have gone found bounding on the side of the road.

I, I, I almost can't keep going because. Because, Chad. I don't even know if I should say this, but, Chad, I hope we don't get canceled, but Chad literally said it's the number on the inside of the stall that's Found Bound.

Call Found Bound for a good time.

God help us. Oh, geez.

Well, George, why don't you help me land this plane here as best we can? I would love to hear from you because, yeah, this was a conversation we knew we needed to have.

Yeah.

And I knew that there was a 50, 50 risk of like, I, I will just start setting the outline on fire within five minutes of the. The episode. Well, because it's highly, it's not a highly experimental topic, but it's just one of those things of like, we all have a lot of feelings about this.

Yeah.

And it is, it is a conversation that we needed to have and I think we're gonna have to have it again. I, it's one of those things where I'm like, I wish Devin was here, but I almost want him to listen to it and then come back and read us the riot act in a way that only Devin can do with his eyeball an inch from the camera where he yells at us and then we say we're sorry.

Yeah, but George, it's either going to be a slack message that says, yes, you guys are awesome, or what the f are you thinking? Like it's going to be one of those. Yeah, hold on.

That's why he's not here. Because they're putting him through some.

No.

All bound.

He's found bounding.

Yeah. No, that is not why anyway, is.

It, Is that like one of those things where like remember like at like Outward Bound where like you have to go. It's like outward found bound. Like, is that what we're doing here now?

Oh my God.

Like that's, that's what we gotta. It's like you just, it's, it's. You're doing inbound, but you're doing it in the wilderness.

You have to attract, you have to attract the campfire to you. You can't go out and create it.

Bring your mosquitoes repellent.

I'll write a blog to the mosquitoes. Here's why you shouldn't bite me. So, George, land this plane for us because obviously we, we need help. Don't land it, just keep flying.

No, I need to land this bad boy. Holy crap.

George, I would be so curious to hear what your takeaways are from this conversation because you and I both came into this conversation on a fact finding mission to find out what we actually feel about this. So what are the things that you learned that you want our listeners to be paying attention to?

Yeah, so there's a couple things. One, we now know that Max, his new title at Happily will be Inbound Realist will be instead of Chief Evangelist of Happily. So we're going to change his title. But, but in all honesty, for, for me, it's interesting because I didn't know where this conversation was going to go. I was excited to see where this conversation would go. The fact that Max is paying attention to micro pieces of the software and saw the card, the fact that we aligned because of something we heard on an episode, and we're able to sit here and create this piece of content that people will be able to listen, to, have their own feelings, have their own opinions. That serves the purpose that I'm actually trying to get here. My big takeaway for the listeners, though, is. And it's funny because, Liz, you said you haven't met a client that wasn't thinking of it from a this and that process or pushed against. I can tell you I've met many that the only thing they were doing was, like, inbound slash content marketing, and they had left to the wayside this piece. My takeaway is those days are over. I don't give a rat's caboose what you call it, but you need to be playing and teasing out the idea of things that you once thought were off base. Have you sent postcards lately? Have you done a print brochure, like a booklet style, and actually tried to put it on, you know, a decision maker's desk? Have you. Have you actually tested billboards? Have you done a calling system in a way that is different than the historical way that we hated? Like, if you're sitting here and you can't say yes to any of those things that historically were outbound or traditional marketing or traditional sales, I would challenge you to test it again. But test it in a way that aligns with the methodology and philosophies that we've picked up over the last 10, 12 years of being a good human, of adding value, of building trust, of it being an interaction that is more based on future relationship than immediate transaction.

Max, did you get the spider buddy?

No, I didn't. I thought he was gonna end the episode on that because it was epic. And now you got me just awkwardly being like, what? I didn't have anything to say.

What was that? Max? I'm sorry.

Thought he was getting cut him off.