HubSpot Hotline: Is INBOUND VIP worth it?

And Chris Admin. Call in, then tune in. You can't miss this. Every Wednesday at 10, streaming straight from LinkedIn, helping with HubSpot. Building community is our philosophy, and we're so proud to be helping you with HubSpot. Aren't you so glad that it's time for the HubSpot Helpline?

Welcome to the HubSpot Helpline. You caught me singing in the shower, although I'm not in the shower. My name is Rob, AKA the Mayor of Inbound. I'm your host. I'm joined by 4 of the smartest people in the entire universe. I was gonna say ecosystem, but that's just not true anymore. Literally the entire universe. Chris Carroll on my top left with Profoundly. George B. Thomas with George B. Thomas Enterprises. He is the man, the myth, the legend. Don't ask him what the B stands for.

I don't think that's what it is, but okay.

We're—

look, I'm on a roll here. Casey Greyhound of the Helpline Hawkins, who's working inside today, not outside, after a fiasco that will— as a little teaser for later. And Kyle Joan of Arc Deserves a Musical Jepson. He has news. I'm not allowed to talk about it, unfortunately, because this is a HubSpot show. I'm gonna break that rule later on. Anyway, how are we doing on this Wednesday, ladies and gentlemen?

Excited to be here. I'm tired. I'm tired, honestly.

To get better, it really does.

Honestly, I'm tired today, if I'm being really honest, but happy to be here. Energized to be with you.

Hopefully I helped contribute to that, and I'm glad you're being honest for once. Kyle, how are you?

My gosh, I'm good. A screen— uh, spring has hit Boston, or at least it did the last couple days. Today it's chilly again, but I've been outside chasing my kids as they're riding the bikes. It's— it's— the snow is melting. I'm feeling good.

Love it. Spring, spring, which is good, or has sprung.

See, now I feel terrible about myself because yesterday I was actually complaining about how hot it was in North Carolina already. Anyway, I'll shut up.

Yeah, never, ever feel bad about that. Yeah, enjoying 80s, joining 80s down in Houston already.

Yeah, it's 77 today, and I'm like, okay, good choices.

Enjoy the several springs you're about to have in, in Boston before it actually becomes real spring.

I've joked about this before, but we have basically 4 seasons in Mississippi. Uh, we're in the middle of season 1, which is the pollinating. So for the next month, everything will be green. Um, the rest of our seasons are summer. By the way, there's like a 2-week mini season that is like hail and Christmas, but that's about it. Speaking of turning the temperatures up, we have something that we want to intro the show with tomorrow. Profoundly kickoff. Over to you, Chris. I know you're ready to intro this.

Uh, I am. Uh, was that— did you try to rhyme there?

I don't know.

Yeah, profoundly annual kickoff. We had a blast, uh, doing this last year, uh, thanks to George and Kyle and Casey who were there. Uh, George gave a wonderful, um, closing at the end.

Uh, thank you.

Uh, this is, uh, if you can imagine, we're talking about AI and HubSpot. This year, um, trying to put the focus on AIOps, helping everybody level up in terms of, um, uh, how are you going to add capabilities and understand how to use AI for your organization in addition to all the HubSpot skills that you've been building. Uh, so we've got an awesome schedule, uh, you know, Miranda Tanner from HubSpot talking about the evolution of HubSpot AI at 11:15 Eastern. The event is 11 to 2 Eastern. Uh, we got your boss Rob, Matt Bolian, joining Bridget Azekar and executives Ryan Gunn and Darren Smith for a panel discussion, uh, RevOps in the Age of AI.

What a lineup, man.

Yeah, we're, uh, we're bringing the big guns. Um, That's the benefit of working with Brian Garvey and Jason Azekar. They have good networks, to say the least. And it's been fun to see this come to pass. Obviously, HubSpot's very interested in helping people understand AI and how it impacts the management of HubSpot and delivery of HubSpot. So it's been cool to get all the support, including Tracy Thomas., from the HubSpot, um, intent team talking about signals. Got, uh, Alex Lindley from Semrush, uh, Ryan Ginsberg and I talking about, of course, uh, unified customer view as it relates to the AI-native, uh, approach that we take inside of HubSpot. Um, Nate from, uh, from Celestial. Uh, we just did a kind of proof of concept boot camp with him. Um, a lot of great content, and we're all trying to figure out what is the right approach to teaching people about, you know, general AI versus advanced. How do we get to production and things like that? Um, uh, Vibe Coding HubSpot is here with Boris. Very cool app that he's put together. It's only a matter of time before we can start managing HubSpot CMS this way. So we're excited about that. Jason splits up our sessions with talking about the Airopps path. Last year was all about HubSpot Professional, right? This year we're adding the AI element and how to future-proof your HubSpot career. I've got Ryan Arner from the customer success team at HubSpot talking about real results with HubSpot AI. And then we've got a second set of breakout sessions. Dana Gonzalez from Red Partners, Amar Khan, Expertise AI. I get to interview him about a really cool conversational AI experience that they provide. Uh, Rob Clark, head of AI at RB2B, talking about the spicy topic, uh, related to anonymous, uh, visitors and what we do with them. Uh, Ricky Lear, uh, our chief growth officer at Profoundly. Uh, we've learned a lot, as you can imagine, uh, since we launched Profoundly last year. He's got a bunch of benchmark data to share, you know, what we've learned about how much does HubSpot help cost across a lot of different vectors, including who's involved on either side and what type of project work it is. And then we've got Matthew Stein from Agent AI closing us out, talking about scaling with HubSpot and AI. So, uh, like you say, Kyle, it's, it's a packed, um, bringing, bringing the heat on this one. Lots of big hitters, and we're really excited for tomorrow.

Very nice. Massive lineup. Shout out to Matt, who will be spicy, uh, about something. I can almost guarantee that now. Um, your thoughts, Kyle, on how much improved this will be from last year? I always feel weird asking that But up into the right, 1%.

This guy's feeling left out. Um, it will be much improved because there are people who actually know stuff, not just me. I'm the HubSpot theory guy. These guys are like real RevOps, AROps. They know stuff. So it's going to be much more tactical, I bet.

Yeah. Chris, what's the intent of people walking away from that event, like having learned what? Or having experienced what, or having become very excited about what?

Um, honestly, trying to get people to take action on learning AI, building with AI, any way, anyhow. Like, you know, we've got some result sessions, we've got some how-to breakouts, we've got some interviews. That panel as an app partner, you know, a consultancy, former lead partner owner, like partner of the year owner, I think, and Darren Smith, right? So the whole spectrum of the state of RevOps there, just trying to help people make sense of all of the noise right now and be comfortable and help them take action in some way, uh, because while we do see real use cases and, and results coming from HubSpot, and I see that session, we have that session, it's one of the challenges of putting this event together is it was kind of hard to find like what, where are the real case studies right now and who's actually getting results and were they right place, right time, or is it something actual repeatable that other people can do, right? So, uh, that helps answer the question, Rob.

Yeah, well, not to put you on blast, and there's a lot of this that I agree with, but you'd mentioned being performative isn't something you, uh, necessarily enjoy or like. And I think of something like a kickoff as having an element of hype, or for lack of a better term, of performative nature. But the lineup, the topics, the, like the desire for people to take action in the form of learning and informing themselves and just starting to get their hands dirty with AI, I think trumps that. So whether people find it performative or not, I don't really think is the point. I think there's an element of utility that's being provided that's, it's gonna be great from a lot of really smart people and it's gonna be necessary, especially with what the ecosystem is dealing with today.

Yeah, and like to that point, like, I am excited. Like, so one of our headline sponsors, expertise.ai, I'm doing an interview with them and we are both aligned. Like, this is not one of those like, oh, sponsor, you know, they're gonna, they get a slot just because they sponsored and it's gonna be a pitch. Like, it's very much not gonna be that. We're both excited to kind of break, break that norm. So I think since last year is very important to Profoundly, like, No pitches. Like, we want to help everybody learn and level up through an event like this. So we're excited for tomorrow.

I think I would lean into that. It's a leveling up moment in time because to me that lineup doesn't feel performative at all. It feels like some of the dopest deep-brained humans that could be, like, put together. And like, I'm dealing with something like this, not to compare myself to Profoundly, but like, I have some humans in my in my life where I'm like, bro or broette, why are you not using AI yet? And the one thing that I've learned is if I can put a worm in the water for them and get them to bite on it, then we can actually have the activation conversation. For instance, I have this buddy and he's historically a designer. He started his own company years ago, maybe a little bit before I did. And I've been like, bro, I can teach you. I can show you. Like, I've been activated. I want to activate you. Oh yeah, yeah. Let's, let's do that.

Let's—

yeah, let's do that. I'm like, when? When are we— you know, like, we'll do that. And I'm like, when? So last night I go and I share a video with him and I hit the sweet spot because the video was, is Figma dead? Paper plus Claude Code. Okay, to which he watched the video. First he goes, what's paper? Question mark. To which I said, watch the video. And he watched the video, and his line is, I need help. To which I then said, as soon as I'm back from vacation, you'll get the help. I'm glad you're finally ready. And so like, when I think of what we're talking about with the ProFoundly event, it will be a— hopefully a ton of humans moment in time where they go, because I heard Matt, because I heard Chris, because I heard whoever, I'm ready. And then they can get activated.

That would be a win.

Yeah, I know it's tangential, but can I respond to Pradeep's comment?

Yes, I was going to mention the other comment about the replay, but Chris can speak to that after you respond to this one. Sure.

Are you going to put a Gen AI chatbot in CRM itself, which can be used as sales agent to automate the communication? That's what Prospecting Agent is. Yeah, that exists. That's been around for a while. Uh, you should check it out.

Yeah, it's there and it's really there. Like, it's really good there. Like, anyway.

Yeah, Chris, there was one more from Yep, there you go, reading my mind. Go ahead, Chris.

Uh, the re— the replay will be available to watch, so make sure you register.

Love it. Um, right before we transition to Update of the Week, uh, presented by our very own Casey Hawkins, that, that to me is the scary weird part as a— I mean, I have a message thread right now about getting help with, with co-work from our very own Chris Carolin. Who I took a session with over the Christmas break. It was amazing, unlocked me to an extent. But there's almost this element of when it can do this, I'll be ready, right? Like when AI is able to do something, then I will give it a shot, or whenever it does this. Those milestones are like passing people by because I hear this from not necessarily as much colleagues, but people in the Robosphere, right? Like I can't imagine a use case, or I'd like to see it do this, or I tried this a week ago, a month ago, and it didn't work, didn't have the outcome that I desired. And as somebody that has found myself on the fence, not in the Luddite camp, but man, I tried this, I experimented with it, didn't have the result I wanted. Though, like, I used to say this about HubSpot all the time. Have you seen HubSpot lately? Right? It's kind of the same thing. Have you done anything with AI lately? Because the amount of progress it's made toward being able to execute an outcome that you would like yesterday versus today is exponentially different in a mostly positive way. George, I know you want to just—

See, here's the thing. I think that people who think that way are thinking in the wrong direction. Meaning when I think about AI, I think about it in the way of what have I always wanted to do but couldn't, right? And then I go and I do that thing that it's good at. Also, for the people who say, Well, I'll wait until it can do this. Listen, it's crappy outcome. Might not have had anything to do with AI. It might have been you, the human that messed it up. Like, let's be honest. So like, if you tried it once and it was jacked up, try it again. Come at it from different angles. Like, oh, okay, I'll shut up. We're not here for an AI show. We're here for HubSpot.

So if I can continue on that a little bit, there is a There is a genre of online comedy right now, which is like AI doing things poorly, right? And I think a couple years ago, it's because the technology legitimately wasn't there. Now it really feels like people are applying AI to things specifically trying to make them fail, right? And then they make a video and they're like, look how dumb AI is. This'll never catch on, right? It's like some of this stuff is legitimately funny. It makes me laugh. But if you're laughing at it, take a look at yourself and see, are you laughing thinking, yeah, this will never catch on? Because you're wrong if you're thinking that. You're going to have a hard time in the coming months and years. Embrace this time where AI is worse at some things than us because there's going to be fewer and fewer things to laugh at in the near future, I think.

Cheers to that. It's getting really close to that right now.

Yeah. Speaking of that and the singularity and being able to find AI comedy of it doing things poorly online and being able to find anything online, are you being found online? Finally got to the transition section. Wow. Kasey, you have our update of the week.

I do. So we have covered 31 updates over the last week and there were 3 big themes that I noticed. The first is, as we've been discussing, AI. AI just continues to spread across the platform. This week was where AI in HubSpot stopped just being the chatbot, and now we have reply recommendations merged into customer agent. That migration happened on Monday, and if you were using reply recommendations a customer agent was auto-created in your portal. So two tools kind of merged into one, I think. Is that accurate, Kyle?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, and I think the big win here is consistency, right? So if someone, if one of your customers hopped online and chatted with customer agent and asked them a question, or if they are talking with one of your human agents and that human agent decides to use an AI reply recommendation, those two things are going to be the same now. If you're updating knowledge sources and whatever else, then that's going to just be one place that controls all the things, and I think that's a huge win.

Another AI win from this week was the prompt sharing, so your team can share saved prompts. I think that's a huge win for using AI across teams. The second theme I noticed though is automating getting easier, specifically with simple workflows that got two updates. So if you use simple workflows, if you're on a starter plan, you can now clone marketing emails and forms for new ac— you can now clone marketing emails from those simple workflows. And you now have more steps in your workflows, in those simple workflows. But my number one update of the week, which I was too afraid Chris was going to— okay, I'm fine. So my number one update of the week is kind of two updates, but it's the AEO Suite, which I think got a big upgrade over the last week. So now you can create a blog post from a recommendation. If you haven't looked at AEO yet, this is the week. If you don't know, AEO is answer engine optimization, and we actually have dashboards in HubSpot that show you where your brand is showing up and where it's invisible, more importantly, in AI-powered searches specifically. So those are going to be your ChatGPTs, Perplexity, and so on. The dashboard's been around for a bit, but now you can actually generate the blog post directly from a recommendation, which was a gap previously in the dashboard itself. This is my pick because it changes what AEO is. It was more of a reporting tool and now you can actually take action on it. I come from a marketing background, so my picks do lean marketing, but I think it's a really big improvement and I think AEO is only gonna continue to obviously to grow. So I'm excited to see it get, um, an upgrade inside HubSpot. That's my thoughts.

It's okay that your picks are biased towards marketing. I will say that. I agree. I like the actionability, uh, being able to generate something from a recommendation. Have we seen from, from the trenches, have we seen that used yet? Like, how recent was this, and have we seen that used successfully? I would ask, be able to ask George or Kyle that question. I guess I could ask Casey that question too.

Like, no, I like when— I like when you pass that question off.

I, I, I mean, it's private beta still. I haven't personally used it, um, but it's definitely— I suspect this will be a very big thing. Um, it just seems, uh, like it has to be. HubSpot has to figure out how to make this a big thing. We, we led the charge and taught people how to do inbound marketing and gave them the tools to do it. Uh, that era is coming to a close and it's time for a new era, and we want to lead that charge in the same way. So expect us to invest heavily here.

Yeah, one, uh, it is new, and if you can get into the beta, get into the beta and mess around with it. Uh, two, it is in my portal, so I have been, uh, giving it what I'll lovingly call the sniff test, uh, meaning just getting it set up, going in and looking at the dashboard, going in and looking at, uh, the prompts, the citations, the, the recommendations. And, um, what's nice is you can see that HubSpot is also doing what HubSpot is great at. And when I say you can see, that's because, um, Chris, I'm about to share a screen. Is HubSpot, even though this is in beta, HubSpot is using this as also educational moments. So like you go and interact with recommendations and a popup comes up and it'll tell you how AEO recommendations work. And so you can learn along the way as you're kind of using this tool. So I would just wanna say kudos to the team. But at the end of the day, there's a lot of information that it's going to spit out and a lot of things that you can kind of interact with and look at from, you know, top citations overall, top domains, top owned citations, uh, you know, the prompts that you're actually looking at. And then like there's even competitors in there, or you can put competitors in there to see where they're landing it. So there's, there's like, there's full-blown strategy that is visible even though this is a beta thing that still needs to be baked out more. But I'm, I'm very happy with where it is, um, especially as somebody who lived through the launch of Service Hub. I'm just saying, uh, yeah, I'm just saying, I'm just saying, a spade is a spade. So Search Strategy, the AEO and SEO tab, um, are very interesting to me in how they're being presented and trained and built. Um, so I'm excited for the future and what that means.

What an inappropriate transition. Speaking of didn't live through the Service Hub launch, Jeremy Belk has a comment. This may be my favorite comment ever for a couple reasons. Number one is because it's not super related to the AI discussion and I love taking hard right turns. So thank you for that, Jeremy. Wondering if you could give a few pointers, possibly with AI, to a returning power user. Shout out for returning. Let's give a round of applause if we can for returning. That is the right choice. I haven't even read the rest of this and you made the right choice. Returning power user, was an admin, a HubSpot admin in my last company and about to rejoin the family. You are welcome back, Jeremy. Uh, as my next role will be leveraging HubSpot.

I've been, I've been looking at this question hoping we would tackle it. I, so Jeremy, I'd love to hear if, if, if you can sound off in the chat how long ago you're returning from, but I think a fun thought experiment for all of us would be like 1 year ago, 5 years ago, 10 years ago. Like Uh, what, uh, what is our advice for someone at those different horizons? Because the, the advice is different depending on how long it's been. HubSpot has changed quite a bit in the last year, and it's completely unrecognizable from 10 years ago.

Oh shoot, it might be unrecognizable from 2 years ago, to be honest with you, like the amount that has changed. While we're waiting on a rebuttal to like how long since he's returning, Chris, did it say like not necessarily specifically AI but just in general, or was it like AI and HubSpot?

Uh, not necessarily with AI, possibly.

That's the, the, uh, like after he understands, uh, possibly with, with AI will become, uh, definitely with AI. And that's where admin at the last company, no idea. How he was using HubSpot at the last company. Yeah, next role will be leveraging HubSpot. Is that full customer platform? Uh, oh, here we go.

So there we are, favorite moments of all time. Recovering SFDC.

Okay, assuming it was exactly 3 years ago, 2023, man.

Okay. First of all, you didn't have Content Hub. You couldn't do video editing in HubSpot. You didn't have Customer Agent. You didn't have a product updates feed that you could look at every day. You didn't have Prospecting Agent. You didn't have the unified views.

You didn't have a morning show that you could listen to. There's that.

There's that. I was trying not to go there, but you can be promotional.

There is a lot of, a lot of LinkedIn shows and content now that did not exist 3 years ago.

Inbound elected a mayor, um, with no term limits.

So welcome, Jeremy. I don't know if help was a thing 3 years ago.

If what was?

Help desk might not have even been a thing 3 years ago.

Yeah, I don't think it was. So Service Hub is good now.

Was there Commerce Hub 3 years ago? Their Commerce Hub was 3 years ago, but it was like infancy 3 years ago.

Yeah, no, and it's changed a lot just recently. Um, Yeah, it's amazing to have like a year in review for HubSpot product development. Because for you as an admin, so much of what's going to be different is just little quiet things that like, as you relearn how to like make properties and, and track where they're used and stuff, you're going to be like, did HubSpot always be used like that? Like, you're like, it's just going to be better.

There were no sync properties. There were no rollup properties. Now that you're mentioning that, like those didn't exist 3 years ago.

He did have Kyle though.

This is now my real job, Jeremy. It was just a thing I was doing for fun before.

Yeah, my best tip is get like— spend time on your data model, get that right, and you can do whatever you want in HubSpot now.

Like, get that right here, Chris. That wasn't— 3 years ago there was not a data management tab which had your data agent, your data integration, your event management, your data quality, your data studio, your model, your data enrichment.

The data model overview, if it existed 3 years ago, was just like a static thing. Now it's got like analytics in it, it's editable. You can activate objects that you couldn't activate 3 years ago, like things like services. Uh, there's, there's 4 new objects: appointments, courses. These did not exist before. You can just turn them on even if you don't have an enterprise tier.

Campaigns are now Marketing Studio.

I was thinking campaigns is—

Lead scoring is not a property anymore. Oh my God.

There are leads in HubSpot.

Uh, oh yeah.

Leads object. Yep.

Yep.

That might be 3 years old though.

Maybe.

Right.

Well, inbound 23 was, uh, Sales Hub and Leads and Prospecting and Sales Workspace.

Um, That is correct. Yeah. So that all came out. Helpdesk.

Leaving.

And this is only because I've been doing content on this, like, since, since then. Spring Spotlight of '24 was the Helpdesk, Service Hub, and Content Hub launch. Like CMS Hub turning into Content Hub and like 300 updates, almost all related to Service Hub. August of '24 is when the object library came out and the extra objects. Inbound '24 was, I think, customer agent, prospecting agent, like starting to get serious about AI. Marketing plus Content Hub together was a big push at the inbound. Also started talking a lot about CRM data management. I went to a talk from Jeff Vincent on that one. And then last year, it's all about AI.

It's, it's Jeremy, right?

Yep.

Yeah, Jeremy, this one's going to blow your mind, bro. There's no longer lists in HubSpot. They're called segments.

Oh my gosh.

And the film drink is legitimately better.

Filtering is a lot better. I feel like just talking with Breeze in platform, if you have a question, and then shout out to Hub Helper Harry, which is a ChatGPT app, but also Nico just launched hubhelperharry.com too. I use Hub Helper Harry daily, and I have been using HubSpot for the last 3 years, um, because there's just constantly pieces of HubSpot that I don't know about that just keep coming up.

Yeah, when I— this is a bit off the rails, but when I was a sophomore in high school, I was 5'6", 155. 3 years after that, I was, uh, exiting my senior year at 6'3", 230. That is similar to HubSpot. It's grown up, it's matured, it can do a lot more. It can squat 400 pounds now, uh, from what I've heard. So spending, spending time inside of it, even— I mean, this shouldn't be, uh, redactive to say there's— coming back should be overwhelming. Just from hearing Casey say, I use Hub Helper Harry every day— shout out Nico, by the way, it's a great thing to use— and I, I'm in the HubSpot every day. But being in the tool more often and with more use cases and exploring it should help. And that's I mean, you can listen to a number of shows which have popped up, like this one, and like what Chris and George and Casey are doing. Um, there's a lot more resources. The community is, uh, infinitely more involved. And I— so just getting immersed back into the system, both from a social, like, communal standpoint and the tool itself, I think is the best course of action.

Yeah, I've got a short list. Oh, go ahead.

I was just going to say attending this show weekly is actually the very best thing you could do.

Yes, plus one to that.

It's up there. Uh, yeah, um, so here's, here's my short list of things. Uh, lots more stuff have properties than they did before. Like, you can create custom properties for campaigns and workflows and a lot of stuff that didn't have, uh, any properties before. Um, the users object has grown up a lot. It's a lot more objecty than it was when you last saw it.

Um, yeah, marketing email object. Marketing email object. Yeah, some properties for that.

HubSpot has been leaning into workspaces. Uh, so we've talked a little bit about help desk. That's a service workspace. We have a couple of different sales workspaces. The idea here is that, uh, reps or managers or whoever have like one screen where they live on instead of having like deals open in a tab and tasks open in a tab.

Um, let's see, uh, can do all of your calling, all of it.

There's, uh, there's conditional properties now in HubSpot, both conditional properties where when you select a value you have to select a value from another property, and also like the options in a dropdown are conditional based on another one. So like you select country and then your state/region property reduces to just the, the relevant ones. That kind of stuff is exciting for anyone in an admin role, I think. So it's a lot of these little kinds of things that, you know, you may have wished, especially coming from Salesforce, you may have wished for things like conditional property objects or, or, or no property options or more properties on things. They're all basically there now. You can associate objects of the same type to each other. I even, I forgot that used to be a limitation. You couldn't do that. You can associate contacts to contacts now. Um, there are these stage calculated properties, uh, time entered stage, time exited stage for deal stages, lifecycle stages. You can do a board view of lifecycle stages for, uh, customers or contacts.

Flexible, flexible CRM views, calendars, maps, Gantt charts.

Events are in Pro. Private content's in Pro. Yeah, like things that drop down to Pro from Enterprise, that's been happening as well. Thanks ladies, that's the show for today.

You can do multi-step forms now. Just a lot of little things.

Oh yeah. Oh, and with that multi-form, um, uh, they have hide and show now as of like a week or two weeks ago, which makes it super powerful.

There are way more cards you can add. Like, it's— I imagine here, I'm— customization was fairly new when you left.

Now, news flash, news flash, Hub Heroes just released about 30 minutes ago part 1 of HubSpot record customization where Chad Hawn and Max Cohen went total nerd on the things that we can do with record customization.

Yeah, that's great.

Yeah, so you came to the right place, Jeremy. That's, that's the one I'll finish on. Um, So yeah, just a— there's a lot of new stuff. Yeah, pretend to talk about how enrichment went from being free to not being free and is now free again, but maybe we'll leave that alone.

Yeah, yeah, walk in with an open mind. Pretend you don't know what HubSpot is.

Yeah, pretend it's your first day.

Uh, and if you do ask AI for help, depending on what you're asking, it still very much sees it as a marketing and sales CRM only. Know that that is not true. So just take care when getting help from AI.

Yeah, all of that distilled back and repeated by Jeremy. He said, sounds like HubSpot grew up a bit.

So he's just a bit—

he used my metaphor. Appreciate you, uh, listening, Jeremy. Yeah, we could probably take the next hour to go through— I mean, that's 3 years worth of updates with different preferences from a marketer, from somebody that's Has hundreds of updates per year. Hundreds. I mean, tons of things. Not to mention things— I think you just mentioned, um, enrichment— like updates that were un-updated and then re-updated. So different versions of updates throughout the 3 years. Um, maybe we could build that into like a seg— not just update of the week, but like since you've been gone as a segment. I'll do a Kelly Clarkson parody song and like anybody returning to the HubSpot ecosystem after a brief absence, we can we can hone in on a few things.

Uh, I wonder if there's a way, like, dig deep enough into product updates to be like, on this day 2 years ago.

Yeah, we could use the Wayback Machine, uh, during the show.

Consider it done. Uh, I helped George understand earlier today that, uh, something I unboxed on April 5th, seriously, of 2024, bringing this up Memberships was a thing in the nav back then.

Well, and it was less about that that was in the nav, even though, yes, it's in the nav, but it was, it was this like complete mental meltdown about how difficult it was to find access groups. And then Chris clicked twice.

Anyway, everybody has empathy for not being able to keep up with HubSpot. So just give yourself permission to ask.

Public service announcement, as a guy who knows a lot about HubSpot but also struggles to find things in the menus, uh, the search bar can search for apps, right? If you, if you have no idea where segments, formerly known as lists, is located, you can just put that in the search bar and it'll come up, app segments lists, and in parentheses, and you can click on it, right? Same thing with a lot of settings and, and tools and stuff.

Oh, by the way, Kyle's here. Wait a second, Kyle, can you ask the team— here's some ding ding ding ding HubSpot feedback. Uh, when I type in access groups, it'd be great if it showed up in the global menu, uh, global search. That would be amazing because— oh, does it not? No, if you type in access groups, it does not show up.

Okay, by the way, that's like— that's back, I can take to the team.

Kyle just mentioned another update. Apps, the word app, we now refer to things, uh, outside of HubSpot and things inside of HubSpot. Uh, but another good question from Jeremy here.

Yeah, what about a cost in Academy to get brought up to speed?

Yeah, it depends a lot on your focus. Oh my goodness, depends a lot on your focus, Jeremy. Um, for example, the HubSpot Sales Hub software certification is completely rebooted. It's not me anymore, it's my friend Nick, and it's all different from anything you learned from me 3 years ago, uh, because Sales Hub itself has changed a lot. Um, that is true of a lot. We have a Service Hub, uh, certification, a Marketing Hub certification, uh, I think we have one for Content Hub. I think, yep, if there's a particular hub you're focused on, uh, looking at those is not necessarily going to tell you what's changed, but it's going to get you up to date on the current state of things, and that's arguably much more valuable.

Agree. I'm gonna— Casey was trying to, uh, ask something and then we started talking. Casey, you had something to add, and I want to also get to your quick win of the week before we depart for the day.

I don't remember what I was gonna ask, so let's pretend that didn't happen.

That's all right, we still have a quick win. I believe it is, uh, customizing pipeline card fields.

Yeah, so you can put my screen, my thing up. Um, I learned this yesterday. Um, if you are on your— I'm just on a deal view board. Um, you can go to board settings, card setup. You can edit the card setup for yourself or for everyone. And in this case, I am customizing the card just for the sales pipeline. If I, you could do it based on, my example actually was my team had a sales pipeline and then like a renewal pipeline. And so they wanted the properties that showed on the renewal pipeline to be a little different because it had to do with like previous deals and current relationships and things like that. So, you can customize them right here. One thing I had struggled with for a moment was if you want to edit these properties, you have to click into properties. But it's fairly easy. It's just a little nested. But easy way to make it work better for you.

That's awesome. Nice. I'm going to be digging into that soon.

And another plus one for Hub Helper Harry, who, when my client asked if we could do that, I went to Hub Helper Harry and said, can I do this? And it said, yeah, here.

Sorry.

Nice, very nice. Um, do we want to venture into the, uh, LinkedIn post with a couple minutes left, Chris, or do we want to tease that for some people?

With a minute and a half left, I don't know about that.

I mean, I mean, we didn't talk about inbound VIP, did we?

Let's talk about inbound VIP, and you need to join next week as we will have collected and digested our thoughts. A very good post from our friend Gregory, uh, we can have more time to chew on and digest as I said that. But inbound VIP tickets, take it away, George.

Oh, oh, okay. My honest answer is it depends. That's my honest answer because I've gone to inbound without VIP and I've gone to inbound with VIP, and both, uh, types were— inbound was awesome. The reason I'm saying it depends, it depends what you're gonna do, like how you're gonna schedule things, because it's not like you can just say I'm gonna get a VIP ticket and, uh, Mauricio is gonna save the front chair for me in row 1. Like, that's not how it works. So like You could say VIP, but then if you just shove your, um, agenda full of stuff and can't get to the VIP section like at a decent time, it's like not really gonna be a VIP section for very long because you're gonna be like in the very back or not even in the VIP section. If you're the type of person that likes to go to a special place for like coffee and like feel special, then maybe, but like I mean, there, there are some benefits, but I guess my thing is I don't think it's required to get a value 3, 4 days out of inbound, but it's a nice to have if you enjoy those additional things that you can actually get to or do.

Um, I know the person who asked, um, and he actually DM'd me after with a little more context He's coming from South Africa, so it's a long trip to begin with. And networking was the thing he specifically called out that he wanted to get out of inbound. I told him I, I have never been a VIP at inbound, but I found plenty of networking opportunities myself.

So can I talk to that? Um, Chris, you gonna go VIP? Uh, no. Rob, you gonna go VIP?

I don't let a badge designate my VIP status, so I'm not—

Kyle, you gonna spend any time in VIP?

Um, HubSpot doesn't give me a VIP badge, so I, I won't be able— there have been times we've been like, hey Kyle, let's go talk, we'll go to the VIP lounge where it's quiet, and we'll like get to the door and whatever temp worker the facility has hired to check people's badges, like, sorry sir, you can't come in here.

Yeah, who have no clue who Kyle Jeppson the flip is anyway. Casey, you gonna be in VIP?

I will not, no.

Yeah, well, I can tell you right now, you want to do that networking, you're not networking with any of us. And I want you to think about the amount of humans and the type of humans that are down in the trenches. Are they VIPs that you want to network Or is it the people that might be in VIP that you want to network with? Because it's probably two distinct types of humans. So which one do you want to talk to?

And I just, I just want to call out to inbound is a huge expense. I honestly like people whose employers don't just provide that for them. I don't know how you make it there. I'm in awe at you that you can pay the travel costs and the ticket costs and the Boston hotel costs and lose a week of work and, and still make it work. Right. And if you are feeling that, if you are price sensitive at all, I kind of doubt that the additional sacrifice to get a VIP badge is going to measurably impact your experience beyond the value you're already going to get for the enormous sacrifice you are, you are making to get there. Yes. And so there are things that are really nice about VIP access. You know, if you are an employer and you're taking your whole team with you, like, and it doesn't make that big a difference to your annual budget, whether they're normal passes or VIP passes, you might really enjoy using that VIP lounge as a place for your employees to be able to meet up with each other and compare notes on the sessions they've been going to. But if you are paying out of pocket to get yourself to Inbound, I— you don't need to be a VIP to hang out with any of us here.

Listen, Kyle is preaching because in June of 2022, I started my own business and I quit working for other agencies. You know, agencies that would send me to inbound and pay for my hotel room and usually give me some type of expense account to like have a beverage or two or a little bit of food. And in 2022, I decided I'm gonna take the whole family. We did not go VIP. And when I saw the bill for everything that we did to get to inbound, be at inbound, that's how I felt when I saw that, my guy.

If you want to network with me, I will be at all of the free food tables. Anytime there's free food, that's where you'll find me.

You may have accidentally just tripped George into a wall.

I almost spit out my coffee on my screen. That would have been ugly.

I went for seconds for tater tots. I was like, This is expensive. Tater tots are filling.

Not, not having— and we can hop after this, but I think the most important thing is established, which is should you go to inbound regardless of VIP or general admission? Yes. If that is, if that is part of the question, then you should go. The networking opportunities may be different, but, but it's one other level of access that's not requisite to get a ton of value out of being there for the 3 or 4 days. So that's, that's where I'll leave. I didn't know if the question was like, if I can't do VIP, should I even go? No, no, no, that's not the question. You should be there 100% if you have the, you know, financial flexibility for a couple other rooms that people may or may not be in.

Sure.

Um, but you can also wear an orange suit made out of traffic cones and just declare yourself a VIP, and that's worked out pretty well for me. Thank you to Jeremy specifically, along with Gabby, Robin, uh, Marowyn, looks like. We have a lot of guests and viewers. Thank you for coming back to HubSpot. We will continue to guide you as you navigate a completely new CRM platform, and we will see you next week on the HubSpot Helpline.

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