HubSpot INBOUND24: Your Practical, Tactical, Somewhat Unhinged Recap

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

It'd be really funny if just for April Fools one day, we just, like, changed the intro just, like, once where it was just like, are you just a complete dumbass? And just. And just throw that into, like, one of them.

Do you know how to spell HubSpot? And that's it.

Yeah. Wow.

And we've got a service for you.

Goodbye.

It's called spell check.

So, gentlemen, we're finally back. We had inbound. We had a hurricane. We had power outages, but gosh darn it, we're here. How's it feel, guys? How's it feel?

We did it.

But we're not alone.

I'm. I'm finally not tired anymore because I was tired for, like, a week and a half.

Well, then I'm not doing my job correctly. Yeah. Get back on that train.

I've been. I've been working out. I've been working out twice a week for an entire year since the last inbound. And so I was like. When I was there, I physically felt fine. I didn't really sleep that well. One of the days I, like, literally had an entire night where I, like, didn't fall asleep.

Like, I remember Wednesday and Thursday next morning.

Yeah. You okay?

It was like. It was like Fear of the Walking Dead, Max Cohen style. Oh, God.

Yeah, I was a husk. It was bad, but, like, I remember last year when it was just, like, I was getting through it and, like, my back was just destroyed by the end of the day, and, like, I could barely, like, walk when I got up and everything. This year, I, like, I. You know, I was running on adrenaline the entire time. And like, I was feeling great through the entire conference that weekend. After, though, when I came home, it. It all hit me at once and I was just. I couldn't even get out of bed. It was just the whole week. Caught you. And it was just. It was so terrible. But great event.

You did better. I made it to the plane, bro. Plane. And.

Yeah, just done.

Done. Yeah, Out.

Brutal.

Anyway, but George and Max, we're. We're not by ourselves today. We have a friend.

Yes.

Friend of the pod. Chad.

We like, friend of the pod.

Lord of the chat. Is what I'll say. A lord of the chat.

Oh, like Lord of the chat. That's. We should just call him that from now on.

Yeah, but he. He's not just that man. He's our HubSpot super admin, our technical wizard, our. I guess. What else? Lord of CRM customizations. Lord of integrations and solutions architecture. I don't know what happens, but, like, when we watch him, like, just kill it in the chat during the live audience, fun stuff. I'm like, I understand 50% of what you're saying. You are so smart.

I'm sort of scared a little bit because it's like, it's not a chat. It's like a chad, like, here right now.

Giga Chad.

Yep. Giga Chad. Oh, Gigachad.

You should.

That should be. Your superhero. Is the Gigachad. Oh, wow.

Just a chin and a printer.

This is Chad mewing up a storm. Yeah, yeah, There you go. He gets it. Yep.

That's what's up. That's what's up.

Yep.

So now nobody saw that, though. That's the thing. The people listen on the audio podcast are like, anyway, Chad, do you want.

To describe in excruciating detail what you just did? So it's even funnier for the audience because I hear when you explain jokes. So I've got to admit something for our listeners at home, I am equal parts happy and excited about this Inbound recap. Also because it's because I'm sad because I didn't get to be there. I had something unexpected come up at the last minute. So I am like the listeners today, having read a bunch of Inbound recaps, having listened to a bunch of inbound 24 podcast episodes about. And they all sound the same, right? They're all the same product updates with the same background information with the same stuff. And so what I'm really excited about with today's conversation is, yeah, we're going to talk about some of the wacky hijinks we all got up to, or you all got up to while you were up there in the great Beantown of the beyond. But we're also going to go a little bit deeper into some of the things that we heard during the product updates. What we're actually thinking, what questions did we get answered, answers did we get? That actually created more questions than answers. So we're gonna start actually with you, George. I want to start a bit of fun because my dude, my guy, my brother in Christ, you were on stage five times. You were on stage five times this year.

Yeah.

What? Take us behind the scenes of that. What did you love? What challenged you? What happened?

Yeah. First of all, it wasn't by design. I just want. I'm not insane. I want everybody to know that. So.

Well, those two things are not related. Two things can be true.

Yeah, that's. This is true. So. So it all kind of just. It was like a snowball, right? It was like a snowball going on. And so for years I've been doing the late night show, and it was this thing where we would be in like a pseudo broom closet or like in the hallway, or we'd be out on the grass, the lawn, and it'd be like multiple people doing like a Twitter live one year and like a LinkedIn Live the next. And this year they actually put us like a news anchor desk. And I had like, so cool. It was so awesome. It was sick. And we had like three guests and myself, and we did it two nights. And so each night for like 30 to 40ish minutes, we were doing the late show. So that's two times. Then obviously I got a chance to speak. And so I did the, like, future of content, you know, harmonizing human and AI. Well, that was. That was awesome. And during that whole process, they actually asked if I would do this AI debate. And I said, well, sure. Like, why not? Because at this point I'm like, the late night show is cool and I can lean on the guests to do the content. I'll just do my session on Thursday and I'll do an AI debate on Friday. And so sweet. This is awesome. Well, then. Then they open up. They own. The debate was fun, by the way. And so. So then they open up for people to register for the session. And Liz, in like an hour and 48 minutes, my session was full. And so then they reached out and they're like, it was full, by the way. I'm not. I'm saying that humbly because it's humbly full. It's on that. It's on the hat. It's on the hat. No, I'm not just a guy, but I'm saying it humbly. So. So then also, you are a human. Do an encore. And I'm like, well, you don't tell inbound no. Like, that's the cardinal rule. You don't tell inbound no. And so I was like, yes, I will. And so that led to Friday, which was the morning debate in the afternoon encore. And then Ryan Reynolds. And hence why I was snoring as soon as we hit the plane after a three hour delay. But anyway, that's not why we're here. So five times. It was exhilarating. I would absolutely do it again. And I learned out of it a couple things. One, I learned that you shouldn't judge yourself on how you feel your talk went. And I also learned that you have as much energy as you need until you don't need it anymore. Because I kept worrying about running out of steam along the way. But I was like, nope, feel good. And honestly, my Friday session, I was on fire.

Like, wall to wall bangers.

Oh, man, he was killing it.

I was at that one.

Yeah, Friday was nuts. Like, I had. I had like this, okay, you're about to run out of gas, so let's go. And Turbo boost. And, like, was just cranking through the audience like, it was a little.

A little puke and rally as we used to call it in college.

Disco N.

Storage. You did. You also had a little bit of a technical mishap on your first one, right?

The Thursday. The Thursday.

Yeah.

Thanks.

Wow, Max, way to call a brother out like that.

You still cry. I want to know the story, dude. It's a fun story.

Here's the thing. So the first session, I didn't have any WI fi, which I needed WI fi because I wanted to show actual, like, you know, Google Docs and website pages and helpful things to the humans who are trying to learn about this stuff.

Things on the screen.

So then when I try to use my hotspot. Okay, sweet. I got hotspot. It's working. But then all of a sudden, I couldn't show my screen if I was showing PowerPoint and going back and forth. And there was a technical issue. And I'm like, oh, my God. So I just rolled with it. I just did it. And I. But I felt bad about it. I was like, I didn't like that at all. I'll get back to that in a second. Like, I was beating myself up. I like, told My wife, like, I just. I'm so frustrated right now. And so then Friday, though, I had WI fi. We figured out why and how we could go back and forth. And so, and, and I was on fire. And I was like. And I got done and I looked at everybody. I was like, that's what I wanted on Thursday. Now here's. Here's the funny freaking crap about me beating myself up about this is. Guys, I got the information back from. From Inbound. And what's funny is my score, the audience, my score for Thursday. Let me pull this up. So I'm actually giving you the real stats. Was a 4.67 out of 5. The one that I was pissed about, the one that I'm like, oh, that sucked. Like, I know what it wanted it to be. Encore three. Seven was four. No, dude, screw.

You know, I just said, be funny. What?

My encore was 4.4.73. So we're literally talking about like fractions of a percentage difference. And. And I was like, why was I judging myself? Like, what? So. So that's why I say you, you shouldn't judge yourself in the moment on what you think you did or thought how you did. And about the energy piece.

Now the other thing too, I want to throw out to our listeners at home is that if you did not get to see George's session or you're like me, and you didn't even make it to Inbound at all. One of the things that you did that was really cool this year, Georgia, I remember seeing on LinkedIn that somebody who attended your session shouted this out.

You, Tiffany.

Yeah, yeah. You created like this crazy activation content. Meaning, like, I think we've seen a lot of people at Inbound. Like they're on stage. You're like, if you go to this link, you can get stuff and it's usually like, here's some slides. Would you like to book a demo? Here's like a really crappy one page Google Doc checklist that is kind of whatever, but give me money. But what's cool about it in folks at home, it's@sidekickstrategies.com inbound24. Going through it, you have. You have like a video on the page. You give them two different massive checklists. So AI prompt checklist and an editing checklist and the presentation slides. And then you gave them a bunch of extra resources and then you also re recorded your session so they could just watch it, Right?

Yeah. And then he dropped his only fans link. It was crazy.

Wild is only heroes.

Want to watch me Implement HubSpot gone wild.

So here's the deal. What I want everybody to realize is, yeah, I recorded the entire session. So you're. You're talking about an hour and 30 minutes of content AI, like, so if you couldn't make it, like, it's all there. And Liz, the thing is, the days of just giving your slide as a speaker are gone. Like, we are in a world if we're really focused on being human centric, if it's all about the humans, if it's really about value over virality, then you have to give them stuff that makes them be able to do, or at least start to do the thing that you want them to do. And if they get stuck, that's when they should be coming back to you. That's when you can do the consulting. That's when you can make the money. And so it's like, I just. I. With help from you and the rest of the team. Like, I wanted this to be two things. The dopest talk I ever gave it inbound, and the like, best resource and, like, automated email flow after the fact. And we hit it out the park on both of those.

I love it. Chad, I have questions for you, please. I have questions for you.

Now that I can talk again. I'm done mewing. And, you know, I really. The reason I didn't respond is because usually when somebody says they want you to talk while you're mewing, you're supposed to, like, put your index finger. This is the description I didn't give because I was busy.

Right.

You put your index finger over your lips and then look at your jaw so that they can see that you're mewing.

Yes, just like that, Max.

Yeah.

And then it.

Wow.

That's the thing.

I feel. I feel ancient right now and totally not connected to this conversation.

I had no idea what it was.

On the veranda with your davenport. Don't worry.

Yeah, I had no idea what it was till I heard that, like, kids in school would just not respond to their teachers and just do that. Like, no, sorry, I'm busy mewing. I can't answer your question.

That's so not infuriating, George. That's so Ohio.

George is on that sigma grind set.

So good.

Sorry, I don't know what you're talking about. I'm too busy focusing on the humans.

Wow, wow, wow. So, Chad, now that George is done showing off rude super Ohio, like, wouldn't.

It be funny if he just said, I'm too busy throwing out my yacht for the rizzler that would have been even more amazing.

Say goodbye to Sizzle reels. Say hello to Rizzle reels. Am I right, guys? But Chad, so you are known around the Hub Heroes universe as someone who's never satisfied with surface level answers.

No.

So I had this image of you during the product keynotes where they're talking about Breeze AI and have you heard of AI? Have you heard about AI and what it could do with everything? Right. And I just had this image of you being like, aha. And then you immediately running off to find people to ask more questions. But I would love for you to talk through your experience with those product announcements with our listeners.

Yeah.

What were the ones that captured you the most and what were the conversations that you had afterward that you felt were the most valuable?

Well, if we go back to last year and not, you know, this most recent year, but the year before 2023 inbound and chat Spot was announced. Right. And then we tried Chat Spot and it was kind of like, you know, like it was a little helpful, but it was kind of like, you know.

Yeah.

So it was novelty.

It was novelty. And the reason is because as, as they do at the Sprocket, you know, they start with the small corner and dream as this big roadmap, but then iterate based on user feedback. That's one of the things I love about the HubSpot product team is that the people in the trenches doing the thing care about you and what you want to get done. I feel like anyway, in my interactions with HubSpot product team, they're really passionate about what they're building. And so as I'm watching the breeze stuff, outside of the ones that are native built into HubSpot, I wasn't actually too worried about Agent AI just yet because that's going to be a next year thing when it's really valuable next year and they're going to like maybe rename it and bring it into HubSpot next year. So the internal stuff, like the Clearbit acquisition and bringing in some of the enrichment stuff, you know, that's pretty cool. But I really wanted to know more about the actual inner workings of as like a solutions architect or somebody who builds integrations. Talk to the product managers like, hey, this is a roadblock. I run into like, I mean one of the craziest things to me was the associations. You know, throw out associate right over there at happily. But the association. Yeah. Shout out that they they launched it. It doesn't let you use the most perfectly awesome ID to create associations in HubSpot, the record ID, like why would you not allow you to use record id? You know, this like these deep things. So I get to go talk to these product managers, give them both an earful and some encouragement of tell them what I love, you know, and like, I mean they're all working hard. They're all, they all have like, you know, I mean sometimes we feel like we get roadmap itis where they're just like, you know, slapping the tape on the flex tape on the thing. They saw the roadmap, you know, like. Yeah, you get that a lot. Right?

But sales guys love to do that.

Oh yeah, they do. Yeah, for sure. But anyway, just getting in there and talking to the product managers, I mean I can go in and say like, hey, like these are the situations I run into in HubSpot data sync. You don't expose these filters or you've completely locked out filters with Invoice Sync and Commerce Hub. Like why would you do that? I know people were roasting themselves, but I can't even make it more restrictive if I have two QBO accounts connected or some of these really specific use cases that a lot of businesses could run into, not just us in the roofing industry. Right. So anyway, I, I really enjoyed the product and it's my favorite part besides meeting the people, talking to the people and you know, just other people out there in HubSpot land.

That's awesome.

I love, so I love so much of that. Like, like, because Chad, it's funny be one of the things that we get to do also outside of inbound is these projects. Folks will reach out and they'll want to do calls. And I love what you said in there at inbound or even on these calls of like give them a earful but also fill them with encouragement. And I think that's important to like list out there because it's like we love the tool. We love that they're working on the tool and we want them to love that we love them working on the tools so that the things get added that we need. I also love the level of granularity into which you went about like filters hidden this that dudes.

Yeah. I mean I run into the roadblocks all the time of oh man, I have this kind of workflow where I can't use an event based trigger because reasons and I like, I'm, you know, you look at like the, the audit log and like all of my time is in the workflows or is in like property creation or schema manipulation. So you're adding properties or whatever you're doing. Like, my user is not creating records unless they say like test beans or something like that, you know, like that's all I do. And then I build the things and then teach people how to use the things, you know, and then make sure that the user interface is able to allow them to do the things easily. Right. That's been my number one goal, making HubSpot just really a delight to use. Because I don't want to go down the team blue rabbit hole of, you know, don't say these things. Right. You know, but like a lot of, I think end users who were on Salesforce kind of hate it because maybe it's not configured well for their job role. And like, it's like I hate using Salesforce because it never gives me the data I need. And I don't want HubSpot to go down that road either. With any HubSpot that we build. I want the end users to say, this is easy to understand. I have the data I need, you know, to get through some of the nuances about like, oh, well, you're looking at this, you know, index page. So it'll only show you deal properties. Right. But they're working on things like that. I've heard that they're like trying to bring cross object filtering to index pages. All sorts of really awesome things. Like so many good things. They really do listen to your feedback as much as it feels like it's ancient slowness, you know, sometimes. But they're very mobile for the size of organization. They are.

Yeah. And I kind of like how they do baby steps for a lot of that stuff. Right. Like so, for example, index pages just got the ability to do filtering objects that are associated to another specific object. Right. But that's the baby step in the direction of like what you just said with the cross object stuff.

Exactly.

Right. You know, we see like another, you know, another interesting one that they just did, which I'm so stoked about, which like I, for me, this would have been like a keynote presentation update is this. And it's like super nuanced. But the, you know, you have the data tables and workflows right. Where they now let you do associated objects. But you can filter by most recently associated. Right. Because they're kind of exposing that. Yeah, they're like exposing whatever that junction object is that like, you know, has the label and everything. But also like that junction object has a create date. Right. So like.

Or an associate.

Yeah, yeah. And what's Cool about that is that's a stepping stone to be able to, say, trigger a workflow when an association occurs. Right. And, like, so it's. It's. It's really interesting to kind of see how they, like the prime. Yeah. How they test the water. Oh, is it interesting?

So when associations.

Sorry.

Oh, nerds.

Nerds. Nerds. Can we get back to talking about inbound?

George. George. The solution. Engineers and architects are talking. Okay.

George, I was about to wrangle these cats and kittens, so why don't you hold on for a second?

Okay.

But here's the thing. I. I love that, though. See, now you gotta wrangle me. But I love that because I was watching Max and Chad's face, and I don't think I've seen two humans light up more, because I was like, man, these guys are like, I don't want to stop them, but I. But I. I want to stop them.

This is how me and Chad make love. You know what I mean? We just talk about nuanced product updates, baby.

Okay, that's something.

Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Sorry. Go ahead.

As we start going down this technical rabbit hole, though, I want to take a step back out here for a moment, because we started touching on something. Chad, when you were talking about the shifts in the. Oh, my God, I'm so uncomfortable right now.

Sorry.

Do you know what I really love about this episode in particular? We're really playing to the audience at home. Like, this is definitely like the episode. The episode for Radio. I have a quick question for all of you. Okay.

Oh, yeah, sorry. What?

How do we feel. How do we feel about what HubSpot is saying about who they are right now and where they want to go? It's a very serious question.

What are we called right now? Are we at where. So we've reached customer platform.

Yeah. So we're at customer platform. And I have to be honest with you, I. I love this idea of customer platform because it is less of a hop, skip, and a jump to customer experience. And. And just the idea of. It's.

It's.

It's getting us closer to eradicating the fact that we've hubbed ourselves to death. Yeah, there's, like, this. Like. No, it's a. It's a customer platform that we can create dope customer experiences. So I love that we're here, and I also love where it positioned us to go in the future.

Yeah. Customer platform. I. I like it. Like, I feel like we've kind of always been that for a while or no, I feel like as soon as Service Hub got here, we've been that. Right. Or at least wanted to be. Or at least you could build that maybe. Right. You could argue when maybe some of the more nuanced advanced stuff around CMS came out. Right. But I think it's, you know, it is, it is interesting. The term customer platform. I think it's what I'm. What, what I'm really kind of like, thinking about is like, all right, how long is this what it's going to be called? Because I remember we were customer data platform for a bit. Or like, we were. We were getting into CDP territory and like now we've kind of. With cos, we've dropped the. Oh, yeah, cos. That was funny. You know what kind of a funny side story here is? Like the, the cos. I remember having to explain it to people and they're like, what is a COS versus a C? And I'm like, oh, it's a content optimization system. And it was basically just like. It's like, yeah, it's got SEO tools built right into it so you can optimize it. And like, that was like the. It's like, cool. A lot of CMS platforms have SEO stuff in it.

Yeah.

But it was really funny is we were, we were, we were called implementation specialists, right. Iss for, like a really long time. And then as soon as the, the. The COs switched to the CMS, the implementation specialists, right around that same time got their job role changed to customer onboarding specialists. And so as soon as we finally ditched COS from our cat, from our vocabulary, it literally became the name of the role, which I thought was ironic and hysterical, but isn't it ironic? Don't you think? It's like. So, yeah, I'm just, I'm curious, like, how long this name's gonna stick. Right? And like, what's the next sort of thing we're gonna kind of define ourselves as? It's exciting to think about, but it's also just. I still call it a CRM.

Yeah.

Because, like, even if I think, like, what's a. What's a customer platform? Well, it is still technically a place where you manage your customer relationship well.

But here's the thing, like it. And if you look at the, if you look at the graphic that they have around this, like, it a smart. Smart, by the way, smart CRM is part of the customer platform, without a doubt. Like, it's, It's a core element or piece and it. You're right, it's all the tools in one. But how. How insanely crazy is it to be like, I don't want to list out all the tools. I just want to be like, yeah, my customer platform is HubSpot. Well, what does it allow you to do? Well, everything. It allows me to, like, do anything I want for my customers because I'm focused on my customer. Right. I'm not focused on the C of the R of the M. I'm just focused on the customer. I think it helps us simplify things.

I thought you were going to say you were focused on the P and I was going to giggle anyway.

We're not giggling about that right now. The other thing I'll say too, though, is that part of me, from a messaging perspective, really likes customer platform because it feels like the least buzzwordy thing we could possibly say. It is a platform and it is for your customers, and it is simple. And the reason I prefer that over CRM is that whether we like it or not, from a connotation perspective, CRM is sales. We can talk without a doubt. We can talk about it from an underpinnings perspective. Perspective. A tactical literal on a technicality. Everything is a CRM within the customer platform. But if we're talking about how this gets messaged to the public and how we talk about it with the public, a CRM, people are going to be like, oh, that's sales. That's not me. I upset Max so much, he walked out.

Bye.

Bye.

I think one of the things.

I'll be right back. Keep going, Max.

My next question is for you this episode. Gentlemen. What have you done?

No, I'm here.

You forgot to keep her.

What's up, Liz?

It's a little delayed.

We're doing great, guys.

I think the best part is that he took his mic off of his stand and he's holding it like it's.

In solidarity with Liz.

It's amazing.

Thanks, bud. Cheers, buddy.

That's hot.

All right. What's up?

Yeah, that's it. Nope. So, Max, I. I have another question for you. And this is not meant in any way to attack you.

Oh, but you're about to attack me.

Did you make any.

I love questions that start like, the thing that I'm not trying to do is the thing that I'm about to do anyway.

You don't have any of those from me, George. Ever.

And never, never.

So, Max, hi. This is an empowering, uplifting question.

Yes.

Did you make any new friends this year as the chief evangelist of Happily at Inbound? And did you Say their names correctly.

Oh, you mean Tony. Tony didn't come back this year, and I wonder why.

I knew this is where she was going, brother. I knew this is where she was going, brother.

Did not have a Tony this year, brother. I made a lot. I feel like I made a lot of new friends. I was literally at the booth from 8 in the morning till 6 o' clock at night, having the same conversation over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over again, and it was delightful. It brought me life. It was fantastic. Also got to spend a ton of time with Chad, which was sick. And then Chad and Trent over at rbp. I feel like Trent was showing up everywhere. It was insane. It was awesome. I got to see you guys a whole bunch. And then, like, right when I was about to leave, I was in the bathroom at the Omni. Trent walks out of one of the stalls. I'm like, you're everywhere, Trent. I loved Trent. He was awesome. Shout out, yo. Shout out. Trent. Probably one of my favorite friends. I made it inbound.

Watch. His name is Bob.

Yeah, his name is man. If it wasn't Trent, I would have been.

He's gonna go, yeah, he's gonna be on Reddit. So this. This popsicle guy.

Yeah, Popsicle guy. Yeah. A lot of new friends, which is really cool. And it's just like, you know, it's so great to see everyone. Everybody in real life got to meet Justin for the first time over an image in a box. That was super cool to sit down with you guys. You know, me and Kyle obviously hang out every. Every week, so I've seen Kyle. He's old news. Wait, Chad, was that the first time.

We got to hang out in person? Yeah. I mean, I think my favorite person.

You didn't see each other last year? No.

Well, I don't think so. I met. I mean, I saw Jonathan from your team last year, but I didn't ever see you. And the. I think my favorite part about meeting Max in person and, you know, we'll have to do this is like he's kind of does one of these, like, you know, he's just really large, like, in charge right of the car, and he just, like, you know, starts in, like, gets in your face, and then you back up, and he just keeps getting in your.

Yeah, right up in you.

And then, like I told.

Exert dominance in your. Greetings, Max.

Yeah. Yes. Yeah.

It's very intense.

Try to alpha. Yeah, try to alpha the conversation without being an alpha, because I'm not toxic.

He's like, I'm going to break your hand when I shake your hand. Church guy that you meet every now and then.

Yeah, yeah. It's one of those, like, I just, I, I, I, you know, only see you from afar and I need to be as close to you as humanly possible and know that you're real. And yeah, no, I get right up in there. I'm, I'm accessible yet aggressive essence. Oh, I became very one with his essence. Yeah, you could say my vibe merged with his essence. It was insane with the meetings.

Product manager that I brought over also, he became one. I brought over Melissa. And then Trent placed his bag on the ground and intentionally did not move. Just because I told him about this ahead of time. And he was like just going to test it. And then Trent sitting here like this way. And then Max and Melissa are like moving around the corner, like walking away.

And Trent eventually dance around the bag.

Rotates his bag so he could still be a part of this conversation.

Guys, I move a lot.

We did it. We achieved my goal of having an inbound recap episode like nobody else on this planet has.

George, how do you feel over there? No, nobody will ever have this conversation. Hold on.

And I have to, I have to give an apology. Hold on. I have to give apology to Austin. To Austin from GeoMapper. No, no, no, not this one. I'll have to apologize to San Francisco next year. We're gonna go nuts. Oh, man, I can't wait.

Just like send a pre apology letter. Just mail it.

Yeah, yeah. You think San Francisco's bad now? I haven't got there yet. No. But I, I saw Austin Birch from GeoMapper and org chart Hub. You know, Dan and Austin. I don't know if you guys, they, you know, they make pretty legendary apps. I basically assaulted him at the bar at the Omni when I saw him. And I, I wasn't expecting it because I didn't see Dan. I didn't know if Austin was there. And I saw us and I was like, oh, my God. And I ran up to him and gave him like a giant hug. And he's like, okay, okay. I gu Totally like, just wasn't expecting a big, giant grizzly bear to run up to him and just like get all up in his aura. And I did. And it was great. And I don't apologize, but at the same idea or at the same time. Sorry, Austin. That was a lot.

So he can listen to this episode.

You didn't deserve that, but I enjoyed it.

George have you ever been as proud of an episode as you are right now? Or is this where you suddenly put a, like an invite on our calendar for Monday? Like, hey guys, just a quick, just a quick chat.

So chat about that.

So, so let's talk. No, no, like here, here's the thing. Like, a master at content realizes that they just let the content become what it's supposed to be. So I'm very comfortable with the conversations we're having because somebody is either already tuned out or they're here laughing their butt off. And so this episode is for you. Laughing your butt off. Guy or gal. This episodes for you.

Yeah, I mean, me and Chad tried to talk about some cool product stuff earlier, but we got the whole thing.

Inbound. Dad said no.

Yeah, sorry.

Yeah, yeah. Down the crazy train a little bit.

You asked for the fact that nobody's talking about that. HubSpot launched YouTube publishing support at Inbound.

I mean, it's still enterprise locked.

Yep, it's enterprise.

Yeah, but, but, but I mean, I'm with you on that. But I'm with you on that. But at least, at least it's there because I always thought it should be there. So that's. Anyway, yeah, it should be there, but like people can. Any.

Most people can't play with it.

Yeah. The thing is like YouTube channel is one of the best ways to grow your business when you're first starting, not when you're an enterprise company. Like, it just doesn't make sense that it's stuck in enterprise. It's crazy to me.

Hopefully they'll switch it, bring it down. It's there to be able to switch it.

There is a lot of things that I, you know, that to me are justified to be an enterprise. Like, especially if it has something to do with scaling something up. Right. Like you see a lot of the side. Yeah, like, Exactly. But like YouTube analytics sitting in enterprise makes no sense at all. I'm sorry. For years.

So.

Yeah.

But hopefully publishing and analytics will come down.

Well, you know what they brought down to Pro, which I'm so stoked on, is Ops Hub Pro data sets that are custom.

True, bro.

That's a 2,800-dollar feature that got dropped down to 800 bucks.

Yes. Yep. And they added. In the enterprise, they added a bunch of different connectors instead of just Snowflake, like AWS and some other shit.

Google Big looker. Looker. Whatever.

The nerds. They're so.

There they go.

So proud.

Like, all right.

Data.

George.

Yeah.

One word review of Inbound this year.

Oh, one Word. Oh, my.

Can tell me why, but you got to tell me what the word is first. Max and Chad. You can't say humans are up next.

You can't say humans.

Humans would be like, an easy go to. I'm trying to bleep out here One word for inbound. 2024.

Gosh, I hope so.

The word that pops to my brain is exhilarating because I've seen things that I've never seen before. I was able to do things that I haven't done before, and there was just this, like, I'll call it this level of freedom that I have never had mentally at inbound either. Like, I just. I just feel like if anybody was with me, hung around with me, saw me, they were getting a different version of, like, George, a new version of George. Like, listen, I've got. Had a chance to sit and watch a couple times now. The interview that I did with Max at the Happily booth around event. Happily. And I'm like, that guy right there. We ate that guy right there. Like, so it was just exhilarating.

You know what? I can. Can I piggyback on that question, George, how was Jorge's first Inbound?

Oh, guys.

Writing about.

Yeah, there's going to be an article, but I'm going to sum it up in. In this way, when Inbound was over, which, by the way, my dude got a chance to get a picture with Brian Halligan. Got it. Yeah, my dude got a chance to get a picture with Marcus Sheridan. And one of the first things he wanted to do, he's like, dude, I got to get a picture with George B. Thomas. And I'm like, bro, what are you talking about? But okay, we can do a selfie. So he sent these photos to his dad, and his dad literally was like. Like, just beside himself that his son was standing with these humans. But we got to the end of Inbound, and I said, jorge, now that you've been at inbound, like, what's your next big dream? And he said to me, guys, he said, oh, no, George, I don't think you understand, because I've been to inbound. I believe I can drink.

Jorge is the best, dude.

My wife and I, we looked at each other. We tried not to cry in our food. Like, I was like, oh, this is.

And then he probably said something like, sure, sure, no problem.

No problem. Yeah, exactly. I love that.

Needs to be in a shirt.

He's. Yeah, yeah, yeah, no problem.

Now, Max, you have to follow that, by the way.

Oh, yeah. What was the question? One word.

Inbound. In one word, brother. Inbound, brother. Let's go, brother.

Brother.

Validating. I'll say. Why? So we launched, quote, happily, right before inbound, right? And, you know, this is something that we been building for a while, and a lot of it was really based on. I hear that mic bouncing around, Liz. So loud. We built, quote, happily, really, based on feedback that we mostly got from HubSpot sales reps, right? And the questions we were constantly asking those guys is like, hey, what? We want to build this quoting product, like, what is. What is losing you deals to other CRMs when it comes to the CPQ stuff, right? And it was mostly price books. Price books. Price books. But it was also just like, you know, quoting Scott in the Wild west, like, you can do whatever you want. Like, you can't lock it down. You can't stop people from making dumb decisions and all that kind of stuff. And approvals, right? And so we kept hearing that over and over and over and over again. So we're like, cool, let's build it. And so we built it and we, we, we, we. We shopped it around and we told partners about it, like, all this stuff. But then to, like, bring it to inbound and hearing other people that aren't just HubSpot. Hubspotters, right? Be like, oh, yeah, that is what we need. We were like, good, good. Like, like, good. It's good to hear other people going, oh, yes, that is a big need. Right? So that felt really good. The other side of the validating piece is like, I fought really hard with Event Happily to like, get the whole trade show lead capture stuff going, right? And, you know, because originally that's not what it was built for. It was built for, like, you're hosting an event, you do this, you're doing that. And I mean, I probably had 100 conversations around event Happily, and every single person was like, yeah, we go to a lot of trade shows. Yeah, it sucks. Oh, my God, where was this? The past 60 shows we went to, all that kind of stuff. And I was just like, yes, I knew there was a reason I was super, super fricking annoying about this. You know what I mean? So it's just like, it's great, especially when you're an app partner. Just, like, get your stuff in front of, like, HubSpot users that, like, no, HubSpot have these problems and they see what you built and they go, damn, that's awesome. Like, it's. It's one thing to, like, know the problem and build it. Be like, yeah, we Solved it. But then to have other people just be like, whoa, I see it and I get it now. And like, yes, that's genuinely helpful for like a situation we're in. It feels really good to kind of get that real world confirmation that we didn't spend a bunch of time going in the wrong direction. You know what I mean? So that was awesome.

Well, imagine a world by the way, because as you're talking I'm like, I can't wait to hear this story when this happens. Imagine a world where somebody has to buy HubSpot because they want to use Event Happily.

Yeah, it's happened, it's happening, right? And like that's, that's a cool, that's a cool feeling.

Yeah. So for me I think the word would be product just because I'm all about how the product works and the updates to the product and they dropped some just awesome fire updates.

Bangers.

Yeah, like enhanced webhook support for pretty much every object type in both private and public apps. Amazing meetings. There's a super private beta, I think it's probably coming out soon that you can like have custom properties on meetings. Super sick, right? Because you can like I IDs to meetings and HubSpot and link systems together more appropriately like a real traditional database. They did, you know, app cards being able to create custom like UI extension style app cards for a public app. So you can put things in the middle column. Like Happily's going to leverage the crap out of that.

Like you know, it's going to be our whole personality.

And like, I mean other things too. Like just in general product improvements that have really just made a material difference on being able to get stuff done in a non hacky way. Like one of the things that is the most frustrating to me ever is to build something for a customer or like in a HubSpot and then to have to maintain it. Like meaning maintain the branching in the workflow because it couldn't be built in a dynamic way. Like the referral type stuff that I've worked on in the past, like it's amazing being able to just say here's your process, here's a new URL. Now you have some referral stuff, right? Like I man like even just going back to like your Event Happily stuff being validating Max. Like I had a dude who wanted me to fill out a form on site because you know, to just circle back with me and I'm like, okay, sure. He's like, hey, can you put my name after your name in the first name? Because we are putting it in some other property and the guy doing our CRM told me that that was gross. And so now I'm putting, you know. And I got an email back from them that said, hi, Chad, John, you know, thanks for whatever.

Like in this legit customer experience. Right?

It's the big one.

It's a big one.

I'm having a heart attack right now, dude.

I did, I like went back to.

That guy that he thinks buying email lists is fine too. George.

He probably does.

Oh, yo, this week did the whole, all the emails of like, you know. Yeah, you came by the booth.

I was gonna bring that.

Leave my booth. Yeah.

How many emails did y' all get that are just like, oh, just, you know, so I wanted to touch base.

Again and like, great seeing you. Yeah, I went to one booth. It was the happily booth. I haven't gotten an email from them. That's why I love them.

Yeah, we're kind with your data.

Yeah, but that's because Max shows up in the middle of the night, taps on the window and goes, hi, I'm about to become one with your essence.

I like.

But in a non toxic alpha way.

Yeah, it's in a very non toxic.

All right, I have one other question. George, I want to start with you.

Good.

San Francisco, how do we feel about it?

Excitedly nervous. Let me explain and then I'll let you guys roll with the rest of this fun stuff. For the last 12 years, I've gone to Boston, landed in Boston and know where I'm going to go in Boston, where I'm going to stay where the event is. The I have to have like there's just a lot of knowns and next year it's all unknowns. And that excites me because I like new adventures. But it freaks me out a little bit because I, I like even dunk bro. I like to be bruh. I, I, I like to be, I like to be in my element a little bit and, and for 12 years you get in your element. Anyway, that's, that's my thoughts.

I just want to say, did we not just have episodes of where I said I am ready for inbound to be somewhere else and I'm finally getting my wish. Not sure San Francisco was at the top of my list because now I have to lose a bunch of weight this year to fit into a plane seat. But at least I have a little bit of motivation now. We lost George. Oh my goodness.

He's, he's got, he's a very important individual. Very important Meeting.

Got it. He's got a lot of important meetings. I'm. I'm beyond excited to be somewhere else besides the bcec. Here's what I'm not so thrilled about. The day I've got to fly out there is the first day of school, which is inconvenient as. But we're going to make it happen. It's going to be okay. We got a year to plan for it. But not only is my are my kids going to school, two separate schools at that. My wife is an 8th grade English teacher and it's the first day of.

School for her too.

So that'll do it. Feeling it, you know what I mean? But we'll plan ahead. But that's the one thing that made me kind of bummed about it. But I. I am just stoked to get out of the bcec, even if it's just for one year, you know, and get it somewhere else forever. Yeah. Let's get a San Francisco fishbowl. That's what I want.

Chad, I think, you know, I only have had three inbounds and one I was temp staff. Going back to like my wife working and actually like helping run the event planning. Not with like working for HubSpot, but she's one of the contractors they hire. I was one of the staff one year. So I mean, three years isn't enough for me to be sick of it yet.

Oh my God, I love that so much.

My feelings about it is this. And I was talking to Chad about this earlier. I'm excited. But I also finally, for the first time, get to see where I was born because I'm technically a Californian.

Californian.

California. Go down there?

Yeah, Yeah. I just gotta hit the 204 and just like smack up to the three.

Yeah.

I, out of a whole family of native Washingtonians, I'm the only one born in.

When you say Washingtonian, I'm from Washington State. And that's what we called ourselves.

I mean, it's Washington state, Washington D.C. it's this. It's not the same thing, but it's the same term.

My dad's family's from dc.

Yeah. And so people from there, like, you're not from D.C. unless you're actually born there. Even though I grew up there, we moved back. Like, I don't remember California. We were back before, I think I was 1 years old.

They're very exclusive. It sounds.

They are very particular. So I'm excited. I haven't been out to the West Coast, I think since. Since I was Born. So, yeah, I'm sure a lot has changed in 41 years. It'll be super fun.

Yeah. I've only ever been out there for paintball and that was never just like, oh, you get to go out and like see stuff. It was all. It was like basically working. And I never got to actually experience California. So I just say I've never really been because I haven't been been. You know what I mean?

So you haven't been.

I'm stoked I haven't been inside of California. Man, that cut that out too.

First time I met Max in person.

Oh my God.

Totally alpha. Totally non toxic.

No, non.

Yeah, fine. And not at all violating.

No, no, it was, but it wasn't maxi.

You got to give it one of these.

Yeah, I'm giving you a little kiss on that forehead. Anyway, go ahead and listen. How you doing?

Well, like I said, I had a goal of having an Inbound recap episode like no other.

You're welcome.

Yeah, we're recapping.

We thought last year's was unhinged. I put somewhat unhinged in the title and I feel like Chad saw that and went, no, nah.

Yeah, off the rails. We're going off the rails today.

But Chad, since our inbound dad has left us for greener pastures.

Sure.

I would actually love for you to tell our listeners what you think they should be taking away as the big headline of Inbound 24. What. What are the things you want them walking away from with. From this episode?

Yeah, I mean, I think this kind of takes me back to where we were talking about the customer platform or like their positioning and messaging of themselves of HubSpot. Right. So getting in all seriousness back to it, I really do feel like things are more possible than they ever have been before and they will only continue to get more possible. I mean, just the simple act of like they're trying to unravel the webs of like not a real object. Like, you know, quotes are not a real object and you know, activities are like all one object with subtypes. And it's weird, like they're moving away from that. That in both their database architecture as well as the user interface. Like, I mean they're, you know, they have a lot of things in mind to make what was once impossible completely possible. To truly make this like as configurable of a customer platform as you want. And if I'm putting my long term vision brain on, the reason that they would be doing that is so that like, if you're a Solution Partner. You could theoretically like take something on top of HubSpot and put it in a HubSpot that you sell to somebody, much like we try to do with rbp, but actually have like the ability to release versions and updates to your product on HubSpot. So to be able to actually like build an industry specific tool as a HubSpot expert and sell that industry specific tool. Right, that's where I think that they want to go with the customer platform. And the headline is it's now more possible than it ever has been before and it's only getting more possible.

Yeah, I mean, well, I mean, Yamini even kind of pointed it to it on Partner Day when she was like laying out those three horizons of where we're at right now for the app marketplace. And that last one that she kind of glazed over just ever so slightly was like, oh yeah, products built on HubSpot. And it's like, this is what I've wanted. It's happening. Right.

Somebody could install something and it puts a layer on top of HubSpot and if you have support for it, great. But I mean, they even may want to do things like give solutions partners insights into the people that they're building stuff for. So like, are they using it so like for customer health Score. Right. I mean like that kind of stuff would be amazing to have as a. Like, are my people who I sold my thing to logging in, are they getting the metrics I want them to like number of signed deals or whatever kind of metrics that tell me if they're using the thing I built them or not. Right. All that and rolling up to my HubSpot portal. Right. As a, as a partner. So anyway, tons of really cool stuff.

Yeah. The thing that's like really kind of blowing my mind is, you know, I look at. So the thing is not. It's like, I think about like a year ago when I was. And maybe a little bit more than a year ago when I was still a solutions engineer. Right. And you know, there was, there was certain things that just like, you know, really kill the deal. Right. I'd get the question, like, tell us about the AI that you have. Right. And it was always just like, oh, couple little things scattered throughout, like the toll. Yeah. It's not really like one thing now you can say it's called breeze and it's everywhere and it does a ton of. Right. Like, you know, we had people would come up and say like, oh, can we, can we store like HIPAA compliant data in there? And I was Always like bail, bailout. Nope, not even worth talking.

Not even go away hospital.

Now you can, now you can. Yeah, now you can, right?

That's insane.

It's amazing.

Like, like and then you start to think about all this new UI extension stuff, right? And you ask yourself, you could build an E, you could build an EHR out of HubSpot if you wanted to today you could, right? Electronic health record system for anyone. But no, no, exactly. But like you could. What's stopping you? Yeah, right, like the, like you could build anything. You could hold what the last piece of the puzzle was like the ultra sensitive, highly sensitive data right past the HIPAA compliance. You put Social Security numbers in HubSpot, you could put financial information in HubSpot. Now, right? Like what, what can you not do with it? And then people don't, I don't think people like fully grasp this yet. App objects and UI extensions for, for app partners, like being able to build whatever they want into the interface, being able to build whatever they want into the data structure and in any tier, keep, keep that accessible to anyone in any tier, not be locked into a small tam of enterprise customers, right? That little thing that only the app partners were listening to that overnight completely changes things for HubSpot. Because in a world where it's like, oh man, like brand new net feet net new features, we're kind of like just hoping and praying that the product team is going to put out third party app developers are quite literally going to be able to build in their own net new features into this thing using UI extensions. Truly. Not like, oh, he stuffed some data in a contact property and like, oh, this one's a dropdown. Like it's not like that. It's like they're going to build full brand new sets of functionality into HubSpot and be able to do whatever they want with the UI on those records and everything. And like that that's going to be crazy. What's really going to be, I think, you know, so I, I, I said this thing at the late night with George and friends, like whatever, where I was just like, man, I tell you, I don't even know. Like I can't like usually like inbound to inbound. I can kind of be like, okay, so I think they'll probably do this next year given what they did this year. I'm still kind of in this phase where I'm just like, I honestly have no idea now like after what we saw and like the, the rate at which like AI, you know, gets better and where Breeze is at as a product and all the new stuff they have. Like, just imagine that in a year, what it's going to be doing. Right. I can't even think about it. Right. What's going to be. But I've been trying to think. I'm like, okay, UI extensions are here. App objects are going to be a thing. What's the next thing? What's the next thing for app partners? And I was kind of just like, I mean, it feels like it's the. It's the edge. It feels like we kind of have everything we got. But then I was like, wait a minute. The next sort of horizon for the app develop. Yeah, true. But also nerds doing stuff outside. Hold on. Doing stuff outside of records. Yeah, right. You know what I mean? So, like, where else can we inject functionality? Is it into certain marketing tools? Is it this? Is it. That. That's going to be really interesting to see how they approach that stuff. But sorry, Liz, we don't know how to end the recording. So I'm blabbering on.

You told us to stay above 55.

Max. Is that your one thing you want people to remember from Inbound 24?

It's the one thing I remember from Inbound 24.

So a multi hyphenate run on sentence.

Yes. Yes. I. Yeah, I was.

I think that was.

The kids say I was. I was. I was cooking is what that is. I was cooking.

Left no crumbs.

No, let me cook.

We ate that. We out.

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