INBOUND 2022, Pop Quiz, Preparing, Surviving, and Memory Lane

Do you live in a world filled with corporate data? Are you plagued by siloed apartments? 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 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 both Devin and Max are currently employed by HubSpot at the time of this episode's recording. This podcast is in no way affiliated with or produced by HubSpot, and the thoughts and opinions expressed by Devin and Max during the show are that of their own and in no way represent those of their employer.

You know, I wonder if there's ever going to be a day where we have to, like, edit that intro to either, like, Max, Devin and George now work for HubSpot or. Well, anyway, never mind. Not why we're here, ladies and gentlemen. Yeah, right. What a way to start the episode. No, I know nothing. I. I know zero. No, that's just. That's not true. I definitely don't know anything about working for HubSpot. I don't know how that would go. I'm kind of a weird dude. But speaking of HubSpot, let's dive into today's conversation, which we're actually taking a spin a little bit out of what we usually do. Usually we talk about tactics, strategies, marketing, sales, business mentalities around things like buyer Personas and all these good things. By the way, about 32 episodes already planned out for the future. So listeners just know that this podcast is here for you and your growth in the future. But today, we're going to spin. We're going to talk about something that's coming up that we're all excited about. We're going to talk about inbound 2022. A couple things. First, Max and Devin, you had zero clue that this was coming. Well, I mean, you saw the show notes, hopefully. So you had some clue, but almost zero clue and no clue to the questions that I'm about to ask. So it's pop quiz, and it's actually pop quiz for the listeners as well. Now, I know both of you have computers in front of you. You're really not allowed to cheat, but no Googling. If you do that's okay.

I was going to say define Google. Define cheating.

Yeah, I mean, it is an open book test. It is an open book test. So question number one. When was the first year that George B. Thomas went to inbound?

I want to say 2010.

No, 2012. Ding, ding, ding, ding, ding. There you go. Yes, Max, you got it. 2012 was the first year that I went to inbound. And a fun little ditty is that I won tickets. We didn't even pay the first time that we went. It was me and agency owner that owned that agency at the time. And that's when I learned about HubSpot. Okay, next question. When was the first year that black at inbound appeared at inbound?

Well, that's kind of cheating if I just answer.

Look at Max's face. I wish people could see Max's face right now.

Yes, Max, when did it start?

Please tell me. Hold on, hold on. What year is it now? It's 20. 2019.

See, I want to say 18. That older now I want to say 18.

It's older than that.

Wait, do you have the answer, George? Is it 2017?

One more.

20. 2016.

I used my calculator. 2016.

Ding, ding, ding, ding.

Are all winners.

It's 2016, black and inbound. 2016. Which, by the way, if you're not part of that, make sure you're part of that because Devin is crushing it with that community for sure.

Well, I'm just showing up at this point. There is a whole team of highly talented and motivated hubspotters who run it now, even though it started as a community thing, started as a hashtag, but now it is several people's full time job.

I love it. I love it. All right, pop quiz. Question number three. How much is Barack Obama's speaking fee?

Ooh, isn't it like something like 200,000?

Now I know that's Michelle's.

Well, that's Michelle's.

And you know, is that standard? Are there like tiered packages?

I mean, how much Obama do you get?

Is there a pricing page? Is it the same for everything? You know what I'm going to say. Hey, worth it. Worth every penny is what I'll say.

Oh, I'm not going to disagree. But here's the thing. So take a wild, just wild, wild guess of first of all, here, I'll level set here. Mr. Bill Clinton. His speaking fee is $750,000.

Oh, well, if, if Barack Obama doesn't go for the cool million, then.

Interesting.

What are we talking about here?

What are we Doing all right, give me your guesses. Give me your guesses.

My speaking fee is a Dunkin Donuts. To be honest.

Yeah.

Two donuts and a large coffee ad.

I don't know. A mil.

Yeah, no, no, it's less. It's less. Actually. The highest price. The higher, the highest price. Former president. At least the. The information that I'm looking at on Google is actually Bill Clinton. So it's less than 750,000.

Really. But.

But we know it's more than Michelle. We know that it's more than Michelle, which I know that from years previous was like 2, 250,500. Oh, that's close.

501 bob.

That's funny. $400,000 now can you. That's a bargain at twice the prices. Can. Can you imagine getting paid $400,000 for 45 minutes of talking in Dunkin Donuts gift cards?

Yes. Kidding me. I love it.

Oh, I love it. All right, let's go ahead and get into the episode. So here's the thing. There is a quote on the Inbound page and it goes, a must attend event for agency owners and marketing professionals. This quote is from Forbes. I would agree that Inbound is an event that if you have not attended it, you should attend. And now there two things if you're listening this one, there is an in person event. By the time you listen to this, it may almost be slightly impossible. But nothing's impossible for you to be at the in person event. But there is a hybrid or virtual side of this that you could definitely do this year and then next year. Put it on your roadmap to go to this event. I want to go ahead and dive into your guys brain around Inbound. If we're talking about that, it's a must attend event. Why you got to back up the claims. You got to give evidence to the proof. By the way, this is, this is marketing and sales too. You gotta, you gotta have evidence when you say something. So Devin, why is Inbound a must attend event for you?

For me, it's the caliber of information that you get and the caliber of training that you get from these breakout sessions you aren't gonna find in one place anywhere else. Inbound has drastically improved and like no hyperbole, drastically improved my skill set as a marketer. I have gotten so much better at marketing and management as well as just being able to exist in a corporate environment. I owe a significant portion of that to, to the breakout sessions at Inbound. There is an equation that I teach about how to basically Identify the monetary value of your marketing pipeline. I learned it at Inbound. Like, I regurgitate so much and people think I'm so smart and I could just like wear a T shirt that says I learned it in inbound. Oh, oh, oh.

That's another T shirt idea for Hub Heroes. Max, when you think about this question of why is inbound a must attend event, where does your brain go?

Well, for me, selfishly, you know, because I've. Every inbound, like, event I've ever gone to has been as employee, right. So for me, it was, you know, all about hugging all the friends that I was making. So, you know, for me, like, I very much used it sort of as a, a really good excuse just to be able to meet folks in person that I'd been working with so closely for a long time. And you know, that was always super fun for me. But in terms of like everyone else who's actually attending, right, you look at the HubSpot community itself. We're a community that like educates itself. People are always sharing content. People are always like helping each other out in the different communities that have existed, be it online or these other sort of events that kind of pop out throughout the year. There's no better place to go to get just a concentrated, just power shot of the HubSpot community than inbound. Whether you want to go there for networking, whether you want to go there to actually learn something, especially from fellow folks in your community, there's no, you know, better way of doing that, in my opinion. Also just, you know, go hug your customer onboarding specialists, go shake hands with your csm, go meet these people that actually really care a whole lot about, you know, your success, things like that. But, you know, it's just a great way to kind of learn from each other. And I think also just see all these like, different perspectives. You're going to see a lot of people with a lot of different, you know, lenses in which they view this whole kind of world that we live in. I think you're going to see a lot of sessions that kind of go out of some of the basic stuff you hear about over and over and over again in the inbound world. Right. It's not all just about the inbound methodology or anything like that. There's, there's many, many other topics you can learn kind of outside of our little inbound bubble too. And it's just, you know, they always got like, great entertainment lined up, awesome speakers. Obviously this year is going to be great. So yeah, there's A million reasons. Try to figure out what you want to get out of it. Because I think for every single person attending, whether you're a HubSpot user, a HubSpot employee, someone who's new to this whole community, someone who works at an agency, partner or business owner or whatever, you can get different things out of it if you just plan accordingly.

Ooh, planning. Planning is a key thing. By the way, we might have to come back to planning for Inbound as part of this show later on. I'm going to upvote both of what you said, right. Education is key. The humans are key. For me. What's interesting, I learned a long time ago with Inbound Bound that it is the perfect place to become the T shaped whatever you want to be. Let me explain what I mean by that. You can go to the conversion rate optimization event and you can learn about conversion rate optimization. You can go to the like sales event and learn just about sales. But when you go to inbound, you have this ability to figure out what do I want to be really, really, really, really good at? The pillar of what makes me who I am as a marketer, as a sales rep, as a business owner, and what are four topics that I want to be the overlying tea of this T shaped human being that I'm building myself to be. As an example, when I think about this, HubSpot is my pillar of all pillars. I don't, I don't want there to be anybody on the planet that knows more. There are though, by the way, but I don't want there to be anybody on the planet that knows more about HubSpot than me. Now the top part of my tea is actually content creation, podcasting, video. That's the other stuff that I like to learn. But there's also like the side of inbound that is the human side and the business side and the strategy that goes along with the tactics that you learn from the dope speakers. And so going back to kind of this planning of how can you plan to not only dive deeper into what it is that you're good at, but learn those ancillary pieces to the left and right of you that really, when you plug those in 10x any performance that you're going to do in the future? So we have to ask you audience listeners, this is about you. But we're curious what you think. Why for you has Inbound been historically and must attend event? And if you haven't gone, why are you excited to go this year either in person or virtually use the Hashtag, hashtag Hub Heroes podcast and let us know on the socials. Here's the thing. Devin Max Inbound, it's a little bit of a thing. We're talking four days. We're talking like 12 to 16 hour days, days depending if you go to the pubs and parties. So we might need a little bit of a survival guide. So when you think about things that we need to know to survive the four days. By the way, even virtually. I sat at my desk virtually last year for like 12 hours doing an after hours show, learning all that I could. So even I'm not, I'm not even just talking in person, but in person and virtually. What are those things that we need to think about or know to survive inbound?

If you're going in person, the first thing is always wear comfortable shoes. If you show up in heels, you're going to have a bad time. I mean, there's no true inbound dress code I don't believe. But dress casual, dress comfortable, be ready. If you're doing the digital event, then the cool thing is is a lot of what you're going to be seeing is going to be accessible later. And so don't try and kill yourself trying to get to everything. Pace yourself. So you can not burn out at home because the, the energy level is different online than it is in person. In person, the energy is contagious. People are running around. You want to run around too. In person, you pass out every night in the hotel room. Unless you live in Boston, then lucky you overpaying on your house. But if you're doing the digital thing, just, you know, pace yourself. And regardless of whether you're digital or in person, if you're attending with friends, split up. If you're tending co workers, split up. Everybody divide and conquer. Get as much information as you can, take good notes and compare notes afterwards.

Yes, that divide and conquer is a real deal. Holyfield Pro tip without a doubt. If you see two or three people from the same company in the same room, get out of there.

Doing it wrong.

Run. Max, what are your thoughts?

So for anyone who's not a Massachusetts native that's coming, first thing you need to know is the Massachusetts Bay Transit Authority, which I think is what the acronym for the MBTA is. The people who run our trains and our subways. It's less than reliable, so it's terrible. The MBTA is absolutely awful. So just keep that in mind. If you are going to rely on public transportation to get anywhere, if you're going to the physical event Just, or anywhere in general, make sure you give quite a bit of buffer time. Just because things tend to be late, stop working, it's not, not great. So just make sure you're giving yourself a little extra time because the MBTA is always going to MBTA in terms of if you're going. And this, I guess you could say this is also like if you're, whether you're going or whether you're going digital. One of the biggest, biggest screw ups I always make, and I've really made it over the past two years too with the digital events, is not blocking out my calendar ahead of time. If you're attending digitally, we're all probably still doing our jobs at that time. I doubt that you're taking days off of work to attend a digital event. So if there are certain sessions, go and take a look at the agenda ahead of time. Go block your calendar out, go find the links that you need, get access to it, put it in your calendar description. Just make it super easy for you to jump into those events when you actually want to do it. Otherwise you're going to get a call booked, something else is going to come up, you're going to forget what time it is you're going to. And I'm, I'm really bad at making sure I'm making the space and time to be able to like attend those digital events that I want to. So just make sure you do that. Like use your calendar wisely. I'm sure they have some sort of thing on the, on the website where you can add a calendar event like to your calendar or something like that. Play it ahead because it's very easy to miss a digital session. Also keep in mind you may have some that are happening at the same time that you want to see. So go ahead and like make a list of stuff you know that you're going to like watch in a recording later or something like that if you do miss anything, because you should be able to access that stuff.

So I would challenge people with something you just said, Max. I would challenge them to take the days off. I would challenge them to treat it like it is an event that they're going to even though it's a virtual event. And the reason I bring this up is because the last two years I literally have taken those days air quotes off, meaning I was still getting paid by the company that I worked for, but I wasn't doing anything else. I wasn't taking meetings, my calendar was completely blocked off and I was actually attending those sessions that I could attend. Which leads me to my number one pro tip here, for survival, that I made sure I did all of the years and going. Or virtual snacks, Baby snacks. You gotta have snacks. You gotta have granola bars. You gotta have bottled waters. You gotta have like an orange that you can grab. Because at some point in time when you're either walking for like hours on end to get to your next session, or you've sat in that seat for five hours listening to four different speakers, you're going to need some energy. And so you got to have some snacks handy. Now, I do want to dive into that whole calendar thing, though, because I'm kind of joking about snacks, but snacks are not jokeable. I am actually being honest about snacks. At the same time, you have to plan ahead. And so as soon as registration is letting you pick the things that you want, that's too late. You should have already kind of picked the things you want, like right now. Then when the gate opens, you go and plug those in immediately. But here's the other thing I'm going to say about planning. Plan space to do nothing. I know that sounds counterintuitive when you're at an event, but plan to do nothing. Because the magical moments of inbound, if you're going in person, are in the hallways. If you're attending virtually is in the chat panes. I want you to think about the hallways or the chat panes is where you can make new friends. Friends. You can have strategy happening on a different level. You. All sorts of fun conversations. And so plan what you want to do, but plan time for what you might not even know is coming and the universe is bringing to you during this time of inbound. Plus, it's refreshing, right? We're talking about surviving, taking a little time to take a breather. Nothing wrong with that. Schedule bathroom breaks. No, I'm just kidding. You shouldn't schedule your bathroom breaks.

My first year at inbound, I. I burned out. I didn't realize just how mentally taxing the event could be. And it's big. If you haven't gone, it's big. It's going to be smaller this year, and it's still big. It's. It's a lot.

All right, so let's switch from surviving and let's talk about what we're excited about. So when you think about breakout sessions, because, by the way, there's a completely different mindset around featured speakers, Barack, other folks that are going to be there, there's a difference. So we're going to start with breakout Speakers, you know, us little guys like Devin and George who like get a room and get to talk to people for a while. Who are you most excited? Let's do two. Two of your favorite breakout sessions this year and why? Max, what are your thoughts?

So I'm a big fan of Mary Grothe from House of Revenue, if anyone's familiar with her. And she's doing a session called Plateaued Sleuth your way to a refreshed go to market that scales. Basically, I think this session is around like you have a startup, you grew it a little bit, it's kind of plateaued. How do you actually take that and then scale it and kind of break out of the stagnant zone that you might be in? I think that is super interesting. Especially I even like, remember back to when I was an implementation specialist, I'd be working with companies that had already kind of, you know, gotten to a certain point and they've been successful, but they don't really understand how to kind of take it to that next level. And me not being a business strategic genius at all, I was kind of just, oh, let's use HubSpot and see how that goes. You know what I mean? I didn't really understand like kind of the strategies and how to think about it. So that's super interesting. And then also, I mean, Kyle Jepsen is doing things every HubSpot admin needs to know. This was definitely the year of the HubSpot admin kind of emerging, which, you know, I had a lot of mixed feelings about, I guess with that whole thing happening because, you know, my cheeky little line that I always used to use is you don't need to hire someone full time to be an admin for HubSpot. But as HubSpot starts to move up market and starts to solve for much more complex teams and business use cases, you know, we are starting to see that people are making careers out of being, you know, HubSpot admins. And that is a thing now. So it'll be, it'll be interesting to hear kind of Kyle's perspective on that kind of stuff.

Absolutely, absolutely. So, Devin, two breakout sessions that you're excited about and why?

First one for me, Diana Zolacot, she is doing a session on Revops tips. She told me in a meeting that she's going to be referencing some of my quotes and I'm like, oh, cool, I'm going to be there.

Let's go.

That made me feel warm and special inside. Yeah, there's that and course Kyle session. Because, like me personally, I have hung my hat on being a HubSpot admin for the past, like, six years. It's. My entire career has revolved around HubSpot. Of course, the one that I'm doing, I'm doing a little mini talk on partner accreditations in the partner space, and that's what I'm excited about.

Yeah, there's a lot to be excited about. I would list mine as well. I'm excited to go do one, but that's not actually my favorite. But I'll tell you, there's a couple in here. And by the way, I'm. I'm kind of a cheater because it was really hard for me to just drill down to two of these bad boys. There's quite a few, and they all have specific reasons. So. First one, Lindsay. I don't even know how to say your last name. I apologize. It's like T, J, E, P, K, E, M, A. I have no clue. I don't know. I'm not even gonna try. But the title of this bad boy pulled me through the vortex of, oh, hell yeah, I gots to go to this one. And it's the Netflix Ization of marketing Turning creativity into marketing fuel. And if anybody knows me over the past 10 years, it's create Content, get creative. And so if you think about the description here, Netflix, Disney plus, and even TikTok, they've raised the bar on audience expectations. I could stop right there and just ask people, hey, have you raised your expectations of yourself to the content that you're creating and the way that you're allowing people to, you know, ingest that content? So I'm excited about that one. The other one, again, it's actually three people. Nadja, Michael, and Karen. And the title of this one is Branded Podcasts. Anybody want to have a big guess why I want to go to that one? I mean, we are doing a podcast right now. Just saying. So branded podcast, getting real about the challenges and how to make it work. Now, don't get me wrong, people. I think that our podcast is working, but we can always make it better. So I'm looking for ideas of what we can do, how we can add more value, how we can implement the community into it, more different things like that. So those are. Those are my two big ones. However, I'm going to cheat. I'm going to do three because. Okay, I'll give you a third one. My third one that I'm excited about. Again, three people. Satya, Vernda, and Johnny. Hopefully I said those names. Right? Again, I apologize. If you're a listener, when I see you in person, you can just smack the crap out of the back of my head if I jack that up. But the title, because guys and gals, ladies and gentlemen, Hub Hero listeners, it's so important, so important. And this is simply around building an environment of belonging. Listen, fundamentally, as humans, we all want to belong to something. We want to be part of a tribe, a community. And so some of the insights that I can learn from this. And again, there's a lot of letters and a lot of ands and a lot of pluses and a lot of things in this. But the things that I can learn from this and take it and use it in my own life and my own thinking, in my own open mindedness. Anyway, I'll get off my pulpit or my soapbox and I'll give you guys what is the third one? If you've picked a third one that you're super excited about.

Another big one that I'm excited about is Christina K. From Reseller Ratings.

Oh yeah?

Yeah. So she's doing a session called Customer Centered Approach Real Life Use Case on Growth with HubSpot's Flywheel Big thing here. She's actually going to be showing how like her company Reseller Ratings switched From Salesforce After 13 years of using it into HubSpot. Which, you know, it's not me being, oh, the, you know, the guy saying, oh, look, you switch over from Salesforce, but showing how like a massive undertaking like that is possible for anyone that is either scared of such an endeavor or wants to know how like something like that worked. So I'm super stoked for that session. And also we gotta have Christina on the podcast at some point.

Yeah, we do, at some point. By the way. By the way, I interviewed her about that transition back when I worked at Impulse Creative. So it's in some community somewhere. Because by the way, if anybody hasn't figured it out, all of the George B. Thomas videos on Sprocket Talk have been taken down and they're somewhere. I don't know where they're at. But I interviewed Christina K. About this transition and she is one smart cookie. And some of the things that she laid out in that interview worth its weight in gold, let me just tell you. Devin, is there a third one that you were able to think about that you're excited about?

Absolutely. One of my favorite speakers at Inbound, she comes every year, is Ty Heath and she is pretty big deal over in LinkedIn. She is going to be speaking. I'm looking at now category entry points in a B2B world buying situations to brand sales. I think that her perspective is always unique. As you guys know, even though I'm a marketer by trade, I have had to put on the sales hat on more than one occasion in my life and I'm always thinking about sales whenever I'm doing what I do. So. So I'm pretty sure Ty is going to crush it as per her usual. And if I may put down a no, I'm just kidding.

Oh, oh, yo, drop a fourth. Who cares? There's no rule.

Their only rule is there are no rules.

Well, in that case, Dave Bertrand, anything he talks about with SEO, he approaches it with this mindset that most people don't think about. And his SEO talks are always fire. I know he's matter of fact he's hosting SEO meetup so that's going to be awesome too.

Audience, let us know. Hub Heroes podcast hashtag on what are you excited about as far as breakouts? Now let's go into the featured speaker. I don't know how this is going to turn out because it could be that we all three are like excited about the same one or two, who knows? But I'm willing to go down that road. And actually again, I'm a cheater because I said one your favorite. I couldn't pick just one. But I will tell you this, my the one for sure that I'm excited about because I'm the old fart in the room and I was actually around to hear listen to the first episode of what this gentleman did. And actually to see somebody that was going to do like a seven day a week podcast at that point was unheard of. No, you can't do that type scenario. And so I'm really excited that John Lee Dumas is one of the featured speakers when you go to like the main page. And just the fact that the entrepreneur on fire story is being told, who knows what lessons will be learned. Like again, somebody who took podcasting, did something absolutely amazing with it and has turned it into an entire brand. It's just, I'm super excited about that one. Now the other one, the nerd in me. All right, Jimmy Yang. Yeah, I mean, I mean, come on. Actor, comedian. That's all I'm gonna say.

I don't.

I feel like I don't need to say anything else than Jimmy Yang. Those two for me though are definitely like, yep. Okay. Taking time out, making sure I'm there, please. By all that Is Holy baby Jesus. Don't let them speak while I'm speaking. Let's go. Knowing that I broke the rules. If you gentlemen want to break the rules too and do more than one, you're allowed to. But Max, when you think about the featured speakers, where does your brain go?

So, I mean, well, let's. The obvious one. It's. It's. It's an honor to have Barack Obama coming to inbound this, this year. I mean, that's just flat out amazing. I don't think I need to speak too much to that. That's going to be incredible. Seeing Dr. Jane Goodall is going to be awesome too as well. She's doing a there her sessions called Rebuilding our Collective Future. I think that's going to be super interesting. And of course, like, I'm a huge Silicon Valley fan, right? So. So Jimmy Yang, I can't wait for. For his bit that he's going to do it inbound at night. Most I've probably ever laughed in my entire life has been the sets for folks that, you know, whenever we have comedians coming for the, the inbound entertainment sessions. It's. It's gonna be great.

Yeah, they have been really good. And it's easy to laugh when you've got like thousands of people around you laughing as with you.

Yeah, it's just.

It makes it easier. Devin, what are your thoughts?

Definitely gotta hop on the Jimmy oh Yang train. The man is legit awesome. Yeah, absolutely hilarious. He definitely speaks to the awkward nerd child in me. Is just like he. He would have been high school Devin's favorite comedian, no question. Like, I probably would have followed him around the country. Dude's awesome. Viola Davis.

Yeah.

I am really excited to hear what she has to say. Her topic is on capital creators, creativity and community care. That one community is a big thing for me personally. Both she and President Obama are going to be talking about community as portions of their talks. And so I'm really excited to hear about that. Just come up with, hopefully come away with ideas on improving community and community relationships because as the old saying goes, it takes a village.

Oh, man. Does it. All right, so we already talked about how there's magic in the hallway moments and so. Or the chat rooms. So when you think about meetups that are happening that you're excited about, are there any meetups that just fundamentally you're like, yeah, this is something I definitely want to take time to go to be part of.

So I'm gonna be spending all my time at Black and Inbound. Tell you that right now that's just where I'm going to be. This year is the first year that we have our own dedicated space.

Oh, snap.

Yeah. In the past, in the beginning, we were crashing seaport parties and just drinking up free drinks, eating free food. And just like you got the badge, you get in, it's like, all right, let's go. Then it turned into like our own meetups, but still crashing sea parties. But the last in person inbound, there were hubspotters who worked to get us time in a space where we could have our own space and we have food and it was a cool networking opportunity. There's pictures of it floating around. Well, there are some like 100 some odd of us and we're like it then it was. It was great. It was absolutely great. This year is going to be different. This year we're going to have food, we're going to have drinks, we're going to have games, we're going to have. I believe someone's going to be there live painting, Shout out to painkiller Cam, aka Cam is Zaddy, aka Cam Parker, who was on. Who was in 2019, the one who was painting murals on the club inbound floor. He's going to be hanging out with us, but it's going to be absolute fire. But that's where I'm going to be. And again, Dave Bertrand's link up, our meetup, the SEO meetup, looks like it's going to be dope.

So there is one interesting one that I'm seeing here for meetups for employee resource group leaders too as well. I think that's something that we've seen a lot of success with here at HubSpot in terms of the different ergs that we have. And I know it's something that a lot of companies have either had great success with, struggled with, or had issues with or are still exploring doing so. It'd be really interesting to go there and see what the experience of other people or other companies have had actually getting this kind of stuff off the ground. So there's that and then there's also a Solutions, partners, growing pains and lessons learned to meet up too. For anyone out there who's currently growing a partner agency or anything like that, sounds like a really great opportunity to go kind of meet up with some other folks that are in the same shoes. Maybe kind of walk the path that you're about to go on. Definitely check those out.

Yeah. So I'm actually excited because there's an unofficial meetup and I feel like it's almost like, you know, Devin knows the, the journey of, like, something that's not something, and then people try to actually make it something. And so somebody reached out to me and they're like, what do you think of this idea? And I think. I said, I think it's a great idea. And we reach out to another person that we know. Hey, what do you think of this idea? They said, we think it's a great idea. And so we have officially put together and I put out on my socials and. And they've shared as well. And anybody listening to this podcast, if you happen to be a person of faith. Notice I didn't say a particular faith. If you happen to be a person of. Notice I didn't say men of faith. I didn't say women. I said if you happen to be a person of faith, like, that's it. We have an unofficial meetup happening 8 o' clock in the morning, by the way, because we got to hit it strong in the morning. But you can hit me up with any details that you want to know about that. But if you are a person of faith and want to meet other people that happen to do marketing, sales service, rev ops, use HubSpot of Faith as well, then this is going to be a meetup that we're going to have. So I'm super excited. Which, by the way, I didn't know until our speaker meeting two days ago that there's actually a prayer room at inbound this year as well. So, hey, who knew except me now and you because you're listening. And so now everybody knows, at least in this circle. All right, so let's keep on moving. Favorite Inbound memories. What is your favorite inbound memory? I'll go first. It was the year that Gary Vaynerchuk spoke to me and only me in the top tier of the building that we don't even know. He didn't really talk to me, but it. But it is a precipice moment where it wasn't even at the bcec. It was at whatever place that we had it before then. I can't even remember the name of the place. I was in the rafters. Gary Vaynerchuk was speaking and he. He pointed up in the vicinity of where I was sitting. It was at that moment with what he said. I knew that I wanted to end up on that stage. I wanted to do HubSpot. I knew I wanted to educate people and I wanted to change my life. And what's fun is it took me from 2012 to 2015. So three years. Three years later, I got to step on stage at Inbound and do my first talk. And so knowing that 2012 was the precipice moment that Gary Vaynerchuk was the person that made the statement, and then three years later, was able to then speak at the event, that's one of my favorite. Like, wow, that's kind of a cool circle of life scenario.

I also had a Gary Vader Chuck moment was this. That's not gonna be my main one, but I remember everywhere it was. You know, it was. It was at a time when I was like, really. I was really into Gary Vaynerchuk because I just thought the way that he talked about content just made a whole lot of sense to me. That was right when I was coming into the realization that, like, it's actually all about content, you know, going through that whole arc. And he. He walked by me in the crowd at the bcec, and I was like, oh, my God, A famous person just walked by me. And it was funny. Weird moment for me. I think one of the best memories I have is I ran into one of my very first customers that I had onboarded. And when we had started, this person, she was completely new to the idea of Inbound, completely new to the idea of HubSpot, but she had run enough where she knew that deploying this strategy and kind of changing their ways was gonna be what was best for the company. And she was really excited to learn it all and. And really kind of just engross herself in all things Inbound. And she did. We had a wonderful experience doing the onboarding and everything. We were working together for the 90 days, and then kind of she went off to continue working with HubSpot. And then I got to meet her at Inbound. And I want to say this was about a year from when we had first kind of connected. And she came up. She recognized me, she ran up to me, she gave me a huge hug, and she told me about all the success that she had that the company had, and that she was going to give her first talk at an insurance conference about using inbound marketing for your. No, it wasn't like an insurance. It was. It was some kind of conference in, like, a. A little bit more of like a bo. Like a dry, boring kind of industry. Like, it was compliance or safety or something like that. But she was gonna go give her very first talk on and how to do inbound marketing, and she was so stoked. And after that, I just started seeing her. She's doing all these talks in all these different, like places, all these different conferences and it was just so awesome to be like, hey, I was there when you started your journey and now you're here and now you're growing with it. And it was just, it was really cool for me because it was the first time in my life that I felt that I had somewhat of an iota of an impact on somebody because, you know, she came up to me and was talking about how it all started with us and everything. So it was just, just, it was a really cool moment. Beth, if you're listening, love you and hope you're doing awesome and hopefully I'll see you at in Monsoon.

I love that dude. There's something special about the realization that you were the catalyst moment for somebody. There's just something special about that. Devin, it seems like you might have had a catalyst moment in your life at Inbound as well. Why don't you tell us about that?

Yeah, there have been a few. The most impactful one was probably 2016 when I was sitting in a semi. I don't even remember the name of the person who put it on. I just remember the name of the breakout was Data Driven Marketing. I knew how to interpret analytics, but I didn't know how to present the information that I was interpreting. And that was when I learned about that equation. And it wasn't even like the main portion, it was just like a throwaway piece. Oh, by the way, here's something you should know. And then breaks down this like 12 slide equation on how to calculate lead values. And I knew that that was game changing information for me. That was, I knew, I knew it was life changing. Didn't know how life changing it would be until months later when I'm breaking out the slide deck and I, based on our conversion rates, can tell them the monetary value of every lead that we get. And every time somebody fills out a form, this is how much money they're worth to us. That was the beginning of the change in my career. There was one management level job where they said, okay, we need you to analyze this pipeline. Because that equation, not only did I know how to analyze the pipeline, but I was able to go back and tell them it's like, well, well did you mean 33 instead of 30 in this number here? Or else the numbers don't line up. Of course I got the job. So that was one game changing moment for me. But there was a lot of validation for me at Inbound where it's easy to succumb to imposter syndrome. But being able to sit in sessions and hearing people say things that you knew but didn't realize, you know, and it's like, yeah, there's somebody, like, on stage saying this thing. Then maybe I do know what I'm talking about. And then there were, of course, the Inbound rocks every year. And this year we're calling Inbound at night. Being able to see things in person that I never would have seen literally anywhere else. Like, Trevor Noah just live. Like. And I was front row. Trevor Noah was right there. He was blown away. Or Leslie Odom Jr. When he sang, like, that was. That was amazing. Like, he's. He's doing Dear Theodosia in my face, and it was like, it was just mind blowing. Or two dope queens. That one was my absolute favorite. Their whole set. Because what we did is we coordinated as a group. Black and Inbound. When the doors open, we were just gonna all. All rush the front row and get like the first two rows on stage, right? And we got it. We did it. And so when they turn or when they were like, oh, there's all the black people, I was like, yeah, we're right here. And like, that was dope. And then one guy told a Star Trek joke or Star wars joke that literally no one got because it was like, not only did you have to be a nerd, but you had to be familiar with black culture. And it was such a niche joke. And it just fell flat. Except for the first two rows who were dying. And then he turns over and sees us. Oh, there's all five people. Gang, gang, gang.

I'm like, we're out here.

And it was like, those kinds of memories were just unforgettable.

That's the thing I love about Inbound is whether it be just a human spark, an educational spark, you know, a friendship, whatever. There are so many things that can happen at Inbound. So let's move forward because, man, we've almost been doing this for 40 plus minutes at this point, and, you know, we usually love to add a ton of value. I think this conversation has been valuable, especially for people who are planning and strategizing for virtual or in person inbound this year. But let's talk about the lights. Get turned out, the party's over, you're back at home, or you're back to normal at home. If you were attending virtually, what are some action items that you guys think people should take post inbound to make sure they're actually getting the most out of the event? That they attended.

Watch the recordings. That's the biggest things. Like, inbound doesn't have to end when inbound ends, there's recordings that come with your passes that you can go and see the keynotes. You could see breakouts that you didn't get a chance to attend if they're recording. There is so much value in adding inbound breakout sessions.