#INBOUND25: HubHeroes Annual INBOUND Prep Episode (San Francisco Edition)

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, 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.

Gentlemen, I don't know how this is possible. We are, what, two, three weeks away from inbound?

I think two. I think. I think it's. Is it two weeks?

Great googly.

Like, two full week. Yeah. This week, next week, and then we're there.

Yeah, we're there. Yeah.

How you guys feeling?

I want to throw up.

Good. Good. Until about 10 seconds ago.

HubSpot, and now 25. Makes us want to throw up. HubSpot. Sponsor us. You'll love us.

Mm.

Yeah.

Get everybody to go.

I was just nervous.

I'm just nervous. Energy.

Nervous about Max. What are you nervous about?

I'm not nervous about anything.

Do you need an emotional support Popsicle?

Oh, well, hey, popsicles sound good.

An emotional support, Belita. Yeah, that's what I want.

Yeah.

So emotional support. Not only are we only two weeks away from inbound, as we're recording this, this is our third annual. Third annual.

Yeah.

Inbound prep episode.

Wow.

How you feeling about that, George?

Third.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, third. Which. Which means, like, it's crazy that we've been in business for three years, by the way. Just the George B. Thomas, LLC and then into Sidekick Strategies and the fact that Hub Heroes, the podcast, is three years old, which means we've done a good amount of episodes. We've added a lot of value to the world. We've. We've helped some people along the way, and, man, just to stop and take a moment to think about that list, to be honest with you, is like, dang, dang on in all the good ways that are possible.

That's amazing.

We have touched a lot of people.

Yeah. Yeah. In good ways, Max. In good ways.

Sure.

Once again, not me. Thank you.

It wasn't you. It was Max this time. Without a doubt.

I'm so proud of that. Well, let's just kick it off, guys. And you know what, Chad? This is your first episode. This is your first Inbound prep episode as an official co Host.

Yeah.

So I'm going to start with you, buddy. Let's bring some new blood into this conversation. So as we're counting down to inbound 25, what are you most excited about? And whether that's events you're looking forward to, general vibes and excitement, specific speakers, seeing people. What. What's getting you prepped and hyped?

Yeah, well, one thing I noticed that they added this year is some. And I think this comes from. I think the. The Kyle Jepsen energy when he gets on stage and frantically goes through his list of like 87 million things that he tries to get done in 45 minutes. And they added more sessions where it's like a. Either an ama, like, ask me anything, which I didn't really see last year. Maybe I just missed them. And then they also added like a. Like some level of. I forget what they call it, but it's like a do, like a Do, you know, do this session. Like, they're gonna do it live. They're doing it live. Right. And it's. You know, I've. So I've actually registered for a couple of those sessions where it's like, oh, sales hub, do it live. You know, type of a thing. Which looks really fun to go in there. Like, oh, yeah, let's. Because people just come up with the craziest stuff to ask you, like, if you're a HubSpot professional, like, oh, how do I do whatever. And it's like, you know, hyper industry specific or something. You know, a lot of times. And then you're like, oh, yeah, that's possible. But, you know, maybe whatever. It's, you know, it's never usually just stuff that's like right there about HubSpot. So I think that'll be really, really, really interesting to see some of the product managers in the hot seat.

Yeah.

Or some of the, you know, people like, trying to build out things on the fly from audience questions, which would be pretty cool.

I mean, listen, as a speaker, that scares the ish out of me for a couple reasons. And don't get me wrong, I would do it, but you got to just roll with it. It is. It is a. It is a maximum master class in. Yes. And.

Oh, yeah.

Especially when you're dealing with conference Internet.

Yeah.

Because you just don't know. You just don't know. Anyway. Yeah.

Yeah, you got to get a hardwire for that.

Oh, my gosh. Something. Yeah.

But yeah, if I was ever, like, if I ever spoke at Inbound, I. I would love to do a session like that. You mean operations hub ama? Yeah, yeah, for sure.

When you do the nerdy goodness of that.

Yeah.

Oh, yeah, yeah, that'd be so good.

By the way, if anybody from Inbound is listening, Chad is gonna submit next year, and you should accept him to do a let's do this in HubSpot session. Okay.

Oh, that'd be great. I don't know, maybe by that time it's just gonna be like, talk to Breeze and it's just.

Oh, don't. Don't go there.

Don't say that.

Inbound 26. No longer needed free.

Yeah.

Literally.

Yeah, no. Okay, let's. Let's not do that. We got. We gotta. We gotta keep the.

There we go.

We gotta. We gotta keep that.

I think this is. I think this year is probably the most excited I've ever been for the headliners.

Nice.

Amy Poehler. She's hilarious. Marcus Brownlee, he's super cool. I watch his YouTube stuff all the time.

Me too.

And then, you know, Brian Halligan doing Hot Ones is going to be objectively hilarious. So, yeah, I'm just super stoked on that. And then we've got a bunch of fun stuff we're going to be showing people for the first time ever, which is going to be great. And we're actually also going to be. We'll talk about a little bit later, maybe building a free tool that everyone's able to use at Inbound for Inbound. We'll talk about it in a little bit. But, yeah, a lot to be excited about. And I'm just, like, honestly stoked that it's just not in Boston. Oh, like, I love Boston. Don't get me wrong. It's great. But the BCEC is so played out. I'm so ready to go somewhere else. I mean, I said it right before in the. In the show last time. I was like, I'm ready for it to be somewhere else. And I got my wish. Right. Unfortunately, it's. Right. I'm leaving the day my kid starts first grade, so I'm gonna miss that. But, you know, the things I do for HubSpot.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Right? It's. I, too, can say that I'm finally excited because I've had this, like, mental battle of, like, man, I'm gonna miss Boston. But I'm excited, You know, the wife is going with me. It's gonna be a new adventure. We're gonna be able to see new things. So, like, I've had to pivot my brain to, like, well, let's just make the best out of it instead of like sitting here complaining around it. So I'll just, I'll just roll into this like I'm excited about actually a lot of things. So one of the things is we're gonna be doing the customer platform podcast that usually virtually we're going to be doing those live from inbound at 11am each day. I'll only miss one day because I'll be speaking on Wednesday the same time that that'll be going on. I'll also be speaking on Friday to kind of close out the, the end of like 12:30 to 3:00pm Basically in, in the sessions that I'm doing. We'll talk about that a little bit later as well. But also then we're doing the inbound after hours show, not to be confused with the after hour show that I'm excited about. Jost. Is it Jost or Jost?

Oh yeah, I think it's Joe Jo.

Yeah, Colin Jost is headlining the inbound 2025 after hours. So that's gonna be interesting because that they crack me up. Anyway, he's one of the funniest title titled memoirs.

I don't know if you ever have ever heard of it, but he's written a memoir and it's called Very Punchable Face and it just made me laugh forever.

Yeah, so.

So it's honestly such a good lineup this year.

It really is. It really is. And so two nights we're doing what has been historically the after hour show where I get some guests. I mean, this year I'm excited because I'm going to reach out to a couple of the women of HubSpot podcast interviews we've done, see if they want to do an evening where for like 30 minutes we're talking about their inbound experience. And then I'm going to grab for another night a couple random humans just like I did last year so we can talk about things that are new and stuff like that. So there's definitely a lot going on. I get to have a couple client dinners, a couple client breakfasts and so like just hanging out with humans and, and being able to add value, I think and be entertained along the way is how I'd wrap this up to what I'm excited about this year at Inbound 25 in. In San Fran.

Lots to do.

So. Wait, George, I am curious though. What gave you friction about San Francisco? Just something new. Someone moved my cheese. That kind of energy. What were we thinking about?

Listen, Listen, your boy GBT's getting older. Sometimes I, I battle with Getting set in my ways because I know it's not a good quality of trait. But when I go to Boston, I can go on co. Just like autopilot. I know where this room is. I know where the speaker lounge is. I know where this is gonna be. I know where I can go to Duncan's. I know where I can go get a quiet space to just like chill and maybe have a phone call or like. So like my brain is on autopilot and just like, I just go do the thing. Nah, that ain't happening this year. Like, it's you. I just gotta figure it all out.

And where is the Duncan? Where is your Duncan?

Nowhere close. Like, here's, here's. Here's a fun thing. Here's another thing that I'm excited about. On Wednesday. No, Thursday. Thursday the 4th, at 8am we're having our annual Christians at Inbound meetup in front of the Moscone center area, right? Usually we do Dunkin Donuts. Coffee and donuts. Got them this year, by the way. I'm excited about this. We're doing bagels because there's a dope bagel shop, like, real close. And so it's gonna, you know, again, September 4th at 8:00am if you want some bagels and some cream cheese and like some prayers before you head in for the day and some just great conversation. Like, that's another kind of meetup event that we're gonna do. Kyle Jepson will be there, a couple other folks that we know and love, Casey and Ben and all those. So like, come and join us there as well and get some. Get some free bagels and. And cream cheese and stuff. Coffee.

But they don't have Duncan, do they?

Are not close. Like, the closest coffee shop is some. I don't even know. I don't remember. I searched it and I'm like.

I mean, there's plenty of coffee shops. It's like the Duncan is like on the other side of the city.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Don't get me wrong, there's coffee in San Francisco, but it is a lot of coffee. Duncan coffee. Or. Or I could say it's not Duncan coffee. Like, because humans drink. Okay, okay, I'll stop. I'll stop.

America runs on Duncan.

Stop it.

Oh, got him.

Got him.

Okay, well, let's decaffeinate this for a moment. Or maybe recaffeinate. I have no idea. But let's pivot from our thoughts about Inbound 25 and what we're thinking. And I would love to hear from you all how folks should be preparing.

Right.

Because sometimes people are traveling alone, Sometimes you're going with a team, but you're not like the leader, the CEO. You're just there with your people. And sometimes you are that business owner, that agency owner, that leader going with your team. George, I actually want to have you start this round. I would be curious to get your advice. If you're talking to folks on their own with teams, what should they be doing right now with one or two weeks to go, depending on when they're listening?

Yeah. If you're alone and you're getting, you know, prepared, I would try to find some connections on the LinkedIns or wherever you hang out to actually have some, like, in person meetups. If you're alone, you may be able to find that you can have, like, an inbound buddy that you connect with, and then you can kind of go and do the event together and meet people together, and that might make it easier. If you're going with a team, I would suggest the opposite. Divide and conquer. Make sure that you're going to different sessions and that you're able to bring the notes back to the team and then do that as a leader. This is kind of fun too, because I had to last year choose times to be with my team and choose times not to be with my team because there were things that made sense that I should go do and be part of. And it like, they should be doing something else because we do different work. We do. We think about different things. And so I think for everybody, give yourself the grace and the understanding of yourself, of, like, do I need to find an inbound buddy because I'm going alone? How do I have the conversation with my team that we're going to separate and conquer? And how, as a leader, can I show up for, like, nightly recaps with the team, but also, you know, empower them to, like, make their own good choices while they're there. So that's where my brain goes initially.

Especially since this is a new event locale. Definitely check out the map. Like, one thing, if you've never been to the Moscone center before is there is a underground hallway that gets you from one building across the street to the other building across the street. Yeah.

Oh.

So if you didn't know that, like, you're gonna need to go down some. And it's like, counterintuitive at first, but you got to go down. I think it's an escalator. And then you go under the street so you don't have to Cross the street and then into the other. I think it's like Moscone west or something like that. There's like, there's another building. I forget the name of it because it's been. I haven't been to the Moscone Sensor center since, like, I think it was. I did the Cisco show because my wife works in the events industry. So we did Cisco, which is like networking equipment. They called it Cisco Live.

Oh, I thought you were talking about like Thong Song. Cisco.

No. My gosh. Wow.

Yeah.

So the Cisco Show.

Okay.

What do you mean?

That's two. That's two times, max. That's twice.

Go ahead, go ahead.

That's two times. Yeah. So like, definitely check out the map and like, if you can get there early at all, even just walking around or taking a peek in and getting the lay of the land and seeing all the different buildings before it's even open is worthwhile in a new location. So whether you're a seasoned inbound professional or a new inbound attendee, this is. This is probably going to be pretty important to make sure you get from place to place. Because remember, if you've been before, if you don't get to a registered session more than five minutes early, then you just go right into Mr. Standby line and you lose your reservation. And it sucks.

You know, for me, I like, sure pack comfortable shoes. Number one. That's, I think, one of my. One of something that we always, always say every year and yet a lot of miles.

And yet we see people in like these clod hopper boots and six inch heels. And my heart goes out, man. At the end of the day, your dogs, they're gonna be barking, I swear to God. Oh, true.

I bought a bunch of crocs just for this. Seriously, man, I'm a sucker for buying crocs on the tik tok shop.

Are you for.

That's fine.

What's your favorite?

You gotta get the HubSpot.

Extremely. For real. I just got to echo the echo clogs.

Oh, you're being serious.

Oh, George, I'm being dead serious. Are you kidding me? I just got the mellow slides. Those are like walking on clouds. Just saying. Anyway, so I think the big thing, you know, and I wish I could do this, but unfortunately I am going to be at our booth having the same conversation 800 times in a row.

Okay. Which of course you love.

I love.

Yeah.

Yep.

Yeah.

I have one. I have one very specific goal when I go to these things, and it's get everyone really excited about Happily apps and that's it.

Yeah.

If I were not in that position, Right. I'd be setting some goals for myself around networking.

Yeah.

And setting some goals for myself around learning some.

Yeah.

Right. So I'd highly encourage people that have the luxury to do that to do that. Right. And, you know, make sure it's like, okay, what am I going to do this day to go learn some stuff? What am I going to do this day to go, you know, do some networking. Right. Try to pick at least one thing for both of those for all of those days. Right. See what sort of time you have left and then just like, keep working some stuff in. But also, if you've never been to San Francisco, try to carve out some time to do some fun shit in San Francisco. Right. You've already done a ton of fun shit in Boston if you go in here for a while. So don't worry about Boston. Right. But if it's your first time in San Francisco, like, it is for me. Carve out some time to do that. I have a funny story. Oh, I was looking through my calendar already.

Living on the edge. Here we go.

I was looking through my calendar the other day because Nikki, our marketing director, was sending out a bunch of calendar invites for stuff that we want to kind of go do as a team. And I was looking at my calendar and I scroll across this calendar invite or calendar event that I created, and all it is is on the first day, somewhere kind of like random, after I land, there's a little calendar event and it just says sandwich question mark. And I. I was like, what is this? I was like, I don't know. I go and click on it. In the description, there's a YouTube link or a link to, like, YouTube or TikTok or Instagram or something like that. And I clicked on it and it's this, like, food review guy doing this, like, review of this sandwich shop in San Francisco that apparently I wanted to try.

There you go.

And so I wrote a calendar invite for myself to remind myself to go seek out this sandwich when I get to San Francisco.

Right.

But I think that's like, a good thing to do is like, remember you're going to be at a place that you haven't been before unless you're from there. Right? Like, try to figure out some other stuff you want to do ahead of time. Right? And, like, give yourself reminders, because inbound moves very quickly. All of it happens in an instant and it's going to be a giant blur because you're going to feel so busy you're going to have no time to just like, sit down and smell the roses. Remember, there's more there than just the conference. Right?

Yeah.

So manage your time well. Right. Try to figure out how to make the most of it. Give yourself some realistic buffer space in between going to stuff, because you don't know what it's going to be like navigating the floor setup that they have now. Right. Again, listen to what Chad said. Go look at the map. Right. But just set yourself some goals and try to make the most of it is kind of what I'm going to say. And if you go as a team, that's even better. Remember, if you're the sole teammates heading there from your company, you know, your, your company's kind of trusting you to bring back as much good, solid information as you can to impart that wisdom amongst your colleagues. And so try to divide and conquer. Even though it's fun to probably go sit through the same classes with your buddies, like, go try to learn different stuff and then put your knowledge together when you come home.

Yeah, leave. We say this every year, but this might be your first year listening to the podcast. Like, leave room for the magic moments in the hallway. Yeah, yeah.

Like there have talk about that every year. George, can you give us a little recap of what that means?

I mean, listen, there's sessions and all the things and all the parties and all. Like you could, you could easily fill up every single day, minute to minute, back to back. And I would just suggest that you don't, because when I've given myself like an hour break here or 30 minute break there, to just go and plop down somewhere where people are walking around or where people are sitting. I'll never forget what one year I sat down in the lobby of Inbound in the BCEC and all of a sudden Christopher Penn and oh, who else? What? Another, like at that point for me was like, oh my gosh, it's a, it's a professional speaker sat down beside me and I sat there and chatted for 45 minutes with these cats who were like, at that point, like speaking at Inbound and before I was even a speaker. So we're going way back, like 2014, 2015. Chris Brogan. There we go, there we go. And, and so it's like, oh my gosh, like, I'll never forget another time we're sitting, took time out. We're sitting there in the Westin lobby and all of a sudden who comes strolling by and sits on the couch, but Brian Halligan. And so all sudden it's like Remington begged me, Brian Halligan, and like a couple other folks. And we're just sitting there chilling and talking. And like, those are moments that you, you can't schedule that. But if you schedule room or buffer time for that. And by the way, there's times where I was like, hey, I'm supposed to be at this session, but all of a sudden I'm talking to a person or several people. And internally I give myself the grace to be like, screw it. Like, I'm gonna stay here. This conversation is going in a good direction and I'll just, I'll catch the next one.

So by now, most folks have probably done a lot of their registering. We're kind of, we're kind of at the tail end of it. So I'd be curious if you guys had any recommendations for folks who may be still toying with their agenda. Maybe running a little bit behind the eight ball in terms of registration. What are our last minute words of wisdom we want to drop here? George, you look like you're hopping up on the mic to say something.

I mean, listen, VIPs, it was like what, a week or two ago? They. They opened. Everybody else, I think opened the beginning of last week. At this point, you should have downloaded the app. You should probably have things scheduled if you're listening to this. I mean, this is gonna go out like next week. Like, do your best. If you're, if you're listening to this and we're trying to answer this question for you right now, you better get real good at getting in the like non registered line real quick so that, so what that does, you can still get in Usually. Yeah, that, that adjusts the amount of time that you have to like skip out of a session or not book a session because you know that these sessions are now important and I've got to be like, you know, one of the first so and so's in line. But yeah, like the other, the other thing too that I want to say here is like, don't just go to sessions that you're already great at. Like, yes, you should still learn about things that you're great at, but you should go to sessions that pull you into other directions. I think about this idea of like a T shaped marketer, you know, T shaped salesperson, where you're like, there's something that you're really, really, really good at. But then you've got like these things that, that are like the top of the T for you. Like. Yeah, yeah, exactly. What are some other sessions that will. That'll pull you out into other areas? And what is the one session or two that has nothing to do with business that might change your life forever? Like give space for that as well when you're registering for these sessions.

Good stuff.

I mean, maybe I'll announce something that everyone should be looking at or even using rather. Yeah.

Are you in trouble, right? Yeah. Okay. Okay. No. Okay.

Especially since this comes out a week before the event. We'll be promoting it by the.

Okay, so. So I'll make sure that we push this out tomorrow then.

Yeah, that's fine. Okay, so we're going to be launching. And this is good because this is a tool that everyone can use. Okay. Everyone's going to be able to use it for free at Inbound. All right. We're launching our first app on the Apple App Store. Right. And you know, from your, your mobile devices, I guess, unless you're an Android user, maybe it's on Android too, I can't remember. It's going to be eventually. I don't know if it's going to be a launch, but we are building a event lead Capture app for HubSpot. Right. It's part of like Event Happily, but you can use it even if you don't have Event Happily. Right. So basically what it lets you do is you can scan someone's badge, you can scan a business card, you can keep track of all the leads you captured at the event.

Okay.

So you go in, you say, I'm at this event. You can capture leads.

Oh my God, that's three times.

It will even write an AI generated email for you to send a follow up that includes your meeting link and context from the event and the conversation that you had. Right. And then it will give you all of those leads at the end of the event in a spreadsheet that you can then upload into HubSpot. And it's already formatted perfectly for HubSpot and all that kind of fun stuff. Right. Eventually though, we'll have it hooked up actually to Event Happily. But that doesn't matter. We're giving everyone a free utility that they can use that's much easier than the boot boop, scoop, boop. Things that we're all used to with the badge things. Clicky clicky Blippi. The Blippi Blippi Blippi. And so everyone's going to be able to use it. It's going to be awesome. We're going to have a good time. And if you need to capture leads at the event.

Oh, my God.

Utility to make it happen.

No, he said it one more time. So does it create leads objects?

Oh, my God.

Okay, if you wanted to.

Okay, no, no, stop it.

Can you lead me in the right direction?

What about leads?

Stop it, stop it.

There's a way that with the app, you can capture leads at the event.

Well, okay, we need to.

Hopefully it's an event Lead capture app list is what I'm trying to say, ladies and gentlemen.

Ladies and gentlemen.

It doesn't capture contacts. Eventually, our event, you go to the.

People in the hallway, the people that you're talking to, they're humans. I tell that to a salesperson. If you want a. If you want an app that is by the dope company, happily, that is a human connector so that you can connect humans and you can communicate with them in a streamlined way after the event because you're trying to be more human with the AI assisted email that you're generating. Then get the connector app. The thing is, I want to swear so bad.

Human capture. Human capture didn't roll off the tongue as well.

I want to. I want to.

We don't want to capture humans, George, because that would be illegal.

Just be human about it, please. Sales, service, marketing.

Listen, if there are human beings you meet at the event that might be interested in purchasing a product that you have, because there are humans, and humans buy things from other humans and you want a better way to get them to book time with you to have human to human conversations after the event that all the humans are attending. Do the human thing and download the event. Happily. Human connector connector app.

That's much better.

And then which we're code naming. We're code naming the event Lead capture app. That's just a code name. Okay. Anyway, it's going to be free. Everyone can use it. It's going to be a great time.

Well, just make sure you upload it as a human who wants to buy something object for your reps reference.

Yes.

Okay, George, I gotta ask you, have you renamed your contact object to humans yet?

Yes, of course he did.

Yes, sir, I have.

You did.

I would assume my. My contacts are humans and my deals are opportunities.

So let me ask you this. Before someone converts into a human, what were they before?

Oh, an embryo.

What?

Here?

I'll get us in trouble.

Mitochondria.

I mean, we're doing.

Oh, my God. No one is ever going to shame me for anything I say on this episode ever again. Dear producer Noah, you will want to keep that in. You cannot keep that in. But you can keep this awkward aside and just to shame your dad and it's totally fine by me.

I mean, hey, if we have to have a talk about the birds and the bees before humans, and we can go there.

You know what, George? Speaking of the birds and the bees, why don't you tell us about the talk?