Strange, Loopy, and AI Everywhere: Our Honest #INBOUND25 Recap
15 Sept 2025 · 43 min
This is a podcast titled "Strange, Loopy, and AI Everywhere: Our Honest #INBOUND25 Recap" recorded in September 2025. It features a multi-speaker conversation including George B. Thomas, Max, and Chad discussing their experiences and impressions from the INBOUND 2025 event. Topics include AI trends, product updates like Breeze Studio, loop marketing, event logistics, and personal anecdotes from the conference. The discussion is informal and covers both technical and cultural aspects of the event and HubSpot's evolving marketing strategies.
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All right, Max, I see what you're doing there, Max, so. Oh. Oh, my goodness. If you're watching this. So first of all. So first of all, if you're watching this, I might have to clip this. Maddie. Maddie, we should probably clip this. Max is flexing. Max, how many of those. Their tags do you have? Inbound tags?
Oh, these actually. Hold on. These are imposters right here.
Oh, those are impossible.
I got. I got this one, and I got last year's.
Gotcha.
Okay, I can't find my other ones. I've got, like, nine of them.
All right, there we go.
This is flywheel kickoff. Oh, those.
Those are all in now, baby.
Dude, those.
Those are all.
George does his squats. Dude, he just puts his.
I just put my. My Hub Squad academy certifications. See all those cert badges? It's like my.
You can even stand with all that on.
It's hard. It's hard. It's my. It's my inbound Mr. T starter kit, if I'm being honest with you. But let me hang it back up. Hey. So here. Here's the thing, ladies and gentlemen, we're back from inbound. It's. It's been a. A week or so since inbound, but things happen. We're finally recording, guys. Let's kick this off as I hang these. Back up. If you could describe this year's Inbound. Inbound 2025, with one word, what would your one word be?
I. Dude.
Loopy.
Oh. Oh, oh. Okay, so we've got AI. We've got loopy. And I'll say strange. Now, Max, why y. AI for you?
I don't know. Because it's the only. Only word that I heard the entire time when we were there.
Well, you. You obviously.
I got myself so sick of hearing it, man. Yeah.
Yeah.
And you want to know what was like, the. The worst part about it all is. Listen, I get there talking about A.I. yeah. Like, man, you know, I don't think on the way back to the airport, I don't think I saw a single billboard that didn't have the word AI in it. And I'm just like, what are we doing? What are we doing? And then, like, when I got into the airport, all the big digital signs that they have, AI AD after AI AD after AI AD after this, that and that with AI and AI and AI, and it's just like, now I just cringe when I hear the word. Be so honest. I think it's cool. AI is super sick. It's great. But, man, am I sick of hearing about it.
It's funny because I heard Remington beg. He did a post, and he was like, are you sick of hearing it yet? I'm sick about. I'm sick of talking about it. But, you know, and. And I think it's interesting because there has to be, like, a deeper level to even why you're using the AI or having the AI conversation. But. But anyway, we might. We might swing back into that. Chad, you said loopy. Talk to me about why your word was loopy.
Well, there's the obvious reason. Loop marketing. But I think there were just so many, like, you know, like, it was all a bit loopy. There was so many things. I think there was double the number of product updates this year compared to Last Inbound. That's a lot of stuff. Like. And that'll make you loopy. Trying to keep it all straight. It's pretty wild how many different things that they launched. I'm. I'm a lot of. It's really cool. Like, there's a lot of really quality of life improvements. There's, you know, I mean, the fact that some things started to change while I was gone. That's kind of not great. Like, oh, the UI is different.
We'll get to that.
Seems like what?
We'll get to that. We'll get to that. So. So loopy. Yeah. A whole bunch of updates.
Yeah.
A whole bunch of humans. And then, of course, marketing, which you kind of, like, alluded to, which we may or may not circle back into. I said strange. I'm saying strange because of a couple different reasons. One, it wasn't in Boston. We all know that. It was in San Francisco, which. Which was kind of strange, right? It. I asked.
The lack of Dunkin Donuts was strange.
Oh, brother. Brother. Don't get me started on the Dunkin Donuts, by the way, because of that. Do you want to know the number of coffees? Okay, let's play a little game. And then I'll get back to why I said strange. Take a wild guess. The number of coffees that I had while I was in San Francisco.
Oh, you're on east coast time. So you're fighting your. Your jet lag a little bit. Wait, are you talking, like, total, like.
Yeah. The whole time I was there, how many coffees do you think I drink? You were there Monday to Friday, Tuesday to Saturday morning.
Tuesday to Saturday morning? Yeah. Oh, so you mixed another morning into there?
Yeah, Yeah.
I didn't. I didn't see you. 26.
Oh, 26.
Yeah.
Chad, you said. I. I didn't.
I didn't see you with a coffee cup in your hand once.
And.
Yeah, I'm gonna say zero.
Oh, okay. We got 26 and we got zero. Guys, the total number of coffees that I drank in San Francisco. One. What?
One.
One.
Why?
I drank one because there was no Dunkin, and. And I was just jamming around and I was speaking and talking and talking to people. And finally I got to, like, Friday and the event's over, and I go, babe, you know what I want? Because my wife was with me. I didn't just call some random person babe.
He called me babe.
You know what I want? We're, like, taking the rice a Roni trolley to the Fisherman's Wharf. You know what I want? She goes, what do you want? I go, I want a coffee. And so I got a coffee. While we're actually walking around after the event was over. So no Duncan's equal, George. Less caffeinated, but still excited. So. So it was just a strange event, right? I was not caffeinated. I was in San Francisco. I asked for directions more ever in, like, the last nine years of, like, where's this room? Where's this room? Like, how do I get here? Because I didn't have time to not, like, just go hunt for it. Like, I had to get there and do a thing. So it was just strange. Here's the other thing. I feel like they had us in a little bit of a bubble, okay? And here's. People love this show because we call a spade a spade. And we talk about things that sometimes we should and maybe sometimes we shouldn't. But listen, I. We stayed, like, after the event was over. Now, while the event was happening, the sidewalks were getting sprayed off. There were security guards all around. It seemed like it was like a pretty. Like it was a dope place. Now you can tell San Francisco has its. It's still trying to come back from, like, financially from, like, Covid Because I, I heard multiple people that live there kind of talk about this, but it seemed like, okay, it's nice city. And it is, by the way. It is a nice city. However, when Inbound left and the security guards left, it was a totally different place. Like, it, like, switched. And so Friday night and Saturday I was like, oh, this got strange. And so that's, that's why, like, it just felt different. I'm glad that we're going to be heading back to Boston. I'm excited for next year already. And we just got done, but loopy, strange, and AI, those are our one words. Okay, so let's, let's. That sums it up, ladies, and see you next week. No, I'm just kidding. So. So talk me through. Max. Chad, like the, the big product announcement. What was the, the product announcement that you were like, oh, okay, Chad, hit it.
I'm thinking that they were going to have an agent builder directly inside a HubSpot. I'll tell you that. Like, I was like you to be able to build your own MCP tools for native inside HubSpot Breeze.
Yeah, that's pretty ba.
Like, that's really, really, really, really powerful because you can leverage any kind of custom solution. You know, people are going to stop asking for API docs and start asking for MCP servers. You know, like, I mean, it's pretty, pretty crazy to think that that's the world we're moving to.
Yeah.
Yeah. Can I get a. Can I get a click up MCP server, please? Like, I think there might be one man, we. I need to find out, because that's the missing thread for me on a couple things. Max, go ahead. Big, big product announcement that you. Oh, my God.
Well, no, I think they. I mean, just kind of building off of what Chad said about the. What is it? Breeze Studio is the thing that lets you build your own, like, agents or whatever. I didn't quite. I guess I didn't quite understand, like, you know, those, like, App Store agents that. Well, because, like, I didn't know that, like, you would use Breeze Studio to, like, invoke a bunch of them together to do something. Right. Which I thought was, like, pretty cool. Yeah. Harry Bevins, the guy that runs Line Pilot, came and actually, like, explained it to me because I didn't. I clearly didn't understand what it was. I thought it was just like talking to a chatbot for, like, that app, telling that app to do something. But in reality, you could use Breeze Studio to get all these things to, like, work together, which is like, really wild and kind of broke my brain a little bit.
Yeah.
The app, you could do, like. Yeah, you could make a framework where it's designed to go through a specific sequence of events for some sort of purpose. So it's almost like building a playbook for an agent.
Yeah, it's. It's really sweet. I was, I was pleasantly surprised to see that projects thing come out too. Yeah, that, you know, it's. It's interesting. I've had my big gripe with all of these, like, new sort of like standard objects that live in that object library has always been that, like, they tend to release objects and give them a name. That sort of implies there's some additional functionality behind it. Right. So, like, you know how they came out with like the appointments tool, I mean, the appointments object, but like, no way for people to book those appointments. They came out with the listing object with no integration with an MLS system. Right. And like, you know, kind of like, why are we just kind of making these things? Because a sales rep that doesn't really understand the nuance of that's gonna be like, oh, yeah, you can book appointments. Just use our appointment object. Right? Yeah, yeah. You know, and it sucks. But then, you know, they. They came up with projects and it came out with a Gantt chart view, which is, yeah, sick.
Have you messed around with that at all?
Not at all. Not at all.
It's pretty cool. I mean, like, yeah, I. I think the thing that they need to like, really make that takeoff is task. Custom objects or, sorry, custom properties. They don't have that quite just yet, but like, being able to be a little bit more free with the task and the task editor and then. But I'm sure that's on the roadmap.
I literally had a product manager come up to me and tell me they were doing that at some point. Not only that, I heard they were.
Allowed to say that.
Maybe. I'm not gonna say who it was. I also heard something around custom activities, which might be interesting. We'll see if that's actually something I heard correctly. But yeah, that's super cool. I mean, big thing for me though, being like the app person. Something that dropped, which we didn't know anything about, was that they're gonna let. They're gonna give like app developers the ability to create like full screen app experiences. Right. So instead of being like regulated to just like a UI extension, they're gonna give us like an entire page surface to play with, which is like, really cool. So I'm super excited to See what we do there, you know? But yeah, it was. It was cool.
And I wonder how much more of that's gonna happen because, like, sorry, Chad, I'll swing back to you. Like, like, a couple things that come to my mind. One, if you're listening to this and you haven't messed around with, like, the new Breeze Assistant, like, what I'm saying when I say new, like, the updates.
Yeah.
Like, I connected my email, I connected my calendar. It now has memories. Like, you can. There's a Breeze marketplace. So, like, the Breeze Assistant is going to be able to be more than you ever thought. It was, like, one of the things that we were doing last week when we were getting ready to record this episode, and then we didn't end up recording it. Literally, I said, can you check my email? It checked my email. And then I said, can you create tasks so I can remember to actually follow up on those emails? And Breeze created those tasks and associated them to the humans. So, like, if you have. And you can go full screen. Right? And so, like, if you haven't messed with Breeze and seen how deep you can kind of, like, dig into it, it's. It's getting crazy. Layer that on what Chad just said. Yeah.
If you haven't messed with Breeze in the last 30 days.
Yeah.
It's a whole new world.
Yeah.
Yeah.
It's crazy.
George, There's a funnier story behind how that actually happened, right? Like, you and me were talking.
Yeah.
And you were like, oh, look, like you can hook up email now as a source. When you talk, you talk to Breeze. And you're like, oh, give me a synopsis of my email inbox from the last week. And it was like, yeah. And it literally, like, it congratulated you on doing a good job at delegating stuff to people because it noticed that, like, things were getting taken care of.
Yeah.
You only got a couple of things. And then I was like, george, wouldn't it be crazy if, like, one day it was like, oh, can you make me tasks to follow up on those things? Right? And we're like, yeah, that'd be crazy.
And then you're like, I tried it.
Wait, let me just try it. And you tried it.
Did it?
Yeah.
I was like, wait, wait, how far along is all this stuff that I like, I don't even. Max is like, nice one day. And then literally one day was that. That 30 seconds later. Right. Which is so cool to see.
It's because they more or less. They've added a lot of functionality of the mcp server to breeze. Not all of it because. But they. You can, like, actually talk to it and add custom properties and it. Ask it questions about your property schema, like the structure of your, your properties and all that sort of stuff already. And it will analyze data. It's very impressive. It doesn't work, like, for a long, long time just yet. I've had some stuff where I'm like, hey, I want to do some data transformation, almost like a workflow, but with a little bit more AI in the middle and not having to, like, build out a weird workflow to do it.
Yeah.
And it did, like, maybe five out of 400 deals that I wanted it to modify because it wouldn't work. This is for Max agentically.
Worst. Worst word in the human language ever invented.
It wouldn't work agentically for a long period of time.
Yeah.
Yeah.
But, yeah, I think that's on the horizon.
So here's, here's my take on this. You want, you want normal people to adopt AI, start stop using words like generative and agentic. Like, it just like, people don't understand AI.
My mom ain't never gonna use that.
Yeah, but it's just like, oh, it's so agentic. It's like, brother. We're already coming up with too many new words for this. It's crazy.
Yeah. Can I, can I just say, look at us talking about AI. Isn't that funny? Anyway, I know, right? Let's, let's almost move on. By the way, I literally did release an article earlier this week about AI assistant versus AI partner, because there's a whole mindset shift that needs to happen around it being a partner, not being assistant. That came out of my talk in Inbound. I said it from stage, and I didn't really understand why I said it from stage, but it's where my brain went. And so I put that out in the world. If, if you're curious what I'm talking about, you can go to psychicstrange.com, look at the article AI assistant versus AI partner. But let's get back on the inbound kind of recap thing here. Any big surprises that you guys were like, and other than software, but just like, maybe it was the space, maybe it was something else.
I mean, I, I, I, the, I liked the layout a lot. I don't know. Our marketing manager, Nikki, who's really, really good at the trade show thing, had a much more tactical, informed, and educated breakdown around why she didn't like it. Mostly because of the traffic.
Right.
Okay.
It is, it Was, you know, it was different in that, like, the booth track, you, you had to want to go to the booths. Yeah, like that.
I was exactly what I was going to say.
Right.
The booths used to be, like, in the same space as the HubSpot product area, and you had to go through the HubSpot product area to get to the keynote.
Yep.
Right.
Yeah. Now, you'd go downstairs, and you either you had a decision point, you had a fork in the road, Right?
Yeah, Right.
And, like, so a lot of people just, like, went upstairs, didn't really go through the booth. So, like, a lot of the people in the booth are like, where's that traffic? You know what I mean? Like, I still feel like we had a lot of traffic. Right. I didn't stop talking the entire time. Yeah, but the, but, you know, as someone who just, like, just doesn't understand all that, like, a very deep level, like, I liked how interesting, like, the booth layout stuff was. Like, it was instead of just one straight line, and it was just kind of something you had to walk through. It very much was very interesting. The layout had a lot of interesting curves and angles and, like, rises around every corner. You know what I mean? It felt very organic. Organic. Almost like a little, little. I said organic because we've been saying organic. Oh, my God, I hate. I'm going to start using that word.
Now, or get my social. Organic traffic.
Yeah. Organ content we've created. And it. But it was always felt like there was something to discover down there. So I did, I did, I did kind of like the, you know, it didn't feel like you just saw everything, like, immediately, and you're like, okay, this is it. Like, it, it felt very, like there was a lot to explore, which I thought was cool. Yeah.
Chad. Big surprises or big surprise.
Yeah, I just, I, I, I think it's interesting to think that when you're walking downstairs, you're literally walking underneath the road into the keynote. I think that's, like, weird for people because I pointed it out to a couple of people. They're like, oh, yeah, you're right. Like, we're in the other building all of a sudden, you know.
Yeah.
My wife prepared for it to be underground.
Yeah, my wife was one of those people because she kept telling me for, like, a couple of days, we don't go into that building. We go into this building. And she's like, it's interesting. We only used that building the first day. And then she came to me, like, day two or three and was like, you know, actually we have been using that building. Chad told me, like, when we. And I was like, oh, oh, okay. I guess we do.
Yeah. It's just. I mean, that's just like, you know, one of those things about the. The event center and. And whatever. But I felt like it was very interesting that, you know, all the. All the HubSpot stuff was completely separate from all the booths. It's obviously there just wasn't enough room to have it. Right. Because of the way the building was. But I felt like that was an interesting thing. You know, the layout was cool. I definitely plus one that on Max. But yeah.
Oh, that's one other surprise. I got a Mountain Dew in water, and it cost me 15. That was a fun surprise.
Yeah. Let's not talk about my taxi surprise. That was like 67. But anyway, that's the surprise I want to talk about. About is honestly, like, loop marketing. That was a surprise to me. Yeah. I was like, wait, what. What is happening right now? Like, listen, and it's not because I'm a loop marketing hater. It's because we only talked about marketing. Like, we didn't talk about sales. We didn't talk about success or service. We didn't.
Right. Like, that ended up being my saving grace. But yeah, okay, well, because. Because, dude, I was crashing the hell out during the. When they, like, showed the loop stuff. Right.
On partner day.
You mean you were, like, going down in flames, like, mentally, what is happening?
I was about to walk out. Not going to lie. Because it looked at it as something that was, like, replacing the flywheel.
Yeah.
Right. And I think that's the wrong way to look at it without what's happening. And. And I. I think also it's like, you know, it's. Just because they didn't mention it doesn't mean that it's replacing it. Right. Yeah. Right. You know, there is. There is a separation between what is inbound marketing and what is the flywheel. Right. You know, the flywheel attract, engaged delight. That kind of encompasses all the big, major motions and things. You're generally using HubSpot to kind of support you doing. Right. And HubSpot was built to support that strategy. Right. And I think it still is. Right. And. But, you know, the reason I loved Inbound so much is like, man, that. That is so easy to explain to somebody. Yeah. Right. And it's like, no matter what you do is if your business is operating in any capacity, you are doing those three things, even if you're doing them in a slow, clunky, grinding to a Halt way. Because if you weren't doing any of those things, technically your business couldn't run at all, right? People gotta find you, you gotta talk to them, and then you gotta deliver some sort of product that makes them happy enough that they tell somebody else about it. Right? Like, those are the basics. Like, think about anytime you started it, started a onboarding or a project with somebody, they were just getting into HubSpot, and you asked them, like, how are you? Have you been getting, like, business so far? What did 90 of them say? Word of mouth. Cool.
Yeah.
If they said word of mouth, brother, you were doing a flywheel and you didn't even know it. Right? And so it was all about, like, how do we dig into those three spots and do them better? Right. And I still think that holds up. Right? I mean, it has to. Like, laws of physics tell us it has to. Right. Like, there's no. You're never not attracting, engaging and delighting as there is one way, shape or form. Right. You may not be doing any of those things well, but you have to do it in some capacity. Right? And so when I saw the loop thing, I was like, oh, what is this? They're taking this beautiful, easy, you know, universally sound, timeless strategy. Right. And completely turning it on its head. And it doesn't make any sense to me, but after I, you know, wiped the blood off of my mouth and like, you know, came like, became conscious again.
Yeah.
I realized like, oh, wait, this is just. This is it. They're calling it loop marketing, and they're calling it marketing for a very specific reason, because it is a marketing strategy. It's not like a system, something replacing everything. Right?
Yeah.
And I do agree that in the age of, like, everyone is now has all these AI tools at their fingertips and no one has any idea how to make sense of all of it. Right. There does need to be a playbook around it. I do think right now, do I think it's a little bit complex? Yes. Do I remember the fourth? Well, hold on in, Spot.
No, we couldn't remember in that whole.
Every time they say express, I just think of Dr. Dragon. Express yourself.
I think I think of backend servers.
Yeah. So Express. What is it? Express, Taylor. Amplify and evolve. It's like it's. I don't know, maybe I need to, like, really kind of understand, like, the pieces of it, but it's just like, I don't. I don't know, I don't understand it. And maybe that's my fault. Right. But I appreciate that you Know, they're trying to build a playbook for marketing, the AI age. The only thing that, like, kind of bugs me about it is that for so long, when we looked at Inbound, right, Inbound was always something that you could do without HubSpot, right? It was a strategy, first and foremost, right? You could. You could. You could do inbound without HubSpot. It would be harder, sure. Right. But you could do it. Right. And they built the tool to support that thing.
Right?
The. Where I get scared. And again, this. Maybe this is just me being like, you know, an inbound marketing conservative or something.
I don't know, Like.
Like someone who, like, you know, inbound marketing purist. Right? Somebody doesn't want to see things. Maybe I'm adverse to change, whatever it.
May be, is a Slytherin.
I'm a Slytherin. Oh, right. To me, there's a piece of it that, you know, with. With this huge emphasis they're putting on AI and breeze and credits and this, that. And the other thing, to me, what it feels like is it feels like the product is now shaping this strategy. Right? And it. It really kind of feels like just a big strategy to say, like, hey, you need to use AI, and we've got all these AI tools, and you have to use AI, and here's a strategy to use AI.
So let's please burn some of my credits.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Okay. Don't get infinite.
Infinite credits. You know what I mean?
We probably need to do. Yeah. Infinity credits. We probably get that unlimited episode. Were the words you used. I want to back up, but first of all, were the words you used express, Taylor, amplify, evolve. Were those the words that you use? Okay, that's it.
Right.
I just wanted to make sure that those were the four, because those are the four words. Let's back up because I think for the impact for what you're saying is like, historically, when you went to Inbound, it was the inbound methodology you felt was driving the product. This year was definitely. It felt like the product was driving the. The inbound talk. Now, I want to back up because I was surprised with loop marketing, but this is what I want to say. I think Yamini did a great job. I. I was paying attention because I had been forewarned of this, the coming of loop marketing. So I was paying attention with an open mind. And on the slides, the things that were on the slides, I'm like, yep, check. Makes sense. Need to do that. Yep. Okay. Yeah. So I agree with everything that was in the slides. I'M just again, I don't know if I'm a big fan of loop marketing. Like the term in itself. I don't know what else you would call it, but I'm just like, okay, I'll. I'll live with it, deal with it, talk about it. Because. But it's a system and you need something that goes along with that system. You need some principles. Right? And so, so there's again, I wrote an article that is loop Marketing meets the superhuman framework. And it's on psychic strategy. You can go check it out. But it's where maybe the two combined actually get us closer to what historically might have been a system that lives inside the inbound kind of original framework that I fell in love with. So here's, here's another surprise. For me, it was a surprise a couple years ago when Brian wasn't on the keynote stage. As far as the kickoff this year is another surprise that Dharmesh was not part of the, like the keynote take off. Yeah, I was, I was like, oh man. Like it's, it's really changed because one of the things that I would love is like you'd go. And it was like Brian and Dharmesh and you know, there was going to be these crazy fun times. And then it was Brian and Dharmesh and Yamini and there was still going to be these crazy fun times. And all a sudden it's just starting to get split out to. And not saying it's bad, I'm just saying it's different, it's strange, it's right. It's a surprise. So we're quickly running out of time. But guys, were there any like, any inbound letdowns where you're like, well, okay.
Other than for me.
Well, other than token. Yeah. So I do want to touch on just one little thing too, like about that last topic. And then we'll circle back or I'll circle back into a letdown. But I mean, the thing is like the inbound methodology, the thing that I think that it did really well is it just touched every part of the business. It touched all hubs. Everything was related. You know, it encompassed the entire product. And you used everything to accomplish the inbound methodology. I still think you can accomplish loop marketing without HubSpot. It would just be harder. Right? Because they have all the things with the nice juicy tokens in there. And this is like a primer for our credits episode is like, if you really think about it, do you want them to price in? If you're using something that Consumes a lot of AI tokens to your HubSpot where somebody is going to use way more than you if you're not going to use that much. Now, does that mean that the product should cost less overall and that. Because then, you know, the tokens are. It's consumption based in a way. Right. Anyway, something to think about because, like, I don't know if I want to pay for somebody else's consumption.
Right.
And to then pad that in. Right.
Which right now also. But yes.
No, but I don't love the idea of, you know, this big whack of credits, you know, showing up because. But again, usage based. It's providing value. Yeah, maybe. I don't know.
Anyway, it's one more thing that a HubSpot super admin needs to pay attention to.
Yeah, unfortunately.
Right.
Making that job a little bit more complex. Okay then. I had a letdown. Oh, did you? Did y' all just. Sorry. While we're at it, I'm going on tangents here, but did y' all see Brian eat them hot chicken wings?
I did, I did.
That was so funny. Oh, my gosh.
So what was the funniest part for you?
I think when he popped the 12 pack of beer out and just busted it and because he had already finished his beer on like wing two out of 12 or whatever. Dude, homeboy is already done with his beer and he just pops out a thing of Sam Adams. Has multiple bottle openers in his pocket. He's like, which one should I use? Himself like multiple extra. Because he's just needing something. He of his chair one time walked around the table because it was so hot.
I missed it. Was he getting just wrecked?
Oh, it was great.
You. I. I think it's online. I think it'll be on YouTube. You've definitely gotta watch it because as. As a fellow Boston logger fan, when that box slid out from under the table and I knew homeboy had brought reinforcements, I was like, my dude. Like, my dude. Smart man. Because it was. You could tell he was like. He was burning up once we got into them. Like and. And wings.
Yeah. Okay, now my letdown is simple. I didn't see almost anything from the Service Hub team, which I love Service Hub. And that product is maturing a lot, but they're hitting the complexity wall of the needs of service and support teams and also customer success teams and trying to build all of that into Service Hub. So the amount of big flashy features that they're able to drop is less. They did drop macros, which are Cool. Which is like a beta where you could just say it's almost like a mini workflow that you can run on demand for a ticket, which could be cool. And in the future, I believe they're going to bring in email templates to apply an email template and run the workflow simultaneously. Anyway, go ahead.
Nice. Max, any letdowns from the sh.
Like, from the show directly? No, I mean, I generally had like an electric time out there. It was good.
Yeah.
You know, besides the Dunkin Donuts. But I mean, here's the thing. The growth. Did you go to the Grove at all?
Yeah.
Oh, dude, the Grove was sick. I can't believe you didn't get coffee there. That's nuts. Yeah, but, yeah, no, I mean, it was. It was. It was good. I think, like, that's the only letdown is like, it was hard to. When we're at inbound, we all know the place to be is the bar at the Omni or the Weston.
The Weston. Yeah.
And it was like. That was like the. It's like the one place everybody knows to go.
Yeah.
After all the party's over to just like burn it down at the end of the night and wake up regretting it and. Right.
Where's that place I got?
It's like. And this is an inbound's fault, but we didn't know where that spot was.
Right.
And it's more just, I guess, like poor planning on the collective of people that went there. Right. But, you know, there's a lot of people that I wish I got to see and spend more time with. Like you, George. Maybe I saw you like twice or I chat. I saw you for like a minute. Right. I mean, at least we got to like, sit together during the partner day thing. Right. You know, But I didn't have a ton of time to like, just really kind of kick it with people, which I felt like is much easier for some reason to do in Boston when we all know that main congregating place that we're all kind of going to, you know, so, like, less of a let down, more of a. Like, ah, this is different. Right. But yeah, no, I mean, it was. It was, you know, I. Yeah, it was. It was good. I liked it, dude. I had a great time. It was good. I can't complain. I think for the first time, having it somewhere else from Boston, I don't think it could have gone any better.
Oh, yeah. Honestly, it went really well. And the team. Yeah, the inbound team did a great job of like. Like, they were. They Were Johnny on the spot? Like, everybody from like checking you in to like, if there were issues with your badge to like Courtney Dogger and her team and like getting it all set up even before, like people, like, it was just good. My let down same kind of with you, Max, is like, there's so many humans, not enough time.
Yeah.
And there I was getting tagged, like in LinkedIn, like, of. And I'm like, you were there. Like, how did I not see you? Like, why did we not meet up? Like, I wonder if that just had.
To do with the fact that the expo, you know, booth, were not next to the main area or because everything was kind of spread out more maybe.
But you just didn't. You didn't see as many humans as you thought you could or wanted to see. So that was. So we'll. We'll see how that feels next year. Okay, so Max, take us to the Happily booth for a minute. How. How. How was the Happily booth? How did it go? Like.
It was crazy. Yeah, it was crazy. If I'm being so honest with you. It was, it was absolutely electric from, from beginning to end. I would just get there, plant my feet on the, on the little astro turf that we had, and then black out for approximately, I don't know, 10 hours or however long we were there. We were there. Yeah, right. Scan some badges, Preach the gospel around how running events in HubSpot is actually the most big brained play you could ever run in your life as a re. Ops or event person. Yeah. And it was sick. And it, you know, it was really cool because this year, this year, like, our tool is as close to, like, just plug and play as it's ever been. Last year, you know, it was one of those things where it was like if someone thought it was cool, like you still needed a, a, a PhD in HubSpot and a unnecessarily nuanced understanding of on how our app worked in the background. It was powerful, don't get me wrong. But this year we were dropping jaws, dude. It's so easy to just install and just start using immediately. It's crazy. And the team did an absolutely insane amount of work getting it to where it was. And so we dropped a bunch of big things. We got the event builder, which just lets you basically give us some information about your event, and we just build all your assets for you instead of you having to do it on your own. Yeah, that's cool. It's crazy. Marketing studio. Something we should talk about at some point.
Yeah.
Yeah. Maybe do a Whole episode on it. Yeah, but we did that. We did. We had our new lead capture app, which is a. Which was a huge hit, Right? So, like, you know, instead of doing like the boop boop thing, you just like scan text on a badge, we look it up, we enrich it, throw it in a HubSpot, all that kind of stuff.
And the original is pretty good too, dude.
It was actually like 90, like the.
Amount that I did, like, scan my badge and it's like, oh, you're a company of blah, blah, blah people. And he sent me an email just as a test, you know.
Yeah.
And like, I would watch it right on. Pretty good.
I be like, you see how it got your first name, last name and company. It pulled that off your badge. But now it's going to try to find some stuff. And I would sit there and watch it with people, right? And like 20 seconds later it would come up. I'm like, is that right? Yeah, it's right. And I'm like, sick. That's awesome. Like, I thought it was going to be wicked inaccurate, but it ended up being like 90%, like, correct, which is. Which is cool. So then we had that, and then we have this whole new way to do, like, in person check ins and like QR code scanning and stuff like that, you know? And so it was cool because, like, these were things that just lived in my brain for a very long time. And then our team, like, worked day and night insanely hard to like, make these things, like, real before Inbound. And it was just. It was a surreal experience. And it was also. It felt very vulnerable. Like, I was like, oh, are all these things we're doing, like, are people actually going to like it? And it was just. I don't think I had one bad conversation. It was just. It was amazing. And the team was cranking. We had, like, images on the iPads and we're showing people. It was really cool. It was super fun. Yeah.
All right, so we've served up an inbound meal. Let's do some salt and pepper. Salt and pepper, meaning you take about 15 seconds to 20 seconds each. And it can just be the most random stuff. I'm going to go first. You guys can then go after me, and then I'll land this episode. So the salt and pepper of inbound 2025 for me are things like one getting to have a dinner with Chad, his wife, Chris, Carolyn, his wife, myself and my wife together, and having one that you were invited to but you missed. No shade thrown. But that sitting and Having that dinner was amazing. Driving in a Waymo and using it as a tour guide through the city of San Francisco to take my wife to see the Golden Gate Bridge, the Full House House, Mrs. Doubt Firehouse, the Curvous Road. Just being able to get comfortable with that in something we'd never done before was. Was amazing. But also seeing those things outside of the event, seeing people like my PDM and other partners that he serves, and we took a big photo. Okay, that's probably longer than 20 seconds. I'll shut up. But, like, those are salt and pepper random moments that made inbound 2025amazing.
I. I really enjoyed hitting the city. Got to go do the Golden Gate Bridge with my wife and her friends. You know, we. Because my wife does like event management, as some may know. And, you know, because of that. Oh, yeah. One of their gifts, I got inbound.
Wow.
Yeah.
Full House.
House on the heel, man.
Damn.
Yeah, so that's. That's a nice little thing that the. The inbound event planning team was given out to some of the event staff, which was fun. So I got a little Inbound sakis. Just seeing and connecting with people everywhere is just so good. Doing the Waymo was fun. Never done. I even got in on the. The public access to the Tesla Robo taxi network, if any, you know, people like them, hate them, whatever. But, like, it was cool to do that for the first time too. I got to try two different driverless car services. That's fun.
Nice.
So, yeah.
Well, I'm glad you guys had a great experience with a Waymo. We almost hit a dog, and then it dropped us off in the middle of the street at like, two in the morning. That was weird. Yeah. And then it, like, stopped behind someone who was at a. At a stoplight that wouldn't go. And, like, we had to, like, get in touch with Waymo support because we didn't know what to do. And then the car got, like, really annoyed and just, like, backed up and drove around the person and then they went. So, yeah, not a great experience in Waymo for us, but I will say had the best fried chicken in my life at this Chinese restaurant called zny. It was like, just a bowl full of Szechuan peppers with this fried chicken that's fried in a way I've never seen chicken fried before. Wow. And when you ate it, your jaw literally would buzz. It was the craziest sensation I've ever experienced eating Chinese food.
It was there some additives on that.
I'm like, I think it was just the bowl of Szechuan peppers it was sitting in, right? But yeah, dude, it was. It was sick. I loved it. Can't complain. It was great.
So moral of the story is a lot happens at Inbound. If you weren't there this year, make sure you check out the HubSpot YouTube channel. They are going to have some things showing. If you haven't ever been to Inbound before and you're listening to this, then try to make it a plan to go in 2026. It sounds weird to say that because hopefully we'll be seeing you in Boston and maybe you'll even be part of our 2026 Inbound recap next year. 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 hubbyerospodcast 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 someone's hero.