What Is The Inbound Methodology Really And How Has It Evolved? Feat. Mark Kilens [HubHeroes, EP.47]

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

I'd like to think that the reason why we have that disclaimer is because Devin has so many shameful, fast and furious hot takes, but moving right along because we don't want to derail us so early into the proceedings today. Hi, everybody. Who's excited? Who's excited?

I'm excited. Especially since you just jabbed Devin immediately at the beginning of the podcast.

It's fine. I'll own it. I'll own it.

You know. You know who else owned it? Two chains in the song. We own it for the Fast and Furious soundtrack. That's right. That's right.

Good tie back.

I know, I know. That's why I'm here.

Hey, even a broke clock is right twice a day, so I'm wounded.

I'm wounded. We are going to have to find some healing and restoration in this episode, which I think is going to be very easy, because Hub heroes, I need to quote my guy George here. I need you all to grab your snack. We're back. Backpack. Because we are going off on an adventure today into the depths of the inbound wilderness. And George and Devin, we're not alone today.

No.

We have someone else sitting in Max's seat today. We have a very, very special guest, Mark Killens. Hi. The one, the only Mark Killens, currently the CEO and co founder of TAC, used to be the CMO at Airmeet, was also the VP of Content and Community at Drift, and the VP of HubSpot Academy for what, almost nine years? Is that right?

I mean, no. I mean, it was. That was like a year and a half with that.

What.

Tell us about that title. That Title. Notice he said that title, by the way. I don't even care. I don't care if it was a month and a half. The pedigree. The pedigree is just.

I want to dig into here because, like, you're right. It's just a title. You are, you are like a founding father of Inbound. I was surprised when I was looking over, getting prepared for this episode, I'm like, he really should just lead with that. Who am I? I'm Mark, one of the founding fathers of Inbound. May have seen me, may have heard about me. We are just so excited to have you on the show today, Mark. How are you?

That's, that's, that's.

Now Mark. Now Mark. He tries to be humble. I know, gentlemen.

So that's.

You're going to get the. No, but, but he, he knows I know he knows I know how many lives he was a part changing with the whole HubSpot Academy and what some. You can be humble, brother, but we.

Yeah, I mean, I was, I was a HubSpot customer way back in 2008, 2009. So that's where the idea for me to hopefully have the opportunity to join HubSpot came from. I mean, I found HubSpot how most people probably found HubSpot in the early days. I went to Google, typed in how to generate more leads, and guess what came up? The HubSpot blog. And the rest is history. That's amazing. Yeah, I just, I just, I want to help people. You know, that's, you know, that's all it is. And HubSpot Academy was an opportunity to help HubSpot help people. Never thought it would become as big influential as it probably has become, but for us, it's just about, like you were saying, George, impact. And there's a lot of, there's a lot of deliberate things we, we did, they're still doing to, to make that brand, that experience so important and successful so we can unpack those things. But yeah, at the end of the day, it's just, you know, how do you, how do you give? Give more than you get, maybe.

You know, I'm going to encourage our listeners. If you haven't already, go back and listen to our episode about the true power of HubSpot Academy. Because all of us really dug deep and talked about the different ways, especially the three of us who are sitting right here. We're really profoundly impacted by HubSpot Academy. Like, that's where my whole career took off like that. Like, without HubSpot Academy, I don't know where I end up. You know what I mean?

But, George, I know I don't end up here. I. I can say that I don't end up here.

I don't.

Without HubSpot Academy.

No. And George, I know I would actually like to turn it over to you a little bit. You alluded to this already somewhat. But you do have, I know, at least one or two good stories about the. The impact and through your connection with Mark.

Yeah, definitely. So I'll just take people down memory lane before we let Max. Max. Now he's gonna be Max for the rest of the episode. Mark. Actually, you know, we're just used to Max being on the podcast anyway. Grass. I do have a few memories with. And it does start with, you know, the world's largest webinar and hearing the voice Time. It does kind of continue on a couple year. I actually made it a point to go to the HubSpot Academy inbound and thank Mark and the team for just all of the hard work that they had done, the education that they enabled my, you know, to be able to dive in and learn about inbound marketing and HubSpot. And. And so. And it was a. It was a moment, by the way. It got a. It got a little emotional, right? Because. And I'm not usually an emotional guy, but I just wanted the fuel that they were putting into the universe. The. The people that were actually able to change their lives because of it. And then one of the very fond memories I have. And there's. There's a video that I still have. We may have to publish it in some sort of certain. Just as like a. An inbound is. I remember sitting in Boston, flew into Boston, and Mark and I interviewed about my inbound journey and got to sit there, you know, face to face and a couple cameras and. And wax poetic on at that point when I worked at the sales line, like the journey that I'm on. And so there are some. Not to mention I catch in dinner, right? Dinner at Del Frisco's. Like, we've just had some great moments where we've been able to hang out, break bread together and understand that when. When you do things like Mark said, when you give more, you actually end up getting a lot. That's the thing. Even though you're still giving. So he's. He's just a great human. This is why he's on the show. And I can't wait, Liz, to dive deeper into these conversations around where it's changed, where we're at now. All these sorts of things. So, yeah, just good, good times.

Yeah. I can only imagine, Mark, right now just. I could see your face, and you are obviously a very humble guy. You are literally ready to talk about anything else except yourself right now. You are literally ready to dive into the topic and let's get going. So one of the things we actually love to talk about here on the Hub Heroes is mindsets, right? Like, if you listen to a lot of our episodes, almost always one of the first questions I'm going to ask, whether we're talking about a tool, a tactic, a specific hub, a strategy, I always usually start by asking, what are the. What is the mindset or different mindsets somebody needs to have in order to do X, Y or Z effectively? Because you can have all these tools and frameworks and tactics, right? You can have all of these different best practices at your fingertips. But if you don't go into your work with the right mindset, you are setting yourself up for failure, if not just at the very least, stunted success. So we're actually going to go super meta today. We're not going to be picking apart a single piece of the HubSpot or inbound ecosystem. We are going to be talking about the story of the inbound methodology overall, what it is, really what we should be thinking about it today. Again, that mindset piece of it, right? What's changed and what has stood the test of time? So, like I said, let's get excited. Grab your snack in a backpack, George, for us. I love when you say it. It makes me so excited.

Oh, yeah. I'm ready to impact the human of inbound. Yeah, there it is.

There it is. All right, so, Mark, I want to ask you to take us back. When the inbound methodology was first being developed, what were some of the challenges that you were facing at the time when you were trying to bring it together and refine it and bring it to the world for the first time?

So. So I did not create the original inbound meth. That was Mike Volpe, Brian Dharmesh, I'm sure a lot of people. The original methodology, George, you know what it is?

Oh, I think.

Let's hear it.

But. But let's. But go ahead and tell me just in case. I don't want to be wrong on it.

No, no, no. I want you to test. It's three parts. The original one was three parts.

Oh, so it's attract, engage and delight or something? No, Capture, converse, attract, convert, clothes. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Get found.

Maybe I didn't Know that. Yeah.

Is get found, convert, analyze.

Yep. Nope, I did not know that. That was pre. That was pre2012. That's.

Yeah.

Whoa.

Yep.

See Mark, you set me up for failure.

You know, I knew it pretty well because that's the one I followed and studied when I was a customer. And that's what HubSpot did early days, right. HubSpot between 20067 when it was founded to in 2012 when we updated, updated it to version two. It was about getting found on the Internet, converting your website traffic using landing pages, forms, thank you pages into leads and analyzing those results. It was very top of funnel to a little bit middle of the funnel type of buying experience. And those are the tools. And then what happened is we started to realize that HubSpot was going to be more than that. We're going to build products that were more than that. We wanted to paint a bigger story, a bigger picture and be more aspirational. Really unpack the entire journey that someone takes and the bigger jobs to be done. The key with the methodology and any of these kind of methodologies, if you will, it's all about like what job are you trying to help your customers do? And those are those verbs. So then we updated it across, you know, the entire company. Remember there was like so many different like wiki pages about this conversations one to ones, group conversations. And it became four parts. Attract, convert, close, delight. And some of this was extremely like out there because you know, HubSpot was just starting to build their stronger middle of the funnel email marketing lead. Nurturing tools really didn't have too much sales stuff yet. Didn't really have too much on the delight side at all. You know, there's still just the marketing hub at that time. But we knew in you know, three years, five years, eventually like 10 years, it was going to be a complete, complete platform that had all of this. So we wanted to warm up the audience, warm up the the story if you will, and start to teach people these things before they could Maybe even use HubSpot to do it. Because the key with another, the key to a good methodology as well, and I'll pause after this is it should be ultimately agnostic of your product or platform. You could use anything to do the email methodology. Email marketing methodology could use, you know, 20 different point solutions if you want. But you know, we of course positioned in a way that made HubSpot be kind of like the best solution to pick.

Yeah, I love this so much. And Liz, before you another question here. A. I just Want everybody to understand that. I'm actually really excited right now because I learned something new about HubSpot and Inbound that I didn't know previous to this interview. So it's worth the money spent already just to realize there was a methodology before the methodology. Also, I do want to let the listeners know because Mark, he. He. He dropped a knowledge bomb that everybody needs to kind of pay attention to. We'll make sure that it's in the show notes. But he mentioned jobs to be done. And I just want everybody to know that that ties back to Clayton M. Christensen and. And there's a book Competing against Luck that if you haven't downloaded it, if you haven't read it, however you done, if you're a marketer, salesperson, business owner, anybody, and you just want to kind of open your brain a little bit, getting that to the. The cranium will help you immensely. Okay.

No, I love that. George, you and I have been plotting and so excited about this conversation. Jump in at any time. Yes, anytime.

Okay, I will, I will, I promise.

So then let's take us to where you came in with that inbound methodology, Mark, when you were there through that refinement process, because you did watch it evolve significantly. Well, it's interesting were talking about this as we were preparing for this episode, how much the inbound methodology has both evolved, but also in many ways stood the test of time. In many ways, like there are core fundamental principles that have remained the same. But I want to first talk about what are some of the most significant changes that you were a part of or observed that you feel people need to keep in mind in terms of how the inbound methodology has evolved?

Well, yeah, let's first talk about why do we create it? I mean, why do we update it? I know why. I was a big advocate of updating it because it is that thing which is now attracting Gaugelite. It's on its third version, by the way, and that was one of the last big things I did before I left. It is a belief tool, a tool to help you believe in something. It is a change management tool, and it is an education tool. So, you know, if you think about what your business might need in order to change people's minds and hearts and belief system, you might want to create something like that. And then to actually get them to believe in it and then remember it, but then understand it and then master it, you need to help them change. And then depending on how much they need to change, will dictate then how much education they might need in order to change. And you can think of that as almost a two by two. You have education on one axis and then change on the other one. And then you start to think through this a little more deeper and it's like, wait a minute. This was intentionally done. And to align how HubSpot talked about these things from a marketing standpoint, a sales standpoint, a customer success standpoint, implementation standpoint, product standpoint. That was the real intention of this update and of using the methodology. And then of course, it was the underpinning, the Bedrock foundation of HubSpot Academy. Because you would teach people the way it's designed is you would teach people the why, how and what of the jobs that we're recommending you do the job of in version 2 of it, the job of attracting, converting, closing and delighting. Why would you do that? Well, here are the outcomes you're trying to get to. How do you do that? Here are the different tools and other things you use to do that. And here's what it looks like. Or here. What are the exact specific tools and features in HubSpot you need to use to actually accomplish the how to get to the why. So this was very crafted with a lot of intention and foresight, if you will in mind.

Yeah. When you take a look back, what were some of the big catalyst moments, either internally or externally, that led to some of the more significant changes over time?

The acquisition of Performable. The acquisition of performable in 2011. June 2011. Because that was when HubSpot rebuilt its entire product team. Engineering team. Thank you, David Cancel and Lias Torres. Probably the biggest moment in HubSpot's history. Definitely. I mean, without that, I don't know. I don't know what would have happened. Brian, that. Brian says that. That's a direct quote from Brian Halligan. You know, he said that, he said that many times. So that then led us to actually build a product that wasn't just a marketing product. But, you know, we were building a product that put the customer at the center of that product. We built it with customers and led us to discover that the next product, the next s curve of HubSpot is going to be on the sales side. Then it's going to be a CRM and then it's going to be, you know, service hub, you know, the delight product, if you will, then it's going to be eventually operations. Right. Like it laid the groundwork in framework. So like I remember going to David Cancel's desks many times and know he was actually the one that's like, yeah, we should use Delight because that comes from Seth Godin. That's how Delight was introduced. Because Seth Godin talked about it a lot and I. And we were trying to figure a word for that last phase of it and yeah, there you go.

I'm nerding out so much right now. I just gotta let everybody know, Hey, I, I just learned a second thing that I didn't know about the journey of like the Academy and that, that the acquisition was that much of like a power piece. But then also like to hear you talk about Delight and Seth Godin and then back to like, him being a speaker at Inbound. But also the, the fact that Mark used Customer being the center of it and the fact that in 1012 the messaging was don't call customer, call human. And that's what freaking attracted me and like drew me into leaf that you talked about earlier, which then led me to the education. I need a man.

I was about to ask you a question, George.

Okay. Devin. Devin. What about Devin is Dev. I got Devin. I can't believe your mind's not exploding right now. Well, you work at Hubs for mine. You probably have like the whole Bible.

Well, my, my take on it As a current HubSpotter is just listening to how things worked before versus how they work now. Now that we're such a much larger organization. And the equivalent of Mark's position now has grown, his prior position has grown so much more in scope and where Mark. I don't know if you know this, but HubSpot Academy is now a part of a larger team called Community Led Growth. And so all of our community initiatives fall under one umbrella, including HubSpot Academy as well as the partner program. I work in the partner program and a lot of the things that I do, I get to work a lot alongside of Academy professors and stuff. And just hearing how much easier things are would have been to change then because of the lower headcount and the fewer people and the lower number. The degrees of separation between like myself and the vp, like the, the person, the current vp, Lori, when she interviewed me, I believe she had just gotten promoted to director and now she's a vp. And I've only been there for two years. And that just goes to show how explosive the growth has been both with HubSpot internally as well as the product. So I'm, I am enjoying hearing how the sausage was made. Like back when I was still a customer. It was pretty cool.

Yeah. Worked together. She was, she was Just a manager when I was there and I think she became a director and whatnot. So she's been there for like coming up on seven, eight years. Gotta be at least amazing. She's great. She's great.

One thing I want to point.

No, no, Devin. One, one fun you could do. I'm sure the wiki still exists. You could go back and look in the wiki and you'll see all of this documented on the wiki. Unless they archived it. I mean this is 12, 14 years ago, but I bet you could do that right now and, and see screenshots of exactly what I'm talking about.

By the way, let me sit there. The day that I get access to the wiki is probably the day that I feel like I'm in heaven because I, I as a non hubspotter cannot have access to that. But I keep hearing about this internal and I'm like, oh, just, just, just give me a camera in like four hours. Just like, I just want someone so much.

Well, I can't talk too much about what's in the wiki, but I can tell you that it's going to take a heck of a lot longer in four hours, buddy.

Yeah, I mean Dharmesh is, you know, genius. That's, that's huge part of the culture of HubSpot, right? And that's where a lot of these kind of conversations, I'm sure they still happen today and they're like, it's, it's so important, right? Because it's especially now that HubSpot is a very distributed, hybrid remote type company. You know, you have to have that, that, that commute the culture of like communication established. Right? And I think that's where a lot of companies, not to deviate, just are missing the mark so bad when they come to like how they build their culture and company because they don't think enough about and deliberate and intentional communication.

There's one thing I want to point out before we move on here that you said, Devin, that I found really profound. And I, and I, and I think it's worth noting HubSpot Academy is considered a community initiative when it could be considered more of a broadcasted content initiative. And I think that just, it's an observation that I think is worth noting for all of us. But with that in mind, Devin and George, I would actually love to hear from both of you since, you know, we've been kicking around the HubSpot block for a little while. You have also watched the inbound methodology evolve. What has surprised you about it. What were some of the biggest. Aha. Moments. What were some of the biggest moments of. I'm not sure about this. Wait a minute. Okay, I'm down. Like, take me through your own journey with inbound.

Well, I can tell you, I literally, like, two days ago, just taught a workshop on inbound marketing for the local Minority Business Assistance Center. And as I had gotten to the flywheel portion of it, I was thinking, it's like, how much it's changed since the. The original funnel with the four steps, and now we're looking at three steps. And as I'm walking through this visual of the flywheel of strangers to prospects to customers to evangelists, and the addition of delight as an equally important step. At first, when. When Brian first unveiled the flywheel at Inbound, I was. I was skeptical because I couldn't get my head around it. And then he's talking about this contest where whoever has. Whoever shows the best flywheel for their business will win VIP tickets inbound. And I, I, at first, I just couldn't wrap my head around it. I couldn't get it. But eventually I did. But I didn't really think about how much I loved it and how much it made sense until two days ago when I was. When I was teaching it again. Because these were like. These were very. This was a very, very novice group, like, small business owners who are, like, in the creating flyers for their company phase of marketing. And so, like, super green. And just that visual made my life so much easier, and it was so much easier for them to digest. When I'm explaining the concepts of force and friction in your flywheel and explaining why delight is. Is just as important as attract and engage and how you're. The idea is that you want to feed people into your sales pipeline by using. By using. Using your evangelists and just. Just the flywheel visual. The. The latest incarnation of the inbound methodology. I've always been a fan, but explaining it to people and them being able to wrap their heads around it the first time and understand the importance of creating evangelists for your brand and how before, when it was a funnel, people just fall out the bottom, it was just. It made life so much easier. And I see them ramping up even faster than I did using the flywheel method.

Yeah. So, Devin, I'm so glad that you brought up the flywheel, because then I don't have to be the guy to bring up the flywheel, because when the flywheel showed up on the scene, I got a little pissed.

I had some.

I Got a little frustrated feeling. I got a little angry with the idea of the flywheel. Yeah, I'll throw a bunch of words, whatever. People can know that. I was aggressively aggravated with the fact that a flywheel showed up on the scene because I had come to know like, and trust my best friend the inbound methodology. And what I mean by that is when you think about the original graphic, that was really out there, yes, it was about attract, convert, clothes and delight. But there were other elements that had presented itself. Like, you had a whole center section that talked about strangers, visitors, leads, customers, promoters. And then you even had a bottom section that talked about, hey, in Attract, it's about blog, it's about social, it's about keywords, it's about pages. In convert, it's about call to actions and landing pages and forms and contacts. When you're talking about close, it's about email and workflows and lead scoring and CRM integrations back in the day at that time. And Delight, it even had a list of things for delight. And it was very easy to understand, it was very easy to teach, it was very easy to tie it back to the tool that you are trying to train people on. And then the flywheel came out and I was like, where's clothes? Where did clothes go? Clothes got hidden. Clothes just got abandoned. He got left out on the side of the road. Clothes is no longer part of the gang now it's just a tract and cage and delight. Wait, what happened? The words are changing. Somebody's messing with my day. Somebody's messing with my life. And like, so all of a sudden I had to take like years of teaching and deep dives of this thing and be like, now you must unlearn pretty much what you have learned and teach something different in a way than you had taught it. Anyway, so now, now let's. Let's fast forward. I love the flywheel now. Yes, moral of the story. I love the flywheel. And by the way, I love the flywheel more now, as of Devin said two days ago, I'll say as of two weeks ago, because by the way, listeners, if you haven't gone and listened to where Max dove into the physics of inbound or inbound physics, and, and we, and we literally started to like pull the flywheel apart. And I had this moment in my brain where I even correlated like five to six books for different stages of the flywheel. You have to go back and listen to it because if you're on the fence, funnel lover, flywheel hater, go listen To Inbound Physics. Give it a shot anyway. Yeah, no, just give it a shot.

I couldn't help but, like, what do they call it in Light, in Law and Order? It's an excited utterance while you were talking. Because, like, it. I have felt like when I saw the Flywheel for the first time, because I was at Inbound that year, and I was so excited. Brian Halligan's up on Flywheel.

You have to go back and listen to it, because if you're on the fence, funnel lover, flywheel hater. Go listen to inbound physics. Give it a shot anyway. Yeah, no, just give it a shot.

I couldn't help but, like, what do they call it in Light, in Law and Order? It's an excited utterance while you were talking, because, like, I have felt like when I saw the Flywheel for the first time, because I was at Inbound that year, and I was so excited. Brian Halligan's up on stage, and then he, like, whips off the thing, and then it starts sparkling around the edges. I'm like, what is happening? What is happening right now? Because I'm like, I love HubSpot because they innovate. And then they came along, and they're like, here. We innovated. And initially I was like, thanks. I hate it. I don't like this. When I said innovation, this is not what I meant. Now I have to actually be innovative, too, and think about things differently. And I think. I think this is something and why we wanted to have this conversation today. And I want to start pivoting to what has stayed the same, because there are certain elements of this conversation where it's like, many of us have been close followers of HubSpot and Inbound for many, many years. My journey started in 2014, not as OG as George and Devin here, but when I think about how much has changed, I also think about how much has, in many ways, stayed the same. So I'd like to take us down that path a little bit to understand. Mark, what are some of the things that you have observed that even as. Even if maybe we gave it new language, even if we gave it new structure, even if things got modified, adapted, shifted, moved around? What are some of the core underpinnings that all Inbound practitioners need to realize that haven't changed the things that should remain evergreen, timeless?

Well, I think the ethos of Inbound and the HubSpot brand, just like. I mean, so you. You know, you have. You have the Constitution of United States of America. Those things in the Constitution don't change often, right? I mean, when was the last time something changed in the Constitution? A few decades ago. Figured that out quickly. Google's it.

We literally were talking before you came on, Mark, about how this is national treasure and how we were going to ask if you could help us steal the unbound version of the Declaration of Independence. We'll take that part of the conversation offline, but please continue.

I mean, it's the ethos, right? Like, the two ages stand out to me, are human and helpful, and then holistic is a third of them. We talked a lot about it. HubSpot, human, helpful, holistic. But then you have heart. I mean, heart. There was. There was a decent change that happened right when I was leaving. We changed. We changed the E. The. The actual what? E. What the word was for E. But, you know, humble, empathetic, adaptable, remarkable, transparent. I mean, I still remember that, right? I mean, that's like, ingrained into my brain. So again, you talk about culture. You talk about being very intentional, purposeful with how you design something. That's why the culture code that Dharmesh created with help of the whole company is such an important artifact for HubSpot. You can almost call that, maybe that is the Declaration of Independence. Then you have, like, the customer code that came out, I don't know, six, seven years ago. Right. And how those were built and what they say and, like, how every detail word matters. It's. It's. It's that thoughtfulness that a lot of companies, quite frankly, just don't put into their brand, into who they are, which is the ethos and then the archetype of the brand. I remember when Grow Better was coming out and there was a lot of debate around, like, the Grow Better term, and I wasn't a huge fan of Grow Better initially, that tagline and, like, what. What HubSpot now kind of stood for. And that's another. That's a tremendous wiki page to look up, by the way, Devin. And, you know, it's grown on me, for sure. I like it. You know, dang it, I like it. So anyway, yeah, so to answer the question, it's ethos, right? What's that?

Let's dig into that for a moment. You had a bit of a kind of an moment about Grow Better. Can you tell me what shifted your mindset around that? Because I remember when that came out, and it didn't have, like. It wasn't flywheel in terms of its impact of cascading ripples in conversation, but I remember there were a Lot of people were like, I love it. Grow better. I get it. And others were like, huh? I don't. I don't get it. So can you take us through that journey there briefly of, like, what brought you around to grow better?

Well, I think with. With anything, like, kind of like that, you need. You need a steak, not just the sizzle. So you need tangible examples of how to bring it to life. And that's what. That's what you do. That's what a good brand does, right? You bring. You bring. You bring it to life from stories. It's easy to say stuff, right? Saying something is super easy, but to actually mean it and show it and do that for, like, years, just like. Like, just do it with Nike, right? Like, if they were ever to change, just do it and have a new tagline, imagine, like, how much time it would take to get people to then understand it. Because you can say it, it's easy. But to get people to actually believe in it, not so much.

George, before I go into my next question, I know you had a few on the back burner that you definitely wanted to pitch over to Mark. What questions have you got? I see you pacing, and I'm trying to do a better job of putting you in.

Yeah.

Putting you in.

No, no, yeah. It's. It's just interesting to me because as a guy who really tries to pay attention to patterns, I have heard Mark say the word belief multiple times during this podcast. And. And what I hope the listeners or the viewers are doing is they're paying attention to the patterns. They're also just quickly writing down, like, things like archetype and culture, code and methodology, and. And they're thinking about how many times. Also, Marcus said, like, it's very in depth and thought out, and, like, it's a plan, because once you put that plan into place, it's. It's what drives the belief of the people that will be attracted to the brand, to the product, to the service, to the. To whatever the thing is. And sometimes I think there are a lot of organizations out there that sell the sizzle, and they don't even have nothing but a hot dog. And it's like, they don't have the steak. Right? They don't have. But. But. But because it can be words and because we can say it, then let's throw it out there. And if we sell a piece of beep, then we sell a piece of beep. And. And. And there's just something that, even though we're going through the national treasure escapade, of inbound and the methodology. There are some fundamentals I have heard Mark say the word belief multiple mentally important business rooted being a great business things that are popping up in this podcast episode. So I just hope the listeners and the viewers are catching that the importance of what's happening here.

Devin, for you, what are some of.

The parts of the inbound times during this podcast and and what I hope.

The listeners methodology that have really stood the test of time for you attract.

That I spent more time talking or.

The viewers are doing is they're paying attention to the patterns. They're also just quickly writing down like things like archetype and culture code and methodology and and they're thinking about how many times also about a track than.

Any other part a couple days ago because the thing that's always resonated with me with the inbound methodology is not just giving people a place to search for solutions to problems they have, but an opportunity to find out about problems that they didn't even realize they had. And that I think is what separates good from great when it comes to the attract phase is helping people. And the thing is is that what you're tracking with them with may not even align 100% with your final product. And that's huge. Like this ebook that I wrote probably like six, seven years ago now, it was about marketing to millennials for auto repair shops and it was mostly about how to use social media and how to engage this these digital natives using a medium that most of these people only rely on their kids or grandkids to tell them about. And even though wasn't aligned with our core product offering, it was, you know, our core product offering adjacent, which is one of the value proposals of our product, was that it's a digital native product that your customers will appreciate. It was getting them in that, you know, digital mindset and here's who's using it and here's how to reach them. And it was wildly successful because it resonated with the our, our target audience. And I never would have thought to do that had I not gone through the academy trainings.

One of the things that's always struck me about Inbound and quite frankly HubSpot overall, I think, George, in a way this is my version of the thing that you always talk about that captured your attention for you. It was like don't call me a customer. I'm a human. It wasn't necessarily something that HubSpot explicitly communicated to me, but something that I've noticed in every single iteration, every Single change, every single initiative, whether we're talking about the methodology, the culture code, the customer code, funnel to Flywheel, all of those different things. Whether I agreed with the changes or not. The thing. There are two things that have always struck me, and it's always the thing that's gotten me in what I call my inner cupcake. That's what I call my gut. In order to connect with my gut, I've had to name it after a baked good. This is where we are.

Oh, there you go.

Yeah, you gotta do it, gotta do it. But the thing that always got me right in the inner cupcake was everything is done because there is such a care in terms of getting it right. With an understanding that things have to change and things evolve. I don't know how to describe it any other way. It's like, who. Whomever the stewards are, and Mark, you were for a time one of those stewards. The stewards of Inbound clearly have a reverence. They give a damn. They know that this is really important work that's being done. And so I think sometimes people can goof on HubSpot and be like, oh, you're just. Just drinking the core, like the Kool Aid and whatever. I'm like, no, this is fundamentally talking about how we solve problems for each other as human beings. That's literally all that we're talking about here. And so I think, you know, this is something we emphasize a lot on our show. And when I think about some of the mindsets I really want people to keep in mind with the inbound methodology going out of this episode. And that is a hint to you all. You need to start thinking about what mindsets you are going to give me as your answer. Hint. Warning, warning. One of the ones that comes to my mind initially is this idea of solve real problems, not imagined ones. Like, that's always been the big thing for me. Like, that's the thing. Even when I was like, the Flywheel. Are you bleeping kidding me right now? Are you bleeping kidding me? What is happening here? I had a funnel, I had a system. I have blogs. I now have to go update. I have to go write a what is Flywheel Blog? And I don't even understand it. But even then, even I was sitting there like, Brian, do you know how much work you've just created for me? Because I, at the time, I was the editor in chief at Impact, which was a. Which is a HubSpot elite agency. And I was just sitting there like, are you effing Kidding me. But even then I sat there and I was like, the man isn't wrong. The man is not wrong. Like, there were problems where if we were just going to sit there with a stand stagnated, inbound methodology, we were not going to see the bigger picture of what it is that we were talking about and what needed to change and what needed to shift.

George not only even the bigger picture, I agree with the bigger picture, but what it did a really great job of doing, and it's something that I love, is it did sort of simplify the complex, right? Because you already had a large mass of people that were adopting the inbound methodology. But we may have reached a level where if we stayed at that point, we couldn't bring other folks into the ecosystem. And here's the thing that I want to tie all of these changes. Don't call me a customer, call me a human. You know, one plus one equals three, grow better. Like all of the words that came around and along the journey. Because again, this, this episode is about the methodology, right? The beginning of attract, convert, close, delight. What does it look like then? What does it look like now? What should we be paying attention to? You know, mindset sets, whatever. One thing that hit me in this episode, it was about a movement. And the methodology was actually the vehicle to enable the movement. And it was a movement of doing business in a better way. It was a movement of being able to even do business in a digital space. It was a movement of the little guy can win too, right? And if you think about how important those things are, this movement mentality, getting a room full of people excited about a cause, a belief, as Mark said, in something, man, we all marched real good. We're still marching real good around this methodology that, yes, it's changed over time, but it's still about, ladies and gentlemen, the humans. It's still about creating a great customer experience. It's still about creating content that adds value and attracts people into your ecosystem. And because you've bought into being a happy, helpful, holistic, all the H's with heart human. And I just love the fact that this is the movement that we've been part of.

I love that. Devin, why don't you kick us off here? What are some of the things that you believe modern or anybody listening right now? Anybody who is an inbound practitioner? And once again, listeners, when I say inbound practitioner, I'm using that language specifically because you could be a marketer, you could be a content manager, you could be in a sales seat, you could be in a service seat. You could be on the ops team, you could be a business owner, you could be a business leader. That's kind of what the whole flywheel is about, right? Like, we're all part of. We're all in this together like a family. Right? So we are all inbound practitioners in our own specific way. So, Devin, I'd love to hear from you. What are some of the. What are the two to three things you think people should keep in mind going forward when they think. Think about the inbound methodology when they're trying to infuse that into their practices, use it as the cornerstone of their strategy.

Well, I think Mark hit it right on the head towards the top of the recording. Here is it. It boils down to value. And you need to add value in every interaction and every step of the way, even if it doesn't end or directly continue, contribute to your bottom line. That's. That's not what this is about. And to echo George's point, at the end of the day, we're just people helping people. And if that isn't your mindset going into this, if. If you have that predatory. You have money, there's a dollar sign on your head. I'm gonna go get it, you know, merch, walk through the streets and all that stuff, then. Then this isn't for you. Because that's not what this is about. Eventually people are going to see through it. They're going to see that everything that you're doing has ulterior motives. And just having that transparency, it's like, yeah, of course I'm here to sell you something and work for a company, but at the end of the day, let's just talk. Let's find out what you got going on. And it's a good fit. Great. Like, I was telling. I was telling the class about HubSpot Academy towards the end of the class, and I'm saying, yeah, you learn this, you learn that. There's all these different courses, and they're fantastic. And, oh, by the way, they're free. And they said, okay, so what's the catch? And it's like, what do you mean, what's the catch? It's like, well, it can't just be for free. There's got to be some sort of catch. I'm like, all right, well, the catch is this. The catch is that I'm going to help you so much. The catch is that I'm going to work with you and help you become such a better human that when it comes Time for you to implement everything thing that I've taught you. You're going to consider me to be the person for your solution. And it's like that. That's the catch. And at the end of the class, I told him, it's like, Yeah, I charge $132 an hour for even a conversation, but if you're a member of this class, hit me up on LinkedIn, we can talk for an hour for free. And. And then they were like, oh, great. And I was like, okay. But nobody asked me what the catch was. Because the thing is, is that while I am going to help you, I am going to talk you through this. The what I'm also going to be doing is asking probing questions, seeing if there's an opportunity for a good fit for what my consulting company offers you. See, like whether or not there's going to be something that I can help you with that you're going to pay me for, or even if you can afford to pay me, but at the end of the day, for the interaction, you're going to be better off. You're going to be in a better position or that much closer to solving your problems. And even if I'm not the one to solve your problems, you'll at least be better positioned to have an educated conversation with someone who is in a position to solve your problems. So I'm going into it with the primary goal of helping you, but with the secondary goal of hopefully we can work together and we can help each other. But that, to me is one of the cornerstones of the inbound methodology is at the end of the day, we're just people helping people. And I, I, I want you, whether you give me money or not, you to be better off now than you were before you met me.

My gosh, I'm curious to know. Version four, it's almost six years. 2006-2012-2012-2018. It's like this year or next year. Dharmesh was kind of dropping hints at some stuff last year on stage. I'm not sure if any of you picked that up. I mean, I just, I've worked with Dharmesh for a long time, so I kind of know his process to thinking out loud, if you will. It could be this year, it could be next year, but I would, I'd be shocked if it's not within the next two years that there's a new version of that that comes out.

Okay, I'm ready to update some slide decks. Let me know where I need to be.

Got a Little bit scared and a little bit excited at the same time, to be honest with you. But, But, Liz, I want to, I want to piggyback on the question that you asked Devin. Think what's interesting that has happened, and the fact that I'm going to say this about a SaaS software, it kind of blows my mind. But I love HubSpot. Like, I fundamentally love HubSpot. I love my wife, I love my kids. I love, you know, people in the academy that are grinding it out. I love the developers that are in the back room making the code work. But, but if I just look at, like, you know, the software itself, like, I love HubSpot, and I have to break down like a little bit of why that is. You know, they did what Devin said and they created content for free that allowed people to make them themselves, better humans, you know, education for free, that allowed them to elevate their own lives to the point where you start to trust that education, you start to trust that software. They build up a massive amount of reciprocity based off of that trust. And because there's so much of an overflow of reciprocity, it turns into love. Now, the reason that I'm bringing this up is because if you think about success leaves clues and you understand that this conversation all started with the methodology. Does your organization have a methodology? Does it have the things that we've talked about today? Is it fundamentally using even this methodology to build trust, to build reciprocity? Do you have a product, a service, or are you a human? That people fundamentally can't necessarily put their finger on it, but they go, man, I love that thing. Because that's where we should be trying to get to as, as a organization. People love us. People love us. Here's the other thing, too, is that I know that we talked about a second goal. Well, hopefully they'll buy our software. The sneaking suspicion that there was a healthy layer of zero expectations that it was, we're gonna do this and we hope, but we don't expect. And ladies and gentlemen, it is a freeing thing when you can actually go at something that can be powerful and mighty and have zero expectations of what it's going to do and just sit there and be excited about seeing it grow into its full potential.

I mean, I agree with that. The, the, the thing that I'd say that you should do is you should at least set goals. Though expectations and goals can be the same, they can be different. I just feel like, you know, doing something without having a why behind it and not Everything has to be measured. There should be an explicit reason for it to be done. And your expectations might be, might be like, you know, I don't think this is going to work. I have no expectations. So I don't, you know, who knows? But like, you still have to have some type of barometer, I think, because that's how you learn. It's how you kind of close the loop.

Mark, let me turn it over to you for the same question. And I think this might be a good place for us to land today's conversation because, and I'm saying this out loud to check myself mostly because, Mark, I will literally just sit here and ask you questions until you're like, I have a family. At some point I need to go eat food, but I do need to.

Jump pretty soon, actually, believe it or not. Sorry. Exactly.

When we think about you, what you think are the one to two things someone should keep in mind as they're, as they're going through their inbound journey right now, the way they should be thinking about the inbound methodology, no matter what their role is. What are those one or two things you would encourage them to keep in mind?

It's all contextual to your business or to your organization. Right. Non profits can use this for profits can use it. B2B, B2C. What people miss is the most important things are like, who are you serving or trying to serve? Why are you serving those people? What are you serving them with? And then the how, the how is it the methodology? The how is like, fine, but like, you have to think about those things. And then it's like, well, how much does a thing I sell cost? What is the market? What are the Personas? What's the account types? If it's B2B, we're in the stage of my company lifecycle, am I? What is the skill set of the people at my company? What's my skillset? So I think one of the biggest things, number one, is context. Number one is context. And number two, when it comes to the inbound methodology, it's probably someone said it, I'm sure when we were talking today. It's like the beginner's mindset, you know, having the student and teacher mindset constantly. Right. So I'd say those two things are critically important because marketing as you know, your go to markets, marketing go to market, inbound is now more of a go to market methodology isn't slowing down because the world is not slowing down. I would argue the world's speeding up. There's more Data being created year over year, and that is never going to stop from what the trends look like. One thing that is going to slow down, ironically, and this is why I'm such a big believer in people first now type of go to market ideas, is human population growth in about 70 years is predicted to flatline, if not start to decelerate.

Whoa, really?

Absolutely.

Mic drop, mic drop, end of episode.

I knew we were going to get real profound here on this episode, but now we're talking about human population growth. Please go on.

Pretty soon, actually. It's crazy. I have another. I have one more thing today on a Friday to do. But the. If you look at, like, data, right? What's data? It's content, it's algorithms. It's literally just like the digital footprints fingerprints of all of us, right? There's so many types of. The data is insane, right? And now it's being measured in zettabytes. Don't you know how many zeros that is in terms of global data created each year? It's hockey sticking. And that's. That's, you know, that's. That's one piece of the equation. The other thing that's not hockey sticking, that actually is going to plateau and probably decelerate, kind of go down is. Is people. So how are you going to cut through all that noise if data just keeps getting more and more created? It's more noisy and it's like, oh, my God. You kind of ignore the data to some degree. If you, you know, not ignore it, but like, you, you, you, you. You kind of. You kind of get that in your mind and you say, wait a minute. What I need to focus on are building relationships, relationships with people, because that ultimately is the thing that's gonna have the highest signal to noise, maybe.

Incredible. Well, on that note, gentlemen, Mark, thank you so much for joining us today. This has been an outstanding and illuminating episode, and I hope our listeners feel the same. And other than that, guys, have a great weekend. And we'll talk to y' all next week on the next episode of Hub Heroes.

And between now and then, make sure you're connecting with the humans. 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. 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.