100th Episode: HubSpot Breeze AI + Co-Pilot Mindsets, Strategies, + Tactics
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.
Intro: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.
Liz Moorhead:Well, gentlemen.
Max Cohen:Well.
Liz Moorhead:We have some business to attend to before we get into today's topic today.
George B. Thomas:Uh-oh. What's that?
Liz Moorhead:No. Get excited, guys. Guess what today?
George B. Thomas:Tell me about it. What's happening?
Liz Moorhead:Guess it is.
George B. Thomas:Guess it is. Oh, I know what this is.
Liz Moorhead:This is our hundredth episode of hub heroes.
Max Cohen:That's insane.
Liz Moorhead:One hundo. Yeah. That's in the living room in our black studio audience. But, George, I gotta ask you. Since this was Hub Heroes was your baby, your brain baby.
Liz Moorhead:We're we're a hundred episodes into this. How do you feel about that, bud?
George B. Thomas:First of all, I can't believe it. It I don't know where the time went. Second of all, they grow up so fast. I I mean, just dang gone. You know, I when I started, this podcast, I didn't really ever plan on stopping, so I knew we'd get here at some point.
George B. Thomas:But, man, there's just we've done so much. We've talked to so many people. So I guess to answer your question, proud papa moment. Proud papa of the baby hub heroes. Yeah.
George B. Thomas:Yeah.
Liz Moorhead:Max, what's your favorite memory from these past hundred episodes or favorite memories? I know there are so many to choose from.
George B. Thomas:I think it was the egg episode. I think he really That was
Liz Moorhead:the man. Of the egg episode. Yeah.
Max Cohen:The egg episode was crazy. When Max
Liz Moorhead:and I couldn't land the plane and figure out how to end the podcast.
George B. Thomas:Yeah. That was great. Maybe the snacks episode. That was a good one.
Liz Moorhead:Oh, the drumming content episode, Max, was tight.
Max Cohen:Unreal. I don't know. I just remember well, I think, honestly, it was this is gonna sound cheesy. Liz, it was the moment you hopped on, and, like, it felt real. Hold on.
Max Cohen:But that very first episode that we did, where it wasn't just me, Devon, and George screaming at each other. And, like, you you you came in and, like, there was an outline. There was a there was a discussion. It was the cats were very herded. Like
George B. Thomas:Yes. Yes.
Max Cohen:We were. I remember I I don't I think I definitely either sent the text or the Slack or whatever, and I was like, this feels way different now. You know what I mean? In, like, the best way. Oh.
Max Cohen:So it was probably moment. Yeah. It felt way more professional at that point. You know? Mhmm.
Max Cohen:You know, that was that was cool. See, I was that. And I think also it's just, like, George, I just remember you, me, and Devin, like, you know, sending LinkedIn messages to each other, like, initially. And we were just like, this this is it. This is it.
Max Cohen:This is gonna be sick. Let's let's make it happen. And then just that very first time I heard, like, the in a world, like and, you know, you had that thing done and you In a world. You did the you did the superhero, like, you know, cartoons and everything. It's just, like, seeing it all come together has been, like, really cool.
Liz Moorhead:I gotta say one of my favorite memories though, and it is a recent one, is when I gotta be honest. It was last week's episode when we unleashed Chad, when we unleashed the the the giga nerd Chad. And just, like, watching George and Max just, like, lose their minds. The ability to we like, the ability now we have to, like, go to a different descending level of nerd when it comes to HubSpot. Like, that
George B. Thomas:so exciting.
Liz Moorhead:Really excited me. Like, that was really fun to me. Because now I get to ask these open ended questions. I'm like, I have no idea where we're gonna go. I don't know where this crazy train is going to end up.
Liz Moorhead:I know there will be a creepy glowing printer in
George B. Thomas:the background changing
Liz Moorhead:colors depending on
Chad Hohn:its mood. Yeah.
Liz Moorhead:But, otherwise, yeah, it's depending on its mood. Yeah. But, otherwise, yeah, it's just it's so great. Especially after, you know, if you join us in the community for the live recordings, Chad is not new to you. Chad is not new because some of my favorite memories are, yes, it's it's the OG crew, but, like, Chad just, like, dropping knowledge bombs in the in the channel.
Liz Moorhead:Just, like, my guy. It's just so great to have you here.
George B. Thomas:Yeah. Yeah. To see it's good to be here. And not just your text across a a black screen is beautiful.
Liz Moorhead:I love that. Yeah. George, what are your favorite memories?
George B. Thomas:Oh, yeah. There's so many. Gosh. Like, I I I don't even I my brain goes immediately, like, Kyle Jepsen, Jack Cooper Smith.
Liz Moorhead:Our guest, and then
George B. Thomas:we'll never do that. Yeah. Like and so I could keep listening. I'm like, but the guests that have come along the way and joined us have made for some pretty magical moments. Yeah.
George B. Thomas:Yeah. I I would say the guests.
Liz Moorhead:Yeah. Chad, what are you hoping for the next hundred?
Chad Hohn:For the next hundred. You know, I mean, just to continue, not more of the the same, but more of the same idea, more of the same concept. Right? Being able to, you know, just chat about things that are relevant for the day for where HubSpot is right now, where we'd like to see it go, you know, and where it's come from too. Because, like, it's you know, you can't know where you're going unless you know where you've been.
Chad Hohn:And I think a lot of people coming into HubSpot, run into, like, a limitation with it in some capacity, and they're like,
George B. Thomas:so frustrating. You know?
Chad Hohn:But, like, man, just think about where you came. And if you know where you came and how short of a period of time that it did that, you know that the future could be bright. But if you don't have that context, I think, you know, that's a little little frustrating. And I think, you know, coming into this, like, you know, having memories and all that, I like it. My memories are, yes, from the audience standpoint, but, man, I remember one time when you guys were talking about marketing, like, digital marketing and people sending text messages to your phone unconsensually, and Devin, like, just about lost his stuff, man.
Chad Hohn:Like, that would do.
George B. Thomas:That hasn't been happening at all during, you know, voting time.
Chad Hohn:I haven't been Right. Exactly. Random. Yes.
Liz Moorhead:I voted early.
Max Cohen:Kamala will be hitting me up like crazy. Oh my god.
George B. Thomas:We're like besties. At least that's what my phone would say, but my god.
Liz Moorhead:I think some of my favorite memories are George, I gotta admit, some of our, like, off the cuff fireside chats we throw we've thrown out over the past couple years. Like, we've had some good ones. We've talked about AI. We've talked about content. Just, like, the times when you and I just hopped on the mic, and we're just like, you know what?
Liz Moorhead:We need to talk about a bigger topic. Just you and me just hanging out.
Max Cohen:Those are
Liz Moorhead:I've always really loved those conversations.
George B. Thomas:Those are those are fun. I it's funny, Liz. You asked, Chad, like, what's he looking forward to in the next hundred. For me and I think that's why, like, I get excited because Mac's here. You're here.
George B. Thomas:Chad here. I'm here. And I just think that that the next hundred episodes, this just o two or two zero one or three zero one level Mhmm. Of stuff that we can create. You know, we've got a a hundred one zero one baseline HubSpot content sales service marketing stuff.
George B. Thomas:Now we can just take it to the next level and be like, hey. Well, if you can go back to this episode, but today, we're gonna talk about bam. And then really Mhmm. I'm I'm excited about that.
Liz Moorhead:And today's bam. Thank you for that beautiful setup there, George.
George B. Thomas:You like that?
Liz Moorhead:Are we ready for today's bam?
George B. Thomas:I'm ready. I'm I'm not sure if the
Intro:humans are
Liz Moorhead:ready or not.
Chad Hohn:There we go. Man, I forgot to say that was my favorite part is the episodes with the humans. Yeah.
George B. Thomas:Well, he
Liz Moorhead:can't do that because then he'll he'll know to say it immediately, and then it doesn't count. Like, it doesn't count. It's
George B. Thomas:gotta be like an off the cuff humans. And then it then it's we keep score on those. So
Liz Moorhead:I love that. It. Well, we are a few weeks out now a few weeks out. Jeez. Over a month now out from inbound, which is, you know, we tie we've had time for the dust to settle, the products to kinda get settled in.
Liz Moorhead:And today, I want us to do a deep dive on the new AI tool Breeze, which they introduced at inbound twenty four. And it's supposed to help all teams work smarter and accomplish tasks faster, but, like, I wanna start with you, George, really quick before we get into today's topic. Can you give us an explain it like I'm five answer of what AI Breeze is in the HubSpot ecosystem?
George B. Thomas:Yeah. I mean and and first of all, I hope that for many of the listeners that this might be a light bulb moment this episode, after listening or watching this episode that, hopefully, you know nothing will be the same ever again.
Liz Moorhead:No. No big lofty goals here. Yeah.
George B. Thomas:Yeah. No. I mean, it like, it's time for people to wake up with AI in their daily workflows. And, yes, that is a pun too, podcast that we do, and I did
Liz Moorhead:that on the podcast. Nice marketing there, bud.
George B. Thomas:How I I did that? And if you haven't checked that wake up with AI, you gotta do that. But but listen. We've we've all been there for years. Like, we're drowning in task.
George B. Thomas:We feel like there isn't enough hours in the day, and we're Mhmm. Wondering how we're gonna get all the stuff done. And, Liz, what I like about Breeze AI, it's transformed how I think about what's possible in a day. And and I'm gonna get into some kind of nerdy stuff later that I actually went through this morning as I woke up with AI and got an email. Because here's what I'll say before I go into just the generalities of what it is, is it's always gonna be growing.
George B. Thomas:Chad, before we, hit the record button, we are in the green room waiting for, you, and Max to show up, and we are talking about the prospecting agent. We're talking about the social media agent. We're talking about the service agent and all of these elements that are coming, and there's and there's more coming. So it'll be built on the base that right now is Breeze Copilot, which, by the way, if you aren't figuring out how to communicate with Copilot in some really unique ways yet, you need to. Like, going to a contact record and starting to have a conversation with Copilot about the contact record.
George B. Thomas:Get some nerds, Stephanie. I know. Okay. So Breeze Copilot.
Liz Moorhead:Just tell us
George B. Thomas:what it is. There's Breeze Intelligence, which can enrich your data, and then there's the, like, the agents side of it. Right? Is that, like, Copilot intelligence, agent side of it? But it's all in HubSpot.
George B. Thomas:It's data enriched. Anyway, we'll we'll get into the nerdy stuff. It's hard for me not to get into the nerdy stuff.
Liz Moorhead:I understand, but that's why we have a whole episode dedicated to this beautiful topic. But that's where we start talking about these things. Right? Like, they're when we think about the power and capacity of these tools, it is very easy to immediately jump into tactics. These are all of the cool things that you can do with it.
Liz Moorhead:But, George, you and I know this from what the way we talk about stuff with clients. Right? Before you can start getting your hands messy with all the paints and the crayons and the stickers and the color like, before you can actually start building stuff out doing things, you have to have the right mindset about something. Once you have the right mindset, then you can build your strategy. And then once you have your strategy, then you get to get into the fun tactics that help bring that strategy to life.
Liz Moorhead:And so that's really the conversation we're gonna be having about today because there is a lot of excitement, right, about these AI powered tools with Breeze and with Copilot. We have all of these different amazing things that are at disposal. But as many of our previous episodes have illuminated for us, like, there's a lot of confusion. You can easily trip into overwhelm, or maybe you don't overwhelm, but you just start getting way too in the weeds with it. So we're gonna take step back.
Liz Moorhead:Right? We're gonna start with our mindsets. And, actually, Chad, I'd love to talk to you first about this question. And then George and Max, I wanna hear from you as well. When we hear when we think about business leaders and teams who are just getting started with Breeze or Copilot, what are the essential mindsets they need to embrace in order to not only use it correctly, but also to use these tools to their fullest potential?
Chad Hohn:Mhmm. Yeah. I mean, with Breeze and AI, I think, you know, the mindset is is being open minded, you know, for me. Like, being open minded with, you know, that it's still in process. It's still being built.
Chad Hohn:It's still in development. They're still weaving it into the fabric of HubSpot because there's, I think there's a difference between a generalized solution for AI and then a customer platform CRM integrated solution for AI because it has a little bit more nuance of, like, where is it gonna pull information from in your CRM? Do you want that information right now? You know? Or are you just kind of, like, asking a general question to your AI?
Chad Hohn:So, like, being open minded and then allowing your team to also be open in using it, testing it, playing with it, making sure they know it's there because people, like, your your team is not gonna go unless they're, you know, inquisitive. Right? But they're typically got a job to do, and they're not gonna go dinking around in HubSpot looking for extra buttons to waste time with because they don't have time. They they, you know, it hasn't become a force multiplier for them unless you've built it into your process. Right?
Chad Hohn:And so once you've built AI into your process, then it can possibly become a force multiplier that will allow them to help build their day or do their day faster or save them time from having to go research, you know, company websites and things like that. I mean, yeah. I think that's that's, like, a mindset being open minded with it, right, is, I think, a good place and and making sure people know that it exists. And if it doesn't do what they want it to, well, check back again soon because it's gonna keep changing. Right?
Max Cohen:Mhmm.
Chad Hohn:Yes. Check back again soon.
Max Cohen:I'd I'd say yeah. I mean, definitely be open minded to it because a lot of people can be scared of it. Right? I would also say don't, don't look at it as, like, an easy button in a way to find shortcuts. Right?
Max Cohen:You know, like, a good example of that would be just, you know, I'm a BDR writing a ton of emails every day. Don't just, like, AI every single one of your emails and send it out the door without looking at it. Right? Because then Right. My inbox is a perfect, you know, graveyard of that.
Max Cohen:Right? And and and and seeing folks, you know, not really think too much about it and just go, oh, if I can get x volume of emails out the door, I'm somehow gonna become a better salesperson. You know, I'd I'd I'd also like sure. I think there's plenty of ways where you can look at it, to help you do more today, but I think also help increase the quality of what you do, even if it's not, like, necessarily a time saving exercise. Like, I'll see sales reps just send out emails that are just, like, you know, riddled with bad punctuation and, like, you know, too short to the point where it's, like, oh, you don't really care.
Max Cohen:You're just trying to, like, you know, get me to buy something. You know, and and sometimes those emails could use a little bit of a rewrite. Even if you did write the first pass yourself, maybe there might be a more eloquent, punctual and grammar. Woah. Okay.
Max Cohen:Sorry. Audrey just went face first into the door somehow. Oh, no. Dang. Yeah.
Max Cohen:I mean, there's you know, clean up the quality, I guess, of the emails you're sending out and and use it that way instead of just, you know, oh, have something else write it for me. Right? But I think, you know, in the in the bigger picture when it comes to HubSpot, users, I'd say the one thing is, like, keep watching it. Like, this is the very, it's cool now. Yeah.
Max Cohen:Imagine what this is gonna be like in a year. Right? Like, this is literally just, you know, the the very first, cohesive and organized step into a very real AI product inside of HubSpot that is one thing versus a bunch of random features where
Liz Moorhead:Right.
Max Cohen:Different product teams kinda took a
George B. Thomas:stab at it. Right?
Max Cohen:So Yeah. You know, keep a close eye on it and watch how this things evolve this thing evolves, and I think it'll happen a lot quicker than you think it's gonna. Yeah. It's gonna be
Chad Hohn:sick. It'll ever be. Right?
Max Cohen:It is literally the worst it'll ever be, and it's pretty sweet right now. Right?
George B. Thomas:Yeah.
Max Cohen:And then I'd say just look for ways that you can use it to, like, create leverage where you don't have it in your business. Right? So, like, you know, why is the customer agent great? It's like, well, I mean, the customer agent is probably better than nothing if you don't have any, like, dedicated customer service staff or, like, you know, someone is the is just kinda handling it, but they have a different job. Like, think of it how you can kind of, like, supplement the gaps in your current business to leverage more of HubSpot by using things like the customer agent and stuff like that and even the sales agent or whatever it's called in the camera, prospecting agent.
Max Cohen:Right?
George B. Thomas:Mhmm.
Max Cohen:That'll never be a replacement for an actual human being. Right? But, you know, could it be a great stop gap in between, and then they can leverage it in a way that helps them out when you do hire that person?
George B. Thomas:Yeah. Yeah. So So I definitely wanna double click on, what Max said as far as the test it again. I had an opportunity this morning to test it again, and I'm gonna be completely honest because I can be, and I've never been a HubSpot Homer. When the first content beta, you know, creation came out, I was like, nope.
George B. Thomas:Nope. I can do much further, much faster with ChatGPT and Claude, and so I'll just continue to do my content assisting there. But this morning, I had an opportunity, got unlocked for the social media beta, agent, and it had me go back through and reset up my voice and tone of sidekick strategies. And I was like, oh, somebody's grown up a little bit.
Liz Moorhead:Have they moved away from the one line of voice and tone?
George B. Thomas:Yes. Yes.
Liz Moorhead:Thank you.
George B. Thomas:So I was able to I was I I was able to upload an entire document, to it to give it the voice and tone. Liz, which
Liz Moorhead:I did share with you. Morning.
George B. Thomas:Yeah. That's the Slack I sent you of, like, this is the document that HubSpot now knows about us. And and so what's fun is, yes, one of the mindsets is for sure. Like, if you have messed around with it, mess around with it again. And it's funny.
George B. Thomas:You take time to actually, air quotes waste time to play around with Copilot and the different things you can do. Because if you waste time to save time, then that's okay. I'm giving you permission to do that. Now here's what I want you to think about, though. I want you to think about a triangle because I think there's this, like, success mindset triangle that we can start to pay attention to as HubSpot users.
George B. Thomas:And what I mean by that is there's three key things I wanna hit upon that are yes ands in addition to what Chad and Max said. The first one is you have to think about, especially HubSpot AI or Breeze AI. AI is your ally. K? I'm tired of saying it, but I'm gonna say it over and over again.
George B. Thomas:Quit worrying about AI taking your job. Quit worrying about AI doing all the things that you can do. It's not it doesn't have your level of creativity. You're the human powering it. It's the AI assisting you, so you have to have this mindset of AI is your ally.
George B. Thomas:Don't be scared of it. Get in there. Use it. Test it. Like, see how far you can push it.
George B. Thomas:So that's the first thing that I wanna say. The other thing is, AI, people look at it. It's like this big, huge, humongous thing. Second mindset I want you to do, especially in HubSpot with Breeze AI, is start small to win big. Like, go in there and just see what Copilot can do.
George B. Thomas:Like, the fact that you can go into a contact record, hit that top little drop down, and summarize a contact or summarize a company, it's small, but you can see big wins. I'll talk about that in a little bit later on this episode because I literally have a real human use case where we did that. And the next thing that I want you to think about in this triangle is it's data first mindset. And when I say data first mindset because your HubSpot users listen to this, I'm not talking about your custom properties. Well, I am.
George B. Thomas:But I'm also talking about every other piece of data that you have. And by the way, conversations are data. Context is data. Teaching your tools what it needs to learn is data. And so, again, like, data first.
George B. Thomas:Okay. When I'm setting up my social media agent, what are my products? What are my services? What are the topics that I wanna be known for? What are the what's the brand content that I wanted to actually be paying attention?
George B. Thomas:Like, what is the data, the context, and the conversations that need to be in there for it to by the way, the activity feed is data. The reason I can summarize a contact or a company, activity feed, data, properties, act like, so data first, start small to win big, and AI is your ally. That's the triangle that I definitely want you to think about as you step in here and move forward.
Liz Moorhead:I would say the big one for me before, George, you're not off the hot seat yet because I have a specific question for you. But one of the things I would think about from a mindset perspective is, you know, it goes back to what we talked about with content, and I think it's just true of AI overall, which is it is your assistant, not your replacement. And the moment you're looking to it the moment you were looking to any of these tools to be a replacement for your brain to be the architect of your own strategy, it is the moment you're you're gonna have a bad time. So I I that's always something I like to throw out there. It's just these are assistants.
Liz Moorhead:These are copilots literally in the title, not the pilot. So I just always like to
George B. Thomas:think
Liz Moorhead:of it that way. But, George, there is also a lot of hype around AI. There's a lot of uncertainty. Right? So when you think about the biggest myths around tools like Breeze or Copilot that you believe teams that that you believe teams and leaders should outright ignore, what would they be?
George B. Thomas:I I mean, a myth for me, and I think that for some reason people fall prey to this, is that, AI is complicated. And especially if we think about who might be listening to this podcast, it might even go to the level of AI is too complicated for my small business. Please trust me that AI is not complicated. And if you say that you have a small business, which by the way, I don't even believe that there's necessarily a such thing as a small business. It's just a business that has the potential to grow into something bigger and better, whatever that is for you and what you want it to be.
George B. Thomas:If you can use Facebook, if you can use email, guess what? You can use HubSpot Breeze. Like, HubSpot has made it so intuitive that you don't need a degree in computer science. You don't need to be this prompt engineer or or have, like, a a bunch of tech experts. Right?
George B. Thomas:So the myth that I'll start this out with is it's not complicated, and it's not too complicated for your small business.
Liz Moorhead:I love that for us. Are we ready to journey into strategy land? Are we ready to actually start talking about tactics? Let you out of the
George B. Thomas:Yeah. I guess.
Max Cohen:Yeah. Sure.
Liz Moorhead:Alright. So I wanna start strategically, though. When we think about a small team, how can they start using Breeze and Copilot in ways that make a big difference without adding too much of George's least favorite thing, and that's complexity? What are we looking at here?
Max Cohen:Yeah. I mean, I I I look at it the same way. I would just say how how is that different how are how are those different parts of the team even just, like, using HubSpot. Right? Like, when you're first getting started, it's all about saying, like, hey, you know, the things that are making team number one's life more difficult are the not the same things that are making team number two's life more difficult.
Max Cohen:Right? So it makes it it it makes it really hard to kind of give a blanket prescription, across the board. Right? So, you know, it's all about coming down and saying, like, hey, what is AI gonna solve for? Well, it's gonna solve for a lot of different things.
Max Cohen:It can make you more efficient. It can, you know, give your team a lot more leverage. It can help you do things faster, like, whatever it may be. And then it really kinda comes down to saying, like, okay. You know, let's say it does those three things and more.
Max Cohen:Right? What are the things that make team number one, team number two, team number three's days hard in those regards? And, like, how can you weave it in? Right? You know, if we were to look at something specific like service teams.
Max Cohen:Right? You know? And and, you know, again, I'm I'm I'm looking at Breeze not not through the realm of just, like, how can AI help a team. And some thinking, like, how Breeze, like, specifically can help a team. Right?
Max Cohen:Like when we think about a service team, one of the most basic things that's true about any service team is that you want to make sure that they're spending the majority of their time on the more complex issues that actually need their help. Right? And so why is something like Service Hub great for them? Well, if you think about it, one, it gives them a place to stay organized so nothing falls through the cracks. Right?
Max Cohen:I mean, that's tickets. Right? It's like, well, how do we make sure we're not just creating a ton of tickets for things that, you know, people can solve on your own? Well, that's your knowledge base. Right?
Max Cohen:And your knowledge base is there. How can we make sure people are actually getting help and they like interacting with the folks that we have? Well, that's the that's the surveys. Right? But a lot of time, that knowledge base and that ticketing system, you know, not only is it a way to help the folks stay stay organized with tickets, but that knowledge base is really there to act as like a firewall.
Max Cohen:Right? To really make sure that most basic simple requests that are generally the most high volume of problems that you're getting, right, can easily be self solved for somebody. Right? And it's not because we don't wanna help the people directly. It's because we wanna make sure that, like, if we're dedicating resources to, like, a customer service team that they're spending their time on the most important things they can spend their time on, which are generally the tougher issues that can't be solved by a knowledge based article or an FAQ section or website or something like that.
Max Cohen:Right? When I started thinking about Breeze and how that helps them, right, one, you know, if we look at just, like, raw communication with your customers, like, sure. Like, will your emails be better? Would and then you because you can gussy them up and make them nicer and maybe change the tone a little bit if you're not that great at, like, communicating tone on email or text or anything like that. Yeah.
Max Cohen:Absolutely. That's great. But, like, when you look at something like the customer agent, that dramatically increases the strength of that firewall because that customer agent can actually talk to somebody. Right? So it's, like, not only do you have sure.
Max Cohen:Here's a myriad of articles and an easy search bar to find the answer to the question you have. Well, now you have a little bit of extra intelligence kinda backing that up that actually understands all that content and can help people find it and can understand someone's questions better, right, rather than just, like, hoping you get the conversation tree correct, like, in a chatbot. Right? So it's, like, it's adding the strength to that firewall that, like, a knowledge base really kinda serves to be to protect customer service reps from wasting their time on stuff that they you just don't need a human being to solve. Right?
Max Cohen:So that's, like, would be one specific example for me.
Liz Moorhead:Chad? Yeah. I mean, at a strategy level. Yeah.
Chad Hohn:Yeah. Yeah. At a strategy level. I mean, like, I I was really, you know, just listening to Max talk, and and, I mean, I definitely wholeheartedly agree that, you know, going in those sorts of directions where you're, you know, making sure that you're resolving actual issues that matter to your team, right, and coming up with strategy that will help them leverage these built in tools better and better. I think, you know, if you guys know me, like, I have a special spot in my heart for customer service teams.
Chad Hohn:Right? And so the the service agent is something that I really, want to make better and better and would love a few more levers even in there to flip to, you know, not just like, ah, here's articles. Like, hopefully, you can help solve some problems or something. You know? But to, you know, have a little bit more configurability on it to, you know, try and in certain scenarios, always send it to a human, and in certain scenarios, you know, have it try and resolve problems a little harder than just one try or whatever.
Chad Hohn:Right? But, you know, strategy is just getting in there and and at least giving it a shot. Any of these agents that exist, at least do something with it at least one time. And even if it doesn't give you the exact expected result, do it again soon because they are always working on these things, man. I mean, they're getting better and better, you know, the the more that you're using them.
Chad Hohn:New features are popping up all the time, and they're not announced on the beta's page like a lot of other new features are. They just kind of are showing up in the agents. And, you know, as well going back to strategy, like, keep your ear to the ground with agent.ai, right, that Dharmesh talked about at inbound. I mean, I know that they're all very not super useful yet. Like, they're cool, but it's the building blocks, the underpinnings, just like chat spot was at inbound 23 now became, you know, Breeze at inbound 24.
Chad Hohn:Agent AI is in the chat spot position last time and will be able to now probably see that at inbound 25 as some sort of fully fledged workflow builder for AI functionality, which will be just mind blowing to be able to have, like, you know, these hive minds that you can, you know, use for certain certain things. So, I would say with strategy, look to look to what's coming in the future as with as best of an educated guess as you can. Right? And I think agent AI is, like, the architecture for the future when it comes to HubSpot.
George B. Thomas:Yeah. I and I wanna double click on what Chad's saying because it's always easier to learn along the way instead of playing catch up. Oh, yeah. And especially in this world of AI, playing catch up is not a viable solution. Like, again, this is literally why and I'm not trying to promote it, but this is why we do a daily podcast called wake up with AI because catch up no.
George B. Thomas:Keep up. K? Mhmm. Now, Liz, on the Beyond Your Default podcast, and I know I'm I'm not trying to do it, but we talk about energy vampires on Beyond Your Default, right, all the time. On on this, what I wanna talk about is time vampires.
George B. Thomas:Because, Max, I'm double clicking into kind of what you're saying. No matter what team you are, you have those things that are time vampires. It's those repetitive tasks that you're like, there's got to be a better way. Like, why the freak do I do this 2,000 times every week? And there is.
George B. Thomas:Right. And so when you know that there is and you know that there is is Breeze AI and the AI tools that HubSpot is creating, then I think you can start to think of. And by the way, I'm just going to throw this out. You should probably start to think about, like, a breeze impact map. And what I mean by a breeze impact map is actually taking time to do what we all talk about doing on this podcast, and that's strategizing the level in which you're going to use and how you're going to use the breeze tools as you move forward.
George B. Thomas:And I think you can think about three dimensions. There's volume, complexity, and business value. If you're paying attention to volume, complexity, and business value and tying it back to Breeze and the Breeze tools, this starts to allow you to build out a Breeze impact map and gives you, again, a strategy, a method to your madness in which you're trying to do. So, like, first, you're you're looking for high volume but low complexity. These these are the quick wins.
George B. Thomas:Maybe it's those daily social media posts. I literally and I'll hopefully, we get a chance for me to talk about this, but us telling Chad setting up the social media agent because I can augment a human to do more post, better post faster. Maybe it's routine customer service questions like we kind of already alluded to. Right? Those those are literally the high volume, low complexity things.
George B. Thomas:Then you could start to identify tasks that are data intensive but repetitive. This is where Breeze Intelligence really shines. Like, it's funny. I I do the super admin training, and we were talking about data hygiene two weeks ago. Mhmm.
George B. Thomas:And one of the, super admins was like, wow. Breeze Intelligence doesn't look that expensive right now. Because we are talking about the amount of, like, if if a salesperson made 6,000 and you did that times 10 and then like, finally, though, the thing is consider, like, the the kind of touch multiple things that touch multiple departments. Right? Now you can go into, like, okay.
George B. Thomas:Here's here's scaling opportunities with with this. And so I think the beauty of this approach is that it works for everyone, whether you're just starting or you're ready to take Breeze implementation to the next level, or if you're sales or if you're marketing, if you're service, if you're paying attention to, like, creating this, you know, Breeze impact map and you're focused on the strategy based on volume, complexity, and business value, now you again, you have a place to start and a place to go.
Liz Moorhead:So, George, this is where I wanna jump in with you again a little bit. Go a bit deeper. You know, we talk a lot about the fact that you have to make a lot of decisions for yourself in terms of what makes the most sense for your organization and your teams. So So when we think about our listeners at home, you know, how are they going to make the best choices for deciding where Breeze, Copilot, all of these different tools fits within their current day to day, their current workflows, their current strategies within HubSpot? Are there certain self reflection questions they should be asking them for themselves, and and what should they be looking for in those answers?
George B. Thomas:Yeah. I mean, listen. Part of me just wants to give you a real simple answer of, like, head over to HubSpot Academy, watch all the videos so that you can educate yourself and know what it actually can do. And then, by the way, test everything, test everything, test everything, and try it again, try it again, try it. Like, but here's the thing.
George B. Thomas:Like, to be honest, I think there's maybe a deeper answer. And and we all know that questions are powerful, and I think that there's three that you can ask yourself. And and, they just happen to all start with w. So maybe this is like the three w framework for, you know, like, implementing HubSpot, Breeze. Like, first, where where are your bottlenecks?
George B. Thomas:Right? Look at where your team spends the most time on manual tasks. What? That's the first w. What specific activities are eating up their time?
George B. Thomas:K? That's the question that you have to ask yourself. The second why or the second w is why, and and why would automating these tasks make a difference? If you gotta know the why of the what. Alright?
George B. Thomas:So, like, I and I'm not trying to blow anybody's mind here, but, like, it's literally the things that you would ask yourself around normal things that you've actually been doing in business, but it's applied to the specific, thing of this framework. And so when you start to do that, right, then you understand, like, Copilot, Breeze Intelligence, the agents. Chad, you you you called it something. I immediately went to, like, the future borg of your HubSpot hub, which is, by the way, a tricky nerdy, tricky statement. But Yeah.
George B. Thomas:Like
Chad Hohn:Love it.
George B. Thomas:Again, when you start to think about the why, the what, and the who, and the process, and the people, and the platform, and the platform being specific to Breeze at this point inside of HubSpot, that's how I think you get started. Again, paying attention to everything that we paid attention before, people, platform, process, problems, the what, the why, the who, and go over to HubSpot Academy and test everything. Okay. I'll I'll shut up.
Liz Moorhead:I like how you show yourself the door verbally. It's always I'm always a big fan.
Chad Hohn:Also, he kinda walks towards the store. Yeah.
Liz Moorhead:He's
George B. Thomas:like, I'm out.
Liz Moorhead:Well, that's a rip that's
George B. Thomas:because people aren't watching it.
Liz Moorhead:And so that's how it works. Physically walks to the door, which I Yeah.
Chad Hohn:It's great.
Liz Moorhead:I people appreciate. So if if someone's ready to dive into these tools, what are what's the first step? What's the easiest first step someone can take with Breezer Copilot to see some quick wins?
Max Cohen:You just gotta try. You just gotta play with it. Like, it's I I I don't think you necessarily have to, you know, do a ton of, like, planning and get, like, so intense and crazy about it. Like, you just gotta get in there and see what it can do, honestly. And, like, it's then and only then are you gonna actually be able to come up with those ideas of, like, oh, I could use it for this, and I could use it for this.
Max Cohen:Right? Like, I I can tell you, like, I don't even know how far Copilot goes. Like, I haven't, like I've talked to it a couple times. Right? But, like, I haven't, like, really, like, pushed the boundaries of, like, what's possible with it.
Max Cohen:Right? And, like, I'm sure when I do, I'll probably come up with a whole bunch of different, you know, ideas for it. But, like, that's just like anything else in HubSpot. It's like, sometimes you don't actually know how you're gonna deploy it or implement until you go in there, play with it, you know, screw around with it, and, like, see what you could actually accomplish with it. You know what I mean?
Max Cohen:It's just, like, don't shy away from it and feel like you have to have this, like, giant big strategy about how everyone's gonna get value out of it and have a plan for every single thing in there. Just go play with it. It's okay. Like, especially since this is new, it's okay to build a plane as you fly it a little bit or fly the plane as you build it or whatever the saying is, you know, especially for stuff like this because it is very kinda open ended, what you can do, with AI these days and especially, you know, now that it's more of a thing you can actually have conversations with. Like, it'll be interesting to see how, like, far people push it.
Max Cohen:Right? But,
George B. Thomas:you know Can I get can I get real tactical? Yeah. Do it. Real tactical.
Liz Moorhead:God, I hope so. It's the tactic section.
George B. Thomas:Because because here's the thing. I wanna give you something to do right now, like, the most straightforward way to start. Like, we're talking so easy peasy lemon squeezy that you just you can't screw it up. K? Open up HubSpot right now.
George B. Thomas:Like, you're if you're driving, don't open up HubSpot right now. But if you're sitting at your desk, open up HubSpot right now.
Chad Hohn:I got it open. Alright.
Max Cohen:Okay. I'm opening it.
George B. Thomas:And I want you to go to a contact record, and I mean any contact record, and we're gonna watch the magic happen. Because here here's the thing.
Chad Hohn:What I want you
George B. Thomas:to do, the the easiest, most straightforward way to, to use Breeze right now today is have a conversation with it. Okay? So you're on a contact record. You click that Breeze Copilot button, and I want you to say something like, give me a summary of our relationship with this customer or give me a summary of this customer. Bam.
George B. Thomas:Just like that, you've got AI powered insights that would have taken, I don't know, twenty minutes, thirty minutes, forty minutes to compile manually. Like, I've got an example. Okay. We'll just call this guy his name Tom. And I literally did the thing that I just told you to do.
George B. Thomas:And it says Tom faces several hurdles primarily around data management and partner onboarding. They struggle with accessing partner intake data, which leads to inefficiencies and have concerns about the cost effectiveness of the operations hub for data cleaning. Tom also expressed frustrations with confusing placement of the meeting scheduler in HubSpot. These it's based on conversations that are being, at by the way, how did that magic happen? Because we have Evoma that takes notes that goes into our HubSpot notes.
George B. Thomas:It looks at the notes. And so when it's summarizing, conversations and context are data. And so because the Evoma notes goes into the HubSpot and because I wanna ask it a question, then all of a sudden, I get the context of the conversation summarize. Ladies and gentlemen, just have a dang conversation with Copilot and ask it the questions that you're curious about that you used to have. Here's the funny thing.
George B. Thomas:One of the things that we love to teach is how to be a, how to be a Sherlock Holmes of your portal, how to be a sleuth. Guess who can be a great sleuth? Copilot can be a great sleuth for you when you're trying to figure things out. Just have a dang conversation. That's that's the easiest way to start.
Chad Hohn:Voma's pretty good. I like how it associates all of the stuff to the correct records, and it has connections to your HubSpot while you're in the meeting. And even from inside of Zoom Yeah. You can open the Evoma app and utilize Evoma. And between that and being able to have, like, specialized triggered segmentation based on certain trigger words, man, that sucker is pretty slick.
Chad Hohn:Like, there's even a world where you could create specific action items that might go to specific customers' lists in your ClickUp based on certain words that you might want to say. Yep. Yep. Some pretty crazy stuff that you could do with it. It's got a really, really unique way of doing its stuff.
George B. Thomas:We should probably do an Evoma episode in the future and see if we can get somebody from Evoma to come beyond the show. Yeah. But here's but here's the thing. The the fact that it just can take that conversational contact data and
Chad Hohn:get it to the right humans in HubSpot.
George B. Thomas:Put it in the right human contact or, you know, record. And now all of a sudden, that magic that I just expressed can happen across all of the people that you're trying to work from a service rep, a sales rep. Like, imagine asking it, like, can based on the latest, information we have, can you give me the sentiment of this human right now? This human is pissed at you right now. Oh, let let me fix that.
Max Cohen:There's also too, like, yeah. So I just did exactly what you said, George. Isn't I wanna actually find your contact record, you know, and I I said, give me a summary here. And, you know, it's so neat because not only is it, like yeah. It's giving that text summary.
Max Cohen:Right? But it's also, like, highlighting things that are, like, really important to me. And it even, like, gives you, like, in the chat, like, these boxes that'll say, oh, here's the last 10 engagements. Here's, you know, the deals. Here's some tickets like that were opened up.
Max Cohen:And then you can, like, summarize that stuff, you know, instead of going into that record and, like, wasting time, like, listening to a call or or or reading through a lengthy email chain. Like, I can't tell you how many times I have to freaking scroll down a giant email thread to, like, follow a conversation and how brutal that is. You know You
George B. Thomas:know what I mean? That? No. No. What's that?
George B. Thomas:No. What's that? There we go.
Max Cohen:That's what I say. But, like, what's really neat too is, like, you know, going back to that thing where, like, I didn't really know, like, what was possible here. It's, like, there's literally a button on the bottom that says prompts. And, like, you can see Yes. You know, what it can actually do and get a good, like, understanding of that.
Max Cohen:You know? Yeah. Like, I don't wanna craft a LinkedIn article. I mean, I don't know what I'm I don't know how but I don't know if this is, yeah, this isn't relevant to the conversation I'm having with you here on the thing, but, you know, it's just it's being able to, like there there is timelines get long. Right?
Max Cohen:Like, you'd be surprised how quickly things add up when you've got a customer you've been working with for a year. Right? And, like, just imagine, like, what we were doing before this. We were scrolling and scrolling and filtering and scrolling and opening up threads of emails
Chad Hohn:and scanning and collapsing. That from September. Yeah.
Max Cohen:I gotta go
Chad Hohn:look into the September's and
Max Cohen:figure it out. But it's like, you know, like, if if I could if I I could probably come in here and just be like, can you tell me the last time I talked to Dax, Dax Miller. Right? And, like, I'm on your code your your contact record here, and I think it'll probably go and just, like, find, you know, some other stuff. Yeah.
Max Cohen:Like, you know, I it's so it's I don't even have to, like
George B. Thomas:Real time,
Max Cohen:my boss. So much better than, like, hit the search bar, find the con like, type the contacts so you can find the contacts, go into the contact, open up the things, filter out all the junk. Like, it's it's just this beautiful new way to just interact with this treasure trove of data you have in your CRM.
George B. Thomas:It's
Max Cohen:so much what your chat
Chad Hohn:spot was.
Max Cohen:I might start here more often now just, like, knowing this. Like, it's so cool.
George B. Thomas:That's another good tactical way to just start with Copilot.
Max Cohen:You know?
George B. Thomas:Just just talk to first. Yes. Have a conversation. Yeah.
Chad Hohn:Well, it's getting better and better. Like, before, I think the thing that weirded people out about chat spot and about also still Copilot in some scenarios is, like, the prompting. Like, it is very it was very prompt engineered at the beginning. It, like, it just had a brain fart if you didn't use a prompt. Like, it just couldn't do it.
Chad Hohn:Right? And
Liz Moorhead:Mhmm.
Chad Hohn:It's getting better at handling and understanding your request. And then it's, you know, so it's just more like talk talking to an open an LOM model. Right? Right. It's just more like talking to that than it ever used to be.
Chad Hohn:So it's getting better and better at that. So it's being more like because people have just gotten used to talking to their AI assistants like a human. Hey. Can you help me do this thing, or is this possible or whatever? Right?
Chad Hohn:Yeah. Anyway, no. I I'll love that.
Liz Moorhead:George, I'd like you to think about some of the problems that you've seen, you know, clients struggle with the most across their HubSpot portals. When you think about Breeze Copilot and what are some of the real world examples in which ways this can be instantly deployed to solve some of the most common problems that they're running into?
George B. Thomas:And, again, the the problems can can they just continue to be the problems. Like, there's you probably don't have a list for that. You can use, AI, Breeze, to now create lists. There's literally a a a beta that's out there that you this is the list that I'd like to create, and it'll help you create. Because people get, bogged down in the trenches of what filter should I do to do this thing.
George B. Thomas:And, again, it's only gonna get better. For me, the other thing is, like, we're we're sitting here, Liz. We're talking about having a conversation. The funny thing about a conversation is a two sided conversation. There's somebody speaking and there's somebody listening.
George B. Thomas:And so a a lot of this is the conversation around, well, like, just go have a conversation, speak to Copilot. But what if you could really lean into what I preach all the time, and that's wrap Hub Spot around your business. And and what if you have custom properties, but you're having Breeze, then pay attention to these custom properties. How how can you turn a Breeze or Copilot into a listening agent that's paying attention to the the custom parts of right? And so what am I talking about?
George B. Thomas:Well, quit trying to slam your business into a SaaS software and use HubSpot to wrap it around your business. Use Copilot and Breeze to help listen to what you're wrapping around there. Like, workflows AI is by the way, I love that it we can just call it Breeze, but you gotta get specific. Like, AI is in workflows. AI is in list.
George B. Thomas:AI is in social media. Like, it's it's a it's going to be if it isn't already across every piece of the platform. And so, again, I go back to what I said earlier. Like, catching up is gonna be real difficult. But, like, taking little steps every single day, having conversations, playing with it like Max said, getting betas, testing.
George B. Thomas:Like, this again, to to go in the vein of the question you asked, the knowledge gap. That's been a problem that every HubSpot user has faced. Okay. So how can we use Breeze to actually fix the knowledge gap? So that there's just so many ways.
Liz Moorhead:I love that. Well, I know we've covered a lot of ground today, George. And as we joked earlier, Max, Chad, and I, not great at landing planes, not great at ending podcasts, especially when we lack your supervision. So I'd love for you to help us bring this conversation home today. Talk to me about if there's one thing our listeners walk away from today's episode, what should it be and why?
George B. Thomas:Yeah. And, again, I kind of alluded to this at the beginning of the episode, but I I hope you realize that Breeze isn't just another tool.
Max Cohen:Yeah.
George B. Thomas:That HubSpot kinda threw in there. It it literally can be your partner in growth. My hopes is that you don't get overwhelmed thinking that you need to understand everything about AI or implement everything at once. My hopes after this episode is that you start small, focus on one area where you're spending too much time on routine tasks, and and let Breeze or the AI element of Breeze in that area help you work smarter, not harder. The the the real takeaway that I think everybody needs to kind of wake up and understand is Breeze represents a fundamental shift in how we approach business operations and use HubSpot in general.
George B. Thomas:Mhmm. It's not just about automating individual tasks. It's about creating intelligent operational ecosystems where us as human experts, and the AI capabilities, they work together and they amplify each other. The real power for HubSpot users moving forward is gonna be in the understanding that they are the conductor of the orchestra that is all of the Breeze components, copilot agents, intelligence, to create these future sophisticated self improving, processes that help drive your business growth. That's the takeaway that I would want them to have.
Liz Moorhead:I love that. Well, guys
Max Cohen:Can I just tell you something I did really quick with Copilot? I just asked it
George B. Thomas:to Max.
Max Cohen:I just asked it well, I think this is also something you should take away. Yeah. I just asked it to explain custom events to me like I was a five year old. Alright? That's awesome.
Max Cohen:And it literally just said, imagine you're playing with blocks and you wanna count every time you stack a red block on top of a blue block. A custom event in HubSpot is like setting up a special tracker that can count these stacking actions. It can help you see how many times you did this special thing, like stacking your blocks, so you can tell your friends how many times you did it. In HubSpot, a custom event like you track special actions on your website or with your business that are important to you just like counting how many times you stack those blocks. For more details, you can check this link.
Max Cohen:Like, sometimes you don't wanna have to just search for a knowledge base article.
George B. Thomas:Yeah.
Max Cohen:And you need like, the fact that we can get HubSpot to explain itself in very simple terms is crazy now. You know what I mean? Like, notice that it didn't just send me to a an academy video.
George B. Thomas:Article to figure it out.
Max Cohen:Just send me to an article. Right? Which is, like, what a basic chatbot would do. Right? It literally explained itself.
George B. Thomas:Dude, where where where
Max Cohen:hold on. HubSpot can literally explain itself to you. Yeah. Today brain
Liz Moorhead:is naming itself a brain.
George B. Thomas:Make no mistake. Every knowledge article, every piece every piece of content HubSpot has ever made is part of the brain behind what you see. Like, they have the context. They have the conversation. They've been creating the content.
George B. Thomas:Like and now that's on whatever drug of choice you wanna put in this sentence that I'm not gonna use because they can now use AI and conversational language to Yep. And what did I say? What did I say? I said, bridge the knowledge gap. And what did Max Go do?
George B. Thomas:Hey. For tonight. This really complex thing historically in a really simple way, please. Okay, hub heroes. We've reached the end of another episode.
George B. Thomas: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 the hubheroes.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.
George B. Thomas:Leave a review if you like what you're listening to, and use the hashtag, hashtag hub euros podcast on any of the socials, and let us know what strategy conversation you'd like to listen into next. Until next time, when we meet and combine our forces, remember to be a happy, helpful, humble human, and, of course, always be looking for a way to be someone's hero.
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