HubSpot AI Data Sources: The Story of Your Products + Services
Do you live in a world filled with corporate data? Are you plagued by silo 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.
Intro: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, educate, empower, and execute. Hub heroes, it's time to unite and activate your powers.
George B. Thomas:How are we doing, everybody? You you can you can tell. We're in the festive, mood and season with the this this is gonna be a real interesting episode. I have a feeling.
Liz Moorhead:You know, George, I was still really safe and comforted when you declare at the top how interesting an episode is good. That brings me as the as the person who has to wrangle all of you. I'm Tidings of great joy.
George B. Thomas:Yeah. I'm just reading the room. I'm reading the room. I'm understanding what happened during the intro. I'm watching Max's face.
George B. Thomas:I just we'll see.
Liz Moorhead:I gotta be perfectly honest. Max has been the one on his best behavior since we got on this morning, which I'm gonna that that actually does not fill me with joy. That does not spark joy. This is we've now we're hitting a critical mass that I find a little bit upsetting. You know what, George?
Liz Moorhead:Let's just dig into it. Can you I wanna kick it over to you for some housekeeping items so our listeners know what to expect during the holidays because next week is Christmas, y'all.
George B. Thomas:Yeah. I'd oh, my goodness. That got here quick. Let me Yeah. Listen.
George B. Thomas:We're gonna we're gonna, you know, throw a couple things at you as far as, like, a season roundup and, you know, the our favorite episodes of this year. But the, the Hub Heroes crew is taking a little bit of time, of course, to maybe strategize, maybe drink some eggnog, maybe hang out with family. So this this episode is the one where we need to just wish you, like, merry Christmas, happy holidays, happy new year, whatever all of the things that you celebrate are. We we say that to you today, because, we're just we're we're about to go into chill mode.
Liz Moorhead:Goodbye.
Max Cohen:Buh bing. How come we said that so weird? What? Felt like we were
Liz Moorhead:Now you decide to talk,
Chad Hohn:Max? Now, Joe?
Max Cohen:Are you
Liz Moorhead:intrigued by calling us weird?
Max Cohen:No. I'm just saying we we set it as if we were, like, stepping back to completely reevaluate everything we're doing when we're just taking two weeks off for the holidays.
George B. Thomas:Well, I mean, does isn't that what people do?
Max Cohen:You say the team's gonna be stepping back
George B. Thomas:No, George. Strategize
Max Cohen:what we're gonna be doing for
Liz Moorhead:Not everyone takes two weeks off and starts new companies, adds other company like, some people just take a nap.
George B. Thomas:Am am I the only one that, like, reevaluates everything that I'm gonna do before the the next year?
Max Cohen:Yeah. I don't reevaluate I
Liz Moorhead:just reevaluate dinner table. I mean, my big thing about the well, here honest answer to your question. I do some of that. Like, I do sit down and kinda take stock. Like, what did I do this year?
Liz Moorhead:What do I wanna stop, start, keep doing? But I also know that if I stare at anything long enough, I will find a problem with it and try to kill the bank. Like, I can't Yeah. Can't do that. Like
Chad Hohn:Don't do it, Liz. Please.
George B. Thomas:I well, I I will tell you this. I will tell you this. I re I refuse to start another company. I I refuse.
Liz Moorhead:Well, that's the right thing.
George B. Thomas:They're they're
Liz Moorhead:What about another podcast?
Chad Hohn:Well, that's the
George B. Thomas:the the jury's still the the jury's still out on that one because, well well, anyway, not why we're here. We're here to talk about HubSpot. We're not here to talk about the superhuman framework, but I'm but I'm looking forward to the superhuman framework of 2025, and that might equal a podcast. I don't know yet. We'll see.
George B. Thomas:But, anyway okay. So what are we talking about?
Liz Moorhead:Right, George. Speaking of HubSpot AI resources. Yep.
George B. Thomas:There we go.
Max Cohen:Now how many episodes have we done on the data sources now at this point?
Liz Moorhead:This is our fourth one, and it's our final one, my guy.
Max Cohen:Oh, wow. At the end of the road.
Liz Moorhead:I know. So we have done grand I would I was about to sing it, and then I'd realized I'd love for us to keep listeners going into
George B. Thomas:Wait. We have listeners? Oh. We should probably behave then.
Max Cohen:No.
George B. Thomas:I told you it's gonna be a fun episode.
Liz Moorhead:Are we done, gentlemen?
Max Cohen:It's not possible to behave.
Liz Moorhead:Yes. Kick it, Chad.
Max Cohen:You thought you'd get away. For a second, I thought that was Chad just with, like, a voice modulator. Anyway, my farm's going great, guys.
Chad Hohn:That was me with the voice modulator. It was.
Max Cohen:Oh, it was. Okay.
Liz Moorhead:Was him. Yep. Well, yes. So we've done I
George B. Thomas:gotta figure out how to do that. There's you know, there's Gentlemen? George. Okay. Let's let's
Liz Moorhead:this podcast around. I swear I will pull us over. We will not stop at McDonald's. That's it.
Chad Hohn:Be good. Okay. Okay.
Liz Moorhead:Everyone stay on the respective side.
Max Cohen:Okay. Gigaliz.
Liz Moorhead:Think Gigamax. Yeah. No. So we've actually done brand voice and tone. We did ideal customer profiles, and we did marketing strategy.
Liz Moorhead:But, George, before we get into our final installment, let's just imagine for a moment we've got some listeners with us who are just hopping on the HubSpot AI data sources train. Can you give us a quick rundown of what those are?
George B. Thomas:So the data sources train is the AI context and specificity that it needs to, use the content agent, the social agent, the service agent, the any of the agents in the future are gonna look at things like brand kits for your brand voice, a company profile, ideal customer profiles. Hopefully, that'll get better in the future. Anyway, now now while we're here, marketing strategy, user profiles. And today, we're talking about products and services and what, lies inside of products and services and why those pieces are important, to humans, to businesses, but also in the context of AI agents, as we move forward. So that is that is AI data sources, a a setting inside of settings of settings, and we've done four episodes.
George B. Thomas:So that should tell you something. Yeah. That should tell you something about potential thought of importance around these items inside here.
Liz Moorhead:You know, it's interesting. I originally had in my notes that I wanted to talk about today that I was feeling a little less nervous going into this episode than I was last week's episode. Because if you missed last week's episode on the marketing strategy setting, singular, just go back and listen to it. I don't I
Chad Hohn:think it was property and setting. We're both singular.
Liz Moorhead:We're just gonna we're gonna move but, originally, I was gonna say I was I was less nervous, but, George, you've cured me. You've cured me entirely of that. So that's Oh. So we're just gonna move right in. Yeah.
Max Cohen:We're just
Liz Moorhead:gonna move right in. I am One thing I will say I am excited about today's episode is the fact that last week's marketing strategy conversation was around a singular lightweight property. And this week, we are dealing with something quite dense where I feel like we're gonna have some really fun stuff to talk about here. Because a product and services discussion for any company is critically important because it's not just about what they are. It's about what makes them different and what they actually solve for.
Liz Moorhead:But, George, I wanna come back to you. Can you share with folks what they will find when they open up the product and services setting in AI data sources in HubSpot?
George B. Thomas:Yeah. There's actually a couple things, and and I wanna talk about these from a couple different angles as we move forward. But as soon as you open the page, you're gonna see first of all, it literally just says products and services, and it says, describe your organization's value, propositions, products, and services to ensure AI generated content is relevant and tailored to your organization. If we have time, by the way, I'm gonna, open up the, social media agent and show what that actually looks like from a products and services standpoint of this. But you're gonna get value proposition or a place to add your value proposition.
George B. Thomas:You're also gonna, see that you can add what pain points does your company solve, and then you can add an itemized products or service list. So this is literally like the product name and the product description. And so that's that's what you'll see when you get there.
Liz Moorhead:So what do we love about this tool on its face?
Max Cohen:Get is there is there any transparency about how it actually uses this information, or is it just kind of going into the, you know, the the AI machine and saying it's giving it context for content it's creating?
George B. Thomas:I mean, it pretty much the context is that top part of the page where it's gonna be using it for, at this point, for, the different agents or content creation.
Max Cohen:Agents. Yes. Got it. Okay. Cool.
Chad Hohn:Yeah.
George B. Thomas:Alright. So I can draw I can draw a straight line for you right from this to my social media agent. And, also, we know
Max Cohen:Got it.
George B. Thomas:As soon as you talk about value proposition and pain points, prospecting agent. I mean, it's just duh. Like
Max Cohen:Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. No.
Max Cohen:I so I know I'm usually, hella skeptical about these tools. Right? But I'm actually kind of excited, about this one. Just because when I did implementation I know I say that a thousand times on the show, but, like, you know,
Chad Hohn:it's Wait.
Liz Moorhead:Did you do implementation?
Max Cohen:I did implementation. Well, no. It's just interesting. The question I would always ask on the first onboarding call is I would just say, tell me about how you make money. Right?
Max Cohen:So I could, like, fully, fully understand what the end zone is. Right? Because if, like, we're putting together this, like, you know, giant strategy with HubSpot, right, it's really important to kind of, like, figure out, like, what the immediate end goal is, right, in terms of how do we get people to buy things from you? How do they buy from you? What do you actually sell?
Max Cohen:Because I felt if I knew that, everything that they would have to do with HubSpot would slowly come into focus. Right? But if I don't know what, like, the endpoint is and I'm just throwing generic inbound mumbo jumbo at them and I don't have anything to kind of, like, tie it into or or, you know, understand again the endpoint that the strategy is, like, leading to. And I know it's not the ultimate endpoint, like, buying something. Right?
Max Cohen:But at least at the very beginning when you're, like, just setting it up and it's like, how do you get the value quickest and understand how you support that, for me, it was really important to understand that. Right? So what I think is really neat here is that it feels like they're at least at the beginning of getting all these different agents and hopefully influencing the way that content's being written to understand what the end goal is, right, is to get people to buy this thing in this, like, certain way so they can accomplish x y z. Right? And I feel like if the agents have that context, they could probably do a much better job in the way that they communicate or suggest things or whatever it may be.
Max Cohen:So It I'm actually kinda stoked on this.
George B. Thomas:Yeah. I I love this piece too. And and it's funny because you, Max, are jumping into AI agents. I'll say, even for humans, this is important. Right?
Max Cohen:Oh, yeah. For sure.
Liz Moorhead:And and one of
George B. Thomas:the things I did is I I love to dissect things with AI. I have quickly over the last year and a half, almost two years, become a a super AI nerd. And so I took a screenshot of this product and services with it filled out of value proposition of what pain points does your company solve for us, Sidekick Strategies. And I said, why is this information important for a business to know, and why is it important for an AI agent to know? Because I wanted to see if there was any differences.
George B. Thomas:And it's it's quite interesting because for the businesses, it talks about clear value proposition. And the fact that a well defined value proposition helps businesses articulate what sets them apart, enabling them to attract the ideal customers. Now I I grabbed that word like I did because literally in one of the AI data sources, we talked about ideal customer profiles. Right? And so value proposition attached to ideal, customer profiles.
George B. Thomas:It talks about for businesses addressing customer pain points, understanding and documenting the pain points the company solves, make sure they focus on delivering solutions that matter most to their target audiences. Now here's the fun part because we're literally talking about prospecting agent, target audiences, ideas. So you can kinda see how even from the human side or business side, it talks about clarity on products and services and strategic growth differentiation. Now when you get into, why is this information important for AI agents, what's fun is it talks about personalized and relevant responses. An AI agent can generate tailored content answers and campaigns based on the business's value proposition, pain points, and product offerings.
George B. Thomas:This avoids generic or irrelevant output, which we we don't want that. We we want it to feel very much like as effective sales and marketing assistance. The AI can assist in creating marketing materials, email campaigns, or pitches that directly address customer challenges and align with the company's offerings, customer support optimization, streamline content creation. AI can generate blog posts, social media content, and proposals that showcase the business's expertise in solving complex challenges. Consistent messaging is a big piece of this.
George B. Thomas:So, like, it's important to both, but important in different directions when you think about the documentation and having this in an in HubSpot and in your organization. But I literally then my brain jumped to this other piece that I wanna mention, and then I'll I'll shut up for a minute, and we can kinda go over this a little bit more is I was like, well, is there a formula for, like, crafting a value proposition that's gonna work for AI assistance and your business? And so what I would want the listeners to realize is there's a who you help, what you do, how you do it, and the transformation slash results formula that you could start to pay attention when you're when you're crafting this. So when I think about this, like, who you help, it's identifying in this statement that you're writing, the specific group or persona that you serve, for business, you know, small to medium sized businesses, enterprise companies, whatever it is. For the AI agents, teams, individuals, marketers, like, things like that, what do you do?
George B. Thomas:The services, the products, how do you do it? Human first approach, advanced data driven strategies, tailored solutions, AI powered or AI assisted optimization. These are just words that we might use. The transformation or the results, save time, increase ROI, unlock new opportunities. So you wanna think about these things.
George B. Thomas:And, Liz, maybe I'll get you the formula so we can put the formula on the show notes, and people can be like, I wanna steal this and use this when I'm crafting the value proposition. Because, again, do I just want you to come and just type some small stuff in here? No. I want you to create a rich, robust, very powerful value proposition. I want you to be able to have a, I'll talk about pain points formula later.
George B. Thomas:But I want you to have a very valuable value proposition, if you will, inside of this setting.
Liz Moorhead:So this is where I wanna happen and have a bit of a conversation because what's interesting about this is that I love that we have things like pain points and value propositions. We have brand voice and tone and stuff like that. But what's interesting is that these are assets that are often created by brands in different ways. Like, value propositions and pain points, those are, like, the first two sections of every mess messaging strategy I ever write. Like, that that is you know, I I pulled up one just so I have it here next to me.
Liz Moorhead:You know? I'm looking at one I did for a client recently where there are five different specific value propositions that they provide because they are tied to five very specific pain points. Right? So we have this interesting thing where we're starting to see some more traditional marketing architecture make its way into HubSpot. What I find interesting about it, and I can't decide if it's something where I like it and this is what it needs to be or I wish it was a little bit different, is that why isn't it just a messaging strategy tab?
Liz Moorhead:Why isn't it just a single document where that can all get uploaded? Or is this the best way for these AI tools to process this information? Like, you need to pull value propositions and pain points out and have it directly paired with products and services. Yeah. Because, like I said, like, I have I'm literally sitting here with a document in front of me that goes through value propositions, pain
Max Cohen:points
Liz Moorhead:at great length and detail as well as their differentiators, which is a third thing that is neither value propositions nor pain points. Mhmm. So I think we're getting into this interesting spot where I'm loving what I'm seeing. Right? I'm loving this idea that we're bringing more storytelling to it.
Liz Moorhead:Right? I wish our listeners could see live what is happening. I'm sorry. Chad, did did did Santa Chad just come and help fix the fire for you behind you?
Chad Hohn:No. That was Linus from Linus Tech Tips. I'm not
George B. Thomas:I love that channel, by the way.
Chad Hohn:Yeah. That was legit. I mean, this is Linus in this stocking, and then that's Dennis who's, like, one of their content creators in that stocking.
George B. Thomas:Which, by the way, if you're listening to this podcast and you don't know what this is, I'm sorry. But it's it's cool. And you should watch, by the way, because you'd see Chad's background. I'll just throw that there too.
Chad Hohn:So we do a live recording
Liz Moorhead:of the new year. We'll have newer ways to watch in the new year.
Max Cohen:Oh, yeah. Thing. Yeah.
Chad Hohn:Yeah. If we if we pass the test.
Liz Moorhead:If well, we've done it before. We can do it again. I believe in us.
George B. Thomas:We'll see.
Liz Moorhead:But to go back to my original point, though, this is where I find a lot of this stuff fascinating. Right? There are already methodologies and ways to craft messaging strategies that encompass all of these things. I I personally have GBTs that I built using these messaging strategies built in a very structured way. So, again, I love this idea of seeing all of these things come in.
Liz Moorhead:And do we need to break the structure? Is this the way it should be structured? Why can't I just have a messaging strategy tab that has certain things in there? I still really love it, though. Like, that's the thing.
Liz Moorhead:I can't understand. Chad, maybe this is where you might be able to answer my question. Is it better that value proposition and pain points are pulled out and put directly with products and services so the AI chat agents better understand how to process this information. Because how messaging strategy documents are built for humans may not be the best way that they are processed by these AI tools that we're now becoming so reliant upon.
Max Cohen:Mhmm.
George B. Thomas:Chad, after you go, I have thoughts.
Chad Hohn:Yeah. Sure. Yeah. I mean, I think it's, you know, for for a couple different reasons. Right?
Chad Hohn:It's this way. And one of the reasons is, you know, HubSpot has a bunch of teams of people working on a bunch of different features. Right? And so it's not like they got one dude where they just, you know, slide some pizzas under the door every now and again, and all of a sudden they get Breeze Copilot. Right?
Chad Hohn:You know, that's not happening. Like, they got so many people working on it. Right? And so because of that, we have all of these different data source functions in different tabs because each different team is working on it all at the same time most likely. Right?
Chad Hohn:That's what I would imagine anyway. Obviously, they're all they're all over some or there's a product lead over kind of the whole thing and, you know, they have meetings and whatever, but, like, people are building them in individually. Right? And, traditionally, we're used to, like, trying to make our own model or our own GPT with memory where we are putting in the guardrails into our ginormous plain text document. You put in things like, here is a value proposition, and here is a company pain point.
Chad Hohn:Like, in your documentation, it's pretty structured. But if you give people the opportunity to put in traditional documentation and then they just feed it a big pile of poo, like, it's not gonna know how to pull the data out of that necessarily. Right? I mean, it'll be able to try to look forward to the best it can. So what I'm imagining is on on their side, they feed value proposition as a variable into a prompt, like a larger prompt architecture where it would go in normal documentation.
Chad Hohn:It's almost like if you could see like, if it spit out a document after it was done doing what it was doing or it understood what it was, you know, extracting the context from what you gave it, then I bet that output would look a lot closer to your traditional documentation, if that makes sense.
George B. Thomas:Yeah. So so I love a couple of things. One, it is very much a recipe. A little bit of x plus y equals the, you know, the muffin or the cake that you're trying to get. And so looking at these items in AI data sources as a spice rack of it can x plus y times whatever equals this thing is beautiful.
George B. Thomas:But, also, what I what I find very interesting is that we, we really wanna paint the picture or paint the stories from who we are and what we know about the world. And I can tell you, HubSpot is not selling a blogging tool, therefore, not focused on messaging, but they are selling a CRM and a customer platform, and there are hundreds, if not thousands, of humans who buy the software and don't give a Oh my my goodness. There there we go. I don't give a about
Liz Moorhead:And he was worried about us.
Chad Hohn:Yeah. Yeah.
George B. Thomas:I I pause. I stop myself. I stop myself. They don't give a about messaging. Right?
George B. Thomas:But what they do want is they want their freaking prospecting agent to work, or they want their social media agent to work because they're literally coming at it as we're buying this platform so that we can do these six things. They are loosely tied to inbound. They're they're not, owners or creators of value based human centric content. Like, they're not coming from the place where we come from, Liz. And so they're not looking at this as the formula to create the best content.
George B. Thomas:What they want is the formula that gets them the best outcome, in things that they can do inside of HubSpot, like email template creation, social media agent, you know, optimization, like, these things. And so if we put it under a messaging tab, for some of us who love that, we'd be like, weehee. Yeah. For others, they'd be like, I don't need that, so I'll never look at it. Unfortunately, very much how I feel like and why we did these episodes is people look at data sources and be like, that's nerd shit.
George B. Thomas:I don't need it.
Liz Moorhead:Well, the challenge I have with that, though, and I because I wanna throw a couple of things out there. One, the idea of having a messaging strategy is a lot more traditional corporate than you might think. That is not something that I came out of, like, inbound and things like that. That is very traditional corporate stuff. I I get it.
Liz Moorhead:Say let me finish. Yeah. One other thing I will say is that value propositions, when I think about this stuff, you know what the last thing I'm thinking of actually is storytelling. This is a very much a practical manual to make sure we're just all saying the same stuff. It is literally like when we say what this company is and what we do, we're not all saying 15,000 different answers.
Liz Moorhead:It's when we say, like, what are our top value propositions? We're we're committed to compliance. We're transparent and reliable. We have uncompromising ethical is done. Like, it's I'm running through one from, like, a an example client.
Liz Moorhead:Right? And so everybody's always saying the same thing. Now what I will agree with you, George, is that I think a lot of times people do not realize did you know that there's a thing called a messaging strategy that has all the same stuff in the same place? Completely agree with you on that. But I would I the only thing I wanna be very careful about is this idea that some of these principles are coming from these very kind of soft, fluffy places when it actually is very just like if you want your sales team to all be saying the same stuff in the sales process, having a messaging strategy out of the box is not entirely unheard of.
George B. Thomas:And and I don't I don't disagree. Yeah. What I'm saying is if you go back and count, you can't count on both hands, what I'm about to say. The amount of times that we've made fun or talked about people buying HubSpot so that they could send email. Idiots.
George B. Thomas:Or or buy HubSpot so they can, like, do one thing or get HubSpot and turn it into their existing system.
Chad Hohn:Oh, yeah. That happens all the time. People just don't wanna change
George B. Thomas:sometimes. And so there's this huge disconnect of, like, this place where we want people to live in this place where we hope that they have the things that we think they have and know the things that we hope they know. And then what is reality.
Chad Hohn:But they don't. Yeah. One of
Liz Moorhead:those they don't. And then this is one of those things where it's kinda like, how much do we want to cater to, like, bad habits, and how much do we want to bring people into correct habits? Now I know that's a much broader discussion, and I don't wanna sound like I'm the person trying to be on the high horse. We should all be doing these things exactly this way. Like, that's not what I'm trying to say.
Liz Moorhead:But, like, if I have a bunch of tabs and one of them says messaging strategy and it says value propositions, pain points, like, certain things, like, that that is not outside the realm of possibility to me. But I totally get what you're saying, George, because we are so inside the platform. We are always looking at it from this holistic, humanistic kind of way, and we do have people coming into the platform who are using it in much more like, I got this because it was an email platform. I got this because I don't like Salesforce anymore as our CRM, and I would like to not use it anymore. Like, we're having people come in through more transactional avenues, and I totally get that.
Liz Moorhead:We are running into a situation, though, where it's like a little bit of messaging, a little bit of hand holding, a little bit of anything from HubSpot here would have been helpful. But I think what is very exciting to me about this conversation is how much potential there is within this specific tool. Now I do wanna ask Oh. Go ahead, George.
George B. Thomas:So let's be honest. If I had my, like, if I could wave wave a magic wand, right under value proposition, there'd be a link to a HubSpot Academy video teaching the what's, why's, and how's of creating the dopest value proposition for this box. Underneath the what pain points does your company solve, there'd be, like, the dopest piece of content that and and by the way, this might be something that other agencies are listening to. And if so, and you have something like, Supered, it would be my suggestion that you would create an internal video, targeting the word value proposition on said page of HubSpot settings or what pain points does your company solve and create a freaking super, video to actually teach the way that this ish needs to be done to to be helpful. Anyway, I digress.
George B. Thomas:Go ahead, Liz.
Liz Moorhead:You know, you say things out loud like that in front of your content strategist who is now just gonna be like, so, George, unrelated to anything, could you whip up some videos for me walking through each of these tools?
Chad Hohn:Yeah.
George B. Thomas:It's fine. Maybe sounds
Max Cohen:like it sounds like George is is tiptoeing down into the super industrial complex. Are you, sir? I
George B. Thomas:I well, I I I've I've talked to them multiple time. I've I've talked to them multiple times. I haven't pulled the trigger on it yet, but I think there's some interesting use cases for it in the future, maybe, but not why we're here.
Liz Moorhead:Okay. So let's flip the script here. We've talked a lot about what we like, but I would be curious to hear if any of you all have concerns. George, let's start with you.
George B. Thomas:I don't well, I mean, my first gut response is I don't really have any concerns with this section in general. But I will say that I guess I might have concerns that people won't do it right, but we've already kind of been alluding to that. Like, listen. AI garbage in garbage out. Right?
George B. Thomas:So if you just slap some like, oh, I think that's good enough in here. It's probably not good enough. And the reason I wanna bring that part up too is because this is one place in the AI data sources that we don't have a character limit. At least that we can visually see. There's nothing saying that it has to be under 5,000 words, which means to me you can get rich and robust, which means you can add a lot of specificity and context to the things that we're talking about here.
George B. Thomas:So I've just I would hope people would take the time to figure out things like where my brain went, you know, when we were prepping for this is what's the formula for the dopest value proposition for an AI agent? What's the dopest formula for, explaining the pain points that your company solves for an AI agent? What's the best formula to create a description, that AI agents really understand the who, what, why, and where of the service that you're providing when you put it in here for your products and services? And taking time to do this right. Again, I don't know if that answers your question, but that's where my brain goes.
Liz Moorhead:No. I like that a lot. I mean, there is something to be said for the fact and and this is something I've experimented with outside outside of, obviously, the HubSpot tools, but with other AI tools. I've noticed that the more because I have to use all of my messaging strategies for my clients, and I build GPTs that help our that are constructed on those. And there it has forced me in very smart ways to rework some of the things that I do because you can't some if you make things too complex, it gets contradictory.
Liz Moorhead:You may not always realize, like, you are overloading. Like, more isn't always better when it comes to the context that you're giving AI tools. So, like, I found, like, it's actually helped me refine things just me personally where it's like, well, maybe I don't need 10,000 words to say we're good at stuff. Right? Like, maybe it could just be we're good at stuff.
Liz Moorhead:Right? But no. I completely agree. The fact that the I did notice that there were no character limits on it. I found that kind of surprising.
Liz Moorhead:But I also understand, you know, maybe it's because they understand that people have value propositions documented, and they may be approved
Chad Hohn:many
Liz Moorhead:at many bureaucratic levels Yeah. That cannot be unapproved. So it's it's a little bit of column a, column b, but this is where the concern I have is that and their education like, I know they have blog articles about value propositions. I know they do. I've always been fascinated by the fact that they don't integrate linking to knowledge based articles or blog articles that they have have in some of these tools, but maybe because they go out of date.
Liz Moorhead:I don't know.
George B. Thomas:Oh, Liz. Humans don't like to read.
Liz Moorhead:I know. But I believe they can date that they're there.
George B. Thomas:Yeah. I I don't disagree. I I was kind of making a funny, but, yeah, the but but but see, here's the thing, man. A lot of what HubSpot does is to attract. Even a lot of the education in HubSpot Academy is to attract.
George B. Thomas:Mhmm. We need we need this is why I brought up Superd. We need content that actually, is you know? I'll be shut up. Not why we're here.
George B. Thomas:Just yeah. Do that for the rest of the show. The old
Liz Moorhead:flat line. Doing great. Chad and Max, concerns, grievances.
Chad Hohn:I mean, I've been thinking about, you know, just a lot of where this is going is, like, you know, we're talking about how, like, they give us a few certain things in certain spots. And, like, you know, we were kind of talking about earlier, when you, you know, have something, should we have, like, a fallback or, like, some sort of a mechanism in case people don't do it right or the way we're expecting them to? And, like, at least when you're engineering some sort of integration or, like,
Liz Moorhead:process is followed.
Chad Hohn:I'm like, yeah. What about when it's not? And they're like, oh, well, it should always be here if the process is followed. I'm like, yeah. What about when it's not?
Chad Hohn:And they're like, oh, well, it should always be there. And if it's not, then there's a problem. I'm like, yeah. But, like, what about when it's not? Because it's not gonna be there more than you think it will if it relies only on a process to get it there or something along those lines.
Chad Hohn:So, like, we I think some of the reason that it's architected the way that it is is to make sure that they have something in the right spot rather than just to be completely missing huge chunks that they might absolutely critically need for the architecture of the solution, right, as a whole. So I don't know if that's like a thought or a cons that's just more of a thought, like, than a concern. I think my you know, I know this is like, AI is getting so much attention. Right? But I still have a little bit of a concern that, like, this could go a little bit the way of, like, HubSpot projects in certain parts of it.
Chad Hohn:Like, I mean, could it just, like, get stuck under under a settings tab, under your you know, click on your face, and then all of a sudden, it's AI data sources, and then it's there since 2017.
George B. Thomas:Wait. When you say that, what you mean is it ends up with cobwebs and and, like, two inches of dust. That's what you mean.
Chad Hohn:Yeah. And, like, it just stays this way forever, and they don't go further because it you know, either the project got abandoned or whatever. And, I mean, like, I really doubt that that's gonna happen because of how much attention AI has and how huge of a focus it is. But, like, there's the potential for that in the event that, like, some of these things are, like, too abstract and, like, there's not enough again, I think going back to, like, the hand holding with people through it to understand what to put here, even just simple stuff. Right?
Chad Hohn:Like, simple, this is what's gonna you know, like, action input output sort of helping people see the picture. Because, like, right now, they see fields. They don't see, like, a vision for what putting good data in this will help you do outside of, like, it will affect your contact content agent. I need to get a voice mod that will be Liz's Liz voice.
Liz Moorhead:Not everyone can be advertising at that end.
Max Cohen:Yeah. It will affect your account head agent.
Chad Hohn:Yeah. Anyway, so that.
Max Cohen:Wow. Is, do all these agents require you to complete
George B. Thomas:one product or or, one product because they don't cause well, yeah. They do
Chad Hohn:a lot of these agents. On HubSpot, you're selling something. Yeah. And you have to have well, no.
Liz Moorhead:But I'm for the you're selling something.
George B. Thomas:Yeah. And you have to have well, no. But I'm for the agent to work, you have to have at least one in place.
Max Cohen:Okay. Yeah. Good. My concern is that people would ignore this and just start flipping the agents on. Right?
Max Cohen:But it sounds like you've gotta at least
George B. Thomas:Yep.
Max Cohen:Have something.
George B. Thomas:Right? At least gotta have something for it to start to work. Because, again, it needs that context.
Max Cohen:Yeah. Yeah. We could
George B. Thomas:look at we literally could look at, data sources as, like, AI agent onboarding.
Chad Hohn:Yeah. Yeah. You're you're onboarding your own
Max Cohen:AI agent. That's pretty true. Yeah. I mean, I've got less concerns because, you know, I was always scared about AI lacking all of this context and just leaning on shit it knows from the Internet to be able to create content and write stuff and and all of that and, you know, because it it kinda goes back to the argument that I would have with, you know, customers when it came to, like, hiring a partner for content creation. I was always very skeptical that some outside agency would be able to come in and understand your customers and your product in your industry the way you do.
Max Cohen:So I always thought, like, hey. It's really important for subject matter experts within the company to actually be the ones generating original content. Right? And then, you know, when, you know, the whole, oh, AI is right in your blog post now stuff came out, and people said, oh, see, it's so easy to create content. And then I was just like, well, I mean, I really, really doubt that, like, the AI is gonna understand your business and your customers and your process and your goals very well.
Max Cohen:Now we're taking a step to really alleviate that, you know, that fear. Right? And just like anything else, it's a baby step. Right? But I think it's a pretty big baby step, to be honest, when you look at all this stuff together in in, you know, summation.
Max Cohen:Right? So I'm less concerned. I'm more hopeful, you know, that we're gonna arm AI with exactly what it needs to act like a team member and not just like a word generator. And I think that's cool.
Liz Moorhead:I have to throw something out there that I think George is gonna be proud of me for saying. Because, normally, I'm I'm the little butthead. It's like, but content is art, you know, all these different thing. And it is. Right?
Liz Moorhead:Like, I I've had extensive conversations on here about, like, you gotta be in the driver's seat. Right?
Max Cohen:Mhmm.
Liz Moorhead:And this is something that is not a conversation that is just specific to this tool, but you said something, Max, that I find really interesting about the idea of, like, outside parties coming in and being able to tell your story better than you can.
Max Cohen:Mhmm.
Liz Moorhead:You have a and I've heard about this. Like, you can't outsource your content. You can't do this. You can't do that. Oh, that's malarkey.
Liz Moorhead:No. But here's what. I wanna speak to that fear at a high level, Max. I'm not saying that's what you were saying. I will just wanna share this because it kinda hit on a point that I think sometimes we miss.
Liz Moorhead:If it requires someone to literally be inside of your organization in order to speak to the soul of it about who you are, what you do, who you're built for, and how you do what you do better than anybody else, what your value propositions are, all these things. If you don't have the ability to articulate that to a third party outside of yourself in a way that makes sense that can be repeated and shared, you have larger problems as an organization.
Max Cohen:Yes. I think that's true. But I think more so when I was so, like, I'm not I I would never discount the ability for a third party to come in and be able to tell that story about a company. Right? Where it gets tougher for me is them creating the content for the folks out there just trying to solve for a specific goal or a challenge that they had.
Max Cohen:Right? That don't even they they're not even in the framework of learning about a company and learning about what they do and who they are. Right? They're just going, oh, my something something is wrong, and I'm trying to figure out how to solve for it. Right?
Max Cohen:Mhmm. When I'm in that mode, I don't give a I don't give a about, you know, who a who a company is and why they are who they are and, like, all this other, you know, stuff. Like, I'm just trying to find an answer to my question. Right? And that to me, I think, like, the nuances of doing that really well, to me, it was always I always felt like it was, like, a little bit tougher to, like, expect a third party to come in there and really be, like, a subject matter expert on the goals and challenges of your customers because that company that built a product to solve for the goals and challenges of the customers probably have a much more deep intimate understanding of what those things are, right, than a third party that's not well skilled in that.
Max Cohen:Right? Now, yes, I I can agree. You can you can communicate that to people and have them create the content and everything. Right? But, you know, it just totally offloading it to them and just saying, like, oh, yeah.
Max Cohen:Like, you know, create which is, like, kinda what happened in the past. Hopefully, it happens a little less. But, you know, I've always just kind of been someone to say, like, listen. When it comes to that true, like, awareness stage, you know, that that true, like, awareness consideration, you know, top of the funnel content that is all, like, purely educational and really pointed and targeted, like, the nuance, goals, and challenges that the type of people you're trying to attract have. I always, always want subject matter experts who are passionate about that shit and understand that stuff deeply involved in that content creation process.
Max Cohen:Right? But that's just me.
Liz Moorhead:We need to have the outsourced content conversation on this podcast. I don't think we've ever done it because I think that is I'm gonna say one thing. We're gonna put a pin in it because, George, I wanna come to you to come to you about best practices. But to put a pin in it, I think the outsourced content conversation is a breakdown on both sides because I think in some ways, most content shops or agency offered content services do not do the work to integrate themselves into organizations the way they should.
Max Cohen:I agree with you.
Liz Moorhead:I agree with you. Conversation.
Max Cohen:And it's more that's not me saying there isn't an agency that can't do it. I'm I'm saying the ones that are really, really good at that speaking of the past. Very, very rare and probably super expensive. Right? Yeah.
Max Cohen:To have that detailed and and skilled of a process and and nuanced understanding of it. Right? The run of the mill people that are gonna come in and be like, top top 10 things you need to know about company a b c and have that be your content is just, like, you know, blockers. But, anyway
Liz Moorhead:Yeah. George, I wanna talk to you really quickly. I wanna hear from you because you have actually built this out for sidekick strategy as your agency. Right? You've gone in.
Liz Moorhead:You've done all the tools. You've done all the build out. And I'd love to hear from you. What are some of the best practices folks should keep in mind while filling these pieces out? You've alluded to formulas.
Liz Moorhead:You've alluded to all of these different things. I'd love to hear best practices and maybe some rookie mistakes folks can avoid as they're going through this process.
George B. Thomas:Again, I'll I'll say something, and I'm gonna say it in a little bit of a different way than I usually, do this. And and by the way, Liz, as I'm saying this, my brain also is transporting me back to when you say some organizations already have these things because it's part of the fabric of who they are. And so if you have these things, great. Look them over. Make sure they're not outdated from when you built them seven or seventeen years ago because your business changed.
George B. Thomas:The world changed. Like so let's let's make sure they are really what they're supposed to be for today, and then put them in put them in. But where I'll go if you don't have that and you're trying to get this in here is, one, you don't have to do this alone. So many times I've watched super admins just be super admins and think that they have to do this alone. Mhmm.
George B. Thomas:It's almost gonna pair with the content, outsourced content. Interview some of your top sales folks, your SVP, your m you know, marketing CMO. Interview them. Ask questions. Get the transcript.
George B. Thomas:Like, start to craft this at a human level if you want, or interview them, get the transcripts, and work together with an AI assistant to be like, hey. If I take these interviews and I try to build a robust value proposition that is going to be used in HubSpot, take screenshot, paste in, boom, like, help me create use this framework that Hub Heroes gave me and and the information that I've taken from people in my organization and helped me craft this draft that I can now take to the next level. In other words, don't do it alone. Like, tagging other humans, tagging AI, because, yes, between humans and AI, you can use those to actually do what we're here to do is program the AI that is HubSpot, the version of HubSpot that is AI. It doesn't have to be a huge hurdle.
George B. Thomas:Like, Liz, when I when I crafted these, like, thirty to forty five minutes, boom. Done. Loved it. Moved on. But also came back and said, hey.
George B. Thomas:This is what I created. Is there a way to make it better? Okay. Let's figure out a formula. Now let's update it.
George B. Thomas:Right? But at least get something that's good in there. Have a conversation with humans in your organization to get the information that you might not have if you don't have it, and then work with a a GPT, a Claude, a perplexity. I don't I don't give a crap. To then expedite or streamline or speed up, getting this into HubSpot.
George B. Thomas:And by the way, part of this might even be just collecting what you already have. With the products and services, hopefully, you have a products and services page. I literally just had, my very programmed trusted GPT, like, look at the page and say, give me titles and descriptions for all the products and services that we provide, and then enhanced them and then did a little bit of copy and paste. And, again, fifteen, twenty, thirty minutes, products and services were in there. So it didn't have to be this massive hurdle, like some of us feel like this this these things might
Chad Hohn:be. I think this takes me to the place where, like, I I think people who, you know, are on the fence about whether or not they need to be, like, using AI in their day to day in any capacity. I mean, like, the part of the reason you just, like, oh, here's an image and tell me to fill in some things, you know, is because, like, you've been just, like, cultivating and caring for your AI assistant for quite a while. Right, George? Like, you've just been, like, working on it, and this is what we do and hone your craft, and it assists your business.
Chad Hohn:And, like, it starts to feel like people you know, like, it well, it's like you're, like, a little Tamagotchi or whatever. Right? It's like Playing
Max Cohen:playing catch playing catch with it outside.
Chad Hohn:Right. Playing catch with the Yeah. Anyway. But it's like if if you're at least starting to do that, then, you know, you're just gonna be starting with blank GPT threads all the time. Yep.
Chad Hohn:And, like, every time you gotta tell it exactly what you want, and it feels a little bit more laborious to deal with, like, your AI assistant. But I think a really exciting place in my brain and, like, you know, this is just against seeing the vision of the future is, like, pop open Copilot on the page inside HubSpot and ask it, hey. I don't have a marketing strategy, like, you know, to get to the point where it's gonna help, like, walk you through that. Because, like, how cool would it be to, like, talk to it about what you need for this page that you're on in your AI settings to help train your AI assistants and your agents in HubSpot and your content with what will be most impactful, especially on what they're wanting. And then ask it to help you, you know, maybe get that information from your team, and, you know, it'll give you some questions to interview so that it has the data that it needs as, like, part of that interview to, you know, bring that back home.
Chad Hohn:So, I mean, I think that's like the, you know, almost, I'm almost hoping that, like, inside of HubSpot, Copilot's gonna have some of that so that everything related to your business, you don't have to, like, so manually go after all of this context input into your model, like, you know, George has been, enjoying doing all this time.
George B. Thomas:I hope they get there. I don't know if it's there yet, but I hope they get there.
Chad Hohn:No. I hope they do too. I think that's the vision of the future that I would love to see. Right?
Liz Moorhead:I love that. Max, what about you, bud?
Max Cohen:I feel like I kind of, gave it all away in my last answer.
Liz Moorhead:It's okay.
Max Cohen:I mean,
Chad Hohn:I I gave it all away.
Max Cohen:I'm sure. I should've saved
Liz Moorhead:some should've squirreled
Chad Hohn:away for one time.
Max Cohen:Yeah. I gave everything I had for it. Yeah. I mean, I'm just generally excited about the direction that it's going. I mean, it's they're I think they're clearly being very thoughtful in the way that they kind of, like, brick by brick build this whole, you know, AI I mean, whatever kind of breezes today.
Max Cohen:I can't even imagine what it's gonna be like in the future. But it it the the thing that makes me happy about it is that they are really getting away from this is an AI easy button to here's how you build Here's how, like, you you truly support an AI strategy within HubSpot, and here's all the things that you can do to make sure you're using it the right way and not just something that is just supposed to be, you know, spitting out a tons of high volume low quality stuff to make it look like it's this giant time saver. It's more so like, how are we turning it into a creative tool that has the context it needs to operate like a true teammate versus some hyper productivity hack. Right? It's it it they're they're they're they're building it with care.
Max Cohen:And they're they're building it in a way that people can use it, but not use it the wrong way, I guess. I don't know. I'm I'm I I'm just glad it's not, like I mean, it's it's it's just very clear it's not gonna be this, like, flash in the bucket AI feature thing. It's it's it's gonna be a a very, you know, good approach to how you should be using it within the context of HubSpot and the greater strategy it supports. Right?
Max Cohen:So I'm, I'm very optimistic, and I'm starting to watch it closer than I ever have before. So
George B. Thomas:I mean, I've said it before. I'll say it again. I think HubSpot is building the world's largest business agent.
Chad Hohn:Mhmm. Yeah.
George B. Thomas:Yeah. So this Yeah. Whole thing that we've been talking about, all of these settings inside of a setting, I don't think they'll end up like projects because they're too dang important to to make the business agent be the best business agent it can be.
Chad Hohn:Yeah. Agreed.
Liz Moorhead:Well, George, as Chad alluded to, I think, once before, it was very difficult for us to land the plane without you that one time we were left to our own devices. So I'd love to just turn it back to you and have you help us officially land the plane for the last time in 2024. What do you want listeners to take away from this episode and, I guess, quite frankly, the whole AI data sources series because we just wrapped that up.
George B. Thomas:Yeah. One, take some time to chill. Happy holidays, happy New Year, merry Christmas, Kwanzaa, whatever. Just take some time to reflect on the journey that you've had in 2024. Definitely look ahead for what's gonna happen in 2025.
George B. Thomas:Maybe, set some goals and some strategies and all those good things that you should do. As far as one of those goals and strategies is go and spend some more time with, data sources. Go think about things like value propositions, ideal customer profiles. Think about the agents that you wanna turn on or use. Think about should you be creating educational value based content if you're not.
George B. Thomas:Think about the experiences that you can create in 2025 because, let's be honest, at this point, that's what we
Intro:humans care about
George B. Thomas:is experiences. So go enjoy, go focus, and we'll see you in the new year. Okay, hub heroes. We've reached the end of another episode. Will Lord Lack continue to loom over the community, or will we be able to defeat him in the next episode of the Hub Heroes podcast?
George B. Thomas: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. 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.
George B. Thomas: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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