HubSpot AI vs. Human Judgment: When Should You Trust the Machine?
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.
Max Cohen:Me. See, I hate that because I hate it because I I thought we were just diving right into the conversation. I was like, oh, George isn't playing the intro, and then you pull that shit
George B. Thomas:in. Yes.
George B. Thomas:You like that?
Max Cohen:Caught me off guard.
George B. Thomas:You like that? I'm not ready
Max Cohen:for that, dude. I'm not ready for that. I haven't thought about HubSpot for fourteen days. I don't know how long I've been off. And
George B. Thomas:The the holidays. Right?
Max Cohen:Yeah. I was just, like, getting I was ready, and then you just you threw me off completely.
Liz Moorhead:You know, let's you know, let's call it guys. Try again tomorrow. Let's just try again
George B. Thomas:tomorrow. No. Tomorrow. Let's just Alright. Another day.
George B. Thomas:Alright. Bye, listeners.
Liz Moorhead:Bye, everybody. It's been good. Bye.
George B. Thomas:Just kidding. Just kidding.
Liz Moorhead:So how have you guys been? I missed you.
Max Cohen:I'm gonna be honest. I'm gonna be honest. I've, give me one second here.
George B. Thomas:No lack of snacks for this morning.
Max Cohen:No no lack of snacks. No lack of snacks. I've racked up around 349 hours in Farming Simulator since we've last booked.
George B. Thomas:Brother. Wow.
Max Cohen:Now granted, there's sometimes where I just kinda, like, keep it on and walk away from it and
George B. Thomas:Yeah.
Max Cohen:But, you know, I was get
George B. Thomas:those farm hours in. You know?
Max Cohen:I got some hours in. A %.
Liz Moorhead:Yeah. Agriculture never sleeps, man.
Max Cohen:Jeez. Hey. You know what? We're just trying to grow better.
George B. Thomas:Okay? Oh, wow.
Max Cohen:We're trying to grow better.
George B. Thomas:This. Really?
Max Cohen:Okay. Mega has
Liz Moorhead:That's the vibe of 2025. That's what we're
George B. Thomas:Yep. We're just trying to,
George B. Thomas:like, get
Max Cohen:a tracker. Grow better.
George B. Thomas:Farm simulator because we forgot what HubSpot is. We are on the
Max Cohen:I ordered a joystick. I ordered a joystick, okay, to control my, you know,
George B. Thomas:Your excavators and stuff.
Max Cohen:Excavators and, yeah, tree harvesters. We're going hard. Wow. You
Liz Moorhead:know? You're right, Max.
Max Cohen:Farmer when you grow up. I might be.
George B. Thomas:You know what? We should be we should be farming Leeds.
Liz Moorhead:Yeah. I was trying
Max Cohen:to make it look so good.
Liz Moorhead:That's a better one. I like that.
George B. Thomas:I was I'm I'm trying here. I'm try I'm
Liz Moorhead:We're doing our best. We're doing our best. But we are back. New year, new episode, but on our same old BS. I'm very excited about today's episode because if you are a longtime listener, first time caller, you know that we spent the a good number of episodes before the new year talking about HubSpot AI's new tools as we went through the different data source settings throughout, the platform.
Liz Moorhead:But AI has been a topic for a while now, not just because of everything that's happening in the headlines, but particularly within the HubSpot ecosystem. It began really enforced last year when the HubSpot CMS hub relaunched as the content hub. And that was when we really started seeing HubSpot leading with some AI powered tools within the platform. Platform. But then we saw it continue to escalate when we got to inbound with Breeze Intelligence and all of the different ways that AI is now basically part of the DNA of how HubSpot works.
Liz Moorhead:Now while we talked about hubs or AI and HubSpot before, I have to admit, guys, one of the reasons why I'm thrilled to be revisiting this topic is we were kind of learning alongside everybody else. Right? We were experiencing all of these updates in real time. We really hadn't had a lot of time to do a lot of excavation of best practices on our own. So this is still going to be a conversation that will evolve as we all learn, but we're here to talk today about the big question when it comes to HubSpot AI versus our own human powered judgment.
Liz Moorhead:When do you trust the machine? Because AI makes it so easy to generate content and strategies without much thought, which leads me to my favorite rule, which is applicable to marketing, HubSpot, or quite frankly anything else in life. It's the Jurassic Park rule. Just because you can, doesn't mean you should. Just because you can build AI content dinosaur, doesn't mean you should.
Liz Moorhead:So today's conversation isn't about picking sides. It's about understanding where HubSpot AI tools really add value versus where our humanity becomes irreplaceable. Now, George, I wanna start with you because your topic at inbound was literally about this idea of human powered AI assisted when you're thinking about your AI content, your AI tools as the critical mindset HubSpot users need to embrace when they're thinking about AI. But what does that really mean? And I would be curious if any of your views have shifted on that at all since we gave since giving that talk.
George B. Thomas:Yeah. So the talk, if I boil it down to, like, three major points, it's one, AI is a tool, not a replacement. In in the conversation, that was a big piece that we talked about that, AI should never be the easy button or the silver bullet solution. Like, the the human context matters, and, again, we are we are the leader. We are the brain even though AI is really, really freaking smart, especially with, like, the latest models that have been launched.
George B. Thomas:A big piece of the talk was context is crucial. I'll talk about something that I've added to that, here as we've kind of been continuing down this AI journey. And then, another part was frameworks for effective AI use, Liz. And, like, one of the things we literally, gave away was, like, a checklist on how to humanize, and this was specific to content because my conversation was on content. Although many of the things that I just said, context is crucial, AI is a tool, not a replacement, could be far outside of the content realm.
George B. Thomas:Mhmm. But if you think about, what are the frameworks that keep you rooted to where you need to be, what is the context that you need to give it, and how is it a tool, not a replacement? My mind hasn't shifted or changed on any of those. I still believe those to be true. One of the things that I have been playing around with to go along with context is this idea of cohesive.
George B. Thomas:And and what I mean by cohesive is, like, being able to string thoughts together. Right? When I gave this talk back at inbound, it was we very much lived in a world where it was like we had one conversation and we did one thing, and and then we went to a next conversation and did another thing. And now with the way that especially, this is less HubSpot, for a second, but more like if we lean into chat GPT and the the birth of Canvas, that we have in there and the the birth of o, four now being able to do things where you can have a cohesive thought across multiple things. I'll give you an example around content creation.
George B. Thomas:I was messing around, this couple weeks ago, and I said, hey. I wanna create four YouTube scripts. I want the four scripts to layer on top of each other and hand off to each other, and I wanna teach this topic, and I wanna teach it in this way. And then in an individual canvas in one conversation, so meaning we had four canvases, we literally had four rough draft scripts for these videos to which then in the same conversation, because we had those scripts, we then asked it for LinkedIn posts, and we asked it for YouTube descriptions. Now we never left that one conversation, but we had a cohesive thread based on the context from a tool that was assisting us to do a task based off of a framework for videos to hand off to each other.
George B. Thomas:Right? So this is where so where we're getting now I think this is still, you can still think about this when you think about HubSpot. Like, how does this be gap that? How does the how do we make this cohesive as we move forward when we're thinking about things, by the way, AKA data sources, when we're thinking about the, service bot, the social bot, the or I should say agent. Right?
George B. Thomas:But I don't know if we're really in a world of agents yet, but we're getting there. But when when we get into the agents, content agents, social agent, prospecting agent, like, now now the the thing that we need to be thinking about is cohesiveness across the board. So that that's my thoughts, Liz, to get us going.
Liz Moorhead:Chad, I wanna ask you, where do you feel that HubSpot's AI tools shine the most right now? When you get into that ops mindset, which is one of the most incredible things that you bring to this show, what what are the specific tasks or processes where they consistently outperform human effort? Because, George, to your point, a lot of the conversation you had during that inbound talk, that was about content. Right? That is where humanity in theory is supposed to be on display.
Liz Moorhead:But I think when we have these AI and particularly generative AI conversations, we forget that sometimes it's not necessarily that kind of output.
George B. Thomas:Yeah. Yeah. I mean, for for me, when I'm looking at where HubSpot's putting AI in in what I often do, a lot of the ops integration, connecting system type stuff, it's not really there for me and what I would do yet. Meaning, like, inside of a workflow, I don't have, unless it's a third party tool, some sort of AI function. But where it is very, very shining is in the scenario where it's augmenting people's daily manual tasks.
George B. Thomas:So maybe the thing that I would build is something to properly task humans to do something or to make sure that they're aware and trained on when their sales meetings are coming up, and then you can use the AI meeting prepare. And, bam, it will look through all of the notes on the company record, and it'll look through all of the previous meetings and all the last calls. And you can ask it for, like, a sentiment update in Breeze. Like, I mean, that's pretty amazing. Being able to, like, just parse through all of that information in an easy to digest manner to get you ready for your upcoming meeting.
George B. Thomas:That's pretty awesome. Like but when it comes to, like, getting it to do asks for you automatically, you know, that's, I think, a little bit where we're not quite you know, it's not built in to that point yet because I think they're still making sure the guardrails are up longer for a season where you're confident that you're actually gonna be able to have that framework that George is talking about in before it starts trying to offload a whole lot into, well, this one part of the process can be done and saved and logged into a property or something like that. Right? All with AI. Right?
George B. Thomas:It gets a little bit more difficult there because we wanna make sure it's doing what we need, and we have all of our own business guidelines and guardrails to be able to put in so it can do what we want it to every time.
Liz Moorhead:Max, what about you? Where do you see HubSpot's AI tool shining?
Max Cohen:You know, again, for me being the guy who's always, you know, constantly championed the idea that content is what runs, you know, the entire inbound machine that you create, like, I think a lot of that, you know, in terms of, like, where it shines the most is really just the assistance around that content creation stuff. And I think, like, even when you talk about, you know, the content creation and I'm thinking specifically about, like, written word here. Right? Like, yeah, all the, you know, mix that so I'm forgetting yeah. I forget whatever these called now because I've been on break
Liz Moorhead:for so long.
Max Cohen:All the yeah. Content remix stuff is, like, super cool just from, like, a time saving perspective and content reuse perspective. I think that's really great because it can really amplify what a marketer is doing. But, you know, even just where it comes into something as simple as, like, you know, assisting people who just aren't great at writing. You You know what I mean?
Max Cohen:I'm not good at writing at all. Right? And, like, when I write emails, I write long, long emails. Right? So, like you're
George B. Thomas:that guy?
Max Cohen:Having some oh, yeah. Totally. Because I feel like I have to explain every single thing. I wanna leave no room for questions. Like, I wanna leave nothing to the imagination.
Max Cohen:I always you know, I tend to be someone who, like, overexplains things. Right? And for me, it's really great to have tools to help me, like, shorten that message and make it more concise and fix all my terrible grammar and punctuation and, like, all these other things.
Liz Moorhead:I totally do that. Like, here's an email. Please make it 75 shorter.
Max Cohen:Yeah. Yeah. And even just that even just that, this is something that's, like, great for salespeople to have. Like, I'm sorry. I've gotten some really poorly written sales emails before.
George B. Thomas:Yeah.
Max Cohen:Right? And, you know, especially, you know, from SDRs and BDRs fresh out of college that, like, don't really know how to write emails well. Right? So, like, even having something that's, like, acting sort of as, like, a glorified Grammarly, like, in your CRM just to be like, hey. You know what?
Max Cohen:There's a there's a better, you know, more professional or, you know, better way to write what you were just trying to write to that person. You know what I mean? I think having that is great just to, like, kind of improve the output quality of their content, quote, unquote, that, like, a salesperson's creating. Creating. Because if you think about a salesperson, their content creation is their outreach, their communications, their emails, their this, their that.
Max Cohen:Right? I think it's really, really great for that. And I think it really falls in line with, you know, all the other sort of, like, time saving stuff that, like, HubSpot's built over the years to make salespeople's lives easier. Right? You look at things like sequences and templates and, you know, all these things that are just meant to, you know, help automate those repetitive tasks that you have.
Max Cohen:Well, it's like, hey. Now the the task of creating that thing in the first place, it improves the quality of. Right? Not just reducing the amount of time you're spending on it. Right?
Max Cohen:Which, also, yeah, you could make an argument. It's reducing the amount of time you're spending on proofreading email or just making sure you're wording something correctly. Right? But it's also you know, it's gonna fix up your sentence structure, and it's gonna make you, like, write it like someone who knows how to be a wordsmith on a keyboard. Right?
Max Cohen:And I think that's gonna be great for folks that wanna focus on selling, not focus on relearning how to, you know, compose the English language in a in a professional and and good quality way. Right? Yeah. So yeah.
George B. Thomas:It's interesting, Max, because you're listening to you, my brain goes in two directions. One, for all of you listening to this, if you have access to Remix and you haven't actually gone back and, like, used it in a while, I would go back and try it again because it has had a little bit of a face lift and also, like, some additives under the hood. I feel like maybe they added a little bit of a turbocharger under there or something. It was yeah.
Liz Moorhead:I feel like we need to have an episode on this because we haven't talked about it.
George B. Thomas:Yeah. So I was teaching it the other day, and and I always love when I'm teaching something and then it it, like, looks new and then it is kind of new, because it's like, you you have to be good at, like, I'm just gonna act like I've seen this a hundred times, and we're gonna teach it together and learn it together.
Max Cohen:So definitely in front of a room of 90 new hires live in the moment in front of a giant projector. That was the worst. Yeah. Exactly. Yeah.
George B. Thomas:So so that's the first thing that comes to mind when like, check out Remix if you hadn't. The second thing that came to my mind was, like, if you knew and I'm I don't know how other how else to paint this other than, like, if you knew that you had a weakness. Right? So I'll I'll pretend for a second that I I'm not a very empathetic human, and I understand. I'm just not very empathetic.
George B. Thomas:I'm very matter of a a fact. Right? Like, here's the facts to the matter. If I realize, like, I'm that type of person, I can see where this gets real interesting to be able, like, can you please take this email and add a slight bit of empathy to it? Or add a add a slight bit of excitement to it or or add a add a slight bit of urgency to it.
George B. Thomas:Mystique. Like yeah. Like, whatever it is. Right? So, like
Liz Moorhead:Add a little human razzle dazzle.
George B. Thomas:A little demure.
George B. Thomas:Yeah. Give it some zhoosh. Give give it a little zhoosh it up a little bit. No. But but I'm being but I'm being dead serious here.
George B. Thomas:Right? Like, think about, and by the way, if if if I was a sales guy, which I kind of am, but if it was, like, my full time thing and I knew that I had to create, like, these dope emails, I would probably do what I'm saying for the same email, and I would look at the six or seven different ways. Well, what does it look like if it's written with empathy or if it's written with urgency? Or what if I did a happy mix of the two? And I would because I could because you can so quickly iterate based on these, like, pinpoints of of of thinking to get then oh, I really like how that one and talk about AB testing your sales emails at the like, I want one that's empathetic, and I want one that's, urgency, and let's AB test those and see what happens.
George B. Thomas:Like so
Max Cohen:You know, I think it would be the the thing that I'm, like, excited about and and I don't know how they would deploy this. But, like, think about I guess the word we would use is, like, tribal knowledge. Right? Think about how much tribal knowledge is contained within a company's, like, HubSpot CRM portal. And, like, by that, what I mean is, like, your internal knowledge bases, your records of conversations that you've had with customers, information about your product that's hosted on your website, your key base, your tickets that you have, all these different things.
Max Cohen:Right? Yeah. If you think about it, your CRM is like this giant repository of information on how you've answered people's questions and ways you've solved problems, right, you know, through all this stuff. Right? Like, it's so cool because I think, like, HubSpot one day with, like, their AI stuff could have this whole, like I mean, they'll probably call it something different, but, essentially, this, like, tribal knowledge engine, right, that understands how to solve all these different problems the way your company does it internally.
Max Cohen:Right? And and and that information can only be trained on and found in the records of communications you've had with your customers and the content that you're putting out into the world and how you've solved similar problems in the past. Right? Like, imagine a day where, like, a ticket gets created, and when you go on to that ticket record or that conversation or whatever. Right?
Max Cohen:The AI is able to say, hey. This looks really similar to a ticket that Jeff b solved back in a couple months ago, and, like, this is how they came to you know, this is how they figured it out. Right? Mhmm. Maybe this is something similar.
Max Cohen:Right? And it gives you instead of you going, let me search the let me search my search bar to see if I can find any, like, tickets that are something similar. Right? It links you to, like, hey. Here's an example of someone solving this problem for this other customer.
Max Cohen:Right? Mhmm. Like, that is going to be completely I don't wanna say game changing because I think the word game changing. That will be, like, such a giant fundamental step forward. Right?
Max Cohen:It could have
George B. Thomas:changed the game.
Max Cohen:And it goes way beyond, like, here's an answer in a knowledge base because, like, that's something that's, like, so unique to the inside of your organization. Right? Being able to find, like, past examples of complex problems that are coming up again that have been solved in the past through a different way and then being smart enough to understand that and be like, hey. This sounds similar. Here was the solution, but you can go look at it if you want to.
Max Cohen:Right? That's gonna be
George B. Thomas:Well, the good thing too the good thing too is it's not it's it's not necessarily needing to look at somebody specifically went and created an SOP or documented it. It's looking at the conversation that happened in the system. Therefore, hey. This is what happened. Here's the thing that excites me about that too is it's it's three employees ago.
George B. Thomas:It's six years ago.
George B. Thomas:Yep. Exactly.
George B. Thomas:You know, like, hey. On June nineteenth of twenty twenty seven, Bobby ran into this problem with Frederico, and this is how he fixed it. Like, and and what's great about that is it's now all of a sudden, what what was exciting about content is we were like, there's no more writer's block. There's always a beginning draft. You have an idea, and you just at least you have a place to start.
George B. Thomas:Now when you're talking about fixing people's problems, you have a place to start because you see the finish lines
Liz Moorhead:Mhmm.
George B. Thomas:Of where you're trying to go with this human anyway.
Liz Moorhead:I'll even take it a step further. I'll even take it a step further, George, because one of the things I really like about it, it reminds me of human nature. Right? We are more outspoken and reactive when we see something we don't like. And so what I've actually found that is helpful with AI is that it kills that blank document syndrome that becomes it's that's where writer's block begins.
George B. Thomas:Yep.
Liz Moorhead:Right? But even if it gives me absolute trash, even in that trash moment, I'm like, well, I know definitely it's not this, and it still gives me a starting point
George B. Thomas:Oh, yeah.
Liz Moorhead:Of where I need to go
George B. Thomas:Yeah.
Liz Moorhead:Which I love.
George B. Thomas:Yeah. Yeah.
Liz Moorhead:I wanna I wanna switch the conversation here a bit. I want to talk about the potential risks or downsides of leaning too heavily on HubSpot AI tools. Like, for example, have you ever experienced or heard of a situation where HubSpot AI just produced something that completely fell off or completely missed the mark?
Max Cohen:You know, I could see it. I I could see there being issues for like, I think about, like, the workflows tool and how, like, you can use a workflow to, like, create actions. Right? I could see a situation where someone who's not as understanding of the nuances of HubSpot would just, like, tell a prompt to build a workflow and be like, alright. Well, you know, I told HubSpot what I wanted, and it did it.
Max Cohen:So, like, it must be right, but I'm not educated or understanding enough of how, like, you know, workflows can have different effects on things to to know like, to check its work if it's right or not. Right? Because then they can Or if
George B. Thomas:it's not specific enough. Like, because if you're not specific enough to say, oh, well, I want these things to be updated when meetings are completed, but only the first time. Or if it hap you know, like, I mean, it doesn't understand that unless you tell it. Right?
Max Cohen:Exactly. So, like, so for some new users who, like, you know, see AI as this, like, all powerful thing but don't necessarily understand its limitations or, like, like, you know, are hyper aware of the nuances of how it might not, like, fully understand exactly what you wanna do. Right? But just kind of, like, build something that sort of, like, aligns with it. Right?
Max Cohen:And then folks kind of leaning in on that too heavily. Like, that could be a risk. Right?
George B. Thomas:Yeah.
Max Cohen:I think you do also, like, you know I've talked about these risks before. Like, you do totally have the potential with these tools in front of you to just put a lot of trash out there, whether it's content, you know, or, you know, email communications or anything like that where people just go, oh, AIC button and you hit it and boom. There you go. Right? And it's just you're just pumping out garbage, and and people hate you because of it.
Max Cohen:Right? And not, like, using it as a tool to, like, assist with the creation versus using it as the thing that just builds everything so you don't have to think about it, and you can go play Fortnite or something like that. You know? So that's, like, still kinda what I'm worried about. Right?
Max Cohen:But I I I feel like as HubSpot kind of, like, moves more into those realms that we were talking about around the I don't wanna say the portal becoming self aware of itself. Right? But Wow. The portal maybe All hail stuck at it. Here's here's kinda like what I wanted to say before, and I think it kind of weaves into, like, solving that problem that I just said.
Max Cohen:Right? You know, imagine we had the, you know, full fledged, prompt thing inside the workflows tool. And as you built your workflow, it could talk to you about the implications of what you created. Right? So for example, if you're building, like, a workflow and you add an action that's, like, just changing, like, a property.
Max Cohen:Right? What if little, you know, HubSpot Clippy AI popped up and said, hey.
George B. Thomas:We'll call it hippie.
Max Cohen:Hey. Just so you know. Wow. Just so you know, if you change this property, it might go and, like, trigger this other stuff, and these are some of the effects that that could have. Right?
Max Cohen:Because maybe it sees the action that you're adding, runs that, you know, simulation in its head and goes, oh, shit. All this other stuff is gonna happen because of this. Right? Just to warn you. Right?
Max Cohen:And then if you could, like, have conversations with it, like, oh, what if I do it this way? What if I do it this way? And it knows, like, it understands what the implications of what that would be because, one, it has, like, a really good understanding of how workflows work, but, two, it matches that with the really deep understanding in the context of your portal and the data inside of it.
George B. Thomas:Mhmm.
Max Cohen:Right? You put that together. There's your missing link of the nuance that new users aren't gonna have. Right? So that that will be a real easy way to solve that.
Max Cohen:Yeah. Totally.
George B. Thomas:Right? Because, like, think about this. I work at a partner agency, and we have multiple people sometimes building workflows inside of our clients, HubSpots. And like,
Max Cohen:what
George B. Thomas:if I'm building something that somebody either has built near or already built or something along those lines, right Yep. Then, you know, hippie might be able to tell us Hippie. What's going on. Yeah. Sprocky will get, you know, a little HubSpot Sprocky, a little sprocket in the corner there.
George B. Thomas:And it just
Max Cohen:Oh, hey, guys. Hey. Hey.
George B. Thomas:Wow. Okay. So I love I love, that little comic relief there. And I also love how you guys are, like, future talking today. This is actually pretty amazing.
George B. Thomas:I I have to be honest with you. I have seen where, let's let's just say reporting gets a little because the AI reporting I I I literally teach it this way. I'm like, hey. It's there. Play with it, but be careful.
George B. Thomas:And I know there'll come a day when that isn't true, but, like, again, you guys went to workflows, which is one of most mere mortal HubSpot users' Achilles heel is the workflows tool. They feel it's it's difficult, and it's confusing, and Mhmm. And and it's changing, and it's the other Achilles' seal is reporting. And so if you're looking for the, like, biggest return, you're like, well, let me just have AI do my reporting, which is a is a is an opportunity for a disaster. Again, if you don't know the specificity and the actual, like, formula or framework of, like, question to insight to, like, data points and all all the underlying pieces.
George B. Thomas:So I I'd love the idea of it getting smart enough to know all of the underlying pieces and being able to say, hey. Unfortunately, we can't give you the report you're looking for because you should be creating a custom property called this that's tracking that. And over time, we could then do what you're looking for. Yep. But because it would be based on what what it is, like anyway, so that's that's the other thing.
George B. Thomas:Here here's another piece, though, that
Max Cohen:Hold on. Wait. Wait. Wait.
George B. Thomas:Wait. Can I
Max Cohen:can I to say it on my end also? Right?
George B. Thomas:Yeah. Yep.
Max Cohen:That that report builder needs to be able to ask you clarifying questions before it actually creates what it's building you. Right? Because, dude, think about how many times when you ask someone, oh, they when they go, oh, I want a report that does this. What do you ask? You go, why do you want it?
Max Cohen:Like, what what is it gonna what, like, what do you want it to tell you?
George B. Thomas:Right? Yeah.
George B. Thomas:Yeah.
Max Cohen:And, like, that is so important to understand how to build that actual report. And, like, AI needs to do that too instead of being like, okay.
Liz Moorhead:Here it is.
Max Cohen:Boom. I'm gonna give it to you. It should be like, wait. Wait. Wait.
George B. Thomas:Wait. Yeah. And I'm I love how to
Max Cohen:wanna see this data? Why do you wanna see this data? How, like, how should you lay it out? And then it also should be able to tell you, bro, you can't build a chart that does that because what you're asking for is impossible in the laws of time and space. Right?
Max Cohen:Like, think about how many times people have said, I want one chart that shows me this, this, this, this, this, this, and you're like, I would always say draw that for me. And they go, oh, I can't because I didn't realize that it was impossible to represent on a graph. I mean, that's what AI is gonna need to do in order to, one, train people to be better report builders. Right? But two, generate reporting that's not trash.
Max Cohen:Right? And just,
Liz Moorhead:like true of anything. Yeah. You know, that idea of, like I think that reminded me of conversations I used to have. This is gonna sound strange, but my graphic, graphic designer I used to work with. She said I used to get really frustrated when people would come to me telling me exactly how to click a button or design something instead of telling me what problem they're trying to solve.
Max Cohen:Exactly.
Liz Moorhead:And I think we're seeing something similar here
George B. Thomas:Mhmm.
Liz Moorhead:Which is there is an assumption on the part of these tools, which makes sense. This is the beginning of these tools, and we talk about that a lot. But that we know what's best for us and what we actually need. So I love this conversation we're hearing right now around this idea of, are you sure? What are you actually trying to solve for?
George B. Thomas:Yeah. And I love the idea, especially with the reporting, Max, because the the technology's there. Right? It can ask follow-up questions. Like, I love when I'm using a custom GPT, and it's, like, asked me seven questions.
George B. Thomas:And I have to give it the answer to get the thing that I'm trying to get. There's a there's a, again, it comes back to the context. Right? And and with reporting, it asking you five, six questions and then trying to build the report would be so much better. But here's here's
George B. Thomas:the thing. Wizard would be cool. Like, a wizard to set it up that takes because, like, what's what's a report? It's trying to answer a question. Right?
George B. Thomas:And so, like, that's the whole goal of a report is to answer somebody's question. And it should basically start by saying, like, what question do you wanna answer? And then ask some clarifying questions and then take a stab at it. Just like when somebody submits a ticket and they go, I want blipity blah. Right?
George B. Thomas:But here's the thing that I think is going to be the Achilles heel of AI when it comes to custom properties trying to build your report. Public service announcement. If you're creating custom properties, put a description and an ineligible name.
George B. Thomas:Yeah. Yeah.
Max Cohen:Don't make it the damn question on the form.
George B. Thomas:Yeah. Yeah. You gotta you wow. Yeah.
George B. Thomas:I mean, otherwise, AI is never gonna know what the frick's in that property. Right?
Liz Moorhead:Yeah.
George B. Thomas:Like, how's it supposed to know if you don't tell it either, a, a good name, and, b, what happens in there?
Max Cohen:Yeah. Yeah. Dude, it's almost like it needs this, like, AI intervention engine. Right? Where it sees someone doing something stupid in HubSpot, like a comment
Liz Moorhead:Help me help you.
Max Cohen:Yeah. Pops
Liz Moorhead:up and
George B. Thomas:goes, are
Max Cohen:you sure? Hey, dude. Are you sure you wanna do that? Alright.
George B. Thomas:So he just needs to send them memes. Yeah. So now
George B. Thomas:we need Again, like, click Jeremy McGuire. We need Jeremy McGuire in HubSpot. Help me help you.
Max Cohen:Thing is, like, when you're when you're building a form and you hit create new property and it realizes you're asking a asking a full sentence question, it should just immediately pop up and be like, no. Don't do that. It
Liz Moorhead:looks like sales is trying to find out where all the revenue is. Do you need help?
George B. Thomas:Here here's here's something I wanna hit on, though, because, Liz, ask your original question again.
Liz Moorhead:Absolutely. So when we think about what are the potential risks or downsides of leaning too heavily on HubSpot AI tools. So and and then I asked again, like, did you have any experiences with that or situations where HubSpot AI has produced something that's like, why why are we here? How did we get here?
George B. Thomas:Yeah. What happens what happens when you as the human psychologically just start to feel dumb? How are you how are you gonna deal with that? So when you ask AI to do everything, and and what was happening historically is that you were learning something and you were achieving a task, which then would release endorphins in your brain and you would feel good about accomplishing a task. When you're no longer accomplishing the task because AI does, what does that do to you psychologically as a human?
George B. Thomas:This is a piece that doesn't have anything to do with HubSpot, but has everything to do with HubSpot, has everything to do with business, and has everything to do with us as humans. We're gonna have to be careful on how we are reprogramming our brain to perceive a completed task based on assistance assisting us to do the task that we never had before. So I'm just putting a stake in the ground right now in a year to two years or two months or six months from now when all of a sudden we have this massive thing happening in organizations where humans are feeling depleted, defeated, not energized, not motivated, not understanding. Anyway, I'll just leave it there for people to think about.
Liz Moorhead:Well, don't hop off the mic too quickly, George, because I wanna ask you first my next question, which is when it comes to content creation specifically, because this is a topic you have spent a lot of time on.
George B. Thomas:Yeah.
Liz Moorhead:Do you think HubSpot AI tools are more effective as a starting point or as an editor for refining human created drafts?
George B. Thomas:I think it depends. I think it depends on the human. Like, if you're sitting there and you're, like, don't have access to GPT or Claude or Perplexity, you haven't been, you know, waking up with AI along the way and figuring it out or whatever, then HubSpot's great for all of the things for you. Like, you can generate your ideas. By the way, you should still probably have human conversations with people inside your organization to generate some of those ideas to then bring into HubSpot to then refine the idea.
George B. Thomas:But I think HubSpot at this point, from a content standpoint, could be a from beginning to end with AI assistant process. Now, I started this with it depends because I actually do a lot of stuff outside of and then bring into. And so what I do understand, especially when you have your brand voice in place, it is a it is a phenomenal refinement tool, meaning, voice consistency in saying the things the way that, they they should be said to have this kind of holistic, cohesive content engine resource center inside of HubSpot, giving it a final brush of, like and make this my brand voice, make this my brand voice, make this my brand voice is a very interesting, phase or step that we've seen adding in depending upon, the content. So, again, I'm a great marketer. It depends.
George B. Thomas:Both. One. All. I don't know.
Liz Moorhead:Well, the other thing too, though, is that as you get more comfortable with the tools and as you quite frankly become a more sophisticated content creator, you probably have a little bit more flexibility. Right? So for example, if I'm working I'm training a a content manager who is very, very green and very, very new just at the principles of storytelling. The principles of architecting what a great piece of content looks like, understanding how to construct a great introduction, understanding what a great conclusion looks like. I'm gonna want them to be more involved and hands on in the process before they start bringing in their AI assistance.
Liz Moorhead:What I would probably do, though, I would have them start learning how to use AI on the back end. Right? One of my favorite things to do is, hey. This was the keyword I was attempting to optimize for. Can you just take a quick look and see if I maximized all those opportunities correctly?
Liz Moorhead:Or did I miss anything glaring? Or helping them integrate it into other pieces of the process. I think there is this idea, and and I will admit I perpetuated this, that I I'm against using it at the front end and only more at the back end when it comes to where AI fits into the content creation process. But, really, my big sticking point is, do you even know what a good story is supposed to look like? If you get a piece of content that is generated from your strategy, your principles, your ideas, do you even know if the output that is in front of you is good or not?
Liz Moorhead:Do you understand what should be changing? So the that's the only thing I would say there is that it it comes down to your level of sophistication as storyteller, and that will greatly sway your inputs and your outputs.
George B. Thomas:Yeah. See, I agree with everything you said. What I hope people understand, though, is, like, here here's what I love about where we live right now. I think every human can look at a piece of content, and I'm going very content specific here for a second, and be like, yep. That's a turd.
George B. Thomas:Not I don't like it. And so then you're like, well, okay. I know I need to probably add a little bit of storytelling too. I need to add a little bit of this, a little bit of that. Here's here's what I love.
George B. Thomas:I love the fact that you can still Google, and you can still grab three or four links. You can still read the material. You can still educate yourself, but then you can educate the the the machine, the assistant that you're using on those things that you're you're doing. And so even your turd, after you educate yourself and you educate it, you can be like, hey. Can we try to rewrite this?
George B. Thomas:But based on the things that we've learned together in the six links that I've uploaded with this, that, this, that because now you can and this is gonna sound gross. This is gonna sound gross. But now you can mold that turd into something better.
Liz Moorhead:Could we just go with clay or something?
George B. Thomas:Well, but it see, clay is like a canvas that you could do anything you want with, and we know we're starting with a big old turd.
Max Cohen:I think, you know, a lot of it is it's all just in the way, like, as enhancement and amplification. Right? So it's like, you know, enhance the content you've created, right, by making it better, whether that is, you know, making the words better or, you know, improving the punctuation or the structure or whatever. Right? But then, like, when I think of the application piece, like, that's immediately content remix.
Max Cohen:Right? Like, just that because, you know, I like, I remember, like, you know, saying, like, alright. I created this piece of content, and then it's like, shit. I gotta go Now what? I gotta go write a blog post about it.
Max Cohen:I gotta go make social posts. I gotta go craft emails. I gotta go do a landing page. I gotta do this. And it's like, now you don't have to have that big giant block of, oh, shit.
Max Cohen:There's all this other extra work I have to do. Right? Yeah. You know that you can at least get the scaffolding and the framework of that stuff put together. So instead of, oh, I've gotta push this giant boulder up this hill to create all this stuff, it's more so, oh, it's already kind of, like, built for me, and all I'm doing is, like, refining the little pieces and, like, making slight changes to it.
Max Cohen:And then it's it's out there. Right? But it's all derived from your original content you created. Right? The other thing too that I think is, like, great for, like, a starting point.
Max Cohen:Like, I think, you know, when we kinda talk about it being a starting point, like, there's saying, like, you look at something like a blog post. There's a big difference of generate an outline for me, and then I'll add the original content into it so I have this, like, structure instead of having to, again, push that boulder up the hill to, like, create, you know, zero to something else, right, which is what gets a a lot of people's way when they're really just kind of going out and starting and trying to create content. Right? The other option is generate the whole thing for me, and I don't think about it and push it out there. Like, it's when we say starting point, I think we're saying, like, starting point for you to make it easier for you to create something original.
Max Cohen:Right? And you get rid of all those mental blocks you might have around how hard it is to go from zero to one point o on a piece of content. Right? So yeah.
George B. Thomas:And, Max, what I love about what you said and, by the way, I'm always more of, like, an outline guy and then go from there. Because here's what's fun about outlines. You can be like, okay. I love this outline, but can we also add this and this to the outline? Mhmm.
George B. Thomas:Totally.
Liz Moorhead:And then you
George B. Thomas:can and then you can be like, you know what? I talked about this on a client meeting. Let me go ahead and get a transcript of that. I actually talked about this in a PowerPoint. Let me go ahead and grab that.
George B. Thomas:Talked about this over here. Let me grab that. And now you can collect stuff that you've historically done anyway, and you can upload it and be like, based on the stuff that I've uploaded in the outline that we've created, let's build a rough draft from that. So it is your brain. It is your words.
George B. Thomas:It is like
Max Cohen:You're just reducing the mental lift to get there. Right?
Liz Moorhead:But then
Max Cohen:the other thing too is, like, when you have AI go and generate an outline for you, right, and you go, okay. Yeah. This is the stuff I should be talking about. It also makes it that much easier to be like, oh, here's some of the things that it probably missed. Right?
Max Cohen:Because you're seeing what it created as an outline. That's giving you inspiration and making it easier for you to think about the other stuff that you should put in there if you are gonna mention these, you know, x five things, like, whatever it may be. Right? So, you know, it just again, I think reducing mental lift is is good. Right?
Max Cohen:Mental health is important. Right? And and and, obviously, like, reducing your your your mental lift to create content is gonna make it easier to create content. Again, you're, like, you're applying a lot of leverage with AI. Right?
Max Cohen:So I think it's just it's important to think about it that way.
George B. Thomas:Two two things I wanna throw in here. One, one of the questions I love to ask before I actually move forward past the outline is, is there anything else I should know about, think about, or train around this conversation and see what it spits out? It's amazing to go down some rabbit holes with that. But second, we as we do many times on this podcast, we dove into the content side of the world for this. And so, Liz, I would be remissed if I didn't talk about another thing that happened back at inbound twenty twenty four that was in the presentation.
George B. Thomas:We talked about a content editing checklist going back to, like, humanizing, your content and AI being the the assistant. Maybe talk the listeners through that because I don't know if we've ever really shared that whole checklist on here. But if but if they are listening to this, they are like, oh, yeah, outlines and, oh, yeah, these things. Like, talk about that whole piece of this to kinda give them a framework to follow.
Liz Moorhead:Yeah. Absolutely. You know, when I think about any piece of content that I'm editing, what's funny is the checklist I'm about to share. We built it and developed it and launched it to go in tandem with these AI tools. But this is act that's actually just enabling us to automate or to to apply structure to a process I was already using before AI even existed.
Liz Moorhead:Because when we look at a piece of content to your point, George, there is a framework. There's a you're looking at a piece of well, how do I know it's good? Well, because it could be good or bad across a number of different things. It could be factually accurate and grammatically a dumpster fire. It could be a grammatical work of art, but a narrative train wreck.
Liz Moorhead:So whenever I look at a piece of content, one of the p one of the biggest lessons I teach new content managers or anybody who has to look at content is do not edit for everything all at once. Edit in sequence. Edit for one thing, then edit for the next thing, then edit for the third thing, and so on. And there is a specific order in which I do it. And the reason why is because, let's say, for example, you have a piece of content that is narratively a trash can, but you've grammatically made it get sparkle.
Liz Moorhead:Right? Well, you're gonna have to rewrite it. So those sparkling new bits of prose that you've thrown in there, if you have a trashy introduction, a conclusion that doesn't make sense, you're speaking to 18 different personas instead of just one or two, you're gonna have to redo that work. Exactly. So here is the order in which I do it.
Liz Moorhead:First round, I'm looking for fact checking and accuracy. Right? Is this is this factually accurate? Is are are the things here correct? I always recommend particularly when you're dealing with AI content.
Liz Moorhead:Do you know how many times it'll say, like, well, I've got this statistic. And I'll say, are you sure? And it'll go back and say, you know what? You're actually right. I made that up.
Liz Moorhead:I'm sorry. So, like, you have to actually check things. Do not just blindly trust what's put in front of you. Next, once I have determined that what I have in front of me is factually accurate. Right?
Liz Moorhead:And, again, I'm not thinking about anything else. I am thinking about these things in a vacuum. Only then can I start taking a look at readability and engagement? Right? How can I simplify the language for clarity and impact?
Liz Moorhead:How can I guarantee that I am speaking at the level of the people I am trying to reach? Right? So molding the turd, shaping the clay stuck. We shape the clay in stages. Right?
Liz Moorhead:Okay. The facts are right. Great. Now let's take a look at how readable and engaging those facts are. Once I've determined that those facts are accurate and the words are readable and engaging, then I start looking at SEO optimization.
Liz Moorhead:How can I enhance it for searchability? How can I make sure that it is including relevant keywords and phrases? Then I do final proofreading. Now one of the things I always find challenging with most people is they don't understand why this is step four. Again, leave the spelling errors alone.
Liz Moorhead:If you're just going to delete that entire sentence, it doesn't matter if we're talking about computer skills versus computer skills if the whole paragraph is getting killed. Right? And then feedback and iteration. So that's really what you're looking at. Right?
Liz Moorhead:Are the facts accurate? Is it a great story? Okay. Is it optimized well for search? Fantastic.
Liz Moorhead:Now that I know I have the right facts with the right framing and the right optimization, is spelled correctly? Is that grammar all razzle dazzle? And then after that, you can do feedback and iteration. That's the order in which you do it. Love it.
Liz Moorhead:Now I would be curious, though, to hear you guys as we wrap up today's conversation. What advice would you give teams trying to figure out when to trust HubSpot AI versus stepping in with human judgment? Are there specific guidelines or use cases that you recommend? And if you don't mind, I'd actually like to go first so that I can turn it over the floor to you guys. The reality my guideline is very simple.
Liz Moorhead:Never have a process where the human is absent. You're either at the beginning, at the end, the beginning, the middle, and ends, the middle and the end. You have to be present somewhere. The only way you actually truly 1000% screw this up is to just click that AI button willy nilly with no oversight. And with that, Chad, do you wanna kick us off?
George B. Thomas:Yeah. I mean, for me, I think it goes back to the old adage, you know, just like you're saying trust but verify. Right? I mean, it's like I mean, I I don't think you could really say it a whole lot better. Like, yeah, let's do it.
George B. Thomas:But let's, you know, get put people in the process. I really in some like, there are some things that are a little bit more process driven, like the ops hub data cleanup stuff, some of the AI driven contact duplication detection stuff, even some AI associations. Like, there's AI, I think, called a ticket association feature in HubSpot to, like, try and figure out which calls are related to a ticket, based on the content of the call and things like that that exists and has existed for quite a while. I I mean, those kind of things, you know, they're more operational. They're they're less, you know, being presented to people.
George B. Thomas:The only real people it causes problems for is the HubSpot admin. If if it does, you know, so, I mean, I would say, like, you could maybe worry a little less about those kinds of things. It's like all it's doing is capitalizing first and last names, and, you know, somebody has to verify that the there is a human with with duplicate contact or do you know, detection, right, where you're, accepting or rejecting the merges and moving data from spot to spot. By the way, if you guys haven't checked out the the new UI for contact merging, it is sick. Like, you can get in there and tell it, I want two properties from this contact and three properties from this contact, and then I want it to go into that one or this one.
George B. Thomas:Like, it's pretty cool. Like, some real cool UI changes to that compared to what it's been in the past. But, yeah, like, they're putting people in the process, I think, where it makes sense and, you know, trust but verify. That's that's my advice.
Liz Moorhead:Max. Gentlemen, don't be so shy.
Max Cohen:I was also gonna say trust but verify. You know, it's
Liz Moorhead:Are you trusting but verifying Chad's trust but verify?
Max Cohen:I would say, like, he's just verifying.
George B. Thomas:Assume
Max Cohen:I don't know the way I would put this. Right? What should go through your head, I think, when you generate a piece of content using AI, you should just assume that it doesn't know anything about the subject matter and verify it. Right? Because it's very possible that it will just say some some that's completely wrong.
Max Cohen:Right? And and totally made up and, you know, incorrect. Right? I'm not saying it's gonna do that. I'm saying you you know, when when when you write content with AI, all of a sudden, you become an editor, not a writer.
Max Cohen:Right? You gotta be the editor. Right? And you gotta you you can trust that it put together a nice piece of content for you. You should assume that it doesn't know shit about the the subject matter, and you should verify that what it actually outputted for you, is correct real information.
Max Cohen:Right? Because, one, people are already starting to easily be able to, like, pick up and understand, oh, this is an AI written article, especially search engines. Right? Two, the last thing you want is them consuming the content, and you're giving bad information, right, and making yourself look stupid because the AI just kinda gave some, like, milquetoast take on some sort of, like, you know, subject matter. Right?
Max Cohen:And and all of a sudden, for people who don't know that, oh, this is an AI written article. Right? They're reading some some junk from you that's either incorrect or not good. Right? So, yeah, you can you can trust trust that it's gonna create some content for you.
Max Cohen:Verify that that content is actually good and and and informationally sound.
George B. Thomas:Yeah. Interesting. So, the way I'll answer this question is if if you deem that there is, some emotional intelligence needed or some strategic direction that needs to be laid down. It's all about the humans. If you're looking
Liz Moorhead:we go.
George B. Thomas:If you're looking for a place where you're trying to enhance speed or extrapolate scale, then it can be about the AI. Bottom line, if I if I'm gonna throw a divider out there, that's what I would want you to think about. Emotional intelligence, strategic direction, human, but then leaning into speed and scale through AI assistant.
Liz Moorhead:George, you're not off the hot seat just yet.
George B. Thomas:Yeah.
Liz Moorhead:Help us land the plane. Take us home.
George B. Thomas:Yeah. This one's easy. He's
George B. Thomas:good at that.
George B. Thomas:Yeah. Yeah.
Liz Moorhead:Yeah. Tell us what that one thing is if we forget nothing else from this conversation except one thing. What should be and why?
George B. Thomas:Yeah. Without a doubt. Listen. Chad talked about the new merging UI. We talked about how Remix is different.
George B. Thomas:We talked about, you know, there's different AI platforms, and should we be doing things just in HubSpot. We talked about how there's gonna be different agents that you can, like there's a there's a lot. Ladies and gentlemen, there's a lot. And so we are definitely in a a world where the thing that I would want you to take away from this when we're talking about AI, HubSpot AI versus human judgment is experiment and learn. Experiment and learn.
George B. Thomas:Be curious, test different approaches, refine, reiterate, refine, like, figure out what works best for your business in a world where you can do almost anything you wanna do at the light of speed. But I'm gonna end it with what Max said.
Max Cohen:If you're
George B. Thomas:doing things at the light of speed, it's stupid if you're making yourself feel stupid or look stupid.
Max Cohen:Why is she saying it like that?
Liz Moorhead:Why are you saying it?
Max Cohen:Why are you saying the light of speed?
Liz Moorhead:Speed of light.
George B. Thomas:Oh, oh, whatever. If that's the last
Liz Moorhead:thing I'd like to say. We're verifying here.
George B. Thomas:We need
Liz Moorhead:to verify.
George B. Thomas:Speed of light, light of speed, whatever. Okay, hub heroes. We've reached the end of another episode. Will Lord Lack continue to loom over the community, or will we be able to defeat him in the next episode of the hub heroes podcast? Make sure you tune in and find out in the next episode.
George B. Thomas: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. 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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