What HubSpot Users Should Be Thinking About in 2025 + Beyond
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. Do you
George B. Thomas:remember back in the day when that intro was about double as long because we had to talk about, Max and Devin working for HubSpot, but now we don't have to do that? Like, it's Well, it
Chad Hohn:got shorter because then Max moved on. Right? Yeah. And then Yeah. And then Devin.
Chad Hohn:Devin.
George B. Thomas:Now we got Chad and yeah. Guys, today, we're gonna talk about what HubSpot users should be thinking about in 2025 and beyond, which is a big conversation. Right? Literally marketing, sales, service
Intro:Mhmm.
George B. Thomas:Operations, could be web design, could be business strategist in general. Like, there's so many things that we could dive into, like, what HubSpot users should be thinking about in 2025. I didn't even mention super admins. Right? And they should be thinking about super admin training and, like, all that good stuff.
George B. Thomas:But but before we jump into that, I have to ask. Did you guys see the create time since and time until properties update?
Chad Hohn:Mhmm. Yeah. Oh, it's sick.
George B. Thomas:Okay. So so just unpack your brain a little bit. I again, we're getting I wanna get nerdy on that. Like, when you saw that, or you started playing with it, because I'm sure both of you have. Like, where did your brain go when you're like and, Max, I know where maybe your brain went.
George B. Thomas:But let let's get both sides let's get both sides of the fence on create time sense and time until properties.
Max Cohen:Jax?
Chad Hohn:No. Alright. So for me, they're awesome, helpful visually, and in, like, index pages and things. But if I'm not mistaken, they can't fully be utilized inside of workflows as you might hope they would. Right?
Chad Hohn:They're more of like a I think they do it browser side calculation. Maybe they don't. But like Oh,
Max Cohen:so they don't store a value?
Chad Hohn:Well, right. Because think about this. Like, if architecturally at the back end, they're gonna have to update, what, every one second, they're gonna have to make an API call to the back end. Like, that's not reasonable. Right?
Chad Hohn:Or, like, I and maybe there's ways to do it that I just don't know about. Right? But, anyway, maybe in the workflow, they need to build in some additional functionality for when one of those properties is called. They, like, actually store it temporarily at the time that it goes through that action. And then it could cause slowness with workflows.
Chad Hohn:So, anyway, there's some things where it's not quite as useful, but the user experience about those properties is great. And I don't know if they can be used in reporting because I haven't I haven't had tried to play with those ones just yet. Right? Yeah. But Yeah.
Chad Hohn:I would love for those to be able to use be used in reporting. I think they can be used in filtering.
George B. Thomas:Yeah. It's it's looking interesting because the latest update as of January 9, by the way, I see a screenshot here. It's got a bullet point around workflows, and it shows it in a workflow screenshot. It
Chad Hohn:does. Okay.
George B. Thomas:Yeah. It's in a list as well, which is interesting. And, Chad, I'm glad you brought up reporting
Chad Hohn:because that's
George B. Thomas:that's where I was like, this would be dope. It even shows a bullet point in, like, single report viewer dashboard and and shows it in there. So, like, I think they're extending it into, places and spaces that they Mhmm. They when it maybe first was launched and people started playing around with it in beta, now that I think it's live. Right?
George B. Thomas:Because that's the thing. When when, Chad, you saw it, beta. Now that I'm bringing it to the masses live. Right? So there's some, like, additions and changes that have
Max Cohen:been made.
George B. Thomas:But but,
Max Cohen:I mean, mister mister popsicle,
George B. Thomas:mister mister
Max Cohen:Well, first of all first of all, HubSpot community, you're you're welcome. You're welcome. K? Yeah. Alright.
Max Cohen:For those of you who don't know it, like, this is exactly what TikTok today was for. Right? Where
Chad Hohn:Yeah.
Max Cohen:The only way that we could figure out how to do this is to create essentially a today's date property and update it every single day. Right? And do it. And like here you're as well.
Chad Hohn:Yeah. Like you didn't even have date time properties inside of the HubSpot UI. That was just date properties. But you made it a date time in the back end.
Max Cohen:Did we? Yeah,
Chad Hohn:you made it a date time in the back end.
Max Cohen:Probably. Yeah, we did that a lot for some reason. Especially when you know event happily first came out and now it's great because all that stuff converted to actual date time properties, which is good. The only thing
Chad Hohn:that's, like, really goofy
Max Cohen:about it. Yeah. The only thing that's really goofy about it is have you guys ever tried to copy a date time property into a date property? Oh, no.
Chad Hohn:Oh, yeah. Work? Via API, I have. Yeah. Because what what happens is it says that it needs to be at UTC midnight.
Max Cohen:Yeah.
Chad Hohn:And so if it's not at UTC midnight, it just Yeah. You know? Same thing like if you're making a direct API call.
Max Cohen:Yeah. It'll be really interesting too to see, if they ever support date time on forms. Right? I have a theory they're never going to because Why is
George B. Thomas:why is that your theory?
Max Cohen:Because it is going to create a lot of confusion and anger around wanting to use HubSpot forms for, like, time booking stuff. Right?
Chad Hohn:Mhmm.
Max Cohen:And it's it's not like it's gonna be able to say, like, oh, block certain times in the date time property if something's, like, already booked. Like, that is a whole other, like, product you need to build. Right?
Chad Hohn:Yeah.
Max Cohen:So I think they're gonna avoid doing that to avoid that, like, those confusions and support tickets and problems and things like that. But don't worry. We're thinking about some stuff over here that we've been thinking about for a long time.
George B. Thomas:Well, I'd love to hear about that in the future.
Max Cohen:That I've been thinking about for almost ten years now. Okay. So the other thing too the the honestly, the besides being able to, like, be like, cool. We solved that problem for people. Now we can, like, spin that thing down.
Max Cohen:It was a free app besides, like, if you wanted, like, multiple objects, it was, like, $10 a month or something like that. I am just, so excited to stop seeing the LinkedIn posts of people saying, HubSpot needs a today's date property. Because, no, it doesn't, and it never did. Right? Yeah.
Max Cohen:Like, the thing is is, like, I I was stoked that they rolled it out the way that I had always envisioned them rolling it out, which is just, like, you select a date, and then the other thing just says today like, you know, time since or time until. Right? And HubSpot should be smart enough to know what today's date is to run whatever calculation it needs to do that. You don't need it to take up a property that just holds today's date. Right?
Max Cohen:So, you know, even and, like, the way we did it with TikTok today, that was, like, the only way we could do it because HubSpot didn't do that. But then they finally rolled it out. They rolled it out the way that I, you know, wanted it to be the whole time, and it's great. You know, and, like, to be honest, like, the real reason for all that stuff is never really workflow automation or reporting or anything like that. It's all just about giving a visual indicator, like, on a record of saying, oh, I only have x amount of time left or, wow, they've been a customer since this long.
Max Cohen:And, you know, being able to, like, deliver that information to someone in a much easier way to understand and digest than just, like, an actual date. Right? Because if I just look at a date, it's really tough for me to say, how long ago was that? Because I gotta know exactly what today's date is, this, that, the other thing. Right?
Max Cohen:When if you're just like, yo, just tell me how long it is, right, or how much time or how much time until
Chad Hohn:You got really good at syncing in the number of days from now or number of days ago type of a scenario.
Max Cohen:Mhmm. Yeah. Yeah. For sure. Yeah.
Max Cohen:So it's it's, it's great. It's out there. TikTok today did its job. It was a love letter to the HubSpot community, and, now we can start to wind it down, which is great.
George B. Thomas:There we go. And if you're listening to this or watching this and you haven't checked out the create time since and time until properties, make sure that you run over and do that in the portal near you, which would hopefully be your portal or maybe a client portal that you're helping people with. So let's go ahead and get into what HubSpot users should be thinking about in 2025 and beyond. Chad, we're gonna start with you. Then, Max, I'll jump to you, and then I'll go.
George B. Thomas:What's what's the first round of things that we think people should be, thinking about? And, again, you take your pick of the litter, marketing, sales, service, operation, business, CMS. I don't care. What should people be thinking? HubSpot users, people, human.
George B. Thomas:HubSpot users. Humans. Of HubSpot should be what should they be thinking of in 2025 and beyond?
Chad Hohn:I mean, I think when it when it comes to me, I always like to grow my skills. Right? And, like, as an somebody in an admin position or, like, really, I'm in a technical integrations type of a position at the moment. I did not have a lot of the skills last year that I have this year. Right?
Chad Hohn:And that now I'm able to, like, teach and give others and try and, like, elevate the rest of my team by teaching them how to do some of the things that I've learned. And so I would say, like, pick a thing you don't know how to do yet and really try and dedicate a little bit of time to learning it or playing around in that area. Now that could be like, hey. I wanna learn about AI models and GPT memory or, like, programming them to be an agent. That could be any number of different things.
Chad Hohn:Like, you know, if you don't know HubSpot CMS, go make a dummy website for, like, can has cheeseburger.com or something.
Max Cohen:Oh. And
Chad Hohn:then see if you can yeah. Go get your, you know, some sort of, like, all the different flow paths that a customer would take to can has cheeseburger and, like, develop that journey if you're not into CMS or, like, HubSpot CMS. Because if you've never done that before, learn it. You know, I know that would be one of my weak areas. Right?
Chad Hohn:But luckily, we all can grow, and you can do anything as long as you really just put your mind to it and start playing around with it and and exposing yourself to it. And so, like, for me, I think one of the things I wanna learn is just from the ground up how to install HubSpot custom extensions, right, and how to work with modifying the HubSpot UI beyond what they just give you out the box. I wanna be able to do that soup to nuts. Right? And, like, including getting that code into, like, a GitHub repo and being able to, like, work with Git so you can check-in new code and have it pushed to your HubSpot portal, stuff like that.
Chad Hohn:Like that, I think at some point, I want to be able to take that thing and build simple, really practical, helpful extensions to our users, HubSpot without having to call in a developer. Right. And so that's one of the skills. And I think pick a skill like that, something practical that's beyond you right now that you can't do, but you have at least enough of the underlying structure to take yourself there. I I could not have chosen this last year, and this is like a practical example of it.
Chad Hohn:Like, I didn't know how to do enough API call integration stuff. Like, I knew about HubSpot. I knew about workflows, but I didn't know, like, how to do data storage, data management in, like, a data table. I didn't know how to really, like, from the ground up, actually make API calls. And now I'm, like, reading API docs and doing integrations no problem because I can get through it and navigate my way around.
Chad Hohn:And there's still some trial and error. There's still some assist AI assistant need, you know, at times, but, I'm able to work my way through those things. Because last year, I got some of the backing skill to do this new thing. And I don't want people to, like, actually be like, oh, well, I wanna, like, send a rocket to the moon, you know, because, like, you're not gonna send a rocket to the moon if you don't already have, like, a vehicle assembly building and, like, you know, liquid methane and liquid oxygen plant and all these other things that you're gonna need to do it. Right?
George B. Thomas:I love it. I I love how, by the way, I asked you for one thing, and you almost kind of snuck in a little bit of three things because you're like, well, you need to grow your skills, number one. And as you were talking through there, you're like and then maybe play along the way, which is, like, number two. And then you're like and sometimes with an AI assistant, which is kind of like number three, by the way, because it's like
Chad Hohn:AMP subsection a.
George B. Thomas:Yeah. Yeah. Have, like, a mentor slash helper slash assistant along the way. Perfect. Right.
George B. Thomas:But baseline, grow your skills and figure out how to do things that once seem difficult or impossible to you as a human. I love that. Max, when when you think about HubSpot users, and you think about twenty twenty five and beyond, what should they be focusing on?
Max Cohen:Sorry. I muted myself. I do agree a lot with Chad in that, you know, I kinda see this year as being a another sort of, like, banner year for UI customization and extensibility. I'd say keep a heavy lookout for AI to collide with that at some point. Maybe not this year, but I'd say definitely the year after.
Max Cohen:I've seen some stuff that I can't talk about. I've seen some stuff I can't talk about. But, you know, it's I I feel like the there is there is, like, a big remember when we kinda had, like, the year of, like, UI extensibility. Right? And they released tons and tons of customization options.
Max Cohen:They went really hard on, like, the record editor and, like, unified all that and did that thing. There's still so much more to go with that. Like and I feel like a lot of that's been kind of, like, taken over by, like, the whole Breeze wave and everything, and people have kind of, like, lost sight of that a little bit. And, like, a lot of the things that have happened recently have kinda been, like, a little bit more under the radar just because it's living in the shadow of all the the AI improvements and stuff like that. Sure.
Max Cohen:You know, so I'd say don't don't lose sight of, you know, what's possible around customization and UI extension. Like, how many years out do you think we are from, you know, given AI's ability to code. Right? And, like, HubSpot's UI extensibility. Like, how far away are we from, like, an AI created CRM extension?
Max Cohen:Right? Dude, we might be we might be does the technology exist today to do that? Yep. Of course. Of course
George B. Thomas:it does. If if you're if you're not playing with Replit yet What's Replit? Oh, well, Replit is like, AI coding. Anyway, not why we're here.
Max Cohen:Yeah.
George B. Thomas:But but if people aren't playing with Replit and looking at what it can do but but go ahead, Megs.
Max Cohen:Megs. Yeah. And I think also just, like, the the kind of general advice I would give, like, every year, and I feel like I'd probably start giving it even more and more and more just just kind of given all the advancements across everything. It's like start thinking about stuff that you can do with HubSpot that you just haven't been able to do before or you haven't thought about integrating into the rest of your business. Right.
Max Cohen:Like it could do so much.
Chad Hohn:Yeah. The stuff that was once impossible to bring in is becoming so much more possible in a useful way, not in just properties, but actually in a useful way.
Max Cohen:Yeah. But what I really I I What I really really want to see is how, you know, a lot of these super super useful things, right? Are still kind of, like, gated behind the, do you have developer resources? Yes, no Yep. Like, problem.
Max Cohen:Right? Yep. And what I really wanna see is HubSpot kind of, like, break down that barrier of, like, what requires a developer from, like, a CRM UI, you know, extension perspective. Like, we'll always need them for, you know, CMS stuff. Right?
Max Cohen:Especially when you wanna get, like, really precise and and, you know, super fancy. Super custom. Right? Like, AI can really only get you so far there. Right?
Max Cohen:But, like, you know, you you look at Salesforce and, like, their declarative, like, flow builder and, like, all that kind of stuff. Like, they need to bring more of that into, like, the UI extensions world, right, where it's, like, you're building UI extensions through a drag and drop editor. You're customizing what sort of stuff happens in the back end, how it talks to the data and, like, does all these different things. Right? I think that would be just kind of a really cool thing, and I and I hope they start to deploy kinda something like that.
Max Cohen:Right? So I would I would really kinda keep an eye on around what they're planning for, sort of, like, democratizing and really unlocking some of the real deep customization stuff when it comes to, like, building processes inside of HubSpot. And, you know, not just like, what does the UI look like? Things like that. Right.
Max Cohen:You know?
Chad Hohn:Yeah. They've been doing some really cool things surrounding, like, allowing AI to unlock things that are more difficult for people who just don't understand a tool. Right?
Max Cohen:Sure.
Chad Hohn:And like, one of those examples is, like, have you guys seen how property validation can now occur with regex or regular expressions? Well, they just added an AI assistant to
Max Cohen:you
Chad Hohn:tell it what regex you want. You're like, I need an invoice number to always start with an I and followed by a dash and three letters and then six numbers. And it can only be two of these letters, and then it'll Yeah. Bit out a regex formula for you. And then you can test it in the regex editor, like, all while you're creating the property right where you need it.
Chad Hohn:It's amazing.
Max Cohen:Which is brilliant because, like, how was anyone writing those regex formulas before that had never heard of regex? You're going to chat g p t and you say, give me a regex expression for, you know, this exact formatting. And it's like, cool. Just build that right.
Chad Hohn:They just add that with a specific prompt to, like, highlight and look for yeah.
Max Cohen:Yeah. And I and I really want people to play, like this is more so, like I don't know if this is, like, what you should be thinking about in 2025, but it's what you should be looking for at least and hoping HubSpot should be doing. You should be asking for it. Right? Is that a lot of this AI stuff needs to be heavily aimed at the admin and making life easier for an admin versus just, like, content creation and Mhmm.
Max Cohen:Sales enablement. Right? Like, you know, again, like, I'm still waiting for the day where, you know, a a partner can hop into a HubSpot portal that, you know, is in dire straits and be like, hey, Copilot. What's wrong with you? And then Copilot goes, oh, thank god you're here.
Max Cohen:Listen. These people are doing this. They're they're doing full names for full full sentences for property names. They're doing all that. You know what I mean?
Max Cohen:Because it's gonna have all that information. Right? But, you know, it's it's they've I don't wanna say they've over indexed. They've really only focused on the creative parts, I think, when it come I mean, sure. They have some admin stuff.
Max Cohen:But, like, the majority of the things that we've seen with AI and HubSpot has all been the creative side, which is good. They need to address that because that is the hardest thing to do in HubSpot by far, right, for folks that aren't admins is, like, the creative side of this work, right, and and and, you know, building some, like, leverage around that. You know, but there's so much they could be doing from, like, a helping out the admin point of view. Right? And giving giving the portal a voice to say, this is what's wrong with me.
Max Cohen:Please help. Right?
George B. Thomas:Yeah. I I love the idea of there being, like, a a nurse or a doctor bot, of, like, HubSpot. Like, here's where I'm sick. You
Chad Hohn:know? Yeah.
George B. Thomas:But Well, no.
Max Cohen:It just needs to be the portal just because it can understand what a good portal looks like and what a bad portal looks like and best practices from one to the other, and then put that
Intro:into the kind
Chad Hohn:of in the eyes.
Max Cohen:I mean, h why why shouldn't it be able to?
George B. Thomas:It should be able to. It should be able to. Perspective. And how do you Yeah.
Max Cohen:That's what I'm saying, bro.
George B. Thomas:Business. I mean, beauty is in the
Max Cohen:eye of the beholder. It shouldn't be that difficult to understand what industry it's in and, like, all those things. It can find that information out.
George B. Thomas:Yeah. Right? And it should
Max Cohen:become smarter over time. And, you know, the the your portal should have a little AI voice to say, hey. Like, I'm struggling. Yeah. I agree.
Max Cohen:Change some shit. Yeah.
Chad Hohn:I agree. It would be surrounding user engagement based on the number of non partner users. It would be, you know, surrounding, like, what we have, like, one client that was, like, over 950 custom properties. Like, that's a lot you're tracking more data points than, like, Meta is trying to track other customers at that point. Yeah.
Chad Hohn:You know, like, that's a lot, but a lot of them are like, abandoned. And like, oh, they messed up my lifecycle stages or whatever. Like, these custom ones are added. They're not being used, and they seem to have nothing to do with marketing or, you know, some key things, like, really the the key HubSpot properties. Here's one of the unfortunate scenarios that occurs that causes people to go down some of those roads, I think, is not knowing that well, a, that Kyle's HubSpot default property cheat sheet thing exists.
Chad Hohn:Like, if you've never been around HubSpot or even if you have and you've never taken a look at that thing, it's really helpful to understand these are a and it's had refreshes recently. These are default properties that are in HubSpot that we're trying to think ahead for junk you're gonna need. And, you know, they're auto calculated or they have these mechanisms, and people just arch ahead. Oh, yeah. They make their own version of all these things all the time.
George B. Thomas:Dude, one of the things that I've and I love Kyle's thing, but one of the things I've said for years is, like, the best search that you can do before creating any type of property or process is, like, HubSpot default x y z, HubSpot default contact properties, HubSpot default subscription properties, HubSpot because there's a knowledge article that has the properties and the description of what it does. And, like Mhmm. When you understand your portal at that intimate level
Max Cohen:Mhmm.
George B. Thomas:Then you don't start creating, like, your scenario that you talked about. You know what's interesting too? Max, you were talking about creative, the the content being the hardest part of HubSpot or, like, inbound strategy. Content agent, has a beta out right now, by the way. Better blog topic suggestions.
George B. Thomas:I don't know if you guys saw that, but it's, it rolled out recently. I think maybe, like, a couple days ago, January 10 or something like that, as the time of this recording. But now, like, what was happening in content agent is it would give you one suggestion. If you enroll in this beta now, it's gonna give you three suggestions, but it's also Yeah. But it's gonna give you information to why it made the suggestions, which I think is very interesting.
Chad Hohn:That GPT version where it's, like, tries to act like it's thinking. You know? It's like, oh, yeah. Like, oh, I went down this branch, and then here's why I went down that branch. And then I went down this branch.
Chad Hohn:And
Max Cohen:Isn't that an o one? Isn't that an o one thing? It does they call it reasoning. Right?
George B. Thomas:Yeah. And so maybe they're pulling into that, but it's very interesting to me that now you would of course, you need more. You you should have, as a human, as a Human. You should have the ability to pick and then go in your kind of own creative direction. But the fact that they're making things better and and to do that so here's the thing I wanna make sure I jump in here and I say and it and it might be two things.
George B. Thomas:I might be cheating, but, like, listen. Twenty twenty five is not 2024. Yeah. We all kinda cheated. But 2025 is not 2024.
George B. Thomas:Do not let his, history dictate where you're headed in the future. I don't know about anybody else, but 2024 felt a little bit difficult when it comes to business, when it comes
Max Cohen:to marketing for 2025.
George B. Thomas:When it comes to sales, it it it felt a little difficult. Right? So, my hopes is that 2025 is better for, all of us humans, better for all of us HubSpot users. And so, again, my my intro to this is, it's a new year. Let's treat it like one.
George B. Thomas:Let's let's shut off the old mindset, bring on the new mindset, and, like, empower people to, like, move forward. Now with that being said, one of the things that I hope people are paying attention to in 2025, because with all of the things, the bells, the whistles, the AI, the squirrel moments, the silver bullets, like, with all of that, like, I hope in 2025, we are focused on how do we build a human centric system. And when I say human centric, I'm talking about internal processes. I'm talking about external customer experiences. Like, how how do we in a world where everything is so powered by something, how do we make sure it's empathetically driven by us, the humans?
George B. Thomas:So I I just I wanna throw that out into the world. I know it's not very HubSpot specific, but it's definitely, the inbound ecosystem specific. One of the things that I loved about inbound at the beginning was the the humanness of it all, the the fact that you could be a marketer and not feel bad about yourself, the fact that you could help humans and not interrupt their dinner at night. Like and so just, like, figure out how is part of your strategy in 2025 human centric, internal and external. Alright.
George B. Thomas:Let's let's, Wait. Can we Yes, Max.
Max Cohen:Can we can we expand on that? Can we, like, define what that means? Because I feel like I have a I feel like I I have my understanding of what you're saying there.
George B. Thomas:So what are your thoughts? When I when I say that, where does your brain go?
Max Cohen:You sell to humans and you employ humans. Right? Yeah. And so, you know, in terms of, like, what does that mean? Right?
Max Cohen:I think it's, like, you know, obviously, you wanna create a great customer experience.
George B. Thomas:Yeah.
Max Cohen:Right? You wanna treat your customers like human beings because they are human beings, which means be good to them, take care of them, don't lie to them, make them successful.
George B. Thomas:Yes. Make
Max Cohen:them, you know, make them understand that they are special because they're giving you money. Right?
George B. Thomas:Yeah.
Max Cohen:Take care of them. But do the same thing for your damn employees. Right? Yeah. And what does that and what does that what does that mean in the context of HubSpot?
Max Cohen:Right? Yeah. Stop looking at HubSpot as a way that you could track every single thing that they're doing. Yeah. Right?
Max Cohen:Like, think less about think less about reports on activities. Right? And think a little bit more of how are you making people's jobs easier Yeah. And their lives easier. How are you putting the information in front of them to help them do their job versus looking at the CRM as the thing I have to track everything I'm doing so my bosses know I'm working.
Max Cohen:Bro. But and there's too many people that still look at it that way.
Chad Hohn:Right. And people paint it as, oh, well, it's so you can find everything,
Max Cohen:but
Chad Hohn:then they know what's up.
Max Cohen:You if you think that's what it is. Like that like and here's the thing. Ready? K. I can respect that a company wants to make sure the people they're paying to do their job are doing their job.
Max Cohen:I can respect that sales managers want some kind of tangible proof that the strategies they're deploying, the playbooks that they're running, the the things the the behaviors that they're trying to reinforce into their sales reps, into whoever, it's happening. I can respect that. But there's a trade there. K? The trade is is that if we're giving you this system so we get something out of it, we being management, leadership, whoever.
Max Cohen:Right? What they're getting out of it is like, oh, I can I can see what you're doing? I can see you're doing your job. I can see we're moving in the right direction to hit whatever goals we have, whether it's across the organization or in specific departments, whatever. Those people aren't gonna wanna use that thing to do that because, like, think about it.
Max Cohen:There's besides, like, keeping their job, there isn't inherently much benefit they have of using a CRM if that's all it's for. It's like making sure you're doing your job. Right? They're gonna use it when it actually brings value to them. So start thinking a little bit more about how your CRM adds value into the day to day and quality of life and quality of work and enjoyment of that work and the enablement of doing that work, right, and decreasing burnout.
Max Cohen:Right? How do you make your CRM a positive thing for the humans that work for you? Right? How do you make them go, fuck. I love this thing.
Max Cohen:Right?
George B. Thomas:Yeah.
Max Cohen:And I actually I I I I input the stuff that you wanna see that's telling me I'm doing my job as a byproduct of me using this thing because it's actually helping me and making me enjoy my work, be enabled to do my best work, making it easier for me to do work, and making it just easier for me to do the fun parts of my job, which would be interacting with customers, treating them like genuine humans, and making sure they're getting helped out and successful. Right? And stopping me from hating my job. Right? That's what you need to think about.
Max Cohen:Because if you do those things, right, whether it's, you know, making the UI more customized so people can find what they need faster and it's all right there and it's easy to use and understand, sure. Maybe it's putting in, you know, internal document documentation to make things, like, easier for people to find answers quickly. If it's, you know, doing all the things that, you know, stop people from having to type the same email over and over again or blah blah blah blah. Like, things that just make their day to day not so much of a slog. Right?
Max Cohen:Whatever it is that improves the quality of life of your employees. Right? If you're doing that stuff and they're actively using it and they're like, this is a net benefit to me versus just something else I have to do on top of, like, taking care of all these customers. Right? Just because upper management wants to see that I'm logging my activities or whatever.
Max Cohen:Right? That logging of activity and and and logging of units of work or whatever, that will be a natural byproduct of you making HubSpot a joyful thing to work inside of. Okay? But the problem is so many people just start off saying, I wanna see how many emails and how many calls everyone's setting up, and I wanna set up these dashboards so I can tell everybody they're not making enough calls and not doing this and not to bro, if that's the way you're still looking at HubSpot, I don't know what to tell you. Well You know what I mean?
George B. Thomas:More than that, if that's the way that you're still looking at business, I don't know what to tell you. Because, Max, when when I when I hear you talk about this, it's funny because you're kinda colliding two worlds for me right now. It's like it's like, okay. Do do the and we're just talking internal team, but we could literally talk external user experience as well. But, does the team really know the true purpose of the CRM?
George B. Thomas:Not the one that you've made up, not the one that you're being selfish about, but the true purpose. Like, what why do we have this in place? We we've gotta think about, you know, platform, process, and people, but what's the purpose of the CRM, the platform being in here? How does this platform enable you to spend more time doing what you're passionate about? Right?
George B. Thomas:And how do we as leaders actually care or love enough to be able to, use the data that we're getting to create a better culture, to to lessen burnout, to create psychological safety, to get more creative, to get more ideas, to move faster, to innovate? Like, there's a happy word
Max Cohen:for us. HubSpot.
George B. Thomas:Yeah. No. It's not.
Max Cohen:Yeah. No. It's not. Like, that's the thing. And, like, what you should be asking when you're first saying, alright, oh, we're gonna roll HubSpot out.
Max Cohen:Right? Or, oh, we rolled HubSpot out. You shouldn't be saying, this is what you do in HubSpot. It should be, what do you what do you guys need? Yeah.
Max Cohen:Hey, support team. What do you need? Hey, sales team. What do you need?
George B. Thomas:See. Now you're talking
Max Cohen:about what can we what can we do? Leadership. Yeah. What can we do to make your life easier? Right?
Max Cohen:Not Yeah. This is where you log your calls, this is how you log your emails, and this is the dashboard that tells you if you're doing a better job than the other person. Yeah. No. No.
Max Cohen:It's what do you need? What do you what what can this help you? And that's, like again, anytime I was, like, doing implementation, I'm, like, rolling this out to sales teams. Right? And managers wanna be, like, I wanna I want you to show the guys how to log an email and how to, like, dump in a template and how to I I would never just do that.
Max Cohen:I go, hey, guys. What sucks about your job and and and and what can we do to make it better with this thing? Right? And and, unfortunately, that's not, like, what a lot of people are are doing. They're just leading with, like, we've got this this unruly sales team that we need to make sure is actually doing the work properly and brought up it's just like, come on, man.
Chad Hohn:So do that, man. Bad rap. Yeah.
George B. Thomas:Do do that in 2025. Chad, what else should HubSpot users be paying attention to in 2025?
Chad Hohn:Yeah. I mean, we've talked about it a ton on this show. And just in general, I think all of us are at least some level of enthusiastic about it. But if you're not the person who's, like, super excited about AI and LMM functionality in your business, at least make sure that somebody is and that you are working with them at least reasonably syncing up to give them ideas or for them to tell you what they're working on to spark ideas for you. You know, because maybe you're just busy doing other things or working on your own skill as we talked about before or whatever it is.
Chad Hohn:But, make sure somebody's got not their finger on the pulse of they don't need to be, like, looking at, oh, every new little thing that happens, but, like, at least reasonably trying to make AI do useful things and help it be a little more automagical in your business process outside of just, I'm gonna talk to Breeze, you know, in the UI when I need to. Right? Like, that's not what we're after as much as, like, well, we want to be able to have like, we have a a a thing at our our business called a dilution extraction that we get from each of the employees that work at a business. So every employee fills out that form, and they use their business email, which automagically associates them to the company. And we get a list of people and their job titles and what they feel could improve about the company and all of this sort of stuff.
Chad Hohn:One of the things we wanna do is take all of this these questions that are specific to the employee and not necessarily even shared with the employee, but automatically program a GPT that you can ask about that business. So, you know, Roof Whatever Inc. Bot knows about what all the employees feel when they're there. And then it also knows about the value extraction that we're trying to get as a company. This is the company's goals, and this is how the humans feel.
Chad Hohn:And you can talk to Roof Company Inc. Bot about that business. Right? And, like, program that automatically so you can get some more context for these people and for what they're doing in the business and what the business is trying to accomplish. Right?
Chad Hohn:And so, like, that's an example of how to maybe use AI practically in your business flow that's not just talking to Breeze. Right? You're, like, actually making a specific model that's relevant to all your interactions with Breeze in a way or sorry, with, you know, with this business and how to update it. Right? So if you're not the one, at least make sure someone is.
Chad Hohn:And that's it's fine. You don't have to be the one. Right? But somebody in your business should be at least interested in it and doing things in it with it or thinking about things that they could do.
George B. Thomas:Yeah. It's such a magical playground right now. Like, literally, we created a a custom well, it started out as a project and then a custom GPT for a client around tax strategies. I'll just say that much. To and we got it to the point where we could list the name of the person.
George B. Thomas:We we want you to write an article as this human or write an article as this human, and it would know the changes and difference to make as far as, like it it's crazy. And and just the way that we program another example of this, I was working over the weekend on a a passion project where, I can show you the documentation based on a process that I went through where I can ask my GPT what are the 25 mindsets that make George b Thomas the way he is, and it'll spit it out, and it's spot on. What are the 25 beliefs that George b Thomas has that make him interact with the world in this way? What are the what are the core values? And and so, like, if your assistant for your business doesn't know it at an intimate level
Chad Hohn:Mhmm.
George B. Thomas:Because because that's where you start to get into these magical places of, like, it just knows everything it can know, and you're directing it into, like, oh, we're just getting it anyway. Not an AI show, but we're just getting into some really crazy cool places that you as business owners, business leaders, even employees can get into to be to be leveraging AI. Let me go back out of AI before I get sucked in. One thing that I want people to pay attention to because it's interesting over the last couple of months if you watch, There was a a a an update slash beta around, HubSpot email tool and having mobile, like, mobile settings
Chad Hohn:in
George B. Thomas:there for mobile email.
Chad Hohn:Mobile optimized email.
George B. Thomas:Yeah. I wanna let everybody know there's a new update slash beta that they can go enjoy as well, which is like a whole new sidebar in the marketing email editor, which is really interesting. Because if you look at the screenshots and you've ever messed around with landing pages or website pages, like theme, it looks very reminiscent to that. The level of
Chad Hohn:the brand new layout. It's how the multi step form editor is, too.
George B. Thomas:Yeah. It's really interesting. So definitely, pay attention to, email. And and since I'm bringing up the email tool, maybe pay attention to how you're actually leveraging or not leveraging email inside of your organization. Because, while some people wanna say email's dead, I think crappy email might be dead, but good email is still a
Max Cohen:Crapy email's always been dead.
George B. Thomas:Yeah. It's always been dead.
Max Cohen:But it
Chad Hohn:is live. Extra dead now.
George B. Thomas:Yeah. It's it's a viable way to communicate. And I would just have you take a second glance, a third glance in 2025 and say, what email efforts have we been applying? What email efforts we haven't? Like, what could we be doing better, what could we be doing different, but definitely, email in 2025 as Mhmm.
George B. Thomas:As far as new folks, nurtures, and current folks, customers. Like, how are we delighting them as well? Max, HubSpot users, twenty twenty five, what should they be focusing on?
Max Cohen:I mean, besides everything that we talked about, you know, I'd here's, I guess, a challenge that I would I would pose Yeah. Right, to to any HubSpot user out there. If there's a hub you haven't explored, go 10 miles deep into it this year. Yeah. Right?
Max Cohen:Like, you might have gotten really good at marketing hub. You might have gotten really good at sales hub. You might have gotten really good at, you know, Service Hub. But when was the last time you even, like, just sat down and said, hey. I'm gonna learn everything I can about CMS Hub.
Max Cohen:I'm gonna learn everything I can about ops hub. Right? Those things are, you know, often, very unexplored, I feel. Right? You know, from from from a lot of users because, of course, there's, like, the big three, marketing, sales, and service.
Max Cohen:I'd even say service is much less explored by a lot of people. Like, you know
Chad Hohn:I love service.
Max Cohen:I'd say you I'd say yeah. I'd say 90% of the people that are really, really good at HubSpot out there are really, really good at marketing and Sales Hub. Right? But haven't had a reason to dive into Service Hub because maybe, like, they're one of those companies that still looks at it as a marketing and sales tool. Right?
Max Cohen:And hasn't really thought about, oh, what can we do to actually, like, help our customers using this instead of it all just going to that one support inbox that we have sitting somewhere. Right? Or, like, you know, what what the hell is this operations hub thing actually? Right? It's like, you know, if you haven't explored any of the CMS stuff, I mean, it's a whole I mean, it's not just CMS stuff now.
Max Cohen:It's content.
Chad Hohn:Literally. It's a
Max Cohen:Right. It's content. I mean, CMS
Chad Hohn:is, like, almost as much as learning all of the other hubs combined.
Max Cohen:Yeah. Sorry. If you're a marketer and you haven't gone full balls into into into into content hub, I I don't know what to tell you. Right? Podcast.
Max Cohen:This is the year to be it.
George B. Thomas:Source library. Like
Max Cohen:A %. So, like, you know, what I would say, like, you know, your HubSpot New Year's resolution is go, what's that hub I don't know anything about, and how can I spend this year becoming an expert in it? Right?
George B. Thomas:Can I
Max Cohen:because, like, Gary, too, you're gonna find yeah? You're gonna find you're gonna find reasons to use it and reasons to spend money on it, but you can
George B. Thomas:enjoy it. Go more granular than that. Like, I agree with the hub thing. I I totally agree with you. But, like, listen.
George B. Thomas:One of the things I wanna talk about paying attention to in 2025 is help desk. If you just look at what's been going on, help desk message analytics, help desk analyze tab, help desk summary tab, like, all the things that's helping happening around help desk. So, like, if you go so I wanna talk about workspaces. Like, if you're not diving into the sales workspace or the help desk or the customer success, you know, beta, workspace. Like so Hub, yes.
George B. Thomas:But even, like, workspace, like, is there a workspace that you haven't been paying attention to or leveraging inside your organization? Like, 2025 is the best time to to probably move in those directions and
Chad Hohn:understand the greater better than they were. The workspaces came out last year. Obviously, start is their tiny box, and they grow into a more rich feature set. The prospecting workspace turned into the sales workspace, which is really bringing together the lead and the sales management process. It's great.
Chad Hohn:I mean, did you guys know that help desk got a board view now so you can see your ticket board view inside of your all tickets view? And you get custom filter properties at the top of both the board and the list view. I mean, like, they have the ability to add a custom app on the right hand sidebar and customize the right hand sidebar in help desk. They have, like, the email AI replies that you can train on your KBAs. Email editor can pop out now.
Chad Hohn:Like, I mean, there's so many good things going on there. Like, the help desk team has been killing it, and they're working on, like, capacity level routings for all channels. Like, if everybody is full up, like, where do the tickets go so you can pass them out? Like, the amount of things that they're doing there is so impressive. And, like, ticket splitting, ticket merging, you know, I know these are basic things, but there are things that HubSpot's never had before.
George B. Thomas:Yeah.
Chad Hohn:And it's trading blows with the big boys in the help desk space for sure. And because it's all in one spot, you have access to more oh, they just literally added the ability to associate invoices to tickets so that you could use your help desk as kind of a sales functionality. Like, for example, at RBP, we utilize, like, fuel to represent how much effort we've assigned to tickets, and they utilize their fuel, and they can get more fuel. And if they wanna, like, use a payment link to buy fuel, they can add fuel to their account so we can process, like, a dev type request and build them something. But now the invoice can be associated to the ticket.
Chad Hohn:Right? So, like, all these things that just never were possible in help desk. And ops hub is, like, its own sack of glory. It's just so good. Like, I love ops hub.
Chad Hohn:And, like, if you don't have somebody who loves ops hub, that's something you should get because like that and somebody who loves, you know, AI. They're they you kinda need both because you need structured data. Like, I know AI deals with unstructured data well. But if you give AI structured data, it's that much better.
George B. Thomas:Right? Knock out. Knock out. One two punch. So Yeah.
George B. Thomas:I'll I'll I'll give one last thing that I want people to definitely pay attention to in 2025. It's actually gonna be something that I'm I'm gonna I'm gonna be very vulnerable and authentic here in about, about ten seconds. And then, by the way, gentlemen, I'm gonna ask, like, what's what's the one takeaway that you're kinda like, oh, man. After this conversation, I need to do x y z a b c. So the last thing I wanna say to HubSpot users in 2025 is, if you've abandoned HubSpot Academy because you've been in the trenches for, you know, ten plus years, eight plus years, seven plus years, and you think you've done it all, been there, seen that, I want you to pay attention to HubSpot Academy in 2025 because if you go on LinkedIn, Courtney Sembler, they're hiring a new position, if not multiple positions for HubSpot Academy.
George B. Thomas:It almost feels like they're getting ready to double down on the things that they're doing. And, also, the the reason I'm bringing this up is because I was on the HUG admin, training January, the beginning of this, month. We talked about defining your role, by the way, as a HubSpot super admin. It's part of our HubSpot super admin training. But I asked a question in there.
George B. Thomas:I said, how many of you have the reporting certification and the amount of no's that flooded up, in in the the super admin hog, the amount of
Chad Hohn:to have them.
George B. Thomas:Nose that flooded up, I was like, wow. So for all these years, I've been an advocate of HubSpot Academy, and I must continue to be an advocate of HubSpot Academy. Meaning, I'm an advocate for education. I'm I'm an advocate for growing yourself. Chad, I'm going back almost to your first thing of, like, your skills.
George B. Thomas:Like, what certification don't you have? What certification should you have? And how many times per week or per month are you checking back in for new lessons that could be learned that could impact you as an individual or the organizations that you work at? So for 2025, that's gonna be a big, focus for me because as somebody who has, at one time in my life, had 41 HubSpot certifications by the way, I think Jorge is at 52 now. Anyway
Max Cohen:Is he? Yeah.
Chad Hohn:I think he's got it out there.
George B. Thomas:It's it's crazy. I I need to go back and I need to research, and I also need to get new ones, and and that needs to be a focus for me moving forward. So, anyway okay. Max, what's your big takeaway from today's episode?
Max Cohen:I mean, the big the big the big takeaway is is for me is, like, yes. AI is going to be absolutely insane in 2025, for HubSpot, but that is not the only thing. Yeah. There is the there is a bit of a where how I say this. I'm not kidding.
George B. Thomas:Be easy. Don't get canceled.
Max Cohen:Oh, pardon you pardon you, Chad. Sorry. I was just stressed that I just I think it it it it will be a year to to the basics really well. It'll also be a year where taking care of people is going to be more important than it ever has been. Yeah.
Max Cohen:Mhmm. K? But also but also, from a tool perspective, it's gonna be a lot more than just AI. Right? And and don't don't lose sight of everything going on around and behind the the big, you know, the big crazy breeze explosion this year.
Max Cohen:Alright? Just Yeah. Pay attention to the stuff around the edges of the big shining AI light that's gonna be, you know, blasting from the center of this tool. Right? There there will be extremely cool things happening to the tool that aren't just AI.
Max Cohen:Yeah. Right? You know, so pay attention to that. Double down on the learning. Right?
Max Cohen:Explore stuff that you're not comfortable with. Explore stuff that you don't understand. And, yeah, embrace it, man. It's gonna be a crazy year.
George B. Thomas:Chad, what's your big takeaway from this episode?
Chad Hohn:Yeah. I just think, that I don't have enough certs again. I feel bad because I let all my certs lapse because I, you know, like, I mean, it's easy to get in the middle of everything. I'm like, well, I'm building things that are like that I think are pretty cool and I think are pretty useful. But, yeah, like, I think there needs to be a balance because, like, certs aren't everything.
Chad Hohn:Like, somebody with only certs and no experience isn't useful necessarily useful. They have some context and understanding. But somebody with, like, doing whatever they want and no certs is also, like, you know, they maybe they know how the rubber meets the road, but, like, hey. You know what? It's, it's just good to have some of that industry, you know, standard sort of stuff to lock in.
Chad Hohn:I mean, that's, like, a takeaway for me. Like, I wanna grow my learning, but the learning that I'm trying to do is, like, kind of stuff they don't really have certs for. They have some, like, integrations stuff for certs. That's one I wanna take, because it's probably gonna push me outside of what I know. And, like, keep me close to the correct trajectory.
Chad Hohn:But other certs I should renew because because it's good.
George B. Thomas:Yeah. It's good.
Chad Hohn:So that's that's one thing I wanna do and I need to do.
George B. Thomas:Love it. So my big takeaway is this. It's a new year. It's a new you. Focus on the the strategies and the growth and the goals that you need to be focused on.
George B. Thomas:Figure out how HubSpot actually plays in this world of process, people, and platform. And I'm gonna go back to something that Max has kinda been dipping in the entire time. It's all about the Humans. Focus on your internal humans, external humans, yourself as a human, and how can you just have the best year ever and flourish? Because that's what we here at the Hub Heroes podcast hope for you is that 2025 is a year of flourishing.
George B. Thomas:Okay, Hub Heroes. We've reached the end of another episode. Will Lord Lack continue to loom over the community, or will we be able to defeat him in the next episode of the Hub Heroes podcast? Make sure you tune in and find out in the next episode. Make sure you head over to the hubheroes.com to get the latest episodes and become part of the league of heroes.
George B. Thomas: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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