Unlock the Untapped Potential of Events with HubSpot 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.
Max Cohen:Just remember, if you're if you're if you're lacking a better transition into the intro, this is not the shackle for you.
George B. Thomas:Yeah. We just we just jump right in. We get going. But I'm but I'm super excited because listen. At at the end of the day, there's something that's been going around in my brain for, gosh, maybe two years now, for sure, the last year and a half.
George B. Thomas:And and it's something that I wanna do. It's something that I've kind of been doing. And and listen, sometimes I probably do more than I think I do, and I have my own crisis when it comes to, like, how much content I should create or how many events I should do. You know? But I listen.
George B. Thomas:We do events. We do super admin training. That's ten weeks. We do it probably two to three times a year. We do podcast.
George B. Thomas:That's an event. Right? Like and that's every week that we're doing one, if not two so but but also you start to think about webinars, you think about in person and events. Right? I've just been thinking about growth led, companies, event led growth, if you will.
George B. Thomas:And so I'm excited to have which, by the way, those let me let me ask you. Is there another events app in the app ecosystem, or do I literally have the only two events app humans on the podcast today?
Max Cohen:What is event integrations?
George B. Thomas:Well, yeah. I don't
Max Cohen:know how can I go
George B. Thomas:reach out
Max Cohen:to That's mostly why me me me and Justin's, you know, little event babies exist because integrations are terrible? Well, they're they're
Justin Givens:they're look. George, let's just say this. There's a other there's other event platforms, but I don't know why you'd wanna waste your time on them.
George B. Thomas:Yeah. I'm probably not reaching out
Max Cohen:to Eventbrite.
George B. Thomas:I'm I'm I'm not reaching out to Eventbrite and asking them to be on the podcast. I'm just I'm just gonna say that because well, I'm just going to say that. But but wait.
Max Cohen:There is one more. There is one more by, something operations, Andrew's company. He does, he's got, like, a little utility for Marketing events. Marketing events object. Yes.
Max Cohen:Okay. Yeah. There's one more. At least one more.
Justin Givens:It what I saw that oh, gosh. You know
Max Cohen:what I'm talking about.
Justin Givens:I do know what you're talking about. I
Max Cohen:feel like a jerk not remembering the name of his company. It's like Go operations or something like that.
Justin Givens:We'll put
George B. Thomas:it in the show notes.
Max Cohen:Yeah. We'll find it.
George B. Thomas:We'll put it in the show notes. We'll find it.
Max Cohen:There's other people fighting the good fight out there. Guys?
George B. Thomas:And that's good. I I think it is a good fight, by the way. And by the way, I want anybody that's watching this on LinkedIn, live or listening to the podcast, you know, in the near future when we release it probably, like, Tuesday afternoon, or maybe it's, like, six months after this because you're just stumbling across the podcast. What's wrong with you? Where you've been?
George B. Thomas:Come listen to us. We love creating content for you that
Max Cohen:that Where are you?
George B. Thomas:Folks. But but I I want everybody to know this isn't just another conversation about events. I'm hoping that we can kind of redefine how people think about them, because listen. I'm to the point where it's like, it's not optional. We've gotta be doing this.
George B. Thomas:Events are probably the cornerstone, especially if you're recording the video because then you can do what I like to call, which is content confetti. Literally turn the events into blog articles, into social posts, into into all sorts of stuff. But but let me back up. Max, most of the humans know who you are, but I'm gonna swing back over to you in a second because we're gonna shine a different kind of light on you this morning. But, Justin, I'm gonna start with you because if we're talking about events, maybe not all the hub, you know, hub heroes folks know who you are.
George B. Thomas:So just give us a lowdown of kind of who you are, what you do, a little bit about the app that you bring to the table this morning during the conversation, and maybe just, like, your fundamental, thirty second spot on what you think about events and organizations using events.
Justin Givens:Yeah. So my name is Justin Givens. I am the the creator and the founder of Simple Events, and also the cofounder of a company named Image in a Box. It is a HubSpot, platinum agency, at the time of this recording. And it is a agency that just loves to solve people's problems, more specifically in the ERP realm of ConnectWise and, cybersecurity companies.
Justin Givens:That is who we really love to help on the agency side. But where we find the biggest passion is running events, and that's why we built Simple Events. It was a journey we started on two years ago. It's the number two event platform in HubSpot. It's gonna be number one.
Justin Givens:I'm just waiting on y'all to sign up for it. Okay? There is a freebie out there for it. So it's the easiest and fastest way to get your events integrated into HubSpot and the simplest. And you get to use all the wonderful tools in HubSpot that you love and use every single day.
Justin Givens:One of the big things that I wanna say about events is that we all do them wrong.
Max Cohen:Oh. Yeah.
Justin Givens:I'm not gonna drop the mic because when's the last time you signed up for your own company's event and felt like an external user and see what the process feels like? So many people have gone and said, you know, why aren't these people showing up? Oh, I I've put in so much effort into this event. And they're like, alright. Cool.
Justin Givens:I didn't get any return on investment. Well Mhmm. That's not the customers that show up the prospect's fault. That's our fault. That we're not running the event the way you should be running events.
Justin Givens:So that's my little spiel that we're gonna dive into more.
George B. Thomas:I feel like we're gonna dive a little bit deeper into that as we go. And and and by the way, I'm also sitting here at as you're, like, the number two event app. I'm like, oh, did I just create a room for chaos? Like, am I gonna be the referee of a boxing match before this whole thing is over? Anyway, I hope not.
George B. Thomas:Maybe so. It might be good for ratings.
Max Cohen:Gotta stick together, bro.
Justin Givens:That's right. We I think we cross share more because I'm like, you know, y'all need to do event happily. It's exactly what it's for. Let's do it.
Max Cohen:You're the same thing. Yeah.
George B. Thomas:Yes. So, Max Max, people know you for being the, you know, lovable teddy bear, huggable, you know, hub heroes, host. But today hugable. Shine the the light on you as far as event happily. So just kind of introduce yourself from that side of things, like who you are, what you do, on that, and a little bit about maybe, how you think about events.
George B. Thomas:Yeah.
Max Cohen:Well, I guess hey, everybody who doesn't know, me. I'm Max. I'm the chief evangelist over at this company called Happily. All we do is we build apps on HubSpot that make HubSpot do more. Is, I guess, the easiest way to think about kinda what we do.
Max Cohen:We've got an app called Event Happily. It's the whole goal of it is essentially to look at HubSpot as a platform, figure out where all the missing puzzle pieces are in terms of event management, and to fill those gaps and literally turn HubSpot into an event management platform. And that's kind of, like, basically what I do. And, you know, part of my, you know, role here is, you know, mostly I create a lot of content. I'm super loud on LinkedIn, and and, I I work with a lot of HubSpotters to get them up to speed on the stuff we build because we do Event Happily, we do Quote Happily, we got a bunch of utility apps, there's a lot of really cool stuff we got planned in the future, but I've been kind of the one sort of, like, guiding the direction for what we're sort of calling Event Happily two point o, which is really the sort of next evolvement, the next iteration, of Event Happily, in its current state.
Max Cohen:I guess in terms of, like, what I think about events is, like, you know, it's so interesting, because everything that people do with events touches everything that HubSpot's really good at. Right? It's a function of marketing. It's a functioning of sales. It can be a functioning of customer service.
Max Cohen:Right? And so forever and ever as a, you know, someone who helped people implement HubSpot. Right? Events were always a topic, and HubSpot was never good at being able to handle it because it's a CRM system. It's not built to be event management software.
Max Cohen:Right? You know, and for so long, you know, I just remember people saying, like, oh, you know, we wanna be able to sign people up for events and and do this and do that. But, you know, a lot of the native stuff built into HubSpot just wasn't built to handle it, you know, whether it comes to the way that forms work out of the box and, you know, doing a ton of list management and all this other crazy stuff. You know, but in turn like, events are important and and, like, the biggest thing that I've kind of learned is that no one does event management in the same exact way. Right?
Max Cohen:Events mean different things to different people. Right? An event could be a conference. An event could be an internal training or some sort of course someone's running or some sort of, you know, like, if you're sure, like a webinar, things like that. And the nuances that come along with how complex, people manage their events can be, are vast.
Max Cohen:And I think, like, the really big opportunity, you know, that there is of building an event management platform on HubSpot is, like, HubSpot has a lot of the things that other, like, point solutions for event management tools don't have already in there. Right? So, like, when Justin was saying earlier, right, getting all your data into HubSpot so you can use all those awesome tools that HubSpot has, like, that's the point. And, like, what's really, really neat about it is since event management is so complex to or can be. Sorry.
Max Cohen:Can be super complex, super nuanced, and really different in the way people execute it. Right? What's great about building an event app on HubSpot is that you can you can build in kind of, like, what's missing, and then you can use HubSpot's, you know, wild amount of extensibility and customization to fill in all of, like, the unique and nuanced parts of your event management strategy or process, whatever that may be, right, through workflows, record customizations, additional custom objects, all of these other things, depending on what you're trying to do. Right? So, yeah, it's cool.
Max Cohen:It's a it's a cool platform to build on. And I think there's a million other things besides events you could apply the same logic to probably. Yeah.
George B. Thomas:Oh, without a doubt. I love that, it could be a simple event, pun intended, or a complex event. But at the end of the day, you're gonna be able to do it happily or anyway, you sound like
Max Cohen:simpler that's
George B. Thomas:what I tried
Max Cohen:to do.
Justin Givens:Seems not really
George B. Thomas:foolish, George. Here's the here's the thing. I'll get rid of my bad dad jokes and puns, for a hot minute. If I think about when most people think about events, they probably think about old school webinars. Right?
George B. Thomas:And so, Justin,
Justin Givens:I'm going
George B. Thomas:to go to you first and then maybe Max back to you. And I might throw some pennies in the pool here as well. But when you think of, like, old school purpose of events kind of evolving from networking or promotion or just downright bad webinars and sales, like, right there to more of this, like, driving maybe lead generation or starting conversations or actually being human and building relationships, you know, the idea of, like, event led growth. What does this shift mean to businesses? Like, what should they be thinking about today?
Justin Givens:So every event should have a goal. And I'm I'm gonna go ahead and say that not every event should be closing a new customer.
Max Cohen:Mhmm.
Justin Givens:So you should have a process. You know, there's this little thing called a flywheel, you know, that you gotta promote.
George B. Thomas:Oh, I've heard of that, I think.
Justin Givens:Yeah. I I don't know if anybody on this podcast has ever heard of it.
George B. Thomas:What's that company?
Max Cohen:Inbound is dead.
Justin Givens:That's not the company name just so no one goes
Max Cohen:book about how inbound is dead.
Justin Givens:So you when you go into the thinking, hey. I'm gonna do this webinar. Hey. I'm gonna do this in person event. One, who's your target?
Justin Givens:Always going in. But when you think about it from a goal for that, is it to drive awareness? Is it to drive leads? Is it to drive sales? Is it to close sales?
Justin Givens:But you gotta think, if I'm building one event, let's just say you've never run an event or you've run a thousand events, and you're going into that event today and you're thinking, okay. I need to run an event for, say, two months from now. If you're thinking I'm gonna drive new leads and I'm gonna close existing leads, you're probably thinking of your event completely wrong. Because just like as we all know, those buyers are at different stages in your process. Don't speak to them like they're brand new to your business.
Justin Givens:Don't speak to them like they've known your business for six years. So create your events that are really tailored to your buyer's journey and where they are in that stage so you can really maximize that effort, that, return on investment. And the biggest thing that I see a lot of companies do is, oh, we're gonna run events. Yeah. Yeah.
Justin Givens:And then they're like, we got no customers. And they go through this process, and it happens every year. You know what? We're gonna do more events this year. And they always fail because they're not thinking, hey.
Justin Givens:That lead, now how can I use HubSpot in a workflow to nurture that lead into a long term customer? Right? They're thinking this event should close them. Mhmm. We used to run pre COVID, a training series every quarter.
Justin Givens:And my goal was to convert. If you came to one in the first quarter of the year, by the fourth quarter, I wanted to convert you as a customer.
George B. Thomas:Right? Long term.
Justin Givens:Yeah. Long term track. Me a year. Right? Now it only took me forty five minutes for the talk.
Justin Givens:So if you think that time investment, right, doesn't cost a lot of me. But I knew going in, I'm gonna stage my contact or my my content, sorry, to elevate that person the whole way into a buyer. Okay?
Max Cohen:Yeah.
Justin Givens:And that's where I feel like a lot of people think about events wrong, then they go and use the wrong tools, which then makes that friction. And they're like, we're not running events. We're just gonna go back to doing what we've always done.
Max Cohen:Yeah. Because then you end up getting sloppy in the way that you use that data after the event too because what are you doing? Just in You're putting Excel. Sheets. Right?
Max Cohen:Exactly. Yeah.
Justin Givens:Well, we'll
George B. Thomas:get we'll get into friction and failure, here in a hot minute. But, Max, I want I want you to kinda go in the same direction of, like, what do businesses need to be thinking about right now when it comes to events?
Max Cohen:Yeah. Well, I mean, on on top of everything that Justin said, because I completely agree with it, and I love him, I think the other thing too and and, George, I think you've been really good at kind of championing this idea is that not every event that you're on has to be something that's gonna get you leads, right, and and and close deals. There's a big reason why you'd want to invest in strengthening your community of customers. Right? Think about why HubSpot is where it's at today.
Max Cohen:It's all because of HubSpot Academy and things like inbound and the rabid fan base and community that they've relentlessly built over the past fifteen whatever years. Right? You know, I'm not out here saying every single company needs to go do their own version of inbound. Right? But the the the big thing that you can tell works, right, is that HubSpot invests in its strengthening and fortification of its community and its user base.
Max Cohen:Right? Events are an amazing way to do that because you can bring people together over the shared love of a product or a service or an industry or whatever, get them talking, and really, really spin up that, you know, base of evangelists that you have when you do, you know, very, when you come up with, like, creative and fun ways of engaging with that community, and events are, like, a wonderful way to do that, be it virtual or in person or meetups or, you know, HubSpot does the user groups, like, things like this. Right? You know, and, obviously, you need an operating system to be able to, like, handle that stuff. Right?
Max Cohen:HubSpot's great at doing that, right, as long as it's paired with the right tools like the two that we're talking about today. Right? You know, so I think it's I think a big mistake, you know, Justin really hit it right on the head. It's like, just looking at it as, like, a lead gen and deal closing tool is the wrong way to look at it. Right?
Max Cohen:You wanna be able to you you gotta know that you there's there's other tactical reasons to deploy it. Right? Like, even when we talk about inbound, we talk about delight. Right? Delight is so important, fortifying your customer base and creating evangelists and getting people stoked on your stuff in ways that don't always necessarily translate to a very specific transaction of money or closing a new deal.
Max Cohen:All these things are important because they affect that stuff down the line and have an impact on it. Right? And events are a great way to, you know, engage that base of fans that you have of, you know, the work your company does. Right? So don't sleep on it.
George B. Thomas:Yeah. So I I love that I'm sitting here talking to you two gentlemen, and it really is about, like, these apps that help you set up, launch and, like, create and then report and then nurture based on the events you're putting on. The the thing that comes to my mind, what people should be thinking about, businesses should be thinking about is with apps like yours, it becomes a lot easier. And so the excuses go away. Here's the thing that I'm gonna throw into this mix.
George B. Thomas:But before I do, if you're watching this live, put in the chat pane if you do events and what type of events you do. Just throw it in the chat pane real quick because I'm super curious what people are considering or or thinking about in events.
Max Cohen:And even if you don't, just lie to us. We need to
Justin Givens:boost the algorithm.
Max Cohen:Don't don't lie.
George B. Thomas:Truth. But in I'll
Max Cohen:I'll lie.
George B. Thomas:Do you do events and what type of events? Here's the thing. Excuses are a a thing of the past or should be when it comes to events because the other thing that I wanna put in people's mind outside of HubSpot, outside of these apps, is if you're not using AI for research, you're failing. If you're not using AI for presenter notes, you're you're probably maybe, spending more time than you need to. If you're not using AI for creative ideas of what should be on the actual slides for your event, like, what I'm talking about is human powered ideas in creation, but AI assisted, because you can spin around a deck for an event in a heartbeat at this point in time if you know the right tools like Gamma to use.
George B. Thomas:And by the way, not sponsored. Could be. Gamma. Reach out. Let us know, if you wanna sponsor the podcast.
George B. Thomas:But it's one of my favorite, like, presentation creation applications, just because of the way that it leverages AI and AI imagery and all the stuff that you can do with it. But so so, like, I want people to rethink about that portion of events as well as the portions that we're talking about in HubSpot and with Simple Events and Event Happily. But here's here's the thing. We've all signed up for those events. Many of us has said, well, we're not gonna attend.
George B. Thomas:We're just gonna watch the replay. Anyway, not why we're here. But we've signed up for these events. We thought we were gonna get value. We get to the event, and it's like, or just flat out, like, you're like, man, I've been here for twenty minutes.
George B. Thomas:I'm checking out. This sucks. I'm curious. You guys are doing events. You're focused on events.
George B. Thomas:You see people doing events. You're helping others. You're enabling them to do events. What are some actionable steps that brands, organizations can take to to kinda make sure that their event delivers on the promises of truly positioning, you know, the company as a thought leader, fostering relationships with the attendees, getting people to stick around? Like, is there, like, a checklist?
George B. Thomas:Is there, like, here's the things you should always think about doing? Like, talk us through that.
Justin Givens:Max, you wanna dive first? Well, I
Max Cohen:mean, let's still I'll be honest. We I I I build an event app that it that is built from the ground for HubSpot. I am not an event producer by any means. Right? So I'm the last guy you wanna talk to in terms of, like, what makes a great event.
Max Cohen:From a very tactical level, I guess the one thing that I would say is don't do the bait and switch, guys. Right? Don't do the hey. You want five free nights at the hotel? All you gotta do is come listen to a seminar on this timeshare.
Max Cohen:Unless you're advertising it as a sales pitch, right, which some people are gonna be interested in that. Sure. You're gonna have people that are, you know, in their buying cycle of whatever product that you have, and sometimes they go, yeah. You know what? I'd like to listen to someone actually talk about the product and show it and create an open forum for questions and things like that.
Max Cohen:That's great. As long as you're saying this is what that is, and if you're interested in consuming that content, here it is. The last thing you wanna do is bamboozle people with some sort of bait and switch and say, hey. Come learn about x y z, you know, topic, and then it ends up being like a sales pitch webinar that people just kinda tune out from and go, oh, I just see what they're trying to do. Right?
Max Cohen:Also, right, be a little bit more nuanced with the way that you follow-up with people after these, you know, after these things. Right? Not everyone needs a salesperson sicked on them. Right? You know, so I would say try to do your best to, you know, really make sure if you are gonna do the sales heavy content types of events that they're advertised as such.
Max Cohen:Not only so you're, you know, doing the right thing and being transparent and not wasting people's time with the bait and switch, but also so you can actually attract the people that wanna see that. You got much, you know, a much better shot at getting the right eyeballs on that type of content. Right? But, you know, I did do new hire training, right, at at HubSpot for a while, especially during COVID. Had to learn how to do that pretty quick.
Max Cohen:And in terms of, like, you know, if you are a company that's doing, like, virtual events, the biggest thing that you have to figure out somehow and this is gonna be different in every single type of event. So, like, I apologize if this, you know, advice is vague. But creating an element that is interactive whenever you're doing any sort of visual event is huge when it comes to maintaining people's engagement. Right? So however you can do that.
Max Cohen:Right? Let's say you're doing a webinar or some other type of virtual event. You gotta figure out what are the interactive elements that are gonna make people not just a passive watcher, right, and an active participant. Right? That's what makes virtual events really good.
Max Cohen:You know, in person events I don't know. Just make sure you got, like, a good spread or something. You know what I mean?
Justin Givens:I don't know.
George B. Thomas:I'm not I'm not a I'm
Max Cohen:not an in person event coordinator. Right? So there's probably someone who could comment better than me than that. Right? But, you know, make sure the content of the event, whatever it may be, matches the audience.
Max Cohen:Don't do a bait and switch. Make sure it's valuable. Right. And then just don't just don't murder people with sales folks right after. Just like let them go, Oh, that was a good event.
Max Cohen:And I learned something. Right. And it wasn't just a ploy to get me to buy some shit. Right?
George B. Thomas:By the way, for for all of you people on LinkedIn or if you're listening to this in the future, hit us up. Let us know either in the chat pane or, in the Hub Heroes community. Have you ever felt like you've been, sicked on by salespeople after an event? Have you ever had to live that experience? Also, by the way, that was my way of making this event interactive.
George B. Thomas:See what I just did there? I got them to do something. There you go. I got the I got
Intro:the to
George B. Thomas:do something. So so, Justin, your turn. Like, where where does your mind go on this question? By the way, after you go, I have some thoughts. And and Yeah.
George B. Thomas:Thanks to Max, I have a a couple extra thoughts.
Max Cohen:Extra thoughts.
Justin Givens:There you go. Yeah. So one of the big things is why are you running this event? Okay. So what information do you want to present that the consumer is going to ingest?
Justin Givens:Right? And where a lot of businesses that I've seen that we've helped with, they try to cram way too much. Okay? So this sort of goes back off what Max was saying is know your target audience and know what they want. Right?
Justin Givens:But don't give them everything in forty five minutes where they're just glazed over and they're like, I have no idea what to do. Another great idea is create uniqueness for those who actually attend. Meaning, you want the recording, you've gotta show up. Right? Add these sort of checks and balances just like the time share.
Justin Givens:We to get the free nights, you just don't show up on property. You have to listen. Do the same concept and be clear about that. We're only gonna send the recordings to those who show up. Alright?
Justin Givens:And one of the tricks that I really love to do in it's not tricks. It's a it's a tactic. Is I tell them at the beginning, don't try to take any notes. I'm gonna be ax asking you to be interactive. I'm gonna be asking questions throughout this, presentation.
Justin Givens:I'm gonna show you how you can get all these slides. And at that moment, you're removing that barrier if somebody feels like they missed something and they just leave to giving you actually full attention because they know that fear of missing details is now removed.
Max Cohen:Yep. Okay? True. Lots of them.
Justin Givens:That is a huge win for virtuals. Now in persons, I honestly you need to pick out five to 10 people and call them out every time you're going through and asking this interaction. Right? And I usually say, hey. I'm gonna call you out if you don't raise your hands.
Justin Givens:And I do that with a big smile. Like, hey. This is you're here to learn. Let's let's have a conversation. Alright?
Justin Givens:People can hide behind on a virtual wall pretty easily, but you can do the awkward silence. I don't know if anybody here is a big salesperson, but you can always mute and wait for those crickets. Alright? Mhmm. So that big thing is knowing the target, knowing what to get.
Justin Givens:The other thing is a lot of marketing teams come up with ideas of events and those kind of things, but they remove that disconnect from the sales team. Going back to the sales team and saying, what's every question you've ever had? Not that every question is gonna be in every webinar, but you can pick out a collection of similar topics and address those and then answer during the presentation and then move on to the next series. So then you're what you're doing is building that knowledge and that trust with those customers. One of the the last thing I'm gonna say is if you think you've communicated your event enough, you haven't.
Justin Givens:So I tell my wife this all the time. The moment my wife thinks she has plenty of time to get ready, that's the moment we're gonna be late. No matter if it's two hours, thirty minutes, fifteen hours, the moment she says, oh, we got plenty of time. We're late, honey. That's it.
Justin Givens:We haven't even left the house.
George B. Thomas:Yeah. Let me know how the doghouse is later, bro.
Justin Givens:No. She she laughs every time, and she actually said it on Saturday. She goes, you know, I was telling myself I got plenty of time. I'm like, yeah. And she goes, yeah.
Justin Givens:You're right. I was behind. But when you think you've communicated so I was actually talking to a simple inventor. That's another word I've made up. And they said, you know, know, a lot of people aren't using the QR code.
Justin Givens:And I'm like, well, are you telling them about the QR code? Well, not really.
Max Cohen:Mhmm. Well, how do you
Justin Givens:expect them to know to use it if you're not telling them? Again, you've gotta remind your people who sign up, who haven't signed up. And, again, this is why EventHappily and Simple Events are so tightly integrated with HubSpot. Use the list functions. Use your workflows to keep bringing them notifications until they actually register, and then flip them into the registration workflow so then they actually show up.
Justin Givens:And during that time, bringing in exactly what you're going to talk about and why they need to join and the nuggets you're gonna give them. Right? I typically keep my talking points to four or less. And during those four, I always have a transformation story that can relate to one of my buyer personas because I wanna create that connection between the customer. At the end of it, there's always something free, but they all and I even cut like George says, you turn these webinars, these digital ones into ongoing content.
Justin Givens:I cut the promotion part of the free content for the web. You only get it if you show up. Alright? So those are my tips there to really maximize your event.
George B. Thomas:Yeah. I love it. There's there's a couple things that I'll add based on the answers that you gave. One, Max, as soon as you started to go, I was like, well, Max is part of the answer because, bro, you always bring energy. Like, you're just who you are.
George B. Thomas:You're authentic, and you're loud, and you're max, and you're, like, you're you're energized. And so many events I've got on, and it's like listening to Charlie Brown's teacher. Mom. Mom. Mom.
George B. Thomas:Mom. Mom. Mom.
Justin Givens:Mom. Mom. Mom. Mom. Mom.
Justin Givens:Mom.
George B. Thomas:Mom. Mom. Mom. Mom. Mom.
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George B. Thomas:Mom. Mom. Mom. Mom. Mom.
George B. Thomas:Mom. Mom. Mom. Mom. Mom.
George B. Thomas:Mom. Mom. Mom. Mom. Mom.
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George B. Thomas:Mom. Mom. Mom. Mom. Mom Justin, you said that you I I like to, share a transformational story.
George B. Thomas:The fact that many people aren't using storytelling as a superpower when it comes to the events that they're creating is shameful. And and here here's
Max Cohen:the thing.
George B. Thomas:Trouble. Not every event that you do has to be recorded. Even saying that in the promotion of it makes it a different type of event. We we do an event for an organization that I help called LifeStar. They help solopreneurs.
George B. Thomas:We do an event called problem solvers, and we don't let note takers in, and we don't record it because it's the type of event that you gotta show up, be you, be human, and talk about the problems in your business, and then let people help you solve them. There's no so you know you can't just register and then get it later. So, like, figuring out the strategy that's right for you and your event, figuring out the stories that you wanna tell along the way and bringing the energy for it all so that if people actually get captivated and get taken away and, like, enjoy the thirty, forty five, whatever minutes of the event, you know, you add that and you'll be doing a lot better. Here's the funny thing I wanna swing back around to is we've mentioned about, like, being, you know, sick in sales on people, and we've talked about not being salesy. And we've almost, like, leaned into this, like, negative vibe of sales attached to events.
George B. Thomas:But I I'm gonna come back to you both because I wanna know if there's some steps, some ways, some mindsets, some best practices that we could actually turn these events into high performing sales machines, and really streamline the process to to go from conversation starters and relationship builders to what CEOs and CFOs and CMOs and anybody with a c and some o's in their title probably really care about, which is closing deals, revenue, and staying in business. Like, what where does your brain go when it's like, yeah. We like to yell about sales, but here's some things you could think about as far as the process.
Max Cohen:It's okay to have salesy events. Right? It's just about making sure the right people are the audience for that. Right? Like, we talked about we for years, we've talked about the whole buyer's journey and top of the funnel, middle of the funnel, bottom of the funnel content.
Max Cohen:The the big problem is people were only focusing on the bottom of the funnel content. Right? Only focus on the stuff where it's like, this is why our product is so great. Right? And you know It's your product.
Max Cohen:Yeah, exactly. But that's the thing, there are people that are in the mindset of, I am trying to consume content about why your product is so great. That's okay. You can have these very sales focused events for those people. Like, not everything has to be this esoteric, top of the funnel, educational, you know, storytelling, stuff.
Max Cohen:Right? You you need to do that a % because the amount of people that are looking for your sales focused content is generally this big at all times. But the people looking for ways to solve the general goals and challenges that they have that don't even know that they have a problem that your product sells for is still is this big at all times. Right? Because you're talking about the rest of the world or the rest of your total addressable market that doesn't know who you are yet.
Max Cohen:Right? And, like, yes. You need to be creating content for this, but it is okay to create content for the people that are just like, oh, yeah. You I I know that I have a problem, and I know that I need to solve it using this type of solution, and I am evaluating all the people that solve the problem in that way. I'd like to learn more about your stuff way, you know, but but do it in a way that's not reading another ebook, looking at your website's product features.
Max Cohen:Like, people do enjoy places they can go to ask very pointed questions about specific products, right, but not also be dragged into a one on one sales call. Right? Now everyone likes to do everything they can. I at least I do. Like, to do everything I can to avoid that.
Max Cohen:That's my last you know, generally gonna be my last step is, like, alright. I need to get on the phone with a salesperson. Right? But, you know, some sort of, like, open forum where I can go and learn about the product. I can ask questions.
Max Cohen:I can interact kind of as much as I want. And then I can choose if I disengage afterwards and kind of disappear and and ghost. Right? It's okay to do that, I think, as long as you're presenting the content that way. You're being very clear who the audience is for.
Max Cohen:You're making it very easy for them to find. And in that case where someone's showing up to quite literally learn about your product, it's kind of okay that you stick the salespeople on them after. Right? Relatively to what you're doing to other people that came to learn about some topic you tried to educate them on, and all of a sudden, they're getting just absolutely, shellacked by salespeople in the rim box after. That's a totally different that's a bait and switch.
Max Cohen:You don't wanna do the bait and switch.
George B. Thomas:You did you did really well. I thought there was something else coming there. You did you did you did well.
Justin Givens:Hold on. I'm I'm gonna I'm gonna piggyback off that because when you run your event, the last thing you want to do is give your sales team, and this I see this all the time, 30 leads who never raised their hand over the
George B. Thomas:past week.
Justin Givens:True. Sales. Because guess what? Sales is gonna tell VP of sales. Hey.
Justin Givens:Tell marketing to stop doing this. They're wasting all of our time. Alright? Then marketing's gonna be like, no. We're gonna do more.
Justin Givens:Stop. But you've gotta think about in your events. What's gonna generate the hand raisers? That goes back to what we were talking earlier on this show is what's that interactivity of one, think about your qualification questions. And I'm gonna play it on my side as or how many events do you run?
Justin Givens:One, not a customer. Just use Excel. You're fine. Okay? Oh, you run 20.
Justin Givens:Awesome. In person. Virtual. Great. Do you run your own conference show?
Justin Givens:Check out event happily. We don't do conferences. Right? I can then funnel people the right way. And guess what?
Justin Givens:That makes yourself look good.
George B. Thomas:Mhmm.
Justin Givens:Yeah. Instead of always saying you need me me me me me me me me. Right? Find what makes those hand raisers go oh, oh, oh. Because as Max said, the last thing someone wants is to disrupt their day right after a webinar, and you have 15 missed phone calls from an unknown phone number.
Max Cohen:Yep. Right? Because also, like, if you run events, it's more than likely you you run multiple events, and you want people to come back to them, and you want people to go, that was a great experience. Right? Not go, I went to this one event, and now they will not stop hounding me.
Max Cohen:Those guys. I'm not gonna go to another one. I'm not gonna listen. They broke my trust. That's not what you're trying to do.
Max Cohen:Events is all about community building and giving people an alternate way to interact with you if we're talking about the sales process type events or the the sales funnel type events. Right? It's not just about, now we got you, and now you're never gonna stop listening like you're yeah. Right? It's just it's not about that.
Max Cohen:But, unfortunately, that's what people do. Right? They just go, oh, we need a webinar to get some leads, and then we're gonna just, you know like, you just go after these people relentlessly. It's like, bro, no.
George B. Thomas:Max, I'm so happy with you right now. That was a great use of the sensor button Mhmm. By the way.
Max Cohen:No swears are. Uh-huh.
George B. Thomas:Just it was a great use of yeah. Since we're on LinkedIn live, Justin, that was honestly one of my biggest worries of doing LinkedIn live is, like, historically, we've been able to edit certain Movies. And what they say on the podcast. But LinkedIn live, I was like, let let ladies and gentlemen, we're gonna do this. So so good job, Max.
George B. Thomas:I I I love this conversation. I wanna, dive kind of a little bit into each one of the apps a little bit. Justin, I'm gonna come back to you, then I'm gonna go, Max, to you, because I wanna think about, like, simple events and kinda like the essential elements of creating these seamless, no fuss, event experiences that can deliver real results, you know, for attendees and and businesses doing this. Like, just walk us through kind of that process, that mindset from the Simple Events standpoint, for us.
Justin Givens:Yeah. So the biggest thing is Simple Events motto is we wanna get you back to marketing your event. Setting up your event, like building it on Eventbrite or any other platform that requires an hour, two hours, it's gonna slow you down. It's gonna deter you. It's gonna keep that freshness from from flowing.
Justin Givens:You're gonna even the creativity from flowing from marketing side. Right? We all need more time to market so we can attract the right people for this event. Okay? So the philosophy there is we've got HubSpot.
Justin Givens:And if you're on HubSpot starter, if you're on one of the free plans in HubSpot, you're really missing out on the value of HubSpot marketing pro. And that is specifically because of the landing page features.
Max Cohen:Mhmm.
Justin Givens:When you're running your event, you should always go out with an AB test. It should be quick. You should know exactly what you're testing, very small test. Run that quick test and then pick your winner. Once you have a good amount of traffic to it.
Justin Givens:Then now you've got that running. Because, again, within simple events, you're clicking five minutes, your event's set up, you've got a registration form, you can start funneling people into this. Now where a lot of people need to have that next mindset is after they register, now what? So to create this seamless perfect experience in something that's repeatable, again, this is why we integrate so tightly with HubSpot, and it's the only platform we integrate with. We want you to take those registrants or those people who have registered and now nurture them.
Justin Givens:Hey. We're so excited. Oh, by the way, here's a video from Max. He's super stoked that you're actually registered. Create that personalization.
Justin Givens:There's so many tools to create these awesome unique one to one videos. Add that flare of your business. So go back to say, who are we and how do we talk to these people? If you're cold, stiffy, and boring, your emails are gonna come across that way. So think about that from that standpoint.
Justin Givens:Then when you go into that registration alright. Cool. We got you. Now be upfront. We're gonna remind you 16 times about the event just so you're aware.
Justin Givens:Right? We don't want you to miss it because it's gonna solve, and we're gonna highlight and give away. We're gonna we're gonna do what are you gonna do during that event? Be clear and upfront and repeat that. Given the tools that they're used to, calendar invites, calendar links, so they can actually add it and they're not forgetting when the event is.
Justin Givens:Okay? Then after the event, you've gotta have a post process. And it's not to say fire over to the sales team. You only do that for those that are the hand mergers. You then nurture them and say, hey.
Justin Givens:We really hope you enjoyed it. By the way, here's our calendar page for the next upcoming events. Or, hey. You can go get a free x. You can go do y.
Justin Givens:Give them something else to do. Even if it's like, hey. Post this on social media. Engage them because those promoters, as Max said earlier, you don't know who where they are. They could be somebody who's looking at your product for somebody else who asked them about that product.
Justin Givens:And they just had the time because they're intrigued about it. Right? So think about it from not just up into the event. Think about post event. How can we put them into a newsletter if you had that on your registration form?
Justin Givens:Hey. Yes. Send me the newsletter. Awesome. Send a personalized message from the speaker.
Justin Givens:Thank you, George, for hosting. Sorry. This is George. I really thank you, man, for showing up. I hope you enjoyed it.
Justin Givens:If you have any questions, you know, just hit a reply. Like, you don't have to be salesy. That's what the sell that's what if it was a sales presentation, make it sales y. But if it's not, just be like, hey. I'm here to ask any nonconfrontational questions.
Justin Givens:You have a one to one message with me now. Alright?
George B. Thomas:Yeah. It's it's interesting because as I hear you talk, Justin, I'm like, oh, you mean you care and you pay attention to detail along the way, and you understand and you create some type of journey, whether it's the communication journey or it's the next event journey. Like, there's just so much you can pull out of what you're talking about. It's funny too because you literally reminded me of one of the things that I have to do when we're done recording here is I'm speaking at an event in March, and they asked me to do a minute to, like, minute and a half teaser video of the fact that we're gonna be talking about AI and getting AI to have empathy and heart and how they can, like, really so, like, even that way before video that can go out and, like, get them excited about it. Max, let's let's pay attention to detail, people.
George B. Thomas:Max, let's flip over to you. This is from the Event Happily, standpoint. I want you to kinda walk us through how Event Happily can transform the way businesses manage events, and maybe even some, like, special advantages, that it that it offers. You know? Justin was talking about, like, calendar links.
George B. Thomas:I know he has a a module that goes into HubSpot emails that, like, makes that easy. But what are talk us through Event Happily and and just the awesomeness that we have for people.
Max Cohen:Yeah. I mean, so the the way that we kinda think about it is you gotta kinda alluded to this at the beginning is, like, we really looked at HubSpot as a platform. We said, like, hey. What are the missing pieces that HubSpot's really not good at, right, when it comes to trying to manage an event top to bottom on on the HubSpot platform. Right?
Max Cohen:And what it really kinda came down to well, I mean, it came down to a lot of different things. But, one, there's a big data structure problem. Right? Like, you know, for example, so we have something called a registrant object. Right?
Max Cohen:And a registrant object, is basically a representation of someone registering for a specific event. Right? And what's really tough, is managing this concept of that time Max went to inbound, right, and having a representation of that data, and then managing that object. Right? I mean and people weren't really doing this or or other event, you know, integrations for for point solution platforms weren't doing this.
Max Cohen:Mostly what they were doing was just shoving information, right, into contact properties. And what's really tough about that is it becomes very, very difficult to manage lists, to build reporting, to have, you know, the the concept of an event get connected to other things in your platform that it's impacting, such as deals and and things like that. And it it was it's really, really difficult to manage it because that crucial piece of the data is not tangible and touchable and usable and customizable. Right? So, you know, with us, there's in the two point o version of Event Happily, we have three objects.
Max Cohen:We've got events. We've got sessions, which are like parts of events. Right? And then we have these registering objects. Right?
Max Cohen:And the registering object really kind of serves as that representation of that time max went to inbound. Right? And so all of these things work together to create a data structure that's very easy to use to get really granular reporting, create whatever sort of automation you want around it. Right? Build calculated properties in the way that all these things touch and connect to each other so you can drive other processes, right, which is useful if your, you know, events are way past just like virtual sales webinars.
Max Cohen:But if you're doing things like lead capture at trade shows, right, or you're doing, you know, doing more like training courses, right, instead of it being a marketing motion. It's more of, like, the product that you actually, you know, sell as a company. Right? If it's education or something like that. Right?
Max Cohen:But really kind of what we did is we said, what can we do to build in the missing pieces or, like, an event engine, if you will, for the HubSpot architecture. Right? And a lot of that came down to, one, making sure all the nuanced parts of your data when it comes to your event management strategy can be well represented, customized. Right? You know, and that's like, you know, having an event record so you can plan and coordinate the event and, you know, talk to each other through notes and tasks and, you know, have an object to report on, right, and to connect other stuff too.
Max Cohen:It came down to building the sessions thing in whether you're doing a cohort of training courses that last, you know, x amount of weeks or
George B. Thomas:It makes
Max Cohen:you're doing a more yep. Or you're doing, like, a more complex event that has breakout sessions or different tracks people can go down. Right? It's really easy to kind of build that data structure. And then, of course, the register an object, which holds the historical data of people registering for your events, but also acts as, like, a really good workflow trigger mechanism.
Max Cohen:Right? And you can do other really cool stuff like use fields on registered objects to collect, you know, feedback on specific events people go to. Right? Because the surveys tool is not really great at doing that and connecting all the data back to each other. Right?
Max Cohen:So one of it was like a data structure issue. The next piece comes down to how do you actually, like, manage registrations. Like, registrations are complex, especially if you have different data you're collecting each time for each event that you're doing. Right? It might be T shirt size at this event.
Max Cohen:It might be dietary restrictions at another. It might be some sort of combination of that. Right? But, also, like, managing that takes a lot of heavy lifting and compute power. Right?
Max Cohen:Like and and complex workflows. You know? I mean, I think you can really do it that well out of the box if you're not doing some sort of custom coded solution. But, like, you know, there needs to be something to say, alright. When someone signs up for an event, which event is it for?
Max Cohen:And if someone just signs up for a session at that event, how do we make sure that we're just tacking it onto that registration versus creating a new one? How are we managing duplicates? How are we doing all this heavy lifting in the background to make sure that, like, registering data is tracked properly? Right? So we had to build a bunch of automation and a whole new, like, logic engine in the background to, like, really kind of manage all that stuff.
Max Cohen:Right? But then it also comes down to how are you driving registration, especially for an event that you're hosting. Right? Because there's really sort of, like, two
Justin Givens:Yeah.
Max Cohen:Sort of sides of of the way we think about event management. There's I'm hosting and producing events, and then there's my team goes to a lot of events. We call that, like, the attending use case. Right? And those motions are totally different.
Max Cohen:If you're hosting events, you care about driving registration and you care about tracking attendance, and then you probably care about deal attribution to some extent because deals are another big thing in HubSpot. Right? At least a lot of people care about it. We hope marketing attribution is fake, and we all made it up, but still people like to do that. Oh.
Max Cohen:But then there's also aspire. Also we attend events. So we don't care about doing preregistration because it's not our event. We're gonna go spend $40 to go put a booth at, like, inbound or something like that on the on the cheap end. Right?
Max Cohen:And, what we're doing is we're gonna go to the event. We're gonna showcase our stuff. We're gonna meet a bunch of people, but we're gonna capture leads and have conversations with people. Hopefully, you're capturing. Hopefully.
Max Cohen:Hopefully. Right? But, like and and what's great about it is that when you get all this stuff into HubSpot in a in a way that makes sense because the data structure makes sense, then it makes it much easier for you to report on those efforts, tie those to influences to, like, revenue that you're hopefully closing because you met this person at the event or they went to the event or or something like that. Right? So the we had to build, you know, especially on the hosted side, a whole bunch of things that really, make up for HubSpot's lacking in this area.
Max Cohen:Like, I don't know if anyone I mean, Justin, I'm sure you know this. HubSpot forms are dog when it comes to event registration. I'm sorry. They just are. And that's fine because that's not what they're built for.
Max Cohen:Right. And I'll be able to
Justin Givens:throw out. The HubSpot engineer told me HubSpot's not built for real time registration.
Max Cohen:Not built for registrations. It's built for lead capture. Right? And so there's a lot of stuff we had to do to account for that. And, like, the most very simple, you know, reasoning behind that is, like, look at the way HubSpot forms work.
Max Cohen:It's actually brilliant in the way that they do cookie tracking. And it's like, alright. If someone fills out a form and, you know, they're on the same IP address and they give a different email, well, they must be giving us a new email. So, like, we update the contact record correctly. Right?
Max Cohen:But what happens when you run events? Someone goes there and signs up 12 of their friends to go to the event, and then you go, why do I only have one contact? Well, because because it's overriding it over and over and over and over. Right? And never mind doing multi person registration on HubSpot forms and doing the whole conditional stuff and things like that.
Max Cohen:So, like, we had to build a whole bunch of, like, CMS modules to not only, like, manage more complex use cases for using HubSpot forms for event registration, but then it's like, how do you keep track of, like, the attendance? Right? And how do you do all that kind of stuff? And how do you manage people signing up for multiple sessions at an event? Things like that.
Max Cohen:So, like, we built all these, like, missing pieces, right, that, like, it's some of the craziest CMS engineering I've I've ever seen in HubSpot in terms of, like, functionality, right, and what we do with forms and listing modules and, like, all this other stuff. But But we kind of build it so you could do as much as you can on HubSpot and really kind of get around some of these, you know, shortcomings that HubSpot has when it comes to the event management motion. Right?
George B. Thomas:Yeah.
Max Cohen:So, yeah, it's a lot of that stuff.
George B. Thomas:Love it. Love it. Love it. So as we close-up because thank god time flies when you're having fun, and this event
Max Cohen:has We have, like, another half hour. This is a good one.
George B. Thomas:This event has been a blast. We could probably talk about this all day, to be honest with you, because there's there's so much that, could go into this. Usually, I like to ask, like, what's one tip? I'm not gonna ask for a tip from you guys today. I'm actually gonna ask for a reason.
Max Cohen:So I
George B. Thomas:want you to put that in your brain. What's one if you could only give the
Intro:True events.
George B. Thomas:One reason to do events. I'll go Justin first since you're a guest, Max second, and then I'll go third. What's one reason they should start doing or keep doing events in your mind?
Justin Givens:Yeah. So the biggest one that just screams at me is you have prospects at every stage of your business that have questions, and you're not giving them a platform to ask those questions.
George B. Thomas:Yeah. Drop the mic, which is funny because you say that, and I'm like, then why don't we have longer q and a sessions at the end? But, anyway, Max, go ahead.
Max Cohen:Community building is important. This is probably the best way to do it.
George B. Thomas:Yeah. And for me, I'm gonna kinda lean into both what you're both saying is, like, listen. Events are the easiest way to be a happy, helpful human. Like, bottom line, you can care. You can pay attention to details.
George B. Thomas:These apps help you make the process easier. We live in a world of AI where the creation of the content is actually not as difficult as it once was. And so the excuses are gone. Build a community, create events, and then have a process to communicate in an authentic human way and just do good Do good with your events.
Max Cohen:Can I give a reason of why you should do your events on HubSpot?
George B. Thomas:Oh, yes. Go for it.
Max Cohen:Think about all the other spreadsheets you've killed moving on to HubSpot. And then what I want you to do is I want you to go into your Google Docs and go find your massive, ugly, complicated, disgusting spreadsheet that you still manage all your events on. I feel
George B. Thomas:like the spreadsheet
Max Cohen:that hurt. I can get rid of this one too because you can. Yeah. Because you can.
George B. Thomas:That's a wrap, ladies and gentlemen. Enjoy the rest of your day, and thanks for tuning in to the Hub Heroes podcast. Okay, Hub Heroes. We've reached the end of another episode. Will Lord Lack continue to loom over the community, or will we be able to defeat him in the next episode of the Hub Heroes podcast?
George B. Thomas:Make sure you tune in and find out in the next episode. Make sure you head over to the hubheroes.com to get the latest episodes and become part of the League of Heroes. FYI, if you're part of the League of Heroes, you'll get the show notes right in your inbox, and they come with some hidden power up potential as well. Make sure you share this podcast with a friend. Leave a review if you like what you're listening to, and use the hashtag, hashtag hub heroes podcast on any of the socials, and let us know what strategy conversation you'd like to listen into next.
George B. Thomas:Until next time, when we meet and combine our forces, remember to be a happy, helpful, humble human, and, of course, always be looking for a way to be someone's hero.
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