The HubHeroes Podcast

Do you live in a world filled with corporate data? Are you plagued by siloed apartments? 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. Get ready to don your cape and mask, move into action, and become the hub hero your organization needs. Tune in each week to join the league of extraordinary inbound heroes as we help you educate, empower, and execute. Hub Heroes, it's time to unite and activate your powers.

Alright. We're at inbound twenty twenty five, day two, and this is a special episode of the hub heroes podcast that we're gonna be putting out the after hours show. I'm your boy George b Thomas. You know who I am. I don't have to really explain all of that.

If this is your first time listening, then go back to other episodes. You can figure out who I am as well as the normal guest. But today, I'm excited because we have a powerhouse of women sitting in what is, I'll affectionately call a fish aquarium or chameleon aquarium, whatever whatever animal might live in here, and we're doing, an episode. So first of all, ladies, let's, have you introduce who you are, what you do, where you do it, that kind of stuff.

Great. Hey. I'm Omi. I am the cofounder of Diaz and Cooper. We are a platinum HubSpot partner based out of Miami, Florida, and I'm excited to be here.

Awesome. I'm Camille Bauhorn.

I'm a HubSpot solutions consultant with Simple Strat, and we're based out of Nebraska. My name is Lika Rogers. I'm from Minometrix, founder of Minometrix. I'm based out of Brooklyn and, Platinum, Solutions partner.

And I'm Tracy Graziani. I am the geek executive officer at Greenfire Strategy, and we're a HubSpot partner located in Cleveland, Ohio. Oh, geek. What? Geek what?

What? Geek executive officer.

Oh, I like that. The g e o. That's that's pretty cool. Okay. So let's go ahead and jump into this.

I wanna talk about inbound. First of all, San Francisco versus Boston. Have you all been to inbound in Boston? Right? Every one of us?

Yeah. Okay. Beautiful. So this can be the good, the bad, the ugly. The thing that the Hub Heroes podcast listeners like, they like the the real deal Holyfield, the truth.

So give give me your thoughts, Boston versus San Francisco.

Way more driverless cars. Oh,

yes. Waymo's. Yeah. Have you ridden in one?

I have not. I'm I think this is gonna be a goal for

me tonight. Anybody? Anybody in the way okay.

Yes. I've done I've done three Waymo's so far.

Okay.

Yes. And including one with a woman who said

she was absolutely not gonna do it and then ended up being the one that that that called the Waymo.

Oh, really? Yeah. Okay. Interesting. Yep.

What I did I was with Omi, in the Waymo. So

I Okay.

Been here.

Are you the woman that caught it?

No. Oh, okay. I was like, you know, I'm game for everything with Ace one. So I'm like, I'll try it. Sure.

But this other person was like, absolutely not. And then she did it and she was like, let's do it again.

Oh, that's funny. That's funny. Okay. So we got off on, driverless cars, which by the way, will let the listeners know, I have not been in one yet. However, I did tell my wife who came to Inbound with me this year that when we're done on Friday, because we don't fly out till Saturday, we can do whatever she wants to do.

And so we're probably gonna take one of these driverless cars. I will close my eyes the entire time, to go to see the Golden Gate Bridge, and then maybe even, Full House House, and I guess the Doubtfire House is here. And so I guess we're gonna go look at houses and buy zero houses because it's California. But let's go back to, Boston versus San Francisco for inbound. Give me your thoughts.

So it's a mixed bag for me. I love being in

a new city. There's a different energy here. It's exciting to be in a different venue. The venue is fantastic. But I do miss Boston.

I mean, I miss the familiarity. I miss the Mike's Pastries. Oh.

Yeah. You gotta have a you gotta walk on the North Shore on the North Side when you when you're there. Yeah. But I think just

getting used to the logistics just took a

little bit longer. But most of us are pretty flexible. Otherwise, we wouldn't do what we do.

Yeah. Very, very true. What else, ladies?

I have jet lag, which is really ridiculous coming from the East Coast. I've been up every day at 4AM.

Oh, Lucy, you're doing good. You're doing good because I woke up at 02:30 and was like, no. I'm like and I tried to like, you know, lay down and then hit the phone to see what time it is, lay down. And I was like, okay, it's it's not changing. It's time to get up.

I've I've a couple of people that are West Coast based, they're like, mama, you know how we feel.

Yeah. Yeah. True. True. True facts.

I'm sure there's a lot of factors at play, but I am loving San Francisco compared to Boston. I just feel like the air is clear. It's more walkable. There's nice restaurants. Probably just in a different neighborhood.

Yeah.

But I love it in San Francisco.

Yeah. Yeah. I will say the streets are clean as like I'm like because we again, if you're up early and you go out, you see like they're pressure washing the sidewalks and stuff, which is I'm like, okay, this is cool. Thoughts on on Boston?

I love both cities, for different reasons. I do miss having, like, you know, a daily lobster roll, because that's not happening

here. Preach.

Preach. But we've had lots of fun and there is plenty of great seafood here too. So it's not like we're missing out

Yes.

By any means. So I love both.

Yeah. I I would agree with you. It's it's interesting because last night, we had to go out to the well, we didn't have to go out. We could have not eaten, but we went out to eat with a client. And it was funny because we were looking at the menu and my wife knows one thing that I love to do when we go to Boston is I love to get, you know, mac and cheese, crab mac and cheese.

And she goes, oh, oh, babe, babe. Or actually lobster mac and cheese. She goes, they got lobster mac and cheese. And I almost ordered it. And then I was like, I'm not in Boston.

So instead I ordered this crazy like grilled cheese and tomato soup thing. And it what it surprised me because they brought it out and it had sauteed onions in my grilled cheese. And I was like, this is the dopest grilled cheese sandwich I've ever had in my life. Okay. So I'm I am loving San Francisco.

I'm loving the Moscone Center. But I will say, I'm gonna just plant the flag and be like, I'm glad, at least I think prayerfully we're gonna be back in Boston because I've had to ask for directions more in the last two days than I've had to ask in my entire life. And my wife looked at me earlier today and she goes, man, you're just not really good with this directions thing, are you? And I'm like, no, I don't remember how to get around to anything in here. Where are we going?

And she's literally been helping me get from point a to point b. Maybe I'm getting old. Okay. Let's switch gears from San Francisco to Boston and talk to me about today or yesterday because you guys have the the opportunity of two days. What have you heard or seen from HubSpot that you're like, that's the dopest thing ever and then maybe something that you're like, I don't know.

Dopest thing ever for sure is Data Hub.

Mhmm.

For sure. Although I'm I'm a little

It makes me cringe a little bit, the auto merge function. I'm Oh, not sure most of my customers are ready for that. The

one that gave me that freaking heart attack today was the move from the CPQ, the custom quotes moving into commerce hub. Oh. So I'm excited for the functionality. I think the functionality is gonna be more solid. However, I was literally in the middle of a custom quote project with a client.

They had not yet published any quotes, and so half our work has disappeared out of their portal. Oh. But the lovely HubSpot engineers are gonna hopefully, fingers crossed, help me with it.

Let's let's hope. Let's hope. Alright. So, again, what is the dopest thing you've heard or seen and what's the I'm not sure.

I got a second the data hub for sure. I mean, definitely have several clients right now that have disparate systems. It's gonna help so much, not to mention the enrichment and the smart properties that you can enrich from those. I think that's gonna be fabulous. I'll also call kind of a smaller update.

That's actually before inbound. Object property snapshots.

So being

able to have those contact activities roll up to the company, the company that they were at when they occurred, so even if they change companies, you know, as well as a life cycle stage reference for that.

Yeah.

And so being able to know, great, they were at MQL when they did this, and I think that'll be so great for attribution.

Yeah. Love it. You went nerdy. I like that.

That's my MO.

There you go. I like that. What else, ladies? What what what's on your mind?

I I I don't think a lot of things meet the deadline. Oh. I am very curious what's gonna happen at the spring spotlight. Yeah. And one of the gripes I'll come up with a gripes

Yeah. Yeah.

Is I like the case study, the AI case study Yep. Feature. Yep. What I don't like is that it's not theme supported. So if you're on a dark theme, case studies is always a light theme.

Yeah. So,

and when I spoke to them about it, they're like, yeah, we kinda know when just expect some changes. Whenever they say just expect some changes, I think whole new things

Yeah.

Come out.

Yeah. Hopefully, it just becomes like it's part of kind of content hub and themed and it just grabs whatever you're using. Product team, if you're listening, maybe, potentially, that is the way we go. What what else? Where where else does your brain go?

So yesterday's session with all the sales updates with Kyle and that holy cow. Like, I was all I mean, fortunately, as partners, we kinda knew we had some advanced knowledge of some things that were coming, but there were more things that than what we knew.

Yeah.

And I was literally in the session, like texting my, head admin on my team because there were so many things in that session that specifically are gonna help certain clients who had complex reporting issues, especially some of these new improvements are gonna make it so much easier for sales managers to have visibility into the sales process with their team

Yeah.

In a way that doesn't feel punitive. Because I think the old way that the dashboards have worked, it becomes about, like, well, did you, you know, you didn't make your call quota. You didn't make know, it was so much like either you did or didn't hit these specific goals, and now you can see these activity metrics, you know, rep by rep. Yeah. And, and so, anyway, it's what's what's coming, what's what's rolling out with all these betas, just sign up for all of them.

They're super exciting.

Yeah.

My moment of anxiety and pause is the same as Omi's. I literally have the same challenge. Yeah. We are in the middle of a very complex custom quote project. Yeah.

And and so this is this is an unpleasant transition.

Yeah. Listen, I'm gonna be honest with you. At at the at dinner with the client, it's funny that this is like a first base, second base, third base moment here. We too have been working on how they're gonna be doing quoting in their organization. We have tapped in quote happily to do some of the stuff that we're gonna do with them and the immediate conversation at dinner table before I could even get bite one is like, hey, do we need to think about what we're doing?

Like is this all changing? Like when do we and I'm like, hold the phone let's just get done with this week and then we'll like see what's gonna happen but it was around the quoting and what they're changing there so very interesting. Okay let's shift gears and this might be difficult. First of all everybody's been to some sessions. Correct?

Because it's possible by the way to come to inbound and not ever go to a session. This year I've been struggling because I've been talking to a lot of people in the hallways, but I've tried to get to a couple. So everybody just so your listeners, everybody shook their head. Yes. We've we've been to some sessions.

So out of the sessions, if you could only pick one thing that you could see your eyeballs are like, oh God, George. What are you doing to me?

Just

one. If you could pick one thing and that would be the most important thing that you learned that you would wanna teach your clients about. What's like the hashtag one thing that you and I when I say teach, it's like I would wanna teach them so they could implement it like yesterday. What's that one thing you've learned?

For

there was and this was not part of a session. This was just one of the on the hero stage. Andrew was talking about AI agents. Yep. And he basically said, don't sell the the nuts and bolts of AI.

Sell the customer experience that you get from AI. And I thought that was very interesting. And I think throughout inbound, and this is something that I've really enjoyed about this inbound, is that they've done a really good job weaving in the human, the human elements

Yeah.

And AI. And, even in Yamini's speech of, like, what does the future Yeah. Look like? It's that human aspect. And I'm I'm sitting across from Omi who has a background in anthropology.

So I'm sure she's probably gonna be like, yeah. But I'm really appreciative of that. And I I think I will probably chew on that for months to come.

Yeah. One, I'll jump in here real quick and then, Omi, I I think you're like ready to rock and roll. She's like she's like leaning in on the mic just so you you can't see it. I can't. It's it's fun.

One of the things that I love is that in 2012, I fell in love with HubSpot because it was about being human in marketing. And so there's been times where I felt like we've maybe left that in the dust a little bit, which made me sad as like the guy who on the podcast usually has a button. It's like humans like, know, I press it and and we go. So I too was pleasantly surprised to hear the word two or three times from Yamini around humans. And as I watched the kickoff, was like, you're literally setting up my keynote or not keynote, my breakout session that I'm about to do.

Like you were talking about the thing that I'm gonna talk about even deeper right now. And so I got excited. But, I mean, come on. I'll let you go.

Yeah. So I'm gonna take

this in a little bit of a different direction.

Yeah. Not necessarily something that is implementable in the CRM. I'm gonna say that the last session of partner day was freaking spectacular. That session, if if that was the only session I had come to in this entire thing, and and believe me, there was value to be

had. Okay.

So, you know, it's so many things. I mean, obviously, Kyle Jepson's session, whatever.

Yeah. Yeah.

But the the gentleman's name escapes me cast something he used to be with OpenAI. Okay. And he talked about how as AI becomes more commonplace, he put on a little bit of his futurist hat on, and he said, people are just gonna have to get used to the fact that they cannot identify themselves by the jobs they do. Oh. And there's gonna they're gonna have to learn to be a human

Yeah.

That is not defined by their job function because AI might disrupt it, change it, remove it Yeah. Whatever the case might be. And so, as we embrace the wonderful things that AI can do, we need to remember what what is it about us as humans that makes us special Yeah. Outside of the job function that we do on a day to day basis. And if I could teach that to my daughters, if I could teach that to everyone that I love, if the world could learn to embrace that

Yeah.

I think that's gonna make this journey a lot smoother in the next

over the next decade or so.

Tracy, you were, like, viscerally, like, you were agreeing, like, wholeheartedly. Like, so this the last session of partner day must it must just have been amazing. Yeah. Okay. So what's what's the one thing whoever wants to go next, what's the one thing that you would man, I I love what you just said, by the way, but and what's the one thing that you would especially about your daughters, like or daughter.

What's what's the one thing that you would wanna teach? And I'll shut up. There. There we go.

I think that human element definitely comes through. Right? Even though we have AI now, we're having new technology, we've all always had technological advances. We're still not throwing out the entire playbook. Right?

We still have the marketing basics that we're always coming back to. We're still doing content marketing. We're changing it a little bit for AEO versus SEO. But I think, right, making sure that we're still going back to those basics even though we have all these new tools to play with.

Yeah.

So I don't I I don't know how to apply this with my clients, but my immediate thought while I was in the session is I'm gonna go home and do this with my team. Yeah. So I attended the session today about fun.

Okay. Alright. Like fun.

Weird. Like, jeez, would shouldn't we maybe have fun at work? Probably, yes. But what was wild was, you know, I don't know. These breakouts, these they're what?

There's it was like a deep dive. So there's what? Like, more than a 100 people in the room. Right? Maybe 150 something?

I don't know. I'm not sure the capacity. It's a lot of people. Yeah. And he had everybody close their eyes and remember when they were a kid, whatever it was they that they did that was the most fun, that was just like pure joy and fun for them when they were a kid.

Like everybody silent, closing their eyes, and just thinking through. And he does the whole, like, visualization. Right?

Like Yeah.

What were you seeing? What were you smelling? What were you whatever. Right? The the the you know, all that touchy feely crap.

Right? Therapy.

Right. Exactly. But we all did it. Right? Yeah.

And doing that, I had this, like, it my own sort of moment about, like, I'm a weirdo. But but but then he he really managed to make it an interactive session. So then he had everybody sort of turn to the person beside them and not the awkward way that many speakers do. Yeah. And, like, actually have people turn this into actionable stuff and go through, okay.

So based on that, like, what are the three values or qualities of fun for you. Yeah. And then he just his whole session kinda walked you through this, and I was like, this this first of all, it unlocked some things in me that, like, I'm gonna go back to work a different person on Monday. Yeah. I wanna do that with my team because I wanna unlock that piece of every person I work with.

Yeah. Because I know it's gonna make everything about what we do and who we help a thousand times better.

Well, even how you help, like the fact that they'll have that transformational moment and then they'll show up for clients in a different way is very interesting. It's funny when you were talking about that, there's been something that I've said for years where I don't go to work, I go to play. And it's just a mindset choice. Right? Because it could be real depressing and it could be a lot of hours or it could be like, hey, this is the funnest thing ever.

And so I do try to go to play. But also when you said that I was transported back to being like four years old on a big wheel in Lincoln, Montana, no technology and I'm like, wow, like why did my brain go there, to like this moment of but there was no care and there was like, you know, wide open spaces and all that kind of cool stuff. Okay. So we gotta wrap this up because, well, let's be honest, we all wanna make it to the comedian. If you're listening to this, I'm not trying to throw, you know, shades your way, you're at home, you're not here, but we got fun stuff to do.

But I do wanna ask one last question because the acronym was used and I'm curious on your ladies thoughts of this world that we're moving into of AEO. Give me your thoughts.

I think I think the verdict is still out.

So I,

I'm always a little bit wary when, you know, one year it doesn't exist, and the next year they say we've had an increase of a 850%.

Yeah.

I I I question those stats. Not to not to say that that's not true.

Right.

I do think we're getting more traffic from search engines. Unlike SEO, I don't think it's as transparent. So I'm not hanging my hat on all the the metrics to it yet. Yeah. I do believe in the principle though.

I do believe we have to get ready for people using AI as search Yeah. And and and problem solving. I wouldn't even call it search at this point anymore. It's like, how do I? What do I?

Can you

help me with? Yeah. So I I think we're actually even querying differently. So I don't wanna call it search.

Yeah.

I do think we have to get ready for that. I'm just a little wary on how do you put data to that yet.

Yeah. It's it's early days. Yeah.

I think that's a great point, and I'm really excited to start tracking that data. Right? So HubSpot talked about releasing that new, original traffic source Yep. Of that AI search. I think that's gonna be really interesting.

Look at it across clients, across industries, see what we're seeing there. And as as I mentioned before, right, we're continuing those content marketing efforts and seeing how those impact and how those come into those, you know, chat GBT or cloud questions

Yeah.

And evolve from there. Yeah. You know, having having done SEO for all these years, I mean, it's it was kind of like standard.

Yeah.

You had the ability to kind of figure out, well, like, started with keywords. What were the keywords? And then it was like, what are the long tail keywords? And then it was like, what are the queries? And so we've evolved in that space.

It's so early days. I'd like to know, and I don't think we can get it yet. I'd like to know what people are asking ChatGPT, Claude. What what is it that they're trying to get help with? Because if we can show up for that

Yeah. That that Is your brain saying to you that it's fundamentally different in a way that they've interacted with the little box on Google? Yeah. I do feel it's gonna be different.

Yeah. Yeah. And We don't even leave ChatGPT for many things as well or or Claude and Yeah. I mean, you have a clone.

Yeah. I do. So I do have a clone. He's pretty cool. I'm just anyway, not why we're here.

I I think people are solving everyday problems with the different GPTs. Right? So I have custom GPTs that, you know, help me with research and help me with I'm figuring things out for my business. I I I built a little mini, you know, this is my business and these are my metrics, and what do you suggest I do if I wanna increase

Yes.

Blah blah blah, whatever, if I wanna do this or that. And I and then I use it for something as mundane as help me find a restaurant within these parameters, and it found a fantastic perplexity. Thank you. Found a fantastic restaurant. I still double checked it on Google, though, to make sure.

That's funny.

But there comes a day where you don't do that, I believe.

Yeah. I think I think that's right. Yeah. I think eventually we'll just trust it. But I think people are interacting with it in a way that is more like problem solving versus just trying to find an answer.

Yeah. And I think a lot of the principles that that originally were true for SEO, you know, the long form accurate deep expertise type content Yeah. That's gonna be even more relevant. It's just gonna be hidden from the human eyes.

Mhmm.

Right? Because people aren't gonna wanna read this whole long diatribe. They're gonna want GPT to give them the highlights. Yeah. Is that good or bad eyes?

Don't know. Yeah.

My thinking on this is like, there's nothing new under the sun, even even AI.

Yeah.

And when we were in the pre chat GPT world, our clients, whenever there was a big Google algorithm change, there would be people posting on LinkedIn. Oh my gosh. My client's traffic tanked. What do I do? What do I do?

We never really experienced that with our clients because we always had a policy of writing for helping people

Yeah.

Not writing for SEO tactics and techniques and hacks and crap like that. Right?

Yeah.

So we always managed our clients always managed to survive. What's different this time is that what is helpful is a

shift. And

so I read a book on the way and I won't say which one because of what I'm about to say. Oh. But I I read Whoopsie. I read a book on the way on the plane, on the way here.

Yeah.

Four four and a half hour flight's about enough time to read a business book. Right?

Yeah.

And still watch a movie.

Wow. You read fast.

Yeah. I mean, four days. And so I read a book, and I just found myself, like, skimming it and flipping through those pages so quick. Because it was it it was good content when that book was released, which was not that many years ago. But at this point, everything that was in that book, I could get from Perplexity.

When I need it, how I need it, like chapter by chapter

Yeah.

And have that full breakdown and just good content. And this author probably put tons of work into researching this

Yeah.

This. But that kind of information where it's just giving me the facts

Yeah.

Those facts are very easy for me to get at my fingertips right away. And that kind of book doesn't need to exist anymore. That kind of blog doesn't need to exist anymore. And so what we have to figure out is how to be helpful and continue to be helpful in a world where there's and I hate it when people say in a world notice that I said this live

Yeah.

Because ChatGPT always says in a world where Yeah. I just did it. It does it because we do that, by the way. Yeah. That's why it does it.

Everything it does is based on us. Yes. So that's why it does it. But I just did it. But but

We'll delve into that a little bit later.

But I'm just kidding. But, like, chat chat, GBT, Perplexity, those perpec Perplexity, in particular, would solve the problem that this book was solving Yeah. Exceptionally well.

Yeah.

And that book doesn't need to exist now because Perplexity will do it. But that person, because I know that author and they're really smart

Yeah.

They're already writing a different kind of book Yeah. Because they do understand helping people. And so they're gonna be fine. They're not gonna be out of work as a as a writer.

Yeah.

You know? And so we just have to reimagine what helpful is.

Oh, I love this idea of reimagining what helpful is. It's funny because I'll I'll kinda end the show here. I had an epiphany moment where I was like it literally was an o o m g moment because at the beginning of my career I was hired by Marcus Sheridan and he wrote the book They Ask You Answer. And I was like, I've been I've been an advocate of that mindset all along. And it was funny because Yamini from the stage she said be part of the answer.

And I literally was sitting next to my wife and I said, oh, beep. I said, have we been doing SEO and AEO the entire time with the they ask you answer strategy? Has Marcus Sheridan positioned himself to actually help organizations with the content they need in this frame as well? And it just was this thing of like, listen, if you are actually a happy, helpful, humble human giving people the answers that they need, you're gonna win. That's a wrap ladies and gentlemen.

Thanks for joining us. We'll see you next time. 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. 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 hub heroes 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, be looking for a way to be someone's hero.