Strange, Loopy, and AI Everywhere: Our Honest #INBOUND25 Recap
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Chad Hohn:Alright, Max. Badge off.
George B. Thomas:Nice. I I I see what you're doing there, Max. So uh-oh. Oh my goodness. If you're watching this.
George B. Thomas:Hey. So first of all so first of if you're watching this, I might have to clip this. Matty Matty, we should probably clip this. Max is flexing. Max, how many of those there tags do you have?
George B. Thomas:Inbound tags.
Max Cohen:Oh, these actually hold on. These are impostors right here.
George B. Thomas:Oh, those are impostors.
Max Cohen:I got I got this one and I got last year's.
George B. Thomas:Gotcha. Okay.
Max Cohen:I can't find my other ones. I've got like nine of them.
George B. Thomas:Alright. There we go.
Max Cohen:This is flywheel kickoff. Oh, shit. That was that was in here, baby. Dude. That's that was That's Those are all in here.
Max Cohen:His squats, dude. He just puts his
George B. Thomas:I just put my my HubSpot Academy certifications. See all those cert cert badges. It's like my with
Chad Hohn:all that on.
George B. Thomas:It I it's hard. It's hard. It's my it's my inbound mister t starter kit, if I'm being honest with you. But let me hang it back up. Hey, so here's the thing.
George B. Thomas:Ladies and gentlemen, It's we're back from been a week or so since inbound, but things happen. We're finally recording. Guys, let's kick this off as I hang these back up. If you could describe this year's inbound, inbound 2025 with one word, what would your one word be?
Max Cohen:Guy, dude. Loopy.
George B. Thomas:Oh, okay. So we've got AI, We've got loopy. And I'll say strange. Max, why why AI for you?
Max Cohen:I don't know. Because it's the only only word that I heard the entire time when we were there.
George B. Thomas:Well, you you obviously
Max Cohen:I got so sick of hearing it, man. Yeah. Yeah. And and you wanna know what was, like, the the worst part about it all is, listen, I get they're talking about AI. Yeah.
Max Cohen:Like, man, you know, I don't think on the way back to the airport, I don't think I saw a single billboard that didn't have the word AI in it. And I'm just like, what are we doing? What are we doing? And then, like, when I got into the airport, all the big digital signs that they have AI ad after AI ad after AI ad after this, that and that with AI and AI and AI. I was just like, now I just cringe when I hear the word.
Max Cohen:I'll be so honest. I think it's cool. AI is super sick. It's great. But man, am I sick of hearing about it?
George B. Thomas:It's funny because I heard Remington beg. He did a post and he was like, Are you sick of hearing it yet? I'm sick of talking about it. And I think it's interesting because there has to be a deeper level to even why you're using the AI or having the AI conversation. But but anyway, we might we might swing back into that.
George B. Thomas:Chad, you said loopy. Talk talk to me about why your word was loopy.
Chad Hohn:Well, there's the obvious reason, loop marketing, but I think there were just so many, like, you know, like, it was all a bit loopy. There was so many things. I think there was double the number of product updates this year compared to last inbound. That's a lot of stuff, like, and that'll make you loopy trying to keep it all straight. It's pretty wild how many different things that they launched.
Chad Hohn:I'm a lot of it's really cool. Like, there's a lot of really quality of life improvements. There's, you know I mean, the fact that something started to change while I was gone, that's kinda not great. Like, oh, the UI is different. My teams, you know, look at that.
Chad Hohn:What?
George B. Thomas:We'll get to that. We'll get to that. So so loopy. Yeah. A whole bunch of updates.
George B. Thomas:Yeah. A whole bunch of humans. Then of course, yeah, marketing, you kind of alluded to, which we may or may not circle back into. I said strange. I'm saying strange because of a couple of different reasons.
George B. Thomas:One, it wasn't in Boston. We all know that. It was in San Francisco, which which was kind of strange. Right? It I asked
Max Cohen:The lack of Dunkin' Donuts was strange.
George B. Thomas:Oh, brother. Brother, don't get me started on the Dunkin' Donuts. By the way, because of that, do you wanna know the number of coffees? Okay. Let's play a little game, and then I'll get back to why I said strange.
George B. Thomas:Take a wild guess, the number of coffees that I had while I was in San Francisco.
Max Cohen:Oh, you're on East Coast time, so you're fighting your your jet lag a little bit. Wait. Are you talking like total? Like Yeah.
George B. Thomas:Plain old was there, how many coffees do you think I drink?
Max Cohen:You were there Monday to Friday?
George B. Thomas:Tuesday to Saturday morning.
Max Cohen:Tuesday to Saturday morning?
George B. Thomas:Yeah.
Max Cohen:Oh, so you mixed another morning into there? Yeah. Yeah. I didn't didn't see you at the company. I'm gonna get 26.
Max Cohen:26.
George B. Thomas:Oh, man. You said 26. Yeah. Chad, you said I I didn't see the cup
Chad Hohn:in your hand once. And I'm gonna say zero.
George B. Thomas:Oh, okay. We got 26 and we got zero. Guys, the total number of coffees that I drank in San Francisco, one.
Max Cohen:What?
Chad Hohn:One. One.
Max Cohen:Why?
George B. Thomas:I drank one because there was no Dunkin'. I was just jamming around and I was speaking and talking and talking to people. And finally I got to Friday and the event's over. And I go, babe, you know what I want? Because my wife was with me.
George B. Thomas:I didn't just call some random person babe.
Max Cohen:You called
George B. Thomas:me, babe.
Chad Hohn:You know
George B. Thomas:what I want? We're, like, taking the Rice Roni trolley to the Fisherman's Wharf. You know what I want? Goes, what do you want? I go, I want a coffee.
George B. Thomas:And so I got a coffee while we're actually walking around after the event was over. So Mhmm. No Dunkin's equal George less caffeinated, but still excited. So so it was just a strange event, right? I was not caffeinated.
George B. Thomas:I was in San Francisco. I asked for directions more ever in like the last nine years of like, where's this room? Where's this room? Like, how do I get here? Because I didn't have time to not like, just go hunt for it.
George B. Thomas:Like, I had to get there and do a thing. It was just strange. Here's the other thing. I feel like they had us in a little bit of a bubble. Okay.
George B. Thomas:And here's people love this show because we call a spade a spade and we talk about things that sometimes we should and maybe sometimes we shouldn't. But listen, I we stayed like after the event was over. Now, the event was happening, the sidewalks were getting sprayed off. There were security guards all around. It seemed like it was like a pretty like, it was a dope place.
George B. Thomas:Now you can tell San Francisco, it has its, it's still trying to come back from like financially from COVID because I heard multiple people that live there kind of talk about this. But seemed like, oh, okay, it's a nice city. And it is, by the way, it is a nice city. However, when inbound left and the security guards left, it was a totally different place. It switched.
George B. Thomas:And so Friday night and Saturday, was like, Oh, this got strange. And so that's why. It just felt different. I'm glad that we're going to be heading back to Boston. I'm excited for next year already.
George B. Thomas:Then we just got done, but loopy, strange and AI. Those are our one words. Okay, so let's, that sums it up ladies and see you next week. No, just kidding. So talk me through Max, Chad, like, the the big product announcement.
George B. Thomas:What was the the product announcement that you were like, oh, okay. Chad hit it.
Chad Hohn:I'm thinking that they were gonna have an agent builder directly inside of HubSpot. I'll tell you that. Like, I was not expecting, like, you to be able to build your own MCP tools for native inside HubSpot Breeze. Yeah. That's pretty BA.
Chad Hohn:Yeah. Like, that's really, really, really, really powerful because you can leverage any kind of custom solution. You know, people are gonna stop asking for API docs and start asking for MCP servers. You know? Like, I mean, it's pretty pretty crazy to think that that's the world we're moving to.
Max Cohen:Yeah. Yeah.
George B. Thomas:Can I get a can I get a ClickUp MCP server, please? Mhmm. Like I
Chad Hohn:think there might be one.
George B. Thomas:Man, we I need to find out because that's the missing thread for me on a couple things. Max, go ahead. Big big product announcement that you're Well oh my god.
Max Cohen:Well, no. I think that I mean, just kind of building off of what Chad said about the what is it? Breeze Studio is the thing that lets you build your own, like, agents or whatever. I didn't quite guess I didn't quite understand, like, you know, those, like, App Store agents that well because, like, I didn't know that, like, you would use Breeze Studio to, like, invoke a bunch of them together to do something. Right?
Max Cohen:Which I thought was, like, pretty cool. Yeah. Harry Bevins, the guy that runs Line Pilot, came and actually, like, explained it to me because I clearly didn't understand what it was. I thought it was just, like, talking to a chatbot for, like, that app, telling that app to do something. But in reality, you could use Breeze Studio to get all these things to, like, work together, which is, like, really wild and kind of broke my brain a little bit.
Chad Hohn:Yeah. Multi app. You could do, like Yeah. You could make a framework where it's designed to go through a specific sequence of events for some sort of purpose. So it's almost like building a playbook for an agent.
Max Cohen:Yeah, it's really sweet. I was pleasantly surprised to see that projects thing come out too. That, you know, it's interesting. I've had my big gripe with all of these, like, new sort of like standard objects that live in that object library has always been that, like, they tend to release objects and give them a name that sort of implies there's some additional functionality behind it. Right?
Max Cohen:So like, you know how they came out with like the appointments tool. I mean, the appointments object, but like no way for people to book those appointments. They came out with the listing object with no integration with an MLS system. Right. And like, it's kind of like, why aren't we just kind of making these things?
Max Cohen:Because a sales rep that doesn't really understand the nuance of that's gonna be like, oh yeah, you can book appointments, just use our appointment object. Right? Know? And it sucks. But then, you know, they they came out with projects and they came out with a Gantt chart view, which is Yeah.
Chad Hohn:Have you messed around with that at all? Not
Max Cohen:at all. Not at all.
Chad Hohn:It's pretty cool. I mean, like It looks really neat. Yeah. I I think the thing that they need to, like, really make that take off is task custom objects or sorry, custom properties. They don't have that quite just yet, but, like, being able to be a little bit more free with the task and the task editor.
Chad Hohn:And then but I'm sure that's on the roadmap. I literally had product
Max Cohen:manager come up to me and tell me they were doing that at the show at some point. Not only that, I heard I'm not say who it I also heard something around custom activities, which might be interesting. We'll see if that's actually something I heard correctly. Yeah, that's super cool. I mean, big thing for me though, being like the app person, something that dropped, which we didn't know anything about was that they're gonna let they're gonna give like app developers the ability to create like full screen app experiences.
Max Cohen:Right? So instead of being like regulated to just like a UI extension, they're gonna give us like an entire page surface to play with, which is like really cool. So I'm super excited to see what we do there, you know? But yeah, it was cool.
George B. Thomas:I wonder how much more of that's gonna happen because like, sorry, Chad, I'll swing back to you in
Chad Hohn:a second.
George B. Thomas:Like a couple of things that come to my mind. One, if you're listening to this and you haven't messed around with like the new Breeze assistant, like what I'm saying when I say new, like the updates. Yeah. Like I connected my email, I connected my calendar. It now has memories.
George B. Thomas:There's a Breeze marketplace. The Breeze assistant is going to be able to be more than you ever thought it was. One of the things that we were doing last week when we were getting ready to record this episode and then we didn't end up recording it, literally I said, Can you check my email? It checked my email, and then I said, Can you create tasks so I can remember actually follow-up on those emails? And Breeze created those tasks and associated them to the humans.
George B. Thomas:You can go full screen, right? And so if you haven't messed with Breeze and seen how deep you can dig into it, it's getting crazy layered that on what Chad just said.
Chad Hohn:Yeah. If you haven't messed with Breeze in the last thirty days, it's a whole new world. Yeah.
Max Cohen:Yeah. Crazy. George, there's a funnier story behind how that actually happened. Right? Like you and me were talking.
George B. Thomas:Yeah.
Max Cohen:And you were like, oh, look. Like, you could hook up email now as a source when you talk to Breeze. You talk to Breeze and you were like, oh, give me a synopsis of my email inbox from the last week. And it was like, yeah. And it it literally, like, it congratulated you on doing a good job at delegating stuff to people because it noticed that, like, things were getting taken care of.
Max Cohen:And it's like, you only got a couple of things. And then I was like, George, wouldn't it be crazy if, like, one day it was like, oh, can you make me tasks to follow-up on those things? Right? And we're like, yeah. That'd be crazy.
George B. Thomas:And then you're like I tried it.
Max Cohen:Wait. Me just try
Chad Hohn:it.
Max Cohen:And you tried it. Yeah. I fucking did it. Yeah. It's because it's like, I was like, wait.
Max Cohen:Wait. How far along is all this stuff that I like, I don't even
George B. Thomas:Max is like, when it was nice and one day, then one day
Max Cohen:was then literally one day was that that thirty seconds later. Right? Which
Chad Hohn:is Yeah.
Max Cohen:Cool to see.
Chad Hohn:It's because they more or less, they've added a lot of functionality of the MCP server Yeah. To Breeze. Not all of it because but they you can, like, actually talk to it and add custom properties and it ask it questions about your property schema, like the structure of your lot your properties and all that sort of stuff already, and it will analyze data. It's very impressive. It doesn't work, like, for a long, long time just yet.
Chad Hohn:I've had some stuff where I'm like, hey. I wanna, you know, do some data transformation, almost like a workflow, but with a little bit more AI in the middle and not having to, like, build out a weird workflow to do it. Yeah. And it did, like, maybe five out of 400 deals that I wanted it to modify because it it wouldn't work this is for Max agentically.
Max Cohen:Worst worst one human
Chad Hohn:language ever invented. It wouldn't work agentically for a long period of time. Yeah. Yeah.
George B. Thomas:But
Chad Hohn:I think that's on the horizon.
Max Cohen:So Yeah. Here's here's my take on this. You want you want normal people to adopt AI. Start stop using words like generative and agentic. Like, it just it like, people don't understand AI.
Chad Hohn:My mom ain't never gonna use that.
Max Cohen:Yeah. But it's just like, oh, it's it's all agentic. It's like, brother, we're already coming up with too many new words for this shit. It's crazy.
George B. Thomas:Yeah. Can I can I just say, look at us talking about AI? Isn't that funny? Anyway I know. Right?
George B. Thomas:Let's let's move on. By the way, I I literally did release an article earlier this week about AI assistant assistant versus versus AI AI partner, because there's a whole mindset shift that needs to happen around it being a partner, not being an assistant. That came out of my talk in Inbound. I said it from stage and I didn't really understand why I said it from stage, but it's where my brain went. So I put that out in the world.
George B. Thomas:If you're curious what I'm talking about, can go to psychicstrange.com, look at the article, AI assistant versus AI partner. But let's get back on the inbound kind of recap thing here. Any big surprises that you guys were like, and other than software, but just like maybe it was the space, maybe it was something else?
Max Cohen:I mean, I I I the mhmm. I liked the layout a lot. I don't know. Okay. There our marketing manager, Nikki, who's Yeah.
Max Cohen:Really, really good at the trade show thing, had a much more tactical informed and educated breakdown around why she didn't like it, mostly because of the traffic. Right?
George B. Thomas:Okay.
Max Cohen:It is it was, you know, it was different in that, like Mhmm. The booth track Yeah. You you had to wanna go to the booths. Yeah.
Chad Hohn:I was exactly what I was gonna say. Right? The booths used to be, like, in the same space as the HubSpot product area.
Max Cohen:Yeah.
Chad Hohn:And you had to go through the HubSpot product area to get to the keynote. Yep. Right? Yeah. Now you'd go downstairs and you either you had a decision point, you had a fork in the road.
Chad Hohn:Right?
Max Cohen:Right. And like, so a lot of people just like went upstairs, didn't really go through the booth. So like a lot of the people in the booth were like, where's that traffic? You know what I mean? Like, I still feel like we had a lot of traffic, right?
Max Cohen:I didn't stop talking the entire time.
George B. Thomas:Yeah.
Max Cohen:As someone who just like, just doesn't understand all that at like a very deep level, like I liked how interesting, like, the booth layout stuff was. Like, it was instead of just one straight line and it was just kinda something you had to walk through, it very much was very interesting and intricate. The layout had a lot of interesting curves and angles and, like Mija bob and weavey. Prizes around every corner. You know what I mean?
Max Cohen:It felt very Mhmm. Organic organic, almost like a little little see, I said organic because we've been saying Agent. Organic. Oh my god. I hate I'm gonna start using that word now.
Max Cohen:Organic. That's just shit.
Chad Hohn:Like, get my social organic traffic.
Max Cohen:Yeah. Look at this organic content we've created. And it but it was it always felt like there was something to discover down there. So I did kind of like the you know, it didn't feel like you just saw everything like immediately and you're like, okay, this is it. Like it felt very like there was a lot to explore,
George B. Thomas:which I thought was Chad, big surprises or big surprise.
Chad Hohn:Yeah. I just I I I think it's interesting to think that when you're walking downstairs, you're literally walking underneath the road into the keynote. I think that's, like, weird for people because I pointed it out to a couple of people. They're like, oh, oh, yeah. You're right.
Chad Hohn:Like, we're in the other building all of a sudden.
George B. Thomas:You know? Yeah. My wife was born
Max Cohen:for us to be underground.
George B. Thomas:Yeah. My my wife was one of those people because she kept telling me for like a couple days, We don't go into that building, we go into this building. And she's like, It's interesting, we only use that building the first day. And then she came to me like day two or three and was like, You know, actually we have been using that building. Chad told me, like when we And I was like, oh.
George B. Thomas:Oh, okay. I guess we do. Yeah.
Chad Hohn:It's just I mean, that's just like, you know, one of those things about the the event center and and whatever. But I I felt like it was very interesting that, you know, all the all the HubSpot stuff was completely separate from all the booths. It's obviously, there just wasn't enough room Yeah. To have it all together, right, because of the way the building was. But I felt like that was an an interesting thing.
Chad Hohn:You know, the layout was cool. I definitely plus won that on Max. But
Max Cohen:Yeah. Oh, that's one other surprise. I I got a Mountain Dew in the water, and it cost me $15.15 dollars. Oh. That was a fun surprise.
George B. Thomas:Yeah. Let's not talk about my taxi surprise that was like $67. But anyway, that's the surprise I wanna talk about is honestly like loop marketing. That was a surprise I to like, wait, what? What is happening right now?
George B. Thomas:Like, listen, and it's not because I'm a loop marketing hater. It's because we only talked about marketing. Like, we didn't talk about sales. We didn't talk about success or service. Didn't right?
George B. Thomas:Like, we
Max Cohen:talked about how my saving grace. But yeah.
George B. Thomas:Okay. Well Because Yeah.
Max Cohen:Go ahead. Dude, I was crashing the hell out during the when they, like, showed the loop stuff.
George B. Thomas:Right?
Chad Hohn:Yeah. On partner day.
George B. Thomas:You mean you were, like, going down in flames, like, mentally, like, what
Chad Hohn:is happening?
Max Cohen:I was about to walk out. Not gonna lie. Yeah. Because it looked at it as something that was, like, replacing the flywheel. Yeah.
Max Cohen:Right? And I think that's the wrong way to look at it. That's not what's happening. I think also it's like, you know, just because they didn't mention it doesn't mean that it's replacing it. Right?
George B. Thomas:Yeah.
Max Cohen:Right. You know, there is a separation between what is inbound marketing and what is the flywheel, right? You know, the flywheel, attract, engage, delight, that kind of encompasses all the big major motions and things you're generally using HubSpot to kind of support you doing. Right? And HubSpot was built to support that strategy.
Max Cohen:Right? And I think it still is. Right? But the reason I loved inbound so much is like, man, that is so easy to explain to somebody. Right?
Max Cohen:And it's like, no matter what you do is if your business is operating in any capacity, you are doing those three things, even if you're doing them in a slow, clunky, grinding to a halt way. Because if you weren't doing any of those things, technically your business couldn't run at all. Right? People gotta find you, you gotta talk to them, then you gotta deliver some sort of product that makes them happy enough that they tell somebody else about it. Right?
Max Cohen:Like, are the basics. Like, think about anytime you started a started a onboarding or a project with somebody and they were just getting into HubSpot and you ask them like, how are you how have you been getting, like, business so far? And what did 90% of them say? Word-of-mouth. Referrals.
Max Cohen:Like, cool. Yeah. If they said word-of-mouth, brother, you were doing a flywheel and you didn't even know it. Right? Yeah.
Max Cohen:And so it was all about, like, how do we dig into those three spots and do them better? Right? Mhmm. And I still think that holds up. Right?
Max Cohen:I mean, it has to. Like, laws of physics tells it has to. Right? Like, there's no you're never not attracting, engaging, and delighting. It's it's it's one way, shape, or form.
Max Cohen:Right? You may not be doing any of those things well, but you have to do it in some capacity. Right? And so when I saw the loop thing, I was like, oh, what is this? They're taking this beautiful, easy, you know, universally sound timeless strategy, right, and completely turning it on its head, and it doesn't make any sense to me.
Max Cohen:But after I, you know, wiped the blood off of my mouth and, like, you know, came like, became conscious again Yeah. I realized like, oh, wait. This is just this is it. They're calling it loop marketing, and they're calling it loop marketing for a very specific reason because it is a marketing strategy. It's not like
George B. Thomas:a System.
Max Cohen:Something replacing everything. Right?
George B. Thomas:Yeah.
Max Cohen:And I do agree that in the age of, like, everyone is now has all these AI tools at their fingertips and no one has any idea how to make sense of all of it. Right? There does need to be a playbook around it. I do think. Right?
Max Cohen:Now, do I think it's a little bit complex? Yes. Do I remember the fourth Well, hold on. Nope. We
Chad Hohn:couldn't remember in that
Max Cohen:whole Every say time Express, I just think of Doctor. Drego. Express yourself.
Chad Hohn:I think of backend servers.
Max Cohen:Yeah. So Express, is it Express, Taylor, Amplify, and Evolve? It's like, it's I don't know. Maybe I need to like really kind of understand like the pieces of it, but it's just like, I don't know. I don't understand it.
Max Cohen:And maybe that's my fault. Right? But I appreciate that, you know, they're trying to build a playbook for marketing in the AIH. The only thing that like kind of bugs me about it is that for so long when we looked at inbound, right, inbound was always something that you could do without HubSpot. Right?
Max Cohen:It was a strategy first and foremost. Right? You could you could you could do inbound without HubSpot. It would be harder. Sure.
Max Cohen:Right? But you could do it. Right? And they built the tool to support that thing. Right?
Max Cohen:Where I get scared, and again, maybe this is just me being like you know, an inbound marketing conservative or something. I don't know. Like, so like someone who, like, you know, did a pure an inbound marketing purist. Right? Somebody doesn't wanna see things maybe I'm adverse to change, whatever it may be.
Chad Hohn:He's a Slytherin.
Max Cohen:I'm a Slytherin. Oh, jeez.
George B. Thomas:To me, there's a piece
Max Cohen:of it that, you know, with with the huge emphasis they're putting on AI and Breeze and credits and this, that, and the other thing, to me, what it feels like is it feels like the product is now shaping this strategy, Right? And it really kind of feels like just a big strategy to say like, hey, you need to use AI and we've got all these AI tools and you have to use AI and here's a strategy to use AI.
George B. Thomas:Let's back up the
Chad Hohn:burn some of my credits. Yeah.
George B. Thomas:Yeah. Okay. Don't get
Max Cohen:started Infinite on credits. You know what I mean? That's
George B. Thomas:probably need to do yeah. Infinity credits.
Chad Hohn:Probably need get all credits.
George B. Thomas:Probably need unlimited plan. Episode. Were the words you used, I want to back up, first of all, the words you used express, tailor, amplify, evolve? Were those the words that you used? Okay.
Max Cohen:That's it, right?
George B. Thomas:I just wanted to make sure that those were the four, because those are the four words.
Max Cohen:I
George B. Thomas:got Let's back up. Because I think for the impact for what you're saying is, historically, you went to inbound, it was the inbound methodology you felt was This driving the year was definitely, it felt like the product was driving the inbound talk. Now, I want to back up because I was surprised with Loop Marketing, but this is what I want to say. I think Yamini did a great job. I was paying attention because I had been forewarned of the coming of Loop Marketing.
George B. Thomas:So I was paying attention with an open mind. And on the slides, the things that were on the slides, I'm like, yep, check, makes sense, need to do that. Yep. Okay. Yep.
George B. Thomas:So I agree with everything that was in the slides. I'm just, again, I don't know if I'm a big fan of loop marketing, like the term in itself. I don't know what else you would call it, but I'm just like, okay, I'll live with it, deal with it, talk about it because But it's a system and you need something that goes along with that system. You need some principles. Again, I wrote an article that is Loop Marketing Meets a Superhuman Framework and it's on Psychic Strategy.
George B. Thomas:Can go check it out. But it's where maybe the two combined actually get us closer to what historically might have been a system that lives inside the inbound kind of original framework that I fell in love with. So here's here's another surprise for me. It was a surprise a couple years ago when Brian wasn't on the keynote stage as far as the kickoff. This year is another surprise that Darmesh was not part of the, like, the keynote kickoff.
George B. Thomas:Yeah. I was, I was like, oh man, like, it's, it's really changed. Cause one of the things that I would love is like, you'd go and it was like Brian and Darmesh and, you know, there was going to be these crazy fun times. And then it was Brian and Darmesh and Yamini, and there was still going to be these crazy fun times, and all of sudden it's just starting to get split out. And not saying it's bad, I'm just saying it's different.
George B. Thomas:It's strange. A surprise. So we're quickly running out of time, but guys, were there any, like, any inbound let downs where you're like, well, okay. Other than
Intro:Duncan. Yeah.
Chad Hohn:I I do wanna touch on just one little thing too, like about that last topic, and then we'll circle back or I'll circle back into a letdown. But I mean, the thing is like the inbound methodology, the thing that I think that it did really well is it just touched every part of the business. It touched all hubs, everything was related, you know, it encompassed the entire product and you used everything to accomplish the inbound methodology. I still think you can accomplish loop marketing without HubSpot. It would just be harder.
Chad Hohn:Right? Because they have all the things with the nice juicy tokens in there. And this is like a primer for our credits episode is like, if you really think about it, do you want them to price in if you're using something that consumes a lot of AI tokens to your HubSpot for somebody who's gonna use way more than you if you're not gonna use that much? Now, does that mean that the product should cost less overall? And that because then, the tokens are it's consumption based in a way, right?
Chad Hohn:Anyway, something to think about because, like, I don't know if I want to pay for somebody else's consumption. Right? And to then pad that in. Right?
George B. Thomas:Which right now also.
Chad Hohn:But yes. No. But I don't love the idea of, you know, this big whack of credits, you know, showing up because but again, usage based, it's providing value. Yeah, maybe it's I don't
Max Cohen:know.
George B. Thomas:Anyway, it's one more thing that a HubSpot super admin needs to pay attention to.
Chad Hohn:Yeah. Unfortunately. Yeah. Right. Making that job a little bit more complex.
Chad Hohn:Okay. Then, I had a letdown. Oh, did did y'all just sorry. While we're at it, I'm going on tangents here. But did y'all see Brian eat them hot chicken wings?
George B. Thomas:I did. I did. That
Chad Hohn:was so funny. Oh my gosh.
George B. Thomas:So what was the funniest part for you?
Chad Hohn:I think when he popped the 12 pack of beer out and just busted it and because he had already finished his beer on, like, wing two out of 12 or whatever. Dude, homeboy's already done with his beer, and he just pops out a thing of Sam Adams, has multiple bottle openers in his pocket. He's like, which one should I use? He was He literally force himself like multiple extra because he's just needing something. He got out of his chair one time, walked around the table.
Chad Hohn:It was so I
Max Cohen:miss him. Was he getting just wrecked Oh,
Chad Hohn:was great.
George B. Thomas:I think it's online. I think it'll be on YouTube. Definitely got to watch it because as as a fellow Boston Lager fan, when that box slid out from under the table and I knew Homeboy had brought reinforcements, I was like, my dude, like smart man. Yeah. Because it was you could tell he was like he was burning up once we got into them, like, end wings.
George B. Thomas:Yeah.
Chad Hohn:Okay. Now my letdown is simple. I didn't see almost anything from the Service Hub team, which I love Service Hub, and that product is maturing a lot. But they're hitting the complexity wall of the needs of service and support teams and also customer success teams and trying to build all of that into Service Hub. Yeah.
Chad Hohn:So the amount of big flashy features that they're able to drop is less. They did drop macros, which are cool, which is like a beta where you could just say it's almost like a mini workflow that you can run on demand for a ticket, which could be cool. And in the future, I believe they're going to bring in email templates to apply an email template and run the workflow simultaneously. Anyway, go ahead.
George B. Thomas:Nice. Max, any let downs?
Max Cohen:From the show, like, from the show directly? No. I mean, I generally had, like, an electric time out there.
Chad Hohn:It was good. Yeah.
Max Cohen:You know, besides the Dunkin' Donuts. But I mean, here's the thing. The Grove did go you to The Grove at all? Yeah. Oh, dude.
Max Cohen:The Grove was sick. I don't I can't believe you didn't get coffee there. That's nuts. Yeah. But yeah.
Max Cohen:No. I mean, it was it was it was good. I think, like, I guess the only letdown is, like, it was hard to when we're at inbound, we all know the place to be is the bar at the Omni or the Western. The Western. Yeah.
Max Cohen:And it was like that was like the it's like the one place everybody knows to go Yeah. After all the parties over to just like burn it down at the end of the night and wake up regretting it.
George B. Thomas:And right. And where's that place?
Max Cohen:I got it's like and this is an inbound fall, but we didn't know where that spot was. Right. And it's more just, I guess, like poor planning on the the collective of people that went there. Yeah. Right?
Max Cohen:But, you know, there's a lot of people that I wish I got to see and spend more time with like you, George. Maybe I saw you like twice. Right, Chad? I saw you for like a minute. Right?
Max Cohen:I mean, at least we got to like sit together during the the partner day thing. Right? You know? But I didn't have a ton of time to, like, just really kind of kick it with people, which I felt like is much easier for some reason to do in Boston when we all know that main congregating place that we're all kind of going to, you know? So, like, less of a letdown, more of a, this is different.
Max Cohen:Right? But yeah. No. I mean, it was it was, you know, I I yeah. It was it was good.
Chad Hohn:I like it, dude. I had a great time. It was good. I can't complain.
George B. Thomas:I think for the first
Max Cohen:time having it somewhere else for Boston, I don't think it could have gone any Oh, honestly.
George B. Thomas:It went really well. And the the team yeah. The inbound team did a great job of, like They fucking rock. Yeah, dude. Like, they were they were Johnny on the spot, like, from, like, checking you in to, like, if there were issues with your badge to, like, Courtney Dogger and her team and getting it all set up even before people walk.
George B. Thomas:It was just good. My letdown, same kind of with you, Max, is there are so many humans, not enough time. I was getting tagged in LinkedIn and I'm like, You were there? How did I not see you? Why did we not meet up?
George B. Thomas:I wonder if that
Chad Hohn:just had to do with the fact that the expo booths were not next to the main area because everything was kind of spread out more.
George B. Thomas:Maybe, but you didn't see as many humans as you thought you could or wanted to see. We'll see how that feels next year. Okay, so Max, take us to the happily booth for a minute. How was the happily booth? How did it go?
George B. Thomas:Like,
Max Cohen:It was crazy. It was crazy if I'm being so honest with you. Was absolutely electric from from beginning to end. I would just get there, plant my feet on the on the little astroturf that we had, and then blackout for approximately, I don't know, ten hours or however long we were there. We were there.
Max Cohen:Scans badges. Scans and badges, preach the gospel around how running events in HubSpot is actually the most big brain to play you could ever run-in your life as a rev ops or event person. Yeah. And it was sick. And it, you know, it was really cool because this year this year, like, our tool is as close to, like, just plug and play as it's ever been.
Chad Hohn:As it's ever been.
Max Cohen:Last year, you know, it was one of those things where it was like, if someone thought it was cool, like, you still needed a a PhD in HubSpot and a unnecessarily nuanced understanding of on how our app worked in the background. It was powerful. Don't get me wrong. But, like, this year, we were dropping jaws, dude. Like, it's just like, it's so easy to just, like, install and just start using immediately.
Max Cohen:It's crazy. And, you know, the team did an absolutely insane amount of work, like, getting it to where it was. And so we dropped a bunch of big things. We got the event builder, which just lets you basically give us some information about your event, and then we just build all your assets for you instead of you having to do it on your own.
Chad Hohn:Yeah. It's like the campaign builder dynamic. That's cool.
Max Cohen:It's crazy. Marketing studio is something we should talk about at some point. Maybe do deep maybe do a whole episode on it. Yeah. But we did that.
Max Cohen:We did we had our new lead capture app, which is a which was a huge hit. Right? So, like, you know, instead of doing like the boop boop thing, you just, like, scan text on a badge. We look it up. We enrich it, throw it into HubSpot, all that kind of stuff.
Chad Hohn:And the original is pretty good too.
Max Cohen:Dude, it was actually like 90%. Like, the amount that I did
Chad Hohn:like He scanned my badge and it's like, oh, you're a company of blah blah blah people. And he sent me an email just as a test, you know? Yeah. And it was like, I'm on pretty good.
Max Cohen:I'll be like, you see how it got your first name, last name, and company? It pulled that off your badge, but now it's going to try to find some stuff. And I would sit there and watch it with people. Right? And like twenty seconds later, it would come up.
Max Cohen:I'm like, is that right? They're like, yeah, it's right. And I'm like, sick. That's awesome. Was gonna be wicked inaccurate, but it ended up being, like, 90%, like, correct, which is which is cool.
Max Cohen:So then we did that, and then we have this whole new, way to do, like, in person check ins and, like, QR code scanning and stuff like that. Mhmm. You know? And so it was cool because, like, these were things that just lived in my brain for a very long time. And our team, like, worked day and night insanely hard to, like, make things things, like, real before inbound.
Max Cohen:And it was just it was a surreal experience. And it was also it felt very vulnerable. Like, I was like, oh, are all these things we're doing? Like, are people actually gonna like it? Was it gonna be good?
Max Cohen:And it was just don't think I had one bad conversation. It was just Love it. It was amazing. And the team was cranking. We had, like, images on the iPads and we're showing people.
Max Cohen:It was really cool. It was Yeah. Super fun. Yeah.
George B. Thomas:Alright. So we've served up an inbound meal. Let's do some salt and pepper. Salt and pepper meaning you take about fifteen seconds to twenty seconds each, and it can just be the most random stuff. I'm going to go first.
George B. Thomas:You guys can then go after me, and then I'll land this episode. So salt and pepper of Inbound twenty twenty five for me are things like, one, getting to have a dinner with Chad, his wife, Chris Carolyn, his wife, myself,
Max Cohen:and my wife sitting the one that I missed.
George B. Thomas:And having, yes, one that you were invited to, but you missed. No shade thrown. But that, sitting and having that dinner was amazing. Driving in a Waymo, using it as a tour guide through the city of San Francisco to take my wife to see the Golden Gate Bridge, the Full House House, Mrs. Doubtfire House, the Curviest Road.
George B. Thomas:Just being able to get comfortable with that and something we'd never done before was amazing. But also seeing those things outside of the event, seeing people like my PDM and other partners that he serves, and we took a big photo. Okay, that's probably longer than twenty seconds. I'll shut up. Those are salt and pepper random moments that made Inbound twenty twenty five amazing.
Chad Hohn:I, I really enjoyed hitting the city. Gotta go do the Golden Gate Bridge with my wife and her friends. You know, we were there early because my wife does, like, event management as some may know. And, you know, because of that oh, yeah. One of their gifts, I got inbound socks.
George B. Thomas:Nice. Yeah.
Max Cohen:Full house house on the heel, man. Damn.
Chad Hohn:Yeah. So that's that's a nice little thing that the, the inbound event planning team was given out to some of the event staff, which was fun. So I got a little inbound Sakis. Just seeing and connecting with people everywhere is just so good. Doing the Waymo was fun.
Chad Hohn:Never done that before. I even got in on the the public access to the Tesla Robotaxi network if any you know, people like them, hate them, whatever. But, like, it was cool to do that for the first time too. I gotta try two different driverless car services. That's fun.
Chad Hohn:Nice. So yeah.
Max Cohen:Well, I'm glad you guys had a great experience with a Waymo. We almost hit a dog and then it dropped us off in the middle of the street at, two in the morning. That was
George B. Thomas:weird. Yeah.
Max Cohen:And then it, like, stopped behind someone who was at a at a stoplight that wouldn't go. And, like, we had to, like, get in touch with Waymo support because we didn't know what to do. And then the car got, like, really annoyed and just, like, backed up and drove around the person, and then they went. So, yeah, not a great experience in Waymo for us. But I will say, I had the best fried chicken in my life at this Chinese restaurant called Z and Y.
Max Cohen:It had it was like just a bowl full of Szechuan peppers with this fried chicken that's fried in a way I've never seen chicken fried before. Wow. And when you ate it, your jaw literally would buzz. It was the craziest sensation I've ever experienced eating Chinese food.
Chad Hohn:Is there some additives on that?
Max Cohen:I'm like, what's
George B. Thomas:some kind? On that.
Max Cohen:I think it was just the bowl of Szechuan peppers it was sitting in. Right? But, yeah, dude, it was it was sick. I loved it. Can't complain.
Max Cohen:Was good.
George B. Thomas:Was good. So moral of the story is a lot happens at inbound. If you weren't there this year, make sure you check out the HubSpot YouTube channel. They are going to have some things showing. If you haven't ever been to Inbound before and you're listening to this, then try to make it a plan to go in 2026.
George B. Thomas:It sounds weird to say that because hopefully we'll be seeing you in Boston and maybe you'll even be part of our 2026 Inbound Recap next year. Okay, Hub Heroes. We've reached the end of another episode. Will Lord Lack continue to loom over the community or will we be able to defeat him in the next episode of the hub heroes podcast? Make sure you tune in and find out in the next episode.
George B. Thomas:Make sure you head over to the hubheroes.com to get the latest episodes and become part of the league of heroes. FYI, if you're part of the league of heroes, you'll get the show notes right in your inbox and they come with some hidden power up potential as well. Make sure you share this podcast with a friend. Leave a review if you like what you're listening to and use the hashtag hashtag hub 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.
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