INBOUND to UNBOUND 2026 The Origin Story with Kat Tooley
HubSpot retired a 15-year-old word, and George B. Thomas wanted to be a fly on the wall in the room where it got decided. In this episode, he and Chad Hohn get the next best thing: a sit-down with Kat Tooley, HubSpot's VP of Global Events and Experiential Marketing and the architect behind turning INBOUND into UNBOUND.
This is the untold origin story, the internal fears, and what UNBOUND 2026 actually means for the humans who built their businesses on the word INBOUND.
In this episode:
• UNBOUND started as a half-joke at an internal kickoff, then survived a multi-year planning cycle that could have killed it
• Why Yamini stayed the path: "We have conviction and we know this name feels right. We've done the testing."
• HubSpot didn't bury inbound. It outgrew the word. The methodology is still alive.
• The thread tying Tom Brady, Cynthia Erivo, Mel Robbins, and Suni Williams to "unbound"
• How HubSpot runs the whole event out of its own portal, with Breeze and a full ROI model: "its own little HubSpot within
HubSpot"
• Kat's two-rule discipline for a rebrand that lands: evolution, not revolution
• What's new for 2026: the Exchanges, the Spotlight keynote, and a new CPO on stage
Register for UNBOUND 2026 (September 16 to 18, Boston): https://unbound.hubspot.com
Read the full recap: https://sidekickstrategies.com/podcast/hubheroes-inbound-to-unbound-origin-story
This is the untold origin story, the internal fears, and what UNBOUND 2026 actually means for the humans who built their businesses on the word INBOUND.
In this episode:
• UNBOUND started as a half-joke at an internal kickoff, then survived a multi-year planning cycle that could have killed it
• Why Yamini stayed the path: "We have conviction and we know this name feels right. We've done the testing."
• HubSpot didn't bury inbound. It outgrew the word. The methodology is still alive.
• The thread tying Tom Brady, Cynthia Erivo, Mel Robbins, and Suni Williams to "unbound"
• How HubSpot runs the whole event out of its own portal, with Breeze and a full ROI model: "its own little HubSpot within
HubSpot"
• Kat's two-rule discipline for a rebrand that lands: evolution, not revolution
• What's new for 2026: the Exchanges, the Spotlight keynote, and a new CPO on stage
Register for UNBOUND 2026 (September 16 to 18, Boston): https://unbound.hubspot.com
Read the full recap: https://sidekickstrategies.com/podcast/hubheroes-inbound-to-unbound-origin-story
Creators and Guests
Host
George B. Thomas
George B. Thomas is the HubSpot Helper and owner at George B. Thomas, LLC and has been doing inbound and HubSpot since 2012. He's been training, doing onboarding, and implementing HubSpot, for over 10 years. George's office, mic, and on any given day, his clothing is orange. George is also a certified HubSpot trainer, Onboarding specialist, and student of business strategies. To say that George loves HubSpot and the people that use HubSpot is probably a massive understatement. A fun fact about George B. Thomas is that he loves peanut butter and pickle sandwiches.
Host
Max Cohen
Max Cohen is currently a Senior Solutions Engineer at HubSpot. Max has been working at HubSpot for around six and a half-ish years. While working at HubSpot Max has done customer onboarding, learning, and development as a product trainer, and now he's on the HubSpot sales team. Max loves having awesome conversations with customers and reps about HubSpot and all its possibilities to enable company growth. Max also creates a lot of content around inbound, marketing, sales, HubSpot, and other nerdy topics on TikTok. A fun fact about Max Cohen is that outside of HubSpot and inbound and beyond being a dad of two wonderful daughters he has played and coached competitive paintball since he was 15 years old.
