The HubHeroes Podcast

George B. Thomas: [00:00:00] Okay, so here's the thing. Um, this is our last podcast ever. No, I'm just kidding. This is our last podcast before Unbound 26, uh, because it is right upon us. It is Monday, 9:14. Uh, really the event starts tomorrow. But Chad, before I even get into asking you a bunch of questions and the reason why I'm asking you the questions, um, I am looking at your background and I see Riverside, I see hello, I see a camera.
Chad, where in God's name are you right now that the background even... I mean, there's RGB and like... Talk, talk, where are you at, my friend?
Chad Hohn: I'm in a virtual background hotel room.
George B. Thomas: There you go. See, but, but here's the thing. I bring this up because immediately when we got on, before I hit the go live button, I was like, "That background is dope." Like that is-- Like it... [00:01:00] And you can't tell, that's the thing. Like you can't tell that it's a background. One would think like, "Wow, is Riverside at Unbound?
Like do they have an area? Did Chad sneak in?" Like all of these questions would come to mind. So you're hanging out at the hotel, um, but your hotel is located where, my friend?
Chad Hohn: Right across the street
George B. Thomas: Ah, so I'll take a guess. You are in the Omni.
Chad Hohn: Yes,
George B. Thomas: Yes. Okay. So, uh, the big question that people probably want to know as they're traveling to Unbound, they might be on a plane right now, they might be on a, a boat, uh, they might be eating green eggs and ham with a fox, I don't know, sitting on a box. Um, is the Unbound sign up yet?
Chad Hohn: In the lobby, I have... Yeah, I've seen all of the colors, but I have not seen the ginormous letters that are normally at [00:02:00] the top of the escalators just yet. But I haven't looked today.
George B. Thomas: Okay.
Chad Hohn: looked yesterday
George B. Thomas: so ye-- so yesterday, 'cause so you've been there a while, yesterday when you were walking, uh, to or in or from the MCEC, formerly known as the BCEC, but the big like, um, uh, you know, photo LED, like
Chad Hohn: Yeah.
George B. Thomas: doesn't say... Yeah, it doesn't say Unbound yet, huh?
Chad Hohn: Mm-mm. Not yet, no. It's probably, it's probably there this morning there, because I didn't go there. I was only there midday yesterday, so I'll, uh, I'll report back. I'll let you know
George B. Thomas: you have to report back. So, um, you're there, you're hanging out. Um, how many humans have you already seen? Or is it like, "Nope, George, not yet. Like, I feel like people are coming today, but yesterday I didn't see anybody." Or are you like, "Wow, humans are already here"?
Chad Hohn: Yeah, I've already [00:03:00] seen some obvious like HubSpot, but I think it's mostly HubSpotters internal. You know, I haven't seen a ton of like people I know from the industry just yet. However, again, I've just been kinda working and trying to get ahead for the week so that I can go play hooky all week at Unbound.
George B. Thomas: So, so can, can we talk about that for a second? Because again, as people are flying there, driving there, can we talk about, um, the potential anxiety of shutting down for a week to actually learn more, to hang out with humans? Um, because it's funny that you bring that up. You're like, "I'm trying to get ahead so I can play hooky."
And when I woke up this morning, I wanted to be excited because it's like I need to pack, I need to go get a couple pairs of new shoes that I know I wanna get. I need to like-- I need to prep everything. But, but there was this anxiety of like, "Oh man, [00:04:00] I, I really have this work that I need to get done, and I, I don't know if more work, new work is gonna show up at my doorstep while I'm gone."
And like, should I feel guilty for that? Should I be excited for in the moment? Like, how many, how many humans do you think deal with this, uh, while they're at Unbound? And, uh, well, let's back up. Chad, would you, would you say that it is-- It's like, "Nah, George, I just need to get ahead." Or, or is it like, "I need to get ahead because I'm feeling anxious"?
Chad Hohn: Nah. No, I'm just kinda trying to knock out some stuff that would be maybe due this week. Uh, you know, just so that I can deliver it when it's time. You know, get it done ahead of time, deliver it on time without having to be too much in the loop. Uh, like I'm not too worried about it. I'm just, uh, personally, I really do take the time to enjoy Unbound for everything that [00:05:00] it can be.
Um, you know, the, the relationships, the connections, talking with HubSpot, uh, team members, you know, uh, all the things you just can't normally do in really getting that in-person and human connection. That's like my main focus. And like, I mean, obviously don't shirk your responsibilities, right? But, um, then if there's stuff that you have to do, you gotta do it, right?
I mean, that's just kinda life. That's business, right? And that's, you know, jobs. But
George B. Thomas: E- yeah
Chad Hohn: mean, for me, you know, I'm, I'm not, uh, hugely worried about it, but I'm a little bit more laid back, go with the flow than some
people too.
George B. Thomas: you, you are very much a, uh, go with the flow guy. And, and I try to be that guy. I wanna be that guy. And, and I almost feel like once I get on the plane, uh, maybe I'll be that guy. And I know when I get in the moment, like I'm just gonna be like, "Okay, it's time to be in the moment." But the-- it's this like energy.
Um, maybe it's [00:06:00] not anxiety, maybe it's just energy. This, this, um...
Chad Hohn: I think it's excitement a little bit. You're excited, but you know, like, "Hey, also, I have, like, all these things that I, like, you know, require me," right? And that's, you know, that's a thing. I mean, I would, you know, just off the wall, like, if you haven't ever or if you're really new to it, I mean, man, set up, uh, you know, an AI assistant morning scheduled brief type thing that will just help you identify any of the high priority stuff that can't wait that you can deal with, uh, quickly before you hop off to Unbound.
And that just takes a big load off of your mental capacity, I think. Um, and you know, it like, if you're just now starting, it'll probably be a little overzealous, but like, man, the, the earlier you can get on some kind of like morning brief or end-of-day summary type automation in your preferred AI platform of choice, um, or in your [00:07:00] custom AI connector or whatever, um, you know, that just really helps take a lot off.
Because I mean, for me, now that I have some of those things configured, I know that my assistant can ping me if something's really urgent and, um, you know, then I can go on about my day and do, do my things, and it can kinda help me, uh, keep track of those things that maybe I might not natively be so good at keeping track of on my own.
I mean, I'll say I'm not the world's best project manager personally. Um, you know, but it sure can do that pretty well and keep me, keep me on track.
George B. Thomas: I-it's, it's interesting that you bring that up because you're actually bringing me a little bit of joy, a little bit of light at the end of my, uh, potential energy anxiety tunnel. And I never really thought about this, but this will be the first Unbound that I'm going to that I have had an agent, uh, well, more than one agent, but an agent in particular on what you're talking about, where, [00:08:00] um, it looks at the emails that come in and it writes first drafts of the emails.
And so what's interesting, Chad, is-- And, and by the way, when I say it writes first drafts, like we're talking one shots. We're talking knocks it out the park because it's attached, I use Grok Bot, it's attached to the main brain, the second brain, like all the context. It, it knows everything.
Chad Hohn: too? I switched, I also switched.
George B. Thomas: Well, so I
Chad Hohn: It's
George B. Thomas: both. I, I use both. I, like I still ha- do some things in Claude Code, in Terminal, but I have these agents set up. Like I have a project management agent. I have a auto- automatic, uh, send emails an hour after meeting agent. But, but the one that I know is gonna save me probably a bunch of time is the agent that will just send the draft email.
I can look at the draft email, I can tweak it a little bit, and so it's gonna buy me time back while I'm at the event or at the nights of the event, uh, where I can focus in on the [00:09:00] humans. And so, um, I, I do agree with you. Now let's-- It's what's funny is y-you're at Boston, I'm getting ready to come to Boston.
There's gonna be, I think, uh, 13, 19, I don't know, so many thousands of people coming to Boston, um, not to talk about Grok Bot, not to talk about Claude Code. We're, we're, we're talking about things outside of HubSpot right now, which by the way, if, if you're not thinking about what pairs nicely, it's like a steak and a fine wine.
Like what pairs nicely with my Breeze Assistant and my HubSpot portal and the things that I do. You, you, you definitely should be thinking about that. But Chad, let's, let's talk about the event for a second. Let's, let's-- Because, I mean, people are coming here, and I, I wanna get into a little bit into the granular of where your brain's at.
And I have a really weird question I'll hold for a hot
Chad Hohn: Okay,
George B. Thomas: But, like, I know the first thing that most people are gonna be excited to, and probably 90% of humans will go to, and that's the HubSpot Spotlight that's happening Wednesday, [00:10:00] September 16th at 9:30 AM. Now, now, ch-Chad, I don't know if you've taken time to actually break down some of these, uh, descriptions that ended up in the agenda, but this one I found interesting because l- well, let me just read it.
It says, "Join HubSpot CEO Yamini, uh, Chief Product and Technology Officer Duncan, uh, Chief Customer Office John," uh, which by the way, you, you don't need their last names. Their last names are in the description. That's not what I'm trying to get to, so I'm just trying to speed this up a little bit. But even in explaining that, I slowed it down.
But here's the thing, as they unpack the latest trends in... Now listen, listen, the latest trends in AI. Okay, so AI is the first thing that the-- of the list. It, it-- Therefore, the human would think, "Well, that's the most important thing of the list." Marketing, sales, and service, and announce innovations from across the HubSpot [00:11:00] platform.
So the fact that it's AI, marketing, sales, and service, do you think it's that way because of importance? Or Chad, do you think an AI assistant did it that way because they're in alphabetical order?
Chad Hohn: Hmm. I don't know. Yeah, I mean
George B. Thomas: I don't either
Chad Hohn: the proper, the proper answer is a well-formatted data file.
George B. Thomas: So, so here, here's my question though. Like When Or I hope, or I don't even know how to mu- maybe even start this question. Like, um, HubSpot's a marketing platform. HubSpot's a sales platform. HubSpot's a service platform. Like, you've heard those things historically. Um, HubSpot, HubSpot's an AI platform. Like, listen, if you've been in the know, you know that a lot of things have changed.
[00:12:00] But Chad, if you would start to embrace AI as, like, an AI platform, HubSpot is an AI platform, just like we do, it's a marketing platform, it's a sales platform, it's, it's a service platform. Where the flip does your brain go on, like, the conversations that these three are gonna have on stage and what we might see potentially that might be mind-blowing?
Chad Hohn: Yeah. I know that just like the scuttlebutt and I know, you know, you've heard a little bit around in general, like the, the place that they're really trying to go is any action that you can perform inside the CRM, an agent should be able to do. And they're talking, probably gonna be talking about agentic permissions, where you can almost separate actions that agents are allowed to do autonomously
George B. Thomas: Yeah
Chad Hohn: via, uh, like API or via MCP connectors or whatever, [00:13:00] plug-ins and all that.
They're, they're likely splitting a lot of that out so that, um, and gonna be talking about those levels of permissions. Um, you're already seeing it in like user permission and scoping. I mean, they've added pipeline government, governance API endpoints, so you can actually like hit an API endpoint and see what are the, uh, deal pipeline required stage conditions, or can you go backwards or can you, uh, edit if you're certain people after a certain thing, and agents can now configure that.
Like, I think they're going to the place where, you know, you-- They're trying to make it so that you don't need to be like a super mcwizard to set up your agent to be able to do the things. 'Cause like you and I, George, have had to go out of our way to get our agents the access they need to administrate portals, and there's significant browser fallback needed to get things done when it's not [00:14:00] accessible via API, MCP, whatever.
I think that that's gonna be a talking point because the, the vision is like these agents are gonna be an extension of you, and then they're gonna be trying to talk about connecting more of your tools directly into the HubSpot Breeze assistant, where you can go into the HubSpot homepage or Sales workspace or Service workspace or Customer Success workspace, whatever your role is, to interact with the Breeze agent or interact with the Breeze agent possibly even remotely from your preferred agent of choice. So I suspect those are all going to be talking points. Um, like if you're, you know, I'm, I-- It's kinda, this has kinda a little bit become the AI show. Like I know it's not, but it is because like the platform is the most AI native out of any CRM I've seen out there. Like I've looked in [00:15:00] other people's recently just talking with friends and like it is so well integrated and the vision is so forward-looking of what HubSpot is building.
And I mean, yeah, I'm like s- you know, Sprocket fanboying out, but like it, it, it's very apparent that they, they know that this is gonna be very important moving forward
George B. Thomas: So, uh, so yes, I agree with you on a little bit of the AI show. I agree that it's important as we move forward. I do, I do also feel like HubSpot is very much, um, trying and winning at being, like, in the forefront of what it can do. Um, some of the things that I'll, I'll echo you on, the amount of... 'Cause I was doing some little work on the side, uh, with some, you know, a agent thing that I was trying to build and work on.
And, um, the amount of APIs that you can give scopes now w- to what it was
Chad Hohn: Oh, it's
George B. Thomas: months ago is, like, crazy. Like, [00:16:00] if you haven't l- looked at the list of scopes, uh, lately, my gosh. The other thing, uh, yeah, the, the other thing that is, um, kind of crazy to me is that while HubSpot's trying to do this, I'm still running into some portals here and there that haven't actually enabled Breeze Assistant, that isn't, uh, enabling AI, that, that ha- like, is- isn't kind of keeping up with how fast HubSpot is moving in that direction.
Um, what, what would you say, in the most loving way possible, to somebody's, somebody's traveling to Unbound, they're about to get a, you know, AI slap in the face, um, because o- of breakouts in the spotlight and, like, what would you lovingly say to those folks, uh, that haven't, um, either been able to or wanted to turn on some of the AI features that HubSpot now has?
Chad Hohn: Yeah. I would say while you're on the [00:17:00] plane or in the wa- you know, like, on your connecting flight or whatever, if you get... It's probably gonna take you 15 minutes, actually. If you get 15 minutes, if you've never done it, go to the product updates page and just turn on, like, every beta, basically. Like, uh, there's, like, 300 that you can turn on and, like, I don't know, 5 to 10% of them are additional API scopes that you can't turn on in your API key unless you do that first, which is kind of a pain.
Like, they used to gray out scopes in the keys that you couldn't access, but some, like, some of these new ones, like Price Books, you know, the Price Books API, that's pretty cool. But if you turn it on and then try and save your API key to, like, give it to your agent or whatever, it's like, "Nah, you can't save this key."
And then you're like, "Which scope is it that's the prob-" And then
George B. Thomas: Oh,
Chad Hohn: go reverse engineer which one. Anyway, so, like, go basically [00:18:00] just take a look at all the things that are betas because they are well enough to not cause you major problems. You know, especially the ones that you could just join.
They're all called public beta. The ones that are request are private beta, right? And there's gonna be more after Unbound, I'm sure. Like, after the keynote, there's gonna be additional things. There always is, like, a s- you know, a slog of things after. And yeah, I guess all that to say, like, um, just take a look at that.
I mean, it's, uh... You know, if you haven't turned on the betas, your portal is severely lacking in capability, believe it or not
George B. Thomas: Yeah, and what I would add to that is because I've seen this, um, somebody will go to product updates, they'll look at betas and they'll be like, uh, "Turn on, turn on, turn on, turn..." What I would add to Chad's, um, wisdom around having the most powerful portal possible, uh, [00:19:00] read those updates. Re-read what
Chad Hohn: take
George B. Thomas: Yeah. Yeah. Uh, and, and by the way, it might take a little bit more than 15 minutes, but read them and, um, and, and make wise decisions on what you do need, what you don't need. All right. All right,
Chad Hohn: like you, you don't need the Epic healthcare unless you're actually with an Epic healthcare portal, right? Like, you know, d- obviously do the ones that are relevant, right? But if, if it's an API scope, basically you could probably just turn it on, you know, and look at the screenshots and read who it's for, you know?
And like, I mean, if you don't have an enterprise portal, well, it'll only show you the betas that are relevant to your portal. So like if you only have Pro and OneHub, it'll whatever, right? Show you the right ones. But yeah, take,
George B. Thomas: way, relevant to your portal is not relevant to you. But yeah, go, go ahead, Chet. Go
Chad Hohn: Yeah. No, I was just, yeah, saying just take a peek. Read, read through them, look at the screenshots. Sometimes there's a Loom video. So while you're traveling, if you [00:20:00] get caught up enough, you know, to where you feel like you're not hitting the old anxiety button, worrying about things that you're gonna be missing back at work or whatever, at your agency or wherever, um, definitely take a peek.
I mean, it's gonna be really, really, really useful if you haven't been down the beta rabbit hole.
George B. Thomas: Yeah, it d-
Chad Hohn: my favorite rabbit hole
George B. Thomas: it is, it's, it is one of my favorite rabbit holes as well pertaining to HubSpot. So, so Chad, um, burning question. Let's stick on AI for a second.
Chad Hohn: Okay, okay
George B. Thomas: do you think we get a Jarvis-style breeze this year, or is it too early?
Chad Hohn: I was seeing, uh, something about two-way conversation at some point. I don't remember where I heard it, but like live conversational. I'm curious if it's going to be able to manipulate the UI and move it around. I don't know, because like [00:21:00] voice agents, real-time voice agents, full duplex, right? Meaning like full duplex in a conversation means forward and backwards.
It's not like transcribe and then it speaks back. It's, it's real time. And, um, they are typically having a bit of an issue context-wise, where you spool up the agent, the voice agent, and it knows some of what you've been talking about, but it has to make tool calls into the system to say, "Hey, this piece of memory that we've talked about," or w- you know, "This, uh, connector, I wanna hit a tool call."
And it's not always extremely efficient. So at the moment, for a lot of people, even in some of the most performant voice models, uh, like even GPT-6 Astra or, you know, uh, Grok Think Fast 2, or whatever some of the most [00:22:00] performant voice models are, um, you're still hitting some limitations where it feels very sluggish to do the things, and you could just click faster.
So I think the performance of the models and tool call interactions need to improve to really make something like that feel really, really performant. And then the step after that is, okay, now HubSpot gets to adopt it.
George B. Thomas: So, so '
Chad Hohn: cause like the Frontier Labs will do it first.
George B. Thomas: it's, it's interesting because, like, I literally was watching a, um, ChatGPT Astra live video where-- And I was like, "Ooh," like, that makes it really easy to maybe put it in a portal. But you're right, there is so much data, there are so many things that it would have to do, tools it would call, this, that, and the other thing.
It, it, it might, uh, feel sluggish. My curiosity is if the human would mind if it was slightly sluggish. But you just said something [00:23:00] that I wanna dive a little bit deeper into, and that is it'd just be faster to click.
Chad Hohn: Угу
George B. Thomas: y- you love AI, I love AI. We're both using AI to, like, um, m- maybe its full potential.
I don't know. Like, I think we're doing a really good job at it. Have you run into this where you're like, "Hey, I'm gonna use AI to do this," and then 30 minutes later you go, "You know what? I could have probably clicked that in, like, 10 minutes." Like-
Chad Hohn: Yeah. I mean, see, there's, there's a thing that'll happen, especially what I've noticed with like Grok Bot. If you haven't tried it, by the way, man, that's a h- that's, that's wild. Like give it a whirl if you haven't tried it. It's the, the chat surfaces I
George B. Thomas: I mean, li- listen, we could turn this whole episode into a Grokbot episode. The fact that you can do, um, agent teams and I can say, "Hey, have my leadership team have a conversation about this," and you can jump into the conversation while you see the conversation happening, or the fact that it just hands off from one [00:24:00] agent to another agent to another agent, like any- anyways, it's, it is, it is wild.
I, um... It's, it's quickly become my favorite new conversational tool. And also what I will say is, Chad, something, and I'm gonna spin this back around to HubSpot in a second. Something that is very interesting about it is I had historically battled, um, doing AI on my phone. I was like, "No, I'll go to my office.
I'll do it on my..." But, but with Grokbot, man, I am more than willing to grab my phone and be like, "Can you do this thing?" And know that it does the thing. For instance, I was walking around my yard 'cause I wanted to get some sun and some fresh air, and literally went through this entire idea that within about a 35 to 45-minute process, we went from no page, no idea, um, doing research, having the team talk about the idea, to launching [00:25:00] sidekickstrategies.com/expert, literally have the expert page and the expert offer and like the things that people can do with that.
And I was walking around my yard on my phone with Grokbot, who then tied into like Riley, the agent on the main brain, and built the page insanity. And, and, and so like this freedom. Now, the reason I said I'm gonna spin around back to HubSpot is when do you feel like a human could say, "I wanna pull up my phone.
I wanna talk to my Breeze agent because I just had this idea of this entire campaign where I want it to like do the emails, I want it to do the form, I want it to build these, uh, properties that are gonna be hidden properties. And, and I, I wanna just be able to talk it through it." 'Cause by the way, my Grokbot and my Casey agent with APIs can do that now.
But when, for the typical user, do they pick up the [00:26:00] HubSpot mobile app or something like it and just are able to conversationally build sales, marketing, service, uh, business in general flows? Do, do we get there or is there too big a hurdle to get to that, Chad?
Chad Hohn: Um, I mean, I'm almost thinking, like, there's a world where until models are real-time enough... Oh, oh, by the way,
um, the, the HubSpot app, that's where I saw voice real-time duplex. In the HubSpot app, you have duplex voice now. I forgot that's where I saw it. Um, so go check it out if you don't have the newest HubSpot mobile app.
Um, but
George B. Thomas: that bad boy
Chad Hohn: yeah, it's limited by, you know, okay, Breeze has to make tool calls to get the thing, so you're just sitting there waiting for it, and it's, like, silent while you're waiting for it, which that's the part that feels weird to people.
George B. Thomas: you need on-hold music. You know, "Hi, I'm back."
Chad Hohn: yeah. [00:27:00] Yeah. Yeah. Oh, yes, I have your report ready. but I, I'm thinking, like, when, when I really, you know, think about how that could be done for kind of, you know...
I, I-- Like, the, the building blocks are all there. People just need to put it together, right? If that makes sense. And so you need some sort of mechanism for whatever your preferred platform of choice is to communicate with Breeze or to do it directly with Breeze. And I'm almost envisioning, you know how, like, there's a plan mode,
George B. Thomas: Yeah. Oh, yeah.
Chad Hohn: I think with plan mode, it would be great to have a planning meeting, and it's a 10, 15-minute meeting where the AI talks to you, and you talk to it and have a meeting and give it all of what do you want, and it asks second-smart questions, so it can build you what you want in one shot. You have, like, a 15-minute meeting with, with your bot and, "Oh, hey, great, [00:28:00] awesome, let's take a look at this, and let's do that," and, "What do you think about this?"
And, "How should the user make their way to the website?" And, "Here's a recommended best practice. Do you want that or no?" And then, like, even somewhat more novice users will be able to build out those flows, and then as long as it has the access to the systems, you'll be able to essentially allow it to build the whole thing in draft mode for you to review.
I would love to see kind of like Cursor or Groq agents can do, where they, um, like, share a video of the flow afterward. W- "Oh, hey, this is what it will look like when somebody's navigating through the thing." They, like, the Groq bots can record their screen and show you clicking through or whatever. I had my bots the other day watch a live stream that I didn't wanna watch and give me the real-time play-by-play.
They literally opened up a live stream on their computer and were giving me [00:29:00] snippets and, like, little funny blurbs about a live stream that was happening and telling me about it. So it's like, it's crazy where we're headed.
Like-
George B. Thomas: funny because you just mentioned a feature that I wish was in HubSpot. Actually, my brain's going 100 miles an hour, but, um, the ability to record a clip to teach HubSpot, to teach Breeze, this is what I mean by that, and now let's automate that, I think would be very interesting. Because Chad, I too have been messing around with the let me teach the bot how to do a thing.
Chad Hohn: Угу,
угу
George B. Thomas: is you can clone deals natively in HubSpot. You've been able to do that for a long time. What's funny is there's no API that, uh, gives you access to clone a deal in HubSpot. And the way that we do our billing, we have partnerships slash some humans call them retainers. We just call them
Chad Hohn: Mhm, mhm.
George B. Thomas: But we have these reoccurring deals that happen on a monthly basis. And so for us it's very easy, just like the line items are in there, the details are in there. We just [00:30:00] wanna clone the deal and move it to November, or clone the deal and move it to December. And so with Grok Bot, again, wishing in the future this was like a HubSpot feature, I hit that little record button and I taught Casey the agent, not Casey the human, Casey Hawkins, but Casey the agent, I taught it, here's how you clone a deal and here's how you take it from, let's say, September to October.
And then I was like, "Hey, and also what I'm showing you how to do it with September and October, but I want you to understand, like, it just,
Chad Hohn: This will
George B. Thomas: the next month. It, it'll whatever the next month is." And brother, can I just tell you that we cloned all of our November and all of our December deals into the two holding pipelines that we needed, and what would've taken me probably, um, manually as a human, you know, uh, 30 minutes, 45 minutes, maybe an hour to like get it all in place and blah, blah, um, it was able to do in minutes.
And what's fun about it being able to do it in [00:31:00] minutes I was able to walk away and go do something else, and then come back and just check on it. And so I think about this world where I can go and do something else and come back to HubSpot, come back to Breeze and just check on it. And, and I just wanna circle back around on that because what I was doing, I was giving it context for it to understand what to do moving forward.
Chad, you mentioned Breeze and like, um, it being more conversational and you being able to have the 15-minute, the 10-minute meeting. Sometimes what I wish Breeze had was what I call a slash grill me skill, meaning I'd love to be able to talk to Breeze and go, "I want this and this and this, and I want this, this and this and this."
And Breeze would be like, "Sweet, dude, this sounds like it's gonna be dope. However, sit down.
Chad Hohn: is
George B. Thomas: Sit down because I'm about to grill you." And all of a sudden there's like five to seven questions that happen, and then it makes, "Okay, here, based on what you want and based on how you answered, [00:32:00] here's the plan for the thing that I think that you want me to do.
And by the way, I've already checked. I can do seven out of these nine things. These two things you're gonna have to do as the human. Do you want to go?" And, and you go. Because I think with that 10 to 15-minute meeting, and I think with the grill me skill context and then a plan mode after that, man, HubSpot, uh, portals will be crazy, crazy, uh, efficient
Chad Hohn: Yeah. But here, here's the thing that I think is like most people are not gonna research or, like, don't, you know... It's like, I mean, it's a lot to learn all this, and, like, you and I are really excited about all this because, like, it just-- where you could go with it, your mind i- is visionary in I am going to imagine and see where this is going with my brain, right?
And I think the thing is a, a lot of people don't necessarily-- They wanna, like, [00:33:00] live their lives and do their work or whatever. They're not gonna, like, try and think about how to best work with the current limitations of AI, which are shifting every five and a half
George B. Thomas: Oh man, I'm telling you
Chad Hohn: and yeah. And so because of that, it's like until some of that is, like, built in, I mean, like, I feel like Grok Bot is the first thing that really is an agentic harness that is, like, so easy to use.
Like, I g- I showed my realtor friend Grok Bot, and it just blew her mind. And, like, she has, like, this, like, little social media marketing team that's doing stuff. She kinda let it run wild, which was pretty funny, is posting on people's comments.
George B. Thomas: Oh,
Chad Hohn: We had some funny stories about that. But, like, I mean, it's just so easy to use, right?
And, like, more of that needs to happen. Like, so easy to use. I mean, like, people really get intimidated and feel like AI is a black box, but really it's turning into [00:34:00] a coworker at the moment.
George B. Thomas: Yeah. You, you-- without a doubt
Chad Hohn: a coworker where you just say, "Hey, I need you to do whatever," but then we need it to be really doing the second smart questions if you want it to.
Like, hey, maybe there's a setting that, you know, is native to some of the platforms that's like the, the grill me skill, right? Like, when we're doing anything that's substantial, like, you know, point out things that I might be missing, and I'll tell you if it's like I really care about it or not, right? Um, and, and make it easy too for people not to have to type, 'cause a lot of people aren't comfortable using, like, whisper flow or voice communication.
People still wanna type, and they're like, "If I'm typing, I could just do it," right? "If I'm typing, I could just do the thing."
George B. Thomas: Brother, I don't, I don't get that. I, I don't, I don't
Chad Hohn: Yeah, I don't know. People aren't used to just, like, talking to their 'puter though,
you
George B. Thomas: yeah, yeah. Un- until it doesn't, until it doesn't. Like, like [00:35:00] it's funny because I literally was like on multiple calls last week, and I was looking something up and I'd literally hit the browser and I'd be like, "hubspot.com," or I'd be like, you know, uh, whatever client, m-make, uh, boom, I'd say the thing.
And they're like, "Huh?" And I'd be like, "Oh, I'm sorry, I was just putting that in my browser." Like, I was just, I was just bringing up the website. Or like I'll say something, then they'll be like, "Uh, what?" And I'm like, "Oh, never mind, that was, that was for the
Chad Hohn: I was typing. Yeah.
Yeah, yeah
George B. Thomas: and, so like, it, like I don't, I don't understand, um, the fascination with not getting off of something that we've done just because we've done it for like eons.
You know what I mean? Like we've always typed. Um,
Chad Hohn: Yeah. I've always ridden a
George B. Thomas: oh my gosh. Like, a- and so, so I, I gotta be honest with you, [00:36:00] using something like Whisperflow, I don't care if you build your own, I don't care if you use something else, I don't... But
Chad Hohn: You use the built-in one, whatever.
George B. Thomas: my God, it's, it's, it's been so freeing, um-
Chad Hohn: of context I can give an AI assistant faster and to write an email or whatever, or get a draft going, I mean, literally, um, I, I basically almost only exclusively talk to AI assistants these days. And then the, the, the system now that I've built around my workflow is designed to approve a draft where I click a button, and that's where I was going with that, George, is like when it proposes things, you get a single or multi-checkbox user interface or do something different.
'Cause usually it's pretty close, and you could say like, "Do this," and then type in a blurb, and it'll pick it up and you're good, right? Um, I mean that's, that's [00:37:00] how like the AI side of things, right? And I feel like Breeze is gonna be heading down that direction. Like, it's very obvious that the people at HubSpot use HubSpot and their AI assistants at that level, and they're trying to bring that to their HubSpot customers without HubSpot customers really having to leave the platform unless they want to, right?
George B. Thomas: Yeah. Yeah, it, because I think that there's, uh, there's a subsection of HubSpot users that have, uh, for the last couple months realized they have to leave the platform to do some of the things that they wanna do at the rate of speed in which they know it can be done. Um, and, and that is a little bit of a friction or a mind, uh, thing that's happening right now is like, well, if I go over here and I take the time to give API scopes, I can do this in 10 minutes.
Um, if I don't wanna do that nerdy element, I go over here, do it in platform, it's gonna take me 40 minutes. I- is the [00:38:00] nerdy thing worth the 30-minute buyback? And, and I will tell you like, yes, I'm nerdy about AI. Yes, I think, uh, like you as far as visionary, what can we do? What can we build? How far can we go?
Can we ask the question, is it possible? But I also think that one of the reasons I love, uh, AI technology, especially Breeze in HubSpot, is like the time that you can buy back in your day. Now you, you as the human decide what you wanna do with that time, but do you wanna be more creative? Do you wanna be more innovative?
Do you wanna start a passion project? Do you wanna take a nap? Do you wanna like go swim in your pool? Maybe you
Chad Hohn: people just need to take a nap, dude. Like, some people have been working so hard for so long that they really just need to take a nap. Like, and I'm not kidding, like naps are underrated.
George B. Thomas: Yeah. But I, I, I, I like me a good nap. I like me a good nap. Um, I, I will tell you,
Chad Hohn: can do
George B. Thomas: you can do that. You c- you can do-- [00:39:00] Like, for me, it's been very fun to say, "Okay, I'm gonna spend 20 to 30 minutes, I'm gonna set up the context, I'm gonna do the thing, I'm gonna put it in plan mode, but as soon as it gives me the plan and I read through it, I'm gonna hit enter and I know I'm gonna have 30, uh, minutes to an hour.
I'm gonna, I'm gonna go do this thing, and I'm gonna come back in 30 minutes or an hour, and I'm gonna see where we're at, and I'm gonna set up for the next cycle, and then I'm gonna go and come back." And, and so, like, understanding that there is a world that you can be doing work while something is doing work, or you can be doing something you enjoy while something is doing work, but nevertheless, you're still the one doing both the works, 'cause you are the one that set it up to be able to work that way.
And I don't know how many humans are gonna hit Unbound and they're gonna see the new [00:40:00] AI features, they're gonna hear the new talks. I don't know how many people are gonna translate it into this, but this is what I really feel like I wanna tell everybody. There's a new way to work.
Chad Hohn: Yeah
George B. Thomas: And when you realize there's a new way to work, you also have to give your brain time to figure out how does it digest or understand or get comfortable with the fact of the new way to work means that you also have to kinda live and manage and move a little bit differently than you historically did.
We kind of tease this out talking versus typing, but, but also we could tease this out where it's like, uh, intense blocks and relaxation. Intense blocks and relaxation, or intense blocks and whatever it is that you wanna fill it with. Um, okay, so w-we're, we're quickly running out of time. I'll see you, uh, probably Tuesday, uh, afternoon-ish.
I f- I, I [00:41:00] leave here tomorrow morning, fly to Boston, so I'll see you then. Um, talk to me about the one place that you know that you're like-- 'Cause I go back to San Francisco, right? And it was you and your wife, Chris Carroll and his wife, and my, my wife, uh, we're sitting there having dinner, breaking bread.
It was very enjoyable. Um, is, is there one place that you and your wife have talked about because it's like, "It's back in Boston, that means..." Is there one place that you're like, "W-we gotta go there. We gotta have a meal there"? Like, uh, and, and maybe you've already done that. You've been there for a hot minute.
But,
Chad Hohn: Yeah, I've been here since Saturday
George B. Thomas: like talk me through the Chad wants to go to at least this one place, uh, before you leave Boston.
Chad Hohn: Yeah. Well, I mean, depends on if you're a seafood person or not, but if you are and you haven't gotten, like, a lobster roll over here, The Barking Crab is a great place for that. It's, like, [00:42:00] open air. It's on the pier or the river or whatever. Um, you go there, it's like a tent thing, and you gotta stand outside and get in.
There's, like, no reservations. It's great. Um, and it's, like, close enough to walk from the convention center if you walk down toward the water. Um, so that's a great place. I mean, we're gonna go there. We've already went to this delicious little French restaurant and ate in the basement, which is like a, a wine cellar kind of a thing.
And then they made me a meal inside of a cheese wheel. It was the craziest thing. They, like, light some sort of bourbon on fire and then pour it in there and mix it up inside this cheese wheel, so it turns it all cheesy. Oh, it was good.
George B. Thomas: Nice. So, as you head to Unbound, if you're listening to this or if you're not heading to Unbound and you have FOMO of all FOMOs, make sure you check out the HubSpot YouTube channel, check out the socials. People will be posting stuff, people will be creating content. Um, my one thing [00:43:00] is if you're heading there, make, make the journey there as relaxing as possible so that you have the energy to last for the four days that you're gonna be, or three days, h- whenever you get there, that you're gonna be smashing it.
But, uh, Chad, close us out. Like, what's the one thing that people who are heading to Unbound or thinking about focusing on it from home, what's the one thing you wanna tell them?
Chad Hohn: Yeah, uh, be, be intentional about your sessions. Don't not choose any, but don't-- I, I think this is for me every year, don't let the fact that you have a session, even if it's like a booked session, um, limited capacity, like prevent, uh, human encounters from happening. Where you, you stop yourself from getting to have that conversation with somebody where either you could help them or they could help you or, or whatever.
You could-- You really, you know, people connecting, especially like in this world of AI where we're talking to like [00:44:00] our robots all the time, like getting that human connection is great, you know. And it's, uh, super, super good for the soul to get in and connect with the other HubSpot users and, you know, um, yeah, I think that's number one.
You know, be, be intentional, but be flexible.
George B. Thomas: What I hear you saying is take time to be human.
Chad Hohn: Yes
George B. Thomas: and here's the thing, Chad, what's fun is I'm gonna wrap this up, but you know what? We made it through this entire episode of the Hub Heroes podcast, and we didn't even play the intro song. You didn't get to listen to the intro. Uh, but with that said, ladies and gentlemen, as you head to Unbound or you think about what's gonna be changing over the next four or five days in your HubSpot portal and, and how your life is gonna change as well, remember to be a happy, helpful, humble human and do some happy HubSpotting along the way.