The HubHeroes Podcast

George B. Thomas: [00:00:00] Yeah, we need to update with, uh, that with all the un words, without a doubt. Without a doubt.
Chad Hohn: feeling unburdened
George B. Thomas: yeah, so here's the thing though. Uh, uh, last week, last week, we saw a lot of people trying to become the Hub Hero, uh, of their organization there are a ton.
Um, so, so Max, let's start with you. And, uh, I want you to kind of think back amongst the, I think Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, and, uh, you're, you're standing at the booth or maybe you're not standing at the
Max Cohen: No, I was standing at the booth. Y- aim, aim at any point in time during that calendar, and I was standing at the booth.
George B. Thomas: you, you might have walked from here to there.
Uh, you might have went to a party or two. But at any point in time, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, um, talk to me about, Max, maybe one of the most impactful, uh, conversations that you had with a human. And it could be completely not related to HubSpot. It could be related to HubSpot. It [00:01:00] could be related to Event Happily.
Like, but like if there's a conversation just pops in your brain, like what, what is it and what's happening? Like-
Max Cohen: The, the thing that I found like funny like is, and like not to make it all about events, but I will, is like All the conversations or all the problems that I was hearing people having were literally the same exact problems from 10 years ago when I was onboarding people in the marketing hub,
Chad Hohn: Mm-hmm.
Max Cohen: which is like crazy to me.
Um, but also like very validating at the same time, right? Because like we built a lot of what we've built into, into Happly, uh, all from like a j- just like stuff that I had seen over the years and like complaints people had about running events in HubSpot. And like, it's just so funny to me how not only did I feel like every single person that I talked to [00:02:00] said almost the same exact thing to me,
George B. Thomas: Yeah
Max Cohen: but it's all the same stuff I've been hearing for years, like no one's tried to solve it, which I think is like kinda crazy.
Um,
George B. Thomas: this is interesting, but, but, but you're trying to solve it. You- your team is trying to solve the things. You've been hearing this thing for the same 10 years. What's interesting in what you said there is it's like I kept hearing the same thing from everybody. There's a reoccurring theme around that, and Chad, get ready 'cause I'm coming to you here in a hot minute.
But there's a reoccurring theme a- around that because when I did both of my sessions this year, uh, I purposely started out with asking them, "Hey, who feels like they have more tools? Who feels like they use more AI? Who feels like they have more tactics?" And as I'm asking this, I say, "Hey, if I say something and you disagree with it, put your hand down.
Otherwise, keep your hand up." Um, and then at the very end I said, "And who still feels stuck?" And I'm telling you, it was 95% of the room had their hands up, [00:03:00] to which I-- In both sessions, by the way. And I said, um, "Now I want you to look around, because when you get in your office and it's just you, you think it's a you problem.
It's not a you problem. It's like an industry problem. It's like an everybody problem." And so Max, like hearing you say that, I'm like, yeah, man, all of us are in kind of the same weird parallel universe that we feel like it's only us, and we start to doubt ourselves, and we start to wonder if there's a fix, and yet everybody else around us is dealing with the same thing.
So it's, it's, it's an
Chad Hohn: that happens a lot with remote work, right?
George B. Thomas: yeah
Chad Hohn: you're remote in your office, you're in your own little space, whatever. I mean, even if you're, like, the only person managing your HubSpot at a specific organization, because with HubSpot you don't see as much of what happens at, like, Team Blue, where you have, like, a whole org of, like, eight people who deal with it.
You know, it's a little bit hard to get out of your own head sometimes, right?
George B. Thomas: Yep. Yeah, without a doubt. [00:04:00] So Chad, I'm gonna swing over to you for a hot second. And, um, there's one thing I know to be true about Chad and Unbound, and that is if you ever are looking for Chad, it's kinda like Where's Waldo, but where's, where's Chado, right?
Chad Hohn: know where to find
George B. Thomas: where's Ch- where's Chad? Chad is gonna be at the product, uh, booth of some shape or form.
So Chad, when you, uh, think about your journeys through the different product booths and talking to project managers, um, what was the most enlightening or exciting product conversation that you feel maybe you had during the Wednesday, Thursday, Friday journey?
Chad Hohn: I get very, like, feature-oriented and, you know, often, right? Which I, I know more tools is not the solution always. Um, but it is like, okay, I got blockers. I'd like to do X or Y with a new thing. You know, I wanna see if [00:05:00] they've thought about it, and I mean, they always have thought about it usually. Like, more often than not, it's at least a little bit on their roadmap of, yes, that's absolutely something that we're aware of.
You know, I mean, and as we all know, HubSpot is very much a crawl, walk, run, right? They get something out that will serve some people, get more feedback, and the more loud problems are the ones that they go after implementing the next features. But I would just say, like, I mean, with, without, w- I, I think no, zero exceptions,
George B. Thomas: Yeah, yeah
Chad Hohn: every single person that I speak to that is in relation to product or design is, like, so excited to hear your feedback, and, like, they really genuinely love the good, the bad, and the ugly, and shipping stuff to their customers, [00:06:00] and they are shipping at a more and more rapid cadence because they're all improving their internal processes.
And I was talking to some of them about the new AI tools I've been using, and they're like, you know, really excited hearing that. And I'm like, "So my goal is more and more to be able to administrate a portal externally and remotely, uh, without having to dink around in the UI as much," because personally, I know what the UI can do, and I don't need to spend time clicking when I know what I wanna do by describing it conceptually, and they're all extremely receptive to that.
Basically, the goal that they ultimately want to achieve is anything you can do in the UI, you should be able to do with an agent if you're a super admin, right? Um, so there's some things that'll, like, make my quality of life a little bit better. Um, but yeah, just talking to them, they, they all are driving very, very, uh, much toward this world where you [00:07:00] can be a HubSpot admin effectively, um, with a little bit less time in the portal and then validate, okay, what's been built, this new view, this new, you know, report.
Does the data work? Does it pass the sniff test? Right, all that kind of stuff.
George B. Thomas: But was there one thing that you saw that, Chad, you were like, "Hmm, I need to go tinker with that." Or, or even maybe didn't see, but somebody mentioned and you were like, "Yeah, I need to go, I need to go tinker with that."
Chad Hohn: Yeah, it was, uh, I mean, that team- the new HubSpot Work, right? It used to be called Teamwork, now it's Work. It's... Like, if you haven't seen it, and I, I had- I've like a, you know, friend using it that I've been kind of working with a little bit. But, um, it's wild how flexible it is. Now, it is a little bit of a, like, credit piggy.
It really enjoys using them [00:08:00] credits.
George B. Thomas: Yeah
Chad Hohn: Yeah, it's really dipping into that credit pool. But,
Max Cohen: credit pond, yeah
Chad Hohn: yeah. But I actually talked to the Teamwork, the, like, Mr. Teamwork, apparently. I didn't know who it was. I'm like, "Hey, oh, hey." I just, you know,
George B. Thomas: he was
Chad Hohn: am I gonna get API scopes for that?" He was the guy, yeah.
He's like, "Well, we're working on it." And they actually added the ability to, if you... This is unfortunate. You have to, like, disconnect and reconnect your remote Claude connector all the time to get new scopes. Like, even if you turn them on at the admin level, if you have an enterprise portal where you have that level of governance, you still have to go disconnect and reconnect it, even if you're a super admin or whatever.
But anyway, all that to say, you can use Claude to communicate with the Teamwork workboards that get created, which is awesome because, like, it was, uh, basically you have to talk to the agent at all times or, like, dump stuck in- stuff into a Slack channel, and it kind of like ingests from the Teamwork Slack bot.
Uh, but it's, [00:09:00] it's so extensible. You could build it out for any kind of internal work. That agent can actually read the comments which is awesome. Like, because right now, I don't know if anybody knows, but comments are basically invisible to AI assistants in HubSpot activities. Uh, it's like if you put it in a comment, your agent will never know, you know, uh, which is crazy.
But anyway, yeah, gotta, gotta mess with Teamwork or Work, HubSpot Work now. Really check it out. It's very cool
Max Cohen: Can you give me the, can you give me the 10,000 foot view on like what it is? I wasn't even able to venture over there to see it
Chad Hohn: Yeah, yeah. I mean, it's, uh... Imagine like Asana or ClickUp inside of HubSpot,
Max Cohen: Oh, okay
Chad Hohn: and it's like fully decoupled but visible. Like, it can see your whole CRM database, but the architecture is fully decoupled, that it's in its own [00:10:00] separate container where they can make table views, board views, any properties. You just go into plan mode with an agent and you're like, "Hey, I wanna manage this process," blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, and you tell
George B. Thomas: that's the part
Chad Hohn: yeah.
And then it goes into, "Do you wanna build it?" And it's like, "Yeah," brr, and it just like makes these columns, and tables, and views, and whatever. Then you can invite your team to it, and you guys can manage your work. You could even say, "Hey, pick up whenever this happens in the CRM, plop an item on here for internal process stuff."
Imagine like, you know, you don't have any kind of object-based customer onboarding yet. Like, oh, we have an onboarding pipeline or something. Do it in Work. It's gonna be way better because it's way better for your internal team collaboration, and you don't need a CRM admin quite as much to dink around with all the property structure
George B. Thomas: A- and one thing I wanna layer down a yes and to everything Chad just said, but Max, we were sitting there watching the, him do the demo, uh, at one point, [00:11:00] and, and like he typed nothing. It was literally, you know, Whisperflow or the, the tool itself, like he, he was just talking. So when I tell you that it's like ClickUp and Asana, but conversational and then just like really smart on what it's supposed to do based on the things wrapped around it, it's, it's, it's a pretty dope little tool.
Um, again
Max Cohen: is this for building stuff in HubSpot or is it more for like, you know, uh,
George B. Thomas: Little bit of
Max Cohen: customer-facing person could use this instead of like a traditional like task view
Chad Hohn: or something. Yeah
George B. Thomas: Yeah, well it's-- So where the battle is, is do you do a HubSpot project or you do, do you do work? 'Cause those
Chad Hohn: it depends on if any of the work... Right, i- if any of the work
Max Cohen: already going the way of the Dota
George B. Thomas: Well, I don't know if it's going away. I'm just saying they do kind of compete against each other dependent upon how you're gonna use the tool. But like one of the demo items was like a webinar flow, right? So think events, but think about all the things that people have to do [00:12:00] around events. But imagine having like where work actually is...
Well, here's something you guys might think about. Uh, can work be trained on or can you create some type of work template or prompt that is like a HubSpot work ha- event happily boop thing, and all of a sudden they do it and there it is, and now it's here, here's all the steps that they gotta go
Chad Hohn: and here's all your internal processes. Like maybe you want an event get scheduled approval process type thing, uh, but it needs to be managed a little bit externally as if it was in an external system. Totally great for that. Uh, yeah
George B. Thomas: Now, Max, um, one of the questions I wanna ask you, uh, and, uh, it's actually two questions, but I'm gonna ask you the first question 'cause I'm just curious. Um, you should be like Kyle if you don't know, 'cause, um, you g- you should get a clicker. But, um, Max, how many estimated hugs, uh, did you give? I know I think I got, like, three or four of them from you,
Max Cohen: so surprised I didn't get COVID, [00:13:00] honestly.
George B. Thomas: you're not the super spreader this year?
Max Cohen: I'm not the super
Chad Hohn: He's not the what, George?
George B. Thomas: uh, he's not the
Max Cohen: I am the super spreader
George B. Thomas: You're not, you're not that this year. That's great. I love it
Max Cohen: I actually felt great this year. Usually feel terrible, um, like at
George B. Thomas: were on like a two or three-year run of like, "And I'm done with inbound, and I have COVID." Yeah.
Chad Hohn: And I'm dead.
Max Cohen: Yeah. Um, I did get it a couple times. Um, yeah, hug count?
Dude, I don't even,
George B. Thomas: Yeah.
Max Cohen: I don't even know. Uh, hundreds.
Chad Hohn: you give
George B. Thomas: Oh, geez.
Max Cohen: to you at least, I
George B. Thomas: Hey, he remembers that.
Chad Hohn: walked up while he was smashing a dony in his face, a little donut from the donut cart. And he
Max Cohen: Dude, Chris Calaran who flagged us down for donuts. May have been the best donut I've ever had in my life,
Chad Hohn: It was delicious, yes.
Max Cohen: cheek. Yeah
George B. Thomas: were
Chad Hohn: he was on donut [00:14:00] high, high heaven.
Max Cohen: was what? That was day two, right? So I was already destroyed from the day before, and I was just delirious and on a sidewalk, and I was like, "I got one chance to give Chad a little kiss on his cheek, I'm gonna take it."
You know? Yeah.
George B. Thomas: That's funny. So, so Max,
Max Cohen: you, George? What's your hug count?
George B. Thomas: What, what... Um, I didn't, I didn't really do hugs. I didn't do-- Well, I did a few hugs. Don't... Uh, actually now that I think back about it. Um, I usually do the side hug though. I don't go full in j- you know, thing, but I do like a little side hug. I did a lot of fist bumps.
I did some good hand... Well, um, of course I'm gonna hug you. You're coming in like, you know, Jaws.
Max Cohen: Yep. I'ma get you
George B. Thomas: So I'm like, "Yep, I better, I just better hug it up right here." Um, and but so like g- fist bumps, a lot of handshakes, couple hugs, no kisses by the way. I just... That, that, none of that shenanigans happened. Um, but a lot of people, um...
You know, it, it's funny 'cause I think back about, uh, the sessions that I had and, and both [00:15:00] times I made it a point to walk out of my room And just walk down and, like, greet the people, say hi to the people, and, and, uh, yeah, pray, pray for the people, honestly. Like, I pray that you make it in. I'm sorry. Like, I don't know what's going on.
Like, maybe next year we'll get the ballroom. Uh, maybe. We'll see. I'll see what I can do. Um, 'cause both times, guys, it was, like, so many humans. Um, uh, but here's the thing, like, uh, what's fun and where I wanna go with my next question to you guys, I'm gonna, I'm gonna give you a moment that felt really good.
Uh, and it's a moment that felt really good because it was about delighting a human. So I was, I was walking down the line, and I heard this voice, and I recognized this voice. But this voice did not see me walking down the line, 'cause I had gone down and was, like, coming back. Um, and it took me a minute 'cause the, the lines were long for people in, in waiting to, to get in, um, standby, standby lines.
It was nuts. Um, and I heard them talk, [00:16:00] and, uh, yeah, this is for my session. I, I turned-- I heard them talk, so I turned around, and I looked right at them, and I go, "Yeah, I pray you get in too." And, um, this is a pers- They're a client, so they've seen me on camera. They were talking to the person about, "Yeah, this is, like, somebody I work with, and I sure hope I can get in."
And, like, on cue, like, just God had me in the right spot. I was like, "Yeah, I pray you get in too." And she's just, her eyes lit up, and she got all excited. And I, again, side hug. And, uh, you know, I walked away, and I could just hear them chattering about like, "Oh, that's the speaker? And that is..." And it was j- But sh- you know, it was a moment.
It was a moment for them. And so, like, I had several moments where I'm, like, very delighted. Um, I had some moments where there were some tough conversations about Unbound and HubSpot as well too, but some very, uh, good delightion moments. Talk me through, like, something that happened for you during Unbound that you either, A, [00:17:00] saw somebody s- saying something, and you're like, "Ooh, they're very delighted about this thing," or you yourself ran into a situation where, like, this is very delightful.
Which I have one I'll share, other than what I just shared, that was, like, a surprise that then was like, wow, that was actually a really dope moment. So, uh, guys, a moment of delightion or delight at Unbound 2026.
Max Cohen: Shadow will go first
Chad Hohn: Hmm. I mean, I think it's always a delight just to get to really spend time with any person who's interested in learning anything for me. Like, my hobby is learning. And, like, I think it was funny, I was talking to Arun, who is, like, the Revenue Hub PM that they've, that they brought in. I think they brought him in from
George B. Thomas: Oh, okay.
Chad Hohn: last year.
Uh, he came in from, from old team [00:18:00] Blue, and I wa- I met him last year at Unbound, and he was so excited to see me. And I was so pumped to see him and all the stuff they've been cranking out, and like, man, that man will... He's... Like, I've even heard from his team members that he's not just like, "Oh, I'm a PM."
He's like, "I'm in here and doing the work with the people." Like, if it needs done and you can't get to it, but it's important, he'll get it done, like that kind of a coworker. And I was sharing with him some stuff that I've been doing with some new AI tools, and he was, like, blown away and, like, so excited and wants to just, like, reconnect to talk about it, uh, you know, post Inbound or Unbound.
I can't ever get that straight. But, like, it was just a delight because the energy that he had and, like, what he cares for on the product and, like, m- the direction of making it serve everybody's needs. Like, it [00:19:00] was a, a true delight knowing that that caliber of people that have that level of care for what the system can do, uh, to serve the needs of all of its customers are...
It, it's really awesome to see. You know, and I feel like in some spots, maybe that's missing a little bit still or, like, they're trying to find the right person in the right seat for each section or maybe alignment across the hubs. But it was really a delight, uh, to, to speak with Arun and just to get to reconnect and chat for a while.
Like, I mean, that, the conversations are always the most delightful, I think
George B. Thomas: Mm-hmm. Yeah. Max, what about you? Moment of delight
Max Cohen: I mean, the whole thing was, like, generally positive, but the th- like I, I, I'll be honest, I don't think I've, I've ever come away from an INBOUND more excited about the work that I'm doing and the people that I work with.
Chad Hohn: ん、うん。 [00:20:00] Yeah
Max Cohen: show at the booth, I'll be honest with you.
It was, it was really crazy, and it was, like, extremely validating too, if anything else. Like, this is the first year We've, I think, like shown up with like a very extremely real product and weren't like just on the precipice of doing something. Like, I feel like a lot of the times, you know, Happily's really been trying to find itself over the years a lot.
Like, we started building like a bunch of different apps and, you know, I remember being there the first year and it's just like, "Yeah, we kinda... Oh, do you need like any of these like randomly unrelated things?" It was like really
Chad Hohn: did the associations
Max Cohen: with people. Yeah, and like, you know, b- back then, like what is EventHappily today was just like some idea really.
It was all snake oil,
George B. Thomas: Yeah, yeah.
Max Cohen: then like even
George B. Thomas: In the best way possible, of course
Chad Hohn: Right
Max Cohen: And in [00:21:00] the past two years, like, you know, uh, uh, I think the year after that it was like, you know, QuoteHappily was just kind of an idea and, you know, uh, uh, EventHappily was, you know, this kind of like weird, uh, collection of custom objects that like worked together in like a strange way and we were about to do some more stuff.
And then, you know, uh, years after that we were splitting time between QuoteHappily and EventHappily, and then even, even last time, you know, we were like just about to release like a lot of the cool stuff. But this year finally like found who we are. We have a consistent message, like we're just an events tool.
But like all of our cool stuff has been out in the wild and working. And so it was like,
Chad Hohn: Yeah, you got the lead scanner, now you're doing in-person meetings.
Max Cohen: capture was going crazy. We were using our own product and it was working so well, right? Um, but you know, [00:22:00] more so it's just like, I think we captured like just south of like 600 leads or something like that, and we created like a million in pipeline.
It was like really, really crazy. Um, but like, it was so cool to like see all this stuff that I had just written down on paper, like that I had like in a document, like two years ago, actually like all be real and not just like, "Well, we're, well, we're gonna do this. Does this sound good? Will we do it in the future?"
You know what I mean? Like, those conversations were so painful to have. Like to show up with like a real product that was like actually working and we don't have to like say, "Well, this is what it's eventually gonna be," right? And to see the reactions people had on a lot of things that like, you know, I kinda thought were like crazy ideas back then, it was super validating.
And it was like I was super stoked that like we were able to build something as a team that like- People genuinely find useful and do it better than [00:23:00] anyone else, and, uh, like go there and like prove it for three days. And it was sick, honestly. I was like, I was buzzing on my way home, just like more excited for the future than I think I've ever been, like after an Unbound, you know?
Um, and so just the whole thing, man, it was just like really uplifting, uh, and just validating that I'm at the right place. I'm, I'm working with the right people, and we're making something really cool, and that rocks. It, it's a
George B. Thomas: It, it-- I love that I'm, I'm at the right place at the right time with the right humans doing the right thing. Like, if you can find that in life just in general, let alone in business, but business and life, then that, that's an amazing
Max Cohen: highly recommend it. Yeah, it
George B. Thomas: it's... Yeah. I, I, I'll tell you, like... Go ahead, Chad
Chad Hohn: oh, I was just gonna say I have a, like a n- tiny nugget add on 'cause it's adjacent to Max. I- one of the things that delighted me was getting to see [00:24:00] Jonathan at Unbound after like, since he hasn't been there since like 2022 or something. And talking to him when I met him like years ago, back when I was at the construction software company managing their portal, I'm like, "What's this Zebra, Zebra thing?
Is it a zebra?" You
Max Cohen: sieht eine Zebra, ja
Chad Hohn: "Yeah, nobody knows." And just talking to him and hearing about what he's doing and how he's moving the c- success org and the support org and anyway, it was really, really cool just checking in. Oh, dude, he was having a great time.
Max Cohen: Yeah, and e- even he was saying like, "Man, it's so funny. I'm meeting all these people that I've only ever just emailed for the past, like, five years." And I'm like, "Yeah, they exist. They're real."
Chad Hohn: Yeah, they're real humans.
George B. Thomas: So the, the, the humans, uh, side of this is delightful. It's interesting that you guys just dipped into the human side because, uh, for years and years I've said, "Hey, leave, uh, moments," right? Leave moments for the [00:25:00] magic moments in the hallways. And I gotta be honest with you, um, I, I did very few like pre ahead of time scheduled things.
I had one dinner with a client which I knew, uh, we were gonna do, and that was unbelievable. We went to this Mexican restaurant down by the, the bay and it was just, it was so, so waterfront, whatever you wanna call it. It's, it was, it was really good dinner, really great conversation.
Max Cohen: Was it Rosa Mexicana?
George B. Thomas: yeah, brother. Yeah.
Yeah.
Max Cohen: night. How good is that
Chad Hohn: So good
George B. Thomas: it was so good. So but,
Max Cohen: it's so good
George B. Thomas: as good as that was, um, I was standing, uh, with, uh, Kevin Barber and Remington Begg. We were at the speaker party. This is not a flex by the way, but we're at the speaker party, we're talking to some other people and, um, Kevin had somebody, uh, had to cancel for, uh, really good reasons, family reasons.
They had to go actually back home so, you know, [00:26:00] prayers their way. Um, but he's like, "Hey, I've got a couple extra spots for dinner. Do you guys wanna come to dinner?" And, um, just kinda looked at each other like, "Yeah, sure. Why not? Like, so right after Aziz we'll head that way and we'll eat dinner." Well, I can't tell you the name of the place.
I don't remember it. Um, Max, you might know it, I don't know. But real close to Lawn D across the road down by kind of the Aloft, there's this, um, Brazilian steakhouse. And, uh, we went there and we had a meal of all meals. And when I say we, uh, it was really fun because Kevin brought his daughter who is going to school for business.
Uh, so she got a chance to kinda see business people doing business things over dinner. And it was Kevin, it was Remington, it was I, it was Justin Grossi, it was a couple other partners were there as well. And we just sat around and we broke bread together and we talked about [00:27:00] Unbound, we talked about HubSpot, we talked about businesses, we talked about our dreams and our grievances.
And, you know, I walked away from that and I was very delighted in just having this surprise moment With humans who care tremendously about, uh, where they are in life, uh, what they do as a business. Um, but more importantly, the conversation that we kept circling a-around to was the passion, uh, for the people, the humans that they do it for.
Um, and, and so many times the, the takeaway here is businesses will just do business to do business, and they won't do business because they care. And I think there's a level of humans inside of the Unbound/Inbound/HubSpot ecosystem that just generally care. All right. So Max, I know that you maybe didn't get to see too many sessions.
Max Cohen: Dude, I, I need to at some [00:28:00] point figure out how I can, like, go and actually experience Inbound a little bit instead of just sitting in... I, I didn't leave that patch of concrete
George B. Thomas: Yeah. So,
Max Cohen: I... And when I say I didn't go to a single session, I didn't see a single key- I didn't sit, step foot in the keynote area
George B. Thomas: So, so I'm gonna ask this question d- your way here in a minute differently. Um, but Chad, we'll close this out. Uh, I'm gonna ask you, I'll share... Oh, I'll ask you, I'll ask Max in a sideways way, and then I'll, uh, share my thoughts, and we'll get the heck out of here and get people back to their regularly scheduled days.
Uh, Chad, you went and saw some sessions, a few here and there. Um, top number one session where you're like, "Man, I'm glad I made time to be in this room."
Chad Hohn: I think that would have to be... I, I did this one session on, it was like basically, you know, [00:29:00] doing G- GTM, 'cause like my title at Rad AI is GTM systems manager. So like I'm looking at how to like build more or less like agentic GTM, right? Is the idea. Um, like how do I do GTM, like AI powered human in the loop?
More, much like your marketing, five-layer marketing. And funny enough, this, uh, GTM session that was like, you know, uh, it was like five layers, and there was a human in the front and a human at the end believe it or not. Yeah, but it was GTM, and it was s- different than, than what you teach for marketing. But, um, yeah, it's, um I, I think it was, was interesting, uh, just because of the qual- like talking about like, all right, well, we're trying to find people who meet the ICP and like what are practical ways to do that while using AI assistance, and I've kind of extrapolated that into some [00:30:00] potential uses in different platforms and leveraging HubSpot.
So I, I, it's... That was a really great, "Hey, this is like an engine that you can build, like a framework that you can put in place where you extract what it is that any given business is doing, and get their GTM engine spooled up in an AI-assisted human-powered way that, that finds their clients and, you know, shares value and puts it in front of, uh, in front of reps, you know, with, with, uh, the ability to connect it, uh, uh, in a good way."
Um, yeah, and it's like a little bit of the human in the front, and then brings it up to, you know, humans on, on the backside. Uh, and approvals, of course, for like emails until you're really sure that it's working well. Um, so there's like a middle kind of tertiary human gate, if you will, uh, [00:31:00] where, hey, let's like make sure we're not sending slop out there.
'Cause like I think one of the insightful things, and I funny enough, I'm pretty sure at Dreamforce they showed almost the same exact slide that HubSpot did, which is, uh, you know, AI with the wrong context is worse than no AI.
George B. Thomas: Yep.
Chad Hohn: Right? And like, it was literally like the same slide that Yamini showed I think in her opening keynote, which was pretty crazy, um, before the, the fabled scatter plot.
George B. Thomas: Yeah. Ooh, yeah
Chad Hohn: was a really great session. Um, it was...
George B. Thomas: Oh, that's a whole nother
Chad Hohn: has, yeah, that's a whole nother
George B. Thomas: I have feelings.
Chad Hohn: I like when George has feelings
George B. Thomas: so Max, um, was there a session that you heard people talking about that they were like, "Oh my gosh, they were dope"?
Max Cohen: I don't know. This is gonna feel very self-aggrandizing. The, uh, the, the... It w- it was funny. Dax [00:32:00] gave a session
George B. Thomas: Yep.
Max Cohen: on, like, how to show up, uh, at, I don't know, I, I, I don't even know what the session was about, to be honest with you. But what was crazy is we had a giant influx of people at the booth afterwards, which was, which was crazy.
I don't know what that man said, but it brought a bunch of people to the booth after, and, like, I heard it was good. He, he
Chad Hohn: Yeah, he's,
Max Cohen: he definitely has juice, that is for sure. He has some form of juice. Um, and, and it is definitely juice. Um, but yeah. I mean, I, I don't know. I, I, I'm, I, I, I re- I really need to figure out how I can go to these things and not just have it be, how do I white-knuckle it at the booth the entire time?
And I don't know what the answer is.
George B. Thomas: you gotta come up with a game plan for next
Max Cohen: I do. I do. And, and you know what? I think it's kinda on me, [00:33:00] because, like,
George B. Thomas: Oh yeah
Max Cohen: my game plan, as I said weeks leading up to it, is I'm gonna sit there and I'm gonna have to have the same conversation 150
Chad Hohn: Yeah. You mentally
Max Cohen: exactly what I ended up doing, right? Yeah.
George B. Thomas: Yeah. So mentally prepare yourself for like times to go do stuff. Like, so here's the thing. One of the things I miss about, uh, Inbound historically was I love the way that Brian Halligan and Dharmesh would just play, uh, a fine wine and a steak, uh, on stage. It just felt right. And, um, I even tried to go to the Dharmesh and Brian Halligan fireside chat that was on the thing, but that got changed last minute.
So honestly, my, my favorite session, which I didn't think it would be 'cause I'm not necessarily just a huge fan of this human just because I have competing teams that I watch with this human. But I will say to watch Brian Halligan and, [00:34:00] um Like, I, I can't imagine being Brian and walking out on stage at the same time as Tom Brady, and then sitting down in the seats with Tom Brady, and then interviewing Tom Brady.
And, and here's the thing. So I think Brian did an amazing job just like-- 'cause I would've been like probably losing my ish, like, "Ugh, my God, this guy is like superhuman." But, but man, I think that Tom did to me what many years ago, um, happened where I thought, "This ain't gonna have nothing to do with me.
This ain't gonna have nothing to do with business." And, um, and man, his talk was good. And what's funny is even when I was in the airport and I like am sitting there and I hear people chattering about, "Oh yeah, [00:35:00] it's not what I expected. He was really good." And what's funny is a lot of those people that are chattering, I'm not necessarily a fan of the guy, but dang gone.
Like, and that was the, the tone. And here's, here's the reason I bring that up is, one, um, you don't have to be a fan of somebody to get value out of them. And you know what? People don't have to love you
Chad Hohn: Угу.
George B. Thomas: to give value. A-and so to sit and watch him, uh, do his thing and tell his story and really understand like never before the struggle that he went through to get to where he is and who he became, um, it was just very inspirational.
And so I would say to all the listeners, uh, you're gonna have struggles like Max trying to figure out how not to say the same thing, uh, for every INBOUND from here to eternity and actually changing things up. Uh, you might have struggles like Chad, where you just can't get away from the product booth and actually go look at something else at INBOUND.[00:36:00]
Uh, you may have struggles like me, where you're just like, you can't fit it all in and it's too big and you're trying to mentally... But you know what? You can make it through the struggles, and you can become your own version of a hub hero, a superhuman,
Max Cohen: clear, you do have to be a fan of Tom Brady 'cause he's the GOAT. And yeah,
George B. Thomas: Max is gonna say you have to be a fan of
Max Cohen: resident New Englander here.
George B. Thomas: Yeah. You know what they have to do, Max? They have to be a happy, helpful, humble human
Max Cohen: that would've been a great time
George B. Thomas: do some happy hub spotting
Chad Hohn: Yeah, that would've been amazing. up the intro we last, last week
George B. Thomas: make it up. Anyway, ladies and gentlemen, be a happy, helpful, humble human and do some happy hub spotting along the way, and we'll see you next week