The Evolution of HubSpot, a Fireside Chat with Kyle Jepson + George B. Thomas
Do you live in a world filled with corporate data? Are you plagued by siloed departments? Are your lackluster growth strategies demolishing your chances for success? Are you held captive by the evil menace Lord Lack? Lack of time, lack of strategy, and lack of the most important and powerful tool in your superhero tool belt, knowledge.
Intro:Never fear, hub heroes. Get ready to don your cape and mask, move into action, and become the hub hero your organization needs. Tune in each week to join the league of extraordinary inbound heroes as we help you educate, empower, and execute. Hub Heroes, it's time to unite and activate your powers. Before we begin, we need to disclose that Devin is currently employed by HubSpot at the time of this episode's recording.
Intro:This podcast is in no way affiliated with or produced by HubSpot, and the thoughts and opinions expressed by Devin during the show are that of his own and in no way represent those of his employer.
George B. Thomas:Which, by the way, let's just replace Devin with Kyle so that Legalese knows that Kyle works at HubSpot and that he, believe it or not, has his own thoughts. Kyle, you have your own thoughts today. Right?
Kyle Jepson:Yes. But today maybe today, I will just play the part of Devin.
George B. Thomas:There you go.
Kyle Jepson:And,
Liz Moorhead:I love that. Well, George, you know what? I have some remarks to lead off this incredible discussion we're about to have today.
Kyle Jepson:Uh-oh.
Liz Moorhead:No. No. No.
George B. Thomas:Okay.
Liz Moorhead:Maybe you should be scared. No. I'm just kidding. George.
George B. Thomas:I I usually am.
Liz Moorhead:Thank you. That's, like, the nicest thing anybody has ever said to me. Thank you. No. But we're here, obviously.
Liz Moorhead:We've got Kyle here from HubSpot. George, I feel I don't feel like it's appropriate for me to introduce this guy. You two go way back. Like, take us through who's here today. What's going on?
George B. Thomas:I'm here.
Kyle Jepson:Actually, I know I'm I'm breaking the show order here, but I'm pretty sure I'm
Liz Moorhead:a mentor. That's right. The Annapolis hug in, like, 2016. Liz was at,
Kyle Jepson:yeah, the very first hug I ever spoke at. I was a brand new HubSpot Academy professor, and she organized it. She was there, and I was like this nervous.
Liz Moorhead:I don't know what I'm gonna say. But talk about the CRM, and it's brand new.
Kyle Jepson:I knew you went. And so yeah.
George B. Thomas:Wow. I don't know if I should be happy for Liz or jealous for myself.
Liz Moorhead:You can be jealous and then tell me about it in great detail.
George B. Thomas:I'll have to tell you
Liz Moorhead:after the show's over in in great detail.
George B. Thomas:But that's amazing. Like so here's here's the fun part about this, though. Like, Kyle, we've had an interesting past as far as, like, content creation. We've done multiple interviews. Kyle is the man, the myth, the legend when it comes to, creating HubSpot updates on the fly, and the the orange hat is freaking amazing.
George B. Thomas:Like, it should probably have its own MC when it enters the room. Listen. Listen. What episode are we actually on this week? Is it, like, eighty nine or nine.
George B. Thomas:Nine or eight eighty nine or ninety. And Kyle was literally on the show back on episode 12 where he's on
Liz Moorhead:the even on here yet.
George B. Thomas:No. No. Yeah. So see, like, he was on the podcast before. You were on the pod I'm not so jealous anymore.
George B. Thomas:So and and he talked about why go HubSpot sales hub. And so, like, when you think of somebody that is, HubSpot evangelist, literally his title, by the way, somebody who loves to help humans, that's Kyle Jepsen, which by the way, one of the most amazing and I'm super excited for this year too. One of the most amazing inbound sessions last year that I went to was Kyle's session where he was flying all over the place and just being Kyle, in his deck, out of his deck, showing HubSpot. So, like, it it is a pleasure to be sitting here with another true HubSpot nerd, like myself. So I'm I'm excited, Kyle, for the conversation we're gonna be able to have today.
Kyle Jepson:Yeah. I'm excited to be here too. And, I mean, while we're talking about firsts, I the first time I ever met you, George, Liz, the first time I ever met George.
Liz Moorhead:You're probably not her husband or her best friend at that point.
Kyle Jepson:He he
Liz Moorhead:Sleepovers and everything.
Kyle Jepson:Yeah. He he Oh, I That was
Liz Moorhead:it. No. That's not Get canceled. Like, with pizza,
Kyle Jepson:like, with your middle school. George came to the HubSpot offices and wanted to interview HubSpot Academy people. And Mark Killens, who had founded the HubSpot Academy, was like, George Thomas is coming. He's gonna record interviews with us. And we had, like, this fancy two camera setup.
Kyle Jepson:So there's, like, a cam and b cam on George and on the first. And each HubSpot Academy professor, there's only, like, five of us then, came in one at a time and sat down and got interviewed by George. I had no idea who he was. I was just like, George. Okay.
Kyle Jepson:Alright. And I sat down, and we just had so much fun. Yeah. But honest yeah. So, I think I think it's it's appropriate that our relationship started with the creation of some content.
George B. Thomas:Yes. Yes. Without a doubt. I love it. Content creators and, brothers in HubSpot love.
Liz Moorhead:Here, the master of mine behind this little fireside chat today because we need to talk about how this came together. So, normally, George and I are very strategic. What do we wanna be talking about? What do we do that? This actually happened because I ambushed both of you on a LinkedIn thread.
Liz Moorhead:You two chuckleheads were going back and forth, talking about something smart, and I'm sitting there going, I'm the hub heroes strategist here. What what are you two talking about? What's going on here? How you doing, fellow kids? Have you heard about this podcast thing we got going on here?
Liz Moorhead:Do you wanna come and talk to me? And by do you want to? Will you? Yes? Fantastic.
Liz Moorhead:Because we're having a really important conversation today. And there's a reason why I wanted to interview the both of you. Because what's for our listeners at home, you know, typically, when we have, typically, when we have guests on, it's a little bit like, if a really friendly firing squad where the hub heroes are peppering our guests with questions. But in this case, I brought these two HubSpot geniuses together so I could pepper them with questions. Right?
Liz Moorhead:Because on one end of the spectrum, you have Kyle. Right? You you know, your introduction speaks for itself. You are an evangelist for the platform. People look to you as one of the top internal educators from HubSpot, especially as the platform has become much more diverse and complex.
Liz Moorhead:Like, at my first inbound, we were still like, but what are we going to? We have email marketing and blogging in one place? What? And now it's like, I'm sorry. Is I sneezed.
Liz Moorhead:Is there a new hub? Oh, I just I threw my like like Yes. There's so much going on. And then on the other end of the spectrum, we have you, George. You have been you know, Dan Tyre has called you inbound in human form, but you've almost kind of been, like, a man of the people, so to speak, from the inbound ecosystem.
Liz Moorhead:Right? So we have the internal person here from HubSpot, and we have our man of the people who has been watching HubSpot evolve for over a decade.
George B. Thomas:Yeah. Twelve years now, which is crazy.
Liz Moorhead:Don't look a day over 75. So proud of you.
George B. Thomas:Thanks. That's why that's why I decided I should keep shaving because as soon as I grow the beard, I look like 92.
Kyle Jepson:So while we're talking about age, I I got a Slack just today from a a CSM, I think, here at HubSpot, someone on our customer facing teams. I was like, hey. I got this message from a customer. Do you think this is you? And, it it was like, hey.
Kyle Jepson:Can you get me in contact with the guy? He's like he does all the weekly meetup things. He's got short gray hair. Do you know the one I'm talking about? It's like, say, no.
Liz Moorhead:Is that
Kyle Jepson:is that for me, I guess?
George B. Thomas:Oh, man. Yep. See my beard, it's got gray, and it's like, nope. Let's just keep it shaved. And I wear a hat, so it I'd be the guy with that hat.
Kyle Jepson:Because it's it's my sideburns that have gone white. So where when I wear my orange hat, probably all you can see is the white. You can see of just some some old man.
George B. Thomas:The joys of getting older. I'll tell you. I'd like to tell you colic gets better, but, you know
Liz Moorhead:Well, before I ship you both off to the home, can I ask you some questions?
Kyle Jepson:Yeah. Fantastic. So
Liz Moorhead:we're the reason why I have gathered you two under duress here today is I want to have a conversation that we're going to say is for everybody else at home, but really it's for me. I have questions. Right? We've been watching over the past few years, but in in many ways in rapid acceleration now over the past six to nine months, HubSpot's scope and depth is rapidly expanding. Right?
Liz Moorhead:And we have we also have this language and positioning now. Right? It's it's a customer platform, which for me, the word nerd and the messaging person, like, I don't just do content strategy. I do brand messaging. Like, that was a purposeful shift.
Liz Moorhead:I see you. Right? And so I wanted to have a conversation with both of you for our listeners at home because we talk a lot on the show about mindsets. Right? And if you're gonna be using HubSpot effectively now and into the future, you have to understand that how you look at HubSpot now should shift.
Liz Moorhead:But I'm not sure that conversation is one that's really particularly being had. So today, my goal is really to have a conversation with both of you, which which is to acknowledge what changes have occurred, the changes are and why they've happened and what they really mean, and how they should be influencing the people at home who are listening to this, whether they're just day to day users or the big decision makers who are in charge of making these decisions. Like, there's a lot of change happening really fast within a tool that we all rely on every day. So I'm gonna ask if you're game for this, but the only answer I will accept is yes.
Kyle Jepson:I guess I'll say
George B. Thomas:yes then.
Kyle Jepson:Compliance. Of the above. Yeah. There you go.
Liz Moorhead:It's beautiful. Isn't it, friends? Alright. You know what? Let's start we're gonna start with you, Kyle.
Liz Moorhead:So we've seen a lot of changes in the HubSpot platform over the past couple of years. Again, like I said, how HubSpot talks about itself, as well as the expansion of services. But I want us to take a step from from talking about this nitty gritty, getting into the details of, like, what's the new hub? Is it a CMS still? Like, all and said, what do these changes and expansions mean in terms of what HubSpot is seeking to become?
Kyle Jepson:Yeah. So it's it's interesting. I love this question. I love answering this question because I this is the journey I've been on with HubSpot. Right?
Kyle Jepson:When I joined the company almost ten years ago, they had just made the leap from having just marketing tools to having a little free CRM and a couple of sales tools on top of it, which was a huge, huge leap for us. Right? And there are still people trying to catch up. Some people still think HubSpot is still just marketing somehow. I don't know.
Kyle Jepson:But what we I was on the support team that was supporting these new sales sales tools. So I was with the product team a lot that built them. And the reason for that decision was we had these customers. We were trying to be the best marketing tools in the world at for the small and midsize businesses, and we were shocked to learn the number one CRM for small and midsize businesses was Microsoft Excel and Google Spreadsheets. Right?
Kyle Jepson:Like, people didn't have a CRM at all, period. Nothing. And so we wanted to give them something better than that. Right? We already were all your marketing data is coming into HubSpot.
Kyle Jepson:We know all the people, so why don't we just give you a place to store that and to do your sales process off of it? So we did it. Great. Now we're gonna own marketing and sales for small and midsize businesses. But it's an incomplete story.
Kyle Jepson:Right? What happens after the sale closes? What how are you servicing your customers? Well, we better solve that too. Now we are owning the front office for small and midsize businesses.
Kyle Jepson:Right? Marketing, sales, service. That's it. That's the whole story. That's everything.
Kyle Jepson:Right? Well, no. There's lots of operational things that need to happen. And now, like, we're thinking about commerce sorts of things. And as we look at the definition of small and mid sized businesses and as we wanna help you with your growth goals, we don't want you to outgrow HubSpot.
Kyle Jepson:So we keep nudging up that definition of what mid market means because it turns out mid market is vast. And there's a big difference in the needs of a company that has 1,500 or 2,000 employees versus the one that has five. Right? And so if we're really gonna meet those needs, man, we gotta go deep on data. We gotta go deep on integrations.
Kyle Jepson:We gotta go we gotta have commerce. We gotta have all this stuff. And so I I think the story of HubSpot, the desire, has never really changed. We love small and mid sized businesses. I don't ever foresee a day no matter how how we define mid market.
Kyle Jepson:We're never gonna want, like, Boeing as a customer. Right? Like, other other CRM companies can keep those. We really wanna help the small and midsize businesses succeed. We wanna do that by enabling their customer facing teams to succeed, but we will go as deep and broad as we have to to fulfill that mission.
Kyle Jepson:And, it happens incrementally. Right? And I don't know five, ten years from now how many hubs there will be, what additional things we'll do. But as our com customers continue to tell us HubSpot, you're doing great. You're enabling us through all these things, but what we really need is this thing.
Kyle Jepson:Or, like, man, you've got a gap here. Like, oh, we have this really nasty integration with this system over there. We're gonna continue to expand and evolve and and open and and and become flexible, so that we can we can plug all those gaps and and help these businesses grow.
George B. Thomas:You know, it Liz, it's it's funny to hear Kyle talk because I too have been on this journey. And what's interesting is I go back to and I I believe it was 2012, the first inbound that I was at. It might have been 2013. But I remember Damesh talking about the franken system. And back in the day, how you had to really kind of take things and combine them together, and you almost had to be a little bit, like, part wizard, part developer, part, like, business strategist.
George B. Thomas:And so immediately in my mind, when when HubSpot, even back then, was talking about marketing, I was like, oh, there's there's this there's this feeling that we're trying to get it all in one place instead of having to build this franking system. And I remember what Kyle was talking about is, like, the little set of sales tools because I don't know how many listeners will remember when it was Sidekick. That was literally the name was Sidekick to these, like, set of tools that you could use, and and, obviously, we've grown from that. And but it was like, oh, so now it's, like, not really all in one place on marketing, but it's now it's becoming sales. And like Kyle said, service and operations.
George B. Thomas:And and so the word that I think HubSpot has always been trying to go after is this word that is holistic. It's a place where you can run your entire business. It's a place where all of your team members can be efficient. It's a place where data and integrity and hygiene and customer experience and user experience and buyers' journeys can happen. And so when you when I think about HubSpot in this journey, and I've preached this from the mountaintops, especially in the super admin training that we do, sometimes I feel like HubSpot is headed in the right direction, but we've hubbed ourself to death.
George B. Thomas:And so the thing that I love about the fact that the messaging was changing, going back to kind of your question of customer platform, is it allows us to have less of a per hub conversation and more of a holistic customer platform with sets of tools that anybody from your organization could use. Anybody can use templates. Anybody can use snippets. Everybody should be using automation. Everybody can get augmented from the AI features.
George B. Thomas:Right? So that when I think about the journey, it's from this, like, independent conversation of frankensystems to we've created, like, marketing sales, service, operations, commerce, and who knows whatever section we add in in the near future. Heaven. Like, here's your business, Nirvana. Enjoy.
George B. Thomas:Sign up. Use the pieces you need. Like, that's what
Kyle Jepson:my brand
Liz Moorhead:tomorrow, go to HubSpot.com and say, here's your business, Nirvana. George, you need to charge them.
George B. Thomas:I know. Right?
Kyle Jepson:But on on that on that topic of frankincense systems too, something that was so unique, so groundbreaking when when HubSpot made that shift and built a little free CRM to go with their marketing tools, as a support rep for that system, all the time people would ask me, what's the integration like between the marketing contacts database and the CRM? And, there there's no integration. Right? It is it is the same database, just accessed through two different interfaces. And that is sort of wild in a world where huge enterprise systems are typically built through acquisition, and you have a lot of different systems that are integrated, sometimes well, sometimes poorly.
Kyle Jepson:HubSpot and to get to Nick's question, how does Kyle define the customer platform? I think the reason customer platform is the right word is because, yes, we have a CRM, a smart CRM, down at the foundation of this. But if you think about the different hubs, whether it's Sales Hub or Marketing Hub or whichever one you wanna choose, if you try to imagine that hub separated from the CRM, it doesn't make any sense. Like, it it it's unclear what you would even have. Right?
Kyle Jepson:They are all built on that unified unified set of databases for your contacts, companies, deals, tickets, custom objects, whatever. The features are built on top of that, and so it really is just a single platform. And, yeah, you're turning different tools on and off, and you might interface with those databases in different ways. But there's no there is no integration. There is no no chewing gum and bailing wire holding it together.
Kyle Jepson:Right? It's all a single piece, and that's that's pretty cool.
George B. Thomas:And I I love this because and I wanna double click on the listeners to pay attention to the fact that you said smart CRM. And by the way too that you've mentioned CRM a couple times because that is the foundational piece. And I believe that we're gonna be talking on the, hug that we've created around customer platform about smart CRM. So listeners, if you wanna dive into that a little bit more, make sure that you check out the hug, get registered. We've got a good amount of people that are already registered.
George B. Thomas:But speaking of that, one of the things that I think is very interesting around CRM is kind of the way that that might even be changing when you start to talk about a smart CRM. And earlier today, a a good buddy of mine, Chris Carolyn, who we do the hug together for the, for the customer platform hug, he literally messaged me, and he said something along the lines of, like, what if CRM wasn't customer relationship manager? What if it was communication and relationship manager or management? And I was like, dude, I would heart the heck out of that because it does come down to having the smart data. It does have, come down to having the smart segmentation to have the smart communication to actually provide the smart experience that the modern buyer wants.
George B. Thomas:Like, no not even once. They need it. Because if they don't find it, they're gonna hit the back button and go somewhere else. So just everybody that's listening, pay attention to the terms customer platform, pay attention moving forward to smart CRM, and be willing to, like, identify what those actually mean for you and your organization.
Liz Moorhead:So I wanna actually keep you on the mic here for a minute, George. We've heard a lot from Kyle about, you know, where the story of HubSpot started, how it's evolved, and from the inside, why. But now I'd like to hear from you, from the outsider perspective. Right? Our our inbound everyman, our man of the people.
Liz Moorhead:What is no longer true about HubSpot today for you?
George B. Thomas:Yeah. I I I think a couple things, and Kyle was kinda joking, not joking when he said that there are still humans. There are still Oh, yeah. Humans on this planet that believe HubSpot is still about just marketing. I'm like, you're you're killing me.
George B. Thomas:The other thing, though, that that I think is interesting because there's this whole other, class of people that have historically tried HubSpot, but back in the day went away and still believe that HubSpot is HubSpot. Heck. HubSpot isn't HubSpot that it was six months ago. So, like, you gotta realize that HubSpot is ever evolving, ever changing. And so one of the things that is a belief out there is that it has inefficiencies or things that you can't do because you once couldn't do them, but now you can.
George B. Thomas:Like, the the mass amount of things that once were impossible, that now are possible in HubSpot. Like, if you're happen to be listening to this and you're not using HubSpot right now and and it's because, hey. We've been there, done that, tried that. I would say to you, it's probably time to come back to the watering trough and see what's actual, possible for the things that we're so, like, it is about marketing. It is about sales.
George B. Thomas:It is about rev ops. It is about service. It is about commerce. And then it is about whatever you want to add from the marketplace and whatever you wanna add. By the way, I should mention we content hub.
George B. Thomas:We've said hub several times. We didn't even bring up content hub. It is about podcasting. It is about, embeds. It is about resource libraries.
George B. Thomas:It is about a CMS. Like so there's just so much that you can do that this historical mindset of it having these, like, limitations, no more. No more because, like, I can't think of anything that is a massive piece that a business would need that HubSpot probably cannot achieve at this point in time.
Liz Moorhead:Kyle
Kyle Jepson:yeah. And if I if I if I can speak
Liz Moorhead:That was literally what I was gonna turn to you and say, well, so what do you think, Kyle?
Kyle Jepson:I yeah. So I I mean, it pains me. It drives me crazy that nine years in as a HubSpot employee that people still, I think a fair number of people still think of us as a marketing automation platform primarily. And I'm always pushing against that, but I don't want to, in my efforts to do that, lose the fact that HubSpot has incredible marketing tools.
Liz Moorhead:I'm a fan.
Kyle Jepson:And I you know, as the guy who is always talking about and and evangelizing and sharing and and packaging up, product updates in various ways, I am blown away at the level of innovation going on in Marketing Hub. If if any hub had a right to let rest on its laurels and say we've we've, achieved maturation and now, you know, we're gonna focus you know, Marketing Hub could do it, and they're not. If anything, Marketing Hub is continuing to accelerate. And, as I as as I see what's coming out and as I hear what's what's coming still, I'll I am just amazed that that Marketing Hub has not tapped out HubSpot innovation yet, which I think is a very optimistic story for the all these other hubs. Right?
Kyle Jepson:Like, that still are a few years behind Marketing Hub. I HubSpot's ability to continue to find new ways to innovate and do new things is really exciting. And so, yes, to most of the world, anyone who is, like, not a HubSpot user who is shocked to hear we have something that's not marketing tools, you gotta come on. Get with it. Like, you're way behind.
Kyle Jepson:But to everyone within, the HubSpot ecosystem who knows that, I I would say, Marketing Hub in a lot of ways is still a a young product. It's got a long exciting life ahead of it. We are nowhere near tapped out on innovation in that product, which to me is just wild. I I can scarcely believe how all the different ways HubSpot can do just find new ways to to approach things, which, which is is what makes HubSpot HubSpot. Right?
Kyle Jepson:And I think HubSpot's gonna keep being HubSpot for a very long time.
George B. Thomas:Yeah. I I hope so. I pray so. I want HubSpot to be HubSpot till I'm no longer, like, able to use HubSpot.
Liz Moorhead:And even then, you'll find a way to automate you'll find a way to automate the metamuse, so I believe in you. I I
George B. Thomas:I'm gonna automate from heaven, ladies and gentlemen. So here here's the thing. I wanna double click on what Kyle's talking about because, by the way, the the date of this recording is July 19. K? So from July 19 to July 9, there has been 10 updates to just the marketing hub, enterprise pro, and starter package.
George B. Thomas:There's also, since July 9, '4 new betas that you could request to be part of. So the fact that in ten days, there's 10 updates and four betas shows you that even the one that Kyle said could rest on their laurels is still pushing the envelope to be the best world class marketing tool that you could, use moving forward.
Kyle Jepson:And, I mean, it's July. Right? This is HubSpot's quiet time.
George B. Thomas:Yeah.
Kyle Jepson:We're we're we're we're busy polishing all the things we're gonna announce What are
Liz Moorhead:they, Kyle?
Kyle Jepson:Over. Right? Like
Liz Moorhead:No one's here. No one's here. It's just you and me, buddy.
George B. Thomas:See, this is why we get canceled. We get canceled because you ask questions like that.
Liz Moorhead:A good investigative journalist. Continue, Kyle. I I I am not
Kyle Jepson:I don't know a lot of things about, inbound, updates, honestly. I don't know if I'm trusted to keep a secret. But I'm just saying, historically, looking at, you know, the the ebb and flow, the seasonality of it, HubSpot am I still here? Yeah.
Liz Moorhead:No. You're here. Am I frozen?
George B. Thomas:Nah. You're still here. You're here.
Kyle Jepson:My screen froze. HubSpot launches stuff at inbound. Right? And we we kinda build our whole annual production calendar around that big release. And so what you're seeing now are just like the the little things that were not on the top priority road map that, various, engineering teams were able to build and and ship themselves, but you're gonna see a sudden just damn burst of, updates in September as you do every year.
Kyle Jepson:I can't wait. If in the July right? And the July, the entire company took a vacation. So, you know, I if in the first, what, five or six days of July Yeah. We we are seeing all these releases and betas.
Kyle Jepson:That's that's that's the low watermark. Right? HubSpot You know? HubSpot is
Liz Moorhead:is I'm gonna say doing my What George has already heard me say once today at a client meeting earlier, which is like, I'm having that feeling of when I wake up in the morning and I'm trying to find coffee and consciousness. And it's like 6AM, and I get an an alert that my best friend, Jesse Lee, has completed a sixty minute high and high intensity interval training workout. It's like, alright. So you went on a whole week vacation, and you're just rolling out betas, and this is just your slow time. And it's just it's fine.
Liz Moorhead:It's fine. You know? It's fine. I'll just I'll just show myself out. I'll just show myself out.
Liz Moorhead:Alright. So I have a quick question here, though. Because we've talked a bit about what it is, what it isn't, how sometimes we just kind of want to, you know, sink into the floor and become one with the carpet and no longer feel feelings when we hear people just refer to it as marketing. So how should folks be thinking about HubSpot? And I'd like us to tackle it from two different directions unless the answer is the same.
Liz Moorhead:The decision maker who's sitting there making business decisions that may or may not include HubSpot and the people who are in the tool every single day. What's shifted about how they should be looking at this? I'm gonna call on someone. I will do
George B. Thomas:I I can go. I I can go, and then Kyle can round it up. So it's funny because, as you're asking that question, two words came to my brain. For the business owners, the word enablement came to my brain, and I'll get to that. When you then mentioned the people who are actually working in the tool, the word efficiency came to my brain.
George B. Thomas:So if I'm a boss, an owner of a company, which, by the way, I am, when I think of HubSpot, I think of being able to give my team the best tools possible to do the best job that they can And understanding that sometimes I'm gonna be around to help, and sometimes I'm not. But I know if I give them HubSpot, not only am I giving them the best tools, but I'm giving them a complete support system that they can tap into to help them do the best that they can do as well. So I'm literally enabling my marketing team, my sales team, my service team to do this one important thing that I am so focused on as a business owner, and that is to create the
Intro:humans,
George B. Thomas:the best user experience that they can have across the entire journey. I want them to be delighted, excited, and talk about everything that has happened as the business owner. Now when I think about this from somebody who is in HubSpot every day, and especially I go back to, like, the super admin training that I'm doing and the super admins that are in there day in, day out trying to, like, help others and help themselves with HubSpot. It's about efficiency. It's having the tools like automation that save you a metric butt ton of time.
George B. Thomas:It's like having tools like snippets and templates that you don't have to rinse and repeat and do the same thing over and over and over and over again because you can create these processes inside of HubSpot that make your life more efficient. And when I go to the employee side of this, it's because I would hope that you could spend more time with your family or golf, whichever you love most. Like, just go do the thing that you love because you've been able to be efficient at your job with the tools that we're providing to enable you to have a great day and our customers to have a great day. That's where my brain goes as far as what you're asking, Liz.
Kyle Jepson:And I would say, first of all, everything George said is true. But if you're suspicious, if you're like, George, you know, he's biased in Hubs go check the review sites. Right? We're halfway through 2024. G '2 just released a bunch of new reviews.
Kyle Jepson:Hubslot received over a thousand badges from g two, which who knew we were even in so many categories? There's a lot of you in for HubSpot. But if you look at them, it's not just like leaders in a space. It's things like easiest to implement, fastest time to value, most best overall value, easiest to use. Right?
Kyle Jepson:And these are things that really matter. Right? If you're that decision maker and you're trying to figure out, like, okay. Is this gonna work out? What I forget which one of our hubs got, number one top best ROI.
Kyle Jepson:Right? And so, like, that's a thing you should care about. Right? That's a thing you should be looking at. And so, and and we're not we're all these different categories HubSpot plays in.
Kyle Jepson:It's not like it's not like we're the sole contender on g two. Right? Like, these are these are crowded saturated areas we're playing in CRM and marketing and and service and all that. And so, yeah, George is not lying to you. But if you don't trust him for whatever reason, go to go look at the reviews.
Kyle Jepson:People love using HubSpot, and that's important for a system like this. Because if people don't love using a system of record, they don't use the system of record, and then you don't have records. Right? And so this is this is the thing that matters a lot. I think for both the decision maker and the end user, you want happy end users.
Kyle Jepson:If you are that end user, you don't wanna use a a system that's death by a thousand paper cuts. And if you're that decision maker, you you want a system that's gonna help your your, employees be happy and productive and and generate shiny reports for you to run your business off of. And and HubSpot does all those things. So, yeah. I mean, the data, the the people have spoken, and, it's all good news for us.
George B. Thomas:Yeah. So I had I had to Google it, but literally, HubSpot ranks number one in sales and marketing in g two's twenty twenty four best software awards. So deal. Y'all can Google it too. Yeah.
George B. Thomas:Just a little thing.
Liz Moorhead:Well, I I finished my whole thing of water today, so take that HubSpot. Nice try.
George B. Thomas:You gotta have goals.
Liz Moorhead:I see you with your betas. Whatever. Kyle, I wanna stick with you here for a moment, though. I want us to shift gears. We've talked a lot about the shoulds.
Liz Moorhead:Right? This is how you should be looking at this, so you should be thinking about it. But I wanna come at this from a different angle here for a moment. Because in your conversations, what have you observed in terms of either what people are missing about the story with HubSpot right now or they're just coming at it the wrong way that you'd like to see shift? Other than please stop just saying we're doing marketing.
Kyle Jepson:No. Well, sure. I'm I but even even for those maybe accepting those folks. For everyone else, I am I'm I'm not quick to say anybody's coming at it the wrong way. One thing that I think is really remarkable about HubSpot and an interesting side effect of our quick, production, which, by the way, something that's pretty unique about HubSpot, I think, for software companies, especially of our size, is that we don't have set sprint schedules.
Kyle Jepson:There's no monthly or quarterly releases. Like, inbound is a big event, but every engineering team is fully autonomous and authorized to commit code to the part of the code base they are own whenever they want to. And so new updates hit literally every business day. And so that that is that is a level of agility that's that's kind of boggling. And kind of the the interesting side effect of that is that people have gotten used to that.
Kyle Jepson:Users have gotten used to the fact that if there's something they're unhappy about in HubSpot, that unhappiness doesn't last very long. Right? We fix it eventually. And and plenty of times when I I post things on on, the Internet, hey. We now have this new feature.
Kyle Jepson:It's it's a running joke now. A lot of my a lot of my followers will say, like, are you sure you're not spying on me? I was just saying I needed this yesterday. Right? But because of that, everybody's really open about the things they're unhappy within HubSpot.
Kyle Jepson:They will tell me, like, man, yeah, that that product update you talked about today, Kyle, that's nice. But what I really wanted was this, and what I really hoped for was this. And why doesn't it do this? And how is it 2024 and it doesn't do this other thing? Because there's an infinite number of things our users might want HubSpot to do, in the realm of marketing or sales or service or operations or content or ecommerce.
Kyle Jepson:Right? And we're getting there as fast as we can, which is pretty fast. But when you're trying to fill infinite space, it takes an infinite amount of time. And so, I I mean, there are always things people wish for, and I don't think they're wrong for wishing for those things. I think it makes HubSpot better.
Kyle Jepson:And, I don't I mean, man, now that as of just earlier this week, you can create your own custom date time properties in the UI. I'm running out of things that I just point to. Like, everybody wishes HubSpot would do this. It's crazy that we've made it this far, and we don't let them do it. There are still things, and there always will be.
Kyle Jepson:But, I mean, our product team loves our ideas for them. I think some ideas for them are just a a place you send your customers to make them leave you alone. But, they those idea forums, they the things get up, they they come to top and Slack channels are spun up around them and meetings are happening and solutions are are proposed, and we and we tick them off. And there are always new ones coming in. We'll never get to inbox zero.
Kyle Jepson:But we really are trying to build the things people want. And so for anyone who's listening, if there's something HubSpot doesn't do that you think it should do, you're not wrong.
Liz Moorhead:Laundry?
Kyle Jepson:You're probably right. We probably should do that thing. We just haven't gotten to it yet. No.
George B. Thomas:It doesn't do your laundry. It doesn't do your
Liz Moorhead:I also have to ask. Put put it on put it on the ideas forum
Kyle Jepson:Yeah. And, and see how many people upvote a feature for HubSpot to do Liz Moorehead's
Liz Moorhead:I was thinking of laundry for all, but if we're talking about just me, you know, if there's just a HubSpot coming this fall to inbound twenty four, HubSpot, Liz's laundry hub.
George B. Thomas:Yeah. Ideas.hubspot.com. Go vote it up, ladies and gentlemen. So, Liz, I wanna I wanna answer your question because immediately, two things came up.
Liz Moorhead:Good. I wanted you to answer it.
George B. Thomas:But let me but but let me get to that, here in a second because I wanna, again, double click or tap or upvote, however you wanna, say this. The fact of what Kyle was talking about because I love that about our culture, the HubSpot culture, the fact that ideas.HubSpot.com, and you can vote it up. And the amount of
Intro:humans
George B. Thomas:that I've asked to go, hit up support and put it in ideas.HubSpot.com so we can get double hits on things that we want in the platform, I I can't even keep count over the last twelve years of how many humans that has been. But I love the openness and the agility and ability for HubSpot to pivot on that. One of the other pieces that I love about this is when I get, an email from a PM and they're like, hey. Can you meet? Can we interview you?
George B. Thomas:Can we we wanna dig into these certain functionalities. And and you literally, as as a little old me, get to, like, brain dump into, like, possible future ideas of where they can take the tool. And I know they're doing interviews with tons of people around that. That's voice of customer, ladies and gentlemen. If you don't have a freaking VOC in place at your organization, then guess what?
George B. Thomas:That's something that you're doing wrong right now, not even from the HubSpot side, but from your business side is having a voice of customer. Now, Liz, let me go back to answering your question.
Kyle Jepson:Sorry. If I can just Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Liz Moorhead:Real quick right there.
Kyle Jepson:My my, LinkedIn channel, my LinkedIn page is called HubSpot Tips and Tricks. If you go and look at it, today's post is about a thing called the all bound timeline. It shows both inbound and outbound contact activities. It's a new card you could put on contact record. If you look at the comment thread, you will see this in action.
Kyle Jepson:You will see people saying, this is super cool. You'll see people saying, I like it, but the name doesn't make any sense. You'll see people who are like, this completely misses the point. What I actually need is this thing. But the thing all three of those comments have in common is that Katharine Mann, the leader of the product team who built that feature, has responded to all of them with follow-up questions and an offer to speak individually with those people.
Kyle Jepson:Right? Yep. And that is what the the product cycle in HubSpot is like. And we we do have voice of the customer stuff, but also just organically here on social media. The product team wants to know.
Kyle Jepson:They wanna get it right. They wanna do right by you. These features are never just boxes they're checking off a to do list. They're they're trying to make HubSpot truly a joy to use, and they know that the users are the secret to doing that. So I I just wanna mention, this thing George is talking about is not hypothetical, happening today, right now.
Kyle Jepson:Go check it out.
George B. Thomas:Yeah. It's funny because three words pop into my brain when I hear you say that, Kyle. And, again, it it comes back to HubSpot culture. And culture's always been a thing, but I think it's just kind of, like, enriched itself over time. When I hear you say that, what it is is it's empathy, it's love, and it's service.
George B. Thomas:Right? Literally, HubSpot and the people who work for HubSpot have empathy for the people who are trying to use the product. They love what they're doing. They love the people that they're doing it for. They they love the direction that they're trying to get it.
George B. Thomas:And so, therefore, they're in this route of service, which by the way goes back to, like, hey. People can release updates anytime they want because, like, they're super passionate about doing this thing. Like, it just is it's bred from the culture. So alright. Let me get back to, amazing stuff, by the way, but let me get back to, people doing it wrong.
George B. Thomas:First of all, any hate mail, you can send it to george@georgebthomas.com. I'll open them all. I'll read them all. I may or may not respond to you. Here's the two big things that I see people doing wrong when it comes to HubSpot.
George B. Thomas:Number one, they are not educating themselves enough on what the platform can do. The amount of people that I talk to and the lack of HubSpot Academy certifications, which, by the way, I don't care if you take the certification. I know Kyle does. I know the academy does. But if you watch the videos and you learn the knowledge and it's like being a master at your craft, being able to get into that education and reading the knowledge articles and watching the academy videos and looking at the blog articles and literally setting time each day for just to learn the next thing that you need to learn so that you can become 1% better at the marketing tools, the sales tools, the service tools, the commerce tools.
George B. Thomas:Like, you have to focus in on education. The next thing that I've seen historically is that people get in their lane and they stay in their lane. And so if you don't have a mindset of experimentation, like, what can we use that we haven't used? What should we turn on that we haven't turned on? Like, what are we testing or not testing?
George B. Thomas:And I don't mean from a landing page standpoint, CTA standpoint, but I mean from a business standpoint with what you can do with these tools. What could we be experimenting with that we're paying for but we're not using? And here's the last one that I'll mention is that the lack of people who go into the sidebar menu. So for me, it's like Sidekick Strategies. For you, it's the name of your business.
George B. Thomas:The lack of people that go in and actually go to the product updates and look at what is happening on a daily basis inside the tool that they pay hundreds, if not thousands of dollars for, And the lack of people who then also enable the betas to get the most recent, like, juju juice of, like, being awesome at their organization is mind blowing. So you've gotta keep up with product and updates. You've gotta have a mindset of experimenting, and you've gotta educate yourself. This is the way that you're gonna I should just be like Mandalorian. This is the way.
George B. Thomas:But this is the way that you're gonna get the most out of what you've invested
Kyle Jepson:month.
George B. Thomas:It's expensive. I don't wanna drop it. I'll just leave it hang right here.
Liz Moorhead:So where is the story of HubSpot headed? What what do we see coming, and what are we hoping for? Kyle, I wanna start with you. And to be fair, we understand that you're basically, like, Tom Holland's Spider Man of the avengers who they had to stop telling secrets to because he would accidentally say them on Seth on Seth Myers' show. So, just don't worry.
Kyle Jepson:Well and so I need, I stand by what I said earlier. HubSpot will continue going as broad and as deep as we need to to solve front office issues for small to mid sized businesses. I I believe what that means over time will continue to evolve. Of course, it's 2024. We almost made it, but AI.
Kyle Jepson:Right? Like, HubSpot is investing in that. We're gonna do more with it. I'm really interested to see what HubSpot does to make AI more palatable and less scary for small and midsize business. Not just owners and leaders, but, like, the sales reps and the marketer.
Kyle Jepson:Like, every new technology that comes out, the headlines are sales reps are gonna be out of a job. Right? We keep having sales reps. I think we'll continue to keep having sales reps, because humans buy stuff from humans. Right?
Kyle Jepson:But there are so many things we can automate and and we can improve efficiency with, with AI, and I expect HubSpot, not to just to become a leader in that space, but to do a really thoughtful job of it and to build opinionated tools that you can rely on not to lead you astray. The thing I'm really curious about, the thing I I don't know if HubSpot is thinking about this, but if I think of opportunities for HubSpot that we should just own, it's the other side of AI, how AI is changing search. Right? HubSpot started in 02/2006 because Brian and Dharmesh were like, the Internet and this Google thing, it's really changing how the way people do business. And, and can it's b to c is getting this, but b to b is not getting it.
Kyle Jepson:Let's let's invent we'll call it inbound marketing, and we will teach small and mid sized businesses how to use the Internet to compete against big inter businesses. Right? And that has propelled us to the
Liz Moorhead:current moment.
Kyle Jepson:But, I was just helping a friend move, a couple weeks ago, and the movers he chose, he asked perplexity, not Google, who are the best movers in Boston. And he got a list of, like, four or five and went to the review sites and, picked one. Right? That's a very different SEO game to be playing. That's a very different SEO game.
Kyle Jepson:Right? And, and we've all been hearing the doom and gloom for years about, traffic is decreasing. AI is maybe accelerating that, but Google's been killing your traffic for years by giving previews and images, and people aren't clicking on web pages. People aren't reading blogs as much as they used to. Right?
Kyle Jepson:But the Internet is still the place to do business. Your your buyer intent traffic probably hasn't gone down. People who are gonna buy from you, still gonna buy from you. And if they can find you through AI, then more you get more people than you used to. Right?
Kyle Jepson:I'd I have not heard anyone solve this problem yet. But if anyone should, it's HubSpot. Right? We solve the problem for Google. Let's solve it for chat, GPT, and perplexity.
Kyle Jepson:Right? And so that's very different. You're hearing a lot from us. You're gonna probably continue hearing a lot from us about AI powered tools and smart this and that, and that's great. That's gonna give you a lot more efficiency that's gonna help you use our tools better.
Kyle Jepson:But there's this whole other thing of how the world is changing and business is changing and results of people not using the Internet at all directly, just asking their favorite, AI powered chatbot who they should do business with. And if we can help you figure out how to win that game, then then, we're we're gonna, right, have a whole new rocket ship for HubSpot. Right? So that's, that's a thing. I I don't know what the answer is.
Kyle Jepson:I don't know if HubSpot has figured out yet. If they have, they haven't told me, but, that's that's a that's an area I am I am keeping an eye on.
George B. Thomas:Yeah. This excites me. By the way, if you're listening to this podcast, I know that you couldn't hear me shaking my head the entire time that Kyle was speaking of, like, yes. Yes. Yes.
George B. Thomas:By the way, Hub Heroes is now on YouTube. So if you wanna go watch it and you can't see me, like, shaking my head, like, vigorously, yes, agreeing in everything that Kyle said. But here's what I'm gonna throw out there. Kyle, you don't know this, but over the last two weeks, I've watched probably 14 videos about how SEO is dead in 2024 because of clients' pains that they're facing. Right now as we're recording this, I have three tabs open, and the information is about how to be found in large language models.
George B. Thomas:Because I'm literally trying to figure out how what do we have to create or what do we have to do or what can we do so that our business and businesses we serve can actually end up in these questions that are being asked in perplexity, in chat GBT, in all of these tools that people are now using. So I I yes. HubSpot.
Liz Moorhead:Here's where SEO still matters. Is holy. Please. Those those large language learning models are not gonna be able to pull your stuff in if you're not optimizing your site. Like, that's the thing.
Liz Moorhead:Like, the other thing and this is you know, I'm hearing we have another this is another episode that we need to talk about, Kyle. I may come find you. But one of the things that's just immediately coming to mind that I wanna get to before we close out today's conversation is this idea that, like, we're watching organic traffic sink a little bit, but how much of that was traffic that was never gonna convert into sales anyway? I'm finding a I'm finding a lot more of the work I'm doing is refining a lot of the sales enablement content with clients. So here's the thing, guys, is that, like, organic search is still important.
Liz Moorhead:I've seen websites where because they haven't gone out of their way to optimize their site for what it is that they do, let alone their content, we run into massive issues in terms of their ability to to to show up where they should show up, let let alone their inbound content. But this idea that people are going to stop trying to find you online once they're ready to purchase or once they're ready to really start making decisions is is it's it's asinine.
George B. Thomas:Anyway. Okay. Before you Yeah.
Kyle Jepson:The the commercial intent, it's it's it's the information intent. Right? The the the old days of write a blog post saying, define what inbound marketing is. So when people search what is inbound marketing, they find you. Right?
Kyle Jepson:Like, nobody's clicking on a website for that now. But the people are like, who can help me build my website?
Liz Moorhead:About it. That's what's wild.
Kyle Jepson:Looking to pay money to, to to yeah. So yeah. Alright.
George B. Thomas:So so before you move forward, Liz, I've got a couple little things here. One, I would want the listeners to go to LinkedIn, and they go to Dharmesh's, LinkedIn. There's something that excites me about the future of HubSpot that he alluded to, and that is that since the beginning of HubSpot's journey, the idea was to turn everything into an object. Now if you're listening to this, you know what an object is. It's it's a container for data and property, But a world where everything becomes an object because now workflows is an object, list is an object.
George B. Thomas:Like, if if you haven't looked under your HubSpot hood in settings, shame on you. They're now objects. Like like so you there's so much you can do once it becomes an object. So I'm excited for that, but I wanna stand here and and throw this out because I don't know anything. But if if I were to dream for a second, which by the way, that question makes me dream.
George B. Thomas:If there if we were gonna add another hub or if there was gonna be another piece of what would be the customer platform or the all encompassing holistic tool, I get real curious about an HR hub where now you can do human resources in the same place that you're doing commerce, in the same place that you're doing marketing, sales, service, Reva. Like, that to me gets real interesting in the future. But who knows? I could be wrong. But if I'm right, I'm going right back to this episode.
George B. Thomas:I'm clipping it Yeah. And I'm gonna be like, I told you so.
Kyle Jepson:I have zero insider information on that, so I feel totally comfortable just speculating here. I will say an interesting fun fact, probably clear back, I would say 02/2017, '2 thousand '18. About the time we launched Service Hub, there were people internally at HubSpot who were really advocating. They heard our next hub is gonna be service, and they're like, no. Our next hub should be something around HR, something around people management.
Kyle Jepson:And at the time, I was like, that's crazy. Why why would we do that? Everything we do is customer facing stuff. Right? But fast forward to today, where we have that full front office suite, and operation stuff and commerce stuff and content stuff.
Kyle Jepson:Look at what we're doing with users. Where users have become an object. You can now in enterprise, you can put Yep. Custom properties on them. You can track, you know, work schedules and and out of office and stuff.
Kyle Jepson:And now it doesn't seem crazy to think. Like, we we make that object fully grow up, and then we give your HR people the tools they need to manage people in there. Right? Like, we could. It's not unthinkable.
Kyle Jepson:I don't expect it at inbound this year or probably next year, but, like, I would never say never to that. Right? And if it turns out that we hear from our customers, like, HubSpot, if you just gave this to us, it would solve us a lot of pain. That's what's gonna make it happen.
George B. Thomas:Yeah. And I love what Nick Fargo said in the chat pane. It's the
Intro:human hub.
George B. Thomas:Yeah. There we go.
Liz Moorhead:George, don't you step away. I want us to help you land this plane. Bring this conversation home for our listeners. What do you want everyone to take from this conversation today between you and Kyle?
George B. Thomas:I mean, for me, it's it comes down to taking whether you're using HubSpot now or not using HubSpot now, the thing that I would say is it's time to take a second look at HubSpot. Because, again, the HubSpot that you've been using is not the HubSpot that you now have, and it won't be in two weeks. It won't be in two months. It's ever changing. So I go back to use HubSpot as its freshest, latest possibilities for your business.
George B. Thomas:And, again, I'm gonna double down on what I love doing and where I think the thing that needs to happen is definitely educate yourself around all of this. Be willing to experiment with all of this, and just free yourself and your team for that enablement and that efficiency is gonna end up with more conversations, conversion, and at the end of the day, cash flow. That's what's important.
Liz Moorhead:I love it. Kyle, thank you so much for joining us today for today's conversation. Can you let our listeners at home know where they can find you?
Kyle Jepson:Yeah. So I am I have a LinkedIn problem. I'm always there. So, find me. If you look for Kyle Jepsen, you can connect with me personally.
Kyle Jepson:So tell me that you heard me on the Hub Heroes podcast so I know who you are and why we're friends. HubSpot tips and tricks is the name of the page where I I do my daily posts. Love, love for you to give me a follow there. But, yeah, always anyone in and around the HubSpot ecosystem. Happy to connect tech happy to chat over LinkedIn DMs and, help you however I can.
Liz Moorhead:Look at that, George. I made it through a whole other episode without getting us canceled. Aren't you proud?
George B. Thomas:I know. Oh, close. But, you know that one time. But no cigar. Okay.
George B. Thomas:Hub heroes, we've reached the end of another episode. Will Lord Lack continue to loom over the community, or will we be able to defeat him in the next episode of the Hub Heroes podcast? Make sure you tune in and find out in the next episode. Make sure you head over to the hubheroes.com to get the latest episodes and become part of the League of Heroes. FYI, if you're part of the League of Heroes, you'll get the show notes right in your inbox, and they come with some hidden power up potential as well.
George B. Thomas: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, always be looking for a way to be someone's hero.
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