100th Episode: HubSpot Breeze AI + Co-Pilot Mindsets, Strategies, + Tactics

Celebrating our 100th episode, we’re marking this milestone with an exploration into something that’s changing the game for HubSpot users—Breeze AI and Co-Pilot. After a quick look back at our favorite HubHeroes moments, we dive into the power of HubSpot’s new AI tools like Breeze and Co-Pilot, unpacking why they’re essential for teams looking to level up their data management, automation, and operational strategy.

🚀 Learn More: HubSpot Announces Major AI Product Updates at #INBOUND24

So, what makes Breeze AI and Co-Pilot such big news for HubSpot users? Think about all those small, repetitive tasks that soak up hours of your day—scheduling follow-ups, summarizing customer interactions, managing scattered data. Breeze AI was designed to take on these exact tasks, using automation to keep your operations running smoothly without you even having to think about it.

And then there’s Co-Pilot. Acting like a digital assistant, Co-Pilot gives you quick insights, lets you interact with your data, and essentially brings your HubSpot portal to life. You ask questions, Co-Pilot answers. Need an update on a specific deal? Co-Pilot’s on it. Trying to organize a contact history in seconds? Done.

🚀 Learn More: The Great AI in Marketing Debate, Pilot or Co-Pilot? (#INBOUND24 Exclusive)

Still, AI can be intimidating, especially for teams who’ve been managing workflows a certain way for years. If you’re hesitant to add new tools or worried that AI is too complex, this episode is here to put those fears to rest. Breeze AI and Co-Pilot were built to be intuitive, approachable, and scalable for businesses of all sizes. We break down how these tools were designed not to replace human insight but to amplify it, freeing up time and mental space so you can focus on what really matters—building relationships, crafting strategy, and driving growth.

So, if you’ve been curious about HubSpot’s AI capabilities, skeptical of their real-world value, or just looking for ways to streamline your workday, this episode has what you need. We’re going deep into how to make these tools work for you, no matter your level of experience with AI, and why embracing them now could be one of the smartest moves you make for your team.

Keywords

HubSpot Breeze AI, HubSpot Co-Pilot, HubSpot automation, AI-powered workflows, operational efficiency, data management in HubSpot, AI in CRM, HubSpot AI tools, AI and data strategy, HubSpot AI integration

What We Cover

• A Milestone Celebration with a Look Back: We start the episode with a nod to our 100th milestone, sharing some of our favorite moments from past episodes. From hilarious mishaps to unexpected deep dives, we take a moment to appreciate the journey of HubHeroes and our amazing listeners who’ve been along for the ride.

• What is Breeze AI? An Overview of HubSpot’s Newest AI Feature: George kicks off the discussion with an “explain it like I’m five” breakdown of Breeze AI. This tool is HubSpot’s answer to AI-driven efficiency, built to help teams automate repetitive tasks, manage data flows, and streamline customer interactions. For anyone wondering how AI could realistically fit into their HubSpot strategy, Breeze is designed to be accessible, even for teams with minimal tech expertise.

• Co-Pilot: Your HubSpot Digital Assistant: We dive into how Co-Pilot acts as an in-platform assistant, capable of summarizing contact histories, automating responses, and providing instant insights—all based on your HubSpot data. Chad explains why Co-Pilot isn’t just a flashy feature but a true productivity enhancer, especially for teams handling large amounts of customer information.

• Mindset First: Embracing AI as a Strategic Partner: Before diving into tactics, we talk about the importance of mindset. Many teams hesitate to use AI tools, fearing complexity or disruption. Max shares why approaching AI as an ally rather than a replacement is critical, and I discuss the importance of seeing Breeze AI as a supplement to your team, not a shortcut that skips the need for strategy.

• Real-World Wins with Breeze AI and Co-Pilot: We explore some quick wins that teams can achieve right out of the gate with Breeze AI and Co-Pilot. From automating social media summaries to analyzing customer sentiment, these tools offer immediate impact in ways that previously required hours of manual work. Chad shares a favorite example of how Co-Pilot has transformed his daily routine, allowing him to focus more on strategic work and less on data upkeep.

• Practical Steps to Get Started: For teams wondering how to begin, we lay out the simplest way to get started with Breeze AI and Co-Pilot—by diving in and experimenting. George walks through how to use Co-Pilot to summarize customer interactions directly within a contact record and explains the value of setting up a “Breeze impact map” to strategically integrate AI into your workflows.

• AI Myths and Misconceptions Debunked: We close the conversation by tackling some of the biggest myths surrounding AI. From the belief that AI is only for large, tech-savvy companies to fears that AI tools are “too complicated” for small teams, we break down why these ideas couldn’t be further from the truth. Breeze AI and Co-Pilot are designed to be as intuitive as possible, allowing teams of any size to tap into their full potential.

And so much more ... 

Episode Transcript

Liz Moorehead: Well, gentlemen, we have some business to attend to before we get into today's topic today.

George B. Thomas: Uh oh.

Chad Hohn: What's that?

Liz Moorehead: No, get excited, guys. Guess what

Chad Hohn: Tell me about it. What's

Liz Moorehead: Guess what it is. Guess what it is.

George B. Thomas: I know what this is.

Liz Moorehead: This is our hundredth episode of Hub Heroes.

Max Cohen: that's insane. Eww.

Liz Moorehead: God, I know you have so many memories from all of these hundreds of episodes.

Although you've been with us since the beginning

Max Cohen: Brother, eww.

Liz Moorehead: in our live studio audience, but George, I got to ask you, since this was, Hub Heroes was your baby. Your brain baby, we're a hundred episodes into this. How do you feel about that, bud?

George B. Thomas: Uh, first of all, I can't believe it. It, I don't know where the time went. Second of all, they grew up so fast. I, I mean, just dang gone. Um, you know, I, when I started, uh, this podcast, I didn't really ever plan on stopping, so I knew we'd get here at some point. But, um, man, there's just, we've done so much. We've talked to so many people.

Um, so I guess to answer your question, proud Papa moment, proud Papa of the baby hub heroes. Yeah. Yeah.

Liz Moorehead: Max, what's your favorite memory from these past hundred episodes or favorite memories? I know there are so many to choose from.

Max Cohen: Jeez.

George B. Thomas: egg episode. I think he

Max Cohen: That was,

Liz Moorehead: violence of the egg episode.

Max Cohen: The egg episode was crazy.

Liz Moorehead: When Max and I couldn't land the plane and figure out how to end the

Max Cohen: Oh, yeah, that was great.

George B. Thomas: Maybe the snacks episode. That was a good,

Liz Moorehead: our croutons and content episode, Max, was tight.

Max Cohen: Unreal, um I don't know. I just remember, well, I think honestly it was, it was going to sound cheesy. Liz, it was the moment you hopped on and like it felt real. Hold on. But that very first episode that we did where it wasn't just me, Devin and George screaming at each other.

And like you, you, you came in and like, There was an outline, there was a, there was a discussion, it was, the cats were very herded, like, and I remember, I, I don't know, I think I definitely either sent the text or the slack or whatever, and I was like, this feels way different now, you know what I mean, in like the best way. So it was probably that moment, yeah, it felt way more professional at that point, you know, um, you know, that was, that was cool. Uh, Transcribed See, I was that and I think also it's just like George. I just remember you me and Devin like, you know sending LinkedIn messages to each other like Initially, and we were just like this.

This is it. This is the this is gonna be sick. Let's let's make it happen and then just that very first time I heard like the Like and you know, you had that thing done and you

Chad Hohn: world.

Max Cohen: the, you did the superhero, like, you know, uh, cartoons and everything. It's just like seeing it all come together. It's been like really cool.

Liz Moorehead: I gotta say one of my favorite memories though, and it is a recent one, is when I gotta be honest, it was last week's episode when we unleashed Chad, when we unleashed the, the, the Giga Nerd Chad. And just like, watching George and Max just like, lose their minds. The ability to, we, like, the ability now we have to like, go to a different, descending level of nerd when it comes to HubSpot.

Like, that really excited me. Like, that was really fun to me because now I get to ask these open ended questions. I'm like, I have no idea where we're gonna go. I don't know where this crazy train is going to end up. I know there will be a creepy glowing printer in the background changing colors depending on its mood.

Uh, but otherwise, yeah, it's just, it's so great. Especially after, you know, if you join us in the community for that. For the live recordings, Chad is not new to you. Chad is not new. Cause some of my favorite memories are, yes, it's, it's the OG crew, but like Chad, just like dropping knowledge bombs in the, in the channel, just like, my guy, it's just so great to have you here.

Chad Hohn: Yeah, yeah, it's good to be here.

George B. Thomas: just your text across a, a black screen is beautiful.

Liz Moorehead: that. George, what are some of your favorite memories?

George B. Thomas: Oh, yeah, there's so many. Um,

Max Cohen: Yeah.

George B. Thomas: I don't even I, my brain goes immediately like Kyle Jepsen, Jack Cooper Smith, DN

Liz Moorehead: Our guests have been incredible.

George B. Thomas: yeah, like, and so I could keep listening. I'm like, but the guests that have come along the way and joined us have made for some pretty magical moments. Yeah, yeah,

Liz Moorehead: Chad, what are you hoping for?

George B. Thomas: the guests.

Liz Moorehead: Yeah, Chad, what are you hoping for the next hundred?

Chad Hohn: for the next 100. Um, you know, I mean, just to, um, continue not more of the same, but more of the same idea, more of the same concept, right. Being able to, um, you know, just chat about things that are relevant for the day for where HubSpot is right now, where we'd like to see it go, um, you know, and where it's come from too, because like, it's, you know, you can't know where you're going unless you know where you've been.

And I think a lot of people. Coming into HubSpot, uh, run into like a limitation with it in some capacity. And they're like, oh, so frustrating, you know, but like, man, just think about where you came and if you know where you came and how short of a period of time that it did that, you know, that the future could be bright.

But if you don't have that context, I think, you know, uh, that's a little, little frustrating. And I think. You know, coming into this, like, you know, having memories and all that, I like it, my memories are yes, from the audience standpoint, but man, I remember one time when you guys were talking about marketing, like digital marketing and people sending text messages to your phone unconsensually.

Liz Moorehead: Oh my God.

Chad Hohn: like, just about lost his stuff, man, like, oh dude,

George B. Thomas: that hasn't been happening at all during, uh, you know, voting time.

Chad Hohn: yeah, right. Exactly.

Max Cohen: Yeah,

Liz Moorehead: I voted early. Please stop.

Max Cohen: Kamala be hitting me up like crazy dog.

George B. Thomas: we're like besties. At least that's what my phone would say, but my god.

Liz Moorehead: I think some of my favorite memories are, George, I got to admit some of our like off the cuff fireside chats we throw, we've thrown out over the past couple of years. Like we've had some good ones. We've talked about AI, we've talked about content, just like the times when you and I just hopped on the mic and we're just like, you know what?

We need to talk about a bigger topic. Just you and me just hanging out. I've always really loved those conversations.

George B. Thomas: are, those are fun. I, it's funny Liz, you asked, uh, Chad, like, what's he looking for to in the next hundred for me? And I think that's why, like, I get excited because Max here, you're here, Chad here, I'm here.

Liz Moorehead: We all

George B. Thomas: think that the, the next hundred episodes. This just Oh two or two Oh one or three Oh one level of stuff that we can create, you know, we've got a hundred one Oh one baseline HubSpot content sales service marketing stuff.

And now we can just take it to the next level and be like, Hey, well, If you can go back to this episode, but today we're going to talk about BAM. And then really I'm, I'm excited about that.

Liz Moorehead: And today's BAM. Thank you for that beautiful setup there, George. Are we ready for today's BAM?

George B. Thomas: Um, I'm ready. I I'm not sure if the humans

Liz Moorehead: Oh, there we go. There we go.

Chad Hohn: I forgot to say that was my favorite part is the episodes with the humans.

George B. Thomas: yeah,

Liz Moorehead: do that because then he'll, he'll know to say it immediately and then it doesn't count. Like it has to be organic. It has to be organic.

George B. Thomas: be like an off the cuff humans. And then it, then it's, we keep score on those. So

Liz Moorehead: I love that. Well, we are a few weeks out now, a few weeks out, geez, over a month now out from Inbound, which is, you know, we've had time for the dust to settle, the products to kind of get settled in.

And today I want us to do a deep dive on the new AI tool, Breeze, which they introduced at Inbound 24. And it's supposed to help all teams work smarter and accomplish tasks faster, but like, I want to start with you, George, really quick before we get into today's topic. Can you give us an explain it like I'm five?

Answer of what AI breeze is in the HubSpot ecosystem.

George B. Thomas: Yeah, I mean, and first of all, I hope that for many of the listeners that this might be a light bulb moment this episode, um, after listening or watching this episode that, um, hopefully, you know, nothing will be the same ever again.

Liz Moorehead: No, no big lofty goals here. Yeah.

George B. Thomas: no, I mean, it's like, it's time for people to wake up with AI in their daily workflows.

And yes, that is a pun to another podcast that we do. And

Liz Moorehead: That was really nice marketing there, bud.

George B. Thomas: how I did that? And if you haven't checked out Wake Up With AI, you gotta do that. But listen, we've all been there for years. Like, we're drowning in tasks. We feel like there isn't enough hours in the day. And we're wondering how we're gonna get all the stuff done.

Um, and Liz, what I like about Breeze AI, Um, it's transformed how I think about what's possible in a day. And, and I'm going to get into some kind of nerdy stuff later that I actually went through this morning as I woke up with AI and got an email. Because here's what I'll say before I go into just the generalities of what it is, is it's always going to be growing Chad, before we hit the record button, we're in the green room waiting for you and Max to show up.

And we were talking about the prospecting agent. We're talking about the social media agent. We were talking about the service agent and all of these elements that are coming and there's, and there's more coming. So it'll be built on the base that right now is Breeze co pilot, which by the way, If you aren't figuring out how to communicate with CoPilot in some really unique ways yet, you need to.

Like, going to a contact record and starting to have a conversation with CoPilot about the

Liz Moorehead: We're going to get to nerd

George B. Thomas: I, I know, I know. Okay. So Breeze Copilot,

Liz Moorehead: Just tell us what it is.

George B. Thomas: there's Breeze Intelligence, which can enrich your data. And then there's the, um, like the agent's side of it, right? Is that like Copilot Intelligence, agent side of it?

Um, but it's all in HubSpot. It's data enriched. Uh, anyway, we'll, we'll get into the nerdy stuff. It's hard for me not to get into the nerd stuff.

Liz Moorehead: I understand, but that's why we have a whole episode dedicated to this beautiful topic. But that's where we start talking about these things, right? Like there, when we think about the power and capacity of these tools, it is very easy to immediately jump into tactics. These are all of the cool things that you can do with it.

But George, you and I know this from what, the way we talk about. Stuff with clients, right? Before you can start getting your hands messy with all the paints and the crayons and the stickers and the color, like before you can actually start building stuff out, doing things, you have to have the right mindset about something.

Once you have the right mindset, then you can build your strategy. And then once you have your strategy, then you get to get into the fun tactics that help bring that strategy to life. And so that's really the conversation we're going to be having about today, because there is a lot of excitement. We have so much excitement, right, about these AI powered tools with Breeze and with Copilot.

We have all of these different amazing things that are at disposal, but as many of our previous episodes have illuminated for us, like there's a lot of confusion. You can easily trip into overwhelm or maybe you don't overwhelm, but you just start getting way too in the weeds with it. So we're going to take a step back, right?

We're going to start with our mindsets. And actually, Chad. I'd love to talk to you first about this question, then George and Max, I want to hear from you as well. When we hear, when we think about business leaders and teams who are just getting started with Breeze or Copilot, what are the essential mindsets they need to embrace in order to not only use it correctly, but also to use these tools to their fullest potential?

Chad Hohn: Yeah. Um, I mean, with breeze and AI, I think, you know, the mindset is, is being open minded, you know, for me, like being open minded with. Um, you know, that it's still in process, it's still being built, it's still in development. They're still weaving it into the fabric of HubSpot because there's, uh, I think there's a difference between a generalized solution for AI and then a customer platform CRM integrated solution for AI because has a little bit more nuance of like, where is it going to pull information from in your CRM?

Do you want that information right now? You know, or are you just kind of like asking a general question to your AI? So like being open minded and then allowing your team to also be open in using it, testing it, playing with it, making sure they know it's there because people like your, your team is not going to go unless they're, you know, inquisitive.

Right. But they're typically got a job to do, and they're not going to go dinking around in a hub spot, looking for extra buttons to waste time with. because they don't have time. They, they, you know, it hasn't become a force multiplier for them unless you've built it into your process. Right. And so once you've built AI into your process, then it can possibly become a force multiplier.

That will allow them to help build their day or do their day faster or save them time from having to go research, you know, company websites and things like that. I mean, um, yeah, I think that's, that's like a mindset being open minded with it, right. Is I think a good place and making sure people know that it exists and.

If it doesn't do what they want it to, well, check back again soon because it's going to keep changing. Right.

George B. Thomas: Mm. Yes.

Chad Hohn: Check back again soon.

Max Cohen: Um, I'd, I'd say yeah, I mean, I definitely be open minded to it because a lot of people can be scared of it. Right? Um, I would also say don't, um, don't look at it as like an easy button in a way to find shortcuts. Right? Um, you know, like a good example of that would be just, You know, i'm a bdr writing a ton of emails every day Don't just like ai every single one of your emails and send it out the door without looking at it right because then my inbox is a perfect, you know graveyard of That right and and and and seeing folks, you know Not really think too much about it and just go if I can get x volume of emails out the door I'm somehow going to become a better salesperson um, you know, I'd I'd i'd also like Sure, I think there's plenty of ways where you can look at it, um, to help you do more in a day, but I think also help increase the quality of what you do, even if it's not like necessarily a time saving exercise.

Like, I'll see sales reps just send out emails that are just like, you know riddled with bad punctuation and like, you know Too short to the point where it's like, oh, you don't really care. You're just trying to like, you know, get me to buy something um, you know and and sometimes Those emails could use a little bit of a rewrite even if you did write the first past yourself Maybe there might be a more eloquent punctual and grammar Whoa, okay. Sorry Audrey just sweat face first into the door somehow

Liz Moorehead: Oh no!

Max Cohen: Yeah Yeah, I mean there's you know, Clean up the quality I guess of the emails you're sending out and use it that way instead of just uh, you know Oh have something else write it for me, right? Um, but I think you know in the in the bigger picture when it comes to hub spot Uh users i'd say the one thing is like keep watching it.

Like this is the very It's cool now

Chad Hohn: Yeah.

Max Cohen: Imagine what this is gonna be like in a year, right? Like it is literally just uh, you know the the very first um cohesive and organized Step into a very real AI product inside of HubSpot that is one thing versus a bunch of random features where Different product teams kind of took a stab at it, right?

So, you know, yeah Keep a close eye on it and watch how this things evolve this thing evolves And I think it'll happen a lot quicker than you think it's gonna It's

Chad Hohn: It's the worst that it'll ever be. Right.

Max Cohen: is literally the worst it'll ever be and it's pretty sweet right now, right? And then I say just look for ways that you can use it to like create leverage where you don't have it in your business Right.

So like, you know, why is the customer agent great? It's like well, I mean the customer agent is probably better than nothing if you don't have any like Dedicated customer service staff or like, you know, someone is the, it's just kind of handling it, but they have a different job. Like think of it, how you can kind of like supplement the gaps in your current business to leverage more of HubSpot by using things like the customer agent and stuff like that.

And even the sales agent or whatever it's called a camera prospecting agent. Right. Um, That'll never be a replacement for an actual human being right but um, you know Could it be a great stop gap in between and then they can leverage it in a way that helps them out When you do hire that person, yeah

George B. Thomas: Yeah. So I definitely want to double click on, um, what Max said as far as the test it again. I had an opportunity this morning to test it again. And I'm going to be completely honest because I can be and I've never been a HubSpot homer. When the first content beta, you know, creation came out, I was like, Nope.

Nope. I can do much further, much faster with chat, GBT and Claude. And so I'll just continue to do my content assisting there. Um, but this morning I had an opportunity, got unlocked for the social media beta, uh, agent, and it had me go back through and reset up my voice and tone of sidekick strategies. And I was like, Oh, somebody's grown up a little bit.

Liz Moorehead: Have they moved away from the one line of voice and tone? Oh,

George B. Thomas: very much. So I was able to. I was up, I was able to upload an entire document, uh, to it to give it the voice and tone. Liz,

Liz Moorehead: explains the slack I got this morning.

George B. Thomas: yeah, that's the slack I sent you of like, this is the

Liz Moorehead: Yep. I was reading through it and I'm like, uh huh.

George B. Thomas: And, and so what's fun is, um, yes, one of the mindsets is for sure, like if you have messed around with it, mess around with it again.

Um, and it's funny, take time to actually, uh, air quotes, waste time to play around with co pilot and the different things you can do. Cause if you waste time to save time, then that's okay. I'm giving you permission to do that. Now, here's what I want you to think about though. I want you to think about a triangle.

Because I think there's this like success mindset triangle that we can start to pay attention to as HubSpot users. Um, and what I mean by that is there's three key things I want to hit upon that are yes ands in addition to what Chad and Max said, the first one is you have to think about, especially HubSpot AI or Breeze AI, AI is your ally.

I'm tired of saying it, but I'm going to say it over and over again. Quit worrying about AI taking your job. Quit worrying about AI doing all the things that you can do. Um, it's not, it doesn't have your level of creativity. You're the human powering it. It's the AI assisting you. So you have to have this mindset of AI is your ally.

Don't be scared of it. Get in there, use it, test it, like see how far you can push it. So that's the first thing that I want to say. The other thing is, AI, people look at it, it's like this big, huge, humongous thing. Second mindset I want you to do, especially in HubSpot with Breeze AI, is start small to win big.

Like, go in there and just see what Copilot can do, like, the fact that you can go into a contact record, hit that top little drop down and summarize, A contact or summarize a company. It's small, but you can see big wins. I'll talk about that in a little bit later on this episode, because I literally have a real human use case where we did that.

And the next thing that I want you to think about in this triangle is it's data first mindset. And when I say data first mindset, because your HubSpot users listen to this, I'm not talking about your custom properties. Well, I am, but I'm also talking about every other piece of data that you have. And by the way, conversations are data.

Context is data teaching your tools. What it needs to learn is data. And so again, like data first. Okay. When I'm setting up my social media agent, um, what are my products? What are my services? What are the topics that I want to be known for? What are the, what's the brand content that I wanted to actually be paying attention?

Like, what is the data, the context and the conversations that need to be in there? For it to, by the way, the activity feed is data. The reason I can summarize a contact or a company. Activity feed, data, properties, active, like, so data first, start small to win big and AI is your ally. That's the triangle that I definitely want you to think about as you step in here and move forward.

Liz Moorehead: I would say the big one for me before George, you're not off the hot seat yet, because I have a specific question for you. But one of the things I always think about from a mindset perspective is, You know, it goes back to what we talked about with content. And I think it's just true of AI overall, which is it is your assistant, not your replacement.

And the moment you're looking to it, the moment you were looking to any of these tools to be a replacement for your brain, to be the architect of your own strategy is the moment you're, you're going to have a bad time. So I, I, that's always something I like to throw out there is just. These are assistants.

These are co pilots, literally in the title, not the pilot. So I just always like to think of it that way. But George, there is also a lot of hype around AI. There's a lot of uncertainty, right? So when you think about the biggest myths around tools like Briggies or co pilot that you believe teams, that you believe teams and leaders should outright ignore, what would they be?

George B. Thomas: mean, a myth for me. And I think that for some reason, people fall prey to this is that, um, AI is complicated. And especially if we think about who might be listening to this podcast, it might even go to the level of AI is too complicated for my small business. trust me that AI is not complicated.

And if you say that you have a small business, which by the way, I don't even believe that there's necessarily a such thing as a small business. It's just a business that has the potential to grow into something bigger and better, whatever that is for you and what you want it to be. If you can use Facebook, if you can use email, uh, guess what?

You can use HubSpot Breeze. Like HubSpot has made it so intuitive that you don't need a degree in computer science. You don't need to be this prompt engineer or, or have a, like a, a bunch of tech experts. Right? So the myth that I'll start this out with is it's not complicated and it's not too complicated for your small business.

Liz Moorehead: I love that for us. Are we ready to journey into strategy land? Are we ready to actually start talking about tactics? Let you out of the, yeah.

George B. Thomas: Yeah.

Liz Moorehead: All right. So I want to start strategically though, when we think about a small team, how can they start using breeze and co pilot in ways that make a big difference without adding too much of George's least favorite thing?

And that's complexity. What are we looking at here,

Max Cohen: Yeah, I mean, I, I, I look at it the same way. I would just say, how, how is that different, how are those different parts of the team even just like using HubSpot, right? Like when you're first getting started, it's all about saying like, hey, you know, the things that are making team number one's life more difficult are the, not the same things that are making team, you know, Number two's life more difficult, right?

So it makes it, it makes it really hard to kind of give a blanket prescription, uh, across the board. Right? So, you know, it's all about coming down and saying like, Hey, what is AI going to solve for? Well, it's going to solve for a lot of different things. It can make you more efficient. It can, you know, give your team a lot more leverage.

It can help you do things faster, like whatever it may be. And then it really kind of comes down to saying like, okay. You know, let's say it does those three things and more, right? What are the things that make team number one, team number two, team number three's days hard in those regards? And like, how can you weave it in, right?

Um, you know, if we were to look at something specific like service teams, right? You know, and, and, you know, again, I'm, I'm, I'm looking at Breeze, not, Not through the realm of just like, how can AI help a team? It's I'm thinking like how Breeze like specifically can help a team, right? Like when we think about a service team, you know, um, one of the most basic things that's true about any service team is that, you know, you want to make sure that they're spending the majority of their time on the more complex issues that actually need their help.

Right? And so why is something like service upgrade for them? Well, if you think about it, um, one gives them a place to stay organized, so nothing falls through the cracks, right? I mean, that's tickets, right? It's like, well, how do we make sure we're not just creating a ton of tickets for things that, you know, people can solve on your own?

Well, that's your knowledge base, right? Your knowledge base is there. How can we make sure people are actually getting help and they like interacting with the folks that we have? Well, that's the that's the surveys, right? But a lot of time that knowledge base and that ticketing system, you know, not only is it a way to help the folks stay organized with tickets, but that knowledge base is really there to act as like a firewall.

Right to really make sure that most basic simple requests that are generally the most high volume of problems that you're getting right can easily be self solved for somebody right and it's not because we don't want to help the people directly it's because we want to make sure that like if we're dedicating resources to like a customer service team that they're spending their time on the most important things they can spend their time on which are generally the tougher issues that can't be solved by a knowledge base article or an FAQ section our website or something like that.

Right? When I start thinking about breeze and how that helps them, right? One, you know, if we look at just like raw communication with your customers, Like, sure, like, will your emails be better when then you because you can gussy him up and make him nicer and maybe change the tone a little bit if you're not that great at like communicating tone on email or text or anything like that.

Yeah, absolutely. That's great. But like when you look at something like the customer agent that dramatically increases the strength of that firewall because that customer agent can actually talk to somebody, right? So it's like, not only Do you have sure here's a myriad of articles and an easy search bar to find the answer to the question you have.

Well, now you have a little bit of extra intelligence kind of backing that up. That actually understands all that content and can help people find it and can understand someone's questions better, right? Rather than just like hoping you get the. Conversation tree correct like in a chat bot, right? So it's like it's adding the strength to That firewall that like a knowledge base really kind of serves to be to protect customer service reps from wasting their time on stuff that they You just don't need a human being to solve right?

Um, so that's like would be one specific example for me

Liz Moorehead: Chad?

Chad Hohn: Yeah. I

Liz Moorehead: about it at a strategy level.

Chad Hohn: yeah, yeah. At a strategy level. I mean, like, I, I was really, you know, just listening to Max talk and, and, you know, I mean, I definitely wholeheartedly agree that, you know, going in those sorts of directions where you're, you know, making sure that you're resolving actual issues that matter to your team, right.

And coming up with strategy that will help them leverage these built in tools better and better. Um, I think, you know, if you guys know me, like I have a special spot in my heart for customer service teams, right? And so the, the service agent is something that I really. Uh, want to make better and better and would love a few more levers even in there to flip to, you know, not just like, ah, here's articles, like, hopefully you can help solve some problems or something, you know, but to, um, you know, have a little bit more configure ability on it, uh, you know, try and in certain scenarios, always send it to a human and in certain scenarios, you know, Uh, have it try and resolve problems a little harder than just one try or whatever.

Right. Um, but you know, strategy is just getting in there and, and at least giving it a shot. Any of these agents that exist. At least do something with it at least one time. And even if it doesn't give you the exact expected result, do it again soon because they are always working on these things, man. I mean, they're getting better and better.

Uh, you know, the more that you're using them, uh, new features are popping up all the time and they're not announced on the betas page like a lot of other new features are. They just kind of are showing up in the agents and, you know, uh, as well going back to strategy, like Uh, keep your ear to the ground with agent.

ai, right, that Dharmesh talked about at Inbound. I mean, I know that they're all very not super useful yet, like they're cool, but it's the building blocks, the underpinnings. Um, just like chat spot was at inbound 23 now became, uh, you know, breeze at inbound 24 agent AI is in the chat spot position last time and we'll be able to now probably see that at inbound 25.

As some sort of fully fledged workflow builder for AI functionality, uh, which will be just mind blowing to be able to have like, you know, these hive minds that you can, you know, use for certain, certain things. So, uh, I would say with strategy, look to look to what's coming in the future as with as best of an educated guess as you can.

Right. And I think agent AI is like the architecture for the future when it comes to HubSpot.

George B. Thomas: Yeah, I want to double click on what Chad's saying, because it's always easier to learn along the way instead of playing catch up. And, and especially in this world of AI, playing catch up is not a viable solution. Like, again, this is literally why, and I'm not trying to promote it, but this is why we do a daily podcast called wake up with AI, because catch up.

No, keep up. Okay. Now, Liz, on the Beyond Your Default podcast, and I know I'm not trying to do it, but we talk about energy vampires on Beyond Your Default, right? All the time. On this, what I want to talk about is time vampires, because Max, I'm double clicking into kind of what you're saying. No matter what team you are, you have those things that are time vampires.

It's those repetitive tasks that you're like, There's got to be a better way. Like, why the frick do I do this 2000 times every week? Like, and there is right. And so when you know that there is, and you know, that the is, is breeze AI and the AI tools that HubSpot is creating, then I think you can start to think of, and, and by the way, I'm just going to throw this out.

You, you should probably start to think about like a breeze impact map. And, and what I mean by a breeze impact map is actually taking time to do what we all talk about doing on this podcast. And that's strategizing the, uh, level in which you're going to use and how you're going to use the breeze tools as you move forward.

And I think you can think about three dimensions. There's volume, complexity, and business value. If you're paying attention to volume, complexity, and business value and tying it back to breeze and the breeze tools, this starts to allow you to build out a breeze impact map and gives you again, a strategy, a method to your madness in which you're trying to do.

So like first you're, you're looking for high volume, but low complexity. These, these are the quick wins. Maybe it's those daily social media posts. I literally, and hopefully we get a chance for me to talk about this, but. I was telling Chad setting up the social media agent because I can augment a human to do more posts better posts faster Um, maybe it's routine customer service questions like we kind of already alluded to right those those are literally the high volume low complexity things Then you can start to identify tasks that are data intensive but repetitive.

This is where Breeze Intelligence really shines. Like, it's funny, I do the super admin training, and we were talking about data hygiene two weeks ago, and one of the super admins was like, WOW! Breeze intelligence doesn't look that expensive right now because we are talking about the amount of like if a salesperson made six thousand and you did that times ten and then like finally though the thing is consider like the the kind of touch multiple things that touch multiple departments right now you can go into like okay here's here's scaling opportunities with With this.

And so I think the beauty of this approach is that it works for everyone. Um, whether you're just starting or you're ready to take breeze implementation to the next level, or if you're sales, or if you're marketing, if you're service, if you're paying attention to like creating this, you know, breeze impact map. And you're focused on the strategy based on volume, complexity, and business value. Now you, again, you have a place to start and a place to go.

Liz Moorehead: George, this is where I want to jump in with you again a little bit. Go a bit deeper. You know, we talk a lot about the fact that you have to make a lot of decisions for yourself in terms of what makes the most sense for your organization and your teams. So when we think about our listeners at home.

You know, how are they going to make the best choices for deciding where Breeze, Copilot, all of these different tools fits within their current day to day, their current workflows, their current strategies within HubSpot? Are there certain self reflection questions they should be asking them for themselves?

And what should they be looking for in those answers?

George B. Thomas: Yeah, I mean, listen, part of me just wants to give you a real simple answer of like, head over to HubSpot Academy, watch all the videos so that you can educate yourself and know what it actually can do. And then, by the way, test everything, test everything, test everything, and try it again, try it again, try it, like, but here's the thing, like, to be honest, I think there's maybe a deeper answer, um, and, and we all know that questions are powerful, and I think that there's three that you can ask yourself, and, and, Um, they just happen to all start with W.

So maybe this is like the 3W framework for, you know, like implementing HubSpot Breeze. Um, like first, where, where are your bottlenecks? Right? Look at where your team spends the most time on manual tasks. What? That's the first W. What specific activities are eating up their time? Okay. That's the question that you have to ask yourself.

The second Y, or the second W is why, and why would automating these tasks make a difference? If you got to know the why of the what, all right, so like, I'm not trying to blow anybody's mind here, but like It's literally the things that you would ask yourself around normal things that you've actually been doing in business, but it's applied to the specific thing of this framework.

And so when you start to do that, right, then you understand like, Co pilot, Breeze Intelligence, the Agents, um, Chad, you, you, uh, you called it something. I immediately went to like the future Borg of your HubSpot Hub, which is by the way, a Trekkie, nerdy Trekkie, uh, statement. But like,

Chad Hohn: Love it. Mm

George B. Thomas: when you start to think about the why, the what, and the who.

And the process and the people and the platform and the platform being specific to breeze at this point inside of HubSpot, that's how I think you get started again, paying attention to everything that we paid attention before people, platform process problems, the why, the who, and go over to HubSpot Academy.

And test everything. Okay, um, I'll shut up.

Liz Moorehead: I like how you show yourself the door verbally. It's always, I'm always a big fan. So.

Chad Hohn: of walks towards the store.

Liz Moorehead: Yeah.

George B. Thomas: I'm like, I'm out.

Liz Moorehead: Well, that's the best part is that if people aren't watching it, I hope they don't realize he actually physically walks to the door, which I, I deeply appreciate. So if, if someone's ready to dive into these tools, what are, what's the first step?

What's the easiest first step someone can take with Breeze or Copilot to see some quick wins?

Max Cohen: gonna try it. He's gonna play with it. Like, the, the, the, the, the It's, I don't think you necessarily have to, you know, do a ton of like planning and get like so intense and crazy about it, like, you just got to get in there and see what it can do, honestly, and like, it's then and only then are you going to actually be able to come up with those ideas of like, oh, I could use it for this and I could use it for this, right, like, I can tell you, like, I don't even know how far Copilot goes, like, I haven't, like, I've talked to it a couple times, right, but like, I haven't like really, Like push the boundaries of like what's possible with it, right?

And like, I'm sure when I do, I'll probably come up with a whole bunch of different, you know, ideas for it. But like, that's just like anything else in HubSpot. Like sometimes you don't actually know how you're going to deploy it or implement until you go in there, play with it. You know screw around with it and like see What you could actually accomplish with it, you know what I mean?

It's just like don't shy away from it and feel like you have to have this like Giant big strategy about how everyone's going to get value out of it and have a plan for every single thing in there Just go play with it. It's okay Like, especially since this is new, it's okay to build the plane as you fly it a little bit or fly the plane as you build it or whatever the saying is, um, you know, especially for stuff like this, because it is very kind of open ended, uh, what you can do with AI these days.

And especially, you know, now that it's more of a thing, you can actually have conversations with, like, it'll be interesting to see how like far people push it. Right. But, um, you know, good.

George B. Thomas: I get real tactical?

Max Cohen: Yeah, do it.

Liz Moorehead: God, I hope so. It's the tactics section.

George B. Thomas: because, because here's the thing. Um, uh, I want to give you something to do right now. Like the most, uh, straightforward way to start. Like, we're talking so easy peasy lemon squeezy that you just, you can't screw it up. Okay. Um, open up HubSpot right now.

Like you're listening. If you're driving, don't open up HubSpot right now. But if you're sitting at your desk,

Chad Hohn: I got it open. I got it

Max Cohen: All right. I'm opening it

George B. Thomas: I want you to go to a contact record. And I mean any contact record. And we're going to watch the magic happen. Because here, here's the thing.

Chad Hohn: I'm in a

George B. Thomas: want you to do, the easiest, most straightforward way to, uh, to use breeze right now today is have a conversation with it.

Okay. So you're on a contact record. You click that breeze co pilot button. And I want you to say something like, give me a summary of our relationship with this customer, or give me a summary of this customer. Bam. Just like that. You've got AI powered insights that would have taken, I don't know, 20 minutes, 30 minutes, 40 minutes to compile manually.

Like I've got an example. Okay. We'll just call this guy's, uh, his name, Tom. And I literally did the thing that I just told you to do. And it says, Tom faces several hurdles. Primarily around data management and partner onboarding. They struggle with accessing partner intake data, which leads to inefficiencies and have concerns about the cost effectiveness of the operations hub for data cleaning.

Tom also expressed frustrations with confusing placement of the meeting scheduler in HubSpot. These it's based on conversations that are being, uh, at, by the way, how did that magic happen? Because we have a Voma that takes notes that goes into our HubSpot notes. It looks at the notes. And so when it's summarizing conversations and context or data, and so, because the Avoma notes goes into the HubSpot and because I want to ask it a question, then all of a sudden I get the context of the conversation, Ladies and gentlemen, just have a dang conversation with co pilot and ask it the questions that you're curious about that you used to have.

Here's the funny thing. One of the things that we love to teach is how to be a, how to be a Sherlock Holmes of your portal, how to be a sleuth. Guess who can be a great sleuth? Co pilot can be a great sleuth for you when you're trying to figure things out. Just have a dang conversation. That's that's the easiest way to start.

Chad Hohn: Avoma's pretty good. I like how it associates all of the stuff to the correct records and it has connections to your HubSpot while you're in the meeting. And even from inside of Zoom, you can open the Avoma app and utilize Avoma. And between that and being able to have like specialized triggered segmentation based on certain trigger words.

Man, that sucker is pretty slick. Like there's even a world where you could create specific action items that might go to specific customers lists in your ClickUp based on certain words that you might want to say, like some pretty crazy stuff that you could do with it. It's got a really, uh, really unique way of doing it stuff.

George B. Thomas: We should probably do an avoma episode in the future and see if we can get somebody from avoma to come beyond the show But here's but here's the thing the the fact that it just can take that conversational Contacts data

Chad Hohn: And get it to the right humans in HubSpot.

George B. Thomas: in the right human contact or you know Record and now all of a sudden That magic that I just expressed can happen across All of the people that you're trying to work from, a service rep, a sales rep, like imagine asking it like can, based on the latest, uh, information we have.

Can you gimme the sentiment of this human right now? This human is pissed at you right now. Oh, let, let me fix that

Max Cohen: There's also two like yeah, so I just did exactly what you said george and when I actually found your contact record Um, you know, and I I said give me a summary here. Um, and uh You know, it's so neat because not only is it like yeah, it's giving that text summary, right? But it's also like highlighting things that are like really important to me Um, and it even like gives you like in the chat like these boxes that'll say oh, here's the last 10 engagements Here's You know the deals here's some tickets like that were opened up and then you can like summarize that stuff you know instead of going into that record and like Wasting time like listening to a call or or reading through a lengthy email chain Like I can't tell you how many times I have to friggin scroll down a giant email thread to like follow a conversation And how brutal that is, um, you know, and that's cool but

George B. Thomas: No, no, no.

Chad Hohn: no.

Max Cohen: What's that brother? That's what I said. Um But like what's really neat too is like, you know Going back to that thing where like I didn't really know like what was possible here It's like there's literally a button on the bottom that says prompts and like you can see You know what it can actually do and get a good like understanding of that, you know Um, like I don't want to craft a linkedin article.

Uh, I mean, I don't know what i'm I don't know how, but I don't know if this is, uh, yeah, this isn't relevant to the conversation I'm having with you here on the thing, but. Um, you know, it's just, it's being able to like there, there's timelines get long, right? Like you'd be surprised how quickly things add up when you've got a customer you've been working with for a year, right?

And like, just imagine like what we were doing before this, we were scrolling filtering and scrolling and opening up threads of emails and expanding and collapsing. And

Chad Hohn: from September. I've got to go. Let me get to the Septembers and figure it out.

Max Cohen: but it's like, you know, like if I could, if I could probably come in here and just be like, uh, can you tell me the last time I talked to Dax, uh, Dax Miller, right?

And like, I'm on your code, your, your contact record here. And I think it'll probably go and just like find, you know, some other stuff. Yeah. Like, you know, so it's, I don't even have to like.

George B. Thomas: real

Max Cohen: even that's so much better than like hit the search bar find the con like type the contacts name find the contact go Into the contact open up the things filter out all the junk.

I don't know like it's it's just this Beautiful new way to just interact with this treasure trove of data you have in your serum

Chad Hohn: It's so

Max Cohen: know and I might start I might start here more often now just like knowing this like it's so

George B. Thomas: that's another good tactical way to just start with co pilot.

Chad Hohn: hmm.

Max Cohen: Just talk to it

George B. Thomas: Yes. Have a conversation.

Max Cohen: Yeah

Chad Hohn: better and better. Like before, I think the thing that weirded people out about Chatspot and about also still copilot in some scenarios is like, The prompting, like it is very, it was very prompt engineered at the beginning. It like, it just had a brain fart. If you didn't use a prompt, like it just couldn't do it.

Right. And it's getting better at handling and understanding your request. And then it's, you know, so it's just more like talk, talking to an open, uh, an LLM model. Right. Right. It's just more like talking to that than it ever used to be. So it's getting better and better at that. So it's being more like, because people have just gotten used to talking to their AI assistants, like a human, Hey, can you help me do this thing?

Or is this possible or whatever? Right. Um, yeah, anyway, no, I love that.

Liz Moorehead: George, I'd like you to think about some of the problems that you've seen. You know, clients struggle with the most across their HubSpot portals. When you think about breeze co pilot and what are some of the real world examples in which ways this can be instantly deployed to solve some of the most common problems that they're running into?

George B. Thomas: And again, the problems can, can, they just continue to be the problems. Like, um, there's. You probably don't have a list for that. You can use AI Breeze to now create lists. There's literally a beta that's out there that you This is the list that I'd like to create and it'll help you create. Because people get bogged down in the trenches of what filters should I do to do this thing.

And again, it's only gonna get better. Um, for me, the other thing is like, we're, we're sitting here, Liz, we're talking about having a conversation. The funny thing about a conversation is a two sided conversation. There's somebody speaking and there's somebody listening. And so a lot of this is the conversation around will like, just go have a conversation, speak to co pilot.

Well, what if you could really lean into what I preach all the time, and that's wrap HubSpot around your business. And, and what if you have custom properties, um, but you're having breeze, then pay attention to these custom properties. How, how can you turn a breeze or co pilot into a listening agent that's paying attention to the custom parts of, right?

And so what am I talking about? Well, quit trying to slam your business into a SaaS software. And use HubSpot to wrap it around your business. Use Copilot and Breeze to help listen to what you're wrapping around there. Like, um, workflows, AI is, by the way. I love that we can just call it breeze, but you got to get specific.

Like AI is in workflows, AI is in lists, AI is in social media. Like it's, it's, uh, it's going to be, if it isn't already across every piece of the platform. And so again, I go back to what I said earlier, like. Catching up is going to be real difficult, but like taking little steps every single day, having conversations, playing with it, like Mac said, getting betas testing like this again, to, to go in the vein of the question you asked the knowledge gap, that's been a problem that every HubSpot user has faced.

Okay. So how can we use breeze to actually. Fixed a knowledge gap so that there's just so many ways.

Liz Moorehead: I love that. Well, I know we've covered a lot of ground today, George. And as we joked earlier, Max, Chad, and I not great at landing planes, not great at ending podcasts, especially when we lack your supervision. So I'd love for you to help us bring this conversation home today. Talk to me. About if there's one thing our listeners walk away from today's episode, what should it be and why

George B. Thomas: Yeah, and again, I kind of alluded to this at the beginning of the episode, but I hope you realize that Breeze isn't just another tool that HubSpot kind of threw in there. It literally can be your partner in growth. Um, my hopes is that you don't get overwhelmed thinking that you need to understand everything about AI or implement everything at once.

Um, my hopes after this episode is that you start small, focus on one area where you're spending too much time on routine tasks and, and let breeze or the AI element of breeze in that area help you work smarter, not harder. The, the, the real takeaway that I think everybody needs to kind of wake up and understand is Breeze represents a fundamental shift in how we approach business operations and use HubSpot in general. It's not just about automating individual tasks. It's about creating intelligent, operational ecosystems where Us as human experts, um, and the AI capabilities, they work together and they amplify each other. The real power for HubSpot users moving forward is going to be in the understanding that they are the conductor. Of the orchestra. That is all of the breeze components, co pilot agents, intelligence, um, to create these future sophisticated self improving, um, processes that help drive your business growth. That's the takeaway that I would want them to have.

Liz Moorehead: I love that. Well, guys,

Max Cohen: Can I just tell you something I did really quick with co pilot? I just asked it to

Liz Moorehead: Max,

Max Cohen: just asked it, well, I think this is also something you should take away. I just asked it to explain custom events to me like I was a five year old. All right. And it literally just said, imagine you're playing with blocks and you want to count every time you stack a red block on top of a blue block.

The custom event in HubSpot is like setting up a special tracker that can count these stacking actions. It can help you see how many times you did this special thing, like stacking your blocks, so you can tell your friends how many times you did it. In HubSpot, a custom event lets you track special actions on your website or with your business that are important to you, just like counting how many times you stack those blocks.

HubSpot. com. For more details, you can check this link. Like, sometimes you don't want to have to just search for a knowledge based article. And you need, like, the fact that we can get HubSpot to explain itself in very simple terms is crazy now. You know what I mean? Like, notice that it didn't just send me to a, an Academy

Liz Moorehead: base article to figure

Max Cohen: just send me to an article, right? Which is like, what a basic chatbot would do, right? It literally explained itself. Dude, where, where, where, hold on. HubSpot can literally explain itself to you

Liz Moorehead: It's the brain naming itself a brain.

George B. Thomas: make no mistake. Every knowledge article, every piece, every piece of content HubSpot has ever made is part of the brain behind what you see. Like, they have the context, they have the conversation, they've been creating the content. Like, and now that's on whatever drug of choice you want to put in this sentence that I'm not going to use because they can now use AI and conversational language to, and what did I say?

What did I say? I said, bridge the knowledge. And what did Max go do? Hey, teach me this really complex thing historically in a really simple way, please.