42 min read

HubSpot Is Now a Customer Platform ... What the Heck Does That Mean?

Picture of Liz Moorehead Liz Moorehead Jul 3, 2024 11:30:10 AM

Inbound Strategy HubSpot Sales Hub Engage Podcast

 

Welp, I picked a heck of a week to miss out on the HubHeroes podcast, because — hoo, boy! — this one is a doozy in the best way possible. This week, George and Max were joined by the one and only Chris Carolan to dig into a critical conversation more folks should be having in the inbound and HubSpot ecosystem. 

In this conversation, George, Max, and Chris discuss the shift in how HubSpot is positioning itself as a customer platform. They explore the challenges of defining and understanding what a customer platform means and how it differs from a CRM. The conversation touches on the importance of educating customers about the broader capabilities of HubSpot and the value it can bring to their business. 

💥 Related HubHeroes Podcast Episodes:

They also discuss the limitations of ROI calculations and the need to focus on the long-term goals and benefits of using a customer platform. The conversation explores the concept of the HubSpot customer platform and the shift in mindset required to fully leverage its capabilities.

The guys then talked about the importance of building relationships and creating better experiences for customers, as well as the need to have conversations with departments like finance that were not traditionally involved. They also touch on the challenge of educating the market about the expanded capabilities of HubSpot and the need for clearer positioning and identity.

You hear that, HubSpot? We love you, but it's time for HubSpot to invest more in the ecosystem and provide coaching and support for users.

Keywords

HubSpot, customer platform, CRM, ROI, education, value, HubSpot customer platform, building relationships, creating better experiences, conversations with departments, educating the market, clearer positioning, ecosystem support

Key Takeaways

  • HubSpot is positioning itself as a customer platform, which is a more holistic and comprehensive term than a CRM.
  • Understanding and defining what a customer platform means is important for both HubSpot users and potential customers.
  • Educating customers about the broader capabilities of HubSpot and the value it can bring to their business is crucial.
  • ROI calculations can be challenging and may not fully capture the long-term benefits and potential of using a customer platform.
  • Focusing on the long-term goals and benefits of using a customer platform is more valuable than trying to quantify ROI. The HubSpot customer platform allows for building better relationships and driving more revenue through improved experiences.
  • Conversations with departments like finance are necessary to fully leverage the capabilities of the customer platform.
  • There is a need for clearer positioning and identity for HubSpot to help educate the market about its expanded capabilities.
  • Investing in the ecosystem and providing coaching and support for users can help drive success with HubSpot.

And so much more ... 

Additional Resources

Episode Transcript

George B. Thomas: no, we don't need that. Also, by the way, before, before I get into the actual true intro. Uh, ladies and gentlemen, the chat pane. Can I just say, first of all, Chad, he says, can I just say that after a difficult week, I always love coming to sit, uh, to the live recording of the hub heroes podcast.

This is a place where I can really enjoy a great conversation between leaders in the industry and relax while still growing as a working professional. Chad, can we just please get that as an actual testimonial and put it on the hub heroes podcast page? Also, Max, he says, where's the croutons and the racing wheel?

Exclamation

Max Cohen: Yo don't,

George B. Thomas: He wants to

Max Cohen: listen, I'll get the croutons dude, I

George B. Thomas: know he wants to, which by the way, if you're watching this live and you're like croutons, go back, watch a historical episode, it's a whole crouton episode.

Chris Carolan: I'm, I'm participating live and I'm like, croutons.

George B. Thomas: Yeah, croutons. So, okay, let's go ahead and get into the, the real deal, Holyfield. So we've been talking a lot over the past few months about how the HubSpot platform has changed. I mean, we've been going at this, uh, conversation from. A number of different angles, if you will, we've talked about the rollout of the new content hub and what that means for the future of hub spot as a CMS platform for businesses.

We've even talked about how the inbound methodology has evolved over the years. Both due to advancements in technology and global events, as well as added complexities around what the customer experience, uh, with your brand should look like, but what has been very interesting about the messaging of HubSpot is a subtle shift in how they are talking about.

What HubSpot itself is. You see, for many of us, HubSpot began as an inbound marketing platform. Then it was for, um, marketing and sales and HubSpot began as this like, you know, growth marketing and sales platform. And, and, and. If I'm honest, I could just say, and so on and so on and so on and so forth to the place that we're at now with all the hubs that we have, they started, uh, even pushing this idea of grow better as a battle cry for businesses and because it's not just about making money.

Growth should be sustainable and should be a result of creating genuine value, you know, solving real problems, not those imagined ones that some of us maybe see other organizations creating noise and nonsense around. It's about genuinely being of service to the humans. That's right. I got it in right in the intro, uh, through education and whatever it is that we do or sell.

Now. We've all recognized that these changes have occurred, but it's only recently that HubSpot has put a more defined label that represents the shift. Uh, they now call themselves a customer platform, and this is a much broader and more holistic term than we've ever heard used before. What makes us even more interesting is that in many ways, HubSpot has expanded to provide automation tools and internal, uh, for internal teams.

Now. Perfect example of this are the Commerce Hub and the Operations Hub. Hubs that on their surface do not seem to be customer facing and yet here we are with HubSpot and the customer platform. And Chris, as you know, I talked about this in the Super Admin training today for over 90 minutes of the, uh, the Commerce Hub and how it kind of fits into customer experience, customer platform, and things like that.

So, What is this subtle shift in how we talk about HubSpot? Uh, what it is really mean and what is a customer platform anyway? Why does understanding this language matter and how will this shift what we think about HubSpot as we go forward? That's exactly. What we're going to be talking about today with one of our favorite friends of the podcast, Chris Carolyn.

Hey, today. That's right. Give us some applause, Max today. We're thrilled to have you here, Chris. Uh, let me just tell if the viewers, listeners don't know. From what I've gathered, you're a seasoned expert in the industrial marketing and revenue growth. Chris is also the founder, co founder, and head of revenue at Conveying Your Message, an agency dedicated to helping industrial and manufacturing companies thrive in the digital age.

15 years of experience. I think I saw 15 HubSpot certifications over there too. And you, you have a unique background that spans, uh, material quality control, analytical instrument sales, and digital marketing. So. I guess that makes you not just a marketer, but he's a problem solver, I think, too. Do you like to solve problems?

Chris Carolan: I do, I

George B. Thomas: And you know, the intricacies of HubSpot and the industrial business. Chris, is there anything that I should have added or I missed in your intro to, so people know a little bit about you?

Chris Carolan: I mean, all that to say, I have been waiting for HubSpot to serve this whole platform role effectively ever since 2017 when they started rolling out sales hub and service hub and, you know, uh, But in your intro, when you say it's not just about the revenue and, and cash anymore, it's actually never been about the revenue inside of HubSpot until you had access to something like Commerce Hub, right?

Now we can actually see and feel it. Cause I can tell you on the outside of the marketing and sales department, when people are working in accounting systems and ERPs, I don't, I don't care what your deal says for closed one amount, that doesn't matter to me. Now we can bring that stuff in, we can start bringing those teams in.

It is a great time to be using HubSpot and I love it.

George B. Thomas: I love that. So Chris, I'm actually going to start with you because as everybody now knows, the topic of today's podcast is HubSpot as a customer platform. And I want to know what, why are you excited to talk about this topic? Um, because one could say that it's, well, it's a label or HubSpot is creating a category.

Um, but. Why is this important? Why are you excited to have this conversation today?

Chris Carolan: Oh man, I bet Max has never in his life been been in the role of the man, right?

George B. Thomas: The man.

Chris Carolan: Yeah. But in, but in the case of like. This, uh, you know, what a customer platform is versus the DNA of the ecosystem being very point solution. And it's the marketing tool, right? When I hear Max say things like. You know, but you could use it for, for just, you know, emailing people if you wanted to, knowing that Max prides himself on customer satisfaction and setting expectations.

I'm not sure that we can tell people anymore that you can just use it for one thing. Because if you try to use it for emails,

George B. Thomas: like, what's happening?

Chris Carolan: you're going to get smacked in the face with, Oh, you could use this.

Max Cohen: you ever told me it's okay, that I ever said it's okay to just use it for email, Chris? Do you have any idea how much I fought that battle when I was doing implementations and people were like, we got it to send a newsletter. And I'm like, what the you doing?

No, you know, I'm not okay with that. You know, I'm not okay with

George B. Thomas: Do I have to

Max Cohen: Nah, I love him. I love him. This is why

Chris Carolan: be fair. Like when you

Max Cohen: my boy right here.

Chris Carolan: you've been hitting on this several times and for good reason, because we're running into this stuff all the time. Now, bad onboardings, just bad expectation setting, because a lot of people just aren't familiar with what customer platform means. And like, Hey, uh, when you're, You still can buy HubSpot and people will sell you HubSpot just to do emailing or sales.

Max Cohen: yes, yes. And that's it. There's a problem there because sales reps, I love them. HubSpot sales reps. I love

George B. Thomas: love how you looked at the camera for that piece right there.

Max Cohen: love you, baby. Love you. Anyway. So the, the, there is a problem and it's, I don't think it's because of, of how HubSpot sales reps are. They're the ones that sell the product, right? But their incentive is to say, what's the specific problem that you have?

Yeah, we can solve for that. Do you want to buy it? Not what's the specific problem that you have? Yeah, totally. We can do that. But like, We can also do all this other stuff. You should be super excited about it. Make sure when you get it, that you're also doing this to get the most out of the thing that I'm selling you to accomplish your basic thing.

Right. And it, it takes a certain type of person that can see that and get other people super jazzed up about it and excited, but the sales reps job is to get the deal over the, over the hump and get it to close one. Right. And the thing that gets problematic with that, and I suffered of this when I was a solutions engineer, because I was the guy that came in that said, yeah, sure.

You can do all this stuff, but like, there's so much more you can do with it that you're not even thinking about the problem with that is that gets them. Overthinking it. Right. And slowing deals down in this economy. Companies don't want to do that. Right. So it's, it's, it's tough. The other thing too, is like HubSpot sales reps.

They don't understand the depth of the most, sorry, most of them, especially newer ones. Right. They haven't played with this thing a lot. Right. You know, don't understand. Like the depth of what you can actually do with the thing, right? Cause how can it just a huge tool of all time? You cannot expect the sales rep to come in and be like, I know what every single corner of this thing can do.

So it's, it's, it's hard to expect them to be able to do that. Like someone who's been consulting it for a long time and sees the bigger value of it. Right. And you compound that with your job is to close pipeline and you need to do that in the fastest, most efficient way possible, that means it's going to leave it up to folks like us to get them to expand their mind on it.

Right. It's, it's hard to do it in the sales process unless you have a partner guiding you through the first initial purchase of HubSpot that can see the forest through the trees, see that, Oh, you came to me saying you wanted to send a newsletter, but like, that is the last thing you should be thinking about, right?

This, all this other stuff, you know? So it's a weird dynamic, but like, I agree with you, but that's like, what's causing that. You know what I mean?

George B. Thomas: So I love this idea of expanding, uh, their mind and expanding the knowledge, which by the way, as I asked this next question, I am going to, there's, there, there are some amazing words that happen in the chat pane. And I'm so happy that now because of some updates to the platform that we use, we can share it with the audience.

Um, Chad says the cash hitting da bank is king, by the way. So everybody can jot that down in your notepad. But, but here's the thing. This is for all of us, but I'm going to ask the question. Maybe Chris, uh, you go Max, then you go, and then I'll follow up on this one. And that's the, when, when we hear the term and maybe we go from the angle when we hear it, or when customers hear it, HubSpot customers or potential HubSpot customers, the term customer platform.

Um, In your mind, what does that actually mean? So Chris, you go first and then Max, you can follow up.

Chris Carolan: The customer platform is the place where your customer processes start and end.

Max Cohen: Damn.

George B. Thomas: And that's

Max Cohen: Damn.

George B. Thomas: Okay.

Max Cohen: I'm, uh, I, Oh man, this is tough because you guys are gonna probably cook me because you're the you guys are the

George B. Thomas: That's what makes a good

Max Cohen: hug,

Chris Carolan: We're a little passionate.

Max Cohen: wait. You guys are gonna yell at me so much. Um, I I uh I don't know right because like the thing there's part of my brain that's just like is this like a new Term that we're we're we're trying to come up with To make it seem more special than a CRM system, which it is obviously.

Right. Um, cause it's like, you know, the most basest example is like, when is the tool that builds your website also powered by your CRM? Like no one else does that. Right. At least that I know of. Right. Um, and, and part of, part of your customer's whole like experience and, you know, experience isn't in the word customer platform, right?

So I almost think there's like some ways that that terminology. hurts it versus helping it, right? Um, because you got to remember, like, you got to keep up with what customers are actually calling this thing, right? They're looking for a CRM system, right? It goes, well, we're not a CRM, we're a customer platform.

And that might make people can't think about it on like a nuanced level go, Oh, well, then that's not what I'm looking for. Right. And the other thing you got to think about too, is like where your customer processes start and end. I like that because I think you're a hundred percent. Right. Um, but the question is, is like, are you doing anything differently now that it's a customer platform versus like what it has been?

And I think, I don't know if they call themselves a CRM or if they've officially kind of changed the name to customer platform yet. Um, but it's, it's not so much like, Oh, well, you're still doing all the stuff that you're doing in HubSpot today, but we're calling it a customer platform. So like, what does that really change?

Nothing. I think it helps change the mindset of the users though, which I think is incredibly important. Right. Because it gets them out of the idea of like, Oh, this is the tool our team, our sales team uses to log their opportunities. Right. And it gets them more into the mindset of. You create the entire experience journey processes, all of it within one system.

And it touches all these things that need to be touched, right? Your customer service and success process, your whole sales process, how your marketing team is operating, all that kind of stuff, plus the outward facing stuff that your customers are experiencing, your website, any sort of web experience that you create, all this kind of stuff, it touches everything.

Right. Um, so I just don't. I don't know. Cause like, I remember for a while ago, like I remember hearing Dharmesh talk about it. Right. Where he's like, you're going to see HubSpot move from customer relationship management system to a customer data platform. Right. That was the kind of big CDP. Right. And there are other CDPs out there.

Like that is a category. Right. But a lot of it is like, you know, really high performance data store and like, you know, tracking a billion different like events and plugging all these other things that are feeding stuff into it and stuff like that. But it's not a CRM like HubSpot is. Right. It's more like data housing and using that data and how you get it different places and sucking in and, and, you know, all that kind of stuff.

Um, so like that didn't describe HubSpot. I don't think, even though that was also when the whole conversation of like, you're all on one platform thing was also kind of getting out there. Right. And then, so when you think customer platform, I get it. I, I sure think you could call it that and that describes it.

But the question is, does the outside world understand what that means? They've already had a tough enough time wrapping their heads around what HubSpot is today, right? So, I'm not sure. I don't have a wild opinion on it.

George B. Thomas: of things, and I love, by the way, um, I, personally, Max, am not gonna cook you. Uh, we'll

Max Cohen: Cook me, dude.

George B. Thomas: Chris decides to still cook you after this, but here's the thing, there's so much that I love about what you

Max Cohen: already cooked me in his intro.

George B. Thomas: there's, there's so much, I know he was kind of going for it. He was like in the right corner, beard number one in the, yeah.

So here's

Max Cohen: Yeah.

George B. Thomas: There's so much that I love about what you were talking about. One, uh, you're right. Originally there was words like customer data platform being thrown out there. Those already exist. By the way, there's already customer experience platforms. Um, so the fact that we slimmed it down and it's just a customer platform, I love this idea.

I love the terminology and max to your statement of, um, we, they don't know what it is sweet. That's why Chris, myself and other HubSpot partners are making it a venture to actually educate people what a customer platform is, hence why we even started a HubSpot user group that is around a customer platform.

So literally you can go to YouTube, you can go look at the first HubSpot user group that we had, where it was like a conversational group. We were really talking about what the heck is a customer platform. And Max, the thing that I love most about that you were rattling around in your brain, and I was like thinking of you historical episodes in Devon historical episodes, because you brought up the whole, well, I'm looking for a CRM, but it's not a CRM.

No, no. It's a customer platform that has a CRM, a CMS, and all of these other AI assisted by AI tools, right? So it's literally the launching pad for the things that you can talk about that it is. But what I think it being called customer platform helps is this problem right here, recreating your historical platform in HubSpot, because now what happens is you're not mentally thinking CRM to CRM.

So let's make it just be what we had, but in here, you're not thinking, uh, email to email, so let's just make what happened there over here. You're literally saying as an organization, if it's positioned, right, if it's educated on, right. Oh, we're moving from a And I'm using air quotes for all of you that can't watch this and are listening a dumb CRM to a smart customer platform.

We're moving away from a dumb CMS, air quotes, air quotes, to a smart customer platform, right? And where we are moving to a customer data platform, we are moving to a customer experience platform, but it just happens to be called the HubSpot customer. platform. So there are actually so many good nuggets in what you were saying.

And I'm like, yep, yep. Chris, what were your thoughts?

Chris Carolan: Yeah. Like one of the reasons I'm so passionate about like, okay, it's going to be customer platform, let's try to define it is I got lucky a little bit after inbound when I first became aware of this phrase that they had it, you know, it's one of, it's one of those casual, like slide ins we're going to start, we're changing what HubSpot is as a category now.

Uh, but I got to be on this AMA with Andy Petrie. And there was only like five people on the call. So it's like face to face. And I just got to ask him like, why, what, what's the plan? Like, are you guys,

Max Cohen: Wouldn't that be a triple A? Ask Andy anything?

George B. Thomas: Oh yeah,

Chris Carolan: there you go.

George B. Thomas: I like that. Uh, ding

Max Cohen: Anyway, didn't mean to interrupt you. Go ahead. I'm cooking. I'm cooking.

George B. Thomas: yourself.

Chris Carolan: said like, it was. Very purposeful, right? They're not, it's not a CRM anymore. Uh, I'll say outside of the usual spaces, Max, you say CRM, CRM doesn't have a lot of street cred, you know, in some of the manufacturing spaces. So I'm fine with not trying to play that game, especially when you have ERPs and monday.

com and everybody's a CRM all of a sudden, right? So,

Max Cohen: I like what Nick said in the chat, though, serum is a noun. It's not a verb or isn't a noun. It's a verb, right? Where it's like, it's something you do customer relationship, man. You manage customer relationships in it. And I think you still do that if it's a customer platform, like that's the action you're performing when you do any of that stuff.

Right. But you know, it, yeah, anyway, I'm, I'm, I'm, I, my brain

Chris Carolan: And because of, of who I try to serve, I'm constantly trying to protect HubSpot from, you know, these other systems that say they are CRMs or do customer management or whatever, like ERPs especially. And what's been successful is basically if you're using CMS or not, right, if you're not using CMS and it's not contextualizing your website, then it is a customer communication platform that you're using.

Because I haven't seen anything yet. I haven't heard of anything that can touch HubSpot when it comes to true communication management across all internal and external stakeholders, right? If you add CMS on top, now it is a customer experience, you know, management platform. And that seems to like get the attention because the next step and what I realized early on is like, if I can't get the CEO or the C suite to understand what HubSpot can be for their business.

They, they can't stop looking at it from a quick wins perspective and it's like, Oh, great. We saved the, we saved the sales team some time. Oh, we got, we got to send more email blasts. Like, Oh, That's where it's like at that point. It is a point solution accessory tool. That is not integral to the business.

And if I can get them on board and they usually make it there to this customer process, cause like we can use like customer process or CRM, like marketing automation, like all these different terms. But for the people that don't, that aren't in SAS and don't know a lot of this stuff, if you say define your customer process, They will always be able to answer that question, right?

If you try to go like, how do you manage your CRM or customer relationships, or like, it just adds a lot of different stuff to it. And that's what, you know, so that's where I've had success, like understanding that, um, it can be a bunch of things. So I do think it's the challenge, like, There is nothing out there called like customer platform only.

Um, and that's why, like, I love the path and that's where it is. Our it's on us to, to define it.

Max Cohen: so this is, this is, so what's interesting here is like, I think, you know, if you're someone who's selling HubSpot, and I think this is more for like a partner to do, because I don't know if direct reps are going to like do this just because the nature of what their metrics look like, they have to close pipeline, right?

And then they have to do it fast and in complicated frictionless way, right? But like, I think getting people to see the bigger picture, right? It's the conversation that needs to happen is it's not what's ailing you right now. Right. It's like, Oh, like I, um, you know, I cut my finger, right? Well, what you need is a bandaid, but I'm going to sell you a whole hospital.

Right. That has a bandaid in it. That's not great. Right. But I think what you need to be asking folks is more so. Regardless of the software you use, take software out of the, out of the conversation, right? What's like the long term goal for the business and what's stopping you from getting there, right?

Because it's what's stopping them from getting there is not like the sales reps hate sending the same email over and over again. And so we have this thing called snippets, right? It's, this is where I want to get the business to. And here's all the things in between that are stopping that from happening.

And when you know what that is, right? Then it's easier to get to someone to be like, okay. All those things you just described that are going to, that are impeding you in your progress down the yellow brick road to like, get to this ultimate place you want to be.

George B. Thomas: to Oz. All right.

Max Cohen: This platform solves for all of those things, right?

Sure. Your, your, your sales reps need to be more efficient, like whatever it is. Great. But like, if you want to be able to sell someone the vision of what a customer platform can do and what HubSpot can do as a whole, versus just saying, I've got this point solution inside of this. Gigantic solution that solves a million other things, right?

When you only need that point solution piece, they're never going to get the full value or see the full picture or get the full understanding of it. Right. So a lot of times, like how you frame the conversation, the problem with sales reps is they're not going to do that. They can't do that. Like that, that just slows everything down for them.

And it makes it really, really tough. So they have to do the, let me sell you a hospital to fix the cut on your finger instead of just the bandaid. Right. Or disguise the hospital as a bandaid, which is impossible. Right.

George B. Thomas: interesting, Max, you say sales reps, but my mind this time, when you said that, and it hadn't historically done this, um, sales reps could make mean HubSpot sales reps, sales reps could mean actual partners who have. Sales reps who are trying to do demos. And so, so like, this isn't just a HubSpot problem.

This now becomes a ecosystem problem because it threads out through the partner ecosystem and conversations as well. Okay. Okay. So I want to, I want to dive, uh, what I'll think is a layer deeper because. My question, and it's kind of a two part question, but really the main point is the last question I'm going to ask.

And that's like, does seeing HubSpot as a customer platform now, opposed to whatever we thought it might be before mean anything, and what I'm really asking in that is, does this mindset shift from what we thought it was to now it's a customer platform, does it translate into any increased ROI of any kind?

Max Cohen: I know a cool app we made recently that does

George B. Thomas: Oh, does it? Yeah, do you

Max Cohen: yeah, that's pretty sick. So wait, wait, wait. So wait, I'm trying to like, Chris, if you have thoughts on this go, cause I'm trying to understand fully the question cause I hate talking

Chris Carolan: Me too, man. Like

Max Cohen: Nothing's a

Chris Carolan: That's the problem. Like ROI. And this is a part of this challenge, ROI. Is one of the hardest, like, it's always the thing that like black and white, it's like, Oh yeah, this is like 10 X like, or, or you're going to cut it by 10 it's like on paper, like, especially before this, like see pricing change where like, it was no contest almost any time you compared HubSpot to Salesforce straight up, it was like, you're going to save a bunch of money, like.

Why are we even talking about this, but ROI, since it's not easily, like it requires calculation. So inherently it's just a harder conversation to have because everybody views return and investment differently,

Max Cohen: Yes.

Chris Carolan: this is, this is.

Max Cohen: And it's sometimes stuff you can't put into a math equation. That's the

Chris Carolan: And that's where like one of my favorite places to go that, that should work.

And it just, it doesn't for all the, a lot of the reasons that we're talking about is like payment links, right? Everybody that is a HubSpot user has access to this tool for free. If HubSpot payments and Stripe or Stripe, right. And I was testing this back in 2021 and I got CFO approval immediately. Okay.

Right. But I had to start talking to the financial team, which like 95 percent of the ecosystem is not used to doing, and they actively try to avoid exactly when, cause I had to tell them, I was like, Hey, I'm not asking for a whole like sale process change here. This is what's going to happen. We're going to get like 10 extra transactions.

And this person who does reconciling at the end of the month has one extra statement. It's going to take her five minutes to reconcile. If we do this, we are satisfying our sales team. Who is tired of quoting these simple parts, our service teams. Who's tired. These processes take days. It's going to impact, you know, resell metrics, upgrade all the goals that we say that we have right for this tool that we already have access to.

Right.

George B. Thomas: For free.

Chris Carolan: And that's where like, and that's the difference. That's why I think Commerce Hub is so impactful and why it's actually different. Now, because that would, that revenue clarity was not in HubSpot, it just wasn't, and that automatically reduced the value of HubSpot to everybody after closed one, right?

So that is a difference, but you know, kind of bringing everybody in, it's like the same people that are asking customer facing teams to work out of an ERP, like that's, that's Should click right away. It's like, Oh, they get to work out a HubSpot instead. Of course there's time effort ROI there, but it just never works the way that we want it to, right?

Max Cohen: Yeah

George B. Thomas: Max, your thoughts?

Max Cohen: Well, yeah, I mean kind of like chris said is like I always thought the roi conversation is so It's it's I'm, I don't want to call it pointless, but I always just think it's silly. It's a trap. Yeah, but you know again Some people when they say well, what's the roi of hub spot? They literally mean how much more money am I gonna make right based in you know Compared to what am I spending on this thing?

And it's like, how, how the hell should a, should a sales rep have any, or like anyone have like any sort of authority to answer that question? Because like you, like, how am I supposed to know how well you use the thing? Right. How am I supposed to know, uh, you know, the future? Right. Like what happens if things outside of it happen and like, you know, that you can't, the HubSpot can't control all of a sudden you can't sell anything.

Right. We had something happen recently that probably threw off a lot of people's ROI production, right. Called the pandemic, right? Like it's so, it's so goofy because I could never feel like genuine answering that question because I'd be lying to someone. Right. Um, and, You know, and even too, like, I just felt like when I got asked it, I, the majority of people that would ask me that question, when they would just say, what's the ROI of HubSpot, it's like, do you even know what you're asking?

You know what I mean? Like, do you literally mean like, cause, cause to ask that question, it means I know how much more money this person should know how much more money my reps and my folks and my whatever is going to generate in the future. Right. Sorry, no one's a psychic. It doesn't exist. Right? Uh, like, so it's just such a goofy question.

And then on top of like what Chris said too. I would have people that say, what's the ROI of HubSpot? And I'm like, Oh, well, it can give you like the HubSpot marketing, like ROI calculator on the website, which is just like, don't get me wrong. Well designed, totally beautiful, really cool. But like only an idiot is falling for that.

Like only an idiot is falling for that. Right. Uh, and someone who doesn't really care about the genuine, like, what can we do that could be really great with this thing? It's like, Oh, I got to justify it to people that are asking what the ROI is, because it's a question you got to ask to check the box.

Right. And the other thing too. So like sometimes like wait, are you asking for ROI from like a money in money out this much more increase whatever perspective Or are you saying and is is like what is the return to you? What is the investment? What does that mean is the investment literally what you're paying for the software or is it in the investment in the time?

And the effort and the whatever it takes to get it do something and is return more Oh, well now you can do this, this thing easier or better or more efficient, or you can communicate with people in a different, is that the return or are we literally talking about, I hate the conversation so much. And maybe it's because I'm too stupid to understand that I am.

Totally okay with that being the case, right? I failed all my accounting classes in college, but I just, I, it's so cringe because there's no way I could give you a genuine answer and I don't lie to people. I don't, and it's like, I couldn't do that part of the sales process. Cause it's just like, I know it's all, you know, it's, it's whatever, but I don't know.

I'm

George B. Thomas: so it's funny because, um, I, I love where you guys went with this. And I'm going to go ahead and just kind of what you all, what both of you have been dancing around, uh, is this idea of ambiguity, right? And, and so here's the thing. Um, what's the ROI of a football in my hands, not much Walter Payton, Tom Brady.

A metric, but ton a metric. I did it for you, Max, a metric, but ton of ROI. Um, what's the ROI of HubSpot in your hands or mine? Cause in my hands, there's going to be a lot of ROI in your hands, depending on who you are and how long you've been using the system and what you know, from tattic tactics, strategies, and building relationships.

I don't know how to answer that, but so we got to be careful because I agree. There's this level of ambiguity. However, what I will say is that when I think about HubSpot and when I think about this, uh, transition to customer platform, and I think of return on investment where my brain has gone for years.

When I hear that is I, I am with you too. I hate ROI, but I love ROR. Return on relationships. And here's the thing. The customer platform will allow you to build better relationships because you're going to be focused on creating better experiences for what HubSpot is calling the customer platform. But I today I'm standing out on a mountain and letting you know.

That it's a human platform, right? It's a human platform that you're going to use to build relationships, which then you're going to actually drive more revenue. And then you can say, Whoa, we, we got a lot of ROI out of that, their HubSpot customer platform. That's how this is going to go. All right. So the other thing though, that I want to hit upon is Chris, you talked about, and I mean, dude, you went.

Right by it, like just threw it out there and kept on rolling. You started to have conversations with humans that you hadn't historically had to have conversations with the finance department. This goes into, I have been talking max. I think the first time I said it was like a couple of months ago on one of our podcast episodes, stop using HubSpot like it's HubSpot.

Cause it's not HubSpot anymore. It is a different beast. And

Max Cohen: It's like your granddaddy's hub

George B. Thomas: This ain't your granddaddy's HubSpot. So, so what I want to lead into is where does your guys brains go in terms of how the idea of HubSpot customer platform shifts our mindset. Of how we think about and more importantly, how we use HubSpot because now we start to, in our mind, think about it as a customer platform that happens to have a CMS, that happens to have a data platform, that happens to have a CRM, that happens to have service sales and marketing tools in it.

Like what, what are the changes in the brain that need to happen?

Chris Carolan: I'm gonna let Max get

Max Cohen: I mean the the change in the brain I think like it's dude, you know how many people that i've talked to that have just been stuck in the salesforce universe That still just think i'm spots a marketing tool right, that's the thing people won't be able to wrap their head around customer platform because they they've they forgot everything they didn't See Everything HubSpot turned into.

Right? Um, so it's easier for people who have been in the ecosystem and watched this for a long time. Right? And go, Oh, oh, oh, brick by brick. This thing has been able to be a lot more than just like a marketing tool. Right? But it's

Chris Carolan: Who, who is it easy for? I'm not seeing anybody out

Max Cohen: No, I'm just saying the people that, I'm talking, dude, I'm talking about the people that

George B. Thomas: Ding, ding.

Max Cohen: and like lick, lick the screen every

Chris Carolan: talking about those people. They still don't know how to sell

Max Cohen: for those, it's easier for those people than the folks who've been living in the, in the big blue cloud land forever and just think, oh, this is the thing that makes lead show up in my Salesforce, right? Obviously like it's going to be easier for those and the thing that I think of salesforce is gigantic I feel like there's a lot more people in that category than a lot more, you know, uh, uh, You know people who look at the product updates page and like check it first thing every morning when they're having their their coffee Like there's a total difference between those folks.

I'm just saying it's easier I'm not saying you got it all figured out right but there are at least people that have paid attention attention to the evolution of this thing versus people that Could be great users of HubSpot and could be great champions of HubSpot, but they've existed in the world that has told them for years.

This is just like the marketing tool. It's kind of better than Marketo or Pardot or whatever. Right. And they don't know what has happened over here while they've been living in Salesforce the entire time. And just hearing tons and tons of people go, Oh, you grow out of HubSpot eventually, or, Oh, it doesn't scale or, Oh, it doesn't do this.

Right. Like, You know brainwashed right? So that's what i'm thinking.

Chris Carolan: Yeah, it would be nice to have some help from HubSpot on this one. Like, cause they definitely created this problem by making a magnificent product very quickly that's way different than it ever was before. But they clearly have no control over the narrative of what HubSpot is and the position of HubSpot.

In the ecosystem right now, or in the, in the market, right?

Max Cohen: Why do you think all the spicy comment wars that happen between salesforce super users and hubspot? Super users are sometimes the only thing you see on your feed when you're existing heavily in any of these ecosystems, right? It's because they think that we're playing with a fisher price, you know, uh, uh, uh cooking set Right?

When we're over here with a, you know, a Ferrari, Lamborghini, Diablo, V5, whatever the heck, right? But they still think we're playing with toys, right? Because all they know is like, we're on the superior platform. Like, so, yeah.

George B. Thomas: so there's a couple of things. One, um, y'all drove me to download a new sound like, Hey, if you hear that sound, if it's go to your corner, holy crap, it's beard versus beard on this

Max Cohen: We're not fighting. I'm, I'm

Chris Carolan: passionate. Yes.

Max Cohen: this guy. Ha

George B. Thomas: here's the thing. Um, there's, there's so much goodness though, in this episode around this thing, Max, it's funny because literally you're making me recall a conversation that I had with one of our clients who we were doing onboarding for, and he literally said, why would I drive a blue pickup truck when I can drive an orange Ferrari?

In the understanding that the ecosystem has changed around the way that you have to think about these tools and platforms that you're putting into your, your, um, business. And so, so I'm, I'm loving this conversation and we're going to keep it going because. And again, I think we've created these questions and we're throwing them out in a way that you, you guys, I am personally passionate about this.

Um,

Chris Carolan: Good job, Liz.

Max Cohen: George, hold on, George. I think I cut Chris off though, when I went on that last diet tribe. So I want to make sure Chris, you finish your thought if I did cut you off, but I can't tell. I felt like

Chris Carolan: it in to this

George B. Thomas: okay.

Max Cohen: All right. Working it. All right.

George B. Thomas: Beautiful. Um, I like how flexible you are on the show, Chris. That's amazing. That's amazing. Okay. So,

Chris Carolan: It tries to make it

George B. Thomas: Humans, oh, oh, crap, crap, humans historically hate change, right? So when we think about this change, what do you guys think about the shift in what HubSpot has become and where it's seemingly, uh, presenting itself that we're going?

Like I'll just ask that first. Like, what do you think about where we've been to where we're going? When I, when I ask that question, what are your thoughts?

Chris Carolan: I mean, it's,

Max Cohen: This

Chris Carolan: it's already, it's already where it needs to be for me in terms of like, it's, it's circled the square. It has closed the loop, uh, at least in baby step functionality. To actually provide a unified view of the customer like has never existed before. Like in any other platform, in a way that you can deliver it to somebody and they can maintain it themselves.

They don't need some managed services agreement, which automatically makes it the most affordable way to do it than has ever existed before. So now it's literally when, when I saw them go on this route, but also I'm always paying attention to this knowledge gap. The only thing that stops success at this point is HubSpot and its own ecosystem.

Like this, this tool is so good. uh, yeah, obviously I'm, I'm excited about where we're going and the way they've integrated AI, like, and just. Like how lucky are we to have somebody like Dharmesh that can just like spin up and just focus on AI and and Start just manhandling it into the platform Like man, we haven't The

George B. Thomas: So Max, what, what are your

Max Cohen: Yeah. Like of where the platform's going,

George B. Thomas: Well, where it's been to where it's going,

Max Cohen: where it's been.

George B. Thomas: What do you think of the

Max Cohen: Yeah. Oh, the juror. I mean, it's been really cool to fricking watch of how it's just like, you know, it said, okay, cool. We got really good at getting people here, which was like seeing the marketing hub mature, you know, to this point. And then it was like, okay, cool.

All these people are getting here. All these contacts are coming in. All this attention is being created in this demand is getting generated, but like, we didn't really have a way to then. Have the people that actually do the selling, like talk to them. Right. So like the CRM came out, sales hub started to come out.

Right. It's like, cool. We could start getting the sales reps, like super efficient and everything. And then like the kind of end of the road there was like, Oh shit, these people turn people into customers. Right. And it's like, well, how do we take care of them? Right. It's like, Oh, service hub came around.

Right. And like the whole customer journey could go get extended and a little bit further and like it could handle more of it. Right. Um, and so what's interesting is if you look at it as the flywheel, right. Right. Which I still think is like, you know, the ultimate basic, you have to at least do these three things to like survive at all as a business.

Right. Um, like it, it, it has that full circle. Right. I think what's going to be interesting is like how it goes deeper into the different chevrons of that circle. Right. Um, you know, and of course they do things more like around customer experience with stuff. It's just how much better the CMS is actually getting, or sorry, content hub is actually getting like with all of that.

Right. And I think that's a really good example of them taking this thing that already existed, but going on 10 times deeper onto it. Right. Um, You know, I think a lot about things like your, your, your delivered platform, Chris, where it's like, I can't imagine the amount of custom dev work. It goes into build something like that.

But dude, when is it going to be where it's like, you can build these customer you know, experience like applications. Uh, uh, what's the word? Um, declaratively, right. Where it's like, I don't have to hire a dev to come in and like, do all this stuff. Right. Um, that's going to be really, really interesting. And of course, yeah, the advances with like AI and stuff and, and, and, you know, more big brand applications of how it can use information from all over the platform versus being like a specific feature for like one specific sliver of the tool, but a million different times.

Right. Cause it's, it's everywhere. That's going to be really neat. Like, like I talk about. All the time where it's like, man, I can't wait for the day where someone that comes into audit a portal. And you could just say, Hey portal, what's wrong with you? And it goes, man, let me tell you, these guys suck at creating properties and actually using it.

Or like whatever it means, right? Like that's going to be crazy, but it's like, I have a hard time visualizing. What's the next hub besides something that feels more of like an ERP type hole. Right. Um, where it's like, Or HR, right? Well, you did user objects here. So that's gotta be around the corner. Right? Um, so it's more like seen a lot of front office.

Is there a need for them to index on the back office now? A whole lot more. Right. Uh, and actually like help it become the operating system for your business, for sure, what your customers can see, but then all the stuff that your customers don't see, but you as the business. Leaders and people at the business see and need to run.

Right. Um, cause it's like the flywheel stuff is like really how you're interacting with your customers. But there's lots of elements of running a business that you don't see on the flywheel, right. Just because it has nothing to do with how your customers perceive you or go through some kind of journey.

It's more like how you operate. Right. And so I used to say this thing to people who would ask like, Oh, what are you most excited about? It's like, I, uh, when I said it's going to be really wild. When you see what HubSpot has learned about how it interacts with the outside world and takes all that knowledge, experience, ideas, and stuff they built and turn it inward.

Right? And like, that's where I first started thinking about, man, user objects should be a lot better. Right? And you're seeing it f ing happen, which is crazy. We just got custom properties for user objects. Like, that is, that was a huge, huge stepping stone. It seems so basic. But like when you, when you, when you watch HubSpot for a long time and you see how they build things brick by brick by brick by brick, and then all of a sudden they can do this big monumental thing, it's happening, which is really cool.

George B. Thomas: most people aren't even understanding that workflows and lists are now objects in HubSpot and what that might mean in the future, like there's just so, so, but here's the thing I want,

Max Cohen: mean, think about this. Think about one day if like HubSpot handles like how you pay your employees and then it can automatically factor in commission from deals because it's all in there. Right? Like

George B. Thomas: Or if it's HR and it's actually payroll because you're getting paid and paying out right in HubSpot. So here's the thing. I got a couple more questions I want to ask, but Max, I love your flywheel analogy and what's funny about this is that I actually, I don't know why my brain works in a weird way.

But you talked about, you know, the things that you don't see on the flywheel and that's because it's either the stick or the air, those teams are the things that actually stabilize the flywheel or make it move. That's what those other teams are doing. So they still have a part to play in the flywheel moving.

So it is a, it is a unified full circle, a customer platform that we're headed down into. Okay, but we've arrived.

Max Cohen: got to hold the flywheel up is what you're saying. And if that person is like, loses a leg, it's going to be harder to balance. If that person, you know, is, is, is waving around. It's not going to, you know, catch the wind. Perfect. Like that. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Yeah.

George B. Thomas: Yep. It's still working. It's still working Um, so we're here We've arrived at that this point right now. Um, what makes you guys nervous?

Chris Carolan: lack of education like it's just and this is where like I think they've got so many of the pieces in play and I like, I hope to God before they do any more, any back office stuff, like, cause I don't think anybody truly realizes, like, as long as it's difficult to explain what HubSpot is and what it can be for a business, it confuses the market and puts everybody asked to selling it, asked to sell it.

In the point solution mindset, because that's the only possible way I'm gonna be able to sell this thing easily. And I feel like they've got this just ginormous product team, which happened to be super knowledgeable about the products that they are building. So could we just, just like, you know, just, just, Tap the brake or just let up on the gas just for like a month or two and get some of those Experts on their products to just tell us about what the hell they're doing So that Kyle Jepson is not the only person doing it Like that's what makes me nervous because we hear it every day right now Onboarding is going bad, you know, just misrepresented expectations left and right And not, I guarantee not everybody is finding one of these, you know, knight in shining armor agencies that we also can't stop hearing about to clean up the mess that somebody else made.

And, you know, this agency might be great at cleaning up messes. But then this agency is talking about how bad that agency is creating messes, right? Clearly, this is happening enough where it's like, how? I just want them to care a little bit more about that. I know it's a challenge,

Max Cohen: How do you incentivize

Chris Carolan: right?

Max Cohen: when you're incentivized by a, a, a commission

Chris Carolan: I mean,

Max Cohen: It's hard.

Chris Carolan: no, that's where it's, it's not on the sales guy.

It's not on the customer success people. It's This is a leadership thing where that's where like, Hey, maybe there's enough money in enterprise and mid market. And we've got a timeline and just acquisitions. And that's clearly, but

George B. Thomas: here's what I'll say. Here's what I'll say before because by the way, Max, you're not getting off the hot seat. I want to know what makes you nervous too, which by the way, it sounds like what makes you nervous. Chris is what you want to see more of, but I'm going to circle back around here in a minute and ask that question as well.

Um, but If you are, I wish I had a zoom in like max. If you are a HubSpot employee. And you work on the product team, call us. We will have you on the show. We will ask you dope questions. We'll create amazing content together and we'll educate the masses together so that they can truly align their brains to the awesome products that you're creating.

It's hard to stay serious when Max is zooming in like that. Oh my God. Okay. Max, what,

Max Cohen: hit up your

Chris Carolan: I'm on, I'm on LinkedIn live every day. You can have as many slots as you want

Max Cohen: We're here. There's, there's no, there's nothing that'll make me clear a calendar slot quicker than a, a, a HubSpot product manager wanting to share their extremely valuable time with me, right? Like you want feedback. I got, I got buckets, loads, bucket loads of feedback, my guy.

Right. And always willing to share it with you guys. So please, uh, my, my time is your time. I will do anything for you.

George B. Thomas: you go. Okay, Max, what makes you, from us arriving here now, what makes you nervous?

Max Cohen: I mean, nervous about the, well, I

get nervous, like, it make it relevant to the whole like customer platform naming thing. What I mean, what gets me nervous is like, did we fully see the transition of them being recognized as a CDP when they wanted to do that? No, I don't know if it was something that they tried to like very publicly like push or if it was just more internal conversations happening.

But like, is, yeah. When, when is HubSpot going to like solidify its identity? Cause we just moved to smart CRM, right? We just started calling it was a new thing in inbound last year. Right. And you know, I remember like talking to SEs being like, yeah, so we didn't know about this smart CRM thing now. And I got people coming up to the booth for a demo saying, well, what makes it a smart CRM?

And they're like,

George B. Thomas: give me a second. Let

Max Cohen: Uh,

George B. Thomas: me Google something real

Max Cohen: it helps you not do dumb, dumb stuff in it, like, you know what I mean? And so, it's, it's tough because getting everybody behind a complete, like, identity shift of something as big and gnarly as HubSpot is, That is hard. So there's a piece of me that gets really worried that like it'll never land it where its identity is I don't know if that's not a problem because maybe you know the identity of something that's constantly changing every single freaking day It's okay to kind of say it's this now, but it's going to eventually be this and one day it will be something else Maybe that's okay.

I just I don't I don't know right? Um, so that freaks me out I don't know why it freaks me out as much. Um You But, you know, the big thing that we talk about is like, Oh, how do we get everyone on the same page on what the heck this thing frickin is? But maybe we don't have to if it's different things for different people.

Right? So,

Chris Carolan: business. One on one

Max Cohen: here we go. Ring the

Chris Carolan: business. One on one

George B. Thomas: it brew a minute.

Chris Carolan: positioning. Like, like if you aren't clear on your, that's how every plan is supposed to start. Like how many posts have HubSpot themselves in the, I can't find anybody in there right now that can give me a clear definition of their position.

Max Cohen: So here's the, but here's the pushback that I give for you. Some businesses just can't straight up can't afford what it is as a whole. You know what I mean? They can only afford a couple seats of the sales hub and maybe that's what they need at that moment Right, you know what I mean? So it's it's it makes it tough because it's like yes HubSpot is this big awesome big beautiful

George B. Thomas: on now.

Max Cohen: like are you gonna are you gonna be able to afford the whole thing?

It's like a tiny startup with no budget. You're not gonna be able to but that's the beauty of it though guys That's the beauty of it. You can start small and you can get better and You As you need it, and as you evolve it, as you succeed, you can add on more stuff and make it the thing you need at that point, right? But also, you need to be in the mindset that that's the future.

George B. Thomas: But here's the thing, here's the thing, um, it kind of falls

Max Cohen: Hold on, I gotta, I have to push back, I have to push back a meeting I have right now. Just keep going, I'm

George B. Thomas: no, we're almost done, we're almost done, I'm, here's the thing, um, I can have rooms. In a house, I still know it's a house. So like you can have what needs to happen is the house hub spot needs to be known the identity of it and sure you can sell it in a way, which by the way, is I'll go back to what you've heard me say a couple of times on this. It happens to have this room that is a CMS.

It happens to have this room that is a CRM. It happens to have this room that is a data layer. It happens to have this room that for sales to be awesome and marketing to be awesome, but it's a house. So here's the thing. We're, we're basically structuring the house as a customer platform. But now please educate us.

Give us Zillow listing of what the Frick that means on this house. How many acreage does it have? AC? Does it have a pool? Like what the is it? It still can be a house. It can still be HubSpot and have rooms. Okay, here's the thing. Quickly, what do you want to see more of? And then I'm wrapping this bad boy out so Max can get to his meeting and everybody else can get to the rest of their day. Pertaining to HubSpot, by the way, holy crap, I forgot

Max Cohen: do I want to say, see more

George B. Thomas: Pertaining to HubSpot, what do you want more of? Because it isn't croutons. The answer is not croutons, Max.

Max Cohen: I want, I want them to like double down on their investment in the ecosystem thing. Right. Um, you know, especially when it comes to like app stuff, uh, you know, it, it doesn't, it doesn't run like, you know, the app store on the phone, on your iPhone does, it doesn't like, there's a lot of things that like make it clunky and like difficult for app developers to kind of like.

You know, do what they need to do. I'm not going to get into like the whole list or anything, but like, if they want that marketplace to succeed, they've got a double triple down on that thing and like really make it change the narrative of like, you know, it's, you know, the product's going to do like, you know, a lot of different things are universal, more people, but like the point is you install apps, you install other stuff to make it unique to exactly what you need to accomplish, whatever it is.

Um, and I don't know if like the HubSpot, you know, community in the, in a. In a massive sense is kind of like thinking about it that way, which is like funny because that's how it's always been with Salesforce. Right. Um, you know, so I don't know. I think there's just needs to be a lot more done on like the ecosystem side of things. I wish I had a more specific answer

George B. Thomas: what do you want more of?

Chris Carolan: think that's the answer too, um, and to help with the education, you know, maybe there's something like a HubSpot coach, you know, partner type out there or something to kind of fill this gap, like we definitely need people out there. Like, don't get me wrong. We need lots of people out there selling and servicing HubSpot.

Cause people are buying it and they need that help. But not everybody needs to buy more HubSpot and they can build stuff themselves. There's nobody in the ecosystem right now, um, incentivized to help them, help those people,

George B. Thomas: Yep.

Max Cohen: Yeah. And you know what, Chris, just to add something real quick, because I got my stuff pushed back is like, at first when you were explaining that idea to me, I was like, It's like, it sounds like a solutions partner to me. Cause they're consultants, right? In a certain sense. I know it's, I know I've reversed my thinking on this and I agree with you because the other thing you got to think of too, is what's the entry point.

For one man army consultants that don't have the bandwidth to do everything that a full agency with like a team of developers and a team of delivery people and a team of sales folks do. How did those people. Break into the ecosystem as someone who can really sit down and help someone craft out their vision and change people's minds and get them to look at HubSpot in a different way.

Right. That's one going to probably be more affordable for smaller companies or even bigger companies that like, you know, need to be able to like afford, you know, a one person army versus like a giant team of devs and, and, and all these other people that just need to build something out and give them the keys.

Right. But it's also just like, how do folks just getting into. The ecosystem and are passionate about maybe one day being a partner agency or, or, or, you know, being able to make a name for themselves. How are those people getting like surfaced and, and getting a spotlight on them and getting endorsed by the community, because that is a very different thing than, you know, a, you know, a HubSpot, you know, Sensei.

That understands like how it all works and can have the right conversation with folks for people who want to be able to say, Hey, I'm a HubSpot. We don't want someone to do it for us. We want someone to enable and empower us and make sure we're going in the right direction. I do think that's something different than just a HubSpot solutions partner.

That's going to go do a bunch of custom work and build some stuff and hand you the keys. Right. Um, so, and I know that it's not how all partners

Chris Carolan: applause button after

George B. Thomas: I know we need the, we need the applause button on that. So, so it's funny cause Max, I totally agree with you as somebody who has been teaching people how to fish since 2014 pertaining to HubSpot, there needs to be more of what Chris is calling for coaching. Uh, by the way, this is what I would want to, I would want more coaching.

I would want easier, uh, ability to build things. I would want a easier ability to build relationships, easier ability to drive more revenue, easier ability for it to. Be visible across the entire organization, adding transparency and unification to the internal. But here's the thing, ladies and gentlemen, we have had a great conversation.

What I love about this episode of the podcast is we went from the battle of the beards to them actually agreeing with, uh, with, with each other at the end. So hopefully you agree with us. Let us know. By the way, let us know what platform you're watching this on as we're now going live and have the audience chat.

And we're super loving it. But remember, until next time we meet, by the way, next Friday at 3 p. m. on the live channel that you're watching now, or will watch

Max Cohen: Oh, wait, wait, wait, aren't we, aren't we Wednesday next week? Aren't we scheduled for Wednesday next week or am I insane? Yeah, Hub Heroes on the

George B. Thomas: Hang on.

Max Cohen: Cause it's July

George B. Thomas: Oh, oh,

Max Cohen: weekend, my guy. Un American!

Chris Carolan: Got this, got this extra level to plan for

George B. Thomas: That's right. That's right. So next week it's Wednesday because there is a national holiday for us Americans, but usually it's Friday at three o'clock until we see you next Wednesday. Remember, oh God, I get to do this. I get to close. Cause usually Liz does something in a poem, but ladies and gentlemen, remember to be a happy, helpful, humble human.

And did some happy hub spotting along the way. Oh, I love doing that.