What HubSpot Users Should Be Thinking About in 2025 + Beyond

Well, this is a first. After all the episodes we’ve done, I had to miss this one thanks to strep throat. And honestly? I’m kind of bummed, because this was a conversation I was really looking forward to. The start of a new year is one of the best times to step back, take stock, and figure out where you want to focus your energy—especially when it comes to HubSpot and how you’re using it to grow.

🚀 Related HubHeroes Episodes:

• HubSpot AI vs. Human Judgment: When Should You Trust the Machine?
• HubSpot Operations Hub Deep-Dive with Chad Hohn
• Content in 2024 (+ Beyond): AI, Brand Storytelling, + Content Program Breakdowns

Thankfully, George, Max, and Chad stepped in and knocked it out of the park. They tackled some of the big questions HubSpot users need to ask themselves in 2025, like what new skills you should prioritize, how to leverage tools you might be overlooking (hello, Ops Hub and Content Hub), and what it really means to build systems that work for the humans behind the screens.

🔎 Go Deeper: Why Do Most Companies Fail with AI + Content?

Whether you’re excited about all the new AI tools HubSpot is rolling out, curious about how to make your CRM a better experience for your team, or just trying to figure out what’s next in your journey, this episode is packed with ideas and insights to help you start the year strong.

Keywords

HubSpot, AI, UI customization, skills development, marketing, sales, service, operations, 2025, user engagement, CRM, human-centric, content creation, employee experience, 2025 strategies, continuous learning

What We Cover 

• Why 2025 Is the Year of Skill-Building: Chad kicks things off with a challenge to every HubSpot user—pick a skill you don’t have yet and commit to mastering it this year. From custom extensions to API integrations, he shares why continuous learning is essential for staying ahead in a rapidly evolving platform.

• What You’re Missing in the Content Hub and Ops Hub: Max dives into the often-overlooked hubs, like Ops Hub and Content Hub, urging users to explore their untapped potential. Whether it’s automation, process optimization, or leveraging the full capabilities of the new Content Hub, there’s more to these tools than meets the eye.

• The Rise of Customization and AI in HubSpot: The team explores the intersection of HubSpot’s new AI tools and customization options. Max and Chad highlight the need for HubSpot to break down the barriers between users and developers, envisioning a future where AI enables more users to build custom CRM extensions without needing advanced coding skills.

• The Importance of Human-Centric Systems: George issues a call to action, that 2025 should be the year of human-centric processes—internally and externally. Whether it’s building systems that make life easier for your team or creating truly empathetic customer experiences, this is the year to refocus on what really matters.

• Practical AI Applications You Should Be Testing: From leveraging AI for smarter meeting prep to building GPT models tailored to your business needs, Chad shares how businesses can use AI in ways that go beyond content creation to drive real value.

• Why You Need to Rethink Email in 2025: George makes the case for revisiting your email strategy, especially with HubSpot’s new email tools and mobile optimization settings. While bad email may be dead, great email is still a critical part of any marketing strategy.

• Reinvesting in HubSpot Academy: The team wraps up with a reminder that certifications and ongoing learning matter more than ever. Whether you’re a super admin or a new user, HubSpot Academy is full of resources to help you grow your skills and maximize the value of your portal.

And so much more ... 

Episode Transcript

[00:00:00] George B. Thomas: You remember back in the day when that intro was about double as long because we had to talk about, uh, Max and Devin working for HubSpot, but now we don't have to do that.

[00:00:08] Like,

[00:00:09] Chad Hohn: well, it got shorter because then Max moved on, right? And then And then Devin and then,

[00:00:15] George B. Thomas: now we got Chad and guys today, we're going to talk about what HubSpot users should be thinking about in 2025 and beyond, which is a big conversation, right? Literally marketing, sales, service, operations. Could be web design, could be business strategist in general, like there's so many things that we could dive into like what HubSpot users should be thinking about in 2025.

[00:00:38] I didn't even mention super admins, right? And they should be thinking about super admin training and like all that good stuff. But, but before we jump into that, I have to ask, did you guys see the create time since and time until properties update? Yes, we did.

[00:00:54] Chad Hohn: yeah, oh, it's sick.

[00:00:55] George B. Thomas: Okay, so, so, just unpack your brain a little bit, I, again, we're getting, I want to get nerdy on that, like, when you saw that, um, or you started playing with it, cause I'm sure both of you have, like, where did your brain go when you're like, and Max, I know where maybe your brain went, but let, let's get both sides, let's get both sides of the fence on create, time, sense, and time until properties.

[00:01:16] Max Cohen: Chad.

[00:01:17] Chad Hohn: No. All right. So for me, they're awesome, helpful visually and in like index pages and things, but if I'm not mistaken, they can't fully be utilized inside of workflows. As you might hope they would write, they're more of like a, I think they do it browser side calculation. Maybe they don't, but like

[00:01:42] Max Cohen: Oh, so they don't store a value.

[00:01:44] Chad Hohn: well, right.

[00:01:44] Because think about this. Like if. Architecturally at the backend, they're going to have to update what every one second they're going to have to make an API call to the backend. Like that's not reasonable. Right. Or like, and maybe there's ways to do it that I just don't know about. Right. But anyway, maybe in the workflow, they need to build in some additional functionality for when one of those properties is called, they like actually store it temporarily at the time that it goes through that action.

[00:02:15] And then it could cause slowness with workflows. So anyway, there's some things where it's not quite as useful, but the user experience about those properties is great. And I don't know if they can be used in reporting. Cause I haven't, I haven't had tried to play with those ones just yet. Right. But I would love for those to be able to use, be used in reporting.

[00:02:36] Um, I think they can be used in filtering.

[00:02:39] George B. Thomas: it's, it's looking interesting because the latest update as of January 9th, by the way. Um, I see a screenshot here that's got a bullet point around workflows and it shows it in a workflow screenshot. I've got it. Yeah, it's in a list as well, which is interesting and chat. I'm glad you brought up reporting because that's.

[00:02:58] That's where I was like, um, this would be dope. It even shows a bullet point in. Like, single report viewer dashboard and and shows it in there. So, like. I think they're extending it into places and spaces that they, they, when it maybe first was launched and people started playing around with it in beta now that I think it's live, right?

[00:03:21] Cause that's the thing. Uh, when, when Chad, you saw it beta, now that I'm bringing it to the masses live, right? So there's some like additions and changes that have been made. Um, but, but, um,

[00:03:34] Max Cohen: I mean, it's yeah. Well, first of all, first of all HubSpot community, you're you're welcome. You're welcome. Okay. All right. Uh, for those of you who don't know it, like this is exactly what TikTok today was for, right? Where the only way that we can figure out how to do this is to create essentially a today's date property and update it every single day, right?

[00:04:00] Uh, and do it. And like, here, here's what I'm,

[00:04:02] Chad Hohn: that, like you didn't even have date, time properties inside of the HubSpot UI, that was just date properties, but you made it a date, time in the backend.

[00:04:10] Max Cohen: Did we?

[00:04:11] Chad Hohn: Yeah. You, you made it a date, time in the backend.

[00:04:13] Max Cohen: Probably. Yeah, we, we, we did that a lot for some reason. Um, especially when, you know, event happily first came out and now it's great because all that stuff converted to actual date time properties, which is good. The only thing it's like really goofy about it. Yeah.

[00:04:27] The only thing that's really goofy about it is, have you guys ever tried to copy a date time property into a date property?

[00:04:32] George B. Thomas: oh

[00:04:33] Chad Hohn: Oh

[00:04:34] Max Cohen: work.

[00:04:34] Chad Hohn: via API I have, yeah. Because what, what happens is it says that it needs to be at UTC midnight. And so if it's not at UTC midnight, it just. You know, same thing. Like if you're making a direct API call,

[00:04:50] Max Cohen: Yeah, it'll be really interesting to to see, um, if they ever support date time on forms, right? I have a theory they're never going to because it

[00:05:00] George B. Thomas: why is that your

[00:05:01] Max Cohen: on, because it is going to create a lot of confusion and anger around wanting to use HubSpot forms for like time booking stuff, right? Um, And it's it's not like it's going to be able to say like oh block certain times in the date time property if something's like Already booked like that is a whole other like product you need to build right?

[00:05:23] So I think they're going to avoid doing that to avoid That like those confusions and support tickets and problems and things like that. Uh, but don't worry. We're

[00:05:32] George B. Thomas: Oh,

[00:05:33] Max Cohen: about some stuff over here that we've been thinking about for a long time. Um That i've been thinking about for almost 10 years now.

[00:05:39] Um, okay, so You The other thing to the, honestly, the, besides being able to like, be like, cool, we solved that problem for people. Now we can like, spin that thing down. It was a free app besides like, if you wanted like, multiple objects, it was like 10 bucks a month or something like that. I am just, uh, so excited to stop seeing the LinkedIn posts of people saying, HubSpot needs a today's date property.

[00:06:00] Because no, it doesn't, and it never did, right? Like, the thing is, is like, I was stoked that they rolled it out the way that I had always envisioned them rolling it out, which is just like, you select a date, and then the other thing just says, Today, like, you know, time since or time until right. And HubSpot should be smart enough to know what today's date is to run whatever calculation it needs to do that.

[00:06:23] You don't need it to take up a property that just holds today's date. Right. So, um, you know, even in like the way we did it with take talk today, that was like the only way we could do it. Cause HubSpot didn't do that, but then they finally rolled it out. They rolled it out the way that I, you know, wanted it to be the whole time and it's great.

[00:06:40] Um, you know, and like, To be honest, like the real reason for all that stuff is never really workflow automation or reporting or anything like that. It's all just about giving a visual indicator, like on a record of saying, Oh, I only have X amount of time left or, wow, they've been a customer since this long and, you know, being able to like deliver that information to someone in a much easier way to understand and digest than just like an actual date.

[00:07:01] Right. Cause if I just look at a date, it's really tough for me to say how long ago was that? Cause I got to know exactly what today's date is and this, that, the other thing. Right. When it can just like, yo, just tell me how long it is, right. Or how much time or how much time until, um,

[00:07:13] Chad Hohn: really good at thinking in the number of days from now or a number of days ago type of a scenario.

[00:07:20] Max Cohen: yeah, no, for sure. Um, yeah, so it's, it's, uh, it's great. It's out there. Take talk today, did its job. It was a love letter to the HubSpot community and, uh, now we can start to wind it down, which is great.

[00:07:33] George B. Thomas: there we go. And if you're listening to this or watching this and you haven't checked out the create time since and time until properties, make sure that you run over and do that in the portal near you, which would hopefully be your portal or maybe a client portal that you're helping people with. So let's go ahead and get into what HubSpot users should be thinking about in 2025 and beyond.

[00:07:53] Uh, Chad, we're going to start with you. Then Max, I'll jump to you and then I'll go, what's, what's the first round of things that we think. People should be thinking about and again, you take your pick of the litter marketing, sales, service, operation, business, CMS, I don't care. What should people be thinking of HubSpot users people human

[00:08:12] Chad Hohn: I'm spot users. Yes.

[00:08:14] George B. Thomas: of HubSpot should be what should they be thinking of in 2025 and beyond?

[00:08:18] Chad Hohn: Um, I mean, I think when it, when it comes to me, I always like to grow my skills. Right. And like, as somebody in an admin position or like really I'm in a technical integrations type of a position at the moment. Um, I did not have a lot of the skills last year that I have this year. Right. And that now I'm able to like teach and give others and Try and, like, elevate the rest of my team by teaching them how to do some of the things that I've learned.

[00:08:50] Um, and so I would say, like, pick a thing you don't know how to do yet and really try and dedicate a little bit of time to learning it or playing around in that area. Now that could be like, Hey, I want to learn about AI models and GPT memory, or like programming them to be an agent. That could be any number of different things.

[00:09:16] Like, you know, if you don't know HubSpot CMS, go make a dummy website for like canhascheeseburger. com or something, and then see if you can, yeah, go get your, you know, some sort of like all the different flow paths that a customer would take to canhascheeseburger. And like develop that journey if you're not into CMS or like HubSpot CMS, because if you've never done that before, learn it.

[00:09:41] Um, you know, I know that would be one of my weak areas, right? But luckily, um, we all can grow and you can do anything as long as you really just put your mind to it and start playing around with it and exposing yourself to it. And so like, for me, I think one of the things I want to learn is just from the ground up how to install HubSpot custom extensions, right.

[00:10:04] And how to work with modifying the HubSpot UI beyond what they just give you out the box. I want to be able to do that soup to nuts. Right. And like, including getting that code into like a GitHub repo and being able to like work with get so you can check in new code and have it pushed to your HubSpot portal, stuff like that.

[00:10:23] Like that, I think at some point I want to be able to take that thing and build simple, really practical, helpful extensions to our users HubSpots without having to call in a developer. Right. And so that's one of the skills. And I think pick a skill like that, something practical, that's beyond you right now that you can't do, but you have at least enough of the underlying structure to take yourself there.

[00:10:50] I could not have chosen this last year. And this is like a practical example of it. Like I didn't know how to do Enough API call integration stuff. Like I knew about HubSpot, I knew about workflows, but I didn't know like how to do data storage, data management in like a data table. I didn't know how to really like from the ground up actually make API calls.

[00:11:14] And now I'm like reading API docs and doing integrations, no problem, because I can get through it and navigate my way around. And there's still some trial and error. There's still some assist AI assistant need, you know, at times, but. Um, I'm able to work my way through those things because last year I got some of the backing skill to do this new thing.

[00:11:34] And I don't want people to like. Actually be like, Oh, well, I want to like send a rocket to the moon, you know, because like, you're not going to send a rocket to the moon if you don't already have like a vehicle assembly building and like, um, you know, liquid methane and liquid oxygen plant and all these other things that you're going to need to do it, right.

[00:11:53] George B. Thomas: I love it. I love how, by the way, I asked you for a one thing and you almost kind of snuck in a little bit of three things. Cause you're like, well, you need to grow your skills. Number one. And as you were talking to there, you're like, and then maybe play along the way, which is like number two. And then you're like, and sometimes with an AI assistant, which is kind of like number three, by the way, because it's

[00:12:14] Chad Hohn: That's two subsection A.

[00:12:16] George B. Thomas: yeah, yeah, have like a mentor slash helper slash assistant along the way, but, but baseline grow your skills.

[00:12:22] And figure out how to do things that once, uh, seemed difficult or impossible to you as a human. I love that. Max, when, when you think about HubSpot users, um, and you think about 2025 and beyond, what should they be focusing on?

[00:12:36] Max Cohen: Sorry, I muted myself. Um, I do agree a lot with Chad in that, you know, I kind of see this year as being a another sort of like banner year for UI customization and extensibility. Um, I'd say keep a heavy lookout for. AI to collide with that at some point. Maybe not this year, but I'd say definitely the year after.

[00:13:05] I've seen some stuff that I can't talk about. Um, Yeah, I've seen some stuff I

[00:13:11] Chad Hohn: Mm hmm. Mm hmm. Mm hmm. Mm

[00:13:12] Max Cohen: Um, but you know, it's I feel like the there is there was like a big, remember when we kind of had like the year of like UI extensibility, right? And they released tons and tons of customization options. They went really hard on like the record editor and like unified all that and did that thing.

[00:13:33] There's still so much more to go. With that, like, and I feel like a lot of that's been kind of like taken over by like the whole breeze wave and everything. And people have kind of like lost sight of that a little bit. And like a lot of the things that have happened recently, it kind of been like a little bit more under the radar just because it's living in the shadow of all the, the AI improvements and stuff like that.

[00:13:54] Um, you know, so I'd say don't, don't lose sight of, you know, what's possible around customization and UI extension. And like, How many years out do you think we are from, you know, given AI's ability to code, right? And like HubSpot's UI extensibility, like how far away are we from like an AI created CRM extension? Right? Dude, we might

[00:14:19] Chad Hohn: I mean

[00:14:20] Max Cohen: we might be, does the technology exist today to do that? Yep. Of course. Of course it does.

[00:14:26] George B. Thomas: if, if you're, if you're not playing with Repl. it yet

[00:14:29] Max Cohen: What's Repl. it?

[00:14:31] George B. Thomas: oh, well, Repl. it is like a AI coding. Anyway, not why we're here, but, but if people aren't

[00:14:37] Max Cohen: something you should think about.

[00:14:38] George B. Thomas: it and looking at what it can do, but, but go ahead, Max.

[00:14:42] Max Cohen: Yeah, um, and I think also just like the kind of general advice I would give like every year And I feel like i'd probably start giving it even more and more and more just just kind of given All the advancements across everything It's like start thinking about stuff that you can do with hub spot that you just haven't been able to do before or you haven't Thought about integrating into the rest of your business, right?

[00:15:01] Like it could do so much now,

[00:15:04] Chad Hohn: stuff that was once impossible to bring in is becoming so much more possible in a useful way. Not in just properties, but actually in a useful

[00:15:14] Max Cohen: yeah, but what I really, I, I, what I really, really want to see is how, you know, a lot of these super, super useful things, right? Um, are still kind of like gated behind the, do you have developer resources? Yes, no. Like problem, right? And what I really want to see is HubSpot kind of like break down that barrier of like what requires a developer from like a CRM UI, uh, you know, extension perspective.

[00:15:47] Like we'll always need them for, you know, CMS stuff, right? Especially when you want to get like really precise and, and, you know, uh, you know, super custom, right? Like AI can really only get you so far there. Right. Um, but like, You know, you look at salesforce and like their declarative like flow builder and like all that kind of stuff like they need to bring more of that into like the ui extensions world right where it's like you're building ui extensions through a drag and drop editor you're customizing what sort of stuff happens in the back end how it talks to the data and like does all these different things I think that would be Just kind of a really cool thing.

[00:16:26] And I, and I hope they start to deploy kind of something like that. Right. So I would, I would really kind of keep an eye on around what they're planning for sort of like democratizing and really unlocking some of the real deep customization stuff when it comes to like building processes inside of HubSpot.

[00:16:41] And, you know, not just like, what does the UI look like? Things like that, you know?

[00:16:47] Chad Hohn: they've been doing some really cool things surrounding like allowing AI to unlock things that are more difficult for people who just don't understand a tool. Right. And like one of those examples is like, have you guys seen how property validation can now occur with regex or regular expressions? Well, they just added an AI assistant

[00:17:09] Max Cohen: Tim.

[00:17:10] Chad Hohn: you tell it what regex you want.

[00:17:13] You're like, I need an invoice number to always start with an I and followed by a dash and three letters and then six numbers. And it can only be two of these letters and then it'll spit out a regex formula for you. And then you can test it in the regex editor, like all while you're creating the property right where you need it.

[00:17:31] It's amazing.

[00:17:32] Max Cohen: Which is brilliant because like, how is anyone writing those regex formulas before that had never heard of regex? You were going to chat GPT and you say, give me a regex expression for, you know, this type of formatting. And it's like, cool. Just build that right

[00:17:44] Chad Hohn: just added that with a specific prompt to like, highlight and look for, yeah.

[00:17:49] Max Cohen: yeah. And I, and I really want people to play, like, this is more so like, I don't know if this is like what you should be thinking about in 2025, but it's what you should be looking for at least and hoping HubSpot should be doing, you should be asking for it, right, is that a lot of this AI stuff needs to be heavily aimed at the admin and making life easier for an admin versus just like content creation and content creation.

[00:18:14] Sales enablement, right? Like, you know, again, like I'm still waiting for the day where, you know, a partner can hop into a HubSpot portal that, you know, is in dire straits and be like, Hey, co pilot, what's wrong with you? And then co pilot goes, Oh, thank God you're here. Listen, these people are doing this.

[00:18:34] They're, they're doing full names for full, full sentences for property names. They're doing all that. You know what I mean? Because it's going to have all that information, right? But you know, it's, it's, they've, I don't want to say they've over indexed, they've really only focused on. The creative parts, I think when it comes, I mean, sure, they have some admin stuff, but like the majority of the things that we've seen with AI and HubSpot has all been the creative side, which is good.

[00:18:59] They need to address that because that is the hardest thing to do in HubSpot by far, right. For folks that aren't admins is like the creative side of this work, right. And, and, and, you know, building some like leverage around that. Um, you know, but. There's so much they could be doing from like a helping out the admin point of view, right?

[00:19:18] And giving, giving the portal a voice to say, this is what's wrong with me. Please help, right?

[00:19:25] George B. Thomas: I love the idea of there being like a nurse or a doctor bot of like HubSpot, like, here's where I'm sick, you know, um, but,

[00:19:35] Max Cohen: no, it just needs to be the portal just because it can understand what a good portal looks like and what a bad portal looks like and best practices from one to the other. And then put that into

[00:19:46] Chad Hohn: good as in the eyes,

[00:19:47] Max Cohen: why, why shouldn't it be able to?

[00:19:49] George B. Thomas: It should be

[00:19:50] Max Cohen: Why shouldn't it be able

[00:19:50] George B. Thomas: perspective and how do

[00:19:52] Max Cohen: Well, that's what I'm saying.

[00:19:53] But

[00:19:54] Chad Hohn: I mean, beauty is in the eye of the beer holder.

[00:19:57] Max Cohen: it shouldn't be that difficult to understand what industry it's in and like all those things, it can find that information out, right. And it can become smarter over time. And you know, if the, your portal should have a little AI voice to say, Hey, like. I'm struggling and you need to change some shit.

[00:20:14] George B. Thomas: I

[00:20:14] Chad Hohn: think it would be surrounding user engagement based on the number of non partner users. It would be, you know, surrounding like, we have like one client that has like over 950 custom properties. Like that's a lot, you're tracking more data points than like a meta is trying to track on their customers at that point.

[00:20:31] You know, like that's a lot, but a lot of them are like abandoned. And like, Oh, they messed up my life cycle stages or whatever. Like these custom ones are added, they're not being used and they seem to have nothing to do with marketing or, you know, some key things like really the, the key HubSpot properties.

[00:20:50] Here's one of the unfortunate. Scenarios that occurs that causes people to go down some of those roads, I think is not knowing that, well, a, that Kyle's HubSpot default property cheat sheet thing exists. Like if you've never been around HubSpot, or even if you have, and you've never taken a look at that thing, it's really helpful to understand these are a, and it's had refreshes recently.

[00:21:16] These are default properties that are in HubSpot that we're trying to think ahead for junk you're going to need. And you know, they're auto calculated or they have these mechanisms and people just charge ahead and they make their own version of all these things all the time.

[00:21:34] George B. Thomas: Dude, one of the things that I've, and I love Kyle's thing, but one of the things I've said for years is like the best search that you can do before creating any type of property or process is like HubSpot default XYZ. HubSpot default contact properties, HubSpot default subscription properties, HubSpot, because there's a knowledge article that has the properties and the description of what it does.

[00:22:00] And like, When you understand your portal at that intimate level, you don't start creating like your scenario that you talked about, you know, it's interesting too. Max, you were talking about creative, the, the content being the hardest part of HubSpot or like inbound strategy. Um, Content Agent, uh, has a beta out right now, by the way, Better Blog Topic Suggestions.

[00:22:22] I don't know if you guys saw that, but it's, uh, it rolled out recently, I think maybe like a couple of days ago, January 10th or something like that, uh, as the time of this recording, but now, like, what was happening in Content Agent is it would give you one suggestion, If you enroll in this beta now, it's going to give you three suggestions, but it's also going to, but it's going to give you information to why it made the suggestions, which I think is very

[00:22:47] Chad Hohn: It's almost like that GPT version where it's

[00:22:50] Max Cohen: it the

[00:22:50] Chad Hohn: tries to act like it's thinking, you know, it's like, oh yeah, like, oh, I went down this branch and then here's why I went down that branch and then I went down this branch

[00:22:59] Max Cohen: Isn't that the O 1? Isn't that an O 1 thing and it does, they call it reasoning, right?

[00:23:04] George B. Thomas: Yeah. And so maybe they're pulling into that, but it's very interesting to me that now you would, of course, you need more. You should have as a human, as a human, you should have the ability to pick and then go in your kind of own creative direction. But the fact that they're making things better and to do that.

[00:23:21] Um, so here's the thing I want to make sure I jump in here and I say. And it might be two things. I might be cheating, but like, listen, 2025 is not

[00:23:30] Chad Hohn: think we all cheated.

[00:23:31] George B. Thomas: we all kind of cheated. But 2025 is not 2024. Do not let history dictate where you're headed in the future. I don't know about anybody else, but 2024 felt a little bit difficult when it comes to business, when it

[00:23:44] Max Cohen: Ha ha, just wait for 2025.

[00:23:46] George B. Thomas: When it comes to sales, it felt a little difficult, right? So, um, my hopes is that 2025 is better for all of us humans, better for all of us HubSpot users. Um, and so again, my, my intro to this is. Um, it's a new year. Let's treat it like one. Let's, let's shut off the old mindset, bring on the new mindset and like empower people to like, move forward.

[00:24:11] Um, now, with that being said, one of the things that I hope people are paying attention to in 2025, because with all of the things, the bells, the whistles, the AI, the squirrel moments, the silver bullets, like, with all of that, like, I hope in 2025, we are focused on how do we build a human centric. And when I say human centric, I'm talking about internal processes.

[00:24:34] I'm talking about external customer experiences. Like, how, how do we, in a world where everything is so powered by something, how do we make sure it's empathetically driven by us, the humans? So I, I just, I want to throw that out into the world. Um, I know it's not very HubSpot specific, but it's definitely, uh, the inbound ecosystem specific.

[00:24:59] One of the things that I loved about inbound at the beginning was the, the humanness of it all. The, the fact that you could be a marketer and not feel bad about yourself, the fact that you could help humans and not interrupt their dinner at night. Like, and so just like figure out how is part of your strategy in 2025.

[00:25:18] human centric internal and external. All right, let's let's Yeah, yes, Max.

[00:25:23] Max Cohen: can we, can we expand on that? Can we like define what that means? Because I feel like I have a I feel like I have my understanding of what you're saying there,

[00:25:32] George B. Thomas: what are your thoughts? When I when I say that? Where does your brain go?

[00:25:35] Max Cohen: You sell to humans and you employ humans, right? And so, you know in terms of like what does that mean? Right. I think it's like, you know Obviously you want to create a great customer experience, right you want to Treat your customers like human beings because they are You human beings, which means be good to them.

[00:25:59] Take care of them. Don't lie to them. Make them successful, right? Make them, you know, make them understand that they are special because they're giving you money, right? Take care of them. But do the same thing for your damn employees. Right. And what does that and what does that what does that mean in the context of HubSpot, right?

[00:26:19] Stop looking at HubSpot as a way that you could track every single thing that they're doing. Right, like think less about think less about reports on activities, right? And think a little bit more of How are you making people's jobs easier and their lives easier? How are you putting? the information in front of them to help them do their job versus Looking at the crm is the thing I have to track everything i'm doing.

[00:26:46] So my bosses know i'm working Bro, but and there's too many people that still look at it that way

[00:26:52] Chad Hohn: Yeah. And people paint it as, oh, well, it's so you can find everything, but the, they

[00:26:57] Max Cohen: Yes. You. If you think that's what it is like that, like, and here's the thing, ready? Okay. I can respect that a company wants to make sure that people they're paying to do their job. Are doing their job. I can respect that sales managers Want some kind of tangible proof that the strategies they're deploying the playbooks that they're running the The things that the behaviors that they're trying to reinforce into their sales reps into whoever It's happening.

[00:27:30] I can respect that. But there's a trade there. Okay. The trade is, is that if we're giving you this system, so we get something out of it, we being management, leadership, whoever, right, what they're getting out of it is like, oh, I can, I can see what you're doing. I can see you're doing your job. I can see we're moving in the right direction to hit whatever goals we have, whether it's across the organization or in specific departments, whatever.

[00:27:58] Those people aren't going to want to use that thing to do that. Because like, think about it. There's besides like keeping their job, there isn't inherently much benefit they have of using a CRM. If that's all it's for, it's like making sure you're doing your job, right? They're going to use it. When it actually brings value to them.

[00:28:18] So start thinking a little bit more about how your CRM adds value into the day to day and quality of life and quality of work and enjoyment of that work and the enablement of doing that work, right? And decreasing burnout, right? How do you make your CRM a positive thing? For the humans that work for you, right?

[00:28:44] How do you make them go fuck? I love this thing right, um, and I actually enjoy I I I Input the stuff that you want to see that's telling me i'm doing my job as a by product Of me using this thing because it's actually helping me And making me enjoy my work, be enabled to do my best work, making it easier for me to do work and making it just easier for me to do the fun parts of my job, which would be interacting with customers, treating them like genuine humans and making sure they're getting helped out and successful, right?

[00:29:19] And stopping me from hating my job, right? That's what you need to think about. Because if you do those things. Right. Whether it's, you know, uh, making the UI more customized so people can find what they need faster and it's all right there and it's easy to use and understand. Sure. Maybe it's putting in, you know, internal document, documentation to make things like easier for people to find answers quickly.

[00:29:45] Uh, if it's, you know, doing all the things that, you know, stop people from having to type the same email over and over again, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Like things that just make their day to day, not so much of a slog, right? Whatever it is that improves the quality of life of your employees, right? If you're doing that stuff.

[00:30:03] And they're actively using it. And they're like, this is a net benefit to me versus just something else I have to do on top of like taking care of all these customers, right. Just because upper management wants to see that I'm logging my activities or whatever, right. That logging of activity and, and, and logging of units of work or whatever, that will be a natural by product of you making HubSpot a joyful thing to work inside of.

[00:30:33] Okay, but the problem is so many people just start off saying I want to see how many emails and how many calls Everyone's setting up and I want to set up these dashboards so I can tell everybody They're not making enough calls and not doing this and not to bro If that's the way you're still looking at hub spot.

[00:30:48] I don't know what to tell you You know what? I mean

[00:30:51] George B. Thomas: more than that, if that's the way that you're still looking at business, I don't know what to tell you because Max, when, when I, when I hear you talk about this, it's funny because you're kind of colliding two worlds for me right now. It's like, It's like, um, okay, do, do the, and we're just talking internal team, but we could literally talk external user experience as well.

[00:31:10] But, um, does the team really know the true purpose of the CRM? Not the one that you've made up, not the one that you're being selfish about, but the true purpose, like, Why do we have this in place? We've got to think about, um, you know, platform process and people. But what's the purpose of the CRM, the platform being in here?

[00:31:31] How does this platform enable you to spend more time doing what you're passionate about? Right? And how do we as leaders actually care or love enough? To be able to, um, use the data that we're getting to create a better culture, to, to lessen burnout, to create psychological safety, to get more creative, to get more ideas, to move faster, to innovate, like there's,

[00:31:56] Max Cohen: happy

[00:31:56] George B. Thomas: but it's just HubSpot.

[00:31:58] No, it's

[00:31:59] Max Cohen: Yeah, no, it's not like that's the thing and like what you should be asking when you're first saying all right Oh, we're gonna roll hub spot out Right or oh, we rolled hub spot out You shouldn't be saying this is what you do in hub spot. It should be what do you what do you guys need?

[00:32:15] Hey support team. What do you need? Hey sales team? What do you need? Like what can we what can we do? Yeah, what can we do to make your life easier right not this is where you log your calls This is how you log your emails and this is the dashboard that tells you if you're doing a better job than the other person No Oh No, it's what do you need?

[00:32:35] What do you what can this help you? And that's like again anytime I was like doing implementation i'm like rolling this out to sales teams Right and managers want to be like I want to I want you to show the guys how to log an email and how to Like dump in a template and how to I I would never just do that.

[00:32:50] I go hey guys What sucks about your job and and and and what can we do to make it better with this thing, right? And and unfortunately, that's not like what a lot of people are are doing They're just leading with like we've got this unruly sales team that we need to make sure is actually Doing the work properly and it's just like come on man.

[00:33:08] Chad Hohn: When sales gets such a bad rap, you know?

[00:33:11] George B. Thomas: that in 2025. Chad. Let's do it. What else should HubSpot users be paying attention to in 2025?

[00:33:18] Chad Hohn: Yeah. I mean, we've talked about it a ton on this show and just in general, I think all of us are at least some level of enthusiastic about it, but if you're not the person who's like super excited about AI and LLM functionality. In your business, at least make sure that somebody is and that you are working with them, at least reasonably syncing up.

[00:33:48] to give them ideas or for them to tell you what they're working on to spark ideas for you. Um, you know, cause maybe you're just busy doing other things or working on your own skill as we talked about before or whatever it is, but, um, make sure somebody's got not their finger on the pulse of, they don't need to be like looking at, oh, every new little thing that happens, but like at least reasonably trying to make AI do useful things and help it be a little more automagical in your business process outside of just, I'm going to talk to breeze.

[00:34:28] You know, in the UI when I need to write, um, like that's not what we're after as much as like, well, we want to be able to have, like, we have a, a thing at our, our business called a, um, solution extraction that we get from each of the employees that work at a business. So every employee. Bills out that form and they use their business email, which automatically associates them to the company.

[00:34:55] And we get a list of people and their job titles and what they feel could improve about the company and all of this sort of stuff. One of the things we want to do is take all of this. These questions that are specific to the employee and not necessarily even shared with the employee, but automatically program a GPT that you can ask about that business.

[00:35:19] So, you know, roof, whatever ink bot knows about what all the employees feel. When they're there, and then it also knows about the value extraction that we're trying to get as a company, this is the company's goals. And this is how the humans feel. And you can talk to roof company, Inc bought about that business, right.

[00:35:42] And like program that automagically. So you can get some more context. Or these people and for what they're doing in the business and what the business is trying to accomplish. Right. Um, and so like, that's an example of how to maybe use AI practically. In your business flow. That's not just talking to breeze, right?

[00:36:02] You're like actually making a specific model that's relevant to all your interactions with breeze in a way, or sorry, with, uh, you know, with this business and how to update it. Right. So if you're not the one. At least make sure someone is, and that's, it's fine. You don't have to be the one, right? But somebody in your business should be.

[00:36:22] At least interested in it and doing things in it with it or thinking about things that they could do.

[00:36:27] George B. Thomas: yeah. It's such a magical playground right now. Like, literally, we created a custom, well, it started out as a project and then a custom GPT for a client. Around tax strategies, I'll just say that much. Um, and we got it to the point where we could list the name of the person. We want you to write an article as this human, or write an article as this human, and it would know the changes and difference to make as far as like, it's crazy, and just the way that we program it.

[00:36:59] Another example of this, I was working over the weekend on a passion project, and Where, um, I can show you the documentation based on a process that I went through, where I can ask my GPT. What are the 25 mindsets that make George B. Thomas the way he is? And it'll spit it out and it's spot on. What are the 25 beliefs that George B.

[00:37:24] Thomas has that make him interact with the world in this way? What are the, what are the core values? And, and so like, if your assistant for your business doesn't know it at an intimate level, Um, because, because that's where you start to get into these magical places of like, it just knows everything it can know, and you're directing it into like, Oh, we're just getting it anyway, not an AI show, but we're just getting into some really crazy cool places that you as business owners, business leaders, even employees can get into to be to be leveraging AI.

[00:37:58] Let me go back out of AI before I get sucked in. One thing that I want people to pay attention to because it's interesting over the last couple of months, if you watch, there was, uh, an update slash beta around, uh, HubSpot email tool and having mobile, like mobile settings in there for mobile

[00:38:18] Chad Hohn: Yes. Mobile optimized email.

[00:38:20] George B. Thomas: I want to let everybody know there's a new update slash beta that they can go enjoy as well, which is like a whole new sidebar in the marketing email editor.

[00:38:30] Which is really interesting because if you look at the screenshots and you've ever messed around with landing pages or website pages, like, themed, it looks very, very reminiscent to that in the

[00:38:44] Chad Hohn: That's how the multi step form editor is too.

[00:38:47] George B. Thomas: Yeah, it's, it's really interesting. So definitely pay attention to, um, email and, and since I'm bringing up the email tool, maybe pay attention to how you're actually leveraging or not leveraging email inside of your organization.

[00:39:01] Because, um, while some people want to say email's dead, I think crappy email might be dead, but good email is still

[00:39:09] Max Cohen: Crappy emails always been

[00:39:10] George B. Thomas: Yeah. It's always been dead, but

[00:39:12] Max Cohen: never

[00:39:12] Chad Hohn: It's extra dead

[00:39:14] George B. Thomas: yeah, it's, it's a viable, um, Way to communicate and I would just have you take a second glance a third glance in 2025 And say what email efforts have we been applying?

[00:39:27] What email efforts we haven't like what could we be doing better? What could we be doing different but definitely uh email in 2025 as as far as new folks nurtures and current folks customers, like how are we delighting them as well max HubSpot users 2025. What should they be focusing on?

[00:39:47] Max Cohen: I mean, besides everything that we talked about, um, you know, I, here's, I guess the challenge that I would, I would pose right to any HubSpot user out there. If there's a hub you haven't explored, go 10 miles deep into it this year. Right, like, you might have gotten really good at marketing hub, you might have gotten really good at sales hub, you might have gotten really good at, uh, you know, uh, service hub, but when was the last time you even, like, just sat down and said, hey, I'm gonna learn everything I can about CMS hub, I'm gonna learn everything I can about OBS hub, right?

[00:40:21] Those things are, you know, often, uh, very unexplored, I feel, right? Um, you know, from, you know, From from a lot of users because of course there's like the big three marketing sales and service i'd even say service is Much less explored by a lot of people like, you know, you i'd say you i'd say Yeah, i'd say 90 of the people that are really really good at hub spot out There are really really good at marketing and sales hub right but haven't had A reason to dive into service hub because maybe like they're one of those companies that still looks at it as a marketing and sales tool Right.

[00:40:57] And hasn't really thought about, Oh, what can we do to actually like help our customers using this instead of it all just going to that one support inbox that we have sitting somewhere. Right. Or like, you know, what, what the hell is this operations hub thing, actually? Right. And it's like, you know, if you haven't explored any of the CMS stuff, I mean, it's a whole, I mean, it's not just CMS stuff now it's content

[00:41:21] Chad Hohn: literally its

[00:41:22] Max Cohen: right?

[00:41:22] It's content

[00:41:23] Chad Hohn: mean, CMS is like almost as much as learning all of the other hubs combined.

[00:41:27] George B. Thomas: Yeah.

[00:41:27] Max Cohen: Yeah. Sorry. If you're a marketer and you haven't gone full balls into, into, into, into content hub, I don't know what to tell you. Right. But like, this is the year to do it. Right. A hundred percent. So like, you know what I would say, like, you know, your HubSpot new year's resolution is go.

[00:41:45] What's that hub? I don't know anything about and how can I spend this year becoming an expert in it, right? Because I guarantee you're gonna find yeah, you're gonna find your final reasons to use it No reasons to spend money on it, but you can George

[00:41:59] George B. Thomas: more granular than that? Like I agree with the hub thing. I totally agree with you, but like Listen, one of the things I want to talk about paying attention to in 2025 is helpdesk

[00:42:11] Max Cohen: Mm

[00:42:11] George B. Thomas: just look at what's been going on helpdesk message analytics, helpdesk analyze tab, helpdesk summary tab, like all the things that's helping happening around helpdesk.

[00:42:20] So, like, if you go, so I want to talk about workspaces. Like if you're not diving into the sales workspace or the help desk or the customer success, you know, beta, uh, workspace, like, so hub, yes, but even like workspace, like, is there a workspace that you haven't been paying attention to or leveraging inside your organization?

[00:42:42] Like 2025 is the best time to, to probably move in those directions and understand the

[00:42:48] Chad Hohn: so much better than they were. The workspaces came out last year, obviously start is their tiny box and they grow into a more rich feature set. The prospecting workspace turned into the sales workspace, which is. Really bringing together the lead and the sales management process.

[00:43:05] It's great. I mean, did you guys know that help desk got a board view now? So you can see your ticket board view inside of your all tickets view and you get custom filter properties at the top of both the board and the list view. I mean, like they have the ability to add a custom app on the right hand sidebar and customize the right hand sidebar and help desk.

[00:43:26] They have like the email AI replies that you can train on your KBAs. Email editor can pop out now. Like, I mean, there's so many good things going on there. Like the help desk team has been killing it and they're working on like. Capacity level routings for all channels. If everybody's full up, like where do the.

[00:43:47] It gets go so you can pass them out. Like the amount of things that they're doing there is so impressive and like ticket splitting, ticket merging. You know, I know these are basic things, but there are things that HubSpot's never had before. And it's trading blows with the big boys in the help desk space for sure.

[00:44:09] And because it's all in one spot, you have access to more data. Oh, they just literally added the ability to associate invoices to tickets so that you could use your help desk as kind of a sales functionality. Like, For example, at RBP, we utilize like fuel to represent how much effort we've assigned to tickets and they utilize their fuel and they can get more fuel.

[00:44:31] And if they want to like use a payment link to buy fuel, they can add fuel to their account. So we can process like a dev type request and build them something, but now the invoice can be associated to the ticket. Right. So like all these things that just never were possible and helped us in ops hub is like.

[00:44:49] It's own sack of glory. It's just so good. Like, I love ops hub and like, if you don't have somebody who loves ops hub, that's something you should get because like that and somebody who loves, um, you know, AI there, they, you kind of need both cause you need structured data. Like I know AI deals with unstructured data well, but if you give AI structured data, it's that much better.

[00:45:14] Right.

[00:45:15] George B. Thomas: knock out, knock out one, two punch. So, uh, I'll, I'll, I'll give one last thing that I want people to definitely pay attention to in 2025. It's actually going to be something that I'm, I'm going to, I'm going to be very vulnerable and authentic here in about, uh, about 10 seconds. Um, and then by the way, gentlemen, I'm going to ask like, what's, what's the one takeaway that you're kind of like, oh man, after this conversation, I need to do X, Y, Z, A, B, C.

[00:45:42] So the last thing I want to say to HubSpot users in 2025 is, um, if you've abandoned HubSpot Academy because you've been in the trenches for, you know, 10 plus years, 8 plus years, 7 plus years, and you think you've done it all, been there, seen that, um, I want you to pay attention to HubSpot Academy in 2025 because if you go on LinkedIn, uh, Courtney Sembler, they're hiring a new position, if not multiple positions for HubSpot Academy.

[00:46:09] It almost feels like they're getting ready to double down. On the things that they're doing. Um, and also the reason I'm bringing this up is because I was on the hug admin, um, training January, the beginning of this, uh, month. Uh, we talked about defining your role by the way, as a HubSpot super admin, it's part of our HubSpot super admin training, but I asked a question in there, I said, how many of you have the reporting certification and the amount of nose that flooded up, uh, in, in the, the super admin hug.

[00:46:42] The amount of no's that flooded up. I was like, wow. So for all these years, I've been an advocate of HubSpot Academy and I must continue to be an advocate of HubSpot Academy, meaning I'm an advocate for education, I'm an advocate for growing yourself, which Adam going back almost to your first thing of like your skills, like what certification don't you have?

[00:47:04] What certification should you have and how many times per week or per month. Are you checking back in for new lessons that could be learned that could impact you as an individual or the organizations that you work at? So, for 2025, that's going to be a big, uh, focus for me, because as somebody who has at 1 time in my life had 41 HubSpot certifications.

[00:47:27] By the way, I think Jorge's at 52 now? Anyway, um, yeah, it's crazy. It's, it's crazy. Um, I, I need to go back and I need to research. And I also need to get new ones. And, and that needs to be a focus for me moving forward. So, anyway. Okay, Max, what's your big takeaway from today's episode?

[00:47:47] Max Cohen: I mean, the big, the big, the big takeaway is, is for me is like, yes, AI is going to be absolutely insane in 2025, uh, for HubSpot. But that is not the only thing.

[00:48:03] Chad Hohn: Mm

[00:48:04] Max Cohen: the, there is a bit of a time we, how I say this.

[00:48:12] George B. Thomas: easy, don't get canceled. Oh, geez, pardon you, pardon you, Chad.

[00:48:19] Max Cohen: sorry, I stressed that I just, um,

[00:48:22] I think it will be a year to do the basics really well. It'll also be a year where taking care of people is going to be more important than it ever has been. Okay, but also, but also from a tool perspective, It's gonna be a lot more than just AI, right, and, and, don't, don't lose sight of everything going on around and behind the, the big, you know, the big crazy breeze explosion this year.

[00:48:57] Alright, just pay attention to the stuff around the edges of the big shining AI light that's gonna be, you know, blasting from the center of this tool, right? There will be extremely cool things happening to the tool that aren't just AI, right? Um, You know, so pay attention to that. Uh, double down on the learning.

[00:49:19] Right? Explore stuff that you're not comfortable with. Explore stuff that you don't understand. Um, and yeah. Embrace it, man. It's gonna be a crazy year.

[00:49:30] George B. Thomas: Chad, what's your big takeaway from this episode?

[00:49:33] Chad Hohn: Yeah, I just think um that I don't have enough certs again

[00:49:38] George B. Thomas: Uh,

[00:49:39] Chad Hohn: I feel bad because I let all my certs lapse because I you know, like I mean it's easy to get in the middle of everything I'm like, well i'm building things that are like that. I think are pretty cool and I think are pretty useful but yeah, like I think there needs to be a balance because like certs aren't everything.

[00:49:58] Like somebody with only certs and no experience isn't useful, necessarily useful. They have some context and understanding, but somebody with like doing whatever they want and no certs is also like, you know, they, maybe they know how the rubber meets the road, but like. Hey, you know what? It's a, it's just good to have some of that industry, you know, standards sort of stuff to lock in.

[00:50:23] Um, I mean, that's like a takeaway for me. Like I want to grow my learning, but the learning that I'm trying to do is like kind of stuff they don't really have certs for. They have some like integrations stuff. So that's one I want to take because it's probably going to push me outside of what I know and like, keep me close to the correct trajectory.

[00:50:45] Um, but other certs I should renew because, because it's good.

[00:50:50] George B. Thomas: yeah, it's

[00:50:50] Chad Hohn: So that's, that's one thing I want to do and I need to do.

[00:50:53] George B. Thomas: Love it. So my big takeaway is this. It's a new year. It's a new you. Focus on the strategies and the growth and the goals that you need to be focused on. Figure out how HubSpot actually plays in this world of process people and platform. And I'm going to go back to something that Max has kind of been dipping in the entire time.

[00:51:14] It's all about the humans. Focus on your internal humans, external humans, yourself as a human, and how can you just have the best year ever and flourish? Because that's what we here at the Hub Heroes Podcast hope for you is that 2025 is a year of flourishing.