George B. Thomas
Take a deep breath, friends. #INBOUND25 is behind us, and it was one for the books.
If you asked each of us to sum it up in one word, here’s what we landed on:
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Max: AI
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Chad: Loopy
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George: Strange
And honestly, those three words capture it perfectly. Let’s unpack why.
The Strange Energy of San Francisco
Boston has been home to Inbound for years. The BCEC. The familiar coffee runs. The haunts you knew you’d always end up at after sessions wrapped.
This year was different. San Francisco gave us the Moscone Center. A brand-new playground.
Here’s what made it strange:
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No Dunkin’. That meant George was far less caffeinated than usual. In fact, he only had one coffee the entire week.
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The layout left many of us asking for directions more than ever. Finding sessions wasn’t as intuitive as it had been in Boston.
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The city itself shifted when Inbound wrapped. During the event, sidewalks were cleaned, security was everywhere, and things felt polished. The moment the event ended, the vibe changed. It was a reminder of how different hosting cities shape the Inbound experience.
Strange? Yes. Bad? Not at all. Just different.
The Loopiness of Product Overload
Chad wasn’t wrong when he said “Loopy.” There were simply too many product updates to keep straight. It felt like double what we’ve seen in years past. From new AI-powered features to structural changes inside the HubSpot ecosystem, it was dizzying in the best and worst ways.
Highlights included:
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Breeze Studio: The ability to build and connect your own agents inside HubSpot. A huge surprise.
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Projects + Gantt Charts: A long-awaited functionality upgrade, though still missing custom task properties.
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Full-Screen App Experiences: Game-changing for developers, giving them more room to build immersive tools directly into HubSpot.
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Breeze Assistant’s Evolution: Email and calendar integration, memories, a marketplace, and even the ability to create tasks directly from your inbox.
It was powerful. It was exciting. It was a little overwhelming.
The AI Everywhere Effect
Max nailed it with his one word: AI. You couldn’t escape it. Billboards. Keynotes. Side sessions. Even the airport signage. It was the word of the week.
But here’s the tension. AI is powerful and exciting, yet it risks becoming noise. The word is everywhere, but what matters is the why behind using it. As George shared, we need to move from thinking about AI as just an assistant to embracing it as a true partner.
That mindset shift is where the real magic happens.
Loop Marketing and the Flywheel Question
One of the biggest surprises was the unveiling of Loop Marketing.
The framework centers on four words: Express. Tailor. Amplify. Evolve.
Some loved it. Some bristled. Because for years, the Inbound Methodology and the Flywheel were the north stars. Attract. Engage. Delight. Clear. Simple. Timeless.
Loop Marketing felt more product-driven than methodology-driven. Useful? Yes. A playbook? Absolutely. But for many, it raised the question: Is HubSpot shaping strategy around the product now, instead of building the product around strategy?
George summed it up best: the principles on the slides made sense, but the language left him uncertain. Maybe it is just going to take time for Loop Marketing to find its footing alongside the Flywheel.
Big Surprises and Letdowns
Every Inbound brings its share of curveballs. Here are a few that stood out this year:
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Surprise: The volume of AI integration inside Breeze. We tested task creation, email summaries, and even schema analysis. The depth was shocking in real time.
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Surprise: Brian Halligan eating hot wings on stage with a secret stash of Sam Adams. Legendary.
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Surprise: Driverless cars like Waymo and Tesla’s network became a side adventure for many attendees. Some rides smooth. Others… not so much.
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Letdown: Service Hub updates felt thin. Macros were exciting, but the big leaps we hoped for in customer service functionality were missing.
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Letdown: Without Boston’s Omni or Westin, there wasn’t a clear “after-hours” hub. The magic of unplanned late-night connections was harder to find.
Salt and Pepper Moments
Beyond sessions and product drops, Inbound always delivers those small but unforgettable experiences.
For George, it was dinner with friends, riding in a Waymo to see San Francisco landmarks, and grabbing one final coffee with his wife after the event wrapped.
For Chad, it was exploring the city, seeing the Golden Gate Bridge, and even trying multiple driverless car networks for the first time.
For Max, it was fried chicken in Chinatown that literally made his jaw buzz from the spices. And yes, it was as wild as it sounds.
These are the random, colorful moments that season the Inbound experience and make it unforgettable.
Final Thoughts
Inbound 2025 was strange, loopy, and AI-fueled. It was a city shift that left us asking for directions, a product shift that left us scrambling to keep up, and a strategy shift that left us reflecting on what comes next.
The Inbound team crushed it. The energy was electric. The product drops were game-changing. And the conversations, both planned and unplanned, reminded us why we keep showing up.
If you missed it, keep an eye on HubSpot’s YouTube channel for recaps. If you were there, I’d love to know: what was your one word for Inbound 2025?
And if you’ve never been before, make Boston 2026 your year. Because no matter what city it’s in, Inbound always finds a way to surprise you.
Episode Transcript
George B. Thomas: All right, max.
Chad Hohn: a badge off boys?
George B. Thomas: I see what you're doing there, max. So, uh oh. Oh my goodness.
If you're watching this.
Max Cohen: Hey,
George B. Thomas: so first of all, so first of all, if you're watching this, I'm might have to clip this. Maddie. Maddie, we should probably clip this. Um, uh, max is flexing Max. How many of those there tags? Do you have inbound tags?
Max Cohen: Oh, these actually, hold on. These are imposters right here.
George B. Thomas: Oh, those are
Max Cohen: I got, I got this one and I got last year's. I can't find my other ones. I've got like nine of them.
George B. Thomas: All right. There we go.
Max Cohen: This is Flywheel kickoff. Oh shit.
George B. Thomas: those, those are all inbound. Baby. Those,
Max Cohen: dude.
George B. Thomas: those, those are all inbound.
Max Cohen: squats, dude. He just puts his, uh,
George B. Thomas: I just put my, my HubSpot Academy certifications. See all those Cert cert badges. It's like my, uh,
Chad Hohn: can even stand with all that on.
George B. Thomas: I, it's hard. It's hard. It's my, uh, it's my inbound Mr. T starter kit, if I'm being honest with you.
But let me hang it back up. Hey, so here, here's the thing, ladies and gentlemen, we're back from inbound. It's, it's been a, a week or so since inbound, but happen. We're finally recording. Uh, guys, let's kick this off as a, hang these back up. If you could describe this, uh, year's inbound inbound, 2025 with one word. Uh, what would your one word be?
Max Cohen: AI dude.
Chad Hohn: Loopy.
George B. Thomas: oh, oh, oh. Okay. So we've got ai, we've got loopy, I'll say strange. Now, max. Why? Why AI for you?
Max Cohen: I don't know. 'cause it's the only, only word that I heard the entire time when we were there.
George B. Thomas: Well, you, you obviously didn't go to my
Max Cohen: sick of hearing it, man.
Chad Hohn: Yeah.
Max Cohen: And, and, and you wanna know what was like the, the worst part about it all is, listen, I get, they're talking about ai. But like, man, uh, you know, I don't think on the way back to the airport, I don't think I saw a single billboard that didn't have the word AI in it.
And I'm just like, what are we doing? What are we doing? And then like when I got into the airport, all the big digital signs that they have, AI ad after ai, ad after ai, ad after this, that, and that with ai and AI and ai, it's just like. Now I just cringe when I hear the word I'll be so honest. I think it's cool.
AI is super sick. It's great. Uh, but man, am I sick of hearing about it?
George B. Thomas: can. It's funny because I heard, um, Remington beg, he did a post and he was like, are you sick of hearing it yet? I'm sick about, I'm sick of talking about it. But, you know, and, and I think it's interesting because there has to be like a deeper level to even why you're using the AI or having the AI conversation.
But, but anyway, we might, we might swing back into that. Uh, Chad, you said loopy talk, talk to me about why your word was loopy.
Chad Hohn: well there's the obvious reason Loop marketing, but I think there were just so many like, um. You know, like it was all a bit loopy. There was so many things. I think there was double the number of product updates this year compared to last inbound. That's a lot of stuff. Like, and that'll make you loopy trying to keep it all straight.
It's pretty wild how many different things that they launched. Um, I'm, I'm a lot of, it's really cool. Like there's a lot of really quality of life improvements. There's, you know, I mean, the fact that some things started to change while I was gone, that's kind of not great. Like, oh, the UI is different. My team's, you
George B. Thomas: we'll, we'll, we'll
Chad Hohn: team's like, what?
George B. Thomas: we'll get to that. We'll get to that. So, so loopy. Yeah. A whole bunch of updates. Um. A whole bunch of humans. Um, and then
Chad Hohn: a little bit of loop marketing.
George B. Thomas: which you kind of like, uh, alluded to, which we may or may not circle back into. I said strange. Um, I, I'm saying strange because of a couple different reasons.
One, it wasn't in Boston. We all know that it was in San Francisco, which, which was kind of strange, right? It
Max Cohen: Yeah, the lack of Dunking Donuts was
George B. Thomas: Oh, brother, brother. Don't get me started on the Dunking Donuts. Um, the, by the way, because of that, do you wanna know the number of coffees? Okay. Um, let's play a little game and then I'll get back to why I said strange.
Uh, take a wild guess. The number of coffees that I had while I was in San Francisco.
Max Cohen: Oh, you're on East Coast time, so you're fighting your, uh, your jet lag a little bit. Uh, wait, are you talking like total like plane to
George B. Thomas: time I was there. How many coffees do you think I drank?
Max Cohen: And you were there Monday to Friday?
George B. Thomas: Uh, Tuesday to Saturday
Max Cohen: Tuesday to Saturday morning. Oh, so you mixed another morning into there? Mm.
George B. Thomas: Yeah.
Chad Hohn: I didn't see you with a
Max Cohen: I'm gonna, I'm gonna get
Chad Hohn: once, George,
Max Cohen: 26.
George B. Thomas: Oh, max, you said 26. Chad, you said I, I didn't
Chad Hohn: see you with a coffee cup in your hand once, and I'm gonna say zero
George B. Thomas: Oh, okay. We got 26 and we got. Guys, the total number of coffees that I drank in San Francisco, one,
Max Cohen: What,
Chad Hohn: one.
George B. Thomas: one, I drank
Chad Hohn: I was.
George B. Thomas: There was no dunking and, and I was just jamming around and I was speaking and talking and talking to people.
And finally I got to like Friday and the event's over and I go, babe, you know what I want? 'cause my wife was with me. I didn't just call some random person, babe.
Max Cohen: He called me babe.
George B. Thomas: know what I want? We're like taking the Eroni trolley to the Fisherman's Wharf. You know what I want? She goes, what do you want?
I go, I want a coffee. And so I got a coffee while we're actually walking around after the event was over. So no Dunkins equal George, less caffeinated, but still excited. So, so it was just a strange event, right. I was not caffeinated, I was in San Francisco. Um, I, I asked for directions more. Ever in like the last nine years of like, where's this, uh, room, where's this room?
Like, how do I get here? Um, 'cause I didn't have time to not like, just go hunt for it. Like I had to get there and do a thing. So it was just strange. Here's the other thing. I feel like they had us in a little bit of a bubble. Okay? And here's, people love this show because we call a spade a spade and we talk about things that sometimes we should and maybe sometimes we shouldn't, but. Listen, I, we stayed like, after the event was over, now while the event was happening, the sidewalks were getting sprayed off. There were security guards all around. It seemed like it was like a pretty, like, it was a dope place. Now you can tell San Francisco it, it, it has, its, it's still trying to come back from, like, financially, from like COVID, because I, I heard multiple people that lived there kind of talk about this, but it, it seemed like.
Okay. It's a nice city and it is, by the way. It is a nice city. However, when inbound left and the security guards left, it was a totally different place. Like it. It like switched. And so Friday night and Saturday I was like, oh, this. Strange. And so that's, that's why like, it just felt different. I'm glad that we're gonna be heading back to Boston.
I'm excited for, for next year already, and we just got done. But loopy strange and ai, those are our one words. Okay, so let's, let's, that's sums it up ladies and see you next week. No, I'm just kidding. So, so talk me through, uh, max Chad like. The, the big product announcement, what was the, the product announcement that you were like, oh, okay.
Max Cohen: Chad hit it.
Chad Hohn: thinking that they were gonna have an agent builder directly inside a HubSpot. I'll tell you that like I was not expecting, like you to be able to build your own MCP tools for native inside HubSpot Breeze.
George B. Thomas: Yeah.
Chad Hohn: That's pretty ba uh, like that's really, really, really, really powerful because you can leverage any kind of custom solution.
You know, people are gonna stop asking for API docs and start asking for MCP servers, you know, like, I mean, it's pretty, pretty crazy to think that that's the world we're moving to.
Max Cohen: yeah. I think it kind of
George B. Thomas: I get a, can I get a Clickup CP server please? Like,
Chad Hohn: there might be one.
George B. Thomas: Man, we, I need to find out because that's the missing thread for me on a couple things. Uh, max. Go ahead. Big, big product announcement that you were like, oh my God.
Max Cohen: well, no, I think the, the, I mean, just kind of building off of what Chad said about the, what is it? Breeze Studio is the thing that lets you build your own, like agents or whatever. I didn't quite, I guess I didn't quite understand like, you know, those like app store agents that well, um. Because like I didn't know that like you would use Brie's studio to like invoke a bunch of them together to do something Right.
Which I thought was like pretty cool. Um, Harry Bevins, the guy that runs. Line pilot came and actually like explained it to me. 'cause then I clearly didn't understand what it was. I thought it was just like talking to a chat bot for like that app, telling that app to do something. But in reality, you could use Brie's Studio to get all these things to like work together, which is like really wild and kind of broke my brain a little bit.
Um,
Chad Hohn: app, you could do, like, you could make a framework where it's designed to go through a specific sequence of events for some sort of purpose. So it's almost like building a playbook for an agent.
George B. Thomas: Yeah.
Max Cohen: it's really sweet. Um, I was, I was pleasantly surprised to see that projects thing come out too. Um, that, you know, it's, it's interesting, I've, I've had my big, uh, gripe with all of these like new sort of like standard objects that live in that object library. Has always been that like they tend to release objects and give them a name.
That sort of implies there's some additional functionality behind it, right? So like, you know how they, they came out with like the appointments tool, I mean the appointments object, but like no way for people to book those appointments. They came out with the listing object, with no integration with an MLS system, right?
And like, you know, kind of like, why are we just kind of making these things because. A sales rep that doesn't really understand the nuance of, that's gonna be like, oh yeah, you can book a book appointments, just use our appointment object. Right. And you know,
Chad Hohn: a listing in there.
Max Cohen: and it sucks. But then, you know, they, they came out with projects and they came out with a Gantt chart view, which is
Chad Hohn: Yeah. Have you messed around with that at all?
Max Cohen: Not at all. Not at all.
Chad Hohn: pretty cool. I mean,
Max Cohen: and it looks
Chad Hohn: yeah. I, I think the thing that they need to like really make that takeoff is task custom objects, or sorry, custom properties. They don't have that quite just yet, but like being able to be a little bit more free with the task and the task editor and then, but I'm sure that's on the roadmap,
Max Cohen: I literally had a product manager come up to me and tell me they were doing that at the show at some point. Um, not only that I heard,
George B. Thomas: to say that.
Max Cohen: maybe I'm not gonna say who it was. I also heard, uh, something around custom activities, which might be interesting. We'll see if that's actually something I heard correctly.
Um, but yeah, that's, that's super cool. Um, I mean, big thing for me though, being like the app person, uh, something that dropped, which we didn't know anything about, um, was that they're gonna let a, they're gonna give like app developers the ability to create like full screen app experiences, right? So instead of being like regulated to just like a UI extension.
They're gonna give us like an entire page surface to play with, which is like, really cool. So I'm super excited to see what we do there. Um, you know, uh, but yeah, it was, it was cool.
George B. Thomas: I
Chad Hohn: So did you,
George B. Thomas: more of that's gonna happen because like, sorry Chad, I'll swing back to you here in a second. Like, like a couple things that come to my mind. One, if you're listening to this and you haven't messed around with like the New Breeze assistant, like what I'm saying when I say new, like the updates, like I connected my email, I connected my calendar.
It now has memories like you can, there's a breeze marketplace. So like the Breeze Assistant is gonna be able to be more than you ever thought. It was like one of the things that we were doing, uh, last week when we were getting ready to record this episode and then we didn't end up recording it. Um, literally I said, can you check my email?
It checked my email and then I said, can you create tasks to, so I can remember to actually follow up on those emails. And Breeze created those tasks and associated them to the human. So like, if you have, and you can go full screen, right? And so like, if you haven't messed with breeze and seen how deep you can kinda like, dig into, it's, it's, it's getting crazy.
Chad Hohn: if you haven't,
George B. Thomas: just said.
Chad Hohn: yeah, if you haven't messed with breeze in the last 30 days, it's a whole new world.
George B. Thomas: Yeah. It's, it's crazy.
Max Cohen: George, here's a funnier story behind how that actually happened, right? Like you and me were talking and you were. Like, oh, look like you can hook up email now as a source. When you talk to breeze, you tied your breeze and you were like, oh, gimme a synopsis of my email inbox from the last week.
And it was like, yeah. And it, it literally like it congratulated you on doing a good job at delegating stuff to people because it noticed that like things were getting taken care of and then it's like you only got a couple of things. And then I was like, George, wouldn't it be crazy if like one day it was like.
Oh, uh, can you make me tasks to follow up on those things? Right? And we're like, yeah, that'd be crazy. And then you're
George B. Thomas: I tried it.
Max Cohen: wait, lemme just try it. And you tried it and it, it fucking did it. And like I was like, wait. I was like, wait, wait. How far along is all this stuff that I like? I don't even,
George B. Thomas: Max is like,
Max Cohen: like, I don't even know,
George B. Thomas: day
Max Cohen: Yeah. One of nice and fun day. And then literally one day it was that, that 30 seconds later. Right? Which is so cool to
Chad Hohn: It's 'cause they more or less, they've added a lot of functionality of the MCP server to breeze. Not all of it because, but they, you can like actually talk to it and add custom properties and it ask it questions about your property schema, like the structure of your li your properties and all that sort of stuff already.
And it will analyze data. It's very impressive. It doesn't work. Like for a long, long time just yet. I've had some stuff where I'm like, Hey, I wanna, you know, do some data transformation, almost like a workflow, but with a little bit more AI in the middle and not having to like build out a weird workflow to do it.
And it did like maybe five out of 400 deals that I wanted it to modify. 'cause it, it wouldn't work for, this is for max age Genically.
George B. Thomas: Mm
Max Cohen: Worst, worst word in the human language ever
Chad Hohn: It wouldn't work age genically for a long period of time. Yeah. But, uh, I think that's on the horizon.
George B. Thomas: So,
Max Cohen: here's my take on this. You want, you want normal people to adopt
George B. Thomas: Yeah.
Max Cohen: co. Stop using words like generative and age agentic. Like, it just, it like people don't understand AI already.
Chad Hohn: use that.
Max Cohen: But it's just like, oh, it's all age agentic.
It's like, brother, it, it, it, we're already coming up with too many new wars with this shit. It's crazy.
George B. Thomas: Can I, can I just say, look at us talking about ai. Isn't that funny? Anyway, um, let's, let's, let's move on. By the way, I, I literally did release an article earlier this week about, um, uh, AI assistant versus AI partner because there's a whole mindset shift that needs to happen around it being a partner, not being assistant.
That came out of my talk in inbound. I said it from stage and I didn't really understand why I said it from stage, but it's where my brain went. And so I, I put that out in the world. If. If you're curious what I'm talking about, you can go to sidekick exchange.com, look at the article, uh, AI assistant versus AI partner.
But let's get back on the inbound. Uh, kind of recap, uh, thing here. Any big surprises that you guys were like, and other than software, but just like, maybe it was the space, maybe it was something else.
Max Cohen: I mean, I, I, I the, hmm, I liked the layout a lot. I don't know. There, uh, our marketing manager, Nikki, who's really, really good at the trade show thing, had a much more. Uh, tactical informed, and educated breakdown around why she didn't like it. Uh, mostly 'cause of the traffic, right? It is, it was, you know, it was different in that like the booth track.
You, you had to want to go to the booths
Chad Hohn: Yeah, that, that was exactly what I was gonna say. The booths used to be like in the same space as the HubSpot product area, and you had to go through the HubSpot product area to get to the keynote.
Max Cohen: Yep.
Chad Hohn: Right. Now you'd go downstairs and you either, you had to decision point, you had a fork in the road, right.
Max Cohen: Right. And like, so a lot of people just like went upstairs, didn't really go through the booth. So like a lot of the people in the booth were like, where's that traffic? You know what I mean? Like, I still feel like we added a lot of traffic. Right. Um, I didn't stop talking the entire time. Um, but the, but you know, as someone who just like, just doesn't understand all that at like a very deep level, like I, I liked how interesting.
Like the booth layout stuff was like, it was instead of just one straight line and it was just kind of something you had to walk through. It very much was very interesting and intricate. The layout had a lot of interesting curves and angles and
Chad Hohn: Made you bob and weave a
Max Cohen: around every corner, you know what I mean?
It felt very. Organic, organic, almost like a little, little, see I said organic 'cause we've been saying
George B. Thomas: Agentic
Max Cohen: tic Oh my God, I hate, I'm gonna start using that word now. Organic. That's
Chad Hohn: I'll get my, uh, social organic traffic.
Max Cohen: Yeah. Look at this organic content we've created. Um, and it, but it was, it, it always felt like there was something to discover down there.
So I did. I did, I did. Kind of like the, um, you know. It didn't feel like he just saw everything like immediately and you're like, okay, this is it. Like it, it felt very, uh, like there was a lot to explore, which I thought was cool. Um, yeah.
George B. Thomas: Chad. Uh, big surprises or big surprise.
Chad Hohn: Yeah, I just, uh, I, I. I think it's, uh, interesting to think that when you're walking downstairs, you're literally walking underneath the road into the keynote. I think that's like weird for people. 'cause I pointed it out to a couple people, they're like, oh, oh yeah, you're right. Like we're in the other building all of a sudden, you know?
Um,
George B. Thomas: wife
Max Cohen: prepared for it to be underground. Yeah.
George B. Thomas: my wife was one of those people, because she kept telling me for like a couple days, we don't go into that building. We go into this building, and, and she's like, it's interesting, we only use that building the first day. And then she came to me like day, uh, two or three and was like, you know, actually we have been using that building.
Chad told me like, when we, and I was like, oh. Oh, okay. I guess we do.
Chad Hohn: Yeah. It's just, I mean, that's just like, you know, one of those things about the, the event center. Um. And, and whatever. But I, I felt like it was very interesting that, you know, all the, all the HubSpot stuff was completely separate from all the booths. It's obviously there just wasn't enough room to have it all together Right.
Because of the way the building was. But, um, I felt like that was an, an interesting thing. You know, the layout was cool. I definitely plus won that on Max, but,
Max Cohen: it, yeah. Oh, that's, uh, one other surprise. Uh, uh, I, I got a Mountain Dew in water and it cost me $15. That was a fun surprise.
George B. Thomas: yeah. Let's not talk about my taxi surprise. That was like $67. But anyway, that's the surprise I want to talk about is honestly like, um, uh, loop marketing. Uh, that was a surprise to me. Uh, I was like, wait, what, uh, what is happening right now? Like, li listen. And it's not because I'm a loop marketing hater.
It's because we only talked about marketing, like we didn't talk about sales, we didn't talk about success or service. We didn't. Right. Like
Max Cohen: That ended up being my saving grace. But yeah,
George B. Thomas: okay,
Max Cohen: because, because I, dude, I was crashing the hell out during the, when they like showed the loop stuff, right?
Chad Hohn: On on partner
George B. Thomas: mean you were like going down in flames, like mentally, like what is happening?
Max Cohen: I was about to walk out, not gonna lie. Um, because it looked at it as something that was like replacing the flywheel. Right. And I think that's the wrong way to look at it.
And that's not what's happening. And, and I, I think also it's like, you know, it just 'cause they didn't mention it doesn't mean that it's replacing it. Right. Um, you know, there is, there is a separation between what is inbound marketing. What is the flywheel, right? Um, you know, the flywheel attract, engage, delight, that kind of encompasses all the big major motions and things.
You're generally using HubSpot to kind of support you doing. Right. And HubSpot was built to support that strategy. Right. And I think it still is. Right? And, but you know, the reason I loved inbound so much is like, man, that that is so easy to explain to somebody. Right. And it's like no matter what you do is if your business is operating in any capacity, you are doing those three things, even if you're doing them in a slow, clunky, grinding to a halt way.
'cause if you weren't doing any of those things, technically you, you, your business couldn't run at all. Right? People gotta find you, you gotta talk to 'em, and then you gotta deliver some sort of product that makes 'em happy enough that they tell somebody else about it. Right? Like, those are the basics. Like think about it, anytime you started a, started a, um, onboarding or a project with somebody.
They were just getting into HubSpot and you asked them like, how are you, how have you been getting like business so far? What did 90% of them say? Word of mouth. It's like, cool, if they said word of mouth, brother, you were doing a flywheel and you didn't even know it. Right? And so it was all about like, how do we dig into those three spots and do 'em better?
Right. And I still think that holds up. Right. I mean, it has to, like laws of physics tells it has to, right? Like there's no, you're never not attracting, engaging, and delighting. It's always one way, shape, or form, right? You may not be doing any of those things well, but you have to do it in some capacity, right?
And so when I saw the loop thing, I was like, oh, what is this? They're taking this beautiful, easy. You know, universally sound timeless strategy, right. And completely turning it on its head. And it doesn't make any sense to me. But after I, you know, wiped the blood off of my mouth and like, you know, came, like, became conscious again, I realized like, oh wait, this is just this it, they're calling it loop marketing and they're calling it Loop Marketing for a very specific reason.
Because it is a marketing strategy. It's not like it's something replacing everything, right? And I do agree. In the age of like everyone is now has all these AI tools at their fingertips and no one has any idea how to make sense of all of it, right? There does need to be a playbook around it. I do think right now, do I think it's a little bit complex?
Yes. Do I remember the fourth? Well, hold on. No express
Chad Hohn: remember him that
Max Cohen: dude. Every time they hear, every time they say express, I just think of, uh, Dr. Drago. Express yourself
George B. Thomas: Oh my
Max Cohen: anyway.
Chad Hohn: I think of backend servers.
Max Cohen: So Express, what is it? Express Tailor, uh, amplify and evolve. It's like it's. I don't know. I, I, I'm, maybe I need to like really kind of understand like, the pieces of it, but it's just like, I, I don't, I don't know.
I, I, I don't understand it and maybe that's my fault, right? But I appreciate that, you know, they're trying to build a playbook for marketing. The a IH, the only thing that like, kind of bugs me about it is that for so long when we looked at inbound, right? Inbound was always something that you could do without HubSpot, right?
It was a strategy first and foremost. Right? You could, you could, you could do inbound without HubSpot it would it be harder? Sure. Right? But you could do it. Right. And they built the tool to support that thing. Right. The where I get scared, and again, this maybe this is just me being like. You know, uh, an inbound marketing conservative or something.
I don't know, like some, like someone who like, you know, a pure, an inbound marketing purist, right? Someone who doesn't wanna see things ch maybe I'm adverse to change, whatever it may be. Um,
Chad Hohn: a slitherin.
Max Cohen: I'm a slithering, right? Uh, to me there's a piece of it that, you know, with, with this huge emphasis they're putting on AI and breeze and credits and this, that, and the other thing.
To me, it, it, it, what it feels like is, it feels like the product is now shaping this strategy. Right. And it, it really kind of feels like just a big strategy to say like, Hey, you need to use ai and we've got all these AI tools and you have to use AI and here's the strategy to use ai.
George B. Thomas: So let's back
Chad Hohn: please burn some of my credits.
Max Cohen: Yeah,
George B. Thomas: yeah, yeah. Woo. Geez. Okay. Don't get started on that.
Max Cohen: infinite credits. You know what I mean? That's, that's.
George B. Thomas: like, we probably need to do Yeah. In infinity credits. Um,
Chad Hohn: the number of tokens you're gonna burn.
Max Cohen: Yeah, get that unlimited
George B. Thomas: episode. Um, were the words you used, I wanna back up, but, but first of all, were the words you used, express, tailor, amplify, evolve?
Were those the words that you used?
Max Cohen: that's it. Right?
George B. Thomas: I just wanted to make sure that those were the four. 'cause those are the four words. But let's back up because I think for the impact for what you're saying is like, historically when you went to Inbound, it was the inbound methodology you felt was driving the product.
This year was definitely, it felt like the product was driving the, the inbound talk. Now, I, I wanna back up because I was surprised with Loop Marketing, but I, this is what I wanna say. I think Yamini did a great job. I, I was paying attention because I had been forewarned of this, the coming of Loop Marketing.
So I was paying attention with an open mind and on the slides, the things that were on the slides, I'm like, yep, check. Makes sense. Need to do that. Yep. Okay. Yeah, so I agree with everything that was in the slides. I'm just, again, I don't know if I'm a big fan of Loop. Marketing, like the term in itself. I don't know what else you would call it, but I'm just like, okay, I, I'll, I'll, I'll live with it, deal with it, talk about it because, but it's a system and you need something that goes along with that system.
You need some principles. Right. And so, so there's, again, I wrote an article that is Loop Marketing meets the Super Human framework. Uh, and it's on psychic strategy. You can go check it out, but it's where maybe the two combined actually get us closer to what. Historically might have been a system that lives inside the inbound kind of original framework that I fell in love with.
So here's, here's another surprise for me. It was a surprise a couple years ago when Brian wasn't on the keynote stage as far as the kickoff. Uh, this year is another surprise that Dharmesh was not part of the, like the keynote kickoff. And I was, I was like, oh man. Like it's, it's really changed. 'cause one of the things that I would love is like, you'd go.
And it was like Brian and Dharmesh and you know, there was gonna be these crazy fun times and then it was Brian and Dharmesh and Yamini, and there was still gonna be these crazy fun times. And all of a sudden it's just starting to get split out to, and not saying it's bad, I'm just saying it's different.
It's strange. It's right. It's a surprise. So, uh, we're quickly running outta time, but guys, were there any, like, any inbound letdowns where you're like, uh, well. Other than
Chad Hohn: I, for me. Well, other than Duncan. Yeah. So I, I do want to touch on just one little thing too, like about that last topic, and then we'll circle back or I'll circle back into a letdown. But I mean, the thing is like the inbound methodology, the thing that I, the. I think that it did really well is it just touched every part of the business.
It touched all hubs. Everything was related. You know, it encompassed the entire product and you used everything to accomplish the inbound methodology. I still think you can accomplish loop marketing. Without HubSpot, it would just be harder, right? Because they have all the things with the nice juicy tokens in there, and this is like a primer for our credits.
Episode is like, if you really think about it, do you want them to price? In, if you're using something that consumes a lot of AI tokens to your HubSpot, for somebody who's gonna use way more than you if you're not gonna use that much. Now, does that mean that the product should cost less overall and that, because then you know, the tokens are, it's consumption based in a way, right?
Um, anyway. Something to think about because like, I don't know if I want to pay for somebody else's consumption. Right. And to then pad that in.
George B. Thomas: Which right
Chad Hohn: But also,
George B. Thomas: but
Chad Hohn: no, but I don't love the idea of, you know, this big whack of credits, you know, showing up because, but again, usage base, it's providing value
George B. Thomas: Yeah,
Chad Hohn: I don't know.
Anyway.
George B. Thomas: it. It's one more thing that a HubSpot Super admin needs to pay attention to.
Chad Hohn: Yeah, unfortunately. Right. Making that job a little bit more complex. Um, okay then, uh, I had a let down. Oh, did, did y'all just, sorry. While we're at it, I'm going on tangents here, but did y'all see Brian eat them hot chicken wings?
George B. Thomas: did. I did.
Chad Hohn: was so funny. Oh my gosh.
George B. Thomas: what was the funniest part for you,
Chad Hohn: I think when he popped the 12 pack of beer out and just busted it and because he had already finished his beer on like wing two out of 12 or whatever, dude, homeboy's already done with his beer and he just pops out a thing of Sam Adams.
Has multiple bottle openers in his pocket. He's like, which one should I use?
George B. Thomas: he, he
Chad Hohn: Then he pours himself like multiple extra 'cause he is just needing something. He got out of his chair one time, walked around the table because it was so
Max Cohen: miss it. Was he getting just
George B. Thomas: oh, bro.
Chad Hohn: Oh, it was great.
George B. Thomas: I, I think it's online. I think it'll be on YouTube. You've definitely gotta watch it because, um, as, as a fellow, uh, Boston Logger fan, uh, when that box slid out from under the table, and I knew homeboy had brought reinforcements, I was like, my dude. Like my smart man, um, because it was, you could tell he was like, he was burning up once we got into them.
Like, uh, end, end wings.
Chad Hohn: Yeah, okay. Now my letdown is simple. I didn't see almost anything from the Service hub team, which I love Service Hub, and that product is maturing a lot, but they're hitting the complexity wall of the needs of service and support teams. And also customer success teams and trying to build all of that into Service Hub.
Um, so the amount of big flashy features that they're able to drop is less. They did drop macros, which are cool, which is like a beta where you could just say it's almost like a mini workflow that you can run on demand, um, for a ticket. Which could be cool. And in the future, I believe they're gonna bring in email templates to apply an email template and run the workflow simultaneously.
Anyway, go
George B. Thomas: Nice. Max, uh, any letdowns?
Max Cohen: Um, from the show, like from the show directly. No, I mean, I generally had like an electric time out there. It was good. Um, you know, besides the Dunking Donuts, but I mean, here's the thing, the Grove, did you go to the Grove at all?
George B. Thomas: Yeah,
Max Cohen: Oh dude, the Grove was sick. I don't, I can't believe you didn't get coffee there.
That's nuts. Um, but yeah, no, I mean, it was, it was, it was good. I think like the, like that's the only letdown is like, it was hard to it. When we're at Inbound, we all know the place to be is the bar at the Omni or the Western.
George B. Thomas: Western. Yeah.
Max Cohen: And it was like, that was like the, it's like the one place everybody knows to go after all the party's over to just like burn it down at the end of the night and wake up regretting it.
Right? And like. It's like, and this is an inbound's fault, but we didn't know where that spot was. Right. And it's more just, I guess, like poor planning on the collective of people that went there. Right. Um, but you know, there was a lot of people that I wish I got to see and spend more time with. Like you, George, maybe I saw you like twice.
Right. Chad, I saw you for like a minute. Right. I mean, at least we got to like, sit together during the, uh. The partner day thing. Right. Um, you know, but I didn't have a ton of time to like, just really kind of kick it with people, which I felt like is much easier for some reason to do in Boston when we all know that main congregating place that we're all kind of going to, you know, so like, less of a let down, more of a like, ah, this is different.
Right. Um, uh, but yeah, no, I mean it was, it was, uh, you know, I, I, yeah, it was. He was good. I liked it. Dude. I had a great
Chad Hohn: it was good. I
Max Cohen: can't, I can't complain. I think for the first time having it somewhere else from Boston, I don't think it could have gone any better,
George B. Thomas: Oh, it, it went, it went really well. And the, the team. The inbound team did a great job of
Max Cohen: they fucking rock. Yeah, dude.
George B. Thomas: they were, they were Johnny on the spot, like everybody from like checking you in to like, if there were issues with your badge to like Courtney Dogger and her team and like getting it all set up even before like people wa like it, it was just good.
My let down, same kind of with you, max is like, there's so many humans, not enough time and there I, I was getting tagged like in LinkedIn, like of, and I'm like, you were there. Like, how did I not see you? Like, why did we not meet up? Like,
Chad Hohn: I wonder if it's had to do with the fact that the expo, you know, booths were not next to the main area or because everything was kind of spread out more.
George B. Thomas: maybe, but you just didn't, you didn't see as many humans as you thought you could or wanted to see.
So that was so, we'll, we'll see how that, that feels next year. Okay. So. Max, uh, take us to the happily, uh, booth for a minute. How, how, how was the Happily Booth? How did it go? Like how,
Max Cohen: was crazy. It was crazy. If I'm being so honest with you. Um, it was, uh, it was absolutely electric from, from beginning to end. Uh, I would just get there, plant my feet on the, on the little AstroTurf that we had, and then black out for approximately, I don't know, 10 hours or however long we were there. We were
Chad Hohn: Yeah. And then you scan some badges.
Max Cohen: Right. Scan some badges. Preach the gospel around how running events in HubSpot is actually the most big brained play you could ever, uh, run in your life as a rev ops or event person. Um, yeah, and it was sick and it, you know, it was really cool because this year, this year, like our tool is as close to like just plug and play as it's ever been Last year, you know, it was one of those things where it was like, if someone thought it was cool, like you still needed a, um.
A, uh, uh, a PhD in HubSpot and a unnecessarily nuanced understanding around how our app worked in the background. It was powerful, don't get me wrong, but like this year. We were dropping Jaws, dude, like, it, it, it's just like, it's so easy to just like install and just start using immediately. It's crazy. And um, you know, the team did an absolutely insane amount of work, like getting it to where it was.
And so we dropped a bunch of big things. We got the event builder, which just lets you basically give us some information about your event and then we just build all your assets for you instead of you having to do it on your own or relying on dynamic. Yeah, dude, it's crazy. Um. Marketing studio is something we should talk about at
Chad Hohn: Yeah.
Max Cohen: Yeah. Maybe do a deep, maybe do a whole episode on it. Um, but we did that. We did, we had our new lead capture app, which is a, which was a huge hit, right. So like, you know, instead of doing like the boop BBO thing, you just like scan text on a badge. We look it up, we enrich it, throw in a HubSpot, all that kind of stuff.
Chad Hohn: and the enrichment's pretty good too.
Max Cohen: Dude. It was actually like 90%, like the, the amount that I did,
Chad Hohn: scanned my badge and it's like, oh, you're a company of blah, blah, blah people, and he sent me an email just as a test, you
Max Cohen: Yeah. And like I would watch
Chad Hohn: Right on. Pretty
Max Cohen: I'd be like, you see how it got your first name, last name, and company? It pulled that off your badge, but now it's going to try to find some stuff. And I would sit there and watch it with people, right? And like 20 seconds later it would come up and I'm like, is that right?
They're like, yeah, it's right. And I'm like, sick. That's awesome. Like, I thought it was gonna be wicked inaccurate, but it ended up being like 90% like Correct. Which is, which is cool. Um, so then we had that, and then we have this whole new, um. Way to do like in-person check-ins and like, uh, QR code scanning and stuff like that.
Um, you know, and so it was cool because like, these were things that just lived in my brain for a very long time. And then our team, like worked day and night insanely hard to like, make things, things like real before inbound. And it was just, it was a surreal experience and it was also, it felt very vulnerable.
Like, I was like, oh, are all these things we're doing? Like are people actually gonna like it? And it was just, I don't think I had one bad conversation. It was just, it was amazing and the team was cranking. We had like images on the iPads and we were showing people, it was really cool. It was super fun.
Yeah.
George B. Thomas: So we've served up an inbound meal. Let's do some salt and pepper. Uh, salt and pepper, meaning you take about 15 seconds to 20 seconds each and it can just be the most random stuff. I'm gonna go first. You guys can then go after me and then I'll land this, uh, episode. Uh, so the salt and pepper of inbound 2025 for me are things like.
Getting to have a dinner with Chad, his wife, Chris, Carolyn, his wife, myself
Max Cohen: the one that I missed?
George B. Thomas: and
Chad Hohn: The one you missed.
George B. Thomas: you were invited to, but you missed no shade throne. But that, sitting and having that dinner was amazing. Driving in a Waymo and using it as a tour guide through the city of San Francisco, to take my wife to see the Golden Gate Bridge, the full house House, Mrs.
Doubtfire house, the Curies Road. Um, just being able to get comfortable with that in something we'd never done before. Um, WA was, was amazing. But also seeing those things outside of the event, seeing people like my PDM uh, and other, um, partners that he serves and we took a big photo. Okay, that's probably longer than 20 seconds.
I'll shut up. But like, those are salt and pepper random moments that made inbound 2025. Amazing.
Chad Hohn: I, uh, I really enjoyed hitting the city. Uh, I gotta go do the Golden Gate Bridge with my wife and her friends. You know, we were there early because my wife does like event management as some may know, and, uh, you know, because of that. Oh yeah. One of their gifts I got inbound
Max Cohen: Wow. Look at
Chad Hohn: sock. Yeah.
Max Cohen: house. House on the heel, man. Damn.
Chad Hohn: so that's, that's a nice little thing that the, uh, the inbound event planning team was given out to some of the event staff, which was fun. So I got a little inbound. So, uh, just seeing and connecting with people everywhere is just so good. Uh, doing the Waymo was fun. Never done that before. I even got in on the, the public access to the Tesla robot Taxii network, if any, you know, people like 'em, hate 'em, whatever.
But like it was cool to do that for the first time too. I gotta try two different driverless car services. That's fun. So yeah.
Max Cohen: I'm glad you guys had a great experience with a Waymo. We almost hit a dog and then it dropped us off in the middle of the street at like two in the morning. That was weird. Um, yeah, and then it like stopped behind someone who was at a, uh, at a stoplight that wouldn't go and like we had to like, get in touch with Waymo's support 'cause we didn't know what to do.
And then the car got like really annoyed and just like backed up and drove around the person and then they went. So, yeah, not a great experience in Waymo for us. Um, but I will say I had the best fried chicken in my life at this Chinese restaurant called z and y. It had, it was like just a bowl full of swan peppers with this fried chicken that's fried in a way.
I've never seen chicken fried before. And when you ate it, your jaw literally would buzz. It was the craziest sensation I've ever experienced eating Chinese food. It
Chad Hohn: there some additives on that of some kind?
George B. Thomas: on
Max Cohen: I think it was just the bowl of swan peppers it was sitting in. Right. Uh, but yeah, dude, it was, it was sick. I loved it.
It can't complain. It was great.
Chad Hohn: it is good.
George B. Thomas: So more of the story is a lot happens at Inbound. If you weren't there this year, make sure you check out the HubSpot YouTube channel. They are gonna have some things showing. Uh, if you haven't ever been to inbound before and you're listening to this, then try to make it a plan to go in 2026. It sounds weird to say that because hopefully.
Uh, we'll be seeing you in Boston, and maybe you'll even be part of our 2026 inbound recap next year.