HubSpot INBOUND 2022 prep, pop quiz, and trip down memory lane

SHOW TRANSCRIPTION

George B Thomas (01:10):

You know, I wonder if there's ever gonna be a day where we have to like, edit that intro to either like max, Devon and George now work for HubSpot or well anyway. Nevermind not why we're here. What ladies, gentlemen <laugh> yeah.

Mac Cohen (01:20)

Right? What?

George B Thomas (01:25):

What a way to start the episode. No, I know nothing. I, I know zero. No, that's just, that's not true. I definitely don't know anything about working for HubSpot. I don't know how that would go. I'm kind of a weird dude, but speaking of HubSpot, let's dive into today's conversation, which we're actually taking a spin a little bit out of what we usually do.

Usually we talk about tactics strategies, marketing sales, business, mentalities around things like buyer personas and all these good things. By the way, about 32 episodes already planned out for the future. So listeners just know that this podcast is here for you and your growth in the future. But today we're gonna spin. We're gonna talk about something that's coming up, that we're all excited about.

We're gonna talk about inbound 20, 22, a couple things. First max and Devon. You had zero clue that this was coming well. I mean, you saw the show notes, hopefully. So you had some clue, but almost zero clue and no clue to the questions that I'm about to ask. Geez, geez. It's pop quiz and it's actually pop quiz for the listeners as well. Now I know both of you have computers in front of you. You're really not allowed to cheat, but no Googling. If you do. That's okay. 

Let's start with a HubSpot INBOUND pop quiz (no cheating!)

Devyn Belamy (02:41):

Was gonna say, define Google. Define cheating. Yeah.

George B Thomas (02:44):

Yeah. I mean it is an open book test. It is an open book test. So question number one. When was the first year that George B. Thomas went to inbound?

Devyn Belamy (02:55):

I wanna say 2010.

George B Thomas (02:57):
Nope. BUZZZZZ

Max Cohen (02:58):

2012

George B Thomas (03:00):

Dinging, dinging, dinging, ding. There you go. Yes, max, you got it. 2012 was the first year that I went to inbound and a fun little Diddy is I won tickets. We didn't even pay the first time that we went. It was me and agency owner that owned that agency at the time. And that's when I learned about hub SWAT. Okay. Next question. When was the first year that black at inbound appeared at inbound? Well,

Devyn Belamy (03:27):

That's kind of cheating if I just

George B Thomas (03:29):

Answer it. Look at Max's face. I wish people could see Max's face right now.

Max Cohen (03:34):

He's <laugh>

Devyn Belamy (03:35):

Yes, max, when did it start, please

Max Cohen (03:37):

Me. Hold, hold on, hold on. What year is it now? It's 20, 20 19.

George B Thomas (03:43):

See, I wanna say 18 older than that.

Max Cohen (03:45):

Older

George B Thomas (03:45):

Than that. I wanna say 18. It's

Max Cohen (03:47):

Older than that. Wait, do you the

George B Thomas (03:48):

Answer

Max Cohen (03:48):

George 20, is it 20 17, 1

Devyn Belamy (03:51):

More

George B Thomas (03:54):

20, 20 16. You my

Max Cohen (03:55):

Calculator 2016,

George B Thomas (03:56):

Ding, ding, ding, ding, all winners. It's 2016 black. It inbound 2016, which by the way, if you're not part of that, make sure you're part of that because Devon is crushing it with that community for sure.

Devyn Belamy (04:07):

Well, I'm just showing up at this point. There is a whole team of highly talented and motivated hubs spotters who run it now, even though it started as a community thing started as a hashtag. But now it is several people's full-time job.

George B Thomas (04:21):

I love it. I love it. All right. Pop quiz, question number three. How much is Barack Obama's speaking fee?

Devyn Belamy (04:32):

Ooh, isn't it like something like 200,000?

George B Thomas (04:34):

No, I know that's Michelle's

Devyn Belamy (04:36):

Oh, that's Michelle's. I mean,

Max Cohen (04:37):

What we get is it's standard. Are there like tiered packages?

George B Thomas (04:41):

<Laugh>

Devyn Belamy (04:42):

I mean, how much Obama do you get?

George B Thomas (04:44):

I don't, I don't.

Max Cohen (04:45):

Is there a, is there a pricing page? Is it the same for everything? I, you know what I'm gonna say? Hey, worth it worth. Every penny is what I'll say.

George B Thomas (04:52):

Oh, I'm not gonna disagree, but, but here's the thing. So take a wild, just wild, wild guess of first of all here I'll I'll I'll level set here, Mr. Bill Clinton. His speaking fee is $750,000.

Devyn Belamy (05:07):

Oh, well, if, if Barack Obama doesn't go for the cool million then

George B Thomas (05:12):

Interest. What

Devyn Belamy (05:13):

Been talking about here? What going

George B Thomas (05:14):

All right. Give me your guesses. Give me your guesses.

Max Cohen (05:17):

My, my speaking fee is a dunking donuts gift card. Be honest.

George B Thomas (05:22):

Yeah. Two donuts and a large coffee. A

Max Cohen (05:25):

Oh a she, I dunno a mill. Yeah,

George B Thomas (05:28):

No, not it's less. It's less the, the, actually the highest price paid,

Max Cohen (05:32):

Just the

George B Thomas (05:33):

Dollar, the higher, the highest price. Former president, at least the, the information that I'm looking at on Google is actually bill Clinton. So it's less than seven 50,000. Oh really? But, but, but we know it's more than Michelle. We know that it's more than Michelle, which I know that from years previous was like two, 250,500. Ooh, that's close. There's

Max Cohen (05:53):

So many,

Devyn Belamy (05:53):

5 0 1 Bob <laugh>

George B Thomas (05:55):

Ah, that that's funny. $400,000. What did now, can you that's a bargain of twice. That's can, can you imagine getting paid $400,000 for 45 minutes of talking

Max Cohen (06:09):

In dunking donuts gift cards? Yes. Are you kidding me? I love it.

INBOUND as a must-attend event for agency owners and marketing professionals

George B Thomas (06:14):

Oh, I love it. All right. Let's go ahead and get into the episode. So here's the thing. There is a quote on the inbound page and it goes a must-attend event for agency owners and marketing professionals. This quote is from Forbes. I would agree that inbound is an event that if you have not attended it, you should attend.

And now there's two things. If you're listening to this one, there is an in-person event. By the time you listen to this, it may almost be slightly impossible, but nothing's impossible for you to be at the in-person event, but there is a hybrid or virtual side of this that you could definitely do this year. And then next year, put it on your roadmap to go to this event. I want to go ahead and dive into your guys' brain around inbound. If we're talking about that, it's a must attend event. Why you gotta back up the claims. You gotta give evidence to the proof, by the way, this is, this is marketing and sales too. You gotta, you gotta have evidence when you say something. So Devon, why is inbound a must attend event for you?

Devyn Belamy (07:14):

For me, it's the caliber of information that you get and the caliber of training that you get from these breakout sessions, you aren't gonna find in one place anywhere else. Inbound has drastically improved. And I, and like no hyperbole drastically improved my skillset. As a marketer, I have gotten so much better at marketing and as, and management, as well as just being able to exist in a corporate environment. I owe a significant portion of that to the breakout sessions at inbound, there is a, an equation that I teach about how to basically identify the monetary value of your Mon marketing pipeline. I learned it at inbound. Like I, I regurgitate so much and people think I'm so smart. And I could just like wear a t-shirt that says I learned it in inbound

George B Thomas (08:19):

<Laugh> oh, oh, oh, that's another t-shirt idea for hub heroes. Max, when you think about this question of why is inbound a must attend event? Where does your brain go? Well,

HubSpot INBOUND is about way more than marketing

Max Cohen (08:30):

For me, selfishly, you know, cuz I've every inbound attended like event I've ever gone to has been as employee. Right? So for me it was you know, all about hugging all the friends that I was making <laugh> so like for, you know, for me, like I, I, I very much used it sort of as a a really good excuse just to be able to meet folks in person that I'd been working with so closely for a long time. And you know, that was always super fun for me.

But in terms of like everyone else who's actually attending, right? You look at the HubSpot community itself, we're a community that like educates itself. People are always sharing content. People are always like helping each other out in the different communities that have existed, be it online or these other sort of events that kind of pop out throughout the year.

There's no better place to go to get just a concentrated, just power shot of the HubSpot community than, than inbound. Whether you want to go there for networking, whether you want to go there to actually learn something, especially from fellow folks in your community, there's no, you know, better way of doing that. In my opinion, also just, you know, go hug your customer, onboarding specialist, go, go shake hands with your CSM, go meet these people that actually really care a whole lot about, you know, your success, things like that. But you know, it's just a great way to kind of learn from each other. And I think also just see all these like different perspectives. You're gonna see a lot of people with a lot of different, you know, lenses in which they view this whole kind of world that we live in. I think you're gonna see a lot of sessions that kind of go out of some of the basic stuff you hear about over and over and over again in the inbound world, right?

It's not all just about the inbound methodology or anything like that. There's there's many, many other topics you can learn kind of outside of our little inbound bubble too. And it's just, you know, they always got like great entertainment lined up, awesome speakers. Obviously this year is gonna be great. So yeah, there's a million reasons. Try to figure out what you want to get out of it. Cuz I think for every single person attending, whether you're HubSpot user or HubSpot employee, someone who's new to this whole community, someone who works at an agency partner or business owner or whatever, you can get different things out of it. If you just plan accordingly,

George B Thomas (10:24):

Ooh, planning, planning is a key thing. By the way, we might have to come back to planning for inbound as part of this show later on, I'm gonna up vote both of what you said, right? Education is key. The humans are key for me. What's interesting. I learned a long time ago with inbound, that it is the perfect place to become the T-shaped, whatever you want to be. Let me explain what I mean by that. You can go to the conversion rate optimization event and you can learn about conversion rate optimization. You can go to the like sales event and learn just about sales. But when you go to inbound, you have this ability to figure out what do I wanna be really, really, really, really good at the pillar of what makes me who I am as a marketer, as a sales rep, as a business owner and what are the 2, 3, 4 topics that I want to be the overlying tea of this T-shaped human being that I'm building myself to be as an example, when I think about this, HubSpot is my pillar of all pillars.

I don't, I don't want there to be anybody on the planet that knows more. There are though by the way, but I don't want there to be anybody on the planet that knows more about HubSpot than me. Now the top part of my tea is actually content creation, podcasting video. That's the other stuff that I like to learn, but there's also like the side of inbound. That is the human side and the business side and the strategy that goes along with the tactics that you learn from the dope speakers. And so going back to kind of this planning of how can you plan to not only dive deeper into what it is that you are good at, but learn those ancillary pieces to the left and right of you. That really when you plug those in 10 X, any performance that you're gonna do in the future.

So we have to ask you audience listeners, this is about you, but we're curious what you think, why for you has inbound been historically and must attend event. And if you haven't gone, why are you excited to go this year? Either in person or virtually used the hashtag hashtag hub heroes podcast and let us know on the socials. Here's the thing, Devon, max inbound. It's a little bit of a thing we're talking for days. We're talking like 12 to 16 hour days, depending if you go to the pubs and parties. So we might need a little bit of a survival guide. So when you think about things that we need to know to survive the four days, by the way, even virtually I sat at my desk virtually last year for like 12 hours doing an after hour show learning all that I could. So even I'm not, I'm not even just talking in person, but in person and virtually what are those things that we need to think about or know to survive inbound,

If this is your first time going to INBOUND, here's what you need to know

Devyn Belamy (13:16):

If you're going in person, the first thing, it always wear comfortable shoes. If you show up in heels, you're gonna have a bad time. I mean, there's no true inbound dress code. I don't believe, but dress casual, dress comfortable. Be ready if you're doing the digital event, then the cool thing is, is a lot of what you're gonna be seeing is going to be accessible later. And so don't try and kill yourself, trying to get to everything, pace yourself. So you can not burn out at home cuz the, the energy level's different online than it is in person in person, the energy's contagious. People are running around. You wanna run around too. In person, you pass out every night in the hotel room, unless you live in Boston, then lucky you overpaying on your house. But if you are doing the digital thing, just, you know, pace yourself. And regardless of whether you're digital or in person, if you're attending with friends, split up, if you're attending coworkers, split up everybody, divide and conquer, get as much information as you can take good notes and compare notes afterwards.

George B Thomas (14:26):

Yes, that divide and conquer is a real deal. Holy field pro tip, without a doubt, if you see two or three people from the same company in the same room, get out of there doing it wrong, run. Max, what are your thoughts?

Max Cohen (14:40):

So for anyone who's not a Massachusetts native that's coming. First thing you need to know is the Massachusetts bay transit authority, which I think is what the acronym for the, the MBTA is the people who run our trains in our subways. It's less than reliable <laugh> so it's terrible. The MBTA is absolutely awful. So just keep that in mind, if you are gonna rely on public transportation to get anywhere, if you're going to the physical event just or anywhere in general, make sure you give quite a bit of buffer time just because things tend to be late, stop working, not, not great. So just make sure you're, you're giving yourself a little extra time cuz the M BTA is always gonna M BTA in terms of if you're go and, and this, I guess you could say this is also like, if you're, whether you're going or whether you're going digital.

One of the biggest scripts I always make and I've, I've really made it over the past two years too, with the digital events is not blocking out my calendar ahead of time. Yeah. If you're attending digitally, we're all probably still doing our jobs at that time. I doubt that like you're taking days off of work to attend a digital event. So if there are certain sessions go and take a look at the agenda ahead of time, go block your calendar out, go find the links that you need, get access to it, put it in your calendar description. Just make it super easy for you to jump into those events. Like when you actually want to do it otherwise, you know, you're gonna get a call book, something else is gonna come up. You're gonna forget what time it is. You're gonna, and I'm, I'm really bad at, at <laugh> making sure I'm making the space and time to be able to like attend those digital events that I want to.

So just make sure you do that. Like use your calendar wisely. I'm sure they have some sort of thing on the, on the website where you can add a calendar event, like to your calendar or something like that. Play it ahead. Cause it's very easy to miss a digital session. Also keep in mind, you may have something that are happening at the same time that you wanna see. So go ahead and like make a list of stuff. You know that you're gonna like watch on a recording later or something like that. If you do miss anything, cause you should be able to access that stuff.

Take the days you're at INBOUND off completely from work (seriously)

George B Thomas (16:35):

So I would challenge people with something you just said, max, I would challenge them to take the days off. I would challenge them to treat it like it is an event that they're going to, even though it's a virtual event. And the reason I bring this up is because the last two years I literally have taken those days, air quotes off, meaning I was still getting paid by the company that I worked for, but I wasn't doing anything else. I wasn't taking meetings. My calendar was completely blocked off and I was actually attending those sessions that I could attend, which leads me to my number one pro tip here for survival that I made sure I did all of the years and going or virtual snacks, baby snacks. You gotta have snacks. You gotta have granola bars. You gotta have bottled waters. You gotta have like an orange that you can grab because at some point in time, when you're either walking for like hours on end to get to your next session, or you've sat in that seat for five hours, listening to four different speakers, you're gonna need some energy.

And so you gotta have some snacks handy. Now I do wanna dive into that whole calendar thing though, because I'm kind of joking about snacks, but snacks are not doable. I am actually being honest about snacks at the same time, you have to plan ahead. And so as soon as registration is letting you pick the things that you want, that's too late, you should have already kind of picked the things you want. Like right now, then when the gate opens you go and plug those in immediately. But here's the other thing I'm gonna say about planning plan space to do nothing. I know that sounds counterintuitive when you're at an event, but plan to do nothing because the magical moments of inbound, if you're going in person are in the hallways. If you're attending virtually is in the chat pains, I want you to think about the hallways or the chat pans is where you can make new friends. You can have strategy happening on a different level. You all sorts of fun conversations. And so plan what you wanna do, but plan time for what you might not even know is coming. And the universe is bringing to you during this time of inbound. Plus it's refreshing, right? We're talking about surviving, taking little time to take a breather, nothing wrong with that schedule. Bathroom breaks. No, I'm just kidding. <Laugh> you shouldn't schedule your bathroom

Devyn Belamy (18:51):

Breaks my first year at inbound, I, I burned out. I didn't realize just how mentally taxing the event could be and it, and it's big. If you haven't gone, it's big. It's gonna be smaller this year and it's still big. It's it's a lot.

George B Thomas (19:10):

All right. So let's switch from surviving and let's talk about what we're excited about. So when you think about breakout sessions, cause by the way, there's a completely different mindset around featured speakers, Barack other folks that are gonna be there. There's a difference. So we're gonna start with breakout speakers, you know, us little guys like Devin and George, who like get a room and get to talk to people for a while. Who are you most excited? Let's do two, two of your favorite breakout sessions this year. And why max, what are your thoughts?

INBOUND 2022 speakers we're most excited about

Max Cohen (19:46):

So I'm, I'm a big fan of Mary growthy from house of revenue. If anyone's familiar with her and she's doing a session called plateaued sleuth your way to a refreshed go to market, that scales basically I think the session is around, like you have a startup, you grew it a little bit. It's kind of plateaued. How do you actually take that and then scale it and kind of break out of the, the stagnant <laugh> zone that you might be in. I think that is super interesting. Especially I even like, remember back to when I was an implementation specialist and I'd be working with companies that had already kind of, you know, gotten to a certain point and they've been successful, but they don't really understand how to kind of take it to that next level. And me not being a business, strategic genius at all.

I was kind of just, oh, let's use HubSpot and see how that goes. You know what I mean? I didn't really understand like kind of the strategies and how to think about it. So that's super interesting. And then also, I mean, Kyle Jepson is doing things every HubSpot admin needs to know let's go this was definitely the year of the HubSpot admin kind of emerging, which, you know, I had a lot of mixed feelings about, I guess, with that whole thing happening because you know, my cheeky little line that I always used to use is you don't need to hire someone full time to be an admin for HubSpot, but as HubSpot starts to move up market and starts to solve for much more complex teams and business use cases, you know, we are starting to see that people are making careers out of being, you know, HubSpot admins. And that is a thing now. So it'll be, it'll be interesting to hear kind of Kyle's perspective on that kind of

George B Thomas (21:09):

Stuff. Absolutely. Absolutely. So Devin two breakout sessions that you're excited about and why

Devyn Belamy (21:16):

The first one for me, Deanna ZK, she is doing a session on rev, rev, op tips. She told me in a meeting that she's going to be referencing some of my quotes and I'm like, Ooh, cool. I'm gonna be there. Let's go. That made me feel warm and special inside. Yeah, there's that. And a course style session because like me personally, I have hung my hat on being a HubSpot admin for the past, like six years. It's my entire career has revolved around HubSpot of course the one that I'm doing, I'm doing a little mini talk on a partner, accreditations in the partner space. And that's what I'm excited about.

George B Thomas (22:00):

Yeah. There's a lot to be excited about. I would list mine as well. I'm excited to go do one, but that's not actually my favorite, but I'll tell you there's a couple in here. And, and by the way, I'm, I'm kind of a cheater, cuz it was really hard for me to just drill down to two of these bad boys. There's quite a few and they all have specific reasons. So first one, Lindsay, I don't even know how to say your last name. I apologize. It's like J E P K E M a. I have no clue. I don't know. I'm not even gonna try, but the title of this bad boy pulled me through the vortex of, oh hell yeah, I got to go to this one. And it's the Netflix ization of marketing, turning creativity into marketing fuel. And if anybody knows me over the past 10 years, it's create content, get creative.

And so if you think about the description here, Netflix Disney plus, and even TikTok, they've raised the bar on audience expectations. I could stop right there and just ask people, Hey, have you raised your expectations of yourself to the content that you're creating and the way that you're allowing people to ingest that content? So I'm excited about that one. The other one, again, it's actually three people NA Michael and Karen and the title of this one is branded podcasts. Anybody wanna have a big guess? Why I want to go to that one? I mean, we are doing a podcast right now just saying, so branded podcast, getting real about the challenges and how to make it work. Now don't get me wrong people. I think that our podcast is working, but we can always make it better. So I'm looking for ideas of what we can do, how we can add more value, how we can implement the community into it, more different things like that. So those are, those are my two big ones. However, I'm gonna cheat. I'm gonna do three. Oh, because, because

Max Cohen (24:03):

Very dentist

George B Thomas (24:04):

<Laugh> okay. I'll I'll give you a third one. My third one that I'm excited about. Again, three people Satcha Verda and Johnny hopefully I said those names, right? Again, I apologize if you're a listener and when I see you in person, you can just smack the crap out of the back of my head if I Jack that up. But the title because guys and gals, ladies and gentlemen, hub hero listeners, it's so important, so important. And this is simply around building an environment of belonging. Listen, fundamentally as humans, we all wanna belong to something. We wanna be part of a tribe, a community. And so some of the insights that I can learn from this, and again, there's a lot of letters and a lot of ands and a lot of pluses and a lot of things in this, but the things that I can learn from this and take it and use it in my own life and my own thinking in my own open mindedness. Anyway, I'll get off my pulpit or my soap box. And I'll give you guys, what is the third one? If you've picked a third one that you're super excited about

Max Cohen (25:11):

Another big one that I'm excited about is Christina K from reseller ratings. Oh yeah. Yeah. So she's doing a session called customer centered approach. Real life use case on growth with HubSpot's flywheel big thing here. She's actually gonna be showing how like her company reseller ratings switched from Salesforce after 15 years of using it into HubSpot, which, you know, it's, this is not me being, oh, the, you know, the guy saying, oh, look, you switch over from Salesforce. But showing how like a massive undertaking like that is possible for anyone that is either scared of such an endeavor or wants to know how like something like that worked. So I'm super stoked for that session. And also we gotta have Christina on the podcast at some

George B Thomas (25:52):

Point. Yeah, we do at some point, by the way, by the way, I interviewed her about that transition, who back when I worked at impulse creative. So it's in some community somewhere because by the way, if anybody hasn't figured it out, all of the George B. Thomas videos on Sprocket talk have been taken down and they're somewhere, I don't know where they're at, but I interviewed Christina Kay about this transition and she is one smart cookie. And some of the things that she laid out in that interview worth it's weight in gold. Let me just tell you Devin, is there a third one that you were able to think about that you're excited about?

Devyn Belamy (26:25):

Absolutely. One of my favorite speakers at inbound, she comes every year is Taif and she is pretty big deal over in LinkedIn. She is going to be speaking. I'm looking at now category entry points in a B2B world, buying situations to brand sales. I think that her perspective is always unique. As you guys know, even though I'm a marketer by trade I have had to put on the sales hat on more than one occasion in my life. And I'm always thinking about sales whenever I'm doing what I do. So I'm pretty sure Ty's gonna crush it as per her usual. And if I may put down a no, I'm just kidding. Go

George B Thomas (27:05):

Uhoh

Max Cohen (27:06):

Oh no, drop four. Who cares? There's no rule.

George B Thomas (27:08):

<Laugh> their only rule is there are no rules. Well,

Devyn Belamy (27:11):

In that case, Dave Becher, anything he talks about with SEO, he approaches it with this mindset that most people don't think about. And his SEO talks are always fire. I know he's a matter of fact, he's hosting SEO meetup. So that's gonna be awesome too.

George B Thomas (27:26):

Audience, let us know hub hero's podcast. Hashtag what are you excited about as far as breakouts? Now let's go into the featured speaker. I don't know how this is gonna turn out because it could be that we all three are like excited about the same one or two, who knows, but I'm willing to go down that road. And actually, again, I'm a cheater because I said one, your favorite? I couldn't pick just one, but I will tell you this, my, the one for sure that I'm excited about because I'm the old fart in the room. And I was actually around to hear, listen to the first episode of what this gentleman did and actually to see somebody that was gonna do like a seven day a week podcast at that point was unheard of, no, you can't do that type scenario. And so I'm really excited that John Lee Dumas is one of the featured speakers when you go to like the main page and just the fact that the entrepreneur on fire story is being told, who knows what lessons will be learned? Like again, somebody who took podcasting did something absolutely amazing with it and has turned it into an entire brand. It's just, I'm super excited about that one. Now the other one, the nerd in me. All right. Jimmy yang.

Max Cohen (28:47):

Yeah.

George B Thomas (28:48):

I mean, I mean, come on actor, comedian. That's all I'm gonna say. I don't. I feel like I don't need to say anything else then Jimmy yang, those two for me though, are definitely like, yep. Okay. Taking time out, making sure I'm there please. By all that is holy baby. Jesus. Don't let them speak while I'm speaking. Let's go knowing that I broke the rules. If you gentlemen wanna break the rules too and do more than one you're allowed to. But max, when you think about the featured speakers, where does your brain go?

Max Cohen (29:19):

So, I mean, well, let's the obvious one. It's it's, it's an honor to have Barack Obama coming to inbound this, this year. I mean, that's just flat out amazing. I don't think I need to speak too much to that. That that's gonna be incredible. Seeing Dr. Jane Goodall is gonna be awesome too, as well. She's doing a, her session's called rebuilding our collective future. I think that's gonna be super interesting. And of course, like I'm a huge Silicon valley fan, right? So, so Jimmy yang, I can't wait for, for his bit that he's gonna do it inbound at night. Most I've probably ever laughed in my entire life has been the sets for folks that, you know, whenever we have comedians coming for the the inbound entertainment sessions, it's it's gonna be great.

George B Thomas (29:59):

Yeah. They have been really good and it's easy to laugh when you've got like thousands of people around you laughing as with you. Yeah. It's just, it makes it easier. Yeah. Devin, what are your thoughts?

Devyn Belamy (30:09):

Definitely gotta hop on the Jimmy O yang train. The man is legit. Awesome. Yeah, absolutely hilarious. He definitely speaks to the awkward nerd child in me is just like he, he would've been high school. Devon's favorite comedian. No question. Like I probably would've followed him around the country. Dude's awesome. Viola Davis. Yes. I am really excited to hear what she has to say. Her topic is on capital creativity and community care. That one community is a big thing for me personally, both she and president Obama are gonna be talking about community as portions of their talks. And so I'm, I'm really excited to hear about that. Just come up with, hopefully come away with ideas on improving community and community relationships. Cuz as the old saying goes, it takes a village.

INBOUND 2022 meetups that you need to know about

George B Thomas (31:10):

Oh man does it. All right. So we already talked about how there's magic in the hallway moments and so, or the chat rooms. So when you think about meetups that are happening, that you're excited about, are there any meetups that just fundamentally you're like, yeah, this is something I definitely wanna take time to go to be part of.

Devyn Belamy (31:32):

So I'm gonna be spending all my time at BLACK@INBOUND tell you that right now that's <laugh>, that's just where I'm gonna be this year is the first year that we have our own dedicated space.

George B Thomas (31:43):

Oh snap. Like,

Devyn Belamy (31:44):

Yeah. In, in the past in the beginning we were crashing Seaport parties and just drinking up free drinks, eating free food. And just in like, you got the badge you get in, it's like, all right, let's go. Then it turned into like our own meetups, but still crashing sea parties. But the last in person, inbound, there were hub spotters who worked to get us time in a space where we could have our own space and we had food and it was a cool networking opportunity. There's pictures of it floating around. Well, there was some like a hundred some out of us and we're like it, then it was, it was great. It was absolutely great. This year is going to be different this year. We are going to have foods. We're gonna have drinks. We're gonna have games. We're going to have, I believe someone's going to be there. Live painting. Shout out to paint killer cam, AKA cam is Z AKA cam Parker who was on who was in 2019, the one who was painting murals on the club, inbound floor. He's gonna be hanging out with us, but it's gonna be absolute fire, but that that's where I'm gonna be. And again, Dave Berman's link up our meetup, the SEO meetup looks like he's gonna be dope

Max Cohen (32:57):

Too. There is one interesting one that I'm seeing here for meetups, for employee resource group leaders too, as well. I think that's something that we've seen a lot of success with here at HubSpot in terms of the different ERGs that we have, you know, and, and I know it's something that like a lot of companies have either had great success with struggled with or had issues with or, or, you know, are still exploring doing, you know, so it'd be really interesting to kind of go there and kind of see what the experience of other people or other, you know, companies have had actually like getting this kind of stuff off the ground. So there's that. And then there's also a solutions partners, growing pains and lessons learned to meet up too, for anyone out there who's currently growing a partner agency or anything like that sounds like a really great opportunity to go kind of meet up with some other folks that are in the same shoes. Maybe kind of walk the path that you're about to go on. Definitely check those out.

George B Thomas (33:41):

Yeah. So I'm actually excited because there's an unofficial meetup. Ooh. And I feel like it's almost like, you know, Devon knows the, the journey of like something that's not something. And then people try to actually make it something. And so somebody reached out to me and they're like, what do you think of this idea? And I think I said, I think it's a great idea. And we reached out to another person that we know, Hey, what do you think of this idea? They said, we think it's a great idea. And so we have officially put together and I put out on my socials and, and they've shared as well. And anybody listening to this podcast, if you happen to be a person of faith notice, I didn't say a particular faith. If you happen to be a person of notice, I didn't say men of faith.

I didn't say women. I said, if you happen to be a person of faith, like that's it. We have an unofficial meetup happening eight o'clock in the morning, by the way, because we gotta hit it strong in the morning, but you can hit me up with any details that you wanna know about that. But if you are a person of faith and wanna meet other people that happen to do marketing sales, service, rev ops use HubSpot of faith as well, then this is gonna be a meetup that we're gonna have. So I'm super excited, which by the way, I didn't know until our speaker meeting two days ago that there's actually a prayer room at inbound this year as well. So, Hey, who knew except me now and you, because you're listening. And so now everybody knows at least in this circle.

All right. So let's keep on moving favorite inbound memories. What is your favorite inbound memory? I'll go first. It was the year that Gary Vaynerchuk spoke to me and only me in the top tier of the building that we don't even, oh, no, he didn't really talk to me, but it, but it, it is a precipice moment where it, it wasn't even at the BCE C, it was at whatever place that we had it before then. I can't even remember the name of the place I was in the rafters. Gary Vaynerchuk was speaking and he pointed up in the vicinity of where I was sitting. It was at that moment with what he said. I knew that I wanted to end up on that stage. Hmm. I wanted to do HubSpot. I knew I wanted to educate people and I wanted to change my life. And what's fun is it took me from 2012 to 2015. So three years, three years later, I got to step on stage at inbound and do my first talk. And so knowing that 2012 was the, was the press ATEST moment that Gary Vanerchuk was the person that made the statement. And then three years later was able to then speak at the event. That's one of my favorite, like, wow, that's kind of a cool circle of life scenario.

Max Cohen (36:11):

I Also had a Gary Vader. Chuck moment was this, that's not gonna be my main one, but I remember like it was everywhere. It was, you know, it was, it was at a time when I was like, really, I was really into Gary Vaynerchuk cuz I, I just thought the way that he talked about content just made a whole lot of sense to me. That was right when I was coming into the realization that like, it's actually all about con you know, going through that whole arc. And, and he, he walked by me in the crowd at the BCC and I was like, oh my God, a famous person just walked by me. It was like a funny, weird moment for me. I think one of the best memories I have is I ran into one of my very first customers that I had onboarded.

Max Cohen (36:46):

And when we had started this person, she was completely new to the idea of inbound, completely new to the idea of HubSpot. But she had, she had run enough where she knew that deploying this strategy and kind of changing their ways was, was gonna be what was best for the company. And she was really excited to like learn it all and, and really kind of just Enro herself in all things inbound. And she did, we have a, we had a wonderful experience doing the onboarding and everything. We were working together for the, for the 90 days. And then, you know, kind of, she went off to continue working with HubSpot and then I got to meet her at inbound. And I wanna say this was about a year from when we had, when we had first kind of connected and she came up, she, she, she recognized me.

Max Cohen (37:29):

She ran up to me. She gave me a huge hug. And she told me about all the success that she had, that the company had and that she was going to give her first talk at an insurance conference about using inbound marketing for your, no, it wasn't like an insurance. It was, it was some kind of conference in like a, a little bit more of like a Bo like a dry, boring kind of industry. Like it was compliance or safety or something like that, but she was gonna go give her very first talk on how to do inbound marketing. And she was so stoked. And after that, I just started seeing her, she's doing all these talks in all these different, like places, all these different conferences. And it was just so awesome to be like, Hey, I was there when you started your journey and now you're here and, and, and now you're, you're grown with it. And it's, it was just, it was really cool for me cuz it was the first time in my life that I felt that I had somewhat of an IOT of an impact on somebody cuz you know, she came up to me and, and was talking about how it all started with us and everything. So it was just, it was a really cool moment, Beth, if you're listening, love you and hope you're doing awesome. And hopefully I'll see, edit in monsoon.

George B Thomas (38:30):

I love that dude. There's something special about the realization that you were the catalyst moment for somebody. Yeah. There's just something special about that. Devin. It seems like you might have had a catalyst moment in your life at inbound as well. Why don't you tell us about that?

Devyn Belamy (38:45):

Yeah, there have been a few, the most impactful one was probably 2016 when I was sitting in a semi. I don't even remember the name of the person who put it on. I just remember the name of the, the breakout was data driven marketing. I knew how to interpret analytics, but I didn't know how to present the information that I was interpreting. And that was when I learned about that equation and, and it wasn't even like the main portion. It was just like a throwaway piece. Oh, by the way, here's something you should know and then breaks down this like 12 slide equation on how to calculate lead values. And I knew that that was game changing information for me, that was, I knew, I knew it was life changing. Didn't know how life changing it would be until months later when I'm breaking out the slide deck.

Devyn Belamy (39:44):

And I, based on our conversion rates can tell them the monetary value of every lead that we get. And every time somebody fill out a form, this is how much money they're worth to us. That was the beginning of the change in my career. There was one management level job where they said, okay, we need you to analyze this pipeline because that equation not only did I know how to analyze the pipeline, but I was able to go back and tell them, it's like, well, did you mean 33 instead of 30? And this number here or else the numbers don't line up. Of course I got the job. So that was one game changing moment for me. But there was a lot of validation for me at inbound where it's easy to succumb imposter syndrome, but being able to sit in sessions in hearing people say things that you knew, we didn't realize, you know?

And it's like, yeah, there's somebody on stage saying this thing then maybe I do know what I'm talking about. And then there were, of course the inbound rocks every year and this year we're calling inbound at night. Being able to see things in person that I, I never would've seen literally anywhere else. Like Trevor Noah just yes. Live like, and I was front row, Trevor Noah was right there. He was blown away. Or Leslie Odom Jr. When he sang like that was, that was amazing. Like he's, he's doing dear Theodosia in my face <laugh> and it was like, it was just mind blowing or two dope Queens. That one was my absolute favorite, their whole set, because what we did is we had coordinated as a group, black and inbound. When the doors open, we were just gonna all rush the front row and get like the first two rows on stage.

Right. And we got it, we did it. And so when they turned or when they were like, oh, there's all the black people. I was like, yeah, we're right here. And like, that was dope. And then the one guy told a star Trek joke or a star wars joke that literally no one got, because it was like, not only did you have to be a nerd, but you had to be familiar with black culture. And it was such a niche joke and it just fell flat except for the first two rows who were dying. And then he turns over and sees, oh, there's all five people, gang gang, I'm black tail

George B Thomas (42:10):

<Laugh> we're

Devyn Belamy (42:11):

Out here. And it was like, tho those kinds of memories were just unforgettable.

George B Thomas (42:17):

That's the thing I love about inbound is whether it be just a, a human spark, an educational spark, you know, a friendship, whatever. There are so many things that can happen inbound. So let's move forward because man, we've almost been doing this for 40 plus minutes at this point. Wow. And you know, we're, we usually love to add a ton of value. I think this conversation has been valuable, especially for people who are planning and strategizing for virtual or in person inbound this year. But let's talk about the lights. Get turned out, the parties over you're back at home, or you're back to normal at home. If you were attending virtually what are some action items that you guys think people should take post inbound to make sure they're actually getting the most out of the event that they attended,

INBOUND doesn't have to end for you when it's over

Devyn Belamy (43:07):

Watch the recordings. That's the biggest thing it's like inbound doesn't have to end when inbound ends the there's recordings that come with your passes, that you can go and see the keynotes. You could see breakouts that you didn't get a chance to attend. If they're recorded. There is so much value in adding inbound breakout sessions, just to hopefully you have a weekly learning session, time dedicated to growth, going back and reviewing. Those is some of the best things you could possibly do and take in one session that has nothing to do with you. One session that doesn't, that's not a part of your vertical, it's not a part of your job. It will give you so much perspective. Even just gleaning knowledge. If 75% of it doesn't make sense to you, there will be at least 25% of it that will allow you to get more broad view of the big picture in where you fit in, in relation to other people.

Max Cohen (44:14):

I think it's also, it's important to kind of realize that you're, you're gonna be going and drinking a fire hose of information or drinking from the fire hose of, of information. You're gonna see a lot of different perspectives, a lot of different opinions and perspectives on maybe some similar subjects, which can sometimes be confusing, right? Because you go there and you're like, Hey, I wanna hear from the experts. But maybe sometimes the experts are saying different things, things like that. So the other thing too, is like, you're gonna have so much new education and, and information that you're going home with. It's easy to get super overwhelmed and say, oh, I have to deploy all of this right now while it's fresh. You don't set yourself. Some, some realistic goals take all the information that you kind of collected and be like, Hey, what are 1, 2, 3 things I can pick from that experience and make small reasonable changes in the way I work in the strategy we deploy in the way we're using HubSpot and the, the new solutions that I learned about that I might want to go check out. Don't try to do it all at once. Make yourself the list, set some reasonable goals and try to fix or, or improve on just a couple things. Not everything, no one has the capacity to do that. And if you do try to do everything, you're gonna end up doing nothing. So just make sure you're not getting overwhelmed with the amount of stuff you could be doing better, just cuz you learned about it. You know what I mean? Otherwise you're not gonna make any small, meaningful changes with all this new, powerful information you

George B Thomas (45:37):

Have. And it's, it's funny because it kind of aligns with something that I learned about four years ago and that I try to help everybody with, especially with events is you're gonna have a notepad. You're gonna have an iPad. You're gonna have something that you're taking these notes feverishly. And it ends up being like three books by the end of the four days of inbound. And you're like, ha, I go back through all of this. So what I want you to do is I want you to actually plan with the end in mind, meaning you're listening, this, you're getting ready to do inbound. And as you go to take notes, I just want you to do one thing. And that's for every session that you go to at the very top of the page, I want you to put hashtag one thing. And as you're learning all of this information, I want you to pick out one execution item that you can do when you get back from the event based on the information you learned, one, not all of them, but one thing that you know, you can easily or somewhat easily implement.

Therefore when you get done, you know that you just go to the top of your iPad or the top of your paper or the top of wherever it is. And you look for the 5, 7, 9, depending on how many sessions you went to hashtag one things. And now you have a list that you can then prioritize. What is the most important hashtag one thing that I should do first, second, third, fourth, fifth, seventh, ninth. Then you can circle back around and watch the videos. Then you can circle back around and read your four novels that you got over four days. Then you can circle back around and start to do the minutia because you've taken care of what impacted you the most in the moment that you're actually attending inbound. Okay? Hub heroes we've reached the end of another episode, will Lord LA continue to loom over the community or will we be able to defeat him in the next episode of the hub heroes podcast?

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