HubSpot INBOUND 2022 prep, pop quiz, and trip down memory lane (HubHeroes Podcast Ep. 5)

Once again, I'm speaking this year at INBOUND, and my session on pillar pages and content cluster strategies is already full! Again, it's exciting! And also sad! Is that strange? Anyway, I digress ... 

Given that Max, Devyn, and I are your humble HubHeroes, you just had to know that with HubSpot INBOUND 2022 right around the corner (September 7-9 in Boston and online!), we were going to be dedicating an episode to it. Especially given that it was 10 years ago that I attended my very first HubSpot INBOUND, and that's when everything changed in my life.

It's crazy how time flies. 

It's also crazy about how much actionable HubSpot INBOUND 2022 goodness we were able to pack into this episode – whether you're attending in person, attending digitally, or thinking about whether or not HubSpot's annual event may be in your future someday, you should tune in and take notes.

We talk about our favorite memories and speakers from years' past, we break down our secrets to making your HubSpot week absolute magic for you (as a human) and the goals you're trying to reach, and where you'll likely see us when the three of us during all of the endless festivities. 

WE ALSO TALK ABOUT ... 

• How HubSpot INBOUND is about way more than just marketing. Seriously, if you think this is just an event for marketers by marketers, you are sorely mistaken.
• Pro-tips for first-time INBOUND attendees, from footwear to Boston public transportation secrets, we get very specific on to how to get the most out of what is an amazing event ... but it can also be very overwhelming if it's your first time.
• With Barack Obama speaking this year (crazy, right?!), we play a few pop quiz rounds on the speaking fees of some of the event's biggest headliners in recent years.
• The INBOUND 2022 speakers we're most excited to see and why. 
• All the deets on the INBOUND 2022 meetups and get-togethers you need to know about – including a couple we're running ourselves! 
• Also, is it possible to get compensated as a speaker at INBOUND in Dunkin' Donuts gift cards? Because, apparently, that's all you need to get Max to show up on your main stage – take note, event planners!

Just typing all of that up got me hyped for INBOUND and for this episode.

RESOURCES FOR THIS EPISODE

Some of these we talked about, others we're adding because they're only going to make the episode that much sweeter for you ... 

• HubSpot INBOUND 2022 event page (in-person and some digital passes still available)
• BLACK@INBOUND
• Get to know the George B. Thomas origin story (And my 2012 HubSpot experience)
• Learn about the Content Creation Masterclass (limit of 20 spots)
• Join the HubHeroes community on Facebook
• HubHeroes Podcast, Ep. 1: Why HubSpot? Why Inbound?
• Wait, what the heck is The HubHeroes Podcast?!

YOUR ONE THING FROM THIS EPISODE

HubSpot INBOUND is an annual event that is so much more than many people think it is – even the folks who've attended in the past can sometimes forget how much it is evolving, and how expansive the wealth of knowledge is that HubSpot is sharing. So, your one thing if you're attending (online or in-person) is take the time to really research what's available to you through this year's programming and make a plan. 

SHOW TRANSCRIPT

Intro: Do you live in a world filled with corporate data? Are you plagued by siloed apartments? Are your lackluster growth strategies demolishing your chances for success? Are you held captive by the evil menace, Lord Lack? Lack of time, lack of strategy, and lack of the most important and powerful tool in your superhero tool belt, knowledge.

Never fear hub heroes. Get ready to don your cape and mask, move into action, and become the hub hero your organization needs. Tune in each week to join the league of extraordinary inbound heroes as we help you educate, empower, and execute. Of heroes, it's time to unite and activate your powers. Before we begin, we need to disclose that both Devin and Max are currently employed by HubSpot at the time of this episode's recording.

This podcast is in no way affiliated with or produced by HubSpot, and the thoughts and opinions expressed by Devin and Max during the show are that of their own and in no way represent those of their employer.

George B. Thomas: 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 house or well, anyway, never mind. Not why we're here. What? Ladies and gentlemen. Yeah.

Right? No. What a what a way to start the episode. No. I know nothing.

I I know 0. 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. Gonna talk about inbound 2022. A couple things. First, Max and Devin, 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. So 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

Max Cohen: googling. If

George B. Thomas: you do, that's okay.

Max Cohen: I

Devyn Bellamy: was gonna say define Google. Define cheating.

George B. Thomas: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it is an open book test. It is an open book test. So question number 1.

When was the 1st year that George b Thomas went to inbound?

Devyn Bellamy: I wanna say 2,010.

Max Cohen: Nope. 2012.

Devyn Bellamy: Ding ding ding ding ding ding

Max Cohen: ding ding.

George B. Thomas: There you go. Yes. Max, you got it. 2012 was the 1st year that I went to inbound. And a fun little, ditty is I won tickets.

We didn't even pay the first time that we went. It was me and the agency owner that owned that agency at the time, and, that's when I learned about HubSpot. Okay. Next question. When was the 1st year that Black at Inbound appeared at inbound.

Devyn Bellamy: Well, that's kind of cheating if I just answer that.

George B. Thomas: At Max's face. I wish people could see Max's face right now.

Devyn Bellamy: Yes, Max. When did it start?

Max Cohen: Please tell me. Hold on. Hold on. What year is it now? It's 22 20 19?

George B. Thomas: See, I wanna say 18.

Devyn Bellamy: Older than that.

Max Cohen: Older than that.

George B. Thomas: I wanna say 18. It's older than that.

Max Cohen: Wait. Do you have the year, sir George? 20 Is it 2017?

George B. Thomas: One more. 20 2016.

Max Cohen: Thought you just went to the calculator. 2016.

Devyn Bellamy: Ding ding ding ding.

George B. Thomas: You're all winners. It's 2016. Black and inbound 2016, which, by the way, if you're not part of that, make sure you're part of that because, Devin is crushing it with that community for sure.

Devyn Bellamy: Well, I'm just showing up at this point. There's a whole team of highly talented and motivated HubSpotters 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: I love it. I love it. Alright. Pop quiz question number 3. How much is Barack Obama's speaking fee?

Devyn Bellamy: Oh, isn't it, like, something like 200,000?

George B. Thomas: Now I know that's Michelle's.

Devyn Bellamy: Oh, that's Michelle's. I mean, that's what

Max Cohen: we get with that ramble. Is this standard? Are there, like, tiered packages?

George B. Thomas: I mean How much Obama do you get?

Max Cohen: I don't I don't 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: 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. Mister, Bill Clinton, his speaking fee is $750,000.

Devyn Bellamy: Oh, well, if if Barack Obama doesn't go for the cool million, then Interesting.

Intro: Talking about here.

Max Cohen: What are

Intro: we doing?

George B. Thomas: Alright. Give me your guesses. Give me your guesses.

Max Cohen: My my speaking fee is a Dunkin' Donuts gift card, to be honest.

George B. Thomas: Yeah. Two donuts and a large coffee. Had. A

Max Cohen: sheet. I don't know. A mil? Yeah. I don't know.

No.

George B. Thomas: It's less it's less. The the actually, the highest prices for liberals

Max Cohen: is the dollar. The higher

George B. Thomas: 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 750,000. 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 22,150,000.

500. Oh, that's close.

Devyn Bellamy: 501, Bob. That's

George B. Thomas: funny. $400,000. What a Now can you that's a bargain of toys, the prices. Can can you imagine getting paid $400,000 for 45 minutes of talking?

Max Cohen: In Dunkin' Donuts gift cards? Yes.

George B. Thomas: Are you

Max Cohen: kidding me? I love it.

George B. Thomas: Oh, I love it. Alright. 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 2 things if you're listening to this. 1, 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 can definitely do this year, and then next year put it on your road map to go to this event. I wanna 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, Devin, why is inbound a must attend event for you?

Devyn Bellamy: 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 skill set as a marketer. I have gotten so much better at marketing and 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, modern 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.

Max Cohen: Oh, oh,

George B. Thomas: 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?

Max Cohen: Well, for me, selfishly, you know, because I've every inbound of 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. So, like, you know, for me, like, I I I very much use it sort of as a, a really good excuse just to be able to meet folks in person that I've 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 is 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 kinda 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 wanna go there for networking, whether you wanna 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 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 kinda 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 kinda 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 wanna get out of it, because I think for every single person attending whether you're a HubSpot user, a HubSpot employee, someone who's new to this whole community, someone who works at an agency partner, a business owner, whatever, you can get different things out of it if you just plan accordingly.

George B. Thomas: Oh, planning. Planning is a key thing, by the way. We might have to come back to the planning for inbound as part of this show later on. I'm gonna upvote 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 t 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're 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 an must attend event? And if you haven't gone, why are you excited to go this year either in person or virtually? Use the hashtag, hashtag hub heroes podcast, and let us know on the socials. Here's the thing, Devin Max, inbound.

It's a little bit of a thing. We're talking 4 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 4 days by the way, even virtually, I sat at my desk virtually last year for, like, 12 hours, like, doing an after hour show, learning all that I could so eve 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?

Devyn Bellamy: If you're going in person, the first thing is 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. Because the the energy level is different online than it is in person. In person, the the energy is 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're 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 your 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: Yes. That divide and conquer is a real deal Holyfield pro tip, without a doubt. If you see 2 or 3 people from the same company in the same room, get out of there. Doing it wrong. Run.

Max, what are your thoughts?

Max Cohen: 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 MBTA is. The people who run our trains and our subways, it's less than reliable. 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 because the MBTA is always gonna MBTA. 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 screw ups I always make, and I've I've really made it over the past 2 years too with the digital events, is not blocking out my calendar ahead of time. If you're attending digitally,

Devyn Bellamy: we're

Max Cohen: 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 wanna do it. Otherwise, you know, you're gonna get a call booked, 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 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, because it's very easy to miss a digital session. Also keep in mind, you may have some 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, because you should be able to access that stuff.

George B. Thomas: 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 2 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 5 hours listening to 4 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 jocable.

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 or in the hallways. If you're attending virtually is in the chat panes. I want you to think about the hallways or the chat panes 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 a little time to take a breather. Nothing wrong with that. Schedule bathroom breaks. No. I'm just kidding.

Max Cohen: Yeah.

George B. Thomas: You you shouldn't schedule your bathroom breaks.

Devyn Bellamy: 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 Yeah. It's a lot.

George B. Thomas: Alright. So let's switch from surviving, and let's talk about what we're excited about. So when you think about breakout sessions because 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 2. 2 of your favorite breakout sessions this year and why.

Max, what are your thoughts?

Max Cohen: So I'm a I'm a big fan of, Mary Grothe from House of Revenue, if anyone's familiar with her. And she's doing a session called plateaued sleuth your way to a fresh go to market that scales. Basically, I think this session is around, like, you have a start up, 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, zone that you might be in. I think that is super interesting.

Especially, I even, like, remember back to when I was implementation specialist. 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 kinda take it to that next level. And me not being a business strategic genius at all, I was kinda 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 Jepsen 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 kinda Kyle's perspective on that kind of stuff.

George B. Thomas: Absolutely. Absolutely. So, Devin, 2 breakout sessions that you're excited about and why.

Devyn Bellamy: First one for me, Diana Zalikouet. She is doing a session on rev ops tips. She told me in a meeting that she's going to be referencing some of my quotes. And I'm like Oh. Cool.

I'm gonna be there.

Max Cohen: Let's go.

Devyn Bellamy: That made me feel warm and special inside. Yeah. There's that. And, of course, Kyle's session because, like me personally, I have hung my hat on being a HubSpot admin for the past, like, 6 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, partner accreditations in the partner space, and that's what I'm excited about.

George B. Thomas: 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 because it was really hard for me to just drill down to 2 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 tjeppkema.

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 gots to go to this one.

And it's the Netflixization 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 3 people, Nadia, Michael, and Karen, and the title of this one is branded podcasts. Anybody wanna have a big guess why I wanna 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 2 big ones.

However, I'm gonna cheat. I'm gonna do 3. Oh. Because

Max Cohen: Because there's 3rd then.

George B. Thomas: Okay. I'll I'll give you a third one. My third one that I'm excited about, again, 3 people, Sasha, Vernda, 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, in my own thinking, in my own open mindedness anyway, I'll get off my pulpit or my soapbox, and I'll give you guys what is the third one if you've picked the third one that you're, super excited about.

Max Cohen: Another big one that I'm excited about is Christina Kaye from reseller ratings.

George B. Thomas: Oh, yeah.

Max Cohen: Yeah. So she is 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 13 years of using it in the HubSpot, which, you know, it's just not me being, oh, the, you know, the guy said, oh, look at me. 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 point.

George B. Thomas: Yeah. We do at some point. By the way by the way, I interviewed her about that transition 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 have been taken down, and they're somewhere. I don't know where they're at.

But I interviewed Christina Kaye about this transition, and she is one smart cookie. And some of the things that she laid out in that interview worth its 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 Bellamy: Absolutely. One of my favorite speakers at Inbound, she comes every year, is Ty Heath, and she is pretty big deal over in LinkedIn. She is going to be speaking, I'm looking at it now, Category Entry Points in a b to b 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 is gonna crush it as per her usual. And if I may put down a no. I'm just kidding.

George B. Thomas: Go ahead. Uh-oh. Uh-oh.

Max Cohen: No. Drop a force. Who cares? There's no rule.

George B. Thomas: Their only rule is there are no rules.

Devyn Bellamy: In that case, Dave Bertrand, 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 matter of fact, he's hosting SEO meetup, so that's gonna be awesome too.

George B. Thomas: Audience, let us know hub heroes 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 3 are, like, excited about the same one or 2. Who knows?

But I'm willing to go down that road. And, actually, again, I'm a cheater because I said 1, your favorite. I couldn't pick just 1. 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 7 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. Alright? Jimmy Yang.

Max Cohen: Yeah.

George B. Thomas: 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 than Jimmy Yang. Those 2 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 1, you're allowed to. But, Max, when you think about the featured speakers, where does your brain go?

Max Cohen: 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 doctor Jane Goodall is gonna be awesome too as well.

She's doing a their their her session is 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: 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.

Max Cohen: Yeah.

George B. Thomas: It's just it makes it easier. Devin, what are your thoughts?

Devyn Bellamy: 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.

It's just like he he would have been high school Devon's favorite comedian. No question. Like, I probably would have followed him around the country. Dude's awesome. Viola Davis.

Yeah. 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 because as the old saying goes, it takes a village.

George B. Thomas: Oh, man does it. Alright. 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 Bellamy: So I'm a be spending all my time at black and and brown. Tell you that right now. That's that's just where I'm gonna be. This year is the 1st year that we have our own dedicated space.

George B. Thomas: Oh, snap.

Devyn Bellamy: Yeah. In in the past, in the beginning, we were crashing seaport parties. And just drinking up free drinks, eating free food, and just like you got the badge, you get in. It's like, alright, let's go. Then it turned into, like, our own meetups, but still crashing c 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 have food and it was a cool networking opportunity. There's pictures of it floating around. But there's some, like, a 100 some odd of us and we're like, it then it was it was great. It was absolutely great. This year is gonna be different.

This year, we're going to have food. 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 pain killer Cam, aka Cam Izady, aka Cam Parker, who's 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, Bertrand's link up, our meet up, the SEO meet up looks like it's gonna be dope too.

Max Cohen: 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 it's still exploring dealing, you know. So it'd be really interesting to kinda go there and kinda 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 kinda 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: Yeah. So I'm actually excited because there's an unofficial meetup, 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 8 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, 2 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. Alright. 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 BCEC. 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. 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. Mhmm.

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 3 years. 3 years later, I got to step on stage at INBOUND and do my first talk.

And so knowing that 2012 was the was the precipice moment that Gary Vaynerchuk was the person that made the statement, and then 3 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: I also had a Gary Vaynerchuk moment. What's this? It's not gonna be my main one, but I remember

George B. Thomas: Gary's everywhere.

Max Cohen: It was, you know, it was it was at a time when I was like really I was really into Gary Vaynerchuk. Because 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 content, 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. 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 deploying this strategy and kinda 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 kinda just engross 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, kinda she went off to continue working with HubSpot. And then I got to meet her in inbound and I wanna say this was about a year from when we had what we had first kinda connected and she came up, she she she recognized me. 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 bore like a dry boring kind of industry. 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 growing with it.

And it's it was just it was really cool for me, because it was the first time in my life that I felt that I had somewhat of an iota of an impact on somebody. Because, 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 you at an amount soon.

George B. Thomas: I love that, dude. There's something special about the realization that you were the catalyst moment for somebody. 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 Bellamy: 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 this 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. And I, based on our conversion rates, can tell them the monetary value of every lead that we get. And every time somebody fills 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 to imposter syndrome. But being able to sit in sessions and hearing people say things that you knew, but 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 it inbound at night.

Being able to see things in person that, I I never would have seen literally anywhere else, like Trevor Noah

Max Cohen: just

Devyn Bellamy: Yes. Live. Like and I was front row. Trevor Noah was right there. He was blown away.

Or, Leslie Odom junior when he sang. Like, that was that was amazing. Like, he's he's doing dear Theodosia in my face. And it was, like, it was just mind blowing. Or 2 Dope Queens.

That one was my absolute favorite. Their whole set. Because what we did is we 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 turn or when they were like, oh, there's all the black people. And I was like, yeah. We're right here. And, like, that was dope.

And then 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 5 people. Gang gang gang. I'm like, damn.

We're out here. And it was like, though those kinds of memories were just unforgettable.

George B. Thomas: 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 in inbound. So let's move forward because, man, we've almost been doing this for 40 plus minutes at this point. 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 party's 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?

Devyn Bellamy: 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.