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The Road to UNBOUND - Office Hours - The Last One Before Boston: Know Thyself, Then Find the Human Who Slowed Down

Office Hours is the informal half of The Road to UNBOUND. No script, no segments, and no expectation that anyone stays the whole hour. This is the last one before Boston, and the host opens by saying so: bittersweet, maybe not sad, because he has plans for after UNBOUND that nobody on the call has heard yet. Four in the room: Chris Carolan, Casey Hawkins, George B. Thomas, and the guest, Sarah Lane-Hawn, who runs a B2B revenue operations practice and arrived out of the overwhelm and into the excitement, having cleared the goals she wanted done before the event. The first half is about the event itself. Sarah skimmed the speaker list and realized she only knew three or four names, and decided that was the good news. A year of HubSpot ads from the airport in, and a drive through Boston looking for billboards that were not up yet. George on whether this year will feel completely different, the way the year everything went white and a DJ booth appeared did, and on the sound of the new name: not you and AI, you and I. Sarah on missing every meetup by a day and planning to hover outside them anyway, because the rooms that put the human first and the tech second were the best part of her first year. George on knowing the fastest escape route to his room from anywhere in the building, and the Irish goodbye that follows. The buddy system, the nursing room, and Sarah's standing offer: if you need a person to be quiet with so you are not standing alone, find her. And a decision she called humbling and George called empowering: after a year of health issues since her son was born, she is bringing a mobility scooter so she can be there for all of it. Know thyself. The second half is Sarah's AI activation story, told in the order it happened. Trust earned incrementally, the way she gives it to anyone. Treating the AI like an entry-level hire at first. Then thirteen years of operations patterns she kept seeing across clients, a conversation with Ryan Ginsberg about building an app to package them, and Ryan's answer: that is not the solution, learn to use AI well. Six weeks of mentorship in the spring, and a new brand of prepackaged solutions going to market at UNBOUND, managed first, self-service in six months. The advice that follows: start with the problem, not with how to use AI; expect to get it wrong and sometimes waste a day; take notes; and if you are hitting a wall, you are probably using the wrong tool, so ask the AI which one you should be using instead. From there: Casey on why it did not click until she saw AI in her own work. George on the domino effect, on vibe-coding HubSpot CMS by teaching his assistant a module, and on asking what CLI or MCP to hand the assistant so it can just do the thing. Chris on building the UNBOUND Unboxed webinar campaign on a morning walk, registration page and UTM links included, from a system he built the blocks for over months. My AI is not your AI. Trust and safety built the way it is built between humans: over time, by repetition. The sparkle emoji, a fairy lullaby, and fairy doors hidden somewhere in the conference for anyone who spots one. The close: everyone's activation story is a human who slowed down enough to be followed, and UNBOUND is a good place to find yours. Boston is September 16 to 18.

Sep 10, 2026