The Road to UNBOUND: Revenue Hub Lands, the Agenda Drops, and Why Philosophy Beats Tactics

Rob Jones (00:01.378)

Welcome. Well, I started early. Welcome back to the Road to Unbound. I'm so excited. I didn't even wait for the recording to kick in. We can scrap that later. I'm Rob, formerly the mayor of Inbound, now the onk of Unbound, coming to you live from my office slash dining room that I've converted into a a studio. Joined by Kyle Jepson, the man, the myth, the legend, the person you that's is at a crucial point in the HubSpot ecosystem. I'll let him get into that in a minute. We also have George.

B. Thomas, don't ask him what the B stands for, you can't afford it. And finally, last but not least, Chris Carolan, the man with a beard that has solved more HubSpot use cases than you've ever even encountered. How are we all doing today?

Chris Carolan (00:35.66)

Thank

Kyle Jepson (00:48.258)

Good.

Chris Carolan (00:48.324)

Feeling better now, I think. I don't know, it's a lot to live up to.

George B. Thomas (00:52.756)

Yeah, that's that beard, man. I don't know, that's like the weight of the world carrying that around. Doing good though.

Rob Jones (00:53.112)

I just

Kyle Jepson (00:58.935)

I think George is the only one who didn't get a a new intro that time, Rob. It's all That's what you get for having a middle initial.

Rob Jones (00:59.373)

Yeah.

George B. Thomas (01:03.568)

I know, I'm like, it fur first first of all, like, they could afford it. I freely share what it is. Anyway, it is what it is. It it is what it is.

Chris Carolan (01:03.88)

I know.

Rob Jones (01:17.038)

I love that the analysis of the the prolonged hype man intros has gotten so in-depth that it's like I suck because I didn't give George a cooler intro. Chris's beard has a problem that he has with me. And Kyle's children are screaming at me literally as we speak for not going more in-depth to his intro. So I'll I'll get better.

Kyle Jepson (01:25.26)

Ha ha.

Chris Carolan (01:36.328)

Yeah, I to put the word out for a new tour guide on this onbound. Get it together, buddy.

George B. Thomas (01:40.316)

my gosh, that's kind of harsh, brother. Sheesh. Sheesh. That's like getting fired from a position that you don't get paid for. let's see. How does that work? I don't think it does.

Rob Jones (01:45.528)

Yikes. Well

Chris Carolan (01:48.757)

Never.

Rob Jones (01:53.902)

It's good point. That's why they can't afford you, George. because of that type of insight. Sometimes you can't afford free, and I'll explain later. we want to get into a couple of things today. one of which, I don't know if you've been on LinkedIn the past twenty four hours, but Commerce Hub doesn't exist anymore. Got rid of it.

George B. Thomas (02:14.356)

Well, easy there. Slow your roll. Nah, see that that's now now you're just like starting some stuff here. you you better keep up. You you Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. Or a s a bump set spike. Revenue Hub. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Anybody else excited about it?

Rob Jones (02:16.543)

What wait, what th what happened? I thought they just removed it completely.

Rob Jones (02:26.679)

George, I don't know if you're a basketball fan, but this is an an alley oop, my friend.

Kyle Jepson (02:26.74)

Yeah.

Chris Carolan (02:32.267)

Revenue, Revenue Hub, Revenue Hub, is a thing now.

Kyle Jepson (02:39.244)

Yeah.

Rob Jones (02:45.385)

I am not as excited as Kyle is to share all of the amazing things that this change means for you. Kyle, what do you have for us?

Kyle Jepson (02:53.782)

So it's it's funny, I I am actually excited. I don't know, it it seems to be like a year of of rebranding, right? We now have Unbound and we now have a Revenue Hub. and I'm not a marketer and I don't know how to analyze those things, but I do think we've reached a moment with Hub HubSpot's revenue tools. Like when we very first started back in when was it? Twenty twenty or something, it was payment processing, plain and simple.

and now you know there were like payment links, which was really cool. And we've gradually been adding new things. And this last year at Inbound, we we introduced commerce seats and we started talking about CPQ and this sort of thing. and all of that is outside like I've never been in a role where I needed to like generate quotes and stuff, so it's been hard for me to have like a real understanding of the the quality and the benchmarks and stuff.

But I very quickly heard feedback from people that it was still not quite complete. my sense now is that it's complete. we we have I finally it seemed big enough that I I got on a call with a few members of the product team and said, Can you explain to me what all this stuff is? And it i there's just a lot going on. Right? There's there's it's not just thing n features like quote rules and price books, which I had to those both had to be explained to me. And like this billing portal and

And all these things, but there's like if you look at the constellation of objects involved in this, the contracts object I think launched at Spring Spotlight. and I didn't fully understand how big a deal that was, but it's actually a very big deal. All the complaints people have made over the years that HubSpot can't really do recurring revenue reporting and that sort of thing, that's solved by this crucial piece of an object that represents your living you know.

agreement or relationship with your customers and it can be changed over time, upgraded, downgraded, cancelled. Like it unlocks a lot. And so I'm currently going through this journey myself trying to understand it all. You're gonna notice the videos I post on LinkedIn for the foreseeable future are all revenue focused because I am digging through this myself and sort of playing catch up. but yeah, Revenue Hub is I think it's pretty legit.

George B. Thomas (05:09.066)

I mean, listen, I have been a fan of Commerce Hub from the very beginning. We have literally been running our business when it was George B. Thomas LLC and then transitioned to Sidekick Strategies. it's it has been the backbone. And so going through this journey, living through some of the historical pain points and getting to this point is absolutely amazing. By the way, my biggest thing that I'm excited about is I think it's way easier.

Easier to teach Revenue Hub than it is to teach Commerce Hub because commerce is B2C. If you talk to a human in the back of their cranium, revenue is something that you drive as a business, no matter if you're B2B, B2C, B to whatever, whatever. so just the idea of teaching or talking about it from a revenue standpoint, it adds an oomph, an importance. if you're in

Kyle Jepson (05:45.686)

Hmm.

Kyle Jepson (05:50.536)

sure.

George B. Thomas (06:08.906)

business and you don't have the Revenue Hub, what's the matter with you? Like do you not want to drive revenue? Like do you not want the revenue to come in easier and be able to report on better? Like and so I just I love this I listen.

Let me be a real deal Holyfield here. I don't always enjoy HubSpot's rebranding, aka lists and segments, or aka business units and brands, which we already had. Brands anyway. This one I can get behind. Like, let's go.

Chris Carolan (06:47.039)

Yeah.

Rob Jones (06:47.213)

Chris, do you want me to come to you now or do you want me to give my two cents and then turn it over to you for a very an excavation of insight rather than just surface level?

Chris Carolan (06:56.875)

Good plan. I like that plan. Go for it.

Rob Jones (07:00.129)

Just just from their website, I agree with George. Kyle's pointing out of like him also not having the the full context of like how this should impact people and then learning immediately. If you've spent any time around Chris Carolan and you know that like quotes CPQ, all of that, the the journey has been like a point of contention may be a strong word from the site right here.

Revenue used to be a moment, right? To me, this is positioning it more to George's point of like B2B any anything, revenue is more representative of that than commerce, which is like tr to me this this difference is from transactional in like revenue only occurs at one point, that's it, and it may or may not ever occur again to include expansion, renewal, to include a deeper relationship as represented by the revenue object.

It it is it is something that can and should happen over the course of time, not just one transaction. So moving from something that hinges on a transactional basis to something that is more relationship centric.

Chris Carolan (08:06.997)

Yeah, like.

Rob Jones (08:07.691)

I will add in applause to to me saying that. Anyway, Chris, go ahead.

Kyle Jepson (08:10.909)

Ha ha.

Chris Carolan (08:12.447)

I finally found the news article. I was looking for the positioning. Like when I opened it up, introducing Revenue Hub quote to cash finally in one place. That's it. Like quote to cash has been such a struggle for every business because cash and finances and accounting is owned by the back office quotes and sales and everything else is, is not. And the systems don't see the world.

the same way in, and we have not, and because of that, it's not been easy to bring all of the data together, like in a meaningful, understandable way. So you have everybody exporting decks and, and spreadsheets and taking lots of time to help understand this most crucial point in the process. Like at the end of the day and the positioning has been tough as George alluded to commerce.

You know, not at the like that word doesn't get, you know, hear that word when you're, when you're talking to a B B2B organization about sales process and like both sales management and that kind of stuff. it also closes the gap on like RevOps. You know how many RevOps teams aren't responsible for the cash part.

George B. Thomas (09:34.772)

Mm.

Chris Carolan (09:36.844)

And then like they don't even own the whole system that they're supposed to help with right now they can and The functionality has been there for a minute. They are closing more gaps But the challenge to the ecosystem is can we start talking to the cash side of the house? of any business To make sure they know that they can now depend on HubSpot and they should depend on HubSpot For this purpose because it can tell the whole picture

George B. Thomas (10:06.216)

And and here's the thing too that I want to add on to what Chris is talking about. I want you to pay attention to how things are kind of moving here. One, Revenue Hub is getting good, really good. Obviously, it's graduating to get rebranded. at the same time, Breeze has been rebuilt basically from the floor up and is becoming amazing. hence why we're doing a webinar on I think it's July seventeenth of wait, Breeze can do that. Now I want you to think about Breeze.

And Revenue Hub together when they're actually like fully aligned, and the things that you'll be able to do with an assistant that once felt almost impossible that now feels way easier, or maybe just feels easy. Like that's the world where I get excited of all the features and functionalities of revenue and your AI assistant and your human-powered brain. the experiences that you should.

be able to create for the end users for the products and service that you provide there the excuses are quickly falling apart for your crappy process like there's just there's not gonna be any excuses in the future other than laziness which shame on you i'm just saying just keeping it real hey can i can i can i steal the show for a minute rob can i totally derail us because n

Kyle Jepson (11:30.223)

Ha.

Rob Jones (11:30.667)

Yeah, go ahead. Wouldn't be the first time, won't be the last, George. Go ahead.

George B. Thomas (11:34.77)

Yeah, and not that I checked my email during the show, but maybe I checked my email during the show. received this email just about two minutes ago. Unbound 26, September 16th date. The agenda has dropped. and they're giving you a starting place. Get the guide it says. Now, just so you know, they give you some information here. They tell you some things that are coming up. If you haven't checked your email, you should check your email. If you're not getting

Kyle Jepson (11:41.705)

Ha ha.

Kyle Jepson (11:52.236)

Whoa.

George B. Thomas (12:04.664)

Getting Unbound emails, you should let me talk about that for a second. Here's where they're gonna send you, though. The Unbound 2026 agenda is live, and they've got some links in some different categories to some things that you might want to check out. So definitely check out this page. If you're not getting the emails, you might want to go to the bottom and actually sign up to get the emails so you can stay up to date. But the at the end of the day, you can now go to the agenda and you can check out all of the agenda.

agenda pieces that they have launched. So ladies and gentlemen, it's getting good and we're getting close. So there's that.

Chris Carolan (12:44.213)

Yeah, I think that was more of like an on-ramp to the next highway, is like, Revenue Hub, big announcement yesterday. Now, Agenda just dropped this idea of we're always launching, we're always marketing. And how does the team think about that in terms of like,

Kyle Jepson (12:47.02)

Actually keeping us on topic sort of.

George B. Thomas (12:47.742)

Yeah, yeah.

Chris Carolan (13:13.503)

Just because there's a Revenue Hub announcement right now, we also expect there to still be a big announcement at Unbound. And as I'm looking at this email, like, I just dropped, I feel like the agenda. So we have times now? Is that what this means? Times and days?

Kyle Jepson (13:34.431)

Yes.

George B. Thomas (13:34.806)

Well

Yeah, times and days. And so if you go to the agenda, sheesh, words difficult. one of the things I love is they have an overviews details and calendar tab. and you can literally see like here, actually let me share my screen again because this is this is pretty dang dope, especially for those people who are going to be trying to do these things. So one when you get here, you're gonna have the overview to

Which just gives you like the little cards that you can click on. You're gonna have the details view, which gives you a bigger card. You can see the humans, you can see a little bit more of the information, or you'll literally be able to see the calendar and how like this stuff lays out. but also when you go to start searching, like you can literally pick a date and then you can slide these time ranges to like, hey, I want it to be before like certain times or whatever. you've got roles over here, and you even have

Chris Carolan (14:28.139)

Thank

George B. Thomas (14:35.48)

have more filters that you can do session types, you can do the theme type, interestingly enough. And so like it's a pretty dope experience when it comes to this agenda page this year. So pretty pretty exciting.

Chris Carolan (14:53.407)

Okay, that helps. So the schedule just dropped. Got it.

George B. Thomas (14:58.59)

I mean, which is the agenda, to be honest with you. Just the w Yeah Well, picky beard maybe, but you know.

Chris Carolan (15:00.849)

I mean, words, picky marketer worrying about the words.

Rob Jones (15:08.301)

Picky beard.

Chris Carolan (15:09.417)

Look, schedule is such a clear word. Know what you're going to get when you click on this button.

Rob Jones (15:13.471)

Is this so this may be for for the rest of us, is this a final iteration of this? Like if you were to go and book everything today, 'cause I know there's a mix of like book your sessions now so that they're you know, so that you can get in on whatever session you want as spaces fill up, versus are they gonna make changes or slot in things or you know, add more

Kyle Jepson (15:34.548)

I'm gonna guess this is baked. I'm I'm looking at mine my my events. and like rooms are assigned and everything. I I don't expect those to change at this point.

George B. Thomas (15:37.99)

Yeah.

George B. Thomas (15:49.248)

H here's what I'll say. Here's what I'll say. If you look at that email that got sent, which I closed it, but it does say, a as far as the things that are on here, I agree with Kyle.

it's it is it is what it is, but it does say coming up the final wave of sessions drops alongside our agenda builder in July, allowing you to personalize your schedule in minutes, but only if you're registered. So there are some more sessions coming, which will fill in there. what is there is probably baked. The other layer, not to well, whatever. it's that's a funny, but you won't know about it until later. To add another layer

to this. I don't think there's been any conversations yet, obviously, of like encores or things like that. Because because you can go view this right now, but you can't like hit a button to register. Like that hasn't opened yet that I can see. So it's like get a visual, get an idea, start to mark it down, start to get ready. So when they do open the race gates, you you can run and try to register for the things that you want. And by that time I think it'll be fully baked, but

Kyle Jepson (16:38.709)

Right, yeah.

Rob Jones (16:55.383)

Yeah.

George B. Thomas (17:01.749)

I think with Kyle, what he's saying, and I agree with him, is like what you see now is baked. Like if it's gonna be that time, it's probably gonna be that room, that kind of thing.

Chris Carolan (17:10.963)

Yeah, so we've got August 25th for VIP attendees to start making reservations for the limited capacity sessions. And then September 1st, it opens up for general admission attendees. And then I would hope that when it says the final wave of sessions drops alongside our agenda builder in July, allowing you to personalize, that's when we will be able to start.

hitting the star and saving and favoriting, you know, stuff that we want to attend.

George B. Thomas (17:40.563)

Yeah, yeah.

Kyle Jepson (17:40.576)

Yeah.

George B. Thomas (17:44.382)

Yep.

Chris Carolan (17:46.153)

Layers indeed.

Rob Jones (17:46.99)

What it's how how do I I'm I'm very cynical and I I mean as somebody that's involved in this all the time I try to balance between like crying wolf and telling people to take an action now that they're gonna have to retake later and then retake again August 25th and then re-finalize after that. What should people do like today? Like just go and be aware. Okay. Well that that was more the question. Like if there's gonna be other stuff added and if if VIP access is a thing, it's like

George B. Thomas (18:06.537)

They should start figuring it out. Like ser

Rob Jones (18:15.817)

If any w went sorry, world, because I know you're listening, I'll speak now directly to you. Today you should go and do what?

George B. Thomas (18:18.522)

Mm. Mm.

George B. Thomas (18:25.053)

Start figuring it out. Like y there's enough here, I think that you can at least start putting a method to your madness. at the end of the day

Like it has how do I want to put this? Cause I don't want to sound any sort of way. it has amazed me over the years the painstaking time and energy that humans have put into trying to make their inbound historically unbound this year perfect.

And listen, if it really drops your general, right? Hit the road, run it first through the sixteenth, and you've got a life, and you've got a job, and you've got soccer practice. Like, so now take the time when we're not at the last moment necessary to spend the time to start asking yourself the questions, to ask your AI assistant the questions of how to map this out, because at least you're getting a kind of runway to be.

prepared. cause again, like for a lot of humans, this is a very important three or four days for the future them.

Kyle Jepson (19:39.317)

And something I will say that would be very good to do right now, is like if you know for a fact you wanna go see George's session and there's maybe like two or three other sessions you know you wanna go watch, now you can see if they conflict with each other. Which there have been times George and I are speaking at the same time, which is awful, right?

George B. Thomas (19:57.062)

Yes. I it. I hate it.

Kyle Jepson (20:03.892)

Yeah, last last year I was I was speaking the same time as Jay, right? And it's just hard when these kinds of things happen. And so I think now you can sort of get eyes on that and see if there are hard choices you need to make. which is just if you're just kind of thinking like, yeah, I'm going to Unbound, I'll probably see this one, I'll probably see that one, and then you don't until day of look at the agenda and realize like, man, I'm running from place to place to place Thursday and missing half the sessions I want and then have nothing on my agenda for Wednesday.

that's that's something you could start ironing out now.

Rob Jones (20:38.359)

For yeah, so for me this is like draft analysis in a way. Like now you know who has g entered the draft, all of it's in here, all of the people that are going to be there, the sessions, the seeing which ones conflict with each other. I don't know the draft metaphor for that, but yeah, you'd be you'd be able to like parse out and get eyes on stuff without actually

Kyle Jepson (20:52.518)

Ha ha ha.

Rob Jones (20:58.037)

I I guess so my understanding, you can't actually register, confirm, finalize that yet, but you can see like, here's my mock up. Here's here's what I would want to do. I now know that this time slot has both Kyle and George, so I'm gonna have to clone myself to see both of their, you know, like that type of thing, you're able to have more

Kyle Jepson (21:14.688)

I I did just check. George and I are not speaking at the same time, so come to both of us. We'd love to have you. There's even a couple of hours in between. So

George B. Thomas (21:19.381)

yeah. There we go.

Rob Jones (21:22.271)

Excellent.

George B. Thomas (21:26.109)

Love it.

Rob Jones (21:27.671)

Well, George, did you check any more emails? 'Cause you were breadcrumbing something a minute ago that I think we want to get into.

Kyle Jepson (21:29.908)

Ha ha ha.

George B. Thomas (21:32.989)

No, I didn't I didn't check any more emails. I I shut it down at that, but you know, I saw the Unbound subject line and figured I should bring that up. I should bring that up.

Rob Jones (21:44.331)

Love it. yeah, so go and do that. Get your draft analysis slash thrunbound three day thing figured out. Good news, you can see George and Kyle. and you don't have to make the difficult, impossible choice on whose session to attend now, because you can attend them both, and you should.

Chris Carolan (21:52.94)

Thank you.

George B. Thomas (22:02.821)

Mm. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Chris Carolan (22:04.263)

So if one were to want to attend both sessions, what times do we have?

George B. Thomas (22:11.541)

Yeah, so mine right now, again, 'cause there has been no encore conversations or anything like that, but right now, September seventeenth, which is the Thursday. mine is one fifteen to two forty-five because it is a ninety minute workshop type session and it's room one four that you would be heading to. Before I pass it over to Kyle to give his details, Kyle, we should put this into the world. it wouldn't be this year, but maybe next.

Next year. Could you imagine if there was a George B. Thomas Kyle Jepson session and just the two of us doing a session together? That might get really interesting. Anyway, when's your when's yours, brother?

Kyle Jepson (22:46.867)

Incredible.

Kyle Jepson (22:54.632)

So I'm doing a three-part session, a three-part series, things every HubSpot admin needs to know. Talking about implementing on Wednesday at 2 p.m. and optimizing Thursday at 4:15, and then troubleshooting Friday at 10. All of these are 45-minute sessions. Interestingly, implementing and optimizing are on the level three ballroom. Troubleshooting is in room 160. So

Unbound theme doesn't think people are interested in in troubleshooting, is what I'm getting at. I don't I don't know what room one sixty means, but

George B. Thomas (23:23.413)

man. I have a prediction. I I I have a prediction. I would get to that troubleshooting one early, ladies and gentlemen. Ooh, boy.

Rob Jones (23:29.164)

I would feel like troubleshooting is where most people would start.

Kyle Jepson (23:39.467)

I will say, I've done this as as three talks a couple of times in the past. and always in this order. Implementing on Wednesday, optimizing on Thursday, troubleshooting on Friday. troubleshooting does tend to be the smallest crowd. I think just because some folks d don't stay for Friday or have to catch a plane or stayed out too late on Thursday or whatever the case may be, you know? so there are reasons that troubleshooting is is smaller, but I'm not I don't know for sure if it's the content. but yeah.

George B. Thomas (23:57.333)

There is

Kyle Jepson (24:08.692)

Be very interested to see how much that room holds and if it is sufficient.

George B. Thomas (24:12.905)

I will say attrition on a Friday is a real thing, man. Like there are a lot there are a lot of humans that are like, we're out and I'm like, ha why? Like how are you anyway. It is what it is. Yeah. Schedules are schedules, I guess.

Kyle Jepson (24:18.059)

Yeah.

Kyle Jepson (24:23.276)

You paid for this.

Yeah.

Rob Jones (24:30.358)

Which you can now see, 'cause they're they're released. So a full circle there. Chris, you asked me a question before we started that was good. I wrote it down, I can't read my own handwriting, but it was about how how do you balance between

Kyle Jepson (24:31.884)

Yeah.

George B. Thomas (24:34.373)

nice, Rob. That was good.

Rob Jones (24:44.448)

W because we've asked this before with George, Kyle, whoever is like submitting a session, how do you submit something six months in advance when something may change and thus, you know, you need to update your deck, update your talking points. But you were more talking about the balance in like which sessions should you attend? And I think from more of like an Unbound insider standpoint, people that will be attending, how do you balance like learning versus creating content versus what HubSpot is doing that's more of like a a marketing tactic to be announced like

You can re-ask the question here to me and we can discuss it. But just balancing all that out is is a real if it's a challenge for me to even understand the question, I would imagine it's a challenge for people to like think through how to do that when they approach the conference.

Chris Carolan (25:14.441)

Yeah.

Chris Carolan (25:25.663)

Right. Well, I'm interested to hear George's story, because it was a little bit different this year in terms of a collaborative selection of topic with the team and easy-using AI a lot to prepare. And we've heard similar things from Jay when we talked to him. how do you like, what are the things that haven't changed and what are the things that have? And then from the team's perspective, the Unbound and HubSpot teams,

George B. Thomas (25:50.194)

Yeah.

Chris Carolan (25:55.424)

Like there is a, like there's a strategy to make sure George like shows up and provides the best kind of content for the audience that they're expecting. Then they also have product strategy, product marketing, Revenue Hub was just announced yesterday. There's going to be a big announcement. Like how do they just thinking through or talking through how those things like come together.

George B. Thomas (26:23.325)

Yeah.

Rob Jones (26:23.903)

So maybe it wasn't only me that had trouble with the question.

George B. Thomas (26:26.133)

N no, no, I understand where Chris is going or I think th the the the theme or the s the journey, the story here. So maybe I just start with like one thing that you said d a second ago, what hasn't changed. I'll tell you what hasn't changed and should never change is that it should always be about the humans. And and what I mean by that is from an event standpoint, from the Unbound team, it's like how do we provide the most valuable.

To the humans who are gonna sign up to this and get them activated in a way that they will do the things that they need to do, use the products and services that we have as far as HubSpot, but even just live potentially a better life. Like, how do we create that scenario? It's all about the humans. I think the journey to getting there is dramatically different, and so let me just kind of explain something that I haven't really talked about.

About wide open yet about this Unbound experience is for years of Inbound, I would submit two or three sessions. they would pick one session, I would have had some referencing point to that, meaning I was like already putting my brain into like content pillar pages or sales strategies or whatever it is that I was like, Hey, these are three things that I know I could talk about. heck, one year is video.

Marketing, right? So it just it was it's always been this ability to be what I'll call a a shapeshifter. So like there are some people out there that they're a square peg, they'll always be a square peg. They speak about this thing, that's the only thing they speak about, which is like if that's your jam, that's your jam. But for me, that's never been my jam. And this year.

It became 100% apparent to me why that's a superpower for people. And also why I think it's something that a lot of people can focus on moving forward. So this year I submitted a talk, singular, to the Unbound team.

George B. Thomas (28:35.881)

And I didn't receive a hey, unfortunately we have chosen not to have you speak. Like cause I by the way, if I have presented two or three talks, that means I got two denials and one approval for every year that I've spoken, right? So I've seen the denial emails and I've seen the approval emails. And I didn't get a denial email. I literally got a one human from the team to me email.

Saying, in essence, hey, we had a lot of submissions around AI. And so we don't know how your AI content systems session would fit into this year's topics. Are you willing to help us find a gap and fill that gap?

To which I was like, yes, I'm willing. Like, let me know what the gap is and let's see what we can do. And so they went to the drawing board as a team. They started it's behind the scenes. I wish I was a fly on the freaking wall, by the way. Like what they were looking at, what they were talking about, but they came back and they're like, hey, we have this idea.

Kyle Jepson (29:29.824)

That's awesome.

George B. Thomas (29:48.242)

Which I like the idea, but I massaged the idea a little bit. I finessed it and I sent back to Hey, based on what you sent me, here's what I'm thinking and here's the direction I'd like to go. And I think that there's some definite strong talking points. And so that's why this year

my session is the five-layer marketing system. Stop chasing tactics. Now, do I wish I was talking about AI content systems? Yes. Am I teaching AI content systems on the website and to people in a 10-week course or session or program or whatever you want to call it? Absolutely. will there be some things in the five-layer marketing system that talk about AI? Hello! yes, there will be. Like, but but the moral of the story here is being

Able to position yourself into a place mentally where you can say, here's the direction that I've got to go. The goal is to focus on humans and provide a five-layer marketing system that enables them to stop chasing tactics. Here's what I know. Now I need to know what I don't know. Okay. So

Chris, to go deeper into the thing that you asked. Historically, what this would have been for getting to that goal is here's all the things that I've taught historically. Here's some YouTube channels that I gotta go watch, here's some blog articles that I've gotta go read, and here's presentation that I've gotta go build out. And it's gonna be painstaking and it's gonna take me weeks, if not months. I better start now. I'm gonna be jamming on this like for an hour before I step on stage.

because everything's always changed. So it's it's it's it's effort. Like we're putting in a lot of effort to like provide this value. Now

George B. Thomas (31:37.746)

I can tell you this year what's fun is I know what I know, and I put that in place in context. And then I start asking questions with an AI assistant of like, what are the things that I don't know? Like you see this, what don't I know? And then you can get it to do deep research basically on the things that I don't know, so that I can learn the things that I don't know and how they correlate to the things that I do know. But here's been like the dramatic thing that has been fun is being able to do deep research on Gemini.

Chris Carolan (31:58.284)

you

George B. Thomas (32:07.679)

Being able to do deep research on Claude, being able to do deep research on ChatGPT, and during those deep research sessions, also asking it and give me any links or YouTube video links to resources that you're pulling this from, to then take those links based on the parts or categories of a five-layer system and put them into NotebookLM.

And have it create a podcast on said subsection of the topic that I'm gonna be talking about. So I can listen to a podcast that's pulling out relevant information in a very conversational, talking way. And then I can jot notes down along the way of like, ooh, that was hot. That right there was hot. Like I gotta make sure that's part of the thing. And then being able to just kind of mold it into like a final product, which final product for me means I'm gonna take these things that are hot, the things that I know, the things.

things that I'm learning and I'm gonna put them into like a Gamma.app scenario and be like, build me a deck.

Now I have a draft deck that I can go in and be like, but we should add this here and we should add that there. And maybe let's tweak this. To which then I'll be able to, at some point in time, have my speaker notes, have my Gamma.app deck, and they're gonna send me a template like they always do. Here's what we'd like you to do for the Unbound thing. And I'll be able to give my assistant, hey, hey, assistant. Unbound just sent me this template.

See this Gamma deck? See these speaker notes? See this thing that we've been building together? Can you please just build it in this template? And it's dramatically different than what we historically did from a self-education, finding the gaps, creating a draft, and being able to present that dope experience to humans.

Rob Jones (34:04.755)

You what what is the name of your talk again, your session again, George? Five layer marketing system.

George B. Thomas (34:09.747)

Yeah, it's five-layer marketing system. Stop chasing tactics. That's the title.

Rob Jones (34:18.453)

So other than I I don't know if I can s speak directly to Chris as much, ironically, and I've probably spent the most time directly with him of of all of you on the call, just from that feels very much like a like and you don't you can give spoilers or you don't have to, but come learn how to learn. Like George, one of your things, George, is like you need to learn how to learn and you need to be willing to do that constantly. Not to tell you what your own session is about.

But that would be more advantageous to me in a world that is like, if you don't understand change management, you're screwed. Period. Like if you don't understand how to cope with that, you're in big trouble. Kyle mentioned it recently, which is why I'm kind of making the connection of like, I did things this way for a long time. And then one day Jim and I turned a spreadsheet that took me weeks into like 10 minutes. Now I can go focus on kind of what he's doing now, which is like, here's the way we did it before. And now I'm just asking people on LinkedIn where the this conversion of like operators versus product.

Knowledge updates is happening. And the product team is finding that very useful, as am I. Like Chris has done this as well. I mean, Value First is a whole essentially like manifesto, like a whole way of thinking about how to how to create that. And it it didn't exist before what, a year and a half, two years ago? So, like with the sessions, part of the impetus of this question was like, how do we balance? How do we know what's important, especially with AI? How how do you

Chris Carolan (35:40.075)

Right.

Rob Jones (35:42.685)

Is that not the most useful thing that you could be doing and what you're you seem to be speaking into? Is like learning or relearning how to learn things?

George B. Thomas (35:50.87)

So so I think learning is part of it. Okay. But I want everybody to realize like one of the major key words in the title is systems. And one of the things that I've been preaching from the mountaintops, the rooftop, wherever I can get and talk, is we are in a world where systems and frameworks is what humans need to be paying attention to as they're building things out. And so Rob, if I just do

This real quick, bear with me, folks. But the description to the talk tells you a lot. Meaning, if you read into it, like there's reading the description, and there's reading into the description. So I want you to think about this. Most marketing teams don't have tactics problem, they have a system problem. More tools, more channels, more complexity, and somehow growth still feels stuck. In the 90-minute working session that we're going to do, you'll learn the five layers. So there are five.

Five distinct layers behind every marketing engine that actually compound. And in the session, you'll be able to diagnose your own system in real time using, and this is by the way, one of the most fabulous things, a scorecard. So I'm literally going to be presenting a scorecard where they'll be able to check it along the way and have a grade for what they're currently doing versus what we're teaching they're doing. and leave with a 30-day starter plan tied to your weakest layer, no theory, a working blueprint you can put to use Monday morning. So I want you to think about that. your boy is going back to his basics actionable and tactical, like, but based off of strategy. And so five layers of strategy, mindsets, and beliefs that have to be true for you to create what will be a marketing system instead of a dysfunctional.

Move, I'll stop there. I'll stop there. I'll stop there.

Rob Jones (37:53.951)

You could just give the whole session now if you if if everybody has time. that is that is really good. Just

Chris Carolan (37:55.41)

And, man, and Kyle, think like to close the loop here, man, that was so easy. I, I was confused earlier today, or I was, I was curious if the marketing team is asking George to fill a gap. And this is the talk. Meanwhile, there's a bunch of other loop marketing sessions.

George B. Thomas (38:05.519)

Loop marketing.

Chris Carolan (38:24.649)

Right. Which is also a system. Right. But one of the issues has been like, people need to change their behavior as far as how fast they're willing to move, how they want to experiment, all that stuff. Right. And that's something I think it was before the show. It's like, you know, HubSpot's got a job to make sure everybody knows about the product. The rest of us, how does it apply? How do you apply it? How do you actually do it for your business?

George B. Thomas (38:52.211)

Yeah. And one of my just just again, giving away a little bit more, but not trying to give away it all. Like one of the things in these five layers that I'm gonna try to be attacking is like the historically difficult.

And and what I mean by that is like one of the things for marketing, a layer is just social proof. It's the ability to build trust. And if we think about historically what has been difficult in most organizations, the creation of case studies is like painful. You've got to interview somebody and then it's gotta go to the writer. And you might send a video videography team out. And like and so like you get a case study in like two months, three months. And like

Why doesn't it happen? Because there's so many places that it can just fall through the cracks.

Again, if I'm talking about systems and frameworks and we talk about human powered and AI assisted, is there a better way to actually now create case studies for your organization? And I'll end up telling the story where Sidekick Strategies, we had been in business for four years on our website. We had count them, it's difficult to get there. Zero case studies after four years on our website. We went to work with an AI assistant and human powered ID.

And within two days, we had seven fully written case studies from client current clients on our website. Within the next week to two weeks, we had nine. So, like from zero to nine in less than 30 days, you know how many organizations would love to be able to hook into that and unpack that and be able to do that after they walk out of Unbound to be able to build more trust, to have more case studies, to tell their story better, which by the way, as soon as they have those case stories, they can get.

George B. Thomas (40:40.215)

give those stories to their AI assistant that's writing the articles that can tie back to the case studies that then makes it feel like they really wrote it instead of feeling like a piece of slop. Uh-oh, uh-oh, I turned it into AI content system as well. I better stop. I better stop. my God.

Kyle Jepson (40:56.68)

I if I can hop in here and and kind of approach from a different angle what I think Chris was asking. it's interesting. loop marketing debuted at Inbound last year. And HubSpot Academy, the team where I sit, was almost immediately tasked with teaching people to do this thing, right? And we came out with some videos and we did some things, and we had this idea: maybe the best way to do this is an in-person workshop. And so there was an in-person workshop.

Here in Boston, a couple of my colleagues ran. and it was like, you know, you're we're gonna start the process of loop marketing using HubSpot tools. Here are some very, very like two-page long prompts that you can copy out of this PDF and drop into into Breeze Assistant, and it'll think for a while and it'll give you good stuff. and the feedback from my colleagues who were tasked with running this was unambiguous. It doesn't work, it's all broken, none of it.

George B. Thomas (41:52.085)

Mm.

Kyle Jepson (41:54.571)

works as advertised. and this was a moment of crisis for some folks. There was a lot of iterating and scrambling that had to be done both on the product side and on the educational side so that we could do a series of in-person workshops that we're now running. So my friends will be in in Chicago next week doing another loop marketing one. We did they did in San Francisco, they've done in New York, they're gonna do it in Houston, I think. And they're constantly iterating and the product is constantly getting better.

And I love all of this. Like all the folks who are just like, it doesn't work, it's just theory. Like, what is HubSpot doing? Like, you're you're missing the point entirely. because there's a very important parallel with how HubSpot started, and there's a very important difference. The important parallel is when HubSpot started, we did not have a product. Brian and Dharmesh start a blog about inbound marketing and how it's gonna work for B2B coun companies, even small ones who wanna compete against big ones, right?

George B. Thomas (42:23.677)

Yep.

Kyle Jepson (42:49.888)

And they started building tools to help people enact that philosophy. and it was rough. If you've ever talked to to Mark Roberge or to Dan Tyre or any of those early, early salespeople, they'll all tell you the same thing. They'll use this phrase. They will say, in the early days, we could demo HubSpot or we could sell it, but we could not do both at the same time. Right? Because the tools were not good. But the philosophy was right.

George B. Thomas (43:13.181)

Yeah, yeah.

Kyle Jepson (43:17.79)

It was reading the technological and sociological changes, and we were building in that direction. That's where we are now with AI. HubSpot's doing that same thing. Loop marketing is our first iteration of this. We are working toward having the tools that enable you to enable to enact that philosophy and to succeed. The difference is we already have this tool set that was built to do inbound marketing. And a lot of it doesn't fit for the new methodology, right? And so people

Are like, there's this disconnect between what Yamini said on stage and what the HubSpot platform actually does. Yes, because it needs to change. And you're gonna see it Unbound this year and next year and the year after, HubSpot's platform becoming more and more in line with loop marketing and whatever future iterations of this philosophy we have as we figure out how to make the two fit together. And for me, that's really exciting. The disconnect is not a sign of failure, it's a sign of opportunity.

And the bigger that gap is, the more work we have to do both as educators and as and as product builders. But all that work is being done. And I think sitting here with front row seat, how seeing how it all evolves is like the thrill of a lifetime. I missed the first few years of HubSpot, right? I joined when the company was 10 years old. Now that it's 20 years old, it's reinventing itself. And to me it's so inspirational to see. And so I don't remember what you said, Chris, that sent me down this path, and I don't know if it answered any questions you had.

George B. Thomas (44:41.301)

So so a couple of things.

Kyle Jepson (44:43.882)

But that's my read on the current situation.

Chris Carolan (44:45.643)

That's the best answer.

Rob Jones (44:46.283)

[Best take on HubSpot I've ever heard.]

Kyle Jepson (44:49.611)

Ha ha ha.

George B. Thomas (44:52.045)

First of all, I got it I I got it. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. I gotta unpack a couple of things or else my brain's gonna friggin' explode. I'm just saying. So one, thank you for that, Kyle, because all of that will be going into my assistant to help me make some dramatic pivot points and thoughts about how I wanna talk about inbound mindset, loop marketing mindset, the transition between and how HubSpot tools actually interact in that segment. So this is the I'm

Kyle Jepson (44:52.278)

George disagrees.

Kyle Jepson (45:06.25)

Ha ha

George B. Thomas (45:21.879)

I love that. I also love when you get excited about this because by the way, if you're sitting here watching this and you're like, well, that sounds great, Kyle, but no, no, not buts. Like there, there this has been a couple weeks or maybe even a month or two months ago. but I had a giggle moment where I was like, okay. I see you jokers right now. Like the fact that you can go and you can attach Reddit to your social feed, hello.

Kyle Jepson (45:33.26)

Ha ha ha.

George B. Thomas (45:51.952)

like anybody paying attention to AEO? Anybody understanding that Reddit is like a major place that's getting so what is HubSpot doing? They're enabling you to do something that you couldn't do before. What was HubSpot doing in 2012? Enabling you to do something you couldn't do before. By the way, the things that you can do in Breeze right now, guess what? Things you couldn't do before. But here's really what I want to go with. What you were saying is it's this and by the way, the charge that I think HubSpot was leading without knowing they were leading it.

is the idea of not being able to give up. In other words, having like this persistence, this grit, this grind to know that there's a better way and we're gonna figure out how to get there, which means you gotta be able to have enough

Yeah, I don't know what word I wanna use there, but you gotta have enough juice to get through the messy middle to get to the mountaintop of victory. And I think that's what a lot of people have to travel through and they get stuck in. And so like we we just gotta listen, you gotta not give up. Like giving up right now is the worst thing you can do ever.

Chris Carolan (46:58.571)

You have to.

Chris Carolan (47:02.133)

You have to challenge the norm because this is how we have to educate real live client scenario where they're using custom signals. First of all, we did the work to get them away from scores because they're trying to score a group of people that are not going to do any scoreable activities, right? Because the whole marketing engine that they built is inbound and it's great and it's nurture sequences and it's all the usual stuff, right?

Kyle Jepson (47:20.746)

Ha ha ha.

Chris Carolan (47:32.576)

We show them custom signals. They find a custom signal. That any salesperson would love to act on immediately. And the first response is how do we turn it into a score? Right. And that's just as much because of the norm as it is. There's a bunch of people that that their job is to do the nurturing and inbound stuff. But somebody and that person in this situation is me.

Kyle Jepson (47:48.66)

Yeah.

George B. Thomas (47:48.798)

Chris Carolan (48:01.909)

has to tell the marketing leader that you need to be able to have a 15 minute conversation with the sales leader that says, hey, this is a signal. I just want to give it to you. I just want to give it to somebody over in sales, not have to go through our systems. can email it. I can drop it in the message, but this is something we need to act on right away. We both agree on it. And then we figure out how to systematize it in that kind of education of,

This is a real signal that we don't need to overthink. Like, let's just get it to sales as soon as possible. It's when that's never been your job. Like it's hard, hard to do that. Right.

George B. Thomas (48:44.777)

Well, so here's the thing. When listening becomes more powerful than talking. And and what I'm what I'm saying, humans, when you listen more and talk less, marketing, when you listen more and broadcast less. Now you said, Chris, systems. Yes. What are the systems that need to be built from li because by the way, the reason I'm saying this is because I'm gonna put you on the mat and I'll be like Rob World, I'm talking.

Talking to you. If you're sitting here watching this right now and you don't have a voice of customer system, you ain't got no ears. You ain't listening. You can't hear the signals. You can't build a system and you can't change. So listen more than you speak. Listen more than you broadcast. And if you start to broadcast off the things you hear, then people will give two craps.

Kyle Jepson (49:42.049)

I think it's really interesting. Chris, I had not thought of I know your point was not to have a conversation specifically about scoring, but I think that's actually it's it it's even though I haven't thought about it before, my suspicion on hearing you say that is that scores are really emblematic of a larger change. Because scores were always in some sense a proxy, right? We don't have a way of looking at an individual person and understanding what is in their heart and

mind and what they intend to do, right? And so we're gonna take this constellation of behavioral clicks and views and things we can see, and and a attribute a number to it and try to rank these people and prioritize them that way. and it was always imprecise. even the ones that were really well done and most of them weren't even well done and so it was even more imprecise. And now like we're in a moment where numbers are are not necessarily we don't need to take everything we're encountering out the world

And assign in a numeric value. that was just like so we could put things in a spreadsheet and short sort them, right? And the way we interact with data now much more conversationally, is it's interesting to to just ponder on what the implications of that are, not just for lead scoring, but for the part of us that craves numbers. Like people have always loved scores, even when the scores don't make any sense.

Chris Carolan (51:00.979)

Yes.

Kyle Jepson (51:04.268)

They're always like, Yes, all of this is purely arbitrary, but this one's a seventy five and that one's a thirty two, so we're gonna go with a seventy five, right? Even though it's all made up. and now there's there's an opportunity to do things differently.

George B. Thomas (51:14.825)

Mm, mm, mm.

Chris Carolan (51:19.315)

Indeed.

Rob Jones (51:21.192)

This has been the best like fifteen minutes ever. yeah. I need to go chew on this and write down. What what I got from the the whole time you're saying this, Kyle, of like there's a parallel and like a juxtaposition. I was thinking of like f like Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, like circa nineteen hundred, right?

Just because the philosophy didn't have the thing to prove it was right yet didn't mean the philosophy wasn't correct. Right. We we could either demo HubSpot or we could sell it, but we can't do both. Should we fly? Like, should there be a more efficient way of moving from point A to point B? Yes, that was right, after however many failed attempts, right, of making an airplane. And it improved over time. The question then, like the scoring and the signal parallel at the end there is like, is

Like what about space, right? Like if you'd started measuring that as a as a a a way to think about success before that question was asked or those tools were invented to get there, you would have you it would have been like horrible results across the board. So the philosophy tends to presuppose or or precede the tools that are that are allowing you or or enabling you to make that philosophy correct. And the same type of thing is happening again with AI, to Kyle's point about like Breeze and all of that.

It was unambiguous that it didn't work at first, but that was the point. Like it didn't work at first twenty years ago, because it was more of a bet or a philosophy of how you could reach new audiences than it was like, here's a tool that we built. What's the bet? We don't know. We just want you to buy this thing. As opposed to we think there's a better way to attract new customers and to solve for them. Do you have a product?

About that, kinda, right? So like that I just feel like we're it's very cyclical in nature and now you're just adding AI and a whole host of other, you know, tools to the mix that need to be improved and developed.

Kyle Jepson (53:01.707)

Yeah.

Chris Carolan (53:13.311)

Yeah, that's a new capability that every business already has access to in the HubSpot. They don't know how to access it or act on it. And that's what I see, like loop marketing plus the five layer mark. Like that's what's needed. That's what we were calling out last year. As soon as it was announced, like I was loving it, but I'm like, people are missing it. Like everybody has, everybody can move as fast as they want.

to move like you, you have the tools, AI is available. People like us sharing free content. Like it's never been easier, but until you get in there and can like have these people in the room and say, see the signal, it's a good one. Right. Okay. Why can't we just give it to sales? What's in the way. And it's honestly humans that have jobs that have identities are in the way. And it's, I feel like.

George B. Thomas (53:43.509)

Mm. This is true, very true statement.

Chris Carolan (54:13.023)

As a coach, a lot of my job is helping them move. Like say, Hey, your job has got way easier. Like why are we having, you know, issues here? so it's, it's been fun to watch this. I, and beautiful how it's, how it's coming together. So looking forward to Unbound.

George B. Thomas (54:22.677)

Mm.

Rob Jones (54:34.599)

I want to end with a more somber note. in the HubSpot community this past weekend, this is like the worst segue of all time, but Charley Vlietstra, PDM partner development at HubSpot, passed away. I don't really know him. I just feel like it'd be remiss not to mention thoughts, prayers, condolences, all that to the family and anybody affected. This is a community-oriented show. Not mentioning that felt like malpractice. So anybody affected by that.

I I legitimately don't have words. I just have empathy. Losing anyone freaking sucks. And especially when it's untimely.

George B. Thomas (55:09.118)

Yeah.

Yeah. Prayer prayers out to all without a doubt.

Rob Jones (55:18.151)

that said in the the second worst segue ever, I could not until like the fifth time George said layer, I thought he meant like a secret lair or an evil lair.

And then all I could do was think about a five layer burrito from Taco Bell, which means it's lunchtime. This has been The Road to Unbound. Kyle, thank you for that. if you need to go back, whoever's editing this George's AI clip that last five minutes at the like eleven o'clock hour and then everything after that. That was massively helpful, inspiring, a great way to think about it, and with like legitimately on point historical context to make the point.

George B. Thomas (55:31.719)

Yes, yes, yeah, it's

Rob Jones (55:54.013)

This has been Road to Unbound. We'll be back next Wednesday, hopefully joined by Casey Greyhound of the Helpline Hawkins. Until next week. See ya.