The Road to UNBOUND Office Hours - Return on Involvement, and Where the Serendipity Actually Happens

Hugs have things. We have the UNBOUND app. We have, you know, ad hoc back channel, WhatsApp or text or whatever, like trying to connect. What's the, apart from walking up to somebody whose face looks like their LinkedIn avatar, what's the between-session way to make that serendipity happen that's in the UNBOUND culture? Like, how do you get, what's the plug-in-connect vibe? How do you find those?

I was watching reruns somehow of How I Met Your Mother yesterday. And one of the things from that show is: have you met Ted? So the law of almost a second or tertiary connection is a really good one too. Not to just go and say like, oh, I don't know you at all, let's talk - that can be weird for people like Chris and I that are maybe a little more socially weird. But Casey kind of did this last year on accident, I think, and it was to meet Jay Schwedelson. She came up and said hey to me as I was talking to Jay, and immediately made that connection. So that's pretty easy to do. Hi, I'm Casey, and my friend's Rob. That's how it goes. It gives you a really easy in.

You know, until you said ROI, Casey, I don't think I ever treated HubSpot - the INBOUND slash UNBOUND - as something to calculate ROI for. For me it's definitely not a good return on investment. It's purely networking and content. You see all those wild ideas, you hear stuff, you hear people on the hero stages and the actual product managers and in the HubSpot booth, and it gives you so many ideas, both for content and implementations. That, for me, is the real ROI. I'm not trying to land new customers there. Okay? Really, honestly.

How strong this community is - last year I had something that was so funny. I felt like Taylor Swift. Someone came to me. Actually, three people came to me: you're Karin from LinkedIn. And I said, oh wow. I've made it. And this is where you feel the community.

For me at least, especially as a partner, the sessions that are useful are more the hands-on, the hero stages and all that - and Clouds. You have to go to Clouds. INBOUND is not INBOUND if you're not going to Cloud sessions, regardless of how many times you've heard that. But this is where I'm spending my time. I'm not spending it in sessions. So if there's one tip that I can give you, it's that don't worry about the sessions. I think that feeling the vibe - going back to what I said in the beginning - you don't feel them in the sessions. You feel them when you're off sessions.

This will be my first UNBOUND. I've been to plenty of industry conferences, in other lives and industries and things before. Usually they're necessary and soul crushing. So I'm hoping that that'll be different. But probably the number one factor this year was Chris's incessant needling last year about come on, come on, aren't you going? Why? Like what? Come on. I did my best. And yeah, it wasn't in the cards last year, for sure.

The most successful kind of accidental thing we had was we had a videographer last year - it was in Boston - and he just recorded everything the whole time. So I would recommend for other people, and now for myself, to almost adopt a buddy system. Be around at least one other person that is willing to get candids of you, or record stuff, or just remind you: hey, do you mind if we capture some of this conversation? Because then it allows you to also pay attention, and not feel like you're doing things just for the sake of doing content. And it kind of exculpates you from the guilt of having a ten minute, fifteen minute conversation with somebody and not having captured it - which to me is one of the worst feelings. Why did we not at least do some of this on camera so that we could have content about it?

The situation that we are in with AI is often like: by the time you can articulate the question, that's not the problem that you're trying to solve anymore. Not because it's a learning journey, but because it's a breaking wave. Can I ask the right question about how to use AI in my business, in customer acquisition and service? Well - maybe. Six months later, by the time you kind of figure out what the domain looks like right now.

During the day: populated areas. Sit by people you don't know and just drum up conversation. And be that person - not to dip into your conversation, but I heard you talking about this. And then just involve yourself. Again, involvement. The one that is the masterclass, though - and I keep saying this, and it keeps getting busier and busier and fuller and fuller - is: do not sleep on the Westin Lobby. I've sat next to Brian Halligan on a couch in the Westin Lobby. I've talked to Remington and Doug Davidoff and Nicholas Holland when he was at HubSpot in the Westin Lobby. The amount of humans that I have had an opportunity to just converse with in the Westin Lobby. So do not sleep on that. Populated areas during the day, Westin Lobby at night and in the early morning. Oh, by the way - there is a long line in the Westin at the Starbucks, and you can talk to people for an hour while you wait for your coffee. That's a good place to involve yourself as well.

If you see me walk in the halls, you can stop me. Because nothing that I'm going to is more important than you. I would love to talk to whoever you are, listening, watching this. And if you want to walk with me and meet people as they stop and talk, then walk with me. We'll do that. Maybe the one place I will let you know that I got to go is if I'm supposed to be on stage. But hey, you can walk on stage with me. We'll present together, like it's now. I'm just kidding.

That motion still exists at UNBOUND. It's like, oh, there's that section. All right, and then there's the rest of UNBOUND. And thankful that the rest of UNBOUND is there. It's like when you go to the beach, but the beach has been visited a lot. And when you get to the beach, they warn you: right there, be careful, that's the undertow. You don't want to go over to the undertow. You want to swim over here. So there is this side of UNBOUND that is the exact opposite of UNBOUND. Which, be warned - but it's a very small piece. The interesting thing is, though, I have seen the undertow get a little bit bigger each year. But hopefully it'll shrink back down into a nothingness eventually.

It's funny, because this whole return on investment piece - first of all, I think it's the wrong word. I think when I think about INBOUND and UNBOUND, it's return on involvement. Meaning the more that you involve yourself in the things that are happening, the more serendipity allows itself to take place after the event is over, and people to reach out to you to become customers, or to ask questions, or to be available to add value to. I've had people where it's been three, four, six, eight years later come and say, oh yeah, I saw you at INBOUND, blah blah blah. And now I work for this company. And can we do X, Y, Z? Yes, we can. But to try to calculate that? I gave up a long time ago.

To your point, Karin - people coming up and saying I know you're from LinkedIn. That's the result of your work all year. Having those moments. And I met you in person last year. It's fun, and it's the outcome of the work that we do all year. And it's interesting, because why I'm hesitating saying that is: Karin, you and I don't work together. We've never exchanged money, which is usually what we think of as value and the ROI of going to these things. But it's also not. And I'm kind of in real time struggling with that.