The Road to UNBOUND - Two Weeks Out: An Orange Suit, an Inflatable Alien, and What a Personal Brand Actually Is
Hosts: Chris Carolan, Rob Jones, George B. Thomas, Kyle Jepson · Guest: Klemen Hrovat
September 2, 2026
Session reservations opened to the rest of the ticket holders on Tuesday, and the first stretch of this one is the table comparing notes on what happened when they clicked.
Klemen Hrovat waited until the evening, the way he says Europeans usually do, and found no crashes and no trouble. George B. Thomas also waited, and sailed through. Chris Carolan built his schedule live on camera and this time it held: the last time he tried it, in 2024, the system went down completely and the whole thing got pushed to the afternoon. This year it worked for a good half hour before the errors started, and he came away with the four sessions he wanted. Kyle Jepson's weekly HubSpot admin hug happened to start at the same moment registration opened, sent its entire chat at the site at once, and he owned the result on air: "We accidentally, in the admin hug, DDoSed the website, and I apologize for that." Rob Jones could not log in at all, and was still trying on air while everybody else talked.
Then the episode goes somewhere no schedule has a slot for.
Rob wears an orange suit. Klemen brings an inflatable alien. George wears a hat and a hoodie, and a man he had seen on Sunday at the church across the road knocked on his door, looked at him sideways and said, "boy, you look different with a hat on." The table pulled on that thread until Kyle stopped it: a personal brand is not a costume, and if a few thousand people all try the costume it stops working. "Hey friends" was never a decision he made, it is just how he talks. A brand you layer on top of yourself to stand out becomes a character you are stuck playing every year, whether you still want to or not.
What follows is the honest version of that argument. Rob on the suit as an extension of humor rather than a gimmick. Klemen on feeling silly the first year and on the alien now opening enterprise calls. George on why the hat and hoodie are the real thing, why a suit would be the costume, and why he is considering walking onto the UNBOUND stage this year dressed the way he actually dresses. And Kyle on the two feelings that are almost impossible to tell apart: the voice saying this is a bad idea, and the voice saying this is scary because you have never done it before.
Also in the hour: how full a full session really is and whether the standby line gets drained, what fifteen unusable hours of hallway audio taught Klemen about recording a conference, George's Wednesday agenda read out loud and his case for leaving gaps in it, Kyle's tease that the keynote format this year is more of a spectacle than usual, and where to find donuts on both Thursday and Friday morning.
Casey Hawkins is out this week. The event is sold out. Boston is September 16 to 18. Recorded Wednesdays on the way there, and anyone going is welcome in the room.
Moments from this stop
Key takeaways
The admin hug DDoSed the site.
Kyle Jepson's weekly HubSpot admin hug started at the very same moment session registration opened. Deanna told the room registrations had gone live three minutes ago and pointed everyone at the sessions to grab, the chat filled up with people stuck on a loading screen, and Kyle took it on the chin on air: "We accidentally, in the admin hug, DDoSed the website, and I apologize for that."
A personal brand is not a costume.
Kyle Jepson stopped the whole thread once it had run through the orange suit, the alien and the hat: if a few thousand people all try the costume it stops working, and there are many other options. "Hey, friends is the thing. That was never a decision I made. That's just how I talk." A brand you layer on top of yourself to stand out becomes a character you are stuck playing every year, whether you still want to or not.
Two feelings that are almost impossible to tell apart.
Kyle's most useful distinction of the hour: one voice says "Kyle, this is a bad idea, don't do it," and should be listened to. The other says "this is scary because I've never done it before," and should not. Those who are naturally cautious should probably be a little more adventurous; those who are naturally reckless should slow down and think a little more.
You cannot know the branch you did not take.
Kyle on regret: you can look back at a moment and call it a mistake, but the temptation is to assume the other option would have worked out better, and you cannot know that. "We know almost as little about the past as we do about the present and the future." His warning was to be careful how you lessonify your life.
Fear and excitement are the same energy.
George B. Thomas's answer to Kyle: the difference is only what your brain does with it. He can be fearful of stepping on the UNBOUND stage or excited to, and it is the same energy either way. He wishes more people would let themselves have the wow moments and learn from them rather than waiting.
Caught outside your own brand.
On Sunday George visited the little church across the road from his new house, did his hair and put on a nice shirt and jeans. On Tuesday a man from that church knocked on his door, looked at him sideways and said, "boy, you look different with a hat on." His point to organizations: notice the moments you get caught outside the brand people know you by.
The hoodie is the real thing
the suit would be the costume. George traced the hat and hoodie back to the hip hop era of his life rather than to a marketing decision. At fifty he could have gone suit and tie, but "that would have been a costume. That wouldn't have been the real George B. Thomas." He is contemplating stepping onto the UNBOUND stage in a hat and hoodie this year, after years of being told it would not be professional.
An outfit has to be an extension of you, not a gimmick.
Rob Jones, wearing the orange suit while he said it, agreed with Kyle that a costume alone is a slippery slope. The suit works because his personality is humor and making light of things, and the clothing matches. He plans to debut a new purple UNBOUND-themed one this year, if it arrives in time to be tailored.
The host could not get into his own conference.
Rob was locked out of UNBOUND registration for the entire episode, a ticket and email mismatch, still trying on air while everyone else compared the sessions they had booked. He kept the kudos pointed at the UNBOUND team for answering people publicly while the site struggled.
Klemen Hrovat felt silly the first year.
He worried people would treat him as a silly guy for bringing the inflatable alien to his first INBOUND. Instead people stopped by and said hi. Now enterprise clients spend the first two minutes of a Zoom call asking about the alien in his background, he explains it, they laugh, and then the serious discussion starts.
Fifteen hours of recordings and no idea who said what.
Klemen's experiment last year was to mic the entire day, on entering a hall and off leaving it. After three days he had roughly fifteen hours and, in his words, "zero chance of figuring out who said what." This year he plans something more structured, and expects AI to do a better job of processing it.
Leave time for magic in the hallways.
George's own scheduling rule, and he built this year's agenda around it: when a session ends he deliberately skips the next half hour to forty five minutes rather than letting the builder fill it. He read his whole Wednesday out loud, ending with Mel Robbins, and suggested feeding your own agenda titles back to an AI assistant afterwards and asking what they say about you and the business you are trying to run.
Not enough Revenue Hub at UNBOUND.
Chris Carolan has gone back to the Revenue Hub team about how little Revenue Hub content is on the agenda, with no deep dive and no Academy Labs among it. He is otherwise looking forward to the Academy Labs format after seeing one of the in-person sessions in Houston.
Transcript
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