Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Intro (00:01):
Do you live in a world filled with corporate data? Are
you plagued by silo departments?Are your lackluster growth
strategies demolishing yourchances for success? Are you
held captive by the evil menace,Lord Lack, lack of time, lack of
strategy, and lack of the mostimportant and powerful tool in
(00:23):
your superhero tool belt,knowledge. Never fear, hub
heroes.
Get ready to don your cape andmask, move into action, and
become the hub hero yourorganization needs. Tune in each
week to join the league ofextraordinary inbound heroes as
we help you educate, educate,empower, and execute. Hub
(00:46):
Heroes, it's time to unite andactivate your powers.
Liz Moorhead (00:51):
Welcome back to another episode of Hub Heroes,
and the gang is all here today.Chad, George, and Max who is no
longer driving.
Max Cohen (01:00):
I should've. I should've just kept it on.
George B. Thomas (01:02):
Yeah. He pulled it up for the podcast.
Liz Moorhead (01:04):
Just kept rolling for it.
George B. Thomas (01:05):
Yeah. It was a very
Liz Moorhead (01:06):
important topic we got today.
George B. Thomas (01:07):
Which well, first of all, Liz, we we have to
we have to address somethingbefore you get into too much of
the topic. Yes. Chad officiallygot his cartoon, this morning,
his hub hero.
Liz Moorhead (01:21):
Oh. Yeah. What?
George B. Thomas (01:22):
So What is it? I will be redoing the podcast
artwork, to have the one andonly, Chad Captain America on
the podcast Oh, shit. Hold
Chad Hohn (01:35):
up. Captain America.
Liz Moorhead (01:36):
Madness to us all.
George B. Thomas (01:37):
Captain America. Yeah.
Liz Moorhead (01:40):
Wait. Does that mean that my name will actually
be correct on the artwork goingforward?
George B. Thomas (01:44):
Oh, is it still the old name?
Liz Moorhead (01:47):
In some places, it is.
George B. Thomas (01:49):
Oh, well, I mean, if I'm updating it, I
guess I'll just update it all.So might as well.
Liz Moorhead (01:54):
Might as well.
Chad Hohn (01:55):
There we go.
Liz Moorhead (01:55):
It's my secret identity. That's what's going on
here. Well, how are we all doingtoday? Let's not all be so
excited. We doing okay?
Max Cohen (02:04):
We're doing good. Yeah?
Liz Moorhead (02:05):
We're doing good?
Max Cohen (02:06):
We're doing good.
George B. Thomas (02:08):
Doing good, Max.
Liz Moorhead (02:08):
We're
George B. Thomas (02:09):
gonna do the whole thing.
Chad Hohn (02:09):
Driving. In
Max Cohen (02:11):
a out in the out in the cornfields and
Liz Moorhead (02:15):
You're absolutely right, Max. Brand voice and tone
is a very important topic wherewe need to get into This is
Max Cohen (02:20):
my brand voice. Oh god.
Liz Moorhead (02:23):
This is my brand tone.
Max Cohen (02:25):
For anyone super confused, I've been playing a
lot of farming simulator.
George B. Thomas (02:31):
Max now thinks he's, like, a 65 year old, South
Carolinian, truck driver with,all sorts of equipment and
fertilizer for this episode.
Max Cohen (02:42):
Listen. If you get on that horse, you gotta ride it.
That's all I gotta say.
Chad Hohn (02:46):
So where can we find you playing farming simulator?
Max Cohen (02:50):
I haven't had the guts to go live yet.
Liz Moorhead (02:54):
When you I'll probably soon. Fun.
Max Cohen (02:56):
Yeah. I I probably will.
Chad Hohn (02:58):
I think it's I guess it's
Max Cohen (02:59):
no more it's no more embarrassing than playing my
Pokemon card shop simulator thatI've been playing too as well.
So that's a it's a whole otherepisode, though.
Chad Hohn (03:07):
Or work work simulator where you gotta be the
boss.
George B. Thomas (03:10):
Yeah. A plan. Yeah.
Liz Moorhead (03:14):
Alright. Alright. Alright, kids. Alright. Are we
ready?
Yeah. Are we ready to be adults?Yeah. Yeah.
George B. Thomas (03:19):
I mean, maybe.
Chad Hohn (03:21):
I've been ready since
George B. Thomas (03:22):
I'll do my best. An hour ago.
Liz Moorhead (03:24):
Don't start. Don't start. Because I okay. I am
very, very, very, very, very,very excited about what we're
talking about today because Ihave been listening for weeks
and happily and steadily takingnotes from all of you. Wait a
minute.
You guys nerdy
Chad Hohn (03:39):
about What
Max Cohen (03:41):
What was the first word you said?
George B. Thomas (03:42):
About Happily. Really, Max? Seriously? Oh, man.
You got a shell right now.
She was in the middle of just,like, laying it down, getting us
going.
Max Cohen (03:53):
We were we were rolling,
George B. Thomas (03:54):
and Max is like, we're
Liz Moorhead (03:55):
getting ready. I was on the horse because you
told me to ride it, and then youstopped riding.
George B. Thomas (04:00):
Wait. Is this an opportunity to shell?
Liz Moorhead (04:06):
We're talking about one of my favorite brands
today.
George B. Thomas (04:09):
Take two. Clap. Alright. Beautiful.
Max Cohen (04:12):
Leave it in.
Liz Moorhead (04:12):
Talk talking about one of my favorite topics today.
Talking about one of my favoriteareas of passion and expertise,
it's brand voice and tone.
Max Cohen (04:21):
You know what one of my favorite brands are? What
Alright. Go ahead. Sorry. Knock.
Go.
George B. Thomas (04:26):
Is it Happily? Is
Max Cohen (04:28):
that big.
George B. Thomas (04:28):
Yeah. Big. Okay.
Max Cohen (04:30):
Oh, god.
Liz Moorhead (04:31):
Alright. Alright. Big Popsicle. Calm down.
Max Cohen (04:34):
Oh.
Liz Moorhead (04:37):
Never. Uncomfortable. No. Okay. So I
want to take us back in timebecause this is not the first
time brand voice and tone hascome up in conversation here on
this podcast.
The last time we talked about itwas when the AI powered rollout
of the HubSpot content hubhappened, and it had a lot of
cool bells and whistles. And thebrand voice and tone thing left
(05:01):
a lot to be desired. We wereexcited to see it recognized,
but the ability to add one,maybe two sentences worth of
stuff there left me a littleemotionally chafed. I'm gonna be
perfectly honest. Didn't feelgreat about it.
But since then, the brand voiceand tone feature has undergone a
massive makeover within HubSpot.So we're taking a trip down this
(05:23):
road together to help usunderstand the tool and to have
a more substantive conversationabout what brand voice and tone
really is. So, George, Iactually wanna start with you.
George B. Thomas (05:35):
Yeah.
Liz Moorhead (05:35):
Can you take us through this transition of what
the original brand voice andtone feature was versus what it
is today?
George B. Thomas (05:43):
Yeah. Well, I mean, when it was released. And
by the way, I let me justpreface. I love HubSpot. I love
all the humans that, work atHubSpot.
I even love the fact that westarted a journey down this road
with this tool. Mhmm. But whenit first came out, I looked at
it and was like, nope. Not rightnow. Yeah.
(06:06):
It's not my happen. Yeah. It itI was like, no. Not happening
right now because I knew what Iwas doing in other AI platforms.
Platforms.
I knew the richness, the depth,the the context that I was able
to give it. And and, like, evengoing in the setup phase when it
originally came out, just justin setup phase, I was like, no.
(06:28):
No. Not the right questions. Notthe I can't upload.
No. Oh, I like how are youguessing my voice and tone?
Because you're really notletting me educate you on it
much. And they're just it itjust wasn't. It wasn't.
But it was because at least itwas there, but I was, like, not
gonna use it. And and then weget to where we're at now where
(06:52):
I reengaged with it and was,wow. Okay. Now we're getting
Liz Moorhead (06:58):
some of that.
George B. Thomas (07:00):
Well, first of all, as soon as I could upload
my own document with my ownvoice and tone, like, that I
wanted to give it, that was a aa sure sign of, like, things
were changing and a winner forme because, I mean, we've we've
helped multiple clients withtheir kind of voice tone GPT
(07:21):
custom, like, you know, soundlike you stuff. And so we
finally were able to kinda getthat in our HubSpot system, and
it really made setup a littlebit easier. But, man, there's
just there's so much. I I Ican't wait to go through all the
pieces that we now have. But forthose of you that might be
listening to this and you'relike, what do you mean voice and
(07:44):
tone?
Well, what we're talking aboutis the brand voice. And and
here's what's funny, Liz, aswe're having this. It's
literally still has a beta tagnext to it, which again which
again, I go, hey. When it firstcame out, it was like and now
it's like, whee. And it's andwhee all in all we in beta.
(08:05):
All in beta. Like, this isn'teven, like, fully, hey. Yes. We
are saying that it is all thereat this point. And so to to say
something that I say quite oftenis that, even though it was
worse, this is the worst that'llever be because they'll continue
to make it better.
But there's just so much there'sjust so much good here. And,
(08:26):
again, if you think about lastweek and how we talked about
data sources and the rich amountof context that, we're starting
to align things and connectthings. Yeah. It's just it's
it's really good.
Liz Moorhead (08:38):
Yep. I when I looked at that tool initially, I
I had a very similar reactionthat you had, which is like, why
are we even bothering doingthis?
George B. Thomas (08:49):
Mhmm. Yeah.
Liz Moorhead (08:50):
Like, if if it's not ready, you're telling me
that your your first foray intothe authenticity and soul of
what a brand sounds like is a,here's the little text box where
you could fit a sentence in bestof luck at Godspeed. Like, it
just I was like, what are wedoing here? And also voice and
tone are not the same thing.Like, there there's a we're
(09:13):
gonna get into this conversationmore deeply because I think this
is a really exciting thing thatHubSpot is doing. I think it's
going to create, I'll put a niceword on it, complexity.
Mhmm. It's going to create morequestions, I think, than answers
for some if they even realizethey're there. So I think we're
entering a very interestingperiod here, but quite frankly,
(09:34):
it's just nice to see HubSpotrolling out new actual content
tools.
Chad Hohn (09:40):
Yeah. Oh, yeah.
Liz Moorhead (09:41):
That that's what excites me about it. Chad, Max,
how do you feel about this? Haveyou had a chance to poke around?
Do you have thoughts,grievances, opinions?
Max Cohen (09:51):
I mean, I haven't played with the new one, or
whatever the newest version ofit is since it launched because
it came out at the beginning,and I was kinda like, oh, okay.
You know, and and the way that Ilooked at it is like a baby
step. Right?
Chad Hohn (10:03):
Baby step one.
Max Cohen (10:04):
You know, just like anything else. Right? You know,
everything starts with a just atiny little pitter patter of a
baby step in HubSpot, which ishow it should how it should be.
You know, I think it's probablyreally important that they
start, heavily investing interms of, you know, what else
this brand voice touchesthroughout all of HubSpot
(10:27):
because, again, at inbound, theyunited all of those, you know,
AI tools under one, you know,one brand voice, if you will,
which is now Breeze. Right?
And so I think, like, you know,as that starts to become a more,
like, cohesive sort of singularproduct within HubSpot. Right?
And, you know, obviously, it'stouching so many different
(10:47):
things. All those differentthings that Breeze does can be,
you know, affected in one way oranother by your brand voice from
the emails that your sales repsare writing through Copilot to
the way that your agentsinteract with and talk to people
and the demeanor that they haveand the, I don't know, the the
(11:10):
the values they have in terms ofhow they operate. Right?
You know, there's so manydifferent things that, you know,
are used by Breeze to basicallyrepresent your company through,
you know, an an an AI,essentially. Like, you know,
putting it out there terms ofthe way it writes with stuff,
the way it interacts withpeople, all these different
things, you know, that you wannamake sure that that experience
(11:34):
and that sort of brand voice, ifyou will, is consistent across
all of those different things.Right? So, you know, if there's
any time, for, you know, HubSpotto really, really push the pedal
down on the brand voice tools inHubSpot, I think it's now.
Right?
Because you don't want thatbrand voice to just be present
in your blog articles. You don'twant it to just be present in
(11:56):
some other content it's creatingfor you. You want it to be
present in things like the AIchatbot and the way your your
reps are communicating withpeople and how it's assisting
them do that and things likethat. So, you know, I'd like to
see them really kinda push thepedal down on it, and I welcome
any and all updates to it.
George B. Thomas (12:12):
But Let let me dive in there for one quick
second, Chad, before you gobecause one of the things that I
want everybody to realize,that's listening to this, when
you turn brand voice on, it isalready and you'll you'll when I
say this, you'll you'll you'llsay, oh, there's some things
missing. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah. We know. We know.Yeah.
Yeah. Hopefully, they'll gethere soon. But when you turn
(12:33):
brand voice on, it it instantlywill apply to your social posts.
Liz Moorhead (12:39):
Mhmm.
George B. Thomas (12:39):
It'll apply to your emails. It'll apply to your
blog posts, your website, yourlanding pages, and SMS messages.
The really other cool thing bythe way, if there's more than
HubSpot, go update yourknowledge article because that's
literally what I'm looking at asa brand voice knowledge. Like,
because immediately, I'm like,like, success. Uh-oh.
Or, like, maybe reference theagents because the agents are
(13:02):
coming out. They should probablybe here. But here's what's also
cool if you're listening to thisand and you happen to be
somewhere other than America.Brand voice is also available in
Spanish, Portuguese, French,German, and Japanese for the
social email blog pages and SMScontent as well. So I I love the
fact that it's going, outside ofjust blog articles, Max, but
(13:27):
across all of the thingseventually.
Yeah. Chad, what are yourthoughts?
Chad Hohn (13:33):
Yeah. I think, it's interesting that BrandVoice and
it makes sense, but BrandVoiceis found as part of BrandKit. So
I'm very interested to see, aswell that get tied into things
like business units for when inone HubSpot portal, you have
multiple segments that possiblysolve different problems for
(13:56):
different industries that arecross segmented or related, for
that brand voice to whensomebody logged into one
business unit is using it versusanother be different in your
generate like, what you'regenerating with your emails or
your reps or different things.Another place that it'd be
really cool, I think, to see itis to really dive down into your
(14:20):
interactions with Copilotbecause that has been getting so
powerful. Like, I was on asupport ticket the other day and
just asked Copilot, like, hey.
Did mister wizard, who I wastalking to, open up the last
email I sent him on this ticket?And it just, like, checked the
activity and told me if heopened it or not or whatever.
(14:41):
Because I was in help desk, andit didn't and I didn't wanna go
click it. I'm like, oh, let meask Copilot just to check and
see. And it's like, it's gettingso good that I'd love for it to
be able to, like, even coach newreps through how do we do
business as well, like, becausethat's the next evolution of
this kind of a thing.
But, you know, it being tied intighter and tighter, I think
(15:04):
having it segmented kind of perbusiness unit for more larger
enterprise type portals, it justmakes a lot of sense. Right? And
I think maybe it might notultimately be part of your brand
kit at some point, but it'll beyour AI voice along with, like,
your content voice, you know, ifthat makes sense, or shapes your
AI, train your AI model type ofthe thing. Right?
George B. Thomas (15:27):
Yeah. I I love the idea of it for business
units because as someone who,you know, we we struggle. The
good thing is we sound a lotalike in the different places
that we are. Right. Like,imagine the tweaks that we could
make for psychic strategiesversus beyond your default
versus, like, superhumanframework.
And Right. Right now, it's kindof like the way our portal's set
(15:50):
up. We've got one. And, also butif it was for business units and
you could have multiple voices,I think that would be super
sweet, in the future. So, hey,if HubSpot if you're if you're
listening and that's somethingthat's coming, then let us know
because inquiring minds we'recurious.
Chad Hohn (16:07):
I think that's the intent based on how it's laid
out in the URL. Right? It'sunder brand kit, and then you're
setting up for your portal orfor this sorry. For this
specific brand kit, you'resetting up the brand voice. And
if you can have multiple brandkits, I think you can already
possibly set up more than onebrand voice.
That would be that would begreat.
George B. Thomas (16:27):
I need to do some digging on that because
that's that's definitely a thingto shout about.
Max Cohen (16:31):
Mhmm. You know what I just noticed looking through the
knowledge base article of, BrandKit is that you can do
replacement rules where it willreplace certain words with other
words.
Liz Moorhead (16:42):
We're getting there.
George B. Thomas (16:43):
We're getting there. Oh. Dressing. Woah. Woah.
Woah. Woah.
Max Cohen (16:47):
Woah. Woah. Woah. Yo. Talk about the greatest prank
potential of all time.
Every time someone writes AI,just replace it with the word
hot dog.
George B. Thomas (17:00):
You know the amount of hours it would take
somebody to figure out why thatwas happening?
Max Cohen (17:04):
Why is
George B. Thomas (17:05):
it happening?
Chad Hohn (17:05):
They'd submit a support ticket to HubSpot. No
time, dude. For support rep.
Max Cohen (17:13):
Oh, yeah. We have some fun here.
Liz Moorhead (17:15):
This is how we, get to the real tips and tricks,
the things that are really gonnamove people's businesses
forward. Like, that's
George B. Thomas (17:21):
That's what we're gonna do.
Max Cohen (17:22):
Hot dogs. Is that high IQ insight people listen to
the podcast for? You know?Right. Right.
For sure.
Liz Moorhead (17:28):
Biggest upgrade. Quick question for you guys. Do
you think that this tool isactually gonna have an impact on
the content we're seeing,companies put out now?
George B. Thomas (17:37):
Without a doubt. Already is. So let me
give you so first of all, beforeI answer that, the fact now,
Liz, that you can do things likepersonality, and and and Max
kinda let the cat out the bag,but you can do personality, and
you can do up to four differentcharacteristics. You can do
default, tone. And so, again,you can do four characteristics.
(18:00):
But you can also add in yourcompany mission up to, like, 50
words. Between those eightthings, four and four, you know,
four plus four, high IQ, eightthings and this company mission.
It's it's crazy how the contextand specificity that you're
giving this thing, but also youhave a terms to avoid. And then,
(18:24):
like Max said, you have areplacement rule. So if there
are things that you don't wantto actually talk about or if you
wanna talk about things in acertain way.
And what's really great aboutthis is it is powered too by
Copilot where you can literallyselect the paragraph of text.
And, sure, you can do thingslike expand or shorten or
(18:45):
whatever, but you literally justsay use my brand voice, and then
you get a chance to look at whatit spits out versus what it has.
And it's I'll I'll equate it to,like, it's almost like the the
fine tooth finish or whateveryou wanna call the the thing
that you thought you had it theway you wanted it, but now you
could apply this brand voice toit. And and here's the real
(19:07):
world example. I created a pieceof content.
I created it in, GPT, like I hadbeen with a custom, Sidekick
Strategies GPT. I put it inHubSpot, and I then applied to
every single sentence inparagraph brand voice. And then
I sent it over to this person.You might have met him, my
(19:29):
content strategist, Liz. And Isaid, what do you think of this
one?
And these are the words that Iwanted to hear. She said, this
is the best one you've sent meso far. So when Liz asked
Max Cohen (19:41):
wrote it myself.
George B. Thomas (19:42):
The the the yeah. When Liz goes, is this
gonna make an impact? Yes. Ifset up properly, and if used in
the right way, and if there's afoundational piece that didn't
suck to begin with, it's gonnaget you to the next level of,
like, oh, that's dope. That's myanswer.
Max Cohen (20:08):
I think you're pretty aligned with Jordan on that.
Right? I think it just like anyother tool in HubSpot, people
it'll have an impact if peopleuse it correctly. Right? My fear
is a lot of people are gonnaignore it, and I don't want that
to happen.
Not that I think, like, it'sgonna get ignored. I just think
that, you know, sometimes thebest parts of HubSpot go
unnoticed by folks who aren'tusing it the right way. Right?
(20:29):
It's the it's the new version ofpeople who just buy it to be an
email tool. Right?
You know, so I think what'llhappen is that this will at
least be a factor in, you know,improving the quality of AI
(20:50):
content. Right? You know,instead of just blasting stuff
out because people want to savetime. Right? So, you know, for
the folks that do or aresuccessful, you know, creating
and refining their content viaAI, I think this will be a, a
(21:10):
common thing you see folks whoare doing it the right way use.
And so hopefully, we can see itbe very well adopted among the
folks that are leveraging AI ina good way is my take. Wait.
You're muted. You're muted.
Liz Moorhead (21:27):
I made a joke. I made a few good men
Max Cohen (21:29):
go get it. Suck.
Liz Moorhead (21:31):
I said, is that the take and nothing but the
take? Can we even handle thetake?
Max Cohen (21:36):
That's the take.
George B. Thomas (21:37):
Oh, well, yeah.
Chad Hohn (21:38):
That's Well, we couldn't because we couldn't
hear it.
George B. Thomas (21:45):
It's a power up for you, Liz.
Liz Moorhead (21:47):
Thanks, bud. Thank you. I really appreciate that,
guys.
Max Cohen (21:51):
Chad, do you have a take?
Liz Moorhead (21:54):
I mean What's going on?
Max Cohen (21:56):
Where we are going, we don't need no takes. Go
ahead. Sorry. Just
Chad Hohn (22:01):
need a 25 k gooseneck and some marshmallows on the
back.
George B. Thomas (22:10):
Love it.
Max Cohen (22:10):
Would you
Liz Moorhead (22:11):
define your brand voice right now, bud?
Chad Hohn (22:13):
Oh, I mean Blue blue. Exquisite.
Liz Moorhead (22:16):
Yeah. Blue. Question. Yeah. What is Giga
Chad's brand voice in town?
Chad Hohn (22:22):
Giga Chad is is back home, actually. So I'm traveling
right now. I ain't got noGigachad when I'm traveling. Up.
George B. Thomas (22:30):
We can't Gigachad today. Wait. Is that a
Max Cohen (22:32):
green screen?
George B. Thomas (22:33):
Yes. Yeah.
Chad Hohn (22:34):
It's a
Liz Moorhead (22:34):
fake printer. Yeah.
Chad Hohn (22:36):
Fake glowing printer. Real. Yeah. It's because I'm
using my graphics card to dobackground replacement instead
of, like, the little, you know,cheeserton one that comes with
the program.
Max Cohen (22:47):
Oh. Here we go. Wow.
Chad Hohn (22:48):
That's my memory.
Liz Moorhead (22:49):
Just tell me how you really feel.
Chad Hohn (22:52):
Yeah. Like, I mean What the does cheeserton mean?
You know? Oh, what the fuck?Rails.
Max Cohen (22:58):
Alright. Sorry. Chad, go ahead. Go ahead.
Liz Moorhead (23:01):
Go ahead.
Max Cohen (23:01):
Go ahead.
Chad Hohn (23:02):
Yeah. I mean, like, this isn't, this isn't my area
of specialty, expertise. Right?Like, content is not something
that I've ever really produced.Like, I've done things like this
where I share, you know, on, onan episode, like, in at with Hub
Heroes, but, like, activelygoing out of my way to write
content, that's not somethingthat I have tons and tons of
(23:25):
experience with.
I can help set up the tools. Iagain, like, I'm much more of,
like, an API plumber type of aperson. Like, I connect the old
systems and make this stuff flowthrough. You know? Make it do
what you need it to do.
Right? That's my jam. So, andand actually having, something
to guide a simpleton like myselfin the correct direction in this
(23:49):
kind of a thing, I think, isreally cool. But I'm I mean, I'm
a little bit curious. Like, youknow, is this something that can
help a company?
You know, like, maybe I'll ask aquestion out there. Like, is
this something that can help acompany, like, reproduce maybe
the mission and vision of theCEO? Like, the CEO of a company
(24:10):
says, hey. This is what we doand who we are and, you know,
helps the new people reallycatch that vision or speak like
that person that originally madethe business successful in the
first place? I mean, is thatwhere this ultimately can go?
Like, I see the connecting ofthe dots and the plumbing in the
back end, but, like,practically, I guess, you know,
(24:31):
maybe that's a good question forLiz. Like, is this something you
see that being able to do, or isthis, you know, something
helpful? Right?
Max Cohen (24:41):
Like, can we
Chad Hohn (24:42):
In that way?
Max Cohen (24:42):
Can we take our founders founders brain and
upload it into the matrix wherehe can live forever?
Chad Hohn (24:48):
Literally. I mean, just like, you know,
Max Cohen (24:50):
I don't passes on, his brand voice will live
throughout the company
Liz Moorhead (24:55):
Well, I can't
Max Cohen (24:56):
generations after that.
Liz Moorhead (24:58):
So this is where we start getting into, I think,
one of the biggest potentialchallenges here
Max Cohen (25:02):
Right.
Liz Moorhead (25:03):
Is that your voice is not your message. Your your
voice is not the what of whatyou're saying. Right? So your
message is the what of whatyou're saying. Your voice and
tone is your style.
Right. It's how you say it.Mhmm. Right? So for example,
George's what's are it's it'sall about the humans.
It's about HubSpot. It's theactual tactical education that
(25:25):
he does about HubSpot. But hisvoice and tone is the packaging.
It is not the message.
Chad Hohn (25:32):
Yeah. So the wrapping
Liz Moorhead (25:33):
is about where I think a lot of people get really
tripped up with this is thatthey are going to think that
voice and tone is going to be away to come up with more whats.
And you still have to have amessage. You still have to have
your own set of core beliefs.You still have to have your own
points of view. Mhmm.
(25:54):
Like, saying you're warm andapproachable, and we say hot dog
instead of artificialintelligence. Like, that is
stuff that is stylistic.
Chad Hohn (26:03):
Right.
Liz Moorhead (26:04):
That is that is just making you sound like a
human.
Max Cohen (26:08):
Mhmm.
Liz Moorhead (26:08):
But what gets even more interesting about this what
gets even more interesting aboutthis is that when I think about
companies that try to operatemore like media companies,
right, or where you havemultiple thought leaders
underneath the same roof,they're not supposed to sound
like each other.
Max Cohen (26:24):
Mhmm.
Liz Moorhead (26:25):
They're supposed to sound like themselves. So,
like, when I used to be theeditor in chief at Impact, you
know, we had a we had an Impactbrand voice, but all of our
editorial, every single bylinewas an individual human being.
And we worked with each of themto make sure that they sounded
just like themselves. Now therewas some stylistic polish that
went on top. You know, we had APstyle, so we had certain rules
(26:47):
for, like, commas and stuff likethat.
Right? But for the most part,you know, there this is one of
those tools where it's veryexciting, but there isn't a ton
of knowledge or education outthere about what this stuff
actually is, what it isn't, andhow and when you use it. Like,
think about the disparity thatwe're gonna see in content
(27:08):
where, you know, George, you andI get to work together, and
that's really exciting, but noteverybody has a list.
George B. Thomas (27:13):
Yeah. Yeah.
Liz Moorhead (27:13):
You know? Not everybody gets to, like, hang
out and talk nerdy shop aboutbrand voice and tone, which is a
very niche specialty area. Sohooray. I'm so glad we all get
to upload documents, but there'sreally no guidance on what that
is supposed to look like,especially since it's like it's
kinda like asking what somebodysomebody what a content strategy
(27:34):
is. You ask 10 different people,you're gonna get 10 different
answers on what that documentlooks like.
George B. Thomas (27:38):
So it's it's interesting. I wanna I wanna
one, I want you to talk about,in a minute, the document that
we created to actually actuallyupload and use to to do the
voice and tone. The, probably,superhuman framework is is the
greatest example that you've,done lately. I want you to talk
(27:59):
about that for a minute and whatthat kinda looks like. But but
what you just said, I think, isreally important.
And, again, I don't know howmany people from HubSpot
actually listen to this podcastor not. But when you started to
talk about individual voices, Istarted to think back to our
episode on data sources lastweek where one of the things was
(28:20):
the user. Right? You can go andput, like, I'm this role and,
like, imagine if there was,like, an overarching brand voice
that was the rules and thingsthat you wanted to set, but
imagine if there was anotherlayer of this that it could be
programmed per individual human.And so if you went to write the
(28:42):
email or if you went to do thesocial poster, you went to write
a blog article, it actuallyknew, oh, I'm supposed to look
at this brand voice, but I'malso supposed to use this
human's, you know, brand voiceor tone or whatever you wanna
call it.
Now all of a sudden, we'regetting double context. We're
getting more specific. These arethe levers I think HubSpot could
(29:05):
start to pull of, like because,again, I'm gonna sound different
than Max. Max is gonna sounddifferent than Chad. Liz is
gonna sound better and probablysmarter than all of us combined.
But if we at least had thisinformation at a user level to
be combined with the brand voicethat is also then connected or
combined with the data sources,now we're getting somewhere. But
(29:28):
but, Liz, talk about thisdocument so people can kind of
understand what we're eventalking about and why I got
excited about the fact that,well, we can upload our own
document now.
Liz Moorhead (29:37):
So it's interesting. The document that
I'm gonna walk through, we didthis obviously for the the
superhuman framework, which,George, we could get into at a
later time what that actuallyis, but it it it's an incredible
passion project that we'reworking on together. But the
what what's interesting about itis that I actually created a
hybrid document that is both amessaging strategy and a voice
(29:59):
and tone document. Because rightnow, there is no place to put a
messaging strategy for yourbusiness or your company within
HubSpot. So and so whenever Ithink about, you know, what are
the documents that peopleactually need in a business, you
need a messaging strategy andyou need a voice and tone
document.
You need both. You need to knowwhat you're saying and you need
to know how you're saying it.You can't just know how to say
(30:22):
something without knowing yourwhat, and you can't just know
what you're saying withouthaving some thought or intention
behind what how that's going tosound when it comes flying out
of your digital face. Right? Sowhat I did was I created a
hybrid document where the firstpart is the messaging strategy.
I documented what the superhumanframework is. I documented key
terms and our chosen definitionsfor them. This is what we say it
(30:46):
is. This is what we say itisn't. These are the different
components of it.
This is how each of them aredefined. And then I also
included a section of this ishow we are competitively
different from other similarframeworks. So it understood how
to position us and understoodour place in the market. Because
a great brand messaging strategyis gonna have a number of
(31:08):
components. It's going to havethe what.
It's going to have the where. Soyour marketplace, where do you
fit? How who are you? How areyou different? And then I went
into a big comprehensiveaudience overview just so
everything was in a singleplace.
Mhmm. But unlike a lot of whatthe persona tool does and does
not allow you to do, I went alittle bit more emotional. So I
(31:33):
said, who is our audience? And Iran through a big list of who
they are. Then I ran throughwhat are their current
challenges.
Great. So disengagement,burnout, high turnover, culture
misalignment, performancepressures, communication
breakdowns, and then we godeeper. So how do they feel
about where they currently are?They're frustrated because of x
y z. They're isolated because ofa b c.
(31:55):
They're skeptical because ofone, two, three, and on and on.
There are a few more like that.And these are very clearly
defined. We don't just say theyfeel frustrated. We say they're
frustrated because they feellike they're spinning their
wheels, constantly putting outfires without seeing meaningful
progress.
They feel isolated becauseleadership is lonely, especially
when it seems like no one elseunderstands or shares their
(32:17):
burdens. So each one has a microstory in it. Then we talk about
what their goals are. They wannabuild stronger teams, reduce
burnout, improve retention. Andthen what do they want from us?
Connection, clarity, competence,impact, and each of those has a
bit of story behind them. Andthen I ended that section with
situational examples. Like,Karen is the VP of operations at
(32:39):
a growing temp company. Her teamhas seen an uptick in burnout
and disengagement after monthsof pushing hard to meet
aggressive goals. She'sfrustrated by the high turnover
and feels the pressure tobalance productivity with
creating a healthier, moresustainable team culture.
She needs a framework to aligntheir leadership with meaningful
action, reduce burnout, andfoster long term loyalty and
engagement. But there are, like,six or seven of those. There are
(33:00):
lots of them. And so that's justthe messaging piece. Right?
Because in order to feedsomething voice and tone, it
needs context. It needs tounderstand what the heck we're
doing here. Now if at some pointlater on, there's a place to
dump a messaging strategy in,this makes it a lot easier.
Although HubSpot make sure theytalk to each other. Make sure, I
(33:21):
don't know, you find someone whocan educate about how these two
things are codependent and worktogether.
I don't know who that personmight be. Some beautiful tall
angel who falls down a lot anddoesn't know how to ride a bike.
Common. But after that, we thenwe get into the brand voice and
tone. Right?
So this is where I have to do alittle educating for our
audience. Voice and tone are notthe same thing. They are two
(33:41):
codependent elements of yourbrand personality. Your brand
voice, that is what someone issupposed to think about you all
the time without you having totell them. You are warm.
You are friendly. You areapproachable. Right? You are
traditional, modern, however youwanna put it. Tone is how you
deliver on the the promise ofyour voice.
(34:02):
It is what you actually soundlike. Oh, so you are a
challenging, innovative,visionary brand voice. Right? So
you speak clearly. You speakconcisely.
You include facts. You you don'tuse passive language. You use
active language wheneverpossible. It's how it manifests.
(34:26):
How do you sound?
How do you deliver on thepromise of being warm and
approachable and friendly?Sounding conversational by using
plain language. So, again, it'sthe delivery mechanism of that.
So that's voice and tone. That'show they work together.
Tone is also a little bit moredynamic. Right? You may see your
tone shift depending on thecontext. A blog article might be
(34:47):
more personal. It might be more,one to one, more human, more
conversational.
A case study is going to be morejust the facts man. It's gonna
be just facts and figures, alittle less editorializing, a
little less fluff. And then weget to dos and don'ts. Talk
about this is how you do embracethis voice and embody this voice
(35:09):
is how you don't do it, then weget into tone. What I really
like about what I did in thistone document and maybe I should
share this as an example in theshow notes just so people can
look through it.
Chad Hohn (35:19):
Yeah.
Liz Moorhead (35:20):
But I talk about the different context. In
educational content, this is thetone. This is how it sounds.
This is what you avoid. Inempathetic situations, in urgent
calls to action, inconversational interactions,
each one has a set of rules.
Then, finally, this is my newfavorite thing, and I'm so
curious to see how thisinfluences our outputs. AI and
(35:41):
machine learning models are allabout if then statements. Right?
They use logic to makedecisions. But if we don't
program some of that logic forthem, they can sometimes make
what they think is the bestdecision possible.
So, Chad, I'm actually gonnashare my screen just so the guys
can see what I'm looking atbecause I wanna see if what Chad
(36:02):
thinks of it. I'm so curious. Sothis is what I'm looking at
here. So I created a bunch of ifthen statements. Mhmm.
Who am I speaking to, and whatare they feeling right now? If
they're overwhelmed, do this. Ifthey're hopeful or curious, do
that. Does this message addresstheir pain points directly? If
not, do this.
If yes, do that. So I created abunch of different questions
George B. Thomas (36:26):
Mhmm.
Liz Moorhead (36:26):
That help them hopefully make decisions.
Because I thought about it thisway. I'm either giving this to a
machine or I'm giving this to aperson. Because voice and tone
documents, brand messagingdocuments, these are all
incredibly subjective. They aremeant to be manuals for your
content creators or anybody whohas to create assets that are a
part of your brand.
(36:47):
But they're always gonna havemoments where they have to make
decisions. Yeah. So I wanted tocreate opportunities for them to
still have creative freedom andflexibility Yeah. But understand
where to move and pivot if thereare changes.
Max Cohen (36:59):
Mhmm.
Liz Moorhead (37:00):
So this is this is what this beautiful child looks
like. I love her.
Chad Hohn (37:03):
I think that's fascinating. I'll go go ahead.
No.
George B. Thomas (37:06):
You Go ahead, Chad.
Chad Hohn (37:07):
Okay. Yeah. So I think that's fascinating. I
mean, the part that I think isfascinating about that so
there's two places that that mybrain goes, when I look at,
like, all those if thenstatements at the end. And,
realistically, it's like, it'sgonna process it sequentially
most likely.
Right? Meaning, like, if this,do that. And so, like, at some
(37:27):
point, it's gonna be like, oh,hey. Is it this? And then it's
gonna rewrite it in some partsand not in others depending on
the action inputs first.
So, like, this is an example.And and if that's by design in
that order, then awesome. Youknow? Right? But if there are
some parts of it where it'slike, if it rewrote this and
(37:53):
then didn't rewrite that, itcould yield something
interesting.
Right? That that's one place.And because, like, I always go
back to, like, ever since Istarted getting more heavy into
automation and data and reallyunderstanding how, like, the
Internet works and, like, howtools are connected and
(38:13):
integrations work, my poor wife,I feel so bad for her because
she's like, hey. Could you goget me the black shirt from the
closet? And I'm like, yeah.
And I returned the first blackshirt because she didn't give me
any additional criteria. Like,oh, I wanted the long sleeve one
that has, like, the button on itor whatever. Right? And I'm
(38:34):
like, I've gotten so much worsesince I've gotten more, like,
programmatic because I thinkstart to think more literally
about the stuff. And, like,yeah, LLMs sound so human and
conversational, but it is gonnatake the easiest path to the
Liz Moorhead (38:53):
Oh, a %.
Chad Hohn (38:54):
Answer you requested. And that's, I think, something
that people forget because it'slike it is a lot of times like,
oh, you just asked it aquestion, it'll do thing, and,
like, you talk to it, like, inyou know, with your voice and
whatever. Right? Depending onwhat models you're using. But
yeah.
So, like, I think the the theorder, if it's how you want it
(39:15):
and, like, if you think throughthat Yep. Then that's
phenomenal.
Liz Moorhead (39:19):
It's interesting. I actually wanna point one thing
out here really quick just toanswer Chad's question about
this. So if anybody went toGeorge's AI talk at inbound this
year, he gave away an editorialchecklist that goes in a very
specific order of how youanalyze a piece of content. And
it's always granular structure,a little bit higher level
(39:40):
substance, a little bit whetherand then toward the end, it just
starts getting more into style.
Max Cohen (39:45):
Mhmm.
Liz Moorhead (39:46):
So there is a definite and definitive order in
which it moves in, and that'swhy I'm curious to play with
this. It's just again, itcreates this sadness for me
where it's like there isn'tenough education out there about
brand voice and tone. So we'rehaving conversations that many
organizations may not even behaving. They may just be excited
to call it warm, friendly, andapproachable. Max, I'm sorry.
I cut you off. Go ahead.
Max Cohen (40:06):
This is to me I know we were listing off where brand
voice gets applied. Do we knowif it if it hits customer agent
yet?
George B. Thomas (40:15):
Not that we know of yet because it doesn't
say it in the knowledge article,which is why I kind of alluded
to, if if anybody from HubSpot'slistening, the that agent, the
prospecting agent, the like, allof the agents
Chad Hohn (40:30):
Yeah. Really need to be tied
George B. Thomas (40:31):
in and pay attention to this.
Max Cohen (40:33):
Yeah. Yeah. I'd say I'd say even so customer service
is so different at every singlecompany because everyone sells
different stuff. Everyone hasdifferent types of customers.
Everyone has different types ofprocesses in the background.
Everybody has nuances around theway, you know, they serve their
customers and what to do indifferent situations. Right? And
(40:55):
I think it's really hard tobuild an interface around that
to create a lot of that logic.Sure. Can you build an interface
to control what happens insideof HubSpot and, like, your
process there?
Yeah. Totally. Can you buildworkflows to do different things
with tickets? Sure. Right?
But that customer agent, the theAI stuff behind it, what I what
(41:16):
I really think it's gearedtowards right now is understand
what they're saying and go findknowledge based articles. And if
they don't work, go give a wayto get back and go go create a
way to get a ticket. Right? But,like, this document that you're
showing me, Liz, where you werewriting through all those, like,
if then, you know, statements.Right?
(41:38):
This like, just imagine if youcould take your customer agent
and literally just upload, thisis our customer service
playbook. Yeah. If you encountersomeone with this situation,
here's what to ask. This is whatto do. Right?
And, like, an AI can get smartenough to, like or the AI
already is smart enough justlike it's it's smart enough to
(41:58):
understand your brand doing,Tony, or just by reading this.
Right? Like, that would be suchan amazing thing to be able to
say, like, hey, here's how wehandle all these different
nuance situations, what to say,what to ask for. Right? Like,
this would be an unbelievableway to train those customer
agents in a much more meaningfulway of, like, here's the URL and
(42:19):
here's the content.
Go find it. If it matches whatthey're looking for, give them
the article. Right?
Chad Hohn (42:23):
They don't have as words
Liz Moorhead (42:25):
in it. This is where we start getting into a
weird space, though. George,what were you gonna say, bud?
George B. Thomas (42:29):
Yeah. So here's here's I wanna just lean
in in the list. I know you'dwanna get into, like, the weird
space thing, but I I wanted tocircle back around on something
that, a, aligned with somethingyou said when you were talking
about this document, and, b,aligns with, Max, what you're
kind of saying. I want everybodyto know inside of brand voice,
there is channel specificsettings, which you can flip
(42:53):
switches on that say use thedefault tone or use the
different tone for. And rightnow, there's blogs, case
studies, email, pages, podcasts,and social.
So there literally is a placethat I can be like, okay. I
wanna tweak the tone to this.Now imagine if it was, I wanna
tweak the tone and tweak thisand tweak this for this. Now all
(43:15):
of a sudden, we get a realinteresting place. But this is
also the screen where I wouldlove to see, well, social
probably stands for the socialagent, but, like, prospecting
agent or a success agent.
Like, I would wanna see thoseagents in this channel specific
settings to be able to do thethings that we're talking about
(43:36):
in today's podcast at a verygranular level. Because, again,
I think the big problem withthis is, one, people might not
just be doing it like Liz saysor not might not understand it.
And when they do do it, it'ssuch a broad brushstroke. And
this is literally where I wouldsay in HubSpot and in your
business, this is one of thosescalpel strategies, not
(43:57):
sledgehammer strategies.
Liz Moorhead (43:58):
Mhmm.
George B. Thomas (43:59):
Like, specificity is gonna win the day
per channel, per tone, per, likeYeah. Alright. Go ahead, Liz.
Liz Moorhead (44:05):
Yeah. So the weird space that we're entering into
is where, guys, voice and toneis so much simpler than we think
it is in some ways. Right? Like,I had to do a lot of writing out
here, and what the what the guysare looking at right now is the
section where I talked about howdo they feel about their current
state, what are the goals theywant to achieve, and why, and
what do they want from us, andthen the situational examples
(44:25):
and scenarios. What this comesdown to is literally just being
a human flipping being.
George B. Thomas (44:32):
Mhmm.
Liz Moorhead (44:33):
Like, if somebody shows up and they are frustrated
and feeling skeptical, but theyare hopeful and determined, that
means you need to show up andacknowledge their frustration
and validate where they areright now and why. And this
often gets packaged under a wordthat I am growing to load with
every fiber of my being, andthat is empathy. Empathy is not
(44:55):
a Band Aid. Empathy is a Trojanhorse word that allows people to
say, well, I'm showing up withempathy. I said, hi.
I see you're frustrated. That'sa freaking bummer. No. That is
not actually showing empathy.Real empathy is showing up and
saying, man, you're frustrated,aren't you?
I get it. You have so muchdownward pressure coming from
(45:16):
above, upward pressure from thepeople you're leading from
below. You're being told twothings that seem to be mutually
exclusive. Your people must hitthese goals. Create a safe work
environment where people canbalance work and life.
And you're just sitting there inthe middle going, sure, Jan.
Happy to. Absolutely. That isshowing up. That is meeting an
(45:39):
emotional need.
Jan Jan sucks.
Chad Hohn (45:41):
Jan sucks. Sandals, Jamaica.
Liz Moorhead (45:42):
Serenity by Jan candles are terrible. Anyway and
that's where I think we get intovery interesting conversations
around brand voice and tone. Youdo need all these rules. You
need to understand what are thethings are that you need to
document. But literally, youwere just sitting down and
saying, well, who is the humanbeing in front of me, and why
are they showing up this way inthis moment?
Not just what are they askingand what do they want from me.
Chad Hohn (46:04):
Yeah. I I'm curious. Do you think that, like,
understanding just your own ish,as George would say, of being a
human and, like, how you feeland, like, because sometimes,
like, you know, I don't know.Maybe I got a little touch of
something in my life, but Idon't know always how to explain
exactly how I feel about stuff.You know?
(46:26):
Like right? And, like, it justis Messaging. Whatever and,
like, articulating those things.But, like, for me to try and,
like, put how I'd like tocommunicate to people in a
business document would be verydifficult because it's
Liz Moorhead (46:42):
not It is incredibly difficult. And so I
have a story about that,actually. I have a I have
someone I work with. I've workedwith for years. And, George, you
will probably relate to thestory not because it's you.
I'm not being sassy. So I do,with with our no. I'm very
serious. I do this workshop forour clients at psychic
strategies, but it's somethingthat I've been doing for a very
(47:03):
long time. It is a voice andtone workshop, and I actually
take people through So what doyou want to sound like, and what
do you not want to sound like?
Who are you and who aren't you?And this guy, he is absolutely
incredible. He's one of myfavorite human beings on the
planet. He is this biggregarious larger than life
kinda guy. He is he is a magnetof a human being.
(47:27):
And that idiot sandwich, I loveyou so much, Rob Beeler. I know
you are listening. You know I'mallowed to tell this story, but
good god. He literally put,well, I don't wanna show up as
opinionated or funny. And I'mlike, wait a minute.
So are you just gonna wake uptomorrow morning and be a be a
fundamentally different humanbeing? Right? So you're
(47:48):
absolutely right, Chad. There isthere is a reason why people who
are third party facilitatorscome in and do this work.
Because when we look in themirror, we only see the best
parts that we wanna emphasizeand the parts that we think will
not be palatable to otherpeople.
We George and I have hadextensive conversations about
this. You know, you have done atremendous amount of growth in
(48:11):
terms of how you show up as awhole ass human, but that
required both of us to gothrough scenarios where it's
like, my guy, why are you hidingparts of yourself?
George B. Thomas (48:20):
Yeah. So so, Chad, by the way, it is
difficult. Yeah. Even for me, itwas difficult, which is why,
ladies and gentlemen, you hirean expert
Chad Hohn (48:34):
Mhmm.
George B. Thomas (48:34):
To help you make that journey. And this is
not a sales pitch, but this issomething that we help humans do
at Sidekick Strategies is likeand by the way, I I will
forewarn anybody and everybodybefore they wanna just reach out
and think it's gonna be, like,frolicking through the tulips.
It's more like laying on apsychological therapy couch over
(48:56):
and over again until you'relike, god. Why did I sign up for
this? Until this beautifuldocument of understanding comes
out the other side, and then youthrow that into your GPT or you
throw it into your HubSpot, andthen all of a sudden you see the
massive difference that it notonly made in you, the human,
(49:19):
going through the process, butalso now your AI assistant that
can because it know you knowyou, so it knows you.
Mhmm. Like, it's a it's a gamechanger.
Liz Moorhead (49:33):
It's a beautiful thing. So I know I could spend a
bajillion hours talking aboutthis, but we do not have a
bajillion hours. So I wouldactually be curious to hear from
you guys considering that we'vedone a little bit more of a deep
dive into my end of the poolwhere I do because you guys talk
about, like, webhooks and youlose your flipping minds. This
is the ish that gets me soexcited because we're just at a
(49:58):
very exciting inflection pointwhere if organizations have the
chance to get it and they reallywanna learn this stuff, they're
gonna they're gonna plow throughanybody else who just doesn't do
the work. But I'd be curious.
What warnings or fears orconcerns do we now have about
this brand voice and tone tool?Where where are you where's your
gut on it? Because there's a lotof opportunity here which we've
(50:19):
already discussed.
Chad Hohn (50:20):
Misunderstanding is the first place I think. Right?
Like, I mean, I think I look atthe tool. The I one of the
reasons there's a beta tag on itis because people just they have
a knowledge based article tohelp explain what it plugs into,
and that's it. Like, I mean,again, we need the content
therapy couch, it sounds like,to, like, really make proper use
(50:42):
of the thing.
And it's like, there's gonnaneed to be some sort of multiple
mediums of video and otherlearning to help people
understand how to configure it.I guess, you know, that's what
I'm afraid is people won'treally know what to do with it.
Max Cohen (50:58):
I don't know I don't know if this is a fear or just
me being still curmudgeon yabout AI for whatever reason.
What I fear, about, you know,making more stuff easier with AI
is that we start to, like, takejust a couple more inches of
detaching ourself from thinkingcritically about our own content
(51:20):
creation and offload even moreof that to computers and take a
little bit more of the human outof it. You know, but that might
also might just be me beinglike, back in my day, we had to
write our own blog post to knowwhat we were talking about. And
now you just got all these AIsand the schemitty toilets
(51:42):
creating it for you. You knowwhat I mean?
Like, I it's I think it's cool.Don't get me wrong. I think it's
I think it's probably gonna bereally impactful in terms of,
like, the quality of everything.But, you know, there's still
always gonna be that part of methat was like, man, we didn't
really wanna create content backthen because it was super hard,
(52:02):
and now we're just kind ofremoving, as much of the
challenge as possible. Yeah.
Which which, again, maybe that'sa good thing because it'll make
it'll look like, that that's thethat's the other side of the
argument that makes it reallydifficult for me to kinda
wrestle with it. Right? Becausethere is so many positives of
(52:23):
it. Right? Like, I talked awhile ago about, you know, why
I'm so stoked about contentremix is that now I can create
content in the format that I'mcomfortable in, so it would
encourage me to create morecontent.
And then all the ways that allthe the the formats and
modalities that I can dispersethat content, I can now create.
Like, you know, I don't likewriting, but I can take, you
(52:43):
know, a short thirty secondTikTok video I do and turn it
into a blog post, turn it into asocial book, turn it, you know,
turn it into all these otherthings that I'm really, really
bad at writing. You know? Soit's good there. Right?
Liz Moorhead (52:55):
You
Max Cohen (52:55):
know, and and I think maybe, like, you're gonna see
that a little bit less with thebrand tool because at least if
you're putting the time andeffort into, like, you know,
doing things like the documentLiz created and really thinking
strategically about your brandvoice, I would say that's a
pretty good indicator thatyou're using AI in the right
way. Right?
Liz Moorhead (53:11):
This is also a baby version of this document.
This is, like, a this is a
George B. Thomas (53:15):
small one. Sure.
Liz Moorhead (53:18):
I can't stop. Tell them how big that you really
are.
Max Cohen (53:20):
Hey. I'm sorry. Do you see how small the scroll bar
is on the right hand side, andyou're telling me this is a
short one?
Liz Moorhead (53:27):
I can't see it, man.
Max Cohen (53:29):
Yeah. I can barely see it.
George B. Thomas (53:30):
Yeah. But
Max Cohen (53:31):
I I do have one question, though. Liz, this
question's for you. If you wentinto, if you went into George's,
advanced settings for his brandvoice and you went down to the
replacement rules and youreplaced the word humans, what
would you replace it with?
Liz Moorhead (53:50):
Oh, wow. Almighty Skynet Overlords.
Max Cohen (53:53):
Oh, jeez. I was gonna say See. I was gonna say stinky
little birds.
George B. Thomas (53:58):
Oh, wow. See. How did we get here?
Max Cohen (54:00):
Just imagine that he
George B. Thomas (54:01):
was doing so
Max Cohen (54:02):
good. Remember everybody.
Liz Moorhead (54:04):
Ponies. It's all
Max Cohen (54:05):
about Just
Liz Moorhead (54:05):
make it super simple.
Max Cohen (54:07):
It's all about the stinky little birds.
George B. Thomas (54:09):
We were we were doing so good.
Liz Moorhead (54:12):
We were doing good.
George B. Thomas (54:13):
Need to
Liz Moorhead (54:13):
get off my lawn.
George B. Thomas (54:18):
So George,
Liz Moorhead (54:18):
what about you? What are your fears and concerns
now?
George B. Thomas (54:21):
That I that I have you guys on this podcast
right now. No. I'm just kidding.
Max Cohen (54:25):
What's
George B. Thomas (54:27):
No. The my biggest fear is that it becomes
the HubSpot projects tool. Oh,can I do that? Idea a great idea
that gets abandoned. Right?
Yeah. It's a idea that getsabandoned because right now,
it's it's to the point whereit's exciting, but it could get
(54:47):
to the point where it's awesome.And and here's where I'm gonna
go with this, is that this couldbe a fundamental piece to where
HubSpot is going in the futureor where I feel like HubSpot
could go in the future. I don'tknow if they're going there or
not. But I bumped up intosomething earlier, maybe a week
(55:08):
or two ago in my brain.
I don't think HubSpot isactually building a CRM anymore.
I think HubSpot is building oneof the world's largest and best
business agents Mhmm. That youwill ever be able to find. And,
(55:28):
because here's the thing, theminute that we have all of the
activities and all of the dataand all of the voice and all of
the tone and all of the agentsworking, it it is now a business
agent filled with other agentemployees that the humans are
powering the strategies and theI I just think this goes to a
(55:52):
place that we might not even beable to imagine at at this
point, to be honest with you.And this piece right here, the
connective tissue of datasources and personas and ICPs
and brand voice is so vitallyimportant to get right that I I
(56:13):
hope they put the money andtime, into, birthing it into
what it needs to be.
By the way, Liz is showingeverybody, if you're watching
this on YouTube or wherever youwatch it, the original document
is a PowerPoint presentationthat is, I don't know, many,
(56:34):
many, many slides ofinformation. You're muted, so
you're just killing it with thatmute button today.
Liz Moorhead (56:41):
Of course. I am. I'm killing it with that mute
button. No. It goes intoproblems, value propositions,
how we talk about ourselves, howwe talk about every single
different type of, competitorthat we have, everything.
So there's a lot that goes intoit, but I haven't I didn't wanna
upload something so large. Yeah.But, George, what do you want
our we've gone through a ton ofstuff today. I've dragged you
(57:03):
all kicking and screaming intothe deep end of my baby pool.
But what do you want people towalk away from this day?
Because we've talked about tool,and we've talked about strategy.
George B. Thomas (57:12):
Yeah. I well, just based on what you said, I
want, people to quit thinking ofit as two different things. I
want I want you to think aboutit as, like, this cohesive,
like, this is where my strategylives. This is where my tech
lives. This is where, like butbut my takeaway for today is and
(57:33):
not to sound like a brokenrecord, but quit using HubSpot
like it's HubSpot.
Always come back to these placesand pieces that they launch,
always retest it, always modifyit, iterate, iterate, iterate.
Like, this this probably is thethird, if not fourth time I've
come back to it and tried to tryit out to see if I liked it. I
(57:54):
finally do enough to talk aboutit on the podcast, but I'm not
just gonna let it sit here. I'mgonna keep digging. I'm gonna be
looking for new features.
My biggest takeaway, would alsobe for anybody and everybody
listening to this podcast is tobe noisy towards HubSpot that we
need more education on this.Look. If I go into the HubSpot
(58:15):
Academy and I type in brandvoice, there's two videos that
show up. One, Jory does forabout three minutes, and one,
Crystal does for two minutes.Come on.
Five minutes for brand voice?Like, I'm not even saying, like,
everything that Liz was justtalking about. I'm just saying
five minutes for brand voicelike the feature. Like, there
there has to be some granularityof educational context to the
(58:41):
way that people should bethinking about the strategy and
using the tool. And if ifHubSpot Academy isn't leading
the way, well, dang on it, thenwe will.
Mhmm. We'll lead the We'll
Liz Moorhead (58:52):
we're already publishing a new piece of
content today about this. Youknow I'm uppity about it.
George B. Thomas (58:57):
I'm just saying. Like, to get noisy about
one uppity about it. Anyway, getnoisy about wanting more
education around this, because II personally feel it's that
important to you, to yourbusiness, and to the level of
what we should be taking this. Ienvision a world where there's
(59:17):
independent, user brand voices,a major brand voice tied to your
persona property being usedright, your ICPs putting being
put in there. Yeah.
And now that's just so it itcould be so good. Mhmm.
Liz Moorhead (59:33):
I already manufactured that outside of
HubSpot. I use so it's not GPT.You know this? I have a George
bot. I have a Paul bot.
I have a Rob bot. I have a Seanbot. I build my own voice GPTs
based on my clients, based onhours and hours and hours and
hours and hours of transcripts,documentation, programming, like
(59:54):
but that's because I know how todo it, and I wish there were
more opportunities for people tolearn this.
Chad Hohn (59:59):
Yeah.
Liz Moorhead (59:59):
HubSpot call me.
Chad Hohn (01:00:01):
Yeah.
Liz Moorhead (01:00:03):
Anyway
George B. Thomas (01:00:03):
Super curious. If if, if you're listening to
this and you're like, wow. I'dlove to do, like, a one day low
cost group, brand voice toneworkshop, hit us up.
George@GeorgebThomas.com. I'lljust hit us up.
I'm curious if that's, like,something that the, actually
Liz Moorhead (01:00:29):
Stinky little birds.
George B. Thomas (01:00:30):
Oh, stinky little birds. Let's not do that.
Okay, hub heroes. We've reachedthe end of another episode. Will
Lord Lack continue to loom overthe community, or will we be
able to defeat him in the nextepisode of the Hub Heroes
podcast?
Make sure you tune in and findout in the next episode. Make
(01:00:52):
sure you head over to thehubheroes.com to get the latest
episodes and become part of theleague of Heroes. FYI, if you're
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(01:01:13):
and use the hashtag, hashtag hubeuros podcast on any of the
socials, and let us know whatstrategy conversation you'd like
to listen into next.
Until next time, when we meetand combine our forces, remember
to be a happy, helpful, humblehuman, and, of course, always be
looking for a way to besomeone's hero.
Do you live in a world filled with corporate data? Are
you plagued by silo departments?Are your lackluster growth
strategies demolishing yourchances for success? Are you
held captive by the evil menace,Lord Lack, lack of time, lack of
strategy, and lack of the mostimportant and powerful tool in
(00:23):
your superhero tool belt,knowledge. Never fear, hub
heroes.
Get ready to don your cape andmask, move into action, and
become the hub hero yourorganization needs. Tune in each
week to join the league ofextraordinary inbound heroes as
we help you educate, educate,empower, and execute. Hub
(00:46):
Heroes, it's time to unite andactivate your powers.
Liz Moorhead (00:51):
Welcome back to another episode of Hub Heroes,
and the gang is all here today.Chad, George, and Max who is no
longer driving.
Max Cohen (01:00):
I should've. I should've just kept it on.
George B. Thomas (01:02):
Yeah. He pulled it up for the podcast.
Liz Moorhead (01:04):
Just kept rolling for it.
George B. Thomas (01:05):
Yeah. It was a very
Liz Moorhead (01:06):
important topic we got today.
George B. Thomas (01:07):
Which well, first of all, Liz, we we have to
we have to address somethingbefore you get into too much of
the topic. Yes. Chad officiallygot his cartoon, this morning,
his hub hero.
Liz Moorhead (01:21):
Oh. Yeah. What?
George B. Thomas (01:22):
So What is it? I will be redoing the podcast
artwork, to have the one andonly, Chad Captain America on
the podcast Oh, shit. Hold
Chad Hohn (01:35):
up. Captain America.
Liz Moorhead (01:36):
Madness to us all.
George B. Thomas (01:37):
Captain America. Yeah.
Liz Moorhead (01:40):
Wait. Does that mean that my name will actually
be correct on the artwork goingforward?
George B. Thomas (01:44):
Oh, is it still the old name?
Liz Moorhead (01:47):
In some places, it is.
George B. Thomas (01:49):
Oh, well, I mean, if I'm updating it, I
guess I'll just update it all.So might as well.
Liz Moorhead (01:54):
Might as well.
Chad Hohn (01:55):
There we go.
Liz Moorhead (01:55):
It's my secret identity. That's what's going on
here. Well, how are we all doingtoday? Let's not all be so
excited. We doing okay?
Max Cohen (02:04):
We're doing good. Yeah?
Liz Moorhead (02:05):
We're doing good?
Max Cohen (02:06):
We're doing good.
George B. Thomas (02:08):
Doing good, Max.
Liz Moorhead (02:08):
We're
George B. Thomas (02:09):
gonna do the whole thing.
Chad Hohn (02:09):
Driving. In
Max Cohen (02:11):
a out in the out in the cornfields and
Liz Moorhead (02:15):
You're absolutely right, Max. Brand voice and tone
is a very important topic wherewe need to get into This is
Max Cohen (02:20):
my brand voice. Oh god.
Liz Moorhead (02:23):
This is my brand tone.
Max Cohen (02:25):
For anyone super confused, I've been playing a
lot of farming simulator.
George B. Thomas (02:31):
Max now thinks he's, like, a 65 year old, South
Carolinian, truck driver with,all sorts of equipment and
fertilizer for this episode.
Max Cohen (02:42):
Listen. If you get on that horse, you gotta ride it.
That's all I gotta say.
Chad Hohn (02:46):
So where can we find you playing farming simulator?
Max Cohen (02:50):
I haven't had the guts to go live yet.
Liz Moorhead (02:54):
When you I'll probably soon. Fun.
Max Cohen (02:56):
Yeah. I I probably will.
Chad Hohn (02:58):
I think it's I guess it's
Max Cohen (02:59):
no more it's no more embarrassing than playing my
Pokemon card shop simulator thatI've been playing too as well.
So that's a it's a whole otherepisode, though.
Chad Hohn (03:07):
Or work work simulator where you gotta be the
boss.
George B. Thomas (03:10):
Yeah. A plan. Yeah.
Liz Moorhead (03:14):
Alright. Alright. Alright, kids. Alright. Are we
ready?
Yeah. Are we ready to be adults?Yeah. Yeah.
George B. Thomas (03:19):
I mean, maybe.
Chad Hohn (03:21):
I've been ready since
George B. Thomas (03:22):
I'll do my best. An hour ago.
Liz Moorhead (03:24):
Don't start. Don't start. Because I okay. I am
very, very, very, very, very,very excited about what we're
talking about today because Ihave been listening for weeks
and happily and steadily takingnotes from all of you. Wait a
minute.
You guys nerdy
Chad Hohn (03:39):
about What
Max Cohen (03:41):
What was the first word you said?
George B. Thomas (03:42):
About Happily. Really, Max? Seriously? Oh, man.
You got a shell right now.
She was in the middle of just,like, laying it down, getting us
going.
Max Cohen (03:53):
We were we were rolling,
George B. Thomas (03:54):
and Max is like, we're
Liz Moorhead (03:55):
getting ready. I was on the horse because you
told me to ride it, and then youstopped riding.
George B. Thomas (04:00):
Wait. Is this an opportunity to shell?
Liz Moorhead (04:06):
We're talking about one of my favorite brands
today.
George B. Thomas (04:09):
Take two. Clap. Alright. Beautiful.
Max Cohen (04:12):
Leave it in.
Liz Moorhead (04:12):
Talk talking about one of my favorite topics today.
Talking about one of my favoriteareas of passion and expertise,
it's brand voice and tone.
Max Cohen (04:21):
You know what one of my favorite brands are? What
Alright. Go ahead. Sorry. Knock.
Go.
George B. Thomas (04:26):
Is it Happily? Is
Max Cohen (04:28):
that big.
George B. Thomas (04:28):
Yeah. Big. Okay.
Max Cohen (04:30):
Oh, god.
Liz Moorhead (04:31):
Alright. Alright. Big Popsicle. Calm down.
Max Cohen (04:34):
Oh.
Liz Moorhead (04:37):
Never. Uncomfortable. No. Okay. So I
want to take us back in timebecause this is not the first
time brand voice and tone hascome up in conversation here on
this podcast.
The last time we talked about itwas when the AI powered rollout
of the HubSpot content hubhappened, and it had a lot of
cool bells and whistles. And thebrand voice and tone thing left
(05:01):
a lot to be desired. We wereexcited to see it recognized,
but the ability to add one,maybe two sentences worth of
stuff there left me a littleemotionally chafed. I'm gonna be
perfectly honest. Didn't feelgreat about it.
But since then, the brand voiceand tone feature has undergone a
massive makeover within HubSpot.So we're taking a trip down this
(05:23):
road together to help usunderstand the tool and to have
a more substantive conversationabout what brand voice and tone
really is. So, George, Iactually wanna start with you.
George B. Thomas (05:35):
Yeah.
Liz Moorhead (05:35):
Can you take us through this transition of what
the original brand voice andtone feature was versus what it
is today?
George B. Thomas (05:43):
Yeah. Well, I mean, when it was released. And
by the way, I let me justpreface. I love HubSpot. I love
all the humans that, work atHubSpot.
I even love the fact that westarted a journey down this road
with this tool. Mhmm. But whenit first came out, I looked at
it and was like, nope. Not rightnow. Yeah.
(06:06):
It's not my happen. Yeah. It itI was like, no. Not happening
right now because I knew what Iwas doing in other AI platforms.
Platforms.
I knew the richness, the depth,the the context that I was able
to give it. And and, like, evengoing in the setup phase when it
originally came out, just justin setup phase, I was like, no.
(06:28):
No. Not the right questions. Notthe I can't upload.
No. Oh, I like how are youguessing my voice and tone?
Because you're really notletting me educate you on it
much. And they're just it itjust wasn't. It wasn't.
But it was because at least itwas there, but I was, like, not
gonna use it. And and then weget to where we're at now where
(06:52):
I reengaged with it and was,wow. Okay. Now we're getting
Liz Moorhead (06:58):
some of that.
George B. Thomas (07:00):
Well, first of all, as soon as I could upload
my own document with my ownvoice and tone, like, that I
wanted to give it, that was a aa sure sign of, like, things
were changing and a winner forme because, I mean, we've we've
helped multiple clients withtheir kind of voice tone GPT
(07:21):
custom, like, you know, soundlike you stuff. And so we
finally were able to kinda getthat in our HubSpot system, and
it really made setup a littlebit easier. But, man, there's
just there's so much. I I Ican't wait to go through all the
pieces that we now have. But forthose of you that might be
listening to this and you'relike, what do you mean voice and
(07:44):
tone?
Well, what we're talking aboutis the brand voice. And and
here's what's funny, Liz, aswe're having this. It's
literally still has a beta tagnext to it, which again which
again, I go, hey. When it firstcame out, it was like and now
it's like, whee. And it's andwhee all in all we in beta.
(08:05):
All in beta. Like, this isn'teven, like, fully, hey. Yes. We
are saying that it is all thereat this point. And so to to say
something that I say quite oftenis that, even though it was
worse, this is the worst that'llever be because they'll continue
to make it better.
But there's just so much there'sjust so much good here. And,
(08:26):
again, if you think about lastweek and how we talked about
data sources and the rich amountof context that, we're starting
to align things and connectthings. Yeah. It's just it's
it's really good.
Liz Moorhead (08:38):
Yep. I when I looked at that tool initially, I
I had a very similar reactionthat you had, which is like, why
are we even bothering doingthis?
George B. Thomas (08:49):
Mhmm. Yeah.
Liz Moorhead (08:50):
Like, if if it's not ready, you're telling me
that your your first foray intothe authenticity and soul of
what a brand sounds like is a,here's the little text box where
you could fit a sentence in bestof luck at Godspeed. Like, it
just I was like, what are wedoing here? And also voice and
tone are not the same thing.Like, there there's a we're
(09:13):
gonna get into this conversationmore deeply because I think this
is a really exciting thing thatHubSpot is doing. I think it's
going to create, I'll put a niceword on it, complexity.
Mhmm. It's going to create morequestions, I think, than answers
for some if they even realizethey're there. So I think we're
entering a very interestingperiod here, but quite frankly,
(09:34):
it's just nice to see HubSpotrolling out new actual content
tools.
Chad Hohn (09:40):
Yeah. Oh, yeah.
Liz Moorhead (09:41):
That that's what excites me about it. Chad, Max,
how do you feel about this? Haveyou had a chance to poke around?
Do you have thoughts,grievances, opinions?
Max Cohen (09:51):
I mean, I haven't played with the new one, or
whatever the newest version ofit is since it launched because
it came out at the beginning,and I was kinda like, oh, okay.
You know, and and the way that Ilooked at it is like a baby
step. Right?
Chad Hohn (10:03):
Baby step one.
Max Cohen (10:04):
You know, just like anything else. Right? You know,
everything starts with a just atiny little pitter patter of a
baby step in HubSpot, which ishow it should how it should be.
You know, I think it's probablyreally important that they
start, heavily investing interms of, you know, what else
this brand voice touchesthroughout all of HubSpot
(10:27):
because, again, at inbound, theyunited all of those, you know,
AI tools under one, you know,one brand voice, if you will,
which is now Breeze. Right?
And so I think, like, you know,as that starts to become a more,
like, cohesive sort of singularproduct within HubSpot. Right?
And, you know, obviously, it'stouching so many different
(10:47):
things. All those differentthings that Breeze does can be,
you know, affected in one way oranother by your brand voice from
the emails that your sales repsare writing through Copilot to
the way that your agentsinteract with and talk to people
and the demeanor that they haveand the, I don't know, the the
(11:10):
the values they have in terms ofhow they operate. Right?
You know, there's so manydifferent things that, you know,
are used by Breeze to basicallyrepresent your company through,
you know, an an an AI,essentially. Like, you know,
putting it out there terms ofthe way it writes with stuff,
the way it interacts withpeople, all these different
things, you know, that you wannamake sure that that experience
(11:34):
and that sort of brand voice, ifyou will, is consistent across
all of those different things.Right? So, you know, if there's
any time, for, you know, HubSpotto really, really push the pedal
down on the brand voice tools inHubSpot, I think it's now.
Right?
Because you don't want thatbrand voice to just be present
in your blog articles. You don'twant it to just be present in
(11:56):
some other content it's creatingfor you. You want it to be
present in things like the AIchatbot and the way your your
reps are communicating withpeople and how it's assisting
them do that and things likethat. So, you know, I'd like to
see them really kinda push thepedal down on it, and I welcome
any and all updates to it.
George B. Thomas (12:12):
But Let let me dive in there for one quick
second, Chad, before you gobecause one of the things that I
want everybody to realize,that's listening to this, when
you turn brand voice on, it isalready and you'll you'll when I
say this, you'll you'll you'llsay, oh, there's some things
missing. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah. We know. We know.Yeah.
Yeah. Hopefully, they'll gethere soon. But when you turn
(12:33):
brand voice on, it it instantlywill apply to your social posts.
Liz Moorhead (12:39):
Mhmm.
George B. Thomas (12:39):
It'll apply to your emails. It'll apply to your
blog posts, your website, yourlanding pages, and SMS messages.
The really other cool thing bythe way, if there's more than
HubSpot, go update yourknowledge article because that's
literally what I'm looking at asa brand voice knowledge. Like,
because immediately, I'm like,like, success. Uh-oh.
Or, like, maybe reference theagents because the agents are
(13:02):
coming out. They should probablybe here. But here's what's also
cool if you're listening to thisand and you happen to be
somewhere other than America.Brand voice is also available in
Spanish, Portuguese, French,German, and Japanese for the
social email blog pages and SMScontent as well. So I I love the
fact that it's going, outside ofjust blog articles, Max, but
(13:27):
across all of the thingseventually.
Yeah. Chad, what are yourthoughts?
Chad Hohn (13:33):
Yeah. I think, it's interesting that BrandVoice and
it makes sense, but BrandVoiceis found as part of BrandKit. So
I'm very interested to see, aswell that get tied into things
like business units for when inone HubSpot portal, you have
multiple segments that possiblysolve different problems for
(13:56):
different industries that arecross segmented or related, for
that brand voice to whensomebody logged into one
business unit is using it versusanother be different in your
generate like, what you'regenerating with your emails or
your reps or different things.Another place that it'd be
really cool, I think, to see itis to really dive down into your
(14:20):
interactions with Copilotbecause that has been getting so
powerful. Like, I was on asupport ticket the other day and
just asked Copilot, like, hey.
Did mister wizard, who I wastalking to, open up the last
email I sent him on this ticket?And it just, like, checked the
activity and told me if heopened it or not or whatever.
(14:41):
Because I was in help desk, andit didn't and I didn't wanna go
click it. I'm like, oh, let meask Copilot just to check and
see. And it's like, it's gettingso good that I'd love for it to
be able to, like, even coach newreps through how do we do
business as well, like, becausethat's the next evolution of
this kind of a thing.
But, you know, it being tied intighter and tighter, I think
(15:04):
having it segmented kind of perbusiness unit for more larger
enterprise type portals, it justmakes a lot of sense. Right? And
I think maybe it might notultimately be part of your brand
kit at some point, but it'll beyour AI voice along with, like,
your content voice, you know, ifthat makes sense, or shapes your
AI, train your AI model type ofthe thing. Right?
George B. Thomas (15:27):
Yeah. I I love the idea of it for business
units because as someone who,you know, we we struggle. The
good thing is we sound a lotalike in the different places
that we are. Right. Like,imagine the tweaks that we could
make for psychic strategiesversus beyond your default
versus, like, superhumanframework.
And Right. Right now, it's kindof like the way our portal's set
(15:50):
up. We've got one. And, also butif it was for business units and
you could have multiple voices,I think that would be super
sweet, in the future. So, hey,if HubSpot if you're if you're
listening and that's somethingthat's coming, then let us know
because inquiring minds we'recurious.
Chad Hohn (16:07):
I think that's the intent based on how it's laid
out in the URL. Right? It'sunder brand kit, and then you're
setting up for your portal orfor this sorry. For this
specific brand kit, you'resetting up the brand voice. And
if you can have multiple brandkits, I think you can already
possibly set up more than onebrand voice.
That would be that would begreat.
George B. Thomas (16:27):
I need to do some digging on that because
that's that's definitely a thingto shout about.
Max Cohen (16:31):
Mhmm. You know what I just noticed looking through the
knowledge base article of, BrandKit is that you can do
replacement rules where it willreplace certain words with other
words.
Liz Moorhead (16:42):
We're getting there.
George B. Thomas (16:43):
We're getting there. Oh. Dressing. Woah. Woah.
Woah. Woah.
Max Cohen (16:47):
Woah. Woah. Woah. Yo. Talk about the greatest prank
potential of all time.
Every time someone writes AI,just replace it with the word
hot dog.
George B. Thomas (17:00):
You know the amount of hours it would take
somebody to figure out why thatwas happening?
Max Cohen (17:04):
Why is
George B. Thomas (17:05):
it happening?
Chad Hohn (17:05):
They'd submit a support ticket to HubSpot. No
time, dude. For support rep.
Max Cohen (17:13):
Oh, yeah. We have some fun here.
Liz Moorhead (17:15):
This is how we, get to the real tips and tricks,
the things that are really gonnamove people's businesses
forward. Like, that's
George B. Thomas (17:21):
That's what we're gonna do.
Max Cohen (17:22):
Hot dogs. Is that high IQ insight people listen to
the podcast for? You know?Right. Right.
For sure.
Liz Moorhead (17:28):
Biggest upgrade. Quick question for you guys. Do
you think that this tool isactually gonna have an impact on
the content we're seeing,companies put out now?
George B. Thomas (17:37):
Without a doubt. Already is. So let me
give you so first of all, beforeI answer that, the fact now,
Liz, that you can do things likepersonality, and and and Max
kinda let the cat out the bag,but you can do personality, and
you can do up to four differentcharacteristics. You can do
default, tone. And so, again,you can do four characteristics.
(18:00):
But you can also add in yourcompany mission up to, like, 50
words. Between those eightthings, four and four, you know,
four plus four, high IQ, eightthings and this company mission.
It's it's crazy how the contextand specificity that you're
giving this thing, but also youhave a terms to avoid. And then,
(18:24):
like Max said, you have areplacement rule. So if there
are things that you don't wantto actually talk about or if you
wanna talk about things in acertain way.
And what's really great aboutthis is it is powered too by
Copilot where you can literallyselect the paragraph of text.
And, sure, you can do thingslike expand or shorten or
(18:45):
whatever, but you literally justsay use my brand voice, and then
you get a chance to look at whatit spits out versus what it has.
And it's I'll I'll equate it to,like, it's almost like the the
fine tooth finish or whateveryou wanna call the the thing
that you thought you had it theway you wanted it, but now you
could apply this brand voice toit. And and here's the real
(19:07):
world example. I created a pieceof content.
I created it in, GPT, like I hadbeen with a custom, Sidekick
Strategies GPT. I put it inHubSpot, and I then applied to
every single sentence inparagraph brand voice. And then
I sent it over to this person.You might have met him, my
(19:29):
content strategist, Liz. And Isaid, what do you think of this
one?
And these are the words that Iwanted to hear. She said, this
is the best one you've sent meso far. So when Liz asked
Max Cohen (19:41):
wrote it myself.
George B. Thomas (19:42):
The the the yeah. When Liz goes, is this
gonna make an impact? Yes. Ifset up properly, and if used in
the right way, and if there's afoundational piece that didn't
suck to begin with, it's gonnaget you to the next level of,
like, oh, that's dope. That's myanswer.
Max Cohen (20:08):
I think you're pretty aligned with Jordan on that.
Right? I think it just like anyother tool in HubSpot, people
it'll have an impact if peopleuse it correctly. Right? My fear
is a lot of people are gonnaignore it, and I don't want that
to happen.
Not that I think, like, it'sgonna get ignored. I just think
that, you know, sometimes thebest parts of HubSpot go
unnoticed by folks who aren'tusing it the right way. Right?
(20:29):
It's the it's the new version ofpeople who just buy it to be an
email tool. Right?
You know, so I think what'llhappen is that this will at
least be a factor in, you know,improving the quality of AI
(20:50):
content. Right? You know,instead of just blasting stuff
out because people want to savetime. Right? So, you know, for
the folks that do or aresuccessful, you know, creating
and refining their content viaAI, I think this will be a, a
(21:10):
common thing you see folks whoare doing it the right way use.
And so hopefully, we can see itbe very well adopted among the
folks that are leveraging AI ina good way is my take. Wait.
You're muted. You're muted.
Liz Moorhead (21:27):
I made a joke. I made a few good men
Max Cohen (21:29):
go get it. Suck.
Liz Moorhead (21:31):
I said, is that the take and nothing but the
take? Can we even handle thetake?
Max Cohen (21:36):
That's the take.
George B. Thomas (21:37):
Oh, well, yeah.
Chad Hohn (21:38):
That's Well, we couldn't because we couldn't
hear it.
George B. Thomas (21:45):
It's a power up for you, Liz.
Liz Moorhead (21:47):
Thanks, bud. Thank you. I really appreciate that,
guys.
Max Cohen (21:51):
Chad, do you have a take?
Liz Moorhead (21:54):
I mean What's going on?
Max Cohen (21:56):
Where we are going, we don't need no takes. Go
ahead. Sorry. Just
Chad Hohn (22:01):
need a 25 k gooseneck and some marshmallows on the
back.
George B. Thomas (22:10):
Love it.
Max Cohen (22:10):
Would you
Liz Moorhead (22:11):
define your brand voice right now, bud?
Chad Hohn (22:13):
Oh, I mean Blue blue. Exquisite.
Liz Moorhead (22:16):
Yeah. Blue. Question. Yeah. What is Giga
Chad's brand voice in town?
Chad Hohn (22:22):
Giga Chad is is back home, actually. So I'm traveling
right now. I ain't got noGigachad when I'm traveling. Up.
George B. Thomas (22:30):
We can't Gigachad today. Wait. Is that a
Max Cohen (22:32):
green screen?
George B. Thomas (22:33):
Yes. Yeah.
Chad Hohn (22:34):
It's a
Liz Moorhead (22:34):
fake printer. Yeah.
Chad Hohn (22:36):
Fake glowing printer. Real. Yeah. It's because I'm
using my graphics card to dobackground replacement instead
of, like, the little, you know,cheeserton one that comes with
the program.
Max Cohen (22:47):
Oh. Here we go. Wow.
Chad Hohn (22:48):
That's my memory.
Liz Moorhead (22:49):
Just tell me how you really feel.
Chad Hohn (22:52):
Yeah. Like, I mean What the does cheeserton mean?
You know? Oh, what the fuck?Rails.
Max Cohen (22:58):
Alright. Sorry. Chad, go ahead. Go ahead.
Liz Moorhead (23:01):
Go ahead.
Max Cohen (23:01):
Go ahead.
Chad Hohn (23:02):
Yeah. I mean, like, this isn't, this isn't my area
of specialty, expertise. Right?Like, content is not something
that I've ever really produced.Like, I've done things like this
where I share, you know, on, onan episode, like, in at with Hub
Heroes, but, like, activelygoing out of my way to write
content, that's not somethingthat I have tons and tons of
(23:25):
experience with.
I can help set up the tools. Iagain, like, I'm much more of,
like, an API plumber type of aperson. Like, I connect the old
systems and make this stuff flowthrough. You know? Make it do
what you need it to do.
Right? That's my jam. So, andand actually having, something
to guide a simpleton like myselfin the correct direction in this
(23:49):
kind of a thing, I think, isreally cool. But I'm I mean, I'm
a little bit curious. Like, youknow, is this something that can
help a company?
You know, like, maybe I'll ask aquestion out there. Like, is
this something that can help acompany, like, reproduce maybe
the mission and vision of theCEO? Like, the CEO of a company
(24:10):
says, hey. This is what we doand who we are and, you know,
helps the new people reallycatch that vision or speak like
that person that originally madethe business successful in the
first place? I mean, is thatwhere this ultimately can go?
Like, I see the connecting ofthe dots and the plumbing in the
back end, but, like,practically, I guess, you know,
(24:31):
maybe that's a good question forLiz. Like, is this something you
see that being able to do, or isthis, you know, something
helpful? Right?
Max Cohen (24:41):
Like, can we
Chad Hohn (24:42):
In that way?
Max Cohen (24:42):
Can we take our founders founders brain and
upload it into the matrix wherehe can live forever?
Chad Hohn (24:48):
Literally. I mean, just like, you know,
Max Cohen (24:50):
I don't passes on, his brand voice will live
throughout the company
Liz Moorhead (24:55):
Well, I can't
Max Cohen (24:56):
generations after that.
Liz Moorhead (24:58):
So this is where we start getting into, I think,
one of the biggest potentialchallenges here
Max Cohen (25:02):
Right.
Liz Moorhead (25:03):
Is that your voice is not your message. Your your
voice is not the what of whatyou're saying. Right? So your
message is the what of whatyou're saying. Your voice and
tone is your style.
Right. It's how you say it.Mhmm. Right? So for example,
George's what's are it's it'sall about the humans.
It's about HubSpot. It's theactual tactical education that
(25:25):
he does about HubSpot. But hisvoice and tone is the packaging.
It is not the message.
Chad Hohn (25:32):
Yeah. So the wrapping
Liz Moorhead (25:33):
is about where I think a lot of people get really
tripped up with this is thatthey are going to think that
voice and tone is going to be away to come up with more whats.
And you still have to have amessage. You still have to have
your own set of core beliefs.You still have to have your own
points of view. Mhmm.
(25:54):
Like, saying you're warm andapproachable, and we say hot dog
instead of artificialintelligence. Like, that is
stuff that is stylistic.
Chad Hohn (26:03):
Right.
Liz Moorhead (26:04):
That is that is just making you sound like a
human.
Max Cohen (26:08):
Mhmm.
Liz Moorhead (26:08):
But what gets even more interesting about this what
gets even more interesting aboutthis is that when I think about
companies that try to operatemore like media companies,
right, or where you havemultiple thought leaders
underneath the same roof,they're not supposed to sound
like each other.
Max Cohen (26:24):
Mhmm.
Liz Moorhead (26:25):
They're supposed to sound like themselves. So,
like, when I used to be theeditor in chief at Impact, you
know, we had a we had an Impactbrand voice, but all of our
editorial, every single bylinewas an individual human being.
And we worked with each of themto make sure that they sounded
just like themselves. Now therewas some stylistic polish that
went on top. You know, we had APstyle, so we had certain rules
(26:47):
for, like, commas and stuff likethat.
Right? But for the most part,you know, there this is one of
those tools where it's veryexciting, but there isn't a ton
of knowledge or education outthere about what this stuff
actually is, what it isn't, andhow and when you use it. Like,
think about the disparity thatwe're gonna see in content
(27:08):
where, you know, George, you andI get to work together, and
that's really exciting, but noteverybody has a list.
George B. Thomas (27:13):
Yeah. Yeah.
Liz Moorhead (27:13):
You know? Not everybody gets to, like, hang
out and talk nerdy shop aboutbrand voice and tone, which is a
very niche specialty area. Sohooray. I'm so glad we all get
to upload documents, but there'sreally no guidance on what that
is supposed to look like,especially since it's like it's
kinda like asking what somebodysomebody what a content strategy
(27:34):
is. You ask 10 different people,you're gonna get 10 different
answers on what that documentlooks like.
George B. Thomas (27:38):
So it's it's interesting. I wanna I wanna
one, I want you to talk about,in a minute, the document that
we created to actually actuallyupload and use to to do the
voice and tone. The, probably,superhuman framework is is the
greatest example that you've,done lately. I want you to talk
(27:59):
about that for a minute and whatthat kinda looks like. But but
what you just said, I think, isreally important.
And, again, I don't know howmany people from HubSpot
actually listen to this podcastor not. But when you started to
talk about individual voices, Istarted to think back to our
episode on data sources lastweek where one of the things was
(28:20):
the user. Right? You can go andput, like, I'm this role and,
like, imagine if there was,like, an overarching brand voice
that was the rules and thingsthat you wanted to set, but
imagine if there was anotherlayer of this that it could be
programmed per individual human.And so if you went to write the
(28:42):
email or if you went to do thesocial poster, you went to write
a blog article, it actuallyknew, oh, I'm supposed to look
at this brand voice, but I'malso supposed to use this
human's, you know, brand voiceor tone or whatever you wanna
call it.
Now all of a sudden, we'regetting double context. We're
getting more specific. These arethe levers I think HubSpot could
(29:05):
start to pull of, like because,again, I'm gonna sound different
than Max. Max is gonna sounddifferent than Chad. Liz is
gonna sound better and probablysmarter than all of us combined.
But if we at least had thisinformation at a user level to
be combined with the brand voicethat is also then connected or
combined with the data sources,now we're getting somewhere. But
(29:28):
but, Liz, talk about thisdocument so people can kind of
understand what we're eventalking about and why I got
excited about the fact that,well, we can upload our own
document now.
Liz Moorhead (29:37):
So it's interesting. The document that
I'm gonna walk through, we didthis obviously for the the
superhuman framework, which,George, we could get into at a
later time what that actuallyis, but it it it's an incredible
passion project that we'reworking on together. But the
what what's interesting about itis that I actually created a
hybrid document that is both amessaging strategy and a voice
(29:59):
and tone document. Because rightnow, there is no place to put a
messaging strategy for yourbusiness or your company within
HubSpot. So and so whenever Ithink about, you know, what are
the documents that peopleactually need in a business, you
need a messaging strategy andyou need a voice and tone
document.
You need both. You need to knowwhat you're saying and you need
to know how you're saying it.You can't just know how to say
(30:22):
something without knowing yourwhat, and you can't just know
what you're saying withouthaving some thought or intention
behind what how that's going tosound when it comes flying out
of your digital face. Right? Sowhat I did was I created a
hybrid document where the firstpart is the messaging strategy.
I documented what the superhumanframework is. I documented key
terms and our chosen definitionsfor them. This is what we say it
(30:46):
is. This is what we say itisn't. These are the different
components of it.
This is how each of them aredefined. And then I also
included a section of this ishow we are competitively
different from other similarframeworks. So it understood how
to position us and understoodour place in the market. Because
a great brand messaging strategyis gonna have a number of
(31:08):
components. It's going to havethe what.
It's going to have the where. Soyour marketplace, where do you
fit? How who are you? How areyou different? And then I went
into a big comprehensiveaudience overview just so
everything was in a singleplace.
Mhmm. But unlike a lot of whatthe persona tool does and does
not allow you to do, I went alittle bit more emotional. So I
(31:33):
said, who is our audience? And Iran through a big list of who
they are. Then I ran throughwhat are their current
challenges.
Great. So disengagement,burnout, high turnover, culture
misalignment, performancepressures, communication
breakdowns, and then we godeeper. So how do they feel
about where they currently are?They're frustrated because of x
y z. They're isolated because ofa b c.
(31:55):
They're skeptical because ofone, two, three, and on and on.
There are a few more like that.And these are very clearly
defined. We don't just say theyfeel frustrated. We say they're
frustrated because they feellike they're spinning their
wheels, constantly putting outfires without seeing meaningful
progress.
They feel isolated becauseleadership is lonely, especially
when it seems like no one elseunderstands or shares their
(32:17):
burdens. So each one has a microstory in it. Then we talk about
what their goals are. They wannabuild stronger teams, reduce
burnout, improve retention. Andthen what do they want from us?
Connection, clarity, competence,impact, and each of those has a
bit of story behind them. Andthen I ended that section with
situational examples. Like,Karen is the VP of operations at
(32:39):
a growing temp company. Her teamhas seen an uptick in burnout
and disengagement after monthsof pushing hard to meet
aggressive goals. She'sfrustrated by the high turnover
and feels the pressure tobalance productivity with
creating a healthier, moresustainable team culture.
She needs a framework to aligntheir leadership with meaningful
action, reduce burnout, andfoster long term loyalty and
engagement. But there are, like,six or seven of those. There are
(33:00):
lots of them. And so that's justthe messaging piece. Right?
Because in order to feedsomething voice and tone, it
needs context. It needs tounderstand what the heck we're
doing here. Now if at some pointlater on, there's a place to
dump a messaging strategy in,this makes it a lot easier.
Although HubSpot make sure theytalk to each other. Make sure, I
(33:21):
don't know, you find someone whocan educate about how these two
things are codependent and worktogether.
I don't know who that personmight be. Some beautiful tall
angel who falls down a lot anddoesn't know how to ride a bike.
Common. But after that, we thenwe get into the brand voice and
tone. Right?
So this is where I have to do alittle educating for our
audience. Voice and tone are notthe same thing. They are two
(33:41):
codependent elements of yourbrand personality. Your brand
voice, that is what someone issupposed to think about you all
the time without you having totell them. You are warm.
You are friendly. You areapproachable. Right? You are
traditional, modern, however youwanna put it. Tone is how you
deliver on the the promise ofyour voice.
(34:02):
It is what you actually soundlike. Oh, so you are a
challenging, innovative,visionary brand voice. Right? So
you speak clearly. You speakconcisely.
You include facts. You you don'tuse passive language. You use
active language wheneverpossible. It's how it manifests.
(34:26):
How do you sound?
How do you deliver on thepromise of being warm and
approachable and friendly?Sounding conversational by using
plain language. So, again, it'sthe delivery mechanism of that.
So that's voice and tone. That'show they work together.
Tone is also a little bit moredynamic. Right? You may see your
tone shift depending on thecontext. A blog article might be
(34:47):
more personal. It might be more,one to one, more human, more
conversational.
A case study is going to be morejust the facts man. It's gonna
be just facts and figures, alittle less editorializing, a
little less fluff. And then weget to dos and don'ts. Talk
about this is how you do embracethis voice and embody this voice
(35:09):
is how you don't do it, then weget into tone. What I really
like about what I did in thistone document and maybe I should
share this as an example in theshow notes just so people can
look through it.
Chad Hohn (35:19):
Yeah.
Liz Moorhead (35:20):
But I talk about the different context. In
educational content, this is thetone. This is how it sounds.
This is what you avoid. Inempathetic situations, in urgent
calls to action, inconversational interactions,
each one has a set of rules.
Then, finally, this is my newfavorite thing, and I'm so
curious to see how thisinfluences our outputs. AI and
(35:41):
machine learning models are allabout if then statements. Right?
They use logic to makedecisions. But if we don't
program some of that logic forthem, they can sometimes make
what they think is the bestdecision possible.
So, Chad, I'm actually gonnashare my screen just so the guys
can see what I'm looking atbecause I wanna see if what Chad
(36:02):
thinks of it. I'm so curious. Sothis is what I'm looking at
here. So I created a bunch of ifthen statements. Mhmm.
Who am I speaking to, and whatare they feeling right now? If
they're overwhelmed, do this. Ifthey're hopeful or curious, do
that. Does this message addresstheir pain points directly? If
not, do this.
If yes, do that. So I created abunch of different questions
George B. Thomas (36:26):
Mhmm.
Liz Moorhead (36:26):
That help them hopefully make decisions.
Because I thought about it thisway. I'm either giving this to a
machine or I'm giving this to aperson. Because voice and tone
documents, brand messagingdocuments, these are all
incredibly subjective. They aremeant to be manuals for your
content creators or anybody whohas to create assets that are a
part of your brand.
(36:47):
But they're always gonna havemoments where they have to make
decisions. Yeah. So I wanted tocreate opportunities for them to
still have creative freedom andflexibility Yeah. But understand
where to move and pivot if thereare changes.
Max Cohen (36:59):
Mhmm.
Liz Moorhead (37:00):
So this is this is what this beautiful child looks
like. I love her.
Chad Hohn (37:03):
I think that's fascinating. I'll go go ahead.
No.
George B. Thomas (37:06):
You Go ahead, Chad.
Chad Hohn (37:07):
Okay. Yeah. So I think that's fascinating. I
mean, the part that I think isfascinating about that so
there's two places that that mybrain goes, when I look at,
like, all those if thenstatements at the end. And,
realistically, it's like, it'sgonna process it sequentially
most likely.
Right? Meaning, like, if this,do that. And so, like, at some
(37:27):
point, it's gonna be like, oh,hey. Is it this? And then it's
gonna rewrite it in some partsand not in others depending on
the action inputs first.
So, like, this is an example.And and if that's by design in
that order, then awesome. Youknow? Right? But if there are
some parts of it where it'slike, if it rewrote this and
(37:53):
then didn't rewrite that, itcould yield something
interesting.
Right? That that's one place.And because, like, I always go
back to, like, ever since Istarted getting more heavy into
automation and data and reallyunderstanding how, like, the
Internet works and, like, howtools are connected and
(38:13):
integrations work, my poor wife,I feel so bad for her because
she's like, hey. Could you goget me the black shirt from the
closet? And I'm like, yeah.
And I returned the first blackshirt because she didn't give me
any additional criteria. Like,oh, I wanted the long sleeve one
that has, like, the button on itor whatever. Right? And I'm
(38:34):
like, I've gotten so much worsesince I've gotten more, like,
programmatic because I thinkstart to think more literally
about the stuff. And, like,yeah, LLMs sound so human and
conversational, but it is gonnatake the easiest path to the
Liz Moorhead (38:53):
Oh, a %.
Chad Hohn (38:54):
Answer you requested. And that's, I think, something
that people forget because it'slike it is a lot of times like,
oh, you just asked it aquestion, it'll do thing, and,
like, you talk to it, like, inyou know, with your voice and
whatever. Right? Depending onwhat models you're using. But
yeah.
So, like, I think the the theorder, if it's how you want it
(39:15):
and, like, if you think throughthat Yep. Then that's
phenomenal.
Liz Moorhead (39:19):
It's interesting. I actually wanna point one thing
out here really quick just toanswer Chad's question about
this. So if anybody went toGeorge's AI talk at inbound this
year, he gave away an editorialchecklist that goes in a very
specific order of how youanalyze a piece of content. And
it's always granular structure,a little bit higher level
(39:40):
substance, a little bit whetherand then toward the end, it just
starts getting more into style.
Max Cohen (39:45):
Mhmm.
Liz Moorhead (39:46):
So there is a definite and definitive order in
which it moves in, and that'swhy I'm curious to play with
this. It's just again, itcreates this sadness for me
where it's like there isn'tenough education out there about
brand voice and tone. So we'rehaving conversations that many
organizations may not even behaving. They may just be excited
to call it warm, friendly, andapproachable. Max, I'm sorry.
I cut you off. Go ahead.
Max Cohen (40:06):
This is to me I know we were listing off where brand
voice gets applied. Do we knowif it if it hits customer agent
yet?
George B. Thomas (40:15):
Not that we know of yet because it doesn't
say it in the knowledge article,which is why I kind of alluded
to, if if anybody from HubSpot'slistening, the that agent, the
prospecting agent, the like, allof the agents
Chad Hohn (40:30):
Yeah. Really need to be tied
George B. Thomas (40:31):
in and pay attention to this.
Max Cohen (40:33):
Yeah. Yeah. I'd say I'd say even so customer service
is so different at every singlecompany because everyone sells
different stuff. Everyone hasdifferent types of customers.
Everyone has different types ofprocesses in the background.
Everybody has nuances around theway, you know, they serve their
customers and what to do indifferent situations. Right? And
(40:55):
I think it's really hard tobuild an interface around that
to create a lot of that logic.Sure. Can you build an interface
to control what happens insideof HubSpot and, like, your
process there?
Yeah. Totally. Can you buildworkflows to do different things
with tickets? Sure. Right?
But that customer agent, the theAI stuff behind it, what I what
(41:16):
I really think it's gearedtowards right now is understand
what they're saying and go findknowledge based articles. And if
they don't work, go give a wayto get back and go go create a
way to get a ticket. Right? But,like, this document that you're
showing me, Liz, where you werewriting through all those, like,
if then, you know, statements.Right?
(41:38):
This like, just imagine if youcould take your customer agent
and literally just upload, thisis our customer service
playbook. Yeah. If you encountersomeone with this situation,
here's what to ask. This is whatto do. Right?
And, like, an AI can get smartenough to, like or the AI
already is smart enough justlike it's it's smart enough to
(41:58):
understand your brand doing,Tony, or just by reading this.
Right? Like, that would be suchan amazing thing to be able to
say, like, hey, here's how wehandle all these different
nuance situations, what to say,what to ask for. Right? Like,
this would be an unbelievableway to train those customer
agents in a much more meaningfulway of, like, here's the URL and
(42:19):
here's the content.
Go find it. If it matches whatthey're looking for, give them
the article. Right?
Chad Hohn (42:23):
They don't have as words
Liz Moorhead (42:25):
in it. This is where we start getting into a
weird space, though. George,what were you gonna say, bud?
George B. Thomas (42:29):
Yeah. So here's here's I wanna just lean
in in the list. I know you'dwanna get into, like, the weird
space thing, but I I wanted tocircle back around on something
that, a, aligned with somethingyou said when you were talking
about this document, and, b,aligns with, Max, what you're
kind of saying. I want everybodyto know inside of brand voice,
there is channel specificsettings, which you can flip
(42:53):
switches on that say use thedefault tone or use the
different tone for. And rightnow, there's blogs, case
studies, email, pages, podcasts,and social.
So there literally is a placethat I can be like, okay. I
wanna tweak the tone to this.Now imagine if it was, I wanna
tweak the tone and tweak thisand tweak this for this. Now all
(43:15):
of a sudden, we get a realinteresting place. But this is
also the screen where I wouldlove to see, well, social
probably stands for the socialagent, but, like, prospecting
agent or a success agent.
Like, I would wanna see thoseagents in this channel specific
settings to be able to do thethings that we're talking about
(43:36):
in today's podcast at a verygranular level. Because, again,
I think the big problem withthis is, one, people might not
just be doing it like Liz saysor not might not understand it.
And when they do do it, it'ssuch a broad brushstroke. And
this is literally where I wouldsay in HubSpot and in your
business, this is one of thosescalpel strategies, not
(43:57):
sledgehammer strategies.
Liz Moorhead (43:58):
Mhmm.
George B. Thomas (43:59):
Like, specificity is gonna win the day
per channel, per tone, per, likeYeah. Alright. Go ahead, Liz.
Liz Moorhead (44:05):
Yeah. So the weird space that we're entering into
is where, guys, voice and toneis so much simpler than we think
it is in some ways. Right? Like,I had to do a lot of writing out
here, and what the what the guysare looking at right now is the
section where I talked about howdo they feel about their current
state, what are the goals theywant to achieve, and why, and
what do they want from us, andthen the situational examples
(44:25):
and scenarios. What this comesdown to is literally just being
a human flipping being.
George B. Thomas (44:32):
Mhmm.
Liz Moorhead (44:33):
Like, if somebody shows up and they are frustrated
and feeling skeptical, but theyare hopeful and determined, that
means you need to show up andacknowledge their frustration
and validate where they areright now and why. And this
often gets packaged under a wordthat I am growing to load with
every fiber of my being, andthat is empathy. Empathy is not
(44:55):
a Band Aid. Empathy is a Trojanhorse word that allows people to
say, well, I'm showing up withempathy. I said, hi.
I see you're frustrated. That'sa freaking bummer. No. That is
not actually showing empathy.Real empathy is showing up and
saying, man, you're frustrated,aren't you?
I get it. You have so muchdownward pressure coming from
(45:16):
above, upward pressure from thepeople you're leading from
below. You're being told twothings that seem to be mutually
exclusive. Your people must hitthese goals. Create a safe work
environment where people canbalance work and life.
And you're just sitting there inthe middle going, sure, Jan.
Happy to. Absolutely. That isshowing up. That is meeting an
(45:39):
emotional need.
Jan Jan sucks.
Chad Hohn (45:41):
Jan sucks. Sandals, Jamaica.
Liz Moorhead (45:42):
Serenity by Jan candles are terrible. Anyway and
that's where I think we get intovery interesting conversations
around brand voice and tone. Youdo need all these rules. You
need to understand what are thethings are that you need to
document. But literally, youwere just sitting down and
saying, well, who is the humanbeing in front of me, and why
are they showing up this way inthis moment?
Not just what are they askingand what do they want from me.
Chad Hohn (46:04):
Yeah. I I'm curious. Do you think that, like,
understanding just your own ish,as George would say, of being a
human and, like, how you feeland, like, because sometimes,
like, you know, I don't know.Maybe I got a little touch of
something in my life, but Idon't know always how to explain
exactly how I feel about stuff.You know?
(46:26):
Like right? And, like, it justis Messaging. Whatever and,
like, articulating those things.But, like, for me to try and,
like, put how I'd like tocommunicate to people in a
business document would be verydifficult because it's
Liz Moorhead (46:42):
not It is incredibly difficult. And so I
have a story about that,actually. I have a I have
someone I work with. I've workedwith for years. And, George, you
will probably relate to thestory not because it's you.
I'm not being sassy. So I do,with with our no. I'm very
serious. I do this workshop forour clients at psychic
strategies, but it's somethingthat I've been doing for a very
(47:03):
long time. It is a voice andtone workshop, and I actually
take people through So what doyou want to sound like, and what
do you not want to sound like?
Who are you and who aren't you?And this guy, he is absolutely
incredible. He's one of myfavorite human beings on the
planet. He is this biggregarious larger than life
kinda guy. He is he is a magnetof a human being.
(47:27):
And that idiot sandwich, I loveyou so much, Rob Beeler. I know
you are listening. You know I'mallowed to tell this story, but
good god. He literally put,well, I don't wanna show up as
opinionated or funny. And I'mlike, wait a minute.
So are you just gonna wake uptomorrow morning and be a be a
fundamentally different humanbeing? Right? So you're
(47:48):
absolutely right, Chad. There isthere is a reason why people who
are third party facilitatorscome in and do this work.
Because when we look in themirror, we only see the best
parts that we wanna emphasizeand the parts that we think will
not be palatable to otherpeople.
We George and I have hadextensive conversations about
this. You know, you have done atremendous amount of growth in
(48:11):
terms of how you show up as awhole ass human, but that
required both of us to gothrough scenarios where it's
like, my guy, why are you hidingparts of yourself?
George B. Thomas (48:20):
Yeah. So so, Chad, by the way, it is
difficult. Yeah. Even for me, itwas difficult, which is why,
ladies and gentlemen, you hirean expert
Chad Hohn (48:34):
Mhmm.
George B. Thomas (48:34):
To help you make that journey. And this is
not a sales pitch, but this issomething that we help humans do
at Sidekick Strategies is likeand by the way, I I will
forewarn anybody and everybodybefore they wanna just reach out
and think it's gonna be, like,frolicking through the tulips.
It's more like laying on apsychological therapy couch over
(48:56):
and over again until you'relike, god. Why did I sign up for
this? Until this beautifuldocument of understanding comes
out the other side, and then youthrow that into your GPT or you
throw it into your HubSpot, andthen all of a sudden you see the
massive difference that it notonly made in you, the human,
(49:19):
going through the process, butalso now your AI assistant that
can because it know you knowyou, so it knows you.
Mhmm. Like, it's a it's a gamechanger.
Liz Moorhead (49:33):
It's a beautiful thing. So I know I could spend a
bajillion hours talking aboutthis, but we do not have a
bajillion hours. So I wouldactually be curious to hear from
you guys considering that we'vedone a little bit more of a deep
dive into my end of the poolwhere I do because you guys talk
about, like, webhooks and youlose your flipping minds. This
is the ish that gets me soexcited because we're just at a
(49:58):
very exciting inflection pointwhere if organizations have the
chance to get it and they reallywanna learn this stuff, they're
gonna they're gonna plow throughanybody else who just doesn't do
the work. But I'd be curious.
What warnings or fears orconcerns do we now have about
this brand voice and tone tool?Where where are you where's your
gut on it? Because there's a lotof opportunity here which we've
(50:19):
already discussed.
Chad Hohn (50:20):
Misunderstanding is the first place I think. Right?
Like, I mean, I think I look atthe tool. The I one of the
reasons there's a beta tag on itis because people just they have
a knowledge based article tohelp explain what it plugs into,
and that's it. Like, I mean,again, we need the content
therapy couch, it sounds like,to, like, really make proper use
(50:42):
of the thing.
And it's like, there's gonnaneed to be some sort of multiple
mediums of video and otherlearning to help people
understand how to configure it.I guess, you know, that's what
I'm afraid is people won'treally know what to do with it.
Max Cohen (50:58):
I don't know I don't know if this is a fear or just
me being still curmudgeon yabout AI for whatever reason.
What I fear, about, you know,making more stuff easier with AI
is that we start to, like, takejust a couple more inches of
detaching ourself from thinkingcritically about our own content
(51:20):
creation and offload even moreof that to computers and take a
little bit more of the human outof it. You know, but that might
also might just be me beinglike, back in my day, we had to
write our own blog post to knowwhat we were talking about. And
now you just got all these AIsand the schemitty toilets
(51:42):
creating it for you. You knowwhat I mean?
Like, I it's I think it's cool.Don't get me wrong. I think it's
I think it's probably gonna bereally impactful in terms of,
like, the quality of everything.But, you know, there's still
always gonna be that part of methat was like, man, we didn't
really wanna create content backthen because it was super hard,
(52:02):
and now we're just kind ofremoving, as much of the
challenge as possible. Yeah.
Which which, again, maybe that'sa good thing because it'll make
it'll look like, that that's thethat's the other side of the
argument that makes it reallydifficult for me to kinda
wrestle with it. Right? Becausethere is so many positives of
(52:23):
it. Right? Like, I talked awhile ago about, you know, why
I'm so stoked about contentremix is that now I can create
content in the format that I'mcomfortable in, so it would
encourage me to create morecontent.
And then all the ways that allthe the the formats and
modalities that I can dispersethat content, I can now create.
Like, you know, I don't likewriting, but I can take, you
(52:43):
know, a short thirty secondTikTok video I do and turn it
into a blog post, turn it into asocial book, turn it, you know,
turn it into all these otherthings that I'm really, really
bad at writing. You know? Soit's good there. Right?
Liz Moorhead (52:55):
You
Max Cohen (52:55):
know, and and I think maybe, like, you're gonna see
that a little bit less with thebrand tool because at least if
you're putting the time andeffort into, like, you know,
doing things like the documentLiz created and really thinking
strategically about your brandvoice, I would say that's a
pretty good indicator thatyou're using AI in the right
way. Right?
Liz Moorhead (53:11):
This is also a baby version of this document.
This is, like, a this is a
George B. Thomas (53:15):
small one. Sure.
Liz Moorhead (53:18):
I can't stop. Tell them how big that you really
are.
Max Cohen (53:20):
Hey. I'm sorry. Do you see how small the scroll bar
is on the right hand side, andyou're telling me this is a
short one?
Liz Moorhead (53:27):
I can't see it, man.
Max Cohen (53:29):
Yeah. I can barely see it.
George B. Thomas (53:30):
Yeah. But
Max Cohen (53:31):
I I do have one question, though. Liz, this
question's for you. If you wentinto, if you went into George's,
advanced settings for his brandvoice and you went down to the
replacement rules and youreplaced the word humans, what
would you replace it with?
Liz Moorhead (53:50):
Oh, wow. Almighty Skynet Overlords.
Max Cohen (53:53):
Oh, jeez. I was gonna say See. I was gonna say stinky
little birds.
George B. Thomas (53:58):
Oh, wow. See. How did we get here?
Max Cohen (54:00):
Just imagine that he
George B. Thomas (54:01):
was doing so
Max Cohen (54:02):
good. Remember everybody.
Liz Moorhead (54:04):
Ponies. It's all
Max Cohen (54:05):
about Just
Liz Moorhead (54:05):
make it super simple.
Max Cohen (54:07):
It's all about the stinky little birds.
George B. Thomas (54:09):
We were we were doing so good.
Liz Moorhead (54:12):
We were doing good.
George B. Thomas (54:13):
Need to
Liz Moorhead (54:13):
get off my lawn.
George B. Thomas (54:18):
So George,
Liz Moorhead (54:18):
what about you? What are your fears and concerns
now?
George B. Thomas (54:21):
That I that I have you guys on this podcast
right now. No. I'm just kidding.
Max Cohen (54:25):
What's
George B. Thomas (54:27):
No. The my biggest fear is that it becomes
the HubSpot projects tool. Oh,can I do that? Idea a great idea
that gets abandoned. Right?
Yeah. It's a idea that getsabandoned because right now,
it's it's to the point whereit's exciting, but it could get
(54:47):
to the point where it's awesome.And and here's where I'm gonna
go with this, is that this couldbe a fundamental piece to where
HubSpot is going in the futureor where I feel like HubSpot
could go in the future. I don'tknow if they're going there or
not. But I bumped up intosomething earlier, maybe a week
(55:08):
or two ago in my brain.
I don't think HubSpot isactually building a CRM anymore.
I think HubSpot is building oneof the world's largest and best
business agents Mhmm. That youwill ever be able to find. And,
(55:28):
because here's the thing, theminute that we have all of the
activities and all of the dataand all of the voice and all of
the tone and all of the agentsworking, it it is now a business
agent filled with other agentemployees that the humans are
powering the strategies and theI I just think this goes to a
(55:52):
place that we might not even beable to imagine at at this
point, to be honest with you.And this piece right here, the
connective tissue of datasources and personas and ICPs
and brand voice is so vitallyimportant to get right that I I
(56:13):
hope they put the money andtime, into, birthing it into
what it needs to be.
By the way, Liz is showingeverybody, if you're watching
this on YouTube or wherever youwatch it, the original document
is a PowerPoint presentationthat is, I don't know, many,
(56:34):
many, many slides ofinformation. You're muted, so
you're just killing it with thatmute button today.
Liz Moorhead (56:41):
Of course. I am. I'm killing it with that mute
button. No. It goes intoproblems, value propositions,
how we talk about ourselves, howwe talk about every single
different type of, competitorthat we have, everything.
So there's a lot that goes intoit, but I haven't I didn't wanna
upload something so large. Yeah.But, George, what do you want
our we've gone through a ton ofstuff today. I've dragged you
(57:03):
all kicking and screaming intothe deep end of my baby pool.
But what do you want people towalk away from this day?
Because we've talked about tool,and we've talked about strategy.
George B. Thomas (57:12):
Yeah. I well, just based on what you said, I
want, people to quit thinking ofit as two different things. I
want I want you to think aboutit as, like, this cohesive,
like, this is where my strategylives. This is where my tech
lives. This is where, like butbut my takeaway for today is and
(57:33):
not to sound like a brokenrecord, but quit using HubSpot
like it's HubSpot.
Always come back to these placesand pieces that they launch,
always retest it, always modifyit, iterate, iterate, iterate.
Like, this this probably is thethird, if not fourth time I've
come back to it and tried to tryit out to see if I liked it. I
(57:54):
finally do enough to talk aboutit on the podcast, but I'm not
just gonna let it sit here. I'mgonna keep digging. I'm gonna be
looking for new features.
My biggest takeaway, would alsobe for anybody and everybody
listening to this podcast is tobe noisy towards HubSpot that we
need more education on this.Look. If I go into the HubSpot
(58:15):
Academy and I type in brandvoice, there's two videos that
show up. One, Jory does forabout three minutes, and one,
Crystal does for two minutes.Come on.
Five minutes for brand voice?Like, I'm not even saying, like,
everything that Liz was justtalking about. I'm just saying
five minutes for brand voicelike the feature. Like, there
there has to be some granularityof educational context to the
(58:41):
way that people should bethinking about the strategy and
using the tool. And if ifHubSpot Academy isn't leading
the way, well, dang on it, thenwe will.
Mhmm. We'll lead the We'll
Liz Moorhead (58:52):
we're already publishing a new piece of
content today about this. Youknow I'm uppity about it.
George B. Thomas (58:57):
I'm just saying. Like, to get noisy about
one uppity about it. Anyway, getnoisy about wanting more
education around this, because II personally feel it's that
important to you, to yourbusiness, and to the level of
what we should be taking this. Ienvision a world where there's
(59:17):
independent, user brand voices,a major brand voice tied to your
persona property being usedright, your ICPs putting being
put in there. Yeah.
And now that's just so it itcould be so good. Mhmm.
Liz Moorhead (59:33):
I already manufactured that outside of
HubSpot. I use so it's not GPT.You know this? I have a George
bot. I have a Paul bot.
I have a Rob bot. I have a Seanbot. I build my own voice GPTs
based on my clients, based onhours and hours and hours and
hours and hours of transcripts,documentation, programming, like
(59:54):
but that's because I know how todo it, and I wish there were
more opportunities for people tolearn this.
Chad Hohn (59:59):
Yeah.
Liz Moorhead (59:59):
HubSpot call me.
Chad Hohn (01:00:01):
Yeah.
Liz Moorhead (01:00:03):
Anyway
George B. Thomas (01:00:03):
Super curious. If if, if you're listening to
this and you're like, wow. I'dlove to do, like, a one day low
cost group, brand voice toneworkshop, hit us up.
George@GeorgebThomas.com. I'lljust hit us up.
I'm curious if that's, like,something that the, actually
Liz Moorhead (01:00:29):
Stinky little birds.
George B. Thomas (01:00:30):
Oh, stinky little birds. Let's not do that.
Okay, hub heroes. We've reachedthe end of another episode. Will
Lord Lack continue to loom overthe community, or will we be
able to defeat him in the nextepisode of the Hub Heroes
podcast?
Make sure you tune in and findout in the next episode. Make
(01:00:52):
sure you head over to thehubheroes.com to get the latest
episodes and become part of theleague of Heroes. FYI, if you're
part of the League of Heroes,you'll get the show notes right
in your inbox, and they comewith some hidden power up
potential as well. Make sure youshare this podcast with a
friend. Leave a review if youlike what you're listening to,
(01:01:13):
and use the hashtag, hashtag hubeuros podcast on any of the
socials, and let us know whatstrategy conversation you'd like
to listen into next.
Until next time, when we meetand combine our forces, remember
to be a happy, helpful, humblehuman, and, of course, always be
looking for a way to besomeone's hero.
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