Episode Transcript
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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.
Max Cohen (00:52):
Me. See, I hate that because I hate it because I I
thought we were just divingright into the conversation. I
was like, oh, George isn'tplaying the intro, and then you
pull that shit
George B. Thomas (01:01):
in. Yes.
You like that?
Max Cohen (01:02):
Caught me off guard.
George B. Thomas (01:03):
You like that? I'm not ready
Max Cohen (01:04):
for that, dude. I'm not ready for that. I haven't
thought about HubSpot forfourteen days. I don't know how
long I've been off. And
George B. Thomas (01:10):
The the holidays. Right?
Max Cohen (01:12):
Yeah. I was just, like, getting I was ready, and
then you just you threw me offcompletely.
Liz Moorhead (01:17):
You know, let's you know, let's call it guys.
Try again tomorrow. Let's justtry again
George B. Thomas (01:20):
tomorrow. No. Tomorrow. Let's just Alright.
Another day.
Alright. Bye, listeners.
Liz Moorhead (01:23):
Bye, everybody. It's been good. Bye.
George B. Thomas (01:24):
Just kidding. Just kidding.
Liz Moorhead (01:27):
So how have you guys been? I missed you.
Max Cohen (01:30):
I'm gonna be honest. I'm gonna be honest. I've, give
me one second here.
George B. Thomas (01:34):
No lack of snacks for this morning.
Max Cohen (01:36):
No no lack of snacks. No lack of snacks. I've racked
up around 349 hours in FarmingSimulator since we've last
booked.
George B. Thomas (01:43):
Brother. Wow.
Max Cohen (01:45):
Now granted, there's sometimes where I just kinda,
like, keep it on and walk awayfrom it and
George B. Thomas (01:50):
Yeah.
Max Cohen (01:50):
But, you know, I was get
George B. Thomas (01:52):
those farm hours in. You know?
Max Cohen (01:53):
I got some hours in. A %.
Liz Moorhead (01:55):
Yeah. Agriculture never sleeps, man.
Max Cohen (01:58):
Jeez. Hey. You know what? We're just trying to grow
better.
George B. Thomas (02:01):
Okay? Oh, wow.
Max Cohen (02:03):
We're trying to grow better.
George B. Thomas (02:04):
This. Really?
Max Cohen (02:05):
Okay. Mega has
Liz Moorhead (02:07):
That's the vibe of 2025. That's what we're
George B. Thomas (02:10):
Yep. We're just trying to,
like, get
Max Cohen (02:12):
a tracker. Grow better.
George B. Thomas (02:14):
Farm simulator because we forgot what HubSpot
is. We are on the
Max Cohen (02:18):
I ordered a joystick. I ordered a joystick, okay, to
control my, you know,
George B. Thomas (02:25):
Your excavators and stuff.
Max Cohen (02:26):
Excavators and, yeah, tree harvesters. We're going
hard. Wow. You
Liz Moorhead (02:30):
know? You're right, Max.
Max Cohen (02:31):
Farmer when you grow up. I might be.
George B. Thomas (02:33):
You know what? We should be we should be
farming Leeds.
Liz Moorhead (02:37):
Yeah. I was trying
Max Cohen (02:37):
to make it look so good.
Liz Moorhead (02:39):
That's a better one. I like that.
George B. Thomas (02:41):
I was I'm I'm trying here. I'm try I'm
Liz Moorhead (02:42):
We're doing our best. We're doing our best. But
we are back. New year, newepisode, but on our same old BS.
I'm very excited about today'sepisode because if you are a
longtime listener, first timecaller, you know that we spent
the a good number of episodesbefore the new year talking
about HubSpot AI's new tools aswe went through the different
(03:06):
data source settings throughout,the platform.
But AI has been a topic for awhile now, not just because of
everything that's happening inthe headlines, but particularly
within the HubSpot ecosystem. Itbegan really enforced last year
when the HubSpot CMS hubrelaunched as the content hub.
And that was when we reallystarted seeing HubSpot leading
(03:29):
with some AI powered toolswithin the platform. Platform.
But then we saw it continue toescalate when we got to inbound
with Breeze Intelligence and allof the different ways that AI is
now basically part of the DNA ofhow HubSpot works.
Now while we talked about hubsor AI and HubSpot before, I have
(03:49):
to admit, guys, one of thereasons why I'm thrilled to be
revisiting this topic is we werekind of learning alongside
everybody else. Right? We wereexperiencing all of these
updates in real time. We reallyhadn't had a lot of time to do a
lot of excavation of bestpractices on our own. So this is
(04:09):
still going to be a conversationthat will evolve as we all
learn, but we're here to talktoday about the big question
when it comes to HubSpot AIversus our own human powered
judgment.
When do you trust the machine?Because AI makes it so easy to
generate content and strategieswithout much thought, which
leads me to my favorite rule,which is applicable to
(04:32):
marketing, HubSpot, or quitefrankly anything else in life.
It's the Jurassic Park rule.Just because you can, doesn't
mean you should. Just becauseyou can build AI content
dinosaur, doesn't mean youshould.
So today's conversation isn'tabout picking sides. It's about
understanding where HubSpot AItools really add value versus
where our humanity becomesirreplaceable. Now, George, I
(04:56):
wanna start with you becauseyour topic at inbound was
literally about this idea ofhuman powered AI assisted when
you're thinking about your AIcontent, your AI tools as the
critical mindset HubSpot usersneed to embrace when they're
thinking about AI. But what doesthat really mean? And I would be
(05:17):
curious if any of your viewshave shifted on that at all
since we gave since giving thattalk.
George B. Thomas (05:23):
Yeah. So the talk, if I boil it down to,
like, three major points, it'sone, AI is a tool, not a
replacement. In in theconversation, that was a big
piece that we talked about that,AI should never be the easy
button or the silver bulletsolution. Like, the the human
context matters, and, again, weare we are the leader. We are
(05:46):
the brain even though AI isreally, really freaking smart,
especially with, like, thelatest models that have been
launched.
A big piece of the talk wascontext is crucial. I'll talk
about something that I've addedto that, here as we've kind of
been continuing down this AIjourney. And then, another part
(06:06):
was frameworks for effective AIuse, Liz. And, like, one of the
things we literally, gave awaywas, like, a checklist on how to
humanize, and this was specificto content because my
conversation was on content.Although many of the things that
I just said, context is crucial,AI is a tool, not a replacement,
could be far outside of thecontent realm.
(06:27):
Mhmm. But if you think about,what are the frameworks that
keep you rooted to where youneed to be, what is the context
that you need to give it, andhow is it a tool, not a
replacement? My mind hasn'tshifted or changed on any of
those. I still believe those tobe true. One of the things that
I have been playing around withto go along with context is this
(06:50):
idea of cohesive.
And and what I mean by cohesiveis, like, being able to string
thoughts together. Right? When Igave this talk back at inbound,
it was we very much lived in aworld where it was like we had
one conversation and we did onething, and and then we went to a
next conversation and didanother thing. And now with the
(07:11):
way that especially, this isless HubSpot, for a second, but
more like if we lean into chatGPT and the the birth of Canvas,
that we have in there and thethe birth of o, four now being
able to do things where you canhave a cohesive thought across
multiple things. I'll give youan example around content
(07:33):
creation.
I was messing around, thiscouple weeks ago, and I said,
hey. I wanna create four YouTubescripts. I want the four scripts
to layer on top of each otherand hand off to each other, and
I wanna teach this topic, and Iwanna teach it in this way. And
then in an individual canvas inone conversation, so meaning we
(07:55):
had four canvases, we literallyhad four rough draft scripts for
these videos to which then inthe same conversation, because
we had those scripts, we thenasked it for LinkedIn posts, and
we asked it for YouTubedescriptions. Now we never left
that one conversation, but wehad a cohesive thread based on
(08:17):
the context from a tool that wasassisting us to do a task based
off of a framework for videos tohand off to each other.
Right? So this is where so wherewe're getting now I think this
is still, you can still thinkabout this when you think about
HubSpot. Like, how does this begap that? How does the how do we
(08:39):
make this cohesive as we moveforward when we're thinking
about things, by the way, AKAdata sources, when we're
thinking about the, service bot,the social bot, the or I should
say agent. Right?
But I don't know if we're reallyin a world of agents yet, but
we're getting there. But whenwhen we get into the agents,
content agents, social agent,prospecting agent, like, now now
(09:03):
the the thing that we need to bethinking about is cohesiveness
across the board. So that that'smy thoughts, Liz, to get us
going.
Liz Moorhead (09:11):
Chad, I wanna ask you, where do you feel that
HubSpot's AI tools shine themost right now? When you get
into that ops mindset, which isone of the most incredible
things that you bring to thisshow, what what are the specific
tasks or processes where theyconsistently outperform human
effort? Because, George, to yourpoint, a lot of the conversation
you had during that inboundtalk, that was about content.
(09:34):
Right? That is where humanity intheory is supposed to be on
display.
But I think when we have theseAI and particularly generative
AI conversations, we forget thatsometimes it's not necessarily
that kind of output.
George B. Thomas (09:46):
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, for for me, when I'm
looking at where HubSpot'sputting AI in in what I often
do, a lot of the opsintegration, connecting system
type stuff, it's not reallythere for me and what I would do
yet. Meaning, like, inside of aworkflow, I don't have, unless
(10:08):
it's a third party tool, somesort of AI function. But where
it is very, very shining is inthe scenario where it's
augmenting people's daily manualtasks.
So maybe the thing that I wouldbuild is something to properly
task humans to do something orto make sure that they're aware
(10:28):
and trained on when their salesmeetings are coming up, and then
you can use the AI meetingprepare. And, bam, it will look
through all of the notes on thecompany record, and it'll look
through all of the previousmeetings and all the last calls.
And you can ask it for, like, asentiment update in Breeze.
Like, I mean, that's prettyamazing. Being able to, like,
(10:52):
just parse through all of thatinformation in an easy to digest
manner to get you ready for yourupcoming meeting.
That's pretty awesome. Like butwhen it comes to, like, getting
it to do asks for youautomatically, you know, that's,
I think, a little bit wherewe're not quite you know, it's
(11:12):
not built in to that point yetbecause I think they're still
making sure the guardrails areup longer for a season where
you're confident that you'reactually gonna be able to have
that framework that George istalking about in before it
starts trying to offload a wholelot into, well, this one part of
the process can be done andsaved and logged into a property
(11:36):
or something like that. Right?All with AI. Right?
It gets a little bit moredifficult there because we wanna
make sure it's doing what weneed, and we have all of our own
business guidelines andguardrails to be able to put in
so it can do what we want it toevery time.
Liz Moorhead (11:53):
Max, what about you? Where do you see HubSpot's
AI tool shining?
Max Cohen (11:56):
You know, again, for me being the guy who's always,
you know, constantly championedthe idea that content is what
runs, you know, the entireinbound machine that you create,
like, I think a lot of that, youknow, in terms of, like, where
it shines the most is reallyjust the assistance around that
content creation stuff. And Ithink, like, even when you talk
(12:17):
about, you know, the contentcreation and I'm thinking
specifically about, like,written word here. Right? Like,
yeah, all the, you know, mixthat so I'm forgetting yeah. I
forget whatever these called nowbecause I've been on break
Liz Moorhead (12:27):
for so long.
Max Cohen (12:28):
All the yeah. Content remix stuff is, like, super cool
just from, like, a time savingperspective and content reuse
perspective. I think that'sreally great because it can
really amplify what a marketeris doing. But, you know, even
just where it comes intosomething as simple as, like,
you know, assisting people whojust aren't great at writing.
You You know what I mean?
I'm not good at writing at all.Right? And, like, when I write
(12:48):
emails, I write long, longemails. Right? So, like you're
George B. Thomas (12:52):
that guy?
Max Cohen (12:53):
Having some oh, yeah. Totally. Because I feel like I
have to explain every singlething. I wanna leave no room for
questions. Like, I wanna leavenothing to the imagination.
I always you know, I tend to besomeone who, like, overexplains
things. Right? And for me, it'sreally great to have tools to
help me, like, shorten thatmessage and make it more concise
and fix all my terrible grammarand punctuation and, like, all
these other things.
Liz Moorhead (13:13):
I totally do that. Like, here's an email. Please
make it 75 shorter.
Max Cohen (13:16):
Yeah. Yeah. And even just that even just that, this
is something that's, like, greatfor salespeople to have. Like,
I'm sorry. I've gotten somereally poorly written sales
emails before.
George B. Thomas (13:26):
Yeah.
Max Cohen (13:26):
Right? And, you know, especially, you know, from SDRs
and BDRs fresh out of collegethat, like, don't really know
how to write emails well. Right?So, like, even having something
that's, like, acting sort of as,like, a glorified Grammarly,
like, in your CRM just to belike, hey. You know what?
There's a there's a better, youknow, more professional or, you
know, better way to write whatyou were just trying to write to
(13:47):
that person. You know what Imean? I think having that is
great just to, like, kind ofimprove the output quality of
their content, quote, unquote,that, like, a salesperson's
creating. Creating. Because ifyou think about a salesperson,
their content creation is theiroutreach, their communications,
their emails, their this, theirthat.
Right? I think it's really,really great for that. And I
think it really falls in linewith, you know, all the other
(14:07):
sort of, like, time saving stuffthat, like, HubSpot's built over
the years to make salespeople'slives easier. Right? You look at
things like sequences andtemplates and, you know, all
these things that are just meantto, you know, help automate
those repetitive tasks that youhave.
Well, it's like, hey. Now thethe task of creating that thing
in the first place, it improvesthe quality of. Right? Not just
(14:27):
reducing the amount of timeyou're spending on it. Right?
Which, also, yeah, you couldmake an argument. It's reducing
the amount of time you'respending on proofreading email
or just making sure you'rewording something correctly.
Right? But it's also you know,it's gonna fix up your sentence
structure, and it's gonna makeyou, like, write it like someone
who knows how to be a wordsmithon a keyboard. Right?
And I think that's gonna begreat for folks that wanna focus
on selling, not focus onrelearning how to, you know,
(14:50):
compose the English language ina in a professional and and good
quality way. Right? Yeah. Soyeah.
George B. Thomas (14:57):
It's interesting, Max, because you're
listening to you, my brain goesin two directions. One, for all
of you listening to this, if youhave access to Remix and you
haven't actually gone back and,like, used it in a while, I
would go back and try it againbecause it has had a little bit
of a face lift and also, like,some additives under the hood. I
(15:17):
feel like maybe they added alittle bit of a turbocharger
under there or something. It wasyeah.
Liz Moorhead (15:22):
I feel like we need to have an episode on this
because we haven't talked aboutit.
George B. Thomas (15:25):
Yeah. So I was teaching it the other day, and
and I always love when I'mteaching something and then it
it, like, looks new and then itis kind of new, because it's
like, you you have to be goodat, like, I'm just gonna act
like I've seen this a hundredtimes, and we're gonna teach it
together and learn it together.
Max Cohen (15:42):
So definitely in front of a room of 90 new hires
live in the moment in front of agiant projector. That was the
worst. Yeah. Exactly. Yeah.
George B. Thomas (15:50):
So so that's the first thing that comes to
mind when like, check out Remixif you hadn't. The second thing
that came to my mind was, like,if you knew and I'm I don't know
how other how else to paint thisother than, like, if you knew
that you had a weakness. Right?So I'll I'll pretend for a
second that I I'm not a veryempathetic human, and I
understand. I'm just not veryempathetic.
(16:11):
I'm very matter of a a fact.Right? Like, here's the facts to
the matter. If I realize, like,I'm that type of person, I can
see where this gets realinteresting to be able, like,
can you please take this emailand add a slight bit of empathy
to it? Or add a add a slight bitof excitement to it or or add a
add a slight bit of urgency toit.
(16:33):
Mystique. Like yeah. Like,whatever it is. Right? So, like
Liz Moorhead (16:37):
Add a little human razzle dazzle.
George B. Thomas (16:39):
A little demure.
Yeah. Give it some zhoosh. Give give it a
little zhoosh it up a littlebit. No. But but I'm being but
I'm being dead serious here.
Right? Like, think about, and bythe way, if if if I was a sales
guy, which I kind of am, but ifit was, like, my full time thing
and I knew that I had to create,like, these dope emails, I would
probably do what I'm saying forthe same email, and I would look
(17:03):
at the six or seven differentways. Well, what does it look
like if it's written withempathy or if it's written with
urgency? Or what if I did ahappy mix of the two? And I
would because I could becauseyou can so quickly iterate based
on these, like, pinpoints of ofof thinking to get then oh, I
really like how that one andtalk about AB testing your sales
(17:24):
emails at the like, I want onethat's empathetic, and I want
one that's, urgency, and let'sAB test those and see what
happens.
Like so
Max Cohen (17:33):
You know, I think it would be the the thing that I'm,
like, excited about and and Idon't know how they would deploy
this. But, like, think about Iguess the word we would use is,
like, tribal knowledge. Right?Think about how much tribal
knowledge is contained within acompany's, like, HubSpot CRM
portal. And, like, by that, whatI mean is, like, your internal
knowledge bases, your records ofconversations that you've had
(17:55):
with customers, informationabout your product that's hosted
on your website, your key base,your tickets that you have, all
these different things.
Right? Yeah. If you think aboutit, your CRM is like this giant
repository of information on howyou've answered people's
questions and ways you've solvedproblems, right, you know,
through all this stuff. Right?Like, it's so cool because I
(18:17):
think, like, HubSpot one daywith, like, their AI stuff could
have this whole, like I mean,they'll probably call it
something different, but,essentially, this, like, tribal
knowledge engine, right, thatunderstands how to solve all
these different problems the wayyour company does it internally.
Right? And and and thatinformation can only be trained
on and found in the records ofcommunications you've had with
(18:39):
your customers and the contentthat you're putting out into the
world and how you've solvedsimilar problems in the past.
Right? Like, imagine a daywhere, like, a ticket gets
created, and when you go on tothat ticket record or that
conversation or whatever. Right?
The AI is able to say, hey. Thislooks really similar to a ticket
that Jeff b solved back in acouple months ago, and, like,
(19:02):
this is how they came to youknow, this is how they figured
it out. Right? Mhmm. Maybe thisis something similar.
Right? And it gives you insteadof you going, let me search the
let me search my search bar tosee if I can find any, like,
tickets that are somethingsimilar. Right? It links you to,
like, hey. Here's an example ofsomeone solving this problem for
this other customer.
Right? Mhmm. Like, that is goingto be completely I don't wanna
(19:26):
say game changing because Ithink the word game changing.
That will be, like, such a giantfundamental step forward. Right?
It could have
George B. Thomas (19:33):
changed the game.
Max Cohen (19:34):
And it goes way beyond, like, here's an answer
in a knowledge base because,like, that's something that's,
like, so unique to the inside ofyour organization. Right? Being
able to find, like, pastexamples of complex problems
that are coming up again thathave been solved in the past
through a different way and thenbeing smart enough to understand
that and be like, hey. Thissounds similar. Here was the
solution, but you can go look atit if you want to.
(19:56):
Right? That's gonna be
George B. Thomas (19:57):
Well, the good thing too the good thing too is
it's not it's it's notnecessarily needing to look at
somebody specifically went andcreated an SOP or documented it.
It's looking at the conversationthat happened in the system.
Therefore, hey. This is whathappened. Here's the thing that
excites me about that too isit's it's three employees ago.
It's six years ago.
Yep. Exactly.
(20:18):
You know, like, hey. On June nineteenth of
twenty twenty seven, Bobby raninto this problem with
Frederico, and this is how hefixed it. Like, and and what's
great about that is it's now allof a sudden, what what was
exciting about content is wewere like, there's no more
writer's block. There's always abeginning draft. You have an
(20:38):
idea, and you just at least youhave a place to start.
Now when you're talking aboutfixing people's problems, you
have a place to start becauseyou see the finish lines
Liz Moorhead (20:48):
Mhmm.
George B. Thomas (20:48):
Of where you're trying to go with this
human anyway.
Liz Moorhead (20:51):
I'll even take it a step further. I'll even take
it a step further, George,because one of the things I
really like about it, it remindsme of human nature. Right? We
are more outspoken and reactivewhen we see something we don't
like. And so what I've actuallyfound that is helpful with AI is
that it kills that blankdocument syndrome that becomes
it's that's where writer's blockbegins.
George B. Thomas (21:13):
Yep.
Liz Moorhead (21:13):
Right? But even if it gives me absolute trash, even
in that trash moment, I'm like,well, I know definitely it's not
this, and it still gives me astarting point
George B. Thomas (21:23):
Oh, yeah.
Liz Moorhead (21:23):
Of where I need to go
George B. Thomas (21:25):
Yeah.
Liz Moorhead (21:25):
Which I love.
George B. Thomas (21:26):
Yeah. Yeah.
Liz Moorhead (21:27):
I wanna I wanna switch the conversation here a
bit. I want to talk about thepotential risks or downsides of
leaning too heavily on HubSpotAI tools. Like, for example,
have you ever experienced orheard of a situation where
HubSpot AI just producedsomething that completely fell
off or completely missed themark?
Max Cohen (21:46):
You know, I could see it. I I could see there being
issues for like, I think about,like, the workflows tool and
how, like, you can use aworkflow to, like, create
actions. Right? I could see asituation where someone who's
not as understanding of thenuances of HubSpot would just,
like, tell a prompt to build aworkflow and be like, alright.
Well, you know, I told HubSpotwhat I wanted, and it did it.
(22:08):
So, like, it must be right, butI'm not educated or
understanding enough of how,like, you know, workflows can
have different effects on thingsto to know like, to check its
work if it's right or not.Right? Because then they can Or
if
George B. Thomas (22:20):
it's not specific enough. Like, because
if you're not specific enough tosay, oh, well, I want these
things to be updated whenmeetings are completed, but only
the first time. Or if it hap youknow, like, I mean, it doesn't
understand that unless you tellit. Right?
Max Cohen (22:36):
Exactly. So, like, so for some new users who, like,
you know, see AI as this, like,all powerful thing but don't
necessarily understand itslimitations or, like, like, you
know, are hyper aware of thenuances of how it might not,
like, fully understand exactlywhat you wanna do. Right? But
just kind of, like, buildsomething that sort of, like,
aligns with it. Right?
And then folks kind of leaningin on that too heavily. Like,
(22:57):
that could be a risk. Right?
George B. Thomas (22:59):
Yeah.
Max Cohen (23:00):
I think you do also, like, you know I've talked about
these risks before. Like, you dototally have the potential with
these tools in front of you tojust put a lot of trash out
there, whether it's content, youknow, or, you know, email
communications or anything likethat where people just go, oh,
AIC button and you hit it andboom. There you go. Right? And
it's just you're just pumpingout garbage, and and people hate
you because of it.
(23:20):
Right? And not, like, using itas a tool to, like, assist with
the creation versus using it asthe thing that just builds
everything so you don't have tothink about it, and you can go
play Fortnite or something likethat. You know? So that's, like,
still kinda what I'm worriedabout. Right?
But I I I feel like as HubSpotkind of, like, moves more into
those realms that we weretalking about around the I don't
(23:43):
wanna say the portal becomingself aware of itself. Right? But
Wow. The portal maybe All hailstuck at it. Here's here's kinda
like what I wanted to saybefore, and I think it kind of
weaves into, like, solving thatproblem that I just said.
Right? You know, imagine we hadthe, you know, full fledged,
prompt thing inside theworkflows tool. And as you built
(24:06):
your workflow, it could talk toyou about the implications of
what you created. Right? So forexample, if you're building,
like, a workflow and you add anaction that's, like, just
changing, like, a property.
Right? What if little, you know,HubSpot Clippy AI popped up and
said, hey.
George B. Thomas (24:23):
We'll call it hippie.
Max Cohen (24:24):
Hey. Just so you know. Wow. Just so you know, if
you change this property, itmight go and, like, trigger this
other stuff, and these are someof the effects that that could
have. Right?
Because maybe it sees the actionthat you're adding, runs that,
you know, simulation in its headand goes, oh, shit. All this
other stuff is gonna happenbecause of this. Right? Just to
warn you. Right?
And then if you could, like,have conversations with it,
(24:47):
like, oh, what if I do it thisway? What if I do it this way?
And it knows, like, itunderstands what the
implications of what that wouldbe because, one, it has, like, a
really good understanding of howworkflows work, but, two, it
matches that with the reallydeep understanding in the
context of your portal and thedata inside of it.
George B. Thomas (25:02):
Mhmm.
Max Cohen (25:02):
Right? You put that together. There's your missing
link of the nuance that newusers aren't gonna have. Right?
So that that will be a real easyway to solve that.
Yeah. Totally.
George B. Thomas (25:13):
Right? Because, like, think about this.
I work at a partner agency, andwe have multiple people
sometimes building workflowsinside of our clients, HubSpots.
And like,
Max Cohen (25:23):
what
George B. Thomas (25:23):
if I'm building something that somebody
either has built near or alreadybuilt or something along those
lines, right Yep. Then, youknow, hippie might be able to
tell us Hippie. What's going on.Yeah. Sprocky will get, you
know, a little HubSpot Sprocky,a little sprocket in the corner
there.
And it just
Max Cohen (25:44):
Oh, hey, guys. Hey. Hey.
George B. Thomas (25:45):
Wow. Okay. So I love I love, that little comic
relief there. And I also lovehow you guys are, like, future
talking today. This is actuallypretty amazing.
I I have to be honest with you.I have seen where, let's let's
just say reporting gets a littlebecause the AI reporting I I I
literally teach it this way. I'mlike, hey. It's there. Play with
(26:08):
it, but be careful.
And I know there'll come a daywhen that isn't true, but, like,
again, you guys went toworkflows, which is one of most
mere mortal HubSpot users'Achilles heel is the workflows
tool. They feel it's it'sdifficult, and it's confusing,
and Mhmm. And and it's changing,and it's the other Achilles'
seal is reporting. And so ifyou're looking for the, like,
(26:31):
biggest return, you're like,well, let me just have AI do my
reporting, which is a is a is anopportunity for a disaster.
Again, if you don't know thespecificity and the actual,
like, formula or framework of,like, question to insight to,
like, data points and all allthe underlying pieces.
So I I'd love the idea of itgetting smart enough to know all
(26:52):
of the underlying pieces andbeing able to say, hey.
Unfortunately, we can't give youthe report you're looking for
because you should be creating acustom property called this
that's tracking that. And overtime, we could then do what
you're looking for. Yep. Butbecause it would be based on
what what it is, like anyway, sothat's that's the other thing.
Here here's another piece,though, that
Max Cohen (27:11):
Hold on. Wait. Wait. Wait.
George B. Thomas (27:12):
Wait. Can I
Max Cohen (27:12):
can I to say it on my end also? Right?
George B. Thomas (27:14):
Yeah. Yep.
Max Cohen (27:15):
That that report builder needs to be able to ask
you clarifying questions beforeit actually creates what it's
building you. Right? Because,dude, think about how many times
when you ask someone, oh, theywhen they go, oh, I want a
report that does this. What doyou ask? You go, why do you want
it?
Like, what what is it gonnawhat, like, what do you want it
to tell you?
George B. Thomas (27:35):
Right? Yeah.
Yeah.
Max Cohen (27:36):
And, like, that is so important to understand how to
build that actual report. And,like, AI needs to do that too
instead of being like, okay.
Liz Moorhead (27:41):
Here it is.
Max Cohen (27:42):
Boom. I'm gonna give it to you. It should be like,
wait. Wait. Wait.
George B. Thomas (27:44):
Wait. Yeah. And I'm I love how to
Max Cohen (27:46):
wanna see this data? Why do you wanna see this data?
How, like, how should you lay itout? And then it also should be
able to tell you, bro, you can'tbuild a chart that does that
because what you're asking foris impossible in the laws of
time and space. Right?
Like, think about how many timespeople have said, I want one
chart that shows me this, this,this, this, this, this, and
you're like, I would always saydraw that for me. And they go,
oh, I can't because I didn'trealize that it was impossible
(28:08):
to represent on a graph. I mean,that's what AI is gonna need to
do in order to, one, trainpeople to be better report
builders. Right? But two,generate reporting that's not
trash.
Right? And just,
Liz Moorhead (28:18):
like true of anything. Yeah. You know, that
idea of, like I think thatreminded me of conversations I
used to have. This is gonnasound strange, but my graphic,
graphic designer I used to workwith. She said I used to get
really frustrated when peoplewould come to me telling me
exactly how to click a button ordesign something instead of
telling me what problem they'retrying to solve.
Max Cohen (28:35):
Exactly.
Liz Moorhead (28:35):
And I think we're seeing something similar here
George B. Thomas (28:37):
Mhmm.
Liz Moorhead (28:37):
Which is there is an assumption on the part of
these tools, which makes sense.This is the beginning of these
tools, and we talk about that alot. But that we know what's
best for us and what we actuallyneed. So I love this
conversation we're hearing rightnow around this idea of, are you
sure? What are you actuallytrying to solve for?
George B. Thomas (28:56):
Yeah. And I love the idea, especially with
the reporting, Max, because thethe technology's there. Right?
It can ask follow-up questions.Like, I love when I'm using a
custom GPT, and it's, like,asked me seven questions.
And I have to give it the answerto get the thing that I'm trying
to get. There's a there's a,again, it comes back to the
context. Right? And and withreporting, it asking you five,
(29:19):
six questions and then trying tobuild the report would be so
much better. But here's here's
the thing. Wizard would be cool. Like, a
wizard to set it up that takesbecause, like, what's what's a
report? It's trying to answer aquestion. Right?
And so, like, that's the wholegoal of a report is to answer
somebody's question. And itshould basically start by
saying, like, what question doyou wanna answer? And then ask
some clarifying questions andthen take a stab at it. Just
(29:41):
like when somebody submits aticket and they go, I want
blipity blah. Right?
But here's the thing that Ithink is going to be the
Achilles heel of AI when itcomes to custom properties
trying to build your report.Public service announcement. If
you're creating customproperties, put a description
and an ineligible name.
(30:04):
Yeah. Yeah.
Max Cohen (30:05):
Don't make it the damn question on the form.
George B. Thomas (30:08):
Yeah. Yeah. You gotta you wow. Yeah.
I mean, otherwise, AI is never gonna
know what the frick's in thatproperty. Right?
Liz Moorhead (30:15):
Yeah.
George B. Thomas (30:15):
Like, how's it supposed to know if you don't
tell it either, a, a good name,and, b, what happens in there?
Max Cohen (30:22):
Yeah. Yeah. Dude, it's almost like it needs this,
like, AI intervention engine.Right? Where it sees someone
doing something stupid inHubSpot, like a comment
Liz Moorhead (30:31):
Help me help you.
Max Cohen (30:32):
Yeah. Pops
Liz Moorhead (30:33):
up and
George B. Thomas (30:33):
goes, are
Max Cohen (30:33):
you sure? Hey, dude. Are you sure you wanna do that?
Alright.
George B. Thomas (30:37):
So he just needs to send them memes. Yeah.
So now
we need Again, like, click Jeremy McGuire. We
need Jeremy McGuire in HubSpot.Help me help you.
Max Cohen (30:45):
Thing is, like, when you're when you're building a
form and you hit create newproperty and it realizes you're
asking a asking a full sentencequestion, it should just
immediately pop up and be like,no. Don't do that. It
Liz Moorhead (30:57):
looks like sales is trying to find out where all
the revenue is. Do you needhelp?
George B. Thomas (31:04):
Here here's here's something I wanna hit on,
though, because, Liz, ask youroriginal question again.
Liz Moorhead (31:10):
Absolutely. So when we think about what are the
potential risks or downsides ofleaning too heavily on HubSpot
AI tools. So and and then Iasked again, like, did you have
any experiences with that orsituations where HubSpot AI has
produced something that's like,why why are we here? How did we
get here?
George B. Thomas (31:28):
Yeah. What happens what happens when you as
the human psychologically juststart to feel dumb? How are you
how are you gonna deal withthat? So when you ask AI to do
everything, and and what washappening historically is that
you were learning something andyou were achieving a task, which
then would release endorphins inyour brain and you would feel
(31:50):
good about accomplishing a task.When you're no longer
accomplishing the task becauseAI does, what does that do to
you psychologically as a human?
This is a piece that doesn'thave anything to do with
HubSpot, but has everything todo with HubSpot, has everything
to do with business, and haseverything to do with us as
(32:10):
humans. We're gonna have to becareful on how we are
reprogramming our brain toperceive a completed task based
on assistance assisting us to dothe task that we never had
before. So I'm just putting astake in the ground right now in
(32:31):
a year to two years or twomonths or six months from now
when all of a sudden we havethis massive thing happening in
organizations where humans arefeeling depleted, defeated, not
energized, not motivated, notunderstanding. Anyway, I'll just
(32:53):
leave it there for people tothink about.
Liz Moorhead (32:55):
Well, don't hop off the mic too quickly, George,
because I wanna ask you first mynext question, which is when it
comes to content creationspecifically, because this is a
topic you have spent a lot oftime on.
George B. Thomas (33:07):
Yeah.
Liz Moorhead (33:08):
Do you think HubSpot AI tools are more
effective as a starting point oras an editor for refining human
created drafts?
George B. Thomas (33:15):
I think it depends. I think it depends on
the human. Like, if you'resitting there and you're, like,
don't have access to GPT orClaude or Perplexity, you
haven't been, you know, wakingup with AI along the way and
figuring it out or whatever,then HubSpot's great for all of
(33:36):
the things for you. Like, youcan generate your ideas. By the
way, you should still probablyhave human conversations with
people inside your organizationto generate some of those ideas
to then bring into HubSpot tothen refine the idea.
But I think HubSpot at thispoint, from a content
standpoint, could be a frombeginning to end with AI
(33:57):
assistant process. Now, Istarted this with it depends
because I actually do a lot ofstuff outside of and then bring
into. And so what I dounderstand, especially when you
have your brand voice in place,it is a it is a phenomenal
(34:18):
refinement tool, meaning, voiceconsistency in saying the things
the way that, they they shouldbe said to have this kind of
holistic, cohesive contentengine resource center inside of
HubSpot, giving it a final brushof, like and make this my brand
(34:42):
voice, make this my brand voice,make this my brand voice is a
very interesting, phase or stepthat we've seen adding in
depending upon, the content. So,again, I'm a great marketer. It
depends.
Both. One. All. I don't know.
Liz Moorhead (34:56):
Well, the other thing too, though, is that as
you get more comfortable withthe tools and as you quite
frankly become a moresophisticated content creator,
you probably have a little bitmore flexibility. Right? So for
example, if I'm working I'mtraining a a content manager who
is very, very green and very,very new just at the principles
(35:17):
of storytelling. The principlesof architecting what a great
piece of content looks like,understanding how to construct a
great introduction,understanding what a great
conclusion looks like. I'm gonnawant them to be more involved
and hands on in the processbefore they start bringing in
their AI assistance.
What I would probably do,though, I would have them start
(35:39):
learning how to use AI on theback end. Right? One of my
favorite things to do is, hey.This was the keyword I was
attempting to optimize for. Canyou just take a quick look and
see if I maximized all thoseopportunities correctly?
Or did I miss anything glaring?Or helping them integrate it
into other pieces of theprocess. I think there is this
(36:02):
idea, and and I will admit Iperpetuated this, that I I'm
against using it at the frontend and only more at the back
end when it comes to where AIfits into the content creation
process. But, really, my bigsticking point is, do you even
know what a good story issupposed to look like? If you
(36:22):
get a piece of content that isgenerated from your strategy,
your principles, your ideas, doyou even know if the output that
is in front of you is good ornot?
Do you understand what should bechanging? So the that's the only
thing I would say there is thatit it comes down to your level
of sophistication asstoryteller, and that will
(36:43):
greatly sway your inputs andyour outputs.
George B. Thomas (36:45):
Yeah. See, I agree with everything you said.
What I hope people understand,though, is, like, here here's
what I love about where we liveright now. I think every human
can look at a piece of content,and I'm going very content
specific here for a second, andbe like, yep. That's a turd.
Not I don't like it. And so thenyou're like, well, okay. I know
(37:06):
I need to probably add a littlebit of storytelling too. I need
to add a little bit of this, alittle bit of that. Here's
here's what I love.
I love the fact that you canstill Google, and you can still
grab three or four links. Youcan still read the material. You
can still educate yourself, butthen you can educate the the the
machine, the assistant thatyou're using on those things
(37:26):
that you're you're doing. And soeven your turd, after you
educate yourself and you educateit, you can be like, hey. Can we
try to rewrite this?
But based on the things thatwe've learned together in the
six links that I've uploadedwith this, that, this, that
because now you can and this isgonna sound gross. This is gonna
sound gross. But now you canmold that turd into something
(37:48):
better.
Liz Moorhead (37:50):
Could we just go with clay or something?
George B. Thomas (37:54):
Well, but it see, clay is like a canvas that
you could do anything you wantwith, and we know we're starting
with a big old turd.
Max Cohen (38:04):
I think, you know, a lot of it is it's all just in
the way, like, as enhancementand amplification. Right? So
it's like, you know, enhance thecontent you've created, right,
by making it better, whetherthat is, you know, making the
words better or, you know,improving the punctuation or the
structure or whatever. Right?But then, like, when I think of
(38:24):
the application piece, like,that's immediately content
remix.
Right? Like, just that because,you know, I like, I remember,
like, you know, saying, like,alright. I created this piece of
content, and then it's like,shit. I gotta go Now what? I
gotta go write a blog post aboutit.
I gotta go make social posts. Igotta go craft emails. I gotta
go do a landing page. I gotta dothis. And it's like, now you
(38:45):
don't have to have that biggiant block of, oh, shit.
There's all this other extrawork I have to do. Right? Yeah.
You know that you can at leastget the scaffolding and the
framework of that stuff puttogether. So instead of, oh,
I've gotta push this giantboulder up this hill to create
all this stuff, it's more so,oh, it's already kind of, like,
built for me, and all I'm doingis, like, refining the little
pieces and, like, making slightchanges to it.
(39:05):
And then it's it's out there.Right? But it's all derived from
your original content youcreated. Right? The other thing
too that I think is, like, greatfor, like, a starting point.
Like, I think, you know, when wekinda talk about it being a
starting point, like, there'ssaying, like, you look at
something like a blog post.There's a big difference of
generate an outline for me, andthen I'll add the original
content into it so I have this,like, structure instead of
(39:27):
having to, again, push thatboulder up the hill to, like,
create, you know, zero tosomething else, right, which is
what gets a a lot of people'sway when they're really just
kind of going out and startingand trying to create content.
Right? The other option isgenerate the whole thing for me,
and I don't think about it andpush it out there. Like, it's
when we say starting point, Ithink we're saying, like,
starting point for you to makeit easier for you to create
(39:48):
something original.
Right? And you get rid of allthose mental blocks you might
have around how hard it is to gofrom zero to one point o on a
piece of content. Right? Soyeah.
George B. Thomas (39:57):
And, Max, what I love about what you said and,
by the way, I'm always more of,like, an outline guy and then go
from there. Because here'swhat's fun about outlines. You
can be like, okay. I love thisoutline, but can we also add
this and this to the outline?Mhmm.
Totally.
Liz Moorhead (40:11):
And then you
George B. Thomas (40:11):
can and then you can be like, you know what?
I talked about this on a clientmeeting. Let me go ahead and get
a transcript of that. I actuallytalked about this in a
PowerPoint. Let me go ahead andgrab that.
Talked about this over here. Letme grab that. And now you can
collect stuff that you'vehistorically done anyway, and
you can upload it and be like,based on the stuff that I've
uploaded in the outline thatwe've created, let's build a
(40:32):
rough draft from that. So it isyour brain. It is your words.
It is like
Max Cohen (40:38):
You're just reducing the mental lift to get there.
Right?
Liz Moorhead (40:42):
But then
Max Cohen (40:42):
the other thing too is, like, when you have AI go
and generate an outline for you,right, and you go, okay. Yeah.
This is the stuff I should betalking about. It also makes it
that much easier to be like, oh,here's some of the things that
it probably missed. Right?
Because you're seeing what itcreated as an outline. That's
giving you inspiration andmaking it easier for you to
think about the other stuff thatyou should put in there if you
are gonna mention these, youknow, x five things, like,
(41:04):
whatever it may be. Right? So,you know, it just again, I think
reducing mental lift is is good.Right?
Mental health is important.Right? And and and, obviously,
like, reducing your your yourmental lift to create content is
gonna make it easier to createcontent. Again, you're, like,
you're applying a lot ofleverage with AI. Right?
So I think it's just it'simportant to think about it that
way.
George B. Thomas (41:23):
Two two things I wanna throw in here. One, one
of the questions I love to askbefore I actually move forward
past the outline is, is thereanything else I should know
about, think about, or trainaround this conversation and see
what it spits out? It's amazingto go down some rabbit holes
with that. But second, we as wedo many times on this podcast,
(41:44):
we dove into the content side ofthe world for this. And so, Liz,
I would be remissed if I didn'ttalk about another thing that
happened back at inbound twentytwenty four that was in the
presentation.
We talked about a contentediting checklist going back to,
like, humanizing, your contentand AI being the the assistant.
Maybe talk the listeners throughthat because I don't know if
(42:06):
we've ever really shared thatwhole checklist on here. But if
but if they are listening tothis, they are like, oh, yeah,
outlines and, oh, yeah, thesethings. Like, talk about that
whole piece of this to kindagive them a framework to follow.
Liz Moorhead (42:21):
Yeah. Absolutely. You know, when I think about any
piece of content that I'mediting, what's funny is the
checklist I'm about to share. Webuilt it and developed it and
launched it to go in tandem withthese AI tools. But this is act
that's actually just enabling usto automate or to to apply
structure to a process I wasalready using before AI even
(42:44):
existed.
Because when we look at a pieceof content to your point,
George, there is a framework.There's a you're looking at a
piece of well, how do I knowit's good? Well, because it
could be good or bad across anumber of different things. It
could be factually accurate andgrammatically a dumpster fire.
It could be a grammatical workof art, but a narrative train
wreck.
So whenever I look at a piece ofcontent, one of the p one of the
(43:07):
biggest lessons I teach newcontent managers or anybody who
has to look at content is do notedit for everything all at once.
Edit in sequence. Edit for onething, then edit for the next
thing, then edit for the thirdthing, and so on. And there is a
specific order in which I do it.And the reason why is because,
let's say, for example, you havea piece of content that is
(43:30):
narratively a trash can, butyou've grammatically made it get
sparkle.
Right? Well, you're gonna haveto rewrite it. So those
sparkling new bits of prose thatyou've thrown in there, if you
have a trashy introduction, aconclusion that doesn't make
sense, you're speaking to 18different personas instead of
just one or two, you're gonnahave to redo that work. Exactly.
(43:53):
So here is the order in which Ido it.
First round, I'm looking forfact checking and accuracy.
Right? Is this is this factuallyaccurate? Is are are the things
here correct? I always recommendparticularly when you're dealing
with AI content.
Do you know how many times it'llsay, like, well, I've got this
statistic. And I'll say, are yousure? And it'll go back and say,
(44:17):
you know what? You're actuallyright. I made that up.
I'm sorry. So, like, you have toactually check things. Do not
just blindly trust what's put infront of you. Next, once I have
determined that what I have infront of me is factually
accurate. Right?
And, again, I'm not thinkingabout anything else. I am
thinking about these things in avacuum. Only then can I start
(44:39):
taking a look at readability andengagement? Right? How can I
simplify the language forclarity and impact?
How can I guarantee that I amspeaking at the level of the
people I am trying to reach?Right? So molding the turd,
shaping the clay stuck. We shapethe clay in stages. Right?
(45:01):
Okay. The facts are right.Great. Now let's take a look at
how readable and engaging thosefacts are. Once I've determined
that those facts are accurateand the words are readable and
engaging, then I start lookingat SEO optimization.
How can I enhance it forsearchability? How can I make
sure that it is includingrelevant keywords and phrases?
(45:21):
Then I do final proofreading.Now one of the things I always
find challenging with mostpeople is they don't understand
why this is step four. Again,leave the spelling errors alone.
If you're just going to deletethat entire sentence, it doesn't
matter if we're talking aboutcomputer skills versus computer
skills if the whole paragraph isgetting killed. Right? And then
(45:44):
feedback and iteration. Sothat's really what you're
looking at. Right?
Are the facts accurate? Is it agreat story? Okay. Is it
optimized well for search?Fantastic.
Now that I know I have the rightfacts with the right framing and
the right optimization, isspelled correctly? Is that
grammar all razzle dazzle? Andthen after that, you can do
feedback and iteration. That'sthe order in which you do it.
(46:07):
Love it.
Now I would be curious, though,to hear you guys as we wrap up
today's conversation. Whatadvice would you give teams
trying to figure out when totrust HubSpot AI versus stepping
in with human judgment? Arethere specific guidelines or use
cases that you recommend? And ifyou don't mind, I'd actually
like to go first so that I canturn it over the floor to you
guys. The reality my guidelineis very simple.
(46:30):
Never have a process where thehuman is absent. You're either
at the beginning, at the end,the beginning, the middle, and
ends, the middle and the end.You have to be present
somewhere. The only way youactually truly 1000% screw this
up is to just click that AIbutton willy nilly with no
oversight. And with that, Chad,do you wanna kick us off?
George B. Thomas (46:53):
Yeah. I mean, for me, I think it goes back to
the old adage, you know, justlike you're saying trust but
verify. Right? I mean, it's likeI mean, I I don't think you
could really say it a whole lotbetter. Like, yeah, let's do it.
But let's, you know, get putpeople in the process. I really
in some like, there are somethings that are a little bit
more process driven, like theops hub data cleanup stuff, some
(47:16):
of the AI driven contactduplication detection stuff,
even some AI associations. Like,there's AI, I think, called a
ticket association feature inHubSpot to, like, try and figure
out which calls are related to aticket, based on the content of
the call and things like thatthat exists and has existed for
(47:38):
quite a while. I I mean, thosekind of things, you know,
they're more operational.They're they're less, you know,
being presented to people.
The only real people it causesproblems for is the HubSpot
admin. If if it does, you know,so, I mean, I would say, like,
you could maybe worry a littleless about those kinds of
things. It's like all it's doingis capitalizing first and last
(48:00):
names, and, you know, somebodyhas to verify that the there is
a human with with duplicatecontact or do you know,
detection, right, where you're,accepting or rejecting the
merges and moving data from spotto spot. By the way, if you guys
haven't checked out the the newUI for contact merging, it is
(48:21):
sick. Like, you can get in thereand tell it, I want two
properties from this contact andthree properties from this
contact, and then I want it togo into that one or this one.
Like, it's pretty cool. Like,some real cool UI changes to
that compared to what it's beenin the past. But, yeah, like,
they're putting people in theprocess, I think, where it makes
sense and, you know, trust butverify. That's that's my advice.
Liz Moorhead (48:44):
Max. Gentlemen, don't be so shy.
Max Cohen (48:46):
I was also gonna say trust but verify. You know, it's
Liz Moorhead (48:50):
Are you trusting but verifying Chad's trust but
verify?
Max Cohen (48:54):
I would say, like, he's just verifying.
George B. Thomas (48:56):
Assume
Max Cohen (48:57):
I don't know the way I would put this. Right? What
should go through your head, Ithink, when you generate a piece
of content using AI, you shouldjust assume that it doesn't know
anything about the subjectmatter and verify it. Right?
Because it's very possible thatit will just say some some
(49:18):
that's completely wrong.
Right? And and totally made upand, you know, incorrect. Right?
I'm not saying it's gonna dothat. I'm saying you you know,
when when when you write contentwith AI, all of a sudden, you
become an editor, not a writer.
Right? You gotta be the editor.Right? And you gotta you you can
trust that it put together anice piece of content for you.
(49:40):
You should assume that itdoesn't know shit about the the
subject matter, and you shouldverify that what it actually
outputted for you, is correctreal information.
Right? Because, one, people arealready starting to easily be
able to, like, pick up andunderstand, oh, this is an AI
written article, especiallysearch engines. Right? Two, the
last thing you want is themconsuming the content, and
(50:02):
you're giving bad information,right, and making yourself look
stupid because the AI just kindagave some, like, milquetoast
take on some sort of, like, youknow, subject matter. Right?
And and all of a sudden, forpeople who don't know that, oh,
this is an AI written article.Right? They're reading some some
junk from you that's eitherincorrect or not good. Right?
(50:24):
So, yeah, you can you can trusttrust that it's gonna create
some content for you.
Verify that that content isactually good and and and
informationally sound.
George B. Thomas (50:35):
Yeah. Interesting. So, the way I'll
answer this question is if ifyou deem that there is, some
emotional intelligence needed orsome strategic direction that
needs to be laid down. It's allabout the humans. If you're
(50:55):
looking
Liz Moorhead (50:56):
we go.
George B. Thomas (50:56):
If you're looking for a place where you're
trying to enhance speed orextrapolate scale, then it can
be about the AI. Bottom line, ifI if I'm gonna throw a divider
out there, that's what I wouldwant you to think about.
Emotional intelligence,strategic direction, human, but
then leaning into speed andscale through AI assistant.
Liz Moorhead (51:18):
George, you're not off the hot seat just yet.
George B. Thomas (51:20):
Yeah.
Liz Moorhead (51:21):
Help us land the plane. Take us home.
George B. Thomas (51:23):
Yeah. This one's easy. He's
good at that.
Yeah. Yeah.
Liz Moorhead (51:26):
Yeah. Tell us what that one thing is if we forget
nothing else from thisconversation except one thing.
What should be and why?
George B. Thomas (51:32):
Yeah. Without a doubt. Listen. Chad talked
about the new merging UI. Wetalked about how Remix is
different.
We talked about, you know,there's different AI platforms,
and should we be doing thingsjust in HubSpot. We talked about
how there's gonna be differentagents that you can, like
there's a there's a lot. Ladiesand gentlemen, there's a lot.
(51:52):
And so we are definitely in a aworld where the thing that I
would want you to take away fromthis when we're talking about
AI, HubSpot AI versus humanjudgment is experiment and
learn. Experiment and learn.
Be curious, test differentapproaches, refine, reiterate,
(52:13):
refine, like, figure out whatworks best for your business in
a world where you can do almostanything you wanna do at the
light of speed. But I'm gonnaend it with what Max said.
Max Cohen (52:28):
If you're
George B. Thomas (52:29):
doing things at the light of speed, it's
stupid if you're making yourselffeel stupid or look stupid.
Max Cohen (52:35):
Why is she saying it like that?
Liz Moorhead (52:36):
Why are you saying it?
Max Cohen (52:38):
Why are you saying the light of speed?
Liz Moorhead (52:40):
Speed of light.
George B. Thomas (52:41):
Oh, oh, whatever. If that's the last
Liz Moorhead (52:44):
thing I'd like to say. We're verifying here.
George B. Thomas (52:46):
We need
Liz Moorhead (52:46):
to verify.
George B. Thomas (52:47):
Speed of light, light of speed, whatever.
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 inand find out in the next
episode.
(53:08):
Make 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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(53:29):
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 nexttime, when we meet and combine
our forces, remember to be ahappy, helpful, humble human,
and, of course, always belooking for a way to be
someone'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.
Max Cohen (00:52):
Me. See, I hate that because I hate it because I I
thought we were just divingright into the conversation. I
was like, oh, George isn'tplaying the intro, and then you
pull that shit
George B. Thomas (01:01):
in. Yes.
You like that?
Max Cohen (01:02):
Caught me off guard.
George B. Thomas (01:03):
You like that? I'm not ready
Max Cohen (01:04):
for that, dude. I'm not ready for that. I haven't
thought about HubSpot forfourteen days. I don't know how
long I've been off. And
George B. Thomas (01:10):
The the holidays. Right?
Max Cohen (01:12):
Yeah. I was just, like, getting I was ready, and
then you just you threw me offcompletely.
Liz Moorhead (01:17):
You know, let's you know, let's call it guys.
Try again tomorrow. Let's justtry again
George B. Thomas (01:20):
tomorrow. No. Tomorrow. Let's just Alright.
Another day.
Alright. Bye, listeners.
Liz Moorhead (01:23):
Bye, everybody. It's been good. Bye.
George B. Thomas (01:24):
Just kidding. Just kidding.
Liz Moorhead (01:27):
So how have you guys been? I missed you.
Max Cohen (01:30):
I'm gonna be honest. I'm gonna be honest. I've, give
me one second here.
George B. Thomas (01:34):
No lack of snacks for this morning.
Max Cohen (01:36):
No no lack of snacks. No lack of snacks. I've racked
up around 349 hours in FarmingSimulator since we've last
booked.
George B. Thomas (01:43):
Brother. Wow.
Max Cohen (01:45):
Now granted, there's sometimes where I just kinda,
like, keep it on and walk awayfrom it and
George B. Thomas (01:50):
Yeah.
Max Cohen (01:50):
But, you know, I was get
George B. Thomas (01:52):
those farm hours in. You know?
Max Cohen (01:53):
I got some hours in. A %.
Liz Moorhead (01:55):
Yeah. Agriculture never sleeps, man.
Max Cohen (01:58):
Jeez. Hey. You know what? We're just trying to grow
better.
George B. Thomas (02:01):
Okay? Oh, wow.
Max Cohen (02:03):
We're trying to grow better.
George B. Thomas (02:04):
This. Really?
Max Cohen (02:05):
Okay. Mega has
Liz Moorhead (02:07):
That's the vibe of 2025. That's what we're
George B. Thomas (02:10):
Yep. We're just trying to,
like, get
Max Cohen (02:12):
a tracker. Grow better.
George B. Thomas (02:14):
Farm simulator because we forgot what HubSpot
is. We are on the
Max Cohen (02:18):
I ordered a joystick. I ordered a joystick, okay, to
control my, you know,
George B. Thomas (02:25):
Your excavators and stuff.
Max Cohen (02:26):
Excavators and, yeah, tree harvesters. We're going
hard. Wow. You
Liz Moorhead (02:30):
know? You're right, Max.
Max Cohen (02:31):
Farmer when you grow up. I might be.
George B. Thomas (02:33):
You know what? We should be we should be
farming Leeds.
Liz Moorhead (02:37):
Yeah. I was trying
Max Cohen (02:37):
to make it look so good.
Liz Moorhead (02:39):
That's a better one. I like that.
George B. Thomas (02:41):
I was I'm I'm trying here. I'm try I'm
Liz Moorhead (02:42):
We're doing our best. We're doing our best. But
we are back. New year, newepisode, but on our same old BS.
I'm very excited about today'sepisode because if you are a
longtime listener, first timecaller, you know that we spent
the a good number of episodesbefore the new year talking
about HubSpot AI's new tools aswe went through the different
(03:06):
data source settings throughout,the platform.
But AI has been a topic for awhile now, not just because of
everything that's happening inthe headlines, but particularly
within the HubSpot ecosystem. Itbegan really enforced last year
when the HubSpot CMS hubrelaunched as the content hub.
And that was when we reallystarted seeing HubSpot leading
(03:29):
with some AI powered toolswithin the platform. Platform.
But then we saw it continue toescalate when we got to inbound
with Breeze Intelligence and allof the different ways that AI is
now basically part of the DNA ofhow HubSpot works.
Now while we talked about hubsor AI and HubSpot before, I have
(03:49):
to admit, guys, one of thereasons why I'm thrilled to be
revisiting this topic is we werekind of learning alongside
everybody else. Right? We wereexperiencing all of these
updates in real time. We reallyhadn't had a lot of time to do a
lot of excavation of bestpractices on our own. So this is
(04:09):
still going to be a conversationthat will evolve as we all
learn, but we're here to talktoday about the big question
when it comes to HubSpot AIversus our own human powered
judgment.
When do you trust the machine?Because AI makes it so easy to
generate content and strategieswithout much thought, which
leads me to my favorite rule,which is applicable to
(04:32):
marketing, HubSpot, or quitefrankly anything else in life.
It's the Jurassic Park rule.Just because you can, doesn't
mean you should. Just becauseyou can build AI content
dinosaur, doesn't mean youshould.
So today's conversation isn'tabout picking sides. It's about
understanding where HubSpot AItools really add value versus
where our humanity becomesirreplaceable. Now, George, I
(04:56):
wanna start with you becauseyour topic at inbound was
literally about this idea ofhuman powered AI assisted when
you're thinking about your AIcontent, your AI tools as the
critical mindset HubSpot usersneed to embrace when they're
thinking about AI. But what doesthat really mean? And I would be
(05:17):
curious if any of your viewshave shifted on that at all
since we gave since giving thattalk.
George B. Thomas (05:23):
Yeah. So the talk, if I boil it down to,
like, three major points, it'sone, AI is a tool, not a
replacement. In in theconversation, that was a big
piece that we talked about that,AI should never be the easy
button or the silver bulletsolution. Like, the the human
context matters, and, again, weare we are the leader. We are
(05:46):
the brain even though AI isreally, really freaking smart,
especially with, like, thelatest models that have been
launched.
A big piece of the talk wascontext is crucial. I'll talk
about something that I've addedto that, here as we've kind of
been continuing down this AIjourney. And then, another part
(06:06):
was frameworks for effective AIuse, Liz. And, like, one of the
things we literally, gave awaywas, like, a checklist on how to
humanize, and this was specificto content because my
conversation was on content.Although many of the things that
I just said, context is crucial,AI is a tool, not a replacement,
could be far outside of thecontent realm.
(06:27):
Mhmm. But if you think about,what are the frameworks that
keep you rooted to where youneed to be, what is the context
that you need to give it, andhow is it a tool, not a
replacement? My mind hasn'tshifted or changed on any of
those. I still believe those tobe true. One of the things that
I have been playing around withto go along with context is this
(06:50):
idea of cohesive.
And and what I mean by cohesiveis, like, being able to string
thoughts together. Right? When Igave this talk back at inbound,
it was we very much lived in aworld where it was like we had
one conversation and we did onething, and and then we went to a
next conversation and didanother thing. And now with the
(07:11):
way that especially, this isless HubSpot, for a second, but
more like if we lean into chatGPT and the the birth of Canvas,
that we have in there and thethe birth of o, four now being
able to do things where you canhave a cohesive thought across
multiple things. I'll give youan example around content
(07:33):
creation.
I was messing around, thiscouple weeks ago, and I said,
hey. I wanna create four YouTubescripts. I want the four scripts
to layer on top of each otherand hand off to each other, and
I wanna teach this topic, and Iwanna teach it in this way. And
then in an individual canvas inone conversation, so meaning we
(07:55):
had four canvases, we literallyhad four rough draft scripts for
these videos to which then inthe same conversation, because
we had those scripts, we thenasked it for LinkedIn posts, and
we asked it for YouTubedescriptions. Now we never left
that one conversation, but wehad a cohesive thread based on
(08:17):
the context from a tool that wasassisting us to do a task based
off of a framework for videos tohand off to each other.
Right? So this is where so wherewe're getting now I think this
is still, you can still thinkabout this when you think about
HubSpot. Like, how does this begap that? How does the how do we
(08:39):
make this cohesive as we moveforward when we're thinking
about things, by the way, AKAdata sources, when we're
thinking about the, service bot,the social bot, the or I should
say agent. Right?
But I don't know if we're reallyin a world of agents yet, but
we're getting there. But whenwhen we get into the agents,
content agents, social agent,prospecting agent, like, now now
(09:03):
the the thing that we need to bethinking about is cohesiveness
across the board. So that that'smy thoughts, Liz, to get us
going.
Liz Moorhead (09:11):
Chad, I wanna ask you, where do you feel that
HubSpot's AI tools shine themost right now? When you get
into that ops mindset, which isone of the most incredible
things that you bring to thisshow, what what are the specific
tasks or processes where theyconsistently outperform human
effort? Because, George, to yourpoint, a lot of the conversation
you had during that inboundtalk, that was about content.
(09:34):
Right? That is where humanity intheory is supposed to be on
display.
But I think when we have theseAI and particularly generative
AI conversations, we forget thatsometimes it's not necessarily
that kind of output.
George B. Thomas (09:46):
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, for for me, when I'm
looking at where HubSpot'sputting AI in in what I often
do, a lot of the opsintegration, connecting system
type stuff, it's not reallythere for me and what I would do
yet. Meaning, like, inside of aworkflow, I don't have, unless
(10:08):
it's a third party tool, somesort of AI function. But where
it is very, very shining is inthe scenario where it's
augmenting people's daily manualtasks.
So maybe the thing that I wouldbuild is something to properly
task humans to do something orto make sure that they're aware
(10:28):
and trained on when their salesmeetings are coming up, and then
you can use the AI meetingprepare. And, bam, it will look
through all of the notes on thecompany record, and it'll look
through all of the previousmeetings and all the last calls.
And you can ask it for, like, asentiment update in Breeze.
Like, I mean, that's prettyamazing. Being able to, like,
(10:52):
just parse through all of thatinformation in an easy to digest
manner to get you ready for yourupcoming meeting.
That's pretty awesome. Like butwhen it comes to, like, getting
it to do asks for youautomatically, you know, that's,
I think, a little bit wherewe're not quite you know, it's
(11:12):
not built in to that point yetbecause I think they're still
making sure the guardrails areup longer for a season where
you're confident that you'reactually gonna be able to have
that framework that George istalking about in before it
starts trying to offload a wholelot into, well, this one part of
the process can be done andsaved and logged into a property
(11:36):
or something like that. Right?All with AI. Right?
It gets a little bit moredifficult there because we wanna
make sure it's doing what weneed, and we have all of our own
business guidelines andguardrails to be able to put in
so it can do what we want it toevery time.
Liz Moorhead (11:53):
Max, what about you? Where do you see HubSpot's
AI tool shining?
Max Cohen (11:56):
You know, again, for me being the guy who's always,
you know, constantly championedthe idea that content is what
runs, you know, the entireinbound machine that you create,
like, I think a lot of that, youknow, in terms of, like, where
it shines the most is reallyjust the assistance around that
content creation stuff. And Ithink, like, even when you talk
(12:17):
about, you know, the contentcreation and I'm thinking
specifically about, like,written word here. Right? Like,
yeah, all the, you know, mixthat so I'm forgetting yeah. I
forget whatever these called nowbecause I've been on break
Liz Moorhead (12:27):
for so long.
Max Cohen (12:28):
All the yeah. Content remix stuff is, like, super cool
just from, like, a time savingperspective and content reuse
perspective. I think that'sreally great because it can
really amplify what a marketeris doing. But, you know, even
just where it comes intosomething as simple as, like,
you know, assisting people whojust aren't great at writing.
You You know what I mean?
I'm not good at writing at all.Right? And, like, when I write
(12:48):
emails, I write long, longemails. Right? So, like you're
George B. Thomas (12:52):
that guy?
Max Cohen (12:53):
Having some oh, yeah. Totally. Because I feel like I
have to explain every singlething. I wanna leave no room for
questions. Like, I wanna leavenothing to the imagination.
I always you know, I tend to besomeone who, like, overexplains
things. Right? And for me, it'sreally great to have tools to
help me, like, shorten thatmessage and make it more concise
and fix all my terrible grammarand punctuation and, like, all
these other things.
Liz Moorhead (13:13):
I totally do that. Like, here's an email. Please
make it 75 shorter.
Max Cohen (13:16):
Yeah. Yeah. And even just that even just that, this
is something that's, like, greatfor salespeople to have. Like,
I'm sorry. I've gotten somereally poorly written sales
emails before.
George B. Thomas (13:26):
Yeah.
Max Cohen (13:26):
Right? And, you know, especially, you know, from SDRs
and BDRs fresh out of collegethat, like, don't really know
how to write emails well. Right?So, like, even having something
that's, like, acting sort of as,like, a glorified Grammarly,
like, in your CRM just to belike, hey. You know what?
There's a there's a better, youknow, more professional or, you
know, better way to write whatyou were just trying to write to
(13:47):
that person. You know what Imean? I think having that is
great just to, like, kind ofimprove the output quality of
their content, quote, unquote,that, like, a salesperson's
creating. Creating. Because ifyou think about a salesperson,
their content creation is theiroutreach, their communications,
their emails, their this, theirthat.
Right? I think it's really,really great for that. And I
think it really falls in linewith, you know, all the other
(14:07):
sort of, like, time saving stuffthat, like, HubSpot's built over
the years to make salespeople'slives easier. Right? You look at
things like sequences andtemplates and, you know, all
these things that are just meantto, you know, help automate
those repetitive tasks that youhave.
Well, it's like, hey. Now thethe task of creating that thing
in the first place, it improvesthe quality of. Right? Not just
(14:27):
reducing the amount of timeyou're spending on it. Right?
Which, also, yeah, you couldmake an argument. It's reducing
the amount of time you'respending on proofreading email
or just making sure you'rewording something correctly.
Right? But it's also you know,it's gonna fix up your sentence
structure, and it's gonna makeyou, like, write it like someone
who knows how to be a wordsmithon a keyboard. Right?
And I think that's gonna begreat for folks that wanna focus
on selling, not focus onrelearning how to, you know,
(14:50):
compose the English language ina in a professional and and good
quality way. Right? Yeah. Soyeah.
George B. Thomas (14:57):
It's interesting, Max, because you're
listening to you, my brain goesin two directions. One, for all
of you listening to this, if youhave access to Remix and you
haven't actually gone back and,like, used it in a while, I
would go back and try it againbecause it has had a little bit
of a face lift and also, like,some additives under the hood. I
(15:17):
feel like maybe they added alittle bit of a turbocharger
under there or something. It wasyeah.
Liz Moorhead (15:22):
I feel like we need to have an episode on this
because we haven't talked aboutit.
George B. Thomas (15:25):
Yeah. So I was teaching it the other day, and
and I always love when I'mteaching something and then it
it, like, looks new and then itis kind of new, because it's
like, you you have to be goodat, like, I'm just gonna act
like I've seen this a hundredtimes, and we're gonna teach it
together and learn it together.
Max Cohen (15:42):
So definitely in front of a room of 90 new hires
live in the moment in front of agiant projector. That was the
worst. Yeah. Exactly. Yeah.
George B. Thomas (15:50):
So so that's the first thing that comes to
mind when like, check out Remixif you hadn't. The second thing
that came to my mind was, like,if you knew and I'm I don't know
how other how else to paint thisother than, like, if you knew
that you had a weakness. Right?So I'll I'll pretend for a
second that I I'm not a veryempathetic human, and I
understand. I'm just not veryempathetic.
(16:11):
I'm very matter of a a fact.Right? Like, here's the facts to
the matter. If I realize, like,I'm that type of person, I can
see where this gets realinteresting to be able, like,
can you please take this emailand add a slight bit of empathy
to it? Or add a add a slight bitof excitement to it or or add a
add a slight bit of urgency toit.
(16:33):
Mystique. Like yeah. Like,whatever it is. Right? So, like
Liz Moorhead (16:37):
Add a little human razzle dazzle.
George B. Thomas (16:39):
A little demure.
Yeah. Give it some zhoosh. Give give it a
little zhoosh it up a littlebit. No. But but I'm being but
I'm being dead serious here.
Right? Like, think about, and bythe way, if if if I was a sales
guy, which I kind of am, but ifit was, like, my full time thing
and I knew that I had to create,like, these dope emails, I would
probably do what I'm saying forthe same email, and I would look
(17:03):
at the six or seven differentways. Well, what does it look
like if it's written withempathy or if it's written with
urgency? Or what if I did ahappy mix of the two? And I
would because I could becauseyou can so quickly iterate based
on these, like, pinpoints of ofof thinking to get then oh, I
really like how that one andtalk about AB testing your sales
(17:24):
emails at the like, I want onethat's empathetic, and I want
one that's, urgency, and let'sAB test those and see what
happens.
Like so
Max Cohen (17:33):
You know, I think it would be the the thing that I'm,
like, excited about and and Idon't know how they would deploy
this. But, like, think about Iguess the word we would use is,
like, tribal knowledge. Right?Think about how much tribal
knowledge is contained within acompany's, like, HubSpot CRM
portal. And, like, by that, whatI mean is, like, your internal
knowledge bases, your records ofconversations that you've had
(17:55):
with customers, informationabout your product that's hosted
on your website, your key base,your tickets that you have, all
these different things.
Right? Yeah. If you think aboutit, your CRM is like this giant
repository of information on howyou've answered people's
questions and ways you've solvedproblems, right, you know,
through all this stuff. Right?Like, it's so cool because I
(18:17):
think, like, HubSpot one daywith, like, their AI stuff could
have this whole, like I mean,they'll probably call it
something different, but,essentially, this, like, tribal
knowledge engine, right, thatunderstands how to solve all
these different problems the wayyour company does it internally.
Right? And and and thatinformation can only be trained
on and found in the records ofcommunications you've had with
(18:39):
your customers and the contentthat you're putting out into the
world and how you've solvedsimilar problems in the past.
Right? Like, imagine a daywhere, like, a ticket gets
created, and when you go on tothat ticket record or that
conversation or whatever. Right?
The AI is able to say, hey. Thislooks really similar to a ticket
that Jeff b solved back in acouple months ago, and, like,
(19:02):
this is how they came to youknow, this is how they figured
it out. Right? Mhmm. Maybe thisis something similar.
Right? And it gives you insteadof you going, let me search the
let me search my search bar tosee if I can find any, like,
tickets that are somethingsimilar. Right? It links you to,
like, hey. Here's an example ofsomeone solving this problem for
this other customer.
Right? Mhmm. Like, that is goingto be completely I don't wanna
(19:26):
say game changing because Ithink the word game changing.
That will be, like, such a giantfundamental step forward. Right?
It could have
George B. Thomas (19:33):
changed the game.
Max Cohen (19:34):
And it goes way beyond, like, here's an answer
in a knowledge base because,like, that's something that's,
like, so unique to the inside ofyour organization. Right? Being
able to find, like, pastexamples of complex problems
that are coming up again thathave been solved in the past
through a different way and thenbeing smart enough to understand
that and be like, hey. Thissounds similar. Here was the
solution, but you can go look atit if you want to.
(19:56):
Right? That's gonna be
George B. Thomas (19:57):
Well, the good thing too the good thing too is
it's not it's it's notnecessarily needing to look at
somebody specifically went andcreated an SOP or documented it.
It's looking at the conversationthat happened in the system.
Therefore, hey. This is whathappened. Here's the thing that
excites me about that too isit's it's three employees ago.
It's six years ago.
Yep. Exactly.
(20:18):
You know, like, hey. On June nineteenth of
twenty twenty seven, Bobby raninto this problem with
Frederico, and this is how hefixed it. Like, and and what's
great about that is it's now allof a sudden, what what was
exciting about content is wewere like, there's no more
writer's block. There's always abeginning draft. You have an
(20:38):
idea, and you just at least youhave a place to start.
Now when you're talking aboutfixing people's problems, you
have a place to start becauseyou see the finish lines
Liz Moorhead (20:48):
Mhmm.
George B. Thomas (20:48):
Of where you're trying to go with this
human anyway.
Liz Moorhead (20:51):
I'll even take it a step further. I'll even take
it a step further, George,because one of the things I
really like about it, it remindsme of human nature. Right? We
are more outspoken and reactivewhen we see something we don't
like. And so what I've actuallyfound that is helpful with AI is
that it kills that blankdocument syndrome that becomes
it's that's where writer's blockbegins.
George B. Thomas (21:13):
Yep.
Liz Moorhead (21:13):
Right? But even if it gives me absolute trash, even
in that trash moment, I'm like,well, I know definitely it's not
this, and it still gives me astarting point
George B. Thomas (21:23):
Oh, yeah.
Liz Moorhead (21:23):
Of where I need to go
George B. Thomas (21:25):
Yeah.
Liz Moorhead (21:25):
Which I love.
George B. Thomas (21:26):
Yeah. Yeah.
Liz Moorhead (21:27):
I wanna I wanna switch the conversation here a
bit. I want to talk about thepotential risks or downsides of
leaning too heavily on HubSpotAI tools. Like, for example,
have you ever experienced orheard of a situation where
HubSpot AI just producedsomething that completely fell
off or completely missed themark?
Max Cohen (21:46):
You know, I could see it. I I could see there being
issues for like, I think about,like, the workflows tool and
how, like, you can use aworkflow to, like, create
actions. Right? I could see asituation where someone who's
not as understanding of thenuances of HubSpot would just,
like, tell a prompt to build aworkflow and be like, alright.
Well, you know, I told HubSpotwhat I wanted, and it did it.
(22:08):
So, like, it must be right, butI'm not educated or
understanding enough of how,like, you know, workflows can
have different effects on thingsto to know like, to check its
work if it's right or not.Right? Because then they can Or
if
George B. Thomas (22:20):
it's not specific enough. Like, because
if you're not specific enough tosay, oh, well, I want these
things to be updated whenmeetings are completed, but only
the first time. Or if it hap youknow, like, I mean, it doesn't
understand that unless you tellit. Right?
Max Cohen (22:36):
Exactly. So, like, so for some new users who, like,
you know, see AI as this, like,all powerful thing but don't
necessarily understand itslimitations or, like, like, you
know, are hyper aware of thenuances of how it might not,
like, fully understand exactlywhat you wanna do. Right? But
just kind of, like, buildsomething that sort of, like,
aligns with it. Right?
And then folks kind of leaningin on that too heavily. Like,
(22:57):
that could be a risk. Right?
George B. Thomas (22:59):
Yeah.
Max Cohen (23:00):
I think you do also, like, you know I've talked about
these risks before. Like, you dototally have the potential with
these tools in front of you tojust put a lot of trash out
there, whether it's content, youknow, or, you know, email
communications or anything likethat where people just go, oh,
AIC button and you hit it andboom. There you go. Right? And
it's just you're just pumpingout garbage, and and people hate
you because of it.
(23:20):
Right? And not, like, using itas a tool to, like, assist with
the creation versus using it asthe thing that just builds
everything so you don't have tothink about it, and you can go
play Fortnite or something likethat. You know? So that's, like,
still kinda what I'm worriedabout. Right?
But I I I feel like as HubSpotkind of, like, moves more into
those realms that we weretalking about around the I don't
(23:43):
wanna say the portal becomingself aware of itself. Right? But
Wow. The portal maybe All hailstuck at it. Here's here's kinda
like what I wanted to saybefore, and I think it kind of
weaves into, like, solving thatproblem that I just said.
Right? You know, imagine we hadthe, you know, full fledged,
prompt thing inside theworkflows tool. And as you built
(24:06):
your workflow, it could talk toyou about the implications of
what you created. Right? So forexample, if you're building,
like, a workflow and you add anaction that's, like, just
changing, like, a property.
Right? What if little, you know,HubSpot Clippy AI popped up and
said, hey.
George B. Thomas (24:23):
We'll call it hippie.
Max Cohen (24:24):
Hey. Just so you know. Wow. Just so you know, if
you change this property, itmight go and, like, trigger this
other stuff, and these are someof the effects that that could
have. Right?
Because maybe it sees the actionthat you're adding, runs that,
you know, simulation in its headand goes, oh, shit. All this
other stuff is gonna happenbecause of this. Right? Just to
warn you. Right?
And then if you could, like,have conversations with it,
(24:47):
like, oh, what if I do it thisway? What if I do it this way?
And it knows, like, itunderstands what the
implications of what that wouldbe because, one, it has, like, a
really good understanding of howworkflows work, but, two, it
matches that with the reallydeep understanding in the
context of your portal and thedata inside of it.
George B. Thomas (25:02):
Mhmm.
Max Cohen (25:02):
Right? You put that together. There's your missing
link of the nuance that newusers aren't gonna have. Right?
So that that will be a real easyway to solve that.
Yeah. Totally.
George B. Thomas (25:13):
Right? Because, like, think about this.
I work at a partner agency, andwe have multiple people
sometimes building workflowsinside of our clients, HubSpots.
And like,
Max Cohen (25:23):
what
George B. Thomas (25:23):
if I'm building something that somebody
either has built near or alreadybuilt or something along those
lines, right Yep. Then, youknow, hippie might be able to
tell us Hippie. What's going on.Yeah. Sprocky will get, you
know, a little HubSpot Sprocky,a little sprocket in the corner
there.
And it just
Max Cohen (25:44):
Oh, hey, guys. Hey. Hey.
George B. Thomas (25:45):
Wow. Okay. So I love I love, that little comic
relief there. And I also lovehow you guys are, like, future
talking today. This is actuallypretty amazing.
I I have to be honest with you.I have seen where, let's let's
just say reporting gets a littlebecause the AI reporting I I I
literally teach it this way. I'mlike, hey. It's there. Play with
(26:08):
it, but be careful.
And I know there'll come a daywhen that isn't true, but, like,
again, you guys went toworkflows, which is one of most
mere mortal HubSpot users'Achilles heel is the workflows
tool. They feel it's it'sdifficult, and it's confusing,
and Mhmm. And and it's changing,and it's the other Achilles'
seal is reporting. And so ifyou're looking for the, like,
(26:31):
biggest return, you're like,well, let me just have AI do my
reporting, which is a is a is anopportunity for a disaster.
Again, if you don't know thespecificity and the actual,
like, formula or framework of,like, question to insight to,
like, data points and all allthe underlying pieces.
So I I'd love the idea of itgetting smart enough to know all
(26:52):
of the underlying pieces andbeing able to say, hey.
Unfortunately, we can't give youthe report you're looking for
because you should be creating acustom property called this
that's tracking that. And overtime, we could then do what
you're looking for. Yep. Butbecause it would be based on
what what it is, like anyway, sothat's that's the other thing.
Here here's another piece,though, that
Max Cohen (27:11):
Hold on. Wait. Wait. Wait.
George B. Thomas (27:12):
Wait. Can I
Max Cohen (27:12):
can I to say it on my end also? Right?
George B. Thomas (27:14):
Yeah. Yep.
Max Cohen (27:15):
That that report builder needs to be able to ask
you clarifying questions beforeit actually creates what it's
building you. Right? Because,dude, think about how many times
when you ask someone, oh, theywhen they go, oh, I want a
report that does this. What doyou ask? You go, why do you want
it?
Like, what what is it gonnawhat, like, what do you want it
to tell you?
George B. Thomas (27:35):
Right? Yeah.
Yeah.
Max Cohen (27:36):
And, like, that is so important to understand how to
build that actual report. And,like, AI needs to do that too
instead of being like, okay.
Liz Moorhead (27:41):
Here it is.
Max Cohen (27:42):
Boom. I'm gonna give it to you. It should be like,
wait. Wait. Wait.
George B. Thomas (27:44):
Wait. Yeah. And I'm I love how to
Max Cohen (27:46):
wanna see this data? Why do you wanna see this data?
How, like, how should you lay itout? And then it also should be
able to tell you, bro, you can'tbuild a chart that does that
because what you're asking foris impossible in the laws of
time and space. Right?
Like, think about how many timespeople have said, I want one
chart that shows me this, this,this, this, this, this, and
you're like, I would always saydraw that for me. And they go,
oh, I can't because I didn'trealize that it was impossible
(28:08):
to represent on a graph. I mean,that's what AI is gonna need to
do in order to, one, trainpeople to be better report
builders. Right? But two,generate reporting that's not
trash.
Right? And just,
Liz Moorhead (28:18):
like true of anything. Yeah. You know, that
idea of, like I think thatreminded me of conversations I
used to have. This is gonnasound strange, but my graphic,
graphic designer I used to workwith. She said I used to get
really frustrated when peoplewould come to me telling me
exactly how to click a button ordesign something instead of
telling me what problem they'retrying to solve.
Max Cohen (28:35):
Exactly.
Liz Moorhead (28:35):
And I think we're seeing something similar here
George B. Thomas (28:37):
Mhmm.
Liz Moorhead (28:37):
Which is there is an assumption on the part of
these tools, which makes sense.This is the beginning of these
tools, and we talk about that alot. But that we know what's
best for us and what we actuallyneed. So I love this
conversation we're hearing rightnow around this idea of, are you
sure? What are you actuallytrying to solve for?
George B. Thomas (28:56):
Yeah. And I love the idea, especially with
the reporting, Max, because thethe technology's there. Right?
It can ask follow-up questions.Like, I love when I'm using a
custom GPT, and it's, like,asked me seven questions.
And I have to give it the answerto get the thing that I'm trying
to get. There's a there's a,again, it comes back to the
context. Right? And and withreporting, it asking you five,
(29:19):
six questions and then trying tobuild the report would be so
much better. But here's here's
the thing. Wizard would be cool. Like, a
wizard to set it up that takesbecause, like, what's what's a
report? It's trying to answer aquestion. Right?
And so, like, that's the wholegoal of a report is to answer
somebody's question. And itshould basically start by
saying, like, what question doyou wanna answer? And then ask
some clarifying questions andthen take a stab at it. Just
(29:41):
like when somebody submits aticket and they go, I want
blipity blah. Right?
But here's the thing that Ithink is going to be the
Achilles heel of AI when itcomes to custom properties
trying to build your report.Public service announcement. If
you're creating customproperties, put a description
and an ineligible name.
(30:04):
Yeah. Yeah.
Max Cohen (30:05):
Don't make it the damn question on the form.
George B. Thomas (30:08):
Yeah. Yeah. You gotta you wow. Yeah.
I mean, otherwise, AI is never gonna
know what the frick's in thatproperty. Right?
Liz Moorhead (30:15):
Yeah.
George B. Thomas (30:15):
Like, how's it supposed to know if you don't
tell it either, a, a good name,and, b, what happens in there?
Max Cohen (30:22):
Yeah. Yeah. Dude, it's almost like it needs this,
like, AI intervention engine.Right? Where it sees someone
doing something stupid inHubSpot, like a comment
Liz Moorhead (30:31):
Help me help you.
Max Cohen (30:32):
Yeah. Pops
Liz Moorhead (30:33):
up and
George B. Thomas (30:33):
goes, are
Max Cohen (30:33):
you sure? Hey, dude. Are you sure you wanna do that?
Alright.
George B. Thomas (30:37):
So he just needs to send them memes. Yeah.
So now
we need Again, like, click Jeremy McGuire. We
need Jeremy McGuire in HubSpot.Help me help you.
Max Cohen (30:45):
Thing is, like, when you're when you're building a
form and you hit create newproperty and it realizes you're
asking a asking a full sentencequestion, it should just
immediately pop up and be like,no. Don't do that. It
Liz Moorhead (30:57):
looks like sales is trying to find out where all
the revenue is. Do you needhelp?
George B. Thomas (31:04):
Here here's here's something I wanna hit on,
though, because, Liz, ask youroriginal question again.
Liz Moorhead (31:10):
Absolutely. So when we think about what are the
potential risks or downsides ofleaning too heavily on HubSpot
AI tools. So and and then Iasked again, like, did you have
any experiences with that orsituations where HubSpot AI has
produced something that's like,why why are we here? How did we
get here?
George B. Thomas (31:28):
Yeah. What happens what happens when you as
the human psychologically juststart to feel dumb? How are you
how are you gonna deal withthat? So when you ask AI to do
everything, and and what washappening historically is that
you were learning something andyou were achieving a task, which
then would release endorphins inyour brain and you would feel
(31:50):
good about accomplishing a task.When you're no longer
accomplishing the task becauseAI does, what does that do to
you psychologically as a human?
This is a piece that doesn'thave anything to do with
HubSpot, but has everything todo with HubSpot, has everything
to do with business, and haseverything to do with us as
(32:10):
humans. We're gonna have to becareful on how we are
reprogramming our brain toperceive a completed task based
on assistance assisting us to dothe task that we never had
before. So I'm just putting astake in the ground right now in
(32:31):
a year to two years or twomonths or six months from now
when all of a sudden we havethis massive thing happening in
organizations where humans arefeeling depleted, defeated, not
energized, not motivated, notunderstanding. Anyway, I'll just
(32:53):
leave it there for people tothink about.
Liz Moorhead (32:55):
Well, don't hop off the mic too quickly, George,
because I wanna ask you first mynext question, which is when it
comes to content creationspecifically, because this is a
topic you have spent a lot oftime on.
George B. Thomas (33:07):
Yeah.
Liz Moorhead (33:08):
Do you think HubSpot AI tools are more
effective as a starting point oras an editor for refining human
created drafts?
George B. Thomas (33:15):
I think it depends. I think it depends on
the human. Like, if you'resitting there and you're, like,
don't have access to GPT orClaude or Perplexity, you
haven't been, you know, wakingup with AI along the way and
figuring it out or whatever,then HubSpot's great for all of
(33:36):
the things for you. Like, youcan generate your ideas. By the
way, you should still probablyhave human conversations with
people inside your organizationto generate some of those ideas
to then bring into HubSpot tothen refine the idea.
But I think HubSpot at thispoint, from a content
standpoint, could be a frombeginning to end with AI
(33:57):
assistant process. Now, Istarted this with it depends
because I actually do a lot ofstuff outside of and then bring
into. And so what I dounderstand, especially when you
have your brand voice in place,it is a it is a phenomenal
(34:18):
refinement tool, meaning, voiceconsistency in saying the things
the way that, they they shouldbe said to have this kind of
holistic, cohesive contentengine resource center inside of
HubSpot, giving it a final brushof, like and make this my brand
(34:42):
voice, make this my brand voice,make this my brand voice is a
very interesting, phase or stepthat we've seen adding in
depending upon, the content. So,again, I'm a great marketer. It
depends.
Both. One. All. I don't know.
Liz Moorhead (34:56):
Well, the other thing too, though, is that as
you get more comfortable withthe tools and as you quite
frankly become a moresophisticated content creator,
you probably have a little bitmore flexibility. Right? So for
example, if I'm working I'mtraining a a content manager who
is very, very green and very,very new just at the principles
(35:17):
of storytelling. The principlesof architecting what a great
piece of content looks like,understanding how to construct a
great introduction,understanding what a great
conclusion looks like. I'm gonnawant them to be more involved
and hands on in the processbefore they start bringing in
their AI assistance.
What I would probably do,though, I would have them start
(35:39):
learning how to use AI on theback end. Right? One of my
favorite things to do is, hey.This was the keyword I was
attempting to optimize for. Canyou just take a quick look and
see if I maximized all thoseopportunities correctly?
Or did I miss anything glaring?Or helping them integrate it
into other pieces of theprocess. I think there is this
(36:02):
idea, and and I will admit Iperpetuated this, that I I'm
against using it at the frontend and only more at the back
end when it comes to where AIfits into the content creation
process. But, really, my bigsticking point is, do you even
know what a good story issupposed to look like? If you
(36:22):
get a piece of content that isgenerated from your strategy,
your principles, your ideas, doyou even know if the output that
is in front of you is good ornot?
Do you understand what should bechanging? So the that's the only
thing I would say there is thatit it comes down to your level
of sophistication asstoryteller, and that will
(36:43):
greatly sway your inputs andyour outputs.
George B. Thomas (36:45):
Yeah. See, I agree with everything you said.
What I hope people understand,though, is, like, here here's
what I love about where we liveright now. I think every human
can look at a piece of content,and I'm going very content
specific here for a second, andbe like, yep. That's a turd.
Not I don't like it. And so thenyou're like, well, okay. I know
(37:06):
I need to probably add a littlebit of storytelling too. I need
to add a little bit of this, alittle bit of that. Here's
here's what I love.
I love the fact that you canstill Google, and you can still
grab three or four links. Youcan still read the material. You
can still educate yourself, butthen you can educate the the the
machine, the assistant thatyou're using on those things
(37:26):
that you're you're doing. And soeven your turd, after you
educate yourself and you educateit, you can be like, hey. Can we
try to rewrite this?
But based on the things thatwe've learned together in the
six links that I've uploadedwith this, that, this, that
because now you can and this isgonna sound gross. This is gonna
sound gross. But now you canmold that turd into something
(37:48):
better.
Liz Moorhead (37:50):
Could we just go with clay or something?
George B. Thomas (37:54):
Well, but it see, clay is like a canvas that
you could do anything you wantwith, and we know we're starting
with a big old turd.
Max Cohen (38:04):
I think, you know, a lot of it is it's all just in
the way, like, as enhancementand amplification. Right? So
it's like, you know, enhance thecontent you've created, right,
by making it better, whetherthat is, you know, making the
words better or, you know,improving the punctuation or the
structure or whatever. Right?But then, like, when I think of
(38:24):
the application piece, like,that's immediately content
remix.
Right? Like, just that because,you know, I like, I remember,
like, you know, saying, like,alright. I created this piece of
content, and then it's like,shit. I gotta go Now what? I
gotta go write a blog post aboutit.
I gotta go make social posts. Igotta go craft emails. I gotta
go do a landing page. I gotta dothis. And it's like, now you
(38:45):
don't have to have that biggiant block of, oh, shit.
There's all this other extrawork I have to do. Right? Yeah.
You know that you can at leastget the scaffolding and the
framework of that stuff puttogether. So instead of, oh,
I've gotta push this giantboulder up this hill to create
all this stuff, it's more so,oh, it's already kind of, like,
built for me, and all I'm doingis, like, refining the little
pieces and, like, making slightchanges to it.
(39:05):
And then it's it's out there.Right? But it's all derived from
your original content youcreated. Right? The other thing
too that I think is, like, greatfor, like, a starting point.
Like, I think, you know, when wekinda talk about it being a
starting point, like, there'ssaying, like, you look at
something like a blog post.There's a big difference of
generate an outline for me, andthen I'll add the original
content into it so I have this,like, structure instead of
(39:27):
having to, again, push thatboulder up the hill to, like,
create, you know, zero tosomething else, right, which is
what gets a a lot of people'sway when they're really just
kind of going out and startingand trying to create content.
Right? The other option isgenerate the whole thing for me,
and I don't think about it andpush it out there. Like, it's
when we say starting point, Ithink we're saying, like,
starting point for you to makeit easier for you to create
(39:48):
something original.
Right? And you get rid of allthose mental blocks you might
have around how hard it is to gofrom zero to one point o on a
piece of content. Right? Soyeah.
George B. Thomas (39:57):
And, Max, what I love about what you said and,
by the way, I'm always more of,like, an outline guy and then go
from there. Because here'swhat's fun about outlines. You
can be like, okay. I love thisoutline, but can we also add
this and this to the outline?Mhmm.
Totally.
Liz Moorhead (40:11):
And then you
George B. Thomas (40:11):
can and then you can be like, you know what?
I talked about this on a clientmeeting. Let me go ahead and get
a transcript of that. I actuallytalked about this in a
PowerPoint. Let me go ahead andgrab that.
Talked about this over here. Letme grab that. And now you can
collect stuff that you'vehistorically done anyway, and
you can upload it and be like,based on the stuff that I've
uploaded in the outline thatwe've created, let's build a
(40:32):
rough draft from that. So it isyour brain. It is your words.
It is like
Max Cohen (40:38):
You're just reducing the mental lift to get there.
Right?
Liz Moorhead (40:42):
But then
Max Cohen (40:42):
the other thing too is, like, when you have AI go
and generate an outline for you,right, and you go, okay. Yeah.
This is the stuff I should betalking about. It also makes it
that much easier to be like, oh,here's some of the things that
it probably missed. Right?
Because you're seeing what itcreated as an outline. That's
giving you inspiration andmaking it easier for you to
think about the other stuff thatyou should put in there if you
are gonna mention these, youknow, x five things, like,
(41:04):
whatever it may be. Right? So,you know, it just again, I think
reducing mental lift is is good.Right?
Mental health is important.Right? And and and, obviously,
like, reducing your your yourmental lift to create content is
gonna make it easier to createcontent. Again, you're, like,
you're applying a lot ofleverage with AI. Right?
So I think it's just it'simportant to think about it that
way.
George B. Thomas (41:23):
Two two things I wanna throw in here. One, one
of the questions I love to askbefore I actually move forward
past the outline is, is thereanything else I should know
about, think about, or trainaround this conversation and see
what it spits out? It's amazingto go down some rabbit holes
with that. But second, we as wedo many times on this podcast,
(41:44):
we dove into the content side ofthe world for this. And so, Liz,
I would be remissed if I didn'ttalk about another thing that
happened back at inbound twentytwenty four that was in the
presentation.
We talked about a contentediting checklist going back to,
like, humanizing, your contentand AI being the the assistant.
Maybe talk the listeners throughthat because I don't know if
(42:06):
we've ever really shared thatwhole checklist on here. But if
but if they are listening tothis, they are like, oh, yeah,
outlines and, oh, yeah, thesethings. Like, talk about that
whole piece of this to kindagive them a framework to follow.
Liz Moorhead (42:21):
Yeah. Absolutely. You know, when I think about any
piece of content that I'mediting, what's funny is the
checklist I'm about to share. Webuilt it and developed it and
launched it to go in tandem withthese AI tools. But this is act
that's actually just enabling usto automate or to to apply
structure to a process I wasalready using before AI even
(42:44):
existed.
Because when we look at a pieceof content to your point,
George, there is a framework.There's a you're looking at a
piece of well, how do I knowit's good? Well, because it
could be good or bad across anumber of different things. It
could be factually accurate andgrammatically a dumpster fire.
It could be a grammatical workof art, but a narrative train
wreck.
So whenever I look at a piece ofcontent, one of the p one of the
(43:07):
biggest lessons I teach newcontent managers or anybody who
has to look at content is do notedit for everything all at once.
Edit in sequence. Edit for onething, then edit for the next
thing, then edit for the thirdthing, and so on. And there is a
specific order in which I do it.And the reason why is because,
let's say, for example, you havea piece of content that is
(43:30):
narratively a trash can, butyou've grammatically made it get
sparkle.
Right? Well, you're gonna haveto rewrite it. So those
sparkling new bits of prose thatyou've thrown in there, if you
have a trashy introduction, aconclusion that doesn't make
sense, you're speaking to 18different personas instead of
just one or two, you're gonnahave to redo that work. Exactly.
(43:53):
So here is the order in which Ido it.
First round, I'm looking forfact checking and accuracy.
Right? Is this is this factuallyaccurate? Is are are the things
here correct? I always recommendparticularly when you're dealing
with AI content.
Do you know how many times it'llsay, like, well, I've got this
statistic. And I'll say, are yousure? And it'll go back and say,
(44:17):
you know what? You're actuallyright. I made that up.
I'm sorry. So, like, you have toactually check things. Do not
just blindly trust what's put infront of you. Next, once I have
determined that what I have infront of me is factually
accurate. Right?
And, again, I'm not thinkingabout anything else. I am
thinking about these things in avacuum. Only then can I start
(44:39):
taking a look at readability andengagement? Right? How can I
simplify the language forclarity and impact?
How can I guarantee that I amspeaking at the level of the
people I am trying to reach?Right? So molding the turd,
shaping the clay stuck. We shapethe clay in stages. Right?
(45:01):
Okay. The facts are right.Great. Now let's take a look at
how readable and engaging thosefacts are. Once I've determined
that those facts are accurateand the words are readable and
engaging, then I start lookingat SEO optimization.
How can I enhance it forsearchability? How can I make
sure that it is includingrelevant keywords and phrases?
(45:21):
Then I do final proofreading.Now one of the things I always
find challenging with mostpeople is they don't understand
why this is step four. Again,leave the spelling errors alone.
If you're just going to deletethat entire sentence, it doesn't
matter if we're talking aboutcomputer skills versus computer
skills if the whole paragraph isgetting killed. Right? And then
(45:44):
feedback and iteration. Sothat's really what you're
looking at. Right?
Are the facts accurate? Is it agreat story? Okay. Is it
optimized well for search?Fantastic.
Now that I know I have the rightfacts with the right framing and
the right optimization, isspelled correctly? Is that
grammar all razzle dazzle? Andthen after that, you can do
feedback and iteration. That'sthe order in which you do it.
(46:07):
Love it.
Now I would be curious, though,to hear you guys as we wrap up
today's conversation. Whatadvice would you give teams
trying to figure out when totrust HubSpot AI versus stepping
in with human judgment? Arethere specific guidelines or use
cases that you recommend? And ifyou don't mind, I'd actually
like to go first so that I canturn it over the floor to you
guys. The reality my guidelineis very simple.
(46:30):
Never have a process where thehuman is absent. You're either
at the beginning, at the end,the beginning, the middle, and
ends, the middle and the end.You have to be present
somewhere. The only way youactually truly 1000% screw this
up is to just click that AIbutton willy nilly with no
oversight. And with that, Chad,do you wanna kick us off?
George B. Thomas (46:53):
Yeah. I mean, for me, I think it goes back to
the old adage, you know, justlike you're saying trust but
verify. Right? I mean, it's likeI mean, I I don't think you
could really say it a whole lotbetter. Like, yeah, let's do it.
But let's, you know, get putpeople in the process. I really
in some like, there are somethings that are a little bit
more process driven, like theops hub data cleanup stuff, some
(47:16):
of the AI driven contactduplication detection stuff,
even some AI associations. Like,there's AI, I think, called a
ticket association feature inHubSpot to, like, try and figure
out which calls are related to aticket, based on the content of
the call and things like thatthat exists and has existed for
(47:38):
quite a while. I I mean, thosekind of things, you know,
they're more operational.They're they're less, you know,
being presented to people.
The only real people it causesproblems for is the HubSpot
admin. If if it does, you know,so, I mean, I would say, like,
you could maybe worry a littleless about those kinds of
things. It's like all it's doingis capitalizing first and last
(48:00):
names, and, you know, somebodyhas to verify that the there is
a human with with duplicatecontact or do you know,
detection, right, where you're,accepting or rejecting the
merges and moving data from spotto spot. By the way, if you guys
haven't checked out the the newUI for contact merging, it is
(48:21):
sick. Like, you can get in thereand tell it, I want two
properties from this contact andthree properties from this
contact, and then I want it togo into that one or this one.
Like, it's pretty cool. Like,some real cool UI changes to
that compared to what it's beenin the past. But, yeah, like,
they're putting people in theprocess, I think, where it makes
sense and, you know, trust butverify. That's that's my advice.
Liz Moorhead (48:44):
Max. Gentlemen, don't be so shy.
Max Cohen (48:46):
I was also gonna say trust but verify. You know, it's
Liz Moorhead (48:50):
Are you trusting but verifying Chad's trust but
verify?
Max Cohen (48:54):
I would say, like, he's just verifying.
George B. Thomas (48:56):
Assume
Max Cohen (48:57):
I don't know the way I would put this. Right? What
should go through your head, Ithink, when you generate a piece
of content using AI, you shouldjust assume that it doesn't know
anything about the subjectmatter and verify it. Right?
Because it's very possible thatit will just say some some
(49:18):
that's completely wrong.
Right? And and totally made upand, you know, incorrect. Right?
I'm not saying it's gonna dothat. I'm saying you you know,
when when when you write contentwith AI, all of a sudden, you
become an editor, not a writer.
Right? You gotta be the editor.Right? And you gotta you you can
trust that it put together anice piece of content for you.
(49:40):
You should assume that itdoesn't know shit about the the
subject matter, and you shouldverify that what it actually
outputted for you, is correctreal information.
Right? Because, one, people arealready starting to easily be
able to, like, pick up andunderstand, oh, this is an AI
written article, especiallysearch engines. Right? Two, the
last thing you want is themconsuming the content, and
(50:02):
you're giving bad information,right, and making yourself look
stupid because the AI just kindagave some, like, milquetoast
take on some sort of, like, youknow, subject matter. Right?
And and all of a sudden, forpeople who don't know that, oh,
this is an AI written article.Right? They're reading some some
junk from you that's eitherincorrect or not good. Right?
(50:24):
So, yeah, you can you can trusttrust that it's gonna create
some content for you.
Verify that that content isactually good and and and
informationally sound.
George B. Thomas (50:35):
Yeah. Interesting. So, the way I'll
answer this question is if ifyou deem that there is, some
emotional intelligence needed orsome strategic direction that
needs to be laid down. It's allabout the humans. If you're
(50:55):
looking
Liz Moorhead (50:56):
we go.
George B. Thomas (50:56):
If you're looking for a place where you're
trying to enhance speed orextrapolate scale, then it can
be about the AI. Bottom line, ifI if I'm gonna throw a divider
out there, that's what I wouldwant you to think about.
Emotional intelligence,strategic direction, human, but
then leaning into speed andscale through AI assistant.
Liz Moorhead (51:18):
George, you're not off the hot seat just yet.
George B. Thomas (51:20):
Yeah.
Liz Moorhead (51:21):
Help us land the plane. Take us home.
George B. Thomas (51:23):
Yeah. This one's easy. He's
good at that.
Yeah. Yeah.
Liz Moorhead (51:26):
Yeah. Tell us what that one thing is if we forget
nothing else from thisconversation except one thing.
What should be and why?
George B. Thomas (51:32):
Yeah. Without a doubt. Listen. Chad talked
about the new merging UI. Wetalked about how Remix is
different.
We talked about, you know,there's different AI platforms,
and should we be doing thingsjust in HubSpot. We talked about
how there's gonna be differentagents that you can, like
there's a there's a lot. Ladiesand gentlemen, there's a lot.
(51:52):
And so we are definitely in a aworld where the thing that I
would want you to take away fromthis when we're talking about
AI, HubSpot AI versus humanjudgment is experiment and
learn. Experiment and learn.
Be curious, test differentapproaches, refine, reiterate,
(52:13):
refine, like, figure out whatworks best for your business in
a world where you can do almostanything you wanna do at the
light of speed. But I'm gonnaend it with what Max said.
Max Cohen (52:28):
If you're
George B. Thomas (52:29):
doing things at the light of speed, it's
stupid if you're making yourselffeel stupid or look stupid.
Max Cohen (52:35):
Why is she saying it like that?
Liz Moorhead (52:36):
Why are you saying it?
Max Cohen (52:38):
Why are you saying the light of speed?
Liz Moorhead (52:40):
Speed of light.
George B. Thomas (52:41):
Oh, oh, whatever. If that's the last
Liz Moorhead (52:44):
thing I'd like to say. We're verifying here.
George B. Thomas (52:46):
We need
Liz Moorhead (52:46):
to verify.
George B. Thomas (52:47):
Speed of light, light of speed, whatever.
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 inand find out in the next
episode.
(53:08):
Make 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,
(53:29):
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 nexttime, when we meet and combine
our forces, remember to be ahappy, helpful, humble human,
and, of course, always belooking for a way to be
someone's hero.
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