Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Intro (00:01):
Do you live in a world filled with corporate data? Are
you plagued by silo departments?Are your lackluster growth
strategies demolishing yourchances for success? Are you
held captive by the evil menace,Lord Lack, lack of time, lack of
strategy, and lack of the mostimportant and powerful tool in
(00:23):
your superhero tool belt,knowledge. Never fear, hub
heroes.
Get ready to don your cape andmask, move into action, and
become the hub hero yourorganization needs. Tune in each
week to join the league ofextraordinary inbound heroes as
we help you educate, educate,empower, and execute. Hub
(00:46):
heroes, it's time to unite andactivate your powers.
Max Cohen (00:52):
Just remember, if you're if you're if you're
lacking a better transition intothe intro, this is not the
shackle for you.
George B. Thomas (01:00):
Yeah. We just we just jump right in. We get
going. But I'm but I'm superexcited because listen. At at
the end of the day, there'ssomething that's been going
around in my brain for, gosh,maybe two years now, for sure,
the last year and a half.
And and it's something that Iwanna do. It's something that
I've kind of been doing. And andlisten, sometimes I probably do
(01:24):
more than I think I do, and Ihave my own crisis when it comes
to, like, how much content Ishould create or how many events
I should do. You know? But Ilisten.
We do events. We do super admintraining. That's ten weeks. We
do it probably two to threetimes a year. We do podcast.
That's an event. Right? Like andthat's every week that we're
doing one, if not two so but butalso you start to think about
(01:45):
webinars, you think about inperson and events. Right? I've
just been thinking about growthled, companies, event led
growth, if you will.
And so I'm excited to havewhich, by the way, those let me
let me ask you. Is there anotherevents app in the app ecosystem,
(02:06):
or do I literally have the onlytwo events app humans on the
podcast today?
Max Cohen (02:13):
What is event integrations?
George B. Thomas (02:15):
Well, yeah. I don't
Max Cohen (02:16):
know how can I go
George B. Thomas (02:17):
reach out
Max Cohen (02:17):
to That's mostly why me me me and Justin's, you know,
little event babies existbecause integrations are
terrible? Well, they're they're
Justin Givens (02:28):
they're look. George, let's just say this.
There's a other there's otherevent platforms, but I don't
know why you'd wanna waste yourtime on them.
George B. Thomas (02:35):
Yeah. I'm probably not reaching out
Max Cohen (02:37):
to Eventbrite.
George B. Thomas (02:38):
I'm I'm I'm not reaching out to Eventbrite
and asking them to be on thepodcast. I'm just I'm just gonna
say that because well, I'm justgoing to say that. But but wait.
Max Cohen (02:46):
There is one more. There is one more by, something
operations, Andrew's company. Hedoes, he's got, like, a little
utility for Marketing events.Marketing events object. Yes.
Okay. Yeah. There's one more. Atleast one more.
Justin Givens (03:04):
It what I saw that oh, gosh. You know
Max Cohen (03:07):
what I'm talking about.
Justin Givens (03:08):
I do know what you're talking about. I
Max Cohen (03:10):
feel like a jerk not remembering the name of his
company. It's like Go operationsor something like that.
Justin Givens (03:15):
We'll put
George B. Thomas (03:16):
it in the show notes.
Max Cohen (03:17):
Yeah. We'll find it.
George B. Thomas (03:17):
We'll put it in the show notes. We'll find
it.
Max Cohen (03:19):
There's other people fighting the good fight out
there. Guys?
George B. Thomas (03:22):
And that's good. I I think it is a good
fight, by the way. And by theway, I want anybody that's
watching this on LinkedIn, liveor listening to the podcast, you
know, in the near future when werelease it probably, like,
Tuesday afternoon, or maybeit's, like, six months after
this because you're juststumbling across the podcast.
What's wrong with you? Whereyou've been?
(03:43):
Come listen to us. We lovecreating content for you that
Max Cohen (03:46):
that Where are you?
George B. Thomas (03:47):
Folks. But but I I want everybody to know this
isn't just another conversationabout events. I'm hoping that we
can kind of redefine how peoplethink about them, because
listen. I'm to the point whereit's like, it's not optional.
We've gotta be doing this.
Events are probably thecornerstone, especially if
you're recording the videobecause then you can do what I
(04:08):
like to call, which is contentconfetti. Literally turn the
events into blog articles, intosocial posts, into into all
sorts of stuff. But but let meback up. Max, most of the humans
know who you are, but I'm gonnaswing back over to you in a
second because we're gonna shinea different kind of light on you
this morning. But, Justin, I'mgonna start with you because if
(04:29):
we're talking about events,maybe not all the hub, you know,
hub heroes folks know who youare.
So just give us a lowdown ofkind of who you are, what you
do, a little bit about the appthat you bring to the table this
morning during the conversation,and maybe just, like, your
fundamental, thirty second spoton what you think about events
(04:53):
and organizations using events.
Justin Givens (04:55):
Yeah. So my name is Justin Givens. I am the the
creator and the founder ofSimple Events, and also the
cofounder of a company namedImage in a Box. It is a HubSpot,
platinum agency, at the time ofthis recording. And it is a
agency that just loves to solvepeople's problems, more
(05:16):
specifically in the ERP realm ofConnectWise and, cybersecurity
companies.
That is who we really love tohelp on the agency side. But
where we find the biggestpassion is running events, and
that's why we built SimpleEvents. It was a journey we
started on two years ago. It'sthe number two event platform in
(05:37):
HubSpot. It's gonna be numberone.
I'm just waiting on y'all tosign up for it. Okay? There is a
freebie out there for it. Soit's the easiest and fastest way
to get your events integratedinto HubSpot and the simplest.
And you get to use all thewonderful tools in HubSpot that
you love and use every singleday.
(05:57):
One of the big things that Iwanna say about events is that
we all do them wrong.
Max Cohen (06:03):
Oh. Yeah.
Justin Givens (06:04):
I'm not gonna drop the mic because when's the
last time you signed up for yourown company's event and felt
like an external user and seewhat the process feels like? So
many people have gone and said,you know, why aren't these
people showing up? Oh, I I'veput in so much effort into this
event. And they're like,alright. Cool.
(06:25):
I didn't get any return oninvestment. Well Mhmm. That's
not the customers that show upthe prospect's fault. That's our
fault. That we're not runningthe event the way you should be
running events.
So that's my little spiel thatwe're gonna dive into more.
George B. Thomas (06:41):
I feel like we're gonna dive a little bit
deeper into that as we go. Andand and by the way, I'm also
sitting here at as you're, like,the number two event app. I'm
like, oh, did I just create aroom for chaos? Like, am I gonna
be the referee of a boxing matchbefore this whole thing is over?
Anyway, I hope not.
Maybe so. It might be good forratings.
Max Cohen (06:59):
Gotta stick together, bro.
Justin Givens (07:01):
That's right. We I think we cross share more
because I'm like, you know,y'all need to do event happily.
It's exactly what it's for.Let's do it.
Max Cohen (07:09):
You're the same thing. Yeah.
George B. Thomas (07:10):
Yes. So, Max Max, people know you for being
the, you know, lovable teddybear, huggable, you know, hub
heroes, host. But today hugable.Shine the the light on you as
far as event happily. So justkind of introduce yourself from
that side of things, like whoyou are, what you do, on that,
(07:31):
and a little bit about maybe,how you think about events.
Yeah.
Max Cohen (07:36):
Well, I guess hey, everybody who doesn't know, me.
I'm Max. I'm the chiefevangelist over at this company
called Happily. All we do is webuild apps on HubSpot that make
HubSpot do more. Is, I guess,the easiest way to think about
kinda what we do.
We've got an app called EventHappily. It's the whole goal of
it is essentially to look atHubSpot as a platform, figure
(08:00):
out where all the missing puzzlepieces are in terms of event
management, and to fill thosegaps and literally turn HubSpot
into an event managementplatform. And that's kind of,
like, basically what I do. And,you know, part of my, you know,
role here is, you know, mostly Icreate a lot of content. I'm
super loud on LinkedIn, and and,I I work with a lot of
(08:21):
HubSpotters to get them up tospeed on the stuff we build
because we do Event Happily, wedo Quote Happily, we got a bunch
of utility apps, there's a lotof really cool stuff we got
planned in the future, but I'vebeen kind of the one sort of,
like, guiding the direction forwhat we're sort of calling Event
Happily two point o, which isreally the sort of next
evolvement, the next iteration,of Event Happily, in its current
(08:44):
state.
I guess in terms of, like, whatI think about events is, like,
you know, it's so interesting,because everything that people
do with events toucheseverything that HubSpot's really
good at. Right? It's a functionof marketing. It's a functioning
of sales. It can be afunctioning of customer service.
Right? And so forever and everas a, you know, someone who
(09:08):
helped people implement HubSpot.Right? Events were always a
topic, and HubSpot was nevergood at being able to handle it
because it's a CRM system. It'snot built to be event management
software.
Right? You know, and for solong, you know, I just remember
people saying, like, oh, youknow, we wanna be able to sign
(09:29):
people up for events and and dothis and do that. But, you know,
a lot of the native stuff builtinto HubSpot just wasn't built
to handle it, you know, whetherit comes to the way that forms
work out of the box and, youknow, doing a ton of list
management and all this othercrazy stuff. You know, but in
turn like, events are importantand and, like, the biggest thing
that I've kind of learned isthat no one does event
(09:52):
management in the same exactway. Right?
Events mean different things todifferent people. Right? An
event could be a conference. Anevent could be an internal
training or some sort of coursesomeone's running or some sort
of, you know, like, if you'resure, like a webinar, things
like that. And the nuances thatcome along with how complex,
(10:14):
people manage their events canbe, are vast.
And I think, like, the reallybig opportunity, you know, that
there is of building an eventmanagement platform on HubSpot
is, like, HubSpot has a lot ofthe things that other, like,
point solutions for eventmanagement tools don't have
already in there. Right? So,like, when Justin was saying
(10:35):
earlier, right, getting all yourdata into HubSpot so you can use
all those awesome tools thatHubSpot has, like, that's the
point. And, like, what's really,really neat about it is since
event management is so complexto or can be. Sorry.
Can be super complex, supernuanced, and really different in
the way people execute it.Right? What's great about
building an event app on HubSpotis that you can you can build in
(11:00):
kind of, like, what's missing,and then you can use HubSpot's,
you know, wild amount ofextensibility and customization
to fill in all of, like, theunique and nuanced parts of your
event management strategy orprocess, whatever that may be,
right, through workflows, recordcustomizations, additional
custom objects, all of theseother things, depending on what
(11:21):
you're trying to do. Right? So,yeah, it's cool.
It's a it's a cool platform tobuild on. And I think there's a
million other things besidesevents you could apply the same
logic to probably. Yeah.
George B. Thomas (11:29):
Oh, without a doubt. I love that, it could be
a simple event, pun intended, ora complex event. But at the end
of the day, you're gonna be ableto do it happily or anyway, you
sound like
Max Cohen (11:43):
simpler that's
George B. Thomas (11:43):
what I tried
Max Cohen (11:44):
to do.
Justin Givens (11:44):
Seems not really
George B. Thomas (11:45):
foolish, George. Here's the here's the
thing. I'll get rid of my baddad jokes and puns, for a hot
minute. If I think about whenmost people think about events,
they probably think about oldschool webinars. Right?
And so, Justin,
Justin Givens (12:00):
I'm going
George B. Thomas (12:00):
to go to you first and then maybe Max back to
you. And I might throw somepennies in the pool here as
well. But when you think of,like, old school purpose of
events kind of evolving fromnetworking or promotion or just
downright bad webinars andsales, like, right there to more
(12:20):
of this, like, driving maybelead generation or starting
conversations or actually beinghuman and building
relationships, you know, theidea of, like, event led growth.
What does this shift mean tobusinesses? Like, what should
they be thinking about today?
Justin Givens (12:37):
So every event should have a goal. And I'm I'm
gonna go ahead and say that notevery event should be closing a
new customer.
Max Cohen (12:46):
Mhmm.
Justin Givens (12:47):
So you should have a process. You know,
there's this little thing calleda flywheel, you know, that you
gotta promote.
George B. Thomas (12:53):
Oh, I've heard of that, I think.
Justin Givens (12:54):
Yeah. I I don't know if anybody on this podcast
has ever heard of it.
George B. Thomas (12:57):
What's that company?
Max Cohen (12:58):
Inbound is dead.
Justin Givens (13:01):
That's not the company name just so no one goes
Max Cohen (13:04):
book about how inbound is dead.
Justin Givens (13:08):
So you when you go into the thinking, hey. I'm
gonna do this webinar. Hey. I'mgonna do this in person event.
One, who's your target?
Always going in. But when youthink about it from a goal for
that, is it to drive awareness?Is it to drive leads? Is it to
drive sales? Is it to closesales?
But you gotta think, if I'mbuilding one event, let's just
(13:29):
say you've never run an event oryou've run a thousand events,
and you're going into that eventtoday and you're thinking, okay.
I need to run an event for, say,two months from now. If you're
thinking I'm gonna drive newleads and I'm gonna close
existing leads, you're probablythinking of your event
completely wrong. Because justlike as we all know, those
buyers are at different stagesin your process. Don't speak to
(13:50):
them like they're brand new toyour business.
Don't speak to them like they'veknown your business for six
years. So create your eventsthat are really tailored to your
buyer's journey and where theyare in that stage so you can
really maximize that effort,that, return on investment. And
the biggest thing that I see alot of companies do is, oh,
we're gonna run events. Yeah.Yeah.
(14:11):
And then they're like, we got nocustomers. And they go through
this process, and it happensevery year. You know what? We're
gonna do more events this year.And they always fail because
they're not thinking, hey.
That lead, now how can I useHubSpot in a workflow to nurture
that lead into a long termcustomer? Right? They're
(14:33):
thinking this event should closethem. Mhmm. We used to run pre
COVID, a training series everyquarter.
And my goal was to convert. Ifyou came to one in the first
quarter of the year, by thefourth quarter, I wanted to
convert you as a customer.
George B. Thomas (14:49):
Right? Long term.
Justin Givens (14:50):
Yeah. Long term track. Me a year. Right? Now it
only took me forty five minutesfor the talk.
So if you think that timeinvestment, right, doesn't cost
a lot of me. But I knew goingin, I'm gonna stage my contact
or my my content, sorry, toelevate that person the whole
way into a buyer. Okay?
Max Cohen (15:09):
Yeah.
Justin Givens (15:10):
And that's where I feel like a lot of people
think about events wrong, thenthey go and use the wrong tools,
which then makes that friction.And they're like, we're not
running events. We're just gonnago back to doing what we've
always done.
Max Cohen (15:23):
Yeah. Because then you end up getting sloppy in the
way that you use that data afterthe event too because what are
you doing? Just in You'reputting Excel. Sheets. Right?
Exactly. Yeah.
Justin Givens (15:33):
Well, we'll
George B. Thomas (15:34):
get we'll get into friction and failure, here
in a hot minute. But, Max, Iwant I want you to kinda go in
the same direction of, like,what do businesses need to be
thinking about right now when itcomes to events?
Max Cohen (15:44):
Yeah. Well, I mean, on on top of everything that
Justin said, because Icompletely agree with it, and I
love him, I think the otherthing too and and, George, I
think you've been really good atkind of championing this idea is
that not every event that you'reon has to be something that's
gonna get you leads, right, andand and close deals. There's a
(16:05):
big reason why you'd want toinvest in strengthening your
community of customers. Right?Think about why HubSpot is where
it's at today.
It's all because of HubSpotAcademy and things like inbound
and the rabid fan base andcommunity that they've
relentlessly built over the pastfifteen whatever years. Right?
(16:31):
You know, I'm not out heresaying every single company
needs to go do their own versionof inbound. Right? But the the
the big thing that you can tellworks, right, is that HubSpot
invests in its strengthening andfortification of its community
and its user base.
Right? Events are an amazing wayto do that because you can bring
(16:54):
people together over the sharedlove of a product or a service
or an industry or whatever, getthem talking, and really, really
spin up that, you know, base ofevangelists that you have when
you do, you know, very, when youcome up with, like, creative and
fun ways of engaging with thatcommunity, and events are, like,
(17:15):
a wonderful way to do that, beit virtual or in person or
meetups or, you know, HubSpotdoes the user groups, like,
things like this. Right? Youknow, and, obviously, you need
an operating system to be ableto, like, handle that stuff.
Right?
HubSpot's great at doing that,right, as long as it's paired
with the right tools like thetwo that we're talking about
today. Right? You know, so Ithink it's I think a big
(17:38):
mistake, you know, Justin reallyhit it right on the head. It's
like, just looking at it as,like, a lead gen and deal
closing tool is the wrong way tolook at it. Right?
You wanna be able to you yougotta know that you there's
there's other tactical reasonsto deploy it. Right? Like, even
when we talk about inbound, wetalk about delight. Right?
Delight is so important,fortifying your customer base
(18:01):
and creating evangelists andgetting people stoked on your
stuff in ways that don't alwaysnecessarily translate to a very
specific transaction of money orclosing a new deal.
All these things are importantbecause they affect that stuff
down the line and have an impacton it. Right? And events are a
great way to, you know, engagethat base of fans that you have
(18:21):
of, you know, the work yourcompany does. Right? So don't
sleep on it.
George B. Thomas (18:25):
Yeah. So I I love that I'm sitting here
talking to you two gentlemen,and it really is about, like,
these apps that help you set up,launch and, like, create and
then report and then nurturebased on the events you're
putting on. The the thing thatcomes to my mind, what people
should be thinking about,businesses should be thinking
about is with apps like yours,it becomes a lot easier. And so
(18:49):
the excuses go away. Here's thething that I'm gonna throw into
this mix.
But before I do, if you'rewatching this live, put in the
chat pane if you do events andwhat type of events you do. Just
throw it in the chat pane realquick because I'm super curious
what people are considering oror thinking about in events.
Max Cohen (19:07):
And even if you don't, just lie to us. We need
to
Justin Givens (19:10):
boost the algorithm.
Max Cohen (19:11):
Don't don't lie.
George B. Thomas (19:12):
Truth. But in I'll
Max Cohen (19:14):
I'll lie.
George B. Thomas (19:14):
Do you do events and what type of events?
Here's the thing. Excuses are aa thing of the past or should be
when it comes to events becausethe other thing that I wanna put
in people's mind outside ofHubSpot, outside of these apps,
is if you're not using AI forresearch, you're failing. If
you're not using AI forpresenter notes, you're you're
probably maybe, spending moretime than you need to. If you're
(19:37):
not using AI for creative ideasof what should be on the actual
slides for your event, like,what I'm talking about is human
powered ideas in creation, butAI assisted, because you can
spin around a deck for an eventin a heartbeat at this point in
time if you know the right toolslike Gamma to use.
(19:58):
And by the way, not sponsored.Could be. Gamma. Reach out. Let
us know, if you wanna sponsorthe podcast.
But it's one of my favorite,like, presentation creation
applications, just because ofthe way that it leverages AI and
AI imagery and all the stuffthat you can do with it. But so
so, like, I want people torethink about that portion of
(20:21):
events as well as the portionsthat we're talking about in
HubSpot and with Simple Eventsand Event Happily. But here's
here's the thing. We've allsigned up for those events. Many
of us has said, well, we're notgonna attend.
We're just gonna watch thereplay. Anyway, not why we're
here. But we've signed up forthese events. We thought we were
(20:41):
gonna get value. We get to theevent, and it's like, or just
flat out, like, you're like,man, I've been here for twenty
minutes.
I'm checking out. This sucks.I'm curious. You guys are doing
events. You're focused onevents.
You see people doing events.You're helping others. You're
enabling them to do events. Whatare some actionable steps that
(21:03):
brands, organizations can taketo to kinda make sure that their
event delivers on the promisesof truly positioning, you know,
the company as a thought leader,fostering relationships with the
attendees, getting people tostick around? Like, is there,
like, a checklist?
Is there, like, here's thethings you should always think
(21:24):
about doing? Like, talk usthrough that.
Justin Givens (21:27):
Max, you wanna dive first? Well, I
Max Cohen (21:29):
mean, let's still I'll be honest. We I I I build
an event app that it that isbuilt from the ground for
HubSpot. I am not an eventproducer by any means. Right? So
I'm the last guy you wanna talkto in terms of, like, what makes
a great event.
From a very tactical level, Iguess the one thing that I would
say is don't do the bait andswitch, guys. Right? Don't do
the hey. You want five freenights at the hotel? All you
(21:52):
gotta do is come listen to aseminar on this timeshare.
Unless you're advertising it asa sales pitch, right, which some
people are gonna be interestedin that. Sure. You're gonna have
people that are, you know, intheir buying cycle of whatever
product that you have, andsometimes they go, yeah. You
know what? I'd like to listen tosomeone actually talk about the
product and show it and createan open forum for questions and
(22:13):
things like that.
That's great. As long as you'resaying this is what that is, and
if you're interested inconsuming that content, here it
is. The last thing you wanna dois bamboozle people with some
sort of bait and switch and say,hey. Come learn about x y z, you
know, topic, and then it ends upbeing like a sales pitch webinar
that people just kinda tune outfrom and go, oh, I just see what
they're trying to do. Right?
Also, right, be a little bitmore nuanced with the way that
(22:36):
you follow-up with people afterthese, you know, after these
things. Right? Not everyoneneeds a salesperson sicked on
them. Right? You know, so Iwould say try to do your best
to, you know, really make sureif you are gonna do the sales
heavy content types of eventsthat they're advertised as such.
Not only so you're, you know,doing the right thing and being
(22:58):
transparent and not wastingpeople's time with the bait and
switch, but also so you canactually attract the people that
wanna see that. You got much,you know, a much better shot at
getting the right eyeballs onthat type of content. Right?
But, you know, I did do new hiretraining, right, at at HubSpot
for a while, especially duringCOVID. Had to learn how to do
(23:19):
that pretty quick.
And in terms of, like, you know,if you are a company that's
doing, like, virtual events, thebiggest thing that you have to
figure out somehow and this isgonna be different in every
single type of event. So, like,I apologize if this, you know,
advice is vague. But creating anelement that is interactive
(23:41):
whenever you're doing any sortof visual event is huge when it
comes to maintaining people'sengagement. Right? So however
you can do that.
Right? Let's say you're doing awebinar or some other type of
virtual event. You gotta figureout what are the interactive
elements that are gonna makepeople not just a passive
watcher, right, and an activeparticipant. Right? That's what
(24:01):
makes virtual events reallygood.
You know, in person events Idon't know. Just make sure you
got, like, a good spread orsomething. You know what I mean?
Justin Givens (24:08):
I don't know.
George B. Thomas (24:09):
I'm not I'm not a I'm
Max Cohen (24:10):
not an in person event coordinator. Right? So
there's probably someone whocould comment better than me
than that. Right? But, you know,make sure the content of the
event, whatever it may be,matches the audience.
Don't do a bait and switch. Makesure it's valuable. Right. And
then just don't just don'tmurder people with sales folks
right after. Just like let themgo, Oh, that was a good event.
(24:33):
And I learned something. Right.And it wasn't just a ploy to get
me to buy some shit. Right?
George B. Thomas (24:39):
By the way, for for all of you people on
LinkedIn or if you're listeningto this in the future, hit us
up. Let us know either in thechat pane or, in the Hub Heroes
community. Have you ever feltlike you've been, sicked on by
salespeople after an event? Haveyou ever had to live that
experience? Also, by the way,that was my way of making this
(25:01):
event interactive.
See what I just did there? I gotthem to do something. There you
go. I got the I got
Intro (25:08):
the to
George B. Thomas (25:11):
do something. So so, Justin, your turn. Like,
where where does your mind go onthis question? By the way, after
you go, I have some thoughts.And and Yeah.
Thanks to Max, I have a a coupleextra thoughts.
Max Cohen (25:23):
Extra thoughts.
Justin Givens (25:24):
There you go. Yeah. So one of the big things
is why are you running thisevent? Okay. So what information
do you want to present that theconsumer is going to ingest?
Right? And where a lot ofbusinesses that I've seen that
we've helped with, they try tocram way too much. Okay? So this
(25:46):
sort of goes back off what Maxwas saying is know your target
audience and know what theywant. Right?
But don't give them everythingin forty five minutes where
they're just glazed over andthey're like, I have no idea
what to do. Another great ideais create uniqueness for those
who actually attend. Meaning,you want the recording, you've
(26:08):
gotta show up. Right? Add thesesort of checks and balances just
like the time share.
We to get the free nights, youjust don't show up on property.
You have to listen. Do the sameconcept and be clear about that.
We're only gonna send therecordings to those who show up.
Alright?
And one of the tricks that Ireally love to do in it's not
(26:28):
tricks. It's a it's a tactic. IsI tell them at the beginning,
don't try to take any notes. I'mgonna be ax asking you to be
interactive. I'm gonna be askingquestions throughout this,
presentation.
I'm gonna show you how you canget all these slides. And at
that moment, you're removingthat barrier if somebody feels
(26:49):
like they missed something andthey just leave to giving you
actually full attention becausethey know that fear of missing
details is now removed.
Max Cohen (26:59):
Yep. Okay? True. Lots of them.
Justin Givens (27:01):
That is a huge win for virtuals. Now in
persons, I honestly you need topick out five to 10 people and
call them out every time you'regoing through and asking this
interaction. Right? And Iusually say, hey. I'm gonna call
you out if you don't raise yourhands.
And I do that with a big smile.Like, hey. This is you're here
to learn. Let's let's have aconversation. Alright?
(27:22):
People can hide behind on avirtual wall pretty easily, but
you can do the awkward silence.I don't know if anybody here is
a big salesperson, but you canalways mute and wait for those
crickets. Alright? Mhmm. So thatbig thing is knowing the target,
knowing what to get.
The other thing is a lot ofmarketing teams come up with
ideas of events and those kindof things, but they remove that
(27:44):
disconnect from the sales team.Going back to the sales team and
saying, what's every questionyou've ever had? Not that every
question is gonna be in everywebinar, but you can pick out a
collection of similar topics andaddress those and then answer
during the presentation and thenmove on to the next series. So
then you're what you're doing isbuilding that knowledge and that
(28:07):
trust with those customers. Oneof the the last thing I'm gonna
say is if you think you'vecommunicated your event enough,
you haven't.
So I tell my wife this all thetime. The moment my wife thinks
she has plenty of time to getready, that's the moment we're
gonna be late. No matter if it'stwo hours, thirty minutes,
(28:29):
fifteen hours, the moment shesays, oh, we got plenty of time.
We're late, honey. That's it.
We haven't even left the house.
George B. Thomas (28:36):
Yeah. Let me know how the doghouse is later,
bro.
Justin Givens (28:38):
No. She she laughs every time, and she
actually said it on Saturday.She goes, you know, I was
telling myself I got plenty oftime. I'm like, yeah. And she
goes, yeah.
You're right. I was behind. Butwhen you think you've
communicated so I was actuallytalking to a simple inventor.
That's another word I've madeup. And they said, you know,
know, a lot of people aren'tusing the QR code.
And I'm like, well, are youtelling them about the QR code?
(28:59):
Well, not really.
Max Cohen (29:00):
Mhmm. Well, how do you
Justin Givens (29:03):
expect them to know to use it if you're not
telling them? Again, you'vegotta remind your people who
sign up, who haven't signed up.And, again, this is why
EventHappily and Simple Eventsare so tightly integrated with
HubSpot. Use the list functions.Use your workflows to keep
bringing them notificationsuntil they actually register,
(29:25):
and then flip them into theregistration workflow so then
they actually show up.
And during that time, bringingin exactly what you're going to
talk about and why they need tojoin and the nuggets you're
gonna give them. Right? Itypically keep my talking points
to four or less. And duringthose four, I always have a
(29:47):
transformation story that canrelate to one of my buyer
personas because I wanna createthat connection between the
customer. At the end of it,there's always something free,
but they all and I even cut likeGeorge says, you turn these
webinars, these digital onesinto ongoing content.
I cut the promotion part of thefree content for the web. You
only get it if you show up.Alright? So those are my tips
(30:10):
there to really maximize yourevent.
George B. Thomas (30:13):
Yeah. I love it. There's there's a couple
things that I'll add based onthe answers that you gave. One,
Max, as soon as you started togo, I was like, well, Max is
part of the answer because, bro,you always bring energy. Like,
you're just who you are.
You're authentic, and you'reloud, and you're max, and
you're, like, you're you'reenergized. And so many events
(30:36):
I've got on, and it's likelistening to Charlie Brown's
teacher. Mom. Mom. Mom.
Mom. Mom. Mom.
Justin Givens (30:41):
Mom. Mom. Mom. Mom. Mom.
Mom.
George B. Thomas (30:42):
Mom. Mom. Mom. Mom. Mom.
Mom. Mom. Mom. Mom. Mom.
Mom. Mom. Mom. Mom. Mom.
Mom. Mom. Mom. Mom. Mom.
Mom. Mom. Mom. Mom. Mom.
Mom. Mom. Mom. Mom. Mom.
Mom. Mom. Mom. Mom. Mom.
Mom. Mom. Mom. Mom. Mom Justin,you said that you I I like to,
share a transformational story.
The fact that many people aren'tusing storytelling as a
superpower when it comes to theevents that they're creating is
(31:03):
shameful. And and here here's
Max Cohen (31:06):
the thing.
George B. Thomas (31:06):
Trouble. Not every event that you do has to
be recorded. Even saying that inthe promotion of it makes it a
different type of event. We wedo an event for an organization
that I help called LifeStar.They help solopreneurs.
We do an event called problemsolvers, and we don't let note
takers in, and we don't recordit because it's the type of
(31:30):
event that you gotta show up, beyou, be human, and talk about
the problems in your business,and then let people help you
solve them. There's no so youknow you can't just register and
then get it later. So, like,figuring out the strategy that's
right for you and your event,figuring out the stories that
you wanna tell along the way andbringing the energy for it all
(31:53):
so that if people actually getcaptivated and get taken away
and, like, enjoy the thirty,forty five, whatever minutes of
the event, you know, you addthat and you'll be doing a lot
better. Here's the funny thing Iwanna swing back around to is
we've mentioned about, like,being, you know, sick in sales
(32:15):
on people, and we've talkedabout not being salesy. And
we've almost, like, leaned intothis, like, negative vibe of
sales attached to events.
But I I'm gonna come back to youboth because I wanna know if
there's some steps, some ways,some mindsets, some best
practices that we could actuallyturn these events into high
(32:37):
performing sales machines, andreally streamline the process to
to go from conversation startersand relationship builders to
what CEOs and CFOs and CMOs andanybody with a c and some o's in
their title probably really careabout, which is closing deals,
(33:00):
revenue, and staying inbusiness. Like, what where does
your brain go when it's like,yeah. We like to yell about
sales, but here's some thingsyou could think about as far as
the process.
Max Cohen (33:10):
It's okay to have salesy events. Right? It's just
about making sure the rightpeople are the audience for
that. Right? Like, we talkedabout we for years, we've talked
about the whole buyer's journeyand top of the funnel, middle of
the funnel, bottom of the funnelcontent.
The the big problem is peoplewere only focusing on the bottom
(33:31):
of the funnel content. Right?Only focus on the stuff where
it's like, this is why ourproduct is so great. Right? And
you know It's your product.
Yeah, exactly. But that's thething, there are people that are
in the mindset of, I am tryingto consume content about why
your product is so great. That'sokay. You can have these very
(33:53):
sales focused events for thosepeople. Like, not everything has
to be this esoteric, top of thefunnel, educational, you know,
storytelling, stuff.
Right? You you need to do that a% because the amount of people
that are looking for your salesfocused content is generally
this big at all times. But thepeople looking for ways to solve
(34:15):
the general goals and challengesthat they have that don't even
know that they have a problemthat your product sells for is
still is this big at all times.Right? Because you're talking
about the rest of the world orthe rest of your total
addressable market that doesn'tknow who you are yet.
Right? And, like, yes. You needto be creating content for this,
but it is okay to create contentfor the people that are just
like, oh, yeah. You I I knowthat I have a problem, and I
(34:37):
know that I need to solve itusing this type of solution, and
I am evaluating all the peoplethat solve the problem in that
way. I'd like to learn moreabout your stuff way, you know,
but but do it in a way that'snot reading another ebook,
looking at your website'sproduct features.
Like, people do enjoy placesthey can go to ask very pointed
(34:58):
questions about specificproducts, right, but not also be
dragged into a one on one salescall. Right? Now everyone likes
to do everything they can. I atleast I do. Like, to do
everything I can to avoid that.
That's my last you know,generally gonna be my last step
is, like, alright. I need to geton the phone with a salesperson.
Right? But, you know, some sortof, like, open forum where I can
(35:21):
go and learn about the product.I can ask questions.
I can interact kind of as muchas I want. And then I can choose
if I disengage afterwards andkind of disappear and and ghost.
Right? It's okay to do that, Ithink, as long as you're
presenting the content that way.You're being very clear who the
audience is for.
You're making it very easy forthem to find. And in that case
(35:42):
where someone's showing up toquite literally learn about your
product, it's kind of okay thatyou stick the salespeople on
them after. Right? Relatively towhat you're doing to other
people that came to learn aboutsome topic you tried to educate
them on, and all of a sudden,they're getting just absolutely,
shellacked by salespeople in therim box after. That's a totally
different that's a bait andswitch.
You don't wanna do the bait andswitch.
George B. Thomas (36:02):
You did you did really well. I thought there
was something else coming there.You did you did you did well.
Justin Givens (36:08):
Hold on. I'm I'm gonna I'm gonna piggyback off
that because when you run yourevent, the last thing you want
to do is give your sales team,and this I see this all the
time, 30 leads who never raisedtheir hand over the
George B. Thomas (36:22):
past week.
Justin Givens (36:22):
True. Sales. Because guess what? Sales is
gonna tell VP of sales. Hey.
Tell marketing to stop doingthis. They're wasting all of our
time. Alright? Then marketing'sgonna be like, no. We're gonna
do more.
Stop. But you've gotta thinkabout in your events. What's
gonna generate the hand raisers?That goes back to what we were
talking earlier on this show iswhat's that interactivity of
(36:46):
one, think about yourqualification questions. And I'm
gonna play it on my side as orhow many events do you run?
One, not a customer. Just useExcel. You're fine. Okay? Oh,
you run 20.
Awesome. In person. Virtual.Great. Do you run your own
conference show?
Check out event happily. Wedon't do conferences. Right? I
(37:07):
can then funnel people the rightway. And guess what?
That makes yourself look good.
George B. Thomas (37:12):
Mhmm.
Justin Givens (37:13):
Yeah. Instead of always saying you need me me me
me me me me me. Right? Find whatmakes those hand raisers go oh,
oh, oh. Because as Max said, thelast thing someone wants is to
disrupt their day right after awebinar, and you have 15 missed
phone calls from an unknownphone number.
Max Cohen (37:33):
Yep. Right? Because also, like, if you run events,
it's more than likely you yourun multiple events, and you
want people to come back tothem, and you want people to go,
that was a great experience.Right? Not go, I went to this
one event, and now they will notstop hounding me.
Those guys. I'm not gonna go toanother one. I'm not gonna
(37:56):
listen. They broke my trust.That's not what you're trying to
do.
Events is all about communitybuilding and giving people an
alternate way to interact withyou if we're talking about the
sales process type events or thethe sales funnel type events.
Right? It's not just about, nowwe got you, and now you're never
gonna stop listening like you'reyeah. Right? It's just it's not
about that.
But, unfortunately, that's whatpeople do. Right? They just go,
(38:18):
oh, we need a webinar to getsome leads, and then we're gonna
just, you know like, you just goafter these people relentlessly.
It's like, bro, no.
George B. Thomas (38:25):
Max, I'm so happy with you right now. That
was a great use of the sensorbutton Mhmm. By the way.
Max Cohen (38:30):
No swears are. Uh-huh.
George B. Thomas (38:32):
Just it was a great use of yeah. Since we're
on LinkedIn live, Justin, thatwas honestly one of my biggest
worries of doing LinkedIn liveis, like, historically, we've
been able to edit certainMovies. And what they say on the
podcast. But LinkedIn live, Iwas like, let let ladies and
gentlemen, we're gonna do this.So so good job, Max.
(38:55):
I I I love this conversation. Iwanna, dive kind of a little bit
into each one of the apps alittle bit. Justin, I'm gonna
come back to you, then I'm gonnago, Max, to you, because I wanna
think about, like, simple eventsand kinda like the essential
elements of creating theseseamless, no fuss, event
(39:18):
experiences that can deliverreal results, you know, for
attendees and and businessesdoing this. Like, just walk us
through kind of that process,that mindset from the Simple
Events standpoint, for us.
Justin Givens (39:35):
Yeah. So the biggest thing is Simple Events
motto is we wanna get you backto marketing your event. Setting
up your event, like building iton Eventbrite or any other
platform that requires an hour,two hours, it's gonna slow you
down. It's gonna deter you. It'sgonna keep that freshness from
from flowing.
You're gonna even the creativityfrom flowing from marketing
(39:55):
side. Right? We all need moretime to market so we can attract
the right people for this event.Okay? So the philosophy there is
we've got HubSpot.
And if you're on HubSpotstarter, if you're on one of the
free plans in HubSpot, you'rereally missing out on the value
of HubSpot marketing pro. Andthat is specifically because of
(40:16):
the landing page features.
Max Cohen (40:18):
Mhmm.
Justin Givens (40:18):
When you're running your event, you should
always go out with an AB test.It should be quick. You should
know exactly what you'retesting, very small test. Run
that quick test and then pickyour winner. Once you have a
good amount of traffic to it.
Then now you've got thatrunning. Because, again, within
simple events, you're clickingfive minutes, your event's set
(40:38):
up, you've got a registrationform, you can start funneling
people into this. Now where alot of people need to have that
next mindset is after theyregister, now what? So to create
this seamless perfect experiencein something that's repeatable,
again, this is why we integrateso tightly with HubSpot, and
it's the only platform weintegrate with. We want you to
(41:02):
take those registrants or thosepeople who have registered and
now nurture them.
Hey. We're so excited. Oh, bythe way, here's a video from
Max. He's super stoked thatyou're actually registered.
Create that personalization.
There's so many tools to createthese awesome unique one to one
videos. Add that flare of yourbusiness. So go back to say, who
(41:22):
are we and how do we talk tothese people? If you're cold,
stiffy, and boring, your emailsare gonna come across that way.
So think about that from thatstandpoint.
Then when you go into thatregistration alright. Cool. We
got you. Now be upfront. We'regonna remind you 16 times about
the event just so you're aware.
(41:42):
Right? We don't want you to missit because it's gonna solve, and
we're gonna highlight and giveaway. We're gonna we're gonna do
what are you gonna do duringthat event? Be clear and upfront
and repeat that. Given the toolsthat they're used to, calendar
invites, calendar links, so theycan actually add it and they're
not forgetting when the eventis.
(42:03):
Okay? Then after the event,you've gotta have a post
process. And it's not to sayfire over to the sales team. You
only do that for those that arethe hand mergers. You then
nurture them and say, hey.
We really hope you enjoyed it.By the way, here's our calendar
page for the next upcomingevents. Or, hey. You can go get
(42:25):
a free x. You can go do y.
Give them something else to do.Even if it's like, hey. Post
this on social media. Engagethem because those promoters, as
Max said earlier, you don't knowwho where they are. They could
be somebody who's looking atyour product for somebody else
who asked them about thatproduct.
(42:46):
And they just had the timebecause they're intrigued about
it. Right? So think about itfrom not just up into the event.
Think about post event. How canwe put them into a newsletter if
you had that on yourregistration form?
Hey. Yes. Send me thenewsletter. Awesome. Send a
personalized message from thespeaker.
Thank you, George, for hosting.Sorry. This is George. I really
(43:09):
thank you, man, for showing up.I hope you enjoyed it.
If you have any questions, youknow, just hit a reply. Like,
you don't have to be salesy.That's what the sell that's what
if it was a sales presentation,make it sales y. But if it's
not, just be like, hey. I'm hereto ask any nonconfrontational
questions.
You have a one to one messagewith me now. Alright?
George B. Thomas (43:27):
Yeah. It's it's interesting because as I
hear you talk, Justin, I'm like,oh, you mean you care and you
pay attention to detail alongthe way, and you understand and
you create some type of journey,whether it's the communication
journey or it's the next eventjourney. Like, there's just so
(43:50):
much you can pull out of whatyou're talking about. It's funny
too because you literallyreminded me of one of the things
that I have to do when we'redone recording here is I'm
speaking at an event in March,and they asked me to do a minute
to, like, minute and a halfteaser video of the fact that
we're gonna be talking about AIand getting AI to have empathy
(44:12):
and heart and how they can,like, really so, like, even that
way before video that can go outand, like, get them excited
about it. Max, let's let's payattention to detail, people.
Max, let's flip over to you.This is from the Event Happily,
standpoint. I want you to kindawalk us through how Event
(44:32):
Happily can transform the waybusinesses manage events, and
maybe even some, like, specialadvantages, that it that it
offers. You know? Justin wastalking about, like, calendar
links.
I know he has a a module thatgoes into HubSpot emails that,
like, makes that easy. But whatare talk us through Event
(44:53):
Happily and and just theawesomeness that we have for
people.
Max Cohen (44:58):
Yeah. I mean, so the the way that we kinda think
about it is you gotta kindaalluded to this at the beginning
is, like, we really looked atHubSpot as a platform. We said,
like, hey. What are the missingpieces that HubSpot's really not
good at, right, when it comes totrying to manage an event top to
bottom on on the HubSpotplatform. Right?
(45:19):
And what it really kinda camedown to well, I mean, it came
down to a lot of differentthings. But, one, there's a big
data structure problem. Right?Like, you know, for example, so
we have something called aregistrant object. Right?
And a registrant object, isbasically a representation of
someone registering for aspecific event. Right? And
(45:39):
what's really tough, is managingthis concept of that time Max
went to inbound, right, andhaving a representation of that
data, and then managing thatobject. Right? I mean and people
(46:01):
weren't really doing this or orother event, you know,
integrations for for pointsolution platforms weren't doing
this.
Mostly what they were doing wasjust shoving information, right,
into contact properties. Andwhat's really tough about that
is it becomes very, verydifficult to manage lists, to
build reporting, to have, youknow, the the concept of an
(46:25):
event get connected to otherthings in your platform that
it's impacting, such as dealsand and things like that. And it
it was it's really, reallydifficult to manage it because
that crucial piece of the datais not tangible and touchable
and usable and customizable.Right? So, you know, with us,
there's in the two point oversion of Event Happily, we
have three objects.
(46:45):
We've got events. We've gotsessions, which are like parts
of events. Right? And then wehave these registering objects.
Right?
And the registering objectreally kind of serves as that
representation of that time maxwent to inbound. Right? And so
all of these things worktogether to create a data
structure that's very easy touse to get really granular
reporting, create whatever sortof automation you want around
(47:08):
it. Right? Build calculatedproperties in the way that all
these things touch and connectto each other so you can drive
other processes, right, which isuseful if your, you know, events
are way past just like virtualsales webinars.
But if you're doing things likelead capture at trade shows,
right, or you're doing, youknow, doing more like training
courses, right, instead of itbeing a marketing motion. It's
(47:30):
more of, like, the product thatyou actually, you know, sell as
a company. Right? If it'seducation or something like
that. Right?
But really kind of what we didis we said, what can we do to
build in the missing pieces or,like, an event engine, if you
will, for the HubSpotarchitecture. Right? And a lot
of that came down to, one,making sure all the nuanced
(47:54):
parts of your data when it comesto your event management
strategy can be wellrepresented, customized. Right?
You know, and that's like, youknow, having an event record so
you can plan and coordinate theevent and, you know, talk to
each other through notes andtasks and, you know, have an
object to report on, right, andto connect other stuff too.
(48:15):
It came down to building thesessions thing in whether you're
doing a cohort of trainingcourses that last, you know, x
amount of weeks or
George B. Thomas (48:22):
It makes
Max Cohen (48:23):
you're doing a more yep. Or you're doing, like, a
more complex event that hasbreakout sessions or different
tracks people can go down.Right? It's really easy to kind
of build that data structure.And then, of course, the
register an object, which holdsthe historical data of people
registering for your events, butalso acts as, like, a really
good workflow trigger mechanism.
Right? And you can do otherreally cool stuff like use
(48:45):
fields on registered objects tocollect, you know, feedback on
specific events people go to.Right? Because the surveys tool
is not really great at doingthat and connecting all the data
back to each other. Right?
So one of it was like a datastructure issue. The next piece
comes down to how do youactually, like, manage
registrations. Like,registrations are complex,
(49:07):
especially if you have differentdata you're collecting each time
for each event that you'redoing. Right? It might be T
shirt size at this event.
It might be dietary restrictionsat another. It might be some
sort of combination of that.Right? But, also, like, managing
that takes a lot of heavylifting and compute power.
Right?
Like and and complex workflows.You know? I mean, I think you
(49:27):
can really do it that well outof the box if you're not doing
some sort of custom codedsolution. But, like, you know,
there needs to be something tosay, alright. When someone signs
up for an event, which event isit for?
And if someone just signs up fora session at that event, how do
we make sure that we're justtacking it onto that
registration versus creating anew one? How are we managing
duplicates? How are we doing allthis heavy lifting in the
background to make sure that,like, registering data is
(49:48):
tracked properly? Right? So wehad to build a bunch of
automation and a whole new,like, logic engine in the
background to, like, really kindof manage all that stuff.
Right? But then it also comesdown to how are you driving
registration, especially for anevent that you're hosting.
Right? Because there's reallysort of, like, two
Justin Givens (50:04):
Yeah.
Max Cohen (50:05):
Sort of sides of of the way we think about event
management. There's I'm hostingand producing events, and then
there's my team goes to a lot ofevents. We call that, like, the
attending use case. Right? Andthose motions are totally
different.
If you're hosting events, youcare about driving registration
and you care about trackingattendance, and then you
(50:25):
probably care about dealattribution to some extent
because deals are another bigthing in HubSpot. Right? At
least a lot of people care aboutit. We hope marketing
attribution is fake, and we allmade it up, but still people
like to do that. Oh.
But then there's also aspire.Also we attend events. So we
don't care about doingpreregistration because it's not
our event. We're gonna go spend$40 to go put a booth at, like,
inbound or something like thaton the on the cheap end. Right?
(50:48):
And, what we're doing is we'regonna go to the event. We're
gonna showcase our stuff. We'regonna meet a bunch of people,
but we're gonna capture leadsand have conversations with
people. Hopefully, you'recapturing. Hopefully.
Hopefully. Right? But, like andand what's great about it is
that when you get all this stuffinto HubSpot in a in a way that
makes sense because the datastructure makes sense, then it
(51:09):
makes it much easier for you toreport on those efforts, tie
those to influences to, like,revenue that you're hopefully
closing because you met thisperson at the event or they went
to the event or or somethinglike that. Right? So the we had
to build, you know, especiallyon the hosted side, a whole
bunch of things that really,make up for HubSpot's lacking in
(51:31):
this area.
Like, I don't know if anyone Imean, Justin, I'm sure you know
this. HubSpot forms are dog whenit comes to event registration.
I'm sorry. They just are. Andthat's fine because that's not
what they're built for.
Right. And I'll be able to
Justin Givens (51:48):
throw out. The HubSpot engineer told me
HubSpot's not built for realtime registration.
Max Cohen (51:52):
Not built for registrations. It's built for
lead capture. Right? And sothere's a lot of stuff we had to
do to account for that. And,like, the most very simple, you
know, reasoning behind that is,like, look at the way HubSpot
forms work.
It's actually brilliant in theway that they do cookie
tracking. And it's like,alright. If someone fills out a
form and, you know, they're onthe same IP address and they
(52:13):
give a different email, well,they must be giving us a new
email. So, like, we update thecontact record correctly. Right?
But what happens when you runevents? Someone goes there and
signs up 12 of their friends togo to the event, and then you
go, why do I only have onecontact? Well, because because
it's overriding it over and overand over and over. Right? And
never mind doing multi personregistration on HubSpot forms
(52:34):
and doing the whole conditionalstuff and things like that.
So, like, we had to build awhole bunch of, like, CMS
modules to not only, like,manage more complex use cases
for using HubSpot forms forevent registration, but then
it's like, how do you keep trackof, like, the attendance? Right?
And how do you do all that kindof stuff? And how do you manage
people signing up for multiplesessions at an event? Things
(52:56):
like that.
So, like, we built all these,like, missing pieces, right,
that, like, it's some of thecraziest CMS engineering I've
I've ever seen in HubSpot interms of, like, functionality,
right, and what we do with formsand listing modules and, like,
all this other stuff. But But wekind of build it so you could do
as much as you can on HubSpotand really kind of get around
(53:18):
some of these, you know,shortcomings that HubSpot has
when it comes to the eventmanagement motion. Right?
George B. Thomas (53:24):
Yeah.
Max Cohen (53:25):
So, yeah, it's a lot of that stuff.
George B. Thomas (53:27):
Love it. Love it. Love it. So as we close-up
because thank god time flieswhen you're having fun, and this
event
Max Cohen (53:33):
has We have, like, another half hour. This is a
good one.
George B. Thomas (53:35):
This event has been a blast. We could probably
talk about this all day, to behonest with you, because there's
there's so much that, could gointo this. Usually, I like to
ask, like, what's one tip? I'mnot gonna ask for a tip from you
guys today. I'm actually gonnaask for a reason.
Max Cohen (53:52):
So I
George B. Thomas (53:52):
want you to put that in your brain. What's
one if you could only give the
Intro (53:58):
True events.
George B. Thomas (54:00):
One reason to do events. I'll go Justin first
since you're a guest, Maxsecond, and then I'll go third.
What's one reason they shouldstart doing or keep doing events
in your mind?
Justin Givens (54:13):
Yeah. So the biggest one that just screams at
me is you have prospects atevery stage of your business
that have questions, and you'renot giving them a platform to
ask those questions.
George B. Thomas (54:26):
Yeah. Drop the mic, which is funny because you
say that, and I'm like, then whydon't we have longer q and a
sessions at the end? But,anyway, Max, go ahead.
Max Cohen (54:36):
Community building is important. This is probably the
best way to do it.
George B. Thomas (54:41):
Yeah. And for me, I'm gonna kinda lean into
both what you're both saying is,like, listen. Events are the
easiest way to be a happy,helpful human. Like, bottom
line, you can care. You can payattention to details.
These apps help you make theprocess easier. We live in a
world of AI where the creationof the content is actually not
(55:02):
as difficult as it once was. Andso the excuses are gone. Build a
community, create events, andthen have a process to
communicate in an authentichuman way and just do good Do
good with your events.
Max Cohen (55:20):
Can I give a reason of why you should do your events
on HubSpot?
George B. Thomas (55:23):
Oh, yes. Go for it.
Max Cohen (55:25):
Think about all the other spreadsheets you've killed
moving on to HubSpot. And thenwhat I want you to do is I want
you to go into your Google Docsand go find your massive, ugly,
complicated, disgustingspreadsheet that you still
manage all your events on. Ifeel
George B. Thomas (55:44):
like the spreadsheet
Max Cohen (55:45):
that hurt. I can get rid of this one too because you
can. Yeah. Because you can.
George B. Thomas (55:50):
That's a wrap, ladies and gentlemen. Enjoy the
rest of your day, and thanks fortuning in to the Hub Heroes
podcast. Okay, Hub Heroes. We'vereached the end of another
episode. Will Lord Lack continueto loom over the community, or
will we be able to defeat him inthe next episode of the Hub
Heroes podcast?
(56:10):
Make sure you tune in and findout in the next episode. 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
(56:32):
friend. Leave a review if youlike what you're listening to,
and use the hashtag, hashtag hubheroes podcast on any of the
socials, and let us know whatstrategy conversation you'd like
to listen into next.
Until next time, when we meetand combine our forces, remember
to be a happy, helpful, humblehuman, and, of course, always be
(56:53):
looking for a way to besomeone's hero.
Do you live in a world filled with corporate data? Are
you plagued by silo departments?Are your lackluster growth
strategies demolishing yourchances for success? Are you
held captive by the evil menace,Lord Lack, lack of time, lack of
strategy, and lack of the mostimportant and powerful tool in
(00:23):
your superhero tool belt,knowledge. Never fear, hub
heroes.
Get ready to don your cape andmask, move into action, and
become the hub hero yourorganization needs. Tune in each
week to join the league ofextraordinary inbound heroes as
we help you educate, educate,empower, and execute. Hub
(00:46):
heroes, it's time to unite andactivate your powers.
Max Cohen (00:52):
Just remember, if you're if you're if you're
lacking a better transition intothe intro, this is not the
shackle for you.
George B. Thomas (01:00):
Yeah. We just we just jump right in. We get
going. But I'm but I'm superexcited because listen. At at
the end of the day, there'ssomething that's been going
around in my brain for, gosh,maybe two years now, for sure,
the last year and a half.
And and it's something that Iwanna do. It's something that
I've kind of been doing. And andlisten, sometimes I probably do
(01:24):
more than I think I do, and Ihave my own crisis when it comes
to, like, how much content Ishould create or how many events
I should do. You know? But Ilisten.
We do events. We do super admintraining. That's ten weeks. We
do it probably two to threetimes a year. We do podcast.
That's an event. Right? Like andthat's every week that we're
doing one, if not two so but butalso you start to think about
(01:45):
webinars, you think about inperson and events. Right? I've
just been thinking about growthled, companies, event led
growth, if you will.
And so I'm excited to havewhich, by the way, those let me
let me ask you. Is there anotherevents app in the app ecosystem,
(02:06):
or do I literally have the onlytwo events app humans on the
podcast today?
Max Cohen (02:13):
What is event integrations?
George B. Thomas (02:15):
Well, yeah. I don't
Max Cohen (02:16):
know how can I go
George B. Thomas (02:17):
reach out
Max Cohen (02:17):
to That's mostly why me me me and Justin's, you know,
little event babies existbecause integrations are
terrible? Well, they're they're
Justin Givens (02:28):
they're look. George, let's just say this.
There's a other there's otherevent platforms, but I don't
know why you'd wanna waste yourtime on them.
George B. Thomas (02:35):
Yeah. I'm probably not reaching out
Max Cohen (02:37):
to Eventbrite.
George B. Thomas (02:38):
I'm I'm I'm not reaching out to Eventbrite
and asking them to be on thepodcast. I'm just I'm just gonna
say that because well, I'm justgoing to say that. But but wait.
Max Cohen (02:46):
There is one more. There is one more by, something
operations, Andrew's company. Hedoes, he's got, like, a little
utility for Marketing events.Marketing events object. Yes.
Okay. Yeah. There's one more. Atleast one more.
Justin Givens (03:04):
It what I saw that oh, gosh. You know
Max Cohen (03:07):
what I'm talking about.
Justin Givens (03:08):
I do know what you're talking about. I
Max Cohen (03:10):
feel like a jerk not remembering the name of his
company. It's like Go operationsor something like that.
Justin Givens (03:15):
We'll put
George B. Thomas (03:16):
it in the show notes.
Max Cohen (03:17):
Yeah. We'll find it.
George B. Thomas (03:17):
We'll put it in the show notes. We'll find
it.
Max Cohen (03:19):
There's other people fighting the good fight out
there. Guys?
George B. Thomas (03:22):
And that's good. I I think it is a good
fight, by the way. And by theway, I want anybody that's
watching this on LinkedIn, liveor listening to the podcast, you
know, in the near future when werelease it probably, like,
Tuesday afternoon, or maybeit's, like, six months after
this because you're juststumbling across the podcast.
What's wrong with you? Whereyou've been?
(03:43):
Come listen to us. We lovecreating content for you that
Max Cohen (03:46):
that Where are you?
George B. Thomas (03:47):
Folks. But but I I want everybody to know this
isn't just another conversationabout events. I'm hoping that we
can kind of redefine how peoplethink about them, because
listen. I'm to the point whereit's like, it's not optional.
We've gotta be doing this.
Events are probably thecornerstone, especially if
you're recording the videobecause then you can do what I
(04:08):
like to call, which is contentconfetti. Literally turn the
events into blog articles, intosocial posts, into into all
sorts of stuff. But but let meback up. Max, most of the humans
know who you are, but I'm gonnaswing back over to you in a
second because we're gonna shinea different kind of light on you
this morning. But, Justin, I'mgonna start with you because if
(04:29):
we're talking about events,maybe not all the hub, you know,
hub heroes folks know who youare.
So just give us a lowdown ofkind of who you are, what you
do, a little bit about the appthat you bring to the table this
morning during the conversation,and maybe just, like, your
fundamental, thirty second spoton what you think about events
(04:53):
and organizations using events.
Justin Givens (04:55):
Yeah. So my name is Justin Givens. I am the the
creator and the founder ofSimple Events, and also the
cofounder of a company namedImage in a Box. It is a HubSpot,
platinum agency, at the time ofthis recording. And it is a
agency that just loves to solvepeople's problems, more
(05:16):
specifically in the ERP realm ofConnectWise and, cybersecurity
companies.
That is who we really love tohelp on the agency side. But
where we find the biggestpassion is running events, and
that's why we built SimpleEvents. It was a journey we
started on two years ago. It'sthe number two event platform in
(05:37):
HubSpot. It's gonna be numberone.
I'm just waiting on y'all tosign up for it. Okay? There is a
freebie out there for it. Soit's the easiest and fastest way
to get your events integratedinto HubSpot and the simplest.
And you get to use all thewonderful tools in HubSpot that
you love and use every singleday.
(05:57):
One of the big things that Iwanna say about events is that
we all do them wrong.
Max Cohen (06:03):
Oh. Yeah.
Justin Givens (06:04):
I'm not gonna drop the mic because when's the
last time you signed up for yourown company's event and felt
like an external user and seewhat the process feels like? So
many people have gone and said,you know, why aren't these
people showing up? Oh, I I'veput in so much effort into this
event. And they're like,alright. Cool.
(06:25):
I didn't get any return oninvestment. Well Mhmm. That's
not the customers that show upthe prospect's fault. That's our
fault. That we're not runningthe event the way you should be
running events.
So that's my little spiel thatwe're gonna dive into more.
George B. Thomas (06:41):
I feel like we're gonna dive a little bit
deeper into that as we go. Andand and by the way, I'm also
sitting here at as you're, like,the number two event app. I'm
like, oh, did I just create aroom for chaos? Like, am I gonna
be the referee of a boxing matchbefore this whole thing is over?
Anyway, I hope not.
Maybe so. It might be good forratings.
Max Cohen (06:59):
Gotta stick together, bro.
Justin Givens (07:01):
That's right. We I think we cross share more
because I'm like, you know,y'all need to do event happily.
It's exactly what it's for.Let's do it.
Max Cohen (07:09):
You're the same thing. Yeah.
George B. Thomas (07:10):
Yes. So, Max Max, people know you for being
the, you know, lovable teddybear, huggable, you know, hub
heroes, host. But today hugable.Shine the the light on you as
far as event happily. So justkind of introduce yourself from
that side of things, like whoyou are, what you do, on that,
(07:31):
and a little bit about maybe,how you think about events.
Yeah.
Max Cohen (07:36):
Well, I guess hey, everybody who doesn't know, me.
I'm Max. I'm the chiefevangelist over at this company
called Happily. All we do is webuild apps on HubSpot that make
HubSpot do more. Is, I guess,the easiest way to think about
kinda what we do.
We've got an app called EventHappily. It's the whole goal of
it is essentially to look atHubSpot as a platform, figure
(08:00):
out where all the missing puzzlepieces are in terms of event
management, and to fill thosegaps and literally turn HubSpot
into an event managementplatform. And that's kind of,
like, basically what I do. And,you know, part of my, you know,
role here is, you know, mostly Icreate a lot of content. I'm
super loud on LinkedIn, and and,I I work with a lot of
(08:21):
HubSpotters to get them up tospeed on the stuff we build
because we do Event Happily, wedo Quote Happily, we got a bunch
of utility apps, there's a lotof really cool stuff we got
planned in the future, but I'vebeen kind of the one sort of,
like, guiding the direction forwhat we're sort of calling Event
Happily two point o, which isreally the sort of next
evolvement, the next iteration,of Event Happily, in its current
(08:44):
state.
I guess in terms of, like, whatI think about events is, like,
you know, it's so interesting,because everything that people
do with events toucheseverything that HubSpot's really
good at. Right? It's a functionof marketing. It's a functioning
of sales. It can be afunctioning of customer service.
Right? And so forever and everas a, you know, someone who
(09:08):
helped people implement HubSpot.Right? Events were always a
topic, and HubSpot was nevergood at being able to handle it
because it's a CRM system. It'snot built to be event management
software.
Right? You know, and for solong, you know, I just remember
people saying, like, oh, youknow, we wanna be able to sign
(09:29):
people up for events and and dothis and do that. But, you know,
a lot of the native stuff builtinto HubSpot just wasn't built
to handle it, you know, whetherit comes to the way that forms
work out of the box and, youknow, doing a ton of list
management and all this othercrazy stuff. You know, but in
turn like, events are importantand and, like, the biggest thing
that I've kind of learned isthat no one does event
(09:52):
management in the same exactway. Right?
Events mean different things todifferent people. Right? An
event could be a conference. Anevent could be an internal
training or some sort of coursesomeone's running or some sort
of, you know, like, if you'resure, like a webinar, things
like that. And the nuances thatcome along with how complex,
(10:14):
people manage their events canbe, are vast.
And I think, like, the reallybig opportunity, you know, that
there is of building an eventmanagement platform on HubSpot
is, like, HubSpot has a lot ofthe things that other, like,
point solutions for eventmanagement tools don't have
already in there. Right? So,like, when Justin was saying
(10:35):
earlier, right, getting all yourdata into HubSpot so you can use
all those awesome tools thatHubSpot has, like, that's the
point. And, like, what's really,really neat about it is since
event management is so complexto or can be. Sorry.
Can be super complex, supernuanced, and really different in
the way people execute it.Right? What's great about
building an event app on HubSpotis that you can you can build in
(11:00):
kind of, like, what's missing,and then you can use HubSpot's,
you know, wild amount ofextensibility and customization
to fill in all of, like, theunique and nuanced parts of your
event management strategy orprocess, whatever that may be,
right, through workflows, recordcustomizations, additional
custom objects, all of theseother things, depending on what
(11:21):
you're trying to do. Right? So,yeah, it's cool.
It's a it's a cool platform tobuild on. And I think there's a
million other things besidesevents you could apply the same
logic to probably. Yeah.
George B. Thomas (11:29):
Oh, without a doubt. I love that, it could be
a simple event, pun intended, ora complex event. But at the end
of the day, you're gonna be ableto do it happily or anyway, you
sound like
Max Cohen (11:43):
simpler that's
George B. Thomas (11:43):
what I tried
Max Cohen (11:44):
to do.
Justin Givens (11:44):
Seems not really
George B. Thomas (11:45):
foolish, George. Here's the here's the
thing. I'll get rid of my baddad jokes and puns, for a hot
minute. If I think about whenmost people think about events,
they probably think about oldschool webinars. Right?
And so, Justin,
Justin Givens (12:00):
I'm going
George B. Thomas (12:00):
to go to you first and then maybe Max back to
you. And I might throw somepennies in the pool here as
well. But when you think of,like, old school purpose of
events kind of evolving fromnetworking or promotion or just
downright bad webinars andsales, like, right there to more
(12:20):
of this, like, driving maybelead generation or starting
conversations or actually beinghuman and building
relationships, you know, theidea of, like, event led growth.
What does this shift mean tobusinesses? Like, what should
they be thinking about today?
Justin Givens (12:37):
So every event should have a goal. And I'm I'm
gonna go ahead and say that notevery event should be closing a
new customer.
Max Cohen (12:46):
Mhmm.
Justin Givens (12:47):
So you should have a process. You know,
there's this little thing calleda flywheel, you know, that you
gotta promote.
George B. Thomas (12:53):
Oh, I've heard of that, I think.
Justin Givens (12:54):
Yeah. I I don't know if anybody on this podcast
has ever heard of it.
George B. Thomas (12:57):
What's that company?
Max Cohen (12:58):
Inbound is dead.
Justin Givens (13:01):
That's not the company name just so no one goes
Max Cohen (13:04):
book about how inbound is dead.
Justin Givens (13:08):
So you when you go into the thinking, hey. I'm
gonna do this webinar. Hey. I'mgonna do this in person event.
One, who's your target?
Always going in. But when youthink about it from a goal for
that, is it to drive awareness?Is it to drive leads? Is it to
drive sales? Is it to closesales?
But you gotta think, if I'mbuilding one event, let's just
(13:29):
say you've never run an event oryou've run a thousand events,
and you're going into that eventtoday and you're thinking, okay.
I need to run an event for, say,two months from now. If you're
thinking I'm gonna drive newleads and I'm gonna close
existing leads, you're probablythinking of your event
completely wrong. Because justlike as we all know, those
buyers are at different stagesin your process. Don't speak to
(13:50):
them like they're brand new toyour business.
Don't speak to them like they'veknown your business for six
years. So create your eventsthat are really tailored to your
buyer's journey and where theyare in that stage so you can
really maximize that effort,that, return on investment. And
the biggest thing that I see alot of companies do is, oh,
we're gonna run events. Yeah.Yeah.
(14:11):
And then they're like, we got nocustomers. And they go through
this process, and it happensevery year. You know what? We're
gonna do more events this year.And they always fail because
they're not thinking, hey.
That lead, now how can I useHubSpot in a workflow to nurture
that lead into a long termcustomer? Right? They're
(14:33):
thinking this event should closethem. Mhmm. We used to run pre
COVID, a training series everyquarter.
And my goal was to convert. Ifyou came to one in the first
quarter of the year, by thefourth quarter, I wanted to
convert you as a customer.
George B. Thomas (14:49):
Right? Long term.
Justin Givens (14:50):
Yeah. Long term track. Me a year. Right? Now it
only took me forty five minutesfor the talk.
So if you think that timeinvestment, right, doesn't cost
a lot of me. But I knew goingin, I'm gonna stage my contact
or my my content, sorry, toelevate that person the whole
way into a buyer. Okay?
Max Cohen (15:09):
Yeah.
Justin Givens (15:10):
And that's where I feel like a lot of people
think about events wrong, thenthey go and use the wrong tools,
which then makes that friction.And they're like, we're not
running events. We're just gonnago back to doing what we've
always done.
Max Cohen (15:23):
Yeah. Because then you end up getting sloppy in the
way that you use that data afterthe event too because what are
you doing? Just in You'reputting Excel. Sheets. Right?
Exactly. Yeah.
Justin Givens (15:33):
Well, we'll
George B. Thomas (15:34):
get we'll get into friction and failure, here
in a hot minute. But, Max, Iwant I want you to kinda go in
the same direction of, like,what do businesses need to be
thinking about right now when itcomes to events?
Max Cohen (15:44):
Yeah. Well, I mean, on on top of everything that
Justin said, because Icompletely agree with it, and I
love him, I think the otherthing too and and, George, I
think you've been really good atkind of championing this idea is
that not every event that you'reon has to be something that's
gonna get you leads, right, andand and close deals. There's a
(16:05):
big reason why you'd want toinvest in strengthening your
community of customers. Right?Think about why HubSpot is where
it's at today.
It's all because of HubSpotAcademy and things like inbound
and the rabid fan base andcommunity that they've
relentlessly built over the pastfifteen whatever years. Right?
(16:31):
You know, I'm not out heresaying every single company
needs to go do their own versionof inbound. Right? But the the
the big thing that you can tellworks, right, is that HubSpot
invests in its strengthening andfortification of its community
and its user base.
Right? Events are an amazing wayto do that because you can bring
(16:54):
people together over the sharedlove of a product or a service
or an industry or whatever, getthem talking, and really, really
spin up that, you know, base ofevangelists that you have when
you do, you know, very, when youcome up with, like, creative and
fun ways of engaging with thatcommunity, and events are, like,
(17:15):
a wonderful way to do that, beit virtual or in person or
meetups or, you know, HubSpotdoes the user groups, like,
things like this. Right? Youknow, and, obviously, you need
an operating system to be ableto, like, handle that stuff.
Right?
HubSpot's great at doing that,right, as long as it's paired
with the right tools like thetwo that we're talking about
today. Right? You know, so Ithink it's I think a big
(17:38):
mistake, you know, Justin reallyhit it right on the head. It's
like, just looking at it as,like, a lead gen and deal
closing tool is the wrong way tolook at it. Right?
You wanna be able to you yougotta know that you there's
there's other tactical reasonsto deploy it. Right? Like, even
when we talk about inbound, wetalk about delight. Right?
Delight is so important,fortifying your customer base
(18:01):
and creating evangelists andgetting people stoked on your
stuff in ways that don't alwaysnecessarily translate to a very
specific transaction of money orclosing a new deal.
All these things are importantbecause they affect that stuff
down the line and have an impacton it. Right? And events are a
great way to, you know, engagethat base of fans that you have
(18:21):
of, you know, the work yourcompany does. Right? So don't
sleep on it.
George B. Thomas (18:25):
Yeah. So I I love that I'm sitting here
talking to you two gentlemen,and it really is about, like,
these apps that help you set up,launch and, like, create and
then report and then nurturebased on the events you're
putting on. The the thing thatcomes to my mind, what people
should be thinking about,businesses should be thinking
about is with apps like yours,it becomes a lot easier. And so
(18:49):
the excuses go away. Here's thething that I'm gonna throw into
this mix.
But before I do, if you'rewatching this live, put in the
chat pane if you do events andwhat type of events you do. Just
throw it in the chat pane realquick because I'm super curious
what people are considering oror thinking about in events.
Max Cohen (19:07):
And even if you don't, just lie to us. We need
to
Justin Givens (19:10):
boost the algorithm.
Max Cohen (19:11):
Don't don't lie.
George B. Thomas (19:12):
Truth. But in I'll
Max Cohen (19:14):
I'll lie.
George B. Thomas (19:14):
Do you do events and what type of events?
Here's the thing. Excuses are aa thing of the past or should be
when it comes to events becausethe other thing that I wanna put
in people's mind outside ofHubSpot, outside of these apps,
is if you're not using AI forresearch, you're failing. If
you're not using AI forpresenter notes, you're you're
probably maybe, spending moretime than you need to. If you're
(19:37):
not using AI for creative ideasof what should be on the actual
slides for your event, like,what I'm talking about is human
powered ideas in creation, butAI assisted, because you can
spin around a deck for an eventin a heartbeat at this point in
time if you know the right toolslike Gamma to use.
(19:58):
And by the way, not sponsored.Could be. Gamma. Reach out. Let
us know, if you wanna sponsorthe podcast.
But it's one of my favorite,like, presentation creation
applications, just because ofthe way that it leverages AI and
AI imagery and all the stuffthat you can do with it. But so
so, like, I want people torethink about that portion of
(20:21):
events as well as the portionsthat we're talking about in
HubSpot and with Simple Eventsand Event Happily. But here's
here's the thing. We've allsigned up for those events. Many
of us has said, well, we're notgonna attend.
We're just gonna watch thereplay. Anyway, not why we're
here. But we've signed up forthese events. We thought we were
(20:41):
gonna get value. We get to theevent, and it's like, or just
flat out, like, you're like,man, I've been here for twenty
minutes.
I'm checking out. This sucks.I'm curious. You guys are doing
events. You're focused onevents.
You see people doing events.You're helping others. You're
enabling them to do events. Whatare some actionable steps that
(21:03):
brands, organizations can taketo to kinda make sure that their
event delivers on the promisesof truly positioning, you know,
the company as a thought leader,fostering relationships with the
attendees, getting people tostick around? Like, is there,
like, a checklist?
Is there, like, here's thethings you should always think
(21:24):
about doing? Like, talk usthrough that.
Justin Givens (21:27):
Max, you wanna dive first? Well, I
Max Cohen (21:29):
mean, let's still I'll be honest. We I I I build
an event app that it that isbuilt from the ground for
HubSpot. I am not an eventproducer by any means. Right? So
I'm the last guy you wanna talkto in terms of, like, what makes
a great event.
From a very tactical level, Iguess the one thing that I would
say is don't do the bait andswitch, guys. Right? Don't do
the hey. You want five freenights at the hotel? All you
(21:52):
gotta do is come listen to aseminar on this timeshare.
Unless you're advertising it asa sales pitch, right, which some
people are gonna be interestedin that. Sure. You're gonna have
people that are, you know, intheir buying cycle of whatever
product that you have, andsometimes they go, yeah. You
know what? I'd like to listen tosomeone actually talk about the
product and show it and createan open forum for questions and
(22:13):
things like that.
That's great. As long as you'resaying this is what that is, and
if you're interested inconsuming that content, here it
is. The last thing you wanna dois bamboozle people with some
sort of bait and switch and say,hey. Come learn about x y z, you
know, topic, and then it ends upbeing like a sales pitch webinar
that people just kinda tune outfrom and go, oh, I just see what
they're trying to do. Right?
Also, right, be a little bitmore nuanced with the way that
(22:36):
you follow-up with people afterthese, you know, after these
things. Right? Not everyoneneeds a salesperson sicked on
them. Right? You know, so Iwould say try to do your best
to, you know, really make sureif you are gonna do the sales
heavy content types of eventsthat they're advertised as such.
Not only so you're, you know,doing the right thing and being
(22:58):
transparent and not wastingpeople's time with the bait and
switch, but also so you canactually attract the people that
wanna see that. You got much,you know, a much better shot at
getting the right eyeballs onthat type of content. Right?
But, you know, I did do new hiretraining, right, at at HubSpot
for a while, especially duringCOVID. Had to learn how to do
(23:19):
that pretty quick.
And in terms of, like, you know,if you are a company that's
doing, like, virtual events, thebiggest thing that you have to
figure out somehow and this isgonna be different in every
single type of event. So, like,I apologize if this, you know,
advice is vague. But creating anelement that is interactive
(23:41):
whenever you're doing any sortof visual event is huge when it
comes to maintaining people'sengagement. Right? So however
you can do that.
Right? Let's say you're doing awebinar or some other type of
virtual event. You gotta figureout what are the interactive
elements that are gonna makepeople not just a passive
watcher, right, and an activeparticipant. Right? That's what
(24:01):
makes virtual events reallygood.
You know, in person events Idon't know. Just make sure you
got, like, a good spread orsomething. You know what I mean?
Justin Givens (24:08):
I don't know.
George B. Thomas (24:09):
I'm not I'm not a I'm
Max Cohen (24:10):
not an in person event coordinator. Right? So
there's probably someone whocould comment better than me
than that. Right? But, you know,make sure the content of the
event, whatever it may be,matches the audience.
Don't do a bait and switch. Makesure it's valuable. Right. And
then just don't just don'tmurder people with sales folks
right after. Just like let themgo, Oh, that was a good event.
(24:33):
And I learned something. Right.And it wasn't just a ploy to get
me to buy some shit. Right?
George B. Thomas (24:39):
By the way, for for all of you people on
LinkedIn or if you're listeningto this in the future, hit us
up. Let us know either in thechat pane or, in the Hub Heroes
community. Have you ever feltlike you've been, sicked on by
salespeople after an event? Haveyou ever had to live that
experience? Also, by the way,that was my way of making this
(25:01):
event interactive.
See what I just did there? I gotthem to do something. There you
go. I got the I got
Intro (25:08):
the to
George B. Thomas (25:11):
do something. So so, Justin, your turn. Like,
where where does your mind go onthis question? By the way, after
you go, I have some thoughts.And and Yeah.
Thanks to Max, I have a a coupleextra thoughts.
Max Cohen (25:23):
Extra thoughts.
Justin Givens (25:24):
There you go. Yeah. So one of the big things
is why are you running thisevent? Okay. So what information
do you want to present that theconsumer is going to ingest?
Right? And where a lot ofbusinesses that I've seen that
we've helped with, they try tocram way too much. Okay? So this
(25:46):
sort of goes back off what Maxwas saying is know your target
audience and know what theywant. Right?
But don't give them everythingin forty five minutes where
they're just glazed over andthey're like, I have no idea
what to do. Another great ideais create uniqueness for those
who actually attend. Meaning,you want the recording, you've
(26:08):
gotta show up. Right? Add thesesort of checks and balances just
like the time share.
We to get the free nights, youjust don't show up on property.
You have to listen. Do the sameconcept and be clear about that.
We're only gonna send therecordings to those who show up.
Alright?
And one of the tricks that Ireally love to do in it's not
(26:28):
tricks. It's a it's a tactic. IsI tell them at the beginning,
don't try to take any notes. I'mgonna be ax asking you to be
interactive. I'm gonna be askingquestions throughout this,
presentation.
I'm gonna show you how you canget all these slides. And at
that moment, you're removingthat barrier if somebody feels
(26:49):
like they missed something andthey just leave to giving you
actually full attention becausethey know that fear of missing
details is now removed.
Max Cohen (26:59):
Yep. Okay? True. Lots of them.
Justin Givens (27:01):
That is a huge win for virtuals. Now in
persons, I honestly you need topick out five to 10 people and
call them out every time you'regoing through and asking this
interaction. Right? And Iusually say, hey. I'm gonna call
you out if you don't raise yourhands.
And I do that with a big smile.Like, hey. This is you're here
to learn. Let's let's have aconversation. Alright?
(27:22):
People can hide behind on avirtual wall pretty easily, but
you can do the awkward silence.I don't know if anybody here is
a big salesperson, but you canalways mute and wait for those
crickets. Alright? Mhmm. So thatbig thing is knowing the target,
knowing what to get.
The other thing is a lot ofmarketing teams come up with
ideas of events and those kindof things, but they remove that
(27:44):
disconnect from the sales team.Going back to the sales team and
saying, what's every questionyou've ever had? Not that every
question is gonna be in everywebinar, but you can pick out a
collection of similar topics andaddress those and then answer
during the presentation and thenmove on to the next series. So
then you're what you're doing isbuilding that knowledge and that
(28:07):
trust with those customers. Oneof the the last thing I'm gonna
say is if you think you'vecommunicated your event enough,
you haven't.
So I tell my wife this all thetime. The moment my wife thinks
she has plenty of time to getready, that's the moment we're
gonna be late. No matter if it'stwo hours, thirty minutes,
(28:29):
fifteen hours, the moment shesays, oh, we got plenty of time.
We're late, honey. That's it.
We haven't even left the house.
George B. Thomas (28:36):
Yeah. Let me know how the doghouse is later,
bro.
Justin Givens (28:38):
No. She she laughs every time, and she
actually said it on Saturday.She goes, you know, I was
telling myself I got plenty oftime. I'm like, yeah. And she
goes, yeah.
You're right. I was behind. Butwhen you think you've
communicated so I was actuallytalking to a simple inventor.
That's another word I've madeup. And they said, you know,
know, a lot of people aren'tusing the QR code.
And I'm like, well, are youtelling them about the QR code?
(28:59):
Well, not really.
Max Cohen (29:00):
Mhmm. Well, how do you
Justin Givens (29:03):
expect them to know to use it if you're not
telling them? Again, you'vegotta remind your people who
sign up, who haven't signed up.And, again, this is why
EventHappily and Simple Eventsare so tightly integrated with
HubSpot. Use the list functions.Use your workflows to keep
bringing them notificationsuntil they actually register,
(29:25):
and then flip them into theregistration workflow so then
they actually show up.
And during that time, bringingin exactly what you're going to
talk about and why they need tojoin and the nuggets you're
gonna give them. Right? Itypically keep my talking points
to four or less. And duringthose four, I always have a
(29:47):
transformation story that canrelate to one of my buyer
personas because I wanna createthat connection between the
customer. At the end of it,there's always something free,
but they all and I even cut likeGeorge says, you turn these
webinars, these digital onesinto ongoing content.
I cut the promotion part of thefree content for the web. You
only get it if you show up.Alright? So those are my tips
(30:10):
there to really maximize yourevent.
George B. Thomas (30:13):
Yeah. I love it. There's there's a couple
things that I'll add based onthe answers that you gave. One,
Max, as soon as you started togo, I was like, well, Max is
part of the answer because, bro,you always bring energy. Like,
you're just who you are.
You're authentic, and you'reloud, and you're max, and
you're, like, you're you'reenergized. And so many events
(30:36):
I've got on, and it's likelistening to Charlie Brown's
teacher. Mom. Mom. Mom.
Mom. Mom. Mom.
Justin Givens (30:41):
Mom. Mom. Mom. Mom. Mom.
Mom.
George B. Thomas (30:42):
Mom. Mom. Mom. Mom. Mom.
Mom. Mom. Mom. Mom. Mom.
Mom. Mom. Mom. Mom. Mom.
Mom. Mom. Mom. Mom. Mom.
Mom. Mom. Mom. Mom. Mom.
Mom. Mom. Mom. Mom. Mom.
Mom. Mom. Mom. Mom. Mom.
Mom. Mom. Mom. Mom. Mom Justin,you said that you I I like to,
share a transformational story.
The fact that many people aren'tusing storytelling as a
superpower when it comes to theevents that they're creating is
(31:03):
shameful. And and here here's
Max Cohen (31:06):
the thing.
George B. Thomas (31:06):
Trouble. Not every event that you do has to
be recorded. Even saying that inthe promotion of it makes it a
different type of event. We wedo an event for an organization
that I help called LifeStar.They help solopreneurs.
We do an event called problemsolvers, and we don't let note
takers in, and we don't recordit because it's the type of
(31:30):
event that you gotta show up, beyou, be human, and talk about
the problems in your business,and then let people help you
solve them. There's no so youknow you can't just register and
then get it later. So, like,figuring out the strategy that's
right for you and your event,figuring out the stories that
you wanna tell along the way andbringing the energy for it all
(31:53):
so that if people actually getcaptivated and get taken away
and, like, enjoy the thirty,forty five, whatever minutes of
the event, you know, you addthat and you'll be doing a lot
better. Here's the funny thing Iwanna swing back around to is
we've mentioned about, like,being, you know, sick in sales
(32:15):
on people, and we've talkedabout not being salesy. And
we've almost, like, leaned intothis, like, negative vibe of
sales attached to events.
But I I'm gonna come back to youboth because I wanna know if
there's some steps, some ways,some mindsets, some best
practices that we could actuallyturn these events into high
(32:37):
performing sales machines, andreally streamline the process to
to go from conversation startersand relationship builders to
what CEOs and CFOs and CMOs andanybody with a c and some o's in
their title probably really careabout, which is closing deals,
(33:00):
revenue, and staying inbusiness. Like, what where does
your brain go when it's like,yeah. We like to yell about
sales, but here's some thingsyou could think about as far as
the process.
Max Cohen (33:10):
It's okay to have salesy events. Right? It's just
about making sure the rightpeople are the audience for
that. Right? Like, we talkedabout we for years, we've talked
about the whole buyer's journeyand top of the funnel, middle of
the funnel, bottom of the funnelcontent.
The the big problem is peoplewere only focusing on the bottom
(33:31):
of the funnel content. Right?Only focus on the stuff where
it's like, this is why ourproduct is so great. Right? And
you know It's your product.
Yeah, exactly. But that's thething, there are people that are
in the mindset of, I am tryingto consume content about why
your product is so great. That'sokay. You can have these very
(33:53):
sales focused events for thosepeople. Like, not everything has
to be this esoteric, top of thefunnel, educational, you know,
storytelling, stuff.
Right? You you need to do that a% because the amount of people
that are looking for your salesfocused content is generally
this big at all times. But thepeople looking for ways to solve
(34:15):
the general goals and challengesthat they have that don't even
know that they have a problemthat your product sells for is
still is this big at all times.Right? Because you're talking
about the rest of the world orthe rest of your total
addressable market that doesn'tknow who you are yet.
Right? And, like, yes. You needto be creating content for this,
but it is okay to create contentfor the people that are just
like, oh, yeah. You I I knowthat I have a problem, and I
(34:37):
know that I need to solve itusing this type of solution, and
I am evaluating all the peoplethat solve the problem in that
way. I'd like to learn moreabout your stuff way, you know,
but but do it in a way that'snot reading another ebook,
looking at your website'sproduct features.
Like, people do enjoy placesthey can go to ask very pointed
(34:58):
questions about specificproducts, right, but not also be
dragged into a one on one salescall. Right? Now everyone likes
to do everything they can. I atleast I do. Like, to do
everything I can to avoid that.
That's my last you know,generally gonna be my last step
is, like, alright. I need to geton the phone with a salesperson.
Right? But, you know, some sortof, like, open forum where I can
(35:21):
go and learn about the product.I can ask questions.
I can interact kind of as muchas I want. And then I can choose
if I disengage afterwards andkind of disappear and and ghost.
Right? It's okay to do that, Ithink, as long as you're
presenting the content that way.You're being very clear who the
audience is for.
You're making it very easy forthem to find. And in that case
(35:42):
where someone's showing up toquite literally learn about your
product, it's kind of okay thatyou stick the salespeople on
them after. Right? Relatively towhat you're doing to other
people that came to learn aboutsome topic you tried to educate
them on, and all of a sudden,they're getting just absolutely,
shellacked by salespeople in therim box after. That's a totally
different that's a bait andswitch.
You don't wanna do the bait andswitch.
George B. Thomas (36:02):
You did you did really well. I thought there
was something else coming there.You did you did you did well.
Justin Givens (36:08):
Hold on. I'm I'm gonna I'm gonna piggyback off
that because when you run yourevent, the last thing you want
to do is give your sales team,and this I see this all the
time, 30 leads who never raisedtheir hand over the
George B. Thomas (36:22):
past week.
Justin Givens (36:22):
True. Sales. Because guess what? Sales is
gonna tell VP of sales. Hey.
Tell marketing to stop doingthis. They're wasting all of our
time. Alright? Then marketing'sgonna be like, no. We're gonna
do more.
Stop. But you've gotta thinkabout in your events. What's
gonna generate the hand raisers?That goes back to what we were
talking earlier on this show iswhat's that interactivity of
(36:46):
one, think about yourqualification questions. And I'm
gonna play it on my side as orhow many events do you run?
One, not a customer. Just useExcel. You're fine. Okay? Oh,
you run 20.
Awesome. In person. Virtual.Great. Do you run your own
conference show?
Check out event happily. Wedon't do conferences. Right? I
(37:07):
can then funnel people the rightway. And guess what?
That makes yourself look good.
George B. Thomas (37:12):
Mhmm.
Justin Givens (37:13):
Yeah. Instead of always saying you need me me me
me me me me me. Right? Find whatmakes those hand raisers go oh,
oh, oh. Because as Max said, thelast thing someone wants is to
disrupt their day right after awebinar, and you have 15 missed
phone calls from an unknownphone number.
Max Cohen (37:33):
Yep. Right? Because also, like, if you run events,
it's more than likely you yourun multiple events, and you
want people to come back tothem, and you want people to go,
that was a great experience.Right? Not go, I went to this
one event, and now they will notstop hounding me.
Those guys. I'm not gonna go toanother one. I'm not gonna
(37:56):
listen. They broke my trust.That's not what you're trying to
do.
Events is all about communitybuilding and giving people an
alternate way to interact withyou if we're talking about the
sales process type events or thethe sales funnel type events.
Right? It's not just about, nowwe got you, and now you're never
gonna stop listening like you'reyeah. Right? It's just it's not
about that.
But, unfortunately, that's whatpeople do. Right? They just go,
(38:18):
oh, we need a webinar to getsome leads, and then we're gonna
just, you know like, you just goafter these people relentlessly.
It's like, bro, no.
George B. Thomas (38:25):
Max, I'm so happy with you right now. That
was a great use of the sensorbutton Mhmm. By the way.
Max Cohen (38:30):
No swears are. Uh-huh.
George B. Thomas (38:32):
Just it was a great use of yeah. Since we're
on LinkedIn live, Justin, thatwas honestly one of my biggest
worries of doing LinkedIn liveis, like, historically, we've
been able to edit certainMovies. And what they say on the
podcast. But LinkedIn live, Iwas like, let let ladies and
gentlemen, we're gonna do this.So so good job, Max.
(38:55):
I I I love this conversation. Iwanna, dive kind of a little bit
into each one of the apps alittle bit. Justin, I'm gonna
come back to you, then I'm gonnago, Max, to you, because I wanna
think about, like, simple eventsand kinda like the essential
elements of creating theseseamless, no fuss, event
(39:18):
experiences that can deliverreal results, you know, for
attendees and and businessesdoing this. Like, just walk us
through kind of that process,that mindset from the Simple
Events standpoint, for us.
Justin Givens (39:35):
Yeah. So the biggest thing is Simple Events
motto is we wanna get you backto marketing your event. Setting
up your event, like building iton Eventbrite or any other
platform that requires an hour,two hours, it's gonna slow you
down. It's gonna deter you. It'sgonna keep that freshness from
from flowing.
You're gonna even the creativityfrom flowing from marketing
(39:55):
side. Right? We all need moretime to market so we can attract
the right people for this event.Okay? So the philosophy there is
we've got HubSpot.
And if you're on HubSpotstarter, if you're on one of the
free plans in HubSpot, you'rereally missing out on the value
of HubSpot marketing pro. Andthat is specifically because of
(40:16):
the landing page features.
Max Cohen (40:18):
Mhmm.
Justin Givens (40:18):
When you're running your event, you should
always go out with an AB test.It should be quick. You should
know exactly what you'retesting, very small test. Run
that quick test and then pickyour winner. Once you have a
good amount of traffic to it.
Then now you've got thatrunning. Because, again, within
simple events, you're clickingfive minutes, your event's set
(40:38):
up, you've got a registrationform, you can start funneling
people into this. Now where alot of people need to have that
next mindset is after theyregister, now what? So to create
this seamless perfect experiencein something that's repeatable,
again, this is why we integrateso tightly with HubSpot, and
it's the only platform weintegrate with. We want you to
(41:02):
take those registrants or thosepeople who have registered and
now nurture them.
Hey. We're so excited. Oh, bythe way, here's a video from
Max. He's super stoked thatyou're actually registered.
Create that personalization.
There's so many tools to createthese awesome unique one to one
videos. Add that flare of yourbusiness. So go back to say, who
(41:22):
are we and how do we talk tothese people? If you're cold,
stiffy, and boring, your emailsare gonna come across that way.
So think about that from thatstandpoint.
Then when you go into thatregistration alright. Cool. We
got you. Now be upfront. We'regonna remind you 16 times about
the event just so you're aware.
(41:42):
Right? We don't want you to missit because it's gonna solve, and
we're gonna highlight and giveaway. We're gonna we're gonna do
what are you gonna do duringthat event? Be clear and upfront
and repeat that. Given the toolsthat they're used to, calendar
invites, calendar links, so theycan actually add it and they're
not forgetting when the eventis.
(42:03):
Okay? Then after the event,you've gotta have a post
process. And it's not to sayfire over to the sales team. You
only do that for those that arethe hand mergers. You then
nurture them and say, hey.
We really hope you enjoyed it.By the way, here's our calendar
page for the next upcomingevents. Or, hey. You can go get
(42:25):
a free x. You can go do y.
Give them something else to do.Even if it's like, hey. Post
this on social media. Engagethem because those promoters, as
Max said earlier, you don't knowwho where they are. They could
be somebody who's looking atyour product for somebody else
who asked them about thatproduct.
(42:46):
And they just had the timebecause they're intrigued about
it. Right? So think about itfrom not just up into the event.
Think about post event. How canwe put them into a newsletter if
you had that on yourregistration form?
Hey. Yes. Send me thenewsletter. Awesome. Send a
personalized message from thespeaker.
Thank you, George, for hosting.Sorry. This is George. I really
(43:09):
thank you, man, for showing up.I hope you enjoyed it.
If you have any questions, youknow, just hit a reply. Like,
you don't have to be salesy.That's what the sell that's what
if it was a sales presentation,make it sales y. But if it's
not, just be like, hey. I'm hereto ask any nonconfrontational
questions.
You have a one to one messagewith me now. Alright?
George B. Thomas (43:27):
Yeah. It's it's interesting because as I
hear you talk, Justin, I'm like,oh, you mean you care and you
pay attention to detail alongthe way, and you understand and
you create some type of journey,whether it's the communication
journey or it's the next eventjourney. Like, there's just so
(43:50):
much you can pull out of whatyou're talking about. It's funny
too because you literallyreminded me of one of the things
that I have to do when we'redone recording here is I'm
speaking at an event in March,and they asked me to do a minute
to, like, minute and a halfteaser video of the fact that
we're gonna be talking about AIand getting AI to have empathy
(44:12):
and heart and how they can,like, really so, like, even that
way before video that can go outand, like, get them excited
about it. Max, let's let's payattention to detail, people.
Max, let's flip over to you.This is from the Event Happily,
standpoint. I want you to kindawalk us through how Event
(44:32):
Happily can transform the waybusinesses manage events, and
maybe even some, like, specialadvantages, that it that it
offers. You know? Justin wastalking about, like, calendar
links.
I know he has a a module thatgoes into HubSpot emails that,
like, makes that easy. But whatare talk us through Event
(44:53):
Happily and and just theawesomeness that we have for
people.
Max Cohen (44:58):
Yeah. I mean, so the the way that we kinda think
about it is you gotta kindaalluded to this at the beginning
is, like, we really looked atHubSpot as a platform. We said,
like, hey. What are the missingpieces that HubSpot's really not
good at, right, when it comes totrying to manage an event top to
bottom on on the HubSpotplatform. Right?
(45:19):
And what it really kinda camedown to well, I mean, it came
down to a lot of differentthings. But, one, there's a big
data structure problem. Right?Like, you know, for example, so
we have something called aregistrant object. Right?
And a registrant object, isbasically a representation of
someone registering for aspecific event. Right? And
(45:39):
what's really tough, is managingthis concept of that time Max
went to inbound, right, andhaving a representation of that
data, and then managing thatobject. Right? I mean and people
(46:01):
weren't really doing this or orother event, you know,
integrations for for pointsolution platforms weren't doing
this.
Mostly what they were doing wasjust shoving information, right,
into contact properties. Andwhat's really tough about that
is it becomes very, verydifficult to manage lists, to
build reporting, to have, youknow, the the concept of an
(46:25):
event get connected to otherthings in your platform that
it's impacting, such as dealsand and things like that. And it
it was it's really, reallydifficult to manage it because
that crucial piece of the datais not tangible and touchable
and usable and customizable.Right? So, you know, with us,
there's in the two point oversion of Event Happily, we
have three objects.
(46:45):
We've got events. We've gotsessions, which are like parts
of events. Right? And then wehave these registering objects.
Right?
And the registering objectreally kind of serves as that
representation of that time maxwent to inbound. Right? And so
all of these things worktogether to create a data
structure that's very easy touse to get really granular
reporting, create whatever sortof automation you want around
(47:08):
it. Right? Build calculatedproperties in the way that all
these things touch and connectto each other so you can drive
other processes, right, which isuseful if your, you know, events
are way past just like virtualsales webinars.
But if you're doing things likelead capture at trade shows,
right, or you're doing, youknow, doing more like training
courses, right, instead of itbeing a marketing motion. It's
(47:30):
more of, like, the product thatyou actually, you know, sell as
a company. Right? If it'seducation or something like
that. Right?
But really kind of what we didis we said, what can we do to
build in the missing pieces or,like, an event engine, if you
will, for the HubSpotarchitecture. Right? And a lot
of that came down to, one,making sure all the nuanced
(47:54):
parts of your data when it comesto your event management
strategy can be wellrepresented, customized. Right?
You know, and that's like, youknow, having an event record so
you can plan and coordinate theevent and, you know, talk to
each other through notes andtasks and, you know, have an
object to report on, right, andto connect other stuff too.
(48:15):
It came down to building thesessions thing in whether you're
doing a cohort of trainingcourses that last, you know, x
amount of weeks or
George B. Thomas (48:22):
It makes
Max Cohen (48:23):
you're doing a more yep. Or you're doing, like, a
more complex event that hasbreakout sessions or different
tracks people can go down.Right? It's really easy to kind
of build that data structure.And then, of course, the
register an object, which holdsthe historical data of people
registering for your events, butalso acts as, like, a really
good workflow trigger mechanism.
Right? And you can do otherreally cool stuff like use
(48:45):
fields on registered objects tocollect, you know, feedback on
specific events people go to.Right? Because the surveys tool
is not really great at doingthat and connecting all the data
back to each other. Right?
So one of it was like a datastructure issue. The next piece
comes down to how do youactually, like, manage
registrations. Like,registrations are complex,
(49:07):
especially if you have differentdata you're collecting each time
for each event that you'redoing. Right? It might be T
shirt size at this event.
It might be dietary restrictionsat another. It might be some
sort of combination of that.Right? But, also, like, managing
that takes a lot of heavylifting and compute power.
Right?
Like and and complex workflows.You know? I mean, I think you
(49:27):
can really do it that well outof the box if you're not doing
some sort of custom codedsolution. But, like, you know,
there needs to be something tosay, alright. When someone signs
up for an event, which event isit for?
And if someone just signs up fora session at that event, how do
we make sure that we're justtacking it onto that
registration versus creating anew one? How are we managing
duplicates? How are we doing allthis heavy lifting in the
background to make sure that,like, registering data is
(49:48):
tracked properly? Right? So wehad to build a bunch of
automation and a whole new,like, logic engine in the
background to, like, really kindof manage all that stuff.
Right? But then it also comesdown to how are you driving
registration, especially for anevent that you're hosting.
Right? Because there's reallysort of, like, two
Justin Givens (50:04):
Yeah.
Max Cohen (50:05):
Sort of sides of of the way we think about event
management. There's I'm hostingand producing events, and then
there's my team goes to a lot ofevents. We call that, like, the
attending use case. Right? Andthose motions are totally
different.
If you're hosting events, youcare about driving registration
and you care about trackingattendance, and then you
(50:25):
probably care about dealattribution to some extent
because deals are another bigthing in HubSpot. Right? At
least a lot of people care aboutit. We hope marketing
attribution is fake, and we allmade it up, but still people
like to do that. Oh.
But then there's also aspire.Also we attend events. So we
don't care about doingpreregistration because it's not
our event. We're gonna go spend$40 to go put a booth at, like,
inbound or something like thaton the on the cheap end. Right?
(50:48):
And, what we're doing is we'regonna go to the event. We're
gonna showcase our stuff. We'regonna meet a bunch of people,
but we're gonna capture leadsand have conversations with
people. Hopefully, you'recapturing. Hopefully.
Hopefully. Right? But, like andand what's great about it is
that when you get all this stuffinto HubSpot in a in a way that
makes sense because the datastructure makes sense, then it
(51:09):
makes it much easier for you toreport on those efforts, tie
those to influences to, like,revenue that you're hopefully
closing because you met thisperson at the event or they went
to the event or or somethinglike that. Right? So the we had
to build, you know, especiallyon the hosted side, a whole
bunch of things that really,make up for HubSpot's lacking in
(51:31):
this area.
Like, I don't know if anyone Imean, Justin, I'm sure you know
this. HubSpot forms are dog whenit comes to event registration.
I'm sorry. They just are. Andthat's fine because that's not
what they're built for.
Right. And I'll be able to
Justin Givens (51:48):
throw out. The HubSpot engineer told me
HubSpot's not built for realtime registration.
Max Cohen (51:52):
Not built for registrations. It's built for
lead capture. Right? And sothere's a lot of stuff we had to
do to account for that. And,like, the most very simple, you
know, reasoning behind that is,like, look at the way HubSpot
forms work.
It's actually brilliant in theway that they do cookie
tracking. And it's like,alright. If someone fills out a
form and, you know, they're onthe same IP address and they
(52:13):
give a different email, well,they must be giving us a new
email. So, like, we update thecontact record correctly. Right?
But what happens when you runevents? Someone goes there and
signs up 12 of their friends togo to the event, and then you
go, why do I only have onecontact? Well, because because
it's overriding it over and overand over and over. Right? And
never mind doing multi personregistration on HubSpot forms
(52:34):
and doing the whole conditionalstuff and things like that.
So, like, we had to build awhole bunch of, like, CMS
modules to not only, like,manage more complex use cases
for using HubSpot forms forevent registration, but then
it's like, how do you keep trackof, like, the attendance? Right?
And how do you do all that kindof stuff? And how do you manage
people signing up for multiplesessions at an event? Things
(52:56):
like that.
So, like, we built all these,like, missing pieces, right,
that, like, it's some of thecraziest CMS engineering I've
I've ever seen in HubSpot interms of, like, functionality,
right, and what we do with formsand listing modules and, like,
all this other stuff. But But wekind of build it so you could do
as much as you can on HubSpotand really kind of get around
(53:18):
some of these, you know,shortcomings that HubSpot has
when it comes to the eventmanagement motion. Right?
George B. Thomas (53:24):
Yeah.
Max Cohen (53:25):
So, yeah, it's a lot of that stuff.
George B. Thomas (53:27):
Love it. Love it. Love it. So as we close-up
because thank god time flieswhen you're having fun, and this
event
Max Cohen (53:33):
has We have, like, another half hour. This is a
good one.
George B. Thomas (53:35):
This event has been a blast. We could probably
talk about this all day, to behonest with you, because there's
there's so much that, could gointo this. Usually, I like to
ask, like, what's one tip? I'mnot gonna ask for a tip from you
guys today. I'm actually gonnaask for a reason.
Max Cohen (53:52):
So I
George B. Thomas (53:52):
want you to put that in your brain. What's
one if you could only give the
Intro (53:58):
True events.
George B. Thomas (54:00):
One reason to do events. I'll go Justin first
since you're a guest, Maxsecond, and then I'll go third.
What's one reason they shouldstart doing or keep doing events
in your mind?
Justin Givens (54:13):
Yeah. So the biggest one that just screams at
me is you have prospects atevery stage of your business
that have questions, and you'renot giving them a platform to
ask those questions.
George B. Thomas (54:26):
Yeah. Drop the mic, which is funny because you
say that, and I'm like, then whydon't we have longer q and a
sessions at the end? But,anyway, Max, go ahead.
Max Cohen (54:36):
Community building is important. This is probably the
best way to do it.
George B. Thomas (54:41):
Yeah. And for me, I'm gonna kinda lean into
both what you're both saying is,like, listen. Events are the
easiest way to be a happy,helpful human. Like, bottom
line, you can care. You can payattention to details.
These apps help you make theprocess easier. We live in a
world of AI where the creationof the content is actually not
(55:02):
as difficult as it once was. Andso the excuses are gone. Build a
community, create events, andthen have a process to
communicate in an authentichuman way and just do good Do
good with your events.
Max Cohen (55:20):
Can I give a reason of why you should do your events
on HubSpot?
George B. Thomas (55:23):
Oh, yes. Go for it.
Max Cohen (55:25):
Think about all the other spreadsheets you've killed
moving on to HubSpot. And thenwhat I want you to do is I want
you to go into your Google Docsand go find your massive, ugly,
complicated, disgustingspreadsheet that you still
manage all your events on. Ifeel
George B. Thomas (55:44):
like the spreadsheet
Max Cohen (55:45):
that hurt. I can get rid of this one too because you
can. Yeah. Because you can.
George B. Thomas (55:50):
That's a wrap, ladies and gentlemen. Enjoy the
rest of your day, and thanks fortuning in to the Hub Heroes
podcast. Okay, Hub Heroes. We'vereached the end of another
episode. Will Lord Lack continueto loom over the community, or
will we be able to defeat him inthe next episode of the Hub
Heroes podcast?
(56:10):
Make sure you tune in and findout in the next episode. 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
(56:32):
friend. Leave a review if youlike what you're listening to,
and use the hashtag, hashtag hubheroes podcast on any of the
socials, and let us know whatstrategy conversation you'd like
to listen into next.
Until next time, when we meetand combine our forces, remember
to be a happy, helpful, humblehuman, and, of course, always be
(56:53):
looking for a way to besomeone's hero.
Popular Podcasts
Math & Magic: Stories from the Frontiers of Marketing with Bob Pittman
How do the smartest marketers and business entrepreneurs cut through the noise? And how do they manage to do it again and again? It's a combination of math—the strategy and analytics—and magic, the creative spark. Join iHeartMedia Chairman and CEO Bob Pittman as he analyzes the Math and Magic of marketing—sitting down with today's most gifted disruptors and compelling storytellers.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
The Breakfast Club
The World's Most Dangerous Morning Show, The Breakfast Club, With DJ Envy And Charlamagne Tha God!