Inbound 2023 was Interesting
Join us in this exciting episode as we delve into our reflections and insights on the recently concluded Inbound 2023 conference. We are thrilled to be joined by Jessica, who will provide her unique perspective as an annual attendee of the event.
Hubspot Highball
Introducing this week's featured cocktail, a delightful creation by our very own producer Zac. Prepare to indulge in a revitalizing and citrus-infused twist on a timeless favorite.
- 2 oz orange-infused vodka
- 1 oz freshly squeezed orange juice
- 1/2 oz triple sec
- 1/2 oz simple syrup (adjust to taste)
- Soda water
- Ice cubes
- Orange slice, for garnish
Steps:
- Fill a highball glass with ice cubes.
- Pour in 2 ounces of orange-infused vodka.
- Add 1 ounce of freshly squeezed orange juice to amplify.
- Pour in 1/2 ounce of triple sec to provide a hint of sweetness and a subtle citrus undertone.
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Episode Transcript
Catelin: Dogs and kids will ruin us.
Rich: Welcome back. Welcome, yeah, hey, caitlin just had to let the dog out of my office. He was which dog. Ramsey, the little white one. He was perfectly content until we hit record, and then he said I need to leave.
Catelin: Maybe. Maybe he was like I got to make sure that these yahoo's on on the computer aren't going to mess with my man who's sick. Maybe that he? Was like being, being a protector, and then when he realized like, oh, they're cool.
Rich: Yeah, today's episode is brought to you by the letter C for COVID, because that's what I have. My husband brought it back from a trip to Japan, with which is kind of inevitable at this point, like we're sort of like well, it's going to happen.
Catelin: So yeah, whatever I mean. It's just the flu, Like I hope.
Rich: I know that's not everybody. I think we have to like in. I mean, yeah, realistically, we have to tolerate it like that right, like it's just going to happen, or you don't live your life and you get into a bubble and that's no fun, although, honestly, like, put me in a bubble.
Catelin: Yeah, right, You're like don't threaten me with a good time.
I know I will say, I actually wished somebody who's kid was starting back to school a couple of weeks ago. I was like, well, enjoy your last week of not being sick all the time, because that's what happens every fall. Now that I have a tiny human that, like everybody, is sick and as soon as they like, start swimming in a different pool. So like right away at the beginning of summer, it was like, oh, all the big kid germs were back from school and then we all had summer colds for like two weeks and then we were fine all summer. And then now they're all like all the big kids are back at school swimming in that pool, and then they're going to come back to daycare or go home to their little siblings and then all of those germs come to daycare.
So we had our. We got our first alert yesterday. Somebody had hand, foot and mouth, which?
Zac: Oh wow.
Catelin: Isn't that like that's?
Rich: also like a cattle disease right, like hoof and mouth. No, that's, that's hoof and mouth.
Catelin: Yeah it's different. This one is it's. I will spare you the graphic details. But it's a long quarantine Okay great. Because they're yeah, yeah, yeah. So, I'm really hoping that the last time we had it is the same rotavirus that's causing this one, so that we can just move on. The likelihood is low, but I'm looking forward to being absent for the next.
Rich: well, I loved, so on Saturday I had a scratchy throat, so I love playing the. Is it the Canadian wild fires causing my scratchy throat? Is it just seasonal allergies, because now the temperatures are bouncing between degrees and degrees every day? Is that causing it? Then I went to Costco to get COVID tests, which they have a bunch, by the way, which? I was surprised and had asked the pharmacist where they were, and he said if we have any of the rest of there and they were there big, huge teal box, like can't miss them.
But then he's like you can apparently, yes, I can, and he's like you know, he's like, he's like flu season started like four months, like four weeks ago, like influenza B has been going around, you know, at least down here, and so it's like okay, like what do I have? And then you get a negative COVID test and you're like, okay, maybe it's just a mild flu, or maybe it truly just is these wildfires. And then two days later you test and get like these strongest lines for the, or maybe I was right, and it was COVID all along.
Cheers. Well, here's hoping that our guests for this episode and next don't have COVID. After coming back from a very large conference, we're going to be talking inbound , which is the conference that they say is not for all things HubSpot, but is for all things HubSpot.
Catelin: I mean, let's just, and all of the other things.
Rich: Yeah, it's really a lead gen inbound marketing conference. They are true and they. Inbound is a separate entity and it runs itself differently. It takes payments differently than. Hubspot, but they're very, very tied together. I mean, hubspot launched inbound. It just kind of became its own thing. So I've been several times, four or five, I don't remember four maybe.
Zac: That feels and didn't go this year.
Rich: So you went and we're not going to talk about that today. You're playing the role of host.
Catelin: Zach told me that I had to save my opinions.
Zac: And.
Catelin: I just dead eye through the. I was like do you even?
Rich: know me, he's ready to just mute your mic every time you start saying something, because, because you're in the next down you're a guest with Jesse in the next episode. Yeah, because this was. You guys were first timers this year.
Catelin: Yeah, I've been to, so, like I, I mean, we can talk more about this next time, but I've been to other conferences so I kind of knew what to expect but also didn't did your other conferences have Reese Witherspoon and John Mulaney at? Them no, no and.
Rich: I think it was, was it last year, year before, anyway, one year we had Barack Obama that was last year, last year, yes, so that was a good one.
I mean, inbound really does it like they take their budget to the next level. So that's going to be interesting to talk to Jessica, because she's been a few times, once pre COVID and twice post COVID now and so we're going to we're going to talk to her about like what's different this year from last year, and I can share from last year some of the complaints that I have and that I learned that other partners you talking to other partners they were like so yeah, we'll get into this and it should be good. So I'm curious.
Catelin: Caitlin go ahead.
Rich: Yes, I was gonna jump to our cocktail, but I was curiosity was, I'm guessing, this cup, this cocktail was not served at inbound.
Catelin: No, but they did have a surprising number of bar choices. I get travel tummy. So I like I didn't, I didn't get to go as hard as I would have at home Just because I was sharing, you know, sharing a hotel room. So just that's enough about that conscious of your gastric system. Just yeah, got it.
Rich: No, that's polite though that's very polite of you. I mean, if you want to go there, I've started a new probiotic, so that's always interesting as well.
Catelin: It's actually. I'll take that with me.
Rich: It's a pre pro, so it's, it's a two layer capsule. We don't, we don't know Well, parts for your stomach and parts for the rest of you. All right. So this, this cocktails, the hot pot and did Zach invent this? Or is this truly something that matters?
Zac: This is probably the first cocktail that I completely created on my own, so feel free to tear it apart if you want.
Catelin: Did you test it? Did you make it for yourself?
Zac: I basically just tried my best. Let's just put it that way.
Rich: All right, that's interesting, so we're gonna have to try this and see how it goes. I don't. I don't have any orange infused vodka, though, so we're gonna have to infuse some vodka, caitlin, and then we'll figure out, although I know what you're gonna say. You're gonna say this would be so much better with gin.
Catelin: Honestly, it might also be okay with like with tequila, yeah but then it's basically just like an orange margarita. All right, so if you want to try this at home, I might force my in-home bartender to make this for me. Two ounces of orange-infused vodka, one ounce of freshly squeezed orange juice, half ounce of triple sec, half ounce of simple syrup. It says adjust to taste, which I think is fair. Some people don't like sweet Pour the vodka and orange juice and the triple sec. I'm just reading the instructions.
Rich: We do such good crap ahead of time Everything except the soda yeah, yeah no fizziness in the shaker.
Catelin: And then shake. Yeah, look at that. And then garnish with an orange slice.
Rich: And you have to put this one in a highball glass because it is called the HubSpot Highball. Hubspot Highball yeah, yeah, ice cubes over.
Catelin: I think, Deck, I think you did okay.
Zac: I think it's good.
Catelin: I would be curious to try this.
Zac: My inspiration was just orange flavored, because HubSpot is orange.
Catelin: HubSpot's branding colors. That's perfect. No, that's good.
Rich: I mean this could be ours too, like our brand color is like our primary color is orange. My only concern is is it going to be too orange with the orange and fused vodka and the orange juice?
Catelin: Yeah, I might just do the best I'm open to experimentation. All right Perfect.
Rich: It's like I'll try it. Yeah, zach, open to experimentation Sounds fantastic. You said it, I didn't say it. I think this sounds really good. It sounds refreshing and light. We should probably see if HubSpot wants to buy the recipe from us.
Catelin: It also assumes that no one has made this before.
Rich: I'm pretty sure somebody has made that.
Catelin: I find that interesting in cocktails that everything old is new again, or whatever that phrase is. It's like there are stories to tell. There's only so many spirits and so many citrus and sodas that you can combine Everybody's done it somewhere.
Rich: So, Caitlin, one correction I just found page two of our prep notes, and you're actually supposed to stir, not shake.
Catelin: Yeah, I found that interesting as well.
Rich: It's a gentle stir. Is there a reason for the stir? Is that just you being pretentious, Zach?
Zac: A little pretentious maybe, I don't know.
Rich: Okay, got it. Feel free to shake or stir it. I don't think it's going to ruin it if you shake it.
Catelin: I would shake it over ice, because that's going to Cool it all down?
Rich: Yeah, and then I would put it in a high ball with one of our craft cocktail balls that our refrigerator makes because we fancy. This sounds good. One thing I was noting is in listening to a previous episode. One, I'm glad we got new equipment, so there's that this equipment is so much better. But two, it was actually an episode where you were drinking the cocktail, Caitlin. You were at home in your bar yeah. I think we were all in your bar, maybe.
Catelin: Probably.
Rich: But you were the only one drinking the cocktail because I think the rest of us had to drive somewhere.
Catelin: Jessica was drinking.
Rich: Well, she wasn't on the episode, though. She was just hanging.
Catelin: Oh, but she was just sitting in the background like hmm.
Rich: Of the people recording you were having the cocktail and I'm like we need to get back to that. But I mean, we probably don't need to record these at nine o'clock in the morning then Although this, I think that this could be a breakfast drink. Could be a breakfast drink %, Zach. I feel like you've had a new.
Zac: A new juice New brunch drink.
Catelin: Yeah, alright, I'm, I was to say we've been at this for a minute. Should we get into it with Jessica?
Rich: Yeah, let's, I'm ready.
Catelin: Let's jump in, I'm ready to keep my opinions to myself.
Rich: No, you're not, and we're back.
Zac: Jessica, you ready? Let's do it for the hot seat gonna be right.
Rich: Yes, I'm sure she was so excited to hear like your episode's gonna be just you and then Caitlin and Jess, I mean it's fine, because I know that Caitlin won't actually keep her opinions to herself, which I do appreciate.
Jessica: Um, I was less excited when Zach originally scheduled this for like Monday morning at am when we were first getting back, and I was like this boy is crazy.
Rich: Oh, no, no, no, we can't do that so you are you're ready? You had a little bit of an adventure coming back. We can start with and I use the word adventure very loosely but yeah, your flight weather inhibited our departure from Boston correct we made the best of a terrible in Not technically Boston, but revere Massachusetts.
Jessica: It was the first time that I've had Travel trouble coming back from inbound in the three years that I've gone, which I'm gonna take it as a win and also I'm really glad that I was with other people, because I've never had a flight Be delayed, cancelled, ish, so it was good to be with other people so I didn't have a complete panic attack. But that's just my travel stuff.
Rich: Well, I mean, I do recall when they de-planed you, I had a very explicit term to let you know that, like you're probably staying, we knew that like we were sitting on the plane and you're like it'll be fine.
Jessica: Yeah, and both of our husbands were like it's gonna be fine, like Chris, chris. My husband was like, oh, just go have a drink, it'll be like it'll all work out. I was like I don't think you understand.
Rich: Oh no, once they take you off the plane, because now you're risking crew timeouts and a whole bunch of things and that that weather was like coming at you, it wasn't moving away.
Catelin: Well, and it was like the entire. It was like from I'm terrible at geography, but like from the bottom of the Great Lakes to like the top of Florida was just like a line of thunder storms.
Zac: Mm-hmm.
Catelin: And so it was like there's no, like we can't there.
Jessica: Yeah, when I looked at and one of the other gate agents not at ours but at one of the other planes that had also de-planed got on and she was like listen, there are no paths out to the if you're going west, if you're going south, if you're going southwest. Like there was nothing.
Catelin: The Well, basically it was just like yeah, if you're going to Canada, you might get to leave. Yeah, the gate agents in Boston.
Jessica: Give zero fucks. They are amazing like. They are they were fantastic. It was yeah.
Rich: Yeah, no, I, I love that about the East Coast, especially Boston, in New York, like there's a lot of things that I don't like, but you know where people stand. Like they just tell it like it is.
Catelin: I think the other thing that really benefited us on the in the like planning, de-planing scenario is that everyone was flying to the Midwest, so we were all like, yep, well, we get it. Like the weather is the weather, and everyone was just like, oh okay.
Jessica: We're gonna miss our connection. It's great because anywhere you're flying, you're not flying directly.
Catelin: Mm-hmm, but it everyone was just like well, I Guess Everybody got off. There was. There was one guy who was convinced that it was all Tom Brady's fault.
Rich: It's like like Tom Brady, controls the weather. Now he's got a weather machine.
Catelin: Well. So, like we did a little bit of research after the fact, and like Delta and Tom Brady have some sort of partnership of Some kind, but I am choosing. So this man on the plane he's like well, if they wouldn't have spent all that money Hiring Tom Brady, they would have been able to hire more or air traffic controllers and I Legitimately thought he meant like the New England Patriots, as if he thought that all of the money from the Eastern seaboard came out of the same bucket, and I was like, sir, that is not how any of this works. No, okay, but Even even if that was the case, it like air traffic control is what did you call it? Airline agnostic?
Rich: Jessica said yeah, like they don't. Yeah, the government hires those people, but they also, but it was so funny. You know whether you've got two air traffic controllers or , they can't split a storm system and send planes Right. Another thing he said was like they fly over hurricanes.
Jessica: Why can't we just go around this storm? And I was like sir, you're missing your connection already. Anyway, just calm down.
Rich: Well, and to go around the storm, you'd have to what go south, I would have to go like.
Jessica: Rico and come back pretty much, I mean like parts of it was why I like no.
Rich: Right. Like that doesn't, the world doesn't work anyway. All right, so that was a heck of a tangent about travel, but it was about him down. So, jessica, I'm gonna just get right into the thing that's always on my mind and you know it. So last year at inbound we felt like it was super high, like toward the enterprise, like large organizations Really coming at like a sales force or those those big enterprise solutions, and they had so much that they launched there and it kind of felt like the SMB's were left out and the partners there wasn't a ton for partners. So that's part one. Part two is they also restricted tickets? I want to say it was like three or five thousand people. So first of all, on the size, I hear we figured this it was a massive.
Jessica: So when we were talking about this before kind of getting ready, I was somewhere, some reason. I had like six in my head, so we were at least double. When they got on for the spotlight on Wednesday morning they said there were , people and I was like this feels right. Yeah, this feels like , people. And it was definitely a lot bigger there.
Jessica:
But I also and I haven't checked the number, so I could be completely wrong but it felt like there were a lot more sessions too. So like the Didn't change size, like the number of people in the sessions didn't change, but I think they had a lot more, which was really great because I think it helped with that. Like there was stuff for enterprises. There were those ones where they were still talking about really like big business things, but there were also a lot on like scaling your business and Remote work and like really tactical things.
That was. That was really great, so I think it was a better mix this year for sure. Yes, so it was balanced.
Rich: It really wasn't swayed. They didn't sway all the way back to like you know. Here's how you use HubSpot for your no Like there was.
Jessica: There was a bunch and I think that it helped, like businesses like ours, but also Just like small businesses who want to do a lot of it themselves, because there were a lot like what every HubSpot admin needs to know and Like those really basic setup things that I think are really beneficial, and I and I think that that really leaned kind of the opposite of where they were last year.
Rich: Good, good, good yeah. I mean, and I think one of the things about HubSpot is it was designed to be marketing and sales software for non-marketing and non-salespeople Like you could be a business owner and you could do this. So that's cool to hear that. And, holy cow, they're launching a ton of stuff too.
Jessica: So much, which is always one of my favorite sessions is the like the HubSpot spotlight at the very beginning, where they talk about all the stuff they're rolling out because I like to have all of the information and be in the know. So it's always fun to be like, ooh, look at all this stuff we just learned about that nobody else knows about except for you know, the other , people in the room. But we're not going to talk about that ,.
Rich: Well, and you were. I know you were sending me links and being like, hey, look at this, and I'm like looking at some of it and some of it I was like I don't understand, like I'm hope you got something different where you're at, because this video is not telling me what this feature actually is. Also, I don't like watching videos to learn about features. I like reading, listening screenshots. So Gen X for the win right here. Cool, cool.
Catelin: I found that I feel like I know Brian and Darmash now because I've listened to both of them talk twice. So yeah, we're friends. Brian and Darmash are the founders of HubSpot.
Rich: And with you know what was really interesting is, was it last year we went through Brian's will ski accident? It was one of the virtual only years like during COVID so yeah, so Brian had a. He was CEO and he had a huge skiing accident and was like out of commission for like a year and that was part of the transition to the new CEO, you know it was sort of a maybe executive chairman or something.
Catelin: Yeah.
Rich: Yeah, how do I get that job? Can I just be executive, show up for conferences and vamp a little bit and then be out?
Jessica: Going does the process.
Catelin: No, he struck me as somebody who was like very in tune with himself, like very self aware, oh yeah.
And not afraid to like acknowledge past shortcomings. He mentioned that like they would do performance reviews for everyone and they would be public. So he's like we basically sent out like net promoter scores for our leadership. And then we would say, like he, we're on a not like the I don't know personal improvement plan. It wasn't like an actual PIP, but it was like here's, here's what I'm going to work on and I can't remember who the interview was. Oh, it was raw guy. Ross said okay, what were, what were the things that came out of that? And he's like why used to lose my temper a lot and I didn't realize how much that affected everyone else around me and I was like, yeah, it was it was admirable, I mean, and to like acknowledge that in a room of , strangers.
Jessica: Yeah, yeah, they're really honest and I love that. I think the one that part Caitlin, and then the part where Darmash had said that one of the things that had shown up on his was that they wish that he would come into the office more, they wanted to have more FaceTime with them, and his response was works as designed, because he's like I know because he is a hardcore introvert. So he's like no, I won't be doing that, but thank you.
Catelin: It was like he's like. It was like they were giving me a bug report and he's like no, that's a feature, not a bug. I appreciate the feedback and it makes me feel good, but no, thank you so much, I will not be doing that Going back to what you had said rich about how, like HubSpot was designed for, like SMBs and not they had talked about in this, like how they built HubSpot.
Jessica: Session that was just with Brian and Darmash. It was, you know, everybody, all of our investors, everyone was telling us you know, build this for enterprises, go after these big enterprises. And they were like no, I was like they get so much already. Like we want to help out these small to midsize businesses.
Catelin: They were they were talking about how the internet really had a benefit for SMBs.
And they were like we want to help SMBs capitalize on that benefit. I think the other thing that was really interesting from that segment was talking about how they made some like non-negotiable decisions early on when they were founding and and like in the kind of startup phase where it was like we have, we have said it's SMBs, whether our investors like that or not, like that's not negotiable for us. And then it was like they each had like kind of a veto power and it was like you know, if they were at at odds over a decision, one got to decide over the. You know like this is not negotiable.
Jessica: Like we're going to lay on the tracks, this is our thing, and then they would go yes, but if they both did it. Then Brian got the final say and that that had only happened like one time in their entire partnership that they had to do that.
Rich: And that's important in an equal partnership, especially if you're , you've got to have some sort of a leak, literally legal rule in your bylaws or somewhere on who can make the decision? If you're, if you're even because you can't just stall right, you can't just stop and not do anything.
Catelin: Yeah.
Rich: That's really, really fascinating.
Catelin: It was. It was really interesting insight into like building something successful. To that they were transparent about like, yeah, we didn't really know what we were doing, necessarily, but we had feelings about what we wanted our business to look like and what we wanted this partnership to be like.
Rich: Yeah.
Catelin: And I, I really respected that.
Rich: They knew their why. They knew why they were doing this and they were very passionate about it. I think one of the other things that obviously it turned out brilliantly. They're a multi billion dollar company, Right, but they it's kind of like when we buy keywords, right. I'm just going to go back to something really tactical from my world. When you're looking at keywords, like you can buy that keyword that everybody else is buying and it's really expensive and it's hard to do and you're fighting tooth and nail for it.
Or you can find that space where there's a gap, where there's you know I mean, in this instance it wasn't even a there's a smaller audience for it. There's a huge audience for small and medium businesses, even especially post COVID, like the number of businesses that started just exponentially like blew up. So it was this real good kind of white space for them, or blue ocean or whatever you want to call it, where they could Caitlin laughs because she knows I hate those terms where they could really make a difference and actually build something and compete. And now they do. Like somebody just the other day on a call said I know Hubsap competes with Salesforce. I'm like, well, competes that also partners with? Like they haven't really saw it. Integration, because you know, sometimes you want the best of both worlds and sometimes you want to like, knock down, drag out.
Catelin: Yeah, yeah.
Rich: Very cool. So what was that your favorite session, then? Or did you have another one that you thought was like?
Jessica: I mean, yeah, Caitlin really wants to answer. So bad, I was like you're not asking me.
Catelin: Um no, that wasn't necessarily my favorite.
Jessica: I always enjoy hearing them talk, because I feel like seeing what HubSpot is now and hearing where they started and why they started and how they actually developed it, like they went through this whole piece on, there was a really long period of time where they didn't think about company culture at all but then they realized, like if we don't define this, then we'll fail, no matter how good the product is. So that was really interesting. But I had heard some of those, the snippets of that story before, because they they've shared it. Um, there were some that were really interesting to me on like burnout, addressing burnout and how to prevent that with your employees.
And like remote first culture, which we obviously don't have a staff that is fully remote. We're kind of this weird like hybrid of we've got people in the office, we've got people who work completely remote, we've got the two offices that are separated, so getting some really interesting tactical feedback on some of that stuff, like we have a really great culture already, but how can we improve that and how can we stay ahead of what other companies are doing? So I really enjoyed those Um good, you can, you can.
Rich: Yeah, make up a list before our next stop of my mind, my goal is like in the next three
Jessica: weeks or the next two weeks or whenever we have our next leadership meeting, just to like put some stuff down and get a plan. And there was also um one on scaling your business, like with personal productivity, um tips and also things that your business should do, and then, um, I really enjoyed this like building an applicant tracking system with HubSpot session that Caitlin and Jesse were also in, so we all said it on that um because.
I had had a client like four or five months ago. One of their sales team members was like, well, you can't do that with HubSpot, it's impossible. And in my mind I'm like, no, it's not, it's completely possible. Well, I know we do it, but we are like I was like you can do it at fail. Yes.
Catelin: We're small.
Jessica: You can do it for a large recruiting team, but I didn't have the like all of the tactics of how to do it. And then I saw this session pop up and I was like this is perfect. And they actually the woman who did it, mandy Thompson, amazing.
Rich: Um, yeah, shout out to Mandy, who's probably not listening. You're connected on
Catelin: LinkedIn. Now she's a. She gave. She gave feedback from the group.
Jessica: It was a Friday session so it was a little bit smaller, because some people have to leave because of flights and stuff. Um, but, it was in one of the bigger rooms and she asked her and she was like is this the thing that you want to do? How many recruiters, how many of you do video interviews? And really tailored her presentation to what we needed and then actually gave us like things. She showed their live portal, which I think is really brave because you never know what you're going to click on.
She made sure that things like it was filtering out, like actual applicants and things, but she showed us how they set up their pipeline, how they set up their workflows and it was like all right now I have this really tactical thing that I can take and make it work for us better or for our clients and things. So like having that session was really great because I felt like I have something that I can actually take and help one of our clients, which is always my main goal.
Catelin: That one also solidified for me the need, like I knew this through the onboarding processes that we've been doing with, like our our partner onboardings. But I have told people in the past, like, put it on paper before you start trying to build it in HubSpot. And she gave Mandy gave a couple of really great tools for that to say, like here is how you should draw it out, here's what this should look like, and it helped just kind of fortify what I already knew and also give me something tangible to take back to people to say like, if you're struggling with this, here's how I would suggest lining it out, because their workflows were so robust and they were using smart content for positions and like the front end work that they put into this was really, really spectacular. But then just reinforce the idea that you can build something that will automate and make the rest of your time easier.
Rich: Well, yeah when you think about the hiring process, your gathering information, your scheduling meetings, your scheduling a video interview, all that could be done with like. Basically, if it comes in, you have to review the candidate, obviously, but if you give them a score they had built in.
Catelin: They had built in some like automatic disqualification where it was like if you don't pat, you know? Like because they are doing like behavioral testing and cognitive testing.
So it was like if this score doesn't equal this, then they get the auto decline. And it's like a you know, like a personalized email, but still like yeah, automatically filtering people out who don't meet the qualifications. And she's like she even said she's like I don't know if you're like me and you post a position and you just get like people that are auto applying and don't meet the qualifications. And she's like she did canv she's like I know that there is something to be said for not having the skills and that's okay. Like some of those people will filter out, but she's like there is a huge set of people on LinkedIn that are just like auto apply, auto apply, auto apply.
Jessica: And I think that some of our clients would fit into this too, like the amount of positions they post and the amount of applicants they get like while we can kind of go with that, are we filling like we're finding the right soft skills?
sometimes that don't necessarily show up on a resume, but there are some where, like you have to know how to do X, y and Z or you have to have this certification for this position, and it really automated that. So it just made it, it reinforced my like I knew this was possible and now I have this thing that I can take back and I told you so.
Catelin: I got the ammo.
Rich: Yeah, and then you can give them a quote for what it would cost for us to build that for them. Really cool Like. So some really interesting like deep niche kind of things that you can do with the tools. That's fantastic.
Catelin: I think the other thing that was valuable out of that was just extrapolating that process into other areas where it's like, okay, so I see what's possible here and I can take that and apply it to X and Y and Z and really start to like.
Jessica: This is the session that we walked out automation and Caitlin's. Like I just want to be a hub spot specialist, Like I can do all of these things, and I was like, well, you kind of are.
Rich: Yeah, I mean, that is. I mean we could change your title if you want to, that's fine Queen Hub spot queen. We'll have to call Brian and Dermash and ask if that's okay.
Catelin: So yeah, I think that could be called me the automation queen.
Rich: Maybe I mean, I'm going to need to see some, some deep workflows coming out of you first.
Catelin: Well, now, that I know how to use Lucid chart. Just buckle up.
Rich: Yeah, I've been using that forever. Yeah, there's a couple of tools that I've suggested that I mean may need to suggest again, because it sounds like people would be on board with them.
Zac: It's down to that.
Rich: like major Okay, there's another one that's not lucid, that specifically designed for building workflows, like for automation. I can't remember the name of it, I'll have to find it, but it's the whole major twice cut, once right. And it's why we have and I love because I know Jessica just sent it to a client the giant spreadsheet that I created for permissions, because permissions can be complicated and you can just go in and start setting them but then you're going to lose it, you're going to lose track. But if you've got tabs for roles and what permissions people have and what permissions people are possible, you can actually build out your permission sets in HubSpot and assign people to them.
But the one thing that we get is like this is overwhelming. It's like yeah, it is overwhelming, which is why we charge to help you do this, but doing it this way is going to be so much easier in the long run than just going in and trying to willy-nilly pull stuff together
Catelin: Well and that's one of the other sessions I went to was like why implementations fail, or like where they go wrong and like that's it. It's like you get overwhelmed and you think that you have to eat the elephant all at once, instead of like breaking it up into pieces and saying like, okay, by this date we need to do X, y and Z, and by the next date we need to do A, b and C.
Jessica: That's one end where you have the people that just like dive in and then they mess it all up, make a big old mess, and it's like, no, no, no, no, no. If you would have taken two steps back, thought about the implication of this, then it would have been so much easier moving forward. So now we got to clean it up and then do the things that you really wanted to do.
Catelin: And we have to yeah, yeah. Yeah that can be crazy.
Rich: So a couple more questions because I know we're like getting along on time. Biggest surprise this year.
Jessica: That's a tough one. I think that it was, while the prospect of having that many more people there again can be kind of daunting and you're like, oh my God, the lines and the time, but I think that it's really kind of infectious and I feel like I always feel this way. Coming out of of inbound is like you're in this room with all of these different people, like we all kind of do the same thing, but it's so vast the amount of different companies, like in one of the. It was at the after hours event and John Mulaney was talking to these people and they they make diamond like blades and things for like diamond tools.
Diamond tools, so like diamonds, and it was like, yes, that's a real thing, but it's like they're there and agencies are there, and it's like it's all of these are own people, but it's really just kind of infectious and you come back wanting to do all of these things. So it wasn't really surprising, but it's always this nice, like little bit, for when you first come back and it's like, oh yes, let's go. And you have all these big ideas, the return to that the return to that energy that was kind of.
Rich: I mean, I do think some of that energy was lacking last year because it did feel small and they brought they really brought that back. Very cool, and then okay, and last question, scala one to . How are you going to rate the experience you had at Hubspot at inbound this year?
Jessica: Sorry, oh, I hate these questions. I mean I know I put some in here. It's like I'm not going to give it a , because I feel like a is like perfect and nothing is ever perfect. So let's call it like a nine or a ., because I feel like I came.
I feel like I came away with a lot of really useful things that I can actually do this year, whereas, like we were talking about the very beginning, last year it was really focused on like these really big businesses, well, and while we work with some of those, we also work with really small teams and really small budgets and like how can we help those clients too and how can we grow our business. So I think I got a little bit of all of that this year, which is great, so I'm going to rate it really high. But, like I said, not perfect. I'll give them. You know, maybe next year they'll get a .
Rich: We'll see A little room to grow, but I mean nine, nine and a half.
Jessica: Like I said, I feel like I got a lot out of it. I hope that Caitlin and Jesse do feel that way too, and I know that we'll find out about that on the next episode.
Catelin: I was like I was ready to buy my ticket for next year.
Rich: Oh, they're cheaper. They're cheaper if we do that.
Catelin: So I was like we can get two for the price of one right now.
Jessica: Rich has said it in the past, and I know that the goal would be able to be like take everybody in it, something that we have to work up towards, but there is a little bit of something for everyone which I think is great, especially with where it feels like they're moving back to. I think everybody can get something from it.
Rich: Yeah, we'll probably buy a couple of tickets, at least because we should get our free one. We'll still be platinum next year, hopefully, and we'll probably buy a couple because we can always change who they go to. I don't have to put a name on it right now, which is really nice that they do that, like right up till the day you can do that. But yeah, I do like the cheaper tickets.
Jessica: If we're going to go anyway, we may as well save the money.
Rich: Well, and then we also get the first notice when the hotel blocks open up and all that stuff. So we'll figure it out. Maybe I'll go back next year.
Catelin: Although I will say that the Hanton seaport was that, what it was called Spectacular A plus experience all around and super close.
Jessica: The only thing that made it walkable was that it was so blessed.
Zac: No, well that was so blessed hot.
Catelin: It was super hot.
Jessica: Well, last year it was raining a little bit, but it was so hot I was like why is it cooler in Iowa right now than it is in Massachusetts? This is ridiculous.
Zac: Yeah, that ocean breeze not helping you All right.
Rich: well, thank you for coming out of your shell for this episode. We appreciate it. And, caitlin, you did a good job, kind of holding back. You'll have your chance.
Catelin: I did the best that I could. It's a big ask.
Rich: I get that. It's a big ask. It really is All right, so join us for the next one. I just All right when Caitlin and Jesse share their.
Catelin: When I tell you all We'll see if we get to hear Jesse's opinion.
Rich: I can't wait. We will make sure that we get to hear Jesse's opinion. We need to hear from both of the noobs, Also hearing from a creative on what they got out of. It is going to be very interesting. I mean, I suppose we could split it into three if we wanted to. But that's X-CALL, All right.
Catelin: Does that mean I get an entire hour just to myself to tell you how I feel about everything?
Rich: These are generally like to minutes, so not an hour.
Catelin: Don't threaten me with a good time.
Rich: See you next time, and that's a wrap for another episode of Cocktails. Tangents and Answers.
Catelin: We hope you had as much fun as we did.
Rich: So if you'd like to connect and have more fun, you can find me on social media at Rich Mackey it's just my name, super simple and easy. And you can find our agency at antidote, underscore seven, one that's A-N-T-I-D-O-T-E, underscore the number seven, the number one, across all social platforms as well.
Catelin: As for me, catch me at home sipping a craft cocktail expertly prepared by my in-home bartender, who happens to be my husband.
Rich: Stay tuned because we'll be back with another episode every other week featuring a brand new cocktail recipe, more tangents and, of course, we'll do our best to answer all your burning marketing questions.
Catelin: And if you have a question you'd like to send our way head to ctapodcastlive to shoot us an email.
Rich: Or, even better, leave us a voice message. Remember those, caitlin, on our hotline at -. Your question might make it into a future episode.
Catelin: For now. Make sure to like subscribe and join us again next time for more fun and insightful discussions. Thanks for tuning in, cheers.