UNBOUND Recap: HubSpot's Next Act Looks a Lot Like Work Tech

Alec Cherrin:

I feel like credits in a pricing model of any sort are usually just meant to obfuscate how much money you're spending on their platform. It doesn't feel like a customer centric innovation to have credits. I feel like a lot of companies try to justify it and say, oh, it's so that you can understand how much usage you're actually engaging with.

It's not useful. I want to know how much money I'm spending, and I feel like one of the biggest things that I took from UNBOUND is that they really want you using agents for everything.

Steve Smith:

Hello everybody. Welcome to a special live edition of Work Tech Weekly. I'm Steve Smith, managing director of growth at Rep Cap, and today we are talking about HubSpot UNBOUND and we have someone who actually sat through the sessions there. It was in attendance in Boston. My friend, colleague, and resident HubSpot guru, Alec Cherrin. Alec, welcome to the podcast.

Alec Cherrin:

Thanks Steve. Appreciate you having me on and trusting me with your audience not to say anything that's going to get us canceled. I appreciate it.

Steve Smith:

Well, I mean, it's just like the fun stuff about, you know, a live broadcast is anything could happen. So, I've spent enough time with you to know that we're definitely walking on a tightrope 'cause heaven only knows what you're gonna say, and that's what makes this fun and exciting.

Alec Cherrin:

Fantastic.

Steve Smith:

Real quick, a few ground rules for the thousands of people who are watching us right now live.

This is an AMA, ask me anything. So feel free to drop questions in the chat anytime. We have our producer and Rep Cap colleague Michael Thibodeaux lurking in the background and he will make sure that he's feeding us only the best questions. So definitely sharpen your pencils, put on your thinking caps and make sure that you are delivering the goods on the question front.

And our goal is that by the end of our broadcast, podcast, whatever cast this is today, that you will have a few things that you can use immediately. So, number one, what's really going on at HubSpot? Where is it headed? You know, what's worth your time? And I mean, the question for me that I'm most interested in is, is HubSpot trying to become a work tech company?

So, I guess with all that said, let's dive into it, Alec. Give us the TL;DR. If you had to explain UNBOUND to someone who hasn't been there before, wants to go, is curious, what would you say?

Alec Cherrin:

Yeah, I would say HubSpot UNBOUND is a phenomenal learning opportunity if you have either never used HubSpot before and really want to get into the very basics and understand how the platform itself works, but also how their business model operates and kind of what they're all about. It also gave a ton of opportunities for one-on-one sessions, networking, meeting people who are using the CRM, using the tools and kind of innovating in the space.

But there was also plenty of opportunities for pitching, and services and AI buzzwords that didn't necessarily get followed up by customer value. So that's a nutshell, I would say.

Steve Smith:

And it's just like, you know, we went to HR Tech last year. How is a...

Alec Cherrin:

Okay.

Steve Smith:

A conference for a CRM different than say, an HR industry conference? Or is it all the same, just a different flavor?

Alec Cherrin:

It was so similar. I mean, if you just took one of the bigger booths at HR Tech, blew it up and gave them the entire hall, almost the exact same number of buzzwords, the same type of value. Same discussions were happening all about AI. Is it gonna take our jobs? How can we use it to optimize our business? Not very different at all.

And I think that was a little bit of what I was disappointed in, was I was expecting a bit more practical learning opportunity and a bit more specific use cases, not only for their software, but HubSpot's been a huge leader in innovating and marketing in general, digital marketing specifically. And I just feel like I was hoping to get more out of it than I did.

Steve Smith:

Hmm. You're not exactly selling this thing here.

Alec Cherrin:

There are good parts, I promise, and we'll talk all about...

Steve Smith:

Okay.

Alec Cherrin:

...too.

Steve Smith:

Well, let's punch some hot buttons. How about, so the people who gave us the funnel have now given us the loop. To me it seemed a little bit BS-y and basically it came off as to me, kind of a desperate rebrand and wanting to slap agentic on something and try to strive for relevance in the AI era.

That too harsh?

Alec Cherrin:

No, I think you just about nailed it. I mean, if you take a look at the loop there, there's no additional value that's being provided by these four steps here that wasn't already part of the flywheel, which I think was a much more useful model. That was actually innovation in the marketing space, in my opinion.

And 'cause you went from funnels where you were basically treating customers as one-off, you know, sales, you sell to them, and then basically the end is that conversion. So you're good. The flywheel took that and made it into a circle, which again, I'm not one for models, but this one's actually okay.

Because you're talking about taking a customer who already exists and now you're either giving them additional value so they pay you more, or you're selling new things to them that actually are gonna help them. And I feel like this loop is specifically designed not to be customer centric or help you help your customers, but rather to help you use more AI credits in HubSpot.

There's not really a whole lot more to this that you could get if you weren't using the HubSpot platform, whereas with the flywheel, it applies no matter what. So I don't feel like this is a one-to-one, and trying to push this as a new type of flywheel, it feels a little disingenuous and not quite right.

Steve Smith:

Well, you know, and I guess, you know, as long as we are expressing the cynical take here, it's just like, you know what, I have been around long enough to remember the, you know, inception of the funnel and the talking about the flywheel really didn't change anything for me. And for better or worse, I mean, the flywheel was a common language that you could use in go-to-market that was actionable.

Now, whether it was the right thing, I don't know. I mean, it certainly captures the dynamic that's going on, but at the end of the day, it just seems like kind of a bullshit graphic that's not really doing anything.

Alec Cherrin:

A hundred percent. I a hundred percent agree with you on the graphic side of it. And again, I hate models. I think these frameworks and these models, it reminds me of like adult Sesame Street. It kind of feels like someone's talking down to me, like there's pandering involved. I'm not a fan of the models in general.

But what I did like about the flywheel is that that last step, delight, which incidentally gets talked a lot about because it's in their model and that's the part I like about it, is fully customer centric. It's so centered around delivering more value so that you can make more money. Because at the end of the day, I mean, if you're in marketing, the whole goal is to improve revenue, right?

Like everyone who says, oh, we're trying to make the world a better place. Well, yeah, but you're also trying to live and feed your family and make the world a better place for you too. And I feel like the flywheel, the delight side of the flywheel, I guess, was very much in line with how I like to conduct my business, how I conduct myself, which is if I'm expecting more value, I have to give more value first.

And that to me has been really nice as a guiding model, and I don't feel like there's anything redeeming about the loop, I guess is the best way to put it.

Steve Smith:

Yeah, and I mean, it's just like, at least for all of the, I think, failures of the funnel, you know, TOFU, MOFU, BOFU, which were stupid terms to begin with, you know, at least they, I don't know, they seemed a little more actionable. This stuff, I mean, it's describing, great, you know what? You connect with a prospect and you deliver value and you're aiming to convert them into a customer.

I don't think that what the world needed was another model and something to slap on a slide. But...

Alec Cherrin:

No, I mean if you've been in marketing for any time at all, I mean, experimentation is the core of everything you do in marketing, and I feel like they were trying to kind of make something new out of that insight. And it doesn't really make any sense because they're not adding anything.

They're just recasting it so that you reach for their AI agents before anything else to run your experiments on.

Steve Smith:

So, I mean, at this point I feel like we're just piling on, you know, the loop, you know, thumbs down is what it sounds like. Let's get into some of the workspace management stuff and the AI agents that they were talking about, because when we were kind of kicking it around after you got back from Boston, you know, the stuff that you're talking about sounds like it is firmly in HR tech, work tech territory.

So, you know, is your read that, you know, HubSpot is actually kinda like veering into work tech territory?

Alec Cherrin:

Yeah, I would say like AI harness territory actually. They absolutely are pushing the agentic AI. They want AI to do everything for you. And as cynical as I sound right now, there are a lot of really good use cases. They have some really cool features that are coming along with this. It's not all bullshit.

There's a lot of bullshit, but it's not all bullshit. And I think some of the tools are priced very fairly and they do make sense for someone who is trying to get more out of their HubSpot instance, but they're really just trying to take the entire platform agentic, and it doesn't really make sense to do it in every single facet.

Steve Smith:

Well, oh, and what kind of made sense to you? Is it just like, are they getting into like more project management and getting, you know, veering more into like Asana, monday.com territory? What, you know, give us some specifics.

Alec Cherrin:

Yeah, so there's a bit of that. They've definitely added some project management tools, which I didn't really get into very heavily. But I would say they are trying to bolster that a little bit. The biggest thing that I think makes me feel this way is I guess the whole context and agentic AI, Agent Hub.

So basically they want to be the tool that essentially is where you do your work all the time, and instead of doing it in monday.com or having your agents do it through Claude connectors or something like that, they want you to be building agents in their platform, launching the agents from their platform, and then correcting their work from there as well.

So they want to control the entire workflow from getting a contact and then bringing 'em through the stages of the sales funnel or the flywheel or their loop, whatever it is at this point.

Steve Smith:

Well, and I think that part of this actually makes sense to me because it's just like, it just seems like agents really should be in the location, you know, in the application that, you know, people are already working in anyway. If I'm in a go-to-market function and I'm in HubSpot, you know, all the time anyway, it's just like, I mean, we use HubSpot internally, so, you know, we're in, you know, Sales Hub, Marketing Hub, Content Hub, all of that.

But then we have also got a project management platform, which it's just like, you do not have to, you know, I've worked in probably all of them over the years. I think they're all just different flavors of terrible. So, you know, if you can spare me from having to go into another tool and experience that excruciating pain, or if you can get an agent to do it, okay. I, you know, maybe the loop doesn't make sense, but you have my interest on that.

Did you see anything that led you to say, yeah, they might be onto something here?

Alec Cherrin:

Yeah. I don't know. I still don't trust them to be taking over the project management side of things. That's really it. It's just not robust enough to make sure that what the agents are doing... In my mind, I like to have a little bit more visibility than they're offering right now with the tools and what I saw into what's actually happening at what time.

And I don't mind when agents are doing, you know, busy work or things like that. But when they're setting up, like, project deadlines, and they are controlling, you know, notifications and when they're going out and who's getting them. Like, I don't want my team being piled on with notifications because I have an agent who's pestering them for something that's overdue when they don't have what they need to get the work done yet.

And I mean, there are ways around that, but you're always gonna have gaps in your agent flows, and that's kind of the nature of any kind of workflow that you're setting up, whether there's AI involved or not. So really it's just creating a different type of work. I think it's a little bit more scalable, but the thing that really concerns me is that all of this amazing AI innovation that's happening, a lot of it is towards the generative AI side of things, which I think there's a place for it.

But I also saw a number of the demonstrations and a few of the talks that I attended at the event, they were really pushing for agentic AI to be your go-to for sending customer contact emails, writing blog posts. And they weren't saying, hey, write this post with this tool and then go and edit it and make it better.

They were saying, full stop, go ahead, click this button, post the blog post, you're gonna be great. I don't think that's their overall position, but I did hear that a number of times, and I want to be fair to HubSpot in general, but a number of their presenters and product team members did basically give that advice.

So I believe we're gonna start seeing more AI slop, not less, from these innovations. And that's one of my bigger concerns here.

Steve Smith:

And I guess that's sort of my concern too because I mean, we, you know, internally we use a lot of AI agents and like in our project management tool, we've got agents, you know, throughout the workflow. And some of 'em I think are valuable and some of 'em are definitely cranking out workslop that is actually just creating more work, you know?

And I think that everyone's kind of living this reality. It's just like we're experimenting in real time and we're all trying to figure it out because this is a, you know, crazy kooky world we're living in. You know, it seems like, you know, HubSpot's not the only, you know, platform out there that is trying to be the everything platform.

You know, at the end of the day, someone's gonna need to own agent management. I mean, who's that gonna be? Is it gonna be, you know, an HRIS? Is it gonna be like a Workday? Is it gonna be your CRM, like a HubSpot or a Salesforce? Or is it, what's behind door number three, like a ServiceNow? Or is it gonna be living in Anthropic or OpenAI?

Well, I mean, what's your hot take on this?

Alec Cherrin:

I don't know if I have a hot take on this. I guess my inkling, in my limited experience, my suspicion is that it's going to end up native to one of these frontier LLMs and their company. So at this point I'm thinking it might end up in Claude. They're building harnesses, they're building the things that you need to control all the agents. Claude Code's already phenomenal at kind of doing that and deploying multiple agents at once and deploying agents that can deploy subagents.

So I think they have a really big head start. Now, whether they might be acquired by an HRIS or something like that, that could totally happen. I absolutely could see a world in which that is possible. But I feel like their ambitions, from what I've seen from their founder and their team, it doesn't seem like they would be satisfied with an acquisition.

And that, I, again, limited experience and just judging based on what I've heard from them. I do feel like they kind of want to take over the space if they can, and every workspace.

Steve Smith:

Well, so, okay, we got our first question here from Simone. Simone, thank you for sending this in. Her question is, did any of the new features announced at INBOUND stand out to you? With AI playing such a big role, she's curious about how they plan to keep the experience customer centric, especially for teams like Simone's that rely on strong client relationships.

Alec Cherrin:

Great question. Thank you. I appreciate the customer centricity of the question because I feel like that was distinctly lacking from the entire event. They are doing some things, and the one feature that I would say was extremely customer centric is this buyer intent and the signals data that is now in Marketing Hub.

If you're not using any other, and they said this directly, but I agree with them, so I'm going to repeat it. If you're not using your AI credits for anything else right now and you have a HubSpot subscription, if you're on Pro, you have about 3,000 credits a month. If you're on Enterprise, you might have 5,000 to 10,000 a month just with your baseline subscription.

First thing I would do is go and activate your buyer intent and your signals. Basically what it's doing right now is it is scouring the internet, taking data from their search partners and everyone else that they can, and they have a very robust network, and basically telling you like, hey, this company has people in it who are searching for services like yours, and it will even tell you what stage of the funnel they're at and where they might be so that you can come to them with the right message at the right time.

I think that was extremely customer centric because people who are using the CRM want better data and they're just handing it to you. You don't have to use, you know, Apollo to go collect that anymore, or tools like it. You have it all right in HubSpot and I think that's extremely helpful.

And then if you activate the signals tracking, you can also see things like, did they get a funding round? Is this company dealing with a specific pain point that you serve? Is deal timing good? Is there a company surge? You know, did a job just end? So maybe you have time to go swoop in and take a contract from someone else?

There's a lot that it can do right now, and I think that's probably one of the coolest things. And the other thing that I think is actually really worth your time is the context feature that's now in Agent Hub. They've had versions of this throughout the last year or so, but they've kind of consolidated this all in Agent Hub now.

So essentially you can add context with AI or without. Depending on how much stuff you have in your CRM, it can discern what your ICP should look like or what your ICP does look like. If maybe you're wrong about it, you think it's one thing, but you have all these people in your CRM who have closed deals that are exhibiting totally different behaviors and totally different demographics, it can help you see that.

And then essentially, if you upload all of the context that you can to that part of the platform, that is what is going to power your agentic AI and your generative AI across the system. So if you're gonna use it for first drafts, whatever, or even at all, I would highly recommend that's the first thing you go do. It will make it less stupid. That is the best way I can put it.

Steve Smith:

That's setting the bar pretty low. So, okay. You used the C word, credits. That's, you know, AI credit usage has become, I think, kind of a hot button topic with anybody who, you know, works with AI right now. You get some agents here reported to burn hundreds of credits per run. So if I'm a buyer who likes, you know, crazy things like knowing what my bill's going to be, you know, how nervous should I be?

Alec Cherrin:

Oh, you should. You...

Steve Smith:

Brian just said less stupid is the goal. So thank you, Brian. I'm glad we're all in agreement on that.

Alec Cherrin:

Absolutely. No, you should be nervous. I feel like credits in a pricing model of any sort are usually just meant to obfuscate how much money you're spending on their platform. It doesn't feel like a customer centric innovation to have credits. I feel like a lot of companies try to justify it and say, oh, it's so that you can understand how much usage you're actually engaging with.

It's not useful. I want to know how much money I'm spending, and I feel like one of the biggest things that I took from UNBOUND is that they really want you using agents for everything, and agents for things that are useful, like buyer intent and tracking this data across the entire internet really.

And they also want you using credits to go and update someone's first name so it has a capital letter in the first place. There are agents for everything at this point. You can set up data agents, you can set up marketing agents, prospecting agents, whatever you want. I would be very careful. The good thing they do have in there is the ability to test your agents before you deploy them.

So if you have this great idea for an agent and you're like, hey, I really want an agent that, when we receive a buying signal from someone who is not currently a customer, it reaches out on LinkedIn and it has this specific type of conversation, depending on their demographics or whatever.

If you test that in the HubSpot platform before you deploy it, it will give you an estimate of how many credits it's gonna use. But then again, easy way to do it is just look at it. Each credit is about 1 cent. So if you're looking at a thousand credits, you're looking at like $10. And I don't know why they can't just say that, but it is annoying.

And I do feel like some of those agents will get very expensive very quickly, and it's definitely gonna be a make versus make-elsewhere analysis that you have to conduct every time, because there are much cheaper models like DeepSeek and some of those other, Hermes, you know, there's other models out there that can do the same things and you might even be able to plug them into HubSpot very similarly.

It just might require a little more configuration. But if you're burning hundreds and hundreds of credits for every run, it's definitely worth looking elsewhere, 'cause it's not cheap.

Steve Smith:

So another follow-on here from Brian. It says, one of the sessions I attended, the speaker recommended to question what the process deserves AI before even starting down the AI path, which is, yeah, 100 on that, Brian. What's your take, Alec?

Alec Cherrin:

Yeah, I mean, that would've been very refreshing for me to hear. I feel like I was getting the opposite message the entire week. Very much like, hey, throw AI at the wall first. See if it sticks like spaghetti. And if it does, then please keep using it. And if it doesn't, then maybe try something else.

And I fully agree. I think you first should see if you can solve the problem in the easiest, laziest way possible first, which would be like a one-step workflow or something that isn't gonna burn credits every single time it runs. What are you building and why are you doing it? And I feel like the needs to take into account the fact that you're gonna be hopefully using this solution for a long time. It's not like you wanna, you know, set something up real quick just to have it forever and, you know, set it and forget it.

If you're building something that is solving a problem that you're having on a daily basis, you're much better off not having AI involved because you're opening up less risk and less potential for mistakes. And if you can do it without AI, I would say you should. Every time.

Steve Smith:

Well, and I think one, you know, if I'm putting on my marketing leader hat, it's just like, I would like some transparency into how much of a bill am I ringing up on a monthly basis? It's just like if I'm throwing agents at everything, is there a way to put a governor on it?

So after it hits a certain dollar amount, it just stops? Or is it, you know, am I looking at, okay, am I gonna get a $500 overage bill at the end of the month, a 5,000 or 50,000? It's just like there's the potential for a really rude shock here.

Alec Cherrin:

So, to their credit, they did mess up at one point and they admitted it and they were like, yeah, we did totally just let agents run amok. And if you got an agent overrunning their credits, we just kind of charged you more. That was a bad idea. They have put a ton of governance into play, so basically you can decide if you want to add anything on top, or you want to cut your agents off at your credit limit.

You can set the credit limit, you can set specific permissions as to, like, what it can go over on or not. And yeah, to HubSpot's credit on that end, you probably won't be seeing any surprise bills unless you're not configuring that properly. But you also may be better off building certain things in other places, because the value of some of these other AI tools in HubSpot are actually much higher than, you know, prospecting agents, for instance, maybe, depending on your situation and how much information's in your CRM.

Steve Smith:

Well, let's get to, you know, stuff you can use tomorrow, you know. So, how do you wanna do this? Do you have something top of mind? Do you want me to go through the kind of the list of features that we have, lightning round style? What works best for you, Alec?

Alec Cherrin:

Yeah, I had, so I guess the biggest thing I would say is like, activate your buyer intent now. If anyone is listening who wants to get more out of their HubSpot instance, they're not using AI right now, activate your buyer intent in your Marketing Hub and make sure that you're, like, turning on the signals and getting all the information that you can from there.

You can even send yourself a digest. That'll burn some credits, but they're absolutely worth it. It is invaluable information and it is pretty good. The other thing I would make sure that you're doing is adding your context. Like I said, if you want to use any AI tools in HubSpot, add your context now.

Add as much as you can. If you're using AI in any tool, the more context you can give it, the better. And I think the advantage that HubSpot has is that if you have something like Content Hub where you're putting all of your creatives in and all of your copy and your website's there and your blog's there, it can read all of that as well.

So it's able to get a lot more information and write better and write more like you. So maybe you get a better first draft is I guess how I would put it, if you're using it to create things. One other thing that is absolutely worth noting is the SEO or the AEO tool.

And Steve, you know, I don't believe in AEO. I don't think it's real. But that is a whole other conversation, and it's not that I don't think it's a worthwhile practice or thing to aim for, but I think it's overblown in the terms of what it is relative to SEO and how much different it actually is. The AEO...

Steve Smith:

I'm gonna pull on that thread here in a second, but we have a question from Hannah. She's asking, did you learn anything about any new useful ways to utilize AI agents? Anything else that you haven't discussed already that jumped out?

Alec Cherrin:

New useful ways to use AI agents. I feel like I did get a couple of really good ideas. One of the ideas I actually got was potentially building an agent to help track experiments, and not only track experiments in HubSpot, but across all properties in an organization, and then basically using that agent to go get the result, like, ask me for what my specs are, and then take the winning result and go implement it.

So that was probably the coolest thing I thought of being able to do there, and just building kind of a machine that, instead of having to go and worry about all these experiments, it's actually running them for you. Once you've set your parameters, you can basically rest assured that you're constantly optimizing whatever it is you're trying to optimize.

Steve Smith:

Okay. Okay, good. Good answer there. And that actually does sound useful and interesting. So let's go back to AEO real quick, because I mean, I hear what you're saying and I'm all in favor of being skeptical about pretty much everything. So good on you. But I also think that, and then we do talk about, okay, is AEO really any different from SEO?

And so here's one way that I would say that, yeah, it is. Is that when you look at, you know, basically the explosion of zero-click searches over the last year, I think that there's something like, you know, web traffic across the board is down, or like conversion traffic is down like 35%, and it's all zero-click searches, and it's really wreaking havoc with marketing teams everywhere trying to figure out, okay, so what's working, what's not?

And it really is requiring a lot more hoops to jump through. So I think in that regard, living in an AEO world is different than an SEO world. Tell me I'm wrong.

Alec Cherrin:

I'm not gonna tell you you're wrong, because the way you just put it, you're a hundred percent correct. Living in an AEO world or living in an agentic or AI search world, I guess, it is different. But I think as a marketer, it's not a useful distinction in terms of what the practice is, other than some slight nuances, like the fact that you now need maybe PR involved in your strategy, and more external sources, like your social media, matters more.

That being said, the way that I've always thought about SEO and anything I'm putting out, products, copy, marketing materials, whatever, I'm always aiming to deliver real value to the person who's reading at the right time. I don't think there's any significant difference in whether the algorithm that is looking for that content is an AI crawler or a traditional web crawler, and if you are constantly optimizing for customer value and the value that you're delivering to the person who's reading, your audience, you are constantly going to be optimized for, no matter what the algorithm is.

Of course there are, you know, schema rules and things like that, but it's not that much different from SEO. You might need an FAQ schema and that's maybe weighted higher. But again, these are just like technical SEO things that have changed over time as well.

And even though the behavior, the search behavior has changed, the way to make good content really hasn't. I feel like people are severely overweighting the importance of AI search and AI optimization, rather than being extremely customer centric and saying, hey, is this article that I'm writing answering the search intent of what someone is putting into their Google, into their Bing search bar?

And if the answer is yes, but it's not as good as this other article that's out there, and here's why, that's how you optimize. I don't think it's useful to say, oh, you know, AI crawlers really like when you have, you know, this particular format. It's like, yeah, it does right now, because that's the best it has.

If you can come up with a better format or a more digestible way to serve the search intent of the person who is searching for that content, you are going to take over that spot. Over time, the algorithm will optimize for you, and it's getting smarter and faster.

Steve Smith:

I agree with all of that, and I think that you brought a bunch of really, I think, important nuances to the conversation because, you know, when you think about the difference between AI mentions and AI citations, it's just like, citations are much higher value. And I think that citations go more toward quality content where you are either getting some of that third-party validity that's driven by, you know, PR, analyst relations, analyst mentions. We're seeing, you know, the value of AI citations go up dramatically.

They're much harder to get. But then when you look at like, you know, merely an AI mention, there's nothing predictable about it. You can, you know, you and I can be sitting right next to each other on laptops, type in the exact same search to the exact same, you know, LLM, and I might get a citation for three brands, or not citation, get a mention for three different brands, and you might get, you know, no mentions for any of those brands or maybe different mentions.

Alec Cherrin:

Yeah.

Steve Smith:

I think that's where it's all still, it doesn't seem like it's manageable or predictable. And until it becomes something that you can do something with, at the end of the day, this is all still about quality content. It's like, don't give me just more AI slop. Give me something that actually adds value.

So yeah, as you said, customer-centric.

Alec Cherrin:

A hundred percent. And you know, I keep telling people, you know, the only thing that AI has really done is democratize mediocrity. Anyone can make crap content now. So the bar has been raised. If you, you know, what gets weighted extremely high in AI search is proprietary data that is discovered and uncovered with good methodologies.

I mean, you can't just go into a Claude and say, hey, write me a blog post on, you know, the best trends in work tech right now, and expect it to rank. If you source it properly, you have a better chance, of course. But if you go and conduct research on your own and you can explain the methodology and it's sound and scientifically viable and statistically viable, then you have a much better shot at being cited than if you were to go, you know, route AI.

I think people are over-indexing on the technical and the AI side of AEO, which is why I like to overcorrect by saying it's not real. And I really wanna bring people back to the idea that if you create valuable content, it's always going to be pushed by these search engines, because their job is to get more people to use them.

And if they're giving the best result, more people will use them. That's the whole model. They make money when advertisers get to show their content to more people, and the way that happens is more people use their tool.

Steve Smith:

Well, yeah, I mean, quality content, much like a black turtleneck, never goes outta style. So, to kind of shift gears a little bit, something that I know that you really wanted to cover off on, and I do too, because this is a topic that is one that I'm incredibly passionate about, is the conference experience, and specifically the conference food options.

You took a picture of your lunch. Michael, can you put that up on the screen? 'Cause I think it's important to share this picture to provide context to our audience. A picture of your $25 lunch, which is, it looks like some coleslaw that you ate, and then a very sad looking chicken and waffle that apparently cost you $25.

So can you talk about this for a second?

Alec Cherrin:

Yeah, let me correct you really briefly. This costs Rep Cap $25 and I feel...

Steve Smith:

It costs somebody $25.

Alec Cherrin:

But no, this was, just to be clear, I had not started eating this lunch. I know it looks like I might have. I had not moved it around very much. It might've gotten jostled very slightly in the walk to the table. But to its credit, what you can see back there is a Quest bar, and that was only $4, and the water was about a dollar, and that chicken send, which I think was 20, and it all just kind of came as a meal.

Yeah, I was not really expecting it to be this bad. They were basically Tyson chicken nuggets on an Eggo waffle with bagged coleslaw. And I could have made a much better meal for much less money.

But this was, you know, this is where they probably made a lot of their money, I would say. Captive audience. And if you wanted to go outside and go to their food trucks, it was a very similar situation. They had about 20 food trucks. You had to wait 30 minutes in line to grab the food, and everyone who was walking outta there, it just didn't look good.

Nothing was quality. It was very much like, eat so you can get back in there. And by the way, pay us way too much money because you're stuck here.

Steve Smith:

Alright, so I have a rant on this, because I know that we're living in a completely different marketing world now, but once upon a time, not that many years ago, you could go to a conference and they would hydrate you. They would give you some food, some snacks. You could get a lunch. The quality of it, maybe it wasn't great, but you weren't paying for it.

It seems like now the conference experience, at least at the last few events I've been to, is not only are they not going to feed you, you know, best case you can find an overpriced meal that you can actually pay for. Worst case, you don't even have that option. You have to leave where you're going and then spend whatever outrageous amount of money to just get enough sustenance to continue your conference experience. And that, in my opinion, is just flat out wrong.

I mean, I am, it is, this is not a world I wanna live in.

Alec Cherrin:

Yeah. No, me neither. I will say to their credit, they did have some snacks on the floor at certain points. They were gone in like 30 seconds. I didn't see any of them until after they were empty bowls and dishes. Thankfully, as a HubSpot partner, I did have access to the partner lounge, so I didn't...

Steve Smith:

Oh, okay.

Alec Cherrin:

It was amazing. I didn't have to drink the awful coffee. I stood in about a five-minute line and got a real cappuccino whenever I needed...

Steve Smith:

Oh, you're in the VIP, huh?

Alec Cherrin:

It felt so VIP. I felt like a big baller. It was incredible. Shout out to the HubSpot partner program, I guess, for that one. But yeah, no, I was truly disappointed with the culinary experience overall. And not that I was expecting much, but I was at least expecting enough food to not be hungry before I had to leave the conference if I was eating for lunch.

And yeah, they missed the mark on that very low baseline.

Steve Smith:

And a couple of comments here. Brian said you should have tried the falafel food truck, no line, and it was actually decent. I do like a good falafel, I will say. So, and any truck-based food group, I'm also in favor of, 'cause even, it's sort of like pizza, even when it's bad, it's still pretty good.

And then our producer, Michael, actually had a comment, and he said they chose Dasani as their water, ick. What, Michael, what's your hate on Dasani? I mean, I'm just, 'cause I'm curious.

Michael Thibodeaux:

I don't know, there's just something really off-putting about the taste. I've never liked it. And if I'm ranking things, you know, I would put that last on my list of bottled waters that I enjoy.

Steve Smith:

Okay. Wow. A new list that I didn't know I needed, but now I guess I'm gonna have to start pursuing. So thank you for bringing that bit of joy into my life, Michael. I really do appreciate it. So I guess let's move toward wrap-up here. I think this has been a fun conversation, and I hope our audience of thousands has enjoyed it.

So, you know, I guess, you know, what's the straight dope? What's your read on it? Is UNBOUND worth going to? Yes, no, or it depends?

Alec Cherrin:

If you are into celebrity speakers who are going to give you inspirational speeches about, I guess, the more eloquent version of you can do it, you're amazing, and you want to hear that over and over again, coupled with AI pitch after AI pitch, and I don't think the AI pitches are going away anytime soon. Or if you just wanna learn about HubSpot and you are completely clueless and wanna crash course, I would say those are the two best use cases for going to UNBOUND.

Steve Smith:

Or if it were me, I would, like, hit the sessions in the morning. I would bail and go have a fantastic seafood lunch in Boston, because I mean, Boston, great food town. And then spend the afternoon at the BFA, 'cause if you haven't ever been to the Boston Fine Arts Museum, one of the best in the country, an absolutely fantastic experience.

It's...

Alec Cherrin:

And I get, okay, a hundred percent agree. And I would be remiss if I didn't mention the fact that I did spend a bulk of my time there actually doing what's called Braindates. And they did offer this program where essentially you could put your topic in that you wanted to discuss with some of the other attendees.

People would show up and you would have a round table discussion or a one-on-one or whatever the session was set up for, and it had up to eight participants. I actually hosted one of these talks about how we don't need to be shoving AI into everything, and that one filled up faster than any of the other ones I saw down there.

So there were some great discussions that were happening. I learned a lot in those individual sessions and those one-on-ones and the group sessions that I joined, other than that one as well. And if I were going back, I would almost exclusively book Braindates, pick those topics, and then go to the few sessions where there's really genuinely insightful information about how to do my job better.

That's what I would be looking for.

Steve Smith:

Okay, and one last question from Brian. B2B Marketing Forum.

Alec Cherrin:

Question.

Steve Smith:

Is that an event? Are you, Brian, are you asking us about whether that's an event to go to, or did HubSpot have a good B2B marketing forum? I'll be watching the chat if we get some clarification on that, Brian. In the meantime, we would not be marketers if we did not try to wrap this up with a good, solid call to action.

So here it is. If any of this conversation's prompted a, hey, wait, my instance of HubSpot can do that moment, our good friend Alec is offering a free 30-minute one-on-one HubSpot consult. So whether you are a current client, you just wandered in here off of the proverbial digital street, you're a lurker, whoever, just drop us a line, either, you know, LinkedIn, or go through HubSpot. We happen to have it. Carrier pigeon, however you do it.

Just drop us a line. We'll tee you up with Alec. And clarification from Brian. He's asking, should we go to HubSpot UNBOUND versus B2B Marketing Forum? I haven't been to B2B Marketing Forum, so I'm not familiar with that event. I don't have anything to compare it to. Alec, you haven't been?

Alec Cherrin:

Can't speak on it. Do not have the expertise.

Steve Smith:

Yeah, I would probably say, is B2B Marketing Forum at a location that has fine dining and great museums? Once I know that, I can weigh in on an opinion. But anyway, so that's it for today. Thanks everyone who joined us. We are gonna wrap up. So, Alec, thank you very much. Michael, thank you for shepherding us through all of this.

Thanks everyone who wanted to hang out live, and for all you who are watching the recording, thanks for paying attention. We'll catch y'all next time.