Episode 80 // Why we’re NEVER going back to Hubspot’s Inbound Conference

Mike Jones (32:47.374)
If you all haven’t figured this out yet, Chris is the question asker on our team. And I have to spill the beans, Chris, because you have a saying that you’ve put up in your office that we’ve now memorialized with a mug. Do you have the mug? Has it shown up yet? No, that’s fine. That’s fine. They don’t need to see it. They just need to hear it. And you have a reminder to yourself. And I want you to tell everybody what your reminder is.

Chris (32:51.834)
Yeah.

Sam (32:51.968)
Yes.

Chris (33:00.274)
I don’t have my mug right now. It’s not right here. I was just looking for it. Yeah.

Do you want to know what it says? Yeah.

It’s ask stupid questions, stupid, and it’s backward. Wait, maybe you see it through the…

Mike Jones (33:20.556)
I love it. It’s fine for us. They can read it. Don’t worry. No, don’t. No, no, no, no, no. That’s not how it works. That’s not how it

Chris (33:27.27)
Guys, yes, ask super questions, because that’s where lot of the answers are hiding. lot of the best answers.

Mike Jones (33:32.974)
I think you just called all of our listeners stupid.

Sam (33:36.352)
That’s really mean,

Chris (33:36.402)
man. I, you know what? stand, I stand by it.

Mike Jones (33:37.816)
That’s it. That’s it.

Mike Jones (33:42.796)
No, I love it. I think it’s a good reminder. Don’t be afraid to ask questions.

Chris (33:46.386)
Okay, well, saving that for last. Okay, so what was the most useful takeaway that you guys got from inbound 2024 in Boston?

Sam (34:03.178)
Hmm, most useful takeaway.

Chris (34:08.05)
hey, or booth interaction.

Because we like the booths, right? We came away thinking like, actually, the vendors are pretty solid, right?

Mike Jones (34:21.475)
You too like the booths. Don’t, don’t, don’t rope me into this, this one.

Chris (34:23.384)
Okay, well, you know, stamina like the

Sam (34:30.352)
I think, you know, I am not an avid user of HubSpot. So I didn’t really go for the HubSpot insights. but I think something I learned was, in-person stuff is, is irreplaceable when you’re able to show up to a place, a physical place and meet new people, see old friends.

It’s just, it’s worth it. I mean, that was a big trip for us. Mike and I flew out there from Phoenix, Arizona, from Phoenix to Boston. We had a lot of logistical issues with hotels and all that stuff. But being together with us three as our team, but also just seeing clients, seeing just people we know from the accounting industry, any excuse we have to do that and.

For our listeners, any excuse you have to do that or the, know, BD, people responsible for BD at your firm who have the opportunity to do that, I would just say that is irreplaceable. Even if you’re an introvert like me, it is an excellent practice.

Mike Jones (35:52.238)
My biggest takeaway was…

man HubSpot is killing it. I’m just, watching like, what is it? Like 10, 12,000 people filling up a convention center. Each of them paying like what? 12 to 2,500 bucks a pop to attend in a ticket price. All the sponsors and vendors who are paying to be there. I calculated at bare minimum, bare, bare, bare minimum.

they’re raking in $20,000 or $20 million in revenue from that. Now, obviously there’s a lot of costs involved, but like, that’s not even their product. They’re not an event company. That just blew me away of just like the value that you can deliver through what you just said, Sam, just in-person events, but more from like the brand side of things of

man, like what a what a great testament to the success of HubSpot success of their product of like the demand and I’ll be honest, and we’re kind of jumping ahead here. Was that like a five star event top must go to every single year type event for me? No, it wasn’t. I think, as one person put it, it felt a little bit like we all just sat in on HubSpot’s like company retreat.

Sam (37:23.529)
Yeah.

Mike Jones (37:23.702)
And it was rah rah and it was fun and there were like good things that happened. There was some good content, but it wasn’t like, my goodness, this is the most like impactful event of my entire of my entire year. Right. And I don’t even know if it was really designed for me. I’m not sure I’m the right person to be there. And so, but the fact that like they get people there, they get 12,000, they pack out the convention center without even

Chris (37:23.813)
Yeah.

Mike Jones (37:52.942)
It was well produced like I’m gonna give them full credit for that. It looked amazing Sound was great Well organized You know, they’ve got staff Everywhere. I mean just really well done from an event standpoint. I’m not sure the content lived up to the hype For me at least and then I have a whole we’ll get into this in the next segment but some other issues I have but

But yeah, I’m just like, I think I, you we’ve had, we’ve talked about this, like one of our vision, part of our vision at resound is like, maybe one day we have our own like, resound or probably remark a brand conference. That would be amazing. And like, I think this gave me some hope that like, maybe we can get there and it probably won’t be 12,000 people. That’d be insane. But like, could we do like 200, 500? That’d be really cool.

And I just see the value of it from a brand a brand awareness brand recognition Brands kind of engagement level. They’re like HubSpot was just it’s clear like They are doing something really really cool when they can put on an event like this And it draws in so many people and there were a lot of people that got a lot of value out of it So I don’t want to discount based on my take on it. Mine’s very unique. So

You know, just, and there’s always room to improve, you know, no events. Perfect. But, kudos to HubSpot, like great, great case study in what it looks like to build a really phenomenal brand. They’ve done it. mean, I hope so. It’s a big case study for me. So I liked actually getting to experience it. And that was a big takeaway for me.

Chris (39:28.325)
Yeah.

you

Chris (39:39.004)
Mm-hmm.

Chris (39:44.72)
Yeah. I mean, think that, cause I was just, I was just reflecting on one of the low lights. and that was the, media masterclass, content marketing tips for media leaders. And, I was thinking about it and. Yeah. Based on what you just said, they had people up there and they’re like, you know, they just kept talking around this idea of like knowing who your audience is. And I’m like, that’s table stakes. That’s.

Mike Jones (39:59.278)
That one was awful. I’m sorry, I’m with you.

Chris (40:14.514)
Is it because we’re in the business that we know this? But it’s just like I wrote down relevance, gee whiz, wow, because it’s like, yeah, of course, right? Relevance, write a persona, is that what you’re trying to tell us? Write a persona. And then I realized, I think that it kind of reminded me of that Simon main wearing and that whole idea of just like, once you get this big, you just start kind of BSing.

And that’s just all that’s just all you do. And you just spend brands money to like these big brands, you spend their money to buy. All you do is you’re buying into and then you’re just saying all the right things, all the normal things that you would expect, you know, very politically correct. You don’t ruffle any feathers. You just try to sound really like humble and all this all the words and.

And it feels like an act. And so when I saw that, I’m like, it’s just more actors. There’s more people saying things that aren’t very interesting at all. And I think that the world we live in, we’re at the brand level, which is at the same time more, I I think more pure than that, more real, more true, right? because of the companies we work with and then more practical than that. And I think that’s why I liked the, that’s why I liked the email tear down so much.

And that’s why I like what we do at ReSound so much. And I don’t really know if we saw a bunch of that there. I think we saw people trying to act like they do what we do because it’s the thing to do.

Mike Jones (41:52.248)
Hmm. It’s an interesting. Yeah. I don’t know if I thought about that way. That’s cool. No, I like it. I like it. I agree. I think there were some format issues with that panel too.

Chris (41:54.738)
Hope that’s not too negative.

Chris (42:05.842)
Ahem.

Mike Jones (42:07.032)
Sam, did you, no, you had your big takeaway, didn’t you? You already went.

Sam (42:09.629)
I already went.

Chris (42:11.19)
But what’s the low? What are the kinds of things can we talk about that were just low lights? Let’s be real. Yes. What’s your rating, Mike?

Mike Jones (42:15.266)
Hello. Well, the Airbnb that it went before we even landed. I had my low light. And I’ll be honest, it kind of flavored the week a little bit for me. We redeemed it that that place that Sam locked down on day two was helpful. But yeah, I mean, that’s a whole other tangent story. But for all the listeners who don’t care. Yeah, our Airbnb canceled about an hour before we landed. So

Good job, host, who shall not be named. Yeah, that was disappointing. And Scramble, was mad Scramble on that flight to try to find something else. And then we got stuck with the airport hotel for a night, and that was not great, and very, very, very expensive. I think that probably is the number one low light for me. And this is just as

Chris (42:50.726)
Yeah.

Sam (42:58.164)
Mm-hmm.

Mike Jones (43:14.868)
It’s the business owner who, you know, we sent 30 people the expense to go to Boston and apparently they’re going to do it in San Francisco next year, which is not going to be cheaper. I just don’t think it’s there. I just don’t think the value is there for all three of us to go. And that’s very contextualized to our firm, our team, the three of us, particularly, and the extend the cost that is Boston.

A lot that was just the fact that it’s in Boston. Flights are expensive. Hotels were insane. Finding a place was difficult. It’s just there’s not enough accommodation for the number of people that are coming into that city. So, you know, it’s probably more of a complaint about location and price to value ratio than it was to like any one specific thing of like, this is just

Chris (43:50.706)
Mm-hmm.

Mike Jones (44:11.5)
You know, there are sessions that were better than others or others that were worse than others. Yeah, absolutely. None of it was like, my goodness, this is the worst conference ever. you know, terrible, good conversations. I would, if I had like one big critique, maybe that if that’s another way to think about it, Chris, that wasn’t totally your, your question, but my, biggest critique. There was really no,

no organized networking. I think it was maybe like one networking session, but it was very opt-in oriented. I think that’s a huge, huge missed opportunity for HubSpot. As an in-person, we’re at an in-person conference, one of the main values of being in-person is the networking, I think for most people, and they did not facilitate that well, in my opinion.

Sam (44:45.856)
Hmm.

Sam (45:07.146)
Yep. Yep.

Mike Jones (45:12.364)
So that’s just me.

Chris (45:12.996)
Mm Well, yeah. And then you lose the fact. I never thought of this until you said that. But you lose the fact that, OK, now people are going to want to go to HubSpot next year because now they know people and they’re going to want to reunite with them and, you know, that kind of thing.

Mike Jones (45:26.53)
Yep. Yep. I saw most people just stuck with their little group that they came with. If you didn’t have networking kind of organized outside of of HubSpot, like you went and put together something, either an event outside of the conference, or even while you’re on site, you organize your own little like networking opportunities. If you’re not connected in, I mean, like we met one guy.

who’s first and probably last time that he will go to inbound. He’s evaluating HubSpot. They’re a pretty large organization. They’re considering moving over to HubSpot. I think they’re going to do it regardless of his experience in it found, which is hilarious to me. But he didn’t feel like he got connected. He didn’t feel like he got his answers answered in his like evaluation of the product, even going to the individual like kind of the breakout stations where you could go and ask specific questions to guides.

the answers were mostly, we’ll go on our online university and learn about the product. And he’s like, no, I want someone to train me. I will pay someone. And they’re like, we don’t we don’t have that here. Well, and he’s like, I’m here. I’m already here. Like, train me. Show me how to do it. And they just kept pointing them back to the online, you know, training. So the free stuff. And he was just like, it’s not what I need. So

I just like that as a little obviously anecdotal point. It’s not a big data point, but it just feels indicative of I think some of the experience that I had with going to my first inbound conference.

Chris (47:06.172)
Yeah. Do you guys want to have a couple of notes, a couple of takeaways? Do we want to go talk about a few of those things? There are specific things about email that I thought were really good. Or do you want to keep going at a higher level?

Mike Jones (47:23.054)
Sure, let’s do that. And then after that, we should ask the final and question that everyone wants to know, which is why, why they should not go back.

Chris (47:31.666)
Yeah. Yeah. Or should they? Yeah. Would we? Would we? Yeah.

Mike Jones (47:33.176)
or why they should not go. And yeah, it’s totally click bait. I get it.

Chris (47:39.972)
OK, so there is is one thing I one thing I wrote down in the and this is the email. So I’ll surround email, which I thought was the most interesting topic that I heard talked about there. One of the things was the idea of writing deeply in order. So this is the guy who built I can’t remember what that what it was called. It was it was why email still relevant. It was kind of that that kind of talk. And it was about it was from this guy who is.

Mike Jones (47:41.069)
We know.

Chris (48:09.008)
He’s the designer of emails and a company that that grew an audience from zero to like some insane number of subscribers. It was like in the millions, I think. And one of the things he said was you’re looking for the WSJ’s 18th paragraph. So you want to go into into detail, bring the interesting things to the top. And he was saying that what’s most interesting to customers and I think this applies to our accounting clients, too.

what’s most interesting to people is you, you don’t say the, just the obvious stuff because everybody is saying that what you want to do is dig deep into a problem and bring it up to the surface, problem that your clients have and bring that up to the surface. One that people aren’t talking about. Yeah, it feels specific, but that’s where you get the most interesting stuff for your, for your blog posts, for your, you know, LinkedIn posts and things like that.

What do you guys think about that?

Sam (49:15.378)
Yeah.

Mike Jones (49:15.459)
Yeah.

Chris (49:15.474)
It was 2.4 million subscribers, zero to 2.4 million. Sorry.

Mike Jones (49:20.406)
Yeah, specific wins. I mean, my old friend Adam Pirna wrote a book about it. I, I’m a firm believer, like the more specific you can be, the more interesting it is, the more kind of bullseye of the target you can be. Is it as broad? I think that’s the catch point to a lot of people get themselves stuck in as they go, well, there’s only so many people that have that problem. And so

I want to talk about something that’s really, really, really, really broad so I can have as much reach as possible. But at the end of the day, like what’s attractive is interesting, specific is interesting. And, you know, it’s like, I can talk about giraffes, or I could talk about how giraffes have this one specific color in their pattern of their of their, their hair on their, you know, their, I don’t know if you call it, it’s probably hair. They’re like horses, right? They have hair, not fur.

Like that’s that’s interesting. Like you put that in a headline, like the one specific color that’s it’s, it just makes it more interesting than if you just say an email about giraffes. Who’s gonna open that right? So I like specific historical facts trivia is interesting, because it’s like nailing down to like the really granular level. So I like how how whoever this was put it in terms of like the journal, the Wall Street Journal, and an article from

Sam (50:20.768)
Sure.

Chris (50:31.271)
Hmm.

Sam (50:31.464)
Ahem.

Mike Jones (50:49.952)
a newspaper or an online, you know, magazine or something where it’s like, yeah, that 18th paragraph, that’s where it’s like, it’s really interesting, because we’re in the we’re in the weeds now. Right. So

Chris (51:00.402)
Mm-hmm.

And also gives you an opportunity to talk about how I should think about this rather than talking, you know, delivering a bunch of facts, right? How do I, how do I think about this, this topic at this level now, right? Where people are interested in it. I’m going to give a meaningful analysis and now you’re proving your expertise. There’s no doubt now, you know, your topic, if you can talk about the 18th paragraph in WSJ article, right? You can be that specific and clear at that level.

Mike Jones (51:10.915)
Mm-hmm.

Mike Jones (51:27.009)
Mm-hmm.

Chris (51:33.116)
There was another one. have two more if we have time here, but one of them was voice. And I thought that went to branding. He was talking about how voice in an email, right? Remember we’re talking about the growing that email list to 2.4 million, how voice matters and informing, delighting and connecting with your audience. And I thought because we’re involved in branding, because we write voice tone and mood that come from

brand personality traits. This one seemed like a, a, what do call it? Something that’s easy cakewalk, right? Basically, I don’t know to, me, just because it’s, it’s something that, that, that we do. And it’s something that’s really easy. If you can follow, if you trust those brand guidelines and follow that, follow them down to application. Does that make sense? Your, your voice.

Mike Jones (52:29.934)
Of course it does, Chris. It’s the chapter in one of our books. Yep, personality matters. It’s interesting. It creates differentiation. And that voice is an extension of your personality, right? It’s an expression of your personality. So, you know, I think for any brand that’s looking to cut through and really, you know, have impact, right? In the marketplace, that’s one of the tools in your tool belt is your voice.

Sam (52:30.165)
Yeah.

Chris (52:32.324)
Your voice this new which is you. Yeah.

Mike Jones (52:59.052)
And the more again, the more specific you can be about your voice, the more interesting you can be. I think it’s hard to deliver that. I think that that’s probably where most people get tripped up is they can maybe go through an exercise and come up with a personality for their firm. Maybe have some characteristics of that maybe even have like a little bit of guidance around what that sounds like. But then when I have to actually write something, I don’t really know how to translate that to writing.

And I think that goes back to like, if you’re not a writer, by background and by training and by experience, or some combination of those things, it’s really hard to translate personality to content in an effective and consistent way. And I think that’s something like we even need to kind of grow in is advising our clients on how to just how to write better with the voice in mind.

Part of that’s having tools that communicate your voice in different ways. You know, we talk a lot about like the brand metaphor or the archetype. Those are really, really helpful tools because now I can start to have a voice applied to a character that I can think about as I’m writing that puts like nomenclature and like voicing type like tools in my tool belt that I can start using.

Chris (54:11.356)
Mm-hmm.

Mike Jones (54:24.738)
You know, how I think I express myself as, you know, Tom Hanks as Forrest Gump is different than how I think about myself as Clint Eastwood as a dirty Harry, right? And both of those have like very particular, they have particularities to how they talk and how they communicate that I can start to like put into my content in a really easy way, right? But if I don’t have that tool, if I don’t have like a metaphor that uses that, and those are just examples, don’t.

Don’t take that too far. you know, if I don’t have a tool like that to help me voice my brand, then I’m kind of left to like interpretation of traits. And that’s difficult. Even an archetype, I think, has limitations to how far it really helps you to communicate. But but they’re all really great. I think that’s where you just you need a multiplicity of tools. And yeah, we could probably talk all day about that. That’s like a whole nother episode.

Chris (55:11.9)
Mm-hmm.

Chris (55:21.062)
Yeah. And we, and we would, you know, just give us call. we’ll just talk. the other, so the, last thing was, I thought was interesting was, and I’m going to, I’m going to combine two things here. Cause I think I can’t be a publishing company. I think we’ve heard that before. at least I’ve heard that a lot before. And I think it’s true. I think. You know, that, that, that treating your, your.

internal marketing organization as a publishing company, it organizes you around thought leadership, creating thought leadership. The why for that, think the thing that justifies that is another thing they said, which was email is still irrelevant because people have to have an email that they have to check.

Sam (56:13.994)
Mm-hmm.

Mike Jones (56:15.206)
It’s a great channel because everyone checks it just about every hour of the day. Right. So, know, and just like any channel, it’s abused and therefore it gets ignored. Like certain messages get ignored. But the actual channel itself is checked more often than probably anything else. I mean, maybe some social networks for certain people or a higher volume.

but they don’t engage with those. Those those are lean back channels, know, emails, a lean forward, it’s task oriented, it’s react, you know, I’m incentivized to respond, right? Because that’s what I do. I’m either sorting, prioritizing, or responding. You know, so I think it’s a fantastic tool. you know, for all of our friends in accounting firms, professional services is like your

Chris (56:56.018)
Mm-hmm.

Mike Jones (57:12.398)
probably selling to a business, right? And so like use channels that reflect the kind of mode that your prospect is in. And for anybody in B2B for sure, like you’re selling to another business and therefore you want to like use channels that are in the mode of doing business. Email is a business channel. is a, you’re in business mode when you’re in your inbox, especially on your work account, right?

Similarly, like LinkedIn, right? Like, I’m in business mode, it might be a little bit more casual, might be a little bit more fun, might add a little bit of personality or some personalness to it, what’s going on my personal life. But for the most part, I’m on there to do business at some level, right? And so like, it’s a great channel to lean into. From that perspective, I think that’s a really good insight, Chris, and then just your larger one about publishing, being a publisher, I

I do have one kind of pushback on that because I, you know, I’ve heard that for years and years. you know, every, every, every brand should be a publisher. I think every brand that has a point of view should be a publisher. I think if you don’t have a point of view, you should not get into publishing cause you’re going to create garbage. That is not helpful. That will not actually be effective. And you will come out the other end going, why did we do that? And you will put publishing as a methodology.

Chris (58:23.792)
Yeah, that’s good.

Chris (58:36.572)
Yeah.

Mike Jones (58:39.832)
for marketing, you’ll have a really sour taste in your mouth and you’ll never try it again. I cannot tell you how many firms I talk to who are like, we don’t podcast anymore because it didn’t work. And then I go and look at their podcasts and I’m like, well, you don’t have a point of view. So of course it didn’t work. It’s not interesting. You’re just doing it to do it. And that’s not a reason to publish. A reason to publish is because you have a unique point of view.

Chris (58:45.206)
Yeah.

Chris (58:52.036)
Yeah.

Sam (58:52.416)
Yeah.

Mike Jones (59:07.19)
And it can be a soft point of view. can be a vague point of view, but you’ve got one. So go get out there. And obviously the more specific you make it, we’ll keep hammering that one. Yeah, develop it. And maybe over time, let me know that takes time, but like if you go into it and you’re like, the activity of podcasting will get me leads. Like, no, it won’t. Right? The activity doesn’t get you leads. What gets you leads is a point of view that is strategically developed.

Chris (59:16.048)
Yeah, develop it. Yeah, you can develop it. Yeah.

Mike Jones (59:36.898)
that really puts you in front of a particular audience and says, I’m gonna deliver maximum value, right? Because I have a point of view. And I think that point of view is actually gonna help you in your particular specific context as a certain type of business, certain type of job title, certain type of person who needs this information, right? And that just…

Yeah, so that would be my caveat to every brand should be a publisher. like, you know what, some brands should just advertise, sorry. Like, because they don’t have a point of view. They should just buy the attention.

Chris (01:00:18.994)
If anybody wants to know what having a point of view sounds like, just rewind about 30 seconds and listen to Mike talk about having a point of view because, yeah, I mean, and that’s the passion, something that you believe in. And, you know, it’s like, if you’re a company and you don’t really believe that you’re offering something different, I wonder why you’re in business. Just go to work for the other companies that are offering the exact same thing, the exact same way. But you know,

Mike Jones (01:00:28.319)
You

Chris (01:00:46.374)
The point of view comes from that, you know, being able to, Hey, we do it differently. We have a process or we have a point of view or we have a specific passion about this thing that changes, that ripples through how we do everything we do. And we want to share that and we can write a book about it and develop that into a passion.

Mike Jones (01:01:04.834)
Yeah, totally agree. Love it.

Chris (01:01:06.544)
The anti-example, I can take one more second here, the anti-example was StubHub that they gave. I just saw this. I thought it’d be interesting. StubHub spams people. Don’t sign up for their email list unless you just want to see how not to do it. If you just want to see how to spam people and that what they gave as the advice was just, you know, hey, offer a lot of value and then offer a little bit of ask, you know, make sure you have that ask in there, but don’t let it outshine your value to your.

Mike Jones (01:01:20.503)
Ha ha!

Chris (01:01:36.892)
people who take the time to open your email or you’re just going to get unsubscribed from.

Mike Jones (01:01:43.416)
I mean, that’s just…

from a lot of a lot of experience and then also just I mean if you’re a marketer and you haven’t read any Seth Godin you need to go back and dig through the archives go check out his blogs go check out go read all of his books I mean that is like like that is opt-in marketing 101 it’s inbound marketing 101 which is deliver value every single message you put out into the world must deliver value

And especially if someone has said I want to hear from you. Here is my email address. Or here’s my LinkedIn profile. It’s connect. If your message is just just it’s not delivering value, then then get out. I mean, it’s not doing you any good. And it’s certainly probably going to risk you a relationship, right? They’re going to unsubscribe, they’re going to block you, they’re going to be done with you at some level, or at the very least, they’re going to ignore you, right?

you might still have access to their inbox, but man, you got filtered out. So you’re going to the promotions folder. you know, it’s just, I just, it’s, I don’t know. It’s funny that you say it, Chris, I feel like, I feel like everyone should have already learned this lesson, but they’re still doing it. So I guess I need to learn it again.

Chris (01:02:48.114)
Mm-hmm.

Chris (01:03:11.762)
Last question guys. Should we? Are we going back? Are we going back? Yeah, would you guys go back to HubSpot next year? Would you go back again?

Mike Jones (01:03:12.718)
All right, are we going back? Are we going back?

Sam (01:03:23.412)
Go back to inbound.

Chris (01:03:25.157)
Inbound, that’s what I meant, yeah.

Sam (01:03:27.801)
I would not.

I would not.

Mike Jones (01:03:33.922)
Done. Drop the mic. Get out.

Sam (01:03:34.016)
That’s my answer.

Sam (01:03:39.012)
yeah, quick, quick little reason why explaining myself. I, again, I’m not an avid user of HubSpot, but even if I was, or a perspective avid user of HubSpot, I heard several people tell me that that’s not really what they could get out of that. like you said, Mikey mentioned one friend that we met there who was actually looking to see if, if HubSpot would be a good

Mike Jones (01:03:41.006)
Explain yourself.

Sam (01:04:08.712)
a good resource, something to change over from their existing CRM. And he was like, I’m underwhelmed. can’t get any answers. I can’t get anybody to show me how it works. And a lot of it was just like, online, go read the notes, go watch this video. So even that, and I wasn’t there for that either, but the biggest thing I got out of it was the networking. And in a sea of 10,000 people, there’s

probably more intimate things that I could go to and get more networking value for a lot less cost and time. So I’m glad I went, glad I went. was a good time, to see some good friends, got to see Boston for the first time, but not really planning to go back unless Mike tells me I have to.

Chris (01:04:58.278)
Ahem.

Mike Jones (01:05:00.918)
How about you Chris?

Chris (01:05:03.442)
No, I wouldn’t. I wouldn’t go back. It was it was flashy. I don’t care about flash. It was like, you know, the coffee was kind of hit and miss as far as even availability, which is like kind of a big deal. The I love going with you guys. That was great. The Boston was great. But that’s not the reason we go to conferences usually, right, is to go to the city.

So, mean, yeah, no, it’s great. It’s a great reason to go to a city, but I didn’t get enough value out of it. I thought that some of the conversations with the vendors were good because I learned a little more about some tools that are out there, some points of view on the tools. Some of the some of the booths had founders manning the booths. And so that was a little more interesting, a little more personal, and they were really knowledgeable.

You obviously have those booths that just don’t have knowledgeable people and they’re just there to smile and shake hands and get your badge or whatever. But it wasn’t worth it to me. I would rather go to a conference where they’re talking a lot more about the work we do and and things that will help us directly with the work we do, which is a couple of the booths there, but not enough. was it was a very small percentage of the total experience, so I would not go back.

Unless you guys were going in five years and you’re like, hey, let’s go. Then I’m to be like, party. But let’s get our own hotel rooms. Yeah. That’s right.

Mike Jones (01:06:31.662)
You wouldn’t go for the conference, you would go for us. I know. I know, Chris. Yeah.

Sam (01:06:40.874)
Super sweet. Mike, would you go back?

Mike Jones (01:06:43.866)
I was gonna answer a flat out no. And then I thought of something that would make me go back. And that is if they wanted me to speak, I would go back. Yeah. Honestly, that’s probably the only way you’d get me back. Yeah, I just, I don’t feel like I know why I would be going there again.

Chris (01:06:55.986)
Hmm. They should. They really should.

Sam (01:06:56.17)
yes, that would be cool.

Mike Jones (01:07:11.214)
I think this year was a fact finding mission. was like, let’s get the experience. We know people that are going, let’s go hang out with them. We are using HubSpot more as a firm. I use it quite a bit from a CRM standpoint. I’m advising people on using it. So I thought maybe that would be helpful. It was not. It is not a user conference. That became really, really clear almost from the get go of there is nothing here that is

Sam (01:07:26.378)
Mm-hmm.

Sam (01:07:34.046)
Yeah.

Mike Jones (01:07:39.064)
particularly geared for like avid users of HubSpot. And that like from a technical standpoint, so it’s not a technical conference. And in that case, it’s a marketing conference. But it’s really broad, it’s not clear who’s supposed to be there. I don’t know how to find like the people that I want to reach as an individual. So it’s like, it’s not a good business development, you know.

conference, the content itself, I could get in lots of other places for a lot less money. Was there anybody I was able to meet that I wouldn’t be able to meet? No, not really. And I think the ultimate answer is I think I’ve outgrown some of these kinds of conferences. I’m just, I just don’t this isn’t what I need to do.

I think if you are newer to the HubSpot world, if you are newer to marketing as a profession, this might actually be a good conference for you. It might be a good kind of like introductory kind of splash into marketing, advertising, kind of keep up with some of the high level trends and stuff because maybe you don’t know how to do that already.

Yeah, you can get introduced to a lot of new like case in point like Neil Patel for some people is brand new to them. Who he was his experience as a marketer. I’ve known about Neil and I’ve seen his stuff for 10 years, 15 years. So like in one sense, it was like kind of fun to be like, there’s Neil and what’s he doing now? OK. Different, but kind of the same.

So that was cool. And like his content was really good. I enjoyed it. I signed up for his like, you know, I signed up for his email list afterwards. Like I haven’t been on his email list in probably 10 years. So he got me back. So like that, that’s cool. But like, I don’t need that every year. So I don’t think I’m going back unless I’m speaking. And then I think maybe there’s some value. I mean, even I went in with like, maybe like, I wonder if there’s like an opportunity down the road to like

Mike Jones (01:10:01.838)
be a sponsor. And it was like, that was interesting to see that there is not a single agency in their sponsorship roles. So for all they’re like, pushing and okay, we’re getting a little opinionated here about HubSpot. I mean, they’ve been pushing me for years and years to make a resound of HubSpot agency partner. I mean, we got really close one year. So glad we didn’t do that. It might still I’m not that’s not ruled out.

Sam (01:10:03.614)
Hmm.

Mike Jones (01:10:30.84)
But like I went and I’m like, what is there here for agencies? There’s nothing. this isn’t going to help me get more clients. It’s not going to help me keep clients. It’s not, this is not for us. So, you know, I’d love to hear from any listeners who have reasons why they would go, I’d love to know what that is, not, not to sell me on it or I just, I would like to better understand who to, how to direct people to inbound, and say, Hey, yeah, this is a place that you should be. and then

other conferences. I want to know about what other conferences people are going to. So I’d be interested if any listeners make it this far into the podcast episode. All three of you.

Sam (01:11:09.397)
Yeah.

Sam (01:11:12.916)
Well, cool. There you have it.

Mike Jones (01:11:15.532)
Yeah. Thanks everybody. We appreciate you hanging out with us and listening to all of our takeaways, feedback, opinions, lots of opinions from HubSpot Inbound Conference from 2024. Hope it was helpful for you. And like I already mentioned, if you have ideas, feedback for us on HubSpot Inbound Conference, other conferences you think that we should be checking out, we’d love to hear from you. Hit us up. Email me, mike at resoundcreative.com or

Sam at resoundcreative.com or Chris at resoundcreative.com. Chris will take all of your complaints as well. So if you’ve got any issues with this show, send those to Chris particularly and he will deal with them. He will triage them.

Chris (01:11:56.818)
would love to hear them. I will let AI respond back to you.

Mike Jones (01:12:03.758)
I love it. Anyway, we thank you all for check hanging out with us checking us out and we’ll see you next time